Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (page 14)

“Well, how goes on the reading?” said he; and then, without waiting for an answer–“We shall be ready to clear out this day week, mother, I do believe; that is, if the hatchets are made in time to pack them.”

“I hope they will be better than the last,” said Mrs. Leigh. “It seems to me a shameful sin to palm off on poor ignorant savages goods which we should consider worthless for ourselves.”

“Well, it’s not over fair: but still, they are a sight better than they ever had before. An old hoop is better than a deer’s bone, as Ayacanora knows,–eh?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” said she, who was always nettled at the least allusion to her past wild life. “I am an English girl now, and all that is gone–I forget it.”

“Forget it?” said he, teasing her for want of something better to do. “Should not you like to sail with us, now, and see the Indians in the forests once again?”

“Sail with you?” and she looked up eagerly.

“There! I knew it! She would not be four-and-twenty hours ashore, but she would be off into the woods again, bow in hand, like any runaway nymph, and we should never see her more.”

“It is false, bad man!” and she burst into violent tears, and hid her face in Mrs. Leigh’s lap.

“Amyas, Amyas, why do you tease the poor fatherless thing?”

“I was only jesting, I’m sure,” said Amyas, like a repentant schoolboy. “Don’t cry now, don’t cry, my child, see here,” and he began fumbling in his pockets; “see what I bought of a chapman in town to-day, for you, my maid, indeed, I did.”

And out he pulled some smart kerchief or other, which had taken his sailor’s fancy.

“Look at it now, blue, and crimson, and green, like any parrot!” and he held it out.

She looked round sharply, snatched it out of his hand, and tore it to shreds.

“I hate it, and I hate you!” and she sprang up and darted out of the room.

“Oh, boy, boy!” said Mrs. Leigh, “will you kill that poor child? It matters little for an old heart like mine, which has but one or two chords left whole, how soon it be broken altogether; but a young heart is one of God’s precious treasures, Amyas, and suffers many a long pang in the breaking; and woe to them who despise Christ’s little ones!”

“Break your heart, mother?”

“Never mind my heart, dear son; yet how can you break it more surely than by tormenting one whom I love, because she loves you?”

“Tut! play, mother, and maids’ tempers. But how can I break your heart? What have I done? Have I not given up going again to the West Indies for your sake? Have I not given up going to Virginia, and now again settled to go after all, just because you commanded? Was it not your will? Have I not obeyed you, mother, mother? I will stay at home now, if you will. I would rather rust here on land, I vow I would, than grieve you–” and he threw himself at his mother’s knees.

“Have I asked you not to go to Virginia? No, dear boy, though every thought of a fresh parting seems to crack some new fibre within me, you must go! It is your calling. Yes; you were not sent into the world to amuse me, but to work. I have had pleasure enough of you, my darling, for many a year, and too much, perhaps; till I shrank from lending you to the Lord. But He must have you. . . . It is enough for the poor old widow to know that her boy is what he is, and to forget all her anguish day by day, for joy that a man is born into the world. But, Amyas, Amyas, are you so blind as not to see that Ayacanora–“

“Don’t talk about her, poor child. Talk about yourself.”

“How long have I been worth talking about? No, Amyas, you must see it; and if you will not see it now, you will see it one day in some sad and fearful prodigy; for she is not one to die tamely. She loves you, Amyas, as a woman only can love.”

“Loves me? Well, of course. I found her, and brought her home; and I don’t deny she may think that she owes me somewhat–though it was no more than a Christian man’s duty. But as for her caring much for me, mother, you measure every one else’s tenderness by your own.”

“Think that she owes you somewhat? Silly boy, this is not gratitude, but a deeper affection, which may be more heavenly than gratitude, as it may, too, become a horrible cause of ruin. It rests with you, Amyas, which of the two it will be.”

“You are in earnest?”

“Have I the heart or the time to jest?”

“No, no, of course not; but, mother, I thought it was not comely for women to fall in love with men?”

“Not comely, at least, to confess their love to men. But she has never done that, Amyas; not even by a look or a tone of voice, though I have watched her for months.”

“To be sure, she is as demure as any cat when I am in the way. I only wonder how you found it out.”

“Ah,” said she, smiling sadly, “even in the saddest woman’s soul there linger snatches of old music, odors of flowers long dead and turned to dust–pleasant ghosts, which still keep her mind attuned to that which may be in others, though in her never more; till she can hear her own wedding-hymn re-echoed in the tones of every girl who loves, and sees her own wedding-torch re-lighted in the eyes of every bride.”

“You would not have me marry her?” asked blunt, practical Amyas.

“God knows what I would have–I know not; I see neither your path nor my own–no, not after weeks and months of prayer. All things beyond are wrapped in mist; and what will be, I know not, save that whatever else is wrong, mercy at least is right.”

“I’d sail to-morrow, if I could. As for marrying her, mother–her birth, mind me–“

“Ah, boy, boy! Are you God, to visit the sins of the parents upon the children?”

“Not that. I don’t mean that; but I mean this, that she is half a Spaniard, mother; and I cannot!–Her blood may be as blue as King Philip’s own, but it is Spanish still! I cannot bear the thought that my children should have in their veins one drop of that poison.”

“Amyas! Amyas!” interrupted she, “is this not, too, visiting the parents’ sins on the children?”

“Not a whit; it is common sense,–she must have the taint of their bloodthirsty humor. She has it–I have seen it in her again and again. I have told you, have I not? Can I forget the look of her eyes as she stood over that galleon’s captain, with the smoking knife in her hand.–Ugh! And she is not tamed yet, as you can see, and never will be:–not that I care, except for her own sake, poor thing!”

“Cruel boy! to impute as a blame to the poor child, not only the errors of her training, but the very madness of her love!”

“Of her love?”

“Of what else, blind buzzard? From the moment that you told me the story of that captain’s death, I knew what was in her heart–and thus it is that you requite her for having saved your life!”

“Umph! that is one word too much, mother. If you don’t want to send me crazy, don’t put the thing on the score of gratitude or duty. As it is, I can hardly speak civilly to her (God forgive me!) when I recollect that she belongs to the crew who murdered him”–and he pointed to the picture, and Mrs. Leigh shuddered as he did so.

“You feel it! You know you feel it, tender-hearted, forgiving angel as you are; and what do you think I must feel?”

“Oh, my son, my son!” cried she, wringing her hands, “if I be wretch enough to give place to the devil for a moment, does that give you a right to entertain and cherish him thus day by day?”

“I should cherish him with a vengeance, if I brought up a crew of children who could boast of a pedigree of idolaters and tyrants, hunters of Indians, and torturers of women! How pleasant to hear her telling Master Jack, ‘Your illustrious grand-uncle the pope’s legate, was the man who burned Rose Salterne at Cartagena;’ or Miss Grace, ‘Your great-grandfather of sixteen quarterings, the Marquis of this, son of the Grand-equerry that, and husband of the Princess t’other, used to feed his bloodhounds, when beef was scarce, with Indians’ babies!’ Eh, mother? These things are true, and if you can forget them, I cannot. Is it not enough to have made me forego for awhile my purpose, my business, the one thing I live for, and that is, hunting down the Spaniards as I would adders or foxes, but you must ask me over and above to take one to my bosom?”

“Oh, my son, my son! I have not asked you to do that; I have only commanded you, in God’s name, to be merciful, if you wish to obtain mercy. Oh, if you will not pity this poor maiden, pity yourself; for God knows you stand in more need of it than she does!”

Amyas was silent for a minute or two; and then,–

“If it were not for you, mother, would God that the Armada would come!”

“What, and ruin England?”

“No! Curse them! Not a foot will they ever set on English soil, such a welcome would we give them. If I were but in the midst of that fleet, fighting like a man–to forget it all, with a galleon on board of me to larboard, and another to starboard–and then to put a linstock in the magazine, and go aloft in good company–I don’t care how soon it comes, mother, if it were not for you.”

“If I am in your way, Amyas, do not fear that I shall trouble you long.”

“Oh, mother, mother, do not talk in that way! I am half-mad, I think, already, and don’t know what I say. Yes, I am mad; mad at heart, though not at head. There’s a fire burning me up, night and day, and nothing but Spanish blood will put it out.”

“Or the grace of God, my poor wilful child! Who comes to the door?–so quickly, too?”

There was a loud hurried knocking, and in another minute a serving- man hurried in with a letter.

“This to Captain Amyas Leigh with haste, haste!”

It was Sir Richard’s hand. Amyas tore it open; and “a loud laugh laughed he.”

“The Armada is coming! My wish has come true, mother!”

“God help us, it has! Show me the letter.”

It was a hurried scrawl.

“DR. GODSON,–Walsingham sends word that the Ada. sailed from Lisbon to the Groyne the 18. of May. We know no more, but have commandment to stay the ships. Come down, dear lad, and give us counsel; and may the Lord help His Church in this great strait.

“Your loving godfather,

R. G.”

“Forgive me, mother, mother, once for all!” cried Amyas, throwing his arms round her neck.

“I have nothing to forgive, my son, my son! And shall I lose thee, also?”

“If I be killed, you will have two martyrs of your blood, mother!–“

Mrs. Leigh bowed her head, and was silent. Amyas caught up his hat and sword, and darted forth toward Bideford.

Amyas literally danced into Sir Richard’s hall, where he stood talking earnestly with various merchants and captains.

“Gloria, gloria! gentles all! The devil is broke loose at last; and now we know where to have him on the hip!”

“Why so merry, Captain Leigh, when all else are sad?” said a gentle voice by his side.

“Because I have been sad a long time, while all else were merry, dear lady. Is the hawk doleful when his hood is pulled off, and he sees the heron flapping right ahead of him?”

“You seem to forget the danger and the woe of us weak women, sir?”

“I don’t forget the danger and the woe of one weak woman, madam, and she the daughter of a man who once stood in this room,” said Amyas, suddenly collecting himself, in a low stern voice. “And I don’t forget the danger and the woe of one who was worth a thousand even of her. I don’t forget anything, madam.”

“Nor forgive either, it seems.”

“It will be time to talk of forgiveness after the offender has repented and amended; and does the sailing of the Armada look like that?”

“Alas, no! God help us!”

“He will help us, madam,” said Amyas.

“Admiral Leigh,” said Sir Richard, “we need you now, if ever. Here are the queen’s orders to furnish as many ships as we can; though from these gentlemen’s spirit, I should say the orders were well- nigh needless.”

“Not a doubt, sir; for my part, I will fit my ship at my own charges, and fight her too, as long as I have a leg or an arm left.”

