THE

HE days were the days when England built up her greatness out of a grain of ignorance, a bushel of courage, and an all-pervading leaven of restlessness. Without the first not even the other two would have given her stomach and impulse enough to have faced the forces of Spain at home and in the West. Without the second the other two had shaped but little of the world's history; and lacking the third, the heart of England had never flung itself beyond seas, seeking out El Dorado, Manoa, and all the gilded shadows of the age, and finding in the shadows something of a biding substance.

Compound of all three, as became his age, was Martin Hughes, shipwright, of the Port of Rye, in the County of Sussex.

The comfortable lie disposed of at Patay, Formigny, and Zutphen, the last at the expense of England's Marcellus, that one Englishman, by reason simply of being an Englishman, was the equal of two Frenchmen, three Spaniards, or five Portugee, was to him an article of faith, wherein may be seen the grain of ignorance helping to build up the greatness.

Though the Armada had come and gone these seven years, those midsummer days were fresh enough in memory to set a seal on such a faith; and God-fearing man as was Martin Hughes the elder, the story of the long Channel fight had lost nought in the telling, whether in the odds to be overcome or in the dogged courage that overcame the odds. 'Twas God Almighty fought for England, and a right thing, too, seeing that England fought for God Almighty; and in coupling the one with the other, he spoke in all honesty and

reverence.

Of the traditions of these days Martin Hughes the younger was bubbling full, and when all's said and done it was wholesome meat on which to feed both mind and spirit. In such simple faith men drew the nearer to their God, and held the honour of their country shrined the higher since the one and the other were interwoven. The Little Englander of these latter days would in those have had a shorter shrift than rope, and more hands to hang than hearts to pity.

The seven years were years of packed life; years of defence, attack, strength, growth, development; and with the years Martin the younger grew, knitting into his fibre the loves, the hates, and the restlessness of the age, but chiefly to fear God, revere the Queen, and hate the devil and the King of Spain. And with the knitting of the sterner stuff came, as has come in all generations, the knitting of those softer loves, those hopes, those fears which make or mar the man, even as the sterner do the nation.

Then, as now, craftsmen worked by families in a single groove. It was enough that Martin Hughes the elder had been a shipwright, that Martin Hughes the younger should be a shipwright also. And in like fashion, it was a thing of nature that a father and son should serve a father and son generation by generation, if the kinship of fellow-craftsmen in those days could be called servitude.

Since the York and Lancaster days there had always been a Ned Barriscote and a Martin Hughes, master and servant, until at length it now had come that the entail of craft-kinship was broken, and there remained only a Martin Hughes and a

Mary Barriscote. In such a case the problem of life hath a holy, a gracious, and a natural solution, and Martin Hughes had willingly found a dearer and a yet more ready servitude, had not one of Drake's men fared round by Rye and spoilt it all.

It was the time of beating up recruits for that last unhappy venture of a venturesome life, and the restlessness of the age was in Martin Hughes but as so much tow waiting a spark and puff of breath.

Both came from tarry Peter Morgan, Able Seaman, and still more able liar, in the service of Admiral Drake. The spark was a jeer at the stay-at-home lads who, when Spain's back was broken, hung off from snapping her neck too, and the puff of breath stirred in every windy tale of the piled-up ingots, unstrung pearls, and outlandish jewels hidden away south of the west for the first searcher to find. Oh, the wonder of the things Peter Morgan had, just by a hair's breadth, missed the seeing!

As the magnet draws steel, so does gold draw a man; and when Peter Morgan told of El Dorado, Manoa, and their fellows the glittering fables of the day, Martin Hughes laid down axe and chisel, and swore he'd face Manoa-land, though he sought until he died.

His mind made up and closed tight as wax against argument, he naturally, manlike, set to work to prove himself in the right.

Rye was no longer the Rye of old days. Trade had slipped westward there to Portsmouth, aye, and still further, round to Plymouth. That was Drake and Hawkins's doing, and now Drake must be made to pay for Drake. All of which as to the trade, Mary knew full well. "But," quoth she, being a shrewd lass, "will it not slip away the faster, you being gone? Such a thing is hard to hold in a woman's hands."

Then Martin, being more nimble with his hands and head than with his tongue, shifted ground, talking "Peter Morgan" as if it had been Martin Hughes's own thought.

"A shame," he said, "now Spain's under heel, not to crush the life out once and for all. Leave her another five years

and it's a second Armada we'll see sweeping up the Channel. Cut off supplies and so starve her, and England's safe."

