"Tell me again just what you said," demanded the queen, "that I may see what penalty you deserve for daring to show dishonor to one of my chaplains."
"I chained him by the leg to the forehatch," replied Drake, "and I said, 'Francis Fletcher, I do here excommunicate thee out of the church of God, and I renounce thee to the devil and all his angels;' and then I tied a riband around his arm, and I said, 'If so be that you dare to unbind this riband, you'll swing from that yardarm as sure as my name is Francis Drake.'"
"And what was it you wrote on the riband?" asked the queen, though well knowing the answer.
"I wrote 'Francis Fletcher, the falsest knave that liveth.' I don't see how I could have done less."
"Neither do I," agreed Elizabeth heartily, "and it would but ill become me to differ with a man who has just given me a New Albion. Where say you that my new domain lies?"
"On the western shores of North America," answered Drake, "and perchance, your Majesty, this new domain may stretch into Asia itself, for the western land reaches much farther west than I had thought, and it may be that in the far north the New World touches the old."
"Then I am perhaps queen of the Indies," said Elizabeth with a smile. "Now go, my brave sailor, but see to it that you come soon to court again, for there is much more that I would know of this wicked journey of yours."
So it was that these bold buccaneers went on their voyages, not so much for adventure or discovery as for the sake of gold. The easiest way to get gold was to take it from the Spanish settlements in America, but when Drake sailed, the Spaniards on the eastern coast of America were becoming wary. Too many of their treasure ships had been attacked and too many of their settlements robbed for them to live as carelessly as had been the case in the earlier days. Spanish ships on the Atlantic were manned with men who could fight, and Spanish settlements on the eastern coast of America were guarded and fortified.
On the Pacific shore matters were different. Spanish gold from the fabulously rich mines of Peru was carried leisurely up the coast in vessels manned chiefly by negro slaves. At Panama it was unloaded and taken across the isthmus. Then it was carefully guarded, and vessels well supplied with Spanish troops bore it across the ocean to the treasure vaults of Philip. It did not occur to the Spaniards that even an English corsair would venture to round Cape Horn, and when Drake appeared among the unprotected ships and the unfortified settlements, he found an easy prey. It was less dangerous for him to cross the Pacific and double the Cape of Good Hope than to return to England among the Spanish vessels on the Atlantic; and that is why Drake was the first Englishman to sail around the world.