The Simeon Chamber by Steve Martini Read Free Book Online Page B

but Drake didn’t know that. All he knew was that the Spaniards were pulling a king’s ransom in silver from their mines in Peru. He’d heard stories about Inca and Aztec cities awash in gold. For all he knew the entire west coast of the Americas was sprinkled with the stuff like manna from heaven.” Nick used his napkin to catch sandwich relish as it dripped down his beard. “But he had a more practical reason for coming north.”
    There was a blank look in Nick’s eyes as his mind was transported to another age, and his cadence slowed.
    “After he navigated his way through the Straits of Magellan, Drake had a field day sacking Spanish villages and plundering their sea traffic off Peru, Chile, and right up to the Isthmus of Panama. He caught a Manila galleon north of Panama in Mexican waters coming the other way and parted it from its cargo.
    The Spanish had no warships in the Pacific at that time—there was no need. No English ship had ever sailed that far west before. But Drake had a problem.”
    He paused and shot a sideways glance at Sam. “By the time he reached California the Spanish had assembled a veritable armada to track him down, and Drake needed to find an eastward passage through North America in the worst way. It would have been the fastest way back to England. The fabled search for a Northwest Passage was not the noble quest one reads about in most history books, at least not as far as Drake was concerned.”
    Nick picked up his fork and chased a French fry around his plate.
    “Most scholars don’t believe that Drake ever intended to sail around the world,” said Nick. “What he really had was a little larceny in his heart and a quick getaway on his mind. We know from records that he went as far north as the Oregon coast, but the weather turned foul so he came back south. His ultimate trek across the Pacific was born of practical necessity.
    It was either that or decorate the end of a Spanish pike.” Nick sipped his beer and gobbled the last bite of his sandwich.
     
    Sam had only picked around the edges of his lunch and half of his sandwich remained on his plate.
    “You gonna eat that?” asked Nick.
    Sam smiled. “No, you go ahead.” The vision of bloody heads hoisted on sharpened spears had curbed Bogardus’s appetite.
    Nick plucked the sandwich from the plate and went to work on it. He spoke with his mouth full. “From everything we know, Drake had about thirty tons of gold, silver, precious gems and other treasure on board the Golden Hinde when he finally landed at Nova Albion. He had to careen his ship—scrape the bottom and patch it—and gather provisions for the Pacific crossing. We don’t know exactly what went on during the period that he stayed in California. We know he was here for more than a month, but the theories on where he landed and where he pitched his camp are as numerous as the scholars studying the question.”
    “I thought you guys at Berkeley had a plate of some kind left behind by Drake?”
    “The brass plate,” said Nick. “a fellow found it near Novato, twenty miles inland, in 1937, and for a while it looked like it might provide some answers, though no one could say why it wasn’t found closer to the coast or the bay. After some debate and a lot of publicity in the papers, another man came forward and said he’d found the plate a couple of years earlier nearer the coast and that he’d carried it around in his car for a time before tossing it out on the highway thinking it was a piece of junk. There’s a lot of conjecture about the plate, but metallurgical tests on the age of the brass indicate it’s not old enough to be authentic. Besides, it doesn’t answer the question of where Drake landed. Archaeologists have scoured the area near Novato where the plate was found and sampled the place near the coast where the second man said he first picked it up and they’ve come up with nothing.”
    He paused to take another bite. “There’s probably only one