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 BEYOND THE SEAS.
 
 All Rights Resei-vsd.
 
 BEYOND THE SEAS. 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE SURPRISING ADVENTURES AND INGENIOUS 
 OPINIONS OF RALPH LORD ST. KEYNE, 
 TOLD AND SET FORTH BY HIS COUSIN, 
 HUMPHREY ST. KEYNE. 
 
 BY 
 
 OSWALD CRAWFURD, 
 
 Author of " The IVorld We Live /;;," 
 ''Portugal: Old and New," &-c. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL, 
 
 Limited. 
 
 1888.
 
 Richard Clay and Sons, 
 london and bungay.
 
 / s-^^ 
 
 BEYOND THE SEAS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 In the year of Our Lord one thousand six hundred 
 and fifty-two (1652), only one year and four months 
 after His Sacred Majesty King Charles, the Second 
 j"^^ of that name (my dread Sovereign and the best of 
 1 Kings), had been crowned at Scone, and but eight 
 months after the fatal fight at Worcester, disastrous 
 to the King's cause, we — that is to say, my young 
 kinsman and master and myself — reached the city of 
 Genoa in our wanderings. After Worcester rout we 
 had taken ship at Rye and run to Scheveningen in 
 Holland. Thence, after long journeying through the 
 Low Countries and Germany, we crossed the Tyrolean 
 Alps into Tuscany, and passing across Italy to Genoa, 
 embarked upon the Spanish trading galleon Es^eransa, 
 in English T/ie Hope (happy omen ! not altogether to 
 be frustrated), bound for Barcelona in Spain, but 
 with intention to touch at the Port of Palermo, in
 
 2 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Sicily, that fair and fertile island being then an 
 appurtenance of the King of Spain. 
 
 It happened that on the 2nd day of May, at a 
 little before seven o'clock in the morning, we lay 
 becalmed some three sea leagues or thereabouts off 
 the Sicilian coast ; a light, south-easterly breeze having 
 died away with the dawn, and the high lands on either 
 side of the city of Palermo being now and again seen 
 and unseen through the mists of early morning. 
 
 I am thus particular, for it was in the idleness 
 and leisure of this morning time that I formed the 
 resolution to begin to set down in writing the true 
 history of the adventures which had befallen my 
 young kinsman (and former pupil in war and letters) 
 and myself since the fight at Worcester. Not indeed 
 opining that there had happened to us at this time 
 any greater dangers or more moving and wonderful 
 incidents, perils, and adventures than to perhaps some 
 other worthy and loyal gentlemen in these melan- 
 choly times ; but that I did then wish, and do now 
 still more urgently desire, to recount the circumstances 
 of our fugitive and exiled life, in order that I may the 
 more particularly set forth and blazon and expatiate 
 upon the singular learning, gravity, courage, and 
 wisdom, rebus in arduis, in trial and adversity, of the 
 young gentleman, my companion in these misfor- 
 tunes, who was the head of our i^voWy , prcssidiiim et 
 dulce decus, the guide and ornament of our house, 
 now alas ! fallen from its pride and magnificence, of 
 which I, a poor scholar and soldier-adventurer, am
 
 Beyond the Seas. 3 
 
 but an unhonoured member (and who must needs 
 bear the bar sinister on my escutcheon), and, so to 
 speak, allowed to name myself one of the family but 
 on sufferance and by condescension. 
 
 So forming this aforesaid resolution, little did I 
 reckon and forecast that this very day, then so newly 
 dawned, would be the turning-point of our lives, and 
 that henceforward my kinsman's fortune would be, 
 though still varied and most strange, indeed to the 
 point of marvellous and astounding, higher and greater 
 than that of any Englishman of the times who has 
 sought and counted upon the favour of the fickle 
 goddess Fortune beyond the seas. 
 
 Thus have I, as my shrewd and gentle Reader has 
 already perceived, got at a stroke in medias res, into 
 the middle of my subject (a method which H. Flaccus 
 commends to the teller of history in prose or verse) 
 before I have so much as told my own name (which 
 is no great matter) or my Lord's (which is), or what 
 was the purpose of our taking ship for Spain from 
 Genoa, or why we touched at the Sicilian port of 
 Palermo, which was indeed, as the reader will have 
 gathered, no business of ours, for wc purposed not even 
 to land there, but the ship's own and its masters'. 
 
 Know then that upon the final defeat at all points 
 of our forces in England and Scotland, and the triumph 
 of the Sectaries at Worcester, there was no place in 
 the land for us King's men who had fought and 
 laboured for the true cause. We gentlemen of the 
 army especially were hunted like hares and foxes, 
 
 B 2
 
 4 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and needed, and indeed did most cautiously and 
 wakefully use, the subtlety and cunning of these 
 beasts to fly from and elude the packs of our 
 enemies ; for if captured we were mercilessly im- 
 prisoned, starved, maltreated ; the common sort shot 
 without trial, by decimation, one man in ten, to fright 
 the rest ; the leading men tried for disobeying the 
 usurper, and many of them barbarously executed for 
 that loyalty to their King and country, which in all 
 nations and times has been acknowledged the chiefest 
 virtue of a good citizen. My young Lord's estates, 
 we had but good enough cause to apprehend, would 
 be shortly confiscated and seized by the usurper 
 Cromwell, who then had gathered all government 
 into his own hands, and was as absolute with our 
 lives and estates as a very grand Sultan of the 
 Turks. 
 
 Notwithstanding the manifest peril in which he 
 stood, my Lord was for making his way to his own 
 house in Somersetshire as soon as the battle and the 
 rout of our side that followed it were over. It was 
 against my will that we rode thither, but, " It will be 
 safe enough from the Roundheads," said he, " till the 
 rumour reaches the Castle how the fight has gone 
 against us, but we must ride faster than rumour, for 
 I have my business to do there." And we rode hard, 
 and by the second day in the morning had reached 
 the gates of St. Keyne Castle. 
 
 I questioned him not as to his business here, con- 
 cluding it was some matter of heirloom, of jewels, or
 
 Beyond the Seas. 5 
 
 plate, or muniments, or of moneys, that he would 
 secure against the spoiling of his estate ; but his 
 business was to provide for the safety of his cousin 
 and ward, the Lady Geraldine Scudamour, a child of 
 but fifteen years, his sole near relative save myself 
 (who am indeed, as I have hinted, no legitimate 
 kinsman of his or hers) : this young lady's wardship 
 having, upon his father's demise, so quick and 
 strangely were matters jumbled in these jumbled 
 times, devolved upon him, a youth, though grave 
 beyond his years, of but twenty-three. The Lady 
 Geraldine resided at St. Keyne Castle with a religious 
 lady from the convent of the Ursulines at Poitiers, 
 and when my Lord and I alighted from our horses, 
 'twas the child who greeted us. 
 
 " Geraldine ! " cried my Lord, after he had saluted 
 her upon the cheek, " Geraldine, my dear," says he 
 very gently but sadly, " the King's cause is lost." 
 
 The child went very pale. 
 
 " Lost ! " she called out, " then will they murder 
 us all ? " 
 
 " Nay," said his Lordship, " thou wilt be spared, 
 and madame here. The lady came up at this moment, 
 very much frightened. 
 
 " But you, Ralph ! " and the child clung to him 
 weeping, " what will become of you .'' " for the two 
 had been in a manner playfellows together. 
 
 " Our kinsman Humphrey and I," quoth he, look- 
 ing at me confidently, "will pass easily through our 
 enemies and embark for Spain. The king of that
 
 6 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 country lacks soldiers of fortune, and we intend to 
 oft'er him our swords." 
 
 " Then will I go with you too," cried out Lady 
 Geraldine. " I will be your page, as Bellario was 
 to Philaster in the play." 
 
 The French religious lady, catching something of 
 the child's meaning, shook her head reprovingly. 
 
 But the child cried to her kinsman to let her come 
 too, and he for peace's sake humoured her fancy 
 a while. 
 
 " But," asked he, " how shall we manage, my dear, 
 in war time, when fighting is on hand ? 'Tis then 
 no place or time for young maidens." 
 
 "Oh," said Lady Geraldine, "see how tall I am, 
 and slim of my figure. I will so dress, as Bellario 
 did or Imogen in the plays, that no man, or woman 
 either, but shall say I am a man ; " and indeed the 
 maiden was slim and tall and upright, being then, I 
 think, a month or so past her fifteenth birthday, and 
 quick and strong in her carriage, and rather wan of 
 face, so that in man's dress she might easily have 
 passed for one between boy and youth. 
 
 My Lord laughed a little, and looking upon me, 
 " What say you, cousin, to this .'' " quoth he. 
 
 Now, I have never failed to inculcate upon my 
 young Lord the evil ways and evil example of women, 
 and put him in remembrance of all that the learning 
 of both ancients and moderns has discovered and 
 expounded in discommendation of women and their 
 ways ; to wit, their vanity, and their lightness, and
 
 Beyond the Seas. 7 
 
 their leading of men's thoughts away from learning 
 and gravity and wisdom into folly and levity. How 
 that, in ancient times, the wisest nations — that is to 
 say, the Greeks and Indians — saw right to include 
 and seclude them in dwellings apart from men ; how 
 the civilest people of the moderns have done the same, 
 to wit, in Convents and Nunneries, and the cunningest 
 and most advancing, and in war the most terrible of 
 modern peoples, namely the Turks, have built their 
 Harems and Seraglios [teste Biisbecqidd) for the utter 
 obclusion of the weaker sex, to the inestimable peace, 
 comfort, ease, and freedom of the rest of mankind. 
 I likewise did not fail to strengthen and support my 
 argument with innumerable instances from the Chris- 
 tian Fathers, as Jerome, Cyprian, and Chrysostom ; 
 from the philosophers, as Seneca ; from the satirist 
 Juvenal; and from the lighter poets, as Propertius, 
 Martialis, and above all Ovidius Naso {vide his Ars 
 Anioris, passim). 
 
 But on this occasion courtesy and good manners 
 forbade ine to be too convincing, and I therefore 
 forewent any response to my kinsman's invitation ; 
 contenting myself with remarking that women's 
 constitutions were too nice and delicate for the 
 rough usages of a campaign or to look upon blood 
 and wounds, and their bodies too weak to bear its 
 fatigues, too weak even to sustain the mere weight of 
 a soldier's arms ; nay, even to hold out a soldier's 
 sword in their hands. 
 
 "Look, Humphrey," cried my girl cousin, "I am
 
 8 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 stronger than you think," and the child, going to the 
 trophies of ancient armour that stood in the hall like 
 armed knights all arovv, snatched up a morion from 
 one figure, took a great battle-axe from another, 
 and fixing the first upon her head with a look 
 between laughing and terrible, she raised the axe 
 in both hands, pretending a swashing blow. "Now 
 look to it, Humphrey," cried she, smiling on me, 
 " for I will kill you dead for your hard words of 
 women." 
 
 But the weapon was too heavy for her puny strength 
 and fell forward upon the paired floor. 
 
 Her cousin laughed a little, overlooking the un- 
 reason of the child, then turning to the nun, 
 " Madame," said he, " there is, I fear, no longer safety 
 for you or my kinswoman in this castle's walls. In 
 an hour you and she must ride forth towards Bristol. 
 I pray you to prepare yourself and the Lady Gerald- 
 ine ; and do you, madame, cloak your religious habit 
 with a riding dress, for no doubt the road will be 
 infested with Sectaries. You will travel to Bristol, 
 where I have provided a gentleman of my friends to 
 meet you, and a house for your due lodging. So soon 
 as things have quieted down, a passage will be taken 
 for you both to Havre-de-Grace, where I have 
 provided friends to receive you, and whence you will 
 be carried by ship to The Groyne in Galicia of Spain, 
 near which is the great Benedictine Nunnery of St. 
 Scholastica, of which our aunt Lady Priscilla Scuda- 
 mour is Abbess, and where my cousin will continue
 
 Beyond the Seas. 9 
 
 her education ; and I desire that you accompany her 
 and still have immediate charge over her person." 
 
 We did not attend the ladies on their journey, 
 which they made in company with several of the 
 trustier of Lord St. Keyne's servants, but after stay- 
 ing a while for some necessary correspondence and 
 having set his affairs hastily in order, my Lord and 
 I rode fast in their track, for though we feared to be 
 seen in their company, justly deeming that our 
 cavalier dress, arms, and appearance might provoke 
 molestation to them; we hung on their traces for two 
 days, unknown to them, that we might make sure that 
 no hurt befell them, and ready, if aught happened 
 amiss, for a bold stroke of help or rescue. But 
 nothing took place worthy of note, for the country- 
 side was not yet aroused nor the Sectaries drunken 
 (as they afterwards were) with the news of their great 
 victory, of which indeed only unconfirmed rumours 
 were as yet flying along the roads, insomuch that men 
 were still doubtful on which side to incline. Note 
 likewise, that about the environs of Bristol and along 
 the main road from London in the east and this, the 
 greatest and richest city of the west, were to be found 
 as many King's men as Roundheads, and as we rode 
 by many spoke out their minds, to the effect that 
 they had it in their hearts to wish good luck to us 
 and to the King (perceiving clearly enough to which 
 party we belonged). 
 
 Seeing how matters went, my Lord spoke openly to 
 some along the road who had served on our side and
 
 10 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 who knew him by sight or rumour, saying, " Friends, 
 the King's cause is ended for the time, and they who 
 love it and me will serve both by taking arms 
 abroad where I intend, namely with the King of 
 Spain." 
 
 This was bold speaking, and I feared for the speaker 
 that it might get bruited in a wrong quarter, but its 
 very boldness won it good acceptance with the honest 
 yeomen and farmers' sons with whom my kinsman 
 spoke, and many were minded at once to bring 
 their swords, their horses, and themselves into a com- 
 pany to serve him ; but, " Weigh the matter well," 
 said he, " and in a day or two I will return along 
 this road, when as many of you as will can join our 
 troop," and to some he appointed one place of meet- 
 ing and to others another, as the case might be, upon 
 the road. Sure enough, when we had got as far as 
 the gates of Bristol, where we knew our ladies and 
 their servants to be in safety, and had turned back, 
 we met several of these said farmers and yeomen, all 
 good fellows, and stout and valiant men, a-horse- 
 back, armed some better, some worse, one with sword 
 and pistols, another with a pike, or a musquetoon, 
 ready to side with my kinsman and myself. For they 
 were all loyal men disappointed with the issues of 
 things, hating the tyranny of the Fanatics and not 
 yet (by a good deal) sick of fighting for their King 
 and for their liberties. 
 
 We rode on, making south, with design to embark 
 at Poole in Dorset, always riding forward very quickly
 
 Beyond the Seas. ii 
 
 and cautiously, increasing in numbers as we went 
 along, and avoiding the towns where troops were 
 posted. At this time, however, the Parliamentary 
 forces were mostly gathered in the west (with the 
 arch usurper Cromwell) or in the northerly parts of 
 England, and we found the town garrisons weak and 
 the country side more bare of troops than we had 
 either expected or hoped. We employed a circuit to 
 avoid Bath, where was a strong troop of horse, and 
 made pretty straight through Devizes towards Salis- 
 bury, wherein was a strongish garrison too, but mostly 
 foot, militia men, as we had heard, and, as indeed 
 proved to be the case, for there were barely three- 
 score horse soldiers in the city. 
 
 Now by this time we feared no such force, for our 
 own troop numbered nearly a hundred men, so many 
 had fallen in on our passage through Somerset and 
 Wiltshire, and, though our business was for the pre- 
 sent rather flying than fighting, we were not like to 
 run from equal or nearly equal numbers of the enemy 
 upon a direct challenge given. We had hopes, so fast 
 had we ridden, that no news of us had gone on before, 
 but as fast as we had come it appeared that treason 
 had travelled still faster, which happened in this wise, 
 that as we passed through Pottern, a small township 
 a little north of Market Lavington in Wiltshire, and 
 lodging that night in the hay-barn of an honest 
 gentleman and a Royalist, some three miles beyond 
 the town, when the troop was in motion at dawn next 
 day, three fellows on good horses overtook us. I was
 
 12 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 riding with my Lord at the head of the men and 
 doubtless seeing me to be the graver looking of the 
 two, my hair grizzled, and my face somewhat fur- 
 rowed and careworn (though less with years than 
 with trouble and long service) and my Lord having a 
 very young face and at the moment turning his head 
 to laugh and jest with the men, as was ever his wont 
 to do on the march, the newcomers mistook me for 
 the chief in command and accosted me : " We would 
 crave to join your honour's troop," said their spokes- 
 man, very civilly, "and fare with you, being loyal 
 King's men, as we perceive you to be." 
 
 I will note here that at this period the Puritans 
 and Sectaries had mostly ceased to wear their hair 
 long, and they dressed in very sober clothes, while we, 
 their enemies, went to a contrary extreme both in 
 hair and dress. These fellows, however, were betwixt 
 and between, distinguishable in look or dress neither 
 one way nor the other. 
 
 "Address yourselves, sir," said I, "to this gentle- 
 man " (purposely not naming him), " for I am but 
 the lieutenant of this troop, and his Worship is in 
 command." 
 
 On this my Lord questioned them a little, and they 
 answering readily enough, he bade them fall in with 
 the men. " And do you," said his Lordship to me in 
 French (for he spake all the tongues), " disperse them 
 separately among our men, for I rather misdoubt their 
 honesty." 
 
 This was wisely devised, for the men were, as it
 
 Beyond the Seas, 13 
 
 afterwards turned out, nothing less than vile Parlia- 
 mentarians come on purpose to spy upon us. 
 
 The next morning we had come to the edge of a 
 huge plain that lies north of Salisbury, and advancing 
 a little way into it where there were neither woods 
 nor hedges to incommode us, nor a hill within many 
 miles round, and we were safe from observation and 
 surprise, we deployed the troop and performed some 
 necessary drill and preparation for battle, having as 
 yet hardly had time in our hasty march to do more 
 than appoint two lieutenants, four cornets, and sundry 
 under officers. 
 
 This manoeuvring and drill was over at a little past 
 noon, and when we got into marching line again and 
 struck across the plain or common, one Cornet Brown, 
 a Somersetshire man well known to me, he having 
 fought by my side many years ago in the Low 
 Countries, came up to me as if upon necessary 
 business of the march. 
 
 "Captain St. Keyne," says he under his breath, 
 "these three new recruits are, an' it please you, no 
 true men at all ; they are soldiers sure enough, but 
 they have never fought on our side." 
 
 I asked him how he knew that. 
 
 " They are drilled soidiers, sir, I can see, because 
 they turn, and back, and keep their horses in line, 
 and draw their swords, and make the cuts, and follow 
 the word, like well-trained men, but when I have 
 questioned them as to the war and with whom they 
 have served, they give no straight answers, and their
 
 14 Beyond the Seas 
 
 talk is too sober for men of our side. If there were 
 ever a , . . tree on this . . . common," said the 
 cornet, looking about him, and swearing a couple of 
 hearty oaths into the sentence (which I need not 
 record), "it would be well to string up the three 
 rogues as a warning to any others who may be 
 following on our track." 
 
 "By the laws of war, Cornet," said I, "we should 
 be justified on this testimony of yours alone, and I 
 will report the matter to our commander." 
 
 Note, that the mark of a Roundhead fanatic was a 
 demure habit of speech and a superstitious sobriety 
 and softness in the use of words, as of conscience- 
 smitten men fearing to awaken the wrath of Heaven 
 upon their hypocrisy, while our poor fellows were all 
 innocently free and bold of utterance, and very 
 outspoken. 
 
 I laid the matter immediately before his Lord- 
 ship. 
 
 " I imagined it might be so," said he, "and I con- 
 ceive we should wisely alter our course, lest these 
 fellows have either prepared the garrison at Salisbury 
 to oppose our way, or are but in the van of others 
 following on our track from the west."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 We marched still onward till past sunset, when 
 coming to a shepherd's hut or croft on the plain, my 
 kinsman called a halt, and ordering the troop into a 
 half circle round about him, commanded the three 
 recruits to advance, then bidding them dismount and 
 causing them to be disarmed, he spoke as follows to 
 the ranks of his troopers : 
 
 " Comrades ! we have here three men in our midst 
 who are traitors to our cause and to us, and who must 
 know themselves by every law of God and man to be 
 worthy of death. They have plotted our undoing, and 
 if we do not put them to immediate death, it is rather 
 lack of time to give them a soldier's trial and such 
 justice as comports even with haste and exigency of 
 war, rather, I say, this haste that we are in than any 
 foolish and futile desire to show them mercy. Therefore 
 I order that as their lives might justly be forfeited to 
 us, so their arms and horses be taken from them in the 
 name and for the service of our rightful King, and that 
 they be bound and cast into this hut, the door made 
 fast, and a guard set." He then turned to me. " Cap- 
 tain St. Keyne," said he, "I desire that you see to
 
 i6 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 the due execution of this order. We encamp here for 
 the night," said he to the men, "and when the bugles 
 sound the r^^/^z7/<? to-morrow morning we will up-saddle 
 quickly and away." 
 
 Thus did we, picketing our horses and eating and 
 sleeping in their midst, with a strong patrol to watch 
 and guard over our prisoners ; and in the night, about 
 two hours before dawn, while it was still very dark, 
 the bugles sounded, and we saddled up and rode 
 away, but examining into our gaol house, namely, the 
 little hut, we found one of our birds flown ; how, we 
 never knew, but probably by the help and confederacy 
 of the others. He had got out and off in the darkness, 
 and, what was more amiss, had stolen away upon 
 one of the troop horses and ridden we knew not 
 whither, though we guessed to Salisbury; but this 
 mattered little to us, as we had already determined to 
 leave that city well alone, and trend to the south, and 
 pass eastward, and then to the south again to some 
 Kentish port, my Lord having already got news by the 
 road that the road to Poole was blocked by its garrison 
 under Colonel Prideaux, who held there some 2,000 
 militia men. Therefore my Lord decided to make 
 eastward almost to Middlesex, where we had intelli- 
 gence that Major-General Skippon, commanding the 
 militia regiments of London, had sent out parties of 
 horse to hold the lanes and roads in hopes to pick up 
 returning stragglers from Worcester rout ; thence we 
 proposed to pass suddenly due south byroads leading 
 to small ungarrisoned or but weakly garrisoned towns,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 17 
 
 reach one of the Cinque Ports in Kent or Sussex, now 
 certainly abandoned by the usurping troops, and there 
 take ship for Spain. 
 
 This, then, was the plan of our march, but it had 
 like to have been frustrated by the escape of our 
 prisoner, for certainly he or some other spy had 
 alarmed the garrison of Salisbury ; and the horsem.en 
 therein, to the number of some seventy, had sallied 
 forth to meet us, and were then nearer to us than we 
 had any notion of, for as one of them who fell into 
 our hands afterwards informed us, their scouts viewed 
 us that morning from a wooded hill-top to the north 
 of Salisbury city. Here they espied us passing along 
 the road making eastward, some mile and a half or 
 two miles below them ; but seeing that we outnum- 
 bered them and marched in very regular order, they 
 thought it more discreet to let us go upon our way 
 than to hinder us. So, descending the opposite side 
 of the hill into the Winchester road, which runs in 
 that valley from Salisbury in a pretty straight line, 
 they marched in all haste to the former city (which 
 would have lain on our road too had we not gone 
 about to the north to avoid it), and there being 
 reinforced by some hfty or sixty sabres of the garrison, 
 they retreated before us towards London, feeling us, 
 as our soldiers have it, with their scouts and outposts, 
 but never letting their main body be seen by us till 
 we had got off the open down country hereabouts, 
 into the woods and waste land of Surrey, about Leith 
 Hill and Dorking ; nor, indeed, did we see thein then, 
 
 C
 
 i8 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 for a time, nor should have known of their being there, 
 but for an odd and happy occurrence. 
 
 We held our march along the Downs, and, in the 
 main, on high land, for there is a very long ridge of 
 hill before you reach Guildford town, lying east and 
 west, on which is good travelling, and whence a good 
 view is to be had on either side and a long way ahead. 
 Here, then, we marched boldly onward, being assured 
 of no ambushes, but so soon as we viewed Leith Hill, 
 a tall, well-wooded eminence, rising abruptly to a 
 goodish height, some thirty miles from London, we 
 struck to the south to touch its foot, not unwilling to 
 lose ourselves among the woodlands in these parts 
 from the observation of the forces of the Fanatics 
 under Skippon, which, as I have said, we guessed 
 were waiting and watching for such as ourselves in 
 the neighbourhood of London. Had it not been, as 
 I have said above, for a most fortunate occurrence at 
 this aforesaid hill, we had run right upon an ambush, 
 cunningly laid for us by our enemies from Salisbury 
 and Winchester. We had, as I have said, entered the 
 forest, which lies pretty thick here, but interspersed 
 with open glades, when we perceived a gentleman on 
 a fine stone horse galloping hastily to us down the 
 hill and along one of these said glades. 
 
 " Hold ! " cried he, raising his hand, and without 
 waiting to bestow on us more ceremonious address, 
 "hold, gentlemen, and proceed no further, or you are 
 dead men ! " 
 
 This person being questioned of u.s, for at first we
 
 Beyond the Seas. 19 
 
 were inclined to suspect such hasty and officious 
 intervention in our business, named himself to be 
 surrogate and estate bailiff to one Squire Evelyn 
 of Wootton, a well-known King's man, upon whose 
 lands we then it seems were riding. The squire, he 
 told us, was living abroad away from the troubles, 
 and Mr. Legge, his surrogate, knew that in warning 
 us of our imminent danger he did but what his 
 master would wish him to do. 
 
 "And what," demanded my Lord, "is this 
 danger ? " 
 
 Mr. Legge informed us that a troop of well-mounted 
 horse soldiers, 145 in number, for he had counted 
 them as they defiled below him, had entered the 
 woods some six miles to the south, and were posted 
 on either side of a wooded valley through which we 
 needs must presently pass. Though concealed by 
 the trees, these were not set so thick but that he had 
 looked down upon and espied them from the neigh- 
 bouring Hill of Leith. 
 
 We called a halt, and sending scouts on foot up 
 the hill, which is a very rugged and steep one, could 
 spy down upon the armed men lying in ambush 
 a league or more along the road we were about 
 to follow. 
 
 When it was made plain to us how things stood, 
 my Lord called us about him and said : 
 
 " Gentlemen, your enemies and the King's have set 
 a trap for us, not content with the chances of an open 
 fight, though they outnumber us by over two score, 
 
 C 2
 
 20 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and are lurking yonder to fall upon us unawares. 
 Now," said he, smiling a little upon the stout fellows 
 around him, '' I have it in my heart not altogether to 
 baulk them. What say you, gentlemen .-' " 
 
 The men sent up a cheer, and crying out that they 
 were ready to follow their leader at any time and any 
 whither, gathered up their bridle reins, and some 
 loosened their swords in scabbard or dropped fresh 
 firing in their carbine locks, looking up to my 
 kinsman for the word to ride up and engage the 
 enemy. 
 
 "Softly! gentlemen," said he, "my leading shall 
 not be direct into the ambush set for you. This 
 honest friend here tells me of a path that keeps to the 
 shoulder of the hill and leaves the enemy to the right. 
 I will take you along it, and thither shall the Sectaries 
 follow us and, if they choose, engage us on more equal 
 terms." 
 
 Herein, I conceive, my Lord most prudently re- 
 solved, though there seems at first sight some slight 
 flavour of rashness in the project, for though as I have 
 said we were but poor fugitives from the rage of the 
 Fanatics, yet often in warfare in medio tutissimiis ibis 
 (to give a new interpretation to the maxim), it is at 
 times politic to escape by going into the very midst 
 of our enemies, and certain it is that if we had not 
 then and there engaged with this force they would 
 have hung upon our steps ever afterwards, hampered 
 and hindered us of our purpose, and prevented us in 
 our escape.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 21 
 
 Our troop, then, marched along certain paths shown 
 to us by Mr. Legge in the thickness of the wood, 
 always keeping on the shoulder of the hill, till we had 
 travelled some league and a half, and were then got 
 to a long ridge of steep hill well overgrown with trees, 
 which is a spur of Leith Hill that runs to the north. 
 Here on the acclivity of this ridge we halted, having 
 given the go-by to the enemy. My Lord now went 
 from man to man, counselling and encouraging each 
 in turn ; he advised them how to use their carbines 
 or pistols, namely, to discharge the fire-arm only 
 when an enemy was at the very point of it, " for other- 
 wise a wild shot that hits nothing, the loading and 
 ramming home of charges and priming your piece, will 
 keep you out of the fight and at a disadvantage from 
 the enemy, but," holding out his drawn sword to the 
 men, " this will be our best weapon to-day ; trust to 
 this, friends, and the day is ours ; never stop to feint 
 or parry or guard, but strike quick, point or edge, and 
 strike home." 
 
 Thus did he speak, showing himself to be most 
 wise in war and skilful in the art of cavalry, though 
 still but young, for he had in all fought but once in a 
 set fight at Worcester with the Scotch army, and, 
 before that, only in that running and victorious cam- 
 paign of forays and skirmishing begun in Cornwall, 
 and that ended in our victory under General Hopton 
 at Lansdown Hill near Bath, and the death of that 
 great and brave commander Sir Bevil Grecnvil ; my 
 Lord being then but a lad of fifteen, he Vvanning his
 
 22 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 spurs that day, but getting a wounded foot from 
 which he did not recover till long afterwards. 
 
 We had now got, as I have said, to a woody ridge 
 called Redland Hill, and we looked down below on a 
 broadish plain pretty thickly interspersed with oak 
 trees and with great holms or holly trees, the ground 
 beneath being free from underwood, and hard, sound 
 turf. This wooded plain is known as Holmwood. Pre- 
 sently we could hear, and then plainly see, six or 
 seven scouts of the enemy galloping here and there, 
 searching the woodland for signs of our troop, as the 
 foremost hounds of a pack scurry hither and thither 
 when the scent of the hare is lost and they are at 
 fault and casting to recover it. So soon as the scouts 
 caught sight of us, for we were at halt and in their 
 full view, they galloped back, and in a few minutes 
 had led the main body up at a round trot. 
 
 Presently we saw that Mr. Legge's information was 
 correct. We learnt afterwards that the garrison at 
 Winchester and some men from Dorking having 
 joined the Salisbury party, it reached in number to 
 145, all told, being just fifty more than we had. 
 
 They too, like us, halted in line, and there we 
 stood, both troops, not 500 paces between us ; they, 
 though in force, not daring to ride up to us, stand- 
 ing as we did on the steeply rising ground broken 
 by trees and much above their heads. Presently some 
 of the enemy began to call out to us, jeering and 
 mocking us. One fellow cried loudly that we were 
 men of sin given over and predestined to the burning,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 23 
 
 and bade us come down, an we dared, and reap the 
 reward (so did he say) of our evil doing. Others 
 called us rogues and bloody-minded malignants, 
 others cowards, whereat some of our fellows earnestly 
 besought to be led against them. Two or three of 
 the Sectaries fired their pieces at us and the bullets 
 whistled overhead and cut the boughs and branches 
 behind our ranks, and one bullet struck the sword 
 hilt of a trooper and jangled it, but did the wearer 
 no hurt. 
 
 My Lord then directed six of our men to return 
 the enemy's fire, " but not more than six of you," 
 said he, "as you love me, for I want but to draw their 
 fire, and then we will charge down before they can 
 load again." 
 
 Some of our troopers thereupon fired a volley, with 
 good aim, for two of the Sectaries' horses lost their 
 riders and galloped off. This provoked the enemy, 
 and there came a general volley from them with such 
 good aim that four of our fellows rolled from the 
 saddle wounded and one dying. Then, before the 
 smoke of their firing had cleared off in the misty 
 air, my Lord, drawing his sword, bid the bugler sound 
 the charge and led his men down the hill through the 
 trees, first at a slow walk, then at a trot, then quicken- 
 ing his pace to a fast hand-gallop as we drew within 
 100 yards of their position. Then he cried out very 
 loudly, *' God save King Charles ! " and, with a terrible 
 answering shout, our fellows in a moment were upon 
 the Rebels.
 
 24 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 In affairs of this kind with cavalry, every man fights 
 his own battle, and it is hit or miss, sink or swim, 
 winning or losing, before he has drawn fifty breaths ; 
 then he wakes as from a strange, eager dream, 
 where he has seen pistols belching fire, sword-blades 
 sweeping through the air, horses rearing up amid 
 smoke and shouting and the noise of shots, and 
 brave fellows — friends or enemies — falling from their 
 saddles and rolling on the ground bleeding and 
 wounded and dying. He awakes, I say, from a sort 
 of confused swound and his party is beaten and in 
 flight, or he himself with his friends is pursuing and 
 cutting down a defeated enemy. 
 
 In this skirmish the enemy numbered 145 to our 
 95, but we had this advantage that we made 
 the onset not without some help of sloping ground ; 
 and note, that in all cavalry fighting the best side to 
 be on is the charging side. Nevertheless, outnumber- 
 ing us as they did, they stood up against our onset 
 without flinching, which again is a rare thing in 
 warfare, for the one or the other of two bodies of 
 horse mostly gives way before it comes to an actual 
 shock of man against man. We had charged in line, 
 and clave our way easily through the enemy, empty- 
 ing many saddles ; then, turning our horses some 
 twenty or thirty yards beyond, at the bugler's call 
 we engaged them again, and we should certainly have 
 overborne them altogether but for two things — one, 
 that we were so greatly outnumbered that their flank 
 men, who had never been engaged at the first charge,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 25 
 
 now spurred up and joined the medley, so that both 
 parties were rabbled up together, and went at it 
 helter-skelter, pell-mell, every man singling out an 
 enemy to fight with to the death, for in these affairs 
 we seldom took or gave quarter. The other thing 
 against us was that there had joined the enemy a 
 detachment of horse from Dorking under the famous 
 Colonel Messenger, numbering some twenty-five or 
 thirty veteran troops of Hollis's dragoons, all wearing 
 Lord Essex's orange scarf over their uniforms of red. 
 These sturdy and valiant soldiers came fresh upon us 
 who were already outnumbered, and fought as I never 
 could wish to see men fight better. Whether by 
 design or accident, but I suspect by design of that 
 good soldier Colonel Messenger, who had taken the 
 chief command, his dragoons were placed some fifteen 
 on each flank with orders to close in after the charge. 
 As for the rest of the enemy, they were raw men of 
 the militia, brave fellows, but unused to the shifts, 
 noise, and confusion of battle, and we had, as I say, 
 speedily overcome and put them to flight but for 
 Hollis's dragoons. On this account the fight was 
 long and obstinate and bloody, and we had no leisure 
 to pursue and utterly rout the militiamen until we 
 had put to the sword the whole of Colonel Messen- 
 ger's troopers ; they, like brave men, neither asking 
 nor giving quarter.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Coming to my reasonable senses, as it were, after 
 the heat and madness of the fight, I perceived how 
 things had gone. The enemy were vanquished and 
 our men were in pursuit and scattered far and wide 
 through the wood, and I was alone, and my horse, 
 wounded to the death, was staggering beneath me 
 to a fall. 
 
 Now, I would have my readers to know that I, 
 who have written so far as a soldier, and have shown, 
 it may be, tokens of affection for the sword, the 
 carbine, the great horse, and all the various circum- 
 stance of war, am in my heart a peace-loving man. Yea, 
 for all my long training to arms from a boy upwards, 
 in the Low Countries and Germany, and for these 
 last troublous years of civil war in England, I could 
 wish almost never to hear again the trumpet's call 
 or a shot fired in anger. I am indeed not one in 
 whom, as Virgil has it, " Sccvit amor ferri et scele- 
 rata insania belli" who is maddened by the cruel 
 lust of war. My true delight is in books and in 
 philosophy : — -
 
 Beyond the Seas. 27 
 
 " How charming is divine Philosophy, 
 Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose, 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute," 
 
 as that sweet poet and bitter Sectary, Mr. John Milton, 
 has lately sung, and I have at times longed with a 
 very earnest longing, and especially when my duty 
 has called me to strike down brothers of my own 
 blood and race in these cruel wars, to put aside the 
 contentious spirit of soldiering and wholly give myself 
 to retirement and a scholar's labours. 
 
 So much have I to say in excuse and extenuation 
 of what I did at the close of this fight. Of a truth, 
 many a man, if he would tell all, has grievous sins of 
 comm'ssion and omission (as the theologians use to 
 say) upon his conscience, and of the latter kind of 
 sins none have so much oppressed me in memory as 
 that which, as I have said, I did or failed to do after 
 this very skirmish at Holmwood. 
 
 It happened in this wise. I had dismounted from 
 my wounded horse and caught a loose one that ran 
 by. Looking to him more closely as I was girthing 
 him anew, I perceived it was our bugler's, and his 
 horn was still lying in its case or holster. I took it 
 in my hand, and, considering a little, blew our private 
 signal of rappel or recall. 
 
 So soon as I had done this I began to repent of 
 my doing it, and have continued ever since to repent 
 though I endeavoured then, and do still at times 
 vainly try, to salve over my conscience with various 
 sophistries, as that the day was won already ; for
 
 28 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 those only who had been stubborn in the fight, 
 Messenger's dragoons, lay on the ground, poor 
 fellows ! around me ; that our men were scattered 
 and at any moment liable to be fallen upon by some 
 new enemy ; that we were a flying and not a fighting 
 force, and our business was retreat not pursuit. Say 
 and argue how I would, I still greatly fear that, as 
 a soldier and a Christian man, I did shamefully amiss 
 in at all this day sparing the enemies of England 
 and our King. 
 
 However this may be, I blew the signal of recall 
 upon the bugle with a loud and warning note, and 
 presently the contention, the shouting and the trample 
 of horses, and the clash of sword against sword, the 
 sounds of battle which still I could hear all round me 
 but could see nothing thereof for the thickness of the 
 trees — presently, I say, these sounds ceased, and the 
 troopers answering the call began to centre towards 
 me one by one and in twos and threes, coming 
 through the glades of the wood ; tired men on tired 
 horses, and many of them wounded and faint with 
 battle. 
 
 Our men had suffered heavily in this fight, and 
 though thrice I sounded the rappel only twenty-seven 
 of our troop answered the roll call out of ninety-fiye 
 strong men who had ridden into the woods that 
 morning. Some few more came in after a while on 
 foot, havin-g parted with their horses, but there was 
 no lack of mounts, for over two score horses ran up 
 to the bugle riderless, mostly unhurt horses of the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 29 
 
 enemy, and with these we could make a good general 
 remounting of our men. Of our officers were killed 
 both our lieutenants, a cornet, and three corporals. 
 My dear kinsman was wounded in three places, but 
 all happily light flesh wounds, and being bound up 
 they incommoded him but little. Cornet Brown, a 
 valiant gentleman of great strength and activity, and 
 a most skilful swordsman, had killed Colonel 
 Messenger with his own hand, and three of his 
 dragoons, and received from one of them a thrust 
 with a sword in the side. It was a bad wound, and I 
 doubted if we could carry him to the coast, but we 
 managed to do it. I also had got a pistol ball 
 lodged in the left shoulder, and a little slash of a 
 sword had laid open my left cheek, but 'twas no great 
 matter. Many of our troopers were wounded, but 
 all carried things with a brave face. We had got but 
 one prisoner (so keen and unmerciful had been the 
 fighting), a young fellow, a townsman of Salisbury, 
 who begged for and got quarter from myself when he 
 lay at my sword's point ; and fearing that if we set 
 him free he would tell of our route we were fain to 
 carry him some thirty miles with us, and then we 
 gave him his liberty at Ashurst in Kent. 
 
 My Lord was pleased to approve of my having 
 sounded the recall, for, said he, we have now given 
 the alarm, and shall be followed from all sides. His 
 first care was to send a scout up to the top of the 
 hill whence we had just descended, with orders to 
 look about him and note the approach of any force,
 
 30 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and, seeing any, to come to us at once. In less than 
 half an hour the fellow returned with news that on the 
 bare Downs to the north, beyond Dorking, was a 
 strong body of horse travelling westward. This, we 
 could not doubt, was a part of Skippon's command 
 from London, purposing to cut us off on the road, 
 which doubtless they considered we should take to 
 the north. So soon as their line of march would be 
 struck by the enemy we had dispersed, they would no 
 doubt alter their course towards us, and seeing that 
 this fresh enemy was but ten miles away as the crow 
 flies, it behoved us therefore immediately to force our 
 march southwards to the coast, where we had news of 
 a Dutch Snow lying in the Downs and ready to carry 
 us away. 
 
 We girthed up our horses therefore, and with as 
 forced marching as our condition would allow travelled 
 due east to the coast; but learning by the way that 
 there were large garrisons at Maidstone and Rochester, 
 and a larger still at Canterbury, all which places lay 
 near to but not upon our road, we abandoned our 
 first intention to seek issue from the kingdom by a 
 Kentish port, and travelling eastward only for a time, 
 suddenly altered our course to due south for the port 
 of Rye, in Sussex, which we reached without further 
 adventure on the third day from Holmwood ; but our 
 swift marching cost us many men left by the way, for 
 when we got within sight of the sea we had but sixteen 
 men, all told, and all of us were dismounted. 
 
 I will here observe that all through this part of the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 31 
 
 country from Dorking south and east there was more 
 of disaffection to the usurper than to the King-, and 
 that we could find help and counsel and supplies all 
 along the way, and, what was of more account, a sure 
 messenger to carry our letters to the shipmaster, who 
 was waiting for us, and bid him meet us at Rye. 
 
 Our horses we had disposed of at very good prices 
 to one honest gentleman or another along the road, 
 and thus each of the troop, besides what private 
 means he enjoyed, had certain ready moneys of his 
 own, as beseems gentlemen soldiers of fortune 
 travelling to the wars. Before reaching Rye the 
 whole troop was, as I have said, afoot, and we 
 marched through the streets of the town with no 
 concealment and no concern, perceiving that the 
 people were altogether on our side, the garrison of 
 less than a dozen men being too weak to molest us, 
 and keeping to their barracks. 
 
 From the cliffs near the port we saw our ship, a 
 Snow of some 150 tons, standing on and off in the 
 offing, and we lay that night in the barn of one 
 Farmer Jumper. He, though with us in heart, for he 
 sent to offer us this accommodation of his barn, 
 begged that in policy we would use some pretended 
 violence in taking possession thereof Here, then, we 
 lay that day and night in great comfort and content- 
 ment, being visited after nightfall by many gentlemen 
 and others of the neighbourhood, all of them bringing 
 presents for our entertainment, as kilderkins of old 
 ale, strong waters, pies of meat and fruit, loaves of
 
 32 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 bread, great cheeses, and the hke ; so that we could 
 make a soldier's feast and a carouse, and afterwards 
 He soft and warm in the farmer's hay, taking full rest 
 after our labours, knowing well that we had good 
 friends outside who had set watch and ward and 
 would warn us should our enemies endeavour at 
 molesting us. 
 
 Betimes next morning we embarked in two boats 
 for the Dutch ship, a great concourse of people 
 standing on the quays, and very sadly, many men 
 and women in tears, watching our going off. My 
 kinsman, sitting in the stern sheets of the last boat 
 to go, took off his hat, and, giving it a wave, called 
 out, " God save King Charles, and send him a speedy 
 return ! " (we had all then thought the King was got 
 away from England, but he did not, in truth, till 
 later) and We all, waving our hats in like manner, 
 joined in this prayer, which hearing, the people on 
 shore, numbering perhaps some three or four hundred, 
 took up the cry with a mighty voice ; and thus, leaving 
 England, the last thing we saw was the weeping 
 faces of our countrymen, and, mingling with the 
 noise of winds and waves, we heard their shout of 
 " God save the King, and send him a speedy return ! " 
 — a good omen, but, alas ! not for many years to be 
 accomplished. 
 
 I have been thus particular in my account of this 
 affair at Holmwood, because, though admitted to be 
 a grievous defeat of themselves by the Parliamen- 
 tarians, the difference in numbers on the two sides,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 33 
 
 and the great advantage had therein by Cromwell's 
 people, have never yet, that I am sensible, been 
 acknowledged by them. On the other hand, our 
 leader and ourselves have been much reprehended for 
 that we fought at all when we must well have known 
 that our cause was lost ; but I have never yet learned 
 that a man is blamable who strikes in his own 
 defence; and if a man, then why not a body of men ? 
 Had we been let alone, be sure we had never fought. 
 It has ever been held right policy to help a retreating 
 enemy ; yea, to go sofar as (in the words of the adage) 
 to build him a golden bridge to escape away upon. 
 But these fellows stood in our way, pursued us hotly, 
 would have hemmed us in, laid a cunning trap to 
 take our lives ; yet all their fury and their cunning we 
 frustrated. Are we, then, to blame or they, if they 
 reaped the reward of their rashness ? 
 
 So far contentiously ; but I have desired too, in 
 the recounting of this long retreat — or rather this 
 long fl-ght — of so considerable a body across nearly 
 the greatest breadth of England, this fight at Holm- 
 wood and the safe embarking of the remnant, to 
 evidence the genius for war of my young kinsman, 
 for to him alone is the credit, and, indeed, the glory of 
 it due. He needed no advice of me and his other 
 lieutenants, though we were all of us men long 
 practised in arms, and the youngest nearly double 
 his years. He called no councils of war in str^iits 
 and extremities, necessities sometimes, but evils 
 always, as serving to divide and distract judgment 
 
 D
 
 34 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and to set envious or foolish men to cavil and 
 contend, and often greatly to discourage the soldiers, 
 who follow the less readily when they perceive their 
 chief hardly to know his own mind. But my Lord 
 ever resolved quickly and well, as was evidenced in 
 changing our course and throwing out our pursuers 
 near Salisbury, in avoiding the ambush at Leith Hill, 
 not by ignoble flight but by bold outwittal of the 
 enemies' device; and again, by that sudden fierce 
 onset at Holmwood against odds, followed by the 
 utter rout and discomfiture of our foes. Yet that 
 which chiefly recommends him to me, rei militaris 
 perito, who have closely studied the art of war, is 
 that love and confidence which he had the art to 
 inspire in those about him — a high virtue which many 
 famous commanders have lacked, but the greatest of 
 all, Julius Caesar, Scipio the African, Alexander the 
 Great, and Hannibal, with some others of less note, 
 never have wanted. 
 
 Touching the retreat and the Holmwood skirmish, 
 I would have it noted that, in the earlier cavalry 
 affairs of the civil wars, in which we gained many 
 successes and some renown, the Parliamentary forces 
 were far less apt for war than ourselves ; not that our 
 side was much to boast of, except in willingness to 
 fight at any moment and against any odds ; but the 
 armies of the rebels were for the most part a very 
 sorry set of pitiful rogues and ragamuffins, and we, 
 though often overnumbered, did most easily over- 
 match them in all else than numbers, such as
 
 Beyond the Seas. 35 
 
 discipline, swordsmanship, and the use of fire-arms. 
 Of great guns I speak not, neither side having much 
 to boast of on this score, neither having any cunning 
 in artillery, nor many great pieces to show it with. 
 Nor, indeed, was either side much given to general- 
 ship at the first going off, for, after some form of 
 manoeuvring, our lesser officers would confuse their 
 orders or forget they had any, and let all go, horse 
 and foot, artillery and small arms, till we would get 
 all rabbled up together, we and the enemy, and then 
 it was man to man ; and perhaps this was the best 
 manoeuvring for our people, they being stout and 
 strong and nimble in the use of arms, gentlemen's 
 sons or at least gentlemen's dependents, or farmers, 
 nriostly out of the north country, hearty fellows 
 trained to cudgel-play and quarter-staff; and the 
 enemy's army but riff-rafT and tail-corn fellows from 
 the towns — tapsters, drawers, runaway apprentices, 
 and the like. Good lack ! how our men would con- 
 quer and overbear them and wound or slay, or put 
 them to terror and flight and utter rout and ruin ; 
 till but for the natural pleasure a soldier must ever 
 take in killing and diminishing the King's enemies, I 
 had forborne many a time from striking and slaying 
 the poor rogues from very pity of them. 
 
 In these latter days, however, the tables had been 
 turned upon us, for so soon as the Parliamentarians 
 had got some sort of settled government they began 
 a reformation of their armies, and drafted into them 
 men of character and substance, yeomen and farmers 
 
 D 2
 
 36 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and farmers' sons, sober fellows under strict discipline 
 and training; such men as with their English blood 
 and spirit would face and master double or treble 
 their numbers of any troops I have encountered 
 anywhere abroad (though this perhaps is but parti- 
 ality in me), while it was we who had to take the 
 riff-raff of the towns into our ranks, whence our later 
 defeats at the rebels' hands ; though I am by no means 
 averse to testify to the generalship and management 
 of that great (though misled and misleading) soldier, 
 the Usurper Cromwell. He it was mainly who effected 
 that great reformation of the army which went then 
 by the name of the New Model : a name all but 
 forgotten in these latter years, but then a word of 
 great import and terror, it being rather a congrega- 
 tion than an army, of well-ordered and staunch 
 soldiery, as to whose discipline and bravery and 
 loyalty to their mistaken cause no honest soldier 
 should speak but with abiding respect. 
 
 It was because there were nearly thirty of the 
 New Model soldiers, to wit, Colonel Messenger's 
 dragoons, among our enemies at Holmwood, whom 
 we yet overthrew, that I contend for our victory being 
 a great and signal one.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Enough for a time of war and fighting : I have, I 
 trust, in hand pleasanter and more edifying themes 
 wherewith to entertain my readers. 
 
 So soon as we were landed with our sixteen 
 troopers at Scheveningen, in Holland (for it was 
 thither our ship was bound) it had been our intention 
 to travel without loss of time across France and over 
 the Pyrenees into Spain. But we discovered that this 
 was not easily to be accomplished, seeing that the 
 Kings of France and Spain were now at war, and 
 that we and our men could neither hope to obtain 
 free passage through the first country nor entrance 
 into the second from that of its enemies. It was 
 resolved, therefore, for our party to travel into Italy, 
 and take ship from some Italian port to the King of 
 Spain's dominions. In the meantime my Lord pro- 
 posed to himself to obtain, through the Spanish 
 Ambassador in the United Provinces, confirmation of 
 his Catholic Majesty's already expressed desire that 
 my Lord and his troop should enlist into his Majesty's 
 service. He proposed to await the answer in
 
 3S Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Holland. For this purpose my cousin obtained an 
 interview of Don Narciso Gusman, the then Envoy 
 of the Spanish King, at which his Excellency, who 
 was already aware of my Lord's exploits in first 
 defeating the Fanatics and thereafter escaping from 
 their rage, and was a nobleman of courtly demeanour 
 and of very ceremonious and gracious sentences, highly 
 extolled my Lord's prowess and success. 
 
 His Excellency took upon himself to promise that 
 his Majesty, his August Master, would welcome him 
 into his armies with a very lively satisfaction, and 
 begged him the more certainly to count upon speedy 
 promotion and the continued favour of the King, his 
 Master, inasmuch as he perceived that his Lordship 
 conversed with great ease and correctness in the 
 Castilian tongue. His Excellency, furthermore, pro- 
 posed to my Lord that, during the considerable 
 interval that must necessarily elapse between the 
 sending to Madrid and obtaining of a reply, the direct 
 route being interrupted, his troopers might find tem- 
 porary employment, high pay, and some of the good 
 chances of war in the armies of the Emperor, the 
 close ally of his Sovereign Lord. In the meantime 
 we, to wit, my kinsman and I, might remain in the 
 Low Countries, whereby the King, his master, would 
 be certain of not being disappointed of the services of 
 two excellent officers (he was pleased thus to couple 
 my name with my kinsman's), "and I myself," 
 continued the Ambassador, smiling upon us and 
 bowing, " will enjoy the opportunity of further
 
 Beyond the Seas, 39 
 
 cultivating the acquaintance of two most distinguished 
 and estimable gentlemen." 
 
 Thus far the Ambassador, using the courtly and 
 complimentary phrases of his nation and his em- 
 ployment, which phrases and method are, to speak 
 sooth, not very easy for me, a rough soldier, to 
 convey into our homely English speech. 
 
 My Lord accepted the offer of the Ambassador 
 very gladly ; and this of itself might be esteemed a 
 sufficient answer to those pestilent and slanderous 
 polemics who, overlooking my Lord's many titles 
 to fame and glory, have for this long time past 
 ignorantly narrowed him down to a mere soldier- 
 adventurer, whose many exploits are referable solely 
 to that Good Fortune which, they will have it, 
 mostly favours the reckless and daring who rush into 
 action without taking thought for the future or 
 having any wise prevision for the event of their 
 adventures miscarrying. I say this resolve of my 
 kinsman might sufficiently answer these deniers of 
 his fame, as showing that his mind was not merely set 
 upon warlike adventure, but loved and adorned the 
 civil life as well. Indeed, he was apt in scholarship 
 and in learning, and longed to help to reap that 
 great harvest of philosophy which at this period, in 
 every nation of the world (save our own, now so sorely 
 oppressed and stifled of her free breathing) was, so to 
 say, ripe, or ripening, for the sickle. 
 
 Had he been, as so maliciously has been alleged, a 
 mere soldier, basely seeking only after war fame,
 
 40 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 would he not, the opportunity now offerhig, have run 
 incontinently into this chance of serving with the 
 Emperor? But not so; my kinsman never loved 
 fighting for fighting's sake, though, thank God for it, 
 he has never feared to strike a blow and stake his 
 life when the cause was good and his heart has been 
 in it. The greedier and baser kind of hawks, train 
 and mew them as we will, wjien they are whistled 
 off the fist, will pursue their quarry straight and 
 direct, seeking only to feast upon its blood and flesh ; 
 but the long-winged falcon is of a nobler race, and, 
 being released, flies upwards, soaring to theextremest 
 altitudes of light, and casting here and there with 
 her strong wings, rejoicing in her expanding vision 
 and command of the firmament : so did my kinsman, 
 newly released, not care to follow greedily after the 
 camp and the battle, but would try his flight amid 
 the wide learning and deep philosophy which then 
 were chiefly to be found in the United Provinces and 
 its towns, to wit, Leyden, Amsterdam, Dort, Haarlem, 
 and the Hague. To feci the strength of his own 
 wings amidst those of strongest flight was indeed to 
 him a new and perpetual delight. I shall have many 
 occasions hereafter of showing to my readers how 
 worthy were my cousin, had he enjoyed fuller leisure, 
 to have held a place in nam.e (as he did in fact) 
 among the great philosophers as well as the great 
 commanders of the time, and how, though silent 
 in the world of printed letters, he had advanced 
 in the deeper learning as far as, and indeed, as I
 
 Beyond the Seas. 41 
 
 shall contend, in some matters farther than the 
 very foremost of them all. 
 
 But alack! what a task have I set myself to per- 
 form, and whence am I, a poor witless soldier doubled 
 with a poorer scholar, to derive courage for such an 
 undertaking? I know my unfitness for this work but 
 too well. I know I am no accomplished writer in 
 the modern manner, for I can use no neat-filcd 
 phrases in the present approved style. If I am a 
 scholar, my breeding has been, I fear, too much of 
 the camp and barrack. Therefore, let the reader not 
 look here for the new modish way of writing. I am 
 content to go forward in the older method, and to be 
 called Pedant by the levity of an unlearned genera- 
 tion. It shall call me, however, by what hard names 
 it please, before I will follow the new fashions. I 
 will not imitate our modern masters when they do up 
 their poor hasty snatches of sense into paltry packets, 
 as a needy apothecary will tie up his drugs into the 
 smallest compass, and I must presume for the same 
 reason, that as one is poor in drugs so is the other in 
 matter ; and if it be not lack of matter, then sure is it 
 that they impute dulness to their reader, and fear to 
 breathe him with too long a stretch of his under- 
 standing. Maybe it is that they have forgot the art, 
 or never learnt it, to use a more sustained division of 
 their utterance (an art not so hard but that patient 
 study, more modesty, and less haste to be on familiar 
 terms with their readers might teach it to them). 
 Be it how it may, they disdain, or have forgot, or
 
 42 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 never knew how to marshal and array a long, well- 
 sounding phrase, compact of harmony of thought 
 and harmony of sound. 
 
 Well! I have admitted my shortcomings, and for 
 all this vapouring of mine I am somewhat abashed 
 on account of them in the gay company of modern 
 readers and writers; but, Gentle Reader, you know 
 now the worst my enemies can say of me. I pray you 
 therefore to make your choice, and either take me for 
 the good matter I have to indite, or leave me at once 
 for my old-fangled manner of telling it. Only you 
 are hereby warned that having made a beginning of 
 tasting me, you are to please eat the whole dish. I 
 am modest as to myself, as you see, but I am nothing 
 of the kind as to the story I have to tell. I know 
 I have good stuff to give you, and weighty, and most 
 wonderful and unheard-of adventures to relate, and 
 so I will not have you throw down my book hereafter 
 with a " Pish, here is a Pedant for you ! " or a " Hang 
 him for his formality ! "
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 I WILL remind the reader of this narration that at 
 this time was just ended that long and cruel war that 
 had held all the Powers of Europe for more than 
 thirty years, whence it has since been named the 
 Thirty Years' War, as if the authors of and actors in 
 it had feared to give it its true name, or to hint at the 
 true causes of why it was begun and why so long con- 
 tinued ; which were nothing else than, at the beginning, 
 hate of Princes and Priests, which afterwards but 
 cloaked the lusts of Kings for power and territory. 
 Not but what some of the chief actors and agents in 
 this long fighting were among the greatest of mortal 
 men ; among whom I need but mention that great 
 commander Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, on the 
 Imperialist side (my own first master in the art of 
 war), and on the other, that incomparable King and 
 Heroic General, Gustavus Adolphus, King of the 
 Swedes, Goths, and Vandals, though but a heretic in 
 religion ; — but where am I got ? I had meant but to 
 say that this great war was just ended, and ended too 
 the much longer and more cruel war in which our
 
 44 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 present hosts, the Dutch, had striven for eighty years 
 against the oppression of foreign tyrants. 
 
 Now, it is very observable that when the spirits of 
 men are suddenly reheved from the oppression of 
 long warfare, they are rendered especially lively and 
 eager and apt for new labours, as a man's limbs and 
 body might be from whose back a burden is taken ; 
 and they run freely at these times into new enterprize 
 and adventure with a most surprizing nimbleness. 
 Their wits which have worked in the dull mill-work 
 round of sieges and defences and sallies, surprises and 
 marches, now go abroad seeking still to conquer, but 
 not in the vulgar domain of their neighbours' cities 
 and provinces ; they seek to attack and to kill still, it 
 is true, but it is error and folly they would attack 
 and destroy ; and to defend, but it is no longer their 
 cities' walls and their goods and their own lives, but 
 Sacred Truth herself they would now protect from 
 ignorance and from prejudice. 
 
 Now such a time was come upon the world, and 
 there were signs and wonders all round about us to 
 those who had the understanding to see them. I 
 mean not such monsters seen in the heavens as the 
 vulgar love to marvel at, and which possibly, did we 
 but know their motions, are after all no more harmful 
 to us than the commoner stars of the sky. I intend 
 not such superstitious wonders and signs as these, but 
 signs that men were now at last permitted by the 
 Divine Ruler of the world to perceive the secrets of 
 His Rulership — I mean the secret laws of nature —
 
 Beyond the Seas. 45 
 
 and to predominate by the mere gift of Philosophy 
 (God-given or it were naught) over the void and the 
 darkness and mystery of Nature. These things are 
 the signs and wonders I speak of; and truly, was it 
 not wonder enough that mere helpless men had looked 
 upon such things as I shall presently string together, 
 and should have made them plain to their fellows? 
 As, for example, that Signor Galileo Galilei had 
 reasoned out the Copernican doctrine of the circum- 
 ambient orbs ; though this was a seed earlier 
 garnered, but it had fallen among the rocks and 
 stones of superstition and for a time prospered not ; 
 and again Signor Torricelli had weighed the imma- 
 terial air and shown that the very vacuum (hitherto 
 so called) hath a body and a being ; and again Mr. 
 Hervey had perceived that the valves in men's veins, 
 discovered by Sylvius and Fabricius, could betoken 
 no less than some constant fluid movement therein, 
 whence he derived the notion of that continual flux 
 and reflux of the blood which is governed by the 
 force and influence of the heart, as that is by the soul ; 
 just as the flux and reflux of the tides is governed by 
 the influence of the Moon, as Herr Kepler has lately 
 demonstrated. And again, the same Kepler has in- 
 geniously conjectured, or as some believe, established 
 that the starry and moony influences do in some 
 similar way govern and turn men's lives ; and this 
 same philosopher has furthermore expounded how 
 the planes of the moving stars (which some call 
 planets) pass through the Sun (as to which, however,
 
 46 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 though I am far from denying, I humbly admit, after 
 such a study of the matter as I am able to bestow 
 upon it, the matter is as yet not quite so apparent to 
 me as I could desire, and perhaps it may turn out on 
 fuller knowledge that their planes do not so pass). 
 But to resume ; it was now a pregnant period and 
 the birth of some philosophic matters of great mo- 
 ment was seemingly at hand. 
 
 All these great discoveries touched indeed but the 
 material and mechanical nature, and my kinsman 
 esteemed them chiefly as helps and presages in reach- 
 ing more essential and spiritual things still hid. 
 Therefore was it that he, in whose apprehension 
 already lay the seed of what should presently turn to 
 strange and marvellous fruit, and who would after- 
 wards conquer some of the darkest secrets of life, and 
 death itself, and perceive and prevail upon the powers 
 of so-called supernatural things more effectually than 
 many who have practised the black, forbidden art of 
 Magic, calling the images of the living before him at 
 his will, and other the like marvels ; all this too not 
 magically and by incantation of any Evil Powers, but 
 by Divine Philosophy and to thegreaterglory of God ; 
 all which things I shall hereafter have occasion to 
 recount to the astonishment and delight of my 
 readers ; therefore was it, I say, that he, though he 
 loved to question the learned men and philosophers 
 around him, and to drink in their opinions, him- 
 self modestly refrained (as one too young and 
 green as yet to mingle in the controversies of veteran
 
 Beyond the Seas. 47 
 
 polemics) from putting forward his own cgnceipts 
 and plerophories. 
 
 Only at times did he speak out, though as yet but 
 obscurely, what lay in his soul, and it was to be 
 observed that in his case fecit indignatio orationem, 
 to misquote and mis-scan the poet : it was when 
 some presumptuous person, trusting to the revelations 
 of the new material Philosophy, would deny the pos- 
 sibility of a higher revelation, or of a life beyond the 
 laws of the material world, that my cousin would 
 denounce such narrowness very critically, though 
 temperately. He would then endeavour to show that 
 a higher revelation is still to come and will display 
 laws not contrary to known laws, but beyond them. 
 Then sometimes would he touch too upon the strange 
 matter which (as I have hinted) afterwards his learn- 
 ing and researches carried so far; and those that heard 
 him were often astounded, and even I marvelled 
 somewhat, saying to myself, " He preluded some- 
 thing of this before, but whence got he these high, 
 strong- notes, this division in his descant and full 
 diapason of eloquence ? " 
 
 I remember one such occasion when a gentleman 
 of some fame then, and of much greater thereafter, 
 for his fantastic reasoning and philosophy of the 
 government of the world (but whom I will not 
 further name in this place) strove to set down 
 the ordering of the world to very material causes, 
 that my Lord stood up to him, contending with 
 him not sharply but civilly, and somewhat in the
 
 48 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Socratie manner of shrewd questions forcing con- 
 sonant replies. 
 
 This philosopher having held forth very learnedly 
 as to how our bodies being confessedly material, and 
 all thought in us, all feeling, will, understanding, and 
 fancy, being but emanations and attributes of our 
 material bodies, the life therein must, like it, be 
 material too — must come with it and go with it into 
 nothingness. "Life therefore," says he, "beyond the 
 grave, is nought and impossible — a vain dream." 
 
 My Kinsrnan — " And the soul, what is that ? " 
 
 Philosophus — " Why, my Lord, it is nothing more 
 nor less than the sum total of our thoughts, our wills, 
 and our emotions." 
 
 My Kinsman — " Has it had no before, and will it 
 have no after life, think you. Sir ?" 
 
 Philosophus — " Why no ; the seat thereof is cer- 
 tainly the brain, which is a mysterious but yet a very 
 corporeal body, and this same soul is the machinery 
 and clockwork of the body, as the weights and pen- 
 dulum are the main machinery of a clock. Put your 
 finger on the pendulum and the clock will stop ; 
 destroy the brain and you kill the man, and his soul 
 too ; hurt the brain and you hurt the so-called soul ; 
 stun it and the soul is stunned. Let but a tiny drop 
 of blood press upon this brain of yours, and the 
 soul — that so wrongly supposed spiritual essence — 
 lies in abeyance ; thought, feeling, and all faculty of 
 emotion cease too ; remove the pressure and it lives 
 ap-ain, and thinks and feels anew. Is it then to be
 
 Beyond the Seas. 49 
 
 supposed that a material thing will survive the cata- 
 strophe of real death, which so small a circumstance 
 can benumb into temporary death ? Not so ; and 
 eternal life for man born of woman is but a vain 
 expectation." 
 
 My Kinsman — " Born of woman. In that, Sir, lies 
 your answer. Pray what is born t What passes from 
 a woman to her child ? " 
 
 PhilosopJms — " Why, my Lord, nothing but a 
 renewed life." 
 
 My Kinsman — " Well, Sir, I would not have you 
 answer yourself more aptly. It is life that comes 
 from the parents, and their life from their parents, 
 and so back, and thence again, without a break in 
 the chain, from Him Who is the Giver of Life. And 
 in this life is comprehended, by admission of all the 
 philosophers, an essence, an energueia, a force, an 
 incomprehensible something, impalpable, but yet 
 existing in us : it is not emotion, will, consciousness, 
 or thought, but it is that which causes all these things : 
 it is never born anew, but passes ; and as it never was 
 entirely born or initiated, so surely it would be very 
 rash to conclude it shall ever entirely die and end." 
 
 PhilosopJnis — " I maintain that it is benumbed with 
 a blow, that it slumbers with sleep, lies senseless in a 
 swoon, and will assuredly die with that which is 
 greater still than a swoon, or sleep, or wounds — 
 namely. Death." 
 
 My Kinsman — "Sir, I would have you know that 
 the soul is more wakeful in sleep than when we are 
 
 £
 
 50 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 up and about, and in a trance travels afield as it 
 cannot do when the grosser body lives its life beside 
 it ; and 'tis most certain that the souls of mortals are 
 never so near to be divine — for assuredly the very 
 grossest of them are part of the spirit of God Himself — 
 as when they lose touch of their carnal embodiment ; 
 and this we see in men's visions, and even in common 
 dreams, and very plainly in the ecstasy of the higher 
 passion falsely called love (I say falsely, as likening 
 it to a baser emotion, but it is indeed and of a truth a 
 part of the Divine glory), so that many times we see 
 one lying in a deep reverie or trance, his body inert, 
 motionless and dull, whose soul meanwhile, taking 
 upon itself a simulacrum or adumbrated image of its 
 earthly body, shall travel, released from natural law, 
 disregarding space and all material obstacles, and 
 shall appear to those it loves, to warn, to counsel, or 
 to comfort them." 
 
 Pliilosophiis — " And this wonderful thing has 
 happened, my Lord .'' " 
 
 My Kinsman — " Why, Sir, to my private knowledge 
 it has happened, and happens continually ; but I am 
 young in years and raw in experience and wisdom, 
 and it behoves not me therefore to seek to convince 
 you out of my own authority, but I will only remind 
 you of the innumerable instances which your great 
 learning, Sir, will immediately recall to your memory ; 
 as how Tully himself was intimately persuaded, 
 no doubt from experience, that the spirits of the 
 dead may haunt the living, as sufficiently appears
 
 Beyond the Seas. 51 
 
 in his expressed wish to kill himself for no other pur- 
 pose than that his ghost might act as alastor — or 
 avenger — to the tyrant Emperor Augustus. Plutarch 
 also relates that the ghost or simulacrum of great Csesar 
 appeared to Marcus Junius Brutus. These instances, 
 indeed, are of the soul released and made free to travel 
 by death, but that it is equally released by trance you 
 may read in Cardan {De Siibtilitate Rerum), who 
 gives numberless instances of those who have had the 
 will to visit in seeming, but unreal, bodily presentment, 
 even at great distances, their friends, their children, 
 their parents, or their lovers, sometimes visibly to 
 them, oftener not, but yet the visitants always 
 adumbrated and felt as a comforting neighbourhood. 
 Camerarius in his lost tractate, entitled Hysteria 
 Natures, quoted by S. Scheretzius, has noted many 
 such examples, and the learned Scribanius (in his De 
 Liberatione Animci) mentions the case of a gentleman 
 of Pavia, of great gravity and accomplishment, who 
 could not only at his pleasure convey his own spirit 
 elsewhere, but who could at times, and by a rare 
 bending of his will thereto, draw to him the liberated 
 spirits of others, over whom he was able to exercise a 
 particular influence ; not, be it noted (for they lay at 
 home inert and senseless), over the persons them- 
 selves, but upon the shadowy embodiment of their 
 spirits. Such simulacra, I take it, are similar to those 
 seen at times near graveyards at night : not harmful 
 ghosts, as the ignorant imagine, but the poor spirits 
 of dead men and women revisiting their ancient 
 
 e 2
 
 52 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 haunts, clothed in mortal shape no doubt rather by 
 the projection of the seers' imagination than having 
 any actual and material existence of their own, these 
 seers' desire to behold them acting in sympathy with 
 the spirits' own strong desire for visible embodiment. 
 The same Scribanius too cites the aforesaid tractate 
 of Camerarius (extant in his time, but now lost) for 
 instances of men above the ordinary run in strength 
 of understanding and of will, who have been enabled 
 to invoke or convoke, by no magical incantations, but 
 only by using freely and powerfully the secret pro- 
 cesses of Nature herself, the souls of living men and 
 women into their presence ; these sometimes coming 
 invisibly, yet have they been able to give evidence 
 of their presence (as by low sounds like words 
 uttered); sometimes, though thinly and in shadowy 
 form, showing themselves clad in their true bodily 
 lineaments and appearances." 
 
 He stopped a little abruptly, as modestly refraining 
 from talking too freely in so learned a company, and, 
 as his voice ended, there fell an admiring silence upon 
 the company, none seeming to wish to follow him who 
 had spoken with such gravity and so convincing a flow 
 of utterance. I did indeed myself not a little marvel 
 at the grace and beauty of his discourse, as much 
 discoverable in its manner as its matter. His adver- 
 sary himself, a very worthy gentleman and disputant, 
 and one ever more eager to get at truth than to 
 silence his opponent, bowed his head and spoke not 
 for a space, as willing to express that what had been
 
 Beyond the Seas. 53 
 
 so well and learnedly set forth gave him cause for 
 further thought and inquiry. 
 
 Some there were present, both men and ladies, 
 for it was a large mixed company, that had not 
 yet much regarded my Lord but as a young gentle- 
 man of goodly looks and gentle birth and manners, 
 who had gained some glory in the wars, and whose 
 name was, as truth is to be exactly told, somewhat 
 noised at the moment on account of a duel lately 
 happened (of which more anon). These then, I say, 
 having hitherto set no greater regard upon my kins- 
 man than for these exploits, were exceedingly amazed 
 to hear him speak on such grave matter so sweetly 
 and so well, and now looked upon him and scanned 
 him with much curiosity. 
 
 At this time my Lord was in his twenty-fourth 
 year, though at times his face, which was of a palish, 
 thoughtful cast and thinnish, gave him the look of 
 having some years more of age. His hair he wore 
 in the cavalier fashion, long and waving to his 
 shoulders ; it was of a darkish brown colour and 
 pretty abundant ; his beard he trimmed as was then 
 and still is the fashion, in long mustachios and with 
 a point or tag to the chin. He was tall and slight 
 of figure and very active, an excellent horseman and 
 an exceedingly pretty swordsman both with the light 
 French rapier and with the long Italian sword. He 
 was likewise well trained in the play of sword and 
 dagger, after the fashion of our forefathers, the which 
 when it comes to medley fighting is the most useful
 
 54 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 method of fence a man can have practised. Of his 
 looks I will not speak, for in truth being but a rough 
 soldier and scholar, I am little given to consider 
 such things either in man or woman. But I well 
 remember on this occasion the saying of a gentle- 
 man who was in our company, and was himself a 
 scholar of Cambridge and fellow student of Mr. 
 Henry Moore, and, like him, of the new Platonist 
 school, who consider inner moral beauty and excel- 
 lence to be figured in the outer man. This gentleman 
 whispered me, as my Lord ended, and, after a little 
 silence, there went a buzz of amazement round the 
 company. 
 
 " Truly," said he, " we might have guessed this 
 by the young Lord's face ; he tells of matter that 
 an angel might speak with a voice like an angel's too, 
 and, sure, it was all prefigured in his face, which has 
 certainly a most uncommon radiancy and beauty in it." 
 
 As for me, I frankly say that I like not these 
 refinements of Philosophy ; and as for this Platonic 
 doctrine that virtue goes with good looks, it must 
 very wrongfully condemn some homely-faced men 
 with good hearts, and sanctify and acquit as unjustly 
 many a ruffian that I have known with the heart of a 
 wolf and the face of a cherub. 
 
 I will admit, however, that the lad was comely, and, 
 to speak truth, I had often wished him otherwise, for 
 I easily foresaw in it a lure and a snare to idle and 
 foolish women, of a sort that abound everywhere, and 
 nowhere more than among the Royalist English who
 
 Beyond the Seas. 55 
 
 had now shelter in France and the Low Countries. 
 I feared in this beauty of his a possible temptation 
 to him to depart from the wholesome practice of 
 despising and avoiding the perfidious female sex, and 
 I could have wished his features cast in a mould as 
 homely as my ov/n, who have in truth never, at any 
 period of my life, suffered from the aforesaid tempta- 
 tions and consequent perils. I determined therefore 
 to continue to use all my efforts to temper the true 
 metal of his nature with my counsel, and to determine 
 him with such sound discourse as my own experience 
 of this too often weak and wayward portion of the 
 human kind should furnish, reinforced by the wisdom 
 of the learned in all ages. Not but that his Lordship, 
 what with his own wide reading of the ancients, his 
 soldier's life, and therefore constant listening in the 
 camp and at the mess to the just defamation of the 
 sex by honest fellows by it cajoled, and as an effect 
 of my own constant hortations in season and out, 
 had arrived at such a misesteem and despisal of 
 womankind as even I could scarce wish made stronger. 
 Note, too, that in our age the ancient estimate of 
 women held by our formal grandfathers has passed 
 away, who had it by tradition from knightly times, 
 when men knew no better than, in the darkness of 
 their ignorance, to over-prize, to over-rate, and almost 
 deify silly and reprehensible women ; but now we of 
 this wiser age know better, and, being forewarned of 
 their true natures, are the better forearmed against 
 their doles and their furberies.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 I SPOKE just now of a duel engaged in by my Lord 
 that had caused some little talk at this time. 
 
 It happened thus : there were now, as I have said, 
 many English gentlemen of quality come over after 
 the troubles at home, and as they had no affairs or 
 business of their own to engage them, either of peace 
 or war, there was among them much dicing, drinking, 
 and worse employment. It happened that one day 
 my Lord and I were gathered after a pretty heavy 
 carouse in a tavern with some friends and acquaint- 
 ances of ours in the city of Amsterdam, and were 
 throwing a main together. When some few scores 
 of pistoles had changed hands, the talk turned, amid 
 the rattle of the dice box, upon the ladies, the estima- 
 tion of whom expressed by the honest gentlemen 
 present was no higher than it is usual to find expressed 
 (and certain to be deserved by the subjects thereof) 
 among gentlemen of ease and leisure. 
 
 Among the ladies touched upon was a certain 
 Lady Penelope .... (I omit the surname for good 
 reason) a young lady of a very comely presence.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 57 
 
 who, it had become pretty notorious, had turned 
 her attention and regard wholly and somewhat sud- 
 denly upon my Lord, while he, I will not seek to 
 deny it, had encountered her civility with no marked 
 repugnance. Being, however, a new comer, he was 
 unaware that the lady had previously distinguished 
 my Lord Bulleyn in similar fashion. It is not to be 
 supposed that this young lord, who had fought with 
 reputation under Prince Rupert, and was in all respects 
 an accomplished gentleman and soldier, entertained 
 any serious regard for the lady, whom he nevertheless 
 allowed the world to consider as the then object of 
 his affections, having publicly complimented her twice 
 or thrice with music before her house, and treated 
 her with an entertainment of masques, as well as sent 
 her sundry rich presents, my Lord Bulleyn being a 
 nobleman of vast estates in Yorkshire. 
 
 This lady's name and manners it was that some of 
 the gentlemen present began to reflect upon with 
 some freedom, none reprehending their doing so, not 
 even my Lord Bulleyn, who was, as ill luck would 
 have it, of the company, and he was rallied very freely 
 by his friends present upon his loss of the lady's 
 affection. So little did he seem to resent their 
 banter that he himself joined in the laugh. My 
 kinsman, who had a liking and friendship for this 
 nobleman, hardly, indeed, gathered that he was touched 
 by the levity of the young lady, till his neighbour at 
 the table whispered him how matters stood ; nor could 
 he then, seeing how lightly his friend took the matter.
 
 58 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 suppose that he was sensibly offended either by the 
 lady's conduct or the gentlemen's taunts, in which I 
 need hardly say my kinsman had in nowise joined. 
 
 I have no doubt things would never have gone to 
 the bloody issue they did, had the gentlemen present 
 been less indiscreet, for in truth there was no real 
 reason for the umbrage which my Lord BuUeyn took. 
 Eut Fate willed it otherwise, and Lord Bulleyn chose 
 a very light circumstance to fix upon for his casus 
 belli, or excuse for the duello. 
 
