CHAPTER XIII.

TO SEA!

"All hands unmoor! proclaims a boisterous cry; All hands unmoor! the caverned rocks reply; Roused from repose, aloft the sailors swarm, And with their levers soon the windlass arm." FALCONER'S _Shipwreck_, Canto i.

On leaving the hall, Sir Andrew Wood was received at the palace-gate by his usual body-guard; the crew of his barge, under the command of Cuddie, the coxswain, armed with their boat-stretchers, and clad in their spotless white gaberdines, girdled by broad black belts, in which each had his Scottish knife or dudgeon-dagger, and all wearing broad blue bonnets, having red cherries on the top and white St. Andrew's crosses in front. They were sixteen of the smartest men in the ship's company, and Cuddie--or Cuthbert--the coxswain, marched in front.

As the admiral, thus escorted and accompanied by Falconer and Barton, proceeded towards the landing-place down Tindall's Wynd, a narrow thoroughfare, then paved by those round stones such as may yet be seen in the streets of Arbroath and other seaport towns in Angus, he perceived a seaman making various efforts to attract his attention, by coming close to the barge's crew, and always touching his bonnet with profound respect whenever his eye fell on him.

"Ahoy, brother!" said the admiral, "what cheer? Do you wish to speak with me? Ha! Jamie Gair--is it thee who art backing and filling thus, as if I were some great lord? Put on thy bonnet, man. But why art not away to the fishing-ground? Are there English cruisers off the coast?"

"Ye have guessed aright, Sir Andrew," replied Gair; "and I crave the honour o' a word wi' ye apart."

"Well,--say forth."

"Captain Howard, the _Royal Harry_, and twa other English ships were off the Firth last night."

"What dost thou tell me?"

"Sure as I am a living man, sir--inside the Inchcape bell," continued Jamie, in a low anxious whisper.

"Lubber and loggerhead! And thou only tellest me now!"

"Wi' the first blink o' dawn I was aboard the frigate, Sir Andrew, but ye werena there; and I hae been haudin' off and an about the palace door sincesyne, in the hope o' seeing you. But oh, be wary, Sir Andrew, and ask me nae mair, for I am but a puir fisherman, wi' a wife and a bairn to feed and to cleed----"

"Wary--what mean ye, Jamie Gair?"

"Your word as a knight, Sir Andrew, that you will never repeat what will assuredly be my ruin."

"Messmate, thou hast my word as a seaman. Well?"

"Last night three gentlemen, in masks, went off to the _Royal Harry_, and remained two hours aboard."

"About what time was this?"

"Mirk midnight----"

"When honest men are swinging in their hammocks. Well?"

"When day broke, she and her twa consorts were bearing awa south and by east."

"Three gentlemen, wearing masks,"--said the admiral, keenly scrutinizing the honest brown visage of the fisherman; "ken ye their names?"

"No, Sir Andrew," replied Jamie looking down, for he trembled for his wife and child, if exposed to the vengeance of Gray of Kyneff.

"By every shrine in Largo kirk!" said the admiral, "I would give my starboard fin to know who these villains were. Ho! Robert Barton, I have news for thee," he added, with a grim smile; "the English _Harry_ and her consorts are off the coast."

"Edmund Howard--he who with his brother slew my father in the Downs?"

"The same, my lad; and while we have been loitering in smooth water among those gilded sharks of courtiers, they may have escaped us."

"Edmund Howard--oh, David Falconer, hearest thou that?" said Barton, with fierce joy; "come admiral: if he escapes us now----"

"May we never go to sea without a foul wind, or come to anchor without a rotten cable. Away to your arms--to your cannon--the English fleet is off the coast!"

"Bear away then, Cuddie--heave ahead, my lads! hurrah!"

cried Burton, waving his bonnet, and the whole of the barge's crew ran down Tindall's Wynd brandishing their boat-stretchers, and springing on board, shipped their oars. Wood and Falconer leaped into the sternsheets, and Barton grasped the tiller.

"Give way, my braw lads, give way!" exclaimed the admiral, as Cuddie shoved the boat off; the sixteen oars were dipped into the water; the crew bent to their task, and almost lifted the light shallop out of the river, as they shot her round the Craig of St. Nicholas, where the nautical loungers bestowed a farewell cheer in honour of old Sir Andrew. Jamie Gair was left in the middle of the Wynd, where he stood for a time, irresolute and half repenting the interest he had taken in affairs of State, and dreading that the gold he had earned might bring him nought but sorrow.

"Give way, callants--give way!" continued the brave old Laird of Largo; "see--the tide is ebbing, and there is a fine breeze blowing down the Carse o' Gowrie! Give way merrily, my hearts--pull with a will!"

