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--"I wonder 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 (I found
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