“Will ye, then?  There’s a good soul, and come and tell with old Martin.  He likes to see the brave young gentlemen, a-going to and fro in their ships, like Leviathan, and taking of their pastime therein.  We had no such ships to our days.  Ah, ’tis grand times, beautiful times surely—­and you’ll bring me a bit sugar?”

“You were up the Plate with Cabot?” said Cary, after a pause.  “Do you mind the fair lady Miranda, Sebastian de Hurtado’s wife?”

“What! her that was burnt by the Indians?  Mind her?  Do you mind the sun in heaven?  Oh, the beauty!  Oh, the ways of her!  Oh, the speech of her!  Never was, nor never will be!  And she to die by they villains; and all for the goodness of her!  Mind her?  I minded naught else when she was on deck.”

“Who was she?” asked Amyas of Cary.

“A Spanish angel, Amyas.”

“Humph!” said Amyas.  “So much the worse for her, to be born into a nation of devils.”

“They’em not all so bad as that, yer honor.  Her husband was a proper gallant gentleman, and kind as a maid, too, and couldn’t abide that De Solis’s murderous doings.”

“His wife must have taught it him, then,” said Amyas, rising.  “Where did you hear of these black swans, Cary?”

“I have heard of them, and that’s enough,” answered he, unwilling to stir sad recollections.

“And little enough,” said Amyas.  “Will, don’t talk to me.  The devil is not grown white because he has trod in a lime-heap.”

“Or an angel black because she came down a chimney,” said Cary; and so the talk ended, or rather was cut short; for the talk of all the groups was interrupted by an explosion from old John Hawkins.

“Fail?  Fail?  What a murrain do you here, to talk of failing?  Who made you a prophet, you scurvy, hang-in-the-wind, croaking, white-livered son of a corby-crow?”

“Heaven help us, Admiral Hawkins, who has put fire to your culverins in this fashion?” said Lord Howard.

“Who? my lord!  Croakers! my lord!  Here’s a fellow calls himself the captain of a ship, and her majesty’s servant, and talks about failing, as if he were a Barbican loose-kirtle trying to keep her apple-squire ashore!  Blurt for him, sneak-up! say I.”

“Admiral John Hawkins,” quoth the offender, “you shall answer this language with your sword.”

“I’ll answer it with my foot; and buy me a pair of horn-tips to my shoes, like a wraxling man.  Fight a croaker?  Fight a frog, an owl!  I fight those that dare fight, sir!”

“Sir, sir, moderate yourself.  I am sure this gentleman will show himself as brave as any, when it comes to blows:  but who can blame mortal man for trembling before so fearful a chance as this?”

“Let mortal man keep his tremblings to himself, then, my lord, and not be like Solomon’s madmen, casting abroad fire and death, and saying, it is only in sport.  There is more than one of his kidney, your lordship, who have not been ashamed to play Mother Shipton before their own sailors, and damp the poor fellows’ hearts with crying before they’re hurt, and this is one of them.  I’ve heard him at it afore, and I’ll present him, with a vengeance, though I’m no church-warden.”