Chapter 16
"That sounds like old Saavedra," was Doughty's idle comment. "He had great store of antiquated sentiments--like those in the chronicles of the paladins. I knew his nephew well--a witty fellow, but visionary. He laughed at the old cavalero, but he was fond of him, and our affections rule us and ruin us. A man should have no loves nor hates if he would get on at court."
Sheer surprise kept the other silent for the moment, and Doughty went on,--
"The old man had been in Mexico with Cortes, and might have risen to Adelantado in some South American province if he had not been too scrupulous to join Pizarro. He was in London, ten or fifteen years before I knew him, and I believe he was the destruction of a well-considered Spanish plot for the assassination of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth--the assassins nearly killed him. He was left for dead and was picked up by some sailors."
"He was in luck." Drake's eyes twinkled.
"They would have been luckier--if they had let the Spanish agents in London know they had him. He paid them well of course, but he gave them credit for the most exalted motives. All his geese were swans."
"Maybe they acted out o' pure decency," Drake said dryly.
"My Admiral, this is not Utopia." Doughty stroked his beard with a light complacent hand. "Seriously, it is not a kindness to expect of men without traditions more than they are capable of doing. 'E meglio cade dalle fenestre che del tetto.'" (It is better to fall from the window than from the roof.)
Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard with the blade inlaid with gold and the great ruby in the top of the hilt, which lay on the table between them. The shipmaster came in just then with some question, and the conversation dropped.
It was not often that Francis Drake attempted to analyze the character and behavior of those about him. Mostly he judged men by a shrewd instinct; but that night he lay long awake, watching the witch-lights upon the waves from the dancing lanterns. He was acute enough to see that Doughty had hit slyly at him over Saavedra's shoulders. Doughty had not liked it that Moone should be raised to the rank of captain; he had already shown that he regarded himself as second only to Drake in command, and the champion of the gentlemen as distinct from the mariners. The second officer of every English ship was a practical shipmaster whose authority held in all matters concerning navigation. The soldiers and their officers were passengers. This was unavoidable in view of the new method of English sea-fighting, which depended quite as much on the skill of the seamen as on the armed and trained soldier. English gunners could give the foe a broadside and slip away before their huge adversary could turn. Drake now had two factions to deal with, and he bent his brows and set his jaw as he pondered the situation. If discord arose, the gentlemen would have to come to order. There was no room here for old ideas of caste. Any man too good to haul on a rope might go to--Spain.
Doughty had a way of taking it for granted that Drake and he, as gentlemen, shared thoughts and feelings not to be comprehended by common men. On land this had not seemed offensive, but on blue water, with the old sea-chanteys in his ears, in the intimate association of a long voyage, Drake found himself resenting it. What was there about the man that made his arguments so plausible when one heard them, so false when his engaging presence was withdrawn? And yet how devoted, how sympathetic, how witty and companionable he could be! Drake found himself excusing his friend as if he were a woman,--laughed, sighed, and went to sleep.
Presently he began to hear of John Doughty's amusing himself by reading palms and playing on the superstitions of the sailors with strange prophecies, in which his brother sometimes joined. Drake summoned the two to a brief interview in which Thomas Doughty learned that his friend on land, frank, boyish and unassuming, was a different person from the Admiral of the Fleet. Yet as this impression faded, the brothers perversely went on encouraging discord between the gentlemen adventurers and the sailors, and foretelling events with sinister aptness.
It grew colder and colder. It should be summer,--but as they crept southward they encountered cold and wind beyond that of the North Sea in January. The nights grew long; the battering of the gales never ceased; the ships lost sight of one another. It was whispered that not only had the uncanny brothers foretold the evil weather, but Thomas Doughty had boasted of having brought it about. "We'll ha' no luck till we get rid of our prophet," said blunt Tom Moone, "and the Lord don't provide no whales for the likes o' he."
Drake warned his comrade with an ominous quiet. "Doughty," he said, "if you value your neck you keep your reading and writing to what a common man can understand--you and your brother. A man can't always prophesy for himself, let alone other folk."
