The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and Discovery

by Edwin M. Bacon; Richard Hakluyt

Two days later the band had come to the open region of savannas over which savage herds of black cattle roamed, whence glimpses of Panama (the old city north of the present one) were had. As they marched on, Drake saw the Spanish ships riding in the harbour; the Pacific beyond stretching placidly to the horizon. Now they were within a day’s journey of the city. Toward sunset they reached the shelter of a grove through which the road ran, about a league from Panama. Here they rested while Drake despatched a spy, disguised as a Negro servant, into the city—a Cimaroon who had once served a master there and so was familiar with the place—to learn all about the movements of the “recuas:” the mule treasure and merchandise teams. The spy returned after dark with the joyous word that that very night a string of mule teams was to come out. The richest was to head the line accompanying the Spanish treasurer of Lima, Peru, on the way with his family to Nombre de Dios, there to take an “advice ship” in waiting for Spain. This team comprised fourteen mules, of which eight were laden with gold and one with jewels. Two others immediately to follow were each of fifty mules, and were to carry provisions for the fleet at Nombre de Dios, with a small quantity of silver. They were to make the journey in the cool of the night, and to take the route by way of Venta Cruz (Cruces, on the left bank of the Chagres River). With this information Drake determined to intercept the whole string and take off the richest treasure. Accordingly the march was resumed away from Panama and toward Venta Cruz, some four leagues distant.

They came to a halt in a secluded spot about two leagues south of the town. Near by one of the Cimaroons scented out a Spanish soldier, whom they literally caught napping. He was one of the guard hired to protect the Lima treasurer’s train outward from Venta Cruz, and while waiting, knowing that he could get no rest till their safe arrival at Nombre de Dios, he had lain down in the grass and dropped asleep. He was terrorized at falling into the hands of the merciless Cimaroons, and being brought into the presence of Drake he plead for protection. He assured the captain, on the honour of a soldier, that that night he might have, if he would, “more gold, besides jewels and pearls of great price” than all his men could carry, and for his own part he asked only as much of the plunder as would suffice for himself and wife to live on comfortably. Holding the soldier for what service he might render, Drake divided his band into two companies and ambushed in long grass on either side of the road. He headed one company[company], and John Oxenham, with the chief of the Cimaroons, the other. Drake’s lay on one side of the road some fifty paces above Oxenham’s on the opposite side. The foremost company were to seize the mules by their heads as the team came up, while the “hindmost” secured the rear: for the mules tied together were always driven one after the other. The Englishmen all drew their shirts over their apparel by Drake’s order that they might be sure to know each other in the “pell mell of the night.”

The two sections had thus lain for above an hour when the notes of deep sounding bells, which the mule teams invariably bore, were heard in the distance in both directions, betokening the approach of trains from and to Venta Cruz. Then the nearer sound of a horse trotting over the road fell on the listening ears. As it was passing the ambuscade one of the Englishmen, a sailor who had taken too much wine and become reckless, crept up close to the road and raised himself and gazed at the rider. He was a cavalier, well mounted, with a page running at his stirrup. A Cimaroon quickly pulled the sailor down and sat on him. But it was too late. The cavalier had caught sight of the white-shirted object, had recognized it as an Englishman of Drake’s crew, and had put spurs to his horse and galloped off to warn the approaching treasurer’s team of danger. Meeting it on the road the cavalier reported what he had seen, and his conjecture that Drake was in the neighbourhood for plunder of treasure teams to recompense himself for his failure at Nombre de Dios; and he persuaded the treasurer to turn his train out of the way, and let the others that were to follow pass first. Their loss, if “worse befel,” would be of far less account, while they would serve to discover the party in ambush. And just this happened. As the others with the lesser treasure reached the ambush the captains blew their whistles for the attack, and both teams were speedily taken; but the spoil, besides the provisions, netted not more than two “horse-loads” of silver, and Drake’s game was fully discovered. One of the chief carriers told him how their ambush had been exposed by the imprudent sailor and how the cavalier had spread the warning, and counselled his party to “shift for themselves betimes” unless they were able to combat the whole force of Panama before daybreak.

