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

sharp chin, minute imperial, and self-satisfied smile, is Richard Hawkins, the Complete Seaman, Admiral John’s hereafter famous and hapless son. The elder who is talking with him is his good uncle William, whose monument still stands, or should stand, in Deptford Church; for Admiral John set it up there but one year after this time; and on it record how he was, “A worshipper of the true religion, an especial benefactor of poor sailors, a most just arbiter in most difficult causes, and of a singular faith, piety, and prudence.” That, and the fact that he got creditably through some sharp work at Porto Rico, is all I know of William Hawkins: but if you or I, reader, can have as much or half as much said of us when we have to follow him, we shall have no reason to complain.

There is John Drake, Sir Francis’ brother, ancestor of the present stock of Drakes; and there is George, his nephew, a man not overwise, who has been round the world with Amyas; and there is Amyas himself, talking to one who answers him with fierce curt sentences, Captain Barker of Bristol, brother of the hapless Andrew Barker who found John Oxenham’s guns, and, owing to a mutiny among his men, perished by the Spaniards in Honduras, twelve years ago. Barker is now captain of the Victory, one of the queen’s best ships; and he has his accounts to settle with the Dons, as Amyas has; so they are both growling together in a corner, while all the rest are as merry as the flies upon the vine above their heads.

But who is the aged man who sits upon a bench, against the sunny south wall of the tavern, his long white beard flowing almost to his waist, his hands upon his knees, his palsied head moving slowly from side to side, to catch the scraps of discourse of the passing captains? His great-grandchild, a little maid of six, has laid her curly head upon his knees, and his grand-daughter, a buxom black-eyed dame of thirty, stands by him and tends him, half as nurse, and half, too, as showman, for he seems an object of curiosity to all the captains, and his fair nurse has to entreat again and again, “Bless you, sir, please now, don’t give him no liquor, poor old soul, the doctor says.” It is old Martin Cockrem, father of the ancient host, aged himself beyond the years of man, who can recollect the bells of Plymouth ringing for the coronation of Henry the Eighth, and who was the first Englishman, perhaps, who ever set foot on the soil of the New World. There he sits, like an old Druid Tor of primeval granite amid the tall wheat and rich clover crops of a modern farm. He has seen the death of old Europe and the birth-throes of the new. Go to him, and question him; for his senses are quick as ever; and just now the old man seems uneasy. He is peering with rheumy eyes through the groups, and seems listening for a well-known voice.

“There ‘a be again! Why don’t ‘a come, then?”

“Quiet, gramfer, and don’t trouble his worship.”

“Here an hour, and never speak to poor old Martin! I say, sir”— and the old man feebly plucks Amyas’s cloak as he passes. “I say, captain, do ‘e tell young master old Martin’s looking for him.”

“Marcy, gramfer, where’s your manners? Don’t be vexed, sir, he’m a’most a babe, and tejous at times, mortal.”

“Young master who?” says Amyas, bending down to the old man, and smiling to the dame to let him have his way.

“Master Hawkins; he’m never been a-near me all day.”

Off goes Amyas; and, of course, lays hold of the sleeve of young Richard Hawkins; but as he is in act to speak, the dame lays hold of his, laughing and blushing.

“No, sir, not Mr. Richard, sir; Admiral John, sir, his father; he always calls him young master, poor old soul!” and she points to the grizzled beard and the face scarred and tanned with fifty years of fight and storm.

Amyas goes to the Admiral, and gives his message.

“Mercy on me! Where be my wits? Iss, I’m acoming,” says the old hero in his broadest Devon, waddles off to the old man, and begins lugging at a pocket. “Here, Martin, I’ve got mun, I’ve got mun, man alive; but his Lordship keept me so. Lookee here, then! Why, I do get so lusty of late, Martin, I can’t get to my pockets!”

And out struggle a piece of tarred string, a bundle of papers, a thimble, a piece of pudding-tobacco, and last of all, a little paper of Muscovado sugar—then as great a delicacy as any French bonbons would be now—which he thrusts into the old man’s eager and trembling hand.

Old Martin begins dipping his finger into it, and rubbing it on his toothless gums, smiling and nodding thanks to his young master; while the little maid at his knee, unrebuked, takes her share also.

“There, Admiral Leigh; both ends meet—gramfers and babies! You and I shall be like to that one day, young Samson!”

“We shall have slain a good many Philistines first, I hope.”

“Amen! so be it; but look to mun! so fine a sailor as ever drank liquor; and now greedy after a hit of sweet trade! ‘tis piteous like; but I bring mun a hit whenever I come, and he looks for it. He’s one of my own flesh like, is old Martin. He sailed with my father Captain Will, when they was both two little cracks aboard of a trawler; and my father went up, and here I am—he didn’t, and there he is. We’m up now, we Hawkinses. We may be down again some day.”

“Never, I trust,” said Amyas.

“‘Tain’t no use trusting, young man: you go and do. I do hear too much of that there from my lad. Let they ministers preach till they’m black in the face, works is the trade!” with a nudge in Amyas’s ribs. “Faith can’t save, nor charity nether. There, you tell with him, while I go play bowls with Drake. He’ll tell you a sight of stories. You ask him about good King Hal, now, just—”

And off waddled the Port Admiral.

