Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (304 page)

Bethink them
......”

“Hieronymus,” Edward Colman said, “this is a very fair scheme, and likely to succeed. But wherefore must I slay the navigator?”

“To make us the more certain that you will keep faith with us,” the dwarf laughed. “For with the brand of Cain upon you you will not very well dare to take us treacherously into an English port unknown to us.”

“Why, it is a very good plot,” Edward Colman said. “But you must saw off my chains and give me two pistols, so that if with one I miss I may hit with the other.”

“I have the keys beneath my cloak,” the dwarf said; “they hang always in the cockpit, for that is their appointed place.”

“Then set me loose,” Edward Colman said, “and give me my pistols and chafe my wrists when I am loosened.”

He had it in his head to strangle the dwarf when he was loose, and to run to call upon Hudson and the captain, so that they would be three men against three men of the remaining mutineers.

But the dwarf gave three little chirps of a cricket between his teeth, and there came over the decks other men, creeping softly. There were four men altogether around him, and they carried heavy swords, that they laid upon the deck, and three or four pistols.

“It is very well,” the dwarf said. “He will do his work. Let us hasten.”

They fumbled in the darkness a long while over the keyholes of his chain.

“One of you fetch a lanthorn,” the dwarf said; “there is no need for much secrecy now. All the crew are in a stupor.”

Whilst they waited one of them put to Edward Colman an oath that he would treat them all always with secrecy, even as they deserved it of him. And whilst he boggled over this — for he was unwilling to take an oath that he knew he must break — he looked up at the high-mast against the stars. He noticed that the round disk he had taken to be the captain’s great hat was no more there, but instead there was a very thin black bar, hardly to be seen, but like a shadow.

The man came back with the lanthorn, and they found the padlock of his chains, so that the dwarf was very soon chafing Edward Colman’s wrists. The lanthorn just showed their shadowed faces, their black cloaks and hats, but it was a great light compared with the darkness that there had been.

“Why,” Edward Colman said, “give me the two pistols, for we must hasten to this work. Afterwards, if it succeed, I will take what oaths you will; but it is foolish to swear oaths before the enterprise succeeds — and it is of ill-omen. I will not do it.”

The dwarf bent over his left wrist, for he still lay on the deck. He looked into Edward Colman’s face with a quick glance of suspicion, and opened his lips to speak.

There was a quick little sound, a half-visible motion in the air; the dwarf’s face sank down upon the deck, his nose pressed on to the planks. The three Dutchmen’s faces filled with dull amazement; they all saw, quivering and waving to and fro waspishly in the dim light, the feathers of an arrow. Its haft ended in the back of the dwarf’s neck, and it pinned him to the wooden deck.

And whilst they still gazed with their mouths open another invisible messenger made a little sound in the air, and the hand of a man who had a reddish beard was transfixed upon one of the links of a chain, the arrow-head passing through wrist and chain-link and held to the planking. He gave a great scream and fell back, kicking with his legs, and the other two screamed out, too, and sprang to their feet, using their hands to push them up. But whilst they ran for the forecastle there came a stream of light from near the masthead.

“By God!” Edward Colman said, “if I do not hurry I shall be late at this conquest!” and he got his fingers on to a sword-hilt and sprang up.

But when he ran, waving the sword above his head, the fourth man ran before him down the deck towards the stern, and when Edward Colman came up with him he saw, even in that darkness, that the man was kneeling down and holding his clasped hands up above his head.

And he cried out for mercy, and Edward Colman had no heart to kill him.

CHAPTER II
.

THAT night, when they had thrown two dead men overboard and trussed up the one that had an arrow through his hand and another that was unharmed but mad with fright, Henry Hudson in his cabin kissed Edward Colman and the captain on both cheeks and drank much wine from silver goblets and set his tame mice to perform tricks and dilated upon his charts and held a high carouse till the crew began to awaken and come forth. It was then that he made his great scene.

“For,” as he said to Edward Colman, “there is not much that one may learn in London town save the art of handling crowds. But that much I have learned there, attending at playhouses and at public spectacles and at many places where the air is very foul.”

He had the crew, as he loved, lined up before him, but allowed to lean against the rigging for their better attention, that they might not grow weary, and he had put on his blue steel armour with gold inlayings that had been given him by the Muscovy merchants, and at his side he had a table with twelve goblets of silver and a great parcel-gilt beaker of French wine. The cliffs all round them were very high, and brown and purple and black; the air was very still, and there were no sea-beasts to ruffle the surface of the water, that was satin grey shot, in the shadows of the currents with translucent green or the purple reflections of the cliffs. And through Edward Colman he made them this great speech, that gave him great joy and pleasure to deliver, with slow gestures and broad smiles —

“My masters and my friends,” he said, “for I trow ye are all my approved friends and I love ye all most well. We are now in the most northerly haven that it shall be our fortune to reach in this voyage, and I will explain to you certain mysteries and things that shall not have appeared very plain to you. And in the first place I will explain to you the very beginnings. Firstly, I am engaged to make not one but several voyages for this East India Company of Holland that we all serve. Now that being so, say I to those masters of mine, firstly, I will have a good ship, and secondly, I will have an approved and a tried crew cemented to me by suffering hardships and tried by me with appearances of unreason. I say with appearances of unreason, for I am not an unreasonable man.”

