For the Honour of the Flag. A story of our sea fights with the Dutch, etc

Front matter

Kidnapped, FOR THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG A STORY OF OUR SEA-FIGHTS WITH THE DUTCH By COMMANDER CHARLES N. ROBINSON, R.N. AND JOHN LEYLAND Authors of 'In tJie Queen's Nai'ee' WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY LANCELOT SPEED LONDON SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED Essex Street, Strand CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. PURSUED ------ i II. 'A ROLAND FOR AN OLIVER' - - ' 2S III. THE BROKEN THREAD - - - 41 IV. 'gentlemen adventurers' - - 58 v. with the ' goliath's ' company - - 74 VI. A set-to with the moor - - 92 vii. enslaved- ..-.- I09 VIII. A PERILOUS VENTURE - - - - 127 IX. LOST AND FOUND - 148 X. ABOARD THE ' PHŒNIX ' - - - - 171 XI. THE FIGHT OFF ELBA - - - - 1 92 XII. WHITHER THE DUTCHMEN LED - - - 209 XIII. NEW RESOLVES ----- 230 XIV. AN ENIGMATIC DISCOVERY - - - 249 XV. THE LAND OF FRANCE - - - - 267 XVI. THE MASTER OF THE 'ANTHONY AND JOAN ' - CONTENTS IV PAGE

CHAPTER XVII. IN THE BAY OF BISCAY

- v' XVIII. SWEPT BY THE DUTCHMAN^ BROOM S^ XIX. 'TWIXT KING AND COUNTRY - " 334 XX. HOW BLAKE PLIED HIS WHIP - 35 2 XXI. CONCLUSION - - " "3 I For the Honour of the Flag

Chapter I. Pursued

We had been waiting anxiously, after many a weary day, through the long hours up to that promised midnight — I remember it very well — and the deep tones of the bell in the turret had just faded into silence, when at last we heard the hoofs of horses ringing upon the terrace, and the longed-for knock resounded upon the oaken door. ' Welcome home, Uncle Marmaduke !' I cried, running eagerly to the porch, where my uncle and Vambrowe were dismounting from their horses. ' We have been expecting you for many an hour.' My words were echoed not less warmly, if more sedately, by Madge, and by mother, who added, ' God be praised for your safety, Brother Marmaduke !' ' Gentle sister ! fair coz !' he exclaimed, saluting my mother and Madge on the cheek, with his courtly air ; ' good Nephew Lance !' clapping me on either shoulder, ' I am right glad to be with you all again, though I come to you in the guise of a sour-milk Puritan.' Old Basil and Vambrowe were seeing to the horses, so Madge and I, taking Uncle Marmaduke each by an arm, pulled him into the hall. ' No vinegar-visaged Roundhead are you, Cousin Marmaduke !' said Madge gaily ; ' however sober the garb, you cannot hide the Cavalier.' ' It does my heart good to hear you, coz.

Loath should I be to seem that which I am not. Loyal je mourirai V (It was the motto of the Staplehursts, which he loved to repeat.) ' Long live the King !' Madge and he were Cavaliers both. She, with her girlish heart, worshipped the memory of the dead King, and commiserated the lot of his son, for whom, up to the last fight at Worcester, from which he was flying even now, Uncle Marmaduke had bravely wielded his sword. But, when his voice filled the house like a trumpet, with a cry which we knew to be treason — for it was a perilous time, in the Sep tember of 165 i, when death pursued the Cavalier, and no man durst trust his neighbour — a look of alarm passed over my mother's face. Uncle Marmaduke saAV it. ' You are right,' he said : ' these very walls have ears. The thick darkness can scarce hide the loyal heart from the vampires of triumphant treachery.' PURSUED 3 As my uncle said this, drawing himself up to his full height, it seemed to me almost as if the erect figure of dead Sir Everard had stepped out from the gilt frame which hung opposite to the fire. ' If I have affrighted you by the hasty utterance of the thought that moves me most,' he continued, ' I bring you news at which you should rejoice.

