THE CHAPLAIN'S CABIN.
"They moved, a gallant companie
Of stately ships, along;
While Scotland's banner in the van,
Led on the warlike throng."--_Ballad._
The king remained on board of the _Yellow Frigate_ for some days,
during which the rumour that he had abdicated and retired to Holland,
to avoid a new civil war, spread far and wide, from the gates of
Berwick to those of Kirkwall. Meanwhile, the faithful Lindesays of
Crawford and Montrose, with Thomas, Earl of Mar, and other loyal
peers, were exerting themselves to raise an armed force for the
protection of James, who appointed the Tower of Alloa as the place of
tryst; and thus, immediately after the storm, the _Yellow Frigate_
and her consort weighed anchor, and bore away for the Firth of Forth.
All communication between the ships and shore had been cut off since
the king's embarkation, as the town of Dundee was full of
malcontents; and indeed there were great fears that an exchange of
shots might take place as the vessels passed Sir Patrick Gray's
garrison in the Castle of Broughty.
Falconer and Barton had no means of ascertaining what was passing at
the house of Lord Drummond; but rumour reached them that he had sent
his four daughters to his Castle of Drummond in Strathearn, under the
escort of the Laird of Balloch.
It was a beautiful morning, about the last day of May; the river
shone like a mirror, but its shores yet slept in the sunny summer
haze when the frigates weighed anchor. The king was in his cabin,
but he heard the din of preparation for sea, as Barton gave the order
to "ship the capstan bars!"
Then, while his pages dressed him, he heard the sound of the fife and
the stamping of feet, as the sailors in their deerskin boots tripped
merrily round the capstan to the old air of "Trolee lolee lemane dou."
"Away aloft," cried Barton; "let fall."
Then the sails fell, and filled as they were sheeted home, on which
the frigate gathered way. "Set the fore-topmast staysail--quick
there--up with it, out of the cat's cradle."
Muffled in a surcoat of scarlet cloth trimmed with sables, King James
came on deck as the vessels passed Tents-muir Point, and all the
seamen took off their bonnets, while the drummer beat a march, and
the arquebussiers gave a profound salute.
"I feel now more keenly than ever how hollow is all this pomp of
royalty," said he, as he walked up the poop with the admiral, "and
how paltry the inheritance of pride! The poorest archer or pikeman
in any of my castles is happier than I, who to-day am called a king.
Believe me, admiral," he continued, sadly, "if my death would be a
bond of peace between my divided subjects, I could die happily!"
"And let those rapscallions get the weathergage of you? No, no--I
would never die while I could live--never sink while I could swim,
and that I consider good salt-water philosophy. Yet when the
death-watch _is_ piped, doubt not, your majesty, that old Andrew Wood
will be found at his post, though he would be sorry to strike his
flag before he had brought a few of these traitors up all standing at
the bar of Divine Justice. Your majesty is only half my age--and to
think of dying----"
"Father Zuill," said James, turning to the chaplain, who at that
moment came on deck; "in this matter, what opinion have you to offer
me?"
"We should remember the words of Seneca," replied the priest, folding
his hands on his breast, and looking down; "he says--it is uncertain
at what place death awaits thee, so wait thou for him in every place.
Before old age be careful to _live_ well, and in old age be careful
to _die_ well--and herein Seneca gave sound advice."
"Alas, good priest," responded the sad king, "art thou a Scottish
subject, and yet forget that thy kings--unhappy race!--never live to
become old men?"
"But their virtues and honour survive the tomb," replied the
chaplain; "true philosophy can only be acquired by mental suffering.
There was a learned Persian who was wont to aver that he who had not
suffered knew nothing."
Here the Admiral, who had a great aversion for this kind of
conversation, which he did not understand, hailed the maindeck.
"How is she going, Barton?"
"Eight knots--clear off the wet reel, Sir Andrew."
"Keep her away a point or two to the south, and close the lee ports,
for now we are past the guns of Broughty."
"We weary thee, worthy admiral," said the gentle king; "but I pray
thee, Sir Andrew, to excuse my sadness."
Largo bowed, and reddened with a feeling of vexation, that the king
had detected his impatience.
"I am a cold comforter for those who are in trouble," said he, "for I
am but a plain-spoken mariner, who know of nothing beyond the ropes
of a ship and the points of a compass; but we sailors, though our
tongues may be less ready than our hands, have our hearts in the
right place, our anchor is hope, and the blessed gospels our helm and
compass--religion is our polestar, and loyalty our pilot."
"I defy thee, Father Zuill, to have expressed this better," said the
king, with a smile; "how many of those dog nobles who are the curse
of Scotland could say as much?"
The sun was now above the sea, which rolled like a mighty sheet of
light around each rock and promontory; the low flat shore of Angus
slept in that sunny glow, but the bolder bluffs of Fife were slowly
becoming visible as the morning haze drew upward like a curtain of
gauze. The clear brilliance of the sea and sun made Father Zuill
think of his burning-glasses, and he invited the king (who found a
great pleasure in visiting every part of the ship) into his cabin,
whither the admiral felt himself constrained to accompany them; for,
as there were many points and features in the chaplain's studies
which he did not admire, he never entered this cabin when he could
avoid it.
Small, low, and panneled with oak, it was surrounded by shelves,
laden with books, glasses, retorts, and chemical apparatus, stuffed
animals, and various antiquities, fossils, and preparations, the use
of which the simple-minded seaman could not divine.
From one of the beams overhead hung a Roman lamp of bronze, which had
been found in the city of Camelon; and appended thereto were the egg
of an ostrich, a large amber bead, used as a charm to cure blindness,
and an amulet of green stone, the meaning of which, Sir Andrew, after
some hesitation, inquired.
