to have some quality distinct from light, by virtue of which men’s features were not clearly seen.  Distant thunder rolled, but when it passed one heard from the gallery above the hall Spanish music.  The feast marched on in triumph, much as it might have done in any camp (where Famine was not King) beneath any flag of truce.  Here the viands were in quantity, and there was wine to spill even after friend and foe had been loudly pledged.  Free men, sea-rovers, and soldiers of fortune, it was for them no courtier’s banquet.  Only the presence at table of their leaders kept the wassail down.  Now and again the thunder shook the hall, making all sounds beneath its own as the shrilling of a cicada; then, the long roll past, the music took new heart, while below it went on the laughter and the soldier wit, babble of sore wounds, of camp-fires, and high-decked ships—­tales wild and grim or broadly humorous.  At the cross-table opposite and a little below Sir John Nevil, who was seated at Brava’s left hand, was a vacant seat.  It awaited (the Governor explained) the envoy whom he had sent out to hardly gather the remainder of the ransom of Cartagena.  The length, the heat, and danger of the journey had outwearied the envoy, who was a gentleman of as great a girth as spirit.  Later, despite his indisposition, he would join them.

He came, and it was Pedro Mexia.  From Nevil and Arden and several of Sir John’s old officers of the Mere Honour burst more or less suppressed exclamations.  Nevil, from his vantage-point, sent a lightning glance far down the table, where were gathered those whose rank or station barely brought them within this hall, but what with the massed fruit, the candles, this or that outstretched hand and shoulder, he could not see to the lowest at the table, and he heard no sound to match his own or Arden’s ejaculation.  Mexia, who had lingered with his own wine-cup and associates, now, after the moment of general welcome, seated himself heavily.  His first gaze had been naturally for Francis Drake, the man whose name was waxing ever louder in Spanish ears, but now in the act of raising his tankard his eyes and those of the sometime conqueror of Nueva Cordoba came together.  For a second his hand shook, then he tossed off the wine, and putting down his tankard with some noise, leaned half-way across the table.

“Ha! we meet again, Sir John Nevil—­and after four years of mortal life we be a-ransoming yet!  You see I have not lost your tongue—­although I lost my teachers!” He laughed at the tag to his speech, being drunk enough to make utter mischief, out of sheer good nature.

“Doth Master Francis Sark still teach you English?” asked Nevil, coldly.

“Francis Sark—­who is Francis Sark?” maundered the fuddled envoy.  “There was the fool Desmond, who overreached himself trying to bargain with Luiz de Guardiola.  Those who do that have strange fates!”

Arden from a place or two below put in lightly:  “Well, our Sark equals your Desmond.  And so he bargained with Don Luiz de Guardiola?”