Westward Ho! ... Tenth edition

Front matter

■ WE8TWAED HO! i LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, TRINTEIS, BP.F.AD STREET HILL. WESTWARD HO! OR, THE VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES OF Sir AMYAS LEIGH, Knight, ©f BurrouBti, In t$c «t-ranr** ot Btbon, IN THE REIGN OF HER MOST GLORIOUS MAJESTY, QUEEN ELIZABETH. RENDERED INTO MODERN ENGLISH BY CHARLES KINGSLEY. K TENTH EDITION. Jonbon : MACMILLAN AND CO. 1874. {The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.] "DUX FŒAIIXA FACTI." Motto of the Armada Medals, 15S8 TO THE RAJAH SIR JAMES BROOKE, K.C.B. AND GEORGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN, D.D. AND BISHOP OP NEW ZEALAND, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, BY ONE WHO (UNKNOWN TO THEM) HAS NO OTHER METHOD OF EXPRESSING HIS ADMIRATION AND REVERENCE FOR THEIR CHARACTERS. THAT TYPE OF ENGLISH VIRTUE, AT ONCE MANFUL AND GODLY, PRACTICAL AND ENTHUSIASTIC, PRUDENT AND SELF SACRIFICING, WHICH HE HAS TRIED TO DEPICT IN THERE PAGES, THET HAVE EXHIBITED IN A FORM EVEN PURER AND MORE HEROIC THAN THAT IN WHICH HE HAS DREST IT, AND THAN THAT IN WHICH IT WAS EXHIBITED BY THE WORTHIES WHOM ELIZABETH, WITHOUT DISTINCTION OF RANK OR AGE, GATHERED BOUND HER IN THE EVER GLORIOUS WARS OF HER GREA'l REIGN.

February, 1855. C. K. CONTENTS. CHIPT.R p.GE I. How Mr. Oxexeam saw the White Bird 1 II. How Amyas came Home the First Time 18 III. Of two Gentlemen of Wales, and how they hunted with the Hounds, and yet ran with the Deer ,2 IV. The two Ways of being crost in Love 57 V. Clovelly court in the Olden Time ... 77 VI. The Coombes of the far West 99 VII. The true and tragical History of Mr. Jons Oxenham of Plymouth 106 VIII. How the Noble Brotherhood of the Rose was founded . . . 1*0 IX. How Amyas kept his Christmas Day 13* X. How the Mayor of Bidf.ford baited his Hook with his ow.v Flesh 182 XI. How Eustace Leiqu met the Pope's Legate 191 XII. How Bidj.ford Bridge dined at Annery House 2115 XIII. How the Golden Hind came home again 227 XIV. How Salvation Yeo slew the King of the Gubbings .... 23 .

XV. How Mr. John Brimelecombe understood the Nature of an Oath '2t,\ XVI. The most chivalrous Adventure of the good Ship Rose . . . 2.1 JlVII. How they came to Barbados, and found no Men therein . . 2)7 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAOB XVIII. HOW THEY TOOK THE PEARLS AT MARGARITA 282 XIX. What defel at La Guayra . 29] XX Spanish Bloodhounds and English Mastiffs 311 XXI. How they took tuf. Communion under the Tree at Higuerote 332 XXII. The Inquisition in the Indies 346 VXIII. The Banks of the Meta 349 XXIV. How Amyas was tempted of the Devil 362 XXV. How they took the Gold-train 380 XXVI. HOW THEY TOOK THE GREAT GALLEON 402 XXVII. How Salvation uo found his Little Maid again 428 XXVIII. How Amyas came Home the Third Time 439 XXIX. How the Virginia' Fleet was stopped by the wueen's Command 45C XXX. How the Admiral John Hawkins testified against Croakers . 471 XXXI. Iee Great Armada 484 XXXII. How Amyas threw his Sword into the Sea ... . . . 4M XXXIII. How A.vyas lxt the apple falx. r . 9\4 WESTWARD HO!

