So, Cecil writes in a letter to his father, that "Whomsoever I met by the way within seven miles, that either had anything in cloak-bag, or in mail, which did but smell of the prizes (for I assure your Lordship I could smell them almost, such hath been the spoils of amber and musk amongst them) I did, though he had little about him, return him with me to the town of Exeter.... I have taken order to search every bag or mail coming from the West.... My Lord, there never was such spoil! I will suppress the confluence of these buyers, of which there are above two thousand. And except they be removed there will be no good.... Fouler ways, desperater ways, nor more obstinate people did I never meet with.... Her Majesty's captive comes after, but I have outrid him."
And in a second letter, written a few days later, he describes Ralegh's arrival, and the enthusiastic welcome which his men of Devon gave him: "I assure you, Sir, poor servants to the number of a hundred and forty goodly men, and all the mariners came to him with such shouts and joy, as I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them in my life. But his heart is broken, for he is very extreme pensive longer than he is busied, in which he can toil terribly."
Ralegh himself came very badly out of the division (probably through the cleverness of Robert Cecil), and he did not scruple to write very frankly to Lord Burghley his opinion of the business. "The Erle of Cumberland is allowed £36,000, and his accompt came but to £19,000: so as he hath £17,000 profytt, who adventured for himselfe; and we that served the Queen and assisted her service, have not our own again. Besides I gave my ship's sayles and cables to furnish the Caraque and bring her home, or else she had perished: my ship first bourded her, and onely staid with her; and brought her into harborough or else she had perished uppon Silley. I was not present, and therefore had no extraordinary profytt: I was the cause that all this came to the Queene.... I that adventured all my estate, lose of my principall and they have double...."
Robert Cecil was one of the few Elizabethan men with any pretence to greatness who was before all else designing and crafty. He had a genius for cold scheming. About this time he began to realize that Ralegh was too impetuous, and too great to be a convenient friend. And so he quietly set about to sap Ralegh's influence, though on the surface he remained as friendly as he had ever been, and let his son stay with the Raleghs at Sherborne. Robert Cecil was a politician and nothing else.
And now Ralegh made Sherborne, in the county of Dorset, his centre, from which he transacted all the manifold business of his life. Here, as in Youghal, he planted trees and flowers. He thought with Lord Bacon that "God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures: it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of a man; without which buildings and handiworks are but gross handiworks:" even as he would think with Bacon, "It is a poor centre of a man's actions, himself. It is right earth; for that only stands fast upon his own centre, whereas all things that have affinity with the heavens, move upon the centre of another, which they benefit." For he was working towards the realization of his great dream, which would bring prosperity and wealth once for all to England and England's greatest Queen, Elizabeth. He now had all the things which are wont to make for comfort and contentment: but he was not a man for whom ease had any attraction. He strained every effort, even amidst the peace and beauty of the country which he loved, to the arduous enterprise which he had set himself—to explore the little-known country of Guiana—an enterprise in which many brave men were known to have lost their lives.
CHAPTER XI
THE KINGDOM IN GUIANA
Ralegh leaves England—Arrives at Trinidad—Taking of S. Joseph—Interviews with Berreo—Dealings with natives—Starts up the river in boats—Dangers overcome—Adventures—They reach River Amana—Indian village—Within sight of Guiana—Toparimaca—Beauty of the land—Falls of the Caroli—The return—Voyage home—Arrival in England.
Although travel was slow and involved great physical endurance, there was never a time when men less loved their homes and firesides. The scene again changes. Many things called Ralegh; the spirit of unrest was always strong in him; he was always longing to get right away. The little things of life pressed upon him, and drove him to seek respite and quiet in the Unknown. And the Unknown held for him immense possibilities; the kingdom he desired to establish haunted his imagination more imperiously even than the actual release from the life and surroundings which quickly to his spirit became dull and commonplace. His nature was too high bred to endure with patience, until it was confronted by the inevitable; and there was very little that to his nature was inevitable. The barriers that would have stopped a smaller nature were pushed on one side by him, and even when Fate held him fast, he ultimately triumphed by turning his bondage to magnificent account. The spirit of life was with him always stronger than his fear of being called a coward, stronger even than his pride. And always when he at length realized a thing to be inevitable, he faced it at his full stature.
He had lived the life of the courtier, he had fought against Spain, he had attended to the numberless duties in Devonshire, in Cornwall, in Ireland; everything was becoming wearisome to him, and while he was unconsciously losing interest in his life, he was also losing his power over others. He was in disfavour. He was prouder than the proud men amongst whom he lived, and in consequence he had many enemies, who longed to humble his pride. He grew tired of the life; his imagination moved ever in advance of the present, and kept him ever unsatisfied and alert. In himself rather than in the influence of others lay the primary reason for his loss of favour. It is almost invariably so with a great personality even when he is himself unconscious of the cause.
He put all his energy into making preparations for carrying out his project of founding a new kingdom in Guiana. If he were successful, fortune would be remade, and favour would be regained. The prospect was exciting, but more alluring than the excitement was the knowledge that the sea and the unknown would bring to his soul immediate peace; that new sights, new dangers, and new interests would soothe his mind, fretted by the immanent pettiness of passing days. Change is the law of life, and Ralegh was immensely alive. Such a nature as his must always find expression for itself, must find scope and occupation for its greatness, or the spirit preys upon itself and pines into uneasiness. Whatever the force be from which vitality comes, brain or blood or soul, that force is irresistible. Death alone can free a man from its tyranny.
So Ralegh turned towards that kingdom in Guiana, towards "that great and golden city which the Spaniards call El Dorado," and on Thursday, February 6, 1595, he left England. The previous year he had sent his servant, Jacob Whiddon, to get "knowledge of the passages," and he had "some light from Captain Parker," but yet his journey's end was vaguely known. Jacob Whiddon and Captain Parker only conjectured that the place existed somewhere southward of the great bay Charuas, or Guanipa; and their conjecture was incorrect by some six hundred miles. Information of the kind was apt then to be inaccurate. Spaniards, indeed, knew something of this vast empire of Guiana, but naturally they kept such knowledge to their own use. That this destination was six hundred miles farther inland than he had been led to believe, Ralegh did not discover until he arrived at Trinidad, which he reached with no mishap other than the usual one of separation.
One of the pieces of gossip which old Aubrey recounts, and which is pleasant to believe, is that Ralegh was in the habit of taking many books with him on a voyage, and of reading them assiduously in his cabin. He knew Spanish well, and was conversant with the travel-lore of Spain. Among his books would surely be the "large discourses" of Pedro de Cieza and Francisco Lopez, recounting the marvels of the land to which he was making and the adventures which the Spaniards endured in conquering it.
