Ballads of the Fleet and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The mother looked out from the window-bay, looked over the woods to the sea,
And, “Where are those four bonny boys of mine?” and “Where are they gone?” said she.

The gardener's lad with the wave-tanned face looked up from the blush-rose bed,
“They have taken the boat and dropped on the ebb at dawn of the day,” he said.

The mother turned from the window-bay, she was fair as three-months' bride,
“Ah well-a-day for my four wild boys and their lust of the sea,” she sighed.

But deeper yet had the mother sighed, could she know what the years would bring,
The gift of the sea, and the doom of the sea, and the faith of a craven king.

A stone's throw under the windows, by dale and covert and down,
The Dart winds home from its moorland source to the roads and the haven town;

And thither it was in an old sea-boat from their home at Greenaway
The eager sons of the manor-house would fare for their holiday;

There were Humphry and Adrien Gilbert, with their friend from over the moor,
The yeoman's son John Davies, to tug at the heavy oar,

And the boy that held the tiller, and the younger one at his side,
Were the lads of Walter Raleigh and the same fair mother's pride.

What deeds of wild adventure they have dared on that Devon stream
When the fabled West was an easy quest to a boy's light-hearted dream.

When the river-reach was their tropic sea, and the coast was the Spanish Main,
And the blistered wreck on the ebb-tide shoal was a great galleass of Spain.

And so they would come to the haven, where, moored to the laden quays,
Were the ships at rest with their canvas furled from a hundred marvellous seas;

The lofty poops and the painted hulls of the beautiful ships of old,
The carven prows and the open ports with their guns that shone like gold;

For the boys that were born and cradled where the breeze of the ocean blows,
They loved those ships with the passion that only the sea child knows.

And the Channel rovers knew them, the men of the western shire,
And told them tales of the ocean life and the world of a boy's desire;

There was one that had sailed with Strangways, another with red Tremayne;
They could tell of the Holy Office and the rule of the monk in Spain;

Of the corsair folk in the eastern isles with the long brass guns on deck,
Of the north sea spray, of a gale in the bay, of a fight, of a run, of a wreck;

Of the fur-clad folk and the frost-bound shores, where the day and night are one,
And the drifting ice-floes sparkle to the gleam of the midnight sun;

But the tale that held them longest was the tale of the isles that lie
Far over the great Atlantic and the land of the sunset sky;

Where veiled in rumour and fable, withdrawn as a virgin bride,
The world to be wooed and conquered was a quest that was still untried.

Then the lips would part and the eager eyes go westward over the sea,
“A little while, but a little while, and the time will come for me.”

Now back—for the tide sets inland, and the mother frets in the hall,
“We have far to go ere the sun be low—good hap to ye, masters all!”

“God speed to ye, gentle worships—good hap to ye, honest John,
Good luck to you, young Squire Raleigh, and keep your eye on the Don!”

The mother looked out as the westering sun went under the steep moorside,
And “Where are those four bonny boys of mine? they are long from their home,” she sighed.

But deeper yet had the mother sighed, could she know what the end would be,
The golden dream of the after years and the doom that came from the sea.

THE STORY OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

I CHILDREN OF THE SEA

In the Medway mouth by Chatham the King's ships lay at ease,
The fleet that Tudor Henry built, who was lord of the narrow seas;

Across the bay were the shipwrights' yards, where they laid the sturdy keel,
And there day through rang hammer stroke, and hissed the strident steel;

And there they bent the good ship's ribs, and trimmed the taper tree,
To lift the wide wings windward that bear men over sea;

The old dismasted war-hulks, whose travelling days were done,
Lay moored in the quiet reaches, where they blistered in the sun.

And many a shore-bird there had found a cranny for its nest,
And children's faces thronged the ports of those old barques at rest.

In such an ark of olden days, moored hard by Chatham dock,
There was lodged a sturdy man of God, one Drake of Tavistock;

A hard, unyielding Western man, who held with the stern new creed,
And deemed that the word was lifeless which did not prompt the deed;

The creed that yet had its evil days of blood and of fire to face
Before the faith was 'stablished that has formed the English race.

He had seen his homestead burning long since, and fled for life
Across the Dartmoor highlands with his new-born child and wife;

What time the Western counties rose, that famous Whitsuntide,
When stalwart Reformation men were on the losing side.

But now was peace in all the land through Edward's ebbing days,
Before the torch Queen Mary lit had set the shires ablaze;

And here of a Sunday morning, in sunshine, rain, or sleet,
The rough sea-folk would gather to the chaplain of the Fleet:

For they that go abroad in ships are earnest men at prayer,
And they prayed as they would in their own plain way, and as yet none vexed them there.

So half a score of sturdy lads grew up between the decks,
And paddled in the ebbing shoals, and played at raids and wrecks—

Their small black boats would bear them over the reaches wide,
Where the mimic billows tossed their manes when the home-wind met the tide,

With quick young hands for tiller and sheet alert to the pulse of the breeze,
And frank young fearless laughter tuned to the tumbled seas;

While the mother would watch with anxious eyes from the deck of their floating home
The track where the children guided a nutshell craft in the foam.

They were nursed on the cradling water by fostering wind and wave,
And as they had lived, so in after years in the sea they found their grave.

There, half in wonder and half in awe, they had heard grave men debate
Dark rumours of the death of kings, and tidings big with fate;

And they saw the Kentish yeomen arm, and march with pike and sword,
When Wyatt mustered round his flag the servants of the Lord;—

They heard of the battles lost and won, and the good blood spilt in vain,
And the infant lips were taught to curse the league with Rome and Spain.

So years rolled on, and the eldest-born went forth and took his chance,
A 'prentice hand on a ketch that plied to the Channel ports and France.

Dark days had set on England, dark days for such as Drake,
And lurid through the darkness shone the fagot and the stake;—

It was little enough like boyhood's dream, a dreary life at the best,
With danger and toil for shipmates, and hunger oft as a guest;

It was little enough like boyhood's dream—when the light on a sunset sail,
To eyes that followed the outward bound, was more than a fairy tale;

To crouch chilled through on the dripping planks, and watch for the roving lights,
When green seas break on the dipping prow through the endless wintry nights,

When the blast drives down from Bergen, and the cloud-banks blot the moon,
And the evil sea is a churning race from the chalk cliffs to the dune;

But the mariner's boy was taught his craft, and in service learned to rule,
And he braced his nerve and he trained his eye in a hard and thankless school.

He saw the lilied flag of Guise at Calais oust his Queen's,
And the fleet of England sail with Spain to battle at Grave-lines;

And in the ports of Maas and Scheldt they found no better cheer,
There too the shadow of the cowl fell deeper year by year:—

For a great unrest had touched the time, the world's deep heart was stirred,
There rang across the northern blasts a voice that would be heard—

A voice that shook the ocean shores where freedom wills to dwell,
From Zealand and the English cliffs to Nantes and La Rochelle:

The night of years broke into dawn, and now in a broader day
Men's conscience craved for warrant from those who bade obey;

And lest this dire contagion spread, and free thought breathe again,
The Holy Office raised her flag in all the ports of Spain;

And through the Flemish sand-hills and up the Holland dykes
The hounds of God were on the trail to flesh the Spanish pikes.

But where their withering mandate fell deep slumbering passions woke,
For simple men grew great of heart and turned against their yoke,

And deeds of high endeavour were no more to the favoured few,
But brain and heart were the measure of what every man might do.

The wronged took arms and sought redress at their own risk and fee,
Shook off their feet the bloody dust, and gathered in the sea;

The London merchants mounted guns, and armed the trading barque,
The boatmen left their nets and lines to follow de la Mark;

So corsairs swept the narrow seas, and watched the highway south,
While justice in her ruder form spoke through the cannon's mouth;

Long years the trembling nations paused, the red fires smouldered low,
While monarchs knew within their gates the internecine foe;

Till there rose in island England a Queen, by God's own grace,
Who gathered in her ample heart the heart of all her race—

The race which, loving freedom, of their own free will obeyed,
Till champions mustered round her, and trust with trust repaid;

She saw the crisis of the age, absorbed her nation's faith,
And faced a world's defiance with battle to the death.

Through those dark years of doubt and stress the coaster plied her trade,
The preacher's lad grew great and strong—and so the man was made.

II SAN JUAN DE LUA

This is a tale of treason, with the fate of a world in its wake—
The treason of Don Martine and the oath of Francis Drake!

It was nigh twelve months since Captain John had beat out of Plymouth Sound
With the Queen's tall ships the Jesus and the Minion southward bound;

And Drake in the little Judith had sailed in his kinsman's train,
With his all on earth in the venture to trade on the Spanish Main.

They met with a gale in Biscay, they had started late in the year,
And the Queen's tall ship the Jesus was leaky and ill to steer;

So they halted in Grand Canary and righted their disarray,
Recaulked the straining timbers and then to the South away!

They harried the Lisbon traders with Fenner's name for a plea,
For the law of quick reprisal was the grim old law at sea;

And the Grace of God got an English name and an English flag at the main
Ere they sailed for Margarita and the ocean world of Spain.

There's many a tale were well forgot,—there's little enough to boast
Of the work they did those winter months in the bights of the Guinea coast.

They did not barter their English gold for the palm-oil or the date,
But the hulls that came in ballast went out with a living freight;

On an evil day, John Hawkins, you took up with an evil trade,
And you set your course by a luckless star with the fruit of a bloody raid!

Though many had held it was God's work too, while in that dark Afric hell
Before the inhuman altars the weak and the captive fell;

While the wretch foredoomed to the slaughter might live to be sold a slave,
The brand be plucked from the burning and a soul be won to save.

But little recked they of doubts or fears that vexed the soul of the wise,
They did as the world did round them, and they claimed their share of the prize:

And their sons shall make atonement, in the years that are to be,
For the freight they bore to the New World's shore through the still Sargasso Sea.

They were seven weeks in the ocean and never a sail went by,
Cramped in the lonely vastness of infinite sea and sky:

But ever the stars moved eastward, and the new stars rose to ken,
The awe of the waters scared them, and they longed for the paths of men:

Till at last with the sunrise glimmer there rose through an opal sea
A shadowy range of islands and the haze of a land on the lee;

And the mariner's boy stared wondering eyed—for the wings of the wind were furled,
And the capes hung high in the still mirage of dawn on a phantom world;

A land where never our island oaks had fared since the years began,
Until John Hawkins taught them the path of the Englishman.

Then a breeze came perfume-laden from the heart of the tropic zone,
And crinkling waves tossed round them the drift of a shore unknown:

And the winged fish rose on the face of the deep to skim like a cloud of spray
From edge to edge of the curling blue and into the blue away;

But the sun still beckoned them westward till he sank in a blaze of fire
On the fabled hills of a thousand dreams and the goal of a world's desire;

While the parting mists wreathed upwards in delicate rosy whirls,
And there peered through a rift in the broken veil the peaks of the isle of pearls.

Now Philip in his great wisdom had laid England under a ban,
And never a New World settler might trade with an Englishman.

But the lust of the land was on them, the craving of men confined
For a draft of the fresh spring water, a breath of the off-shore wind,

So they landed in Margarita in despite of the King of Spain,
They paid their footing in honest gold and quickened their hearts again.

And they saw the unscaled mountains that rose from the New World's edge,
Where the long surf rollers thunder and burst on the coral ledge;

But they skirted steep La Guayra till they came to a lonely bay,
In the gulf that men called “Sorrowful,” where was none to say them nay;

And there they abode careening, refitting masts and spars,
And they learned the signs of the seasons and the march of the tropic stars.

Here all was a land of marvel: the fireflies' glimmer at night,
The shore where the sea-weed gardens rock under the phosphor light;

The great tree-ferns and the coco palms, and the wild lime's sweet perfume,
The edge of the forest crimsoned with the great hibiscus bloom,

Where clinging from each green tangle hang down like a cluster of bells,
Purple and pink and scarlet, the frail convolvulus cells;

Where the moth-birds pause and flutter a shower of gems in the air,
Dip slender bills in the waxen cups and drink of the nectar there.

So a passion of high adventure came over that English crew,—
They had seen the New World's promise and the way that the east wind blew;

They had only stood on the threshold, on the marge of the siren west,
But the magic wand had touched them, and now they would never rest.

From thence they began their trading—the peace of the realms their plea,
And the right of open harbour to all from the open sea.

The Spanish governors shook their heads, but they made protest in vain,
And the Guinea freight was bartered in despite of the King of Spain;

For the settlers made them welcome, and came off in the night aboard,
Or they claimed their rights of market at the point of the naked sword;

And it prospered those free-traders till deep in the Jesus' hold
Was a smouldering fire of jewels and a shimmer of virgin gold.

Then merry at heart they hoisted sail with a homeward facing prow,
For each had a share in the venture, and each was a rich man now.

It was northward first, then eastward, the course that the Gulf Stream ran,
Where it swept to the bend of Cuba from the elbow of Yucatan;

And there the storms broke on them, and the wave came nigh to whelm:
The hulls were foul, and they made no way, and the Jesus lost her helm.

Oh nerve of iron and heart of oak were set in the simple mould
Of the men who sped to the unknown seas in the crazy craft of old!

They drove past misty headlands with the chill of death on their souls,
And they heard the thunders breaking over uncharted shoals;

And thrice each deemed that the rest were lost, and scoured the seas in vain,
And thrice each fought in a week of storm with the might of the hurricane;

They saw no sun in the daytime, and the stars at night were blind,
And they sped for a week on an unknown course at the mercy of the wind;

Till their desperate hearts were broken, and as men who have nought to lose,
They ran right in to the hornet's nest in the port of Vera Cruz.

So they moored in the outer harbour, while the ships' bells rang to prayer,
And they cried on the Lord who had spared their lives to be with them even there;

For this was the way with the western folk in storm or battle or raid,
They wrought with a will, and they fought with a will, and so with a will they prayed.

For strong, they said, are the whirlwinds, and long is the arm of the foe,
But the finger of God is strongest in the path where seamen go.

Now it chanced that there in the haven the Indies' Plate Fleet lay,
To wait for the convoy galleons that were due since many a day;

And all Potosi's hoarded gold, and the wealth of half Peru,
Lay under the guns of Captain John, of Drake, and his trusty few.

So the governor manned his galley, and the Dons put out to greet
The long-expected vanguard, as he deemed, of the convoy fleet;

But he found himself on an alien deck, and he stared at Captain John,
And he bowed a cold obeisance, and made haste to get him gone;

While couriers sped fast inland to ride with the evil news,
There were pirate craft and heretics in the port of Vera Cruz.

Then stoutly smiled John Hawkins, and he said, “Sith need must be,
I will hold this port of the King of Spain till my ships can face the sea:

“By the chance of storm and our evil star we are here in the lion's jaw;
And here, my lads, we must hold our own by the need that knows no law!”

