Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth, - [e books for reading .TXT] 📗

holy birds who run up and down on the Prado at Seville among the ladies' pretty feet,—eh? with hooked noses and cinnamon crests? Of course. Hoopoes—Upupa, as the classics have it. Well, senors, once on a time, the story goes, these hoopoes all had golden crowns on their heads; and, senors, they took the consequences—eh? But it befell on a day that all the birds and beasts came to do homage at the court of his most Catholic majesty King Solomon, and among them came these same hoopoes; and they had a little request to make, the poor rogues. And what do you think it was? Why, that King Solomon would pray for them that they might wear any sort of crowns but these same golden ones; for—listen, Tita, and see the snare of riches—mankind so hunted, and shot, and trapped, and snared them, for the sake of these same golden crowns, that life was a burden to bear. So Solomon prayed, and instead of golden crowns, they all received crowns of feathers; and ever since, senors, they live as merrily as crickets in an oven, and also have the honor of bearing the name of his most Catholic majesty King Solomon. Tita! fill the senor commandant's glass. Fray Gerundio, what are you whispering about down there, sir?”

Fray Gerundio had merely commented to his brother on the bishop's story of Solomon's birds with an—

“O si sic omnia!—would that all gold would turn to feathers in like wise!”

“Then, friend,” replied the other, a Dominican, like Gerundio, but of a darker and sterner complexion, “corrupt human nature would within a week discover some fresh bauble, for which to kill and be killed in vain.”

“What is that, Fray Gerundio?” asked the bishop again.

“I merely remarked, that it were well for the world if all mankind were to put up the same prayer as the hoopoes.”

“World, sir? What do you know about the world? Convert your Indians, sir, if you please, and leave affairs of state to your superiors. You will excuse him, senors” (turning to the Dons, and speaking in a lower tone). “A very worthy and pious man, but a poor peasant's son; and beside—you understand. A little wrong here; too much fasting and watching, I fear, good man.” And the bishop touched his forehead knowingly, to signify that Fray Gerundio's wits were in an unsatisfactory state.

The Fray heard and saw with a quiet smile. He was one of those excellent men whom the cruelties of his countrymen had stirred up (as the darkness, by mere contrast, makes the light more bright), as they did Las Casas, Gasca, and many another noble name which is written in the book of life, to deeds of love and pious daring worthy of any creed or age. True Protestants, they protested, even before kings, against the evil which lay nearest them, the sin which really beset them; true liberals, they did not disdain to call the dark-skinned heathen their brothers; and asserted in terms which astonish us, when we recollect the age in which they were spoken, the inherent freedom of every being who wore the flesh and blood which their Lord wore; true martyrs, they bore witness of Christ, and received too often the rewards of such, in slander and contempt. Such an one was Fray Gerundio; a poor, mean, clumsy-tongued peasant's son, who never could put three sentences together, save when he waxed eloquent, crucifix in hand, amid some group of Indians or negroes. He was accustomed to such rebuffs as the bishop's; he took them for what they were worth, and sipped his wine in silence; while the talk went on.

“They say,” observed the commandant, “that a very small Plate-fleet will go to Spain this year.”

“What else?” says the intendant. “What have we to send, in the name of all saints, since these accursed English Lutherans have swept us out clean?”

“And if we had anything to send,” says the sea-captain, “what have we to send it in? That fiend incarnate, Drake—”

“Ah!” said his holiness; “spare my ears! Don Pedro, you will oblige my weakness by not mentioning that man;—his name is Tartarean, unfit for polite lips. Draco—a dragon—serpent—the emblem of Diabolus himself—ah! And the guardian of the golden apples of the West, who would fain devour our new Hercules, his most Catholic majesty. Deceived Eve, too, with one of those same apples—a very evil name, senors—a Tartarean name,—Tita!”

“Um!”

“Fill my glass.”

“Nay,” cried the colonel, with a great oath, “this English fellow is of another breed of serpent from that, I warrant.”

“Your reason, senor; your reason?”

“Because this one would have seen Eve at the bottom of the sea, before he let her, or any one but himself, taste aught which looked like gold.”

“Ah, ah!—very good! But—we laugh, valiant senors, while the Church weeps. Alas for my sheep!”

“And alas for their sheepfold! It will be four years before we can get Cartagena rebuilt again. And as for the blockhouse, when we shall get that rebuilt, Heaven only knows, while his majesty goes on draining the Indies for his English Armada. The town is as naked now as an Indian's back.”

“Baptista Antonio, the surveyor, has sent home by me a relation to the king, setting forth our defenceless state. But to read a relation and to act on it are two cocks of very different hackles, bishop, as all statesmen know. Heaven grant we may have orders by the next fleet to fortify, or we shall be at the mercy of every English pirate!”

“Ah, that blockhouse!” sighed the bishop. “That was indeed a villainous trick. A hundred and ten thousand ducats for the ransom of the town! After having burned and plundered the one-half—and having made me dine with them too, ah! and sit between the—the serpent, and his lieutenant-general—and drunk my health in my own private wine—wine that I had from Xeres nine years ago, senors and offered, the shameless heretics, to take me to England, if I would turn Lutheran, and find me a wife, and make an honest man of me—ah! and then to demand fresh ransom for the priory and the fort—perfidious!”

“Well,” said the colonel, “they had the law of us, the cunning rascals, for we forgot to mention anything but the town, in the agreement. Who would have dreamed of such a fetch as that?”

“So I told my good friend the prior, when he came to me to borrow the thousand crowns. It was Heaven's will. Unexpected like the thunderbolt, and to be borne as such. Every man must bear his own burden. How could I lend him aught?”

“Your holiness's money had been all carried off by them before,” said the intendant, who knew, and none better, the exact contrary.

“Just so—all my scanty savings! desolate in my lone old age. Ah, senors, had we not had warning of the coming of these wretches from my dear friend the Marquess of Santa Cruz, whom I remember daily in my prayers, we had been like to them who go down quick into the pit. I too might have saved a trifle, had I been minded: but in thinking too much of others, I forgot myself, alas!”

“Warning or none, we had no right to be beaten by such a handful,” said the sea-captain; “and a shame it is, and