Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/138

 12* REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 64. Spaniards/ by seizing a convoy of bullion at Panama, and on that occasion having seen the South Pacific from the mountains, ' he fell on his knees and prayed God that he might one day navigate those waters/ which no English keel as yet had furrowed. The time and the opportunity had come. He was now in the prime of his strength, thirty-two years old, of middle height, with crisp brown hair, a broad high forehead ; grey steady eyes, unusually long ; small ears, tight to the head ; the mouth and chin slightly conceal- ed by the moustache and beard, but hard, inflexible, and fierce. His dress, as he appears in his portrait, is a loose dark seaman's shirt, belted at the waist. About his neck is a plaited cord with a ring attached to it, in which, as if the attitude was familiar, one of his fingers is slung, displaying a small, delicate, but long and sinewy hand. When at sea he wore a scarlet cap with a gold band, and was exacting in the respect with which he required to be treated by his crew. Such was Francis Drake when he stood on the deck of the Pelican in Plymouth harbour, in November, 1577. The squadron with which he was preparing to sail into a ehartless ocean, and invade the dominions of the King of Spain, consisted of his own ship, of a hundred and twenty tons, the size of the smallest class of our modern Channel schooners, two barques of fifty and thirty tons each, a second ship as it was -called, the Elizabeth, of eighty tons, not larger than a common revenue cutter, and a pinnace, hardly more than a boat, intended to be burnt if it- could not bear the seas,