Now the haven pass is narrow, but it widens deep inland
From the isle which bars the entrance and the long low spit of sand;

So they warped their ships to the new sea-wall in the lee of the island south,
Where the lead gave seven fathoms, and they held San Juan's mouth.

And they landed guns on the island, they worked with might and main,
And they built the fort Defiance in the jaws of the King of Spain.

No moon betrayed their counsel as they laboured through the night,
And dawn broke over a freshening sea with the convoy fleet in sight.

There were six tall ships on the starboard line, and seven more on the port,
But the English flag was waving from a spar on the island fort.

So Don Martine Enriquez hove to outside the bar,—
And “Bring me word forthwith,” said he, “who these intruders are!”

But a boat shot out from the haven and drew to the flagship's lee,
John Hawkins sat in the stern-sheets, with his cutlass on his knee;—

“To the Lord High Admiral greeting, for the peace that is between
King Philip's royal majesty and my own most gracious Queen;

“We be English seamen weather-bound in a port of the King of Spain,
As we came in peace we would bide in peace, and in peace sail out again;

“We met with a gale off Cuba, we are leaky and out of gear,—
But yet, my Lord, by your evil chance we are like to be masters here.

“There is one way into the haven, and that is a narrow way,
And not one ship can make it if I choose to say you nay;

“If the breeze should freshen to half a gale, as it blew for a week and more,
You'll find no break five hundred miles in the surf on the long lee shore,—

“We hold the fort on the island bar, and I swear by book and creed,
I will sink you all in the narrow pass if my warrant must be my need.

“But if you will pledge your honour in the name of the King of Spain
You will do my ships no violence so long as we shall remain,

“You will neither let nor hinder my men upon shore or sea,
And leave the ward of the island fort to my captains and to me;

“If you sign these terms of treaty here under your hand and seal,
Ye shall pass in peace to your moorings, and all shall be to your weal;

“But if you will give me no such bond, in the name of England's Queen
I give you the bond of an Englishman that ye shall not enter in!”

Then the face of Don Martine grew dark with an evil frown,
As his captains came about him and they paced it up and down;

For he held the King's commission to chase and harry and take
The bodies of one John Hawkins and his kinsman Francis Drake.

The day wore by debating while the freshening north wind grew,
And the waves came crisply curling with a long white edge to the blue;

The shrill breeze sang in the cordage, and panic grew with the wind,
He looked at the lee-shore breakers, he looked at the bond, and signed.

So the stately galleons entered between the isle and the crags,
While our men stood all to quarters and the Queen's ships dipped their flags.

The Spaniards moored in the inner port where the laden Plate Fleet lay,
The English bode by the new sea-wall, but the breeze died down with the day.

Then all went well for a little while, there was change of courtesies,
The men took heart of confidence and they landed on the quays;

They marvelled much at the giant ships that were nigh two thousand tons,
With castles set on the poop and prow and tier over tier of guns:

Not all the fleet of England could have mustered such a line,
And they pledged the Dons in fellowship, and they tasted Spanish wine.

It was noon on the third day after, we had half of our crews away
When the sudden rattle of musket fire rang over the silent bay;

The galleons slipped a cable's length and drifted down the tide,
While a great black hulk towed seaward swang round to the Minion's side.

There was never a word of warning till the ships' sides clashed, and then
Their boarders sprang to the ratlins and the hulk grew quick with men;

But the war drums beat to quarters, and a cry went round our ships,
The crews sprang up the hatchways with “Treason!” on their lips;

And they snatched up pike and hatchet and capstan-bar and sword,
And they dashed out on the Spaniards, and they flung them overboard;

While stricken men with gaping wounds came swimming off from shore,
And boats put back in frantic haste to the ships they reached no more.

They hoisted sail in a hail of shot, and they cut the hawsers free,
So the Minion and the Judith won safe to the open sea.

But the Jesus lay dismantled where the galleons ringed her round,
And they opened fire at the stroke of noon in black San Juan's Sound.

The land troops crossed in barges by the shoals from the haven town,
They took the fort on the island, and they mowed the gunners down;

They trained their guns on the Jesus, and she fought like a wolf at bay,
With the wolf-hounds barking round her, cut off from the narrow way.

They will plead reserves of conscience, and the oath that is no oath,
But dearly Don Martine shall pay for his broken troth,—

For the gunners of the Jesus have laid their pieces true,
And they struck him hard on the water-line, and they lacked the flagship through;

The wave rushed in by the breaches, and there rose a shuddering cry
From the soldiers penned in the fighting-decks to every saint in the sky;

The main-mast snapped and toppled with the banner of proud Castile,
The poop sank down in the churning sea, and the stem showed clean to the keel;

While far away from the Judith's deck the sound of cheering broke,
As the Admiral's great Armada went down in a cloud of smoke.

“So the devil comes to his own again!” laughed grim old Captain John,
And his blue eyes flashed through the powder smirch, as he roared from the poop, “Fight on!”

There were four great galleons silenced when the powder was spent at last,
When they loosed their fireships on him, and then the end came fast;

So he manned his boats with the rest of his crew, and they cut their desperate way
To the harbour gate and the narrow strait and into the outer bay;

And there as they won to the Minion and climbed to the Judith's decks,
They could see the Jesus burning in the midst of a ring of wrecks;

And all the fruits of the voyage, the silver and gems and gold,
The charts they had made and the traitor's bond went down with the burning hold.

But none made bold to follow of all they had fought so well,—
The kindlier sea received them and the shadow of evening fell.

Day broke on a dreary ocean, San Juan was far behind,—
And the God of the just and unjust tethered the wings of the wind.

So they hugged the reefs long days and nights, till they chanced on an inland reach,
Where the surf was still, and the lead sank deep, and the wave lay asleep on the beach;

Where the smooth transparent water was clear as a film of air,
Over fathom-deep weed gardens and sea things marvellous fair;

Where the forest pressed to the blue tide's marge, and never mayhap till then
Wide wandering ships had carried the venturous lives of men.

And a hundred souls of their own free will were left on the tropic shore,
Since they never might win to England with the burden that they bore.

Solemn was that leave-taking, where they knelt in the alien sand,
Commending these their comrades into their Maker's hand;

For a year and more in an alien world they had shared in weal and woe,
Had breasted storm and affronted toil, and had held their own with the foe;

And those rough old dogs of ocean were tender of heart and true,
And comrade clung to his comrade staunch as captain clung to his crew;

There were salt wet tears on the furrowed cheeks that the tropic suns had tanned
As they bade farewell, and they left them there to their chance in an unknown land;

To an evil fate, and an unforeseen, as it proved in the years to be,
When the curse of the Holy Office fell over that island sea.

It was well-nigh three months later the watch on the Hoe descried
The wraith of a battered warship beat in on the flooding tide;

Through the dismal wintry waters, through infinite trials past,
Hungry and lean and spent with storm, it was Drake come home at last.

And later yet in the new year's dawn came the little Minion too,
Smitten with plague in the ocean and manned with a stranger crew.

But the length and the breadth of England took fire at the news they brought,
The treason of Don Martine and the fight John Hawkins fought.

And Drake has got him another ship, and sworn to the Lord of Hosts
He will claim redress at the cannon's mouth round all their ports and coasts,

Till the treasure stores of the Indies have atoned to him fifty-fold
The loss of the good ship Jesus and her men and the Guinea gold;

And so he has gathered a willing crew with the rest of his Judith's men,
And they're off once more on the same old trail, and it's Westward Ho again;

And wherever the wide seas open he will brook no bar nor stay,
And there's never a wave but English sails shall claim for their free highway;

Till the sceptre shall pass of ocean, and the whole of the world shall know
That an English life is a sacred thing wherever a keel can go!

And Captain John was on all men's lips, and his loss was England's gain,
For his single ship had shattered the myth of the might of Spain.

III THE REPRISAL

Being the veracious narrative of John Killigrew, gentleman adventurer, who accompanied Captain Francis Drake on his second voyage to Darien; done into the modern manner.

Oh, sweetly rang the Plymouth bells on the day we put to sea,
When May and June were nearly met and the new leaf on the tree;

And sweetly over Edgcumbe's isle the setting sun declined,
It was Whitsun-Eve of May-time, and the May thrill in the wind.

There were hats that waved and kerchiefs, a cheer rang round the quays
As the fiddler played our anchors up and the new sails took the breeze.

The highlands drew their mantle round, and high up on the Hoe,
And nestling deep in shadowy hills red lights began to show;

But the eager heart looked never back on a world so good to leave,
To the orchard lawns and the cowslip fields and the bells of Whitsun-Eve.

Our captain stood on the Pasha's poop as we won to the open sea;
“Now lay her straight in the sunset track, for it's Westward Ho!” said he.

I sailed with Drake and with Oxenham, and the captain's brother John
With the rest of those who ventured were aboard of the little Swan.

We were three-and-seventy men and boys when the muster-log was told,
And only one of the seventy-three who was thirty summers old.

The crew were Dart and Plymouth men, with the four I brought from Looe,
Jack Basset and the Widdicombes, and my foster-brother Drew.

Two years were gone since the Dragon ship sailed out with the self-same men,
And Drake had won him his right of way to the Gulf of Darien;

And the little Swan got an evil name last year on the Spanish Main,
For the long white wings of the tiny craft were a match for the best of Spain.

The breeze was fair, with the topsails square, and never a reef we flew,
And the heart of our little captain was a fire to the heart of his crew;

It passed to a proverb in after-years with the men who had loved him well—
You were sure of heaven with Gilbert, but with Drake you had daunted hell!

At last we had sight of the Windwards limned like a cloud in the sky,
It was five weeks out from the Lizard, and the second day of July;

And not in vain we had proved those seas and charted the reefs last year,
And laid the course by the star and sun that the venture had to steer,

For we saw strange sails to the eastward, and ran for a week of days
Past flowery cliffs where the blue wave winds through the calm of the island maze.

The men were mad to be landing, but he suffered it not to be
Till our track was lost in the wildering isles, and we struck on the Carib Sea.

We voided the path of traders, ran west yet awhile, and then
Bore down on the midmost channel of the Gulf of Darien;

And we came to the hidden haven he had found two years before,
We anchored under the high cliffs' lee, and at last we went ashore.

We felled the forest timbers and planted a high stockade,
Where they pieced the jointed pinnace under the ceiba's shade;

While we shot the mark with the arquebus, we measured swords in play,
And Drake assigned the prizes that the Dons would have to pay;

The chattering monkeys swarmed to watch and swung on the climbing vine,
The parrots screamed in the branches, but of man was never a sign.

A week from the day we landed they had launched three handy craft,
Twelve-oared and low in the water, and long with a shallow draft.

Their crews were picked and a course was buoyed as the sun dropped low to the west,—
The Devon muscle was good to see on shoulder and arm and chest,—

And the cliffs of the silent haven rang to the helmsman's cries
As the Minion raced the Jesus and the Judith won the prize,

When round the sheltering headland, traced black on the even glow,
Came sailing in a barque of war with a caravel in tow!

In a flash we were back to the Pasha's side, and Oxenham, mighty of lung,
Hailed them over the waters, for he spoke with the Spaniard's tongue;

While the gunners stood to their pieces with linstocks over the breech,
But the answer came in the Devonshire with a “Plague on your foreign speech!”

It was Rance the Channel rover in Sir Edmund Horsey's barque,
Grown tired of his privateering in the Downs with de la Mark;

And so he had sailed on fortune's wind right into the heart of the west;
And here was a man to our captain's hand—we were far too few at the best;

For the mettle of Drake had fired us, we were set on the wildest plan
That ever perchance had dazzled the desperate dreams of man;—

On the coast due east from Nombre lay a cluster of isles he knew
Girded in reefs and white with shoals that had daunted an older crew;

He would hide his ships in the wooded isles, and thence with a chosen band
Creep on by night in the launches under the lee of land;

He would enter the port of Nombre, the great treasure-house of Spain,
And carry a year's gold harvest back to his ships again.

So a bond was made and a treaty signed, and the forty with Rance were sworn
To stand by Drake in the venture, and we sailed with the break of morn.

We came to the fir-grown islands—we sounded wary and slow
Till we found a way through the sunken rocks where the ships might pass in tow,

And we laid them up in a shore-locked bay that ran like a lake inland,
With the world-old forest ringing the rim of its silver sand;

We drew the lot and we started, night through we tugged at the oar,
Seventy men in the launches, and with day drew in to the shore;

We fought with the surf and conquered, we slept through the sultry noons,
We woke with the shadow of evening and toiled by the waning moons;

Till the fifth sun sank in a stormy sky, and at last the launches lay
Adrift on a murky midnight off the point of Nombre Bay.

Great clouds shut out the starlight, the moon would be late to rise,
There was one black void of water under one black void of skies;

Far off the long surf thundered on an unseen shingle shore,
And between its measured pulse-beats you felt the silence more;

And the awe of the shifting darkness wrought into each straining sense
Till you heard your own heart beating in the stillness of suspense.

Then eastward rose a glimmer as it might be, faint and dim,
The first white touch of dawning over the ocean rim.

It was only the moon belated, but “Yonder,” he said, “comes day,
One last pull round the headland and Drake will show the way!”

There was hardly a light in Nombre but the lamp at the haven head,
And away beyond at the landing-place where the cresset fires shone red;

So we stole in under the shadow at the edge of the new sea-wall,
While the moon sailed up through a cloudy bank and we heard the sentry call;

There were ten men left in the launches, there were threescore sprang to the land,
And we rushed to the fort at the haven mouth and tumbled the guns in the sand:

But the gunners dropped in the fosses and fled through the night unhurt,
And they roused the sleepy watchmen, and the darkness grew alert:

The great bell tolled from the belfry, it clanged with a sullen stroke,
And rumour swelled to a stormy cry as the shuddering city woke;

For Drake had carried the market-place, and the guards were full in flight
As I fell on their flank with Oxenham, and panic screamed in the night,—

We charged with a babel of horn and drum, we yelled our rallying cry,
And the torches fixed on our ten-foot pikes blazed into the murky sky.

So we fought our way to the treasure-house, and the guards fell back once more,
The bowmen kept them at bow-shot length while we rammed through the iron door,

And we stared on an Empire's ransom in the torchlight's glare, untold
Wedges of silver shoulder high and the Inca's virgin gold.

There were gems imbedded in rough-hewn quartz that caught the flickering gleam,
There were pearls to be had for the snatching, wealth over our wildest dream!

But the great Church bell of Nombre boomed on with its call to arms,
And we heard their war-drums beating and the bugles' shrill alarms,

We heard the rattle of musket fire where our boats were left behind,
While clouds rolled over the moon again and a chill struck into the wind;

“They never must form to rally. Back, lads, to the marketplace!”
And lo! as he sprang to lead us our captain fell on his face:

Long since he had gotten a grisly wound, and his strength had ebbed as it bled,
But our hearts stood still for a moment's space at the thought he had fallen dead;

For a sudden volley had struck the ground, and the sand splashed into our eyes
As we staggered blind from the lightning-flash shot over the purple skies:

Then the tropic rain burst o'er us, and our matchlock fires were drenched,
Our bow-strings would not serve us, and the blazing tow was quenched;

We raised our wounded captain, and we bore him back to the quay,
While he cursed us all for cravens—“Will you lose this chance?” said he.

