ds, say the chroniclers, "it
sent more vessels to the northern trade than any port in England, saving
(strange juxtaposition!) London and Topsham," and was the centre of a
local civilization and enterprise, small perhaps compared with the
vast efforts of the present day: but who dare despise the day of small
things, if it has proved to be the dawn of mighty ones? And it is to the
sea-life and labor of Bideford, and Dartmouth, and Topsham, and Plymouth
(then a petty place), and many another little western town, that England
owes the foundation of her naval and commercial glory. It was the men
of Devon, the Drakes and Hawkins', Gilberts and Raleighs, Grenvilles and
Oxenhams, and a host more of "forgotten worthies," whom we shall learn
one day to honor as they deserve, to whom she owes her commerce, her
colonies, her very existence. For had they not first crippled, by their
West Indian raids, the ill-gotten resources of the Spaniard, and then
crushed his last huge effort in Britain's Salamis, the glorious fight of
1588, what had we been by now but a popish appanage of a world-tyranny
as cruel as heathen Rome itself, and far more devilish?

It is in memory of these men, their voyages and their battles, their
faith and their valor, their heroic lives and no less heroic deaths,
that I write this book; and if now and then I shall seem to warm into
a style somewhat too stilted and pompous, let me be excused for my
subject's sake, fit rather to have been sung than said, and to have
proclaimed to all true English hearts, not as a novel but as an epic
(which some man may yet gird himself to write), the same great message
which the songs of Troy, and the Persian wars, and the trophies of
Marathon and Salamis, spoke to the hearts of all true Greeks of old.

One bright summer's afternoon, in the year of grace 1575, a tall and
fair boy came lingering along Bideford quay, in his scholar's gown,
with satchel and slate in hand, watching wistfully the shipping and the
sailors, till, just after he had passed the bottom of the High Street,
he came opposite to one of the many taverns which looked out upon the
river. In the open bay window sat merchants and gentlemen, discoursing
over their afternoon's draught of sack; and outside the door was
gathered a group of sailors, listening earnestly to some one who stood
in the midst. The boy, all alive for any sea-news, must needs go up
to them, and take his place among the sailor-lads who were pe