back the old way of kingly rule once more. But those stern-eyed men,
clad in steel, had tasted freedom. They knew their own strength now.
Was it likely that Louis of Daneshold, with the blood of Norse
ancestors in his veins, and those Crusader comrades of his, every whit
as sturdy fighters, would hold in great respect a tricky king, a
murderer of little boys, a man who could not lead to victory in his
own battle? No! a thousand times no! And iron clanged on iron when
word from the King was brought to the nobles as they camped at London.
Down came the mailed hand of many a knight with a resounding blow.
"No compromise! no treaty, save on our own terms!" was their warcry,
and what those terms were, John Lackland of England was soon to know.
One thousand two hundred and fifteen was the year; twenty-four years
after Richard's last Crusade, and his death. The world had been moving
fast meanwhile. Freedom was thought more of. The younger men had grown
up to be great captains in their turn; and in this year they did a
deed which was far reaching, for we feel the effects of it to this
day.
Helmeted, and sword in hand, with a host of stalwart men-at-arms at
their back, they called on John at Runnymede. It was not a friendly
call. There was too much iron present for that. Iron glove meant iron
hand that day, and John Lackland knew it. Sternly those assembled
barons told him that the time for smooth words was past. "The divine
right" of kings had been held up to the broad light of a modern day,
and found to be motheaten by time. Its fabric was thin as cobweb, and
there was nothing "divine" about it; nothing but the plain fact that
"king's right" was merely the might of the strong, not the right of
the just, and if it must come to that, they were muscular Christians
too, and could behead a man as well as another. So then and there they
laid before him a written agreement or "charter," as they called it,
and told him to place at the end of it the written signature of the
king, which would thus make it the law of the land.
It was a bitter moment for that sullen king. He would have refused to
sign it had he dared. But there, to right and left of him, scowled the
menacing faces of the fiercest fighters in all England. Crusader waved
his hand to Crusader across the hall, and in that greeting the low
clash of steel rippled through the ranks. To refuse that signature
meant--not the death of his friends, his comrades, his helpers in
doing evil. That result not greatly would have troubled him. No! It
meant what to him was a more serious matter. It was his own life now
which he must buy by his signature, or die. He was not ready for that,
so John Lackland of England signed the charter.
What a great thing for England and the world it was! for among other
things the agreement read that
"NO FREEMAN SHALL BE IMPRISONED OR PUT TO DEATH, OR HAVE HIS PROPERTY
TAKEN FROM HIM, BUT BY THE JUDGMENT OF HIS PEERS (his equals) OR BY
THE LAW OF THE LAND!"
And now, seven hundred years later, if it is claimed that a man does
wrong and breaks the law he is arrested and brought before a judge.
But before that judge can sentence him to death or long imprisonment
the whole story is told before twelve men, called a jury, who decide
whether he deserves punishment or not. And this is the great gift
handed down to us by those barons of old from the days when, if he
wished a person's death, it was enough for a king to say, "I do not
like that man!"
To this day we speak of that agreement as "the great charter;" or more
often, we use the words of the Latin language in which it was written
(since all learned men then, whether Saxon, Norman, French or Dane,
could read and understand that common tongue) words which mean the
same, and we call it
"MAGNA CHARTA."
SPARK XII.
AND HOW IT WENT HALF ROUND THE EARTH, YET CROSSED AGAIN AT LAST THE
TRAIL OF LEIF ERICSSON.
A thistle bloomed in a garden. A small boy forgot to pull it up. His
twin sister saw it, but said that thistle-pulling was not her work, so
it went to seed. One seed was caught up by a wind and went drifting,
drifting, a little balloon of thistledown, until it reached the clouds
and travelled westward with them for thousands of miles. Then the
cloud struck a mountain and burst into rain. The seed went down among
the drops. Months afterward a boy with a dark skin came stealing along
that mountain slope, trying to get shot at a deer, and put his bare
knee on an unknown plant that pricked him sharply,--so sharply that he
said, "Oh!" or a word in his language which meant the same. It was
lucky for the deer, which took fright and ran away, but the boy had no
dinner that day.
I like to think that splinters from my Iron Star are journeying across
the world somewhat more solidly than thistledown, yet making
themselves felt wherever they stop to rest. I like to think that
possibly one splinter was forged into the identical steel needle which
formed the indicator in the office of the first Atlantic cable, that
three-thousand-mile-long wire, covered with gutta percha to keep out
the salt water, which was laid from England to America under the
ocean. You know that we telegraph by electricity, which is lightning
in harness. But you may not know that this first deep-sea wire sent
messages which were read by the way in which a flash of light was
reflected in a mirror, wavering to and fro; and that the very first
message was a greeting of peace and goodwill from Queen Victoria to
President Buchanan.
The first message sent by the cable read as follows:--
"To the President of the United States, Washington
"The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful
completion of this great international work, in which the Queen has
taken the greatest interest.
