Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth

Jack (who was always very loud about the dignity of the priesthood, as many of his cloth are, who have no other dignity whereon to stand) answered very boldly, “Of course.”

Frank. Then a priest containeth a man, and is a man, and something over—viz, his priesthood?

Jack (who saw whither this would lead). I suppose so.

Frank. Then, if a priest show himself no man, he shows himself all the more no priest?

“I’ll tell you what, Master Frank,” says Jack, “you may be right by logic; but sharks aren’t logic, nor don’t understand it neither.”

Frank. Nay but, my recalcitrant Jack, my stiff-necked Jack, is it the part of a man to howl like a pig in a gate, because he thinks that is there which is not there?

Jack had not a word to say.

Frank. And still more, when if that had been there, it had been the duty of a brave man to have kept his mouth shut, if only to keep salt water out, and not add the evil of choking to that of being eaten?

“Ah!” says Jack, “that’s all very fine; but you know as well as I that it was not the Spaniards I was afraid of. They were Heaven’s handiwork, and I knew how to deal with them; but as for those fiends’ spawn of sharks, when I saw that fellow take the fish alongside, it upset me clean, and there’s an end of it!”

Frank. Oh, Jack, Jack, behold how one sin begets another! Just now thou wert but a coward, and now thou art a Manichee. For thou hast imputed to an evil creator that which was formed only for a good end, namely, sharks, which were made on purpose to devour useless carcasses like thine. Moreover, as a brother of the Rose, thou wert bound by the vow of thy brotherhood to have leaped joyfully down that shark’s mouth.

Jack. Ay, very likely, if Mistress Rose had been in his stomach; but I wanted to fight Spaniards just then, not to be shark-bitten.

Frank. Jack, thy answer savors of self-will. If it is ordained that thou shouldst advance the ends of the Brotherhood by being shark-bitten, or flea-bitten, or bitten by sharpers, to the detriment of thy carnal wealth, or, shortly, to suffer any shame or torment whatsoever, even to strappado and scarpines, thou art bound to obey thy destiny, and not, after that vain Roman conceit, to choose the manner of thine own death, which is indeed only another sort of self-murder. We therefore consider thee as a cause of scandal, and a rotten and creaking branch, to be excised by the spiritual arm, and do hereby excise thee, and cut thee off.

Jack. Nay faith, that’s a little too much, Master Frank. How long have you been Bishop of Exeter?

Frank. Jack, thy wit being blinded, and full of gross vapors, by reason of the perturbations of fear (which, like anger, is a short madness, and raises in the phantasy vain spectres,—videlicet, of sharks and Spaniards), mistakes our lucidity. For thy Manicheeism, let his lordship of Exeter deal with it. For thy abominable howling and caterwauling, offensive in a chained cur, but scandalous in a preacher and a brother of the Rose, we do hereby deprive thee of thine office of chaplain to the Brotherhood; and warn thee, that unless within seven days thou do some deed equal to the Seven Champions, or Ruggiero and Orlando’s self, thou shalt be deprived of sword and dagger, and allowed henceforth to carry no more iron about thee than will serve to mend thy pen.

“And now, Jack,” said Amyas, “I will give thee a piece of news. No wonder that young men, as the parsons complain so loudly, will not listen to the Gospel, while it is preached to them by men on whom they cannot but look down; a set of softhanded fellows who cannot dig, and are ashamed to beg; and, as my brother has it, must needs be parsons before they are men.

“Frank. Ay, and even though we may excuse that in Popish priests and friars, who are vowed not to be men, and get their bread shamefully and rascally by telling sinners who owe a hundred measures to sit down quickly and take their bill and write fifty: yet for a priest of the Church of England (whose business is not merely to smuggle sinful souls up the backstairs into heaven, but to make men good Christians by making them good men, good gentlemen, and good Englishmen) to show the white feather in the hour of need, is to unpreach in one minute all that he had been preaching his life long.

“I tell thee,” says Amyas, “if I had not taken thee for another guess sort of man, I had never let thee have the care of a hundred brave lads’ immortal souls—”

And so on, both of them boarding him at once with their heavy shot, larboard and starboard, till he fairly clapped his hands to his ears and ran for it, leaving poor Frank laughing so heartily, that Amyas was after all glad the thing had happened, for the sake of the smile which it put into his sad and steadfast countenance.