 My kinsman (who had a most merry and gracious 
 humour in company, as I have before hinted) thinking 
 so soon as he heard of Lord Bulleyn's inclination for 
 the lady, to turn off the matter with a jest, took out 
 his tablets and wrote quickly a quatrain impromptu 
 in the nature of an epigram ; then rolling up the leaf 
 into a little pellet he flicked it across the table to 
 Lord Bulleyn. All he meant was to show the elder 
 lover how little he, as the new favourite, regarded the 
 favour he had received, and how he gave his friend 
 joy at getting quit of his flame. 
 
 Lord Bulleyn, taking the paper and unfolding it, 
 could not forbear smiling at its pleasantry, and in 
 certain token of his having taken my kinsman's act 
 in good part, he nodded his head pleasantly towards 
 him. There the matter was ending but for the 
 gentlemen present, who, hoping to get more food for 
 merriment at the poor young jilted Loid's expense, 
 clamoured to have the paper read out to them ; but 
 Lord Bulleyn crumpled it up and threw it on the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 59 
 
 floor, and only upon the gentlemen insisting he 
 picked it up, and, amid much laughing and jesting, he 
 read out with something of a wry face the four lines, 
 which ran as follows : — 
 
 " When Celia her inconstant eyes 
 Did kindly turn on me, 
 I less esteemed the favour done 
 Than welcomed Strephon free." 
 
 — Strephon, I need hardly say, standing for my Lord 
 Bulleyn. 
 
 Soon after this the company broke up, and it was 
 not till next day that my old friend Colonel Salter 
 (formerly of Hopton's) waited upon my Lord in our 
 lodgings on behalf of Lord Bulleyn, and very formally 
 demanded amends for the slight that had been put 
 upon him by my Lord's lampoon, as he was pleased 
 to call it. 
 
 There is a convenient and retired bit of ground for 
 
 these encounters about a quarter of a mile outside the 
 
 ramparts of the city of Amsterdam, and thither we 
 
 repaired within an hour of Colonel Salter's visit. He 
 
 and young Mr. Percival, my Lord Bulleyn's cousin, a 
 
 very fierce and hasty gentleman, and a very pretty 
 
 swordsman, but who had never fought in the wars, were 
 
 this nobleman's seconds, and we picked up on the way 
 
 to the field an Irish captain of horse, to serve as second 
 
 friend on our side. This gentleman readily agreed to 
 
 c>blige us, on which I requested to be informed if he 
 
 were well acquainted with the use of the small-sword, 
 
 inasmuch as I expected that the duel would extend
 
 6o Beyond the Seas. 
 
 to the seconds, and the other side were all noted 
 swordsmen. 
 
 "Faith, Sir," says he, somewhat confusing the 
 matter, " for backsword or cudgel-play I could boldly 
 answer that I was, but of your sharps and points I 
 know very little." 
 
 I had guessed as much, for the Irish gentlemen, 
 though as brave men as exist upon this earth, are 
 seldom trained to the rapier. Therefore I answered 
 that I heartily thanked him for his obligingness, but 
 would not risk his life in our quarrel and would seek 
 another second. The Irishman however would on no 
 account be put off. 
 
 " I thank you humbly, Sir," says he, drawing himself 
 up, "but if you decline my services, now that I have 
 offered them, I shall take it to be an affront to my 
 honour." 
 
 "But, my dear Sir," quoth I, laying my hand upon 
 his arm, " I love you too well " (for I had met this 
 honest gentleman before) "to invite you to such peril 
 of your life against some of the finest swordsmen of 
 the day." 
 
 " I may not be a finished fencer, Captain St. 
 Keyne," says he, "but never fear, Sir, that I shall 
 flinch from my man or discredit your duel." 
 
 So I bowed, sorry for his obstinacy, but not with- 
 out admiring the humour of this Irish gentleman's 
 courage. 
 
 So soon as the two adversaries had faced each 
 other, the whole six of us fell to, so sharp set were we
 
 Beyond the Seas. 6i 
 
 all for sword-work in those idle days. I had leisure 
 but to glance at my kinsman, as I got to my guard, 
 and to see that he was taking Lord Bulleyn's passes 
 very coolly, without ripost, which made me a little 
 fearful of the result ; for if a man constantly receives 
 the point, and is content to parry only, 'tis evident he 
 must be reached at last. 
 
 I found the chances of the duel had brought Colonel 
 Salter opposite my point, and considering him to be 
 altogether as good as, or perhaps a better man than 
 myself, I fought very warily, but I did not then know 
 that the Colonel had received a wound at Dunbar in 
 the right ankle, which, though it did not make him 
 limp, stiffened the joint a little, so that it hindered 
 him of the necessary quickness in replying to my 
 assault. Pressing upon him somewhat, after we had 
 quickly exchanged a dozen passes, I found him to flag 
 a little, and presently perceived I had more control of 
 his weapon than I had expected. Very soon my lunge 
 was rewarded; the sword-point, entering the fleshy 
 portion of his arm above his sword-wrist, passed 
 through some five or six inches of the muscle of the 
 arm, spitting it, as it were, in a very singular manner, 
 and came out below the elbow — a curious wound and 
 a disabling one, for the colonel's arm was entirely 
 paralysed, and his sword dropped from his hand. 
 
 Turning to my Lord, I perceived to my inexpres- 
 sible relief and joy that he had overmastered his 
 antagonist, having himself received only two flesh 
 wounds in the neck, from which he was not bleeding
 
 62 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 very much. He had at last, so he afterwards told 
 me, on being very hotly pressed, riposted in earnest, 
 and as I looked he was passing his sword clean 
 through his adversary's shoulder. The wound, as my 
 kinsman withdrew his sword, caused Lord Bulleyn to 
 grow dizzy, but such was the young nobleman's 
 courage that he would not acknowledge his defeat, 
 but stood up still crossing swords, though staggering 
 a bit on his feet. My kinsman seeing how things 
 were and that Lord Bulleyn was at his mercy, weighed 
 upon his opponent's sword in quarte, ready to parry, 
 but making no thrust himself. On this, young Mr. 
 Percival who had already very quickly disposed of 
 his adversary, the Irishman, by running him through 
 the body and laying him upon his back bleeding 
 and senseless, now seeing his cousin and principal 
 getting the worst of it, in plain truth utterly defeated, 
 and owing the continuance of his life to my Lord's 
 forbearance, lost all command of his temper, and in- 
 deed of his senses, and running round to his cousin's 
 side, against all rule and principle of the duello, 
 assailed Lord St. Keyne furiously outside the other 
 gentleman's sword ; and had I not, seeing what the 
 mad fellow was about, run in and struck Mr. Percival's 
 sword up, most assuredly he would have murdered my 
 cousin while Lord Bulleyn engaged his sword. 
 
 So soon as my kinsman perceived that he had a 
 fresh antagonist, he leaped back with incredible swift- 
 ness to disengage his sword from Lord Bulleyn, and 
 lunged fiercely at the new man, who in his turn would
 
 Beyond the Seas. 63 
 
 most certainly have been whipped through the body 
 (for I had succeeded in Hfting away Mr. Percival's 
 guard in that very moment) but that my cousin in 
 the very act of lunging perceived that he was oppos- 
 ing an unguarded man, and though too late to stop 
 his lunge, dropped his point with an up turn of the 
 wrist as he came forward, and so did the gentleman 
 no hurt. In the meantime I still held up Mr. 
 Percival's sword, and turning the blade of it down- 
 wards by a simple movement in seconde, and bearing it 
 against Lord Bulleyn's blade, still held by him 
 en garde, I held it thus imprisoned, thus rendering 
 this young gentleman, who had been proceeding 
 against all rule and honour, harmless. 
 
 The whole thing had passed in three clicks of a 
 sword-blade, one, two, three, and no word was 
 spoken by any of us till Colonel Salter, standing by, 
 raised his unwounded hand and cried out very sternly, 
 " Mr. Percival ! What are you about ? Drop your 
 sword at once. Sir!" 
 
 This seemed to call the young gentleman to his 
 senses : he drew back like one dazed, and released his 
 sword point. 
 
 " Put your swords up, gentlemen," cried the Colonel, 
 standing by with his wounded right arm hanging 
 down, " Honour is satisfied." 
 
 ^ We did his bidding. " Sir," he cried, speaking very 
 stiffly to the young gentleman who had been his 
 fellow second, " you had like to have committed 
 murder upon a man who had not his weapon free to
 
 64 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 defend himself, and I call upon you humbly to heg 
 his pardon, or by .... " says he, " you shall answer 
 your crime, for it is nothing else, to me ! " 
 
 " . . . . me ! Harry," cried Lord Bulleyn, very angry, 
 though he was badly hurt, " do you want to disgrace 
 us all with your folly ? If you ha'n't murdered the 
 gentleman, 'tis none of your doing. Ask my Lord's 
 pardon, or ... . me. Sir! but I'll whip my sword 
 through your vitals!" 
 
 Mr. Percival hung his head and went very white, 
 beingoverwhelmed with shame and mortification. Then 
 he spoke, in a broken voice, " Gentlemen, I acknow- 
 ledge my fault, I knew not what I was doing. I 
 humbly crave your pardon, and," turning to my 
 cousin, " chiefly yours, my Lord." 
 
 " Come, Sir," said Ralph, taking him by the 
 hand, " enough is said. You are a brave man, if 
 a rash one. Let us not hear another word on the 
 matter." 
 
 In the meantime the Irish gentleman was lying 
 upon the turf, and was like to have bled to death 
 while we stood thus discoursing upon the point of 
 honour. He was pretty badly hurt, for Mr. Percival's 
 sword had passed through and through him. We 
 carried him insensible into a little tavern by the river 
 side, and, staunching the blood as well as we could, 
 presently got a Dutch surgeon to him, who gave us 
 some hopes of his life ; which indeed were not disap- 
 pointed, for in a fortnight this brave gentleman was 
 afoot, and in a week after almost recovered, the blade
 
 Beyond the Seas. 65 
 
 having touched no very important part. " \" But," said 
 he to me afterwards, '' I got no satisfaction at all out 
 of the fighting, for the second pass from Mr. Percival 
 was through my body, and I saw no more of the busi- 
 ness." Lord BuUeyn was laid up with a fever from 
 the hurt in his shoulder, which all but carried 
 him off, and my Lord too had lost more blood than 
 he imagined. 
 
 Thus did a duel end very pleasantly and honourably 
 for all concerned (for I consider Mr. Percival's repent- 
 ance and apologies to have condoned his rashness) 
 which might easily have had a very unfortunate ter^ 
 mination. Lord Bulleyn's blood-letting and the other 
 distractions to his mind caused him to forego all 
 thoughts of the lady who was the primal cause of all 
 this pother, and to revert to his former love and esteem 
 for my cousin. Moreover, Lord Bulleyn's conduct of 
 his sword in the duello (seeing that he had bestowed 
 two not inconsiderable wounds on his adversary and 
 still stood up to fight, after himself receiving a very 
 bad one) procured him much applause from his 
 acquaintances. This duel was indeed a nine days' 
 wonder ; all condemned Mr. Percival's headstrong be- 
 haviour, yet not without finding in it some redeeming 
 touch of loyalty to his cousin ; all commended my 
 Lord Bulleyn's stoutness ; but most of all did they 
 approve and praise the forbearance, generosity, and 
 valour of my dear kinsman, which indeed were beyond 
 all laudation. 
 
 We sojourned after this some weeks in different 
 
 F
 
 66 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 towns of the United Provinces, waiting for letters 
 from the King of Spain, seeing much learned, 
 edifying company, and more that was neither learned 
 nor edifying. 
 
 Many ingenious gentlemen inquired of me curiously 
 in regard to my Lord's opinions on various philo- 
 sophical matters, and particularly as to his views and 
 perceptions as to immaterial and essential things, 
 which views being once expressed by him had oc- 
 casioned much comment and interest among them- 
 It is partly for this reason that I have reported, 
 somewhat exactly, his above discourse upon this point, 
 as defining what he then held, and shadowing forth 
 some further discoveries which he afterwards made. 
 I have been thus particular too for another reason, 
 which is this : the vulgar, men and women (but 
 chiefly, as may be imagined, women) had carried 
 away an altogether warped and exaggerated notion 
 of what my Lord had then put forward, and the thing 
 beinsf hacked from one to another of these foolish 
 bearers soon came to be stretched into a wholly 
 absurd and monstrous doctrine, insomuch that I have 
 been seriously asked if my young Lord had not 
 received some terrible supernatural revelation or 
 another ; whether it were not true that he possessed 
 influence over the Powers of Darkness ? Could he 
 call the spirits of the dead into his presence ? Had 
 he not an attendant familiar ? and so forth. 
 
 "Why, madam," I cried to one lady who had 
 questioned me thus, " if the hundredth part of all you
 
 Beyond the Seas. ^y 
 
 suggest be true, my Lord would as richly deserve 
 death as the two witches who were burnt at the stake 
 last week ! " 
 
 During this period my kinsman, being one who, in 
 Tully's phrase, was an omnis homo, who loved all 
 forms of life, and could equally touch the highest as 
 entertain himself with the most lowly affairs, having 
 been somewhat wearied with the hardships of war on 
 the one hand, and on the other with the long vigils 
 and the aridities and disappointments of study, and 
 as neque semper arcitm tendit Apollo — the diligent 
 should not keep for ever on the full stretch — so my 
 cousin, I say, now sought (as he highly deserved) 
 some salutary rest and relaxation. He mingled 
 therefore very pleasantly with the light humours of 
 the ladies and gentlemen round about him, native 
 and foreign, but chiefly English, who then greatly 
 resorted to these Provinces. As he still touched great 
 revenues of his estates, for the pinch of those holding 
 lands at home did not come till later, he lived, for the 
 few months we waited in expectation of news from 
 Spain, in no little magnificence of lodging and dress, 
 and with entertainments of various kinds, such as of 
 music, or dancing, or else of masques in some retired 
 and rustic pleasance in the neighbourhood, to which 
 he would freely bid great concourses of his friends 
 and acquaintances ; whereby he obtained great 
 reputation and glory (in that kind, and among the 
 vulgar). My Lord was ever of a gay and kindly 
 disposition, and those that served him loved him for 
 
 F ?.
 
 68 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 his sweetness to them as well as did those that had 
 fought by his side in the wars (as I have already 
 shown) ; and he loved music, and singing, and 
 dancing, and all the several pastimes that idle persons 
 of quality follow. In music indeed he did not him- 
 self excel, nor was he versed, as he had had little 
 time to practise the art, though I remember when he 
 was a young boy he both sang and played upon the 
 theorbo-lute with some promise of excellence ; but of 
 his own accord he abandoned this diversion as he 
 grew older, and though he was always free in praising 
 the excellent performance of his friends, and chary of 
 disapproval, he conceived, in private and to me, that 
 music was somewhat of a snare and a temptation 
 from its very plcasurableness, and tended to absorb 
 all the faculties and affections of the mind into itself 
 and to withdraw them from more arduous and im- 
 portant pursuits; therefore he opined that both sing- 
 ing and the touching of instruments of music should 
 be accomplishments abandoned to women, or to those 
 men who happen to be crippled, or weaklings from 
 birth, or wanting in vigour of mind and manly cour- 
 age, and so (poor souls !) unfit and unapt for the 
 handling of the sword or the management of the 
 great horse in battle line. Yet he willingly fell into 
 the prevailing mode of this day in verse-writing 
 (which is but a sister muse of music) and he was of a 
 most facile and happy humour in the inditing of 
 songs and epigrams. Indeed, his fame in this respect 
 went so high that some verses were commonly
 
 Beyond the Seas. 69 
 
 ascribed to his pen that belonged of right to other 
 
 authors ; as, for instance, that gracious and pleasant 
 
 |) song against the foolishness of love, beginning; 
 ! 
 
 " Never believe me if I love, 
 
 Or know what 'tis, or mean to prove." 
 
 These lines were very obstinately set down to him, 
 perhaps as smacking somewhat of his expressed 
 opinions on this trivial and tedious subject, though 
 they were certainly written by another hand several 
 years before, — I believe by that of Sir John Suckling, 
 in whose book, printed since this incomparable poet's 
 death, they are at any rate included. 
 
 On the other hand, a song written by my Lord, 
 and which enjoyed at the time a very great vogue, 
 and had for its first lines ; 
 
 " Like to the changing Lunar Star, 
 Or water for inconstancie," 
 
 was commonly ascribed to the famous Lord 
 Rochester, but was in truth composed by my 
 kinsman at this time of our residence in the Low 
 Countries, and by him given to a lady of his acquaint- 
 ance, one Mrs. Cecil Courthope. This lady did in 
 fact sing it very prettily to her lute (with a setting of 
 Mr. Henry Lawes), the lady being then at the Hague, 
 while we were there, with her brother Sir Edward 
 Courthope, of Courthope Hall in Yorkshire, at a 
 time when my Lord Rochester, since noted for his
 
 70 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 verse, was plain John Wilmot and a little child of 
 five, or at most six years of age.-^ 
 
 1 I have given but the first two hnes of this song because I 
 am not certain of rightly remembering the whole at this dis- 
 tance of time. Should I find a true copy of it before this book is 
 ended, either one on paper or in the memory of a friend, I will 
 set it down entire in this place for the diversion of the curious 
 reader.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 After we had waited several months in the 
 United Provinces — it may have been five or six, but 
 my memory for dates is not exact — we at last got 
 our reply from the Spanish King, delayed on the 
 route, the messenger said, by the chase of the vessel 
 which bore him from Cadiz to Leghorn by a Rover 
 from Algiers, one of that pestilent and piratical 
 nation who set at defiance all the Powers of Christen- 
 dom, be they and their Ottoman Suzerain at peace 
 with them or at war. 
 
 When we came to have the letters read to us by 
 the Ambassador of his Majesty, we saw that we 
 had wasted our time in awaiting them, as even his 
 Excellency was bound to confess, for the letters, with 
 a profusion of civil phrases, promised and undertook 
 neither one thing nor the other. The great officer 
 of state who wrote was indeed, so he stated, "inti- 
 mately persuaded " (this was his exact phrase) "of 
 the glory of our past achievements and of the reflected 
 illustration which the presence of such eminent cava- 
 liers would bring upon the armies of Spain ; but, on
 
 72 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 the other hand, these forces were already, and had 
 ever proved themselves to be, invincible in every 
 battle-field " (they had to be sure, for all these fine 
 words, been latterly very signally defeated by the 
 French under Conde at Rocroy, and again by the 
 great Turenne in Roussillon, to say nothing of their 
 having repeatedly been worsted by the Dutch : but 
 this by the way); "and were therefore," the letter 
 continued, " independent of all foreign assistance ; 
 nevertheless, the esteemed honour of our presence in 
 Spain was so great as to overcome all considerations 
 of mere necessity, and he " (the high officer in ques- 
 tion) " made sure that his Majesty would highly 
 value and cheerfully welcome our offer to join his 
 armies." 
 
 This was but a cold offer for our services, and but 
 that he hoped to find more of adventure and surer 
 paths to glory among the Spaniards than among the 
 Imperialists, who then seemed, after their long wars, 
 not a little tired of campaigning, my Lord would have 
 hesitated to depart upon so doubtful an invitation. 
 Cold as it was, we were yet rejoiced to leave this life 
 of idleness and ease. 
 
 On the second day after we got our news, therefore, 
 and after setting our business in order, we began our 
 journey, with no greater retinue than a servant apiece 
 and two followers on horseback, leading each a 
 sumpter mule. As to letters, we burdened ourselves 
 with none, and with papers none either, save a pass- 
 port from the Spanish Ambassador declaring our
 
 Beyond the Seas. 73 
 
 intention of taking arms with the King of Spain, and 
 calling upon all Powers and Rulers by the way to 
 further and forward us upon this our destination. 
 
 As we were in no haste to join an army where we 
 seemed not to be expected with any impatience, so 
 we journeyed at some leisure to Italy. Having 
 another reason not to make too great speed, which 
 was that we desired on our arrival at Genoa to find 
 our men released from their engagernents in the 
 Imperial service and able to join themselves to us : 
 we having had letters' from Cornet Brown that he 
 and those under him had joined the army near 
 Vienna on what, in the cant phrase of the day, was 
 called ''Novices' Teiins," which was half pay but 
 with privilege to discharge themselves, in case no 
 campaign was going forward, at very short notice, 
 three v/eeks' or a month's, I think. The men, said 
 the Cornet, did not love their employment nor the 
 company they found themselves among; there was 
 no fighting or prospect of any, and all they hoped for 
 was to join his Lordship and share his fortunes 
 wherever he might choose to lead them. This letter, 
 I think, determmed my kinsman to haste away more 
 than aught else, 
 
 " They are all good fellows, Humphrey," he said to 
 me ; " and I long to be at their head once more," and 
 he named several of them to me, recalling some deed 
 each had done or endurance he had shown. " Come ! 
 cousin," cried he, " let us get to horse at once and on 
 the road to join these good, stout fellows again, whn
 
 74 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 in truth are no more able to do without us than we 
 without them." 
 
 By the way we often fell awondering as to what 
 chances had happened to our friends, for as such we 
 loved to speak of them, though many of our troop 
 were ignorant men of rustic manners and lowly birth ; 
 and readers of these pages who are proud and con- 
 ceited of their own rank and quality may perchance 
 think it unmeet and an improper condescension, in 
 one of my Lord's birth and fortune, to have placed 
 himself on terms of amity and comity with men of 
 such low degree. If so, I will tell them roundly that 
 they know nothing of the soldier's trade, which is in 
 some sort a republic of a nobler kind, where the brave 
 man and worthy soldier is the equal of any ; not but 
 what discipline goes before all, but a good officer 
 knows how to exact it without losing his men's love, 
 and a good soldier knows how to render it without 
 any touch of slavishness, seeing that both are per- 
 suaded that without discipline an army is nought, 
 and will fall away before an enemy in battle like a 
 rain cloud before the sun. Then, as a commander 
 loves and esteems his men for their stoutness in fight 
 and their heartiness and brave endurance in cold and 
 rain and wind and scorching heat and fatigue, in 
 sickness and in pain of wounds, so do they too love 
 him for the like qualities. And let me tell these 
 cavilling gentlemen who live at home in sluggish 
 ease and safety, and have never seen a company 
 drawn up in battalia, a sword flashed in anger, or a
 
 Beyond the Seas. 75 
 
 crun fired with intent to kill a man, that a good 
 soldier, be his private condition what it will, is 
 equalled with the highest when they two have marched 
 together, shoulder to shoulder, over rough and smooth, 
 by day and night, in storm and sunshine, tended 
 each other when sick and weak, fought side by side 
 and mayhap warded off imminent death from the 
 other, risking to get a mortal stroke themselves to 
 save a comrade's life. Why, gentlemen, think you 
 that we who have undergone these things together 
 are not so much even' as friends ? I tell you we are 
 not friends only, but brothers, for life and till death! 
 But where am I got to ? I had only in my mind to 
 say a good word for all honest soldiers against the 
 many bad ones the world will ever be giving them, 
 and to justify my Lord's calling up with me, as we 
 rode along our way, the memories of the brave 
 fellows who had been so tried with us in adversity. 
 Now these sixteen men, which were all that were left 
 to us of our little army, if I may so call it, of ninety- 
 five, with which we had marched through Somerset 
 and Wiltshire, were all proved men. ]\Iany of the 
 elder ones I had known, or at least they had known 
 me, as an officer in former campaigns ; some had 
 fought with the Scotch against the rebels at 
 Worcester and knew his Lordship there by sight 
 or reputation ; several were his own tenants or 
 near neighbours, and every one we could call by 
 his name and Christian name, knowing too each 
 his disposition and what service each was best fitted
 
 76 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 for ; in short, no sergeant could know each man of 
 his guard or no priest his parishioners better than we 
 knew those in our little wasted troop. What wonder, 
 then, if my cousin was eager and impatient to have 
 under his orders again such men as these, so tried, so 
 worthy, though alas ! so (cw.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 I WILL make a very short story of our journey to 
 Italy, though it was a long and weary one, yet with 
 no perils or adventures very worthy of remembrance, 
 but many delays and contrarieties. We followed in 
 the track which Dutch trade has made to Italy, that 
 is, through Westphalia to the cities of Frankfort-on- 
 the-Main and Nuremberg and Munich in Bavaria, 
 and thence due south by Innsbrug into that strange 
 region of tall mountains called Tyrol, thence along 
 the valley of the Inn and over the great rugged 
 peaks of snow, where, steep and awful as is the 
 country, the passage is yet said to be easier than 
 to the east or to the west. Nature has indeed seemed 
 to wish to set up here an impassable barrier between 
 the cold north and the rich and fertile south which 
 only the strange unconquerable restlessness of men 
 has enabled them to force. 
 
 Through all this country till we had come into the 
 very mountains of Tyrol, we saw such traces of the 
 long war, ended but three years before, as were enough 
 to make a man weep for pity. It is commonly said
 
 78 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 that out of every thousand inhabitants of these fair 
 countries not a hundred were left alive, what with 
 famine, and the pestilence thence ensuing, and the 
 many cruelties and violences of the great armies on 
 either side ; hordes, by all accounts, of hungry ruffians, 
 for the most part knowing nothing of right discipline, 
 regarding no calls of humanity, and caring for nothing 
 but rapine and wrong and murder of the defenceless 
 inhabitants, and plunder of their goods. 
 
 Of the unhappy condition of the country we met 
 with abundant evidence, for the fields were every- 
 where untilled, the roads unkept ; in whole leagues of 
 fertile land often was no man or woman or child to 
 be encountered, though plain signs of their former 
 abiding were to be seen in fences now decayed, 
 bridges broken down, and cottages roofless, with their 
 walls blackened with smoke. In the cities it was no 
 better ; the grass was growing in the streets, every 
 second house was a ruin, and of the people many 
 went half naked, having wan faces pinched with 
 hunger and misery. The once thriving Free Cities 
 of the Empire — I speak of Frankfort, Nuremberg, 
 and Augsburg, so famous for their advancement in 
 learning, scholarship, science, and all the arts — were 
 now decayed through the violence and corrupted by 
 the grossness of war, or altogether dead and ruined. 
 Even in that ingenious and civil city of Nurem- 
 berg, eminent once for wealth and ease and all the 
 arts of peace, was naught now heard but sighs and 
 lamentations for departed prosperity. There had
 
 Beyond the Seas. 79 
 
 lived here, over one hundred years before, that great 
 master in graving upon copper, Albrecht or Albert 
 Diirer, whose fame is not even yet passed away, 
 though the Dutchman Mynheer Rembrandt Van Rijn 
 is thought by many to have surpassed him, as he 
 certainly has surpassed all others, in the intricate 
 cutting of designs upon plates of copper, to be thence 
 printed upon paper, and in the apposition thereon of 
 light against the darkness of shadow ; an art for its 
 ingenuity and as spreading abroad the knowledge of 
 pictures in distant regions, comparable only to that 
 greater discovery of printing. 
 
 My Lord has at all times possessed a very lively 
 observation and delight in pictures, painting, and the 
 arts of engraving, sculpture, and building, and during 
 our stay in the United Provinces had diverted him- 
 self greatly with these matters ; having at my instance 
 allowed his portrait to be limned by the aforesaid 
 Heer Rembrandt, which that worthy gentleman ac- 
 complished very faithfully ; and this is that great 
 picture which now hangs over the chimney in the 
 chief dining hall at St. Keyne Castle, showing my 
 Lord at full length, standing against a very dark 
 field of battle, with smoke of artillery and so forth. 
 His face has somewhat more of a ruddy colour than 
 it bore at this time; the dress too is more fantastic 
 in colour and cut than was ever usual with my Lord 
 (except perhaps once or twice and in these early days, 
 for afterwards my Lord dressed ever in dark and 
 sober clothes, though composed of very rich silks.
 
 8o Beyond the Seas. 
 
 satins or velvets), but in this great picture, though 
 his jerkin is of black velvet, he wears a green scarf, and 
 his short cloak and breeches are of a reddish brown, 
 but more red than brown, with tall buff leather boots 
 and great spurs. The face is indeed admirably limned, 
 and I find upon it a look such only as I have seen at 
 very rare times and then in moments of battle, sur- 
 prises, sudden assaults, and the like ; and it is surely 
 a sign of insight in this noble painter that without 
 the possibility of having seen my Lord so moved, he 
 should have so contrived this very eager and militant 
 expression, this frowning of the brows and setting of 
 the lips which the countenance wears in the picture, 
 which indeed is suitable to the attitude of my Lord 
 therein, for his hand is on his sword to draw it and 
 his foot is advanced as against a coming enemy. 
 
 My kinsman and I often entertained ourselves while 
 we were in the Low Countries with the sight of many 
 fine pictures, Italian and others, which the rich and 
 civil burghers of the chief cities have procured for 
 themselves ; they showing them freely to curious 
 strangers, and having themselves great pleasure not 
 only in pictures and other curiosities of the arts, as 
 for instance, in copper-plate prints, whether graven 
 with a tool and bitten in with acids, in which last art 
 this aforesaid Rembrandt is the chief master ; and 
 these same burghers, even in this time of great im- 
 poverishment, were nothing less than mad in their 
 extravagant seeking after such works, and other 
 curiosities of a much lower rating, going so far as
 
 Beyond the Seas. 8i 
 
 to give 1,000 florins or more for the bulb of a tulip, a 
 thing which almost passes belief. 
 
 It is to be supposed that a people so lavish about a 
 flower that a snail might eat in a night, or a merle 
 scratch up with its claws, are not less so with regard 
 to works that with care are imperishable, and the 
 like of which had never been seen before and mig-ht 
 never be again while the world lasts. Accordingly 
 the richer of them sought after these before-mentioned 
 prints with such fanatic eagerness that no rich citizen 
 with pretension to taste thought his house furnished 
 if he did not possess certain of the more famous of 
 these works of the great master ; and I myself over- 
 hearing two worthy gentlemen discoursing each of 
 his possessions in this kind, have laughed in my 
 sleeve to hear one mock and banter the other, because 
 forsooth he had failed to buy a particular print while 
 it was still to be had : " What ! " he cried, " does 
 Mynheer So-and-So really assert that he has neither 
 a root of tulip Scmpei' Augustus in his garden, nor 
 a single copy in his house of TJie Marriage of Creusa 
 or the Little Juno with tlie Croivu " (both prints of 
 Mr. Rembrandt's). Upon such frivolities will men's 
 conversation turn ! 
 
 Arriving at Nuremberg, which we did through a 
 most piteously war- wasted country, for war had raged 
 all around this once so rich and happy city, and it had 
 itself been held by the Swedish King, and stood a siege 
 by the Imperialists, my Lord inquired after the works 
 of the great master Diirer, but to our surprise we found 
 
 G
 
 82 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 little knowledge of and no pride among the people in 
 him who had raised their city to such a pinnacle in the 
 arts. After a time came one to us who having heard 
 of our repeated asking, very civilly said, " Sirs, my 
 great grandfather, by name Pirkheimer, was a friend 
 of the painter you are curious about, and I have many 
 engraved works by his hand, heirlooms in my family, 
 which you are very welcome to see in my poor house." 
 We repaired thither with pleasure, and the gentleman 
 unfolding his portfolios exhibited to us perhaps 
 sixty or seventy different engravings of this famous 
 master. 
 
 Never before were my eyes so ravished by man's 
 handiwork, nor could I have believed that it was in 
 the power of a man's fingers to trace out upon paper 
 so delicately the utterance of his inner spirit, the 
 workings of his fancy and of a most subtle imagina- 
 tion ; and Lord ! how far is the German artist above 
 Heer Rembrandt Van Rijn, not perhaps in the render- 
 ing of lights and shadows, or the curls and twists of 
 men's hair and beards, and the curiosities of their 
 raiment, but how greatly does he better him in truth 
 and dignity ; for the Dutchman, when he sets himself 
 to paint a sacred piece, can often rise no higher than 
 to fill his picture with gross fat Dutch burghers, or 
 mean fellows in dirty rags from the Jews' Quarter of 
 Amsterdam, with hungry, scoundrel faces ; but Herr 
 Diirer having to draw the Blessed Virgin, though it be 
 on a bit of paper not greater than the breadth of a 
 man's hand, will limn her v^'ith such a high, pure look
 
 Beyond the Seas. 83 
 
 on her face as testifies to all beholders that she is 
 indeed worthy to be chosen out and blessed among 
 all women upon earth ; and though she be depicted 
 but as adjusting her Babe's dress, there is an awe and 
 love mingled together upon her face as Christians 
 dream and indeed know that there must be in it, but 
 could not hope ever to see set forth in a picture. 
 
 Of all Herr Durer's works there were two which 
 chiefly ravished us. One of a Knight riding through 
 a dark and horrid valley and being followed and 
 mocked by a terrible Shape of a Goblin : at the 
 Knight's side is the grim form of Death, riding on a 
 poor lame jade of a horse, with shambling gait and 
 down-hanging head. The Figure of Death holds up 
 to the Knight an hourglass and a timepiece, to warn 
 him that his last hour is at hand. But the Knight, 
 though his face is not defiant, is steadfast to keep 
 onward upon his path, and his horse is of a like 
 courage to his own, though the way is beset with 
 skulls and foul reptiles, and though the Knight's 
 hound is terrified by all these ghastly, spectral forms. 
 A true allegory of life which the most cursory may 
 read as in a book. 
 
 There was a print among those of Herr Diirer that 
 moved my kinsman and me yet more strongly than 
 this, for it seemed so apposite to the miserable circum- 
 stances of all this great, war-wasted country ; and that 
 was one which showed forth and interpreted all the 
 blessings and virtues which follow upon Peace, who is 
 represented in the likeness of a stately dame crowned 
 
 G 2
 
 84 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 with the peace-auguring olive, and round about hei 
 are those blessed circumstances that follow in the train 
 of peace, all expressed in signs and tokens, such as the 
 squared stone and the workman's tools, and the globe, 
 and the burning furnace with crucible therein; each 
 to signify that the arts of architecture and carpentry, 
 and the smelting of metals, flourish only in peace 
 time ; so too Justice now reigns supreme, as typified 
 in the drawing of the equal poised balances, since 
 inter anna silent leges (in war time equity may go 
 hang) and mathematics prosper, as shown in the 
 Magic Square (so-called) drawn upon the wall ; and 
 religion is shown not to be troubled, for there is the 
 quiet convent bell in its place, with its rope to toll it 
 by ; and the flourishing of commerce is expressed by 
 the distant view of a busy sea-port with ships enter- 
 ing and going forth upon a gently moving sea ; and 
 Winged Love himself is drawing upon a tablet, to 
 typify the love that springs from leisure and content- 
 ment. The central figure of Peace herself is winged, 
 to prove that her origin is heavenly, and at her girdle 
 are keys implying that she alone can unlock the 
 mysteries of nature, and also, depending from her 
 girdle, is a wallet full of money, meaning that Peace 
 brines wealth in her train. At the woman's feet lies, 
 crouching and asleep, the form of War itself, in likeness 
 of a gaunt and wolfish hound. The sun has newly 
 risen in the firmament, and his light is falling on hill 
 and valley, while flying away before this new-come 
 light of contentment and joy, is a winged dragon form
 
 Beyond the Seas 85 
 
 with its horrid jaws opened in act to howl, as it: bears 
 away a placard marked Melancholy. A most noble 
 allegory, and like the other most plain to be under- 
 stood.^ 
 
 We passed through the territories of the Elector of 
 Bavaria and the cities of Augsburg, Munich, and 
 others of lesser note till we entered the region of the 
 great mountains at Innsbrug, and here the poverty 
 of the inhabitants and the asperities of the country 
 and its bitter cold were very great and sore. Though 
 it was now midspring, yet even the valleys were snow 
 clad. 
 
 I could tell the reader many strange things of this 
 country, such as of the many powerful witches and 
 warlocks that dwell in the mountains, who are reputed, 
 whether superstitiously or not I shall not here stop to 
 
 ^ Many years after this, being entertained at a college in the 
 University of Oxford, I happened to mention this engraving and 
 discoursed briefly to the learned company about me upon its 
 happy signification. " Sir," said one of my hosts, a very in- 
 genious Doctor of Arts, "you mistake this thing altogether. 
 This pictured print I know well, having procured myself a copy 
 from the Hague, and as to its interpretation, you are, by your 
 leave, altogether mistaken, for the artist certainly intended only 
 to represent the Melancholy Temperament in the guise of a very 
 sorrowful female." I could not forbear smiling in my sleeve at 
 my host's fancy, but let him not perceive my merriment, nor did 
 I argue the point with him, considering it one of those matters 
 that are too plain, and the truth too apparent, for discussion ; 
 but if this gentleman's interpretation were true (as most cer- 
 tainly it is not) what a sad reduction to a pitiful performance 
 would there be of Herr Durer's noble allegory of War and 
 Peace !
 
 86 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 inquire, to be very potential in the affairs of the 
 dwellers in the mountains. 
 
 In these awful mountains we met with many delays 
 and sundry small crosses and adventures, but none of 
 any moment; and I will not dwell upon them, being 
 impatient to relate the much stranger things which 
 came to pass later on. Nor will I expatiate upon how, 
 coming from the inhospitable, snowy north, and tread- 
 ing ever upon ground that sloped to the south, and 
 the air growing daily more balmy, and passing many 
 famous cities, as Botzen, Trent, and Roveredo, we at 
 length, as we neared Verona, saw spread out beneath 
 us like a great wide map, the warm, sunny champaign 
 country of Lombardy, rich and green with growing 
 crops of rye and wheat, and white with the blossom 
 of countless fruit trees. 
 
 It was at Genoa that we had agreed to unite with 
 the men of our troop who, having been in the service 
 of the Emperor, had, as I have said, discharged them- 
 selves therefrom, and travelling through Venetia had 
 reached Genoa some fortnight before our arrival. 
 There we met the whole sixteen of our friends, no 
 mishap of sickness or accident having, for a wonder, 
 happened to any of them, and they all being sound in 
 wind and limb when my Lord and I reviewed them 
 in Genoa ; and such a set of goodly, stout, brawny 
 fellows as did a man's heart good to look upon. 
 
 Their dress was new, for, having put off the livery 
 of the Emperor with their service to his Majesty, 
 and that we might not go ragged to our new employ,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 8; 
 
 the troop had, at my Lord's orders from Holland, 
 equipped themselves in such uniform apparel as was 
 purchasable at Genoa, as near as possible to represent 
 the colours of the King of Spain. This new livery of 
 theirs was a plain dark-buff jerkin, red breeches with 
 green points, tall jack boots, and a sword-belt over 
 the shoulder of a brightish yellow, and each man had 
 green feathers in his gold-laced hat. Every trooper 
 carried a brace of horse pistols in his girdle and a 
 eood carbine on his shoulder. So we marched down 
 to the quays, two and two, his Lordship at our head, 
 to embark in the Spanish merchant ship that was to 
 give us passage to Barcelona in Spain. 
 
 As to the servants we brought with us, we were 
 loath to part with them, they having proved them- 
 selves very honest and faithful ; serviceable and stout, 
 too, as they had shown in a little brush or skirmish 
 we had with certain robbers who had come out upon 
 us from the forest in passing along the Brenner 
 mountain road. These four men were as loath to 
 part from us as we from them. Two were soldiers, 
 one a Spaniard, the other a Frisian, and these two 
 volunteered to serve in our troop, into which we 
 readily drafted them. The two others who had 
 charge of the sumpter mules we proposed to continue 
 as our servants, but they also were desirous to take 
 service in the troop. Both were Dutchmen and both 
 sailors. One had, he told us, served as cabin boy in 
 the flag ship of their famous admiral, Piet Heyn, at 
 Tholen, in the great fight against the Spaniards
 
 88 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 twenty years before. " Why then, Jan, my good 
 fellow," said I (the Dutchman's name was Jan Loots), 
 "you and I have fought against each other before 
 now, for I myself was in Count John's ship on that 
 day, that had your admiral yard-arm to yard-arm for 
 three hours : 'tis but fair you should serve on my side 
 for a change." So we carried both men with us, and 
 I truly think it was by God's direct Providence that 
 we did so, for it happened that before a week was 
 over this same Jan Loots was the means of pre- 
 serving our lives and liberties in as great a strait and 
 peril as ever I was in. 
 
 It thus came to be then that our little army was 
 swelled to twenty-three, thus told : officers, three, my 
 Lord, myself, and Cornet Brown ; rank and file, 
 twenty, including the four new recruits, twenty-three 
 men in all. 
 
 Thus equipped and ordered, and a couple of dozen 
 native porters to bring up the rear with our baggage 
 and spare arms and ammunition, we marched down 
 to the place of embarkation through a pretty thick 
 crowd of the townspeople come to see the English 
 troop go off to the wars in Spain, Our fellows had 
 been in Genoa, as I have said, a fortnight before we had 
 arrived, and though in difficulties with the language, 
 had made friends among the people, who are here 
 very civil. When our own servants came in our 
 small retinue, I imagine they must have talked some- 
 thing over-enough of what the troop had done in 
 England under my Lord's command, for when he and
 
 Beyond the Seas. 89 
 
 I soon after our coming at Genoa paid our respects 
 to the General Commanding in Chief of the Forces 
 there, we found him as well aware of our doings as 
 the people of the United Provinces had been ; and 
 this officer was pleased to address us a set compli- 
 ment upon what he called our "glorious services" to 
 our Master and King. On our going off to our ship, 
 the general courteously sent a company of musque- 
 teers, with a bass-drum, a horn, and a couple of 
 hautboys, so that we had music at our parting, which 
 our fellows liked well ; and they went down to the 
 waterside laughing and jesting with the citizens, 
 keeping step to the music, but swinging in their gait 
 and swaggering a bit (as is the way of us English) ; 
 and the people seeing these tall, comely fellows, their 
 long swords clattering along the pavement, their 
 carbines carried jauntily on their shoulders, and 
 themselves so gay and debonair, were greatly pleased 
 with them, and shouted out in \\.-a]X?iX\/^ Evviva !" 
 and '^Bravi !" which was their Italian way of wishing 
 us God speed and good luck ; all which we took for a 
 very good omen. 
 
 Note, that we soldiers, being simple folk, are mightily 
 taken with kind looks and cheering words, particularly 
 of our own people, at going upon service or returning 
 therefrom, and we bear such last words and cheers in 
 our mind often through the long watches and fatigues 
 of the campaigns ; and in our fighting and troubles 
 we ever look to the prospect of a kind welcome home 
 again, which things I beg my fellow countrymen will
 
 4 
 
 90 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 remember, and not be too chary either of their God 
 speeds to us at our going, or of their welcomes when 
 we come home, for I think it is very politic of our 
 people to remember how their homes and hearths 
 and liberties are guarded for them by us soldiers ; and 
 we, too, should ever bear in mind that we are to march 
 forth and suffer and fight, not for our own pleasure 
 and profit (as so many think and do), but for the 
 honour and safety of their King and for the good of 
 those they leave at home — fathers, mothers, brothers 
 and sisters, sweethearts, or friends, among which 
 latter I am willing they should number all good 
 citizens who love their country and honour the 
 King.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 We met with a contrary wind, though not a strong 
 one, on standing out from Genoa Harbour, and for 
 three days and nights were tacking, and had not 
 made three score of leagues on our way to the Port 
 of Palermo in Sicily, the first at which w^e were to 
 touch. Then we got a light slant of wind from nearly 
 east and went along merrily, this being our ship's 
 best sailing point, she being tubby in build, and but 
 a very slow sailer at best. It was on the fifth day 
 at sea, being the 2nd of May, 1652, that we sighted 
 land, and this not Sicily, but an island called Ustica 
 lying a few leagues to the north of it. Then it fell to 
 a calm, or almost one, with light airs from the east- 
 ward now and again, which just helped us on at 
 times ; and by daybreak on the sixth day we lay 
 quite becalmed, the heights on either side of Palermo 
 Harbour being in s"ght some two or three leagues off, 
 though the morning was a little misty. 
 
 The attentive, courteous Reader who has followed 
 me thus far (if indeed such an attentive Reader there
 
 92 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 has been) will doubtless remember that it was to this 
 point I had brought this narrative almost at first 
 starting. Now, then, that he knows (as I hope) so 
 much of the preliminaries as imports him to be ac- 
 quainted with, I can proceed to the recounting of 
 more important particulars. 
 
 Our men had just got their breakfast on deck, for 
 the morning was warm and fine and the sea very 
 calm, when we heard a gun fired from a small fort on 
 the hill to the west of the city, whose towers and 
 houses we could already discern. We looked and saw 
 a flag run up in the same fort, presently there came 
 a report of a second gun, whereupon the crew of the 
 vessel began immediately to hurry up from below 
 amid much talk and noise, and some ran up into the 
 rigging, and every man began to peer and spy 
 anxiously here and there upon the horizon ; then 
 came a third gun from the fort, and immediately 
 there was visible a still greater consternation among 
 all on board. In a little while this signal by the 
 three gun shots and the flag was repeated from the 
 city fortifications, and again almost immediately the 
 same signal came from a sea fort on a hill some four 
 or five miles east of the Port ; again it was repeated 
 along the coast, for we could plainly hear the shots 
 and see the smoke of the gun, though the place of 
 firing was out of our sight, and once more the sound 
 came, but much further off, from the east. 
 
 Seeing how the crew of the ship were affected by 
 this gun-fire signalling, we enquired its meaning and
 
 Beyond the Seas. 93 
 
 learnt that it betokened nothing less than that sundry 
 Barbary Rovers, or Pirate vessels, had been sighted 
 from the direction in which the sound was first 
 heard. This, it seemed, is the warning always given 
 along these coasts for all the inhabitants to fly into the 
 woods and mountains, and all boats and ships at sea 
 to run to the nearest port, for shelter from these 
 bloody robbers and cruel scourges of sea and shore. 
 One gun and the flag means, it seems, that a single 
 vessel of the Rovers has been seen ; two guns, two 
 of their ships or galleys ; and three guns, as now, 
 a squadron or fleet of three or more, " The worst of 
 it is " said the Captain to us, " that we know not how 
 near or how far off the Pirates may be, or if the 
 signal has come from round the island, out of our 
 hearing, or has begun where we heard it first, 
 showing that the Pirates are newly come from the 
 open sea, and even now may be upon us at any 
 moment. If it is not so," said he, " it is strange that 
 we have heard no signal guns to westward of Cape 
 Gallo." 
 
 Even while he spoke to us the Captain's doubts 
 were resolved, for we saw, over the tops of a low ridge 
 of rocks beyond the fortress on the hill in the west, 
 the peaked tops of two lateen sails travelling against 
 the sky very fast towards us. The Italian sailors who 
 had gathered in a crowd in the fore part of the vessel 
 gave a shout ; "And," said the Captain, "we are lost 
 men, unless by a miracle the wind should arise and 
 blow us into Port before the Pirates can reach us."
 
 94 Beyond the Seas, 
 
 " Why," I said, " there is no more wind for them 
 than for you," 
 
 "What!" cried he, "did you not notice the gun- 
 smoke carried eastward by the long-shore wind .-' It is 
 blowing from the west along the coast line and for 
 nearly a mile out to sea, though it is calm here. 
 These fellows in a trice will cut us off from the shore ; 
 then, even if they have no slaves to row them, as I 
 suspect by their rig they have not, they will at any 
 rate man their sweeps, for they carry three times the 
 crew we have, and their ships are narrow and swift, 
 and ours very slow, and be upon us in an hour or two 
 at furthest," 
 
 He was right about the shore wind, for looking, I 
 could see the line of wind-ripples extending out from 
 the shore about a mile but no further. 
 
 I asked what was to be done ? 
 
 " Why," said he, " if there were but one of them, 
 though these Rover galleys are crowded with men, 
 three to one of our crew, I would propose to fight. 
 We have two guns, plenty of small arms, and the men 
 would fight for their liberty even against odds ; but 
 against a squadron what can we do ? And look !" cries 
 he, pointing to the ridge of low rocks, " here come the 
 Pirate's consorts," and, we now could see above the 
 ridge the mast heads and peaked sails of two more 
 large galleys, 
 
 " Will the people on shore not put out to our 
 help ? " 
 
 " Not they !" cried the Captain ; " these Spaniards of
 
 Beyond the Seas. 95 
 
 Sicily are not what they are at home : — they are 
 sneaks and curs, Signer Capitano, they care only to 
 enrich themselves, and they will do anything but 
 strike a blow for honour. They have three fine War 
 ships there in Palermo Harbour, — I see their masts 
 at this moment — but they will cower behind their guns 
 while these kites are swooping down upon us at their 
 very threshhold." 
 
 My cousin was standing by as the Captain and his 
 officers were thus in conversation with me. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " it seems to me that with so 
 many stout fellows as I see about me, and armed as 
 we are, we could make at least some kind of a stand 
 for our lives and liberties. Your countrymen were 
 ever noted fighters by sea and by land." 
 
 " Sir," said the Captain, " you little know what 
 these African brigands are ; how trained and disci- 
 plined in attack, how strong their ships are in artillery, 
 what skilful marksmen they are, how great the crowd 
 of armed men on board, and what terrible Devils (for 
 I can call them little else) they are at fighting. Did 
 you. Sir, know but a tenth part of what I do of their 
 fierceness and barbarity, you would abstain from 
 counselling resistance which will but whet their native 
 ferocity, and make our lot the harder to bear. At 
 least, surrendering at discretion, we shall escape with 
 our lives, though I know we may not escape bonds 
 and hardships and even the scourge." 
 
 By this time not the officers only, but the crew of 
 the Italian ship were gathered about us, and our
 
 96 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 fellows too came up, but inasmuch as the Englishmen 
 could make out little or nothing of the talk, and knew 
 nothing of the imminent peril we were in, so they 
 were laughing and jesting, while the poor Italian 
 sailors forecasting the fate before them, looked woe- 
 begone indeed. The Italian Captain went on, and 
 presently I began to hope that there was something 
 in his speech beyond its apparent meaning of a 
 counsel to bare submission, and soon I had reason to 
 alter my opinion of him from a pitiful cur to a brave 
 and very cunning fellow. Thus it always is with 
 Italians, who even while they seek to persuade others 
 and themselves to right issues and brave action, will 
 ever be doing it by guile and tortuous courses. 
 
 " Sir," he said to my Lord, and pointing to the 
 troop, " I would prevail upon you to let these honest 
 gentlemen of yours know that their lives are probably 
 safe if they will consent to go down upon their knees 
 and beg these Barbary ruffians for mercy, who will 
 then bind them, as they will our men too, and carry 
 them captive into their infamous dens : there got, 
 some will be fettered to the oar for their lives, others 
 will be sent into mines and never see the light of the 
 sun again, others will be chained in gangs and set to 
 scavenge the streets, and all will be starved and ill used, 
 and live under constant dread of the whips of savage 
 and cruel masters. But is not this better than to fight 
 with no chance of victory and every certainty of death, 
 though to be sure it would be a glorious and happy 
 death against these enemies of our faith, who, when
 
 Beyond the Seas. 97 
 
 they have got us, will never rest till, by scourging 
 and starving and torturing us, they have caused us to 
 blaspheme against our blessed religion and curse the 
 Holy Cross itself, and so they will cause our immortal 
 souls to perish when they have at length tormented our 
 bodies into the grave." 
 
 We now saw the Italian captain's drift clearly, and 
 his m.en began to be moved by his subtle rhetoric, 
 muttering among themselves, clenching their hands, 
 and presently, breaking out, they besought the captain 
 to show them the way to make the best resistance 
 that was possible. 
 
 Our own fellows needed no such roundabout 
 eloquence. " Look you ! " cried my Lord, "here are 
 three scoundrelly Sea Rovers coming to take us ; we 
 must make the best fight we can." The men gave a 
 cheer and went for their arms. 
 
 We had come so very quickly to our decision to 
 offer resistance that the Pirate vessels were still 
 beyond the rocks in the west and their hulls yet 
 under the horizon, when we began to make our pre- 
 parations. The Esperanza, which was our ship's 
 name, was a square-rigged, two-masted vessel, short 
 and broad, and a slow sailer, and standing pretty 
 high out of the water, for though she carried cargo it 
 was not a very heavy one. 
 
 The crew was fortunately pretty numerous, con- 
 sisting of forty-nine men, all told, and all of them 
 Genoese, who are I think the stoutest and most 
 valiant of the Italians, as they have proved at all 
 
 H
 
 qS Beyond the Seas. 
 
 times by gloriously maintaining their independence 
 for so long by sea and land against all its assailants. 
 About half of these men had served in the navy of 
 Genoa. Besides them we had three young Spanish 
 gentlemen on board, passengers to Spain, each with 
 his two servants. These gallant gentlemen were all 
 for fighting, but they looked little used to serious 
 work in that way, and I did not count much upon 
 them. This then brought our number up to fifty- 
 eight, all good men, the six Spanish servants being 
 stout, likely-looking fellows, natives of Galicia. Add 
 to this our own troop, which now came up to twenty- 
 three, and our fighting strength was eighty-one, all told. 
 
 While we were all consulting together and advising, 
 some one thing, some another, my Lord, who had 
 hitherto held his peace, said : " Gentlemen, if we are 
 to make anything of this business, it will only be by 
 our deputing all authority to our captain, who is in 
 sole rightful command on this deck, and by obeying 
 his directions, with no distraction to him by any word 
 of objection, or cavil, or advice offered." 
 
 The captain considered a little, and addressing 
 himself to his officers and men, said : " The English 
 cavalier's advice is good, but I would have him and 
 you to know that I am but a seafaring man, with no 
 knowledge of war, and therefore claim no experience 
 in the ordering of such a matter as we now have in 
 hand ; and as I know this English gentleman is a 
 captain of war who has done great things in his own 
 country, and is accustomed to command in battle.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 99 
 
 and moreover as he speaks well in the Tuscan tongue, 
 which we Genoese can all fairly understand, I do 
 hereby transfer to him the government and ordering 
 of this ship and all who are in it, and call upon you 
 all to obey him, as I will myself, in everything he 
 may be pleased to command." 
 
 " I accept this charge," said his Lordship ; and 
 immediately, having already considered what was 
 best to be done, he began to give his orders. 
 
 The cargo was chiefly bales of woollen cloth, of 
 velvet and of silk. These he commanded to be 
 brought up from the hold and built up in a sort of 
 bulwark all round the gunwale to the height of a 
 man, with loopholes between every three or four 
 bales for the men to fire through. My kinsman left 
 to me to inquire into the state of the ship's cannon and 
 to distribute among the men small arms of all kinds, 
 this being a department of warfare of which I have 
 made some careful study. I found the ship furnished 
 with two i8-lb. guns, as fine pieces of Italian ordnance 
 as ever I saw, and I believed we should make very 
 pretty practice with them : there was abundance of 
 powder, which I found to be good and dry, but 
 unfortunately there were in all but thirteen cannon 
 balls. These I set in open boxes by the sides of the 
 guns, and got powder, rammers, linstocks, and all in 
 readiness. To remedy the deficiency of iron balls I 
 had some cartouches or cartridges made up with 
 bullets, pistol balls, and slugs, and laid half of them 
 by each gun ; and by my Lord's order, who had 
 
 II 2
 
 100 
 
 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 already designed his method for the coming battle, 
 each gun was loaded at the first with a cartridge of 
 this small shot. To each man of the sailors, and to 
 the Spaniards (for our own men had their arms), I 
 served out one pistol or a brace, according as I 
 judged of their skill in using them, for there were not 
 enough pairs to go round, and each man had either a 
 cutlass or a short pole-axe, at his choice, I ordered 
 the muskets to be carried on deck, and caused to be 
 laid down by each loophole three or four of these 
 arms ready loaded, for we had many more muskets 
 than men to use them. 
 
 Coming up on the quarter-deck after I had got 
 through this work, I found that the three Pirates 
 were now in full view rounding the point, the wind 
 aft for them, but light. We perceived that they were 
 not rowing galleys — that is, not rowed by slaves, but 
 wholly sailing ships, lateen rigged. This was better 
 for us, and yet worse : they would not reach us so 
 soon in a calm, not being moved by a great crowd of 
 men ; but, on the other hand, the room of unarmed 
 slaves chained to the rowlocks would be filled by 
 fighting men, and we might, we believed, now count 
 upon having 140 to 180 enemies in each of their ships. 
 
 Another thing I discovered on coming up on deck, 
 which before I was ignorant of ; this was that a 
 current was setting us to westward, that is, in the 
 direction of the fort from which the first signal guns 
 had been fired, though parallel to it and carrying us 
 past it. We had in the morning been opposite the
 
 Beyond the Seas. ioi 
 
 city, now v/e were west of it half a league. This, too 
 was against us, for till now if the wind had got up 
 it would have driven us in ; but now if it came we 
 must pass by the Pirate ships first, for they already 
 stood nearly betwixt us and the entrance. 
 
 The men had worked hard, and now had raised a 
 very fair bulwark, lashed and made fast with ropes to 
 the gunwale railing all round ; and my cousin had 
 caused to be built up another similar bulwark, well 
 secured and loopholed, across the poop of the ship 
 from side to side. This poop was high, raised some 
 four feet above the quarter-deck, there being a round 
 house below it. The tiller came up to the poop, and 
 the bulwark of bales had now converted it into a 
 little citadel which, if the deck were rushed and cleared 
 by boarders, might still afford a refuge to a remnant 
 of us. 
 
 " 'Tis a thousand pities," said I, "we have no piece 
 of ordnance to mount here that should command the 
 deck below." 
 
 The captain remembered that he had in the hold a 
 disused rusty sort of a cannon, which, being old- 
 fashioned and having no carriage belonging to it, had, 
 since he had commanded the ship, done no other 
 duty than to serve as ballast. I asked to have it 
 shown me, and thinking I saw some fight still left in 
 the old piece, we got it up. It was a strange kind of 
 a gun, perhaps a hundred years old, a short piece, that 
 would carry a four or five pound shot, and bound 
 round with rings of iron ; and it had seen much
 
 102 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 service in its day, for the touch-hole was so large 
 that I feared to charge the gun till I had bushed it 
 with splints of hard wood driven in : then we made a 
 rammer and cleaned out the piece, and mounted it on 
 a makeshift carriage of a strong wooden box, laying 
 the gun with wedges and making it fast with rope, so 
 that its fire from^ its station on the poop would rake 
 our own deck from end to end. We had no am- 
 munition proper for it, and I imagine it was never 
 constructed to carry a ball, for it had something 
 of a bell mouth, like a blunderbuss, and as we were 
 out of slugs and bullets the captain brought me a 
 barrel of various sized nails, with which I loaded the 
 gun nearly to the mouth, and tying up half a dozen 
 loads more of this irregular shot in woollen bags, I 
 laid them and the powder in an open box by its side. 
 The Italians called this piece, the like of which I had 
 never seen before, a Pederero, or Pederara, as being, I 
 suppose, contrived for the shooting of small stones or 
 gravel. 
 
 Now we were ready, and could look about us a bit 
 and see our enemy's movements. The three Rovers 
 might now be about two leagues from us, and still 
 within the influence of the light westerly breeze and 
 sailing very gently along, with their lateen sails out 
 over the sides. They kept close in to hold the wind, 
 sailing, as we could see by the line of ripples, just 
 within the outer edge of it ; and now we very 
 unexpectedly found we had a friend where we least 
 expected one, and that was on shore.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 103 
 
 The three Rovers were now in single file, with four 
 or five cables' length between them, passing in front 
 of the Fort whence we had first heard the signalling, 
 and we noticed that they kept edging away as far 
 from it as they could, but still not so far as to get into 
 calm water. As the Pirates came nearer we could 
 see that the last vessel of the line was the smallest of 
 the three, carrying but one gun in her bows, and the 
 vessel that sailed in the middle place was the largest, 
 carrying four cannon, and a chase gun in her bows. 
 
 The Fort stands on a tongue or ridge of rocky land 
 somewhat advanced into the sea, and the Pirates 
 could remove themselves from its guns no further, 
 still to keep the shore wind, than about a quarter of a 
 mile. As the first of them got abreast of the fort the 
 gunners there fired upon her two shots. It is true 
 the first missed its aim, going too high and striking 
 the water many hundred yards beyond the ship ; the 
 second shot struck nearly as far too short ; so the 
 Rover gotofi" scot free. We could see embrasures for 
 ten guns, and hoped for more firing from our friends, 
 but there were apparently but two sound guns to fire 
 with, and they seemingly had to be leaded again, for 
 the second ship of the Pirates passed unharmed, and 
 it was only when the third Rover came by that the 
 two guns were ready to be fired again, which took 
 place almost at the same moment. By this time the 
 gunners had got their range, and the shots were 
 marvellously true, for the first brought the foremast 
 of the third galley by the board, and the second did
 
 I04 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 better work still, for it cut down the great single yard 
 of the mainmast, and brought yard, sail, and all 
 tumbling down upon deck. Our men set up a shout, 
 and the air and sea were so still and calm that we 
 could hear it plainly answered from the quays and 
 housetojDS of the city, whither the citizens of Palermo 
 had crowded to see out our capture by the Pirates. 
 
 The Rover was disabled and in disorder for the time, 
 but presently they got out their sweeps and began to 
 endeavour to row beyond the reach of the guns, but 
 not before the fort had again fired twice upon them, 
 striking both times, but with what effect we could 
 not discern. The second Pirate immediately hove to 
 in order to help her consort, but the first ship kept 
 on her course towards us, and it was to her only that 
 we now looked. 
 
 So soon as she had got into calm water she hauled 
 down her sails, and manning six great sweeps on 
 either side, she advanced towards us very swiftly over 
 the water. My Lord commanded our people to lie 
 qu.iet behind the bulwark of bales. Presently the 
 Rover, being got within three or four hundred yards of 
 us, a person on board of her hailed us in the Italian 
 language. At my Lord's direction the captain 
 answered, asking what the other's business with 
 them might be. " Send a boat to us with all your 
 officers in it," cried the spokesman, " and you shall 
 discover our business." 
 
 The captain, at my Lord's order, made answer that 
 he could not, seeing that his only boat was not
 
 Beyond the Seas. 105 
 
 sea-worthy (which was the case), and he again 
 demanded to know what the Pirate's business was. 
 
 The Pirates, never, it may be supposed, appre- 
 hending that a single merchant vessel intended 
 serious resistance to three powerful Corsairs, though 
 they may have wondered a little at our deck 
 defences, took no precautions to ascertain our strength 
 and intentions, and looking on our ship and us as 
 already their prey and delivered over to their mercy, 
 forbore to injure what they considered their own 
 property by firing upon our ship. They accordingly 
 came near and within easy talking distance ; so when 
 our captain asked what their business with us was, he 
 who was their spokesman, thinking he had got hold 
 of a very simple fellow, began to jeer and mock : 
 ** Why," said he in very good Italian, " you must know 
 you have had the good fortune to fall into the hands 
 of true believers, who will speedily convert you into 
 the right faith by such persuasive arguments as the 
 scourge and the bastinado, and to such as are very 
 obstinate we will administer the argument of im- 
 palement and other convincing reasons of the like 
 kind." The pirates laughed at their spokesman's 
 merriment, who, to judge by his cruelty and also his 
 Italian speech, must have been one of those villain- 
 ous Christian Renegados who, having denied their 
 own faith, have falsely pretended to that of the 
 Pagans. 
 
 By this the Pirate had come up nearly alongside, 
 and peering on them through the loopholes of our
 
 io6 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 fortification of bales we perceived that there could 
 not be fewer than 140 of these bloodthirsty ruffians 
 crowded upon the deck of the Rover, swarthy, 
 bearded villains, each with a scimetar by his side and 
 three or four pistols thrust into his girdle. Then they 
 stopped rowing, their ship being not above twenty-five 
 or thirty yards off, the way on their vessel still 
 carrying them onward towards us. 
 
 This was the moment my Lord had determined 
 upon: "Fire!" he called out, and at the word our 
 starboard gun was fired, loaded to the muzzle with 
 small bullets, while our crew let fly with all the 
 muskets we had got ready. The men were crowded 
 so thick in the forepart of the vessel, all eager to be 
 the first to board us, and they were so near, that I do 
 not think one single bullet of the scores in the cannon 
 charge could have missed of its aim. There rose up 
 a most terrible cry of rage and surprise from them, 
 and before they had recovered of their confusion we 
 had run the larboard gun over to the enemy's side and 
 fired her with equal aim and still better effect among 
 the crowd. Then the Pirates rallied a little and ran 
 to their cannon, which all lay on the spar, or upper 
 deck. While they did so, our fellows fired some fifty 
 or sixty more shots with their muskets loaded with 
 slugs, doing great destruction among them, for the 
 ships were now fouled and entangled together. Still 
 so great was the enemy's resolution that they got one 
 gun laid and were about to have fired it but that my 
 Lord, seeing what they were about, jumped on the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 107 
 
 gunwale and waving his sword called out very loud in 
 English for his own men to board, and climbed down 
 into the Pirate ship without waiting to see who 
 followed him. We leaped down after him so quickly 
 that we all twenty-three of us stood on the Pirate's 
 deck before we had received half a dozen pistol shots. 
 The Turks seeing, amid the clouds of smoke which 
 now covered everything, that they were boarded by 
 men in uniform, perhaps magnified their numbers, and 
 certainly discovered to their cost that they were not 
 merely pouncing upon a defenceless prey. Then we 
 rushed the decks, fighting very strenuously with sword 
 and pistol for three or four minutes till we found the 
 Turks begin to give way a little, and by this time 
 some two dozen or more of the Italians and the nine 
 Spaniards had followed our board, and we overcame 
 the Pirates ; and as they sought no quarter, we killed 
 or disabled all but some score or so who fled below, and 
 whom we did not care to follow. 
 
 Now all this, from the first gun fired to the end of 
 the fighting, did not occupy five full minutes, but 
 then no quarter-minute of that time but was taken up 
 with a hard struggle for life or for death. It was a 
 thing wholly in the nature of a surprise, and had it not 
 been so it would clearly have been impossible for 
 some forty or forty-five men, however stout and nimble, 
 to overcome over treble that number as we had done ; 
 but it is to be remembered we must have killed or 
 badly wounded with the two shots of our cannon at 
 close quarters, and with our musketry fire immediately
 
 io8 Beyond the Seas, 
 
 after, a large number — perhaps a third — of the enemy ; 
 and what is most extraordinary is the little hurt our 
 men took, for not one of the Italians was even touched 
 (this I ascribe to the scanty and hasty firing of the 
 enemy) and only two of our own fellows were wounded : 
 one got a cut from a scimetar on the left arm, but 
 when it was bound up he said he felt none the worse 
 or weaker : another had a pistol shot graze him above 
 the knee, but it did not so much as lame the man. 
 
 So soon as the Pirates' resistance was overcome my 
 Lord ordered those who carried axes to break up the 
 tiller, cut the sheets, halyards, and shrouds, and break 
 to pieces the rowlocks in which the great oars or 
 sweeps were worked ; while I myself, at my Lord's 
 orders, quickly spiked the four guns with some great 
 nails, breaking off the heads short, so that the guns 
 were useless for a day at the least. 
 
 When we looked about us we perceived that we had 
 had the misfortune to drift a cable's length or there- 
 abouts from our own ship, the fellows on board the 
 Esperanza not having had the common wit to lash 
 the two ships together when we boarded. The Rovers 
 carry boats enough in their ships to convey the whole 
 of their crews, and to make their piratical adventures 
 on shore, and there were two great launches lying 
 amidships ready with oars and sails complete, either 
 of which would easily have held our boarders, but my 
 Lord had his reasons for having both the boats lowered, 
 which in a few minutes we had accomplished, on the 
 side away from and out of sight of the other two
 
 Beyond the Seas. 109 
 
 Pirate Galleys, and dividing our company in them, 
 we rowed back to our ship. 
 
 We now saw that the second Rover, and the largest 
 of the three, after standing by for a while to aid the 
 stricken ship, was rowing up with all haste through the 
 calm water to come to the help of her consort whom 
 we had engaged. It was certain that she knew not, 
 what with the distance and the heavy smoke that still 
 hung over us, all that had happened to her sister ship 
 and how complete her discomfiture had been at our 
 hands ; but seeing as she came up the two launches 
 set forth on our return from the Rover, it is likely 
 the new-comer supposed they were filled with boarders 
 from her consort, and therefore she would forbear, as 
 she did forbear, from firing her guns into the merchant- 
 man, whom she must have conceived to be now full 
 of her own men ; which fell out luckily for us, for had 
 she cannonaded us it is certain she could not have 
 failed, and in no long time, to have sent us to the 
 bottom. 
 
 So it was that when we had got back to the 
 Esperanza the first thing we saw was this new and 
 terrible enemy some 500 yards only from us and still 
 coming near, but slowly and, as the boatmen say, 
 " easing " her sweeps. My Lord resolved to begin the 
 ball, so waiting till she was within twenty-five yards, 
 and stem on to our starboard gun, he gave the order 
 to fire first one and then our second gun (both loaded 
 with round shot), which was still trained on our star- 
 board side. My Lord had called to Jan Loots and
 
 no Beyond the Seas. 
 
 said, " Do you, Jan, lay this gun and fire it," having 
 observed this fellow's knowledge of great guns, and 
 his incredible Dutch phlegm and coolness ; so the 
 Dutchman, while wc all watched him, never hurrying 
 himself a jot, laid his piece, twisted and turned it to 
 his content till he had got his aim, and just waiting 
 the rise of the sea-swell, laid the linstock to the touch- 
 hole. The shot was so truly aimed that he raked the 
 enemy's deck, as we could plainly see, from stem to 
 stern, laying low half a score of our enemy. " Now the 
 other!" cries my Lord, and Jan in the same leisurely 
 fashion fired the second piece. The aim was not 
 quite so true as the first, yet it did us better service, 
 for it struck to the one side of amidships and passing 
 fore and aft as the first had done, cut down and broke 
 to pieces all the sweeps on that side. By this accident 
 to them the Pirate for the time could neither near us 
 to board, nor keep in a good position for firing his 
 guns to advantage. Nevertheless he began at once 
 to return our fire with great and small pieces, which 
 we endeavoured to answer as well as we could with 
 the disadvantage of having but two cannon, against 
 the enemy's five, and but sixty or fifty musketeers 
 against his 150 or more. However we did him a good 
 deal more mischief than he us, for our men were pro- 
 tected from shot and splinters by the bulwark of 
 bales, while his deck lay quite open to us ; and we, 
 being higher and firing down, had. the better and 
 bigger target for our shots, and his having to fire 
 upwards was no doubt the reason that most of his
 
 Beyond the Seas. hi 
 
 round shot struck our masts and rigging, pretty soon 
 encumbering the deck with a hamper of spars and 
 ropes, while not above three or four came into our 
 hull. Seeing which, the Pirate made up his mind to 
 use what sweeps he had left and come to closer 
 quarters, and to board us by means of his boats, 
 relying no doubt upon being able to put on our decks 
 two men to one of ours. So getting his two large 
 boats into the water and putting some sixty men into 
 each, over the side furthest from us, they rowed 
 towards us very fast. 
 
 As soon as my Lord perceived how critical was our 
 predicament he ran among the men, directing them to 
 load their pieces with slugs and reserve their fire till 
 the Corsair's boats were got into the water ; the cannon 
 he ordered to be loaded with bullets and the muzzles 
 to be lowered to the utmost. 
 
 Presently the two boats of boarders were upon us 
 we peppering them hotly with small shot in the short 
 space of time we had to fire, and getting off our two 
 cannon upon them. The first gun fired — it was 
 manned and aimed by Italians — took no effect ; but 
 the second was aimed by Jan Loots, and he waited 
 and waited till I feared the boat would be got under 
 his muzzle. At last he let fly, and with so pretty an 
 aim that positively I believe he accounted for about 
 half the crew : certain I am I saw over a score of the 
 Miscreants roll to the bottom of the boat, and she 
 herself was so riddled with bullets through her sides 
 and bottom that she began to fill with water How-
 
 112 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 ever, she held on till the crew of her laid hold of our 
 vessel's side and scrambled up with the other boat's 
 crew. My Lord, willing to spare our small numbers 
 to the utmost for what they had still to do, had 
 quickly retired all his men to the little citadel before 
 mentioned on the poop ; and thence we fired at our 
 will and ease upon the Turks, who were running to 
 and fro in search of us upon our wreck-hampered 
 deck, disappointed no doubt at finding, after their 
 pains to come at us, that we were still out of their 
 reach. At last, seeing our game, they got together 
 in a crowd before the mainmast to prepare, as we 
 believed, for a storm of our position. 
 
 So soon as they were in a bunch, Jan Loots, whom 
 my Lord had now put in charge of the old wide- 
 mouthed piece, or Pederera, inside our citadel, dis- 
 charged it among them ; and though the gun scat- 
 tered its shot of great nails, and wasted them to right 
 and left, yet at least five of these queer bullets 
 reached the group of Turks, for there were knocked 
 over as many of the villains. Its effects, however, 
 were less to terrify than to anger and inspirit them, 
 and under the cover of the smoke, which in the hazy 
 air hung very thick over us, they charged up to our 
 position on the poop, and with such fierce determina- 
 tion that, though a dozen fell by our pistols, or 
 hangers, or pole-axes, some six or seven scrambled 
 up and were killed by us inside the bulwarks. The 
 rest ran back, but presently came again to the charge, 
 so very bravely do these Infidels fight. At last they
 
 Beyond the Seas. 113 
 
 were discouraged beyond hope of rally, for while they 
 were so charging us, the men kept firing on them 
 with musket and pistol whenever they could catch 
 sight of a man through the smoke ; and as quickly as 
 she could be loaded the old Pederera never ceased her 
 fire at large into the darkness of the smoke, and no 
 doubt accounted for a good many of the villains. 
 
 When presently there came no more shots from 
 them, and we could no longer hear their scuffling 
 over the deck, we stopped too, and perceived that 
 under cover of the smoke they had got into their one 
 boat — the other had sunk — and were making off to 
 their ship. We counted fifty men in the boat, many 
 hurt, out of the no or 120 that had come at us, and 
 as we plied them pretty freely with shot on their way 
 to their friends, it is to be supposed that they took 
 home with them even less than this number. 
 
 As soon as we began to shoot from our ship with 
 our big guns, so did our enemy do the same very 
 furiously. While this was going on, the enemy, re- 
 solving again to close with us, was using the sweeps 
 he still had unbroken by our second shot, and was 
 coming slowly up to us through the firing. 
 
 It was now that my Lord proceeded to execute a 
 stratagem which for boldness, cunning, and novelty 
 exceeds all I ever heard of in naval battle. First, he 
 told off all the men in twos and threes to entsr the 
 boats ho had brought from the first Pirate and which 
 still lay alongside, fastened by their painters. They 
 were to discharge their firelocks before they entered
 
 114 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 them, and before all the crew were got in them the 
 cannon were fired again a last time ; and finally, 
 when nearly all were aboard the launches, he bade 
 set light to a barrel of damped powder, which raised 
 so thick a smoke as covered up ship and all, and lay 
 like a thick mist on the water all about her. In this 
 cloud we rowed away, having at the very last spiked 
 our own two guns ; but the little old Pederera v;e 
 carried with us, and two or three charges for her, and 
 at my Lord's order we fixed her, on her makeshift 
 carriage, in the bows of the boat, pointing her muzzle 
 upwards with a slant, and loaded her. Then we 
 pulled away gently from our ship, and lying upon 
 our oars some few boats' length away, and the fog of 
 smoke still hiding us, bided our time. 
 
 Presently we could hear (for we could see nothing 
 
 now in the thickness of the smoke cloud) the Pirate 
 
 vessel come bump up against our ship, the noise of 
 
 their musketry fire still continuing, and some of our 
 
 light-hearted fellows could not forbear laughing to 
 
 think the enemy was so busily firing through the 
 
 smoke into an empty ship, and we now within a 
 
 stone's throw of them. Then my Lord ordered us to 
 
 give way with a will, and with his own hand on the 
 
 tiller he ran us right alongside of the Corsair. He 
 
 had justly supposed that most of her crew would be 
 
 out of her, boarding the Esperanza, but there were 
 
 about forty men left, and some of these catching 
 
 sight of our boat as we got near, the whole of them 
 
 ran together to the side of their vessel, as if taken
 
 Beyond the Seas. 115 
 
 aback at the sight of us whom they had so Httle 
 reason to expect. Before they had much time to 
 think of it, my Lord gave orders to fire both our 
 muskets and the Pederera, which we did in the very 
 act before scrambhng up the low side of the Corsair 
 galley. 
 
 We very easily and very quickly overmastered 
 them ; but the moment after, the rest of the crew — 
 those namely who had invaded our empty ship, the 
 two vessels being now lashed together — hearing the 
 affray, began to jump down and back into their own 
 vessel to attack us. Here came some very stiff fight- 
 ing, for we were pretty evenly matched in numbers, 
 the Pirates rather, I suppose, the larger force, though 
 we had already done so much to kill and disable a 
 very large number of them. It was mostly sword 
 work, for as we had fired off our pistols, so too had 
 the others ; and the combat was very long and very 
 sore, and there were great shouting and noise on both 
 sides — of the Turks crying upon Mahomet their false 
 Prophet to help them, of the Italians calling upon 
 the Saints, and both fighting bravely ; but the 
 English kept their breath, saying no word, good or 
 bad, but fought on very stiffly indeed. 
 
 I will not deny that we had the advantage that 
 but very few of us as yet were wounded so badly but 
 that we could fight, while over a score of the Pirates 
 bore our marks ; and then again we had the surprise 
 and our boldness in our favour, and that they were 
 fighting they hardly knew how, with whom, or why, 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 or wherefore. There must be some magic, sure, they 
 must have thought, about this empty ship of ours, 
 and our coming at them so strangely, and the bodies 
 of their own men lying on the deck : and all this had 
 happened in a flash, as it were, and by what cantrip 
 or enchantment they must have been hard put to it 
 to conjecture, and perhaps they felt they were fight- 
 ing against some more than mortal enemy. So, as I 
 say, we had an advantage; and presently, and through 
 our good cause, and by the mercy of the Almighty 
 we began to prevail against them, and we drove the 
 Pirates slowly into the corners and slew them, and 
 some of them leapt overboard in the despair of defeat 
 and were drowned ; and the deck was slippery with 
 men's blood, and the air full of their groans. 
 
