There is no record of public demonstrations at this home-coming, or of elation over the precious freight of the battered ships. During the absence of the voyagers a mystery which had been thrown over the ore previously brought had deepened, and now there was a growing suspicion that it was not the profitable thing that had been supposed. Indeed, before this expedition had started out from England a pretty sturdy quarrel had developed among the assayers. Now the breach between them had widened. There was, too, a rupture in the councils of the Company of Cathay. A sorry situation, therefore, was met by the returned voyagers. Frobisher fell upon evil days. Charges of broken promises were brought against him. He retorted with similar charges against the management of the promoting corporation. Finally, the Company of Cathay went to pieces, the adventurers lost heavily in their investment, while of the ore of the last voyage, so laboriously gathered and safely brought to port through such perils, nothing more was heard. Thus dismally closes the story of the Eldorado of the Northwest. Three centuries afterward, in 1862, Captain Charles Francis Hall, the American Arctic explorer, on a New England whaler, identified the Countess of Warwick’s Island as “Kod-lu-narn,” the “Island of the White Man”; and found, even then in a fair state of preservation, the little house of lime and stone, with a number of relics of its furnishings. Frobisher, upon the sorry sequel of his third voyage, lost the queen’s favour. He later regained it, however, sufficiently to secure his employment in 1580 as captain of his majesty’s ship the “Foresight” in preventing the Spaniards from aiding the Irish rebellion in Münster. The next year, 1581, he was the chosen leader for a new voyage of Northwestern discovery projected by the Earl of Leicester and others. But when, before the sailing, in 1582, the instructions were changed for the purposes of trade and not for discovery, he withdrew from the enterprise in favour of Captain Fenton, his lieutenant-general in the voyage of 1578. In 1585–1586 he was in Sir Francis Drake’s warring expedition to the West Indies, in charge of the “Primrose”; and in 1588 he commanded the “Triumph” in the great fight against the Spanish Armada. It was then that he received the honour of knighthood, being knighted by Admiral Howard at sea for bravery. In 1590, 1592, and 1594 he was in other engagements, vice-admiral to Sir John Hawkins in one; sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in another; and in the third with Sir John Norris at Brest and Crozon. Wounded in the last fight while leading his men in action ashore, and the victim of unskilled surgery, he died after reaching Plymouth. He was a brave and resolute man, harsh in bearing, with the rough manner of the sailor, but generous and just. XV HAWKINS IN FLORIDA