Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth

Now it befell that Salvation Yeo, for the very purpose of holding up to ridicule that time-honored melody, had put into it the true nasal twang, and rung it out as merrily as he had done perhaps twelve years before, when he got up John Oxenham’s anchor in Plymouth Sound. And it befell also that Ayacanora, as she stood by Amyas’s side, watching the men, and trying to make out their chat, heard it, and started; and then, half to herself, took up the strain, and sang it over again, word for word, in the very same tune and tone.

Salvation Yeo started in his turn, and turned deadly pale.

“Who sung that?” he asked quickly.

“The little maid here. She’s coming on nicely in her English,” said Amyas.

“The little maid?” said Yeo, turning paler still. “Why do you go about to scare an old servant, by talking of little maids, Captain Amyas? Well,” he said aloud to himself, “as I am a sinful saint, if I hadn’t seen where the voice came from, I could have sworn it was her; just as we taught her to sing it by the river there, I and William Penberthy of Marazion, my good comrade. The Lord have mercy on me!”

All were silent as the grave whenever Yeo made any allusion to that lost child. Ayacanora only, pleased with Amyas’s commendation, went humming on to herself—

     “And heave, my mariners all, O!”

Yeo started up from the gun where he sat.

“I can’t abear it! As I live, I can’t! You, Indian maiden, where did you learn to sing that there?”

Ayacanora looked up at him, half frightened by his vehemence, then at Amyas, to see if she had been doing anything wrong; and then turned saucily away, looked over the side, and hummed on.

“Ask her, for mercy’s sake—ask her, Captain Leigh!”

“My child,” said Amyas, speaking in Indian, “how is it you sing that so much better than any other English? Did you ever hear it before?”

Ayacanora looked up at him puzzled, and shook her head; and then—

“If you tell Indian to Ayacanora, she dumb. She must be English girl now, like poor Lucy.”

“Well then,” said Amyas, “do you recollect, Ayacanora—do you recollect—what shall I say? anything that happened when you were a little girl?”

She paused awhile; and then moving her hands overhead—

“Trees—great trees like the Magdalena—always nothing but trees—wild and bad everything. Ayacanora won’t talk about that.”

“Do you mind anything that grew on those trees?” asked Yeo, eagerly.

She laughed. “Silly! Flowers and fruit, and nuts—grow on all trees, and monkey-cups too. Ayacanora climbed up after them—when she was wild. I won’t tell any more.”

“But who taught you to call them monkey-cups?” asked Yeo, trembling with excitement.

“Monkey’s drink; mono drink.”

“Mono?” said Yeo, foiled on one cast, and now trying another. “How did you know the beasts were called monos?”

“She might have heard it coming down with us,” said Cary, who had joined the group.

“Ay, monos,” said she, in a self-justifying tone. “Faces like little men, and tails. And one very dirty black one, with a beard, say Amen in a tree to all the other monkeys, just like Sir John on Sunday.”

This allusion to Brimblecombe and the preaching apes upset all but old Yeo.

“But don’t you recollect any Christians?—white people?”

She was silent.

“Don’t you mind a white lady?”

“Um?”

“A woman, a very pretty woman, with hair like his?” pointing to Amyas.

“No.”

“What do you mind, then, beside those Indians?” added Yeo, in despair.

She turned her back on him peevishly, as if tired with the efforts of her memory.

“Do try to remember,” said Amyas; and she set to work again at once.

“Ayacanora mind great monkeys—black, oh, so high,” and she held up her hand above her head, and made a violent gesture of disgust.

“Monkeys? what, with tails?”

“No, like man. Ah! yes—just like Cooky there—dirty Cooky!”

And that hapless son of Ham, who happened to be just crossing the main-deck, heard a marlingspike, which by ill luck was lying at hand, flying past his ears.

“Ayacanora, if you heave any more things at Cooky, I must have you whipped,” said Amyas, without, of course, any such intention.

“I’ll kill you, then,” answered she, in the most matter-of-fact tone.

“She must mean negurs,” said Yeo; “I wonder where she saw them, now. What if it were they Cimaroons?”

“But why should any one who had seen whites forget them, and yet remember negroes?” asked Cary.

“Let us try again. Do you mind no great monkeys but those black ones?” asked Amyas.

“Yes,” she said, after a while,—“devil.”

