[image]HE PLIED THE WHIP RIGHT MERRILYWhen our sails took the wind, the speed of the galley sensibly increased, but it was not long before I was troubled to see that our pursuer was gaining on us. She had far outstripped her consorts, the which indeed were no longer visible, and might be left out of the reckoning. The darkness was waxing deeper, and I could scarce have seen our resolute pursuer had we not come opposite to the extreme westward point of the island, where, before the friary of Saint Sebastian, a great fire had been kindled, without doubt of set purpose to enfurther the chase. It was the customary place where beacon fires were made, to give warning of danger on the side of the sea. The ruddy glare, shining forth over the water, showed me that the galley was no more than two furlongs astern. We made all the speed we might, but I could not but perceive that the pursuer crept ever nearer, and I began to be exceeding apprehensive. Her oarsmen, having rowed not above a quarter of the distance we had come, must needs be fresh by comparison with my own men, who had been straining at the oar without remission for close upon an hour. Furthermore, she would certainly have soldiers aboard her, maybe to the number of fifty or more, and we had no sufficiency of arms wherewith to oppose them.We had come beyond the cast of the beacon fire, into a vast impenetrable blackness. Pacing the deck in sore travail of spirit, and setting my wits on the rack if haply I might devise some stratagem that should profit us, on a sudden I spied by the fore hatch a large vessel of iron shaped like a round bucket, and pierced with holes, which I knew was designed to hold fire, whether for cooking or for illumination. I stood for a while chewing upon a device which the sight of this vessel had set a-working in my mind, and then hied me to Raoul to make him partner of the merry conceit I had fashioned. He heard it joyfully, and I went without delay to put it in practice.I gathered together some shreds of canvas and rope ends and stuffed them lightly into the vessel, mixing them plentifully with grease that was employed about the rowlocks, and liquid tar out of pots left in the galley by the men that had been caulking her. Then I thrust two short pikes through the topmost holes of the vessel opposite one to the other, as it were at the cardinal points of the circumference, and stopped the others as well as I could. This done I strewed upon the top a handful of gunpowder, and set in the midst a length of slow match that might be two or three minutes in burning. Having kindled the match at its utmost end, I let down the vessel over the stern into the water, and with great satisfaction watched it float in our wake until nought was visible in the darkness save the red glow of the match. Then I ran below and bade Stubbs put the rowers to a very frenzy of labour, so that we might draw as far as we could from the pursuer while that their strength endured.Returning to the deck I beheld my beacon burst into a bright flare; and the pursuer coming upon it, I saw the galley with great clearness, and sparkling reflections from the morions and harness of the soldiers that were aboard. I knew that so long as the light endured our own galley must be wholly hid from their eyes, and besides, they would be perplexed to know the meaning of the light, and might even suppose it to betoken a floating mine whereof they must be ware. Without doubt it would delay them somewhat, and give me the few minutes I needed for the full accomplishment of my design.As soon as I saw the galley come within the circle of light I gave the word to Raoul, who put up the helm, so that our vessel swung round in a wide circuit until she was a cable length of her former course. I had already commanded the slaves to cease from rowing, lest the sound of their oars should acquaint the enemy with our movement. As we came round I saw the galley draw out from the radiance, and heard the voices of the men upon her. She sped directly forward, following the course her captain supposed us to have taken.When she was almost abreast of us, and scarce three fathom length away, I bade the rowers pull with all their might, and Raoul steered straight for the galley. The rattle of the oars must have apprised the enemy that we were nearer than they supposed, but they were not thoroughly aware of us until we were upon them. Then, as they spied our vessel looming big out of the darkness, there was a great outcry among them, and it appeared that divers commands were given, for one moment she seemed to be swinging round to oppose the imminent shock, the next she held on her course as if endeavouring to evade us. By her greater speed she might without difficulty have drawn clear, but in bearing up she lost way, and so enabled us to diminish the gap between her and our galley.Under the sturdy strokes of our oarsmen the galley in a manner leapt towards her. We were greeted with a pretty hot salvo from her musketeers, but there were no more than two or three of us upon the deck, and we were flat on our faces, all save Raoul, so that what with the sway and toss of the vessels and the flurried aim they took, we suffered no hurt. While the smoke still hung in the air there was a mighty crash: the bow of our galley had cut the other a little abaft of the mainmast. Being fashioned for this very device of ramming, our beak had, I doubted not, stove a hole in her side, whereas I could not suppose that we had been endamaged, though the vessel quivered from stem to stern.Immediately after we struck I commanded the oarsmen to back water, by which means, and the cunning handling of the helm, we withdrew a space. From the enemy's galley came loud shouts of fear and consternation, and I heard some say that she was sinking. It troubled me that, to save our own skins, we had perforce imperilled the lives of three-score hapless slaves that had done us no wrong, but were indeed in a like case with our own men; but the breeze brought with it the rattle of the oars of the galleys that had first set off to pursue us, and I could very well leave the men of the foundering vessel to be rescued by their fellows. Our need was to draw clear away as swiftly as we might. Accordingly I commanded our men again to ply their oars, and this they did the more willingly, despite their fatigue, because they exulted in the crippling of their adversaries.We were now come into the open sea. Our men pulled with measured strokes for a full half-hour before I deemed it prudent to suffer any intermission. Then I bade them lie upon their oars while I hearkened for sounds of our pursuers. There was not so much as a whisper. I could not but believe that the commanders of the galleys had given over the attempt to come up with us. Yet, as I took counsel with Raoul, I durst not rest thoroughly assured that all danger was past, nor all need for labour and watchfulness vanished. The galleons in the harbour would surely make sail as soon as they could be put in trim, and scour the sea for leagues around. Furthermore, we might fall in with some vessel homeward bound, or perchance outward bound from Lisbon to the Americas. It behoved us then to be very wary, and, as our proverb says, not to holla until we were out of the wood.Our men, having fasted since the morning and toiled very hard, were in dire need of food, and I hazarded to rest for so long as they might take their fill of the broth and biscuit which the cookmen had brought aboard, bidding them spare enough for another meal. We should not be utterly safe until we made a French port, Bordeaux being the most likely, and we were distant thence, at the very least reckoning, upwards of three hundred leagues. Within a single day we must needs be in dire straits for food, but I had conceived a plan for supplying ourselves so soon as we were free from the immediate fear of pursuit.When we had all eaten and drunk very heartily, though in good sooth the fare was of the poorest, we sped on again, the men taking turns to row, and so continued all that night. We directed our course at a venture, but at break of day we saw with thankfulness that we were not a great way from the shore. There was no safety for us but in boldness; accordingly Raoul steered directly for the land, that was very barren hereabout, and we put into a small bay, and ran the vessel abeach, purposing to lie up there and take our rest. I parted the whole company into watches, and we slept by turns, the men of each watch being straitly charged not to stray from the low beach to higher ground. While we stayed in that place I saw several galleys and one great galleon cruising in the offing, which I guessed to be hunting for us; but we were very well hid, and I thought it would scarce come into the heads of the Spaniards that we had adventured ourselves ashore.During one of the watches I talked long with Raoul concerning the occasion of my venturing upon this course for his behoof. He was in perfect ignorance of the complicity of the Count de Sarney in his kidnapping, and was loath to believe that his uncle could have descended to such a depth of villainy. I was at no pains to bring him to my own persuasion, being content to leave the unravelling of the plot until we should come safely to his home. He drew from me the full tale of my adventures, breaking into a great gust of laughter when I related the manner of my dealing with Don Ygnacio. I assured him that he owed all to my honest mariner William Stubbs, on whom he bestowed thanks without stint, promising me in secret that, if we got safe to Torcy, he would reward him with much more than barren words.We lay in that spot for near six hours, and then, having consumed all our food, saw ourselves faced by the prospect of famine. Certain of the galley-slaves, who were for the most part desperate and abandoned ruffians that richly deserved their fate, began to murmur, and not without reason, for it is no profit to a man to leap out of the frying-pan into the fire. In this strait I bethought me of the use whereto I had imagined putting our noble prisoners, Don Ygnacio and Captain Badillo. We launched our galley when the tide was full, and mounting into her, coasted along for a league or two until we descried a village of fishers nestling in a hollow between the cliffs. We then ran ashore, and made Don Ygnacio write on his tables a formal requisition for meat and wine, signing it with his full name and titles. And I went up the land with Stubbs and Captain Badillo, together with a dozen of the galley-slaves bearing baskets and buckets; and giving the captain to know that I would certainly use my dagger upon him if he by word, deed, or even with wink of eye betrayed us, we marched boldly to the village, where he presented his mandate to the people, and received from them enough to supply our instant needs. When I saw how grudgingly they furnished us, I pitied the poor folk, and wished with all my heart that I could pay them, suspecting that the minions of the Spanish king were not over scrupulous in honouring this sort of debt; but my purse was well-nigh empty, and I could only trust that Providence would in due season repay them a hundredfold.The story we gave out was that the Captain-General of the King's galleys was making a voyage