XXXIIIA. D. 1583SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT
“Heis not worthy to live at all, that for any fear of danger of death, shunneth his countrey’s service and his own honor.”
This message to all men of every English nation was written by a man who once with his lone sword covered a retreat, defending a bridge against twenty horsemen, of whom he killed one, dismounted two and wounded six.
In all his wars and voyages Sir Humphrey Gilbert won the respect of his enemies, and even of his friends, while in his writings one finds the first idea of British colonies overseas. At the end of his life’s endeavor he commanded a squadron that set out to found a first British colony in Virginia, and on the way he called at the port of Saint Johns in Newfoundland. Six years after the first voyage of Columbus, John Cabot had rediscovered the American mainland, naming and claiming this New-found Land, and its port for Henry VII of England. Since then for nearly a hundred years the fishermen of Europe had come to this coast for cod, but the Englishmen claimed and held the ports where the fish were smoked. Now in 1583 Gilbert met the fishermen, English and strangers alike, who delivered to him astick of the timber and a turf of the soil in token of his possession of the land, while he hoisted the flag of England over her first colony, by this act founding the British empire.
When Gilbert left Saint Johns, he had a secret that made him beam with joy and hint at mysterious wealth. Perhaps his mining expert had found pyrites and reported the stuff as gold, or glittering crystals that looked like precious stones. Maybe it was the parcel of specimens for which he sent his page boy on board theDelight, who, failing to bring them, got a terrific thrashing.
When theDelight, his flagship, was cast away on Sable Island, with a hundred men drowned and the sixteen survivors missing, Gilbert mourned, it was thought, more for his secret than for ship or people. From that time the wretchedness of his men aboard the ten-ton frigate, theSquirrel, weighed upon him. They were in rags, hungry and frightened, so to cheer them up he left his great ship and joined them. The Virginia voyage was abandoned, they squared away for England, horrified by a walrus passing between the ships, which the mariners took for a demon jeering at their misfortunes.
They crossed the Atlantic in foul weather, with great seas running, so that the people implored their admiral no longer to risk his life in the half-swampedSquirrel.
“I will not forsake my little company,” was all his answer. The seas became terrific and the weird corposants, Saint Elmo’s electric fires “flamed amazement,” from masts and spars, sure harbinger of still more dreadful weather.
A green sea filled theSquirreland she was near sinking, but as she shook the water off, Sir Humphrey Gilbert waved his hand to theGolden Hind. “Fear not, my masters!” he shouted, “we are as near to Heaven by sea as by land.”
As the night fell, he was still seen sitting abaft with a book in his hand.
Then at midnight all of a sudden the frigate’s lights were out, “for in that moment she was devoured, and swallowed up by the sea,” and the soul of Humphrey Gilbert passed out of the great unrest.