gone; but none that will tend her, because none love her like me, and they won't venture. Who will? It can't be expected, and no shame to them?" "I wonder what Amyas Leigh would say to all this, if he were at home?" "Say? He'd do. He isn't one for talking. He'd go through fire and water for her, you trust him, Will Cary; and call me an ass if he won't." "Will you wait, then, till he comes back, and ask him ?” "He may not be back for a year and more." "Hear reason, Jack. If you will wait like a rational and patient man, instead of rushing blindfold on your ruin, something may be done." "You think so!" 66 'I cannot promise; but- Do you tell Mr. Frank what I say-or rather, I'll warrant, if I knew the truth, he has said the very same thing himself already." "You are out there, old man; for here is his own handwriting." Jack read the letter and sighed bitterly. "Well, I did take him for another guess sort of fine gentleman. Still, if my duty isn't his, it's mine all the same. I judge no man; but I go, Mr. Cary.” "But go you shall not till Amyas returns. As I live, I will tell your father, Jack, unless you promise; and you dare not disobey him." "I don't know even that, for conscience sake," said Jack doubtfully. "At least, you stay and dine here, old fellow, and we will settle whether you are to break the fifth commandment or not, over good brewed sack." Now a good dinner was (as we know) what Jack loved, and loved too oft in vain; so he submitted for the nonce, and Cary thought, ere he went, that he had talked him pretty well round. At least he went home, and was seen no more for a week. But at the end of that time he returned, and said with a joyful voice "I have settled all, Mr. Will. The parson of Welcombe will serve my church for two Sundays, and I am away for London town, to speak to Mr. Frank." "To London? How wilt get there?" "On Shanks his mare," said Jack, pointing to his bandy legs. "But I expect I can get a lift on board of a coaster so far as Bristol, and it's no way on to signify, I hear." Cary tried in vain to dissuade him; and then forced on him a small loan, with which away went Jack, and Cary heard no more of him for three weeks. At last he walked into Clovelly Court again just before supper-time, thin and leg-weary, and sat himself down among the serving-men till Will appeared. Will took him up above the salt, and made much of him (which indeed the honest fellow much needed), and after supper asked him in private how he had sped. "I have learnt a lesson, Mr. William. I've learnt that there is one on earth loves her better than I, if she had but had the wit to have taken him." "But what says he of going to seek her?" "He says what I say, Go! and he says what you say, Wait." "Go? Impossible! How can that agree with his letter?” "That's no concern of mine. Of course, being nearer heaven than I am, he sees clearer what he should say and do than I can see for him. Oh, Mr. Will, that's not a man, he's an angel of God; but he's dying, Mr. Will." "Dying?" "Yes, faith, of love for her. I can see it in his eyes, and hear it in his voice; but I am of tougher hide, and stiffer clay, and so you see I can't die even if I tried. But I'll obey my betters, and wait." And so Jack went home to his parish that very evening, weary as he was, in spite of all entreaties to pass the night at Clovelly. But he had left behind him thoughts in Cary's mind, which gave their owner no rest by day or night, till the touch of a seeming accident made them all start suddenly into shape, as a touch of the freezing water covers it in an instant with crystals of ice. He was lounging (so he told Amyas) one murky day on Bideford quay, when up came Mr. Salterne. Cary had shunned him of late, partly from delicacy, partly from dislike of his supposed hard-heartedness. But this time they happened to meet full; and Cary could not pass without speaking to him. Well, Mr. Salterne, and how goes on the shipping trade?" "Well enough, sir, if some of you young gentlemen would but follow Mr. Leigh's example, and go forth to find us stay-athomes new markets for our ware." 66 298 HOW BRIMBLECOMBE UNDERSTOOD AN OATH. [CHAP. XV. "What? you want to be rid of us, eh?" "I don't know why I should, sir. We shan't cross each other now, sir, whatever might have been once. But if I were you, I should be in the Indies about now, if I were not fighting the queen's battles nearer home." "In the Indies ? I should make but a poor hand of Drake's trade." And so the conversation dropped; but Cary did not forget the hint. 'So, lad, to make an end of a long story," said he to Amyas; "if you are minded to take the old man's offer, so am I: and Westward-ho with you, come foul come fair.” “It will be but a wild-goose chase, Will." "If she is with him, we shall find her at La Guayra. If she is not, and the villain has cast her off down the wind, that will be only an additional reason for making an example of him." "And if neither of them are there, Will, the Plate-fleets will be; so it will be our own shame if we come home emptyhanded. But will your father let you run such a risk?" "My father!" said Cary, laughing. "He has just now so good hope of a long string of little Carys to fill my place, that he will be in no lack of an heir, come what will." "Little Carys?" "I tell you truth. I think he must have had a sly sup of that fountain of perpetual youth, which our friend Don Guzman's grandfather went to seek in Florida; for some twelvemonth since, he must needs marry a tenant's buxom