to inspect the coast, and we found this served us to a miracle among the ignorant fisher folk, both at this place and at the many other villages on the coast of Portugal where we made like perquisitions on the days succeeding. We pursued our way every night, and rested every day, choosing only small paltry places whereat to obtain food, and such as we might adventure into without raising a wind of suspicion. Nowhere did we come within an ace of danger save at one village, whose parish priest, a canon of Salamanca, would not be stayed from paying a visit of ceremony to the illustrious and worshipful Captain-General. It was a marvellous whimsical thing to behold their meeting, the priest offering gracious incense of flattery to the royal officer, who received his compliments and felicitations, I being at his elbow, in a mood betwixt dudgeon and impotent rage. I caught a look of puzzlement on the worthy canon's face as he made his adieu, and I fear me he carried to his humble parsonage a blighted estimate of the courtliness of princes' servants. As for me, I thanked my stars that the peril of discovery had as it were but lightly brushed us.Our plan of hugging the coast, yet not so close as to risk our bottom on rocks or shoals, kept us far away from the track of sea-going vessels, and the weather being exceedingly fair, we accomplished fifteen or twenty leagues a day without danger from the elements or man. The voyage was tedious beyond telling, but I did not grudge it, for joy at beholding the amelioration it wrought in the health of my dear friend. I laughed often to think how the transfusion I had proposed in trickery to Don Ygnacio was in process of accomplishment by the agency of nature. He became leaner in proportion as Raoul indued flesh, and my scrupulous care that he should not have the means to overeat, but should perform a fitting share of labour at the oar, did not only reduce his bulk, but also brought his body to a healthful condition whereto he had been strange for many a year. He showed me no gratitude, and paid me no fees, though I declare without boasting that I did more for him than any physician or chirurgeon that ever mixed a powder or wielded a scalpel.I used my endeavour to wrest from him a full confession of his villainies, but he would never admit further than what we knew: that he had received moneys from his cousin the Count de Sarney. As for the kidnapping, he avouched most solemnly that he was as ignorant as innocent in respect of it; but inasmuch as Raoul had acquainted him of his name and condition, and besought him with many promises to set him free, I concluded that he had found his best interest in playing the horse-leech upon his cousin.We came in due time to Bordeaux, where our story, when it leaked out, became a nine-days' wonder. I am very sure it would have mightily pleased the Sieur Michel de Montaigne, had he been yet alive; of whose Essays I purchased a very pretty copy before I departed. We sold the galley at a price much above its value, to a rich noble of Perigord, who declared his intention of keeping it for his private pleasure, and for a perpetual memorial of the gullibility of Spaniards. Every galley-slave received his freedom and his proper share of the purchase money, though I confess I was uneasy in my mind when I thought of such rapscallions being loosed among honest people. We delivered Don Ygnacio and Captain Badillo to the mayor, who threw them into prison until he should advise himself concerning their future. Then one fair day I took ship with Raoul and worthy Stubbs in a vessel bound for Calais, being somewhat in pocket by my adventure.VIn the interim between our departure from Cadiz and our arrival at Calais, Raoul's hairs grew again both on his face and on his head, albeit I observed with sorrow a many flecks of grey among them. Besides those and sundry scars and callosities, there was no other enduring mark upon him of his long torture in the galleys when he came ashore with me. We stayed in Calais only so long as that he might provide himself with decent apparel, and then we rode on hired horses, Stubbs following, to Dieppe. There we betook ourselves to Jean Prévost, to learn what had happened during the two months of my absence. He welcomed Raoul with boisterous demonstrations of delight, and having heard our story, cried out in a fury that he would drive his sword through the carcass of the Count de Sarney, and so rid the world of a villain. But I prevailed upon him to leave us to our own courses with the Count, whereupon he told us that the Count had but lately sold his own little domain, the which we took to be an evident sign of his perfect security.Next day we rode all four to Torcy, and never did I see pleasure so admirably pictured on a man's countenance as it was when the old faithful servitor opened to us and beheld his true master. He lifted up his old cracked voice and called to his fellows, and they came pell-mell from the kitchen and offices, and leapt and laughed in the right Gallic manner, which we sober Englishmen are apt to find ridiculous. Their clamour drew the Count from his cabinet, and he stood at the head of the stairs as still as a stone, his countenance taking the colour of wax when he beheld Raoul at my side, and Stubbs capering (sore against his will) in the arms of a buxom buttery maid. The miserable wretch wreathed his lips to a smile, and said, mumbling in dreadful sort—"Welcome, my dear nephew; I had given you up for dead.""You have kept my house warm for me, monsieur," said Raoul, with a fine self-mastery; but Jean Prévost sprang up the stairs, and taking the Count by the collar, bundled him down and out at the door without ceremony. Raoul dispatched a man after him with his hat and cloak, and he went away and sought shelter, as we afterward learnt, in the house of one of his old retainers.We made diligent search in the cabinet for evidence of his villainy, finding nought save a book of accounts wherein were set down the sums he had paid to Don Ygnacio de Acosta, the addition of which mounted to a monstrous figure. Raoul bade his servants gather up all the Count's chattels ready to be conveyed to him, and having put all things in order for his own occupancy he returned with us to Dieppe, where we spent a merry night at Jean Prévost's house.We did not delay to seek the king's commissary, before whom we laid the whole matter. He took down our depositions, and examined the account-book, and delivered his opinion at great length, the which was, in brief, that we had nothing to convict the Count of the felony of kidnapping, though we might reasonably presume it; but that Raoul might bring a suit against him in the king's court for restitution of the moneys he had disbursed. This he did, and I had word, many months after, that the slow-footed law upheld his claim, and that the Count, being unable to acquit himself of so heavy a debt, was reduced to beggary and thrown into prison, there to remain at the king's pleasure. With great magnanimity Raoul relented towards him for the sake of his son Armand, whom he sought out in Paris, and, being perfectly assured of his innocency, endowed him with a pension sufficient to keep his father in a decent penury.As for me, long ere this was accomplished I had returned with Stubbs (rejoicing in Raoul's liberal largess, and bound to my service for ever) to my own land. I was not wholly at ease in my mind, for I had absented myself from my duty in the Queen's Guard without her august leave, and had no expectation but that she would visit my fault upon me somewhat grievously. I betook me to the Palace on the day after my return, and learnt from my comrades that the Queen had been highly incensed against me, and had sworn to show me bitter marks of her anger.I took up my post in the corridor at the proper hour, and had been there but a brief while, when her Highness herself issued from her cabinet unattended. She halted at sight of me, and, frowning heavily, cried in shrill and shrewish accents (and it went to my heart that she was now most apparently an old woman)—"How now, sirrah? Dost dare show thy ugly face to me?""As for my ugliness, madam," said I, "that is as God pleases.""It does not please me that thou hast hog's bristles on thy countenance" (my beard and mustachio, in truth, were as yet somewhat like a field of stubble). "Where hast thou been, monkey?"I told her Grace that I had come from working some mischief among the galleys of her brother of Spain, whereupon she let forth a round oath, exceeding disparaging to the said brother, and bid me go with her into her chamber and inform her more particularly on that matter. I related the incidents in their due order, and when I came to that part where I had made the Captain-General swallow my vile admixture, she burst forth in a fit of laughter so immoderate that I feared lest, tight-laced as she was, she should do herself a hurt."Well, well, I pardon thee, my sweet Chris," she said, when I had made an end; "but I must e'en have my moiety of the spoils."And 'tis sober truth that her Grace made me tell over into her royal palm a half of the French crowns that I had brought back with me. I confess 'twas not an exact reckoning, for knowing her Grace's propensity, I had been careful to make a subtraction from the full sum before I named it, a fault which I trust will be held to be venial, and not laid against me by honest men.Her Grace's anger being thus mollified, I made bold to proffer a petition whereon I set much store, to wit, that she would suffer me to join myself to Sir Walter Raleigh for his voyage, the ships being at that time, as I had already learnt, on the point of sailing from Plymouth."Ods my bodikins!" cried the Queen; "hast thou lost thy silly heart to some Spanish slut, that thou art burning to return among the garlic-eaters?""I assure your Highness' Grace," said I, "that in all my wanderings I have never beheld a damsel whose eyes could lure me from devotion to my Queen."At this her Grace showed as much pleasure as she were a girl of sixteen, and I looked for her to consent to my petition; but in this I was deceived."Well, well," she said, "thou'rt a proper bold rascal, but I can't have all my lovers running about the wicked world, in danger of falling into divers snares and temptations. No; ods my life, thou shan't go," she cried in a passion, "and if I see any mumping and glooming, to the Tower with thee!"I smiled as amiably as I could, and vowed that I had no pleasure save her Highness' will; but I own that I nourish to this day a remnant grudge against my old mistress, for that she hindered me from serving with Sir Walter in that world-renowned enterprise.