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-                           The Great Captain
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
-no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
-under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
-eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-Title: The Great Captain: A Story of the Days of Sir Walter Raleigh
-
-Author: Katharine Tynan Hinkson
-
-Release Date: April 17, 2011 [EBook #35896]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: US-ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT CAPTAIN: A STORY OF
-THE DAYS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
-at http://www.pgdp.net.
-
-This file was produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive/American Libraries.
-
-
-                          _THE GREAT CAPTAIN._
-
-
-
-
-              _A STORY OF THE DAYS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH._
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                                   BY
-                        KATHARINE TYNAN HINKSON,
-
-
-
-
-    _Author of "The Golden Lily," "The Queen's Page," "Her Father's
-                            Daughter," etc._
-
-
-
-
-                    _New York, Cincinnati, Chicago_:
-                           BENZIGER BROTHERS,
-                  _Publishers of Benziger's Magazine_
-
-
-                Copyright, 1902, by _Benziger Brothers_.
-
-                Printed in the United States of America
-
-
-
-[Illustration: _"While I stood stammering and staring a lean finger was
-pointed at me." (See page 24.)_]
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS.
-
-
-  - I.--Of Myself, that Great Captain Sir Walter Raleigh, and how I
-    became his Leal Man ............................................   7
-
-  - II.--The Apparition of the Monk ................................  21
-
-  - III.--Of My Secret, the Lord Boyle, and Other Matters ..........  37
-
-  - IV.--The Dead Hand .............................................  52
-
-  - V.--Of a Strait Place and a Quiet Time .........................  67
-
-  - VI.--The Treasure-ship .........................................  83
-
-  - VII.--Our Last Years Together ..................................  99
-
-  - VIII.--An Unravelled Thread .................................... 113
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.--OF MYSELF, THAT GREAT CAPTAIN SIR WALTER RALEIGH, AND OF HOW
-I BECAME HIS LEAL MAN.
-
-
-I never knew my father and mother, having been born into a time like
-that of the great desolation foretold by the Scriptures. They were the
-days of what I have heard called the Rebellion of the Desmonds, when
-that great league was made against the power of Eliza, the English
-Queen, by the Irish princes, which went down in a red sunset of death
-and blood. Indeed I myself had starved, like other innocents, on the
-breasts of their dead mothers, had it not been for the pity of him I
-must ever regard as the greatest of Englishmen, albeit no friend, but
-rather the spoiler, of those of my blood and faith.
-
-It was indeed while the end was not yet quite determined, for although
-Sir James Desmond, the wisest and most skilled of their generals in the
-art of war, was dead, there was yet the Seneschal of Imokilly and other
-Geraldine lords fighting for their inheritance and their country. It was
-on a day when Sir Walter Raleigh with a handful of troopers was
-returning from a visit to the Lord Deputy at Dublin that he found me. He
-had expected no ambush, and rode slowly, being fatigued by his journey,
-through the great woods to the Ford of the Kine. Now the woods covered
-many dead and dying, and as the Captain rode at the head of his men I
-came running from the undergrowth, a lusty and fearless lad of three,
-and held up my hands to the foremost rider. I had as like as not been
-spitted on a trooper's sword but that the Captain himself, leaning from
-his horse, swung me to his saddle-bow.
-
-He had perhaps a thought of his own little Wat, by his mother's knee in
-an English pleasaunce, for, as I have heard since, he talked with me and
-provoked me to confidence. Nor was I slow to answer all he asked, being
-a bright and bold child, which perhaps was the saving of me, since I
-flung an arm round the great Captain's steel-clad neck, and perched by
-him as bold as any robin that is housed in the frost.
-
-But as we rode along in the summer evening, fearing no danger, though
-danger there was, for my lord the Seneschal of Imokilly had word of our
-coming, and as we forded the river was upon us from the further bank
-with his kerns, three times our number. But the Captain rode at them
-with his sword drawn, slashing hither and thither, and sorely I must
-have hampered him, and much marvel it was that he did not loose me into
-the stream. But that he held me shows what manner of man he was, that
-being fierce and violent in battle he yet was of so rare magnanimity.
-Little lad as I was then, I remember to this day the cold of his steel
-and silver breastplate against my cheek.
-
-And when he had hewed his way through them and was on the further bank
-in safety, he looked back and saw one of his men, Jan Kneebone by name,
-dismounted in the stream and in peril. Then, setting me down gently, he
-rode back into deep water to his man's deliverance, and having slain two
-kerns who had him in jeopardy he flung him upon his saddle-bow and rode
-with him again up the steep bank. It was a great feat of arms, and might
-well have cost the English this most splendid soldier; yet I have heard
-Sir Walter say that the Desmond Lord of Imokilly might have slain him
-had he willed it. "And think not, little Wat," he said to me years
-after, speaking upon that day, "that chivalry departed from the world
-with the glorious pagan, Saladin; for in many places I have found it,
-nor least in this wild country of thine; and it is an exceeding good
-thing," he added, "that men will forget their passions amid the heat of
-battle, and will remember only that the enemy they fight against is
-brave."
-
-Wat, he called me from himself, because he loved me, and after his
-little son. Indeed, he seemed in time to love me as fondly as any
-father; and while I was yet a little one and learning from him swordplay
-and fence, horsemanship, and other manly arts, I began to understand
-that amid all his splendor he carried sadness beneath it, and was a
-banished man. He had lost the Queen's favor--not because he had enemies
-at court, for Eliza was not one to be misled by rumors or cunning, but
-because he had clasped around the white neck of Mistress Throckmorton, a
-dame of honor, the milky carcanet of pearls the Queen's vanity desired
-to adorn her leanness, which in time the Queen might have forgiven, if
-he had not privily married the same Mistress Throckmorton; for she would
-have but one moon in the sky, and she liked not the gallantest man of
-her kingdom to be her dame's satellite. So he was become a soldier of
-fortune, and since he might not have his lady or his little son with him
-in these wild times, they abode in his quiet English Manor-house, while
-his sword slashed a way to fortune for them through the inheritance of
-the great, unhappy Desmonds.
-
-In later years, when I had become well acquainted with the character of
-my lord, it hath seemed to me that he was not one for marriage; for
-danger was his love, and he was homesick away from her smile. And yet no
-more tender lord than he to the Lady Elizabeth might be found, and he
-loved his little Walter greatly.
-
-But presently, the war being ended and the last Desmond Earl slain by a
-traitor in a cabin in the mountains, my lord sailed away from the harbor
-of Youghall to London, to the end that he might win permission for
-another expedition in search of treasure, and so regain the Queen's
-favor. By this time I was a tall lad, and was fain to go with my lord,
-but this he would by no manner of means permit. I hated so to live my
-life without him, even for a time, that I had thought of hiding myself
-aboard his ship, the Bon Aventure, but the fear which I had of him
-besides my love held me back. I had never seen him angry with me, and I
-prayed that I never should, so I heard him in silence when he bade me
-stay. Taking me aside then, he said to me, lovingly:
-
-"I wrong you not, Wat, because I go without you, for Queen's favor is
-vain, and it may be I go to Traitor's Gate. You are no meat for the
-Tower, lad."
-
-Then I cried out that if he went to the Tower I should go with him; at
-which he seemed pleased, patting my shoulder with great gentleness.
-
-"It may be," he said, "that I return again to this Irish exile I weary
-of. Or, in the greatest event of all, I shall fit out a fleet for the
-Spanish Main, and make the Dons stand and deliver. That would be
-happiest for us, boy, for indeed I make but a bad port-sailor."
-
-"You sail in the Bon Aventure," I said; "it is of good omen."
-
-"It is indeed," he replied, "and I thank you for reminding me of it."
-
-He looked out to sea, where the English leopards flapped at the wind's
-will on the mast of his ship, and I think I never saw such a longing in
-a man's eyes: so great was it that my heart bled for him. I had thought
-perhaps that he longed so much to see the Lady Elizabeth and his boy.
-But he spoke, and I knew he was thinking of the free life of the rovers
-of the sea, not of that lady whom he so tenderly loved.
-
-"If we prosper," he said, "we shall sail for Guiana, and found there,
-who knows, another Virginia. The spoil of half a dozen fat galleons and
-a new country. These are things that even Gloriana need not disdain. Yet
-Essex hath all her ear, and Essex is mine enemy."
-
-"If you succeed, my lord--" I began.
-
-"If I succeed I shall send for you. If I am sent to the Tower there are
-certain matters concerning you to which Master Richard Boyle is privy,
-and which he will impart to you. But it may be I shall be sent back to
-rot here; if so, there is nothing more to be said."
-
-So on a certain day of lusty summer my lord sailed away in the Bon
-Aventure, with Master Edmund Spenser, whose company had so greatly
-lightened his exile. The same carried with him two books of his poem,
-_The Faery Queen_, which he designed to have printed in London. He was
-bound to return, whether my lord came or not, for he had left at his
-Castle of Kilcohnour his lady whom he had married at Cork, and his young
-son. The same lady he made famous forever by the most beautiful of
-marriage-songs, which thing I had come to know, young as I was, for my
-lord would have me a scholar as well as a soldier, and I was become a
-very excellent scribe, so that the fair copying of Master Spenser's
-poems came to me.
-
-I remember my last glimpse of them ere the Bon Aventure sunk over the
-rim of ocean, and evening seemed all at once to settle on the world. My
-lord was wearing a suit of black velvet over white, very finely
-embroidered with seed-pearls. The plume of his hat was held in its place
-by a clasp of diamonds. Beside him Master Spenser, in his black, looked
-over-grave. But when did Sir Walter--whom I call here "my lord" out of
-the love and loyalty I bore him--fail to shine before all the world by
-the splendor of his apparel as well as by his manly beauty and the
-greatness of his deeds?
-
-After they had gone, set in the endless dusk of summer evening, I grew
-tired of wandering about the gardens, so strange and sad without their
-master. So I went within doors, where some one had set a starveling
-rushlight in the chamber that was my lord's dining-hall, and there I sat
-me down with my Latin grammar and the Virgil my lord had given me. At
-this time I sat daily on the wooden benches of the College School at
-Youghall, and had my learning of an old clerk Sir Walter had summoned
-here from Devonshire to take the place of the doctors and singing-men
-who had gone with the Desmonds. But my heart was heavy, and my head, and
-I had pushed away from me untasted the supper a serving-wench had
-carried to me.
