Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea Part 5

"And the news of the Captain's return brought unto his people, did so speedily pa.s.s over all the church, and fill the minds of the congregation with delight and desire to see him, that very few, or none, remained with the preacher. All hastened to see the evidence of G.o.d's love and blessing towards the gracious Queen and country, by the fruit of the gallant mariner's labor and success."

"To G.o.d alone," spake an humble citizen of Plymouth, "be the Glory."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRAKE'S GREATEST VICTORY ON THE SPANISH MAIN.

(The surrender of Don Anton to Sir Francis Drake, March 1, 1579.)]

And all echoed these pious sentiments, in spite of the fact that Drake was a robber, a pirate, and a buccaneer. But was he not their own countryman?

The scene now changes. It is a gray day at Plymouth and anxious faces peer into the street from the windows of the low, tiled houses. A crowd has collected upon the jutting cliffs and all gaze with eager eyes towards the ocean. Men speak in hushed and subdued voices, for there is trouble in the air.

Among the knots of keen-eyed English there is one small party which seems to be as joyous as a lot of school-boys. Five men are playing at bowls, and one of them is stout, and well knit, and swarthy visaged with long exposure to the elements. He is laughing uproariously, when a lean fellow comes running from the very edge of those beetling cliffs which jut far out into the gray, green Atlantic.

"Hark'ee, Captain Drake!" he cries. "Ships are in the offing, and many of them too! It must be the fleet of Philip of Spain come to ravage our beauteous country!"

"Ah, indeed," answers the staunch-figured captain, without looking up.

"Then let me have one last shot, I pray thee, before I go to meet them."

And so saying, he calmly tosses another ball upon the greensward, knocks aside the wooden pins, then smiling, turns and strides towards the waterside.

Thus Drake--the lion-hearted--goes out to battle with the great Armada of Philip of Spain, with a smile upon his lips, and full confidence in his ability to defeat the Spaniards at home as well as on the Spanish Main. Let us see how he fared?

Smarting with keen anger at Drake and his successful attacks upon his western possessions, Philip--the powerful monarch of Spain--determined to gather a great fleet together and to invade England with a mighty army.

"That rascally pirate has beaten me at Cadiz, at Cartagena, and at Lisbon," the irate king had roared, with no show of composure. "Now I will sail against him and crush this buccaneer, so that he and his kind can never rise again."

A mighty fleet of heavy ships--the Armada--was not ready to sail until July, 1588, and the months before this had been well spent by the English in preparation for defense, for they knew of the full intention of their southern enemy. Shipwrights worked day and night.

The clamoring dockyards hummed with excitement, while Good Queen Bess and her Ministers of State wrote defiant letters to the missives from the Spanish crown. The cold blood of the English--always quite lukewarm in their misty, moisty isle--had begun to boil with vigor.

The Britons would fight valiantly.

As the lumbering galleons neared the English coast, a heavy mist which hid them, blew away, and the men of England saw the glimmering water fairly black with the wooden vultures of old Spain. The Spaniards had come ready to fight in the way in which they had won many a brilliant victory; with a horde of towering hulks, of double-deckers and store-ships manned by slaves and yellow-skinned retainers, who despised big guns and loved a close encounter with hand thrusts and push of pike. Like a huge, wooden octopus this arrogant fleet of Arragon moved its tentacles around the saucy, new-made pinnaces of the tight little isle.

"The boats of the English were very nimble and of good steerage,"

writes a Spaniard, "so that the English did with them as they desired.

And our ships being very heavy compared with the lightness of those of the enemy, it was impossible to come to hand-stroke with them."

This tells the whole story. With a light wind astern--the war ships of the English bore down easily upon the heavy-bottomed Spanish galleons and fired their guns at the hulls of the enemy.

"Don't waste your b.a.l.l.s upon the rigging," cried Drake through a trumpet. "Sight low and sink 'em if you can. But keep away from the grappling hooks so's not to let 'em get hold of you. If they once do--you're lost!"

Now was the sound of splitting of boards, as the solid shot pumped great holes in the sides of the high rocking galleons. Dense clouds of vapor hung over the struggling combatants--partly from a sea fog which the July sun had not thoroughly burned away, and partly from the spitting mouths of the cannon. Fire burst from the decks, the roar of the guns was intermingled with the shrill wails of the slaves, the guttural cries of the seamen, the screams of the wounded and the derisive howls of those maddened by battle. The decks were crimson with blood; sails split and tore as the chain-shot hummed through the rigging, and the sharp tw.a.n.g of the arquebusques was mingled with the crash of long-barrelled muskets.

No men can fight like those who are defending their own homes. At Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac--twice beaten in an attack upon the South in the enemy's country--struggled as it had never done before,--and won. It had nowhere battled as when the foe was pushing it back upon its own soil and cities.

