And down the two sat, and Amyas talked long into the night; while Sir Richard, his usual stateliness recovered, smiled stern approval at each deed of daring; and when all was ended, answered with something like a sigh: 

“Would God that I had been with you every step!  Would God, at least, that I could show as good a three-years’ log-book, Amyas, my lad!”

“You can show a better one, I doubt not.”

“Humph!  With the exception of one paltry Spanish prize, I don’t know that the queen is the better, or her enemies the worse, for me, since we parted last in Dublin city.”

“You are too modest, sir.”

“Would that I were; but I got on in Ireland, I found, no better than my neighbors; and so came home again, to find that while I had been wasting my time in that land of misrule, Raleigh had done a deed to which I can see no end.  For, lad, he has found (or rather his two captains, Amadas and Barlow, have found for him) between Florida and Newfoundland, a country, the like of which, I believe, there is not on the earth for climate and fertility.  Whether there be gold there, I know not, and it matters little; for there is all else on earth that man can want; furs, timber, rivers, game, sugar-canes, corn, fruit, and every commodity which France, Spain, or Italy can yield, wild in abundance; the savages civil enough for savages, and, in a word, all which goes to the making of as noble a jewel as her majesty’s crown can wear.  The people call it Wingandacoa; but we, after her majesty, Virginia.”

“You have been there, then?”

“The year before last, lad; and left there Ralf Lane, Amadas, and some twenty gentlemen, and ninety men, and, moreover, some money of my own, and some of old Will Salterne’s, which neither of us will ever see again.  For the colony, I know not how, quarrelled with the Indians (I fear I too was over-sharp with some of them for stealing—­if I was, God forgive me!), and could not, forsooth, keep themselves alive for twelve months; so that Drake, coming back from his last West Indian voyage, after giving them all the help he could, had to bring the whole party home.  And if you will believe it, the faint-hearted fellows had not been gone a fortnight, before I was back again with three ships and all that they could want.  And never was I more wroth in my life, when all I found was the ruins of their huts, which (so rich is the growth there) were already full of great melons, and wild deer feeding thereon—­a pretty sight enough, but not what I wanted just then.  So back I came; and being in no overgood temper, vented my humors on the Portugals at the Azores, and had hard fights and small booty.  So there the matter stands, but not for long; for shame it were if such a paradise, once found by Britons, should fall into the hands of any but her majesty; and we will try again this spring, if men and money can be found.  Eh, lad?”

“But the prize?”