-
-Now all was very still in the house, so that the tap-tapping of a twig
-by the window-pane seemed to me a little frightful, although I was a boy
-of spirit. Outside was the black of an early summer night before the
-moon has risen, and going to the window upon the tapping I could see no
-star for the myrtle boughs. Yet sure I was that were I outside the
-purple would be pierced by innumerable eyes of light, and I was greatly
-tempted to return to the garden. Indeed, out in the night there would be
-companionship, although every bird slept well within the boughs. It is
-the houses men build that breed these phantoms of the brain, and not the
-free air. But disregarding the temptation I went back to my book,
-knowing full well the pleasure it would give my lord to learn that I had
-been diligent in his absence. Wonderful it was that he was hardly less
-in love with learning than with adventure. Indeed a man of such parts
-was this knight and master of mine that there seemed to be nothing
-admirable in which he did not excel. And if I am blind to his faults,
-even to this day when I repent me of certain share of mine in his
-adventures, let that be forgiven me, for surely I owed him all love and
-loyalty.
-
-As the night went I heard the scullions who had been disporting
-themselves in the town return one by one, and the bolting and barring of
-doors. The songs of the sailors which came up from the shipping in the
-bay fell off and ceased. Silence fell on the town, a silence as unbroken
-as that of the sleepers yon in St. Mary's yard, and presently drowsiness
-overcoming me I too slept.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.--THE APPARITION OF THE MONK.
-
-
-The room in which I had studied and now slept was that to the right hand
-as you entered the door of the Manor-house. It was lined stoutly with
-oak, and it was dark because, though it had two fair windows, they were
-much obscured by the myrtles my lord had planted, which had thriven
-exceedingly in this mild air.
-
-This room, as I have said, my lord used for a dining-hall. Else when he
-was within doors he sat in the oriel of the pleasant room overhead; and
-it was there that he and Master Spenser would sit and smoke or be
-silent; and there, which is not to be forgotten, Sir Walter listened to
-_The Faery Queen_.
-
-For some reason or another this dining-hall, despite its purpose, seemed
-a place of little cheer. The Manor-house had belonged to the warden of
-the college, and owed its construction to him; and it was built after
-the English manner, which need not be surprising, since the progenitors
-of those church and abbey builders, the Munster Geraldines, were of
-English blood and race. Not only was the dining-hall in itself low and
-somewhat forbidding of aspect, but it smelt of earth and new graves, for
-all the generous wine and meats that had been consumed within it. The
-cause of the same my lord had never been able to determine, and it
-stayed, although the chimney roared with logs of ships' timber, and the
-brightness, the good cheer, the wit and gayety that met there were
-enough to scare away any thought of death or the earth that shall
-receive us.
-
-I slept, I have said, and while I slept the moon had arisen. The low
-light of it filled the chamber when I awoke with a start, smelling the
-graves, and feeling very cold. On the myrtle tree without an owl hooted.
-The rushlight had gone out, but this I hardly knew, only that an earthy
-wind, smelling of damp and mildews, blew about my face, and I was stiff
-from lying asleep upon my book.
-
-But this I noticed vaguely, for as soon as my eyes were well open a
-strange appearance in the room drew my gaze upon it. I was by this time
-a stout lad of some sixteen years, and accustomed to fear nothing, yet I
-will confess that the hair of my head stood up. The figure of a monk was
-in the further corner from me. I knew it to be a monk, because of the
-effigies, images, and portraits in St. Mary's Church and the library of
-the college. Further, I knew the apparition to be of a white friar. The
-cowl was over the face; the head was bent; a fold of white cloth hid the
-hands. The stature of the monk was exceedingly tall, and of a great
-leanness, as I could see where the belt of brown leather clasped the
-white gown about the middle.
-
-All this I saw clearly by the light of the moon, or was it by some
-unearthly light of which the figure stood the centre? I know not, only
-that I saw everything clear: and still the odor of graves was in my
-nostrils.
-
-While I stood stammering and staring a lean finger was pointed at me, so
-lean that I know not if flesh covered it, or if it were the fleshless
-finger of a skeleton. A voice, hollow and strange, came forth of the
-cowl.
-
-"Son of the Geraldines," it said, "why art thou here among their
-murderers and despoilers?"
-
-The voice constrained me to answer.
-
-"Alas," I said, "I know not what you mean. I am a nameless boy, a dead
-leaf drifted in the forests. Why do you call me a son of the Geraldines,
-unless it be that I come of the humblest of the clan?"
-
-"You are no kern's son, Walter Fitzmaurice, but of a noble house. How is
-it that you eat the bread and run at the stirrups of the Sassenach who
-is the destroyer of your race?"
-
-I stretched my hands imploringly to the cowled figure.
-
-"He rescued me from death," I cried; "he warmed me with his love. He has
-taught me all a noble youth should know."
-
-"You love him?"
-
-"I love him."
-
-"Listen, boy. They think they have destroyed the Desmonds, root and
-branch, as a man might tread out under his heel a nest of vipers. Yet
-hope is not dead. The line of the Geraldines is not destroyed. Return to
-your own people and leave this evil knight."
-
-"Alas, I cannot," I said, "for I love him."
-
-"The blood of your kin is red on his hands."
-
-"And yet I love him."
-
-"He and his freebooters have wasted the country that was the portion of
-your fathers. Whom he spared to slay famine and pestilence have slain."
-
-"I should have died of the hunger," said I, "had he not delivered me."
-
-"And you will follow him?"
-
-"I will follow him."
-
-"Wherever he goes?"
-
-"To death."
-
-"To death and evil. Very well, Walter Fitzmaurice, of the race of
-Desmond, then your kindred's blood be on your hands, as they are on
-those for which you have held basin and ewer that they might wash. Water
-will not wash them clean, nor yours that share in the stain. He shall
-die by violence as he has slain many another--and as for you, what
-penance, what fast and prayer shall suffice to wipe out your sin? You
-have chosen, Walter Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. Take care that you have not
-chosen forever."
-
-The voice rose in a shriek of menace, and I caught sight of burning eyes
-under the cowl. Suddenly through the hooting of the owl in the myrtles
-there rang, shrilly as a trumpet, the crowing of a cock. The wind from
-the grave rose in my nostrils and filled me with a great terror. I
-turned giddy and swayed hither and thither, and the room went up and
-down under my feet.
-
-The next thing I knew was that the sun was in the room, and I was lying
-with my cheek on the open page of the Virgil. Nothing was changed in the
-room since last night, except only that the rushlight had dwindled to a
-pool of cold fat; but how long it had been out I could not gauge.
-
-Slowly the happenings of the night came back to me; but now in the warm
-daylight who thought on ghosts and goblins, or was afraid of them if
-they came? Where the owl had hooted over night a blackbird was singing,
-bold and bright. The lawn of the Manor-house was under dew. As I looked
-a peacock spread his tail in the sun, and his more sober mate stood to
-admire him.
-
-Sitting there I rubbed my eyes. Why, I had awakened just as I had fallen
-asleep, worn out with the sorrow of loneliness, and the trial to fix my
-discontented thoughts upon my book. I stood up and caught sight of
-myself in a mirror. Then I realized that it is ill to sleep
-full-dressed. I was pale, and my hair strayed in disorder. My doublet
-looked as if I had had the habit to sleep in it, and my cloak was awry.
-I had been no sight to please my lord, who loved daintiness, and
-observed it himself in the strangest circumstances.
-
-I would down to the Port-side and bathe in the morning waters. But ere I
-did that, remembering the dream or vision of the night, I went towards
-that place where I had seen the monk and carefully examined the same.
-But nothing there was to give me clue. The room was stoutly panelled
-with oak, every panel as like to his brother as two peas. Yet in that
-corner of the room there was one thing that made me linger, for the
-smell of earth, it seemed to me, was there stronger than elsewhere.
-
-I sniffed and smelt like a terrier after a mouse; but sniff and smell as
-I might found nothing. I was no stranger to sliding panels and the like,
-at least by hearsay, but press and push as I might nothing came of it,
-so that at last I was fain to desist.
-
-As I made my way to the water-side in the glorious morning my thoughts
-were full of the night's encounter. If it had been no dream but a true
-happening I did not doubt now, with the sun risen, that the monk was no
-ghost but a living man, albeit a spare one, for I recalled his lean
-finger, and the burning eyes set in the hollow cheeks. His words had
-been verily human, not ghostly at all: and had I been minded to leave my
-great lord whom I loved, had he not been ready to bear me away with him?
-Either the thing was a fantasy of a dream, every part of it exceedingly
-sensible, and one part following another as I have not known it in
-dreams, or else it were true, and he a living man who had stood before
-me last night.
-
-One thought made my heart leap up with a sharp throb of pleasure. The
-monk had said I was noble--I, who had come from none knew where, a
-nameless youth and treated courteously only because I was dear to my
-lord, and myself very sharp in a quarrel and adroit in the practice of
-arms.
-
-After I had bathed and lain to dry in the sun I returned back hungry as
-a hawk. In the blessed sun all was different from last night. My lord
-would return, and would bear me away to court, and presently we should
-have letters of marque, and should go sailing on the Spanish Main in
-search of good fighting, salted with doubloons and pieces of eight; and
-presently should make for the Treasure Islands, and find there, as I
-imagined, jewels as large as plums, and gold and silver in great
-portions. For I had read Maundeville and other travellers, and had
-magnified in my credulity even the marvels they had told. I knew, too,
-that my lord had brought home to the Queen's Majesty a necklace of
-pearls whereof each stone was larger than a cherry. And we had heard of
-Guiana that the very sands of the seashore sparkled with gold and
-silver, and that in the workings the old inhabitants thereof had made,
-that they might build their heathen temples, the walls were of gold,
-while the idols were crusted with jewels so that no man might look on
-them without winking.
-
-So much in the sunlight. And yet again I had a cause for joy and pride
-because the monk had declared me noble. How to prove it I knew not, but
-resolved that when my lord was come hither again I would tell him all,
-and he would somehow unriddle me the secret and I should be no longer
-nameless.
-
-My breakfast I had beneath the shade of Sir Walter's myrtles, where he
-had made his favorite seat. It was brought thither by that good Sukey
-who had nearly drowned my lord the first time she beheld him smoking
-that weed called tobacco, which he had brought from his settlement in
-Virginia. For she conceived him to be on fire, and half-drowned him that
-she might put him out. I had my white manchet and roast beef and flagon
-of ale, and had a fine hunger for it after my morning swim.
