rica.

'Since our return from Panama he never carried mirth nor joy in his
face,' wrote one of Baskerville's officers who was constantly near
Drake. A council of war was called and Drake, making the best of it,
asked which they would have, Truxillo, the port of Honduras, or the
'golden towns' round about Lake Nicaragua. 'Both,' answered Baskerville,
'one after the other.' So the course was laid for San Juan on the
Nicaragua coast. A head wind forced Drake to anchor under the island of
Veragua, a hundred and twenty-five miles west of Nombre de Dios Bay and
right in the deadliest part of that fever-stricken coast. The men began
to sicken and die off. Drake complained at table that the place had
changed for the worse. His earlier memories of New Spain were of a land
like a 'pleasant and delicious arbour' very different from the 'vast and
desert wilderness' he felt all round him now. The wind held foul. More
and more men lay dead or dying. At last Drake himself, the man of iron
constitution and steel nerves, fell ill and had to keep his cabin. Then
reports were handed in to say the stores were running low and that there
would soon be too few hands to man the ships. On this he gave the order
to weigh and 'take the wind as God had sent it.'

So they stood out from that pestilential Mosquito Gulf and came to
anchor in the fine harbor of Puerto Bello, which the Spaniards had
chosen to replace the one at Nombre de Dios, twenty miles east. Here, in
the night of the 27th of January, Drake suddenly sprang out of his
berth, dressed himself, and raved of battles, fleets, Armadas, Plymouth
Hoe, and plots against his own command. The frenzy passed away. He fell
exhausted, and was lifted back to bed again. Then 'like a Christian, he
yielded up his spirit quietly.'

His funeral rites befitted his renown. The great new Spanish fort of
Puerto Bello was given to the flames, as were nearly all the Spanish
prizes, and even two of his own English ships; for there were now no
sailors left to man them. Thus, amid the thunder of the guns whose voice
he knew so well, and surrounded by consuming pyres afloat and on the
shore, his body was committed to the deep, while muffled drums rolled
out their last salute and trumpets wailed his requiem.

APPENDIX

NOTE ON TUDOR SHIPPING

In the sixteenth century there was no hard-and-fast distinction between
naval and all other craft. The sovereign had his own fighting vessels;
and in the course