"What ship are you?"
Numa de Silva, a Portuguese pilot Drake had appropriated after capturing de Silva's ship off Brazil, replied in Spanish, "San Pedro de Paula out of Valparaiso." The name of a vessel Drake had seized three weeks earlier.
Except for a few crew members who were dressed as Spanish sailors, Drake had hidden the mass of his men below decks and armed them with protective coats of mail and an arsenal of pikes, pistols, muskets, and cutlasses. Grappling hooks attached to stout ropes were stowed along the bulwarks on the top deck. Crossbowmen were secretly stationed in the fighting tops above the mainyards of the masts. Drake forbade firearms in the fighting tops where musket fire could easily ignite the sails into sheets of flame. The mainsails were hauled up and furled to give the bowmen an unobscured line of vision. Only then did he relax and patiently wait for the moment to attack. The fact that his Englishmen numbered eighty-eight against the Spanish crew of nearly two hundred bothered him not at all. It was not the first time nor the last he would ignore superior odds. His renowned fight against the Spanish Armada in the English Channel was yet to come.
From his view, de Anton saw no unusual activity on the decks of the seemingly friendly and businesslike ship. The crew looked to be going about their duties without undue curiosity toward the Concepcion. The captain, he observed, leaned casually against the railing of the quarterdeck and saluted de Anton. The newcomer seemed deceptively innocent as it unobtrusively angled closer to the big treasure galleon.
When the gap between the two ships had narrowed to 30 meters (97 feet), Drake gave an almost imperceptible nod, and his ship's finest sharpshooter, who lay concealed on the gun deck, fired his musket and struck the Concepcion's steersman in the chest. In unison the crossbowmen in the fighting tops began picking off the Spaniards manning the sails. Then, with the galleon losing control of its steerageway, Drake ordered his helmsman to run the Hind alongside the bigger vessel's high sloping hull.
As the ships crushed together and their beams and planking groaned in protest, Drake roared out, "Win her for good Queen Bess and England, my boys!"
Grappling hooks soared across the railings, clattered and caught on the Concepcion's bulwarks and rigging, binding the two vessels together in a death grip. Drake's crew poured onto the galleon's deck, screaming like banshees. His bandsmen added to the terror by beating on drums and blaring away on trumpets. Musket balls and arrows showered the dumbfounded Spanish crew as they stood frozen in shock.
It was over minutes after it began. A third of the galleon's crew fell dead or wounded without firing a shot in their defense. Stunned by confusion and fear they dropped to their knees in submission as Drake's crew of boarders brushed them aside and charged below decks.
Drake rushed up to Captain de Anton, pistol in one hand, cutlass in the other. "Yield in the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England!" he bellowed above the din.
Dazed and incredulous, de Anton surrendered his ship. "I yield," he shouted back. "Take mercy on my crew."
"I do not deal in atrocities," Drake informed him.
As the English took control of the galleon, the dead were thrown overboard and the surviving crew and their wounded were confined in a hold. Captain de Anton and his officers were escorted across a plank laid between the two ships onto the deck of the Golden Hind. Then, with the characteristic courtesy that Drake always displayed toward his captives, he gave Captain de Anton a personally guided tour of the Golden Hind. Afterward he treated all the galleon's officers to a gala dinner, complete with musicians playing stringed instruments, solid silver tableware, and the finest of recently liberated Spanish wines.
Even while they were dining, Drake's crewmen turned the ships to the west and sailed beyond Spanish sea lanes. The following morning they heaved to, trimming the sails so that the ship's speed fell off but they maintained enough headway to keep the bows up to the seas. The next four days were spent transferring the fantastic treasure trove from the cargo holds of the Concepcion to the Golden Hind. The vast plunder included thirteen chests of royal silver plate and coins, eighty pounds of gold, twenty-six tons of silver bullion, hundreds of boxes containing pearls and jewels, mostly emeralds, and a great quantity of food stores such as fruits and sugar. The catch was to be the richest prize taken by a privateer for several decades.
