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Updated: June 17, 2025


At the same time Drake turned his eyes in Frobisher's direction, stared blankly at him for a second, and then smiled a glad but painful smile painful because of the slash which he had received across the face; but he refrained from calling a greeting, and Frobisher instantly recognised that the other must have some good reason for remaining silent a circumstance very much opposed to his usual nature.

As he was on the point of descending the side-ladder, Drake asked him to wait a moment, and ran down below; reappearing, a few seconds later, with a serviceable ship's cutlass in his hand, which he himself belted round Frobisher's waist.

He gripped the sacred person of the Prince round the body, and endeavoured to hurl him to the floor and so stun him; but Hsi was a powerful man, and although taken at a disadvantage, managed to twist himself so that Frobisher's superior strength expended itself in vain.

In fact, none of the cruisers carried anything more powerful in the way of guns than the five-inch weapons which Frobisher's own ship, the latest addition to the Navy, mounted; and of these the Chih' Yuen possessed only two, one in a barbette forward, and one similarly mounted aft.

It was not Frobisher's policy, however, to let Ling see that he was suspected, otherwise the man might become desperate and adopt some still more strenuous measure, which it might be difficult if not impossible to frustrate.

But fortunately he remembered in time the absolute necessity for strict silence, and contented himself with calling in a low voice: "That's you, Drake, surely?" "It is that same," responded the little man, in a tone as subdued as Frobisher's own; "but where the dickens are you? I saw something move just now, but I'm hanged if I can see a thing now."

Before Frobisher's departure on his first voyage Queen Elizabeth sent for him and commended him for his enterprise, and when he sailed, July 1, 1576, she waved her hand to him from her palace window. He explored Frobisher's Strait and took possession of the land called Meta Incognita in the name of the queen.

Drake, who was watching, told him afterward that when he saw the horribly suggestive gestures that followed upon the man placing his hand on Frobisher's shoulder he almost fainted from very horror, and was scarcely able to draw his breath until, after a few seconds' hesitation, the men decided to postpone their barbarous idea until the victim was in a state to anticipate and to feel, and passed on.

Then the incident of the door was no trick, after all, and the man had really suffered a lapse of memory. Twenty-four hours would elapse before he returned, and Frobisher's absence was discovered, and the latter hoped by that time to be far away, if he could but find some mode of escaping undetected from the building.

"Never say die" was, however, Frobisher's motto, and Drake's too, for that matter, so they tried back and entered the right-hand branch. But no better success attended them here, this ending in a blank wall also. There was now only one corridor untried, and with sinking hearts they proceeded to explore it.

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