Westward Ho!

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Westward Ho!


In few words he told the company the sad story which we already know.
Ere it was ended, noble tears were glistening on some of those stern
faces.

"The old Egyptians," said Sir Edward Osborne, "when they banqueted, set
a corpse among their guests, for a memorial of human vanity. Have we
forgotten God and our own weakness in this our feast, that He Himself
has sent us thus a message from the dead?"

"Nay, my lord mayor," said Sidney, "not from the dead, but from the
realm of everlasting life."

"Amen!" answered Osborne. "But, gentlemen, our feast is at an end. There
are those here who would drink on merrily, as brave men should, in spite
of the private losses of which they have just had news; but none here
who can drink with the loss of so great a man still ringing in his
ears."

It was true. Though many of the guests had suffered severely by the
failure of the expedition, they had utterly forgotten that fact in the
awful news of Sir Humphrey's death; and the feast broke up sadly and
hurriedly, while each man asked his neighbor, "What will the queen say?"

Raleigh re-entered in a few minutes, but was silent, and pressing many
an honest hand as he passed, went out to call a wherry, beckoning Amyas
to follow him. Sidney, Cumberland, and Frank went with them in another
boat, leaving the two to talk over the sad details.

They disembarked at Whitehall-stairs; Raleigh, Sidney, and Cumberland
went to the palace; and the two brothers to their mother's lodgings.

Amyas had prepared his speech to Frank about Rose Salterne, but now that
it was come to the point, he had not courage to begin, and longed that
Frank would open the matter. Frank, too, shrank from what he knew must
come, and all the more because he was ignorant that Amyas had been to
Bideford, or knew aught of the Rose's disappearance.

So they went upstairs; and it was a relief to both of them to find that
their mother was at the Abbey; for it was for her sake that both dreaded
what was coming. So they went and stood in the bay-window which looked
out upon the river, and talked of things indifferent, and looked
earnestly at each other's faces by the fading light, for it was now
three years since they had met.

Years and events had deepened the contrast between the two brothers; and
Frank smiled with affectionate pride as he looked up in Amyas's face,
and saw that he was no longer merely the rollicking handy sailor-lad,
but the self-confident and stately warrior, showing in every look and
gesture,

"The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill,"

worthy of one whose education had been begun by such men as Drake and
Grenville, and finished by such as Raleigh and Gilbert. His long locks
were now cropped close to the head; but as a set-off, the lips and chin
were covered with rich golden beard; his face was browned by a thousand
suns and storms; a long scar, the trophy of some Irish fight, crossed
his right temple; his huge figure had gained breadth in proportion to
its height; and his hand, as it lay upon the window-sill, was hard and
massive as a smith's. Frank laid his own upon it, and sighed; and Amyas
looked down, and started at the contrast between the two--so slender,
bloodless, all but transparent, were the delicate fingers of the
courtier. Amyas looked anxiously into his brother's face. It was
changed, indeed, since they last met. The brilliant red was still on
either cheek, but the white had become dull and opaque; the lips were
pale, the features sharpened; the eyes glittered with unnatural fire:
and when Frank told Amyas that he looked aged, Amyas could not help
thinking that the remark was far more true of the speaker himself.

Trying to shut his eyes to the palpable truth, he went on with his chat,
asking the names of one building after another.

"And so this is old Father Thames, with his bank of palaces?"

"Yes. His banks are stately enough; yet, you see, he cannot stay to look
at them. He hurries down to the sea; and the sea into the ocean; and the
ocean Westward-ho, forever. All things move Westward-ho. Perhaps we may
move that way ourselves some day, Amyas."

"What do you mean by that strange talk?"

"Only that the ocean follows the primum mobile of the heavens, and flows
forever from east to west. Is there anything so strange in my thinking
of that, when I am just come from a party where we have been drinking
success to Westward-ho?"

"And much good has come of it! I have lost the best friend and the
noblest captain upon earth, not to mention all my little earnings, in
that same confounded gulf of Westward-ho."

"Yes, Sir Humphrey Gilbert's star has set in the West--why not? Sun,
moon, and planets sink into the West: why not the meteors of this lower
world? why not a will-o'-the-wisp like me, Amyas?"

"God forbid, Frank!"

"Why, then? Is not the West the land of peace, and the land of dreams?
Do not our hearts tell us so each time we look upon the setting sun, and
long to float away with him upon the golden-cushioned clouds? They bury
men with their faces to the East. I should rather have mine turned
to the West, Amyas, when I die; for I cannot but think it some divine
instinct which made the ancient poets guess that Elysium lay beneath the
setting sun. It is bound up in the heart of man, that longing for the
West. I complain of no one for fleeing away thither beyond the utmost
sea, as David wished to flee, and be at peace."