He paused and laughed.

“Now, if you will try the strength of tackle-hooks to bear two hundred pounds weight, you do not try them with a weight of two hundred pounds but with five or six or seven hundred pounds, overtesting them to see that the steel of them is true. So I have tested you. For I said to the Company, ‘Give me the best twenty men that you can find and I will test them very nearly, and so select from them ten or a dozen to be my comrades upon several voyages.’ And they gave me the fourteen best that are here, and the ten next best that are upon the
Good Hope.
And I have well tested you.

“First, touching this voyage over the Pole to India. I know very well — and very well I knew — that this voyage is accounted a great folly in Holland. It is, by you, accounted and called the ‘English madness,’ for it was an Englishman called Will Thorne who first said that there was a free and open sea at the Pole. You, of Holland, much dreaded this voyage, for you held that these seas were impassable for ice, bewitched by sorcerers, shrouded in a perpetual night and beset by endless tempests. I will not say that I hold all these beliefs of yours, but I have made two stout voyages for the Muscovy Company of London and I believe that there is no way over the Pole.

“I believed this before I left Amsterdam; I believe it now. But the good merchants of the East India Company have their own ideas and their own reasons to believe, not having, like you and me, sailed the seas and known the look of ice. They said to me, ‘We will have you make this endeavour to go to India over the Pole, for we have heard the assertions of Will Thorne, and we would have you to try this way again.’

“I say to them, ‘You are my masters and employers; I will do your will for this voyage if, for the next voyage, you let me essay the only way that I believe to be adventurable, viz. by the North-West Passage. I will in this first voyage make a stout endeavour in places where I have not been when I sailed for the Muscovy merchants of London.’

“This I did the more readily, for I knew that thus I should have a good test for my crew. For if ye served me well upon a voyage that ye undertook very unwillingly, how much the better would ye not serve me upon a voyage that ye did with all your hearts.

“So I had it set about that our voyage was for the North-West Passage, and when we were well engaged and at sea I told ye all, as ye wist, that it was for over the Pole. So then arose amongst ye discontented ones — and some that sailed discontentedly, but with cheerful obedience as your duty was. Now I have sifted out them that be mutinous — and two of them be dead and two in chains, and those of the
Good Hope
who were all in a second class have been proved all but two to be men of little account. But you whom I have tested and tried I believe to be the best men that ever I may find in this world to sail with me. I call ye my friends, my brothers, my tried assistants and my trusty ones — and to you all I drink this glass of wine.”

He lifted a silver goblet, with a large gesture, and drank and paused. The faces of his crew were expressionless — but he didn’t hope for cheers from Hollanders. He set his goblet down, wiped his beard and spoke on —

“Now let me tell you a thing,” he said, “that will put contentment into all your hearts: this voyage, as far as it is a voyage to the northwards, is ended. Now we sail west and south and into warm seas and pleasant climes. Now we shall see what few of ye, I believe, have seen, that western land called the New World, where there are green fields and fine champaigns and noble rivers and spiceries and sweets and gentle savages and juice filled fruits.”

He paused again, and then he said —

“I will not say that this is altogether to my will; I am a man more for hardships and ice and tempests than for rivers and champaigns and fruits. Yet I go this adventure willingly — for if it be child’s play yet it serves my turn, which is, in my next voyage with ye, to go for that Passage, north and east and over the western continent to the further ocean. But this year it is too late in the season thither to set sail; we must seek warmer seas.

“In this wise it is that this latter half of our voyage is fallen about. Our masters of the East India Company have in their heads another fairy tale that is a hundred years old or so, like the tale of Will Thorne. And this other fairy tale has it that there is a deep and broad channel across the western continent to the ocean called the Pacific.

“This is a very old tale of the days of Columbus, that fell into disrepute. But your East India masters have of late had it revived for them by the sayings of certain Indians, that they have seen great waters crossing their continent in the north parts that no man has trodden. This I think is an old wife’s tale. But it has pleased my masters to bid me seek for this passage, and seek for it I will and with pleasure; for if it is but child’s play sailing, yet I too have my seasons when I would have rest and leisurous journeyings. And next year we shall go to the north-west for our reward.

