But still more astonished am I at the use which has been made of Captain Parker’s letter. The letter is written by a man in a state of frantic rage and disappointment. There never was any mine, he believes now. Keymis’s ‘delays we found mere delusions; for he was false to all men and hateful to himself, loathing to live since he could do no more villany. I will speak no more of this hateful fellow to God and man.’ And it is on the testimony of a man in this temper that we are asked to believe that ‘the admiral and vice-admiral,’ Raleigh and St. Leger, are going to the Western Islands ‘to look for homeward-bound men’: if, indeed, the looking for homeward-bound men means really looking for the Spanish fleet, and not merely for recruits for their crews. I never recollect—and I have read pretty fully the sea-records of those days—such a synonym used either for the Mexican or Indian fleet. But let this be as it may, the letter proves too much. For, first, it proves that whosoever is not going to turn ‘pirate,’ our calm and charitable friend Captain Parker is; ‘for my part, by the permission of God, I will either _make a voyage_ or bury myself in the sea.’ Now, what making a voyage meant there is no doubt; and the sum total of the letter is, that a man intending to turn rover himself accuses, under the influence of violent passion, his comrades of doing the like. We may believe him about himself: about others, we shall wait for testimony a little less interested. But the letter proves too much again. For Parker says that ‘Witney and Woolaston are gone off a-head to look for homeward-bound men,’ thus agreeing with Raleigh’s message to his wife, that ‘Witney, for whom I sold all my plate at Plymouth, and to whom I gave more credit and countenance than to all the captains of my fleet, ran from me at the Grenadas, and Woolaston with him.’