-
-But when it had all vanished I strolled away to the stable-yard, where
-Gregory Dabchick rubbed down one of my lord's horses, and hissed between
-his teeth as is the manner of ostlers in the doing. He was a
-shock-headed fellow, of slow wits, but honest, and loved my lord.
-
-"It be lonely, Master Wat," he said, "since the master be gone."
-
-"Gregory Dabchick," said I, "you were of Sir Walter's following the day
-the Seneschal of Imokilly set upon him at the Ford of the Kine."
-
-"Ay," he said, grinning, "and Jan was spilt in the water. He got up
-dripping like a fish, and when the Captain haled him to dry land, and he
-would mount his beast he overleapt him and a good horse galloped into
-the forest and so became the goods of the Irishry. I wish," he added,
-"that Margery May, at home in pleasant Devon, might have looked on Jan
-then."
-
-"I have nothing to do with your jealousies," I said, as haughty as
-though I were my lord's son. "But tell me, Gregory, do you remember me
-that day?"
-
-"A brown babby, as fat as ever I see," Gregory answered, still rubbing
-down his horse. "And as near being spitted by Dan'l Drewe as ever I wish
-to see. I never liked that work myself, killing o' babes and sucklings,
-and fair women, or leaving the babe to die on its mother's breast.
-'Twere lucky for you, Master Wat, them that starved in the forest did
-not eat you, ere ever you came the way o' Dan'l's mercy. Eh, what a fat
-one you were!"
-
-"But a comely, Gregory?" I asked anxiously. "A noble child? Was I that?
-And clad in silk and fine woollen, as became my condition?"
-
-"Why, no, Master Walter, but a fat, brown babe; eh, so fat! And nought
-but rabbit-skins to cover you. You had been good eating for them in the
-forest."
-
-"You are rude and dull, Gregory," said I, leaving him in dudgeon. As I
-looked back I saw that he had come to the stable door and stood watching
-me with a gaping mouth. Plainly there was nothing to be learned from
-Gregory Dabchick.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.--OF MY SECRET, THE LORD BOYLE, AND OTHER MATTERS.
-
-
-In the autumn of that year my lord came back, and in my joy at seeing
-him again I hardly felt that he was sad. The Lord Essex had prevailed
-against him with the Queen and he was returned to exile, although one of
-his ships had brought in a Spanish galleon worth fifty thousand pounds.
-It must be remembered of him that his passion for discovering the
-unknown worlds swallowed up all the treasure he was able to discover; so
-that the sea was never without his ships, and one expedition but led to
-another.
-
-Had he been differently framed this season at Youghall had been happy
-enough. For now there was no fighting to be done he led that quiet and
-pastoral life which might have won him Master Spenser's title for him,
-_The Shepherd of the Ocean_. He delighted himself by planting the
-strange seeds and roots he had brought from the ends of the earth and
-seeing them thrive. All his garden ventures were fortunate. The kindly
-Irish soil suited well with the tobacco, the myrtle, and the fuchsia. At
-Affane, a little way up the Blackwater, he had his orchards, where
-already the cherry grew abundantly. There, also, on sunny banks, he
-sowed in long rows a strange fruit called the potato, whereof the fruit
-is in the earth, and the leaves above it, and a very pleasant fruit to
-eat when well boiled, being of a sweet flouriness within.
-
-Another fruit from the Indies which he planted at Affane was called the
-tomato--a great, smooth-skinned, scarlet fruit, over-heavy for its
-branches, and of a strange half-sour flavor, which yet grew on one in
-the eating. Another seed brought him by his captains was that of the
-clove-gilly-flower, or wall-flower, a most sweet-smelling plant; and the
-cedar also he planted.
-
-He was as much set upon gardens as upon adventure and the search for new
-countries. Those of his captains who had returned had brought with them
-charts of the lands in which they had sailed, together with long reports
-concerning the inhabitants, their manner of living, their food and
-pursuits, the beasts and birds, the plants and ore, and all such
-matters; over which my lord would sit and pore in the long winter
-evenings, by the fire of driftwood, and smoking his long pipe. And
-sometimes he would talk with Master Spenser concerning them; but more
-often their talk ran on poetry and the arts. Master Spenser was working
-at the later books of _The Faery Queen_, and had written also a very
-pretty pastoral entitled _Colin Clout's Come Home Again_. Nor was my
-lord's admirable pen silent. I went to and fro almost as a son; and I
-can see my lord now in some gallant apparel, for he knew not what it was
-to be slovenly, leaning back in his great chair, and reading from the
-manuscript in his hand that lament he made for the death of the
-stainless knight, Sir Philip Sidney, slain then at the battle of
-Zutphen:
-
-    England does hold thy limbs that bred the same;
-    Flanders thy valour where it last was tried;
-    The camp thy sorrow where thy body died;
-    Thy friends thy want; the world thy virtue's fame.
-
-Alas, if but Sir Walter had been content to be poet and gardener; but
-whereas the one part of him was content the other tugged at his
-heart-strings so that he was not happy. In gardening he had no rivals
-except the Dutch, that great little republic of the water, since as
-famous as England herself for great battles and adventures by sea.
-
-Now, quiet as the time was, and I was often alone with my lord, it was
-long before I found courage to speak to him of my birth. I know not why
-I was so wary in approaching it, but somewhere in my heart I had a
-warning that it would be unwelcome matter to him; so that often the
-words rose to my lips and fell silent before I could say them. It was
-indeed close upon a year from the time I had seen the monk that at last
-I dared to touch upon the subject. It was one evening when we had been
-gardening together, and tired after that pleasant toil we sat beneath
-the myrtle trees. My lord's brow for a little while was unfurrowed with
-care, and his eagle eyes looked at me softened through the mists of his
-smoke.
-
-"My lord--" I began, and then could go no further.
-
-"What is it, Wat?" he asked kindly.
-
-"My lord, I am troubled about the question of my birth. To be nameless
-where every one hath a name is no light matter to bear."
-
-"Hath any one reproached you?" he asked, and his eyes flashed.
-
-"If any hath I should not have come even to you for redress," I said,
-fingering my sword.
-
-"Ah," he said, and he looked well pleased. "There spoke no nameless
-boy!"
-
-I breathed hard at the thought of what his speech meant. I was in act
-indeed to ask him if I were truly a Fitzmaurice and of noble birth when
-his next words held me, and, as it proved, the silence between us was to
-last to the edge of the grave for one of us.
-
-"Be content, boy, for a little while," he said, and his voice was of
-great sweetness. "You are no nameless child; but let it be my secret for
-a time. In time I shall reveal it. If I told you now it might mean that
-we should part company."
-
-"Never that," I said.
-
-"Never that, I pray," he rejoined, adding--"because I love you, Wat."
-
-Then after a few minutes of silence he went on:
-
-"Your secret is left to no such blind chance as may befall such an one
-as I. If aught happen to me, Master Boyle holds it safe, and will reveal
-it in proper time."
-
-"You will not tell me?" I broke out.
-
-"To have it known would bring me some steps nearer the Tower," he said,
-"and I wend that way already."
-
-"Then keep it silent forever," I cried out.
-
-"Nay; that would be hardly fair to you. Besides, you forget that Master
-Boyle hath it."
-
-"I like not Master Boyle."
-
-"Nor do I, overmuch, Wat. He is one of your still, secret men, with the
-lawyer's craft and cunning. What should there be between us?"
-
-"I hate his peaked face and his yellow eyes, and the way he hath of
-watching you and peering like a cat that sees in the dark."
-
-"You are hard on Master Boyle, Wat. There is too much of the lawyer in
-him, and he treads soft as a cat. Yet there is a man behind his greed
-and his cunning. He is better framed for times like these than such an
-one as I. I could never walk warily."
-
-"He has your secret and can use it against you."
-
-"He would do me no more harm than beggar me if he might so enrich
-himself. My head would be no use to him, little Wat."
-
-"'Tis a poor warranty for holding a secret," said I, bitterly.
-
-"I am well-disposed to Master Boyle," my lord went on. "He is a man of
-substance, Wat, and a useful friend for one like myself, who can keep
-nothing. We shall not pluck the jewels from the gold-trees of Guiana
-without money and ships. I am nearly sucked dry, and the Queen hath lost
-faith in me."
-
-Then I knew that my lord was not so contented as he had seemed of late,
-and that further voyages were afoot. In the joy and excitement of the
-prospect I forgot to fret about my namelessness. Besides, my lord knew
-that I was noble; and Master Boyle knew it, and treated me with a
-consideration which should have won my regard if it were not that I
-distrusted his dealings with my lord.
-
-And as the autumn of that year came on I noticed that my lord ceased to
-care for his gardens and orchards and plantations, and would be forever
-poring over maps and charts, and had long conversations with the master
-of the Bon Aventure, which good ship lay yet in Youghall Harbor, and the
-master did seem nigh as weary of idleness as Sir Walter himself. And
-sometimes he had Master Boyle privily. Indeed, though I speak of him as
-Master Boyle, 'tis from old habit; for about this time he had been
-created my Lord Boyle for his services to the Queen's Majesty in the
-better governance of Ireland.
-
-At last the word came that we were to sail; and it was as if the quiet,
-sleeping town of Youghall had started awake. Such a burnishing of arms
-and armor; such a getting out of old materials of war; such a polishing
-of decks and making of sails and mounting of guns on the good ship Bon
-Aventure as never was known. All day long the singing of the sailors in
-the harbor floated to us through the still air. And my lord's swarthy
-face smiled once again as I had known it when I was a little lad, before
-he was like a led eagle that is chained beyond hopping a little way.
-
-My Lord Boyle had found us the funds; so much I knew, but liked him no
-better. The evening before we were to sail there was a great banquet,
-and many gentlemen came even from so far off as Dublin to wish the Great
-Captain Godspeed. We were to sail at blink of the morning star, and
-there was to be no sleeping for us till we were on shipboard. Never have
-I seen my lord but once so magnificently clad. His doublet was of white
-silk, so sewn with diamonds that the silk was hardly to be seen. His
-hose were of white silk, his trunk-hose of silk with slashings of gold.
-Over one shoulder he wore a short cloak of yellow velvet clasped with
-diamonds; and the rosettes of his shoes were a blaze of diamonds. Seeing
-his face in the midst of such splendor I marvelled how the Queen could
-harden her heart against him--for never have I seen him in any
-assemblage, however honorable, that he did not make the other gentlemen
-seem mean and dull beside him.
