"For all that day and the next we wandered in great misery, the lady weeping continually, and calling for Mr.Oxenham most piteously, and the little maid likewise, till with much ado we found the track of our comrades, and went up that as best we might:
but at nightfall, by good hap, we met the whole crew coming back, and with them 200 negroes or more, with bows and arrows.At which sight was great joy and embracing, and it was a strange thing, sirs, to see the lady; for before that she was altogether desperate: and yet she was now a very lioness, as soon as she had got her love again; and prayed him earnestly not to care for that gold, but to go forward to the North Sea, vowing to him in my hearing that she cared no more for poverty than she had cared for her good name, and then--they being a little apart from the rest--pointed round to the green forest, and said in Spanish--which Isuppose they knew not that I understood,--'See, all round us is Paradise.Were it not enough for you and me to stay here forever, and let them take the gold or leave it as they will?'
"To which Mr.Oxenham--'Those who lived in Paradise had not sinned as we have, and would never have grown old or sick, as we shall.'
"And she--'If we do that, there are poisons enough in these woods, by which we may die in each other's arms, as would to Heaven we had died seven years agone!'
"But he--'No, no, my life.It stands upon my honor both to fulfil my bond with these men, whom I have brought hither, and to take home to England at least something of my prize as a proof of my own valor.'
"Then she smiling--'Am I not prize enough, and proof enough?' But he would not be so tempted, and turning to us offered us the half of that treasure, if we would go back with him, and rescue it from the Spaniard.At which the lady wept and wailed much; but I took upon myself to comfort her, though I was but a ****** mariner, telling her that it stood upon Mr.Oxenham's honor; and that in England nothing was esteemed so foul as cowardice, or breaking word and troth betwixt man and man; and that better was it for him to die seven times by the Spaniards, than to face at home the scorn of all who sailed the seas.So, after much ado, back they went again;I and Penberthy, and the three Plymouth men which escaped from the pinnace, keeping the lady as before.
"Well, sirs, we waited five days, having made houses of boughs as before, without hearing aught; and on the sixth we saw coming afar off Mr.Oxenham, and with him fifteen or twenty men, who seemed very weary and wounded; and when we looked for the rest to be behind them, behold there were no more; at which, sirs, as you may well think, our hearts sank within us.
"And Mr.O., coming nearer, cried out afar off, 'All is lost!' and so walked into the camp without a word, and sat himself down at the foot of a great tree with his head between his hands, speaking neither to the lady or to any one, till she very pitifully kneeling before him, cursing herself for the cause of all his mischief, and praying him to avenge himself upon that her tender body, won him hardly to look once upon her, after which (as is the way of vain and unstable man) all between them was as before.
"But the men were full of curses against the negroes, for their cowardice and treachery; yea, and against high Heaven itself, which had put the most part of their ammunition into the Spaniards'
hands; and told me, and I believe truly, how they forced the enemy awaiting them in a little copse of great trees, well fortified with barricades of boughs, and having with them our two falcons, which they had taken out of the pinnace.And how Mr.Oxenham divided both the English and the negroes into two bands, that one might attack the enemy in front, and the other in the rear, and so set upon them with great fury, and would have utterly driven them out, but that the negroes, who had come on with much howling, like very wild beasts, being suddenly scared with the shot and noise of the ordnance, turned and fled, leaving the Englishmen alone; in which evil strait Mr.O.fought like a very Guy of Warwick, and I verily believe every man of them likewise; for there was none of them who had not his shrewd scratch to show.And indeed, Mr.Oxenham's party had once gotten within the barricades, but the Spaniards being sheltered by the tree trunks (and especially by one mighty tree, which stood as I remembered it, and remember it now, borne up two fathoms high upon its own roots, as it were upon arches and pillars), shot at them with such advantage, that they had several slain, and seven more taken alive, only among the roots of that tree.So seeing that they could prevail nothing, having little but their pikes and swords, they were fain to give back; though Mr.
Oxenham swore he would not stir a foot, and ****** at the Spanish captain was borne down with pikes, and hardly pulled away by some, who at last reminding him of his lady, persuaded him to come away with the rest.Whereon the other party fled also; but what had become of them they knew not, for they took another way.And so they miserably drew off, having lost in men eleven killed and seven taken alive, besides five of the rascal negroes who were killed before they had time to run; and there was an end of the matter.** In the documents from which I have drawn this veracious history, a note is appended to this point of Yeo's story, which seems to me to smack sufficiently of the old Elizabethan seaman, to be inserted at length.
"All so far, and most after, agreeth with Lopez Vaz his tale, taken from his pocket by my Lord Cumberland's mariners at the river Plate, in the year 1586.But note here his vainglory and falsehood, or else fear of the Spaniard.
"First, lest it should be seen how great an advantage the Spaniards had, he maketh no mention of the English calivers, nor those two pieces of ordnance which were in the pinnace.
