Early the next morning, April first, a jangle of bells nearing their cover told the approach of an unwonted number of recuas. Putting themselves in readiness they cautiously moved down toward the highway. Three great teams from Panama were coming along together. One consisted of fifty mules, the other two of seventy each, and each mule carried three hundred pounds’ weight of silver: one hundred and ninety mules in all with a total of fifty-seven thousand pounds of the metal; while some were also laden with a small quantity of gold. Their guards comprised forty-five soldiers, fifteen to each recua. At the moment the teams were abreast them Drake’s band sprang out, and took such hold of the heads of the foremost and hindmost mules that the rest stopped short and lay down. There followed a quick exchange of bullets and arrows, and then the flight of the guard “to seek more help abroad.” In the skirmish the French captain was painfully wounded and one Cimaroon was killed. The raiders hurriedly relieved the mules of their burden, taking all of the treasure that they could well carry, including a few bars and quoits of gold, and burying a large part of the rest in various places—in burrows which great land crabs had made, beneath the trunks of fallen trees, and in the sand and gravel of a shallow river—to be taken away later as occasion might offer. Two hours were consumed in this business. Then the return march was started by the way they had come. They had scarcely re-entered the woods when they heard both horse and foot clattering along the road behind them. This force, however, did not pursue them, and it was supposed that they tarried to repossess the mules and the rifled packs. The march had not far progressed when the wounded French captain was obliged to drop out and seek rest in the woods, hoping soon to regain his strength. He was never again seen by his companions, though repeatedly sought, and it was afterward learned that he fell into the hands of the Spaniards. Later on the march another of the Frenchmen was missed. His fate, also ascertained subsequently, was not so tragic as his captain’s, though hard and with sorry results to the band in that through it they lost much of the treasure which they had hidden. While rifling the teams he had drunk much wine, and overloading himself with pillage, had started ahead of the rest and become lost in the woods. He, too, was captured by the Spaniards, and under torture he revealed the places of the buried plunder. Rio Francesco was reached after two days of marching and here no pinnaces were met. Instead they saw a fleet of seven Spanish pinnaces cruising off the coast. They “mightily suspected” that these Spaniards had taken or spoiled their boats.