ost a
hundred tons; Philip's leviathans outweighed them more than ten to one.
What could England do against the landing of such an army? An English
Admiral would be Jack the Giant-Killer with no magic at his command. Yet
in the face of all this, under the very noses of the Spanish patrol,
Protestant craftsmen were escaping from the Inquisition in the
Netherlands to England, where Elizabeth had contrived to let it be known
that they were quite welcome.

To a perfectly innocent and lawful coasting trade Drake and his crew now
added this hazardous passenger service. They were braving imprisonment,
torture and the stake, for in 1562 no less than twenty-six Englishmen
were burned alive in Spain, and ten times as many lay in prison. Before
Drake was twenty all Spanish ports were closed to English trade. He sold
his ship and joined Hawkins in his more or less contraband trade with
the West Indies.

With every year of adventure upon the high seas his hatred of the
tyranny of Spain deepened and strengthened. Yet though Spanish ferocity
might soak the world in blood, he would not have his men tainted with
the evil inheritance of the idolaters. It came to be known that El
Draque did not kill prisoners. His crews fought like demons, but they
slew no unarmed man, they molested no woman or child. On these terms
only would he accept allies. Tons of plunder he took, but never a
helpless life. He landed the shivering crews of his prizes on some
Spanish island or with a laugh returned to them their empty ships. "A
dead man's no mortal use to anybody," he would say cheerily, and go on
using his cock-boats to sink or capture galleys. At twenty-seven,
beholding for the first time the shining Pacific, he vowed that with
God's help he would sail an English ship on that sea. Alone upon the
platform built in a great tree with steps cut in its trunk, to which his
negro allies the Maroons had guided him, he conceived the sublimely
audacious plan which he was one day to unfold to Walsingham and the
Queen.

The air was thick with rumors of war with Spain when Drake arrived in
London years later, in the company of a new friend, Thomas
Doughty,--courtier, soldier, scholar, familiar with every shifting
undercurrent of European court life. Never at a loss for a phrase, ready
of wit and quick of understanding, Doughty could put into words what the
frank-hearted young sea-captain had thought and felt and dreamed. Both
knew the peace with Philip to be