[image]tailpiece to Fourth PartInterimThat feat of Sir Walter Raleigh was a wondrous achievement that any man might envy without blame. The English fleet came to anchor off Cadiz on June 20, 1596. Sir Walter's voice had great weight with the generals, and it was by his counsel and ordering that the enterprise was ruled. His device was to attack the galleons lying there in the haven and after assail the town, and so was it performed. Himself led the van ward in theWarspright, and ran through a fierce cannonade from the fort of Puntal and the galleys, esteeming them but as wasps in respect of the powerfulness of the others, and making no answer save by blare of trumpet to each discharge. And he dropped anchor close over against theSt. Philipand theSt. Andrew, the greatest of all the galleons, and the same which had overpowered in the Azores the littleRevengewherein Sir Richard Grenville died gloriously, winning deathless fame. Three hours theWarsprightfought those great ships, and was near sinking; nevertheless Raleigh would not yield precedence to my Lord Essex or the Lord Admiral, but thrust himself athwart the channel, so as he was sure none should out-start him again for that day.And so he set on to grapple theSt. Philip, and the Spaniards fell into a panic, and that galleon with three others tried to run aground, tumbling into the sea soldiers in heaps, so thick as if coals had been poured out of a sack. Straightway two were taken or ever their captains were able to turn them; but theSt. Philipwas blown up by her captain, and a multitude of men were drowned or scorched with the flames. And Raleigh received in the leg from a spent shot a grievous wound, interlaced and deformed with splinters.Thereupon my Lord Essex hasted to land, and put to rout eight hundred horse that stood against him, and by eight of the clock the English were masters of the market-place, the forts, and the whole town save only the castle, which held out till break of day. And the citizens were constrained to pay a hundred and twenty thousand crowns for their ransom, and moreover all the rich merchandise of the town fell to the English as spoils of war. And Sir Walter's valiant deeds purchased again the favour of the Queen, and she willed he should come to the Palace, and received him graciously, holding much private talk and riding abroad with him.My grandfather, who was of a goodly presence, had taken the eye of the Queen, and she lifted him out of the Guard and made him one of her fifty gentlemen pensioners, albeit he was full young for such a place. These gentlemen were appointed to attend the Queen on all ceremonious occasions, bearing a gilt axe upon a staff, and to serve about the Palace, the which offices were little to his liking. And his father dying about this time, he went down into Hampshire to take up his inheritance, and was much busied about his estates, and exercising as justice of the peace that little law he had learned in the Inner Temple. But he was again lodging in London when my Lord Essex, having botched up his work in Ireland, and taking reproof like a spoilt child, gave rein to his ill-temper, and hatched treason against his long-suffering Mistress. My grandfather often spoke to me sorrowfully of that headstrong young lord, and related sundry of his foolhardy doings—how he locked into an inner chamber the Chancellor, the Chief Justice, and other grave men who had resorted to his house to inquire the cause of the assemblage of armed men there; how he rode boisterously through the streets, brandishing his sword, and calling upon the populace to follow him; and how finally he lost his head on the block.A short while thereafter, my grandfather sailed to Ireland, where befell him the last great adventure, and, as he was wont to say, the most fortunate, of his life. The O'Neill, called Earl of Tyrone, had been long time a thorn in the side of Queen Elizabeth, taking gold from the King of Spain to sustain his treasons, and in the year 1597 making open war upon the English governor. He did great despite upon the people of the Plantation, and lurking in the forests, long defied the English soldiery. My Lord Mountjoy, whom the Queen had sent to Ireland as her deputy in the room of Essex, being resolved to make an end of the rebellion, ravaged and wasted the country, driving off the cattle, starving the people, and fortifying all the passes through the woods. And you shall read now how my grandfather once more, and for the last time, drew his sword, and the strange fashion whereby he was led to put it up again, for ever.THE FIFTH PARTCHRISTOPHER RUDD'S ADVENTURE IN IRELAND,AND THE MANNER OF HIS WINNING A WIFE[image]headpiece to Fifth PartII hold it ill that a man should be under no constraint to labour for his bread. To have a competency is indeed a comfortable thing; but being so possessed, a man lacks a spur to high emprise, and his faculties are like to wither and decay.It was my fortune to receive from my father a property sufficient to supply the needs of the body; and the gear I added thereto in divers enterprises and adventures gave me the wherewithal to maintain a decent port before the world, and even at the Court of the Queen's Majesty, where a man had need be of some substance. But my ambition did not soar a high pitch: I was content to play a modest part on the world's stage; and when I fell out of humour, as sometimes I did, with the fevered life at Court, I withdrew myself to my little estate in the country, and there lived rustically among the boors and the pigs.Nevertheless, from having seen many men and cities in my time, I was not long of finding this rustical employment stale upon me. After some few months I would begin to yearn again for the stir and bustle of London, where I might at the least whet my wits that had grown dull and rusty among my simple country fellows. One such time, in the late autumn of the year 1601, my years then numbering thirty, I rode out of Hampshire to London, and took up my lodging in King Street, in Westminster, rejoicing to meet my old friends again, to hear the clash of wits, and feed my mind on the marvellous inventions of Will Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and other ornaments and luminaries of that glorious age.I found that two great matters were in men's mouths, whereof the one was the exceeding melancholy whereinto the Queen had sunk since the beheading of my Lord Essex; the other, the rising of the O'Neill (otherwise the Earl of Tyrone) in Ireland, and the descent of some thousands of Spaniards upon the harbour of Kinsale to enfurther that base ungrateful traitor. King Philip having failed in his endeavour to get a grip upon the throat of England, was seeking to annoy her extremities, like as a blister upon the heel or a corn upon the toe. I acknowledge that this news of his impudency made me itch and sweat to flesh my sword again on those enemies of my country; but I dallied somewhat, supposing that my Lord Mountjoy, who was now Lord Deputy in my Lord Essex his room, would speedily make his account with the Irish rebels and their Spanish consorts. Furthermore, Ireland had always shown me a forbidding aspect: I had heard much of its wildness, its thick woods and filthy bogs, its savage and uncouth people, from men that had served the Queen there and got thereby small thanks and less renown; and I had read of these matters also in the book of Master Spenser, whereof a written copy (for it was not put in print until many years after) had come into my hands. For these reasons, therefore, I was no ways in the mind to adventure myself across the Irish Sea.But that winter, a day or two before Christmas, Sir Oliver St. John arrived in London out of that distressful country, bearing letters from the Lord Deputy and his council wherein they set down the exceeding hard straits in which they rested for want of provisions and men. They related how they had annoyed all parts of the town of Kinsale with the battery of their ordnance, so as the breach was almost assaultable, insomuch that they were not without hope of the enemy yielding, or of their being able to enter the town by force. But a thousand more Spaniards had lately sailed into Castlehaven with great store of munition and artillery; and moreover the Spanish commander had besought the O'Neill to haste to relieve him, who had accordingly come and encamped not far from the town with eight thousand men or more. The Lord Deputy therefore earnestly entreated the Lords of the Council in England to despatch to him without delay four thousand good footmen at the least, with victuals, munition, and money.These urgent messages occasioned a notable stir among the Lords of the Council, and being laid before the Queen by master secretary Cecil, kindled her to an extremity of rage. Her Majesty had already been at great charges to sustain the Lord Deputy in his dealings with the rebels and their Spanish aids, and being ever loth to untie her purse-strings, she bemoaned exceedingly the ruinous expense which this demand of the Lord Mountjoy would cast upon her. Yet had she a proud spirit that ill brooked the thought of Spain planting a foot in any part whatsoever of her dominions, and she was torn betwixt her parsimony and her care for the common weal.It chanced that, having gone to Greenwich, where the Queen then was, to bear my part in the revels that were performed at Christmas-time, I came in the eye of Her Majesty one day as she passed through the hall. She stayed her walk (alas! how tottering!), and as I rose up from bending my knee, my heart smote me to see how thin and frail her body was, albeit her eye still flashed and glittered with the fire of her unquenchable spirit."So, sirrah," quoth she, "you are come again out of your pigsty to refresh your snout with more delectable odours."Her Majesty was ever hard of tongue, and she bore me a grudge for that I had demitted the humble office I had one time held at her Court."Madam," I said, "I have come like Eurydice, out of Tartarus into the bounteous light of the sun.""Ods fish! dost think to win me by thy flattery?" she said; nevertheless methought she was not ill-pleased. But she went on, in a pitiful shrill voice: "What does a proper man here in idlesse, conning soft speeches and inditing silly verses to silly wenches, when my kingdom of Ireland lieth in peril for lack of swords! Go to, rascal; an thou wouldst pleasure me, show thyself a man, and vex me not with lip service and the antics of an ape."Then, wellnigh breaking in two with her churchyard cough, she passed on, leaving me a sorry spectacle of confusion.Methought that now I could do no other thing than take up the challenge which my wrathful Mistress had flung at me. In two breaths she had called me swine and ape, and I grudged that in this her feeble old age she should hold me in low esteem. 