“Or a tongue to say, never surrender, I’ll warrant!” said an old merchant. “You put life into us old fellows, Admiral Leigh: but it will be a heavy matter for those poor fellows in Virginia, and for my daughter too, Madam Dare, with her young babe, as I hear, just born.”

“And a very heavy matter,” said some one else, “for those who have ventured their money in these cargoes, which must lie idle, you see, now for a year maybe–and then all the cost of unlading again– “

“My good sir,” said Grenville, “what have private interests to do with this day? Let us thank God if He only please to leave us the bare fee-simple of this English soil, the honor of our wives and daughters, and bodies safe from rack and fagot, to wield the swords of freemen in defence of a free land, even though every town and homestead in England were wasted with fire, and we left to rebuild over again all which our ancestors have wrought for us in now six hundred years.”

“Right, sir!” said Amyas. “For my part, let my Virginian goods rot on the quay, if the worst comes to the worst. I begin unloading the Vengeance to-morrow; and to sea as soon as I can fill up my crew to a good fighting number.”

And so the talk ran on; and ere two days were past, most of the neighboring gentlemen, summoned by Sir Richard, had come in, and great was the bidding against each other as to who should do most. Cary and Brimblecombe, with thirty tall Clovelly men, came across the bay, and without even asking leave of Amyas, took up their berths as a matter of course on board the Vengeance. In the meanwhile, the matter was taken up by families. The Fortescues (a numberless clan) offered to furnish a ship; the Chichesters another, the Stukelys a third; while the merchantmen were not backward. The Bucks, the Stranges, the Heards, joyfully unloaded their Virginian goods, and replaced them with powder and shot; and in a week’s time the whole seven were ready once more for sea, and dropped down into Appledore pool, with Amyas as their admiral for the time being (for Sir Richard had gone by land to Plymouth to join the deliberations there), and waited for the first favorable wind to start for the rendezvous in the Sound.

At last, upon the twenty-first of June, the clank of the capstans rang merrily across the flats, and amid prayers and blessings, forth sailed that gallant squadron over the bar, to play their part in Britain’s Salamis; while Mrs. Leigh stood watching as she stood once before, beside the churchyard wall: but not alone this time; for Ayacanora stood by her side, and gazed and gazed, till her eyes seemed ready to burst from their sockets. At last she turned away with a sob,–

“And he never bade me good-bye, mother!”

“God forgive him! Come home and pray, my child; there is no other rest on earth than prayer for woman’s heart!”

They were calling each other mother and daughter then? Yes. The sacred fire of sorrow was fast burning out all Ayacanora’s fallen savageness; and, like a Phoenix, the true woman was rising from those ashes, fair, noble, and all-enduring, as God had made her.

CHAPTER XXX

HOW THE ADMIRAL JOHN HAWKINS TESTIFIED AGAINST CROAKERS

“Oh, where be these gay Spaniards,
Which make so great a boast O?
Oh, they shall eat the gray-goose feather, And we shall eat the roast O!”

Cornish Song.

What if the spectators who last summer gazed with just pride upon the noble port of Plymouth, its vast breakwater spanning the Sound, its arsenals and docks, its two estuaries filled with gallant ships, and watched the great screw-liners turning within their own length by force invisible, or threading the crowded fleets with the ease of the tiniest boat,–what if, by some magic turn, the nineteenth century, and all the magnificence of its wealth and science, had vanished–as it may vanish hereafter–and they had found themselves thrown back three hundred years into the pleasant summer days of 1588?

Mount Edgecombe is still there, beautiful as ever: but where are the docks, and where is Devonport? No vast dry-dock roofs rise at the water’s edge. Drake’s island carries but a paltry battery, just raised by the man whose name it bears; Mount Wise is a lone gentleman’s house among fields; the citadel is a pop-gun fort, which a third-class steamer would shell into rubble for an afternoon’s amusement. And the shipping, where are they? The floating castles of the Hamoaze have dwindled to a few crawling lime-hoys; and the Catwater is packed, not as now, with merchant craft, but with the ships who will to-morrow begin the greatest sea-fight which the world has ever seen.

There they lie, a paltry squadron enough in modern eyes; the largest of them not equal in size to a six-and-thirty-gun frigate, carrying less weight of metal than one of our new gun-boats, and able to employ even that at not more than a quarter of our modern range. Would our modern spectators, just come down by rail for a few hours, to see the cavalry embark, and return tomorrow in time for dinner, have looked down upon that petty port, and petty fleet, with a contemptuous smile, and begun some flippant speech about the progress of intellect, and the triumphs of science, and our benighted ancestors? They would have done so, doubt it not, if they belonged to the many who gaze on those very triumphs as on a raree-show to feed their silly wonder, or use and enjoy them without thankfulness or understanding, as the ox eats the clover thrust into his rack, without knowing or caring how it grew. But if any of them were of the class by whom those very triumphs have been achieved; the thinkers and the workers, who, instead of entering lazily into other men’s labors, as the mob does, labor themselves; who know by hard experience the struggles, the self- restraints, the disappointments, the slow and staggering steps, by which the discoverer reaches to his prize; then the smile of those men would not have been one of pity, but rather of filial love. For they would have seen in those outwardly paltry armaments the potential germ of that mightier one which now loads the Black Sea waves; they would have been aware, that to produce it, with such materials and knowledge as then existed, demanded an intellect, an energy, a spirit of progress and invention, equal, if not superior, to those of which we now so loudly boast.

But if, again, he had been a student of men rather than of machinery, he would have found few nobler companies on whom to exercise his discernment, than he might have seen in the little terrace bowling-green behind the Pelican Inn, on the afternoon of the nineteenth of July. Chatting in groups, or lounging over the low wall which commanded a view of the Sound and the shipping far below, were gathered almost every notable man of the Plymouth fleet, the whole posse comitatus of “England’s forgotten worthies.” The Armada has been scattered by a storm. Lord Howard has been out to look for it, as far as the Spanish coast; but the wind has shifted to the south, and fearing lest the Dons should pass him, he has returned to Plymouth, uncertain whether the Armada will come after all or not. Slip on for a while, like Prince Hal, the drawer’s apron; come in through the rose-clad door which opens from the tavern, with a tray of long-necked Dutch glasses, and a silver tankard of wine, and look round you at the gallant captains, who are waiting for the Spanish Armada, as lions in their lair might wait for the passing herd of deer.

See those five talking earnestly, in the centre of a ring, which longs to overhear, and yet is too respectful to approach close. Those soft long eyes and pointed chin you recognize already; they are Walter Raleigh’s. The fair young man in the flame-colored doublet, whose arm is round Raleigh’s neck, is Lord Sheffield; opposite them stands, by the side of Sir Richard Grenville, a man as stately even as he, Lord Sheffield’s uncle, the Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, lord high admiral of England; next to him is his son-in-law, Sir Robert Southwell, captain of the Elizabeth Jonas: but who is that short, sturdy, plainly dressed man, who stands with legs a little apart, and hands behind his back, looking up, with keen gray eyes, into the face of each speaker? His cap is in his hands, so you can see the bullet head of crisp brown hair and the wrinkled forehead, as well as the high cheek bones, the short square face, the broad temples, the thick lips, which are yet firm as granite. A coarse plebeian stamp of man: yet the whole figure and attitude are that of boundless determination, self- possession, energy; and when at last he speaks a few blunt words, all eyes are turned respectfully upon him;–for his name is Francis Drake.

A burly, grizzled elder, in greasy sea-stained garments, contrasting oddly with the huge gold chain about his neck, waddles up, as if he had been born, and had lived ever since, in a gale of wind at sea. The upper half of his sharp dogged visage seems of brick-red leather, the lower of badger’s fur; and as he claps Drake on the back, and, with a broad Devon twang, shouts, “be you a coming to drink your wine, Francis Drake, or be you not?–saving your presence, my lord;” the lord high admiral only laughs, and bids Drake go and drink his wine; for John Hawkins, admiral of the port, is the patriarch of Plymouth seamen, if Drake be their hero, and says and does pretty much what he likes in any company on earth; not to mention that to-day’s prospect of an Armageddon fight has shaken him altogether out of his usual crabbed reserve, and made him overflow with loquacious good-humor, even to his rival Drake.

So they push through the crowd, wherein is many another man whom one would gladly have spoken with face to face on earth. Martin Frobisher and John Davis are sitting on that bench, smoking tobacco from long silver pipes; and by them are Fenton and Withrington, who have both tried to follow Drake’s path round the world, and failed, though by no fault of their own. The man who pledges them better luck next time, is George Fenner, known to “the seven Portugals,” Leicester’s pet, and captain of the galleon which Elizabeth bought of him. That short prim man in the huge yellow ruff, with sharp chin, minute imperial, and self-satisfied smile, is Richard Hawkins, the Complete Seaman, Admiral John’s hereafter famous and hapless son. The elder who is talking with him is his good uncle William, whose monument still stands, or should stand, in Deptford Church; for Admiral John set it up there but one year after this time; and on it record how he was, “A worshipper of the true religion, an especial benefactor of poor sailors, a most just arbiter in most difficult causes, and of a singular faith, piety, and prudence.” That, and the fact that he got creditably through some sharp work at Porto Rico, is all I know of William Hawkins: but if you or I, reader, can have as much or half as much said of us when we have to follow him, we shall have no reason to complain.

There is John Drake, Sir Francis’ brother, ancestor of the present stock of Drakes; and there is George, his nephew, a man not overwise, who has been round the world with Amyas; and there is Amyas himself, talking to one who answers him with fierce curt sentences, Captain Barker of Bristol, brother of the hapless Andrew Barker who found John Oxenham’s guns, and, owing to a mutiny among his men, perished by the Spaniards in Honduras, twelve years ago. Barker is now captain of the Victory, one of the queen’s best ships; and he has his accounts to settle with the Dons, as Amyas has; so they are both growling together in a corner, while all the rest are as merry as the flies upon the vine above their heads.

But who is the aged man who sits upon a bench, against the sunny south wall of the tavern, his long white beard flowing almost to his waist, his hands upon his knees, his palsied head moving slowly from side to side, to catch the scraps of discourse of the passing captains? His great-grandchild, a little maid of six, has laid her curly head upon his knees, and his grand-daughter, a buxom black- eyed dame of thirty, stands by him and tends him, half as nurse, and half, too, as showman, for he seems an object of curiosity to all the captains, and his fair nurse has to entreat again and again, “Bless you, sir, please now, don’t give him no liquor, poor old soul, the doctor says.” It is old Martin Cockrem, father of the ancient host, aged himself beyond the years of man, who can recollect the bells of Plymouth ringing for the coronation of Henry the Eighth, and who was the first Englishman, perhaps, who ever set foot on the soil of the New World. There he sits, like an old Druid Tor of primeval granite amid the tall wheat and rich clover crops of a modern farm. He has seen the death of old Europe and the birth-throes of the new. Go to him, and question him; for his senses are quick as ever; and just now the old man seems uneasy. He is peering with rheumy eyes through the groups, and seems listening for a well-known voice.

