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

“Then here’s your health, and long life, sir!” said Amyas and Cary.

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

“Columbus?”

“Iss, fegs, he did, not a pistol-shot from us; and I saw mun stand on the poop, so plain as I see you; no great shakes of a man to look to nether; there’s a sight better here, to plase me, and we was disappointed, we lads, for we surely expected to see mun with a goolden crown on, and a sceptre to a’s hand, we did, and the ship o’ mun all over like Solomon’s temple for gloory. And I mind that same year, too, seeing Vasco da Gama, as was going out over the bar, when he found the Bona Speranza, and sailed round it to the Indies. Ah, that was the making of they rascally Portingals, it was! … And our crew told what they seen and heerd: but nobody minded sich things. ‘Twas dark parts, and Popish, then; and nobody knowed nothing, nor got no schooling, nor cared for nothing, but scrattling up and down alongshore like to prawns in a pule. Iss, sitting in darkness, we was, and the shadow of death, till the day-spring from on high arose, and shined upon us poor out-o’ -the-way folk—The Lord be praised! And now, look to mun!” and he waved his hand all round—“Look to mun! Look to the works of the Lord! Look to the captains! Oh blessed sight! And one’s been to the Brazils, and one to the Indies, and the Spanish Main, and the NorthWest, and the Rooshias, and the Chinas, and up the Straits, and round the Cape, and round the world of God, too, bless His holy name; and I seed the beginning of it; and I’ll see the end of it too, I will! I was born into the old times: but I’ll see the wondrous works of the new, yet, I will! I’ll see they bloody Spaniards swept off the seas before I die, if my old eyes can reach so far as outside the Sound. I shall, I knows it. I says my prayers for it every night; don’t I, Mary? You’ll bate mun, sure as Judgment, you’ll bate mun! The Lord’ll fight for ye. Nothing’ll stand against ye. I’ve seed it all along—ever since I was with young master to the Honduras. They can’t bide the push of us! You’ll bate mun off the face of the seas, and be masters of the round world, and all that therein is. And then, I’ll just turn my old face to the wall, and depart in peace, according to his word.

“Deary me, now, while I’ve been telling with you, here’ve this little maid been and ate up all my sugar!”

“I’ll bring you some more,” said Amyas; whom the childish bathos of the last sentence moved rather to sighs than laughter.

“Will ye, then? There’s a good soul, and come and tell with old Martin. He likes to see the brave young gentlemen, a-going to and fro in their ships, like Leviathan, and taking of their pastime therein. We had no such ships to our days. Ah, ‘tis grand times, beautiful times surely—and you’ll bring me a bit sugar?”

“You were up the Plate with Cabot?” said Cary, after a pause. “Do you mind the fair lady Miranda, Sebastian de Hurtado’s wife?”

“What! her that was burnt by the Indians? Mind her? Do you mind the sun in heaven? Oh, the beauty! Oh, the ways of her! Oh, the speech of her! Never was, nor never will be! And she to die by they villains; and all for the goodness of her! Mind her? I minded naught else when she was on deck.”

“Who was she?” asked Amyas of Cary.

“A Spanish angel, Amyas.”

“Humph!” said Amyas. “So much the worse for her, to be born into a nation of devils.”

“They’em not all so bad as that, yer honor. Her husband was a proper gallant gentleman, and kind as a maid, too, and couldn’t abide that De Solis’s murderous doings.”

“His wife must have taught it him, then,” said Amyas, rising. “Where did you hear of these black swans, Cary?”

“I have heard of them, and that’s enough,” answered he, unwilling to stir sad recollections.

“And little enough,” said Amyas. “Will, don’t talk to me. The devil is not grown white because he has trod in a lime-heap.”

“Or an angel black because she came down a chimney,” said Cary; and so the talk ended, or rather was cut short; for the talk of all the groups was interrupted by an explosion from old John Hawkins.

“Fail? Fail? What a murrain do you here, to talk of failing? Who made you a prophet, you scurvy, hang-in-the-wind, croaking, white-livered son of a corby-crow?”

“Heaven help us, Admiral Hawkins, who has put fire to your culverins in this fashion?” said Lord Howard.

“Who? my lord! Croakers! my lord! Here’s a fellow calls himself the captain of a ship, and her majesty’s servant, and talks about failing, as if he were a Barbican loose-kirtle trying to keep her apple-squire ashore! Blurt for him, sneak-up! say I.”

“Admiral John Hawkins,” quoth the offender, “you shall answer this language with your sword.”

“I’ll answer it with my foot; and buy me a pair of horn-tips to my shoes, like a wraxling man. Fight a croaker? Fight a frog, an owl! I fight those that dare fight, sir!”

“Sir, sir, moderate yourself. I am sure this gentleman will show himself as brave as any, when it comes to blows: but who can blame mortal man for trembling before so fearful a chance as this?”