'Twas too plain that she was not long for this world, and the desire to please her, together with my old longing for a bout with the Spaniards, prevailed upon me to join myself to those voluntaries that were proffering their service in Ireland. Accordingly I wrote a brief epistle to her Majesty, acquainting her of my design, and received for answer two lines in a quivering hand."Chris, thou'rt a good lad. God bless thee with perseverance. Thy loving sovereign, E.R."IIIn such manner it came to pass that, one day about the middle of January, I found myself sailing into Kinsale harbour, my ship having aboard her many gentlemen that were voluntaries like myself, and some portion of the new levies for which the Lord Deputy had made petition. I stretched my ears for the sound of guns and the blast of war trumpets, but there was a great stillness and peace that smote me with dread of ill news. However, on coming to land, I discovered as much with disappointment as with joy that the Spaniards had yielded themselves by articles of capitulation a few days before, that the O'Neill had been beaten back from the English camp with sore discomfiture, and his men scattered to the four winds. Though I rejoiced in the good success of the Lord Deputy's arms, I was vexed that I had come too late to deal a blow against the Spaniard, more especially as I foresaw a weary campaign against the native rebels.It fell out according to my expectation. The Lord Deputy, furnished with new supplies of men and munition, marched through the land, burning, wasting, harrowing without ruth, and hanging such chief rebels as fell into his hands. As it ever is in war, they that suffered most were the poor peasantry of the country: and seeing daily their lamentable estate, finding everywhere men dead of famine, insomuch that in one day's journey we saw upwards of a thousand men lying unburied, my heart sickened of this work, and I thought to return home. Could I but have looked into the future, I should have seen divers sorry experiences through which it was my destiny to pass; but that which is to come is mercifully hid from us. I foresaw neither what I was to suffer, nor that great blessing which Providence bestowed on me, whereby I have ever regarded my going to Ireland as the most fortunate and happy event of all that ever befell me.That island is covered in every part with thick forest and vast swamps and bogs, from which arise exhalations exceeding noisome as well to the native people as to our English. From camping oft on the borders of such oozy fens I took an Irish ague, suffering sharp pains in all my limbs, with shivering and vomiting, my teeth chattering, my head oppressed with ringing noises intolerable. So sore was I beset by this most malignant distemper as that all my strength departed from me; I could neither sit my horse nor march afoot, and was afflicted with so desperate a languor and exhaustion that I believed myself nigh unto death. Being in so dreadful a case, I must needs be left behind in a small fort, that had lately been constructed to command a ford on the border of O'Neill's country; and I am sure that when my companions shook my hand and bade me farewell, none expected ever to see me in life again. But by the mercy of God and the devotion of my servant (there was no physician in that place) I recovered of my fever; and within ten days or so I felt myself ready to make a push towards the army that had gone before.We had learnt by scourers that our people were then distant some thirty miles across the hills, intending to advance further towards the north. By this it was plain that I must needs hasten if I would come up with them, and there was the more reason for this in that the hills were known to be the haunt and covert of rebels. But I had good hope that, being furnished with a noble horse, and accompanied with my stout and mettlesome servant, and three tall natives of the country, of proven loyalty, I might compass the journey of thirty miles in security. I acknowledge that, having been occupied of late in hunting a broken rabble, I held the enemy in lighter esteem than I ought; and when I look back upon the matter, I feel some scorn of my recklessness, and deem that in what befell me I had no more than my desert.We set forth at daybreak one morning, one of the Irishmen leading us, and took our way into the hills. I knew somewhat of the trials and hardships of travel in Ireland, but they were as nought by comparison with that which I encountered that day. The country was covered with close and almost impassable woods, intersected with watercourses of depth sufficient to render hazardous their crossing; and we pierced the woods but to find ourselves in swamp or morass. I was by this time aware of the treacherous nature of these quaggy places; but in spite of all our heedfulness, and notwithstanding that three of us were natives well skilled in their country's discommodities, we had ofttimes much ado to hold our course. Ever and anon we saw ourselves forced to go round about; and although our guide ordered our going with as diligent carefulness as he might, many times we had need to quit our saddles and lend aid to our horses, to draw them from the deceitful mire of the swamps, in such sort that we made but poor going, and by the middle part of the day had accomplished a mere trifle of our journey.As we were picking our steps thus gingerly over an expanse of spongy ground, overhung by a low beetling cliff, there befell an accident upon which I cannot look back without a mortifying pang, seeing that I was, for all my thirty years, a veteran in war. In all our journey up to that moment we had seen neither man nor any living thing save only the small animals of the woods, and some few wild cattle that smelt us afar off, and vanished from our sight more quickly than eye could follow. On a sudden, before we were aware, there descended upon us from the midst of the bushes on the rock aforesaid a thick shower of spears and stones. A fragment of rock smote upon my headpiece with such violence as wellnigh to stun me; and my horse, made frantic by the sudden onset and the fierce cries of the men in ambush, swerved from the narrow track whereon we were riding, and carried me into the swamp. Dizzy with the shock, I lost my manage of the beast, which, plunging to regain his footing, cast me headlong from my saddle.When I came to myself, I saw my horse in the hands of two kernes, as they are named in that country—rude and ragged fellows, barefoot, half-naked, and armed with light darts and a long and deadly knife which they call a skene. These two were hauling upon my horse's bridle, to bring the scrambling beast upon the dry ground. One of my Irishmen lay like a senseless log, with a dart in his body; another and my servant were overthrown, and the kernes were standing over them; the third Irishman, as I saw, had wheeled his horse, and was spurring along the track, I supposed to bring help. I made no doubt but that the rascals, when they had finished their work upon my followers, would deal likewise with me, whom they had left hitherto, seeing me dazed and bewildered by my fall.But I perceived, after a brief space, that these ragged and unkempt creatures took no step towards me, but stood at gaze, their fierce eyes glittering with I knew not what excitation of mind. I was still in my wonderment, bracing myself to withstand the assault which I supposed they intended against me, when I came to a sudden knowledge of my true situation. I lay upon a thin crust of earth overlying the yielding bog, and already I felt it sinking under my weight. I had not been so short a time in the country but I knew in what extremity of peril I lay, and this knowledge serving as a goad to my numbness, I strove to lift myself from the clammy embrace of the bog that was beginning to suck me down.And now my mind was smitten with the fear of death, and I take no shame from the terror that beset me. A man may face his foes, and not quail, with a weapon in his hand; but to lie helpless in the clutch of an enemy against which neither weapon nor courage is of any avail is a condition to turn the stoutest heart to water. I cried aloud to those kernes that stood upon the bank, choosing rather to die swiftly by their knives than to choke and smother in that slow torment. They did but mock me with jeers and horrid execrations, uttered in their barbarous tongue,[#] and their delight became doubly manifest when with every motion of my ineffectual limbs I did but assist the bog. The more desperately I strove to free myself, the more closely did the pitiless morass cling about me and clog me, like to that loathly creature of which mariners tell, that winds innumerable tentacles about its living prey and digests it to a jelly. Presently I could no more move my limbs, and when I sought to purchase succour from those that stood by, offering great rewards whereby every one of those paupers might have become a petty Croesus among his kind, they sat them down like spectators at a play, to feast their eyes upon my agony, even as in ancient days the Romans saw without compassion the holy martyrs yield up their lives beneath the claws of Nubian lions. And when I saw that neither promises nor entreaties would prevail with them, by reason mayhap that they knew not what I said, I wrapped myself in despair and silence, endeavouring, as a Christian ought, to contemplate the inevitable end with quiet mind.[#] It must be remembered that Englishmen of Christopher Rudd's time were ignorant of the Irish civilization and literature which their ancestors had destroyed, and were even more apt than their descendants to decry what they did not understand.—H.S.[image]THEY DID BUT MOCK ME WITH JEERS AND HORRID EXECRATIONSI had sunk wellnigh to my shoulder-blades, and as it were a mist was hovering before my eyes, when the sound of a horse galloping awoke my slumbering senses, and I looked up, thinking to see my Irishman returning. The kernes had risen to their feet, and turned their backs upon me, and their vociferous clamour fell to a great silence. And gazing beyond them, I saw, not my Irishman, but a young maiden, upon a hobby of the country, riding with loose rein at the very brink of the cliff above. Distraught and speechless, I gazed in amaze and wonderment, as this radiant creature brought her hobby to a stand on the height over against me. She cast one glance at me, and I heard a voice like a silver bell rung sharply, and at her words the kernes were set in motion as they were puppets moved by invisible strings, and with one consent, yet sullenly, they hasted to obey her behests. Having loosed the bridles of my servant's horse and of the maiden's hobby, they knit them together, and one of the men cast this rope of leather upon the bog towards me. Mustering my remnant strength I caught it, and passed it over my head and beneath my armpits, whereupon some few of the kernes laid hold of it at the end, and with mighty hauling heaved me from my slimy bed. So strong was the embrace wherein I had been clasped that I came to the bank in my stocking feet, having left my boots in that ravenous maw.In this sorry plight my aspect was as filthy and foul as Odysseus when he showed himself to the maiden Nausicaa. My Nausicaa smiled upon viewing me, and when I could find no words wherewith to utter the gratitude of my swelling spirit, her lips parted, and that silvery voice uttered words in my own tongue, which fell the more sweetly upon my ear by reason of their quaintness of accent."I am troubled, sir," said she, "at this your incommodity, but no herald announced your coming, whereby we might furnish guides. Haply your messenger went astray?"I perceived that she mocked me, but being too far spent to answer her in kind, I was content to relate briefly what had befallen me. She smiled again, and said lightly—"My kernes did what seemed good to them, at no man's bidding. I pray you accept our hospitality, so that we can repair in some measure the coldness of your welcome in this our country."Then she turned upon the kernes that stood glooming by, and spake a few words to them in their own tongue; and after she had assured me that they would do me no harm, and bid me accompany them, she sped back towards the quarter whence she had come, riding without bridle, a marvel to behold.
