none of your business: but I have had it in my bosom ever since I left Plymouth; and I tell you now, what I forbore to tell you at first, that the South Seas have been my mark all along! such news have I herein of plate-ships, and gold-ships, and what not, which will come up from Quito and Lima this very month, all which, with the pearls of the Gulf of Panama, and other wealth unspeakable, will be ours, if we have but true English hearts within us.’
“At which, gentles, we were like madmen for lust of that gold, and cheerfully undertook a toil incredible; for first we run our ship aground in a great wood which grew in the very sea itself, and then took out her masts, and covered her in boughs, with her four cast pieces of great ordnance (of which more hereafter), and leaving no man in her, started for the South Seas across the neck of Panama, with two small pieces of ordnance and our culverins, and good store of victuals, and with us six of those negroes for a guide, and so twelve leagues to a river which runs into the South Sea.
“And there, having cut wood, we made a pinnace (and work enough we had at it) of five-and-forty foot in the keel; and in her down the stream, and to the Isle of Pearls in the Gulf of Panama.”
“Into the South Sea? Impossible!” said Sir Richard. “Have a care what you say, my man; for there is that about you which would make me sorry to find you out a liar.”
“Impossible or not, liar or none, we went there, sir.”
“Question him, Amyas, lest he turn out to have been beforehand with you.”
The man looked inquiringly at Amyas, who said—
“Well, my man, of the Gulf of Panama I cannot ask you, for I never was inside it, but what other parts of the coast do you know?”
“Every inch, sir, from Cabo San Francisco to Lima; more is my sorrow, for I was a galley-slave there for two years and more.”
“You know Lima?”
“I was there three times, worshipful gentlemen, and the last was February come two years; and there I helped lade a great plate-ship, the Cacafuogo,’ they called her.”
Amyas started. Sir Richard nodded to him gently to be silent, and then—
“And what became of her, my lad?”
“God knows, who knows all, and the devil who freighted her. I broke prison six weeks afterwards, and never heard but that she got safe into Panama.”
“You never heard, then, that she was taken?”
“Taken, your worships? Who should take her?”
“Why should not a good English ship take her as well as another?” said Amyas. “Lord love you, sir; yes, faith, if they had but been there. Many’s the time that I thought to myself, as we went alongside, ’Oh, if Captain Drake was but here, well to windward, and our old crew of the “Dragon”!’ Ask your pardon, gentles: but how is Captain Drake, if I may make so bold?”
Neither could hold out longer.