The World's Greatest Books - Volume 5 Part 49

Amyas was at his wits' end. A light was burning in a window on the upper story; twenty black figures lay sleeping on the terrace.

Frank saw the shadow of the Rose against the window. She came down, and he made a wild appeal to her.

"Your conscience! Your religion--"

"No, never! I can face the chance of death, but not the loss of my husband. Go! For G.o.d's sake leave me!"

Frank turned, and Amyas dragged him down the hill. Both were too proud to run, but the whole gang of negroes were in pursuit, and stones were flying.

They were not twenty-five yards from the boat, when the storm burst and a volley of great quartz pebbles whistled round their heads. Frank is struck, and Amyas takes him over his shoulders and plunges wildly on towards the beach.

"Men, to the rescue!" Amyas shouts. "Fire, men! Give it the black villains!"

The arquebuses crackled from the boat in front, but, b.a.l.l.s are answering from behind. The governor's guard have turned out, followed them to the beach, and are firing over the negroes' heads.

Amyas is up to his knees in water, battered with stones, blinded with blood; but Frank is still in his arms. Another heavy blow--confused ma.s.s of negroes and English, foam and pebbles--a confused roar of shouts, shots, curses, and he recollects no more.

He is lying in the stern-sheets of the boat, stiff and weak. Two men only are left of the six, and Frank is not in the boat. With weary work they made the s.h.i.+p, and as, the alarm being now given, it was hardly safe to remain where they were, it was agreed to weigh anchor. Amyas had no hope that Frank might still be alive. So ended that fatal venture of mistaken chivalry.

_IV.--Amyas Comes Home for the Third Time_

More than three years have pa.s.sed since the Rose sailed out from Bideford, and never a word has reached England of what has befallen the s.h.i.+p and her company.

Many have been the adventures of Amyas and the men who have followed him. Treasure they have got in South America, and old Salvation Yeo has found a young girl whom he had lost twelve years before, grown up wild among the Indians. Ayacanora she is called, and she is white, for her father was an Englishman and her mother Spanish, for all her savage ways; and will not be separated from her discoverers, but insists on going with them to England. And Amyas has learnt that his brother Frank was burnt by order of the Inquisition, and with him Rose, and that Don Guzman had resigned the governors.h.i.+p of La Guayra.

Amyas swore a dreadful oath before all his men when he was told of the death of Frank and Rose, that as long as he had eyes to see a Spaniard and hands to hew him down he would give no quarter to that accursed nation, and that he would avenge all the innocent blood shed by them.

And now it is February, 1587, and Mrs. Leigh, grown grey and feeble in step, is pacing up and down the terrace walk at Burrough. A flash is seen in the fast darkening twilight, and then comes the thunder of a gun at sea. Twenty minutes later, and a s.h.i.+p has turned up the Bideford river, and a cheer goes up from her crew.

Yes, Amyas has come, and with him Will Cary and the honest parson, Jack Brimblecombe, and the good seamen of Devon; and Ayacanora, who knelt down obedient before Mrs. Leigh because she had seen Amyas kneel, and whom Mrs. Leigh took by the hand and led to Bur-rough Court.

William Salterne would take none of his share of the treasure which was brought home, and which he had a just claim to.

"The treasure is yours, sir," he said to Amyas. "I have enough, and more than enough. And if I have a claim in law for aught, which I know not, neither shall ever ask--why, if you are not too proud, accept that claim as a plain burgher's thank-offering to you, sir, for a great and a n.o.ble love which you and your brother have shown to one who, though I say it to my shame, was not worthy thereof."

That night old Salterne was found dead, kneeling by his daughter's bed.

His will lay by him. Any money due to him as owner of the Rose, and a new barque of 300 tons burden, he had bequeathed to Captain Amyas Leigh, on condition that he should re-christen that barque the Vengeance, and with her sail once more against the Spaniard.

In the summer of 1588 comes the great Armada, and Captain Leigh has the Vengeance fitted out for war, and is in the English Channel. He has found out that Don Guzman is on board the Santa Catherina, and is set on taking his revenge.

