points out that this passage, which Mr. Napier says occurs in the last
despatch, was written a month after Raleigh had sailed; and that the
previous despatch, written only four days after Raleigh sailed, says
nothing about the matter. So that it could not have been a very
important or fixed resolution on Raleigh’s part, if it was only to be
recollected a month after. I do not say—as Sir Robert Schomburgk is very
much inclined to do—that it was altogether a bubble of French fancy. It
is possible that Raleigh, in his just rage at finding that James was
betraying him and sending him out with a halter round his neck, to all
but certain ruin, did say wild words—That it was better for him to serve
the Frenchman than such a master—that perhaps he might go over to the
Frenchman after all—or some folly of the kind, in that same rash tone
which, as we have seen, has got him into trouble so often already: and so
I leave the matter, saying, Beware of making any man an offender for a
word, much less one who is being hunted to death in his old age, and
knows it.
However this may be, the fleet sails; but with no bright auguries. The
mass of the sailors are ‘a scum of men’; they are mutinous and
troublesome; and what is worse, have got among them (as, perhaps, they
were intended to have) the notion that Raleigh’s being still _non ens_ in
law absolves them from obeying him when they do not choose, and permits
them to say of him behind his back what they list. They have long delays
at Plymouth. Sir Warham’s ship cannot get out of the Thames.
Pennington, at the Isle of Wight, ‘cannot redeem his bread from the
bakers,’ and has to ride back to London to get money from Lady Raleigh.
The poor lady has it not, and gives a note of hand to Mr. Wood of
Portsmouth. Alas for her! She has sunk her £8000, and, beside that,
sold her Wickham estate for £2500; and all is on board the fleet. ‘A
hundred pieces’ are all the ready money the hapless pair had left on
earth, and they have parted them together. Raleigh has fifty-five and
she forty-five till God send it back—if, indeed, He ever send it. The
star is sinking low in the west. Trouble on trouble. Sir John Fane has
neither men nor money; Captain Witney has not provisions enough, and
Raleigh has to sell his plate in Plymouth to help him. Courage! one last
struggle to redeem his good name.
Then storms off Sicily—a pinnace is sunk; faithful Captain King drives
back into Bristol; the rest have to lie by a while in some Irish port for
a fair wind. Then Bailey deserts with the ‘Southampton’ at the Canaries;
then ‘unnatural weather,’ so that a fourteen days’ voyage takes forty
days. Then ‘the distemper’ breaks out under the line. The simple diary
of that sad voyage still remains, full of curious and valuable nautical
hints; but recording the loss of friend on friend; four or five officers,
and, ‘to our great grief, our principal refiner, Mr. Fowler.’ ‘Crab, my
old servant.’ Next a lamentable twenty-four hours, in which they lose
Pigott, the lieutenant-general, ‘mine honest frinde, Mr. John Talbot, one
that had lived with me a leven yeeres in the Tower, an excellent general
skoller, and a faithful and true man as ever lived,’ with two ‘very fair
conditioned gentleman,’ and ‘mine own cook Francis.’ Then more officers
and men, and my ‘cusen Payton.’ Then the water is near spent, and they
are forced to come to half allowance, till they save and drink greedily
whole canfuls of the bitter rain water. At last Raleigh’s own turn
comes; running on deck in a squall, he gets wet through, and has twenty
days of burning fever; ‘never man suffered a more furious heat,’ during
which he eats nothing but now and then a stewed prune.
At last they make the land at the mouth of the Urapoho, far south of
their intended goal. They ask for Leonard the Indian, ‘who lived with me
in England three or four years, the same man that took Mr. Harcourt’s
brother and fifty men when they were in extreme distress, and had no
means to live there but by the help of this Indian, whom they made
believe that they were my men’; but the faithful Indian is gone up the
country, and they stand away for Cayenne, ‘where the cacique (Harry) was
also my servant, and had lived with me in the Tower two years.’
