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 pronounced 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 God 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 bumper, 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 assurance 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 superstitious crews' fears of disaster for the death of Doughty seemed to become very real in the terrific tempests that assailed 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.
[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.