THE PLEASANT ISLE OF AVÈS.
"And such a port for mariners I ne'er shall see again
As the pleasant Isle of Aves, beside the Spanish main."
C. KINGSLEY, _The Last Buccàneer_.
For a while Richard Harrison found safety in his old county, not indeed
in his father's comfortable town-house, nor in the widowed Mrs.
Harrison's county home, but lurking among the potters' huts on the
Staffordshire moors, and only venturing to visit his friends under
cover of night.
The colour which his unlucky presence among the congregation at Coleman
Street on the day of General Harrisons execution, had given to his
enemy's accusations, had made his position perilous in the extreme, for
General Monck, and his other secret friends, considered that he had
wilfully disregarded their warnings, and were not inclined to exert
their influence in his behalf. During those miserable months of hiding
he had but one sad satisfaction--that of knowing that Prince Rupert had
kept his promise and the mangled remains of Thomas Harrison were
restored to his widow, and laid in decency in Newcastle churchyard.
The dead was safe from further outrage, but the living were still at
the mercy of private malice and public panic, and Richard found that to
linger any longer near his old home would be but to draw suspicion on
his friends, and even involve them in the fate that threatened himself.
His best chance of escape was to reach some seaport, but it took all
the efforts of his father and his relatives to rouse him to decide on
trying to make for one. Sick at heart, hopeless for the future of the
country, all that had made life worth living--ambition, work, love, and
even religion, seemed lost. He was practically alone in the world.
Those of General Harrison's friends who had not shared the Regicide's
doom, were scattered to the four winds, and even if Richard had known
of their places of refuge, he had nothing to unite him to them, but the
bond of a common sorrow. His own comrades either believed in the
accusations that his enemy circulated with such industry against him,
or were too busy and too selfish to trouble themselves about a man who
was under a cloud. There was no one left alive who had the power to
rouse Richard from the torpor that possessed him; the numb misery that
had fallen on him when he saw General Harrison die had never again
lifted from his heart and brain.
Till that day he had never realized how completely the warmth and
enthusiasm of General Harrison's character had dominated his own life.
While their opinions diverged completely, their feelings were in
harmony, or rather the glowing faith and single-hearted idealism of the
elder man had illuminated the being of the younger. Now a glory had
departed from the earth. Richard's youthful wisdom had often grown
impatient of his uncle's wild fancies, or smiled with affectionate
mockery on his Utopian dreams; but unconsciously the young man had
always measured his own thoughts and actions by the unworldly standard
of General Harrison's ideal. He, with all who lived near Harrison, had
seemed to catch a reflected gleam of the radiance that shone on his
path; now, a light was gone. Where Richard had seen that noble figure
treading the path before him, a sudden gulf yawned, the leader had
vanished, the path was lost, and the blank fog was around him. The
warm clasp was gone, only the memory of the dead hand would be with him
to the end.
Richard's life had been one of activity. Whether fighting or
administrating or farming, his simple and practical nature had found
its natural outlet in work. Speculations on religion or forms of
government had little attraction for him; there was always some work to
be done, and that he found more congenial than meditation. Now, his
occupations were gone, his career wrecked, the only subject for his
thoughts was how to preserve his own wretched life, a matter which soon
grew to him one of complete indifference. His relations painted to him
in glowing colours the future that still opened to him in the New
England plantations where their friend Parson Perrient was sure to
offer him a warm welcome, and to satisfy their wishes, he made his way
eastward, hoping to find a ship bound for Holland at King's Lynn, and
so to take passage for the New World from Rotterdam. But the new life
in the West that had once seemed so attractive, the day dreams that had
woven themselves about the log cabin in a forest clearing, faded almost
before he began to desire them. He was too heart-sick to hope, too
weary to devise new ambitions, or even to recall the old ones that had
kept him company from his youth.
In the dusk of a winter evening, Richard Harrison's tired feet turned
to the door of a shabby little inn on the outskirts of Northampton. He
had grown skilful in picking resting-places where he was likely to meet
none but creatures as wretched as himself, wanderers and beggars too
much taken up with their own misery to waste curiosity on the history
of others. Wet and weary, the fire was grateful to him, though the
room it lit up was as dirty and mean as could well be. But the rickety
settle at least kept the wind from the tired traveller, and the bulging
rafters supported a roof that kept the rain out. Richard crouched over
the hearth, drying his wet clothes and awaiting without much
expectation of satisfaction the supper the slatternly hostess promised,
when a heavy step without, and a violent rattle of the door-latch, told
that another wayfarer was coming to share his wretched lair. A tall
burly fellow swaggered into the room, and flung into the elbow chair
with a weight that made it creak.
