Westward Ho! | Page 4

of
face and form.
But at the time whereof I write, Bideford was not merely a pleasant
country town, whose 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 Topsham," and was the centre of a
local civilization and enterprise, small perhaps compared with the vast
efforts of the present day: but 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 labor of Bideford, 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 Raleighs, Grenvilles
and Oxenhams, and a host more of "forgotten worthies," whom we
shall learn one day to honor 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 Britain's 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 itself, and far
more devilish?
It is in memory of these men, their voyages and their battles, their faith
and their valor, 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 the 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 sprinkling 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 bars, and each bar between a
thirty and forty pound weight. And says 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 him 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 shotten herrings, wasn't it worth more
to save him