which Amyas offered him on his left, while the commandant sat on his right.
"A little of this kid, my Lord? No—ah—Friday, I recollect. Some of that turtle-fin, then. Will, serve his lordship; pass the cassava-bread up, Jack! Senor Commandant! a glass of wine? You need it after your valiant toils. To the health of all brave soldiers—and a toast from your own Spanish proverb, 'To-day to me, to-morrow to thee!"
"I drink it, brave Señor. Your courtesy shows you the worthy countryman of General Drake, and his brave lieutenant."
"Drake! Did you know him, Señor? " asked all the Englishmen at once.
"To well, too well" and he would have continued; but the bishop burst out—
"Ah, Señor Commandant! that name again! Have you no mercy? To sit between another pair of, and my own wine, too! Ugh, ugh!"
The old gentleman, whose mouth had been full of turtle the whole time, burst into a violent fit of coughing, and was only saved from apoplexy by Cary's patting him on the back.
"Ugh, ugh! The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, and their precious balms. Ah, Señor Lieutenant Englishman! May I ask you to pass those limes?—Ah! what is turtle without lime?—Even as a fat old man without money! Nudus intravi, nudus exeo—ah!"
"But what of Drake?"
"Do you not know, sir, that he and his fleet only last year, swept the whole of this coast, and took, with shame I confess it, Carthagena, San Domingo, St. Augustine, andI see you are too courteous, Señors, to express before me what you have a right to feel. But whence come you, sir? From the skies, or the depth of the sea?"
"Art-magic, art-magic!" moaned the bishop.
"Your holiness! It is scarcely prudent to speak thus here," said the commandant, who was nevertheless much of the same opinion.
"Why you said so yourself, last night, Señor, about the taking of Carthagena."
The commandant blushed, and stammered out somewhat—"That it was excusable in him, if he had said in jest, that so prodigious and curious a valor had not sprung from mortal source."
"No more it did, Señor," said Jack Brimblecombe stoutly: "but from Him who taught our 'hands to war, and our fingers to fight.'"
The commandant bowed stiffly. "You will excuse me, Sir Preacher; but I am a Catholic, and hold the cause of my king to be alone the cause of Heaven. But, Señor Captain, how came you thither, if I may ask? That you needed no art-magic after you came on board, I, alas! can testify but too well: but what spirit—whether good or evil, I ask not—brought you on board,
