truth of the "purchase" gained by Drake in the famous capture of the
plate ship in the South Sea.

One of the old buccaneer writers of a century later says: "The Spaniards
affirm to this day that he took at that time twelvescore tons of
plate and sixteen bowls of coined money a man (his number being then
forty-five men in all), insomuch that they were forced to heave much of
it overboard, because his ship could not carry it all."

Maybe this was a very greatly exaggerated statement put by the author
and his Spanish authorities, nevertheless there was enough truth in it
to prove very conclusively to the bold minds of the age that tremendous
profits--"purchases" they called them--were to be made from piracy. The
Western World is filled with the names of daring mariners of those old
days, who came flitting across the great trackless ocean in their little
tublike boats of a few hundred tons burden, partly to explore unknown
seas, partly--largely, perhaps--in pursuit of Spanish treasure:
Frobisher, Davis, Drake, and a score of others.

In this left-handed war against Catholic Spain many of the adventurers
were, no doubt, stirred and incited by a grim, Calvinistic, puritanical
zeal for Protestantism. But equally beyond doubt the gold and silver and
plate of the "Scarlet Woman" had much to do with the persistent energy
with which these hardy mariners braved the mysterious, unknown terrors
of the great unknown ocean that stretched away to the sunset, there in
faraway waters to attack the huge, unwieldy, treasure-laden galleons
that sailed up and down the Caribbean Sea and through the Bahama
Channel.

Of all ghastly and terrible things old-time religious war was the most