Then they ran across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in calm weather, abusing the Portuguese for calling it the most dangerous Cape in the world for intolerable storms, for "This Cape," said the English, "is a most stately thing and the finest Cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth." And so they came home. After nearly three years' absence Drake triumphantly sailed his little _Golden Hind_ into Plymouth harbour, where he had long ago been given up as lost. Shouts of applause rang through the land at the news that an Englishman had circumnavigated the world. The Queen sent for Drake to tell his wonderful story, to which she listened spellbound. A great banquet was held on board the little ship, at which Elizabeth was present and knighted Drake, while she ordered that the _Golden Hind_ should be preserved "as a worthy rival of Magellan's _Victoria_" and as "a monument to all posterity of that famous and worthy exploit of Sir Francis Drake." It was afterwards taken to pieces, and the best parts of wood were made into a chair at Oxford, commemorated by Cowley's lines-- "To this great ship, which round the world has run And matched in race the chariot of the sun; * * * * * Drake and his ship could ne'er have wished from fate A happier station or more blest estate; For lo, a seat of endless rest is given To her in Oxford and to him in Heaven." Sir Francis Drake died at sea in 1596. "The waves became his winding sheet, the waters were his tomb, But for his fame the ocean sea was not sufficient room." [Illustration: "THE UNROLLING OF THE CLOUDS"--V. The world as known after its circumnavigation by Sir Francis Drake in the years 1577-1580.] CHAPTER XXXV DAVIS STRAIT But even while Drake was sailing round the world, and Frobisher's search for a north-west passage had been diverted into a quest for gold, men's minds were still bent on the achievement of reaching Cathay by some northern route. A discourse by Sir Humphrey Gilbert to prove the existence of a passage by the north-west to Cathay and the East Indies, in ten chapters, was much discussed, and the Elizabethan seamen were still bent on its discovery. "When I gave myself to the study of geography," said Sir Humphrey, "and came to the fourth part of the world, commonly called America, which by all descriptions I found to be an island environed round by sea, having on the south side of it the Strait of Magellan, on the west side the Sea of the South, which sea runneth toward the north, separating it from the east parts of Asia, and on the north side the sea that severeth it from Greenland, through which Northern Seas the Passage lieth which I take now in hand to discover."