beyond Solomon his temple, and Mr. Oxenham would surely show us how to conquer some golden city or discover some island all made of precious stones.  And one day, as the captain and I were talking after our fashion, I said, ’And you shall be our king, captain.’  To which he, ’If I be, I shall not be long without a queen, and that no Indian one either.’  And after that he often jested about the Spanish ladies, saying that none could show us the way to their hearts better than he.  Which speeches I took no count of then, sirs:  but after I minded them, whether I would or not.  Well, sirs, we came to the shore of New Spain, near to the old place—­that’s Nombre de Dios; and there Mr. Oxenham went ashore into the woods with a boat’s crew, to find the negroes who helped us three years before.  Those are the Cimaroons, gentles, negro slaves who have fled from those devils incarnate, their Spanish masters, and live wild, like the beasts that perish; men of great stature, sirs, and fierce as wolves in the onslaught, but poor jabbering mazed fellows if they be but a bit dismayed:  and have many Indian women with them, who take to these negroes a deal better than to their own kin, which breeds war enough, as you may guess.

“Well, sirs, after three days the captain comes back, looking heavy enough, and says, ’We played our trick once too often, when we played it once.  There is no chance of stopping another reco (that is, a mule-train, sirs) now.  The Cimaroons say that since our last visit they never move without plenty of soldiers, two hundred shot at least.  Therefore,’ he said, ’my gallants, we must either return empty-handed from this, the very market and treasury of the whole Indies, or do such a deed as men never did before, which I shall like all the better for that very reason.’  And we, asking his meaning, ‘Why,’ he said, ’if Drake will not sail the South Seas, we will;’ adding profanely that Drake was like Moses, who beheld the promised land afar; but he was Joshua, who would enter into it, and smite the inhabitants thereof.  And, for our confirmation, showed me and the rest the superscription of a letter:  and said, ’How I came by this is none of your business:  but I have had it in my bosom ever since I left Plymouth; and I tell you now, what I forbore to tell you at first, that the South Seas have been my mark all along! such news have I herein of plate-ships, and gold-ships, and what not, which will come up from Quito and Lima this very month, all which, with the pearls of the Gulf of Panama, and other wealth unspeakable, will be ours, if we have but true English hearts within us.’

“At which, gentles, we were like madmen for lust of that gold, and cheerfully undertook a toil incredible; for first we run our ship aground in a great wood which grew in the very sea itself, and then took out her masts, and covered her in boughs, with her four cast pieces of great ordnance (of which more hereafter), and leaving no man in her, started for the South Seas across the neck of Panama, with two small pieces of ordnance and our culverins, and good store of victuals, and with us six of those negroes for a guide, and so twelve leagues to a river which runs into the South Sea.