The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book Part 25

"What is it, sir?" he asked blandly, but with wrinkled brow.

"Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain?" said I, without preface. He looked at me for a few moments, without speaking and without seeming to see me. His brow gradually smoothed, and his eyes apparently looking into the street were really, I have no doubt, feasting upon the Spanish landscape.

"Too many, too many," said he, at length, musingly, shaking his head and without addressing me.

He feared, I thought, that he had too much impracticable property elsewhere to own so much in Spain: so I asked:--

"Will you tell me what you consider the shortest and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne? for, of course, a man who drives such an immense trade with all parts of the world will know all that I have come to inquire."

"My dear sir," answered he, wearily, "I have been trying all my life to discover it; but none of my ships have ever been there--none of my captains have any report to make.

"They bring me, as they brought my father, gold-dust from Guinea, ivory, pearls, and precious stones from every part of the earth; but not a fruit, not a solitary flower, from one of my castles in Spain.

"I have sent clerks, agents, and travellers of all kinds, philosophers, pleasure hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or heard of my castles, except a young poet, and he died in a madhouse."

"Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at ninety-seven?" hastily demanded a man whom, as he entered, I recognized as a broker. "We'll make a splendid thing of it."

Bourne nodded a.s.sent, and the broker disappeared.

"Happy man!" muttered the merchant, as the broker went out; "he has no castles in Spain."

"I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne," said I, retiring.

"I'm glad you came," returned he; "but, I a.s.sure you, had I known the route you hoped to ascertain from me I should have sailed years and years ago. People sail for the Northwest Pa.s.sage, which is nothing when you have found it. Why don't the English Admiralty fit out expeditions to discover all our castles in Spain?"

Yet I dream my dreams and attend to my castles in Spain. I have so much property there that I could not in conscience neglect it.

All the years of my youth and hopes of my manhood are stored away, like precious stones, in the vaults; and I know that I shall find everything elegant, beautiful, and convenient when I come into possession.

As the years go by, I am not conscious that my interest diminishes.

Shall I tell a secret? Shall I confess that sometimes when I have been sitting reading to my Prue "Cymbeline," perhaps, or a "Canterbury Tale,"

I have seemed to see clearly before me the broad highway to my castles in Spain, and, as she looked up from her work and smiled in sympathy, I have even fancied that I was already there?

George William Curtis: "Prue and I."

(Adapted)

ALADDIN

When I was a beggarly boy And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend or a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And builded with roofs of gold My beautiful castles in Spain!

Since then I have toiled day and night, I have money and power good store, But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright For the one that is mine no more; Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, You gave, and may s.n.a.t.c.h again; I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose, For I own no more castles in Spain!

Lowell

DRAKE'S VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD

Francis Drake was born near Tavistock in the year 1545. He served his time as an apprentice in a Channel coaster, and his master, who had been struck with his character, left the vessel to him in his will when he died. He was then twenty-one. His kinsman, John Hawkins, was fitting out his third expedition to the Spanish Main, and young Drake, with a party of his Kentish friends, went to Plymouth and joined him. In 1572 "he made himself whole with the Spaniards" by seizing a convoy of bullion at Panama, and on that occasion, having seen the South Pacific from the mountains, "he fell on his knees and prayed G.o.d that he might one day navigate those waters," which no English keel as yet had furrowed.

The time and the opportunity had come. He was now in the prime of his strength, thirty-two years old, of middle height, with crisp brown hair, a broad high forehead; gray, steady eyes, unusually long; small ears tight to the head; the mouth and chin slightly concealed by the moustache and beard, but hard, inflexible, and fierce. His dress, as he appears in his portrait, is a loose, dark, seaman's shirt, belted at the waist. About his neck is a plaited cord with a ring attached to it, in which, as if the att.i.tude was familiar, one of his fingers is slung, displaying a small, delicate, but long and sinewy hand. When at sea he wore a scarlet cap with a gold band, and was exacting in the respect with which he required to be treated by his crew.

Such was Francis Drake when he stood on the deck of the Pelican in Plymouth harbour, in November, 1577. The squadron, with which he was preparing to sail into a chartless ocean and invade the dominions of the King of Spain, consisted of his own ship, of a hundred and twenty tons, the size of the smallest cla.s.s of our modern Channel schooners, two barques of fifty and thirty tons each, a second ship as it was called, the Elizabeth, of eighty tons, not larger than a common revenue cutter, and a pinnace, hardly more than a boat, intended to be burnt if it could not bear the seas. These vessels, with a hundred and sixty-four men, composed the force. The object of the expedition was kept as far as possible secret. On the fifteenth of November the expedition sailed from Plymouth Sound. The vessels struck across the Atlantic and made the coast of South America on the fifth of April in lat.i.tude thirty-three degrees South.

