At the end, when hope was gone, you would hear little splashes in
the waters as this man or that put his treasures into eternal hiding. A
Spanish sword was like to have cleft my skull, but before I lost my senses
I noted Captain Bovill tearing the chart in shreds and using them to hold
down the last charges for his matchlock. He was crying, too, in English
that some day we would return the road we had come."
"And you returned?"
The seaman shook his head. Not with earthly feet. Two of us they slew
outright, and two more died on the way coastwards. For long I was between
death and life, and knew little till I woke in the Almirante's cell at
Panama. . . . The rest you have heard. Captain Bovill died praising God,
and with him three stout lads out of Somerset. I escaped and tell you the
tale."
Raleigh meditation. With a sudden motion he rose to his feet and stared
through the port, which was now tremulous with the foreglow of the tropic
dawn. He put his head out and sniffed the sweet cold air.
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