The capture was made exactly as it had been planned. All went as pat as a drill on a parade-ground. They seized the foremost and the hindmost mules of each train, at which the rest stopped and lay down. The three trains had forty-five soldiers to guard them, and for a little time there was some exchange of arrows and bullets. The French Captain was wounded badly and one Cimaroon was slain; but in a very short while the Spanish soldiers had had enough and bolted to seek for reinforcements. The mules were at once unloaded. Drake’s men buried about fifteen tons of the silver in the burrows made by great land-crabs under the roots of old trees and in the sand and gravel of a stream, but they charged their own shoulders with the bars and quoits of gold and the boxes of jewels. They spent two hours upon this business and had hardly finished before they heard a great trampling of horses and soldiers. They retreated into the woods, fairly confident that they would not be followed. Slowly as they went, Captain Têtu could not keep up with them. Two of his men volunteered to stay with him and follow after he had rested.
All through that day and the next, the 2nd and 3rd of April, the marauders staggered under their loads towards the Rio Francisco. On the morning of the 4th they saw it gleaming between the trees and for the first time despair mastered them. Seven Spanish pinnaces were patrolling the mouth of the river and of their own there was not a sign. They imagined that these had been captured, the crews tortured, the secret anchorage at the headlands disclosed. The Pasha, the frigate, Têtu’s ship were taken without a doubt. Their voyage was “made,” as the phrase went. The golden fruit of their year’s long labours and miseries was strapped upon their shoulders and not one ounce of it was of use to any one of them. The Spanish pinnaces abandoned their watch and with oars and sails beat up against a head-wind towards Nombre de Dios. But to the adventurers their case seemed hardly bettered. They were marooned half-way across the world. For none can the moment have been so bitter as for Drake. For the fifth time he had failed and involved in his failure all these lads who had trusted him. But he was the least downcast of them all.
“It is no time to fear,” he cried. “If the enemy has prevailed against our pinnaces, which God forbid! yet they must have time to search them, to examine the sailors, to execute their resolution. Before all these times be taken we may get to our ships, if ye will! though not possibly by land, yet by water. Let us, therefore, make a raft with the trees that are here in readiness, and put ourselves to sea. I will be one. Who will be the other?”
John Smith offered himself, and two Frenchmen who could swim very well. A raft was quickly put together from trees brought down by the river. A sail was made out of a biscuit sack. An oar was shaped out of a sapling to serve as a rudder, and Drake, with John Smith and the Frenchmen, climbing on to the raft, promised his company that “If it pleases God I should put my foot in safety aboard my frigate, I will, God willing, by one means or another get you all aboard in despite of all the Spaniards in the Indies.”
The sea was rough. They were always up to their waists in water, and at every breaking wave to their armpits. The parching heat of the sun and the beating of the salt water upon their bodies fretted their skins; but the wind was at their backs, and after they had travelled nine miles, to their joy they caught sight of their two pinnaces beating up towards them. Night was falling and they had not themselves been seen. The pinnaces ran for shelter behind a point of land, and Drake with a laugh drove the raft on shore. It was the right moment for a joke, however simple. He explained his intention to his companions, and with the others at his heels ran round the point as if he were chased by the enemy. They all tumbled on board the pinnaces, and when they were asked anxiously how all had gone, Drake answered coldly, as he was wont to do at moments of misfortune, “Well.” The men in the pinnaces were sure that all had gone ill, and then Drake with a laugh pulled out of his doublet a quoit of gold and, holding it up, thanked God that the voyage was made.
They had suffered all their fears for no reason at all. A head-wind had forced the seven Spanish pinnaces to shelter for the night in the Rio Francisco. The same head-wind had hindered Drake’s from keeping to their timetable. But Drake was running now no more risks than he could help. The pinnaces were rowed through the night to the Rio Francisco; the treasure and the men left behind were taken on board, and soon after the dawn of day they were all back at their ships. The General, before he went to sleep, divided the gold and silver into two even portions for the French and the English. He sent John Oxenham with a party of Cimaroons to search for Têtu, but he only found one of the two Frenchmen who had volunteered to stay with him. Within half an hour the Spaniards had overtaken them and captured the Captain and the other Frenchman. One of these must have betrayed the burying of the silver, for they had dug the earth every way within the radius of a mile to find it. Even so, they had not found all, and Oxenham was able to bring back and add to the treasure thirteen bars of silver and some few more quoits of gold.
