Historical Tales [calibre 5.4.1]

But, to their great joy, the mariners found plenty of the shining yellow stones, and stowed abundance of them on their ships, deeming, like certain Virginian gold-seekers of a later date, that their fortunes were now surely made. They found also "a great dead fish, round like a porepis [porpoise], twelve feet long, having a Horne of two yardes, lacking two ynches, growing out of the Snout, wreathed and straight, like a Waxe-Taper, and might be thought to be a Sea-Unicorne. It was reserved as a Jewell by the Queens' commandment in her Wardrobe of Robes."

A northwest wind having cleared the strait of ice, the navigators sailed gayly forward, full of the belief that the Pacific would soon open to their eyes. It was not long before they were in battle with the Eskimos. They had found European articles in some native kyacks, which they supposed belonged to the men they had lost the year before. To rescue or revenge these unfortunates, Frobisher attacked the natives, who valiantly resisted, even plucking the arrows from their bodies to use as missiles, and, when mortally hurt, flinging themselves from the rocks into the sea. At length they gave ground, and fled to the loftier cliffs, leaving two of their women as trophies to the assailants. These two, one "being olde," says the record, "the other encombred with a yong childe, we took. The olde wretch, whom divers of our Saylors supposed to be eyther the Divell, or a witch, had her buskins plucked off, to see if she were cloven-footed; and for her ougly hewe and deformitie, we let her goe; the young woman and the childe we brought away."

This was not the last of their encounters with the Eskimos, who, incensed against them, made every effort to entrap them into their power. Their stratagems consisted in placing tempting pieces of meat at points near which they lay in ambush, and in pretending lameness to decoy the Englishmen into pursuit. These schemes failing, they made a furious assault upon the vessel with arrows and other missiles.

Before the strait could be fully traversed, ice had formed so thickly that further progress was stopped, and, leaving the hoped-for Cathay for future voyagers, the mariners turned their prows homeward, their vessels laden with two hundred tons of the glittering stone.

Strangely enough, an examination of this material failed to dispel the delusion. The scientists of that day declared that it was genuine gold-ore, and expressed their belief that the road to China lay through Frobisher Strait. Untold wealth, far surpassing that which the Spaniards had obtained in Mexico and Peru, seemed ready to shower into England's coffers. Frobisher was now given the proud honor of kissing the queen's hand, his neck was encircled with a chain of gold of more value than his entire two hundred tons of ore, and, with a fleet of fifteen ships, one of them of four hundred tons, he set sail again for the land of golden promise. Of the things that happened to him in this voyage, one of the most curious is thus related. "The Salamander (one of their Shippes), being under both her Courses and Bonets, happened to strike upon a great Whale, with her full Stemme, with suche a blow that the Shippe stood still, and neither stirred backward or forward. The whale thereat made a great and hideous noyse, and casting up his body and tayle, presently sank under water. Within two days they found a whale dead, which they supposed was this which the Salamander had stricken."