All the terrible hardships of these first explorers had often fired his imagination, but never as now, when every movement of the ship brought him nearer to the actual scene of his endeavour. He would succeed where they had failed. And his heart must have warmed to these brave adventurers in spite of the fact that they were his enemies. He remembered their hardships, and his own, when he wrote in his "History of the World," "I cannot forbeare to commend the patient virtue of the Spaniards. We seldome or never finde that any Nation hath endured so many misadventures and miseries as the Spaniards have done in their Indian discoveries.... Tempests and shipwrecks, famine, overthrowes, mutinies, heat and cold, pestilence, and all manner of diseases, both old and new, together with extreme povertie, and want of all things needefull, have beene the enemies wherewith every one of their most noble Discoverers, at one time or other hath encountered. Many yeeres have passed over some of their heads in the search of not so many leagues; yea, more than one or two have spent their labour, their wealth and their lives in search of a golden Kingdom without getting further notice of it than what they had at their first setting forth. All which, notwithstanding the third, fourth, and fifth under-takers, have not been disheartened. Surely they are worthily rewarded with those Treasuries and Paradises which they enjoy; and well they deserve to hold them quietly, if they hinder not the like virtue in others, which (perhaps) will not be found." Men who lived through the same elemental perils have something in common, and a man like Ralegh is able to realize and to express the fact; he is able to rise above the claims of nationality at a time when his nation struggled for its very life, and he with it, against the rival nation of Spain.
He arrived at the island of Trinidad, and punished, after the manner of the time, the treachery of the Spaniards against Jacob Whiddon; for the year before Berreo, Governor of Trinidad, had broken his word of truce to Whiddon, and having set an ambuscade for his men when they landed, slew some eight of them. "So as both to be revenged of this wrong, as also considering that to enter Guiana by small boats, to depart four or five hundred miles from my ships and to have a garrison in my back interested in the same enterprise, who also daily expected supplies out of Spain, I should have savoured very much of the ass; and therefore, taking a time of most advantage, I set upon the corp du gard in the evening, and having put them to the sword, sent Captain Galfield onward with sixty soldiers, and myself followed with forty more, and so took their new city, which they called S. Joseph, by break of day; they abode not any fight after a few shot, and all being dismissed but only Berreo and his companion. I brought them with me aboard, and at the instance of the Indians I set their new city of S. Joseph on fire."
And now Ralegh shows once more his extraordinary power over other men, and shows it even more vividly than in the case of the Irish chieftain whom he changed from a leader of rebels to a staunch servant of the Queen. He wanted all the information he could obtain, and from Berreo he obtained it, though he was bitterly opposed, as might be expected, to the English and to Ralegh. A Boswellian record of their conversations would be of value to all business men.
"Having Berreo my prisoner, I gathered from him as much of Guiana as he knew. This Berreo is a gentleman well descended and had long served the Spanish King in Milan, Naples, the Low Countries, and elsewhere, very valiant and liberal, and a gentleman of great assuredness, and of a great heart. I used him according to his estate and worth in all things I could, according to the small means I had." Berreo well knew the importance of such knowledge to Ralegh; for he had spread reports far and wide among the Indians that the English meant them the deadliest mischief, and he had announced that any native found to have had any intercourse with the English would be forthwith hanged. But Berreo, an old man, was constrained to give a full account of his journey; and Ralegh's narrative of his own expedition is punctuated by what Berreo saw and heard, and conjectured, and by repeated corroboration of Berreo's statements. Ralegh must have smiled to himself when the old man so far relented towards him as even to beg him not to venture his life and the lives of the company in attempting a task which had proved too much for his own capability. There must have been a singular mingling of affection and cunning in the petition. "Berreo," writes Ralegh, "Berreo was stricken into a great melancholy and sadness, and used all the arguments he could to dissuade me, and also assured the gentlemen of my company that it would be labour lost, and that they should suffer many miseries if they proceeded." And he went on to explain the nature of the difficulties, how the mouths of the rivers were sandy and full of flats, which could only be entered in the smallest boats; how the current ran swift and strong; how the natives were hostile, and how the kings of the natives had decreed that none should trade with the English for gold, "because the same would be their own overthrow, and that for the love of gold the Christians meant to conquer and dispossess them of all together." To which Ralegh adds drily, "Many and the most of these I found to be true."
Naturally he did not let experience alone prove the truth of his valiant prisoner's statements. He called all the captains of the island together that were enemies to the Spaniards and conversed with them by means of an
Indian interpreter whom he had brought out of England. "I made them understand that I was the servant of a queen who was the great Cassiqui of the north, and a virgin, and had more Cassiqui under her than there were trees in their island; that she was an enemy to the Castellans in respect of their tyranny and oppression, and that she delivered all such nations about her as were by them oppressed; and having freed all the coast of the northern world from their servitude had sent me to free them also, and withal to defend the country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest. I showed them Her Majesty's picture, which they so admired and honoured as it had been easy to have brought them idolatrous thereof.... They now call her Ezrabeta Cassipuna Aquerewana."
That was his policy always with the natives. The Spaniards desired immediate wealth, which they wrung from the Indians by all means in their power; Ralegh desired a new English kingdom, and knew that for his purpose the aid of the Indians was invaluable. And accordingly wherever he went he was always at the utmost pains to conciliate them with presents and carefully sought expressions of regard and good will. The Indian chieftains fell under the spell of his personality in the same way as the Irish rebel and his Spanish prisoner, or, indeed, any one over whom he sought from the first moment of acquaintance to exercise influence.
To estimate at its proper value the gigantic proportions of the task which Ralegh had sailed some thousand miles to achieve, it is necessary to remember something of the geography of the country which is now called Venezuela, and the innumerable rivers which there flow into the sea, forming a complicated network.
Having at length discovered from Berreo and the natives as much as he could about the lie of the land—that is to say, about a quarter of that which an intelligent Council School teacher could have told him in ten minutes at the present day—Ralegh started up the river to Guiana, "resolving," as he puts it, "to make trial of all, whatsoever happened." He sent ships to reconnoitre and take soundings. Captain Calfield in his bark and the vice-admiral George Gifford in the Lion's Whelp eastward to the mouth of the river called Capuri; King, master of the Lion's Whelp in his ship's boat to try another branch of the river in the bottom of the bay of Guanipa, and to see if there was water enough to admit the passage of a small ship. This branch was called the Amana; but it, like the other, presented the same difficulties. The rush of water was dangerous for a small boat, and the shallowness prevented the use of a ship. King could only make hurried investigations, because his Indian guide assured him that the natives of Guanipa, who were cannibals, might any moment attack them, and that the attack would be terrible, for they paddled swiftly in canoes and shot poisoned arrows with deadly effect.
Nothing could deter Ralegh from his enterprise. He gave instructions to his carpenters to cut down a gallego-boat, to draw five feet of water, and to fit her with banks to row on. John Douglas was sent in his barge to look after King, who had not returned, and to take careful soundings in the bottom of the bay. For old John Hampton of Plymouth, and others who had come from Trinidad, had told him dreadful stories of its danger. "It hath been held for infallible that whatsoever ship or boat shall fall therein can never disembogue again by reason of the violent current which setteth into the said bay, as also for that the breeze and easterly wind bloweth directly into the same."