[image]HE PLIED THE WHIP RIGHT MERRILY
[image]
[image]
HE PLIED THE WHIP RIGHT MERRILY
When our sails took the wind, the speed of the galley sensibly increased, but it was not long before I was troubled to see that our pursuer was gaining on us. She had far outstripped her consorts, the which indeed were no longer visible, and might be left out of the reckoning. The darkness was waxing deeper, and I could scarce have seen our resolute pursuer had we not come opposite to the extreme westward point of the island, where, before the friary of Saint Sebastian, a great fire had been kindled, without doubt of set purpose to enfurther the chase. It was the customary place where beacon fires were made, to give warning of danger on the side of the sea. The ruddy glare, shining forth over the water, showed me that the galley was no more than two furlongs astern. We made all the speed we might, but I could not but perceive that the pursuer crept ever nearer, and I began to be exceeding apprehensive. Her oarsmen, having rowed not above a quarter of the distance we had come, must needs be fresh by comparison with my own men, who had been straining at the oar without remission for close upon an hour. Furthermore, she would certainly have soldiers aboard her, maybe to the number of fifty or more, and we had no sufficiency of arms wherewith to oppose them.
We had come beyond the cast of the beacon fire, into a vast impenetrable blackness. Pacing the deck in sore travail of spirit, and setting my wits on the rack if haply I might devise some stratagem that should profit us, on a sudden I spied by the fore hatch a large vessel of iron shaped like a round bucket, and pierced with holes, which I knew was designed to hold fire, whether for cooking or for illumination. I stood for a while chewing upon a device which the sight of this vessel had set a-working in my mind, and then hied me to Raoul to make him partner of the merry conceit I had fashioned. He heard it joyfully, and I went without delay to put it in practice.
I gathered together some shreds of canvas and rope ends and stuffed them lightly into the vessel, mixing them plentifully with grease that was employed about the rowlocks, and liquid tar out of pots left in the galley by the men that had been caulking her. Then I thrust two short pikes through the topmost holes of the vessel opposite one to the other, as it were at the cardinal points of the circumference, and stopped the others as well as I could. This done I strewed upon the top a handful of gunpowder, and set in the midst a length of slow match that might be two or three minutes in burning. Having kindled the match at its utmost end, I let down the vessel over the stern into the water, and with great satisfaction watched it float in our wake until nought was visible in the darkness save the red glow of the match. Then I ran below and bade Stubbs put the rowers to a very frenzy of labour, so that we might draw as far as we could from the pursuer while that their strength endured.
Returning to the deck I beheld my beacon burst into a bright flare; and the pursuer coming upon it, I saw the galley with great clearness, and sparkling reflections from the morions and harness of the soldiers that were aboard. I knew that so long as the light endured our own galley must be wholly hid from their eyes, and besides, they would be perplexed to know the meaning of the light, and might even suppose it to betoken a floating mine whereof they must be ware. Without doubt it would delay them somewhat, and give me the few minutes I needed for the full accomplishment of my design.
As soon as I saw the galley come within the circle of light I gave the word to Raoul, who put up the helm, so that our vessel swung round in a wide circuit until she was a cable length of her former course. I had already commanded the slaves to cease from rowing, lest the sound of their oars should acquaint the enemy with our movement. As we came round I saw the galley draw out from the radiance, and heard the voices of the men upon her. She sped directly forward, following the course her captain supposed us to have taken.
When she was almost abreast of us, and scarce three fathom length away, I bade the rowers pull with all their might, and Raoul steered straight for the galley. The rattle of the oars must have apprised the enemy that we were nearer than they supposed, but they were not thoroughly aware of us until we were upon them. Then, as they spied our vessel looming big out of the darkness, there was a great outcry among them, and it appeared that divers commands were given, for one moment she seemed to be swinging round to oppose the imminent shock, the next she held on her course as if endeavouring to evade us. By her greater speed she might without difficulty have drawn clear, but in bearing up she lost way, and so enabled us to diminish the gap between her and our galley.
Under the sturdy strokes of our oarsmen the galley in a manner leapt towards her. We were greeted with a pretty hot salvo from her musketeers, but there were no more than two or three of us upon the deck, and we were flat on our faces, all save Raoul, so that what with the sway and toss of the vessels and the flurried aim they took, we suffered no hurt. While the smoke still hung in the air there was a mighty crash: the bow of our galley had cut the other a little abaft of the mainmast. Being fashioned for this very device of ramming, our beak had, I doubted not, stove a hole in her side, whereas I could not suppose that we had been endamaged, though the vessel quivered from stem to stern.
Immediately after we struck I commanded the oarsmen to back water, by which means, and the cunning handling of the helm, we withdrew a space. From the enemy's galley came loud shouts of fear and consternation, and I heard some say that she was sinking. It troubled me that, to save our own skins, we had perforce imperilled the lives of three-score hapless slaves that had done us no wrong, but were indeed in a like case with our own men; but the breeze brought with it the rattle of the oars of the galleys that had first set off to pursue us, and I could very well leave the men of the foundering vessel to be rescued by their fellows. Our need was to draw clear away as swiftly as we might. Accordingly I commanded our men again to ply their oars, and this they did the more willingly, despite their fatigue, because they exulted in the crippling of their adversaries.
We were now come into the open sea. Our men pulled with measured strokes for a full half-hour before I deemed it prudent to suffer any intermission. Then I bade them lie upon their oars while I hearkened for sounds of our pursuers. There was not so much as a whisper. I could not but believe that the commanders of the galleys had given over the attempt to come up with us. Yet, as I took counsel with Raoul, I durst not rest thoroughly assured that all danger was past, nor all need for labour and watchfulness vanished. The galleons in the harbour would surely make sail as soon as they could be put in trim, and scour the sea for leagues around. Furthermore, we might fall in with some vessel homeward bound, or perchance outward bound from Lisbon to the Americas. It behoved us then to be very wary, and, as our proverb says, not to holla until we were out of the wood.
Our men, having fasted since the morning and toiled very hard, were in dire need of food, and I hazarded to rest for so long as they might take their fill of the broth and biscuit which the cookmen had brought aboard, bidding them spare enough for another meal. We should not be utterly safe until we made a French port, Bordeaux being the most likely, and we were distant thence, at the very least reckoning, upwards of three hundred leagues. Within a single day we must needs be in dire straits for food, but I had conceived a plan for supplying ourselves so soon as we were free from the immediate fear of pursuit.
When we had all eaten and drunk very heartily, though in good sooth the fare was of the poorest, we sped on again, the men taking turns to row, and so continued all that night. We directed our course at a venture, but at break of day we saw with thankfulness that we were not a great way from the shore. There was no safety for us but in boldness; accordingly Raoul steered directly for the land, that was very barren hereabout, and we put into a small bay, and ran the vessel abeach, purposing to lie up there and take our rest. I parted the whole company into watches, and we slept by turns, the men of each watch being straitly charged not to stray from the low beach to higher ground. While we stayed in that place I saw several galleys and one great galleon cruising in the offing, which I guessed to be hunting for us; but we were very well hid, and I thought it would scarce come into the heads of the Spaniards that we had adventured ourselves ashore.
During one of the watches I talked long with Raoul concerning the occasion of my venturing upon this course for his behoof. He was in perfect ignorance of the complicity of the Count de Sarney in his kidnapping, and was loath to believe that his uncle could have descended to such a depth of villainy. I was at no pains to bring him to my own persuasion, being content to leave the unravelling of the plot until we should come safely to his home. He drew from me the full tale of my adventures, breaking into a great gust of laughter when I related the manner of my dealing with Don Ygnacio. I assured him that he owed all to my honest mariner William Stubbs, on whom he bestowed thanks without stint, promising me in secret that, if we got safe to Torcy, he would reward him with much more than barren words.
We lay in that spot for near six hours, and then, having consumed all our food, saw ourselves faced by the prospect of famine. Certain of the galley-slaves, who were for the most part desperate and abandoned ruffians that richly deserved their fate, began to murmur, and not without reason, for it is no profit to a man to leap out of the frying-pan into the fire. In this strait I bethought me of the use whereto I had imagined putting our noble prisoners, Don Ygnacio and Captain Badillo. We launched our galley when the tide was full, and mounting into her, coasted along for a league or two until we descried a village of fishers nestling in a hollow between the cliffs. We then ran ashore, and made Don Ygnacio write on his tables a formal requisition for meat and wine, signing it with his full name and titles. And I went up the land with Stubbs and Captain Badillo, together with a dozen of the galley-slaves bearing baskets and buckets; and giving the captain to know that I would certainly use my dagger upon him if he by word, deed, or even with wink of eye betrayed us, we marched boldly to the village, where he presented his mandate to the people, and received from them enough to supply our instant needs. When I saw how grudgingly they furnished us, I pitied the poor folk, and wished with all my heart that I could pay them, suspecting that the minions of the Spanish king were not over scrupulous in honouring this sort of debt; but my purse was well-nigh empty, and I could only trust that Providence would in due season repay them a hundredfold.
