Nor would it matter what force the Spaniards had, nor would any murmur have arisen if but the Captain had been at our head. But he, alas, was laid low by the sickness; and his men without him as a shepherdless flock that is driven hither and thither and blown upon by winds of confusion. For when they found the Spanish defences they cried out that they had been betrayed, and would go no further.
Then young Walter, that inheritor of all braveries, leaped to the front and offered to creep ashore, past the line of the Spaniards, and reach the mines if so he might, and return with reports upon them. Also Captain Keymis, one of the bravest of Raleigh’s seamen, would go with him. With tender embracings and partings did father and son say farewell, that never were to look on each other in this life again. For a party of Spaniards did set upon our dear Wat and his brave companion, together with the little force that went with them; and shouting to his men to come on, Wat fell, hacked to pieces by Spanish swords.
Captain Keymis escaped to bring back the tale of disaster and a report that there was no gold to be had at the mines now, whatever had been. So the men murmured more; though my lord, sick as he was, would himself go in search of the mines and in pursuit of the Spaniards that had slain his son. But none would follow him.
Then, broken-hearted, the lion of England at last turned his back on his promised land and set sail for England to meet his death at last. He had better have died fighting the Spaniards, yet that his men would not permit; and I think none of them guessed that they brought him home to his death.
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CHAPTER VIII.—AN UNRAVELLED THREAD.
Once again we were in the dolorous Tower, and this time there was no returning. They arrested him at Plymouth on the moment of his landing. As though they could never slay him fast enough, he was put on his trial and found guilty of abusing the King’s confidence and injuring the subjects of Spain, and condemned to death on the old sentence.
Perhaps they thought if they were not speedy that the people would not suffer it. To kill a Raleigh was better sport than witch-burning, yet they hardly paused from their torture of innocent crones and helpless girls to see the lion die. One grace they gave him—that his body was to be spared the last indignities and to be handed over to his wife for burial where she would. “It is well, Bess,” he said to her, rallying her, “thou mayst dispose of that dead which thou hadst not always the disposal of when living.”
The last night he lived he spoke with me of my birth. I then told him that I had held the secret all those years. “Yet you stayed, Wat,” he said gently, “though I was the enemy of your people.”
“But ever my most dear and admired lord,” I made answer.