CHAPTER XLIV.

LARGO.

"Oh, blythely shines the bonnie sun upon the Isle o' May, And blythely rolls the morning tide into St. Andrew's Bay; When haddocks leave the Firth of Forth and mussels leave the shore When oysters climb up Berwick Law, we'll go to sea no more-- No more--we'll go to sea no more." _Scottish Fisherman's Song._

When the sun rose from the ocean, the appearance of these six ships was wofully changed. The waves were rolling in brilliant green and gold, and the yellow sands of Tyningham, the red towers, the deep caverns and surf-beaten rocks of Dunbar were glistening in the morning beams; the gannets, the cormorants, and gigantic solan geese on their snow-white pinions, were wheeling merrily in the welkin above the summer sea; but the state of the hostile ships, which, while they were all lashed together, had drifted hither and thither at the mercy of the wind and tide, was deplorable. Their decks were crowded by killed and wounded, especially round the scuttle-butts, to which many had crawled for the purpose of allaying their burning thirst; the bulwarks were splashed with blood, and it oozed, or dropped in curdles from the scuppers; boats, booms, and spars were riven and splintered; sheets and tackles were streaming loose upon the breeze; the yards were out of trim and lowered upon the caps, while the canvas was pierced and torn;--but still the _blue ensign_ was flying over all.

The ships with which Sir Alexander Mathieson had grappled were almost complete wrecks, for all his cannon were great carthouns or forty-pounders--prodigious guns for that age. The _Yellow Frigate_, like her chief adversary the _Harry_, had lost all her trim neatness; some of her yards were shot in the slings; her rigging hung in loops and bights, and blood was trickling down the masts and stays, or dropping from the tops upon the battered deck and white courses; for many of Falconer's arquebussiers lay there slain, or bleeding through the gratings, from the wounds of bullets and arrows.

Sir Andrew Wood, before loosening a buckle of his harness, now ordered the prisoners to be secured, and crews put on board the prizes; their damages to be partly repaired, and sail to be made on them all. The grappling-irons were cast off; the ports lowered; the decks swabbed, and the dead sent ashore; shot-holes were plugged and caulked; loose ropes coiled up, the sails trimmed, and before a favourable breeze from the south-east, the six vessels bore away for Largo Bay, as the Admiral had no intention of taking his prizes into Leith, until he knew to whom they should be delivered; for he considered the victorious barons as no better than rebels.

The dead were buried in two trenches in the cemetery of the old collegiate kirk at Dunbar, where the mound which covered the "Englishmen's grave" was long an object of interest to the people.

In getting the ships clear of the horrid _débris_ of the battle, and in attending to the wounded, English and Scots worked side by side with hearty goodwill, and only relaxed their sailor-like indifference when they drank their cans of brown ale together, and passed the blackjack of whiskey-and-water from man to man;--for now, when that deadly strife was over and their fury had expended itself, enmity was at an end--for a time at least,--and Willie Wad and Dick Selby, the rival gunners, carved at the same junk with their jocktelegs (or clasp-knives), and the latter sang when the former produced his fiddle; while the boatswain spun some of his wonderful yarns to amuse the prisoners. All on the gundeck of the _Yellow Frigate_ seemed merry enough, the maimed excepted, but there were lowering brows and heavy hearts in the cabin of her Admiral.

This apartment had four windows which overlooked a gallery; and the morning sun shone brightly through them as he rose from the amber-coloured sea. Along the sides were the culverins on their carriages, and on the rudder-case were the arms of Wood--_argent_, an oak tree growing out of a mount, with two bears for supporters; and to this two ships were afterwards added, as we find in Sir David Lindesay's "Book of Blazons," in memory of his victory near the Isle of May.

The frank Laird of Largo had doffed his helmet and much of his iron panoply, and at two bells (nine A.M.) was entertaining to a sumptuous breakfast (as sumptuous at least as could be prepared on board of ship) his officers and some of the English prisoners--Captain Howard, John o'Lynne, Miles Furnival, and two other English captains whose names are not recorded, with Falconer, Burton, and other gentlemen of the Scottish ships. All sat side by side at Largo's long and hospitable board, the place of honour being assigned to Lady Margaret Drummond and her two attendants, Rose and Cicely.

The three looked pale, jaded, and weary, for the terrors of the past night and the horrors of the dawn had impressed them deeply--the more so, as they had been attending to some of the wounded, who had no other leeches than the ship's barber-apothecary and their messmates. The breakfast consisted of several joints of mutton, cut in collops, with roasted capons, dishes of roasted chickens, eggs broiled in their shells on large platters--or as they are named in Scotland and France, assiettes,--cakes, manchets, and jugs of ale, with several sack possets, each formed of twelve eggs put into a Scottish mutchkin of sack with a quart of cream, well sugared and boiled together for fifteen minutes; and there were hippocrass of milk and cherry wine for the ladies. Such was the repast to which fair justice was done by all save Howard and Margaret Drummond--or as we should perhaps style her, the Duchess of Rothesay.

