Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 1.djvu/266

 180 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS open war ; as for instance, on meeting a Spaniard driving eight llamas, each laden with one hundred pounds' weight of silver, " they offered their service without entreaty, and became drovers, not enduring to see a gentleman Spaniard turned carrier." Enriched by the most valuable spoil, jewels, gold, and silver, Drake steered to the northward, hoping to discover a homeward passage in that quarter. In the forty-eighth degree of north latitude, in what is now the State of Well- ington, he was stopped by the cold ; and, determining to traverse the Pacific, he landed, careened his ship, and, in the queen's name, took possession of the country, which he named New Albion, September 29, 1579; he sailed again, and reached the Molucca Islands November 4th. In his passage thence to the island of Celebes, he incurred the most imminent danger of the whole voyage. The ship struck, as they were sailing before a fair wind, on a reef of rocks, so precipitous that it was impossible to lay out an anchor to heave her off. They stuck fast in this most hazardous situation for eight hours. At the end of that time the wind shifted, and the ship, lightened of part of her guns and cargo, reeled off into deep water, without serious injury. Had the sea risen, she must have been wrecked. This was Drake's last mishap. He reached Plymouth in the autumn of 1580, after nearly three years' absence. Accounts differ as to the exact date of his arrival. Since Drake had for this voyage the queen's commission, by which we must suppose the license to rob the Spaniards to have been at least tacitly conceded, he seems to have been rather hardly used, in being left from November to April in ignorance how his bold adventure was received at court. Among the people it created a great sensation, with much diversity of opinion ; some commending it as a notable instance of English valor and maritime skill, and a just reprisal upon the Spaniards for their faithless and cruel practices ; others styling it a breach of treaties, little better than piracy, and such as it was neither expedient nor decent for a trading nation to encourage. During this interval, Drake must have felt his situation unpleasant and precarious ; but the queen turned the scale in his favor by going, April 4, 1581, to dine on board his ship at Deptford, on which occasion she declared her entire approbation of his conduct, and conferred on him the honor, and such it then was, of knighthood. His ship she ordered to be preserved as a monument of his glory. Having fallen to decay, it was at length broken up : a chair, made out of its planks, was presented to the Univer- sity of Oxford, and probably is still to be seen in the Bodleian Library. Cowley wrote a Pindaric ode upon it. Drake had now established his reputation as the first seaman of the day ; and in 1585 the queen, having resolved on war, intrusted him with the command of an expedition against the Spanish colonies. He burnt or put to ransom the cities of St. Jago, near Cape Verde, St. Domingo, Carthagena, and others, and returned to England, having fully answered the high expectations which were en- tertained of him. He was again employed with a larger force of thirty ships, in 1587, with which he entered the port of Cadiz, burnt ten thousand tons of ship- ping, which were to form part of the Armada, took the castle of Cape St. Yin-