So here--no fighters ever bled as did the English when the greedy hands of Spain were clutching at their sh.o.r.es. The light ships hung near the Spaniards at a distance and did not board until spars were down and the great rakish hulls were part helpless. Then--with a wild cheer--the little galleons--often two at a time--would grapple with the enemy and board--cutla.s.ses swinging, pistols spitting, and hand-spikes hewing a way through the struggling, yellow-faced ruffians of Philip of Arragon.

While the awful battle raged, fire ships were prepared on sh.o.r.e and sent down upon the Spanish fleet, burning fiercely and painting the skyline with red. Some of the large vessels had anch.o.r.ed, and, as these terrors approached, they slipped their cables in order to escape. Confusion beset the ranks of the boastful foe and cheered on the British bull-dogs to renewed exertions.

At six in the evening a mighty cry welled from the British boats.

"They fly! They fly!" sounded above the ruck and roar of battle.

Yes--it was the truth. Beaten and dismayed, the Spanish fleet bore away to the North, while the English--in spite of the fact that their powder was wet, and nearly all spent--"gave them chase as if they lacked nothing, until they had cleared their own coast and some part of Scotland of them." The Armada--split, part helpless--drifted away from Plymouth, and wild cheers of joy came from the deck of the vessel which carried bold Sir Francis Drake. The great battle had been won.

So crippled were many of the Spanish hulks that they were wrecked in stormy weather, off the coast of Scotland and Ireland. Not half of those who put to sea ever reached Spain again. Many sailors were drowned, or perished miserably by the hands of the natives of the coast, and some who escaped were put to death by the Queen's orders.

Fever and sickness broke out in the English ships and the followers of bold Drake died by hundreds, "sickening one day and perishing the next."

The English vessels, themselves, were in a bad way--they had to be disinfected and the men put ash.o.r.e--where the report of the many wrecks and the ma.s.sacre of Spanish soldiers, eased the anxiety of the once terrified inhabitants of the tight little isle, and made it certain that the Armada would never return. Drake and his bold seamen had saved the people of Merrie England. Again hats off to this pirate of the Spanish Main!

Safely settled in Buckland Abbey, knighted, honored, respected--the hero of the defense of England--one would think that Drake would have remained peacefully at home to die "with his boots on." But not so.

The spirit of adventure called to him with irresistible force, and again he set out for the Spanish Main. He had sailed around the world before his grapple with the Armada; he had hara.s.sed the Spaniard in an expedition to Lisbon; he was the idol of the English. He had done enough--you say. Yes, he had done enough--but--like all men who love the game of life he wished to have just one more expedition in search of gold and adventure, for--by nature he was a gambler, and he was throwing the dice with Fate.

So a goodly crew sailed with him again, hoping for another raid upon mule trains and cities of treasure. But alas! There was to be a different story from the others. All the towns and hamlets of the Spanish Main had been warned to "be careful and look well to themselves, for that Drake and Hawkins were making ready in England to come upon them." And when the English arrived they found stout defense and valiant men, nor was a sail seen "worth giving chase unto."

Hawkins died, many grew ill of fever, and finally Drake, himself, succ.u.mbed to the malarial atmosphere of Panama. He was to remain where gold and adventure had first lured him.

On January the twenty-eighth, 1596, the great captain yielded up his spirit "like a Christian, quietly in his cabin." And a league from the sh.o.r.e of Porto Rico, the mighty rover of the seas was placed in a weighted hammock and tossed into the sobbing ocean. The spume frothed above the eddying current, sucked downward by the emaciated form of the famous mariner, and a solitary gull shrieked cruelly above the bubbles, below which--upon beads of coral and clean sand--rested the body of Sir Francis Drake, rover, rogue, and rattling sea ranger. It was his last journey.

"Weep for this soul, who, in fathoms of azure, Lies where the wild tarpon breaks through the foam, Where the sea otter mews to its brood in the ripples, As the pelican wings near the palm-forest gloom.

Ghosts of the buccaneers flit through the branches, Dusky and dim in the shadows of eve, While shrill screams the parrot,--the lord of Potanches, 'Drake, Captain Drake, you've had your last leave.'"

SEA IRONY

One day I saw a ship upon the sands Careened upon beam ends, her tilted deck Swept clear of rubbish of her long-past wreck; Her colors struck, but not by human hands; Her masts the driftwood of what distant strands!

Her frowning ports, where, at the Admiral's beck, Grim-visaged cannon held the foe in check, Gaped for the frolic of the minnow bands.

The seaweed banners in her fo'ks'le waved, A turtle basked upon her capstan head; Her cabin's pomp the clownish sculpin braved, And, on her prow, where the lost figure-head Once turned the brine, a name forgot was graved, It was "The Irresistible" I read.

--HEATON.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

PERSECUTOR OF THE SPANIARDS

(1552-1618)

"All great men have lived by hope."--JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YOUNG RALEIGH AND A COMPANION LISTENING TO TALES OF THE SPANISH MAIN.]