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Promptly obeying that order, the United States squadron, consisting of the flagship Olympia, Baltimore, Raleigh, Boston, Concord, and Petrel, with the revenue cutter McCulloch as an auxiliary dispatch boat, entered the harbor of Manila at daybreak on the 1st of May and immediately engaged the entire Spanish fleet of eleven ships, which were under the protection of the fire of the land forts.
The two travelers talked of various subjects, but, once more aboard the train at Sangre Grande, the question of Trinidad's wealth recurred to Stuart, and he sought further information. "You spoke of the island as being prosperous, Mr. James," he said. "Has the Pitch Lake, discovered so many centuries ago by Sir Walter Raleigh, had anything to do with it?"
At midnight the lights went out suddenly, and from the watchers on the Hind the cry arose, "The admiral is cast away." And only the Golden Hind returned to England. The mantle of Gilbert fell upon the shoulders of his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh, whose energy and versatility made him, perhaps, the foremost Englishman of his age.
We like to think these things, but we can only make believe to ourselves as Millais did when he went to Budleigh Salterton and painted that picture. When still quite a boy, Walter Raleigh went to Oriel College, Oxford, but we know nothing of what he did there, and the next we hear of him is that he is fighting for the Huguenots in France.
Thompson, librarian to Sir Thomas Raleigh sins, it is true, by excess of brevity, and does not offer that character of exactitude which the archivists of my own generation were the first to introduce into works upon diplomatics and paleography. It leaves a good deal to be desired and to be divined.
A few years later, when the great Raleigh returned from his trans-Alantic expedition, Gondemar fiercely denounced him to the King as the worst enemy of Spain. The usual threat was made, the wand was waved, and the noblest head in England fell upon the block, in pursuance of an obsolete sentence fourteen years old.
Before morning fifteen several Armadas had assailed her, and all in vain; some had been sunk at her side; and the rest, 'so ill approving of their entertainment, that at break of day they were far more willing to hearken to a composition, than hastily to make more assaults or entries. 'But as the day increased, says Raleigh, 'so our men decreased; and as the light grew more and more, by so much the more grew our discomfort, for none appeared in sight but enemies, save one small ship called the "Pilgrim," commanded by Jacob Whiddon, who hovered all night to see the success, but in the morning, bearing with the "Revenge," was hunted like a hare among many ravenous hounds but escaped.
They possessed amulets, little idols of molten gold, and chairs, elegantly carved; but these traces of dawning civilization are far distant from those cities and houses of stone described by Raleigh and those who followed him.
Then came the first of the maritime swallows, which made many dismal summers for the Court of Spain. In 1565 Drake voyaged to the Guianas on the Spanish Main. He was followed by Hawkins, Raleigh, and a host of others, including the Dutch navigators. These hardy seamen, it must be said, had in the first instance proceeded to the Continent with the idea of engaging in legitimate trade.
Essex, and the Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil, regarded each other with mutual distrust and dislike. Cecil and Raleigh were connected by ties of common interest, and, as the latter supposed, of friendship.
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