e too courteous, senors, 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, senor, about the taking of
Cartagena."

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, senor," 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, senor 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, and whence? Where is your ship? I thought that all Drake's
squadron had left six months ago."

"Our ship, senor, has lain this three years rotting on the coast near
Cape Codera."

"Ah! we heard of that bold adventure--but we thought you all lost in the
interior."

"You did? Can you tell me, then, where the senor governor of La Guayra
may be now?"

"The Senor Don Guzman de Soto," said the commandant, in a somewhat
constrained tone, "is said to be at present in Spain, having thrown up
his office in consequence of domestic matters, of which I have not the
honor of knowing anything."

Amyas longed to ask more: but he knew that the well-bred Spaniard would
tell him nothing which concerned another man's wife; and went on.

"What befell us after, I tell you frankly."

And Amyas told his story, from the landing at Guayra to the passage down
the Magdalena. The commandant lifted up his hands.

"Were it not forbidden to me, as a Catholic, most invincible senor, I
should say that the Divine protection has indeed--"

"Ah," said one of the friars, "that you could be brought, senors, to
render thanks for your miraculous preservation to her to whom alone it
is due, Mary, the fount of mercies!"

"We have done well enough without her as yet," said Amyas, bluntly.

"The Lord raised up Nebuchadnezzar of old to punish the sins of the
Jewish Church; and He has