For God and Gold

CHAPTER VIII

On the morrow, as I walked in the orchard after dinner with Frank Drake and Harry, for the rest were gone, I took occasion to inquire what they thought of piracy; for our adventure, and especially my own part in it, weighed no less heavily on my mind for my night's rest.

'That was a shrewd thrust of yours, Mr. Festing,' said Drake, as our talk turned, naturally enough, on our adventure. 'But for you we might have had ugly work. I give you good thanks for it, and all the honour; ay, and if I had my way you should have the lion's share of the booty too.'

'Have my thanks, Mr. Drake,' said I, 'for your good words. Yet think me not churlish if I say they might be better bestowed. As for the thrust, it was none, for the Don spitted himself; as for the honour, let us talk of that when there is any in such work; and as for the booty, I will have none of it.'

'Your reasons, Mr. Festing, your reasons?' said Drake good-humouredly.

'For the honour,' answered I, 'it is a thing which I hold pirates have little part in; for the booty, I care not to share with water-thieves.'

He turned sharp on me then and stopped in his walk with a flush in his face, looking hard at me with that strange, honest, searching look of his. I was ready to bite my tongue out; for I saw in a moment that my hot words had seared the unsullied spirit of a man whom nothing would bend to an act which he thought base, a man in all ways nobler than myself. God knows, I thought him wrong, and thought he led Harry wrong, but now I would have given half I had to have chosen kindlier words to say my say.

'You use hard words, and wrong ones too, Mr. Festing, saving your scholarship,' said Drake at last, proud as a Spaniard. 'I am no water-thief or pirate either. I shall tell you what a pirate is, not to speak more of water-thieves, which is a hard word that breaks no more bones than another. By the most ancient customs of the sea, sir, whereof be it your excuse that you are ignorant, a pirate is one who, without license from his prince or his prince's officers, in time of peace or truce doth spoil or rob those which have peace or truce with him.'

'Then how shall you justify yourself,' I asked, too cowardly to yield to him, 'seeing we have peace with Spain?'

'Nay, but I say,' he answered, 'we have no peace with Spain, or truce either. Is it peace when they lay embargos on our ships, throw our mariners into prison, and burn and torture them in their streets? Is it peace when they shut our trade from their ports, and succour and defend our deadliest enemies?'

'That was well, perhaps, months ago,' said I, though it wanted all my courage to answer him, such force was in his eyes and voice, 'but now truce is made, and prisoners are released, the embargo lifted, and King Philip's ambassador received at Court.'

'And how call you that truce?' he asked. 'They brand us heretics and Lutheran dogs, with whom they say openly no faith is to be kept; no mariner is safe from their rake-hell Inquisition in any port of Spain; they send a spy, whom they call ambassador, to search out the weakness and plot with the traitors of the land and practise on our poor young Queen, that they may bring on us again the curse of Rome, as they did in Mary's time. Call you that truce? Call it rather war, and worse than war, for it is dastards' warfare? Philip may cry truce to Bess, and Bess to Philip, but between the people of Spain and England there is, nor shall be, neither peace nor truce till one of us is crushed.'

'Yet if all were as you say,' I persisted, more faintly now, for there was that in the man which no one could withstand when he was moved thus, 'if there be neither peace nor truce, you have no license from the Queen. Nor even her goodwill, since you must know what urgent orders she has issued against adventurers like yourself.'

'I know well enough,' he answered. 'For some reasons of state she has done this. Yet wait till you see the orders carried out, wait till you see such an adventurer punished, before you say I have not her license. Did you not see how the Minion, sailing under her own royal flag, passed us by when we were at the work; and was it not one of her Justices in constant communication with the Council who fitted me out? Is not that license enough?'

'Nay, then you accuse the Queen's grace of bad faith to the Spaniard, and you are willing to abet her in her deceit.'

'Faith to those that keep faith, say I. To every Spaniard, and not the least the Spanish ambassador, Don Guzman de Silva, she is a heretic with whom to break faith is the path to heaven. To such must a man give fair words, as the poor Queen does, till she grow great enough to strike them straight on the mouth, as, under God, by our help she shall. And were all I have said too little excuse for what we do, I have even a higher and greater license than all; for, as dad says, and all pious men beside, I have God's own commission to prey on Antichrist and him who stands his champion, till the filthy breath of the beast shall cease to poison the earth. The Spaniard goes about to lead away the people after false gods and idolatry and superstition. Such men by the Word of God are worthy of death. Here in my Bible I hold license from the Great King to seek out and spoil and destroy His enemies. Shall I hold my hand so long as He shall prosper His servant? How are we to call that piracy and thieving which God has so clearly commanded?'

Then all at once came back to me Mr. Cartwright's words, and how he spoke of these rovers as doing the Lord's work and being prospered by Him. I do not think it was that which overcame me, but rather Frank Drake's presence. The recalling of my master's words was but an excuse to myself for yielding.

'Mr. Drake, you have prevailed,' said I. 'I crave your pardon; you are a better man than I, and a truer servant both to God and the Queen. Give me your pardon for my words; they were uncourteous and unjust. Forget that they were spoken, and let my memory of them be my punishment.'

'Nay, it is you, sir,' said he, holding out his hand, 'it is you that have prevailed. I took you for a distempered, fastidious scholar, and now I know you for a true man. I desire your better acquaintance, Mr. Festing, and nothing better than that we may one day adventure together. At any rate, I trust that if you have a mind to it at any time, you will know where to look for a captain.'

'Ah,' said Harry, 'Jasper is more for stay-at-home book voyages than for a dainty feast of dry haberdine and "poor John" at sea; for I think,' the foolish lad added, 'he knows every cosmography book that was ever wrote.'

'Say you so?' cried Drake. 'Then I pray you lay in a victualling of apples, and we three will aboard the arbour and make a dry voyage together.'