The perils of the voyage were now about to commence. No Englishman had as yet pa.s.sed Magellan's Strait. Cape Horn was unknown. Tierra del Fuego was supposed to be part of a solid continent which stretched unbroken to the Antarctic pole. A single narrow channel was the only access to the Pacific then believed to exist. There were no charts, no records of past experiences. It was known that Magellan had gone through, but that was all. It was the wildest and coldest season of the year, and the vessels in which the attempt was to be made were mere c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls. They were taken on sh.o.r.e, overhauled and scoured, the rigging looked to, and the sails new bent.

On the seventeenth of August, answering to the February of the northern hemisphere, all was once more in order. Drake sailed from Port St.

Julian, and on the twentieth entered the Strait and felt his way between the walls of mountain "in extreme cold with frost and cold continually."

To relieve the crews, who were tried by continual boat work and heaving the lead in front of the ships, they were allowed occasional halts at the islands, where they amused and provisioned themselves with killing infinite seals and penguins. Everything which they saw, birds, beasts, trees, climate, country, were strange, wild, and wonderful. After three weeks' toil and anxiety, they had accomplished the pa.s.sage and found themselves in the open Pacific. But they found also that it was no peaceful ocean into which they had entered, but the stormiest they had ever encountered. Their vessels were now reduced to three; the pinnace had been left behind at Port St. Julian, and there remained only the Pelican, the Elizabeth, and the thirty-ton cutter. Instantly that they emerged out of the Strait, they were caught in a gale which swept them six hundred miles to the south-west. For six weeks they were battered to and fro, in bitter cold and winds which seemed as if they blew in these lat.i.tudes for ever. The cutter went down in the fearful seas, carrying her crew with her. The Elizabeth and the Pelican were separated. The bravest sailor might well have been daunted at such a commencement, and Winter, recovering the opening again and, believing Drake to be lost, called a council in his cabin and proposed to return to England. They had agreed to meet, if they were parted, on the coast in the lat.i.tude of Valparaiso. The men, with better heart than their commander, desired to keep the appointment. But those terrible weeks had sickened Winter. He overruled the opinions of the rest, re-entered the Strait, and reached England in the following June.

Drake, meanwhile, had found shelter among the islands of Tierra del Fuego. At length spring brought fair winds and smooth seas, and running up the coast and looking about for her consort, the Pelican or Golden Hind--for she had both names--fell in with an Indian fisherman, who informed Drake that in the harbour of Valparaiso, already a small Spanish settlement, there lay a great galleon which had come from Peru.

Galleons were the fruit that he was in search of. He sailed in, and the Spanish seamen, who had never yet seen a stranger in those waters, ran up their flags, beat their drums, and prepared a banquet for their supposed countrymen. The Pelican shot up alongside. The English sailors leaped on board, and one "Thomas Moore," a lad from Plymouth, began the play with knocking down the first man that he met, saluting him in Spanish as he fell, and crying out "Down, dog." The Spaniards, overwhelmed with surprise, began to cross and bless themselves. One sprang overboard and swam ash.o.r.e; the rest were bound and stowed away under the hatches while the ship was rifled. The beginning was not a bad one. Wedges of gold were found weighing four hundred pounds, besides miscellaneous plunder. The settlement, which was visited next, was less productive, for the inhabitants had fled, taking their valuables with them.

At Arica, the port of Potosi, fifty-seven blocks of precious metal were added to the store; and from thence they made haste to Lima, where the largest booty was looked for. They found that they had just missed it.

Twelve ships lay at anchor in the port without arms, without crews, and with their sails on sh.o.r.e. In all of these they discovered but a few chests of reals and some bales of silk and linen. A thirteenth, called by the seamen the Cacafuego, but christened in her baptism "Our Lady of the Conception," had sailed for the Isthmus a few days before, taking with her all the bullion which the mines had yielded for the season. She had been literally ballasted with silver, and carried also several precious boxes of gold and jewels.

Not a moment was lost. The cables of the ships at Lima were cut, and they were left to drive on sh.o.r.e to prevent pursuit; and then away sped the Pelican due north, with every st.i.tch of her canvas spread. A gold chain was promised to the first man who caught sight of the Cacafuego. A sail was seen the second day of the chase: it was not the vessel which they were in pursuit of, but the prize was worth the having. They took eighty pounds' weight of gold in wedges, the purest which they yet had seen.

For eight hundred miles the Pelican flew on. At length, one degree to the north of the line, off Quito, and close to the sh.o.r.e, a look-out on the mast-head cried out that he saw the chase and claimed the promised chain; she was recognized by the peculiarities in her sails, of which they had received exact information at Lima. There lay the Cacafuego; if they could take her their work would be done, and they might go home in triumph. She was several miles ahead of them; if she guessed their character, she would run in under the land, and they might lose her. It was afternoon: several hours remained of daylight, and Drake did not wish to come up with her till dark.

