Part 17

Having now practically completed the journey across the isthmus, and having been absent from the ships nearly a fortnight, a rapid return march was deemed imperative. The start was hastened by a little episode at the Panama gate. While the marauders were at breakfast just before daybreak they were startled by a lively fusillade at that end of the town. A company of cavaliers from Panama had galloped up, supposing that Drake had left, and had encountered his sentries at the gate. Several of the cavaliers were killed in the skirmish and the rest scattered. Fearing that they were a scouting party and might be followed by a large force, Drake gave immediate orders to fall in for the departure. At dawn they were crossing the Chagres bridge and on their way at a quick gait. It was a hard and rushing march throughout to the coast where the ships lay, the men for days with empty stomachs and footsore. But it was cheerfully performed under Drake’s buoyant leadership and his promise of golden spoil they were yet to win before they finally sailed back to England.

After the return to their rendezvous Drake divided the company into two bands to rove in the pinnaces, one eastward the other westward, for plunder off the coast. The eastward rovers soon captured a fine Spanish frigate; and this ship, because of her strength and “good mould,” Drake retained, and fitting her as a man-of-war added her to his fleet. He was in need of some new craft, for he had recently sunk one of his three pinnaces. Shortly after, in March, additional strength came in a French ship, a rover out of Havre, under one Captain Tetou with seventy men. The Frenchman had appeared when Drake’s ships were again at the “Cativaas,” needing water and provisions. Drake supplied his wants. Then the Frenchman, desiring to join him in a venture, the two struck a bargain for a second raid on the isthmus treasure teams. The Frenchman with twenty of his men was to serve with Drake, “for halves”: the plunder obtained to be equally divided.

For this expedition Drake selected fifteen of his men and the Cimaroons with him before, so that the whole company, exclusive of the natives, numbered but thirty-five, besides the two captains. Leaving his “Pasha” and the French ship in a safe road, he manned the reformed Spanish frigate and his two pinnaces, and sailed toward “Rio Francesco.” The frigate was left at Cabecas, with a crew of English and French, the pinnaces alone continuing to Rio Francesco. Here the band landed and took up their march, Drake charging the masters of the pinnaces to be back at this place without fail on the fourth day following, when they expected to return. They proceeded in covert through the woods toward the highway over which richly laden “recuas” were now coming daily from Panama to Nombre de Dios. When they had marched, as in the previous journey to Panama, to a “convenient point” between Rio Francesco and Nombre de Dios, they bivouacked for that night. As they rested “in great silence” they could hear the distant sounds of many carpenters working on the ships at Nombre de Dios, which was customarily done in the night time because of the great heat of the day; and their ears were charmed with the music of the bells of the trotting mule teams on the road.

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.

In this emergency Drake determined to reach his ships at all hazard. From trees that had been brought down a river by a recent storm he had his men construct a raft. For a sail a biscuit sack was utilized, and a young tree was stripped for an oar to serve instead of a rudder. Upon this rude craft he embarked with a few volunteers, and as he pushed off he comforted the company left behind with the assurance that “if it pleased God he should put his foot in safety aboard his frigate he would, God willing, by one means or other get them all aboard despite of all the Spaniards in the Indies.” He had thus sailed out into the sea some three leagues, under a parching sun and for about six hours all the while sitting up to the waist in water and at nearly every surge to the armpits, when two pinnaces were descried coming inward under a spanking breeze. As they neared they were seen to be his own pinnaces. At the sight the half-drowned raftsmen set up a shout. But they were evidently not seen by those on the pinnaces, for the boats shifted and ran into a cove beyond a point of land. Since they did not come out again Drake concluded that they were to anchor there for the night. Thereupon he piloted his shaky craft ashore, and leaping off, ran around the point and so came upon them, to the great astonishment of their occupants and his greater relief. Their masters accounted for their delay in reaching the rendezvous in telling how they had been beaten back by a heavy storm, and had been obliged to stand off to avoid the Spanish pinnaces. Drake’s companions of the raft were first succoured; and then he himself, not stopping for rest, that evening rowed to Rio Francesco, where the remainder of the company and the treasure were taken off and brought to the pinnaces. At dawn next morning all set sail back again to the frigate, and thence directly to the ships at Fort Diego. Upon the arrival here Drake at once divided the treasure by weight into two even portions between the English and French.

