for the enemy. For besides this loss the
town had been stripped of everything worth carrying away by the troops
and seamen. Two hundred forty guns were taken on board the English
ships; and not only were they thoroughly refurnished from the Spanish
stores, but for a month the whole expedition had lived in free quarters
at the enemy's expense. The entire fleet which lay in the harbor fell
into Drake's hands, and, with the exception of four of the finest
galleons, was given to the flames. Besides the vessels which the
Spaniards themselves had scuttled, two galleys with their tenders,
fifteen frigates, and a galleon were thus destroyed, and hundreds of
galley-slaves set free.

"It was such a cooling to King Philip," said one in Europe as the news
leaked out, "as never happened to him since he was King of Spain." But
as yet Drake was far from done. In the middle of February, with his
force recruited by the English prisoners he had freed, and with a troop
of attendant prizes laden with his spoil, in undiminished strength he
appeared before Cartagena. No city in America was more difficult of
approach, but the memories of the old hard days were still green, when,
storm-beaten, drenched, and chilled, without food or shelter, he had
ridden in the harbor day after day in despite of all the Spaniards could
do, and he knew it all like a pilot. The city was built close to the
shore fronting west, and directly from its southern face an inlet of the
sea stretched many leagues southward along the coast, forming a large
lagoon. The long spit of land which separated this sheet of water from
the sea was pierced by two natural channels. At the far end was the
dangerous Bocca Chica, and some three miles from the city was a larger
entrance known as the Bocca Grande. Between this entrance and the town a
tongue of land ran out at right angles from the spit to the opposite
shore, forming an inner harbor and barring all approach to the city from
the outer part of the lagoon, except by a narrow channel which lay under
the guns of a powerful fort on the mainland.

On its northern and eastern faces the city was encircled by a broad
creek, which ran round it from the inner harbor to the sea in such a way
as to form a wide natural moat, rendering the city unapproachable from
the mainland except by a bridge. This bridge was also commanded by the
harbor fort, nor were land operations possible at any other point except
from that part of the spit which