Chapter I. How

Mil. OXENHAM. SAW THE WHITE BIBD. " The hollow oak our palace is, Oar heritage the sea." All who Lave travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know the little white town of Bideford, which elopes upwards from its hroad tide-river paved with yellow sands. and many-arched old hridge where salmon wait for Autumn floods, toward the pleasant upland on the west. Above the town the hills close in, cushioned with deep oak woods, through which juts here and there a crag of fern-fringed slate ; below they lower, and open more and more in softly-rounded knolls, and fertile squares of red and green, till they sink into the wide expanse of hazy flats, rich 'salt marshes, aud rolling sandhills, where Torridge joins her sister Taw, and both together flow quietly toward the broad surges of the bar, and the everlasting thunder of the long Atlantic swell.

Pleasantly the old town stands there, beneath its soft Italian sky, fanned day and night by the fresh ocean breeze, which forbids alike the keen winter frosts, and the fierce thunder heats of the midland ; and pleasantly it has stood there for now, perhaps, eight hundred years since the first Grenvil, cousin of the Conqueror, returning from the conquest of South Wales, drew round him trusty Saxon serfs, and free Norse rovers with their golden curls, and dark Silurian Britons from the Swansea shore, and all the mingled blood which still give8 to the seaward folk of the next county their strength and intellect, and, even in these levelling days, their peculiar beauty of face and form. But at the time whereof I write, Bideford was not merely a pleasant country town, whoso quay was haunted by a few coasting craft.

It was one of the chief ports of England ; it furnished seven ships to fight the Armada : even more than a century afterwards, say the chroniclers, " it sent more vessels to the northern trade, than any port in England, saving (strange juxtaposition !) London and HOW MTt. OXENHAM Topsham," and was the centre of a local civilization and enterprise, small perhaps compared with the vast efforts of the present day : hut who dare despise the day of small things, if it has proved to be the dawn of mighty ones ? And it is to the sea-life and labour of Bide ford, and Dartmouth, and Topsham, and Plymouth (then a petty place), and many another little western town, that England owes the foundation of her naval and commercial glory. It was the men of Devon, the Drakes and Hawkins', Gilberts and Ealeighs, Gren viles and Oxenhams, and a host more of " forgotten worthies," whom we shall learn one day to honour as they deserve, to whom she owes her commerce, her colonies, her very existence.

For had they not first crippled, by their "West Indian raids, the ill-gotten resources of the Spaniard, and then crushed his last huge effort in Britair'g Salamis, the glorious fight of 1588, what had we been by now, but a Popish appanage of a world-tyranny as cruel as heathen Rome itaelf, and far more devilish ? It is in memory of these men, their voyages and their battles, their faith and their valour, their heroic lives and no less heroic deaths, that I write this book ; and if now and then I shall seem to warm into a style somewhat too stilted and pompous, let me be excused for my subject's sake, fit rather to have been sung than said, and to have proclaimed to all true English hearts, not as a novel but as an epic (which some man may yet gird himself to write), the same great message which the songs of Troy, and tho Persian wars, and the trophies of Marathon and Salamis, spoke to the hearts of all true Greeks of old.

One bright summer's afternoon, in the year of grace 1575, a tall and fair boy came lingering along Bideford quay, in his scholar's gown, with satchel and slate in hand, watching wistfully the shipping and the sailors, till, just after he had passed the bottom of the High Street, he came opposite to one of the many taverns which looked out upon the river. In the open bay-window sat merchants and gentlemen, discoursing over their afternoon's draught of sack ; and outside the door was gathered a group of sailors, listening earnestly to some one who stood in the midst. The boy, all alive for any sea-news, must needs go up to them, and take his place among the sailor-lads who were peeping and whispering under the elbows of the men ; and so came in for the following speech, delivered in a loud bold voice, with a strong Devonshire accent, and a fair sprink ling of oaths.