For his men with a gentle violence had forced him out of the strife—
Not all the gold in the west, they said, would pay for their captain's life.

So the Spanish footmen rallied, and the streets grew live with men,
And we fought with the pike and the musket-butt, and we charged them one to ten.

We laid our wounded under the thwarts with the spoil we had brought away,
And never a man was missing as we pushed out into the bay.

We climbed on board of a seventy-ton, and we cut the hawsers free,
We towed her out, and we hoisted sail, and made for the open sea.

While day-dawn scowled through a sullen sky, and ever our captain railed,
“Had I been quit of my wound,” he said, “the venture had not failed.”

But we found good store on the capture ship of red and of amber wines,
And our wounds were nigh forgotten when we came to the Isle of Pines.

So Rance took his share of the Nombre gold, and the barque sailed home again,
And that was the first reprisal that we made on the Spanish Main.

But we ran for Cartagena, and we steered right up the port,
'Mid clanging of bells from the churches, and thunder of guns from the fort;

And the launches dashed through the musket fire, and under the Governor's eyes
Laid hands on a Cadiz transport, and carried her out a prize.

He sent the prisoners back to shore in their boats for his good name's sake,
For there never was gentler pirate or kindlier foe than Drake;

But he freed the slaves we had found on board at work in collar and chain,
And thus we won to our service these the deadliest foes of Spain.

It was first at Cartagena we were 'ware of the evil news
That the men of the Holy Office had landed in Vera Cruz.

And they told of our good comrades in the hands of a ruthless foe,
The Judith's men and the Minion's that were left three years ago;

And they told us four great galleons had sailed in the Pasha's track
Because of the raid on Nombre, with an oath to bring us back.

So we made as though we were eastward bound, and scuttled the little Swan
On the rocks near Cartagena, and with nightfall we were gone.

We were sore at heart for the brave little craft, but our hands were all too few
To work one ship with the prizes and to man the launches too.

So we turned and steered for a lonely bay, far out of their mariners' ken,
He had found in a deep reef-sheltered blue elbow of Darien:

Long creeks run up from its shelving shore to the foot of the hills inland,
Where the rain-born torrents cleave their way through the mud swamps and the sand;

Where over the banks untrodden, in mist and in fever-breath,
The silent mangrove forest broods on a world of death;

Their black stems rise from the waters, their thin bent roots divide,
And clutch with crooked fingers the drift of the shifting tide;

We hid our ships in the gloomy creeks, with the topmasts stowed away,
And we built us huts on the upland, with an outlook over the bay.

It were long to tell of the raids we made from our lair in Plenty Cove,
How we built a fort at the forest edge, and our every venture throve;

For thence the swift black launches would creep through the island maze,
By the channels still uncharted to the edge of the great highways;

They would board the coastwise traders becalmed on the tropic nights,
They claimed sea-toll from the victualling ships and fought in a hundred fights;

But we paid the price of rashness, when at last on an evil day
With a weary stroke and a bleeding crew the boats crawled back to the bay

With the tale of a raid too well repelled, of the few that were far too few,
With the mangled bodies of Captain John and my foster-brother Drew.

We dug their graves in the alien world, as a sailor's grave should be,
On a spur of the hill at the forest edge where it looks to the open sea;

And we mourned as you mourn for the first to fall, and there stole on the brooding mind
A thought of the lights last Whitsun-Eve and of all we had left behind.

Now the slaves we had freed and friended were gone to the jungle folk,
The fierce black tribes of the Cimaroons with the links of the chain we broke,

A symbol of peace and friendship, that their great cacique might know
The men of the woods and the men of the sea were at war with a common foe;

They were sprung, they claimed, from the mutineers that had once been a galley's crew,
And a deadly hate of their lords of old was the only law they knew;

They had got them wives of the Indian folk, and here on the free hillside,
In the tracking of game and the plunder of man, they had thriven and multiplied.

So the chiefs came down to our camping ground, and the tribe abode with us there,
And we learned the lore of their forest craft, and the trick of the woodman's snare.

They told us priceless tidings, how the rains were near at hand,
When the hill streams swell in the torrent beds and travel is barred by land,

But so we would wait in our hiding-place till the dry months came again,
When the plate stores cross from the southern sea to the ports on the Spanish Main;

They would guide us over the jungle waste through the crags by an unknown way
To the path of the laden mule-trains, and the road to Nombre Bay.

So the rains came on in their season, and the hills raced down to the seas,
And ever it poured on our cranky thatch, and it dripped in the night of the trees;

The weeks went by in a shadow of gloom till the camp was a dismal fen,
Till the chill of the rain wrought into our souls, and the heart died out of our men.

Then the gray skies broke and the sun pierced through, bu the white mist rose like a shroud
From the ooze and slime of the mangrove creek, and death was abroad in the cloud.

And one by one in the fever camp our men dropped down and died;
There were twenty-and-nine of the seventy-three that are laid there side by side;

Till we cursed the sea and the hoarded gold, and the toil we had spent for its sake;
But stronger than death, and the fear of death, was the quenchless heart of Drake.

Though his youngest brother, the lad we loved, dropped down in his strength and prime,
And I saw great tears in the stern blue eyes for the first and only time,—

Yet he came and went with a cheery smile, he sat by each sick man's bed,
He nerved the doubting surgeons, and at night bore out his dead.

We dug him a grave by Captain John at the head of that line of mounds,—
They will rise up first on the judgment dawn when the last great muster sounds;

They will call their lads to quarters, and my foster-brother Drew
Will pipe on his boatswain's whistle that the men of the Pasha knew,

And I pray the Lord have mercy, when the angel reads the scrolls,
For the bitter death that they died out there, on those poor seamen's souls.

For look you it is sweet and well in the day we come to die,
To know familiar presences and kindred faces by;

To watch from sheltering windows wide the happy light that plays
On pleasant scenes that seem to soothe the ebbing of our days;

To see the shadows lengthen down the quiet fields we knew,
And the farewell sunset purpling the distant hills of blue;

While tender voices whisper near with gently bated breath,
So softly in its season falls the kindly kiss of death.

But it's ill to pass in the wilderness on the bed of wattled reeds,
With only the swamp to cool the fire of the fever that it breeds.

Yet they that march in England's van have such grim death to face,
And alien suns shall bleach the skulls of our unquiet race.

The desert wastes shall gather them, the red sand choke their groans,
And every tide of all the seas roll up their restless bones.

So there we endured and conquered; the evil drew to an end,
The murmur hushed in his greater loss, and the sick began to mend.

And yet we were hardly a score in all that were strong to march and fight,
When the scouts brought news from Nombre of the Plate Fleet hove in sight;

But thirty men of the Cimaroons marched out with their great cacique,
And they suffered us bear no burdens from the day we left the creek.

We struck through the gloom of the forest, where the dark arms lace and cross,
And the huge dead trunks rot slowly under their pall of moss,

Where there dwells eternal silence, and never the sunlight breaks
The roof that tents the twilight of a sleep where no life wakes.

They found us a track where no track was, and we crept on their noiseless trail,
Through the steamy shade and the fungus slime, to the world of a fairy tale.

We climbed the Cordilleras, up steps of the mountain rills
That yet ran full with the overflow from the springs in the heart of the hills;

We passed through untrodden valleys where the shrubs had an odour of balm,
And the wild wood creatures dwelt unscared in the old primeval calm;

The sap of those trees ran white like milk, the wounds in the bark ran blood,
The fruit hung luscious on every bough, and the ripe fruit grew by the bud;

The cotton blanched in a silky tuft, the bamboos waved their flags,
The acacia pods were a sabre's length, and the wild gourd clung to the crags.

We came to a break in the mountain chain at end of a weary day,
A pass hewn deep in the great rock wall, and the late moon rose that way;

The upland hollow was dense with bush, and the grass rose shoulder high,
There was nought to see for its forest ring but the stars far up in the sky;

And lone in a jungle clearing one monster ceiba stood,
The last of a race of giants of the patriarchal wood;

Its wide arms stretched to the rock's high crest, and its branches bar on bar
Were the rungs of a mighty ladder that reached right up to the star;

The great lianes wound through them and drooped to the earth again,
And myriad blooms of orchids had life from the living chain;

They pitched our camp in the mighty roots, and they waved their hands on high,
And they said, “Climb up, Señores, for this is the Mountain's Eye!”

So Drake swung up through the creepers, and he scaled the ancient tree,
And first of all living Englishmen had a sight of the Golden Sea.

Beneath him forests lay in gloom, dim gorges wound between
White crags like billows cresting in the moonlight's marble sheen.

Behind the vast Atlantic rolled, and widening glimmering west
The sister ocean rose and took the moon-kiss on her breast.

He clambered down with a bursting heart, and fell on his bended knee,
And awe came over us all who watched as he said, “Go up and see!”

And I went aloft through the twisted coils, and Oxenham climbed, and then
The mariners each went up in turn to the last of the Pasha's men:

And the mystic secret was no more hid, and the jealous lords of Spain
Had veiled the face of the virgin sea and had barred her gates in vain!

We stood ringed round together, bared heads by the flickering fire,
We sang the Nunc Dimittis, and Jack Basset led the choir;

And we swore the oath of a fellowship in the shade of the ceiba-tree,
We would never rest till an English keel had sailed on the Golden Sea.

Then we dropped down the gorges, and we came on the second day
To the meeting of roads in a mountain pass, and they said, “There winds the way!”

And we looked once more on the western sea, and saw from the ridge afar
The fleets of the sister ocean in the roads of Panama.

The black folk sent their scouts to spy while the moon was sultry yet,
And they saw the mule-trains gathered to march when the sun should set.

So we chose a place in the level way and the narrow strait of the pass,
Between the gates of the east and west, and hid in the jungle grass;

And there we had ease of our weariness as we lay by twos and threes
Through the trance of the burning noontide in shadow of rocks and trees.

They rolled us leaves of a priceless herb that grew in their hill domain,
Whose fumes are better than meat and drink, a drug to the heart and brain;

And our limbs, worn out with the mountain march, were soothed with a sweet relief
As our lips inhaled its fragrance, and our souls forgot their grief.

Then the sun went down on the western sea, the stars in the east grew bright,
And the fireflies lit their lanterns in the sudden tropic night;

And since the moon would be late to rise each man drew on his shirt
Outside of his seaman's jersey, and we lay by our arms alert.

There were twenty men in the ambush with the breast-high grass for screen,
On either side of the mountain track, and a bow-shot's length between.

The drowsy night air hummed with life, the forest things gave tongue,
While measured on the throbbing pulse the minutes dragged along.

Then far and faint on rustling breaths that seemed to move in sleep,
We could hear the mule-bells tinkle far down the misty deep;

And ever they mounted nearer, till we heard the hide-whips crack,
Till the echoes rang with the jangling chime, and the hoofs that slipped on the track.

They hummed an air as they rode along, the guards at the head of the line,
They rode right into the ambush, and then Drake gave the sign;

And the night was rent with a wild war-cry, the bolt rang keen from the bow,
The black men sprang to the pack-mules' heads, and we all dashed out on the foe.

The escort stood for one moment's space in the jungle path at bay,
And then fled clattering madly back, or on to Nombre Bay.

And we loosed the packs, and we lashed the mules behind them left and right,
And headlong down the desperate paths they galloped through the night.

But all the cost of our voyage was paid us a thousandfold
In the gems we took from the rifled packs and the red Potosi gold;

And as for the silver ingots that we had no hands to bear,
We stuffed them into the crannied rocks and under the tree-roots near.

Then we clambered up by the hill-stream's course, though the way was dark to find,
Where our feet on the dripping boulders would leave no trail behind.

We were far away on the mountain's crest before the alarm had spread,
When dawn broke rosy wakening out of her ocean bed;

For panic grew with the morning light, gave wings to the evil news,
And they landed guns from the ships of war, and they armed at Venta Cruz.

And still folks say that in Panama you may hear the settlers tell
How the Dragon came in his devil-ship, and he made a league with hell;

For their own guards saw the black fiends swarm and gather at his call,
And they cross themselves as they tell the tale: “From such God save us all!”

But we went down by the pathless crags through the thorn-brakes' tangled coil,
Where the face of the cliff was sheerest, bent under the weight of spoil:

And we came to the edge of ocean at eve on the second day,—
Our hearts were glad for the salt waves' smell and the beat of the tossing spray,—

We came to the gorge with its winding stream where our trysting-place should be,
And there were our launches hidden in a sheltered arm from the sea;

And there were our comrades waiting, grown hearty and hale once more,
And wild at the sight of the treasure loads that our black companions bore.

We gave the chiefs to their hearts' desire of our arms and stores and loot,
And we left them all the launches and a Spanish prize to boot;

And we got on board of our own good ship, we tested spar and mast,
Streamed all the silken pennants and shook sail out at last.

We skirted Cartagena with the red cross at our main,
To fire one last defiance to King Philip and to Spain:

And gaily through the tropic sea we ran before the wind,
And left the name of Francis Drake and the fear of God behind.

Oh, sweetly rang the Sabbath bells across from shore to shore
The merry August morning when we sighted home once more;

We heard them ring to matins from Cawsand and the Rame,
And sweetly up the off-shore wind the homely voices came.

We thundered out our last salute to the Admiral of the Port,
And old John Hawkins answered with the guns in Plymouth fort.

But how the folk streamed out of church, and hurried down the Hoe,
And left the parson preaching, all lads in Plymouth know.

So there, my sons, the tale must end of what we did afloat,
You must ask good Master Walsingham what Philip's envoy wrote.

They say Mendoza still protests—and long he may in vain,—
But Spain will pause before she breaks her solemn bond again.

[IV] ST. JULIAN'S BAY

It was summer now in the world they knew, mid June and the month of mirth,
But Drake was stayed in the winter's grip on the dreariest coast of earth.

They had sailed in a bleak November and assembled in Mogador,
He had taken a prize of the Portingals and had set her crew on shore:

He had made the Brazils in April and watered in River Plate,
And now two months he had sought in vain for the pass to Magellan's Strait.

In fog and in heavy weather, through wildering sleet and snow,
They had fought with the leaden waters in a track where no ships go,

Where the storm wind howls with a human voice, where the long swell flings its spray
Up cliffs where never a green leaf breaks the gloom of the wintry gray;

And still it blew from the frozen pole, and they beat in the icy breath,
The Pelican and the Marygold and the barque Elizabeth.

The heart of his men was broken, and ever the discord grew,
And a haunting dread of that unknown world crept over his simple crew;

Till they wrought with a grudging labour, till they answered with sullen lips,
And the breath of a mutinous murmur went up from the weary ships.