I come a double victor. As my letter darkly told you, we escaped featly from the bloody field of Worcester, and your own affair is happily concluded, too. In the jaws of death, beset by the eavesdropper and the spy, I found the attorney, and have that now with me, in this stout leathern bag, which shall redeem your good husband, my brave brother, albeit no follower of the King, from his painful captivity among the unbelieving Moors.' This was the hope we cherished and the trust upon which our future hung. Yet, though Uncle Marma duke spoke bravely of rejoicing, as he looked round the hall, and his eye rested upon the armour of his ancestors, upon the portraits of Sir Everard and Dame Alice, and upon all the tokens of home, I saw his eyes fill with tears. My mother could not restrain her sobs, while I, garrulous old man that I am, can never forget the anguish I then felt as a boy.

This house, Kingsgrave Hall, which Sir Everard had built, and which every Staplehurst since had cherished as the apple of his eye, was the price of my father's redemption. Only by making ourselves strangers to the dear old place we loved could he be redeemed from captivity. But Uncle Marmaduke forced a gay smile to his countenance. ' While Ave talk about our affairs,' he said, ' we forget the bold companion of my adventures, honest Vambrowe, Nicholas Vambrowe, the very man who slew the dozen at Saverne. Ah, Vambrowe ! ill should we have fared without thy wily pate, and thy device of ragged coats and undarned hose !' Vambrowe, who had entered the hall and stood by the door, bowed as my mother greeted him. 'An old servant,' she said, ' is always a welcome friend.' He presented a strange and remarkable figure.

Short in stature, very broad, with the evidences of prodigious strength, a man of fifty or more, he was clad in a suit of black, and looked a soldier from head to heel. He was the hero of a hundred continental skirmishes, and had followed my uncle in many of the battles between the Parliament and the King. His frame bore the evidence of his career. Three fingers missing from his left hand ; a gash in his cheek, which grew livid in moments of excitement or anger ; and gaps that became visible in the ranks of his teeth when he smiled, left by the bullet which had passed out at the back of his neck, and laid him senseless amid the foemen he had slain, were the marks left upon him by the terrible fight at Saverne. Many a time I had listened eagerly to the stories which Vambrowe told of PURSUED 5 the wars when he had been with my uncle at Kings grave.

He had taught me as a boy the art of fence, and had praised me as an apt scholar, and after every bout with the foils, when he had put me in an awk ward plight, he would exclaim, ' 'Twas thus I slew the dozen at Saverne !' To the women-servants at Kingsgrave Vambrowe was a veritable hero, and they forgave the ferocity of his aspect for the honeyed sweetness of his tongue, and for the deeds in which his scars had been gained. The gallant fellow was indeed a bone of contention in the servants' hall, where old Basil, the last remaining of our men-servants in the day of our fallen fortunes, jealous of Vambrowe's influence, and perhaps of the attentions he paid my mother in her distress, waged war upon the maids who trumpeted the hero's praise. ' But now,' said my mother, ' you come with the appetites of wayfarers.

Supper is ready, and Basil will look after Vambrowe's comfort.' ' Ugh !' I heard Basil exclaim under his breath, ' I'd as lief stroke a hedgehog.' ' Come !' exclaimed my uncle, ' let us, then, make haste to drive hunger from the citadel.' We trooped out of the hall — my mother, Uncle Marmaduke, Madge and I — up the broad staircase, where we heard the distant voice of the sea carried on the summer breeze, and along the corridor, into the cosy room where the supper had been laid. Even at that moment of fear, when the time for our departure from the old home was at hand, we grew joyous, because the great project of our lives was making ready ; and Uncle Marmaduke had dealt so well with the attorney in London for our mortgage that his bag was filled with gold for our service. His frank and smiling countenance awoke confidence ; but, for himself, I knew he was in danger — and with him our project — for English soil was no safe resting-place for such as fled from Worcester field.

My mother, with Madge and myself, had been waiting uneasily through the long hours for my uncle's coming — now sitting in the hall, where Madge sang to us, again pacing the terrace, watching the rooks as they wheeled above until they settled in the elm trees, then gazing upon the sun as he sank into his fiery couch behind the woods. Our minds had been filled with the thought of my father, captured by the Moors during a venture in the Levant, and now pining in Algerian slavery ; of our home being mortgaged to strangers to procure his ransom ; of brave Uncle Mar maduke, in peril from the Parliament men, hastening hitherward in disguise with the price of his brother's redemption. And now, beneath the warm lamplight, with moths buzzing about the room, doing justice to an excellent supper, was Uncle Marmaduke, safe and sound among us, who made us laugh merrily at the story of the small adventures he had met with on his night journey from Canterbury hither.

