Westward Ho! Part 44

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

"This to Captain Amyas Leigh with haste, haste!"

It was Sir Richard's hand. Amyas tore it open; and "a loud laugh laughed he."

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

"G.o.d help us, it has! Show me the letter."

It was a hurried scrawl.

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

"Your loving G.o.dfather, R. G."

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

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

"If I be killed, you will have two martyrs of your blood, mother!--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nor forgive either, it seems."

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

"Alas, no! G.o.d help us!"

"He will help us, madam," said Amyas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At last, upon the twenty-first of June, the clank of the capstans rang merrily across the flats, and amid prayers and blessings, forth sailed that gallant squadron over the bar, to play their part in Britain's Salamis; while Mrs. Leigh stood watching as she stood once before, beside the churchyard wall: but not alone this time; for Ayacanora stood by her side, and gazed and gazed, till her eyes seemed ready to burst from their sockets. At last she turned away with a sob,-- "And he never bade me good-bye, mother!"

"G.o.d forgive him! Come home and pray, my child; there is no other rest on earth than prayer for woman's heart!"

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

CHAPTER x.x.x.

HOW THE ADMIRAL JOHN HAWKINS TESTIFIED AGAINST CROAKERS.

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

Cornish Song.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There 'a be again! Why don't 'a come, then?"

"Quiet, gramfer, and don't trouble his worship."

"Here an hour, and never speak to poor old Martin! I say, sir"-- and the old man feebly plucks Amyas's cloak as he pa.s.ses. "I say, captain, do 'e tell young master old Martin's looking for him."

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

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

"Master Hawkins; he'm never been a-near me all day."

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

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

Amyas goes to the Admiral, and gives his message.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Never, I trust," said Amyas.

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

And off waddled the Port Admiral.

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

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

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

"The Field of the Cloth of Gold, gramfer," suggested the dame.

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

"What--cry?" said Amyas. "I shouldn't have thought there was much cry in him."

"You think what you like--"

"Gramfer, gramfer, don't you be rude, now-- "Let him go on," said Amyas.

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

"But when?"

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

"He is telling of the Mary Rose, sir."

"I guessed so."

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

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

"Iss! Iss! Drowned like rattens. Drowned like rattens!"

"Now; you mustn't trouble his worship any more."

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

And Amyas settled himself to listen, while the old man purred to himself-- "Iss. They likes to hear old Martin. All the captains look upon old Martin."

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

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

"What year was that?"

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

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

The old man's eyes flashed up in triumph.

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

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

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

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

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

"Then here's your health, and long life, sir!" said Amyas and Cary.

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

"Columbus?"