[Illustration: The Golden Hind.]
Meanwhile like disaster had befallen the Golden Hind, the cable snapping weak as thread against the drive of tide and wind. Only the Elizabeth kept her anchor grip, and her crew became so panic-stricken, they only waited till the storm abated, then turned back through the straits, swift heels to the stormy, ill-fated sea, and steered straight for England, where they moored in June. Towed by the Golden Hind, now driving southward before the tempest, was a jolly-boat with eight men. The mountain seas finally wrenched the tow-rope from the big ship, and the men were adrift in the open boat. Their fortunes are a story in itself. Only one of the eight survived to reach England after nine years' wandering in Brazil.[6]
Onward, sails furled, bare poles straining to the storm, drifted Drake in the Golden Hind. Luck, that so often favors daring, or the courage, that is its own talisman, kept him from the rocks. With battened hatches he drove before what he could not {153} stem, southward and south, clear down where Atlantic and Pacific met at Cape Horn, now for the first time seen by navigator. Here at last, on October 30, came a lull. Drake landed, and took possession of this earth's end for the Queen. Then he headed his prow northward for the forbidden waters of the Pacific bordering New Spain. Not a Spaniard was seen up to the Bay of San Filipe off Chile, where by the end of November Drake came on an Indian fisherman. Thinking the ship Spanish, the fellow offered to pilot her back eighteen miles to the harbor of Valparaiso.
Spanish vessels lay rocking to the tide as Drake glided into the port. So utterly impossible was it deemed for any foreign ship to enter the Pacific, that the Spanish commander of the fleet at anchor dipped colors in salute to the pirate heretic, thinking him a messenger from Spain, and beat him a rattling welcome on the drum as the Golden Hind knocked keels with the Spanish bark. Drake, doubtless, smiled as he returned the salute by a wave of his plumed hat. The Spaniards actually had wine jars out to drown the newcomers ashore, when a quick clamping of iron hooks locked the Spanish vessel in death grapple to the Golden Hind. An English sailor leaped over decks to the Spanish galleon with a yell of "Downe, Spanish dogges!" The crew of sixty English pirates had swarmed across the vessel like hornets before the poor hidalgo knew what had happened. Head over heels, down the hatchway, reeled the astonished dons. Drake clapped down {154} hatches, and had the Spaniards trapped while his men went ashore to sack the town. One Spaniard had succeeded in swimming across to warn the port.[7] When Drake landed, the entire population had fled to the hills. Rich plunder in wedges of pure gold, and gems, was carried off from the fort. Not a drop of blood was shed. Crews of the scuttled vessels were set ashore, the dismantled ships sent drifting to open sea. The whole fiasco was conducted as harmlessly as a melodrama, with a moral thrown in; for were not these zealous Protestants despoiling these zealous Catholics, whose zeal, in turn, had led them to despoil the Indian? There was a moral; but it wore a coat of many colors.
