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72 effect. Sailing boldly into Nombre de Dios harbor, at three o'clock in the morning on the twenty-ninth of July, Drake tumbled ashore with seventy-three men and captured



the sea-battery before the Spaniards could fire a single one of its six brass guns. Dismounting these, the English marched into the plaza, with drums beating, trumpets sounding, and six "fire-pikes" or torches lighting the way with a lurid glare. There was a volley of shot from the Spanish musketeers, an answering flight of English arrows, a rush, a brief, brisk hand-to-hand fight, and the defenders went flying through the landward gate and down the road to Panama.

In the governor's house the English found a stack of solid silver bars, seventy feet long, ten wide, and twelve