The story we gave out was that the Captain-General of the King's galleys was making a voyage to inspect the coast, and we found this served us to a miracle among the ignorant fisher folk, both at this place and at the many other villages on the coast of Portugal where we made like perquisitions on the days succeeding. We pursued our way every night, and rested every day, choosing only small paltry places whereat to obtain food, and such as we might adventure into without raising a wind of suspicion. Nowhere did we come within an ace of danger save at one village, whose parish priest, a canon of Salamanca, would not be stayed from paying a visit of ceremony to the illustrious and worshipful Captain-General. It was a marvellous whimsical thing to behold their meeting, the priest offering gracious incense of flattery to the royal officer, who received his compliments and felicitations, I being at his elbow, in a mood betwixt dudgeon and impotent rage. I caught a look of puzzlement on the worthy canon's face as he made his adieu, and I fear me he carried to his humble parsonage a blighted estimate of the courtliness of princes' servants. As for me, I thanked my stars that the peril of discovery had as it were but lightly brushed us.
Our plan of hugging the coast, yet not so close as to risk our bottom on rocks or shoals, kept us far away from the track of sea-going vessels, and the weather being exceedingly fair, we accomplished fifteen or twenty leagues a day without danger from the elements or man. The voyage was tedious beyond telling, but I did not grudge it, for joy at beholding the amelioration it wrought in the health of my dear friend. I laughed often to think how the transfusion I had proposed in trickery to Don Ygnacio was in process of accomplishment by the agency of nature. He became leaner in proportion as Raoul indued flesh, and my scrupulous care that he should not have the means to overeat, but should perform a fitting share of labour at the oar, did not only reduce his bulk, but also brought his body to a healthful condition whereto he had been strange for many a year. He showed me no gratitude, and paid me no fees, though I declare without boasting that I did more for him than any physician or chirurgeon that ever mixed a powder or wielded a scalpel.
I used my endeavour to wrest from him a full confession of his villainies, but he would never admit further than what we knew: that he had received moneys from his cousin the Count de Sarney. As for the kidnapping, he avouched most solemnly that he was as ignorant as innocent in respect of it; but inasmuch as Raoul had acquainted him of his name and condition, and besought him with many promises to set him free, I concluded that he had found his best interest in playing the horse-leech upon his cousin.
We came in due time to Bordeaux, where our story, when it leaked out, became a nine-days' wonder. I am very sure it would have mightily pleased the Sieur Michel de Montaigne, had he been yet alive; of whose Essays I purchased a very pretty copy before I departed. We sold the galley at a price much above its value, to a rich noble of Perigord, who declared his intention of keeping it for his private pleasure, and for a perpetual memorial of the gullibility of Spaniards. Every galley-slave received his freedom and his proper share of the purchase money, though I confess I was uneasy in my mind when I thought of such rapscallions being loosed among honest people. We delivered Don Ygnacio and Captain Badillo to the mayor, who threw them into prison until he should advise himself concerning their future. Then one fair day I took ship with Raoul and worthy Stubbs in a vessel bound for Calais, being somewhat in pocket by my adventure.
V
In the interim between our departure from Cadiz and our arrival at Calais, Raoul's hairs grew again both on his face and on his head, albeit I observed with sorrow a many flecks of grey among them. Besides those and sundry scars and callosities, there was no other enduring mark upon him of his long torture in the galleys when he came ashore with me. We stayed in Calais only so long as that he might provide himself with decent apparel, and then we rode on hired horses, Stubbs following, to Dieppe. There we betook ourselves to Jean Prévost, to learn what had happened during the two months of my absence. He welcomed Raoul with boisterous demonstrations of delight, and having heard our story, cried out in a fury that he would drive his sword through the carcass of the Count de Sarney, and so rid the world of a villain. But I prevailed upon him to leave us to our own courses with the Count, whereupon he told us that the Count had but lately sold his own little domain, the which we took to be an evident sign of his perfect security.
Next day we rode all four to Torcy, and never did I see pleasure so admirably pictured on a man's countenance as it was when the old faithful servitor opened to us and beheld his true master. He lifted up his old cracked voice and called to his fellows, and they came pell-mell from the kitchen and offices, and leapt and laughed in the right Gallic manner, which we sober Englishmen are apt to find ridiculous. Their clamour drew the Count from his cabinet, and he stood at the head of the stairs as still as a stone, his countenance taking the colour of wax when he beheld Raoul at my side, and Stubbs capering (sore against his will) in the arms of a buxom buttery maid. The miserable wretch wreathed his lips to a smile, and said, mumbling in dreadful sort—
"Welcome, my dear nephew; I had given you up for dead."
"You have kept my house warm for me, monsieur," said Raoul, with a fine self-mastery; but Jean Prévost sprang up the stairs, and taking the Count by the collar, bundled him down and out at the door without ceremony. Raoul dispatched a man after him with his hat and cloak, and he went away and sought shelter, as we afterward learnt, in the house of one of his old retainers.
We made diligent search in the cabinet for evidence of his villainy, finding nought save a book of accounts wherein were set down the sums he had paid to Don Ygnacio de Acosta, the addition of which mounted to a monstrous figure. Raoul bade his servants gather up all the Count's chattels ready to be conveyed to him, and having put all things in order for his own occupancy he returned with us to Dieppe, where we spent a merry night at Jean Prévost's house.
We did not delay to seek the king's commissary, before whom we laid the whole matter. He took down our depositions, and examined the account-book, and delivered his opinion at great length, the which was, in brief, that we had nothing to convict the Count of the felony of kidnapping, though we might reasonably presume it; but that Raoul might bring a suit against him in the king's court for restitution of the moneys he had disbursed. This he did, and I had word, many months after, that the slow-footed law upheld his claim, and that the Count, being unable to acquit himself of so heavy a debt, was reduced to beggary and thrown into prison, there to remain at the king's pleasure. With great magnanimity Raoul relented towards him for the sake of his son Armand, whom he sought out in Paris, and, being perfectly assured of his innocency, endowed him with a pension sufficient to keep his father in a decent penury.
As for me, long ere this was accomplished I had returned with Stubbs (rejoicing in Raoul's liberal largess, and bound to my service for ever) to my own land. I was not wholly at ease in my mind, for I had absented myself from my duty in the Queen's Guard without her august leave, and had no expectation but that she would visit my fault upon me somewhat grievously. I betook me to the Palace on the day after my return, and learnt from my comrades that the Queen had been highly incensed against me, and had sworn to show me bitter marks of her anger.
I took up my post in the corridor at the proper hour, and had been there but a brief while, when her Highness herself issued from her cabinet unattended. She halted at sight of me, and, frowning heavily, cried in shrill and shrewish accents (and it went to my heart that she was now most apparently an old woman)—
"How now, sirrah? Dost dare show thy ugly face to me?"
"As for my ugliness, madam," said I, "that is as God pleases."
"It does not please me that thou hast hog's bristles on thy countenance" (my beard and mustachio, in truth, were as yet somewhat like a field of stubble). "Where hast thou been, monkey?"
I told her Grace that I had come from working some mischief among the galleys of her brother of Spain, whereupon she let forth a round oath, exceeding disparaging to the said brother, and bid me go with her into her chamber and inform her more particularly on that matter. I related the incidents in their due order, and when I came to that part where I had made the Captain-General swallow my vile admixture, she burst forth in a fit of laughter so immoderate that I feared lest, tight-laced as she was, she should do herself a hurt.
"Well, well, I pardon thee, my sweet Chris," she said, when I had made an end; "but I must e'en have my moiety of the spoils."
And 'tis sober truth that her Grace made me tell over into her royal palm a half of the French crowns that I had brought back with me. I confess 'twas not an exact reckoning, for knowing her Grace's propensity, I had been careful to make a subtraction from the full sum before I named it, a fault which I trust will be held to be venial, and not laid against me by honest men.
Her Grace's anger being thus mollified, I made bold to proffer a petition whereon I set much store, to wit, that she would suffer me to join myself to Sir Walter Raleigh for his voyage, the ships being at that time, as I had already learnt, on the point of sailing from Plymouth.
"Ods my bodikins!" cried the Queen; "hast thou lost thy silly heart to some Spanish slut, that thou art burning to return among the garlic-eaters?"
"I assure your Highness' Grace," said I, "that in all my wanderings I have never beheld a damsel whose eyes could lure me from devotion to my Queen."
At this her Grace showed as much pleasure as she were a girl of sixteen, and I looked for her to consent to my petition; but in this I was deceived.
"Well, well," she said, "thou'rt a proper bold rascal, but I can't have all my lovers running about the wicked world, in danger of falling into divers snares and temptations. No; ods my life, thou shan't go," she cried in a passion, "and if I see any mumping and glooming, to the Tower with thee!"
I smiled as amiably as I could, and vowed that I had no pleasure save her Highness' will; but I own that I nourish to this day a remnant grudge against my old mistress, for that she hindered me from serving with Sir Walter in that world-renowned enterprise.
[image]tailpiece to Fourth Part
[image]
[image]
tailpiece to Fourth Part
Interim
That feat of Sir Walter Raleigh was a wondrous achievement that any man might envy without blame. The English fleet came to anchor off Cadiz on June 20, 1596. Sir Walter's voice had great weight with the generals, and it was by his counsel and ordering that the enterprise was ruled. His device was to attack the galleons lying there in the haven and after assail the town, and so was it performed. Himself led the van ward in theWarspright, and ran through a fierce cannonade from the fort of Puntal and the galleys, esteeming them but as wasps in respect of the powerfulness of the others, and making no answer save by blare of trumpet to each discharge. And he dropped anchor close over against theSt. Philipand theSt. Andrew, the greatest of all the galleons, and the same which had overpowered in the Azores the littleRevengewherein Sir Richard Grenville died gloriously, winning deathless fame. Three hours theWarsprightfought those great ships, and was near sinking; nevertheless Raleigh would not yield precedence to my Lord Essex or the Lord Admiral, but thrust himself athwart the channel, so as he was sure none should out-start him again for that day.
