f the English. He had done
enough--you say. Yes, he had done enough--but--like all men who love
the game of life he wished to have just one more expedition in search
of gold and adventure, for--by nature he was a gambler, and he was
throwing the dice with Fate.

So a goodly crew sailed with him again, hoping for another raid upon
mule trains and cities of treasure. But alas! There was to be a
different story from the others. All the towns and hamlets of the
Spanish Main had been warned to "be careful and look well to
themselves, for that Drake and Hawkins were making ready in England to
come upon them." And when the English arrived they found stout defense
and valiant men, nor was a sail seen "worth giving chase unto."
Hawkins died, many grew ill of fever, and finally Drake, himself,
succumbed to the malarial atmosphere of Panama. He was to remain where
gold and adventure had first lured him.

On January the twenty-eighth, 1596, the great captain yielded up his
spirit "like a Christian, quietly in his cabin." And a league from the
shore of Porto Rico, the mighty rover of the seas was placed in a
weighted hammock and tossed into the sobbing ocean. The spume frothed
above the eddying current, sucked downward by the emaciated form of
the famous mariner, and a solitary gull shrieked cruelly above the
bubbles, below which--upon beads of coral and clean sand--rested the
body of Sir Francis Drake, rover, rogue, and rattling sea ranger. It
was his last journey.

"Weep for this soul, who, in fathoms of azure,
Lies where the wild tarpon breaks through the foam,
Where the sea otter mews to its brood in the ripples,
As the pelican wings near the palm-forest gloom.
Ghosts of the buccaneers flit through the branches,
Dusky and dim in the shadows of eve,
While shrill screams the parrot,--the lord of Potanches,
'Drake, Captain Drake, you've had your last leave.'"

SEA IRONY

One day I saw a ship upon the sands
Careened upon beam ends, her tilted deck
Swept clear of rubbish of her long-past wreck;
Her colors struck, but not by human hands;
Her masts the driftwood of what distant strands!
Her frowning ports, where, at the Admiral's beck,
Grim-visaged cannon held the foe in check,
Gaped for the frolic of the minnow bands.
The seaweed banners in her fo'ks'le waved,
A turtle basked upon her capstan head;
Her cabin's pomp the clownish sculpin bra