308 THE SEA. 



which being done, and the place of execution made ready, he, having- embraced our general, 

 and taken his leave of all the company, with prayer for the queen's majesty and our 

 realm, in quiet sort laid his head to the block, where he ended his life." One account says 

 that after partaking of the communion, Drake and Doughtie dined at the same table 

 together, " as cheerfully, in sobriety, as ever in their lives they had done ; and taking 

 their leave by drinking to each other, as if some short journey only had been in hand." 

 A provost marshal had made all things ready, and after drinking this funereal stirrup-cup, 

 Doughtie went to the block. Drake subsequently addressed the whole company, exhorting 

 them to unity and subordination, asking them to prepare reverently for a special celebration 

 of the holy communion on the following Sunday. 



And now, having broken up the Portuguese prize on account of its unseaworthiness, 

 and rechristened his own ship, the Pelican, into the Golden Hinde, Drake entered the 

 Straits now named after Magellan, though that navigator termed them the Patagonian 

 Straits, because he had found the natives wearing clumsy shoes or sandals : patagon 

 signifying in Portuguese a large, ill-shaped foot. The land surrounding the straits is high 

 and mountainous, and the water generally deep close to the cliffs. " We found the strait/' 

 says the first narrator, " to have many turnings, and as it were, shuttings up, as if there 

 were no passage at all." Drake passed through the tortuous strait in seventeen days. 

 Clift, one of the historians of the expedition, whose narrative is preserved in Hakluyt's 

 collection of "Voyages," says of the penguins there, three thousand of which were killed 

 in less than a day, " We victualled ourselves with a kind of fowl which is plentiful on 

 that isle (St. George's in the Straits), and whose flesh is not unlike a fat goose here 

 in England. They have no wings, but short pinions, which serve their turn in swimming; 

 their colour is somewhat black, mixed with white spots under their belly, and about their 

 necks. They wall: so upright that, afar off, a man would take them to be little children. 

 If a man approach anything near them, they run into holes in the ground (which be 

 not very deep) whereof the island is full, so that to take them we had staves with 

 hooks fast to the end, wherewith some of our men pulled them out, and others being 

 ready with cudgels did knock them on the head, for they bite so cruelly with their crooked 

 bills, that none of us were able to handle them alive." 



Drake's vessels, separated by a gale, were driven hither and thither. One of them, 

 the Marigold, must have foundered, as she was never again heard of. The two remaining 

 ships sought shelter in a dangerous rocky bay, from which the Golden Hinde was driven 

 to sea, her cable having parted. The other vessel, under Captain Winter's command, 

 regained the straits, and " anchoring there in an open bay, made great fires on the 

 shore, that if Drake should put into the strait also, he might discover them." Winter 

 proceeded later up the straits, and anchored in a sound, which he named the Port of 

 Health, because his men, who had been " very sick with long watching, wet, cold, and 

 evil diet," soon recovered on the nourishing shell-fish found there. He, after waiting 

 some time, and despairing of regaining Drake's company, gave over the voyage, and 

 set sail for England, " where he arrived with the reproach of having abandoned his 

 commander." 



Drake was now reduced to his own vessel, the Golden Hiiide, which was obliged 