"The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in
fervently hoping that the electric cable, which now connects Great
Britain with the United States, will prove an additional link between
the nations, whose friendship is founded upon their common interest
and reciprocal esteem.
"The Queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the President,
and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the United
States."
Let us pick up the thread of the story of one sharp splinter which we
have lost sight of;--the sword which Louis of Daneshold lost in
battle, which Wulf had carried and which Ulf had made far back in the
days of the Northmen.
Men do not linger long around a battlefield after the fight is over,
unless it is their fate to stay there forever; and with rattle of
mailed harness and blare of trumpet-calls the Crusaders tramped
heavily away through the sand, leaving behind them here and there a
red spot on the earth, here and there a Saracen. Then, in time, a
lightfooted, lightfingered troop of Arabs dashed into the little
valley, sharply scanning the ground to right and left for forgotten
weapons worth the picking up.
One wild, swift riding young fellow came sweeping along with his white
burnous, or robe, trailing behind him in the air, and down he bent to
earth like a circus rider as his eye caught a flash of sunlight. With
a shout of triumph he snatched up a straight cut-and-thrust sword,
which in weight and size seemed exactly made for him. This was unusual
luck; for, as he said gleefully to his comrades, while Frankish swords
were not uncommon trophies of war yet usually they were heavy, clumsy
things, not easily wielded by the hands of Eastern men. So, that night
by the camp fire at the little well under the date palms, Mohammed Ali
Ben Ibyn, no longer a wild, reckless horseman, but a grave, dignified
young man, thrust a fresh coal into the bowl of his long stemmed pipe,
handed it politely to an elder friend, and beckoned to a slave to
bring him that new weapon from his tent. Taking it he made a few
passes and cuts at the empty air to learn the balance of it, then set
the point of it on the metal boss of a small shield at his feet,
steadily pressing downward.
Down, down went the hilt while the splendidly tempered blade curved
under the pressure into a bow, until before their astonished eyes hilt
and point kissed each other. Then the spring of the steel slowly
overcame the muscle in the arm that bent it, and the hilt turned ever
so slightly in the hand, yet quite enough; for the point glanced from
the metal and sank into the leather, the blade sprung into line, and
with a whiz the little buckler slid out from under foot, flew up from
the sand as though it had wings and skimmed away far beyond the
firelight.
"Allah kerim!" cried the astonished Arab. "God is merciful! This is a
sword for a sultan. See, it is as straight as when it was made. No
chief in the army of Saladin has a better blade."
"True, O son of Sheik Ibyn. The blade is perfect. But the hilt is not.
Seest thou not that it is made like the cross of the infidel, the
unbeliever? Good luck will not follow thee, wielding that sign."
"That is easily remedied,--" began Mohammed Ali, but got no further;
for from one of the other fires a tall Arab stepped forward, clad in a
long robe and a white turban, and with a beard that reached his waist.
Lifting his powerful voice he sent it forth in a chant that made
itself heard from end to end of the camp; and far out in the
surrounding desert the jackals that whined and skulked among the
sandhills dropped to earth hushed by the sonorous call. Not a leaf in
the palms was astir. Not a breath of the night wind swayed a tent
curtain. The chant rang through a stillness broken only by the low
snap and crackle of the fires.
"Ashhadu an la illah illa-llah,
Ashhadu anna Mohammadar ra-sool ulla."
chanted the long robed priest. "God is God, and Mohammed is his
Prophet! There is no God but God! To prayer, O sons of the Faithful!--
"just as at that hour, all over Arabia, other priests in other places
were sending out their warning summons in camp and city, under the
palms and from the lofty minarets of countless round-domed mosques or
temples, wherever ruled the might of the Eastern faith.
Forth from their fires stepped the dark skinned warriors and formed in
line, facing Mecca, the birthplace of their prophet Mohammed, and to
them a most holy place. Not ashamed were they to say their prayers to
the Father of All, nor to ask for help and guidance; and the wildest
fighter of them all knelt and prayed as earnestly as a child, knowing
well that if God was with him it mattered nothing if the whole world
was against him; although in the desert the Arab's own proverb says
that "No man meets a friend."
Then, their prayers ended, it was night, and time for sleep. And,
after all, it was not Mohammed Ali Ben Ibyn's hand which put a new
hilt to that sword, but another's; for its fame, in that land where a
good weapon is beyond price, was carried from camp to camp, and the
sword itself became the cause and centre of a little war all its own.
Once a man stole it, and on a swift camel he fled by night only to
fall into the power of still greater thieves and wickeder men. Thus
the sword, like a firebrand, was passed from hand to hand. At one time
it even got as far south as Abyssinia, in Africa, and became by
purchase the property of a Hamran Arab, one of the most daring,
reckless, fearless, skilful hunters that ever walked on earth, as his
people are to this day.