 Then at last we had conquered and overcome our 
 cruel enemies who had so triumphed in the thought 
 of our captivity. But this last victory had cost us 
 very dear, and our side, which had as yet so miracul- 
 ously escaped with so few and such slight wounds, 
 had now lost a dozen men killed. Two of our own 
 troop lay dead on the deck, and six were wounded, 
 but none very badly. All three of the young Spanish 
 gentlemen and one of their servants had fallen, 
 fighting bravely, and of the Italians six were killed 
 outright and either eleven or twelve wounded. 
 
 We had but a few minutes' rest to attend to the 
 wounded when we heard the noise of great oars in 
 their rowlocks, and saw the third Pirate closing upon 
 us. A light breeze had now sprung up, and was
 
 Beyond the Seas. 117 
 
 blowing shorewards, and against this the Corsair 
 could advance but slowly. Seeing his own men so 
 tired and weakened by their morning's work, my 
 Lord determined to employ other tactics against our 
 third enemy. He therefore ordered all hands to set 
 the foresail of the Pirates' ship, we not being a strong 
 enough crew to hoist the great yard of the main- 
 sail. He ordered the captain himself to take the helm, 
 and had the Pirate's own cannon loaded, and directing 
 the ship to be laid broadside on to the enemy as he 
 advanced, he gave the word to fire the two guns. 
 Then presently began between us and the enemy a 
 pretty lively cannonade ; but at this work we had a 
 very signal advantage, for as the Pirate's only gun was 
 a chaser fixed in his bows, he could not fire it without 
 exposing his deck to be raked by our two broadside 
 cannon. The fight was then a very unequal one, and 
 but for a chance disabling shot we were pretty sure 
 to get the better of it, as indeed very soon happened ; 
 for seeing that every shot of ours did most terrible 
 execution all along their decks, and that their gunners 
 too were flurried by our two shots to their one, they 
 began to lose heart. Then came a lucky shot from 
 Jan Loots, which struck their only cannon and over- 
 set it, killing and wounding the gunners. At this they 
 quite lost heart, and betook themselves to their boats, 
 we still assailing them briskly the while with cannon 
 and musketry shot. We knew not whether they 
 intended boarding, being still some sixty or seventy 
 in number, though many hurt ; but they had seem-
 
 ii8 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 ingly no mind to attempt this forlorn hope, and had 
 no wish left but to fly from a ship wherein they could 
 hope for nothing for themselves but death and 
 destruction. So we saw them row away in their two 
 great boats, and immediately my Lord gave orders 
 to stop firing. 
 
 The Italian captain and his officers very earnestly 
 entreated that my Lord would pursue them in the 
 ship, and that our gunners might pick off the boats 
 and sink them ; but my Lord would not. Said he : 
 " I will allow no firing upon unresisting men." The 
 captain urged that these Pirates were the scourge and 
 terror of the seas, and as they would have shown no 
 mercy or forbearance to us, so we were not bound to 
 use any with them. " They may be all you say, and 
 worse," said my Lord smiling, " but they have fought 
 like brave men while there was a chance left for them. 
 No," said he, " they shall go their ways in peace for 
 me ; " and he would not be moved. 
 
 We had now leisure to look about us and count the 
 fruits of our victory, and to thank our God (which I 
 believe each of us did in his heart most devoutly) for 
 our so marvellous escape from this great and terrible 
 strait we had been in. We had overcome, partly by 
 lawful guile and partly by boldness, an enemy number- 
 ing fourfold our own force, and with arms, discipline, 
 and swiftness much exceeding our own. I cannot 
 forbear here to note down for the admiration of my 
 readers the behaviour of that " poor fellow," Jan 
 Loots — so do I call him now in a sort of irony, and
 
 Beyond the Seas. 119 
 
 somewhat to reproach myself for my wrong judgment 
 of him, for it was so we in the troop had been used 
 to name him ; and when I urged upon my Lord that 
 he should be admitted of our number, and my kins- 
 man was nothing loth, Cornet Brown objected a little, 
 " This Dutch fellow," said he, " an' it please your 
 worship, is altogether too soft and ease-loving for a 
 trooper, though I grant he is a good-natured fellow ; 
 but he will ever care for his pipe and his pot better 
 than for fighting, and will do the troop no credit 
 at all." 
 
 "Well," said I, "Cornet, we can but try him, and 
 if he runs away, poor wretch ! he will never corrupt 
 the troop to do the same." 
 
 The truth was, I had got to love the fellow, he was 
 so gentle and obliging. Jan was a round-faced Dutch- 
 man, a simple fellow, very quiet, who spoke but little 
 (indeed he had but little English to speak with), and 
 was civil to every one about him ; and, as I have said, 
 when we had that little trouble with some robbers in 
 the mountains he seemed not to lose heart ; so, a little 
 doubting his sufficiency, we clad him in our livery 
 like the others and gave him his arms. 
 
 On the morning of the sea-fight, as I was serving 
 out the ship's hangers and pole-axes to the crew, he 
 begged to be let have one of the latter weapons, and 
 this though he carried his own trooper's sword and 
 pistols. I gave him his choice of several, and he 
 picked out the longest and heaviest axe he could find. 
 He was indeed, as we afterwards found, a fellow of
 
 I20 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 prodigious strength and activity, as well as courage, 
 when once he had woke up a little. When he 
 we-nt with us to board the greatest ship of the three 
 Corsairs, he whipped off his coat in the boat, put 
 away his pistols and sword and sword-belt, and 
 turned up his shirt sleeves, having nothing but this 
 great pole-axe in his hand, and in our worst strait, 
 when the returning boarders came upon us and had 
 like to overwhelm us utterly, Jan ran furiously among 
 tJie thick of them, whirling his axe round his head, 
 and bringing it down with such right aim and force 
 on the turbans and shoulders of the Unbelievers that 
 they could make nothing of him, and I profess that I 
 myself with my own eyes saw him slay no fewer than 
 four of them in succession with this terrible weapon : 
 and he did all through the engagement mighty exe- 
 cution with his great axe, insomuch that afterwards, 
 when our troopers wanted to magnify some great 
 swashing blow, they would liken it to one from Jan 
 Loots's pole-axe, and " Jan's axe " after this got to be 
 a byword among us. 
 
 But this is by no means all ; for it is undoubted 
 that but for Jan's shot at the Pirates' boat with the 
 boarders, and the great discouragement to them that 
 followed it, I do verily believe we should have been 
 hard put to it to win, in the very beginning of the 
 fight, for all my Lord's strategy and valour. Then 
 again, but for his two shots at the second Rover, one 
 raking their deck and the other breaking half their 
 oars, we should have gone near to be undone ; so
 
 Beyond the Seas. 121 
 
 that to Jan Loots, whom we had so meanly thought 
 of, we all owed our lives and safety. 
 
 The breeze had now got up a little, and we steered 
 for the other vessels — our own and the other two 
 Pirates, all now empty, drifting about at large — and 
 putting half a dozen men in each to man a pair of 
 sweeps, and so help to keep her course and to work 
 the mended tiller, we set all sail on the Esperanza, 
 and, taking advantage of the slight favouring breeze, 
 towed the other three towards the harbour of 
 Palermo. 
 
 As our ship, drawing her great prizes after her, 
 came slowly in, an immense multitude of citizens 
 who, all through, had watched the progress of the 
 fight, despairing for us at first, then fearing and 
 doubting of our escape, then hoping a little, and at 
 last, when we came towing the three great ships of 
 the enemy, confounded with amazement at our 
 triumph, and hardly believing their own eyes — the 
 citizens, I say, now ran down to the piers and quays, 
 while others looked from every window that gave a 
 view of the harbour, and some were crowded even 
 upon the house-tops ; and all this vast multitude 
 began to fill the air with resounding shouts of wel- 
 come and gladness. Looking upward upon a lofty 
 mountain that in a horseshoe shape girds the city 
 some way off (for there is a goodly plain between), 
 we saw people there too in crowds, and the cry of 
 the townspeople was taken up and echoed by the 
 countrymen far and near among the hills.
 
 122 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 We learnt afterwards that upon the signal guns 
 giving token of an approaching Corsair, the people 
 from all the coast, even those four or five miles away 
 from the sea, would fly terror-stricken to the moun- 
 tains or to the strong cities, and there abide and 
 watch the doings of their enemies. It was these poor 
 people who were now beside themselves with joy at 
 our victory and their deliverance ; for it is almost 
 impossible for us who are Englishmen, and are mostly 
 not averse to striking a blow for our liberties, to 
 understand the submission and fear these inhabitants 
 of the Island had come to be in on account of the 
 Barbary Rovers ; not even the ships of war in the 
 harbours, though armed and manned, daring to leave 
 the safety of their moorings to go forth to encounter 
 them ; nor would the soldiery in the garrisons suffer 
 themselves to be led to meet them, when they landed 
 from their ships to raid the villages. A fear and 
 slavishness which in defenceless peasants may be 
 excused, but in men trained to arms and wearing the 
 livery of war, is, to be sure, a most mean and pitiful 
 circumstance.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 So soon as we had come to our moorings in the 
 Harbour, we gave over in charge of the Port 
 Constables our prisoners, of whom we had some fifty, 
 mostly wounded, but some unhurt, who had run below 
 when our boarders cleared the decks. These and our 
 own wounded we sent ashore, and the dead we gave 
 in charge of them also for burial. Then we asked for 
 a guard of Sicilian soldiers to be set in each vessel, 
 seeing we were like now to be boarded and overrun 
 by our friends, as in the morning we had so nearly 
 been by our enemies ; for no sooner were we in the 
 still water of the smaller harbour of the two which 
 together make up the Port of Palermo, than some 
 hundred of rowing and sailing boats came up, full of 
 townspeople eager to see the captive Turks and the 
 prizes and us who had so miraculously (as they 
 thought) conquered and captured them ; and they 
 rowed round about our ship laughing with pleasure, 
 singing some of them to the music of their mandolines 
 and guitars, clapping their hands, both men and 
 women, if they but caught sight of one of our fellows,
 
 124 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and throwing flowers and garlands on to our decks, 
 calling out we were their deliverers and preservers, 
 and I know not what ; behaving in short more like 
 children at play than serious grown-up men and 
 women. 
 
 Presently came off to us in his gilt barge, in great 
 state, the Governor of the city with a company of his 
 musketeers, to compliment my Lord upon our victory 
 and to bring a civil communication to the same effect 
 from the Viceroy, or Vice Regent of the King of 
 Spain ; this little King of the Island of Sicily having 
 his Court with no small pomp and magnificence at 
 Palermo itself His Grace the Viceroy was graciously 
 pleased to command my Lord's presence before him 
 with as little delay as might be accordant with his 
 convenience, in order that his Grace might learn from 
 his Lordship's own lips the tidings of his glorious 
 achievement. 
 
 It was too late that night to comply with the 
 Viceroy's desire, therefore my Lord signified through 
 the Governor, that on the morrow he would have the 
 honour of obeying the august command, and of 
 waiting upon his Grace. 
 
 The next morning therefore, after the refreshment 
 of sleep and rest, for the troop was in truth quite 
 worn and weary with this long day's work and 
 fighting, we took boat for the nearest quay. My 
 Lord and I and so many of the troop as were fit to 
 carry arms and to march, which were as many 'as 
 eighteen all told, for of our six wounded men, only
 
 Beyond the Seas. 125 
 
 three were so hurt that they could not move ; the rest 
 must needs fall in. The two killed of our troop, the 
 Governor had promised should have a soldier's funeral, 
 with full honours, that evening ; so here do I take my 
 leave of these my companions, sociorum et sodalhim 
 fidelium, of these most true and trusty comrades and 
 friends. One was Dick Spooner, an honest Gloucester- 
 shire man, a yeoman soldier, whom we could but ill 
 spare ; he had followed us from the very first ; the 
 other was Jack Page, a Kentish man, a young gentle- 
 man who joined us after the fight at Holmwood, on the 
 recommendation of Mr. Farleigh of Cheveninsf. He 
 had never the chance, poor fellow, of striking a blow 
 for the cause of his King and country ; but 'twas his 
 misfortune, not his fault, for he was lusty, strong and 
 loyal, and died fighting nobly against the Pirates. 
 He was a man of most pleasant life. Reqidescant in 
 pace: may these brave and faithful soldiers rest in 
 peace ! 
 
 When we reached the Harbour Stairs, we found in 
 waiting for my Lord and myself, two most noble 
 Barbary chargers sent by the Governor and very 
 bravely caparisoned, and at the head of our troop 
 we rode through the streets to the Viceroy's palace, 
 which is set on a hill in the outskirts of the city. 
 
 If the joy and exultation of the people had been 
 great the evening before, what shall I say of their be- 
 haviour to-day .-• 
 
 The noise of our exploit had spread far and near, 
 and the city was invaded by multitudes of country-
 
 126 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 men willing to be assured of the good news through 
 their own hearing. It was well that the Governor had 
 had the forethought of lining the streets with his 
 troops, and sending two companies of musketeers to 
 clear the way before us, and another to keep them off 
 us in our rear, for otherwise we could not have passed 
 through the crowd, so thickly did they press upon us 
 in their wonder and admiration. There was a great 
 band of music, drums, horns, hautboys, bassoons and 
 cymbals, ready for us to march to, and much display 
 of banners and pendants and flags borne in procession 
 before us, flowers flung upon us from windows and 
 balconies, and gay-coloured scarfs and kerchiefs 
 waved by the women ; and yet we were but a sorry 
 set of fellows for such bravery, for though as I have 
 said but six of our whole troop were badly wounded, 
 hardly any of us had escaped some little mark or 
 token of the Pirates' swords or pistols. Some of us 
 limped, some had an arm bandaged, some their cheek 
 laid open or their head tied up, and we who rode at 
 their head on our fine Barbary horses, had come no 
 better off for looks than our followers, for my Lord 
 had a bullet through the fleshy part of his right arm 
 and carried it in a sling, and I wore a great black 
 patch across my left eye. Homely as we were, 
 however, the people seemed never tired of cheering us 
 on our way to the Royal Palace. 
 
 In the great Piazza in front thereof we left" the 
 people behind, and there followed in through the 
 gateway into the courtyard only our escort of soldiers
 
 Beyond the Seas. 127 
 
 and the music. The Chamberlain then conducted my 
 Lord and me through many courts and corridors and 
 lofty halls till we came to the Throne Room, bedight 
 with rich Flemish tapestries and hangings and rare 
 carpets from the East, where his Grace Don Roderigo 
 Mendoza Roscas y Sandoval, Duke of Infantado, 
 Viceroy and Captain-General of Sicily, sat enthroned 
 and wearing the Order and Red Cross of Calatrava, 
 encompassed with his courtiers and great Officers 
 of State. 
 
 We kissed the Viceroy's hands, tendering to him 
 our homage, fealty, and obeisance, as to a Sovereign 
 Lord, which in deed, though not in name, he is, Don 
 Roderigo was a gentleman of fine bearing and courtly 
 manners, a tall and handsome personage, and in years 
 between fifty and sixty, perhaps inclining to the 
 greater age. He asked us many questions of our 
 encounter with the Corsairs, and expatiated greatly 
 upon my Lord's ingenuity in stratagem and singular 
 audacity in applying that stratagem to action. 
 
 His courtiers being a little removed to the one side 
 and the other, his Grace spoke very freely to us as to 
 the military condition of the island ; as to how all the 
 picked forces were drawn to serve in the campaign 
 against France and he had but the riff-raff fellows for 
 his regiments, and how the coasts were daily swept 
 by the Rovers from Africa, the farmers and their 
 families carried into captivity, commerce impaired, 
 and the prosperity of the country ruined. Don 
 Roderigo was very particular in asking my Lord as
 
 1 28 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 to military affairs in England and as to our share In 
 them, and questioned him closely too as to his 
 separate command of the small body of horse which 
 had passed in retreat and safety through the midst of 
 England after the battle of Worcester, and of which 
 his Grace had heard but confused accounts ; and he 
 enquired likewise as to the terms of my Lord's 
 engagement with the King of Spain, his master. 
 By his discourse I perceived his Grace to be no 
 thoroughly informed soldier, he having indeed served 
 but one campaign thirty years before with the great 
 Spinola in the United Provinces, and since then being 
 more versed in civil than in military affairs ; yet he 
 spoke shrewdly enough, if in general terms, of the 
 main issues of the art and practice of War. 
 
 After a conference of some duration, during which 
 the Duke had treated us with particular condescension, 
 his Grace commanded the Lord High Chamberlain to 
 present us to the several great Officers of State and of 
 the Court, who were then standing in the Presence 
 Chamber, " as cavaliers of high renown," said his 
 Grace in our hearing, "and as guests in our island, 
 whom it is my special care and delight to respect and 
 to honour." The High Chamberlain accordingly 
 presented us to the Generalissimo of the Viceroy's 
 forces (but subordinate to his Grace) by sea and land, 
 Don Diego de Camporeal,a young man and a nephew 
 of the Duke, and to the Archbishop of Palermo, who 
 is likewise President of the Viceregal Council. Then 
 we were saluted by Don Pasquale Truxillo, whose
 
 Beyond the Seas. 129 
 
 title in Spanish is Consejero de la Contaduria Mayor ; 
 in English, Lord High Treasurer of Sicily. Apart 
 from these high officers to whom we were duly 
 presented, and coming in respect of importance in the 
 affairs of this Island next to the Viceroy himself, is 
 the Italian Jesuit Priest, Monsignore Distori, Head of 
 the Holy Office in Sicily and Grand Inquisitor. 
 
 With all these high officials and some lesser Officers 
 of State we were duly made acquainted, and by them 
 most courteously entreated ; but I observed that no 
 one of the personages of State entertained us with 
 any serious discourse touching the affairs of Sicily 
 itself, saving only the Italian Churchman and Grand 
 Inquisitor, a most devout and zealous priest, who 
 asked us of the condition of the Faith in England, 
 and complained of the slackness and licence in 
 religious affairs of the Christian world at large. 
 
 Don Diego de Camporeal, the Generalissimo, was 
 a young gentleman of great dignity, good manners 
 and courteous speech, much favoured of the ladies of 
 the Court both of Palermo and Madrid, and lately 
 removed from the latter city, to his very great dis- 
 content. This nobleman was from the first greatly 
 affected to my kinsman. 
 
 K
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Genoese captain of the Esperaiiza having 
 received a pretty severe wound, and having partly to 
 re-man his ship, to fill up the losses by death and of 
 men down with hurts received in the fight, and the 
 ship herself requiring to be re-sparred and re-rigged, 
 it was a month before all was ready to put to sea 
 again. During this time we frequently attended at 
 the Court of the Viceroy, and my Lord was by his 
 Grace received into especial favour ; insomuch that I 
 call to mind that an entertainment of a Court party 
 of pleasure for the sport of wolf-hunting having been 
 projected to the Viceregal hunting-lodge in the 
 mountains of Madonia, ten or twelve leagues from 
 the city, which my Lord and I were invited to join, 
 my Lord, being still at that time suffering from his 
 wound, happened in the Viceroy's hearing to mention 
 his disability on this account to be a party to a diver- 
 sion of which he had never yet partaken (wolves being 
 at the present day unknown in the County of Somer- 
 set, or, to speak by the book, certainly not so abound-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 131 
 
 ing there or elsewhere as to make common sport 
 for hunters), his Grace immediately was so com- 
 plaisant as to defer the hunting until such time as 
 his Lordship should be able to take his share 
 therein. 
 
 It might have been some five days before the time 
 of the Esperanza s sailing for Barcelona that the 
 wolf-hunt took place, and the gentlemen of the Court 
 repaired to the hunting-lodge aforesaid — a fair house, 
 set in the heart of the mountains and forest. 
 
 It was on the second day of this pleasuring that 
 the Viceroy, taking the occasion of my Lord and 
 myself riding with him through a glade of the forest, 
 and it happening that we were separated from the 
 other gentlemen, his Excellency suddenly asked my 
 Lord if he were still fully resolved to proceed with 
 the Genoese ship to Spain. 
 
 " Yes, your Grace," says my Lord, civilly, " such is 
 my intention, unless my longer stay in this Island 
 should conduce to your Grace's service." 
 
 The speech was but a complimentary one, struck 
 upon that anvil of fine courtesy which it is usual for 
 Spaniards to beat out their phrases upon, but the 
 Viceroy was pleased to take my Lord at his word. 
 
 " Why," says his Grace, " if it were but to please 
 myself and for the service of the King my Sovereign, 
 I would fain keep your Lordship in Sicily for as long 
 as I stay in it myself." 
 
 My Lord bowed, thinking he was answered in his 
 own coin, and for a space neither gentleman spoke. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 In that interval there fell upon our ears the distant 
 sound of a cannon fired from the direction of the 
 coast, then another, then a third ; and as we were on 
 very high ground and overlooking the great plain 
 round Palermo, we could view the waters of the sea 
 beyond the bay, and we could see very plainly the 
 rising of the smoke as the guns were fired from that 
 very fort wherein we first had heard this dread signal 
 of the Corsairs' advent. 
 
 Don Roderigo looking very gravely upon us — " In 
 that," says he presently, " in that signal, my Lord 
 Baron, you have the reason for my wish to keep you 
 with me." And when we were silent, seeming to him 
 perchance to muse and wonder at the unexpectedness 
 of his speech, he began — "Think ! gentlemen," grow- 
 ing as he spoke to a sort of crescendo of indignation, 
 " think, that I, who have myself been a soldier, who 
 am a gentleman of unsullied lineage and a Grandee 
 of Spain, who am the Ruler of Provinces fairer and 
 richer than any other in the world, peopled with a 
 race of men as brave as live, am doomed to see them 
 daily spoiled and my people insulted by the Un- 
 believers. Remember, gentlemen, that my precursor 
 on the throne I fill, Don Garcia of Toledo, once saved 
 the honour of Christendom with his Sicihan galleys 
 in the great fight against the heathen at Malta. 
 Think," he went on " that I, who wear the badge of 
 the proudest Order in the world " (the Duke was 
 invested with the Order of the Golden Fleece as well 
 as with that of Calatrava), "whose motto is that its 
 
 I
 
 Beyond the Seas. 133 
 
 knights are to strike with the sword before ever they 
 speak with the tongue — put it before you, gentle- 
 men, that I should command armies whose gen- 
 erals dare not march afield, and war ships that 
 skulk in harbour when the enemy draws near ! 
 
 "You will not wonder, my Lord," said the Viceroy 
 in a less majestic tone (for truly his Grace's rhetoric 
 had been nothing short of majestic and fit for a King 
 to use, but now he lowered his voice to a more per- 
 suasive note), " you will not wonder, my Lord, that 
 when two brave cavaliers like yourselves come to my 
 Island with the glory of a great achievement fresh 
 upon you, I ask myself if there is not here work as 
 worthy of your swords as any you will find in Spain. 
 Pray might I inquire what especial end your Lordship 
 sets before yourself in seeking service with my Master 
 the King of Spain .' " 
 
 My kinsman told him plainly how the matter stood. 
 " I am not, may it please your Excellency," said he, 
 "a soldier of fortune by profession, and the accident 
 of my birth would have forbidden my giving myself 
 wholly to this noble service, but the circumstances of 
 our unfortunate country, and the necessity that my 
 august Master the King has lately stood in for the 
 sword of every loyal man able to use one, forced me 
 not unwillingly to take service with the King's 
 armies ; and if I have fought not without some small 
 favouring of fortune, and consequent repute, I will 
 frankly declare this happiness of achievement in me 
 is far less due to myself than that I have been able
 
 134 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 to profit by the teaching of one who has studied all 
 the art and mystery of war, both abroad and at 
 home, and is skilled and learned in it with a mastery 
 unequalled. Yet he cares for no advancement and 
 seeks for no glory, and for no laurel, though he has 
 deserved all three, unless they fall to m^e who am his 
 pupil. And this my master, your Grace, and my 
 tutor in all learning, military and civil, is my dear 
 cousin here. Captain St. Keyne." 
 
 So far my kinsman, and I have recorded this 
 speech of his at full ; not, as the mocking reader may 
 suppose, in that it sets me up for admiration, for I 
 declare formally, and on my conscience, that I de- 
 serve not one-tenth of this praise. There are many 
 of my fellow soldiers who still live and can remember 
 me in the wars, and know me well for a rough soldier 
 of fortune ; and these my friends will, I am per- 
 suaded, readily bear me out in saying that I never 
 ran after a higher fame than to be an honest soldier 
 and faithful comrade ; and if I am justifying myself 
 at this moment, it is not to convince the world of my 
 own prowess. That I have studied the art of war 
 deeply in many countries is true; that I have lived 
 through many long campaigns, through privations of 
 war, through sickness and wounds, is true also ; and 
 that I have imparted all I have learnt to my pupil 
 and kinsman, who has joined his genius to my learn- 
 ing, that is true also. But where is the praise to have 
 been diligent in teaching one who was even as a son 
 to me for the love I bore him .-* Or that I little re- 
 
 I
 
 Beyond the Seas. 135 
 
 garded honour and advancement except they fell to 
 him, nor even desired the laurel itself, that fair object 
 and end of all true soldiers' endeavours, but if it 
 flourished on his brows — tarn caro capita — on his whom 
 I hold so dear ? 
 
 I have recorded my kinsman's speech to the 
 Viceroy in full, that it may be patent how great not 
 only was his own modesty, but how infinitely great 
 and noble his generosity, who at this very moment of 
 his triumph wished to shift the wreath from his own 
 to another's head. So did Pompeius Magnus in the 
 zenith of his fame, when having newly overcome the 
 parties of Marius in Spain and of Spartacus in Italy, 
 and one said to him, marvelling, " Surely, Pompey, 
 thou hast a divine genius for war." " Not so," replied 
 he, " but I owe it to my father, who early taught me 
 the division of a battle and all the secret arts of war." 
 Now Strabo, Pompey's father, was, by all seeming, 
 but an ordinarily faithful and well-trained soldier, no 
 genius at all, and perhaps, to compare the great with 
 the small, but such a plain, unpretending fellow as I 
 am myself. But to pass on. 
 
 His Grace the Viceroy bowed to me as my Lord 
 spoke, and smiled, as no doubt implying, " I under- 
 stand this magnanimity, which confirms me in my 
 high estimate of your young Lord." 
 
 My kinsman then proceeded thus: "It is not un- 
 known to your Grace that, though our party in the 
 State is conquered for the time and lies now in 
 abeyance, as much perhaps through our own debase-
 
 136 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 ment and disorder as through the valiance of our 
 enemies, we are yet persuaded that a time will soon 
 arise when the people of England will grow sick of 
 the violent and fanatic methods of her present unrati- 
 fied governors, and that then they will be willing to 
 throw off the yoke of their present tyranny, just as 
 they have been lately stirred, not perhaps altogether 
 unrighteously, to break the yoke of their former 
 rulers. It is certain that as the kingdom was lost by 
 the sword, so will it have to be won by the sword ; 
 and therefore has it behoved all true and loyal men, 
 during this period of their country's servitude, to 
 avoid even lip-service to their oppressors ; to quit 
 their native land and go abroad, and perfect them- 
 selves in that art of war by which they can hope in 
 time to replace their lawful King on the throne of his 
 ancestors. Now, therefore, your Excellency will per- 
 ceive my reason and my cousin's for taking service 
 with the King of Spain, and for carrying thither in 
 our company as many tried and trusty Englishmen as 
 would follow us. We look to gain knowledge and 
 experience of war. I hope for myself to obtain 
 advancement to high command, and to gather some 
 fame in the Spanish war with France, knowing that 
 being thus signalized I shall be the better able in due 
 time on returning home to render worthy service to 
 my King and to my Country." 
 
 The Viceroy listened with great attention to my 
 kinsman's words, and seemed to ponder them deeply 
 " I could suppose," said he, ** nothing less from your
 
 Beyond the Seas. 137 
 
 Lordship's prudence, loyalty, and valour than this 
 high resolve, of which I would crave permission to 
 express my most profound approval ; but," his Grace 
 went on, with a courteous smile upon his lips, "has 
 your Lordship ever heard an old French saying to 
 the effect that there are many castles in Spain, but 
 never a one of them is well furnished within ? " 
 
 My Lord bowed, but spoke nothing, in his courtesy, 
 as not willing to confirm any current ill report of his 
 Grace's fatherland. 
 
 " Yes," said the Viceroy, " Spain is a land of great 
 promise and poor performance, and it is in truth no 
 exception to the rule of most kingdoms, that office, 
 whether it be military or civil, goes by favour and 
 not by merit. Were it not so, and were the best 
 leaders of our armies to be advanced to the highest 
 posts, I am confident that our present war with 
 France would end in our favour in a vear. Now, 
 could I conjecture that so eminent a Captain as your 
 Lordship would obtain that advancement which you 
 deserve, I would, in my country's interest, do nothing 
 to detain you here ; but I fear that your Lordship 
 and your cousin will languish in subordinate posts ; 
 that neither you nor your men will be sent forward to 
 the front, but may perhaps find yourselves doomed to 
 remain in some small, retired, provincial garrison, 
 away, it is true, from danger, but away likewise from 
 all chance of service and renown." 
 
 His Grace had employed a very powerful argument 
 with us, and he continued :
 
 138 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 " Therefore I would put it to you, gentlemen, that 
 you might still do great service to the King, my 
 Master, without departing from this Island, seeing 
 that if you will consent to take service with me, I 
 will immediately put the three sailing galleys you 
 have captured into commission and set you in com- 
 mand over them, and 1 will add to this squadron 
 three powerful, fast-sailing, square-rigged corvettos, 
 each carrying twelve fine guns of Venetian make, 
 two of which ships now lie here, and one at Messina, 
 but not one of the three has ever fired a shot at an 
 enemy ; and you shall have charge of my coasts and 
 six miles inland, and of their protection from the 
 Corsairs of Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, and Morocco ; and 
 all the coast fortresses of the Island shall be under 
 your command, and you shall have detailed for 
 your service ten strong troops of horse, of over a 
 hundred sabres to each troop, to scour the coast, as 
 to whose disposition in various parts of the Island 
 you shall yourself advise me ; and your command 
 over these forces by land and by sea shall be answer- 
 able and subordinate to no one but to myself." 
 
 So spake the Viceroy, who had already well con- 
 sidered this scheme of his, and had, as we afterwards 
 learned, fully debated it in Council and carried it 
 there, but not without some considerable opposition 
 from certain members thereof. 
 
 My kinsman was surprised by this offer of the 
 Viceroy, and was, it may be conceived, mightily 
 taken with the greatness of the prospect it offered ;
 
 Beyond the Seas. 139 
 
 but he perceived also how it could not fail to raise 
 up as many enemies and opponents as there were 
 high Officers of State engaged in the government of 
 the Island. 
 
 " Consider of it well, my Lord," said the Viceroy 
 "before you give me an answer, and take your kins- 
 man and counsellor into your conference. I have 
 ittle doubt his wisdom and experience will discover 
 and set forth any objections which my proposal may 
 carry with it." 
 
 My Lord thanked the Viceroy heartily for the great 
 honour he had done him, and said he, " I will obey 
 you, my Lord Duke, in conferring upon it with my 
 cousin, and together we will bring you an answer, no 
 later than to-morrow." 
 
 On our ride homewards from the hunt, which was 
 that evening, my cousin fell by the w^ay in a deep 
 muse upon this proposition of the Viceroy : at last 
 he broke forth : 
 
 " Is it not, cousin Humphrey," said he, "the most 
 fortunate circumstance in the world, and almost 
 beyond hope or expectation, that two soldiers like 
 ourselves, bent upon the pursuing of Fortune, should 
 suddenly find opened before them such opportunity 
 and anticipation of worthy employment as this?" 
 
 I smiled to think how the Viceroy's advice had 
 been forgotten, that I was to be conferred with, 
 whose experience could point out and suggest any 
 difficulties to the undertaking. 
 
 " For, look you, cousin, this project of fighting for
 
 I40 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Spain against France v/as beginning to sit somewhat 
 uneasily on my conscience ; for how are we to be 
 sure that Spain is in the right of it ? And should 
 honest men give their sword to an unjust cause ? 
 Why not with France against Spain ? Faugh ! 
 Humphrey, it is, when you look at it, an ill deed, 
 even with a righteous cause (unless indeed to save a 
 man's own people or the throne of his King) to lay 
 desolate a country, as we lately saw all those leagues 
 of land laid desolate ; to widow countless wives and 
 make countless children orphans ; to help to stifle 
 the arts of peace and to silence and confuse all 
 learning, in the senseless clash of arms and the 
 damnable rattle of drums. I will declare to you, 
 Humphrey, that since I looked upon that so eloquent 
 allegory of Peace and War by the painter Diirer, 
 the matter has come to me in a new light, and my 
 steps war-ward have grown heavy and have dragged." 
 
 " It is to regard the thing very curiously, Ralph," I 
 answered, " but I will not deny that my own con- 
 science has at times somewhat twinged me on this 
 very account." 
 
 "Now here," says he, "all will be different. Of 
 hard fighting we shall have enough and to spare, yet 
 not a stroke but will be to save this fair Island and 
 these poor peasants, to whom my breast warms, from 
 foul injustice and rapine. Did you not notice when 
 we passed through those wasted lands of Germany 
 how everywhere the people standing by their ruined 
 hovels looked on us askance, with hungry, unfriendly
 
 Beyond the Seas. 141 
 
 eyes, perceiving we were soldiers, and of the felon 
 tribe who had ravished and murdered their kith and 
 kin, and left their houses flaming, and their silly 
 granaries and gardens wrecked and ruined. And 
 now we have seen (in contrast to this) the gratitude 
 of these Islanders, their extravagant show of joy and 
 love to us when we, though only by a side-wind in 
 saving ourselves from the Rovers, saved them too and 
 avenged some of their many wrongs." 
 
 I saw my cousin so set upon undertaking this work 
 that I urged nothing against it but its greatness, and 
 the insufficiency of the means at his disposal, " For," 
 said I, " you will have for your enemies all the Bar- 
 bary Rovers from Tripoli in the east to Tangiers in 
 the west, who have had their wicked will of this poor 
 Island now for a generation." 
 
 "You have taught me, Humphrey," said my cousin 
 Ralph, " that the true art of war is to suddenly bring 
 against the enemy all the forces we have, and to 
 break him with the swiftness and weight and un- 
 expectedness of our blow. That will we do against 
 these Corsairs." 
 
 But to speak honestly, I saw not how this might be 
 effected, we being dispersed in a mountainous Island 
 and they free to choose time and place of attack. 
 
 But this consideration was not enough to distract 
 him from following his bent ; nor, in plain truth, was 
 I much less inclined than himself to the undertaking 
 and accordingly, after much conversation together 
 upon the ways and means of carrying out the Viceroy's
 
 142 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 wishes, we betook ourselves at an early hour the 
 following morning to the Palace and kissed his 
 Grace's hands upon our acceptance of the new offices 
 he had bestowed upon us ; my Lord as General 
 of his active land and sea forces, and I as his 
 Aide de Cauip, as the French call it, and second in 
 command.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Immediately there commenced a very busy time 
 for us. My Lord resolved upon two things from the 
 very first, and he had the Viceroy's ready consent 
 thereto ; first as to re-manning of the three corvettos 
 and the new manning of the captured galleys with 
 picked men of any provenance, whether Spaniards, 
 Italians, or native Sicilians ; and secondly, that before 
 any naval or military achievement was entered upon, 
 the ships should be thoroughly re-fitted, and the men 
 trained to the use of their arms, whether the cannon, 
 the firelock, or the sword, and drilled for service by 
 sea or by land. For the navigation of the ships he 
 would employ Genoese and Venetian sailors only, 
 who are beyond all others skilful and bold in danger. 
 The rest would be a kind of naval soldiery, to board, 
 and fight and serve the guns, and to bear a hand 
 with the sails in case of need. The ships were to 
 carry large crews, the corvettos 2S0 men apiece, the 
 galleys 170; and there was besides this to be a 
 land force under my Lord's command of i,ico
 
 144 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 troopers, to meet the continual raids of Corsairs by- 
 land ; they being so bold and cunning in their enter- 
 prises as to sail round the coasts with their galleys 
 to alarm the natives, while another unsuspected ship 
 of the Pirates would then appear suddenly, after the 
 alarm was past and the peasants returned to their 
 homes, and invade the country, even though it were 
 some four or five miles inland, and capture perhaps 
 some forty or fifty (men, women, youths, and maidens) 
 carrying all alike into cruel captivity ; or else they 
 would creep up to the coast under shelter of night, 
 land, and gather up the people by the houseful, asleep, 
 the father and mother, with their innocent children ; 
 or surround some remote country church at early mass 
 and capture a whole God-honouring congregation at 
 one swoop. 
 
 Now, to meet this cunning and malignant warfare 
 of the bloody-minded Miscreants, there was in the 
 Island no provision whatever, excepting the coast 
 fortified towers with ten or a dozen soldiers in each, 
 who could do no more when the Pirates landed than 
 shut their gates, draw in the ladders to their upper 
 stories and windows, and sit coy and trembling and 
 hoping the Pirates would pass them by, bent on more 
 profitable harvest ; who would sometimes in their 
 anger if baffled of easier prey, besiege the forts, 
 drao-o-ins: ashore their ship cannon to batter down the 
 walls with, or heaping up faggots in the battery ditch 
 level with the parapets, run in upon the weak garrison 
 and cut their throats, or if they had more leisure
 
 Beyond the Seas. 145 
 
 would leave them impaled round about their own tort, 
 half in sport, half in cruelty, and to terrify the 
 peasantry. 
 
 These being the methods of the enemy, it was in- 
 cumbent upon us to contrive some scheme to frustrate 
 their devices, and my Lord's imagination to this end 
 was a masterly one. 
 
 In order that our stratagem may be understood by 
 those who are curious in the noble art of war, and I 
 desire for readers none who are not, making as I do 
 no pretence (as will already have been perceived) of 
 addressing myself to the idle and unlearned, and 
 especially willing to avoid the discredit of furnish- 
 ing entertainment (as so many in this wanton age 
 affect to do) to weak and wayward women ; but to 
 resume ; I say, that in order that our design in this 
 defensive war against the Pirates may be the better 
 understood, I give the reader a little rude cut or print 
 of the contours of the Island of Sicily, in which are 
 set down roughly and without use of compass or other 
 instrument, the chief ports, mountains, and a few chief 
 rivers, showing also, by lines of navigation in the seas 
 round about, the nearness of the haunts of the different 
 Pirate nations, as the Tunisians, Moroccans, Algerines, 
 Tripolitans and the like, together with such general 
 topical information as beseems the Reader to be 
 acquainted with. If he cavil at the rudeness of this 
 map or chart, it is good he know that it is a copy 
 (only smaller and not so full) of the map I drew up 
 by the order of my Lord General (for so I must now 
 
 L
 
 146 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 call him) to enable him to proceed to the disposition 
 of his sea and land forces. 
 
 The Island of Sicilia is, as I take it, of the bigness, 
 or nearly the bigness, of Ireland (though an honest 
 Irish gentleman of our company denies its being even 
 half so great), but in richness and civility far exceeding 
 that remote and barbarous Island. Sicily greatly 
 exceeds the Northern Isle in all natural commodities 
 and productions, to wit, in rare fruits, as oranges, 
 granados, mulberries, figs, and lemons ; and in possess- 
 ing most fertile vineyards and olive groves, and fields 
 of wheat, of barley, and of rye, and of that rare Turkey 
 corn which is indeed a marvel to behold for its heisfht 
 and the size of its ear, and for its lush and prolific 
 growth. There is here moreover that great reed or 
 cane whence sugar is made, and which thrives here as 
 well as in the Indies of Asia or America. Moreover 
 the Island excels all other lands I ever knew or heard 
 of for its sweet and constant air, never too hot in 
 summer time or cold in winter. Again there are 
 marvels here such as no other land can boast, moun- 
 tains which hide abundant stores of sulphur, that most 
 strange and mysterious mineral, which mayhap will 
 turn out, as some learned alchemists allege, but gold 
 itself in disguise, and that requires but to be alloyed 
 and smelted in a crucible to take its golden, metal 
 shape, when every Sicilian peasant will command 
 wealth like another Croesus. In the seas around 
 is found great wealth of the precious red coral, which 
 would be fished up, to the notable enrichment of the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 147 
 
 people, but for the harrying of the Corsairs. To con- 
 tinue (for of the wonders of this Island there is no end) 
 there is ^^tna Mons, higher than the tallest Alpine 
 clifif, which many times shoots forth flames and 
 fire and ashes, but not maleficently as does the 
 terrible Volcano of Vesuvius, which after stifling the 
 elder Pliny (that most learned scholar) buried the cities 
 of Herculaneum and Pompeii under its ashes. But 
 ^tna is a kinder monster, though fabled to have been 
 the prison house of the Giant Typhon, of the hundred 
 hands, whose groans beneath the mountain mass used 
 to shake the heavens (as the poet Theocritus fables), 
 ind his moving quake all the solid earth, y^tna is 
 nevertheless no longer hurtful, seeing that the fire and 
 ashes that rise from his jaws fall in a gentle beneficent 
 2nriching shower on the vineyards and orchards below 
 his hill, and many times with this rain of fertilizing 
 ashes will fall precious stones, gems of price, so that 
 (as I am told in the Island) many a farmer walking 
 on to his fields after a fall of this dry volcanic rain, 
 and looking but to see his young crops helped with 
 the enrichment spread over them, will find sparkling 
 in the dust at his feet some precious Garnet, or 
 Chrysophrase, or Tourmaline, that will outvalue all 
 that his granaries can hold. No wonder therefore is 
 it that the peasants on the mountain's side, which they 
 populate very thickly (and their little terraced wheat 
 plots and orchards and vineyards are of an incredible 
 fertility and beauty), call ^tna their father, and them- 
 selves his children, who inherit largely of their father's 
 
 L 2
 
 148 Beyond the Seas, 
 
 bounty. So would they be rich and happy too, but 
 for the wicked encroachments and invasions of the 
 ravenous Turks, who are brought about their fat and 
 fertile fields and farmsteads, enticed by their richness, 
 like wolves by the smell of the sheepfold, to pillage 
 and steal their flocks and fruits, and to kidnap, or, 
 failing surrender, to wound and maim and kill their 
 owners. 
 
 On the opposite page is my map of the Island, 
 which I pray the Reader will study a while. 
 
 It will be noticed that there are a good many moun- 
 tains in the Island, but, if truth were to be fully 
 depicted in my map, there would appear still more, 
 but I have lacked the skill to draw them ; for after 
 passing to and fro over the Island, at my Lord's order, 
 I do verily believe that there is hardly a scrap of 
 plain ground in all of it saving three; to wit, one 
 biggish plain round the sea port of Catania, another 
 about the Port of Trapani in the other extremity of 
 the Island, and a third, a horseshoe shaped one at the 
 back of Palermo, between it and the hills. The moun- 
 tains in the north side of the Island are prodigious in 
 their height, their anfractuosities and their wildness, 
 and they branch out into all the corners of this 
 triangular Island. On the southern coast they slope 
 down to a lower level and a lesser wildness ; and, note, 
 that in the length of this southern shore there is not a 
 single decent harbour, for Girgenti has but a miser- 
 ably "unsafe anchorage, and Licata, another puny 
 place, has still less ; but of this latter port more anon.
 
 Beyond the Seas, 
 
 149 
 
 
 '^t*' 
 
 <3.jU SoT-fc- 
 
 Ml tUf /■•"* f— •; 
 
 
 iS'ira.Cuse f y. 
 
 [Tlieieaconsdrt)»art^W/{ anaikrtck,Y^ 
 
 JTiie itinSCzSntterieiiiui.o o. 
 
 til, „.,,, i„, ,„,■„,„,, -y^. ■,•■,,,.■■:■,,,,, ^if.t.U/i.iJ. 
 
 
 faf* B'*^^" 
 
 
 
 
 -3- jl" 
 
 .•»'», 
 
 V ^r-^;r 
 
 

 
 I50 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Now, my Lord's plan of campaign against the Cor- 
 sairs was fourfold ; first he would establish posts of 
 observation on various high points on the Island, from 
 which to give early notice by beacon fires or otherwise 
 to his cavalry, or to his sea forces, of the approach of 
 the enemy ; secondly, he would build wooden huts or 
 barracks along the coast, in which to house and stable 
 his troopers and horses in detachments, which barracks 
 should be in full view and correspondence with the 
 beacons aforesaid, and each about twenty miles apart 
 and set some few miles back from the coast ; by this 
 means he would be able to concentrate a force of 
 about lOO troopers, in three hours' time at furthest, 
 at any point invaded by the Corsairs ; thirdly, 
 he would establish fresh, unsuspected batteries and 
 gunners on the coast lines, and to this end use 
 some of the guns in the already existing fortified huts 
 or towers along the coast, which numbered at this time 
 twenty-one, at intervals and on salient points, each 
 containing five, six, or seven guns, and of gunners 
 some twelve to twenty ; but of these guns hardly two 
 in each fort were in order. Now my Lord rightly 
 considered that except for the giving warning of the 
 Corsair's approach these forts were now useless, seeing 
 that the enemy had long ago taken their measure, 
 and long ago had learned to give them a wide berth ; 
 but as the gunners were, as he discovered, expert 
 marksmen, and the guns fine Italian pieces wanting 
 but a little repair, he petitioned the Viceroy in Council 
 to allow him both to repair all the guns and to remove
 
 Beyond the Seas. 151 
 
 men and materials from these forts to some new 
 masked batteries which he proposed to construct. 
 This was his third proposal. His fourth was to keep 
 the six ships of his little squadron continually cruising 
 round the Island, whenever wind and weather per- 
 mitted, not together, but one following after another 
 at a distance of five to ten leagues ; in such wise that 
 if any one of them came upon and got into action 
 with an enemy, whether a single ship or in force, the 
 consorts of our ship would presently one after the 
 other be at hand to support her. 
 
 Of these separate items in my Lord's plan each 
 was dependent upon all the others, seeing that without 
 them all together a fair fight against such over- 
 whelming forces as the Pirates could bring against us 
 was not possible. Nevertheless, though the Rulers of 
 the Island ardently desired to see the discomfiture of 
 the Turks, and the peace of the Island secured, if for 
 no better reason than because their own individual 
 revenues were sensibly diminished by the ruin of so 
 large an extent of territory, and the embargo so 
 constantly laid by the Pirates' doings upon foreign 
 trade, yet my Lord found it very difficult to have his 
 way with them in these excellent reforms of his, 
 seeing that the most of the Councillors were men 
 stantes super antiqiias vias, who had long worked under 
 the yoke of rigid custom, and were lovers of the 
 ancient methods for no better reason than that they 
 had not vigour of imagination enough to foresee and 
 forecast the advantage of new and better ones. They 
 then, being men of little genius for affairs, could no
 
 152 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 resist the temptation, which so constantly assails their 
 like, to take up only to deface, the designs of those 
 abler than themselves (they having no projective 
 power of their own) and to warp them into some 
 confused new shape, and so claim these disfigured 
 bastard bantlings for their own legitimate children, not 
 seeing that such mutilated creatures can never live 
 and prosper. Of which I will relate a curious instance. 
 
 When my Lord's project was first laid before the 
 Council of State, which is a necessary and usual 
 course in the government of this Island, it met with 
 much objection and disparagement from several 
 Lords of the Council ; indeed, none but the Viceroy 
 himself and his nephew, Don Diego de Camporeal, 
 General of the Forces (who, knowing little of military 
 or State affairs, cared still less for either), had a good 
 word to say for it. After one meeting of the Council 
 held, the Viceroy called upon my Lord and me to 
 attend before the Councillors with our plans and 
 particulars, and to expound and explain them. We 
 found, as we expected, that the most strenuous 
 objector was the Lord High Treasurer. We expected 
 this, for Don Pasquale Truxillo was a gentleman who 
 had filled this post under successive Viceroys, and was 
 one of those who can never see that new emergencies 
 in a State require a new policy to meet them. 
 
 "Well," said he, "your Grace and my Lords, I will 
 not deny that the English General's scheme shows 
 considerable ingenuity, but I would have him and you 
 to know that there are those who have had more 
 experience of Sicilian affairs than he has. Now I 
 
 i
 
 Beyond the Seas. 153 
 
 have filled my present office for twelve years, and 
 before that I was, as your Lordships know, Comp- 
 troller of the Exchequer for seven ; and during all 
 those years things have certainly been no worse than 
 they are now. I do not say that the incursions of 
 the Corsairs are not an abominable, a shameful, and 
 indeed a ruinous circumstance ; the Island is im- 
 poverished by them, I admit ; not a week, as I am 
 aware, passes but a Sicilian ship or half a dozen 
 fishing boats, or a few families of peasants, are 
 captured and lost to us ; but at least we know where 
 we are ; it is very bad, but it might be worse. Now 
 where may we be landed if the designs of this most 
 ingenious gentleman (whose exploits in these seas I 
 am the last to impugn) are accepted ? Why, if his 
 plans are defeated, we are worse off than ever, and 
 that too after a very large expenditure of money ; 
 and the Rovers made bolder than before. Even if he 
 is successful and beats off the Pirate ships, what will 
 happen ? Why a fleet will sail from Algiers or Tunis 
 or Salee, and lay Palermo and Messina and Syracuse 
 in ashes." 
 
 The Viceroy very temperately contended that the 
 chief cities of the Island were so defended by fortifica- 
 tions, and these so well manned by gunners and 
 garnished with artillery, and the harbour filled with 
 war ships (which last were so extraordinarily bent 
 upon protecting the citizens that they never ventured 
 into the open sea), that he believed they might set 
 aside all fears of the African Pirates assailing their 
 cities, who it was well known regarded plunder as far
 
 154 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 above honour, and were very loath to run into mere 
 fighting without a prospect of booty. 
 
 My Lord Treasurer would bow to the superior 
 wisdom of his Excellency in a question of policy, but 
 he could not forego his opinion that for the outlay 
 now proposed to be made there was no precedent 
 whatever ; and particularly he would protest against 
 any vote for the building of new fortresses when there 
 were a score or more of them already in existence 
 on the coast, which buildings it was now proposed to 
 dismantle. 
 
 The Viceroy called upon my Lord to explain the 
 necessity of this portion of his scheme, which he did 
 by showing that he trusted to the new batteries almost 
 wholly to resist such a general attack by a piratical 
 fleet as the Treasurer had forecast, with the small 
 squadron at his service. This he proposed to effect 
 by manoeuvring to draw the enemy, should they 
 happen to greatly outnumber him, to fight him under 
 the guns of his batteries, which would be masked 
 from their observation by trees and bushes; "and 
 your Lordships of the Council," said he, " will be 
 pleased to observe that on the map I submit to you 
 the batteries are placed in couples near together 
 round the Island, so that a ship of ours coming in 
 shore at a point between any two of them would be 
 reinforced by no less than twenty great guns firing 
 from a steady land platform." 
 
 The Lord High Treasurer considered the scheme 
 too ingenious and imaginative to be workable in 
 practice, for he would appeal to his brother Councillors,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 155 
 
 many of them versed in campaigns, if such a stratagem 
 had ever before been used in warfare, and would it 
 not have been hit upon by some great Commander 
 or another had it been practicable ? He then argued 
 against the scheme of the new forts on the score of 
 their great and ruinous expense, which the resources 
 of the Island could ill afford. 
 
 My Lord being requested again to speak, observed 
 that they were not forts he proposed to build, but 
 batteries only, and such batteries would be built on 
 projecting headlands with earthworks on their sea 
 faces, a ditch all round, and on the land side a 
 stockade to save them from a sudden attack in the 
 rear, and his forts manned and armed at no expense, 
 with guns from the fortresses already existing, and 
 which for a generation had done little service but 
 as signalling stations. These rough defences would 
 cost but the labour of his soldiers, and the help of 
 a few peasants. 
 
 The Lord High Treasurer now shifted his ground, 
 and said the history of the loss by capture of several 
 forts on the Island was doubtless unknown to the 
 authors of this scheme. If the Pirates could assault 
 and take stone-built towers, what defence could be 
 expected from such naked batteries as were now 
 proposed ? He foretold that every one of them would 
 be captured in detail by the Pirates within a month of 
 their building, and their defenders butchered. 
 
 My Lord would not deny but that his batteries lay 
 under some risk of capture, but then all war was 
 a perpetual risk and danger. He submitted however
 
 156 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 that there would be less risk to the new batteries than 
 to the old ones, on account that these had been 
 isolated, and any attack upon them safe from inter- 
 ruption, but in future his scheme would provide for an 
 immediate convergence of troops by land and of ships 
 by sea upon any threatened point. 
 
 These assuredly were most convincing arguments ; 
 but those who know the ways of men in whom power 
 and authority have swelled the native perversity of 
 their understandings, and strengthened their inherent 
 obstinacy and stiff-neckedness, know well that such 
 men having but once put forth their opinion, perhaps 
 in idleness only and not to lie under the reproach of 
 having no judgment at all of their own on a proposi- 
 tion, will cling to that opinion right or wrong, 
 through thick or thin, ay, even though an angel from 
 Heaven should come to reason against them for the 
 contrary with logic and with rhetoric divine. 
 
 So was his Lordship, Don Pasquale, Grandee of 
 Spain, and twelve years Lord High Treasurer of 
 Sicily, implacable and inexorable on this most simple 
 and necessary point of the new batteries : on the rest 
 of the scheme he was ready to concede to the gracious 
 wishes of the Viceroy, but bowing to the Duke sitting 
 at the head of the table, " your Grace must permit me, 
 in the best interests of this Island and of our Gracious 
 Sovereign and Most Catholic Majesty, to protest 
 against this innovation of the sea batteries, fraught, 
 as I have endeavoured to show them to be, with 
 innumerable dangers to the Island and difficulties to 
 the State."
 
 Beyond the Seas. 157 
 
 The Count, by reason perhaps of his holding the 
 purse strings of the Island, carried with him whenever 
 he expressed his conviction a large following. 
 Although in the government of this Island the 
 Council is but a consulting body, professing but a 
 formal and seldom used privilege of appeal to the 
 Government at Madrid, and the Viceroy is as absolute 
 a ruler as the Grand Seignor or the Czar of Muscovy, 
 and it was open to him at his choice to override tiie 
 vote of his Council and carry out his single rule, yet 
 it will be readily understood by those who are used 
 to affairs of State, that a wise Governor, however 
 absolute he may be, does not care at every step to be 
 an absolute Dictator. It thus came to pass that his 
 Excellency, unconvinced by the arguments of the 
 Treasurer, and indeed very fully convinced of their 
 unwisdom, was nevertheless content to let this matter 
 of the new batteries lie by, while the rest of my Lord's 
 scheme was carried at once into effect. 
 
 I have dwelt a little fully, and I fear the Reader 
 will think not a little wearisomely, on this point of 
 the batteries, first to make evident to the curious 
 Reader the constitution of the Council and Govern- 
 ment of the Island in those days (and I am not aware 
 that they are altered in these), but chiefly because this 
 hitch in my kinsman's scheme and the pertinacity 
 in the wrong of my Lord High Treasurer, did at a 
 later date all but wreck the prosperity, nay, even 
 the very existence of the Island of Sicilia as a 
 Christian State.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 My kinsman and I, acting under his orders, used 
 all diligence for the recruiting of our new forces, and 
 then to get our little squadron of ships fitted, armed 
 and manned, the body of i,ioo troopers horsed and 
 drilled, and the beacon huts built on the hills, and 
 the barracks on the shore. We now found that a 
 circumstance which we had almost forgotten, on the 
 occasion of our taking of the three Corsairs, had 
 Inclined every man of any mettle or hardihood among 
 the sea-going people in Sicily to offer eagerly to 
 engage with us. The circumstance was this ; when 
 we had got our three prizes safely into Port, we heard 
 of an old disused law, made for the encouragement of 
 captures from the Turks, that ships and prisoners, by 
 whomsoever taken, should be sold to the State at a 
 fair assessment, one half of the proceeds to be the 
 prize of the chief in command of the captors, 
 one quarter to his lieutenant, and the residuary 
 quarter to be apportioned among the rest of the 
 crew. Hearing of this law, my Lord, who being in 
 sole command of the Esperanza, had been legally
 
 Beyond the Seas. 159 
 
 recognized as the conqueror and capturer of the 
 Pirates, declared at once it was not becoming for him 
 as an English gentleman and servant of his King to 
 be dividing prize-money with poor sailors and soldiers, 
 and taking such a lion's share to boot ; and so 
 forewent his share. I was of the same mind as my 
 cousin, and so our troopers and the crew of the 
 Esperanza divided the whole of this prize-money, 
 which for the three ships alone, with their guns and 
 gear, was valued at not less than 2,500 great doubloons 
 of gold, while the forty-five surviving prisoners being 
 mostly stout strong fellows, went into the State 
 galleys at 120 dollars, or pieces of eight, each (and 
 dog cheap too), which made in all something like 
 ;^8,8oo of our English money, or about ^120 apiece 
 for each man engaged — a very pretty windfall. 
 
 Now the news of this magnificence of my Lord's 
 was very quickly noised abroad, and created an 
 incredible admiration among the people, and a very 
 ardent desire among them to enlist with a leader of 
 so noble and generous a character. 
 
 The beacons which I have mentioned above were 
 but snug wooden huts fit for a couple of men to live 
 in, and the barracks were of wood too, each to 
 accommodate from forty to fifty men, with stables 
 hard by ; and so carefully did we post the beacons on 
 the sea-coast acclivities of the Island, that it required 
 but twenty-three in all to guard and watch the whole 
 of Sicily, for in the circuit round the larger towns none 
 were needed. Beside each hut were in readiness
 
 i6o Beyond the Seas. 
 
 about twelve tall narrow piles of resin-bearing wood 
 thatched with rushes to keep them dry, and the same 
 number of planks of wood, painted white on one side 
 and black on the other, each plank turning on a pivot 
 in the ground. Every beacon hut was in full view 
 from at least two barracks ; there being twenty-three 
 barracks as there were twenty-three beacons. Now 
 the method of signalling was this : the sea-shore to be 
 watched from the beacon was to be divided into 
 twelve fairly equal portions, and delimited off and 
 bounded by some natural mark, as a cliff, a tree, 
 a stream, a reef of rock, or a tongue of sand. These 
 twelve portions of coast were to be plainly set down 
 in a chart or plan kept in each beacon, with the said 
 portions or districts marked one, two, three, and so on 
 up to twelve, counting from the east, and a counter- 
 part thereof was to be posted on the inner walls of 
 any barracks in view therefrom. It will be evident, 
 then, how this signalling would work. So soon as a 
 Pirate ship or a Squadron was observed off the coast, 
 and her presence was announced by the signal guns of 
 the fortresses, the troopers were required to saddle 
 up their horses and watch the beacon huts for their 
 signal, which, by the men there, would be given at the 
 moment the Corsairs landed. As soon as ever they 
 touched the shore in a particular district, the number 
 of that district was to be notified to the two barracks, 
 if by day by turning the white sides of so many of 
 the planks towards the sea, so that the look-out men 
 in the two adjoining barracks should see them, if by
 
 Beyond the Seas. i6i 
 
 night, by lighting the right number of beacon fires. 
 The instant the signal was up, some forty-five to fifty 
 or more troopers from each barrack would start at 
 their best pace towards the same point on the coast; 
 so that in two or three hours at the outside, often- 
 times much sooner, ninety to a hundred armed horse 
 soldiers would be drawn up at the water side ready to 
 cut off the raiding party before it could return with 
 booty and prisoners. 
 
 In the meantime our ships would be forewarned as 
 well, and would be hastening up to endeavour to 
 catch the Pirate vessels while their crews were still on 
 shore. 
 
 This was my Lord's plan, stated shortly. There 
 were in it other contrivances, by which, in cases of 
 great emergency, such as the appearance of a fleet of 
 Pirates on the coast, or a landing by them in great 
 force, messengers could be sent across the Island, and 
 men could be brought up from a distance, and ships 
 warned to come up or keep off as the case might 
 require. 
 
 Two months or more we gave to the drill and 
 discipline of sailors and troopers, and it was but a 
 very little time for the business. This matter gave 
 us incredible trouble, for the men being of every sort 
 and nation, and mostly of a bold and reckless temper, 
 attracted by our pay which was liberal, being no less 
 than a half dollar for troopers and a quarter dollar for 
 sailors, with rich prospects of plunder and prizes for 
 both : the men, I say, were exceedingly wild and 
 
 M
 
 1 62 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 ruffianly, and we had all the pains in the world to 
 teach these licentious fellows civility, obedience, and 
 good discipline. I think in the first fortnight we 
 had flogged a score of both kinds, namely sailors 
 and soldiers, and then drummed them out of the 
 ranks, shot some half dozen of the worst of the 
 troopers, and strung up to the yardarms of our ships 
 as many of the more obstinate sailors, before their 
 manners mended at all. After this matters sensibly 
 improved, and in time our discipline came to be very 
 good indeed, but it was long before we could venture 
 to relax a jot in our stern treatment of the men. 
 
 One little circumstance I will mention here, though 
 indeed it hardly deserves record in so grave a 
 chronicle as mine, but it may serve to provoke a 
 little merriment from some of my old companions 
 in arms, who, having fought their campaigns on the 
 grand scale in Germany and the Low Countries, may 
 a little despise such a small business as this soldiering 
 and sailoring of ours in Sicily. It was this, that 
 having recruited somewhat hastily for both services, 
 the fellows, seeing the high pay offered and the good 
 chances of the service, were so eager to come in that 
 they stayed not to choose between the sea and land 
 services, but got in where they could, so that we often 
 found that we had carried to sea the makings of a 
 very good trooper, a bold, dashing fellow enough, but 
 who thoucfht the end of the world was at hand when 
 the ship began to roll or the sea to come over the 
 deck. So too we recruited into our cavalry some ex-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 163 
 
 cellent sailors, to whom a trotting horse was far more 
 terrible than a tempest on a lee shore, who would 
 haul at their bridles as they would at a rope, and 
 part company with their saddles pretty well as soon 
 as they had embarked upon them. Yet we had 
 established such good discipline by this time, that 
 neither the wrong-placed sailor nor soldier dared for 
 his life utter a murmur of remonstrance. It was 
 pleasant to see these poor fellows when, after watching 
 them a bit with as stern a countenance as I could 
 muster up, I would come up to them as if to reprove 
 them and then put it to them that they had my leave 
 to exchange, — the sailor to a horse, the soldier to a 
 ship. It is well to note that these transferred men 
 were afterwards among the cheerfullest and most 
 trustworthy men we had. 
 
 The state of discipline and cheerfulness and hope- 
 fulness to which we had brought both our ships' 
 crews and our cavalry was indeed exemplary. By 
 his word "hopefulness," my soldier readers will 
 know what I mean, but others mayhap not, so I will 
 say it is the condition a fighting body should ever be 
 in of expecting and desiring soon to meet the enemy, 
 and of feeling pretty confident to give a good accovmt 
 of him when they do. But this hopefulness and this 
 good discipline had perhaps never been attained but 
 for the fine bearing and good example of our own 
 
 English troops. They were now constituted by my 
 Lord his personal body-guard, and wore, in addition, 
 
 to the uniform of the regiment (as I must call it) 
 
 M 2
 
 164 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 which was of the Spanish colours, a kind of baldrick, 
 or sword-carrier, of gold lace over the right shoulder. 
 When we inarched through the streets afoot, as we 
 did at times till the regiment was fitly mounted, 
 our fellows following close upon my Lord and myself, 
 marching very steadily and firmly together (for they 
 had greatly improved their drill with their few months' 
 service in the Imperial armies) the townspeople could 
 never forbear admiring and cheering them as they 
 passed, seeing these handsome, clear-skinned fellows, 
 with their honest English faces, towering a head and 
 shoulders above the rest of the regiment, and re- 
 membering too how^ bravely they had fought against 
 the Pirates in the sight of the whole city. 
 
 Jan Loots the Dutchman, and his brother Dutchman 
 Piet Potgeiter, though sailors, were not without some 
 knowledge of a horse, Jan especially, he being handy 
 at most things, and having been bred a farmer's son 
 in his youth. He carried himself fairly well on horse- 
 back from the first, and though he had gdt to be 
 very well liked among the troopers and was ill to be 
 spared from them, being a fellow of excellent temper, 
 patience, and resource, yet my Lord was fain to 
 destine him to a special kind of employment, so 
 approved was Jan in gunnery and so skilled in the 
 rigging of ships and the like. Therefore at times he 
 was serving with my Lord on the ships, at others he 
 was my right hand man on shore, in my business of 
 the barracks and beacons. 
 
 At last we got things in some order, and the ships
 
 Beyond the Seas. 165 
 
 put to sea under my Lord's captainship, and made 
 their first cruise round the coasts. I stayed behind 
 to get the beacon huts and barracks finished and in 
 order. We could only gradually establish ourselves 
 along the coast. At first we had the three which lie, 
 as the map will show, in the easterly corner of the 
 Island, then two more to the south, and so on ; and 
 we garrisoned the barracks as quickly as we could 
 get trained men and horses to fill them. While these 
 preparations were going on, nearly three months 
 were, I will not say wasted, but at least spent, and all 
 the time the Corsairs were raiding our coasts and 
 pillaging our ships. Never before had they been so 
 bold or so cruel to the people. 
 
 My Lord had made several cruises of a few hours 
 "with his squadron from Palermo, less to meet with 
 the Pirates than to get his men accustomed to the sea 
 and to their ships ; but now at last he set forth in 
 earnest in search of the African Rovers, sailing from 
 the port of Messina with all his six ships. It was on 
 the morning of the Feast of Saint Bartholomew that 
 he set forth, with a good breeze from the westward : 
 as this wind was favourable from the African coast, it 
 was pretty certain to bring up one or more of the 
 Corsair ships, so the occasion for coming to quarters 
 with the enemy was very good. I did not myself see 
 the starting of the squadron from Messina, being then 
 busy with the beacon hut which we called No. 4, for 
 we could not be troubled with the names of the 
 places where they were set up, and so numbered them
 
 1 66 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 in the order they were built ; and the Reader will find 
 No, 4 on the map, among the hills and some way- 
 inland of the Port of Syracuse, on the south coast. 
 Being then at work with the building of this 
 hut and the two barracks in correspondence with 
 it, we only saw the squadron pass. My Lord, having 
 then hoisted his ancient in the largest Corvetto, was 
 leading in her. The six vessels were still in company, 
 but it was my Lord's intention, for the reasons I have 
 before set forth, to cruise in single file, and with a 
 distance of some leagues between the vessels. 
 
 It was a very brave sight to see our squadron sail- 
 ing by, and to know that every ship was fully manned 
 and armed, and intent upon searching out and punish- 
 ing these iniquitous despoilers and ravishers of inno- 
 cent men and women. Being where our hut was 
 building on a high mountain which overtops all 
 others about it, and is about ten miles from 
 the sea, we could look down upon a vast extent of 
 sea coast in a horseshoe shape beneath, with Syra- 
 cuse in the east, its white towers and houses 
 encompassed with evergreen groves of orange and 
 lemon trees, and its quays and wharves spread out 
 beneath our feet. A marvellous fine sight, the whole 
 coast line that was in our view being, I verily believe* 
 not less than a hundred miles in length, so great 
 was the prospect and so clear the air ; and every- 
 where we could observe the sea beating upon the 
 stones and jutting cliffs and sandy linguets, but very 
 gently, showing a white line of foam and little break-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 167 
 
 ing waves along all the windings of the shore ; the 
 sea so blue as I had never seen it before, and calm, 
 and spread out so vastly that verily it begot a sort 
 of awe in me, for its very width and greatness. Yet it 
 was most serene all the while, with countless little 
 ripples or curls of sea foam far and near under the 
 light wind ; just such, I did suppose, as the Poet 
 Homer once saw and noted, standing perhaps on just 
 such an eminence as this in Tenedos or Samos of 
 the ^gean Sea, when he called these tiny breakers 
 the uncountable smiles on Ocean's face, which indeed 
 they are, as if Nature herself were glad and smiling, 
 conscious of her own beauty. 
 
 While we were still looking upon this great spread 
 of sea, upon which never a ship was to be seen, there 
 swam into our view all our squadron ; the three 
 galleys, with the breeze abeam, heeling over under 
 the weight of their great fore and aft sails ; the square- 
 rigged ships bearing themselves more stiffly and as if 
 proudly. 
 
 Then of a sudden — filled with this great view of 
 land and sea and cities, and on the entrance into the 
 prospect of our ships — my heart was gladdened 
 within me, to think that my Lord and I, who had so 
 lately been cast forth by the afflictions of our own 
 country ; despairing of her for the time, and setting 
 forth to seek our fortunes in the wide world, should 
 so quickly, in these few months only, have been thus 
 befriended by favouring Fortune, so safely conducted 
 by a kindly Providence through such great dangers
 
 i6S Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and perils to this high destiny of having already won 
 honour and fame, the favour of the Regent of a great 
 Island, and being now entrusted by him and his 
 people with command of war ships and land forces, 
 and the conduct of a holy war of defence and protec- 
 tion asainst the accursed nations of Pirates. 
 
 While we still looked, a gun was fired from the flag 
 ship, end at this signal all the others hauled their 
 wind and presently after hove to. Then followed 
 some exchange of signals, and the Admiral then held 
 his course alone (the wind being now a little north of 
 west) towards Cape Passaro, which makes one angle of 
 this three-cornered Island, and from which cape they 
 were now distant some fifteen or twenty miles. We 
 watched my Lord's ship rounding the cape with a 
 very wide berth, and then, altering her course, she 
 stood about due west, sailing nearly close hauled 
 to the wind, and making, as we could see, very good 
 weather in the freshening breeze. 
 
 My Lord had purposely chosen to sail to windward 
 along the southern coast, which, as it is the richest 
 and most populated, so is it likewise, from its lack of 
 harbours and the dangers of its navigation, the most 
 undefended and remote from chance of interference 
 with the Pirates. Therefore is it the part of the Island 
 to which they most frequently betake themselves 
 not scrupling, in the knowledge of their impunity, to 
 carry their raids five, six, or even seven miles inland 
 from the sea shore. It will be readily understood 
 that the Rover galleys, though by the nature of
 
 Beyond the Seas. 169 
 
 their great fore and aft lateen sails, they had a 
 superiority of speed in going to windward, close- 
 hauled, and in ordinary reaching if the sea was calm 
 would in sailing with the wind abeam in rough 
 water, or in going before the wind, be quickly over- 
 hauled by our full-canvassed square-rigged Corvettos, 
 with their fine and shapely hulls, that yet had a good- 
 ish breadth of beam. Unless, therefore, the Rovers 
 were strong enough to fight and beat us, or quick 
 enough to bring their vessels up into the wind again 
 before they were disabled by our shot, they ran a 
 very good chance of capture if once wc could get the 
 weather-gauge of them. 
 
 Having noted these things, I set the men again to 
 their work of building the hut, leaving only one to 
 watch the ships and coast batteries and report on any 
 signs of approaching Corsairs. 
 
 Here I will observe that our method of building 
 both huts and barracks, wherein we wished to use as 
 much speed as possible, was to take with us a body 
 of some forty peasants from one point to another, 
 with a dozen sumptcr mules to carry tools, food, 
 cooking pots, and other necessaries. Our own com- 
 pany consisted of twenty or thirty of our troopers 
 fully armed and riding their horses. These fellows, 
 having their hearts in the work, would picket their 
 horses, pile their arms, strip to the shirt, and set to at 
 cutting down trees, digging trenches, and building up 
 the beacon fires ; so that in an incredibly short time 
 we had established in each place a decent wooden
 
 170 
 
 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 house, a shelter box for a watchman, laid the twelve 
 beacon fires before mentioned, set up the twelve signal 
 boards in their places, and built up a huge thatched 
 stack of split pine for fuel. In addition to this were 
 left two little three-pounder guns of brass, with which 
 to exchange signals with our ships at sea.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 We had been but an hour at our work when the 
 look-out man called to us that he had seen two puffs 
 of smoke away in the far west ; this we knew was from 
 a coast fort too far off for the sound of the gun to 
 reach us, and presently the signal and this time the 
 sound of the gun came from the nearer batteries, and 
 were again repeated along the coast to the east of us. 
 Although we guessed that this notification of the 
 coming of two Rovers would advise the rest of the 
 squadron to move forward, we judged it not amiss to 
 jog their memory, and therefore, running up a flag, we 
 fired our guns thrice, and lowered our flag and raised 
 it once, which was agreed to signify that the squadron 
 was to proceed to the assistance of their consort. By 
 til's time the two Rovers were in our sight, scudding 
 down the coast before the wind with great swiftness, 
 their sails goose-winged, as sailors use to say ; that is, 
 with one great peaked sail boomed out to either side, 
 looking for all the world like two great white herons or 
 gannets flying across the waters. 
 
 So soon as they perceived my Lord, which was not
 
 1/2 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 for a little time yet, we having the advantage in pro- 
 spect from our height, they bore down upon him, 
 thinking no doubt he was a merchantman, and yet 
 they must have wondered a little too that at the sound 
 of the warning guns on the coast he had not turned 
 and fled, and still more that he still carried on when 
 they steered for him. But in truth these Pirates of 
 the Barbary Coast had set up such a terror in all these 
 seas by their fierceness and inhumanity, that the last 
 thing they ever expected was that any ship, however 
 great or strong, would dare to show any fight against 
 them. Perhaps too they were taken in by a little 
 manoeuvre which my Lord, evidently to beget or con- 
 firm this belief of his fear of them, now executed. 
 When he first sighted the Pirates he was beating to 
 windward, close hauled, on the starboard tack ; but 
 presently, as if he was suspicious of the strange sail, 
 he put his helm down and came about upon the lar- 
 board tack, the ship's head then pointing to the little 
 Port of Terranova, which lay some leagues to the 
 west, but which he might hope to reach upon this 
 tack. True there is no harbour there, except for 
 small boats, but on the hill near the town is a 
 small fortress carrying several guns, and no doubt the 
 Pirates imagined he was running thither for the pro- 
 tection cf its guns, or perhaps, if very hard pressed, 
 was preparing to beach his vessel on the coast, which 
 is low and sandy thereabouts. So soon therefore as 
 they saw what my Lord was about, one of the Rovers 
 altered his course so as to cut him off from the shore.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 173 
 
 while the other held on full towards the Corvetto, and 
 presently, as we could sec, was nearly at close quarters 
 with our flag ship. 
 
 We looked down upon the two ships, being perhaps 
 ten or twelve miles away, but the air so clear that their 
 rigging and tackle, seen against the sea, seemed as if 
 drawn with thin lines of a pen dipped in ink upon a 
 blue paper ; and their decks lay open before us, but 
 appearing no wider than a mian's finger nail, on the 
 which we could see numbers of men moving, who 
 looked like so many little grains of sand. 
 
 Now while we stood wondering what would happen 
 next, and the troopers by me on the hill could hardly 
 draw their breath for their solicitude and eagerness, 
 and while the two vessels were coming head on towards 
 each other, my Lord suddenly put his helm hard a- 
 weather and bore up ; or, to state it more plainly for 
 such as know not the sea, he turned his ship's head 
 from the wind, and so laid himself broadside on to- 
 wards the Pirate, and before the fellow had recovered 
 from his surprise, and while the galley was still coming 
 end on, the whole broadside of the Corvetto had been 
 poured into him with a raking fire at less than 100 
 yards' distance; first one gun, then a second, then a 
 third, very deliberately, to the number of seven, which 
 was all she had, her full complement being thirteen, 
 one of them in the bows. Our fellows on the hill 
 shouted for joy, and there was a great laugh from 
 them too ; though why they should have laughed 
 puzzles me, only that when we arc much wrought and
 
 174 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 in great expectation and anx'ety, we know not well 
 what we do ; and perhaps they laughed to see the 
 rogues so suddenly taken in by the honest men, which 
 in truth is always a most delectable sight. 
 
 We did not observe however that much harm was 
 done by the Corvetto's broadside, for at least four of 
 the shots missed or hit lightly and glanced, and we 
 saw them skipping over the sea beyond ; moreover we 
 perceived none of the Rover's top hamper or yards 
 to come down ; but frightened they certainly were, for 
 they seemed less busy to serve their own guns than to 
 give the Corvetto a wide berth, which they did by put- 
 ting their helm hard a-larboard, and to enhance the 
 swiftness of their flight they got their sweeps out. My 
 Lord luffed and stood close hauled again, so keeping 
 his broadside still opposed to them, and we could see 
 his gunners reloading ; but so quickly did the rogues 
 get away down the wind and with their sweeps, our 
 ship too moving the while away from them, that my 
 Lord must have judged the galley too far to waste 
 powder and shot upon, for he fired no more at her 
 that time. 
 
 Now, so soon as the Corvetto had shown her teeth, 
 the second Rover, that had been so industrious to cut 
 off the poor silly merchantman from her harbour of 
 safety, immediately altered his course and bore down 
 right upon the Corvetto, and my Lord still holding on 
 the larboard tack to meet him, was seemingly preparing 
 to treat him with the same compliment wherewith he 
 had saluted hir, consort; but the Rover was wary, and
 
 Beyond the Seas. 175 
 
 coming nearly within gunshot, having previously got 
 out his sweeps, with their help travelled so quickly 
 that he was about to cross the Corvette's bows before 
 my Lord could get his ship round on the starboard 
 tack. While the Corvetto was still in stays and her 
 sails all shaking in the wind, the Rover fired his 
 broadside of three very powerful guns, with such good 
 aim, though high, that two of the shots passed (as we 
 afterwards learned) close over the Corvetto's deck, and 
 one struck her bows, but at such an angle that the shot 
 glanced off into the water. 
 
 Seeing that the Corvetto lingered somewhat in stays, 
 not coming about so quickly as she should, I feared 
 that some of her upper tackle was shot away, and she 
 hindered thereby of her quickness, but when we could 
 make out nothing coming by the board, I put another 
 construction upon her slowness, and guessed she might 
 be waiting to fire her bow gun. 
 
