same thing. Head of Abel! Elizabeth hath heard of me. The
Seigneur of St. Ouen's and others have writ me down a pirate to her. She
would not pardon the muscadella," he added, with another laugh, looking
down where the flagons lay.

"She must pardon more than that," exclaimed Angele, and hastily she told
him of what had happened to Michel de la Foret, and why she would go.

"Thy father, then?" he asked, scowling hard in his attempt to think it
out.

"He must go with me--I will seek him now."

"It must be at once, i' faith, for how long, think you, can I stay here
unharmed? I was sighted off St. Ouen's shore a few hours agone."

"To-night?" she asked.

"By twelve, when we shall have the moon and the tide," he answered. "But
hold!" he hastily added. "What, think you, could you and your father do
alone in England? And with me it were worse than alone. These be dark
times, when strangers have spies at their heels, and all travellers are
suspect."

"We will trust in God," she answered.

"Have you money?" he questioned--"for London, not for me," he added
hastily.

"Enough," she replied.

"The trust with the money is a weighty matter," he added; "but they
suffice not. You must have 'fending."

"There is no one," she answered sadly, "no one save--"

"Save the Seigneur of Rozel!" Buonespoir finished the sentence. "Good.
You to your father, and I to the Seigneur. If you can fetch your
father by your pot-of-honey tongue, I'll fetch the great Lempriere with
muscadella. Is't a bargain?"

"In which I gain all," she answered, and again touched his arm with her
finger-tips.

"You shall be aboard here at ten, and I will join you on the stroke of
twelve," he said, and gave a low whistle.

At the signal three men sprang up like magic out of the bowels of the
boat beneath them, and scurried over the side; three as ripe knaves as
ever cheated stocks and gallows, but simple knaves, unlike their master.
Two of them had served with Francis Drake in that good ship of his lying
even now not far from Elizabeth's palace at Greenwich. The third was a
rogue who had been banished from Jersey for a habitual drunkenness which
only attacked him on land--at sea he was sacredly sober. His name was
Jean Nicolle. The names of the other two were Herve Robin and Rouge le
Riche, but their master called them by other names.

"Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego," said Buonespoir in ceremony, and
waved a hand of homage between them and Angele. "K