" If you don't believe me, go and see, or stay here and grow all over blue mould. I tell you, as I am a gentleman, I saw it with these eyes, and so did Salvation Yeo there, through a window in the lower room ; and we measured the heap, as I am a Christened man, seventy foot long, ten foot broad, and twelve foot high, of silver BIRD. bars, and each bar between a thirty and forty pound weight. And Bays Captain Drake : ' There, my lads of Devon, I've brought you to the mouth of the world's treasure-house, and it's your own fault now, if you don't sweep it out as empty as a stock-fish.' " " Why didn't you bring some of they home, then, Mr. Oxenham?" " Why weren't you there to help to carry them ? We would have brought 'em away, safe enough, and young Drake and I had broke the door abroad already, but Captain Drake goes off in a dead faint ; and when we came to look, he had a wound in his leg you might have laid three fingers in, and his boots were full of blood, and had been for an hour or more ; but the heart of him was that, that he never knew it till he dropped, and then his brother and I got hi-nn away to the boats, he kicking and struggling, and bidding us let him go on with the fight, though every step he took in the sand was in a pool of blood ; and so we got off.

And tell me, ye sons of shorten herrings, wasn't it worth more to save him than the dirty silver ? for silver we can get again, brave boys : there's more fish in the sea than ever came out of it, and more silver in Nombre de Dios than would pave all the streets in the west country : but of such captains as Franky Drake, heaven never makes but one at a time ; and if we lose him, good-bye to England's luck, say I, and who don't agree, let Viim choose his weapons, and I'm his man." He who delivered this harangue was a tall and sturdy personage, with a florid black-bearded face, and bold restless dark eyes, who leaned, with crossed legs and arms akimbo, against the wall of the house ; and seemed in the eyes of the school-boy a very magnifico, some prince or duke at least. He was dressed (contrary to all sumptuary laws of the time) in a suit of crimson velvet, a little the worse, perhaps, for wear ; by his side were a long Spanish rapier and a brace of daggers, gaudy enough about the hilts ; his fingers sparkled with rings ; he had two or three gold chains about his neck, and large earrings in his ears, behind one of which a red rose was stuck jauntily enough among the glossy black curls ; on his head was a broad velvet Spanish hat, in which instead of a feather was fastened with a great gold clasp a whole Quezal bird, whose gor geous plumage of fretted golden green shone like one entire precious stone.

As he finished his speech, he took off the said hat, and looking at the bird in it — " Look ye, my lads, did you ever see such a fowl as that before ? That's the bird which the old Indian kings of Mexico let no one wear but their own selves ; and therefore I wear it, — I, John Oxen ham of South Tawton, for a sign to all brave lads of Devon, that as the Spaniards are the masters of the Indians, we're the masters of the Spaniards :" and he replaced his hat. ,, A murmur of applause followed ; but one hinted, that he " doubted the Spaniards were too many for them." b2 HOW 1LR. OXENHAM " Too many ? How many men did we take Nombre de Dios with ? Seventy-three were we, and no more when we sailed out of Plymouth Sound ; and before we saw the Spanish main, half were ' gastados,' used up, as the Dons say, with the scurvy ; and in Port Pheasant Captain Rawse of Cowes fell in with us, and that gave us some thirty hanils moro; and with that handful, my lads, only fifty three in all, we picked the lock of the new world !

And whom did we lose but our trumpeter, who stood braying like an ass in the middle of the square, instead of taking care of his neck like a Chris tian ? I tell you, those Spaniards are rank cowards, as all bullies are. They pray to a woman, the idolatrous rascals ! and no wonder they fight hke women." " You'm right, Captain," sang out a tall gaunt fellow who stood close to him ; " one westcountryman can fight two easterlings, and an easterling can beat three Dons any day. £h ! my lads of Devon ? " For 0 ! it's the herrings and the good brown beef, And the cider and the cream so white ; 0 ! they are the making of the jolly Devon lads, For to play, and eke to fight." " Come," said Oxenham, " come along ! Who lists? who lists? who'll make his fortune ? " Oh, who will join, jolly mariners all ?

