ips entered the tempestuous seas around Cape Horn. Drake drove
before the gales with sails close-reefed and hatches battened, and came
{5} out with only one of his three ships left, the first English keel
to cleave the waters of the Pacific. In honour of the feat Drake
renamed his ship the _Golden Hind_. Perhaps there was jocose irony in
the suggestion of gold and speed. Certain it is, the crew of the
_Golden Hind_ were well content with the possession of both gold and
speed before advancing far up the west coast of South America.

Quite by chance, which seems always to favour the daring, somewhere off
the coast of Chile Drake picked up an Indian fisherman. The natives of
South America, for the best of reasons, hated their Spanish masters,
who enslaved them, treated them brutally, and forced them to work in
the pearl fisheries and the mines. Drake persuaded the Indian to pilot
his ship into the harbour of Valparaiso. Never dreaming that any
foreign vessel had entered the Pacific, Spanish treasure-ships lay
rocking to the tide in fancied security, and actually dipped colours to
Drake. Drake laughed, waved his plumed hat back in salute, dealt out
wine to give courage to 'his merrie boys,' and sailed straight amid the
anchored treasure-ships. Barely had the _Golden Hind_ taken a position
in the midst of the enemy's fleet, when, selecting one of the
staunchest {6} vessels of the enemy, Drake had grappling-irons thrown
out, clamping his ship to her victim. In a trice the English sailors
were on the Spanish deck with swords out and the rallying-cry of 'God
and St George! Down with Spanish dogs!' Dumbfounded and unarmed, down
the hatches, over the bulwarks into the sea, reeled the surprised
Spaniards. Drake clapped hatches down upon those trapped inside, and
turned his cannon on the rest of the unguarded Spanish fleet.
Literally, not a drop of blood was shed. The treasure-ships were
looted of their cargoes and sent drifting out to sea.

All the other harbours of the Pacific were raided and looted in similar
summary fashion; and, somewhere seaward from Lima, Drake learned of a
treasure-ship bearing untold riches--the _Glory of the South Seas_--the
huge caravel in which the Spaniards sent home to Spain the yearly
tribute of bullion. The _Golden Hind_, with her sails spread to the
wind, sought for the _Glory_ like a harrier for its quarry. One crew
of Spaniards on a small ship that was scuttled saved their throats