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held by what was going forward about him; he did not observe my lady upon the deck above.
    You are to know that this seeming piracy was a sort of licensed affair, a guerilla warfare waged upon King Philip II of Spain, who certainly provoked it. Englishmen had a lively hatred of Spain, induced by a variety of causes. There was, many years ago, the affair of Sir John Hawkins at San Juan de Ulloa, an instance of Spanish treachery that would not soon be forgot; there was grim persecution at work in the Low Countries which must make any honest man's blood boil; and a Holy Inquisition in Spain that had swallowed up in hideous manner many stout sailormen captured on English vessels. If you wished to seek farther you had only to observe the way Spain used towards the natives of the Indies. It should suffice you. On top of all there was the abundant pride of Spain, who chose to think herself mistress of the Old World and the New. It remained for Elizabeth, Queen of England by God's Grace, to abate this overweening conceit. In this she was ably assisted by such men as Drake, bluff, roaring man, and Beauvallet, his friend; Frobisher and Gilbert; Davis and the Hawkins, father, sons, and grandson. They put forth into Spanish waters without misgiving and harried King Philip mightily. They laboured under a belief – and you could not rid them of it – that one Englishman was worth a round dozen of Spaniards. Events proved them to be justified in their belief.
    Nicholas Beauvallet, a younger son, spent the restlessness of his youth in wanderings upon the Continent, as befitted hisstation. He left his England a boy overflowing with such a spirit of dare-devilry that his father and his elder brother prophesied it would lead him to disaster. He came back to it a man seasoned and tried, but it was not to be seen that the dare-devilry had departed from him. His brother, succeeding to their father's room, shook a grave head and called him Italianate, a ruffler, a veritable swashbuckler, and wondered that he would not be still. Nicholas refused to fulfil his family's expectations. He must be off on his adventures again. He went to sea; he made some little noise about the New World, and in due course accompanied Drake on his voyage round the world. With that master mariner he passed the Straits of Magellan, saw the sack of Valparaiso, reached the far Pelew Islands, and Mindanao, and came home round the perilous Cape of Storms, bronzed of face, and hard of muscle, and rich beyond the dreams of man. This was well enough, no doubt, but Gerard Beauvallet, a sober man, judged it time to be done with such traffickings. Nicholas had won an honourable knighthood; let him settle down now, choose a suitable bride, and provide the heirs that came not to my Lady Beauvallet. Instead of this, incorrigible Nicholas had sailed away, after the briefest of intervals, this time in a ship of his own. So far from conducting himself like a respectable landowner, such as his brother wished him to be, he seemed to be concerned only to make a strong noise about the world. This he did with complete success. There was only one Drake, but also there was only one Beauvallet. The Spaniards coupled the two names together, but made of Beauvallet a kind of devil. Drake performed the impossible in the only possible way; the Spaniards said that El Beauvallet performed it in an impossible way, and feared him accordingly. As for his own men, they held him in some affection, and believed firmly in his luck and his genius. They thought him clearly mad, but his madness was profitable, and they had long ceased to wonder atanything he might take it into his head to do. They might be trusted to follow where he led, knowing by experience that he would not lead them to disaster. His master, Patrick Howe, of bearded mien, would wag a solemn finger. ‘Look you, we win because our Nick cannot fail. He is bird-eyed for opportunity, and blind to danger, and he laughs his way out of every peril we