And who will join, says he, 0 ! To fill his pockets with the good red goold, By sailing on the sea, 0 I " Who'll list?" cried the gaunt man again ; " now's your time ! We've got forty men to Plymouth now, ready to sail the minute we get back, and we want a dozen out of you Bideford men, and just a boy or two, and then we'm off and away, and make our fortunes, or go to heaven. "Our bodies in the sea so deep, Our souls in heaven to rest ! Where valiant seamon, one and all, Hereafter shall be blest ! " " Now," said Oxenham, " you won't let the Plymouth men say that the Bideford men daren't follow them ? North Devon against South, it is. Who'll join ? who'll join ? It is but a step of a way, after all, and sailing as smooth as a duck-pond as soon as you're past Cape Finisterre. I'll run a Clovelly herring-boat there and back for a wager of twenty pound, and never ship a bucketful all the way.

Who'll join ? Don't think you're buying a pig in a poke. I know the road, and Salvation Yeo, here, too, who was the gunner's mate, as well as I do the narrow seas, and better. You ask him to show you the chart of it, now, and see if he don't tell you over the ruttier as well as Drake himself." On which the gaunt man pulled from under his arm a oreat white BTRP . 5 buffalo horn covered with rough etchings of land and sea, and held it up to the admiring ring. " See here, boys all, and behold the pictur of the place, dra'ed out so natural as ever was hfe. I got mun from a Portingal, down *.o the Azores ; and he'd pricked mun out, and pricked mun out, wheresoever he'd sailed, and whatsoever he'd seen. Take mun in your hands now, Simon Evans, take mun in your hands ; look mun over, and I'll warrant you'll know the way in five minutes so well as ever a shark in the seas."

And the horn was passed from hand to hand ; while Oxenham, who saw that his hearers were becoming moved, called through the open window for a great tankard of sack, and passed that from hand lo hand after the horn. The school-boy, who had been devouring with eyes and ears all which passed, and had contrived by this time to edge himself into the inner ring, now stood face to face with the hero of the emerald crest, and got as many peeps as he could at the wonder. But when he saw the sailors, one after another, having turned it over awhile, come forward and offer to join Mr. Oxenham, his soul burnt within him for a nearer view of that wondrous horn, as magical in its effects as that of Tristrem, or the enchanters' in Ariosto ; and when the group had somewhat broken up, and Oxenham was going into the tavern with his recruits, he asked boldly for a nearer sight of the marvel, which was granted at once.

And now to his astonished gaze displayed themselves cities and harbours, dragons and elephants, whales which fought with sharks, plate ships of Spain, islands with apes and palm-trees, each with its name over-written, and here and there, " Here is gold ;" and again " Much gold and silver ;" inserted most probably, as the words were in Enghsh, by the hands of Mr. Oxenham himself. Lingeringly and longingly the boy turned it round and round, and thought the owner of it more fortunate than Khan or Kaiser. Oh, if he could but possess that horn, what needed he on earth beside to make him blest ! " I say, will you sell this ?" " Yea, marry, or my own soul, if I can get the worth of it." " I want the horn, — I don't want your soul ; it's somewhat oi a stale sole, for aught I Know ; and there are plenty of fresh ones in the bay."

And therewith, after much fumbling, he pulled out a tester (the only one he had), and asked if that would buy it ? " That? no, nor twenty of them." The boy thought over what a good knight-errant would do in such case, and then answered, " Tell you what ; I'll fight you for it." " Thank 'ee, Sir !" " Break the jackanapes' head for him, Yeo," said Oxenham. HOW ME. OXENHAM " Call me jackanapes again, and I break yours, Sir." And the boy listed his fist fiercely. Oxenham looked at him a minute smilingly. " Tut ! tut ! my man, hit one of your own size, if you will, and spare little folk like me ! " " If I have a boy's age, Sir, I have a man's fist. I shall be fifteen years old this month, and know how to answer any one who insults me." " Fifteen, my young cockerel ? you look liker twenty," said Oxen ham, with an admiring glance at the lad's broad limbs, keen blue eyes, curling golden locks, and round honest face.

