and
very mightily in visions as beautiful as that which had been vouchsafed
to him going through the orchard that eventide, felt as light a heart as
if no shadowy ship awaited in the little port down by the little town,
whose people either cursed or looked askance. Waking in the middle of
the night, he thought he saw a knight at prayer--one of the old stone
Templars from Ferne church, where they lay with palm to palm, awaiting
with frozen patience the last trumpet-call that ever they should hear.
This knight, however, was kneeling with bowed head and hidden face, a
thing against all rule with those other stark and sternly waiting forms.
So Robin, being too drowsy to reason, let the matter alone and went to
sleep again.

X

The _Sea Wraith_, an ancient ship, gray and patched of sail, battered
and worn with a name for all disaster, sailed the Spanish seas as though
she bore a charmed life--and her crew that was the refuse of land and
sea, used to license, to whom mutiny was no uglier a word than another,
kept the terms of an iron discipline--and her Captain waked and slept as
one aware of when to wake and when to sleep.

There was fever between the decks; there was fever in black hearts; of
dark nights a corposant burned now at this masthead, now at that.
Mariner and soldier knew the story of the shadowy figure keeping company
with the stars there above them on the poop-royal. Did he keep company
only with the stars and with the boy, his familiar? The sick, tossing
from side to side, raved out curses, and the well saw many omens.
Dissatisfaction, never far from their unstayed minds, crept at times
very near, and superstition sat always amongst them. But they reckoned
with a Captain stronger for this voyage than had been Francis Drake or
John Hawkins, and stranger than any under whom they had ever sailed. He
was so still a man that they knew not how to take him, but beneath his
eyes vain imaginings and half-formed conspiracies withered like burnt
paper. He called upon neither God nor devil, but his voice blew like an
icy wind upon the heat of disloyal intents, and like the white fire that
touched now stem, now stern, so his will held the ship, driving it like
a leaf towards the mainland and the fortress of Nueva Cordoba.

The ship that seemed so aged and disgraced yet had a strength of sinew
which made her formidable. All things had been patiently cared for by
the man who, selling his patrimony, had labored agains