Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (page 8)

first with vainglory and then with wine?”

Salterne looked at him a while fixedly, and then, sticking out his chin–“Because, Captain Leigh, I am a man who has all his life tried the crooked road first, and found the straight one the safer after all.”

“Eh, sir? That is a strange speech for one who bears the character of the most upright man in Bideford.”

“Humph. So I thought myself once, sir; and well I have proved it. But I’ll be plain with you, sir. You’ve heard how–how I’ve fared since you saw me last?”

Amyas nodded his head.

“I thought so. Shame rides post. Now then, Captain Leigh, listen to me. I, being a plain man and a burgher, and one that never drew iron in my life except to mend a pen, ask you, being a gentleman and a captain and a man of honor, with a weapon to your side, and harness to your back–what would you do in my place?”

“Humph!” said Amyas, “that would very much depend on whether ‘my place’ was my own fault or not.”

“And what if it were, sir? What if all that the charitable folks of Bideford–(Heaven reward them for their tender mercies!)–have been telling you in the last hour be true, sir,–true! and yet not half the truth?”

Amyas gave a start.

“Ah, you shrink from me! Of course a man is too righteous to forgive those who repent, though God is not.”

“God knows, sir–“

“Yes, sir, God does know–all; and you shall know a little–as much as I can tell–or you understand. Come upstairs with me, sir, as you’ll drink no more; I have a liking for you. I have watched you from your boyhood, and I can trust you, and I’ll show you what I never showed to mortal man but one.”

And, taking up a candle, he led the way upstairs, while Amyas followed wondering.

He stopped at a door, and unlocked it.

“There, come in. Those shutters have not been opened since she–” and the old man was silent.

Amyas looked round the room. It was a low wainscoted room, such as one sees in old houses: everything was in the most perfect neatness. The snow-white sheets on the bed were turned down as if ready for an occupant. There were books arranged on the shelves, fresh flowers on the table; the dressing-table had all its woman’s mundus of pins, and rings, and brushes; even the dressing-gown lay over the chair-back. Everything was evidently just as it had been left.

“This was her room, sir,” whispered the old man.

Amyas nodded silently, and half drew back.

“You need not be modest about entering it now, sir,” whispered he, with a sort of sneer. “There has been no frail flesh and blood in it for many a day.”

Amyas sighed.

“I sweep it out myself every morning, and keep all tidy. See here!” and he pulled open a drawer. “Here are all her gowns, and there are her hoods; and there–I know ’em all by heart now, and the place of every one. And there, sir–“

And he opened a cupboard, where lay in rows all Rose’s dolls, and the worn-out playthings of her childhood.

“That’s the pleasantest place of all in the room to me,” said he, whispering still, “for it minds me of when–and maybe, she may become a little child once more, sir; it’s written in the Scripture, you know–“

“Amen!” said Amyas, who felt, to his own wonder, a big tear stealing down each cheek.

“And now,” he whispered, “one thing more. Look here!”–and pulling out a key, he unlocked a chest, and lifted up tray after tray of necklaces and jewels, furs, lawns, cloth of gold. “Look there! Two thousand pound won’t buy that chest. Twenty years have I been getting those things together. That’s the cream of many a Levant voyage, and East Indian voyage, and West Indian voyage. My Lady Bath can’t match those pearls in her grand house at Tawstock; I got ’em from a Genoese, though, and paid for ’em. Look at that embroidered lawn! There’s not such a piece in London; no, nor in Alexandria, I’ll warrant; nor short of Calicut, where it came from. . . . Look here again, there’s a golden cup! I bought that of one that was out with Pizarro in Peru. And look here, again!”– and the old man gloated over the treasure.

“And whom do you think I kept all these for? These were for her wedding-day–for her wedding-day. For your wedding-day, if you’d been minded, sir! Yes, yours, sir! And yet, I believe, I was so ambitious that I would not have let her marry under an earl, all the while I was pretending to be too proud to throw her at the head of a squire’s son. Ah, well! There was my idol, sir. I made her mad, I pampered her up with gewgaws and vanity; and then, because my idol was just what I had made her, I turned again and rent her.

“And now,” said he, pointing to the open chest, “that was what I meant; and that” (pointing to the empty bed) “was what God meant. Never mind. Come downstairs and finish your wine. I see you don’t care about it all. Why should you! you are not her father, and you may thank God you are not. Go, and be merry while you can, young sir! . . . And yet, all this might have been yours. And–but I don’t suppose you are one to be won by money–but all this may be yours still, and twenty thousand pounds to boot.”

“I want no money, sir, but what I can earn with my own sword.”

“Earn my money, then!”

“What on earth do you want of me!”

“To keep your oath,” said Salterne, clutching his arm, and looking up into his face with searching eyes.

“My oath! How did you know that I had one?”

“Ah! you were well ashamed of it, I suppose, next day! A drunken frolic all about a poor merchant’s daughter! But there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, nor done in the closet that is not proclaimed on the house-tops.”

“Ashamed of it, sir, I never was: but I have a right to ask how you came to know it?”

“What if a poor fat squinny rogue, a low-born fellow even as I am, whom you had baffled and made a laughing-stock, had come to me in my loneliness and sworn before God that if you honorable gentlemen would not keep your words, he the clown would?”

“John Brimblecombe?”

“And what if I had brought him where I have brought you, and shown him what I have shown you, and, instead of standing as stiff as any Spaniard, as you do, he had thrown himself on his knees by that bedside, and wept and prayed, sir, till he opened my hard heart for the first and last time, and I fell down on my sinful knees and wept and prayed by him?”

“I am not given to weeping, Mr. Salterne,” said Amyas; “and as for praying, I don’t know yet what I have to pray for, on her account: my business is to work. Show me what I can do; and when you have done that, it will be full time to upbraid me with not doing it.”

“You can cut that fellow’s throat.”

“It will take a long arm to reach him.”

“I suppose it is as easy to sail to the Spanish Main as it was to sail round the world.”

“My good sir,” said Amyas, “I have at this moment no more worldly goods than my clothes and my sword, so how to sail to the Spanish Main, I don’t quite see.”

“And do you suppose, sir, that I should hint to you of such a voyage if I meant you to be at the charge of it? No, sir; if you want two thousand pounds, or five, to fit a ship, take it! Take it, sir! I hoarded money for my child: and now I will spend it to avenge her.”

Amyas was silent for a while; the old man still held his arm, still looked up steadfastly and fiercely in his face.

“Bring me home that man’s head, and take ship, prizes–all! Keep the gain, sir, and give me the revenge!”

“Gain? Do you think I need bribing, sir? What kept me silent was the thought of my mother. I dare not go without her leave.”

Salterne made a gesture of impatience.

“I dare not, sir; I must obey my parent, whatever else I do.”

“Humph!” said he. “If others had obeyed theirs as well!–But you are right, Captain Leigh, right. You will prosper, whoever else does not. Now, sir, good-night, if you will let me be the first to say so. My old eyes grow heavy early now-a-days. Perhaps it’s old age, perhaps it’s sorrow.”

So Amyas departed to the inn, and there, to his great joy, found Cary waiting for him, from whom he learnt details, which must be kept for another chapter, and which I shall tell, for convenience’ sake, in my own words and not in his.

CHAPTER XV

HOW MR. JOHN BRIMBLECOMBE UNDERSTOOD THE NATURE OF AN OATH

“The Kynge of Spayn is a foul paynim, And lieveth on Mahound;
And pity it were that lady fayre Should marry a heathen hound.”

Kyng Estmere.

About six weeks after the duel, the miller at Stow had come up to the great house in much tribulation, to borrow the bloodhounds. Rose Salterne had vanished in the night, no man knew whither.

Sir Richard was in Bideford: but the old steward took on himself to send for the keepers, and down went the serving-men to the mill with all the idle lads of the parish at their heels, thinking a maiden-hunt very good sport; and of course taking a view of the case as favorable as possible to Rose.

They reviled the miller and his wife roundly for hard-hearted old heathens; and had no doubt that they had driven the poor maid to throw herself over cliff, or drown herself in the sea; while all the women of Stow, on the other hand, were of unanimous opinion that the hussy had “gone off” with some bad fellow; and that pride was sure to have a fall, and so forth.

The facts of the case were, that all Rose’s trinkets were left behind, so that she had at least gone off honestly; and nothing seemed to be missing, but some of her linen, which old Anthony the steward broadly hinted was likely to be found in other people’s boxes. The only trace was a little footmark under her bedroom window. On that the bloodhound was laid (of course in leash), and after a premonitory whimper, lifted up his mighty voice, and started bell-mouthed through the garden gate, and up the lane, towing behind him the panting keeper, till they reached the downs above, and went straight away for Marslandmouth, where the whole posse comitatus pulled up breathless at the door of Lucy Passmore.

Lucy, as perhaps I should have said before, was now a widow, and found her widowhood not altogether contrary to her interest. Her augury about her old man had been fulfilled; he had never returned since the night on which he put to sea with Eustace and the Jesuits.

“Some natural tears she shed, but dried them soon”–

as many of them, at least, as were not required for purposes of business; and then determined to prevent suspicion by a bold move; she started off to Stow, and told Lady Grenville a most pathetic tale: how her husband had gone out to pollock fishing, and never returned: but how she had heard horsemen gallop past her window in the dead of night, and was sure they must have been the Jesuits, and that they had carried off her old man by main force, and probably, after making use of his services, had killed and salted him down for provision on their voyage back to the Pope at Rome; after which she ended by entreating protection against those “Popish skulkers up to Chapel,” who were sworn to do her a mischief; and by an appeal to Lady Grenville’s sense of justice, as to whether the queen ought not to allow her a pension, for having had her heart’s love turned into a sainted martyr by the hands of idolatrous traitors.

Lady Grenville (who had a great opinion of Lucy’s medical skill, and always sent for her if one of the children had a “housty,” i. e. sore throat) went forth and pleaded the case before Sir Richard with such effect, that Lucy was on the whole better off than ever for the next two or three years. But now–what had she to do with Rose’s disappearance? and, indeed, where was she herself? Her door was fast; and round it her flock of goats stood, crying in vain for her to come and milk them; while from the down above, her donkeys, wandering at their own sweet will, answered the bay of the bloodhound with a burst of harmony.

