“As soon as possible I will return.” With these words Guy springs lightly out of the boat and clambers over the gunwale of his own vessel.
Then hurriedly drawing aside his first officer, who has been looking over at this colloquy, he says: “It has all turned out as I wished. Besides, I know a little more. This dead man in the cabin (whom you will throw overboard as soon as possible) is the secretary of that accursed Chiapin Vitelli!”
“The scoundrel who is aiding Alva in his plans against the life of our sovereign!” interjects Dalton.
“Yes. This thing makes it doubly important that I go to Antwerp. I may even stay there some days. Keep the boat off and on near the dyke below Fort Lillo, as I have commanded.”
“You are taking desperate chances,” mutters his subordinate, dissentingly.
“But they are chances I must take. In case anything happens to me, in case I—I do not come back, tell my Queen it was for her sake. Return with the vessel, Dalton, to England and utter to our Sovereign these words: ‘Be more on your guard of Spanish poison or Spanish dagger than ever. It is the last warning you will hear from your devoted liegeman, Guy Stanhope Chester.’ ”
With this the young captain steps into his cabin, and within ten minutes, as he re-opens the door, the dim light displays him as a different man.
No longer the weather-beaten sailor in tarpaulin and sou’wester, but as gay and debonnaire a young gallant as ever flaunted with the court ladies of Hampton, or ruffled it in the tennis courts of Windsor or Westminster.
A light blue velvet cap surmounted by two long [[19]]white plumes fastened by a diamond clasp is on his youthful head; round his neck a long Spanish collar of the lace of Venice; his velvet doublet slashed with silver and satin; his hose and trunks of the finest silk of France; his high Spanish boots of the softest bronze morocco leather. In this gallant garb, with his blue, flashing eyes, and laughing lips and curly hair, Guy Stanhope Chester makes as brave a figure as even Dudley, Earl of Leicester, himself, when he charmed the Queen of England and her maids of honor.
Perhaps even more so, for his face is honest and his smile sincere, though there is a determined expression in his face as he steps out of his cabin and examines carefully the priming of the two long pistols he has in his belt, and thrusts his hand in his bosom to be sure that the long, keen poniard is in its place, and claps his hand on sword hilt to assure himself that his trusty long Toledo cut-and-thrust rapier is right to his hand. For the chances of this visit to the great city of the Netherlands, which Alva holds in his grasp, mean to him the chances of not merely success nor failure, but the chances of life and death. With the caution of common sense, Guy has given himself the appearance of Catholic and Spanish cavalier; he has discarded the medal of the Gueux and wears instead, quite ostentatiously, a rosary of golden beads and ornamented cross.