"Complain of no one for fleeing thither?" asked Amyas. "That is more
than I do."

Frank looked inquiringly at him; and then--

"No. If I had complained of any one, it would have been of you just now,
for seeming to be tired of going Westward-ho."

"Do you wish me to go, then?"

"God knows," said Frank, after a moment's pause. "But I must tell you
now, I suppose, once and for all. That has happened at Bideford which--"

"Spare us both, Frank; I know all. I came through Bideford on my way
hither; and came hither not merely to see you and my mother, but to ask
your advice and her permission."

"True heart! noble heart!" cried Frank. "I knew you would be stanch!"

"Westward-ho it is, then?"

"Can we escape?"

"We?"

"Amyas, does not that which binds you bind me?"

Amyas started back, and held Frank by the shoulders at arm's length; as
he did so, he could feel through, that his brother's arms were but skin
and bone.

"You? Dearest man, a month of it would kill you!"

Frank smiled, and tossed his head on one side in his pretty way.

"I belong to the school of Thales, who held that the ocean is the mother
of all life; and feel no more repugnance at returning to her bosom again
than Humphrey Gilbert did."

"But, Frank,--my mother?"

"My mother knows all; and would not have us unworthy of her."

"Impossible! She will never give you up!"

"All things are possible to them that believe in God, my brother; and
she believes. But, indeed, Doctor Dee, the wise man, gave her but this
summer I know not what of prognostics and diagnostics concerning me. I
am born, it seems, under a cold and watery planet, and need, if I am to
be long-lived, to go nearer to the vivifying heat of the sun, and there
bask out my little life, like fly on wall. To tell truth, he has bidden
me spend no more winters here in the East; but return to our native
sea-breezes, there to warm my frozen lungs; and has so filled my
mother's fancy with stories of sick men, who were given up for lost in
Germany and France, and yet renewed their youth, like any serpent or
eagle, by going to Italy, Spain, and the Canaries, that she herself will
be more ready to let me go than I to leave her all alone. And yet I must
go, Amyas. It is not merely that my heart pants, as Sidney's does, as
every gallant's ought, to make one of your noble choir of Argonauts,
who are now replenishing the earth and subduing it for God and for the
queen; it is not merely, Amyas, that love calls me,--love tyrannous and
uncontrollable, strengthened by absence, and deepened by despair; but
honor, Amyas--my oath--"

And he paused for lack of breath, and bursting into a violent fit of
coughing, leaned on his brother's shoulder, while Amyas cried,

"Fools, fools that we were--that I was, I mean--to take that fantastical
vow!"

"Not so," answered a gentle voice from behind: "you vowed for the
sake of peace on earth, and good-will toward men, and 'Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.' No my sons,
be sure that such self-sacrifice as you have shown will meet its full
reward at the hand of Him who sacrificed Himself for you."

"Oh, mother! mother!" said Amyas, "and do you not hate the very sight of
me--come here to take away your first-born?"

"My boy, God takes him, and not you. And if I dare believe in such
predictions, Doctor Dee assured me that some exceeding honor awaited you
both in the West, to each of you according to your deserts."

"Ah!" said Amyas. "My blessing, I suppose, will be like Esau's, to live
by my sword; while Jacob here, the spiritual man, inherits the kingdom
of heaven, and an angel's crown."

"Be it what it may, it will surely be a blessing, as long as you are
such, my children, as you have been. At least my Frank will be safe from
the intrigues of court, and the temptations of the world. Would that I
too could go with you, and share in your glory! Come, now," said she,
laying her head upon Amyas's breast, and looking up into his face with
one of her most winning smiles, "I have heard of heroic mothers ere
now who went forth with their sons to battle, and cheered them on to
victory. Why should I not go with you on a more peaceful errand? I could
nurse the sick, if there were any; I could perhaps have speech of that
poor girl, and win her back more easily than you. She might listen to
words from a woman--a woman, too, who has loved--which she could not
hear from men. At least I could mend and wash for you. I suppose it is
as easy to play the good housewife afloat as on shore? Come, now!"

Amyas looked from one to the other.

"God only knows which of the two is less fit to go. Mother! mother! you
know not what you ask. Frank! Frank! I do not want you with me. This
is a sterner matter than either of you fancy it to be; one that must be
worked out, not with kind words, but with sharp shot and cold steel."

