But if, again, he had been a student of men rather than of machinery, he would have found few nobler companies on whom to exercise his discernment, than he might have seen in the little terrace bowling-green behind the Pelican Inn, on the afternoon of the nineteenth of July.  Chatting in groups, or lounging over the low wall which commanded a view of the Sound and the shipping far below, were gathered almost every notable man of the Plymouth fleet, the whole posse comitatus of “England’s forgotten worthies.”  The Armada has been scattered by a storm.  Lord Howard has been out to look for it, as far as the Spanish coast; but the wind has shifted to the south, and fearing lest the Dons should pass him, he has returned to Plymouth, uncertain whether the Armada will come after all or not.  Slip on for a while, like Prince Hal, the drawer’s apron; come in through the rose-clad door which opens from the tavern, with a tray of long-necked Dutch glasses, and a silver tankard of wine, and look round you at the gallant captains, who are waiting for the Spanish Armada, as lions in their lair might wait for the passing herd of deer.

See those five talking earnestly, in the centre of a ring, which longs to overhear, and yet is too respectful to approach close.  Those soft long eyes and pointed chin you recognize already; they are Walter Raleigh’s.  The fair young man in the flame-colored doublet, whose arm is round Raleigh’s neck, is Lord Sheffield; opposite them stands, by the side of Sir Richard Grenville, a man as stately even as he, Lord Sheffield’s uncle, the Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, lord high admiral of England; next to him is his son-in-law, Sir Robert Southwell, captain of the Elizabeth Jonas:  but who is that short, sturdy, plainly dressed man, who stands with legs a little apart, and hands behind his back, looking up, with keen gray eyes, into the face of each speaker?  His cap is in his hands, so you can see the bullet head of crisp brown hair and the wrinkled forehead, as well as the high cheek bones, the short square face, the broad temples, the thick lips, which are yet firm as granite.  A coarse plebeian stamp of man:  yet the whole figure and attitude are that of boundless determination, self-possession, energy; and when at last he speaks a few blunt words, all eyes are turned respectfully upon him;—­for his name is Francis Drake.

A burly, grizzled elder, in greasy sea-stained garments, contrasting oddly with the huge gold chain about his neck, waddles up, as if he had been born, and had lived ever since, in a gale of wind at sea.  The upper half of his sharp dogged visage seems of brick-red leather, the lower of badger’s fur; and as he claps Drake on the back, and, with a broad Devon twang, shouts, “be you a coming to drink your wine, Francis Drake, or be you not?—­saving your presence, my lord;” the lord high admiral only laughs, and bids Drake go and drink his wine; for John Hawkins, admiral of the port, is the patriarch of Plymouth seamen, if Drake be their hero, and says and does pretty much what he likes in any company on earth; not to mention that to-day’s prospect of an Armageddon fight has shaken him altogether out of his usual crabbed reserve, and made him overflow with loquacious good-humor, even to his rival Drake.