When all the riches of the globe beside
Flow'd in to thee with every tide;
When all that nature did thy soil deny,
The growth was of thy fruitful industry;
When all the proud and dreadful sea,
And all his tributary streams,
A constant tribute paid to thee,
Extended Thames.
COWLEY.
The country through which Robin travelled on his journey to London
presented an aspect very different from that which it now assumes.
Blackheath was noted for highwaymen; and there was a fair and reasonable
chance of being robbed and murdered between Greenwich and London. The
Ranger never paused from the time he set out until he found himself
under a portion of the long brick-wall that still divides the richly
ornamented park from the arid and unfertilised heath. He sat down
beneath its shadow, and regaled himself with a morsel of ship-biscuit
and a mouthful of brandy; then undid the fastening of his wallet, and
selected from amid its contents a neatly and skilfully made hump, which,
having previously removed his coat, he dexterously transferred to his
shoulder, and then donned a jacket into which the hump fitted with
extraordinary exactness. He next drew from his bosom a small hand-glass,
and painted and dyed his face with different preparations, so that even
Barbara would have failed to recognise her friend and admirer. Having
placed a patch over one eye, and stuck a chin-tuft of black hair under
his lip, he seemed satisfied with his appearance, replaced the glass and
sundry other things in his sack, then, with his usual agility, mounted
one of the overhanging trees, and concealed it amid the branches. As he
resumed his journey, he might have been taken for a gipsy minstrel, for
suspended round his neck was a small cracked gittern, retaining only two
strings. This, as if in mockery of his assumed misfortune, he had rested
on the hump, while the riband, which was of bright scarlet, encircled,
like a necklace, his swarthy neck, that was partially uncovered. In his
steeple-crowned hat was stuck a peacock's feather; and any passenger
would have been puzzled to ascertain whether the motley deformed being
was a wit or a fool.
"Now"--thus ran his thoughts--"Now do I defy any of the serving-men at
Whitehall to recognise their play-fellow, Sir Willmott Burrell's valet,
in the gipsy-looking rascal into which I have, of myself, manufactured
myself! Verily, Robin, thou art a most ingenious fellow! Apt at
contrivances--even nature is thy debtor, for thou hast increased her
deformity! I could gain no tidings of the Cavalier in my own proper
person--of that I am certain; because the people there will either not
know, or be so effectually cautioned--there would be no use in fishing
in such water. Ah! your heart's blood Puritans will never defile
themselves by questioning such as me. 'Slife, I think Old Noll himself
could hardly make me out! I wonder what would Barbara say now, if she
were to behold me in this disguise! I should not like her to see me, and
that's the truth; for no man likes to look worse than he is to his
mistress, and, the devil knows, I can ill spare my beauty! My _beauty_!"
he thought again, and then chuckled one of his vile laughs, the most
decided indicators of a scornful and bitter temper.
Robin did not pursue the high London road, but struck across the Park;
and his love of fine scenery induced him to pause at the top of
Greenwich Hill, and look around on the richness and beauty of the
prospect. Flowing to the right, the broad and glorious Thames turned its
liquid mirror to the skies, and reflected every passing cloud upon its
translucent bosom. But our noble river had more than clouds to shadow
it;--the treasures of the universe floated for us upon its wave--the
spoils of conquered and humbled nations left their track along its
shores; Spain, France, and either India--the whole world, rendered us
homage and paid us tribute, and proud was our own Father Thames to bear
that homage and that tribute to his favoured city. Well might the great
cupola of St. Paul erect its heavy but majestic head, and peer forth
through the first beams of day upon the rich and blessed river! Robin
felt his heart swell within his bosom when he looked down upon the
waters and the land of which every Englishman is so justly proud. "It is
my own country!" was his emphatic ejaculation, as he gazed on this
picture of English wealth and English cultivation. The little village of
Greenwich, straggling at the foot of the hill, approaching closely to
the palace, and then wandering along the great Dover and London road,
formed a more pleasant object than it does now that it has been
magnified into a great and populous town. Many wooden cottages nested
under the Park walls, and sent their smoke curling through the foliage
of the fine trees that formed a bold, rich back-ground. The palace,
extending its squares and courts along the river's brink, gave an air of
dignity to the whole scene; while the tinkling music of the sheep-bells,
echoing from the heath, lent to it a soft and harmonising effect. On the
river, in the extreme distance, an English vessel was towing up some of
the Spanish prizes which the gallant Blake had forwarded to their future
home: they trailed the water heavily and gloomily, like captives as they
were; and their dismantled and battered aspect afforded ample subject
for discourse to a group of old sailors, who, though not yet possessed
of their Palace-Hospital, found many convenient dwellings in the
village, and added not a little to the picturesque appearance of the
hill, as, congregated in a small party, they handed a rude spy-glass
from one to another,
"And told how ships were won."
