The Golden Galleon Part 1

The Golden Galleon.

by Robert Leighton.

PREFACE.

In this present amphibious story I have tried to represent some of the conditions of life ash.o.r.e and afloat in the glorious days of Queen Elizabeth; but I must state, to begin with, that the only portion of the narrative that is actually based upon historical fact is the account of Lord Thomas Howard's expedition against the West Indian treasure-s.h.i.+ps.

In this part of the story I have closely followed the original report of the last fight of _The Revenge_, as it was written by Sir Walter Raleigh some few weeks after the battle.

My friend Commander C. N. Robinson tells me that Sir Richard Grenville's disregard of Admiral Howard's instructions was, strictly speaking, a breach of discipline. Whether or not this was the case need not here be discussed. All that we need remember just now is that Sir Richard was one of the bravest of the many brave men of his splendid time, and that, undismayed by the almost certain prospect of defeat, he led a forlorn hope, plunged into the glorious fray, and fought to the death with a boldness which has never been excelled in all the course of our naval history.

Grenville was not a great admiral as Drake and Nelson were great, and this most memorable action upon which his fame must always rest was not an example of the supremest heroism, simply because his success or failure involved no high or very n.o.ble principle. But the worst that can be said of his daring exploit is that it was the Balaclava charge of the Spanish war; at its best it was an example, and a very grand example, of that British pluck and intrepidity which have ever been the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of our fighting countrymen; and I shall be glad if, in writing this story, I help in some measure to instil into my young readers a fuller pride in the navy which has secured for England her supremacy upon the seas.

ROBERT LEIGHTON.

CHAPTER I.

TIMOTHY TROLLOPE.

"Tim," said Peter Trollope, looking up from the oily whetstone that lay on the edge of the table in front of him, and slowly wiping the blade of the razor on the broad palm of his hand, "I want thee to go fetch me some more herbs."

"Herbs?" repeated Tim from the far corner of the shop, where he was sprawling upon the floor side by side with a very ugly-looking bull-dog.

"Ay," returned his father, running the edge of the razor along his thumb-nail to test its keenness. "My stock is at an end, and I have none left to make up the physic for Cap'n Cruse's sick wife. 'Tis some h.e.l.lebore roots that I need most, and a little meadow-saffron and jasmine, and, if thou canst come upon them, a handful of yew-berries.

You will find them all in Modbury Park if I make no mistake--over against the plantation of fir-trees where we saw the dead hind. I'd have thee go there this morning; and see that thou tarry not over long by the way, for I shall need thy help in distilling them."

Timothy rose slowly to his feet. There was a look of glum discontent on his face. It was evident that he was in nowise willing to obey his father's behest.

"What!" cried Peter, glancing at the lad with sharp reproof. "Dost object to the journey? Now, prithee, what wild boy's adventure hast thou on hand that is more to thy humour?"

Timothy looked dreamily out through the little latticed window towards the quay, and his eyes wandered for a time among the masts and riggings of the s.h.i.+ps.

"I was but thinking to go out for a sail in Ambrose Pennington's fis.h.i.+ng-boat," he said in a sulky undertone.

"A plague on your fis.h.i.+ng-boats!" exclaimed Peter somewhat angrily.

"Y'are for ever thinking of the sea and s.h.i.+ps and all such mischievous inventions! I'll not have it, look you. And to-day, so please you, you'll do my bidding and go fetch me these herbs, and there's an end on't."

Timothy made no answer, for at this moment a hairy-faced mariner entered the shop, making a great noise upon the sanded floor with his heavy sea-boots.

"Give you good-morning, Master Whiddon," said Peter Trollope with a bow and a smile, as he offered the man a chair in the middle of the room.

"What may be your honour's will?"

"Trim me my beard, Master Trollope," returned the seaman, seating himself in the chair and stretching out his legs in front of him; "and tell me your news; for 'tis a good two years since I was last ash.o.r.e in Plymouth, and I am full eager, as you may be sure, to learn all that hath happened in my absence."

Timothy opened a little locker under the window and drew forth a large canvas wallet, which he strapped over his shoulder. Then he crossed over to a door and disappeared into an inner room behind the shop, leaving his father to attend to his customer and retail news that to the boy, at all events, was as stale as a last year's chestnut.

Peter Trollope was a barber-surgeon. He carried on his useful art (for in his deft hands it was in truth an art) at the sign of the Pestle and Mortar, down against Sutton Pool. He was a great man in Plymouth town, by reason of his entertaining talk and his skill alike in surgery and in hairdressing; and his little shop was the lounging-place of all the idle young gallants of the port, who came in to discuss the latest news from London, to gossip about their neighbours' affairs and about the s.h.i.+ps, or to learn the tricks and fas.h.i.+ons in the new art of taking tobacco.