But the general watched and waited till the time should be ripe for speech;
Till the hidden evil had come to light, and the sickness craved the leech.

They had won to an inlet isle-enclosed, by the reckoning fifty south,
And the battered fleet put in at last through the reefs that barred its mouth.

There were spars to be refitted, and the standing gear was worn,
The hulls were foul from the long sea-way, and the sails were frayed and torn.

There was never a ship sailed here but once, and now it was fifty years
Since the great Magellan anchored to deal with his mutineers;

There was never a trace of living thing in that arm of the lonely sea,
But high on the cliff in the silent world stood the frame of his gallows tree;

And there, clean picked of the vultures, and washed by the driving rain,
The bones of a man swung to and fro, held up in a rusty chain.

They stared at the silent witness of the great sea-captain's hand,
And the sense of an ill-foreboding came up from that dismal strand.

Now once more here at this world's far end among the boulders gray
Shall a court be called for judgment in bleak St. Julian's Bay.

For at last the leech has probed the wound and the bitter charge is framed,
Long-hidden things shall come to light and the traitor's name be named.

So Drake has called his captains and the mates and the volunteers,
And Master Thomas Doughty shall be tried before his peers;

As ran the law in England, so ran their law at sea,
Who stood within its danger might claim his due degree.

The chaplain brought the book to kiss, and swore them man by man,
And grimly that mid-winter morn the ocean court began.

And witness after witness rose, to tell the sordid tale
Of all the arts the man had used to make the venture fail.

Then he, since Drake so humbled him, replied with taunt and jest,
And by his own lips' railing stood a traitor self-confessed;

There were those at home in England of the counter-plot, said he,
Who knew the end of this fool's design long ere they had put to sea:

King Philip had ambassadors to guard the rights of Spain,
And when the watchman waketh the wolf will prowl in vain.

But the eye of Drake grew cold and hard with the glance it was ill to meet,
And he called the crews together to the least man in the fleet;

From first to last he had said no word till then for good or ill—
And he faced his wavering captains while his trumpet blew the “still.”

He stood erect in the midst of all with his drawn sword in his hand
At the foot of Magellan's gallows by the edge of the dreary land,

While the chill wind moaned in the gully and the waves boomed far away
On the sunken reefs and the broken crags at the gate of the wintry bay.

And he said: “My masters, hearken, friends old and comrades new,
While I tell you all that my purpose holds and the things we have sailed to do.

“There was no man questioned whither on the day we set to sea,
I am used to be trusted all in all by the men that sail with me;

“But your discords, aye and your mutinies, have left me nigh distraught,
I must have this left, my masters, though the price be dearly bought;

“I would have you know that the gentlemen shall take their place with the crew,
Shall haul and draw with the seamen when their captain bids them to;

“I will brook no more division—I would know who dares refuse.
God's life! am I not your master?—I will break you all if I choose!

“Let the Pasha's men stand forward, you five that were with me then,
When we looked across to the unknown side from the tree in Darien.

“Do you mind my oath in the camp-fire light, how I swore, God helping me,
I would sail a ship with an English flag through the heart of the Golden Sea!

“Since then five years have come and gone, and now, so He hath willed,
The oath that I swore in Darien shall surely be fulfilled.

“For it fell in the appointed time that the Queen, whom God defend,
Had heard her subjects' bitter cry from Berwick to Land's End:

“And since the Spanish King protests his arm may not control
The Holy Office in his realm, which lie be on his soul,

“Since in the councils of her peers she had found small help or stay,
And still unchallenged at her feet the King's defiance lay;

“So in her bitter need she turned from the grave and proved, and wise,
And she called a poor sea-captain who had found grace in her eyes.

“And thus it chanced upon a day, a year gone by and more,
There came a summons to the court from the great who guard her door.

“A hand put back the arras and beckoned round the screen,
And I was kneeling at the feet of England's injured Queen.

“She stood against the oriel frame and looked me up and down,
Who wondered how so frail a brow could bear so great a crown:

“‘And this is Captain Francis Drake, and that the guilty head
My kinsman Philip long hath craved, and craveth still,’ she said.

“She won my heart with mild reproof—with frowns that died in smiles,
She learned the tale of all we did beyond the western isles;

“She hearkened and she never tired as I told it all again,
How we stripped the mules at Nombre and scared the Spanish Main:

“And then herself, with broken voice, she spake of all her woes:
The peace proclaimed where no peace is; the bitter cry that rose

“From cities where her merchant fleets lie idle by the quays,
With rotting sail and fouling keel, debarred from half the seas;

“From little havens in the cliffs, where their mothers watch in vain
For the lads that the fever dungeons will never yield again;

“From wretches maimed in torture cells, whose bodies show the scar
Where peace has struck the craven stroke they had never brooked in war;

“From those an alien judge hath doomed, and who for conscience' sake
Were greater than their fear of death and English at the stake,—

“And womanlike she sighed and said, ‘And is there none to aid?’
And queenly with a burst of scorn, ‘Are all but I afraid?’

“So there and then with halting breath, but all the brain on fire,
I told our glorious Lady Liege of all my heart's desire.

“I told her of the great South Sea, the secret of our foe,
Where unperceived of prying eyes his Plate-fleets come and go—

“How there the sword he wields so well, the serried pikes of Spain,
The guns that menace every sea are wrought for England's bane;

“And so the glorious scheme was planned to raid the Golden Sea,—
Now let me know who turns his back on England and on me!

“Still southlier yet through seas unsailed Magellan found the gate
Where the sister oceans meet and mix at war in the stormy strait:

“And though it shall blow ten times as wild, though the pass be blind with snow,
Though its whirlpools spin with the drifted ice,—where he went I will go;

“Though the foul fiend have dominion there as the seamen's fables say,
Though the devil in hell would hold me back,—I have sworn to find the way;

“But when we have won to the farther side, to the breeding seas of the seal,
We shall sail on the gentlest ocean that ever has rocked a keel:

“For these crags that freeze on the eastward face slope green to the westward blue,
And a land breeze gently northing bears up for rich Peru.

“There, where the treasure galleons ply secure from all attack,
Drop down to Valparaiso and bring the bullion back,

“I look to find the ransom that will more than buy again
The lives of all the English lads that rot to death in Spain.

“Then when the lockers burst with gems, and when the ballast hold
Of every ship in this my fleet is packed with bars of gold,

“We'll trust the luck of the sun's wake still, and it's Westward Ho once more,
And home, my lads, by an ocean-track ship never has tried before!

“Now if I have told you only here what but I and my captains knew,
It was that I learned in Venta Cruz of the harm loose tongues may do;

“Therefore whoso hath no stomach to bear hand in this emprise,
Hath welcome and leave to take his choice as it seemeth best in his eyes;

“Let him go aboard of the Marygold—let him steer for home this day,—
But look to it whoso chooseth that he steer no other way;

“For I swear to you as God liveth, wherever my bark be blown,
I will sink his ship if I meet him, though he be of my blood and bone.”

It was Captain Philip Wynter first, of the barque Elizabeth,
Stept forth and clasped the general's hand, and he said, “For life and death!”

And Thomas Moon the carpenter, the oldest hand at sea,
Spake up and swore a grisly oath, “Lord do so unto me,

“If ever a skulk shall turn his back while I have a head to break
On the spoiling of the Philistine and my Captain Francis Drake!”

And there rose from twice a hundred throats a mighty English cheer,
The voice of hearts in unison the sea-queen loves to hear.

And Doughty heard it far away where he paced the lonely shore,
He heard and knew his doom was sealed—but the general spake once more;

He said they were timid surgeons who were loath to use the knife,—
He spoke of their state endangered by their jealousies and strife,

Of the rule of ocean broken with brawls and mean affrays,
Of the slights put on the seamen, contentions, doubt, dispraise;

And all that smouldering discontent had rallied round one name,
And the very hand he had trusted most was the hand that fanned the flame;

Gentle and brave he had deemed him of old, of purpose steady and pure,
Master of manifold learning, venturous, strong to endure;

But for all the love he had borne him once, yet he dared not be untrue
To the Queen's high expectation and the safety of his crew,

And so, since warnings naught availed, and the evil might not mend,
He had called a court in judgment on his own familiar friend:

And there they had heard from his lips confessed the bond he had pledged to the foe,
The trust betrayed and the plot to bring this scheme to its overthrow.

“Henceforth,” he said, “the watchman wakes, the foe has a thousand eyes,
And wealth and fame, or the gallows-tree, are the end of this emprise:

“Let no man look for quarter, henceforth who sails with Drake,
I warn him, if the voyage fail, his life will pay the stake;

“Henceforth we are bound on a venture that is well-nigh past my wit,
We have set three kings by the ears, my lads, and we needs must through with it;

“Howbeit I trust that the galleons will cruise on our trail in vain,
For we shall fare by the southern pass while they watch by the western main:

“But there waits one doom for treason at sea as it is on land,—
Who deems his crime has been worthy death, let him hold forth his hand!”

Then a murmur rose from the listening ranks, an oath, and an angry cry,
And twice a hundred clenching fists condemned the wretch to die.

The crowd fell back, the general passed to where Doughty strode aloof—
Henceforth in all his words and deeds might no man find reproof;

He had played the stake for life or death as a gambler throws the cast,
And so, like a gallant gentleman, he would bear him to the last:

He heard his doom with fearless eyes, he doffed his hat to say,
“My cause be with the Judge of hearts until that latter day!”

He craved no grace save such an end as his gentle blood might bear,
To have his dues as a Christian man, and to shrive his soul in prayer.

So it came to pass on the second day that the crews were called ashore,
And they spread a banquet near the strand of the best they had in store;

And there, unseen in the chill gray dawn, high up on a crest of rock,
In the face of Magellan's gallows-tree, Tom Moon set up the block:

They dressed an altar near at hand with the red cross banner spread,
Where the chaplain, stoled and surpliced, set on the wine and bread:

And Drake and Thomas Doughty knelt down there side by side,
In Nature's vast and awful shrine above the yellow tide,

While Master Fletcher ministered and blessed the bread and brake,
And gave the cup in brotherhood to Doughty and to Drake.

And those rough souls were awed and cowed, while moaned the rainy wind,
And the deep voice of ocean boomed its measured chant behind.

Then, the long quarrel reconciled, each kissed the other's cheek,
And held his hand for a little space, but no man heard them speak.

So they passed to where the board was spread in a sheltered spot to lee,
They made good cheer together there, each after his degree.

But Doughty filled a cup and cried a pledge in Spanish wine,
“Here's luck in all your ventures, lads, and a better end than mine!”

And in a little while he rose, and with a courtier's bow,
“With your good leave, my captain,” he said, “I am ready now.”

They climbed the crest of broken hill to where the block was set,
As men unmoved by craven fear, by passion or regret.

And Doughty passed along the ranks with a word to each and all,
And as he knelt to try the block the rain began to fall.

But Drake unclasped his seaman's cloak and spread it on the ground,
And bared the sword his arm alone might wield in honour bound;

The shivering blade whirled round and fell cold, cruel, swift and keen.
“So perish all her enemies!” said Drake; “God save the Queen!”

He spread his cloak about the corse, and raised the severed head,
The shuddering crews drew slowly back and left him with the dead:

And long he gazed in that pale face he shielded from the rain;
Thereafter, saith the chronicle, Drake seldom smiled again.

The grave is on that bleak foreshore, and the crime is purged away,
But steadfast stands while England stands her ocean law, “Obey!”

V THE WIND OF GOD

It was late in the wintry August when the ships were fit for sea,
From stem to stern-post caulked and paid, for the fierce fight yet to be;

And they double-braced the standing-gear, reshipped their spars and stores,
And beat out seaward eagerly from those ill-omened shores.

It was noon on the third day after, they had sight of the ocean gate
Where the long black wall of mountain is cleft by the fabled strait.

They saw the headlands break the swell, the great walls yawning wide,
And up the foam of shoaling reefs a path of steely tide;

Thereat he streamed his banners out, and as he passed between
Drake struck his topsails on the bunt in homage to the Queen;

And since his bird of wilderness had met with fortune's wind,
New named henceforth the Pelican shall sail the Golden Hind.

Their track wound in through narrowing gulfs with bastioned walls o'erbowed
'Neath drifted snows on the dripping shelves and a tent of inky cloud;

Fierce wind-flaws drave with an angry blast at the turns of the winding way,
Bleak breaths that swept from the misted crags and lashed the freezing spray;

Wild currents raced through the twisting tides that washed round wilderness isles,
And the shadow of night hung all day long in the deep scarred rock defiles;

And ever at even wandering fires showed glimmering through the gloom,
While prisoned deep in the tunnelled caves they heard the pent seas boom;

There many a stout heart shook for dread that had feared no earthly foe,
For the weird of night is an awesome thing in the paths where seamen go.

And at times the strait way broadened out till the white mists hid the shore,
And they drifted on in a veil of fog till they heard the breakers roar,

Then the lead would fly from the sounding-chains, and the starboard line raced free,
While the larboard caught on a sunken edge of the shoal they might not see:

They were fifteen days and fifteen nights in the throat of the dismal strait,
And the shadow of death was near alway, but as yet they could smile at fate,

For ever the eye of the master watched, and a master-hand was laid
To sail and tiller and sounding gear, and a master-voice obeyed;

Till the dreary battle was all behind, and at last the deed was done,
And the keel of an English ship ran out on the sea of the setting sun.

They watched him drop to the ocean rim, and they felt the old sea-spell
As with joy they beat to the open wave, and the long south twilight fell.

But lo, when the dawn came gray with cloud there was no more land on the lee,
And they met the tail of the western gale that is lord in the southern sea;

And a tempest rose such as never yet they had hoped for heart to brave,
These men who had spent their whole hard lives at the chance of the evil wave.

It flung them south and it drave them east, while the mountain tides ran past
With death in the hiss of the breaking swell and death in the boom of the blast;

The sky pressed down on their bare mast poles as they scudded before the wind,
As they climbed the seas and shuddered at the sheer green gulfs behind;

And swiftlier raced the following tide with the white comb reared to whelm,
And they knew how nigh was the dread lee-shore, but they dared not change the helm.

The nights grew brief in that wintry world, but there broke no friendly sun
Through the cumbered cloud and the drifting scud, and the night and the day seemed one.

So ever they toiled at the creaking pumps and the breach that the green seas made,
And ever they cried on the Lord of Storms, and their hearts were unafraid.

Week after week at the tempest's will the Golden Hind ran on,
Till the blast died down to a whispering breeze and a clean sun rose and shone;

And the albatross came wheeling to stare at their ribboned sail
As he dropped from the calm of the upper sky in the wake of the dying gale.

They rode alone in a lonely sea,—it was months before they knew
They would meet no more with their sister ships at the tryst in far Peru,

For the great untraversed ocean had claimed its first-fruit prey,
And never a sign from the Marygold shall be till the judgment day;

But Wynter ran with the warning wind back into the sheltered strait,
And there three weeks he had lingered on, for the storm would not abate;

Till at last with a waning hope or will, grown weary of fight and foam,
He turned his back on the venture and set the course for home.

