ad a letter had been cut:

CAPTAIN DRAKE,

if you fortune to come to this Port, make hast away;
for the Spanyards which you had with you here the last year, have
bewrayed this place, and taken away all that you left here. I
departed from hence this present 7 of July, 1572.

Your very loving friend,
JOHN GARRET.

The smoke was from a fire which Garret and his men had kindled in a
great hollow tree, that was probably rotted into touchwood. It had
smouldered for five days or more, sending up a thick smoke, to warn any
coming to the harbour to proceed with caution.

The announcement that the place was known to the Spaniards did not weigh
very heavily upon Drake; nor is it likely that he suffered much from
the loss of his hidden stores, for nothing of any value could have been
left in such a climate. He determined not to leave "before he had built
his Pinnaces," and therefore, as soon as the ships were moored, he
ordered the pieces to be brought ashore "for the Carpenters to set up."
The rest of the company was set to the building of a fort upon the beach
by the cutting down of trees, "and haling them together with great
Pullies and halsers." The fort was built in the form of a pentagon, with
a sort of sea-gate opening on the bay, for the easy launching of the
pinnaces. This gate could be closed at night by the drawing of a log
across the opening. They dug no trench, but cleared the ground instead,
so that for twenty yards all round the stockhouse there was nothing to
hinder a marksman or afford cover to an enemy. Beyond that twenty yards
the forest closed in, with its wall of living greenery, with trees "of a
marvellous height" tangled over with the brilliant blossoms of many
creepers. The writer of the account seems to have been one of the
building party that sweated the logs into position. "The wood of those
trees," he writes, "is as heavie, or heavier, than Brasil or Lignum
Vitae, and is in colour white."

The very next day an English barque came sailing into the anchorage,
with two prizes, in her wake--"a Spanish Carvell of Sivell," which had
despatches aboard her for the Governor of Nombre de Dios, and a shallop
with oars, picked up off Cape Blanco to the eastward. She was the
property of Sir Edward Horsey, at that time Governor of the Isle of
Wight, a gallant gentleman, who received "sweetmeats and