CHAPTER III.
He who first committed himself to the perils of the great waters must have been peculiarly distinguished among men for his intrepidity. Modern adventure on the wide ocean, or in comparatively unknown seas, is not accompanied with that uncertainty and sense of utter desolation which must have filled the mind of early adventurers when driven out of sight of land by the tempest; but neither the discovery of the compass nor the many other aids to safety possessed by modern navigators free their enterprises from appalling dangers. The persevering courage of travellers evermore commands our admiration; but the voyager takes his life in his hand from the moment that he leaves the shore. The freedom from fear—nay, the cheerfulness and exultation he experiences when surrounded by the waste of waters, far away from the enjoyments of house and home; the unsubduable resolution with which he careers over the wave and encounters every vicissitude of season and climate; the strength and vastness of the element itself which is the chief scene of his daring enterprise: these are considerations that ever interweave themselves with our ideal of the sea-adventurer, and render him the object of more profound and ardent admiration than the mere traveller by land.
To ourselves, as natives of a country whose greatness is owing to commercial enterprise and superiority in the arts of navigation, these remarks forcibly apply. Maritime discovery has been oftener, much oftener, undertaken by England and Englishmen than by any other country or people in the world. Many secondary reasons for this might be alleged in addition to the primary one of discovery. Such undertakings are the means of training our sailors to hardihood and young officers to the most difficult and dangerous situations in which a ship can be placed. They accustom the officers how to take care of and to preserve the health of a ship’s company. They are the means of solid instruction in the higher branches of nautical science, and in the use of the various instruments which science has, of late years especially, brought to such perfection.
The career of the navigator thus assumes a higher character, being that of a pioneer of science and corroborator of its discoveries, than the employ or profession of any other man, however elevated the station allotted him by society. Reflection will convince the young reader that such men as Cook and Vancouver, Parry and Ross, are much more deserving of triumphal monuments than martial heroes. The dangers they encountered were fully as great, while the tendency of their grand enterprises was not to inflict suffering on mankind but to enlighten it with the knowledge of distant quarters of the globe, and to bless and enrich it by the improvement of navigation and commerce. For these reasons, the claim of the navigator to a high rank in our briefchronicle of the “Triumphs of Enterprise” would boldly assert itself, independent of the exciting nature of sea adventures.
Here is an hour of danger described by the heroic Ross, and occurring in the month of August, 1818, during that intrepid commander’s search for the long wished-for “North-West Passage.” “The two ships were caught by a gale of wind among the ice, and fell foul of each other. The ice-anchors and cables broke, one after another, and the sterns of the two ships came so violently into contact as to crush to pieces a boat that could not be removed in time. Neither the masters, the mates, nor those men who had been all their lives in the Greenland service, had ever experienced such imminent peril; and they declared that a common whaler must have been crushed to atoms. Our safety must, indeed, be attributed to the perfect and admirable manner in which the vessels had been strengthened when fitting for the service. But our troubles were not yet at an end; for, as the gale increased, the ice began to move with greater velocity, while the continued thick fall of snow kept from our sight the further danger that awaited us, till it became imminent. A large field of ice was soon discovered at a small distance, bearing fast down upon us from the west, and it thus became necessary to saw docks for refuge, in which service all hands were immediately employed. It was, however, found to be too thick for our nine-feet saws, and no progress could be made. This circumstance proved fortunate, for it was soon after perceived that the field, towhich we were moored for this purpose, was drifting rapidly on a reef of icebergs which lay aground. The topsails were therefore close-reefed, in order that we might run, as a last resource, between two bergs, or into any creek that might be found among them; when suddenly the field acquired a circular motion, so that every exertion was now necessary for the purpose of warping along the edge, that being the sole chance we had of escaping the danger of being crushed on an iceberg. In a few minutes we observed that part of the field into which we had attempted to cut our docks, come in contact with the berg, with such rapidity and violence as to rise more than fifty feet up its precipitous side, where it suddenly broke, the elevated part falling back on the rest with a terrible crash, and overwhelming with its ruins the very spot we had previously chosen for our safety. Soon afterwards the ice appeared to us sufficiently open for us to pass the reef of bergs, and we once more found ourselves in a place of security.”
