On the 9th of January, 1580, the ship ran upon a rocky shoal and stuck fast. The crew were first summoned to prayers, and then ordered to lighten the ship. Three tons of cloves were thrown over, eight guns, and a quantity of meal and pulse. One authority says distinctly that no gold or silver was thrown into the water, though it was the heaviest part of the cargo; another authority asserts the contrary in the following passage:--"Conceiving that the best way to lighten the ship was to ease their consciences, they humbled themselves by fasting, afterwards dining on Christ in the sacrament, expecting no other than to sup with him in heaven. Then they cast out of their ship six great pieces of ordnance, threw overboard as much wealth as would break the heart of a miser to think of it, with much sugar and packs of spices, making a caudle of the sea round about." The ship was at last freed, and started again on her way. Her adventures from this point offer no very salient features: she stopped at Java, the Cape of Good Hope, and Sierra Leone. In the latter place Drake saw troops of elephants, and oysters fastened on to the twigs of trees and hanging down into the water in strings. Drake arrived at Plymouth after a voyage of two years and ten months. Like Magellan, he found he had lost a day in his reckoning. He immediately repaired to court, where he was graciously received, his treasure, however, being placed in sequestration, to answer such demands as might be made, upon it. Drake was denounced in many quarters as a pirate, while in others collections of songs and epigrams were made, celebrating him and his ship in the highest terms. The Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, who called him the Master-Thief of the Unknown World, demanded that he should be punished according to the laws of nations. Elizabeth firmly asserted her right of navigating the ocean in all parts, and denied that the Pope's grant of a monopoly in the Indies to the Spaniards and Portuguese was of any binding effect upon her. She yielded, however, so far as to restore, to the agent of several of the merchants whom Drake had despoiled, large sums of money. Enough remained, however, to make the expedition a remunerating one for the captors. The queen then, in a pompous and solemn ceremony, gave to the entire affair an official and governmental ratification. She ordered Drake's ship to be drawn up in a little creek near Deptford, to be there preserved as a monument of the most memorable voyage the English had ever yet performed. She went on board of her, and partook of a banquet there with the commander, who, kneeling at her feet, rose up Sir Francis Drake. The Westminster students inscribed a Latin quatrain upon the mainmast, of which the following lines are a translation: