ebbing strength for one last effort, he addressed them in words they have religiously recorded:  ’"Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind; for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his country, queen, religion, and honour.  Wherefore my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body.” ...  And when he had said these and other suchlike words he gave up the ghost with a great and stout courage.’

Grenville’s latest wish was that the Revenge and he should die together; and, though he knew it not, he had this wish fulfilled.  For, two weeks later, when Don Bazan had collected nearly a hundred more sail around him for the last stage home from the West Indies, a cyclone such as no living man remembered burst full on the crowded fleet.  Not even the Great Armada lost more vessels than Don Bazan did in that wreck-engulfing week.  No less than seventy went down.  And with them sank the shattered Revenge, beside her own heroic dead.

* * * * *

Drake might be out of favor at court.  The Queen might grumble at the sad extravagance of fleets.  Diplomats might talk of untying Gordian knots that the sword was made to cut.  Courtiers and politicians might wonder with which side to curry favor when it was an issue between two parties—­peace or war.  The great mass of ordinary landsmen might wonder why the ‘sea-affair’ was a thing they could not understand.  But all this was only the mint and cummin of imperial things compared with the exalting deeds that Drake had done.  For, once the English sea-dogs had shown the way to all America by breaking down the barriers of Spain, England had ceased to be merely an island in a northern sea and had become the mother country of such an empire and republic as neither record nor tradition can show the like of elsewhere.

And England felt the triumph.  She thrilled with pregnant joy.  Poet and proseman both gave voice to her delight.  Hear this new note of exultation born of England’s victory on the sea: 

As God hath combined the sea and land into one globe, so their mutual assistance is necessary to secular happiness and glory.  The sea covereth one-half of this patrimony of man.  Thus should man at once lose the half of his inheritance if the art of navigation did not enable him to manage this untamed beast; and with the bridle of the winds and the saddle of his shipping make him serviceable.  Now for the services of the sea, they are innumerable:  it is the great purveyor of the world’s commodities; the conveyor of the excess of rivers; uniter, by traffique, of all nations; it presents the eye with divers colors and motions, and is, as it were with rich brooches, adorned with many islands.  It is an open field for merchandise in peace; a pitched field for the most dreadful fights in war; yields diversity of fish and fowl for diet, material for wealth; medicine for sickness; pearls and