LORDS OF ROANOKE

Primrose garlands in Coombe Wood shone with the pale gold of winter sunshine.  Violets among dry leaves peered sedately at the pageant of spring.  In the royal hunting forest of Richmond, venerable trees unfolded from their tiny buds canopies like the fairy pavilion of Paribanou.

Philip Armadas and Arthur Barlowe, coming up from Kingston, beheld all this April beauty with the wistful pleasure of those who bid farewell to a dearly beloved land.  Within a fortnight Sir Walter Ralegh’s two ships, which they commanded, would be out upon the gray Atlantic.  The Queen would lie at Richmond this night, and the two young captains had been bidden to court that she might see what manner of men they were.[1]

Armadas, though born in Hull, was the son of a Huguenot refugee.  Barlowe was English to the back-bone.  Both knew more of the ways of ships than the ways of courts.  Yet for all her magnificence and her tempers Elizabeth had a way with her in dealing with practical men.  She welcomed merchants, builders, captains and soldiers as frankly as she did Italian scholars or French gallants.  Her attention was as keen when she was framing a letter to the Grand Turk securing trade privileges to London or Bristol, as when she listened to the graceful flatteries of Spenser or Lyly.  In this year 1584 she had granted a patent to Ralegh for further explorations of the lands north of Florida discovered half a century since by Sebastian Cabot.  She heaped upon it rights and privileges which made Hatton and her other court gallants grind their teeth.  Ralegh knew well that this was no time for him to be wandering about strange coasts.  He was therefore fitting out an expedition to make a preliminary voyage and report to him what was found.

“’T is like this,” Armadas was saying with the buoyant confidence which endeared him alike to his patron and his comrade.  “North you get the scurvy and south the fever, but midway is the climate for a new empire.  There Englishmen may have timber for their shipyards, and pasture for their sheep and cattle, and meadows for their corn.  There Flemings and Huguenots may live and work in peace.  Our sons may be lords and princes of a new world, Arthur lad.”

“Aye; but there’s the Inquisition in the Indies to reckon with,” answered Barlowe with his grim half-smile.  “And if what we hear of the barbarians be true, the men who make the first plantation may be forced to plant and build with their left hand and keep their right for fighting.”

“Oh, the barbarians,—­” Armadas began, and paused, for the chatter of young voices broke forth in a copse.

“I tell thee salvages be hairy men with tails like monkeys.  My uncle he has seen them on the Guinea coast.”

“Dick, if thou keep not off my heels in the passamezzo—­”

“Be not so cholerical, Tom Poope, or the Master’ll give thee a tuning.  Thou’rt not Lord of the Indies yet.”