The terrors of an iceberg scene are most graphically depicted by Ross, in the account of his second voyage of discovery. “It is unfortunate,” says he, “that no description can convey an idea of a scene of this nature; and, as to pencil, it cannot represent motion or noise. And to those who have not seen a northern ocean in winter—who have not seen it, I should say, in a winter’s storm—the term ice, exciting but the recollection of what they only know at rest, in an inland lake or canal, conveys no ideas of what it is the fate of an arctic navigator to witness and to feel. But let them rememberthat ice is stone; a floating rock in the stream, a promontory or an island when aground, not less solid than if it were a land of granite. Then let them imagine, if they can, these mountains of crystal hurled through a narrow strait by a rapid tide; meeting, as mountains in motion would meet, with the noise of thunder, breaking from each other’s precipices huge fragments, or rending each other asunder, till, losing their former equilibrium, they fall over headlong, lifting the sea around in breakers, and whirling it in eddies; while the flatter fields of ice forced against these masses, or against the rocks, by the wind and the stream, rise out of the sea till they fall back on themselves, adding to the indescribable commotion and noise which attend these occurrences.”
How tremendous must be the sense of danger to the tenants of a frail ship amidst such gigantic forces of nature, the most inexperienced reader can form some conception. But, overwhelming as the feeling of awe must be with the sailor surrounded with such terrors, it must be infinitely more tolerable than the prolonged and indescribably irksome heart-ache he experiences when inclosed for months in fixed ice, encompassed on every hand with desolation. “He must be a seaman,” says the same gallant adventurer, “to feel that the vessel which bounds beneath him, which listens to and obeys the smallest movement of his hand, which seems to move but under his will, is ‘a thing of life,’ a mind conforming to his wishes: not an inert body, the sport of winds and waves. But what seaman could feel thisas we did, when this creature, which used to carry us buoyantly over the ocean, had been during an entire year immoveable as the ice and the rocks around it, helpless, disobedient, dead? We were weary for want of occupation, for want of variety, for want of the means of mental exertion, for want of thought, and (why should I not say it?) for want of society. To-day was as yesterday—and as was to-day, so would be to-morrow: while, if there were no variety, no hope of better, is it wonderful that even the visits of barbarians were welcome? or can anything more strongly show the nature of our pleasures, than the confession that these visits were delightful—even as the society of London might be amid the business of London? When the winter has once in reality set in, our minds become made up on the subject; like the dormouse (though we may not sleep, which would be the most desirable condition by far), we wrap ourselves up in a sort of furry contentment, since better cannot be, and wait for the times to come: it was a far other thing to be ever awake, waiting to rise and become active, yet ever to find that all nature was still asleep, and that we had nothing more to do than to wish and groan, and—hope as we best might.” How truly poetical his description of human feeling amidst the eternal appearance of ice and snow!—“When snow was our decks, snow was our awnings, snow our observations, snow our larders, snow our salt; and, when all the other uses of snow should be at last of no more avail, our coffins and our graves were to be graves and coffins of snow. Is this not more than enough of snowthan suffices for admiration? Is it not worse, that during ten months in a year the ground is snow, and ice, and ‘slush;’ that during the whole year its tormenting, chilling, odious presence is ever before the eye? Who more than I has admired the glaciers of the extreme north? Who more has loved to contemplate the icebergs sailing from the Pole before the tide and the gale, floating along the ocean, through calm and through storm, like castles and towers and mountains, gorgeous in colouring, and magnificent, if often capricious, in form? And have I, too, not sought amid the crashing, and the splitting, and the thundering roarings of a sea of moving mountains, for the sublime, and felt that Nature could do no more? In all this there has been beauty, horror, danger, everything that could excite; they would have excited a poet even to the verge of madness. But to see, to have seen, ice and snow—to have felt snow and ice for ever, and nothing for ever but snow and ice, during all the months of a year—to have seen and felt but uninterrupted and unceasing ice and snow during all the months of four years—this it is that has made the sight of those most chilling and wearisome objects an evil which is still one in recollection, as if the remembrance would never cease.”
