g
breath.

"It's that boy Robin! Had they not bound him he would have thrown
himself overboard. I doubt you'll have to flog his senses back to him."

Robin-a-dale's voice again, this time from the break of the
poop;--Robin-a-dale himself upon them, his bonds broken, his eyeballs
starting, a wild blue-jerkined Ariel filled with tidings. In this moment
a scant respecter of persons, he threw himself upon Nevil, pointing and
stammering, inarticulate with the wealth of his discovery. The eyes of
the two men followed his lean, brown finger.... Above the quay where
boats made landing a sand-spit ran out from the tamarind-shadowed bank,
and now in the red dawning the mist that clung to it lifted. A man who
for an hour had lain heavily in the heavy shadow where he had been left
by De Guardiola's picked men had arisen, and with feeble and uncertain
steps was treading the sand-spit in the direction of the ships. Even as
Nevil and Arden looked where Robin's shaking forefinger bade them look,
he raised and waved his hand. It was the shadow of an old
familiar gesture.

Before the cockboat reached the point he had fallen, first to his knee,
then prone upon the sand. It was in that deep swoon that he was brought
aboard the _Mere Honour_ and laid in the Admiral's cabin, whence Arden,
leaving the chirurgeon and Robin-a-dale with the yet unconscious man,
presently came forth to the Admiral and to Ambrose Wynch and asked for
aqua vitae, then drew his hand across his brow and wiped away the cold
sweat; finally found voice with which to load with curses Luiz de
Guardiola and his ministers. The Admiral listening, kept his still look
upon the fortress. When Arden had ended his imprecations he spoke with a
quiet voice:

"I love a knightly foe," he said. "For that churl and satyr yonder, may
God keep him in safety until we come again!"

"Till we come again!" Arden cried, in the fierceness of his unwonted
passion. "Are we not here? Why is the boatswain calling? Why do we make
sail, and that so hastily?"

"Look!" said Ambrose Wynch, gruffly, and pointed to the west. "The
plate-fleet!"

Those many white flecks upon the horizon grew larger, came swiftly on.
Forth from the river's mouth, out to sea, put the _Mere Honour_ and the
_Marigold_, for they might not tarry to meet that squadron. None that
looked upon Nevil's face doubted that though now he went, he would come
again. But he must gather other ships, replace his dead, renew his
streng