When Robin-a-dale had also quenched his thirst the two left the forest, and together dragged the cockboat down the sand and launched it over the gentle surf.  Ferne rowed slowly, with a mind that was not for Robin, nor the glory of the tropic morning, nor the shock of yesterday, nor the night’s despair.  He looked ahead, devising means to an end, and his brows were yet bent in thought when the boat touched the Sea Wraith’s side.

As much a statesman of the sea as Drake himself, he knew how to gild authority and hold it high, so that they beneath might take indeed the golden bubble for the sun that warmed them.  He kept state upon the Sea Wraith as upon the Cygnet, though of necessity it was worn with a difference.  For him now, as then, music played while he sat at table in the great cabin, alone, or with his rude lieutenants, in a silence seldom broken.  Now, as he stepped upon deck, there was a flourish of trumpets, together with the usual salute from mariners and soldiers drawn up to receive him.  But their eyes stared and their lips seemed dry, and when he called to him the master who had fought with Barbary pirates for half a lifetime, the master trembled somewhat as he came.

It was the hour for morning prayer, and the Sea Wraith lacked not her chaplain, a man honeycombed with disease and secret sin.  The singing to a hidden God swelled so loud that it rang in the ears of the sick below, tossing, tossing, muttering and murmuring, though it pierced not the senses of them who lay still, who lay very, very still.  The hymn ended, the chaplain began to read, but the gray-haired Captain stopped him with a gesture.  “Not that,” he commanded.  “Read me a psalm of vengeance, Sir Demas,—­a psalm of righteous vengeance!”

XI

In England, since the stealing forth of one lonely ship, heard of no more, three spring-times had kissed finger-tips to winter and bourgeoned into summer, and three summers had held court in pride, then shrivelled into autumn.  In King Philip of Spain his Indies, blazing sunshine, cataracts of rain, had marked off a like number of years, when Sir Francis Drake with an armada of five-and-twenty ships, fresh from the spoiling of Santiago and Santo Domingo, held the strong town of Cartagena, and awaited the tardy forthcoming of the Spanish ransom.  Week piled itself upon week, and the full amount was yet lacking.  When negotiations prospered and the air was full of promise, Sir Francis and all his captains and volunteers were most courteous, exchanging with their enemies compliment and entertainment; when the Spanish commissioners drew back, or when the morning report of the English dead from fever or old injuries was long, half the day might be spent in the deliberate sacking of some portion of the town.  With the afternoon the commissioners gave ground again, and like enough the evening ended with some splendid love-feast between Spaniard and