“He’s dead and at peace, Jack,” the master said, the words dropping wearily, like spent bullets.  “He couldn’t help being as he was,—­I reckon.  If I’d known he was like that I could ha’ stopped him, but I never knew—­till too late.”

Discord among the crews continued, until Drake, rousing from his fitful melancholy, called them all together on a Sunday, and mounted to the place of the chaplain.

“I am going to preach to-day,” he said shortly.  Then he unfolded a paper and began to read it aloud.

“My masters, I am a very bad orator, for my bringing up hath not been in learning; but what I shall speak here let every man take good notice of and let him write it down.  For I will speak nothing but what I will answer it in England, yea, and before Her Majesty.”  He reminded them of the great adventure before them and went on.

“Now by the life of God this mutiny and dissension must cease.  Here is such controversy between the gentlemen and the sailors that it doth make me mad to hear it.  I must have the gentleman to haul with the mariner and the mariner with the gentleman.  I would know him that would refuse to set his hand to a rope—­but I know there is not any such here.

“Any who desire to go home may go in the Marygold, but let them take care that they do go home, for if I find them in my way I will sink them.”

Then beginning with Wynter he reduced every officer to the ranks forthwith, reprimanded known offenders, and wound up with this appeal: 

“We have set by the ears three mighty sovereigns, and if this voyage have not success we shall be a scorning unto our enemies and a blot on our country forever.  What triumph would it not be for Spain and Portugal!  The like of this would never more be tried!” Then he gave every man his former rank and dismissed them.  Moone, meeting Will Harvest that night by the light of a bonfire, was the only man who dared venture a comment.  “We was spoilin’ for a lickin’,” he said, “and we got it.  I do hope and trust we’ll keep out o’ mischief till Frankie gets us home to Plymouth, Hol’.”  Will grinned back cheerfully, and there was a subdued laugh from the group about the fire.  The fleet was itself again.

Adventure after adventure succeeded, wilder than minstrel ever sang.  The Marygold went down with all hands; Wynter in the Elizabeth, believing the Admiral lost, turned homeward; the Christopher and the Swan had already been broken up.  All alone the little Golden Hynde, blown southward, sailed around Cape Horn and proved the Antarctic continent a myth.  Then Drake steered northward after more than two month’s tossing on the uncharted seas, to revictual his ship in Spanish ports, fill his hold with the rich cargoes of one prize ship after another, and capture at last the great annual treasure-ship Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, nicknamed the Spitfire because she was better armed than