-
-When the gayety was at its highest and he feared not to be missed, I saw
-him slip from the table with my Lord Boyle, and retire with him into the
-oriel. The banquet had been set in the oriel-chamber because it was
-lighter and more spacious.
-
-When my lord had left the table I too went away. Looking at the horologe
-my lord had given me, I saw that it lacked yet two hours of the time
-when we should be aboard.
-
-I went down stairs to the lower chamber, which was dark and silent. Once
-more I thought I should endeavor to find the secret way through which
-the death-damp came, and my midnight visitor of more than a year ago. If
-he had sought me since he had not found me, for I had avoided being
-alone there since that night.
-
-There was neither moonlight nor rushlight in the room, so that I could
-only grope with my fingers for the secret the panel must contain. For
-some time I groped in vain. Then my nails seemed to have found a crack
-in the wood, a mere notch in which they fitted. It gave me no promise,
-for the oak had warped here and there, and had left a few furrows. I was
-sure I had been over all the place before, yet now as I drew a little
-way the whole panel began to move. I did not know then, nor could I see,
-the cunning by which that door was devised so that none should discover
-it. I have said that the chamber was quite dark.
-
-Feeling now before me with my hands, I found a vacant square wide enough
-for one to creep through. Through it the wind blew strongly, and it was
-a cold, earthy, evil-smelling wind, such as I knew full well. Where
-might it lead? There was a report amongst us that the house had secret
-ways to the harbor; but it was no honest sea-wind, however confined and
-far from its source, that blew my way, but something far more villanous.
-
-I know not how it was that I seemed to forget that in less than two
-hours we must embark. The present adventure held me to the exclusion of
-all else. I stepped within the narrow passageway--crept within it, for I
-had to go on hands and knees. I had no light nor aught else to guide me;
-but if I thought at all it was that if the monk could come this way in
-safety, I could go as he had come. But to leave a gaping panel was not
-in my thoughts. Having entered I drew the panel to. Then feeling with my
-hands I came upon a lock. Had I moved it by my touch, or had it been
-left unlocked of design? There was no time for answering of riddles, and
-having pushed the panel to I turned to pursue the adventure.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.--THE DEAD HAND.
-
-
-After a little I found that I could stand upright in the passage.
-Stretching up my hands I could feel a solid roof above my head. The
-walls on either side of me were of earth, held back by stout balks of
-timber. If one were to give way the passage had been a grave indeed; but
-so far as I could feel with my feet the clay had not fallen at all. Else
-indeed there could not have been so much air in the passage as to give
-me breath; and I breathed freely enough, albeit with a certain
-oppression, and a loathing of the dank smells.
-
-For a time the passage went down into the bowels of the earth as it
-seemed to me. I guessed by the direction it took from the dining-hall
-that it must grope under the graveyard--and thinking on this I realized
-how that indeed the wind that blew from it was a wind of death. And at
-that time I was too ignorant and too vain to rebuke myself by the
-thought that this was a burying-place of saints.
-
-Presently my foot stumbled against a step, and much relieved I was to
-find on ascending it that there was another step and yet another; for I
-liked not this burrowing among graves like the mole; and the steps
-seemed to promise a speedy end to my journey. Taking them in the dark
-there seemed to me a prodigious number of them; yet I was not gone very
-far when I perceived agreeably a lightening and sweetening of the air. I
-could have taken but a little while in coming, for I had met with no
-obstacles; yet it seemed long since the time I had plunged into that pit
-of blackness ere I came up against a stout door, with a grating in it,
-designed no doubt to give air to the passage.
-
-To my great joy it was held only by a latch, and even before I had made
-this happy discovery I felt the sweet air of heaven blow into my face;
-and I think I never before knew how sweet it tasted.
-
-Undoing the latch and drawing the door to me I stepped within a stone
-tower. The moon had arisen on the eastward side of the tower, and
-looking through the crumbling lancet window I saw below me, serene and
-beautiful, the quiet, terraced graveyard of St. Mary's.
-
-I could have laughed aloud to think that the journey had seemed to me so
-long. In truth it had occupied some five minutes, as I discovered,
-holding my horologe to the moon, and had not occupied so long if it were
-not for my groping and pausing.
-
-But the floor was solid under my feet. I had to think a minute before I
-knew where I was. I was in that blind tower of St. Mary's to the
-eastward corner, in the basement whereof were deposited the brooms and
-pails for cleaning of the church.
-
-Playing hide and seek therein with a boy's irreverence I had marvelled
-why, since the tower was blind--nothing but a roof of stone above the
-chamber--that they should have troubled to pierce it with lancets like
-any honest belfry. The upper portion of the tower was in ruins, as you
-could see from the graveyard without. Ah, and so the blind tower had its
-uses; as a hiding-place it might be for some one who had lived in the
-Manor-house in old wild days. For, as to any manner of egress from the
-tower, that I could not see at all.
-
-The chamber where I stood was full of the drifted leaves and the nests
-of birds. Except for the shaft of light from the lancet it was in
-blackness, and I began to wonder if the tower went no further.
-
-I groped about the walls, however, till I came upon a staircase, which
-went up, not in the middle, as is usual in towers, but at one corner, so
-that each story formed a room.
-
-'Twas three stories' climb to the upper room. Here it was that the ruin
-had befallen the tower; for where the lancet had been there was a great
-gap, and somewhat of the roof had fallen away.
-
-I was now clear of the low trees, and the half-veiled moon looked within
-the chamber. Then I saw to my amazement that at the side of it, yet
-roofed over, there was a bed, a chair, a table, all of the rudest. But
-little of this I saw till afterwards, for on the bed lay the figure of
-that monk who had spoken with me, now nearly fifteen months ago.
-
-His face was in shadow, yet I never thought for a moment that he slept.
-One lean hand dangled from his great sleeve over the side of the bed; it
-hung helplessly; and young as I was I had looked on death often enough
-to know that this was the hand of the dead. The habit was composed
-decently about the figure. Either the monk had so composed himself for
-death or he had had some companion who had fled away leaving him to the
-eye of heaven.
-
-Standing there, a great awe and compassion fell upon me. Something of
-yearning and tenderness afflicted me as though the dead man had been of
-my blood: the tears rushed from my eyes, and I trembled so that I was
-forced to my knees; yea, as though invisible hands had bent me. I knew
-little of praying, but something of wordless petition to the Great
-Father of us all stirred in my dull and proud spirit. In that moment I
-had indeed the heart of a child.
-
-When I had arisen from my knees I went to the side of the pallet and
-looked upon the sleeper's face. In the shadow it gleamed like polished
-ivory, and as I looked the moon, climbing higher, touched the still
-mouth with a sweet and sanctified light, making it as though it smiled.
-I touched the hand that swung by the side of the pallet. It was scarcely
-cold. I knew not how I thought of such a thing, except that I was
-familiar with the knights and ladies who sleep in stone in St. Mary's
-Church, but I composed the sleeper's hands in the manner of Christ's
-cross upon his breast; and afterwards turned away from the patient,
-smiling mouth like one who hath sinned and been forgiven.
-
-Then I did what I believed he would have me do: I made a search for any
-letters and papers he might have left; for I could not think he had left
-me ignorant of what he would have me know. I searched busily; and there
-were not many places wherein to look. There was nothing anywhere. But my
-search was not yet over till I had examined the monk's person. I went
-back to his side, and with a prayer to him for forgiveness, I groped
-gently in his habit for anything in the nature of papers, and doing so I
-felt his body to be by wasting scarcely greater than a child's. Yet
-'twas not starvation, I knew, for a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water
-stood on the table.
-
-I had not far to seek. The papers were within the folds of his habit,
-where they met upon his breast, and were confined with the claspings of
-his leathern belt.
-
-I drew them forth and went to the full flood of the moonlight. By it I
-read the superscription:
-
-    "_To Walter Devereux Fitz-Hugo Fitz-Theobald Fitz-Maurice_"--
-
-As I read it my heart leaped up. What a proud name it was, and telling
-of a glorious ancestry!
-
-    "--commonly known as Walter Munster, the ward and page of Sir
-    Walter Raleigh."
-
-When I had deciphered so far the tower seemed suddenly to rock. It was
-the great clock in the neighboring tower striking of midnight; and I had
-yet to ford the passageway between the graves! Already I might have been
-missed. I read no more, but thrust the papers within my breast. Then I
-bent and kissed the hands of the monk, feeling again that rush of
-softness, and as I kissed the hands I noticed the great string of beads
-which fell from the girdle, and that too I kissed, and the crucifix
-dependent from it; and these things I did blindly, having then a hard
-and ignorant heart, but being compelled I knew not how.
-
-Then I stole from the tower-room and again down the winding staircase;
-but first I had drawn the cowl over the face and hid the hands and feet
-in the folds of the habit; and so left him to quietness and the night.
-
-I made the return passage without any mishap; and though a fear assailed
-me on the way lest I had locked myself within by closing the door, there
-was no ground for it, for the panel opened simply enough, and was indeed
-secured by a bolt on the passage side; which no doubt had prevented my
-finding the opening before. For either the monk had left it undone now
-by design, or being surprised by his last sickness, or else a companion
-or companions of his had fled the house-way while we slept, leaving the
-door unbarred. Yet I had seen no sign of any other inmate of the tower
-save one; that is of visible folk, for I doubt not there were others,
-ministering and invisible.
-
-So I returned as I had come and went hastily to the banquet-hall. As I
-entered my lord and the Lord Boyle were returning slowly to their
-places. I caught a word of their speech. "You will remember the trust,"
-said my dear lord; and I knew not it was of me they were talking. "Yea,"
-said my Lord Boyle, and showed his yellow teeth; "let it be in my hands,
-or else when Jamie succeeds some Scot will have it." And then he
-laughed, rubbing his lean hands together.
-
-Then my lord observed me, and calling me to him he put his hand upon my
-shoulder and looked at me with surprise.
-
-"Why, Wat," he said, "what spider's nest hath caught you?"
-
-I looked down then at my brave apparel, and was confused to find that it
-was gray with dust and cobwebs from my journey.
-
-"He hath been ratting," said my Lord Boyle, "and hath pursued the quarry
-even within their holes."
-
-"It matters less," said my lord, "since it is the hour to put on soberer
-attire. Be in good time, Wat,"--and so saying he released me. Then I
-hurried to my chamber in the roof, and was right pleased that I had not
-been questioned more closely. And when I had laid away my fine apparel
-and all was ready for our journey, I took my paper to the candle-light
-that I might decipher it.