" Fifteen ? If I had half-a-dozen such lads as vou, I would make knights of them before I died. Eh, Yeo?" " He'll do," said Yeo ; " he will make a brave gamecock in a year or two, if he dares ruffle up so early at a tough old hen-master like the Captain." At which there was a general laugh, in which Oxenham joined as loudly as any, and then bade the lad tell him why he was so keen after the horn. " Because," said he, looking up boldly, " I want to go to sea. I want to see the Indies. I want to fight the Spaniards. Though I am a gentleman's son, I'd a deal liever be a cabin-boy on board your ship." And the lad having hurried out his say fiercely enough, dropped his head again. ". And you shall," cried Oxenham, with a great oath ; " and take a galleon, and dine off carbonadoed Dons. Whose son are you, my gaUant fellow ?"

" Mr. Leigh's, of Burrough Court." " Bless his' soul ! I know him as well as I do the Eddystone, and his kitchen too. Who sups with him to-night ?" " Sir Richard Grenvil." " Dick Grenvil ? I did not know he was in town. Go home and tell your father John Oxenham will come and keep him com pany. There, off with you ! I'll make all straight with the good gentleman, and you shall have your venture with me ; and as for the horn, let him have the horn, Yeo, and I'll give you a noble for it." " Not a penny, noble Captain. If young master will take a poor mariner's gift, there it is, for the sake of his love to the calling, and Heaven send him luck therein." And the good fellow, with the impulsive generosity of a true sailor, thrust the horn into the boy's hands, and walked away to escape thanks. " Aoid now," quoth Oxenham, " my merry men all, make up your minds what mannered men you be minded to be before you take your bounties.

I want none of your rascally lurching longshore vermin, who get five pounds out of this captain, and ten out of that, and let him sail without them after all, while they are stowed away BEED. nnder women's mufflers, and in tavern cellars. If any man is of that humour, he had better to cut himself up, and salt himself down in a barrel for pork, before he meets me again ; for by this hght, let me catch him, be it seven years hence, and if I do not cut his throat upon the streets, it's a pity ! But if any man will be true brother to me, true brother to him I'll be, come wreck or prize, storm or calm, salt water or fresh, victuals or none, share and fare alike ; and here's my hand upon it, for every man and all • and so— " Westward ho ! with a rumbelow, And hurra for the Spanish main, 0 ! " After which oration Mr. Oxenham swaggered into the tavern, followed by his new men ; and the boy took his way homewards, nursing his precious horn, trembling between hope and fear, and blushing with maidenly shame, and a half-sense of wrong-doing at having revealed suddenly to a stranger the darling wish which he had hidden from his father and mother ever since he was ten years old.

Now this young gentleman, Amyas Leigh, though come of as good blood as any in Devon, and having lived all his hfe in what we should even now call the very best society, aud being (on account of the valour, courtesy, and truly noble qualities which he showed forth in his most eventful life) chosen by me as the hero and centre of this story, was not, saving for his good looks, by any means what would be called now-a-days an " interesting " youth, still less a " highly educated " one ; for, with the exception of a little Latin, which had been driven into him by repeated blows, as if it had been a nail, he knew no books whatsoever, save his Bible, his Prayer-book, the old " Mort d'Arthur " of Caxton's edition, which lay in the great bay window in the hall, and the translation of " Las Casas' History of the West Indies," which lay beside it, lately done into Enghsh under the title of " The Cruelties of the Spaniards."

He devoutly believed in fairies, whom he called pixies; and held that they changed babies, and made the mushroom rings on the downs to dance in. When he had warts or burns, he went to the white witch at Northam to charm them away; he thought that the sun moved round the earth, and that the moon had some kindred with a Cheshire cheese. He held that the swallows slept all the winter at the bottom of the horse-pond ; talked, hke Raleigh, Grenvil, and other low persons, with a broad Devonshire accent ; and was in many other respects so very ignorant a youth, that any pert monitor in a national school might have had a hearty laugh at him. Nevertheless, this ignorant young savage, " vacant of the glorious gains " of the nineteenth century, children's literature and science made easy, and, worst of all, of those improved views of English history now current among our railway essayists, which consist in believing all persons, male and female, before the HOW MB.