Men who had received sword-wounds in street frays or damaged skulls in tavern brawls came to him to have their hurts dressed and plastered; he had a famous tincture for the toothache, a certain remedy for melancholy, and at curing the common ailments of children and old women no doctor in the town could beat him. Mariners just home after a long voyage came to him to have their overgrown locks shorn and their beards singed. Poor workmen and apprentices came to him to be polled for twopence, were soon trimmed round as a cheese, and dismissed with a hearty "G.o.d speed you, my master!" There were many high and mighty gentlemen among his customers too, I do a.s.sure you; for he had starched the beard of the great Sir Walter Raleigh, curled the moustachios of brave Sir Francis Drake, and tied up the lovelocks of courtly Sir Anthony Killigrew.

The Pestle and Mortar stood facing the busy wharf at the corner of one of the narrow alleys that led up into the town. The upper windows of the house looked out across the Pool, where all the s.h.i.+ps and fis.h.i.+ng-boats were harboured. From these upper windows you could, if you had only been there, see down upon the s.h.i.+ps' decks and watch the brown-faced seamen at their work of discharging the merchandise that they had brought from distant climes; and in the street below there was the channel where, on wet days, the rain-water rushed by in a deep stream; and where, when the rain had ceased, young Timothy Trollope and his playmates used to go out in their bare feet and sail their tiny boats, and imagine these bits of rough-hewn stick to be Spanish galleons, laden with gold, or corsair galleys with cargoes of Christian captives for the slave-markets of Algiers.

Timothy's games had always some connection with s.h.i.+ps (which, I suppose, was natural enough, seeing that he had been born and brought up in sight of the sea, and with the smell of tar rope and bilge-water for ever in his nostrils), and all his boyish ambitions were of travel and adventure, fostered, it may be, by the travellers' talk he had heard from the mariners who gossiped with his father in the barber's shop.

Many of these adventurous mariners, remembering past benefits that they had received at the hands of the kindly barber-surgeon, or perhaps being short of money (as they ofttimes were, in spite of the vast treasures that they had voyaged and fought for in far-off regions), had given or sold to him many relics of their travels in foreign lands, and the shop was a veritable museum of curiosities from all parts of the known world.

Here was a live poll-parrot brought home by one of Sir Richard Grenville's seamen from Virginia; the jaws of a giant shark that had been killed by John Hawkins' boatswain off the west coast of Africa; a Turk's scimitar, a Patagonian's war-club, a red Indian's tobacco-pipe, an Icelander's harpoon, and even some of the so-called gold brought back by Sir Martin Frobisher from distant Greenland. People who had never crossed the seas regarded these things with wonder and reverence, but seamen were wont to scoff at them, and to declare that they were but the sweepings and refuse of s.h.i.+ps' cabins. Peter Trollope, however, was proud of his curious collection; and often, when business was slack, he would sit in his chair by the fire and look at the things each in turn, and grumble that Providence had not made him an adventurer instead of a quiet, stay-at-home barber-surgeon.

Master Thomas Cavendish, the great explorer, when he was fitting out his s.h.i.+p, the _Hugh Gallant_, for his voyage round the world, had once said to him:

"Peter, thou art too good a man to be wasting thy palmiest days at the clipping of hair. Those strong big limbs of thine should rather be employed in the hauling of ropes, the s.h.i.+fting of heavy guns, or fighting against the Spaniards. Now, my s.h.i.+p will be a-sailing out of Plymouth Sound in a few days' time, wilt shut up shop and join us? I do faithfully promise that thou shalt come back home again at the end of two brief years a wealthier man than ever the use of such trifling instruments as scissors and curling-irons can make thee."

But Peter was already a married man, with a growing family of boys to keep and to clothe and to send out upon the world, and he chose the certainty of an easy livelihood rather than the promise of riches which were to be gained, if at all, by deserting his home and leaving his wife and children to s.h.i.+ft for themselves. He had reflected, too, that if there were Spaniards to be fought abroad, there was also a threatened danger from the same dread enemy at home in England, and that Queen Elizabeth had as great need for landsmen to defend her coasts as for mariners to extend her power beyond the seas. And, indeed, when that danger arrived (as it did in the year 1588, when Timothy was a boy of twelve years old) Peter proved himself ready and willing to fight for his country, albeit the sum of his work on that glorious occasion was no more than to help to light the bonfire on Plymouth Hoe--the first of those beacon-fires which flashed along the coast to warn all England of the coming of King Philip's great armada.