So we did, and talked over Drake's map till sunset, of half-known worlds and unfurrowed seas, and all the wonders with which the learning of the ancients and the fancies of the moderns had peopled them.

I cannot say that from that moment I became Frank Drake's friend, for he was ever as slow in making a friendship as he was in parting with one. Yet before he sailed again I may boast we began to be to one another what we continued till his death.

For in those days which followed we were always together, seeing that Harry had almost every day to ride forth with his father to bid farewell to some neighbour.

I had been much astonished at the learning Drake displayed in his first talk with me, and marvelled where a mariner could have gathered so great a store of knowledge. He had gladly assented when I bade him to Longdene, that we might study together the cosmography books that were in my library.

Day by day we pored together over their crabbed latinity, which I expounded for his better understanding, while he, as I could see by his shrewd questions and ruthless commentation, sucked the old pedants dry as herrings.

Ah! sweet bulky tomes, how dear is the sight of you to my declining years, since that renowned navigator deigned to ask wisdom of you! Well may you stand so proudly in your ranks, mounting guard, as it were, over yonder table whereon he read in you. Best beloved to me you are of all my books, yea, though I have around me the choicest flowers of wit and scholarship, which in these latter years have blossomed so bounteously under the glorious rays of our most royal sun.

Yes, you I love best; as much for the memory of my dear friend, which you enshrine, as for some mighty power that seems to lie still behind your great leather covers. Who knows how much you told him that listened to your voice with such a wise discernment? Who knows how much of fame he owed to what you whispered in his ear, unheard by me? Ay, and who can even tell how many of these new dainty fruits our sun would have had power to ripen, if he, untaught by you, had not first so deeply stirred and tilled our fallow English wit with his heroic and inspiring deeds?

How large and fair a place those weeks hold in my memory! Had their sands run out less quickly, how great a sorrow I might have been spared! For I cannot doubt that had I spent a very little longer time with Frank Drake, he would have made of me, there and then, a sailor like himself, and I should never have gone back to Cambridge.

But the hours of our studies were numbered, and the day came at last when Harry must pass over to France in Drake's bark.

It was a parting of double sadness; for not only was I to lose my two friends, but one of them, he that I accounted my brother, was going to a far country, where I feared I should lose him, both body and soul.

For Harry, like most other young gentlemen in his case, had determined to pass into Italy—a country of which all our party had a most wholesome horror, not only as the very home and fount of papistry, but also because we held it no better than a foul Circean garden, full of all manner of enticements to pleasure and wantonness.

The proverb, by which the Italians themselves would make of every Italianate Englishman a fiend incarnate, was ever on our lips. I knew how hardly a man of Harry's kidney could escape unsullied, seeing how little love he had for learning, in pursuit of which it was pretended he should travel to Padua and elsewhere, and which alone could save a man from the Italian taint.

I perceived with great pain that since his return from Berwick Harry read nothing but the Morte d'Arthur, and such like wanton books of chivalry, wherein, as it seemed to me, those were accounted the noblest knights who slew most men for mere valour's sake, without any quarrel, and lived the most wanton lives.

I spoke long and earnestly to him on this, praying him rather to travel in Germany, and countries given up to God's true religion. He listened patiently, as he always did to my preaching, though I think he must have laughed in his sleeve, knowing how true and pure his heart was beside mine. Yet I could not turn him from his purpose, and had to bid him farewell with a sinking heart, which he tried to comfort by promising that for my sake, if for none other, he would come back unchanged.

After Harry's departure Sir Fulke was so lonely that he prayed me stay with him, for a little space. And this I was glad enough to do, till letters came to me from Mr. Cartwright, wherein he told me of the growing heats of the controversies at Cambridge concerning conformity, and urged me to return to the standard, which thing I did in the beginning of the year of grace 1565.

It is in no way my desire to overstrain patience by speaking of these matters, whereof so many have written at so great length, and better than I; nor do I wish to speak much of my life, save in so far as it was wrapped in those of my two dear friends who were now beyond the seas, Frank Drake, on his return from France, having sailed under Captain Lovell on his disastrous voyage to the Indies.

Suffice it to say that I remained at Trinity, working diligently, under Mr. Cartwright's guidance, to perfect myself in all manner of scholarship, that I might render myself well practised in the use of the most lethal weapons which he could forge for me in regard to the then present controversies.

Every day they and I grew more heated. Conformity was openly condemned in Trinity, till at last Mr. Cartwright persuaded the whole college, save three, to cast off the garb of Antichrist, and appear in chapel without surplices.

It was a day of great rejoicing in my college, for we, setting far too high our importance, as is the wont of scholars in places where they are gathered together, deemed we had accomplished little less than a second Reformation. Yet all it brought about was so sound a rating from the Chancellor, in which he was pleased to call us 'bragging, brainless heads,' with other pretty conceits, that many were glad to disclaim their part in the matter and blame Mr. Cartwright; so that, fearing the further displeasure of Mr. Secretary, and urged thereto by his friends, my master left Cambridge and went abroad, whither I would gladly have followed him, but he would not have it so.

'It were better,' he said, 'that you should abide here and take your degrees; and, moreover, I desire to leave behind me in the University some true and understanding friend, who will keep me informed of all that passes here.'

Being very glad to take upon myself so honourable an office I did as he wished, and Mr. Cartwright's encouragement to scholarship being thus withdrawn, my studies became almost entirely turned to theology, or rather to that unseemly scramble for scraps of divinity which passed for it in those days.

I was even appointed for a time to read the divinity lecture, as a gentleman reader without stipendium, and thus becoming always more fanatical, and being well known as being in Mr. Cartwright's confidence, I grew to be a marked man in Trinity, and in due course was elected fellow, to my great content, though I had no intention of taking orders, being a violent opponent of conformity.