To bid farewell to his ship in these regions of deathly solitariness must be a trial of the heart even severer than its sense of awe amid icebergs, or wearisomeness with the eternal snow. This fell to the lot of the brave Ross and his crew. Fast beset where there was no prospect of release, they commenced carrying forwards acertain quantity of provisions, and the boats with their sledges, for the purpose of advancing more easily afterwards. The labour of proceeding over ice and snow was most severe, and the wind and snow-drift rendered it almost intolerable. On the 21st of May, 1832 (for this was during Sir John Ross’ssecondvoyage) all the provisions from their ship, the Victory, had been carried forward to the several deposits, except as much as would serve for about a month. In the process of forming these deposits it was found that they had travelled, forwards and backwards, three hundred and twenty-nine miles to gain about thirty in a direct line. Preparation was now made for their final departure, which took place on the 29th of May.
“We had now,” continues the commander, “secured everything on shore which could be of use to us in case of our return; or which, if we could not, would prove of use to the natives. The colours were therefore hoisted and nailed to the mast, we drank a parting glass to our poor ship, and having seen every man out, in the evening I took my own adieu of the Victory, which had deserved a better fate. It was the first vessel that I had ever been obliged to abandon, after having served in thirty-six, during a period of forty-two years. It was like the last parting with an old friend; and I did not pass the point where she ceased to be visible without stopping to take a sketch of this melancholy desert—rendered more melancholy by the solitary, abandoned, helpless home of our past years, fixed in immovable ice till Time should perform on her his usual work.”
After a full month’s most fatiguing journey, they encamped and constructed a canvass-covered house. This they deserted, and set out once more, but, after several weeks’ vain attempt to reach navigable water, were compelled to return, “their labours at an end, and themselves once more at home.” Here—of the provisions left behind them—flour, sugar, soups, peas, vegetables, pickles, and lemon-juice, were in abundance; but of preserved meats there remained not more than would suffice for their voyage in the boats during the next season. A monotonous winter was spent in their house; and the want of exercise, of sufficient employment, short allowance of food, lowness of spirits produced by the unbroken sight of the dull, melancholy, uniform waste of snow and ice, had the effect of reducing the whole party to a more indifferent state of health than had hitherto been experienced.
“We were indeed all very weary of this miserable home,” says Sir John Ross. “Even the storms were without variety: there was nothing to see out of doors, even when we could face the sky; and within it was to look equally for variety and employment and to find neither. If those of the least active minds dozed away their time in the waking stupefaction which such a state of things produces, they were the most fortunate of the party. Those among us who had the enviable talent of sleeping at all times, whether they were anxious or not, fared best.”
At length the long-looked-for period arrived when it was deemed necessary to abandon the house in search ofbetter fortune; and on the 7th of July, being Sunday, the last divine service was performed in their winter habitation. The following day they bid adieu to it for ever! and having been detained a short time at Batty Bay, and finding the ice to separate and a lane of water to open out, they succeeded in crossing over to the eastern side of Prince Regent Inlet. Standing along the southern shore of Barrow’s Strait, on the 26th of August they discovered a sail, and, after some tantalizing delays, they succeeded in making themselves visible to the crew of one of her boats.
“She was soon alongside,” proceeds Sir John Ross, “when the mate in command addressed us, by presuming that we had met with some misfortune and lost our ship. This being answered in the affirmative, I requested to know the name of his vessel, and expressed our wish to be taken on board. I was answered that it was the ‘Isabella of Hull, once commanded by Captain Ross;’ on which I stated that I was the identical man in question, and my people the crew of the Victory. That the mate who commanded this boat was as much astonished at this information as he appeared to be I do not doubt; while, with the usual blunderheadedness of men on such occasions, he assured me that I had been dead two years! I easily convinced him, however, that what ought to have been true, according to his estimate, was a somewhat premature conclusion, as the bear-like form of the whole set of us might have shown him had he taken time to consider that we were certainly not whaling gentlemen, and that we carried tolerable evidence of our being ‘truemen, and no impostors’ on our backs, and in our starved and unshaven countenances. A hearty congratulation followed, of course, in the true seaman style, and after a few natural inquiries he added that the ‘Isabella was commanded by Captain Humphreys,’ when he immediately went off in his boat to communicate his information on board, repeating that we had long been given up as lost, not by them alone, but by all England.