The memorable rout of the Spanish s.h.i.+ps had taken place just two years before the opening of my story, and Timothy Trollope was now a well-grown lad of fourteen. He could remember all the events of the chase up the Channel, for he had heard the story repeated many times by men who had fought upon the Queen's s.h.i.+ps. He was reminded of them every day; and even this morning as he strode through the town with his bag over his shoulders on his way to Modbury, he saw a group of the Spanish prisoners of war standing in the market-place--dark-visaged, evil-looking men, who seemed to be for ever plotting and scheming how they might escape from England and get back to their own orange groves in sunny Seville.

Tim hated the Spaniards (as I suppose all English boys hated them at that time), and he was careful to pa.s.s the senors at a very safe distance, believing that there was danger in being close to them, and that under their long black cloaks each of them carried a rapier or a stiletto ready to his hand, to draw upon any unwary person who should happen to betray by look or sign the enmity that was in the hearts of all the townsfolk, young and old. For although the prisoners were out on their parole and were strictly forbidden to carry arms, yet Timothy always secretly mistrusted them, and suspected them, not without reason, of carrying weapons which they were only too ready to use.

It was a long walk from Plymouth to Modbury Park; but the morning was fine, and Timothy, having left the town behind, tramped merrily along the shady country lanes, slas.h.i.+ng with his stick at the rank weeds that grew at the wayside, and fancying that each nettle and foxglove that he laid low was a proud Spaniard whom he had slain.

As he crossed the fields by a footpath leading towards Beddington Dingle, a covey of partridges, alarmed at his approach, rose with a noisy whirr of wings from the stubble. In the woods of the dingle he watched a squirrel running along the high branch of an oak-tree, and in a ditch at the farther border of the wood he startled a rat, and loitered there for a long, long time trying to discover the hole into which the animal had escaped.

While he was searching he heard voices from behind him, mingled with the screaming of hawks, the yelping of dogs, and the tinkling of bells.

"Well cast off aloft, ah!--well flown!" cried one voice.

"Now she hath seized the fowl," cried another, "and 'gins to plume her--rebeck her not!--stand still and check her!"

Timothy turned quickly round. High in the air he saw a heron flying, pursued by a couple of falcons, that whirled about their quarry, shunning its spear-like beak. At a moment of advantage one of the hawks mounted yet higher, and then, swooping down, struck like a thunderbolt upon her prey and seized the fowl within her talons. A shower of feathers floated down into the midst of the joyous crowd of men and women who were watching the sport from their horses' backs in the stubble-field.

It was a very gay and courtly company. Here on their prancing horses were many elegant gentlemen wearing plumed hats and bright-coloured capes; ladies with their snow-white ruffs and their long velvet gowns that almost swept the daisies and dandelions at their horses' feet; and all were laughing and calling aloud in their excitement as they compared the merits of their birds, or made wagers on the success of their flights.

Near to where Timothy stood, an old gentleman with a pointed white beard and a russet-coloured doublet rode on a very large chestnut horse. He carried a merlin hawk perched on his fist, but he seemed to take less interest in the sport than did his younger companions. Timothy had seen him many times before, both in Plymouth and at Modbury Park, and knew him to be the great Baron Champernoun, the lord of the manor of Modbury, a noted soldier and courtier. A very beautiful lady rode by his side, wearing a sombre black gown and a wide black hat with black feathers.

She looked strangely out of place among her gaily-dressed friends, and Timothy wondered why she should wear this habit of gloom, until he saw her face, when he at once recognized her as the Lady Elisabeth Oglander, and knew that her reason for shunning bright colours in her apparel was the death of her most n.o.ble husband, the honourable Edmund Oglander, who had fallen in battle in the Netherlands while fighting against the Spaniards.

She drew rein, and the master falconer approached her with his square frame round his waist, on which were perched some half-dozen hawks with their hoods and bells and their scarlet tufts. The lady leaned over on her saddle and took a hawk from the falconer's hand. The bird flapped its wings in great commotion until it was fairly perched on the fingers that held it. Then the Lady Elizabeth, holding her hand aloft, rode off across the field, followed presently by the rest of the hawking party, while Tim Trollope watched them disappear round a corner of the wood.

As he turned to continue his way he came face to face with a boy of about his own age, who was carrying some dead partridges--spoils of the chase.

"h.e.l.loh, Will!" cried Timothy, recognizing the lad. "I had thought you were at work on Modbury farm. Hast had a rise in the world that you are out here at the heels of the gentlefolks?"

"A rise, do you call it?" returned Will. "That is as it may be. For my own part I do call it but a change of labour. I get no more pay for't, I promise you; and 'tis a vast deal harder work than the herding of cattle or the tending of sheep. I like it not, Tim; and 'tis certain I shall not stand it much longer." He dropped his burden on the gra.s.s at his feet and gazed idly about him with a dreamy look in his eyes. Presently he added, "I am for the sea, if peradventure I can get a s.h.i.+p to take me. I'd leave to-morrow an I could get someone to take my place."

Timothy glanced quickly at his young friend.