Those were great days for us in Trinity, for we had, what men love best, a perfect content in the sense of our own bigness, at least whenever our ears were not tingling with a rating from my Lord Burleigh, our chancellor. We went on our ways like prophets, blindly swelling out our littleness with the vain wind of our own babbling, till we seemed to ourselves to tower like a giant at the head of Reformation.

If any had told us then that Frank Drake, or even my Lord of Bedford, was doing more for the cause with his little finger than all our heads together, we should have laughed him to scorn. Yet now it is not clear to me that such a speech would not have had some show of reason.

In the year 1567 Dr. Beaumont died, to my great sorrow, and we had set over us in his place Dr. Whitgift, Master of Pembroke Hall and Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. He was a man from whom we hoped much, seeing that to a good disposition towards the Puritan party, a hatred of vestments, and very sound Calvinistic doctrine, he added a greater force of scholarship and eloquence than Dr. Beaumont ever had, and moreover was a better courtier.

Indeed, I think Trinity could have had no better Master in those days. For although he seemed then to my hot head but lukewarm in the cause, yet now I can see how high he raised my college during the ten years of his mastership, which thing he achieved by a nice handling of his authority between the parties, whereby the turbulent spirits were pruned to a less rank growth, and the timid digged about and fostered to the plentiful production of sweet and peaceful fruit.

Such is the man as I see him now. Then it was different, for my hard zeal was always distasteful to him, and we were but sorry friends. So little indeed to my taste was the new spirit in the college, that on his constantly urging me to conform and take orders, I resigned my fellowship in fear of being deprived of it, as Mr. Cartwright was afterwards, and retired to Longdene.

I had the full consent of my master for this. He had recently returned to Cambridge, and found himself the man of greatest weight in the University, and like to be elected Vice-Chancellor had he been in priest's orders.

'It will be better in many ways,' said he, when I asked him his advice, 'that you should return to your estate; your influence will be more useful there. In Cambridge we have an abundance of labourers. It is men like yourself that we now require throughout the country. The cause needs urgently the support of the gentry, who for the most part are papist or half-reformed. Since Mr. Drake has got the vicarage of Upchurch you will have a stalwart fellow-worker. Go then, and do your best till the time is ripe for our great blow. I do not mean in any way to attack our present detestable and superstitious manner of church government until I am made Professor of Divinity, and can speak with all the authority of our great University. Meanwhile in your private study you can help me in my labour of grinding the weapons, that they may be sharp and ready in my hands when the hour is come.'

Though feeling not a little sad at leaving my dear college, perhaps never to return, I could not but rejoice when I reached home that I had taken Mr. Cartwright's advice; for I found my good old guardian most grievously sick.

He seemed very glad to see me, but yet I could fancy his manner was not so frank as of yore. It pained me not a little, for I could see by his pinched face that he was near to death's door. Nor could I understand why he should be so different, till after I had talked with him for some time, particularly of his spiritual state, we were interrupted by some one entering the room unbidden.

I started to my feet when I saw at the door a young gentleman whom I had known at Cambridge. He had been a scholar of King's, and was one of those who took little trouble to disguise their love of papistry. He was dressed now in a cassock, and wore a small skull-cap to hide his tonsure.

We saluted each other very stiffly, while Sir Fulke looked from one to the other in a frightened way, as though he expected us to fly at each other's throats.

'Which of us shall remain, Sir Fulke,' said I, 'since there is no room for both?'

'Both, lad, both,' cried Sir Fulke.

'Nay,' said the Catholic gentleman, 'you must choose between us. If you would have me do my office let this gentleman depart. I cannot defile the mass by celebrating it in the presence of a heretic.'

He said this in so soft and polished a manner that, though I felt my face flush, I would not let him have the advantage, but replied with my utmost politeness, speaking as though I had not heard him.

'It were better I should go, Sir Fulke,' I said; 'I cannot stay and stand by while a servant of Antichrist sullies your soul with superstition and idolatry even as it is knocking for entry at God's door.'

It was the priest's turn to look angry then, but he only bowed to me again and was silent.

'Tush, lads,' broke in Sir Fulke, 'there is no need for squabbling over me. What matter, Jasper, if I have a bit of a mass in memory of the old days? I have been an arrant sinner too, and would ease myself of a load of sin with just a piece of confession. I have robbed the Church grievously, curse that mad knave Drake that led me to it, and been a great swearer, Heaven help me; ay, and you help me too, Jasper, since you know better prayers against swearing than the priests. You shall come and pray with me after he has done, lad, and then God will know it was my wish to make peace with Him and all men before I died. Come, lad, will you not? I have no son but you to smooth my pillow, since Harry is beyond the sea. Go now, and come again. You would not grudge me a bit of a mass like my fathers to die upon. May be they would be ashamed of me when I went to do homage with them up there, if I came amongst them unshriven and unhouselled.'

'Surely, sir,' I said, much melted at the old knight's words, 'you would depart in surer hope of Paradise if you please God in your death rather than your ancestors.'

'That is right, lad,' said the dying man, 'and so I will. You shall come and help me. But there would be no joy in Paradise if my ancestors and the old gentry turned their backs upon me, and I had to go with the new men. Save your father, there never was one of them I could abide; and Mr. Carter says Nick will not be there.'

I looked at Mr. Carter, as Sir Fulke called him, though I knew it was not his name. He bowed again to me politely, and I repressed the angry burst that I had ready for him, being unwilling to cause Sir Fulke any further pain.

'Sir Fulke,' said I, 'it was your good will to let my father be buried as he would. I have not forgotten that, and for your sake will this day forget my plain duty both to God and myself.'

With that I left the room, and waited below in the hall till I was called up again. I found Sir Fulke at the mercy of God, and senseless. The Catholic gentleman was gone. So I knelt by the old knight's bed, and prayed long and earnestly to God that his opinions might be forgiven him, seeing they sprang of ignorance rather than perversity, though I had then, it must be said, little hope my prayers would be heard; and even as I prayed my guardian passed peacefully away.

