ime. May
the high planets fortify you!"

What room was left for a knight-errant in the Spain of to-day, ruling by
steel and shot and flame and gold? It must be rather awful, the listener
reflected, to see your own country go rotten like that in a generation.
Yet there was no bitterness in the old hidalgo's tranquil eyes. "I have
been a fool," he said smiling, "but somehow I do not regret it. The
wound from a poisoned arrow can be seared with red-hot iron, but for the
creeping poison of the soul--the loss of honor--there is no cure."

When the seamen came to get orders from their young captain, Saavedra
observed with surprise the lad's clear knowledge of his own trade.
Francis Drake's old master had seen King Henry's shipwrights discarding
time-honored models to build for speed, speed and more speed. He had
seen Fletcher of Rye, in 1539, prove to all the Channel that a ship
could sail against the wind. All that he knew he had taught his young
apprentice, and now the boy was free to use it for his own
work--whatever that should be. Unlike the gilded and perfumed courtiers,
these men of the sea showed little respect toward the tall ships of
Spain. Saavedra, pleased that they spoke without reserve in his
presence, watched the rugged straightforward faces, and wondered.

The time came when they took him and his stocky, silent old servant to
board a Vizcayan boat. As they caught his last quick smile and farewell
gesture Will Harvest heaved a rueful sigh. "I never thought to be
sorrowful at parting with a Don," he said reflectively, "but I be."

"God made men afore the Devil made Dons," growled Tom Moone. "Yon's a
man."

Drake had gone down the wharf with John Hawkins of Plymouth, a town that
was warmly defiant of Spain's armed monopoly of sea-trade. Privateers
were dodging about the trade-routes where Spanish and Portuguese
galleons, laden with ingots of gold and silver, dyewoods, pearls,
spices, silks and priceless merchandise, moved as menacing sea-castles.
Huger and huger galleasses were built, masted and timbered with mighty
trunks from the virgin forests of the Old World, four and five feet
thick. The military discipline of the Continent made a warship a
floating barrack; the decks of a Spanish man-of-war were packed with
drilled troops like marching engines of destruction, dealing leaden
death from arquebus and musquetoun. The little ships of Cabot,
Willoughby and William Hawkins had not exceeded fifty, sixty, at m