with a trumpet sounding, a drum rolling, fire-pikes blazing, swords flashing, and all ranks yelling like fiends.  Drake was only of medium stature.  But he had the strength of a giant, the pluck of a bulldog, the spring of a tiger, and the cut of a man that is born to command.  Broad-browed, with steel-blue eyes and close-cropped auburn hair and beard, he was all kindliness of countenance to friends, but a very ‘Dragon’ to his Spanish foes.

As Drake’s men reached the Plaza, his trumpeter blew one blast of defiance and then fell dead.  Drake returned the Spanish volley and charged immediately, the drummer beating furiously, pikes levelled, and swords brandished.  The Spaniards did not wait for him to close; for Oxenham’s party, fire-pikes blazing, were taking them in flank.  Out went the Spaniards through the Panama gate, with screaming townsfolk scurrying before them.  Bang went the gate, now under English guard, as Drake made for the Governor’s house.  There lay a pile of silver bars such as his men had never dreamt of:  in all, about four hundred tons of silver ready for the homeward fleet—­enough not only to fill but sink the Pascha, Swan, and pinnaces.  But silver was then no more to Drake than it was once to Solomon.  What he wanted were the diamonds and pearls and gold, which were stored, he learned, in the King’s Treasure House beside the bay.

A terrific storm now burst.  The fire-pikes and arquebuses had to be taken under cover.  The wall of the King’s Treasure House defied all efforts to breach it.  And the Spaniards who had been shut into the town, discovering how few the English were, reformed for attack.  Some of Drake’s men began to lose heart.  But in a moment he stepped to the front and ordered Oxenham to go round and smash in the Treasure House gate while he held the Plaza himself.  Just as the men stepped off, however, he reeled aside and fell.  He had fainted from loss of blood caused by a wound he had managed to conceal.  There was no holding the men now.  They gave him a cordial, after which he bound up his leg, for he was a first-rate surgeon, and repeated his orders as before.  But there were a good many wounded; and, with Drake no longer able to lead, the rest all begged to go back.  So back to their boats they went, and over to the Bastimentos or Victualling Islands, which contained the gardens and poultry runs of the Nombre de Dios citizens.

Here they were visited, under a flag of truce, by the Spanish officer commanding the reinforcement just sent across from Panama.  He was all politeness, airs, and graces, while trying to ferret out the secret of their real strength.  Drake, however, was not to be outdone either in diplomacy or war; and a delightful little comedy of prying and veiling courtesies was played out, to the great amusement of the English sea-dogs.  Finally, when the time agreed upon was up, the Spanish officer departed, pouring forth a stream of high-flown compliments, which Drake, who was a Spanish scholar, answered with the like.  Waving each other a ceremonious adieu the two leaders were left no wiser than before.