'Slid, it seems half a life that I've been away.
"And you really thought of your poor cousin?
Be sure that he, too, thought of you, and offered up nightly his weak prayers for your safety (doubtless, not without avail) to those saints, to whom would that you--" "Halt there, coz.

If they are half as good fellows as you and I take them for, they'll help me without asking." "They have helped you, Amyas." "Maybe; I'd have done as much, I'm sure, for them, if I 'd been in their place." "And do you not feel, then, that you owe a debt of gratitude to them; and, above all, to her, whose intercessions have, I doubt not, availed for your preservation?
Her, the star of the sea, the all-compassionate guide of the mariner ?" "Humph!" said Amyas.

"Here's Frank; let him answer." And, as he spoke, up came Frank, and after due greetings, sat down beside them on the ridge.
"I say, brother, here's Eustace trying already to convert me; and telling me that I owe all my luck to the Blessed Virgin's prayers for me.
"It may be so," said Frank; "at least you owe it to the prayers of that most pure and peerless virgin by whose commands you sailed; the sweet incense of whose orisons has gone up for you daily, and for whose sake you were preserved from flood and foe, that you might spread the fame and advance the power of the spotless championess of truth, and right, and freedom,--Elizabeth, your queen." Amyas answered this rhapsody, which would have been then both fashionable and sincere, by a loyal chuckle.

Eustace smiled meekly, but answered somewhat venomously nevertheless-- "I, at least, am certain that I speak the truth, when I call my patroness a virgin undefiled." Both the brothers' brows clouded at once.

Amyas, as he lay on his back on the pebbles, said quietly to the gulls over his head--"I wonder what the Frenchman whose head I cut off at the Azores, thinks by now about all that." "Cut off a Frenchman's head ?" said Frank.
"Yes, faith; and so fleshed my maiden sword.