“They’m laughing at us, keper, they neddies; sure enough, we’m lost our labor here.”

But the bloodhound, after working about the door a while, turned down the glen, and never stopped till he reached the margin of the sea.

“They’m taken water. Let’s go back, and rout out the old witch’s house.”

“‘Tis just like that old Lucy, to lock a poor maid into shame.”

And returning, they attacked the cottage, and by a general plebiscitum, ransacked the little dwelling, partly in indignation, and partly, if the truth be told, in the hope of plunder; but plunder there was none. Lucy had decamped with all her movable wealth, saving the huge black cat among the embers, who at the sight of the bloodhound vanished up the chimney (some said with a strong smell of brimstone), and being viewed outside, was chased into the woods, where she lived, I doubt not, many happy years, a scourge to all the rabbits of the glen.

The goats and donkeys were driven off up to Stow; and the mob returned, a little ashamed of themselves when their brief wrath was past; and a little afraid, too, of what Sir Richard might say.

He, when he returned, sold the donkeys and goats, and gave the money to the poor, promising to refund the same, if Lucy returned and gave herself up to justice. But Lucy did not return; and her cottage, from which the neighbors shrank as from a haunted place, remained as she had left it, and crumbled slowly down to four fern- covered walls, past which the little stream went murmuring on from pool to pool–the only voice, for many a year to come, which broke the silence of that lonely glen.

A few days afterwards, Sir Richard, on his way from Bideford to Stow, looked in at Clovelly Court, and mentioned, with a “by the by,” news which made Will Cary leap from his seat almost to the ceiling. What it was we know already.

“And there is no clue?” asked old Cary; for his son was speechless.

“Only this; I hear that some fellow prowling about the cliffs that night saw a pinnace running for Lundy.”

Will rose, and went hastily out of the room.

In half an hour he and three or four armed servants were on board a trawling-skiff, and away to Lundy. He did not return for three days, and then brought news: that an elderly man, seemingly a foreigner, had been lodging for some months past in a part of the ruined Moresco Castle, which was tenanted by one John Braund; that a few weeks since a younger man, a foreigner also, had joined him from on board a ship: the ship a Flushinger, or Easterling of some sort. The ship came and went more than once; and the young man in her. A few days since, a lady and her maid, a stout woman, came with him up to the castle, and talked with the elder man a long while in secret; abode there all night; and then all three sailed in the morning. The fishermen on the beach had heard the young man call the other father. He was a very still man, much as a mass- priest might be. More they did not know, or did not choose to know.

Whereon old Cary and Sir Richard sent Will on a second trip with the parish constable of Hartland (in which huge parish, for its sins, is situate the Isle of Lundy, ten miles out at sea); who returned with the body of the hapless John Braund, farmer, fisherman, smuggler, etc.; which worthy, after much fruitless examination (wherein examinate was afflicted with extreme deafness and loss of memory), departed to Exeter gaol, on a charge of “harboring priests, Jesuits, gipsies, and other suspect and traitorous persons.”

Poor John Braund, whose motive for entertaining the said ugly customers had probably been not treason, but a wife, seven children, and arrears of rent, did not thrive under the change from the pure air of Lundy to the pestiferous one of Exeter gaol, made infamous, but two years after (if I recollect right), by a “black assizes,” nearly as fatal as that more notorious one at Oxford; for in it, “whether by the stench of the prisoners, or by a stream of foul air,” judge, jury, counsel, and bystanders, numbering among them many members of the best families in Devon, sickened in court, and died miserably within a few days.

John Braund, then, took the gaol-fever in a week, and died raving in that noisome den: his secret, if he had one, perished with him, and nothing but vague suspicion was left as to Rose Salterne’s fate. That she had gone off with the Spaniard, few doubted; but whither, and in what character? On that last subject, be sure, no mercy was shown to her by many a Bideford dame, who had hated the poor girl simply for her beauty; and by many a country lady, who had “always expected that the girl would be brought to ruin by the absurd notice, beyond what her station had a right to, which was taken of her,” while every young maiden aspired to fill the throne which Rose had abdicated. So that, on the whole, Bideford considered itself as going on as well without poor Rose as it had done with her, or even better. And though she lingered in some hearts still as a fair dream, the business and the bustle of each day soon swept that dream away, and her place knew her no more.

And Will Cary?

He was for a while like a man distracted. He heaped himself with all manner of superfluous reproaches, for having (as he said) first brought the Rose into disgrace, and then driven her into the arms of the Spaniard; while St. Leger, who was a sensible man enough, tried in vain to persuade him that the fault was not his at all; that the two must have been attached to each other long before the quarrel; that it must have ended so, sooner or later; that old Salterne’s harshness, rather than Cary’s wrath, had hastened the catastrophe; and finally, that the Rose and her fortunes were, now that she had eloped with a Spaniard, not worth troubling their heads about. Poor Will would not be so comforted. He wrote off to Frank at Whitehall, telling him the whole truth, calling himself all fools and villains, and entreating Frank’s forgiveness; to which he received an answer, in which Frank said that Will had no reason to accuse himself; that these strange attachments were due to a synastria, or sympathy of the stars, which ruled the destinies of each person, to fight against which was to fight against the heavens themselves; that he, as a brother of the Rose, was bound to believe, nay, to assert at the sword’s point if need were, that the incomparable Rose of Torridge could make none but a worthy and virtuous choice; and that to the man whom she had honored by her affection was due on their part, Spaniard and Papist though he might be, all friendship, worship, and loyal faith for evermore.

And honest Will took it all for gospel, little dreaming what agony of despair, what fearful suspicions, what bitter prayers, this letter had cost to the gentle heart of Francis Leigh.

He showed the letter triumphantly to St. Leger; and he was quite wise enough to gainsay no word of it, at least aloud; but quite wise enough, also, to believe in secret that Frank looked on the matter in quite a different light; however, he contented himself with saying:

“The man is an angel as his mother is!” and there the matter dropped for a few days, till one came forward who had no mind to let it drop, and that was Jack Brimblecombe, now curate of Hartland town, and “passing rich on forty pounds a year.

“I hope no offence, Mr. William; but when are you and the rest going after–after her?” The name stuck in his throat.

Cary was taken aback.

“What’s that to thee, Catiline the blood-drinker?” asked he, trying to laugh it off.

“What? Don’t laugh at me, sir, for it’s no laughing matter. I drank that night naught worse, I expect, than red wine. Whatever it was, we swore our oaths, Mr. Cary; and oaths are oaths, say I.”

“Of course, Jack, of course; but to go to look for her–and when we’ve found her, cut her lover’s throat. Absurd, Jack, even if she were worth looking for, or his throat worth cutting. Tut, tut, tut–“

But Jack looked steadfastly in his face, and after some silence:

How far is it to the Caracas, then, sir?”

“What is that to thee, man?”

“Why, he was made governor thereof, I hear; so that would be the place to find her?”

“You don’t mean to go thither to seek her?” shouted Cary, forcing a laugh.

“That depends on whether I can go, sir; but if I can scrape the money together, or get a berth on board some ship, why, God’s will must be done.”

Will looked at him, to see if he had been drinking, or gone mad; but the little pigs’ eyes were both sane and sober.

Will knew no answer. To laugh at the poor fellow was easy enough; to deny that he was right, that he was a hero and cavalier, outdoing romance itself in faithfulness, not so easy; and Cary, in the first impulse, wished him at the bottom of the bay for shaming him. Of course, his own plan of letting ill alone was the rational, prudent, irreproachable plan, and just what any gentleman in his senses would have done; but here was a vulgar, fat curate, out of his senses, determined not to let ill alone, but to do something, as Cary felt in his heart, of a far diviner stamp.

“Well,” said Jack, in his stupid steadfast way, “it’s a very bad look-out; but mother’s pretty well off, if father dies, and the maidens are stout wenches enough, and will make tidy servants, please the Lord. And you’ll see that they come to no harm, Mr. William, for old acquaintance’ sake, if I never come back.”

Cary was silent with amazement.

“And, Mr. William, you know me for an honest man, I hope. Will you lend me a five pound, and take my books in pawn for them, just to help me out?”

“Are you mad, or in a dream? You will never find her!”

“That’s no reason why I shouldn’t do my duty in looking for her, Mr. William.”

“But, my good fellow, even if you get to the Indies, you will be clapt into the Inquisition, and burnt alive, as sure as your name is Jack.”

“I know that,” said he, in a doleful tone; “and a sore struggle of the flesh I have had about it; for I am a great coward, Mr. William, a dirty coward, and always was, as you know: but maybe the Lord will take care of me, as He does of little children and drunken men; and if not, Mr. Will, I’d sooner burn, and have it over, than go on this way any longer, I would!” and Jack burst out blubbering.

“What way, my dear old lad?” said Will, softened as he well might be.

“Why, not–not to know whether–whether–whether she’s married to him or not–her that I looked up to as an angel of God, as pure as the light of day; and knew she was too good for a poor pot-head like me; and prayed for her every night, God knows, that she might marry a king, if there was one fit for her–and I not to know whether she’s living in sin or not, Mr. William.–It’s more than I can bear, and there’s an end of it. And if she is married to him they keep no faith with heretics; they can dissolve the marriage, or make away with her into the Inquisition; burn her, Mr. Cary, as soon as burn me, the devils incarnate!”

Cary shuddered; the fact, true and palpable as it was, had never struck him before.

“Yes! or make her deny her God by torments, if she hasn’t done it already for love to that– I know how love will make a body sell his soul, for I’ve been in love. Don’t you laugh at me, Mr. Will, or I shall go mad!”

“God knows, I was never less inclined to laugh at you in my life, my brave old Jack.”

“Is it so, then? Bless you for that word!” and Jack held out his hand. “But what will become of my soul, after my oath, if I don’t seek her out, just to speak to her, to warn her, for God’s sake, even if it did no good; just to set before her the Lord’s curse on idolatry and Antichrist, and those who deny Him for the sake of any creature, though I can’t think he would be hard on her,–for who could? But I must speak all the same. The Lord has laid the burden on me, and done it must be. God help me!”

