e pirates from Algiers. One English merchant
vessel was lying there at anchor, and by means of this interpreter
Raleigh endeavoured to explain his peaceful intention, but without
success. He had a meeting on shore with the governor of the island, 'our
troops staying at equal distance with us,' and was asked the pertinent
question, 'what I sought for from that miserable and barren island,
peopled in effect all with Moriscos.' Raleigh asserted that all he
wanted was fresh meat and wine for his crews, and these he offered to
pay for.

On the 11th, finding that no provisions came, and that the inhabitants
were carrying their goods up into the hills, the captains begged Raleigh
to march inland and take the town; 'but,' he says, 'besides that I knew
it would offend his Majesty, I am sure the poor English merchant should
have been ruined, whose goods he had in his hands, and the way being
mountainous and most extreme stony, I knew that I must have lost twenty
good men in taking a town not worth two groats.' The Governor of
Lanzarote continued to be in a craven state of anxiety, and would not
hear of trading. We cannot blame him, especially when we find that less
than eight months later his island was invaded by genuine Algerine
bandits, his town utterly sacked, and 900 Christians taken off into
Moslem slavery. After three Englishmen had been killed by the islanders,
yet without taking any reprisals, Raleigh sailed away from these sandy
and inhospitable shores. But in the night before he left, one of his
ships, the 'Husband,' had disappeared. Captain Bailey, who is believed
to have been in the pay of Gondomar, had hurried back to England to give
report of Raleigh's piratical attack on an island belonging to the
dominion of Spain. As the great Englishman went sailing westward through
the lustrous waters of the Canary archipelago, his doom was sealed, and
he would have felt his execution to be a certainty, had he but known
what was happening in England.

He called at Grand Canary, to complain of the Lanzarote people to the
governor-general of the islands, but, for some reason which he does not
state, did not land at the town of Palmas, but at a desert part, far
from any village, probably west of the northern extremity of the island.
The governor-general gave him no answer; but the men found a little
water, and they sailed away, leaving Teneriffe to the north. On
September 18 they put into the excellent port of the island of Gome