'Save us now, worshipper, from your sharp and stinging comparisons,' she said, as she turned on me radiantly, her pliant figure entwined with a tender vine of rose-coloured flowers, and her glossy hair crowned with glowing blossoms, 'and send your goddess a daintier offering!'

'Nay, goddess,' said I, 'it was a bright and glittering offering enough till your radiance put it out of countenance.'

'Then must you offer me something brighter still,' she said, as she sat herself upon a great rock half hidden in flowers. 'See, your goddess is enthroned. To your knees, errant worshipper; I will endure no heretical postures.'

So I knelt before her and offered her such dainty sweetmeat phrases as every pretty woman loves, so they be compounded to her taste and served so that she may taste without offence.

In such wise my pretty plaything and I played together till the sun began to sink and I returned to my duties, wondering idly, as the wise Sieur de Montaigne tells us in his Apology for Raymond Sebond he did of his cat, whether she played with me or I with her; and wondering, too, still more to think how the magic of the west, or warfare, or whatsoever else it might be, had changed me. It was barely a year ago since I was alone with another woman, the first I ever knew. How different it was then, and yet perhaps how like, if we but knew the springs of our hearts! But enough of that! Let me not speak of those two with one breath.

I seemed another man as I looked backward. Yet was there no miracle. For surely it is no more than natural that, when a man has burst the bonds in which he blindly bound down and tormented his soul, it should grow quickly to its proper shape if it finds itself planted in soil that is apt to its true nature.

All too soon, as we thought, and yet perhaps not soon enough, Frank came back with the frigate and the pinnace in company with a goodly bark.

'A fat prize at last,' I cried, as he rowed up to the ship, 'and I not there to see. Is our voyage made?'

'Not yet,' said Frank, 'and yet I hope not far from it. Yonder is no prize, but a Frenchman with seventy good Huguenots aboard, whom we have admitted to our company. Let me present to you her captain, most worthy Monsieur Tetú.'

He bowed with great ceremony and much spreading abroad of his hands, and I asked if he had any news from Europe, at which to my surprise he seemed very pained.