The surprise of the town was complete. As the four pinnaces were sailing forward, the rowers noiselessly plying their oars, a Spanish ship laden with Canary wines, newly arrived in the bay, espied them, and immediately sent off one of her boats townward, evidently to give an alarm. But Drake dexterously checked this move by cutting “betwixt her and the Towne forcing her to goe to the other side of the bay.” At the landing place a platform was found fortified with “six great pieces of ordnance mounted upon the carriages,” but only a single gunner on guard. The gunner fled to arouse the town, while Drake’s men dismantled the guns. Then Drake marched his men up a neighbouring hill, where he had heard that ordnance was to be placed that night, to dismantle it if found. But none had yet been set, and he hurried back now to make direct for the town’s treasure. Leaving a guard at the platform to secure the pinnaces, and a trumpeter to sound his trumpet at intervals while the other trumpeters were sounding theirs in other parts, to give an impression of a large force of besiegers, Drake divided his men into two companies. One, of sixteen men, under his brother John, was to execute a flank movement upon the King’s Treasure House near by; the other, led by himself, was to march up the broad main street to the Market Place, where the two were to come together. Meanwhile the alarm-bell of the church had been set a-ringing by an official of the town, drums were beating, and the startled people were mustering in the Market Place, their first thought being that their common enemy, the Cimaroons, were upon them.