This emerald sold for a great sum, however, with part of
which I purchased clothing suitable to a person of rank, taking the rest
of the gold with me. I grieved to part with the stone indeed, though it
was but a pendant to the pendant of the collar, but necessity knows no
law. The pendant stone itself, a fine gem though flawed, I gave in after
years to her gracious majesty Queen Elizabeth.
On board the English ship they thought me a Spanish adventurer who had
made moneys in the Indies, and I did not undeceive them, since I would
be left to my own company for a while that I might prepare my mind to
return to ways of thought and life that it had long forgotten. Therefore
I sat apart like some proud don, saying little but listening much, and
learning all I could of what had chanced in England since I left it some
twenty years before.
At length our voyage came to an end, and on a certain twelfth of June I
found myself in the mighty city of London that I had never yet visited,
and kneeling down in the chamber of my inn, I thanked God that after
enduring so many dangers and hardships, it had pleased Him to preserve
me to set foot again on English soil. Indeed to this hour I count it
nothing short of marvellous that this frail body of a man should survive
all the sorrows and risks of death by sickness, hunger, battle, murder,
drowning, wild beasts, and the cruelty of men, to which mine had been
exposed for many years.
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