Amyas left him with a smile of pity, and went to look for Lucy Passmore, whom the sailors were nursing and feeding, while Ayacanora watched them with a puzzled face.

“I will talk to you when you are better, Lucy,” said he, taking her hand.  “Now you must eat and drink, and forget all among us lads of Devon.”

“Oh, dear blessed sir, and you will send Sir John to pray with me?  For I turned, sir, I turned:  but I could not help it—­I could not abear the torments:  but she bore them, sweet angel—­and more than I did.  Oh, dear me!”

“Lucy, I am not fit now to hear more.  You shall tell me all to-morrow;” and he turned away.

“Why do you take her hand?” said Ayacanora, half-scornfully.  “She is old, and ugly, and dirty.”

“She is an Englishwoman, child, and a martyr, poor thing; and I would nurse her as I would my own mother.”

“Why don’t you make me an Englishwoman, and a martyr?  I could learn how to do anything that that old hag could do!”

“Instead of calling her names, go and tend her; that would be much fitter work for a woman than fighting among men.”

Ayacanora darted from him, thrust the sailors aside, and took possession of Lucy Passmore.

“Where shall I put her?” asked she of Amyas, without looking up.

“In the best cabin; and let her be served like a queen, lads.”

“No one shall touch her but me;” and taking up the withered frame in her arms, as if it were a doll, Ayacanora walked off with her in triumph, telling the men to go and mind the ship.

“The girl is mad,” said one.

“Mad or not, she has an eye to our captain,” said another.

“And where’s the man that would behave to the poor wild thing as he does?”

“Sir Francis Drake would, from whom he got his lesson.  Do you mind his putting the negro lass ashore after he found out about—­”

“Hush!  Bygones be bygones, and those that did it are in their graves long ago.  But it was too hard of him on the poor thing.”

“If he had not got rid of her, there would have been more throats than one cut about the lass, that’s all I know,” said another; “and so there would have been about this one before now, if the captain wasn’t a born angel out of heaven, and the lieutenant no less.”

“Well, I suppose we may get a whet by now.  I wonder if these Dons have any beer aboard.”

“Naught but grape vinegar, which fools call wine, I’ll warrant.”

“There was better than vinegar on the table in there just now.”

“Ah,” said one grumbler of true English breed, “but that’s not for poor fellows like we.”

“Don’t lie, Tom Evans; you never were given that way yet, and I don’t think the trade will suit a good fellow like you.”

The whole party stared; for the speaker of these words was none other than Amyas himself, who had rejoined them, a bottle in each hand.