To avert disaster for the sacrilege of the sacred touch of healing, Drake added to his prayers strong lotions and good ginger plasters. Sometime in the next five weeks, Drake travelled inland with the Indians, and because of patriotism to his native land and the resemblance of the white sand cliffs to that land, called the region "New Albion." "New Albion" would be an offset to "New Spain." Drake saw himself a second Cortés, and nailed to a tree a brass plate on which was graven the Queen's name, the year, the free surrender of the country to the {165} Queen, and Drake's own name; for, says the chaplain, quite ignorant of Spanish voyages, "the Spaniards never had any dealing, or so much as set a foot in this country, the utmost of their discoveries reaching only many degrees Southward of this place."
Drake's misunderstanding of the Indian ceremony would be comical if it were not that later historians have solemnly argued whether an act of possession by a pirate should hold good in international law.
On the 23d of July the English pirate bade farewell to the Indians. As he looked back from the sea, they were running along the hilltops burning more of the fires which he thought were sacrifices.
Following the chart taken from the Spanish ship, Drake steered for the Philippines, thence southward through the East Indies to the Indian Ocean, and past Good Hope, back to Plymouth, where he came to anchor on September 26, 1580. Bells were set ringing. Post went spurring to London with word that Drake, the corsair, who had turned the Spanish world upside down, had come home. For a week the little world of England gave itself up to feasting. Ballads rang with the fame of Drake. His name was on every tongue. One of his first acts was to visit his old parents. Then he took the Golden Hind round the Channel to be dry-docked in Deptford.
For the once, the tactful Queen was in a quandary. Complaints were pouring in from Spain. The {166} Spanish ambassador was furious, and presented bills of sequestration against Drake, but as the amount sequestered, pending investigation, was only fifty-six thousand pounds, one may suspect that Elizabeth let Drake protect in his own way what he had taken in his own way. For six months, while the world resounded with his fame, the court withheld approval. Jealous courtiers "deemed Drake the master thief of the unknown world," till Elizabeth cut the Gordian knot by one of her defiant strokes. On April 4 she went in state to dine on the Golden Hind, to the music of those stringed instruments that had harped away Drake's fear of death or devil as he ploughed an English keel round the world. After the dinner, she bade him fall to his knees and with a light touch of the sword gave him the title that was seal of the court's approval. The Golden Hind was kept as a public relic till it fell to pieces on the Thames, and the wood was made into a memorial chair for Oxford.
[Illustration: The Silver Map of the World. Both sides of a medal struck off at the time of Drake's return to England, commemorating his voyage around the world. The faint dotted line shows the course sailed by him in the Golden Hind.]
After all the perils Drake saw in the subsequent war—Cadiz and the Armada—it seems strange that he should return to the scene of his past exploits to die. He was with Hawkins in the campaign of 1595 against Spain in the New World. Things had not gone well. He had not approved of Hawkins's plans of attack, and the venture was being bungled. Sick of the equatorial fever, or of chagrin from failure, Drake died off Porto Bello in the fifty-first year of his age. His body {167} was placed in a leaden coffin, and solemnly committed to that sea where he had won his first glory.[11]
[1] This is but a brief epitome of the Spaniard's swelling words. Only the Heavens above were omitted from Spain's claim.