"How?" cried both together, aghast.

"I must pay my men, and pay my fellow-adventurers; and I must pay them
with Spanish gold. And what is more, I cannot, as a loyal subject of
the queen's, go to the Spanish Main with a clear conscience on my own
private quarrel, unless I do all the harm that my hand finds to do, by
day and night, to her enemies, and the enemies of God."

"What nobler knight-errantry?" said Frank, cheerfully; but Mrs. Leigh
shuddered.

"What! Frank too?" she said, half to herself; but her sons knew what she
meant. Amyas's warlike life, honorable and righteous as she knew it
to be, she had borne as a sad necessity: but that Frank as well should
become "a man of blood," was more than her gentle heart could face at
first sight. That one youthful duel of his he had carefully concealed
from her, knowing her feeling on such matters. And it seemed too
dreadful to her to associate that gentle spirit with all the ferocities
and the carnage of a battlefield. "And yet," said she to herself, "is
this but another of the self-willed idols which I must renounce one by
one?" And then, catching at a last hope, she answered--

"Frank must at least ask the queen's leave to go; and if she permits,
how can I gainsay her wisdom?"

And so the conversation dropped, sadly enough.

But now began a fresh perplexity in Frank's soul, which amused Amyas at
first, when it seemed merely jest, but nettled him a good deal when
he found it earnest. For Frank looked forward to asking the queen's
permission for his voyage with the most abject despondency and terror.
Two or three days passed before he could make up his mind to ask for
an interview with her; and he spent the time in making as much interest
with Leicester, Hatton, and Sidney, as if he were about to sue for a
reprieve from the scaffold.

So said Amyas, remarking, further, that the queen could not cut his head
off for wanting to go to sea.

"But what axe so sharp as her frown?" said Frank in most lugubrious
tone.

Amyas began to whistle in a very rude way.

"Ah, my brother, you cannot comprehend the pain of parting from her."

"No, I can't. I would die for the least hair of her royal head, God
bless it! but I could live very well from now till Doomsday without ever
setting eyes on the said head."

"Plato's Troglodytes regretted not that sunlight which they had never
beheld."

Amyas, not understanding this recondite conceit, made no answer to it,
and there the matter ended for the time. But at last Frank obtained his
audience; and after a couple of hours' absence returned quite pale and
exhausted.

"Thank Heaven, it is over! She was very angry at first--what else could
she be?--and upbraided me with having set my love so low. I could only
answer, that my fatal fault was committed before the sight of her had
taught me what was supremely lovely, and only worthy of admiration. Then
she accused me of disloyalty in having taken an oath which bound me to
the service of another than her. I confessed my sin with tears, and when
she threatened punishment, pleaded that the offence had avenged itself
heavily already,--for what worse punishment than exile from the sunlight
of her presence, into the outer darkness which reigns where she is not?
Then she was pleased to ask me, how I could dare, as her sworn servant,
to desert her side in such dangerous times as these; and asked me how I
should reconcile it to my conscience, if on my return I found her dead
by the assassin's knife? At which most pathetic demand I could only
throw myself at once on my own knees and her mercy, and so awaited
my sentence. Whereon, with that angelic pity which alone makes her
awfulness endurable, she turned to Hatton and asked, 'What say you,
Mouton? Is he humbled sufficiently?' and so dismissed me."

"Heigh-ho!" yawned Amyas;

"If the bridge had been stronger,
My tale had been longer."

"Amyas! Amyas!" quoth Frank, solemnly, "you know not what power over the
soul has the native and God-given majesty of royalty (awful enough in
itself) when to it is superadded the wisdom of the sage, and therewithal
the tenderness of the woman. Had I my will, there should be in every
realm not a salique, but an anti-salique law: whereby no kings, but only
queens should rule mankind. Then would weakness and not power be to man
the symbol of divinity; love, and not cunning, would be the arbiter of
every cause; and chivalry, not fear, the spring of all obedience."

"Humph! There's some sense in that," quoth Amyas. "I'd run a mile for
a woman when I would not walk a yard for a man; and--Who is this our
mother is bringing in? The handsomest fellow I ever saw in my life!"

Amyas was not far wrong; for Mrs. Leigh's companion was none other than
Mr. Secretary, Amyas's Smerwick Fort acquaintance; alias Colin Clout,
alias Immerito, alias Edmund Spenser. Some half-jesting conversation had
seemingly been passing between the poet and the saint; for as they came
in she said with a smile (which was somewhat of a forced one)--"Well,
my dear sons, you are sure of immortality, at least on earth; for Mr.
Spenser has been vowing to me to give your adventure a whole canto to
itself in his 'Faerie Queene'."