“There ‘a be again! Why don’t ‘a come, then?”

“Quiet, gramfer, and don’t trouble his worship.”

“Here an hour, and never speak to poor old Martin! I say, sir”– and the old man feebly plucks Amyas’s cloak as he passes. “I say, captain, do ‘e tell young master old Martin’s looking for him.”

“Marcy, gramfer, where’s your manners? Don’t be vexed, sir, he’m a’most a babe, and tejous at times, mortal.”

“Young master who?” says Amyas, bending down to the old man, and smiling to the dame to let him have his way.

“Master Hawkins; he’m never been a-near me all day.”

Off goes Amyas; and, of course, lays hold of the sleeve of young Richard Hawkins; but as he is in act to speak, the dame lays hold of his, laughing and blushing.

“No, sir, not Mr. Richard, sir; Admiral John, sir, his father; he always calls him young master, poor old soul!” and she points to the grizzled beard and the face scarred and tanned with fifty years of fight and storm.

Amyas goes to the Admiral, and gives his message.

“Mercy on me! Where be my wits? Iss, I’m a-coming,” says the old hero in his broadest Devon, waddles off to the old man, and begins lugging at a pocket. “Here, Martin, I’ve got mun, I’ve got mun, man alive; but his Lordship keept me so. Lookee here, then! Why, I do get so lusty of late, Martin, I can’t get to my pockets!”

And out struggle a piece of tarred string, a bundle of papers, a thimble, a piece of pudding-tobacco, and last of all, a little paper of Muscovado sugar–then as great a delicacy as any French bonbons would be now–which he thrusts into the old man’s eager and trembling hand.

Old Martin begins dipping his finger into it, and rubbing it on his toothless gums, smiling and nodding thanks to his young master; while the little maid at his knee, unrebuked, takes her share also.

“There, Admiral Leigh; both ends meet–gramfers and babies! You and I shall be like to that one day, young Samson!”

“We shall have slain a good many Philistines first, I hope.”

“Amen! so be it; but look to mun! so fine a sailor as ever drank liquor; and now greedy after a hit of sweet trade! ’tis piteous like; but I bring mun a hit whenever I come, and he looks for it. He’s one of my own flesh like, is old Martin. He sailed with my father Captain Will, when they was both two little cracks aboard of a trawler; and my father went up, and here I am–he didn’t, and there he is. We’m up now, we Hawkinses. We may be down again some day.”

“Never, I trust,” said Amyas.

“‘Tain’t no use trusting, young man: you go and do. I do hear too much of that there from my lad. Let they ministers preach till they’m black in the face, works is the trade!” with a nudge in Amyas’s ribs. “Faith can’t save, nor charity nether. There, you tell with him, while I go play bowls with Drake. He’ll tell you a sight of stories. You ask him about good King Hal, now, just–“

And off waddled the Port Admiral.

“You have seen good King Henry, then, father?” said Amyas, interested.

The old man’s eyes lighted at once, and he stopped mumbling his sugar.

“Seed mun? Iss, I reckon. I was with Captain Will when he went to meet the Frenchman there to Calais–at the Field, the Field–“

“The Field of the Cloth of Gold, gramfer,” suggested the dame.

“That’s it. Seed mun? Iss, fegs. Oh, he was a king! The face o’ mun like a rising sun, and the back o’ mun so broad as that there” (and he held out his palsied arms), “and the voice of mun! Oh, to hear mun swear if he was merry, oh, ‘tas royal!–Seed mun? Iss, fegs! And I’ve seed mun do what few has; I’ve seed mun christle like any child.”

“What–cry?” said Amyas. “I shouldn’t have thought there was much cry in him.”

“You think what you like–“

“Gramfer, gramfer, don’t you be rude, now–

“Let him go on,” said Amyas.

“I seed mun christle; and, oh dear, how he did put hands on mun’s face; and ‘Oh, my gentlemen,’ says he, ‘my gentlemen! Oh, my gallant men!’ Them was his very words.”

“But when?”

“Why, Captain Will had just come to the Hard–that’s to Portsmouth– to speak with mun, and the barge Royal lay again the Hard–so; and our boot alongside–so; and the king he standth as it might be there, above my head, on the quay edge, and she come in near abreast of us, looking most royal to behold, poor dear! and went to cast about. And Captain Will, saith he, ‘Them lower ports is cruel near the water;’ for she had not more than a sixteen inches to spare in the nether overloop, as I heard after. And saith he, ‘That won’t do for going to windward in a say, Martin.’ And as the words came out of mun’s mouth, your worship, there was a bit of a flaw from the westward, sharp like, and overboard goeth my cap, and hitth against the wall, and as I stooped to pick it up, I heard a cry, and it was all over!”

“He is telling of the Mary Rose, sir.”

“I guessed so.”

“All over: and the cry of mun, and the screech of mun! Oh, sir, up to the very heavens! And the king he screeched right out like any maid, ‘Oh my gentlemen, oh my gallant men!’ and as she lay on her beam-ends, sir, and just a-settling, the very last souls I seen was that man’s father, and that man’s. I knowed mun by their armor.”

And he pointed to Sir George Carew and Sir Richard Grenville.

“Iss! Iss! Drowned like rattens. Drowned like rattens!”

“Now; you mustn’t trouble his worship any more.”

“Trouble? Let him tell till midnight, I shall be well pleased,” said Amyas, sitting down on the bench by him. “Drawer! ale–and a parcel of tobacco.”

And Amyas settled himself to listen, while the old man purred to himself–

“Iss. They likes to hear old Martin. All the captains look upon old Martin.”

“Hillo, Amyas!” said Cary, “who’s your friend? Here’s a man been telling me wonders about the River Plate. We should go thither for luck there next time.”

“River Plate?” said old Martin. “It’s I knows about the River Plate; none so well. Who’d ever been there, nor heard of it nether, before Captain Will and me went, and I lived among the savages a whole year; and audacious civil I found ’em if they ‘d had but shirts to their backs; and so was the prince o’ mun, that Captain Will brought home to King Henry; leastwise he died on the voyage; but the wild folk took it cruel well, for you see, we was always as civil with them as Christians, and if we hadn’t been, I should not have been here now.”

“What year was that?”

“In the fifteen thirty: but I was there afore, and learnt the speech o’ mun; and that’s why Captain Will left me to a hostage, when he tuked their prince.”

“Before that?” said Cary; “why, the country was hardly known before that.”

The old man’s eyes flashed up in triumph.

“Knowed? Iss, and you may well say that! Look ye here! Look to mun!” and he waved his hand round–“There’s captains! and I’m the father of ’em all now, now poor Captain Will’s in gloory; I, Martin Cockrem! . . . Iss, I’ve seen a change. I mind when Tavistock Abbey was so full o’ friars, and goolden idols, and sich noxious trade, as ever was a wheat-rick of rats. I mind the fight off Brest in the French wars–Oh, that was a fight, surely!–when the Regent and the French Carack were burnt side by side, being fast grappled, you see, because of Sir Thomas Knivet; and Captain Will gave him warning as he ran a-past us, saying, says he–“

“But,” said Amyas, seeing that the old man was wandering away, “what do you mind about America?”

“America? I should think so! But I was a-going to tell you of the Regent–and seven hundred Englishmen burnt and drowned in her, and nine hundred French in the Brest ship, besides what we picked up. Oh dear! But about America.”

“Yes, about America. How are you the father of all the captains?”

“How? you ask my young master! Why, before the fifteen thirty, I was up the Plate with Cabot (and a cruel fractious ontrustful fellow he was, like all they Portingals), and bid there a year and more, and up the Paraguaio with him, diskivering no end; whereby, gentles, I was the first Englishman, I hold, that ever sot a foot on the New World, I was!”

“Then here’s your health, and long life, sir!” said Amyas and Cary.

“Long life? Iss, fegs, I reckon, long enough a’ready! Why, I mind the beginning of it all, I do. I mind when there wasn’t a master mariner to Plymouth, that thought there was aught west of the Land’s End except herrings. Why, they held them, pure wratches, that if you sailed right west away far enough, you’d surely come to the edge, and fall over cleve. Iss–‘Twas dark parts round here, till Captain Will arose; and the first of it I mind was inside the bar of San Lucar, and he and I were boys about a ten year old, aboord of a Dartmouth ship, and went for wine, and there come in over the bar he that was the beginning of it all.”

“Columbus?”

“Iss, fegs, he did, not a pistol-shot from us; and I saw mun stand on the poop, so plain as I see you; no great shakes of a man to look to nether; there’s a sight better here, to plase me, and we was disappointed, we lads, for we surely expected to see mun with a goolden crown on, and a sceptre to a’s hand, we did, and the ship o’ mun all over like Solomon’s temple for gloory. And I mind that same year, too, seeing Vasco da Gama, as was going out over the bar, when he found the Bona Speranza, and sailed round it to the Indies. Ah, that was the making of they rascally Portingals, it was! . . . And our crew told what they seen and heerd: but nobody minded sich things. ‘Twas dark parts, and Popish, then; and nobody knowed nothing, nor got no schooling, nor cared for nothing, but scrattling up and down alongshore like to prawns in a pule. Iss, sitting in darkness, we was, and the shadow of death, till the day- spring from on high arose, and shined upon us poor out-o’ -the-way folk–The Lord be praised! And now, look to mun!” and he waved his hand all round–“Look to mun! Look to the works of the Lord! Look to the captains! Oh blessed sight! And one’s been to the Brazils, and one to the Indies, and the Spanish Main, and the North-West, and the Rooshias, and the Chinas, and up the Straits, and round the Cape, and round the world of God, too, bless His holy name; and I seed the beginning of it; and I’ll see the end of it too, I will! I was born into the old times: but I’ll see the wondrous works of the new, yet, I will! I’ll see they bloody Spaniards swept off the seas before I die, if my old eyes can reach so far as outside the Sound. I shall, I knows it. I says my prayers for it every night; don’t I, Mary? You’ll bate mun, sure as Judgment, you’ll bate mun! The Lord’ll fight for ye. Nothing’ll stand against ye. I’ve seed it all along–ever since I was with young master to the Honduras. They can’t bide the push of us! You’ll bate mun off the face of the seas, and be masters of the round world, and all that therein is. And then, I’ll just turn my old face to the wall, and depart in peace, according to his word.

“Deary me, now, while I’ve been telling with you, here’ve this little maid been and ate up all my sugar!”

