Having got the pinnaces and all things in readiness within a week’s time, the fleet was off for their first foray. Coming to the Isla de Pinos (Isles of Pines), a group at the mouth of the Gulf of Darien (called by them “Port Plenty”), they found here two frigates for Nombre de Dios lading planks and timber, with a number of black men on board at work. These blacks were half-breeds, belonging to a local tribe sprung from self-freed Negro slaves and native Indians, known as “Cimaroons,” or “Maroons,” as the English sailors termed them, enrolled under two chiefs, and constant enemies of the Spanish. The frigates were seized, and the black men were taken to the mainland and set ashore to join their tribe and gain their liberty if they would, or, if they were disposed to warn Nombre de Dios, to make the troublesome journey overland, which they could not finish before the Englishmen could reach the place by sea. Then leaving the three ships with the prize in charge of Captain Rouse, and taking fifty-three of his own men and twenty of Rouse’s band, and adding Rouse’s shallop to his fleet of pinnaces, Drake “hastened his own going with speed and secrecy.” Five days later they had arrived at the island of “Cativaas” (Catives), off the mouth of the St. Francis, to the westward of which Nombre de Dios lay. Here they landed and spent part of a day making ready for the assault. Drake distributed the arms among the men and delivered a heartening speech setting before them the “greatness of the hope of good things” in this store house of treasure which might be theirs for the taking. That afternoon they again set sail and at sunset they were alongside the main. Keeping “hard aboard the shore” that they might not be “descried of the Watch House,” they made their cautious way till they had come within two leagues of the port. At this point they anchored till after dark. Then again “rowing hard aboard shore,” as quietly as they could, they attained a sheltered place in the harbour under high land, where they lay “all silent,” purposing to make the attack at daylight. When, however, talk of the “greatness of the town” and of its strength for defence, based upon stories told by the blacks at the Isles of Pines, was found to be spreading among the men, Drake “thought it best to put these conceits out of their heads,” by prompter action, taking advantage of the rising of the moon that night which he would persuade them “was the day dawning.” By this strategy the advance was begun at three o’clock, a “large houre sooner than first was purposed.”