e; and then the smoke rose and drifted in a heavy veil
in the keen frosty air over the cheering crowds. When it lifted again,
there was the flash of gold and colour from the Greenwich road, and the
high braying of the trumpets pierced the roaring welcome of the people.
But the watchers at the windows could see no more over the heads of the
crowd than the plumes of the royal carriage, as the Queen dismounted, and
a momentary glimpse of her figure and the group round her as she passed
on to the deck of the _Pelican_ and went immediately below to the
banquet, while the parish church bells pealed a welcome.

Lady Maxwell insisted that Isabel should now dine, as there would be no
more to be seen till the Queen should come up on deck again.

Of the actual ceremony of the knighting of Mr. Drake they had a very fair
view, though the figures were little and far away. The first intimation
they had that the banquet was over was the sight of the scarlet-clad
yeomen emerging one by one up the little hatchway that led below. The
halberdiers lined the decks already, with their weapons flashing in long
curved lines; and by the time that the trumpets began to sound to show
that the Queen was on her way from below, the decks were one dense mass
of colour and steel, with a lane left to the foot of the poop-stairs by
which she would ascend. Then at last the two figures appeared, the Queen
radiant in cloth of gold, and Mr. Drake, alert and brisk, in his Court
suit and sword. There was silence from the crowd as the adventurer knelt
before the Queen, and Anthony held his breath with excitement as he
caught the flash of the slender sword that an officer had put into the
Queen's hand; and then an inconceivable noise broke out as Sir Francis
Drake stood up. The crowd was one open mouth, shouting, the church bells
burst into peals overhead, answered by the roll of drums from the deck
and the blare of trumpets; and then the whole din sank into nothingness
for a moment under the heart-shaking crash of the ship's broadside,
echoed instantly by the deeper roar of the dockyard guns, and answered
after a moment or two from far away by the dull boom from the Tower. And
Anthony leaned yet further from the window and added his voice to the
tumult.

As he rode back alone to Lambeth, after parting with the others at London
Bridge, for they intended to go down home again that night, he was
glowing with national zeal. He had seen not only royalty and magnifi