r.--I trust no one has
overheard us!"

Amyas left him with a smile of pity, and went to look for Lucy Passmore,
whom the sailors were nursing and feeding, while Ayacanora watched them
with a puzzled face.

"I will talk to you when you are better, Lucy," said he, taking her
hand. "Now you must eat and drink, and forget all among us lads of
Devon."

"Oh, dear blessed sir, and you will send Sir John to pray with me? For
I turned, sir, I turned: but I could not help it--I could not abear the
torments: but she bore them, sweet angel--and more than I did. Oh, dear
me!"

"Lucy, I am not fit now to hear more. You shall tell me all to-morrow;"
and he turned away.

"Why do you take her hand?" said Ayacanora, half-scornfully. "She is
old, and ugly, and dirty."

"She is an Englishwoman, child, and a martyr, poor thing; and I would
nurse her as I would my own mother."

"Why don't you make me an Englishwoman, and a martyr? I could learn how
to do anything that that old hag could do!"

"Instead of calling her names, go and tend her; that would be much
fitter work for a woman than fighting among men."

Ayacanora darted from him, thrust the sailors aside, and took possession
of Lucy Passmore.

"Where shall I put her?" asked she of Amyas, without looking up.

"In the best cabin; and let her be served like a queen, lads."

"No one shall touch her but me;" and taking up the withered frame in her
arms, as if it were a doll, Ayacanora walked off with her in triumph,
telling the men to go and mind the ship.

"The girl is mad," said one.

"Mad or not, she has an eye to our captain," said another.

"And where's the man that would behave to the poor wild thing as he
does?"

"Sir Francis Drake would, from whom he got his lesson. Do you mind his
putting the negro lass ashore after he found out about--"

"Hush! Bygones be bygones, and those that did it are in their graves
long ago. But it was too hard of him on the poor thing."

"If he had not got rid of her, there would have been more throats than
one cut about the lass, that's all I know," said another; "and so there
would have been about this one before now, if the captain wasn't a born
angel out of heaven, and the lieutenant no less."

"Well, I suppose we may get a whet by now. I wonder if these Dons have
any beer aboard."

"Naught but grape vinegar, which fools call wine, I'll warrant."

"There was better than vinegar on the table in there just now."

"Ah," said o