'
You must take this last incident into your conception of Drake's
character, think of it how you please.
It was now midwinter, the stormiest season of the year, and they
remained for six weeks in Port St. Julian. They burnt the twelve-ton
pinnace, as too small for the work they had now before them, and there
remained only the _Pelican_, the _Elizabeth_, and the _Marigold_. In
cold wild weather they weighed at last, and on August 20 made the
opening of Magellan's Straits. The passage is seventy miles long,
tortuous and dangerous. They had no charts. The ships' boats led, taking
soundings as they advanced. Icy mountains overhung them on either side;
heavy snow fell below. They brought up occasionally at an island to rest
the men, and let them kill a few seals and penguins to give them fresh
food. Everything they saw was new, wild, and wonderful.
Having to feel their way, they were three weeks in getting through. They
had counted on reaching the Pacific that the worst of their work was
over, and that they could run north at once into warmer and calmer
latitudes. The peaceful ocean, when they entered it, proved the
stormiest they had ever sailed on. A fierce westerly gale drove them 600
miles to the south-east outside the Horn.
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