"Aye, aye," said Mary, "and who put that fine thought in Martin Hughes's brain? Not Martin Hughes, I'm thinking." Which, while it was not argument, showed that Mary Barriscote had a shrewd head on her shoulders, and could go cruelly to the truth for all her love, or, perhaps by reason of her love, that being a fashion of woman. "Well enough to singe the King of Spain's beard at Nombre de Dios; but who's to fend the maids at home from the bruisings of the King of Spain's fists?"

"Tut, lass," said Martin, out of his point of cardinal faith. "What England's done England'll do again, though Drake, Hawkins, and Martin Hughes be beyond seas. And 'tis but a year, or two, or three, and the gold of Manoa 'll pay for all."

Whereat Mary did what she should have done at the first, and fell to crying quietly behind her fingers. "And how am I to live at home without you a year, or two, or three, aye, or all my life; you being dead beyond seas ? Tell me that, Martin Hughes?"

Now when a woman cries softly as if the tears came slowly from the heart, the nobler and honester the man the heavier the gentle tempest smites him, and there are but two ways of meeting it: annihilate the lesser storm by a greater, a veritable tornado against a midsummer outbreak, and be a brute in your passion; or fly for shelter until the skies are clear. What could Martin do but say

"The Lord forbid, lass. Ha' done with weeping; we'll say no more of it," and then show how he thought no more of it by spending the next three hours tramping Rye beach in a more evil temper than Martin Hughes had ever dreamed lay in Martin Hughes. No man knows how dear a thing is to his heart till the hope of it is crushed out.

The seven days that thereafter crept so wearily far from one another's heels were days of heaviness. The burden of death is ever a heavy one, whether that which lies dead is hope, honour, ambition, or

any other of the passions men are playthings to, or that love which hath been life itself. And so the days were days of heaviness. Then, Martin Hughes coming upon Mary Barriscote stitching hard at garments which were certainly none of women's wear, suspicion was added to this burden; and, like a fool, he bore the heart-break for a full day, then spoke out, asking bluntly and with scant grace what things these were.

Now women's ways are truly hard of comprehension even to a man in love.

"What of this?" said Mary, stitching the harder. "Nay! how could a man go west with Drake without a woman to look to him first, and you with neither mother nor sister to set you on your way in comfort." Upon which, for neither rhyme. nor reason, but to show, I suppose, that the comfort went not all westward, she flung garment, thread, needle, tape, and what-not all on the table, and her head on top of the heap, and broke out a-crying. "But," said Martin, and because that restlessness was in his bones, and, like a fool, he knew not which way the good lay, and there he stopped.

"But," said Mary between her sobs, "if Manoa-land lie not for you here in Rye, then go westward with Drake and seek it. What joy to me to hold you here fretting your heart out. It's only a yearor or two years-or-or three, and-oh, my God! I would Philip of Spain had choked Peter Morgan ere he came here." And the weeping that came now was no quiet weeping, but a passion of grief under the shadow of bereavement.

And now the wind was from the other quarter. It was Martin who, honestly enough on the surface, would have nought of Manoa, and Mary who, out of naked misery, open and hidden, would have nought but Manoa.

"Better love me and go," said she, "than bide and fret till fret breed resentment, and resentment hate. Better a three-years sorrow than a thirty-years canker." And in the end, Martin, being the weaker of the two, for all his talk, went westward with Drake, full at the last of Manoa and its riches, and by that much,

as well as by reason of his coarser fibre, the less stricken at the parting.

In any case, it is the woman who bides at home who suffers. With the man, the new world and its importunities fill the blank; but the woman, hourly face to face with the beggary of her happiness, her loss, and her silence, finds no such easy comfort, and for her the world grows dark.

But it is not with Mary and her overlate, barren repentance of her wilful sacrifice that we have to do, a repentance that is the reaction of loneliness when the grandeur of abnegation shows poor and grey. Self-sacrifice is so magnificent and endurable until the consequences come! Nor yet, indeed, with Martin Hughes in that weary journey westward, now tempest, and now a drifting calm, with its grievous check at Grand Canary, and its none too joyous rendezvous at the Admiral's old anchorage. A journey of dissension and disaster, overshadowed first by the death of old John Hawkins, weary enough of life after his seventy-five years of this world with its buffets to spirit as to body, but never weary of fighting the Queen's battles. Sad hearts they were, every one, on that small fleet of twenty-six sail when they laid the grand old sailor to his rest off Puerto Rico.

