White fog, the thick mist of windless marshes, masked the Kentish coast.
The Medway at flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one maze
of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays. Nothing was visible an
oar's length overside but shifting cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely
in the fog. But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as master
of his own ship, he knew these waters as he knew the palm of his hand.
His old captain, dying a bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten
cargo-ship as reward for his "diligence and fidelity", and at sixteen he
was captain where six years before he had been ship's-boy.
Scores of daring projects went Catherine-wheeling through his mind as he
steered seaward through the white enchanted world. In 1561 Spain was the
bogy of English seaports, most of whose folk were Protestants. There was
no knowing how long the coast-wise trade would be allowed to go on.
Out of the white mist flashed a whiter face, etched with black brows and
lashes and a pointed silky beard--the face of a man all in black, whose
body rose and dipped with the waves among the marsh grass of an eyot. So
lightly was it held that it might have slipped off in the wake of the
boat had not Tom Moone the carpenter caught it with a boat-hook. But
when they had the man on board they found that he was not dead.
Ten minutes before, the young captain would have said that every dead
Spaniard was so much to the good, but he had the life-saving instinct of
a Newfoundland dog. He set about reviving the rescued man without
thinking twice on the subject.
"'T is unlucky," grumbled Will Harvest under his breath. "Take a
drownded man from the sea and she get one of us--some time."
"Like enough," agreed his master blithely. "But this one's not
drownded--knocked on the head and robbed, I guess. D'you think we might
take him to Granny Toothacre's, Tom?"
"I reckon so," returned Tom with a wide grin, "seein' 't is you. If I
was the one to ask her I'd as lief do it with a brass kittle on my head.
She don't like furriners."
Drake laughed and brought his craft alongside an old wharf near which an
ancient farm-house stood, half-hidden by a huge pollard willow. Here,
when he had seen his guest bestowed in a chamber whose one window looked
out over the marshes, he stayed to watch with him that night, sending
the ship on to Chatham in charge of the mate.
"Now what's the lad up to?" queried Will as they caught the ebbing tide.
"D'ye think he'll find out anything, tending that there Spanisher?"
"Not him. He don't worm secrets out o' nobody. But he's got his reasons,
I make no doubt. You go teach a duck to swim--and leave Frankie alone,"
said Moone.
The youth did not analyze the impulse that kept him at the bedside of
the injured man, but he felt that he desired to know more of him. The
stranger was gaunt, gray and without jewel, gold chain or signet ring
to show who he was, but it was the same man who had spoken to him at
Gravesend five years ago.
A barge-load of London folk had come down to see the launching of the
_Serchthrift_, the new pinnace of the Muscovy Company, and among them
was the venerable Sebastian Cabot. Alms were freely distributed that the
spectators might pray for a fortunate voyage, but Frankie Drake was
gazing with all his eyes at the veteran navigator. A hand was laid on
his shoulder, and a friendly voice inquired,
"Did you get your share of the plunder, my son?"
The lad shook his head a trifle impatiently. "I be no beggar," he
answered. "I be a ship's boy."
"Ay," said the man, "and you seek not the Golden Fleece?"
His eyes laughed, and his long fingers played with a strange jewel that
glowed like Mars in the midnight of his breast. It was of gold enamel,
with a splendid ruby in the center, and hanging from it a tiny golden
ram. Could he mean that? But the crowd surged between them and left the
boy wondering. He had never spoken to a Spaniard before.
As the fluttering pulse grew stronger and the man roused from his
stupor, disjointed phrases of sinister meaning fell from his lips. No
names were used, and much of his talk was in Spanish, but it suggested a
foul undercurrent of bribery, falsehood and conspiracy hidden by the
bright magnificence of the young Queen's court. The queer fact seemed to
be that the speaker appeared himself to be the victim of some Spanish
plot. Now why should that be, and he a Spaniard?
The young captain turned from the window, into which through the
clearing air the moon was shining, to find the stranger looking at him
with sane though troubled eyes.
"The _Golden Fleece_?" he asked in English. Drake shook his head.
"You've had a bad hurt, sir," he said, and briefly explained the
circumstances.
"Ah," said the man frowning, and was silent.
"If you would wish to send any word to your friends,--" Drake began, and
hesitated.
"I have no friends here, save my servant Sancho. The _Golden Fleece_
will sail on Saint James's Eve for Coruna, and he was to meet me at
Dover and return with me to our own country. In Alcala they know what to
expect of a Saavedra."