So the might of the waves was broken, and the might of the sun shone forth,
And eastward stretched a broad sea-way, but the land lay west and north;

Till then they had deemed that the austral earth with a long unbroken shore
Ran on to the Pole Antarctic, for such was the old sea-lore;

But here were the sperm whales spouting for joy that the storm was done,
And the ice-floes sailing round them and the waves blue under the sun.

The sick men crept from their reeking bunks, and climbed to the decks again,
To see where the sister oceans met to the south of the gloomy main;

And they hailed that storm for the wind of God, for the might of its blast had borne
The Hind on her path of glory a sea-league past the Horn.

They steered for the shadowy land they saw low under the northern sky,
To an isle unveiled by the lifting cloud, and they found good haven nigh:

They laughed and sang as they scaled the cliffs, the New World rang with mirth,
And they stretched glad arms to heaven on the southernmost earth on earth.

VI THE TREASURE GALLEONS

Beyond the gloom of ice-scarred cliffs that bound that austral land
The coast trends north two thousand miles through plains of yellow sand;

And darkly shadowed far inland the sudden Andes rise
With bleak and barren flanks that turn towards the sunset skies;

For bounteous earth looks eastward there, and from her snow-capped crests
Great rivers flow to meet the dawn among her fruitful breasts.

But rarely some lone mountain tarn spills westward down the chain
A stream that feeds its borderlands of garden in the plain;

So the ports where ships may enter are few and far between,
Where some such silver thread winds down to make the desert green.

They watched the snows of Andes slide past beneath the moon,
And felt the summer's breath once more blow down the mellow noon;

The eager zest of life came back, they drank a glorious air,
Forgot the toil of weary months and winter's long despair.

It was a fair November eve in Valparaiso Bay,
Where all aboard made taut for sea the treasure-galleon lay.

The crew were lounging o'er her sides to watch the setting sun,
And sweetly fell the end of day to men whose work was done.

A lazy mist hung o'er the stream and veiled the hills in blue,
And up the lime-washed belfry tower the rose of evening grew.

The ripple from the river ran a sheet of quivered flame,
And softly on the dropping breeze the bell's low tinkle came;

When round the distant headland a dark sail hove in sight,
A gallant bark stood up the bay, and swiftly fell the night.

An hour more and the last red glow on ocean's margin waned,
And through the pale star-clusters the queen moon rose and reigned.

The Spaniards broached a cask of wine, the crew stood by to greet
The ship come in from Panama with tidings from the fleet.

A boat has left the stranger craft, they hailed, and one replied,
And a score of sturdy Devon lads have swarmed the galleon's side;

A sudden rush has cleared the decks, and up swarmed twenty more,
And the galleon's crew are overboard and striking out for shore;

But her pilot hailed them friends, not foes, a Greek long years impressed,
An eager guide to steer the Hind along the unknown west.

Oh, never draught of wine hath seemed so sweet to parching mouth
As that first cup they pledged on board the Captain of the South!

A panic seized the little port, the townsfolk fled inland,
And left their stores of Chili wine and all good things to hand.

So three days more Drake lingered here and stocked the ship afresh,
They had lived too long on melted snow and the bitter penguin flesh;

And the scurvy-stricken wretches laughed out for very mirth
As they culled the fruits they craved for and blessed the mother earth.

Then wind and current bore them north along the yellow main,
And the sound of fife and hautboy was heard on board again;

For keen as lads let loose from school, with reckless jest and boast
They raided every bight and bay that frets the silver coast.

And ere they left Arica's quays with all her ingots stored,
There was half-a-million ducats' worth of silver bars on board.

In splendid scorn of circumstance, with desperate odds to face,
They sailed, those first intruders of our adventurous race;

To-day a wiser, wearier world will brand them buccaneers;
They did not doubt their cause was just in those distracted years.

In a little while all England's isle, like them, shall gird for fray:
The first who battle with the strong must use what arms they may.

But still no tidings came to hand of Wynter and his crew,
So they bore away for Lima and the spoils of rich Peru.

For every bark they had overhauled confirmed their pilot's tale,
That the richest prize in all those seas lay there and due to sail.

They left the Captain of the South without a crew to drift,
Henceforth the Hind must sail alone, for the race is to the swift:

And fleeter than the tidings ran from shores their advent scared,
They sailed beyond their ill-renown and found men unprepared.

They lay hove-to a sea-league off, and then with never a light
Ran up Callao di Lima in the dead of a murky night.

But the giant Cacafuego had sailed ten days before,
Deep laden to the water-line with all Potosi's ore;

And while they ransacked empty hulls a wild alarum broke
From clamouring bells and signal-guns, and startled Lima woke;

Red torches flitted through the gloom, men mustered on the quay,
And Drake must cut his cable-tow and hurry out to sea.

But the light night breeze died down with dawn, and there the rovers lay
With flapping sails struck motionless a short sea-league away;

While rumour rode with panic spur, their one ship grew to ten,
And the Viceroy of Peru marched down with twice a thousand men.

He has manned and armed four galleons, with the charge to take or burn
The Dragon in his devil-ship, or nevermore return.

But still across a cloudless sky the slow sun climbed and crept,
While like a sheet of milky glass the breathless ocean slept;

And morn and morrow's morning dawned, and still like a drowsy spell
On land and water, friend and foe, the trance of nature fell.

And now the watchers on the Hind beheld from those clear shores
Two galleys move like living things on hundred-footed oars;

They heard their pulsing measured thud far off across the calm
As they cleared their deck for action and sang the battle psalm.

The general's clear blue eye surveyed the narrowing space between,
“Now, lads,” cried he, “to play the man, for God and for the Queen!”

But ere the answering cheer died down a dark flaw crimped the seas,
The ripple rattled on the stem, they sniffed the coming breeze:

The white sails filled, the good ship heeled, the merry land-wind blew,
And as a scared swan skims the lake she shook her wings and flew.

And now to crowd all canvas on and dog the Spitfire's wake,
There sails no craft of Panama shall show clean heels to Drake.

They tracked her north from port to port, they never lost the trace,
Eight hundred weary miles of sea, and yet she baffled chase.

She had lingered in Truxillo to load more treasure still,
She had watered at Paita, she had touched at Guayaquil.

It was hard on the Line on the first of March when the morning broke at last,
They were 'ware of her square-rig far away, and they knew that they held her fast.

So they shortened sail in the Golden Hind to wait till the end of day,
And they trailed great casks and breakers at her stern to check the way.

The sun was dropping down the west as they cut her fetters free,
And like a greyhound slipped from leash she bounded through the sea:

They hauled the chase as twilight fell—one flight of arrows flew,
One broadside brought the mainyard down, and the giant ship hove to.

Night strode across the heaving deep, night and the unknown foe,
And the richest prize that ever sailed has struck without a blow.

Her captain sits at meat with Drake, a sore unwilling guest,
And prize and captor side by side have set their courses west.

Far off in ocean's solitude, secure from all pursuit,
They overhauled the priceless freight and they found an empire's loot:

There were thirteen chests of minted coin, there were pearls and gems untold,
And all the ballast under decks was silver bars and gold.

The admiral of the treasure fleets at Nombre waits in vain,
For not one ounce of all that gold shall find its way to Spain.

The cruisers sent from Lima long since had cried despair,
The Dragon came they knew not whence, and was gone they knew not where.

So all the coast rose up in arms, and, as the panic grew,
The great ship came to Panama, a long month overdue;

They had met, they said, with a corsair, whose like there was none on earth,
For the men at arms who served him were of England's gentlest birth;

There was never a crew so ordered, so quick to the captain's call,
He lived like a prince in his state on board, and his will was a law for all.

They had brought a letter signed and sealed with a haughty word from Drake,
And the king's vicegerent gnashed his teeth as he read for anger's sake;

“There be English seamen here,” he wrote, “of my own old fellowship,
Whose limbs are chained to your galley bench, and red from the driver's whip,

‘Henceforth I bid you give good heed that they come to no more harm,
Or I'll hang me a thousand Spaniards at the Golden Hind's yard-arm.”

So frigates with despatches sailed post haste from Venta Cruz,
And soon Madrid and Lisbon rang with this disastrous news;

Then Sarmiento put to sea to block Magellan's Strait,
And Philip's envoy found the Queen no novice in debate;

Once more El Draque had dared transgress the sea's forbidden bar,
Had set the bulls of Rome at naught, perplexing peace with war;

His liege of Spain would learn forthwith whose flag these corsairs fly!—
Not Cecil, but the Queen herself, returned the proud reply:

“For proven wrong waits due redress; but ill-timed comes your plea
When hireling bravos land and league with Desmond's Irishry:

“When all the claims myself have urged for wrongs to be redressed
Still wait my kinsman's courtesy to be answered—for the rest,

“I have yet to learn what papal bulls run west of Finisterre
To bar my people's birthright in ocean, earth, and air!”

And thus the war of words ran high with claim and counter-claim,
And weeks and months rolled on for years—but of Drake no tidings came.

VII THE WORLD ENCOMPASSED

Three thousand miles to the frozen north on a track untried of man,
They had sought for the fabled outlet of the Straits of Anian;

As many a stout heart yet shall sail in the years that are to be,
On the phantom quest of the drift north-west, through the heart of the iceberg sea.

But ever they beat in the teeth of storms, half blind with the threshing hail,
While the spray froze fast on gear and mast and starched their fretting sail;

They came to the edge of a mountain world, where clouds hung heavy and low
On the gloom of the great fir forests, black under the crowning snow:

The sparkle died from the merry sea, and the fogs lay dank and thick
On the wan unfriendly waters, and half of his men fell sick.

But the trend of the land lay westward still, and icier struck the blast,
The work of three grew a toil for six, and they gave up hope at last.

So the Hind ran south with the wind in her wake till they chanced on a kindlier land,
And they set up forge and workshop, and they beached her on the strand.

The gentle tribes of the Indian folk came down to their camp unscared,
On a shore that the Old World's lust for gold or hunger of earth had spared:

They hailed them welcome, they brought them gifts, in wonder and love and awe,
And bowed at the feet of the great white gods who were come to give them law;

They brought the wand of their chief of chiefs to set in the general's hand,
And with mystic rights proclaimed him the lord of the Indian's land.

So the English went to their upland towns, for the fringe of the hills was near,
Looked over the boundless pasture world and the untold herds of deer;

The dust of that earth was agleam with gold, the skirt of the slopes was rare
With the tender growth of a northern clime, and spring was quick in the air.

There was many a lad was tempted then—begged hard to be left behind,
For they said, “We have wandered two full years at the chance of the fickle wind.

“So long we roam, and it's far to home, and weary of fight are we,”
But the captain frowned in silence as he led them down to the sea.

He piled a cairn on the cliffs' high crest with a graven plate thereon,
And Her Grace's name writ large to mark when her latest realm was won;

He called that land New Albion, with a tender thought for home,
As they bade farewell to the gleaming rocks that rose through the whiter foam;

The wild folk watched with wondering eyes, the women crooned low wails,
For the fair white gods went seaward and the Hind shook out her sails.

But the sea-queen's brood shall come once more to that shore where the white cliffs are,
When the sons of their children's children have followed the evening star;

Their bounds shall be either ocean, for the same divine unrest
Shall drive their teeming millions to seek new fortunes west;

And a great sea-city havened here shall leap to sudden fame,
Re-echoing in an alien speech the great sea-captain's name.

He laid his course by the Spaniard's chart, “For we'll trust to the open sea,
And it's Westward Ho till the home-wind blows, as it was from the start,” said he.

“We are half-way round the world, my lads, and it's half-way round once more,
Till we've ploughed a track on the ocean's back that never was ploughed before.”

So they dropped to the edge of the North-East Trade, and they ran west sixty days,
With never a sight of shore or sail in the infinite ocean ways;

And the mariner's boy through the long night-watch would brood on his heart's desire,
While the strange stars played with the dancing yards and the wake ran blue with fire;

For the craving came that the wanderer knows for the lilt of his own folk's speech,
For the damp moss scents in the ancient grass and the shade of elm and beech,

For the rook's loud call in the twilight fall and the thin blue smoke that weaves,
The veil of mist on the red farm roof and the gold of the autumn leaves.

But weary wide were those seas untried, and little avail to sigh
For the home stars in their places and the old familiar sky.

Light lie the snows on byre and thatch, and windless falls the rain,
Deal gently with them, summer sun, till we get back again!

And at last they came to a mid-sea isle, and a cluster of isles beyond
Swam up through the white mirage of dawn as if by a fairy's wand;

Up rose the sun, the long low swell slid landward flushed with day,
And the golden message climbed the brows of an upland far away;

The flighting sea-birds overhead went clanging through the sky,
But the ripple showed the white reef's edge, and they dared not venture nigh.

So they left the clustering isles to dream through their drowsy moons and noons,
Safe walled in the coral girdles that glass their still lagoons

And they bore away for the Line once more till a fairway broadened free,
Where the perfume-laden breezes blow through the blue Molucca sea.

The bloom of the clove was harvested as they lingered to explore
The garden ways of the ocean realms of Ternate and Tidore;

And they beached the Hind in a lonely isle where foot never yet, maybe,
Had stirred the sand of the shell strewn strand since the isles came up from the sea.

All over its hills gigantic, weird, the silent forest grew,
With tapered stems to the tented roof that never a sun looked through,

And even at midmost noon was gloom in the branchless colonnade,
Where the bats and the flying foxes were lords of the twilight shade,

Where great land-crabs in the twisting roots stared out of their towering eyes,
And night was quick with the shifting light of the myriad phosphor flies.

So there they abode for a month intrenched with the bullion stacked on shore,
Till trimmed and taut for her long run home, she slid to the deep once more.

Then west and south through the infinite isles, through treacherous reefs that hide,
Where the dead volcanoes cumber the drift of the parcelled tide;

They were bound for the Sunda Channel, for the chart gave free-way there,
They were two days out from Celebes, and the topsail wind blew fair;

There was never a sign on the false sea's face as she struck with a grinding shock,
As the keel ploughed through and the ship held fast in the crust of a sunken rock;

Oh, many a time these two years back they had fought with the ague breath
That chills the heart of the bravest man when he looks in the face of death;

But not in their mad race past the Horn, nor the jaws of the fearsome strait,
Not yet at the hand of God or man had they stood so near their fate.

And then, as ever in direst need, they bent the stubborn knee,
And said the brief and earnest prayer to the God who made the sea.

It was all deep water round the Hind, and the warps could find no stay,
And fast at the chance of a freshening breeze and a rising swell they lay;

So they rolled the great guns overboard, and the spoils of rich Peru,
The shimmering ingots one by one went diving down the blue.

No craven panic blanched their cheeks though the good ship never stirred,
The ocean drill was perfect now—one voice alone demurred:

What ailed you, Master Fletcher, there, brave heart in all beside,
To prate about the hand of God, and the death that Doughty died?