CHAPTER IX

After Sir Fulke's death, and the stir which naturally followed, things grew very quiet with me. Almost my whole day was devoted to what Mr. Cartwright had called 'grinding the weapons' for his coming attack on prelatical government.

In spite of my books I was very lonely. Mr. Drake was at this time almost always away on duty. Upnor Castle was full of Spanish prisoners, who had been seized in the neighbouring ports in pursuance of the Queen's recent order, whereby she sought to make reprisal for a like order issued by her loving brother-in-law the King of Spain. And that some recognition might be made for the labours of the Inquisition so generously bestowed on the English prisoners in Spain, Mr. Drake was ordered to preach at Upnor every day.

It seemed a great delight to the old navy preacher to go and rail before them at the Romish church, and it was no doubt most medicinable in his case, for never saw I a man more furious against Spain than he was at that time, and not without cause.

Frank Drake had sold his bark, and sailed with his cousin, Mr. John Hawkins, in the great trading expedition which Sir William Garrard and Company had fitted out for the Guinea coast and the Indies. His kind old kinsman suffered him to venture his small savings with him, and had given him a petty officer's place in the fleet, out of pity for the wrongs he had suffered at Rio de la Hacha, under Captain Lovell, of which I have already spoken.

We were all rejoiced at his good fortune, for it was as pretty a sail of ships as ever left the coast. There was the great Jesus of Lubeck, Mr. Hawkins's admiral; the Minion, his vice-admiral; a smart bark of fifty tons, called the Judith; besides three others, the Swallow, the William and John, and the Angel. It was, moreover, no fast secret that the Queen's grace and many of the Council were sharers in the venture, so that it lacked not any kind of furniture, either of men or arms, and great things were expected from it for all concerned, even to the lowest mariner. Indeed I myself had adventured a moderate sum, being persuaded by Drake how profitable the negro trade had been and would be again.

Of this expedition nothing had now been heard for more than a year, and we began to grow anxious. At last a Spaniard who had put into Plymouth gave Mr. William Hawkins intelligence that his brother was on his way home, laden with the untold spoils of a town which he had sacked, and of prizes which he had taken on the seas. We hardly knew what to think of this, for such dealings were not at all to John Hawkins's liking. He was a wary, far-casting man, and I always thought looked on trading, especially in negroes, as more profitable than piracy, as indeed it was. Thus he had always laboured while in the Indies, by just dealing, that the planters and merchants should stand well with him and secretly support him, when, as happened sometimes, he was forced to carry a high hand over governors who refused to trade quietly.

Mr. Drake was sure the report was all another Spanish lie, and was not surprised when, some time after, he heard that some Spanish mariners had been bragging over their cups that Hawkins and all his men had been entrapped and put to the sword far inland, and the whole undertaking brought to nought. I need not say with what alarm and anxiety these reports filled us, for they sounded far more like truth than the last. It in no way decreased our fear for Frank's safety when shortly afterward the Queen seized the treasure-ships of the Duke of Alva, which had been chased by privateers and pirates into Southampton, Plymouth, and Foy, and were still lying there, since the ship-masters knew not how to get through to the Netherlands. We could not doubt then that the Council had certain news that all we feared was true. Every one now gave up all hope, and thought only of revenge and reprisal, when tidings joyfully reached us that the Judith, one of the ships of the expedition, had put into Mount's Bay, crowded with twice her proper crew, and in command of 'Captain' Drake!

All kinds of rumours now arose of what had happened, mingled with news of how the Spaniards had laid an embargo on British ships in the Netherlands and in Spain, and imprisoned every Englishman they could clutch. The Queen replied undaunted with like boldness, and every prison along the coast was packed with Spanish sailors, and every town-hall with treasure and rich cargoes.

Such doings very soon caused it to be reported with greater certainty that the Council had certain news of Mr. Hawkins's death and the destruction of all his men, when to our great relief it was said that the Minion, with the general aboard and a half-starved crew, had come home. We were more hopeful now, but hungrier than ever for news. Mr. Drake brought us every kind of horrible tale from the Spanish prisoners at Upnor. I think they devised them in pure revenge for his preaching at them, and the more they lied the more he rated their idolatry and superstition.

It was some time before we heard the truth. Frank sent us letters (in which I noted that he wrote himself 'Captain' Drake) saying that Mr. William Hawkins, Governor of Plymouth, had sent him up to inform the Council fully of what had occurred, and that he was detained in London upon that business. So things stood with us when one morning, a month or more after Sir Fulke's death, I was awakened by the sound of a gruff, loud voice, such as soldiers affect, in conversation with Lashmer's somewhat strident tenor.

'Good master soldier,' cried Lashmer, 'I tell you he is still abed, and you cannot see him this two hours.'

'Nay, by this bright honour, but I will see him,' said the other.

'And yet I think you will not,' said Lashmer; 'and yet again, by this bright honour is a good oath, and a gentleman's oath, and one that may not be sworn to a lie or a thing that is not true, unless, indeed, there be provocation; for provocation, look you, master soldier, excuses many things. It is your great peacemaker.'

'Why, this is monstrous logic,' returned the bass, 'and such as I never heard all the time I was sergeant-groom under the Signor John Peter Pugliano, esquire of the Emperor's stables, a man of most fertile Italian wit. What need of the philosopher's stone, if by mere logic you can make of provocation a peacemaker?'

'Well, softly now, and I will show you,' answered Lashmer, whose talk served often to wile a dull hour, since he had been to Cambridge and gleaned I know not what stray scraps of learning that careless students had dropped in his way,—'I will show you how a man will come to swear the peace of another for some assault, or battery, or mayhem, or anything, and that other shall show provocation. Then shall no peace be sworn, and they shall be at one again. For it shall appear that he who battered the other did him no wrong, seeing there was provocation in it. So they that thought they had quarrel shall find by this same sweet provocation that they have none.'

