Shortly after this interview Drake was told late at night that he should have audience of Her Majesty next day.  On seeing him, Elizabeth went straight to the point.  ’Drake, I would gladly be revenged on the King of Spain for divers injuries that I have received.’  ‘And withal,’ says Drake, ’craved my advice therein; who told Her Majesty the only way was to annoy him by the Indies.’  On that he disclosed his whole daring scheme for raiding the Pacific.  Elizabeth, who, like her father, ’loved a man’ who was a man, fell in with this at once.  Secrecy was of course essential.  ’Her Majesty did swear by her Crown that if any within her realm did give the King of Spain to understand hereof they should lose their heads therefor.’  At a subsequent audience ’Her Majesty gave me special commandment that of all men my Lord Treasurer should not know of it.’  The cautious Lord Treasurer Burleigh was against what he considered dangerous forms of privateering and was for keeping on good terms with Spanish arms and trade as long as possible.  Mendoza, lynx-eyed ambassador of Spain, was hoodwinked.  But Doughty, the viper in Drake’s bosom, was meditating mischief:  not exactly treason with Spain, but at least a breach of confidence by telling Burleigh.

De Guaras, chief Spanish spy in England, was sorely puzzled.  Drake’s ostensible destination was Egypt, and his men were openly enlisted for Alexandria.  The Spaniards, however, saw far enough through this to suppose that he was really going back to Nombre de Dios.  It did not seem likely, though quite possible, that he was going in search of the Northwest Passage, for Martin Frobisher had gone out on that quest the year before and had returned with a lump of black stone from the arctic desolation of Baffin Island.  No one seems to have divined the truth.  Cape Horn was unknown.  The Strait of Magellan was supposed to be the only opening between South America and a huge antarctic continent, and its reputation for disasters had grown so terrible, and rightly terrible, that it had been given up as the way into the Pacific.  The Spanish way, as we have seen, was overland from Nombre de Dios to Panama, more or less along the line of the modern Panama Canal.

In the end Drake got away quietly enough, on the 15th of November, 1577.  The court and country were in great excitement over the conspiracy between the Spaniards and Mary Queen of Scots, now a prisoner of nine years’ standing.

’THE FAMOUS VOYAGE OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE into the South Sea, and therehence about the whole Globe of the Earth, begun in the year of our Lord 1577’ well deserves its great renown.  Drake’s flotilla seems absurdly small.  But, for its own time, it was far from insignificant; and it was exceedingly well found.  The Pelican, afterwards called the Golden Hind, though his flagship, was of only a hundred tons.  The Elizabeth, the Swan, the Marigold, and the Benedict