 " Be sure," cried I to the men about me, " my Lord 
 has a mind to let Jan Loots have a throw at the 
 fellow, and is keeping her hove in stays till his shot 
 is made." 
 
 But my Lord was playing a very different game, for 
 presently the Corvetto having come round forged 
 ahead to windward, going very fast through the 
 water. By this time the wind had freshened a good 
 deal, still my Lord kept all his canvas up, and now 
 the ships seemed to be racing apart, the two Rovers 
 going together down the wind, and my Lord forging 
 ahead to windward close hauled, which puzzled us
 
 176 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 exceedingly, for presently there was a mile or two 
 between the Corvetto and the Rovers. In a little 
 while however we perceived my Lord's design, for, so 
 soon as he had fully got the weather-gauge of the others 
 he kept his ship away before the wind, and having 
 all his canvas up, though the wind was now strong, 
 bore down upon the Pirates with exceeding swiftness. 
 Though he could venture, with the Corvetto's breadth 
 of beam, thus to come at them with such a spread of 
 sail, the Pirates with their huge sails and in their 
 cranker ships were forced, with the wind that blew, to 
 reduce their canvas ; this gave the Corvetto so greatly 
 the advantage that she overhauled the galleys hand 
 over hand. Perceiving this, the hindmost of the two, 
 which was the one that had fired at the Corvetto, ran 
 up into the wind again, to recover her advantage and 
 get past her enemy and so avoid being overtaken on 
 her worst sailing point ; but she resolved on this 
 manoeuvre too late, or performed it too slowly, for as 
 she got on the wind again, she had to pass my Lord 
 so close that the two exchanged broadsides, the 
 Corvetto receiving but one shot in the hull, and our 
 fire, to our inexpressible joy, bringing the Pirate's fore 
 mast by the board and so breaking her wing, as it 
 were, disabled her. 
 
 As soon as ever the vessels had crossed, my Lord 
 put his helm over again, and bringing the Corvetto 
 quickly up into the wind, shot ahead, and in a few 
 moments he was half a mile away from the stricken 
 ship, which with her remaining sails still made some
 
 Beyond the Seas. 177 
 
 way toward the shore. He took no further notice of 
 her at all, and we perceived he was manoeuvring to 
 get at the other vessel, which seeing her consort's 
 mischance had gone about, and was now on the 
 larboard tack, pointing to land, while my Lord was on 
 a long board with the Corvetto's head toward the 
 open sea. There was a simple fellow among our troop, 
 a Spaniard and a landsman, knowing nothing of 
 sailing and ships and but little of aught else — " Why!" 
 he calls out, " our ship and the Rover are running 
 away from each other!" 
 
 " Hush ! you silly fellow," cried I, " and wait a little." 
 Presently my Lord went about, and though the 
 Pirate could sail closer to the wind and so as we could 
 see was travelling faster than my Lord could, over the 
 sea to the westward, our ship had at starting the 
 weather-gauge of him by about two miles, and so 
 could afford to lose a little lee way, well knowing that 
 the Turk would have to tack again at the shoreward 
 end of his board, which presently happened, and then 
 the two travelling on opposite tacks with their bows 
 pomting to each other were bound to cross, each ever 
 nearing the other, though still a good way apart. Just 
 before they crossed, my Lord as we expected turned 
 from the wind to make his swoop upon the second 
 Pirate, as he had upon the first, but the rogue was too 
 cunning to wait the encounter and, turning too, ran 
 before the wind, not so soon however but what a shot 
 reached him from the gun in the bows of the Corvetto, 
 with what effect we knew not, except that it did not 
 
 N
 
 lyS Beyond the Seas. 
 
 miss. Immediately afterwards the Corvetto, not caring 
 to make a long stern chase of it, put her head about 
 again and went to windward. The Pirate followed 
 her enemy's example a few moments after, but in 
 these mancEuvres the Corvetto was more smartly 
 handled than the Pirate, or with her shorter hull was 
 quicker in turning, for the Rovers' galleys and feluccas 
 are, as I have said, very narrow and long, and mainly 
 built for swiftness upon a wind, or for rowing in calm 
 waters, not for scudding or for any quick manoeuvring 
 in rough weather ; so that there was now a longer 
 distance between them than before and so much more 
 advantage of the wind for the Corvetto. 
 
 I protest that never yet have I seen a braver sight 
 or nobler sport than this chase of the Corsair, with 
 the doubles and tricks of the cunning scoundrel Sea- 
 Robberand the skill and patience of his pursuer. Not 
 otherwise have I seen in the marshes of Lincolnshire a 
 great-winged crane or heron circling and mounting to 
 the sky, to find refuge in the upper air from some 
 noble falcon in pursuit. Each bird for a time is busy 
 to raise himself above the other, the one to make her 
 stoop, the other to prevent it, till at last the falcon, 
 gaining the upper gauge, turns downward upon her 
 quarry and swoops upon him like a thunderbolt ; but 
 the crane twists and turns in his flight to avoid his 
 enemy, and so the aim is missed, and immediately 
 both birds turn and circle upwards and mount the air 
 again, the one seeking for safety, the other to gain 
 vantage for another stoop.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 179 
 
 So was it between the Pirate and the Corvetto ; my 
 Lord never leaving him at rest, but swooping again 
 and again upon him, sometimes getting a shot at him 
 by swift moving, never giving him time to get the 
 weather-gauge of the Corvetto. At last my Lord 
 either made a swifter swoop than before from the 
 windward, or the Pirate fumbled in the turning of his 
 ship for the fourth or fifth time to avoid the stroke, 
 and my Lord caught him in the act and got near 
 enough to fire a broadside into him, with the good 
 effect of bringing the enemy's yards and guys and 
 stay ropes down by the board. Then our people in 
 the Corvetto, having her under good command, 
 manoeuvred to rake the galley's deck, and hardly 
 getting a scratch themselves in half an hour's firing 
 had all but wrecked the Pirate, shooting away two of 
 his three masts, and not desisting till the rogue made 
 signs of surrender and distress by showing some 
 sort of an ancient upon his remaining mast and 
 lowering it, for these fellows as a rule carry no pendant 
 or flag of any kind, as Christian nations use. Then 
 my Lord, leaving his conquered enemy a helpless log 
 on the water, went for the other lamed Pirate, who 
 had all this time been creeping away towards the 
 shore, still being distant from it some four or five 
 miles, so slowly was she travelling and so quickly had 
 the fight passed between the Corvetto and the Pirate's 
 consort. It was clear there was no fight in the first 
 vanquished Pirate though we saw his decks crowded 
 with men ; indeed there was no chance for him but in 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o Beyond the Seas. 
 
 boarding, and on account of the high sea and the 
 inutihty of his sweeps, that course was no longer 
 possible to him. 
 
 Suddenly it came upon me to understand what he 
 would be at, and I called out to the troopers about 
 me, " Get to your arms, men, and to horse ! We shall 
 be in the fight yet ! " 
 
 The distance to the sea, though no greater than 
 about ten miles as the crow flies, is no less than 
 sixteen or eighteen miles by such roads as there are, 
 but except at first over the mountains the travelling is 
 fairly good. In a quarter of an hour the troop was 
 on its way, twenty-two in number, all good men, 
 fourteen of our own English fellows and the rest 
 Spaniards and Italians from the mainland, but all 
 seasoned soldiers. For a time as we rid we lost sight 
 of the sea and ships in the valleys, being behind the 
 woody ridges of the hills ; after more than an hour's 
 fast travelling when I called a halt of two or three 
 minutes to breathe our horses, on a little hill-side 
 overlooking the plain which still intervened between 
 us and the shore, we caught sight of the ships again, 
 the Pirate now not more than a mile from shore and 
 still coming in very slowly, it being evident that his 
 purpose was to beach his vessel and for the crew to 
 save themselves from the Corvetto, though they should 
 deem it hopeless to save their ship. 
 
 My Lord was in chase of them, and no doubt 
 perceiving their design, was carrying on a running 
 fight with the Pirate ; but the sea on the coast here
 
 Beyond the Seas. i8i 
 
 shoals fast, and with the Corvette's deeper draught of 
 water our people were cautious in pressing on too 
 boldly. The Rover, in spite of the high sea, had got 
 out three sweeps on his lee side, and so often as he 
 perceived the Corvetto coming into position to fire, 
 he would quickly, with the help of his rudder and 
 these great oars, turn his broadside to his enemy and 
 fire, thereby seeking to confuse our people's aim, if 
 not to do some mortal damage to them or their ship ; 
 so infinite is the subtlety and so great the daring of 
 these Infidels, more like those of incarnate devils than 
 of honest Christian men ! 
 
 Perceiving that the Pirates were aiming to bring in 
 their vessel upon a little sandy cove at about an 
 hour's ride from us, where they would be arrived 
 before we could be, and that a wooded dell or valley 
 led to it from the higher ground, I shaped our 
 course to enter the head of the valley unperceived 
 by them. 
 
 We rode on, plainly hearing, ever and anon, the 
 noise of the cannonade of the two ships, and catching 
 a glimpse now and then, through the trees which 
 encumber this part of the land, of the Corvetto and 
 the Pirate galley, now half a mile apart, and the smoke 
 of their cannon rolling away over the waves to the 
 east, I gave the order to slacken our pace so as to 
 freshen up our horses and men and to give the 
 scoundrels time to land, and also to afford myself a 
 little leisure to mature my plans, for, said I to myself 
 these fellows will certainly beach their vessel here.
 
 1 82 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and when she is high and dry on the sand they will 
 land without having so much as to wet their feet 
 Perhaps they will scatter and fly at once, but their 
 numbers are so great (for I reckoned the galley, 
 which was a very large one, might hold over 200 
 men) that they will seek to defy my Lord's landing 
 to get at them. Probably, thought I, they will 
 endeavour to land some of their cannon and mount 
 them on the sea shore, and firing from terra finna 
 against ship fire or upon boats attempting to land, 
 will easily, with their superior numbers, hold their 
 own against the worst our people can do. 
 
 So considering we reached the valley head, and 
 there I halted the men at some quarter of a inile 
 from the cove, in a place where they were hidden by 
 the trees. Going a little forward myself to recon- 
 noitre I found the Pirate galley already beached and 
 lying upon her beam ends in the sand. In the 
 shelter from her hull were over 250 of the Turks 
 very busily engaged handing out arms and stores. 
 They had landed one gun with her carriage, and 
 they were getting out a second piece, and had set 
 the first behind a little ledge of shore rock, man-high, 
 which served their gunners for a sort of natural 
 parapet. 
 
 It was pretty clear to me that a landing in the 
 face of nearly 300 armed men and with a couple 
 of guns in strong position would be very tough work 
 for the Corvetto. I made' no doubt that m)^ Lord 
 was fully aware what the Miscreants were about, and
 
 Beyond the Seas. 183 
 
 was resolved to get upon them before their defence 
 was fully established. He was now firing upon the 
 Pirates to distract and delay them, but from the 
 shelter they had with their ship and the motion of the 
 sea the cannonade did them little hurt. The Corvetto 
 was then some half a mile from land, and was coming 
 slowly in shore, feeling her way with the lead. The 
 boats were already lowered, and I made no doubt 
 but that my Lord intended a desperate attack with 
 all the men he could spare. I imagined he was not 
 aware of our being at hand, and I could think of no 
 way of letting him know without apprizing the enemy 
 as well. Indeed, the neighing of our horses made me 
 already fear we should be discovered by the pirates, 
 but there was such a noise of the waves breaking on 
 the shore, the shouting of the Turks, and the 
 musketry and cannon of the ship, keeping up a 
 hot fire all the time, that I soon concluded I need 
 have no fears on this head. 
 
 I now hurried back to my troop, and brought them 
 up to the very verge of the wood, bidding them 
 shelter themselves as best they could behind the 
 tree trunks from the shot both great and small that 
 was now coming from our Corvetto, for we were in 
 the direct line of fire, and not lOO yards distant from 
 the Pirates and their stranded ship. Going forward 
 again a little myself I perceived that my Lord's 
 men were crowding into the boats. Now, I con- 
 sidered that all would depend upon my timing my 
 action rightly, for unless I could in some way distract
 
 184 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 the attention of the Corsairs from our boats when 
 they were close in, I should do little or nothing to 
 help my Lord, having so small a body of men at my 
 command. For I did not apprehend that either the 
 enemy's cannon or their musketeers, distracted as 
 they were by the continuous fire from the ship, would 
 do our people much harm till the boats that held 
 them should come within 200 yards, or our men 
 perhaps be actually in the water. 
 
 I waited patiently then till the boats approached, 
 which they did very swiftly and much helped by the 
 wind, which blew nearly aft (for my Lord had pro- 
 vided for this by going well to windward of the cove). 
 When the two guns had fired a shot apiece, and 
 the boats were almost in the shore surf, I drew my 
 men from the trees. I had bid them leave their 
 carbines in the wood, and carrying nothing but their 
 swords and pistols. The sand was deep for the first 
 fifty yards, and in the uproar our coming was 
 unheard ; through this sand we kept our horses 
 well by the head and in hand, at a fair pace ; then 
 coming to the hard wet sand we let them go, and 
 with a shout we charged right up to the gunners 
 while they were loading for the second shot, and 
 we sabred or pistolled every one of them. Then 
 breaking into twos and threes we rode here and 
 there among the groups of musketeers as they were 
 firing upon the boats, ensconced as they were in 
 nooks among the rocks and sand, sheltered on the 
 sea front, but quite open to attack from the rear.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 185 
 
 In all my experience of surprises I have never seen 
 one so complete, which I ascribe to the noise of the 
 sea and the firing, and the favourable nature of the 
 ground. It was not so much that we killed very many 
 of the enemy before the Corvetto's crew came to help 
 us, for I do not think we cut down, apart from the four- 
 teen or fifteen gunners whom we slew at the first, more 
 than some half dozen more of the others, but it was 
 the confusion we put them into. There was the enemy 
 from the sea who would be upon them in a moment, 
 and whom they reckoned so surely upon accounting 
 for, and then suddenly to be taken in the rear by an 
 unexpected cavalry force : 'twas doubtless a most 
 confounding circumstance to them. We had not 
 fought for three minutes I believe when the boats' 
 crews had jumped into the water, knee deep, eager to 
 be at their enemy. So great had been the interruption 
 our fellows had caused that I do not think six shots 
 of a musket were fired at the boats after our cominsf 
 among the enemy, and certainly no man on our side 
 was hit on the passage from the sea to the land ; 
 so unsteady are men under a hot fire. 
 
 Doubtless our troopers would have very soon been 
 hard put to it had there been any longer delay or 
 time for the enemy to gather his senses, for our 
 numbers were very contemptible among such a crowd 
 of armed men and very hard fighters, but a new 
 complexion was put on things when our people 
 landed from the Corvetto. My Lord had brought 
 nearly 150 men in his four boats, being all he could
 
 1 86 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 spare from the ship, and these running in among the 
 Turks there was soon a pretty stiff and Hvely medley 
 in which the Infidels had greatly the superiority in 
 numbers ; nevertheless victory inclined to our side 
 from the very first, partly by the sudden disconcerting 
 of the Turks in their scheme of attack (which the great 
 Maurice used to consider among the best fetches and 
 stratagems in War), and doubtless too by the admirable 
 activity of our troopers, who rode briskly among the 
 melee, swinging their great swords above their heads 
 and, distinguishing foes from friends by their Turkish 
 dress, bringing their weapons down whenever they 
 found a turban within reach of a cut, thwacking and 
 banging and slashing the Unbelievers in a most 
 potential manner. 
 
 But what chiefly caused us the victory was the 
 brave fighting of our sailors; and this to my thinking 
 was a marvellous thing, for but a few months ago 
 these very fellows could hardly have been persuaded 
 to deal a blow against the Corsairs; and I have heard 
 of a crowded shipful of Christians driven into cap- 
 tivity by a few of them, like sheep before a sheep 
 dog, so great was the terror of the Barbary Corsairs 
 in these seas and so invincible were they reported. 
 But now my Lord had inspired these poltroons with 
 the souls of brave men, informing their dull hearts 
 and leaden spirits with some of his own indomitable 
 courage and genius for enterprise. Nor was it 
 admiration and confidence only but love for him 
 which these rough fellows felt, of which they gave
 
 Beyond the Seas. 187 
 
 many proofs afterwards, but one very signal one on 
 this occasion of their first encounter with the Pirates. 
 It happened in this wise, that in the sorest of the 
 medley and when we were scattered all over the 
 beach, fighting stiffly, every man carrying his life in 
 his hand and knowing that a shrewd killing blow or 
 a quick timely parry would be the making or marring 
 of him, my Lord got with half a dozen of his sailors 
 among as many of the Pirates, and, every one of his 
 men falling killed or wounded by the chances of 
 battle, he was left standing against the Turks alone. 
 Presently Ralph received a pistol shot in his sword- 
 arm and had to transfer his weapon to his left, and 
 could make but a very poor defence with it against 
 the Pirates that came hacking at him with their 
 crooked scymctars and ataghans. Luckily some of 
 the Christian sailors happened to perceive my Lord's 
 sorry plight and imminent peril, and immediately a 
 great cry rose among our fellows that the Pirates 
 were killing their Capitano (for so the sailors would 
 always call my Lord), and straightway some dozen of 
 them ran together from all points to his rescue, and 
 fell with such incredible fury upon his assailants that 
 in a trice they had cut to pieces the five or six Turks 
 who were round him and about to slay him. Seeing 
 this, a body of the Pirates ran up to avenge their 
 friends, and there was great stress and heat of battle all 
 round my kinsman. The cry that my Lord was hurt 
 had reached me through the din fifty or sixty yards 
 away on the right, and I galloped up, some four or
 
 1 83 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 five troopers following in my track as good soldiers 
 will always crowd up to their leader in a fight ; but 
 when we came to where the struggle was we could do 
 little good, so closely engaged were they, friends and 
 foes together, many down on the ground and fighting 
 with shortened swords, daggers, and even great stones 
 picked up on the beach to pound and pummel each 
 other with, for the men had all discharged their 
 weapons, and there was no room to fight even with 
 their muskets clubbed. 
 
 I could not tell for a time whether my kinsman 
 was killed or no, for I could see nothing of him ; he 
 having in truth, in his faintness and weakness with 
 loss of blood, been hustled dov/n upon the slippery 
 rocks where the scuffle took place by the great 
 brawny fellows, his friends, coming all round him to 
 his succour ; and they, no longer seeing him and 
 thinking he had been done to death by the Pirates, 
 smote them with such redoubled rage and animosity 
 as soon put the whole number round my Lord to the 
 sword. Then in their thirst for vengeance running out 
 from the heap of the slain they had made in this spot, 
 they fell with exceeding spite and fury upon all whom 
 they could meet, and in a very short time had routed 
 and dispersed the whole crew of Turks. A few, 
 perhaps two score of the enemy, ran towards the 
 wood and would have got there and hidden them- 
 selves, but my troopers galloped up and prevented 
 them ; and as they stood there in a body back to 
 back loading their firelocks and pistols, I called upon
 
 Beyond the Seas. 189 
 
 them to surrender and they should have quarter. 
 They perceived that they were cut off from the wood, 
 for our horsemen were drawn up on the way, while a 
 body of our sailors were hastening up to them from 
 the sea shore, biting their cartridges and ramming 
 them into their firelocks, as they came along. Seeing 
 themselves thus surrounded on all sides, and my 
 troopers with drawn and bloody swords about to 
 charge in upon them, the Turks threw their muskets 
 on the ground with one accord and begged for quarter, 
 which we very willingly accorded to them. 
 
 I left them in haste in my concern to know what 
 had betided my kinsman, and galloped up to where 
 the chief conflict had taken place. It will, I think, 
 readily be conceived with what content and solace of 
 mind and relief of my great disquietude I discerned 
 my Lord rising out of the heap of dead and wounded, 
 faint still and staggering, indeed, with his wounds and 
 bruises, but no otherwise hurt than by a disabling 
 wound in his arm. 
 
 So did this day end in the mor-t complete defeat 
 and discomfiture of the Turks, and we had no more 
 to do than to bind the unhurt prisoners and to tend 
 our own and their wounded. By the time we had 
 accomplished this we perceived the other five vessels 
 of the squadron in the offing, one of them having the 
 disabled Corsair in tow. My Lord resolved to return 
 to Syracuse, instead of proceeding with his cruise, 
 having many prisoners and wounded, and a prize of 
 war to deliver to the officers of the Port.
 
 190 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Though the fighting was so short, the losses were 
 heavy on both sides, we having in killed and wounded 
 some fourteen men of the Corvetto's crew, one killed 
 of our men, a Spanish trooper, and two of our 
 Englishmen wounded, but not mortally.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 That afternoon our troop, numbering now but 
 sixteen (for the lightly wounded of them had em- 
 barked in the squadron for Syracuse), rode on some 
 six miles westward to where we had already set 
 up a barrack for our use, which as yet stood 
 empty, and loading our spare horses (of which we had 
 five) with provisions and necessaries from the ships, 
 we took our way thither with great contentment of 
 mind and body. 
 
 Alas ! war and fighting ate but sad, senseless 
 things in themselves, even if, in this wilful and wicked 
 world, they are necessary, seeing that men will so 
 seldom be led into the right way of thinking and 
 acting but by compulsion ; which indeed, as the 
 vulgar might say, is as long as it is broad, when we 
 consider how sectaries at home are for ever taking 
 the sword into their wicked hands and compelling us 
 silly, honest folk to do as much to save ourselves 
 from conversion to their devilish ways and vile 
 opinions. 
 
 So often as I fight, I have no thoughts — woe is 

 
 192 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 mc ! — of anything but the ardour and deh'ght of 
 fighting ; but as soon as it is over, and I see some 
 who are my dear friends wounded and dying, and 
 others, the loss of whom would make every breath 
 and step of my after living a bitterness and regret to 
 me : when I see others, I say, saved but by the skin 
 of their teeth (as in the book of Job 'tis strangely and 
 strongly said), then I begin to lament myself and the 
 folly and wickedness of the world that forces us to 
 bring death and destruction to our fellows. Perhaps 
 I am in the wrong altogether to have entered so 
 particularly into this history of my Lord's campaign 
 against the Pirates by sea and land, even though it 
 was for the righteous cause of preventing these Infidel 
 robbers of their prey. It may be, and indeed I am 
 pretty sure is (I mean by entering into it so fully) a 
 form of the sin of intemperance now being committed 
 by myself (and by my Readers too, let me tell them) 
 to dwell at such length and with such gusto as we 
 are both doing upon these various stratagems of 
 War, these surprises, and these plots to assault, and 
 counter-plots to parry and defend. In all which this 
 same sin of intemperance appears (by the judgment 
 of the philosopher Plotinus and other grave moralists) 
 to consist in running too eagerly after any pursuit 
 on which our affections are immoderately set : which, 
 though to be sure it extends the peccability of man, 
 and his duty to refrain, almost beyond endurance of 
 ordinary mortality, is nevertheless a high and edify- 
 ing doctrine. Inasmuch, however, as it is (by con-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 193 
 
 consent of all but the over learned) easier to practise 
 virtue in the pages of a book than in the daily walks 
 of life, so shall this remembrance now stand in the 
 way of my speaking more than very shortly in the 
 future of my Lord's operations on shore and on the 
 sea. The rather is this reticence due, as I have other 
 matter of very deep import to convey to the Reader, 
 and certain most strange adventures of my Lord 
 to tell of, which I should fear to relate were I not 
 well known to be a plain, simple man, whose 
 judgment may not be widely respected (on which 
 point it becomes me neither to insist nor deny), 
 but whose word at least, in these troublous times, 
 has never once been impugned. Were it not for this, 
 I would in truth hardly dare to narrate what I am 
 shortly going to put before the Reader. 
 
 I have used this flourish here because the things 
 I have still to tell are indeed most strange, in good 
 sooth almost marvellous ; and I would not for the 
 world have the smallest sentence of my writing called 
 in question. I am indeed aware that those who have 
 travelled beyond the seas are at times taxed by un- 
 travelled and envious and ignorant men, I will not say 
 with invention and falsehood, but with overlaying the 
 plain truth with unsifted fables and unscrutinized 
 reports. So Marcus Pclus the grave Venetian, 
 Fernandas Mendes Pintus the Portuguese traveller, 
 and our own Mandeville have not unfrequently been 
 indicted of trespasses on the credulity of their readers, 
 while all the time (as later and closer enquiry has 
 
 O
 
 194 Beyond the Seas. - 
 
 abundantly shown) they have been most heedful and 
 exact and modest narrators, often rather hinting at 
 than fully expounding the wonders of foreign lands 
 and peoples, as fearing that a complete lifting of the 
 veil from the naked truth might be too much for the 
 aforesaid envious and ignorant folk at home. 
 
 But to go back to my self-accusation of intemper- 
 ance in the indulging of my love (and the Reader's) 
 for warlike themes, I will now hurry over the matter 
 in a very few words. 
 
 This first action of ours that I have described on 
 the south coast of Sicily was but the prelude and 
 exemplar of many other fights and many other 
 victories ; not but what we ourselves suffered loss 
 at times, and some discouragement. One of our 
 galleys was attacked by two Corsairs and captured 
 by them before my own eyes, who was standing on 
 the shore, with forty of my soldiers, helpless to succour 
 them, though her crew came ashore in their boats, 
 the enemy sheering off with their prize before our 
 squadron could come up to the rescue. 
 
 Another of our ships, our third and smallest Corvetto, 
 was overpowered by a squadron of three Rovers, and 
 though she sank one of them, she was overcome by 
 the fire of the others all coming about her, then 
 boarded and captured with her crew. This defeat 
 indeed turned in the end greatly to our advantage, 
 for the fight against numbers made by our ship being 
 long, there was time for her consorts to come up, who 
 gave chase in force, and ran the Pirates and their 
 
 I 
 
 I
 
 Beyond the Seas. 195 
 
 prize almost to Goletta in Tunis Bay before they 
 came up and engaged the enemy. Our people 
 could indeed do no more than rescue their Corvetto, 
 seeing that we fought within actual sight and hearing 
 of the Port of Tunis, and every moment apprehended 
 the coming forth of the enemy in force, which to be 
 sure happened, for they came buzzing out like angry 
 hornets from their nest ; not so quickly however but 
 that we got away with but little damage to ourselves, 
 taking our captured ship and crew back with us, and 
 so had all the honours of war ; and what was perhaps 
 better than such barren honours, we carried off the 
 prize crew of Turks put on board the Corvetto, num- 
 bering some thirty men. This action almost under 
 the fortifications of Tunis, and which took place 
 about three months after the commencement of our 
 campaign against the Pirates, was much talked of, 
 both in Sicily and along the Mediterranean coasts, 
 and finally opened the eyes of the Africans to the 
 valour and efiiciency of my Lord ; for Tunis Bay, 
 with Goletta which is an inlet therefrom, is the place 
 of assembly of the ships of all the Moslem Robber 
 Powers of Africa. 
 
 The Corsairs hail from the ports along the whole 
 coast of Africa, many hundreds of miles in length, from 
 Tripoli in the east to Morocco in the far west, and 
 from very ignorance in them it was some time before 
 all of them learnt to avoid the coasts of Sicily from 
 fear of my Lord and his ships ; so that for months 
 every southerly or south-westerly wind would bring 
 
 O 2
 
 196 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 some one or more of their Rovers, many of which fell 
 into our hands. In this way we made many prizes 
 and crowds of prisoners ; which great success of ours 
 put us into two altogether unexpected difficulties ; 
 one of which was that our sailors and soldiers (for the 
 proceeds and profits were divided equally among the 
 two services) got so much prize-money that they 
 were many of them more eager to enjoy and spend it 
 than keen to adventure their lives in making more. 
 This evil was, it is true, in course of remedying itself; 
 for, first, the men spent a good deal of their gains in 
 carousing on shore during their frequent sojournings 
 in port. Secondly, though the prizes we took 
 from the Turks (many were Galleons, Brigantines, 
 Bricks, Snows, and of other Christian rigs) always 
 fetched good prices from traders and merchants, the 
 prices of the prisoners ran down to almost nothing, 
 so soon as our Sicilian Harbour galleys were fully 
 manned, and we had sold three or four hundred of 
 them to the chain-gangs used for road-making and 
 other State purposes ; for there is a law in this country 
 against the buying of slaves by private gentlemen. 
 And this glut of Turks, to use the merchants' term, 
 took place, although in every shipful of prisoners a 
 goodly proportion was by the law of the country 
 always got rid of summarily; namely, by being 
 hanged in chains on the hills and headlands looking 
 to the sea all round the Island : these being the 
 Christian Renegados of all nations, who were so served 
 for the comfort and encouragement of the Islanders.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 197 
 
 and the warning of the evil disposed. Such a wanton 
 waste of prisoners was felt to be a hardship by our 
 poor fellows at first, and they complained bitterly 
 when they saw so many fine, strong, brawny Renegados 
 swinging idly on the gallows, whom they had been at 
 all the pains in the world to capture, and who might, 
 as slaves, they contended, have brought them several 
 good gold doubloons apiece ; but as our captures of 
 Turks became more and their price fell almost to 
 nothing, our sailors learnt to bear this little hard- 
 ship with more equanimity. 
 
 Still they did very well, what with the ransoms 
 paid by some of the richer prisoners and sometimes 
 the prize cargoes found in their ships' holds, and the 
 arms, jewels, carpets and hangings which the Turks 
 always carry about with them — all very rich and 
 marketable commodities — the prize dividends con- 
 tinued pretty high, though certainly not so rich as at 
 first. To meet this difficulty of the over-enrichment 
 of the men, my Lord proposed to the Council to 
 make a new Ordinance, that all ransoms of prisoners 
 should appertain to the State, and that all prisoners 
 should as far as possible be exchanged against Chris- 
 tian captives in the Pirates' hands ; this traffic being 
 undertaken at all times by Jew brokers passing, no 
 one well knew how, from one country to the other; 
 and lastly that all prizes, except ships and prisoners, 
 should go to the Sicilian government, excepting one 
 fourth part thereof, to be divided in certain proportions 
 between officers and men.
 
 198 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Now tliis was no doubt a wise and equitable plan, 
 and would have worked very well, but for the Council 
 of Palermo. So soon as these Lords began to perceive 
 that the service of my Lord St. Keyne against the 
 Pirates was one of profit and great honour to those 
 engaged in it, as well as of benefit to the country, 
 they began to persuade themselves that it behoved 
 them to be meddling therewith. Now of statesmen 
 of the lesser kind — statemongers I would rather call 
 them, being those upon whom authority has been 
 thrust without any particular virtue in them to deserve 
 it — of such I have observed three or four particulari- 
 ties, which I will hereunder set down. First, that 
 when a thing goes well by the ordering of one who is 
 set imder them, they must needs order it anew, though 
 the performance may be marred in the altering, lest 
 the world think they are not themselves its first 
 designers : Second, that if there be a place of profit 
 and honour, well administered, they will be ever trying 
 by plot and cabal to thrust out the holder thereof in 
 order to thrust in a creature of their own : Third, that 
 if there be repute to be gained or pelf or power to be 
 acquired, they will move heaven and earth but it shall 
 be their hand that is at the helm, and if there be 
 lucre about, they will have it to stick to their own 
 fingers and no one else's. 
 
 These three characteristics belong truly, I think, 
 to whoever of the baser kind hold power; and this 
 not in one country, or two or three, for I verily believe 
 that no Kingdom whatever is free from such impro-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 199 
 
 bities, save the Kingdom of Heaven itself, of which I 
 have as yet no experience. Therefore I say to the 
 Rulers of the earth, Beware of your instruments, and 
 see that their hands are clean and their hearts pure, 
 and that they be honourable gentlemen you employ, 
 who fear the reproach of a baseness as the reproach 
 of a blow ; and to the ruled I say, Keep your eyes 
 open upon these knaveries and backslidings, neither 
 consorting with their doers, nor countenancing or 
 conniving at the doings, but loudly denouncing them 
 till your voices reach the ears of the King himself. 
 But come ! I am preaching, which very ill becomes a 
 soldier, and is, to be sure, a sin I have not committed 
 before, nor will ever again, nor would now but for the 
 provocation roused in me, and the great indignation 
 that the conduct of these Lords of the Council of 
 Sicilia has worked in me and does still work in my 
 memory. 
 
 Now to the understanding of what next befell my 
 Lord in these most strange adventures that were soon 
 to follow, the Reader must know somewhat (though 
 I need tell him but a little part of the whole matter) 
 of the condition and way of government of this Island 
 of Sicily. 
 
 Know then, that though it is a dependency of the 
 Crown of Spain, it is one which the King of that 
 country is constrained to leave to itself in these 
 distracted times of wasting war by the Africans in all 
 these Mediterranean waters, content only if he can 
 draw his tribute once a year. There is consequently
 
 200 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 full scope for intrigues and for plots and counter-plots 
 in the Council itself, and insurrections, tumults and 
 outbreaks of the people, fomented by cunning fellows 
 who have no interests but their own in their moving 
 (one such insurrection, a very bloody one, had 
 happened but a short time before our coming). All 
 this, under a fair and peaceful seeming, we soon found 
 to be lying under the surface in Sicily. Some of the 
 Councillors would be caballing against the Viceroy 
 himself, and it was understood that to gain their ends 
 there were some who would as lief as not hire the 
 stiletto of a bravo or resort to a secret poison dose. 
 One of the Lord Councillors would set his heart upon 
 ousting another a little higher placed than himself, 
 hoping to get his place and pay, and he too would 
 stick at nothing to accomplish his end ; so that envy 
 and hatred of one another and of their Regent, and 
 greed and ignoble avarice, distracted this Sicilian 
 Council which contained, I will positively declare, no 
 honest man but one, and he, good soul, one between 
 fool and fanatic, and as such the tool unknowingly of 
 cunninger men than himself; and this was the Lord 
 High Inquisitor. 
 
 We had marvelled in the beginning to find so 
 simple a youth as Don Diego de Camporeal 
 Generalissimo of the Forces, seeing that all the 
 security of the Viceroy's throne was based on his 
 Grace's soldiery, Don Diego being a young nobleman 
 of a very pleasing exterior indeed, but knowing 
 nothing of the soldier's trade, never going among his
 
 Beyond the Seas. 201 
 
 regiments, and caring for any diversion in the world 
 rather than to lead them against an enemy. He was 
 however a very civil, pleasant and obliging gentleman, 
 who sang very prettily to the touching of his own lute, 
 and bore so great a regard to my Lord, that learning 
 once that a favourite gyr falcon of his Lordship's had 
 met with an accident to her feathers (for both my 
 kinsmen and I were passionate lovers of the sport of 
 falconry), Don Diego waited upon us to make his 
 condolences, and nothing would serve him but he 
 must ijnp the broken wing with his own hand ; which 
 I will admit he accomplished with a cunning I have 
 never seen surpassed by any trained falconer. He 
 never spoke at the Council, save to agree with his 
 uncle the Viceroy, nor stirred himself to think upon 
 State affairs. At the first I will confess I apprehended 
 that this carpet knight and soft-spoken gentleman 
 would yet bear malice at the rivahy of my Lord so 
 near his own domain, and so do us some under- 
 hand injury, but it was in my simplicity that these 
 fears were based, and afterwards I began to per- 
 ceive wherein lay the craft of the Viceroy in this 
 regard. 
 
 His nephew was a young Lord of vast wealth, being 
 a Grandee of Spain, Lord of Seron in Almeria and of 
 all the lands between the river Almanzora and the 
 sea. His rightful place was at Madrid, where only, 
 he averred, a gallant gentleman could consent to live, 
 and where be held the noble hereditary office (if 
 my memory serve) of Assistant Deputy Lord High
 
 202 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Chamberlain of the Infante's Bedroom, and he was 
 still entitled to wear in virtue thereof the embroidered 
 silver key of office on his shoulder. A scandal at 
 Court had caused Don Diego's banishment for a time 
 to his estates in Almeria, whence the Viceroy had called 
 him to Sicily and made him General of his Forces, 
 knowincf well that he need fear neither ambition in 
 one who was so idle, nor mercenary plotting in one so 
 rich. So the Viceroy could sleep easily of nights in 
 his Palace, unlike his precursor on the Sicilian throne, 
 who never knew he should not wake to find the 
 Palace Court-yard filled with his own soldiers in 
 mutiny, and his own Generalissimo holding (to speak 
 in metaphor) the stiletto to his throat. 
 
 But the Viceroy, though fain to keep his army and 
 navy demoralized in order that he might have nothing 
 to fear from soldiery swelled with successes, and officers 
 accredited by doughty deeds, suff"ered greatly in his 
 government and his revenues (public and private), as 
 did likewise every statesman who sat with him in the 
 Council Chamber, by the unhindered ravages of the 
 Turks. Affairs had latterly grown from bad to very 
 bad, for trade had dwindled to a tenth, and a 
 breadth of land five miles deep or more all round the 
 sea coast was lying bare of crops, and bare also of 
 inhabitants, through fear of the constant invasions. 
 The farm people who had not yet been captured had 
 run into the woods starving, and many had turned 
 brigands. So that the revenues of the land from 
 taxes fell off greatly, and with them the incomes of
 
 Beyond the Seas. 203 
 
 the great Spanish Lords who came to Sicily but to 
 feed upon the SiciHans. 
 
 It was in this condition of affairs that my Lord ap- 
 peared in the Island, with the blush of his honour- 
 able exploits still upon him, and when the Viceroy 
 offered him the office of repressing the Pirates, 
 his Grace knew well he could trust a foreigner and an 
 English gentleman not to raise a mutiny against him, 
 and he was not unwilling too to have some sort of a 
 trustworthy body-guarrd against his own troops, should 
 they ever prove unruly. The Councillors were for once 
 of the Viceroy's way of thinking, because they saw in 
 this course the only way of restoring the ruined Island 
 (and their own purses) to prosperity ; and so for a 
 time all went well. In about six months, my Lord 
 and I not having once in that time rested a day, he 
 had made the name of Sicily so terrible to the 
 Corsairs that they would not in their expeditions 
 even pass near it, and at last we could cruise in the 
 seas round about for weeks without seeing a sail, and 
 the beacon men strained their eyes over the blue waters 
 but could never view a hostile ship. Then the people 
 began to creep out of the woods to their deserted 
 fields and their empty houses ; the smoke went up 
 again from the unused chimneys, forage was cut in 
 the fields, fruit plucked from the orchards, the plough 
 cut its furrows in the long fallowed fields, and seed 
 was again committed to the ground. 
 
 After this began our trouble. Till this we had been 
 left alone, but now that the work was accomplished,
 
 204 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 the Councillors persuaded themselves it had been 
 easier than it was. They did not venture to pro- 
 pose my Lord's own removal, for they perceived 
 him to be too much beloved by his soldiers and 
 sailors for that to be safe ; besides which they 
 could not be sure of no further danger from the 
 Pirate nations. They knew they could not do 
 without his genius and his sword, but they took 
 advantage of his asking for the aforesaid new ordi- 
 nance on prize money to put forward a scheme of 
 their own by which to administer the new services. 
 First they accepted my Lord's counsel that the 
 common soldiers and sailors should get but one 
 fourth of the prize money from ships attd prisoners, 
 and the State the rest; second, they enacted that any 
 treasure, cargo, or any articles found in the ships 
 taken, or on the persons of the captives or anything 
 of value, their property, or treasure trove, or other 
 treasure found on shore (for they were very particular 
 to leave out nothing) should become the sole, undis- 
 puted and undivided property of the commander of the 
 ship effecting that capture or trover. Their third enact- 
 ment explained the motive of their first and second ; 
 for each ship was to be in chief command of an officer 
 to be appointed by the Viceroy in Council, with high 
 pay and emoluments, my Lord remaining in com- 
 mand of the Flag Ship, as heretofore, and being 
 continued in the supreme command of the new land 
 and sea forces. As to the cavalry forces, they were 
 to be divided into troops of 200, that is, into five
 
 Beyond the Seas. 205 
 
 troops ; and officers, also appointed by the State, were 
 to be set over them, with rights to special shares of 
 booty and prizes. This gave ten rich appointments 
 into the hands of the Viceroy and his Lords. The 
 ship commanders were to be called Vice-Admirals, 
 and those at the head of the troops Colonels. 
 
 My Lord raised no further objection to the new 
 decrees than to request leave to protest in Council 
 against the commands of the several detachments at 
 the several barracks being in other hands than in 
 those of the lieutenants whom he had chosen himselt 
 for their fitness ; and against the command of the 
 ships during their cruises being taken from those 
 whom he had picked out from the others as most 
 able to navigate and fight his ships and keep his 
 sailors in subjection. The Spanish Lords, who 
 desired nothing but to give honorary duties and 
 substantial pay and emolument to their creatures, 
 readily consented to my Lord's amendments, and so 
 their project passed into law. There were to be vice- 
 admirals who were not to go to sea, and colonels who 
 were never to command in battle. 
 
 In truth, my Lord was now of opinion that all his 
 real work in Sicily and all the fighting was over ; the 
 Pirates were, he thought, cowed. The new orna- 
 mental vice-admirals might wear their uniforms tn 
 harbour, and the fine gentlemen colonels were 
 soldiers enough to march at the head of the troopers 
 through the city streets.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 When our squadron had made two or three 
 cruises without finding any Pirates to fight or scare 
 away, my Lord judged it useless for him to accom- 
 pany the ships, and thereupon gave himself for a 
 time to travelling inland from post to post, advising 
 with me and perfecting the disposal of the stations, and 
 rebuildine the beacons and barracks in more favourable 
 places as occasion served ; for it was well, in view of 
 the Pirates making further assaults upon the Island, 
 that they should not be aware from repute of where 
 each station was placed. Said he to the Council : 
 " There is now but one thing I apprehend, and that 
 is the appearance of the Pirates in force enough to 
 overpower our squadron, when, if our ships should 
 happen to be caught far away from the four fortified 
 harbours of the Island, they will infallibly be con- 
 quered and captured." My Lord then repeated his 
 project of the sea batteries, and offered to build them, 
 now that he had more fully explored the circum- 
 stances of the coast, in such a manner, and employing 
 the guns and gunners of the present useless fortresses,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 207 
 
 as should, with but httle expense, afford harbours of 
 safety from attack all round the Island, into which 
 ships in stress of war could run, and each Httle port 
 or bay secured and defended by a double battery ; 
 and all this should cost the State but little. This, 
 however, being the project which the Lord Treasurer 
 had already condemned, he was equal to finding some 
 very prevailing arguments, even if they were but 
 weak, in opposition to my Lord. 
 
 " For a generation- past," said he, " and I might 
 perhaps be justified in saying for a much longer 
 period, there has been no such incursion upon us as 
 my Lord foresees ; and if he will permit me, who am 
 an older man than he is and have no small experience 
 of this country and these waters, to express my 
 assurance, none will there be in time to come. When 
 an invasion does come it will be time to take such 
 measures as he recommends : Qiiicta non moverel' 
 added Don Pasquale, " when things are going well it 
 is unwise to stir at all ; that is an axiom which 
 statesmen can do no better than follow." 
 
 The Council w-as prevailed upon by these and a 
 host of arguments of the like kind, and no batteries 
 were built. 
 
 My Lord accepted these decisions with a stoical 
 equanimity that somewhat astonished me, who am, I 
 fear, more of a praiser than a practiser of the stoical 
 virtues. 
 
 I may take occasion to observe here that during 
 the time of my Lord's being under my tutelage, I
 
 2o8 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 • 
 
 had never failed to impress upon him the advantages 
 of the Stoical Philosophy, causing him to study and 
 become impenetrated with the works of the great 
 Teachers of this system, as Seneca, Epictetus, and 
 Marcus Aurelius, and furnishing him with plentiful 
 examples from Plutarch us of great men who have in 
 adverse circumstances shown that Apathy or Noble 
 Indifference of mind to the troubles and crosses of 
 life which is taught by this Philosophy ; and the boy 
 was so impressed by the axiomata and practice of 
 the great men and writers aforesaid that though in 
 time he began to abandon, or rather, I should say, to 
 go beyond and leave behind the moral theories ot 
 the Stoics, he never ceased to practise their leading 
 principles of living and conduct. Indeed, I must say 
 it with self-reproach, he put me, his tutor and pre- 
 ceptor (as on this occasion), to shame by the contrast 
 of his fixity in these great principles to my own 
 inconstancy ; for when I was almost beside myself 
 with indignation at the narrowness, bigotry in their 
 unreason,- and utter forgetfulness of the good of the 
 State in their own self-seeking, of these ignoble Lords 
 of the Council (of which said resentment I have, if I 
 mistake not, already given a sample to the Reader), 
 my Lord, as I have said, preserved a perfect and 
 smiling equanimity, neither reproaching them at the 
 time nor expressing any adverse opinion afterwards ; 
 and to all my animosity he would go no further than 
 to say : " This, Humphrey, is but the nature of these 
 Lords ; we can no more change them (and be hanged
 
 Beyond the Seas. 209 
 
 to them !) or the world, in a day, than we can take 
 the stings from hornets or the poison-teeth from 
 vipers ; " and he went on his way with no more outlet 
 to his impatience than the little innocent imprecation 
 above recorded, which I have set in a couple of ancini, 
 or brackets. 
 
 My Lord now conceived that the time had arrived 
 when he might properly rest after his hard labours of 
 nearly a year, for so long (that is, for eleven months 
 and a fortnight) had we now sojourned in the Island 
 of Sicily, fighting or preparing to fight against the 
 Turks ; in the course of which service he had been 
 weakened by the receipt of several wounds, which 
 had ill healed in the hurry of constant warfare and of 
 so many journeys to and fro ; and for this reason too 
 he required leisure, for ease and refreshment of his 
 health. He had been very willing to borrow some 
 one of the empty castles in the great mountains 
 which overlook the town, belonging to the Sicilian 
 nobles, who in these degenerate days find less delight 
 in a country life than in the city and in nearness to 
 the Court ; but the Viceroy besought him not to depart 
 so far away, begging him to consider as his own a 
 great habitation with courts and halls and gardens 
 which forms part of the Royal Palace and is indeed a 
 noble palace of itself 
 
 This his Grace offered him for his lodging, and 
 when my Lord still urged his desire to remove 
 himself for study and recruitment of his strength 
 farther from the city, his Grace frankly set forth his 
 
 P
 
 210 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 politic reason for wishing my kinsman to live by 
 him, which was — to state it plainly — the troublous 
 and unquiet state of men's minds, who having so 
 lately passed through an insurrection might easily, 
 in their present temper, be cajoled or provoked into 
 a fresh one by designing men. For the safety of 
 his throne therefore the Viceroy wished the presence 
 near him of troops and a leader whom he could freely 
 consult and on whom he could wholly rely. My 
 Lord accordingly consented, and presently we and 
 a body of about 350, picked from the cavalry under 
 my Lord's orders, including our English troop (my 
 Lord's private body-guard), were quartered in the 
 habitation aforesaid and in barracks adjacent thereto. 
 
 The Royal Palace is a hamlet or assemblage of 
 palaces, situated in the outskirts of the city on very 
 rising ground, and which commands a great view of 
 the town and harbour and the sea beyond. In the 
 Building given up to our use was a lofty hall richly 
 adorned with black silken hangings, a vast and 
 sombre chamber with vaulted and arcaded recesses 
 and alcoves, which my Lord reserved for a studio, as 
 the Italians have it, or place for meditation and 
 mental research. " It rather seems fit," said he, " but 
 for its greatness, for the cell of a recluse philosopher 
 than the dwelling of a soldier, but I like it none 
 the less for that." 
 
 It was in truth the life of a philosopher and student 
 that my Lord now began to lead, and he set himself 
 to search for truth wheresoever he might find it :
 
 Beyond the Seas. 211 
 
 in the starry skies ; in the inner burning white heat 
 of the crucible ; in the air ; in the earth's interior and 
 in tlie watery depths ; but chiefly in the minds of 
 living men, " For," said he, " books are helpful to- 
 wards the truth, but they are mostly but dead men's 
 minds recorded, and I love best to turn over living 
 volumes ; namely, the thoughts and experience of wise 
 men, who, being questioned, will answer me again." 
 And this being known, all strangers in Sicily who had 
 seen foreign countries and had observed their wonders, 
 waited upon him, and he discoursed with them ; 
 welcoming knowledge and learning, and searching for 
 the hidden secret of life wherever he thought it might 
 be hid. 
 
 In his great room there soon had been gathered by 
 him many learned volumes, and presently it became 
 encumbered with the instruments and implements of 
 all the arts known to the learned ; as alchemical 
 crucibles and alembics, astronomic quadrants, astro- 
 labes and armillary spheres ; and here were displayed 
 too, many strange creatures and objects from far-off 
 countries, as corals from the ocean's depths, the 
 Crocodile of the Nile, the horned Serpent of the 
 desert, and the crowned Basilisk of Arabia, the Sea 
 Lion's skull and tusks, and the great air-borne 
 Albatross of the Indian seas, whose bones are hollow 
 and whose wing-stretch is by thrice greater than the 
 greatest of eagles', and which lives in the air all its 
 days and nights, yea, sleeping upon it with outspread 
 wings, and whose female alone resorts to a rock, and 
 
 P 2
 
 212 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 that but once a year, to hatch her eggs and rear her 
 young. 
 
 In this chamber he would pass long hours by day 
 and night, measuring his wits against those problems 
 of nature that are still involved in their native dark- 
 ness, and more deeply involved still by the obscurity 
 of men's false questionings and false learning. 
 
 He had strange fancies, and yet, am I inclined to 
 
 think, wise ones too, for he held that pure reasoning 
 
 alone, the lumen siccinn or dry unassisted light of 
 
 the intellect by itself, was all too weak to force from 
 
 unwilling Nature her secret fruit. She must be 
 
 helped to delivery thereof by all the powers of the 
 
 spirit. Chiefly must the imagination give wings to 
 
 our reason and lift it from the earth and carry it afar 
 
 into unexplored regions. 'Twas on this account, I 
 
 think, that he had the somewhat fantastic notion of 
 
 lighting during his watches of the night only one 
 
 extremity of the great hall with the glare of wax 
 
 tapers in silver sconces and tall candelabra, while the 
 
 alcoves and vaulted recesses of the apartment outside 
 
 the circle of light were deep in shadow. The room 
 
 was thus itself an emblem of the world about him, 
 
 where some few of the facts of life are clear and open 
 
 as day, but the greater number hidden, as to their 
 
 causes, in obscurity. So it was that this chiaroscuro 
 
 (as the Italians say), this alternate light and darkness, 
 
 stimulated him, as he fancied, to fresh and fuller 
 
 thought. 
 
 There was a watch-tower to the flat roof, to which
 
 Beyond the Seas. 213 
 
 a winding stair led from the great chamber where he 
 passed his time in study ; and on clear nights, the 
 townspeople would observe him while he stood for 
 long hours immovable against the star-lit slcy ; 
 and stories gathered in the city around my Lord's 
 name — his greatness in war, his generosity, and now 
 these evidences of his learning moved the people to 
 admiration ; and very strange reasons were given for 
 his watching the stars, yet not in the manner that 
 those learned in predictions are wont to regard them, 
 namely, with help of astrolabes, quadrants, and the 
 like instruments. It was said by many that his 
 power over the mysteries of nature was greater than 
 other men's, as was proved by his conquest of the 
 Pirates, whom none before had overcome. Some 
 said that he could predict the future from the 
 movements of the heavenly bodies, not as common 
 astrologers use, with common methods, but by some 
 occult intuitive faculty known only to himself; and 
 that now his learning had told him that some great 
 catastrophe was hanging over the Island ; and they 
 would have it he was watching the conjunctions of 
 the skyey spheres to foretell the moment of its 
 coming, and to learn how best to avert the misfortune. 
 Then the people remembering what he had already 
 done for them, blessed him in their hearts. 
 
 In truth he was but meditating on the problems 
 he had set himself to solve. He was making no 
 astronomer's reckoning nor astrologic calculations ; 
 he was but deeply pondering, in the presence of the
 
 214 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 stars thus rolling in their courses ; for in these southern 
 regions they seem of nights, not as in our northerly 
 clime, mere pin-heads and points of brightness set in 
 the misty dark, but globes of fire, wheeling each in his 
 harmonious appointed track through infinite space. 
 A wonder to us of the north, and one that led him 
 often to marvel greatly and to enquire whether Kepler 
 were not in the right of it, and these harmonious 
 motions of the stellar bodies are not indeed made to 
 the accompaniment of symphonious tones, sweeter, 
 and fuller, and diviner than any earthly music, but 
 alas ! inaudible to our gross mortal ears ; music, 
 whose strains if we could but catch, and learn the 
 subtle counterpoint that governs them, we doubtless 
 should straightway gain the key of the deepest 
 mysteries of heaven and earth. He was marvelling, 
 too, whether, after all, these movements in the skyey 
 vaults might not be, as the same Kepler maintains 
 (with so many of the learned), in some sort harmo- 
 nious and synchronic with the movements and actions 
 of God's creatures on earth ; so that to know the 
 government of the stars and predict their motions 
 would lead to our seeing far deeper than we now can 
 see into the lives and destinies of the human race. 
 
 I have hinted, if not said outright, that my 
 kinsman had been not only instructed in the teachings 
 and practices of the Stoics (that most noble and 
 worthy of Philosophies, which being joined to the 
 doctrines and commandments of our Holy Church, is 
 surely the highest and most perfect noviciate, discipline,
 
 Beyond THE Seas. 215 
 
 and education which a man destined to a great part 
 in human affairs can undergo) but he had also been, 
 as I have not, I think, yet conveyed to my Readers, 
 somewhat impenetrated with and impressed by the 
 beauty and fitness of the religious doctrines of this 
 sect of thinkers. If I may, in this common parlance 
 of mine, employ a Greek word where an English one 
 is wanting, he had founded himself upon the Ethical 
 teaching of these Philosophers ; in that, namely, which 
 considers the laws underlying the right actions of 
 men, the subtle motives whence they spring, the 
 directions to which they run, and the effects in which 
 they end. 
 
 Yet, as he grew older, and from gathering his wisdom 
 at second hand from between the pages of books, he 
 began to turn over the leaves of life itself, and to 
 harvest a fuller and more authentic wisdom thereby ; 
 he soon perceived that the first practice and principles 
 of this ancient wisdom of the Stoics might be true and 
 just in essentials. To wit that there is through nature 
 a Providence that, on the whole, makes for goodness 
 and virtue, and which overcomes its opposite, evil ; 
 that man is of God's essence and immortal, and not 
 having been born from nothing, so he can never fall 
 into nothing, but, when he quits the regions lighted 
 by this sun and moon, will be absorbed into the 
 Divine Essence. So likewise did he find in their 
 notions of obedience to Duty as being obedience to 
 God, the highest concept of human righteousness, and 
 in their doctrine of the necessity of a possession by
 
 2i6 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 man of an sequanimous soul in trouble, and his power 
 of rising by his will superior to Fate, the highest 
 fortitude. He held to all this as high and comfortable 
 doctrine, tending, if practised, to the highest life. 
 But then again, the teaching of the Stoic writers 
 seemed to him narrow in many points, unsatisfying 
 in others, and wholly wrong in some. He knew now, 
 by his wider knowledge of the world, that to affirm 
 with them that pain and pleasure have no concern 
 with the governance of the world is a tenet untenable. 
 To learn to grow as callous to pain as to pleasure 
 might seem noble in so far as a man's self was con- 
 cerned, but such callousness was, in his view, not 
 far removed from insensibility and from stupidity. 
 The truer nobility seemed to him to lie far beyond 
 the Stoics' ideal ; it was to feel and yet to bear ; for 
 the martyr who feels not the flames is no true 
 martyr. And again, not to feel for ourselves was, by 
 the Stoics' doctrine, to extend to not feeling the griefs 
 of our friends and fellows : a palpable heresy to him, as 
 failing in the approach of our human nature to that of 
 an Omniscient and Omnibenevolent Deity, of whom 
 compatiscence with human joy and pity of human 
 misery was, in his eyes, i certain attribute. That, 
 however, which in the Stoic Philosophy most troubled 
 my kinsman at this period, and most inclined him to 
 branch off and travel into new regions of thought, 
 was the intellectual apathy and incuriosity of the 
 Stoic Philosophers, which, in his opinion, they had 
 forced themselves to arrive at by their own deliberate
 
 Beyond the Seas. 217 
 
 action ; for while they thought to be relieving them- 
 selves of the burden of their emotions, their sensibili- 
 ties, and their affections, they were in truth casting 
 away, in their guise, spurs to strong endeavour, shields 
 and armour against error, and keen weapons in the 
 chase after truth. 
 
 Yet let it not be supposed that Ralph St. Keyne, 
 while broadening and deepening the dogmas on which 
 his youth had been nourished, departed from them so 
 far as to err and stray into the pleasant, pernicious paths 
 of the Epicureans. I have shown (since ncque semper 
 arnim tendit Apollo) that he knew how on fit occa- 
 sion to relax, for he feared the narrowness of asceticism 
 and the peril of pedantry coming from an anchoritish 
 mortification of the flesh. ''Nihil hiunanuni a vie 
 alienum piito" he would say, " all that is human is 
 in my domain while I am human too ; all the pursuits 
 of men, qiiidqtiid agnnt Jioniines, all that they do and 
 pursue, I must follow ; and loving my kind, I do 
 love their pursuits." Yet if he was so wise as not to 
 fall into the prevailing Puritan excesses of flesh and 
 spirit mortifying, he guessed that the soul, if she is to 
 take a high and strenuous flight, can accomplish it 
 but in one way ; for, as a falcon can only be trained 
 to stoop to the lordliest quarry by the sharp setting 
 and starving of her body, so too must he who would 
 have his soul to soar, thoroughly restrain and mortify 
 his material nature, yet at times only, not too con- 
 stantly, lest he dull and weaken his nature to that of 
 the poor formal habitual ascetic, and, like him, lose in
 
 2i8 Beyond the Seas, 
 
 stupid apathy his co-sensibiHty with his fellow-men. 
 For he would distinguish between those foolish and 
 ignorant ascetics of India or of Africa, who will sit 
 motionless for a life-time, remaining with uplifted 
 hands till they can never more reach them down, and, 
 losing the very form of humanity, lose its attributes 
 and emotions too; or who stand for a life-time upon a 
 pillar, chained to it of their free will, crying aloud in 
 lunatic prayer or praise, abiding in sun, wind, rain, 
 storm or fair, and making (whether of purpose or no, 
 and in vanity and self-esteem or no) a show and 
 wonder to idle men. Between such as these he would 
 distinguish, and those wise Christian hermits who 
 mortify the flesh, but not so as to kill the spirit, but 
 only the rampant mortality of it, feeding on roots 
 indeed, and going scant-clothed, drinkers from the 
 spring or running brook, and, if their spiritual natures 
 were still in abeyance to the corporeal on^s, beating 
 their bosoms with great stones (as Jerome), spurning 
 more food and sleep than is required to retain the 
 spirit in its tabernacle of clay (as Bernard), or rolling 
 to overcome their material nature, with a keen re- 
 ligious delight, naked, amid thorn bushes (as Benedict). 
 And all of them content to rest in their hermitages, 
 solitary, never courting the wonder of admiring 
 worldlings, for all the days of their lives, desiring for 
 only compensation a place to commune with God and 
 with Truth, Yet would these holy men not hesitate 
 (being called) to betake themselves into the world 
 (as to a new penance) to lead it by example and
 
 Beyond the Seas. 219 
 
 teaching to virtuous courses ; as did that same holy 
 St. Benedict, and many other famous saints and 
 sometime anchorites. 
 
 So did my kinsman, keeping to the nobler tenets of 
 the Stoics and their most noble practice of fortitude 
 and aequanimity, yet enlarge the boundaries of their 
 doctrines ; for he saw that their concept of the 
 perfect man, as one wholly self contained, was lower 
 than of one who should not disdain touch of, or help 
 from his fellow-men. His ideal of the most noble 
 attainable state was of a being set apart by his own 
 choice from his fellows, yet none the less a partaker 
 with them at times in their pleasures and pursuits, 
 and their joys and sorrows, with no Stoic restraint, so 
 that he might be able to feel akin with them in all 
 things. Yet for all that he would be one standing 
 aloof, stronger than other men in thought and in 
 action, for that he had in silence and watching and 
 with fasting, and by taking deep thought, and in self- 
 restraint, and by studying the laws and secrets of 
 nature and of men, stored up and funded a mighty 
 stock of energy and knowledge, and of ready-hand 
 devices of right action and prevailing speech, to be 
 used in times of emergency ; while other men wasted 
 their power and used their thought upon the present 
 commodities and frivolities of life, with hardly a 
 care for the future, or of providence for the coming 
 exigencies of destiny. That my Lord had already 
 shown his great prevalence and supremacy in several 
 various and most unaccustomed departments of war
 
 220 ' Beyond the Seas. 
 
 is to be set down to this long habit in him of fore- 
 thought and prevision and preparedness of himself, 
 all in accordance with his great scheme of life, as well 
 as to his native genius, of which things more anon ; 
 but such warlike triumphs were but of the smallest 
 account in his eyes ; he hoped to extend these 
 triumphs in the domains of Peace as well. 
 
 He looked now (and to this end was he moiling 
 and toiling in patience), using all his endeavours to 
 arrive at some true conclusion and result, to obtain 
 ascendency over the hearts and minds of men, as well 
 as over their bodies by conquering and killing. 
 
 It cannot be denied by those who have studied the 
 actions and fame of great men, that no mere taking of 
 pains or self-preparation, or concentration of thought, 
 or restraint of the vulgar affections, will make a great 
 man of a mean fellow (even had he the strength to 
 train and incline his nature towards becoming one). 
 He must have the genius in him, as my Lord had, 
 and to become great he must mew his spirit and set 
 her sharp, as I have said above, and prepare her 
 courage and preen her for flight, as a falcon is trained 
 and treated ; for 'tis undoubted that none can become 
 great without these things, and I will for once warp a 
 wise Latin saying, one of the Poet Juvenal's, and put 
 it that nemo rcpentc fnit heroissinms, no man ever 
 jumped from the ranks into a great general's place. 
 
 Now, if I could feel persuaded (as would indeed I 
 could be) that none but the grave and learned would 
 read these pages, I would willingly expatiate at
 
 Beyond the Seas. 221 
 
 length on these great themes, well knowing that I 
 could do nothing for the greater profit and delectation 
 of the wise and curious Reader ; but every writer 
 nowadays must make his account with the idle, the 
 incurious, or at best the cursory, who chiefly hate and 
 despise learning in anger at their own lack thereof. 
 Moreover he must not forget that in this impertinent 
 age there are those (whom my breeding forbids me to 
 name more particularly) who will for ever be aban- 
 doning their spinning-wheels, and their distaffs and 
 their samplers, and be for turning over the leaves of 
 grave works that were never meant for them who 
 look for entertainment rather than edification. Yet if 
 a poor writer should omit to give them their due, or if 
 he say but a rough or crabbed word of them, which 
 for my part I have hitherto, as the Reader knows, 
 cautiously forborne (save indeed once or perhaps 
 twice, under the stress of a necessary and righteous 
 indignation), he is like to meet the fate of the wretched 
 Pentheus at the hands of the infuriate horde of 
 Maenades. For all which reasons therefore I will 
 hasten my pace and somewhat abridge this matter of 
 my Lord's philosophy. 
 
 1 cannot however forbear relating one circumstance 
 in connection with my Lord's searchings at this 
 present juncture after the hidden secret of Nature, for 
 it was upon this discovery of his, that all with him 
 now turned, and upon the motives or levers that 
 were most effective to lead men by : this same cir- 
 cumstance being a great discovery which he now
 
 222 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 made into man's nature, and which he communicated 
 to a friend and correspondent then Hving in Paris, 
 Mr. Thomas Hobbes, formerly of Malmesbury, the 
 now noted Philosopher, who in his answer to my 
 Lord, approving his originality and subtlety (they 
 corresponded in the Latin tongue) speaks of my 
 Lord's hypothesis as inventio, implying its novelty, 
 and again as excogitatio sublimis, which I may fairly 
 claim to have somewhat under-translated by my 
 phrase of "great discovery." I would very gladly 
 cite this letter of my Lord in its original dress, if for 
 no other reason than to exhibit the beauty and cor- 
 rectness and pithiness of his Latinity, were it not 
 for the fear before my eyes of the before referred 
 to cursory and idle Readers and the fate of the 
 afore-mentioned Pentheus. I will therefore make a 
 translation of one part of the epistle. 
 
 I must premise, to make the matter clearer, that 
 my kinsman had previously expressed to his corre- 
 spondent his confidence that while we are part of the 
 essence of the Deity it were idle to assert that, first, 
 each one of us has received an equal portion of 
 the Divine Essence, or, secondly, that the quality of 
 the said Essence is not more subtle and refined in 
 some cases, and in others grosser and less perfect ; 
 perhaps by coming to the ultimate recipient through 
 an unkindly medium, whereby some part is modified 
 or the whole dissipatedjby the way. Which proposition, 
 when it is once stated, no one who looks around him 
 to survey the innate differences in human beings can
 
 Beyond the Seas. 223 
 
 for a moment deny ; and is a fact he may doubtless 
 reconcile with the eternal justice and loving-kindness 
 of our Creator by remembering the plain text, "to 
 whom much is given, of him shall much be required." 
 What here follows are my Lord's very words, in my 
 English version of them. 
 
 "I would propose, Sir, to divide mankind into two 
 kinds or species ; a higher, a rarer, and by comparison 
 almost a divine species, the individuals of which act 
 by their own spontaneity; and a lower species which 
 acts and moves and thinks and speaks from necessita- 
 tion, and of blind impulse and instinct, unwitting and 
 unaware. The first I would name Spontaneists, as 
 being such as spontaneously give birth to and nourish 
 primary concepts ; and I would call the last Automata 
 (rather than men at all) whose actions are the effects 
 of causative faculties that are born with them and 
 perhaps are no other than (as our lawyers phrase 
 it) incorporeal hereditaments passing from father to 
 son, or their action and these concepts are imitated 
 unreasoningly from others, as we see plovers, parrots, 
 marmots, apes and certain other animals mimic the 
 actions of other creatures, a circumstance not assign- 
 able to any cause or reason, but because it would 
 seem they have in themselves the innate faculty of 
 imitation. Such men as these I call Automaton men 
 (as being of the nature of those self-acting toys of 
 which Aristotle speaks), they moving, thinking and 
 acting in correspondence and accordance with a 
 higher and foreordained intelligence that is wholly
 
 224 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 outside and beyond them and above their compre- 
 hension. Whereas on the other hand, those rarer 
 men whom I have called Spontaneists have within 
 themselves, underived, the springs and nascence of 
 notions and of concepts and of ideas. Now, I would 
 have no such men to be puffed up with the conceit 
 that they are certainly not as the Automaton men, but 
 necessarily of a higher and more gifted fabric ; for it 
 is quite doubtful whether they be not greatly to be 
 pitied for having escaped into this higher region where 
 the air is thinner and harder to breathe, from the 
 easier lot enjoyed by the Automaton men below them. 
 For these several reasons ; first, that there are degrees 
 in the intelligence of the Spontaneists, d^nd a man may 
 be of this kind, and ideas may spring in him and yet 
 be naught ; as plants do indeed spring up in an un- 
 kindly soil, but they are not wholesome wheat or rye, 
 but darnel, cockles and thistles : secondly, however 
 endowed the Spontaneist may be, he has need of infinite 
 care and labour to subdue and cultivate his soul, 
 having to deal such hardness and rigour to himself as 
 the Automaton men need never trouble to use, to whom 
 their ideas, opinions and notions (such as they are), 
 flow in at second hand with but little or no labour to 
 themselves : thirdly, the Spontaneist has all the pains 
 in the world to get acceptance from the Automaton 
 men for his notions, and must with infinite labour 
 coin the virgin gold of his thoughts into current 
 money that shall be accepted by the masses of 
 A^utoniaton people ; and even then it is odds but he is
 
 Beyond the Seas. 225 
 
 assessed as a madman, or condemned for a villain 
 who is for spreading new, hurtful doctrine, when the 
 world was quite contented with the old. 
 
 " Moreover it is to be remembered that theA/^tomaton 
 men are the prevailing party everywhere in Church 
 and in State, in the land, in the army and at Court, 
 pushed by their kind into all offices of trust or profit, 
 and in numbers abounding, a thousand to one perhaps, 
 wherever men congregate for pleasure or for business. 
 If the Spontaneist would gather any harvest of fame 
 and honour and reputation and foitune and titles, and 
 all that the common run of men most signally covet, 
 he must put off his higher nature and conform to the 
 lower, and as the greater includes the less, and the 
 higher the lower, so is this degradation very easy. To 
 attain these baser ends (which indeed are not base at 
 all except they be viewed from the very highest 
 standpoint of perfectibility) a Spontaneist man must 
 set himself to observe the Automaton men narrowly ; 
 he must partake their nature and pursue their ways, 
 
 " Now, Sir, I would have you to know that an 
 honest Automaton man is well enough, I am very will- 
 ing to love and respect him ; and a good Spontaneist 
 is well enough, and sometimes better than well; but 
 between the two is a pestilent creature bred with the 
 sins of both and the virtues of neither, a self-willed, 
 unreasoning, extravagant, crooked-witted and fantas- 
 tical fellow. Of this race come fanatics, zealots, cruel 
 bigots against good understanding, ever in rebellion 
 against all authority of God and man, and therefore 
 
 Q
 
 226 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 criminals, as bravoes, self-seeking politicians, plotters, 
 assassins, and the like ; madmen for the mischief they 
 do, but too cunning for the chain and strait waist- 
 coat ; or idiots in wits, yet too harmful and cruel for 
 any pity of them. For want of a better name I call 
 these unfortunates Border men, as being betwixt and 
 between the other categories of mankind. There is 
 happily no great crowd of border men, but alas ! some 
 few of them still meet us at every turn of our lives." 
 
 These are but the conclusions drawn from a very 
 elaborate chain of reasoning and inquisition into facts 
 by my kinsman, and I cite them here for that they 
 bear very consistently upon the ends he set himself to 
 aspire to at this time, and interpret and illustrate 
 certain subsequent dogmata and pretensions of his in 
 regard to supernatural things, which have, then and 
 since, made no little stir in the thinking world. He 
 was at this time in correspondence with many learned 
 men of different nations, sundry of whom, hearing the 
 fame of his researches, had invited themselves into 
 epistolary intimacy with him. I am the less ready to 
 mention the names of these learned persons, for the dis- 
 paragement I am here forced to allege against them, 
 in remarking that my Lord gave much more than he 
 got at this game of letter-writing; discovering too often 
 (as he hinted to me) after he had entered into argu- 
 ment with some very learned gentleman, that he was 
 only at prisals with an accomplished and plausible 
 Automaton man, who would yield him no harvest for 
 all the working and weeding that should be bestowed 
 
 {
 
 Beyond the Seas. 227 
 
 upon his intellect. Among them all he accounted 
 the most profitable the aforesaid English gentleman 
 Mr. Hobbes, who about this time had brought 
 out a very pretty book entitled Leviathan ; an enter- 
 taining but fantastical work dealing with matters of 
 government in Church and State. 
 
 It will readily be agreed that my Lord was himself 
 of the Spontaneist order, and that according to his 
 own theory and belief it was due for him to enter 
 sedulously and rigorously upon that difficult course 
 of preparation and training which I have already 
 signified. 
 
 He knew himself to be one set apart from among 
 other men, and that while others might take their fill 
 of the good things of this world he must ever be 
 striving and resisting and girding himself in solitude 
 for the encounter, and breathing himself for the race ; 
 and times were when the prospect saddened him, and 
 the thought of long fasts and anxious vigils was sore 
 for his human weakness, for he loved his kind, and 
 took pleasure in all the refreshments, delights, and 
 conveniences of life, having as little natural love of 
 austerity in him as any man could have. Insomuch 
 that there were some at this period, not looking very 
 deeply into the causes of things, who reproached him 
 somewhat with the charge of fantastical, as being at 
 times merry, at others moody, now all for hunting or 
 dancing or what not diversion with the Lords and 
 Ladies of the Court, and himself the soul and centre 
 of all wit and gaiety and entertainment ; now silent, 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 pale with study and watching abstracted and caring 
 for no converse but on learning and philosophy ; but 
 these be the trials of the Spontaneist, not very easily 
 to be apprehended oi Automaton men and women. 
 
 There happened at this time to touch at Palermo a 
 
 war ship of the Sultan of the Ottomans who had 
 
 given passage and safe convoy to an Embassy from 
 
 the Moslem King of India, namely, Shah Jehan, the 
 
 Grand Mogul of Delhi ; and the Ambassadors, who 
 
 travelled with extreme magnificence, carried in their 
 
 train (for they were passing from one to another of 
 
 the States of Europe) several Sages or Philosophers, 
 
 well knowing in all the learning and metaphysic 
 
 of the Indians. "With these Doctors and the 
 
 Ambassadors themselves, for they too were learned 
 
 men, my Lord enjoyed many discourses through an 
 
 Italian interpreter, and he enquired closely as to the 
 
 ancient learning of the Indian Philosophers, sundry 
 
 scraps and fragments of which had already reached 
 
 us and raised in my kinsman a mighty interest and 
 
 curiosity. 
 
 I cannot deal in this place with the many deep and 
 learned disquisitions held between us (for I myself 
 took some small part in these conversations), but 
 suffice it to say that these Indian doctors spoke much 
 of an ancient Philosophy or Religion, it seems to 
 have been something of both, that at one time pre- 
 vailed over these countries (and is even yet, it seems, 
 much spread beyond their borders), but now lives 
 only in the memory and esteem of the Indian Sages.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 229 
 
 My Lord was greatly impressed with finding 
 many lines of convergence (though some of wide 
 divergence) between the teaching of the Greek Stoics 
 and that of the Indian Saint and Philosopher Gautama 
 (called Buddha for his wisdom), such, for instance, as 
 the pervading Essence of the Deity, the re-assumption 
 into It of man's being, the sanctification and redemp- 
 tion of man from his utter misery coming of ignorance, 
 his final perfectibility, by self-imposition of an ascetic 
 training and the withdrawal of the soul within itself 
 from all contact with the affective emotions of man's 
 nature. So presented to him as a whole and suddenly, 
 these notions seemed at once to excite and delight 
 
 'fc.' 
 
 him with the thought of man having in these remote 
 regions of the world travelled so far on a noble course 
 of thinking, and at the same time to disappoint him 
 at finding how poor and blind and ineffectual after all 
 was man's most earnest endeavour after truth, and 
 how short and limping a journey he made. 
 
 It was after this that my Lord began to be confirmed 
 in opinions which, as I have just now hinted, had long 
 been brooding within him; to wit, that upon higher 
 natures there were imposed higher duties, as well as 
 harder duties, than upon lower ones. It was not enough 
 to mortify and restrain the sensibilities and raise the 
 soul, only for the redemption and the salvation of 
 itself ; it was necessary for the higher nature to go 
 beyond self and enter upon a new crusade for the 
 redemption of the world from the tyranny of error, 
 and the establishment in it of the truth, mercy, and
 
 230 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 happiness of God. This doctrine had grown up in him 
 as a corollary and sequel to his great doctrine of the 
 Aiitomaton and Spontatieist men, " To whom much 
 was given, from him much would be required," and the 
 reverse would hold; the crowd oi Automaton men and 
 women might take their ease in the world and enjoy in 
 moderation, with justice and mercy and charity one to 
 another, and gratitude to their Creator for comfortable 
 gifts greater than belonged to the other creatures of 
 God. It was their function to enjoy life and live in 
 contentment as the beasts of the field live and the 
 fowls of the air, but if they went beyond their own 
 domain they did mischief and must be restrained ; for 
 great evil arose from the ambition of busybodies of 
 the Automaton kind pushing out beyond their homes 
 and firesides, and their counters, their workshops and 
 their desks, their benches and bars of law, their pulpits 
 or their thrones, or wherever it might be that their 
 narrow lives were centred, and assuming to set the 
 great world beyond their ken to rights. In their 
 ignorance and littleness, their obstinacy and unwisdom, 
 — nay, their very folly and madness, they would do 
 inexpressible hurt to their fellow-men, seeking for 
 nothing, poor mistaken souls ! but to benefit them. 
 This business was beyond them altogether ; it was a 
 delegation and commission from on high charged upon 
 them that were higher in moral stature than the 
 crowd, and not idly to be undertaken even by them, 
 but only by rarely met with and rarely endowed 
 individuals among them, perhaps but one or two in an
 
 Beyond the Seas. 231 
 
 age ; and never by them save after long subdual of 
 the lower nature, long perlustration of the ways 
 of men and the tendencies of the age, and long 
 perfectioning of the soul. 
 
 I believe I have now sufficiently exposed the stand- 
 point v/hich my kinsman had reached in his short 
 repose, after the hardships and vicissitudes of our 
 campaign, I have been at some pains briefly to set 
 forth his most ingenious opinions, the like of which 
 have not been held by ancient or modern Philosophers, 
 but, studying brevity, as was incumbent upon me 
 with so much other matter to deal with, I shall 
 yet, I fear, fall under the reproach with metaphysical 
 and enquiring readers, of baldness and insufficiency. 
 Let these critical and learned gentlemen hold me ex- 
 cused, on the ground that I write not for them alone 
 but (as I have so often said) for the cursory crowd as 
 well, and that too much fulness on abstruse points is 
 a thing it will never forgive a poor author. How- 
 ever, to make amends for my shortness now, I will 
 make this undertaking with the learned : if any of 
 them find my arguments too light for their taste, or 
 my information as to my Lord's doctrines to fail in 
 fulness, let them address themselves to me (to the 
 care of the putters forth of this book) with the matter 
 stated on which they require fuller knowledge, and I 
 will expound thereon to them to their heart's content. 
 Note ; if they be foreigners, let them address me in 
 the Latin tongue, in a hand as nearly resembling 
 print as th^y can make it (for my eyes, with age and
 
 23: 
 
 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 troubles, are weakening fast) ; if they be my country- 
 men, I pray them to write to me, as I will answer 
 them, in the vulgar English tongue, which is, to my 
 thinking (let the learned say what they will) as noble 
 and lucid an exponent of thought as any language 
 in the world, either dead or living.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ralph St. Keyne was now, as I have shown, set 
 upon one thing, the preparation of himself for what 
 may perhaps be called the moral conquest of mankind 
 (though he himself in his modesty would have shrunk 
 from such a fine phrase), though as yet he knew not 
 clearly in what domain his campaign for this purpose 
 would lie, but he guessed it might be in our distracted 
 country, so soon as fit occasion should ofifer for his return 
 thither. As he was thus, as I have said, set upon this 
 great task of reaching the hearts and understandings 
 of his fellow-men, so he left no stone unturned for its 
 accomplishment ; and he began to fear that he might 
 be losing his right way too much with the refinements 
 and pleasant subtleties of the philosophers — holding 
 his head up in the clouds, as it were (with many 
 another doctor subtilissinnis), while the true way to 
 victorious action might lie much nearer to earth, 
 namely, in the very hearts of men and in studying 
 how to set that to work that should move them. 
 
