FOUR months went by—four months of weary, monotonous waiting—and still Lord Thomas Howard's fleet lay in its old anchorage in the roadstead off the north of Flores Island. The long-expected homeward-bound treasure flota from the Spanish Main had not yet come in sight. The King of Spain, who was now well aware of the presence of the English ships at the Azores, and who knew their drift as surely as did Lord Thomas himself, was sensible of how much the safety of his galleons concerned his own interests and the interests of his country; and by secret means he had communicated with his admirals at Nombre de Dios, causing them to delay their starting; for he chose to hazard the perishing of ships, men, and goods by bringing them over in a season of storms rather than endanger their falling into our hands.
He had two distinct designs in bringing his fleet home so late. One was that he thought that Lord Thomas would have consumed his victuals and have been forced accordingly to abandon his quest and return to England; and the other was that he might meanwhile gain time to furnish a great fleet, which he was preparing to act as the guardian of his treasure galleons. In the first design he found himself deceived, for Admiral Howard had not been two months at the Western Isles ere he received supplies of victuals from England; and in the second he was equally prevented, for the Earl of Cumberland, who was then cruising off the coast of Spain, was keeping a constant watch upon the port of Ferrol, where the new armada was being hurriedly fitted out, and Cumberland was prepared to send intelligence to Flores to warn Lord Thomas at the moment of danger.
But despite the arrival of supplies from home, the provisions of the English fleet at the Azores were meagre in quantity, and in quality wretchedly poor, and it was found necessary to add to them by making frequent raids upon the nearer islands and taking forcible possession of food from the islanders' homesteads. The hot summer months of June and July had brought additional discomforts to the crews, and early in August a pestilent sickness spread from ship to ship. On the Defiance a score of men had died before the middle of August, and an equal number of the ship's company of the Lion were carried off. Sir Robert Cross of the Bonaventure had buried in the sea no fewer than thirty-six of his picked men, and the disease in a more or less virulent form had made an entrance upon every one of the Queen's six ships, as well as the victuallers, fly-boats, and small pinnaces that were of the expedition. Jacob Whiddon's little ship, the Pilgrim, had escaped so far with but one death.
On board the Revenge Sir Richard Grenville had much ado to stem the tide of the dread visitation. His ship was small, and her crowded crew had but indifferent accommodation even when in good health, and when the illness seized them there was little chance of a recovery. The matter was made worse by the fact that, for want of a more convenient hospital, her sick men were forced to lie upon the ballast, down below, where no fresh air could reach them, where the light of the sun could not penetrate, and where even the best and freshest food became speedily rank and nasty. Her surgeons were ignorant men, of a low and ill-educated class, to whom the payment of five shillings a week was considered an ample return for the exercise of their profession. Of medicine and the laws of health they scarcely knew anything. They could saw off a shattered limb or patch a broken head passing well; but they had no more than a child's skill in dealing with a sickness that came of bad sanitation, putrid food, and insidious infection. The ship's lower decks were so pestilential that a sound man might hardly hope to go below without catching the disease.
At the first it was the men of the commoner sort, the working mariners and the ill-fed soldiers, who were affected, but betimes the gentlemen of the poop were struck down one by one by the fell complaint, and there were few among them who did not suffer in some wise, if it were no more than to experience a sickly headache. So general did the complaints become, that many of the men, led by Red Bob, threatened more than once to break out into open mutiny. They declared that they were being poisoned by sour beer and rancid meat, and day after day, as the expected treasure-ships failed to come into view, the discontent became stronger and more noisy.
Sir Richard Grenville held a firm and determined authority over his ship's company, however, for he was a most resolute man, and none dared to openly offend him. He was a man very unquiet in his mind, always eager and impatient, and greatly affected to war. It was perhaps from this same resolute spirit that he had been able to perform the many valiant acts that are recorded of him. At the age of sixteen he had distinguished himself for bravery and fearlessness in the wars in Hungary under the Emperor Maximilian against the Turks; he had fought in the great sea-fight at Lepanto with the Christians against the Turks, when thirty thousand of the Saracens fell or were taken prisoners, and twelve thousand Christian slaves were liberated. Also he had taken prominent part in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Of his life in Virginia, whither he went to found the first English colony, many heroic acts are recorded. His rivals thought him harsh and overbearing, and certify that he exercised a most tyrannical rule over his colonists and shipmates from first to last; and Master Ralph Lane (who is remembered as being the first to introduce the herb tobacco into England) wrote of him in an ample discourse addressed to Sir Walter Raleigh, that Grenville's pride was intolerable, his ambition insatiable, and that his proceedings towards them all in Virginia, and to Lane in particular, were unendurable. It seems certain that among the islanders of the Azores he was greatly feared for his severity in leading his men to plunder the homesteads for food for the ships. Some things that are written of him show that at times he could be boastful and inclined to bravado.
"He was of so hard a complexion," says Jan van Linschoten in a document that is to be found in Hakluyt's Voyages, "that as he continued among the Spanish captains while they were at dinner or supper with him, he would carouse three or four glasses of wine, and in a bravery take the glasses between his teeth and crash them in pieces and swallow them down, so that oftentimes the blood ran out of his mouth, without any harm at all unto him. And this was told me by divers credible persons that many times stood and beheld him."
Yet he was a very excellent gentleman, a loyal subject of the Queen, and a very proper Christian. In an age when cruelty in war was common he fought with a truly British sense of fairness, and while the Spaniards treated their prisoners with unnameable tortures Sir Richard Grenville was ever just and humane with the enemies who fell into his hands. He hated the Spaniards with a fierce envenomed hatred, and was never known to shrink from an encounter with them, or to neglect a chance of striking a blow which should help to lessen their vaunted power upon the seas. No man in his time—not even Drake himself—was more bold or more courageous in attacking them. His self-confidence and his trust in English pluck were supreme. He considered an Englishman equal to any dozen Spaniards.
On one occasion when he was returning from the Spanish Main in a ship which had been sorely battered by storms and badly bored by the teredo-worm, he sighted a richly-laden galleon. His ship could not be brought to a close encounter, and he had no boats, yet he was bent upon capturing that galleon. So he made a raft out of the boards of chests and boxes, took a handful of men with him, and on this frail craft adventured an attack. He brought the raft alongside the galleon and clambered up upon her decks. As soon as his men were all off the raft it fell asunder and sank at the galleon's side, thus cutting off the adventurers' retreat. Yet they captured the galleon and brought her home as a prize to England.
It was towards the end of the hot month of August that the sickness on board the Revenge, as on board all the other ships of the fleet, became more general and severe. Lord Thomas Howard, realizing at last that it was the ships themselves that were unhealthy, and that if he would preserve his little army from actual dissolution he had better institute an hospital of some sort on shore, issued orders to his various captains, instructing them to land their sick men upon the beach, where huts and tents and other shelters were erected. This proceeding was found to be of vast benefit. Each ship's company was kept separate in their own shelters, with a goodly number of healthy men to attend to their wants.