PURSUED 7 Madge and I — she was a distant orphan kins woman of my mother's — had had Uncle Marmaduke for our childhood's playfellow. My father, who looked at life in a somewhat graver light than he, sometimes envied the exuberant spirits which had brought his brother triumphant through a host of difficulties. Often had Uncle Marmaduke carried us shoulder-high, and sung his jovial songs to us, and played and danced with us in the bowling-alley beneath the apple-trees. It was he who had been our riding-master ; with him we had learned to pull the oar ; he had been our craftsman by wood and stream. Many a brave story he had told us of how old Sir Everard had captured the Spanish treasure-ships at the Azores, and had pulled the Dons by the beard when he boarded the great galleon on the sands off Calais.

These histories, and the story of the adventures of my grandfather, who had been with Sir William Wynter against the Spaniards, enthralled me wholly, and I loved to go aboard the ships that put into our cove sometimes, to talk to the seamen about their craft, and to hear the wild stories they told. But when the unhappy troubles between the King and the Parliament broke out, Uncle Marmaduke was almost lost to us. He was a Royalist of the Royalists, and joined the King's standard at Notting ham, and in those days he visited us rarely, and then in secret. My father, on the other hand, though he drew no sword in the conflict— he shrank from it, indeed — was in sympathy with the Parliament, not certainly upon the question of ship-money, but because he feared the King might in the end throw us into the hands of foreigners.

But for his unhappy capture by the Moors I should have gone to sea, in 1649, with General Blake, whom my father knew very well. Yet the death of the King had been a grievous shock to my father, and my mother, who came of a high family, and was akin to Strafford, began to sympathize anew with the men who fought for the King. But it might well have happened, as I have said, that Uncle Marmaduke and I had been arrayed on opposite sides in the struggle. This, however, changed not a whit the enthusiastic admiration I had for him, nor the tender love which he always manifested towards me. As for quick-witted Madge, she was with him entirely. ' Tell us, cousin,' she said, when his story and the supper were done, ' the braver tale of your escape from the field of Worcester.' ' 'Tis well worth the telling, Madge, but a long history which time must shorten.

Alas, the fatal day ! You know how ill it fared with the men who fought for the cause. When night fell, they sped like rabbits to their holes when a dog leaps over the fence ; but some sixty of us together galloped through the night, safeguarding the King to Mistress Cotton's at Whiteladies. There we left PURSUED 9 his sacred Majesty, shaven, and beggared by newdonned clothing to the guise of a woodman ; and whether he lives now, God knows — I cannot tell. It was already daylight, and Vambrowe and I betook ourselves to a farmstead near by, and hid ourselves in a friendly haymow. A picket of Roundhead horsemen sang hymns through the livelong day Avithin twenty yards of us ; but towards sunset they rode off, and Vambrowe and I went on our several ways, for it was dangerous to journey together..

He, with the farmer, had made himself my ready varlet, and an old gray steeple-crowned hat, limp as a dishcloth, a coarse brown threadbare coat and breeches, and stockings of green yarn all in holes, formed my apparel. And so disguised, I journeyed Londonward as a pedlar, vending yarn and buttons to needy housewives. Arrived in the city, barefooted after my journey, I sought one Master Wolfram, at the Three Tons, in Bishopsgate, and there found Vambrowe, in greasy leathern doublet, with a bag of shoes on his back, drinking ale in a corner. For our business dealings with the attorney, who proved a friend true as steel, and managed our agency bravely, we donned more sober black ; and, as an impoverished gentleman seeking the suffrages of a kinsman in Kent, I set out to Canterbury, being there joined again by Vambrowe.' Madge and I busied Uncle Marmaduke with a hundred questions about these dangerous adventures, the recital of which had enthralled us, and I did not notice a look of alarm which had grown upon my mother's face. ' I implore you to tell us, Marmaduke,' she broke in, ' if there be danger upon your track.' 'A murrain on timid thoughts!' he exclaimed. ' It is true there are spies enough abroad, and Oliver and his men have little cause to love me, for I have smitten them many a blow, and, God willing, shall again.' ' It is this I feared,' my mother interposed. ' They know you for an implacable foe, and will not fall off from the chase.' ' If they have wind of my money-bags, they will certainly conclude that I am bent with supplies to the King, whom they shrewdly suspect to have escaped beyond the seas.

