Vikings of the Pacific Part 7

How the Sea Rover was attacked and ruined as a Boy on the Spanish Main off Mexico--His Revenge in sacking Spanish Treasure Houses and crossing Panama--The Richest Man in England, he sails to the Forbidden Sea, scuttles all the Spanish Ports up the West Coast of South America and takes Possession of New Albion (California) for England

If a region were discovered where gold was valued less than cartloads of clay, and ropes of pearls could be obtained in barter for strings of gla.s.s beads, the modern mind would have some idea of the frenzy that prevailed in Spain after the discovery of America by Columbus. Native temples were found in Chile, in Peru, in Central America, in Mexico, where gold literally lined the walls, silver paved the floors, and handfuls of pearls were as thoughtlessly thrown in the laps of the conquerors as sh.e.l.ls might be tossed at a modern clam-bake.

Within half a century from the time Spain first learned of America, Cortes not only penetrated Mexico, but sent his corsairs up the west coast of the {134} continent. Pizarro conquered Peru. Spanish ships plied a trade rich beyond dreams of avarice between the gold realms of Peru and the spice islands of the Philippines. The chivalry of the Spanish n.o.bility suddenly became a chivalry of the high seas.

Religious zeal burned to a flame against those gold-lined pagan temples. It was easy to believe that the transfer of wedges of pure gold from heathen hands to Spain was a veritable despoiling of the devil's treasure boxes, glorious in the sight of G.o.d. The trackless sea became the path to fortune. Balboa had deeper motives than loyalty, when, in 1513, on his march across Panama and discovery of the Pacific, he rushed mid-deep into the water, shouting out in swelling words that he took possession of earth, air, and water for Spain "for all time, past, present, or to come, without contradiction, . . . north and south, with all the seas from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic, . . . both now, and as long as the world endures, until the final day of judgment." [1]

Shorn of noise, the motive was simply to shut out the rest of the world from Spain's treasure box. The Monroe Doctrine was not yet born. _The whole Pacific was to be a closed sea_! To be sure, Vasco da Gama had found the way round the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean; and Magellan soon after pa.s.sed through the strait of his name below South America {135} right into the Pacific Ocean; but round the world by the Indian Ocean was a far cry for tiny craft of a few hundred tons; and the Straits of Magellan were so storm-bound, it soon became a common saying that they were a closed door. Spain sent her sailors across Panama to build ships for the Pacific. The sea that bore her treasure craft--millions upon millions of pounds sterling in pure gold, silver, emeralds, pearls--was as closed to the rest of the world as if walled round with only one chain-gate; and that at Panama, where Spain kept the key.

That is, the sea _was_ shut till Drake came coursing round the world; and his coming was so utterly impossible to the Spanish mind that half the treasure ships scuttled by the English pirate mistook him for a visiting Spaniard till the rallying cry, "G.o.d and Saint George!"

wakened them from their dream.

It was by accident the English first found themselves in the waters of the Spanish Main. John Hawkins had been cruising the West Indies exchanging slaves for gold, when an ominous stillness fell on the sea.

The palm trees took on the hard glister of metal leaves. The sunless sky turned yellow, the sea to bra.s.s; and before the six English ships could find shelter, a hurricane broke that flailed the fleet under sails torn to tatters clear across the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz, the stronghold of Spanish power.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir John Hawkins.]

But Hawkins feared neither man nor devil. He {136} reefed his storm-torn sails, had the stoppers pulled out of his cannon in readiness, his gunners alert, ran up the English ensign, and boldly towed his fleet into port directly under Spanish guns. Sending a messenger ash.o.r.e, he explained that he was sorry to intrude on forbidden waters, but that he needed to careen his ships for the repair of leakages, and now asked permission from the viceroy to refit.

Perhaps, in his heart, the English adventurer wasn't sorry to get an inner glimpse of Mexico's defences. As he waited for permission, there sailed into the harbor the Spanish fleet itself, twelve merchantmen rigged as frigates, loaded with treasure to the value of one million eight hundred thousand pounds. The viceroy of Mexico, Don Martin Henriquez himself, commanded the fleet. English and Spanish ships dipped colors to each other as courteous hidalgoes might have doffed hats; and the guns roared each other salutes, that set the seas churning. Master John Hawkins quaffed mug after mug of foaming beer with a boisterous boast that if the Spaniards thought to frighten _him_ with a waste of powder and smoke, he could play the same game, and "singe the don's beard."

Came a messenger, then, clad in mail to his teeth, very pompous, very gracious, very profuse of welcome, with a guarantee in writing from the viceroy of security for Hawkins while dismantling the English ships.