"You heard what he said," commented Wynter grimly when the Admiral was in his cabin behind closed doors. "Better not raise the devil unless you know for sure what he'll do. There's been one gallows planted on this coast."
"Sneck up!" laughed Doughty, "he would not dare hang a gentleman!" but he felt a creeping chill at the back of his neck.
On the desolate island where the stump of Magellan's gallows stood black against a crimson dawn, they landed and the tragedy of estrangement and suspicion ended. Thomas Doughty was tried for mutiny and treason before a jury of his peers. Every man there held him a traitor, yet he was acquitted for lack of evidence. Thus encouraged, Doughty boldly declared that they should all smart for this when Burleigh heard of it. What he had done to hinder the voyage, he averred, was by Burleigh's orders, for before they sailed he had gone to that wily statesman and told him the entire scheme.
In a flash of merciless revelation Drake saw the truth. He left Doughty to await the verdict, called the companies down to the shore, and there told them the story of the expedition from first to last, not overlooking the secret orders of the Queen.
"This man was my friend," he said with a break in his voice such as they had not heard save at the suffering of a child. "I would not take his life,--but if he be worthy of death, I pray you hold up your hands."
There was a breathless instant when none stirred; then every hand was raised.
On the next day but one they all sat down to a last feast on that bleak and lonely shore; the two comrades drank to each other for the last time, shared the sacrament, and embracing, said their farewells. Doughty proved that if he could not live a true man he could die like a gentleman; the headsman did his work, and Drake pronounced the solemn sentence, "Lo! this is the death of traitors!"
In that black hour the boyish laughter went forever from the eyes of the Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice. When after a while young Jack Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between them, began some phrase of blundering boyish affection, the sentence trailed off into a stammer.
"He's dead and at peace, Jack," the master said, the words dropping wearily, like spent bullets. "He couldn't help being as he was,--I reckon. If I'd known he was like that I could ha' stopped him, but I never knew--till too late."
Discord among the crews continued, until Drake, rousing from his fitful melancholy, called them all together on a Sunday, and mounted to the place of the chaplain.
"I am going to preach to-day," he said shortly. Then he unfolded a paper and began to read it aloud.
"My masters, I am a very bad orator, for my bringing up hath not been in learning; but what I shall speak here let every man take good notice of and let him write it down. For I will speak nothing but what I will answer it in England, yea, and before Her Majesty." He reminded them of the great adventure before them and went on.
"Now by the life of God this mutiny and dissension must cease. Here is such controversy between the gentlemen and the sailors that it doth make me mad to hear it. I must have the gentleman to haul with the mariner and the mariner with the gentleman. I would know him that would refuse to set his hand to a rope--but I know there is not any such here.
"Any who desire to go home may go in the _Marygold_, but let them take care that they do go home, for if I find them in my way I will sink them."
Then beginning with Wynter he reduced every officer to the ranks forthwith, reprimanded known offenders, and wound up with this appeal:
"We have set by the ears three mighty sovereigns, and if this voyage have not success we shall be a scorning unto our enemies and a blot on our country forever. What triumph would it not be for Spain and Portugal! The like of this would never more be tried!" Then he gave every man his former rank and dismissed them. Moone, meeting Will Harvest that night by the light of a bonfire, was the only man who dared venture a comment. "We was spoilin' for a lickin'," he said, "and we got it. I do hope and trust we'll keep out o' mischief till Frankie gets us home to Plymouth, Hol'." Will grinned back cheerfully, and there was a subdued laugh from the group about the fire. The fleet was itself again.
