Spanish cruelties, that he threw up all his prospects and turned captain of Filibusters in the West Indies, for the express purpose of ridding them of their tyrants; and when a Spanish ship was taken, used to relinquish the whole booty to his crew, and reserve for himself only the pleasure of witnessing his victims' dying agonies.
But what had become of that bird-like song of Ayacanora's which had astonished them on the banks of the Meta, and cheered them many a time in their anxious voyage down the Magdalena? From the moment that she found out her English parentage, it stopped. She refused utterly to sing anything but the songs and psalms which she picked up from the English. Whether it was that she despised it as a relic of her barbarism, or whether it was too maddening for one whose heart grew heavier and humbler day by day, the nightingale notes were heard no more.
So homeward they ran, before a favoring south-west breeze: but long ere they were within sight of land, Lucy Passmore was gone to her rest beneath the Atlantic waves.
"It fell about the Martinmas,
When nights were lang and mirk,
That wife's twa sons cam hame again,
And their hats were o' the birk.
"It did na graw by bush or brae,
Nor yet in ony shough;
But by the gates o' paradise
That birk grew fair eneugh."
It is the evening of the 15th of February 1587, and Mrs. Leigh (for we must return now to old scenes and old faces) is pacing slowly up and down the terrace-walk at Burrough, looking out over the winding river, and the hazy sand-hills, and the wide western sea, as she has done every evening, be it fair weather or foul, for three weary years. Three years and more are past and gone, and yet no news of Frank and Amyas, and the gallant ship and all the gallant souls therein; and loving eyes in Bideford and Appledore, Clovelly and Ilfracombe, have grown hollow with watching and with weeping for those who have sailed away into the West, as John Oxenham sailed before them, and have vanished like a dream, as he did, into the infinite unknown. Three weary years, and yet no word. Once there was a flush of hope, and good Sir Richard (without Mrs. Leigh's knowledge) had sent a horseman posting across to Plymouth, when the news arrived that Drake, Frobisher, and Carlisle had returned with their squadron