The last words were spoken with a proud assurance that gave the listener
a tingling sense of something high and indomitable. Saavedra's dark eyes
were searching his face.
"I fear I trespass on your kindness," he added courteously, "and that I
have talked some nonsense before I came to myself."
"Nothing of any account, sir," answered the lad quickly. "Mostly it was
Spanish--and I don't know much o' that. You'll miss your ship if she
sails so soon, but you're welcome here so long as you like to stay."
"I thank you," said the Spaniard in a relieved tone, adding half to
himself, "No friends--but one cannot break faith--even with an enemy."
He dropped asleep almost at once after swallowing the cordial which
Drake held to his lips. The moon came up over the flooded meadows that
were all silvery lights and black shadow like a fairy realm. The lad
had never spent a night like this, even when he had seen his master
die.
When the pearl and rose of a July morning overspread the sky he
descended, to splash and spatter and souse his rough brown head in a
bucket of fresh-drawn water, and wheedle the old dame into a good humor.
"What ye hate and fear's bound to come to ye, sooner or later," Granny
Toothacre grumbled as she stirred her savory broth, "My old man said so
and I never beleft it--here be I at my time o' life harborin' a
Spanisher."
"Ah, now, mother,"--Drake laid a brown hand coaxingly on her old
withered one,--"you'll take good care of him for me, and we'll share the
ransom."
"Ransom," the old woman muttered, looking after the straight, sturdy
young figure as it strode down to the wharf, "not much hope o' that. Not
but what he's a grand gentleman," she admitted, turning the contents of
her saucepan into her best porringer. "He don't give me a rough word no
more than if I was a lady."
Drake spent all his leisure during the next fortnight with the Spaniard,
whose recovery was slow but steady. It was tacitly understood that the
less said of the incident which had left him stunned and half-drowned
the better. If those who had sought to kill him knew him to be alive,
they might try again.
The young seaman had never known a man like this before. In his guest's
casual talk of his young days one could see as in a mirror the Spain of
a half-century since, with its audacious daring, its extravagant
chivalry and its bulldog ferocity.
"They have outgrown us altogether, these young fellows," he said once
with his quaint half-melancholy smile. "When the King and Queen rode in
armor at the head of their troops in Granada, our cavaliers dreamed of
conquering the world--now it has all been conquered."
"Not England," Drake put in quickly.
"Not England--I beg your pardon, my friend. But we have grown heavy with
gold in these days--and gold makes cowards."
"It never made a coward o' me," laughed the lad. "Belike it'll never
have the chance."
Through the shadows the old ship's-lantern cast in the rude
half-timbered room seemed to move the wild figures of that marvellous
pageant of conquest which began in 1492. Saavedra spoke little of
himself but much of others--Ojeda, Nicuesa, Balboa, Cortes, Alvarado,
Pizarro. In his soft slow speech they lived again, while by the stars
outside, unknown uncharted realms revealed themselves. This man used
words as a master mariner would use compass and astrolabe.
"Those days when we followed Balboa in his quest for the South Sea," he
ended, "were worth it all. Gold is nothing if it blinds a man to the
heavens. You too, my son, may seek the Golden Fleece in good time. May
the high planets fortify you!"
What room was left for a knight-errant in the Spain of to-day, ruling by
steel and shot and flame and gold? It must be rather awful, the listener
reflected, to see your own country go rotten like that in a generation.
Yet there was no bitterness in the old hidalgo's tranquil eyes. "I have
been a fool," he said smiling, "but somehow I do not regret it. The
wound from a poisoned arrow can be seared with red-hot iron, but for the
creeping poison of the soul--the loss of honor--there is no cure."
When the seamen came to get orders from their young captain, Saavedra
observed with surprise the lad's clear knowledge of his own trade.
Francis Drake's old master had seen King Henry's shipwrights discarding
time-honored models to build for speed, speed and more speed. He had
seen Fletcher of Rye, in 1539, prove to all the Channel that a ship
could sail against the wind. All that he knew he had taught his young
apprentice, and now the boy was free to use it for his own
work--whatever that should be. Unlike the gilded and perfumed courtiers,
these men of the sea showed little respect toward the tall ships of
Spain. Saavedra, pleased that they spoke without reserve in his
presence, watched the rugged straightforward faces, and wondered.
