Francis Drake sailed to Biscay under William, and at St. Sebastian met some Plymouth sailors who had just emerged half-dead from the dungeons of the Inquisition. Thus little by little the "Scourge of the Spanish Main" was being moulded by sights and sounds of cruelty to fight against Philip.
Then he sailed under Fenner to the West Indies and saw some sharp conflicts, was treacherously attacked, and came home empty-handed.
Again, in 1567, he sailed as pilot under John Hawkins to Guinea, took a prize, The Grace of God, and was made its captain.
It is very strange how history repeats itself, for Las Casas, the apostle to the Indians, was even then urging the employment of negroes to take the place of the Indians in South America, who died too quickly in their forced service: just as the Chinese were recently brought over to the Rand to save the lives of the Kaffirs. So John Hawkins had good authority for his kidnapping of African slaves, and may have thought he was doing good, not evil.
How the voyage prospered has been told in an earlier chapter.
But it sent home Hawkins and Drake in a temper that boded ill for Philip, if ever opportunity should make a great revenge a possibility.
Drake no sooner arrived at Plymouth than he was bidden by William Hawkins to ride post-haste to London to inform the Council of his ill-treatment. It was another argument in favour of war with Spain.
Drake took service in the Queen's Navy, and sailed under Sir William Winter to Rochelle, to convoy English merchantmen to the Baltic.
That summer he came home on leave and married Mary Newman, who was living at St. Bordeaux, close to Plymouth.
But his domestic happiness was soon broken off by his being ordered to sail with the Dragon and the Swan to the Spanish Indies. He was only to use his senses and find out where Spain was most vulnerable.