To every Englishman’s amazement the chase was seen to go about and calmly come to hail the Golden Hind, which she mistook for a despatch vessel sent after her with some message from the Viceroy!  Drake, asking nothing better, ran up alongside as Anton her captain hailed him with a Who are you?  A ship of Chili! answered Drake.  Anton looked down on the stranger’s deck to see it full of armed men from whom a roar of triumph came. English! strike sail! Then Drake’s whistle blew sharply and instant silence followed; on which he hailed Don Anton:—­Strike sail!  Senor Juan de Anton, or I must send you to the bottom!—­Come aboard and do it yourself! bravely answered Anton.  Drake’s whistle blew one shrill long blast, which loosed a withering volley at less than point-blank range.  Anton tried to bear away and shake off his assailant.  But in vain.  The English guns now opened on his masts and rigging.  Down came the mizzen, while a hail of English shot and arrows prevented every attempt to clear away the wreckage.  The dumbfounded Spanish crew ran below, Don Anton looked overside to port; and there was the English pinnace, from which forty English boarders were nimbly climbing up his own ship’s side.  Resistance was hopeless; so Anton struck and was taken aboard the Golden Hind.  There he met Drake, who was already taking off his armor.  ‘Accept with patience the usage of war,’ said Drake, laying his hand on Anton’s shoulder.

For all that night, next day, and the next night following Drake sailed west with his fabulous prize so as to get well clear of the trade route along the coast.  What the whole treasure was has never been revealed.  But it certainly amounted to the equivalent of many millions at the present day.  Among the official items were:  13 chests of pieces of eight, 80 lbs. of pure gold, jewels and plate, 26 ton weight of silver, and sundries unspecified.  As the Spanish pilot’s son looked over the rail at this astounding sight, the Englishmen called out to say that his father was no longer the pilot of the old Spit-fire but of the new Spit-silver.

The prisoners were no less gratified than surprised by Drake’s kind treatment.  He entertained Don Anton at a banquet, took him all over the Golden Hind, and entrusted him with a message to Don Martin, the traitor of San Juan de Ulua.  This was to say that if Don Martin hanged any more Englishmen, as he had just hanged Oxenham, he should soon be given a present of two thousand Spanish heads.  Then Drake gave every Spanish officer and man a personal gift proportioned to his rank, put all his accumulated prisoners aboard the emptied treasure ship, wished them a prosperous voyage and better luck next time, furnished the brave Don Anton with a letter of protection in case he should fall in with an English vessel, and, after many expressions of goodwill on both sides, sailed north, the voyage ‘made’; while the poor ‘spit-silver’ treasure ship turned sadly east and steered for Panama.