Courage once more, brave old heart! Here at least thou art among
friends, who know thee for what thou art, and look out longingly for thee
as their deliverer. Courage; for thou art in fairyland once more; the
land of boundless hope and possibility. Though England and England’s
heart be changed, yet God’s earth endures, and the harvest is still here,
waiting to be reaped by those who dare. Twenty stormy years may have
changed thee, but they have not changed the fairyland of thy prison
dreams. Still the mighty Ceiba trees with their wealth of parasites and
creepers tower above the palm-fringed islets; still the dark mangrove
thickets guard the mouths of unknown streams, whose granite sands are
rich with gold. Friendly Indians come, and Harry with them, bringing
maize, peccari pork, and armadillos, plantains and pine-apples, and all
eat and gather strength; and Raleigh writes home to his wife, ‘to say
that I may yet be King of the Indians here were a vanity. But my name
hath lived among them’—as well it might. For many a year those simple
hearts shall look for him in vain, and more than two centuries and a half
afterwards, dim traditions of the great white chief who bade them stand
out to the last against the Spaniards, and he would come and dwell among
them, shall linger among the Carib tribes; even, say some, the tattered
relics of an English flag, which he left among them that they might
distinguish his countrymen.
Happy for him had he stayed there indeed, and been their king. How easy
for him to have grown old in peace at Cayenne. But no; he must on for
honour’s sake, and bring home if it were but a basketful of that ore to
show the king, that he may save his credit. He has promised Arundel that
he will return. And return he will. So onward he goes to the ‘Triangle
Islands.’ There he sends off five small vessels for the Orinoco, with
four hundred men. The faithful Keymis has to command and guide the
expedition. Sir Warham is lying ill of the fever, all but dead; so
George Raleigh is sent in his place as sergeant-major, and with him five
land companies, one of which is commanded by young Walter, Raleigh’s son;
another by a Captain Parker, of whom we shall have a word to say
presently.
Keymis’s orders are explicit. He is to go up; find the mine, and open
it; and if the Spaniards attack him, repel force by force: but he is to
avoid, if possible, an encounter with them: not for fear of breaking the
peace, but because he has ‘a scum of men, a few gentlemen excepted, and I
would not for all the world receive a blow from the Spaniards to the
dishonour of our nation.’ There we have no concealment of hostile
instructions, any more than in Raleigh’s admirable instructions to his
fleet, which, after laying down excellent laws for morality, religion,
and discipline, go on with clause after clause as to what is to be done
if they meet ‘the enemy.’ What enemy? Why, all Spanish ships which sail
the seas; and who, if they happen to be sufficiently numerous, will
assuredly attack, sink, burn, and destroy Raleigh’s whole squadron, for
daring to sail for that continent which Spain claims as its own.
Raleigh runs up the coast to Trinidad once more, in through the Serpent’s
Mouth, and round Punto Gallo to the lake of pitch, where all recruit
themselves with fish and armadillos, ‘pheasant’ (Penelope), ‘palmitos’
(Moriche palm fruit?), and guavas, and await the return of the expedition
from the last day of December to the middle of February. They see
something of the Spaniards meanwhile. Sir John Ferns is sent up to Port
of Spain to try if they will trade for tobacco. The Spaniards parley; in
the midst of the parley pour a volley of musketry into them at forty
paces, yet hurt never a man; and send them off calling them thieves and
traitors. Fray Simon’s Spanish account of the matter is that Raleigh
intended to disembark his men, that they might march inland on San
Joseph. He may be excused for the guess; seeing that Raleigh had done
the very same thing some seventeen years before. If Raleigh was
treacherous then, his treason punished itself now. However, I must
believe that Raleigh is not likely to have told a lie for his own private
amusement in his own private diary.
On the 29th the Spaniards attack three men and a boy who are ashore
boiling the fossil pitch; kill one man, and carry off the boy. Raleigh,
instead of going up to Port of Spain and demanding satisfaction, as he
would have been justified in doing after this second attack, remains
quietly where he is, expecting daily to be attacked by Spanish armadas,
and resolved to ‘burn by their sides.’ Happily, or unhappily, he escapes
them. Probably he thinks they waited for him at Margarita, expecting him
to range the Spanish main.
