d but 20,000_l._ to be shared
among the ships' companies. Men and officers had entered, high and low,
without wages, on the chance of what they might get. The officers and
owners gave a significant demonstration of the splendid spirit in which
they had gone about their work. They decided to relinquish their own
claims on the ransom paid for Carthagena, and bestow the same on the
common seamen, 'wishing it were so much again as would be a sufficient
reward for their painful endeavour.'

Thus all were well satisfied, conscious all that they had done their
duty to their Queen and country. The adventurers' fleet turned homewards
at the beginning of April. What men could do they had achieved. They
could not fight against the pestilence of the tropics. For many days the
yellow fever did its deadly work among them, and only slowly abated.
They were delayed by calms and unfavourable winds. Their water ran
short. They had to land again at Cape Antonio, the western point of
Cuba, and sink wells to supply themselves. Drake himself, it was
observed, worked with spade and bucket, like the meanest person in the
whole company, always foremost where toil was to be endured or honour
won, the wisest in the devising of enterprises, the calmest in danger,
the first to set an example of energy in difficulties, and, above all,
the firmest in maintaining order and discipline. The fever slackened as
they reached the cooler latitudes. They worked their way up the Bahama
Channel, going north to avoid the trades. The French Protestants had
been attempting to colonise in Florida. The Spaniards had built a
fortress on the coast, to observe their settlements and, as occasion
offered, cut Huguenot throats. As he passed by Drake paid this fortress
a visit and wiped it out. Farther north again he was in time to save the
remnant of an English settlement, rashly planted there by another
brilliant servant of Queen Elizabeth.

Of all the famous Elizabethans Sir Walter Raleigh is the most
romantically interesting. His splendid and varied gifts, his chequered
fortunes, and his cruel end, will embalm his memory in English history.
But Raleigh's great accomplishments promised more than they performed.
His hand was in everything, but of work successfully completed he had
less to show than others far his inferiors, to whom fortune had offered
fewer opportunities. He was engaged in a hundred schemes at once, and in
every one of them there was always some taint o