“Jack,” said Cary, “if this is your duty, it is others’.”

“No, sir, I don’t say that; you’re a layman, but I am a deacon, and the chaplain of you all, and sworn to seek out Christ’s sheep scattered up and down this naughty world, and that innocent lamb first of all.”

“You have sheep at Hartland, Jack, already.”

“There’s plenty better than I will tend them, when I am gone; but none that will tend her, because none love her like me, and they won’t venture. Who will? It can’t be expected, and no shame to them?”

“I wonder what Amyas Leigh would say to all this, if he were at home?”

“Say? He’d do. He isn’t one for talking. He’d go through fire and water for her, you trust him, Will Cary; and call me an ass if he won’t.”

“Will you wait, then, till he comes back, and ask him?”

“He may not be back for a year and more.”

“Hear reason, Jack. If you will wait like a rational and patient man, instead of rushing blindfold on your ruin, something may be done.”

“You think so!”

“I cannot promise; but–“

“But promise me one thing. Do you tell Mr. Frank what I say–or rather, I’ll warrant, if I knew the truth, he has said the very same thing himself already.”

“You are out there, old man; for here is his own handwriting.”

Jack read the letter and sighed bitterly. “Well, I did take him for another guess sort of fine gentleman. Still, if my duty isn’t his, it’s mine all the same. I judge no man; but I go, Mr. Cary.”

“But go you shall not till Amyas returns. As I live, I will tell your father, Jack, unless you promise; and you dare not disobey him.”

“I don’t know even that, for conscience’ sake,” said Jack, doubtfully.

“At least, you stay and dine here, old fellow, and we will settle whether you are to break the fifth commandment or not, over good brewed sack.”

Now a good dinner was (as we know) what Jack loved, and loved too oft in vain; so he submitted for the nonce, and Cary thought, ere he went, that he had talked him pretty well round. At least he went home, and was seen no more for a week.

But at the end of that time he returned, and said with a joyful voice–

“I have settled all, Mr. Will. The parson of Welcombe will serve my church for two Sundays, and I am away for London town, to speak to Mr. Frank.”

“To London? How wilt get there?”

“On Shanks his mare,” said Jack, pointing to his bandy legs. “But I expect I can get a lift on board of a coaster so far as Bristol, and it’s no way on to signify, I hear.”

Cary tried in vain to dissuade him; and then forced on him a small loan, with which away went Jack, and Cary heard no more of him for three weeks.

At last he walked into Clovelly Court again just before supper- time, thin and leg-weary, and sat himself down among the serving- men till Will appeared.

Will took him up above the salt, and made much of him (which indeed the honest fellow much needed), and after supper asked him in private how he had sped.

“I have learnt a lesson, Mr. William. I’ve learnt that there is one on earth loves her better than I, if she had but had the wit to have taken him.”

“But what says he of going to seek her?”

“He says what I say, Go! and he says what you say, Wait.”

“Go? Impossible! How can that agree with his letter?”

“That’s no concern of mine. Of course, being nearer heaven than I am, he sees clearer what he should say and do than I can see for him. Oh, Mr. Will, that’s not a man, he’s an angel of God; but he’s dying, Mr. Will.”

“Dying?”

“Yes, faith, of love for her. I can see it in his eyes, and hear it in his voice; but I am of tougher hide and stiffer clay, and so you see I can’t die even if I tried. But I’ll obey my betters, and wait.”

And so Jack went home to his parish that very evening, weary as he was, in spite of all entreaties to pass the night at Clovelly. But he had left behind him thoughts in Cary’s mind, which gave their owner no rest by day or night, till the touch of a seeming accident made them all start suddenly into shape, as a touch of the freezing water covers it in an instant with crystals of ice.

He was lounging (so he told Amyas) one murky day on Bideford quay, when up came Mr. Salterne. Cary had shunned him of late, partly from delicacy, partly from dislike of his supposed hard- heartedness. But this time they happened to meet full; and Cary could not pass without speaking to him.

“Well, Mr. Salterne, and how goes on the shipping trade?”

“Well enough, sir, if some of you young gentlemen would but follow Mr. Leigh’s example, and go forth to find us stay-at-homes new markets for our ware.”

“What? you want to be rid of us, eh?”

“I don’t know why I should, sir. We sha’n’t cross each other now, sir, whatever might have been once. But if I were you, I should be in the Indies about now, if I were not fighting the queen’s battles nearer home.”

“In the Indies? I should make but a poor hand of Drake’s trade.” And so the conversation dropped; but Cary did not forget the hint.

“So, lad, to make an end of a long story,” said he to Amyas; “if you are minded to take the old man’s offer, so am I: and Westward- ho with you, come foul come fair.”

“It will be but a wild-goose chase, Will.”

“If she is with him, we shall find her at La Guayra. If she is not, and the villain has cast her off down the wind, that will be only an additional reason for making an example of him.”

“And if neither of them are there, Will, the Plate-fleets will be; so it will be our own shame if we come home empty-handed. But will your father let you run such a risk?”

“My father!” said Cary, laughing. “He has just now so good hope of a long string of little Carys to fill my place, that he will be in no lack of an heir, come what will.”

“Little Carys?”

“I tell you truth. I think he must have had a sly sup of that fountain of perpetual youth, which our friend Don Guzman’s grandfather went to seek in Florida; for some twelvemonth since, he must needs marry a tenant’s buxom daughter; and Mistress Abishag Jewell has brought him one fat baby already. So I shall go, back to Ireland, or with you: but somewhere. I can’t abide the thing’s squalling, any more than I can seeing Mistress Abishag sitting in my poor dear mother’s place, and informing me every other day that she is come of an illustrious house, because she is (or is not) third cousin seven times removed to my father’s old friend, Bishop Jewell of glorious memory. I had three-parts of a quarrel with the dear old man the other day; for after one of her peacock-bouts, I couldn’t for the life of me help saying, that as the Bishop had written an Apology for the people of England, my father had better conjure up his ghost to write an apology for him, and head it, ‘Why green heads should grow on gray shoulders.'”

“You impudent villain! And what did he say?”

Laughed till he cried again, and told me if I did not like it I might leave it; which is just what I intend to do. Only mind, if we go, we must needs take Jack Brimblecombe with us, or he will surely heave himself over Harty Point, and his ghost will haunt us to our dying day.”

“Jack shall go. None deserves it better.”

After which there was a long consultation on practical matters, and it was concluded that Amyas should go up to London and sound Frank and his mother before any further steps were taken. The other brethren of the Rose were scattered far and wide, each at his post, and St. Leger had returned to his uncle, so that it would be unfair to them, as well as a considerable delay, to demand of them any fulfilment of their vow. And, as Amyas sagely remarked, “Too many cooks spoil the broth, and half-a-dozen gentlemen aboard one ship are as bad as two kings of Brentford.”

With which maxim he departed next morning for London, leaving Yeo with Cary.

CHAPTER XVI

THE MOST CHIVALROUS ADVENTURE OF THE GOOD SHIP ROSE

“He is brass within, and steel without, With beams on his topcastle strong;
And eighteen pieces of ordinance
He carries on either side along.”

Sir Andrew Barton.

Let us take boat, as Amyas did, at Whitehall-stairs, and slip down ahead of him under old London Bridge, and so to Deptford Creek, where remains, as it were embalmed, the famous ship Pelican, in which Drake had sailed round the world. There she stands, drawn up high and dry upon the sedgy bank of Thames, like an old warrior resting after his toil. Nailed upon her mainmast are epigrams and verses in honor of her and of her captain, three of which, by the Winchester scholar, Camden gives in his History; and Elizabeth’s self consecrated her solemnly, and having banqueted on board, there and then honored Drake with the dignity of knighthood. “At which time a bridge of planks, by which they came on board, broke under the press of people, and fell down with a hundred men upon it, who, notwithstanding, had none of them any harm. So as that ship may seem to have been built under a lucky planet.”

There she has remained since as a show, and moreover as a sort of dining-hall for jovial parties from the city; one of which would seem to be on board this afternoon, to judge from the flags which bedizen the masts, the sounds of revelry and savory steams which issue from those windows which once were portholes, and the rushing to and fro along the river brink, and across that lucky bridge, of white-aproned waiters from the neighboring Pelican Inn. A great feast is evidently toward, for with those white-aproned waiters are gay serving men, wearing on their shoulders the city-badge. The lord mayor is giving a dinner to certain gentlemen of the Leicester house party, who are interested in foreign discoveries; and what place so fit for such a feast as the Pelican itself?

Look at the men all round; a nobler company you will seldom see. Especially too, if you be Americans, look at their faces, and reverence them; for to them and to their wisdom you owe the existence of your mighty fatherland.

At the head of the table sits the lord mayor; whom all readers will recognize at once, for he is none other than that famous Sir Edward Osborne, clothworker, and ancestor of the dukes of Leeds, whose romance now-a-days is in every one’s hands. He is aged, but not changed, since he leaped from the window upon London Bridge into the roaring tide below, to rescue the infant who is now his wife. The chivalry and promptitude of the ‘prentice boy have grown and hardened into the thoughtful daring of the wealthy merchant adventurer. There he sits, a right kingly man, with my lord Earl of Cumberland on his right hand, and Walter Raleigh on his left; the three talk together in a low voice on the chance of there being vast and rich countries still undiscovered between Florida and the River of Canada. Raleigh’s half-scientific declamation and his often quotations of Doctor Dee the conjuror, have less effect on Osborne than on Cumberland (who tried many an adventure to foreign parts, and failed in all of them; apparently for the simple reason that, instead of going himself, he sent other people), and Raleigh is fain to call to his help the quiet student who sits on his left hand, Richard Hakluyt, of Oxford. But he is deep in talk with a reverend elder, whose long white beard flows almost to his waist, and whose face is furrowed by a thousand storms; Anthony Jenkinson by name, the great Asiatic traveller, who is discoursing to the Christ-church virtuoso of reindeer sledges and Siberian steppes, and of the fossil ivory, plain proof of Noah’s flood, which the Tungoos dig from the ice-cliffs of the Arctic sea. Next to him is Christopher Carlile, Walsingham’s son-in-law (as Sidney also is now), a valiant captain, afterwards general of the soldiery in Drake’s triumphant West Indian raid of 1585, with whom a certain Bishop of Carthagena will hereafter drink good wine. He is now busy talking with Alderman Hart the grocer, Sheriff Spencer the clothworker, and Charles Leigh (Amyas’s merchant-cousin), and with Aldworth the mayor of Bristol, and William Salterne, alderman thereof, and cousin of our friend at Bideford. For Carlile, and Secretary Walsingham also, have been helping them heart and soul for the last two years to collect money for Humphrey and Adrian Gilbert’s great adventures to the North-West, on one of which Carlile was indeed to have sailed himself, but did not go after all; I never could discover for what reason.

