The raiders did up in bundles and bestowed about their persons as much as they could stagger under, and set to work to bury what they could not carry in the burrows of landcrabs and under the great trunks of fallen trees. For two hours they toiled on; then, hearing the clatter of hoofs from the direction of the town, they seized their booty and made off to the woods. Up came a troop of horse; but when they reached the mules they halted, for they heard in the woods the "Yo peho!" of the maroons, and shrank from engaging those terrible forest fighters. Staggering under the weight of their treasure, the raiders tramped with what haste they might through the jungle. They had not gone far when Captain Le Testu lay down groaning; weak from loss of blood, he could go no farther. Two of his men volunteered to stay with him, and help him on after he had rested. The others hurried on, and after struggling through the forest for two days and nights, drenched by terrible rainstorms, burnt black by the torrid heat, reached their landing-place on the bank of the Francisco River.
It was four days since they had left it; the pinnaces should have been there awaiting them; but not a sign of them met their hungry eyes. Instead, seven Spanish pinnaces were observed rowing from the island, where the maroons had been ordered to shelter with Richard Doble. The drenched and footsore raiders were aghast. Had their enemies captured the pinnaces, and slain their comrades? Were they to be imprisoned in this swampy jungle, with no means of sailing or rowing away to Fort Diego? Loud murmurs, cries of despair, curses at being deserted, broke from the seamen. They cried out that they were betrayed; that the Spaniards would fall on them and overwhelm them; that they would never see home again. Drake expostulated with them; the maroons offered to lead them the sixteen days' journey overland, and promised, if the ships proved indeed to be taken, to give them shelter in their villages. But the men cried out the more; some threw down the treasure they had dared so much to win; some began to cry out against their leader himself.
Then Drake showed the stuff of which he was made.
"Silence, you knaves!" he cried. "Am I any whit better off than you? Is this a time to yield to craven fear? Nay, but rather to pluck up heart and play the man. If the Spaniards have in truth taken our pinnaces, which God forbid, yet they must have time to search them, time to examine the mariners, and, if they compel them by torture to confess where our ships are, time to execute their resolution after it is determined. Before all these times be taken, we may get to our ships if ye will. We may not hope to go by land, for that the journey is too long and the ways too foul. But we may surely go by water. Look at the trees here rolling down upon the flood, thrown down by the storms that beset us so sorely. May we not build ourselves a raft, and put ourselves to sea? I will be one; who will be the others?"
"That will I," said Dennis, stepping forward.
"And I too, good-now," cried Turnpenny.
"Nay, Master Hazelrig, you I will leave to command these timid rascals if ill befall me; but Amos I will take, and go fetch those laggard pinnaces."
Then the maroons, taking hands and forming into a line, stepped into the river and intercepted the trees as they came down on the torrent. With their hatchets they lopped off the branches; they bound the trunks together with leathern thongs taken from the mules, and with tendrils of creepers from the jungle. A stout sapling was reared as a mast, and with his own hands Turnpenny rigged up a biscuit sack for a sail, and fashioned a crutch in which another sapling might serve as a rudder. The raft being now ready, Drake selected two of the Frenchmen who could swim well to accompany him and Turnpenny. The four men stepped on to the frail craft, and as she was hauled off over the bar at the river mouth, Drake cried out:
"Be of good cheer, my hearts. If it please God I put my foot in safety aboard my frigate, I shall, God willing, by one means or other get ye all aboard, in despite of all the Spaniards in the Indies."
And the seamen, with new hope born within their breasts, sped their gallant captain with a cheer.