“Mr. Leigh!” said Winter, “it behoves you to speak with somewhat more courtesy, if not respect, to captains who are your elders and commanders.”
“Ask your pardon, sir,” said the giant, as he stood in front of the fire with the rain steaming and smoking off his armor; “but I was bred in a school where getting good service done was more esteemed than making fine speeches.”
“Whatsoever school you were trained in, sir,” said Winter, nettled at the hint about Drake; “it does not seem to have been one in which you learned to obey orders. Why did you not come in when the recall was sounded?”
“Because,” said Amyas, very coolly, “in the first place I did not hear it; and in the next, in my school I was taught when I had once started not to come home empty-handed.”
This was too pointed; and Winter sprang up with an oath—“Do you mean to insult me, sir?”
“I am sorry, sir, that you should take a compliment to Sir Francis Drake as an insult to yourself. I brought in this gentleman because I thought he might give you good information; if he dies meanwhile, the loss will be yours, or rather the queen's.”
“Help me, then,” said Cary, glad to create a diversion in Amyas's favor, “and we will bring him round;” while Raleigh rose, and catching Winter's arm, drew him aside, and began talking earnestly.
“What a murrain have you, Leigh, to quarrel with Winter?” asked two or three.
“I say, my reverend fathers and dear children, do get the Don's talking tackle free again, and leave me and the admiral to settle it our own way.”
There was more than one captain sitting in the ring, but discipline, and the degrees of rank, were not so severely defined as now; and Amyas, as a “gentleman adventurer,” was, on land, in a position very difficult to be settled, though at sea he was as liable to be hanged as any other person on board; and on the whole it was found expedient to patch the matter up. So Captain Raleigh returning, said that though Admiral Winter had doubtless taken umbrage at certain words of Mr. Leigh's, yet that he had no doubt that Mr. Leigh meant nothing thereby but what was consistent with the profession of a soldier and a gentleman, and worthy both of himself and of the admiral.