ROB DINES AT "YE SWANNE."
Morgan had a host of questions to ask Paignton Rob, and he wont back to
"Ye Swanne" in Wood Street, off Chepe, his head buzzing with many
ideas. So occupied was he with his own thoughts that he replied but
absently to Captain Dawe's remarks; and he quite forgot to offer Dolly
any compliments over her pastries. The young lady was naturally
indignant with a burly trencherman who devoured a round dozen of
assorted confections that were put on his platter without discovering
that they possessed any flavour whatsoever.
"La! Master Morgan!" she cried. "If I did not know that such a thing
was impossible with such as thou art, I should declare thou hadst
fallen in love."
The tone was sharp, and a trifle spiteful, so Johnnie's wits gathered
themselves into marching order.
"So I have, Dolly," he answered. "I am enamoured of--"
"Whom?"
"A friend of Master Jeffreys."
The girl's cheeks flushed. "Thou art bold to say such a thing to me."
"I imbibed courage with a flagon of sack this morning."
"It hath got to thy head."
"And my heart, Dolly; I am afire, heart and head. I see visions, and
pulse with great hopes."
"I trust the wench will prove kind, and not grow plain of face on a
closer acquaintance."
"For that fair wish, a thousand thanks, dear Dolly."
"Mistress Dawe, if it please you, Master Morgan." Dorothy bobbed a
scornful curtsy, and left the parlour.
"What's amiss with you two?" asked Captain Dawe. "Ye were billing and
cooing like two pigeons over breakfast this morning."
"And shall be doing so again over supper," said Johnnie.
"What's this nonsense about a wench who is a friend to Master Jeffreys?"
"There is no wench. I am enamoured of a fellow with a visage like
brown leather, and who hath but one thumb and one ear."
"Thou art talking in riddles."
"Master Jeffreys shall make them clear; he hath a better gift of words
than I."
So the Devon man retold the story of John Oxenham's voyage; and he
added many strange things that lie had heard from other Plymouth men
who had gone to the Indies, and whom he had met in Raleigh's company.
He himself had gone westwards to Virginia, and other parts of the
American mainland, and could relate wonders from his own experiences.
He talked for full two hours, and both Mrs. Stowe and Dorothy stole in
to listen.
The next day Paignton Rob and his two stranded comrades found
themselves seated at Mistress Stowe's table to dinner. Morgan and the
captain hung about the aisles of St. Paul's for more than an hour,
waiting in the hope that the sailors would appear. Jeffreys went down
to Whitehall, found them in the neighbourhood of Raleigh's lodgings,
and brought them into the city.
The three derelict mariners were not slow to divine one reason for the
pressing invitation that had brought them hot-foot from Whitehall to
Wood Street. Rob's story of the fabled Spanish Main had opened
Mistress Stowe's door to such dilapidated guests; it would have opened
hundreds of other English doors to the maimed adventurers. The whole
country was smitten with the fever of travel, and possessed with the
lust for wealth and conquest. Men and women believed strange things of
the wonderful western world, and they listened eagerly and without
question to things their great-grandchildren would scoff at.
A travelled sailor can fit himself into any company. Paignton Rob
adjusted himself with the greatest nicety into his proper position that
day. He ate and drank to repletion, praising every dish without stint,
and paying his hostess such daring compliments that her round face was
a very sunset of blushes.
Nick and Ned Johnson played their accustomed part of chorus, and just
said "ay, ay" at the proper time and place. And Rob did not keep his
audience too long waiting for his stories. He described the tropical
seas--their storms and calms, their fish that flew, and the fearsome
monsters that gambolled along their surface. He took his hearers into
the gloomy forests, with their myriad forms of life, their gaudy birds
and gorgeous insects, their lurking beasts and dense-packed horrors.
Weird cries and terrifying howls rang out in imaginative sounds. And
what horrific beings stalked in the dim alleys betwixt the giant trees,
or peeped forth at the intrepid traveller from cave and den!
One-horned beasts with fiery hoofs; dragons that had wings of brass,
and vomited flames from cavernous throats; huge birds, enormous
reptiles, flew or crawled in their appointed places. Two-headed men
wielded clubs of stone; men with no heads at all, but one great eye in
the centre of their breasts, glared malevolently from the pits wherein
they had their habitation. The little company in the tavern parlour
shivered with affright, and cast uneasy glances at the doorway.
Then--wonderful Rob!--a sinewy, thumbless hand swept the air like an
enchanter's wand, and lo! the scene was changed. Gloom and horror
fled, the forest vanished, the malodorous swamp gave place to smiling
meadow. The hills frowned no longer, but laughed with fertility and
sparkled with a thousand fairy rills and cascades. Fair cities
encircled their bases, and golden temples glittered in the ardent,
tropical sunshine. Brown-skinned, gentle people flitted gracefully
along the streets and through the squares. Music, barbaric but
melodious, hummed through the fragrant air. Here was the paradise of
dreams--bright colours, sweet sounds, fragrant odours, gentle beings,
fair peace, and jocund plenty! Rob was a poet, and his audience panted
with parting lips as he spread the scene before them.
