was shown afterwards by Mendoza makes it likely
that he was in Spanish pay. The ambassador cross-questioned Captain
Winter very particularly about him, and we learn one remarkable fact
from Mendoza's letters not mentioned by any English writer, that Drake
was himself the executioner, choosing to bear the entire responsibility.

'This done,' writes an eye-witness, 'the general made divers speeches to
the whole company, persuading us to unity, obedience, and regard of our
voyage, and for the better confirmation thereof willed every man the
Sunday following to prepare himself to receive the Communion as
Christian brothers and friends ought to do, which was done in very
reverend sort; and so with good contentment every man went about his
business.'

You must take this last incident into your conception of Drake's
character, think of it how you please.

It was now midwinter, the stormiest season of the year, and they
remained for six weeks in Port St. Julian. They burnt the twelve-ton
pinnace, as too small for the work they had now before them, and there
remained only the _Pelican_, the _Elizabeth_, and the _Marigold_. In
cold wild weather they weighed at last, and on August 20 made the
opening of Magellan's Straits. The passage is seventy miles long,
tortuous and dangerous. They had no charts. The ships' boats led, taking
soundings as they advanced. Icy mountains overhung them on either side;
heavy snow fell below. They brought up occasionally at an island to rest
the men, and let them kill a few seals and penguins to give them fresh
food. Everything they saw was new, wild, and wonderful.

Having to feel their way, they were three weeks in getting through. They
had counted on reaching the Pacific that the worst of their work was
over, and that they could run north at once into warmer and calmer
latitudes. The peaceful ocean, when they entered it, proved the
stormiest they had ever sailed on. A fierce westerly gale drove them 600
miles to the south-east outside the Horn. It had been supposed,
hitherto, that Tierra del Fuego was solid land to the South Pole, and
that the Straits were the only communication between the Atlantic and
the Pacific. They now learnt the true shape and character of the Western
Continent. In the latitude of Cape Horn a westerly gale blows for ever
round the globe; the waves the highest anywhere known. The _Marigold_
went down in the tremendous encounter. Captain Winter, in the
_Elizabeth_, made h