in the cabin a slight man of not unpleasing countenance--blue eyes,
brown hair, unfurrowed brow, and beneath a scant and silky beard a chin
as softly rounded as a woman's.--His name and estate? Francis Sark,
gentleman.--English? So born and bred, cousin and sometime servant to my
lord of Shrewsbury.--And what did my English gentleman, my cousin to an
English nobleman, upon the galleon _San José_? Alack, sirs! were
Englishmen upon Spanish ships so unknown a spectacle?

"I have found them," quoth the Admiral, "rowing in Spanish galleys,
naked, scarred, chained, captives and martyrs."

Said Ferne, "You, sir, fought in Milan mail, standing beside the captain
of soldiers from Nueva Cordoba."

"And if I did," answered boldly their prisoner, "none the less was I
slave and captive, constrained to serve detested masters. Where needs
must I fight, I fought to the purpose. Doth not the galley-slave pull
strongly at the oar, though the chase be English and of his own blood?"

"He toils under the whip," said Ferne. "Now what whip did the Spaniard
use?"

"He is dead, and his men await succor on that lonely coast where you
left them," was Master Francis Sark's somewhat singular reply. "There is
left in the fortress of Nueva Cordoba a single company of soldiers; the
battery at the river's mouth hath another. Luiz de Guardiola commands
the citadel, and he is a strong man, but Pedro Mexia at the Bocca is so
easy-going that his sentinels nod their nights away. In the port ride
two caravels--eighty tons, no more--and their greatest gun a
demi-cannon. The town is a cowardly place of priests, women, and rich