, etc., and especially
where there is any stagnancy of the Water, it soon corrupts; and
possibly the Serpents and other poisonous Vermin and Insects may not a
little contribute to its bad qualities." Whatever it was, the disease
raged among the men with great violence--as many as thirty being down
with it at the one time. Among those who died was Joseph Drake, another
brother of the Captain, "who died in our Captain's arms." The many
deaths caused something like a panic among the men, and Drake, in his
distress, determined to hold a post-mortem upon his brother's corpse
"that the cause [of the disease] might be the better discerned, and
consequently remedied." The operation was performed by the surgeon, "who
found his liver swollen, his heart as it were sodden, and his guts all
fair." The corpse of one dead from yellow-fever displays very similar
symptoms; and the muddy foreshore on which they were camped would,
doubtless, swarm with the yellow-fever mosquito. The sick seem to have
recovered swiftly--a trait observable in yellow-fever patients. This,
says the narrative, "was the first and last experiment that our Captain
made of anatomy in this voyage." The surgeon who made this examination
"over-lived him not past four days"--a fact which very possibly saved
the lives of half the company. He had had the sickness at its first
beginning among them, but had recovered. He died, we are told, "of an
overbold practice which he would needs make upon himself, by receiving
an over-strong purgation of his own device, after which taken he never
spake; nor his Boy recovered the health which he lost by tasting it,
till he saw England." He seems to have taken the draught directly after
the operation, as a remedy against infection from the corpse. The boy,
who, perhaps, acted as assistant at the operation, may have thought it
necessary to drink his master's heeltaps by way of safeguard.

While the company lay thus fever-stricken at the fort, the Maroons had
been wandering abroad among the forest, ranging the country up and down
"between Nombre de Dios and us, to learn what they might for us." During
the last few days of January 1573 they came in with the news that the
plate fleet "had certainly arrived in Nombre de Dios." On the 30th of
January, therefore, Drake ordered the _Lion_, one of the three pinnaces,
to proceed "to the seamost islands of the Cativaas," a few miles from
the fort, to "descry the truth of the report" by observing