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_THE GREAT CAPTAIN._
_A STORY OF THE DAYS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH._
BY
KATHARINE TYNAN HINKSON,
_Author of "The Golden Lily," "The Queen's Page," "Her Father's
Daughter," etc._
_New York, Cincinnati, Chicago_:
BENZIGER BROTHERS,
_Publishers of Benziger's Magazine_
Copyright, 1902, by _Benziger Brothers_.
Printed in the United States of America
[Illustration: _"While I stood stammering and staring a lean finger was
pointed at me." (See page 24.)_]
CONTENTS.
- I.--Of Myself, that Great Captain Sir Walter Raleigh, and how I
became his Leal Man ............................................ 7
- II.--The Apparition of the Monk ................................ 21
- III.--Of My Secret, the Lord Boyle, and Other Matters .......... 37
- IV.--The Dead Hand ............................................. 52
- V.--Of a Strait Place and a Quiet Time ......................... 67
- VI.--The Treasure-ship ......................................... 83
- VII.--Our Last Years Together .................................. 99
- VIII.--An Unravelled Thread .................................... 113
CHAPTER I.--OF MYSELF, THAT GREAT CAPTAIN SIR WALTER RALEIGH, AND OF HOW
I BECAME HIS LEAL MAN.
I never knew my father and mother, having been born into a time like
that of the great desolation foretold by the Scriptures. They were the
days of what I have heard called the Rebellion of the Desmonds, when
that great league was made against the power of Eliza, the English
Queen, by the Irish princes, which went down in a red sunset of death
and blood. Indeed I myself had starved, like other innocents, on the
breasts of their dead mothers, had it not been for the pity of him I
must ever regard as the greatest of Englishmen, albeit no friend, but
rather the spoiler, of those of my blood and faith.
It was indeed while the end was not yet quite determined, for although
Sir James Desmond, the wisest and most skilled of their generals in the
art of war, was dead, there was yet the Seneschal of Imokilly and other
Geraldine lords fighting for their inheritance and their country. It was
on a day when Sir Walter Raleigh with a handful of troopers was
returning from a visit to the Lord Deputy at Dublin that he found me. He
had expected no ambush, and rode slowly, being fatigued by his journey,
through the great woods to the Ford of the Kine. Now the woods covered
many dead and dying, and as the Captain rode at the head of his men I
came running from the undergrowth, a lusty and fearless lad of three,
and held up my hands to the foremost rider. I had as like as not been
spitted on a trooper's sword but that the Captain himself, leaning from
his horse, swung me to his saddle-bow.
He had perhaps a thought of his own little Wat, by his mother's knee in
an English pleasaunce, for, as I have heard since, he talked with me and
provoked me to confidence. Nor was I slow to answer all he asked, being
a bright and bold child, which perhaps was the saving of me, since I
flung an arm round the great Captain's steel-clad neck, and perched by
him as bold as any robin that is housed in the frost.
But as we rode along in the summer evening, fearing no danger, though
danger there was, for my lord the Seneschal of Imokilly had word of our
coming, and as we forded the river was upon us from the further bank
with his kerns, three times our number. But the Captain rode at them
with his sword drawn, slashing hither and thither, and sorely I must
have hampered him, and much marvel it was that he did not loose me into
the stream. But that he held me shows what manner of man he was, that
being fierce and violent in battle he yet was of so rare magnanimity.
Little lad as I was then, I remember to this day the cold of his steel
and silver breastplate against my cheek.
And when he had hewed his way through them and was on the further bank
in safety, he looked back and saw one of his men, Jan Kneebone by name,
dismounted in the stream and in peril. Then, setting me down gently, he
rode back into deep water to his man's deliverance, and having slain two
kerns who had him in jeopardy he flung him upon his saddle-bow and rode
with him again up the steep bank. It was a great feat of arms, and might
well have cost the English this most splendid soldier; yet I have heard
Sir Walter say that the Desmond Lord of Imokilly might have slain him
had he willed it. "And think not, little Wat," he said to me years
after, speaking upon that day, "that chivalry departed from the world
with the glorious pagan, Saladin; for in many places I have found it,
nor least in this wild country of thine; and it is an exceeding good
thing," he added, "that men will forget their passions amid the heat of
battle, and will remember only that the enemy they fight against is
brave."
Wat, he called me from himself, because he loved me, and after his
little son. Indeed, he seemed in time to love me as fondly as any
father; and while I was yet a little one and learning from him swordplay
and fence, horsemanship, and other manly arts, I began to understand
that amid all his splendor he carried sadness beneath it, and was a
banished man. He had lost the Queen's favor--not because he had enemies
at court, for Eliza was not one to be misled by rumors or cunning, but
because he had clasped around the white neck of Mistress Throckmorton, a
dame of honor, the milky carcanet of pearls the Queen's vanity desired
to adorn her leanness, which in time the Queen might have forgiven, if
he had not privily married the same Mistress Throckmorton; for she would
have but one moon in the sky, and she liked not the gallantest man of
her kingdom to be her dame's satellite. So he was become a soldier of
fortune, and since he might not have his lady or his little son with him
in these wild times, they abode in his quiet English Manor-house, while
his sword slashed a way to fortune for them through the inheritance of
the great, unhappy Desmonds.
