“Ah, Mr. Gilbert! since first he went to Guinea after those poor negroes, little lightness has my heart known; and the very day that that crest was put up in our grand new house, as the parson read the first lesson, there was this text in it, Mr. Gilbert, ’Woe to him that buildeth his house by iniquity, and his chambers by wrong.  Shalt thou live because thou closest thyself in cedar?’ And it went into my ears like fire, Mr. Gilbert, and into my heart like lead; and when the parson went on, ’Did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice?  Then it was well with him,’ I thought of good old Captain Will; and—­I tell you, Mr. Gilbert, those negroes are on my soul from morning until night!  We are all mighty grand now, and money comes in fast, but the Lord will require the blood of them at our hands yet, He will!”

“My dearest madam, who can prosper more than you?  If your husband copied the Dons too closely once or twice in the matter of those negroes (which I do not deny,) was he not punished at once when he lost ships, men, all but life, at St. Juan d’Ulloa?”

“Ay, yes,” she said; “and that did give me a bit of comfort, especially when the queen—­God save her tender heart!—­was so sharp with him for pity of the poor wretches, but it has not mended him.  He is growing fast like the rest now, Mr. Gilbert, greedy to win, and niggardly to spend (God forgive him!) and always fretting and plotting for some new gain, and envying and grudging at Drake, and all who are deeper in the snare of prosperity than he is.  Gold, gold, nothing but gold in every mouth—­there it is!  Ah!  I mind when Plymouth was a quiet little God-fearing place as God could smile upon:  but ever since my John, and Sir Francis, and poor Mr. Oxenham found out the way to the Indies, it’s been a sad place.  Not a sailor’s wife but is crying ‘Give, give,’ like the daughters of the horse-leech; and every woman must drive her husband out across seas to bring her home money to squander on hoods and farthingales, and go mincing with outstretched necks and wanton eyes; and they will soon learn to do worse than that, for the sake of gain.  But the Lord’s hand will be against their tires and crisping-pins, their mufflers and farthingales, as it was against the Jews of old.  Ah, dear me!”

The two interlocutors in this dialogue were sitting in a low oak-panelled room in Plymouth town, handsomely enough furnished, adorned with carving and gilding and coats of arms, and noteworthy for many strange knickknacks, Spanish gold and silver vessels on the sideboard; strange birds and skins, and charts and rough drawings of coast which hung about the room; while over the fireplace, above the portrait of old Captain Will Hawkins, pet of Henry the Eighth, hung the Spanish ensign which Captain John had taken in fair fight at Rio de la Hacha fifteen years before, when, with two hundred men, he seized the town in despite of ten hundred Spanish soldiers, and watered his ship triumphantly at the enemy’s wells.