he had seen, and talked
with all eagerness and warmth of the new expedition
for the following spring. Apocryphal gold-mines still
occupying the minds of Mr. Hayes and others, who were
persuaded that Sir Humfrey was keeping to himself some
such discovery which he had secretly made, and they
tried hard to extract it from him. They could make
nothing, however, of his odd ironical answers, and their
sorrow at the catastrophe which followed is sadly blended
with disappointment that such a secret should have
perished. Sir Humfrey doubtless saw America with
other eyes than theirs, and gold-mines richer than
California in its huge rivers and savannahs.

"Leaving the issue of this good hope (about the gold),"
continues Mr. Hayes, "to God, who only knoweth the truth
thereof, I will hasten to the end of this tragedy, which must
be knit up in the person of our General, and as it was God's
ordinance upon him, even so the vehement persuasion of
his friends could nothing avail to divert him from his wilful
resolution of going in his frigate; and when he was
entreated by the captain, master, and others, his well-wishers
in the Hinde, not to venture, this was his answer--'I will
not forsake my little company going homewards, with whom
I have passed so many storms and perils.'"

Albeit, thinks the writer, who is unable to comprehend
such high gallantry, there must have been something on
his mind of what the world would say of him, "and it
was rather rashness than advised resolution to prefer
the wind of a vain report to the weight of his own life,"
for the writing of which sentence we will trust the
author, either in this world or the other, has before this
done due penance and repented of it.

Two-thirds of the way home they met foul weather
and terrible seas, "breaking short and pyramid-wise."
Men who had all their lives "occupied the sea" had
never seen it more outrageous. "We had also upon
our mainyard an apparition of a little fire by night,
which seamen do call Castor and Pollux."

"Monday, the ninth of September, in the afternoon, the
frigate was near cast away oppressed by waves, but at that
time recovered, and giving forth signs of joy, the General,
sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried unto us in the
Hinde so often as we did approach within hearing, 'We
are as near to heaven by sea as by land,' reiterating the
same speech, well beseeming a soldier resolute in Jesus
Christ, as I can testify that he was. The sa