with great bodily suffering, "all our men complaining of the
tenderness of their feet." Drake complained also, "sometimes without
cause, but sometimes with cause indeed; which made the rest to bear the
burden the more easily." Some of the men were carried in by the Maroons.
Indeed, the Maroons had saved the whole party from collapse, for they
not only built them shelter huts at night, carried the weary, and found,
or made, them a road to travel by, but they also bore the whole burden
of the company's arms and necessaries. Their fellows who had stayed with
Ellis Hixom had built the little town in the woods, for the refreshment
of all hands, in case they should arrive worn out with marching. At
sunset on the evening of Saturday, the 22nd of February, the weary crew
arrived at the little town, to the great joy of the Maroons who kept
watch and ward there. The tired men lay down to rest, while Drake
"despatched a Cimaroon with a token and certain order to the Master."

The day had dawned before this messenger arrived upon the sands near
which the ship was moored. He hailed her, crying out that he came with
news, and immediately a boat pushed off, manned by men "which longed to
hear of our Captain's speeding." As soon as he appeared before Ellis
Hixom, he handed over Drake's golden toothpick, "which he said our
Captain had sent for a token to Ellis Hixom, with charge to meet him at
such a river." The sight of the golden toothpick was too much for Ellis
Hixom. He knew it to be his Captain's property, but coming as it did,
without a sign in writing, it convinced him that "something had befallen
our Captain otherwise than well." The Maroon saw him staring "as
amazed," and told him that it was dark when Drake had packed him off, so
that no letter could be sent, "but yet with the point of his knife, he
wrote something upon the toothpick, 'which,' he said, 'should be
sufficient to gain credit to the messenger.'" Looking closely at the
sliver of gold, Hixom saw a sentence scratched upon it: "By me, Francis
Drake," which convinced him that the message was genuine. He at once
called away one of the pinnaces, storing her with "what provision he
could," and promptly set sail for the mouth of the Tortugos River, a few
miles along the coast, to the west of where he lay, for there Drake
intended to await him.

At about three o'clock that afternoon, Drake marched his men, or all
who were fit to march, out of the forest to the sandy beach a