5. At Valparaiso, in Chile, there lay in the harbour a great galleon which had come from Peru. Drake sailed in, and the Spanish seamen, who had never seen a foreigner in those waters, ran up their flags, beat their drums, and prepared a banquet for their supposed countrymen. They were only undeceived when the English sailors leapt on board and rifled the ship of its wedges of gold. Off the coast of Peru, near Potosi, world-famed for its silver mines, they swept off the silver bars laid out on the pier, whilst the weary labourers who had brought them from the mines were peacefully sleeping. The last bars had scarcely been stowed away in the boats, when a train of llamas was seen descending the hills with a second freight as rich as the first. This too found its way on board the _Pelican_. 6. All sail was now set for Lima, the chief port of Peru. Here they learned that a ship had sailed for Panama a few days before, taking with her all the bullion that the mines had yielded for the season. Not a moment was to be lost. Every inch of canvas was spread and the chase begun. Drake promised his gold chain to the man who should first descry the golden prize. For eight hundred miles the _Pelican_ flew on, and then the man at the mast-head claimed the promised chain. [Illustration: Queen Elizabeth Knighting Sir Francis Drake] 7. Not wishing to come up with his prize till dusk, Drake filled his empty wine casks with water and trailed them astern, thus slackening his pace whilst avoiding the suspicion that might have been awakened by taking in sail. On coming within ear-shot our commander hailed the Spanish captain to "strike" his flag. The next moment a cannon-ball shot his mast overboard and a volley of arrows cleared the decks. The master, who was wounded, at once yielded his ship. Besides gold, pearls, emeralds, and diamonds, the booty included twenty-six tons of silver bullion. With spoils of above half-a-million in value the daring adventurer sought the safest way home. 8. That way, he considered, lay across the Pacific, and around the Cape of Good Hope. But before starting on his journey across the fifteen thousand miles of unknown water that lay between him and the Cape, it was necessary to repair his ship and scour her keel; for before the days of copper sheathing, the ships' bottoms grew foul with sea-weed, barnacles formed in clusters, and the sea-worms bored holes in the planking. Finding a suitable harbour Drake beached his ship, and setting up forge and workshop, refitted her, with a month's labour, from stem to stern.