“As we approached slowly after him to the ship, he jumped up the side, and in a minute the rigging was manned, while we were saluted with three cheers as we came within cable’s length, and were not long in getting on board of my old vessel, where we were all received by Captain Humphreys with a hearty seaman’s welcome.
“Though we had not been supported by our names and characters, we should not the less have claimed, from charity, the attentions that we received, for never was seen a more miserable-looking set of wretches; while, that we were but a repulsive-looking people, none of us could doubt. If to be poor, wretchedly poor, as far as all our present property was concerned, was to have a claim on charity, no one could well deserve it more; but if to look so as to frighten away the so-called charitable, no beggar that wanders in Ireland could have outdone us in exciting the repugnance of those who have not known what poverty can be. Unshaven since I know not when, dirty, dressed in the rags of wild beasts instead of the tatters of civilization, and starved to the very bones, our gaunt and grim looks, when contrasted with those of the well-dressed and well-fed men around us,made us all feel, I believe for the first time, what we really were as well as what we seemed to others. Poverty is without half its mark unless it be contrasted with wealth; and what we might have known to be true in the past days, we had forgotten to think of till we were thus reminded of what we truly were as well as seemed to be.
“But the ludicrous soon took place of all other feelings; in such a crowd and such confusion all serious thought was impossible, while the new buoyancy of our spirits made us abundantly willing to be amused by the scene which now opened. Every man was hungry and was to be fed, all were ragged and were to be clothed, there was not one to whom washing was not indispensable, nor one whom his beard did not deprive of all English semblance. All, everything, too, was to be done at once; it was washing, dressing, shaving, eating, all intermingled; it was all the materials of each jumbled together; while, in the midst of all, there were interminable questions to be asked and answered on all sides: the adventures of the Victory, our own escapes, the politics of England, and the news which was now four years old. But all subsided into peace at last. The sick were accommodated, the seamen disposed of, and all was done for all of us which care and kindness could perform. Night at length brought quiet and serious thoughts, and I trust there was not one man among us who did not then express, where it was due, his gratitude for that interposition which had raised us all from a despair which none could now forget, and had broughtus from the very borders of a not distant grave to life, and friends, and civilization.
“Long accustomed, however, to a cold bed on the hard snow or the bare rock, few could sleep amid the comfort of our new accommodations. I was myself compelled to leave the bed which had been kindly assigned me and take my abode in a chair for the night, nor did it fare much better with the rest. It was for time to reconcile us to this sudden and violent change, to break through what had become habit, and to inure us once more to the usages of our former days.”
As a curious contrast to these exciting descriptions of danger, we will sketch in as compact a form as possible the first voyage round the world performed by an Englishman—namely, our illustrious countryman, Sir Francis Drake.
Queen Elizabeth, on presenting a sword to the commander of a secret expedition, said, “We do account that he which striketh at thee, Drake, striketh at us.” His fleet consisted of five ships—the Pelican, of 120 tons burthen; the Elizabeth, a bark of 80 tons; the Swan, a fly-boat of 50 tons; the Marygold, a barque of 30 tons, and the Christopher, a pinnace of 15 tons, and was ostensibly fitted out for a trading voyage to Alexandria, though this pretence did not deceive the watchful Spaniards. Drake, like Columbus and Cook, chose small ships as better fitted to thread narrow and difficult channels. The crews of his little squadron amounted to one hundred and sixty men; an old author says that he did not omit “provision for ornament and delight, carryingwith him expert musicians, rich furniture (all the vessels for his table, yea, many belonging to his cook-room, being of pure silver), with divers shows of all sorts of curious workmanship whereby the civility and magnificence of his native country might, among all nations whither he should come, be the more admired.”
Although it is likely that the intrepid resolve of crossing the Pacific Ocean was not originally formed by Drake, and only entered into from circumstances in which he was afterwards placed, he is not the less entitled to the praise so often given him for penetrating with so small a force the channel explored by Magellan and known by his name. The passage through the Straits of Magellan had long been abandoned by the Spaniards, and a superstition had arisen against adventuring into the Pacific, as likely to prove fatal to any who are engaged in the discovery or even in the navigation of its waters.
