Part 14

We made good passage to Antwerp, where I did not delay to visit the goldsmith upon whom the Count de Sarney's bill of exchange was drawn. He held me in no suspicion, and was vastly serviceable in negotiating with the skipper of a vessel bound for Cadiz, as well as in conducting the other necessary parts of my business. I was some little troubled in my mind what course to pursue with my mariner. I proposed to him that, seeing the risks of my adventure, he should take ship for London, carrying a letter from me to Sir Walter Raleigh, who I made no doubt would find him employment. But he begged me so earnestly to permit him to accompany me that I yielded, though not without misgiving. I showed him that for a runagate slave to venture himself in Cadiz would be a mere running into the lion's jaws, to which he answered that, whereas on the galley his head and face were shaved, he was now as shaggy as a bear, and so would not easily be known of any man, slave or free. Furthermore I showed him how in Spain he could not hope to pass either for a Spaniard or a Frenchman, whereupon, with a readiness that raised him in my estimation, he said that he would pass very well for a Muscovite, and invented a fable of his having escaped fifteen years before from the clutches of Ivan the Terrible, and conveyed himself aboard a vessel of Sweden. To this he gave countenance by venting a torrent of outlandish phrases, assuring me 'twas a mingle-mangle of sea terms employed by the Muscovites and the Swedes; whereat I laughed very heartily, and declared that he at least would have been at no loss among the builders of Babel. The matter being thus settled to our mutual contentment, we tarried a few days in Antwerp until the time of our vessel's sailing, and then embarked together on an adventure whereof neither of us foresaw the end.

*III*

'Twas a fair bright day when we put into the harbour of Cadiz, and I set foot in that comely town. We took up our lodging in an inn (called _venta_ in the Castilian tongue) built all of stone, as indeed are all the buildings, whether large or small. I spent a day in learning my way about the town, or, as Stubbs worded it, taking my bearings, and could not but admire its goodly cathedral and abbey, and its exceeding fine college of the Jesuits. The streets were for the most part so narrow, none being commonly broader than Watling Street in London, as but two men or three at the most together could in any reasonable sort march through them, and I was somewhat astonied to see that the town was altogether without glass, save only the churches. Yet the windows were fair and comely, having grates of iron to them, and large folding leaves of wainscot or the like.

Having attained a reasonable knowledge of the place, I made my way on the second day to the large flat-topped house (as are they all) which I had learnt to be the mansion of Don Ygnacio de Acosta. Before I left Antwerp I had taken pains to seal up the Count de Sarney's epistle (God pardon my duplicity!), and this I presented to a servant of exceeding magnificence at the door; the Spaniards call such majordomo: by whom I was after a tedious waiting conducted to the presence of the Captain of the Galleys. The Spaniards, as all the world knows, have the name for the nicest punctilio and courtliness, but I own that the Captain received me none too graciously. Indeed, his first words, after a briefer greeting than was seemly, were a complaint of the Count's delay in dispatching the draft, the which had occasioned Don Ygnacio to take a loan from a Jew of his town at a usurious rate of interest. I made humble excuses on my father's behalf: you are to remember that I personated Armand de Sarney: and it needed no wondrous shrewdness to discern, by the manner of the Spaniard's putting up the papers in his cabinet, that he was of a right avaricious nature. When he read the postscriptum wherein the Count de Sarney warned him against a meddlesome Englishman, he seemed to me to resemble a cock ruffling his feathers. He poured scorn upon the Count's fears and alarms, asking me whether Cadiz was Calais or even Cartagena that it lay open to any English adventurer. I might have reminded him how Sir Francis Drake burnt the King's galleys in this very harbour, but I forbore; nor would he have taken any profit of it, for the unquenchable pride and self-sufficiency of the Spaniards after so many buffets and calamities is one of the wonders of the age.

