ostentation with some of the famous captains of the time. Even the incomparable Drake had not been guiltless of it, and the Admiral used to inveigh with a fierce scorn against the silver-engraved plate, and the demulcent lutes and violins, and the silken cushions and stifling perfumes with which that mighty sailor had thought fit to furnish his cabin in the _Pelican_. There were no perfumes on the _Tiger_, save of burning gunpowder; but sharp claws and fierce colouring, as was martial and fitting. She carried ten guns a side, and two on her upper deck, and was ready for her spring at any time, though not an ounce of silver adorned either her table or her musket-locks. Music there might be in moderation, since you could not keep natural songsters from singing; but Grenville would have none of it in his own quarters, not even on the offer of young Anthony Russe, who was a gentleman adventurer like Brion, and had a voice like a merry bird’s. He was a captivating young fellow, was this Anthony, one of the few whom Brion had already met in London, and the two soon attached themselves to one another and became fast friends. Attachment, indeed, was a common condition of that life, for what with the colonists, who numbered 108 males in all, and with the crews, and supervisors, and fighting men, the vessels had all that they could pack, though the Admiral’s ship was less crowded than the others. But, fortunately for comfort, the voyage was destined to be, almost from start to finish, a prosperous one, and the only sharp storm they encountered was early met with and soon weathered. They caught it in the Bay of Portugal, which they had reached in three days from the start with a fair following wind, and Brion and Master Anthony were sick and sorry youths until they had rendered unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar’s, and emerged vacant but happy from that chastening ordeal. Thereafter a smooth run of a couple of days brought them to the Canaries, whence they shaped their course south-west for the little Antilles and the island of Dominica, which they made on the seventh of May, after a happy but eventless passage across the Atlantic. All this, the sights and sounds, the abounding freedom of the life, the foreign ports and foreign people, was to Brion, after the somewhat narrow restrictions of his custom, an incessant novelty and delight. Only one thing so far was wanting to his and to the general content--they had encountered no Spaniard with whom to pick a quarrel on any or no terms, and plain sailing, though pleasant enough in itself, was mere mariners’ satisfaction without that crowning grace to spice it.