Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth

At last one of them slipt through his fingers, and fell on the floor. He stooped and felt for it: but he could not find it. Vexatious! He turned hastily to search in another direction, and struck his head sharply against the table.

Was it the pain, or the little disappointment? or was it the sense of his blindness brought home to him in that ludicrous commonplace way, and for that very reason all the more humiliating? or was it the sudden revulsion of overstrained nerves, produced by that slight shock? Or had he become indeed a child once more? I know not; but so it was, that he stamped on the floor with pettishness, and then checking himself, burst into a violent flood of tears.

A quick rustle passed him; the apple was replaced in his hand, and Ayacanora’s voice sobbed out:

“There! there it is! Do not weep! Oh, do not weep! I cannot bear it! I will get you all you want! Only let me fetch and carry for you, tend you, feed you, lead you, like your slave, your dog! Say that I may be your slave!” and falling on her knees at his feet, she seized both his hands, and covered them with kisses.

“Yes!” she cried, “I will be your slave! I must be! You cannot help it! You cannot escape from me now! You cannot go to sea! You cannot turn your back upon wretched me. I have you safe now! Safe!” and she clutched his hands triumphantly. “Ah! and what a wretch I am, to rejoice in that! to taunt him with his blindness! Oh, forgive me! I am but a poor wild girl—a wild Indian savage, you know: but—but—” and she burst into tears.

A great spasm shook the body and soul of Amyas Leigh; he sat quite silent for a minute, and then said solemnly:

“And is this still possible? Then God have mercy upon me a sinner!”

Ayacanora looked up in his face inquiringly: but before she could speak again, he had bent down, and lifting her as the lion lifts the lamb, pressed her to his bosom, and covered her face with kisses.

The door opened. There was the rustle of a gown; Ayacanora sprang from him with a little cry, and stood, half-trembling, half-defiant, as if to say, “He is mine now; no one dare part him from me!”

“Who is it?” asked Amyas.

“Your mother.”

“You see that I am bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, mother,” said he, with a smile.

He heard her approach. Then a kiss and a sob passed between the women; and he felt Ayacanora sink once more upon his bosom.

“Amyas, my son,” said the silver voice of Mrs. Leigh, low, dreamy, like the far-off chimes of angels’ bells from out the highest heaven, “fear not to take her to your heart again; for it is your mother who has laid her there.”

“It is true, after all,” said Amyas to himself. “What God has joined together, man cannot put asunder.”

From that hour Ayacanora’s power of song returned to her; and day by day, year after year, her voice rose up within that happy home, and soared, as on a skylark’s wings, into the highest heaven, bearing with it the peaceful thoughts of the blind giant back to the Paradises of the West, in the wake of the heroes who from that time forth sailed out to colonize another and a vaster England, to the heaven-prospered cry of Westward-Ho!

notes

1

See note at end of chapter.

2

In the documents from which I have drawn this veracious history, a note is appended to this point of Yeo’s story,  which seems to me to smack sufficiently of the old Elizabethan seaman, to be inserted at length.

“All so far, and most after, agreeth with Lopez Vaz his  tale, taken from his pocket by my Lord Cumberland’s mariners at the river Plate, in the year 1586.  But note here his  vainglory and falsehood, or else fear of the Spaniard.

“First, lest it should be seen how great an advantage the Spaniards had, he maketh no mention of the English calivers, nor those two pieces of ordnance which were in the pinnace.

“Second, he saith nothing of the flight of the Cimaroons: though it was evidently to be gathered from that which he himself saith, that of less than seventy English were slain eleven, and of the negroes but five.  And while of the  English seven were taken alive, yet of the negroes none. And why, but because the rascals ran?

“Thirdly, it is a thing incredible, and out of experience, that eleven English should be slain and seven taken, wit loss only of two Spaniards killed. “Search now, and see (for I will not speak of mine own small doings), in all those memorable voyages, which the worthy and learned Mr. Hakluyt hath so painfully collected, and  which are to my old age next only to my Bible, whether in all the fights which we have endured with the Spaniards,  their loss, even in victory, hath not far exceeded ours. For we are both bigger of body and fiercer of spirit, being even to the poorest of us (thanks so the care of our  illustrious princes), the best fed men of Europe, the most trained to feats of strength and use of weapons, and put our  trust also not in any Virgin or saints, dead rags and bones, painted idols which have no breath in their mouths, or St. Bartholomew medals and such devil’s remembrancers; but in the only true God and our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom whosoever trusteth, one of them shall chase a thousand.  So I hold, having had good experience; and say, if they have done it once, let them do it again, and kill their eleven to  our two, with any weapon they will, save paper bullets blown  out of Fame’s lying trumpet.  Yet I have no quarrel with the  poor Portugal; for I doubt not but friend Lopez Vaz had  looking over his shoulder as he wrote some mighty black  velvet Don, with a name as long as that Don Bernaldino Delgadillo de Avellaneda who set forth lately his  vainglorious libel of lies concerning the last and fatal voyage of my dear friends Sir F. Drake and Sir John Hawkins,  who rest in peace, having finished their labors, as would God I rested.  To whose shameless and unspeakable lying my good friend Mr. Henry Savile of this county did most pithily  and wittily reply, stripping the ass out of his lion’s skin;  and Sir Thomas Baskerville, general of the fleet, by my advice, send him a cartel of defiance, offering to meet him  with choice of weapons, in any indifferent kingdom of equal distance from this realm; which challenge he hath prudently  put in his pipe, or rather rolled it up for one of his Spanish cigarros, and smoked it, and I doubt not, found it foul in the mouth.”

3

Strange as it may seem, this distich is Spenser’s own; and the other hexameters are all authentic.

4

“The Shepherd’s Calendar.”

5

This letter was a few years since in the possession of Mr. Pomeroy Gilbert, fort-major at Dartmouth, a descendant of the admiral’s.

6

The Raleigh, the largest ship of the squadron, was of only 200 tons burden; The Golden Hind, Hayes’ ship, which returned safe, of 40; and The Squirrel (whereof more hereafter), of 10 tons!  In such cockboats did these old heroes brave the unknown seas.

7

Fuller, p. 398.

8

“Some natural tears she shed, but dried them soon”

9

This noble monument of Drake’s piety and public spirit still remains in full use.

10

Humboldt says that there is a path from Caravellada to St. Jago, between the peaks, used by smugglers.  This is probably the “unknowen way of the Indians,” which Preston used.

11

The crew of the Tobie, cast away on the Barbary coast a few years after, “began with heavy hearts to sing the twelfth Psalm, ‘Help, Lord, for good and godly men,’ etc. Howbeit, ere we had finished four verses, the waves of the sea had stopped the breaths of most.”

12

Two-toed sloths.