Read "The Great Captain" by Katharine Tynan online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In the autumn of that year my lord came back, and in my joy at seeing him again I hardly felt that he was sad. The Lord Essex had prevailed against him with the Queen and he was returned to exile, although one of his ships had brought in a Spanish galleon worth fifty thousand pounds. It must be remembered of him that his passion for discovering the unknown worlds swallowed up all the treasure he was able to discover; so that the sea was never without his ships, and one expedition but led to another.
Had he been differently framed this season at Youghall had been happy enough. For now there was no fighting to be done he led that quiet and pastoral life which might have won him Master Spenser's title for him, _The Shepherd of the Ocean_. He delighted himself by planting the strange seeds and roots he had brought from the ends of the earth and seeing them thrive. All his garden ventures were fortunate. The kindly Irish soil suited well with the tobacco, the myrtle, and the fuchsia. At Affane, a little way up the Blackwater, he had his orchards, where already the cherry grew abundantly. There, also, on sunny banks, he sowed in long rows a strange fruit called the potato, whereof the fruit is in the earth, and the leaves above it, and a very pleasant fruit to eat when well boiled, being of a sweet flouriness within.