afresh.

"Where is my wife, Salvation Yeo?"

"With the Lord."

"Amen!" says the old man, with a short shudder. "I thought so much;
and my two boys?"

"With the Lord."

The old man catches Yeo by the arm.

"How, then?" It is Yeo's turn to shudder now.

"Killed in Panama, fighting the Spaniards; sailing with Mr. Oxeham; and
'twas I led 'em into it. May God and you forgive me!"

"They couldn't die better, cousin Yeo."

The old man covers his face with his hands for a while.

"Well, I've been alone with the Lord these fifteen years, so I must not
whine at being alone awhile longer--'twon't be long."

"Put this coat on your back, uncle," says some one.

"No; no coats for me. Naked came I into the world, and naked I go out
of it this day, if I have a chance. You'm better go to your work,
lads, or the big one will have the wind of us yet."

"So she will," said Amyas, who had overheard; but so great is the
curiosity of all hands that he has some trouble in getting the men to
quarters again; indeed, they only go on condition of parting among
themselves with them the newcomers, each to tell his sad and strange
story. How after Captain Hawkins, constrained by famine, had put them
ashore, they wandered in misery till the Spaniards took them; how,
instead of hanging them (as they at first intended), the Dons fed and
clothed them, and allotted them as servants to various gentlemen about
Mexico, where they throve, turned their hands (like true sailors) to
all manner of trades, and made much money; so that all went well, until
the fatal year 1574, when, much against the minds of many of the
Spaniards themselves, that cruel and bloody Inquisition was established
for the first time in the Indies; and how from that moment their lives
were one long tragedy; how they were all imprisoned for a year and a
half, racked again and again, and at last adjudged to receive publicly,
on Good Friday, 1575, some three hundred, some one hundred stripes, and
to serve in the galleys for six or ten years each; while as the
crowning atrocity of the Moloch sacrifice, three of them were burnt
alive in the market-place of Mexico.

The history of the party was not likely to improve the good feeling of
the crew towards the Spanish ship which was two miles to leeward of
them, and which must be fought with, or fled from, before a quarter of
an hour was past. So, kneeling down upon the deck, as many a brave
crew in those days did in like c