And so he set on to grapple theSt. Philip, and the Spaniards fell into a panic, and that galleon with three others tried to run aground, tumbling into the sea soldiers in heaps, so thick as if coals had been poured out of a sack. Straightway two were taken or ever their captains were able to turn them; but theSt. Philipwas blown up by her captain, and a multitude of men were drowned or scorched with the flames. And Raleigh received in the leg from a spent shot a grievous wound, interlaced and deformed with splinters.
Thereupon my Lord Essex hasted to land, and put to rout eight hundred horse that stood against him, and by eight of the clock the English were masters of the market-place, the forts, and the whole town save only the castle, which held out till break of day. And the citizens were constrained to pay a hundred and twenty thousand crowns for their ransom, and moreover all the rich merchandise of the town fell to the English as spoils of war. And Sir Walter's valiant deeds purchased again the favour of the Queen, and she willed he should come to the Palace, and received him graciously, holding much private talk and riding abroad with him.
My grandfather, who was of a goodly presence, had taken the eye of the Queen, and she lifted him out of the Guard and made him one of her fifty gentlemen pensioners, albeit he was full young for such a place. These gentlemen were appointed to attend the Queen on all ceremonious occasions, bearing a gilt axe upon a staff, and to serve about the Palace, the which offices were little to his liking. And his father dying about this time, he went down into Hampshire to take up his inheritance, and was much busied about his estates, and exercising as justice of the peace that little law he had learned in the Inner Temple. But he was again lodging in London when my Lord Essex, having botched up his work in Ireland, and taking reproof like a spoilt child, gave rein to his ill-temper, and hatched treason against his long-suffering Mistress. My grandfather often spoke to me sorrowfully of that headstrong young lord, and related sundry of his foolhardy doings—how he locked into an inner chamber the Chancellor, the Chief Justice, and other grave men who had resorted to his house to inquire the cause of the assemblage of armed men there; how he rode boisterously through the streets, brandishing his sword, and calling upon the populace to follow him; and how finally he lost his head on the block.
A short while thereafter, my grandfather sailed to Ireland, where befell him the last great adventure, and, as he was wont to say, the most fortunate, of his life. The O'Neill, called Earl of Tyrone, had been long time a thorn in the side of Queen Elizabeth, taking gold from the King of Spain to sustain his treasons, and in the year 1597 making open war upon the English governor. He did great despite upon the people of the Plantation, and lurking in the forests, long defied the English soldiery. My Lord Mountjoy, whom the Queen had sent to Ireland as her deputy in the room of Essex, being resolved to make an end of the rebellion, ravaged and wasted the country, driving off the cattle, starving the people, and fortifying all the passes through the woods. And you shall read now how my grandfather once more, and for the last time, drew his sword, and the strange fashion whereby he was led to put it up again, for ever.
THE FIFTH PART
CHRISTOPHER RUDD'S ADVENTURE IN IRELAND,AND THE MANNER OF HIS WINNING A WIFE
[image]headpiece to Fifth Part
[image]
[image]
headpiece to Fifth Part
I
I hold it ill that a man should be under no constraint to labour for his bread. To have a competency is indeed a comfortable thing; but being so possessed, a man lacks a spur to high emprise, and his faculties are like to wither and decay.
It was my fortune to receive from my father a property sufficient to supply the needs of the body; and the gear I added thereto in divers enterprises and adventures gave me the wherewithal to maintain a decent port before the world, and even at the Court of the Queen's Majesty, where a man had need be of some substance. But my ambition did not soar a high pitch: I was content to play a modest part on the world's stage; and when I fell out of humour, as sometimes I did, with the fevered life at Court, I withdrew myself to my little estate in the country, and there lived rustically among the boors and the pigs.
Nevertheless, from having seen many men and cities in my time, I was not long of finding this rustical employment stale upon me. After some few months I would begin to yearn again for the stir and bustle of London, where I might at the least whet my wits that had grown dull and rusty among my simple country fellows. One such time, in the late autumn of the year 1601, my years then numbering thirty, I rode out of Hampshire to London, and took up my lodging in King Street, in Westminster, rejoicing to meet my old friends again, to hear the clash of wits, and feed my mind on the marvellous inventions of Will Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and other ornaments and luminaries of that glorious age.
I found that two great matters were in men's mouths, whereof the one was the exceeding melancholy whereinto the Queen had sunk since the beheading of my Lord Essex; the other, the rising of the O'Neill (otherwise the Earl of Tyrone) in Ireland, and the descent of some thousands of Spaniards upon the harbour of Kinsale to enfurther that base ungrateful traitor. King Philip having failed in his endeavour to get a grip upon the throat of England, was seeking to annoy her extremities, like as a blister upon the heel or a corn upon the toe. I acknowledge that this news of his impudency made me itch and sweat to flesh my sword again on those enemies of my country; but I dallied somewhat, supposing that my Lord Mountjoy, who was now Lord Deputy in my Lord Essex his room, would speedily make his account with the Irish rebels and their Spanish consorts. Furthermore, Ireland had always shown me a forbidding aspect: I had heard much of its wildness, its thick woods and filthy bogs, its savage and uncouth people, from men that had served the Queen there and got thereby small thanks and less renown; and I had read of these matters also in the book of Master Spenser, whereof a written copy (for it was not put in print until many years after) had come into my hands. For these reasons, therefore, I was no ways in the mind to adventure myself across the Irish Sea.
But that winter, a day or two before Christmas, Sir Oliver St. John arrived in London out of that distressful country, bearing letters from the Lord Deputy and his council wherein they set down the exceeding hard straits in which they rested for want of provisions and men. They related how they had annoyed all parts of the town of Kinsale with the battery of their ordnance, so as the breach was almost assaultable, insomuch that they were not without hope of the enemy yielding, or of their being able to enter the town by force. But a thousand more Spaniards had lately sailed into Castlehaven with great store of munition and artillery; and moreover the Spanish commander had besought the O'Neill to haste to relieve him, who had accordingly come and encamped not far from the town with eight thousand men or more. The Lord Deputy therefore earnestly entreated the Lords of the Council in England to despatch to him without delay four thousand good footmen at the least, with victuals, munition, and money.
These urgent messages occasioned a notable stir among the Lords of the Council, and being laid before the Queen by master secretary Cecil, kindled her to an extremity of rage. Her Majesty had already been at great charges to sustain the Lord Deputy in his dealings with the rebels and their Spanish aids, and being ever loth to untie her purse-strings, she bemoaned exceedingly the ruinous expense which this demand of the Lord Mountjoy would cast upon her. Yet had she a proud spirit that ill brooked the thought of Spain planting a foot in any part whatsoever of her dominions, and she was torn betwixt her parsimony and her care for the common weal.
It chanced that, having gone to Greenwich, where the Queen then was, to bear my part in the revels that were performed at Christmas-time, I came in the eye of Her Majesty one day as she passed through the hall. She stayed her walk (alas! how tottering!), and as I rose up from bending my knee, my heart smote me to see how thin and frail her body was, albeit her eye still flashed and glittered with the fire of her unquenchable spirit.
"So, sirrah," quoth she, "you are come again out of your pigsty to refresh your snout with more delectable odours."
Her Majesty was ever hard of tongue, and she bore me a grudge for that I had demitted the humble office I had one time held at her Court.
"Madam," I said, "I have come like Eurydice, out of Tartarus into the bounteous light of the sun."
"Ods fish! dost think to win me by thy flattery?" she said; nevertheless methought she was not ill-pleased. But she went on, in a pitiful shrill voice: "What does a proper man here in idlesse, conning soft speeches and inditing silly verses to silly wenches, when my kingdom of Ireland lieth in peril for lack of swords! Go to, rascal; an thou wouldst pleasure me, show thyself a man, and vex me not with lip service and the antics of an ape."
Then, wellnigh breaking in two with her churchyard cough, she passed on, leaving me a sorry spectacle of confusion.
Methought that now I could do no other thing than take up the challenge which my wrathful Mistress had flung at me. In two breaths she had called me swine and ape, and I grudged that in this her feeble old age she should hold me in low esteem. 'Twas too plain that she was not long for this world, and the desire to please her, together with my old longing for a bout with the Spaniards, prevailed upon me to join myself to those voluntaries that were proffering their service in Ireland. Accordingly I wrote a brief epistle to her Majesty, acquainting her of my design, and received for answer two lines in a quivering hand.
"Chris, thou'rt a good lad. God bless thee with perseverance. Thy loving sovereign, E.R."
II
In such manner it came to pass that, one day about the middle of January, I found myself sailing into Kinsale harbour, my ship having aboard her many gentlemen that were voluntaries like myself, and some portion of the new levies for which the Lord Deputy had made petition. I stretched my ears for the sound of guns and the blast of war trumpets, but there was a great stillness and peace that smote me with dread of ill news. However, on coming to land, I discovered as much with disappointment as with joy that the Spaniards had yielded themselves by articles of capitulation a few days before, that the O'Neill had been beaten back from the English camp with sore discomfiture, and his men scattered to the four winds. Though I rejoiced in the good success of the Lord Deputy's arms, I was vexed that I had come too late to deal a blow against the Spaniard, more especially as I foresaw a weary campaign against the native rebels.
