e from Panama, by which time
all the invalids were perfectly recovered and not only fit but eager for
duty. True, the weather which they encountered during the fortnight
that they were in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn proved rather trying to
all hands, accustomed as they had now become to the enervating climate
of the tropics, but it was by this time early summer in the southern
hemisphere, and although the air was keen it was also bracing, and
Chichester, the surgeon, stoutly maintained that a taste of it was all
that was needed to set everybody perfectly right.

Then followed the long weary drag up the eastern coast of South America,
and everybody was rejoiced when, on a certain glorious morning of the
last month of the year, they rounded the north-eastern angle of the
continent--now known as Cape San Roque--and bore away to the westward
for the creek where the _Nonsuch_ still--as they hoped--lay securely
hidden. And at this point in the voyage they were exceptionally
favoured by the elements, for they accomplished their second passage of
the Line without a minute's delay from calms. On the last day of the
year they sailed past Trinidad, joyfully recognising its lofty heights
and its three distinct entrances to the gulf as they passed; and on the
evening of January 15th, 1570, they entered the hidden harbour near
Nombre, where they had left the _Nonsuch_, and found her apparently not
a penny the worse for her five months' sojourn there. For Lukabela, the
Cimarrone chief, had so scrupulously fulfilled his promise to look after
the ship that a party of twenty men had been camped on the beach for the
past five months, and had every day visited her and thoroughly soused
her deck and upper works with water.

Immediately upon the arrival of the _Cristobal Colon_ in the cove, a
messenger was dispatched to Lukabela with the news; and within a couple
of hours he appeared on board to personally welcome his friends upon
their return. George at once concluded an arrangement with the chief
for the supply of a strong gang of men to assist in refitting the
_Nonsuch_; and on the following day the work was energetically begun,
and so strenuously carried forward that ten days later the vessel was
ready for sea. All that now remained was to suitably reward the
Cimarrones for their services, and this George did upon so lavish a
scale that Lukabela there and then vowed to hold himself and his tribe
henceforth at the service of any