The audacity of the project is unparalleled. Eighteen boys
led by a man not yet in his thirtieth year accompanied by Indians were
to invade a tangled thicket of hostile country, cut off from retreat,
the forts of the enemy--the cruelest enemy in Christendom--on each
side, no provisions but what each carried in his haversack!
Led by the Indian Pedro, the freebooters struck across country, picked
up the trail behind Nombre de Dios, marched by night, hid by day,
Indian scouts sending back word when a Spaniard was seen, the English
scudding to ambush in the tangled woods. Twelve days and nights they
marched. At ten in the morning of February 11, they were on the Great
Divide. Pedro led Drake to the top of the hill. Up the trunk of an
enormous tree, the Indians had cut steps to a kind of bower, or
lookout. Up clambered Francis Drake. Then he looked westward.
Mountains, hills, forested valleys, rolled from his feet westward.
Beyond--what? The shining {144} expanse of the fabled South Sea! The
Pacific silver in the morning light! A New World of Waters, where the
sun's track seemed to pave a new path, a path of gold, to the mystic
Orient! Never before had English eyes seen these waters! Never yet
English prow cut these waves! Where did they lead--the endlessly
rolling billows? For Drake, they seemed to lead to a New World of
Dreams--dreams of gold, of glory, of immortal fame.
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