The next day was Sunday; on which, after divine service (which they could hardly persuade Jack to read, so shamefaced was he; and as for preaching after it, he would not hear of such a thing), Amyas read aloud, according to custom, the articles of their agreement; and then seeing abreast of them a sloping beach with a shoot of clear water running into the sea, agreed that they should land there, wash the clothes, and again water the ship; for they had found water somewhat scarce at Barbados. On this party Jack Brimblecombe must needs go, taking with him his sword and a great arquebuse; for he had dreamed last night (he said) that he was set upon by Spaniards, and was sure that the dream would come true; and moreover, that he did not very much care if they did, or if he ever got back alive; “for it was better to die than be made an ape, and a scarecrow, and laughed at by the men, and badgered with Ramus his logic, and Plato his dialectical devilries, to confess himself a Manichee, and, for aught he knew, a turbaned Turk, or Hebrew Jew,” and so flung into the boat like a man desperate.

So they went ashore, after Amyas had given strict commands against letting off firearms, for fear of alarming the Spaniards. There they washed their clothes, and stretched their legs with great joy, admiring the beauty of the place, and then began to shoot the seine which they had brought on shore with them. “In which,” says the chronicler, “we caught many strange fishes, and beside them, a sea-cow full seven feet long, with limpets and barnacles on her back, as if she had been a stick of drift-timber. This is a fond and foolish beast: and yet pious withal; for finding a corpse, she watches over it day and night until it decay or be buried. The Indians call her manati; who carries her young under her arm, and gives it suck like a woman; and being wounded, she lamenteth aloud with a human voice, and is said at certain seasons to sing very melodiously; which melody, perhaps, having been heard in those seas, is that which Mr. Frank reported to be the choirs of the Sirens and Tritons. The which I do not avouch for truth, neither rashly deny, having seen myself such fertility of Nature’s wonders that I hold him who denieth aught merely for its strangeness to be a ribald and an ignoramus. Also one of our men brought in two great black fowls which he had shot with a crossbow, bodied and headed like a capon, but bigger than any eagle, which the Spaniards call curassos; which, with that sea-cow, afterwards made us good cheer, both roast and sodden, for the cow was very dainty meat, as good as a four-months’ calf, and tender and fat withal.”

After that they set to work filling the casks and barricos, having laid the boat up to the outflow of the rivulet. And lucky for them it was, as it fell out, that they were all close together at that work, and not abroad skylarking as they had been half-an-hour before.

Now John Brimblecombe had gone apart as soon as they landed, with a shamefaced and doleful countenance; and sitting down under a great tree, plucked a Bible from his bosom, and read steadfastly, girded with his great sword, and his arquebuse lying by him. This too was well for him, and for the rest; for they had not yet finished their watering, when there was a cry that the enemy was on them; and out of the wood, not twenty yards from the good parson, came full fifty shot, with a multitude of negroes behind them, and an officer in front on horseback, with a great plume of feathers in his hat, and his sword drawn in his hand.

“Stand, for your lives!” shouted Amyas: and only just in time; for there was ten good minutes lost in running up and down before he could get his men into some order of battle. But when Jack beheld the Spaniards, as if he had expected their coming, he plucked a leaf and put it into the page of his book for a mark, laid the book down soberly, caught up his arquebuse, ran like a mad dog right at the Spanish captain, shot him through the body stark dead, and then, flinging the arquebuse at the head of him who stood next, fell on with his sword like a very Colbrand, breaking in among the arquebuses, and striking right and left such ugly strokes, that the Spaniards (who thought him a very fiend, or Luther’s self come to life to plague them) gave back pell-mell, and shot at him five or six at once with their arquebuses: but whether from fear of him, or of wounding each other, made so bad play with their pieces, that he only got one shrewd gall in his thigh, which made him limp for many a day. But as fast as they gave back he came on; and the rest by this time ran up in good order, and altogether nearly forty men well armed. On which the Spaniards turned, and went as fast as they had come, while Cary hinted that, “The dogs had had such a taste of the parson, that they had no mind to wait for the clerk and people.”

“Come back, Jack! are you mad?” shouted Amyas.

But Jack (who had not all this time spoken one word) followed them as fiercely as ever, till, reaching a great blow at one of the arquebusiers, he caught his foot in a root; on which down he went, and striking his head against the ground, knocked out of himself all the breath he had left (which between fatness and fighting was not much), and so lay. Amyas, seeing the Spaniards gone, did not care to pursue them: but picked up Jack, who, staring about, cried, “Glory be! glory be!—How many have I killed? How many have I killed?”

