We are told that Robin Hood liked to attend mass every morning, but even he does not astonish us by his piety so much as this "great dragon" of the seas. No doubt it was all genuine, and he believed he was only doing his duty when he robbed King Philip's ships, and thereby weakened his power for persecuting those who did not agree with him in his religious views. "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Francis Drake felt himself commissioned by a greater than Queen Elizabeth. "I am the man I have promised to be, beseeching God, the Saviour of all the world, to have us in His keeping "--so he writes in his letter to Winter. The question now before them was how to get home. The whole west coast of America was now alarmed, and the Spaniards would stop him if he tried to return by the Straits as he came. So Drake called the ship's company together and took them into counsel. He desired to sail north and find a way home by the North-west Passage; for he, too, was possessed by that chimerical idea. "All of us," writes one of his company, "willingly hearkened and consented to our general's advice; which was, first, to seek out some convenient place to trim our ship, and store ourselves with wood and water and such provisions as we could get; thenceforward to hasten on our intended journey for the discovery of the said passage, through which we might with joy return to our longed homes." On 16th March they made the coast of Nicaragua and effected some captures. Swooping down upon the little port of Guatuleo, they found the judges sitting in court, and as a merry change for them, the whole court, judges and counsel and prisoners, were carried off to the _Golden Hind_, where, amid hearty laughter, the chief judge was bidden to write an order for all the inhabitants to leave the town for twenty-four hours. Then Drake and his men went ashore and replenished their cupboards from the Spanish storehouses. The next capture was a vessel containing two Chinese pilots, who had all the secret charts for sailing across the Pacific. We may well believe that Drake, as he pored over these in his little cabin, may have thought to himself, "Why should not we go home that way, and thus have sailed round the globe?" On 3rd June they had reached latitude 42° N., and were feeling the cold extremely. A storm was blowing as they reached Vancouver Island, and here they turned back, and after turning south ten degrees put into a fair and good bay, where the white cliffs reminded them of home, probably near San Francisco. The natives came round in their canoes, and one threw a small rush basket full of tabah, or tobacco, into the ship's boat.