Adventure after adventure succeeded, wilder than minstrel ever sang. The _Marygold_ went down with all hands; Wynter in the _Elizabeth_, believing the Admiral lost, turned homeward; the _Christopher_ and the _Swan_ had already been broken up. All alone the little _Golden Hynde_, blown southward, sailed around Cape Horn and proved the Antarctic continent a myth. Then Drake steered northward after more than two month's tossing on the uncharted seas, to revictual his ship in Spanish ports, fill his hold with the rich cargoes of one prize ship after another, and capture at last the great annual treasure-ship _Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion_, nicknamed the _Spitfire_ because she was better armed than most of the ships plying on that coast. As they ballasted the _Golden Hynde_ with silver from her huge hulk the jesting seamen dubbed her the _Spit-silver_. The little flagship was literally brimful of silver bars, ingots of gold, pieces of eight, and jewels whose value has never been accurately known. The Spanish Adelantados, accustomed to trust in their remoteness for defense, frantically looked for Drake everywhere except where he was. Warships hung about the Patagonian coast to catch him on his way home--surely he could not stay at sea forever!
But Drake had other plans. Navigators were still searching for the northern passage, the Straits of Anian, and he coasted northward until his men were half paralyzed with cold and the creeping chill of the fog. From the latitude of Vancouver he turned south again, and put into a natural harbor not far from the present San Francisco, which he named New Albion because of the white cliffs like the chalk downs of England. Here he landed and made camp to refit and repair his flagship. He had captured on one prize, two China pilots in whose possession were all the secret charts of the Pacific trade.
Indians ventured down from the mountains to the little fort and dockyard, wondering and admiring. Parson Fletcher presently came to the Admiral with the extraordinary news that they were worshiping the English as gods. Horror and laughter contended among the Puritans when they found themselves set up as idols of the heathen, and the chaplain endeavored by signs to teach the simple savages that the God whom all men should worship was invisible in the heavens.
"'T only shows," remarked Moone, with a nail in one corner of his mouth, after vehemently dissuading a persistent adorer, "that a man never knows what he'll come to. Granny Toothacre used to say that if there's a thing you fight against all your life it'll come to you sooner or later."
"So she did," said Drake with a grim smile as he passed. "Takes a woman to tell a fortune, after all."
"D'you ever hear what become of the old Don we picked up that time?" Moone asked in a lowered voice.
"Not since he sent Frankie the dagger with the gold work and the jewel. Why?"
"'Cause the pilot o' the _Spit-silver_ he knowed un. He say the plague broke out in the Low Countries, and the old Don took and tended that Gallego servant o' his and then he died--not o' the pestilence--just wore out like. I reckon maybe he told Mus' Drake. I didn't."
Silence fell. Then Will said thoughtfully, "He won't be Mus' Drake much longer--by rights--but you never know what a woman'll do. She keep her presents and her favors for them that ha'n't earned 'em--as a rule."
Moone presently hummed half aloud,
"When I served my master I got my Sunday pudden, When I served the Company I got my bread and cheese. When I served the Queen I got hanged for a pirate, All along o'sailin' on the Carib Seas!"
It was a reckless jest, for every one knew that if Elizabeth were dead or married to a Catholic or at peace with Spain when they saw England again, it was extremely likely that the gallows would be their reward. But here, at any rate, was one spot not yet haunted by the Spanish spectre.
The Indians, persuaded at last that the white chief was not a god, insisted on making him their King. They crowned him with a headdress of brilliant feathers, in all due ceremony, hung a chain of beads about his neck, and looked on with the utmost reverence while Drake fixed to a large upright post a tablet claiming the land for the Queen of England, and a silver sixpence with the portrait of Elizabeth and the Tudor rose. Securely hidden under the tablet in a hollow of the wood were memoranda concerning the direction in which, according to the Indians, gold was to be found in the streams,--plenty of gold. When she was ready to the last rope's end the little ship spread her wings and sailed straight across the Pacific, round the Cape of Good Hope, home to England.
Battered and scarred but still seaworthy the _Golden Hynde_ crept into Plymouth Sound, where Drake heard that the plague was in the seaport. Using this for excuse not to land until he knew his footing, he anchored behind Saint Nicholas Island and sent letters to Court.
