But the fates were against it: winds blew the ships astray; tempests beat upon them; mutinies threatened; and in Guiana, at last, there came disastrous fights with the Spaniards.
Keymis, the second in command, and an old friend of Raleigh’s, being reproached by this latter in a moment of frenzy, withdraws and shoots himself; Raleigh’s own son, too, is sacrificed, and the crippled squadron sets out homeward, with no gold, and shattered ships and maddened crews. Storm overtakes them; there is mutiny; there is wreck; only a few forlorn and battered hulks bring back this disheartened knight. He lands in his old home of Devon—is warned to flee the wrath that will fall upon him in London; but as of old he lifts his gray head proudly, and pushes for the capital to meet his accusers. Arrived there, he is made to know by those strong at court that there is no hope, for he has brought no gold; and yielding to friendly entreaties he makes a final effort at escape. He does outwit his immediate guards and takes to a little wherry that bears him down the Thames: a half-day more and he would have taken wings for France. But the sleuth-hounds are on his track; he is seized, imprisoned, and in virtue of his old sentence—the cold-hearted Bacon making the law for it—is brought to the block.
He walks to the scaffold with serene dignity—greets old friends cheerfully—dies cheerfully, and so enters on the pilgrimage he had set forth in his cumbrous verse:—
“There the blessed paths we’ll travel,
Strow’d with rubies thick as gravel;
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors,
High walls of coral and pearly bowers.
From thence to Heaven’s bribeless hall,
Where no corrupted voices brawl;
No conscience molten into gold,