the value of a training in exploring expeditions is brought out. Men have to decide on the instant, when one false step would be fatal. The habit of alertness and presence of mind is acquired; and the necessary training cannot be secured by study and exercise, but only by long service in the midst of perils and difficulties and of sudden emergencies. Taking every precaution that his people should be neither seen nor heard, Drake led them quietly down to a part of the bay which was concealed from the Spaniards by a jutting point. Here they built a raft and embarked to search for their comrades with a bread-bag for a sail, and the branch of a young tree for a rudder. They were up to their middles in water, but the ships were found, and Drake prepared for the homeward voyage after dismissing the faithful Cimarrones loaded with presents.
Drake returned to Plymouth on the 9th of August, 1593, and found himself a rich man. He served for some years in Ireland, and on his return he was, through the good offices of Sir Christopher Hatton, presented to the great queen.
John Oxenham was not so patient. He was devoted to the service of Drake, whom he had accompanied through all the stirring incidents of his marvellous voyage to the isthmus, but, while waiting for his old master, he must needs scrape together money from among his Devonshire friends, fit out a small vessel of 140 tons at Plymouth, and start on an expedition of his own in 1575. Proceeding to the same place on the isthmus he heard from the Cimarrones that, since Drake's incursion, the mule trains were guarded by much larger escorts. So he conceived the project of embarking on the South Sea and intercepting the treasure ships before they reached Panama. Oxenham concealed his ship in a creek and buried his guns. He then made his way across the isthmus with all his crew and a large body of Cimarrones. On reaching a river flowing into the Pacific, trees were felled, timbers were shaped, and a pinnace was built, with forty-five feet length of keel. On board this little craft Oxenham and his intrepid followers sailed down the river and across the bay to one of the Pearl Islands, thus being the first Englishmen to navigate the Pacific Ocean. They captured two vessels from Callao and Guayaquil laden with treasure, but Oxenham committed the fatal mistake of allowing the crews to depart and give the alarm. The English returned to the isthmus and went up the river where the pinnace had been built, on their way to their own ship on the other side. Meanwhile, an expedition in pursuit,