“Nineteen, at the least,” quoth Cary, “and seven with one back stroke;” and then showed Brimblecombe the captain lying dead, and two arquebusiers, one of which was the fugitive by whom he came to his fall, beside three or four more who were limping away wounded, some of them by their fellows’ shot.

“There!” said Jack, pausing and blowing, “will you laugh at me any more, Mr. Cary; or say that I cannot fight, because I am a poor parson’s son?”

Cary took him by the hand, and asked pardon of him for his scoffing, saying that he had that day played the best man of all of them; and Jack, who never bore malice, began laughing in his turn, and—

“Oh, Mr. Cary, we have all known your pleasant ways, ever since you used to put drumble-drones into my desk to Bideford school.” And so they went to the boats, and pulled off, thanking God (as they had need to do) for their great deliverance: while all the boats’ crew rejoiced over Jack, who after a while grew very faint (having bled a good deal without knowing it), and made as little of his real wound as he made much the day before of his imaginary one.

Frank asked him that evening how he came to show so cool and approved a valor in so sudden a mishap.

“Well, my masters,” said Jack, “I don’t deny that I was very downcast on account of what you said, and the scandal which I had given to the crew; but as it happened, I was reading there under the tree, to fortify my spirits, the history of the ancient worthies, in St. Paul his eleventh chapter to the Hebrews; and just as I came to that, ‘out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens,’ arose the cry of the Spaniards. At which, gentlemen, thinking in myself that I fought in just so good a cause as they, and, as I hoped, with like faith, there came upon me so strange an assurance of victory, that I verily believed in myself that if there had been a ten thousand of them, I should have taken no hurt. Wherefore,” said Jack, modestly, “there is no credit due to me, for there was no valor in me whatsoever, but only a certainty of safety; and any coward would fight if he knew that he were to have all the killing and none of the scratches.”

Which words he next day, being Sunday, repeated in his sermon which he made on that chapter, with which all, even Salvation Yeo himself, were well content and edified, and allowed him to be as godly a preacher as he was (in spite of his simple ways) a valiant and true-hearted comrade.

They brought away the Spanish officer’s sword (a very good blade), and also a great chain of gold which he wore about his neck; both of which were allotted to Brimblecombe as his fair prize; but he, accepting the sword, steadfastly refused the chain, entreating Amyas to put it into the common stock; and when Amyas refused, he cut it into links and distributed it among those of the boat’s crew who had succored him, winning thereby much good-will. “And indeed” (says the chronicler), “I never saw in that worthy man, from the first day of our school-fellowship till he was laid in his parish church of Hartland (where he now sleeps in peace), any touch of that sin of covetousness which has in all ages, and in ours no less than others, beset especially (I know not why) them who minister about the sanctuary. But this man, though he was ugly and lowly in person, and in understanding simple, and of breeding but a poor parson’s son, had yet in him a spirit so loving and cheerful, so lifted from base and selfish purposes to the worship of duty, and to a generosity rather knightly than sacerdotal, that all through his life he seemed to think only that it was more blessed to give than to receive. And all that wealth which he gained in the wars he dispersed among his sisters and the poor of his parish, living unmarried till his death like a true lover and constant mourner (as shall be said in place), and leaving hardly wherewith to bring his body to the grave. At whom if we often laughed once, we should now rather envy him, desiring to be here what he was, that we may be hereafter where he is. Amen.”

CHAPTER XIX
WHAT BEFELL AT LA GUAYRA

 
       “Great was the crying, the running and riding,
     Which at that season was made in the place;
        The beacons were fired, as need then required,
     To save their great treasure they had little space.”
 

                                       Winning of Cales.

