r
crews.

Smile, if you will: but those were days (and there were never less
superstitious ones) in which Englishmen believed in the living God, and
were not ashamed to acknowledge, as a matter of course, His help and
providence, and calling, in the matters of daily life, which we now
in our covert atheism term "secular and carnal;" and when, the sermon
ended, the communion service had begun, and the bread and the wine were
given to those five mariners, every gallant gentleman who stood near
them (for the press would not allow of more) knelt and received the
elements with them as a thing of course, and then rose to join with
heart and voice not merely in the Gloria in Excelsis, but in the Te
Deum, which was the closing act of all. And no sooner had the clerk
given out the first verse of that great hymn, than it was taken up by
five hundred voices within the church, in bass and tenor, treble and
alto (for every one could sing in those days, and the west-country folk,
as now, were fuller than any of music), the chant was caught up by the
crowd outside, and rang away over roof and river, up to the woods of
Annery, and down to the marshes of the Taw, in wave on wave of harmony.
And as it died away, the shipping in the river made answer with their
thunder, and the crowd streamed out again toward the Bridge Head,
whither Sir Richard Grenville, and Sir John Chichester, and Mr.
Salterne, the Mayor, led the five heroes of the day to await the pageant
which had been prepared in honor of them. And as they went by, there
were few in the crowd who did not press forward to shake them by the
hand, and not only them, but their parents and kinsfolk who walked
behind, till Mrs. Leigh, her stately joy quite broken down at last,
could only answer between her sobs, "Go along, good people--God a mercy,
go along--and God send you all such sons!"

"God give me back mine!" cried an old red-cloaked dame in the crowd; and
then, struck by some hidden impulse, she sprang forward, and catching
hold of young Amyas's sleeve--

"Kind sir! dear sir! For Christ his sake answer a poor old widow woman!"

"What is it, dame?" quoth Amyas, gently enough.

"Did you see my son to the Indies?--my son Salvation?"

"Salvation?" replied he, with the air of one who recollected the name.

"Yes, sure, Salvation Yeo, of Clovelly. A tall man and black, and
sweareth awfully in his talk, the Lord forgive him!"

Amyas recollected now. It was the name of the sailor