Mortimer Ferne, his hand resting upon the table before him, waited until there was quiet in the tavern of the Triple Tun, then, because he felt deeply, spoke lightly.

“My lords and gentlemen,” he said, “and you, John Nevil, whom I reverence as my commander and love as my friend, I give you thanks.  Did we lose at Fayal?  Then, this voyage, at some other golden island, we shall win!  Honor stayed with us that bloody day, and shall we not now bring her home enthroned?  Ay, and for her handmaidens fame and noble service and wealth,—­wealth with which to send forth other ships, hounds of the sea which yet may pull down this Spanish stag of ten!  By my faith, I sorrow for you whom we leave behind!”

“Look that I overtake you not, Mortimer!” cried Sidney.  “Walter Raleigh and I have plans for next year.  You and I may yet meet beneath a palm-tree!”

“And I also, Sir Mortimer,” exclaimed Captain Philip Amadas.  “Sir Walter hath promised me a ship—­”

“When the old knight my father dies, and I come into my property,” put in, loudly, a fancy-fired youth from Devon, “I’ll go out over bar in a ship of my own!  I’ll have all my mariners dressed like Sir Hugh Willoughby’s men in the picture, and when I come home—­”

“Towing the King of Spain his plate-fleet behind you,” quoth the mustachioed gentleman.

“—­all my sails shall be cloth of gold,” continued wine—­flushed one-and-twenty.  “The main-deck shall be piled with bars of silver, and in the hold shall be pearls and pieces of gold, doubloons, emeralds as great as filberts—­”

“At Panama saw I an emerald greater than a pigeon’s egg!” cried one who had sailed in the Golden Hind.

Sir Mortimer laughed.  “Why, our very speech grows rich—­as did thine long since, Philip Sidney!  And now, Giles Arden, show these stay-at-home gentlemen the stones the Bonaventure brought in the other day from that coast we touched at two years agone.  If we miss the plate-fleet, my masters, if we find Cartagena or Santa Marta too strong for us, there is yet the unconquered land, the Hesperidian garden whence came these golden apples!  Deliver, good dragon!”

He of the mustachios laid side by side upon the board three pieces of glittering rock, whereat every man bent forward.

“Marcasite?” said one, doubtfully.

“El madre del oro?” suggested another.

“White spar,” said Arden, authoritatively, “and containeth of gold ten pounds to the hundredweight.  Moreover—­” He sifted down upon the dark wood beside the stones a thimbleful of dull yellow grains.  “The sands of Pactolus, gentlemen!  Sure ’twas in no Grecian river that King Midas bathed himself!”