"Ah!" said one veteran, "I heard old Blake myself say, soon after his
Highness was made the same as a king, and many lubberly scoundrels put
up their backs at it--'Boys,' says he, and, my eyes! how nobly he does
stand upon the deck o' his own ship, the Triumph!--'Boys,' says he, 'it
isn't for us to mind state affairs, but keep foreigners from fooling
us.' D--n it, _that_'s what I call English."
"So it is," continued another, whose weather-beaten body was supported
on a pair of wooden legs, and who had just joined the little party of
which Robin made one; "so it is, Jack, and what _I_ call English, worth
ten books full of other lingo; wasn't I with him in Fifty-three, when,
with only twelve vessels, he beat Van Tromp, who had seventy ships of
the line and three hundred merchantmen under convoy? and hadn't the
Triumph seven hundred shot in her hull? Well, though it was there I lost
my precious limbs, I don't grudge them, not I: it's as well to go to the
fish as to the worms, and any how we have the king's pension."
"Jemmy," said a waggish-looking sailor, with only one eye and half an
arm, twirling some tobacco in his mouth at the same time--"Jemmy, it's
rum talking about royalty--you forget----"
"It's no such thing as rum talking, Terry; I don't mind who governs
England--she's England still. It warms my blood, too, to think of the
respect paid the Union Jack by all nations. When our admiral, God bless
him! was in the road of Cadiz, a Dutch fellow didn't dare to hoist his
flag; so, ye see, the Dutch knows what's what, though both men and ships
are heavy sailors."
"Yes," chimed in the first speaker, "that was the time when his health
was drunk with a salute of five guns by one of the French commanders:
and it's noble, so it is, to see the order he keeps those Algerines in.
Why, if in searching the Sallee rovers they found an English prisoner
aboard, they sent him off to Blake as civil as possible, hoping to get
favour. But that didn't hinder him from peppering both the Dey of
Algiers, and the infidel rascal at Tunis."
"I hear that the burning of the Spanish ships in the Road of Santa Cruz
was the most wonderful thing ever done," observed he of the wooden legs;
"and it's desperate bad news that he's taken on for sickness; for sure
am I, that the Protector will never have so faithful a friend, or so
good a servant. And so I told the sergeant, or whatever you choose to
call him, of the Ironsides, who stopped at the Oliver's Head, down below
yesterday, to bait horses, or some such thing:--says I, 'If Blake goes,
let your master look to himself.'--But I hate all soldiers--lubberly,
sulky, black-looking fellows--no spirit in them, particularly now, when
it's the fashion not to drink, or swear, or do any thing for
divarsion--ugh!" And the old man's ire against the "land-lubbers" grew
so hot, that he turned away, and stumped stoutly down the hill. Robin
was not tardy in following, nor long in getting into conversation,
though the remembrance of the "land lubbers" still rankled in the old
man's mind.
"Here's a most excellent glass," said Robin, pulling a pocket-glass from
his vest, and showing it to the sailor; "you can count the very
shot-holes in the vessel they are towing up."
The sailor took it with a sneer of incredulity and a glance of distrust
at the speaker, but neither were of long duration.
"Yes," said he, after gazing through it attentively for some minutes;
"yes, that is something like what I call a glass. 'Gad, it makes me
young again to see those marks--every bullet had its billet, I warrant
me. The eye you have left, my friend, does not look, though, as if it
wanted such a helper."
"Nor does it," said Robin; "and, as a token of the great honour which I
bear to the wooden walls of Old England, you are welcome to keep it."
"Keep your glass, sir!" repeated the wooden-legged hero; "no; you don't
look like one who could afford to make such a present. But I'll buy it,
I'll buy it, if you'll let me--that I will."
"I'd rather you would take it," replied Robin with much courtesy, and in
a well-feigned foreign accent; "for though I am a poor wanderer, one of
another country, trying to pick up a little by my skill in music, and
from those charitable Christians who pity my deformity, yet I love the
very look of a sailor so much, that I would give even my gittern to a
true son of the sea."
"Say you so, my boy?" shouted the old tar, "then d--n me now if I do
take it, nor I'll not buy it either; but I'll swop for it any thing I
have, and then, d'ye see, we'll have something to remember each other
all our days."
"The sailors of England," pursued the crafty Robin, "are never seen but
to be remembered--feared on sea and loved on land."
