The Golden Galleon Part 3

Timothy shook his head, and then, after a short pause, he said:

"No, Master Gilbert, she is no foreigner at all, but one of our own brave English adventurers. Look at the tattered flag waving from the staff on her after-castle. 'Tis the red cross of St. George. And by the decayed and grimy look of her, I'd judge that she hath been on some long and perilous voyage--it may be to far Cathay, or the scorching coasts of Africa, or it may even be to the Western Indies of which we have heard so much."

"An that be so," returned Gilbert as he stood gazing with wondering eyes upon the approaching ship, "methinks there will be some very strange surprising things for us to see and hear when she droppeth anchor in the haven yonder. She is deeply laden, look you. 'Tis the bars of silver in her hold that do weigh her down, or else the heavy chests of gold and precious stones. Ay, 'tis surely from the Spanish Main that she hath come; for now as she beareth round I can e'en see the shining gold-dust clinging to her sides from out her port-holes like flour-drift from out the windows of Modbury Mill."

Timothy smiled incredulously and moved apart from his companion.

"'Tis no gold-dust that you see, my master," said he, "but only the red iron from off her rust-eaten chains. Come, let us walk down unto the harbour, that we may get a nearer view of her and see what manner of voyagers she bringeth home."

They walked together down the gra.s.sy slopes. In aspect, as in their natures, they differed one from the other as much as a heavy Flemish horse differs from an agile Arab steed. Timothy looked much the elder, although in truth he was his master's senior by no more than a twelvemonth. Gilbert had much ado to keep pace with his long measured strides, or perhaps it was his own great riding-boots of thick hard leather coming up above his knees which made his steps seem difficult.

The strong December wind, blowing from over the Channel, caught his ample cloak, and the garment was forever escaping from his careless hold and flapping outward behind him, a.s.sailing his ears or getting twisted about his long sword. As the cloak blew aside from his shoulders it revealed the pink silk slashings of his doublet of russet velvet and the glittering ornaments on his girdle. He wore a little velvet cap, embroidered with gold lace and surmounted with a gallant waving feather which was held in place by a pearl brooch.

Timothy towered a full head and shoulders above him, being indeed almost a man in height and build, with great broad shoulders and big strong hands and muscular arms, and plump cheeks that were as red as ripe Devon apples. But in spite of his great bulk and his somewhat ungainly figure, Tim was nevertheless alert and active when occasion required, as many of his acquaintance were well aware; for at a wrestling bout, at fencing, riding, climbing, swimming, and many other manly exercises, there were few who could excel him. He was dressed very plainly now, as beseemed one whose work it was to serve and to obey. His cap, which was set jauntily on his head of curly red hair, was not of silk or velvet, but simple knitted wool, unadorned with any gay-coloured ribbons or flaunting feathers. He wore no lace ruff about his thick neck, but only a simple white linen collar. His body was covered by a doublet of plain tan-coloured leather; his wide trunks were of fustian, trimmed with cotton braid and gartered below the knee; and he wore low shoes without any spurs. Like his young master, he carried a sword; and he also had in his belt a small dagger. He was well skilled in the use of both these weapons, and during the months that he had pa.s.sed in Master Oglander's service he had imparted much of this skill to Gilbert.

By the time that the two had got down to the level ground, and had pa.s.sed through several of the quaint narrow streets leading towards the harbour, the strange ship had sailed far to the eastward of Mill Bay; her men were aloft furling the sails, and she was slowly drifting with the tide into the sheltered basin of Sutton Pool.

Some fishermen and seamen had gathered in groups upon the wharf to watch her as she came nearer, and to make conjectures as to what might be her name and whence she had come. Gilbert Oglander strode into their midst and stood awhile listening to their talk.

"'Tis a full three years since she sailed out of Plymouth Sound," said one of them.

"Ay, and the rest!" declared another. "Why, 'twas in the summer of 1586 that she went out--in the self-same month, if not the same week, that Thomas Cavendish sailed with his three ships to make the voyage round the world, and that, as I do reckon it, must be nigh upon four years and six months; though in truth it seemeth less. But the years do fly amazingly in these busy times!"

"Know you the name of this vessel that is now coming in, Master Whiddon?" asked Gilbert of a brown-faced mariner at his elbow.

"Ay, to be sure, Master Oglander," returned Whiddon. "We do make her out to be the _Pearl_--one of Sir Walter Raleigh's ships--that went out along with two others upon a voyage of adventure to the Brazil, or some such place. Master Will Marsden, of Plymouth, was her captain; an old playmate of mine own, and a right fortunate seamen in his younger days.