The men would gladly have hawked awhile round Margarita and Cubagua for another pearl prize. But Amyas having, as he phrased it, “fleshed his dogs,” was loth to hang about the islands after the alarm had been given. They ran, therefore, south-west across the mouth of that great bay which stretches from the Peninsula of Paria to Cape Codera, leaving on their right hand Tortuga, and on their left the meadow-islands of the Piritoos, two long green lines but a few inches above the tideless sea. Yeo and Drew knew every foot of the way, and had good reason to know it; for they, the first of all English mariners, had tried to trade along this coast with Hawkins. And now, right ahead, sheer out of the sea from base to peak, arose higher and higher the mighty range of the Caracas mountains; beside which all hills which most of the crew had ever seen seemed petty mounds. Frank, of course, knew the Alps; and Amyas the Andes; but Cary’s notions of height were bounded by M’Gillicuddy’s Reeks, and Brimblecombe’s by Exmoor; and the latter, to Cary’s infinite amusement, spent a whole day holding on by the rigging, and staring upwards with his chin higher than his nose, till he got a stiff neck. Soon the sea became rough and chopping, though the breeze was fair and gentle; and ere they were abreast of the Cape, they became aware of that strong eastward current which, during the winter months, so often baffles the mariner who wishes to go to the westward. All night long they struggled through the billows, with the huge wall of Cape Codera a thousand feet above their heads to the left, and beyond it again, bank upon bank of mountain, bathed in the yellow moonlight.

Morning showed them a large ship, which had passed them during the night upon the opposite course, and was now a good ten miles to the eastward. Yeo was for going back and taking her. Of the latter he made a matter of course; and the former was easy enough, for the breeze blowing dead off the land, was a “soldier’s wind, there and back again,” for either ship; but Amyas and Frank were both unwilling.

“Why, Yeo, you said that one day more would bring us to La Guayra.”

“All the more reason, sir, for doing the Lord’s work thoroughly, when He has brought us safely so far on our journey.”

“She can pass well enough, and no loss.”

“Ah, sirs, sirs, she is delivered into your hands, and you will have to give an account of her.”

“My good Yeo,” said Frank, “I trust we shall give good account enough of many a tall Spaniard before we return: but you know surely that La Guayra, and the salvation of one whom we believe dwells there, was our first object in this adventure.”

Yeo shook his head sadly. “Ah, sirs, a lady brought Captain Oxenham to ruin.”

“You do not dare to compare her with this one?” said Frank and Cary, both in a breath.

“God forbid, gentlemen: but no adventure will prosper, unless there is a single eye to the Lord’s work; and that is, as I take it, to cripple the Spaniard, and exalt her majesty the queen. And I had thought that nothing was more dear than that to Captain Leigh’s heart.”

Amyas stood somewhat irresolute. His duty to the queen bade him follow the Spanish vessel: his duty to his vow, to go on to La Guayra. It may seem a far-fetched dilemma. He found it a practical one enough.

However, the counsel of Frank prevailed, and on to La Guayra he went. He half hoped that the Spaniard would see and attack them. However, he went on his way to the eastward; which if he had not done, my story had had a very different ending.

About mid-day a canoe, the first which they had seen, came staggering toward them under a huge three-cornered sail. As it came near, they could see two Indians on board.

“Metal floats in these seas, you see,” quoth Cary. “There’s a fresh marvel, for you, Frank.”

“Expound,” quoth Frank, who was really ready to swallow any fresh marvel, so many had he seen already.

“Why, how else would those two bronze statues dare to go to sea in such a cockleshell, eh? Have I given you the dor now, master courtier!”

“I am long past dors, Will. But what noble creatures they are! and how fearlessly they are coming alongside! Can they know that we are English, and the avengers of the Indians?”

“I suspect they just take us for Spaniards, and want to sell their cocoa-nuts. See, the canoe is laden with vegetables.”

“Hail them, Yeo!” said Amyas. “You talk the best Spanish, and I want speech of one of them.”

Yeo did so; the canoe, without more ado, ran alongside, and lowered her felucca sail, while a splendid Indian scrambled on board like a cat.

He was full six feet high, and as bold and graceful of bearing as Frank or Amyas’s self. He looked round for the first moment smilingly, showing his white teeth; but the next, his countenance changed; and springing to the side, he shouted to his comrade in Spanish—

“Treachery! No Spaniard,” and would have leaped overboard, but a dozen strong fellows caught him ere he could do so.

It required some trouble to master him, so strong was he, and so slippery his naked limbs; Amyas, meanwhile, alternately entreated the men not to hurt the Indian, and the Indian to be quiet, and no harm should happen to him; and so, after five minutes’ confusion, the stranger gave in sulkily.

“Don’t bind him. Let him loose, and make a ring round him. Now, my man, there’s a dollar for you.”

The Indian’s eyes glistened, and he took the coin.

“All I want of you is, first, to tell me what ships are in La Guayra, and next, to go thither on board of me, and show me which is the governor’s house, and which the custom-house.”

The Indian laid the coin down on the deck, and crossing himself, looked Amyas in the face.

