Part 13 (2/2)
”Ah, Walter, Walter, ilt always slander thyself thus?”
”Slander? Tut--I do but give the world a fair challenge, and tell it, 'There--you know the worst of me: come on and try a fall, for either you or I h here, who has but known ht, whether I am not as vain as a peacock, as selfish as a fox, as imperious as a bona roba, and ready to make a cat's paw of him or any man, if there be a chestnut in the fire: and yet the poor fool cannot help lovingall ospel; and verily believes now, I think, that I shall be the ”
”Well,” said Aetically, ”if you are the cleverestso?”
”Hearken to hirown this sareat Goddess Detraction how to show hi out to the world the fool's h the rents in the philosopher's cloak Go to, lad! slander thy equals, envy thy betters, pray for an eye which sees spots in every sun, and for a vulture's nose to scent carrion in every rose-bed If thy friend win a battle, show that he has needlessly throay his men; if he lose one, hint that he sold it; if he rise to a place, argue favor; if he fall fro, but endure all things, even to kicking, if aught ot thereby; so shalt thou be clothed in purple and fine linen, and sit in kings' palaces, and fare sumptuously every day”
”And ith Dives in the tor, captain”
”Go to, Misanthropos,” said Spenser ”Thou hast not yet tasted the sweets of this world's corapes are sour, lad”
”And will be to the end,” said Amyas, ”if they come off such a devil's tree as that I really think you are out of your h, at tiry, windy mind as man ever was cursed withal But come in, lad We were sent from the lord deputy to bid thee to supper There is a dainty lu for thee”
”Send me some out, then,” said matter-of-fact Aood leave, I don't stir fro, if I can keep awake There is a stir in the fort, and I expect them out on us”
”Tut, man! their hearts are broken We know it by their deserters”
”Seeing's believing I never trust runaway rogues If they are false to their o thy ways, old honesty; and Mr Secretary shall give you a book to yourself in the 'Faerie Queene'--'Sir Monoculus or the Legend of Cole-eye, ive hih that win I am sick of this Irish work; were it not for the chance of advance a teary with the dear lad because he is not sick of it too What a plague business has he to be paddling up and down, contentedly doing his duty, like any city watchhty aspirations of our nobler hearts,--eh, h! you can afford to confess yourself less than soreater than all Go on and conquer, noble heart! But as for me, I sow the wind, and I suppose I shall reap the ind”
”Your harvest seems come already; what a blast that was! Hold on by me, Colin Clout, and I'll hold on by thee So! Don't tread on that pike Don, and with sudden dagger slit Cohn's pipe, and Colin's weasand too”
And the two stu A his brains over Raleigh's ords and Spenser's melancholy, till he came to the conclusion that there was some mysterious connection between cleverness and unhappiness, and thanking his stars that he was neither scholar, courtier, nor poet, said grace over his lump of horseflesh when it arrived, devoured it as if it had been venison, and then returned to his pacing up and down; but this ti on, and there was no need to tell the Spaniards that any one ake and watching
So he began to think about hisher Christrand Court festival he was assisting, aay ladies, and hoas dressed, and whether he thought of his brother there far away on the dark Atlantic shore; and then he said his prayers and his creed; and then he tried not to think of Rose Salterne, and of course thought about her all the ht be past eleven o'clock, and all lights were out in the battery and the shi+pping, and there was no sound of living thing but the monotonous trarunt from the party who slept under arms some twenty yards to the rear
So he paced to and fro, looking carefully out now and then over the strip of sand-hill which lay between him and the fort; but all was blank and black, and an to rain furiously
Suddenly he seerass True, the histling through it loudly enough, but that sound was not altogether like the wind Then a soft sliding noise; soht the sand down after it Aun, and laid his ear to the raht, the noise of approaching feet; whether rabbits or Christians, he knew not, but he shrewdly guessed the latter
Now Amyas was of a sober and business-like turn, at least when he was not in a passion; and thinking within himself that if he ed) would retire, and all the sport be lost, he did not call to the two sentries, ere at the opposite ends of the battery; neither did he think it worth while to rouse the sleeping company, lest his ears should have deceived him, and the whole camp turn out to repulse the attack of a buck rabbit
So he crouched lower and lower beside the culverin, and was rewarded in a ainst the mouth of the embrasure, which, by the noise, should be a piece of tiood,” said he to hi ladder is up, the soldier follows, I suppose I can only hu my embrasure the preference There he co”
He could hear plainly enough so hiue was, that it was so dark that he could not see his hand between him and the sky, much less his foe at two yards off However, hesoftly, discharged such a bloards as would have split a yule log A volley of sparks flew up frorunt issued from within it, which proved that, whether he was killed or not, the blow had not improved his respiration
Aun, sprang into the embrasure on his knees, felt for the top of the ladder, found it, hove it clean off and out, with four or five men on it, and then of course tu like a town bull to her eneral
Sailor-fashi+on, he had no arht morion and a cuirass, so he was not too s instantly, and setting to work, cutting and foining right and left at every sound, for sight there was none
