The warning which this town received of our coming towards them from St. Domingo, by the space of 20 days before our arrival here, was cause that they had both fortified and every way prepared for their best defence.  As also that they had carried and conveyed away all their treasure and principal substance.

The ransom of 110,000 ducats thus concluded on, as is aforesaid, the same being written, and expressing for nothing more than the town of Carthagena, upon the payment of the said ransom we left the said town and drew some part of our soldiers into the priory or abbey, standing a quarter of an English mile below the town upon the harbour water-side, the same being walled with a wall of stone; which we told the Spaniards was yet ours, and not redeemed by their composition.  Whereupon they, finding the defect of their contract, were contented to enter into another ransom for all places, but specially for the said house, as also the blockhouse or castle, which is upon the mouth of the inner harbour.  And when we asked as much for the one as for the other, they yielded to give a thousand crowns for the abbey, leaving us to take our pleasure upon the blockhouse, which they said they were not able to ransom, having stretched themselves to the uttermost of their powers; and therefore the said blockhouse was by us undermined, and so with gunpowder blown up in pieces.  While this latter contract was in making, our whole fleet of ships fell down towards the harbour-mouth, where they anchored the third time and employed their men in fetching of fresh water aboard the ships for our voyage homewards, which water was had in a great well that is in the island by the harbour-mouth.  Which island is a very pleasant place as hath been seen, having in it many sorts of goodly and very pleasant fruits, as the orange-trees and others, being set orderly in walks of great length together.  Insomuch as the whole island, being some two or three miles about, is cast into grounds of gardening and orchards.

After six weeks’ abode in this place, we put to sea the last of March; where, after two or three days, a great Ship which we had taken at St. Domingo, and thereupon was called The New Year’s Gift, fell into a great leak, being laden with ordnance, hides, and other spoils, and in the night she lost the company of our fleet.  Which being missed the next morning by the General, he cast about with the whole fleet, fearing some great mischance to be happened unto her, as in very deed it so fell out; for her leak was so great that her men were all tired with pumping.  But at the last, having found her, and the bark Talbot in her company, which stayed by great hap with her, they were ready to take their men out of her for the saving of them.  And so the General, being fully advertised of their great extremity, made sail directly back again to Carthagena with the whole fleet; where, having staid eight or ten days more about the unlading of this ship and the bestowing thereof and her men into other ships, we departed once again to sea, directing our course toward the Cape St. Anthony, being the westermost part of Cuba, where we arrived the 27th of April.  But because fresh water could not presently be found, we weighed anchor and departed, thinking in few days to recover the Matanzas, a place to the eastward of Havana.