The old man was all impatience; the crew of the barge caught his enthusiasm. They bent to their slender oars with all their muscular energy, and the light boat was shot over the waters of the Tay, which parted before its bows, and curled under its counter, in the bright sunshine, in long lines that were edged with bells of snowy foam. Like an arrow, the long sharp boat sheered alongside the towering frigate; the oars were unshipped from the rowlocks and piled along the thwarts, while Cuddie the coxswain caught an eyebolt with his boat-hook. In three minutes, the admiral, his officers, and the crew were all on board, and the boat was dangling like a toy from the davits.

"Run up the signal for sea," said the admiral; "Master Wad, fire a culverin to let Sir Alexander Mathieson know what we are about. Boatswain, pipe away the yeomen of the windlass, and heave short--cast loose the courses; trip the anchor, and prepare all for sailing."

The greatest alacrity followed these rapid orders. Archy of Anster was as active as if the one-eyed demon of his extraordinary yarn was after him: he hurried from poop to forecastle, growling, shouting, swearing and piping away between decks.

"Willie Wad--quick wi' your gun!" he cried; "or we'll serve ye wi' a stoup o' bilge in guid earnest."

The little blue flag, which, from time immemorial has been the signal for sailing, was run up to the foremast-head, where it fluttered in the wind; one of the starboard ports was triced up, and a great cannon-royale sent its report like thunder over the calm still flow of the shining river; and immediately a commotion was visible on board the _Queen Margaret_. The flag of Sir Alexander Mathieson was displayed from her mainmast-head, and the shrill whistle of her boatswain was heard, as he piped all hands on deck.

As to referring to either king or council, lord high chancellor or secretary of state, for orders to put to sea, such an idea never entered the head of stout Sir Andrew Wood; who sometimes was not over-particular, for it is recorded that once during a private quarrel with the Provost of Aberdeen, he sailed up the Don with the king's ships, and bombarded the granite city in a fashion which its citizens never forgot or forgave.

Falconer stood on the poop looking regretfully at the house of the Drummonds, with its large round towers, which were then almost washed by the river; but Barton was all life and animation; and with a celerity astonishing for an age when every species of mechanism was rude and in its infancy, the ships of war were got under way. The boatswain manned the windlass, and after a few hard tugs with the handspikes, they tripped the anchor and turned

----"The engine round, At every turn the clanging pauls resound; Uptorn reluctant from its oozy cave, The ponderous anchor rises o'er the wave."

Its square stock appeared above the surface of the water, and then Barton seized his trumpet.

"Hard up with the helm, timoneer," he cried; "fill the head sails--on board with the foretack! haul out the spanker and set the spritsail. Forecastle there--cat and fish the anchor!"

"Quick, my lads!" added the boatswain; "yare, yare--mony hands mak licht wark."

"Sheet home," said the admiral, stamping his feet as he walked up and down the poop impatiently, and at every turn looked aloft; "sheet home! Barton, hoist the top-gallant sails! Gadzooks, but it is a brave breeze this! Archy of Anster, send your sharpest man to the crow's-nest as a look-out, and see that he kens a fleet of ships from a flock of gulls. By the whale of Jonas! I will give a hundred golden angels to the first man who discovers these English pirates!"

Cuddie the coxswain scampered up aloft, and perched himself in the main-cross-trees.

As the great square mainsails of the frigates fell, they began to feel the full pressure of their canvas, and gathered way; the transient bustle subsided, and as the broad sails swelled out from the yardheads, and the glassy river rippled beneath their sharp and lofty prows, they stood noiselessly down the opening Tay with the ebbing tide, and a western wind, right aft to bear them onward.

With evening a soft opal-coloured light stole over the summer sky. The heat of the day had subsided, and a light breeze stole along the water, wafting from the shores of that majestic river the rich fragrance of the apple-bowers, the ripening grain, and the thousand plants that flourish by its margin.

The great square tower of St. Mary, the pointed spire of St. Clement, the Rock of St. Nicholas, and the little burgh--for it was then indeed but a small but beautiful Dundee,--became shrouded in the haze of the warm summer evening, as the frigates, keeping straight in the fair way, rounded Tentsmuir-point, the sands of Abertay, and then bore away a point or two towards the south, with the western wind upon the quarter, when the sun's rays were fading behind the undulating coast of Forgan, or, as it then was named, St. Fillan.

People supped early in those days; thus, an hour after sunset, the bell in the great cabin announced that the evening meal was ready.

"By Heaven! admiral, I have an appetite for the first time since my father's death!" said Barton, as he took his seat with a flushed brow.

"Gadzooks, Robbie, if Cuddie descries those Englishmen----"

"I will add two hundred angels to thine, admiral, and rig him a crayer of his own--and she shall be the best that ever was launched on the Forth or the Tay!"

