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

and his comrade, in the year of grace 1595.

But though a venture on the town was impossible, yet there was another venture which Frank was unwilling to let slip. A light which now shone brightly in one of the windows of the governor’s house was the lodestar to which all his thoughts were turned; and as he sat in the cabin with Amyas, Cary, and Jack, he opened his heart to them.

“And are we, then,” asked he, mournfully, “to go without doing the very thing for which we came?”

All were silent awhile. At last John Brimblecombe spoke.

“Show me the way to do it, Mr. Frank, and I will go.”

“My dearest man,” said Amyas, “what would you have? Any attempt to see her, even if she be here, would be all but certain death.”

“And what if it were? What if it were, my brother Amyas? Listen to me. I have long ceased to shrink from Death; but till I came into these magic climes, I never knew the beauty of his face.”

“Of death?” said Cary. “I should have said, of life. God forgive me! but man might wish to live forever, if he had such a world as this wherein to live.”

“And do you forget, Cary, that the more fair this passing world of time, by so much the more fair is that eternal world, whereof all here is but a shadow and a dream; by so much the more fair is He before whose throne the four mystic beasts, the substantial ideas of Nature and her powers, stand day and night, crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, Thou hast made all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created!’ My friends, if He be so prodigal of His own glory as to have decked these lonely shores, all but unknown since the foundation of the world, with splendors beyond all our dreams, what must be the glory of His face itself! I have done with vain shadows. It is better to depart and to be with Him, where shall be neither desire nor anger, self-deception nor pretence, but the eternal fulness of reality and truth. One thing I have to do before I die, for God has laid it on me. Let that be done tonight, and then, farewell!”

“Frank! Frank! remember our mother!”

“I do remember her. I have talked over these things with her many a time; and where I would fain be, she would fain be also. She sent me out with my virgin honor, as the Spartan mother did her boy with the shield, saying, ‘Come back either with this, or upon this;’ and one or the other I must do, if I would meet her either in this life or in the next. But in the meanwhile do not mistake me; my life is God’s, and I promise not to cast it away rashly.”

“What would you do, then?”

“Go up to that house, Amyas, and speak with her, if Heaven gives me an opportunity, as Heaven, I feel assured, will give.”

“And do you call that no rashness?”

“Is any duty rashness? Is it rash to stand amid the flying bullets, if your queen has sent you? Is it more rash to go to seek Christ’s lost lamb, if God and your own oath hath sent you? John Brimblecombe answered that question for us long ago.”

“If you go, I go with you!” said all three at once.

“No. Amyas, you owe a duty to our mother and to your ship. Cary, you are heir to great estates, and are bound thereby to your country and to your tenants. John Brimblecombe—”

“Ay!” squeaked Jack. “And what have you to say, Mr. Frank, against my going?—I, who have neither ship nor estates—except, I suppose, that I am not worthy to travel in such good company?”

“Think of your old parents, John, and all your sisters.”

“I thought of them before I started, sir, as Mr. Cary knows, and you know too. I came here to keep my vow, and I am not going to turn renegade at the very foot of the cross.”

“Some one must go with you, Frank,” said Amyas; “if it were only to bring back the boat’s crew in case—” and he faltered.

“In case I fall,” replied Frank, with a smile. “I will finish your sentence for you, lad; I am not afraid of it, though you may be for me. Yet some one, I fear, must go. Unhappy me! that I cannot risk my own worthless life without risking your more precious lives!”

“Not so, Mr. Frank! Your oath is our oath, and your duty ours!” said John. “I will tell you what we will do, gentlemen all. We three will draw cuts for the honor of going with him.”

“Lots?” said Amyas. “I don’t like leaving such grave matters to chance, friend John.”

“Chance, sir? When you have used all your own wit, and find it fail you, then what is drawing lots but taking the matter out of your own weak hands, and laying it in God’s strong hands?”

“Right, John!” said Frank. “So did the apostles choose their successor, and so did holy men of old decide controversies too subtle for them; and we will not be ashamed to follow their example. For my part, I have often said to Sidney and to Spenser, when we have babbled together of Utopian governments in days which are now dreams to me, that I would have all officers of state chosen by lot out of the wisest and most fit; so making sure that they should be called by God, and not by man alone. Gentlemen, do you agree to Sir John’s advice?”

They agreed, seeing no better counsel, and John put three slips of paper into Frank’s hand, with the simple old apostolic prayer—

“Show which of us three Thou hast chosen.”

The lot fell upon Amyas Leigh.

Frank shuddered, and clasped his hands over his face.