The little captain turned in wrath and flung him on the deck,
Set both his ankles in the stocks, and a posy round his neck:

“Lo, here sits Parson Fletcher, the falsest knave alive!”
“For till her timbers part,” said he, “I'll have no croaker thrive.”

And so the weary day went down, and up the full moon sailed,
The broken waters tinkled by, and nought their toil availed;

But tired and spent and sick at heart they watched the watches through:
“We are in the hand of God,” said he; “we have done what men may do.”

And lo, the hand was stetched to save; as it drew towards the day
The breeze that held her broadside up grew slacker, died away;

She heeled towards the deep once more, and so with never a strain,
By the mercy of God, as the morning broke, slid back to her own again.

Now, drawers, bring the Alicant of which we robbed the Don!
Go loose the parson from the stocks, and get his surplice on!

The leadsmen to the chains again, for Drake's triumphant star
Shall guide us through the Flores Sea and past the eastern bar!

So on by treacherous reef and shoal, by cape and channel and sound,
They groped their way through the island belt that girds the South Sea round;

Behind them sank the shadowy shores, and they came on the ocean swell
Where the great tides heave untrammelled, and they knew that all was well.

VIII THE HOMECOMING

Now it fell one morn in the after-year there was stir in Plymouth fort,
And the guard turned out as the daylight broke to the Admiral of the Port,

For the watch on the Rame had sent him word of a warship hove in sight
That beat in the teeth of the keen north-east at fall of the autumn night;

He searched the dawn with his keen sea eyes, for there sailed neither Dutch nor Don,
But veiled his tops to the English flag in the days of Admiral John.

And need was then for wary eyes, for the news was fresh to hand
Of galleons off the Irish coast with companies to land.

The white mist rose, a bare mile off she stood in over the bay,
And she bore her topsails proudly as one that had right of way:

“If ever the dead came back to life,” it was old John Hawkins spake,
“I had sworn to that rig in a thousand ships for my kinsman's Frankie Drake.”

And e'en as he spake the red cross flag shook out from her taper mast,
A thunder of guns broke right and left and the Hind was home at last!

Her beardless boys were seasoned men with necks set firm, and face
Tanned ruddy by the winds and suns that shape the sea-born race;

Her fluttering sails were patched and frayed, her bulwarks all a wreck,
The pitch ran through her open seams and stained her splintered deck;

Her painted prow was rusty brown with the crust of alien seas,
And half her ports were blind of the guns she had dropped in Celebes:

But every hand was up on deck, or aloft on mast and spar,
To cheer the dropping anchor down behind the harbour bar.

Oh, golden spread the Edgcumbe woods and purpling leaned the down,
And lingering wreaths of yellow furze lit up the moorland crown;

The world of home lay passing fair beyond the weary seas,
As all the bells began to ring and the folk ran down the quays.

From house to house, from street to street, the news ran far and wide,
To Dart and Tamar, east and west, and up the country-side.

The dead had all been duly mourned long since, time out of mind,
There was only clasp of welcome hands and mirth on board the Hind.

They have brought the Hind to Deptford town, they have moored her by the quay,
A bridge of plank athwart her waist—she will go no more to sea.

But pilgrims come from far and near and climb her poop in pride,
And many a barge from Tower steps drops down there on the tide;

There's not a 'prentice in the Fleet but has felt a sailor born
The day he saw the famous ship that found and named the Horn;

And scholars learnèd in the lore of great adventures past
Have turned conceits and epigrams to hang about her mast;

While Drake's tall lads, in silk and stuff, went swaggering up and down,
With tales that turned the staidest heads, and ale ran free in town.

But now the windows all are wide, there are flags in every street,
For the Queen herself has come to-day to sit with Drake at meat.

The Golden Hind's great ordnance has fired the last salute,
The crew are marshalled on the poop with drum and fife and flute;

The board is spread between the decks among the brazen guns,
For to-day the great Queen honours the bravest of her sons.

The captain of her guard was there in doublet slashed and pearled,
For Hatton's was the proud device they had carried round the world;

And subtle Master Walsingham with the long thin nervous hands,
Who knew the minds and manners of many folk and lands;

And there was Martin Frobisher, the pilot of the Pole,
And Grenville, than whom England held no knightlier sailor soul.

There sat Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the untimely lost—not yet
In the vengeful night of ocean scorned his storm-tossed star had set;

And Walter Raleigh new to court, and flushed with fortune's smile,
The travelled Earl of Cumberland and Christopher Carlile;

With Sanderson, the man of maps, who drew the first sea-card,
And Osborne, Mayor of London town, and the elders of his ward,

Whose merchant fleets shall sail henceforth untrammelled east or west;
And they spoke of deeds adventurous and all the world's unrest.

So went she forth accompanied, that unforgotten day
She flung the Spaniard's challenge back, defiant; these were they

Who first dared dream and dreaming dared—while all was yet to do,
To roll the bounds of empire back beyond the bounds they knew;

To bind the winds their bondsmen, and hold the tide their slave,
And claim for island England dominion o'er the wave.

“Now hearken, lords and gentlemen, we have heard to-day,” said she,
“Of the world beyond the sunset and the sea beyond the sea,

“But of piracies and plunderings, of trespass, raid, and wrong—
Of this we learned from Philip's self, and the tale is passing long;

“And still my kinsman claims to know whose flag this bark hath flown
Which Master Drake hath dared maintain through seas he claims his own.

“Now therefore to such questionings let this my answer be,
Down, truant rover, down, and crave my pardon on your knee!”

Then he who fear had never known stood blanched before her seat,
Ungirt his sword and bowed and knelt to lay it at her feet.

And roundly there she rated him, and looked him up and down,
With eyes that knew a true man's worth, and smiled away their frown.

She bared his blade, she rose a queen, a queen to mar or make—
“My little pirate, rise,” she cried, “and rise Sir Francis Drake!”

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IX THE SINGEING OF THE BEARD

The Queen's ships and the London ships were mustered in the Sound,
For Drake had streamed his pennant there an Admiral outward bound;

No more a lawless rover now he signalled “Follow me!”
With the Queen's good leave and warranty to watch the Southern sea.

For Parma held the northern ports and all the Spanish coasts
Were live with gathering armaments and marshalling of hosts.

At last the word was open war since Drake had swept the main,
The champion of his Queen avowed against the might of Spain:

He had sailed to Cartagena, had stormed the fort and town,
And held to pawn the fairest gem of Philip's western crown:

And the merchant guilds of Venice were scared and ill at ease,
While ruined Seville closed her bank and mourned her argosies.

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The hand to check,” the Queen had said, “the bridle and curb for me!
This folk be too high-mettled to run with a rein too free.

“But now I have given this realm of mine good space to breathe and grow,
And the time is ripe for action; I will let my sea-dogs go.”

So twenty bold adventurers beat out beneath the Rame,
And the Queen's ship Bonaventure, with a fortune in her name;

Light winds this side the Lizard, without a north-west gale,
On board the stoutest companies that ever handled sail;

They rounded Cape St. Vincent—it dropped to a merry breeze—
And ten days out from the Lizard light they had mustered off Cadiz.

The city on its headland bluff that eve of April-tide
On tower and fane and gable roof took all the sunset pride:

The batteries on the bastion heights frowned grimly o'er the bay,
But none may choose but follow where Drake shall lead the way.

He stood right in for Maryport—the tide was at the flow—
As, twinkling through the orange-groves, the lights began to show.

The batteries dared not open fire, for round the crowded ports
The victualling ships by hundreds rode beneath the sheltering forts;

But, shadowlike, with measured pulse unchecked by bar or shoal,
The dreadful galleys oared with life across the twilight stole:

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His broadsides flashed, the galleys turned, like wounded living things,
With bleeding decks and splintered ribs and trailing broken wings.

That night in shuddering Cadiz no weary eye might close,
But round her dim-lit altar shrines wild litanies arose:

Far inland through the vineyard hills ran tidings of despair,
The scourge of God had led the foe where none but Drake would dare:

No monk might preach the panic down, no saint stood by to save,
As the ruddy glare of burning ships lit up the moonless wave.

The galleons lay a helpless prey, their ordnance all in store,
The sails unbent, the anchors down, and the crews at work on shore.

Adrift on night with cables cut he fired them as they fled,
From road to haven, wharf to dock, the flame of vengeance spread;

And, reddening in the dreadful glow, flashed spar and sail and mast,
Where, lit by floating torches, the Bonaventure passed.

So there they looted, fired and fought, till none were left to fight,
While Cadiz watched the devil's work that long disastrous night;

And when on shores made desolate another day began
He led the fleet in triumph out and had not lost a man.

So plucking at the giant's heart he dared his strength deride,
And Spain, who loves a gallant deed, applauded while she sighed.

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Then west by Seville's river-gates and on to Lagos Bay,
They raided every creek and cove where mustered shipping lay.

This year the Algarve coast shall see no fishing fleets put forth
When the great schools of tunny go scatheless shoaling north.

The brine-tubs in the sun may crack along deserted quays,
This year shall no man gather in the harvest of the seas.

But far in quiet English homes shall summer wane in peace,
While good folk tend their harvesting and store the year's increase.

Unscared along her white chalk cliffs shall child and mother sleep;
Unscared the coaster ply his trade while Drake patrols the deep.

He had set his course for Florès isle, for now the home wind blew,
And sailing with the Northern Trade the treasure fleets were due;

But as the ocean broadened out beyond St. Vincent's lee,
Once more the wild north-west raced down across a maddened sea.

Three days and nights his scattered ships drove on before the blast,
Then maimed and torn, in evil case, beat up for home at last.

But Drake held on his stubborn course until the storm went by,
And saw no sign of all his fleet beneath the clearing sky.

Now it chanced that as he railed at fate and sailed his sullen way,
King Philip's great East Indiaman came up from far Cathay.

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She saw the flag of ill-renown, she crowded on more sail,
And then a desperate race began before the dying gale.

Alas! for Spain's unlucky star, a league off Cadiz town,
In sight of help, in sight of home, her proud flag fluttered down!

And so a month behind the rest, belying not her name,
With such a prize to Saltash creek the Bonaventure came.

But Drake rode post to London town to don a courtier's dress
And kneel before the Queen and crave her pardon for success.

“Now, come you as a privateer from troubling all the sea?
Or come you as my Admiral?”—“So please my liege,” said he,

“Your Grace's fleet in April gales went forth at high behest,
And found a giant's head thrust out that watched your highway west.

“For Vigo is the eye of Spain and Lisbon rock the nose,
And round the chin St. Vincent the trade of Turkey goes;

“My liege's ships rode out the gale, the wind of fortune veered,
And in his throat at Cadiz Bay I singed King Philip's beard.”

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X THE ARMADA

There shall be so much forgotten of deeds beneath the sun,
But not this deed of England's, till England's race be run;

The fathers shall tell their children, and the children's children know
How we fought the great sea-battle three hundred years ago.

It was in the middle summer, and the wheat was full in ear,
But men's hearts were dark and troubled, and women's faint for fear:

The fleets of Spain set sail in May, but a storm had warned them home,
The might of Spain had met again to do the will of Rome.

The Pope's high benediction had sped them on their way,
With monks and priests and bishops to teach us how to pray;

And all the Southland's knighthood, well proved in many a field,
And all her great sea-captains had come to make us yield;

And thirty thousand seamen and soldiers lay aboard;—
So England watched and waited, and trusted in the Lord.

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Then all along this southern coast there was hurrying to and fro,
And the nation's eyes went seaward to watch the coming foe;

The shepherds left the pasture-hills, the yeomen left their farms,
For all the squires in England were gathering men-at-arms;

And there was vigil through the night, and ever stir and life,
From the Foreland to the Landsend, before the coming strife;

The old sea-dogs of England were met on Plymouth Hoe,
And the little fleet was anchored across the Sound below;

And rusty swords were furbished while yet the corn was green,
For a mighty cry went through the land, For God and for the Queen!

It was a July evening, and in the waning day
The fairy woods of Edgcumbe hung rosy o'er the bay,

When through the track of sunset, full-sail and homeward bound,
A little bark came gliding in and anchored up the Sound;

And round the quays and through the streets a wild-fire rumour ran:
A sea-league off the Lizard they've seen the Spanish van.

They say the Lord High Admiral was bowling on the green,
And round him sat the goodliest men the world has ever seen;

For there was Richard Grenville, the bravest of the brave,
Who fought the greatest sea-fight that ever shook the wave

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And there sat old John Hawkins, and preached of loot and prize,
And the grim battle-hunger flashed through his grizzled eyes;

And there was Martin Frobisher, who tried the North-west way,
And saw the sunless noontide, and saw the midnight day;

And Drake, the seaman's hero, whose sails were never furled,
Whose bark had found the ocean-path that girdles round the world;

And Preston of La Guayra, and Fenner of the Azores,
Who shook the flag of England out on undiscovered shores;

And Fenton, and John Davies, and many another one,
Whose keels had furrowed untried seas behind the setting sun.

Without one dark misgiving they sat and watched the play,
And sipped their wine and laughed their jests like boys on a holiday.

That night men fired the beacons and flared the message forth,
From the southland to the midland, from the midland to the north:

And there was mustering all night long, wild rumour and unrest,
And mothers clasped their children the closer to their breast;

But calmly yet in Plymouth Sound the fleet of England lay,
The gunners slept beside their guns and waited for the day.

Then as the mists of morning cleared, up drew the Spanish van,
And grimly off the Devon cliffs that ten days' fight began.

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Four giant galleons led the way like vultures to the feast,
And the huge league-long crescent rolled on from west to east:

But they will not stay for Plymouth, nor check the late advance,
For Parma's armies wait and fret to cross the Strait from France.

No grander fleet, no better foe, has ever crossed the main,
No braver captains walked the deck than hold the day for Spain.

There sailed Miguel d'Oquenda, our seamen knew him well,
Recalde and Pietro Valdez, Mexia and Pimentel.

Oh, if ever, men of England, now brace your courage high,
Make good your boast to rule the waves, and keep the lin-stocks dry:

For the weeks of weary waiting, the long alert is past,
The pent-up hate of nations meets face to face at last.

The giant ships held on their course, and as the last was clear
The Plymouth fleet put out to sea and hung upon their rear;

And their war-drums beat to quarters, the bugles blared alarms,
The stately ocean-castles were filled with men-at-arms.

All through that summer morn and noon, on till the close of night,
We harried through the galleons and fought a running fight;

And far up Dartmoor highlands men heard the booming gun,
And watched the clouds of battle beneath the summer sun.

As o'er some dead sea-monster wheel round the white-winged gulls,
Our little ships ran in and out between the giant hulls;

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For fleetly through their clumsy lines we steered our nimble craft,
And thundered in our broadsides, and raked them fore and aft,

The broken spars flung havoc down, the floating castles reeled,
While o'er our heads their cannon flashed, their idle volleys pealed.