OXENHAM year 1688, and nearly all after it, to have been either hypocrites or fools, had learnt certain things which he would hardly have been taught just now in any school in England ; for his training had been that of the old Persians, " to speak the truth, and to draw the bow," both of which savage virtues he had acquired to perfection, as well as the equally savage ones of enduring pain cheerfully, and of beheving it to be the finest thing in the world to be a gentleman ; by which word he had been taught to understand the careful habit of causing needless pain to no human being, poor or rich, and of taking pride in giving up his own pleasure for the sake of those who were weaker than himself. Moreover, having been entrusted for the last year with the breaking of a colt, and the care of a cast of young hawks which his father had received from Lundy Isle, he had been profiting much by the means of those coarse and frivolous amusements, in perseve rance, thoughtfulness, and the habit of keeping his temper; and though he had never had a single " object lesson," or been taught to " use his intellectual powers," he knew the names and ways of every bird, and fish, and fly, and could read, as cunningly as the oldest sailor, the meaning of every drift of cloud which crossed the heavens.

Lastly, he had been for some time past, on account of his extraordinary size and strength, undisputed cock of the school, and the most terrible fighter among all Bideford boys ; in which brutal habit he took much delight, and contrived, strange as it may seem, to extract from it good, not only for himself, but for others, doing justice among his school-fellows with a heavy hand, and succouring the oppressed and afflicted ; so that he was the terror of all the sailor lads, and the pride and stay of all the town's-boys and girls, and hardly considered that he had done his duty in his caUing if he went home without beating a big lad for bullying a httle one. For the rest, he never thought about thinking, or felt about feeling : and had no ambition whatsoever beyond pleasing his father and mother, getting by honest means the maximum of " red quarrenders " and mazard cherries, and going to sea when he was big enough.

Neither was he what would be now-a-days called bj* many a pious child ; for though he said his Creed and Lord's Prayer night and morning, and went to the service at the church every forenoon, and read the day's Psalms with his mother every evening, and had learnt froni her and from his father (as he proved weU in after life), that it was infinitely noble to do right and infinitely base to do wrong, yet (the age of children's religious books not having yet dawned on the world) he knew nothing more of theology, or of his own soul, than is contained in the Church Catechism. It is a question, however, on the whole, whether, though grossly ignorant (according to our modern notions) in science and religion, he was altogether untrained in manhood, virtue, and godliness ; and whether the barbaric narrowness of his Information was not somewhat counterbalanced both in him and in BIRD. the rest of his generation by the depth, and breadth, and healthiness of his Education.

So let us watch him up the hiU as he goes hugging his horn, to teU all that has passed to his mother, from whom he had never hidden anything in his life, save only that sea-fever ; and that only because he foreknew that it woidd give her pain ; and because, moreover, being a prudent and sensible lad, he knew that he was not yet old enough to go, and that, as he expressed it to her that afternoon, " there was no use hollaing till he was out of the wood." So he goes up between the rich lane-banks, heavy with drooping ferns and honeysuckle ; out upon the windy down toward the old Court, nestled amid its ring of wind-clipt oaks ; through the grey gateway into the homeclose ; and then he pauses a moment to look around ; first at the wide bay to the westward, with its southern wall of purple cliffs ; then at the dim Isle of Lundy far away at sea ; then at the cliffs and downs of Morte and Braunton, right in fronl of him ; then at the vast yellow sheet of roUing sandhUl, and green alluvial plain dotted with red cattle, at his feet, through which the sUver estuary winds onward toward the sea.

Beneath him on his right, the Torridge, hke a land-locked lake, sleeps broad and bright between the old park of Tapeley and the charmed rock of the Hubbastone, where, seven hundred years ago, the Norse rovers landed to lay siege to Kenwith Castle, a mUe away on his left hand ; and not three fields away, are the old stones of " The Bloody Corner," where the retreating Danes, cut off from their ships, made their last fruitless stand against the Saxon sheriff and the valiant men of Devon. Within that charmed rock, so Torridge boatmen teU, sleeps now the old Norse Viking in his leaden coffin, with all his fairy treasure and his crown of gold ; and as the boy looks at the spot, he fancies, and almost hopes, that the day may come when he shall have to do his duty against the invader as boldly as the men of Devon did then.