Part 10 (1/2)
”What have we here? some fantastical Anabaptist, who is wiser than his teachers”
”My conscience, sir--”
”The devil take it and thee! I never heard a in to prate of his conscience, but I knew that he was about to do so more than ordinarily cruel or false”
”Sir,” said theto law, and yet contrary to the laear profane oaths, for which a fine is provided?”
Amyas expected an explosion: but Sir Richard pulled a shi+lling out and put it on the table ”There--my fine is paid, sirrah, to the poor of Kilkhampton: but hearken thou all the same If thou wilt not speak an oath, thou shalt speak on cooest, there to answer for Mr Oxenha it, I will attach thee and every soul of his crew that coallant captains of late by treachery of their crews, and he that will not clear hiuilty, and self-condeive up his belief in the man's honesty, ”why, for such fantastical scruples, peril not only your life, but your honor, and Mr Oxenham's also? For if you be examined by question, you may be forced by torment to say that which is not true”
”Little fear of that, young sir!” answered he, with a grim smile; ”I have had too much of the rack already, and the strappado too, to care ht it lawful to be sworn: but not so thinking, I can but subh I did expect s, as a most miserable and wrecked mariner, at the hands of one who hath hireat deep Sir Richard Grenville, if you will hear e on my head all my sins from my youth up until now, and cut me off from the blood of Christ, and, if it were possible, from the number of His elect, if I tell you one whit more or less than truth; and if not, I commend myself into the hands of God”
Sir Richard sh an ass manifest Dost thou not see, fello thou hast sworn a ten-tier oath than ever I should have asked of thee? But this is the ith your Anabaptists, who by their very hatred of forms and ceremonies, show of how much account they think them, and then bind themselves out of their own fantastical self- ith far heavier burdens than ever the lawful authorities have laid on them for the sake of the co as they can save, as they fancy, each man his own dirty soul for hio on with thy tale: and first, who art thou, and whence?”
”Well, sir,” said the man, quite unmoved by this last explosion; ”my name is Salvation Yeo, born in Clovelly Street, in the year 1526, where eon, and a preacher of the people since called Anabaptists, for which I return huhty knave; return thanks that thy father was an ass?
Yeo--Nay, but because he was a barber surgeon; for I myself learnt a touch of that trade, and thereby saved ood e of carnal and worldly cunning, even to tailoring and shoe, that he may be able to turn his hand to whatsoever may hap
Sir Richard--Well spoken, fellow: but let us have thy text without thy comments Forwards!
Yeo--Well, sir I was bred to the sea froes, which he ro slaves, and thence to the West Indies
Sir Richard--Then thrice thou wentest to a bad end, though Captain Hawkins be ood friend; and the last ti that last, your worshi+p: but as for the forroes are of the children of Ham, who are cursed and reprobate, as Scripture declares, and their blackness testifies, being Satan's own livery; a whom therefore there can be none of the elect, wherefore the elect are not required to treat thematical sea-lawyer have we here? And I doubt not, thou hypocrite, that though thou wilt call the negroes' black skin Satan's livery, when it serves thy turn to steal them, thou wilt find out sables to be Heaven's livery every Sunday, and up with a Godly howl unless a parson shall preach in a black gown, Geneva fashi+on Out upon thee! Go on with thy tale, lest thou finish thy sermon at Launceston after all
Yeo--The Lord's people were always a reviled people and a persecuted people: but I will go forward, sir; for Heaven forbid but that I should declare what God has done for iven over to all wretchlessness and unclean living, and was by nature a child of the devil, and to every good work reprobate, even as others
Sir Richard--Hark to his ”even as others”! Thou nehelped Pharisee, canst not confess thine own villainies withoutout others as bad as thyself, and so thyself no worse than others? I only hope that thou hast shown none of thy devil's doings to Mr Oxenham
Yeo--On the word of a Christian man, sir, as I said before, I kept true faith with him, and would have been a better friend to him, sir, what is more, than ever he was to hiht easily be
Yeo--I think, sir, and will ainst any entleman; true of his word, stout of his sword, skilful by sea and land, and worthy to have been Lord High Ad your worshi+p's presence), but that through two great sins, wrath and avarice, he was cast away e of the truth Ah, sir, he was a captain worth sailing under!
