“Well, old lad, it does look very natural to see you.  I often used to think of you walking the deck o’ nights.  Uncle and the girls are all right, then?  But is the old pony dead yet?  And how’s Dick the smith, and Nancy?  Grown a fine maid by now, I warrant.  ’Slid, it seems half a life that I’ve been away.

“And you really thought of your poor cousin?  Be sure that he, too, thought of you, and offered up nightly his weak prayers for your safety (doubtless, not without avail) to those saints, to whom would that you—­”

“Halt there, coz.  If they are half as good fellows as you and I take them for, they’ll help me without asking.”

“They have helped you, Amyas.”

“Maybe; I’d have done as much, I’m sure, for them, if I ’d been in their place.”

“And do you not feel, then, that you owe a debt of gratitude to them; and, above all, to her, whose intercessions have, I doubt not, availed for your preservation?  Her, the star of the sea, the all-compassionate guide of the mariner?”

“Humph!” said Amyas.  “Here’s Frank; let him answer.”

And, as he spoke, up came Frank, and after due greetings, sat down beside them on the ridge.

“I say, brother, here’s Eustace trying already to convert me; and telling me that I owe all my luck to the Blessed Virgin’s prayers for me.

“It may be so,” said Frank; “at least you owe it to the prayers of that most pure and peerless virgin by whose commands you sailed; the sweet incense of whose orisons has gone up for you daily, and for whose sake you were preserved from flood and foe, that you might spread the fame and advance the power of the spotless championess of truth, and right, and freedom,—­Elizabeth, your queen.”

Amyas answered this rhapsody, which would have been then both fashionable and sincere, by a loyal chuckle.  Eustace smiled meekly, but answered somewhat venomously nevertheless—­

“I, at least, am certain that I speak the truth, when I call my patroness a virgin undefiled.”

Both the brothers’ brows clouded at once.  Amyas, as he lay on his back on the pebbles, said quietly to the gulls over his head—­“I wonder what the Frenchman whose head I cut off at the Azores, thinks by now about all that.”

“Cut off a Frenchman’s head?” said Frank.

“Yes, faith; and so fleshed my maiden sword.  I’ll tell you.  It was in some tavern; I and George Drake had gone in, and there sat this Frenchman, with his sword on the table, ready for a quarrel (I found afterwards he was a noted bully), and begins with us loudly enough about this and that; but, after awhile, by the instigation of the devil, what does he vent but a dozen slanders against her majesty’s honor, one atop of the other?  I was ashamed to hear them, and I should be more ashamed to repeat them.”

“I have heard enough of such,” said Frank.  “They come mostly through lewd rascals about the French ambassador, who have been bred (God help them) among the filthy vices of that Medicean Court in which the Queen of Scots had her schooling; and can only perceive in a virtuous freedom a cloak for licentiousness like their own.  Let the curs bark; Honi soit qui mal y pense is our motto, and shall be forever.”