All now began to look towards home. The Frenchmen said their farewells, as eager to depart as the English were to let them go. Drake took out of the Pasha what he needed and gave the ship to his Spanish prisoners as a recompense for their detention. But he still needed another ship to match the sound good frigate which he had taken, and he thought to find it in the Magdalena River. He sailed in his new ship with his single pinnace, and although he knew that a Spanish fleet was in Cartagena harbour he sailed boldly past the town with the Cross of St. George flying at the main-top and silk streamers and ensigns down to the water.
He had a strong wind behind him and, good fortune now turning on his side, at the very mouth of the river crossed the bows of a frigate going out. Drake attacked with his muskets, his arrows and his guns. They answered with their bases. But Drake laid them aboard, took their frigate with a large cargo of maize, hens and hogs, and something specially valuable for his sick — a tub of honey. He set the Spanish sailors ashore, and having now all that he wanted, went about and set his course for the Headlands. There the two frigates were careened and tallowed afresh, retrimmed and reloaded; the pinnaces were burnt and the ironwork given to the Cimaroons.
In an unfortunate moment Drake offered to Pedro, the faithful leader of the negroes, any present that he might like, and Pedro chose that very scimitar which the Huguenot Captain had given to Drake. It was the last thing which Drake wished to lose, but Pedro’s heart was set upon it and he was allowed to carry it off.
Perhaps no greater proof could be given of the power with which Drake captured the hearts and the trust of his comrades than the loyalty of these poor negroes and his loyalty to them. He relied upon them as confidently as upon his own men. On his last dash from Rio Francisco to Nombre de Dios he had left his pinnaces with no other guard, to the wonder of the French Captain and his men.
He set sail now for Cabo San Antonio in Cuba, stopped a bark for one necessary thing of which he stood in great need — a pump — and taking this on board let the bark go. At Cabo San Antonio he captured a great store of turtles, and resting there for a little while set sail for home.
There were, as Nichols’ narrative relates, belonging to the ports of the Spanish Indies, about two hundred frigates, some of one hundred and twenty tons, others of ten or twelve tons, but the greater number of thirty or forty tons; “the most of which, during our abode in those parts, we took; and some of them, twice or thrice each: yet never burnt nor sunk any, unless they were made out Men-of-war against us, or laid as stales to entrap us. And of all the men taken in these several vessels, we never offered any kind of violence to any, after they were once come under our power; but either presently dismissed them in safety, or kept them with us some longer time, provided for their sustenance as for ourselves and secured them from the rage of the Cimaroons.”
He passed through the Bahama Channel, leaving a great name behind him — a name which had now become the terror of Spain and the worship of the Indians — a name for an audacity which amazed the Spaniards, coupled with a gentleness
which they could not understand. A following wind drove them pleasantly across the Atlantic. They were never short of water, for they had from time to time a good fall of rain, and they covered the miles from the Cape of Florida to the islands of Scilly within twenty-three days. Drake dropped anchor in Plymouth Sound on the morning of August 9th, 1573. It was Sunday and sermon-time, but the news spread so quickly throughout the church that hardly a member of the congregation stayed to hear the preacher reach his “fifthly and lastly.” They all hastened down to the harbour “to see the evidence of God’s love and blessing towards our Gracious Queen and country by the fruit of our Captain’s labour and success.” He had lost forty of the seventy-three men and lads who had sailed away with him fifteen months before. But it was not above the average loss as the Elizabethans reckoned losses on long sea voyages; and he brought home wealth for all who were left, the English flag unstained by any charge of cruelty, and a reputation which to the end of time was to stand high in the book of fame. Meanwhile Pedro the runaway slave, with the sword of Henri Valois clattering against his thigh, ruled his Cimaroons in the forests of Darien.