-
-It had been written for my hand and none other, and the writer thereof
-was mine own father's brother. I was indeed of the illustrious Desmond
-house, though of a younger branch; and yet in the havoc that had come
-upon it I might well now be all that was living of the race. I had, it
-seemed, my father being slain, been hidden with my mother in the forest
-by a faithful clansman, who had provided us with what food he might; who
-being out one day snaring rabbits in the forest had been caught by a
-party of the enemy and borne away by them strapped to one of their
-horses. He had escaped them by the mercy of God, and returned to the
-place where he had left us, to find his lady dead of starvation and
-myself gone. Doubtless that sweet mother of mine had starved through
-giving all she had to her child. The man knew not if I had met an enemy
-and been hacked or speared to death, or if the wolves had had me, or the
-fierce eagles that yet infest the forest in search of tender prey. He
-grieved to death not knowing. But the friar, Brother Ambrose, the last
-of the White Monks of Youghall, and mine uncle, known to men as Roderick
-Fitzmaurice, rested not till he had found if I were of this life, and at
-last discovered me. Having written this history for mine eyes, he
-wrestled with me further that I should come out from among the enemies
-of my people. But to what end? I asked, having so much worldly wisdom,
-since the Desmond clan was gone down in blood, and its inheritance with
-strangers. Indeed, when I had come to the dead man's prayers, I folded
-up the paper as one that will not listen and fears to be persuaded. Even
-then there came from the harbor a ringing of bells and the shouts of the
-sailors as they drew up the anchor of the Bon Aventure from its bed in
-the sands. I therefore thrust my fine garments into my sea-chest and
-shot the bolt; but mine uncle's message to me I put within my doublet.
-As the ship swung round, and we headed her for eastward I turned my
-thoughts away from the quiet sleeper in the church tower, and looked
-rather to my lord's dark figure as he leant over the vessel's side,
-gazing not the way she was going, but rather to westward. For though he
-was the enemy of my race and my country, yet I loved him with such a
-love that nothing could dissever my heart from him. And for his sake I
-was not sorry even that I had not sooner discovered that poor kinsman of
-mine--the very last it well might be--in his hiding-place. For no doubt
-he had come many times to the room in which he had first found me, but
-never found me again. And now he was dead and past caring any more.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.--OF A STRAIT PLACE AND A QUIET TIME.
-
-
-A few days later the Bon Aventure was lying in the river Thames, and we
-had no more than cast anchor when my lord put on his richest clothes,
-and bidding me to attend him, went by water to the steps leading to the
-Queen's palace of Westminster. I remember that the way took us past
-Traitor's Gate, the low and threatening portals by which prisoners are
-brought within the Tower. As we passed my lord looked at me with a sad
-smile. "I shall go that way yet, Wat," he said. And when I burst into a
-passionate protest, he said to me: "Why, Wat, if you could look upon the
-company which hath passed by way of that gate, you would see it to be of
-the finest. I shall not blush to tread in their footsteps." But I could
-not believe it, looking upon him in his garb of peach-bloom velvet laced
-with silver, and the jewels of a king's ransom; and yet alas! he spoke
-too truly.
-
-I remember when we were come to those stairs of Westminster how the
-people pressed to look upon him, and shouted for him, and flung their
-caps in the air. If he was not in favor at the court, certainly he
-lacked not favor outside it.
-
-Even within the palace the pages and the maids of honor peeped at him,
-and many courtiers thronged to welcome him, and the scullions and grooms
-of the chambers looked through windows and down staircases to see him
-pass, so that to me it was as though the tapestry wavered with whispers
-and eyes. As we waited for an audience we saw many great men pass, but
-not one fit to stand beside my lord. Then came the Queen, a shrunk,
-tall, high-boned woman, in a blaze of diamonds, the ruff standing about
-her spare, pale head like a setting sun, so thick it was with jewels,
-and her farthingale and petticoat making a prodigious circle about her.
-She had green eyes, and they were cold, and coldly she gave her hand to
-my lord to kiss.
-
-She had called him back because Spain threatened; but now he was come
-she could not forget her anger. That was for the old affair of Mistress
-Throckmorton. I heard the pages whispering that day that she had not
-forgiven him; and one, a pert, bright lad, who won my heart because he
-was so eager to see and hear of the Great Captain, told me how my Lord
-Essex had in likewise nearly forfeited the Queen's favor. For he had
-admired upon the person of the Lady Mary Howard a farthingale of cloth
-of gold, sewn with seed-pearls, the which coming to the Queen's ears she
-had demanded the garment for herself, saying that no subject should go
-finer than the Queen's Majesty. But having acquired it she discovered
-herself to be too tall and too broad for it, so that it misbecame her
-mightily. Whereupon she cast it aside so that none should wear it since
-she could not.
-
-Of the same palace I grew sick to death. How long were we kept waiting
-about its corridors till the Queen's favor should veer towards us again.
-It suited not with a country lad like myself; and as for my lord, his
-face grew lined and he seldom smiled: so that often, often, I longed
-that the old gardening days in Youghall were come again. Nor had he yet
-seen his wife and son. At last he grew restive, and declared that
-Devonshire air consorted better with his humor than the dank fogs that
-spread at evening about Westminster. But ere he could be gone he was
-committed to the Tower on the Queen's warrant. So, sooner than we dreamt
-were we come to Traitor's Gate.
-
-I went thither with him, and together we passed the low arch. There I
-was permitted to be in attendance on him, and listened often to his
-cries and groans, for he could not endure the imprisonment while there
-were so many glorious things in the world to be done. Sometimes he would
-solace himself with philosophy and poetry. But at times his fury would
-break forth so that the governor of the Tower feared for him lest he
-should go mad. He well described his own sufferings.
-
-"I am become like a fish cast on dry land," he wrote, "gasping for
-breath, with lame legs and lamer lungs."
-
-Indeed there were times when it seemed as if he would die from being so
-imprisoned and confined. Trust in the Queen's pity he had not.
-
-"There is no chance for me now, Wat," he said once, "unless it be that
-one of my captains should bring home a treasure-ship to pour into her
-lap, which might buy my freedom if she conceived that by that means I
-might find her more. For she loves gold as other women love love,
-wherefore is her face become yellower than a guinea."
-
-It was for some such saying, doubtless, the Queen had had him cast in
-the Tower. He was not one to learn guile; and, like his rival, Essex, he
-was over-brave in speech as in other things.
-
-However, that happened that one of his captains did bring home a
-treasure-ship. He had been in the Tower two months, and had worn the
-stone floors with his pacing of them, more restless than the lion. The
-folk came to stare at him in the courtyard without. Then word came to us
-that his ships were in from the Azores and had brought with them the
-Spanish plate-ship, the Madre di Dios, which they had captured from the
-Dons. Half a million, a million, there was no end to the guineas she was
-worth. She was lined with glowing, woven carpets, sarcenet quilts, and
-lengths of white silks and cyprus. She carried, in chests of sandalwood
-and ebony, such stores of rubies and pearls, such porcelain and ivory
-and crystal, such planks of cinnamon, and such marvellous treasures as
-had never before been seen. Her hold seemed like a garden of spices, so
-laden was it with cloves, cinnamon, ambergris, and frankincense.
-
-But even then the Queen was not minded to deliver him. His chief captain
-came from the mouth of the Dart, where the ship lay, to bring him his
-reports; but no message came from the Queen. However, his freeing was
-taken out of her hands and came not a whit too soon, for he had aged ten
-years in those two months. It seemed that the usurers and dealers in
-precious metals in London had flocked to the Dart upon the news of the
-treasure. And vagrants from all the winds flocked thither. And between
-those vultures and my lord's own seamen and men of Devon there was soon
-riot and bloodshed. Then, since all means of restoring the peace seemed
-to have failed, at last they took my lord from the Tower that he might
-make peace.
-
-It seemed that half the world was about the treasure-ship, and my lord's
-ships. There came to greet us at our journey's end that Lord Cecil of
-whom I had heard so much. I trusted him not, and I was rejoiced that he
-should see the passion of welcome which awaited my lord from his men of
-Devon. It was well that it was so, for my Lord Cecil reported upon it to
-the Queen.
-
-"I assure you," he wrote, "all his servants and his mariners came to him
-with such shouts of joy as I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them
-in all my life. But his heart is broken, and whenever he is saluted with
-congratulation for liberty he doth answer, 'No, I am still the Queen of
-England's poor captive.' But I vow to you his credit among the mariners
-is greater than I could have thought it."
-
-My Lord Cecil was well disposed to my lord, albeit his cunning eyes and
-old, wise face made my youth feel of a sudden cold. The Queen harkened
-to him, and we were returned no more to the Tower; yet those two months
-of impatient fretting had set their mark upon my lord.
-
-After this we sailed up the Dart to that Manor-house where the Lady
-Raleigh dwelt with her son. And again there was a very sweet interval of
-peace. I have now but to close my eyes and see again the red-brick ivied
-house, with its chimney-stack dark against the sky. The swallows are
-wheeling overhead, shouting and playing with one another. The rooks are
-coming homeward across the evening sky. On the green and velvety bowling
-green young Walter and I are playing at bowls. There are roses on the
-terrace and a peacock spreading his tail. Below these is the garden with
-its box borders, its roses and pinks and pansies; its fountain where the
-goldfish swim round and round, and its mossy dial. Further yet is the
-orchard, and beyond it the deer feeding amid the trees, and further
-still the river, and apple-orchards, with maids and men a-gathering
-apples for the cider brew. But I look not so far. My eye rests with my
-heart upon my lord, when he goeth between the box-borders in sweet
-converse with his lady-wife; and I watch him till young Walter rallies
-me as a poor comrade and player at the game.
-
-Often my lady would take me apart, and bid me tell her of my lord when
-he was in Ireland. Of those years she was never tired of hearing; and
-when my tongue or my thoughts would grow slack she would grow impatient
-with me. Yet I think my love for her lord pleased her. She was a little
-lady, and the brightest ever I saw, with cream-pale cheeks and the
-liveliest of black eyes. I could not wonder that for a time she lulled
-to sleep my lord's desires for America. Very pitiful she was towards the
-havoc their long parting and the trouble and the imprisonment had
-wrought in him, and would stand a-tiptoes to smooth the wrinkles out
-with her dainty finger.