"It is an Egyptian Nileometer," replied the priest; "in hieroglyphics
this was the symbol of _stability_, and as such was given of old to
Pthah and Osiris."
Sir Andrew, who did not appear to be much more enlightened on the
subject, rubbed his short beard, and ventured on one other inquiry.
"What means this black devil imprinted here on stone?"
"It is the Scarabaeus, the symbol of Pthah and the emblem of creative
power, inscribed on a tablet, supported by Serapis and Anubis."
"Fiend take me, father chaplain, if I understand all this!" said the
admiral, testily; "yet it may be all true as Barton's logbook, for
aught that I know to the contrary. But were these persons you name
demons like he who dwells at the Cape of Storms, and by one puff of
his sulphurous breath blew old Barty Diaz on his beam-ends? or like
the sea-ape--that scaly monster which hath the voice and figure of a
man, yet is, after all, but a fish? or like the great sea-serpent
whose yawning causes the whirlpool of Lofoden?"
"Nay," said the king, "they were the false gods of the pagan
Egyptians."
"Well, I do not like having their trumpery on board the _Yellow
Frigate_," replied the admiral. "Do they not smell of witchcraft?"
"Nay," replied the chaplain, angrily, "not half so much as these two
books behind you."
The admiral turned abruptly, and perceived two gigantic volumes,
bound in vellum and clasped with iron; they lay upon the stock of a
large brass culverin, which, as the port was closed, was lashed
alongside the _gun-wall_, or, as it is now named, gunnel.
"And what may they be anent?" he asked.
"The writings of Joannes de Sacro Bosco, _De Sphæra Mundi_, and the
magic book of Kirani, King of Persia, with the four treatises of Sir
Michael Scott of Balwearie, _De Secretis Naturæ_; his tracts on the
transmutation of metals, chiromancy, and astrology."
"Priest, I do not understand all this," said the admiral, growing
quite angry. "Gadzooks! to me it would seem that thou speakest very
much like a sorcerer, and all this place must be well swabbed out,
for it hath a devilish odour of necromancy. But the gunner to his
lintstock, the steersman to his helm, and the cook----"
"Sorcery!" interrupted the poor chaplain; "Heaven forbid! Dost
think, if these relics of the olden time had aught to do with
sorcery, they would lie side by side with this holy volume?" he
added, opening an oak-bound tome, containing St. Gregory's Homilies
on the Four Gospels. "Nay, this amber bead and this hieroglyphical
tablet would then explode like a bursting cannon."
The admiral craved pardon, but mentally resolved that, in the first
gale of wind, he would contrive to have the ship lightened of all
these strange and mysterious wares.
"Dost thou speak Latin, admiral?" asked the chaplain.
"Latin," reiterated the seaman, angrily, "how should I speak Latin?"
"With your tongue," replied the chaplain, simply.
"Thou laughest at me, Father Zuill; dost take me for a puling student
or a smock-faced friar, that I should know Latin? Nay, when such
drones as thee were at the grammar schule, and trembling like a wet
dog under a pedant's ferule, I was a bold sailor-lad, learning to
hand, reef, and steer, and being made a man of, even while my chin
was smooth as a lady's hand."
"Father Zuill was merely about to refer to a certain learned writer,
who wrote of the secrets with which Nature is filled," replied the
king, in a conciliatory tone. "Was it not so?"
"Exactly, please your grace; for with all his seamanship, he hath
much yet to learn. Now, admiral, with what is the water filled?"
"Fish," was the laconic reply.
The chaplain smiled, and pouring a drop into the palm of the
admiral's hand, placed a magnifying glass above it.
"Look, now, Sir Andrew," said he.
The admiral bent his eyes over it, and lo! an unknown world of little
monsters were crawling there!
"Now, by Our Lady of Pittenweem, there _is_ sorcery here!" said he,
aghast, as he flung the water on the deck, and rubbed his hand on his
trunk hose, and examined it again and again, to see whether all were
gone.
"Nay, nay," said the king, with one of his sad smiles, "thou wrongest
our good friend; for I assure thee, admiral, there is nought of
sorcery here. This will show thee, Sir Andrew, how unsafe it is to
laugh at anything merely because we do not understand it."
"Your majesty is right," said the chaplain, beginning to screw and
unscrew the mirrors of his warlike machine; "thus the admiral laughs
at me, because he knows not the theory of light, or the principles of
its production. Why do decayed wood and dead fish emit a light? You
know not; yet Pliny, who lived fourteen centuries ago, knew and wrote
of these things. Every earthly body will emit light when heated, for
the particles on their surfaces shine by attrition, and light is the
first principle of fire. Ah," continued the learned projector,
setting all the little mirrors in motion, and making them flash and
glitter in a very alarming manner, "if Heaven give me grace, I may
yet achieve much by my burning-glasses."
"Father Zuill," said James III., who had been reflecting that this
poor priest, in his realm of strange inventions and abstruse study,
was much happier than a King of Scotland and the Isles, "thou
mightest achieve more by striving to develop the use of the
magnifying-glass. Dost remember what Seneca says of a crystal
convexity?"
"Yes; and of a glass globe filled with water, which maketh letters
appear larger and brighter when viewed through it."
"I pray your majesty to excuse me," said the admiral, bowing; "for,
gadzooks, if this goes on for another ten minutes, he will give me a
fit of apoplexy. By the sound on deck, I think the wind is dead
off-shore; and as we have not a king under our pennon every day, I
beg leave to retire to the deck, and see how the land bears."