FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  
workshop, and refitted her with a month's labour from stem to stern. By the sixteenth of April, 1579, the Pelican was once more in order, and started on her northern course in search of the expected passage. She held on up the coast for eight hundred miles into latitude forty-three degrees North, but no signs appeared of an opening. Though it was summer the air grew colder, and the crew having been long in the tropics suffered from the change. Not caring to run risks in exploring with so precious a cargo, and finding by observation that the passage, if it existed, must be of enormous length, Drake resolved to go no further, and expecting, as proved to be the case, that the Spaniards would be on the look-out for him at Magellan's Strait, he determined on the alternative route by the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese had long traded with China. In the ship going to the Philippines he had found a Portuguese chart of the Indian Archipelago, and with the help of this and his own skill he trusted to find his way. At the little island of Ternate, south of the Celebes, the ship was again docked and scraped. The crew were allowed another month's rest, when they feasted their eyes on the marvels of tropical life, then first revealed to them in their luxuriance--vampires "as large as hens," crayfish a foot round, and fireflies lighting the midnight forest. Starting once more, they had now to feel their way among the rocks and shoals of the most dangerous waters in the world. They crept round Celebes among coral reefs and low islands scarcely visible above the water-line. The Malacca Straits formed the only route marked in the Portuguese chart, and between Drake and his apparent passage lay the Java Sea and the channel between Borneo and Sumatra. But it was not impossible that there might be some other opening, and the Pelican crawled in search of it along the Java coast. Here, if nowhere else, her small size and manageableness were in her favour. In spite of all the care that was taken, she was almost lost. One evening as the black tropical night was closing, a grating sound was heard under her keel: another moment she was hard and fast upon an invisible reef. The breeze was light and the water calm, or the world would have heard no more of Francis Drake and the Pelican. She lay immovable till morning; "we were out of all hope to escape danger," but with the daylight the position was seen not to be utterly desperate. "Our gener
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Portuguese
 

passage

 

Pelican

 
Celebes
 

tropical

 

search

 

opening

 

apparent

 

marked

 

formed


Straits

 
crawled
 

labour

 
impossible
 
Malacca
 

channel

 

Borneo

 

Sumatra

 

shoals

 

Starting


fireflies

 

lighting

 

midnight

 

forest

 

dangerous

 
waters
 

islands

 

scarcely

 

visible

 

sixteenth


Francis

 

immovable

 
breeze
 

invisible

 

morning

 

utterly

 

desperate

 

position

 

daylight

 

escape


danger
 
moment
 

favour

 

refitted

 

manageableness

 
workshop
 

grating

 
closing
 
evening
 

vampires