s and
taffetas to the value of 40,000 ducats, besides gold and silver. They
were all taken.

Two years later he made a most daring attempt to take the town of
Nombre de Dios, and would probably have succeeded had he not been
wounded. He fainted from loss of blood. His men carried him back on
board and suspended the attack. On his recovery he met with complete
success, and returned to Plymouth in 1573 with a large amount of
treasure openly torn from a nation with which England was at peace,
arriving at the very time that Philip's ambassador to Queen Elizabeth
was negotiating a treaty of peace. Drake had no letters of marque, and
consequently was guilty of piracy in the eyes of the law, the penalty
for which was hanging. The Spaniards were naturally very angry, and
clamored for restitution or compensation and Drake's punishment, but
the queen, who shared the pirate's hatred of the Spaniards, sent him
timely advice to keep out of the way.

In 1580 he returned from another voyage in the West Indies, just when
a body of so-called papal volunteers had landed in Ireland. They had
been brought by a Spanish officer in Spanish ships, and the queen,
pending a satisfactory explanation, refused to receive Mendoza, the
Spanish ambassador, and hear his complaints of Drake's piracies. When
his ships had been brought round in the Thames, she visited him on
board and conferred on him the honor of knighthood. From this time
onward he became a servant of the crown.[38]

It was this redoubtable sea-rover who, according to advices received
early in 1595, was preparing an expedition in England for the purpose
of wresting her West Indian possessions from Spain. The expedition was
brought to naught, through the disagreements between Drake and Hawkyns,
who both commanded it, by administrative blunders and vexatious delays
in England. The Spaniards were everywhere forewarned and goaded to
action by the terror of Drake's name.

Notwithstanding this, the island's fate, seeing its defenseless
condition, would, no doubt, have been sealed at that time but for a
most fortunate occurrence which brought to its shores the forces that
enabled it to repulse the attack. Acosta's annotations on Abbad's
history contains the following details of the events in San Juan at
the time:

"General Sancho Pardo y Osorio sailed from Havana March 10, 1595, in
the flagship of the Spanish West Indian fleet, to convoy some
merchantmen and convey 2,000,000 pesos in go