There was also a hold full of precious and exotic Inca artifacts that were being transported to Madrid for the personal pleasure of His Catholic Majesty, Philip II, the King of Spain. Drake studied the artifacts with great astonishment. He had never seen anything like them. Reams of intricately embroidered Andean textiles filled one section of the hold from deck to ceiling. Hundreds of crates contained intricately sculpted stone and ceramic figures mingled with highly crafted masterpieces of carved jade, superb mosaics of turquoise and shell, all plundered from sacred religious temples of the Andean civilizations overrun by Francisco Pizarro and succeeding armies of gold-hungry conquistadors. It was a glimpse of magnificent artistry that Drake never dreamed existed. Oddly, the item that interested him most was not a masterwork of three-dimensional art inlaid with precious stones but rather a simple box carved from jade with the mask of a man for a lid. The masked lid sealed so perfectly the interior was nearly airtight. Inside was a multicolored tangle of long cords of different thicknesses with over a hundred knots.
Drake took the box back to his cabin and spent the better part of a day studying the intricate display of cords tied to lesser cords in vibrantly dyed colors with the knots tied at strategic intervals. A gifted navigator and an amateur artist, Drake realized that it was either a mathematical instrument or a method of recording dates as a calendar. Intrigued by the enigma, he tried unsuccessfully to determine the meaning behind the colored strands and the different disposition of the knots. The solution was as obscure to him as to a native trying to interpret latitude and longitude on a navigational chart.
Drake finally gave up and wrapped the jade box in linen. Then he called for Cuttill.
"The Spaniard rides higher in the water with most of her riches relieved," Cuttill announced jovially as he entered the captain's cabin.
"You have not touched the artworks?" Drake asked.
"As you ordered, they remain in the galleon's hold."
Drake rose from his worktable and walked over to the large window and stared at the Concepcion. The galleon's sides were still wet several feet above her present waterline. "The art treasures were meant for King Philip," he said. "Better they should go to England and be presented to Queen Bess."
"The Hind is already dangerously overladen," Cuttill protested. "By the time another five tons are loaded aboard, the sea will be lapping at our lower gunports, and she won't answer the helm. She'll founder sure as heaven if we take her back through the tempest of Magellan Strait."
"I don't intend to return through the strait," said Drake. "My plan is to head north in search of a northwest passage to England. If that is not successful, I'll follow in Magellan's wake across the Pacific and around Africa."
"The Hind will never see England, not with her cargo holds busting their seams."
"We'll jettison the bulk of the silver on Cano Island off Ecuador, where we can salvage it on a later voyage. The art goods will remain on the Conception."
"But what of your plan to give them to the queen?"
"That still stands," Drake assured him. "You, Thomas, will take ten men from the Hind and sail the galleon to Plymouth."
Cuttill spread his hands in anguish. "I can't possibly sail a vessel her size with only ten men, not through heavy seas."
Drake walked back to his worktable and tapped a pair of brass dividers on a circle marked on a chart. "On charts I found in Captain de Anton's cabin I've indicated a small bay on the coast north of here that should be free of Spaniards. You will sail there and cast off the Spanish officers and all wounded crewmen. Impress twenty of the remaining able-bodied seamen to man the vessel. I'll see you're supplied with more than enough weapons to pr
eserve command and prevent any attempt to wrest control of the ship."
Cuttill knew it was useless to object. Debating with a stubborn man like Drake was a lost cause. He accepted his assignment with a resigned shrug. "I will, of course, do as you command."
Drake's face was confident, his eyes warm. "If anyone can sail a Spanish galleon up to the dock at Plymouth, Thomas, you can. I suspect you'll knock the eyes out of the queen's head when you present her with your cargo."
"I would rather leave that piece of work to you, Captain."
Drake gave Cuttill a friendly pat on one shoulder. "Not to fear, my old friend. I'm ordering you to be standing dockside with a wench on each arm, waiting to greet me when the Hind arrives home."
