On the Spanish Main; Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. John 1878-1967 Masefield
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to hand. They hove the planks overboard to make a clear fighting space, and "took them such poor weapons as they had: viz., a broken pointed rapier, one old visgee, and a rusty caliver. John Drake took the rapier and made a gauntlet of his pillow, Richard Allen the visgee, both standing at the head of the pinnace called Eion. Robert took the caliver, and so boarded." It was a gallant, mad attempt, but utterly hopeless from the first. The frigate was "armed round about with a close fight of hides," and "full of pikes and calivers, which were discharged in their faces, and deadly wounded those that were in the fore ship, John Drake in the belly, and Richard Allen in the head." Though they were both sorely hurt, they shoved the pinnace clear with their oars, and so left the frigate, and hurried home to their ship, where "within an hour after" this young man of great hope ended his days, "greatly lamented of all the company." He was buried in that place, with Richard Allen his shipmate, among the brilliant shrubs, over which the parrots chatter.
For the next four or five weeks the company remained at Fort Diego with the Maroons, their allies. They fared sumptuously every day on the food stored within the magazine; while "daily out of the woods" they took wild hogs, the "very good sort of a beast called warre," that Dampier ate, besides great store of turkeys, pheasants, and numberless guanas, "which make very good Broath." The men were in good health, and well contented; but a day or two after the New Year (January 1573) "half a score of our company fell down sick together, and the most of them died within two or three days." They did not know what the sickness was, nor do they leave us much information to enable us to diagnose it. They called it a calenture, or fever, and attributed it to "the sudden change from cold to heat, or by reason of brackish water which had been taken in by our pinnace, through the sloth of their men in the mouth of the river, not rowing further in where the water was good." We cannot wonder that they died from drinking the water of that sluggish tropical river, for in the rainy season such water is often poisonous to the fish in the sea some half-a-mile from the shore. It comes down from the hills thick with pestilential matter. It sweeps away the rotting leaves and branches, the dead and drowned animals, from the flooded woods and savannahs. "And I believe," says Dampier, "it receives a strong Tincture from the Roots of several Kind of Trees, Herbs, etc., and especially where there is any stagnancy of the Water, it soon corrupts; and possibly the Serpents and other poisonous Vermin and Insects may not a little contribute to its bad qualities." Whatever it was, the disease raged among the men with great violence—as many as thirty being down with it at the one time. Among those who died was Joseph Drake, another brother of the Captain, "who died in our Captain's arms." The many deaths caused something like a panic among the men, and Drake, in his distress, determined to hold a post-mortem upon his brother's corpse "that the cause [of the disease] might be the better discerned, and consequently remedied." The operation was performed by the surgeon, "who found his liver swollen, his heart as it were sodden, and his guts all fair." The corpse of one dead from yellow-fever displays very similar symptoms; and the muddy foreshore on which they were camped would, doubtless, swarm with the yellow-fever mosquito. The sick seem to have recovered swiftly—a trait observable in yellow-fever patients. This, says the narrative, "was the first and last experiment that our Captain made of anatomy in this voyage." The surgeon who made this examination "over-lived him not past four days"—a fact which very possibly saved the lives of half the company. He had had the sickness at its first beginning among them, but had recovered. He died, we are told, "of an overbold practice which he would needs make upon himself, by receiving an over-strong purgation of his own device, after which taken he never spake; nor his Boy recovered the health which he lost by tasting it, till he saw England." He seems to have taken the draught directly after the operation, as a remedy against infection from the corpse. The boy, who, perhaps, acted as assistant at the operation, may have thought it necessary to drink his master's heeltaps by way of safeguard.
While the company lay thus fever-stricken at the fort, the Maroons had been wandering abroad among the forest, ranging the country up and down "between Nombre de Dios and us, to learn what they might for us." During the last few days of January 1573 they came in with the news that the plate fleet "had certainly arrived in Nombre de Dios." On the 30th of January, therefore, Drake ordered the Lion, one of the three pinnaces, to proceed "to the seamost islands of the Cativaas," a few miles from the fort, to "descry the truth of the report" by observing whether many frigates were going towards Nombre de Dios from the east, as with provisions for the fleet. The Lion remained at sea for a few days, when she captured a frigate laden with "maize, hens, and pompions from Tolu." She had the Scrivano of Tolu aboard her, with eleven men and one woman. From these they learned that the fleet was certainly at Nombre de Dios, as the Indians had informed them. The prisoners were "used very courteously," and "diligently guarded from the deadly hatred of the Cimmeroons," who used every means in their power to obtain them from the English, so that "they might cut their throats to revenge their wrongs and injuries." Drake warned his allies not to touch them "or give them ill countenance"; but, feeling a little doubtful of their safety, he placed them aboard the Spanish prize, in charge of Ellis Hixom, and had the ship hauled ashore to the island, "which we termed Slaughter Island (because so many of our men died there)." He was about to start upon "his journey for Panama by land," and he could not follow his usual custom of letting his prisoners go free.
CHAPTER IV
THE ROAD TO PANAMA
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