Sir Mortimer | Page 3

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 speaker broke off with an oath and sat with fixed gaze, his hand beating upon the table a noiseless tattoo.
"To die," said Mortimer Ferne slowly. "To die cleanly, having lived nobly--it is a good wish, Master Hudson! To die greatly--as did your cousin, sir,--a good knight and true, defending faith and loyalty, what more consummate flower for crown of life? What loftier