"It may be so," said Frank; "at least you owe it to the prayers of that most pure and peerless virgin by whose commands you sailed;the sweet incense of whose orisons has gone up for you daily, and for whose sake you were preserved from flood and foe, that you might spread the fame and advance the power of the spotless championess of truth, and right, and freedom,--Elizabeth, your queen."Amyas answered this rhapsody, which would have been then both fashionable and sincere, by a loyal chuckle.Eustace smiled meekly, but answered somewhat venomously nevertheless--"I, at least, am certain that I speak the truth, when I call my patroness a virgin undefiled."Both the brothers' brows clouded at once.Amyas, as he lay on his back on the pebbles, said quietly to the gulls over his head--"Iwonder what the Frenchman whose head I cut off at the Azores, thinks by now about all that.""Cut off a Frenchman's head?" said Frank.
"Yes, faith; and so fleshed my maiden sword.I'll tell you.It was in some tavern; I and George Drake had gone in, and there sat this Frenchman, with his sword on the table, ready for a quarrel (Ifound afterwards he was a noted bully), and begins with us loudly enough about this and that; but, after awhile, by the instigation of the devil, what does he vent but a dozen slanders against her majesty's honor, one atop of the other? I was ashamed to hear them, and I should be more ashamed to repeat them.""I have heard enough of such," said Frank."They come mostly through lewd rascals about the French ambassador, who have been bred (God help them) among the filthy vices of that Medicean Court in which the Queen of Scots had her schooling; and can only perceive in a virtuous freedom a cloak for licentiousness like their own.Let the curs bark; Honi soit qui mal y pense is our motto, and shall be forever.""But I didn't let the cur bark; for I took him by the ears, to show him out into the street.Whereon he got to his sword, and I to mine; and a very near chance I had of never bathing on the pebble ridge more; for the fellow did not fight with edge and buckler, like a Christian, but had some newfangled French devil's device of scryming and foining with his point, ha'ing and stamping, and tracing at me, that I expected to be full of eyelet holes ere Icould close with him."
"Thank God that you are safe, then!" said Frank."I know that play well enough, and dangerous enough it is.""Of course you know it; but I didn't, more's the pity.""Well, I'll teach it thee, lad, as well as Rowland Yorke himself, 'Thy fincture, carricade, and sly passata, Thy stramazon, and resolute stoccata, Wiping maudritta, closing embrocata, And all the cant of the honorable fencing mystery.'""Rowland Yorke? Who's he, then?"
"A very roystering rascal, who is making good profit in London just now by teaching this very art of fence; and is as likely to have his mortal thread clipt in a tavern brawl, as thy Frenchman.But how did you escape his pinking iron?""How? Had it through my left arm before I could look round; and at that I got mad, and leapt upon him, and caught him by the wrist, and then had a fair side-blow; and, as fortune would have it, off tumbled his head on to the table, and there was an end of his slanders.""So perish all her enemies!" said Frank; and Eustace, who had been trying not to listen, rose and said--"I trust that you do not number me among them?""As you speak, I do, coz," said Frank."But for your own sake, let me advise you to put faith in the true report of those who have daily experience of their mistress's excellent virtue, as they have of the sun's shining, and of the earth's bringing forth fruit, and not in the tattle of a few cowardly back-stair rogues, who wish to curry favor with the Guises.Come, we will say no more.Walk round with us by Appledore, and then home to breakfast."But Eustace declined, having immediate business, he said, in Northam town, and then in Bideford; and so left them to lounge for another half-hour on the beach, and then walk across the smooth sheet of turf to the little white fishing village, which stands some two miles above the bar, at the meeting of the Torridge and the Taw.
Now it came to pass, that Eustace Leigh, as we have seen, told his cousins that he was going to Northam: but he did not tell them that his point was really the same as their own, namely, Appledore; and, therefore, after having satisfied his conscience by going as far as the very nearest house in Northam village, he struck away sharp to the left across the fields, repeating I know not what to the Blessed Virgin all the way; whereby he went several miles out of his road; and also, as is the wont of crooked spirits, Jesuits especially (as three centuries sufficiently testify), only outwitted himself.For his cousins going merrily, like honest men, along the straight road across the turf, arrived in Appledore, opposite the little "Mariner's Rest" Inn, just in time to see what Eustace had taken so much trouble to hide from them, namely, four of Mr.Thomas Leigh's horses standing at the door, held by his groom, saddles and mail-bags on back, and mounting three of them, Eustace Leigh and two strange gentlemen.
"There's one lie already this morning," growled Amyas; "he told us he was going to Northam.""And we do not know that he has not been there," blandly suggested Frank.
"Why, you are as bad a Jesuit as he, to help him out with such a fetch.""He may have changed his mind."
"Bless your pure imagination, my sweet boy," said Amyas, laying his great hand on Frank's head, and mimicking his mother's manner."Isay, dear Frank, let's step into this shop and buy a penny-worth of whipcord.""What do you want with whipcord, man?"
"To spin my top, to be sure."
"Top? how long hast had a top?"
"I'll buy one, then, and save my conscience; but the upshot of this sport I must see.Why may not I have an excuse ready made as well as Master Eustace?"So saying, he pulled Frank into the little shop, unobserved by the party at the inn-door.