Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (book club reads txt) 📖

of course, the seminary priests used to enforce the duty of helping the invaders, and the certainty of their success; and from their hands it soon passed into those of the devout ladies, who were not very likely to keep it to themselves; till John Bull himself found his daughters buzzing over it with very pale faces (as young ladies well might who had no wish to follow the fate of the damsels of Antwerp), and condescending to run his eye through it, discovered, what all the rest of Europe had known for months past, that he was in a very great scrape.

Well it was for England, then, that her Tudor sovereigns had compelled every man (though they kept up no standing army) to be a trained soldier. Well it was that Elizabeth, even in those dangerous days of intrigue and rebellion, had trusted her people enough, not only to leave them their weapons, but (what we, forsooth, in these more “free” and “liberal” days dare not do) to teach them how to use them. Well it was, that by careful legislation for the comfort and employment of “the masses” (term then, thank God, unknown), she had both won their hearts, and kept their bodies in fighting order. Well it was that, acting as fully as Napoleon did on “la carriere ouverte aux talens,” she had raised to the highest posts in her councils, her army, and her navy, men of business, who had not been ashamed to buy and sell as merchants and adventurers. Well for England, in a word, that Elizabeth had pursued for thirty years a very different course from that which we have been pursuing for the last thirty, with one exception, namely, the leaving as much as possible to private enterprise.

There we have copied her: would to Heaven that we had in some other matters! It is the fashion now to call her a despot: but unless every monarch is to be branded with that epithet whose power is not as circumscribed as Queen Victoria’s is now, we ought rather to call her the most popular sovereign, obeyed of their own free will by the freest subjects which England has ever seen; confess the Armada fight to have been as great a moral triumph as it was a political one; and (now that our late boasting is a little silenced by Crimean disasters) inquire whether we have not something to learn from those old Tudor times, as to how to choose officials, how to train a people, and how to defend a country.

To return to the thread of my story.

January, 1587-8, had well-nigh run through, before Sir Richard Grenville made his appearance on the streets of Bideford. He had been appointed in November one of the council of war for providing for the safety of the nation, and the West Country had seen nothing of him since. But one morning, just before Christmas, his stately figure darkened the old bay-window at Burrough, and Amyas rushed out to meet him, and bring him in, and ask what news from Court.

“All good news, dear lad, and dearer madam. The queen shows the spirit of a very Boadicea or Semiramis; ay, a very Scythian Tomyris, and if she had the Spaniard before her now, would verily, for aught I know, feast him as the Scythian queen did Cyrus, with ‘Satia te sanguine, quod sitisti.’”

“I trust her most merciful spirit is not so changed already,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“Well, if she would not do it, I would, and ask pardon afterwards, as Raleigh did about the rascals at Smerwick, whom Amyas knows of. Mrs. Leigh, these are times in which mercy is cruelty. Not England alone, but the world, the Bible, the Gospel itself, is at stake; and we must do terrible things, lest we suffer more terrible ones.”

“God will take care of world and Bible better than any cruelty of ours, dear Sir Richard.”

“Nay, but, Mrs. Leigh, we must help Him to take care of them! If those Smerwick Spaniards had not been—”

“The Spaniard would not have been exasperated into invading us.”

“And we should not have had this chance of crushing him once and for all; but the quarrel is of older standing, madam, eh, Amyas? Amyas, has Raleigh written to you of late?”

“Not a word, and I wonder why.”

“Well; no wonder at that, if you knew how he has been laboring. The wonder is, whence he got the knowledge wherewith to labor; for he never saw sea-work to my remembrance.”

“Never saw a shot fired by sea, except ours at Smerwick, and that brush with the Spaniards in 1579, when he sailed for Virginia with Sir Humphrey; and he was a mere crack then.”

“So you consider him as your pupil, eh? But he learnt enough in the Netherland wars, and in Ireland too, if not of the strength of ships, yet still of the weakness of land forces; and would you believe it, the man has twisted the whole council round his finger, and made them give up the land defences to the naval ones.”

“Quite right he, and wooden walls against stone ones for ever! But as for twisting, he would persuade Satan, if he got him alone for half an hour.”

“I wish he would sail for Spain then, just now, and try the powers of his tongue,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“But are we to have the honor, really?”

“We are, lad. There were many in the council who were for disputing the landing on shore, and said—which I do not deny—that the ‘prentice boys of London could face the bluest blood in Spain. But Raleigh argued (following my Lord Burleigh in that) that we differed from the Low Countries, and all other lands, in that we had not a castle or town throughout, which would stand a ten days’ siege, and that our ramparts, as he well said, were, after all, only a body of men. So, he argued, as long as the enemy has power to land where he will, prevention, rather than cure, is our only hope; and that belongs to the office, not of an army, but of a fleet. So the fleet was agreed on, and a fleet we shall have.”