'Then must I provoke all men,' said the sergeant-groom, 'if I would live at peace with them.'

'Ay, by this bright honour,' said Lashmer; 'then no matter how often you get a bloody coxcomb, yet shall you never have quarrel with any man.'

'Then will I now most lovingly break your pate,' said the other, 'that you may stand my friend and bring me to your master. For my master, the most excellent esquire, Henry Waldyve, bade me spare no pains to see your master as soon as possible.'

Whether my servant's logic would have been put to this severe test I cannot say, for at Harry's name I sprang out of bed and cried from the window that I would see the messenger forthwith.

I hurried from my chamber to find Harry's servant discussing his morning ale with Lashmer. He rose to a stiff military position as I entered, and made me a most lofty salute with his Spanish hat. He was a tall, soldierly-looking man of about forty years of age, with a peaked beard and very fierce moustaches that had been nicely disciplined in the Spanish fashion to curl nearly up to his eyes. By his side hung a very terrible 'schiavona,' which he wore instead of a rapier, after the fashion of the German reiters, considering, as he afterwards told me, that the broadsword was the only fit weapon for horsemen. It had a great steel closed hilt, presenting such a defiant tangle of rings, hilt-points, and twisted bars after the latest pedantic fancy as to make the beholder tremble to think what the blade must be.

Indeed his whole appearance was foreign. He wore a large ruff, a thing as new to me as his sword; and his doublet, which showed clearly the marks of a corselet often worn over it, was pinked and slashed in the furthest fantastic fashion.

'If you come on the part of Mr. Waldyve,' said I, receiving his salute, 'you are thrice welcome.'

'In truth I bring you, sir, that most excellent and soldierly young gentleman's most full and lovingly complete commendation. Know me, at your worship's service, as Alexander Culverin, sometime sergeant-groom under the Signor John Peter Pugliano, esquire of the Emperor's stables, and now body-servant and master of the horse to that most proper gentleman Mr. Henry Waldyve.'

All this he said drawn up as stiff and soldierly as though he were mounting guard over the Emperor's own bedchamber. His presence much impressed my peaceful follower, though to me he was a thing to smile at lovingly; for somewhere in his face was a simple, kindly, almost childish look, that was strangely in contrast with his fiercely curling moustache, his loud, gruff voice, and his very warlike bearing.

'When came your master home?' I asked, for in truth I was greatly surprised to hear of his return so suddenly.

'But a week ago,' said the Sergeant; 'since which time we have been lying at my Lord of Bedford's house in London; for Mr. Waldyve had matters to report to the Council ere he could come down here.'

'And have you brought me any message from him beside his commendations?' I asked.

'Saving your worship's worship,' said the man, 'he would have you ride over at your worship's most early haste to Ashtead, since he would have some speech with you together with some poor soul, who, to judge by his most unhorsemanlike carriage, is a mariner or sailor.'

'Gave he the name of this same sailor?' I asked.

'That he did. A name he had that sorts well with one who splashes about all his life in that most base element called water. To be short with you, it is one Captain Drake, though I hold it most false heraldry to apply so dignified and soldierly a title to a seafaring man.'

'Well, we can talk of this as we go,' said I, in a mighty hurry now to be off. 'I will ride back with you now, if you will wait till Lashmer has saddled our horses.'

I tarried but to eat my manchet and drink my bowl of ale, since I hold a morsel in the morning with a good draught, sweetened and defecated by all night standing, to be very good and wholesome for the eyesight.

As I mounted my horse I saw Culverin watching me with a most judicial air. I must own I felt no little comfort and gratitude to my guardian for his good training to see him nod a distinct though qualified approval to himself when he saw me in the saddle.

'Know you what business your master has with Captain Drake?' I asked as we rode out of my gates, my mouth watering for news.

'Nay, not I,' answered Culverin; 'yet I hope it will be none, since I hold it unseemly for a gentleman and a soldier to have near communication with sailors.'

'Yet Captain Drake,' I said, 'has great love and respect for land-soldiers.'

'Has he indeed?' replied the Sergeant, looking very pleased; 'a most notable sign of his good sense, and had he said horse-soldiers, it would have been a notable sign of his better sense.'

'How make you that good, Master Culverin?' asked Lashmer, whose hunger for an argument was by this time getting the better of his awe of the stranger.

'It is good of itself, Master Lashmer,' said Sergeant Culverin. 'For when I was sergeant-groom under Signor John Peter Pugliano, esquire of the Emperor's stables, he was wont to say (and, mark you, he was a man of most fertile Italian wit) that soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind, and horsemen the noblest of soldiers. They were masters of war, he said, and ornaments of peace, speedy goers and strong abiders, triumphers both in courts and camps. In truth, your only salvation is to be a horse-soldier. Take that of me.'

Seeing Lashmer was on the point of a desperate charge upon this monstrous position, I changed our subject quickly by asking news of Harry.

'It was but three weeks ago, sir,' said Culverin, 'that we got your letters telling of Sir Fulke Waldyve's death. We were in winter quarters, whither we had gone when the campaign ended so ill for us with the fall of St. Jean d'Angely. Then we tarried not for drum or trumpet, but came straight homewards in the first ship that sailed. It was a pity it fell so. There was pretty warfare there, and most profitable for a gentleman to see. For, look you, sir, a soldier can learn more from defeats than victories. Take that of me. We were present all through last year's campaign, and rode in M. Ardelot's regiment when they drubbed us so soundly at Jarnac. After his death we were attached to the admiral himself, and so continued till our second rout at Moncontour. It was an evil time for the Huguenots, but a pretty schoolhouse for a scholar of arms, and my master was growing to be a most sweet soldier. I tell you, sir, his name was on every tongue in the army, so high a courage and discretion had he shown in all passages of arms we had made together.'

