om
the rich Potosi mines, and rifling even the churches, he hastened
onward in pursuit of a richly laden galleon nicknamed _Cacafuego_--a
name discreetly translated _Spitfire_, but which, to repeat a joke
that greatly amused Drake's men at the time, it was proposed to
change to _Spitsilver_, for when overtaken and captured the vessel
yielded 26 tons of silver, 13 chests of pieces of eight, and gold
and jewels sufficient to swell the booty to half a million pounds
sterling.

For 20 years the voyage across the northern Pacific had been familiar
to the Spanish, who had studied winds and currents, laid down routes,
and made regular crossings. Having picked up charts and China pilots,
and left the whole coast in panic fear, Drake sailed far to the
northward, overhauled his ship in a bay above San Francisco, then
struck across the Pacific, and at last rounded Good Hope and put
into Plymouth in September of the third year. It suited Elizabeth's
policy to countenance the voyage. She put the major part of the
treasure into the Tower, took some trinkets herself, knighted Drake
aboard the _Golden Hind_, and when the Spanish ambassador talked
war she told him, in a quiet tone of voice, that she would throw
him into a dungeon.

This red-bearded, short and thickset Devon skipper, bold of speech
as of action, was now the most renowned sailor of England, with a
name that inspired terror on every coast of Spain. It was inevitable,
therefore, that when Elizabeth resolved upon open reprisals in
1585, Drake should be chosen to lead another, and this time fully
authorized, raid on the Spanish Indies. Here he sacked the cities
of San Domingo and Carthagena, and, though he narrowly missed the
plate fleet, brought home sufficient spoils for the individuals
who backed the venture. In the year 1587 with 23 ships and orders
permitting him to operate freely on Spain's home coasts, he first
boldly entered Cadiz, in almost complete disregard of the puny
galleys guarding the harbor, and destroyed some 37 vessels and
their cargoes. Despite the horrified protests of his Vice Admiral
Borough (an officer "of the old school" to be found in every epoch)
at these violations of traditional methods, he then took up a position
off Saigres where he could harry coastwise commerce, picked up the
East Indiaman _San Felipe_ with a cargo worth a million pounds
in modern money, and even appeared off Lisbon to defy the Spanish
Admiral Santa Cruz. Thus he "singed t