"Que tiempo maldito!" he growled, shaking the wet from his hat brim.
"Hullo, good mother, food and drink as quick as may be, most especially
drink, and none of your small beer for me," he shouted, jingling a few
coppers in his hand with the air of an alderman ordering turtle and
venison.
"Pray Heaven my neighbour speedily drink himself drunk," thought Dick,
withdrawing himself further into the chimney-corner.
The stranger shivered, coughed, grumbled out a few more oaths in bad
Spanish, and hitching his chair nearer to the fire he lifted the
tankard the woman of the house brought to him, and nodded over at
Richard.
"Here's to thy health, friend, and our better acquaintance!"
Richard answered civilly, and pulling his hat over his eyes leaned back
as one disposed to sleep; but the new-comer seemed to have no fancy for
solitary potations.
"Take a pull at my ale, friend," he hallooed, pushing the steaming
mixture under Dick's nose. "It's rare stingo, 'schrecklich gut' as the
Dutchmen say, though it be a slut that brewed it. Folks in this
country want something to warm their gizzards!"
The hostess who brought Dick's bowl of onion broth at this moment
destroyed his chance of feigning sleep, and he had to resign himself to
endure his companion's conversation which flowed on, garnished with
oaths and cant phrases in three or four different languages, without
any interruption, till by an unguarded movement Richard exposed his
face to the light of the fire, and the stranger stared a moment, and
then sprang up exclaiming, "Body o' me if it be not Measter Dick
himself!"
Richard scanned the other's features with surprise and annoyance.
"You have the advantage of me, sir," he answered, stiffly.
"Whoy, Measter Dick, you ain't forgot me! But 'tis little wonder; time
flies, time flies, and I bean't so slim as I was once. But you'll mind
my name, Hodge Astbury from Penkull, that rode at the tail of your nag
all the way from Hurst Castle to London, and many a day after."
"Can it be Astbury!" cried Richard, with a warmer feeling of pleasure
than he could have imagined possible at finding a link with his old
past in the drunken ruffian who claimed his acquaintance.
"Ay!" cried the other, seizing his hand. "Hodge Astbury I am, and
right pleased to set eyes on you again, sir. But alack, alack, times
is changed, and I hear tell they've hanged the Major?"
Dick nodded.
"Ay, dear, dear," meditated Astbury, in a maudlin tone of regret. "The
Major, he was a fine soldier, and no mistake. I'd rather than a cup of
strong waters ride behind him when fighting was toward, and see the
pleasure he took in it! Seemeth, whatever the Major did, us was bound
to do, whether 'twas fighting or praying; 'twas somehow catching, like
as 'twas the plague. You may believe me, sir, I got afeared of keeping
along o' him; he'd have turned me into a saint before I could wink.
When he looked at you--why General Cromwell himself was put to it to
say him nay! Aye, dear, dear, 'tis a pity."
Whether intentionally or not, the man had slipped back into his
Staffordshire accent and dropped the strongest of his oaths, and Dick
could not prevent a feeling of bitter amusement at seeing that this
drunken ne'er-do-well, whom his uncle had persuaded to enlist in the
hopes of drilling him into a decent life, had yielded to the influence
of General Harrison's character just as he himself had done. But
Astbury had broken loose from the charm; he himself had remained
obedient till death dissolved the spell. Which of them had been the
wiser--which was the better off? The fellow maundered on, taking a
drink at his replenished tankard now and then.
"And seems as if times be not over good with you, Master Dick, if
you'll excuse my making so bold."
"No," answered Richard, with some reserve; "I have not been altogether
fortunate of late. But what has befallen you since we met last?" he
continued, anxious to turn the conversation. "I think you were bound
for Ireland, were you not?"
"Ay, ay, I've seen a siege or two, and a fight or two, and many a queer
thing besides. Why, if I had the wit to put it all into rhyme, what
I've seen would make a score of ballads! I've been across seas to
Amerikey since last I clapped eyes on you, Maester Dick."