"You're the best-hearted foreigner I ever fell in with," said the old
man; "so let us make full sail for the Oliver's Head, and settle the
matter there; perhaps you'll give us a taste of your calling," touching
as he spoke the cracked gittern with the point of his stick. "My eyes!
how Ned Purcell will stare at this glass! His own! why his own an't a
fly-blow to it."
"The Oliver's Head" was a gay hostelry by the road-side, with what was
called in those days a portraiture of the Protector swinging from a post
which stood on the slip of turf that skirted the house. It was kept by a
bluff landlord and a young and pretty landlady, young enough to be her
husband's daughter, and discreet enough to be an old man's wife with
credit and respectability. There were benches all round the house, one
side of which looked towards the river, and the other out upon the
heath, and up the hill; and a pleasant view it was either way; but the
sailor chose the water-prospect, and established himself and Robin on a
small separate bench that was overshadowed by a green and spreading
cherry-tree. Having settled the exchange, which ended in Robin's
receiving a small Spanish dagger in exchange for his glass, the seaman
insisting on his taking a glass of another sort; to which Robin was by
no means averse, as he had not yet been able to obtain the desired
information relative to the Ironsides.
While they sat under the cherry-tree, however, the wished-for
opportunity occurred.
"What a pity it is," observed Robin, "that they don't cut canals through
the country, and do all the business by water instead of land. They do
it, you know, in Venice."
"There'd be sense and reason in that," replied the sailor in great glee.
"I never could see much use in the land at any time."
"And then we should have all sailors and no soldiers," continued Robin.
"Ah!" said the sailor, "I doubt if the Protector could ever be brought
to see the good of that; he's mortally fond of the army."
"You had some of his own Ironsides here yesterday, you said?"
"Ay, they were after something or other, I'll answer for that; for
though they never go the same road twice, if they can by any means help
it, yet they have been about the place, and round the neighbourhood,
very much lately. I did hear that Noll was after some smuggling, or
devilrie, down a little beyond Gravesend. He never can let a thing alone
when once he gets scent of it."
"Was there any one, any prisoner, or chap of that sort, with them last
night, or yesterday?" Robin ventured to ask.
"No, not that I saw or noticed," said the sailor.
"Yes, there was," replied the landlady, who had been leaning over the
hatch-door, listening to their conversation, and scrutinising the person
of her new guest. "There was a young gentleman, not like a prisoner
either, only I fancied under some restraint; and I brought him a better
stoup of wine than I brought the rest. Poor gentleman! he seemed
downhearted, or like one crossed in love."
"Crossed in a fiddlestick!" said the bluff old landlord: "your woman's
head is ever running on love."
"Then it does not run on you, I am sure," retorted Robin. "Your stick
would get no music out of any fiddle."
"I could make as good music out of a currycomb, as you out of that
cracked thing that sits perched on your hump--like a monkey on the back
of a dromedary."
"Get your currycomb, and we'll make a wager of it," replied Robin,
unslinging his gittern, while some of the old sailors crowded round the
challenger, and voted it a fair challenge.
"Ugh!" grunted forth the bluff landlord, turning away. "When I play, it
shall be against a Christian Englishman, and none of your foreign
jigmaries."
"Play, play, nevertheless," said the young landlady, handing Robin at
the same time a measure of fine ale; then stooping as if to untie the
knot that fastened the gittern, she whispered in his ear. "And there was
one who, with a few others, left the party, rode on, and took no
refreshment. I knew him well; but if the youth be a friend of yours,
depend upon't he's kindly thought of, for the leader put a broad-piece
into my hand as he passed, and told me to see that the Cavalier was
properly attended to."
"Took they the London road?" inquired Robin.
"Ay; though 'tis hard to say how long such as they continue on any
path."
"What are you doing, Maud?" inquired the rough landlord, who had just
returned, and was lounging against the door-post.
"There! I have broken the string that went round his neck," she said
aloud, without heeding the question. "I must get you another."
When she returned with a flaming red riband, that glared in cruel
mockery at the shabby gittern, she contrived to add, "I have a brother
in the Ironsides, and he said he thought they were bound for Hampton
Court; but it might have been only his fancy."
It was a quaint but pretty sight under that green Kentish cherry-tree,
and upon the bank of that beautiful river, to see the weather-cock Robin
in his motley dress, the long peacock's feather ever and anon lifted
from his hat by the fresh breeze that came from the water, while he sung
with sweet and animated voice a song that suited well the tastes and
feelings of his hearers.
"Oh, the sailor's home is the boundless sea,
The sea, the sea, the sea!
He loves it best when waves are high,
And a fierce nor'-wester shakes the sky.
Oh, the sea, the sea, the sea--
Oh, the sailor's home is the home for me!
