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How long she ept through the swirling vortex, Cuttill could not ree totally erased as left of the village The few drenched men who somehow remained alive on the battered Conception were even further terrorized by the sight of centuries-deadto the surface and surrounding the ship Torn by the wave froround, the ahtlessly at the horrified sailors, ere certain they were being cursed by creatures of the devil

Cuttill atte the ship His was a useless gesture as the rudder had been ripped off its pintles soon after the wave struck He clung tenaciously to life, his fear heightened by the alleon

The worst was far from over The alleon with such force the uns broke their lashings and tumbled about the deck in a wild dance of destruction One by one the fear-crazed sea avalanche of water until only Cuttill was left The enored its way 8 kilo trees until over 100 square kilometers (36

square miles) were utterly devastated Massive boulders were scattered ahead of the wave's force like s Then at last, as the leviathan of death an to lose momentum Its fury spent, it lapped at the foot of thesound, leaving in its wake a swath of destruction unknown in recorded history

Cuttill felt the galleon becoun deck covered with fallen rigging and ti soul For nearly an hour he huddled under the tiller, fearing a return of the murderous wave, but the ship remained still and silent Slowly, stiffly, he made his way to the top of the quarterdeck and surveyed the scene of devastation

Astoundingly, the Conception sat upright, high and dry in a flattened jungle He judged her to be alues froed construction and the fact she was sailing into the hen it struck If she had been sailing away the watery force would have s She had endured, but she was a wreck that would never feel the sea beneath her keel again

Far in the distance, the village had disappeared All that ree It was as if a thousand people and their hole To Cuttill they seemed to be scattered everywhere, in sorotesquely in th

e twisted branches of the trees Most had been battered into alnizable shapes

Cuttill could not believe he was the only human to survive the cataclys soul He thanked God for his deliverance and prayed for guidance Then he took stock of his situation Stranded fourteen thousand nautical land, deep in a part of the world controlled by the Spanish, ould gladly torture and execute a hated English pirate should they lay hands on hi life were sli home by sea He decided his only course, one with little probability of success, was to trek over the Andes and work east Once he reached the Brazilian coast there was always the possibility of uese shipping

The followinghe made a litter for his sea chest and filled it with food and water frounpowder, a supply of shot, flint, and steel, a sack of tobacco, a knife, and a Spanish Bible Then with nothing else but the clothes on his back, Cuttill set off with his litter for theone final look at the forlorn Conception and wondering if perhaps the gods of the Incas were somehow responsible for the catastrophe

Now they had their sacred relics back, he thought, and they were dae lid came to mind, and he did not envy the next men who came to steal it

Drake returned triu at Plying with spoils But he found no sign of Thomas Cuttill and the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion His backers received a 4700 percent profit on their investment and the queen's share beca a lavish party on board the Hind at Greenwich, Queen Elizabeth conferred knighthood on Drake

The second ship to circuenerations she remained on view until finally she either rotted away or burned to the waterline History doesn't know for certain how it happened, but the Golden Hind vanished into the water of the Thames

Sir Francis Drake continued his exploits for another sixteen years On a later voyage, he seized the city ports of Santo Doena and became Her Majesty's Admiral-of-the-Seas He also served as mayor of Plymouth and a member of Parliareat Spanish Ar an expedition to plunder ports and shipping on the Spanish Main in 1596 After succu to dysentery he was sealed in a lead coffin and dropped in the sea near Portobelo, Panama

Before his death, hardly a day passed when Drake didn't puzzle over the disappearance of the Conception and the enigma of the mysterious jade box and its knotted cords