beset the ranks of the boastful foe and cheered on the British bull-dogs to renewed exertions.
At six in the evening a mighty cry welled from the British boats. “They fly! They fly!” sounded above the ruck and roar of battle.
Yes—it was the truth. Beaten and dismayed, the Spanish fleet bore away to the North, while the English—in spite of the fact that their powder was wet, and nearly all spent—“gave them chase as if they lacked nothing, until they had cleared their own coast and some part of Scotland of them.” The Armada—split, part helpless—drifted away from Plymouth, and wild cheers of joy came from the deck of the vessel which carried bold Sir Francis Drake. The great battle had been won.
So crippled were many of the Spanish hulks that they were wrecked in stormy weather, off the coast of Scotland and Ireland. Not half of those who put to sea ever reached Spain again. Many sailors were drowned, or perished miserably by the hands of the natives of the coast, and some who escaped were put to death by the Queen’s orders. Fever and sickness broke out in the English ships and the followers of bold Drake died by hundreds, “sickening one day and perishing the next.”
The English vessels, themselves, were in a bad way—they had to be disinfected and the men put ashore—where the report of the many wrecks and the massacre of Spanish soldiers, eased the anxiety of the once terrified inhabitants of the tight little isle, and made it certain that the Armada would never return. Drake and his bold seamen had saved the people of Merrie England. Again hats off to this pirate of the Spanish Main!
Safely settled in Buckland Abbey, knighted, honored, respected—the hero of the defense of England—one would think that Drake would have remained peacefully at home to die “with his boots on.” But not so. The spirit of adventure called to him with irresistible force, and again he set out for the Spanish Main. He had sailed around the world before his grapple with the Armada; he had harassed the Spaniard in an expedition to Lisbon; he was the idol of the English. He had done enough—you say. Yes, he had done enough—but—like all men who love the game of life he wished to have just one more expedition in search of gold and adventure, for—by nature he was a gambler, and he was throwing the dice with Fate.
So a goodly crew sailed with him again, hoping for another raid upon mule trains and cities of treasure. But alas! There was to be a different story from the others. All the towns and hamlets of the Spanish Main had been warned to “be careful and look well to themselves, for that Drake and Hawkins were making ready in England to come upon them.” And when the English arrived they found stout defense and valiant men, nor was a sail seen “worth giving chase unto.” Hawkins died, many grew ill of fever, and finally Drake, himself, succumbed to the malarial atmosphere of Panama. He was to remain where gold and adventure had first lured him.
On January the twenty-eighth, 1596, the great captain yielded up his spirit “like a Christian, quietly in his cabin.” And a league from the shore of Porto Rico, the mighty rover of the seas was placed in a weighted hammock and tossed into the sobbing ocean. The spume frothed above the eddying current, sucked downward by the emaciated form of the famous mariner, and a solitary gull shrieked cruelly above the bubbles, below which—upon beads of coral and clean sand—rested the body of Sir Francis Drake, rover, rogue, and rattling sea ranger. It was his last journey.
“Weep for this soul, who, in fathoms of azure,
Lies where the wild tarpon breaks through the foam,
Where the sea otter mews to its brood in the ripples,
As the pelican wings near the palm-forest gloom.
Ghosts of the buccaneers flit through the branches,
Dusky and dim in the shadows of eve,
While shrill screams the parrot—the lord of Potanches,
‘Drake, Captain Drake, you’ve had your last leave.’ ”
SEA IRONY
One day I saw a ship upon the sands
Careened upon beam ends, her tilted deck
Swept clear of rubbish of her long-past wreck;
Her colors struck, but not by human hands;
Her masts the driftwood of what distant strands!
Her frowning ports, where, at the Admiral’s beck,
Grim-visaged cannon held the foe in check,
Gaped for the frolic of the minnow bands.
The seaweed banners in her fo’ks’le waved,
A turtle basked upon her capstan head;
Her cabin’s pomp the clownish sculpin braved,
And, on her prow, where the lost figure-head
Once turned the brine, a name forgot was graved,
It was “The Irresistible” I read.
—Heaton.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
PERSECUTOR OF THE SPANIARDS
(1552–1618)
“All great men have lived by hope.”—James Freeman Clarke.
YOUNG RALEIGH AND A COMPANION LISTENING TO TALES OF THE SPANISH MAIN.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
PERSECUTOR OF THE SPANIARDS
(1552–1618)
“When the sobbing sea is squally,
Then—look out for Walter Raleigh!
He’s the fellow whom Queen Bess is said to love.
He’s a reckless, handsome sailor,
With a ‘Vandyke’ like a tailor,
He can coo fond words of loving like a dove.
Faith! I like this gallant rover,
Who has ploughed the wild seas over,
Who has passed the grim and wild equator’s ring.
And I cheer, whene’er I view him,
For—my Boy—off Spain I knew him
When he trimmed the Spanish cruisers, like a King.”
—Chant of the Plymouth Dock-Hand.
BOYS! You have all heard about the Square Deal. Well—Here is the story of a man who didn’t get one.
Walter Raleigh was a brave man; he was an able seafarer; his younger manhood was spent in the midst of the most brilliant Royal Court which England has known. He proved his courage and military prowess in more than one bitterly contested battle-field and naval conflict. His love of his own land and his hatred of his enemies was ardent.
He was also a fellow of wit, and, as an author, took rank with the great literary lights of the Elizabethan Age. He was an adventurer, and, in middle life, as well as in old age, braved the great deep and perils of savage lands in the magnificent attempt to make discoveries and to settle English colonies in the New World. Chivalrous in actions and feeling; of handsome person; graceful manners and courtly address; it is no wonder that he had a host of enemies: those fellows who couldn’t do anything worth while themselves, and wanted to “pull the other fellow down.” There are plenty of them around, to-day, doing the same thing in the same, old way.
As an Englishman he loved England to such an extent, that—upon the return from one of his numerous voyages—he