-
-The Lord Cecil was now my lord's friend at court, and to him she writ
-beseeching that there might be no more voyages, at least for the time.
-
-"I hope for my sake," she writ, "that you wilt rather draw Walter toward
-the East than help him forward toward the sunset, if any respect to me
-or love to him be not forgotten."
-
-So we remained in peace, and young Walter and I flew our hawks and
-played at the ball, and fished and swam to our hearts' content. And
-dearly as I loved my lord, I came to love his son hardly less. He was a
-brave lad of Devon, this Walter Raleigh, tall as his father, and nigh as
-comely, yet innocent and quiet, with the country innocence and quietude,
-because by reason of the Queen's displeasure he had abode all his years
-in those sequestered ways; yet skilled in all such manly and courtly
-arts as became the son of his father; so that he was as good with a
-sonnet as at swordplay, and could dance the pavane as prettily as he
-could loose his goshawk. And for all his innocence was not unfit to face
-a rough world; and for all his quiet kindliness was as brave and as
-quick to fight as any gallant ever I saw.
-
-My lord looked on at our comradeship well pleased. I heard him ask my
-Lady Raleigh one day if we did not make a gallant couple, at which my
-lady pouted, and said he was loving me in Ireland when she and her Wat
-were forgotten. "Nay," said he, "that never was, Sweetlips; but he
-comforted me something in my loneliness without wife and son." Then my
-lady called me to her, and kissed me like a mother, and vowed that she
-loved me for what I had been to her lord in those Irish years. She
-changed quickly in her pretty humors; but there was no change in her
-constancy and kindness towards me any more than in her lord's love.
-
-After that we went eastward for a season to the village of Bath, to
-drink at its springs, which had been discovered to be sovereign remedy
-for many ills. It was my Lady Raleigh's will to make her lord well
-again. "As though, Bess," he said, "you could turn backward the years we
-have been parted."
-
-And I left the Manor-house with grief and pain, for never again, I
-feared, should we have a season of such peace. My lord was not one to
-abide long in peace; and certainly the Bath waters as they restored his
-strength restored also his passion for adventure and turmoil, so that my
-Lady Raleigh in healing him but defeated her desire of keeping him with
-her. For after a time he seemed no longer quiet and well-content. And he
-had yet not only his share of the treasure-ship, though I doubt not the
-greater part was poured in the Queen's lap, but he had also my Lord
-Boyle's purse to draw upon.
-
-Then as he was becoming restive, yea, straining as a hound strains at
-the leash, and declaring that he would sail before the mast if he might
-none other way, one of his captains, Popham by name, and a stout old
-sea-dog from the harbor town of Plymouth, brought him letters writ by a
-Spanish captain to the King of Spain, and captured by the English ship.
-Reading them my lord seemed as he would choke with fury. I knew how my
-lord's heart turned to Guiana, the golden country. And these letters
-reported that the Governor of Trinidad had annexed this same wondrous
-land in the name of King Philip. Then, even my Lady Raleigh saw that it
-was no use seeking to hold her lord any longer; and she bade him go,
-with so sweet a grace and so high a spirit that she proved herself even
-a worthy mate for the Great Captain.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.--THE TREASURE-SHIP.
-
-
-We left my Lady Raleigh alone in the spring of the year. It was February
-the sixth, and the snowdrop and crocus were up in the garden-beds of the
-Manor-house, and the blackbirds and thrushes singing nigh as sweet as
-they sing in Ireland, when we put out from Plymouth with five ships and
-a motley company. It was a stolen expedition in a manner of speaking;
-for we hoisted our flag for Virginia, yet I think the meanest scullion
-aboard knew that Guiana was our port. For it was not politic to flout
-too openly Philip of Spain; though we might fly the Jolly Roger and
-overhaul his treasure-ships on the high seas. For the Queen of England,
-as she grew older grew craftier; and would have any cat's-paw to draw
-her chestnuts out of the fire, and bear the brunt of it as well, while
-she went free.
-
-We two Wats sailed with Sir Walter. 'Twas time, he said, his son should
-see the world; and indeed it would have gone hard with us to be left
-behind.
-
-It is wonderful to me now to recall how I had learnt--yea, as though I
-had been English-born--to hate the Spaniard, as though he had been a rat
-or some such thing, and no evil but merit in the slaying and despoiling
-of him. And therein was shown the folly and vanity of my youth; for not
-only was the Spaniard a grave and majestic foe, but he was of the faith
-my fathers had died to defend. Yet of this I thought not at all at the
-time, being indeed little better than a heathen; for my lord, albeit he
-was religious at heart, yet showed little of it in his life, and
-troubled not at all about it in others. Indeed, it is a strange thing to
-me now to reflect that all who led that wild life had yet some measure
-of religion; for then the days of the cold-heart and the mocker had not
-yet begun.
-
-I remember as we made the voyage how Wat and I used to gather at night
-about the mast to hear the sailors tell stories and sing songs. There
-was one, Jonas Tittlebat, of Devizes, who was our favorite story-teller
-of them all, and I doubt not our favorite stories were of the slaying of
-Spaniards and sacking of their ships. It was as though one should inure
-a tender child to the shambles. For we grew to love the talk of blood,
-and to desire to see and smell and taste it; and I remember how at the
-end of the recitals Wat and I used to sit and pant, facing each other
-like a pair of tiger-cats, with the lust of blood in our hearts. For
-though we had been brought up simply and innocently the evil was there,
-only awaiting the breath that should fan it to a flame, and the
-fostering hands that would not let it go out.
-
-Many weeks, even months, were we sailing till we came in sight of land,
-and for some days before this the southwesterly wind had brought us many
-an earnest of the beautiful country, brilliant and strange leaves, and
-plumes, and shells, and flowers, drifting to us over the phosphorescent
-water which at night made the sea a dance of silver.
-
-Of my lord we saw little during the voyage. He was ever busy with his
-maps and charts in the cabin, observing the motion of his compasses, and
-studying the stars by night. Or else he was writing; and often it made
-me wonder to see how he, so greatly in love with action and energy,
-could yet content himself so many hours with the pen.
-
-As we sailed up the river the beauty of it struck us dumb. I saw my lord
-stand in the bows of the vessel and drink in hungrily the beauty of that
-land. Exceedingly fertile it seemed, nor can I describe it better than
-in his own words.
-
-"I never imagined a more beautiful country nor more lively prospects,"
-he wrote; "hills so raised here and there over the valleys; the river
-winding into divers branches; the plains adjoining without bush or
-stubble, but all fair, green grass; the deer crossing in every path; the
-birds towards the evening singing on every tree with a thousand several
-tunes, cranes and herons of white, crimson, and carnation, perching on
-the river's side; the air fresh with a gentle easterly wind, and every
-stone that we stooped to take up promised either gold or silver by his
-complexion."
-
-We sailed even into the golden city of Manoa, and there saw the houses
-with their strange carvings, and their cups and drinking-vessels of
-precious metal; and the marvellous temple with its hundred images of
-beaten gold, the eyes of diamonds, and with necklets of rubies large as
-pigeon's eggs, and garments sewn with pearls and emeralds.
-
-The poor Indians who possessed these treasures were a mild and gentle
-race, ignorant of how greatly men's passions were inflamed by gold and
-gems, which to them were common matters. They were no savages, but a
-nation with a certain knowledge of the arts and a civilization after
-their own manner; and it was touching to see how kindly and sweetly they
-welcomed the white man among them, although indeed in the ships were to
-be found some of the worst rascals that ever sailed out of Plymouth.
-However, fear of my lord kept this rascaldom in check; for he loved the
-Indians, and made it a matter with the Queen that in any expedition to
-the Guianas there should be no ill-treatment of the gentle race. Indeed
-he believed honestly that he were better their master than Spain, and so
-had less compunction in seeking their treasures.
-
-But now a larger expedition was needed, and one that would have the
-Queen's sanction; and so having feasted our eyes on the delights of this
-enchanting country we turned our ships for home, bearing with us gifts
-of gems and gold with which the Indians had loaded us, and also great
-stores of roots and plants and many strange matters.
-
-We were not bent on any adventure, for my lord thought only of gaining
-the Queen's ear, displaying to her the earnest he brought of the
-treasures of Guiana, and returning thither as fast as might be after
-fitting out a large fleet of ships; and then of taking possession in the
-Queen's name. For greater even than his passion for adventure were his
-love of England and hatred of Spain; and the new policy of pleasing King
-Philip he loathed with all his heart.
-
-The homeward voyage therefore he spent in writing for the Queen's eye an
-account of Guiana, which afterwards he magnified into his book "_On the
-Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a
-relation of the great and Golden City of Manoa, which the Spaniards call
-El Dorado, and the Provinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, and other
-Countries, with their Rivers adjoining_."
-
-So we were left again to the story-telling about the mast; and this grew
-more violent and rank with blood, as though the sight of so much
-treasure as we had left behind us had inflamed the minds of the tellers.
-Yea, we ate and drank blood, it seems to me, now looking back on those
-recitals; and were thus prepared for what followed.
-
-For lo, one evening we saw far off upon the waters the shape of a great
-ship. Her poop was high out of the water, and apart from her size she
-was easy to be seen, for as the night gathered she blazed with candles
-so that she was like a fiery thing upon the waters.
-
-Then there was such a confusion and excitement on the ships as never
-have I seen surpassed. My lord had left his books, and standing by the
-prow of the Bon Aventure gazed through his telescope upon that far-away
-vision that hung like a great golden bird against the purple of the
-after-sunset. There was no doubt in any mind that she was a Spanish
-galleon by her high poop and her great decks above the water. She was
-indeed none other than the famous treasure-ship, Nuestra Senora del
-Pilar, and she was riding without any escort.
-
-We extinguished every light we had aboard the ships, and in cover of the
-darkness we crept upon her. She was big as a little town, it seemed to
-me; and for all she was so gayly lit she slept well, for we crept up
-under her stern, and there was no cry from her lookout. At last we were
-so near that I could see the image of the Holy Virgin at her masthead,
-and the lamp burning before it. But the image said nothing to me then.
-
-The great ship was almost motionless on the dark water. Indeed I
-wondered if she had cast anchor, so still she was; yet how cast anchor
-in so many fathoms of water?
