Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  Meanwhile Drake raised his anchor and set his prow to the sea. The alarm had been given on shore. Church bells rang, drums were beating and the lights of torches tossing in the streets as the soldiers and inhabitants assembled to protect their storehouses and homes. The news that a Corsair was harrying the port reached the Viceroy in his palace six miles away at one o’clock in the morning. Don Luis de Toledo sent for his horse, put on his armour, and carrying the Royal Standard of Spain rode to the marketplace. He mustered then the population of Lima, threw open the armoury and sent General Diego de Frias Trejo with his soldiers hot-foot to Callao.

  The people of Lima were afraid that the Chileans, exasperated by the cruelty and extortions of their rulers, had risen in rebellion, but before the General marched off to the port the truth was published. It was an English ship from the south which was making all this pother. When he reached Callao, General Diego could see the lights of the Golden Hind already beyond the island in the open sea, with Bautista’s galleon in her company. A council of war was held and a resolution passed that pursuit should be made and the San Cristobal recovered. A despatch was sent off to Lima calling for more troops, and two ships were chosen for the chase, Nuestra Señora del Valle and the Nao de Muriles. As soon as the troops arrived they embarked, three hundred of them in all, with General Diego on Nuestra Señora del Valle, which thus became the flagship. It was a part of the Spanish system, and the part which nine years afterwards did so much to wreck the Great Armada, that the man in command should be the General of the troops. Pedro de Arana, who sailed as Admiral in the Nao de Muriles, sailed as his subordinate. The dawn was breaking as the two ships put out, and Drake was seen in the offing becalmed twelve miles away. There was a chance to overhaul the Golden Hind and her captive ship. Each man in the pursuit was as eager to bring the Corsair to judgment as though it were his private affair. At the island the flagship came under its lee and lost what little wind there was. The Almirante, however, gave the island a wide berth and passed ahead.

  It was then that Drake noticed the two ships. He had put a prize crew on board the San Cristobal. She was laden with silks and linen and doublets, and he was transferring what he wanted of her cargo to his own galleon. He asked of the Spaniards he had with him what those two ships could be, and was answered that they were after him. At the moment he did not disturb the work of his crew, but he kept his eyes open; and by the time the goods were transferred he saw that the two ships were free of the island and making directly towards him. He now put Juan Griego and Nicolas Jorge and all the foreigners he had with him, except of course Nuño da Silva, into the ship’s boat and sent it off to the San Cristobal. The foreigners were to go free. Drake made them the present of a ship. His own prize crew must return to the Golden Hind. The English sailors, however, were in no hurry, and Drake himself in a rage jumped down into his pinnace and went for them. If he had to fight with twenty of his men away in an unarmed ship, he would be at too heavy a disadvantage. As soon as they were on board, the wind strengthened, and hoisting his topsails he set his course to the north-west, and between himself and his pursuers the distance rapidly widened.

  But, indeed, he had little to fear. The equipment of the Spaniards did not match their eagerness. They had no cannon. There were no big guns on the Pacific coast at all. At this very time the most urgent questions were being put to John Oxenham and his English companions by order of the Viceroy as to whether they understood the casting of cannon and the manufacture of ammunition. Diego had embarked with such haste that he had brought no food. But he held on all through that day, until the white sails of the Golden Hind became one with the summer clouds. The Spanish ships had no ballast and therefore no speed; and many of the gentlemen were sick. During the night a long consultation was held upon the flagship, and it was decided to abandon a hopeless chase and return to Callao. The Viceroy was in a rage; he degraded General Diego; he despatched a small frigate to warn each port between Lima and Panama of the Corsair’s proximity; and he set about equipping with the proper armaments a fleet which would follow and destroy him. With the recovery of Bautista Patagalana’s galleon, something had been gained of more importance than the galleon; and that was the name of the English Captain who had had the insolence to disturb Peru. There were bitter memories attached already to that Peru. Drake! Memories of blows sharp and swift and harsh as the sound of it. Memories of Nombre de Dios, of Cartagena, of Puerto Cabello. Drake! He swept suddenly out of the clear blue, struck like lightning and was gone, leaving King Philip and his merchants so much the poorer. He was a visitation from the Devil.

