CHAPTER XVIII
Just sixteen days after my ink was dry the great bell in the church of Nombre de Dios was calling men to complines as the sun went down. So it might have boomed over the waving forest and darkening sea any time the last fifty years or more. Yet I doubt if the people would have doffed their broad hats, or crossed themselves so peacefully to-night, had they known in what other ears it sounded besides their own.
I doubt their prayers would have been more fervent that night had they been aware how the stars, that just began to glimmer, were looking down on four boats crowded with men, that were striking a-hull and dropping their grapples hard by the mouth of the Rio Francisco, scarce two leagues from the point of their bay.
Yet there we lay in our three pinnaces and the shallop, seventy-three desperate souls, on the eve of our great attempt.
The ships and the rest of the men had been left behind, under Captain Ranse, at the Isle of Pinos, twenty-five leagues away, and we had come on, each man with the comrades he chose, as far as could be. I was with Frank, Harry with Mr. Oxenham, the other pinnace being in charge of John Drake, and the shallop under John Overy, the master of the Lion. Everything had been done to encourage the more faint-hearted, and we were most excellently furnished with muskets, calivers, pikes, fire-pikes, targets, bows, and everything such an enterprise could need, apportioned to each man according to his skill and disposition.
Yet many a heart must have beat anxiously as we lay waiting for the dark night, and would have done so still more had the mariners been aware of all that their commanders knew. For at the Isles of Pinos we had captured two small frigates from Nombre de Dios, wherein certain negroes were lading planks. From these men, being very kindly used, we heard that their countrymen, the Cimaroons, had fallen upon the town and nearly surprised it but six weeks ago.
These Cimaroons were African negroes who, having risen against their masters some eighty years ago, had fled into the woods, and now were become two nations, that lived in the country on either side of the way from Panama to Nombre de Dios, each under its separate king. For defence against these people our prisoners told us soldiers were expected from Panama and elsewhere, if they were not already come.
Nothing could have been worse for us; for now we knew that the town would be on the alert, and perhaps full of soldiers. Yet, wishing to make the best of a bad case, our captain freed these slaves and set them ashore, that they might seek their countrymen and bear them a good report of us, in case it might fall out that at a future time the help of the Spaniards' enemies might be welcome to us.
We who knew these things kept them to ourselves, very thankful for our increased force. Frank, I know, saw how ill this fortune was for us, yet he was more cheerful and resolute than I had ever seen him when he called the boats about him, that he might say his last words to the crews.
'Come close,' said he, 'that I have not to speak too loud, and so be heard by any negroes in the woods, whereby those in the town might have notice of our coming, which I should much grieve at. For I am loath to put them to all the charge which I know they would willingly bestow for our entertainment, seeing that we come uninvited.'