But it is useless to surmise idly. I have been well occupied. This very night a ship will be moored off the coast in waiting for us. Vambrowe and I will procure a boat from the fishermen, and, with God's help, we will join her. Stout hearts and strong hands will win the day, as ever before. Soon you may count on seeing Brother Thomas safe from the hands of the accursed Moors, and, if my plans go well, you may hear ill-news ot Oliver, too. I have been in many a venture more perilous than this.' As if to confirm our fears, the loud baying ot Carlo, the bloodhound, at that very moment fell PURSUED 1 1 upon our ears ; Vambrowe burst into the room with a drawn blade, and a loud and thundering knocking upon the oaken door of the hall re-echoed through the silent house. ' I have heard the hoofs of horses upon the road,' he whispered ; ' we shall do well to be prepared.

Find a hiding-place for the wallet, sir ; 'twere foolish to leave it exposed.' ' A wise man, Vambrowe ! But we can make the room good against a score.' He drew his sword, and Vambrowe, who had been handling his own long blade as one fondles the thing one loves, busied himself in priming a pistol which he carried at his belt. ' Oh, Marmaduke !' exclaimed my mother, putting her hand upon his shoulder. ' it cannot avail to make this room a slaughter-house if Oliver pursues you. You must hide yourself ; you must fly, if you never fled before. Think of my husband, think of your own brother ! How will his ransom fare if misad venture befall you?' As she spoke, Basil and the two maids, who then alone formed the establishment of our fallen house, entered the room, alarm painted on their faces. ' You speak well, sister,' said my uncle. ' This thought should hold us back.' As he spoke the loud knocking was repeated with impatient hand upon the door, and the barking of Carlo was re doubled. ' Put up thy sword, Vambrowe, until the occasion call for it ; Nephew Lance, be not over bold ; do thou, Basil, go out and parley with the strangers at the door ; keep it fast locked, man, and come hither with thy message !' Basil disappeared. ' It may be,' my uncle continued, ' that we vex our selves with idle fears.

Some belated traveller, perhaps, solicits impatiently our hospitality.' ' You have not forgotten the famous hiding-place ?' I said, pointing to the panelling by the fire, where a portrait of Strafford hung. Uncle Marmaduke, who well knew the spot, touched the spring, and the panelling swung back as a door, with the dead Earl's portrait upon it, dis closing a large, secret cupboard, where all the deeds and papers of the Staplehursts were reserved. ' Bring hither the leathern bag, Vambrowe. 'Tis a narrow space for two lusty foxes such as thou and I to lie within, but it may shelter us while Oliver's huntsmen go by. I doubt that scrivener — whether he hath babbled of the money. If they have pursued us along the road, and do not find us here, they will hasten, thinking to forestall us at the shore.' Basil now entered the room, breathless. ' There are two or three men at the door,' he said. ' They demand entrance in the Parliament's name, seeking, as they say, saving your presence, sir, the traitor, Marmaduke Staplehurst.' 'Traitor !' exclaimed my uncle angrily. ' The ill tongued knaves lie in their throats.

But I cannot PURSUED 13 bandy words about such uncivil brutes. Get thee in there, Vambrowe, quickly. Sister, Madge, be not afraid ! Lance, admit these men that they may search, and discretion be your counsellor ! Woe betide them if they search this cupboard ! I thought, we should have had a nest of hornets about us. Two or three, saidst thou, Basil ?' ' Two or three at the door, but they have a troop of horse, they say, besetting the house.' ' He is tardy in the telling of his story, Lance ; but go out to them, boy, and admit a brace. They cannot expect to stable a troop of horse in Kings grave Hall.' He followed Vambrowe through the opening, and closed the panels behind him, and I heard him bolt them Avithin. No man would have suspected the existence of that door, for its edges were concealed by the mouldings of the panels.

