is life really
ended on the return of Keymis from San Thome.' His contemporaries did
not think it. For them he was never even an old man; and it is one of
the phenomena in the national feeling towards and about him. To the
popular mind he was to the end, though portraits might show him grey and
wasted, the brilliant and gallant Knight of Cadiz. Least of all for his
enemies was he ever aged and broken. They had too acute a perception of
his ability to resist them. They knew that he preserved his powers
intact, and was not to be trampled on with impunity. He brought now an
all but direct charge of treachery against the King: 'It pleased his
Majesty to value us at so little as to command me upon my allegiance to
set down under my hand the country, and the very river by which I was to
enter it; to set down the number of men, and burden of my ships; with
what ordnance every ship carried; which was made known to the Spanish
Ambassador, and by him in post sent to the King of Spain.' His future
looked to him profoundly black. He glanced, as he well might without
treason, at the contingency of foreign service, whether in Denmark,
France, or Holland: 'What shall become of me now I know not.'
Notwithstanding the royal commission, which, like others, he
misdescribed as 'under the Great Seal,' and not the Privy Seal, he was
aware that he was 'unpardoned in England.' He went on: 'My poor estate
is consumed; and whether any other Prince or State will give me bread I
know not.' From St. Christopher's he wrote also to his wife. He had told
Winwood he durst not write to her from fear of renewing the sorrow for
her son. Yet he could not be silent, though he confessed he knew not how
to comfort her: 'God knows, I never knew what sorrow meant till now.
Comfort your heart, dearest Bess, I shall sorrow for us both. I shall
sorrow the less because I have not long to sorrow, because not long to
live.' He expressed a hope, which must be allowed to be ambiguous, that
'God will send us somewhat before we return.' He bids her tell about
Keymis to Lord Northumberland, Sir John Leigh, and Silvanus Skory, a
London merchant, who had in verse dissuaded him from the Guiana
adventure altogether.

[Sidenote: _Sympathy._]

From St. Christopher's he sent home his fly-boat, under his cousin
Herbert, who afterwards suffered in purse for the association with him.
The vessel was laden with 'a rabble of idle rascals, which I know will
not spare to wound me; but