He was one of four brothers, and every day in the hunting season they
used to ride out together elephant hunting, yet armed with nothing but
their swords. In spite of his great size an elephant is wonderfully
quick in movement, and it is a good horse that can outrun him. Yet one
of these four brothers, the smallest and lightest of them, would ride
up close to the head of a wild elephant and tease him into a charge.
The instant that the great ears were cocked forward and the wicked
little eyes flashed the warning that he was coming, round would whirl
the good horse and away he would fly with the great grey beast
striding after him like a runaway steam-engine, screaming with rage.
Then up from the rear would come the other brothers like hawks; a leap
to the ground while at full speed, sword in hand! a swift, circling
blow, and the steel would bite deep into the thick leg just above the
heel, and like a gadfly the hunter would be away and in saddle again
before the blow of the whistling trunk could reach him.
Another tempting by the youngest brother, another vain charge, another
flash of the circling sword in the sun, and with the sinews cut in
both hind legs that elephant's running days would be over, and
presently he would die almost a painless death from loss of blood,
slain in spite of his great size by just two strokes of a sword! Then
at the nearest village there would be great rejoicing. The young girls
would clap their hands and praise the courage of the brothers; all the
older people would sharpen their knives and prepare to go to market,
for even one elephant could not be carried home in a basket. It would
provide steaks and roasts enough for a whole village; while the four
brothers would carefully cut out the great tusks of gleaming white
ivory,--each perhaps weighing half as much as a man, and worth a
little fortune to them when traders reached their tribe. For such
ivory was sold from hand to hand until sometimes it reached even far-
away Britain, where it was made into sword-hilts, thrones, and other
things for kings.
Those were peaceful days for the sword, and useful ones. It is no
small matter to provide food for a whole village full.
Centuries rolled away, and men went with them. From hand to hand went
the sword of Ulf, ever the possession of one who knew its worth, and
more than one etched on its blade, with acid or otherwise, brief
sayings, each in their own tongue--now forgotten; just as even
nowadays you may sometimes find on a Spanish blade some good word as a
warning to the user, such as,
"Draw me not without cause; sheathe me not without honour." One day,
to Ghent, in the Netherlands, there came a man, short, though broadly
built. His hair was chestnut, and in his eyes there was a glint of the
same red, especially when he was angry, which was not seldom; for as
he said of himself, "A little pot is soon hot."
English he was by birth, and of a noble family; yet for many a year he
had lived the life of a soldier, and to some of the great captains who
warred in that time against the Turks he was not unknown as one who
did daring deeds when in the mood, or when it was his duty. In Ghent,
then, there lived an old armourer to whom this man did some great
service in protecting his goods and very possibly his life from
robbers.
The soldier made light of the matter, but the old armourer took a
different view and was very grateful; so grateful, indeed, that from
his store of arms of all sorts he brought forth a curious sword which
had a curious story, for he told a long, rambling tale of love and war
in which the weapon had figured, claiming that it came from Persia
last, yet was made in Damascus, a city of great fame as a place where
the best sword-blades were forged. It was of splendid steel, it is
true, yet if the old man had trusted his eyes instead of his ears he
would have seen that, whether it came last from Persia or not, whether
the hilt was put on at Damascus or not, yet that nearly straight, cut-
and-thrust blade was not the fashion in which Eastern swords were
made. On the contrary, it was distinctly a Western style. This weapon
the armourer insisted on the soldier accepting as a gift; and he,
seeing how much the giver desired it, was not unwilling, taking care
at a later time to do the armourer another good turn in a matter of a
large order for arms and armour, although the old man knew it not.
Thus he kept the balance of favours even.
Now this sword had inscriptions etched on it in unknown tongues, and
also the sun, moon, and stars of the night deeply bitten in by the
craft of some former owner. I will not say that it was the sword of
Ulf. I will say only that I like to think it might have been; for the
short soldier took it, whistled it through the air around his head a
few times, and straightway went and had a few signs of his own
engraved upon it.
In Holland at that time there was a little company of English men and
women who had come over there because of trouble about religious
matters at home, where they were not allowed peaceably to worship God
in the way they thought was right. They were planning to go to the new
world which had been discovered across the seas, and it seemed to the
impetuous soldier that they would have need of him in such a journey,
so he went with them. They did not sail direct from Holland, but went
over to England again first, and sailed from Plymouth. Do you not know
now the rest of the story without my telling it? Do you not know that
the famous sword of that fiery little soldier, who valiantly stood so
many times between those wanderers and death, is now to be seen among
the most precious relics treasured at the old town of Plymouth,
Massachusetts? And the name of that sword was "Gideon," and the name
of the noble, quick-tempered, warm-hearted little soldier, a name
which will be remembered as long as the United States of America
exist, was Captain Myles Standish.