'Ah,' said I, 'there is little need to tell me that. I knew well what men would say of him when the time came to show what stuff was in him.'

'And so did I too, sir,' said he. 'As soon as ever he came to the Emperor's Court, and rode down to the tilting ground, I said to Signor John Peter Pugliano, esquire of the stables, "There is a soldier," said I; for his seat was as well as a man could sit. It won my heart, sir, to see him. From that hour I was his servant. I craved leave to direct his exercises under the esquire, and grew to love him as my own horse.'

'Was it, then, pure love that made you follow him to England?' I asked.

'Indeed, sir, I think it was. After he had been with us a year or so, he took it in his mind to see some service in the French wars. I begged to go in his train; for I loved him, and could not see him go to the wars without a proper following or some old dog to watch over him when dangers were thick.'

'And you gave up your honourable post of sergeant-groom for his sake?'

'Ay, sir, and willingly; for he promised to carry me to England with him after he had had his fill of fighting. My bowels yearned for the land I had not seen for twenty years. Indeed, sir, there's no man loves the smoke of his own country that hath not been singed in the flame of another soil. Take that from me, sir, saving your wisdom.'

'Then you are of English parentage, Sergeant Culverin?'

'Yes, sir, though many think not, because of my name and a certain carriage that comes to men of travel; yet I am English born, sir, and never knew father or mother, save an English great piece on the Calais barbican.'

'Then save you, Sergeant, from your kinsmen,' said I, thinking he was jesting, 'since the Moors call great pieces the "mothers of death." You and it are the only children I ever heard that they had.'

'You are merry, sir, but I jest not,' said the Sergeant, drawing himself up very stiff on his horse. 'What I say is sober truth. The first human eyes that ever saw me, as I could ever hear, were just those of an old gunner, who found me one night in the mouth of his culverin. He, good soul, took care of me. "She is the only lass I ever loved," he was wont to say, "but I never thought she would be mother of a son to me." So he took me home, and his mates and he would have the priest kursten me "Culverin" after my mother, and "Alexander," because they said I must be born to be a mighty soldier.'

'Truly, Sergeant,' said I, seeing how serious he was, though I had much ado to stop laughing, 'a most honourable and soldierly descent.'

'Ay, sir, you may say that,' he answered, looking round at Lashmer, from whom came a sound of choking laughter. 'A most soldierly and royal parentage. She was as good a piece as ever was cast, and stamped, look you, with King Harry's own arms, rest his soul! To say no more, for modesty's sake, it is not one or two who have rued their ribald merriment at what I am telling you.'

And with that he laid his hand upon the great steel hilt of his broadsword, and glared so terribly at Lashmer that I thought the poor lad would have fallen from his saddle from pure fear of the bristling of the Sergeant's fierce moustache.

I do not think Lashmer ever laughed at Sergeant Culverin again, at least not in his face. Indeed it was not many who did; most men feared his sword too much, and those who knew him best, and were not afraid, loved him too well.

I think three men never greeted each other more warmly than Frank, Harry, and I when I reached Ashtead. It was like summer to see them again, yet I found them much altered.

Harry seemed shocked by his father's death, and looked very sad in his black clothes. His face was bronzed, his short beard neatly trimmed to a point, and a scar scarce healed stretched across one temple. Yet I thought I never saw him look more manly, handsome, or lovable, in spite of the foreign look his travels had given him.

Captain Drake, too, was changed. His eye was as bright and his ways as cheery as ever; yet when he was not speaking I could see in his face a harder and sterner look than there used to be. His dress, too, was very different to what he had worn in the old days; though plain, it was of good stuff, and cut according to the fashion. He wore, moreover, a smart rapier, and had the air of a gentleman, though without having lost his sailor-like looks.

'You will want to know why I sent for you, Jasper,' said Harry, as soon as our greetings were over.

'Nay, that do I not,' said I; 'so long as you sent for me, that is enough.'

'Well, but I had a good reason,' answered Harry. 'I met Captain Drake in London, whither he had come on business, as he will tell you. As he was coming hither to see his father at Upchurch we journeyed together, and he told me—tell him, Frank, what you told me, and then he will know why we sent for him.'

'Well, lad,' said Captain Drake, setting himself down for a long tale, as sailors will, 'you remember how I wrote to you of the voyage which I made to Cape de la Vela in the Indies with Captain Lovell, the year after our brush with the caravel, and how it all ended in the wrong I suffered from the Spaniards at Rio de la Hacha for no cause but their accursed treachery?'

'Yes, that I do,' said I; for he had written to me about it at Cambridge, and Mr. Drake, too, had told me fully of that most wicked dealing with his son.

'Well, that was well enough,' Drake went on; 'a plague on the false papist hearts; but what came after was worse.'

'And at one time we feared it was worse again,' said I; 'for we thought we had lost you as well as our venture. But how came it about? We looked for nothing but success under Mr. Hawkins.'

'And nothing but that should you have had,' said Drake. 'Merrily should we have singed the King of Spain's beard, and filled some most noble pockets beside our own, but that Jack Hawkins was over scrupulous with the traitors. Things went well enough at first, in spite of bad weather, especially for me; for off Cape de Verde we fell in with a Frenchman from Rochelle, who had taken a Portugal caravel. This Jack Hawkins chased and took, and made me master and captain of her. We called her the Grace of God, and a good name too, seeing how God graced our venture. For we drubbed the Portugals wherever we met them, and before we left the Guinea coast we had gathered as fine a cargo of black flesh as a merchant need wish to see.