On the opposite side of the table is a group, scarcely less interesting. Martin Frobisher and John Davis, the pioneers of the North-West passage, are talking with Alderman Sanderson, the great geographer and “setter forth of globes;” with Mr. Towerson, Sir Gilbert Peckham, our old acquaintance Captain John Winter, and last, but not least, with Philip Sidney himself, who, with his accustomed courtesy; has given up his rightful place toward the head of the table that he may have a knot of virtuosi all to himself; and has brought with him, of course, his two especial intimates, Mr. Edward Dyer and Mr. Francis Leigh. They too are talking of the North-West passage: and Sidney is lamenting that he is tied to diplomacy and courts, and expressing his envy of old Martin Frobisher in all sorts of pretty compliments; to which the other replies that,

“It’s all very fine to talk of here, a sailing on dry land with a good glass of wine before you; but you’d find it another guess sort of business, knocking about among the icebergs with your beard frozen fast to your ruff, Sir Philip, specially if you were a bit squeamish about the stomach.”

“That were a slight matter to endure, my dear sir, if by it I could win the honor which her majesty bestowed on you, when her own ivory hand waved a farewell ‘kerchief to your ship from the windows of Greenwich Palace.”

“Well, sir, folks say you have no reason to complain of lack of favors, as you have no reason to deserve lack; and if you can get them by staying ashore, don’t you go to sea to look for more, say I. Eh, Master Towerson?”

Towerson’s gray beard, which has stood many a foreign voyage, both fair and foul, wags grim assent. But at this moment a Waiter enters, and–

“Please my lord mayor’s worship, there is a tall gentleman outside, would speak with the Right Honorable Sir Walter Raleigh.”

“Show him in, man. Sir Walter’s friends are ours.”

Amyas enters, and stands hesitating in the doorway.

“Captain Leigh!” cry half a-dozen voices.

“Why did you not walk in, sir?” says Osborne. “You should know your way well enough between these decks.”

“Well enough, my lords and gentlemen. But, Sir Walter–you will excuse me”–and he gave Raleigh a look which was enough for his quick wit. Turning pale as death, he rose, and followed Amyas into an adjoining cabin. They were five minutes together; and then Amyas came out alone.

In few words he told the company the sad story which we already know. Ere it was ended, noble tears were glistening on some of those stern faces.

“The old Egyptians,” said Sir Edward Osborne, “when they banqueted, set a corpse among their guests, for a memorial of human vanity. Have we forgotten God and our own weakness in this our feast, that He Himself has sent us thus a message from the dead?”

“Nay, my lord mayor,” said Sidney, “not from the dead, but from the realm of everlasting life.”

“Amen!” answered Osborne. “But, gentlemen, our feast is at an end. There are those here who would drink on merrily, as brave men should, in spite of the private losses of which they have just had news; but none here who can drink with the loss of so great a man still ringing in his ears.”

It was true. Though many of the guests had suffered severely by the failure of the expedition, they had utterly forgotten that fact in the awful news of Sir Humphrey’s death; and the feast broke up sadly and hurriedly, while each man asked his neighbor, “What will the queen say?”

Raleigh re-entered in a few minutes, but was silent, and pressing many an honest hand as he passed, went out to call a wherry, beckoning Amyas to follow him. Sidney, Cumberland, and Frank went with them in another boat, leaving the two to talk over the sad details.

They disembarked at Whitehall-stairs; Raleigh, Sidney, and Cumberland went to the palace; and the two brothers to their mother’s lodgings.

Amyas had prepared his speech to Frank about Rose Salterne, but now that it was come to the point, he had not courage to begin, and longed that Frank would open the matter. Frank, too, shrank from what he knew must come, and all the more because he was ignorant that Amyas had been to Bideford, or knew aught of the Rose’s disappearance.

So they went upstairs; and it was a relief to both of them to find that their mother was at the Abbey; for it was for her sake that both dreaded what was coming. So they went and stood in the bay- window which looked out upon the river, and talked of things indifferent, and looked earnestly at each other’s faces by the fading light, for it was now three years since they had met.

Years and events had deepened the contrast between the two brothers; and Frank smiled with affectionate pride as he looked up in Amyas’s face, and saw that he was no longer merely the rollicking handy sailor-lad, but the self-confident and stately warrior, showing in every look and gesture

“The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill,”

worthy of one whose education had been begun by such men as Drake and Grenville, and finished by such as Raleigh and Gilbert. His long locks were now cropped close to the head; but as a set-off, the lips and chin were covered with rich golden beard; his face was browned by a thousand suns and storms; a long scar, the trophy of some Irish fight, crossed his right temple; his huge figure had gained breadth in proportion to its height; and his hand, as it lay upon the window-sill, was hard and massive as a smith’s. Frank laid his own upon it, and sighed; and Amyas looked down, and started at the contrast between the two–so slender, bloodless, all but transparent, were the delicate fingers of the courtier. Amyas looked anxiously into his brother’s face. It was changed, indeed, since they last met. The brilliant red was still on either cheek, but the white had become dull and opaque; the lips were pale, the features sharpened; the eyes glittered with unnatural fire: and when Frank told Amyas that he looked aged, Amyas could not help thinking that the remark was far more true of the speaker himself.

Trying to shut his eyes to the palpable truth, he went on with his chat, asking the names of one building after another.

“And so this is old Father Thames, with his bank of palaces?”

“Yes. His banks are stately enough; yet, you see, he cannot stay to look at them. He hurries down to the sea; and the sea into the ocean; and the ocean Westward-ho, forever. All things move Westward-ho. Perhaps we may move that way ourselves some day, Amyas.”

“What do you mean by that strange talk?”

“Only that the ocean follows the primum mobile of the heavens, and flows forever from east to west. Is there anything so strange in my thinking of that, when I am just come from a party where we have been drinking success to Westward-ho?”

“And much good has come of it! I have lost the best friend and the noblest captain upon earth, not to mention all my little earnings, in that same confounded gulf of Westward-ho.”

“Yes, Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s star has set in the West–why not? Sun, moon, and planets sink into the West: why not the meteors of this lower world? why not a will-o’-the-wisp like me, Amyas?”

“God forbid, Frank!”

“Why, then? Is not the West the land of peace, and the land of dreams? Do not our hearts tell us so each time we look upon the setting sun, and long to float away with him upon the golden- cushioned clouds? They bury men with their faces to the East. I should rather have mine turned to the West, Amyas, when I die; for I cannot but think it some divine instinct which made the ancient poets guess that Elysium lay beneath the setting sun. It is bound up in the heart of man, that longing for the West. I complain of no one for fleeing away thither beyond the utmost sea, as David wished to flee, and be at peace.”

“Complain of no one for fleeing thither?” asked Amyas. “That is more than I do.”

Frank looked inquiringly at him; and then–

“No. If I had complained of any one, it would have been of you just now, for seeming to be tired of going Westward-ho.”

“Do you wish me to go, then?”

“God knows,” said Frank, after a moment’s pause. “But I must tell you now, I suppose, once and for all. That has happened at Bideford which–“

“Spare us both, Frank; I know all. I came through Bideford on my way hither; and came hither not merely to see you and my mother, but to ask your advice and her permission.”

“True heart! noble heart!” cried Frank. “I knew you would be stanch!”

“Westward-ho it is, then?”

“Can we escape?”

“We?”

“Amyas, does not that which binds you bind me?”

Amyas started back, and held Frank by the shoulders at arm’s length; as he did so, he could feel through, that his brother’s arms were but skin and bone.

“You? Dearest man, a month of it would kill you!”

Frank smiled, and tossed his head on one side in his pretty way.

“I belong to the school of Thales, who held that the ocean is the mother of all life; and feel no more repugnance at returning to her bosom again than Humphrey Gilbert did.”

“But, Frank,–my mother?”

“My mother knows all; and would not have us unworthy of her.”

“Impossible! She will never give you up!”

“All things are possible to them that believe in God, my brother; and she believes. But, indeed, Doctor Dee, the wise man, gave her but this summer I know not what of prognostics and diagnostics concerning me. I am born, it seems, under a cold and watery planet, and need, if I am to be long-lived, to go nearer to the vivifying heat of the sun, and there bask out my little life, like fly on wall. To tell truth, he has bidden me spend no more winters here in the East; but return to our native sea-breezes, there to warm my frozen lungs; and has so filled my mother’s fancy with stories of sick men, who were given up for lost in Germany and France, and yet renewed their youth, like any serpent or eagle, by going to Italy, Spain, and the Canaries, that she herself will be more ready to let me go than I to leave her all alone. And yet I must go, Amyas. It is not merely that my heart pants, as Sidney’s does, as every gallant’s ought, to make one of your noble choir of Argonauts, who are now replenishing the earth and subduing it for God and for the queen; it is not merely, Amyas, that love calls me,–love tyrannous and uncontrollable, strengthened by absence, and deepened by despair; but honor, Amyas–my oath–“

And he paused for lack of breath, and bursting into a violent fit of coughing, leaned on his brother’s shoulder, while Amyas cried,

“Fools, fools that we were–that I was, I mean–to take that fantastical vow!”

