e boat. "There came a small
Barke by, which came from Peru, from a place called Quito"; and the
pinnace dashed alongside of her, and carried her by the sword, before
her sailors learned what was the matter. She was laden with "sixtie
thousand pezos of golde, and much victuals." John Oxenham took her
lading, and kept the barque by him, while he stayed on at the islands.
At the end of six days, another "barke" came by, from Lima, "in whiche
he tooke an hundred thousand pezos of silver in barres." This was
plunder enough to "make" any voyage, and with this John Oxenham was
content. Before he sailed away, however, he marched upon one or two of
the Pearl fisheries, where he found a few pearls. He then sailed
northward to the river's mouth taking his prizes with him, with all the
prisoners.

At the river's mouth he very foolishly "sent away the two prizes that
hee tooke"--a piece of clemency which knotted the rope under his ear. He
then sailed up the river, helping his pinnace by poles, oars, and warps,
but making slow progress.

Before he reached this river, the negroes of the Pearl Islands sent word
to the Governor of Panama that English pirates had been in those seas
plundering their fisheries. "Within two days" the Governor despatched
four galleys, "with negroes to rowe," and twenty-five musketeers in each
galley, under the Captain John de Ortega, to search the Pearl Islands
very thoroughly for those robbers. They reached the islands, learned in
which direction the pirate ships had gone, and rowed away north to
overtake them. As they came near the land, they fell in with the two
prizes, the men of which were able to tell them how the pirates had gone
up the river but a few days before.

John de Ortega came to the river's mouth with his four galleys, and
"knew not which way to take, because there were three partitions in the
river, to goe up in." He decided at last to go up the greatest, and was
actually rowing towards it, when "he saw comming down a lesser river
many feathers of hennes, which the Englishmen had pulled to eate." These
drifting feathers, thrown overboard so carelessly, decided the Spanish
captain. He turned up the lesser river "where he saw the feathers," and
bade his negroes give way heartily. Four days later, he saw the English
pinnace drawn up on the river-bank "upon the sands," guarded by six of
her crew. The musketeers at once fired a volley, which killed one of the
Englishmen, and sent the other fi