by Terry Deary
“They get killed,” I said.
“So? Do you want to hang alongside your Spanish friend? Or do you want me to cut off your head with my rusty old sword?”
Chapter Eight
Noose and Neck
I tell you, sir, I’ve faced a hundred freezing storms and laughed at them. But those words from Captain Drake turned me colder than an albatross’s foot.
I don’t remember what I said. “Don’t cut off my head, sir… and don’t hang me… I didn’t mean to argue, oh, spare me, sir…”
Drake turned his back on my bubbling and babbling. “Put a rope around the Spanish lad’s neck,” he ordered.
Jed hurried to obey. The Spanish boy’s olive skin turned pale green with terror as a noose slipped over his neck.
Captain Drake jerked on the end of the rope. “The gold… oro… where is the oro, lad?”
The boy just shook his head.
Drake shrugged and dragged the Spaniard up the stairs onto the rear deck. It was a drop of six foot onto the main deck. He threw one end of the rope over the spar of the mizzenmast. “Oro… or die… quieres morir?” the captain asked as he pushed the boy towards the rail. He picked him up and sat him on the rail till the Spaniard looked at the drop below him.
I looked at the end of the rope. Captain Drake hadn’t tied it to anything. The boy didn’t know that.
“Oro?” Drake asked.
The boy’s mouth moved, but no words came out. Drake pushed him. The boy dropped the six feet to the deck and screamed. But the rope didn’t stop him. He tumbled to the deck a sobbing, twitching jellyfish.
Drake walked slowly down the steps to where he lay. “Oro?”
“En la parte trasera.”
Drake nodded. “At the stern of the galleon, lads. We’ve been looking in the wrong place. Find it, Tom,” he ordered.
I ran past the blubbering boy and through the ship’s cabins. I was the one who found the twenty crates. They were too heavy to move and were bound with leather and iron so they were too strong to open.
Jed Trickett brought tools from the Golden Hind and after long minutes sweating in the stinking dark, we managed to open one.
Even in the weak light of the lanterns, the gold and silver bars were dazzling. No one was able to take his eyes off the magical metal. When Jed Trickett finally spoke it was in a whisper. “Let’s get it back on the Golden Hind,” he said.
As we hauled the first bucket up on deck, George Archer cried, “Spanish soldiers! The Spanish are sending their gunboats out from harbour. If we don’t move soon, we’ll be dead meat.”
Chapter Nine
Boats and Bullets
Drake gave his orders quickly and calmly. “The Spanish are coming from Valparaiso to the east. We’ll unload to the west so the galleon shelters us. Jed Trickett… you hold them off.”
Jed snorted. “By myself, Captain?”
“No, young Tom here will help you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, Tom lad. Are you arguing again?”
“No, Captain,” I said quickly.
“Take two muskets, powder and shot. Trickett will fire a musket while you load the other one. That’ll give them something to think about. Now move, before I throw you to the fishes,” he said.
We moved. We looked through one of the cannon ports and saw three gunboats heading towards us with about thirty soldiers in each. They were heading into the west wind, so they needed to be rowed by clumsy oarsmen. The boats were slow, but they would reach us before a quarter hour was gone.
Jed took the first musket and fired a shot that splashed harmlessly into the sea. “Missed,” he muttered as I took the musket and passed him a loaded one.
Moments later twenty musket balls splintered the wood beside us. “They’re good shots!” Jed laughed. “Better than me.”
“The next round of shots could hit me!” I squawked.
Jed nodded. “That’s one good reason for moving to another gun port,” he said and crawled quickly along the deck to where another black cannon stood. “If I fire from here, they’ll think we have quite a few musketeers… that’ll slow them down.”
I ran after him, keeping my head below the wooden rail.
Captain Drake was helping his men unload the treasure onto the boat. He watched it sail across to the Golden Hind and unload while our crew brought more onto the deck of the galleon.
“How are we doing, Trickett?” he asked.
“Keeping them guessing,” he replied.
Drake shook his head. “This is too slow,” he sighed. He called across the water with waving arms. “Bring the Golden Hind alongside – we’ll load straight onto her.”
Another round of musket fire smashed into the side of the ship. “I’ve been hit,” Jed Trickett moaned, and fell backwards with blood streaming down his face.
The captain ran across to the deck. I thought he was going to help patch Jed’s wound, but he didn’t. No, that wasn’t Drake’s way. Instead, he pulled the wounded man away from the side and snatched up the musket. “It’s you and me now, Tom, against the might of Spain. Keep loading.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
As my captain kept firing, I saw the Spanish boy begin to slip across the deck towards us. I’d just loaded a musket, and I pointed it at him. I’d never fired a gun in my young life, but I’d have shot him if he’d tried to harm my captain.