Shortly after twelve of Drake’s men and sixteen of the Cimaroons were secretly sent again to the isthmus, for the buried treasure, and also, if possible, to recover the French captain. They learned no more than that Captain Tetou had been taken by the Spaniards, while the treasure had mostly disappeared, the earth having been dug and turned up for a mile about the hiding places. They found, however, thirteen bars of silver and a few quoits of gold, which they took off.

Now it had become “high time to think of homewards.” The frigate was supplied from the “Pasha” with what necessaries were needed fully to supply her, and the “Pasha” was turned over to the few Spaniards whom they had all this time detained. Then Fort Diego was left, the French ship accompanying Drake’s little fleet. For a few days they rode among the Cabecas. Afterward they parted with the French ship, and cruised about seeking another Spanish frigate which they might take to augment the fleet. Meanwhile they passed “hard by” Cartagena, in the sight of the Spanish ships lying off that port, defiantly displaying the flag of St. George in the main top of the frigate, “with silk streamers and ancients down to the water.” Finally in July they were on the homeward voyage in two captured Spanish frigates and with their pinnaces. Their

## parting with the Cimaroons was most affectionate. Drake gave Pedro,

their chief, a rich cimeter which he had received as a gift from Captain Tetou, and which the savage had secretly coveted, and Pedro gave Drake four wedges of gold as a “pledge of his friendship and thanks.” Drake would decline the gold, but seeing that Pedro would be pained at a refusal, he accepted it and turned it into the common stock of his company.

The return voyage was made with such a merry wind that the distance from Cape San Antonio in Florida to the Scilly Islands was accomplished in twenty-three days. Plymouth was reached on a Sunday, August nine, during “sermon time,” and the news of Drake’s arrival "did so speedily pass over all the church and surpass their minds with desire and delight to see him that very few or none remained with the preacher: all hastening to see the evidence of God’s love and blessing toward our Gracious Queen and country, by the fruits of our Captain’s labours and success. Soli Deo Gloria." So piously ends the chronicle.

The profits of this buccaneering voyage, with the bullion brought home, were large to all who had part in it. Drake’s share made him comparatively rich. As the historian Camden put it, he had “gotten a pretty store of money by playing the sailor and the pirate.” Among the prizes that he took were a number of frigates engaged in the coasting trade, carrying gold, silver, and merchandise, and newly built through the energy and skill of Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the destroyer of the French colony in Florida.

XVII ON THE PACIFIC COAST

Three years later Drake had begun his preparations for his crowning exploit in the voyage round the globe. In the interim he had served voluntarily in Ireland (1573) under the Earl of Essex, furnishing at his own expense three frigates, with their equipment of munitions and men. This service brought him a strong friend and ultimate patron in Sir Christopher Hatton, then vice-chamberlain. And by Hatton he had been favourably presented to the queen, who received him most flatteringly, and is said to have encouraged him to follow up his attacks upon the colonies of Spain, her bitterest enemy, though yet nominally at peace with her.

This voyage was planned with the utmost secrecy and its real object was carefully concealed. Even when the fleet had actually set sail the company on board were not aware of their true destination; and the mystery enveloping the enterprise most fascinated the bold and daring spirits enlisted in it. The statement had been given out that Constantinople was the goal of the voyage, but it was pretty generally felt that sooner or later the Spanish American possessions would be reached. Spain, which at length had been apprised by her envoy of Drake’s movements, shrewdly suspected that his aim, as before, was the Spanish Main; and it was the Spaniards’ belief that he particularly contemplated a fresh attack upon Nombre de Dios and the “Treasure of the World.” To prey upon Spanish ships and loot Spanish possessions was indeed an uppermost purpose with him, but his scheme involved a far greater sweep of operations than the Spaniards imagined. He meant, above all, to accomplish his ardent desire expressed on that tree top on the Isthmus of Panama, to sail an English ship into and to explore the Pacific, and incidentally to harass the Spanish colonies on the Pacific Coast, which from Patagonia to California was then under Spanish rule. The encompassing of the globe, however, was an afterthought growing out of the circumstances in which he found himself on the western North American coast.