At last the weary days of sickness and anxiety succeeded to days of
terror. On the 1st of February a strange report comes by an Indian. An
inland savage has brought confused and contradictory news down the river
that San Thomé is sacked, the governor and two Spanish captains slain
(names given) and two English captains, nameless. After this entry
follow a few confused ones, set down as happening in January, concerning
attempts to extract the truth from the Indians, and the negligence of the
mariners, who are diligent in nothing but pillaging and stealing. And so
ends abruptly this sad document.
The truth comes at last—but when, does not appear—in a letter from
Keymis, dated January 8. San Thomé has been stormed, sacked, and burnt.
Four refiners’ houses were found in it; the best in the town; so that the
Spaniards have been mining there; but no coin or bullion except a little
plate. One English captain is killed, and that captain is Walter
Raleigh, his firstborn. He died leading them on, when some, ‘more
careful of valour and safety, began to recoil shamefully.’ His last
words were, ‘Lord have mercy upon me and prosper our enterprise.’ A
Spanish captain, Erinetta, struck him down with the butt of a musket
after he had received a bullet. John Plessington, his sergeant, avenged
him by running Erinetta through with his halbert.
Keymis has not yet been to the mine; he could not, ‘by reason of the
murmurings, discords, and vexations’; but he will go at once, make trial
of the mine, and come down to Trinidad by the Macareo mouth. He sends a
parcel of scattered papers, a roll of tobacco, a tortoise, some oranges
and lemons. ‘Praying God to give you health and strength of body, and a
mind armed against all extremities, I rest ever to be commanded, your
lordship’s, Keymish.’
‘Oh Absalom, my son, my son, would God I had died for thee!’ But weeping
is in vain. The noble lad sleeps there under the palm-trees, beside the
mighty tropic stream, while the fair Basset, ‘his bride in the sight of
God,’ recks not of him as she wanders in the woods of Umberleigh, wife to
the son of Raleigh’s deadliest foe. Raleigh, Raleigh, surely God’s
blessing is not on this voyage of thine. Surely He hath set thy misdeeds
before Him, and thy secret sins in the light of His countenance.
Another blank of misery: but his honour is still safe. Keymis will
return with that gold ore, that pledge of his good faith for which he has
ventured all. Surely God will let that come after all, now that he has
paid as its price his first-born’s blood?
At last Keymis returns with thinned numbers. All are weary,
spirit-broken, discontented, mutinous. Where is the gold ore?
There is none. Keymis has never been to the mine after all. His
companions curse him as a traitor who has helped Raleigh to deceive them
into ruin; the mine is imaginary—a lie. The crews are ready to break
into open mutiny; after a while they will do so.
Yes, God is setting this man’s secret sins in the light of His
countenance. If he has been ambitious, his ambition has punished itself
now. If he has cared more for his own honour than for his wife and
children, that sin too has punished itself. If he has (which I affirm
not) tampered with truth for the sake of what seemed to him noble and
just ends, that too has punished itself; for his men do not trust him.
If he has (which I affirm not) done any wrong in that matter of Cobham,
that too has punished itself: for his men, counting him as _non ens_ in
law, will not respect or obey him. If he has spoken, after his old
fashion, rash and exaggerated words, and goes on speaking them, even
though it be through the pressure of despair, that too shall punish
itself; and for every idle word that he shall say, God will bring him
into judgment. And why, but because he is noble? Why, but because he is
nearer to God by a whole heaven than others whom God lets fatten on their
own sins, having no understanding, because they are in honour, and having
children at their hearts’ desire, and leaving the rest of their substance
to their babes? Not so does God deal with His elect when they will try
to worship at once self and Him; He requires truth in the inward parts,
and will purge them till they are true, and single-eyed, and full of
light.
