Stories of Elizabethan heroes : $b Stirring records of the intrepid bravery and boundless resource of the men of Queen Elizabeth's reignGilliat, Edward
History
Stories of Elizabethan heroes : $b Stirring records of the intrepid bravery and boundless resource of the men of Queen Elizabeth's reign
Gilliat, Edward
Great Britain -- Biography; Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603
Drake was not the man to leave such an outrage unavenged; he ordered
the Provost-Marshal to carry two friars to the same spot and hang
them there. He also sent a messenger to inform the Governor that two
prisoners would be hanged every day until the murderer was given up.
The murderer was given up and hanged, and then the town was fired.
Similar proceedings were taken at Cartagena, though here the
Spaniards fought more stoutly, and Indian archers "with arrows most
villainously empoisoned" caused the death of many. Many English,
too, "were mischiefed to death by small sticks, sharply pointed, that
were fixed in the ground, with the points poisoned." As the attack
was made in the dark, many were wounded and died. Cartagena was held
for six weeks, and many courtesies passed between the Spaniards and
the English. A ransom of £28,000 was paid, and Drake restored the
town to its inhabitants.
They left Cartagena on the 31st of March, after blowing up the fort,
and sailed along the coast of Florida, sacking and burning the
Spanish settlements of San Juan de Pinos and St. Augustine; then they
came to the island of Roanoke, where they found Raleigh's colonists
on the verge of starvation, offered them help and a passage home.
These colonists had behaved cruelly to the Indians and had suffered
for it. They brought home a strange herb, which is thus described:
"There is a herb," says Hariot, one of the colonists, "which is
called by the natives uppowoc: the Spaniards call it tobacco. The
leaves thereof being dried and brought into powder, they are to take
the fume thereof, by sucking it through pipes made of clay, into
their stomach and head, whence it purgeth superfluous phlegm and
other gross humours, or openeth all the pores and passages of the
body."
A month's sailing brought them to Portsmouth, but it was not
considered a successful cruise, for they had lost seven hundred and
fifty men, chiefly from disease, brought home two hundred pieces of
brass cannon, and sixty thousand pounds, of which one-third was given
to the soldiers and sailors as prize-money. But the chief gain was
in the effect on Philip, who forbade the sailing of his Indian fleet
until Drake and Frobisher returned.
These found on landing that nearly every gentleman in England was
fitting out a ship for privateering against Spain; that Hawkins and
Winter were busy overhauling the Queen's navy, and that England was
expecting an invasion. No doubt Frobisher was soon kept busy too,
and we will hope that the wife and children at Hampstead had less
cause to complain of their poverty when they got their share of the
prize-money. And how glad they all were when Frobisher rode home one
evening and cried: "News! good wife. What think ye, lads and lasses?
The great Armada is on her way at last."
"Alack! and wail-away! is that news for your poor family, Master
Frobisher?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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