“Not so,” answered a gentle voice from behind: “you vowed for the sake of peace on earth, and good-will toward men, and ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.’ No my sons, be sure that such self-sacrifice as you have shown will meet its full reward at the hand of Him who sacrificed Himself for you.”

“Oh, mother! mother!” said Amyas, “and do you not hate the very sight of me–come here to take away your first-born?”

“My boy, God takes him, and not you. And if I dare believe in such predictions, Doctor Dee assured me that some exceeding honor awaited you both in the West, to each of you according to your deserts.”

“Ah!” said Amyas. “My blessing, I suppose, will be like Esau’s, to live by my sword; while Jacob here, the spiritual man, inherits the kingdom of heaven, and an angel’s crown.”

“Be it what it may, it will surely be a blessing, as long as you are such, my children, as you have been. At least my Frank will be safe from the intrigues of court, and the temptations of the world. Would that I too could go with you, and share in your glory! Come, now,” said she, laying her head upon Amyas’s breast, and looking up into his face with one of her most winning smiles, “I have heard of heroic mothers ere now who went forth with their sons to battle, and cheered them on to victory. Why should I not go with you on a more peaceful errand? I could nurse the sick, if there were any; I could perhaps have speech of that poor girl, and win her back more easily than you. She might listen to words from a woman–a woman, too, who has loved–which she could not hear from men. At least I could mend and wash for you. I suppose it is as easy to play the good housewife afloat as on shore? Come, now!”

Amyas looked from one to the other.

“God only knows which of the two is less fit to go. Mother! mother! you know not what you ask. Frank! Frank! I do not want you with me. This is a sterner matter than either of you fancy it to be; one that must be worked out, not with kind words, but with sharp shot and cold steel.”

“How?” cried both together, aghast.

“I must pay my men, and pay my fellow-adventurers; and I must pay them with Spanish gold. And what is more, I cannot, as a loyal subject of the queen’s, go to the Spanish Main with a clear conscience on my own private quarrel, unless I do all the harm that my hand finds to do, by day and night, to her enemies, and the enemies of God.”

“What nobler knight-errantry?” said Frank, cheerfully; but Mrs. Leigh shuddered.

“What! Frank too?” she said, half to herself; but her sons knew what she meant. Amyas’s warlike life, honorable and righteous as she knew it to be, she had borne as a sad necessity: but that Frank as well should become “a man of blood,” was more than her gentle heart could face at first sight. That one youthful duel of his he had carefully concealed from her, knowing her feeling on such matters. And it seemed too dreadful to her to associate that gentle spirit with all the ferocities and the carnage of a battlefield. “And yet,” said she to herself, “is this but another of the self-willed idols which I must renounce one by one?” And then, catching at a last hope, she answered–

“Frank must at least ask the queen’s leave to go; and if she permits, how can I gainsay her wisdom?”

And so the conversation dropped, sadly enough.

But now began a fresh perplexity in Frank’s soul, which amused Amyas at first, when it seemed merely jest, but nettled him a good deal when he found it earnest. For Frank looked forward to asking the queen’s permission for his voyage with the most abject despondency and terror. Two or three days passed before he could make up his mind to ask for an interview with her; and he spent the time in making as much interest with Leicester, Hatton, and Sidney, as if he were about to sue for a reprieve from the scaffold.

So said Amyas, remarking, further, that the queen could not cut his head off for wanting to go to sea.

“But what axe so sharp as her frown?” said Frank in most lugubrious tone.

Amyas began to whistle in a very rude way.

“Ah, my brother, you cannot comprehend the pain of parting from her.”

“No, I can’t. I would die for the least hair of her royal head, God bless it! but I could live very well from now till Doomsday without ever setting eyes on the said head.”

“Plato’s Troglodytes regretted not that sunlight which they had never beheld.”

Amyas, not understanding this recondite conceit, made no answer to it, and there the matter ended for the time. But at last Frank obtained his audience; and after a couple of hours’ absence returned quite pale and exhausted.

“Thank Heaven, it is over! She was very angry at first–what else could she be?–and upbraided me with having set my love so low. I could only answer, that my fatal fault was committed before the sight of her had taught me what was supremely lovely, and only worthy of admiration. Then she accused me of disloyalty in having taken an oath which bound me to the service of another than her. I confessed my sin with tears, and when she threatened punishment, pleaded that the offence had avenged itself heavily already,–for what worse punishment than exile from the sunlight of her presence, into the outer darkness which reigns where she is not? Then she was pleased to ask me, how I could dare, as her sworn servant, to desert her side in such dangerous times as these; and asked me how I should reconcile it to my conscience, if on my return I found her dead by the assassin’s knife? At which most pathetic demand I could only throw myself at once on my own knees and her mercy, and so awaited my sentence. Whereon, with that angelic pity which alone makes her awfulness endurable, she turned to Hatton and asked, ‘What say you, Mouton? Is he humbled sufficiently?’ and so dismissed me.”

“Heigh-ho!” yawned Amyas;

“If the bridge had been stronger,
My tale had been longer.”

“Amyas! Amyas!” quoth Frank, solemnly, “you know not what power over the soul has the native and God-given majesty of royalty (awful enough in itself) when to it is superadded the wisdom of the sage, and therewithal the tenderness of the woman. Had I my will, there should be in every realm not a salique, but an anti-salique law: whereby no kings, but only queens should rule mankind. Then would weakness and not power be to man the symbol of divinity; love, and not cunning, would be the arbiter of every cause; and chivalry, not fear, the spring of all obedience.”

“Humph! There’s some sense in that,” quoth Amyas. “I’d run a mile for a woman when I would not walk a yard for a man; and– Who is this our mother is bringing in? The handsomest fellow I ever saw in my life!”

Amyas was not far wrong; for Mrs. Leigh’s companion was none other than Mr. Secretary, Amyas’s Smerwick Fort acquaintance; alias Colin Clout, alias Immerito, alias Edmund Spenser. Some half-jesting conversation had seemingly been passing between the poet and the saint; for as they came in she said with a smile (which was somewhat of a forced one)–“Well, my dear sons, you are sure of immortality, at least on earth; for Mr. Spenser has been vowing to me to give your adventure a whole canto to itself in his ‘Faerie Queene'”

“And you no less, madam,” said Spenser. “What were the story of the Gracchi worth without the figure of Cornelia? If I honor the fruit, I must not forget the stem which bears it. Frank, I congratulate you.”

“Then you know the result of my interview, mother?”

“I know everything, and am content,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“Mrs. Leigh has reason to be content,” said Spenser,” with that which is but her own likeness.”

Spare your flattery to an old woman, Mr. Spenser. When, pray, did I” (with a most loving look at Frank) “refuse knighthood for duty’s sake?”

“Knighthood?” cried Amyas. “You never told me that, Frank!”

“That may well be, Captain Leigh,” said Spenser; “but believe me, her majesty (so Hatton assures me) told him this day, no less than that by going on this quest he deprived himself of that highest earthly honor, which crowned heads are fain to seek from their own subjects.”

Spenser did not exaggerate. Knighthood was then the prize of merit only; and one so valuable, that Elizabeth herself said, when asked why she did not bestow a peerage upon some favorite, that having already knighted him, she had nothing better to bestow. It remained for young Essex to begin the degradation of the order in his hapless Irish campaign, and for James to complete that degradation by his novel method of raising money by the sale of baronetcies; a new order of hereditary knighthood which was the laughing-stock of the day, and which (however venerable it may have since become) reflects anything but honor upon its first possessors.

“I owe you no thanks, Colin,” said Frank, “for having broached my secret: but I have lost nothing after all. There is still an order of knighthood in which I may win my spurs, even though her majesty refuse me the accolade.”

“What, then? you will not take it from a foreign prince?”

Frank smiled.

“Have you never read of that knighthood which is eternal in the heavens, and of those true cavaliers whom John saw in Patmos, riding on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, knights-errant in the everlasting war against the False Prophet and the Beast? Let me but become worthy of their ranks hereafter, what matter whether I be called Sir Frank on earth?”

“My son,” said Mrs. Leigh, “remember that they follow One whose vesture is dipped, not in the blood of His enemies, but in His own.”

“I have remembered it for many a day; and remembered, too, that the garments of the knights may need the same tokens as their captain’s.”

“Oh, Frank! Frank! is not His precious blood enough to cleanse all sin, without the sacrifice of our own?”

“We may need no more than His blood, mother, and yet He may need ours,” said Frank.

. . . . . . .

How that conversation ended I know not, nor whether Spenser fulfilled his purpose of introducing the two brothers and their mother into his “Faerie Queene.” If so, the manuscripts must have been lost among those which perished (along with Spenser’s baby) in the sack of Kilcolman by the Irish in 1598. But we need hardly regret the loss of them; for the temper of the Leighs and their mother is the same which inspires every canto of that noblest of poems; and which inspired, too, hundreds in those noble days, when the chivalry of the Middle Ages was wedded to the free thought and enterprise of the new.

. . . . . . .

So mother and sons returned to Bideford, and set to work. Frank mortgaged a farm; Will Cary did the same (having some land of his own from his mother). Old Salterne grumbled at any man save himself spending a penny on the voyage, and forced on the adventurers a good ship of two hundred tons burden, and five hundred pounds toward fitting her out; Mrs. Leigh worked day and night at clothes and comforts of every kind; Amyas had nothing to give but his time and his brains: but, as Salterne said, the rest would have been of little use without them; and day after day he and the old merchant were on board the ship, superintending with their own eyes the fitting of every rope and nail. Cary went about beating up recruits; and made, with his jests and his frankness, the best of crimps: while John Brimblecombe, beside himself with joy, toddled about after him from tavern to tavern, and quay to quay, exalted for the time being (as Cary told him) into a second Peter the Hermit; and so fiercely did he preach a crusade against the Spaniards, through Bideford and Appledore, Clovelly and Ilfracombe, that Amyas might have had a hundred and fifty loose fellows in the first fortnight. But he knew better: still smarting from the effects of a similar haste in the Newfoundland adventure, he had determined to take none but picked men; and by dint of labor he obtained them.

