HAWKINS. My poor Brother, with all his gallant spirit and seamanship, when dealing with the enemy, was so confident in his crotchets of Law and Treaty! KILLIGREW. Law and Treaty with the Spaniard; that means let him tie your hands until he cuts your throat and robs you! There is hardly a day without some demand of redress from Philip, whilst even an answer is refused to us for the gravest breaches of Law, human and divine. The state of affairs is ominous. The Council is divided. Men say the Nation is divided; a foul falsehood. This affair of the Queen of Scots with the Duke of Norfolk, the poor fool! an idle threat of rebellion aided by Spain and the Pope. The Queen hardly knows whom to trust. Her reliance is on the Privateers, but we had better retire to talk of these matters. Here comes a suspicious looking rascal (_he looks at him_) he walks lame! Yet, observe, it is only a limp now and then; and that patch over his eye—it is only put on for a blind; the fellow does not look before him, like a man with one eye; yet he has a bold bearing, and tall. But for the patch and the awkward limp, I should think I knew the rake of his top-mast. HAWKINS (_after a view of the new-comer through his telescope_—_laughing_) You know him well. It is bold Tom Cobham, that fought his way with Wyatt, to the very gates of the Tower. He is after some devil’s play, I’ll warrant—and I think I know his game; he wears a disguise in Plymouth; there are so many spies here; he is supposed to be dead, you know. KILLIGREW. Of course; it was given out that he was sentenced to an extravagant death—unknown to our laws. It was a trick of the Queen’s. She laughs when she tells how she humbugged the Ambassador, who took it all in, and actually wrote it to his master. Elizabeth knew better than to execute one of Lord Cobham’s sons, who so nearly forfeited their lives in her cause. You know his offence? HAWKINS. Yes, Yes! the Spanish ship he captured, with eighty thousand ducats, in the Bay of Biscay, and which, after sewing up the Captain and all hands in their sails for winding sheets, he sent to the bottom! It was cleverly done, that affair; just like Cobham, who is not the man to do things by halves where Spaniards are concerned. I marvel how the thing got wind. When we scuttle a ship, we expect to hear no more of her: dead men usually tell no tales! KILLIGREW. In this case the adage turned out to be untrue; the westerly swell in Biscay’s shallow waters washed eighteen bodies ashore, sewed up in the mainsail; they of course were recognized, and the chase through the chops of the channel was seen by another Spaniard, who knew Cobham’s Sea Eagle before, only too well! Here he comes; let us affect not to know him! COBHAM _passes_—_Then walks round surveying them comically_, _using his hand as a telescope_, _held to his covered eye_.