“Your name?” my Master demanded of him too.

“Affonzo Cabral,” he answered, and plunged into a long tale of the loss of his ship and how it happened.  Cut short in this and asked concerning the lady, he shrugged his shoulders and replied with an oath he knew nothing about her beyond this, that she had taken passage with him at Dunquerque for Lisbon, paying him beforehand and bearing him a letter from the Bishop of Cambrai, which conveyed to him that she was bound on some secret mission of politics to the Court of Lisbon.

As I thought, two or three of the men would have murmured something here, but for a look from her, who, turning to my Master, said quietly in good English: 

“That man is a villain.  My name is Alicia of Bohemia, and my mission not to be told here in public.  But he best knows why he took me for passenger, and how he has behaved towards me.  Yourselves may see how I have saved his freight.  And for the rest, sir”—­here she bent her eyes on my Master very frankly—­“I have proved these men, and claim to be delivered from them.”

At this my Master knit his brows:  and albeit he was a young man (scarce past thirty) and a handsome, the deep wedge-mark showed between them as I had often seen it show over the nose of the old man his father.

“I think,” said he to Mr. Saint Aubyn, “this should be inquired into at greater leisure.  With your leave my men shall take the prisoner to Pengersick and have him there in safe keeping.  And if”—­with a bow—­” the Lady Alicia will accept my poor shelter it will be the handier for our examining of him.  For the rest, cannot we be of service in rescuing yet more of the cargo?”

But this for the while was out of question:  the Saint Andrew lying well out upon the strand, with never fewer than four or five ugly breakers between her and shore; and so balanced that every sea worked her to and fro.  Moreover, her mizzen mast yet stood, as by a miracle, and the weight of it so strained at her seams that (thought I) there could be very little left of her by the next ebb.

By now, too, the night was closing down, and we must determine what to do with the cargo saved.  Mr. Godolphin, who had arrived with his men during my Master’s colloquy, was ready with an offer of wains and pack-horses to convey the bulk of it to the outhouses at Godolphin.  But this, when I interpreted it, the Portuguese captain would not hear.  Nor was he more tractable to Mr. Saint Aubyn’s offer to set a mixed guard of our three companies upon the stuff until daybreak.  He plainly had his doubts of such protection:  and I could not avoid some respect for his wisdom while showing it by argument to be mere perversity.  To my Master’s persuasions and mine he shook his head:  asking for the present to be allowed a little fuel and refreshment for his men, who would camp on the beach among their goods.  And to this, in the end, we had to consent.  Several times before agreeing—­and perhaps more often than need was—­my Master consulted with the Lady Alicia.  But she seemed indifferent what happened to the ship.  Indeed, she might well have been overwearied.