Sir Mortimer | Page 3

"and you, John Nevil, whom I
reverence as my commander and love as my friend, I give you thanks.
Did we lose at Fayal? Then, this voyage, at some other golden island,
we shall win! Honor stayed with us that bloody day, and shall we not
now bring her home enthroned? Ay, and for her handmaidens fame and
noble service and wealth,--wealth with which to send forth other ships,
hounds of the sea which yet may pull down this Spanish stag of ten! By
my faith, I sorrow for you whom we leave behind!"
"Look that I overtake you not, Mortimer!" cried Sidney. "Walter
Raleigh and I have plans for next year. You and I may yet meet beneath
a palm-tree!"
"And I also, Sir Mortimer," exclaimed Captain Philip Amadas. "Sir

Walter hath promised me a ship--"
"When the old knight my father dies, and I come into my property," put
in, loudly, a fancy-fired youth from Devon, "I'll go out over bar in a
ship of my own! I'll have all my mariners dressed like Sir Hugh
Willoughby's men in the picture, and when I come home--"
"Towing the King of Spain his plate-fleet behind you," quoth the
mustachioed gentleman.
"--all my sails shall be cloth of gold," continued wine--flushed
one-and-twenty. "The main-deck shall be piled with bars of silver, and
in the hold shall be pearls and pieces of gold, doubloons, emeralds as
great as filberts--"
"At Panama saw I an emerald greater than a pigeon's egg!" cried one
who had sailed in the Golden Hind.
Sir Mortimer laughed. "Why, our very speech grows rich--as did thine
long since, Philip Sidney! And now, Giles Arden, show these
stay-at-home gentlemen the stones the Bonaventure brought in the
other day from that coast we touched at two years agone. If we miss the
plate-fleet, my masters, if we find Cartagena or Santa Marta too strong
for us, there is yet the unconquered land, the Hesperidian garden
whence came these golden apples! Deliver, good dragon!"
He of the mustachios laid side by side upon the board three pieces of
glittering rock, whereat every man bent forward.
"Marcasite?" said one, doubtfully.
"El madre del oro?" suggested another.
"White spar," said Arden, authoritatively, "and containeth of gold ten
pounds to the hundredweight. Moreover--" He sifted down upon the
dark wood beside the stones a thimbleful of dull yellow grains. "The
sands of Pactolus, gentlemen! Sure 'twas in no Grecian river that King
Midas bathed himself!"

Those of the company to whom had never before been exhibited these
samples of imperial riches craned their necks, and the looks of some
were musing and of others keenly eager. The room fell silent, and still
they gazed and gazed at the small heap of glistening stones and those
few grains of gold. They were busy men in the vanguard of a quickened
age, and theirs were its ardors, its Argus-eyed fancy and potent
imagination. Show them an acorn, and straightway they saw a forest of
oaks; an inch of a rainbow, and the mind grasped the whole vast arch,
zenith-reaching, seven-colored, enclosing far horizons. So now, in
addition to the gleaming fragments upon the table before them, they
saw mountain ranges with ledges of rock all sparkling like this ore,
deep mines with Indian workers, pack-trains, and burdened holds of
ships.
After a time one lifted a piece of the ore, hesitatingly, as though he
made to take up all the Indies, scrutinized it closely, weighed it, passed
it to his neighbor. It went the round of the company, each man handling
it, each with the talisman between his fingers gazing through the bars
of this present hour at a pageant and phantasmagoria of his own
creating. At last it came to the hand of an old merchant, who held it a
moment or two, looking steadfastly upon it, then slowly put it down.
"Well," said he, "may God send you furthering winds, Sir Mortimer
and Sir John, and make their galleons and galliasses, their caravels and
carracks, as bowed corn before you! Those of your company who are to
die, may they die cleanly, and those who are to live, live nobly, and
may not one of you fall into the hands of the Holy Office."
"Amen to that, Master Hudson," quoth Arden.
"The Holy Office!" cried a Banbury man. "I had a cousin, sirs,--an
honest fellow, with whom I had gone bird's-nesting when we were boys
together! He was master of a merchantman--the Red Lion--that by foul
treachery was taken by the Spaniards at Cales. The priests put forth
their hands and clutched him, who was ever outspoken, ever held fast
to his own opinion!... To die! that is easy; but when I learned what was
done to him before he was let to die--" The