The air grew cold though it was summer. The men felt it from
having been so long in the tropics, and dropped out of health. There was
still no sign of a passage. If passage there was, Drake perceived that
it must be of enormous length. Magellan's Straits, he guessed, would be
watched for him, so he decided on the route by the Cape of Good Hope. In
the Philippine ship he had found a chart of the Indian Archipelago. With
the help of this and his own skill he hoped to find his way. He went
down again to San Francisco, landed there, found the soil teeming with
gold, made acquaintance with an Indian king who hated the Spaniards and
wished to become an English subject. But Drake had no leisure to annex
new territories. Avoiding the course from Mexico to the Philippines, he
made a direct course to the Moluccas, and brought up again at the Island
of Celebes. Here the _Pelican_ was a second time docked and scraped. The
crew had a month's rest among the fireflies and vampires of the tropical
forest. Leaving Celebes, they entered on the most perilous part of the
whole voyage. They wound their way among coral reefs and low islands
scarcely visible above the water-line. In their chart the only outlet
marked into the Indian Ocean was by the Straits of Malacca.
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