“No, senor! I am a freeman and a cavalier, a Christian Guayqueria, whose forefathers, first of all the Indians, swore fealty to the King of Spain, and whom he calls to this day in all his proclamations his most faithful, loyal, and noble Guayquerias. God forbid, therefore, that I should tell aught to his enemies, who are my enemies likewise.”

A growl arose from those of the men who understood him; and more than one hinted that a cord twined round the head, or a match put between the fingers, would speedily extract the required information.

“God forbid!” said Amyas; “a brave and loyal man he is, and as such will I treat him. Tell me, my brave fellow, how do you know us to be his Catholic majesty’s enemies?”

The Indian, with a shrewd smile, pointed to half-a-dozen different objects, saying to each, “Not Spanish.”

“Well, and what of that?”

“None but Spaniards and free Guayquerias have a right to sail these seas.”

Amyas laughed.

“Thou art a right valiant bit of copper. Pick up thy dollar, and go thy way in peace. Make room for him, men. We can learn what we want without his help.”

The Indian paused, incredulous and astonished. “Overboard with you!” quoth Amyas. “Don’t you know when you are well off?”

“Most illustrious senor,” began the Indian, in the drawling sententious fashion of his race (when they take the trouble to talk at all), “I have been deceived. I heard that you heretics roasted and ate all true Catholics (as we Guayquerias are), and that all your padres had tails.”

“Plague on you, sirrah!” squeaked Jack Brimblecombe. “Have I a tail? Look here!”

“Quien sabe? Who knows?” quoth the Indian through his nose.

“How do you know we are heretics?” said Amyas.

“Humph! But in repayment for your kindness, I would warn you, illustrious senor, not to go on to La Guayra. There are ships of war there waiting for you; and moreover, the governor Don Guzman sailed to the eastward only yesterday to look for you; and I wonder much that you did not meet him.”

“To look for us! On the watch for us!” said Cary. “Impossible; lies! Amyas, this is some trick of the rascal’s to frighten us away.”

“Don Guzman came out but yesterday to look for us? Are you sure you spoke truth?”

“As I live, senor, he and another ship, for which I took yours.”

Amyas stamped upon the deck: that then was the ship which they had passed!

“Fool that I was to have been close to my enemy, and let my opportunity slip! If I had but done my duty, all would have gone right!”

But it was too late to repine; and after all, the Indian’s story was likely enough to be false.

“Off with you!” said he; and the Indian bounded over the side into his canoe, leaving the whole crew wondering at the stateliness and courtesy of this bold sea-cavalier.

So Westward-ho they ran, beneath the mighty northern wall, the highest cliff on earth, some seven thousand feet of rock parted from the sea by a narrow strip of bright green lowland. Here and there a patch of sugar-cane, or a knot of cocoa-nut trees, close to the water’s edge, reminded them that they were in the tropics; but above, all was savage, rough, and bare as an Alpine precipice. Sometimes deep clefts allowed the southern sun to pour a blaze of light down to the sea marge, and gave glimpses far above of strange and stately trees lining the glens, and of a veil of perpetual mist which shrouded the inner summits; while up and down, between them and the mountain side, white fleecy clouds hung motionless in the burning air, increasing the impression of vastness and of solemn rest, which was already overpowering.

“Within those mountains, three thousand feet above our heads,” said Drew, the master, “lies Saint Yago de Leon, the great city which the Spaniards founded fifteen years agone.”

“Is it a rich place?” asked Cary.

“Very, they say.”

“Is it a strong place?” asked Amyas.

“No forts to it at all, they say. The Spaniards boast, that Heaven has made such good walls to it already, that man need make none.”

“I don’t know,” quoth Amyas. “Lads, could you climb those hills, do you think?”

“Rather higher than Harty Point, sir: but it depends pretty much on what’s behind them.”

And now the last point is rounded, and they are full in sight of the spot in quest of which they have sailed four thousand miles of sea. A low black cliff, crowned by a wall; a battery at either end. Within, a few narrow streets of white houses, running parallel with the sea, upon a strip of flat, which seemed not two hundred yards in breadth; and behind, the mountain wall, covering the whole in deepest shade. How that wall was ever ascended to the inland seemed the puzzle; but Drew, who had been off the place before, pointed out to them a narrow path, which wound upwards through a glen, seemingly sheer perpendicular. That was the road to the capital, if any man dare try it. In spite of the shadow of the mountain, the whole place wore a dusty and glaring look. The breaths of air which came off the land were utterly stifling; and no wonder, for La Guayra, owing to the radiation of that vast fire-brick of heated rock, is one of the hottest spots upon the face of the whole earth.

