Part 36

"Sneck up!" laughed Doughty, "he would not dare hang a gentleman!" but he felt a creeping chill at the back of his neck.

On the desolate island where the stump of Magellan's gallows stood black against a crimson dawn, they landed and the tragedy of estrangement and suspicion ended. Thomas Doughty was tried for mutiny and treason before a jury of his peers. Every man there held him a traitor, yet he was acquitted for lack of evidence. Thus encouraged, Doughty boldly declared that they should all smart for this when Burleigh heard of it. What he had done to hinder the voyage, he averred, was by Burleigh's orders, for before they sailed he had gone to that wily statesman and told him the entire scheme.

In a flash of merciless revelation Drake saw the truth. He left Doughty to await the verdict, called the companies down to the shore, and there told them the story of the expedition from first to last, not overlooking the secret orders of the Queen.

"This man was my friend," he said with a break in his voice such as they had not heard save at the suffering of a child. "I would not take his life,--but if he be worthy of death, I pray you hold up your hands."

There was a breathless instant when none stirred; then every hand was raised.

On the next day but one they all sat down to a last feast on that bleak and lonely shore; the two comrades drank to each other for the last time, shared the sacrament, and embracing, said their farewells. Doughty proved that if he could not live a true man he could die like a gentleman; the headsman did his work, and Drake pronounced the solemn sentence, "Lo! this is the death of traitors!"

In that black hour the boyish laughter went forever from the eyes of the Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice. When after a while young Jack Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between them, began some phrase of blundering boyish affection, the sentence trailed off into a stammer.

"He's dead and at peace, Jack," the master said, the words dropping wearily, like spent bullets. "He couldn't help being as he was,--I reckon. If I'd known he was like that I could ha' stopped him, but I never knew--till too late."

Discord among the crews continued, until Drake, rousing from his fitful melancholy, called them all together on a Sunday, and mounted to the place of the chaplain.

"I am going to preach to-day," he said shortly. Then he unfolded a paper and began to read it aloud.

"My masters, I am a very bad orator, for my bringing up hath not been in learning; but what I shall speak here let every man take good notice of and let him write it down. For I will speak nothing but what I will answer it in England, yea, and before Her Majesty." He reminded them of the great adventure before them and went on.

"Now by the life of God this mutiny and dissension must cease. Here is such controversy between the gentlemen and the sailors that it doth make me mad to hear it. I must have the gentleman to haul with the mariner and the mariner with the gentleman. I would know him that would refuse to set his hand to a rope--but I know there is not any such here.

"Any who desire to go home may go in the Marygold, but let them take care that they do go home, for if I find them in my way I will sink them."

Then beginning with Wynter he reduced every officer to the ranks forthwith, reprimanded known offenders, and wound up with this appeal:

"We have set by the ears three mighty sovereigns, and if this voyage have not success we shall be a scorning unto our enemies and a blot on our country forever. What triumph would it not be for Spain and Portugal! The like of this would never more be tried!" Then he gave every man his former rank and dismissed them. Moone, meeting Will Harvest that night by the light of a bonfire, was the only man who dared venture a comment. "We was spoilin' for a lickin'," he said, "and we got it. I do hope and trust we'll keep out o' mischief till Frankie gets us home to Plymouth, Hol'." Will grinned back cheerfully, and there was a subdued laugh from the group about the fire. The fleet was itself again.

Adventure after adventure succeeded, wilder than minstrel ever sang. The Marygold went down with all hands; Wynter in the Elizabeth, believing the Admiral lost, turned homeward; the Christopher and the Swan had already been broken up. All alone the little Golden Hynde, blown southward, sailed around Cape Horn and proved the Antarctic continent a myth. Then Drake steered northward after more than two month's tossing on the uncharted seas, to revictual his ship in Spanish ports, fill his hold with the rich cargoes of one prize ship after another, and capture at last the great annual treasure-ship Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, nicknamed the Spitfire because she was better armed than most of the ships plying on that coast. As they ballasted the Golden Hynde with silver from her huge hulk the jesting seamen dubbed her the Spit-silver. The little flagship was literally brimful of silver bars, ingots of gold, pieces of eight, and jewels whose value has never been accurately known. The Spanish Adelantados, accustomed to trust in their remoteness for defense, frantically looked for Drake everywhere except where he was. Warships hung about the Patagonian coast to catch him on his way home--surely he could not stay at sea forever!

But Drake had other plans. Navigators were still searching for the northern passage, the Straits of Anian, and he coasted northward until his men were half paralyzed with cold and the creeping chill of the fog. From the latitude of Vancouver he turned south again, and put into a natural harbor not far from the present San Francisco, which he named New Albion because of the white cliffs like the chalk downs of England. Here he landed and made camp to refit and repair his flagship. He had captured on one prize, two China pilots in whose possession were all the secret charts of the Pacific trade.

Indians ventured down from the mountains to the little fort and dockyard, wondering and admiring. Parson Fletcher presently came to the Admiral with the extraordinary news that they were worshiping the English as gods. Horror and laughter contended among the Puritans when they found themselves set up as idols of the heathen, and the chaplain endeavored by signs to teach the simple savages that the God whom all men should worship was invisible in the heavens.

"'T only shows," remarked Moone, with a nail in one corner of his mouth, after vehemently dissuading a persistent adorer, "that a man never knows what he'll come to. Granny Toothacre used to say that if there's a thing you fight against all your life it'll come to you sooner or later."

"So she did," said Drake with a grim smile as he passed. "Takes a woman to tell a fortune, after all."

"D'you ever hear what become of the old Don we picked up that time?" Moone asked in a lowered voice.

"Not since he sent Frankie the dagger with the gold work and the jewel. Why?"

"'Cause the pilot o' the Spit-silver he knowed un. He say the plague broke out in the Low Countries, and the old Don took and tended that Gallego servant o' his and then he died--not o' the pestilence--just wore out like. I reckon maybe he told Mus' Drake. I didn't."

Silence fell. Then Will said thoughtfully, "He won't be Mus' Drake much longer--by rights--but you never know what a woman'll do. She keep her presents and her favors for them that ha'n't earned 'em--as a rule."

Moone presently hummed half aloud,

"When I served my master I got my Sunday pudden, When I served the Company I got my bread and cheese. When I served the Queen I got hanged for a pirate, All along o'sailin' on the Carib Seas!"

It was a reckless jest, for every one knew that if Elizabeth were dead or married to a Catholic or at peace with Spain when they saw England again, it was extremely likely that the gallows would be their reward. But here, at any rate, was one spot not yet haunted by the Spanish spectre.

The Indians, persuaded at last that the white chief was not a god, insisted on making him their King. They crowned him with a headdress of brilliant feathers, in all due ceremony, hung a chain of beads about his neck, and looked on with the utmost reverence while Drake fixed to a large upright post a tablet claiming the land for the Queen of England, and a silver sixpence with the portrait of Elizabeth and the Tudor rose. Securely hidden under the tablet in a hollow of the wood were memoranda concerning the direction in which, according to the Indians, gold was to be found in the streams,--plenty of gold. When she was ready to the last rope's end the little ship spread her wings and sailed straight across the Pacific, round the Cape of Good Hope, home to England.