“Then here is his health, the health of a true friend to all bold mariners, and myself in particular! But where is he now?”

“Coming here tomorrow, as I hope—for he left London with me, and so down by us into Cornwall, to drill the train-bands, as he is bound to do, being Seneschal of the Duchies and Lieutenant-General of the county.”

“Besides Lord Warden of the Stanneries! How the man thrives!” said Mrs. Leigh.

“How the man deserves to thrive!” said Amyas; “but what are we to do?”

“That is the rub. I would fain stay and fight the Spaniards.”

“So would I; and will.”

“But he has other plans in his head for us.”

“We can make our own plans without his help.”

“Heyday, Amyas! How long? When did he ask you to do a thing yet and you refuse him?”

“Not often, certainly; but Spaniards I must fight.”

“Well, so must I, boy: but I have given a sort of promise to him, nevertheless.”

“Not for me too, I hope?”

“No: he will extract that himself when he comes; you must come and sup tomorrow, and talk it over.”

“Be talked over, rather. What chestnut does the cat want us monkeys to pull out of the fire for him now, I wonder?”

“Sir Richard Grenville is hardly accustomed to be called a monkey,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“I meant no harm; and his worship knows it, none better: but where is Raleigh going to send us, with a murrain?”

“To Virginia. The settlers must have help: and, as I trust in God, we shall be back again long before this armament can bestir itself.”

So Raleigh came, saw, and conquered. Mrs. Leigh consented to Amyas’s going (for his twelvemonth would be over ere the fleet could start) upon so peaceful and useful an errand; and the next five months were spent in continual labor on the part of Amyas and Grenville, till seven ships were all but ready in Bideford river, the admiral whereof was Amyas Leigh.

But that fleet was not destined ever to see the shores of the New World: it had nobler work to do (if Americans will forgive the speech) than even settling the United States.

It was in the long June evenings, in the year 1588; Mrs. Leigh sat in the open window, busy at her needlework; Ayacanora sat opposite to her, on the seat of the bay, trying diligently to read “The History of the Nine Worthies,” and stealing a glance every now and then towards the garden, where Amyas stalked up and down as he had used to do in happier days gone by. But his brow was contracted now, his eyes fixed on the ground, as he plodded backwards and forwards, his hands behind his back, and a huge cigar in his mouth, the wonder of the little boys of Northam, who peeped in stealthily as they passed the iron-work gates, to see the back of the famous fire-breathing captain who had sailed round the world and been in the country of headless men and flying dragons, and then popped back their heads suddenly, as he turned toward them in his walk. And Ayacanora looked, and looked, with no less admiration than the urchins at the gate: but she got no more of an answering look from Amyas than they did; for his head was full of calculations of tonnage and stowage, of salt pork and ale-barrels, and the packing of tools and seeds; for he had promised Raleigh to do his best for the new colony, and he was doing it with all his might; so Ayacanora looked back again to her book, and heaved a deep sigh. It was answered by one from Mrs. Leigh.

“We are a melancholy pair, sweet chuck,” said the fair widow. “What is my maid sighing about, there?”

“Because I cannot make out the long words,” said Ayacanora, telling a very white fib.

“Is that all? Come to me, and I will tell you.”

Ayacanora moved over to her, and sat down at her feet.

“H—e, he, r—o, ro, i—c—a—l, heroical,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“But what does that mean?”

“Grand, good, and brave, like—”

Mrs. Leigh was about to have said the name of one who was lost to her on earth. His fair angelic face hung opposite upon the wall. She paused unable to pronounce his name; and lifted up her eyes, and gazed on the portrait, and breathed a prayer between closed lips, and drooped her head again.

Her pupil caught at the pause, and filled it up for herself—

“Like him?” and she turned her head quickly toward the window.

“Yes, like him, too,” said Mrs. Leigh, with a half-smile at the gesture. “Now, mind your book. Maidens must not look out of the window in school hours.”

“Shall I ever be an English girl?” asked Ayacanora.

“You are one now, sweet; your father was an English gentleman.”

Amyas looked in, and saw the two sitting together.

“You seem quite merry there,” said he.

“Come in, then, and be merry with us.”

He entered, and sat down; while Ayacanora fixed her eyes most steadfastly on her book.

“Well, how goes on the reading?” said he; and then, without waiting for an answer—“We shall be ready to clear out this day week, mother, I do believe; that is, if the hatchets are made in time to pack them.”

“I hope they will be better than the last,” said Mrs. Leigh. “It seems to me a shameful sin to palm off on poor ignorant savages goods which we should consider worthless for ourselves.”

“Well, it’s not over fair: