Spain was a veritable despoiling of the
devil's treasure boxes, glorious in the sight of God. The trackless
sea became the path to fortune. Balboa had deeper motives than
loyalty, when, in 1513, on his march across Panama and discovery of the
Pacific, he rushed mid-deep into the water, shouting out in swelling
words that he took possession of earth, air, and water for Spain "for
all time, past, present, or to come, without contradiction, . . . north
and south, with all the seas from the Pole Arctic to the Pole
Antarctic, . . . both now, and as long as the world endures, until the
final day of judgment." [1]

Shorn of noise, the motive was simply to shut out the rest of the world
from Spain's treasure box. The Monroe Doctrine was not yet born. _The
whole Pacific was to be a closed sea_! To be sure, Vasco da Gama had
found the way round the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean; and
Magellan soon after passed through the strait of his name below South
America {135} right into the Pacific Ocean; but round the world by the
Indian Ocean was a far cry for tiny craft of a few hundred tons; and
the Straits of Magellan were so storm-bound, it soon became a common
saying that they were a closed door. Spain sent her sailors across
Panama to build ships for the Pacific. The sea that bore her treasure
craft--millions upon millions of pounds sterling in pure gold, silver,
emeralds, pearls--was as closed to the rest of the world as if walled
round with only one chain-gate; and that at Panama, where Spain kept
the key.

That is, the sea _was_ shut till Drake came coursing round the world;
and his coming was so utterly impossible to the Spanish mind that half
the treasure ships scuttled by the English pirate mistook him for a
visiting Spaniard till the rallying cry, "God and Saint George!"
wakened them from their dream.

It was by accident the English first found themselves in the waters of
the Spanish Main. John Hawkins had been cruising the West Indies
exchanging slaves for gold, when an ominous stillness fell on the sea.
The palm trees took on the hard glister of metal leaves. The sunless
sky turned yellow, the sea to brass; and before the six English ships
could find shelter, a hurricane broke that flailed the fleet under
sails torn to tatters clear across the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz, the
stronghold of Spanish power.

[Illustration: Sir John Hawkins.]

But Hawkins feared neither man nor devil. He {136} reefed