ard they found that he was not dead.

Ten minutes before, the young captain would have said that every dead
Spaniard was so much to the good, but he had the life-saving instinct of
a Newfoundland dog. He set about reviving the rescued man without
thinking twice on the subject.

"'T is unlucky," grumbled Will Harvest under his breath. "Take a
drownded man from the sea and she get one of us--some time."

"Like enough," agreed his master blithely. "But this one's not
drownded--knocked on the head and robbed, I guess. D'you think we might
take him to Granny Toothacre's, Tom?"

"I reckon so," returned Tom with a wide grin, "seein' 't is you. If I
was the one to ask her I'd as lief do it with a brass kittle on my head.
She don't like furriners."

Drake laughed and brought his craft alongside an old wharf near which an
ancient farm-house stood, half-hidden by a huge pollard willow. Here,
when he had seen his guest bestowed in a chamber whose one window looked
out over the marshes, he stayed to watch with him that night, sending
the ship on to Chatham in charge of the mate.

"Now what's the lad up to?" queried Will as they caught the ebbing tide.
"D'ye think he'll find out anything, tending that there Spanisher?"

"Not him. He don't worm secrets out o' nobody. But he's got his reasons,
I make no doubt. You go teach a duck to swim--and leave Frankie alone,"
said Moone.

The youth did not analyze the impulse that kept him at the bedside of
the injured man, but he felt that he desired to know more of him. The
stranger was gaunt, gray and without jewel, gold chain or signet ring
to show who he was, but it was the same man who had spoken to him at
Gravesend five years ago.

A barge-load of London folk had come down to see the launching of the
_Serchthrift_, the new pinnace of the Muscovy Company, and among them
was the venerable Sebastian Cabot. Alms were freely distributed that the
spectators might pray for a fortunate voyage, but Frankie Drake was
gazing with all his eyes at the veteran navigator. A hand was laid on
his shoulder, and a friendly voice inquired,

"Did you get your share of the plunder, my son?"

The lad shook his head a trifle impatiently. "I be no beggar," he
answered. "I be a ship's boy."

"Ay," said the man, "and you seek not the Golden Fleece?"

His eyes laughed, and his long fingers played with a strange jewel that
glowed like Mars in the midnight of his breast. It was of gold enamel,
with a spl