Father Zuill, the chaplain, who sat on Wood's right hand, blessed the viands, which consisted of a platter of fried garvies fresh from the Tay, two great pies, one called a gibelotte, which the Scots had adopted from their friends the French, and have now abbreviated into _giblet_; and the other a tower of paste, containing all the odds and ends the cook could collect in his larder. This was designated a double-decker. There were pies of quinces and orange marmalade for dessert, and cases of sack and canary for those who sat above the salt; with a great leather jack of ale for Archy the boatswain, Willie Wad the gunner, Cuddie the coxswain, the captains of the fore, main, and mizentops, who sat below this line of demarcation, and who, instead of supping off plate and a silk-edged table-cloth like the officers, were bound to content them with a plain bare table and wooden treen-plates, with horn-handled knives, and spoons. The conversation was general and animated, for it ran chiefly on the merits and death of Sir Andrew Barton, the probable strength of the enemy, and the chances of overhauling them. When supper was over, Sir Andrew desired all to fill their cans, for the toast which he invariably gave every night, at the same hour and in the same place, when on board, and had done so for the last thirty years.

"The gude Port o' Leith, messmates--God bless it, and a' our Scottish ships at sea!"

When again they came on deck, the ships were off the Eden mouth, and the waves of St. Andrew's stormy bay were rolling their crests away to windward. As the light breeze swept over them, they were tinted with a thousand prismatic hues by the broad white summer moon, which rose in her clearest beauty from the German Sea. Falconer's thoughts were then of Sybilla, whom he loved so well and perhaps so vainly; and abandoning himself to the fondest reveries, he brooded deeply over his passion amid the majestic silence of the sea that swept around him, and the distant land, whose headlands jutted into that shining mirror in bold but hazy outlines.

Barton loved Euphemia Drummond not a whit less than the captain of arquebussiers loved her younger sister; but with the secure feeling of a fiancé, for the present he dismissed her fair image from his breast, and gave full play to those high hopes of fully avenging his gallant father on the very men who had slain him, and whose ships he knew were on those moonlit waters, which he was incessantly scanning with eagerness and impatience, but with his unaided eyes alone: for telescopes were not invented for nearly a hundred and twenty years after.

The old admiral, who burned to punish the slayers of his venerable friend and messmate, more than to avenge the temporary disgrace--if disgrace it was--cast by the Howards upon the rising prowess of the Scottish mariners, shared all the impatience of Barton, and together they trod up and down the weather side of the poop, frequently hailing Cuddie, who was still perched at the crosstree, to be assured that he kept a proper look-out.

The night stole on; the moon began to sink; the frigates were still going free with the wind upon the quarter; Fifeness, with the dangerous Carr-rock, arose on the starboard-bow, and the old admiral, who knew every part of the coast as well as the features of his own face, now looked from time to time at the compasses which stood in the lighted binnacle, or as the seamen then named it, _habbitacle_--_i.e._, a small house, for there were two--one for the steersman and another for the gunner who was conning.

The _Margaret_ was now a falcon-shot astern, and the great poop-lantern of the _Yellow Frigate_ was lighted; but this precaution was needless, as her cloud of snow-white canvas and all her taut black rigging were as visible to her consort under the clear blue sky of night as if at noonday.

"Fifeness in sight, and no sign of them yet!" muttered the Admiral; "square the yards, Barton, and stand right away before the breeze."

The temporary bustle of this manoeuvre soon subsided; the rope-ends were again coiled away, and, save the watch and some of the crew, who were listening to another of the boatswain's incredible yarns in the forecastle, all the ship's company had turned into their hammocks. About the middle watch of the night, Barton, who was still impatiently pacing the deck, heard the man (who for a time had replaced the coxwain) at the masthead hailing the deck.

"Poop, ho!"

"Hallo," answered Barton, instinctively grasping his trumpet, which lay on the binnacle; "are you aloft, Dalquhat?"

"Twa sail are in sicht, sir."

"Where away, my old Carle?"

"On the larboard bow."

"What are they like?"

"Ilk ane is a three-masted ship. Ane has a poop lantern--the other is hull doon; but we are coming up wi' them hand owre hand."

"Look hard, shipmate, and mayhap ye may see another," said Barton; "Falconer, call the admiral. Yeomen of the sheets and braces, to your quarters; up with that fore-top-gallant-sail a bit, and fill the heads of that sprit-sail-yard. How does she steer, Wad?"

"Like a swan," replied the gunner; "a wee bairn micht keep her full wi' a silken twine."

The admiral now came on deck, and with a beating heart the gallant Barton sprang away aloft, to have a look at the vessels a-head, and praying as he went, that they might prove to be those of Captain Edmund Howard.

By this time the silver moon had waned, and the hills of Fife were melting into the darkened sea and cold, blue, starlit sky astern.