The time came when they took him and his stocky, silent old servant to
board a Vizcayan boat. As they caught his last quick smile and farewell
gesture Will Harvest heaved a rueful sigh. "I never thought to be
sorrowful at parting with a Don," he said reflectively, "but I be."
"God made men afore the Devil made Dons," growled Tom Moone. "Yon's a
man."
Drake had gone down the wharf with John Hawkins of Plymouth, a town that
was warmly defiant of Spain's armed monopoly of sea-trade. Privateers
were dodging about the trade-routes where Spanish and Portuguese
galleons, laden with ingots of gold and silver, dyewoods, pearls,
spices, silks and priceless merchandise, moved as menacing sea-castles.
Huger and huger galleasses were built, masted and timbered with mighty
trunks from the virgin forests of the Old World, four and five feet
thick. The military discipline of the Continent made a warship a
floating barrack; the decks of a Spanish man-of-war were packed with
drilled troops like marching engines of destruction, dealing leaden
death from arquebus and musquetoun. The little ships of Cabot,
Willoughby and William Hawkins had not exceeded fifty, sixty, at most a
hundred tons; Philip's leviathans outweighed them more than ten to one.
What could England do against the landing of such an army? An English
Admiral would be Jack the Giant-Killer with no magic at his command. Yet
in the face of all this, under the very noses of the Spanish patrol,
Protestant craftsmen were escaping from the Inquisition in the
Netherlands to England, where Elizabeth had contrived to let it be known
that they were quite welcome.
To a perfectly innocent and lawful coasting trade Drake and his crew now
added this hazardous passenger service. They were braving imprisonment,
torture and the stake, for in 1562 no less than twenty-six Englishmen
were burned alive in Spain, and ten times as many lay in prison. Before
Drake was twenty all Spanish ports were closed to English trade. He sold
his ship and joined Hawkins in his more or less contraband trade with
the West Indies.
With every year of adventure upon the high seas his hatred of the
tyranny of Spain deepened and strengthened. Yet though Spanish ferocity
might soak the world in blood, he would not have his men tainted with
the evil inheritance of the idolaters. It came to be known that El
Draque did not kill prisoners. His crews fought like demons, but they
slew no unarmed man, they molested no woman or child. On these terms
only would he accept allies. Tons of plunder he took, but never a
helpless life. He landed the shivering crews of his prizes on some
Spanish island or with a laugh returned to them their empty ships. "A
dead man's no mortal use to anybody," he would say cheerily, and go on
using his cock-boats to sink or capture galleys. At twenty-seven,
beholding for the first time the shining Pacific, he vowed that with
God's help he would sail an English ship on that sea. Alone upon the
platform built in a great tree with steps cut in its trunk, to which his
negro allies the Maroons had guided him, he conceived the sublimely
audacious plan which he was one day to unfold to Walsingham and the
Queen.
The air was thick with rumors of war with Spain when Drake arrived in
London years later, in the company of a new friend, Thomas
Doughty,--courtier, soldier, scholar, familiar with every shifting
undercurrent of European court life. Never at a loss for a phrase, ready
of wit and quick of understanding, Doughty could put into words what the
frank-hearted young sea-captain had thought and felt and dreamed. Both
knew the peace with Philip to be only deceptive. Walsingham and
Leicester were for war; Burleigh for peace; between the two the subtle
Queen played fast and loose with her powerful enemy.
Drake avowed to Doughty his belief that to strike effectively at the
gigantic power of Spain, England must raid the colonies--not the West
Indies alone, but the rich western provinces of Peru and Chili. No one
had been south of Patagonia since its discovery, sixty years before.
Geographers still held that beyond the Straits of Magellan a huge
Antarctic continent existed. From that unknown region of darkness and
tempest came the great heaving ground-swell, the tidal wave and the
hurricane. Even Spanish pilots never used the perilous southern route.
Treasure went overland across the Isthmus. Every year an elephantine
treasure-ship sailed from Panama westward through the South Sea; and
there was a rich trade between the American mines and the Orient and the
Spanish peninsula, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Doughty's
imagination was fired by the gorgeous possibilities of the idea, and
when he became the secretary of Christopher Hatton, the Queen's handsome
Captain of the Guard, he laid the plan before him with all the eloquence
of his persuasive tongue. Hatton finally obtained from Elizabeth a
promise to contribute a thousand crowns to the cost of an expedition to
penetrate the South Seas. This, however, was only on condition that the
affair should be kept secret, above all from Burleigh, who was certain
to use every effort to stop it. She had already, in a private audience
with Drake, been informed of the main features and even the details of
the scheme, and had assured him that when the time was ripe he should be
chosen to avenge the long series of injuries which Philip had inflicted
upon England's honor and her own.
