At Guatulco one object of the expedition was achieved. He had definitely annoyed Philip of Spain, as Queen Elizabeth had wished, and he was bringing back to her as rich a cargo of that annoyance as his ship would hold. His voyage was “made.” But this was only part of his mission. It was fairly certain now that Philip would fortify the entrance to the Straits of Magellan so as to make the Pacific Ocean once more invulnerable to the English marauder or the French privateer who was sure to follow since the way had been shown. It was, therefore, all the more important to discover and chart that northern passage upon which so many hearts were broken and so many lives lost. He had finished for the moment with Spain; and all that had to do with Spain, except its treasure, was unshipped from his galleon at Guatulco. He let the bark of Rodrigo Tello go, and even that Portuguese pilot who had for so many months sat at his table, Nuño da Silva. Da Silva remains a very enigmatic figure, a small man dressed soberly in black with a big black beard, who seldom spoke but sometimes smiled. What use he served, why Drake kept him so continually on the Golden Hind, it is impossible even to conjecture. He was far from any waters of which he had expert knowledge. There is not a hint to be found that Drake ever made the slightest call upon his services. Yet Drake carried him from Cape Verde round South America to Guatemala and — let us be honest about it — treated him scurvily. He stole his ship, took from it what he wanted, let it drift onto the rocks at Port Saint Julian and, at the end, did not even put him decently ashore. He set him without a penny on an empty ship, and the last sound which the Golden Hind heard as she put out to sea was the voice of Nuño da Silva bawling for a dinghy to take him to the land. He had found his voice at last. It is true that owing to the insistence of the Portuguese Ambassador in London, da Silva was awarded compensation for his lost galleon by the Admiralty Court. But Drake had no hand in it. It was a rare streak of good fortune for the pilot that just at that time Queen Elizabeth was dancing one of her elusive fandangoes with the Pretender to the Crown of Portugal. She wanted to keep in with Portugal for the moment, and Nuño da Silva profited.
But Drake was not the only man who treated Nuño da Silva scurvily. The Viceroy of New Spain, he already infamous for his treachery at St. John de Ulua, would not believe but that the pilot had been hand in glove with the corsair. Surely it was the pilot who had guided the Golden Hind through the windings of the Straits. Had he not also taken part in those services when Drake had kneeled upon a cushion and read from a book in which there were pictures of heretics burning at the stake? Juan Pascual, pilot of Zárate’s galleon, said yes. Well then! If Nuño would not confess to his heresies out of his own repentance, there were other ways. A little torture was suggested, and at Panama torture was duly applied. Nuño da Silva lived through four unhappy years of prison, and after making an abjuration of his heresy at an auto-da-fé, was exiled for ever from the Indies and sent in the Indian Guard to Spain. There at last good fortune found him out. He achieved the happiness of Prince Charming of the fairy stories. According to one story, King Philip received him at his Court, and took him into his service. According to another, he escaped from Spain to Plymouth and there settled down with a wife.
Drake sailed out of Guatulco on April 16th and set a course straight out into the deep sea in order to pick up a wind which should drive him northwards to the mouth of his Strait. Nuño da Silva did not believe that it existed. “There are neither maps nor descriptions of it,” he wrote. “This Englishman is hunting for it in a pure spirit of boastfulness of his cleverness.”
That other famous pilot, Pedro Sarmiento, believed that it did. In describing a conversation which he had held with Nuño da Silva, Pedro wrote:
“To this I added, what is more for the safety of the navigation, that from the month of March in which we now are, to September, it is summer and the hot season up to Cape Mendocino in 43° north latitude by which he has a short and easy route to return to his country from this sea. This route, although it is not known by the pilots around here, because they do not as a rule sail in that region, is known to the cosmographers, especially to the English who sail to Iceland, the Bacallaos, Labrador, Totilan and Norway. To these it is well known that a high latitude does not frighten them. As this corsair is a navigator of the countries above referred to and well-versed in all navigations, it may be suspected and believed that he knows it, and one who has the spirit which he has shown will not shrink from undertaking this route, especially as the summer season of the Arctic pole and gain from what he may steal are in prospect.”
This is a pleasing tribute from an enemy himself of courage and experience which is worthy of special record. For Pedro Sarmiento goes very near to inferring the existence of the Straits from the probability that Drake would seek by that way his outlet into the Atlantic. Between the two pilots stands Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the early advocate of the North-West Passage. If there were such a passage, it could not be used. He was arguing from that old legend which the Elizabeth had now disproved, of an eastward current which no ship could stem. However, in the end Sir Humphrey is inclined to suspend his judgment.
“It must be Peregrinationis historia, that is true reports of skilful travellers, as Ptolemy writeth, that in such controversies of Geography must put us out of doubt.”
Drake, wedding practice to imagination, sailed west to pick up a wind and then north to 42° north latitude, where the cold weather caught him. Two degrees further on, and “though seamen lack not good stomachs, yet it seemed a question to many amongst us whether their hands should feed their mouths, or rather keep themselves within their coverts.” So stiff and frozen grew the ropes that six men putting forth their best strength were hardly able to handle them as well as three men without much effort had done before. However, Drake, partly by sermons from the Scriptures on God’s loving care of His children and partly by his own sturdy example, persuaded them to endure this short trial and extremity for the greater glory which awaited them. But there were no maps drawn with knowledge of these regions, and the General’s, as we have seen, were incorrect of even the coast of Chile; and before the first days of June were reached, they found the coast of America still stretching out beyond them to the west and they were so beset with foul weather that they could make no head against it.
