"'Fore God!" he shouted in sudden joy, "it is Sir Thomas Winchester!" Then throwing up his hands sorrowfully, he cried: "Then it is true! Would to God I had not seen it!" and he turned his face away, as though to shut me from his sight.
"What's true?" I exclaimed, disappointed and alarmed at the change in his countenance, and painfully I staggered to my feet and faced him.
"That thou hast joined these pirates," he answered. "The report was circulated in London after thy disappearance, but thy friends would not credit such a tale. Never would I have believed it, had I not seen thee with mine own eyes," and he finished with a groan.
"Art thou so easily persuaded to think ill of one whom thou didst once believe in and trust?" I answered coldly, for in truth I was grieved and wounded that he should so readily think this of me. "Shame on thee, Sir Francis! Is it the part of a man to convict on such slight testimony and without a hearing? A few idle words of an empty brain, and thou wouldst turn thy back forever upon me, and tarnish the good name of a man of noble family, and one whom thou didst once love," and I looked at him indignantly.
"Slight testimony," he replied bitterly. "What wouldst thou call overwhelming then, if this is but slight? Lo! I look into the hall where the ruffians held their drunken feast last night, and I find thee here on the floor with them. Yes, by the saints, thou hast on the very sword of Sir Samuel Morton, who sailed away two years ago to search for gold on the coast of Peru, and who never returned. It was rumored that he was slain by the hand of Count DeNortier. I cannot be mistaken, for oft have I seen the sword in London. It is of a curious design, and thou couldst search the world over and find no other like unto it," and he pointed to the gold-hilted sword that lay at my side.
A young gallant had entered the room behind Drake, and now stood regarding me with a supercilious air.
"He even wears the gray silk doublet of Sir Samuel!" he lisped breathlessly. "Thou didst see it at the Queen's palace, Sir Francis, when Sir Samuel appeared in it that night for the first time, and how the doublet was praised for the beauty of the cloth and the shape of the garment. As for the sword, there are a dozen gentlemen here who can swear to it."
He was a dainty creature, this gentleman who had spoken, slender, wiry, with a colorless face, and little black beard; his doublet and hose all of the latest cut, and made of the finest material. He might have just stepped out of some London coffee-house instead of a ship commanded by the rough soldier Drake.
I turned my face towards Drake with a bitter look of scorn.