Richard hesitated to ask in what fashion Astbury had made his voyage,
seeing that the usual way to dispose of thieves and vagabonds was to
ship them off to the American plantations; but Astbury loved the sound
of his own voice, and stretching out his legs towards the fire, took up
his tale in the fashion of the professional story-teller. His history
ran somewhat as follows, though it sounds bald enough without the
expletives with which he garnished it, growing somewhat less shy of his
Major's nephew as he went on.
"I went across seas first time along o' Lord General Cromwell to
Ireland, and he gave us our bellyful of fighting, and no mistake; but
it ain't fighting that I complain of, having been always held a valiant
man of my inches;" and he puffed out his broad chest and looked a very
crusader. "And you'll bear me out, sir, I wasn't one to call out at
knocks. But here's what I complains of--'twas nothing but knocks over
there. If so be you laid hands if it were but on a hen, if you 'scaped
the gallows your back paid for your chicken, and as for kissing an
Irish wench, they'd have hanged a colonel for doing of it! And they
great woods! Now I've seen woods as is worth the seeing, chock full of
monkeys and grapes and parrots and such like, but they Irish woods!
Caramba! I'd sooner be hanged than set eyes on them again! So as I
was saying, 'twas hard knocks and short commons and long sermons, and
agues to boot; so when we come to Cork, I just turned my back on old
Noll and padded the hoof to Kinsale, and there I shipped under Prince
Rupert."
"I hope that suited you better," said Richard.
"Ay, there was a good deal to be said for Prince Rupert," answered
Astbury, judicially--"a good deal. He were a proper man--a very proper
man, and valiant. But, caramba, we had no luck! Luck don't run in his
family, folks say. We overhauled a many good ships, and many a pretty
bout of fighting we had; and when we went ashore, well, there wasn't
any of old Noll's provost marshals after us. But for all the ships we
took, we didn't seem to get no richer; so being a prudent man, I
thought the time had come to shift for myself, and I slipped off one
fine morning without troubling nobody. And there I found my luck!
Those islands in the Caribee Sea are a very paradise, and no mistake!
And all around there and down the Mosquito Coast the Indians are very
good folk, and civil. And plenty to eat there--turtle and wild pigs,
and pineapples and bananas, and more fruits than I can count; and drink
too--wines very curious and hearty, made both of grapes and pineapples.
And if we got tired of swinging in a hammock, and eating of fruit and
smoking tobacco, why there was a many jolly fellows ready to whip into
a little sloop we had handy, and off to--to--to spoil the papishers.
There is a many papishers in those seas, sir--black idolaters all on
'em."
"Spaniards?" asked Dick, idly, amused by the ne'er-do-well's yarn.
"I reckon they were mostly Spaniards, or Portugees, or some such sort
of outlandish cattle; but soon we got so as it wasn't only ships we
made prize of. Why, I could talk all night if I was to start in
telling you of all the brave sport we had! One time, I mind, we
landed, there was a town, Santa Ysabel they called it, as it might be
here"--arranging a tankard at the corner of the table--"with a good
high road leading up to it from the sea, as it might be my tobacco
pipe"--laying it down with care; "and if you'll believe me, sir, we
took and run races, as it might be along my tobacco pipe, and as soon
as them Spaniards was 'ware of our coming, they took and ran out by
'tother gate, and left the town empty! There was seven churches all
chock full of gold and silver idols and candle-sticks, and such like:
'twas just who'd fill his pockets fastest!"
"But how is it you left such a prosperous life?" interrupted Dick, who
had some recollection of Astbury's powers of imagination.
"Ay, indeed! There it was that luck was against me. Shipwrecked we
was, me and four others, on a little sandy key, where there was nought
to eat or drink, and the rest, they died, and a Bristol ship come along
and took me off, and I wish I was back again!"
Half idly, Richard asked more questions and grew interested in the
man's tales, for the fellow's varied experiences had given him a sort
of shrewd cunning, which in a higher walk of life might have been
almost worthy the name of diplomacy, and he knew how to fit his tale to
his audience. It was obvious that he was nothing better than a pirate,
but he managed to gloss over the barbarities of the life so well, and
to dwell on its picturesque and adventurous side so successfully, that
Dick began insensibly to soften in his judgment of the wanderer. As
the night wore on, Astbury's description of a buccanneer's life grew
more and more glowing; he exercised a good deal of rude art in his
pictures of the career that awaited a gentleman of spirit among the
keys of the Carribean Sea, and at last he burst out--
"Now, Measter Dick, I don't ask no questions, but seems to me pretty
plain your luck's not of the best. Why don't you shout Westward Ho!
and come along o' me? I know many a roaring blade that would be proud
to ship under such a captain as you'd make!" Then leaning forward, he
continued in a solemn whisper, "What though I seem no better than a
beggar--cavado, cleaned out, as the Spaniards say--if I could but get a
loan of as much as would carry me across sea, I'd be a rich man again.