“Devil?” asked all three, who, of course, were by no means free from the belief that the fiend did actually appear to the Indian conjurors, such as had brought up the girl.

“Ay, him Sir John tell about on Sundays.”

“Save and help us!” said Yeo; “and what was he like unto?”

She made various signs to intimate that he had a monkey’s face, and a gray beard like Yeo’s. So far so good: but now came a series of manipulations about her pretty little neck, which set all their fancies at fault.

“I know,” said Cary, at last, bursting into a great laugh. “Sir Urian had a ruff on, as I live! Trunk-hose too, my fair dame? Stop—I’ll make sure. Was his neck like the senor commandant’s, the Spaniard?”

Ayacanora clapped her hands at finding herself understood, and the questioning went on.

“The ‘devil’ appeared like a monkey, with a gray beard, in a ruff;—humph!—”

“Ay!” said she in good enough Spanish, “Mono de Panama; viejo diablo de Panama.”

Yeo threw up his hands with a shriek—“Oh Lord of all mercies! Those were the last words of Mr. John Oxenham! Ay—and the devil is surely none other than the devil Don Francisco Xararte! Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear! my sweet young lady! my pretty little maid! and don’t you know me? Don’t you know Salvation Yeo, that carried you over the mountains, and used to climb for the monkey-cups for you, my dear young lady? And William Penberthy too, that used to get you flowers; and your poor dear father, that was just like Mr. Cary there, only he had a black beard, and black curls, and swore terribly in his speech, like a Spaniard, my dear young lady?”

And the honest fellow, falling on his knees, covered Ayacanora’s hands with kisses; while all the crew, fancying him gone suddenly mad, crowded aft.

“Steady, men, and don’t vex him!” said Amyas. “He thinks that he has found his little maid at last.”

“And so do I, Amyas, as I live,” said Cary.

“Steady, steady, my masters all! If this turn out a wrong scent after all, his wits will crack. Mr. Yeo, can’t you think of any other token?”

Yeo stamped impatiently. “What need then? it’s her, I tell ye, and that’s enough! What a beauty she’s grown! Oh dear! where were my eyes all this time, to behold her, and not to see her! ‘Tis her very mortal self, it is! And don’t you mind me, my dear, now? Don’t you mind Salvation Yeo, that taught you to sing ‘Heave my mariners all, O!’ a-sitting on a log by the boat upon the sand, and there was a sight of red lilies grew on it in the moss, dear, now, wasn’t there? and we made posies of them to put in your hair, now?”—And the poor old man ran on in a supplicating, suggestive tone, as if he could persuade the girl into becoming the person whom he sought.

Ayacanora had watched him, first angry, then amused, then attentive, and at last with the most intense earnestness. Suddenly she grew crimson, and snatching her hands from the old man’s, hid her face in them, and stood.

“Do you remember anything of all this, my child?” asked Amyas, gently.

She lifted up her eyes suddenly to his, with a look of imploring agony, as if beseeching him to spare her. The death of a whole old life, the birth of a whole new life, was struggling in that beautiful face, choking in that magnificent throat, as she threw back her small head, and drew in her breath, and dashed her locks back from her temples, as if seeking for fresh air. She shuddered, reeled, then fell weeping on the bosom, not of Salvation Yeo, but of Amyas Leigh.

He stood still a minute or two, bearing that fair burden, ere he could recollect himself. Then,—

“Ayacanora, you are not yet mistress of yourself, my child. You were better to go down, and see after poor Lucy, and we will talk about it all to-morrow.”

She gathered herself up instantly, and with eyes fixed on the deck slid through the group, and disappeared below.

“Ah!” said Yeo, with a tone of exquisite sadness; “the young to the young! Over land and sea, in the forests and in the galleys, in battle and prison, I have sought her! And now!—”

“My good friend,” said Amyas, “neither are you master of yourself yet. When she comes round again, whom will she love and thank but you?”

“You, sir! She owes all to you; and so do I. Let me go below, sir. My old wits are shaky. Bless you, sir, and thank you for ever and ever!”

And Yeo grasped Amyas’s hand, and went down to his cabin, from which he did not reappear for many hours.