 This begot in him a questioning as to whether 
 there might not lie in man himself, and especially in
 
 234 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 certain men gifted more adequately than others with 
 some innate efifluvial essence or potential emanation 
 of energy, some power not as yet quite patent to the 
 acknowledged senses, or named and recognized by the 
 general, and yet existent and even known to the 
 learned in all ages, but so overlaid with idle ex- 
 aggeration and the gossip of the credulous (and 
 especially of silly women) as to be a circumstance 
 fought shy of, as it were, and avoided by the learned 
 as savouring too much of superstition and a false intru- 
 sion of the supernatural into the domain of philosophy. 
 In this belief, which he had long entertained, he 
 was confirmed not by his reading only, but by the 
 perception that such a faculty lay in himself, though 
 unused and perhaps impotent for lack of use ; and 
 further, the truth of it was now brought very intimately 
 to his perception by the experiences of the Indian 
 gentlemen, who spoke of this very faculty (which my 
 Lord had somewhat coyly and half-heartedly hinted 
 at to them) as a thing of common knowledge and ex- 
 perience among themselves. They told him of men held 
 entranced by the will of others ; of command wielded 
 by some over persons so held in subjection, as in 
 being ordered to lie motionless, to all seeming pale in 
 death, and yet the soul never so active, travelling at 
 its commander's will into strange unknown regions of 
 earth and heaven, and seeing and knowing things un- 
 knowable by the common denizens of earth. That 
 which was strangest of all and yet not irreconcilable 
 with the wisdom and accumulated experiences of nearly
 
 Beyond the Seas. 235 
 
 all the great teachers and seers among the ancients 
 and moderns, was these Indians' free confession that 
 at times and when the will of the compelling master 
 spirit was in great ascendency over that held in sub- 
 jection, the anima (the soul or spirit) of the obeying 
 person would take on a dim and adumbrated image 
 of its bodily form, unseen to grosser sight, but not to 
 those endowed with the inner keener sense, and would 
 thus pass on its pilgrimage to its invoker; a being 
 immaterial and yet material, not able altogether to 
 disregard the laws of nature, but capable seemingly of 
 enforcing its way against many obstacles that oppose 
 the motions of gross corporeal beings. 
 
 Here now was confirmed most strangely, and by all 
 the learning of the East, that very phenomenon of 
 potential present transmigration which my kinsman 
 had, if the Reader will recollect, so insisted upon in 
 conversation with a certain sceptical Philosopher at 
 Amsterdam, and so convincingly supported with the 
 recorded learning of the Western world. 
 
 My kinsman likewise questioned the Indian doctors 
 on the most strange reports that have for this long 
 time past reached us in the West, and which indeed 
 have seemed to many almost past belief for their 
 marvellousness. I mean their essentializing and quint- 
 essentializing of drugs, in such potent form as that 
 all fancies of our poets and playwrights are distanced 
 by the wonders of these sages' inventions ; for it 
 seems that, by their arts, they can purge from drugs 
 and simples, well known to us, all the qualities that in
 
 236 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 our less cunning hands are hurtful to man's constitu- 
 tion, and so combine them into elixirs with certain 
 other substances corroborative of their good or sub- 
 tractive of their evil properties, as that these drugs' 
 sovereign power is multiplied a hundredfold and 
 their nocuity avoided. 
 
 On this matter my kinsman could not but somewhat 
 stick at and mistrust their declarations ; as for instance 
 when they told him of their artful handling of the 
 juice of the Indian poppy, which our apothecaries 
 know so well for its dormitive faculty under its 
 common name of Opium TJiebaicum, but often fear to 
 administer for the great harm and disturbance it 
 causes to the bodies of patients, rending them almost 
 like a devil entering therein, or filling them with a 
 black and melancholy humour. But the subtle 
 apothecaries of India have known so to handle this 
 devil Opium as to render him a very good angel, most 
 kindly ministering to man, calming and dwindling 
 his pain to nothing in a sweet dreamful slumber, and 
 corroborating his weakened energy. They effect this 
 change in the drug by coction only and the sublimation 
 of its evil properties, and so killing the remaining 
 hurtfulness with acids and sweet essences, and so 
 subtilizing the resulting compound that, said these 
 Indian gentlemen, but as much as will lie on the 
 point of a blade of grass will overcome the strongest 
 man with a deep and pleasant sleep. Hearing this 
 most marvellous relation, my Lord bowed his head 
 courteously, refraining from those natural doubts
 
 Beyond the Seas. 2n 
 
 which he could not but entertain. Upon which the 
 Ambassador, guessing his mind, smiled, and taking 
 from the hands of an attendant a little case of chased 
 silver he opened it and showed a lump of a reddish 
 and shining substance, and with the point of a tiny 
 bodkin he separated from it two pieces of about the 
 bigness each of a grain of wheat, and, eating the larger 
 of the two himself, presented the other to my Lord. 
 "If," said his Excellency, "your Lordship will com- 
 mand one of your shaves " (he presumed that our 
 servants were no freer) " to swallow this smaller piece, 
 your Lordship will presently observe him to fall into 
 a heavy slumber, from which for twelve or fourteen 
 hours there will be no possibility of rousing him, but he 
 will then awake and arise in health of mind and body." 
 
 " And will it not," enquired my Lord, " have a like 
 effect upon your Excellency .''" 
 
 " Nay," he answered, " for I am accustomed to its 
 use ; it will cause with me but a trifling exhilaration 
 of the spirits." 
 
 My cousin resolved to commit the experience of 
 this marvel to no one but himself, and when the 
 business of the day was over he administered to 
 himself the Ambassador's drug. He bade me remain 
 by him and he would endeavour to force his wakeful- 
 ness against the dormitive power of the poppy-juice ; 
 but it was wholly in vain, and my kinsman, overcome 
 by drowsiness, sank down upon a cushioned settee in 
 his chamber and fell into so profound a slumber as 
 nothing could wake him ; and it happened exactly as
 
 238 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 the Ambassador had predicted, that in twelve hours 
 afterwards my cousin woke up, refreshed, and with a 
 feeling of a renewal of life and strength upon his 
 spirit. The Indians further told him of other and 
 greater wonders, as of that strange drug Chumis, 
 compounded of a lowly Indian herb, which entangles 
 the senses of men and holds them in an insane 
 ecstasy, not unlike that madness caused by the juice 
 of the renowned Hemlock, fatal to Socrates ; but 
 which is yet, it would seem, most kindly to man's 
 nature and sovereign in many distempers. Again 
 they told him of poisons so deadly that but to 
 breathe their odour once v/ill cause a man to fall 
 suddenly to the ground, and yet, before he touches it, 
 he will have died in all his members ; of another so 
 slow and subtle that if a man but swallow the bigness 
 of a millet-seed of it he shall pine and languish day 
 by day, week by week, and month by month, and in 
 the end shall surely die. No physician can save him_ 
 My kinsman pondered deeply upon these new 
 wonders, and reasoned therefrom : " If so slight a 
 thing as a drop of the juice of a humble plant, or a 
 pinch of a powdered mineral, can have such power 
 over man's nature as to command the most wakeful 
 to sleep, the sanest to go mad, and the strongest to 
 die, shall it not be that man's will, that has conquered 
 all else in the interspace of heaven and earth, has 
 power also to conquer and prevail over man's own 
 nature ? " And he was confirmed in his hope that to 
 him it might be given to overcome and lead captive
 
 Beyond the Seas. 239 
 
 to his will the wills of other men. He could never 
 succeed in gaining the end he had set himself without 
 power over the various hearts of men ; and one key to 
 their hearts and to that power was knowledge, and he 
 would procure it, yea, though he must pluck it down 
 from the firmament above, or pick it up from out of 
 the dust beneath his feet. The other key was the 
 power to use this knowledge ; for in his reformed 
 scheme of life knowledge was nought if it were self- 
 concentred and contained : it must be disseminated. 
 This second key, then, was the art of disseminating 
 truth, that is, eloquence. So highly did he esteem 
 this faculty in man, that he was inclined to set the 
 great preachers and evangelists of truth as high as, or 
 higher than, the great seers ; for he ever held with 
 Bruno, the Nolan Philosopher, that Philosophy itself 
 is nought and a dead thing, unless it be joined by art 
 to fancy and imagination and to poesy ; to the making 
 faculty, as the Greeks held it to be. Plato, the dis- 
 seminator and seer, therefore my kinsman set above 
 Socrates the seer and disputant : Seneca as high, or 
 nearly, as Zeno, and those highest of all who were 
 seer and preacher too, as that same Plato and the 
 greater poets. For reason, standing by itself, even 
 though it lift truth from its well into the light of day, 
 was a lower faculty, an earth-born one, subjectable to 
 plain rules of logical formulae — a mathematical process, 
 as the working out of a mathematical calculation is 
 mechanical, though still a wonderful and beautiful 
 thing ; but when mortal men use eloquence, high
 
 240 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 -^ 
 
 eloquence written or spoken, not mere rhetoric — they 
 touch the spear that God Himself might handle and 
 will allow none but His favoured ones to use. For, said 
 my kinsman, to use right eloquence a man must 
 in his soul have attributes and faculties that are 
 nothing less than God-given ; an imagination that can 
 project him into the hearts of his fellow-beings ; a 
 noble, tolerant sympathy of soul that can read their 
 inmost feelings and still not despise them ; under- 
 standing, with long-suffering, that can judge men and 
 not condemn them ; compassion and pity that can 
 enter into their hearts and exult with their joys, or 
 grieve with their sorrows. Nom^, to possess these 
 things is to reach as high as man can reach, for are 
 they not the attributes of God Himself .-' 
 
 I cannot, even I cannot, go to all the lengths that 
 my dear kinsman went in the praise and exaltation 
 of this mere faculty of expressing great thoughts in 
 great and heart-reaching words, and in truth I have 
 smiled at times and seen others do so (who yet 
 respected and admired him for a genius almost more, 
 to their seeming, than human) when I have heard 
 him hold up for this God-derived gift of eloquence 
 the poor player W. Shakespeare (then deceased some 
 twenty years or more) as one who in his esteem and 
 in respect of this great Heaven-derived quality, held 
 rank above the greatest of the earth. " When I open 
 his book," he would say, " I feel to be standing by the 
 shores of a great unfathomable sea, in whose depths 
 are hidden riches greater than all the treasures the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 241 
 
 earth can hold (for they are riches of the heart and 
 mind and soul of man, not commodities of his hands 
 and for his eyes), whose surface, as I look upon it, 
 is now fair and peaceful, and yet can be stirred by 
 tempest into being as dark and gloomy as a thunder 
 cloud." 
 
 I remember that when once he had so spoken, a 
 learned English gentleman, who happened to be 
 travelling in the Island, and was present at his levee, 
 objected that this same Shakespeare had but little 
 philosophy in his composition, or if he were a philo- 
 sopher, had never troubled himself to so much as hint 
 at a cosmogony, as befitted a true philosopher. 
 
 " Why," said my cousin, " I think you have read 
 him amiss, or have forgot." Then he cited to us some 
 lines which I can but ill remember and will not try 
 to set down fully, but they began so : — - 
 
 " The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous Palaces, 
 The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself. 
 Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve." 
 
 And my kinsman uttered these great words and some 
 others which follow them with such a feeling voice as 
 stirred our souls, putting into them, methought, his 
 very heart ; then breaking off into a lower and as it 
 were more reflective and sadder tone, he begot, I do 
 declare, almost an awe in us all who heard him, for 
 he spoke as one telling of a new-solved mystery ; — 
 
 " We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 R
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 We had now lived in peace from the African 
 Corsairs for a year and two months, and many in 
 the Island could hardly bring themselves to believe 
 that they had once been so harried and held down by 
 these cruel rogues. After the wont of the unreflect- 
 ing, they began to belittle our exploits in conquering 
 the Pirate squadrons and capturing ships and crews. 
 " It wanted far less of warlike array," they said, " of 
 fleets, and of troops of horse, and of beacons and 
 batteries, to daunt a few cowardly Infidels ; a little 
 show of audacity at any time would have served to 
 keep the coasts clear of such fellows : " and there 
 were even grave Councillors of State to lend their 
 voices to these arguments in the Council Chamber 
 itself But about the very time that these envious 
 surmises and foolish contentions were being heard, 
 there came to us rumours from abroad of a kind 
 that caused the idle talkers very suddenly to change 
 their note. 
 
 I need not observe that at this period there 
 was no peaceful trading at all between us and the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 243 
 
 Corsairs, nor, indeed, that I know, between any- 
 Christian port in the Mediterranean and the coasts 
 of Africa ; yet, for all that, we were always kept 
 pretty well informed of what the Pirates were about. 
 Reports coming to us, as I take it, in a roundabout 
 course, very much as the riches of that coast, such 
 as gold, ivory, dates, and feathers of the ostrich and 
 marabou (which are found in no other known land) are 
 bought and sold, as I have daily seen, in the markets 
 of Palermo or Messina, but reach first some honest 
 Moslem port, as Smyrna, Acre, or Bcyrout, and 
 thence get shipment to us. By this same slow route, 
 doubtless, came the rumours aforesaid, which were to 
 the effect that the Barbary Rovers, all along the coast 
 from Tripoli to Salce, were resolved to avenge their 
 many defeats in Sicilian waters, and were at that 
 very moment gathering a great fleet for our subdual, 
 in Tunis Bay, under the leadership of their Admiral, 
 El Saida, renowned in all these parts for his bold- 
 ness, cunning, and ferocity, and who was reported to 
 be no Turk at all, but a renegade from Christianity, 
 either Greek or Albanian. The fleet was reported to 
 number already twenty great galleys, but El Saida 
 had declared he would not put to sea till he had full 
 thirty sail under his command. 
 
 It is inconceivable the commotion and terror this 
 rumour occasioned in Sicily. Nothing was now said 
 of daunting the Pirates ; on the other hand, com- 
 plaints were made that our squadron was too weak 
 in numbers, the ships undermanned, the old coast 
 
 R 2
 
 244 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 batteries all but useless. One of the newly-appointed 
 Admirals resigned his post ; three others were very 
 suddenly confined to their houses with illness. My 
 Lord was commanded to appear at once before the 
 Council (who were in a very distracted condition) 
 and lay before them his scheme of action in this 
 emergency. Several Lords spoke as to the great 
 danger the wdiole community lay in, and called for 
 immediate action ; but none of them pointed to any 
 particular measures to be taken. 
 
 My Lord said that he considered they had about 
 three weeks or a month before them, and that 
 which could be done must, he said, be accomplished 
 within that time. The forces at his disposal would 
 not allow him to meet the enemy either by sea or on 
 land in case they made an invasion upon the coast. 
 If e had several proposals to make : first, he would 
 remove men and guns from all the existing coast 
 batteries (which otherwise would certainly be cap- 
 tured at once by the enemy) into new earthworks 
 which he proposed to build at once with the help 
 of the peasants. He laid a plan before the Council, 
 in which the positions of these batteries were set 
 forth. They were to be set in pairs in every case, 
 on the projecting headlands of small harbours or 
 bays round the coast, and were to serve as harbours 
 of refuge from a too powerful enemy, or, if you will, 
 traps into which to inveigle him. 
 
 The Island of Sicily, as m}- little chart shows, has 
 something of the shape of a triangle, \\ ith the north
 
 Beyond the Seas. 245 
 
 side the longest, the east side the shortest, and the 
 south side between the two for length. On the north 
 side we proposed to set two of the double batteries ; 
 on the short eastern side none at all, for there are 
 already armed ports there, namely, Messina, Taornina, 
 Catania, and Syracuse, into which the Pirates would 
 not dare to enter, and where our ships could always 
 find refuge. On the south side of the Island we 
 proposed to set but one pair of batteries ; we would 
 have built more, but that on this inhospitable shore 
 there is hardly any safe entry and lying for ships, 
 save at Licata and Girgenti and one or two lesser 
 places : but none of these, by reason of the lying of 
 the coasts, suited us so well for our purpose of a 
 double battery as the little bay of Port Niccolo, lying 
 just east of Licata and under the great round Tower 
 of Palu. Here, at Port Niccolo, we built the strongest 
 of our double batteries, and armed them with the 
 heaviest guns we had. My Lord's other proposal was 
 to concentrate all his troops in the close neighbour- 
 hood of these three fortified ports. Thirdly, he recom- 
 mended that the defences of the chief cities of the 
 Island be looked to, and the gunners and armaments 
 increased. As for the peasants along the coasts and 
 within reach of the sea, he was for warning them 
 cither to retire forthwith from the more exposed 
 situations, or, if further inland, still to be ready to 
 make a run for it on the Pirates showing their 
 faces. 
 
 To all these proposals the Lords of the Council
 
 246 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 in the great panic they were in, hastened to agree, 
 and that without any debate or question. This was 
 all we proposed to do, except the manning and 
 arming of two more of the ships last captured from 
 the Turks, thereby bringing up the numbers of the 
 Sicilian sea-going squadron, one being a powerful 
 galley and the other a very fine Genoa-built Corvetto, 
 for there were other ships armed, manned, and 
 officered in each of the chief ports of the Island, but 
 which had never made a cruise outside them, and 
 which were, by general consent, wholly unfit to do 
 so. Some of the best men from these useless hulks 
 were drafted into the two newly-commissioned ships, 
 and with some of their more serviceable cannon they 
 were armed, and Ave had thus two very fair makeshift 
 vessels of war to add to our fleet now numbering 
 nine sail, all told, namely, five Corvettes (for though 
 we had lost one, we had before this commissioned two 
 others in its place), and the rest very powerful, fully- 
 armed galleys ; and this was all we could get to pit 
 against a possible thirty of the enemy. 
 
 About this time there was blowing a pretty strong 
 breeze from the north, and we knew that so long as it 
 lasted, which was some five weeks, there was no like- 
 lihood of an attack from the Corsairs. This was a 
 happy thing for us, for when the work of building the 
 new batteries began, and the shifting the armaments 
 from the old ones, and the providing of fresh barracks 
 for the troops near the new batteries, we found that it 
 would take longer than we had reckoned to accom-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 247 
 
 plish all. However, we did our best, and as there 
 was no lack of hands to work, for the peasants trooped 
 in their hundreds, nor of money to pay them with, we 
 set on a night shift at each battery to work by the 
 light of torches ; and so before the good north wind 
 was blown away we had our batteries completed, each 
 one mounting from eighteen to twenty heavy guns, en 
 barbette, and so placed that every pair of batteries 
 could bring a converging fire of some forty guns to 
 bear on a vessel in the fairway of the coves or little 
 harbours they protected. What was more, we had 
 time to let the gunners practise a few days with their 
 pieces, my Lord giving them a floating target of a barrel 
 to fire upon. When they had got the range at between 
 a quarter and half a mile, which was the farthest he 
 designed them to shoot, he caused the distances to be 
 marked with fishermen's buoys. This he did with all 
 the six batteries. 1 mention these little particulars, 
 though to men of peace they may seem of but ver}- 
 trifling importance, but 'tis forevision of these small 
 matters that wins the day or the forgetting of them 
 that loses it, when the emergency comes, as the sequel 
 of these events will show. 
 
 Now so soon as the wind shifted to a southerly 
 quarter, we knew it would bring the Corsair fleet, and 
 my Lord passed the word round the Island for the 
 men in their barracks to be in readiness for the enemy, 
 and betook himself to the harbour of Trapani, in the 
 extreme west of the Island, where the squadron were 
 already assembled. Here he expected to get the first
 
 248 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 news of the enemy, which proved to be the case, for 
 on the morning of the third day after the setting in of 
 the south-west breeze, the beacon on the great moun- 
 tain close behind the town of Trapani signalled the 
 appearance in the south of a fleet of twenty-six sail 
 of the enemy, sailing to the westward. 
 
 This was as good news as my Lord desired, and we 
 put to sea without loss of time, slipping in between 
 the islands and the coast and keeping our course, like 
 the enemy, towards the west. So soon as we had 
 rounded Cape Boco, some fifteen miles to the south, 
 and where the coast line begins to trend wholly to the 
 westward, we expected to view the enemy, but had 
 run some twenty miles further, now getting the S.S.W. 
 breeze smartly on our quarter, before they hove in 
 sight, and we counted not twenty-six sail as we had 
 been advised from Mount Julian, but twenty-nine ; 
 showing that they must have been too far off when 
 first sighted by our beacon men for the clear discern- 
 ment of their number. They stretched in a long line 
 across the horizon, bearing about S.S.W. of us. 
 
 So soon as we had sighted the fleet my Lord gave 
 the signal to heave to, which doubtless led the enemy 
 to suppose, as it was our intention it should, that we 
 had a mind to run back to the protection of Trapani, 
 which is not only a strong harbour but well garrisoned 
 and strongly armed ; and there was indeed still plenty 
 of time to do this, for as yet the Pirate vessels were 
 hull under. As quickly as their Admiral perceived or 
 thought he perceived our intention, he ordered (in his
 
 Beyond the Seas. 2.;9 
 
 great cunning-), a dozen or so of his galleys to tack to 
 the north, and so cut us off from our earth ; and mv 
 Lord remaining hove to, as if irresolute, for some half 
 hour or more, these twelve vessels, fetching a long 
 board to the west, presently went quite out of sight, 
 while their seventeen consorts, keeping their course, 
 neared us every moment. We then continued our 
 westerly sailing, the pack of our enemies now stretch- 
 ing in a great semicircle some nine or ten miles right 
 astern of us. The wind was pretty strong, with the 
 sea running high, and our square rigged Corvettos, 
 with their topsails spread, made very good weather of 
 it, but the galleys in our little squadron had some ado 
 to keep up with them. As we were now making all 
 the speed we could, the Corsairs evidently feared we 
 should give them the slip after all, for though there is 
 not a single good port or place of arms all the length 
 of the southern coast of Sicily (so far as they knew), 
 still they clearly feared that if they continued their 
 cautious company sailing, and we could go on travel- 
 ling at the rate we did, we might easily get round 
 Cape Passaro, the eastern corner of the Island, and 
 so into Syracuse or Catania harbour, and behind 
 friendly guns, before they should win within reach 
 of us. 
 
 Therefore they changed their tactics, and we per- 
 ceived that the order passed to leave company sailing, 
 and for each captain to make his best speed to over- 
 take and engage us ; for in about an hour's time some 
 of the slowest sailers had lagged behind and were hull
 
 2 50 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 under, while the foremost four or five galleys with 
 all sail set, goose-winged in the favouring breeze, were 
 advanced to within four or five miles of us ; but we 
 noticed that they made as bad weather of it as our 
 own galleys, for the wind freshened as the day went 
 on, and they all, the galleys to wit (for our Corvettos 
 were steady, being on their best sailing point) rolled 
 nearly gunwale under with the press of canvas. By 
 four o'clock in the evening we had travelled not far 
 short of ninety miles, having left Trapani at dawn, 
 and by this hour we at last sighted the great white 
 Tower of Palu, which lies above Port Niccolo. 
 
 I do not think a single sailor on board our little fleet 
 but guessed what my Lord's plan had been in setting sail 
 from Trapani in presence of so great an Armada of the 
 Corsairs, and in running down the coast before them. 
 They had understood his manoeuvre when he heaved 
 to in the morning, and threw out a third of his 
 enemies, and now when we sighted the Tower of Palu, 
 and they perceived how near they were to their refuge, 
 there passed a great cheer from ship to ship. The 
 foremost galleys of the enemy were now crowding us 
 pretty close, the nearest not above two miles astern, 
 one of them being, as we judged, the Admiral's 
 ship, for it was the largest and loftiest of them all, 
 and contrary to their common usage, carried an 
 ancient, and from her mizenmast we had observed 
 signals to pass to the others. This great ship was 
 some three miles ahead of the others, and a mile or 
 more separated each of the next six, which came
 
 Beyond the Seas. 251 
 
 staggering on under all their canvas in a long strag- 
 gling file, and beyond these six we could see no more 
 of the fleet than some of their mast heads. 
 
 So soon as we had arrived abreast of Palu Tower 
 my Lord signalled to the four galleys, which were in 
 truth labouring somewhat heavily in the still rising 
 wind and sea, to run in under shelter of the batteries. 
 He himself in his flagship with the other four 
 Corvettos remained outside. My Lord had hitherto 
 kept me on board with him, but now giving me his 
 last directions for the conduct of the operations on 
 shore, he sent me on board one of the Corvettos, with 
 which I entered into the shelter of the little harbour. 
 We had built our pair of batteries in a little inlet or 
 creek, called Port Niccolo, lying snugly encircled by a 
 jutting headland on the east side, and by a tall hilly 
 promontory on the west ; on the extreme points of 
 this hill and of this headland we had built our 
 batteries, and on them we had disposed our heaviest 
 guns and manned them with our most skilful gunners- 
 The hill battery carried no fewer than twenty-three 
 cannon and the headland battery but two less. \Vc 
 had so cunningly hidden the mouths of the cannon 
 with branches and bushes, and disposed pieces of rock 
 along the face of the parapets to deceive the e}'e, 
 that the batteries where wholly masked from the sea. 
 The entrance of the bay was not 600 yards in width, 
 so that an enemy entering in mid-channel would be 
 exposed to a converging point-blank fire from forty- 
 four heavy guns. Inside the bay there was, it is true,
 
 252 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 but little room for vessels in from three to six fathoms 
 of water, and shoal water on cither side of the deep- 
 lying, but what room there was my Lord had taken care 
 to mark out with buoys and furnish with moorings. 
 
 When the boat which carried me to the Corvetto had 
 returned, the first two ships of the enemy were already 
 upon us, and began without delay to open fire upon 
 the four Corvettos without waiting for their friends to 
 come up, imagining as I suppose, that these heavier 
 vessels could not venture into the shallow waters of 
 the little bay. Then, my Lord having already con- 
 certed his plan with his three Corvetto consorts, the 
 whole four of them advanced to the encounter of the 
 two foremost Pirates. My Lord laid himself yard 
 arm and yard arm with the Admiral's ship, while one 
 of his consorts closed up on the other side of the 
 enemy, and the two fired into him with all the 
 quickness they could. In the meantime the second 
 and third Corvettos executed the like manoeuvre 
 upon the second Pirate, the whole four of our side 
 very busily plying their guns, and, as they did not roll 
 like the crank and narrow galleys, with so true an 
 aim, that in less than a quarter of an hour they had so 
 maltreated them that both galleys were disabled and 
 the crews (those that were left of them) had taken to 
 their boats and pulled for shore, many of them getting 
 swamped in the heavy sea. My Lord put a prize 
 crew into the Admiral's ship, and affixed a tow rope 
 to her bows, to hale her into harbour. The second 
 .ship was served in like manner, but she had been
 
 Beyond the Seas. 253 
 
 struck so often between wind and water that she 
 sank while she was still at the entrance of the 
 little bay. 
 
 My kinsman after so quickly conquering the two 
 foremost Pirates was in a mind to turn upon three 
 more that had come up just at the end of the fight 
 and who added a few shots to their friends' last dying 
 broadsides, but perceiving that the bulk of the enemy 
 was nearing him and would be upon him before he 
 could dispatch his business with the two or three 
 leaders, he somewhat unwillingly gave the signal to his 
 consorts to retreat, and himself towing the Admiral's 
 ship at his stern, they passed in safety between our 
 batteries into still water, all but the second prize, 
 which, as I have said, had sunk and settled in 
 the fairway. 
 
 Here all our galleys were alrcad}'- lying in a half 
 circle, each anchored stem and stern, and all broadside 
 on to the entrance of the Bay. The Corvettos now 
 took their places in the line and waited for the attack 
 of the enemy. It was now nearly six o'clock, and 
 being then in the middle of the month of June could 
 not have been far from the longest day of the year, 
 we had therefore still some hours of daylight before us. 
 The enemy had now come up and hove to opposite the 
 entrance of the harbour, at no more than a mile or a 
 mile and a quarter from our squadron ; and now, for 
 the first time, we ascertained that the threat of the 
 Corsair Admiral, El Saida, that he would put to sea 
 with no fewer than thirt}- galleys, was true to the letter,
 
 254 Beyond the Seas, 
 
 for it appears we must have overlooked one in our 
 reckoning ; for here were sixteen galleys drawn up 
 outside, which with twelve gone to cut us off from the 
 northern route, one we had captured and one sunk, made 
 thirty sail, not twenty-nine as we had supposed. One 
 more or less out of this huge armada may seem but a 
 trifle, but I have my reasons to be very particular, 
 seeing that the history of this action on the southern 
 coast of Sicily has been most strangely misconstrued ; 
 yea, even by Spanish writers ; by some exaggerated, 
 by some belittled, by all distorted. 
 
 We made sure the enemy would attack us forth- 
 with, but all they did was to open fire upon our ships 
 as they lay at anchor ; and as their galleys rolled 
 exceedingly they made very poor practice, not one 
 shot in twenty or twenty-five striking, though we 
 made a fine target, lying as we did in a line a 
 lurlong or more in length. We did not reply to 
 these compliments except now and then with a de- 
 liberate shot from the ships, but as we were lying 
 very steady in the still water, our aim, when we 
 did shoot, was good, and the enemy getting several 
 round shot into their hulls, began to get sick of the 
 unequal game and presently sheered off and left us in 
 peace. We were amazed at this slackness and luke- 
 warmness of the Corsairs in attacking an enemy whom 
 they so greatly outnumbered, for their boldness is 
 usually beyond expression and they never use to count 
 the odds either way when their foe is a Christian ; 
 trusting, as I have heard say, to a sort of Nemesis or
 
 Beyond the Seas. 255 
 
 Fate, that will not fail to carry them through if their 
 enterprise be but bold and bloody enough to please 
 (as they fancy) their savage God and licentious 
 Prophet. This, to be sure, is but the idlest of super- 
 stitions to us who are Philosophers ; yet does this 
 boldness and its oft success arise from a cause 
 implanted in our human temperament : Fortuna 
 favet audacibus, good luck is ever with the bold, 
 said the ancient wisdom, fondly personifying the 
 issue, Fortune, when 'twas the causes leading thereto 
 men should have enquired into, not depending idly 
 (as all so love to do) on a mere axiom. 
 
 Alas ! 'tis none of mine, this wisdom, but comes 
 at second hand, for I only repeat, parrot-like, the 
 sayings of my dear kinsman, wdio had in quiet and 
 meditation enquired very carefully into the wherefore 
 of this necessity, in all urgent affairs and emergency 
 of business, of sudden audacity (to which indeed he 
 was by nature apt), and he had resolved it so that his 
 own action was ever, rebus in arduis, in trouble, con- 
 formable to the issue of his slow previous inquisi- 
 tion. Now let us, henceforward, no more, as the 
 common run of idle onlookers do, ascribe all great 
 and glorious action of heroic men to some possession 
 of God-given genius in the doer, and so acquit our- 
 selves (who are indolent in all honourable achievements) 
 against an indictment for ignoble faineance, on the plea 
 that we possess not this good gift. Know, vile and 
 slavish sluggards ! that our Great Ruler does not drop 
 this seed of great price save in fit and receptive soil,
 
 256 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and you have, be sure, been tried and found wanting ; 
 or if, of His bounty, the seed be too generously 
 bestowed and has fallen on stony ground (such as I 
 take your barren souls to be) it withers and decays. 
 For this same seed must be warmed into germination 
 with exceeding precaution, and lovingly watered and 
 fertilized with study and thought-taking into growth 
 and goodly expansion. Witness J. Csesar, who nou- 
 rished his youth and manhood on all the wisdom 
 of the earth, before he set about the performance of 
 his imperishable exploits ; and Alexander, son of 
 Philip of Macedon, who patiently sat at the feet of 
 the great master Aristotle (facile sovereign of all the 
 ancient arts and learning) before he went forth to con- 
 quer all the known kingdoms of the Eastern world. 
 
 Surely never was great Captain, even such as these, 
 in sorer straits than now my Lord in this adventure 
 of the Corsairs' invasion, seeing that with but nine 
 ships of war he had put to sea in face of a fleet of 
 thirty, all great ships, and every one armed and 
 manned as strongly or more strongly than his own 
 ships, and commanded by the most renowned sea- 
 leader that the atrocious African Pirates have had 
 for a hundred years, since their famous renegade 
 Admiral Barbarossa whom they called Hayraddin. 
 
 We marvelled somewhat, as I have said, at the 
 Corsairs not coming at us without more ado when 
 they had thus, as they must have thought, run us to 
 earth, but we presently learnt the cause from a wounded 
 sailor on board their captured flagship. It was that,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 257 
 
 the Admiral having escaped on shore on the taking- of 
 his ship, their second or Vice-Admiral of the Fleet, was 
 in command of the twelve galleys that had sailed to 
 intercept us in our supposed flight to Trapani. It was 
 clear that only the want of a commander had held 
 them back for a time, and as the second division of 
 the Fleet could not long delay their arrival, we 
 foresaw that action against us would not be delayed 
 either. 
 
 It fell out as we had expected, and before nightfall 
 the twelve ships were in the offing. It was doubtful 
 whether they would attack us that night or w^ait till 
 morning. A prudent leader, other things being equal, 
 would have delayed his attack, but these fellows are 
 very reckless of danger, and the common expectation 
 among our sailors was that they would brave the 
 perils of a difficult navigation in the dark and fight us 
 immediately. The more likely was this as the wind had 
 not abated, and their crank galleys, riding more and 
 more uneasily, ran no small danger of foundering on 
 the lee shore, so that they must either, we conceived, 
 sheer off and go to windward for safety, or find shelter 
 by coming in upon us at our moorings. They did not 
 guess how vastly to their advantage this course might 
 be, knowing nothing of our batteries and that if they 
 could but enter in the dark of night, they might slip 
 in without peril of fire from them and so make their 
 numbers tell at close quarters. 
 
 I will here observe, what they who live in northerly 
 latitudes may not be acquainted with ; namely, that 
 
 S
 
 258 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 the midsummer nights are not so light as with us, 
 but if there be clouds over the sky as there were this 
 night, 'tis often pitchy dark at midnight. It was now 
 past the full of the moon, though she was still pretty 
 large, but we could get no help of her light till some 
 hours later. 
 
 My Lord, foreseeing that a night attack, though it 
 might lead to some disaster among the enemy by their 
 stranding, could end in nothing but comjDlete anni- 
 hilation of our ships, as in the dark we should be 
 quite unhelped by our batteries, hit upon a notable 
 expedient to lessen the odds against us. 
 
 There happened to have been taken in as ships' 
 stores at Trapani, and for the caulking of our ships 
 and boats, about 150 barrels of tar, which commodity 
 is furnished of great excellence by the pine forests in 
 that part of the Island. My Lord caused some of these 
 barrels to be got up from the holds of the different 
 ships, and at nightfall carried in boats to the prize 
 galley which had gone down by the stern in about 
 three fathoms of water at the entrance of the bay, and 
 lay with her bows and forepart well out of the water. 
 He ordered the men to load their boats with a sort of 
 resinous shrub that they call Lcntisco, growing abund- 
 antly on the shore, and with this herb or bush to 
 fill up the hatchways and forehold of the sunken 
 vessel, tying great bunches of it in the rigging ; then 
 they started about ten of the barrels and sluiced the 
 decks with the tar, drenching all the Lentisco shrub. As 
 many more barrels, unstarted, were left lashed to the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 259 
 
 gunwales and the foremast, for the deck was all on a 
 quick slant aft, and some six or eight more barrels 
 were rolled down the fore-hatchway. A boat's crew 
 with two officers were then left to watch for the 
 in-coming of the Pirate fleet, with orders to fire the 
 ship so soon as they perceived the enemy to be 
 entering, which, though it was already dark, they could 
 not fail to do through the dusk of the summer night. 
 
 My Lord had passed from ship to ship of the fleet, 
 giving exact orders to' the officers how to conduct the 
 coming fight. I will here observe that, as I have often 
 had occasion to notice on the eve of great emergencies, 
 my kinsman was never stern, and silent, and wrapt 
 and abstracted into his own meditations, after the 
 manner of many commanders that I have known 
 before an engagement, as if the cares and forethink- 
 ing of the coming event were all they had a mind to ; 
 which behaviour in one whom all have their eyes 
 upon is very apt to breed doubt and fearfulness 
 among their people. My Lord was never so 
 debonair as at such times, seeming to have already 
 resolved all his action, and having a friendly word, a 
 jest, and a laugh for all about him, so that the very 
 sight of his face, or sound of his voice as he passed 
 by (as I have heard many say since), would inspire 
 the men with hope and confidence. 
 
 My Lord visited the batteries with me, and appre- 
 hending they might lack light to do their work with 
 due expedition, ordered a couple of tar-barrels to be 
 set in a convenient place at each of the works, with 
 
 S 2
 
 26o Beyond the Seas. 
 
 orders to light them only when they perceived the 
 first gleaming of fire upon the sunken ship. He 
 enjoined them to have their guns laid upon the entrance, 
 a little pointing seaward, and in readiness to fire heavily 
 upon the first vessels that came in, and the gunners 
 were to stand by the guns with their linstocks in 
 their hands. 
 
 By the new marshalling of our land forces we had 340 
 troopers in barrack within half a mile of Port Niccolo, 
 and as the new batteries were altogether undefended, 
 except by a little ditch and low curtain wall, my Lord 
 caused 200 men to be dismounted, and 100 of these 
 kept at hand near to each battery, in shelter, to resist any 
 attack upon them by land. The rest of the cavalry, 140 
 in number, I took under my own command, and by my 
 Lord's orders posted them behind the western hill in 
 readiness to act against any body of the enemy landing 
 in their boats ; the shore, except the two hilly head- 
 lands aforesaid where the two batteries stand, being 
 a hard, sandy tract, interspersed with little rocks stand- 
 ing up here and there from the sand, and much growth 
 of the before-mentioned low scrubby Lentisco, but still, 
 such ground as horsemen could travel upon to advant- 
 age. This western hill is but some 300 feet in height, 
 bare of trees, and with the ruins of an old fortification 
 at top. We had not used the old work, but built our 
 parapet on the very point of the headland some 200 
 feet below. Here is a rough draft of the bay and bat- 
 teries ; but 'tis from remembrance only, and perhaps 
 not to be trusted by navigators of this coast.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 261 
 
 TEar^ Of Toft NUco^ 

 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 On the western hill-top I took my stand and kept 
 a look-out, with three or four of our troopers by me, 
 dismounted, for messengers in case of need. It was 
 a black and gloomy night, being then long past dark, 
 and I could hear more than I could see, the loudest 
 sounds being the roaring of the surf on the shore, and 
 the whistling of the strong wind through the shrouds 
 and rigging of our squadron in the bay, for though the 
 headland kept the waves off, 'twas too low for complete 
 shelter from the wind. I could hear too, every now 
 and then, the jingle of iron, as one of our horses just 
 below me would throw his head up or champ on 
 his bit, but from our fellows themselves, or from 
 the sailors or the gunners, not a sound came. All I 
 could discern seawards was the long line of breakers to 
 east and west, which somewhat glistened in the dark, 
 and I could make out, or thought I could make out, 
 the loom of the enemy's vessels in the offing, and the 
 waves breaking in spray against their hulls ; but in 
 the bay, under the shadow of the tall mountains 
 behind, all was black, and I could see nothing at all 
 of our ships. 

 
 Beyond the Seas. 263 
 
 I say I thought I could make out the loom of the 
 galleys at sea, and still keeping my eyes fixed upon 
 them through the dark, I perceived I was right, for 
 the shapes I saw now began to move, first one, 
 then another, following in single file towards the 
 entrance of the bay. As soon as I was quite certain 
 that my eyes had not misled me, I fired off my 
 pistols, this being the signal agreed upon. A moment 
 after, I perceived a little streak of light to creep slowly 
 across the hull of the sunken galley, and while I was 
 still fearing that the wind and spray might be too 
 strong for the kindling of the fire, the light grew in 
 bigness, and in a moment more leapt up to a great 
 flame, which divided into tongues of fire and licked 
 all the surface of the ship ; and these joining together, 
 there went up, in less time than the telling takes, a huge 
 column of fire and fiery smoke across the firmament, 
 that lit up the land far and near and the mountains 
 behind with their pine-trees as in daylight, and showed 
 every little jutting point of rock and every little 
 shrub on the beach, and our ships and the crowds ot 
 men in them all standing on their decks in readiness. 
 The glare shone on the steel of our troopers behind 
 the hill sitting on their horses, and their faces, red- 
 dened in the fiery glow, were turned up to me ; and so 
 strong was the light that I could see their knit brows 
 and the set, resolute, eager, angry look on their faces, 
 impatient for the fight to begin ; and the glare shone 
 far away over the waves of the sea, and we saw the 
 whole fleet of great galleys, their sailors at the ropes,
 
 264 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 their gunners with Hnstocks in their hands, the 
 gaping mouths of their cannon, the sails set, and the 
 ships coming in upon us, heeling over under the 
 pressure of the wind. 
 
 The two leading vessels were abreast, and just 
 about to enter the harbour mouth, when a gun was 
 fired from my Lord's ship at them. Before the echoes 
 had come back from the hills, the fire was belching 
 forth from over thirty great guns in the ships, and from 
 the forty-four in the batteries. The distance was so 
 short, our aim so steady, and the guns so heavy, that 
 almost every shot seemed to tell. The leading ship 
 staggered in her course, but still carried on a little ; 
 then, hardly giving time for her crew to cut the lash- 
 ing of their boats and enter them, she foundered on a 
 level keel and went under water all but her masts 
 before she had gone thirty yards inside the harbour. 
 The second galley was to windward of the sunken 
 ship that we had fired, and shots from the western 
 battery must have struck her helm, or perhaps her 
 rudder itself, for she lost steerage-way, and was 
 carried by the wind, while still in the fairway, right 
 upon the burning ship, and herself presently caught 
 fire too and was in a blaze. Four more of the 
 enemy were following in single file about two cables' 
 lengths behind the two first, and so quickly did the 
 gale fetch them in that our gunners had not loaded, 
 nor were their guns laid, before the first had passed in. 
 She therefore got off and into the harbour safely, but 
 there presently she received the broadsides point blank
 
 Beyond the Seas. 265 
 
 of all our moored ships, and sank at once in deep 
 water. The battery gunners served the second and 
 third and fourth of this batch of four as they had the 
 two first comers, riddling them with shot and dis- 
 abling all three so completely that they drifted with 
 the wind, water-logged, and with their sails and 
 riggii^g hanging useless, one foundering in deep 
 water, the others stranding in the shoal-water of 
 the bay. 
 
 Thus in a very short time we had caught six great 
 war-ships in our trap, and overcome them without the 
 loss of a man, and the rest of the fleet for a time were 
 daunted and hung back, and we hardly thought they 
 would again venture in ; but we observed them to be 
 signalling to each other, which they did (strangely 
 enough) by the light of the lamps we had lighted (to 
 wit, their own burning ships). Then presently they 
 had formed a new and cunning plan, and followed it 
 very boldly. 
 
 It is certain the Pirates very well knew the pilotage 
 of Port Niccolo, as they know all these coasts and 
 waters from their frequent hunting over them for their 
 prey of ships and slaves ; and they must have been 
 aware of there being deep water almost from point tcj 
 point of the entrance, otherwise they would not have 
 ventured upon the boldness of what they now pro- 
 jected. There were still twenty-two galleys outside, and 
 of these they told off eight to run in and engage the 
 batteries, four to each, which they presently did, with 
 very great skill and courage ; and while the guns therein
 
 266 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 were thus rendered powerless against other enemies 
 
 their plan was for twelve of the remaining fourteen 
 
 to run boldly in upon our ships in the bay. But in 
 
 the meantime the remaining two galleys of the Pirates, 
 
 getting further away east, behind shelter of the eastern 
 
 headland, and where the surf was a little less strong, 
 
 began to land their crews, and it was very evident they 
 
 intended a land attack by the disembarked crews upon 
 
 the eastern battery. Now, my Lord had foreseen that 
 
 my troopers, who were on foot, could take some useful 
 
 part in the coming struggle by using their firelocks 
 
 upon the crowded decks of the vessels in harbour, and 
 
 as I had lOO men lying idle in shelter behind each 
 
 battery, I had at the beginning of the engagement 
 
 ordered these men to scatter themselves among the 
 
 rocks and natural escarpments and battlements of the 
 
 two headlands, and fire at their ease upon the gunners 
 
 in the enemies' ships below them. It is incredible how 
 
 galling and distracting the fire of even a few good 
 
 marksmen can be, themselves being unmolested, upon 
 
 men working their guns ; and our troops were now 
 
 from practice very fair shooters, even with the short 
 
 carbines they used. When I perceived the intention 
 
 of the enemy to land and assail our east battery, under 
 
 cover of the distraction of the fight, I considered with 
 
 myself whether it was wise in me to allow the men 
 
 told off for its defence to remain dispersed among the 
 
 rocks, while the enemy might be creeping up in their 
 
 rear, but so useful to our side did their sharpshooting 
 
 seem to me to be in this great juncture of our fortunes
 
 Beyond the Seas. 267 
 
 that I resolved to let them continue this molestation 
 of the enemy, and to adventure my cavalry for the 
 defence of the eastern battery (for the western was 
 safe on account of the great surf that beat on the 
 point and all the coast west of it). So taking good 
 note of the He of the land, I rode with my 140 troopers 
 quickly round the head of the bay, and got, un- 
 observed, among the bushes and rocks to within lOO 
 yards of where the two galleys were landing their 
 crews. 
 
 Now there had already got ashore from the two 
 galleys which my Lord had worsted at sea earlier in 
 the evening, many more of their crews than we had 
 thought for. We had indeed observed at the time, 
 but confusedly in the hurry of the fight, most of their 
 boats to be swamped in the mighty surf that was 
 beating upon the shore. Yet many of the sailors had 
 escaped through the rush of water alive to land, for so 
 soon as the boats, to the number of eight, put off from 
 the two galleys, choosing a sheltered little creek that 
 lies some fifty yards eastward of the battery for their 
 disembarkation, as m.any as 130 or 150 of these ship- 
 wrecked men ran down from their concealment in the 
 woods, many having arms in their hands, and ad- 
 venturing themselves into the surf, somewhat lighter 
 here from the shelter the cove enjoyed, laid hands 
 upon the bows and gunwales of their brother pirates' 
 boats, and pulled them safely in through the troubled 
 water. 
 
 I waited till the party had gathered in a crowd of
 
 268 
 
 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 perhaps 350 men, of whom over 200 were the armed 
 crews newly landed. Then I formed my troopers 
 into line and galloped down upon the enemy. The sand 
 here is hard and level, and allowed our charge to 
 be fast and in good order. We struck them very 
 heavily while they were thinking of anything but a 
 charge of horse, and though with their pistols and 
 scymetars they made a very pretty fight of it for a 
 time, presently we had worsted them, having pistolled 
 or cut down some sixty or seventy before we had felt 
 any sensible loss ourselves. I do not remember in the 
 annals of War to have read of so curious a skirmish as 
 this, for our horses' hoofs all the time were wetted by 
 the great waves that kept running in, and sometimes 
 they were knee-deep in salt water, and the spray that 
 the wind brought in beat hard against our faces. The 
 roar of the sea and wind almost overcame the noise of 
 battle, the shots, the clatter of sword upon sword, the 
 shouts and curses of fighting men, and the neighing 
 of our horses. We charged through them twice, and 
 then, having broken them utterly, and the sailors from 
 the woods beginning some of them to fly to this same 
 refuge again, we strayed here and there dispersedly 
 upon the beach in pursuit of the straggling enemy, 
 but after a little while, there being no longer any array 
 of them to charge into, we stayed our hands. 
 
 Thus, in less than five minutes by the clock, we had 
 killed or wounded all who would stand, and the rest 
 had fled by twos and threes, and by sixes and dozens, 
 to the woods hard by. None had sought refuge by
 
 Beyond the Seas. 269 
 
 way of the sea, or thought of escaping back by the 
 way they had come, for the breakers were too great, 
 and the boats they had landed in lay grounded on 
 their sides, beating to pieces with repeated strokes of 
 the waves. 
 
 Perceiving that we had wholly overcome the in- 
 tended attack upon the battery, and knowing we 
 were wanted elsewhere, I quickly recalled my men, 
 gave them a few moments to recover their breathing, 
 and moved them towards the harbour side again, and 
 halting behind the east headland dismounted four- 
 fifths of the troops (that is, nearly 100, for some were 
 wounded and a few killed outright). Then we left the 
 horses in the shelter of the rocks in charge of the 
 remainder, dispersed ourselves among the rocks, 
 and were in good time to help in the great fight that 
 was going on in the bay. 
 
 Now I had not seen the beginning of what I will 
 call the second engagement, for none of the enemy 
 had yet entered the bay when wc began to ride round 
 it to the eastward, only we had gathered their inten- 
 tions by their movements. To speak by the card, 
 I could not in this my narrative hav^c spoken so 
 plainly of that which had come to pass, had I not 
 heard it since from the mouths of c}-c-\\"itnesses. 
 
 When we got to the headland, which, though lower 
 lying than that on the west side, stands still some thirty 
 feet or so above the water, we marvelled at the 
 turmoil that we saw below us, and more even at the 
 great red light of the burning ships tliat lit all up ;
 
 270 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 yea, even penetrated through the clouds of thick 
 smoke from the firing. Our troopers ran boldly to the 
 edge of the cliffs without needing to seek shelter or 
 concealment, for the smoke was now cover enough of 
 itself. They loaded and fired, loaded and fired, as 
 fast as they could, and as often as the smoke lifted 
 for a moment with the wind or there happened a little 
 rift in its thickness to show us the decks of the Turks. 
 All the water of the bay was covered with our own 
 and the enemy's ships, and with many of the boats of 
 the Corsairs, for four or five more of their vessels had 
 gone down or got aground in the confusion of coming 
 in so many together, some having fouled one another, 
 and some encountering discomfiture through an ex- 
 cellent stratagem of my Lord's. It was this, that 
 having heaped the Pirate Admiral's ship which we 
 had taken with brushwood, and poured some barrels of 
 tar upon that, he hauled her to the eastern extremity of 
 the bay, and pointing her head towards the entrance, 
 which was within about six, or six and a half, points 
 of the wind, upon the starboard tack, he made fast her 
 helm on that course ; then as the enemy came through 
 the fairway of the harbour, those on board cut hei 
 cables, set fire to the tarred brushwood and went of! 
 in their boat, leaving the ship to herself This 
 happened while I was away with the cavalry, but 
 I heard its relation by our people, who likened the 
 putting to sea of this huge crewless ship (comparing 
 great things with small) to a child's sailing of his 
 paper boat on a pool of water, who will start it from
 
 Beyond the Seas. 271 
 
 the bank and watch it as it goes forth on its un- 
 certain course across the little water, helping it with 
 his wishes when he can no longer help it with his 
 hands ; so did our people watch this great galley set 
 forth on her voyage. 
 
 She started so near the wind that she went slow 
 and staggeringly, and the wind seemed like to take 
 her sails aback and blow her back to where she 
 started ; then a slant of wind coming more northerly, 
 or perhaps the ropes that held her helm fast growing 
 somewhat tauter with the wet, her helm went up 
 and she bore up and went on a better course ; at any 
 rate, said those who watched her, good luck steered 
 and sailed her to the best advantage for us (so that 
 the most cunning pilot could have served us no 
 better), right athwart the in-coming fleet of Corsairs, 
 who started to right and left to avoid her, for now she 
 was full of fire and very terrible ; and the necessity 
 for them to so suddenly shift their courses was the 
 cause of some of the enemy fouling each other, and of 
 some getting into shoal-water and stranding. Then 
 the fire ship seemed to be pointing to the galleys 
 which were beginning to attack the western battery, 
 and they, in the terror of this great tower of flame 
 coming upon them, sheered off very expeditiously, 
 using their sweeps in all haste, and let the battery 
 have leisure to ply the other galleys in the bay with 
 their shot, which they did very heartily and service- 
 ably. However, to go back to the fire-ship, she 
 passed very quickly through the water where the
 
 2/2 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 galleys had been firing upon the battery, and just 
 then her sails caught fire, and straightway her voyage 
 was ended, for she was at the mercy of the wind, and 
 drifted towards the point she came from. Being 
 then in the fairway of the bay, she fell back upon 
 the two ships that were on fire there, stranded (or 
 rather, one was stranded and the other foul of her), so 
 these three great galleys were consumed together, 
 sending fragments of burning stuff into the air and 
 down the wind ; and such fierceness of heat was 
 engendered as, coming to us, who were on the east 
 headland, with the wind, scorched our faces, and often, 
 with the blinding smoke, somewhat hindered us of our 
 aim in firing. 
 
 In the meantime, we knew little or nothing of 
 how the fight was going, so thick was the smoke 
 and so deafening loud was the cannonade on both 
 sides. Yet we hoped for the best, in spite of the 
 great numbers of the enemy and their skill and 
 courage ; for first, by my Lord's disposition of 
 his squadron, as each vessel lay broadside on to 
 any attack, he could not have his own ships 
 enfiladed (or as sailors say, raked) by the enemy's 
 fire, who, coming of necessity bow on, must needs 
 himself submit to be searched by our fire from 
 bow to stern : secondly, with shoal-water behind 
 them, our ships lay in no danger of being served as 
 we had the Admiral's ship earlier in the day ; 
 namely, of finding an enemy on either beam. Our 
 main danger was their boarding of us, to which
 
 Beyond the Seas. 273 
 
 cout-se it appears the enemy from the first com- 
 mitted himself, running right upon our line, fouling 
 our ships and sending his men aboard in huge 
 numbers. Now, but for the enemy's mishaps, this 
 policy must needs have been our undoing, as he 
 could put on our board two men to our one, but 
 what with the fouling of some of their ships, the 
 stranding of others, and the great injury done them 
 by the heavy cannon fire that issued from our deck 
 and land batteries, he had but about thirteen or 
 fourteen vessels (counting in this number some that 
 had engaged the batteries) to, as a soldier might say, 
 charge with. With these, nevertheless, he executed, 
 as we afterwards learnt, very bloody work, and had 
 not our Admiral foreseen and provided for this event, 
 assuredly the day had been lost to us. My Lord, 
 however, had moored his ships so closely, the bow 
 of one a little overlapping the stern of her neighbour, 
 that it was easy for the crews to climb from one to 
 the other ; and being moored in still water, and the 
 guns on the lee-side of the ships not requiring to be 
 worked, he had the greater part of the crews idle 
 and ready for service. These fellows he kept armed 
 with their weapons ; to wit, pistols, hatchets, or 
 cutlasses, prepared to resist boarders of their own 
 ship or of their neighbours'. Now, had the enemy 
 attacked all at once or nearly at once, this scheme 
 had failed, but it takes but little acquaintance with 
 warfare to know that, with all the accidents and 
 misadventures of so hot a conflict in so narrow a 
 
 T
 
 274 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 space, such concurrence in attack is not to be 
 accomplished. So it fell out, for first three of the 
 enemy came upon our ships with orders to break in 
 and board, and presently after two more ; and from 
 the first three, after receiving our fire and some stray 
 shots perhaps from the batteries, there ran aboard 
 our Flagship and one other some 300 or 400 men, 
 and were met by nearly as many of the crews of 
 the vessels they were attacking, and almost im- 
 mediately reinforcements of 200 men came leaping 
 in from our ships' consorts on either side, and the 
 Turks, seeing they were outnumbered by two or more 
 to one, retreated to their own ships, leaving no few 
 dead and wounded behind them. 
 
 Then followed the next two ships meaning to 
 board, with no better success, and so with some six 
 or seven other of the Pirates, and the last of their 
 boarders had got back into their vessels, not a little 
 discomfited, by the time my troopers came up to 
 help in the fight. We perceived by the gaping 
 mouths of our ships' guns, all of a row, now black, 
 now fiery, which we could still plainly see through 
 the fog of the smoke as the strong gusts of wind 
 blew it aside, that our men were firing quickly and 
 steadily upon the enemy. As to hearing the guns 
 singly or particularly we could not ; it was one endur- 
 ing thunderous peal of artillery. Just then, when every 
 cannon on either side was being momentarily dis- 
 charged, when every pistol and every firelock that could 
 be levelled at an enemy from either side was being
 
 Beyond the Seas. 275 
 
 fired and loaded again in hottest haste, when the noise 
 and confusion was at its height, and the Hght of the 
 burning ships was at its very greatest and reddest, 
 bright as dayHght, but a more terrible angry glare 
 than ever yet proceeded from the luminous sun ; 
 just then there arose above all the roar of this 
 fearful artillery, drowning and subduing it at once, 
 a mighty rush of sound, as loud as the report of a 
 thousand cannon fired at once. In the next instant 
 all noise of battle was hushed and all the air grew dark 
 as pitch. This sound and wind proceeded from the 
 blowing up of the powder-room of the sunken flag- 
 ship which the fire had reached, and the force of the 
 outburst had blown the two ships that had fouled 
 and grappled with her likewise through the water, 
 extinguishing all burning wood therein, so that first the 
 very ground shook beneath our feet ; then the water 
 of the bay rose in a mighty fluctuation. When it fell 
 again and the sparks and burning splinters of timbers 
 had rained down upon the bay, such a darkness fell on 
 us (for the tar-barrels near the batteries had by this 
 burnt out) as that none could see his hand if 
 he held it close to his face, and no man could fire 
 gun or pistol or cannon, for he could not so much 
 as find his ammunition to lay his hand upon it, far 
 less see his enemy. After this great shock and ex- 
 plosion and the darkness that followed, not another 
 shot was fired nor was any sound heard, — nay, not so 
 much as a shout or a cry of any man ; only now 
 again we could hear the noises of the tempest, the 
 
 T 2
 
 276 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 whistling of the wind through the rigging of the shipS; 
 and the splash of the waves upon the shore. 
 
 Thus did we remain for a long space, no man in 
 this chaos of darkness and uncertainty knowing what 
 to do next, or what next might happen, or how far 
 from or how near him stood his deadly enemy, and 
 no officer could see his men nor any man his officer ; 
 each holding the gun or pistol, discharged or just 
 loading, or the rope he grasped, or the linstock or 
 rammer in his hand, just as he held it when the shock 
 came and the darkness fell. And no man of us all 
 knew whether we were beaten or had conquered in 
 this terrible fight. 
 
 We stood fixed thus for a space of time ; then 
 suddenly, while we all waited in expectancy in this 
 deep and stagnant darkness, up rose the full and 
 radiant moon, and we all did so little look to her 
 showing so soon, forgetting how quickly pass the 
 minutes of a battle, that we were taken aback, and 
 for a space neither friend nor foe would stir, but 
 stared upon her stupidly, as her fair round face up- 
 reared itself from the sea ; nor till her disk was fully 
 above the horizon, and hung, a great lamp, to show us 
 our situation, did any man move. Then one or two 
 fired the guns or pistols they held still loaded, and 
 one of our fellows put the match that still burned in 
 his hand to the touch-hole of a cannon and fired it, 
 and the shot seemed to awaken our senses, but less 
 to fight anew than to look about us first and see how 
 the battle had gone.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 277 
 
 It was pretty evident to us and to the enemy too, 
 that we had overmastered the Pirates, There were 
 lying no fewer than three of their galleys stranded on 
 the lee shore of the bay ; two more had got, I know 
 not well how, on the western side, but perhaps had 
 run thither, by mischance, for safety in the confusion 
 of the night, thinking to escape through the harbour 
 mouth. They lay there on their beam ends, wrecked 
 and helpless. Four more had sunk, under the heavy 
 fires of our guns, in the midst of the bay, and only 
 their masts were above water. The bay was covered 
 with floating wreckage and splinters of blackened 
 wood, and above a dozen boats of the Corsairs were 
 upon the water, carrying the crews of the disabled 
 ships to those galleys that still were sound. On the 
 decks of all the galleys, and on our ships as well, were 
 lying stretched the bodies of scores of dead and dying 
 men. Our ships were still in their line, as I had seen 
 them the night before ; yet all were struck and some 
 grievously damaged, with great holes of round shot in 
 their hulls, and some had lost masts and spars, but 
 none had foundered. All this I took in at a very 
 quick glance under the full light of the rising moon. 
 Then in a moment was the battle renewed, but 'twas 
 from our side chiefly that came the shooting of great 
 and small arms now, and very soon we gathered that 
 the Pirates had no mind for more fighting, but were 
 each by common accord, as it would seem (since we 
 saw no signalling), resolved upon flight from this bay 
 of most fatal omen to them.
 
 278 
 
 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 The wind had now moderated and the sea some- 
 what gone down, and the remnant of the enemy's 
 galleys, and of this remnant three or four much 
 hurt by our shot, began to use their sweeps 
 with all the expedition they could ; and presently, 
 taking advantage of the slant of wind that entered 
 the harbour, they got under way and made off 
 to sea with less hurt and loss at the last than the 
 fury and zeal of our gunners to hinder their going 
 had promised, for but one more of their galleys was 
 disabled. This one, however, could not carry away 
 all the shot we had given her, and the very last 
 ball from the battery striking her between wind 
 and water was the straw that, 'tis said, breaks the 
 camel's back, and she quickly filled and sank in the 
 very entrance channel. Her boats landed her crew 
 of over 200 men on the western shore of the bay 
 without molestation from us, and our cavalry, riding 
 round again, were in time to surround them at the 
 landing, and they, seeing our superiority, surrendered 
 at discretion. 
 
 Would that this had been the last of the battle, for 
 surely with all our losses and the disablement for the 
 time of several of our ships, our victory was a very 
 great and glorious one, and we might have rested 
 under the laurels we had won in this great deliver- 
 ance ; but alas ! my Lord, nil actum reputans dum 
 quid siiperesset agendum — never satisfied while aught 
 of glory was to be reaped— would not stay quietly 
 while still the enemy was in sight, but sallied forth in
 
 Beyond the Seas. 279 
 
 his Flagship with three other of the Corvettos in 
 pursuit of the retreating galleys. 
 
 They had made to windward toward Tunis Bay, 
 and having apparently no stomach for further fight- 
 ing, did not turn back, though they must have seen 
 that but four ships were pursuing them, and so the 
 chase lasted as far as we could see ; the galleys, being 
 on their best sailing point, had the legs of our ships 
 (except one or two that lagged), and presently we 
 lost sight of enemies and friends as well. 
 
 It was not till eight hours afterwards, being then 
 about noon, that three of the Corvettos returned, 
 towing two of the enemy's galleys as prizes, and bear- 
 ing marks in damaged hulls and tattered sails of a hard 
 fight. They brought the grievous news that the Flag- 
 ship was sunk by the enemy, and all her crew, my 
 Lord with them, taken prisoners. Their account was 
 that in the chase, the Flagship, being the fastest sailer, 
 had outpaced the others, and had overhauled first one, 
 then another, of the enemy's galleys, which were flying 
 in no order but a long straggling line ; these two 
 vessels, having both received some damage in Port 
 Niccolo and fleeing the slower, our Flagship had en- 
 gaged both vessels one after another, disabling both, 
 and had then sailed on after the others, signalling to 
 her consorts to put prize crews into the captures and 
 turn their heads homewards. When the Corvettos, 
 which had been delayed a little in their obedience to 
 this order, had come up with the Flagship, they found 
 the whole fleet of galleys round about her. They
 
 28o 
 
 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 surmised that my Lord's ship had first been disabled 
 by an unlucky shot in a third encounter with a single 
 lagging ship of the enemy, and that the Pirate's con- 
 sorts, seeing my cousin hard put to it, had come 
 round him and overwhelmed him with numbers ; but 
 the Flagship was already hull under when the third 
 encounter had taken place, and they had seen the 
 occurrence but very confusedly. They however lost 
 no time in coming up and joining in the fight ; but in a 
 very little time the Flagship was sunk by the continual 
 cannonading of the Pirates, and her crew, escaping 
 into their boats, were immediately taken prisoners. 
 The Corvettos were near enough to observe that my 
 Lord was among the captives, and they believed he 
 \vas wounded, but they did not think the wound could 
 be severe, for though his hand or arm was tied up, he 
 stood up in the boat, as if to give orders. Seeing that 
 they were like to be themselves overwhelmed by the 
 superior numbers of the enemy, who were still as three 
 to one of them, and that they could render no further 
 service to my kinsman, they sheered offhand went 
 down the wind toward the Sicilian coast. For a little 
 while the Pirates followed, firing a shot or two, but 
 as the Corvettos could outsail them before the wind, 
 the enemy presently gave up the chase.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 I WILL hasten over the narration of what followed 
 immediately upon this disastrous news of my Lord's 
 being taken captive thus in the very midst of his 
 great crowning victory. The reader will very readily 
 apprehend the disquiet and solicitude which we, his 
 nearer friends, and I, his nearest friend of all and 
 kinsman, felt upon this emergency. For a while the 
 tidings went far and near that my Lord had died of 
 his wounds in the Pirates' hands, and the news came 
 in such authentic shape, though roundabout, from the 
 African coast, after about a month of waiting, that 
 we could not but believe it ; and I grieved for my 
 dear kinsman as one that was lost and gone for ever. 
 Then came a swift galley into Palermo harbour, 
 bearing a herald's flag, to deliver a special message to 
 the Viceroy, which was that my Lord was recovered 
 of his wound, was being treated in accordance with 
 his high rank and great exploits, and that he had 
 listened favourably to overtures made to him to take 
 service with the Bey of Tunis. I knew very well that 
 this was a foul lie, knowing my Lord's honour and
 
 282 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 hie fealty to the Christian faith ; but to the Sicilian 
 Lords, say what I would, it seemed no improbable 
 circumstance or unreasonable belief (so low were they 
 sunk in their iniquitous schemes of life) that a Chris- 
 tian gentleman and a soldier of his King should 
 condescend to service with a Miscreant and a Pirate ! 
 But in my sudden joy in knowing of my dear 
 kinsman's health and safety, I somewhat overlooked 
 this lying traducement of him, and that he was still a 
 captive in the hands of an inexorable and cruel 
 enemy, and the conclusion of the message, which was 
 that the Pirates were still willing to treat for the 
 ransom of their prisoner ; and the terms they offered 
 for his tradition were the restoration of the Corsair 
 Admiral El Saida, whom we had captured, and 
 of all the galleys taken by the Sicilians, with their 
 guns and crews, and in addition the sum of 500,000 
 gold doubloons. Now, when we considered the 
 worth to them of their own great Admiral, and 
 that this sum was more than could be raised by 
 the whole revenues of Sicily (nay, it is doubtful if 
 the Treasury of Spain itself could then have furnished 
 as much without great wringing and delay), we con- 
 cluded that it was but another way of saying that 
 they had no mind to part with their captive for a 
 while. Either they hoped to convert him to their in- 
 famous faith and to use his genius for war on their side, 
 or they feared to have so terrible an enemy against 
 them, who, if he should extend his warfare beyond 
 Sicily, was like to close all the Mediterranean Sea to
 
 Beyond the Seas. 283 
 
 their adventuring as completely as he already had the 
 coasts and waters of Sicilia. This surmise we learnt 
 afterwards was the true one, and they were resolved 
 not to part with him on any terms ; no, not even to 
 get back their own famous Admiral El Saida, whom 
 the Sicilian Viceroy freely offered to deliver up as 
 ransom, with every ship we had captured in the late 
 engagement. 
 
 The mention of this reminds me that I have been 
 in such haste to record this most tragic event of the 
 capture of my Lord, that I have not related the ending 
 of the fight, nor struck the true account of losses 
 and gains, as a soldier chronicler must do after a 
 battle, no less duly than a merchant after a trading 
 adventure ended. 
 
 When the Pirates had fled and we began to look 
 into our own lists of killed and wounded, we found 
 fewer than we expected, 1 1 5 only between dead and 
 hurt, and of these but 22 killed outright : this 
 among the sailors only. Our troops had lost but 2 
 killed and 7 wounded, these losses being in the 
 fight by the sea-shore. Of the enemy's loss in 
 killed and wounded, we knew little or nothing, 
 but the steady firing from our guns, batteries, and 
 small arms must have told upon them heavily : 
 over eighty dead and desperately wounded lay 
 upon the sea-shore after the night skirmish. The 
 lightly wounded had escaped into the woods, and the 
 crews of several of the disabled and stranded galleys had 
 likewise escaped ashore and hidden. Their haunts were
 
 284 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 revealed to us by the peasants as those of so many 
 ravenous wild beasts ; and searching the coasts and 
 shore forests, we picked up no fewer than 470 of these 
 unhappy runaways, — among them their Admiral, who 
 had escaped at the very first, when my Lord took his 
 ship. This, with the 200 taken by my troops as 
 already recounted, raised the number of our prisoners 
 to between 600 or 700, in exact number to 687. 
 
 But it was in captured galleys that the fruits of our 
 victory was so great. To begin with, we had utterly 
 destroyed by burning three of the Pirates' Fleet. 
 There were in all five galleys stranded which we 
 got off after lightening them of their guns, and found 
 them, with some patching, still seaworthy. Five more 
 were sunk in the harbour, but as the water was not 
 above a fathom deep over their decks, and the bottom 
 hard, we raised them easily by filling and emptying 
 of great barges lashed to their sides. Our Corvettos 
 had likewise brought back the two prizes taken by my 
 Lord on his last ill-fated cruise. This made fifteen 
 vessels of which we had deprived the enemy, of which 
 twelve were fit to take the sea. After staying some 
 days in Port Niccolo, to repair the shot-holes in our 
 own vessels and to raise and clean the sunken galleys, 
 we put to sea, and brought our prizes and oui 
 prisoners safely into Messina Harbour. I will not 
 speak of the elation of the people at this astounding 
 victory over the Pirates, and the saving of them from 
 the terror of a Pirates' invasion ; but 'twas a joy 
 mingled with tribulation and with forebodings that,
 
 Beyond the Seas, 285 
 
 without his help who had gained them this great 
 dehverance, their lot would shortly be as unhappy as 
 before. 
 
 The Viceroy had, since the battle of Port Niccolo, 
 graciously accorded me several private audiences, 
 at which his Grace spoke very freely of the 
 defence of the coasts and the affairs of the navy ; 
 no doubt as conceiving that I had been imbued with 
 the ideas of my Lord, and might, therefore, carry on 
 the campaign against the Rovers, as it were, by pro- 
 curation. At length his Grace was pleased to speak 
 out very openly. 
 
 " Captain St. Keyne," says he, " 'tis very plain that, 
 whatever happens in this Island, your illustrious kins- 
 man will never again command the active forces of 
 Sicily ; it not being to be supposed that the Corsairs 
 of the African Coast will set free a prisoner who has 
 in these few months done them more harm, and 
 caused their fame more disparagement, than has come 
 to them within the last hundred years. They will 
 either persuade him to conform to their own faith" 
 (" That they will never do," quoth I), " and they will 
 then," said his Grace, not noticing my interruption, 
 " give him the command of their navies " (" He would 
 die first, your Grace," I cried), " or," the Viceroy 
 went on, smiling a little at my lack of courtliness, 
 " should he refuse, imprison him for his life-time in 
 one of their inland fortresses." ('"Tis very sad," said 
 I, shaking my head.) " It is the most melancholy 
 circumstance in the world," said the Viceroy, " but it
 
 286   Beyond the Seas. 
 
 behoves me to think what I can do in this great mis- 
 fortune that has come upon the Island. Now," says 
 he, " Captain St. Keyne, I have had evidence enough 
 of the ability, diligence, and loyalty you have dis- 
 played under your kinsman, and I do hereby offerto you 
 the same command over the land and sea forces of 
 this Island as was held by Lord St. Keyne, until such 
 time as his Lordship may happily return to us, of 
 which, however, I will say that I see at present not 
 the very slightest chance or prospect." 
 
 I bowed to his Grace, for in truth speech was denied 
 me for a time at the strangeness and greatness of this 
 offer ; but I hastened to give his Grace to understand, 
 after humbly thanking him for his condescension, that 
 though I trusted he had not over-estimated my 
 loyalty to him or my diligence in his service, both of 
 which, I declared, were second only to those I bore to 
 my King and my General, he had nevertheless vastly 
 over-rated my ability for such a high command. " I 
 am," said I, " a critic of war, and can perhaps (like 
 many another) make shift to follow where a good 
 lead has been given me ; but I would have your 
 Excellency to observe that in this campaign, as in all 
 well-conducted ones, the enemy have every time been 
 defeated because some wholly new-imagined strata- 
 gems had been executed against them, and in their 
 execution carried out with prevision of the smallest 
 particulars. Now," said I, "when once a stratagem of 
 war has been displayed and is known to the enemy, its 
 value is gone, and need is, in fresh operations, to
 
 Beyond the Seas. 287 
 
 imagine and think out fresh devices and inventions, 
 and to accompHsh them and consummate them to the 
 very last detail, anticipating every chance of their 
 hindrance or of their prevention ; and this, your 
 Excellency, is the secret of the art of war, and per- 
 adventure of many other arts known to man ; and in 
 this my kinsman was supreme, and I am in no sense 
 worthy to take his place." 
 
 The Viceroy was pleased to smile, perhaps at my 
 entering upon so uncourtierlike a tractation de scieniid 
 militari. 
 
 " I was fully prepared, Captain St. Keyne," said his 
 Grace, " by your known modesty, for your refusal of 
 my offer. I did not in truth the least count upon 
 your acceptance of it, but I desired by offering you 
 this command to show you how truly I value your 
 services and confide in your loyalty to my person. 
 You are already in command, under Lord St. Keyne 
 as Generalissimo, of the land forces created for the 
 defence of the Island. I desire that you now continue 
 in this command, owning therein no superior ofificer 
 except myself" 
 
 I kissed his Grace's hand upon my acceptance of 
 his gracious offer.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 I HAVE now to enter upon a matter which, though 
 it has been pressing upon me for some time back, 
 I have deferred because it likes me not to touch upon 
 it, or upon matters kindred thereto. The Reader, if 
 he is of the way of thinking that some who suppose 
 they know me are (though erroneously), and who con- 
 sider me a churlish and ungallant person, may guess 
 that here is to come some talk of women and their 
 ways. Well, I would it were not ! Not so much for any 
 real antipathy I have to them and their practices, as 
 for my great ignorance of both, and that I am so 
 given to plain speaking on all occasions as I fear is 
 exceedingly displeasing to themselves (why, I must 
 leave the Reader to determine !). Moreover, so poor a 
 hand am I at flattering as that the civilest woman must 
 in her heart wish me at the devil fifty times in a day, 
 had I the hardihood or desire to give her time and 
 leisure enough to form so many as fifty wishes in my 
 presence : which same hardihood and desire (again to 
 avoid flattery) I am removed by an incredible distance 
 from possessing.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 289 
 
 The matter then, to come to the point, is that as 
 women of all ages conceive that their chief business 
 and interest in this world is that of marrying, being 
 married, or giving in marriage (Lord ! how well it 
 would be if they would let us alone, but 'tis no mat- 
 ter), so my aunt, and my Lord's, the Lady Priscilla 
 Scudamour, sister of the late Earl of Scudamour, 
 and who is the lady that I have already men- 
 tioned in the beginning of this narrative as being 
 the Abbess of the House of St. Scholastica, near the 
 Groyne in Galicia of Spain, could not rest con- 
 tent till she had found a match for our little 
 cousin Geraldine, whom we had confided to her 
 charge. 
 
 It was about six weeks before the events of which 
 I have now told, that my Lord received a letter from 
 the aforesaid Lady Priscilla, in which, with as much 
 formality as if she were a sovereign Prince treating 
 for the cession of a town or Province with another 
 Potentate, she informed us that a lady of high rank 
 in Madrid, and of her acquaintance, naming a certain 
 Duchess, had signified to her that His Grace the 
 Viceroy of Sicily, cousin of the said Duchess, had, 
 at her (the Duchess's) recommendation and instance, 
 expressed his willingness to contract a matrimonial 
 alliance with the distinguished family of Scudamour. 
 His Grace was a widower and without a direct heir. 
 Then did the reverend Lady Abbess consider which 
 of her several marriageable nieces and cousins dis- 
 persed in sev'cral Convents in Spain, France, and the 
 
 U
 
 290 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Low Countries, was worthiest of an alliance with a 
 cavalier who belonged to one of the noblest families 
 of Spain, was a Grandee of the most distinguished 
 renown, and in the flower of his age (the Viceroy 
 being then not above fifty-eight years and ten 
 months). Finally she had fixed upon her niece the 
 Lady Geraldine Scudamour. All this she conveyed 
 at very wearisome length to my kinsman, and having 
 fully made up her own mind to the projected con- 
 sorcium, she now requested the formality of my Lord's 
 consent, as the young lady's sole guardian and nearest 
 male relative. 
 
