Beauvallet fell to stroking his pointed beard, seeing him at which significant trick Joshua backed strategically to the door. "An evil chance will without any doubt at all shortly befall you, my friend," said Sir Nicholas, and came to his feet, "At the toe of my boot!" "If that is your humour, sir, I withdraw with all speed," said Joshua promptly, and retired nimbly. Beauvallet swung out in his wake, and went up on deck to oversee an inventory of the _Santa Maria's_ cargo in the waist. Thus Doña Dominica, when she came up on deck to take the air, chanced upon a sight that made her curl her lip, and lift her chin. She wandered to the quarterdeck and stood looking down into the waist, where bales of cloth were lying, and where ingots were being weighed upon a rough scale. Master Dangerfield had a sheet of paper and an inkhorn upon an upturned cask, and wrote carefully thereon while a stout, hairy fellow called weights and numbers. Near him, upon another cask, lounged Beauvallet, with a hand on his hip, and a booted leg swinging. His attention was 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.