Drake was at first driven back by a violent storm; but, unintimidated by this adverse augury, he finally set sail from Plymouth on the 13th of December, 1577. On Christmas-day they reached Cape Cantin, on the coast of Barbary, and on the 27th found a safe and commodious harbour in Mogadore. Here Drake had some unpleasant transactions with Muley Moloc, the celebrated king of the Moors, but sailed again on the last day of the year. The less important places touched at in the succeeding part of the voyage were Cape Blanco, the isles of Mayo and San Jago, and the “Isla del Fogo,” or Burning Island, together with “Ilba Brava,” or the Brave Island. The equinoctial line is afterwards crossedamidst alternate calms and tempest; they are supplied with fresh water by copious rains, and they also catch dolphins, bonitos, and flying-fish which fell on the decks, “where hence,” says the invaluable Hakluyt, “they could not rise againe for want of moisture, for when their wings are drie they cannot flie.” At length, on the 5th of April, they had fully voyaged across the wide Atlantic, and made the coast of Brazil in 31° 30´ south latitude. They saw the natives raising fires on the shore, beheld troops of wild deer, “large and mightie,” and saw the foot-prints of men of large stature on the beach. On the 15th of the same month they anchored in the great River Plate, where they killed “certaine sea-wolves, commonly called seales.” They thus secured a new supply of fresh provisions, and shortly after of fresh water.
Seals
On the 27th they again stood out to sea, and steered southward. The Swan was outsailed by the rest of the little fleet, and also the Mary, a very small Portuguese vessel, or caunter, which they had taken in their course. On the 12th of May, Drake anchored within view of a headland, and the next morning went in a boat to the shore. Here he was in some danger, for a thick fog came on and shut him from the view of the vessels; a gale also arose and drove them out to sea. Fires were at length lighted, all the vessels, save the Swan and the Mary, were again collected together. Fifty dried ostriches, besides other fowls, are related to have been here found deposited by the savages, and of this store the ships’ crews took possession. Upwards of two hundred seals were also taken and slaughtered; and while a party was filling water-casks, killing seals, and salting fowls for future provision, Drake himself set sail in the Pelican, and Captain Winter in the Elizabeth, each on different tacks, in search of the Swan and the Mary. Drake soon found the Swan, and, to diminish the cares and hazards of the voyage, removed all her stores and then broke her up for firewood.
The place of rendezvous was named Seal Bay, and some highly interesting accounts of interviews with the savage native tribes during their stay here are given in Hakluyt. On the 3rd of June they set sail once more; on the 19th they found the missing Portuguese prize, the Mary; and the next day the whole squadron moored in Port San Julian, latitude 49° 30´ S.
A very perilous squabble took place here with thenative Patagonians. A gunner belonging to the crew was shot through with an arrow, and died on the spot, and Robert Winter, relative of the officer above mentioned, was wounded, and died in consequence shortly afterwards. The stature of these tribes has been the subject of dispute from the time of Magellan to our own. An old author in Hakluyt says, “These men be of no such stature as the Spaniardes report, being but of the height of Englishmen: for I have seene men in England taller than I could see any of them. But peradventure the Spaniard did not thinke that any Englishman would have come thither so soone to have disproved them in this and divers others of their notorious lies.” Another author, however, makes the Patagonians seven feet and a half in height.
An event occurred while the fleet lay at Port San Julian, which has cast a deep shade of suspicion over the character of Drake. This was the execution of Thomas Doughty, accused of mutiny and a conspiracy to massacre Drake and the principal officers. We leave the young reader to investigate the matter in other works, and proceed with our abridged narrative.
After breaking up the Portuguese prize and reducing the number of ships to three, they again set sail on the 17th of August—the weather being colder than midwinter in Britain—and on the 24th anchored thirty leagues within the Strait of Magellan. Here Drake changed the name of his ship, the Pelican, to the Golden Hind, in compliment to his friend, Sir Christopher Hatton, in whose escutcheon the goldenhind is said to have had a place. While passing through the strait, which they computed to be 110 leagues in length, they noted that the width varied from one league to four; that the tide set in from each end of the strait and met about the middle; and they also killed 3000 “of birds having no wings, but short pineons which serve their turne in swimming.” These penguins, as they undoubtedly were, are also described as being “fat as an English goose.”
