Drake. Stop! Won’t you have a boat?
Chiruca (waving his hand declining). Adieu! Adieu! (he leaps overboard and swims ashore)
Drake. Marvellous speed. These Indians are amphibious. They can swim like beavers.
Scene changes.
Scene IV.—TWO STREAMS MEETING AT A POINT OF LAND,
On which grows a tall solitary Palm, its feathered branches waving in the morning air. The densely wooded banks reflected in the still water. The horizon in the background, a Sierra of lofty mountains. The sun rising and illumening their tops and sending his rays along one of the streams. A canoe coming down the shining river.
Enter Drake, Oxenham, Moon the carpenter, and others in a boat from the side.
Drake (after a pause looking round). I don’t see our dark-visaged friends; I hope there is no mistake. One cannot exactly apprehend treason. These Symerons hate as well as fear the Spaniards, and would neither aid nor trust them.
Oxenham. True, General, our foes are theirs. From them they have nothing to expect but the slavery of their race or death. Gold they value not—thus cruelty and treachery defeat themselves. Spain can never be trusted. To us they look as friends to aid them in their vengeance.
Drake. What a tide of Spanish blood is due to them—a nation crushed, tortured, massacred, enslaved, driven from such a paradise as this, or seeing it blasted before their eyes. Such is conquest; such a foreign yoke, (aside) England, look well to it! There are men, and Englishmen, who would thus degrade their native land, the glorious and the free!