and kept a chaplain. There are, to be sure, in the anonymous "short abstract" of this voyage "in the handwriting of the time," published by the Hakluyt Society, some ugly hints as to the private morals of the officers of Drake's ship, including the captain himself. And there is something very grotesque in the final fall from grace of the chaplain, Francis Fletcher, himself, as described in a memorandum among the Harleian MSS. This is the same chaplain who had the chalice and the altar-cloth as his share of the plunder of a church at Santiago. Drake afterwards found him guilty of mutiny, and apparently felt himself free to pronounce both temporal and spiritual penalties, as given in the following narrative by an eye-witness: "Drake excommunicated Fletcher shortly after. . . . He called all the company together, and then put a lock about one of his legs, and Drake sytting cros legged on a chest, and a paire of pantoffles [slippers] in his hand, he said, Francis Fletcher, I doo heere excomunicate the out of ye Church of God, and from all benefites and graces thereof, and I denounce the to the divell and all his angells; and then he charged him vppon payne of death not once to come before the mast, for if hee did, he swore he should be hanged; and Drake cawsed a posy [inscription] to be written and boñd about Fletcher's arme, with chardge that if hee took it of hee should then be hanged. The poes [posy or inscription] was, Francis fletcher, y' falsest knave that liveth." Carthagena was next attacked by Drake, and far more stoutly defended, the inhabitants having had twenty days' notice because of the attack on San Domingo. Carthagena was smaller, but for various reasons more important; there had been preparations for attack, the women and children had been sent away, with much valuable property; a few oldfashioned cannon had been brought together; there were barricades made of earth and water-pipes across the principal streets; there were pointed sticks tipped with Indian poisons, and stuck in the ground, points upward. There were also Indian allies armed with bows and poisoned arrows. Against all these obstacles the Englishmen charged pell-mell with pikes and swords, relying little upon fire-arms. They had longer pikes than the Spaniards, and more of the Englishmen were armed. “Every man came so willingly on to the service, as the enemy was not able to endure the fury of such hot assault." It ended in the ransoming of the town for 110,000 ducats, or about £30,000. It seems, by the report of the council of captains, that £100,000 had been the original demand, but these officers say that they can "with much honor and reputation,” accept the smaller sum after all, "inasmuch," they add, "as we have taken our full pleasure, both in the uttermost sacking and spoiling of all their household goods and merchandise, as also in that we have consumed and ruined a great part of the town by fire.” After all, the Englishmen. insisted that this ransom did not include the abbey and the block-house or castle, and they forced the Spaniards to give "a thousand crowns" more for the abbey, and because there was no money left with which to redeem the castle, it was blown up by the English. Drake afterwards took St. Augustine, already settled by the Spaniards, and after sailing northward, and taking on board the survivors of Raleigh's unsuccessful colony in what is now North Carolina, he sailed for England. What a lawless and even barbarous life was this which Drake led upon the American coast and among the Spanish settlements! Yet he was not held to have dishonored his nation, but the contrary. His Queen rewarded him, poets sang of him, and Sir Philip Sidney, the mirror of all chivalry at that day, would have joined one of his expeditions had not his royal mistress kept him at home. The Spaniards would have done no better, to be sure, and would have brought to bear all the horrors of the Inquisition besides. Yet the English were apt pupils in all the atrocities of personal torture. Cavendish, who afterwards sailed in the track of Drake, circumnavigating the globe like him, took a small bark on the coast of Chili, which vessel had on board three Spaniards and a Fleming. These men were bound to Lima with letters warning the inhabitants of the approach of the English, and they had sworn before their priests that in case of danger the letters should be thrown overboard. "Yet our General," says THOMAS CAVENDISH. the narrator, "wrought so with them that they did confess it; but he was fain to cause them to be tormented with their thumbs in a wrench, and to continue three several times with extreme pain. Also he made the old Fleming believe that he would hang him, and the rope being about his neck, he was pulled up a little from the hatches, and yet he would not confess, choosing rather to die than to be perjured. In the end it was confessed by one of the Spaniards." Who can help feeling more respect for the fidelity of this old man, who would die but not break his oath, than for the men who tortured him? gave Yet it is just to say that the expeditions of Cavendish, like the later enterprises of Drake, were a school for personal courage, and were not aimed merely against the defenceless. Cavendish battle off California to the great Spanish flagship of the Pacific, the Santa Anna, of 700 tons burden, bound home from the Philippine Islands. They fought for five or six hours with heavy ordnance and with small-arms, and the Spaniards at last surrendered. There were on board 122,000 pesos of gold, besides silks and satins and other merchandise, with provisions and wines. These Cavendish seized, put the crew and passengers-nearly 200 in all-on shore, with tents, provisions, and planks, and burned the Santa Anna |