Keymis returns with the wreck of his party. The scene between him and
Raleigh may be guessed. Keymis has excuse on excuse. He could not get
obeyed after young Raleigh’s death: he expected to find that Sir Walter
was either dead of his sickness or of grief for his son, and had no wish
‘to enrich a company of rascals who made no account of him.’ He dare not
go up to the mine because (and here Raleigh thinks his excuse fair) the
fugitive Spaniards lay in the craggy woods through which he would have to
pass, and that he had not men enough even to hold the town securely. If
he reached the mine and left a company there, he had no provisions for
them; and he dared not send backward and forward to the town while the
Spaniards were in the woods. The warnings sent by Gondomar had undone
all, and James’s treachery had done its work. So Keymis, ‘thinking it a
greater error, so he said, to discover the mine to the Spaniards than to
excuse himself to the Company, said that he could not find it.’ From all
which one thing at least is evident, that Keymis believed in the
existence of the mine.
Raleigh ‘rejects these fancies’; tells him before divers gentlemen that
‘a blind man might find it by the marks which Keymis himself had set down
under his hand’: that ‘his case of losing so many men in the woods’ was a
mere pretence: after Walter was slain, he knew that Keymis had no care of
any man’s surviving. ‘You have undone me, wounded my credit with the
King past recovery. As you have followed your own advice, and not mine,
you must satisfy his Majesty. It shall be glad if you can do it: but I
cannot.’ There is no use dwelling on such vain regrets and reproaches.
Raleigh perhaps is bitter, unjust. As he himself writes twice, to his
wife and Sir Ralph Winwood, his ‘brains are broken.’ He writes to them
both, and re-opens the letters to add long postscripts, at his wits’ end.
Keymis goes off; spends a few miserable days; and then enters Raleigh’s
cabin. He has written his apology to Lord Arundel, and begs Raleigh to
allow of it. ‘No. You have undone me by your obstinacy. I will not
favour or colour your former folly.’ ‘Is that your resolution, sir?’
‘It is.’ ‘I know not then, sir, what course to take.’ And so he goes
out, and into his own cabin overhead. A minute after a pistol-shot is
heard. Raleigh sends up a boy to know the reason. Keymis answers from
within that he has fired it off because it had been long charged; and all
is quiet.
Half an hour after the boy goes into the cabin. Keymis is lying on his
bed, the pistol by him. The boy moves him. The pistol-shot has broken a
rib, and gone no further; but as the corpse is turned over, a long knife
is buried in that desperate heart. Another of the old heroes is gone to
his wild account.
Gradually drops of explanation ooze out. The ‘Sergeant-major, Raleigh’s
nephew, and others, confess that Keymis told them that he could have
brought them in two hours to the mine: but as the young heir was slain,
and his father was unpardoned and not like to live, he had no reason to
open the mine, either for the Spaniard or the King.’ Those latter words
are significant. What cared the old Elizabethan seaman for the weal of
such a king? And, indeed, what good to such a king would all the mines
in Guiana be? They answered that the King, nevertheless, had ‘granted
Raleigh his heart’s desire under the great seal.’ He replied that ‘the
grant to Raleigh was to a man _non ens_ in law, and therefore of no
force.’ Here, too, James’s policy has worked well. How could men dare
or persevere under such a cloud?
How, indeed, could they have found heart to sail at all? The only answer
is that they knew Raleigh well enough to have utter faith in him, and
that Keymis himself knew of the mine.
Puppies at home in England gave out that he had killed himself from
remorse at having deceived so many gentlemen with an imaginary phantom.
Every one, of course, according to his measure of charity, has power and
liberty to assume any motive which he will. Mine is simply the one which
shows upon the face of the documents; that the old follower, devoted
alike to the dead son and to the doomed father, feeling that he had, he
scarce knew how, failed in the hour of need, frittered away the last
chance of a mighty enterprise which had been his fixed idea for years,
and ruined the man whom he adored, avenged upon himself the fault of
having disobeyed orders, given peremptorily, and to be peremptorily
executed.
Here, perhaps, my tale should end; for all beyond is but the waking of
the corpse. The last death-struggle of the Elizabethan heroism is over,
and all its remains vanish slowly in an undignified, sickening way. All
epics end so. After the war of Troy, Achilles must die by coward Paris’s
arrow, in some mysterious, confused, pitiful fashion; and stately Hecuba
must rail herself into a very dog, and bark for ever shamefully around
lonely Cynossema. Young David ends as a dotard—Solomon as worse.