The Pelican sailed two feet to the Cacafuego's one, and dreading that her speed might rouse suspicion, he filled his empty wine casks with water and trailed them astern. The chase meanwhile unsuspecting, and glad of company on a lonely voyage, slackened sail and waited for her slow pursuer. The sun sank low, and at last set into the ocean, and then, when both ships had become invisible from the land, the casks were hoisted in, the Pelican was restored to her speed, and shooting up within a cable's length of the Cacafuego, hailed to her to run into the wind. The Spanish commander, not understanding the meaning of such an order, paid no attention to it. The next moment the corsair opened her ports, fired a broadside, and brought his main-mast about his ears. His decks were cleared by a shower of arrows, with one of which he was himself wounded. In a few minutes more he was a prisoner, and his ship and all that it contained was in the hands of the English. The wreck was cut away, the ship cleared, and her head turned to the sea; by daybreak even the line of the Andes had become invisible, and at leisure, in the open ocean, the work of rifling began. The full value of the plunder taken in this ship was never actually confessed. It remained a secret between Drake and the Queen. In a schedule afterwards published, he acknowledged to have found in the Cacafuego alone twenty-six tons of silver bullion, thirteen chests of coined silver, and almost a hundredweight of gold. But this was only so much as the Spaniards could prove to have been on board.

Drake imagined, like most other English seamen, that there was a pa.s.sage to the north corresponding to Magellan's Strait, of which Frobisher conceived that he had found the eastern entrance. He went on therefore at his leisure towards the coast of Mexico, intending to follow the sh.o.r.e till he found it. Another ship coming from China crossed him on his way loaded with silks and porcelain. He took the best of the freight with a golden falcon and a superb emerald. Then needing fresh water he touched at the Spanish settlement of Guatulco.

The work of plunder was nearly over. Again sailing north, the Pelican fell in with a Spanish n.o.bleman who was going out as Governor to the Philippines. He was detained a few hours and relieved of his finery, and then, says one of the party: "Our general, thinking himself both in respect of his private injuries received from the Spaniards, as also their contempt and indignities offered to our country and prince in general, sufficiently satisfied and revenged, and supposing her Majesty would rest contented with this service, began to consider the best way for his country."

The first necessity was a complete repair of the Pelican's hull. Before the days of copper sheathing, the ships' bottoms grew foul with weed; the great barnacles formed in cl.u.s.ters and stopped their speed, and the sea-worms bored holes into the planking. Twenty thousand miles of unknown water lay between Drake and Plymouth Sound, and he was not a man to run idle risks. Running on till he had left the furthest Spanish station far to the south, he put into the Bay of Canoa in Lower California. There he laid his ship on sh.o.r.e, set up forge and workshop, and refitted her with a month's labour from stem to stern.

By the sixteenth of April, 1579, the Pelican was once more in order, and started on her northern course in search of the expected pa.s.sage. She held on up the coast for eight hundred miles into lat.i.tude forty-three degrees North, but no signs appeared of an opening. Though it was summer the air grew colder, and the crew having been long in the tropics suffered from the change. Not caring to run risks in exploring with so precious a cargo, and finding by observation that the pa.s.sage, if it existed, must be of enormous length, Drake resolved to go no further, and expecting, as proved to be the case, that the Spaniards would be on the look-out for him at Magellan's Strait, he determined on the alternative route by the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese had long traded with China. In the ship going to the Philippines he had found a Portuguese chart of the Indian Archipelago, and with the help of this and his own skill he trusted to find his way.

At the little island of Ternate, south of the Celebes, the ship was again docked and sc.r.a.ped. The crew were allowed another month's rest, when they feasted their eyes on the marvels of tropical life, then first revealed to them in their luxuriance--vampires "as large as hens,"

crayfish a foot round, and fireflies lighting the midnight forest.

Starting once more, they had now to feel their way among the rocks and shoals of the most dangerous waters in the world. They crept round Celebes among coral reefs and low islands scarcely visible above the water-line. The Malacca Straits formed the only route marked in the Portuguese chart, and between Drake and his apparent pa.s.sage lay the Java Sea and the channel between Borneo and Sumatra. But it was not impossible that there might be some other opening, and the Pelican crawled in search of it along the Java coast. Here, if nowhere else, her small size and manageableness were in her favour. In spite of all the care that was taken, she was almost lost. One evening as the black tropical night was closing, a grating sound was heard under her keel: another moment she was hard and fast upon an invisible reef. The breeze was light and the water calm, or the world would have heard no more of Francis Drake and the Pelican. She lay immovable till morning; "we were out of all hope to escape danger," but with the daylight the position was seen not to be utterly desperate. "Our general, then as always, showed himself most courageous, and of good confidence in the mercy and protection of G.o.d; and as he would not seem to perish wilfully, so he and we did our best endeavour to save ourselves, and in the end cleared ourselves of that danger."

The Pelican had no more adventures; and sweeping in clear fine weather close to the Cape of Good Hope, and touching for water at Sierra Leone, she sailed in triumph into Plymouth harbour in the beginning of October, having marked a furrow with her keel round the globe.

Froude: "History of England."

(Adapted)