And at once, without answer, in the silence of suffering which only the wild things of the earth understand, Wildenai crept from the lodge, her heart heavy with its own bitter disappointment.  Noiselessly she passed among the tepees where her father’s people slept.  Not one of them should ever know how far dwelt slumber from her own eyes that night.  Up the steep trail beyond the Bay of Moons she climbed and flung herself weeping on the bed of skins within the cavern.

“Oh, thou false one,” she moaned, “why did’st thou promise then, when never did’st thou mean to keep it?”

Yet nothing had been farther from the young Englishman’s thoughts when he left her than faithlessness to his word.  On reaching the ship again he had gone directly to his cabin.  Here he took from its small but richly embroidered case a slender chain of gold, threaded so closely with garnets that even in the dim light of the one flaring lantern, the only illumination the room could boast, it glowed, a glancing stream of crimson, in his hand.  This he carried to the light and as he examined it under the lantern he smiled.

“Never saw the little maid such jewels before, I’ll warrant me!  Yet, beshrew my heart, but she deserves them.  Indian though she be, still is she, nevertheless, the loveliest woman that ever mine eyes have looked upon!”

Then, stowing the necklace carefully away in his belt, he went at once in search of the commander.

But at this point an unexpected difficulty had presented itself.  He found Sir Francis in close conversation with his pilot.

“Marry, Sir, an it fit n’er so ill with thy wish,” the keen-eyed old mariner was saying.  “I still maintain it were a shame to lose this wind.  Gift or no gift, I’ve sailed these latitudes before, my lord, and by heaven I swear we’re not like to have such another breeze, no, not till the change of the moon, and that you know yourself, sir, is a good fortnight hence.”

Sir Francis, striding back and forth within the narrow confines of the quarter deck, appeared to be weighing the old man’s words with unusual care.  At length, however, he turned as one who has made his decision.

“By the mass and it shall be even as you say, Jarvis,” he declared.  “I think myself ’twere well to push on at once.  At the most they be but Indians!” The last words were spoken in a lower tone as if to himself.  “’Twill matter little either way!”

It was at this point that young Harold stepped hastily forward.  For, strangely enough, although on the morning of that same day such a proceeding would scarcely have appealed to him as being at all unfitting or out of the ordinary, yet now it seemed unthinkable.

“But, good sir,” he interrupted, “you would not so belie your promise!  To do as Jarvis here advises, — by heaven, ’twould be neither truthful nor honorable!  ’Tis not like you, Sir Francis!”

Drake shot at him a surprised glance from under his bushy eyebrows, then shrugged his shoulders.