On the 6th of September, 1578, Drake and his gallant crew sailed their ships on the great Pacific. Magellan had passed through the strait in 1520, and but two other voyagers had performed the passage after Magellan, and before Drake.
A north-east passage was one main object contemplated by Drake; and accordingly, on clearing the strait, he held a north-west course, and in two days the fleet advanced seventy leagues. A violent gale from the north-east now drove them into 57° south latitude and 200 leagues to the west. Under bare poles they scudded before the tempest, and observed an eclipse of the moon on the 15th of September; “but,” says a narrator, in Hakluyt, “neyther did the eclipticall conflict of the moon impayre our state, nor her clearing againe amend us a whit, but the accustomed eclipse of the sea continued in his force, wee being darkened more than the moone sevenfold.” After a short season of moderate weather, another tempest separated from them the ship Marygold, and she was never more heard of. The Golden Hind and Elizabeth were now left to pursue thevoyage; but on being driven back to the western entrance of the strait, Winter, the commander of the Elizabeth, heartily tired of the voyage, slipped away from Drake and returned to England. He reached this country in June, 1579, with the credit of having achieved the navigation of the Straits of Magellan, but with the shame of having deserted his commander.
The gallant Drake in the Golden Hind had stormy weather to encounter for some time after, and was driven so far south as to anchor in a creek at Cape Horn, and thus became the discoverer of that southern point of the entire continent of America.
The wind changing he steered northwards, and on the 25th of November, 1578, anchored near the coast of Chili, where he had another collision with the natives and lost two of his men. Soon afterwards they fell in with a people of more friendly manners, and learned that they had oversailed Valparaiso, the port of San Jago, where a Spanish ship lay at anchor. They put back and took the ship, called the Grand Captain of the South, in which were 60,000 pesos of gold, besides jewels, merchandise, and a good store of Chili wine. Each peso was valued at eight shillings. They rejoiced over their plunder; but in our own times such an act would be deemed a piracy. Nine families inhabited Valparaiso, but they fled, and the English revelled in the pillage of wine, bread, bacon, and other luxuries to men long accustomed to hard fare. They plundered the church also of a silver chalice, two cruets, and an altar-cloth, and presented them to the chaplain of the vessel.
On the 19th of January, 1579, after some period of rest in a harbour, they pursued their voyage along the coast, and accidentally landing at Tarapaza, they found a Spaniard asleep on the shore with thirteen bars of silver lying beside him. “We took the silver and left the man,” says the relator. A little farther on a party which was sent ashore to procure water fell in with a Spaniard and a native boy driving eight llamas, each of which was laden with two leathern bags containing fifty pounds of silver, or eight hundred in all. They not only took on board the llamas and the silver, but soon after fell in with three small barks quite empty (the crews being on shore), save that they found in them fifty-seven wedges of silver, each weighing twenty pounds. They took the silver and set the barks adrift. After some other trifling adventures they learned that the Cacafuego, a ship laden with gold and silver, had just sailed for Panama, the point whence all goods were carried by the Spaniards across the isthmus. Away they bore in search of this ship, but were near being overtaken by a superior force of Spaniards in two ships. Escaping, they passed Payta, and learned that the Cacafuego had the start of them but two days. Two other vessels were next taken, with some silver, eighty pounds of gold, and a golden crucifix “with goodly great emerauds set in it.” The Cacafuego was at length overtaken and captured: the ship contained twenty-six tons of silver, thirteen chests of rials of plate, and eighty pounds of gold, besides diamonds and inferior gems, the whole estimated at 360,000 pesos. The uncoined silver alone found in thevessel may be estimated at 212,000l., at five shillings an ounce.
It seems questionable whether, when thus richly laden, Drake would have thought of encompassing the globe if he could have assured himself of a safe voyage to England by returning through the Straits of Magellan. He knew that the Spaniards would be on the alert to recover the treasure, and so resolved to seek a north-east passage homeward. After remaining a short time in a safe harbour to repair the ship, he commenced the voyage once more. Delays were made for plunder and prizetaking until the 26th of April, when Drake stood boldly out to sea, and by the 3rd of June had sailed 1400 leagues on different courses without seeing land. He had now reached 42° north latitude, and the cold was felt severely. On the 5th, being driven by a gale, land was seen, to the surprise of Drake, who had not calculated that the continent stretched so far westward. The adventurers were now coasting the western margin of California.