From that day Ayacanora was a new creature. The thought that she was an Englishwoman; that she, the wild Indian, was really one of the great white people whom she had learned to worship, carried in it some regenerating change: she regained all her former stateliness, and with it a self-restraint, a temperance, a softness which she had never shown before. Her dislike to Cary and Jack vanished. Modest and distant as ever, she now took delight in learning from them about England and English people; and her knowledge of our customs gained much from the somewhat fantastic behaviour which Amyas thought good, for reasons of his own, to assume toward her. He assigned her a handsome cabin to herself, always addressed her as madam, and told Cary, Brimblecombe, and the whole crew that as she was a lady and a Christian, he expected them to behave to her as such. So there was as much bowing and scraping on the poop as if it had been a prince’s court: and Ayacanora, though sorely puzzled and chagrined at Amyas’s new solemnity, contrived to imitate it pretty well (taking for granted that it was the right thing); and having tolerable masters in the art of manners (for both Amyas and Cary were thoroughly well-bred men), profited much in all things, except in intimacy with Amyas, who had, cunning fellow, hit on this parade of good manners, as a fresh means of increasing the distance between him and her. The crew, of course, though they were a little vexed at losing their pet, consoled themselves with the thought that she was a “real born lady,” and Mr. Oxenham’s daughter, too; and there was not a man on board who did not prick up his ears for a message if she approached him, or one who would not have, I verily believe, jumped overboard to do her a pleasure.

Only Yeo kept sorrowfully apart. He never looked at her, spoke to her, met her even, if he could. His dream had vanished. He had found her! and after all, she did not care for him? Why should she?

But it was hard to have hunted a bubble for years, and have it break in his hand at last. “Set not your affections on things on the earth,” murmured Yeo to himself, as he pored over his Bible, in the vain hope of forgetting his little maid.

But why did Amyas wish to increase the distance between himself and Ayacanora? Many reasons might be given: I deny none of them. But the main one, fantastic as it may seem, was simply, that while she had discovered herself to be an Englishwoman, he had discovered her to be a Spaniard. If her father were seven times John Oxenham (and even that the perverse fellow was inclined to doubt), her mother was a Spaniard—Pah! one of the accursed race; kinswoman—perhaps, to his brother’s murderers! His jaundiced eyes could see nothing but the Spanish element in her; or, indeed, in anything else. As Cary said to him once, using a cant phrase of Sidney’s, which he had picked up from Frank, all heaven and earth were “spaniolated,” to him. He seemed to recollect nothing but that Heaven had “made Spaniards to be killed, and him to kill them.” If he had not been the most sensible of John Bulls, he would certainly have forestalled the monomania of that young Frenchman of rank, who, some eighty years after him, so maddened his brain by reading of the Spanish cruelties, that he threw up all his prospects and turned captain of filibusters in the West Indies, for the express purpose of ridding them of their tyrants; and when a Spanish ship was taken, used to relinquish the whole booty to his crew, and reserve for himself only the pleasure of witnessing his victims’ dying agonies.

But what had become of that bird-like song of Ayacanora’s which had astonished them on the banks of the Meta, and cheered them many a time in their anxious voyage down the Magdalena? From the moment that she found out her English parentage, it stopped. She refused utterly to sing anything but the songs and psalms which she picked up from the English. Whether it was that she despised it as a relic of her barbarism, or whether it was too maddening for one whose heart grew heavier and humbler day by day, the nightingale notes were heard no more.

So homeward they ran, before a favoring southwest breeze: but long ere they were within sight of land, Lucy Passmore was gone to her rest beneath the Atlantic waves.

CHAPTER XXVIII

HOW AMYAS CAME HOME THE THIRD TIME

     “It fell about the Martinmas,         When nights were lang and mirk,     That wife’s twa sons cam hame again,         And their hats were o’ the birk.     “It did na graw by bush or brae,         Nor yet in ony shough;     But by the gates o’ paradise         That birk grew fair eneugh.”                The Wife of Usher’s Well.