CHAPTER VI
DRAKE IN THE IRISH SEAS. THE PLAN OF MENENDEZ. DRAKES FRIENDSHIP WITH DOUGHTY. SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM. PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE OF CIRCUMNAVIGATION.
IT HAS BEEN asserted that the Queen was herself interested in the expedition to Darien, and that Drake, on his return, sent to her a negro boy who followed in her train at Court, but there is neither evidence of her partnership nor of her black page. It was in the greatest degree unlikely that Drake was, in the summer of 1573, known either to Queen Elizabeth or to any of her statesmen. He had indeed carried a letter from William Hawkins to Cecil after the disaster of St. John de Ulua, but that was so far his nearest approach to the Court. He had certainly come back with a great dividend for himself and his partners; and he had left a great name behind him on the Spanish Main and the Darien coast, but his reputation in England could hardly yet have spread beyond the gates of Plymouth.
Hawkins was in every probability one of the partners who shared in the results of the Nombre de Dios voyage, and it is possible that he dropped a hint into Lord Burghley’s ear that the spread of Drake’s fame in England might well be deferred and himself sent out of England on some useful but quiet service. For in the early part of the year 1573 Elizabeth, in her fear lest the French should get a footing in Flanders and her eternal enemies, the Guise family, use that point of vantage to set Mary Stuart in her place on the throne of England, had offered a reconciliation to the Duke of Alva. Alva had always respected the English Queen. He had found too many obstacles in his long effort to establish the Spanish power in the Netherlands not to respect her. With victory apparently continually within his reach, it had always eluded him, and as often as not through one of those devious twists in the Queen’s own policy which made her Ministers shake their heads over her wilfulness and declare that only a miracle of God could save her. Alva in 1573 turned a deaf ear alike to the Spanish hotheads and the Catholic refugees from England, and during that year he signed a treaty with the Queen. It might well have been thought that as the knowledge of Drake’s exploits overseas filtered through to Europe, Drake’s presence in England, unchastised, with his new fortune untouched, would endanger her policy of appeasement.
Stow declares that immediately after Drake’s return from the Indies he furnished at his own proper charge three frigates with men and munitions and served voluntarily in Ireland under Walter, Earl of Essex, where he did excellent service both by sea and land at the winning of divers strong forts. This is the only plain direct statement which we have to explain Drake’s disappearance, and Stow was careful of his facts. It may indeed have been that Drake furnished three frigates, as he could now afford to do, as a fine for his unauthorized voyage.
Thomas Doughty, of whom we shall hear a good deal more, declared at his Court-Martial at Port Saint Julian, according to Francis Fletcher, the chaplain, his advocate and friend, that it was he who gave Drake his introduction to the Earl of Essex. But it is most unlikely that Drake at that time had the slightest acquaintanceship with Doughty. Drake himself declared that it was Hawkins who gave him the introduction, and the probable sequence of events was as follows.
Drake returned to Plymouth suddenly with a considerable fortune got by open war when no war had been declared. His arrival was an embarrassment to the Queen’s policy of conciliation, and an offence to Burghley, the Lord Treasurer, whose face was set against the privateers. At the same time, the little company of friends at Plymouth who had backed the voyage were unwilling to lose their share of its profits. Hawkins was one of them. Being a person of importance in the Royal Dockyards, he was in a position to realize the full force of the embarrassment. It may well have been, then, through his agency that Francis Drake was removed for a time from England and engaged in Essex’s effort to end the disturbances in Ulster.
Ulster at that time was overrun by savage clans, as adept as Drake himself in sudden and devastating onslaughts and equally sudden disappearances. They attacked the fortified places held by Essex’s officers, but melted away when the troops were reinforced. Essex, a young and chivalrous enthusiast, had offered at his own charge to pacify that province. He was allowed to find the means in the province itself, under conditions. He was practically, as Sir Julian Corbett describes, in the position of a chartered company. But his work of pacification was rendered more difficult because the seas about the coast of Ireland were infested by Scottish filibusters who were looting and claiming the right to loot as good Catholics and enemies of the Protestant rule in England.