“I’ll bring you some more,” said Amyas; whom the childish bathos of the last sentence moved rather to sighs than laughter.

“Will ye, then? There’s a good soul, and come and tell with old Martin. He likes to see the brave young gentlemen, a-going to and fro in their ships, like Leviathan, and taking of their pastime therein. We had no such ships to our days. Ah, ’tis grand times, beautiful times surely–and you’ll bring me a bit sugar?”

“You were up the Plate with Cabot?” said Cary, after a pause. “Do you mind the fair lady Miranda, Sebastian de Hurtado’s wife?”

“What! her that was burnt by the Indians? Mind her? Do you mind the sun in heaven? Oh, the beauty! Oh, the ways of her! Oh, the speech of her! Never was, nor never will be! And she to die by they villains; and all for the goodness of her! Mind her? I minded naught else when she was on deck.”

“Who was she?” asked Amyas of Cary.

“A Spanish angel, Amyas.”

“Humph!” said Amyas. “So much the worse for her, to be born into a nation of devils.”

“They’em not all so bad as that, yer honor. Her husband was a proper gallant gentleman, and kind as a maid, too, and couldn’t abide that De Solis’s murderous doings.”

“His wife must have taught it him, then,” said Amyas, rising. “Where did you hear of these black swans, Cary?”

“I have heard of them, and that’s enough,” answered he, unwilling to stir sad recollections.

“And little enough,” said Amyas. “Will, don’t talk to me. The devil is not grown white because he has trod in a lime-heap.”

“Or an angel black because she came down a chimney,” said Cary; and so the talk ended, or rather was cut short; for the talk of all the groups was interrupted by an explosion from old John Hawkins.

“Fail? Fail? What a murrain do you here, to talk of failing? Who made you a prophet, you scurvy, hang-in-the-wind, croaking, white- livered son of a corby-crow?”

“Heaven help us, Admiral Hawkins, who has put fire to your culverins in this fashion?” said Lord Howard.

“Who? my lord! Croakers! my lord! Here’s a fellow calls himself the captain of a ship, and her majesty’s servant, and talks about failing, as if he were a Barbican loose-kirtle trying to keep her apple-squire ashore! Blurt for him, sneak-up! say I.”

“Admiral John Hawkins,” quoth the offender, “you shall answer this language with your sword.”

“I’ll answer it with my foot; and buy me a pair of horn-tips to my shoes, like a wraxling man. Fight a croaker? Fight a frog, an owl! I fight those that dare fight, sir!”

“Sir, sir, moderate yourself. I am sure this gentleman will show himself as brave as any, when it comes to blows: but who can blame mortal man for trembling before so fearful a chance as this?”

“Let mortal man keep his tremblings to himself, then, my lord, and not be like Solomon’s madmen, casting abroad fire and death, and saying, it is only in sport. There is more than one of his kidney, your lordship, who have not been ashamed to play Mother Shipton before their own sailors, and damp the poor fellows’ hearts with crying before they’re hurt, and this is one of them. I’ve heard him at it afore, and I’ll present him, with a vengeance, though I’m no church-warden.”

“If this is really so, Admiral Hawkins–“

“It is so, my lord! I heard only last night, down in a tavern below, such unbelieving talk as made me mad, my lord; and if it had not been after supper, and my hand was not oversteady, I would have let out a pottle of Alicant from some of their hoopings, and sent them to Dick Surgeon, to wrap them in swaddling-clouts, like whining babies as they are. Marry come up, what says Scripture? ‘He that is fearful and faint-hearted among you, let him go and’– what? son Dick there? Thou’rt pious, and read’st thy Bible. What’s that text? A mortal fine one it is, too.”

“‘He that is fearful and faint-hearted among you, let him go back,'” quoth the Complete Seaman. “Captain Merryweather, as my father’s command, as well as his years, forbid his answering your challenge, I shall repute it an honor to entertain his quarrel myself–place, time, and weapons being at your choice.”

“Well spoken, son Dick!–and like a true courtier, too! Ah! thou hast the palabras, and the knee, and the cap, and the quip, and the innuendo, and the true town fashion of it all–no old tarry-breeks of a sea-dog, like thy dad! My lord, you’ll let them fight?”

“The Spaniard, sir; but no one else. But, captains and gentlemen, consider well my friend the Port Admiral’s advice; and if any man’s heart misgives him, let him, for the sake of his country and his queen, have so much government of his tongue to hide his fears in his own bosom, and leave open complaining to ribalds and women. For if the sailor be not cheered by his commander’s cheerfulness, how will the ignorant man find comfort in himself? And without faith and hope, how can he fight worthily?”

“There is no croaking aboard of us, we will warrant,” said twenty voices, “and shall be none, as long as we command on board our own ships.”

Hawkins, having blown off his steam, went back to Drake and the bowls.

“Fill my pipe, Drawer–that croaking fellow’s made me let it out, of course! Spoil-sports! The father of all manner of troubles on earth, be they noxious trade of croakers! ‘Better to meet a bear robbed of her whelps,’ Francis Drake, as Solomon saith, than a fule who can’t keep his mouth shut. What brought Mr. Andrew Barker to his death but croakers? What stopped Fenton’s China voyage in the ’82, and lost your nephew John, and my brother Will, glory and hard cash too, but croakers? What sent back my Lord Cumberland’s armada in the ’86, and that after they’d proved their strength, too, sixty o’ mun against six hundred Portugals and Indians; and yet wern’t ashamed to turn round and come home empty-handed, after all my lord’s expenses that he had been at? What but these same beggarly croakers, that be only fit to be turned into yellow-hammers up to Dartymoor, and sit on a tor all day, and cry ‘Very little bit of bread, and no chee-e-ese!’ Marry, sneak-up! say I again.”

“And what,” said Drake, “would have kept me, if I’d let ’em, from ever sailing round the world, but these same croakers? I hanged my best friend for croaking, John Hawkins, may God forgive me if I was wrong, and I threatened a week after to hang thirty more; and I’d have done it, too, if they hadn’t clapped tompions into their muzzles pretty fast.”

“You’m right, Frank. My old father always told me–and old King Hal (bless his memory!) would take his counsel among a thousand;– ‘And, my son,’ says he to me, ‘whatever you do, never you stand no croaking; but hang mun, son Jack, hang mun up for an ensign. There’s Scripture for it,’ says he (he was a mighty man to his Bible, after bloody Mary’s days, leastwise), ‘and ’tis written,’ says he, ‘It’s expedient that one man die for the crew, and that the whole crew perish not; so show you no mercy, son Jack, or you’ll find none, least-wise in they manner of cattle; for if you fail, they stamps on you, and if you succeeds, they takes the credit of it to themselves, and goes to heaven in your shoes.’ Those were his words, and I’ve found mun true.–Who com’th here now?”

“Captain Fleming, as I’m a sinner.”

“Fleming? Is he tired of life, that he com’th here to look for a halter? I’ve a warrant out against mun, for robbing of two Flushingers on the high seas, now this very last year. Is the fellow mazed or drunk, then? or has he seen a ghost? Look to mun!”

“I think so, truly,” said Drake. “His eyes are near out of his head.”

The man was a rough-bearded old sea-dog, who had just burst in from the tavern through the low hatch, upsetting a drawer with all his glasses, and now came panting and blowing straight up to the high admiral,–

“My lord, my lord! They’m coming! I saw them off the Lizard last night!”

“Who? my good sir, who seem to have left your manners behind you.”

“The Armada, your worship–the Spaniard; but as for my manners, ’tis no fault of mine, for I never had none to leave behind me.”

“If he has not left his manners behind,” quoth Hawkins, “look out for your purses, gentlemen all! He’s manners enough, and very bad ones they be, when he com’th across a quiet Flushinger.”

“If I stole Flushingers’ wines, I never stole negurs’ souls, Jack Hawkins; so there’s your answer. My lord, hang me if you will; life’s short and death’s easy ‘specially to seamen; but if I didn’t see the Spanish fleet last sun-down, coming along half-moon wise, and full seven mile from wing to wing, within a four mile of me, I’m a sinner.”

“Sirrah,” said Lord Howard, “is this no fetch, to cheat us out of your pardon for these piracies of yours?”

“You’ll find out for yourself before nightfall, my lord high admiral. All Jack Fleming says is, that this is a poor sort of an answer to a man who has put his own neck into the halter for the sake of his country.”

“Perhaps it is,” said Lord Howard. “And after all, gentlemen, what can this man gain by a lie, which must be discovered ere a day is over, except a more certain hanging?”

“Very true, your lordship,” said Hawkins, mollified. “Come here, Jack Fleming–what wilt drain, man? Hippocras or Alicant, Sack or John Barleycorn, and a pledge to thy repentance and amendment of life.”

“Admiral Hawkins, Admiral Hawkins, this is no time for drinking.”

“Why not, then, my lord? Good news should be welcomed with good wine. Frank, send down to the sexton, and set the bells a-ringing to cheer up all honest hearts. Why, my lord, if it were not for the gravity of my office, I could dance a galliard for joy!”

“Well, you may dance, port admiral: but I must go and plan, but God give to all captains such a heart as yours this day!”

“And God give all generals such a head as yours! Come, Frank Drake, we’ll play the game out before we move. It will be two good days before we shall be fit to tackle them, so an odd half-hour don’t matter.”

“I must command the help of your counsel, vice-admiral,” said Lord Charles, turning to Drake.

“And it’s this, my good lord,” said Drake, looking up, as he aimed his bowl. “They’ll come soon enough for us to show them sport, and yet slow enough for us to be ready; so let no man hurry himself. And as example is better than precept, here goes.”

Lord Howard shrugged his shoulders, and departed, knowing two things: first, that to move Drake was to move mountains; and next, that when the self-taught hero did bestir himself, he would do more work in an hour than any one else in a day. So he departed, followed hastily by most of the captains; and Drake said in a low voice to Hawkins:

“Does he think we are going to knock about on a lee-shore all the afternoon and run our noses at night–and dead up-wind, too–into the Dons’ mouths? No, Jack, my friend. Let Orlando-Furioso- punctilio-fire-eaters go and get their knuckles rapped. The following game is the game, and not the meeting one. The dog goes after the sheep, and not afore them, lad. Let them go by, and go by, and stick to them well to windward, and pick up stragglers, and pickings, too, Jack–the prizes, Jack!”

“Trust my old eyes for not being over-quick at seeing signals, if I be hanging in the skirts of a fat-looking Don. We’m the eagles, Drake; and where the carcase is, is our place, eh?”

And so the two old sea-dogs chatted on, while their companions dropped off one by one, and only Amyas remained.