Only one scapegrace did he take into his crew, named Parracombe; and by that scapegrace hangs a tale. He was an old schoolfellow of his at Bideford, and son of a merchant in that town–one of those unlucky members who are “nobody’s enemy but their own”–a handsome, idle, clever fellow, who used his scholarship, of which he had picked up some smattering, chiefly to justify his own escapades, and to string songs together. Having drunk all that he was worth at home, he had in a penitent fit forsworn liquor, and tormented Amyas into taking him to sea, where he afterwards made as good a sailor as any one else, but sorely scandalized John Brimblecombe by all manner of heretical arguments, half Anacreontic, half smacking of the rather loose doctrines of that “Family of Love” which tormented the orthodoxy and morality of more than one Bishop of Exeter. Poor Will Parracombe! he was born a few centuries too early. Had he but lived now, he might have published a volume or two of poetry, and then settled down on the staff of a newspaper. Had he even lived thirty years later than he did, he might have written frantic tragedies or filthy comedies for the edification of James’s profligate metropolis, and roistered it in taverns with Marlowe, to die as Marlowe did, by a footman’s sword in a drunken brawl. But in those stern days such weak and hysterical spirits had no fair vent for their “humors,” save in being reconciled to the Church of Rome, and plotting with Jesuits to assassinate the queen, as Parry and Somerville, and many other madmen, did.

So, at least, some Jesuit or other seems to have thought, shortly after Amyas had agreed to give the spendthrift a berth on board. For one day Amyas, going down to Appledore about his business, was called into the little Mariners’ Rest inn, to extract therefrom poor Will Parracombe, who (in spite of his vow) was drunk and outrageous, and had vowed the death of the landlady and all her kin. So Amyas fetched him out by the collar, and walked him home thereby to Bideford; during which walk Will told him a long and confused story; how an Egyptian rogue had met him that morning on the sands by Boathythe, offered to tell his fortune, and prophesied to him great wealth and honor, but not from the Queen of England; had coaxed him to the Mariners’ Rest, and gambled with him for liquor, at which it seemed Will always won, and of course drank his winnings on the spot; whereon the Egyptian began asking him all sorts of questions about the projected voyage of the Rose–a good many of which, Will confessed, he had answered before he saw the fellow’s drift; after which the Egyptian had offered him a vast sum of money to do some desperate villainy; but whether it was to murder Amyas or the queen, whether to bore a hole in the bottom of the good ship Rose or to set the Torridge on fire by art-magic, he was too drunk to recollect exactly. Whereon Amyas treated three- quarters of the story as a tipsy dream, and contented himself by getting a warrant against the landlady for harboring “Egyptians,” which was then a heavy offence–a gipsy disguise being a favorite one with Jesuits and their emissaries. She of course denied that any gipsy had been there; and though there were some who thought they had seen such a man come in, none had seen him go out again. On which Amyas took occasion to ask, what had become of the suspicious Popish ostler whom he had seen at the Mariners’ Rest three years before; and discovered, to his surprise, that the said ostler had vanished from the very day of Don Guzman’s departure from Bideford. There was evidently a mystery somewhere: but nothing could be proved; the landlady was dismissed with a reprimand, and Amyas soon forgot the whole matter, after rating Parracombe soundly. After all, he could not have told the gipsy (if one existed) anything important; for the special destination of the voyage (as was the custom in those times, for fear of Jesuits playing into the hands of Spain) had been carefully kept secret among the adventurers themselves, and, except Yeo and Drew, none of the men had any suspicion that La Guayra was to be their aim.

And Salvation Yeo?

Salvation was almost wild for a few days, at the sudden prospect of going in search of his little maid, and of fighting Spaniards once more before he died. I will not quote the texts out of Isaiah and the Psalms with which his mouth was filled from morning to night, for fear of seeming irreverent in the eyes of a generation which does not believe, as Yeo believed, that fighting the Spaniards was as really fighting in God’s battle against evil as were the wars of Joshua or David. But the old man had his practical hint too, and entreated to be sent back to Plymouth to look for men.

“There’s many a man of the old Pelican, sir, and of Captain Hawkins’s Minion that knows the Indies as well as I, and longs to be back again. There’s Drew, sir, that we left behind (and no better sailing-master for us in the West-country, and has accounts against the Spaniards, too; for it was his brother, the Barnstaple man, that was factor aboard of poor Mr. Andrew Barker, and got clapt into the Inquisition at the Canaries); you promised him, sir, that night he stood by you on board the Raleigh: and if you’ll be as good as your word, he’ll be as good as his; and bring a score more brave fellows with him.”

So off went Yeo to Plymouth, and returned with Drew and a score of old never-strikes. One look at their visages, as Yeo proudly ushered them into the Ship Tavern, showed Amyas that they were of the metal which he wanted, and that, with the four North-Devon men who had gone round the world with him in the Pelican (who all joined in the first week), he had a reserve-force on which he could depend in utter need; and that utter need might come he knew as well as any.

Nor was this all which Yeo had brought; for he had with him a letter from Sir Francis Drake, full of regrets that he had not seen “his dear lad” as he went through Plymouth. “But indeed I was up to Dartmoor, surveying with cross-staff and chain, over my knees in bog for a three weeks or more. For I have a project to bring down a leat of fair water from the hill-tops right into Plymouth town, cutting off the heads of Tavy, Meavy, Wallcomb, and West Dart, and thereby purging Plymouth harbor from the silt of the mines whereby it has been choked of late years, and giving pure drink not only to the townsmen, but to the fleets of the queen’s majesty; which if I do, I shall both make some poor return to God for all His unspeakable mercies, and erect unto myself a monument better than of brass or marble, not merely honorable to me, but useful to my countrymen.”* Whereon Frank sent Drake a pretty epigram, comparing Drake’s projected leat to that river of eternal life whereof the just would drink throughout eternity, and quoting (after the fashion of those days) John vii. 38; while Amyas took more heed of a practical appendage to the same letter, which was a list of hints scrawled for his use by Captain John Hawkins himself, on all sea matters, from the mounting of ordnance to the use of vitriol against the scurvy, in default of oranges and “limmons;” all which stood Amyas in good stead during the ensuing month, while Frank grew more and more proud of his brother, and more and more humble about himself.

* This noble monument of Drake’s piety and public spirit still remains in full use.

For he watched with astonishment how the simple sailor, without genius, scholarship, or fancy, had gained, by plain honesty, patience, and common sense, a power over the human heart, and a power over his work, whatsoever it might be, which Frank could only admire afar off. The men looked up to him as infallible, prided themselves on forestalling his wishes, carried out his slightest hint, worked early and late to win a smile from him; while as for him, no detail escaped him, no drudgery sickened him, no disappointment angered him, till on the 15th of November, 1583, dropped down from Bideford Quay to Appledore Pool the tall ship Rose, with a hundred men on board (for sailors packed close in those days), beef, pork, biscuit, and good ale (for ale went to sea always then) in abundance, four culverins on her main deck, her poop and forecastle well fitted with swivels of every size, and her racks so full of muskets, calivers, long bows, pikes, and swords, that all agreed so well-appointed a ship had never sailed “out over Bar.”

The next day being Sunday, the whole crew received the Communion together at Northam Church, amid a mighty crowd; and then going on board again, hove anchor and sailed out over the Bar before a soft east wind, to the music of sacbut, fife, and drum, with discharge of all ordnance, great and small, with cheering of young and old from cliff and strand and quay, and with many a tearful prayer and blessing upon that gallant bark, and all brave hearts on board.

And Mrs. Leigh who had kissed her sons for the last time after the Communion at the altar-steps (and what more fit place for a mother’s kiss?) went to the rocky knoll outside the churchyard wall, and watched the ship glide out between the yellow denes, and lessen slowly hour by hour into the boundless West, till her hull sank below the dim horizon, and her white sails faded away into the gray Atlantic mist, perhaps forever.

And Mrs. Leigh gathered her cloak about her, and bowed her head and worshipped; and then went home to loneliness and prayer.

CHAPTER XVII

HOW THEY CAME TO BARBADOS, AND FOUND NO MEN THEREIN

“The sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark.”

COLERIDGE.

Land! land! land! Yes, there it was, far away to the south and west, beside the setting sun, a long blue bar between the crimson sea and golden sky. Land at last, with fresh streams, and cooling fruits, and free room for cramped and scurvy-weakened limbs. And there, too, might be gold, and gems, and all the wealth of Ind. Who knew? Why not? The old world of fact and prose lay thousands of miles behind them, and before them and around them was the realm of wonder and fable, of boundless hope and possibility. Sick men crawled up out of their stifling hammocks; strong men fell on their knees and gave God thanks; and all eyes and hands were stretched eagerly toward the far blue cloud, fading as the sun sank down, yet rising higher and broader as the ship rushed on before the rich trade-wind, which whispered lovingly round brow and sail, “I am the faithful friend of those who dare!” “Blow freshly, freshlier yet, thou good trade-wind, of whom it is written that He makes the winds His angels, ministering breaths to the heirs of His salvation. Blow freshlier yet, and save, if not me from death, yet her from worse than death. Blow on, and land me at her feet, to call the lost lamb home, and die!”

So murmured Frank to himself, as with straining eyes he gazed upon that first outlier of the New World which held his all. His cheeks were thin and wasted, and the hectic spot on each glowed crimson in the crimson light of the setting sun. A few minutes more, and the rainbows of the West were gone; emerald and topaz, amethyst and ruby, had faded into silver-gray; and overhead, through the dark sapphire depths, the Moon and Venus reigned above the sea.

“That should be Barbados, your worship,” said Drew, the master; “unless my reckoning is far out, which, Heaven knows, it has no right to be, after such a passage, and God be praised.”

“Barbados? I never heard of it.”

“Very like, sir: but Yeo and I were here with Captain Drake, and I was here after, too, with poor Captain Barlow; and there is good harborage to the south and west of it, I remember.”