'Being well filled up with what we sought, we sailed for the Indies. My luck stood by me still; for when Captain Dudley of the Judith died, Cousin Jack gave me his place, and made me full captain. We found traffic on the Main a bit hard, because the King of Spain had most uncourteously charged that no man should trade so much as a peso-worth with us. Yet negroes are dear to a Don's heart, and there are ways, lad, there are ways that none know better than old Jack. So we had reasonable trade at mighty good prices, both in black flesh and our other merchandise, till we came to Rio de la Hacha. We were but two ships when we anchored before the town—the Angel and my lady Judith. The rest had been sent to Curaçoa to make provision for the fleet. So they thought to try their scurvy tricks there again, and refused us water, thinking thereby to starve us into selling our negroes for half nothing. The Treasurer, who was in charge, had fortified the town and got some hundred or so of harquebusiers behind his bulwarks; so we could not land, but took a caravel in spite of all their shot, right under their noses, and rode there till our general came round in the Jesus. They soon found that an English cock could crow as loud and louder than a Spaniard. For old Jack set ashore two hundred small shot and pikemen, and took the town. It was no less than their discourtesy deserved, and they suffered no harm; for every man of them ran clean out of the place at the first bark of our snappers. I think it was only a little comedy to please the King of Spain; for Master Treasurer and all of them came in at night to trade, and before we left we had two hundred less black mouths to fill and a pretty store of gold and pearls in our hold.

'We had done such a brisk trade and no bones made all along the coast, after our persuasions at Rio de la Hacha, that when we came to Carthagena, our traffic being nearly done, we tried nothing against it, save that the Minion saluted the castle with a few shot from her great pieces, while we landed and took certain botijos of wine from an island, just to drink their health, leaving woollen and linen cloth there in payment. So we bore up for Florida; but being taken in a furicano, which I believe the Lord sent to guide us, we were driven into San Juan de Ulloa, the port of the city of Mexico, as you know. Now listen, lad; listen what God sent us. There in the port at our mercy—entirely in our power—were twelve galleons, laden with two hundred thousand pounds' worth of gold and silver. Two hundred thousand pounds! Think of it, if you can, without going mad, for I can't. Yet, in spite of God's plain guidance, as I told him again and again, Jack Hawkins set them all at liberty without touching a peso, fearing, as he said, the Queen's displeasure, the simple fool, if he touched the goods of her most loving brother-in-law! Ah! had we known how the brave Queen was going to deal with her loving brother-in-law's money in her own fair ports of Southampton and the West, Jack would have listened to me when I told how best to please her Grace!

'Well, it was no good. Not a peso would he touch, but only asked leave to refit and victual; and now, lad, comes the worst of all. Next morning we saw open of the haven thirteen great ships, being the Plate fleet and its wafters—a sight to make an honest Protestant man's mouth water. Lord, Lord, Jasper! I cannot think of it with loving-kindness to Jack. Just see now, lad! We had complete command of the haven. Not a fly-boat, not a pinnace could enter or leave without our yea. To keep the Spaniards outside in the north wind was only the other way of saying present wreck to every rag and stick of them; and that meant wellnigh two millions loss to the Spaniards, and Heaven knows what gain to us in wreckage, and flotsam, and trifles we should have had for our trouble in saving crews.

'Did God ever show a greater mercy to His faithful people than that? I ask you, sir. You know better than I, because you are a scholar. Yet Jack Hawkins let his scruples stand before the plain will of God, and would make conditions with them. Would I could have told him what our lion-hearted Queen was doing in the narrow seas with her dear brother-in-law's belongings; but we did not know. Then he would have heard the voice of the Lord aright. But, as it was, he was stubborn, and let them all in on conditions of peace, and safe fitting and victualling for ourselves; to the which was passed the word of Don Martin Henriquez, Viceroy of Mexico, himself, who was with the fleet; a pox on him till this hand has squeezed him dry, and then the knave may go hang!

'I need not tell the rest. You guess what came—what must have come. It was like night after day. Relying on all their solemn words and papistical oaths, no less than on the hostages they had given us, we laboured together two days peaceably to bestow the ships properly in the port and prepare ours for refitting. A good part of our ordnance we set ashore upon an island in the mouth of the port, which, by the conditions, was to be in our possession.

'On the third day after we had let them in, when we were about to set the carpenters to work, and were all dismantled, I could see things were going treacherously, in spite of their fine words. Soldiers were marching to and fro, and ordnance being bent upon us. Jack sent to inquire what it might mean, and Don Martin Henriquez passed his word of honour to protect us from treason.

'Still the preparation went on, and Jack protested again—this time with much effect; for his messenger was seized, a trumpet blown, and in a moment all was in a roar and blaze. Out of the smoke that hid the quay and ships we could see the glitter of harness and pikes and halberds, and the glow of matches, as hundreds of soldiers rushed upon us and thrust out to the island in crowded long-boats. In a trice our men ashore were overcome and cut down, and our ships swarming with Spaniards.

'Lord, what a fight it was then! Tooth and nail, claw and heel, we went at them. Such a roar and din there was as my ears at least had never heard, till it lulled again, and not a Spaniard was left alive upon our ships. It was glorious work, but we had no time to think of it.

'No sooner were we clear than we cut our headfasts and warped out on our sternfasts; but though that saved us from boarding again, it did little good; for the treacherous dogs were masters of the island and our great pieces, as well as of their own on the ships and the platform. Still, for a whole hour we made a great fight of it, in which we sunk two of their great ships and burnt another.

'By this time the Jesus was dismasted and an utter wreck. She, being the admiral, had aboard of her all our treasure—twelve thousand pounds in gold, lad, besides negroes and merchandise.

'It was impossible to bring her off, so Jack resolved to abandon her, after taking out all she had. To this end we drew her off and set her in front of the Minion, to keep off the shot of the Spanish batteries, and so save our whole ship from destruction while we were at our work. For the Minion was the only ship we had now that would sail, except my Judith, which I had got safe off after the fight. But the Spaniards saw our game, and fired two other great ships of theirs, and loosed them down wind at us. They may call us cowards, Jasper, but it is a fearful thing to see two fireships a mass of roaring, crackling flames, and each twice and thrice as big as yourself, bearing down on you. Who can blame them if the crew of the Minion grew afraid and cast her off from the Jesus, in spite of all their captain or the general could say? So suddenly was it done that the general himself almost perished in trying to come aboard the Minion, and many were drowned in the attempt, and many left aboard the grand old Jesus with the treasure, to fall a prey to those rake-hell traitors.

