Twelve great hulks lay anchored there.  The sails were unbent, the men were ashore.  They contained nothing but some chests of reals and a few bales of silk and linen.  But a thirteenth, called by the gods Our Lady of the Conception, called by men Cacafuego, a name incapable of translation, had sailed a few days before for the isthmus, with the whole produce of the Lima mines for the season.  Her ballast was silver, her cargo gold and emeralds and rubies.

Drake deliberately cut the cables of the ships in the roads, that they might drive ashore and be unable to follow him.  The Pelican spread her wings, every feather of them, and sped away in pursuit.  He would know the Cacafuego, so he learnt at Lima, by the peculiar cut of her sails.  The first man who caught sight of her was promised a gold chain for his reward.  A sail was seen on the second day.  It was not the chase, but it was worth stopping for.  Eighty pounds’ weight of gold was found, and a great gold crucifix, set with emeralds said to be as large as pigeon’s eggs.  They took the kernel.  They left the shell.  Still on and on.  We learn from the Spanish accounts that the Viceroy of Lima, as soon as he recovered from his astonishment, despatched ships in pursuit.  They came up with the last plundered vessel, heard terrible tales of the rovers’ strength, and went back for a larger force.  The Pelican meanwhile went along upon her course for 800 miles.  At length, when in the latitude of Quito and close under the shore, the Cacafuego’s peculiar sails were sighted, and the gold chain was claimed.  There she was, freighted with the fruit of Aladdin’s garden, going lazily along a few miles ahead.  Care was needed in approaching her.  If she guessed the Pelican’s character, she would run in upon the land and they would lose her.  It was afternoon.  The sun was still above the horizon, and Drake meant to wait till night, when the breeze would be off the shore, as in the tropics it always is.

The Pelican sailed two feet to the Cacafuego’s one.  Drake filled his empty wine-skins with water and trailed them astern to stop his way.  The chase supposed that she was followed by some heavy-loaded trader, and, wishing for company on a lonely voyage, she slackened sail and waited for him to come up.  At length the sun went down into the ocean, the rosy light faded from off the snows of the Andes; and when both ships had become invisible from the shore, the skins were hauled in, the night wind rose, and the water began to ripple under the Pelican’s bows.  The Cacafuego was swiftly overtaken, and when within a cable’s length a voice hailed her to put her head into the wind.  The Spanish commander, not understanding so strange an order, held on his course.  A broadside brought down his mainyard; and a flight of arrows rattled on his deck.  He was himself wounded.  In a few minutes he was a prisoner, and Our Lady of the Conception