  The visitation meanwhile was hurrying northwards as fast as all his spread canvas could drive him. He picked up a small bark a few leagues out of Callao and learned that Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion had passed a little time before. He ran into the small harbour of Paita where the ship of Custodio Rodriguez was lying. From Custodio he got more definite information. Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion, known more briefly and more impolitely as Cacafuego, had left that port a little more than two days before. Drake took Custodio Rodriguez to guide him through the shoals along the coast, and was away from Paita before six hours had elapsed. He stopped a ship belonging to Gregorio Alvarez with passengers and a cargo of clothes. Drake took some clothes and a Cimaroon negro who was on board, and after three hours cast her off. The date of this hold-up was February 21st. He pushed his nose into St. Ellen’s. The harbour was empty and within the hour he was off again. He swept by the port of Guayaquil without entering it. His quarry was ahead. On the 28th she was still ahead, and nearing the point of San Francisco, where she would strike straight across the bay for Panama. On the 28th, Drake crossed the Line and overhauled the bark of Diaz Bravo.

  Bravo was carrying tackle and provisions for the galleons which were to escort Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa, the new General of the Philippines, to Manila; and brand-new tackle for his rigging and cables for his moorings were things which no marauding captain who had had his ship for two years in commission could possibly leave behind, however desperate his hurry. Besides the tackle, he found on board two friars, a gentleman and twenty thousand pesos of gold. The friars and the gentleman he placed in a rowing-boat, and, since the shore was near, let them go. The tackle and the gold he took into the Golden Hind, and placed a prize crew with some pieces of artillery on board Bravo’s ship, since she sailed well and could indeed, with a wind full-and-bye, outstrip the Golden Hind. But upon a second thought he doubted whether he could spare the men, and taking back his artillery and his prize crew he must needs make sure that Bravo’s ship did not pass him in the night and warn the great treasure ship. So he wrapped Bravo’s big sails about Bravo’s anchor and dropped them to the bottom of the sea and sheered off upon his way.

  But whilst all these movements backwards and forwards between the ships were happening, a good deal of conversation was happening too. The negro sailors of the Bravo ship gossiped that there were still golden pesos hidden on board. Drake rounded his galleon into the wind and once more the pinnace came alongside the dismantled galleon. Francisco Jacome, Bravo’s clerk, was ordered aboard the Golden Hind. Drake had no doubt now that he would overhaul the Cacafuego, even though she was famous as the Glory of the South Seas. But meanwhile here was gold concealed from him. Drake was outraged. He stormed at Jacome, a youth half negro half Spaniard, who brought to the deck of the Golden Hind a finer dignity than its Captain did. Drake threatened to hang the youth. Jacome replied that he had told the truth, that he could not point out places where there was gold when there wasn’t any there. Drake’s reply was the noose of a rope about the clerk’s neck. Still the lad had nothing to say. He was swung up towards the yardarm, but as soon as his body was clear of the bulwark, by some prearranged order which Drake had given, the rope was let go and Francisco Jacome dropped into the sea. A boat, already manned, put out from the ship’s side quickly, and there was need it should be quick. The sea was infested with sharks; Francisco Jacome might have fainte
d. The boat reached him in time and then put him on board his own ship unharmed, and let it go. But it was, even for those rough days, a shameful occurrence. Drake’s was the action of a German bully. Nothing excuses it, neither his impatience at the delay nor the Queen’s commission; nor the wrongs he had suffered at Rio de la Hacha and St. John de Ulua, nor the tortures his fellow-sailormen were subjected to by the Spanish Inquisition. It was a blot upon Drake’s record, and nothing can be gained by pretending to erase it.

  Drake crossed the Line that day, the pinnace sailing inshore, the big ship three miles out to sea, and a close watch kept on both vessels. Drake offered the prize of a gold chain to the man whose eyes first picked up the Cacafuego. But it was not until one o’clock on the following afternoon that a boy’s voice claimed it from the mast-head and John Drake the page came sliding down the stays. He had seen the glint of the sun on the galleon’s topsail nine miles ahead.