The sea-dogs who patrolled the Narrow Seas in Elizabeth's time understood her better than her courtiers did. To Drake she was still the keen-minded woman who, like the jeweled silent birds he had seen in tropical jungles, sat in her palace, with enemies all about her alert and observant, and ready to seize her if she came within their grasp. He knew her waywardness to be half assumed, since to let an enemy know what he can count on is fatal. He had not much doubt of her action, but he must wait for her to give him his cue.
Within a week came her answer. She demurely suggested that she should be pleased to see any curiosities which her good Captain had brought home. Drake went up to London, and with him a pack train laden with the cream of his spoil. The Spanish Ambassador Mendoza came with furious letters from Philip demanding the pirate's head. A Spanish force landed that very week in Ireland. Burleigh and the peace party were desperate. All that Mendoza could get out of Elizabeth was an order to Edmund Tremayne at Plymouth to register the cargo of the _Golden Hynde_ and send it up to London that she might see how much the pirate had really taken. At the same time Drake himself went down with her private letter to Tremayne telling him to look another way while her captain got his share of the bullion. Meanwhile she suggested that Philip call his Spaniards out of Ireland. Philip snarled that they were private volunteers. Elizabeth replied, so was Drake. An inquiry was held, and not a single act of cruelty or destruction of property could be proved against any of Drake's crews. The men were richly rewarded by their Admiral; the _Golden Hynde_ came up to Deptford; a list of the plunder was returned to Mendoza; and London waited, excited and curious.
Out of this diplomatic tangle Elizabeth took her own way, as she usually did. On April 4, 1581, she suggested to Drake that she would be his guest at a banquet on board the little, worm-eaten ship. All the court was there, and a multitude of on-lookers besides, for those were the days when royalty sometimes dined in public. After the banquet, the like of which, as Mendoza wrote his master, had not been seen in England since the time of her father, Elizabeth requested Drake to hand her the sword she had given him before he left England. "The King of Spain demands the head of Captain Drake," she said with a little laugh, "and here am I to strike it off." As Drake knelt at her command she handed the sword to Marchaumont, the envoy of her French suitor, asking that since she was a woman and not trained to the use of weapons, he should give the accolade. This open defiance of Philip thus involved in her action the second Catholic power of Europe before all the world. Then, as Marchaumont gave the three strokes appointed the Queen spoke out clearly, while men thrilled with sudden presage of great days to come,--
"Rise up,--Sir Francis Drake!"
A WATCH-DOG OF ENGLAND
Where the Russian Bear stirs blindly in the leash of a mailéd hand, Bright in the frozen sunshine, the domes of Moscow stand,
Scarlet and blue and crimson, blazing across the snow As they did in the Days of Terror, three hundred years ago.
Courtiers bending before him, envoys from near and far, Sat in his Hall of Audience Ivan the Terrible Tsar,
(He of the knout and torture, poison and sword and flame) Yet unafraid before him the English envoy came.
And he was Sir Jeremy Bowes, born of that golden time When in the soil of Conquest blossomed the flower of Rhyme.
Dauntless he fronted the Presence,--and the courtiers whispered low, "Doth Elizabeth send us madmen, to tempt the torture so?"
"Have you heard of that foolhardy Frenchman?" Ivan the Terrible said,-- "He came before me covered,--I nailed his hat to his head."
Then spoke Sir Jeremy Bowes, "I serve the Virgin Queen,-- Little is she accustomed to vail her face, I ween.
"She is Elizabeth Tudor, mighty to bless or to ban, Nor doth her envoy give over at the bidding of any man!
"Call to your Cossacks and hangmen,--do with me what ye please, But ye shall answer to England when the news flies over seas."
Ivan smiled on the envoy,--the courtiers saw that smile, Glancing one at the other, holding their breath the while.
Then spoke the terrible Ivan, "His Queen sits over sea, Yet he hath bid me defiance,--would ye do as much for me?"