They were forced in on the land by violent gales, and these alternated with thick fogs, and whether the gales drove them towards a lee-shore or the fogs kept them becalmed in canopies of cloud, the cold gnawed at them without remission. For fourteen days they could not take the height of the sun or any star.
They were now as high as 48° north latitude. Drake, with a quite modern touch, had prepared his men to endure the cold, “so that even after our departure from the heat, we always found our bodies not as sponges but strong and hardened.” But even so the bitter cold and the unfriendly coast overbore him. All were anxious to reach home and there was no swift journey by the north. Drake went about and sailed southwards until on June 17th he could drop his anchor in a convenient harbour in 38° 30ʹ. Climates change no doubt in the course of centuries, but it seems odd that at a spot less than two hundred miles north of San Francisco the adventurers in mid-June were still so nipped by the cold that they would have preferred to stay in bed rather than get up and face it, had there been work to do. The Golden Hind stayed in that harbour until July 23rd, making ready for the long voyage which lay ahead of it.
It was a country inhabited by a friendly and tractable sort of heathen who mistook Drake and his companions for gods. Drake, warned by his experiences at Port Saint Julian and La Mocha, entrenched himself in a camp and received them warily. They were a people more inured to the making of long speeches than the crew of the Golden Hind were to cold. They made speeches from canoes when he arrived, offering him little baskets of tobacco and bunches of feathers, but would accept no presents in return except a hat. This fell into the water but was retrieved. A long essay could be written on the passion for a hat which burns in every primitive breast. A shining silk hat
or a busby wakes the liveliest fires, but any hat will be welcome, and by a hat wet from the sea the stoic independence of this remarkable tribe was undermined.
It came down in a body to the seashore on the following day with more baskets of tobacco and more bunches of feathers. The women came down with it, and tearing their faces and their breasts with their nails, they flung themselves on their faces on the stony ground. Drake, shocked by these heathen signs of worship, and stationed in a place of vantage, read from his prayer-book and led the singing of the psalms appointed for the day. This afforded them great pleasure, and the General, understanding that there was no harm in them, admitted them within his enclosure. Whereupon the ladies were still more anxious to burn sacrifices and tear their flesh to ribbons before these new gods, especially the young ones, and were with difficulty brought to realize that they were human like themselves. Three days later, their king, the Hioh, came in person surrounded by his tall young warriors and preceded by his sceptre. More speeches were made, more psalms were sung, the ladies once more repeated their disfiguring prostrations, and now presents were interchanged. In a little while they began to bring their maimed and sick to be cured by the royal touch of the General. Drake replied with plasters and unguents from his medicine chest, and finally the Hioh in a paroxysm of devotion offered his sceptre to the General. The General, however, was true blue. He would only become Vice-Hioh as representative of his great mistress Gloriana. She would be the real Hioh, and in her name he accepted their fealty. Drake gave to the country the name of “New Albion,” partly because of the whiteness of the seaward cliffs and partly because the countryside had to his eyes a look of England. He set up a great post, and to it nailed a great brass plate on which were engraved first the Queen’s name, then the date on which the Golden Hind had arrived upon this coast, and next a record of the concession of the country by its king and people to Her Majesty. A hole was cut in the plate to frame a silver sixpence of English currency carrying the Queen’s picture and her arms. Under all was engraved the name of Francis Drake.
When this ceremony was completed and all leaks in the galleon caulked, the General departed amidst universal lamentations. He stopped for two days at the Farallones Islands for the seals and birds which filled so large a space of the ship’s larder, and on July 25th set out on the first stage of his journey home. He sailed for sixty-eight days across the Pacific Ocean, and reached some islands which may have been the Carolines and may have been the islands of Pelew. There has been inevitably a good deal of guess-work about this part of the voyage of circumnavigation. It is a catastrophe that Drake’s own log has disappeared. It was illustrated by the pictures which he and John Drake had painted of the coasts along which they passed — pictures so well painted that they made Zárate exclaim, “No one who guides himself according to these paintings can possibly go astray.” They were all given, according to the Spanish Ambassador Mendoza, by Drake to Queen Elizabeth, and if they were finished with the same care as his maps of his last voyage, to be seen in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, the loss of them is still more grievous. All the more grievous since there is nothing in the feeblest way to take their place. Fletcher’s notes had come to an end, and the rough sailors upon whose accounts we must rely had neither a smattering of navigation nor even an accurate ear for names. The reader who looks on the map at the crowded constellation of the islands in the oblong between 110° and 130° east longitude and 10° north and south latitude will see how impossible it is to plot the course of the Golden Hind from vague descriptions and ill-remembered names. The marvel is, indeed, how Drake, himself a stranger in these narrow waters, managed, even with all his skill as navigator and sailor, to find his way through the maze. No doubt that big map made for him at Lisbon helped. The Portuguese were familiar with the East Indian Archipelago. The Moluccas and the spice trade had long been their prerogative; and the chart which had shown nothing of the eastward trend of the Chilean coast, north of Magellan’s Straits, might well have been an excellent guide to the Celebes Sea and the Straits of Sundra.