 Now the first effect of this communication upon my 
 Lord had been to throw him into an unbounded rage, 
 in which unphilosophic state I found myself, to my 
 own no small surprise, likewise involved ; and together 
 we strode up and down the apartment, each of us 
 using expressions wholly improper to be applied to 
 the Head of a Religious House, and which therefore I 
 shall take the liberty not to record on this page. We 
 agreed that our little cousin Geraldine was still but a 
 child, in regard to whom to raise the question of 
 marriage was an absurdity ; further that our elder 
 kinswoman was a meddlesome and impertinent old 
 woman ; thirdly, we were of accord that even if our 
 cousin had been of an age to be married, it was a 
 monstrous extravagance to propose to marry a sweet, 
 innocent young English girl to a man of the Viceroy's 
 years and appearance. For though he was a man still 
 strong and hearty, he carried his age but heavily,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 291 
 
 having neither in his carriage, which was slow and 
 unwieldy, nor in his face, which was pale and care- 
 worn, nor in his aspect anything to remind the ob- 
 server that he had ever been young, and active, and 
 lusty. Presently, however, we began to reckon the 
 months which had passed since we had parted from 
 our cousin Geraldine, then little over fifteen years old, 
 and though tall and slim, still but a child ; and it was 
 a surprise to us both to find how time had passed, and 
 that the child of nearly three years ago was now a 
 woman of eighteen. My kinsman fell into a study, 
 and for a time said nothing. 
 
 " These matters. Cousin Humphrey," he said pre- 
 sently, " are women's politics, and it is not for us to 
 resolve them ; but, I know not why I say it, 'twill be 
 more than I can bear to see the child (so he would 
 still call her) the wife of our Viceroy. Why is that, 
 do you suppose .'' " 
 
 " It is natural enough," I said ; " a young girl, un- 
 knowing of the ways of the world, should not be 
 advised into marrying a man old enough nearly to be 
 her grandfather, and it goes against the grain with 
 you to let such a thing come to pass." 
 
 "That must be the reason," he said, "and I will 
 refuse my consent. And yet the girl might wish it. 
 'Tis a grand marriage ; it is making her almost a 
 queen. Consider, Humphrey, a girl rising from a 
 CoDvent, at a bound, almost to a throne." 
 
 We spoke no more on the matter, but I could sec 
 it was deep in my cousin's thoughts. 
 
 U 2
 
 292 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 A few days after this discourse of ours, my cousin 
 received a letter from Geraldine herself. It was a 
 sweet letter, and an artless one. She had been told, 
 she said, of the marriage proposed for her ; she had 
 no wish to marry. She was not discontented with the 
 Convent, where she had many friends, though it was 
 in truth a trifle dull and doleful, and though she felt 
 no calling towards a religious life. Her aunt had 
 spoken to her of this marriage as of a thing which for 
 her own sake, for her family's sake, and for her Con- 
 vent's sake she ought not to refuse. She did not know 
 how to decide. Her kinsman had always been her 
 truest and dearest friend, as well as her nearest relative : 
 " What you tell me to do, Ralph," wrote the child, " I 
 will do. I will obey you in this as in everything, and 
 I will obey no one else, for I love no one else in the 
 world but only you. Advise me what I am to do, for 
 I trust only in you, but if you can advise me not to 
 consent to this marriage I shall be very glad. If you 
 tell me I am not to marry any one at all, you will 
 make me very happy." 
 
 My kinsman said nothing as to this letter, but 
 he thought upon it very earnestly, and was troubled. 
 After pondering for two or three days, which was a 
 thing uncommon in him, for he was used to resolve 
 all questions swiftly, he answered his kinswoman, 
 and showed me the letter. 
 
 I thought it cold, and less kind than I should have 
 expected in him. He told her that he desired her 
 happiness before everything, but that in the matter of
 
 Beyond the Seas. 293 
 
 a woman's marrying or not marrying he did not see 
 that it was possible for him to advise her one way or 
 the other. From him especially, advice could not 
 come with any wisdom, for the subject was one apart 
 from his meditations. From one who had considered 
 marriage in a single aspect only, which was that he 
 was resolutely set on avoiding it for himself, no sound 
 counsel could issue. She must resolve the matter in 
 accordance with her own inclinations, and the opinions 
 she had been brought up to form. It was some years 
 since he had seen and known her ; she was then a 
 child, she was now a woman. The child he had 
 known and still knew well, and loved : the woman, 
 her present self, was wholly unknown to him. He 
 could not judge for her. In one respect only could 
 he help her ; he could tell her what he knew of the 
 Viceroy, He had served under him, and he could 
 say that he was a man to be respected for his ex- 
 pertness and moderation in affairs of State. His 
 manners were courtly and gentle, befitting his birth, 
 which was very high : his wealth was great ; his pre- 
 sent office in Sicily gave him almost kingly state, and 
 power, and rank. His age was over fifty-eight, his 
 health and strength were seemingly good, but his 
 figure was bent and his gait slow, as of an even older 
 man. To most women wifehood with such a man 
 might well be beyond all their dreams of wealth and 
 splendour ; to others, not so : it was for her to make 
 her election. This was how the letter ran. 
 
 Remembering how Ralph had loved the child in
 
 294 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 former days, how tender and pitiful his fondness had 
 been forher, she being an orphan ; how between these two 
 cousins and nearest relatives (they having none nearer 
 in parentage than each other), she a child, he not much 
 more than a boy, and that in their equal forlornness 
 a very uncommon affection had grown up between 
 them, I marvelled at the coldness of his letter. It 
 seemed to me that he must have used some constraint 
 over himself to write so hardly to one whose memory, 
 as I well knew, from many small casual mentionings 
 of her, was still so green and fresh with him. 
 
 This letter-writing had come in an idle time, some 
 weeks before the news of the intended invasion of us 
 by the Moors. That urgent business put the matter 
 out of my thoughts, but not (as I had imagined it 
 had) out of my Lord's, for on the very day we were 
 sailing along the Sicilian coast to Port Niccolo, chased 
 by the Pirates' fleet, he said to me, " Humphrey, this 
 will be the sharpest affair we have yet had, and after 
 it I purpose to leave Sicily ; that is, if — " He 
 delayed a little with his speech. 
 
 " If.'' " said I, resuming his last word, " If what .'' " 
 
 " If Geraldine marries the Viceroy. If she were to 
 become his wife, I should not desire to live here." 
 
 " Why not ? " I asked him. 
 
 He hesitated a little over his reason, and finally 
 gave none. 
 
 " Why," he said, " if she were living here in the 
 Palace, the Viceroy's wife, I should not desire to be 
 in Sicily also.'"'
 
 Beyond the Seas. 295 
 
 He said no more, and these words were all that 
 passed between us in the matter. 
 
 Then occurred the great fight at Port Niccolo, my 
 kinsman's pursuit of the enemy, and his capture by 
 the Pirate Fleet. 
 
 During the first month or so after this, and before 
 we got the message from the African coast, it was, as 
 I have noticed before, very confidently noised abroad 
 that my Lord was dead ; and this news reaching 
 Spain, as I had afterwards occasion to know it did, 
 decided my young kinswoman to give way to the 
 insistence of her aunt, there having been no advice 
 against it in her guardian's letter. So now I learnt 
 from the Viceroy himself that the Lady Geraldine 
 had agreed to become his wife, and that on his pro- 
 ceeding to Madrid in about a year's time the wedding 
 would there take place. A little while after, a letter 
 from Geraldine reached me, confirming this news. 
 She lamented her cousin's melancholy fate ; but the 
 letter was short and very sad (I thought) and spirit- 
 less, unlike her who was by nature always light of 
 heart, both in spoken and in written speech. 
 
 So far then had this matter gone when we got the 
 happy announcement of my kinsman's safety and of 
 his health, but, alas ! he was a close prisoner. 
 
 Ever after this I gave myself no rest in devising 
 and rejecting and devising again plans and plots to 
 procure his release ! but no invention that I could hit 
 upon seemed even to myself to have any possibility 
 in It of good issue. I inquired of some who had
 
 296 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 themselves been captives of the Turks, and afterwards 
 ransomed, to tell me of any scheme by which, either 
 through boldness, cunning, or the profuse spending 
 among them of gold in subornation of his keepers 
 and castellans, it might be possible to win him his 
 freedom. They said they could hardly remember of 
 a prisoner escaping from the Pirates of Tunis, so close 
 was the custody and so contrary to the interests and 
 avarice of all the people was it to wink upon an 
 escaping prisoner, and so far too from their cruel 
 nature to pity a Christian captive. But as for my 
 Lord, who was worth to them a King's ransom, it was 
 not conceivable but that he should be guarded with 
 uncommon vigilance and wariness, in some high- 
 walled, deep-moated castle, of which the Tunisians 
 had many score in their country. I asked if they 
 knew where such a prisoner as my kinsman would in 
 most likelihood be impounded. They said they knew 
 not. There were gaols and dungeons for prisoners 
 new taken at a certain town named Bizerta where 
 the ships' arsenals were, which town lay some few 
 leagues north of the great city of Tunis ; but they 
 agreed that for so esteemed a captive it was more 
 likely the Bey would find a securer imprisonment in 
 the city itself, and in some gaol or castle near his 
 Palace, where he might, no doubt, touch with his 
 prisoner upon the matter of his conversion to the 
 Moslem Faith, and his entry into the service of the 
 Pirates, and where the prisoner would constantly be 
 under the eyes of the officers of the Bey's own body-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 297 
 
 guard. This was a very heavy discouragement to me, 
 and I had perforce to give up all hopes of attempting 
 any rescue of my kinsman by force or by guile ; but I 
 nevertheless did not wholly abandon my projects, 
 though I could never put them into any practicable 
 shape. Then did the months go slowly forward ; very 
 gloomily to me, no sign or token ever coming from 
 my kinsman ; and I saw myself obliged to yield 
 up my last expectations of doing somewhat for his 
 help. 
 
 It was five months after his being taken, and three 
 months and three weeks after our receipt of news that 
 he was alive and well, that one day as I was passing 
 through the town of Messina with a part of my troop, 
 the corporal who rode behind me was accosted by 
 one in the habit of a seafaring man, who asked if 
 I were not Captain St Keyne, and being told I was, 
 the fellow begged to have speech of me on a matter 
 of importance. Now it had ever been my Lord's 
 custom to be easy of access to all kinds and condi- 
 tions of men, as often being able to gather from the 
 lowly some whisper of things going amiss and some 
 hint as to a reform of them ; so, desiring to follow 
 him in this as in everything, I pulled up my horse, 
 and, " Well, Sir," said I, in Italian, " in what can I 
 serve you ? " The fellow looked about him, and see- 
 ing none within earshot (for our men had fallen back 
 to let him come to my horse's bridle rein), " Captain 
 St. Keyne," said he, in good broad English, but 
 dropping his voice almost to a whisper, " I come
 
 298 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 direct from your kinsman, Lord St. Keyne, and I 
 have a message for you." 
 
 Now, I do not pretend to have a stronger command 
 over my behaviour in public than another ; still when 
 a man is a seasoned soldier and has been through fire 
 and slaughter, he counts upon some proper restraint 
 of himself, and in truth I have no reason in general 
 to complain of myself on this score. This sudden 
 speech of the stranger however so took me aback that 
 I protest I turned dizzy and had some ado to sit 
 steady on my horse ; but I commanded myself and 
 thought what I would do next, and then I spoke, 
 calmly enougli. 
 
 " Walk by my horse's side, Sir, I pray you ; a 
 hundred yards from this are the barracks, where we 
 intend an hour's halt." Then I put the troop in 
 motion again, and carried the stranger with me 
 through the barrack gates. He was a black-bearded 
 man of forty or so, his face roughened by sun and 
 wind ; he was dressed like an Italian sailor, and wore 
 a little red peaked cap, in the mode of the southern 
 Italians ; but for all his darkness, his beard and his 
 garb, there was Englishman written in his looks as 
 plainly as I could hear it in his speech. As soon as 
 we were in private, I questioned the English sailor, 
 for so I fancied him to be, and this is what he 
 told me. 
 
 " I am an Englishman from Poole in Dorsetshire, 
 and I was brought up to the trade of shipbuilding. 
 Business being slack at home, I was offered work
 
 Beyond the Seas. 299 
 
 in the arsenal of Antwerp and after that at Trieste, 
 where I worked profitably as master shipwright five 
 years and married a wife. I was then offered employ- 
 ment at Naples, and travelling to this latter city by 
 sea, was captured by a Corsair in the Adriatic some 
 two years ago and carried to Tunis. There I have 
 worked at shipbuilding in the Bey's arsenal, and my 
 ransom being fixed at only thirty gold doubloons 
 (for I took care to hide from them that I had any 
 particular skill), I procured this sum through my 
 Italian wife and some friends at Trieste, and became 
 a free man. A little before my going I heard of the 
 capture of the famous Sicilian Admiral, Lord St. 
 Keyne, and his crew. The crew are already sold for 
 slaves and dispersed, and I know no more of them, 
 but the Lord was kept prisoner first at Bizerta and 
 latterly in the Castle at Tunis. The Pirates guard 
 him closely, and yet for reasons of their own, give 
 him some considerable liberty, as of examining the 
 city, and the ships, and conversing through an Italian 
 interpreter with the people ; for 'tis well known they 
 have no will to allow his ransom for any sum what- 
 ever, and they hope in time he will consent to take 
 service with them. I had some occasions to have 
 speech with his Lordship, who, knowing that I was 
 about to regain my liberty, confided to me the coming 
 hither and the communicating to you of a scheme he 
 had formed for his escape, with some five or six of his 
 fellow captives of all nations." 
 
 " Stay, Sir ! " cried I, " let me understand this
 
 300 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 matter a little better. Am I to take it from you 
 that my Lord by direct word of mouth to you has 
 conveyed a message to me ? " 
 
 " He has, Sir, no longer than ten days since, for 
 there happened to be in Tunis Port an aviso ship 
 from the Knights Hospitallers of Malta, treating of 
 the ransom and release of certain prisoners, and 
 by them I was carried with some fourscore other 
 ransomed prisoners to the Island of Malta, which is, 
 as your Honour knows, not two days' sail from 
 hence." 
 
 Now, desirous as I was to believe this good news 
 of the stranger, I could not hide from myself that 
 there was room here for treachery of a kind to which 
 these perfidious Miscreants of Africa are but too prone ; 
 and so it behoved me not to be entrapped into doing 
 'what might bring trouble to my Lord, and destruction 
 or captivity to those who might seek to give him mis- 
 taken help. 
 
 " My friend," said I to the Englishman, " I believe 
 in my heart you are an honest man, but you are too 
 well acquainted with the Turks not to know that it 
 behoves all those who have dealings with them to 
 be wary " 
 
 The stranger interrupted me here with " Sir, I am 
 expecting a question from you which you have not 
 yet put, and which, being answered by me, should set 
 your reasonable doubts at rest." He smiled upon me 
 as he said these words. 
 
 •' Ha !" cried I, " I had forgot. Do I see you come
 
 Beyond the Seas. 301 
 
 to that ? Then show me the token that you are a 
 true man indeed, and the faithful ambassador of my 
 cousin." 
 
 On this he opened his shirt and took in his hand a 
 Httle round package made of leather neatly sewn 
 round and hanging from his neck by a thong of the 
 same piece of leather. He had a great clasp knife 
 hanging by a yarn round his middle after the fashion 
 of sailors, and setting the edge of the blade against 
 the seam of the little package, he cut through threads 
 and all and laid bare a silver coin of nearly the bigness 
 of an English crown, which, without a word, he handed 
 to me. 
 
 It was a silver ducat of Venice, and worn pretty 
 smooth. I took it in my hand and carried it to the 
 window to look closely at some marks scratched upon 
 its surface, but the rather, I will honestly confess it, to 
 hide from the stranger, while my back was turned 
 upon him, the signs of the perturbation of my 
 spirits into which this matter of the coin had thrown 
 me. 
 
 Holding the coin so that the light shone slantingly 
 upon it, I could very plainly see, scratched thereon 
 with the point of a knife or dagger, a shape of an 
 escutcheon, and drawn across that a band or belt with 
 three little diamonds thereon depicted. 
 
 Now, that the reader may understand the meaning 
 of all this, I must tell him of an understanding between 
 my cousin and myself so long ago that it was before 
 ever my cousin had seen a sword drawn in anger. It
 
 302 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 was in England, and when he and I were riding through 
 the western counties to join the Royalists then in 
 Cornwall under Sir Bevil Greenvil. The boy was 
 jesting with me after his wont (his humour being ever 
 sprightly and merry) and his head being then filled with 
 the extravagance of the tales of Knights Errant and 
 the like, and set upon considering only the glory and 
 magnificence and romance of war, little recking how 
 dreary is the reality ; — " If ever we are parted, Cousin 
 Humphrey," said the child (for in truth he was little 
 more), " and you are taken captive by the enemy and 
 desire to send word to me where you be, how shall I 
 make sure that your messenger is a true man and to 
 be trusted ? " 
 
 " Why, Ralph," said I, " I cannot tell." 
 " Well," said the boy very seriously, " your mes- 
 senger must bring from you a sign or token that he is 
 a true man, as you will remember was done by Arnaldo 
 in the tale of Garvin de Montglane, who, being taken 
 prisoner by the infidel Soldan of Lombardy, the 
 messenger was known to be no traitor because he 
 brought Arnaldo's cross-handled dagger, with seven 
 notches made by him on the blade. Now, Humphrey, 
 should you ever be taken prisoner and desire to have 
 word with me, do you send me either a smooth pebble, 
 or a coin, or a shell, or any like thing, on which you 
 have emblazoned with the point of your dagger the 
 charges on our shield ; and by that token shall I know 
 the messenger to be the messenger of truth, and I 
 swear to you, Humphrey,'' cried the boy, lifting his
 
 Beyond the Seas. 303 
 
 hand to Heaven, " that, after getting that token, I will 
 die, but I will work your release." 
 
 I had, I will confess, forgotten this idle talk, but 
 Ralph reminded me of it on that very last day before 
 the fight at Port Niccolo, as we were running down 
 the coast with the enemy in hot pursuit. In our 
 flight we purposely kept our Corvetto hindmost 
 of our squadron and nearest the enemy ; my kins- 
 man and I sitting together on the taffrail through this 
 long and idle day, from early dawn to near sunset, 
 devising of many things that had befallen us in our 
 late busy life, for seldom had we had in the thick of 
 our doings and our many separations so full leisure 
 for talk as we had that day while we sat there waiting 
 for the white tower of Palu to show over our bows. 
 Be sure I often went over afterwards everything 
 that happened that last day. I remember how 
 the white and grey sea-birds flew in circles above 
 our heads and we watched them, and Ralph ever and 
 anon, in the lightness of his humour, would throw 
 pieces of biscuit into the waves, and laughed to see 
 the birds swoop down and plunge, and struggle to- 
 gether for their prize. " Humphrey," said he to me 
 all of a sudden, "do you remember when we rid 
 together to the wars across Dartmoor in Devonshire, 
 and that which we agreed upon then ? " and he 
 reminded me of what I have said above. " Remember," 
 said he, " if you are taken by the Turks, you are to 
 send to me the tracing with a dagger-point of our 
 arms, and that will be a token that there is no Turkish
 
 304 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 deceit in the thing." Now the blazon of the St. 
 Keyne arms is argent on a fess azure three fusils of 
 the first ; and this is what I found very plainly 
 inscribed upon the coin. 
 
 I turned round to the stranger, and took him by 
 the hand : " Friend," said I, " give me my cousin's 
 message."
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " My Lord St. Keyne," said John Fowler (for that 
 ivas this honest fellow's name) " besought me to go 
 straight to you in Sicily, to tell you freely who I 
 was and whence I came, and if you should show any 
 suspicions of me (as my Lord said you would, Sir), 
 I was to deliver to you this coin. He bid me tell 
 you this ; that he is not so well guarded in Tunis 
 city but that he has very good hopes of giving 
 those about him the slip, and that he has entered into 
 a plot with some other Christian captives for their 
 escape on a particular night in the coming month of 
 December, namely, on Christmas Eve. His Lordship 
 wishes you to procure a swift galley, man it with a 
 crew of trustworthy men, disguising them in the dress 
 of Moroccans, and run boldly on the afternoon of that 
 day into the strait or channel, named Goletta, which 
 leads from the Bay of Tunis into the great lake 
 whereon is situate the city itself Now, you are so 
 to time your visit as to be running up the aforesaid 
 Strait of Goletta a little before sunset, and to drop 
 your anchor about a mile from the great fortress which 
 
 X
 
 3o6 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 lies on its north shore. If you advance farther, you 
 will be boarded and examined by the officers of the 
 Port, and should that threaten, you will immediately 
 put to sea again and escape ; but if not, you will bide 
 where you are till dawn, and nothing happening by 
 then, depart for the time ; but if all goes well, my 
 Lord will that night give his keepers the slip, and at 
 a little past midnight come aboard you in a boat." 
 
 He added to this some further instructions for our 
 conduct which I need not here set down. 
 
 " It is well," said I, " all this can I do very easily, 
 save in one matter I fear a mistake. Who shall pilot 
 us in these waters which no Christian navigator ever 
 goes into to come out again .-* " 
 
 " My Lord," said Mr. Fowler, " has provided for 
 this, and has undertaken with a pilot who will be 
 waiting for you at the end ot the great Bay an hour 
 or so before sunset on Christmas Eve. He will 
 show a small white flag as he nears you, and to 
 your questions will give you the watchword ' Sicilia! 
 He will then board your galley and show you exactly 
 where you are to drop your anchor in the Goletta 
 channel to wait for my Lord." 
 
 It was now the 20th of November, and we had 
 therefore a month and more to get ready in. It 
 happened that we had taken from the Corsairs some 
 time before a small galley, so fine in the lines of 
 her hull, and therefore so swift, that had the wind 
 been moderate, we should never have overhauled her ; 
 but we chanced to come upon her in that great Bight
 
 Beyond the Seas. 307 
 
 wherein lies Catania, where we had the weather gauge 
 of her, and the wind blowing almost a gale from 
 S.S.E., she could not escape from us, and we took her 
 without a shot fired. This vessel, from her crankness 
 and lightness, my Lord would not commission to be 
 part of our squadron, but had a mind to re-fit her 
 some day for his private use, and so bought her back 
 from the Treasury, but for some reason nothing was 
 done with her, and she now lay idle in the Harbour 
 of Palermo. 
 
 Repairing thither, I laid the whole matter before 
 the Viceroy, and begged him to allow me to put a 
 crew of our best men into this little galley, and with 
 them endeavour at the rescue of my kinsman. His 
 Grace was very willing, but advised me to let no word 
 get abroad of our purpose until we were about to sail ; 
 " For," said he, " the Corsairs have spies here, as we 
 well know, and you are to bear in mind that with a 
 fair wind a boat can reach the African shore in three 
 or four days, and you might find the Tunisians 
 prepared to counterplot you." 
 
 I therefore set about all my preparations with due 
 caution and secrecy. I fresh rigged and victualled 
 the galley entirely at our own expense, furnishing 
 her with sweeps as well as sails. I christened her 
 the Golondrina, which is Spanish for Swallow, a name 
 that might typify the little vessel's lightness and 
 swiftness. We then drafted into her, with his Grace's 
 leave, some 1 50 of the smartest and best of the sailors 
 of the fleet, this being a very large crew, seeing that 
 
 X 2
 
 3o8 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 we meant no fighting, but my purpose was to man 
 the sweeps very strongly in the case arising of our 
 finding ourselves becalmed or with a contrary wind in 
 Tunis Bay. 
 
 On the 6th of December, all being in readiness, I 
 put to sea for a cruise, to practise the crew and to see 
 how the galley behaved. We ran round the coast 
 from Palermo and in and out of the harbours of 
 Messina, Catania, and Syracuse, one after the other, 
 for I designed to make the crew as handy and smart 
 as 1 could in this sort of work ; and I had reason to 
 be well pleased with both men and ship. 
 
 Five days before Christmas-tide we put to sea from 
 Syracuse, having, as I calculated, a voyage of between 
 300 and 350 miles to Goletta, but the wind was 
 favourable ; namely, a five-knot breeze from nearly 
 due east. So soon as we were out of harbour, I 
 shortened sail and calling the men together told them 
 shortly whither we were bound. I had as yet taken 
 none into my confidence but the Captain of the ship, 
 a very honest Genoese, and his Lieutenant, who 
 happened to be his own brother. Jan Loots was of 
 the crew, being a very cool-headed man not likely to 
 fail me in a sudden strait, and him likewise I had told 
 what voyage we were upon. None of these three 
 had made any cavil at the enterprise, but I feared 
 it might appear to the men but a desperate business, 
 as I was expounding its nature to them, though the 
 Captain had told me not to fear they would hang 
 back, for the confidence they had in any scheme of
 
 Beyond the Seas. 309 
 
 their Capitano (meaning my Lord), and because the 
 hatred they had of the cruel Corsairs would ever over- 
 power their terror of them. In spite of the Captain's 
 telling me this, I say, I was a little half-hearted about 
 their consent. " My lads," said I, addressing them, 
 " I am aware 'tis a desperate venture we are upon, for 
 we are going to put our heads into the lion's mouth ; 
 but 'tis to save your Capitano from these black- 
 hearted devils of Corsairs, and it is his own commands 
 you will be following if you continue upon this 
 voyage, for it is he who has ordered beforehand every 
 step we are to take." Then I told them of all we 
 were to do ; how we were to disguise ourselves as 
 Turks, stain our arms and faces, how we were to 
 meet a Pilot and where, and all the rest of it. 1 
 then said : — " It is a perilous service, and if any of 
 you think the danger too great, there is a boat here 
 that will serve to carry back to land any who fear 
 to go on with us." But looking closely on their faces 
 and seeing no signs of flinching, ^'' Per Dio!" cried I 
 (which is a little oath for ever in their own mouths) 
 smiling upon them, " I perceive that for this service 
 a very little boat will suffice ! " 
 
 In truth, no man thought of holding back ; so I 
 ordered full sail to be put on the ship, and, with some 
 little variations of the wind and weather, \ve made Cape 
 Bon on the morning of the third day of our voyage, 
 and lay off the Cape till very early on the morning of 
 Christmas Eve ; having then still, as I imagined, some 
 60 miles to travel, with a fav^ouring breeze on our beam.
 
 310 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 I had provided red skull-caps for the men, such 
 as the Moroccans wear, and such clothes as are in 
 common use by all the sailors of the Barbary Coast, 
 to wit, loose trousers, gathered at the ankle, and such 
 like, we having great store of such apparel captured 
 in the Turkish galleys. I had likewise provided 
 a stain of an infusion of walnuts, wherewith we 
 every one ot us (except some half-a-dozen of the 
 Italians, whom nature and the wind and sun had 
 already stained as dark as any blackamoor), every 
 one of us, I sa}', washed our hands, arms and faces 
 with this brown juice, and we came out, what with our 
 baggy breeches and red caps, and the great crimson 
 sashes wound about our middles, with pistols stuck 
 therein, such villainous-looking rogues as our very 
 mothers would not have known for Christian men. 
 At all which doings our lighthearted sailors laughed 
 and jested, despising and forgetting (like brave men) 
 the imminent peril they were running into. 
 
 Tunis is, as I believe I have mentioned before, a 
 gathering place of all the Barbary Pirates, from 
 Tangiers in the far west to Tripoli in the east ; and 
 in that circumstance we hoped to find our safety, 
 for any Turks who should see us would judge us 
 from a distance to be of a kindred nation to their 
 own. In the Bay we passed not a few Corsair 
 galleys, some at anchor, some standing out to sea ; 
 and we were not afraid to pass quite close to them 
 or even to answer their hail, for we had one or two on 
 board who could speak their tongue ; one in especial.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 311 
 
 a Spaniard of Malaga, who had passed eighteen years 
 of his youth and manhood in captivity at Tetuan in 
 Morocco, and spoke their dialect as well as or better 
 than his own. This fellow, who had a present wit, 
 answered the hail of one great galley that passed us 
 outward bound, and he told us afterwards what their 
 talk had been. " Where from, and what luck } " 
 cried the Pirates. " From the Sicily coast," answered 
 our disguised Spaniard, " and very good luck we have 
 met with. We have 150 Christians on board at this 
 moment." " Allah is great ! " cried the stranger, 
 " and you were wise to go there now that we have got 
 their great Capitano (whom may Sheitan confound !) 
 a prisoner in our hands." " Ha !" cried our Spaniard, 
 " but they say he is about to return ! " " Never fear ! " 
 cried they, " the Bey is too wise for that." 
 
 I was glad when the galley passed out of hearing, 
 and learning our interpreter's raillery, desired him to 
 be more chary of his tongue for the future. 
 
 The wind was variable from light to almost nothing, 
 and as we had plenty of time to get to the head of the 
 Bay before nightfall, I went forward with as little 
 spread of canvas as might be ; fearing to anchor and 
 wait, lest some inquisitive boatman or fisherman should 
 board us. W^e conjectured a storm to be brooding, 
 for there was a blackness in the sky toward the south, 
 and the heat was great for the time of year. We went 
 on thus in a very leisurely manner, to time our coming 
 to the Goletta Channel to nearly sunset. 
 
 As we came to the head of the bay we kept a sharp
 
 312 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 look-out for the pilot-boat that was to show us the 
 signal flag. Several crossed our bows and hailed us, 
 but each time our Spaniard, by my ordering, put 
 them off, and we carried on till presently one fellow 
 ran across very close, and as my eye was upon him, I 
 saw he showed a little bit of a white rag for a moment 
 between the gunwale of his boat and the water. I 
 immediately stopped the way of the galley, and he 
 hailed us. I bid the Spaniard ask him if he had any 
 business with us, and one of the two men in the boat 
 stood up looking hard at us for a bit as if he were 
 doubtful of us, but presently he sang out " Sicilian 
 Then we took him and his boat- mate on board, and 
 towed their boat. Neither of the two would say much ; 
 and I, doubting still how far they were to be trusted, 
 ordered the crew to go forward, and the Spaniard 
 to interpret for me with the head man of the two. 
 
 " Ask him," said I, " what orders he has." 
 
 " To pilot the galley into the Goletta, and show the 
 right anchoring ground." 
 
 " Where is that ? " I asked. 
 
 " About a mile this side of the fort," said he. 
 
 " Will the officers come aboard this evening ? " 
 
 " Not if we get to our moorings at nightfall." 
 
 " Should we shorten sail ? " 
 
 He nodded. It was then less than an hour of 
 sundcwn,and we had got into the narrow channel 
 they call Goletta. 
 
 He stood on the roundhouse with the Captain, 
 myself, and the man at the helm, giving his directions
 
 Beyond the Seas. 313 
 
 very quietly, after the manner of pilots, with a motion 
 of his hand this way and that. Presently he pointed 
 to the fort now three miles away : it was already 
 falling dark, the blackness of the sky somewhat 
 advancing the time of dusk, the wind being gusty at 
 times, and then calm again, presaging with the black- 
 ness overhead a thunderstorm. At our pilot's direction 
 we dropped our anchor opposite the fort, and at the 
 same moment the clouds were cloven asunder with a 
 lightning flash. It thundered very quickly upon the 
 flash, and the rain began to come down thick and 
 steady. It was so dark already, what with storm and 
 rain and nightfall, that we could not sec the shore on 
 either side. Thought I, this could not happen better. 
 The little boats about us now began to run for shore, 
 fearing the gusts of wind, and I saw there was little 
 danger of any officers boarding us while this weather 
 lasted. 
 
 We waited patiently till midnight, listening in the 
 lulls of the tempest for any sounds of a boat putting 
 off from shore. The storm continued, and the wind 
 got so heavy that I feared at one time for our moor- 
 ings, and at another that in so wild a night no boat 
 could pass across the water. Of this, though, there was 
 the less peril, as the wind, which was chiefly westerly, 
 was partly off the north shore of the channel, which 
 here runs about east and west, and we under its shelter ; 
 therefore, though we felt the wind strong, there was no 
 room for any heavy sea to get up. I had let the men 
 have their supper and turn in, for I knew not what
 
 314 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Avork might not lie before them ; but an hour before 
 midnight I had all hands piped on deck. 
 
 It was a little past midnight, and our eyes were 
 now fixed most earnestly upon the shore, whence we 
 expected the first signs of a boat putting off, when we 
 saw lights glancing hurriedly to and fro on land just 
 below the Fort. This made us uneasy, for it was 
 from thence, as John Fowler had warned us, that my 
 Lord's boat would come, and we thought it strange he 
 should let lights show at so momentous a time, and 
 the Fort and soldiers so close. Presently after, we saw 
 lanterns carried here and there in the Fort itself, and 
 a gnn was fired after that, seemingly as a signal. 
 Then came the rattle of musketry fire, but against 
 whom they were firing we could only guess, for it was 
 so dark we could see nothing save the flash from the 
 muzzle of the guns, and we heard nothing but their faint 
 report. Now we knew at once that the alarm must 
 have been given, and my Lord's escape discovered. 
 While we were wondering what would happen next 
 we heard the splash of oars rowed towards us with a 
 very quick stroke, but the splash only, the oars being 
 seemingly muffled in their rowlocks. 
 
 We were showing no lights, by my Lord's orders 
 through John Fowler, and for signals we had done 
 nothing but this ; when it was exactly an hour after 
 sunset we had shown a light three times, for thirty 
 seconds by the watch, and with the like space of time 
 betwsen the showings. This was to warn those on 
 shore of our having come. We knew now that the
 
 Beyond the Seas, 315 
 
 boat was escaping towards us, and but for my Lord's 
 positive orders to let no light or lantern be seen, lying 
 as we were under the very guns of the Fortress, I 
 would have done so now, fearing his missing us in the 
 dark. 
 
 Listening as well as we could through the noises of 
 
 the storm for the coming boat, we presently could 
 
 make out other sounds of rowing oars and these not 
 
 muffled, and we knew thereby that my Lord was 
 
 being chased. Our two pilots, who had kept so cool 
 
 hitherto, now began to be very unquiet, shouting out 
 
 to us this and that in their language, and pointing to 
 
 the sails, and again making signs as if they would 
 
 shoot at something in the water. I called the 
 
 Spaniard to interpret for me, and learned they were 
 
 bidding us put up sail to be ready to make off before 
 
 the guns of the Fort should blow us out of the w^ater, 
 
 and that we were to be ready to resist the soldiers 
 
 who were pursuing the fugitives in their boat, and 
 
 would assuredly, they said, board us and cut all our 
 
 throats. This was good advice, and I bid the captain 
 
 get as much sail on the ship as he dared, without 
 
 dragging our anchors (for we had two down, the wind 
 
 blowing hard now from the west), which he did, but 
 
 she could carry but little breadth of canvas in the 
 
 great wind that blew : only as much as showed like 
 
 a lady's kerchief I told off forty of our men to 
 
 stand by with muskets in their hands, and set Jan 
 
 Loots and another to hold axes ready to cut the 
 
 anchor cables at a word from me. By this time
 
 3i6 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 we plainly heard the regular oar-beat of boats racing 
 very swiftly towards us, and now and then the sound 
 of a shot, which we guessed to be the soldiers in 
 their boat firing on the runaway. The shore being 
 over a mile away and the sea bad for travelling 
 in, we had had full time for getting in readiness, and 
 now we peered into the night for the first signs of the 
 boats. We could just see about thirty yards or so 
 from us, and that only dimly, beyond that was like a 
 wall of darkness and rain drizzle. Presently the nose 
 of my Lord's skiff shot swiftly through from the dark- 
 ness into our sight, and immediately after a great 
 wherry of the soldiers, pulling twelve oars. Seeing 
 their prey so near escaping them, two of the soldiers 
 in her stood up, and levelling their pieces, let fly, while 
 my Lord's boat was within a few yards of us (we could 
 now plainly see Ralph with the helm in his hand 
 and we could hear him cheering on his men). At the 
 shots a gentleman sitting by his side in the stern 
 sheets, started up, lifted both his arms with a loud 
 cry and immediately fell forward wounded. Seeing 
 this cruel act, our fellows with the muskets could not 
 forbear their indignation, and without waiting for an 
 order fired a volley upon the soldiers. It was a very 
 unfortunate thing for us that they did so, for it served 
 to mark our position to the gunners on shore, who 
 must have been waiting for a sign of us, and before 
 the smoke of our muskets had cleared away we saw 
 the flashes of over a hundred great guns from the 
 fortress. Two round shots came on the instant
 
 Beyond the Seas. 317 
 
 crashing through our side and fifty others ploughed 
 up the water all round us, while others went whistling 
 over our heads. By this time, however, the little skiff 
 was alongside and made fast, and my Lord, spring- 
 ing on deck, called out to cut the cables, which 
 was immediately done. The ship, which had been 
 straining at her m.oorings, started forward into the 
 night like a greyhound from the slips. We were still 
 in great peril and imminent danger from the cannon 
 fire, for the shots came all about us, but in three or 
 four minutes the great force of the wind had driven 
 us beyond the range of the guns ; yet its great violence, 
 though it saved us from the gun fire, brought us in 
 great peril in another way, for we were now scudding 
 before a tempest in the black of night along a narrow 
 channel, with sunken rocks and sandbanks on either 
 side, and in which we had by daylight seen some half 
 dozen ships at anchor. Only ever and again in the 
 departing storm came the last few flashes of lightning 
 and lit up the whole firmament far and near, and the 
 unquiet waves, and the fortress with its puffs of smoke, 
 and the channel studded with ships at anchor ; and 
 these short lightings up helped us to steer our course ; 
 indeed, but for them I know not into what hidden 
 dangers we should have run in our flight. 
 
 So we managed somehow to keep in mid-channel. 
 Once, in the darkness, we were like to have stumbled 
 on and run down a great war galley of the Corsairs, 
 but seeing her loom just in time to clear her, we went 
 flying by and only grazed her quarter with something
 
 3i8 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 of a bump, but with no great harm done, save the 
 oversetting the most of her crew of over 200, who had 
 swarmed up on deck at the fearful noise of the cannon- 
 nade from the fort. So swiftly did we rush by 
 them that they had no time to do us any hurt (sprawl- 
 as they all were on the decks) either to shoot upon us 
 or grapple with us, only we heard a great shouting 
 out of (as we supposed) pagan curses, in their foul 
 and filthy lingo. 
 
 When after a little of this quick travelling we guessed 
 we must have got out of the Goletta Channel into the 
 great Bay, we had no means of assuring ourselves of 
 it, with no landmarks visible and the lightning now 
 ended, and we should not have known but for our 
 pilots, who bid us let down a bucket over the side. 
 When they looked at what came up they told us 
 we were already in the Bay, for the water in Goletta, 
 coming from the city lagoon, is green and ill-smelling, 
 and that in the Bay clean sea water. Thereupon we 
 altered our course to northerly, and felt at last that we 
 had given our enemies the slip. Presently, the rain 
 having quite abated or we sailed out of it, a little 
 waxing moon arose, and our pilot could see his land- 
 marks and set our course aright to drop him and his 
 boat-mate off a little village (whose name I have 
 forgot) at the entrance of the Bay, to which they 
 belonged. This we did, my Lord giving the two a 
 bag of gold coins between them ; so they departed 
 rejoicing, and we sped on our way, rejoicing too. 
 
 Now at last we could look into each other's faces
 
 Beyond the Seas. 319 
 
 and give welcome to my Lord and question him of 
 his great escape, and how it came so near of failing, 
 which it seemed was owing to one of the gentlemen 
 he brought off with him. My kinsman had rescued with 
 himself six sailors of the crew of his Flagship and 
 three Spanish gentlemen, two being officers of the 
 King's army, and the third a rich merchant living at 
 Syracuse, in Sicily. It seems that the whole of them, 
 under my Lord's management, had safely and secretly 
 broken from the castle near the Bey's Palace in Tunis, 
 and come by divers ways to gather together before 
 midnight in the broken, rocky ground under the 
 Fortress, where, under its very guns, my Lord justly 
 thought, if they were missed, they would never be 
 looked for. It was the unfortunate gentleman from 
 Syracuse who, coming in the dark upon a sentry 
 near the Fortress, took him for one of his own com- 
 panions and made I know not what foolish speech 
 to him, whereupon the sentry, scenting the project 
 in hand, very naturally levelled his piece at the poor 
 Spaniard, and would have shot him through the head 
 had not my Lord knocked the barrel up in time, and 
 so saved the gentleman's brains. The alarm, however, 
 was given, and though the two Spanish officers very 
 expeditiously knocked the soldier on the head, the 
 garrison began to buzz out like bees from a hive, with 
 torches and lanterns, these being the moving lights 
 we had seen. Upon this, our party ran helter-skelter 
 down the rocks and entered their boat, getting by their 
 haste some little start of the soldiers, who, however,
 
 320 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 in their great wherry could row more swiftly than they, 
 and yet just missed of catching them up. It was this 
 Syracuse gentleman (who seemed born to be unlucky) 
 whom, with the last shot, the soldiers wounded with a 
 bullet : it passed from behind between and through 
 his shoulders, by a little only missing the spine, and 
 so right through his lungs ; yet the man recovered 
 when he got among his friends at home. 
 
 With the diversion of recounting this hairbreadth 
 escape, and other the like pleasant occurrences of my 
 Lord's captivity (since all's well that ends well), we 
 passed the time very agreeably till we reached Syracuse 
 again, late on the evening of the Feast of St. John the 
 Evangelist, so swiftly did the strong west wind bear 
 us from Tunis Bay. 
 
 The secret of the purpose of our departure had not 
 been so well kept but that, through some hint given 
 or guess made, it was noised abroad among the people 
 after our sailing that we had gone to fetch them 
 back their great Admiral and preserver from the 
 Turks ; insomuch that we learnt afterwards that 
 they had kept watch for our return, counting the hours 
 till our galley might re-enter the harbour and confirm 
 their hopes or dash them. She was first sighted fi'om 
 the heights, about noon, and as our Italian crew had 
 run up all the flags and pendants and ancients in the 
 Golondrina, and decked all her rigging with every 
 bit of coloured stuff we had on board, the townspeople 
 knew the good news so soon as the galley was sighted. 
 Then straightway such a clamour of gladness was heard
 
 Beyond the Seas. 321 
 
 in Syracuse, and such demonstration of rejoicing made, 
 as, I suppose, never before or since has been wit- 
 nessed in that city ; the bells in all the churches rang 
 out, rockets went up, music was everywhere in the 
 air when we landed, and crowds of citizens flocked 
 down to the water's edge to catch the first sight of his 
 face whom they had mourned for, as lost to them for 
 ever.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 I WOULD very gladly have left the politics of the 
 Island of Sicilia alone, and with the politics the politi- 
 cians, for I greatly mislike the one and the other, as 
 being (both here and elsewhere) for the most part, the 
 latter base, self-seeking men, and the former base and 
 ignoble courses which these ignoble men employ to- 
 wards their private ends : I say, I would very gladly 
 leave all this alone, but that my Lord's fortunes now 
 became very intimately bound up with the affairs of 
 the Island, as thus, briefly ; 
 
 I have said the statesmen, councillors, magistrates, 
 and captains, with others in authority, were all 
 seekers after their own honour, interest and profit, 
 who cared nothing for the good of their country : 
 " After me, let the deluge come " (as Monsieur 
 Scarron has it) was their maxim.. Yet they were not 
 all so ; the Viceroy might have been (nay, as we 
 gathered afterwards, in heart he was) as evil-minded 
 as the rest, but he well knew that the safety and 
 prosperity of the Island conduced to his own prosperity 
 and honour, and he endeavoured to rule place and
 
 Beyond the Seas. 323 
 
 people well, so far as his instruments and the ever 
 tumultuous mobile would let him. So again was 
 that good man (for so I still can honestly call him) the 
 Chief or Grand Inquisitor of Sicily, the Italian Jesuit 
 priest whom I have already once named, Monsignore 
 Distorri. Now this to me is a very delicate subject, 
 for as good Catholics, my Lord and I could not but 
 approve the good Father's zeal and godliness, but as 
 diligent seekers after truth along the path of enquiry 
 as well as along that of authority, we could not but 
 very strongly condemn this priest's narrowness and 
 bigotry. His learning was indeed incredible, but 
 more incredible and marvellous still was so learned a 
 man's unwillingness to let godliness or wisdom take 
 any form but blind faith and obedience to the orthodox 
 teaching of the Church. His charity to all his fellow 
 creatures was boundless as the sun's light, but it ever 
 stopped short at the souls of men ; their bodies it 
 utterly despised ; and he racked, tortured, and burnt 
 them as often as their owners seemed to him to 
 stray by a hair's breadth into heretical paths. He did 
 this with a zeal, and unction, and delight which, I am 
 willing to believe, arose quite as much from truest 
 kindliness and affection to his victims (who were 
 thus by fire, or other salutary torment to be purified, 
 delivered from the Evil One, and restored to salvation), 
 as for any edificatory and deterrent effect the spectacle 
 might have upon the faith and compliance to the 
 Church of the outer world. 
 
 It may readily be conceived that the common idle 
 
 y 2
 
 324 Beyond the Seas, 
 
 talk, among the citizens to which I have already 
 adverted, of my Lord's necromantic power stirred in 
 this devout ecclesiastic no small perturbation of mind. 
 He listened to many who, for reasons I shall presently 
 allege, were ill disposed to my Lord's continual as- 
 cendency in the Island. The Grand Inquisitor having 
 heard from them a very twisted and malignant 
 account of the matter, he touched upon it with my 
 Lord himself, who, esteeming him a learned man, 
 very freely and innocently replied to his questionings 
 with no disguise of his own opinions. The good 
 priest, who had grown out of all understanding of 
 deep matters or metaphysical reasoning, and had 
 come, through prejudice and preconception, into as 
 bigoted a condition of superstition as ever possessed 
 a poor benighted peasant or fishwife, was by this 
 conversation confirmed in his worst fears of the 
 peril my Lord's soul stood in through his manifest 
 tamperings with the Black Art, and clear communion 
 (so he would have it) with Satan himself. 
 
 Lest any in the future (as some through folly or 
 malignity have done in the past) should charge my 
 Lord or me, his humble historian, either with such 
 communion with the Enemy of mankind as was 
 imputed by Monsignore Distorri, or, on the other 
 hand, with an entire denial of the possibility of any 
 such communion, or the sin of it (if the thing be pos- 
 sible), I will here very shortly express the opinions of 
 my Lord, many times communicated to me, on this 
 matter of resort to the Father of Evil.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 325 
 
 My Lord held that there is no reasonable doubt 
 
 whatever that the Creator does, on rare occasions, 
 
 allow non-natural and unreal apparitions or phantas- 
 
 mata of things and bodies, perhaps to exhibit to such 
 
 as are (by affliction of unreason) wanting in faith in the 
 
 unseen world, some true token that there is a power 
 
 beyond their own. Furthermore, Ralph could not fail 
 
 to observe that in the common affairs of life, God but 
 
 very seldom intervenes directly, else would there be 
 
 justification for such as sit idly expecting of God's 
 
 providence, and waiting for signs thereof in their behalf. 
 
 Nevertheless He hath established in His omnipotent 
 
 science of all things, certain well-known laws whereby 
 
 certain resultants follow whenever certain causes set 
 
 them in motion. So likewise certain other more hidden, 
 
 and, so to speak, esoteric laws do exist unknown to 
 
 and unseen by the common run of mankind, which 
 
 laws are set to work by certain rare, yet none the 
 
 less previsionable and determinable causes. Of such 
 
 an order of laws are those which govern some at leas 
 
 of the aforesaid appearances ; namely, the passage 
 
 before the eyes of men of ghosts and spirits of the 
 
 dead, and certain phantasmagoric apparitions of the 
 
 living. Now, it may be affirmed (and herein my Lord 
 
 was in full agreement with that great man, Mr, Thomas 
 
 Hobbcs, late of Malmesbury and now of Paris) that 
 
 our Creator and Ruler hath so willed and determined 
 
 it, that no law of His is so subtle and obscure but 
 
 that He has granted to His favoured creature man 
 
 the power to resolve and declare it ; and this being so,
 
 326 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 it follows that men exist, though perhaps rarely, who 
 possess this deep science and can set in motion those 
 laws whereby the aforesaid ghosts of the dead can be 
 called up, or souls of the living conjured, and even 
 spirits other than mortal ones under the human dis- 
 pensation and of power greater than men's, can be 
 invoked and convoked at pleasure. Now, to do this 
 reverently and for the honour of God and the good 
 of His cause, which is that of Right and Justice, were 
 no sin. But who can say that a man shall exercise 
 this power and not be doing it for his own selfish 
 ends and private greed, or to revenge his injuries, or 
 gratify his sinful desires .'' Surely none shall arrogate 
 this privilege but he who should know himself placed 
 above the temptations of common men. 
 
 Therefore my Lord was in full agreement with the 
 aforesaid Mr. Hobbes in considering that both the 
 Church and the Law do proceed lawfully and right- 
 eously and expediently in condemning the above 
 practices, under the general name of Magic, as harmful 
 both to Religion and to the State, and indeed as 
 nothing less than instituting a new Religion and Laws 
 beyond the ken and practice of the judges of the land. 
 Wherefore witches and warlocks, often indeed only 
 thoughtless or pretending and ignorant persons (yet 
 not so ignorant but that they are often skilled in the 
 black and devilish art of bargaining with the Fiend 
 over the price of their own souls) are justly punished 
 by all tribunals. My Lord, however, would often say 
 he hated the cruelty of it, and would have some
 
 Beyond the Seas. 327 
 
 measure used in punishing these criminals, as by 
 reproving and admonishing them of their folly and 
 wickedness, when their guilt was not very black, and 
 in not incontinently condemning them to tortures 
 and flames (poor wretches !) as is now the custom. 
 Even in cases of obstinate impenitence and recal- 
 citrancy he would execute the offended law upon 
 the bodies of criminals mercifully, and, so to speak, 
 kindly and lovingly, as by hanging of them by the 
 neck, or submerging of them, till they be drowned, in 
 some neighbouring River, or Lake, or in the Sea. 
 
 But to go back : The state of parties now in Sicily 
 was ticklish, and, briefly put, it stood thus ; the 
 Viceroy, trying to make a stand for the honour of his 
 post against the exactions and robbery of the great 
 officers, was for ever crossed by them, while the people, 
 angered by the cruelties, injustices and extortions of 
 their Spanish masters, were preparing for a new 
 revolt. The Viceroy, who saw his safety, in all these 
 troubles and tangles of State, to lie chiefly in the good 
 discipline which we had established in his troops and 
 their love and loyalty to my Lord, was very willing 
 to uphold my Lord's designs in everything against 
 the High Officers of State, while these latter opposed 
 us for several reasons : first, that they could plot to 
 no purpose against the Viceroy while we and our 
 troops stood by him ; second, that my Lord was 
 an honest and honourable man who would never wink 
 at their doings or tacitly approve them, and that 
 rogues have ever this of conscience about them that
 
 328 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 they most cordially hate a disapprover of their 
 roguery ; third, that he was a foreigner among them ; 
 fourth, that he had raised himself to a greater emi- 
 nence than any man in Sicily by his exploits and 
 through the love and esteem which the common 
 people bore him ; and the Lords Councillors, being 
 ignoble men, they envied him. Any one of these 
 four reasons would have made them willing to undo 
 any man, but all four together put them in a fury of 
 animosity against my kinsman. 
 
 Apart from all these causes of mischance, and 
 mingling with them for greater mischief and misdoing, 
 was the polity of the Grand Inquisitor, who being 
 neither a Spaniard nor a Sicilian, but an Italian 
 Jesuit, and an honest man into the bargain, cared 
 not a rush for honours or pelf, regarding nothing 
 gained unless the Church gained (no matter by what 
 means) and desiring nothing but to foster religious 
 zeal and suppress religious heresy. To him all parties 
 in the State were fain to pay court, for in his single 
 person he held, as it were, by procuration all the 
 powers of the Holy Catholic Religion itself, which in 
 Sicily doth, or did at that time, mightily s'vvay, through 
 fear chiefly, all hearts and minds. The Lords Council- 
 lors in their opposition to us were not slow to perceive 
 his Reverence's estrangement from my Lord, and 
 used, as I have hinted, all their efforts to foment the 
 suspicions of the Churchman as to his Lordship's 
 supposed heretical opinions and conduct. With this 
 view they spread (or rather further extended, for it
 
 Beyond the Seas. 329 
 
 had already begun to spread) among the common 
 herd, the repute of my Lord's dealings with forbidden 
 Powers. Now, these stories coming exaggerated to his 
 Reverence's ears through his Inquisitorial emissaries 
 and familiars, together with reports of the esteem and 
 gratitude the people held my kinsman in, the Grand 
 Inquisitor began to fear the Faith itself in danger when 
 one so favoured by high and low could venture openly 
 to deal with magic arts. It behoved him therefore to 
 stir in the matter and make some examples, and 
 assuredly my Lord would himself have run no little 
 peril of a trial by the Holy Office, and of the fate of 
 the great Nolan Philosopher Bruno, whose honesty 
 and genius and virtue and piety could not save him 
 from the cruelty of the Italian Inquisitors, and who 
 perished at the stake some two score years before. 
 My kinsman however stood too high in favour with 
 the whole people and with the Viceroy, and was too 
 sure of a very faithful support from his soldiers and 
 sailors, and they thought it wisest to let him be. 
 
 The Grand Inquisitor indeed was a man who feared 
 little or nothing, yet was his boldness too politic to 
 strike at my kinsman except indirectly ; and he 
 therefore caused his Familiars to use their dilicience 
 among the people, so that several poor fellows, on one 
 pretence or another, were dragged into the dungeons 
 of the Inquisition, and, under pressure of I know not 
 what infernal torments, confessed to I know not what 
 uncommitted crimes, some dying under the stress of 
 their torturings, and some being brought to open and
 
 330 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 shameful deaths in the streets and Piazzas of Palermo 
 City. 
 
 My kinsman did his utmost to prevent this iniquity 
 as he deemed it, and scandal to the Church, and 
 fearing to fail to bring conviction to the Lords Coun- 
 cillors if he alleged the ferity or injustice of the act 
 he inveighed in Council against it on the score of its 
 im.policy ; urging that it would move the citizens' 
 spirits in their present inquietude against Spanish 
 rule in Church and State. Many agreed with him 
 publicly and more in private, but the influence of the 
 Inquisition was strong enough to pass this inhuman 
 measure in Council, and the prisoners were burnt. 
 
 I will note in passing that, strange as it may appear 
 in my countrymen's ears, the Grand Inquisitor had 
 both a voice and a vote in the Council of State ; not 
 indeed in the Lesser or Inner and Privy Council, 
 which consisted of but five members and did not even 
 include my kinsman, but as in this body the Vice- 
 roy could command but two votes, his own and his 
 nephew's, the Generalissimo, so it was seldom or 
 never convoked by him. I am speaking now of the 
 greater Council where twenty-three Councillors sat, 
 or had a right to sit, and in which (being a sort of 
 little Parliament) nearly all measures of State were 
 debated and passed. The Grand Inquisitor feeling his 
 power and seeing his success so far, was emboldened 
 to go still further. In this, however, he went too 
 far ; for, that the people might not doubt that their 
 favourite had come under the heavy displeasure of
 
 Beyond the Seas. 331 
 
 the Church and was powerless in her hands, and even 
 that my Lord's very soldiers were not safe from her 
 chastisements, he caused to be arrested three of our 
 troopers (one being an English Corporal of the name 
 of Cappers in the Viceroy's own body guard, and 
 the other two Spaniards of good army standing). 
 These three were taken up on I know not what idle 
 pretence of a charge trumped up by the priestly 
 delators, and immediately lodged in the prison of 
 the Inquisition. 
 
 The Council was sitting, and my Lord, having no 
 intention that day of attending it, was busy in my 
 company with affairs of his command, when Lieu- 
 tenant Brown (late Corporal in my Lord's English 
 troop) ran pale-faced into the room where we were 
 sitting to give us the news of our fellows being taken. 
 My Lord having enquired closely as to the facts, spoke 
 no further word, but buckling on his sword which 
 lay upon the table, and catching up his hat, strode 
 hastily through the Palace to where the Council were 
 sitting. 
 
 I followed as far as I could go, that is, to the ante- 
 chamber of the Council Chamber, where our own men 
 of the Viceroy's body guard were on duty, and it was 
 pretty clear by their troubled faces that they too had 
 learnt of the arrest of their fellows, and would not 
 take it calmly. They easily gathered from my 
 Lord's knitted brows and hasty stride through the 
 room, what was his purpose in now attending the 
 Council.
 
 ■\'\2 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 00 
 
 What took place at the session leaked out through 
 several there present, for the proceedings that day 
 caused a great stir in the Island, and were, in truth, 
 the beginning of great changes. My Lord told me 
 somewhat afterwards of what took place, but I learnt 
 most from the telling of others. 
 
 It appears that there was that day a large attend- 
 ance of some twenty or twenty-one Councillors, and 
 his Reverence the Grand Inquisitor was in the act of 
 speaking on the question of the arrest of the soldiers 
 as my Lord entered. Now, I must remark that my 
 Lord had always observed a very ceremonious 
 deference in addressing the Councillors. He spoke 
 no oftener than he absolutely needed to, never using 
 passion or vehemence, but often, if the subject 
 allowed, as much lightness and restrained raillery as 
 was decent, being thereby willing to attest that, as a 
 foreigner, it did not beseem him to concern himself 
 too earnestly with the affairs of a country which was 
 not his own ; and this modest bearing and his wit and 
 soundness in debate gained him friendly hearing even 
 from his enemies. What then was the surprise and 
 even consternation of the gentlemen of the Council 
 Board when my Lord burst into the Great Hall with 
 knit brows and a terrible face, his long sword clank- 
 ing along the pavement as he advanced, his right 
 hand clapped upon his dagger, his left clenched in 
 
 anger. 
 
 He saluted the Viceroy on his throne, but none 
 other of the Lords, and they were fluttered by his
 
 Beyond the Seas. 333 
 
 belligerent attitude, and there fell a sudden silence at 
 the Board ; the Lord Inquisitor, on whom my Lord 
 fixed his eyes, stammering out a few confused sen- 
 tences of his speech and then ending it tamely. 
 
 My Lord did not interrupt him, as the Church- 
 man's supporters afterwards alleged, but when no one 
 spoke he addressed the Viceroy in these words : 
 
 " 1 have learned," said he, " that the agents of the 
 Holy Office, contrary to the laws of this Island and 
 in contempt of the privileges of your Grace, have 
 arrested three of your Lordship's Body Guard under 
 my command." 
 
 None answered him, but presently the Viceroy 
 said, " I refer your Lordship to the Grand 
 Inquisitor." 
 
 ^ly Lord turned to the Priest with, " Is it as 
 I say.?" 
 
 " The soldiers have been arrested by my orders," 
 said the Grand Inquisitor, and he was proceeding to 
 an explanation w^hen my Lord, in a voice which 
 over-sounded his own, cried, " I demand their 
 immediate release under the Grand Inquisitor's 
 hand." 
 
 In a moment a majority of the Lords rose to 
 clamour against so unusual, and, as they said, unbe- 
 coming a demand, but my Lord still standing at the 
 table in a threatening attitude opposite the Grand 
 Inquisitor, and in a voice which over-bore those of 
 the Councillors, called out : 
 
 " In the name of my master the Viceroy, and of
 
 334 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 the offended laws of this land, I demand on the 
 moment an order of release, signed by the Grand 
 Inquisitor !" 
 
 When no sign of compliance was made, he stepped 
 nearer to the table, and pushing a sheet of paper 
 towards the Churchman pointed to it with a menacing 
 gesture. 
 
 " Your Reverence," said he in a very firm voice, " will 
 do well to sign the order, for in a few minutes 'twill be 
 too late, and my soldiers will have broken open your 
 prisons for themselves." 
 
 At the boldness of this speech (for in all the worst 
 tumults in the Island none had dared to lay hands on 
 the officers or the prisons of the Inquisition) the 
 Churchman exclaimed and raised his hands, as if in 
 horror of such a threatened desecration, but my Lord 
 stood unmoved before him, with a fixed, stern coun- 
 tenance, still pointing to the blank paper. Some of 
 the waverers, seeing my cousin so very masterful, 
 stood away from the Grand Inquisitor, and though 
 none in this crisis spoke, they made manifest by their 
 attitude and movement towards my Lord that they 
 were rather with him, who was gaining power, than 
 with the Priest, who was losing it. 
 
 The Grand Inquisitor appealed to the Viceroy — 
 " Your Highness ! " he cried, but the Viceroy shook 
 his head as if to imply that the debate lay between 
 him who shadowed the Church and him who had the 
 soldiery at his back. 
 
 For a space there was silence anew in the Council,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 335 
 
 and the strain of will against will. Then the Grand 
 Inquisitor, daunted and overcome, taking up a pen, 
 wrote slowly upon the paper before him the order 
 for the prisoners' release and signed it with his name 
 and cross. 
 
 My Lord took it, read it in silence, inclined his 
 head to the Grand Inquisitor, bowed low to the 
 Viceroy, saluted the Councillors with a lesser for- 
 mality, and passed out to the ante-chamber where I 
 stood. From his going in to his coming out not 
 eight minutes had passed by the clock. 
 
 " Take this order of his Reverence the Grand 
 Inquisitor," said he to me in hearing of the guard, 
 " with two files of your musketeers to the Prison of the 
 Holy Office, and claim the delivery to you of my three 
 soldiers, wrongfully arrested and imprisoned."
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 It may very easily be imagined the stir that this 
 event made among the people of all classes, who, 
 though they never had dared to murmur against the 
 cruel tyranny of the Inquisition, lived in daily terror 
 of it, and in their heart of hearts hated and abhorred 
 it. As for our soldiers and sailors, my kinsman's 
 rescue of their fellows served but to cause a renewal 
 and redintegration in them of the love, esteem, and 
 trust they already had towards him. 
 
 Though my Lord gained by this boldness some 
 voices in the Council, namely, of the weak-kneed, who 
 ever array themselves on the side of the resolute ; 
 the Viceroy, though still acknowledging to himself 
 the necessity of my Lord's support in the troubled 
 state of the Island, began to be a little fluttered and 
 frightened by and mistrustful of my kinsman's in- 
 dependence and over-riding of forms. This at least 
 is how I now read his Grace's mind, with the help 
 and by the light of after events. 
 
 Very soon after this affair of the three soldiers 
 there arose another question, which was a second
 
 Beyond the Seas. 337 
 
 trial of strength between my Lord on the one side 
 and the Grand Inquisitor and his following on the 
 other, and which I doubt not was designed by the 
 Churchman to give him a chance of recovering his 
 influence. As this matter led to a very singular 
 sequence and had an extraordinary great influence 
 upon the fortunes of my Lord and his house, I shall 
 dwell upon it a little, though not at greater length, 1 
 hope, than the fastidious Reader will find endurable. 
 
 It will be remembered how, at the crowning victory 
 of Port Niccolo, we had taken the Corsair Renegade 
 Admiral of the Fleet, by name El Saida, whom 
 we had considered, with the rest of the Christian 
 world (into which his fame had gone out far and 
 wide), to be either a Greek or an Albanian (a Greek 
 for his cunning and an Albanian for his ferocity). 
 It turned out, however, he was nothing of the kind, but 
 one Ronald Campbell, a Highland gentleman of good 
 birth and parentage, being related to the Campbells 
 of Lochaw, a very potent clan and of some repute 
 and great possessions in the north-western parts of 
 Britain. I have mentioned before that to fellows of 
 his inconstant persuasion in matters of faith it was 
 customary in Sicily to give a short shrift and as shore 
 a rope. This famous Rencgado Admiral however 
 was spared from this fate, because it was supposed 
 he might help us in procuring the ransom of my Lord, 
 and on my Lord's happy return he was still alive and 
 in the prisons of the state. 
 
 The Grand Inquisitor had not been so set upon 
 
 Z
 
 338 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 making an example of this arch-apostate of an 
 Admiral, but that he had seen the policy of saving 
 him from the rope which was his due while the 
 ransom of my Lord was still in treaty, for at that 
 time the Priest was among our warmest well-wishers. 
 Perhaps after my Lord's return he might still have 
 overlooked the captive Admiral, which he indeed did 
 for a whole month ; but then came his suspicions of 
 my Lord's orthodoxy, the clashing of their opinions 
 and wills in the matter of the arrested soldiers, with 
 my Lord's victory over him in the Council. After 
 that the Grand Inquisitor cast about for means to 
 re-establish the tottering faith and orthodoxy of the 
 people, and he resolved upon a grand ceremonial or 
 function of the Church, or, as the Holy Office terms 
 it, an auto da fe, at which the execution of the 
 Corsair Admiral at the stake should be exhibited to 
 the people with all possible pomp and gala of pro- 
 cessions, solemn music, and bravery of banners, flags, 
 flowers, streamers, and so forth. 
 
 Now, I am much afeared that if I say that it went 
 very heavily against my Lord's heart and conscience 
 (and against mine too) that this thing should be 
 done, many pious, heavenward-stepping men will 
 charge him with lukewarmness to the faith ; and it is 
 to clear him of any such infamous imputation that 
 I must beg the Reader to let me state my Lord's 
 opinions on this important matter a little fully. So 
 far from his, or my objecting to the mere execution 
 of Renegades, I will remind the Reader how, a little
 
 Beyond the Seas. 339 
 
 back fn this narrative, I mentioned with approval the 
 practice of stringing up these scoundrelly apostates 
 by the dozen or score, as a most laudable custom. 
 Therefore it can hardly be necessary for me to protest 
 very strongly on my Lord's behalf against that 
 pernicious doctrine advanced in these latter days by 
 one section of General Cromwell's followers (his too, of 
 all men !) of the wickedness of taking life under any 
 circumstances whatever. So far from holding which, 
 I will declare boldly that it has never appeared to 
 me (nor, I believe, to my Lord) to be more than a 
 venial sin to kill a man. I mean not, of course, the 
 foul sin of murder, nor the honest killing of soldiers 
 by each other, offensively or defensively, for that is 
 so far from being a sin that it is a virtue. I speak 
 now of the merciful ending of those lives which the 
 owners have forfeited to the laws, for surely this is a 
 virtuous and salutary action. I say merciful, for some- 
 times I ask myself if soldiers, who are accounted such 
 cruel wretches, are not of their natures more merciful 
 than Lawyers and Statesmen and Churchmen, who are 
 so mighty fond of condemning the poor rogues that 
 fall into their hands to torments of every kind, as the 
 rack, the wheel, and the stake ; things that make my 
 blood (a soldier's, too !) to run icy cold even to write 
 down, and presently after set my heart on fire to avenge 
 these barbarities on the authors thereof., 
 
 To be sure, we soldiers may be (what Bishop 
 Jeremy Taylor reproaches us for being) fathers ot 
 great misery, through wounds, death, arson, and what 
 
 Z 2
 
 340 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 not ; still, that is our trade, and 'tis not we who com- 
 mand in this, but Rulers and Statesmen, and sure no 
 good soldier but will rather kill outright than wound ; 
 and as for arson, what honest soldier will set fire to 
 so much as a haycock but for some good reason of 
 policy — to strike a terror, and thus, maybe, save life in 
 the end ? As for this matter of killing, we know more 
 of that matter than those who stay at home and preach 
 on the terror of it, and if they will take my word, it 
 is a thing neither so terrible as they are apt to contend, 
 nor, I am sure, otherwise than a salutary one for many 
 most pestilent rogues and scoundrels, who greatly 
 better the world by leaving it. As for the killing of 
 honest men (soldiers themselves, for the most part, 
 who expect no kinder treatment), why, what is it after 
 all but expediting by a little what must come to us 
 all some day .'* 
 
 I have thus, I believe, purged myself of any possible 
 charge of undue leniency in the lawful taking of life, 
 and a fortiori^ in the rightful doing of malefactors to 
 death. I have said enough, too, I believe, to show 
 why my cousin and I set our faces against the 
 torturing of the Corsair Admiral. It was less the 
 killing than the manner of it that we objected to ; 
 but my Lord went some way further than this, and 
 would have the prisoner spared from death altogether. 
 If his reasons seemed over subtle to some in Sicily, 
 they seem to me (as they will to the Reader) most 
 clear and conclusive. 
 
 " Had you hanged the prisoner at once," said my
 
 Beyond the Seas. 341 
 
 Lord, in Council, " there would have been nothing to 
 say in the matter ; but as you kept him alive to serve 
 your own purposes, it were base to slay him now, 
 when your ends can no longer be served. You have 
 kept him between hope of life and fear of death for 
 all these months, and therefore he has undergone 
 already punishment far more bitter than death ; and 
 now to add to this the sentence of death is clear 
 injustice. Why is he to be punished by this so 
 much more cruel a sentence than any of his fellows 
 have got in past times ? Is it as a recompense for 
 his own iniquity, and that he may serve as a warning 
 to others .-• No ; it is not to satisfy justice at all, but 
 that the people may be persuaded that the Church is 
 strong. Why, gentlemen!" cries he, very indignant, 
 " I tell you that to do this man to death, however you 
 accomplish it, is a base and dishonouring act, and if it 
 come to pass as the Grand Inquisitor purposes, I for 
 one will shake from my feet the dust of that land 
 where so shameful a deed has been committed ! " 
 
 These words, hard as they were, went home to the 
 bosoms of the Lords of the Council, of whom, though 
 I have in no respect held back the tale of their many 
 wrong doings and perversions, yet were they all 
 Spanish cavaliers of old lineage and good blood, 
 coming of a stock of soldier gentlemen who had, in 
 days gone by, followed chivalric courses, and spurned 
 all dishonour; and now this true blood in them rose 
 conscious to their faces, and they remembered their 
 high pedigree and ancient worth, and suddenly
 
 342 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 perceived the baseness of the course to which the 
 
 Churchman was leading them. After this, rage as the 
 
 Grand Inquisitor would (who had himself seemingly 
 
 no lively sense whatever of honour and dishonour), 
 
 they gave all their voices to our side, and the Corsair 
 
 Admiral was thus saved from a cruel death. 
 
 So did my Lord, in regard to these Spanish Lords, 
 
 to apply the fine verse of my friend the late William 
 
 Habington of Hindlip — 
 
 " Keep 
 Strayed honour in the true magnificke way." 
 
 This is not all that my Lord did for his now dis- 
 comfited enemy, the Renegado Admiral. He had 
 procured the gift of his life, and considering now that 
 he was expurgated and freed of the great crime of 
 apostacy by his long sojourning in prison, and the 
 humiliation of his shameful fall from highest state to 
 cruel captivity (since, sure, to those placed high, dis- 
 comfiture in this kind brings penalties and torments 
 of the soul the meaner sort of men can never 
 apprehend), my Lord, partly because he would 
 ameliorate the prisoner's lot, whom he knew to be 
 suffering sore sickness as well as captivity, begged of 
 the Viceroy that he might have the custody of the 
 Admiral in his own Palace which his Grace had 
 bestowed upon him, and under guard of his own 
 soldiery. This he asked too as a precaution against 
 any sudden re-arrest of the Corsair's person by the 
 Inquisitor, which my kinsman was not without 
 apprehending. 
 
 ^. 
 
 Jkil
 
 Beyond the Seas. 343 
 
 So soon as my Lord and I saw the prisoner, a deep 
 pity fell upon us for him ; for we had expected this 
 terrible fierce and famous Captain of the Pirate Turks 
 to be of rough aspect, and complexion conformable 
 to his repute, whereas he was a man but a few years 
 older than my kinsman, with a wan face, now worn 
 very thin with sickness, and his manners and carriage 
 were gentle, and his speech smooth, bespeaking gentle 
 birth and breeding. There are some whose fortune is 
 far lower than their power to rise, and whom the evil 
 counsellor that abides in a man's own heart tempts to 
 leave their lowness behind, and leap to unconditioned 
 eminence, across bounds that conscience sets in vain 
 to restrain them. Of such was this great fallen 
 soldier of fortune, and such had been his life's history ; 
 though we never questioned him of his past doings, or 
 of the temptations that had led him to fall so low and 
 thereby rise to the ill-savoured honours he had got. 
 
 My Lord, seeing that he needed only salve for his 
 unquiet conscience, and solace for his remorseful soul, 
 gave him no words but of comfort ; and perceiving 
 how great was his disorder, called in a surgeon to 
 him. Then we learned that he was sickening unto 
 near death, for a decline that long since he had been 
 in was hastened by his doings the night of the fight 
 of Port Niccolo, when he with others saved themselves 
 from their captured ships, and their boats were beaten 
 to pieces on that sea-tormented shore, and many 
 perished drenched and drowned in the surf, or 
 wounded by the jagged, jutting rocks. Among the
 
 344 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 wounded was the Admiral, who being struck insensible 
 on the stones would certainly have been drowned by 
 the waves, but his sailors pulled him inshore, and he 
 remained all that night, through the pelting storm 
 and the loudness of the fight, without sense, lying on 
 the sand till next morning, when my troopers took 
 him prisoner. This exposure, his wounds, and his 
 bitter captivity, had made his disorder mortal, and 
 even now he lay on the point of death. 
 
 He remained in my Lord's house above a fortnight 
 before his death, solemnly recanting from his wicked 
 apostacy from our faith, and obtaining due absolution 
 by his repentance. On the last day, being then very 
 weak and feeling his end to be approaching, he asked 
 to have private speech of my Lord and myself. We 
 thereupon sent those who were in waiting upon him 
 from the room, and my Lord seeing him unwilling to 
 speak, took the dying man by the hand, and very 
 earnestly assured him that any wish he might have to 
 communicate his last words or desires to friends or 
 relatives at home would be fulfilled by him, and there- 
 fore to speak his mind freely ; but, " No," said the 
 dying man, " I have none near me in friendship any- 
 where whom I would remember dying, nor have I any 
 near relation living, nor any one to whom I wish a 
 message sent." 
 
 Then he spoke of that which lay at his heart, and 
 on which he had not yet opened to us at all ; which 
 was that, as he lay in prison, word had been brought 
 to him of the near danger he ran of an infamous
 
 Beyond the Seas. 345 
 
 death through the designs of the Grand Inquisitor, 
 and how it had become known to him (indeed the 
 whole city could speak of nothing else), that my Lord 
 alone had stood between him and this cruel public 
 sacrifice of his life, and of the vehement contention 
 my cousin had made for him and for mercy before the 
 Council. Here his voice, which had sunk very low, 
 trembled and failed him, and yet I think less with 
 weakness of his disorder than a disablement coming 
 from some deep emotion in him. We turned away 
 our eyes from his face, guessing yet not willing to see 
 that he wept, for, sure, it becomes not a soldier to look 
 upon the infirmity of one, who has never been un- 
 manned in stress of battle, brought low by sickness 
 and unmanned by that. 
 
 So we waited ; and when he had recovered himself 
 he spoke thus, with a firmer voice : 
 
 "To you, my Lord St. Keyne, I owe much more 
 than life, which God indeed had already in His justice 
 seen fit to make forfeit of to me : I am a soldier, and 
 you have saved me from disgrace, a gentleman, and 
 you have stood between me and everlasting dis- 
 honour." Then again he fell to a silence. 
 
 Presently he said, " Will your Lordship grant me a 
 favour, the first I have asked for long years, the last I 
 shall ask of man } " 
 
 "I will," said my kinsman very heartily, "whatever 
 it be." 
 
 "I desire," said the dying man, "to make you my 
 heir."
 
 346 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Here we began to think the poor man was wander- 
 ine in his mind, and the mists of coming death to be 
 aheady clouding over his senses, for of what legacy 
 could he, a death-stricken captive, have the be- 
 queathing ? 
 
 Then he told us a very marvellous tale ; and but 
 that strange things happened in these unquiet times, 
 and in these lands beyond the seas, it was a story over 
 marvellous for belief. 
 
 He told us that he had in his beginnings with the 
 Pirates served under his uncle, himself a famous 
 Renegado Captain, from all he told us a bold and bad 
 man who lived red-handed in denial of his Redeemer, 
 and died red-handed still denying Him, and who was 
 unfaithful not to his Christian fellows alone, but to his 
 Infidel masters. This uncle of our prisoner had served 
 first the Corsair Dey of Algiers, and then, when war 
 had threatened to break out between the Mussulmans 
 of Algiers and them of Tunis, he had gone over to the 
 Tunisians, and given them information of a great gift 
 or bribe that the Algerines were intending to send, 
 with strong convoy, by sea to the Grand Turk at 
 Constantinople, the Suzerain of both States, to incline 
 him to their side. This ship and convoy the Tuni- 
 sians had intercepted, and in a fight the Algerines 
 had been worsted near the little Island of Ustica, north 
 of Sicily, and the Algerine treasure-ship had gone down 
 and all on board her had perished, except the Emissary, 
 bearer of the treasure to Constantinople, who had 
 escaped in a boat to land, carrying with him in a little
 
 Beyond the Seas. 347 
 
 leaden coffer, or casket, the very heart of the great 
 treasure. " My uncle," said the dying man, " having 
 some suspicion of this, pursued the Emissary, slew him 
 and those with him, and became secretly possessed of 
 the casket. None but he took any account of it or 
 knew of its contents, or their inestimable value ; 
 for while, in the hold of the ship was great wealth 
 destined for the Sultan, rich stuffs, carpets of Ispahan, 
 embroidered silks of Broussa, many chests full of gold 
 and silver work from Persia and India, and arms from 
 Damascus, together with great weight of bullion, and 
 coined money besides, enough altogether to load and 
 fill a great galley, in the little casket was stowed that 
 which out-valued all this rich cargo a hundredfold, for 
 it contained great diamonds, seventy-two in number, 
 each the size of a wren's egg ; all white stones, sharp 
 cut and perfect, and each one gleaming with inner 
 fires of green, and blue, and red. 
 
 " Sure his mind is wandering," whispered I to my 
 Lord, but my cousin put his hand on my shoulder as 
 we stood together at the bedside, in sign I should let 
 the dying man speak on. 
 
