watching the swirling dark-blue waters or the stars of night,
lying idle upon the deck, propped by the mast while the trade-winds
blew and up beyond sail and rigging curved the sky--they had time enough
indeed to plan for marvels! If they could have seen ahead, what pictures
of things to come they might have beheld rising, falling, melting one
into another!

Certain of the men upon the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the
Discovery stand out clearly, etched against the sky.

Christopher Newport might be forty years old. He had been of Raleigh's
captains and was chosen, a very young man, to bring to England from the
Indies the captured great carrack, Madre de Dios, laden with fabulous
treasure. In all, Newport was destined to make five voyages to Virginia,
carrying supply and aid. After that, he would pass into the service of
the East India Company, know India, Java, and the Persian Gulf; would be
praised by that great company for sagacity, energy, and good care of his
men. Ten years' time from this first Virginia voyage, and he would die
upon his ship, the Hope, before Bantam in Java.

Bartholomew Gosnold, the captain of the Goodspeed, had sailed with
thirty others, five years before, from Dartmouth in a bark named the
Concord. He had not made the usual long sweep southward into tropic
waters, there to turn and come northward, but had gone, arrow-straight,
across the north Atlantic--one of the first English sailors to make the
direct passage and save many a weary sea league. Gosnold and his men
had seen Cape Ann and Cape Cod, and had built upon Cuttyhunk, among the
Elizabeth Islands, a little fort thatched with rushes. Then, hardships
thronging and quarrels developing, they had filled their ship with
sassafras and cedar, and sailed for home over the summer Atlantic,
reaching England, with "not one cake of bread" left but only "a little
vinegar." Gosnold, guiding the Goodspeed, is now making his last voyage,
for he is to die in Virginia within the year.

George Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, has fought bravely
in the Low Countries. He is to stay five years in Virginia, to serve
there a short time as Governor, and then, returning to England, is to
write "A Trewe Relacyion", in which he begs to differ from John Smith's
"Generall Historie." Finally, he goes again to the wars in the Low
Countries, serves with distinction, and dies, unmarried, at the age
of fifty-two. His portrait shows a long, rather mel