Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (christmas read aloud .txt) 📕

“So like a wild girl, Ayacanora.”

Her hands dropped on her knees: a strong spasm ran through her throat and bosom, and she fell on her knees before him, and looked up imploringly in his face.

“Yes; wild girl—poor, bad wild girl… . But I will be English girl now!”

“Fine clothes will never make you English, my child,” said Amyas.

“No! not English clothes—English heart! Good heart, like yours! Yes, I will be good, and Sir John shall teach me!”

“There’s my good maid,” said Amyas. “Sir John shall begin and teach you tomorrow.”

“No! Now! now! Ayacanora cannot wait. She will drown herself if she is bad another day! Come, now!”

And she made him fetch Brimblecombe, heard the honest fellow patiently for an hour or more, and told Lucy that very night all that he had said. And from that day, whenever Jack went in to read and pray with the poor sufferer, Ayacanora, instead of escaping on deck as before, stood patiently trying to make it all out, and knelt when he knelt, and tried to pray too—that she might have an English heart; and doubtless her prayers, dumb as they were, were not unheard.

So went on a few days more, hopefully enough, without any outbreak, till one morning, just after they had passed the Sargasso-beds. The ship was taking care of herself; the men were all on deck under the awning, tinkering, and cobbling, and chatting; Brimblecombe was catechising his fair pupil in the cabin; Amyas and Cary, cigar in mouth, were chatting about all heaven and earth, and, above all, of the best way of getting up a fresh adventure against the Spaniards as soon as they returned; while Amyas was pouring out to Will that dark hatred of the whole nation, that dark purpose of revenge for his brother and for Rose, which had settled down like a murky cloud into every cranny of his heart and mind. Suddenly there was a noise below; a scuffle and a shout, which made them both leap to their feet; and up on deck rushed Jack Brimblecombe, holding his head on with both his hands.

“Save me! save me from that she-fiend! She is possessed with a legion! She has broken my nose—torn out half my hair!—and I’m sure I have none to spare! Here she comes! Stand by me, gentlemen both! Satanas, I defy thee!” And Jack ensconced himself behind the pair, as Ayacanora whirled upon deck like a very Maenad, and, seeing Amyas, stopped short.

“If you had defied Satan down below there,” said Cary, with a laugh, “I suspect he wouldn’t have broken out on you so boldly, Master Jack.”

“I am innocent—innocent as the babe unborn! Oh! Mr. Cary! this is too bad of you, sir!” quoth Jack indignantly, while Amyas asked what was the matter.

“He looked at me,” said she, sturdily.

“Well, a cat may look at a king.”

“But he sha’n’t look at Ayacanora. Nobody shall but you, or I’ll kill him!”

In vain Jack protested his innocence of having even looked at her. The fancy (and I verily believe it was nothing more) had taken possession of her. She refused to return below to her lesson. Jack went off grumbling, minus his hair, and wore a black eye for a week after.

“At all events,” quoth Cary, relighting his cigar, “it’s a fault on the right side.”

“God give me grace, or it may be one on the wrong side for me.”

“He will, old heart-of-oak!” said Cary, laying his arm around Amyas’s neck, to the evident disgust of Ayacanora, who went off to the side, got a fishing-line, and began amusing herself therewith, while the ship slipped on quietly and silently as ever, save when Ayacanora laughed and clapped her hands at the flying-fish scudding from the bonitos. At last, tired of doing nothing, she went forward to the poop-rail to listen to John Squire the armorer, who sat tinkering a headpiece, and humming a song, mutato nomine, concerning his native place—

“Oh, Bideford is a pleasant place, it shines where it stands, And the more I look upon it, the more my heart it warms; For there are fair young lasses, in rows upon the quay, To welcome gallant mariners, when they come home from say.”

“‘Tis Sunderland, John Squire, to the song, and not Bidevor,” said his mate.

“Well, Bidevor’s so good as Sunderland any day, for all there’s no say-coals there blacking a place about; and makes just so good harmonies, Tommy Hamblyn—

“Oh, if I was a herring, to swim the ocean o’er, Or if I was a say-dove, to fly unto the shoor, To fly unto my true love, a waiting at the door, To wed her with a goold ring, and plough the main no moor.”

Here Yeo broke in—

“Aren’t you ashamed, John Squire, to your years, singing such carnal vanities, after all the providences you have seen? Let the songs of Zion be in your mouth, man, if you must needs keep a caterwauling all day like that.”

“You sing ‘em yourself then, gunner.”

“Well,” says Yeo, “and why not?” And out he pulled his psalm-book, and began a scrap of the grand old psalm—

“Such as in ships and brittle barks Into the seas descend, Their merchandise through fearful floods To compass and to end; There men are forced to behold The Lord’s works what they be; And in the dreadful deep the same, Most marvellous they see.”

“Humph!” said John Squire. “Very good and godly: but still I du like a merry catch now and then, I du. Wouldn’t you let a body sing ‘Rumbelow’—even when he’s heaving of the anchor?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Yeo; “but the Lord’s people had better praise the Lord then too, and pray for a good voyage, instead of howling about—

“A randy, dandy, dandy O, A whet of ale and brandy O, With a rumbelow and a Westward-ho! And heave, my mariners all, O!”

“Is that fit talk for immortal souls? How does that child’s-trade sound beside the Psalms, John Squire?”

