“My good sir,” said Grenville, “what have private interests to do with this day?  Let us thank God if He only please to leave us the bare fee-simple of this English soil, the honor of our wives and daughters, and bodies safe from rack and fagot, to wield the swords of freemen in defence of a free land, even though every town and homestead in England were wasted with fire, and we left to rebuild over again all which our ancestors have wrought for us in now six hundred years.”

“Right, sir!” said Amyas.  “For my part, let my Virginian goods rot on the quay, if the worst comes to the worst.  I begin unloading the Vengeance to-morrow; and to sea as soon as I can fill up my crew to a good fighting number.”

And so the talk ran on; and ere two days were past, most of the neighboring gentlemen, summoned by Sir Richard, had come in, and great was the bidding against each other as to who should do most.  Cary and Brimblecombe, with thirty tall Clovelly men, came across the bay, and without even asking leave of Amyas, took up their berths as a matter of course on board the Vengeance.  In the meanwhile, the matter was taken up by families.  The Fortescues (a numberless clan) offered to furnish a ship; the Chichesters another, the Stukelys a third; while the merchantmen were not backward.  The Bucks, the Stranges, the Heards, joyfully unloaded their Virginian goods, and replaced them with powder and shot; and in a week’s time the whole seven were ready once more for sea, and dropped down into Appledore pool, with Amyas as their admiral for the time being (for Sir Richard had gone by land to Plymouth to join the deliberations there), and waited for the first favorable wind to start for the rendezvous in the Sound.

At last, upon the twenty-first of June, the clank of the capstans rang merrily across the flats, and amid prayers and blessings, forth sailed that gallant squadron over the bar, to play their part in Britain’s Salamis; while Mrs. Leigh stood watching as she stood once before, beside the churchyard wall:  but not alone this time; for Ayacanora stood by her side, and gazed and gazed, till her eyes seemed ready to burst from their sockets.  At last she turned away with a sob,—­

“And he never bade me good-bye, mother!”

“God forgive him!  Come home and pray, my child; there is no other rest on earth than prayer for woman’s heart!”

They were calling each other mother and daughter then?  Yes.  The sacred fire of sorrow was fast burning out all Ayacanora’s fallen savageness; and, like a Phoenix, the true woman was rising from those ashes, fair, noble, and all-enduring, as God had made her.

CHAPTER XXX

HOW THE ADMIRAL JOHN HAWKINS TESTIFIED AGAINST CROAKERS

“Oh, where be these gay Spaniards,
Which make so great a boast O? 
Oh, they shall eat the gray-goose feather,

    And we shall eat the roast O!”