We have no doubt that he did think it was the devil; men in those days believing really that evil was more than a principle or a necessary accident, and that in all their labour for God and for right, they must make their account to have to fight with the devil in his proper person.  But if we are to call it superstition, and if this were no devil in the form of a roaring lion, but a mere great seal or sea-lion, it is a more innocent superstition to impersonate so real a power, and it requires a bolder heart to rise up against it and defy it in its living terror, than to sublimate it away into a philosophical principle, and to forget to battle with it in speculating on its origin and nature.  But to follow the brave Sir Humfrey, whose work of fighting with the devil was now over, and who was passing to his reward.  The 2nd of September the General came on board the Golden Hinde “to make merry with us.”  He greatly deplored the loss of his books and papers; and Mr. Hayes considered that the loss of manuscripts could not be so very distressing, and that there must have been something behind, certain gold ore, for instance, which had perished also—­ considerations not perhaps of particular value.  He was full of confidence from what he had seen, and talked with all eagerness and warmth of the new expedition for the following spring.  Apocryphal gold-mines still occupying the minds of Mr. Hayes and others, who were persuaded that Sir Humfrey was keeping to himself some such discovery which he had secretly made, and they tried hard to extract it from him.  They could make nothing, however, of his odd ironical answers, and their sorrow at the catastrophe which followed is sadly blended with disappointment that such a secret should have perished.  Sir Humfrey doubtless saw America with other eyes than theirs, and gold-mines richer than California in its huge rivers and savannahs.

“Leaving the issue of this good hope (about the gold),” continues Mr. Hayes, “to God, who only knoweth the truth thereof, I will hasten to the end of this tragedy, which must be knit up in the person of our General, and as it was God’s ordinance upon him, even so the vehement persuasion of his friends could nothing avail to divert him from his wilful resolution of going in his frigate; and when he was entreated by the captain, master, and others, his well-wishers in the Hinde, not to venture, this was his answer—­’I will not forsake my little company going homewards, with whom I have passed so many storms and perils.’”

Albeit, thinks the writer, who is unable to comprehend such high gallantry, there must have been something on his mind of what the world would say of him, “and it was rather rashness than advised resolution to prefer the wind of a vain report to the weight of his own life,” for the writing of which sentence we will trust the author, either in this world or the other, has before this done due penance and repented of it.

Two-thirds of the way home they met foul weather and terrible seas, “breaking short and pyramid-wise.”  Men who had all their lives “occupied the sea” had never seen it more outrageous.  “We had also upon our mainyard an apparition of a little fire by night, which seamen do call Castor and Pollux.”