furnished seven ships to fight the Armada: even more than a
century afterwards, say the chroniclers, "it sent more vessels
to the northern trade than any port in England, saving (strange
juxtaposition!) London and Topsham," and was the centre of
a local civilisation and enterprise, small perhaps compared with
the vast efforts of the present day: but who dare despise the
day of small things, if it has proved to be the dawn of mighty
ones? And it is to the sea-life and labour of Bideford, and
Dartmouth, and Topsham, and Plymouth (then a petty place),
and many another little western town, that England owes the
foundation of her naval and commercial glory. It was the men
of Devon, the Drakes and Hawkins', Gilberts and Raleighs,
Grenviles and Oxenhams, and a host more of "forgotten
worthies," whom we shall learn one day to honour as they
deserve, to whom she owes her commerce, her colonies, her very
existence. For had they not first crippled, by their West
Indian raids, the ill-gotten resources of the Spaniard, and then
crushed his last huge effort in Britain's Salamis, the glorious
fight of 1588, what had we been by now, but a Popish appan-
age of a world-tyranny as cruel as heathen Rome itself, and far
more devilish?

It is in memory of these men, their voyages and their
battles, their faith and their valour, their heroic lives and no
less heroic deaths, that I write this book; and if now and then
I shall seem to warm into a style somewhat too stilted and
pompous, let me be excused for my subject's sake, fit rather to
have been sung than said, and to have proclaimed to all true
English hearts, not as a novel but as an epic (which some man
may yet gird himself to write), the same great message which
the songs of Troy, and the Persian wars, and the trophies of
Marathon and Salamis, spoke to the hearts of all true Greeks
of old.

One bright summer's afternoon, in the year of grace 1575,
a tall and fair boy came lingering along Bideford quay, in his
scholar's gown, with satchel and slate in hand, watching wist-
fully the shipping and the sailors, till, just after he had passed
the bottom of the High Street, he came opposite to one of the
many taverns which looked out upon the river. In the open
bay window sat merchants and gentlemen, discoursing over their
afternoon's draught of sack; and outside the door was gathered
a group of sailors, listening earnestly to some one who stood in
the midst. The boy, all alive for any sea-news, must needs go

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