up
and down, and gaining strength with every step.

"Well done, lads!" cried Amyas, "keep a cheerful mind. We will have the
music ashore after dinner, for want of mermaids to sing to us, and those
that can dance may."

And so those four days were spent; and the men, like schoolboys on
a holiday, gave themselves up to simple merriment, not forgetting,
however, to wash the clothes, take in fresh water, and store up a
good supply of such fruit as seemed likely to keep; until, tired with
fruitless rambles after gold, which they expected to find in every bush,
in spite of Yeo's warnings that none had been heard of on the island,
they were fain to lounge about, full-grown babies, picking up shells and
sea-fans to take home to their sweethearts, smoking agoutis out of the
hollow trees, with shout and laughter, and tormenting every living thing
they could come near, till not a land-crab dare look out of his hole, or
an armadillo unroll himself, till they were safe out of the bay, and
off again to the westward, unconscious pioneers of all the wealth, and
commerce, and beauty, and science which has in later centuries made that
lovely isle the richest gem of all the tropic seas.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOW THEY TOOK THE PEARLS AT MARGARITA

P. Henry. Why, what a rascal art thou, then, to praise him so for
running!
Falstaff. O' horseback, ye cuckoo! but a-foot, he will not budge a
foot.
P. Henry. Yes, Jack, upon instinct.
Falstaff. I grant ye, upon instinct.

Henry IV. Pt. I.

They had slipped past the southern point of Grenada in the night, and
were at last within that fairy ring of islands, on which nature had
concentrated all her beauty, and man all his sin. If Barbados had been
invested in the eyes of the newcomers with some strange glory, how much
more the seas on which they now entered, which smile in almost perpetual
calm, untouched by the hurricane which roars past them far to northward!
Sky, sea, and islands were one vast rainbow; though little marked,
perhaps, by those sturdy practical sailors, whose main thought was of
Spanish gold and pearls; and as little by Amyas, who, accustomed to the
scenery of the tropics, was speculating inwardly on the possibility of
extirpating the Spaniards, and annexing the West Indies to the domains
of Queen Elizabeth. And yet even their unpoetic eyes could not behold
without awe and excitement lands s