why) them who minister about the sanctuary.  But this man, though he was ugly and lowly in person, and in understanding simple, and of breeding but a poor parson’s son, had yet in him a spirit so loving and cheerful, so lifted from base and selfish purposes to the worship of duty, and to a generosity rather knightly than sacerdotal, that all through his life he seemed to think only that it was more blessed to give than to receive.  And all that wealth which he gained in the wars he dispersed among his sisters and the poor of his parish, living unmarried till his death like a true lover and constant mourner (as shall be said in place), and leaving hardly wherewith to bring his body to the grave.  At whom if we often laughed once, we should now rather envy him, desiring to be here what he was, that we may be hereafter where he is.  Amen.”

CHAPTER XIX

WHAT BEFELL AT LA GUAYRA

“Great was the crying, the running and riding,
Which at that season was made in the place;
The beacons were fired, as need then required,
To save their great treasure they had little space.”

Winning of Cales.

The men would gladly have hawked awhile round Margarita and Cubagua for another pearl prize.  But Amyas having, as he phrased it, “fleshed his dogs,” was loth to hang about the islands after the alarm had been given.  They ran, therefore, south-west across the mouth of that great bay which stretches from the Peninsula of Paria to Cape Codera, leaving on their right hand Tortuga, and on their left the meadow-islands of the Piritoos, two long green lines but a few inches above the tideless sea.  Yeo and Drew knew every foot of the way, and had good reason to know it; for they, the first of all English mariners, had tried to trade along this coast with Hawkins.  And now, right ahead, sheer out of the sea from base to peak, arose higher and higher the mighty range of the Caracas mountains; beside which all hills which most of the crew had ever seen seemed petty mounds.  Frank, of course, knew the Alps; and Amyas the Andes; but Cary’s notions of height were bounded by M’Gillicuddy’s Reeks, and Brimblecombe’s by Exmoor; and the latter, to Cary’s infinite amusement, spent a whole day holding on by the rigging, and staring upwards with his chin higher than his nose, till he got a stiff neck.  Soon the sea became rough and chopping, though the breeze was fair and gentle; and ere they were abreast of the Cape, they became aware of that strong eastward current which, during the winter months, so often baffles the mariner who wishes to go to the westward.  All night long they struggled through the billows, with the huge wall of Cape Codera a thousand feet above their heads to the left, and beyond it again, bank upon bank of mountain, bathed in the yellow moonlight.

Morning showed them a large ship, which had passed them during the night upon the opposite course, and was now a good ten miles to the eastward.  Yeo was for going back and taking her.  Of the latter he made a matter of course; and the former was easy enough, for the breeze blowing dead off the land, was a “soldier’s wind, there and back again,” for either ship; but Amyas and Frank were both unwilling.