John Douglas took with him an old cassique of Trinidad for a pilot, and was successful. Four goodly entrances were found, whereof the least was as big as the Thames at Woolwich, but only six feet deep. Ralegh accordingly gave up hope of finding passage for his ship, and decided to go on with the boats, and the gallego which he had prepared, and which held sixty men. In the boat of Lion's Whelp and in its wherry there was room for twenty men, in Captain Calfield's wherry for ten, and in Ralegh's barge for ten more. They carried victuals for a month. Among the gentlemen were Ralegh's cousins Butshead Gorges and John Grenville, his nephew John Gilbert, Captain Keymis and Captain Clarke. "We had as much sea to cross over in our wherries as between Dover and Calais, and in a great billow, the wind and current being both very strong, so as we were driven to go in those small boats directly before the wind into the bottom of the bay of Guanipa." Their pilot was an Arwacan, an Indian of Barema, which is a river to the south of the Orinoco. Ralegh had caught and pressed him into his service as he was paddling in his canoe to sell bread at Marquerita; but now the Arwacan confessed himself quite ignorant of the river up which they were rowing; he told them he had not been on it for twelve years, "at which time he was very young and of no judgment." The position of the adventurers was one of extreme danger; they might have rowed in that labyrinth of rivers for a year without finding a way either out or in, for they only discovered the Arwacan's ignorance after four days. Ralegh realized their plight to the full, and the extraordinary good fortune which drew them out of it. A small canoe was espied in which three Indians were paddling. Ralegh, in his eight-oared barge, immediately gave chase, and succeeded in overtaking the canoe before it crossed the river ("which because it had no name we called the river of the Red Cross, ourselves being the first Christians that ever came therein"). Natives on the thickly wooded bank watched the chase with eagerness, and the captain with anxiety, fearing what might happen to their fellows. But when they saw that Ralegh treated the three with deference, the people on the shore made friendly signs and showed no fear as the eight-oared barge drew in, but offered to traffic in such commodities as they possessed.
As the adventurers stopped there for a while at the mouth of a little creek which came from the Indian village into the river, Ferdinando the pilot, who came with them originally, and his brother, must needs go to the village to drink the wine of the place, and upon him the chief men of the village fell, threatening to punish them with death for having thus brought white strangers into their midst. But Ferdinando, "being quick and of a disposed body," escaped to the woods, and his brother raced back to the barge, where he cried out panting that the Indians had slain Ferdinando. Ralegh immediately laid hands on a very old man, who was with him to serve as hostage, and if Ferdinando were indeed dead, to take his place as pilot. Meanwhile the Indians were pursuing Ferdinando with deer-dogs, and the woods sounded with their shouts; nor could the old man stay them, though he called out as loudly as he could the sad consequences in which they would involve him. At last Ferdinando reached a part of the shore and climbed a tall tree which hung over the river, and the barge happening to pass by, he plunged into the water and swam to it, half dead with fear. "But our good hap was that we kept the other old Indian, which we hand-fasted to redeem our pilot withal, for being natural of those rivers we assured ourselves he knew the way better than any stranger could; and, indeed, but for this chance, I think we had never found the way either to Guiana or back to our ships; for Ferdinando, after a few days, knew nothing at all nor which way to turn, yea and many times the old man himself was in great doubt which river to take."
They rowed on through the maze of rivers and islands, which were inhabited by the Ciawani and the Waraweete, goodly people, carpenters for the most part of canoes, who dwell in little houses in the summer, and, when the river rises (and it rises thirty feet, amazingly, as Ralegh discovered), in the tops of trees. He relates their customs; how some beat the bones of their chiefs into powder and the wives and friends drink it all, that the bones may have a kindly resting-place; how others take up the buried corpse of a dead chieftain, when the flesh has departed from the bones, and hang the skeleton in his own house, decking the skull with feathers and fitting his gold plates about the bones of his arms and thighs and legs.
On the third day the gallego "came on ground and stuck so fast as we thought that even there our discovery had ended and that we must have left sixty of our men to have inhabited like rooks upon trees with those nations; but the next morning, after we had cast out all her ballast, with tugging and hauling to and fro we got her afloat."
Four days more they rowed on until they came into the river Amana, which ran more directly, without windings and twistings, than the other, and then a fresh difficulty met them. For the flood of the sea no longer gave any help and "we were enforced either by main strength to row against a violent current or to return as wise as we went out." The men complained that the work was too much for them; but they consented to pull on when Ralegh and the other captains and gentlemen offered to take each his turn at the oar. Each spell of rowing lasted one hour. Thus they proceeded slowly and with tremendous effort for three more days, when the men began to despair; the current became each day stronger and the river appeared interminable in length. "But we evermore commanded our pilots to promise an end by next day, and used it so long as we were driven to assure them from four reaches of the river to three, and so to two, and so to the next reach." The men, too, were hungry; food was giving out; the sun was scorching, and there was nothing to drink but the thick and troubled water of the river. Sometimes they found fruits on the trees that were good to eat; sometimes they shot birds. Birds there were of every brilliant colour, "carnation, crimson, orange-tawny, purple, green watchet, and of all sorts, both simple and mixt, as it was unto us a great good passing of the time to behold them." But the men were hungry and tired. Then a pilot, the very old man, whom they had hand-fasted, said that he would bring them soon to a town of the Arwacas, where they would find a store of bread, hens, fish, and the wine of the country, if they would turn with their barge and wherries down a branch of the river on the right hand. The men were cheered at the prospect. Ralegh and Gifford and Calfield determined to make their way to the town for food; so, leaving the majority of their men at the river's entrance, they set out. They rowed three hours without seeing a sign of human life, and they began to suspect that the pilot was playing them false. It grew towards night, but still he kept assuring them that the village lay only four reaches farther on. "When we had rowed four and four we saw no sign, and our poor watermen even, heartbroken and tired, were ready to give up the ghost; for we had now come from the galleye near forty miles."
Then they determined to hang the very old man, their pilot. But the river began to narrow. It became so narrow that the trees with which either bank was thickly covered touched branches across the water, and they were obliged to draw their swords and cut a passage through. "We were very desirous to find this town, hoping of a feast, because we made but a short breakfast aboard the galley in the morning, and it was now eight o'clock at night and our stomachs began to gnaw apace." At last they saw a light, heard the dogs of the village bark, and one hour after midnight they arrived. The old pilot had not deceived them in any way. They found good store of hens, bread, fish, and Indian drink.
Meanwhile the company which was left behind in the galley, fearing that some mishap must have come to the wherries, sent out a party after them in the ship's boat of the Lion's Whelp, under Captain Whiddon. But Ralegh was so pleased with the prospect which the morning light disclosed to his view, that he had rowed some forty miles farther on. For no longer was the country beshrubbed with thorns and thickets and closely growing trees. Great plains, twenty miles in length, covered with fair green grass spread out before him, "and in divers parts groves of trees by themselves (he writes with his keen eye for effects of landscape), as if they had been by all the art and labour in the world so made of purpose, and still as we rowed the deer came down, feeding by the water's side, as if they had been used to a keeper's call." But all was not beautiful and quiet. In the river swam fishes of a monstrous size, and thousands of ugly serpents, called lagartos. A negro, a very proper young fellow, leapt from Ralegh's barge to swim to the shore, and in the sight of all the men, one of these lagartos ate him. Those monstrous serpents are now called alligators.