Drake, known to Hawkins as a courageous warrior and an accomplished sailor, was the very man to guard the coast of Ireland and play havoc with the filibusters. For three years, then, he performed this service, but it was not until the year 1575 that he was borne upon the English accounts as due for wages. Those wages covered a period between April 30th and October 16th, 1575. It is reasonable, therefore, to infer that until April of 1575 he was upon his own charges with such compensation as he could obtain from the Earl of Essex himself.
There was yet another reason why Drake’s presence in the Irish seas was of special value. Menendez of the Indian Guard had devised a scheme worthy of Drake himself in its sagacious audacity. He was building and collecting at Santander a fleet with the object of seizing the Scilly Isles and perhaps a port in Cornwall itself such as Falmouth or Penzance. Had he succeeded in so doing, he would have closed the English Channel to English ships sailing out to the Indies or sailing in to hamper the convoys plying between Flanders and Spain. By the summer of 1574 Pero Menendez had concentrated at Santander twenty-four great ships and one hundred and fifty lighter craft. Up and down the coast of England, in the Netherlands, at Rochelle in France, this concentration was watched with alarm. An officer was sent by Menendez to the coast of Ireland to open communications with the rebels. This officer reported that English privateers were guarding the Irish seas under secret orders of the Queen; and amongst these privateers we may certainly count Drake and his three ships. Early in September, however, whilst Menendez was applying the last polish to his fleet, an epidemic swept through it, seized upon Menendez himself and killed him. Menendez and Santa Cruz were the two great sailors whom Spain possessed — men of vision and strategy. Santa Cruz was growing old and unwieldy! Menendez was the young hope of Spain. His death completed the demoralization already started by the epidemic. The project was abandoned, the fleet demobilized, the Scilly Isles unoccupied. No doubt the Royal Navy would have been equal to ousting him from his naval stations in England, but his death saved it from a difficult and costly task. It is not astonishing that over and over again devout men declared that Elizabeth and her realm were under the special protection of God.
The Essex expedition failed after using barbarities worthy of the pirates of the seventeenth century. A force, for instance, under Sir John Norreys, was landed on the island of Rathlin off the coast of A
ntrim, whither the Irish Chiefs had sent their women and children for safety. Three frigates escorted Essex’s soldiers to Rathlin and, for all we know, these three frigates may have been Drake’s command. The only guard upon the island consisted of a garrison of Scots in Bruce’s Castle. This garrison repelled the first attack, but guns were thereupon brought ashore from the ships and the garrison surrounded. They were massacred to a man, or rather to a man, woman and child, for no one was left alive. Whilst this massacre was going on, the three frigates captured and destroyed eleven Scottish galleys.
In the autumn of 1575 Essex had failed, and with the end of his experiment Drake was free to return to Plymouth. But his service with Essex had two consequences which were momentous to his career. One was helpful. It was a letter of introduction written by Essex himself to Sir Francis Walsingham, who in December, 1573, had been appointed one of Her Majesty’s two principal Secretaries of State. This for the first time brought Drake into touch not only with Her Majesty’s Ministers but with the Queen herself. The other consequence was to cause him the greatest disquietude, endanger his great voyage of circumnavigation and make him the subject of so many intrigues, that he might well cry: “It hathe even bereaved me of my wytts to thinke on it.” It was his friendship with Thomas Doughty.
Doughty was a man employed by Essex in some military capacity which brought him close to his master. Essex acquired, by what means we know not, the impression that there were men at Court undermining his favour with the Queen. He sent Doughty to London to find out, and he can hardly have made a worse choice. For Doughty was a man without loyalty and, in spite of his downright English name, subtle as a politician of the Italian Renaissance. He worked by secret ways, seeking his own advantage at the cost even of the Queen’s good name. He brought back to Essex news that his friend Leicester was the hidden enemy. Essex allowed himself some unguarded words of indignation which were swiftly brought to Leicester’s ears, and it would not be surprising if the agency by which they reached him was this very Doughty. The two men became estranged, and it needed Burghley himself to put an end to the estrangement. It was ended, however, and by a letter of apology from Essex to Leicester in which he stated that he had been misled by the treachery of his own servant.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 864