to kindle the wrath of that vehement official. The vessel
was commanded by Turnel, Argall's lieutenant, apparently an officer of
merit, a scholar and linguist. He had treated his prisoner with great
kindness, because, says the latter, "he esteemed and loved him for
his naive simplicity and ingenuous candor." But of late, thinking
his kindness misplaced, he had changed it for an extreme coldness,
preferring, in the words of Biard himself, "to think that the Jesuit had
lied, rather than so many who accused him."

Water ran low, provisions began to fail, and they eked out their meagre
supply by butchering the horses taken at Port Royal. At length they came
within sight of Fayal, when a new terror seized the minds of the two
Jesuits. Might not the Englishmen fear that their prisoners would
denounce them to the fervent Catholics of that island as pirates and
sacrilegious kidnappers of priests? From such hazard the escape was
obvious. What more simple than to drop the priests into the sea? In
truth, the English had no little dread of the results of conference
between the Jesuits and the Portuguese authorities of Fayal; but
the conscience or humanity of Turnel revolted at the expedient which
awakened such apprehension in the troubled mind of Biard. He contented
himself with requiring that the two priests should remain hidden while
the ship lay off the port: Biard does not say that he enforced the
demand either by threats or by the imposition of oaths. He and his
companion, however, rigidly complied with it, lying close in the hold or
under the boats, while suspicious officials searched the ship, a proof,
he triumphantly declares, of the audacious malice which has asserted it
as a tenet of Rome that no faith need be kept with heretics.

Once more at sea, Turnel shaped his course for home, having, with some
difficulty, gained a supply of water and provisions at Fayal. All was
now harmony between him and his prisoners. When he reached Pembroke,
in Wales, the appearance of the vessel--a French craft in English
hands--again drew upon him the suspicion of piracy. The Jesuits,
dangerous witnesses among the Catholics of Fayal, could at the worst do
little harm with the Vice-Admiral at Pembroke. To him, therefore, he led
the prisoners, in the sable garb of their order, now much the worse for
wear, and commended them as persons without reproach, "wherein," adds
the modest father, "he spoke the truth." The result of their evidence
was,