Harding’s Luck E. Nesbit (epub read online books .txt) 📖

threw up his pointed beard in a jolly laugh. “And see what I’ve made thee while thou’st been lazying in bed⁠—a real English ship of war.”

He laid down the auger he held and went into a low, rough shed, and next moment came out with a little ship in his hand⁠—a perfect model of the strange high-built ships Dickie could see on the river.

“ ’Tis the picture,” said he, proudly, “of my old ship, The Golden Venture, that I sailed in with Master Raleigh, and help to sink the accursed Armada, and clip the King of Spain his wings, and singe his beard.”

“The Armada!” said Dickie, with a new and quite strange feeling, rather like going down unexpectedly in a lift. “The Spanish Armada?”

“What other?” asked the shipbuilder. “Thou’st heard the story a thousand times.”

“I want to hear it again,” Dickie said. And heard the story of England’s great danger and her great escapes. It was just the same story as the one you read in your history book⁠—and yet how different, when it was told by a man who had been there, who had felt the danger, known the escape. Dickie held his breath.

“And so,” the story ended, “the breath of the Lord went forth and the storm blew, and fell on the fleet of Spain, and scattered them; and they went down in our very waters, they and their arms and their treasure, their guns and their gunners, their mariners and their men-of-war. And the remnant was scattered and driven northward, and some were wrecked on the rocks, and some our ships met and dealt with, and some poor few made shift to get back across the sea, trailing home like wounded mallards, to tell the King their master what the Lord had done for England.”

“How long ago was it, all this?” Dickie asked. If his memory served it was hundreds of years ago⁠—three, five⁠—he could not remember how many, but hundreds. Could this man, whose hair was only just touched with gray, be hundreds of years old?

“How long?⁠—a matter of twenty years or thereabouts,” said the shipbuilder. “See, the pretty little ship; and thy very own, for I made it for thee.”

It was indeed a pretty little ship, being a perfect model of an Elizabethan ship, built up high at bow and stern, “for,” as Sebastian explained, “majesty and terror of the enemy,” and with deck and orlop, waist and poop, hold and masts⁠—all complete with forecastle and cabin, masts and spars, portholes and guns, sails, anchor, and carved figurehead. The woodwork was painted in white and green and red, and at bow and stern was richly carved and gilded.

“For me,” Dickie said⁠—“really for me? And you made it yourself!”

“Truth to tell, I began it long since in the long winter evenings,” said his friend, “and now ’tis done and ’tis thine. See, I shall put an apron on thee and thou shalt be my ’prentice and learn to build another quaint ship like her⁠—to be her consort; and we will sail them together in the pond in thy father’s garden.”

Dickie, still devouring the little Golden Venture with his eyes, submitted to the leather apron, and felt in his hand the smooth handle of the tool Sebastian put there.

“But,” he said, “I don’t understand. You remember the Armada⁠—twenty years ago. I thought it was hundreds and hundreds.”

“Twenty years ago⁠—or nearer eighteen,” said Sebastian; “thou’lt have to learn to reckon better than that if thou’st to be my ’prentice. ’Twas in the year of grace 1588, and we are now in the year 1606. This makes it eighteen years, to my reckoning.”

“It was 1906 in my dream,” said Dickie⁠—“I mean in my fever.”

“In fever,” Sebastian said, “folk travel far. Now, hold the wood so, and the knife thus.”

Then every day Dickie went down to the dockyard when lessons were done. For there were lessons now, with a sour-faced tutor in a black gown, whom Dickie disliked extremely. The tutor did not seem to like Dickie either. “The child hath forgot in his fever all that ever he learned of me,” he complained to the old nurse, who nodded wisely and said he would soon learn all afresh. And he did, very quickly, learn a great deal, and always it was more like remembering than learning. And a second tutor, very smart in red velvet and gold, with breeches like balloons and a short cloak and a ruff, who was an extremely jolly fellow, came in the mornings to teach him to fence, to dance, and to run and to leap and to play bowls, and promised in due time to teach him wrestling, catching, archery, pall-mall, rackets, riding, tennis, and all sports and games proper for a youth of gentle blood.

And weeks went by, and still his father and mother had not come, and he had learned a little Greek and more Latin, could carve a box with the arms of his house on the lid, and make that lid fit; could bow like a courtier and speak like a gentleman, and play a simple air on the viol that hung in the parlor for guests to amuse themselves with while they waited to see the master or mistress.

And then came the day when old nurse dressed him in his best⁠—a suit of cut velvet, purple slashed with gold-color, and a belt with a little sword to it, and a flat cap⁠—and Master Henry, the games-master, took him in a little boat to a gilded galley full of gentlemen and ladies all finely dressed, who kissed him and made much of him and said how he was grown since the fever. And one gentleman, very fine indeed, appeared to be his uncle, and a most charming lady in blue and silver seemed to be his aunt, and a very jolly little boy and girl who sat by him and talked merrily all the while were his little cousins. Cups of wine and silver dishes