He divided his men and attacked both together.  One party he led in person.  The cannon opened on him, and an Englishman next to him was killed.  He dashed on, leaving the Spaniards no time to reload, carried the gate at a rush, and cut his way through the streets to the great square.  The second division had been equally successful, and St. Domingo was theirs except the castle, which was still untaken.  Carlile’s numbers were too small to occupy a large city.  He threw up barricades and fortified himself in the square for the night.  Drake brought the fleet in at daybreak, and landed guns, when the castle surrendered.  A messenger—­a negro boy—­was sent to the Governor to learn the terms which he was prepared to offer to save the city from pillage.  The Spanish officers were smarting with the disgrace.  One of them struck the lad through the body with a lance.  He ran back bleeding to the English lines and died at Drake’s feet.  Sir Francis was a dangerous man to provoke.  Such doings had to be promptly stopped.  In the part of the town which he occupied was a monastery with a number of friars in it.  The religious orders, he well knew, were the chief instigators of the policy which was maddening the world.  He sent two of these friars with the provost-marshal to the spot where the boy had been struck, promptly hanged them, and then despatched another to tell the Governor that he would hang two more every day at the same place till the officer was punished.  The Spaniards had long learnt to call Drake the Draque, the serpent, the devil.  They feared that the devil might be a man of his word.  The offender was surrendered.  It was not enough.  Drake insisted that they should do justice on him themselves.  The Governor found it prudent to comply, and the too hasty officer was executed.

The next point was the ransom of the city.  The Spaniards still hesitating, 200 men were told off each morning to burn, while the rest searched the private houses, and palaces, and magazines.  Government House was the grandest building in the New World.  It was approached by broad flights of marble stairs.  Great doors opened on a spacious gallery leading into a great hall, and above the portico hung the arms of Spain—­a globe representing the world, a horse leaping upon it, and in the horse’s mouth a scroll with the haughty motto, ‘Non sufficit orbis.’  Palace and scutcheon were levelled into dust by axe and gunpowder, and each day for a month the destruction went on, Drake’s demands steadily growing and the unhappy Governor vainly pleading impossibility.

Vandalism, atrocity unheard of among civilised nations, dishonour to the Protestant cause, Drake deserving to swing at his own yardarm; so indignant Liberalism shrieked, and has not ceased shrieking.  Let it be remembered that for fifteen years the Spaniards had been burning English seamen whenever they could catch them, plotting to kill the Queen and reduce England itself into vassaldom to the Pope.  The English nation, the loyal part of it, were replying to the wild pretension by the hands of their own admiral.  If Philip chose to countenance assassins, if the Holy Office chose to burn English sailors as heretics, those heretics had a right to make Spain understand that such a game was dangerous, that, as Santa Cruz had said, they had teeth and could use them.