QUEEN ELIZABETH GOING ON BOARD THE GOLDEN HIND
She is remembered still, but it is hardly for her own sake; her story is a part of Drake’s, and not the greatest part. Question your Elizabethan again some ten years later, and hers is no longer the name that he will give you; he will speak of things that are even nearer to his heart, and to ours; for though an Englishman will always, I suppose, lick his lips over a tale of treasure, it is the fighting and not the plunder that he is really fitted to enjoy, and in his imagination even the jewels of the Golden Hind will shine with a less bright and steady glow than the battle-lanterns of the Revenge.
The Revenge is a part of no man; she saw many captains and more triumphs than one. She had a personality, as great ships always have; she had a career, a life of her own. She has a life after death; not only a posterity but a true survival.
She may be said, in no merely figurative sense, to be on active service still. If the day ever comes when she no longer helps to keep the sea for us, it can only be when Time shall have paid off the British Navy.
The last of her successes is more freshly remembered by our friends than by ourselves. A neighbouring potentate, whom pride in his English descent had exhilarated to a pitch of splendid audacity worthy of an Elizabethan, challenged us by a telegram encouraging a vassal State to throw off the suzerainty of the Queen. If the message meant anything, it was a promise of armed support; but the promise had none of the Elizabethan hardihood to back it, and proved bankrupt as soon as the Flying Squadron put to