o weeks later, when Don Bazan had collected nearly a hundred more sail
around him for the last stage home from the West Indies, a cyclone such
as no living man remembered burst full on the crowded fleet. Not even
the Great Armada lost more vessels than Don Bazan did in that
wreck-engulfing week. No less than seventy went down. And with them sank
the shattered _Revenge_, beside her own heroic dead.

* * * * *

Drake might be out of favor at court. The Queen might grumble at the sad
extravagance of fleets. Diplomats might talk of untying Gordian knots
that the sword was made to cut. Courtiers and politicians might wonder
with which side to curry favor when it was an issue between two
parties--peace or war. The great mass of ordinary landsmen might wonder
why the 'sea-affair' was a thing they could not understand. But all this
was only the mint and cummin of imperial things compared with the
exalting deeds that Drake had done. For, once the English sea-dogs had
shown the way to all America by breaking down the barriers of Spain,
England had ceased to be merely an island in a northern sea and had
become the mother country of such an empire and republic as neither
record nor tradition can show the like of elsewhere.

And England felt the triumph. She thrilled with pregnant joy. Poet and
proseman both gave voice to her delight. Hear this new note of
exultation born of England's victory on the sea:

As God hath combined the sea and land into one globe, so their
mutual assistance is necessary to secular happiness and glory. The
sea covereth one-half of this patrimony of man. Thus should man at
once lose the half of his inheritance if the art of navigation did
not enable him to manage this untamed beast; and with the bridle of
the winds and the saddle of his shipping make him serviceable. Now
for the services of the sea, they are innumerable: it is the great
purveyor of the world's commodities; the conveyor of the excess of
rivers; uniter, by traffique, of all nations; it presents the eye
with divers colors and motions, and is, as it were with rich
brooches, adorned with many islands. It is an open field for
merchandise in peace; a pitched field for the most dreadful fights
in war; yields diversity of fish and fowl for diet, material for
wealth; medicine for sickness; pearls and jewels for adornment; the
wonders of the Lo