And Yeo heaved a deep sigh
Sir Richard--Steady, steady, good fellow! If thou wouldst quit preaching, thou art no fool after all But tell us the story without
So at last Yeo settled hih knows, to Nombre de Dios, with Mr Drake and Mr Oxenham, in 1572, whereand did, your worshi+p, I suppose, knows as well as I; and there was, as you've heard maybe, a covenant between Mr Oxenhaether, which they , under the tree over Pana the sea afar off, Mr Oxenham and I went up and saw it too; and e came down, Drake says, 'John, I have made a vow to God that I will sail that water, if I live and God gives race;' which he had done, sir, upon his bended knees, like a Godly man as he alas, and would I had taken after him! and Mr O says, 'I am with you, Drake, to live or die, and I think I know soers;' and laughed withal Well, sirs, that voyage, as you know, never ca in Ireland; so Mr Oxenha, sailed for himself, and I, who loved hi the difference in our ranks), helped hiunner That was in 1575; as you know, he had a 140-ton shi+p, sir, and seventy men out of Plymouth and Fowey and Dartmouth, and many of them old hands of Drake's, beside a dozen or so fro Master here”
”Thank God that you did not pickhis hands on his breast ”Those seventy allant men, sir, with every one of them an immortal soul within him,--where are they now? Gone, like the spray!” And he swept his hands abroad with a wild and soleesture ”And their blood is upon an to suspect that the ether sound
”God forbid, ht, kindly
”Thirteen men I persuaded to join in Bideford town, beside Williaood coment, 'Salvation Yeo, where are those fourteen whom thou didst teold?' Not that I was alone in my sin, if the truthloud speech, after his pleasant way, that he would make all their fortunes, and take them to such a Paradise, that they should have no lust to coain And I--God knohy--for every one boast of his wouldto keep up the men's hearts For I had really persuaded myself that we should all find treasures beyond Solomon his temple, and Mr Oxenhaolden city or discover some island all made of precious stones And one day, as the captain and I were talking after our fashi+on, I said, 'And you shall be our king, captain' To which he, 'If I be, I shall not be long without a queen, and that no Indian one either' And after that he often jested about the Spanish ladies, saying that none could show us the way to their hearts better than he Which speeches I took no count of then, sirs: but after I minded them, whether I would or not Well, sirs, we came to the shore of New Spain, near to the old place--that's Nombre de Dios; and there Mr Oxenham went ashore into the woods with a boat's crew, to find the negroes who helped us three years before Those are the Ciro slaves who have fled from those devils incarnate, their Spanish reat stature, sirs, and fierce as wolves in the onslaught, but poor jabbering mazed fellows if they be but a bit dismayed: and have roes a deal better than to their own kin, which breeds war enough, as you uess
”Well, sirs, after three days the captain coh, and says, 'We played our trick once too often, e played it once There is no chance of stopping another reco (that is, a mule-train, sirs) now The Cimaroons say that since our last visit they never move without plenty of soldiers, two hundred shot at least Therefore,' he said, 'allants, we must either return empty-handed from this, the very market and treasury of the whole Indies, or do such a deed as men never did before, which I shall like all the better for that very reason' And we, asking his , 'Why,' he said, 'if Drake will not sail the South Seas, ill;' adding profanely that Drake was like Moses, who beheld the promised land afar; but he was Joshua, ould enter into it, and smite the inhabitants thereof And, for our confirmation, showed me and the rest the superscription of a letter: and said, 'How I came by this is none of your business: but I have had it in my bosom ever since I left Plymouth; and I tell you nohat I forbore to tell you at first, that the South Seas have been ! such news have I herein of plate-shi+ps, and gold-shi+ps, and what not, which will come up from Quito and Lima this very month, all which, with the pearls of the Gulf of Panama, and other wealth unspeakable, will be ours, if we have but true English hearts within us'
”At which, gentles, ere like old, and cheerfully undertook a toil incredible; for first we run our shi+p aground in a great hich grew in the very sea itself, and then took out her hs, with her four cast pieces of great ordnance (of whichno man in her, started for the South Seas across the neck of Panaood store of victuals, and with us six of those negroes for a guide, and so twelve leagues to a river which runs into the South Sea
”And there, having cut wood, we h we had at it) of five-and-forty foot in the keel; and in her down the stream, and to the Isle of Pearls in the Gulf of Panama”
”Into the South Sea? Impossible!” said Sir Richard ”Have a care what you say, my man; for there is that about you which would make me sorry to find you out a liar”
”Impossible or not, liar or none, ent there, sir”
”Question him, Amyas, lest he turn out to have been beforehand with you”
The ly at Amyas, who said-- ”Well, my man, of the Gulf of Panama I cannot ask you, for I never was inside it, but what other parts of the coast do you know?”
”Every inch, sir, froalley-slave there for two years and more”
”You know Lientlemen, and the last was February coreat plate- shi+p, the Cacafuogo,' they called her”
Aently to be silent, and then-- ”And what became of her, my lad?”
”God knoho knows all, and the devil who freighted her I broke prison six weeks afterwards, and never heard but that she got safe into Panama”
”You never heard, then, that she was taken?”
”Taken, your worshi+ps? Who should take her?”
”Why should not a good English shi+p take her as well as another?” said Amyas
”Lord love you, sir; yes, faith, if they had but been there Many's the tiside, 'Oh, if Captain Drake was but here, well to ard, and our old crew of the ”Dragon”!' Ask your pardon, gentles: but how is Captain Drake, if I er
”Fellow, fellow!” cried Sir Richard, springing up, ”either thou art the cunningest liar that ever earned a halter, or thou hast done a deed the like of which never man adventured Dost thou not know that Captain Drake took that 'Cacafuogo' and all her freight, in February coive me, sir; but--Captain Drake in the South Seas? He saw them, sir, from the tree-top over Panama, when I ith him, and I too; but sailed them, sir?--sailed them?”
”Yes, and round the world too,” said Ao' off Cape San Francisco, as she cah to prove his sincerity The great stern Anabaptist, who had not winced at the news of his ht on his knees on the floor, and burst into violent sobs
”Glory to God! Glory to God! O Lord, I thank thee! Captain Drake in the South Seas! The blood of thy innocents avenged, O Lord! The spoiler spoiled, and the proud robbed; and all they whose hands were lory! Oh, tell ave her three pieces of ordnance only, and struck down her mizzenmast, and then boarded sword in hand, but never had need to strike a blow; and before we left her, one of her own boys had changed her nalory! Cowards they are, as I told them I told them they never could stand the Devonit; but they could not stop et the shi+p that ca race-shi+p, sir, froentleman on board,--Don Francisco de Xararte was his na to a chain round his neck, and a green stone in the breast of it I saw it as ed him aboard O tell me, sir, tell me for the love of God, did you take that shi+p?”