ows were marvellously
patined by stars. Raleigh's voice had sunk to the hoarse whisper of a
man still fevered. He let his head recline again on the skins and closed
his eyelids. Instantly it became the face of an old and very weary man.

The sailor Jasper Lauval--for so he now spelled his name on the rare
occasions when he wrote it--thought he was about to sleep and was rising
to withdraw, when Raleigh's eyes opened.

"Stay with me," he commanded. "Your silence cheers me. If you leave me I
have thoughts that might set me following Tom Keymis. Kit Marlowe again!
I cannot get rid of his accursed jingles. How do they go?

"'Hell hath no limite, nor is circumscribed
In one self-place, for where we are is hell
And where hell is there must we ever be.'"

Lauval stretched out a cool hand and laid it on the Admiral's hot
forehead. He had a curiously steadfast gaze for all his drooping left
eye. Raleigh caught sight of the withered arm.

"Tell me of your life, Jasper. How came you by such a mauling? Let the
tale of it be like David's harping and scatter my demons."

The seaman sat himself in a chair. "That was my purpose, Sir Walter. For
the tale is in some manner a commentary on your late words."

"Nay, I want no moral. Let me do the moralising. The tale's the thing.
See, fill a glass of this Irish cordial. Twill keep off the chill from
the night air. When and where did you get so woefully battered?"

"'Twas six years back when I was with Bovill."

Raleigh whistled. "You were with Robert Bovill' What in Heaven's name
did one of Coffyn blood with Robert? If ever man had a devil, 'twas he.
I mind his sullen black face and his beard in two prongs. I have heard
he is dead--on a Panama gibbet?"

"He is dead; but not as he lived. I was present when he died. He went
to God a good Christian, praying and praising. Next day I was to follow
him, but I broke prison in the night with the help of an Indian, and
went down the coast in a stolen patache to a place where thick forests
lined the sea. There I lay hid till my wounds healed, and by and by I
was picked up by a Bristol ship that had put in to water."

"But your wounds--how got you them?"

"At the hands of the priests. They would have made a martyr of me, and
used their engines to bend my mind. Being obstinate by nature I mocked
them till they wearied of the play. But they left their marks on this
arm and leg. The scar I had got some months before in a c