When in mid-November, 1577, Drake ran out of Plymouth with his tiny
fleet, he had with him all told one hundred and fifty seamen and
fourteen boys, enlisted for a voyage to Alexandria, although it was
pretty well known that this was a blind. His flagship, the _Pelican_,
afterward re-christened the _Golden Hynde_ for Hatton's coat-of-arms,
was a hundred-ton ship carrying eighteen guns. The _Marygold_, a barque
of thirty tons and fifteen guns, and the _Swan_, a provision ship of
fifty tons, were commanded by two of the gentlemen volunteers, Mr. John
Thomas and Mr. John Chester. Captain John Wynter commanded the
_Elizabeth_, a new eighty-ton ship, and a fifteen-ton pinnace called
the _Christopher_ in honor of Hatton, was commanded by Tom Moore. Thomas
Doughty was commander of the land-soldiers, and his brother John was
enlisted among the gentlemen adventurers.
All of Drake's experience and sagacity had gone to the fitting out of
the ships. There were less than fifty men on board besides the regular
crews, and among them were special artisans, two trained surveyors,
skilled musicians furnished with excellent instruments, and the
adventurous sons of some of the best families in England. As page the
Admiral had his own nephew, Jack Drake. There were stores of wild-fire,
chain-shot, arquebuses, pistols, bows, and other weapons. The Queen
herself had sent packets of perfume breathing of rich gardens, and
Drake's table furniture was of silver gilt, engraved with his arms; even
some of the cooking utensils were of silver. Nothing was spared which
became the dignity of England, her Admiral and her Queen. On calm nights
the sea was alive with music. And on board the little flagship Doughty
and Drake talked together as those do whose minds answer one another
like voices in a roundelay.
Men who have time and again run their heads into the jaws of death are
often inclined to fatalism. Drake had never expressed it in words, but
he had a feeling that whatever he was meant to do, God would see that he
did, so long as he gave himself wholly to the work. One evening when the
Southern Cross was lifting above the darkling sea, and the violins were
crooning something with a weird burden to it, Doughty mused aloud.
"'T is the strangest thing in life, that whatever we are most averse to,
that we are fated to do."
"Eh?" said Drake with a laugh, looking up from Eden's translation of
Pigafetts. "Accordin' to that you can't even trust yourself. D'you look
to see me set up an image to be worshiped?" Then he added in a lower
tone, "That's foolish, Tom. God don't shape us to be puppets."
"That sounds like old Saavedra," was Doughty's idle comment. "He had
great store of antiquated sentiments--like those in the chronicles of
the paladins. I knew his nephew well--a witty fellow, but visionary. He
laughed at the old cavalero, but he was fond of him, and our affections
rule us and ruin us. A man should have no loves nor hates if he would
get on at court."
Sheer surprise kept the other silent for the moment, and Doughty went
on,--
"The old man had been in Mexico with Cortes, and might have risen to
Adelantado in some South American province if he had not been too
scrupulous to join Pizarro. He was in London, ten or fifteen years
before I knew him, and I believe he was the destruction of a
well-considered Spanish plot for the assassination of Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth--the assassins nearly killed him. He was left for dead and was
picked up by some sailors."
"He was in luck." Drake's eyes twinkled.
"They would have been luckier--if they had let the Spanish agents in
London know they had him. He paid them well of course, but he gave them
credit for the most exalted motives. All his geese were swans."
"Maybe they acted out o' pure decency," Drake said dryly.
"My Admiral, this is not Utopia." Doughty stroked his beard with a light
complacent hand. "Seriously, it is not a kindness to expect of men
without traditions more than they are capable of doing. 'E meglio
cade dalle fenestre che del tetto.'" (It is better to fall from the
window than from the roof.)
Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard with the blade
inlaid with gold and the great ruby in the top of the hilt, which lay on
the table between them. The shipmaster came in just then with some
question, and the conversation dropped.