“Eh, Captain Leigh, where’s my boy Dick?”

“Gone off with his lordship, Sir John.”

“On his punctilios too, I suppose, the young slashed-breeks. He’s half a Don, that fellow, with his fine scholarship, and his fine manners, and his fine clothes. He’ll get a taking down before he dies, unless he mends. Why ain’t you gone too, sir?”

“I follow my leader,” said Amyas, filling his pipe.

“Well said, my big man,” quoth Drake. “If I could lead you round the world, I can lead you up Channel, can’t I?–Eh? my little bantam-cock of the Orinoco? Drink, lad! You’re over-sad to-day.”

“Not a whit,” said Amyas. “Only I can’t help wondering whether I shall find him after all.”

“Whom? That Don? We’ll find him for you, if he’s in the fleet. We’ll squeeze it out of our prisoners somehow. Eh, Hawkins? I thought all the captains had promised to send you news if they heard of him.”

“Ay, but it’s ill looking for a needle in a haystack. But I shall find him. I am a coward to doubt it,” said Amyas, setting his teeth.

“There, vice-admiral, you’re beaten, and that’s the rubber. Pay up three dollars, old high-flyer, and go and earn more, like an honest adventurer.”

“Well,” said Drake, as he pulled out his purse, “we’ll walk down now, and see about these young hot-heads. As I live, they are setting to tow the ships out already! Breaking the men’s backs over-night, to make them fight the lustier in the morning! Well, well, they haven’t sailed round the world, Jack Hawkins.”

“Or had to run home from San Juan d’Ulloa with half a crew.

“Well, if we haven’t to run out with half crews. I saw a sight of our lads drunk about this morning.”

“The more reason for waiting till they be sober. Besides, if everybody’s caranting about to once each after his own men, nobody’ll find nothing in such a scrimmage as that. Bye, bye, Uncle Martin. We’m going to blow the Dons up now in earnest.”

CHAPTER XXXI

THE GREAT ARMADA

“Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep,
Her march is o’er the mountain wave, Her home is on the deep.”

CAMPBELL, Ye Mariners of England.

And now began that great sea-fight which was to determine whether Popery and despotism, or Protestantism and freedom, were the law which God had appointed for the half of Europe, and the whole of future America. It is a twelve days’ epic, worthy, as I said in the beginning of this book, not of dull prose, but of the thunder- roll of Homer’s verse: but having to tell it, I must do my best, rather using, where I can, the words of contemporary authors than my own.

“The Lord High Admirall of England, sending a pinnace before, called the Defiance, denounced war by discharging her ordnance; and presently approaching with in musquet-shot, with much thundering out of his own ship, called the Arkroyall (alias the Triumph), first set upon the admirall’s, as he thought, of the Spaniards (but it was Alfonso de Leon’s ship. Soon after, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher played stoutly with their ordnance on the hindmost squadron, which was commanded by Recalde.” The Spaniards soon discover the superior “nimbleness of the English ships;” and Recalde’s squadron, finding that they are getting more than they give, in spite of his endeavors, hurry forward to join the rest of the fleet. Medina the Admiral, finding his ships scattering fast, gathers them into a half-moon; and the Armada tries to keep solemn way forward, like a stately herd of buffaloes, who march on across the prairie, disdaining to notice the wolves which snarl around their track. But in vain. These are no wolves, but cunning hunters, swiftly horsed, and keenly armed, and who will “shamefully shuffle” (to use Drake’s own expression) that vast herd from the Lizard to Portland, from Portland to Calais Roads; and who, even in this short two hours’ fight, have made many a Spaniard question the boasted invincibleness of this Armada.

One of the four great galliasses is already riddled with shot, to the great disarrangement of her “pulpits, chapels,” and friars therein assistant. The fleet has to close round her, or Drake and Hawkins will sink her; in effecting which manoeuvre, the “principal galleon of Seville,” in which are Pedro de Valdez and a host of blue-blooded Dons, runs foul of her neighbor, carries away her foremast, and is, in spite of Spanish chivalry, left to her fate. This does not look like victory, certainly. But courage! though Valdez be left behind, “our Lady,” and the saints, and the bull Caena Domini (dictated by one whom I dare not name here), are with them still, and it were blasphemous to doubt. But in the meanwhile, if they have fared no better than this against a third of the Plymouth fleet, how will they fare when those forty belated ships, which are already whitening the blue between them and the Mewstone, enter the scene to play their part?

So ends the first day; not an English ship, hardly a man, is hurt. It has destroyed for ever, in English minds, the prestige of boastful Spain. It has justified utterly the policy which the good Lord Howard had adopted by Raleigh’s and Drake’s advice, of keeping up a running fight, instead of “clapping ships together without consideration,” in which case, says Raleigh, “he had been lost, if he had not been better advised than a great many malignant fools were, who found fault with his demeanor.”

Be that as it may, so ends the first day, in which Amyas and the other Bideford ships have been right busy for two hours, knocking holes in a huge galleon, which carries on her poop a maiden with a wheel, and bears the name of Sta. Catharina. She had a coat of arms on the flag at her sprit, probably those of the commandant of soldiers; but they were shot away early in the fight, so Amyas cannot tell whether they were De Soto’ s or not. Nevertheless, there is plenty of time for private revenge; and Amyas, called off at last by the admiral’s signal, goes to bed and sleeps soundly.

But ere he has been in his hammock an hour, he is awakened by Cary’s coming down to ask for orders.

“We were to follow Drake’s lantern, Amyas; but where it is, I can’t see, unless he has been taken up aloft there among the stars for a new Drakium Sidus.”

Amyas turns out grumbling: but no lantern is to be seen; only a sudden explosion and a great fire on board some Spaniard, which is gradually got under, while they have to lie-to the whole night long, with nearly the whole fleet.

The next morning finds them off Torbay; and Amyas is hailed by a pinnace, bringing a letter from Drake, which (saving the spelling, which was somewhat arbitrary, like most men’s in those days) ran somewhat thus:–

“DEAR LAD,–I have been wool-gathering all night after five great hulks, which the Pixies transfigured overnight into galleons, and this morning again into German merchantmen. I let them go with my blessing; and coming back, fell in (God be thanked!) with Valdez’ great galleon; and in it good booty, which the Dons his fellows had left behind, like faithful and valiant comrades, and the Lord Howard had let slip past him, thinking her deserted by her crew. I have sent to Dartmouth a sight of noblemen and gentlemen, maybe a half-hundred; and Valdez himself, who when I sent my pinnace aboard must needs stand on his punctilios, and propound conditions. I answered him, I had no time to tell with him; if he would needs die, then I was the very man for him; if he would live, then, buena querra. He sends again, boasting that he was Don Pedro Valdez, and that it stood not with his honor, and that of the Dons in his company. I replied, that for my part, I was Francis Drake, and my matches burning. Whereon he finds in my name salve for the wounds of his own, and comes aboard, kissing my fist, with Spanish lies of holding himself fortunate that he had fallen into the hands of fortunate Drake, and much more, which he might have kept to cool his porridge. But I have much news from him (for he is a leaky tub); and among others, this, that your Don Guzman is aboard of the Sta. Catharina, commandant of her soldiery, and has his arms flying at her sprit, beside Sta. Catharina at the poop, which is a maiden with a wheel, and is a lofty built ship of 3 tier of ordnance, from which God preserve you, and send you like luck with.

“Your deare Friend and Admirall,

“F. Drake.

“She sails in this squadron of Recalde. The Armada was minded to smoke us out of Plymouth; and God’s grace it was they tried not: but their orders from home are too strait, and so the slaves fight like a bull in a tether, no farther than their rope, finding thus the devil a hard master, as do most in the end. They cannot compass our quick handling and tacking, and take us for very witches. So far so good, and better to come. You and I know the length of their foot of old. Time and light will kill any hare, and they will find it a long way from Start to Dunkirk.”

“The admiral is in a gracious humor, Leigh, to have vouchsafed you so long a letter.”

“St. Catherine! why, that was the galleon we hammered all yesterday!” said Amyas, stamping on the deck.

“Of course it was. Well, we shall find her again, doubt not. That cunning old Drake! how he has contrived to line his own pockets, even though he had to keep the whole fleet waiting for him.”

“He has given the lord high admiral the dor, at all events.”

“Lord Howard is too high-hearted to stop and plunder, Papist though he is, Amyas.”

Amyas answered by a growl, for he worshipped Drake, and was not too just to Papists.

The fleet did not find Lord Howard till nightfall; he and Lord Sheffield had been holding on steadfastly the whole night after the Spanish lanterns, with two ships only. At least there was no doubt now of the loyalty of English Roman Catholics, and indeed, throughout the fight, the Howards showed (as if to wipe out the slurs which had been cast on their loyalty by fanatics) a desperate courage, which might have thrust less prudent men into destruction, but led them only to victory. Soon a large Spaniard drifts by, deserted and partly burnt. Some of the men are for leaving their place to board her; but Amyas stoutly refuses. He has “come out to fight, and not to plunder; so let the nearest ship to her have her luck without grudging.” They pass on, and the men pull long faces when they see the galleon snapped up by their next neighbor, and towed off to Weymouth, where she proves to be the ship of Miguel d’Oquenda, the vice-admiral, which they saw last night, all but blown up by some desperate Netherland gunner, who, being “misused,” was minded to pay off old scores on his tyrants.

And so ends the second day; while the Portland rises higher and clearer every hour. The next morning finds them off the island. Will they try Portsmouth, though they have spared Plymouth? The wind has shifted to the north, and blows clear and cool off the white-walled downs of Weymouth Bay. The Spaniards turn and face the English. They must mean to stand off and on until the wind shall change, and then to try for the Needles. At least, they shall have some work to do before they round Purbeck Isle.

The English go to the westward again: but it is only to return on the opposite tack; and now begin a series of manoeuvres, each fleet trying to get the wind of the other; but the struggle does not last long, and ere noon the English fleet have slipped close-hauled between the Armada and the land, and are coming down upon them right before the wind.

And now begins a fight most fierce and fell. “And fight they did confusedly, and with variable fortunes; while, on the one hand, the English manfully rescued the ships of London, which were hemmed in by the Spaniards; and, on the other side, the Spaniards as stoutly delivered Recalde being in danger.” “Never was heard such thundering of ordnance on both sides, which notwithstanding from the Spaniards flew for the most part over the English without harm. Only Cock, an Englishman” (whom Prince claims, I hope rightfully, as a worthy of Devon), “died with honor in the midst of the enemies in a small ship of his. For the English ships, being far the lesser, charged the enemy with marvellous agility; and having discharged their broadsides, flew forth presently into the deep, and levelled their shot directly, without missing, at those great and unwieldy Spanish ships.” “This was the most furious and bloody skirmish of all” (though ending only, it seems, in the capture of a great Venetian and some small craft), “in which the lord admiral fighting amidst his enemies’ fleet, and seeing one of his captains afar off (Fenner by name, he who fought the seven Portugals at the Azores), cried, ‘O George, what doest thou? Wilt thou now frustrate my hope and opinion conceived of thee? Wilt thou forsake me now?’ With which words he being enflamed, approached, and did the part of a most valiant captain;” as, indeed, did all the rest.

