When the pinnaces were put together they stole along the coast, seized and questioned some negroes whom they found, and heard that all the country from Panama to Nombre de Dios was held by a savage, black people, a mixed race of African escaped slaves intermarried with Indian women, and forming a tribe of splendid giants, formidable to their late masters, the Spaniards, and terribly cruel. But, owing to their recent outrages, the people of Nombre de Dios had sent to Panama for help, and Drake's surprise did not look feasible. However, with seventy-three men armed, some of them with bows and arrows and gear for holding blazing tow, Drake crept along near the shore in the dark. As they landed under the shore battery they heard the city waking to a panic, for they dreaded an attack of the half-breeds: first came a confused murmur, then women's shrieks, then shouts of command and the tuck of drums. Drake and his men rushed up the main street, meeting at the Plaza a splutter of gun-shots and then a long roar of musketry. In the midst of the fray John Drake and Oxenham broke in upon the Spaniards' flank, who turned and fled, pursued by flaming pikes and arrows. On entering the governor's house Drake saw a great pile of silver bars shining from floor to ceiling--a pile seventy feet in length. "Not one bar to be touched, lads," shouted Drake, "till the fighting be done." As they hurried back to the streets a tropical storm burst on them, and they had to take cover in a long shed. As they tried to repair the damage done to matchlock and bowstring, Drake marked the signs of fatigue and fear, and shouted: "Lads, I have brought you to the mouth of the treasure-house of the world. Blame nobody but yourselves if ye go away empty." As Drake stepped forward to lead the way to the treasury door, he suddenly rolled over speechless in the sand. As they stooped to lift him, they noted a pool of blood, and a wound in his leg which he had hidden for some time. They carried him to the pinnace and rowed back to the ships, the sun just rising to see Drake's great failure, which had so nearly succeeded. Next day a Spanish general rode round to the bay where Drake's ships lay, and asked if this was indeed the chivalrous "El Draque" who never drowned his prisoners? "Yes," laughed Drake, "but go tell your governor that before I depart, if God lend me life and leave, I mean to reap some of your harvest which you get out of the earth, and send into Spain to trouble all the world."