The boy shook his head and pointed at Jed, who was groaning and clutching at his face. “Ayudará,” he said.
“Ayud… aid… aid him?”
The boy nodded. He tore at his shirt sleeve and made a bandage to stop the bleeding. If you ask me, he saved my friend’s life.
But I was too busy loading muskets to worry about Jed just then. The Spanish gunboats were drawing nearer – the oarsmen clattering into the soldiers, who were standing up and trying to fire at us. I felt a shudder as the Golden Hind nudged into us. Loading the gold went much quicker. Our crew tipped the buckets down onto the Golden Hind, which was much smaller than the galleon.
At last the gunboats drew close enough for the Spanish to haul out their small cannon. Captain Drake and I watched as they loaded a stone cannonball and raised the barrel towards us.
Drake snorted. “They won’t fire on one of their own galleons.”
Three things happened very quickly. There was a puff of smoke and the stone ball flew towards us. The rail near our heads shattered into a thousand pieces. And, strangest of all, their cannon crashed backwards in the gunboat and sent Spanish soldiers tumbling, screaming into the water. The kick from the gun was so great it cracked the hull and we could see the gunboat start to fill with water. Soldiers scrambled to reach the other two gunboats, grabbed for the oars and almost upset them.
Drake laughed, rose to his feet and took off his hat. He waved it at the panicking Spanish. “Adios, amigos… from Draco!” he cried.
Then, to me, he said, “Time to go home, Tom lad.”
Chapter Ten
Wealth and Wounds
We helped Jed down onto the Golden Hind and sailed off into the western sunset.
Captain Drake stood at the tiller that evening and said to me, “How does it feel to be a pirate, Tom Pennock?”
“Oh, but Captain Drake, I’m not! I’m a good citizen of England. I’m not a pirate.”
“You are now, Tom,” he said quietly. “You are now.”
You know the rest, sir. We sailed on robbing more Spanish ships of their gold and silver, spices and jewels. Then we headed west across the Pacific, past India and Africa, and home at last with a ship almost sinking with treasure.
The queen’s share of the treasure was more than all the taxes she gathered that year. Captain Drake was a hero. Queen Elizabeth came aboard the Golden Hind in London and made him Sir Francis.
The queen was rich. But what about the English sailors? There were just 59 of us came home safe. We shared a quarter of the treasure 59 ways. More money than most men see in a lifetime.
But I’d had enough of the sea. I’d made so many friends and then lost them in the southern storms. All the money in Spain wouldn’t bring my drowned friends back again. Jed Trickett knew how I felt. He said he wanted to buy an inn and settle down. I gave him my share of the treasure and between us we bought this place.
So how do I come to own it now, sir? Ah, that wound on poor Jed’s face never healed. Not really. He was always sickly after our raid on Valparaiso.
No sooner had we opened the inn, and changed its name to The Golden Hind, than Jed died. He had no wife or family. The inn was all mine.
And that’s the end of the story. I hope you enjoyed your lamb stew, sir. It’s been good serving you. Yes, I enjoy my life as a landlord. It’s better than being a pirate, sir.
When I was a pirate I was one of the 59 lucky ones. But you have to pay for your treasures, sir. And a pirate pays in blood.
Aye, in blood.
Epilogue
In the story Tom Pennock and Jed Trickett are made up. But the tale of Francis Drake and his famous voyage around the world is true enough.
He set off in November 1577. Only the Pelican made the trip through the storms at the southern tip of South America. After that, Drake changed her name to the Golden Hind.
His crew really did raid the port of Valparaiso using a trick – pretending to be friendly Spanish sailors.
And he really did scare a Spanish sailor into revealing the location of the loot by pretending to hang him.
At the end of his two-year voyage, Captain Drake returned home in September 1580 to be made a knight – Sir Francis Drake.
Queen Elizabeth took half of all the treasure that Drake and his men had fought and died for. Her share was greater than all the taxes she collected in England in a year. She wanted more and sent off new fleets of pirates to rob the Spanish. None of them came back with as much treasure as Drake’s Pacific voyage.
And his pirating had upset the Spanish. In 1588 they put together a mighty navy – the Armada – and set off to conquer England. Drake was one of the captains of the little English navy that defeated the Armada and saved England from Spanish rule.
Francis Drake was a thief and a pirate. He was also a great sailor and fearless fighter.
First published 2011 by
A & C Black
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP
www.acblack.com
This electronic edition published in March 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © 2011 Terry Deary
Illustrations copyright © 2011 Helen Flook
The rights of Terry Deary and Helen Flook to be identified as the
author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them in
accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
eISBN 978-1-4081-8107-2
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.
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