“While beauty, born of murmuring sound,
     Did pass into his face.”

Somewhat apart crouched their two dusky brides, crowned with fragrant flowers, but working busily, like true women, for the lords whom they delighted to honor.  One sat plaiting palm fibres into a basket; the other was boring the stem of a huge milk-tree, which rose like some mighty column on the right hand of the lawn, its broad canopy of leaves unseen through the dense underwood of laurel and bamboo, and betokened only by the rustle far aloft, and by the mellow shade in which it bathed the whole delicious scene.

Amyas stood silent for awhile, partly from noble shame at seeing two Christian men thus fallen of their own self-will; partly because—­and he could not but confess that—­a solemn calm brooded above that glorious place, to break through which seemed sacrilege even while he felt it a duty.  Such, he thought, was Paradise of old; such our first parents’ bridal bower!  Ah! if man had not fallen, he too might have dwelt forever in such a home—­with whom?  He started, and shaking off the spell, advanced sword in hand.

The women saw him, and springing to their feet, caught up their long pocunas, and leapt like deer each in front of her beloved.  There they stood, the deadly tubes pressed to their lips, eyeing him like tigresses who protect their young, while every slender limb quivered, not with terror, but with rage.

Amyas paused, half in admiration, half in prudence; for one rash step was death.  But rushing through the canes, Ayacanora sprang to the front, and shrieked to them in Indian.  At the sight of the prophetess the women wavered, and Amyas, putting on as gentle a face as he could, stepped forward, assuring them in his best Indian that he would harm no one.

“Ebsworthy!  Parracombe!  Are you grown such savages already, that you have forgotten your captain?  Stand up, men, and salute!”

Ebsworthy sprang to his feet, obeyed mechanically, and then slipped behind his bride again, as if in shame.  The dreamer turned his head languidly, raised his hand to his forehead, and then returned to his contemplation.

Amyas rested the point of his sword on the ground, and his hands upon the hilt, and looked sadly and solemnly upon the pair.  Ebsworthy broke the silence, half reproachfully, half trying to bluster away the coming storm.

“Well, noble captain, so you’ve hunted out us poor fellows; and want to drag us back again in a halter, I suppose?”

“I came to look for Christians, and I find heathens; for men, and I find swine.  I shall leave the heathens to their wilderness, and the swine to their trough.  Parracombe!”

“He’s too happy to answer you, sir.  And why not?  What do you want of us?  Our two years vow is out, and we are free men now.”

“Free to become like the beasts that perish?  You are the queen’s servants still, and in her name I charge you—­