Entreaty and remonstrance had proved alike futile when Howard was pressed by Barton and Sir Andrew Wood to explain how and why this missing daughter of the Lord Drummond--she whose strange disappearance was one of the secret springs that rolled a civil war against the throne--was found on board his vessel! He flatly and firmly declined to answer; and Margaret herself could not very clearly inform them as to her abductors; for she knew of none save Borthwick, against whom, for want of a better object, Barton resolved to turn the whole current of his wrath.

However, all King Henry's plot with the Scottish traitors was nearly being discovered about the time the ships surrendered, by Master Quentin Kraft, the notary, who was dragged abaft the mizenmast of the _Yellow Frigate_ by Cuddie Clewline and Dalquhat the seaman, who had found him ensconced in the cable-tier of the _Harry_, where he had repeatedly offered them a certain iron-bound volume, with which they would have nothing to do, believing by its aspect that it must be a book of magic, else wherefore that lock and all these bands of steel.

"Slue him round--heave ahead, master," said the coxswain, giving him a push; "haud up your face, auld dog-fish--you are before the Admiral!"

The dapper attorney, in his black cassock-coat, looked very much scared, and said in a quavering voice--

"I crave your mercy, Sir Andrew Wood--I can pay a small ransom if it be wished; I am Quentin Kraft, a gentleman of the law--an attorney--a notary, if it please you--one well known about Westminster Hall and Lincoln's Inn--London."

"A what, sayst thou?" demanded the Admiral.

"A notary public, at your service--and secretary to the noble Captain Howard."

"A scurvy rogue, Sir Andrew Wood," said Howard, disdainfully; "one who hath been stripped of his gown and coif in Westminster Hall and cast adrift by the benchers at Lincoln's Inn. But men who can handle the quill are scarce,--so I was e'en forced to content me with such a secretary, for lack of a better."

"It is false--I am a man of repute," said Kraft.

"Yea," said Howard; "but a devilish one, sirrah."

"And if the Scottish admiral," added the spiteful notary, "will accept this volume at my hands, promising that my life, limbs, and goods shall be respected, it will make his fortune."

"Wretch and villain, wouldst thou betray the secrets of King Henry?" cried Howard, as he rushed upon Kraft, and wrenching away the volume, flung it through an open port-hole; and being iron-bound, it sunk like a stone into the sea.

"It was well done, Captain Howard," said Sir Andrew Wood; "I ken little and I care less what yonder black tome contained; but I honour thee for destroying it, as much as I despise this miserable notary for proffering it as the price of a life that is not worth taking. Away with him, Cuddie, and though such lubberly land-loupers are gude for nocht but to drink the king's ale and lollop in the afterguard or ship's waist, see that no man molests him."

The breakfast was dispatched with great relish. Men were used to hard knocks, cuts, and slashes in those days; and, though many at the table had their heads and arms bandaged up, from the effect of their late conflict, they passed the ale-cans and frothing possets merrily from hand to hand; and already Father Zuill, who had donned his friar's frock, was explaining to John o'Lynne the powerful results that would ultimately accrue to an astonished world by a properly developed parabolic speculum; and John listened with a smile of perplexity to what he considered the freak of a learned madman.

Barton sat silent, and gazed from time to time at Howard, as if he was pondering whether it was a dream or a reality, that they both had their legs under the same friendly table. Falconer, too. was somewhat silent, or only addressed the fair Margaret, in whose soft eyes and pale Madonna face he was tracing the expression of her darker sister Sybilla. Howard was also reserved, for the waves that ran go brightly past the cabin windows were bearing him further from his home; and he felt himself disgraced in being captured by a force so inferior to his own, and being the subject of a narrative that would sound but ill on Paul's Walk, in London; and he was aware, too, that with Margaret's release all hope of his gaining her affection would pass away for ever for now she would be restored to that gay young prince, whom, as yet, he conceived to be her lover only.

Wood observed that the brave Englishman was low-spirited, and that a peculiar sadness hovered over his fine features, so he begged him to be of good cheer; "for I doubt not," said he, "that the Governor of Berwick will have in ward some of our mosstrooping lairds, for whom to exchange thee; at all events, we may fairly set thee off against the Lord Bishop of Dunblane, whom your king still detains in London. Come, shipmate, fill the foreyard; the sea is yet under thee--and life in thee is young yet; for I am more than twice thine age, and am a canty auld carle yet."

"True, Admiral," said Howard, with a glance at Margaret; "but the charms of life have been doubly destroyed at the very time I was beginning to find there was another to live for than myself."

