the place on October 8, but found nothing.  English sailors have never been wanting in resolution.  They knew that if they all remained on board every one of them must starve.  A hundred volunteered to land and take their chance.  The rest on short rations might hope to make their way home.  The sacrifice was accepted.  The hundred men were put on shore.  They wandered for a few days in the woods, feeding on roots and berries, and shot at by the Indians.  At length they reached a Spanish station, where they were taken and sent as prisoners to Mexico.  There was, as I said, no Holy Office as yet in Mexico.  The new Viceroy, though he had been in the fight at San Juan de Ulloa, was not implacable.  They were treated at first with humanity; they were fed, clothed, taken care of, and then distributed among the plantations.  Some were employed as overseers, some as mechanics.  Others, who understood any kind of business, were allowed to settle in towns, make money, and even marry and establish themselves.  Perhaps Philip heard of it, and was afraid that so many heretics might introduce the plague.  The quiet time lasted three years; at the end of those years the Inquisitors arrived, and then, as if these poor men had been the special object of that delightful institution, they were hunted up, thrown into dungeons, examined on their faith, tortured, some burnt in an auto da fe, some lashed through the streets of Mexico naked on horseback and returned to their prisons.  Those who did not die under this pious treatment were passed over to the Holy Office at Seville and were condemned to the galleys.

Here I leave them for the moment.  We shall presently hear of them again in a very singular connection.  The Minion and Judith meanwhile pursued their melancholy way.  They parted company.  The Judith, being the better sailer, arrived first, and reached Plymouth in December, torn and tattered.  Drake rode off post immediately to carry the bad news to London.  The Minion’s fate was worse.  She made her course through the Bahama Channel, her crew dying as if struck with a pestilence, till at last there were hardly men enough left to handle the sails.  They fell too far south for England, and at length had to put into Vigo, where their probable fate would be a Spanish prison.  Happily they found other English vessels in the roads there.  Fresh hands were put on board, and fresh provisions.  With these supplies Hawkins reached Mount’s Bay a month later than the Judith, in January 1569.

Drake had told the story, and all England was ringing with it.  Englishmen always think their own countrymen are in the right.  The Spaniards, already in evil odour with the seagoing population, were accused of abominable treachery.  The splendid fight which Hawkins had made raised him into a national idol, and though he had suffered financially, his loss was made up in reputation and authority.  Every privateer in the West was eager to serve under the leadership