ouldness, leave their widows and fatherless
children to give me bitter curses.

"Whereupon, seeking counsel of God, it pleased His
Divine Majesty to move my heart to prosecute that which
I hope shall be to His glory, and to the contentation of
every Christian mind."

He had two vessels, one of some burthen, the other a
pinnace of thirty tons. The result of the counsel which
he had sought was, that he made over his own large
vessel to such as wished to return, and himself "thinking
it better to die with honour than to return with
infamy," went on, with such volunteers as would follow
him, in a poor leaky cutter, up the sea now called
Davis's Straits, in commemoration of that adventure,
4^0 north of the furthest known point, among storms and
icebergs, by which the long days and twilight nights
alone saved him from being destroyed, and, coasting
back along the American shore, discovered Hudson's
Straits, supposed then to be the long-desired entrance
into the Pacific. This exploit drew the attention of
Walsingham, and by him Davis was presented to
Burleigh, "who was also pleased to show him great
encouragement." If either these statesmen or Elizabeth
had been twenty years younger, his name would have
filled a larger space in history than a small corner of the
map of the world; but if he was employed at all in the
last years of the century, no vales sacer has been found
to celebrate his work, and no clue is left to guide us.
He disappears; a cloud falls over him. He is known
to have commanded trading vessels in the Eastern seas,
and to have returned five times from India. But the
details are all lost, and accident has only parted the
clouds for a moment to show us the mournful setting
with which he, too, went down upon the sea.

In taking out Sir Edward Michellthorne to India, in
1604, he fell in with a crew of Japanese, whose ship
had been burnt, drifting at sea, without provisions, in
a leaky junk. He supposed them to be pirates, but he
did not choose to leave them to so wretched a death,
and took them on board, and in a few hours, watching
their opportunity, they murdered him.

As the fool dieth, so dieth the wise, and there is no
difference; it was the chance of the sea, and the ill
reward of a humane action--a melancholy end for such
a man--like the end of a warrior, not dying Epaminondas-like
on the field of victory, but cut off in some poor
brawl or ambuscade. But so it was with all these men.
They were