"Away we go, o'er our own blue sea,
The sea, the sea, the sea!
We are ocean lords, for the winds obey,
And the raging billows own our sway.
Oh, the sea, the sea, the sea!--
Let my home be the sailor's home--the sea!
"A proud man well may our captain be,
The sea, the sea, the sea!
But our noble ship a bride shall be
To five hundred men as good as he.
Oh, the sea, the sea, the sea--
'Tis a fitting mate for the brave and free!
"Give the land to slaves, but give us the sea--
The sea, the sea, the sea!
Our hopes, our joys, our bed, and our grave,
Are above or below the salt-sea wave.
Oh, the sea, the sea, the sea--
Hurrah for the sailor's home--the sea!"
Then leaning over the hatch-door, her rosy cheek half-resting on the
rough shoulder of her rough husband, was the pretty Mistress Maud, the
personification of rustic English beauty; then the picturesque grouping
of the old and worn, but still gallant and manly sailors--our friend of
the wooden legs a little in the fore-ground, supported by the quizzical
seaman, and a tall stiff bony-looking "Black Sal" of a woman on the
other, whose complexion was contrasted by a snow-white cap, somewhat
pointed at the top, which hardly concealed her grizzled hair. She was
both exhibiting and admiring in dumb show the telescope so lately in the
possession of our friend Robin; while Ned Purcell, a little dumpy,
grey-headed mariner, who had heretofore been considered the owner of the
best glass in Greenwich, was advancing, glass in hand, to decide which
was really the best without farther parley. As Robin was obliged to sing
his song twice, we may be excused for having given it once, though
certainly it received but little advantage from the miserable
accompaniment of the wretched instrument that had just been so gaily
adorned by the hands of Mistress Maud.
When the song was fairly finished, Robin arose to depart, for he had
been long anxious to proceed on his way, though the scene we have
described, and the conversation we have recorded, had passed within the
compass of an hour. They all pressed him to remain. Even the bluff
landlord tempted him with the offer of a pint of Canary, an offer he
would not himself under any circumstances have declined. Robin, however,
bade them a courteous farewell; but he had hardly reached the outskirts
of the village, when he heard a light step, and felt a light hand press
upon his shoulder. He turned round, and the blithe smile of mine hostess
of the Oliver's Head beamed upon his painted face.
"Robin Hays!" she said, "I would advise you never to sing when you go
mumming; you did well enough till then; but, though the nightingale hath
many notes, the voice is aye the same. The gentleman you were speering
after, dropped this while making some change in his garments; and it
looks so like a love-token, that I thought, as you were after him, you
would give it him, poor youth! and my benison with it."
"Yes," replied the Ranger, taking from her the very lock of hair which
the Cavalier had severed, with his own hand, from among the tresses of
Constantia. "I'll give it him when I can find him; yet, had you not
better wrap it up in something? It pains the heart to see such as this
exposed to the air, much less the eyes of any body in the world." Maud
wrapped it in a piece of paper, and Robin placed it carefully in a small
pocket-book.
"The devil's as bright in your eyes still, Maud, as it was when you won
poor Jack Roupall's heart, and then jilted him for a rich husband. I did
not think any one would have found me out."
"If I did sell myself," replied the landlady, "I have had my
reward"--the colour faded from her cheek as she spoke--"as all will have
who go the same gait. But ye ken, Bobby, it was not for my ain sake, but
that my poor mother might have a home in her auld age--and so she had,
and sure that ought to make me content." The tears gathered in her eyes,
and the Ranger loudly reproached himself for unkindness, and assured her
he meant no harm.
"I am sure o' that; but when any one evens Jack to me, it brings back
the thought of my ain North to my heart, and its words to my tongue,
which is no good now, as it becomes me to forget both."
"God bless you, Maud!" said Robin, shaking her affectionately by the
hand: "God bless you! and if any ask after the Ironsides, see you say
nothing of the young gentleman, who is as dear to me as my heart's
blood; and do not tell to any, even of our own set, that I passed this
way; for it's hard to tell who's who, or what's what, these times."
"So it is," replied the dame, smiling through tears; "and now God be wi'
ye, Robin!" And presently he heard her voice carolling a North country
ballad, as she returned to her own house.
"Now is her heart in her own country," muttered the Ranger, "though her
voice is here; and those who did not know her little story would think
her as cheerful as the length of a summer's day; and so she ought to be,
for she performed her duty; and duty, after all, when well performed,
seems a perpetual and most cheerful recompense for care and toil, and,
it may be, trouble of mind and pain of heart."
Robin having obtained the clue to the secret of which he was in search,
wended his way towards the metropolis. The steeples of a hundred
churches were soon in sight.