They came back to the great river and resumed their course, pulling ever with difficulty against the current. And again they were reduced to hunger, and again they were on the brink of despair, when Captain Gifford, who was a little in advance of the others seeking a place to land and make a fire, saw four canoes, and with no small joy he urged his men to try the uttermost of their strength to come up with them. At last they overtook them, as they paddled up a creek off the main stream, and found bread in two canoes, which they captured, and learned that three Spaniards were in the other canoes, one a cavallero, one a soldier, and one a refiner of metals. The bread roused the courage of the hungry men, and "Let us go on!" they cried; "we care not how far!" as they lit fires for the night's encampment. Immediately Ralegh sent Captain Thyn and Captain Gifford in one direction, Captain Calfield in another, to follow the men who had fled away. As he himself was creeping through the bushes he saw an Indian basket which was insecurely hidden. In the basket was a refiner's outfit, quicksilver, saltpetre, and other things to test the quality of minerals, and the dust of ore which had been refined. They could not, however, catch the Spaniards, but they discovered some Arwacas concealed in the woods who had acted as pilots to the Spaniards. Them they questioned, and one they took with them for their own pilot.
Ralegh had no mining tools with him, nor had he come for small and immediate gain. His purpose was no other than to open out the resources of the whole country for England, not to snatch a cargo load of gold. Moreover, a month had passed since they had seen the ships. Time was precious; there was much to be done; "and to stay," he says pithily, "to dig out gold with our nails had been opus laboris but not ingenii." He stayed only to survey the neighbourhood. During his short stay the natives came in numbers to him, and with his usual policy he treated them with elaborate kindness in contrast to the cruelty of the Spaniards. He paid for everything which he used, and took every means to prevent violence to their women, and theft. If the offender was discovered he was punished before the Indians; and, more than that, if an Indian complained of a theft which could not be laid to any man's account, he was paid to the full amount of his loss.
Here Ralegh sent back Ferdinando and the very old man in a canoe with presents for themselves and a message to deliver to the ships, and the company rowed on their way, taking with them as pilot, Martin, the native who was captured from the three Spaniards. But the next day the galley ran aground, and "we were like to cast her away with all our victual and provision and so lay on the sand one whole night, and were far more in despair at this time to free her than before, because we had no tide of flood to help us; and therefore feared that all our hopes would have ended in mishaps. But we fastened an anchor upon the land, and with main strength drew her off."
Then at last, to their great joy, the mountains of Guiana rose before them, and in the evening of the same day a fresh northerly wind sprang up, and before it they passed on till they were brought in sight of the great river of Orinoco, "out of which the river descended wherein we were." As their boats entered the Orinoco they espied three canoes manned by natives, who, when they saw the English, paddled fast away westward towards Guiana, thinking they were Spaniards. The boats, giving chase, came up with one of the canoes, and explained by their interpreter that they were not Spaniards but friends. Thereupon the natives were cordial, gladly gave them fish and tortoise eggs, and promised to bring their chief man to the boats in the morning. In the morning the chief man, whose name was Toparimaca, came with some forty followers, bringing presents of bread and fruit and wine. With him Ralegh conferred about the nearest way to Guiana, and he escorted Ralegh to his own port, and from his port escorted Ralegh and some of his captains to the town, where the captains caroused until they were "reasonable pleasant." The name of the town was Arowocai, and in it was staying a stranger cassique with his wife and retainers. Of this wife Ralegh gives a characteristic description: "In all my life I have seldom seen a better favoured woman. She was of good stature, with black eyes, fat of body, of an excellent countenance, her hair almost as long as herself, tied up again in pretty knots, and it seemed that she stood not in that awe of her husband as the rest, for she spake and discoursed and drank among the gentlemen and captains and was very pleasant, knowing her own comeliness, and taking great pride therein. I have seen a lady in England so like her as, but for the difference of colour, I would have sworn might have been the same." Toparimaca gave them a pilot, an old man of great experience and travel, who knew his way by day or night on the river, and they rowed on. Without him, mishap would have befallen them, because the river is exceedingly broad, at places extending to twenty miles, and its course is full of wonderful eddies, islands, shoals, currents, and dangerous rocks.
They passed up the great river, sailing, for a wind rose up behind them, along the shore of the island of Assapana, past the river Europa, which poured its waters into the great river; they sailed on ever westward, wide green plains spread out on the right hand, and the banks of the river were a very perfect red. Now they must make all speed possible, for the time was drawing near when the rain would fall, and the river rising, would, by the violence of its current, hinder all further progress. On they sailed, past the high mountains of Aroami and Aio, past the great island Manoripano, until, on the sixth day, they reached the land of that Morequito whom Berreo had slain. They anchored in the port, and Ralegh despatched one of his pilots to the uncle of Morequito, King of Aromaia. In the morning, before noon, the old king came with his followers, walking the fourteen miles to the shore; he was one hundred and ten years old. A little tent had been set up on the shore, and in it the old king rested. When he was rested, Ralegh conversed with him by means of an interpreter. He explained how he had been sent out by his Queen specially to free the land from the tyranny of the Spaniards; he dilated at large on "Her Majesty's greatness, her justice, her charity to oppressed nations, with as many of the rest of her beauties and virtues as either I could express or they conceive, all which being with great admiration attentively heard and marvellously admired. I began to sound the old man as touching Guiana." They talked for a long space of time, the old king relating memories of his youth, how "there came down into that large valley of Guiana a nation from so far off as the sun slept (Ralegh liked that phrase and mentions it as the old king's own expression), with so great a multitude as they could not be numbered nor resisted; and that they wore large coats and hats of crimson; ... that they had slain and rooted out so many of the ancient people as there were leaves in the wood upon all the trees." When the Christians came, however, they joined forces together and lived at peace, each one holding the Spaniard as a common enemy. And as the old king talked, Ralegh marvelled to find a man of such gravity and judgment and of so good discourse that had no help of learning nor breed.
Then the old king "desired leave to depart, saying that he had far to go; that he was old and weak and was every day called for by death." Ralegh begged him to remain during the night, but he could not prevail upon him to do so; and, though the weather was hot, the old king walked back fourteen miles to his town, having promised to wait upon Ralegh on his return. And that he did not fail to do. It was not for nothing that he was held to be the proudest and the wisest of all the Oroonokoponi.
Still they sailed westward, eager to see the famous river Caroli, which led to the frontiers of the people who were most hostile to Tuga, the Emperor of Guiana, and anchored by the island Caiama. The next day they came, after ten miles, to the mouth of the Caroli; when they were yet far distant they heard the great roar and fall of the river. So violent was the rush of the current that they were unable to make any headway up the stream—not a stone's cast in an hour. Accordingly, a halt was made, and messengers were sent inland to invite the native king to a parley. The king came, and Ralegh discoursed with him about the purpose of his coming and his Queen's goodness and beauty; and learned from him about his people and country. By this time, all the rivers having risen five feet and more, further progress became impossible; and Ralegh, dividing his company into bands, sent them inland in every direction to explore. He himself went to the top of the first hills of the plain adjoining the river, and in the distance the celebrated falls of the Caroli were visible. "There appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight, every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had all been covered over with a great shower of rain; and in some places we took it at the first for a smoke that had arisen over some great town. For my own part I was well persuaded from thence to have returned, being a very ill footman, but the rest were all so desirous to go near the strange thunder of waters, as they drew me on by little and little till we came into the next valley where we might better discern the same." The men of each band returned and brought with them stones and minerals, lustre, marquesite crystal, and stones that resembled sapphire.
Ralegh, as he looked at the stones and heard the reports of the wonderful fertility and resources of the land which lay in splendid expanse around him, must have felt within him that his dream of El Dorado was at last realized. Indeed, it seemed that he had only to come out and take possession.
