The offer was not very welcome to Drake, for the French company was more than double the strength of the English. Drake had but thirty-one men left alive, and he regarded Tetû with a good deal of jealousy and a good deal of distrust. Yet with only thirty-one men he could hardly hope to succeed in any great adventure. If he joined with the French, he thought there would be danger of their appropriating most of the booty after using him and his men as their tools. The English sailors were of the same opinion; but it was at last decided that Tetû, with twenty picked hands, should be admitted to partnership, "to serve with our Captain for halves." It was something of a risk, but by admitting only twenty of the seventy men the risk was minimised. They were not enough to overpower Drake in case they wished to make away with all the booty, yet they made him sufficiently strong to attempt the schemes he had in hand. An agreement was, therefore, signed; a boat was sent to the secret anchorage to bring the Cimmeroons; and the three ships then sailed away to the east, to the magazines of food which Drake had stored some weeks before.
Here they lay at anchor for five or six days to enable the sick Frenchmen to get their health and strength after their weeks of misery. The Huguenot ship was revictualled from the magazines and then taken with the Bear into the secret haven. The third pinnace, the Lion, had been sunk a few days before, but the other two, the Eion and the Minion, with the new Tolu frigate, were set in order for the next adventure. Drake chose fifteen of his remaining thirty hands, and sent them down into the pinnaces with a few Maroons. The twenty Frenchmen joined him, under their captain, and the expedition then set sail for Rio Francisco, fifteen miles from Nombre de Dios. As they sailed, the Maroons gave out that the frigate was too deep a ship to cross the Rio Francisco bar, which had little water on it at that season of the year. They, therefore, sailed her back, and left her at the Cabezas, "manned with English and French, in the charge of Richard Doble," with strict orders not to venture out until the return of the pinnaces.
Putting her complement into the pinnaces, they again set sail for the mouth of the Francisco River. They crossed the bar without difficulty, and rowed their boats upstream. They landed some miles from the sea, leaving the pinnaces in charge of some Maroons. These had orders to leave the river, and hide themselves in the Cabezas, and to await the raiders at the landing-place, without fail, in four days' time.
As soon as Drake had landed, he ordered the company in the formation he had used on his march to Panama. He enjoined strict silence upon all, and gave the word to march. They set forward silently, through the cane-brakes and lush undergrowth, upon the long, seven leagues march to the town of Nombre de Dios. They marched all day uncomplainingly, so that at dusk they had crept to within a mile of the trackway, a little to the south of the town. They were now on some gently rising ground, with the swamps and Nombre de Dios at their feet. It made a good camping-ground; and there they passed the night of the 31st of March, resting and feasting "in great stillness, in a most convenient place." They were so close to the town that they could hear the church bells ringing and the clatter of the hammers in the bay, where the carpenters were at work upon the treasure ships. They were working there busily, beating in the rivets all night, in the coolness, to fit the ships for sea. Nearer to them, a little to the west, was the trackway, so that they could hear the mule trains going past to Panama with a great noise of ringing bells.
Early on the morning of the 1st of April they heard a great clang of bells among the woods. The mule trains were coming in from Venta Cruz—three mule trains according to the Cimmeroons, laden with "more gold and silver than all of us could bear away." The adventurers took their weapons, and crept through the scrub to the trackway "to hear the bells." In a few minutes, when each side of the track had been manned by the adventurers, the treasure trains trotted up with a great clang and clatter. There were three complete recuas, "one of 50 mules, the other two of 70 each, every of which carried 300 lbs. of silver; which in all amounted to near thirty tons." The trains were guarded by a half company of Spanish foot, "fifteen to each company." The soldiers marched by the side of the trains, blowing on their matches to keep the smouldering ends alight. As the leading mules came up with the head of the ambush Drake blew a blast upon his whistle. The raiders rose from their hiding-place, and fired a volley of shot and arrows at the troops. At the same moment tarry hands were laid upon the heads of the leading mules, so that "all the rest stayed and lay down as their manner is." The Spanish soldiers, taken by surprise, were yet a credit to their colours. They fell into confusion at the first assault, but immediately rallied. A brisk skirmish began, over the bodies of the mules, with sharp firing of muskets and arrows. Captain Tetû was hit in the belly with a charge of hail-shot; a Maroon was shot dead; and then the sailors cleared the road with a rush, driving the Spanish pell-mell towards the town. Then with feverish hands they cast adrift the mule packs "to ease some of the mules, which were heaviest loaden, of their carriage." They were among such wealth as few men have looked upon at the one time. How much they took will never now be known, but each man there had as much pure gold, in bars and quoits, as he could carry. They buried about fifteen tons of silver "partly in the burrows which the great land-crabs had made in the earth, and partly under old trees which were fallen thereabout, and partly in the sand and gravel of a river, "not very deep of water." Some of it, no doubt, remains there to this day.
In about two hours' time, they were ready to return to their pinnaces. They formed into order, and hurried away towards the woods, making as much haste as the weight of plunder would allow. As they gained the shelter of the forest they heard a troop of horse, with some arquebusiers, coming hurriedly to the rescue of the mules. They attempted no pursuit, for no Spaniard cared to enter the forest to attack a force in which Maroons were serving. The raiders were, therefore, able to get clear away into the jungle. All that day and the next day they hurried eastward through the scrub. They made a brief pause, as they tramped, to lay down Captain Tetû, whose wound prevented him from marching. He could go no farther, and begged that he might be left behind in the forest, "in hope that some rest would recover him better strength." Two French sailors stayed with him to protect him.