  The Golden Hind was gaining upon her fast — too fast to avoid rousing suspicion. Drake called in his pinnace and hid her on the off-side of his ship. He dragged behind him some of his wine jars filled with water, and slowed down his speed to only a little more than that of the merchant ships which he had encountered. But it was greater, and by sunset Drake was level with Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion. He drew up his wine jars and went immediately ahead. A little further on, the wind still in the south-west, he bore away and crossed the Spanish galleon’s bows. On board the Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion curiosity was certainly aroused. The Golden Hind was hailed. “What ship is that?” Drake returned an answer which had already served him twice. “Miguel Angelo’s ship from Chile.” There must have been a moment of consternation on Our Lady of the Conception when that answer was given. For all this while Miguel Angelo’s ship had been lying at Callao, and none knew it better than the sailors of Our Lady of the Conception. “It is not,” they cried. “We left her empty at Callao”; and San Juan de Anton, the owner and Master, sure of his supremacy in this unquestioned sea of Spain, shouted an order: “Strike your sails in the name of the King.”

  Drake’s reply was swift and unexpected. He let fly with a chain-shot from one of his big guns which cut through the mizzen-mast of his opponent close to the deck and tumbled it with a crash over the side. He put up his helm, slid alongside the lee of Our Lady of the Conception and grappled her with his irons. All through the day his pinnace had been sailing on the weather side of his ship, unseen by the Spaniards. She now slipped out and came up, still unseen, on the port side of the enemy. “You strike your sails in the name of the Queen of England,” cried Drake from his ship, and upon his word the armed men from his pinnace scrambled up the channels of the shrouds over the opposite quarter. They let fly a volley with their arquebuses and bows. An arrow wounded San Juan de Anton, and the crew, taken at so great a disadvantage, fled. San Juan de Anton was left alone on deck. To a rather superfluous demand that he should surrender, he made no reply. He was seized and carried on board the Golden Hind. There he was brought before Francis Drake, who was taking off his helmet and coat of mail. Drake embraced him, saying: “Be patient! This is the usage of war.” San Juan de Anton was wounded in the face by the arrow which had struck him, much as Drake had been hurt at La Mocha; and his hurt was tended in the same way. Then he was locked up in a cabin in the poop, a prize crew was put on board Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion, and, following Drake’s usual practice, the two ships steered away to the west beyond the trade route, where in some lonely stretch of ocean the treasure captured could at leisure be computed and transferred. A fair wind was blowing, and Drake set only his mizzen and foresails, so that the ships moved easily side by side first to the north-west and then by gradual alterations to the north.

  Drake did not himself go on board his prize until the next morning, March 2nd, and when he did, he left word that San Juan de Anton was to be served in his own cabin with the same liberality which he used himself. It took the crew of the Golden Hind three days to transfer the cargo. The treasure alone amounted to more than four hundred thousand pesos in gold and silver. Taking the peso, as it stood then, at a little more than nine shillings, it reached a value of two hundred and forty thousand pounds. Translate that into the money of today, and it will be seen that Drake’s haul amounted to nearly two and a half millions of gold. Apart from the money, the Cacafuego contained a great deal of porcelain, many jewels fashioned of gold, many precious stones and pearls. There were silks besides and clothes. All were shifted over to the Golden Hind, with what was needed of the ship’s stores, flour, sugar, preserves, salt pork. It is no wonder that a wit amongst the ship-boys of Nuestra Señora cried out that they must change her name. She wasn’t the Cacafuego at all, she was the Cacaplata. It is no wonder that Drake had a place laid for San Juan de Anton at his own table and showered upon him the civilities reserved for an honoured guest. He made him presents, too, a gilt corselet, a firelock which had been sent to him from Germany and upon which he set a great value. Well, he could afford them, and Anton can have received them with no more than a rueful gratitude. However, whilst Drake was supervising the shifting of the treasure, Anton had the run of the Golden Hind and used his eyes. He noticed that there were twelve of the gentlemen on board and a crew of eighty. He reckoned that fifty of the crew were good fighting men, and the rest, boys and the like, the ship’s servants. They were short of water — two casks, indeed, were taken from the Cacafuego — and the ship’s sides were very dirty, seaweed streaming from her as she sailed. He was much intrigued, too, by the number of the agricultural implements which were carried, such as pickaxes, hoes, sickles and pruning-knives. And in truth they were a queer appanage for a pirate ship, as the Golden Hind must have appeared to him, howsoever polite and well-mannered the pirate-chief might be. But for us now, the mere presence on board this crowded ship of these intractable instruments of husbandry is a proof that at the inception of the voyage and during a great portion of it the founding of a colony was definitely contemplated. Why else should they have found a place in a hold of which every inch of space was valuable? For trading? They were never traded, although on a rare occasion some trifles were given away as presents. There can be no other reason than an intention to colonize one or two unfrequented spots along the coast of South America. Colonies would be perpetually irritating thorns in the flesh of King Philip, and a symbol and an opportunity at the same time of the expansion of England which was going to increase through the world in spite of all the Popes and all the Kings embattled against it. But, of course, the sinking of the Marigold and the defection of the Elizabeth had turned these plans into dreams. Drake had eighty good men all told, and twenty or thirty boys and futilities. There were none to spare for settlements.