It is the evening of the 15th of February, 1587, and Mrs. Leigh (for we must return now to old scenes and old faces) is pacing slowly up and down the terrace-walk at Burrough, looking out over the winding river, and the hazy sand-hills, and the wide western sea, as she has done every evening, be it fair weather or foul, for three weary years. Three years and more are past and gone, and yet no news of Frank and Amyas, and the gallant ship and all the gallant souls therein; and loving eyes in Bideford and Appledore, Clovelly and Ilfracombe, have grown hollow with watching and with weeping for those who have sailed away into the West, as John Oxenham sailed before them, and have vanished like a dream, as he did, into the infinite unknown. Three weary years, and yet no word. Once there was a flush of hope, and good Sir Richard (without Mrs. Leigh’s knowledge), had sent a horseman posting across to Plymouth, when the news arrived that Drake, Frobisher, and Carlisle had returned with their squadron from the Spanish Main. Alas! he brought back great news, glorious news; news of the sacking of Cartagena, San Domingo, Saint Augustine; of the relief of Raleigh’s Virginian Colony: but no news of the Rose, and of those who had sailed in her. And Mrs. Leigh bowed her head, and worshipped, and said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”

Her hair was now grown gray; her cheeks were wan; her step was feeble. She seldom went from home, save to the church, and to the neighboring cottages. She never mentioned her sons’ names; never allowed a word to pass her lips, which might betoken that she thought of them; but every day, when the tide was high, and red flag on the sandhills showed that there was water over the bar, she paced the terrace-walk, and devoured with greedy eyes the sea beyond in search of the sail which never came. The stately ships went in and out as of yore; and white sails hung off the bar for many an hour, day after day, month after month, year after year: but an instinct within told her that none of them were the sails she sought. She knew that ship, every line of her, the cut of every cloth; she could have picked it out miles away, among a whole fleet, but it never came, and Mrs. Leigh bowed her head and worshipped, and went to and fro among the poor, who looked on her as an awful being, and one whom God had brought very near to Himself, in that mysterious heaven of sorrow which they too knew full well. And lone women and bed-ridden men looked in her steadfast eyes, and loved them, and drank in strength from them; for they knew (though she never spoke of her own grief) that she had gone down into the fiercest depths of the fiery furnace, and was walking there unhurt by the side of One whose form was as of the Son of God. And all the while she was blaming herself for her “earthly” longings, and confessing nightly to Heaven that weakness which she could not shake off, which drew her feet at each high tide to the terrace-walk beneath the row of wind-clipt trees.

But this evening Northam is in a stir. The pebble ridge is thundering far below, as it thundered years ago: but Northam is noisy enough without the rolling of the surge. The tower is rocking with the pealing bells: the people are all in the streets shouting and singing round bonfires. They are burning the pope in effigy, drinking to the queen’s health, and “So perish all her enemies!” The hills are red with bonfires in every village; and far away, the bells of Bideford are answering the bells of Northam, as they answered them seven years ago, when Amyas returned from sailing round the world. For this day has come the news that Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded in Fotheringay; and all England, like a dreamer who shakes off some hideous nightmare, has leapt up in one tremendous shout of jubilation, as the terror and the danger of seventeen anxious years is lifted from its heart for ever.

Yes, she is gone, to answer at a higher tribunal than that of the Estates of England, for all the noble English blood which has been poured out for her; for all the noble English hearts whom she has tempted into treachery, rebellion, and murder. Elizabeth’s own words have been fulfilled at last, after years of long-suffering,—

     “The daughter of debate,       That discord aye doth sow,     Hath reap’d no gain where former rule       Hath taught still peace to grow.”

And now she can do evil no more. Murder and adultery, the heart which knew no forgiveness, the tongue which could not speak truth even for its own interest, have past and are perhaps atoned for; and her fair face hangs a pitiful dream in the memory even of those who knew that either she, or England, must perish.

     “Nothing is left of her     Now, but pure womanly.”

And Mrs. Leigh, Protestant as she is, breathes a prayer, that the Lord may have mercy on that soul, as “clear as diamond, and as hard,” as she said of herself. That last scene, too, before the fatal block—it could not be altogether acting. Mrs. Leigh had learned many a priceless lesson in the last seven years; might not Mary Stuart have learned something in seventeen? And Mrs. Leigh had been a courtier, and knew, as far as a chaste Englishwoman could know (which even in those coarser days was not very much), of that godless style of French court profligacy in which poor Mary had had her youthful training, amid the Medicis, and the Guises, and Cardinal Lorraine; and she shuddered, and sighed to herself”—To whom little is given, of them shall little be required!” But still the bells pealed on and would not cease.

What was that which answered them from afar out of the fast darkening twilight? A flash, and then the thunder of a gun at sea.

Mrs. Leigh stopped. The flash was right outside the bar. A ship in distress it could not be. The wind was light and westerly. It was a high spring-tide, as evening floods are always there. What could it be? Another flash, another gun. The noisy folks of Northam were hushed at once, and all hurried into the churchyard which looks down on the broad flats and the river.

