“Indeed, I did forget,” said Captain George Noble, looking disconcerted. “Prithee, Sir Thomas, ask them to pardon me. Say to them what I would say in their own tongue, if I could. We owe it to their Christian charity that Cousin Walter was kept alive until deliverance came to him. But for them, he tells us, he would have sunk long ago under his bitter and cruel bondage. Thanks, first to God, from whom all goodness comes; then to these, His servants—‘This our brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found.’” Sir Thomas Hartfield interpreted what was said to Fray Fernando and José. But the hearty clasping of hands and drinking of healths that followed, with true British cheering, needed no interpreter. One word more in Spanish was addressed to the strangers, and this time it was Walter Grey who spoke. “I have told Cousin George, and all our friends here present, that you are truly one with us in faith and hope. You will come with us to England? And as surely as friends, homes, welcomes await us there, so surely all these are yours as much as they are ours.” With glistening eye and quivering lip Fray Fernando thanked him, and accepted his offer, for himself and for José. XLIII. Foam of the Sea. “Ask’st thou my home? My pathway wouldst thou know, When from thine eye my floating shadow passed?” SCHILLER. It was night—glorious tropical night—surely “not made for slumber.” There was no moon, but her place was well supplied by the soft radiance of large luminous stars—Argo in the zenith, the Southern Cross near the horizon, while, far away towards the north, “the stars of the Great Bear shone with almost fearful magnitude.”[55] Nor was the deep that lieth under less marvellous for glory and for beauty than the sky that stretched above. Beneath the vessel’s keel burned a sheet of living fire, kindled by mysterious phosphoric lights. Jets of flame—blue, and red, and purple—flashed out here and there; while a shoal of dolphins, sporting about the ship, cut the waves in long circling lines, that gleamed and sparkled with prismatic hues. Two, perhaps three, were enjoying this sight from the deck of the _Sea Snake_. Fray Fernando and Walter Grey sat together, now talking in low quiet words, now silent, but always in true communion each with the other. A little further off José stood, leaning against a mast, either wrapped in his own thoughts or sharing those of his friends.