However this may be, the fleet sails; but with no bright auguries. The mass of the sailors are ‘a scum of men’; they are mutinous and troublesome; and what is worse, have got among them (as, perhaps, they were intended to have) the notion that Raleigh’s being still _non ens_ in law absolves them from obeying him when they do not choose, and permits them to say of him behind his back what they list. They have long delays at Plymouth. Sir Warham’s ship cannot get out of the Thames. Pennington, at the Isle of Wight, ‘cannot redeem his bread from the bakers,’ and has to ride back to London to get money from Lady Raleigh. The poor lady has it not, and gives a note of hand to Mr. Wood of Portsmouth. Alas for her! She has sunk her £8000, and, beside that, sold her Wickham estate for £2500; and all is on board the fleet. ‘A hundred pieces’ are all the ready money the hapless pair had left on earth, and they have parted them together. Raleigh has fifty-five and she forty-five till God send it back—if, indeed, He ever send it. The star is sinking low in the west. Trouble on trouble. Sir John Fane has neither men nor money; Captain Witney has not provisions enough, and Raleigh has to sell his plate in Plymouth to help him. Courage! one last struggle to redeem his good name. Then storms off Sicily—a pinnace is sunk; faithful Captain King drives back into Bristol; the rest have to lie by a while in some Irish port for a fair wind. Then Bailey deserts with the ‘Southampton’ at the Canaries; then ‘unnatural weather,’ so that a fourteen days’ voyage takes forty days. Then ‘the distemper’ breaks out under the line. The simple diary of that sad voyage still remains, full of curious and valuable nautical hints; but recording the loss of friend on friend; four or five officers, and, ‘to our great grief, our principal refiner, Mr. Fowler.’ ‘Crab, my old servant.’ Next a lamentable twenty-four hours, in which they lose Pigott, the lieutenant-general, ‘mine honest frinde, Mr. John Talbot, one that had lived with me a leven yeeres in the Tower, an excellent general skoller, and a faithful and true man as ever lived,’ with two ‘very fair conditioned gentleman,’ and ‘mine own cook Francis.’ Then more officers and men, and my ‘cusen Payton.’ Then the water is near spent, and they are forced to come to half allowance, till they save and drink greedily whole canfuls of the bitter rain water. At last Raleigh’s own turn comes; running on deck in a squall, he gets wet through, and has twenty days of burning fever; ‘never man suffered a more furious heat,’ during which he eats nothing but now and then a stewed prune.