 " But this was little," the Renegado continued, " for 
 in the coffer, which was hardly bigger than a man 
 might enclose in his two hands, was contained that 
 which is the wonder of all the world, namely, the 
 famed Amulet of Sultan Solyman the Magnificent, 
 which is made of three chains of gold interlinked 
 together, each chain holding in golden circlets three 
 great Rubies of equal shape, each a smooth, flat, trans-
 
 348 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 lucent gem, nine in all (but one is missing), the like of 
 any one of which for blood-red tint and greatness the 
 the world possesses not, for they are in size of round 
 equal to the eye-circle of a tiger or a lion ; and each 
 one bears on one side engraved a verse of the Koran, 
 and on the other the name of the Hebrew King 
 Solomon, whom the Moslems hold the father of all 
 enchantments, and with his name a sign or token is 
 inscribed, which no man can read ; on each stone a 
 different sign. These stones were in collecting a 
 hundred years by the Sultans of Turkey, and the 
 great Sultan Selim in his long life found only one, the 
 eighth stone. His son, the mightiest of the Sultans, 
 Solyman the Magnificent, procured the ninth ruby and 
 completed the Amulet. Now with this Amulet was held 
 to lie the great good fortune of this Sultan, who over- 
 came Moslem and Christian alike, and never suffered 
 defeat till the Amulet, a hundred years ago, was 
 stolen from him by the Renegado Barbarossa ; and 
 him too it strangely befriended, it is said, till the 
 ninth stone of the Amulet was lost (which is sti-ll 
 missing), when he died miserably. Since then the 
 Amulet has lain in the Treasury of the Dey of 
 Algiers till it was sent in the treasure-ship to Con- 
 stantinople with other gifts to bribe the Turk, where- 
 upon it fell into the hands of my uncle in the Island 
 of Ustica. There it has remained, buried in that 
 island ever since, for he feared to bring it home, lest 
 rumour should fetch to light how it had been saved 
 from the Algerine ship and taken by my uncle. This
 
 Beyond the Seas. 349 
 
 little Island is peopled by a few fishermen and shep- 
 herds only, but they had fled and hidden at the coming 
 of the ships, and after the fight the Tunisians staying 
 for a space in the Island to repair their ships, and my 
 uncle being encamped on the shore, he buried the 
 casket as deep as his arm could reach in the loose 
 sand under his tent. 
 
 " My uncle lived in great honour and fame with the 
 Tunisians for many years after, commanding their 
 frigates in many adventures, but never having their 
 whole fleet under him, so that never being in chief com- 
 mand he never was able to revisit privily the Island 
 and recover the jewels. Then he died, leaving to me 
 the secret of their burial-place, which I, too, in three 
 }'ears that I have been Admiral-in-Chief of their fleet, 
 have never been able to come at, though always en- 
 deavouring to do so. Once I was driven away by a 
 great storm, and once by your ships ; but I had 
 resolved when I brought my great fleet of thirty 
 vessels hither, to proceed to Ustica after defeat of the 
 Sicilians, to dig up the casket, leave the service of 
 Tunis, and live ever after in my own country, richer 
 and more powerful, through the great treasure in the 
 casket, than the greatest in all the land." 
 
 Thus spoke the dying Rcnegado Corsair, and we 
 listened incredulous, being sure that in the delirium of 
 his disorder he had dreamed a dream of that fabled 
 lost Amulet of Sultan Solyman, of which all have 
 heard, whose presence brought that great Emperor 
 of the Turks victory, and its loss defeat. Still, not
 
 350 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 willing to disabuse him in his dying moments of the 
 belief that he was conferring a vast benefit upon his 
 benefactor, and to humour him, I enquired by what 
 signs and tokens we should find the place of the 
 buried casket ; but he had fallen again into a stupor, 
 overcome by his long speaking, and my words did 
 not rouse him. 
 
 " We will let him be," said my kinsman. 
 
 But my words had reached through the numbness 
 of the dying man's senses, and presently again he 
 spoke, but very weakly and slow : 
 
 " On the easternmost point of Ustica, a little north 
 of the only harbour, is a tall, black rock standing 
 upright to the height of the mainmast of a frigate, with 
 its foot washed by the sea at high water ; its peak is 
 very narrow, and the shadow of it, exactly an hour 
 after sunrise, fell upon my uncle's tent ; it was then 
 the 125th day, counting from the winter solstice. 
 There look for the casket— take it— it is yours." 
 
 No more words spoke the Renegado, nor once did 
 he recover his senses ; and that night he died.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 My cousin Ralph was not of my incredulous mind 
 as to the testament of the Renegado Admiral. He 
 never doubted that the casket had indeed been buried 
 on Ustica Island as the Admiral had told us, but he 
 greatly suspected (knowing the many lies, villanies, 
 and deceits of the Infidels) that it might contain none 
 or but few of the priceless treasures imputed to it ; 
 also he was doubtful if the casket could be found 
 again on the sand of the sea-shore, with so fallible a 
 description of its whereabouts as we had got. 
 
 It was now mid April, and therefore near the time 
 appointed for the determining of the hiding place of the 
 casket by the falling of the shadow of the rock ; and 
 our united squadron being about to proceed upon its 
 monthly cruise, my Lord, on the 24th day of the 
 month, put to sea and steered for Ustica, which lies 
 some seventy miles due north of Palermo, and on the 
 evening of the 25th anchored off the Island, with his 
 whole fleet, in a little cove on its eastern side. So out of 
 the track of all commerce and its conveniences is this
 
 352 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Islet, that there is no quay or other mode of landing, 
 and as on account of the pointed nature of the shore 
 rocks and the unruly movement of the waters around 
 them, it is ill disembarking here in boats, we waited 
 for the people of the Island to come and carry us 
 ashore, as is the usage ; but not a soul appeared, all 
 having fled, as we afterwards heard, into a great rocky 
 recess of the mountains, taking our ships for Corsairs, 
 so remote and ignorant are the inhabitants of this 
 Islet. We therefore approached as near as was pos- 
 sible in our long boat, and made shift to wade to land 
 as best we could. Then by means of a line of our 
 men from boat to shore, standing in water to their 
 middle, a little tent was passed over dry from one to 
 the other, together with picks and tools to pitch it, and 
 with food and other necessaries, for my Lord designed 
 to pass that night and the next on shore, which we 
 did ; and next day, which was the 26th, being as we 
 calculated it, the 124th after the winter solstice, 
 we wandered along the shore and pretty soon 
 discovered a tall, mast-shaped rock. We easily 
 guessed it was the one intended, for there was none 
 other of its bigness or shape near about, and it had 
 its base washed by the sea. 
 
 We rose at dawn on the 27th, which was the 
 appointed day, and waited for the rising of the sun 
 and the falling of the shadow of the rock. When the 
 rock's shadow began to shorten and, in an hour's tim,e, 
 fell on just such a level bit of sand as would be 
 suitable for a tent to be pitched upon, we marked the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 353 
 
 very spot, but did not dig at once, for the sailors 
 having landed in numbers, had dispersed themselves 
 for pastime about the shore ; but we ordered our tent 
 to be immediately pitched anew over the spot, which 
 we had marked with a large stone. Then, in our 
 impatience, hardly waiting for the men to have done, 
 we pricked the sand deeply with our swords inside the 
 tent, and thinking we encountered somewhat in one 
 place, we dug down upon it with a spade, and 
 presently, at about three and a half or four feet down, 
 came upon a hardish lump of something, but it was 
 no casket at all, only a great, heavy, pudding-shaped 
 lump of hard sand. Note, that here the sand is black 
 and heavy and sharp, more like iron filings than any 
 sand I ever saw elsewhere. Holding this great round 
 lump in both my hands, I cast it, in my grievous dis- 
 appointment, upon the ground, when lo ! there broke 
 away and crumbled from it about a half or two-thirds 
 of the sand in powder, still leaving something of a 
 central part or core which did not, like the rest, fall to 
 pieces. As I spurned it with my foot in my vexation, 
 my Lord, who had laughed at this baulking of our 
 hopes, and at, I suppose, my dumbfoundered, angry 
 aspect, looking attentively upon this central portion 
 as it lay on the ground, took it in his hand, and 
 weighing it therein, " Why ! Humphrey," he cries, " I 
 believe this lump of stuff is nothing less than the 
 casket itself" 
 
 With that, he pulled his dagger from its sheath and 
 putting the point between the interstices of the sand, 
 
 A A
 
 354 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 presently reached to something that resisted the steel, 
 but not much, for he easily ripped open that which 
 was in truth the leaden casket buried by the 
 Renegade ; only the lead thereof was eaten away, and 
 had turned, by corrosion of the salt water and the 
 eager nature of the sand, to a softish film no thicker 
 nor much tougher than paper. Still holding the 
 coffer in his hand, in a moment he had opened it fully 
 and laid bare the contents ; and we looked upon them 
 speechless, and then upon one another in amaze ; for 
 here were scores of huge diamonds that sparkled in 
 the morning light, and, mingled with them, lay the 
 great blood-red gems of the famous lost Amulet of 
 Sultan Solyman the Magnificent. 
 
 There could be no doubt that we held in our hands 
 a vast treasure, whose twentieth part even would 
 furnish the ransom of the greatest King in 
 Christendom. We picked out the gems, finding the 
 great rubies in the Amulet to be, as we had been 
 forewarned, eight in number, all flattish stones, blood- 
 red, perfect, translucent, most beautiful ; all equal in 
 size to a hair's breadth, all alike in tint of redness, 
 and all, as the Renegade had told us, of the bigness, or 
 as I should judge, a little more, of a tiger's or a lion's 
 eye : such marvels as I had never conjectured the 
 world could hold. Of the diamonds, two score and 
 ten were, as we had been told, of the size of a wren's 
 Ggg ; that is, of the width, in their greatest diameter 
 of an English silver groat, but there were twelve 
 (for the tale of them we had got was right, namely
 
 Beyond the Seas. 355 
 
 seventy-two in all) that bulked larger and might attain 
 to half as much again in carats' weight ; I should 
 equal them very nearly as to size, to the egg of a 
 robin or goldfinch. Of the value of the twelve larger 
 diamonds I would not give a guess, fearing to say too 
 little (as knowing how rare such great stones are) but 
 as to the smaller diamonds (if small they can be called 
 which were themselves of monstrous bigness) I believe 
 I might hazard the assessing of them, for we soldiers 
 of many campaigns get to have some experience in 
 judging of valuables, as gems, jewels, gold plate and 
 the like, coming to us in the way of spoil. These 
 diamonds, then, I priced in my mind at 1,000 gold 
 doubloons of Spain apiece, (or about iJ^3,SOO of our 
 money) but I did not reckon the purity of their 
 " water," as the jewellers call it, and the first two that 
 I offered a week later to a jeweller of Venice, travelling 
 through Sicily, he took without a word at my first 
 price, which was 3,000 doubloons for the pair ; the 
 old man's hands trembling with eagerness as his 
 fingers closed on the stones and he pushed me the 
 price I asked in gold. I saw thereby that I had been 
 over-reached, but the fellow had my word and I said 
 no more ; only I made my Lord laugh heartily when 
 I told him of the poorness of my first bargain in 
 jewel trading, and at only getting 3,000 doubloons for 
 what I thought worth 2,000. 
 
 I the more rejoiced in this wonderful fortune that 
 had befallen my Lord because from the first, feeling 
 upon him the pride of an English gentleman, the 
 
 A A 2
 
 3S6 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 servant of the greatest of Kings (though now edipsed 
 in exile), he had, with perhaps undue generosity and 
 magnificence, refused to receive (or himself any sa/armm 
 or salary from the Viceroy of Sicily, though insisting 
 that his men, soldiers and sailors, should all be lodged, 
 paid and boarded with unusual munificence. Now 
 my Lord's own state had ever been princely, and his 
 outlay for retinue, liveries, and the entertainment by 
 sumptuous banquets, by masques, by music and 
 otherwise, of the Lords and Ladies of the Vice-regal 
 Court, was, beyond experience of the Palermitans, 
 magnificent. 
 
 I would not call this pomp by the hard word 
 prodigal, for it suited with the great revenues of my 
 kinsman's estates, comported with his eminent station 
 in Sicily, and was in congruence with his own 
 generous and openhanded humour (and if a man 
 check and thwart his true humour in this line 'tis 
 not unknown what ill may follow). Of a truth, 
 however, I had latterly feared somewhat for the 
 ending of it all, for the Fanatics had now laid 
 embargoes upon as many of the St. Keyne lands as 
 they could come at, and though privily he still derived 
 rents from the loyal holders of them, who well knew 
 that the rule of Cromwell was for a time only, still my 
 Lord's revenues had within the past year or two very 
 sensibly diminished, — by a half perhaps, or even two- 
 thirds. It may be gathered then how contented I 
 was at having this great windfall and vast addition 
 of means to meet the outgoings of my kinsman's
 
 Beyond the Seas. 357 
 
 establishment. But this is but base, money-bag talk : 
 let us pass on. 
 
 Our purpose in coming to Ustica having been so 
 fully accomplished, we had no further reason to stay 
 in the Island. We therefore divided the jewels into 
 two parts and folding them into napkins, disposed them 
 about the persons of each of us, after which we returned 
 the remnants of the casket to their grave, filled it up, 
 smoothed down the sand, and caused our tent to be 
 struck. Then we went on board as we had come, 
 leaving no trace behind us, and no man knew either 
 then or thereafter — nay, no man has ever known or 
 ever had cause to guess until now, and until this my 
 telling of it, that we bore with us from the Island of 
 Ustica a store of great diamonds more precious than 
 any King's Treasury in the world could show, and 
 that which was far beyond them still in price, eight 
 rubies of the renowned lost Amulet of Sultan Solyman 
 the Magnificent.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 We made at once towards Trapani, but were no 
 sooner arrived there than we were recalled by a 
 letter from the Viceroy, bidding us assemble the 
 Squadron at Palermo and prepare to set sail with a 
 part of it for so far off a destination as Cadiz, in 
 Spain, which lies outside the Mediterranean Sea, ten 
 leagues beyond the Pillars of Hercules. There we 
 were to await the arrival of the Lady Geraldine by 
 sea in a frigate of war, from the Groyne of Galicia, in 
 the far north of Spain, 
 
 For some time past, that is since the knowledge had 
 reached the Island of my Lord's safety, the Viceroy had 
 been in communication with the Lady Geraldine's 
 friends, and had at length induced them to shorten the 
 time before the marriage ; and in view of the un- 
 settled condition of the Island, to dispense with the 
 presence of the bridgeroom in Spain, and to consent 
 that the marriage should take place, not at Madrid, but 
 in Sicilia. My Lord himself had put no obstacle to the 
 consummation of the Viceroy's wishes in this regard ; 
 and as there could be no reasonable objection thereto
 
 Beyond the Seas. 359 
 
 from any one else, the plan had been carried through. 
 The assent of Lady Geraldine's friends and her own 
 had been made known by letters arrived during our 
 absence in Ustica Island. 
 
 My Lord resolved that in the then unquiet state of 
 Sicily it was impolitic to remove the whole of the 
 Fleet to so great a distance ; less, however, from ap- 
 prehension of trouble from the Pirates than of 
 dissensions and revolt both among the troops and 
 the citizens of the great cities, who were now growing 
 incensed against the ill-rule, tyranny, and corruption 
 of their masters. He laid the matter very freely 
 before the Viceroy, who, following his counsel, de- 
 spatched my Lord himself to Cadiz with two of the 
 Corvettos only, and named me to the command, in 
 his absence, of the squadron that was left. 
 
 It was intended that my Lord should sail from 
 Palermo some weeks before Lady Geraldine's ship 
 departed from the Groyne, so that he might have time 
 to visit the King of Spain at Madrid, in New Castile, 
 and report to him of the condition of Sicilia. This 
 w^as by command of His Majesty himself, who desired 
 to have word of mouth with one who had made such 
 a stir in the great world. 
 
 While my Lord was away I took occasion to set 
 his affairs in some order, and with this end I disposed 
 of some six or seven of the smaller gems among the 
 jewellers of Messina and Palermo ; the large ones 
 I reserved, not desiring that our possession of such 
 huge stones should get bruited abroad. But even the
 
 360 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 sale of the smaller diamonds caused a great com- 
 motion, and the goldsmiths to buy them were forced 
 to join in companies to make up the price of a single 
 pair of the diamonds, for I had now arrived at some 
 just appraisement of their value. With their proceeds 
 my Lord's treasury was amply replenished, and I 
 could carry out his last orders, which were to prepare 
 a wing of his palace against the coming of our cousin, 
 in which, with her suite of ladies, she could dwell under 
 our guardianship, who were her relatives, in the 
 interval between her coming to the Island and the 
 ceremonial of her wedding with the Viceroy. To this 
 end I was to spare no expense in labour of the best 
 artificers from Genoa and Naples, or in rich furniture 
 of hangings, tapestries, and carpets, from the East ; 
 all which I set about and accomplished in good time. 
 We lived at this time in one portion of that as- 
 semblage of palaces at Palermo, which taken together 
 are called the Royal Palace. The buildings are set 
 round a great piazza or courtyard that a small army 
 might parade in, and the Viceroy and his suite were 
 very finely lodged over against our palace across the 
 open square; my Lord being placed so near the 
 Viceroy's person that his Grace could readily send for 
 him or come to him (as he would at times do) familiarly 
 for converse and counsel on affairs of State. The Lady 
 Geraldine's dwelling was to be a range of apartments 
 that lie just beyond my Lord's, andformingpartofthem, 
 and that we had held too dainty for a man's and a 
 soldier's quarters, and so had never used. Here had
 
 Beyond the Seas, 361 
 
 formerly been the state residence-house of the Norman 
 kings of Sicily, and the adornment of the halls, 
 chambers, and corridors is, for marvellous richness 
 and fineness, such as mine eyes, in all that I have seen 
 of the magnificences of the greatest Kings and Princes, 
 have never yet looked upon ; for the doorways and 
 windows, all with round-headed arches over them, 
 and deep set with strange devices and mouldings, are 
 not cut and carved in common stone, but of rare, 
 rich marbles, green and yellow or red, polished. 
 Interspersed with these precious marbles are in- 
 crustations of gold mosaic, with which the very walls 
 and tlie vaulted roofs are everywhere set thick, so 
 that a torch or lamp being held aloft in these halls 
 or corridors, its light is cast from ten thousand points 
 of burnished gold and colour till the place seems on 
 fire, so great is its glory. This strange work is, I 
 have heard, not of the Normans, whom the world long 
 has known for plain, rough, honest, fighting men, 
 unskilled in such matters, but of the Saracens of the 
 Island, enslaved by these Northern warriors. The 
 dwelling-rooms and halls intended for the Viceroy's 
 bride being thus already so fair to see, I had but little 
 trouble, with the rich stuffs and hangings aforesaid, to 
 fit the abode for a great lady's residence. 
 
 I may observe for the curious in these matters, that 
 all these palaces being built in the Moorish fashion, 
 no such thing as an honest door and door-fastening 
 is to be found, this being contrary to the lazy habits of 
 the Moslems, only in their places are hung great
 
 362 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 curtains of some rich stuff, silk or embroidered velvet. 
 In my cousin's apartments I ordered these door-curtains 
 to be fashioned of Genoese velvet, very rich, of a 
 delicate dark green hue, and embroidered here and 
 there with black and gold. Ha ! It makes me laugh 
 to think how I, a plain grizzled old soldier, had come 
 to this employment of tricking out a lady's bower 
 with satins and velvets ; and how I would stand, with 
 a severe, frowning, ignorant face, feeling the substance 
 of a rich hanging, and pretending to know more about 
 it than the seller thereof; or giving an inexorable 
 judgment, with no appeal therefrom allowed, on the 
 value of a Venetian mirror or a carpet from Teheran ! 
 
 Note, also, that so great is the roguery and so 
 infinite the subtlety of these Sicilians, that I wguld 
 trust none of them with so much as the victualling 
 of my Lord's palace ; as not wishing to deliver over 
 my kinsman to the robbing and reiving of the citizen 
 purveyors of the Island ; but I caused the whole 
 provisioning and supplying of our palace to be done 
 by Corporals and Sergeants of our troops, Spaniards 
 or Italians, honest fellows as day, but mighty simple 
 in the hands of these foxish Italians of Sicily. 
 
 Good lack ! what a state it was we lived in : not a 
 morning but a hundred beggars at the gates waited for 
 the largesse of broken meat of the day before. My 
 Lord's retinue of servants in livery was indeed kingly, 
 and when we passed through the corridors and outer 
 halls, their standing up to salute us was the rising of 
 a multitude. My Lord chose to ration the men of his
 
 Beyond the Seas. 363 
 
 Body-Guard with meat, bread, and wine, at his private 
 cost, not esteeming the treatment in this kind of the 
 SiciHans worthy of such approved and vahant troops ; 
 and to every two of the Viceroy's soldiers (whom he 
 ennobled with the title of Gentlemen of the Viceregal 
 Guard) he appointed a servant to wait upon them. 
 There were besides these soldiers' servants, a vast body 
 of servants of his own, of whose numbers I have now 
 but a confused and doubtful memory, and fearing to 
 set down a greater number than the truth, will forbear 
 from any record. I can however well remember that 
 for victualling of our own Palace and our own guard I 
 gave orders that the daily purveyance should never be 
 less than, of wine one and a half salma (that is, about 
 sixty gallons English), of fat beeves two, of sheep 
 seven (but the Sicilian sheep are small, seldom reach- 
 ing to seven stone by our West of England computa- 
 tion ; to wit, between fifty and sixty pounds), of flour 
 and meal of various corns four salmas (dry measure). 
 Besides these necessaries, there were fixed quantities, 
 which my memory has let slip, of hams and lard from 
 Trapani, olives and oil from about Catania, poultry, 
 fruit of every kind in season, fish ad libitum from the 
 three Seas of the Island, and beasts of the chase and 
 warren in autumn and winter, to wit, wild boar, deer, 
 hares, and coneys ; besides game and wild fowl, as 
 cranes, partridges, frankolins ; together with all manner 
 of swamp birds, such as snipe, dunlins, ducks, and 
 didappers ; the whole in very great variety and 
 abundance.
 
 364 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 My Lord was away fifty-seven days before I 
 received a letter from him, so slow and difficult are 
 communications through these Pirate-scourged waters. 
 He had prosperously and quickly reached Cadiz and 
 there, receiving news of the busy doings of the Rovers 
 on all the Spanish Coasts, had sent his ships round to 
 Lisbon in Portugal, having got word that our cousin's 
 ship would touch at that Port on her voyage south, and 
 resolving to convoy the Spanish Frigate in which she 
 travelled through the perils of the southern seas. My 
 Lord's letter was expressed in a private book-cypher 
 we used between us, and he told me how King Philip 
 had received him graciously at Madrid (whence he 
 then wrote), and had made him a surprising offer, 
 which was no less than to take the command of a 
 Fleet for the recapture of the two great sea cities of 
 Portugal, to wit, Lisbon and Oporto, which had been, 
 with the Kingdom of Portugal itself, lost to Spain 
 about twelve years before, Portugal having then 
 happily recovered its ancient independence, after 
 having lost it for some sixty years. My cousin 
 Ralph had refused this offer, he told me, not being 
 willing to fight against the liberties of a free people. 
 I cannot hear that any further attempt was ever made 
 by Spain, either by way of Fleet or Army, to recover 
 the Kingdom of Portugal. Her independence was 
 however not fully acknowledged by her great neigh- 
 bour for many years. I imagine therefore that my 
 kinsman's opinion of the King's and his Councillors' 
 project, which he probably was pressed for and pro-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 365 
 
 pounded (though he forgot or forbore to speak on 
 the subject to me afterwards, in the press of more 
 important topics) may have dissuaded them from any 
 committal of themselves to a foolhardy and indeed an 
 infamous undertaking. 
 
 As my cousin Ralph at his writing was on the eve 
 of leaving Madrid for Lisbon, and would again de- 
 part from that city for Sicily so soon as the Lady 
 Geraldine should arrive, I was not without expectation 
 of seeing them very soon, there being then a favouring 
 wind from the west ; and this happy event took place 
 in less than ten days afterwards. 
 
 I am informed that in Spain the Court ceremonial 
 is excessive beyond all example in other countries, 
 and tedious to those persons that care nothing for 
 such empty formal observances, among whom I name 
 myself. Chiefly long and tedious are they, and 
 beyond belief absurd, when any women's affairs are 
 in hand, such as a wedding, or the birth of an Infante 
 or Infanta ; circumstances these in which the women 
 about the Court, chiefly the old women (of both sexes 
 — the females being known as Dueiias or, as we 
 say. Duennas) claim to have a voice, and getting it, 
 carry their follies to more unconscionable lengths 
 than usual. As the Court of Sicily never fails to 
 repeat to the echo every observance of the mother 
 Court of Spain, and as the commotion from a falling 
 stone is greater in a horse-pond than in the sea, so it 
 may be imagined the stir which the Viceroy's pro- 
 jected marriage, and the arrival of his bride, made in
 
 366 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 the capital city of this Island. Indeed I will ask the 
 forbearing Reader to imagine it rather than to ask 
 me, a plain soldier of my King, and with such brains 
 as he possesses set on the grave affairs of life, to 
 chronicle such preposterous nothings as now took place 
 at Palermo on the coming of the Lady Geraldine. 
 Suffice it to say that on the arrival of the Spanish 
 Frigate and my Lord's Corvettes, Lady Geraldine 
 and her four demure Duennas, all ladies of great 
 birth (and age to match), had been transferred at 
 Lisbon to my cousin's Flag Ship. On the arrival 
 of the vessels a salute of seventeen guns was fired, 
 neither more nor less, and the city (by command) 
 hung with flags. The Court then betook itself to 
 a Pavilion set up in a Piazza near the quay, the streets 
 being lined with troops, and horse and foot patrolling 
 everywhere, for it was well known the people were 
 ripe for insurrection. 
 
 To this place came the Viceroy on horseback, 
 encircled by his body guard of troopers under my 
 orders. Arrived at the Pavilion his Grace dismounted 
 and the troop closed in upon him. Thereupon the 
 foot-guards, under me too, for I now had sole com- 
 mand of all the palace and city troops, stood around 
 him as he sat upon a gilt throne, each man with his 
 musquetoon so close to his neighbour that never an 
 assassin among the mutineers could get an opening 
 for a snap shot at his Grace betwixt our ranks. I 
 mention this, for we had warning that several dis- 
 contented citizens with stilettos or horse pistols were
 
 Beyond the Seas. 367 
 
 to be in the crowd that day. It is to be observed 
 too that, for all the show of holiday bravery of gold 
 lace on our fellows' doublets and scarves, and their 
 white buckskin gauntlets, all flashing bright in the 
 sun, each man of my cavalry had had his sword fresh 
 ground and set that morning, and his great horse- 
 pistols were loaded with ball and fresh primed ; and 
 the foot soldiers too had their musquetoons loaded 
 with slugs and all in readiness for a fight. 
 
 However, the crowd were daunted, and no worse 
 weapons or missiles than scowls and curses reached 
 the Viceroy and his little Court, as he sat with his 
 Councillors, while the great crowd of discontented 
 Sicilian citizens swayed and surged all about, outside 
 our swords and muskets. 
 
 From the Pavilion to the quay is a distance of 
 about 100 paces or less along the Piazza and through 
 a short straight street, all which way was laid down 
 with a crimson cloth, and along either side thereof 
 were planted high poles bearing banners, and from 
 pole to pole were hung, in great garlands, all manner 
 of sweet-scented blossoms and green leaves, for it was 
 now the middle of the floral month of July, when all 
 the gardens of Sicily are at their richest and fairest. 
 Along this flowery and sweetly odorous lane was the 
 bride to pass, so soon as she had disembarked from 
 the Viceregal barge which should fetch her from the 
 ship ; not afoot though, but borne in a gilt litter 
 fantastically carved and carried by twelve turbaned 
 negroes in the Moorish dress, very rich and brave ; six
 
 368 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 others of the same swart complexion, bearing aloft a 
 canopy of gold-embroidered purple silk over the 
 maiden's head. 
 
 All this came about as it had been ordered, and my 
 first view of the newly arrived bride was now, for I 
 had not dared to leave my men and their ordering to 
 go and greet her on board the ship in the Harbour, so 
 critical and momentous did the state of things among 
 the citizens seem to us all. 
 
 Ralph St. Keyne walked by the side of his cousin's 
 litter, and the first knowledge we had of their coming 
 upon the quay was the cheers and joyful clamour of 
 the multitude, the first in that kind we had heard this 
 day, for the Sicilians ever looked upon my Lord as 
 their friend. Presently the bride was arrived to where 
 we stood, and alighting from her litter with my Lord's 
 hand given to her, she was led by him up the two or 
 three steps of the dais under the Pavilion to where the 
 Viceroy bridegroom was sitting. He, such was the 
 obligation upon him of his state, could do no more in 
 his courtesy to welcome her than to rise from his 
 throne and advance two paces to meet his bride, taking 
 her hand in his and bending over it with some spoken 
 words of salutation which the shouting of the crowd 
 did not let me hear. 
 
 I had taken some pains to prefigure to myself the 
 transformation that must needs have taken place from 
 my little child cousin to a grown woman, but good 
 lack ! how far was I from expecting to see such a tall, 
 fair and comely maiden as this, with the sweetest.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 369 
 
 softest face and eyes, poor child ! that ever, I think, 
 woman possessed. I say " poor child," for now when 
 all was done, and she was here in Sicily and in a few 
 days to become the wife of a husband so unfit for a 
 young girl, I said to myself, even as I stood there 
 among my soldiers, " What have I and Ralph done to 
 let things come to this ? We have between us betrayed 
 our cousin ; " and my blood ran hot through my veins. 
 
 She came forward, modest and wondering and 
 dazed, seemingly, by the crowd, and the noise of 
 shouting, and the clash of cymbal music that had filled 
 the air from her landing ; and yet very graciously and 
 gracefully, for the maiden had a most noble presence 
 and a carriage that fitted her birth and breeding, and 
 with some show of courage too through all her 
 modesty, for I watched her closely with the above 
 thoughts running strongly in my head. Then when 
 she caught sight of her husband that was to be, her 
 countenance fell, and she went suddenly paler and 
 looked enquiringly at her cousin, as if to ask, " Can 
 this be he ? " 
 
 The Viceroy was very gallant in his dress and 
 bearing that day ; his vest and doublet so heavy with 
 gold embroidery on green velvet, his sword hilt and 
 laced baldrick and belt so sparkling with diamonds, 
 that it was easy to see even by this bravery, and 
 apart from his alone wearing the red jewelled cross 
 and collar of the Order of Calatrava, that he was the 
 chief of all who stood there. He made his advance 
 to the Lady Geraldine very courteously, and, bowing 
 
 E B
 
 370 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 low, his periwig (which he and his courtiers wore in 
 the fashion of the Court of France) fell straight down 
 on either side of his face like a great curly fleece of 
 wool, and almost hid it for the moment. Yet it was 
 impossible for this perruque, abundantly as it was 
 furnished and much as it advanced on either side of 
 his face, to hide the wrinkles and sallowness, the 
 heavy jowl and the dull and careful eyes of age. 
 
 I cannot say whether any Reader of mine is lenient 
 enough to my many shortcomings to accept my 
 opinion on a woman, and certainly I would counsel 
 none to do this hastily, not because, as has been very 
 falsely alleged of me, I am a misogynist ; I am indeed 
 no woman hater, but I will frankly acknowledge that 
 I have always been indifferent to and unobservant of 
 the sex. Because I am indifferent no doubt I am 
 wholly ignorant ; and 'tis probably my ignorance only 
 that has made me ever so extremely mistrustful of 
 them. It is therefore perhaps either this ignorance 
 and inexperience of mine that is now speaking, or 
 that I naturally favour one of my own nation and so 
 near myself in blood ; but I do now protest that this 
 sweet English maiden seemed to me to show here in 
 Sicily like a swan among crows. Instead of being 
 formally muffled up in black, like the Spanish ladies 
 about her, whose fashion is to wear their very ears 
 and napes covered with a mantilla, she was attired 
 after the latest mode, which our King's Dutch painter. 
 Sir Peter Lely, has since then put upon his canvases ; 
 to wit, with a wild but studied disorder in her gown-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 371 
 
 folds, which gown to-day was of pale blue satin with 
 a little white about it. Her neck was bare, though it 
 was midday, her hair cut down short over her forehead 
 and combed into little delicate ringlets at the temples ; 
 in the bosom of her dress, to set off the blue satin, a 
 twist of great orient peals, set there with an artful, 
 artless grace. Her arms like her neck were bare, to 
 the astonishment and envy of the Sicilian ladies, only 
 on her little hands, which bore her fan, she wore white 
 gloves reaching half way to the elbow and embroidered 
 with seed pearl, and with great round pearls for 
 buttons. Her skin was indeed incredibly white, and 
 as smooth, methought, as cream, her eyes blue and 
 gentle, and her young, innocent, simple face set among 
 the swart, sharp-featured, hawk-nosed Sicilian dames, 
 — did I liken her to a swan among crows ? I would 
 rather say to an angel come among devils (though, I 
 admit, comely and seductive ones) but after all, I am 
 the maiden's cousin and countryman, and some 
 allowance is to be made for me, if I show a 
 preference. 
 
 Well, I have got as far as I can bring myself to go 
 in the reporting of the Court ceremonies that now 
 took place ; but let no one suppose what I have told 
 was all, or nearly all. It was but the beginning, for 
 indeed there was no room in the Pavilion for the de- 
 ploying and manoeuvring of all the forces of Courtiers 
 and Court ladies. The grand Parade and Field Day 
 was therefore put off till it could take place in the 
 Viceroy's Palace. And we were all, Courtiers and 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Officers alike, drilled beforehand, like recruits, and 
 had to learn each of us his movements in the 
 "Function" (as they called it) from a written paper. 
 Ex ungue leonem : here is a bit of my own lesson ; 
 Captain St. Keyne will tJiereupoti sloivly advance to 
 the Viceregal Throne, and at about six paces from it 
 bow three times very loiv to the Viceroy, carrying his 
 hand the zvhile lightly to his sivo7'd-Jiilt in token of 
 fidelity to his Grace s person : then tvill he rejnove his 
 hand from his sword and bow once, but rather less low, 
 to the Lord President and the Councillors of State on 
 the right of the Throne, and to the Lords Lieutenants 
 of the Island, the fridges and great offi.cers on the left ; 
 and upon recovering from the last of these reverences, 
 Jie will advance and kiss hands, first that of the 
 Viceroy, then that of the Lady Geraldine Scudamour." 
 Enough of these futilities ! Let us come to more 
 urgent matters. 
 
 My Lord had returned from Spain in a very 
 changed humour, which I was at first inclined to 
 suppose might arise from discontent with his service 
 here with the Viceroy of Sicily, since he could not 
 but perceive after his journeying to Spain that a 
 genius for war and for affairs like his might find scope 
 for flight worthier of him, and a quarry nobler than 
 any to be started in this remote Island of the 
 Mediterranean Sea. But when I questioned him, he 
 told me plainly this was not so : That he was here 
 and bound to the Viceroy, was a matter of no concern 
 to him at all ; he and I, he said, had given as good as
 
 Beyond the Seas. 373 
 
 or indeed better than we had got in Sicily, and he 
 felt so Httle irked by his bond that he would take 
 leave, if he were in a mind to do so, to break it at a 
 moment's notice. Indeed he had so resolved long 
 before, and but for his cousin's marriage intervening, 
 and the threatening of an insurrection, and his un- 
 willingness to leave the Viceroy in the lurch, he would 
 not now be in the Island. 
 
 " Why then, Ralph, in the Devil's name " (for at 
 times, if I happened to lose patience, I used some of 
 my old tutor's freedom with my cousin) " in the 
 Devil's name, man," said I, " what ails you to be so 
 glum and moody .-* " 
 
 He was pleased to smile a Httle, but presently 
 resumed his old sad look and knitted brow. 
 
 " Is it our cousin's marriage that troubles you ? " 
 I asked him. 
 
 He said it was ; but vouchsafed no further inter- 
 pretation of his solicitude. 
 
 "Would to God!" I cried, "I could clap her and 
 you and myself aboard the Golondrina " (this was the 
 swift galley we had got him out of Tunis with) " and 
 sail for Bristol city, and so get us all to St. Keyne 
 Castle, out of this nest of ceremonious foreign rogues 
 and civil-spoken, posture-mongering thieves." 
 
 He shook his head : " I would 'twere possible ! " 
 he muttered. 
 
 " Why not t " cried I. " Say the word and I do it 
 to-morrow ! " 
 
 "Why, Humphrc}'," said he, "what is this you
 
 374 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 say ? You know as well as I do what stands in the 
 way — that 'tis her honour and her plighted word, 
 my honour and yours." 
 
 Truly enough, I knew it and had only spoke thus 
 idly in my anger at this turn of ill fortune that had 
 come upon us. " Poor Geraldine ! " quoth I, with 
 something liker to a sigh than anything I had uttered 
 in m.y life before, I think. " 'Tis a melancholy fate we 
 have prepared for thee." 
 
 I have so often said that I know nothing of women 
 and their ways, and yet have so often made bold to 
 pass my opinion upon both, that the most forbearing 
 reader will peradventure begin to be impatient with 
 me if I now say that the very best and wisest of them 
 (and I take my cousin Geraldine to be both) have but 
 the very sorriest notion in the world of foreseeing the 
 future, and are by nature so little provident of their 
 own welfare that if they are advised to any course 
 or if only they tell themselves it is one that others 
 follow, they will pursue it as one sheep follows the 
 flock, unthinking, and as if they were imperilling 
 some other life and body than their own. They only 
 begin to be dismayed and to cry out for help when 
 help can no longer come to them, and when they 
 have slipped or leapt (and be hanged to them !) over 
 the precipice and see the rocks below which shall 
 presently (poor wretches) rend and destroy their 
 tender bodies. 
 
 Chiefly, as I think, are women thus simple when 
 marriage is concerned, and thou2"h we men are no
 
 Beyond the Seas. 375 
 
 better than fools for the shutting of our eyes to what 
 all but we can see, and will bind ourselves for 
 life to a scold that we love for her sweetness, or to 
 a fool for her wisdom, a slattern for her discreet 
 carefulness, or to some other disguised imp of Satan 
 that we take for a better kind of angel ; yet in this 
 matter of pure blind, insane foolhardiness, our male 
 foolishness is as nothing to the madness of women 
 Only one ground have I for not calling my sweet 
 cousin Geraldine by a stronger name than fool, if 
 stronger name there be in the direction of foolishness ; 
 and that is that the child was not heart-whole, and 
 being forlorn and hopeless and desperate, recked less 
 than nothing of what became of her, and so had 
 taken [this devil-possessed leap in the dark. I did 
 not indeed know this for certain till afterwards, and 
 perhaps have no right even now and here to hint at 
 the matter, but already I had reason to guess some- 
 thing of how the matter lay. 
 
 I was never, all my life long, much of a courtier, 
 having found my knees of a most unaccommodating 
 stiffness when I have come to bend them before any 
 alien Sovereign. Indeed they refuse any pliancy at 
 all at such times but on compulsion of my will. Nor 
 will they ever willingly ply but in presence of my 
 own revered Sovereign, to whom to feel love and 
 offer allegiance is sure sweeter and nobler than 
 Independence itself So it was that when I 
 endeavoured to treat my girl cousin with some 
 of the respect and observance owing to her coming
 
 n^ Beyond the Seas. 
 
 state and dignity, I found it a hardish matter to 
 accomplish. The more so as she would in no wise 
 help me : indeed I believe it was as much the 
 maiden's kindly nature as my own churlish one 
 that was in fault, she not being willing to endure 
 to be so stiffly treated by one she had loved as a 
 child, and who she knew loved her too (for I must 
 make free confession here of that weakness in me). 
 Be it how it might ; if I but said " Madam " to her 
 she would laugh. If we were at Court and in 
 observation of the Courtiers, and I made her an 
 obeisance, she would whisper as I came near her, 
 "How can you, dear Humphrey.'"' If I reproved 
 her, as I would in private, and pretty sternly too, 
 for not forgetting our kinship and for not being 
 more haughty with me, her countenance would fall 
 and the tears stand in her eyes. So it came 
 to be that when the Courtiers or Duennas were 
 not present to observe us, she and I would often 
 fall into our old way of talking, and speak of old 
 times with us, when I was guardian and tutor to 
 my Lord at St. Keyne and in a fashion to her as 
 well, and my two young pupils were companions 
 and in a way playmates, though there was a 
 difference of between seven and eight years between 
 them. She dearly loved now to hear of all that 
 had happened to her kinsman since our parting 
 with her at St. Keyne Castle. "Ah!" she said, 
 " if I could but have come with you as I had 
 desired."
 
 Beyond the Seas. 377 
 
 " Why, Mrs. Geraldine," said I, " thou wert surely 
 never in earnest to propose thyself for a Bellario } " 
 
 "Yes indeed, Humphrey, I was quite in earnest." 
 
 " I warrant now you never thought of your poor 
 cousin Ralph again after our parting," said I, willing 
 to droll a little with her. 
 
 " Ah ! " cried she, " you little know ! You should 
 have let mc come with you to take care of you 
 both, Humphrey." 
 
 "Why, poor child, thou wouldest have had but 
 a rough service, what with fighting our way through 
 our enemies in England, and our hard days of 
 travelling through Germany, and then again the 
 snows and the frost and the lofty hills to climb, 
 and the robbers to fend off in the Tyrolean Alps." 
 
 " Nay ! " she cried, for she was ever tender of 
 
 heart, " I saw it all in thought, and you never put 
 
 foot in stirrup or marched a step on your way 
 
 but I was with you in heart. Alas ! " cried she, 
 
 " I had like to have died a hundred times for fright 
 
 of his — of your fate," and she cited from Dr. Donne' 
 
 poem, clasping her little hands and looking up, in 
 
 the fashion of the players : — 
 
 " I saw him go 
 O'er the white Alps alone : I saw him, I, 
 Assailed, fight, taken, stabbed, bleed, fall and die." 
 
 And it was the prettiest thing to see and hear her, 
 for she had got, or put on ('twas the mode then) an 
 odd sort of a little lisp in her speech ; she dragged 
 her words out slowly, just as the play-actors do, and
 
 378 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 with such a feeling and sadness in them that it seemed 
 not possible but she must weep outright ere she could 
 end the line and come to, " bleed, fall and die." 
 
 " And would you in truth, Geraldine, knowing all 
 the dangers we have run, have been willing to 
 accompany us ? " 
 
 "Ay! with all my heart." 
 
 " Why then, Mrs. Geraldine," said I, still drolling 
 with her, " how would you have fared in the sea-fight 
 off this city, when we were so hard pressed .'' You 
 could not have skulked below ; being in man's dress 
 and so near my Lord it would have behoved you 
 for example's sake to stay, and face wounds and death 
 itself" 
 
 She trembled a little and turned red, " And do you 
 think, Humphrey, I would have feared wounds or 
 death by his side ? " Then in lower, muttered voice 
 to herself, which I could not be sure I rightly caught 
 " Besides, I was sorely wounded, all the time, before."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 I HAD never known my cousin Ralph in so brooding 
 and unhappy a humour as at this time. He was in 
 truth divided between his duty on the one side to his 
 master, the Viceregent of Sicily, which behoved him 
 to stand between the Throne and the insane murder- 
 ous turbulence of the citizens, while on the other there 
 was his hatred for the tyranny and oppression of the 
 Sicilian Rulers, against which the people had justifica- 
 tion enough to protest and murmur, and even, as we 
 conceived, to rise in arms ; for the Spaniards are in 
 Sicily by no right but of conquest, and as such, are 
 more than other Rulers, bound to justice and mercy 
 towards their subjects. 
 
 About five years before this, Spanish oppression 
 had so overborne the fears of the people in Palermo, 
 that they had run desperately against their rulers ; 
 and their desperation being sharpened by a famine 
 that was then pinching them, and which they believed 
 arose from the cruel taxings and exactions of their 
 foreign masters, their mutiny was so fierce and sudden
 
 3So Beyond the Seas. 
 
 that the Spaniards were overborne and the city of 
 Palermo had no doubt been burned to the ground, 
 and every head man and magistrate murdered by the 
 enraged multitude, had not the moderate counsels of 
 some monks and others, who were neither against the 
 lower people nor exactly of them, prevailed ; but this 
 only after fire had been set to some Palaces and 
 many of the Spaniards had lost their lives. The 
 Viceroy's troops were quite daunted, and hid or fled, 
 and he himself with his Court and chief officers (not 
 this present Viceregent, but a precursor of his) sought 
 refuge ignominiously in his ships, and thus saved his 
 neck. In the meantime the people acclaimed for their 
 leader one Alessio, an honest, well meaning fellow, 
 with his mouth full of high talk of equity, and mercy, 
 and reformation of wrongs ; but poor Alessio soon 
 found, as others have, that the Throne is an uneasy 
 seat, and the Sceptre a heavy instrument for a weak, 
 unused hand to bear. For all his talk of justice and 
 mercy, he began his reign by hanging a brother 
 insurgent ringleader who he fancied was creeping too 
 near his throne, with a mind to oust himself. Then 
 he went on from bad to worse; ruling too mercifully 
 for some, too hardly for others, letting some of his 
 followers get too rich, and keeping others too poor. 
 He increased his enemies daily, and his friends not 
 at all, was wrongly accused of treachery by the first, 
 and coldly defended by the last ; insomuch that after 
 a few weeks of wretched rule, in a rising of his new 
 subjects the unhappy Alessio was by them torn
 
 Beyond the Seas. 5,81 
 
 wl^ 
 
 cruelly to pieces and his head kicked hke a football 
 through the streets of Palermo. 
 
 Over the ruins of Alcssio's short empire the 
 Spaniards crept again into their places, and as soon 
 as they felt securely seated therein they began to 
 scourge the city with exceeding malevolence for its 
 mutiny; using the barbarous cruelty of repression 
 which the weak and the cowardly ever employ. 
 They established their government again upon the 
 terror they inspired, and again lived and prospered 
 upon the wrongs and oppressions of the unfortunate 
 Sicilians. 
 
 This had taken place five years before, and since 
 then my Lord's victories over the Pirates by increas- 
 ing the labours and profits of the farming and fisher 
 people in the Island had bestowed prosperity with 
 peace upon all alike and so had staved off for a time 
 that famine which ever follows upon oppression. 
 
 Now, had the Spaniards been but moderate in their 
 exactions, all had yet gone well, but so soon as they 
 perceived the yield of the fields and markets to rise, 
 and the gains of country folk, city folk and fisher folk 
 to increase, they must needs lay the-ir greedy hands 
 upon these gains in their haste to grow rich at the 
 people's cost, and again starvation and famine threat- 
 ened the people of Sicily. 
 
 These then were the horns of the dilemma we were 
 fixed on : for my cousin argued, " If in my impatience 
 of the Spaniards' tyranny I leave them to the anger 
 of the people, the revenge the insurgents will take
 
 382 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 will be bloody and without bounds, and no im- 
 proved government of this wretched country can 
 ensue ; for the Spaniards, with all the power of 
 King Philip behind them, are strong enough to re- 
 conquer the Island ten times over, with suffering to 
 the poor ignorant people beyond words. If on the 
 other hand I stay, I countenance the tyranny and 
 cause it to continue." 
 
 This it was that troubled him greatly; and he could 
 see no way of escape for him but to stay on and en- 
 deavour to temper the severity of the governors while 
 he persuaded the governed to more patience. 
 
 So it was that while the preparations for the 
 wedding were taking place, Ralph was busy almost 
 daily, either at the Council or with the Viceroy, or 
 with the secretaries, the consuls (as they are called 
 here) and other rulers of the city and people ; warning 
 them of the imminent peril of over-severity, prevailing 
 upon them to mingle lenity with justice, and generally 
 interceding for the people. The governors were not 
 so blind to the future or forgetful of the recent past 
 as not greatly to fear an insurrection ; and when he 
 so warned them and pleaded with them, 'tis acknow- 
 ledged he persuaded them to his way of thinking; and 
 so an insurrection that we knew was just then actually 
 kindling to a mighty flame and blaze, was, for the 
 time, stifled and stayed. 
 
 It was upon this great and imminent business that 
 my cousin was engaged immediately upon his return 
 from Spain to the excluding of all other affairs,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 3S3 
 
 insomuch that he for days together abstained from 
 appearing at Court, and even withdrew himself from 
 the society of the Lady Geraldine, though she was 
 residing under his very roof. 
 
 I now fully understand his reason for this restraint of 
 his cousinly and friendly intercourse with and interest 
 in the girl, but at the time I did not even suspect 
 there was anything in the matter beyond the great 
 urgency of State affairs, being myself of a very un- 
 regarding habit, and never apt to look below the 
 surface of my friends' and companions' minds for 
 motives and purposes which they themselves refrain 
 from informing me of. So soon as he had despatched 
 this aforesaid great business, and so soon as he could 
 assure himself that he had warded off the peril of a 
 sudden movement of the populace, and he had his 
 leisure again, I expected from my cousin a return to 
 the comity and companionableness of life, in which 
 he had till now ever been the first to delight, in times 
 of freedom from affairs. Yet he still held aloof, and 
 so far from helping me to reconcile myself to the lot 
 which lay before our girl cousin, he avoided mention 
 of the subject as he still avoided the maiden herself
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 As I am chronicling the opinions as well as the 
 life-story of my cousin, I must endeavour to make 
 clear in this place that one of all his concepts which 
 has roused the most questioning and curiosity among 
 the learned. The more bound am I to do this, inas- 
 much as his arriving at this opinion was a sort of 
 turning point in his own life, from and after which a 
 change was upon him. Not that he ever turned his 
 back upon his former way of thinking or of action, or 
 altered either in essentials; but the river of his life, 
 so to say, hereafter flowed with a stronger and swifter 
 current : it had in its course broken down and passed 
 through a great obstructive weir, which till now had 
 dammed back the waters of his being into stagnation. 
 This turning point, this eventful passage in his life, 
 has been spoken of since, but too vaguely, as his 
 acceptance (I would myself rather call it his discovery) 
 of the Doctrine of the " World Spirit." This phrase, 
 " World Spirit," I will use for lack of a better, and 
 because it was he who first coined it, but he was 
 never quite pleased therewith. 
 
 That my cousin should have chosen, as he did, the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 385 
 
 short lull in affairs that now occurred, as a time for 
 abstracting his thoughts from the world of men, and 
 for thinking out this new doctrine of his philosophy, 
 would seem as strange a circumstance to me as I am 
 persuaded it does to the Reader, did I not know that 
 the cause of it lay in that power acquired by him (of 
 which I have already spoken) of transporting and 
 abstracting himself, for duty's sake, from pursuing 
 after that which his soul might love. I alone could 
 guess what it now cost him to seek solitude and to 
 convey his thoughts upon the cold, solitary heights 
 of philosophy when the valleys below tempted him, 
 whence came up to him confusedly the sounds of 
 life and comfortable hum of men and women's 
 voices. 
 
 There are times in all our lives of such heavy 
 dreariness, and bitter disappointment and hopeless- 
 ness of all attainment, that we are driven thereby 
 into deeper melancholy, which I am persuaded could 
 end in nothing else than madness, were we not able to 
 work out a salvation from our misery by our own 
 energy, and through the workings of that same 
 mysterious World Spirit in regard to which I will 
 now speak of my cousin's doctrine and opinions. 
 
 When we passed through the Low Countries 
 Ralph had been greatly disappointed to have come 
 too late to have word of mouth with that greatest 
 among thinkers of our day and most generous among 
 men and soldiers, Monsieur Rene Descartes, who had 
 for many years found in these civil regions a refuge 
 
 C C
 
 386 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 from ignorant spite and persecution ; but this famous 
 Philosopher had passed away from the living only a 
 few months before our arrival, and that not in the 
 land ofhis adoption but in Sweden, whither the rage 
 of his enemies had at length driven him. 
 
 In Monsieur Descartes's exposition of the problem 
 of life my kinsman had once thought to find safe 
 mooring for his own questionings, so cunningly did 
 the French philosopher steer his way among the 
 shoals and rocks which had wrecked others, and so 
 honestly refuse to seek or enforce conviction but 
 where his foundation was sure. 
 
 Ralph St. Keyne could go some way in his company. 
 He could say with him, " Cogito ergo sum ; " because 
 I can think, I know that I exist — not otherwise. I 
 could not think were I not a being holding of God ; 
 were I, that is, bereft of certain innate and connate 
 ideas, and chief of them that there is a perfect God, 
 who was, and is, and will be ; and that as perfection 
 includes omnipotence, so must God be not the 
 Creator only of the material universe, but its Informer, 
 whose infinite perfection is reflected in me in the 
 aforesaid innate ideas of Justice, Mercy, Truth, and 
 even of Limitation and Doubt ; for that I doubt 
 itself implies that I look to a certitude beyond myself, 
 and that Certitude is God, Thus was the Cartesian 
 Principle reflected in the mirror of my kinsman's 
 intelligence, a faint image, though not a distorted 
 one ; but hereabouts he began to differ and his path to 
 diverge from his who was in a sense and in his begin-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 387 
 
 nings (chiefly for the great admiration he had for this 
 master's understanding and honesty) his guide and 
 teacher in philosophy. For in my cousin's esteem, 
 the Cartesian God was too abstract and metaphysical 
 a Deity for his own acceptance ; it being a positive 
 profanity in Ralph's eyes to contemplate the great 
 Creator of the Universe otherwise than as its Preserver 
 too, and as the Perfect and Infinite God who was all 
 in all, was present in every creature and in every 
 act of that creature ; " So that," said he, " it is not 
 I who think, but God within me who thinks." So 
 too was it that when Monsieur Descartes insisted 
 upon an essential difference in spiritual and material 
 things, in thought and extended substance, my kins- 
 man insisted upon all phenomena and all created 
 beings, all their acts, all thought, volition and emotion, 
 being forms of extension emanating from the Divine 
 Essence. That some of these phenomena are evil 
 was no stumbling block, for evil was in his eyes 
 perhaps not a positive thing at all, but a negative 
 one, the absence of good — as cold is not a positive 
 thing but the absence of heat ; or it was a perversion 
 of the good, and being so, might in time be changed 
 and perfected to good. Thus we could obtain the 
 comfortable assurance that the reign of evil would 
 not tend to permanent ascendency, but that there 
 was that of Divine implanted in all societies of men 
 which ever made for goodness. 
 
 So wandering in the maze with all of us who are 
 not content to sit in idle and indifferent thought- 
 
 C C 2
 
 388 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 lessness, Ralph St. Keyne soon let go from his hand 
 the clue that Monsieur Descartes had held out to him. 
 He had pondered very deeply upon the problem 
 of life and death and the ordering of the world, and 
 in turn had walked with all the great masters of 
 thought, both of old and of these later days, and 
 with all in turn had come before the locked Portal 
 which might not be passed. Each would offer him a 
 key to the lock, but no key would open it to his hand 
 and show the promised shining land beyond : and he 
 was grievously discouraged to observe how each 
 thinker was for opening this ultimate Portal with a 
 key of his own designing ; how each Philosophy con- 
 tained nothing of a description of the further land but 
 only of the key to the Portal, its wards and figurings, 
 and how, rightly used, it could not fail to thrust back 
 the bolts and bars of the Portal gate. Beyond 
 pt-omising this, none went. None even could tell what 
 this lock was, that so obstinately shut out the inner 
 world from man's inspection ; of the lock they said 
 nothing; of the Portal, nothing; of the land beyond, 
 nothing; of their key, too much. Now it was this 
 very consideration of the great divergence of thinkers 
 and the as great divergence in their solution of the 
 problem, that first shed some little ray of light upon 
 Lord St. Keyne in the darkness of his groping ; for 
 he began to ask himself the reason, and whether it 
 might not be that man's self, man's own mind and 
 heart, his intelligence, that is, as influenced by his 
 emotions, were not themselves the locked door which
 
 Beyond the Seas. 389 
 
 barred him from the truth ; or, to put it more clearly, 
 whether his own imagination, habits, prepossesions, and 
 prejudices did not so grow up in him as to cloud and 
 bedim his own intelligence, that only spyglass where- 
 with to view the far-off spiritual world. 
 
 This set him upon thinking how infinitely different 
 are men's minds, and how impossible for any two to 
 see quite alike. Again, as that is not confirmed truth 
 for the world, or even for the seer himself, which but 
 one can see and shall fail to persuade others to see, 
 so perhaps will the truth of ultimate things never be 
 revealed to the world because of this Babel of diverse 
 intelligences, of which doubtless the failure to reach 
 to heaven by the confusion of tongues m the old 
 Babel builders is but a fabled fore-image. 
 
 After perceiving this he began to enquire whether 
 there might not be some attribute common to all 
 men, some universal faculty or quality, untouched, or 
 at least not eradicated by habit, passion, emotion or 
 prejudice, whereby they and perhaps all creatures of 
 God could be (as the arithmeticians say) brought into 
 some common denomination together, and so perhaps 
 the resolution of the great problem attained. 
 
 " Yes ! " he cried, " Eureka ! I have found it — • 
 there is one thing in common so strong that it can 
 overcome or nearly overcome all passion, habit, 
 emotion or prejudice." It was the endeavour in all 
 created beings after the heightening and enhance- 
 ment of their existences, the unreasoning delieht in 
 the living functions even when life is no longer
 
 390 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 delightful, which is implanted in all living creatures: 
 the desire not to live only but to increase and extend 
 the mere delight of continuing to breathe this vital air 
 This something, this mysterious and unreasoning force 
 he would christen " The World Spii'it," as being an 
 incarnation in all life upon the earth, in all living 
 creatures, from man to the fly and worm and meanest 
 creeping thing, of the very soul of God Himself; and 
 as being that which beyond all else informs and 
 dominates the world we live in, its soul and spirit in 
 manifest shape. It is an attribute, an energy, mean 
 and limited in the meaner creatures, but rising with 
 increasing glory in those of higher endowment till it 
 reaches its earthly altitude and meridian in man 
 himself, and comprehends all that raises him towards 
 Heaven, as love, and chanty, and the energy to 
 employ every high faculty of the soul ; but yet is still 
 imperfect and unaccomplished, and must needs attain 
 its final culmination only in the Creator and Informer 
 and Preserver of the world Himself. By means of the 
 reverent contemplation of this universal " World 
 Spirit " in all its so various and varying phases, we 
 could, my kinsman hoped, consider and contemplate 
 God Himself, and reach to a nearer knowledge of His 
 nature and the working of His Spirit in ourselves. 
 
 I have thus but indicated my cousin's doctrine of 
 the " World Spirit," giving here but a foretaste and 
 ample of that which I shall hereafter fully lay before 
 the world in my still unfinished work on my Lord St. 
 Keyne's Philosophic System, to be entitled " Nobilis-
 
 Beyond the Seas. 391 
 
 simi Domini Sancti Keynii Doctrines Expositio." 
 Enough to say now that the Doctrine widened his 
 Philosophy at once and softened the asperity and 
 austerity of his long-held stoical convictions. 
 
 I have said that he perceived this aforesaid " World 
 Spirit" in all that was endowed with life. I should 
 have limited this last word perhaps to sentient life, 
 but I was and still am unwilling to make this reserva- 
 tion in his name, for he was inclined and all but con- 
 sented to extend the existence of the " World Spirit" 
 into inanimate beings, so that he loved in fancy at 
 least to read its manifestation in all the nature of this 
 fair and favoured Island ; in the leaves of trees, turn- 
 ing their green and glistening surfaces under the 
 breeze with a hundred changing shapes of beauty to- 
 wards the radiant sun ; in the flowers heavy with 
 odorous wealth with which in their bounty they en- 
 riched the surrounding air, that already did not lack 
 the accompaniment of music, namely the treble song 
 of woodland birds, and humming of innumerable bees 
 to make an harmonic bass in this symphony of things 
 and beings, all creatures and obeissant lieges of 
 God. 
 
 There is a retired valley high up in the mountains 
 behind the city of Palermo and within the reach of it 
 in an hour's riding, and therein stands a little country 
 house set in a goodly garden adorned with many 
 smooth-lipped fountains and conduits and runnels for 
 the flowing water, all of polished white marble. Here 
 in spring and early summer, the song of throstles and
 
 392 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 nightingales is ever heard, and the plane and orange 
 trees, thickset, with jasmine and roses in their inter- 
 spaces, make a green dusk and refreshmg odorous 
 coolness in the heats of noontide. 
 
 To this solitary place, which had no owner but 
 himself, my kinsman had lately resorted daily, and 
 here when I wanted him for advice or orders, I sought 
 him. I would find him ever, now against his former 
 wont, idle, having abandoned books, with all researches 
 into the nature of things, and all conference with the 
 learned; living now only in reverie and meditation 
 here in this retired and hidden nook, where silence 
 reigned, but for the summer hum of insects, the rustle 
 of leaves, the twitter of hidden birds, and the sound 
 of ever falling and flowing water. || 
 
 Here he sought and found the rest he needed, for 
 in truth my kinsman was at this season of his life 
 somewhat worn and wasted with the vicissitudes of 
 our busy campaigns and weakened with the fever fol- 
 lowing upon sundry grievous wounds gotten therein ; 
 and he sorely needed the rest that now he v.-as taking. 
 I have observed that they who are of such fine and 
 eager spirit as his are less able to bear wounds and 
 fatigue and the hard betidings of war, than men of 
 coarser grain and rougher fibre, such as my own ; as 
 the humble cruse or crock will endure usage that 
 shall break in pieces the vessel of more artful 
 workmanships and as Mr. Dryden has well said, the fl 
 souls of great men over inform their bodies and waste 
 them to decay.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 393 
 
 It was in this secluded pleasance that he discoursed 
 to me after the tenour of what I have now been 
 setting down. It was in such a spot as this, if in any, 
 and in this season, if in any, that the fatigues of con- 
 stant warfare might easily have seemed to him vain, 
 fond and foolish ; that he might have cried, " A truce 
 with war, sat militavi, I have fought enough, and again. 
 Dens nobis hcec otia fecit, Providence has surely pre- 
 pared for me this retreat and repose now that I have 
 so laboured through the heat and burden of the day ; " 
 but far from him was any such faineance. If he 
 paused, it was only that his philosophy was enlarging 
 its bounds, and that he rested awhile before he should 
 take a loftier flight ; " for," said he, with this new doc- 
 trine of the "■ xvorld spirit'' forcing itself upon his 
 convictions, " am I not in the wrong if I think, by my- 
 self alone and with unaided strength, to force myself 
 along the path to truth when I should take all Nature 
 into my confidence and enter into hers, and so," he 
 waved his hand round about him on all within this 
 fair garden, "take my own pait in this eternally 
 cntoned symphony of the creatures of God .-* " 
 
 Thinking I saw in all this some lessening of that 
 ascetic spirit which had as yet caused him to measure 
 out the future fate of our cousin Geraldine in a path 
 as hard to tread as his own ; and guessing that this 
 would be a favourable moment to confer with him on 
 the lot that was before her, I came full rpon the 
 matter with him one day that I had ridden out to his 
 retreat among the mountains.
 
 394 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 " Cousin Ralph," said I, " they have fixed the 
 marriage for this day se'nnight. Now I am for this, 
 that we cannot let it be at all." 
 
 He looked at me with a face full of amazement at 
 my offhandedness. 
 
 " On what account or reason ? " asked he. 
 
 ** On account first that to marry a young girl to an 
 old man is a sin." 
 
 " 'Tis too late to refrain from committing it," he said. 
 
 " Secondly, on account that we who are grown men 
 and know the world have taken advantage of the 
 weak will of a child who knows it not, and the 
 spoiling of all her life will be our doing, not hers, who 
 has had but a poor half-knowledge of things in the 
 nebulosities of a Convent close." 
 
 " Will she not, being a woman, and young and 
 unset in opinion and habit, fall into the ways of her 
 new life, and conform to it and find her happiness 
 in it?" 
 
 " By Heaven ! Ralph," cried I, losing patience with 
 him, "if she learn to conform to the ways of an old 
 Spanish Courtier husband, and to love their formality 
 and hypocrisy, 'twill be the spoiling of the sweetest, 
 tenderest, truest maiden that ever breathed our 
 English air." 
 
 Ralph St. Keyne was dashed a little by my bold- 
 ness and impatience with him, and held his peace, as 
 perhaps not finding an immediate answer to a plea he 
 knew so sound. 
 
 Now, Reader, thou thinkest doubtless I am as 

 
 Beyond the Seas. 395 
 
 simple a man in certain matters as some idle, shrewish 
 talk of mine throughout this narration has evidenced. 
 Well, perhaps I have a little misled thee of set pur- 
 pose. Perhaps I have a shrewder knowledge of men 
 and women than I have cared to betray. I will make 
 no boast however, and indeed I will not say another 
 word on the subject, except that I have not read the 
 writings of Messer Niccolo Macchiavelli without some 
 profit therein. This subtle Italian is of opinion that 
 if we have a mind to gain our will of one of a noble 
 nature we must take him by some noble quality he 
 possesses, as pity, or gratitude or generosity or what 
 not ; contrariwise, if we have to do with a mean man, 
 we can surely turn him through some mean attribute 
 in him, as envy, vanity, self-love — the numbering of 
 them is but too easy. 
 
 Perhaps if I were as simple as thou, Reader (in 
 thine own possible simplicity) hast taken me to be, I 
 would have blurted out to my cousin a thing that, by 
 this, after long suspicion, I had come to know very 
 surely ; to wit, that Ralph's boy-liking for his cousin 
 had deepened into a strong abiding love. Now a man 
 has no need of being a Philosopher to know that the 
 love of one of my kinsman's kind is not as the trivial 
 love of common men, but may be likened to a tempest 
 that tosses a great sea ; and that, once so possessed, 
 such a man is made or marred by the possession ; 
 made, if things go well and he loves and is loved 
 again worthily ; marred, if they go awry, or his love 
 fall on stony ground.
 
 396 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Therefore in this is my afore-claimed shrewdness 
 shown, that I would not for all the world put into 
 plain words, for his pride and nobleness of soul to 
 split upon, what he himself hardly guessed or did 
 certainly not dare to formulate to himself, and say to 
 him, " Ralph, thou lovest thy cousin, therefore suffer 
 her not to bestow herself on another." That would 
 have been to appeal to the lower side of him, and 
 straightway have warned and armed him to resist 
 himself; but I knew that, though he was a philosopher 
 and a sound logician, armed with all the weapons of 
 the Scholastics, there was in him that most unreason- 
 ing and unphilosophic quality of pity, which, being 
 moved, would scatter all his metaphysics to the 
 winds ; and by this I was going to take him. 
 
 " It is meet, Ralph," said 1, coming upon him as it 
 were from afar, " it is meet you should know that if 
 our cousin enters upon this marriage, it will be the 
 more cruel a thing in this, that the poor child has 
 already bestowed her heart on another." 
 
 He broke in upon me at once with, " Has she told 
 you that.?" 
 
 " Come ! " said I, " Ralph, look at me well, and tell 
 me if a young maiden would be apt to choose as 
 curst and crabbed a fellow as myself for her con- 
 fidant ? " 
 
 " Why," said he, looking on me curiously, " I will 
 swear, Humphrey, she might do worse." 
 
 *' No," said I, " Geraldine has told me not a word 
 of her love, but, as I am informed, there are many
 
 Beyond the Seas. 397 
 
 ways of judging of such affairs by other means, as by 
 looks, tones of voice, sighs, the gossip of other women 
 and the h'ke." 
 
 "And by one of these methods you are assured 
 that our cousin has " 
 
 "Yes," said I, "'tis sure enough she has given her 
 heart for good and ever to this gentleman," 
 
 "Who is the man?" setting his face a little, 
 though he had been forcing himself till now to smile 
 pleasantly on the matter. 
 
 "Why, it would appear that she met the gentleman 
 in Spain, passing through from her Convent " (Heaven 
 forgive me, if this was more of a lie than an evasion !) 
 "or maybe 'twas in Portugal ; I am not truly informed." 
 
 " But," said my cousin, studying the matter deeply, 
 " I was with her all the days in both countries, and I 
 cannot bring to my mind that Geraldine seemed to 
 regard — to prefer any one, Spanish or Portuguese, 
 courtier or other gentleman. No," he said, " most 
 positively she distinguished none of them." 
 
 " I have never heard," said I, " that a Philosopher was 
 any good at women's politics, Ralph, and thou art 
 still but a Philosopher, and knowest no more than a 
 child the way to read a woman's thoughts. Be sure 
 she beguiled thee." 
 
 " Well," said he, " even taking it to be as you say, 
 she is young, she will forget ; time and distance, I 
 have heard say, cure heart wounds." 
 
 " It is a very foolish saying, and never meant for 
 Geraldine. Weak women may be as changing as the
 
 393 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 moon or the ocean water, as in your verse you once 
 rhymed it, but they of the nobler kind love once and love 
 for ever ; yea, through all changes of their lives and 
 through death itself. Of such is Geraldine, and as she 
 lacks something of your stoical philosophy, Ralph, so 
 the wound she has got will rankle and be the sorer the 
 longer it is borne and the further it is carried. She 
 will not complain, but the poor child, in the sad 
 yearning of unaccomplished desire, ever setting what 
 might have been against the cold and bitterness of 
 what will be, will quickly lose her youth, her 
 happiness, her health, her trust in God's goodness, 
 and finally her life itself (for no so tender nature as 
 hers can long bear up against the negation of all that 
 her good star intended for her). So she will die, and 
 the last breath she draws will still be her happiest, 
 for thereafter she will know shall come her release. 
 And this fate will be not of her own contriving, nor 
 mine, nor any one's in all the world but yours alone, 
 Ralph." 
 
 He answered me nothing, but my words had touched 
 his heart, and troubled him. 
 
 I had this day brought him word of some slight 
 apprehended trouble in the city ; and presently he and 
 I, with our little cavalry escort, rode back to the 
 Palace. On the way citywards he came back from 
 time to time to the matter of our discourse, but I 
 judged it best to let my last speech work in him and 
 add nothing thereto, barely answering his questions 
 as he asked them.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 399 
 
 " Is this gentleman," he asked me, " by his manners 
 and his age, and his birth, the equal of our cousin, 
 and worthy of her . . . ," 
 
 I cut him short with " He is a gentleman of 
 ancient lineage, high rank, a very honourable man, 
 and by his sword already made famous abroad and 
 at home." 
 
 " What may his age be ? " 
 
 " His age I judge from all accounts to be near your 
 own, neither more nor less ; — but Ralph," said I, 
 " I came out to confer with you on the state of 
 the citizens' minds in Messina, and the eastern parts 
 of the Island . . . ." 
 
 " Has this gentleman, who must needs know of the 
 Lady Geraldine's engagement to marry the Viceroy, 
 ventured to speak of his love to her ? " 
 
 " He has not — would that he had ! — and your 
 mention of the Viceroy reminds me to tell you 
 his Grace's particular injunctions to me to inform 
 you that . . . ." 
 
 " Come ! " said my kinsman, " I must be certified 
 of this. Have you any knowledge of how this gentle- 
 man is inclined to my cousin?" 
 
 " He loves her ; of that I am assured. For her love 
 he shuns his friends, his business, the studies that he 
 used to love, and all pleasure of his life. If he miss 
 getting her, he is a lost man." 
 
 " But he knows she loves him ? " 
 
 " Nay, he does not remotely guess it." 
 
 " Then why does he not set his fate on the hazard
 
 400 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 of an avowal ? Why, in Heaven's name, does he not 
 speak out, like a man ? " 
 
 " Why 'tis just because he is a man, because he is 
 an honourable man, who, knowing of the maiden's 
 bond, will do nothing to persuade her to break it." 
 
 " This is a noble fellow," said my kinsman, after 
 musing a little, " and one after my own heart." 
 
 " Indeed," said I, " he is after mine too." 
 
 "And you are persuaded she loves this gentle- 
 man .? " 
 
 " With all her soul ; if she miss getting him she 
 weds misery," 
 
 " Alas ! " said my poor kinsman, " this is a very 
 pitiful affair. You do not know, Humphrey, all the 
 pity of it." 
 
 " I believe," I said, " I know more about the matter 
 than you do." 
 
 He considered a little : " Were I fully assured that 
 our cousin's heart was set in earnest upon this, and 
 that to continue in her present engagement was to 
 bring this great life-long unhappiness upon her, I 
 could almost resolve to forfeit my promise and break 
 my plighted word with the Viceroy." 
 
 " What ! " said I (willing to prove him), " and give 
 her to this stranger, whom she loves .'' " ; 
 
 " Ay ! " setting his face hard, " and give her to this 
 stranger." 
 
 " Cousin Ralph," said I, " I believe I never loved 
 you till now." 
 
 He seemed not to hear my words, but falling into
 
 Beyond the Seas. 401 
 
 deep thought we rode on silently till we neared the 
 Palace gates ; then he said ; 
 
 " I must have some assurance from Geraldine her- 
 self that you have read her heart and mind aright. 
 As she has said nothing, you may have mistaken. 
 How am I to make sure ? " 
 
 "Why, man, question her yourself closely, and I 
 warrant you force all the truth from her. You are 
 in your rights, being her guardian." 
 
 " No," said he, " I will not question her, nor shall 
 any other : I will not have the girl shamed before us. 
 And yet it is a matter too momentous in her life for 
 me not to arrive at the truth, and I will know it other- 
 wise. I will question her, and she shall confess all 
 that is in her soul before you and before me, who will 
 never betray her, and she shall never even guess she 
 has spoken a word." 
 
 " To do that," said I, " seems to me a wholly im- 
 possible thing. How will you perform it .'' " 
 
 " Can you not guess ? " he said. " Do you suppose 
 I cannot, if I choose, call her spirit before me as she 
 sleeps, and question that ? What passes thus will be 
 as an unremembered dream to her ; or, if she recall it, 
 she will recall it only as a dream, a vision, a fantasy 
 of her own creation." 
 
 Now, I will honestly admit that I then had but an 
 infirm faith in this faculty which my dear cousin was 
 used to arrogate to himself; not indeed that I would 
 at this time, even, have denied the possibility of a 
 thing which could be supported by him with such 
 
 D D
 
 402 Beyond the Seas, 
 
 wealth of argument and of authority, but I suspended 
 my judgment upon the feasibihty of this seeming 
 miracle in modern days ; in short, I conceived of it 
 rather as a pious opinion, for which much could be 
 advanced, than as a vital article of belief The more 
 so as Ralph allowed that he had not succeeded, or but 
 seldom and imperfectly during his captivity among 
 the Turks, in calling my own spirit into his presence, 
 which he had endeavoured on several occasions to do. 
 Once or twice he had supposed my imago, or rather, 
 I suppose, the imago of my spirit, was actually in his 
 presence, but so faintly adumbrated and responding 
 so imperfectly to questions and suggestions from him- 
 self, that he was fain to believe in the end that what 
 he thought he perceived, he would not say what he 
 saw, was perceived by his mental vision only, and was 
 something projected upon the background of his per- 
 ceptions by his own vivid imagination and by the 
 strong desire he had for communion with me, but was 
 in truth no real spirit form at all — only an illusion. 
 The great distance between Sicily and Tunis may 
 doubtless have had something to do with this failure, 
 as my Lord was ready to admit ; for, as distance 
 attenuates and weakens all material bonds and con- 
 necting vinciila whatever, so it cannot but weaken this 
 link between man and man, which he would not for 
 worlds pretend to be other than as material a thing as 
 the calling voice or beckoning hand of a friend. I 
 am, however, willing to believe that the chief difficulty 
 in my case was my own temperament, who am in
 
 Beyond the Seas. 403 
 
 truth of a very obdurate and insensitive nature, and 
 moreover the soundest sleeper in the world ; so that 
 I doubt if any invocation less audible than a can- 
 nonade or less moving than an earthquake would, 
 while I sleep, persuade any portion of my spirit to 
 travel abroad.
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 By the time we reached the Palace it was late, and 
 had got to be dusk, and Lieutenant Brown, knowing 
 of our coming, had sent a small body of troopers to 
 meet us, as a guard through the city streets, for there 
 were at this time flying rumours of insurrection among 
 the citizens. We indeed little needed it, seeing that 
 my Lord and his troops and sailors were at this time 
 much liked by the common people ; still, it was good 
 policy for us military not to traverse the streets of a 
 disturbed city save in imposing numbers. However, 
 nothing occurred of note, save perhaps that our pre- 
 sence called forth more than the usual voices of the 
 mobile in our favour, and more than the ordinary cries 
 against the Viceroy and the Spanish Lords. I 
 
 So soon as we had reached the Palace, and my Lord 
 had despatched his immediate business, which was to 
 hold audience with sundry magistrates of the city and 
 Captains of the Guard in its various quarters, all of 
 whom were awaiting his arrival, he sent in his usual 
 report to the Viceroy, not considering that the urgency 
 of affairs at this juncture required an immediate
 
 Beyond the Seas. 405 
 
 personal conference with his Grace. Lord St. Keyne 
 received in reply a message from his master, through 
 the confidential secretary who passed between them, 
 requesting his presence at an early hour in the morn- 
 ing for conference, and further repeating an injunction 
 which the Viceroy had already laid stress upon, that 
 his Lordship for the present should on no account 
 show himself about the city or elsewhere without a 
 strong guard of his troopers. 
 
 I desire to be very particular in recounting the 
 events of this night, even the most trifling ones, for 
 'twas of all nights in Ralph St. Keyne's life the 
 most eventful, and the most pregnant with his after 
 fate. 
 
 There had been this evening at the Viceroy's Palace 
 a great banquet, given to the courtiers and chief 
 nobles of the Island, from which and other recent 
 festivities of the kind my Lord had obtained the 
 Viceroy's leave to absent himself, on the ground of his 
 retirement into his country-house for the recruitment 
 of his health. By the time we had concluded our 
 last business, it was within an hour of midnight, and 
 we had knowledge of the departure of the Palace 
 guests, for one of them, a young Castilian Lord, Don 
 Pedro de Morona, hearing by chance of my Lord's 
 return, waited upon him in his apartments. Don Pedro 
 was a newly made Member of the Council, not long 
 arrived from Spain, a gentleman very constant in his 
 admiration of my Lord and in friendship to his 
 person.
 