“And neither Spaniard, cannibal, or other evil beast,” said Yeo. “A very garden of the Lord, sir, hid away in the seas, for an inheritance to those who love Him. I heard Captain Drake talk of planting it, if ever he had a chance.”

“I recollect now,” said Amyas, “some talk between him and poor Sir Humphrey about an island here. Would God he had gone thither instead of to Newfoundland!”

“Nay, then,” said Yeo, “he is in bliss now with the Lord; and you would not have kept him from that, sir?”

“He would have waited as willingly as he went, if he could have served his queen thereby. But what say you, my masters? How can we do better than to spend a few days here, to get our sick round, before we make the Main, and set to our work?”

All approved the counsel except Frank, who was silent.

“Come, fellow-adventurer,” said Cary, “we must have your voice too.”

“To my impatience, Will,” said he, aside in a low voice, “there is but one place on earth, and I am all day longing for wings to fly thither: but the counsel is right. I approve it.”

So the verdict was announced, and received with a hearty cheer by the crew; and long before morning they had run along the southern shore of the island, and were feeling their way into the bay where Bridgetown now stands. All eyes were eagerly fixed on the low wooded hills which slept in the moonlight, spangled by fireflies, with a million dancing stars; all nostrils drank greedily the fragrant air, which swept from the land, laden with the scent of a thousand flowers; all ears welcomed, as a grateful change from the monotonous whisper and lap of the water, the hum of insects, the snore of the tree-toads, the plaintive notes of the shore-fowl, which fill a tropic night with noisy life.

At last she stopped; at last the cable rattled through the hawsehole; and then, careless of the chance of lurking Spaniard or Carib, an instinctive cheer burst from every throat. Poor fellows! Amyas had much ado to prevent them going on shore at once, dark as it was, by reminding them that it wanted but two hours of day.

“Never were two such long hours,” said one young lad, fidgeting up and down.

“You never were in the Inquisition,” said Yeo, “or you’d know better how slow time can run. Stand you still, and give God thanks you’re where you are.”

“I say, Gunner, be there goold to that island?”

“Never heard of none; and so much the better for it,” said Yeo, dryly.

“But, I say, Gunner,” said a poor scurvy-stricken cripple, licking his lips, “be there oranges and limmons there?”

“Not of my seeing; but plenty of good fruit down to the beach, thank the Lord. There comes the dawn at last.”

Up flushed the rose, up rushed the sun, and the level rays glittered on the smooth stems of the palm-trees, and threw rainbows across the foam upon the coral-reefs, and gilded lonely uplands far away, where now stands many a stately country-seat and busy engine- house. Long lines of pelicans went clanging out to sea; the hum of the insects hushed, and a thousand birds burst into jubilant song; a thin blue mist crept upward toward the inner downs, and vanished, leaving them to quiver in the burning glare; the land-breeze, which had blown fresh out to sea all night, died away into glassy calm, and the tropic day was begun.

The sick were lifted over the side, and landed boat-load after boat-load on the beach, to stretch themselves in the shade of the palms; and in half-an-hour the whole crew were scattered on the shore, except some dozen worthy men, who had volunteered to keep watch and ward on board till noon.

And now the first instinctive cry of nature was for fruit! fruit! fruit! The poor lame wretches crawled from place to place plucking greedily the violet grapes of the creeping shore vine, and staining their mouths and blistering their lips with the prickly pears, in spite of Yeo’s entreaties and warnings against the thorns. Some of the healthy began hewing down cocoa-nut trees to get at the nuts, doing little thereby but blunt their hatchets; till Yeo and Drew, having mustered half-a-dozen reasonable men, went off inland, and returned in an hour laden with the dainties of that primeval orchard,–with acid junipa-apples, luscious guavas, and crowned ananas, queen of all the fruits, which they had found by hundreds on the broiling ledges of the low tufa-cliffs; and then all, sitting on the sandy turf, defiant of galliwasps and jackspaniards, and all the weapons of the insect host, partook of the equal banquet, while old blue land-crabs sat in their house-doors and brandished their fists in defiance at the invaders, and solemn cranes stood in the water on the shoals with their heads on one side, and meditated how long it was since they had seen bipeds without feathers breaking the solitude of their isle.

And Frank wandered up and down, silent, but rather in wonder than in sadness, while great Amyas walked after him, his mouth full of junipa-apples, and enacted the part of showman, with a sort of patronizing air, as one who had seen the wonders already, and was above being astonished at them.

“New, new; everything new!” said Frank, meditatively. “Oh, awful feeling! All things changed around us, even to the tiniest fly and flower; yet we the same, the same forever!”

Amyas, to whom such utterances were altogether sibylline and unintelligible, answered by:

“Look, Frank, that’s a colibri. You ‘ve heard of colibris?”

Frank looked at the living gem, which hung, loud humming, over some fantastic bloom, and then dashed away, seemingly to call its mate, and whirred and danced with it round and round the flower-starred bushes, flashing fresh rainbows at every shifting of the lights.

Frank watched solemnly awhile, and then:

“Qualis Natura formatrix, si talis formata? Oh my God, how fair must be Thy real world, if even Thy phantoms are so fair!”

“Phantoms?” asked Amyas, uneasily. “That’s no ghost, Frank, but a jolly little honey-sucker, with a wee wife, and children no bigger than peas, but yet solid greedy little fellows enough, I’ll warrant.”

“Not phantoms in thy sense, good fellow, but in the sense of those who know the worthlessness of all below.”

“I’ll tell you what, brother Frank, you are a great deal wiser than me, I know; but I can’t abide to see you turn up your nose as it were at God’s good earth. See now, God made all these things; and never a man, perhaps, set eyes on them till fifty years agone; and yet they were as pretty as they are now, ever since the making of the world. And why do you think God could have put them here, then, but to please Himself”–and Amyas took off his hat–“with the sight of them? Now, I say, brother Frank, what’s good enough to please God, is good enough to please you and me.”

“Your rebuke is just, dear old simple-hearted fellow; and God forgive me, if with all my learning, which has brought me no profit, and my longings, which have brought me no peace, I presume at moments, sinner that I am, to be more dainty than the Lord Himself. He walked in Paradise among the trees of the garden, Amyas; and so will we, and be content with what He sends. Why should we long for the next world, before we are fit even for this one?”

“And in the meanwhile,” said Amyas, “this earth’s quite good enough, at least here in Barbados.”

“Do you believe,” asked Frank, trying to turn his own thoughts, “in those tales of the Spaniards, that the Sirens and Tritons are heard singing in these seas?”

“I can’t tell. There’s more fish in the water than ever came out of it, and more wonders in the world, I’ll warrant, than we ever dreamt of; but I was never in these parts before; and in the South Sea, I must say, I never came across any, though Yeo says he has heard fair music at night up in the Gulf, far away from land.”

“The Spaniards report that at certain seasons choirs of these nymphs assemble in the sea, and with ravishing music sing their watery loves. It may be so. For Nature, which has peopled the land with rational souls, may not have left the sea altogether barren of them; above all, when we remember that the ocean is as it were the very fount of all fertility, and its slime (as the most learned hold with Thales of Miletus) that prima materia out of which all things were one by one concocted. Therefore, the ancients feigned wisely that Venus, the mother of all living things, whereby they designed the plastic force of nature, was born of the sea-foam, and rising from the deep, floated ashore upon the isles of Greece.”

“I don’t know what plastic force is; but I wish I had had the luck to be by when the pretty poppet came up: however, the nearest thing I ever saw to that was maidens swimming alongside of us when we were in the South Seas, and would have come aboard, too; but Drake sent them all off again for a lot of naughty packs, and I verily believe they were no better. Look at the butterflies, now! Don’t you wish you were a boy again, and not too proud to go catching them in your cap?”

And so the two wandered on together through the glorious tropic woods, and then returned to the beach to find the sick already grown cheerful, and many who that morning could not stir from their hammocks, pacing up and down, and gaining strength with every step.

“Well done, lads!” cried Amyas, “keep a cheerful mind. We will have the music ashore after dinner, for want of mermaids to sing to us, and those that can dance may.”

And so those four days were spent; and the men, like schoolboys on a holiday, gave themselves up to simple merriment, not forgetting, however, to wash the clothes, take in fresh water, and store up a good supply of such fruit as seemed likely to keep; until, tired with fruitless rambles after gold, which they expected to find in every bush, in spite of Yeo’s warnings that none had been heard of on the island, they were fain to lounge about, full-grown babies, picking up shells and sea-fans to take home to their sweethearts, smoking agoutis out of the hollow trees, with shout and laughter, and tormenting every living thing they could come near, till not a land-crab dare look out of his hole, or an armadillo unroll himself, till they were safe out of the bay, and off again to the westward, unconscious pioneers of all the wealth, and commerce, and beauty, and science which has in later centuries made that lovely isle the richest gem of all the tropic seas.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOW THEY TOOK THE PEARLS AT MARGARITA

P. Henry. Why, what a rascal art thou, then, to praise him so for running!
Falstaff. O’ horseback, ye cuckoo! but a-foot, he will not budge a foot.
P. Henry. Yes, Jack, upon instinct. Falstaff. I grant ye, upon instinct.

Henry IV. Pt. I.

They had slipped past the southern point of Grenada in the night, and were at last within that fairy ring of islands, on which nature had concentrated all her beauty, and man all his sin. If Barbados had been invested in the eyes of the newcomers with some strange glory, how much more the seas on which they now entered, which smile in almost perpetual calm, untouched by the hurricane which roars past them far to northward! Sky, sea, and islands were one vast rainbow; though little marked, perhaps, by those sturdy practical sailors, whose main thought was of Spanish gold and pearls; and as little by Amyas, who, accustomed to the scenery of the tropics, was speculating inwardly on the possibility of extirpating the Spaniards, and annexing the West Indies to the domains of Queen Elizabeth. And yet even their unpoetic eyes could not behold without awe and excitement lands so famous and yet so new, around which all the wonder, all the pity, and all the greed of the age had concentrated itself. It was an awful thought, and yet inspiriting, that they were entering regions all but unknown to Englishmen, where the penalty of failure would be worse than death– the torments of the Inquisition. Not more than five times before, perhaps, had those mysterious seas been visited by English keels; but there were those on board who knew them well, and too well; who, first of all British mariners, had attempted under Captain John Hawkins to trade along those very coasts, and, interdicted from the necessaries of life by Spanish jealousy, had, in true English fashion, won their markets at the sword’s point, and then bought and sold honestly and peaceably therein. The old mariners of the Pelican and the Minion were questioned all day long for the names of every isle and cape, every fish and bird; while Frank stood by, listening serious and silent.