Now it befell that Salvation Yeo, for the very purpose of holding up to ridicule that time-honored melody, had put into it the true nasal twang, and rung it out as merrily as he had done perhaps twelve years before, when he got up John Oxenham’s anchor in Plymouth Sound. And it befell also that Ayacanora, as she stood by Amyas’s side, watching the men, and trying to make out their chat, heard it, and started; and then, half to herself, took up the strain, and sang it over again, word for word, in the very same tune and tone.

Salvation Yeo started in his turn, and turned deadly pale.

“Who sung that?” he asked quickly.

“The little maid here. She’s coming on nicely in her English,” said Amyas.

“The little maid?” said Yeo, turning paler still. “Why do you go about to scare an old servant, by talking of little maids, Captain Amyas? Well,” he said aloud to himself, “as I am a sinful saint, if I hadn’t seen where the voice came from, I could have sworn it was her; just as we taught her to sing it by the river there, I and William Penberthy of Marazion, my good comrade. The Lord have mercy on me!”

All were silent as the grave whenever Yeo made any allusion to that lost child. Ayacanora only, pleased with Amyas’s commendation, went humming on to herself—

“And heave, my mariners all, O!”

Yeo started up from the gun where he sat.

“I can’t abear it! As I live, I can’t! You, Indian maiden, where did you learn to sing that there?”

Ayacanora looked up at him, half frightened by his vehemence, then at Amyas, to see if she had been doing anything wrong; and then turned saucily away, looked over the side, and hummed on.

“Ask her, for mercy’s sake—ask her, Captain Leigh!”

“My child,” said Amyas, speaking in Indian, “how is it you sing that so much better than any other English? Did you ever hear it before?”

Ayacanora looked up at him puzzled, and shook her head; and then—

“If you tell Indian to Ayacanora, she dumb. She must be English girl now, like poor Lucy.”

“Well then,” said Amyas, “do you recollect, Ayacanora—do you recollect—what shall I say? anything that happened when you were a little girl?”

She paused awhile; and then moving her hands overhead—

“Trees—great trees like the Magdalena—always nothing but trees— wild and bad everything. Ayacanora won’t talk about that.”

“Do you mind anything that grew on those trees?” asked Yeo, eagerly.

She laughed. “Silly! Flowers and fruit, and nuts—grow on all trees, and monkey-cups too. Ayacanora climbed up after them—when she was wild. I won’t tell any more.”

“But who taught you to call them monkey-cups?” asked Yeo, trembling with excitement.

“Monkey’s drink; mono drink.”

“Mono?” said Yeo, foiled on one cast, and now trying another. “How did you know the beasts were called monos?”

“She might have heard it coming down with us,” said Cary, who had joined the group.

“Ay, monos,” said she, in a self-justifying tone. “Faces like little men, and tails. And one very dirty black one, with a beard, say Amen in a tree to all the other monkeys, just like Sir John on Sunday.”

This allusion to Brimblecombe and the preaching apes upset all but old Yeo.

“But don’t you recollect any Christians?—white people?”

She was silent.

“Don’t you mind a white lady?”

“Um?”

“A woman, a very pretty woman, with hair like his?” pointing to Amyas.

“No.”

“What do you mind, then, beside those Indians?” added Yeo, in despair.

She turned her back on him peevishly, as if tired with the efforts of her memory.

“Do try to remember,” said Amyas; and she set to work again at once.

“Ayacanora mind great monkeys—black, oh, so high,” and she held up her hand above her head, and made a violent gesture of disgust.

“Monkeys? what, with tails?”

“No, like man. Ah! yes—just like Cooky there—dirty Cooky!”

And that hapless son of Ham, who happened to be just crossing the main-deck, heard a marlingspike, which by ill luck was lying at hand, flying past his ears.

“Ayacanora, if you heave any more things at Cooky, I must have you whipped,” said Amyas, without, of course, any such intention.

“I’ll kill you, then,” answered she, in the most matter-of-fact tone.

“She must mean negurs,” said Yeo; “I wonder where she saw them, now. What if it were they Cimaroons?”

“But why should any one who had seen whites forget them, and yet remember negroes?” asked Cary.

“Let us try again. Do you mind no great monkeys but those black ones?” asked Amyas.

“Yes,” she said, after a while,—“devil.”

“Devil?” asked all three, who, of course, were by no means free from the belief that the fiend did actually appear to the Indian conjurors, such as had brought up the girl.

“Ay, him Sir John tell about on Sundays.”

“Save and help us!” said Yeo; “and what was he like unto?”

She made various signs to intimate that he had a monkey’s face, and a gray beard like Yeo’s. So far so good: but now came a series of manipulations about her pretty little neck, which set all their fancies at fault.

“I know,” said Cary, at last, bursting into a great laugh. “Sir Urian had a ruff on, as I live! Trunk-hose too, my fair dame? Stop—I’ll make sure. Was his neck like the senor commandant’s, the Spaniard?”

Ayacanora clapped her hands at finding herself understood, and the questioning went on.

“The ‘devil’ appeared like a monkey, with a gray beard, in a ruff;— humph!—”

“Ay!” said she in good enough Spanish, “Mono de Panama; viejo diablo de Panama.”

Yeo threw up his hands with a