Night falls upon the floating volcano; and morning finds them far past Purbeck, with the white peak of Freshwater ahead; and pouring out past the Needles, ship after ship, to join the gallant chase. For now from all havens, in vessels fitted out at their own expense, flock the chivalry of England; the Lords Oxford, Northumberland, and Cumberland, Pallavicin, Brooke, Carew, Raleigh, and Blunt, and many another honorable name, “as to a set field, where immortal fame and honor was to be attained.” Spain has staked her chivalry in that mighty cast; not a noble house of Arragon or Castile but has lent a brother or a son–and shall mourn the loss of one: and England’s gentlemen will measure their strength once for all against the Cavaliers of Spain. Lord Howard has sent forward light craft into Portsmouth for ammunition: but they will scarce return to-night, for the wind falls dead, and all the evening the two fleets drift helpless with the tide, and shout idle defiance at each other with trumpet, fife, and drum.

The sun goes down upon a glassy sea, and rises on a glassy sea again. But what day is this? The twenty-fifth, St. James’s-day, sacred to the patron saint of Spain. Shall nothing be attempted in his honor by those whose forefathers have so often seen him with their bodily eyes, charging in their van upon his snow-white steed, and scattering Paynims with celestial lance? He might have sent them, certainly, a favoring breeze; perhaps, he only means to try their faith; at least the galleys shall attack; and in their van three of the great galliasses (the fourth lies half-crippled among the fleet) thrash the sea to foam with three hundred oars apiece; and see, not St. James leading them to victory, but Lord Howard’s Triumph, his brother’s Lion, Southwell’s Elizabeth Jonas, Lord Sheffield’s Bear, Barker’s Victory, and George Fenner’s Leicester, towed stoutly out, to meet them with such salvoes of chain-shot, smashing oars, and cutting rigging, that had not the wind sprung up again toward noon, and the Spanish fleet come up to rescue them, they had shared the fate of Valdez and the Biscayan. And now the fight becomes general. Frobisher beats down the Spanish admiral’s mainmast; and, attacked himself by Mexia and Recalde, is rescued by Lord Howard; who, himself endangered in his turn, is rescued in his turn; “while after that day” (so sickened were they of the English gunnery) “no galliasse would adventure to fight.”

And so, with variable fortune, the fight thunders on the livelong afternoon, beneath the virgin cliffs of Freshwater; while myriad sea-fowl rise screaming up from every ledge, and spot with their black wings the snow-white wall of chalk; and the lone shepherd hurries down the slopes above to peer over the dizzy edge, and forgets the wheatear fluttering in his snare, while he gazes trembling upon glimpses of tall masts and gorgeous flags, piercing at times the league-broad veil of sulphur-smoke which welters far below.

So fares St. James’s-day, as Baal’s did on Carmel in old time, “Either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on a journey; or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.” At least, the only fire by which he has answered his votaries, has been that of English cannon: and the Armada, “gathering itself into a roundel,” will fight no more, but make the best of its way to Calais, where perhaps the Guises’ faction may have a French force ready to assist them, and then to Dunkirk, to join with Parma and the great flotilla of the Netherlands.

So on, before “a fair Etesian gale,” which follows clear and bright out of the south-southwest, glide forward the two great fleets, past Brighton Cliffs and Beachy Head, Hastings and Dungeness. Is it a battle or a triumph? For by sea Lord Howard, instead of fighting is rewarding; and after Lord Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield, Townsend, and Frobisher have received at his hands that knighthood, which was then more honorable than a peerage, old Admiral Hawkins kneels and rises up Sir John, and shaking his shoulders after the accolade, observes to the representative of majesty, that his “old woman will hardly know herself again, when folks call her My Lady.”

And meanwhile the cliffs are lined with pike-men and musketeers, and by every countryman and groom who can bear arms, led by their squires and sheriffs, marching eastward as fast as their weapons let them, towards the Dover shore. And not with them alone. From many a mile inland come down women and children, and aged folk in wagons, to join their feeble shouts, and prayers which are not feeble, to that great cry of mingled faith and fear which ascends to the throne of God from the spectators of Britain’s Salamis.

Let them pray on. The danger is not over yet, though Lord Howard has had news from Newhaven that the Guises will not stir against England, and Seymour and Winter have left their post of observation on the Flemish shores, to make up the number of the fleet to an hundred and forty sail–larger, slightly, than that of the Spanish fleet, but of not more than half the tonnage, or one third the number of men. The Spaniards are dispirited and battered, but unbroken still; and as they slide to their anchorage in Calais Roads on the Saturday evening of that most memorable week, all prudent men know well that England’s hour is come, and that the bells which will call all Christendom to church upon the morrow morn, will be either the death-knell or the triumphal peal of the Reformed faith throughout the world.

A solemn day that Sabbath must have been in country and in town. And many a light-hearted coward, doubtless, who had scoffed (as many did) at the notion of the Armada’s coming, because he dare not face the thought, gave himself up to abject fear, “as he now plainly saw and heard that of which before he would not be persuaded.” And many a brave man, too, as he knelt beside his wife and daughters, felt his heart sink to the very pavement, at the thought of what those beloved ones might be enduring a few short days hence, from a profligate and fanatical soldiery, or from the more deliberate fiendishness of the Inquisition. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, the fires of Smithfield, the immolation of the Moors, the extermination of the West Indians, the fantastic horrors of the Piedmontese persecution, which make unreadable the too truthful pages of Morland,–these were the spectres, which, not as now, dim and distant through the mist of centuries, but recent, bleeding from still gaping wounds, flitted before the eyes of every Englishman, and filled his brain and heart with fire.

He knew full well the fate in store for him and his. One false step, and the unspeakable doom which, not two generations afterwards, befell the Lutherans of Magdeburg, would have befallen every town from London to Carlisle. All knew the hazard, as they prayed that day, and many a day before and after, throughout England and the Netherlands. And none knew it better than she who was the guiding spirit of that devoted land, and the especial mark of the invaders’ fury; and who, by some Divine inspiration (as men then not unwisely held), devised herself the daring stroke which was to anticipate the coming blow.

But where is Amyas Leigh all this while? Day after day he has been seeking the Sta. Catharina in the thickest of the press, and cannot come at her, cannot even hear of her: one moment he dreads that she has sunk by night, and balked him of his prey; the next, that she has repaired her damages, and will escape him after all. He is moody, discontented, restless, even (for the first time in his life) peevish with his men. He can talk of nothing but Don Guzman; he can find no better employment, at every spare moment, than taking his sword out of the sheath, and handling it, fondling it, talking to it even, bidding it not to fail him in the day of vengeance. At last, he has sent to Squire, the armorer, for a whetstone, and, half-ashamed of his own folly, whets and polishes it in bye-corners, muttering to himself. That one fixed thought of selfish vengeance has possessed his whole mind; he forgets England’s present need, her past triumph, his own safety, everything but his brother’s blood. And yet this is the day for which he has been longing ever since he brought home that magic horn as a fifteen years boy; the day when he should find himself face to face with an invader, and that invader Antichrist himself. He has believed for years with Drake, Hawkins, Grenville, and Raleigh, that he was called and sent into the world only to fight the Spaniard: and he is fighting him now, in such a cause, for such a stake, within such battle-lists, as he will never see again: and yet he is not content, and while throughout that gallant fleet, whole crews are receiving the Communion side by side, and rising with cheerful faces to shake hands, and to rejoice that they are sharers in Britain’s Salamis, Amyas turns away from the holy elements.

“I cannot communicate, Sir John. Charity with all men? I hate, if ever man hated on earth.”

“You hate the Lord’s foes only, Captain Leigh.”

“No, Jack, I hate my own as well.”

“But no one in the fleet, sir?”

“Don’t try to put me off with the same Jesuit’s quibble which that false knave Parson Fletcher invented for one of Doughty’s men, to drug his conscience withal when he was plotting against his own admiral. No, Jack, I hate one of whom you know; and somehow that hatred of him keeps me from loving any human being. I am in love and charity with no man, Sir John Brimblecombe–not even with you! Go your ways in God’s name, sir! and leave me and the devil alone together, or you’ll find my words are true.”

Jack departed with a sigh, and while the crew were receiving the Communion on deck, Amyas sate below in the cabin sharpening his sword, and after it, called for a boat and went on board Drake’s ship to ask news of the Sta. Catharina, and listened scowling to the loud chants and tinkling bells, which came across the water from the Spanish fleet. At last, Drake was summoned by the lord admiral, and returned with a secret commission, which ought to bear fruit that night; and Amyas, who had gone with him, helped him till nightfall, and then returned to his own ship as Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, to the joy and glory of every soul on board, except his moody self.

So there, the livelong summer Sabbath-day, before the little high- walled town and the long range of yellow sandhills, lie those two mighty armaments, scowling at each other, hardly out of gunshot. Messenger after messenger is hurrying towards Bruges to the Duke of Parma, for light craft which can follow these nimble English somewhat better than their own floating castles; and, above all, entreating him to put to sea at once with all his force. The duke is not with his forces at Dunkirk, but on the future field of Waterloo, paying his devotions to St. Mary of Halle in Hainault, in order to make all sure in his Pantheon, and already sees in visions of the night that gentle-souled and pure-lipped saint, Cardinal Allen, placing the crown of England on his head. He returns for answer, first, that his victual is not ready; next, that his Dutch sailors, who have been kept at their post for many a week at the sword’s point, have run away like water; and thirdly, that over and above all, he cannot come, so “strangely provided of great ordnance and musketeers are those five-and-thirty Dutch ships, in which round-sterned and stubborn-hearted heretics watch, like terriers at a rat’s hole, the entrance of Nieuwport and Dunkirk. Having ensured the private patronage of St. Mary of Halle, he will return to-morrow to make experience of its effects: but only hear across the flats of Dixmude the thunder of the fleets, and at Dunkirk the open curses of his officers. For while he has been praying and nothing more, the English have been praying, and something more; and all that is left for the Prince of Parma is, to hang a few purveyors, as peace offerings to his sulking army, and then “chafe,” as Drake says of him, “like a bear robbed of her whelps.”