I have a nice little pot buried in a safe place on a certain key; I've
got a map here"--and he thumped his broad chest--"here, sewed in the
lining of my coat, and the place marked with a cross; and I tell you,
sir, there's enough gold in that pot to fit out the snuggest little
pinnace any man need want to see. Now, don't say nay in a hurry, sir,
but turn it over abit. Why, I mind how the Major--General I should
say--would be for ever talking of commonwealth. Why, you could make a
commonwealth to any pattern you please on that Mosquito Coast, and
learn all the Indians to be saints!" He chuckled. "Why, you might be
a regular king among them, sir, like Solomon in his glory, sitting
there in golden jewels among apes and peacocks, leastways currasows,
and as many queens as you please." Harrison frowned. "Ask your
pardon, sir; my tongue runs away with me sometimes, and thinking of
Solomon made me say it, and 'tis all in the Bible, sir, now isn't it?
But to go back to what I was a saying, you know well, sir, as no one
would follow a chap like me as captain, but if we could get a real
gentleman, and one used to command to lead us--why, hang me, sir, if we
wouldn't be masters of St. Jago de Cuba before many months were out!"
It was all impossible, preposterous; yet the wild tales of the pirate
began to exercise a curious fascination over Dick.
"What good do you gain by stopping here?" urged Astbury. "What did the
Major gain by all his fighting and praying? Nothing but the gallows!
Now, for me! I've been near the gallows a good few times, but I bean't
hanged yet, and I've had a merry life of it; and I've got that pot of
gold I told you of. Strike hands and join me, sir! What have you got
to look for here, if you'd excuse me, but to hang like Major Harrison?"
Strange, that this ignorant man should once and again put his finger on
the vulnerable spot in Dick's armour.
"Yes," he murmured to himself, "the wise man dieth as the fool dieth,
and what hath a man for his labours but vexation of spirit. This also
is vanity!"
Astbury caught the muttered words. "Very well said, sir, and sounds
like Scripture! But I tell you gold's solid, that's no vanity; and if
I could but get back to where I buried it----"
Dick was not listening. Something in his own bosom was arguing
Astbury's cause, better than that vagrant could do it himself.
Homeless, friendless in England, might there not yet be a career for
him in the West? Not in cold, pious Rhode Island, but under brighter
skies that offered fiercer pleasures. Good Parson Perrient had painted
Providence plantation as a sort of paradise, where the liberty and
toleration dreamt of by a few in England were the law for all; but was
that refuge open to him? The good parson might be dead; his daughter
wedded to some sturdy settler, who would have no fancy for such a
compromising guest as one bearing the hated name of Harrison! To fly
to New England would be but to begin his old life over again, and as
Astbury truly said, What had it brought him? What had he gained? What
had England gained by all they had done and dared? "If our cause was,
as we thought, of God, why did He not own us? What were General
Harrison's dreams of a pure republic, but vanity? Who can say if his
dreams of heaven were any truer?"
A wild desire flashed across the young man to break once and for all
with the puzzles and struggles of the past, and throw in his life with
the ruffian who sat opposite to him. He knew his own powers, he could
lead, he was cool and prompt; he might be a stupid enough fellow in
many ways, but he was a born soldier. Astbury would get together
enough of men to follow him; only too many good soldiers were then
laying by their useless swords. Why should he not sail in the wake of
Drake and Raleigh, and make himself a name? Ay, and found new
commonwealths in the land of sunset?
"I must think it over, Astbury," he said, rousing himself. "Sleep
brings council, they say; and we have sat our fire out."