[Illustration: "DRAKE WAS SILENT, FINGERING THE SLENDER MILANESE
PONIARD."--_Page_ 227]
It was not often that Francis Drake attempted to analyze the character
and behavior of those about him. Mostly he judged men by a shrewd
instinct; but that night he lay long awake, watching the witch-lights
upon the waves from the dancing lanterns. He was acute enough to see
that Doughty had hit slyly at him over Saavedra's shoulders. Doughty had
not liked it that Moone should be raised to the rank of captain; he had
already shown that he regarded himself as second only to Drake in
command, and the champion of the gentlemen as distinct from the
mariners. The second officer of every English ship was a practical
shipmaster whose authority held in all matters concerning navigation.
The soldiers and their officers were passengers. This was unavoidable in
view of the new method of English sea-fighting, which depended quite as
much on the skill of the seamen as on the armed and trained soldier.
English gunners could give the foe a broadside and slip away before
their huge adversary could turn. Drake now had two factions to deal
with, and he bent his brows and set his jaw as he pondered the
situation. If discord arose, the gentlemen would have to come to order.
There was no room here for old ideas of caste. Any man too good to haul
on a rope might go to--Spain.
Doughty had a way of taking it for granted that Drake and he, as
gentlemen, shared thoughts and feelings not to be comprehended by common
men. On land this had not seemed offensive, but on blue water, with the
old sea-chanteys in his ears, in the intimate association of a long
voyage, Drake found himself resenting it. What was there about the man
that made his arguments so plausible when one heard them, so false when
his engaging presence was withdrawn? And yet how devoted, how
sympathetic, how witty and companionable he could be! Drake found
himself excusing his friend as if he were a woman,--laughed, sighed, and
went to sleep.
Presently he began to hear of John Doughty's amusing himself by reading
palms and playing on the superstitions of the sailors with strange
prophecies, in which his brother sometimes joined. Drake summoned the
two to a brief interview in which Thomas Doughty learned that his friend
on land, frank, boyish and unassuming, was a different person from the
Admiral of the Fleet. Yet as this impression faded, the brothers
perversely went on encouraging discord between the gentlemen adventurers
and the sailors, and foretelling events with sinister aptness.
It grew colder and colder. It should be summer,--but as they crept
southward they encountered cold and wind beyond that of the North Sea in
January. The nights grew long; the battering of the gales never ceased;
the ships lost sight of one another. It was whispered that not only had
the uncanny brothers foretold the evil weather, but Thomas Doughty had
boasted of having brought it about. "We'll ha' no luck till we get rid
of our prophet," said blunt Tom Moone, "and the Lord don't provide no
whales for the likes o' he."
Drake warned his comrade with an ominous quiet. "Doughty," he said, "if
you value your neck you keep your reading and writing to what a common
man can understand--you and your brother. A man can't always prophesy
for himself, let alone other folk."
"You heard what he said," commented Wynter grimly when the Admiral was
in his cabin behind closed doors. "Better not raise the devil unless you
know for sure what he'll do. There's been one gallows planted on this
coast."
"Sneck up!" laughed Doughty, "he would not dare hang a gentleman!" but
he felt a creeping chill at the back of his neck.
On the desolate island where the stump of Magellan's gallows stood black
against a crimson dawn, they landed and the tragedy of estrangement and
suspicion ended. Thomas Doughty was tried for mutiny and treason before
a jury of his peers. Every man there held him a traitor, yet he was
acquitted for lack of evidence. Thus encouraged, Doughty boldly declared
that they should all smart for this when Burleigh heard of it. What he
had done to hinder the voyage, he averred, was by Burleigh's orders, for
before they sailed he had gone to that wily statesman and told him the
entire scheme.
In a flash of merciless revelation Drake saw the truth. He left Doughty
to await the verdict, called the companies down to the shore, and there
told them the story of the expedition from first to last, not
overlooking the secret orders of the Queen.
"This man was my friend," he said with a break in his voice such as they
had not heard save at the suffering of a child. "I would not take his
life,--but if he be worthy of death, I pray you hold up your hands."
There was a breathless instant when none stirred; then every hand was
raised.
On the next day but one they all sat down to a last feast on that bleak
and lonely shore; the two comrades drank to each other for the last
time, shared the sacrament, and embracing, said their farewells. Doughty
proved that if he could not live a true man he could die like a
gentleman; the headsman did his work, and Drake pronounced the solemn
sentence, "Lo! this is the death of traitors!"
In that black hour the boyish laughter went forever from the eyes of the
Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice. When after a while young
Jack Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between them, began
some phrase of blundering boyish affection, the sentence trailed off
into a stammer.