The fleet assembled for this voyage were five small ships, the largest of only one hundred tons, the smallest of fifteen, and the average of the whole lot fifty-five tons. They comprised: the “Pelican,” the flag-ship, and the largest, with Drake in command; the “Elizabeth,” eighty tons, Captain John Winter; the “Marigold,” thirty tons, Captain John Thomas; the “Swan,” a flyboat, fifty tons, Captain John Chester; the “Christopher,” a pinnace, fifteen tons, Captain Thomas Moon. And in the holds of the larger ships were stored four pinnaces in parts, to be set up when needed. The vessels were stocked and provisioned for a year or more. Some of them, at least Drake’s ship, were luxuriously furnished. We are told of his rich tableware embellished with silver, presumably some of it prizes taken on his previous voyage; of silver pots and kettles in the cook-room; and of other sumptuous fittings. “Neither,” says the historian, “had he omitted to make provision also for ornament and delight, carrying to this purpose with him expert musicians,” a band of fiddlers to play for him at dinners; “and divers shews of all sorts of curious workmanship whereby the civility and magnificence of his native country might amongst all nations whithersoever he should come, be the most admired.” The company comprised, according to the account which Hakluyt gives, one hundred and forty-six men, gentlemen and sailors; another puts the number at one hundred and sixty-three “stout and able seamen.”

They sailed out of Plymouth on the fifteenth of November, 1577. But this proved to be a false start. The wind falling contrary they were forced the next morning to put into Falmouth, where a furious tempest struck them and nearly wrecked the whole fleet. So they were obliged to return to Plymouth for repairs. The second start was made successfully, on the thirteenth of December. Twelve days later they were off the coast of Barbary, and on the second day they called at Magador, where they tarried long enough to put together one of their pinnaces. While at this work they entertained some of the natives, who promised to bring them choice provisions in return for gifts of linen cloth, shoes, and a javelin. But the next day an unlucky incident changed the aspect of affairs. A group supposed to have come with the provisions appeared at the water side and a shipboat was sent out to meet them. As the boat touched the shore a sailor sprang from it with outstretched hand to give a hearty sailor’s welcome. He was instantly seized, flung across a horse’s back and galloped away. It was afterward learned that this violent act was committed only to ascertain to whom the ships belonged. It was feared that they might be Portuguese ships, and these Moors were then at war with the Portuguese. The captured sailor was brought before a chief, and when this chief found out that the ships were English, the sailor was hurried back with apologies and loaded with presents. But the fleet was then gone. The sailor was returned to England at the first opportunity, none the worse for his experience.

From Magador the fleet coasted the shore and put next into port at Cape Blanco. On the way down their first captures were made. These included three Spanish fisher boats, “canters,”—or canteras, they were termed—and three Portuguese caravels, the latter bound to the Cape Verde Islands for salt. At Cape Blanco a ship was found riding at anchor with only two “simple mariners” aboard her. She was promptly taken and her cargo added to their spoil. In this harbour the fleet remained four days, during which time Drake mustered his men on land and trained them “in warlike manner to make them fit for all occasions.” Before departing he had shifted such things as he desired from the captured canters and returned them to their owners save one, for which he gave in exchange one of his little barks, called the “Benedict,” or the “Christopher,” which name the canter afterward bore. Only one also of the captured Portuguese caravels was retained. Next the Cape Verde Islands were reached, and a landing made at Mayo (Maio), where luscious fruits were added to their stock of provisions. Drake sent out a company of his men to view this island, and they feasted on “very ripe and sweet grapes,” and cocoa which was new to them. Next the fleet sailed by St. Jago [San Thiago], but far enough off to escape danger from the inhabitants whom they mistrusted: and properly, for the latter discharged three pieces at them as they passed by, the shot falling short of them. Off this island they took their richest prize thus far. She was one of two Portuguese ships to which they gave chase. They boarded her, when overhauled with a shipboat, without resistance. She yielded them with other valuable articles a good store of wine. Her pilot, one Nuno da Silva, was retained for service, which proved to be excellent, through a considerable part of the voyage, while the rest of her crew and her passengers, of whom there were several, were sent off in the newly set-up pinnace, graciously provided by her captors with a butt of wine out of their booty and some victuals. She was added to the fleet, with the name of “Mary” bestowed upon her, and put under the charge of Master Doughty, a volunteer and perhaps investor in the expedition, and a personal friend of Drake. Doughty was not a seafaring man, and he seems to have got into difficulty with his crew soon after taking command of the prize. Within a few days complaints of his conduct of her coming to Drake, he was called to the “Pelican,” and the captain’s own brother Thomas Drake (another younger brother) appointed to his place, the captain accompanying Thomas Drake on the prize. In the “Pelican” Doughty had no better luck, for complaints of abuse of his authority here soon arose. Accordingly he was deposed and sent to the “Swan” in no post of command. Farther along on the voyage he came to a tragic end, the central figure of a dramatic scene, as will appear later in this narrative. Next after San Thiago, Fuego (Fogo), the “burning island,” then throwing out volcanic flames, and lastly “Brava,” found in contrast a “most pleasant and sweet” isle, were passed.