In later years, when I had become well acquainted with the character of
my lord, it hath seemed to me that he was not one for marriage; for
danger was his love, and he was homesick away from her smile. And yet no
more tender lord than he to the Lady Elizabeth might be found, and he
loved his little Walter greatly.
But presently, the war being ended and the last Desmond Earl slain by a
traitor in a cabin in the mountains, my lord sailed away from the harbor
of Youghall to London, to the end that he might win permission for
another expedition in search of treasure, and so regain the Queen's
favor. By this time I was a tall lad, and was fain to go with my lord,
but this he would by no manner of means permit. I hated so to live my
life without him, even for a time, that I had thought of hiding myself
aboard his ship, the Bon Aventure, but the fear which I had of him
besides my love held me back. I had never seen him angry with me, and I
prayed that I never should, so I heard him in silence when he bade me
stay. Taking me aside then, he said to me, lovingly:
"I wrong you not, Wat, because I go without you, for Queen's favor is
vain, and it may be I go to Traitor's Gate. You are no meat for the
Tower, lad."
Then I cried out that if he went to the Tower I should go with him; at
which he seemed pleased, patting my shoulder with great gentleness.
"It may be," he said, "that I return again to this Irish exile I weary
of. Or, in the greatest event of all, I shall fit out a fleet for the
Spanish Main, and make the Dons stand and deliver. That would be
happiest for us, boy, for indeed I make but a bad port-sailor."
"You sail in the Bon Aventure," I said; "it is of good omen."
"It is indeed," he replied, "and I thank you for reminding me of it."
He looked out to sea, where the English leopards flapped at the wind's
will on the mast of his ship, and I think I never saw such a longing in
a man's eyes: so great was it that my heart bled for him. I had thought
perhaps that he longed so much to see the Lady Elizabeth and his boy.
But he spoke, and I knew he was thinking of the free life of the rovers
of the sea, not of that lady whom he so tenderly loved.
"If we prosper," he said, "we shall sail for Guiana, and found there,
who knows, another Virginia. The spoil of half a dozen fat galleons and
a new country. These are things that even Gloriana need not disdain. Yet
Essex hath all her ear, and Essex is mine enemy."
"If you succeed, my lord--" I began.
"If I succeed I shall send for you. If I am sent to the Tower there are
certain matters concerning you to which Master Richard Boyle is privy,
and which he will impart to you. But it may be I shall be sent back to
rot here; if so, there is nothing more to be said."
So on a certain day of lusty summer my lord sailed away in the Bon
Aventure, with Master Edmund Spenser, whose company had so greatly
lightened his exile. The same carried with him two books of his poem,
_The Faery Queen_, which he designed to have printed in London. He was
bound to return, whether my lord came or not, for he had left at his
Castle of Kilcohnour his lady whom he had married at Cork, and his young
son. The same lady he made famous forever by the most beautiful of
marriage-songs, which thing I had come to know, young as I was, for my
lord would have me a scholar as well as a soldier, and I was become a
very excellent scribe, so that the fair copying of Master Spenser's
poems came to me.
I remember my last glimpse of them ere the Bon Aventure sunk over the
rim of ocean, and evening seemed all at once to settle on the world. My
lord was wearing a suit of black velvet over white, very finely
embroidered with seed-pearls. The plume of his hat was held in its place
by a clasp of diamonds. Beside him Master Spenser, in his black, looked
over-grave. But when did Sir Walter--whom I call here "my lord" out of
the love and loyalty I bore him--fail to shine before all the world by
the splendor of his apparel as well as by his manly beauty and the
greatness of his deeds?
After they had gone, set in the endless dusk of summer evening, I grew
tired of wandering about the gardens, so strange and sad without their
master. So I went within doors, where some one had set a starveling
rushlight in the chamber that was my lord's dining-hall, and there I sat
me down with my Latin grammar and the Virgil my lord had given me. At
this time I sat daily on the wooden benches of the College School at
Youghall, and had my learning of an old clerk Sir Walter had summoned
here from Devonshire to take the place of the doctors and singing-men
who had gone with the Desmonds. But my heart was heavy, and my head, and
I had pushed away from me untasted the supper a serving-wench had
carried to me.
Now all was very still in the house, so that the tap-tapping of a twig
by the window-pane seemed to me a little frightful, although I was a boy
of spirit. Outside was the black of an early summer night before the
moon has risen, and going to the window upon the tapping I could see no
star for the myrtle boughs. Yet sure I was that were I outside the
purple would be pierced by innumerable eyes of light, and I was greatly
tempted to return to the garden. Indeed, out in the night there would be
companionship, although every bird slept well within the boughs. It is
the houses men build that breed these phantoms of the brain, and not the
free air. But disregarding the temptation I went back to my book,
knowing full well the pleasure it would give my lord to learn that I had
been diligent in his absence. Wonderful it was that he was hardly less
in love with learning than with adventure. Indeed a man of such parts
was this knight and master of mine that there seemed to be nothing
admirable in which he did not excel. And if I am blind to his faults,
even to this day when I repent me of certain share of mine in his
adventures, let that be forgiven me, for surely I owed him all love and
loyalty.
As the night went I heard the scullions who had been disporting
themselves in the town return one by one, and the bolting and barring of
doors. The songs of the sailors which came up from the shipping in the
bay fell off and ceased. Silence fell on the town, a silence as unbroken
as that of the sleepers yon in St. Mary's yard, and presently drowsiness
overcoming me I too slept.