the poor of
Kilkhampton: but hearken thou all the same. If thou wilt not speak an
oath, thou shalt speak on compulsion; for to Launceston gaol thou goest,
there to answer for Mr. Oxenham's death, on suspicion whereof, and of
mutiny causing it, I will attach thee and every soul of his crew that
comes home. We have lost too many gallant captains of late by treachery
of their crews, and he that will not clear himself on oath, must be held
for guilty, and self-condemned."

"My good fellow," said Amyas, who could not give up his belief in the
man's honesty, "why, for such fantastical scruples, peril not only your
life, but your honor, and Mr. Oxenham's also? For if you be examined by
question, you may be forced by torment to say that which is not true."

"Little fear of that, young sir!" answered he, with a grim smile; "I
have had too much of the rack already, and the strappado too, to care
much what man can do unto me. I would heartily that I thought it lawful
to be sworn: but not so thinking, I can but submit to the cruelty of
man; though I did expect more merciful things, as a most miserable and
wrecked mariner, at the hands of one who hath himself seen God's ways
in the sea, and His wonders in the great deep. Sir Richard Grenville,
if you will hear my story, may God avenge on my head all my sins from my
youth up until now, and cut me off from the blood of Christ, and, if it
were possible, from the number of His elect, if I tell you one whit more
or less than truth; and if not, I commend myself into the hands of God."

Sir Richard smiled. "Well, thou art a brave ass, and valiant, though an
ass manifest. Dost thou not see, fellow, how thou hast sworn a ten-times
bigger oath than ever I should have asked of thee? But this is the way
with your Anabaptists, who by their very hatred of forms and ceremonies,
show of how much account they think them, and then bind themselves out
of their own fantastical self-will with far heavier burdens than ever
the lawful authorities have laid on them for the sake of the commonweal.
But what do they care for the commonweal, as long as they can save, as
they fancy, each man his own dirty soul for himself? However, thou art
sworn now with a vengeance; go on with thy tale: and first, who art
thou, and whence?"

"Well, sir," said the man, quite unmoved by this last explosion; "my
name is Salvation Yeo, born in Clovelly Street, in the year 1526, where
my father exercised the mystery of a barber