With great condescension Don Ygnacio offered me a lodging in his house until such time as I should pursue my way to Seville, and I guessed that his manner was nicely proportioned to the remote degree of his relationship to my supposed father. Moreover it bespoke no great relish for the company of a mere student. None the less I thanked him in terms whose warmth would have befitted one that had done me unimaginable honour, but declined his proffered hospitality, saying that even on my travels I diligently pursued my studies, so that I was in no wise suited to the thronging life of the world wherein so high a magnifico moved. His countenance confirmed the justness of my surmise. Then, summoning my gravest look, I said--

"I devote the greater part of my time, senor, to the investigation of the ills that affect the _Ramus stomachichus_, wherewith I have perceived, even in the so little time I have sojourned in your town, that many of its inhabitants are afflicted. My father bade me inquire very particularly after your health, the which by your last advice was not all that could be wished. I fear that the _Ramus stomachichus_ is the seat of your disorder, and I trust that the treatment of your physician is meeting with the desired success."

I threw this out as a bait, and to my exceeding joy I saw that it was swallowed as greedily as a gudgeon snaps up a worm. Don Ygnacio was a mountainous man, as Stubbs had told me on the voyage, with the girth but not the hardness of an oak, his face like dough with two raisins for eyes, his whole frame betokening a consuming love of the flesh-pots and strong liquors. During my speech, delivered with a measured gravity, his face put on a look of great dolefulness, and broke out into a sweat.

"I cannot sleep," said he, in most dolorous accents.

"A certain sign," said I, nodding my head gravely.

"I dream of horrors," said he.

"Devils, and serpents, dark dens and caves, sepulchres, and dead corpses," said I, quoting the words of Ambrose Parey, which I had diligently conned on board ship, "all arising from the putrefaction and inflammation of the _Ramus stomachichus_, together with the afflux of noisome humours to the brain. The diaphragm hath a close community with that organ, by the nerves of the sixth conjugation which are carried in the stomach."

"I reel in the street," said he, with lamentable groans, "and when I lay my head on the pillow, I hear noises like the sound of many waters."

I shook my head solemnly, having at the moment no more of Ambrose Parey's sentences at my command. Taking him delicately by the wrist, I put my finger on his pulse, which in truth fluttered unsteadily.

"Show me your tongue," I said, and could barely avoid laughing at the grimace he made when he displayed that monstrous organ.

Then, presuming on his manifest discomposure, I dealt him a lusty buffet above the fifth rib, so that he catched at his breath, and at his outcry I inquired solicitously whether he felt any pain.

"The pains of Gehenna," he said, groaning.

I was mute, bending on him a mournful look, whereat his excitation of mind did but increase.

"I pray you, cousin, be open with me," he said. "I will steel my heart to bear it."

"Your case is not utterly hopeless," I replied with deliberation, having first hemmed and hawed in the style approved of the faculty, "but it demands careful treatment. Methinks from the symptoms that it has hitherto been treated somewhat negligently. I will return to my lodging and ponder upon it, consulting Fernelius, his _Pathologia_" (a work I had seen named in the pages of Ambrose Parey). "To-morrow, by your good leave, I will see you again. The true course is not to be lightly determined, but I trust that my art has resources wherewith to counter the worst symptoms of your distemper and perchance to work a cure."

"Do so, good cousin," he said. "Come early, I pray you, and by St. Iago, I shall know how to recompense you becomingly."

I took my leave, and when the door was between us, gave a loose to my merriment, hastily composing my features when the majordomo approached to conduct me to the street.

I returned to my inn, and buried my nose for some while in the folio; then betook myself to an apothecary's, where I purchased a quantity of barley creams, poppy seeds, and seeds of lettuce, purslain, and sorrel, commanding him to make a decoction of them and have it ready against I came on the morrow. This was a prescription of Ambrose Parey. I bade him also compound an admixture of the infusion of sundry simples, exceeding nauseous, yet like to do no great hurt, to wit, valerian, quassia, a trifling quantity of colocynthis (which grows very plentifully in Spain), and _pix atra_, by the which you shall understand common tar. This also, a bolus of my own devising, I commanded the man to have in readiness, and then found that I had a good relish for my dinner.

