This menace naturally caused great alarm at Havana and throughout the Island, and urgent appeals were made to the royal government and also to the Viceroy in Mexico for aid. It was represented that galleys were needed to patrol and to defend the coast. Artillery was needed for La Fuerza and for other fortifications at Havana and elsewhere. A larger garrison was also needed for La Fuerza. To these and other like appeals the King made no satisfactory reply. He apparently had no galleys nor men to spare for the defense of the Island. The best he would do was to direct Luzan to utilize his own resources to the full. A military census of the Island was to be taken, the first in its history, and all available men including Indians and negroes, were to be mustered into service. The result of this enrolment, which was made in the spring of 1582, was unsatisfactory. In Havana itself only 226 men fit for service could be found, and no other town on the Island could furnish more than a quarter as many. They were, moreover, chiefly men unused to arms and therefore of little prospective value against the formidable fighting men whom Drake was reported to have in his train. As for La Fuerza, sickness and desertion had so depleted its garrison that not a score of able-bodied men were left. Quinones gathered in reinforcements of 60 or 70, chiefly young and inexperienced men and thus raised the apparently effective strength to something less than 100, when more than 200 were considered necessary. Two small brass cannon and a supply of powder and small arms came from Spain, and Luzan either purchased or requisitioned from a visiting ship four more small cannon. The Governor also destroyed, by burning, all the houses which had been built close to La Fuerza so as to leave an open zone of considerable strength around that fortress.