watchfulness of Spain was redoubled in the West Indies;
but the Pacific, which Drake had seen from the Peak of Darien, was still
regarded as a safe inland lake. Into the Pacific, with its coasts
unprotected and its ships scarcely armed at all, he therefore determined
to venture. Authorized by the queen and with Walsingham's approval, he
set out in 1577. Quelling a mutiny as his great predecessor had done at
St. Julian, he passed the Straits of Magellan, and sailed northward
along the coast, harming no man, but taking every man's treasure until
the ship was full. He would have returned home by some northeast
passage, but failed to find any, and so at last crossed the Pacific--the
second to circumnavigate the globe. We are told that the queen "received
him graciously, and laid up the treasure he brought by way of
sequestration, that it might be forthcoming if the Spaniards should
demand it."

It is not recorded that the treasure was ever restored, but it is known
that Drake was knighted by the queen on the deck of the Golden Hind. And
it is recorded that in 1588 Philip prepared the Invincible Armada, which
appeared in the English Channel to demand the submission of England. It
was a decisive moment in the history of America; and it is doubtful
what the issue might have been had the queen been dependent upon the
royal navy alone. But round the twenty-nine ships of the royal navy
there gathered more than twice as many of those privateers who in a
generation of conflict had become past masters in dealing with the ships
of Spain. Manned by sailors seasoned to every hardship, equipped with
the best cannon of the day, rapid and dexterous in movement, the English
ships, outnumbered though they were, sailed round and round the unwieldy
galleons of the Armada, crippling them by broadsides and destroying them
with fire-ships, without ever being brought to close quarters. And so
the "Invincible navy neither took any one barque of ours, neither yet
once offered to land but after they had been well beaten and chased,
made a long and sorry perambulation about the northern seas, ennobling
many coasts with wrecks of noble ships; and so returned home with
greater derision than they set forth with expectation."

The defeat of the Armada was followed by a carnival of conquest. Within
three years eight hundred Spanish ships were taken; and in 1596, shortly
after the deaths of Drake and Hawkins, Sir Thomas Howard of Effingham
captured the c