But now "the fury of Oroonoco began daily to threaten us with dangers ... for no half day passed but the river began to rage and overflow very fearfully and the rains came down in terrible showers, and gusts in great abundance, and withal our men began to cry out for want of shift, for no man had place to bestow any other apparel than that which he wore upon his back, and that was thoroughly washed on his body for the most part ten times in one day; and we had now been well near a month, every day passing to the westward farther and farther from our ships. We therefore turned towards the east and spent the rest of the time in discovering the river towards the sea which we had not yet viewed and which was most material."
The first day of their return they sped down the stream of the great river against the wind one hundred miles, and anchored at the port of Morequito; and immediately a messenger was sent to bid the old king come. Once more Ralegh had a long conference with him concerning the kingdom of Guiana, and once more he was impressed by the wisdom of the old man's replies to his questions. Francis Sparrow and a boy, Harry Gordon, were left to learn the language till Ralegh came next year, equipped to conquer the land; and a young native was to go with them to England.
On their journey back to the sea they stayed several times to confer with native kings and find out how they were disposed towards the Spaniards and towards Tuga, the Emperor of Guiana. At the very end of their expedition they found the greatest peril awaiting them. "When we were arrived at the seaside, then grew our greatest doubt and the bitterest of all our journey fore-passed, for I protest before God we were in a most desperate estate.... There arose a mighty storm, and the river's mouth was at least a league broad, so as we ran before night close under the land with our small boats and brought the galley as near as we could, but she had as much ado to live as could be, and there wanted little of her sinking and all those in her.... The longer we tarried the worse it was, and therefore I took Captain Gifford, Captain Calfield, and my cousin Grenville into my barge, and after it cleared up about midnight we put ourselves to God's keeping and thrust out into the sea, leaving the galley at anchor, who durst not adventure out but by daylight. And so being all very sober and melancholy, one faintly cheering another to shew courage, it pleased God that the next day, about nine of the clock, we descried the island of Trinidado, and steering for the nearest part of it, we kept the shore until we came to Curiapan, where we found our ships an anchor, than which there was never to us a more joyful sight.
"Now it have pleased God to send us safe to our ships it is time to leave Guiana to the sun whom they worship, and steer away to the north."
So Ralegh and his brave men set their sails for England. Many hours in his cabin he must have enjoyed the luxury of rest, working out in his mind the time and proper equipment for the great expedition which he would lead back to the land which he had prospected. His imagination would picture to him the careful opponents who would be ready to put forward drawbacks and dangers; and he would answer them with such conviction that the most careful would gradually catch a part of his ardour. Guiana would be the topic of all Englishmen, and England's ultimate glory. He would view again the beauty of the land and its fertility, the broad plains and the thick woods, where birds of every brilliant colour flew, he would see the deer coming to drink at the water's edge, the refiner's basket, and the gold waiting to be worked out of the ground, and the precious stones waiting to be cut; the crystal, the sapphire, the lustre. He had his map, he had friends among the natives, he had made all ready for the great occupation. "The common soldier shall here fight for gold, and pay himself, instead of pence, with plates of half-a-foot broad, whereas he breaketh his bones in other wars for provant and penury. Those commanders and chieftains that shoot at honour and abundance, shall find there more rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with golden images, more sepulchres filled with treasure than either Cortez found in Mexico, or Pizzaro in Peru, and the shining glory of this conquest will eclipse all those so far extended beams of the Spanish nation."
He arrived in England in August, 1595, having been absent not quite seven months. On all sides he met with opposition and disbelief. Some, the graver sort, considered it better to husband their forces, to repel the threatened invasion of Philip, who had sworn "to avenge the destruction of the Armada on Elizabeth, if he were reduced to pawn the last candlestick on his domestic altar." Others were angry that Ralegh had brought back no cargoes of gold and precious stones; others, again, laughed at him, saying that he had never been to Guiana at all, but had been lurking in Cornwall: that the whole thing was a cock and bull story to regain favour at Court. He, sneered they, was too easeful and sensual to endure the discomfort of so long a journey. Where were the riches which he would have taken, as Drake took, had he really been to Guiana? To which Ralegh answered proudly, "It became not the former fortune in which I once lived to go journies of picory: and it had sorted ill with the offices of honour, which, by her Majestie's grace I hold this day in England, to run from cape to cape, and from place to place, for the pillage of ordinary prizes."
His reception exasperated him; but he did not give way. In five months he fitted out another expedition under Captain Keymis; and wrote a full account of the voyage he had himself taken. But this second expedition was too small to do anything else than keep in touch with the native friends, and to find fresh information.
Ralegh's efforts were unavailing. To found the empire in Guiana became his life's purpose, and he strove to attain it with all the resources of his energy. But the course of events was too strong for him, and he could not make men see far enough ahead of immediate gain. Many years later his scorn at their apathy broke out again, when, in writing his "History of the World," he is describing Roman energy in the founding of colonies: "Such an offer, were it made in England, concerning either Virginia or Guiana, it selfe would not overjoy the multitude. But the Commonalty of Rome tooke this in so good part, notwithstanding all danger, joined with the benefit, that Flaminius had ever after their good will." There is something indescribably pathetic in this personal touch—of the prisoner recording the fame of a man who had been honoured for offering less to his people than the prisoner himself had offered, and at less personal risk—Flaminius supported, Ralegh hindered—each by the nation which he most desired to serve.
Edmund Spenser felt for him a friend's sympathy when he wrote in the Faërie Queene—
And shame on you, O Men, which boast your strong
And valiant hearts, in thoughts lesse hard and bold,
Yet quaile in conquest of that Land of Gold!
But this to you, O Britons, most pertaines,
To whom the right hereof itselfe hath sold,
The whiche, for sparing little cost or paines,
Loose so immortall glory, and so endless gaines.
CHAPTER XII
CADIZ AND FAYAL
Division of command—Ralegh's delay—Unwillingness of men to serve—Disputes—Ralegh's wise plan of action—The attack—The sack—Ralegh wounded—His small share of spoil—Return home—Sends ship to Guiana—Death of Lady Cecil—Robert Cecil's policy—expedition to Azores—Fayal—Quarrel with Essex.
Ralegh did not long remain inactive. He found that a great adventure was in course of preparation in which he must needs take his part. A year before the Armada Sir John Hawkins had planned an attack on Spain's chief harbour, Cadiz, and in this year of 1596 Lord Howard of Effingham, High Admiral of England, determined to carry the plan into effect. The Earl of Essex was put in command of the land forces, Effingham of the fleet. Elizabeth invariably favoured the dangerous policy of divided command, which Ralegh in his "History of the World" cannot censure too strongly. The reason why such a clever woman continued to make this mistake is not known. Probably she feared that one man by a conspicuous victory would become too powerful for a subject. If this were the reason, and it seems likely that it was, her fears would naturally increase with her age. The same feeling, no doubt, prompted her strange choice of the inexperienced Essex. He, at any rate, she would think, would remain her loyal subject, and would not aspire to rebel against his royal mistress.
The preparations were on an extensive scale. The fleet was divided into four squadrons, which were led by Essex, by the Lord Admiral, by Ralegh, and by Lord Thomas Howard. The total muster numbered seventeen Queen's ships and seventy-six hired ships, which were chiefly used for transport, besides pinnaces and small craft. They were assisted by a Dutch squadron of twenty-four vessels. The men were nearly sixteen thousand in all, land-soldiers and mariners.
