It grew colder and colder.  It should be summer,—­but as they crept southward they encountered cold and wind beyond that of the North Sea in January.  The nights grew long; the battering of the gales never ceased; the ships lost sight of one another.  It was whispered that not only had the uncanny brothers foretold the evil weather, but Thomas Doughty had boasted of having brought it about.  “We’ll ha’ no luck till we get rid of our prophet,” said blunt Tom Moone, “and the Lord don’t provide no whales for the likes o’ he.”

Drake warned his comrade with an ominous quiet.  “Doughty,” he said, “if you value your neck you keep your reading and writing to what a common man can understand—­you and your brother.  A man can’t always prophesy for himself, let alone other folk.”

“You heard what he said,” commented Wynter grimly when the Admiral was in his cabin behind closed doors.  “Better not raise the devil unless you know for sure what he’ll do.  There’s been one gallows planted on this coast.”

“Sneck up!” laughed Doughty, “he would not dare hang a gentleman!” but he felt a creeping chill at the back of his neck.

On the desolate island where the stump of Magellan’s gallows stood black against a crimson dawn, they landed and the tragedy of estrangement and suspicion ended.  Thomas Doughty was tried for mutiny and treason before a jury of his peers.  Every man there held him a traitor, yet he was acquitted for lack of evidence.  Thus encouraged, Doughty boldly declared that they should all smart for this when Burleigh heard of it.  What he had done to hinder the voyage, he averred, was by Burleigh’s orders, for before they sailed he had gone to that wily statesman and told him the entire scheme.

In a flash of merciless revelation Drake saw the truth.  He left Doughty to await the verdict, called the companies down to the shore, and there told them the story of the expedition from first to last, not overlooking the secret orders of the Queen.

“This man was my friend,” he said with a break in his voice such as they had not heard save at the suffering of a child.  “I would not take his life,—­but if he be worthy of death, I pray you hold up your hands.”

There was a breathless instant when none stirred; then every hand was raised.

On the next day but one they all sat down to a last feast on that bleak and lonely shore; the two comrades drank to each other for the last time, shared the sacrament, and embracing, said their farewells.  Doughty proved that if he could not live a true man he could die like a gentleman; the headsman did his work, and Drake pronounced the solemn sentence, “Lo! this is the death of traitors!”

In that black hour the boyish laughter went forever from the eyes of the Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice.  When after a while young Jack Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between them, began some phrase of blundering boyish affection, the sentence trailed off into a stammer.