XVI
LORDS OF ROANOKE
Primrose garlands in Coombe Wood shone with the pale gold of winter sunshine. Violets among dry leaves peered sedately at the pageant of spring. In the royal hunting forest of Richmond, venerable trees unfolded from their tiny buds canopies like the fairy pavilion of Paribanou.
Philip Armadas and Arthur Barlowe, coming up from Kingston, beheld all this April beauty with the wistful pleasure of those who bid farewell to a dearly beloved land. Within a fortnight Sir Walter Ralegh's two ships, which they commanded, would be out upon the gray Atlantic. The Queen would lie at Richmond this night, and the two young captains had been bidden to court that she might see what manner of men they were.[1]
Armadas, though born in Hull, was the son of a Huguenot refugee. Barlowe was English to the back-bone. Both knew more of the ways of ships than the ways of courts. Yet for all her magnificence and her tempers Elizabeth had a way with her in dealing with practical men. She welcomed merchants, builders, captains and soldiers as frankly as she did Italian scholars or French gallants. Her attention was as keen when she was framing a letter to the Grand Turk securing trade privileges to London or Bristol, as when she listened to the graceful flatteries of Spenser or Lyly. In this year 1584 she had granted a patent to Ralegh for further explorations of the lands north of Florida discovered half a century since by Sebastian Cabot. She heaped upon it rights and privileges which made Hatton and her other court gallants grind their teeth. Ralegh knew well that this was no time for him to be wandering about strange coasts. He was therefore fitting out an expedition to make a preliminary voyage and report to him what was found.
"'T is like this," Armadas was saying with the buoyant confidence which endeared him alike to his patron and his comrade. "North you get the scurvy and south the fever, but midway is the climate for a new empire. There Englishmen may have timber for their shipyards, and pasture for their sheep and cattle, and meadows for their corn. There Flemings and Huguenots may live and work in peace. Our sons may be lords and princes of a new world, Arthur lad."
"Aye; but there's the Inquisition in the Indies to reckon with," answered Barlowe with his grim half-smile. "And if what we hear of the barbarians be true, the men who make the first plantation may be forced to plant and build with their left hand and keep their right for fighting."
"Oh, the barbarians,--" Armadas began, and paused, for the chatter of young voices broke forth in a copse.
"I tell thee salvages be hairy men with tails like monkeys. My uncle he has seen them on the Guinea coast."
"Dick, if thou keep not off my heels in the passamezzo--"
"Be not so cholerical, Tom Poope, or the Master'll give thee a tuning. Thou'rt not Lord of the Indies yet."
"Faith," chuckled Barlowe, "here be some little eyasses practising a fantasy for the Queen's pleasure. Hey, lads, what's all the pother about?"[2]
The company emerged half-shamefacedly from the shrubbery, a group of youngsters between ten and fourteen, in fanciful costumes of silk and brocade, or mimic armor and puffed doublets. The central figure of the group was a handsome little lad in a sort of tunic of hairy undressed goatskin, a feather head-dress and gilded ornaments. His dark face had a sullen look, and he grasped his lance as if about to use it. Another urchin, whose great arched eyebrows, rolling eyes and impish mouth marked him as the clown of the company, made answer boldly,
"'T is Tom Poope, your lordships, who mislikes the dress he must wear, and says if we have but a king and queen of the monkeys to welcome the discoverers, the Queen will only laugh at us, and 'a will not stay to be laughed at. 'T is a masque of the ventures of Captain Cabot, look you, and Tom's the King of the salvages and makes all the long speeches."
"Upon my word, coz," laughed Armadas, "I think we have stumbled upon a pretty conceit intended to do honor to our master. Methinks His Royal Highness here has the right on't--the man who made that costume never saw true Indians."
"Have you seen them, then, sir? Are you a voyager?" asked Tom Poope eagerly, his face brightening. "And will you look on and tell us if we do it right?"
Barlowe grinned good-humoredly, and Armadas waved a laughing assent. They seated themselves upon a grassy bank and the play began.