Shorn of noise, the motive was simply to shut out the rest of the world from Spain's treasure box. The Monroe Doctrine was not yet born. _The whole Pacific was to be a closed sea_! To be sure, Vasco da Gama had found the way round the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean; and Magellan soon after passed through the strait of his name below South America {135} right into the Pacific Ocean; but round the world by the Indian Ocean was a far cry for tiny craft of a few hundred tons; and the Straits of Magellan were so storm-bound, it soon became a common saying that they were a closed door. Spain sent her sailors across Panama to build ships for the Pacific. The sea that bore her treasure craft--millions upon millions of pounds sterling in pure gold, silver, emeralds, pearls--was as closed to the rest of the world as if walled round with only one chain-gate; and that at Panama, where Spain kept the key. That is, the sea _was_ shut till Drake came coursing round the world; and his coming was so utterly impossible to the Spanish mind that half the treasure ships scuttled by the English pirate mistook him for a visiting Spaniard till the rallying cry, "God and Saint George!" wakened them from their dream. It was by accident the English first found themselves in the waters of the Spanish Main. John Hawkins had been cruising the West Indies exchanging slaves for gold, when an ominous stillness fell on the sea. The palm trees took on the hard glister of metal leaves. The sunless sky turned yellow, the sea to brass; and before the six English ships could find shelter, a hurricane broke that flailed the fleet under sails torn to tatters clear across the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz, the stronghold of Spanish power. [Illustration: Sir John Hawkins.]