At sunrise the following morning Cuttill ordered the crewmen to cast off the lines binding the two ships. Safely tucked under one arm was the linen-wrapped box that Drake had directed him to personally give to the queen. He carried it to the captain's cabin and locked it inside a cabinet in the captain's quarters. Then he returned to deck and took command of the Nuestra Senora de la Conception as she drifted away from the Golden Hind. Sails were set under a dazzling crimson sun the superstitious crews on both ships solemnly described as red as a bleeding heart. To their primitive way of thinking it was considered a bad omen.
Drake and Cuttill exchanged final waves as the Golden Hind set a course to the northeast. Cuttill watched the smaller ship until she was hull down over the horizon. He did not share Drake's confidence. A deep feeling of foreboding settled in the pit of his stomach.
Several days later, after dumping many tons of silver ingots and coins off Cano Island to lighten her draft, the sturdy Hind and the intrepid Drake sailed north. . . to what would be known more than two centuries later as Vancouver Island. . . before turning west across the Pacific on their epic voyage.
Far to the south the Conception tacked and headed due east, making landfall and reaching the bay marked on the Spanish chart by Drake sometime late the next evening. The anchor was dropped and the watch lights set.
Daylight brought the sun shining down over the Andes as Cuttill and his crew discovered a large native village of more than a thousand inhabitants, surrounded by a large bay. Without wasting time, he ordered his men to begin ferrying the Spanish officers and their wounded to shore. Twenty of the best seamen among the survivors were offered ten times their Spanish pay to help sail the galleon to England where they were promised to be set free upon landing. All twenty gladly signed on.
Cuttill was standing on the gun deck overseeing the landing operation just after midday when the ship began to vibrate as though a giant hand were rocking it. Everyone immediately stared at the long streamlike ensigns tied to the top of the masts. But only the ends of their tails fluttered under a slight whisper of wind. Then every eye turned to shore where a great cloud of dust rose from the base of the Andes and appeared to be moving toward the sea. A frightening thundering sound increased to deafening proportions along with a tremendous convulsion of the earth. As the crew gawked in stunned fascination, the hills east of the village seemed to rise and fall like breakers rolling on a shallow shore.
The dust cloud descended on the village and swallowed it. Above the uproar came the screams and cries of the villagers and the crashing sounds of their rock and adobe mud houses as they shook apart and crumbled into ruin. None of the crew had ever experienced an earthquake, and few were even aware of such a phenomenon. Half the Protestant English and every one of the Catholic Spaniards on the galleon dropped to their knees and began praying fervently to God for deliverance.
In minutes the dust cloud passed over the ship and dispersed out to sea. They all stared uncomprehendingly at what had been a thriving village bustling with activity. Now it was nothing but flattened ruins. Cries came from those trapped under the debris. A later estimate would show that less than fifty of the local inhabitants survived. The Spaniards on shore ran up and down the beach in panic, shouting and begging to be brought back to the ship. Collecting his senses, Cuttill ignored the pleas, ran to the railing and scanned the surrounding sea. Beyond showing a mild chop, the water appeared indifferent to the nightmare tragedy in the village.
Suddenly desperate to escape the cataclysm on shore, Cuttill began shouting orders to get the galleon underway. The Spanish prisoners cooperated wholeheartedly, working alongside the English to unfurl the sails and pull in the anchor. Meanwhile, the survivors from the village crowded the beach, imploring the galleon's crew to return and help them rescue their relatives from the shattered wreckage and carry them aboard the ship to safety. The seamen turned deaf ears to the pleas, concerned only with their own preservation.
Suddenly, another earthquake shook the land, accompanied by an even more thunderous roar. The terrain began to undulate as if some monster were shaking a giant carpet. This time the sea slowly rolled back, stranding the Concepcion and exposing the floor of the sea. The seamen, none of whom knew how to swim, possessed an unnatural fear of what was under the water. Now they stared wonderingly at the sight of thousands of fish flipping about like wingless birds amid the rocks and corals where they had been left high and dry by the retreating sea. Sharks, squid, and a rainbow of tropical fish all mingled together in their death throes.