For Lord Henry Seymour has brought Lord Howard a letter of command from Elizabeth’s self; and Drake has been carrying it out so busily all that Sunday long, that by two o’clock on the Monday morning, eight fire-ships “besmeared with wild-fire, brimstone, pitch, and resin, and all their ordnance charged with bullets and with stones,” are stealing down the wind straight for the Spanish fleet, guided by two valiant men of Devon, Young and Prowse. (Let their names live long in the land!) The ships are fired, the men of Devon steal back, and in a moment more, the heaven is red with glare from Dover Cliffs to Gravelines Tower; and weary-hearted Belgian boors far away inland, plundered and dragooned for many a hideous year, leap from their beds, and fancy (and not so far wrongly either) that the day of judgment is come at last, to end their woes, and hurl down vengeance on their tyrants.

And then breaks forth one of those disgraceful panics, which so often follow overweening presumption; and shrieks, oaths, prayers, and reproaches, make night hideous. There are those too on board who recollect well enough Jenebelli’s fire-ships at Antwerp three years before, and the wreck which they made of Parma’s bridge across the Scheldt. If these should be like them! And cutting all cables, hoisting any sails, the Invincible Armada goes lumbering wildly out to sea, every ship foul of her neighbor.

The largest of the four galliasses loses her rudder, and drifts helpless to and fro, hindering and confusing. The duke, having (so the Spaniards say) weighed his anchor deliberately instead of leaving it behind him, runs in again after awhile, and fires a signal for return: but his truant sheep are deaf to the shepherd’s pipe, and swearing and praying by turns, he runs up Channel towards Gravelines picking up stragglers on his way, who are struggling as they best can among the flats and shallows: but Drake and Fenner have arrived as soon as he. When Monday’s sun rises on the quaint old castle and muddy dykes of Gravelines town, the thunder of the cannon recommences, and is not hushed till night. Drake can hang coolly enough in the rear to plunder when he thinks fit; but when the battle needs it, none can fight more fiercely, among the foremost; and there is need now, if ever. That Armada must never be allowed to re-form. If it does, its left wing may yet keep the English at bay, while its right drives off the blockading Hollanders from Dunkirk port, and sets Parma and his flotilla free to join them, and to sail in doubled strength across to the mouth of Thames.

So Drake has weighed anchor, and away up Channel with all his squadron, the moment that he saw the Spanish fleet come up; and with him Fenner burning to redeem the honor which, indeed, he had never lost; and ere Fenton, Beeston, Crosse, Ryman, and Lord Southwell can join them, the Devon ships have been worrying the Spaniards for two full hours into confusion worse confounded.

But what is that heavy firing behind them? Alas for the great galliasse! She lies, like a huge stranded whale, upon the sands where now stands Calais pier; and Amyas Preston, the future hero of La Guayra, is pounding her into submission, while a fleet of hoys and drumblers look on and help, as jackals might the lion.

Soon, on the south-west horizon, loom up larger and larger two mighty ships, and behind them sail on sail. As they near a shout greets the Triumph and the Bear; and on and in the lord high admiral glides stately into the thickest of the fight.

True, we have still but some three-and-twenty ships which can cope at all with some ninety of the Spaniards: but we have dash, and daring, and the inspiration of utter need. Now, or never, must the mighty struggle be ended. We worried them off Portland; we must rend them in pieces now; and in rushes ship after ship, to smash her broadsides through and through the wooden castles, “sometimes not a pike’s length asunder,” and then out again to re-load, and give place meanwhile to another. The smaller are fighting with all sails set; the few larger, who, once in, are careless about coming out again, fight with top-sails loose, and their main and foreyards close down on deck, to prevent being boarded. The duke, Oquenda, and Recalde, having with much ado got clear of the shallows, bear the brunt of the fight to seaward; but in vain. The day goes against them more and more, as it runs on. Seymour and Winter have battered the great San Philip into a wreck; her masts are gone by the board; Pimentelli in the San Matthew comes up to take the mastiffs off the fainting bull, and finds them fasten on him instead; but the Evangelist, though smaller, is stouter than the Deacon, and of all the shot poured into him, not twenty “lackt him thorough.” His masts are tottering; but sink or strike he will not.

“Go ahead, and pound his tough hide, Leigh,” roars Drake off the poop of his ship, while he hammers away at one of the great galliasses. “What right has he to keep us all waiting?”

Amyas slips in as best he can between Drake and Winter; as he passes he shouts to his ancient enemy,–

“We are with you, sir; all friends to-day!” and slipping round Winter’s bows, he pours his broadside into those of the San Matthew, and then glides on to re-load; but not to return. For not a pistol shot to leeward, worried by three or four small craft, lies an immense galleon; and on her poop–can he believe his eyes for joy?–the maiden and the wheel which he has sought so long!

“There he is!” shouts Amyas, springing to the starboard side of the ship. The men, too, have already caught sight of that hated sign; a cheer of fury bursts from every throat.

“Steady, men!” says Amyas, in a suppressed voice. “Not a shot! Re-load, and be ready; I must speak with him first;” and silent as the grave, amid the infernal din, the Vengeance glides up to the Spaniard’s quarter.

“Don Guzman Maria Magdalena Sotomayor de Soto!” shouts Amyas from the mizzen rigging, loud and clear amid the roar.

He has not called in vain. Fearless and graceful as ever, the tall, mail-clad figure of his foe leaps up upon the poop-railing, twenty feet above Amyas’s head, and shouts through his vizor,–

“At your service, sir whosoever you may be.”

A dozen muskets and arrows are levelled at him; but Amyas frowns them down. “No man strikes him but I. Spare him, if you kill every other soul on board. Don Guzman! I am Captain Sir Amyas Leigh; I proclaim you a traitor and a ravisher, and challenge you once more to single combat, when and where you will.”

“You are welcome to come on board me, sir,” answers the Spaniard, in a clear, quiet tone; “bringing with you this answer, that you lie in your throat;” and lingering a moment out of bravado, to arrange his scarf, he steps slowly down again behind the bulwarks.

“Coward!” shouts Amyas at the top of his voice.

The Spaniard re-appears instantly. “Why that name, senor, of all others?” asks he in a cool, stern voice.

“Because we call men cowards in England, who leave their wives to be burnt alive by priests.”

The moment the words had passed Amyas’s lips, he felt that they were cruel and unjust. But it was too late to recall them. The Spaniard started, clutched his sword-hilt, and then hissed back through his closed vizor,–

“For that word, sirrah, you hang at my yardarm, if Saint Mary gives me grace.”

“See that your halter be a silken one, then,” laughed Amyas, “for I am just dubbed knight.” And he stepped down as a storm of bullets rang through the rigging round his head; the Spaniards are not as punctilious as he.

“Fire!” His ordnance crash through the stern-works of the Spaniard; and then he sails onward, while her balls go humming harmlessly through his rigging.

Half-an-hour has passed of wild noise and fury; three times has the Vengeance, as a dolphin might, sailed clean round and round the Sta. Catharina, pouring in broadside after broadside, till the guns are leaping to the deck-beams with their own heat, and the Spaniard’s sides are slit and spotted in a hundred places. And yet, so high has been his fire in return, and so strong the deck defences of the Vengeance, that a few spars broken, and two or three men wounded by musketry, are all her loss. But still the Spaniard endures, magnificent as ever; it is the battle of the thresher and the whale; the end is certain, but the work is long.

“Can I help you, Captain Leigh?” asked Lord Henry Seymour, as he passes within oar’s length of him, to attack a ship ahead. “The San Matthew has had his dinner, and is gone on to Medina to ask for a digestive to it.”

“I thank your lordship: but this is my private quarrel, of which I spoke. But if your lordship could lend me powder–“

“Would that I could! But so, I fear, says every other gentleman in the fleet.”

A puff of wind clears away the sulphurous veil for a moment; the sea is clear of ships towards the land; the Spanish fleet are moving again up Channel, Medina bringing up the rear; only some two miles to their right hand, the vast hull of the San Philip is drifting up the shore with the tide, and somewhat nearer the San Matthew is hard at work at her pumps. They can see the white stream of water pouring down her side.

“Go in, my lord, and have the pair,” shouts Amyas.

“No, sir! Forward is a Seymour’s cry. We will leave them to pay the Flushingers’ expenses. And on went Lord Henry, and on shore went the San Philip at Ostend, to be plundered by the Flushingers; while the San Matthew, whose captain, “on a hault courage,” had refused to save himself and his gentlemen on board Medina’s ship, went blundering miserably into the hungry mouths of Captain Peter Vanderduess and four other valiant Dutchmen, who, like prudent men of Holland, contrived to keep the galleon afloat till they had emptied her, and then “hung up her banner in the great church of Leyden, being of such a length, that being fastened to the roof, it reached unto the very ground.”

But in the meanwhile, long ere the sun had set, comes down the darkness of the thunderstorm, attracted, as to a volcano’s mouth, to that vast mass of sulphur-smoke which cloaks the sea for many a mile; and heaven’s artillery above makes answer to man’s below. But still, through smoke and rain, Amyas clings to his prey. She too has seen the northward movement of the Spanish fleet, and sets her topsails; Amyas calls to the men to fire high, and cripple her rigging: but in vain: for three or four belated galleys, having forced their way at last over the shallows, come flashing and sputtering up to the combatants, and take his fire off the galleon. Amyas grinds his teeth, and would fain hustle into the thick of the press once more, in spite of the galleys’ beaks.

“Most heroical captain,” says cary, pulling a long face, “if we do, we are stove and sunk in five minutes; not to mention that Yeo says he has not twenty rounds of great cartridge left.”

So, surely and silent, the Vengeance sheers off, but keeps as near as she can to the little squadron, all through the night of rain and thunder which follows. Next morning the sun rises on a clear sky, with a strong west-north-west breeze, and all hearts are asking what the day will bring forth.

They are long past Dunkirk now; the German Ocean is opening before them. The Spaniards, sorely battered, and lessened in numbers, have, during the night, regained some sort of order. The English hang on their skirts a mile or two behind. They have no ammunition, and must wait for more. To Amyas’s great disgust, the Sta. Catharina has rejoined her fellows during the night.

“Never mind,” says Cary; “she can neither dive nor fly, and as long as she is above water, we– What is the admiral about?”

He is signalling Lord Henry Seymour and his squadron. Soon they tack, and come down the wind for the coast of Flanders. Parma must be blockaded still; and the Hollanders are likely to be too busy with their plunder to do it effectually. Suddenly there is a stir in the Spanish fleet. Medina and the rearmost ships turn upon the English. What can it mean? Will they offer battle once more? If so, it were best to get out of their way, for we have nothing wherewith to fight them. So the English lie close to the wind. They will let them pass, and return to their old tactic of following and harassing.

