"Come on, my lads," quietly said Drake, taking a few quick steps forward. Aloud he cried: "For the honour of the Queen of England, my mistress, I must have passage this way."
At the same moment he fired his pistol. The Spaniards in ambush, mistaking the shot for a signal from their own officer, poured in a volley. Drake blew his whistle, and instantly his men sent a spattering shower of bullets and arrows into the brushwood, following it up with a charge. The Spaniards bolted like hares, and at Drake's command the maroons of his party swarmed forward to cut the enemy off from a stronger position in the rear, shouting their terrifying war-cry, "Yo peho! Yo peho!" Back went the Spaniards, scurrying along to the shelter of the town, the maroons leaping and dancing after them as their manner was in war, the seamen not far behind, adding to the uproar with English yells. Within a few yards of the town wall the enemy attempted to rally, posting themselves across the road and in the woods on both sides. But the maroons swept upon their flanks, Drake and his men charged full at the centre. For a few moments the place rang with the clash of sword and pike and the cries of the combatants. Then as one man the Spaniards wheeled about and scampered through the open gates of the town, with Drake's whole party at their heels. On they went into the streets, seamen and maroons, thrusting and slashing without pause or respite, yet strictly observing their captain's injunction to spare women and unarmed men. In five minutes they were masters of the town.
For little over an hour the men ran hither and thither, gathering what spoils they could in the shape of articles easily carried. Then, just as dawn was breaking, and they were snatching a hasty breakfast before departing, a dozen horsemen dashed in at the Panama gate. Not until they were within point-blank range of the musketeers whom Drake had posted there did they perceive that the town was in the enemy's hands. The sentries fired; half of the horsemen fell; the rest fled back hastily into the forest. But Drake feared they were the advance guard of a larger force. It was dangerous to delay. He whistled his men together; and in a few minutes they marched out of the town with their spoils, some little compensation for the lost treasure of the mule train.
The toils and sufferings of that homeward march lived long in the memories of Dennis and Turnpenny. Drake forced the pace unmercifully, anxious to get back to his ship. Food ran short; he would not stay to hunt wild hog or deer. Several of the men had been wounded; there was no time to tend their wounds. Their clothes were torn to tatters; their boots, even the extra pairs, had given way, and they were driven to bind their feet with rags. The faithful maroons served them nobly, carrying all the burdens, building huts for their rest at night, bearing upon their shoulders some of the seamen who were too exhausted and footsore to tramp any longer. A maroon went forward to warn the waiting company of their approach. On the afternoon of the 23rd of February, three weeks after they had started on the expedition, they tottered out of the forest towards the beach, just as the pinnace, sent by Ellis Hixom to take them off, scudded inshore. There on the glistening sand the little company of men, haggard, worn-out, half-famished, raised their husky voices in a psalm of thanksgiving, praising God because they saw their pinnace and their fellows again.
CHAPTER XXI
Maiden Isle Again
As they sailed back in the pinnace to the secret haven, the weary adventurers were surrounded by their comrades, and feasted their ears with wondrous tales of what had befallen them. Ellis Hixom also had a story to tell. A few days after the departure of the company, there had staggered into the clearing three men in the last stage of exhaustion. Two were English, one French. They were pitiable objects, their eyes bright with fever, their cheeks haggard with famine, their feet blistered and bleeding from long wandering in the woods. Each man carried a bag of pearls.
And they told a pitiful story. They had escaped, they said, from captivity in Nombre de Dios, and set out with three comrades, bearing plunder from the houses of their captors. It was well known along the coast that Drake was somewhere in hiding, and they marched eastward, hoping by good hap to light upon his encampment. But as they rested one night, the leader had overheard a plot on the part of three of the men to slay the rest and make off with the booty. Fearing that if it came to a fight he and his two comrades would stand but little chance against the others, who were men of exceeding great strength and ferocity, the three had slipped away in the darkness and had since been tramping for days through the forest, unable to find sufficient food, and subsisting on berries and mushrooms. Once they had almost stumbled into a village of maroons, and fled for their lives, dreading lest they should be taken for Spaniards and slain before the error was discovered.
"And where are they now?" asked Drake.