Driven together now into a compact body, the Spaniards fired a volley. Before the smoke had cleared away, from all around the maroons, dusky forms clad in smocks that reached their knees, were among them. Then began a desperate hand-to-hand fight. The Spaniards, in their turn outnumbered by three to one, were wielding their swords with the courage of despair against the javelins of their furious yelling enemy, striving to break through the ring.
"Yo peho! yo peho!" The maroon war-cry rose ever fiercer and fiercer. It was an affair of a few minutes. Half of the Spaniards were on the ground; the survivors broke and scattered, some speeding towards the copse, forgetful that their first check had come from thence. Turnpenny levelled his caliver and fired at the foremost of them.
"Shoot 'em, sir!" he cried to Dennis, who had hesitated, feeling some compunction. "Shoot 'em, or we shall have the maroons in upon us, and they will not stop to ask our names."
Dennis fired. The Spaniards broke away to the left, and dashed into the forest, pursued hotly by the exultant maroons. Seeing that the tide had passed them by, Turnpenny stepped out into the open and, raising his arms, shouted "Amigos!" at the top of his voice to the maroons within hail. One or two let fly their arrows at him; some were about to fire; but a big fellow among them called loudly to them in a tongue that the Englishman did not understand.
"My heart, 'tis Juan!" cried Turnpenny, and as the man advanced towards them Dennis recognised the leader of the maroons he had rescued on the island—the man who had with Amos supported the ladder for his climb into Fort Aguila.
Juan shook hands with them with every sign of delight. While the others continued the pursuit, he explained to Amos that his attention had been attracted by the sound of firing at sea, and from a point some distance along the coast he had watched, from among the trees, the race in the boats. Never loath to seize a chance of striking a blow at the hated Spaniards, he had hurried with his comrades along the fringe of forest. He was overjoyed to think that the men whom his sudden onslaught had saved were his old friends and the leaders of the attack on Fort Aguila. He invited them to accompany him to his village deep in the forest, and wound a horn to recall his comrades. Within a few minutes they were all assembled. The Englishmen recognized among them some who had been with them at the attack on the fort. Soon they were on the march. They took no prisoners; it was not the maroons' way to spare any Spaniard who fell into their hands. Four of them carried the twice-wounded sailor, but ere they had gone far he succumbed to his hurts, and they buried him under leaves in the forest.
An hour's march brought them to the maroons' village, built on a hillside circled by a narrow river. It was surrounded by a broad dyke, and a mud wall ten feet high. It had one long street and two cross streets, very clean and tidy; and the huts of mud and wattle, thatched with palm-leaves, and with doors of bamboo, were kept with a neatness that surprised the Englishmen, who mentally contrasted them with the dirty cottages of labourers at home. Juan made them very welcome, supplying them with a feast of wild hog, turkeys, oranges and other pleasant fruits.
"I'feck, it be a dinner fit for a lord," said Turnpenny, appreciatively.
He related the events that had brought them to the straits in which Juan had found them. When the maroon learnt that some of their party had deserted with the treasure, he despatched a band of his men to follow them up. And then he told his visitors a piece of news that mightily cheered them. El Draque, he said, the Dragon, the great English sea-captain, had lately raided Nombre de Dios, the port whence the great treasure fleets were wont to sail for Spain. Then he had disappeared. The Spaniards were in a state of nervous dread. So bold, so sudden were his movements, that not a settlement on the coast but lived in constant terror of his appearance. The very mystery that surrounded him, their ignorance of his whereabouts, added to the fear his name inspired.
"They do not know where he is," said Juan, with a chuckle; "but I know. He is a long day's march from this place, in a little harbour that no passing ship can spy. And there he waits till he can swoop like a jaguar on the dogs of Spain."