Essex was waiting with the fleet at Plymouth for Ralegh, who had been commissioned to find men for the expedition. Ralegh's delay was the cause of much anxiety, and naturally there were not wanting men ready to construe that delay into treachery. Gossip Bacon suggests that he was endeavouring to undermine the position of Essex and get himself nominated general of the land forces in his stead. The true reason of his delay is, however, available. On May 4 he writes from Northfleet on the Thames to Sir Robert Cecil, telling him of the difficulty he experienced in obtaining ships and men for the service. "Mr. Pope presst all the ships. Hee can also informe you how little her Majestie's autoretie is respected. For as fast as wee press men one day they come away another and say they will not serve." He recommends Mr. Pope to Sir Robert Cecil for his keenness, and proceeds, "Here are at Gravesend ... sume 22 saile. Thos above that ar of great draught of water cannot tide it down, for they must take the high water and dare not make after an houre ebb untill they be past Barking Shelf. And now the wind is so strong as it is impossible to turne down, or to warpe down or to tooe downe. I cannot writ to our generalls all this tyme; for the pursevant found me in a countre villag, a mile from Gravend honting after runaway marriners and dragging in the mire from ale-house to ale-house, and could gett no paper, butt that the pursevant had this peece."
The unwillingness to serve on a foreign expedition was common in England then: men began to weary of the hardships of fighting: they knew too intimately the horrors of a sea-battle. Essex, too, found the men at Plymouth ready to mutiny and desert. He immediately took stringent measures: soldiers were tried by martial law, and two were executed forthwith "on a very fair pleasant green called the Ho."
On June 1 the fleet at length put out to sea, and came to anchor on June 20 in the bay of St. Sebastians, which is half a league distant from Cadiz. The voyage had been taken without any mishap, except that the unwisdom of a divided command soon became apparent. From Dover Lord Howard of Effingham wrote to Robert Cecil: "My commission in being joined to the Earl is an idle thing; I am used but as a drag." But the weather was favourable, and several prizes were taken. From St. Sebastians Ralegh had instructions to sail with the ships under his charge and the Dutch squadron to the Main, and to lie just outside the harbour; he was bidden to take special care that the ships riding near Cadiz did not escape, but not to fight, except in self-defence, without further direction. "When I was arrived back again (which was two hours after the rest) I found the Earl of Essex disembarking his soldiers; and he had put many companies into boats, purposing to make his descent on the west side of Cales; but such was the greatness of the billow, by reason of a forcible southerly wind, as the boats were ready to sink at the stern of the Earl; and indeed divers did so, and in them some of the armed men; but because it was formerly resolved (and that to cast doubts would have been esteemed an effect of fear) the Earl purposed to go on until such time as I came aboard him, and in the presence of all the collonels protested against the resolution; giving him reasons and making apparent demonstrations that he thereby ran the way of our general ruin, to the utter overthrow of the whole armies, their own lives, and her Majesty's future safety. The Earl excused himself, and laid it before the Lord Admiral, who (he said) 'would not consent to enter with the fleet till the town were first possessed.' All the commanders and gentlemen present besought me to dissuade the attempt, for they all perceived the danger, and were resolved that the most part could not but perish in the sea, ere they came to set foot on ground, and if any arrived on shoar, yet were they sure to have their boats cast on their heads; and that twenty men in so desperate a descent would have defeated them all. The Earl hereupon prayed me to perswade my Lord Admiral, who, finding a certain destruction by the former resolution, was content to enter the port.
"When I brought news of this agreement to the Earl, calling out of my boat Entramus, he cast his hat into the sea for joy and prepared to weigh anchor."
In these words Ralegh tells how he saved England from a great disaster. It is not known to whom he wrote this account, but it was found and printed by his grandson, Philip Ralegh, just one hundred and three years later. Probably Lord Howard took a negative attitude; he found, no doubt, a grim satisfaction in seeing the impetuous young fool, Essex, send the land force which he commanded to its inevitable destruction. He would think that he could easily set matters right again with his fleet, and Essex would be once for all humiliated, if not slain. Ralegh saved the situation. He had the moral courage to disdain the charge of cowardice, and the ability to prove in words the complete wrongness of the plan of attack. That was not all. The situation was still perilous to a degree. The day was drawing to a close; boats were filled in disorder with men from different ships. They were an attacking force with whom time was of the utmost value, and they were without a plan of attack. Ralegh was indefatigable. All his powers were called into play—his influence over men, his capacity of managing affairs, his knowledge of tactics in sea-fighting and land-fighting—and he mastered the crisis.
The men were disposed to their ships, and the ships were anchored at the very mouth of the harbour, and probably Ralegh was at the pains to prove to them that this retirement was no disgrace. Order was not restored until ten o'clock at night, and then Ralegh drew up a full account of the manner in which the attack should be conducted, full in every detail of the arrangement of the ships and the precedence of the commanders. His plan was accepted, and at his own request he was allowed the post of honour, much coveted, as leader of the van. Lord Thomas Howard especially coveted the foremost position; "he pressed the Generals to have the service committed unto him, and left the Meer Honour to Mr. Dudley, putting himself in the Nonpareill. For mine own part, as I was willing to give honour to my Lord Thomas, having both precedency in the army, and being a nobleman whom I much honoured, so yet I was resolved to give and not take example for this service; holding mine own reputation dearest, and remembering my great duty to her Majesty. With the first peep of day, therefore, I weighed anchor, and bare with the Spanish fleet, taking the start of all ours a good distance."
Within the harbour the enemy were waiting in readiness and in force. Great galleons and galleys, manned with oarsmen, were drawn up in front of the forts, which opened fire upon Ralegh's ships; the men in the galleys gripped their oars in readiness to row out and board any ship which the cannon from the forts or the galleons might disable. Ralegh sailed right into the harbour, disdaining to answer the fire from the forts and the curtain with anything but a contemptuous blare from a trumpet, and leaving the ships that followed him to scatter with their fire the galleys. Ralegh sailed right into the harbour; "the St. Philip, the great and famous Admiral of Spain, was the mark I shot at, esteeming these galleys but as wasps in respect of the powerfulness of the other; and being resolved to be revenged for the Revenge, or to second her with mine own life." For on the Revenge had perished his gallant friend and kinsman, Sir Richard Grenville; and many times through that day Grenville's dying words must have thrilled his mind, those words that are the most illustrious requiem of a dying soldier, spoken in the Spanish of his conquerrors, "Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, having ended my life like a true soldier that has fought for his country, his Queen, his religion, and his honour." For three hours Ralegh, at anchor, kept up an incessant cannonade against the galleons and the forts; the volleys of cannon and culverin came as thick as if it had been a skirmish of musketeers. On one side lay Lord Thomas Howard's ship, the Lyon; on the other lay the Mary Rose and the Dreadnaught. When Essex heard the tremendous roar of the cannon he could no longer stop outside the harbour, but sailed in the Swiftsure as far to the van as he was able, regardless of battle order. But "always I must without glory say for myself that I held single in the head of all." At last the cannonade became too heavy. Ralegh had been told not to board until fly-boats came from the fleet; and no fly-boats came. Accordingly, in a little skiff, he was rowed to the Swiftsure and besought Essex to let him board with his own ship—"for it was the same loss to burn or sink, for I must endure the one." He convinced Essex, who promised upon his honour to second him in whatsoever he did. Ralegh had been away from his ship for a quarter of an hour; but during that quarter of an hour Sir Francis Vere, the Marshal, and Lord Thomas Howard had pushed their ships quietly in front of the Warspite. This Ralegh could not brook. "At my return, finding myself from being the first to be but the third, I presently let slip anchor, and thrust in between my Lord Thomas and the Marshal, and went up further ahead than all them before and thrust myself athwart the channel, so as I was sure none should outstart me again, for that day." But though the battle continued to rage furiously and at close quarters, Sir Francis Vere and Lord Thomas Howard could not rest content with second places. Sir Francis Vere secretly caused a rope to be fastened to the Warspite that he might draw his ship ahead of her. But sailors told Ralegh of this, and he ordered the rope to be severed.