Where was the harbor? There was none. Only an open roadstead, wherein lay tossing at anchor five vessels. The two outer ones were small merchant caravels. Behind them lay two long, low, ugly-looking craft, at sight of which Yeo gave a long whew.

“Galleys, as I’m a sinful saint! And what’s that big one inside of them, Robert Drew? She has more than hawseholes in her idolatrous black sides, I think.”

“We shall open her astern of the galleys in another minute,” said Amyas. “Look out, Cary, your eyes are better than mine.”

“Six round portholes on the main deck,” quoth Will.

“And I can see the brass patararoes glittering on her poop,” quoth Amyas. “Will, we’re in for it.”

“In for it we are, captain.

 
     “Farewell, farewell, my parents dear.
     I never shall see you more, I fear.
 

“Let’s go in, nevertheless, and pound the Don’s ribs, my old lad of Smerwick. Eh? Three to one is very fair odds.”

“Not underneath those fort guns, I beg leave to say,” quoth Yeo. “If the Philistines will but come out unto us, we will make them like unto Zeba and Zalmunna.”

“Quite true,” said Amyas. “Game cocks are game cocks, but reason’s reason.”

“If the Philistines are not coming out, they are going to send a messenger instead,” quoth Cary. “Look out, all thin skulls!”

And as he spoke, a puff of white smoke rolled from the eastern fort, and a heavy ball plunged into the water between it and the ship.

“I don’t altogether like this,” quoth Amyas. “What do they mean by firing on us without warning? And what are these ships of war doing here? Drew, you told me the armadas never lay here.”

“No more, I believe, they do, sir, on account of the anchorage being so bad, as you may see. I’m mortal afeared that rascal’s story was true, and that the Dons have got wind of our coming.”

“Run up a white flag, at all events. If they do expect us, they must have known some time since, or how could they have got their craft hither?”

“True, sir. They must have come from Santa Marta, at the least; perhaps from Cartagena. And that would take a month at least going and coming.”

Amyas suddenly recollected Eustace’s threat in the wayside inn. Could he have betrayed their purpose? Impossible!

“Let us hold a council of war, at all events, Frank.”

Frank was absorbed in a very different matter. A half-mile to the eastward of the town, two or three hundred feet up the steep mountain side, stood a large, low, white house embosomed in trees and gardens. There was no other house of similar size near; no place for one. And was not that the royal flag of Spain which flaunted before it? That must be the governor’s house; that must be the abode of the Rose of Torridge! And Frank stood devouring it with wild eyes, till he had persuaded himself that he could see a woman’s figure walking upon the terrace in front, and that the figure was none other than hers whom he sought. Amyas could hardly tear him away to a council of war, which was a sad, and only not a peevish one.

The three adventurers, with Brimblecombe, Yeo, and Drew, went apart upon the poop; and each looked the other in the face awhile. For what was to be done? The plans and hopes of months were brought to naught in an hour.

“It is impossible, you see,” said Amyas, at last, “to surprise the town by land, while these ships are here; for if we land our men, we leave our ship without defence.”

“As impossible as to challenge Don Guzman while he is not here,” said Cary.

“I wonder why the ships have not opened on us already,” said Drew.

“Perhaps they respect our flag of truce,” said Cary. “Why not send in a boat to treat with them, and to inquire for—

“For her?” interrupted Frank. “If we show that we are aware of her existence, her name is blasted in the eyes of those jealous Spaniards.”

“And as for respecting our flag of truce, gentlemen,” said Yeo, “if you will take an old man’s advice, trust them not. They will keep the same faith with us as they kept with Captain Hawkins at San Juan d’Ulloa, in that accursed business which was the beginning of all the wars; when we might have taken the whole plate-fleet, with two hundred thousand pounds’ worth of gold on board, and did not, but only asked license to trade like honest men. And yet, after they had granted us license, and deceived us by fair speech into landing ourselves and our ordnance, the governor and all the fleet set upon us, five to one, and gave no quarter to any soul whom he took. No, sir; I expect the only reason why they don’t attack us is, because their crews are not on board.”

“They will be, soon enough, then,” said Amyas. “I can see soldiers coming down the landing-stairs.”