wind of them, and would have been able to do this without
difficulty, but they did not wait his coming. They got to their oars in
a hurry, and rowed to their defence in the woods--the fight being at an
end before the frigate could warp to windward into action.

Being weary of these continual fruitless tussles, "and because our
victuals grew scant," Drake sailed from the port the following morning,
in slightly better weather, hoping to get fresh provisions at the Rio
Grande, where he had met with such abundance a few days before. The wind
was still fresh from the west, so that he could not rejoin his ship nor
reach one of his magazines. He took two days in sailing to the
Magdalena, but when he arrived there he found the country stripped. "We
found bare nothing, not so much as any people left," for the Spaniards
had ordered everyone to retire to the hills, driving their cattle with
them, "that we might not be relieved by them." The outlook was now
serious, for there was very little food left, and that of most
indifferent quality, much of it being spoiled by the rains and the salt
water. On the day of their landfall they rowed hard for several hours to
capture a frigate, but she was as bare of food as they. "She had neither
meat nor money," and so "our great hope" was "converted into grief."
Sailors get used to living upon short allowance. The men tightened their
belts to stay their hunger, and splashed salt water on their chests to
allay their thirst. They ran for Santa Martha, a little city to the
east, where they hoped "to find some shipping in the road, or limpets on
the rocks, or succour against the storm in that good harbour." They
found no shipping there, however, and little succour against the storm.
They anchored "under the western point, where is high land," but they
could not venture in, for the town was strongly fortified (later
raiders were less squeamish). The Spaniards had seen them come to
moorings, and managed to send some thirty or forty musketeers among the
rocks, within gunshot of them. These kept up a continual musket fire,
which did bodily hurt to none, but proved a sad annoyance to sailors who
were wearied and out of victuals. They found it impossible to reply to
the musketry, for the rocks hid the musketeers from view. There was
nothing for it but to "up kedge and cut," in the hope of finding some
less troublous berth. As they worked across the Santa Martha bay the
culverins in the city batteries ope