  So Drake did not talk of them to San Juan de Anton in the evenings when he returned from Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion and sat down to supper in his own cabin, with John Drake, now proudly decorated with a gold chain, behind his chair and the viols discoursing sweet music outside the door.

  But he talked of many things and with a good deal of bumptious swagger. The long passage from England through the Straits of Magellan lost none of its difficulties in the telling, nor the Captain who had made it, any of his resource. Others would follow him, he boasted, now the way was known. There would be as many English mariners in the Pacific Ocean as there were on the other side of Panama. Then let Kang Philip look to his gold or give Englishmen the right to trade where they willed. But Drake’s face would flush with anger as he urged Anton if he knew any who had the ear of the Viceroy of Peru to see to it that a word from him, Drake, reached it. If he killed John Oxenham or the other three whom the Inquisition held in Lima, he, Drake, would hang two thousand Spaniards — not Spaniards far away in Europe, but Spaniards here and in Don Luis’s presence. San Juan replied soothingly that since the Englishmen had not been killed already, the Viceroy was little likely to kill them now.

  “Well, what will he do with them?” asked Drake.

  Anton r
eplied that they would probably be sent as soldiers to fight with other soldiers against the Indians in Chile. And then Drake’s mood would change. Supper perhaps was finished and the gentlemen gone about their business. Drake would fetch out his great chart two rods long and discuss with Anton as with an old friend how he should go home. There were three ways from which he could choose — the Straits of Magellan by which he had come; the route by the Islands and the Cape of Good Hope; or north-eastwards by the North-West Passage. Anton wouldn’t have it that there was any such way. “You’ll find yourself in a bag,” he argued. “You’ll be no nearer home in a year.”

  They would fall to wrangling, but to a pleasant wrangling. The Straits of the Bacallao. It is interesting to find that word in use so far back as Elizabeth’s day. Bacallao! You can hear it in Lisbon, you can hear it in Spain, you used to hear it in Italy before the policy of “sanctions” enraged that country. The dried cod of the Newfoundland fisheries was then as now the staple food of the Southern peasant of Europe. This writer can picture to himself a little brig of eighty tons lying against the sea-wall of Málaga twenty years ago. Three to four times a year for forty years she put into Málaga harbour with her cargo of salt cod, until one winter passage overtaxed her and she was lost with all hands. Just in the same way in Drake’s day the fishing fleets crossed from the Mediterranean to Newfoundland and back again. It is not to be wondered at if Drake sought to open to traffic the legendary Strait by Cape Mendocino and Anian and break out into the Atlantic. Pedro de Sarmiento believed in its existence. “This would be the shortest and quickest route for getting from this sea to his country, and while this route is not familiar to the pilots here, it is not unknown to the cosmographers and particularly to the English,” he wrote in his narrative in the year 1579.