This grand piratical expedition excited great indignation in Spain,
which country was still at peace with England, and even in England there
were influential people who counselled the Queen that it would be wise
and prudent to disavow Drake's actions, and compel him to restore to
Spain the booty he had taken from his subjects. But Queen Elizabeth was
not the woman to do that sort of thing. She liked brave men and brave
deeds, and she was proud of Drake. Therefore, instead of punishing him,
she honored him, and went to take dinner with him on board his ship,
which lay at Deptford.
So Columbus does not stand alone as a grand master of piracy. The famous
Sir Francis Drake, who became vice-admiral of the fleet which defeated
the Spanish Armada, was a worthy companion of the great Genoese.
These notable instances have been mentioned because it would be unjust
to take up the history of those resolute traders who sailed from
England, France, and Holland, to the distant waters of the western world
for the purpose of legitimate enterprise and commerce, and who
afterwards became thorough-going pirates, without trying to make it
clear that they had shining examples for their notable careers.
Chapter III
Pupils in Piracy
After the discoveries of Columbus, the Spanish mind seems to have been
filled with the idea that the whole undiscovered world, wherever it
might be, belonged to Spain, and that no other nation had any right
whatever to discover anything on the other side of the Atlantic, or to
make any use whatever of lands which had been discovered.
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