After a week’s detention San Juan and his men were restored to the empty Cacafuego, and allowed to go.  On their way back they fell in with the two cruisers sent in pursuit from Lima, reinforced by a third from Panama.  They were now fully armed; they went in chase, and according to their own account came up with the Pelican.  But, like Lope de Vega, they seemed to have been terrified at Drake as a sort of devil.  They confessed that they dared not attack him, and again went back for more assistance.  The Viceroy abused them as cowards, arrested the officers, despatched others again with peremptory orders to seize Drake, even if he was the devil, but by that time their questionable visitor had flown.  They found nothing, perhaps to their relief.

A despatch went instantly across the Atlantic to Philip.  One squadron was sent off from Cadiz to watch the Straits of Magellan, and another to patrol the Caribbean Sea.  It was thought that Drake’s third way was no seaway at all, that he meant to leave the Pelican at Darien, carry his plunder over the mountains, and build a ship at Honduras to take him home.  His real idea was that he might hit off the passage to the north of which Frobisher and Davis thought they had found the eastern entrance.  He stood on towards California, picking up an occasional straggler in the China trade, with silk, porcelain, gold, and emeralds.  Fresh water was a necessity.  He put in at Guatulco for it, and his proceedings were humorously prompt.  The alcaldes at Guatulco were in session trying a batch of negroes.  An English boat’s crew appeared in court, tied the alcaldes hand and foot, and carried them off to the Pelican, there to remain as hostages till the water-casks were filled.

North again he fell in with a galleon carrying out a new Governor to the Philippines.  The Governor was relieved of his boxes and his jewels, and then, says one of the party, ’Our General, thinking himself in respect of his private injuries received from the Spaniards, as also their contempt and indignities offered to our country and Prince, sufficiently satisfied and revenged, and supposing her Majesty would rest contented with this service, began to consider the best way home.’  The first necessity was a complete overhaul of the ship.  Before the days of copper sheathing weeds grew thick under water.  Barnacles formed in clusters, stopping the speed, and sea-worms bored through the planking.  Twenty thousand miles lay between the Pelican and Plymouth Sound, and Drake was not a man to run idle chances.  Still holding his north course till he had left the furthest Spanish settlement far to the south, he put into Canoas Bay in California, laid the Pelican ashore, set up forge and workshop, and repaired and re-rigged her with a month’s labour from stem to stern.  With every rope new set up and new canvas on every yard, he started again on April 16, 1579, and continued up the coast to Oregon.  The air