Well do I mind how we all envied him when he set out on this same voyage. But alas! by the look of his ship at this moment, and the fact that he hath come home alone and unattended, I much doubt that he hath left the better part of his good fortune behind him. Ah, there be blackamoors aboard of her!"

"Ay," interposed another of the group, who by his ap.r.o.n and his turned-up sleeves was evidently an artisan and a landsman. "And at seaman's work too. A woeful sign, my masters! Where be all the brave men of Devon that set sail in her, I'd like to know? Down among the coral and the shrimps at the bottom of the sea, I suppose, or else toiling in Spanish galleys, imprisoned by the Inquisition, or lying dead with the crows a-picking of their bones out yonder in Panama. 'Tis ever so with these buccaneering cruises. I like them not, for they do ever end with disaster."

"Thou'rt over-quick with thy conjectures, Jack Prynne," said the man named Whiddon. "The craft is short-handed, 'tis true; but how know you that the brave men you speak of have not given up their lives for old England in honest fight against the Spaniards? Had you yourself been as brave as they--G.o.d rest 'em!--you would not have taken flight from Plymouth the last week, as you did with the other timid fools, because of a mere idle alarm that the king of Spain was sending over another armada, forsooth. A brave thing, truly, thus to take to your heels. Why, man, I marvel that y'are not ashamed to show your craven face in the town again!"

Jack Prynne stroked his beard, partly hiding his shamed face with his big work-worn hand.

"When we went away," said he, "the town was ill-defended. Sir Francis Drake was absent."

"The more reason why every man should have remained to protect his home and do his duty by his neighbours," returned Whiddon. "Drake cannot well be in two places at once. What astonisheth me is, that you should all have come trooping back the instant you heard that Sir Francis had again taken up his residence in the town. Sure, 'tis a very high compliment to a man when his mere presence among us should inspire such confidence and allay such a general panic."

"There goes her anchor!" cried Timothy Trollope. And as he spoke there was a splash of water at the ship's bow, followed by the familiar rumbling noise of her hempen cable as it tore through the hawse-pipe.

Now that the vessel was close at hand it could be seen that she was very much battered by the storms and conflicts through which she had pa.s.sed during her long voyaging in distant seas. The lower timbers of her hull were overgrown with barnacles and slimy green weeds. Above the water-line there were many shot-holes, patched up with raw hides, sheets of lead, or rough-hewn balks of wood; and in one place, abaft her main-chains, a cannon-ball could be seen deeply embedded in the stout oak. In place of her original mizzen-mast there was the trunk of a forest tree, with the bark still upon it; and the lateen yard was made of spliced bamboo. Her standing rigging was mended with strands of twisted cow-hide. She was a ship of about a hundred tons burden, built with a high castle at her p.o.o.p and with bulging sides. Her bows were as round and blunt as the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the noisy sea-birds that floated near her in the harbour, feeding on the garbage thrown from the fishing-boats.

She had not long been at anchor when a boat was put off from her, and was rowed by two men towards the stone-built slip beside which Gilbert Oglander and Timothy Trollope were standing. The boat had four occupants in addition to the two seamen who pulled at the oars. They were a black-bearded, middle-aged man who sat on the stern gunwale, and who seemed by his frequent commands to the rowers to be in authority; a woman, who sat near him; a beardless youth, who was crouching down in the bottom of the boat; and an aged, white-haired man, with a brown sunburned face and a long silvery beard, who was bending forward over the prow as if in desperate eagerness to spring on sh.o.r.e.

As the little craft came yet nearer, Timothy Trollope observed that the pa.s.sengers seemed to be no less weary and tattered than the ship from which they had just come. The old man at the bow wore no clothing save a ragged canvas shirt and a pair of wide, ill-made trunks. One of the rowers had but a single sleeve to his jerkin, and his hair was long and matted. The woman wore a large black cloak, whose hood was drawn over her head, leaving visible no more of her than her thin olive-coloured face and her sparkling dark eyes. She paid scarcely any regard to what was pa.s.sing, but sat like an image, gazing stonily before her.

"Ship your oar, Pascoe!" cried the man at the stern. "Pull three more strokes, Mason!"

He rose to his feet as he gave these orders, showing himself to be very tall. None of the men on sh.o.r.e seemed to know him; nor did he greet them, even as a stranger newly arrived from foreign climes might have been expected to do.

The old man at the bow was the first to leap on sh.o.r.e. And, having done so, he fell down upon his knees, reverently pressed his lips upon the stones, and murmured the words:

"Thanks be to G.o.d! Thanks be to G.o.d!"

Then he stood up beside the boat and held it by the gunwale while the woman and the two other pa.s.sengers stepped ash.o.r.e.