The Admiral rubbed his beard uneasily, for he detected the glance of Howard, and saw how Margaret's cheek reddened, though Falconer was speaking to her of other things; and, as he afterwards said to Barton, he "knew in a moment which way the wind was setting in," but he veiled his correct suspicions, and said,--

"Of course it is sad to lose one's old shipmates and a battle too; but what o' that; we lose to-day and win to-morrow, for we cannot be always victorious. Twelve years ago, the ships of stout Andrew Barton (who never was beaten before) were overwhelmed by the Admiral of Portugal, though, as the song says, he was

'The best sailor that ever sailed the sea.'

But, gadzooks, he soon after cleared off that score with the skippers of the King of Portugal."

"True, Admiral," said Howard, glad to grasp at anything which might serve to explain his melancholy; "but of all those whom you have sent ashore to be entombed, and of those who in the _Cressi_ have sunk to feed the hungry serpent of the sea," he continued, for that nautical personage, now so familiar to us as Master David Jones, was then unknown, "I regret none more than brave Anthony Arblaster, the captain of my archers."

"Ah--and how fell he?"

"A blow from a poleaxe took him right amidships, and slew him;--poor Tony!"

"And thus he went to foreign parts--God bless him! we'll remember him when masses are said and the sance-bell tolled in Largo Kirk," replied the Admiral. "And now, Madame," he added, turning to Margaret, to change the subject, "now that the smiles are coming back to your sweet face (I am an auld carle, and may say so)--now that you have got all your gear rove and your golden hair braided, by my faith, I would scarcely know you it be the same wild dame who rushed from the _Harry's_ poop last night, all pale, like a white spirit or weird woman, with your hair dishevelled and canvas loose in the brails, to save this gallant gentleman! I' faith! 'twill be a strange story to tell the old Lord Drummond, though darkly enough he looked on me, when, yesterday at noon, we stood in the prince's presence. I think that now I may win his good-will, unless his heart be tough as a nine-inch cable or hard as a cannon-ball."

"You have indeed a claim on my father's everlasting gratitude--and on one greater even than he," said Margaret, as tears filled her eyes, and she paused, lest too many thanks should sound reproachfully to the gentle Howard.

"Ay, the good king," said the Admiral, partly mistaking her; "yet, I would to St. Andrew we could hear aught of him, for he must be in Scotland still, and they are false traitors who say he hath fled to Holland, England, or any other foreign country; for there are too many brave clansmen in the north to make flight necessary after one battle! But of these matters of statecraft I ken little; kings and lords ride in owre deep water for me; so the gunner to his lintstock and the steersman to his helm, say I."

About noon the ships passed the basaltic promontory and low, flat, sterile links near Elie--or as it was then named, Ardross, with the houses of its bleak old burgh standing upon sea-dykes of black round stones, on which the tide was roaring with a peculiar sound, which ever betokens bad weather. Thus, the fisher-boats were all creeping under the lee of the bluff, into that little harbour which is still named from our Admiral, Wood's Haven; and as the mist was beginning to roll round the green and conical hill of Largo, he ordered that on coming to anchor in the bay, the topmasts should be struck, the topgallant-yards sent down on deck, and all the ports secured, for now the sky had overcast, and as the old sea rhyme says,

"When Largo Law the mist doth bear, Let Kelly Law for storms prepare."

Thus, both wind and rain were expected.

The coast of Fife looked close and gloomy, the headlands were drenched in foam; the fir woods and deeply caverned shore of Kilconquhar were black and dreary; the sun became fiery and red, while the wind came in hollow, sudden, and furious gusts, an the vessels ran into the broad and beautiful Bay of Largo, and came to anchor abreast of the little town, which was then thriving under the fatherly care of the noble merchant-skipper, and was protected by the strong castle he had built with the royal permission, on becoming the king's chief admiral, and being made a knight and baron of Parliament.

As the summer sky was darkening fast, and some of the ships were injured in their hulls, Sir Andrew ordered all the hammocks to be stowed below; the culverins to be double-breeched, the deadlights to be shipped, and the sheet anchors to be let go, as the vessels had to ride on an ebb and lee tide. He then conveyed Lady Margaret and her two English attendants, with Howard, Miles Furnival, and all the gentlemen of their squadron, ashore, and conducted them to his Castle of Largo, the gates of which were barely closed behind them, before the summer storm burst forth with all its fury, and its drenching rain that sowed the sea and smoked along the shore, while the chill east wind, swayed the heavy woods and made the ships careen in the bay, as it swept round each bare headland, and the rifted nesses of Fife.

"Truly Horace was right," sighed Father Zuill, as he saw the squadron straining on their cables, "when he said that 'he who ventured first to sea had a soul of triple brass!'"