In order to avoid clashes among the common soldiers, the fortified island was a.s.signed for the English to {137} disembark. It was the 12th of August, 1568. Darkness fell with the warm velvet caress of a tropic sea. Half the crew had landed, half the cannon been trundled ash.o.r.e for the vessels to be beached next day, when Hawkins noticed torches--a thousand torches--glistening above the mailed armor of a thousand Spanish soldiers marching down from the fort and being swiftly transferred to the frigates. A blare of Spanish trumpets blew to arms!

The waters were suddenly alight with the flare of five fire-rafts drifting straight where the disarmed English fleet lay moored. Hawkins had just called his page to hand round mugs of beer, when a cannon-shot splintering through the mast arms overhead ripped the tankard out of his hand.[2]

"G.o.d and Saint George," thundered the enraged Englishman, "down with the traitorous devils!"

No time to save sailors ash.o.r.e! The blazing rafts had already b.u.mped keels with the moored fleet. No chance to raise anchors! The Spanish frigates were already abreast in a life-and-death grapple, soldiers boarding the English decks, sabring the crews, hurling hand grenades down the hatches to blow up the powder magazines. Hawkins roared "to cut the cables." It was a hand-to-hand slaughter on decks slippery with blood. No light but the musketry fire and glare of burning masts!

The little English company were fighting like a wild beast trapped, when with a {138} thunderclap that tore bottom out of hull--Hawkins's ship flew into mid-air, a flaring, fiery wreck--then sank in the heaving trough of the sea, carrying down five hundred Spaniards to a watery grave. Cutla.s.s in hand, head over heels went Hawkins into the sea. The h.e.l.l of smoke, of flaming mast poles, of blazing musketry, of churning waters--hid him. Then a rope's end flung out by some friend gave handhold. He was up the sides of a ship, that had cut hawsers and off before the fire-rafts came! Sails were hoisted to the seaward breeze. In the carnage of fire and blood, the Spaniards did not see the two smallest English vessels scudding before the wind as if fiend-chased. Every light on the decks was put out. Then the dark of the tropic night hid them. Without food, without arms, with scarcely a remnant of their crews--the two ships drifted to sea.

Not a man of the sailors ash.o.r.e escaped. All were butchered, or taken prisoners for a fate worse than butchery--to be torn apart in the market-place of Vera Cruz, baited in the streets to the yells of on-lookers, hung by the arms to out-of-doors scaffolding to die by inches, or be torn by vultures. The two ships at sea were in terrible plight. North, west, south was the Spanish foe. Food there was none.

The crews ate the dogs, monkeys, parrots on board. Then they set traps for the rats of the hold. The starving seamen begged to be marooned.

They would risk Spanish cruelty to escape starvation. Hawkins landed {139} three-quarters of the remnant crews either in Yucatan or Florida.

Then he crept lamely back to England, where he moored in January, 1569.

Of the six splendid ships that had spread their sails from Plymouth, only the _Minion_ and _Judith_ came back; and those two had been under command of a thick-set, stocky, red-haired English boy about twenty-four years of age--Francis Drake of Devon, one of twelve sons of a poor clergyman, who eked out a living by reading prayers for the Queen's Navy Sundays, playing sailor week days. Francis, the eldest son, was born in the hull of an old vessel where the family had taken refuge in time of religious persecution. In spite of his humble origin, Sir Francis Russell had stood his G.o.dfather at baptism. The Earl of Bedford had been his patron. John Hawkins, a relative, supplied money for his education. Apprenticed before the mast from his twelfth year, Drake became purser to Biscay at eighteen; and so faithfully had he worked his way, when the master of the sloop died, it was bequeathed to young Drake. Emulous of becoming a great sailor like Hawkins, Drake sold the sloop and invested everything he owned in Hawkins's venture to the West Indies. He was ruined to his last penny by Spanish treachery. It was almost a religion for England to hate Spain at that time. Drake hated tenfold more now. Spain had taught the world to keep off her treasure box. Would Drake accept the lesson, or challenge it?

{140} Men who master destiny rise, like the Phenix, from the ashes of their own ruin. In the language of the street, when they fall--these men of destiny--they make a point of falling _up_stairs. Amid the ruin of ma.s.sacre in Mexico, Drake brought away one fact--memory of Spanish gold to the value of one million eight hundred thousand pounds. Where did it come from? Was the secret of that gold the true reason for Spain's resentment against all intruders? Drake had coasted Florida and the West Indies. He knew they yielded no such harvest. Then it must come from one of three other regions--South America, Central America, Mexico.

For two years Drake prospected for the sources of that golden wealth.