It fell out according to my expectation. The Lord Deputy, furnished with new supplies of men and munition, marched through the land, burning, wasting, harrowing without ruth, and hanging such chief rebels as fell into his hands. As it ever is in war, they that suffered most were the poor peasantry of the country: and seeing daily their lamentable estate, finding everywhere men dead of famine, insomuch that in one day's journey we saw upwards of a thousand men lying unburied, my heart sickened of this work, and I thought to return home. Could I but have looked into the future, I should have seen divers sorry experiences through which it was my destiny to pass; but that which is to come is mercifully hid from us. I foresaw neither what I was to suffer, nor that great blessing which Providence bestowed on me, whereby I have ever regarded my going to Ireland as the most fortunate and happy event of all that ever befell me.
That island is covered in every part with thick forest and vast swamps and bogs, from which arise exhalations exceeding noisome as well to the native people as to our English. From camping oft on the borders of such oozy fens I took an Irish ague, suffering sharp pains in all my limbs, with shivering and vomiting, my teeth chattering, my head oppressed with ringing noises intolerable. So sore was I beset by this most malignant distemper as that all my strength departed from me; I could neither sit my horse nor march afoot, and was afflicted with so desperate a languor and exhaustion that I believed myself nigh unto death. Being in so dreadful a case, I must needs be left behind in a small fort, that had lately been constructed to command a ford on the border of O'Neill's country; and I am sure that when my companions shook my hand and bade me farewell, none expected ever to see me in life again. But by the mercy of God and the devotion of my servant (there was no physician in that place) I recovered of my fever; and within ten days or so I felt myself ready to make a push towards the army that had gone before.
We had learnt by scourers that our people were then distant some thirty miles across the hills, intending to advance further towards the north. By this it was plain that I must needs hasten if I would come up with them, and there was the more reason for this in that the hills were known to be the haunt and covert of rebels. But I had good hope that, being furnished with a noble horse, and accompanied with my stout and mettlesome servant, and three tall natives of the country, of proven loyalty, I might compass the journey of thirty miles in security. I acknowledge that, having been occupied of late in hunting a broken rabble, I held the enemy in lighter esteem than I ought; and when I look back upon the matter, I feel some scorn of my recklessness, and deem that in what befell me I had no more than my desert.
We set forth at daybreak one morning, one of the Irishmen leading us, and took our way into the hills. I knew somewhat of the trials and hardships of travel in Ireland, but they were as nought by comparison with that which I encountered that day. The country was covered with close and almost impassable woods, intersected with watercourses of depth sufficient to render hazardous their crossing; and we pierced the woods but to find ourselves in swamp or morass. I was by this time aware of the treacherous nature of these quaggy places; but in spite of all our heedfulness, and notwithstanding that three of us were natives well skilled in their country's discommodities, we had ofttimes much ado to hold our course. Ever and anon we saw ourselves forced to go round about; and although our guide ordered our going with as diligent carefulness as he might, many times we had need to quit our saddles and lend aid to our horses, to draw them from the deceitful mire of the swamps, in such sort that we made but poor going, and by the middle part of the day had accomplished a mere trifle of our journey.
As we were picking our steps thus gingerly over an expanse of spongy ground, overhung by a low beetling cliff, there befell an accident upon which I cannot look back without a mortifying pang, seeing that I was, for all my thirty years, a veteran in war. In all our journey up to that moment we had seen neither man nor any living thing save only the small animals of the woods, and some few wild cattle that smelt us afar off, and vanished from our sight more quickly than eye could follow. On a sudden, before we were aware, there descended upon us from the midst of the bushes on the rock aforesaid a thick shower of spears and stones. A fragment of rock smote upon my headpiece with such violence as wellnigh to stun me; and my horse, made frantic by the sudden onset and the fierce cries of the men in ambush, swerved from the narrow track whereon we were riding, and carried me into the swamp. Dizzy with the shock, I lost my manage of the beast, which, plunging to regain his footing, cast me headlong from my saddle.
When I came to myself, I saw my horse in the hands of two kernes, as they are named in that country—rude and ragged fellows, barefoot, half-naked, and armed with light darts and a long and deadly knife which they call a skene. These two were hauling upon my horse's bridle, to bring the scrambling beast upon the dry ground. One of my Irishmen lay like a senseless log, with a dart in his body; another and my servant were overthrown, and the kernes were standing over them; the third Irishman, as I saw, had wheeled his horse, and was spurring along the track, I supposed to bring help. I made no doubt but that the rascals, when they had finished their work upon my followers, would deal likewise with me, whom they had left hitherto, seeing me dazed and bewildered by my fall.
But I perceived, after a brief space, that these ragged and unkempt creatures took no step towards me, but stood at gaze, their fierce eyes glittering with I knew not what excitation of mind. I was still in my wonderment, bracing myself to withstand the assault which I supposed they intended against me, when I came to a sudden knowledge of my true situation. I lay upon a thin crust of earth overlying the yielding bog, and already I felt it sinking under my weight. I had not been so short a time in the country but I knew in what extremity of peril I lay, and this knowledge serving as a goad to my numbness, I strove to lift myself from the clammy embrace of the bog that was beginning to suck me down.
And now my mind was smitten with the fear of death, and I take no shame from the terror that beset me. A man may face his foes, and not quail, with a weapon in his hand; but to lie helpless in the clutch of an enemy against which neither weapon nor courage is of any avail is a condition to turn the stoutest heart to water. I cried aloud to those kernes that stood upon the bank, choosing rather to die swiftly by their knives than to choke and smother in that slow torment. They did but mock me with jeers and horrid execrations, uttered in their barbarous tongue,[#] and their delight became doubly manifest when with every motion of my ineffectual limbs I did but assist the bog. The more desperately I strove to free myself, the more closely did the pitiless morass cling about me and clog me, like to that loathly creature of which mariners tell, that winds innumerable tentacles about its living prey and digests it to a jelly. Presently I could no more move my limbs, and when I sought to purchase succour from those that stood by, offering great rewards whereby every one of those paupers might have become a petty Croesus among his kind, they sat them down like spectators at a play, to feast their eyes upon my agony, even as in ancient days the Romans saw without compassion the holy martyrs yield up their lives beneath the claws of Nubian lions. And when I saw that neither promises nor entreaties would prevail with them, by reason mayhap that they knew not what I said, I wrapped myself in despair and silence, endeavouring, as a Christian ought, to contemplate the inevitable end with quiet mind.
[#] It must be remembered that Englishmen of Christopher Rudd's time were ignorant of the Irish civilization and literature which their ancestors had destroyed, and were even more apt than their descendants to decry what they did not understand.—H.S.
[image]THEY DID BUT MOCK ME WITH JEERS AND HORRID EXECRATIONS
[image]
[image]
THEY DID BUT MOCK ME WITH JEERS AND HORRID EXECRATIONS
I had sunk wellnigh to my shoulder-blades, and as it were a mist was hovering before my eyes, when the sound of a horse galloping awoke my slumbering senses, and I looked up, thinking to see my Irishman returning. The kernes had risen to their feet, and turned their backs upon me, and their vociferous clamour fell to a great silence. And gazing beyond them, I saw, not my Irishman, but a young maiden, upon a hobby of the country, riding with loose rein at the very brink of the cliff above. Distraught and speechless, I gazed in amaze and wonderment, as this radiant creature brought her hobby to a stand on the height over against me. She cast one glance at me, and I heard a voice like a silver bell rung sharply, and at her words the kernes were set in motion as they were puppets moved by invisible strings, and with one consent, yet sullenly, they hasted to obey her behests. Having loosed the bridles of my servant's horse and of the maiden's hobby, they knit them together, and one of the men cast this rope of leather upon the bog towards me. Mustering my remnant strength I caught it, and passed it over my head and beneath my armpits, whereupon some few of the kernes laid hold of it at the end, and with mighty hauling heaved me from my slimy bed. So strong was the embrace wherein I had been clasped that I came to the bank in my stocking feet, having left my boots in that ravenous maw.
In this sorry plight my aspect was as filthy and foul as Odysseus when he showed himself to the maiden Nausicaa. My Nausicaa smiled upon viewing me, and when I could find no words wherewith to utter the gratitude of my swelling spirit, her lips parted, and that silvery voice uttered words in my own tongue, which fell the more sweetly upon my ear by reason of their quaintness of accent.
"I am troubled, sir," said she, "at this your incommodity, but no herald announced your coming, whereby we might furnish guides. Haply your messenger went astray?"
I perceived that she mocked me, but being too far spent to answer her in kind, I was content to relate briefly what had befallen me. She smiled again, and said lightly—
"My kernes did what seemed good to them, at no man's bidding. I pray you accept our hospitality, so that we can repair in some measure the coldness of your welcome in this our country."
Then she turned upon the kernes that stood glooming by, and spake a few words to them in their own tongue; and after she had assured me that they would do me no harm, and bid me accompany them, she sped back towards the quarter whence she had come, riding without bridle, a marvel to behold.