They anchored at length in 38° 30´ north latitude, and were soon surrounded with native Indians, who, among other remarkable things, offered themtabah, or tobacco. Drake spent thirty-six days here for completing the repairs of his ship, took possession of the country formally, by erecting a monument and fixing a brass plate upon it, bearing the name, effigy, and arms of Queen Elizabeth, and called the country New Albion. To the port in which they had anchored he gave his own name, and on the 23rd of July bore away direct west as possibleacross the Pacific, with the intent to reach England by India and the Cape of Good Hope.
No land was seen by the gallant men on board this little ship for sixty-eight days. On the 30th of September they fell in with some islands in 8° north latitude, which they termed the Isle of Thieves, from the dishonest disposition of the natives. On the 16th of October they reached the Philippines, and anchored at Mindanao. On the 3rd of November the Moluccas were seen, and they soon anchored before the chief town of Ternate, entered into civil gossip with the natives, and were visited by the king, “a true gentleman Pagan.” Among the presents received from this royal person were fowls, rice, sugar, cloves, figs, and “a sort of meale which they callsagu, made of the tops of certaine trees, tasting in the mouth like soure curds, but melteth like sugar, whereof they make certaine cakes, which may be kept the space of ten yeeres and yet then good to be eaten.” Brilliant offers were made by the Sultan of Ternate; but Drake was shy of them, and on the 9th of November, having taken in a large quantity of cloves, the Golden Hind left the Moluccas.
On the 14th they anchored near the eastern part of Celebes, and finding the land uninhabited and abundant in forests, they determined there fully to repair the ship for her voyage home. “Throughout the groves,” say the old writers in Purchas and Hakluyt, “there flickered innumerable bats ‘as bigge as large hennes.’ There were also multitudes of ‘fiery wormes flying in the ayre,’ no larger than the common fly in England, which skimmingup and down between woods and bushes, made “such a shew and light as if every twigge or tree had bene a burning candle.” They likewise saw great numbers of land-crabs, or cray-fish, “of exceeding bignesse, one whereof was sufficient for foure hungry stomackes at a dinner, being also very good and restoring meat, whereof wee had experience; and they digge themselves holes in the earth like conies.”
On the 12th of December they again set sail; but now came their great peril. After being entangled in shoals among the Spice Islands for some days, in the night of the 9th of January, 1580, the Golden Hind struck on a rock. No leak appeared; but the ship was immovable. The ebb tide left her in but six feet water, while, so deeply was she laden, that it required thirteen feet of water to float her. Eight guns, three tons of cloves, and a quantity of meal were thrown overboard, but this did not relieve the ship. “We stucke fast,” says the narrator in Hakluyt, “from eight of the clocke at night til foure of the clocke in the afternoone the next day, being indeede out of all hope to escape the danger; but our generall, as he had alwayes hitherto shewed himself couragious, and of a good confidence in the mercie and protection of God, so now he continued in the same; and lest he should seeme to perish wilfully, both hee and wee did our best indevour to save ourselves, which it pleased God so to blesse, that in the ende we cleared ourselves most happily of the danger.”
Their ship in deep water once more, they reached the Isle of Barateve on the 8th of February, and were kindlyand handsomely treated by the inhabitants. Java was reached on the 12th of March, and here again they were generously received. On the 26th they left Java, and did not again see land till they passed the Cape of Good Hope, on the 15th of June. The Portuguese being acquaintances, Drake did not wish just then to meet; he did not land at the Cape, but steered away north, and on the 22nd of July arrived at Sierra Leone. Finally, on the 26th of September, 1580, after an absence of two years and ten months, he came to anchor in the harbour of Plymouth.
The riches he had brought home, the daring bravery he had displayed, the perils undergone, the marvels told of the strange countries visited, made Drake the idol of the whole English people. On the 4th of April, 1581, Queen Elizabeth went in state to dine on board the Golden Hind, then lying at Deptford. After the banquet she knighted the gallant circumnavigator, and also gave orders that his vessel should be preserved as a monument of the glory of the nation and of the illustrious voyager.