We can see how Shakespeare must have heard tales of the Indians, or read Sir Walter's "Virginia."

"When thou camst here first,
Thou strok'dst me, and made much of me, would'st teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee,
And show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle,
The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile;—
Cursed be I that did so!"
—Tempest.

At length, in May 1586, the Indians could brook no more such wrongs; they stole into Port Ferdinando, broke up the fish-weirs and wooden huts, and crossed over to the mainland. In June a battle ensued—guns against bows and arrows—the Indians were out-matched and fled. Their king, being shot through with a pistol, lay on the ground for dead; but suddenly started up and ran away as though he had not been touched. But he was shot again, fell and was killed. "I met my man," says Lane, "returning out of the woods with Pemisapan's head in his hand."

The colony was now in despair—a few oysters were found or they would have been starved. One prophet amongst them vowed that "the hand of God had come upon them for the cruelty and outrages committed by some of them on the natives." Then came Drake with three-and-twenty ships out of the misty deep, and at once Ralph Lane saw "the very hand of God stretched out to save them."

On the 19th of June they embarked on Drake's ship and returned to Portsmouth. But they carried with them that wonderful herb uppowoc, or tobacco, which all Europe has now learnt to suck after the manner of the Red Indians, which Edmund Spenser in his "Faerie Queen," writ a few years after, called "divine." Of course Lane blamed Sir Richard Grenville for his failure, since Grenville had promised to return in the spring with fresh colonists and supplies; but he did not arrive until a fortnight after Lane's departure with Drake.

We have given this short sketch of the doings of the colony in Virginia, partly that the reader may judge where the fault lay. It was not Sir Richard's, and it was not wholly Lane's; it was the ill choice of unworthy colonists that really wrecked the scheme; it was their gross ill-treatment of the natives that ruined the settlement. But if Lane had stayed with his own men, instead of hunting for pearls and copper, he might have kept them in better order. But as it happened, the real savages were some few of those English settlers, the off-scouring of England's gaols, and the ill-conduct of the few made the Indians suspicious of all.

Grenville, when he left Virginia for Plymouth, took the opportunity of having a little fight with a richly laden Spaniard of 300 tons burthen, and arrived home rich. He had been unable to fulfil his promise to return in the spring, because Raleigh had a difficulty in raising money for the three ships and their outfit. When Grenville did reach Roanoke, he found all deserted and left in confusion, as if the colonists had been hunted away by a mighty army.

After scouring the country round and making inquiries of the Indians, Grenville left fifteen men on the island with provisions for two years, and set sail for England; but he did not omit to fill his coffers by an attack upon Spanish towns in the Azores, where he seized considerable store of booty.

Perhaps he was not only working for himself, but was thinking of his cousin Walter, who had already spent some forty thousand pounds on these two Virginian expeditions. These prizes did much to recoup him for his great expenses.

For the next five years we have little news of Sir Richard's doings, except that he swept the sea of pirates other than his own countrymen. But in 1591 he was sent out as vice-admiral with seven Queen's ships under Lord Thomas Howard, to intercept the Spanish fleet from the West Indies, which had wintered in Havannah the preceding year by royal order, lest it should fall into the hands of Hawkins and Frobisher. For Philip chose rather to hazard the perishing of ships, men, and goods than that they should become the prize of the English. He was also preparing a large naval force to protect and convoy his treasure; but as it happened the Earl of Cumberland was then off the coast of Spain, and learning their designs sent word to Lord Thomas.