 400 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 With this gentleman we removed into the dining- 
 hall, and sat down to a Hght repast — I can hardly 
 call it a supper — of bread, botargo, dried fruits and 
 Tuscan wine. The young Spanish Lord, coming straight 
 from Court, entertained us, with his accustomed liveli- 
 ness of wit, by a recital of the various humours of 
 the Sicilian noblemen and noblewomen's manners, 
 which ever seem strange and uncouth, and indeed 
 most ridiculous, to the Spaniards of Castile, who are, 
 I need hardly say, very staid and ceremonious in their 
 behaviour. Though my kinsman had, as I knew, 
 such particular cause for dejection, being indeed in 
 as anxious a mood as a man could well be, he did 
 not let his guest perceive it, it being ever his wont, by 
 principle and by habit of courtesy, to subdue his 
 private humour to that of those who sat with him> 
 or conferred with him. 
 
 Don Pedro de Moroiia, who was one upon whose 
 judgment Ralph greatly relied (and as to whose 
 loyalty to his person he justly felt sure), had, as I 
 learned afterwards, made this night visit to us from 
 no idle desire to beguile us with the humours of the 
 Sicilian Court, but to inform us of some current 
 rumour at Court of new designs on the part of the 
 Holy Office. As Don Pedro took his leave, which 
 was upon the stroke of the half after eleven, leaving 
 his merry humour (for till then he had touched upon 
 no affairs of State), he informed us that the talk of 
 the assembly he had just quitted had run upon this 
 matter, and in view of the late opposition to the work
 
 Beyond the Seas. 407 
 
 of the Inquisition having originated with my Lord, it 
 was currently supposed that it would be against my 
 Lord or his friends that the first activity of the Grand 
 Inquisitor would be directed. To Englishmen, among 
 whom happily the Holy Office has never had 
 authority, it is not possible to convey a notion of the 
 uneasiness, nay terror, which its secret action and all 
 but unopposable power inspire among the people of 
 countries where it holds sway, both the high-placed 
 and the lowly ; for none is so humble but that he 
 may be haled up by it on a charge of heresy, none so 
 pious but he may be accused (by some hidden enemy) 
 of impiety, and be cast into the terrible, torture- 
 haunted prisons of the Inquisition. Even powerful 
 statesmen, wielding the might of a nation's treasuries 
 and armies, have trembled before a power that is 
 greater than their own ; nay, kings themselves have 
 felt their thrones shake under them and their sceptre 
 tremble in their hands, if but the shadow of the Holy 
 Office has fallen upon the Throne Chamber. It was 
 on this account that the Viceroy, as we well knew, 
 though no word touching the Holy Office had been 
 uttered by his Grace, had warned my Lord to go ever 
 guarded, and to beware. My kinsman^ not bred up in 
 this universal terror, and having twice already set his 
 wits and his strength against the Grand Inquisitor 
 without defeat, was inclined to disregard these warn   
 ings and to rely upon his own resources, upon the 
 citizens' friendliness, his officers' watchfulness, and his 
 soldiers' fidelity. We had better reasons for oui
 
 4o8 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 security even than these, and which Don Pedro, as a 
 very recent comer, could scarcely estimate. First, 
 there was the fear and hatred which the Grand 
 Inquisitor had inspired among our soldiery by his 
 arbitrary arrest of three of their number ; so that they 
 felt their Capitano, who had stood up for them, v/as 
 their champion, for whom they would stand up in 
 their turn. It was to be observed too that whoever 
 else dreaded the mysterious, abhorred Inquisition, our 
 reckless, dare-devil soldiers felt no religious terror for it 
 whatever, and would, the chance given, have clouted the 
 masked and hooded Familiars of the Holy Office over 
 the head with the greatest pleasure in life. Again, we 
 knew that, though the power of the Holy Office was 
 still great, it was somewhat decadent and declining 
 of late years, and that the order had gone out from 
 Head-quarters to temper zeal with a discretion that 
 in old times it had been unnecessary to employ. 
 Above all else, we knew that while the Viceroy saw it 
 politic to stand our friend, we had no cause to fear 
 the worst the Inquisition could do. 
 
 Upon Don Pedro's taking his leave of us, my 
 kinsman returned to the great hall which I have 
 already had occasion to mention, and where he had 
 till lately been used to follow his various studies. 
 He then ordered all the servants to retire, and 
 informed them that he would need their services no 
 more that night. 
 
 The hall was lighted, as usual, with many great 
 waxen tapers in silver candelabra standing upon the
 
 Beyond the Seas. 409 
 
 floor, but from the apartment's great height and size, 
 and the walls being hung with black tapestries and 
 with tall curtains of the same dark stuff before the 
 doorways, the hall, with its several deep vaulted 
 alcoves, was still obscure and sombre, save just where 
 the candles burned. Many ©f these my kinsman now 
 extinguished, leaving but ten or a dozen burning, so 
 that, when this was done, there was far more of 
 obscurity than of light in the room. 
 
 Ralph had fallen into silence again when Don 
 Pedro had gone ; but presently he turned to me 
 abruptly and spoke of our cousin Geraldine. 
 
 " It is now," said he, " within a few minutes of mid- 
 night, and I intend to call her spirit hither. I do 
 not know whether you will see or hear anything 
 except my voice, but assuredly before the chimes ot 
 the great clock in the Palace Courtyard have rung 
 out for midnight, Geraldine's spirit v/ill be standing 
 here and speaking to my questions." 
 
 There stood ready placed near the centre of the 
 floor a metal tripod, knee high, of Eastern damas- 
 cened work, and upon it Ralph St. Keyne now laid 
 a heap of Turkish incense. He set light to this, 
 and when it had well kindled, he unlocked a little 
 casket and took therefrom a portion of the herb 
 PecJiauri given to him by the Indian Ambassadors, 
 and which the Indians hold precious beyond all their 
 drugs and essences, it being sovereign to many ends ; 
 but, beyond all other virtues which it possesses, it is 
 famous for its potency over the spirits of man. He
 
 410 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 heaped the Pechauri over the burning incense, and 
 presently it kindled too. Then there went up so full 
 a cloud of smoke into the room as was marvellous to 
 behold, less for the volume of it, though that was 
 very great, than for its appearance and properties. 
 Though the Pechauri would seem to be nothing 
 but the parched and rolled up leaves of some un- 
 known Indian flower, — not unlike the dried rose-leaves 
 of our Apothecaries, and it has no scent till it be burnt 
 — its smoke gives forth a most potent, penetrating- 
 odour, yet incomparably sweet, and, as it were, vernal, 
 as if all the scents that an odorous garden of the 
 Indies breathes out upon the morning air in spring- 
 time, had been imprisoned in these dry leaves and 
 now were released ; and this aroma so takes the 
 senses that they are rapt and intoxicated therewith. 
 
 Now I must hasten to absolve my cousin in the 
 use of this strange drug, at this invoking by him of 
 Geraldine's spirit, of any vulgar, superstitious, magical 
 notion of correspondences, as the Alchemists and they 
 who exercise the Black Art (or pretend to) use to 
 say. He employed it only because the fumes of 
 the drug Pechauri have, as the Indians who gave it 
 to him maintain, a faculty of inducing recipiency in 
 those who breathe it ; or, to put it more plainly, they 
 throw the human senses into such a rapt and subtle 
 state as enables them more easily to recognize and 
 perceive the fine and tenuous lineaments of spiritual 
 forms. 
 
 More strange, almost, even than the odorous in-
 
 Beyond the Seas, 411 
 
 fluence of the drug was the behaviour, if I may so 
 call it, of the smoke thereof, for it not only came 
 forth with exceeding abundance, but it seemed almost 
 to possess a kind of vitality in itself (though I know 
 well this is an idle fancy) so lively were its motions. 
 I aver that, though there was never a current of 
 air in the hall to carry it hither or thither (the tapers 
 burning all the time with a steady upward flame) yet 
 the smoke, rising first in a great column, presently 
 dispersed itself here and there in the vaulted hall in 
 wreaths, and circlets, and spirals, with a causeless, 
 ceaseless nimbleness of motion, like a thing endowed 
 with life, so that I could not but watch it with a 
 deep expectancy upon me, entranced too by the 
 breathing of the odorous vapour, while I waited 
 for some strange thing to be begot of this great 
 curiosity of nature. 
 
 Ralph had been standing near the burning incense, 
 but now he retired from it towards me with slow, 
 backward steps, his lips moving, and now and then 
 a low word escaping from them, but it was no 
 incantation or magical charm he was uttering ; he 
 was but calling upon, praying, beseeching, throwing 
 all his soul and will and heart into the entreaty to 
 his cousin, the Lady Geraldine, that she would appear 
 before him in visible spirit shape. 
 
 As he stepped back, his hands extended towards 
 that part of the Palace where our cousin lay, though 
 far off, the vapour, as if it had been a sentient thing, 
 followed him, hovering above him, and now and then
 
 412 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 a part thereof, like an arm reaching out, descended 
 suddenly to touch him. 
 
 At this moment the great clock in the tower out- 
 side began its double stroke, four times repeated for 
 the four quarters ; then the deeper-toned bell began 
 to toll out the strokes of midnight. As the strokes 
 went on slowly, the vapour began to creep from 
 various points through the air from the dark corners 
 where some still had hung, even moving along the 
 floor, snake-like, towards the portal entrance. Here it 
 gathered before the tall black hanging, hiding it 
 partly from our view, and I now could see that this 
 smoke from the still burning Pechauri was rather a 
 vapour than a smoke for its extreme tenuity, and 
 was of a strange silvery whiteness that gave out a 
 certain sheen or light in the half-darkened room. 
 Yet was it not so tenuous but that it obscured what 
 lay behind it, except the tapers, but they showed dim 
 through it and burned with a greenish flame. 
 
 Now, as I looked upon the smoke before the door- 
 way, there seemed to me to come a new motion into 
 it, and the ever-moving wreaths and circlets that it 
 kept forming itself into took fresh shapes, so that, 
 verily, to my enthralled fancy, it seemed at one 
 moment possible to disentangle from the curving and 
 waving of the vaporous cloud, the lineaments of a 
 white-draped human figure, but the moment after 
 I could perceive nothing save the white, ever-moving 
 vapour. 
 
 I turend to my cousin, and, looking upon him, I
 
 Beyond the Seas. 413 
 
 knew Immediately by his face that he was aware of 
 some presence that I could not see. Then I returned 
 my eyes again to the place whereon he was gazing, 
 and lo ! there stood the form or appearance of my 
 sweet cousin Geraldine, revealed plainly to my eyes, 
 yet the figure's outline mingling and moving with 
 and melting into the white vaporous cloud that still 
 moved about the portal. The shape stood there for 
 the space of some moments, in front of the dark 
 doorvv'ay curtain, with out-held hands and pitiful, 
 uncertain, wide-opened eyes, gazing not at us but 
 at the vacant air before her. Then it advanced a 
 little towards us with gliding steps, and stood again. 
 The figure was clad as we knew Geraldine had been clad 
 at the Viceroy's banquet, with satin draperies of a 
 creamy white, that trailed to her feet. The neck and 
 arms of the appearance were bare, and the arms 
 unclasped by the bracelets that my cousin was wont 
 to have on, but still she seemed to wear, hanging by 
 a little chain round her neck, that which her cousin 
 Ralph had given her ; namely, one of the Rubies from 
 the recovered Amulet, a round, blood-red stone, large 
 and fiery as a tiger's eye. Her hair, deep gold, was 
 unfastened, and fell in waves and soft ripplets upon 
 her shoulders. 
 
 As the presentment of Geraldine stood thus, the 
 thin vapour still partly enveloping her, I looked 
 earnestly upon her, and a doubt came to me whether 
 this were, after all, only the unreal simulacrum of our 
 cousin Geraldine, and not herself in her true bodily
 
 4^4 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 presence ; yet she did not stir, seeming only to be 
 swayed gently with the motion of the vapour, and 
 standing there so still, so dim and diaphanous in the 
 dimly lighted hall, all so white and shining against 
 the black hangings (since but for the red stone on her 
 breast, and the ruddy gold of her golden hair, she was 
 altogether white), I supposed it must indeed be nothing 
 but a spirit. Then a sudden awe came upon me, but 
 not for that I looked for the first time upon a spiritual 
 being, only because of the passing beauty that was in 
 her face, cleared thus of all earthly taint ; and yet a 
 pity fell upon me too, greater than this awe, for the 
 deep sadness of her look ; and a sense of her mortality 
 grew upon me again from that, for sure, thought I, no 
 spirit ever yet could be so sorrowful. 
 
 I turned to Ralph, who stood enwrapped in thought, 
 his gaze fixed upon the apparition, and I whispered 
 to him : 
 
 " Ts this the spirit of our cousin, or her mortal body 
 that we see before us .-' " 
 
 I tried to speak in a low whisper, but my words 
 came from me harsh and loud with the reverberation 
 ot the high vaulted chamber, and I expected to see 
 the vision fade and dissolve into air as my voice broke 
 the silence, but it remained, heeding me not. 
 
 Then Ralph answered, standing close to my side, 
 but not dropping his voice, as if assured that, unless 
 he so willed it, his words would not reach the spectre's 
 spiritual sense ; but he mistook, for, at the first word 
 he spoke, the figure thrilled and shivered, and raised
 
 Beyond the Seas. 415 
 
 its hands to its brow. Yet none could, I think, have 
 recognized the voice for Ralph St. Keyne's, so altered 
 was it, so hollow and constrained by his deep emotion. 
 
 " This," said he in answer to my question, " is but 
 Geraldine's spirit, and that which you perceive is not 
 here at all in any material sense ; for were we not 
 prepared to receive this vision on the retina of our 
 mind's eye, we should perceive nothing." 
 
 " Look, Ralph ! " cried I, pointing, " it is surely she 
 herself in bodily form — look how piteously she bends 
 her eyes on us and wrings her hands ! Sure it is no 
 vision, but Geraldine herself, — I will go to her and 
 comfort her." 
 
 " Stay," he said, laying his hand on mine, " you are 
 misled. This is no living being, but the creature of 
 our imagination and our will ; just such a phantasm 
 as bewildered men see at times in desert places, or by 
 night along the lonely sea-shore, which their terror 
 or their yearning for those they love projects upon 
 empty space, near by or far away from them, if only 
 it happen that another human thought coincides in 
 time is willing to project its energy towards them. 
 This apparition is only thin air ; and that place where 
 stands the image of Geraldine is but the point in 
 space where her and our energies have met — ours to 
 call her, hers to respond." 
 
 " But look again ! I could never conjure up so true 
 an image of her as that ; my memory or my fancy 
 could never contrive a beauty like that in her face, or, 
 upon it, so deep a sadness."
 
 4i6 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 " Nay," said he, " that is none of your doing ; it is 
 her spirit that brings with it this portraiture of her 
 mortal body, and of the emotion of which it is 
 sentient. This it is which so misleads your eyes ; and 
 as they are beguiled by an appearance, so will your 
 ears be presently deceived when she speaks with a 
 voice as unreal as this visible spectre of her earthly 
 form." 
 
 Then he steadfastly regarded the apparition for a 
 moment or two ; and as he did so, it swayed some- 
 what, and glided softly a little nearer us, again holding 
 out its hands, as if it felt it was governed by his will 
 and was wishful to grope its way towards him through 
 darkness. 
 
 " Geraldine ! " he said, and his voice dropped now 
 to a tone as low as of one who speaks by the bedside 
 of a sick child. 
 
 The vision seemed to shiver through all its members 
 a,t the new voice, and stood still suddenly, listening, 
 with wide-opened eyes, but that certainly saw us not. 
 
 " Geraldine ! " he said, " they tell me you have given 
 your heart away. Answer me ! " 
 
 The spectral form of Geraldine dropped her hands, 
 crossed them before her, bent her head towards the 
 ground, and her lips moved, but no speech came from 
 them. 
 
 " Gather all your thought, and answer this : Is 
 there one, Geraldine, whom in your soul, and with 
 every yearning of your heart, you love ? " 
 
 The answer came in a sound softer than any 
 
 i
 
 Beyond the Seas 417 
 
 spoken sound I ever heard, and as if from very far 
 away : 
 
 " There Is." 
 
 For a space of time no question came from Ralph. 
 Then he spoke again. 
 
 " But will time never dull the edge of this your love 
 and longing ? " 
 
 "Never!" The voice was as of one dreaming, 
 when but half the dreamer's understanding wakes, 
 and who is compelled to speak to some dream- 
 conjured questioner. 
 
 " But, Geraldine, he whom you love loves you not 
 again." 
 
 "Alas! no." 
 
 "Will that not help you to forego your love for 
 him .? " 
 
 " I never can forego my love for him." 
 
 Again Ralph waited a while ere he renewed his 
 questioning. 
 
 "This marriage of yours with the Viceroy, which 
 will be so soon, does it seem terrible and most 
 grievous to you ? " 
 
 This time there came no answer but a sob. 
 
 " Alas, poor Geraldine ! " cried Ralph. 
 
 Till then his voice had been so restrained that it 
 ounded most unlike his own, but when he spoke 
 these last true pitying words from his very heart, 
 they came from him in his own natural voice, and 
 the tone seemed to reach through the half-numbed 
 senses of the spectre, for it raised its head and listened 
 
 E E
 
 4i8 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 earnestly, and there came a quick radiant look through 
 all its sorrow. 
 
 Again the visionary form began to glide towards 
 us, but Ralph raising his hand, seemed to bid it stay, 
 and again it stood fixed to one spot. 
 
 " Listen, Geraldine," he said, again speaking with 
 his first, restrained voice, "you are mistaken if you 
 have thought this man, whom you love, loves you not 
 again. He yearns for you with a passion stronger 
 even than your own." 
 
 There came a sharp cry from the figure : it raised 
 its arms and we thought it would fall to the earth, so 
 did it tremble, reel and sway in its place. 
 
 Ralph, forgetting that it was but a thing of air con- 
 jured hither by our fancy, advanced ,quickly towards 
 it, but remembering in time he stopped, being now 
 but a step or two removed from where the spectre 
 stood. I 
 
 " Listen again, Geraldine, to what you are to learn. 
 They who promised you in marriage did not consider 
 that they were dooming a woman to a life in death : 
 they have learnt to see more truly now, and rather 
 than break your woman's heart, they are resolved to 
 break their own plighted word, even though they 
 suffer the penalty of dishonour thereby."   
 
 The spirit figure looked wonderingly : and as if 
 bewildered by so strangely sudden a reprieve to the 
 heavy sentence of unhappiness it had lain under, and 
 Ralph spoke on, seeking to come nearer to its intelli- 
 gence with plainer words.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 419 
 
 " You are free, Geraldine, to give yourself to him 
 you love, and who loves you so dearly." 
 
 She looked up quickly, and I swear that the sudden 
 joy that was in her eyes, and the smile that came upon 
 her face was not of mortal kind ; it was such as only 
 disembodied spirits can show when first they feel 
 their freedom from earthly bonds, and see the white, 
 shining plains of Heaven open to their view. Nothing 
 so holy, nothing so beautiful, have I yet seen on 
 mortal face. 
 
 We stood thus for some moments, neither of us 
 speaking, but as I watched Geraldine's spirit (for so I 
 must needs call it, if it still was indeed no tangible 
 being that we looked upon) I thought I saw its 
 lineaments grow slowly dim as if it owed what shape 
 it had of life only to Ralph's will, were sustainedinto 
 existence thereby, and as if that will were now failing 
 it. I looked to his face, and saw the blackness of his 
 despair thereon, but behind that lay the strength of 
 a great resolution to bear this heavy strain upon his 
 fortitude. 
 
 He watched the waning life in the apparition, and 
 willed it to return to sentience. 
 
 " Gather your thoughts once more, Geraldine," 
 and still he subdued his voice into the low, even tone 
 of one who wishes to suggest a dream-thought to a 
 fevered, sleeping child, "gather your thoughts and tell 
 me this one further thing that I must know before 
 I dismiss your spirit." 
 
 The spectral form seemed, at his bidding — or it 
 
 E E 2
 
 420 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 may have been my fancy — to grow less shadowy and 
 become again distinct to my sight, and the in- 
 telhgence to come again into the look that just before 
 had been returning to that which the unexpressive 
 face of a sleeper wears. 
 
 " One thing only need I know more ; his name who 
 has won your love ? " 
 
 The spirit form moved uneasily at the asking of 
 this question, as if it were troubled by the unexpected- 
 ness thereof. 
 
 Ralph repeated his demand very slowly and 
 distinctly. 
 
 Still the apparition seemed uneasy, and its trouble 
 showed in its silence, and in a look of sorrowful doubt, 
 as if it were beginning to question the truth and reality 
 of all that had passed. Then slowly, and as if doubt- 
 ingly, it spoke, fixing its vision seemingly on Ralph's 
 face, but in truth seeing him not. 
 
 " You, who spoke to me, who have told me of him, 
 who know everything, and who have given me the 
 tidings of this great happiness to be, — I thought just f 
 now I saw your face like a bright angel from Heaven 
 and now I can see nothing before me but darkness." 
 Her thoughts had wandered from the point he would 
 fix her to, and again he spoke his question. 
 
 " Tell me, Geraldine, the name of him you love." 
 
 " Yes, that is the voice I have heard, and would 
 hear again." 
 
 " Tell it me ! " he repeated. '^ 
 
 She answered at last, but it seemed that his desire '
 
 Beyond the Seas. 421 
 
 had hardly prevailed against her unwillingness, and 
 that she was now contending against a lethargy that 
 nearly benumbed her senses, for the words came so 
 low, — hardly above a whisper, — that I had to strain my 
 ears to catch them. 
 
 " You know well, — you must know well, — it is my 
 cousin Ralph whom I love with all my soul, and have 
 always loved." 
 
 A groan came from Ralph St. Kcync, but no 
 spoken words. I looked quickly at him : he had 
 gone as pale as death. 
 
 For some long moments there was silence unbroken 
 in the room, and now there came a wonder so great 
 that even at this distance of time I hardly like to tell 
 of it. When I looked again at the spectral form (and I 
 am sure that I had not taken my eyes from it for the 
 space of a second) the place where it had stood had 
 become encompassed with the vapour of the burning 
 herb, which till then had been chiefly dispersed 
 through the room, and I saw nothing there, only 
 thick rising spirals of smoke, enveloping and hiding 
 the space wherein the intangible shape of Geraldine 
 had lately stood. Then the vapour passed away, and 
 the air was clear, and I could again perceive the dark 
 curtain hanging before the portal where first the 
 apparition of Geraldine had showed ; and in that place 
 there stood now no filmy spirit-figure, diaphanous, 
 and with its outlines mingling with the tenuous vapour 
 — wreaths, but the true living, bodily, flesh and blood 
 form of Geraldine herself. She held her hands
 
 422 Beyond tfie Seas. 
 
 upraised and pressed to her temples, her eyes were 
 widely opened, and not gazing now at vacancy, un- 
 seeing real objects, like eyes of one who walks still 
 dreaming ; but wakeful eyes, wondering and confused, 
 but with all their human sense expressed in them. 
 
 How came she thus ? How came the spirit, which 
 had so lately flitted at Ralph's will, to be re-embodied 
 in Geraldine's mortal shape ? Was it the human joy 
 so suddenly engendered in the spirit that had woke 
 the sleeping body to be rejoined with its soul in a 
 rapture that had commingled the spiritual with the 
 material nature ? I do not know ; I cannot explain ; 
 I only testify that Geraldine herself was now present 
 with us. 
 
 It was upon me that her first mortal look fell, and 
 my face was to her, I think, as the face of a friend 
 in the strange country of dreams she had newly 
 returned from. 
 
 " Humphrey ! " she cried, coming to me, " why am 
 I here ? What has happened ? " Her countenance 
 was still radiant with the joy that had so lately filled 
 her soul, but suddenly the sight and touch of dull 
 material things around her awoke a fear in her. " Ah, 
 tell me ! " she cried, touching my arm as if to assure 
 herself that she was not still dreaming, " Is it true ? Is 
 it all a vision, or true ? " 
 
 " It is all true. Look ! there is Ralph ; ask him." 
 
 She turned to him. She took his hand, as she used 
 to do when she was his child friend, in the gardens of 
 St. Keyne. He held it for a while clasped in his.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 423 
 
 "No, Geraldine, it Is not true, it is all a dream. 
 Forget it. Forget what you have said, forget what 
 you have been told ; it is all false together, a foolish 
 dream that can have no continuance." 
 
 She dropped the hand she held, covered her face 
 with both her own, and wept. Then slowly she 
 began to go from our presence, dejectedly, with no 
 spoken word. 
 
 " Stay, Geraldine!" I said ; "be comforted, for it is 
 no dream you have dreamt, or untruth you have 
 heard. The man you love, loves you again : he 
 stands there ; and you are free to be his wife," 
 
 Ralph looked at me with a reproachful aspect, but 
 did not speak, and Geraldine turned towards him with 
 a most earnest, pleading face. 
 
 " Dear Ralph . . . ." she began, but she proceeded 
 no further. 
 
 Her softness, and her sadness, and her beauty, 
 touched him through his fortitude to resist. He was 
 not weak, but he could not help being human. He 
 went up to where she stood and, taking her two 
 hands in his, spoke to her thus, amid her weeping. 
 
 " Dearest Geraldine, it is true I love you, but not 
 true that you arc free. Far dearer are you to me 
 than the life-blood in my veins, but dearer still are 
 your honour and my own. You can never be my 
 wife. Go from me, Geraldine, and let us never see 
 each other again upon this earth ! " 
 
 At this moment the curtain across the chief portal 
 of the hall was lifted aside, and there stood, in the
 
 424 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 entrance, his Grace the Viceroy ; his coming having 
 been, as it often was, for consultation on some affair 
 of State with my Lord 
 
 The Viceroy remained thus for a httle space regard- 
 ing us, none moving or speaking, and he still holding 
 the curtain uplifted with his hand ; then Geraldine, 
 seeing him, cried out, and shrinking from him with a 
 visible horror, laid herself close to her cousin, and 
 clung to him as if for refuge from a hated and hateful 
 presence. 
 
 It was the Viceroy who broke the silence that held 
 us all for some space of time. 
 
 " Madam," said his Grace very slowly and delibe- 
 rately, " I hereby release you from the engagement you 
 have taken to become my wife." 
 
 He retired, the curtain closed upon him, and we 
 saw him no more. 
 
 Ralph St. Keyne spoke no word, but he took 
 Geraldine's head between his two hands and kissed 
 her, first upon her eyes, hot and wet with her weeping, 
 and then upon her mouth ; drawing her to himself, 
 into his arms ; comforting her. 
 
 I, in my shortsightedness, rejoiced exceedingly, 
 seeing in this sudden and so unexpected event, the 
 solution of a great entanglement of the ties of honour 
 with the bonds of love, to which solution, to say 
 truth, I had seen no right way of arriving ; but I 
 knew not, I could not guess, thfe revengeful spirit and 
 the devilish guile of this Spanish nobleman, and all 
 that was to come of these things. 
 
 !ti
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 The following morning there was a sitting of the 
 Council, which my Lord attended, having to lay 
 certain schemes for the quieting of the outlying 
 suburbs of Palermo before the Lords. This business 
 being got through, the Viceroy announced his inten- 
 tion of proceeding in state to Messina that afternoon, 
 and, as a matter of necessity and of course, I received 
 directions to attend him with the larger portion of the 
 Viceregal Body-guard. The time of the Council was 
 mostly occupied by an address from the Grand 
 Inquisitor referring to the condition of irreligion pre- 
 vailing in the City of Palermo. He had long desired 
 to make some wholesome examples of certain leading 
 and most pestilent heretics, and would ere now, he said, 
 have done so, but for the opposition he had met with 
 in the Council itself He had now, he informed the 
 Councillors, received his instructions from Rome to 
 proceed with more zeal, and was resolved no longer 
 to defer some v^cry strict preventive and punitive 
 measures. 
 
 When none spoke to this discourse, my Lord stood 
 up and replied to the effect that the severities of the
 
 426 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Holy Ofifice in recent times had so moved the spirits 
 of the citizens, who were to all common seeming as God- 
 fearing a set of people as existed, that it was within 
 his own knowledge, whose duty led him to inquire 
 particularly into their disposition, that hardly any 
 cause had so inflamed them latterly with an indignant, 
 mutinous spirit as the knowledge that each man and 
 woman in the city lay at the mercy of private enemies, 
 who had no more difficult task before them if they 
 wished to undo their man, than to carry a secret, 
 baseless, infamous charge against him to an Office 
 ever greedy for malignant accusations, and never 
 careful to sift them. A fresh move in the direction of 
 severity would, at this juncture, certainly have very 
 disastrous consequences. 
 
 When this came from my Lord very calmly, 
 the Council was visibly persuaded by his argu- 
 ments ; his warning no doubt reaching the fears 
 and cupidity of the Spanish Lords quicker than 
 it did their reason. My kinsman wound up his 
 speech with an observation which angered the Church- 
 man exceedingly. He said : I 
 
 His Reverence had spoken of instructions from 
 Rome, but no member of the Council was without 
 knowing that the power of the Inquisition in Sicily 
 derived in no way from Rome, but solely from our 
 Master the King of Spain : that the Inquisition in 
 Spain was a Spanish Tribunal, wholly subservient to 
 the Spanish Crown, and that no Sicilian subject owed 
 the smallest allegiance or obedience to any authority 
 
 i
 
 Beyond the Seas. 427 
 
 save that which came direct from His Catholic 
 Majesty himself. 
 
 When the Grand Inquisitor had replied to this, 
 with more passion and perturbation than logic, the 
 Viceroy himself intervened to moderate the debate ; 
 and he inclined to the vicxvs of my Lord. As 
 Governor of the Island, he said, it was his duty to 
 consider no authority paramount to his Master's, 
 and he was resolved to sanction no new measures of 
 religious compulsion at this particular crisis in the 
 affairs of the Island, when the passions and fears of 
 the people were already so riotously stirred. 
 
 This discourse of His Grace's seemed and indeed 
 was, so agreeable to justice, policy, reason and 
 expediency, that my Lord, in his own loyalty and 
 uprightness, never for a moment suspected that it 
 covered the most dark and devil-hearted designs ; 
 but he was wofully deceived, and so fell into the 
 trap wherein he was to get his undoing. 
 
 The Viceroy, before the breaking up of the Council, 
 detained the Lords to make a further communication 
 to them ; which was to the effect that the project of 
 espousals between himself and the Lady Geraldine 
 Scudamour had unhappily come to an end ; certain 
 events having now occurred which had rendered those 
 espousals, to his own extreme regret and sorrow, 
 impossible. These events were no cause for anim- 
 adversion to the friends of the Lady Geraldine, still 
 less to that lady herself, and he believed he might 
 claim to be held equally free from reproach in the
 
 428 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 matter. Here he ended, bowed to the Lords, and 
 declared the Session concluded, having spoken, as I 
 was informed, in this delicate affair, with a restraint, 
 courtesy and high breeding that comported well 
 with his noble birth and rank ; and which manner 
 also perfectly dissembled the dark purpose of his 
 soul. 
 
 That afternoon the Viceroy proceeded in state 
 towards Messina ; I myself accompanying him with 
 a troop of his Body-guard, a second troop having 
 preceded the Viceregal procession by some six hours, 
 and a third of equal number, receiving my orders to 
 follow that evening : it being His Grace's desire to 
 make his progress through the north of the Island 
 with considerable state and show of force, this part of 
 Sicily then being in a very disturbed and discontented 
 condition. 
 
 As the weather was hot and roads bad, our travel- 
 ing was slow, and we got no further than Termini, 
 about twenty miles away, where we found the first 
 despatched troop already arrived. I sent the detach- 
 ment at once eastward, and we ourselves and the 
 Viceroy lay that night at Termini. The next morning 
 the third troop arrived and took our place, we our- 
 selves travelling on by short stages, the reason of this 
 breaking of our party in detachments being, as will 
 be easily gathered, the lack of suitable lodging along 
 the road for larger bodies of troops. 
 
 Travelling in this leisurely manner, on the third 
 night after leaving Palermo we reached the town of 
 
 I
 
 Beyond the Seas. 429 
 
 Naso, and were very miserably entertained in this 
 small and poverty-stricken place ; my Lord Duke 
 finding a better lodging in the country house of a 
 Sicilian nobleman beyond the town. 
 
 It was here that I began to be rendered somewhat 
 uneasy by reason of a circumstance which I could 
 not understand. It is in the knowledge of the reader 
 that a mutinous spirit was at this time abroad in 
 Palermo, and as often as I received my instructions 
 in the lesser matter of ordering the movements of the 
 troops, I usually took my orders either directly from 
 his Grace or from him through an officer of his 
 household. I was anticipated in* my fear that we 
 might be laying the city too bare of troops by the 
 Viceroy himself, who observed that he must needs 
 leave troops enough with his Lordship to keep the 
 city in awe. For all this, he proposed to take with 
 him no fewer than four-fifths of the only trustworthy 
 soldiers in Palermo. When, after getting my orders, 
 I thereafter communicated them to my kinsman, with 
 some hesitation as to their wisdom, he disregarded my 
 objections, saying that the citizens would be far 
 easier when his Grace and the Spanish Lords were 
 out of the place, and that he would undertake himself 
 to keep order with a single company of his troopers, 
 or even without any soldiers at all. Ralph was right 
 in so thinking, for of the citizens those few who did 
 not love him feared him, and his very name by this time 
 was enough to appease the orderly and overawe the 
 turbulent ; but his and my foresight was baffled by a
 
 430 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 plot in a quarter in which we never thought to find 
 malice arise. 
 
 It was nevertheless arranged between my cousin 
 and myself that he should keep me informed of the 
 state of things in Palermo by mounted messengers 
 despatched from the Palace at punctual intervals of 
 twelve hours. This was indeed an obvious measure of 
 precaution, seeing that I was now in command of 
 nearly all the available city forces, only half a troop 
 being left in the Palace Barracks under my Lord's 
 orders, the remainder having been spread abroad in 
 the difierent outlying parts of the city and its 
 suburbs. 
 
 Now, when, on the evening of the third day, we 
 arrived at Naso (this making forty-eight hours since 
 our setting forth), and no messenger had come, I 
 began to wonder, and to be very uneasy. I was sure 
 my Lord had not forgetten his promise to me. Had 
 his messengers then lagged by the way .■' There was 
 time both for the first and second to have reached 
 me : had they been stopped on the road, and if so by 
 whose orders, and why ? All that night I was very 
 uneasy, conjecturing every manner of disaster to have 
 happened ; and falling into uneasy slumber towards 
 morning, I was startled suddenly out of my sleep, for 
 it seemed to me that my kinsman stood at my bed- 
 side. It was only a dream, but for a minute or two I 
 could not believe it was that, so vivid had been the 
 presentment before me of Ralph, and so piteous his 
 aspect. When I saw it was nothing but a dream, I
 
 Beyond the Seas. 431 
 
 composed myself again to sleep ; and again my kins- 
 man stood before me, and this time his face was very 
 wan and there was, methought, a red gash upon his 
 forehead. Again I awoke, fearful, but presently I felt 
 sure it was no more than a dreaming fancy that my 
 waking thoughts had taken, and after a time I slept 
 again. Then I dreamed for the third time, and now 
 there rang in my ears a dream-voice that cried, 
 " Help me, Humphrey ! Help me in my sore 
 distress," and then I seemed to wake, but in reality I 
 did not wake, but was dreaming on, only with a more 
 vivid ecstasy of the sleeping imagination ; and I 
 looked, methought, into the gloom of night, and 
 slowly a luminous place grew before my sleeping 
 senses, and shaped itself into what seemed a vaulted 
 dungeon wherein stood my cousin Ralph, still very 
 wan and with a piteous and beseeching aspect, and on 
 his brow the red gash I had seen before ; but this 
 time he spoke not, only looked upon me very 
 entreatingly. 
 
 After that I slept no more but rose, and though I 
 reasoned with myself that surely it was but a dream, 
 and I was not, like an ignorant peasant, to be guided 
 in my action by such conjurings of the distempered 
 fancy ; yet I could not prevail upon my judgment to 
 let the matter go by. Thought I, if Ralph were truly 
 in trouble and distress of mind or body, would he not, 
 using that power which he had so clearly shown he 
 possessed, call upon me to come to him as he had 
 done ? And again, I argued, assuming that it is
 
 432 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 nothing but a dream, may it not be that my spirit 
 in sleep, freed from its material earthly shackles of 
 prejudice and misconception, has reasoned out a true 
 conclusion that Ralph is even now imprisoned, 
 wounded, and entreating me to succour him ? Then 
 I began to marshal with my waking understanding all 
 the thin lines of thought that for these last three days 
 had passed across my mind, and still as I marshalled 
 them they pointed to and converged upon some 
 possible disaster to my cousin ; nay, they shadowed 
 even this very imprisonment and danger to his life 
 which had been figured to me in my dream ; for, I 
 bethought me, how strange is this non-coming of the 
 messengers ! How strange the Viceroy's sudden 
 journey, and his bidding such an unnecessary force 
 of us to accompany him, leaving Ralph all undefended 
 if he should be assailed. How strange, too, that the 
 Viceroy should have shown no resentment for that 
 very action against himself, against his self-love, 
 though so unconsciously committed by Ralph, which 
 of all other injuries men are apt to resent the most. 
 Could he have dissembled so profoundly unless he had 
 some fell and secret purpose ? When I had set to- 
 gether this string of improbabilities and inconsistencies 
 in one who till now had never shown himself in- 
 consistent, I marvelled that I had been so free from 
 suspicion. Then suddenly a great impatience and in- 
 dignation seized me, for that I too perhaps had been 
 entangled in the plot that was undoing my cousin ; 
 that I too was blindly helping to hold the net that 
 
 !
 
 Beyond the Seas. 433 
 
 perhaps at that moment was enmeshing him in its 
 toils. 
 
 When once this notion had taken possession of my 
 mind, I thought upon it again neither twice nor thrice- 
 but I caused the Reveille to be sounded, though it was 
 not yet dawn, and ordered the troop to saddle up. 
 In a short space of time we were upon a very quick 
 march back to Palermo : I having in the meantime 
 sent an orderly to the troop ahead of us to bid them 
 fall back and serve as the Viceroy's immediate Body- 
 guard and convoy. 
 
 Now, if any soldier who, upon reading of this 
 summary abandonment by me of the Viceroy upon 
 his journey, shall charge me with indiscipline and a 
 dereliction of my strict duty, I fear I have no answer 
 to give him or apology to make, save to refer him to 
 all that has gone before in this narrative, and to all 
 that shall presently follow after. 
 
 By noon that day I had got as far as our first 
 station, Termini, but had rid so quickly that only six 
 of my troop were with me. Here we met the last 
 detachment, who as we had agreed, had left Palermo 
 the afternoon before. They brought with them no 
 news from the city : it was quiet, they said, and their 
 commanding officer reported that the mounted mes- 
 sengers to myself had departed at the appointed 
 times. Now we had neither received messages at 
 Naso, nor met any bearers of them upon the road, 
 neither had the last arrived troop seen anything of 
 
 them. 
 
 F F
 
 434 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 I left half a score of troopers at Termini with orders 
 to wait for the troop I had outridden, and with them 
 follow us to Palermo, Then, exchanging my tired 
 horse for a fresh one, I turned the heads of the troop 
 back to Palermo, and we pushed on to the city, but 
 not too quickly, for I had to keep men and horses 
 fresh and brisk and all together against our reaching 
 the streets of the city. 
 
 We got to the suburbs of Palermo that afternoon, 
 and here we got the first hint that something was 
 amiss, for we met first three or four bodies of citizens 
 flying from the city, then a stream of men and women 
 with children, all escaping for their lives, some afoot, 
 some on horse or muleback, the sick, the old, or infirm 
 in coaches and carts, or borne in mule litters. They 
 were all of the wealthier sort of people. They would 
 hardly stay to tell us more than that the people were 
 up, but they knew not why nor wherefore. As we got 
 nearer the strings of fugitives ceased, and we gathered 
 from this circumstance either that the people held the 
 streets and broad places and so had stopped escape, or 
 that the troubles were already overpast. We entered 
 the city in its busiest part, near the quays, and almost 
 immediately found ourselves in a great crowd swaying 
 hither and hither. The people did not run from the 
 troops as they will mostly do when a mutinous spirit 
 is on them, but standing back on either side to make 
 a lane for us, cheered us, throwing up their hats and 
 caps. Many seditious cries came from their ranks too, 
 and some that were not too plain to me : " Down with
 
 Beyond the Seas. 435 
 
 the Traitors," cried they, " Death to the Spaniards ! " 
 " Death to the Viceroy ! " " Give us back our Friend ! " 
 and I wondered to see these mutinous fellows standing 
 so close to our passage that our horses all but trod 
 upon them ; but I pushed on, taking no notice, only 
 willing to get to Head-quarters as quickly as might 
 be. As we went on the crowds increased, and I saw 
 many of the worthier kind of citizens among the 
 people. Presently, recognising a tradesman with 
 whom I was acquainted, I pulled up my horse and 
 beckoning to him to come near, begged him to inform 
 me how he came to take part in such an assembly, 
 and what all the pother was about. 
 
 " Why, Sir," he says, " I apprehend you know a 
 great deal more of the matter than I do." 
 
 When I assured him that we had but just entered 
 the city from Termini, and that he was the first 
 person I had had word of mouth with, he said, 
 
 " Then it is true they stopped the messengers to 
 you ? " 
 
 "At any rate we got none," said I. 
 
 " How should you, Captain St. Keyne ? " said 
 the citizen, " seeing that all travelling on the 
 roads has been stopped these two days. Only at 
 noon to-day has the guard outside the city been 
 removed." 
 
 "Now, Sir," said I, "a word more with you and 
 I have done. What is the Treachery these poor 
 people complain of, and who is the Friend they are 
 clamouring for ? " 
 
 F F 2
 
 43^ Beyond the Seas. 
 
 He stared upon me in surprise, then he broke 
 out : " Do you not know, then, how that Lord St. 
 Keyne was taken treacherously before dawn this 
 morning by the FamiHars of the Inquisition, and is now 
 set fast in their prisons? We have no other cause 
 for rising, and the people make sure you are come 
 back to save him, if it be not already too late." 
 
 I 
 
 i
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 I CLAPPED spurs to my horse's side, and we went 
 through the streets of Palermo, crowded as they 
 were, at a hand gallop, the people breaking to right 
 and left of us as we rode to the Palace, and, knowing 
 the purpose of our haste, cheering and shouting their 
 " God speeds," as we passed them like the wind. 
 
 We found the great gateway, leading into the piazza 
 or quadrangle that is formed by the four sides of the 
 buildings (namely, of Palaces, Barracks, and the Prison 
 of the Inquisition), barred, bolted and barricaded as we 
 rode up to it, and entrance was denied to us. I got 
 speech of the Officer of the Sicilian Army in command, 
 not one of our people but of the old-established army of 
 which I have already spoken, and which did garrison 
 duty both here and in other cities of Sicily, but which 
 had done no fighting against either a foreign or a cival 
 enemy now for over twenty years. This gentleman 
 told me that his regiment was in occupation of the 
 Barracks. Where was the troop under my Lord's com- 
 mand ? I asked. It had marched to Partimeo (naming 
 a distant village) the day before. Had my Lord taken
 
 438 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 command in person ? He had not, there being no 
 expectation of actual fighting. Where was my Lord 
 at this moment ? On tliat point the officer could not 
 answer. I asked for the gates to be opened and my 
 men admitted to their quarters. The officer replied 
 that he had orders to admit no one. I asked from 
 whom had he received such orders, seeing that I 
 myself came straight from the Viceroy with whom 
 was Don Diego, Generalissimo of the forces, neither 
 of whom had said a word of the Viceregal Body- 
 guard being shut out from their quarters. He said 
 that in the absence of these higher authorities the 
 army took their orders from the Council. The officer, 
 who held the rank of Colonel and had informed me 
 he was in command, was very civil spoken, and so 
 was I, but presently I had to speak plainly to him. 
 
 " Hark'ee, Sir," said I, " I cannot go tamely away 
 from here at the command of any but my lawfully 
 constituted commanding officers, whom I take to be 
 the Viceroy and my Lord St. Keyne, and failing 
 these, the Generalissimo. No one else in this Island 
 has authority by military law over me, or over your- 
 self Now therefore, I will beg you to admit me 
 peaceably through these gates, or to see me force 
 my way in, in spite of you." 
 
 The Colonel smiled as he pointed to the cannons 
 in the embrasures of the towers that flanked the gate- 
 way : there were twelve pieces, on one of which his 
 hand was resting while he spoke to me. " We have 
 a garrison of 500 men here," said he. 
 
 1
 
 Beyond the Seas. 439 
 
 The Sicilian Colonel was quite right in supposing 
 that his position was impregnable against any attack 
 or assault in front that was not supported by a train 
 of siege artillery. 
 
 "Well, Sir," said I, willing to humour this notion 
 I saw he had in his head, " if you are prepared to 
 stand a siege, 'tis very well. I promise you it shall 
 be no longer delayed than till to-morrow." 
 
 " We have our orders to do that very thing," says 
 he ; and I pulled my hat off and saluting him rode 
 away to make my preparations for forcing our wa}' 
 into our Head-quarters. 
 
 We had at this time, in Palermo, two corvettos 
 (one the Flagship) two galleys, and besides 
 these my Lord's private galley, the Golondrina ; 
 and from the crews of these vessels I could easily 
 count upon a contingent of nearly 500 men that I 
 could use on shore. I immediately called a council 
 of superior officers on board the Flagship, and laid 
 the state of affairs before them, but touched not of 
 how far I believed the Viceroy to be implicated in 
 the plot against his own General and his own Guard. 
 It is hardly necessary for me to say that the 
 Captains, my kinsman's own trusted officers, were 
 for immediate action for his succour, 1 promised 
 them they should not have long to wait. 
 
 By my instructions, a body of picked men was 
 told off from each vessel, who were to hold them- 
 selves in readiness to land at a preconcerted signal 
 from me on shore. By this time it was evening.
 
 440 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 and the second body of 120 troopers, that namely 
 which I had outridden from Termini, had arrived, 
 and we had thus, with our sailors, a body of 730 
 or 740 men ; not enough, even if armed with artillery, 
 to take the Palace Buildings by direct assault, but 
 sufficient, I believed, for the kind of attack I 
 meditated. 
 
 I had with my parting words promised the 
 Sicilian Colonel that my assault upon him should 
 not be delayed beyond the morrow : I meant to 
 be better than my word, and to commence my 
 siege of him that very night. 
 
 The buildings that surround the great Piazza, 
 though not designed to serve as a citadel or strong- 
 hold, are yet so built, with an armed tower set 
 here and there in the outer wall, as to defy any 
 ordinary attack, even by a disciplined force ; but 
 as every place of arms has its weakest point, so 
 this place had so extraordinarily weak a one that 
 'tis a marvel to me yet that it was suffered to 
 remain. My Lord and I had more than once 
 remarked that the glacis or open space outside 
 the enceinte (as the engineers call it) had been 
 encroached upon in one place by a store-house 
 built from the outside against the outer wall. Here 
 I resolved to make my assault, and for that purpose 
 so soon as the night had fallen quite dark I called 
 out my men, and having already dismounted all 
 my troopers, save a few to serve as orderlies, I 
 marched the whole body from the Oua}'s to the 
 
 i
 
 Beyond the Seas. 441 
 
 Palace, taking with us four ships' cannon with 
 ammunition on trucks or rough tumbrils ; on another 
 similar truck we carried a good stock of gunpowder, 
 made up in strong bags weighing some half hundred- 
 w^eight each. A body of twenty sailors from the 
 ships were armed with heavy axes and sledge 
 hammers. 
 
 Now, I protest, as I was marching through the 
 streets upon this expedition at the head of my men, 
 it did not a little go against the grain with me and 
 positively hurt my conscience as a soldier, that I 
 should be setting my wits and about to use all the 
 resources and stratagems and fetches of glorious War 
 against a poor simple fellow like this Sicilian Colonel, 
 who clearly was ignorant of them all, and indeed had 
 nothing of the soldier about him but the uniform on 
 his back and the sword by his side. However, as I was 
 minded for this once to effect my purpose without 
 bloodshed, and catch the Colonel and his garrison 
 in my net without hurting him or them, I salved 
 my conscience a little with the humanity of my 
 intention. 
 
 There is in front of the principal gate of the great 
 Palace quadrangle a broad stretch of open ground, 
 and a similar but lesser space, also free of houses, in 
 front of the two side gates of the Piazza. In front of 
 these three gates I drove my four tumbrils with a gun 
 apiece on them, two guns before the chief gate, and 
 one before each of the smaller approaches, but retired 
 back as far as the nature of the ground would allow.
 
 442 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Then dismounting the guns and their ship-carriage 
 with no Httle deHberation and noise, the gunners 
 loaded their pieces and fired, and loaded and fired 
 again in hot haste upon the gates, before each of 
 which I had already ordered a bundle of lighted torches 
 to be thrown to show them off and dazzle the eyes of 
 the garrison. I did not expect that this cannonade 
 would prove very harmful to the garrison, or that they 
 would return the fire with any particular hurt to our 
 people, for I knew the Sicilian troops were unskilled 
 cannoneers, and moreover I was aware from former 
 observation that the guns were only laid to give a 
 cross fire upon an enemy actually entering the gate 
 itself, and their gunners would be some time endeavour- 
 ing after an aim upon our pieces ; which proved the 
 case, and their shot never came near us at all. 
 
 When I had set this feigned attack going, for I 
 meant nothing else by it than a feint, designing only 
 to alarm the garrison into running (poor simpletons !) 
 to their strongest points, and into leaving their weakest 
 to my attack, I rode quickly round to the afore- 
 mentioned storehouse, where the main body of our 
 sailors and dismounted troopers were already gathered, 
 under cover of the night and the noise that the cannon- 
 fire within and without was making. We easily 
 broke open the doors of the building, and I caused a 
 heavy mine of powder to be laid inside it against the 
 very wall of the enceinte, and retiring my men blew 
 it in and down, with a terrible noise and much smoke. 
 Before the smoke had well cleared away, our men had
 
 Beyond the Seas. 443 
 
 all run in through the breach, and as there was not 
 a soul to oppose us inside we passed through at our 
 leisure, and deployed in good order inside the Piazza. 
 I had expected to find all dark here, and so had caused 
 every seventh man of our force to provide himself with 
 a torch, a novel armament truly for men storming a 
 citadel, and an imprudent one, as some may think, 
 had I not rather designed to fright than to fight the 
 garrison ; but we found the garrison had already lit a 
 great bonfire in the middle of the courtyard to light 
 them to their work; so I bid the men douse their 
 torches, but not throw them away. 
 
 I had bidden my gunners outside to cease their fire 
 at the rising up of the mine, and as the blast likewise 
 frightened away the gunners of the enemy (if I can 
 by that word dignify this crowd of wretched fellows) 
 there was a silence in the place broken only by the 
 tread of our men marching in line towards the chief 
 gate, where I could see, in the half darkness, a crowd 
 of the garrison running from their guns in confusion 
 and endeavouring after a fashion to form into line. 
 Three or four of these undisciplined Sicilians now 
 discharged their firelocks upon us, and I began to be 
 terribly afraid, — if I may venture upon so ill-omened 
 a word, — I began, I say, to be afraid that if any of 
 our men were hit, their fellows would open fire m 
 spite of me (for the most disciplined soldiers are but 
 men) and then would commence a senseless slaughter 
 of the whole garrison. So halting our line, I went 
 forward alone some two score paces and called upon
 
 444 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 the garrison to lay down their arms and they should 
 have quarter. They gave me no answer for a bit, 
 but when they looked upon the array of our men, we 
 having the great fire at our back with its swaying 
 flames, that cast moving shadows upon the ground, 
 and gleamed very terribly upon the barrels of our 
 fellows' arms, the Sicilians were utterly daunted, and 
 presently began to fling down their firelocks on the 
 ground and to hold up their unarmed hands for 
 quarter. I advanced towards them, leaving my men 
 still at halt, and called upon their commander by 
 name to cause his men to do the like. He did so, 
 and handed me his sword, which I took and imme- 
 diately restored to him, in presence of his people 
 and ours. 
 
 " Sir," said I to him, " let us proceed to business 
 at once and waive ceremony. I pray you to order 
 the gates to be opened, and your people may file out 
 and go their ways for me." 
 
 He did as I required, and when the garrison had 
 departed, our gunners from outside brought their 
 cannon in by the chief gate. While this was doing, 
 I asked the Colonel, whom I kept by me, of my 
 cousin Geraldine and of Ralph. The Lady Geraldine, 
 he told me, and her suite had not stirred from their 
 lodging in the Palace. " And Lord St. Ke}aie .'' " I 
 asked. The Colonel faltered, and his face grew dark. 
 
 " Sir," he said, " you are aware that his Lordship 
 has come into the hands of those against whom a 
 siDldier's power does not prevail."
 
 Beyond the Seas. 445 
 
 " I will find means to prevail very shortly," said I, 
 and I gave orders for all the gates to be closed, and 
 set my men to marching to the eastern corner of the 
 Piazza, where the Halls and Dungeons of the 
 Inquisition lie, keeping the Sicilian Colonel, the while, 
 by my side. 
 
 " I greatly fear you may arrive too late, Captain 
 St. Keyne." 
 
 " Surely," cried I, " they have not carried off my 
 Lord by sea ? " 
 
 " Nay," he said, " there was no occasion. I fear 
 there is no longer need for any further doing by the 
 Inquisition, But I pray you not to bring me into 
 this matter ; I hold not at all with the severities of 
 the Holy Office. Neither I nor my men have had 
 a hand in this deed." 
 
 " Why ! " said I, a sudden fear coming on me. 
 " What is it .'' — what has happened } What have 
 they done with my Lord?" 
 
 " He was arrested between midnight and dawn this 
 day by the officers of the Inquisition." 
 
 " Arrested ! " cried I, " but did his people not 
 resist ? Did his soldiers make no stand ? " 
 
 " Nay," said the Colonel, " there were no soldiers 
 about him ; they were on duty in the city." 
 
 "'Twas treachery — black, devilish treachery, that 
 laid him bare and undefended to his enemies' spite ! 
 Speak, Sir, what you know, and quickly ! " 
 
 " One who related the matter to me told me that 
 when a body of armed Familiars of the Holy Office
 
 44^ Beyond the Seas. 
 
 seized his person, he ran upon them with sword and 
 dagger, his servants coming about him to his rescue, 
 but they were mostly unarmed men and soon beaten 
 down, and he himself wounded." 
 
 " Wounded ? " 
 
 " Ay, on the head, with a sword-cut." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 " Then they carried him to the Tribunal of the 
 Holy Office, and put him straightway upon his 
 trial." 
 
 " Trial ! " I called out in the agony of my soul, 
 "but their trial begins with the question, — it begins 
 with the torture of the accused to force a false 
 confession ! Do you know that ? " 
 
 " Sir, I fear it is as you say. 'Tis a most cruel 
 thing and a most grievous tyranny upon us here in 
 Sicily." 
 
 While I thus spoke with the Sicilian Colonel, we 
 were advancing rapidly to the Palace of the Inquisi- 
 tion, which contains Courts, and a Judgment Seat, 
 and many cells, dungeons, and places of punishment for 
 its prisoners. I quickly surrounded the building with 
 my men, and we smote loudly upon the great door for 
 admission, but there came no acknowledgment from 
 within. Seeing that the windows all were barred 
 with cross bars of iron and all were lightless, I gave 
 orders for the men carrying axes and sledge-hammers 
 to ply them on the main door, and for them who had 
 torches to light them. When the door was down I 
 entered at the head of fifty of my own dismounted 
 
 1
 
 Beyond the Seas. 447 
 
 troopers and with a dozen men bearing lighted 
 torches aloft. Passing through the doorway, we 
 found ourseh'es in a corridor, dark but for the h'ght 
 thrown by us : following it, we reached a vaulted 
 chamber so vast that the flare of our torches barely 
 reached to its extremities. As yet no one had 
 answered my summons and no inmate had showed, 
 but opening from the great chamber, which I took 
 to be the Judgment Hall itself, was a lower chamber, 
 reached by a passage at a slope with steps along it. 
 This lower chamber had a low-pitched roof held up 
 by many stone pillars. This kind of crypt ran back 
 a long way, and at its far end I perceived the red 
 embers of a fire still smouldering in its ashes, and 
 about it some scores of moving lights looking dim 
 in the distance and no larger than glowworms. Ad- 
 vancing towards them, we perceived the fire to have 
 been kindled on a sort of altar-like square of built 
 up stones, open on all sides, and the lights to be held 
 in the hands of over two score armed officers and 
 Familiars of the Inquisition. We could have no 
 doubt of the horrid purpose of this fire and the uses 
 of the crypt, for into the walls were let great iron 
 rings with chains depending, and on the pillars were 
 hung sundry devilish instruments of iron, which sent 
 a shiver and a shudder through our veins but to 
 glance at them. 
 
 The Familiars, masked and hooded men, and mostly 
 bearing partizans in their hands and swords by their 
 sides, stood in a kind of military order, not giving
 
 448 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 way as my soldiers came near ; and suddenly their 
 ranks opened and the Grand Inquisitor himself and 
 two brother Inquisitors, clad in their black garbs and 
 caps of office, stood forth. 
 
 " What do you here ? " he cried out in an angry, 
 solemn voice, "desecrating these Halls of the Holy 
 Office .'' On your souls lies this sin against the 
 privileges of our Church ! " 
 
 His boldness and the solemn array of silent hooded 
 men with hidden faces, daunted my soldiers for a little, 
 but they recovered their assurance with their indigna- 
 tion and resentment when I spoke. 
 
 " Your Reverence has arrested our General by a vile 
 trick," cried I, " contrary to the laws of Spain, and 
 you have tried him without evidence and condemned 
 him to these damnable cruelties," I pointed to the 
 cursed implements upon the walls, "without justice 
 or the fear of our merciful God before your eyes. 
 Now," I called out, in a voice that fluttered all their 
 ranks, "deliver him to me immediately or, by the 
 Heaven above us all, you die the death ! " 
 
 The Familiars shrank back, and the three In- 
 quisitors themselves, seeing that their spiritual terrors 
 had no effect upon us, stood dismayed. 
 
 " Disarm these fellows ! " I called out, and at my 
 order the spell was off our troopers, and in a moment 
 they had run in upon the Familiars, jerked their 
 weapons from their hands, and tearing off the cloth 
 hoods which hid all but their eyes, discovered to vaew 
 some of the most villainous-visaged cut-throats 'twas 
 
 i 
 
 i
 
 Beyond the Seas. 449 
 
 ever my misfortune to gaze upon. Our men, when 
 once they had their hands in, were not very content 
 with a bare obedience to my orders, but hustled the 
 Familiars of the Holy Office, cuffing and buffeting 
 them with their clenched fists, and pummelling 
 them most unmercifully with the butt ends of their 
 muskets. 
 
 The Grand Inquisitor alone retained some little 
 courage, but his voice, mcthought, trembled as he 
 said, " Sir, this is Sacrilege, which the Most High will 
 revenge upon you. He whom you seek is already 
 beyond human seeking, or human succour." 
 
 "Old man!" cried I, "sure you are lying to me, 
 and are less inhuman than your words. You have 
 hidden your prisoner. Where is he ? " 
 
 I was over lenient in my thoughts of them, for 
 in truth even now they had come from trlieir cruel 
 work, having only desisted at the noise of our 
 assault. 
 
 Some of the fellows who were being roughly used 
 by the soldiers now in their own terror cried out 
 that my Lord was there — pointing to a particular 
 door near where the Inquisitors and Familiars had 
 been standing. I ran to it, and catching up a sledge- 
 hammer, and one or two who carried axes and 
 hammers joining with their blows upon the door, it 
 presently flew open and I entered. 
 
 Dear Father of all Pity ! What a sight met my 
 eyes ! Never may I blot from my memory the horror 
 and grief of this moment ! For there was Ralph, my 
 
 G G
 
 450 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 dearest cousin Ralph, lying stretched upon a low 
 truckle-bed in this vile dungeon, a great wound upon 
 his forehead, his white shirt dabbled with his blood, 
 his long hair soaked and matted therewith, and his 
 poor hands and bare feet torn and wounded with 
 cruel torturing and all their white skin streaked with 
 his blood. I knelt by his side and laid my hand upon 
 his heart, my lips upon his face. Alas ! Alas ! the 
 pulses moved not and his cheek was ice-cold. Dead ! 
 Dead ! cut down in his prime and pride of youth by 
 these inhuman villains ! The fairest soul, and sweetest, 
 bravest, noblest nature that ever came to brighten this 
 earth ! 
 
 " O foul murderers ! " cried I, turning towards the 
 villains and lifting my hands to Heaven, " O 
 bloody, cruel and most damnable crime ! Bind them 
 fast," cried I to my soldiers, " sure the sentence 
 of Heaven upon them cannot long be delayed ; but 
 hold 1 bind them fast, for its execution is decreed to 
 us — bind them fast till I can think how I shall tear 
 their black hearts from their vile bodies with torments 
 as horrible as they have used to him ! " 
 
 I raved, I wept, I cried aloud, I know not what 
 words I used, nor could I perhaps have intended their 
 meaning truly, but in that moment I was distracted 
 by my agony : I was mad. 
 
 There had accompanied the troop, as is customary, 
 our surgeon, an Italian gentleman of great skill, and 
 while I, making sure that Ralph was indeed dead, was 
 giving vent to the ecstasy of my grief and anger,
 
 Beyond the Seas. 451 
 
 he was busying himself with my cousin's lifeless 
 body. 
 
 " Stay, Captain St. Keyne ! " cried he suddenly ; and, 
 looking quickly round, I perceived he was holding one 
 of those little mirrors our soldier doctors use to carry 
 on the field of battle with them, to my cousin's mouth. 
 " There is still life here, the soul is not wholly fled. 
 Bear him quickly from this close dungeon air," he 
 called out, and four of our English troopers that stood 
 nearest lifted the low bed and carried it and him to 
 the crypt, and laid him down where the air was freer. 
 We gathered in a great circle about, while the surgeon 
 raised Ralph's fallen head, and touched his lips with 
 some essence from a phial he carried with him, 
 and with his hand upon Ralph's heart, watched 
 for the coming back of the little remnant spark 
 of life. 
 
 Thus we stood, and none spoke or whispered even, 
 or stirred, or hardly breathed ; but we all looked from 
 the pale dead face of him we loved for a sign of the 
 life's return, to the surgeon's for a sign of hopefulness, 
 — most earnestly praying and beseeching our Maker 
 to show His mercy to us : 
 
 Almighty God ! thou Dear and Loving Befriender 
 of us Thy children ! Sure Thou art All-Merciful even 
 before Thou art All-Powerful, and wilt let Thine own 
 Dread Decrees bend before the higher Law of Thy 
 great Love and Pity for the creatures Thou hast made ! 
 And didst Thou not, this night, recall the Death 
 Sentence that had already gone forth from Thy 
 
 G G 2
 
 452 Beyond tpie Seas. 
 
 Judgment Seat, in answer to the urgent, instant 
 entreaties that reached Thee from our Souls ? 
 
 The first herald that came to us of returning life 
 was the surgeon's sudden looking to us, with tidings 
 of Hope in his face, for he had felt the first weak 
 stroke of the awakening heart ; then the brow that 
 had lain so smooth and calm in the death that had 
 already begun to relax all the members, gathered a 
 little, and a faint glow of red tinged the wan face, but 
 vanished again immediately, and first a long breath 
 came, liker though to a sigh, then, alas ! a moan, for 
 the life that awoke in him awoke to the suffering that 
 his torturers had caused, and which only the merciful 
 swoon of his exhaustion had set to sleep. 
 
 When his soldiers saw the first breath of their 
 General, they drew their own more freely, but 
 at his groaning they looked again upon their 
 prisoners (whom they had forgotten) with most 
 revengeful eyes, and as if they burned at once to 
 take a full and bloody vengeance upon those 
 wolfish men. 
 
 I have now to tell of a most strange thing that 
 befell ; which was this, that while we had imagined 
 my Lord to be in a swoon, nay, even already passed 
 away from the living, but assuredly in a deep trance, 
 and bereft of all sense and apprehension of outer 
 things, it would appear that though he was indeed 
 beyond every faculty of motion, he was not so bereft 
 of apprehension but that my mad words against the 
 Familiars had been perceived and were known to him.
 
 Beyond the Seas. 453 
 
 'Tis certain that in the very stupor of his trance he 
 could judge and decide with his old accustomed right- 
 ness ; for we now saw his lips moving as if in speech, 
 and when I leant down my ear I caught his whispered 
 words : " Humphrey, we are to spare these ignorant 
 fellows ; hurt them not and let them go their ways 
 in peace." So strangely conscious can the recipient 
 soul become when all the bodily senses still are 
 sleeping ! 
 
 I delivered the order aloud to the men, and sent a 
 body of them to escort the Inquisition men in safety 
 through our people in the Piazza and through the outer 
 gate. Then, upon the advice of our surgeon, my Lord 
 was borne on the bed as he lay, by some of his 
 English troopers from the crypt out into the great 
 court-yard and to his own lodging hard by. 
 
 As our men, soldiers and sailors, had now fully estab- 
 lished themselves in the encemte of the place, their 
 battalia, or array, had been broken by their officers and 
 they had been allowed to disperse themselves about the 
 place. Still, however, they remained waiting about the 
 entrance of the Inquisition Prison, having learnt from 
 the fellows who had escorted the Familiars the news 
 of their General's distressful condition, and of his lying 
 between life and death, and now they would not go 
 about their private business till they had learnt the 
 fate of him who was so near the hearts of them all. 
 
 So we found our men when we issued from the 
 doors in a crowd of some 700, who, as slowly we 
 moved along carrying the entranced body of our
 
 454 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 leader, formed themselves in a lane to let the bearers 
 pass, and some of them as we came out having quickly- 
 lighted the torches we had brought, now held them 
 aloft against the darkness of the night. When the 
 men saw their Lord's death-pale face, and body with- 
 out life or motion, they feared he was already passed 
 away from them, and a reverence and an awe was 
 begot in them, as for the dead ; and they uncovered 
 their heads and looked downwards solemnly in their 
 sorrow. When he passed near to them, and they saw 
 the piteous sight of his wound, of his torn and bleeding 
 hands and feet, these rough, ignorant, uncouth men 
 were stirred to tears. Yea, I protest that with my 
 own eyes I saw it ; they wept. 
 
 We brought him into the great Hall where he had 
 been used to study, and let him still lie stretched as 
 we had found him upon the little truckle-bed ; the 
 surgeon not daring as yet, in the pain and weakness 
 which beset him, to do aught to his wounds. 
 
 It was perhaps the moving him in his weakened, 
 half-deathly state, or perhaps some baneful influence 
 of the night air he passed through, that caused him 
 to go back into his stupor, and his heart-beat to flutter 
 first, and then grow still. He lay again quite en- 
 tranced, and again the surgeon brought him to his 
 senses with the fumes of the subtle essence he had 
 used before, and again he breathed, and his heart went 
 on a little, and he moaned heavily in his pain ; but 
 presently he fell back into lifelessness. 
 
 " What I fear," said the surgeon, " is that when his
 
 Beyond the Seas. 455 
 
 senses come fully to him, the agony of his limbs, 
 racked and twisted by the torments he has suffered, 
 will be so great, it will extinguish the little flame of 
 life that yet flickers." 
 
 We watched on, hoping a little, but fearing far more, 
 he never advancing to any recovery, but his strength 
 seeming to wane and ebb with the minutes, and we 
 being quite helpless to save him. 
 
 Then it was that the surgeon spoke to me thus : — 
 
 "Sir, your Lord has enlarged to me more than 
 once upon the virtues of a certain Indian herb, like 
 that which our apothecaries name Opium Thebaiaim, 
 and which as the Indians prepare it has strange 
 dormitive and corroborant qualities. It first excites 
 and rouses the spirits, then sets sense and feeling 
 gradually asleep, so that all pain is stilled and all 
 sorrow forgotten, and the body gets such refreshment 
 by the drug, that it sleeps on, corroborating itself in 
 rest, and needing neither drink nor food. Could we 
 but administer this medicine, 'tis true we cannot hope 
 to save the life — the tenement which holds it is too 
 broken and subdued — but we should allay the suffering 
 that will otherwise make death an agony." 
 
 Looking on Ralph, I wondered if he had heard 
 these words also, and, willing to refer so great an 
 issue to his own arbitrament, I asked him whether we 
 should administer the drug, and leaning down my 
 ear to his lips, I caught the faint whisper, " Yes." 
 
 Thereupon we procured a portion of the Indian 
 Opium, and dissolving it in aqua vitcB gave him to 
 drink of it.
 
 
 45^ Beyond the Seas. 
 
 How strange is the potency of this medicament ! In 
 a few minutes his eyes opened, and though the gather- 
 ing of his brow betokened that he still suffered, the 
 anodyne already began to work, and he moaned no 
 longer. He spoke, and it was no longer in a whisper, 
 though the voice was still weak : 
 
 " Cousin Humphrey, I have heard the surgeon's 
 words, and he judges rightly ; I must die. I cannot 
 pass through what I have undergone and live. Let 
 me therefore see Geraldine, while the drug still gives 
 me this strength to speak ; but tell her first I must 
 surely die." 
 
 While the surgeon departed to procure his bandages 
 and dressings for the wounds, I went to the Lady 
 Geraldine's apartments and brought her hastily with 
 me, telling her by the way of what had happened. 
 She, among her women and the Palace servants, had 
 heard but a confused account of her cousin's seizure 
 by the Inquisition, of his having been subjected 
 to the question, and his being rescued by us with some 
 remains of life still lingering in him ; and now I told 
 her that, though we were able to subdue the pain he 
 suffered, he yet must surely die. 
 
 When she came to his bedside and stood weeping 
 at his most piteous condition, he tried to take her 
 hand in his, but his wounds were too sore, and his 
 strength availed not. Then said he to her, 
 
 " Kiss me, Geraldine, my own true wife, before I go 
 away from you in death." 
 
 So she bent down her face upon his, and her lips
 
 Beyond the Seas. 457 
 
 were upon his, and in her kiss strong pity was yet 
 no stronger than strongest love. So she kissed his 
 languid eyes, and then again fixed her lips upon his 
 weak and trembling ones, murmuring womanly words 
 of love and comfort, which, standing back, I heard 
 but confusedly. Her two hands she laid upon his 
 breast, but so tenderly that he felt nothing but the 
 solace of her touch upon him ; and as I looked on, 
 lo ! there was a wonder, yea, almost a miracle ! For 
 it was apparent to me that the maiden was instilling 
 a new vitality into Ralph's inanimate body and, by 
 her presence and bodily communion with him, she 
 sustained and bore up the little fainting vitality still 
 left, while with the mighty energy of her woman's love 
 she breathed upon and fanned the dying fire of life, 
 so near to extinguishment, till it grew again into a 
 flame. Yea, 1 looked and saw the life come back into 
 his face, the eyes brighten, the cheeks recover their 
 colour, the lips grow red again from death's own 
 wanness, and again he smiled upon us. The surgeon, 
 coming hastily back at that moment, stared, wondering 
 upon the late dying man. 
 
 " He is saved !" he cried, "and " (looking upon the 
 Lady Geraldine) "not by my art. Such a marvel 
 have I read in books," he muttered to himself, " but 
 never yet have looked upon." 
 
 We waited, watching this miracle in silence ; then 
 Ralph spoke again, and it was no longer the broken, 
 dying voice that wp had heard before, but had hope 
 in it and assurance of life.
 
 458 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 " Geraldine ! " he said, " my beloved, you have called 
 me back to you, from the dark land that I was just 
 entering, and now I shall live, to stay with you here, 
 to love you ! " 
 
 Now the dormitive drug began to have its influence, 
 and his eyelids closed, but the colour of returned hfe 
 was still visible upon his countenance. 
 
 " Let me rest," he said, " I am weary." 
 
 He slept with a long, deep sleep. It was forty- 
 eight hours before he opened his eyes again, and 
 the sleep so held all his senses that the surgeon 
 bandaged the limbs that had been so cruelly be-racked, 
 and Ralph knew it not, and bound up all his wounds, 
 dressing them with smooth, lenitive ointments, and 
 Ralph felt not he was handled by us. All this while 
 his cousin Geraldine stayed by him, by day and 
 by night, and it seemed that some unseen influence, 
 some emanation of her love for him and loving resolve 
 that she would conquer death and keep her lover 
 with her, was ever passing from her to him. Nay, 
 I will not say it seemed ; it was so; for if she, in her 
 anxious care for him, rose for a moment to adjust a 
 covering or to help the surgeon or me in our ministra- 
 tions, and if she happened to remove her hand from 
 touching him but for an instant, he would move 
 uneasily, and his face immediately lost its calmness. 
 Our handling of his grievous wounds, our binding his 
 strained limbs never stirred him in his slumbering, 
 only if he lost the contact of Geraldine he knew it ; 
 and when she laid her hand upon him again, he was
 
 Beyond the Seas. 459 
 
 soothed afresh. By this I knew he was wandering 
 with her he loved amid the pleasant fields and woods 
 of the Dream Realm, and even through the thick 
 envelope of his deep-drugged sleep, would not forego 
 his communion and bodily touch of her. So was 
 Ralph recalled to life by love. 
 
 What little more of this narrative I have to set 
 down, I will tell in very few words. 
 
 When my Lord St. Keyne's long sleep had ended, 
 he was past all danger, and needed but a few days' 
 rest to recover his health, but alas ! not all his 
 strength. The cruelty of the Inquisition had robbed 
 him for ever of his full heritage in this great gift of 
 nature, and he ever after bore on his brow the 
 cicatrice of the deep sword-cut he had received when 
 they assaulted him, and overpowered him, and cruelly 
 wounded him. Was this the bleeding wound I had 
 seen in my dream of him .-' 
 
 Ralph never drew sword again in battle ; so was 
 his hope that he should one day draw it in his 
 country's cause frustrated. 
 
 Even before my cousin had awoke from his first 
 sleep, I had established beyond doubt how deep the 
 Viceroy himself was in the plot which had betrayed 
 Ralph to his merciless enemies. This high-placed, 
 disloyal Spaniard indeed was the Judas on whose 
 guilty head chiefly lay the innocent blood of Ralph 
 that had been shed ; for the Viceroy's cruelty was 
 base revenge, the Inquisitor's only mistaken zeal. So
 
 460 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 therefore we were disengaged of our loyalty to the 
 Viceroy by his broken faith with us, and we removed 
 ourselves from the Sicilian service, and took out of it 
 with us, as the terms of our engagement allowed, all 
 our English troop. Embarking them all in our little 
 galley, the Golondrina, we sailed for Naples, where 
 the happy marriage of Ralph and Geraldine took 
 place. But this departure was delayed for over a 
 month, less to await the recovery of my Lord, for in 
 a fortnight he had got strength enough to be moved, 
 than because he was loth to leave the City of Palermo 
 in the commotion into which the recent events had 
 thrown it. In truth the city was in a sort of tacit 
 insurrection against the Viceroy, and would have 
 broken out into a flame of avowed rebellion, but for the 
 people's love and respect for my Lord, The Viceroy 
 did not dare to return from Messina, with his Body- 
 guard now inflamed against him, and because he 
 knew the Sicilian troops to be untrustworthy, and 
 feared too to face the man against whom he had 
 schemed so foul a treason ; but my Lord composed 
 the matter for the sake of the Palermitan citizens, 
 and the guard we had formed consented to serve the 
 Viceroy again. 
 
 We ever afterwards rejoiced to think we had done 
 the Sicilians two good services. We had broken the 
 tyranny of the Inquisition. After the great shaking 
 their power got that night, when their Officers, including 
 the three Head Inquisitors themselves, were bundled 
 ignominiously into the street among the crowd that 
 
 I 
 
 !
 
 Beyond the Seas. 461 
 
 had gathered (with perhaps a few more parting cuffs 
 and kicks from our troopers and sailors than it was 
 in my strict orders to bestow), the Holy Office never 
 could hold its head up again in Sicily. Another 
 grievous tyranny we had broken was that of the 
 Barbary Corsairs. They never thereafter so harried the 
 Sicilian coasts. Perhaps they would have begun again 
 after a time, but shortly after we left the Island, our 
 famous English Admiral Blake (a rough sea-dog of a 
 fellow and a Cromwellian, but, I am willing to con- 
 cede, a great commander) gave them a most terrible 
 trouncing in Tunis Bay ; yet it must not be over- 
 looked that Blake had all the might of England's navy 
 at his back, and that 'twas my Lord who first taught 
 these Infidels to run from an Englishman. 
 
 My two cousins were fated never again to sec 
 England. Six years of happy life they passed in the 
 several chief cities of Italy ; then, on the joyful 
 restoration of our rightful king to his throne, they set 
 sail for Bristol and their English home at St. Keyne, 
 whither I was to follow with the Englishmen and the 
 two Dutchmen of the troop, who now no longer were 
 soldiers, but lived as honoured dependants in the 
 household of my Lord. 
 
 Ralph and Geraldine took ship for Bristol from the 
 Port of Leghorn, in Tuscany ; and I watched the ship 
 sail out of harbour one May evening, and lost sight 
 of her at last in the glow and glory of the setting sun. 
 Alas ! I was never to set eyes on my dear Lord and 
 Geraldine again, for their ship went down among the
 
 462 Beyond the Seas. 
 
 Biscay waves, and none from her ever won to 
 land. 
 
 For this their death I have only lately ceased to 
 mourn and sorrow ; but now I grieve no longer, 
 seeing that the time is at last come so near for my 
 meeting again with these two, whom I have loved 
 beyond everything in this world. In truth I have 
 reproached myself in that I ever wept their loss at 
 all, for I should have remembered Ralph's opinion 
 and declaration touching death ; namely, that, as it 
 behoves us all, sooner or later, to make this passage 
 from darkness here to unknown light beyond, so is it 
 to be desired and prayed for that we may be stricken 
 down in the pride and fulness of our youth, and in 
 our contentment and joy of life, rather than later, 
 when the bitterness of age and sickness shall have 
 arrived ; and this wish he had obtained for himself 
 and for her whom he loved better than himself. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 1 
 
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 DIANA OF THE CROSS- 
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