The hunt is up, the hunt is up To the gray Atlantic's bound,— The health of the Queen in a golden cup!— The quarry is hunting the hound! Like steel the stars gleam through the night On armored waves beneath,— As England's honor cold and bright We bear her sword in sheath!
When that great Empire dies away And none recall her place, Men shall remember our work to-day And tell of our Captain's grace,— How never a woman or child was the worse Wherever our foe we found, Nor their own priests had cause to curse The quarry that hunted the hound!
XV
THE FLEECE OF GOLD
White fog, the thick mist of windless marshes, masked the Kentish coast. The Medway at flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one maze of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays. Nothing was visible an oar's length overside but shifting cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely in the fog. But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as master of his own ship, he knew these waters as he knew the palm of his hand. His old captain, dying a bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten cargo-ship as reward for his "diligence and fidelity", and at sixteen he was captain where six years before he had been ship's-boy.
Scores of daring projects went Catherine-wheeling through his mind as he steered seaward through the white enchanted world. In 1561 Spain was the bogy of English seaports, most of whose folk were Protestants. There was no knowing how long the coast-wise trade would be allowed to go on.
Out of the white mist flashed a whiter face, etched with black brows and lashes and a pointed silky beard—the face of a man all in black, whose body rose and dipped with the waves among the marsh grass of an eyot. So lightly was it held that it might have slipped off in the wake of the boat had not Tom Moone the carpenter caught it with a boat-hook. But when they had the man on board they found that he was not dead.
Ten minutes before, the young captain would have said that every dead Spaniard was so much to the good, but he had the life-saving instinct of a Newfoundland dog. He set about reviving the rescued man without thinking twice on the subject.