The start was auspiciously made from Plymouth harbour on the eleventh of June, 1583, Gilbert wearing on his breast the queen’s gift of an emblematical jewel,—a pearl-tipped golden anchor guarded by a woman,—sent him on the eve of the departure as a token of her good wishes for his venture. But when only the third night out, with a prosperous wind, consternation was occasioned by the desertion of the “Raleigh.” Earlier in the evening she had signified that her captain and many of her men had fallen sick; then later, with no further communication, she put about on a homeward course. Although after his return from the voyage Captain Hayes heard it “credibly reported” that her men were really affected with a contagious sickness, and that she arrived back at Plymouth greatly distressed, he could not accept this as sufficiently accounting for her act. The real reason he “could never understand.” Therefore he left it “to God.” With this desertion of the “Raleigh” Captain Hayes’s “Golden Hind” succeeded to the place of vice-admiral, and accordingly her flag was shifted from the mizzen to the foretop. Thus the remaining ships sailed till the twenty-sixth of July when the “Swallow” and the “Squirrel” were lost in a fog. The “Delight” and the “Golden Hind,” now alone, four days later sighted the Newfoundland coast,—seven weeks from the time that the fleet had left the coast of England. The two ships continued along the east coast to Conception Bay, where the “Swallow” was met again. After her disappearance in the fog she had engaged in piratical performances on the sea. An especially mean act had been the despoiling of a fishing bark and leaving her sailless to make her homeward voyage, some seven hundred leagues away. The “Swallow’s” crew were hilarious over their exploits, and many of them appeared in motley garb made up of the clothing filched from the despoiled fishermen. Her captain, an “honest and religious man,” was held blameless in this business. He had had put upon him men “not to his humour or desert”: a crew of pirates, whom he evidently could not control. Later, the same day, the now three ships had come before the harbour of St. John’s, and here the “Squirrel” was found. She was lying at anchor off the harbour mouth, entrance having been forbidden her by the “English merchants” of St. John’s, who, as the elected “admirals,” represented the Newfoundland fishing fleets of different nationalities, of which thirty-six sail happened then to be inside this harbour.