"And starving cold it is, too," grumbled Astbury. "Best come to warm
countries, Maester Dick!" and so flung himself on the wretched pallet
in the corner of the room, and was snoring before many minutes were
over. Dick wrapped himself in his cloak and stretched himself on the
settle, but sleep was far from him. Many a man of good birth and
education he had known driven to take the road and become a highwayman,
and think himself none the worse gentleman for it. Pah! that revolted
him--that was little better than common thievery. But to sail the
South seas! to harry the Spaniard! to free the oppressed Indians! A
sort of fever seemed to possess him, and rouse him from the apathy that
had fallen on him. He tried to call up his cooler judgment, but in
vain; pictures of sunny seas and waving palm groves, of gallant fights
and sacked towns danced before him, and his broken slumbers only wove
the fancies into dreams. The morning found him still undecided.
"I will go a mile or two along with you, Astbury," he said, "before I
give my word. Which way are you bound?"
"Well," he answered, "the best seaport for our purpose would be either
Bristol or London."
"No, no," answered Richard. "I may not venture on the back road so as
to come to Bristol, and London were worse still. Is there no seaport
this side of England would do as well?"
"Well, sir, if 'twas a matter of working my passage, I'd be bound to go
where there would be ships trading the right way; but if I was with a
gentleman as would oblige me with a loan, 'tis easy to take ship from
Harwich, or find one lying in Yarmouth Roads that would carry us part
way, and then we could take passage from some French or Spanish port.
What do you say, sir, to Yarmouth?"
Richard assented, and they trudged on silently for some time. The
morning air cooled Dick's fevered pulse, and the exercise shook off the
sort of dream that had taken hold of him. His sober reason began to
awaken, and then, almost with the distinctness of a living voice, the
words flashed back on him: "It is to secure the just liberties of the
people of God that thou art pledged to live or die for it."
What had possessed him? Was he running mad? Was he to draw that sword
that had fought for justice and liberty as the comrade of murderers and
pirates? Had he sunk so low that he was willing to choose the company
of a drunken ruffian; he who had been the comrade of Thomas Harrison?
The dead hand still held his. The Fifth Monarchy might be a dream, the
hope of a Republic an idle fancy, but he had not been trained to fight
for theories alone. Justice, law, liberty were solid facts; those were
the watchwords General Harrison had taught him; for those he had lived,
to those he would be true, whether good or evil fortune awaited him,
whether there were, indeed, a heavenly reward for the victor, or but
the abyss of forgetfulness at the end of the strife. He stopped short.
"I have come to my resolution, Astbury," he said. "I cannot go with
you."
And, even as he spoke, he realized what a very fool he had been to let
this fellow gull him with his talk of a pot of gold! The gleam of
disappointed greed that shone in Astbury's eyes told what he might have
guessed already, that it was no old affection or fidelity that had
drawn the man to him, but merely the hope of making money. And that
hope the fellow was not likely to relinquish in a hurry.
But in vain did Astbury implore and wheedle, swear and protest Dick was
firm, till at last the rascal began to realize that his prize was
slipping from him, and changed his tone and grumbling out--
"It wasn't like a gentleman to go back on his word after as good as
promising a poor fellow his passage-money."
"Nay, I made no promise," returned Richard; "and I am a poor man
myself. But, for the sake of old times, I will give thee twenty
shillings to help thee on thy road to Bristol."
Astbury clutched the money, and then an evil grin came over his face.
"Fair and easy, Master Dick! Twenty shillings in hand is all very
well, but you give me to expect more, and I do expect more."
"Then you will get no more, my man," returned Dick, sharply; "so good
day to you. There lies your way, and here lies mine."
He was turning as he said, when Astbury, with an oath, sprang forward,
flourishing his cudgel; but he had forgotten that the young officer was
no novice at sword-play, and a turn of Dick's wrist sent the ruffian's
stick flying over the hedge. Astbury, nothing disconcerted, rushed in
and closed with him, and so heavy was the onslaught of the burly fellow
that it staggered Richard, and he was put to it to hold his own. But,
after a few blows had been exchanged, Dick's rising temper supplied the
strength that had been lessened by hardship, while Astbury, unwieldy
and out of condition, soon lost his breath, and, hitting out wildly,
gave Dick an opening for a good straight left-hander, that sent his
opponent crashing on the ground. Once down, he seemed in no hurry to
get up, and Dick, having satisfied himself that the fellow was more
frightened than hurt, left him sprawling in the mud with his twenty
shillings scattered round him, and, as Bunyan would have put it, "went
joyfully on his way, and was troubled no more by him at that time."