how he went to sea as a boy, found favour with his master, became early
an owner of his own ship, sticking steadily to trade. You hear nothing
of him in connection with the Channel pirates. It was not till he was
five-and-twenty that he was tempted by Hawkins into the negro-catching
business, and of this one experiment was enough. He never tried it
again.

The portraits of him vary very much, as indeed it is natural that they
should, for most of those which pass for Drake were not meant for Drake
at all. It is the fashion in this country, and a very bad fashion, when
we find a remarkable portrait with no name authoritatively attached to
it, to christen it at random after some eminent man, and there it
remains to perplex or mislead.

The best likeness of Drake that I know is an engraving in Sir William
Stirling-Maxwell's collection of sixteenth-century notabilities,
representing him, as a scroll says at the foot of the plate, at the age
of forty-three. The face is round, the forehead broad and full, with the
short brown hair curling crisply on either side. The eyebrows are highly
arched, the eyes firm, clear, and open. I cannot undertake for the
colour, but I should judge they would be dark grey, like an eagle's. The
nose is short and thick, the mouth and chin hid by a heavy moustache on
the upper lip, and a close-clipped beard well spread over chin and
cheek. The expression is good-humoured, but absolutely inflexible, not a
weak line to be seen. He was of middle height, powerfully built, perhaps
too powerfully for grace, unless the quilted doublet in which the artist
has dressed him exaggerates his breadth.

I have seen another portrait of him, with pretensions to authenticity,
in which he appears with a slighter figure, eyes dark, full, thoughtful,
and stern, a sailor's cord about his neck with a whistle attached to it,
and a ring into which a thumb is carelessly thrust, the weight of the
arms resting on it, as if in a characteristic attitude. Evidently this
is a carefully drawn likeness of some remarkable seaman of the time. I
should like to believe it to be Drake, but I can feel no certainty about
it.

We left him returned home in the Judith from San Juan de Ulloa, a ruined
man. He had never injured the Spaniards. He had gone out with his cousin
merely to trade, and he had met with a hearty reception from the
settlers wherever he had been. A Spanish admiral had treacherously set
upon him and his kinsman, destro