-
-With much care and muffling of our oars we now took to the boats, and as
-fast as the boats filled they rowed towards the ship. The boat in which
-I was came up by the poop. I looked above me in wonder at all the rows
-of carven saints and angels, as it were the hierarchy of heaven. Over
-the side a rope swung noiselessly, as though it had been left there for
-our purpose. We clambered up it one after another and stood on deck,
-where was not a living soul, and this puzzled us not a little. But the
-bulwarks were set round with carven images in little niches, and each
-had its lamp, and the like on every deck; and that was how the
-illumination had come.
-
-I looked round on the shipmen in the light of the many shrines. Some had
-the brown and wholesome faces of seamen, and though they looked fierce
-and blood-thirsty enough, were yet no worse than any fighting man. But
-others were no better than Algerine pirates, and carried a knife in
-their teeth and their pistols at full cock, and were as ready to slay
-and murder as any evil beast. For my lord had sailed with but a handful
-of his own men amid the scum of Plymouth rascaldom.
-
-Yet even these did the silence of the great ship somewhat appal. And for
-myself, though I was as ready for murder and rapine as any, yet was I
-given pause; and hearing my lord's whisper at my elbow, I turned and
-looked at him. "What do you make of it, Wat?" he asked. "Do you think it
-is a trap?"
-
-But ere I could answer him a figure came up the stairway from the cabin.
-It was an old man, very tall, and in the garb of a white friar, just
-such another as I had left sleeping in St. Mary's Tower. The likeness
-sent a thrill of terror through me. The old man saw us not. He carried a
-taper in his hand; he was going round doubtless to replenish the lamps
-if they had gone out. The light from the taper showed a face of much
-benignancy--an old, kind face. The cowl had fallen back, and the silver
-tonsure gleamed in the light.
-
-Suddenly some one stirred in our midst, and all at once he knew that we
-were there. He opened his lips as though to speak. Then some of those
-pirates were upon him. I saw him lift the great crucifix that hung by
-his side between them and him. Then he was down, and the knives were
-hewing him. I thought no more on it, though it turned me sick an
-instant.
-
-The ship now swarmed with our men rushing hither and thither in search
-of treasure. Some were seizing the silver lamps before the shrines,
-others were tearing down the images. A rush of men swept me from my feet
-and down the cabin stairs, and I grasped my sword tighter. But here was
-no enemy. Only rich garments flung hither and thither in the silk-hung
-rooms, and many signs of the ship having been deserted in haste.
-
-I would have gone further, leaving the place to those who were tearing
-it to pieces, dragging down the hangings, kicking open the cedar-wood
-lockers, and pouring the precious wine they found there down their
-throats; I would have gone further had not my lord prevented me.
-
-"Come up on deck, Wat," he said; "there is a scent of death here that
-sickens me. I am glad I left my boy on the Bon Aventure."
-
-He dragged me with him. We were hardly up in the pure air before there
-was a scream from the mad herd below that turned one cold to hear; and
-as though the devil pursued them they came clambering up the hatches and
-staircases white as death, and sobered, and began flinging themselves
-off the sides of the vessel into their boats.
-
-"They would leave us here, Wat, to the terror, whatever it may be," said
-my lord, "if I had not had with me by good fortune a handful of mine own
-shipmates. Ah, Gregory Dabchick"--seizing one--"what white devil hast
-thou seen below-stairs?"
-
-"If you please, none, Captain," cried Dabchick, his breath sobbing; "but
-a worse thing. There are half a dozen corpses below there, dead of the
-smallpox. 'Tis a floating pest-house, my lord, and the place reeks with
-death."
-
-"Ah," said Sir Walter, as we stood waiting for the mob to get off the
-ship, "the monk would have told us so if those dogs had not murdered
-him. Doubtless he remained behind when the others fled away, to nurse
-the living and bury the dead, and solaced himself, poor soul, by setting
-candles to his saints."
-
-Ere we were put into Plymouth town again there were eighty of our
-hundred dead of the smallpox; and I was carried ashore more dead than
-alive, to be nursed back to health by the Lady Raleigh's ministering
-hands.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.--OUR LAST YEARS TOGETHER.
-
-
-I came out of that illness no longer the youth I had been; for God used
-the things that had happened me to make a change in my heart. I went
-very near to death, and I came back to life very grievously disfigured,
-yea, as though I had been slashed criss-cross with swords, and the sight
-of one of mine eyes gone. Nevermore should I ruffle it with gallants;
-and indeed it seemed a bitter and cruel thing to the boy, this ruin of
-comeliness, so that for long the bitterness was greater than death, yet
-since then the man has learned to thank the Hand that wielded that most
-merciful rod.
-
-I was yet but a moping thing, creeping up heavily from death to life,
-when my lord sailed on that expedition to Cadiz with the Lord Admiral
-Thomas Howard and his old-time enemy the Lord Essex, which brought such
-glory to the English name. I think there was but one part of my old self
-remained alive in me, and that was my love for Sir Walter, which is
-wrought so inextricably within the chords of my being that nothing shall
-disentangle it.
-
-I had been sick to death during that time when Sir Walter had wrestled
-vainly with the Queen for an expedition to Guiana, and been discomfited.
-For truly her will was brass and iron; nothing for man, however great,
-to prevail against, and for long her face had been turned away from him,
-and seemed like to remain so.
-
-I was getting well, with no heart to recover, when the reports came of
-the Cadiz expedition. It was glorious summer weather, and my Lady
-Raleigh, whose patience was more than human with me, would have me
-carried to the lawn under shade of trees; and there laid on my pillows I
-would listen to her proud recitals of her lord's heroic deeds.
-
-It was on the 21st of June that the fleet entered Cadiz Harbor. My lord
-was on board the Water Sprite; and he had no sooner entered than he
-received the fire of seventeen great galleons. But as though she had
-been indeed spirit and not body, the Sprite went unharmed. Raleigh blew
-his trumpets upon them in a great blare of defiance. Near at hand lay
-the St. Philip and the St. Andrew, the two ships foremost in that attack
-on the Revenge in which the brave Sir Richard Greville had fallen.
-"These," wrote he, "were the marks I shot at, being resolved to be
-revenged for the Revenge, or to second her with my own life.... Having
-no hope of my fly-boats to board, and the Earl and my Lord Thomas having
-both promised to second me, I laid out a way by the side of the Philip
-to shake hands with her, for with the wind we could not get aboard;
-which when she and the rest perceived they all let slip and ran aground,
-tumbling into the sea heaps of soldiers as thick as if coals had been
-poured out of a sack in many parts at once, some drowned and some
-sticking in the mud. The Philip burned itself, the St. Andrew and the
-St. Matthew were recovered by our boats ere they could get out to fire
-them. The spectacle was very lamentable, for many drowned themselves;
-many, half-burned, leaped into the water; very many hanging by the
-rope's end by the ship's side, under the water even to the lips; many
-swimming with grievous wounds, and withal so huge a fire and so great a
-tearing of ordnance in the great Philip and the rest, when the fire came
-to them, as if a man had a desire to see Hell itself it was there most
-lively figured. Ourselves spared the lives of all after the victory, but
-the Flemings, who did little or nothing in the fight, used merciless
-slaughter, till they were by myself, and afterwards by the Lord Admiral,
-beaten off."
-
-"The poor Spaniards!" cried my Lady Raleigh with tears, even while she
-was proudest; but as for me, I had no heart to rejoice or to be sorry,
-being so marred myself, and scarce anything alive in me except my love
-for her lord, and even that pulsed faintly.
-
-He came home to be hailed with such cheers and shouts by the common
-people as pleased the Queen but little, for she liked not to be eclipsed
-by a subject. Besides, the victory gave her little treasure; and she
-grew more and more miserly. Though my lord was glorious with wounds, she
-even refused to look upon him, which led me to say, as I have said often
-since, that the greatness of those Tudors lay chiefly in their hard
-usage of those who made them great. However, there was to gauge a deeper
-depth when the Stuart came to England's throne.
-
-I had feared my lord's face when he came to look on me in my
-disfigurement, for he loved beauty, so that I scarcely dared to lift my
-one sound eye to his. Yet when I had found courage to do so I found
-nothing but love in his regard, and he embraced me as a father might,
-kissing my seamed cheek and calling me his dear lad. And young Walter
-likewise; for in the years that followed, during which we continued the
-tender friendship that had sprung up between us at the first, I have
-never once seen in his manner that pity which I could not have borne.
-
-But the end of our misfortunes was not yet. Elizabeth died, and the son
-of Mary of Scotland succeeded; and now my lord anticipated no more ill
-than came, for the Stuart truckled to King Philip as never a Tudor had
-done, and 'twas like the Spaniard's first demand would be that the most
-glorious of his enemies should be laid away beyond power of annoying him
-more. So it was that presently my lord was accused of being joined with
-the Lord Cobham in a plot to bring the Lady Arabella Stuart to the
-throne, and was cast into the Tower.
-
-Then began that long martyrdom which is the everlasting disgrace of the
-meanest of Kings. He had made friends with his mother's slayer. What was
-to be looked for from him? But to shut an eagle in a cage, to clip a
-sea-bird's wings, to confine in a little space the noblest, freest
-spirit that lived, and the loyalist to England! This remained for Mary
-Stuart's son to do.
-
-There was no end to that imprisonment. Again I went with him to the
-Tower; while my lady had a lodging without the walls. Young Walter still
-fought, as his father had before him, the battles of England by land and
-sea. And I was my lord's squire in the Tower, and had as much glory and
-love in it as though 'twere the Field of Cloth of Gold.
-
-For now I was to witness the greatness of his spirit. When it had been
-borne in upon him that this imprisonment was like to have no end, he
-fretted not as he did in those two months long ago, but solaced his
-heart by the writing of that great _History of the World_ which remains
-his monument. Also religion came sweetly to his aid, for that which had
-been out of sight in his wild, seafaring days now leaped up like a
-flame. Indeed never have I seen a greater tranquillity. He also occupied
-himself with the distilling of sweet waters and medicinal herbs; and the
-Governor of the Tower, who loved him, permitted that his still should be
-set up in the Governor's garden, where also he took up again his old
-gardening ways. Indeed he kept his pain as being a captive out of sight
-after the first, and contented himself heroically; although his lady,
-poor soul, deafened the court with her prayers for her brave Wat, as
-though it were not the Spaniard who had turned the key upon him.
-
-Nor yet was he forgotten by his old lovers, the common people. They
-waited in crowds to see him walk upon the terrace. The sailors shouted
-for him as the ships came up the river. As the years passed, and his
-feats became a legend, ladies and cavaliers came praying from the
-lieutenant of the Tower a word with the lion-heart. Still he wore his
-velvets and silks and damasks; still he blazed with jewels: no dusty
-prisoner, but a splendid knight, pacing the terrace while summers and
-winters went.
