when the castle
surrendered. A messenger--a negro boy--was sent to the Governor to learn
the terms which he was prepared to offer to save the city from pillage.
The Spanish officers were smarting with the disgrace. One of them struck
the lad through the body with a lance. He ran back bleeding to the
English lines and died at Drake's feet. Sir Francis was a dangerous man
to provoke. Such doings had to be promptly stopped. In the part of the
town which he occupied was a monastery with a number of friars in it.
The religious orders, he well knew, were the chief instigators of the
policy which was maddening the world. He sent two of these friars with
the provost-marshal to the spot where the boy had been struck, promptly
hanged them, and then despatched another to tell the Governor that he
would hang two more every day at the same place till the officer was
punished. The Spaniards had long learnt to call Drake the Draque, the
serpent, the devil. They feared that the devil might be a man of his
word. The offender was surrendered. It was not enough. Drake insisted
that they should do justice on him themselves. The Governor found it
prudent to comply, and the too hasty officer was executed.

The next point was the ransom of the city. The Spaniards still
hesitating, 200 men were told off each morning to burn, while the rest
searched the private houses, and palaces, and magazines. Government
House was the grandest building in the New World. It was approached by
broad flights of marble stairs. Great doors opened on a spacious gallery
leading into a great hall, and above the portico hung the arms of
Spain--a globe representing the world, a horse leaping upon it, and in
the horse's mouth a scroll with the haughty motto, 'Non sufficit orbis.'
Palace and scutcheon were levelled into dust by axe and gunpowder, and
each day for a month the destruction went on, Drake's demands steadily
growing and the unhappy Governor vainly pleading impossibility.

Vandalism, atrocity unheard of among civilised nations, dishonour to the
Protestant cause, Drake deserving to swing at his own yardarm; so
indignant Liberalism shrieked, and has not ceased shrieking. Let it be
remembered that for fifteen years the Spaniards had been burning English
seamen whenever they could catch them, plotting to kill the Queen and
reduce England itself into vassaldom to the Pope. The English nation,
the loyal part of it, were replying to the wild pretension by the hands