Stubbs had already shown me where the king's galleys lay; 'twas off the east side of the town, betwixt the island and the mainland. They were four in number: these were the principal galleys, there being sixteen of an inferior sort that rode nigh to the bulwark of _St. Philip_, at the north-east extremity of the town. A strong fortification of stone-work ran from this bulwark towards the water-side, having its southern end beside the king's storehouse of provision and munition for his ships of war. Here, moreover, was the barrack in which certain of the galley-slaves were cabined at night, for when the galleys lay idle the greater number of the oarsmen was employed on shore in sundry laborious exercises--repairing the fortifications and the like. A little way southward of this barrack was a rampire of earth built close against the sea-wall, and furnished with three great pieces of ordnance. This kind of bulwark is called in military parlance a _terrapleno_. There was in the inner harbour also a fleet of near forty merchant vessels, making ready for the American voyage, and a goodly number of galleons and galliasses for the intended invasion of Ireland.

I marvelled greatly at the bravado of my companion as we passed through the marketplace, thronged with folk of all conditions--orange-sellers, horse-dealers, chapmen and hucksters innumerable--and came near to the barrack wherein he had spent many hours in anguish both of body and mind. He showed me the two portions of the building, and the window of the very room where he had lain. He showed me also a mighty fine galley lying in a manner of dock near to the king's storehouse, and on my asking a wayfarer what the vessel did there, he told me 'twas the galley of Don Ygnacio de Acosta being new furbished and fitted for sea. A great way off I saw some of the slaves, with shaven polls, and naked save for a strip of cloth about their loins, moving hither and thither about their labour, under guard of soldiers armed with halberds and arquebuses. A hot fire of wrath raged within me when I thought that my bosom friend perchance toiled among them, but I gave great heed so as that I should not approach them too nearly, lest he might spy me and by some gesture ruin the plan I had conceived for his salvation.

As we were returning to our inn from this inquisition, by way of the market-place, I observed that many curious glances were cast upon us, and being in some dubience how to account for this, I was at first ready to fear that some suspicion was entertained of me and my purposes, or else that some person had recognized my companion despite his shaggy locks and beard. But on a sudden the true explication smote upon my slumbering wits, and I took myself to task for my heedlessness. Stubbs was attired in the common garb of sailor men, and I perceived that it must indeed seem passing strange to the Spaniards, of all people the stiffest on decorum and punctilio, to see a grave student of medicine in familiar converse with a man so meanly habited. No sooner did this illumination flash upon my mind than I bid Stubbs leave me, giving him at the same time money wherewith to buy him a Spanish gaberdine, which would in some sort cloak his quality. I went on to my inn alone, pondering upon how prone men are, when devising machinations of great poise and moment, to omit some small trifling matter, which lacking, all their cunning is like to turn to futility.

Sallying forth of the inn about three of the clock, I went to my apothecary's, and took from him the vials containing the preparations he had compounded for me, together with a small Turkey sponge and a new medicine glass nicely graduated. These I gave into the hands of Stubbs, now clad in a capacious gaberdine that suited with his quality as my henchman, and bade him follow me at a reasonable interval. At the door of Don Ygnacio's house I received them from him again, and being admitted as before by the don's gentleman-usher, I found my grandee awaiting me in a quivering expectancy. His heavy countenance lightened at sight of me, and he told me with plentiful groaning that he had not shut an eye all the night through, but tossed wakeful and tormented upon his bed. I felt of his pulse and scanned his furred and sickly tongue, and then, mustering all my new-gotten lore, I discoursed very learnedly for the space of five minutes upon the distempers of the _Ramus stomachichus_, ending my allocution somewhat as follows--

"Having now full assurance, senor, as well by the observation of my senses as also by your own description, that this is in good sooth the distemper whereof you suffer, I must tell you in all sobriety that 'tis high time 'twere taken in hand ere it grow beyond remedy. My counsel is that you instantly command the attendance of a skilful surgeon."

