“Ann eoriou zo savet; setu ar flik-ha-flok! Krenvat ra ann avel; mont a reomp kaer a-rog; Stegna reeur ar gweliou; ann douar a bella; Va c’halon, siouaz d’in; ne ra med huanada.…” (“The anchors are up; hark to the _flik-flok_! The wind freshens; we speed on our course; The sails blow full; the land recedes; Alas! my heart voices only sighs…”) Handsome, dark faces, prescient with some mystery of the sea, were revealed slowly as the gray light spread. Umbrous eyes, that seemed sleeping, though unclosed, and whose looks were dreams begetting dreams, gazed out to the eastern line. For the sun had not yet risen. “Ann eoriou zo savet; setu ar flik-ha-flok! Krenvat ra ann avel; mont a reomp kaer a-rog…” Then, as the sound of the men’s deep voices died away across the sea, a woman’s voice rose higher, in limpid, silvery tones, yet with words that seemed incongruous in the still gray hour of dawn. For the sun had not yet risen. “Let the world slide, let the world go; A fig for care and a fig for woe; If I can’t pay, why, I can owe, And death makes equal the high and low— Be merry, friends!” But the truest singer of them all lay in the bow, shrouded by the daybreak mist, and silent in the depths of slumber. For the sun had not yet risen. * * * * * Thus Christopher Marlowe—an impression, a song, a vivid but fleeting picture—passed from the life of a new-world people. CHAPTER XXIII “But who comes here? How now?” —MARLOWE, in _The Jew of Malta_. “Master Christopher Marlowe hath disappeared.” The assertion came from Ananias Dare, who at noon joined a number of his fellows idling in the town. “Ay,” said a gossip following him, “and Gyll Croyden is nowhere to be found.” “Marlowe gone!” exclaimed one. “Gyll Croyden missing!” ejaculated another. “The poet and his love,” insinuated the gossip. The women exchanged glances; the men were grave with apprehension. “By St. George, ’tis a strange hap,” said a soldier. “Some ill hath overtaken them as retribution,” declared the Oxford preacher. “Let us institute a search,” suggested several simultaneously. “We may find them.” “Nay, they’ve not been seen for many hours.” “But we should try.” “Well, then, ’twill keep us fro’ twiddling our thumbs. Ho, Prat! Give us aid. ’Ods precious! Where’s the merry-andrew gone? Was she not _his_ light o’ love as well?” “Yes,” laughed the gossip, “but saw you not Prat’s look when I told you she had disappeared? He and his bear have gone a-roaming in the forest. Poor clown!” Many shook their heads with indulgent pity. “Come, let us go in search.” But Ananias Dare, who, being in the turmoil of a struggle against himself, had said little, now stayed them. “They are not in jeopardy. We ourselves have more to fear. Last night I saw a ship bear away to the east. My masters, I doubt not they have clandestinely deserted us. They have gone.”