In Search of a Kingdom by Laurence Bergreen

Author:Laurence Bergreen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Custom House
Published: 2020-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XI

Deliverance

There was no chance of escape. “The ghastly appearance of instant death, affording no respite or time of pausing, called upon us to deny ourselves, and to commend ourselves into the merciful hands of our most gratious God.” It had been two months since they departed from the Moluccas, and they had little idea of their whereabouts. The sailors prostrated themselves and prayed to God to have mercy on them. “And so preparing as it were our necks into the block, we every minute expected the final stroke to be given unto us.”

After they appealed to the Almighty, Drake spoke calmly, “showing us the way thereto by his own example.” He explained “first of all the pump being well plied, and the ship freed of water, we found our leaks to be nothing increased, which though it gave us no hope of deliverance, yet it gave us some hope of respite, insomuch as it assured us that the bulk was sound, which truly we acknowledged to be an immediate providence of God alone, insomuch as no strength of wood and iron could have possibly bore so hard and violent a shock as our ship did, dashing herself under full sail against the rocks.” Thus, Drake implied, God had not abandoned them, despite the appearance of disaster.

Drake summoned his resolve to reassure the crew. He personally supervised the sounding, and declared that the line was too short to reach the sea floor. A good sign, perhaps, but not for Fletcher. “Our misery seemed to be increased, for whereas at first we could look for nothing but a present end, that expectation was now turned into waiting for a lingering death, of the two the far more fearful to be chosen.” Drake, all the while, gave “cheerful speeches and good encouragements unto the rest.” Either their ship was stuck fast, and they would remain with her, or they would abandon ship, “to see some other place of stay and refuge, the better of which two choices did carry with it the appearance of worse than 1000 deaths.” It was preferable, in Fletcher’s estimation, to perish together rather “than with the loss and absence of his friends to live in a strange land: whether a solitary life (the better choice) among wild beasts, as a bird on the mountains without all comfort, or among the barbarous people of the heathen, in intolerable bondage both of body and mind.” They had survived crossing the Atlantic, the Strait of Magellan, and thousands of miles of the Pacific, along with mutinies, deadly storms, the Spanish, and giant crabs with pincers capable of snapping off a man’s finger, only to come to grief on a wretched sandbar in the unexplored reaches of the ocean.

Fletcher took the measure of their prospects for survival and arrived at a bleak conclusion. “Our boat was by no means able at once to carry above 20 persons with any safety, and we were 58 in all; the nearest land was six leagues from us, and the wind from the shore directly bent against us.

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