“We are hit somewhere forward, below the water-line, sir.  She leaks a terrible deal, and the Lord will not vouchsafe to us to lay our hands on the place, for all our searching.”

“What are we to do now, Amyas, in the devil’s name?” asked Cary, peevishly.

“What are we to do, in God’s name, rather,” answered Amyas, in a low voice.  “Will, Will, what did God make you a gentleman for, but to know better than those poor fickle fellows forward, who blow hot and cold at every change of weather!”

“I wish you’d come forward and speak to them, sir,” said Yeo, who had overheard the last words, “or we shall get naught done.”

Amyas went forward instantly.

“Now then, my brave lads, what’s the matter here, that you are all sitting on your tails like monkeys?”

“Ugh!” grunts one.  “Don’t you think our day’s work has been long enough yet, captain?”

“You don’t want us to go in to La Guayra again, sir?  There are enough of us thrown away already, I reckon, about that wench there.”

“Best sit here, and sink quietly.  There’s no getting home again, that’s plain.”

“Why were we brought out here to be killed?”

“For shame, men!” cries Yeo; “you’re no better than a set of stiff-necked Hebrew Jews, murmuring against Moses the very minute after the Lord has delivered you from the Egyptians.”

Now I do not wish to set Amyas up as a perfect man; for he had his faults, like every one else; nor as better, thank God, than many and many a brave and virtuous captain in her majesty’s service at this very day:  but certainly he behaved admirably under that trial.  Drake had trained him, as he trained many another excellent officer, to be as stout in discipline, and as dogged of purpose, as he himself was:  but he had trained him also to feel with and for his men, to make allowances for them, and to keep his temper with them, as he did this day.  True, he had seen Drake in a rage; he had seen him hang one man for a mutiny (and that man his dearest friend), and threaten to hang thirty more; but Amyas remembered well that that explosion took place when having, as Drake said publicly himself, “taken in hand that I know not in the world how to go through with; it passeth my capacity; it hath even bereaved me of my wits to think of it,” . . . and having “now set together by the ears three mighty princes, her majesty and the kings of Spain and Portugal,” he found his whole voyage ready to come to naught, “by mutinies and discords, controversy between the sailors and gentlemen, and stomaching between the gentlemen and sailors.”  “But, my masters” (quoth the self-trained hero, and Amyas never forgot his words), “I must have it left; for I must have the gentlemen to haul and draw with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentlemen.  I would like to know him that would refuse to set his hand to a rope!”

And now Amyas’s conscience smote him (and his simple and pious soul took the loss of his brother as God’s verdict on his conduct), because he had set his own private affection, even his own private revenge, before the safety of his ship’s company, and the good of his country.