-
-Even the Queen came thither with her young son begging his "strawberry
-water" to cure her of an ailment; and if the mother returned not it was
-not so with the son. The young Prince Henry came again and again, and
-being a youth of high and generous spirit, loved my lord in time near as
-well as we did, who had seen his glories. "None save my father," he
-quoth bitterly, "would have kept such a bird in a cage."
-
-His relation with my lord came in time to be as that of master and
-pupil, for he would pace with him for hours while my lord discoursed on
-the arts of peace and war and the duties of a prince to his subjects. So
-great grew the tenderness between them that I doubt not if the young
-Prince had lived my lord would have stood at his right hand. But that
-was not to be: he died untimely, and the last prayer on his lips was for
-the freeing of his friend.
-
-The dead Prince's prayer was forgotten; but presently when the King
-wanted money he remembered the treasures of Guiana and those gifts my
-lord had brought to Queen Elizabeth. 'Twas as mean a bargain as ever was
-made. My lord was to have his liberty. He was to find the money for the
-ships and the men; but whatever treasure the gold mines in the Orinoco
-yielded was to fall to the King. On these conditions, and that he was
-not to meddle with the Spaniards, my lord set out. I went with him; and
-young Walter also sailed. He who had been a noble and gallant youth was
-now become a noble and gallant man, and my lord had great hopes of him;
-but, alas, Death mows down the fairest and the most promising.
-
-From the first the thing was ill-fated. We were not so far sailed when
-fever broke out and ravaged the ships. Now there is nothing like a
-pestilence for breaking the heart and reducing the spirit in men; and
-ere ever we reached Guiana shores there was grumbling a-shipboard and
-mutiny in the air. And when we were come there it was to find the
-Spaniards, with forces of ships and men guarding the mouth of the river;
-for all our secrets had been betrayed to them.
-
-Nor would it matter what force the Spaniards had, nor would any murmur
-have arisen if but the Captain had been at our head. But he, alas, was
-laid low by the sickness; and his men without him as a shepherdless
-flock that is driven hither and thither and blown upon by winds of
-confusion. For when they found the Spanish defences they cried out that
-they had been betrayed, and would go no further.
-
-Then young Walter, that inheritor of all braveries, leaped to the front
-and offered to creep ashore, past the line of the Spaniards, and reach
-the mines if so he might, and return with reports upon them. Also
-Captain Keymis, one of the bravest of Raleigh's seamen, would go with
-him. With tender embracings and partings did father and son say
-farewell, that never were to look on each other in this life again. For
-a party of Spaniards did set upon our dear Wat and his brave companion,
-together with the little force that went with them; and shouting to his
-men to come on, Wat fell, hacked to pieces by Spanish swords.
-
-Captain Keymis escaped to bring back the tale of disaster and a report
-that there was no gold to be had at the mines now, whatever had been. So
-the men murmured more; though my lord, sick as he was, would himself go
-in search of the mines and in pursuit of the Spaniards that had slain
-his son. But none would follow him.
-
-Then, broken-hearted, the lion of England at last turned his back on his
-promised land and set sail for England to meet his death at last. He had
-better have died fighting the Spaniards, yet that his men would not
-permit; and I think none of them guessed that they brought him home to
-his death.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.--AN UNRAVELLED THREAD.
-
-
-Once again we were in the dolorous Tower, and this time there was no
-returning. They arrested him at Plymouth on the moment of his landing.
-As though they could never slay him fast enough, he was put on his trial
-and found guilty of abusing the King's confidence and injuring the
-subjects of Spain, and condemned to death on the old sentence.
-
-Perhaps they thought if they were not speedy that the people would not
-suffer it. To kill a Raleigh was better sport than witch-burning, yet
-they hardly paused from their torture of innocent crones and helpless
-girls to see the lion die. One grace they gave him--that his body was to
-be spared the last indignities and to be handed over to his wife for
-burial where she would. "It is well, Bess," he said to her, rallying
-her, "thou mayst dispose of that dead which thou hadst not always the
-disposal of when living."
-
-The last night he lived he spoke with me of my birth. I then told him
-that I had held the secret all those years. "Yet you stayed, Wat," he
-said gently, "though I was the enemy of your people."
-
-"But ever my most dear and admired lord," I made answer.
-
-Then he told me how he had always intended that I should have his
-portion of the Desmond inheritance, together with certain jewels and
-plate which he had hidden in a secret place in the garden at Youghall;
-but he had been obliged by sore necessity to give six thousand acres to
-the Lord Boyle, who was now Earl of Cork. Another six thousand the Lord
-Boyle was to hold in trust for me. "The deeds are safe," he said, "and
-he is bound fast. If he will not disgorge, you must even make him."
-
-"Alas, to what end?" I asked, "seeing that by my name I am an outlawed
-man."
-
-"You might be the King's Fitzmaurice," he said, hesitatingly.
-
-"My dear lord," I made answer, "tomorrow morn I am done with earthly
-hopes. Am I one to go to court, or to present myself to my people, if
-people I yet possess?"
-
-"Why, Wat," he said gently, "I think others might love that seamed face
-of yours since I do so greatly. What will you do? Will you comfort my
-lady?"
-
-"If she needs me," I made answer.
-
-"I think she will go to her own folk," he said.
-
-"Then I shall be free to do what I will."
-
-"And that, Wat?"
-
-"Seek out a hermitage far from the world."
-
-"It is truest wisdom," he said. "I was not born to be quiet or else I
-might wish that I had found wisdom in my time."
-
-But he asked me nothing more of what I meant to do, although he placed
-the deeds in my hands to carry to the Lord Boyle. I think he had so done
-with this world that but for his lady's sake he had been glad his doom
-was at hand. Think on it! He had been twelve years in that Tower, who
-could never abide the least shackle, however gentle.
-
-While yet I was with him he writ this verse and gave it me with a smile:
-
-    Even such is He that takes in trust
-      Our youth, our joys, our all we have
-    And pays us but with earth and dust;
-      Who in the dark and silent grave,
-    When we have wandered all our ways
-    Shuts up the story of our days;
-    But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
-    My God shall raise me up, I trust.
-
-The next morning I helped to caparison him as for his wedding. Such gay
-trappings for death were never seen, such rose-pink silk, bediamonded,
-such white velvet, such white leathern shoes with rosettes of rubies.
-Then once again I saw my lord young and glad, and so full of jests that
-it grieved the good Dean of Westminster to hear him, for he thought it a
-light spirit in which to meet death.
-
-Throngs of people crowded the palace-yard of Westminster to see him for
-the last time. He smiled upon them happily while he spoke his farewells
-to them.
-
-"I thank God," he said, "that He hath brought me into the light to die,
-and hath not suffered me to die in the dark prison of the Tower, where I
-have known a great deal of misery and sickness. And I thank God that my
-fever hath not taken me at this time, as I prayed Him it might not, that
-I might clear myself of some accusations laid to my charge unjustly, and
-leave behind me the testimony of a true heart both to my King and
-country." Then he held the crowd spellbound while he spoke in his
-defence, and when he had finished, none moved, but they all pressed
-closer to him as though they could not bear to leave him.
-
-At last he sent them away himself. "I have a long journey to go," he
-said, "therefore must I take my leave of you."
-
-Afterwards he tried the temper of the axe, passing his finger along the
-edge. "'Tis a sharp medicine," he said; "but one that will cure me of
-all my diseases."
-
-The sheriff asked him which way he would lay himself upon the block. "So
-as the heart be right," he said, "it matters not which way the head
-lies." Then he laid himself down; and since the headsman feared to
-strike, and well he might fear, my lord himself hurried him. "Strike,
-man, strike!" he cried; and in an instant the noblest head in England
-rolled upon the ground.
-
-So ended the glorious Sir Walter Raleigh; and musing on that end and on
-the wrongs he suffered at the hands of Queen Elizabeth, I am often led
-to wonder that men should raise kings and queens over them to work such
-ill. For it seems to me that the great days of England were not made by
-Elizabeth Tudor or Harry, her sire, but by the great men who stood
-around them, and whom so often they sent to their death. Raleigh
-followed Essex by a space of less than a score years, both suffering
-execution; and I pray that in another world these two are friends who
-jostled each other in this, but came alike to the headsman's block. The
-Tudors were too fond of beheading; but they, at least, sent their
-friends to the block and took the shame. I notice in these Stuarts
-something more treacherous--that they permit the slaying, and then will
-rend their garments.
-
-However, what have I to do with bitterness? No sooner was my lord laid
-in the grave than I set out to visit my Lord Boyle; and being a great
-man now, his name carried me safely where I had not gone without. He
-received me with great honor as a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, and
-entertained me well; but never a word he spoke concerning that trust.
-However, I will not wrong him, for I left him after all without saying
-farewell. I was little minded to dispute with him the possession of
-those acres; but I paid a visit by stealth to the garden of the
-Manor-house, and there dug up the treasure of which Sir Walter had
-warned me, and conveyed it privily on board my vessel.
-
-It had to be done piecemeal, for I trusted none but myself; but when my
-sea-chests held all those chalices and monstrances and golden
-candlesticks, we weighed anchor one night of storm, and sailed from
-Youghall without so much as farewell to my Lord Boyle. However, it
-comforted him doubtless that I never spoke of the trust, but disappeared
-from his world that stormy night as though I had gone on a witch's
-broomstick.
-
-I had fain given mine uncle's bones burial, but that might not be; so I
-left him in the consecrated place where he had lain so many years--to
-the birds of heaven and the angels.
-
-But for myself, I and my sea-chests were put ashore at a little French
-town, from whence in due time I made my way to Douai, and restored the
-treasure to Her from whom it had been taken. And since Tyburn Tree had
-so greatly added to the glorious throng of the martyrs, and the ranks
-were thinned of those who would follow in their footsteps, I asked the
-Fathers of the English College to accept me among them, which of their
-graciousness they did; for I was grown sick of the world. And who cares
-that Father Walter is pock-pitted and hath one blind eye?
-
-Once I had cared only to be of the flower of knighthood. Now all my
-dream is that I might some day earn that greeting of St. Philip to my
-forerunners in these gray halls--_Salvete, flos martyrum_!
-
-
-                PRINTED BY BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT CAPTAIN: A STORY OF
-THE DAYS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH ***
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