There was a gallant ship outside the bar. She was running in, too, with all sails set. A large ship; nearly a thousand tons she might be; but not of English rig. What was the meaning of it? A Spanish cruiser about to make reprisals for Drake’s raid along the Cadiz shore! Not that, surely. The Don had no fancy for such unscientific and dare-devil warfare. If he came, he would come with admiral, rear-admiral, and vice-admiral, transports, and avisos, according to the best-approved methods, articles, and science of war. What could she be?

Easily, on the flowing tide and fair western wind, she has slipped up the channel between the two lines of sandhill. She is almost off Appledore now. She is no enemy; and if she be a foreigner, she is a daring one, for she has never veiled her topsails,—and that, all know, every foreign ship must do within sight of an English port, or stand the chance of war; as the Spanish admiral found, who many a year since was sent in time of peace to fetch home from Flanders Anne of Austria, Philip the Second’s last wife.

For in his pride he sailed into Plymouth Sound without veiling topsails, or lowering the flag of Spain. Whereon, like lion from his den, out rushed John Hawkins the port admiral, in his famous Jesus of Lubec (afterwards lost in the San Juan d’Ulloa fight), and without argument or parley, sent a shot between the admiral’s masts; which not producing the desired effect, alongside ran bold Captain John, and with his next shot, so says his son, an eye-witness, “lackt the admiral through and through;” whereon down came the offending flag; and due apologies were made, but not accepted for a long time by the stout guardian of her majesty’s honor. And if John Hawkins did as much for a Spanish fleet in time of peace, there is more than one old sea-dog in Appledore who will do as much for a single ship in time of war, if he can find even an iron pot to burn powder withal.

The strange sail passed out of sight behind the hill of Appledore; and then there rose into the quiet evening air a cheer, as from a hundred throats. Mrs. Leigh stood still, and listened. Another gun thundered among the hills; and then another cheer.

It might have been twenty minutes before the vessel hove in sight again round the dark rocks of the Hubbastone, as she turned up the Bideford river. Mrs. Leigh had stood that whole time perfectly motionless, a pale and scarcely breathing statue, her eyes fixed upon the Viking’s rock.

Round the Hubbastone she came at last. There was music on board, drums and fifes, shawms and trumpets, which wakened ringing echoes from every knoll of wood and slab of slate. And as she opened full on Burrough House, another cheer burst from her crew, and rolled up to the hills from off the silver waters far below, full a mile away.

Mrs. Leigh walked quickly toward the house, and called her maid,—

“Grace, bring me my hood. Master Amyas is come home!”

“No, surely? O joyful sound! Praised and blessed be the Lord, then; praised and blessed be the Lord! But, madam, however did you know that?”

“I heard his voice on the river; but I did not hear Mr. Frank’s with him, Grace!”

“Oh, be sure, madam, where the one is the other is. They’d never part company. Both come home or neither, I’ll warrant. Here’s your hood, madam.”

And Mrs. Leigh, with Grace behind her, started with rapid steps towards Bideford.

Was it true? Was it a dream? Had the divine instinct of the mother enabled her to recognize her child’s voice among all the rest, and at that enormous distance; or was her brain turning with the long effort of her supernatural calm?

Grace asked herself, in her own way, that same question many a time between Burrough and Bideford. When they arrived on the quay the question answered itself.

As they came down Bridgeland Street (where afterwards the tobacco warehouses for the Virginia trade used to stand, but which then was but a row of rope-walks and sailmakers’ shops), they could see the strange ship already at anchor in the river. They had just reached the lower end of the street, when round the corner swept a great mob, sailors, women, ‘prentices, hurrahing, questioning, weeping, laughing: Mrs. Leigh stopped; and behold, they stopped also.

“Here she is!” shouted some one; “here’s his mother!”

“His mother? Not their mother!” said Mrs. Leigh to herself, and turned very pale; but that heart was long past breaking.

The next moment the giant head and shoulders of Amyas, far above the crowd, swept round the corner.

“Make a way! Make room for Madam Leigh!”—And Amyas fell on his knees at her feet.

She threw her arms round his neck, and bent her fair head over his, while sailors, ‘prentices, and coarse harbor-women were hushed into holy silence, and made a ring round the mother and the son.