Instead, however, of following this advice Drake took that of the chief of the Cimaroons, which was that he should boldly march on to the town and “make a way with his sword through the enemies.” So, after enjoying a full supper of meat and drink from the captured provisions, the march upon Venta Cruz was begun. The band mounted the mules and thus made the journey comfortably. When within a mile of the town and in a deep woods they dismounted, and leaving the muleteers here, bidding them not to follow at their peril, made the remainder of the way on foot. Half a mile beyond a couple of Cimaroons of the advance guard discovered a Spanish force in ambush in a jungle at the side of the road. They were a body of soldiers with a number of fighting friars of a monastery at Venta Cruz. With this news Drake cautioned his men to move quietly, and pressed on. As they neared the ambuscade the Spanish captain appeared in the roadway before them and called out “Hoo!” Drake replied with the sailor’s response to a hail, “Hallo!” The Spaniard queried, “Que gente?” Drake answered, “Englishmen.” The Spaniard demanded their surrender, "in the name of the ‘King, his master,’" with the promise, as a “gentleman soldier,” of courteous treatment. Drake demanded passage “for the honour of the Queen, his mistress,” and advancing toward the Spaniard fired his pistol in the air. This was taken as a signal by the men in ambush and they let off a volley. Drake was scratched, and several of his men were wounded, one fatally. He blew his whistle, and the English returned shot for shot, with a flight of arrows. Then the Cimaroons took a hand, and under the combined Indian and English warfare the Spaniards were routed. Close by the town gate they made another stand. Drake’s men again scattered them, and with a rush entered the town. Guards were placed at the entrances at either end that the raiders might be secure while here. They stayed only an hour and a half. Drake ordered his men to take no heavy plunder, for they had a long march to make back to their ships, and they were yet in danger of attack. Still, many of them and the Cimaroons managed to make “some good pillage.”

Having now practically completed the journey across the isthmus, and having been absent from the ships nearly a fortnight, a rapid return march was deemed imperative. The start was hastened by a little episode at the Panama gate. While the marauders were at breakfast just before daybreak they were startled by a lively fusillade at that end of the town. A company of cavaliers from Panama had galloped up, supposing that Drake had left, and had encountered his sentries at the gate. Several of the cavaliers were killed in the skirmish and the rest scattered. Fearing that they were a scouting party and might be followed by a large force, Drake gave immediate orders to fall in for the departure. At dawn they were crossing the Chagres bridge and on their way at a quick gait. It was a hard and rushing march throughout to the coast where the ships lay, the men for days with empty stomachs and footsore. But it was cheerfully performed under Drake’s buoyant leadership and his promise of golden spoil they were yet to win before they finally sailed back to England.

After the return to their rendezvous Drake divided the company into two bands to rove in the pinnaces, one eastward the other westward, for plunder off the coast. The eastward rovers soon captured a fine Spanish frigate; and this ship, because of her strength and “good mould,” Drake retained, and fitting her as a man-of-war added her to his fleet. He was in need of some new craft, for he had recently sunk one of his three pinnaces. Shortly after, in March, additional strength came in a French ship, a rover out of Havre, under one Captain Tetou with seventy men. The Frenchman had appeared when Drake’s ships were again at the “Cativaas,” needing water and provisions. Drake supplied his wants. Then the Frenchman, desiring to join him in a venture, the two struck a bargain for a second raid on the isthmus treasure teams. The Frenchman with twenty of his men was to serve with Drake, “for halves”: the plunder obtained to be equally divided.

For this expedition Drake selected fifteen of his men and the Cimaroons with him before, so that the whole company, exclusive of the natives, numbered but thirty-five, besides the two captains. Leaving his “Pasha” and the French ship in a safe road, he manned the reformed Spanish frigate and his two pinnaces, and sailed toward “Rio Francesco.” The frigate was left at Cabecas, with a crew of English and French, the pinnaces alone continuing to Rio Francesco. Here the band landed and took up their march, Drake charging the masters of the pinnaces to be back at this place without fail on the fourth day following, when they expected to return. They proceeded in covert through the woods toward the highway over which richly laden “recuas” were now coming daily from Panama to Nombre de Dios. When they had marched, as in the previous journey to Panama, to a “convenient point” between Rio Francesco and Nombre de Dios, they bivouacked for that night. As they rested “in great silence” they could hear the distant sounds of many carpenters working on the ships at Nombre de Dios, which was customarily done in the night time because of the great heat of the day; and their ears were charmed with the music of the bells of the trotting mule teams on the road.