"And you no less, madam," said Spenser. "What were the story of the
Gracchi worth without the figure of Cornelia? If I honor the fruit, I
must not forget the stem which bears it. Frank, I congratulate you."

"Then you know the result of my interview, mother?"

"I know everything, and am content," said Mrs. Leigh.

"Mrs. Leigh has reason to be content," said Spenser, "with that which is
but her own likeness."

Spare your flattery to an old woman, Mr. Spenser. When, pray, did I"
(with a most loving look at Frank) "refuse knighthood for duty's sake?"

"Knighthood?" cried Amyas. "You never told me that, Frank!"

"That may well be, Captain Leigh," said Spenser; "but believe me, her
majesty (so Hatton assures me) told him this day, no less than that by
going on this quest he deprived himself of that highest earthly honor,
which crowned heads are fain to seek from their own subjects."

Spenser did not exaggerate. Knighthood was then the prize of merit only;
and one so valuable, that Elizabeth herself said, when asked why she did
not bestow a peerage upon some favorite, that having already knighted
him, she had nothing better to bestow. It remained for young Essex to
begin the degradation of the order in his hapless Irish campaign, and
for James to complete that degradation by his novel method of raising
money by the sale of baronetcies; a new order of hereditary knighthood
which was the laughing-stock of the day, and which (however venerable
it may have since become) reflects anything but honor upon its first
possessors.

"I owe you no thanks, Colin," said Frank, "for having broached my
secret: but I have lost nothing after all. There is still an order of
knighthood in which I may win my spurs, even though her majesty refuse
me the accolade."

"What, then? you will not take it from a foreign prince?"

Frank smiled.

"Have you never read of that knighthood which is eternal in the heavens,
and of those true cavaliers whom John saw in Patmos, riding on white
horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, knights-errant in the
everlasting war against the False Prophet and the Beast? Let me but
become worthy of their ranks hereafter, what matter whether I be called
Sir Frank on earth?"

"My son," said Mrs. Leigh, "remember that they follow One whose vesture
is dipped, not in the blood of His enemies, but in His own."

"I have remembered it for many a day; and remembered, too, that the
garments of the knights may need the same tokens as their captain's."

"Oh, Frank! Frank! is not His precious blood enough to cleanse all sin,
without the sacrifice of our own?"

"We may need no more than His blood, mother, and yet He may need ours,"
said Frank.

* * * * *

How that conversation ended I know not, nor whether Spenser fulfilled
his purpose of introducing the two brothers and their mother into his
"Faerie Queene." If so, the manuscripts must have been lost among those
which perished (along with Spenser's baby) in the sack of Kilcolman by
the Irish in 1598. But we need hardly regret the loss of them; for the
temper of the Leighs and their mother is the same which inspires every
canto of that noblest of poems; and which inspired, too, hundreds in
those noble days, when the chivalry of the Middle Ages was wedded to the
free thought and enterprise of the new.

* * * * *

So mother and sons returned to Bideford, and set to work. Frank
mortgaged a farm; Will Cary did the same (having some land of his own
from his mother). Old Salterne grumbled at any man save himself spending
a penny on the voyage, and forced on the adventurers a good ship of two
hundred tons burden, and five hundred pounds toward fitting her out;
Mrs. Leigh worked day and night at clothes and comforts of every kind;
Amyas had nothing to give but his time and his brains: but, as Salterne
said, the rest would have been of little use without them; and day after
day he and the old merchant were on board the ship, superintending
with their own eyes the fitting of every rope and nail. Cary went about
beating up recruits; and made, with his jests and his frankness, the
best of crimps: while John Brimblecombe, beside himself with joy,
toddled about after him from tavern to tavern, and quay to quay, exalted
for the time being (as Cary told him) into a second Peter the Hermit;
and so fiercely did he preach a crusade against the Spaniards, through
Bideford and Appledore, Clovelly and Ilfracombe, that Amyas might have
had a hundred and fifty loose fellows in the first fortnight. But he
knew better: still smarting from the effects of a similar haste in the
Newfoundland adventure, he had determined to take none but picked men;
and by dint of labor he obtained them.

