vessel lifted off the rocks and was saved. The hull was uninjured, thanks to the Californian repairs. All on board had behaved well with the one exception of Mr. Fletcher, the chaplain. Mr. Fletcher, instead of working like a man, had whined about Divine retribution for the execution of Doughty.
For the moment Drake passed it over. A few days after, they passed out through the Straits of Sunda, where they met the great ocean swell, Homer's [Greek: mega kuma thalasss], and they knew then that all was well.
There was now time to call Mr. Fletcher to account. It was no business of the chaplain to discourage and dispirit men in a moment of danger, and a court was formed to sit upon him. An English captain on his own deck represents the sovereign, and is head of Church as well as State. Mr. Fletcher was brought to the forecastle, where Drake, sitting on a sea-chest with a pair of _pantoufles_ in his hand, excommunicated him, pronounced him cut off from the Church of God, given over to the devil for the chastising of his flesh, and left him chained by the leg to a ring-bolt to repent of his cowardice.
In the general good-humour punishment could not be of long duration. The next day the poor chaplain had his absolution, and returned to his berth and his duty. The _Pelican_ met with no more adventures. Sweeping in fine clear weather round the Cape of Good Hope, she touched once for water at Sierra Leone, and finally sailed in triumph into Plymouth Harbour, where she had been long given up for lost, having traced the first furrow round the globe. Winter had come home eighteen months before, but could report nothing. The news of the doings on the American coast had reached England through Madrid. The Spanish ambassador had been furious. It was known that Spanish squadrons had been sent in search. Complications would arise if Drake brought his plunder home, and timid politicians hoped that he was at the bottom of the sea. But here he was, actually arrived with a monarch's ransom in his hold.
English sympathy with an extraordinary exploit is always irresistible. Shouts of applause rang through the country, and Elizabeth, every bit of her an Englishwoman, felt with her subjects. She sent for Drake to London, made him tell his story over and over again, and was never weary of listening to him. As to injury to Spain, Philip had lighted a fresh insurrection in Ireland, which had cost her dearly in lives and money. For Philip to demand compensation of England on the score of justice was a thing to make the gods laugh.
So thought the Queen. So unfortunately did not think some members of her Council, Lord Burghley among them. Mendoza was determined that Drake should be punished and the spoils disgorged, or else that he would force Elizabeth upon the world as the confessed protectress of piracy. Burghley thought that, as things stood, some satisfaction (or the form of it) would have to be made.
Elizabeth hated paying back as heartily as Falstaff, nor had she the least intention of throwing to the wolves a gallant Englishman, with whose achievements the world was ringing. She was obliged to allow the treasure to be registered by a responsible official, and an account rendered to Mendoza; but for all that she meant to keep her own share of the spoils. She meant, too, that Drake and his brave crew should not go unrewarded. Drake himself should have ten thousand pounds at least.
Her action was eminently characteristic of her. On the score of real justice there was no doubt at all how matters stood between herself and Philip, who had tried to dethrone and kill her.
The _Pelican_ lay still at Plymouth with the bullion and jewels untouched. She directed that it should be landed and scheduled. She trusted the business to Edmund Tremayne, of Sydenham, a neighbouring magistrate, on whom she could depend. She told him not to be too inquisitive, and she allowed Drake to go back and arrange the cargo before the examination was made. Let me now read you a letter from Tremayne himself to Sir Francis Walsingham:--
'To give you some understanding how I have proceeded with Mr. Drake: I have at no time entered into the account to know more of the value of the treasure than he made me acquainted with; and to say truth I persuaded him to impart to me no more than need, for so I saw him commanded in her Majesty's behalf that he should reveal the certainty to no man living. I have only taken notice of so much as he _has_ revealed, and the same I have seen to be weighed, registered, and packed. And to observe her Majesty's commands for the ten thousand pounds, we agreed he should take it out of the portion that was landed secretly, and to remove the same out of the place before my son Henry and I should come to the weighing and registering of what was left; and so it was done, and no creature living by me made privy to it but himself; and myself no privier to it than as you may perceive by this.
'I see nothing to charge Mr. Drake further than he is inclined to charge himself, and withal I must say he is inclined to advance the value to be delivered to her Majesty, and seeking in general to recompense all men that have been in the case dealers with him. As I dare take an oath, he will rather diminish his own portion than leave any of them unsatisfied. And for his mariners and followers I have seen here as eye-witness, and have heard with my ears, such certain signs of goodwill as I cannot yet see that any of them will leave his company. The whole course of his voyage hath showed him to be of great valour; but my hap has been to see some particulars, and namely in this discharge of his company, as doth assure me that he is a man of great government, and that by the rules of God and his book, so as proceeding on such foundation his doings cannot but prosper.'
The result of it all was that deductions were made from the capture equivalent to the property which Drake and Hawkins held themselves to have been treacherously plundered of at San Juan de Ulloa, with perhaps other liberal allowances for the cost of recovery. An account on part of what remained was then given to Mendoza. It was not returned to him or to Philip, but was laid up in the Tower till the final settlement of Philip's and the Queen's claims on each other--the cost, for one thing, of the rebellion in Ireland. Commissioners met and argued and sat on ineffectually till the Armada came and the discussion ended, and the talk of restitution was over. Meanwhile, opinion varied about Drake's own doings as it has varied since. Elizabeth listened spellbound to his adventures, sent for him to London again, and walked with him publicly about the parks and gardens. She gave him a second ten thousand pounds. The _Pelican_ was sent round to Deptford; a royal banquet was held on board, Elizabeth attended and Drake was knighted. Mendoza clamoured for the treasure in the Tower to be given up to him; Walsingham wished to give it to the Prince of Orange; Leicester and his party in the Council, who had helped to fit Drake out, thought it ought to be divided among themselves, and unless Mendoza lies they offered to share it with him if he would agree to a private arrangement. Mendoza says he answered that he would give twice as much to chastise such a bandit as Drake. Elizabeth thought it should be kept as a captured pawn in the game, and so in fact it remained after the deductions which we have seen had been made.
Drake was lavish of his presents. He presented the Queen with a diamond cross and a coronet set with splendid emeralds. He gave Bromley, the Lord Chancellor, 800 dollars' worth of silver plate, and as much more to other members of the Council. The Queen wore her coronet on New Year's Day; the Chancellor was content to decorate his sideboard at the cost of the Catholic King. Burghley and Sussex declined the splendid temptation; they said they could accept no such precious gifts from a man whose fortune had been made by plunder.
Burghley lived to see better into Drake's value. Meanwhile, what now are we, looking back over our history, to say of these things--the Channel privateering; the seizure of Alva's army money; the sharp practice of Hawkins with the Queen of Scots and King Philip; or this amazing performance of Sir Francis Drake in a vessel no larger than a second-rate yacht of a modern noble lord?
Resolution, daring, professional skill, all historians allow to these men; but, like Burghley, they regard what they did as piracy, not much better, if at all better, than the later exploits of Morgan and Kidd. So cried the Catholics who wished Elizabeth's ruin; so cried Lope de Vega and King Philip. In milder language the modern philosopher repeats the unfavourable verdict, rejoices that he lives in an age when such doings are impossible, and apologises faintly for the excesses of an imperfect age. May I remind the philosopher that we live in an age when other things have also happily become impossible, and that if he and his friends were liable when they went abroad for their summer tours to be snapped by the familiars of the Inquisition, whipped, burnt alive, or sent to the galleys, he would perhaps think more leniently of any measures