"Ods my soul!" he cried (for so I render his words in our homely English), "I have employed surgeons without number, and they bleed me, both of blood and money. Do you undertake me, good cousin; but do not let my blood, I pray you, for I am not a whit better for all the gallons they have drawn from my exhausted veins."

I affected to shrink from the conduct of so serious a case, on the score of my youth and pupillary condition, and of the high nobility of his captainship; but the more backward I showed myself, so much the more instancy did he employ; in brief, he would take no denial. Whereupon I insisted that he must follow my directions without reck or hesitation, the which he avowed himself ready to do in all points. Accordingly I stripped the wrappings from my vials, and poured from the larger of them into the medicine glass, with the nicest measurement, a good dram of the villainous admixture, and called for water to allay it, and this I added with deliberate care, he keeping a wary watch on all my movements. I then bade him drink it at a draught, the which he did, afterwards spluttering and wrying his countenance to such a picture of abhorrence as came nigh to overset my studied gravity.

"Ay de mi! ay de mi!" he groaned; "'tis a very vile draught, cousin, a very villainous concoction. Must I discomfit my inwards with the whole bottle?"

"Thrice a day, senor, you must take your dose," I said.

"Permit me at least to qualify the savour of it: it is so exceeding nasty and rough upon the tongue," he said pleadingly.

"One sole glass of sherris," said I, with a great show of reluctancy; "no more, or the merits of this most potent medicine will be utterly quelled."

He drank the wine with great relish, eyeing the decanter very wistfully as I set it out of his reach. Then calling for a basin, I poured into it a little of the contents of my second vial, and dipping the sponge into the liquid, I delicately anointed his sweating brows, telling him 'twas a sure begetter of sleep tranquil as a child's.

"Your hand is rather that of a swordsman than of a physician, cousin," he said, thereby giving me a wrench in my soul, lest he began to suspect me. But he proceeded: "Yet it is delicate in its touch as a woman's; you give me great comfort, cousin."

I continued to bathe his temples until I had wrought him to a fair placidity; then admonishing him to be punctual in taking his doses of the former admixture, I left him, promising to visit him again on the morrow.

My next concern was to certify myself that Raoul was still among the galley-slaves, and whether he was of those that remained aboard or of those that were employed ashore. To this end I dispatched Stubbs to the sea-wall in the afternoon, a little before the time when, as he had told me, the day's work was wont to end, there to keep a watch. He returned soon after sunset, and told me that he had seen his whilom comrade among those that were marched into the barracks. I inquired eagerly how he looked, and my heart was very bitter when he replied that my friend was worn to a shadow, with lamentable sunken cheeks and haggard eyes. Nevertheless I rejoiced that he was yet alive, and comforted with this assurance I bent my mind to the working out of the plan I had devised for his deliverance.

On the morrow I went somewhat earlier to see my patient, whom I found wondrously gracious, for that he had slept a good four hours without waking. Indeed, he believed himself to be already cured, and I had much ado to persuade him to take his dose. I showed him that his distemper being of long standing, it was sheer madness to suppose that it could be wholly banished in so short a space of time, and proceeded to expound the necessity of continuing not only in the course he had begun, but also in a subsidiary treatment which I would forthwith explain.

Don Ygnacio, as I have said, was of enormous bulk, and the ills from which he suffered, when they were not merely figments of a disordered imagination, proceeded from too instant a devotion to meat and drink and an over-softness of living. In a word, his greatest need was temperance in these things, together with a more frequent use of his muscles. Accordingly I made him strip to his shirt and stand in his stocking feet in the middle of the room, and then put him through such simple exercises as the Dutch captains use with the common soldiers--extensions of the arms, bending of the trunk, and so forth. It was matter for merriment to see the great hulks, at my urging, make desperate endeavour to touch his toes, and come not within half a yard of accomplishing it. I kept him at these motions, paying no heed to his protestations, for a good half-hour, by the which time I had wrought him to a fine heat and perspiration, so that when finally I permitted him to sink back upon the cushions of his divan he was more wholesomely tired, I warrant, then he had been ever in his life before. While he sat and fanned himself, and quaffed slowly the cup of sherris I allowed for his refreshment, I made him a neat discourse for which I was beholden not to Master Ambrose Parey, but to my own wit. 'Twas sound sense as well as a furtherance of my device.