I felt that delay was dangerous, so, after a few reassuring words to my mother and Madge, who despatched the maids to their room so as to remove the appearance of alarm from among us, I hastened with Basil to the porch, where I heard men's voices without, and, as we approached it, their blows resounded again through the house, and seemed as if they would break in the door. ' Who is it that demands admittance by night to Kingsgrave Hall?' I called aloud. A stern, harsh voice replied : ' I have already told thee or thy varlet, and it thou open not the door on the instant, we will batter it down. We come with the warrant of the Parlia ment to arrest the traitor, Marmaduke Staplehurst, whom ye have within.' ' If you are reasonable men,' I answered, ' you will see that I cannot admit a crowd of strangers into this peaceable house at night upon their own demand.

Two of your number shall enter, and, if they show their warrant for so doing, shall search the house.' I heard a low colloquy without, and then the same stern voice commanded, ' Open, then, the door.' At a sign from me Basil drew back the bolts, and held the door a little ajar while two men entered, and then immediately closed and bolted it again. Two tall, solemn-faced men they were, with gray jerkins belted about their waists and battered morions upon their heads. Breast and back plates were strapped upon them ; each had a couple of pistols in his belt, and each carried a drawn sword. ' So thou art the stripling,' said the one who seemed to be in authority, ' who dost hold high words to us. If the godly man, Thomas Staplehurst, had been here he would not have held the door against the messengers of the Parliament.' ' I hold no other words to you than such as any man should hold to strangers who force themselves into his house.

As to my father, I do but that which I know he would have done. Show me your warrant, PURSUED 15 and you shall have such help as, with honesty, may be given.' He brought a document from his pocket addressed to Captain Habakkuk Smitehome, authorizing him to arrest Marmaduke Staplehurst, a ' malignant,' late in arms against the Parliament, and charged with divers high crimes and misdemeanours. 'This Marmaduke Staplehurst is thy uncle?' I assented with a sign. ' Answer me truly ; is he in this house ?' ' I answer you no question save such as should be answered. It is your affair to find him, not mine. But this I tell you, that this is not Marmaduke Staplehurst's house, and that he is not used to be here.' ' We have traced him hither, boy, and if he have escaped it is but to his destruction, even as Zedekiah out of Jerusalem from the vengeance of Nebuchad nezzar, the King.

We have men, boy, besetting the house. Where is the lady, thy mother?' I led the way up the staircase, and the spurred boots of the Puritan soldiers rang upon the boards as they followed me to where my mother and Madge sat pale and trembling. The eye of Habakkuk Smitehome fell upon the remains of the supper which had been spread for Uncle Marmaduke. ' Like the impious feasting of Belshazzar,' he said, turning to his companion, ' have they filled the night with their revelry.' ' Yea, verily,' answered the other, who, as it seemed to me, would very much have liked to consume what remained, ' but ill would it beseem us to hunger after the flesh-pots of Egypt.' The captain now produced his warrant afresh for my mother's inspection, and told her his mission. ' We will have this fine Cavalier,' he concluded, ' either alive or dead, and I charge you, madam, to deliver him up to us.' His request was enforced by the loud neighing of horses and the champing of bits on the terrace, accompanied by the deep baying of Carlo in the stable-yard. ' But you assume too readily,' said my mother, ' that to deliver him up is within my power.

I thought the wise Parliament would deal justly with the men who have fought bravely for their cause ; but your fellows, I see, are bent on making enemies of their countrymen.' ' Such as are conformable,' said the Puritan soldier, ' are doubtless like to be pardoned, but such as Mar maduke Staplehurst, who pursue their wickedness, even as aged Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites, these shall be smitten hip and thigh.' When I heard the stern Puritan speak thus, and reflected that my Cavalier uncle, with fiery Vam browe, were separated from us by but an inch of PURSUED 17 oaken panelling, my excitement made me speechless, and gentle Madge, trembling like a leaf, came over to where I stood, and clung to my arm. My mother, pale and thin, sat calmly grasping the arms of her chair, but I saw that she could not take off her gaze from the panel whereon the portrait of Strafford hung.