daughter; and Mistress Abishag Jewell has brought him one fat baby already. So I shall go, back to Ireland, or with you: but somewhere. I can't abide the thing's squalling, any more than I can seeing Mistress Abishag sitting in my poor dear mother's place, and informing me every other day that she is come of an illustrious house, because she is (or is not) third cousin seven times removed to my father's old friend, Bishop Jewell of glorious memory. I had three-parts of a quarrel with the dear old man the other day; for after one of her peacock-bouts, I couldn't for the life of me help saying, that as the Bishop had written an Apology for the people of England, my father had better conjure up his ghost to write an apology for him, and head it, 'Why green heads should grow on grey shoulders."" "You impudent villain! And what did he say?” 66 'Laughed till he cried again, and told me if I did not like it I might leave it; which is just what I intend to do. Only mind, if we go, we must needs take Jack Brimblecombe with us, or he will surely heave himself over Harty Point, and his ghost will haunt us to our dying day." "Jack shall go. None deserves it better." After which there was a long consultation on practical matters, and it was concluded that Amyas should go up to London and sound Frank and his mother before any further steps were taken. The other brethren of the Rose were scattered far and wide, each at his post, and St. Leger had returned to his uncle, so that it would be unfair to them, as well as a considerable delay, to demand of them any fulfilment of their VOW. And, as Amyas sagely remarked, "Too many cooks spoil the broth, and half-a-dozen gentlemen aboard one ship are as bad as two kings of Brentford." With which maxim he departed next morning for London, leaving Yeo with Cary. CHAPTER XVI. THE MOST CHIVALROUS ADVENTURE OF THE GOOD SHIP ROSE. "He is brass within, and steel without, With beams on his topcastle strong; Sir Andrew Barton. LET us take boat, as Amyas did, at Whitehall-stairs, and slip down ahead of him under old London Bridge, and so to Deptford Creek, where remains, as it were embalmed, the famous ship Pelican, in which Drake had sailed round the world. There she stands, drawn up high and dry upon the sedgy bank of Thames, like an old warrior resting after his toil. Nailed upon her mainmast are epigrams and verses in honour of her and of her captain, three of which, by the Winchester scholar, Camden gives in his History; and Elizabeth's self consecrated her solemnly, and having banqueted on board, there and then honoured Drake with the dignity of knighthood. "At which time a bridge of planks, by which they came on board, broke under the press of people, and fell down with a hundred men upon it, who, notwithstanding, had none of them any harm. So as that ship may seem to have been built under a lucky planet." There she has remained since as a show, and moreover as a sort of dining-hall for jovial parties from the City; one of which would seem to be on board this afternoon, to judge from the flags which bedizen the masts, the sounds of revelry and savoury steams which issue from those windows which once were portholes, and the rushing to and fro along the river brink, and across that lucky bridge, of white-aproned waiters from the neighbouring Pelican Inn. A great feast is evidently toward, for with those white-aproned waiters are gay serving men, wearing on their shoulders the City-badge. The Lord Mayor is giving a dinner to certain gentlemen of the Leicester house party, who are interested in foreign discoveries; and what place so fit for such a feast as the Pelican itself? Look at the men all round; a nobler company you will seldom see. Especially too, if you be Americans, look at their faces, and reverence them; for to them and to their wisdom you owe the existence of your mighty fatherland. At the head of the table sits the Lord Mayor; whom all readers will recognise at once, for he is none other than that famous Sir Edward Osborne, clothworker, and ancestor of the Dukes of Leeds, whose romance now-a-days is in every one's hands. He is aged, but not changed, since he leaped from the window upon London Bridge into the roaring tide below, to rescue the infant who is now his wife. The chivalry and promptitude of the 'prentice boy have grown and hardened into the thoughtful daring of the wealthy merchant adventurer. There he sits, a right kingly man, with my lord Earl of Cumberland on his right hand, and Walter Raleigh on his left; the three talk together in a low voice on the chance of there being vast and rich countries still undiscovered between Florida and the River of Canada. Raleigh's half-scientific declamation and his often quotations of Doctor Dee the conjuror, have less effect on Osborne than on Cumberland (who tried many an adventure to foreign parts, and failed in all of them; apparently for the simple reason that, instead of going himself, he sent other people), and Raleigh is fain to call to his help the quiet student who sits on his left hand, Richard Hakluyt, of Oxford. But he is deep in talk with a reverend elder, whose long white beard flows almost to his waist, and whose face is furrowed by a thousand storms; Anthony Jenkinson by name, the great Asiatic traveller, who is discoursing to the Christchurch virtuoso of reindeer sledges and Siberian steppes, and of the fossil ivory, plain proof of Noah's flood, which the Tungoos dig from the ice-cliffs of the Arctic sea. Next to him is Christopher |