A great awe seemed to have possessed his soul; yet not a sad one: for his face seemed daily to drink in glory from the glory round him; and murmuring to himself at whiles, “This is the gate of heaven,” he stood watching all day long, careless of food and rest, as every forward plunge of the ship displayed some fresh wonder. Islands and capes hung high in air, with their inverted images below them; long sand-hills rolled and weltered in the mirage; and the yellow flower-beds, and huge thorny cacti like giant candelabra, which clothed the glaring slopes, twisted, tossed, and flickered, till the whole scene seemed one blazing phantom-world, in which everything was as unstable as it was fantastic, even to the sun itself, distorted into strange oval and pear-shaped figures by the beds of crimson mist through which he sank to rest. But while Frank wondered, Yeo rejoiced; for to the southward of that setting sun a cluster of tall peaks rose from the sea; and they, unless his reckonings were wrong, were the mountains of Macanao, at the western end of Margarita, the Isle of Pearls, then famous in all the cities of the Mediterranean, and at the great German fairs, and second only in richness to that pearl island in the gulf of Panama, which fifteen years before had cost John Oxenham his life.

The next day saw them running along the north side of the island, having passed undiscovered (as far as they could see) the castle which the Spaniards had built at the eastern end for the protection of the pearl fisheries.

At last they opened a deep and still bight, wooded to the water’s edge; and lying in the roadstead a caravel, and three boats by her. And at that sight there was not a man but was on deck at once, and not a mouth but was giving its opinion of what should be done. Some were for sailing right into the roadstead, the breeze blowing fresh toward the shore (as it usually does throughout those islands in the afternoon). However, seeing the billows break here and there off the bay’s mouth, they thought it better, for fear of rocks, to run by quietly, and then send in the pinnace and the boat. Yeo would have had them show Spanish colors, for fear of alarming the caravel; but Amyas stoutly refused, “counting it,” he said, “a mean thing to tell a lie in that way, unless in extreme danger, or for great ends of state.”

So holding on their course till they were shut out by the next point, they started; Cary in the largest boat with twenty men, and Amyas in the smaller one with fifteen more; among whom was John Brimblecombe, who must needs come in his cassock and bands, with an old sword of his uncle’s which he prized mightily.

When they came to the bight’s mouth, they found, as they had expected, coral rocks, and too many of them; so that they had to run along the edge of the reef a long way before they could find a passage for the boats. While they were so doing, and those of them who were new to the Indies were admiring through the clear element those living flower-beds, and subaqueous gardens of Nereus and Amphitrite, there suddenly appeared below what Yeo called “a school of sharks,” some of them nearly as long as the boat, who looked up at them wistfully enough out of their wicked scowling eyes.

“Jack,” said Amyas, who sat next to him, “look how that big fellow eyes thee: he has surely taken a fancy to that plump hide of thine, and thinks thou wouldst eat as tender as any sucking porker.”

Jack turned very pale, but said nothing.

Now, as it befell, just then that very big fellow, seeing a parrot- fish come out of a cleft of the coral, made at him from below, as did two or three more; the poor fish finding no other escape, leaped clean into the air, and almost aboard the boat; while just where he had come out of the water, three or four great brown shagreened noses clashed together within two yards of Jack as he sat, each showing its horrible rows of saw teeth, and then sank sulkily down again, to watch for a fresh bait. At which Jack said very softly, “In manus tuas, Domine!” and turning his eyes in board, had no lust to look at sharks any more.

So having got through the reef, in they ran with a fair breeze, the caravel not being now a musket-shot off. Cary laid her aboard before the Spaniards had time to get to their ordnance; and standing up in the stern-sheets, shouted to them to yield. The captain asked boldly enough, in whose name? “In the name of common sense, ye dogs,” cries Will; “do you not see that you are but fifty strong to our twenty?” Whereon up the side he scrambled, and the captain fired a pistol at him. Cary knocked him over, unwilling to shed needless blood; on which all the crew yielded, some falling on their knees, some leaping overboard; and the prize was taken.

In the meanwhile, Amyas had pulled round under her stern, and boarded the boat which was second from her, for the nearest was fast alongside, and so a sure prize. The Spaniards in her yielded without a blow, crying “Misericordia;” and the negroes, leaping overboard, swam ashore like sea-dogs. Meanwhile, the third boat, which was not an oar’s length off, turned to pull away. Whereby befell a notable adventure: for John Brimblecombe, casting about in a valiant mind how he should distinguish himself that day, must needs catch up a boat-hook, and claw on to her stern, shouting, “Stay, ye Papists! Stay, Spanish dogs!”–by which, as was to be expected, they being ten to his one, he was forthwith pulled overboard, and fell all along on his nose in the sea, leaving the hook fast in her stern.

Where, I know not how, being seized with some panic fear (his lively imagination filling all the sea with those sharks which he had just seen), he fell a-roaring like any town-bull, and in his confusion never thought to turn and get aboard again, but struck out lustily after the Spanish boat, whether in hope of catching hold of the boat-hook which trailed behind her, or from a very madness of valor, no man could divine; but on he swam, his cassock afloat behind him, looking for all the world like a great black monk-fish, and howling and puffing, with his mouth full of salt water, “Stay, ye Spanish dogs! Help, all good fellows! See you not that I am a dead man? They are nuzzling already at my toes! He hath hold of my leg! My right thigh is bitten clean off! Oh that I were preaching in Hartland pulpit! Stay, Spanish dogs! Yield, Papist cowards, least I make mincemeat of you; and take me aboard! Yield, I say, or my blood be on your heads! I am no Jonah; if he swallow me, he will never cast me up again! it is better to fall into the hands of man, than into the hands of devils with three rows of teeth apiece. In manus tuas. Orate pro anima–!”

And so forth, in more frantic case than ever was Panurge in that his ever-memorable seasickness; till the English, expecting him every minute to be snapped up by sharks, or brained by the Spaniard’s oars, let fly a volley into the fugitives, on which they all leaped overboard like their fellows; whereon Jack scrambled into the boat, and drawing sword with one hand, while he wiped the water out of his eyes with the other, began to lay about him like a very lion, cutting the empty air, and crying, “Yield, idolaters! Yield, Spanish dogs!” However, coming to himself after a while, and seeing that there was no one on whom to flesh his maiden steel, he sits down panting in the sternsheets, and begins stripping off his hose. On which Amyas, thinking surely that the good fellow had gone mad with some stroke of the sun, or by having fallen into the sea after being overheated with his rowing, bade pull alongside, and asked him in heaven’s name what he was doing with his nether tackle. On which Jack, amid such laughter as may be conceived, vowed and swore that his right thigh was bitten clean through, and to the bone; yea, and that he felt his hose full of blood; and so would have swooned away for imaginary loss of blood (so strong was the delusion on him) had not his friends, after much arguing on their part, and anger on his, persuaded him that he was whole and sound.

After which they set to work to overhaul their maiden prize, which they found full of hides and salt-pork; and yet not of that alone; for in the captain’s cabin, and also in the sternsheets of the boat which Brimblecombe had so valorously boarded, were certain frails of leaves packed neatly enough, which being opened were full of goodly pearls, though somewhat brown (for the Spaniards used to damage the color in their haste and greediness, opening the shells by fire, instead of leaving them to decay gradually after the Arabian fashion); with which prize, though they could not guess its value very exactly, they went off content enough, after some malicious fellow had set the ship on fire, which, being laden with hides, was no nosegay as it burnt.

Amyas was very angry at this wanton damage, in which his model, Drake, had never indulged; but Cary had his jest ready. “Ah!” said he, “‘Lutheran devils’ we are, you know; so we are bound to vanish, like other fiends, with an evil savor.”

As soon, however, as Amyas was on board again, he rounded his friend Mr. Brimblecombe in the ear, and told him he had better play the man a little more, roaring less before he was hurt, and keeping his breath to help his strokes, if he wished the crew to listen much to his discourses. Frank, hearing this, bade Amyas leave the offender to him, and so began upon him with–

“Come hither, thou recreant Jack, thou lily-livered Jack, thou hysterical Jack. Tell me now, thou hast read Plato’s Dialogues, and Aristotle’s Logic?”

To which Jack very meekly answered, “Yes.”

“Then I will deal with thee after the manner of those ancient sages, and ask whether the greater must not contain the less?”

Jack. Yes, sure.

Frank. And that which is more than a part, contain that part, more than which it is?

Jack. Yes, sure.

Frank. Then tell me, is not a priest more than a layman?

Jack (who was always very loud about the dignity of the priesthood, as many of his cloth are, who have no other dignity whereon to stand) answered very boldly, “Of course.”

Frank. Then a priest containeth a man, and is a man, and something over–viz, his priesthood?

Jack (who saw whither this would lead). I suppose so.

Frank. Then, if a priest show himself no man, he shows himself all the more no priest?

“I’ll tell you what, Master Frank,” says Jack, “you may be right by logic; but sharks aren’t logic, nor don’t understand it neither.”

Frank. Nay but, my recalcitrant Jack, my stiff-necked Jack, is it the part of a man to howl like a pig in a gate, because he thinks that is there which is not there?

Jack had not a word to say.

Frank. And still more, when if that had been there, it had been the duty of a brave man to have kept his mouth shut, if only to keep salt water out, and not add the evil of choking to that of being eaten?

“Ah!” says Jack, “that’s all very fine; but you know as well as I that it was not the Spaniards I was afraid of. They were Heaven’s handiwork, and I knew how to deal with them; but as for those fiends’ spawn of sharks, when I saw that fellow take the fish alongside, it upset me clean, and there’s an end of it!”