“Of what my plans are I will say no more than this: that now we sail to south and west, and when we come to these New World coasts we shall quarter them from north to south, seeking the entrance to this passage across the land, even as hitherto we have beaten east and west along the barrier of ice, seeking the passage to the Pole. So I will make no more bones about this, but very soon I will drink a bumper of wine with each man of you, and so send you to your play and enjoyment for three days’ time.

“But first let me say somewhat touching another matter. The most excellent and trusted friend that I have upon this ship is mine interpreter, through whom I speak to you. But I was minded to set a trap for certain malcontent mice that did infest this ship. And to set a trap nothing is so excellent as cheese if it be well toasted. And so ye may look upon certain blows and foul words that I gave this friend of mine as the toasting of a piece of cheese, and this Edward Colman was the piece of cheese. And how well he did take these dangerous vermin you have had related to you. I think there was never stratagem so well devised or so perfect in its success. For had it not appeared that I mistreated that man those conspirators would never have come out of their holes, but might have slain us all as we slept, and so turned pirators as many other ships’ crews have done. And no other man would have served my turn so well as this Edward Colman, for they took him for a pilot who, like myself, could have taken them back to charted seas, so that their hearts leapt with joy when they saw me mistreat the only man that — they thought — could serve their turns.

“And touching the manner of their execution, I trust ye will not take it cowardly in me that it was your captain and not I that I set in the high-mast top to slay them with arrows when he had overheard their devilish plottings. For indeed it was no small test of my courage that I should sit thus still in my cabin and sing whilst these things were acting, and far rather had I gone among them with swords and blows. But this your good captain is the man to deal with executions, and I would not have it against me in your eyes that I who am an Englishman and a foreigner should slay these your countrymen, how treacherous soever they were and deserving of death.

“So that I think ye will all say that I have done very well by you, and I take great credit to myself for having so well explained this delicate matter to your captain, without an interpreter, but using only signs and dumbshow and writing down the few words of Latin that he and I have in common, so that I take great credit to myself for this. And now we will drink together a glass of wine, each one touching our cups against the others. And to show how I esteem ye I will myself serve you and pledge you.”

He went round among them, giving to each man a cup, which he filled well from his beaker of parcel-gilt, and going back to his place before the white and gilt door of the companion way he gave them this toast —

“Friends and brother mariners, I pray you toast this voyage that we make to the New World. If fortune is kind to us we will find a passage across it. But if we do not yet this New World is a golden place for glorious new adventures and voyagings. A little while ago men went to it to find gold and to find ideal republics and commonwealths. Now it is the fashion rather to seek to found settlements and colonies. May we who lead the way with little profit to ourselves yet find eternal renown for ourselves; may great republics and commonwealths with cities named after us arise there to keep our fame always in men’s minds. May New Hollands and other Englands arise on that soil and grow and multiply, and may this voyage of the
Half Moon
that begins now so nobly and amicably be never forgotten or off the lips of men.

“Now fare ye well, for I grow hoarse. I will have you to do certain things, such as warping this ship up against the
Good Hope
and discharging into her the two that we have in chains and choosing from her four men to take the places of them we have lost and taking aboard from her certain victuals that we need, and so sending her with little glory back to Holland whilst we sail away over leagues of sea towards new glories. But for that ye shall ask directions of our good sailing master and captain. And I pardon now the Master Outreweltius and make him under-master of the ship, for I trow he would rather that than to be master of the one that with little honour shall sail back to Amsterdam.”

When he was in his cabin he drank much wine, for he was very contented with himself. And he Smote Edward Colman on the back and cried—”This is the best day that ever I had.”

Edward Colman smiled foxily.

“Why,” he said, “if you sail so close to the wind again I doubt you will miscarry.”

“Oh, croak! croak!” the navigator answered him, and he set a little mouse to run up his arm. “You are like the ravens they used to carry for pilots on shipboard. You will not join with me in my triumph. Have I not purged my ship and tried my crews?”

“Oh aye,” Edward Colman said, “but we came near enough to death for the sake of your glory.” Hudson laughed at him.

“You are angry still for the way I fooled you,” he said. “If you play for a great stake you must gamble.”

“You might have saved me some evil moments,” Edward Colman said. “You tried me very sorely. What if I had joined the mutineers and told them how the captain watched in the top castle? You would not have come out well. For we should have gone to the
Good Hope
for help and all your men were drugged.”

Hudson pished at him boisterously.

“Do I not know a faithful man when I see him?” he said. “I am a leader of men. You deemed I was mad; but it was you that were mad; for you deemed I deemed you unfaithful, and madly you misjudged me. But I will make it up to you with cossetings and findings, and tell you many secrets and lead you to find such a piece of land to build a settlement upon as will make you the richest lord in Christendom.” He cast his arm round Edward Colman’s neck; took the little white mouse from his shoulder and placed it tenderly on the table before a piece of biscuit, and poured out more wine for the young man.