“Good-bye to Seymour,” says Cary, “if he is caught between them and Parma’s flotilla. They are going to Dunkirk.”

“Impossible! They will not have water enough to reach his light craft. Here comes a big ship right upon us! Give him all you have left, lads; and if he will fight us, lay him alongside, and die boarding.”

They gave him what they had, and hulled him with every shot; but his huge side stood silent as the grave. He had not wherewithal to return the compliment.

“As I live, he is cutting loose the foot of his mainsail! the villain means to run.”

“There go the rest of them! Victoria!” shouted Cary, as one after another, every Spaniard set all the sail he could.

There was silence for a few minutes throughout the English fleet; and then cheer upon cheer of triumph rent the skies. It was over. The Spaniard had refused battle, and thinking only of safety, was pressing downward toward the Straits again. The Invincible Armada had cast away its name, and England was saved.

“But he will never get there, sir,” said old Yeo, who had come upon deck to murmur his Nunc Domine, and gaze upon that sight beyond all human faith or hope: “Never, never will he weather the Flanders shore, against such a breeze as is coming up. Look to the eye of the wind, sir, and see how the Lord is fighting for His people!”

Yes, down it came, fresher and stiffer every minute out of the gray north-west, as it does so often after a thunder-storm; and the sea began to rise high and white under the ” Claro Aquilone,” till the Spaniards were fain to take in all spare canvas, and lie-to as best they could; while the English fleet, lying-to also, awaited an event which was in God’s hands and not in theirs.

“They will be all ashore on Zealand before the afternoon,” murmured Amyas; “and I have lost my labor! Oh, for powder, powder, powder! to go in and finish it at once!”

“Oh, sir,” said Yeo, “don’t murmur against the Lord in the very day of His mercies. It is hard, to be sure; but His will be done.”

“Could we not borrow powder from Drake there?”

“Look at the sea, sir!”

And, indeed, the sea was far too rough for any such attempt. The Spaniards neared and neared the fatal dunes, which fringed the shore for many a dreary mile; and Amyas had to wait weary hours, growling like a dog who has had the bone snatched out of his mouth, till the day wore on; when, behold, the wind began to fall as rapidly as it had risen. A savage joy rose in Amyas’s heart.

“They are safe! safe for us! Who will go and beg us powder? A cartridge here and a cartridge there?–anything to set to work again!”

Cary volunteered, and returned in a couple of hours with some quantity: but he was on board again only just in time, for the south-wester had recovered the mastery of the skies, and Spaniards and English were moving away; but this time northward. Whither now? To Scotland? Amyas knew not, and cared not, provided he was in the company of Don Guzman de Soto.

The Armada was defeated, and England saved. But such great undertakings seldom end in one grand melodramatic explosion of fireworks, through which the devil arises in full roar to drag Dr. Faustus forever into the flaming pit. On the contrary, the devil stands by his servants to the last, and tries to bring off his shattered forces with drums beating and colors flying; and, if possible, to lull his enemies into supposing that the fight is ended, long before it really is half over. All which the good Lord Howard of Effingham knew well, and knew, too, that Medina had one last card to play, and that was the filial affection of that dutiful and chivalrous son, James of Scotland. True, he had promised faith to Elizabeth: but that was no reason why he should keep it. He had been hankering and dabbling after Spain for years past, for its absolution was dear to his inmost soul; and Queen Elizabeth had had to warn him, scold him, call him a liar, for so doing; so the Armada might still find shelter and provision in the Firth of Forth. But whether Lord Howard knew or not, Medina did not know, that Elizabeth had played her card cunningly, in the shape of one of those appeals to the purse, which, to James’s dying day, overweighed all others save appeals to his vanity. “The title of a dukedom in England, a yearly pension of 5000 pounds, a guard at the queen’s charge, and other matters” (probably more hounds and deer), had steeled the heart of the King of Scots, and sealed the Firth of Forth. Nevertheless, as I say, Lord Howard, like the rest of Elizabeth’s heroes, trusted James just as much as James trusted others; and therefore thought good to escort the Armada until it was safely past the domains of that most chivalrous and truthful Solomon. But on the 4th of August, his fears, such as they were, were laid to rest. The Spaniards left the Scottish coast and sailed away for Norway; and the game was played out, and the end was come, as the end of such matters generally comes, by gradual decay, petty disaster, and mistake; till the snow-mountain, instead of being blown tragically and heroically to atoms, melts helplessly and pitiably away.

CHAPTER XXXII

HOW AMYAS THREW HIS SWORD INTO THE SEA

“Full fathom deep thy father lies;
Of his bones are corals made;
Those are pearls which were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange;
Fairies hourly ring his knell,
Hark! I hear them. Ding dong bell.”

The Tempest.

Yes, it is over; and the great Armada is vanquished. It is lulled for awhile, the everlasting war which is in heaven, the battle of Iran and Turan, of the children of light and of darkness, of Michael and his angels against Satan and his fiends; the battle which slowly and seldom, once in the course of many centuries, culminates and ripens into a day of judgment, and becomes palpable and incarnate; no longer a mere spiritual fight, but one of flesh and blood, wherein simple men may choose their sides without mistake, and help God’s cause not merely with prayer and pen, but with sharp shot and cold steel. A day of judgment has come, which has divided the light from the darkness, and the sheep from the goats, and tried each man’s work by the fire; and, behold, the devil’s work, like its maker, is proved to have been, as always, a lie and a sham, and a windy boast, a bladder which collapses at the merest pinprick. Byzantine empires, Spanish Armadas, triple- crowned papacies, Russian despotisms, this is the way of them, and will be to the end of the world. One brave blow at the big bullying phantom, and it vanishes in sulphur-stench; while the children of Israel, as of old, see the Egyptians dead on the sea- shore,–they scarce know how, save that God has done it, and sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb.

And now, from England and the Netherlands, from Germany and Geneva, and those poor Vaudois shepherd-saints, whose bones for generations past

“Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;”

to be, indeed, the seed of the Church, and a germ of new life, liberty, and civilization, even in these very days returning good for evil to that Piedmont which has hunted them down like the partridges on the mountains;–from all of Europe, from all of mankind, I had almost said, in which lay the seed of future virtue and greatness, of the destinies of the new-discovered world, and the triumphs of the coming age of science, arose a shout of holy joy, such as the world had not heard for many a weary and bloody century; a shout which was the prophetic birth-paean of North America, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, of free commerce and free colonization over the whole earth.

“There was in England, by the commandment of her majesty,” says Van Meteran, “and likewise in the United Provinces, by the direction of the States, a solemn festival day publicly appointed, wherein all persons were solemnly enjoined to resort unto ye Church, and there to render thanks and praises unto God, and ye preachers were commanded to exhort ye people thereunto. The aforesaid solemnity was observed upon the 29th of November: which day was wholly spent in fasting, prayer, and giving of thanks.

“Likewise the Queen’s Majesty herself, imitating ye ancient Romans, rode into London in triumph, in regard of her own and her subjects’ glorious deliverance. For being attended upon very solemnly by all ye principal Estates and officers of her Realm, she was carried through her said City of London in a triumphant Chariot, and in robes of triumph, from her Palace unto ye said Cathedral Church of St. Paul, out of ye which ye Ensigns and Colours of ye vanquished Spaniards hung displayed. And all ye Citizens of London, in their liveries, stood on either side ye street, by their several Companies, with their ensigns and banners, and the streets were hanged on both sides with blue Cloth, which, together with ye foresaid banners, yielded a very stately and gallant prospect. Her Majestie being entered into ye Church together with her Clergy and Nobles, gave thanks unto God, and caused a public Sermon to be preached before her at Paul’s Cross; wherein none other argument was handled, but that praise, honour, and glory might be rendered unto God, and that God’s Name might be extolled by thanksgiving. And with her own princely voice she most Christianly exhorted ye people to do ye same; whereunto ye people, with a loud acclamation, wished her a most long and happy life to ye confusion of her foes.”

Yes, as the medals struck on the occasion said, “It came, it saw, and it fled!” And whither? Away and northward, like a herd of frightened deer, past the Orkneys and Shetlands, catching up a few hapless fishermen as guides; past the coast of Norway, there, too, refused water and food by the brave descendants of the Vikings; and on northward ever towards the lonely Faroes, and the everlasting dawn which heralds round the Pole the midnight sun.

Their water is failing; the cattle must go overboard; and the wild northern sea echoes to the shrieks of drowning horses. They must homeward at least, somehow, each as best he can. Let them meet again at Cape Finisterre, if indeed they ever meet. Medina Sidonia, with some five-and twenty of the soundest and best victualled ships, will lead the way, and leave the rest to their fate. He is soon out of sight; and forty more, the only remnant of that mighty host, come wandering wearily behind, hoping to make the south-west coast of Ireland, and have help, or, at least, fresh water there, from their fellow Romanists. Alas for them!–

“Make Thou their way dark and slippery, And follow them up ever with Thy storm.”

For now comes up from the Atlantic, gale on gale; and few of that hapless remnant reached the shores of Spain.

And where are Amyas and the Vengeance all this while?

At the fifty-seventh degree of latitude, the English fleet, finding themselves growing short of provision, and having been long since out of powder and ball, turn southward toward home, “thinking it best to leave the Spaniard to those uncouth and boisterous northern seas.” A few pinnaces are still sent onward to watch their course: and the English fleet, caught in the same storms which scattered the Spaniards, “with great danger and industry reached Harwich port, and there provide themselves of victuals and ammunition,” in case the Spaniards should return; but there is no need for that caution. Parma, indeed, who cannot believe that the idol at Halle, after all his compliments to it, will play him so scurvy a trick, will watch for weeks on Dunkirk dunes, hoping against hope for the Armada’s return, casting anchors, and spinning rigging to repair their losses.

“But lang, lang may his ladies sit, With their fans intill their hand,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the land.”

The Armada is away on the other side of Scotland, and Amyas is following in its wake.

For when the lord high admiral determined to return, Amyas asked leave to follow the Spaniard; and asked, too, of Sir John Hawkins, who happened to be at hand, such ammunition and provision as could be afforded him, promising to repay the same like an honest man, out of his plunder if he lived, out of his estate if he died; lodging for that purpose bills in the hands of Sir John, who, as a man of business, took them, and put them in his pocket among the thimbles, string, and tobacco; after which Amyas, calling his men together, reminded them once more of the story of the Rose of Torridge and Don Guzman de Soto, and then asked:

“Men of Bideford, will you follow me? There will be plunder for those who love plunder; revenge for those who love revenge; and for all of us (for we all love honor) the honor of having never left