Then Ralegh started to board. He laid out a warp by the side of the Philip "to shake hands with her," and the other English ships followed suit. Fear seized the Spaniards. "They all let slip, and ran aground, tumbling into the sea heaps of souldiers, so thick as if coals had been powred out of a sack in many ports at once: some drowned and some sticking in the mud.... The spectacle was very lamentable on their side; for many drowned themselves; many, half-burnt, leapt into the water; very many hanging by the ropes' ends by the ship's side under the water even to the lips; many swimming with grievous wounds, strucken under water and put out of their pain: and so huge a fire, and such tearing of the ordnance in the great Philip and the rest, when the fire came to them, as, if any man had a desire to see Hell itself, it was there most lively figured."
Then followed the capture and sack of Cadiz. In the assault Ralegh received "a grievous blow in the leg interlaced and deformed with splinters." But he was carried on shore on men's shoulders until a horse was forthcoming, when he mounted. For an hour he remained in the town, but then the pain of the wound became intolerable; the streets were filled with jostling tumultuous soldiers, and they pressed against his leg in their disorder, do what he would to prevent them. So he returned to his ship to rest, while the sack raged in the town.
The plunder taken was immense in quantity and value: and as was invariably the case, there was much ill-feeling as to its distribution. The Queen quarrelled with the generals, thinking that they had much held back, and the generals with each other, thinking that the share of each was disproportionate. Ralegh especially fared ill. "For my own part I have gotten a lame leg and a deformed. For the rest either I spake too late, or it was otherwise resolved. I have not wanted good words, and exceeding kind and regardful usance. But I have possession of naught but poverty and pain." Ralegh was better able to win a first place in the fighting-line, than in the prize list. This he resented with absolute candour: but to deduce from his resentment that he cared only for gain is totally to misunderstand the nature of the man.
The results of the victory, for which Ralegh was chiefly responsible, were far-reaching and decisive. It crippled Spain's power more effectually even than the Armada. Cadiz was razed to the ground; as the Council of State decided that to raze the town was safer than to garrison it for English purposes.
Ralegh gained the respect of his fellow soldiers for his genius and his bravery; even men who, like Sir Anthony Standen, were hostile to him, wrote in enthusiastic praise of his conduct. "Sir Walter Ralegh did (in my judgment) no man better: and his artillery most effect. I never knew the gentleman till this time, and I am sorry for it, for there are in him excellent things, beside his valour. And the observation he hath in this voyage used with my Lord of Essex hath made me love him." But at the Court little had changed. Essex remained arrogant and hostile, and for the time his influence appears to have been dominant.
Immediately on his return Ralegh busied himself in the preparation and despatch of another ship to Guiana, to keep in touch with the natives whose alliance he had on his own visit obtained. Mr. Thomas Masham sailed in a pinnace called the Wat on the 14th of October from Limehouse upon the Thames. Ralegh never ceased from ardour in this great enterprise of his; nothing drove it from his mind; he was convinced of its ultimate success, believing in it as he believed in himself. But he could not go in person, the time was not yet ripe. So he with his wounded leg was glad to retire to Sherborne for a season to the quiet of his Dorsetshire garden. In Sherborne was brought him the news of the death of Lady Cecil, to whom Sir Robert was much devoted, and Ralegh's letter of sympathy is beautiful in thought and expression, though, such is the interesting divergency of human opinion, there are those who think the letter crude, sententious and laboured.
"Sir,
"Because I know not how you dispose of your sealf, I forbeare to visitt you, preferringe your plesinge before myne owne desire. I had rather be with you now then att any other tyme, if I could thereby ether take off frome you the burden of your sorrows, or lay the greater part thereof on myne owne hart.... There is no man sorry for death it sealf, butt only for the tyme of death; every one knowing that it is a bonnd never forfeted to God.... If then we know the same to be certayne and inevitable, wee ought withall to take the tyme of his arrivall in as good part as the knowledge; and not to lament att the instant of every seeminge adversity, which we ar asured have byn on ther way towards us from the begininge.... I beleve it that sorrows are dangerus companions, converting badd into yevill and yevill into worse, and do no other service then multeply harms. They ar the treasures of weak harts and of the foolishe. The minde that entertayneth them is as the yearth and dust whereon sorrows and adversetes of the world do as the beasts of the field, tread trample and defile. The minde of man is that part of God which is in us, which, by how mich it is subject to passion, by so mich it is farther from Hyme that gave it us. Sorrows draw not the dead to life, butt the livinge to deathe...."
So Ralegh wrote; he was acquainted with grief, and familiar with death in every horrid guise. Twenty years later he was to prove with his own example the truth of what he wrote: "It apartayneth to every man of a wize and worthy spiritt to draw together into sufferance the unknown future to the known present; lookinge no less with the eyes of the minde then thos of the body—the one beholdinge afar off and the other att hand—that thos things of this worlde in which we live be not strange unto us when they approach...."
But Sir Robert Cecil was playing a deep and subtle game which was to make him the chief man in England during the few years that remained to the Queen of life and after her death. Essex and Ralegh he feared. He encouraged Essex to pass on his proud way to disaster, using Essex to thwart the rise of Ralegh. And Essex needed small encouragement. He coveted the popularity, which was to end in his utter undoing. Meanwhile his star was in the ascendant. His pride had not yet outgrown his strength.
Outwardly Cecil was friendly to Ralegh and hostile to Essex. He hated Essex; the two men's natures were in fierce opposition.
Ralegh was still suspended from his post of Captain of the Guard; but in June he was brought by Cecil to the Queen's presence. The Queen received him graciously, and reinstated him. Moreover, Ralegh and Essex were no longer in open enmity. Mr. Rowland Whyte records that "Sir Walter Ralegh hath been very often very private with the Earl of Essex and is the mediator of a peace between him and Sir Robert Cecil." And again in a letter dated April 9: "This day being Monday Sir Robert Cecil went in coach with the Earl of Essex to his house where Sir Walter Ralegh came, and they dined there together. After dinner they were very private all three for two hours, where the treaty of peace was confirmed." Between Ralegh and Essex there was something in common at certain moments; there was a gallantry about both men, which, in spite of everything, each could not fail to recognize in the other. This Sir A. Gorges noticed; he wrote with much acumen: "Though the Earl had many doubts and jealousies buzzed into his ears against Sir Walter Ralegh, yet I have often observed that both in his greatest actions of service, and in the times of his chiefest recreations, he would ever accept of his counsel and company before many others who thought themselves more in his favour."
