tion, artillery [which then meant every kind of firearm as well as
cannon], artificers' stuff and tools; but especially three dainty
pinnaces made in Plymouth, taken asunder all in pieces,' and stowed
aboard to be set up as occasion served.

Without once striking sail Drake made the channel between Dominica and
Martinique in twenty-five days and arrived off a previously chosen
secret harbor on the Spanish Main towards the end of July. To his
intense surprise a column of smoke was rising from it, though there was
no settlement within a hundred miles. On landing he found a leaden plate
with this inscription: 'Captain Drake! If you fortune to come to this
Port, make hast away! For the Spaniards which you had with you here, the
last year, have bewrayed the place and taken away all that you left
here. I depart hence, this present 7th of July, 1572. Your very loving
friend, John Garrett.' That was fourteen days before. Drake, however,
was determined to carry out his plan. So he built a fort and set up his
pinnaces. But others had now found the secret harbor; for in came three
sail under Ranse, an Englishman, who asked that he be taken into
partnership, which was done.

Then the combined forces, not much over a hundred strong, stole out and
along the coast to the Isle of Pines, where again Drake found himself
forestalled. From the negro crews of two Spanish vessels he discovered
that, only six weeks earlier, the Maroons had annihilated a Spanish
force on the Isthmus and nearly taken Nombre de Dios itself. These
Maroons were the descendants of escaped negro slaves intermarried with
the most warlike of the Indians. They were regular desperadoes, always,
and naturally, at war with the Spaniards, who treated them as vermin to
be killed at sight. Drake put the captured negroes ashore to join the
Maroons, with whom he always made friends. Then with seventy-three
picked men he made his dash for Nombre de Dios, leaving the rest under
Ranse to guard the base.

Nombre de Dios was the Atlantic terminus, as Panama was the Pacific
terminus, of the treasure trail across the Isthmus of Darien. The
Spaniards, knowing nothing of Cape Horn, and unable to face the
appalling dangers of Magellan's straits, used to bring the Peruvian
treasure ships to Panama, whence the treasure was taken across the
isthmus to Nombre de Dios by _recuas_, that is, by mule trains under
escort.

At evening Drake's vessel stood off the harbor of Nombre de Dios and