"He's dead and at peace, Jack," the master said, the words dropping
wearily, like spent bullets. "He couldn't help being as he was,--I
reckon. If I'd known he was like that I could ha' stopped him, but I
never knew--till too late."
Discord among the crews continued, until Drake, rousing from his fitful
melancholy, called them all together on a Sunday, and mounted to the
place of the chaplain.
"I am going to preach to-day," he said shortly. Then he unfolded a paper
and began to read it aloud.
"My masters, I am a very bad orator, for my bringing up hath not been in
learning; but what I shall speak here let every man take good notice of
and let him write it down. For I will speak nothing but what I will
answer it in England, yea, and before Her Majesty." He reminded them of
the great adventure before them and went on.
"Now by the life of God this mutiny and dissension must cease. Here is
such controversy between the gentlemen and the sailors that it doth make
me mad to hear it. I must have the gentleman to haul with the mariner
and the mariner with the gentleman. I would know him that would refuse
to set his hand to a rope--but I know there is not any such here.
"Any who desire to go home may go in the _Marygold_, but let them take
care that they do go home, for if I find them in my way I will sink
them."
Then beginning with Wynter he reduced every officer to the ranks
forthwith, reprimanded known offenders, and wound up with this appeal:
"We have set by the ears three mighty sovereigns, and if this voyage
have not success we shall be a scorning unto our enemies and a blot on
our country forever. What triumph would it not be for Spain and
Portugal! The like of this would never more be tried!" Then he gave
every man his former rank and dismissed them. Moone, meeting Will
Harvest that night by the light of a bonfire, was the only man who dared
venture a comment. "We was spoilin' for a lickin'," he said, "and we got
it. I do hope and trust we'll keep out o' mischief till Frankie gets us
home to Plymouth, Hol'." Will grinned back cheerfully, and there was a
subdued laugh from the group about the fire. The fleet was itself again.
Adventure after adventure succeeded, wilder than minstrel ever sang. The
_Marygold_ went down with all hands; Wynter in the _Elizabeth_,
believing the Admiral lost, turned homeward; the _Christopher_ and the
_Swan_ had already been broken up. All alone the little _Golden Hynde_,
blown southward, sailed around Cape Horn and proved the Antarctic
continent a myth. Then Drake steered northward after more than two
month's tossing on the uncharted seas, to revictual his ship in Spanish
ports, fill his hold with the rich cargoes of one prize ship after
another, and capture at last the great annual treasure-ship _Nuestra
Señora de la Concepçion_, nicknamed the _Spitfire_ because she was
better armed than most of the ships plying on that coast. As they
ballasted the _Golden Hynde_ with silver from her huge hulk the jesting
seamen dubbed her the _Spit-silver_. The little flagship was literally
brimful of silver bars, ingots of gold, pieces of eight, and jewels
whose value has never been accurately known. The Spanish Adelantados,
accustomed to trust in their remoteness for defense, frantically looked
for Drake everywhere except where he was. Warships hung about the
Patagonian coast to catch him on his way home--surely he could not stay
at sea forever!
But Drake had other plans. Navigators were still searching for the
northern passage, the Straits of Anian, and he coasted northward until
his men were half paralyzed with cold and the creeping chill of the fog.
From the latitude of Vancouver he turned south again, and put into a
natural harbor not far from the present San Francisco, which he named
New Albion because of the white cliffs like the chalk downs of England.
Here he landed and made camp to refit and repair his flagship. He had
captured on one prize, two China pilots in whose possession were all the
secret charts of the Pacific trade.
Indians ventured down from the mountains to the little fort and
dockyard, wondering and admiring. Parson Fletcher presently came to the
Admiral with the extraordinary news that they were worshiping the
English as gods. Horror and laughter contended among the Puritans when
they found themselves set up as idols of the heathen, and the chaplain
endeavored by signs to teach the simple savages that the God whom all
men should worship was invisible in the heavens.
"'T only shows," remarked Moone, with a nail in one corner of his mouth,
after vehemently dissuading a persistent adorer, "that a man never knows
what he'll come to. Granny Toothacre used to say that if there's a thing
you fight against all your life it'll come to you sooner or later."
"So she did," said Drake with a grim smile as he passed. "Takes a woman
to tell a fortune, after all."
"D'you ever hear what become of the old Don we picked up that time?"
Moone asked in a lowered voice.
"Not since he sent Frankie the dagger with the gold work and the jewel.