“Well,” said Cary, “I have ill-luck tonight: but Frank goes at least in good company.”

“Ah, that it had been I!” said Jack; “though I suppose I was too poor a body to have such an honor fall on me. And yet it is hard for flesh and blood; hard indeed to have come all this way, and not to see her after all!”

“Jack,” said Frank, “you are kept to do better work than this, doubt not. But if the lot had fallen on you—ay, if it had fallen on a three years’ child, I would have gone up as cheerfully with that child to lead me, as I do now with this my brother! Amyas, can we have a boat, and a crew? It is near midnight already.”

Amyas went on deck, and asked for six volunteers. Whosoever would come, Amyas would double out of his own purse any prize-money which might fall to that man’s share.

One of the old Pelican’s crew, Simon Evans of Clovelly, stepped out at once.

“Why six only, captain? Give the word, and any and all of us will go up with you, sack the house, and bring off the treasure and the lady, before two hours are out.”

“No, no, my brave lads! As for treasure, if there be any, it is sure to have been put all safe into the forts, or hidden in the mountains; and as for the lady, God forbid that we should force her a step without her own will.”

The honest sailor did not quite understand this punctilio: but—

“Well, captain,” quoth he, “as you like; but no man shall say that you asked for a volunteer, were it to jump down a shark’s throat, but what you had me first of all the crew.

After this sort of temper had been exhibited, three or four more came forward—Yeo was very anxious to go, but Amyas forbade him.

“I’ll volunteer, sir, without reward, for this or anything; though” (added he in a lower tone) “I would to Heaven that the thought had never entered your head.”

“And so would I have volunteered,” said Simon Evans, “if it were the ship’s quarrel, or the queen’s; but being it’s a private matter of the captain’s, and I’ve a wife and children at home, why, I take no shame to myself for asking money for my life.”

So the crew was made up; but ere they pushed off, Amyas called Cary aside—

“If I perish, Will—”

“Don’t talk of such things, dear old lad.”

“I must. Then you are captain. Do nothing without Yeo and Drew. But if they approve, go right north away for San Domingo and Cuba, and try the ports; they can have no news of us there, and there is booty without end. Tell my mother that I died like a gentleman; and mind—mind, dear lad, to keep your temper with the men, let the poor fellows grumble as they may. Mind but that, and fear God, and all will go well.”

The tears were glistening in Cary’s eyes as he pressed Amyas’s hand, and watched the two brothers down over the side upon their desperate errand.

They reached the pebble beach. There seemed no difficulty about finding the path to the house—so bright was the moon, and so careful a survey of the place had Frank taken. Leaving the men with the boat (Amyas had taken care that they should be well armed), they started up the beach, with their swords only. Frank assured Amyas that they would find a path leading from the beach up to the house, and he was not mistaken. They found it easily, for it was made of white shell sand; and following it, struck into a “tunal,” or belt of tall thorny cactuses. Through this the path wound in zigzags up a steep rocky slope, and ended at a wicket-gate. They tried it, and found it open.

“She may expect us,” whispered Frank.

“Impossible!”

“Why not? She must have seen our ship; and if, as seems, the townsfolk know who we are, how much more must she! Yes, doubt it not, she still longs to hear news of her own land, and some secret sympathy will draw her down towards the sea tonight. See! the light is in the window still!”

“But if not,” said Amyas, who had no such expectation, “what is your plan?”

“I have none.”

“None?”

“I have imagined twenty different ones in the last hour; but all are equally uncertain, impossible. I have ceased to struggle—I go where I am called, love’s willing victim. If Heaven accept the sacrifice, it will provide the altar and the knife.”

Aymas was at his wits’ end. Judging of his brother by himself, he had taken for granted that Frank had some well-concocted scheme for gaining admittance to the Rose; and as the wiles of love were altogether out of his province, he had followed in full faith such a sans-appel as he held Frank to be. But now he almost doubted of his brother’s sanity, though Frank’s manner was perfectly collected and his voice firm. Amyas, honest fellow, had no understanding of that intense devotion, which so many in those days (not content with looking on it as a lofty virtue, and yet one to be duly kept in its place by other duties) prided themselves on pampering into the most fantastic and self-willed excesses.

Beautiful folly! the death-song of which two great geniuses were composing at that very moment, each according to his light. For, while Spenser was embalming in immortal verse all that it contained of noble and Christian elements, Cervantes sat, perhaps, in his dungeon, writing with his left hand Don Quixote, saddest of books, in spite of all its wit; the story of a pure and noble soul, who mistakes this actual life for that ideal one which he fancies