For twelve months past this hatred of Don Guzman has been eating out his heart, and now the hour has struck. But the Armada melts away in the storms of the North Sea, and Captain Leigh has pursued the Santa Catherina round the Orkneys and down to Lundy Island. And there, on the rock called the Shutter, the Santa Catherina strikes, and then vanishes for ever and ever.

"Shame!" cried Amyas, hurling his sword far into the sea, "to lose my right, when it was in my very grasp!"

A crack which rent the sky, a bright world of flame, and then a blank of utter darkness. The great proud sea captain has been struck blind by the flash of lightning.

Once more Amyas Leigh has come home. His work is over, his hatred dead.

And Ayacanora will comfort him.

"Amyas, my son," said Mrs. Leigh, "fear not to take her to your heart, for it is your mother who has laid her there!"

"It is true, after all," said Amyas to himself. "What G.o.d has joined together, man cannot put asunder."

HENRY KINGSLEY

Geoffry Hamlyn

Henry Kingsley, younger brother of Charles Kingsley, was born at Barnack, Northamptons.h.i.+re, England, Jan. 2, 1830. Leaving Worcester College, Oxford, in 1853, he, with a number of fellow-students, emigrated to the Australian goldfields. After some five years of unremunerative toil he returned to England, poor in pocket, but possessing sufficient knowledge of life to justify his adoption of a literary career. His first attempt, and perhaps his most successful, was "The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn," published in 1859, which was based largely on his own experiences in Australia. From that time until his death on May 24, 1876, some nineteen stories flowed in quick succession from his pen, none of them, however, reaching the high standard of his first two--"Geoffry Hamlyn" and "Ravenshoe." In 1869 Kingsley became editor of the Edinburgh "Daily Review," and on the outbreak of the Franco-German War represented that paper at the front. He was present at the battle of Sedan, and was the first Englishman to enter the town afterwards.

_I.--In a Devons.h.i.+re Village_

The twilight of a winter's evening was fast falling into night, and old John Thornton sat dozing by the fire. His face looked worn and aged, and anyone might see the old man was unhappy.

What could there be to vex him? Not poverty, at all events, for not a year ago a relation had left him 5,000, and a like sum to his daughter, Mary. And his sister--a quiet, good old maid--had come to live with him, so that now he was comfortably off, and had with him the only two relations he cared about to make his old age happy. His daughter Mary--a beautiful girl, merry, impetuous, and thoughtless--was standing at the window.

The white gate swings on its hinges, and a tall man comes, with rapid, eager steps, up the walk. The maid, bringing in candles, announces: "Mr.

George Hawker!"

As the light fell on him, any man or woman might have exclaimed instantly, and with justice, "What a handsome fellow!" Handsome he was, without doubt, and yet the more you looked at him the less you liked him. The thin lips, the everlasting smile, the quick, suspicious glance were fearfully repulsive. He was the only son of a small farmer in one of the outlying hamlets of Drumston. His mother had died when he was very young, and he had had little education, and strange stories were in circulation about that lonely farmhouse, not much to the credit of father or son; which stories John Thornton must, in his position of clergyman, have heard somewhat of; so that one need hardly wonder at his uneasiness when he saw him enter.

For Mary Thornton adored him. The rest of the village disliked and mistrusted him; but she, with a strange perversity, loved him with her whole heart and soul. After a few words, the lovers were whispering in the window.

Presently the gate goes again, and another footfall is heard approaching.

That is James Stockbridge. I should know that step in a thousand. As he entered the parlour, John's face grew bright, and he held out his hand to him; but he got rather a cool reception from the pair at the window.

Old John and he were as father and son, and sat there before the cheerful blaze smoking their pipes.

"How are your Southdowns looking, Jim?" says the vicar. "How is Scapegrace Hamlyn?"

"He is very well, sir. He and I are thinking of selling up and going to New South Wales."

The vicar was "knocked all of a heap" at Jim's announcement; but, recovering a little, said, "You hear him? He is going to sell his estate--250 acres of the best land in Devon--and go and live among the convicts. And who is going with him? Hamlyn, the wise! Oh, dear me! And what is he going for?"

That was a question apparently hard to answer. Yet I think the real cause was standing there, with a look of unbounded astonishment upon her pretty face.