III.--The Good Ship Rose
When Amyas was in Ireland he made captive a certain Spanish grandee, Don Guzman, and sent him to Sir Richard Grenville to be held at ransom. And then, the Irish being for the time subdued, Amyas sailed with Sir Humphrey Gilbert on that ill-fated voyage to Newfoundland, and returned in rags, landing at Plymouth, where he learnt news of Bideford.
Mrs. Hawkins, wife of John Hawkins the port admiral, gave him supper, and then told him that the Spanish prisoner had "gone off, the villain."
"Without paying his ransom?"
"I can't say that, but there's a poor, innocent young maid gone off with him, one Salterne's daughter."
"Rose Salterne, the mayor's daughter, the Rose of Torridge?"
"That's her. Bless your dear soul, what ails you?"
Amyas had dropped back in his seat as if he had been shot; but he recovered himself, and next morning started for Bideford.
The story was true. Don Guzman had been made governor of La Guayra, in the West Indies, and his ransom had been paid. But he had fallen in love with the Rose, and the girl, driven, some said, by the over-harshness of her father, who loved his daughter and knew not how to manage her, had willingly escaped with him.
Amyas called on Salterne, and the old burgher besought him to go in pursuit of the Spaniard, and promised he would spend any money that was needed to fit out a ship to avenge his child. And Amyas heard that honest John Brimblecombe, now a parson, mindful of his oath to the brotherhood, was longing to seek the Rose, though it might be in the jaws of death. Will Cary, too, was for a voyage to the Indies to cut the throat of Don Guzman.