yed half their vessels, and robbed them
of all that they had. They had left a hundred of their comrades behind
them, for whose fate they might fear the worst. Drake thenceforth
considered Spanish property as fair game till he had made up his own
losses. He waited quietly for four years till he had re-established
himself, and then prepared to try fortune again in a more daring form.

The ill-luck at San Juan de Ulloa had risen from loose tongues. There
had been too much talk about it. Too many parties had been concerned.
The Spanish Government had notice and were prepared. Drake determined to
act for himself, have no partners, and keep his own secret. He found
friends to trust him with money without asking for explanations. The
Plymouth sailors were eager to take their chance with him. His force was
absurdly small: a sloop or brigantine of a hundred tons, which he called
the _Dragon_ (perhaps, like Lope de Vega, playing on his own name), and
two small pinnaces. With these he left Plymouth in the fall of the
summer of 1572. He had ascertained that Philip's gold and silver from
the Peruvian mines was landed at Panama, carried across the isthmus on
mules' backs on the line of M. de Lesseps' canal, and re-shipped at
Nombre de Dios, at the mouth of the Chagre River.

He told no one where he was going. He was no more communicative than
necessary after his return, and the results, rather than the
particulars, of his adventure are all that can be certainly known.
Discretion told him to keep his counsel, and he kept it.

The Drake family published an account of this voyage in the middle of
the next century, but obviously mythical, in parts demonstrably false,
and nowhere to be depended on. It can be made out, however, that he did
go to Nombre de Dios, that he found his way into the town, and saw
stores of bullion there which he would have liked to carry off but could
not. A romantic story of a fight in the town I disbelieve, first because
his numbers were so small that to try force would have been absurd, and
next because if there had been really anything like a battle an alarm
would have been raised in the neighbourhood, and it is evident that no
alarm was given. In the woods were parties of runaway slaves, who were
called Cimarons. It was to these that Drake addressed himself, and they
volunteered to guide him where he could surprise the treasure convoy on
the way from Panama. His movements were silent and rapid. One
interest