Gilbert Oglander paid but small regard to them, little dreaming of the important parts they were destined to play in his life. He only noticed as they pa.s.sed him that the tall man's otherwise handsome face was marred by an unsightly scar on the right cheek, that the youth seemed to be about sixteen years of age, and that the woman, when she spoke to either of her companions, did so in a foreign tongue.

The youth who had come ash.o.r.e paused for a moment, tightening his sword-belt, and as he did so he glanced aside at the old man.

"Art going back to the ship, Jacob?" he inquired with seeming carelessness, yet with a look of strange eagerness in his dark eyes as if much depended upon the veteran's answer.

The graybeard slowly shook his head, and the deep-drawn sigh that issued from his lips seemed to Gilbert Oglander to betoken a whole world of past troubles and present grat.i.tude.

"Wherefore should I go back, Master Philip?" said he in a husky voice.

"Have I not had enough of the pestilent old hulk, think you? I have done all that was needed of me, I trow; and since, as you well know, I did but engage to work my pa.s.sage home, there be no wages due to me and we are quits. As to my worldly belongings," he added with a hollow, uneasy laugh as he rested his bony hand upon the leathern bag that hung at his side, "this wallet containeth all my chattels and goods. Ay, all that I am worth in the world. And little enough, you'll be saying, as the sole outcome of all my perils and wanderings. Howbeit," he went on, not heeding that the young man had already pa.s.sed beyond hearing and was continuing his way up the slip, "there's but small use in complaining.

And after all, G.o.d hath been truly merciful in that He hath brought me safely back to my dear native land. Sure 'tis worth all my twenty-three years of voyaging to be back once more in Plymouth town and to again set foot on English ground!"

A gust of cold wind blew round one of the stone piers of the wharf near which he lingered. He shivered slightly, and drew his ragged canvas shirt closer about his bare chest and neck. Then his moist blue eyes surveyed the group of men who now stood apart watching the boat returning to the ship.

"I don't see none o' my old friends among you, my masters," said he, looking from one to the other. "You'm all strangers to me. And peradventure I am as great a stranger to yourselves. But the time hath been when I was as well known in Plymouth as the tower of St. Andrew's church yonder." A forced, unnatural smile flitted about the parched blue lips as he added, addressing no one in particular: "Jacob Hartop is my name--Jacob Hartop that went out with John Hawkins in the year 1567, and that hath now come home after three-and-twenty years of foreign travel and fighting and slavish toil."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "G.o.d HATH BEEN TRULY MERCIFUL IN THAT HE HATH BROUGHT ME SAFELY BACK"]

He held out his hand to grasp that of one of the older men who stood near. As he did so Timothy Trollope noticed that his wrist bore an indented mark upon it, as if it had been too tightly clasped by a bracelet. Several of the bystanders now shook hands with him.

"Thou'rt welcome home, friend Hartop," said one.

"G.o.d give you peace and joy, my master!" said another.

"And may you never need to wander from England's sh.o.r.es again!" said a third.

Captain Whiddon then stepped forward, and said he:

"Be you related to young George Hartop that fell in the great fight against the Invincible Armada of Spain?"

Jacob Hartop stared blankly before him. It was evident that he knew naught of the great fight referred to. He was about to answer when the touch of a hand on his thin bare arm caused him to turn suddenly round, and he stood face to face with Gilbert Oglander.

"Thou'rt thinly clad, and the wind blows cold," said Gilbert as he took off his cloak and spread it over the ancient traveller's shoulder. "I pray you take this cloak."

The old man drew back.

"Nay, I can take no such goodly gift from one who doth owe me no manner of kindness," he declared, attempting to remove the garment. "Believe me, I am not so cold but that a walk and a flagon of ale will warm me."

But seeing that the offer was seriously meant he relented, and, fixing his tearful eyes upon Gilbert, he said: "Now, prithee, my gallant young sir, what might be your honour's name? Tell me, so that I may bear it in memory, and think of you with the grat.i.tude that I do truly feel."

Gilbert Oglander made a light pretence of not having heard the question, and, followed by Timothy, he strode gaily up to the head of the slip.

The tall man with the scar on his cheek was at this moment crossing the muddy roadway with his two companions towards a house with heavy overhanging gables, that stood at the corner of one of the alleys. It was a tavern, as could be known by the fact that the window lattices were painted red, and it bore the sign of the Three Flagons. The stranger had to bend down his head as he entered the low porchway.

"Truly a man may be known by the hostelry he chooseth," remarked Timothy Trollope as he saw the woman's skirts disappear behind the door-post. "I had thought by their favour that these people were of high station and good breeding, and that by their great haste to quit their ship they were intent upon travelling yet farther into the country, haply to some famous old estate. But 'tis plain to see that they do intend to abide at the humble Three Flagons. 'Tis a cheap inn and an ill-managed.