And the sun went down behind us, but the sea was ribbed with red,
For the greatest of the galleons was burning as she fled.

Yet hard behind we followed and held on through the night,
And kept the tossing lanterns of the Spanish fleet in sight.

So past Torbay to Portland Bill they ran on even keels,
And ever we hung behind them and gored their flying heels;

And many a hull dismasted was left alone to lag,
To fall back in the hornets' nest, and, fighting, strike her flag.

Then every port along the coast put out its privateers,
And one by one our ships came in with ringing cheers on cheers;

So sailed Sir Walter Raleigh, the knight-errant of the sea,
And all the best of Cornwall and Devon's chivalry,

Northumberland and Cumberland, and Oxford and Carew,
Till from every mast in England the red-cross banner blew.

A calm fell on the twenty-fifth—it was St. Jago's day—
And face to face off Weymouth cliffs the baffled warships lay.

Now, bishops, read your Masses, and, friars, chant your psalm!
Now, Spain, go up and prosper, for your saint hath sent the calm!

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With stubborn sweep of giant oars that thresh the glassy blue,
The rear-guard galleons laboured down towards our foremost few.

Then loud laughed Admiral Howard, and a cheer went up the skies,
King Philip's three great galleons will be a noble prize!

So we towed out two of our six ships to meet each floating fort,
And we laid one on the starboard side and we laid one on the port;

And all forenoon we pounded them; they fought us hard and well,
Till the sulphur clouds along the calm hung like the breath of hell.

But a fair wind rose at noontide and baulked us of our prey,
The rescue came on wings of need and snatched the prize away;

So past the Needles, past Spithead, along the Sussex shores,
The tide of battle eastward rolls, the cannon's thunder roars;

The pike-men on the Sussex Downs could see the running fight,
And spread the rumour inland, the Dons were full in flight:

The fishing-smacks put out to sea from many a white chalk cove,
To follow in the battle's wake and glean the treasure-trove;

Till night fell on the battle-scene, and under moon and star
Men saw the English Channel one long red flame of war.

So, harried like their hunted bulls before the horsemen's goad,
They dropped on the eve of Sunday to their place in Calais road:

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And we, we ringed about them and dogged them to their lair
Beneath the guns of Calais, to fight us if they dare;

But afar they rode at anchor and rued their battered pride,
As a wounded hound draws off alone to lick his gory side;

And when the Sabbath morning broke, they had not changed their line,
For Parma's host by Dunkirk town lay still and made no sign.

So calm that Sabbath morning fell, men heard the land-bells ring,
They heard the monks at masses, they heard the soldiers sing;

Then as the noon grew sultry came sounds of feast and mirth,
And when the sun set many had seen the last on earth.

A breeze sprang up at even, dark clouds rolled up the sky,
And evil-boding fell the night, that last night of July.

But in the fleet of England was every soul awake,
For a pinnace ran from bark to bark and brought us word from Drake;

And we towed eight ships to leeward, and set their bows to shore,
To send the Dons a greeting they never had before;

No traitor moon revealed us, there shone no summer star
As we smeared the doomed hulls over with rosin and with tar;

And all their heavy ordnance was rammed with stone and chain,
And they bore down on the night wind into the heart of Spain.

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It was Prowse and Young of Bideford who had the charge to steer,
And a bow-shot from the Spanish lines they fired them with a cheer,

Dropped each into his pinnace—it was deftly done and well—
And on the tide set shoreward they loosed the floating hell!

Oh, then were cables severed, then rose a panic cry
To every saint in heaven, that shook the reddened sky!

And some to north and some to south, like a herd of bulls set free,
With sails half set and cracking spars they staggered out to sea:

But we lay still in order and ringed them as they came,
And scared the cloudy dawning with thunder and with flame.

The North Sea fleet came sailing down, our ships grew more and more,
As Wynter charged their severed van and drove their best on shore.

The Flemish boors came out to loot, and up the Holland dykes
The windmills stopped, the burghers marched with muskets and with pikes;

So we chased them through the racing sea and banged them as they went,
And some we sank, and boarded some, till all our shot was spent;

Till we had no food nor powder, but only the will to fight,
And the shadows closed about us and we lost them in the night.

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The white sea-horses sniffed the gale and climbed our sides for glee,
And rocked us and caressed us and danced away to lee.

Now rest you, men of England, for the fight is lost and won,
The God of Storms will do the rest, and grimly it was done;

Far north, far north on wings of death those scattered galleys steer
Towards the rock-bound islands, the Scottish headlands drear;

And the fishers of the Orkneys shall reap a golden store,
And Irish kernes shall strip the dead tossed up their rocky shore.

Long, long the maids of Aragon may watch and wait in vain,
The boys they sent for dowries will never come again.

Deep, fathoms deep their lovers sleep beneath an alien wave,
And not a foot of English land, not even for a grave!

But it's Ah for the childless mothers! and Ah for the widowed maids!
And the sea-weed, not the myrtle, twined round their rusting blades!

But we sailed back in triumph, our banner floating free,
Our red-cross banner in the gale,—the masters of the sea!

The waves did battle for us, the winds were on our side,
The God of the just and unjust hath humbled Philip's pride.

Henceforth shall no man bind us: where'er the salt tides flow
Our sails shall take the sea-breeze, the oaks of England go!

And every isle shall know them, and every land that lies
Beyond the bars of sunset, the shadows of sunrise.

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Henceforth, oh Island England, be worthy of thy fate,
And let thy new-world children revere thee wise and great!

Sit throned on either ocean and watch thy sons increase,
And keep the seas for freedom and hold the lands for peace!

Thy fleets shall bear the harvest from all thy daughter-lands,
And o'er thy blue sea-highways the continents join hands.

But should some new intruder rise to bind the ocean's bride,
Should once thy wave-dominion be questioned or denied,

Then rouse thee from thy happy dream, go forth and be again
The England of our hero-sires who broke the might of Spain.

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XI THE BURIAL OF DRAKE

Hove to off Puerto Bello the Queen's Defiance lay,
The sun went down on Darien and crimsoned all the bay.

Yet once more Dame Adventure, the witch that knows no ruth,
Had smiled from out the sunset world, the siren smile of youth.

But the merry main was silent now, no more in careless ease
The treasure transports plied unscared through those enchanted seas,

And fleets of war sailed to and fro between the island ports,
The peaceful cities of the west were grim with battled forts;

For many a year had come and gone since Drake's unconquered hand,
The magic of his name had changed the face of all that land.

Of five that sailed from Plymouth shall one see home again,
For storm and death and sickness have fought the fight for Spain.

The dauntless eyes had lost their mirth, the stricken ranks grew less,
But till the end he hugged his dream and scoffed at ill-success.

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Defeat nor failure had not taught that stubborn will to break,
But life-long toil and fever breath wore out the heart of Drake.

So, grave and heavy-hearted, they watched the setting sun,
His crews that leave untenanted the isles that he had won.

The skies were red and angry, the heaving waves were red,
And in his leaden coffin lay the great sea-captain dead.

Old friends stood ringed about him and every head was bowed,
St. George's red-cross banner lay over him for shroud.

The cradle of his childhood's dream rocked on an English wave,
Here billows no more alien shall guard an English grave.

He ploughed the longest furrow that ever split the foam,
From sunset round to sunrise he brought the good ship home.

His soul was wide as ocean, unfettered as the breeze,
He left us for inheritance the freedom of the seas.

The death-guns echoed landward, the last brief prayer was said,
“'Neath some great wave” they left him there, till the sea gives up her dead.

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THE BALLAD OF RICHARD PEAKE

“A good ship I know, and a poor cabin; and the language of a cannon: and therefore as my breeding has been rough, scorning delicacy, so must my writings be, proceeding from fingers fitter for the pike than the pen.” —Peake's Narrative.

This is the tale of Richard Peake,
Of Tavistock in Devon,
And the fight he fought in Xeres town,—
God rest his soul in Heaven!

I know each pool of Dart and Exe
Where trout or grayling hide,
I know the moors from sea to sea
And where the red-deer bide;
I know a tall ship stem to stern
What sail to set or strike,
I know to point a culverin
And how to thrust a pike.
I know the star-way through the night
And the bodings in the skies,
But many a man knows more than I
That is not wondrous wise.
I cannot turn a silken phrase,
Nor make a sonnet sing;
Yet must I write my chronicle
For my good Lord the King.

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A western man and lowly born,
And early sent to sea,—
So simple as my breeding was,
Let this my record be.

Ye have heard my Lord of Essex
How he sailed to Cadiz Bay,
With all King Charles' men of war
Upon a Saturday.
We were sixteen sail of Holland,
And a hundred of the line,
And I was pricked a volunteer
Aboard the Convertine.
We had stormed the fort and castle
From rising of the sun,
And long ere noon they landed
And silenced every gun.
But I was no shore soldier,
And so on board must bide
What time my Lord of Essex
Marched up the country-side.

Now it fell on the Monday morning
I took my leave ashore,
And walked up through the orange groves
A mile might be, or more.
'Twas said the country-side was bare,
The country-folk in flight,
A score of miles round Cadiz town,
And not a don in sight;—
When suddenly a cavalier,
His long sword at the thrust,
Came spurring down the narrow way
With a clatter through the dust.
His steed was checked, his grip was loosed,
With a flap from my blue cloak;

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I clutched the rider by the heel,
And caught the muffled stroke;
I dragged him down upon his face
And stripped him where he lay,
I took five silver pieces
And a horse in that affray.
But while he begged his life in words
That lisp on English ears,
There stole down through the orange groves
His squad of musketeers:
And when my hands were bound behind,
That knight, to his disgrace,
Took back the sword I stripped him of
And slashed me in the face.
With seven guards on either hand
And this brave knight before,
They brought me bound and bloody
In through the city door;
They gored my back with halberds
And spat into my face,
The urchins called me heathen swine,
God give them little grace!
They threw me into prison,
So bloodless and so weak,
It needed all their leeches
To find me strength to speak;
And vain it was my Captain sent
To ransom Richard Peake.
I saw our frigates hoisting sail
Upon the seventh day,
And through my dungeon window
I watched them fade away.
Two Irish monks came every noon
And wasted pious breath,
Adjuring me from heresy
Since I must die the death.

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And when a week had passed they said
It was the Governor's mind
That I should thence to Xeres town,
To the torture, they divined.

In Xeres Duke Medina lay
With many a Count and Earl,
And gravely these good lords were met
To try the English churl.
It was a pleasant sight to see
Where they sat in double rows,
Such ruffles and such velvet cloaks
And slashen sleeves and hose!
The Duke sat at the table's head
With the King's golden chain—
I mind no finer gentlemen
Than gentlemen in Spain.
And there and then Medina's self
Rebuked that craven knight
Who struck the prisoner in the face
He dared not face in fight.
They plied me well with questions—
What guns were in the fleet?
What ship was mine? what captain?
And I answered as was meet.
They asked how strong the fort was
That watches Plymouth Sound,
And boastfully I lied my best
As a Devon man was bound.
Quoth one, “Why spared ye Cadiz?
Your fleet put back to sea!”
“Who loots,” said I, “in palaces
May let the almshouse be.”
But all this while the soldiers round
Made mirth each time I spoke,
And ugly words for English ears
Went round the common folk:

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Until some jest rang o'er the rest,
And all those nobles smiled;
Now God forbid that I should stand
And hear my land reviled.

I said, “Your king keeps gallant troops
To wear such bands and cuffs,
And they should hold in battle firm
When the starch is in their ruffs.
Yet were I free to pick my choice
From a score of oaken sticks,
I'd stand and play my quarterstaff
For life or death with six.”
“Now, by the rood,” Medina said,
“A braggart though thou be,
I will not take thee at thy word,
But fight thou shalt with three!”

And if I made so bold a face
Be sure it was not pride,
But Richard Peake of Tavistock
Had heard his land belied.
I deemed my death was long resolved,
So basely would not die,
And three to one were heavy odds
For a better man than I.
A halberd was my quarterstaff—
They knocked the blade away,
The iron spike which shod the butt
Stood me in stead that day.
I swung the halberd round my head
And felt my might again,
And I took my stand for England
Against the arch-foe Spain.

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Then out stepped three hidalgos,
Steel armoured cap-a-pie,
And lightly sprang into the lists
With a mocking bow to me.
God save my Lord—though I must speak—
It was a pretty fight.
Three long swords thrust and feinted
In front, to left, to right;
While round their heads the halberd swung
And as they closed up near,
I snapped two blades, then shortened grip
And used it as a spear;
I drove it at the third one's breast,
And a horrid wound it made,
The iron butt went through his heart
And out by the shoulder-blade.
And now befell a wondrous thing,—
I needs must say again
Earth holds no finer gentlemen
Than the gentlemen of Spain.

Those nobles rose and clapped their hands:
The Duke was first to speak,
He bade no man on pain of death
Lay hands on Richard Peake.
They gave me gold, a band and cuffs,
This cloak I wear, the ring,
And sent me forth escorted well
To see the Spanish King;
And in Madrid on Christmas Day
I knelt before his sight,
Resolving all his questionings
With what poor wit I might.
He would have had me bide in Spain
To serve on shore or sea,
But I've a wife by Tavy side
And she's got none but me.

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Wherefore he pitied my estate
And pardon free bestowed,
With a hundred pistoles in my scrip
For charges on the road.
And so I bade Madrid farewell,
And came without annoy
Through France to Bordeaux haven,
And thence took ship to Foy.

Now while the Tamar winds to sea,
And while the Tavy runs,
God bless my old west country,
And God bless all her sons!
It's not in vain we've tracked the deer
By dale and moor and fen,
And drunk the morning with our lips,
And grown up brawny men.
It's not in vain we swam the Sound,
And tugged the heavy oar,
And braced the nerve and trained the limbs
That English mothers bore.
And therefore when the fight goes hard,
And the many meet the few,
She'll still find hands to do the work
That English lads must do.
So here I render thanks to God,
Who brought me through the sea,
Across the desert, back again,
My mother-land, to thee.

This was the tale of Richard Peake
Of Tavistock in Devon,
And the fight he fought in Xeres town,—
God rest his soul in Heaven!

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THE FIRST OF JUNE

That fight shall be remembered while sea-tides ebb and flow,
That fight that fell on the first of June a hundred years ago;

What time in the mid-Atlantic, far out of the ken of shore,
The flag of the double crosses was matched with the tricolor.

The fleets were even ship for ship, and man for man the crews,
And braver seaman never sailed than Villaret-Joyeuse.

When Howe broke through his battle line, the first to join the fray,
The Vengeur shook her top-sails out and raced to bar the way;

The Brunswick steering for the gap was next to gallant Howe,
And driving on before the wind she struck her on the bow;—

The forechains held her anchor fast, she swung and could not free,
So tethered in a deadly grip those two dropped off to lee.

Our English blew their ports away, the shock had jammed them to,
They rammed their guns with shot and chain and raked the Vengeur through.