Battles (as soldiers know, and newspaper editors do not) are usually fought, not as they ought to be fought, but as they can be fought; and while the literarydown the law at his desk as to how many troops should be moved here, and what rivers should be crossed there, and where the cavalry should have been brought up, and when the flank should have been turned, the wretched man who has to do the work finds the matter settled for him by pestilence, want of shoes, empty stomachs, bad roads, heavy rains, hot suns, and a thousand other stern warriors who never show on paper
So with this skirht to have been a very pretty one; for Hercules of Pisa, who planned the sortie, had arranged it all (being a very sans-appel in all military science) upon the best Italian precedents, and had brought against this very hapless battery a column of a hundred to attack directly in front, a coht flank, and a coulations, orders, passwords, countersigns, and what not; so that if every hts (as seldodalena de Soto, who coht to have taken the work out of hand, and annihilated all therein But alas! here stern fate interfered They had chosen a dark night, as was politic; they had waited till the moon was up, lest it should be too dark, as was politic likewise: but, just as they had started, on cah which seven ht, and which washed out the plans of Hercules of Pisa as if they had been written on a schoolboy's slate The company ere to turn the left flank walked manfully down into the sea, and never found out where they were going till they were knee-deep in water The coht flank, bewildered by the utter darkness, turned their own flank so often, that tired of falling into rabbit-burrows and filling their mouths with sand, they halted and prayed to all the saints for a coht on by a trackway to within fifty yards of the battery, so ht the ditch two pikes' length off, they fell into it one over the other, and of six scaling ladders, the only one which could be found was the very one which Aain After which the clouds broke, the wind shi+fted, and the moon shone out merrily And so was the deep policy of Hercules of Pisa, on which hung the fate of Ireland and the Papacy, decided by a ten minutes' squall
But where is A into it, but unable to find the it much too dark to attempt a counter sortie, have opened a seneral, whereat the Spaniards are swearing like Spaniards (I need say nolike veno to be riddled by friendly balls, has got his back against the foot of the rampart, and waits on Providence
Suddenly the lish sailors, seeing the confusion, leap down from the embrasures, and to it pell- to cocker,” I know not: but the sailor, then as now, is not susceptible of highly-finished drill
Amyas is now in his element, and so are the brave fellows at his heels; and there are ten breathless, furiousthe sand-hills; and then the truain by twos and threes, and are helped up into the euns of Fort del Oro open on them, and blaze away for half an hour without reply; and then all is still once ainst the deputy's caht relish
Twenty minutes after, Winter and the captains ere on shore were drying the over the skirh? who has seen hione too far, and been slain”
”Slain? Never less, gentlemen!” replied the voice of the very person in question, as he stalked out of the darkness into the glare of the fire, and shot down froht a sack of corn, a huge dark body, which was gradually seen to be aso shot down, lay quietly where he was dropped, with his feet (luckily for him mailed) in the fire
”I say,” quoth Amyas, ”some of you had better take him up, if he is to be of any use Unlace his helm, Will Cary”
”Pull his feet out of the eh to put us to the scarpines; but that's no reason we should put him to them”
As has been hinted, there was no love lost between Adht certainly have reported himself in a more ceremonious manner So Winter, whom Amyas either had not seen, or had not chosen to see, asked hi dead men into camp?”
”If he's dead, it's not h when I started with hiht end uppermost all the way; and ould you have h!” said Winter, ”it behoves you to speak with somewhat more courtesy, if not respect, to captains who are your elders and coiant, as he stood in front of the fire with the rain stea off his arood service done wasfine speeches”
”Whatsoever school you were trained in, sir,” said Winter, nettled at the hint about Drake; ”it does not seem to have been one in which you learned to obey orders Why did you not come in when the recall was sounded?”
”Because,” said Amyas, very coolly, ”in the first place I did not hear it; and in the next, in ht when I had once started not to come home e up with an oath--”Do you mean to insult me, sir?”
”I am sorry, sir, that you should take a compliht in this gentleood information; if he dies meanwhile, the loss will be yours, or rather the queen's”
”Help lad to create a diversion in Ah rose, and catching Winter's ar earnestly
”What a h, to quarrel with Winter?” asked two or three
”I say, et the Don's talking tackle free again, and leave me and the admiral to settle it our oay”
There was , but discipline, and the degrees of rank, were not so severely defined as now; and Aentleman adventurer,” was, on land, in a position very difficult to be settled, though at sea he was as liable to be hanged as any other person on board; and on the whole it was found expedient to patch the h Ade at certain words of Mr Leigh's, yet that he had no doubt that Mr Leighthereby but as consistent with the profession of a soldier and a gentleman, and worthy both of himself and of the admiral
From which proposition Ah went back, and inforh had freely retracted his words, and fully wiped off any iht conceive to have been put upon him, and so forth So Winter returned, and Ah-- ”Admiral Winter, I hope, as a loyal soldier, that you will understand thus far; that naught which has passed to-night shall in any way prevent you finding me a forward and obedient servant to all your commands, be they what theythe ainst the foe, even with my life For I should he asharain the public weal”