Produced by Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries. _THE GREAT CAPTAIN._ _A STORY OF THE DAYS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH._ BY KATHARINE TYNAN HINKSON, _Author of “The Golden Lily,” “The Queen’s Page,” “Her Father’s Daughter,” etc._ _New York, Cincinnati, Chicago_: BENZIGER BROTHERS, _Publishers of Benziger’s Magazine_ Copyright, 1902, by _Benziger Brothers_. Printed in the United States of America [Illustration: _“While I stood stammering and staring a lean finger was pointed at me.” (See page 24.)_] CONTENTS. · I.—Of Myself, that Great Captain Sir Walter Raleigh, and how I became his Leal Man ............................................ 7 · II.—The Apparition of the Monk ................................. 21 · III.—Of My Secret, the Lord Boyle, and Other Matters ........... 37 · IV.—The Dead Hand .............................................. 52 · V.—Of a Strait Place and a Quiet Time .......................... 67 · VI.—The Treasure-ship .......................................... 83 · VII.—Our Last Years Together ................................... 99 · VIII.—An Unravelled Thread ..................................... 113 CHAPTER I.—OF MYSELF, THAT GREAT CAPTAIN SIR WALTER RALEIGH, AND OF HOW I BECAME HIS LEAL MAN. I never knew my father and mother, having been born into a time like that of the great desolation foretold by the Scriptures. They were the days of what I have heard called the Rebellion of the Desmonds, when that great league was made against the power of Eliza, the English Queen, by the Irish princes, which went down in a red sunset of death and blood. Indeed I myself had starved, like other innocents, on the breasts of their dead mothers, had it not been for the pity of him I must ever regard as the greatest of Englishmen, albeit no friend, but rather the spoiler, of those of my blood and faith.