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While hand to hand on the upper deck the Frenchmen swarmed to board,
Redressed the balance of the fight with grape and pike and sword:

That long forenoon the battle raged they scarce knew how or where,
Who, shrouded in a sulphur mist, fought out their duel there.

Our figure-head was Brunswick's Duke, who died at Auerstadt:
Now it chanced a round shot carried off the Duke's three-cornered hat.

Brave Captain Harvey lay below with the wound of which he died,
But as the word passed round the decks he raised him on his side,

And, “God forbid King George's fleet or Admiral Howe should see
The gallant Duke uncover to Villaret,” says he.

His strength was ebbing as he spoke, but smiling through the pain,
“I shall not need,” he whispered, “to wear my own again,”

“Take my cocked hat and brush away the powder from the lace,
And send for Jack the carpenter to nail it in its place.”

The bullets snarled and spattered thick where'er a face might show,
But Jack just said, “Aye, aye, sir,” and touched his hat to go.

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They watched him crawl out on the boom, they lost him in the smoke,
And through a pause of battle roar they caught his hammer's stroke.

But when the breeze a moment's space blew all the forecastle clear
There rose from half a thousand throats a ringing English cheer:

For Jack was back at quarters, begrimed and black and torn,—
“And the Duke does not uncover, lads, to any Frenchman born!”

You know the rest,—the long swell grew, the vessels strained and heeled
Till the grapple parted, and away the stricken Vengeur reeled;

Her spars still swung, but rudderless she drifted o'er the seas,
And lost the mastless Brunswick to close with the Ramillies.

An hour more and waterlogged she rolled a helpless wreck,
But still she bore the tricolor above her bloody deck.

When seven ships had struck their flags and that great fight was done,
When the shrouding smoke drew up and off towards the setting sun,

They saw her sinking slowly down with all her dying brave,
And boats put out in eager haste to succour and to save.

Too late, alas, to rescue all—the sea winds took their cry,
The cool waves washed their fevered wounds and they died as heroes die.

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All honour to the men who wore the tricolor cockade,
All honour to the Vengeur for the splendid fight she made!

And to our own brave sailor lads all honour then as now,
But when the first of June comes round and you drink to gallant Howe,

Remember Jack the carpenter who held his life in scorn,
If Brunswick should uncover to any Frenchman born.

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PUMWANI

Comrades mine of Blanche and Swallow scattered now a hundred ways,
Such a march we made together, once in torrid August days!

Up the mangrove creeks we laboured, where the crooked roots divide,
Clutching fast the shoaling mud-banks and encroaching on the tide;

Gaunt and hideous rose the baobabs with their bloated stems and bare,
And their gray arms stretching naked to the rank and steamy air;

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There we slept beneath the mangoes on forsaken village sites,
And drank in the cool refreshment of the wind-swept tropic nights,

Till at last the word was forward! and a noiseless camp awoke,
And the line fell into order ere the blush of morning broke.

Faint our track wound through the clearings, with their rank grass shoulder high,
Right and left the dense black forest walling in a tropic sky;

Where the gum-vine binds the branches and the fiercely fecund soil
Bars the way to human ingress, tightens tangles into coil.

The thorn palm took fantastic shapes and drooped a withered skirt,
The vultures rose into the blue to give the woods alert.

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Each followed close on his fellow's steps in the single serpent file,—
Like the gray baboons at the forest edge,—and the line reached half a mile.

The black marsh water splashed our knees, the ooze sucked down our boots,
The slimy mud-fish wriggled off and hid in the tangled roots.

And every man held back his breath of all three hundred men,
For the dropping shots gave warning we were near the robber den.

Then a bugle broke the stillness of that forest edged with eyes,
Then a wild uproar of drumming and a thunder to the skies;

Tongues of flame and battle rattle, puffs of smoke along the green,
Silent pauses in the volleys, and the foe we fought unseen:

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Yet our little line drew closer, creeping on by slow degrees,
While the rockets like winged dragons ploughed a fire track through the trees.

And the minutes passed like hours, and the burning sun beat down,
Till ere noon drank up the shadows we were in the rebel town.

Once again the heart beat lightly and a sense of triumph grew,
For the fort was well defended and great gaps were in our few.

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Swiftly fell the tropic evening, and, while camp fires flickered red,
Softly we drew off on one side and we gathered up our dead;—

By a lantern's feeble flicker read the words with which we trust
This our brother to God's keeping, this his body to the dust.

Dug a trench for you to lie in, you whose home was on the wave,
You, the white man with the dark men, your bedfellows in the grave,

White and black both dead for England, with the grass mats round your heads,—
As we turned and left them lying in their solitary beds.

So world over sleep the English, eyes of friends will never look
Through that gloom of Afric forest where we buried stoker Cook.

Only gray baboons will chatter in the branches where you lie,
And the quick hyena scamper through the tangle silently;

Yet such meed of due remembrance I would yield you as I may,
Since you gave your life for England—have her greatest more to say?

Since last night we slept together, 'twixt the grasses and the star,
And to-night you sleep for ever by the bitter chance of war.

But the camp was quick with laughter, for the blood was beating high,—
Laugh out!—life is for the living, for the dead at most a sigh.

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And the men whose hearts are boys' hearts set the lanterns in a ring,
And the battle dawn's reaction made the peace of evening sing.

So the old sea-songs came rolling till the chorus shook the trees,
And the tropic stars looked wondering at the men from over seas.

Then the hand-shake and the silence, and brief sleep for those who may.
Let to-morrow take its chances, we have lived our lives to-day.

East Africa, 1893.

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TO GERALD PORTAL

A blood-red sky, a milky sea;
And home almost in hail,
And you that walked the deck with me
To watch that glory pale!

I think my eyes had never seen
So grand an even sky,
As that which ushered Europe in,
You only reached to die.

Was it there first I learned to know
How much you were to me?
Though neither spoke, for that red glow
Had struck the silent key.

The torrid suns were far behind
The toil of dreary days,
The breaths of poison striking blind,
The wild untrodden ways:

I had no doubts, I never thought
Those kind and fearless eyes,
Those strong unfaltering hands, were wrought
Of stuff that lightly dies.

O fierce dark land, unconquered still
Though doomed to our behest,
How long ere thou hast drunk thy fill
Of the blood of England's best!

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The ship glides on, and overhead
The moonless night succeeds,—
Henceforth whenever skies are red
I may think my own heart bleeds.

136

THE DUKE HAS FRIENDS

My answer is—fill up your glass!—With you, Sir John, the Port!
They may call him traitor if they dare, and hound him from the Court!

There's many a courtier I could name has had his fingers black
With dipping after dirtier coin in some one else's sack.

But you and I may only know we've drawn for England's right
Behind the greatest captain that ever rode to fight!

Have you forgotten Eckerslau, when the balls were thick as rain,
And we thought the word would never come to take the field again:

When the battle hung in balance, and we waited for his sign:
Do you remember what you felt as he cantered down the line?

His breast was all one blaze of stars, his wrists were ruffed with lace,
The wind blew back his scented curls and showed his gallant face;

The bullets snarled like angry wasps, the cannon thundered loud,
As he drew his rein before our ranks, and raised his hat and bowed;

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‘With your permission, gentlemen of the English cavalry,
Myself will lead where honour calls—sound trumpet, charge!’ said he.

And calm as in the hunting-field he wheeled his chestnut round,
And all the line behind him leapt forward with a bound.

Then, when the fight was over, and Blenheim lost and won,
And England's greatest day went down in triumph with the sun,

I see him as he bowed once more in answer to our cheers,
That splendid English gentleman, that prince of cavaliers!

The town may talk its head off—I care not who they tell,
The Duke! his health in bumpers, and the Court may go to Hell!

138

AT STRATHFIELDSAY

The Autumn sun went down on Strathfieldsay,—
An old man rode by shadowy lawn and dell,
The old horse turned and took the homeward way,
And sweetly evening's benediction fell.
Then—wreathing smoke and grove and gable-crest
Melting together in the sunset skies,
Piled a fantastic fabric in the west,
And touched the chord of sleeping memories.
He saw it all;—there frowned the battled height,
Here flowed Aguéda livid in the glare,
Ciudad Rodrigo blazed into the night,
And cannon thundered through the misty air;—
Sounds of far voices, silent long ago,
Rose like faint echoes, and close by his side
Familiar forms seemed flitting to and fro,
While darkness gathered and the red glow died.
The old horse whinnied, and he bowed his head,
The twilight mellowed to its own again,—
“All that I lived through! and they all are dead!
Grant us Thy peace, God merciful. Amen!”

139

THOBAL

There was bloody work in the border hills, as it drew to Easter-tide,
And the flag that waved for England was humbled there in its pride.

They were grim familiar tidings, those few dark words of doom,
For the wide outposts of Empire are marked by the lonely tomb;—

There was no new phase in the story, but another page writ red,
The ambush laid, and the few too few, and the roll of English dead!

And we doubted not of the duty done, we were sure they had died like men,
And we knew that the flag of England would float on its mast again.

But it chanced there were thirty Ghoorkas who were marching on their way,
With fifty more of the Burman folk that have learned the word “obey,”

When the scouts brought in the tidings, and the blood lust made them mad,
These eighty men of the loyal folk led on by an English lad.

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And he did not wait nor waver, he took no count of the odds,
For he knew that he stood for England in the face of the painted gods;

Though the hills poured down their thousands, if the sturdy pluck held true,
He would stand his ground and show them what an English lad could do.

So a week went by in silence, and at last the message came,
And the eighty men of Thobal had saved the English name.

Then speak, oh mother island, for was it not well done?
Be proud of thy step-children, and proudest of thy son!

Once more the world has seen it, far under alien skies,
The beating heart of England is where the old flag flies.

What though they deem thou sleepest, and smile to see thee range,
And follow wandering voices on many a wind of change;

What though men say thy gospel is the counter and the till,
The boys we send to the far world's end have the heart of the lion still—

The heart of Richard Grenville when he fought with the fifty-three,
As he bled to death in the battered hull that was lost in the Spanish sea;

The heart of Walter Raleigh, and the heart of Francis Drake,
The heart of all the heroes who have lived for England's sake;

The heart of those who ventured on many a hopeless quest,
Till their dear divine unreason had joined the east and west.

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You boys that man the warships that are the ocean queen's,
Come back and tell your fathers what that name of England means.

Round all the world's wide girdle, in Asia's dark defiles,
In the yellow sands of torrid lands, in tempest-sundered isles,

O'er many a lonely station the trebled crosses wave,
For justice to the weaker, and for freedom to the slave!

God send her rulers wisdom,—the task to tame the lands,
The peril path of Empire is safe in these young hands.

Though the air be filled with strange new sound, and perplexed with doubtful creeds,
The boys we send to the far world's end still know what England needs.

142

TENNYSON

Into the silent Abbey, to the heroes' burying-place,
Bear him and leave him lying, peer with the peers of his race!

With the men of debate and battle, the mighty of heart or of brain,
Warders of Empire's outposts, home with their own again:—

Fitting is their death-welcome—the masks of his great compeers
Wrapt in the trance of silence—fitter for him than tears.

Never a sigh escort him, he has lived the tale of his days,
His burial-wreath is the laurel, his dirge is a nation's praise.

Why do we call him hero? Why do we bury him here?
Why are all England's greatest gathered about his bier?

Wandering sons she hath many, erring and loved no less
But this was the son of her heart, and his strength was his faithfulness.

Singer of England's saga, back to the misty prime,
Rolling a morning glamour over the night of time;

Singer of English gardens, poet of English springs
Lover of earth's dear beauty, and all elemental things.

Never a girl in England, or in England over the sea,
But wakes to her life's first love-dream sweetlier-souled for thee.

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Never a boy's young life-blood thirsts for the dawn of deeds,
But it throbs to a nobler impulse as he turns thy roll and reads.

That was his lofty level, all that is hard and high,
All that is purely purposed, theme of his minstrelsy:

Never for easy guerdon—the goodliest gift disgraced—
Flinging a tainted poison down to a morbid taste:

Never a doubt or shadow cast on a virgin soul,
But love in a pure white garment, and faith in an aureole;

Lending the mute thought language, flame to the waning fire,
A voice for the dream of the simple, a song for the world's desire.

For his heart was the heart of a child, and of such since time began
Are those the Eternal uses to speak to the heart of man.

144

ABOU HAMED

Two white stone crosses side by side
Mark where the true blood flowed,
Where Sidney and Fitzclarence died
To win the desert road.
And ringed about them close at hand
In trenches not too deep,
Unnamed, unnumbered in the sand,
Their dead black troopers sleep.

No cypress here, no English yew,
No trailing willow waves;
On wastes where never green thing grew
Lone blanch their outpost graves.
Through scanty fringe of thorn and palm
The Nile rolls on hard by,
Around them broods the desert calm,
Above the desert sky.

The sunrise scares the waning moon
And smites the dawn with fire,
The still mirage of torrid noon
Fades like a vain desire;
Time's wrinkled hand marks no impress
Across that desert wide,
And changeless there in changelessness
Shall those white graves abide.

For they that seek the river's flow
From the parched eastern waste,
And mark the evening's orange glow,
Push on in panic haste;

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And caravans from north to south
That through the desert fare,
Choose other spots to quench their drouth
When swift night falls—for there,

The dark folk tell, as evening dies,
A sentry's cry alarms
The graves from which dead soldiers rise
That hear the call to arms;
And till the new sun's level rays
Chase night across the sand,
On guard around their English beys
The dead battalions stand.

World-over thus, good comrades sleep,
By alien wilds and waves,
Where kindly hands are none to keep
And tend the frontier graves;
But here, though not in hallowed ground,
Beneath the Afric sky,
Inviolately fenced around
With love and awe they lie.

146

SPRING THOUGHTS

My England, island England, such leagues and leagues away,
It's years since I was with thee, when April wanes to May:—

Years since I saw the primrose, and watched the brown hillside
Put on white crowns of blossom and blush like April's bride;

Years since I heard thy skylark, and caught the throbbing note
Which all the soul of springtide sends through the blackbird's throat.

Oh England, island England, if it has been my lot
To live long years in alien lands, with men who love thee not,

I do but love thee better, who know each wind that blows—
The wind that slays the blossom, the wind that buds the rose,

The wind that shakes the taper mast and keeps the topsail furled,
The wind that braces nerve and arm to battle with the world!

I love thy moss-deep grasses, thy great untortured trees,
The cliffs that wall thy havens, the weed-scents of thy seas,

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The dreamy river reaches, the quiet English homes,
The milky path of sorel down which the springtide comes.

Oh land so loved through length of years, so tended and caressed,
The land that never stranger wronged nor foeman dared to waste,

Remember those thou speedest forth round all the world to be
Thy witness to the nations, thy warders on the sea!

And keep for those who leave thee and find no better place
The olden smile of welcome, the unchanged mother-face

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THE END