The
halberdiers lined the decks already, with their weapons flashing in long
curved lines; and by the time that the trumpets began to sound to show
that the Queen was on her way from below, the decks were one dense mass
of colour and steel, with a lane left to the foot of the poop-stairs by
which she would ascend. Then at last the two figures appeared, the Queen
radiant in cloth of gold, and Mr. Drake, alert and brisk, in his Court
suit and sword. There was silence from the crowd as the adventurer knelt
before the Queen, and Anthony held his breath with excitement as he
caught the flash of the slender sword that an officer had put into the
Queen's hand; and then an inconceivable noise broke out as Sir Francis
Drake stood up. The crowd was one open mouth, shouting, the church bells
burst into peals overhead, answered by the roll of drums from the deck
and the blare of trumpets; and then the whole din sank into nothingness
for a moment under the heart-shaking crash of the ship's broadside,
echoed instantly by the deeper roar of the dockyard guns, and answered
after a moment or two from far away by the dull boom from the Tower. And
Anthony leaned yet further from the window and added his voice to the
tumult.
As he rode back alone to Lambeth, after parting with the others at London
Bridge, for they intended to go down home again that night, he was
glowing with national zeal. He had seen not only royalty and magnificence
but an apotheosis of character that day.
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