In the _Dragon_ and _Swan_, he cruised the Spanish Main during 1570.

In 1571 he was out again in the _Swan_. By 1572 he knew the secret of that gold--gold in ship-loads, in caravans of one thousand mules, in ma.s.ses that filled from cellar to attic of the King's Treasure House, where tribute of one-fifth was collected for royalty. It came from the subjugated Kingdom of Peru, by boat up the Pacific to the Port of Panama, by pack-train across the isthmus--mountainous, rugged, forests of mangroves tangled with vines, bogs that were bottomless--to Nombre de Dios, the Spanish fort on the Atlantic side, which had become the storehouse of all New Spain. Drake took counsel of no one.

Next year he was back on the Spanish Main, in the {141} _Pacha_, forty-seven men; his brother John commanding the _Swan_ with twenty-six of a crew, only one man older than fifty, the rest mere boys with hate in their hearts for Spanish blood, love in their hearts for Spanish gold. Touching at a hidden cove for provisions left the year before, Drake found this warning from a former comrade, stuck to the bark of a tree by a hunting knife:--

"_Captain Drake--if you do fortune into this port, haste away; for the Spaniards have betrayed this place, and taken all away that you left here--your loving friend--John Garret._"

Heeding the warning, Drake hastened away to the Isle of Pinos, off the isthmus, left the ships at a concealed cove here, armed fifty-three of his boldest fellows with muskets, crossbows, pikes, and spontoons.

Then he called for drummers and trumpeters, and rowed in a small boat for Nombre de Dios, the treasure house of New Spain. The small boat kept on the offing till dark, then sent ash.o.r.e for some Indians--half-breeds whom Spanish cruelty had driven to revolt. This increased Drake's force to one hundred and fifty men. Silently, just as the moon emerged from clouds lighting up harbor and town, the long-boat glided into Nombre de Dios. A high platform, mounted with bra.s.s cannon, fronted the water. Behind were thirty houses, thatch-roofed, whitewashed, palisaded, surrounded by courtyards with an almost European pomp. The King's Treasure House stood at one end of the market. Near it was a chapel with high wooden steeple.

{142} A Spanish ship lay furled in port. From this glided out a punt poled like mad by a Spaniard racing to reach the platform first. Drake got athwart the fellow's path, knocked him over, gagged his yells, and was up the platform before the sleepy gunner on guard was well awake.

The sentry only paused to make sure that the men scrambling up the fort were not ghosts. Then he tore at the top of his speed for the alarm-bell of the chapel and, clapping down the hatch door of the steeple stairs in the faces of the pursuing Englishmen, rang the bells like a demon possessed.

Leaving twelve men to hold the platform as a retreat, Drake sent sixteen to attack the King's Treasure just at the moment he himself, with his hundred men, should succeed in drawing the entire Spanish garrison to a sham battle on the market-place. The cannon on the platform were spiked and overturned. Drums beating, trumpets blowing, torches aflare, the English freebooter marched straight to the market.

Up at the Treasure House, John Drake and Oxenham had burst open the doors of the store-room just as the saddled mules came galloping to carry the booty beyond danger. A lighted candle on the cellar stair showed silver piled bar on bar to the value of one million pounds.

Down on the market, the English trumpeter lay dead. Drake had fallen from a sword slash and, s.n.a.t.c.hed up by comrades, the wound stanched by a scarf, was carried back to the boat, where the raiders made good their escape, richer by a million pounds with the loss of only one man.

{143} Drake cruised the Spanish Main for six more months. From the Indians he learned that the mule trains with the yearly output of Peruvian gold would leave the Pacific in midwinter to cross overland to Nombre de Dios. No use trying to raid the fort again! Spain would not be caught napping a second time. But Pedro, a Panama Indian, had volunteered to guide a small band of lightly equipped English inland behind Nombre de Dios, to the halfway house where the gold caravans stopped. The audacity of the project is unparalleled. Eighteen boys led by a man not yet in his thirtieth year accompanied by Indians were to invade a tangled thicket of hostile country, cut off from retreat, the forts of the enemy--the cruelest enemy in Christendom--on each side, no provisions but what each carried in his haversack!

Led by the Indian Pedro, the freebooters struck across country, picked up the trail behind Nombre de Dios, marched by night, hid by day, Indian scouts sending back word when a Spaniard was seen, the English scudding to ambush in the tangled woods. Twelve days and nights they marched. At ten in the morning of February 11, they were on the Great Divide. Pedro led Drake to the top of the hill. Up the trunk of an enormous tree, the Indians had cut steps to a kind of bower, or lookout. Up clambered Francis Drake. Then he looked westward.

