“Tell me about the Cacafuego,” bade the queen, and Drake said:—
“We took a Spanish ship, and one of the sailors said, ‘Let me go free and I will tell you such news as you never heard before.’ I promised, and he said, ‘There’s a ship not far ahead of you, her name is the Cacafuego, and if you can catch her, you’ll have such a prize as you never saw in a dream—and I’ll get my revenge on her captain for this,’ he muttered, and then he put his hand on a great red scar on his forehead. We chased her to Payta, but she had gone to Panama, and when we came to Panama, she was somewhere else. ‘I’ll give a gold chain to the first man that sees her,’ I said, and, your Majesty, if I had even given an order to drop anchor, I verily believe every man of them would have climbed the masthead. Well, about three o’clock one afternoon my page John caught sight of her, and we pursued. Oh, but it was glorious! I wish you had been there!” said the sturdy sailor, forgetting for a moment that he was addressing the sovereign of England.
“So do I,” declared Elizabeth, and she too forgot that she was a queen, she forgot everything but the wild adventures that the man before her had met. Drake went on:—
“We fired across her bow, but she wouldn’t stop. Then we shot three pieces of ordnance and struck down her mizzen mast, and we boarded her. A man could wade up to his waist in the treasure in her hold. There were thirteen chests full of Spanish reals, there were six and twenty tons of silver, and fourscore pounds of gold, and there were jewels and precious stones. Your Majesty can see them in the Tower, but oh, how they glittered and flashed and sparkled in the dark hold of the vessel when we broke open the caskets and turned the light of the lanterns on them, and how the dons swore at us! It’s many a month that they should do penance for that day’s work.”
“I really wonder that you didn’t excommunicate them as you did your own chaplain,” said Elizabeth.
“They were only swearing, and he was a coward,” explained Drake. “A man who’ll go about among the sailors before a fight and tell them he is not sure that it is the will of God to give them the victory ought to be excommunicated, he ought to be hanged.”
“Tell me again just what you said,” demanded the queen, “that I may see what penalty you deserve for daring to show dishonor to one of my chaplains.”
“I chained him by the leg to the forehatch,” replied Drake, “and I said, ‘Francis Fletcher, I do here excommunicate thee out of the church of God, and I renounce thee to the devil and all his angels;’ and then I tied a riband around his arm, and I said, ‘If so be that you dare to unbind this riband, you’ll swing from that yardarm as sure as my name is Francis Drake.’”
“And what was it you wrote on the riband?” asked the queen, though well knowing the answer.
“I wrote ‘Francis Fletcher, the falsest knave that liveth.’ I don’t see how I could have done less.”