Louis Tracy - The Great Mogul

These were dangerous words. They lost none of their tremendous import when uttered by a man of such statesman-like qualities that Anthony à Wood wrote of him long afterwards: “Those who knew him well have said that there was nothing wanting in him towards the accomplishment of a scholar, gentleman, or courtier.”

It was inevitable that the opinion of such an one should weigh deeply with young Mowbray, and impress even the less critical brains of Roger Sainton. Roe’s appearance, no less than his impassioned outburst, would have won the credence of any well-bred youths in the Kingdom. In face, in figure, and indeed in many of his attributes, he resembled that gallant and high-minded adventurer of an earlier generation, Sir Walter Raleigh, who was now a close prisoner in the Tower. He had the bright, penetrating eyes, the long, aquiline nose, firm mouth, and well-molded chin which bespeak good birth and high intelligence. A mass of brown hair waved over a lofty forehead and fell in ringlets on his neck. He wore the mustaches and Vandyke tuft of beard affected by gentlemen of the period, and the natural gravity of his expression could be wholly dispelled, when occasion warranted, by a smile of rare humor.

But he was in no smiling mood just then. He leaned his head on his hand and sighed wearily. Mowbray, notwithstanding his own desperate though wholly unmerited plight, now presented to his eyes in all its sinister significance, could not help marveling how it came about that the leader of an expedition to the Spanish Main, which could scarce be undertaken without royal sanction, should avow himself so helpless in that very circle, while it was still more strange that Roe’s position and attainments did not render him a favored suitor in the Cave household.

Moreover, the King had knighted him, and Nellie Roe had said, during their walk in the garden, that her brother was a great friend of Prince Henry, and declared laughingly that Anna should think herself highly flattered, for the gossip ran that Princess Elizabeth was much attached to “Honest Tom,” as she called him.

Roe’s disturbed reflections and Mowbray’s bewilderment alike were put an end to by Roger.

“Ecod!” he cried, thumping the stout table screwed to the floor of the cabin and making the tankards dance under the blow, “Walter and I can ask no better fate than to voyage with you to the Indies. We are in quest of fortune, and folk say that the Spaniards have gold for the taking. Here’s to you, Sir Thomas Roe, and here’s to all of us! May we never want nowt, none of us!”

He drained his own tankard and caused a gleam of amusement to flicker on Roe’s face.

“Had you lost your right hand for brawling, Master Sainton,” he said, “you would now lose the left if the King heard your sentiments. Harry a Spaniard, i’ faith! That is rankest heresy nowadays. Yet there is no telling what may befall when we set our course west by south of the Canaries. And now, let me see to your comfort for the night.”

He called a young negro from the depths of the ship; the sudden appearance of the boy’s shining black face in the cabin caused Roger Sainton to start so violently that Roe and Mowbray laughed, while the negro himself displayed all his teeth in a huge grin. Mowbray, during an earlier visit to London, had seen many a dark-skinned man; it was becoming the fashion to have one or more of these ebony-hued servitors in each household with any pretensions to grandeur. But Roger had never before set eyes on the like, and the apparition was unexpected.

“Gad,” said he, reaching for the flagon again, “no wonder the sailor-man thought he saw the devil! ’Tis clear he fancied that this worthy had fallen overboard.”

He stood up, to follow Roe, whereupon the negro’s astonishment was even greater than Roger’s, for the cock’s feathers in the Yorkshireman’s hat swept the ceiling of the cabin, and his belt was nearly on a level with the other’s chin.

“Where him one dam big fighting-man lie, sir?” said the black to Roe. “Dere am no bunk in the ship will hold him half.”

Indeed, this was a minor difficulty which had not been foreseen. In his own cabin, which Roe intended to place temporarily at their service, there were two bunks, but each was a full twelve inches too short for Sainton. They were stoutly built, too, of solid oak and abutting on strong lockers. The only way in which one of them could be made to serve his needs was to cut away the partition, and it was now a very late hour to seek the services of the ship’s carpenter.

“If that is the only drawback, it is solved most readily,” said Roger, and, with his clenched fist, guarded only by a leather glove, he smashed a strong oaken panel out of its dovetailed joints.

The negro’s eyes nearly fell out with amazement, and, indeed, Sir Thomas Roe was not prepared for this simple yet very unusual feat of sheer strength.

“That blow would have felled an ox,” he cried, and Mowbray told him how Roger once, in the market square of Richmond, had, for a wager, brought down an old bull with a straight punch between the eyes.

Now, the negro not only saw and heard, but he talked of these things to the watch, and they, in their turn, related them to others of the ship’s company in the early morning. It chanced that a half-caste Spanish cook, hired because he knew the speech of the natives of Guiana, was among the auditory, and he stole to the cabin wherein the two Englishmen lay sleeping soundly. Mere idle curiosity impelled him to gaze at the man who could perform such prodigies, and, having gaped sufficiently, he went ashore for a farewell carouse with certain cronies in Alsatia.

Not the great men of the world, but their petty myrmidons, are oft the mainspring of the events which shape the destinies not alone of individuals but of nations. Even Pedro, the half-caste, might have dispensed with the day’s drinking bout had his cup been fashioned of the magic crystal which enables credulous people to see future events in its shadowy mirror! Assuredly, some of the sights therein would have sated his desire for stimulant.

Mowbray and Sainton were aroused by an unusual movement. At first they hardly knew where they were, and it was passing strange that the floor should heave and the walls creak.

Mowbray sprang from his bunk quickly and looked through the open door to see if it were possible that the ship had cast off from her moorings during the night. The frowning battlements of the Tower, dimly visible through a pelting rain, showed that his first surmise was incorrect. The Defiance was anchored securely enough, but a high wind had lashed the river into turbulence, and the storm which threatened over night had burst with fury over London.

Roger, too, awoke.

“Gad,” he cried, “I dreamt I was being hanged as a cutpurse, and I felt the branch of an oak-tree swaying as I swung in the wind.”

“You will have many such visions if you mix Brown Devon and Alicant with the wines of Burgundy in your midnight revels,” said Walter, cheerfully. To his ordered senses had come the memory of the garden and Nellie Roe’s kiss. He hailed the bad weather with glee. Men would be loth to stir abroad, and, if Sir Thomas Roe’s arrangements permitted, he could foresee another meeting with Eleanor that evening.

“At times you talk but scurvy sense,” grumbled Sainton, pulling on his huge boots. “’Tis the lack of a pasty, washed down by any one of the good liquors you name, that hath disordered my stomach and sent its fasting vapors to my brain. By the cross of Osmotherly, I could eat the haunch of a horse.”

“Without there!” shouted Mowbray. “Where is the black summoned by Sir Thomas Roe to wait on us?”

The negro came at the call. He told them that his master had gone ashore at daybreak, with intent to return before noon, but that breakfast awaited their lordships’ pleasure in the cabin.