There they were examined, and confronted on a charge of witchcraft, which the wretched Lucy could not well deny.  She was tortured to make her inculpate Rose; and what she said, or did not say, under the torture, the poor wretch could never tell.  She recanted, and became a Romanist; Rose remained firm.  Three weeks afterwards, they were brought out to an Auto-da-fe; and there, for the first time, Lucy saw Frank walking, dressed in a San Benito, in that ghastly procession.  Lucy was adjudged to receive publicly two hundred stripes, and to be sent to “The Holy House” at Seville to perpetual prison.  Frank and Rose, with a renegade Jew, and a negro who had been convicted of practising “Obi,” were sentenced to death as impenitent, and delivered over to the secular arm, with prayers that there might be no shedding of blood.  In compliance with which request, the Jew and the negro were burnt at one stake, Frank and Rose at another.  She thought they did not feel it more than twenty minutes.  They were both very bold and steadfast, and held each other’s hand (that she would swear to) to the very last.

And so ended Lucy Passmore’s story.  And if Amyas Leigh, after he had heard it, vowed afresh to give no quarter to Spaniards wherever he should find them, who can wonder, even if they blame?

CHAPTER XXVII

HOW SALVATION YEO FOUND HIS LITTLE MAID AGAIN

     “All precious things, discover’d late,
        To them who seek them issue forth;
     For love in sequel works with fate,
        And draws the veil from hidden worth.”

The Sleeping Beauty.

And so Ayacanora took up her abode in Lucy’s cabin, as a regularly accredited member of the crew.

But a most troublesome member; for now began in her that perilous crisis which seems to endanger the bodies and souls of all savages and savage tribes, when they first mingle with the white man; that crisis which, a few years afterwards, began to hasten the extermination of the North American tribes; and had it not been for the admirable good sense and constancy of Amyas, Ayacanora might have ended even more miserably than did the far-famed Pocahontas, daughter of the Virginian king; who, after having been received at Court by the old pedant James the First, with the honors of a sister sovereign, and having become the reputed ancestress of more than one ancient Virginian family, ended her days in wretchedness in some Wapping garret.

For the mind of the savage, crushed by the sight of the white man’s superior skill, and wealth, and wisdom, loses at first its self-respect; while his body, pampered with easily obtained luxuries, instead of having to win the necessaries of life by heavy toil, loses its self-helpfulness; and with self-respect and self-help vanish all the savage virtues, few and flimsy as they are, and the downward road toward begging and stealing, sottishness and idleness, is easy, if not sure.