Glorious Alexander must die, half of fever, half of drunkenness, as the
fool dieth. Charles the Fifth, having thrown all away but his follies,
ends in a convent, a superstitious imbecile; Napoleon squabbles to the
last with Sir Hudson Lowe about champagne. It must be so; and the glory
must be God’s alone. For in great men, and great times, there is nothing
good or vital but what is of God, and not of man’s self; and when He
taketh away that divine breath they die, and return again to their dust.
But the earth does not lose; for when He sendeth forth His Spirit they
live, and renew the face of the earth. A new generation arises, with
clearer sight, with fuller experience, sometimes with nobler aims; and
‘The old order changeth, giveth place to the new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways.
The Elizabethan epic did not end a day too soon. There was no more life
left in it; and God had something better in store for England. Raleigh’s
ideal was a noble one: but God’s was nobler far. Raleigh would have made
her a gold kingdom, like Spain, and destroyed her very vitals by that
gold, as Spain was destroyed. And all the while the great and good God
was looking steadfastly upon that little struggling Virginian village,
Raleigh’s first-born, forgotten in his new mighty dreams, and saying,
‘Here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein.’ There, and not in
Guiana; upon the simple tillers of the soil, not among wild reckless
gold-hunters, would His blessing rest. The very coming darkness would
bring brighter light. The evil age itself would be the parent of new
good, and drive across the seas steadfast Pilgrim Fathers and generous
Royalist Cavaliers, to be the parents of a mightier nation than has ever
yet possessed the earth. Verily, God’s ways are wonderful, and His
counsels in the great deep.
So ends the Elizabethan epic. Must we follow the corpse to the grave?
It is necessary.
And now, ‘you gentlemen of England, who sit at home at ease,’ what would
you have done in like case?—Your last die thrown; your last stake lost;
your honour, as you fancy, stained for ever; your eldest son dead in
battle—What would you have done? What Walter Raleigh did was this. He
kept his promise. He had promised Lord Arundel to return to England; and
return he did.
But it is said his real intention, as he himself confessed, was to turn
pirate and take the Mexico fleet.
That wild thoughts of such a deed may have crossed his mind, may have
been a terrible temptation to him, may even have broken out in hasty
words, one does not deny. He himself says that he spoke of such a thing
‘to keep his men together.’ All depends on how the words were spoken.
The form of the sentence, the tone of voice, is everything. Who could
blame him, if seeing some of the captains whom he had most trusted
deserting him, his men heaping him with every slander, and, as he
solemnly swore on the scaffold, calling witnesses thereto by name,
forcing him to take an oath that he would not return to England before
they would have him, and locking him into his own cabin—who could blame
him, I ask, for saying in that daring off-hand way of his, which has so
often before got him into trouble, ‘Come, my lads, do not despair. If
the worst comes to the worst, there is the Plate-fleet to fall back
upon’? When I remember, too, that the taking of the said Plate-fleet was
in Raleigh’s eyes an altogether just thing; and that he knew perfectly
that if he succeeded therein he would be backed by the public opinion of
all England, and probably buy his pardon of James, who, if he loved Spain
well, loved money better; my surprise rather is, that he did not go and
do it. As for any meeting of captains in his cabin and serious proposal
of such a plan, I believe it to be simply one of the innumerable lies
which James inserted in his ‘Declaration,’ gathered from the tales of men
who, fearing (and reasonably) lest their heads should follow Raleigh’s,
tried to curry favour by slandering him. This ‘Declaration’ has been so
often exposed that I may safely pass it by; and pass by almost as safely
the argument which some have drawn from a chance expression of his in his
pathetic letter to Lady Raleigh, in which he ‘hopes that God would send
him somewhat before his return.’ To prove an intention of piracy in the
despairing words of a ruined man writing to comfort a ruined wife for the
loss of her first-born is surely to deal out hard measure. Heaven have
mercy upon us, if all the hasty words which woe has wrung from our hearts
are to be so judged either by man or God!