Nothing could deter Ralegh from his enterprise. He gave instructions to his carpenters to cut down a gallego-boat, to draw five feet of water, and to fit her with banks to row on. John Douglas was sent in his barge to look after King, who had not returned, and to take careful soundings in the bottom of the bay. For old John Hampton of Plymouth, and others who had come from Trinidad, had told him dreadful stories of its danger. "It hath been held for infallible that whatsoever ship or boat shall fall therein can never disembogue again by reason of the violent current which setteth into the said bay, as also for that the breeze and easterly wind bloweth directly into the same." John Douglas took with him an old cassique of Trinidad for a pilot, and was successful. Four goodly entrances were found, whereof the least was as big as the Thames at Woolwich, but only six feet deep. Ralegh accordingly gave up hope of finding passage for his ship, and decided to go on with the boats, and the gallego which he had prepared, and which held sixty men. In the boat of _Lion's Whelp_ and in its wherry there was room for twenty men, in Captain Calfield's wherry for ten, and in Ralegh's barge for ten more. They carried victuals for a month. Among the gentlemen were Ralegh's cousins Butshead Gorges and John Grenville, his nephew John Gilbert, Captain Keymis and Captain Clarke. "We had as much sea to cross over in our wherries as between Dover and Calais, and in a great billow, the wind and current being both very strong, so as we were driven to go in those small boats directly before the wind into the bottom of the bay of Guanipa." Their pilot was an Arwacan, an Indian of Barema, which is a river to the south of the Orinoco. Ralegh had caught and pressed him into his service as he was paddling in his canoe to sell bread at Marquerita; but now the Arwacan confessed himself quite ignorant of the river up which they were rowing; he told them he had not been on it for twelve years, "at which time he was very young and of no judgment." The position of the adventurers was one of extreme danger; they might have rowed in that labyrinth of rivers for a year without finding a way either out or in, for they only discovered the Arwacan's ignorance after four days. Ralegh realized their plight to the full, and the extraordinary good fortune which drew them out of it. A small canoe was espied in which three Indians were paddling. Ralegh, in his eight-oared barge, immediately gave chase, and succeeded in overtaking the canoe before it crossed the river ("which because it had no name we called the river of the Red Cross, ourselves being the first Christians that ever came therein"). Natives on the thickly wooded bank watched the chase with eagerness, and the captain with anxiety, fearing what might happen to their fellows. But when they saw that Ralegh treated the three with deference, the people on the shore made friendly signs and showed