It was honest Basil — shall I ever forget the good old stalwart soul ? — who took up our cause. ' Sirs,' said he, boldly addressing the strangers, ' if an old servant may speak, I tell ye that 'tis a churlish, unmannerly thing to come into this house to insult the lady, my mistress, and her ward. We are not used to lard our speech with these Bible saws ye quote so glibly, but even the meanest soldier who followed the King would have been 'shamed to speak so of her kinsman to a woman. An ye have work to do 'twere well to begin.' Basil's blood was up, and the Puritan, enraged by his boldness, turned on him like an angry bull. ' Thou spawn of Satan,' he cried, ' I am minded to run thee through the gizzard ! Thou lick-spittle of a traitor Cavalier, befouling the house of thy godly master, utter another word, and thou shalt prate no more !' He turned upon his heel, and his eye rested upon the face of Strafford, which seemed strangely to fire him with the frenzy of personal malevolence. ' Crafty hound,' he cried, in an angry shout, addressing the inanimate picture as if beside himself, ' cast that glowering eye upon the breast of him whose father perished through thee !

Thou fawning ser vitor, forsaken by Charles Stuart, the man of blood, would I could run thee through !' He made, indeed, as if he would attack the lifeless figure in his passionate outburst, but 1 interfered. ' Sir,' I said, ' be calm. It was not to assail the dead Strafford, my mother's kinsman, nor to asperse the dead King, but to seek Marmaduke Staplehurst, that you came hither.' ' You speak well,' he said more solemnly. ' Go down, Eli, and let in the men. Stop, boy !' as I made a start as if to hold the door. ' We will ran sack the house until Marmaduke Staplehurst be found.' At the moment I heard the shooting back of a bolt, the portrait of Strafford moved, and the panel swung open. My heart stood still ; a little cry burst from Madge ; my mother, with a gasp, fell back swooning in her chair.

Uncle Marmaduke was about to breast his foes. For a second the two Puritans stood aghast. It was the little lull before the storm. Then there was a rush, a smothered shout, the trampling of feet, a flash of steel. Vambrowe leaped like a savage tiger upon the man we had heard ad dressed as Eli. I saw him wrest a pistol from his hand. The soldier went down with a heavy thud, his back-plate striking the floor, and Vambrowe gripped him by the throat. There was a throttling The Fight in Kingsgrave Hall. PURSUED 19 cry and a groan. Never shall I forget that onslaught. Uncle Marmaduke had grappled the other. There was a terrible struggle. I saw the frenzied captain dash upon him, and he drew back, though not with out receiving a wound in the shoulder. But he flung Smitehome even against the door, and I shrank with horror from the deadly spectacle.

Then, I know not how, the strap was cut that held the Puritan's breast plate, which hung partly from him, but with terrific fury he made at my uncle, and for what seemed an age that fearful clashing of steel went on, the sparks flying from their weapons in the fury of the conflict. But at last the fight was over ; with a low groan Smitehome sank to the ground ; the long sharp sword had pierced him through, and his blood im brued the floor. ' Your mother, Lance ! and Madge !' broke from my uncle. Oh, the horror of that moment ! But Madge, with a face like marble, did not fall. Somehow — I wot not how — my mother was supported from the room to where her maid awaited her. ' So do foul aspersers of his late sacred Majesty bite the dust !' my uncle exclaimed. ' My blood was up, Lance,' he said, turning to me, ' and I could not let the fellows go without a trouncing.

A Roland for an Oliver! But 'tis a narrow strait, boy. Hearken !' A loud crashing of glass told that the troopers FLAG 20 were breaking in through the hall window, and we heard the clank of their steel below. They had heard the noise of the struggle, and in a moment would be upon us. ' Vambrowe,' cried my uncle, ' begone, man, like the wind ! Lance, take care of your mother and Madge. All depends upon you.' Without another word the pair disappeared through the door. It was not a moment too soon ; for in an instant a dozen troopers, mounting the stairs, poured into the room. I marvelled how they had missed the fugitives in the corridor. An ex pression of dismay overspread their features when they saw the lifeless body of their captain lying prone upon the floor. The man Eli was rising to his feet, battered and scratched, and with his arm hanging limp by his side.