Mountains, hills, forested valleys, rolled from his feet westward.

Beyond--what? The shining {144} expanse of the fabled South Sea! The Pacific silver in the morning light! A New World of Waters, where the sun's track seemed to pave a new path, a path of gold, to the mystic Orient! Never before had English eyes seen these waters! Never yet English prow cut these waves! Where did they lead--the endlessly rolling billows? For Drake, they seemed to lead to a New World of Dreams--dreams of gold, of glory, of immortal fame. He came down from the lookout so overcome with a great inspiration that he could not speak. Then, as with Balboa, the fire of a splendid enthusiasm lighted up the mean purposes of the adventurer to a higher manhood. Before his followers, he fell on his knees and prayed Almighty G.o.d to grant him the supreme honor of sailing an English ship on that sea!

That night the Indian came back with word that the mule train laden with gold was close on the trail. Drake scattered his men on each side of the road flat on their faces in high gra.s.s. Wealth was almost in their grasp. Hope beat riotous in the young bloods. No sound but the whir of wings as great tropic insects flitted through the dark with flashes of fire; or the clank of a soldier unstrapping haversack to steel courage by a drink of grog! An hour pa.s.sed! Two hours before the eager ears pressed to earth detected a padded hoof-beat over gra.s.s.

Then a bell tinkled, as the leader of the pack came in sight. Drunk with the glory of the day, or too much grog, some fool sailor leaped in {145} mid-air with an exultant yell! In a second the mule train had stampeded.

By the time Drake came to the halfway house,[3] the gold was hidden in the woods, and the Spaniards fleeing for their lives; though an old chronicle declares "the general" went from house to house a.s.suring the Spanish ladies they were safe. The Spaniards of Tierra Firme were simply paralyzed with fright at the apparition of pirates in the centre of the kingdom. Then scouts brought word of double danger: on the Atlantic side, Spanish frigates were searching for Drake's ships; from the Pacific, two hundred hors.e.m.e.n were advancing in hot pursuit.

Between the two--was he trapped?--Not he! Overland went a scout to the ships--Drake's own gold toothpick as token--bidding them keep offsh.o.r.e; he would find means to come out to them. Then he retreated over the trail at lightning pace, sleeping only in ambush, eating in s.n.a.t.c.hes, coming out on the coast far distant from Nombre de Dios and Spanish frigates. Binding driftwood into a raft, Drake hoisted sail of flour sacks. Saying good-by to the Indian, the freebooter noticed Pedro's eyes wander to the gold-embossed Turkish cimeter in his own hand, and at once presented scabbard and blade to the astonished savage. In grat.i.tude the Indian tossed three wedges of gold to the raft now sheering out with the tide to sea. These Drake gave {146} to his men.

Six hours the raft was drifting to the sails on the offing, and such seas were slopping across the water-logged driftwood, the men were to their waists in water when the sail-boats came to the rescue.

On Sunday morning, August 9, 1573, the ships were once more in Plymouth. Whispers ran through the a.s.sembled congregations of the churches that Drake, the bold sea-rover, was entering port loaded with foreign treasure; and out rushed every man, woman, and child, leaving the scandalized preachers thundering to empty pews.

Drake was now one of the richest men in England. At his own cost he equipped three frigates for service under Ess.e.x in Ireland, and through the young Earl was introduced to the circle of Elizabeth's advisers.

To the Queen he told his plans for sailing an English ship on the South Sea. To her, no doubt, he related the tales of Spanish gold freighting that sea, closed to the rest of the world. Good reason for England--Spain's enemy--to prove that the ocean, like air, was free to all nations! The Pope's Bull dividing off the southern hemisphere between Portugal and Spain mattered little to a nation belligerently Protestant, and less to a seaman whose dauntless daring had raised him from a wharf-rat to Queen's adviser. Elizabeth could not yet wound Spain openly; but she received Drake in audience, and presented him a magnificent sword with the words--"Who striketh thee, Drake, striketh us!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Queen Elizabeth knighting Drake.]

{147} Five ships, this time, he led out from Plymouth in November of 1577. Gales drove him back. It was December before his fleet was at sea--the _Pelican_ of one hundred tons and twenty or thirty cannon under Drake, Thomas Doughty, a courtier second to Drake, the _Elizabeth_ of eighty tons, the _Swan_, _Christopher_, and _Marygold_ no larger than fishing schooners; manned in all by one hundred and sixty sailors, mostly boys.