Only one scapegrace did he take into his crew, named Parracombe; and
by that scapegrace hangs a tale. He was an old schoolfellow of his
at Bideford, and son of a merchant in that town--one of those unlucky
members who are "nobody's enemy but their own"--a handsome, idle,
clever fellow, who used his scholarship, of which he had picked up some
smattering, chiefly to justify his own escapades, and to string songs
together. Having drunk all that he was worth at home, he had in a
penitent fit forsworn liquor, and tormented Amyas into taking him to
sea, where he afterwards made as good a sailor as any one else,
but sorely scandalized John Brimblecombe by all manner of heretical
arguments, half Anacreontic, half smacking of the rather loose doctrines
of that "Family of Love" which tormented the orthodoxy and morality of
more than one Bishop of Exeter. Poor Will Parracombe! he was born a few
centuries too early. Had he but lived now, he might have published
a volume or two of poetry, and then settled down on the staff of a
newspaper. Had he even lived thirty years later than he did, he might
have written frantic tragedies or filthy comedies for the edification of
James's profligate metropolis, and roistered it in taverns with Marlowe,
to die as Marlowe did, by a footman's sword in a drunken brawl. But in
those stern days such weak and hysterical spirits had no fair vent for
their "humors," save in being reconciled to the Church of Rome, and
plotting with Jesuits to assassinate the queen, as Parry and Somerville,
and many other madmen, did.

So, at least, some Jesuit or other seems to have thought, shortly after
Amyas had agreed to give the spendthrift a berth on board. For one day
Amyas, going down to Appledore about his business, was called into the
little Mariners' Rest inn, to extract therefrom poor Will Parracombe,
who (in spite of his vow) was drunk and outrageous, and had vowed the
death of the landlady and all her kin. So Amyas fetched him out by the
collar, and walked him home thereby to Bideford; during which walk Will
told him a long and confused story; how an Egyptian rogue had met him
that morning on the sands by Boathythe, offered to tell his fortune,
and prophesied to him great wealth and honor, but not from the Queen of
England; had coaxed him to the Mariners' Rest, and gambled with him
for liquor, at which it seemed Will always won, and of course drank his
winnings on the spot; whereon the Egyptian began asking him all sorts of
questions about the projected voyage of the Rose--a good many of which,
Will confessed, he had answered before he saw the fellow's drift;
after which the Egyptian had offered him a vast sum of money to do some
desperate villainy; but whether it was to murder Amyas or the queen,
whether to bore a hole in the bottom of the good ship Rose or to set the
Torridge on fire by art-magic, he was too drunk to recollect exactly.
Whereon Amyas treated three-quarters of the story as a tipsy dream,
and contented himself by getting a warrant against the landlady for
harboring "Egyptians," which was then a heavy offence--a gipsy disguise
being a favorite one with Jesuits and their emissaries. She of course
denied that any gipsy had been there; and though there were some who
thought they had seen such a man come in, none had seen him go out
again. On which Amyas took occasion to ask, what had become of the
suspicious Popish ostler whom he had seen at the Mariners' Rest three
years before; and discovered, to his surprise, that the said ostler
had vanished from the very day of Don Guzman's departure from Bideford.
There was evidently a mystery somewhere: but nothing could be proved;
the landlady was dismissed with a reprimand, and Amyas soon forgot the
whole matter, after rating Parracombe soundly. After all, he could not
have told the gipsy (if one existed) anything important; for the special
destination of the voyage (as was the custom in those times, for fear of
Jesuits playing into the hands of Spain) had been carefully kept secret
among the adventurers themselves, and, except Yeo and Drew, none of the
men had any suspicion that La Guayra was to be their aim.

And Salvation Yeo?

Salvation was almost wild for a few days, at the sudden prospect of
going in search of his little maid, and of fighting Spaniards once more
before he died. I will not quote the texts out of Isaiah and the Psalms
with which his mouth was filled from morning to night, for fear of
seeming irreverent in the eyes of a generation which does not believe,
as Yeo believed, that fighting the Spaniards was as really fighting in
God's battle against evil as were the wars of Joshua or David. But the
old man had his practical hint too, and entreated to be sent back to
Plymouth to look for men.

"There's many a man of the old Pelican, sir, and of Captain Hawkins's
Minion that knows the Indies as well as I, and longs to be back again.
There's Drew, sir, that we left behind (and no better sailing-master for
us in the West-country, and has accounts against the Spaniards, too; for
it was his brother, the Barnstaple man, that was factor aboard of poor
Mr. Andrew Barker, and got clapt into the Inquisition at the Canaries);
you promised him, sir, that night he stood by you on board the Raleigh:
and if you'll be as good as your word, he'll be as good as his; and
bring a score more brave fellows with him."