Early the next morning, April first, a jangle of bells nearing their cover told the approach of an unwonted number of recuas. Putting themselves in readiness they cautiously moved down toward the highway. Three great teams from Panama were coming along together. One consisted of fifty mules, the other two of seventy each, and each mule carried three hundred pounds’ weight of silver: one hundred and ninety mules in all with a total of fifty-seven thousand pounds of the metal; while some were also laden with a small quantity of gold. Their guards comprised forty-five soldiers, fifteen to each recua. At the moment the teams were abreast them Drake’s band sprang out, and took such hold of the heads of the foremost and hindmost mules that the rest stopped short and lay down. There followed a quick exchange of bullets and arrows, and then the flight of the guard “to seek more help abroad.” In the skirmish the French captain was painfully wounded and one Cimaroon was killed. The raiders hurriedly relieved the mules of their burden, taking all of the treasure that they could well carry, including a few bars and quoits of gold, and burying a large part of the rest in various places—in burrows which great land crabs had made, beneath the trunks of fallen trees, and in the sand and gravel of a shallow river—to be taken away later as occasion might offer. Two hours were consumed in this business. Then the return march was started by the way they had come. They had scarcely re-entered the woods when they heard both horse and foot clattering along the road behind them. This force, however, did not pursue them, and it was supposed that they tarried to repossess the mules and the rifled packs. The march had not far progressed when the wounded French captain was obliged to drop out and seek rest in the woods, hoping soon to regain his strength. He was never again seen by his companions, though repeatedly sought, and it was afterward learned that he fell into the hands of the Spaniards. Later on the march another of the Frenchmen was missed. His fate, also ascertained subsequently, was not so tragic as his captain’s, though hard and with sorry results to the band in that through it they lost much of the treasure which they had hidden. While rifling the teams he had drunk much wine, and overloading himself with pillage, had started ahead of the rest and become lost in the woods. He, too, was captured by the Spaniards, and under torture he revealed the places of the buried plunder. Rio Francesco was reached after two days of marching and here no pinnaces were met. Instead they saw a fleet of seven Spanish pinnaces cruising off the coast. They “mightily suspected” that these Spaniards had taken or spoiled their boats.

In this emergency Drake determined to reach his ships at all hazard. From trees that had been brought down a river by a recent storm he had his men construct a raft. For a sail a biscuit sack was utilized, and a young tree was stripped for an oar to serve instead of a rudder. Upon this rude craft he embarked with a few volunteers, and as he pushed off he comforted the company left behind with the assurance that “if it pleased God he should put his foot in safety aboard his frigate he would, God willing, by one means or other get them all aboard despite of all the Spaniards in the Indies.” He had thus sailed out into the sea some three leagues, under a parching sun and for about six hours all the while sitting up to the waist in water and at nearly every surge to the armpits, when two pinnaces were descried coming inward under a spanking breeze. As they neared they were seen to be his own pinnaces. At the sight the half-drowned raftsmen set up a shout. But they were evidently not seen by those on the pinnaces, for the boats shifted and ran into a cove beyond a point of land. Since they did not come out again Drake concluded that they were to anchor there for the night. Thereupon he piloted his shaky craft ashore, and leaping off, ran around the point and so came upon them, to the great astonishment of their occupants and his greater relief. Their masters accounted for their delay in reaching the rendezvous in telling how they had been beaten back by a heavy storm, and had been obliged to stand off to avoid the Spanish pinnaces. Drake’s companions of the raft were first succoured; and then he himself, not stopping for rest, that evening rowed to Rio Francesco, where the remainder of the company and the treasure were taken off and brought to the pinnaces. At dawn next morning all set sail back again to the frigate, and thence directly to the ships at Fort Diego. Upon the arrival here Drake at once divided the treasure by weight into two even portions between the English and French.

Shortly after twelve of Drake’s men and sixteen of the Cimaroons were secretly sent again to the isthmus, for the buried treasure, and also, if possible, to recover the French captain. They learned no more than that Captain Tetou had been taken by the Spaniards, while the treasure had mostly disappeared, the earth having been dug and turned up for a mile about the hiding places. They found, however, thirteen bars of silver and a few quoits of gold, which they took off.