Drake took counsel with the soldiers as to the strength of the place, but most of them thought it too great a risk, though one or two were for trying it. “The General presently said: ‘I will bring you to twenty places far more wealthy and easier to be gotten;’ and hence we went on the 15th. And here,” says the teller of the story, “I left all hope of good success.”
On the way to Nombre de Dios they stopped at Rio de la Hacha, where Drake had first been wronged by the Spaniards. This town they took with little difficulty, and some treasure was won.
On December 27th they were at Nombre de Dios, which they took with small resistance. But the people had been warned, and had fled and hidden their treasure, and the town was left very bare. So they resolved to “hasten with speed to Panama.” The soldiers were under the command of Sir Thomas Baskerville, who had been a brave fighter against the Spaniards before now in Holland and France. They started to go to Panama by the old road well known to Drake. He, meanwhile, stayed with the ships and burned the town. He was about to sail nearer the river when news came that the soldiers were returning. The road was only too strongly defended now, and Baskerville’s men were driven back with severe loss. They were a small force, and weak with the long march through heavy rains; their powder was wet and their food scarce and sodden, and Baskerville decided upon a retreat. “This march,” says the story, “had made many swear that they would never buy gold at such a price again.”
Drake, being disappointed of his highest hopes, now called a council to decide what was to be done. All the towns had been forewarned, and told “to be careful and look well to themselves, for that Drake and Hawkins were making ready in England to come upon them.” And now the company seem to have regarded their leader with some bitterness, as his brave promises failed, and the places that he used to know were found to be changed and formidable. Now they had to rely “upon cards and maps, he being at these parts at the farthest limit of his knowledge.” But still he proposed fresh places that had the golden sound of riches in their names, and gallant Baskerville said he would attempt both, one after another.
But the winds drove them instead to a “waste island, which is counted the sickliest place in the Indies, and there died many of the men, and victuals began to grow scarce. Here,” says Maynarde, who writes the story, “I was often private with our General, and I demanded of him why he so often begged me, being in England, to stay with him in these parts as long as himself.... He answered me with grief, protesting that he was as ignorant of the Indies as myself, and that he never thought any place could be so changed, as it were, from a delicious and pleasant arbour into a waste and desert wilderness: besides the variableness and changes of the wind and weather, so stormy and blustrous as he never saw it before. But he most wondered that since his coming out of England he never saw sail worth giving chase unto. Yet, in the greatness of his mind, he would, in the end, conclude with these words: ‘It matters not, man; God hath many things in store for us. And I know many means to do her Majesty good service and to make us rich, for we must have gold before we reach England.’
“And since our return from Panama he never carried mirth nor joy in his face, yet no man he loved must show he took thought thereof. And he began to grow sickly. And now so many of the company were dying of the sickness, and food was getting so scarce, that at last he resolved ‘to depart and take the wind as God sent it.’”
But the lurking fever in the swamp had done its work, and on January 28, 1596, after a brief fight with illness and death, Drake “yielded up his spirit like a Christian to his Creator quietly in his cabin.”
“The General being dead,” we are told, “most men’s hearts were bent to hasten for England as soon as they might. ‘Fortune’s Child,’ they said, ‘was dead; things would not fall into their mouths, nor riches be their portions, how dearly soever they adventured for them.’”
But Sir Thomas Baskerville assumed the command and took the remains of the fleet in his charge, and did not return home till he had met the Spaniards and fought a battle with them at sea.
Before the fleet left Puerto Rico he burned that port, and sunk two of the ships no longer needed, and all the prizes. And there, a league from the shore, under seas, he left the body of Sir Francis Drake, heavily freighted with death and silence. But I like to think that his soul went a-roving again among the stars.