e of far sheep-bells, heard the nightingales
singing beneath the moon that shone on England. Friends' homes opened to
them; Grenville welcomed them to Stowe, Sidney to charmed Penshurst.
Then to London and the Triple Tun! Bow Bells rang for them; they drank
in the inn's long-room; their names were in men's mouths. What welcome,
what clashing of the bells, when they should sail up the Thames
again--the _Mere Honour_, the _Cygnet_, the _Marigold_, and the
_Phoenix_--with treasure in their holds, and for pilot that bright angel
Fame! What should they buy with their treasure? what should they do with
their fame? Treasure should beget stout ships, stout hearts to sail
them; fame, laid to increase, might swell to deathless glory!
Sea-captains now, sea-kings would the English be, gathering tribute
from the waters and the winds, bringing gifts to England--frankincense
of wealth, myrrh of knowledge, spikenard of power!--till, robed and
crowned, she rose above the peoples, Joseph's sheaf, Joseph's star!

On went the charmed words, each a lantern flashed on thought, grave,
poetic, telling of triumph, yet far removed from gross optimism, not
without that strange, melancholy note sounding now and again amongst the
age's crashing chords. Abruptly his voice fell, but presently with a
lighter note he broke the silence in which his listeners gazed upon the
stately vision he had conjured up. "Ah, we will talk to Frank Drake of
this night! Canst not hear Richard Hawkins laugh in the Triple Tun's
long-room? The Queen, too, in her palace will laugh,--like a man with
the flash in her eye and her white hand clenched! And they whom we
love.... What is the word for to-night, John Nevil? I may give it?
Then--Dione!"

It was the red dawn after his vigil on the fortress hill: in the great
room of the stone house the leaders of the expedition had followed, line
by line, his sword point as it drew upon the flagging a plan of attack,
to which they gave instant adoption; Master Francis Sark had been
dismissed, and to the Admiral's grave hint of possible treachery Ferne
had answered, "Ay, John Nevil, I also think him a false--hearted craven,
Spaniolated and perverse, a huckster, whose wares do go to the highest
bidder! Well, with our hand at his throat we do not bid the highest?"

Now as he raised his tankard to thirsty lips, suddenly from the square
below, shattering all the languid stillness of the tropic dawn, brayed a
trumpet, arose a noise of hu