Whatever islands they were, their inhabitants were unpleasant people. You could find no greater contrast than the contrast between them and Gloriana’s new subjects on the opposite side of the Pacific, whose wailing had followed Drake out to sea. They would give what they had and were reluctant to take anything in return. These snatched rather than took what they could and paid for it with showers of stones. The crew of the Golden Hind dubbed one island the Island of Thieves, and John Drake not unnaturally confused it with the Ladrones which lay about ten degrees to the north. On the 3rd of October Drake sailed away, and on the 21st stopped for a day at Mindanao in the Philippines and watered his ship there.
He lost a day thereafter by stopping a ship, stating that he was English and proposing to buy provisions. Those in command of the ship — it seems to have been a galleon belonging to the King of Portugal — refused on the ground that Drake’s people were Lutherans and took to flight. Drake fired two of his great pieces of ordnance at the fugitive without doing any damage and set off in pursuit. For a day and a night he kept it up, until the Bang’s galleon ran deliberately upon a shoal. Drake dared not follow her. He went about, sailed southwards past the island of Sangi, picked up two Indians in a fishing-boat off Siauw to pilot him to the Moluccas, and then steered eastwards through the Siauw passage. On the 22nd day of October they saw at last the peaks of the four islands of the Moluccas, Ternate, Tidore, Motir and Makyan.
Drake’s intention was to make for Tidore which was held in strength by the Portuguese, and indeed he had picked up from Mindanao or another of the islands one of that race. But whilst he was still off a small island at the north end of Ternate, the northernmost of the Moluccas, a boat came alongside with “a Moorish gentleman in his native dress with a chain which seemed of gold about his neck and some keys hanging to a small silver chain.” So John Drake described the Sultan of Ternate’s official, and this man coming on board warned Drake against Tidore. There was a Portuguese galley there, and besides the galley a galleon, and both would give him trouble. On the other hand, the Sultan of Ternate, one Barber, a man of Malay and a Mohammedan, would give him a good welcome. Drake, who at this stage of his voyage could have wanted nothing more than a swift and easy passage home, agreed to run with Ternate instead of Tidore. He needed provisions, for which he had goods to exchange. A good deal of flowery talk was exchanged between this Viceroy, as he was termed, and the General. The Sultan had driven the Portuguese out of Ternate, Motir and Makyan. He had the bulk of the clove trade in his hands. On the other hand, the Portuguese would not trade with him, and a big ship from a new country might open up to him a new market. Drake would find the King of Ternate a man of his word. The official, however highly he extolled his King, was no match for Drake at what one may call noble talk. His Queen, the might of her Kingdom, the fine benefits which would flow from friendship with her — Drake talked from that text with a sincerity and enthusiasm which swept the Viceroy off his feet. He gave him a velvet cloak to present to the King, and after coming to an anchorage for the night, sent him off with it.
This Viceroy that night so impressed the King with the story of what he had seen and heard on the Golden Hind that the King the next morning sent out four great boats with men-at-arms and guns mounted in the bows and important people clad in white standing under awnings to tow the ship to the good anchorage on the east side of the island. The King himself followed in a state barge and his brother after him in another. Drake was not left behind in such courtesies. He fired off a salute with his big guns and set his band of sweet musicians at their work. The King was so delighted with the music that Drake sent the band out in a boat to play behind the King’s barge which was now towed by the Golden Hind; and behind the King’s barge and the music-boat the King’s brother tied on; and in that pompous procession, with the King in “a musical paradise,” the Golden Hind was brought to its anchorage. Thereupon the King took his leave, promising to se
nd provisions on board and to come on board himself the next morning. The provisions did come that night, rice, hens, sugar, plantains, coconuts and sago, but the King did not. He sent instead an invitation to Drake to come on shore. But the mariners of the Golden Hind had learnt to be wary. The invitation smelt like treachery, the treachery for instance of La Mocha. Moreover, somebody had heard or said he had heard the King’s brother who had come on board the day before use words to Drake which were suspicious. A small deputation was sent as a substitute and received with great ceremony in a Durbar Hall outside the Palace gates, the King appearing in embroideries of gold and attended by a page who fanned him with a huge jewelled fan. The reception passed off with every appearance of cordiality on both sides, and according to the chronicles of “The World Encompassed,” Barber went so far as to offer his realm and the monopoly of his trade in cloves to Drake’s great Prince.
One or two historians have shown themselves a little pernickety over this statement, averring that even if Barber ever bowed so low before the stranger Drake, it could not have been so early in their acquaintanceship. But the probabilities are entirely against them. It would be at his first levee that Barber in a fit of Oriental imagery would offer all that he had to his guest, without meaning it any more than the Spaniard who offers you his luncheon in a railway carriage means that you should take it. When the brass tacks of bargaining were reached, he would be as stiff as another.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 876