As often as the _Hind_, tossed upon the waves, approached within hailing distance of the _Squirrel_, the gallant admiral, "himself sitting with a book in his hand" on the deck, would call out words of cheer and consolation--"We are as near heaven by sea as by land." When night came on (September 10) only the lights in the riggings of the _Squirrel_ told that the noble Gilbert still survived.

At midnight the lights went out suddenly, and from the watchers on the Hind the cry arose, "The admiral is cast away." And only the _Golden Hind_ returned to England.[4] The mantle of Gilbert fell upon the shoulders of his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh, whose energy and versatility made him, perhaps, the foremost Englishman of his age.

When the _Hind_ returned from her ill-fated voyage Raleigh was thirty-one years of age and possessed a person at once attractive and commanding.

He was tall and well proportioned, had thick, curly locks, beard, and mustaches, full, red lips, bluish gray eyes, high forehead, and a face described as "long and bold." By service in France, the Netherlands, and Ireland he had shown himself a soldier of the same fearless stamp as his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert; and he was already looked upon as a seaman of splendid powers for organization.

Poet and scholar, he was the patron of Edmund Spenser, the famous author of the _Faerie Queene_; of Richard Hakluyt, the naval historian; of Le Moyne and John White, the painters; and of Thomas Hariot, the great mathematician.
Expert in the art of gallantry, Raleigh won his way to the queen's heart by deftly placing between her feet and a muddy place his new plush coat.