Outward bound for trade in Egypt, the world was told, but as merchantmen, the ships were regally equipped--Drake in velvets and gold braid, served by ten young gentlemen of n.o.ble birth, who never sat or covered in his presence without permission; service of gold plate at the mess table, where Drake dined alone like a king to the music of viols and harps; military drill at every port, and provisions enough aboard to go round the world, not just to Egypt.

January saw the fleet far enough from Egypt, at the islands off the west coast of Africa, where three vessels were scuttled, the crews all put ash.o.r.e but one Portuguese pilot carried along to Brazil as guide.

Thomas Doughty now fell in disfavor by openly acting as equal in command with Drake. Not in Egypt, but at Port St. Julian--a southern harbor of South America--anch.o.r.ed Drake's fleet. The scaffold where Magellan had executed mutineers half a century before still stood in the sands.

The _Christopher_ had already been sent adrift as useless. The _Swan_ was now broken up as unseaworthy, {148} leaving only the _Pelican_, the _Elizabeth_, and the _Marygold_. One thing more remained to be done--the greatest blot across the glory of Drake. Doughty was defiant, a party growing in his favor. When sent as prisoner to the _Marygold_, he had angered every man of the crew by high-handed authority. Drake dared not go on to unknown, hostile seas with a mutiny, or the chance of a mutiny brewing. Whether justly or unjustly, Doughty was tried at Port St. Julian under the shadow of Magellan's old scaffold, for disrespect to his commander and mutiny; and was p.r.o.nounced guilty by a jury of twelve. A council of forty voted his death. The witnesses had contradicted themselves as if in terror of Drake's displeasure; and some plainly pleaded that the jealous crew of the _Marygold_ were doing an innocent gentleman to death. The one thing Drake would not do, was carry the trouble maker along on the voyage. Like dominant spirits world over, he did not permit a life more or less to obstruct his purpose. He granted Doughty a choice of fates--to be marooned in Patagonia, or suffer death on the spot.

Protesting his innocence, Doughty spurned the least favor from his rival. He refused the choice.

Solemnly the two, accuser and accused, took Holy Communion together.

Solemnly each called on G.o.d as witness to the truth. A day each spent in prayer, these pirate fellows, who mixed their religion with their robbery, perhaps using piety as sugar-coating for their ill-deeds.

Then they dined together in the {149} commander's tent,--Fletcher, the horrified chaplain, looking on,--drank hilariously to each other's healths, to each other's voyage whatever the end might be, looked each in the eye of the other without quailing, talking nonchalantly, never flinching courage nor balking at the grim shadow of their own stubborn temper. Doughty then rose to his feet, drank his last b.u.mper, thanked Drake graciously for former kindness, walked calmly out to the old scaffold, laid his head on the block, and suffered death. Horror fell on the crew. Even Drake was shaken from his wonted calm; for he sat apart, his velvet cloak thrown back, slapping his crossed knees, and railing at the defenders of the dead man.[4] To rouse the men, he had solemn service held for the crew, and for the first time revealed to them his project for the voyage on the Pacific. After painting the glories of a campaign against Spanish ports of the South Seas, he wound up an inspiriting address with the rousing a.s.surance that after this voyage, "_the worst boy aboard would never nede to goe agayne to sea, but be able to lyve in England like a right good gentleman_."

Fletcher, the chaplain, who secretly advocated the dead man's cause, was tied to a mast pole in bilboes, with the inscription hung to his neck--"_Falsest knave that liveth_."

On August 17 they departed from "the port {150} accursed," for the Straits of Magellan, that were to lead to Spanish wealth on the Pacific.[5]

The superst.i.tious crews' fears of disaster for the death of Doughty seemed to become very real in the terrific tempests that a.s.sailed the three ships as they entered the straits. Gales lashed the cross tides to a height of thirty feet, threatening to swamp the little craft.

Mountains emerged shadowy through the mists on the south. Roiling waters met the prows from end to end of the straits. Topsails were dipped, psalms of thanks chanted, and prayers held as the ships came out on the west side into the Pacific on the 6th of September. In honor of the first English vessel to enter this ocean, Drake renamed his ship "_Golden Hind_." {151} The gales continued so furiously, Drake jocosely called the sea, _Mare Furiosum_, instead of Pacific.

The first week of October storms compelled the vessels to anchor. In the raging darkness that night, the explosive rip of a snapping hawser was heard behind the stern of the _Golden Hind_. Fearful cries rose from the waves for help. The dark form of a phantom ship lurched past in the running seas--the _Marygold_ adrift, loose from her anchor, driving to the open storm; fearful judgment--as the listeners thought--for the crew's false testimony against Doughty; for, as one old record states, "they could by no means help {152} spooming along before the sea;" and the _Marygold_ was never more seen.