Why?"
"'Cause the pilot o' the _Spit-silver_ he knowed un. He say the plague
broke out in the Low Countries, and the old Don took and tended that
Gallego servant o' his and then he died--not o' the pestilence--just
wore out like. I reckon maybe he told Mus' Drake. I didn't."
Silence fell. Then Will said thoughtfully, "He won't be Mus' Drake much
longer--by rights--but you never know what a woman'll do. She keep her
presents and her favors for them that ha'n't earned 'em--as a rule."
Moone presently hummed half aloud,
"When I served my master I got my Sunday pudden,
When I served the Company I got my bread and cheese.
When I served the Queen I got hanged for a pirate,
All along o'sailin' on the Carib Seas!"
It was a reckless jest, for every one knew that if Elizabeth were dead
or married to a Catholic or at peace with Spain when they saw England
again, it was extremely likely that the gallows would be their reward.
But here, at any rate, was one spot not yet haunted by the Spanish
spectre.
The Indians, persuaded at last that the white chief was not a god,
insisted on making him their King. They crowned him with a headdress of
brilliant feathers, in all due ceremony, hung a chain of beads about his
neck, and looked on with the utmost reverence while Drake fixed to a
large upright post a tablet claiming the land for the Queen of England,
and a silver sixpence with the portrait of Elizabeth and the Tudor rose.
Securely hidden under the tablet in a hollow of the wood were memoranda
concerning the direction in which, according to the Indians, gold was to
be found in the streams,--plenty of gold. When she was ready to the last
rope's end the little ship spread her wings and sailed straight across
the Pacific, round the Cape of Good Hope, home to England.
Battered and scarred but still seaworthy the _Golden Hynde_ crept into
Plymouth Sound, where Drake heard that the plague was in the seaport.
Using this for excuse not to land until he knew his footing, he anchored
behind Saint Nicholas Island and sent letters to Court.
The sea-dogs who patrolled the Narrow Seas in Elizabeth's time
understood her better than her courtiers did. To Drake she was still the
keen-minded woman who, like the jeweled silent birds he had seen in
tropical jungles, sat in her palace, with enemies all about her alert
and observant, and ready to seize her if she came within their grasp. He
knew her waywardness to be half assumed, since to let an enemy know
what he can count on is fatal. He had not much doubt of her action, but
he must wait for her to give him his cue.
Within a week came her answer. She demurely suggested that she should be
pleased to see any curiosities which her good Captain had brought home.
Drake went up to London, and with him a pack train laden with the cream
of his spoil. The Spanish Ambassador Mendoza came with furious letters
from Philip demanding the pirate's head. A Spanish force landed that
very week in Ireland. Burleigh and the peace party were desperate. All
that Mendoza could get out of Elizabeth was an order to Edmund Tremayne
at Plymouth to register the cargo of the _Golden Hynde_ and send it up
to London that she might see how much the pirate had really taken. At
the same time Drake himself went down with her private letter to
Tremayne telling him to look another way while her captain got his share
of the bullion. Meanwhile she suggested that Philip call his Spaniards
out of Ireland. Philip snarled that they were private volunteers.
Elizabeth replied, so was Drake. An inquiry was held, and not a single
act of cruelty or destruction of property could be proved against any of
Drake's crews. The men were richly rewarded by their Admiral; the
_Golden Hynde_ came up to Deptford; a list of the plunder was returned
to Mendoza; and London waited, excited and curious.
Out of this diplomatic tangle Elizabeth took her own way, as she usually
did. On April 4, 1581, she suggested to Drake that she would be his
guest at a banquet on board the little, worm-eaten ship. All the court
was there, and a multitude of on-lookers besides, for those were the
days when royalty sometimes dined in public. After the banquet, the
like of which, as Mendoza wrote his master, had not been seen in England
since the time of her father, Elizabeth requested Drake to hand her the
sword she had given him before he left England. "The King of Spain
demands the head of Captain Drake," she said with a little laugh, "and
here am I to strike it off." As Drake knelt at her command she handed
the sword to Marchaumont, the envoy of her French suitor, asking that
since she was a woman and not trained to the use of weapons, he should
give the accolade. This open defiance of Philip thus involved in her
action the second Catholic power of Europe before all the world. Then,
as Marchaumont gave the three strokes appointed the Queen spoke out
clearly, while men thrilled with sudden presage of great days to come,--
"Rise up,--Sir Francis Drake!"