magazines of food which Drake had stored some weeks
before.

Here they lay at anchor for five or six days to enable the sick
Frenchmen to get their health and strength after their weeks of misery.
The Huguenot ship was revictualled from the magazines and then taken
with the _Bear_ into the secret haven. The third pinnace, the _Lion_,
had been sunk a few days before, but the other two, the _Eion_ and the
_Minion_, with the new Tolu frigate, were set in order for the next
adventure. Drake chose fifteen of his remaining thirty hands, and sent
them down into the pinnaces with a few Maroons. The twenty Frenchmen
joined him, under their captain, and the expedition then set sail for
Rio Francisco, fifteen miles from Nombre de Dios. As they sailed, the
Maroons gave out that the frigate was too deep a ship to cross the Rio
Francisco bar, which had little water on it at that season of the year.
They, therefore, sailed her back, and left her at the Cabezas, "manned
with English and French, in the charge of Richard Doble," with strict
orders not to venture out until the return of the pinnaces.

Putting her complement into the pinnaces, they again set sail for the
mouth of the Francisco River. They crossed the bar without difficulty,
and rowed their boats upstream. They landed some miles from the sea,
leaving the pinnaces in charge of some Maroons. These had orders to
leave the river, and hide themselves in the Cabezas, and to await the
raiders at the landing-place, without fail, in four days' time.

As soon as Drake had landed, he ordered the company in the formation he
had used on his march to Panama. He enjoined strict silence upon all,
and gave the word to march. They set forward silently, through the
cane-brakes and lush undergrowth, upon the long, seven leagues march to
the town of Nombre de Dios. They marched all day uncomplainingly, so
that at dusk they had crept to within a mile of the trackway, a little
to the south of the town. They were now on some gently rising ground,
with the swamps and Nombre de Dios at their feet. It made a good
camping-ground; and there they passed the night of the 31st of March,
resting and feasting "in great stillness, in a most convenient place."
They were so close to the town that they could hear the church bells
ringing and the clatter of the hammers in the bay, where the carpenters
were at work upon the treasure ships. They were working there busily,
beating in the rivets all night, in the