"You must know, senor," I said, "that this distemper of yours never assails men of spare frames and active bodies. The husbandman, the mariner, the poor scavenger of the street never suffer in this wise, nor is their _Ramus stomachichus_ ever in peril of dissolution. In truth, their bodily exercise does but strengthen the nerves in all their conjugations, so that their inward parts perform their offices to perfection, and furthermore furnish to them in some sort an armour against the assaults of disease. For a speaking ensample you have the slaves of your galleys, those reprobates whom you have in your august charge. Did ever you know one of them to suffer from any derangement of the _Ramus stomachichus_?"

Since I conjectured Don Ygnacio's knowledge of the anatomy of man to be less than my own, and that was infinitely little, I got the answer that I expected, with the addition that if any galley-slave should have the impudency to suffer from a gentleman's complaint, he would certainly be cured by the bastinado.

"Now therefore," I continued, here drawing largely upon my invention, for a purpose, as you are to see--"now therefore, it is one of the miracles of our nature that a man beset by this dreadful distemper, being set in juxtaposition with a man of exceeding spareness, but otherwise sound in his members and organs, the infirmity of the one is in a manner fortified by the wholeness of the other, or as Spegelius hath it in his renowned tractate, the debility of the one is engraffed and mingled with the virtue of the other. The trial of this remedy is attended with sundry notable perils and incommodities, wherefore it is not to be lightly undertaken, and I leave it for this present until we have made a proper experimentum of the more vulgar means."

The captain heard this with great attention, and made me many compliments on the profundity of my learning, though he might have read Spegelius his tractate from cover to cover without finding the passage that I gave forth with so great unction. Leaving the precious seed to germinate, I betook myself away in high contentment, though not without a qualm and tremor at the lengths whereto my audacity was carrying me.

Having sought my faithful attendant, I dispatched him to make sundry purchases at the armourers of the town, a knife at one, a dagger at another, small weapons in goodly number, but not more than one weapon at any one shop, lest suspicion or curiosity should be excited. These weapons, when he brought them to the inn, I bade him enfold them in strips of cloth I held in readiness, and wrap them in two several parcels. While this was adoing, I took my way to the sea-wall, noting very particularly the positions of the four galleys, the extent of water betwixt them and the shore, the manner in which the shore curved to a point, and all other information that was necessary to the execution of my plan. As I walked hither and thither, I was observed by a captain of soldiers that chanced, as it seemed, to be taking the air by the sea-wall, and who accosted me, asking me with a kind of truculency what I did there.

"Noble excellency," I replied, "I am but a poor student of medicine of the French nation, making a brief sojourn in this your town."

"A Frenchman, and I warrant me a spy!" he cried, and hailing a soldier from the guard-house near by, he assured me that I should soon company with rats and beetles in the castle dungeon.

"Beseech you, senor," I said, "my illustrious cousin Don Ygnacio de Acosta, captain of the royal galleys, will have somewhat to say to that. Come with me straightway to his house, and we shall learn if such immodesty of language pleasures him."

My bold and assured mien daunted this strutting fellow, and he began incontinently to make excuse how that he wot not of my condition, and craved my pardon for the unmannerliness whereinto he had been betrayed. I took him very coldly, and set forth to return to my inn. This is a slight matter, unworthy of mention but for that which ensued.

That same evening, a little before the hour when the slaves were wont to be immured in their barrack, I came to the door of Don Ygnacio's house and inquired of the majordomo how the worshipful captain did.

"Desperately sick, senor," he replied. "He has but now commanded me to summon hither Don Diaz de Rotta, physician to the constable of the castle."