'I quickly lay aboard the Minion with the Judith, and took out of her all I had room for; and so, at the mercy of God and looking for nothing but death, seeing how overladen we were and without proper provisions, I made my way home as speedily as I might. Jack takes it unkindly that I left him; yet, God knows, I did it for the best, trusting, by His help, to save my ship and all those aboard, if such a thing were possible to any man. Who knows, if I had tarried with the general, I should not have fared like him, and had to set half my crew ashore to suffer Heaven knows what miseries at the hand of Indians and wild beasts and Spaniards, which is worse. Ay, and to lose half the rest from famine and sickness. God be praised for His mercy to me, and judge between me and Cousin Jack.'

So Frank Drake ended his relation of that famous adventure in the port of San Juan de Ulloa, and fell to walking fiercely up and down the room where we sat. I knew not what to answer him; for I was almost as much moved as he, and firmly believed it was the will of God that they should have destroyed the two Spanish fleets. It is strange to look back upon now, yet I cannot wonder that I thought as I did, seeing what my masters had been at Cambridge, and, above all, in what a perilous case England then was.

Never, I think, was reformation in greater danger than at that time. There were already constant rumours of the disquiet in the north. The rumblings of the Papist storm that was soon to burst from thence were making themselves heard. The Scots Queen sat fouling the nest to which she had flown for refuge, in our eyes like some unclean bird that bred new traitors every day, and Spain cried louder and France blustered more fiercely against the one stout heart which would not bend to Rome.

The Queen still stoutly held the Duke of Alva's treasure, which she had seized; our ports were closed to Spain, and those of Spain to us. Sir William Winter was fitting out his expedition to relieve Rochelle, with victuals, men, and furniture for the Huguenots. Papist prizes, Spanish, French, no matter what, were daily pouring into our ports upon the narrow seas, and Don Gueran de Espes, the Spanish Ambassador, was a prisoner in his own house in London. It was said at all hands that the times could not long endure the strain, and we looked for war to burst out every day.

What wonder then, if, when the whole host of Anti-christ seemed to be gathering about us, I, like Francis Drake, saw the finger of God in the hurricane which had put it in our power to make so big a blow at His enemies, and read in the disaster that followed a judgment on those who spared to spoil the Egyptians? That was what the scholar Said to the sailor; ay, and honestly believed it too.

'Have no doubt, Frank,' said I, 'it was the Lord's will that you had smitten and spared not. It was His plain and manifest mercy to you to put it in your power to bruise the serpent's head. Would God Captain Hawkins had listened with your ears!'

'That is what I tell Harry, but he scorns it,' said Drake eagerly; and Harry, to my inquiring look, only laughed a little low laugh, so full of complete amusement that it made me shudder, and there rushed to my mind the horrid Italian proverb that we heard so often—Inglese Italianato è Diavolo incarnato.

'Do you not think, then,' I asked of Harry, 'that it is God's will that we should smite Antichrist and all his host?'

'Well, let that pass, lad,' said Harry, laying his hand gently upon my knee. 'I know not too well what God thinks of us; but it is my will, and England's will, that we should smite, as you say, the King of Spain, and that is why I sent for you. Ever since he came home Frank has been striving to get redress from Spain through the Council, but things have come to such a pass with embargoes and imprisoned ambassadors that all hope of that is at an end. So Frank is going to fry his own fish. Tell him what you are going to do, Frank.'

Drake looked at Culverin and Lashmer, who had remained in the room, with that same strange stare of his, as though to see whether he might safely speak before them.

'Shall they go?' said Harry.

'No,' said Frank, after a pause, and the Sergeant saluted him, and Lashmer looked like a happy sheep. 'They are neither men to blab, yet we must be close; for it would seem there is a Spanish ear grows on every village cross.'

Therewith Frank Drake unfolded to us his mighty project, of which I think none but his heroic soul had yet dreamed—that glorious enterprise which, before a few more years were gone, was to make England's heart to leap with pride like a young stag, and set her fair body throbbing with the wild untamable life that was to make her what she is.

'The time is past for child's play,' he cried, with glowing face, 'the time is past for nibbling at our enemy in the narrow seas, it is past for peaceable trade with them. If we are to live and dare worthily of our manhood, we must bite hard and deep in their vitals. Where is that, lad? Whence comes their life? Where but from the Indies? There lies the heart of Spain, the heart of Antichrist, open and unprotected, for a man who dares to try. I have seen and I know. They are no match for us. See what we did at San Juan de Ulloa. In spite of their numbers, in spite of their treachery, we saved two of our ships and they lost five of theirs, and all three times the Minion's size at least. I suffered there, but still I learnt a lesson which, by God's help, they shall rue the teaching of. But he who attempts this must not flinch or quail. Jack Hawkins is no man for it; but I can do it, lads, under God, I can; and if I do it, it shall be under no man's flag but my own.'

'Frank,' said I, 'I believe if there is a man in England can attempt this thing it is you. But be not hasty to throw away your life, which England needs. Think of those unknown seas for which you can get no pilot in England; think of the power of him you attack.'

'I know, lad, I know,' answered Drake, as calm and confident as ever. 'I have thought of it. I will have a pilot, and that pilot shall be myself. It may take a year or two, but at last I will know those seas as well as any Spaniard of them all. Then I will strike, and let them see how I can revenge myself. Revenge is the Lord's, and by His chosen people He does His work. To you, and such as you, He looks to help me in this, and I have come to ask if you will join me in working the revenge of God.'