“You have seen good King Henry, then, father?” said Amyas, interested.

The old man’s eyes lighted at once, and he stopped mumbling his sugar.

“Seed mun? Iss, I reckon. I was with Captain Will when he went to meet the Frenchman there to Calais—at the Field, the Field—”

“The Field of the Cloth of Gold, gramfer,” suggested the dame.

“That’s it. Seed mun? Iss, fegs. Oh, he was a king! The face o’ mun like a rising sun, and the back o’ mun so broad as that there” (and he held out his palsied arms), “and the voice of mun! Oh, to hear mun swear if he was merry, oh, ‘tas royal!—Seed mun? Iss, fegs! And I’ve seed mun do what few has; I’ve seed mun christle like any child.”

“What—cry?” said Amyas. “I shouldn’t have thought there was much cry in him.”

“You think what you like—”

“Gramfer, gramfer, don’t you be rude, now—

“Let him go on,” said Amyas.

“I seed mun christle; and, oh dear, how he did put hands on mun’s face; and ‘Oh, my gentlemen,’ says he, ‘my gentlemen! Oh, my gallant men!’ Them was his very words.”

“But when?”

“Why, Captain Will had just come to the Hard—that’s to Portsmouth— to speak with mun, and the barge Royal lay again the Hard—so; and our boot alongside—so; and the king he standth as it might be there, above my head, on the quay edge, and she come in near abreast of us, looking most royal to behold, poor dear! and went to cast about. And Captain Will, saith he, ‘Them lower ports is cruel near the water;’ for she had not more than a sixteen inches to spare in the nether overloop, as I heard after. And saith he, ‘That won’t do for going to windward in a say, Martin.’ And as the words came out of mun’s mouth, your worship, there was a bit of a flaw from the westward, sharp like, and overboard goeth my cap, and hitth against the wall, and as I stooped to pick it up, I heard a cry, and it was all over!”

“He is telling of the Mary Rose, sir.”

“I guessed so.”

“All over: and the cry of mun, and the screech of mun! Oh, sir, up to the very heavens! And the king he screeched right out like any maid, ‘Oh my gentlemen, oh my gallant men!’ and as she lay on her beam-ends, sir, and just a-settling, the very last souls I seen was that man’s father, and that man’s. I knowed mun by their armor.”

And he pointed to Sir George Carew and Sir Richard Grenville.

“Iss! Iss! Drowned like rattens. Drowned like rattens!”

“Now; you mustn’t trouble his worship any more.”

“Trouble? Let him tell till midnight, I shall be well pleased,” said Amyas, sitting down on the bench by him. “Drawer! ale—and a parcel of tobacco.”

And Amyas settled himself to listen, while the old man purred to himself—

“Iss. They likes to hear old Martin. All the captains look upon old Martin.”

“Hillo, Amyas!” said Cary, “who’s your friend? Here’s a man been telling me wonders about the River Plate. We should go thither for luck there next time.”

“River Plate?” said old Martin. “It’s I knows about the River Plate; none so well. Who’d ever been there, nor heard of it nether, before Captain Will and me went, and I lived among the savages a whole year; and audacious civil I found ‘em if they ‘d had but shirts to their backs; and so was the prince o’ mun, that Captain Will brought home to King Henry; leastwise he died on the voyage; but the wild folk took it cruel well, for you see, we was always as civil with them as Christians, and if we hadn’t been, I should not have been here now.”

“What year was that?”

“In the fifteen thirty: but I was there afore, and learnt the speech o’ mun; and that’s why Captain Will left me to a hostage, when he tuked their prince.”

“Before that?” said Cary; “why, the country was hardly known before that.”

The old man’s eyes flashed up in triumph.

“Knowed? Iss, and you may well say that! Look ye here! Look to mun!” and he waved his hand round—“There’s captains! and I’m the father of ‘em all now, now poor Captain Will’s in gloory; I, Martin Cockrem! … Iss, I’ve seen a change. I mind when Tavistock Abbey was so full o’ friars, and goolden idols, and sich noxious trade, as ever was a wheat-rick of rats. I mind the fight off Brest in the French wars—Oh, that was a fight, surely!—when the Regent and the French Carack were burnt side by side, being fast grappled, you see, because of Sir Thomas Knivet; and Captain Will gave him warning as he ran a-past us, saying, says he—”

“But,” said Amyas, seeing that the old man was wandering away, “what do you mind about America?”

“America? I should think so! But I was a-going to tell you of the Regent—and seven hundred Englishmen burnt and drowned in her, and nine hundred French in the Brest ship, besides what we picked up. Oh dear! But about America.”

“Yes, about America. How are you the father of all the captains?”

“How? you ask my young master! Why, before the fifteen thirty, I was up the Plate with Cabot (and a cruel fractious ontrustful fellow he was, like all they Portingals), and bid there a year and more, and up the Paraguaio with him, diskivering no