Then they “drew towards the line,” where they were becalmed for three weeks, but yet “subject to divers great stormes, terrible lightnings, and much thunder.” Along with this “miserie,” however, they enjoyed an abundance of fish, as “Dolphins, Bonitos, Flying fishes,” some of the latter falling into their ships. It was now known to the company that their next destination was America, at Brazil.

From the moment of leaving the Cape Verde Islands, they sailed fifty-four days without sight of land. On the fifth of April the Brazilian coast presented itself to view. In the distance they saw fires on the coast. These they afterward learned were set by the natives when their ships were sighted, as a sacrifice to “the devils about which they use conjurations.” The custom of these natives, it seemed, whenever a strange ship approached the coast was to perform weird ceremonies to conjure the gathering of shoals and the outbreak of tempests by which the ship would be cast away. Two days afterward there actually came upon them a “mightie great storme both of lightning, rayne, and thunder,” during which they lost the “Christopher,” their captured canter. While sailing southward, however, they found her a few days later, and the place where she was met Drake called the “Cape of Joy.” Landing, they found no people, but the footprints they saw in the clay ground led them to believe that the inhabitants were “men of great statute,” if not giants. On or about the twenty-seventh of April they were at the great river La Plata. They merely entered it, and finding no good harbour bore to sea again. In bearing out the “Swan” was missed. They next made harbour in a fair bay where were a number of islands, on one of which were seen many “sea wolves” (seals). In early June they were anchored in another harbour, farther south, which they called “Seal Bay” because of the abundance of seal here. They killed from two hundred to three hundred of them, the chronicler averred, within an hour’s time. Again the “Swan” was found, and having become unseaworthy, she was stripped of her furnishings and burned. A few days later the “Christopher” was also discharged for the same reason. On the twentieth of June the fleet came to anchor at Port St. Julien, Patagonia, above the Strait of Magellan, giving entrance to the Pacific.

St. Julien was the original winter port of Magelhaens, so named and established by him, and whence he sailed to his discovery of the mysterious strait. Drake similarly made it his port for recuperation and preparation before attempting his passage of this strait to the goal of his ambition. Here two months were spent, while the ships were put in thorough condition,—three only, now, the “Mary,” the Portuguese prize, having been broken up on her arrival because leaky,—and the company disciplined for the better conduct of the adventures before them. The stay was most dramatically and painfully marked, however, by the trial, conviction, and beheading of Drake’s friend, the unfortunate Master Doughty, on the charge of inciting a mutiny in the fleet. The sight of a gibbet set up, as was supposed, seventy years before by Magelhaens for the execution of certain mutineers in his company, may have suggested this inexplicable proceeding, which has been the subject of much speculation by historians and of condemnation by Drake’s harsher critics. The affair is thus vividly reported, with careful

## particularity, by Hakluyt’s chronicler: