seas constantly broke over the poop and dashed with great force against the lower sails.
After nine days of an unequal contest the gallant commander of a resolute crew reluctantly bore up for the Strait. The provisions were spent and the Desire was quite unfit to continue the voyage. It would be necessary to lay in provisions for the return voyage while anchored in the Strait, of which Davis had already made a careful survey. He made salt by evaporation from the sea water, and stored in the hold fourteen thousand salted penguins. The allowance on the passage home was five ounces of meal per week for each man, three spoonfuls of oil a day, five penguins between four men, and six quarts of water for four men. In the hot weather the penguins, having been insufficiently salted, went bad. Scurvy broke out and all the crew died but sixteen, of whom only five were able to move. The whole work of the ship was done by Davis himself, the master, two men and a boy. The captain and master at first went aloft to the topsails, but latterly they were too weak, and finally topsails and spritsail were blown away. Davis sailed homewards under courses, he and the master taking turns at the helm. Thus did the great navigator, in spite of almost insuperable difficulties, bring his ship into Berehaven, on the Irish coast, on the 11th of June, 1593.
Such was the type of seamen created by a training in the Arctic regions. Davis was not found wanting when the trial came. He had learnt courage of the highest order, perseverance, readiness of resource, patience, and sympathy for his men, in the best school. No man, without these qualities, would have struggled against adverse circumstances as he did, nor would any less gifted seaman have ever brought the Desire home. The life of Davis was still preserved for useful service to his country as a scholar and as a pilot.
The last Elizabethan voyage to the South Sea, with its memorable fight against hopeless odds, belongs rather to the militant than to the exploring department of our naval service. Yet its leader inherited the traditions of an explorer, and was himself a born lover of everything that appertained to the work of maritime discovery.
Richard Hawkyns was the only son of Sir John Hawkyns, and was brought up to a sea life from a boy. Born about 1562, and losing his mother at an early age, he became his father's constant companion, and his boyhood was passed in dockyards and on board