A constant flow of tremors moved the earth as the submarine quake caused crustal fracturing, collapsing the seafloor and creating a vast depression. Then it was the sea's turn to go crazy as it swept in from all sides to fill the hole. The water piled up in a gigantic countersurge with incredible speed. Millions of tons of pure destruction rose higher and higher until its crest reached 40 meters (157 feet) high, a phenomenon that would later become known as a tsunami.
There was no time for the helpless men to clutch a solid object for support, no time for the devout to pray. Paralyzed and speechless in fear of the green and frothwhite mountain of water rising before their eyes, they could only stand and watch it rush toward them with the ungodly sounds of a thousand hells. Only Cuttill had the presence of mind to run under the protecting deck over the tiller and wrap his limbs around its long wooden shaft.
Bow on to the colossal wall of water, the Conception arched and soared vertically toward the curling crest. Moments later she was engulfed in a boiling turbulence as nature ran berserk.
Now that the mighty torrent had the Concepcion in its grasp, it hurled the galleon toward the devastated shore at tremendous speed. Most of the crew on the open decks were snatched away and never seen again. The poor souls on the beach and those struggling to free themselves from the wreckage of the village were inundated as if a sudden gush of water had rushed over an ants' nest. One second they were there, the next they were gone, mere bits and pieces of smashed debris being hurled toward the Andes.
Buried under the towering mass of water for what seemed an incredible length of time, Cuttill held his breath until his lungs turned to fire and gripped the tiller as if he were a mutated branch that had grown from it. Then, with every one of her beams howling and creaking at their joints, the tough old ship battled her way back to the surface.
How long she was swept through the swirling vortex, Cuttill could not remember. The violent surge totally erased what was left of the village. The few drenched men who somehow remained alive on the battered Conception were even further terrorized by the sight of centuries-dead mummies of the ancient Incas rising to the surface and surrounding the ship. Torn by the wave from their graves in some long-forgotten burial ground, the amazingly well-preserved bodies of the dead stared sightlessly at the horrified sailors, who were certain they were being cursed by creatures of the devil.
Cuttill attempted to move the tiller as if steering the ship. His was a useless gesture as the rudder had been ripped off its pintles soon after the wave struck. He clung tenaciously to life, his fear heightened by the mummies that swirled around the galleon.
The worst was far from over. The mad swirl of the tidal current caused a vortex that spun the galleon with such force the m
asts went crashing over the sides and the two guns broke their lashings and tumbled about the deck in a wild dance of destruction. One by one the fear-crazed seamen were swept away by the gyrating avalanche of water until only Cuttill was left. The enormous surge smashed and ravaged its way 8 kilometers (5 miles) inland, uprooting and shredding trees until over 100 square kilometers (36 square miles) were utterly devastated. Massive boulders were scattered ahead of the wave's force like small pebbles thrown by a boy's sling. Then at last, as the leviathan of death met the foothills of the Andes it began to lose momentum. Its fury spent, it lapped at the foot of the mountains and finally began to recede with a great sucking sound, leaving in its wake a swath of destruction unknown in recorded history.
Cuttill felt the galleon become motionless. He stared across the gun deck covered with fallen rigging and timbers, unable to see another living soul. For nearly an hour he huddled under the tiller, fearing a return of the murderous wave, but the ship remained still and silent. Slowly, stiffly, he made his way to the top of the quarterdeck and surveyed the scene of devastation.
Astoundingly, the Conception sat upright, high and dry in a flattened jungle. He judged her to be almost three leagues from the nearest water. Her survival was due to her rugged construction and the fact she was sailing into the wave when it struck. If she had been sailing away the watery force would have smashed into her high sterncastle and ripped her to kindling. She had endured, but she was a wreck that would never feel the sea beneath her keel again.
Far in the distance, the village had disappeared. All that remained was a wide beach of sand swept free of wreckage. It was as if a thousand people and their homes had never existed. Corpses littered the drenched jungle. To Cuttill they seemed to be scattered everywhere, in some places over 3 'meters deep (10 feet). Many were hanging grotesquely in the twisted branches of the trees. Most had been battered into almost unrecognizable shapes.
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