Then he brought them nearer. See yonder roof?--plates of beaten gold!
Yonder mule hath harness of exquisitely chased silver! Here comes a
noble chief and his favourite wife, with a retinue of slaves. The
soles of his sandals are of gold, the straps are studded with gems;
pearls are sewn in hundreds in his bright-hued robes! Yet is he
completely eclipsed by the splendour of his spouse. She is sprinkled,
hair and clothing, with the precious yellow dust. The breeze blows it
from her hair; she shakes it with a careless laugh from her silken
garments; the slaves walk behind on a gold-strewn pathway. They value
it no more than the beggar values the dust that blows along the Chepe
in London on a July day. Ah! a gloriously generous headpiece hath
Paignton Rob. Why stint the tale of glittering grains? In the land of
"El Dorado" the sands of the rivers can be coined into minted money.
Would mine hostess--who has so lavishly fed three poor sailor-men--like
to go to a banquet in the palace of "El Dorado"? Nothing
simpler!--'tis done with a wave of Rob's brown hand. See! the table
is gold; the platters are the same. The pillars of sweet cedar that
support the lofty roof are richer by far than those of Solomon's
temple. And the "gilded one" smiles at his queen, and lifts a cup of
rosy wine to his lips. Do the company notice that miracle of dazzling
light he holds in his delicate brown hand? 'Tis cut from one precious
stone. It is like a living fire, and the red wine glows warmly through
it.
Such the land of "El Dorado"--the golden realm!--the home of an
everlasting summer! Rob pauses dramatically; he comes to a full stop.
How mean is the parlour of the comfortable Wood Street tavern! How
paltry its pewter pots and clumsy flagons! How dull its smoky beams
and walls!
"Ah! Ah!"--longing sighs echo and re-echo. Then come questions,
timidly put at first, for no man would dare to throw suspicion on the
seaman's stories. But--but who has seen any of these things?
Who? Why, Rob knows men, who know other men, who have heard from other
men, who actually listened to dying Spaniards or faithful natives
recounting how they themselves had seen these sights. Rob himself had
gazed upon a sack of gold dust brought by a Jesuit missionary from "El
Dorado's" kingdom. The monk had shovelled it with his own bare hands
from the bed of a shallow lake. Nick Johnson, with a nervous and
apologetic cough, announced that he had seen a bag of pearls brought
from that same favoured land; and brother Ned, whose memory also got
some stimulus from Rob's stories, related how lie met a Spanish
prisoner in a Dutch town, who told him that the pebbles in "El
Dorado's" land were all pearls or jewels, sometimes one, sometimes the
other--just according to the haphazard luck of the thing. Then honest
Rob took some more sack, and found that he distinctly remembered
meeting a Bideford man on Plymouth Hoe who had sailed with a Bristol
captain whose twin brother had shot a no-headed, breast-eyed monster,
and had immediately afterwards been stunned by the stone club of a
two-headed gentleman of those same parts. 'Twas an exciting adventure
altogether, and Rob proceeded to remember the details and relate them.
As for the forests, the swamps, the lurking reptiles and ravenous
beasts, the huge crabs, venomous snakes, and the fevered ghosts and
ghouls that wreathed up after sunset from the pools and rivers--why!
Rob had seen all those things for himself. He had also handled bars of
gold and lumps of silver, and let pearls run through his fingers like
beads. Captain Dawe, Master Morgan, and the ladies might be assured
that they had heard but a tithe of the wonders and horrors that might
be told them. Ah! that wonderful New World! Brave Rob shook the head
that was bereft of an ear. He had talked to them for three hours, but
he had no gift of speech, and had been unable to give them any real
idea of the glamour and mystery that lay beneath the setting sun.
Nevertheless, he had set each heart and brain pulsing and throbbing
with wild dreams. The world was changing for Johnnie Morgan. The
admiral and Raleigh had opened his eyes in the glades of the forest,
and taught him to look beyond its treetops. Master Jeffreys had
extended his view, and all men and all things in London Town seemed to
probe deeper into his mind, and find new emotions and desires, and stir
them into active life. The grim old Forest of Dean was dwarfing to a
mere coppice; the rushing Severn was becoming an insignificant brook.
The forester's heart was expanding; his eyes were opening; his arms
were stretching forth to grasp that which was finite, yet infinite. He
dreamed strange dreams; his eyes started open to behold wondrous
visions. The fever of the time was getting into his blood. Vague,
half-understood impulses moved him hither and thither. He groped, and
touched nothing. He cried out, "What do I want?"
A woman answered the question the very next day.