Thence to La Hacha to a barren conquest, on to Santa Marta and Nombre de Dios, whence Martin tasted the flavour of Spain and the new world for the first time in Baskerville's ill-fated expedition up the Chagres. Thence across the Musquito Gulf to the deadly paradise of Escudo de Veragua, sowing the seeds of pestilence in every breath drawn in the glory of the luxuriant undergrowth. Within a month of laying Hawkins to rest the shadow had loomed yet deeper, and Francis Drake himself, the brain and soul of the attack, had passed away.

A mighty funeral, that which bowed all hearts with sorrow that December day off Porto Bello; and a fitting procession it was which swept downward through the depths with England's best sea-warrior, a procession of battered war - ships and Spanish prizes, and flung across the face of the waters rolled the pall of smoke from

the Spanish forts as they went up in flame, a fiery sacrifice to the manes of the dead.

A voyage, truly, of disaster and death, but with which, after all, we have little to do, seeing that this is a story of the finding of Manca, and not of the losing of heroes.

It's a far cry from Porto Bello to north of the Mexican Sea, and to tell how Martin Hughes and eight of the nineteen who adventured with him fared on their way would fill an hour to the full and yet leave overmuch untold. The marvel of the tale being not so much that they lost eleven men in winning their way, but rather that nine set foot on the coast.

A war-worn nine they were, and worn by more battles than those fought with the Spaniards. Their own element, the sea, had dealt savagely with them, battering into desperate state the boat wherein they had made their adventure. Disease had grappled them almost from the first, choking two, and even now held three hard by the throat. Hunger had laid close siege, starving two more into the quiet submission of death. Thirst and thirst's near ally, tropic heat, had fought on the side of Spain and slain one by the way.

Of the other six, five had death dealt out in open warfare, and of the sixth it were better not to ask too closely, for, like as not, the Inquisition would tell no truths pleasant to be learned.

Thus the nine were war-worn and spent in spirit when, as near as they dared to San Jose, they faced away from the waters. Their clothing was in rags, their bodies gaunt with privation and sickness, their stubborn tenacity of spirit strained to breaking. Hitherto the journey had been, at the worst, coastwise and by salt water. Now the beloved sea was a thing of the bygone, and for the first time there came a real counting of the cost, and with the counting came discord and disruption.

"Manoa is over-far," said some," and no man knoweth where it lies. What matter that we set out to seek Manoa if we find instead El Dorado, and with it the better prize. Gold of the one weighed as heavy and shone as bright as gold of the other. Drake himself-God rest him

had shifted a worse plan for a better before now; why not they?" As all the world knew, El Dorado lay clustered round the Lake of Nicaragua; but where was this Manoa? A far cry to El Dorado, forsooth! Well, at the worst it was for the most part a cry over a sailor-man's natural home, the bonny sea, and not a cry over the Lord alone knew what desperate chances of swamp, forest, desert, plain, or mountain as was the cry to this Manoa. Better take ship again and fare west.

So for one grievous day there was a bitter strife. "Better the swamp and all the rest of it, and I grant the risks,” said Martin, "than that accursed back track to the San Juan River." If of twenty men hard fed and with their lives whole in them eleven died on the outward journey, how many, such as they were now, shadows in strength and spirit, would live through the return plainly, none. Or worse, live they might until it pleased Spain to send them to heaven in a chariot of fire. Better the savagery of the unknown than the tender mercies of Spain.

"No El Dorado for me," said Martin. "Manoa I vowed I'd seek, and Manoa I'll find if I die for it. The plan hath cost overmuch for a shift at this time of day, and if I die, please God I'll die as becomes a man, and not in some filthy Spanish prison." As for the where, Manoa lay north and west-more north than west, maybe-and another hundred miles or two of a tramp would be of small account at the journey's end when the gains were reckoned up: Manoa for him. So again there was bitter strife, and that day Englishmen had well-nigh done Spain's work one upon the other.

In the end, seven took to their crazy boat once more and fared south by west again, nor were ever heard of in this world, and two-Martin Hughes and tarry Peter Morgan-broke their way into the woods, supremely certain with the calm assurance of post-Armada men that the looting of Manoa to their advantage was but a question of discovery.

Positions had shifted with Martin Hughes and Peter Morgan. While on salt water the latter had to lead, and Martin obeyed