Accordingly they returned to the Market Place, thence to go for the Treasure House. Back in the Market Place they received a startling report that their pinnaces were in danger of capture. John Drake was hurried to the landing with a guard to meet this emergency. He found the force there much alarmed by a report of a Negro spy that the Spanish soldiers which the blacks at the Isles of Pines had told them had been ordered from Panama, to defend the town from an expected attack of the Cimaroons, had arrived. John Drake quieted their fears. Now a new trouble arose. A “mighty shower of rain” with a “terrible storm of thunder and lightning” burst upon the town. Drake and his men sought shelter near the King’s Treasure House. But before they had got under cover some of their bow-strings were wet, and their match and powder hurt. Some of the men began “harping on the reports lately brought” and “muttering of the forces of the town.” Thereupon Drake exclaimed that here he had brought them to the “mouth of the Treasure of the World,” and if they did not gain it they “might henceforth blame nobody but themselves.” So soon as the fury of the storm had abated Drake ordered John Drake and John Oxenham, another officer, to break open the Treasure House, the rest to follow him to “keep the strength” of the Market Place till their work was done. But as he stepped forward he suddenly fell prone in a swoon from loss of blood from his wound, which to this moment he had successfully concealed. This produced consternation among the band. Upon his revival his scarf was bound about the wound, and he was entreated to go aboard his pinnace to have it dressed. He persistently refused, and finally, “with force mingled with fair entreaty” he was seized and borne to his boat. Then all hurriedly embarked and got away, with what little plunder a few had managed to pick up. So was abandoned “a rich spoil for the present,” but “only to preserve their captain’s life.” It was afterward admitted by the Spaniards that but for the mishap to Drake necessitating their precipitate departure, the buccaneers would have fully succeeded in sacking the town.