Ralegh's rest was brief. Almost immediately after despatching the Wat to Guiana, he was engaged in raising levies and supplies with Essex for a new expedition against Spain. For the Spanish king was resolved to revenge his bad defeat at Cadiz by another invasion of England. Ralegh always believed that the surest manner of defence against such an invasion was an immediate attack. And that was the step which the Lords of the Council determined to take. About the time that Ralegh's ship, the Wat, returned from Guiana with the news which its captain, Mr. Thomas Masham, brought, the expedition was ready to put out to sea. The fleet was divided into three squadrons; the first was commanded by the Earl of Essex, who was Admiral and General-in-Chief; the second by Lord Thomas Howard; the third by Sir Walter Ralegh, whose position was that of Rear-Admiral, and in whose squadron sailed the great galleons, the St. Andrew and the St. Matthew, which he had captured at Cadiz. On Sunday the 10th of July the fleet set sail. Their destination was Ferroll in the Azores, where the Spanish fleet was reported to be harbouring. Their instructions were firstly to attack the fleet, and if it had gone away, to follow in pursuit; secondly, to intercept and capture the homeward-bound fleets from the East and West Indies. The expedition has passed into history under the name of the Islands Voyage.
The very day after the fleet weighed anchor a storm beat upon the ships with such violence that they were eventually forced to return to whatsoever harbour each could make. Many came very near to sinking, so high was the wind, so strong the waves, and there were sailors who died of exhaustion on their return to shore. The damage done to the heavy ships was very great, and time was necessary to refit them for the sea; the delay involved the necessity of revictualling the ships. On the 26th of July Ralegh reported from Plymouth, "Wee only attend the winde, having repayred as much as we can our bruses. Butt we shall not bee in any great corage for winter weather and longe nights, in thes ships."
The weather was unpropitious on their second venture, though they were obliged to wait until the second week in August. Ralegh's squadron was separated from the fleet, and was forced by the wind into the Bay of Biscay, out of which he found the greatest difficulty in making his way. Later in the voyage Sydney's flyboat foundered; but he and all his soldiers were rescued. "I have notwithstanding," writes Ralegh, "followed my Lord's order to cum to the Ilands, and I am now this 8 of September, in sight of Tercera, having chosen rather to perishe than to relinquishe the enterprize; and, the Lord douth know, in a torne shipp. Butt her Majestye shall find that I valew not my life; although I hope that her Majestye would not that I perishe in vayne. I hope after too dayes to fynde my Lorde Generall and the fleet with whom, I thinke, all the rest of her Majesties shipps ar, butt the Mathew with poore Georg Carew. It is a carfull and perelus tyme of the yeare for thes wayghty shipps. The Lorde of Heaven send us all well to returne, and send us the good hope to do her Majestie acceptable service; to performe which wee have already suffered miche. For my particular, I have never dared to rest since my wreacks, and God doth judge that I never for thes 10 dayes came so mich as in to bedd or cabbin."
Ralegh's squadron did not join the fleet until Essex had been ten days at Flores. Then it was determined to make a joint attack upon Fayal, as they had heard that it was unlikely the Spanish ships from the Indies would sail at all that year, and if they did sail, that they would avoid Flores. Essex sailed first for Fayal, because Ralegh's squadron was obliged to delay for repairs and revictualling. But Ralegh's squadron arrived first at Fayal, and, having waited three days for Essex, Ralegh at length, on the fourth day, attacked and captured Fayal by himself. He writes in the "History of the World:" "There were indeede some which were in that voyage who advised me not to undertake it: and I harkened unto them, somewhat longer than was requisite, especially whilest they desired me to reserve the title of such an exploit (though it were not great) for a greater person. But when they began to tell me of difficulty: I gave them to understand, the same which I now maintaine, that it was more difficult to defend a coast then to invade it. The truth is, that I could have landed my men with more ease than I did; yea without finding any resistance if I would have rowed to another place, yea even there where I landed if I would have taken more company to helpe me. But, without fearing any imputation of rashnesse, I may say that I had more regard of reputation in that businesse, than of safetie. For I thought it to belong unto the honour of our Prince and Nation, that a few Ilanders should not thinke any advantage great enough, against a fleet set forth by Q. Elizabeth: and further I was unwilling that some Low Countrie Captaines and others, not of mine own squadron, whose assistance I had refused, should please themselves with a sweet conceit ... that for want of their helpe I was driven to turne taile."
The passage is one of interest, larger than the mere description of an engagement. It shows Ralegh's immense and correct confidence in his judgment; and how his outlook always embraced much more than the actual event in hand, though its outline was never blurred for that reason. The theory he pronounced on the deck of his ship, and proved next day in the engagement, he reiterates in his History in one of the most notable of his digressions, that an island's only safe defence is her fleet. He ends his remarks with the very typical sentence, "I hope that this question shall never come to triall; his Majesties many moveable Forts will forbid the experience. And thoughe the Englishe will no lesse disdaine, than any Nation under heaven can doe, to be beaten upon their owne ground or elsewhere by a forraigne enemy; yet to entertaine those that shall assaile us with their own beefe in their bellies, and before they eate of oure Kentish capons, I take it to be the wisest way. To doe whiche, his Majesty, after God, will imploy his good ships on the Sea and not trust to any intrenchment upon the shore."
But to the actual action. The men who foretold trouble from the greater man spoke as truly as Ralegh proved his courage and foresight in the event. The fort on the shore was quickly taken; but behind rose a high hill, topped by another strong fort, and the men at the sight wavered to withdraw. None were willing to reconnoitre. Ralegh was furious, and swore that he would do scout's work himself. Sir Arthur Gorges and some dozen personal followers would not suffer him to go alone. So they made their way together up the hill under continual fire from the enemy. Ralegh's clothes were torn by bullets. Gorges was shot in the leg. The ascent impressed the enemy. When the final attack was made, the fort was found to be deserted.
When Essex arrived, Ralegh was master of the island. Ralegh's enemies (a great man seldom lacks such enemies) had long been trying to enflame the antagonism between him and Essex, and now they insisted to Essex that Ralegh's success was flat disobedience, and warranted a heavy penalty. A court martial should be called, and should punish him with death. So when Ralegh visited the Earl's vessel to give an official account of the victory, he was surprised to meet with angry looks and the charge of a breach of the orders. But he convinced Essex that he was within his rights. "None should land any of the troops without the General's presence or his order," said Essex. "There is an Article," replied Ralegh, "that no captain of any ship or company, if he be severed from the fleet shall land anywhere without directions from the General or some principal commander upon pain of death. But I take upon myself to be a principal commander under your Lordship, and therefore not subject to that Article." And he proceeded to explain how the delay of Essex made him think that he was adventuring upon some other enterprise, and how his own company began to murmur and hint at fear. Essex was not easily convinced. Weakness dreads to be slighted, where strength relies upon its own authority. Monson observes in his narrative of the Island Voyage, "The act was urged with that vehemency by those that hated Sir Walter that if my Lord, who by nature was timorous and flexible had not feared how it would be taken in England, I think Sir Walter had smarted for it."