most of the ships plying on that coast.  As they ballasted the Golden Hynde with silver from her huge hulk the jesting seamen dubbed her the Spit-silver.  The little flagship was literally brimful of silver bars, ingots of gold, pieces of eight, and jewels whose value has never been accurately known.  The Spanish Adelantados, accustomed to trust in their remoteness for defense, frantically looked for Drake everywhere except where he was.  Warships hung about the Patagonian coast to catch him on his way home—­surely he could not stay at sea forever!

But Drake had other plans.  Navigators were still searching for the northern passage, the Straits of Anian, and he coasted northward until his men were half paralyzed with cold and the creeping chill of the fog.  From the latitude of Vancouver he turned south again, and put into a natural harbor not far from the present San Francisco, which he named New Albion because of the white cliffs like the chalk downs of England.  Here he landed and made camp to refit and repair his flagship.  He had captured on one prize, two China pilots in whose possession were all the secret charts of the Pacific trade.

Indians ventured down from the mountains to the little fort and dockyard, wondering and admiring.  Parson Fletcher presently came to the Admiral with the extraordinary news that they were worshiping the English as gods.  Horror and laughter contended among the Puritans when they found themselves set up as idols of the heathen, and the chaplain endeavored by signs to teach the simple savages that the God whom all men should worship was invisible in the heavens.

“’T only shows,” remarked Moone, with a nail in one corner of his mouth, after vehemently dissuading a persistent adorer, “that a man never knows what he’ll come to.  Granny Toothacre used to say that if there’s a thing you fight against all your life it’ll come to you sooner or later.”

“So she did,” said Drake with a grim smile as he passed.  “Takes a woman to tell a fortune, after all.”

“D’you ever hear what become of the old Don we picked up that time?” Moone asked in a lowered voice.

“Not since he sent Frankie the dagger with the gold work and the jewel.  Why?”

“‘Cause the pilot o’ the Spit-silver he knowed un.  He say the plague broke out in the Low Countries, and the old Don took and tended that Gallego servant o’ his and then he died—­not o’ the pestilence—­just wore out like.  I reckon maybe he told Mus’ Drake.  I didn’t.”

Silence fell.  Then Will said thoughtfully, “He won’t be Mus’ Drake much longer—­by rights—­but you never know what a woman’ll do.  She keep her presents and her favors for them that ha’n’t earned ’em—­as a rule.”

Moone presently hummed half aloud,

    “When I served my master I got my Sunday pudden,
      When I served the Company I got my bread and cheese. 
    When I served the Queen I got hanged for a pirate,
      All along o’sailin’ on the Carib Seas!”