Ebsworthy broke the silence, half reproachfully, half trying to bluster away the coming storm.
"Well, noble captain, so you've hunted out us poor fellows; and want to drag us back again in a halter, I suppose?""I came to look for Christians, and I find heathens; for men, and Ifind swine.I shall leave the heathens to their wilderness, and the swine to their trough.Parracombe!""He's too happy to answer you, sir.And why not? What do you want of us? Our two years vow is out, and we are free men now.""Free to become like the beasts that perish? You are the queen's servants still, and in her name I charge you--"Free to be happy," interrupted the man."With the best of wives, the best of food, a warmer bed than a duke's, and a finer garden than an emperor's.As for clothes, why the plague should a man wear them where he don't need them? As for gold, what's the use of it where Heaven sends everything ready-made to your hands?
Hearken, Captain Leigh.You've been a good captain to me, and I'll repay you with a bit of sound advice.Give up your gold-hunting, and toiling and moiling after honor and glory, and copy us.Take that fair maid behind you there to wife; pitch here with us; and see if you are not happier in one day than ever you were in all your life before.""You are drunk, sirrah! William Parracombe! Will you speak to me, or shall I heave you into the stream to sober you?""Who calls William Parracombe?" answered a sleepy voice.
"I, fool!--your captain."
"I am not William Parracombe.He is dead long ago of hunger, and labor, and heavy sorrow, and will never see Bideford town any more.
He is turned into an Indian now; and he is to sleep, sleep, sleep for a hundred years, till he gets his strength again, poor fellow--""Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light! A christened Englishman, and living thus the life of a beast?""Christ shall give thee light?" answered the same unnatural abstracted voice."Yes; so the parsons say.And they say too, that He is Lord of heaven and earth.I should have thought His light was as near us here as anywhere, and nearer too, by the look of the place.Look round!" said he, waving a lazy hand, "and see the works of God, and the place of Paradise, whither poor weary souls go home and rest, after their masters in the wicked world have used them up, with labor and sorrow, and made them wade knee-deep in blood--I'm tired of blood, and tired of gold.I'll march no more; I'll fight no more; I'll hunger no more after vanity and vexation of spirit.What shall I get by it? Maybe I shall leave my bones in the wilderness.I can but do that here.Maybe I shall get home with a few pezos, to die an old cripple in some stinking hovel, that a monkey would scorn to lodge in here.You may go on;it'll pay you.You may be a rich man, and a knight, and live in a fine house, and drink good wine, and go to Court, and torment your soul with trying to get more, when you've got too much already;plotting and planning to scramble upon your neighbor's shoulders, as they all did--Sir Richard, and Mr.Raleigh, and Chichester, and poor dear old Sir Warham, and all of them that I used to watch when I lived before.They were no happier than I was then; I'll warrant they are no happier now.Go your ways, captain; climb to glory upon some other backs than ours, and leave us here in peace, alone with God and God's woods, and the good wives that God has given us, to play a little like school children.It's long since I've had play-hours; and now I'll be a little child once more, with the flowers, and the singing birds, and the silver fishes in the stream, that are at peace, and think no harm, and want neither clothes, nor money, nor knighthood, nor peerage, but just take what comes; and their heavenly Father feedeth them, and Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these--and will He not much more feed us, that are of more value than many sparrows?""And will you live here, shut out from all Christian ordinances?""Christian ordinances? Adam and Eve had no parsons in Paradise.
The Lord was their priest, and the Lord was their shepherd, and He'll be ours too.But go your ways, sir, and send up Sir John Brimblecombe, and let him marry us here Church fashion (though we have sworn troth to each other before God already), and let him give us the Holy Sacrament once and for all, and then read the funeral service over us, and go his ways, and count us for dead, sir--for dead we are to the wicked worthless world we came out of three years ago.And when the Lord chooses to call us, the little birds will cover us with leaves, as they did the babies in the wood, and fresher flowers will grow out of our graves, sir, than out of yours in that bare Northam churchyard there beyond the weary, weary, weary sea."His voice died away to a murmur, and his head sank on his breast.
Amyas stood spell-bound.The effect of the narcotic was all but miraculous in his eyes.The sustained eloquence, the novel richness of diction in one seemingly drowned in sensual sloth, were, in his eyes, the possession of some evil spirit.And yet he could not answer the Evil One.His English heart, full of the divine instinct of duty and public spirit, told him that it must be a lie: but how to prove it a lie? And he stood for full ten minutes searching for an answer, which seemed to fly farther and farther off the more he sought for it.
His eye glanced upon Ayacanora.The two girls were whispering to her smilingly.He saw one of them glance a look toward him, and then say something, which raised a beautiful blush in the maiden's face.With a playful blow at the speaker, she turned away.Amyas knew instinctively that they were giving her the same advice as Ebsworthy had given to him.Oh, how beautiful she was! Might not the renegades have some reason on their side after all.