“Let mortal man keep his tremblings to himself, then, my lord, and not be like Solomon’s madmen, casting abroad fire and death, and saying, it is only in sport. There is more than one of his kidney, your lordship, who have not been ashamed to play Mother Shipton before their own sailors, and damp the poor fellows’ hearts with crying before they’re hurt, and this is one of them. I’ve heard him at it afore, and I’ll present him, with a vengeance, though I’m no churchwarden.”

“If this is really so, Admiral Hawkins—”

“It is so, my lord! I heard only last night, down in a tavern below, such unbelieving talk as made me mad, my lord; and if it had not been after supper, and my hand was not oversteady, I would have let out a pottle of Alicant from some of their hoopings, and sent them to Dick Surgeon, to wrap them in swaddling-clouts, like whining babies as they are. Marry come up, what says Scripture? ‘He that is fearful and faint-hearted among you, let him go and’— what? son Dick there? Thou’rt pious, and read’st thy Bible. What’s that text? A mortal fine one it is, too.”

“‘He that is fearful and faint-hearted among you, let him go back,’” quoth the Complete Seaman. “Captain Merryweather, as my father’s command, as well as his years, forbid his answering your challenge, I shall repute it an honor to entertain his quarrel myself—place, time, and weapons being at your choice.”

“Well spoken, son Dick!—and like a true courtier, too! Ah! thou hast the palabras, and the knee, and the cap, and the quip, and the innuendo, and the true town fashion of it all—no old tarry-breeks of a sea-dog, like thy dad! My lord, you’ll let them fight?”

“The Spaniard, sir; but no one else. But, captains and gentlemen, consider well my friend the Port Admiral’s advice; and if any man’s heart misgives him, let him, for the sake of his country and his queen, have so much government of his tongue to hide his fears in his own bosom, and leave open complaining to ribalds and women. For if the sailor be not cheered by his commander’s cheerfulness, how will the ignorant man find comfort in himself? And without faith and hope, how can he fight worthily?”

“There is no croaking aboard of us, we will warrant,” said twenty voices, “and shall be none, as long as we command on board our own ships.”

Hawkins, having blown off his steam, went back to Drake and the bowls.

“Fill my pipe, Drawer—that croaking fellow’s made me let it out, of course! Spoil-sports! The father of all manner of troubles on earth, be they noxious trade of croakers! ‘Better to meet a bear robbed of her whelps,’ Francis Drake, as Solomon saith, than a fule who can’t keep his mouth shut. What brought Mr. Andrew Barker to his death but croakers? What stopped Fenton’s China voyage in the ‘82, and lost your nephew John, and my brother Will, glory and hard cash too, but croakers? What sent back my Lord Cumberland’s armada in the ‘86, and that after they’d proved their strength, too, sixty o’ mun against six hundred Portugals and Indians; and yet wern’t ashamed to turn round and come home empty-handed, after all my lord’s expenses that he had been at? What but these same beggarly croakers, that be only fit to be turned into yellow-hammers up to Dartymoor, and sit on a tor all day, and cry ‘Very little bit of bread, and no chee-e-ese!’ Marry, sneak-up! say I again.”

“And what,” said Drake, “would have kept me, if I’d let ‘em, from ever sailing round the world, but these same croakers? I hanged my best friend for croaking, John Hawkins, may God forgive me if I was wrong, and I threatened a week after to hang thirty more; and I’d have done it, too, if they hadn’t clapped tompions into their muzzles pretty fast.”

“You’m right, Frank. My old father always told me—and old King Hal (bless his memory!) would take his counsel among a thousand;— ‘And, my son,’ says he to me, ‘whatever you do, never you stand no croaking; but hang mun, son Jack, hang mun up for an ensign. There’s Scripture for it,’ says he (he was a mighty man to his Bible, after bloody Mary’s days, leastwise), ‘and ‘tis written,’ says he, ‘It’s expedient that one man die for the crew, and that the whole crew perish not; so show you no mercy, son Jack, or you’ll find none, leastwise in they manner of cattle; for if you fail, they stamps on you, and if you succeeds, they takes the credit of it to themselves, and goes to heaven in your shoes.’ Those were his words, and I’ve found mun true.—Who com’th here now?”

“Captain Fleming, as I’m a sinner.”

“Fleming? Is he tired of life, that he com’th here to look for a halter? I’ve a warrant out against mun, for robbing of two Flushingers on the high seas, now this very last year. Is the fellow mazed or drunk, then? or has he seen a ghost? Look to mun!”

“I think so, truly,” said Drake. “His eyes are near out of his head.”

The man was a rough-bearded old sea-dog, who had just burst in from the tavern through the low hatch, upsetting a drawer with all his glasses, and now came panting