By six o’clock the next day he and Clerivault and Nol porter were on the Plymouth road, the latter riding with them to convey the baggage, and to bring back the horses. Their way took them by Holne Chase and the head of the Horse-shoe Glen. It was a fair April morning, blue and white and gold. The birds were singing as they never sang but about that lovely haunted spot. It seemed suddenly to Brion that the fetters of long years were broken, and that he was riding forth to challenge the vision not of what was to be, but of what had been and fled. Love was on the heights, and it was the morning of an older day. CHAPTER XXVII. THE VOYAGE ‘The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the light-house top.’ A sky of liquid blue freighted with lazy argosies of clouds; the green lift of the Hoe under, like England on its feet to cry them God speed; drums and fiddles sounding on the quay; sunshine and merriment and colour in infinite variety coming up from the water and going down to it; beyond all, the ships themselves, resplendent painted craft, beflagged and picture-sailed, webbed with glistening shrouds, their fighting tops streaming blood-red pennons, like giant beacons alive with tongues of flame, their prows and side galleries minutely carved and frosted with gilding, coats of arms emblazoned on their poops, eyes of excitement appearing even in their port-holes, where each gun seemed to have thrust up its own little window to peep forth and see what all the fun was about--so, to such views and accompaniments, was brazen Adventure launched in Brion’s day, and so had been his. He had found it all very right and inspiring. He could have seen no reason in the world why serious business should go clothed in drab raiment, as if it feared the issue. Colour had its definite value in the scheme of things, and limbs were no less sturdy nor hearts strong because silk and velvet covered them. There was tough oak under the gilding, as there was invincible valour under the bright feathers and doublets, the shining morions and breastplates. Enterprise, it was felt, lost nothing in a brave send-off, nor would lose again, for all that the ships which now weighed so gallantly should come staggering back to their moorings, after long months of adventure, soiled, battered, befouled, stripped to the very bedrock of their unconquerable stubbornness.