Martin Hyde (6 page)

"Yes, your Majesty," I said, "I should very much like to enter your service."

"You understand, Hyde," said Mr. Jermyn, "that we are engaged in a very dangerous work. It is so dangerous that we should not be justified in allowing you to go free after what you have heard tonight. But its very danger makes it necessary that we should tell you something of what your work under his Majesty will be, before you decide finally to throw in your lot with us. It is one thing to be a prisoner among us, Hyde; but quite another to be what is called a rebel, engaged in treasonable practices against a ruling King."

"Still," said Lane, "don't think that your imprisonment with us would be unpleasant. If you would rather not join us, you have only to say so. We shall then send you over to Holland, where you will, no doubt,
find plenty of boats with which to amuse yourself. You will be kept in Holland till a certain much-wished event takes place, about the middle of June. After that you will be brought back here to your uncle, who, by that time, will have forgiven you."

"That's a very pretty ladder you made," said the Duke. "You've evidently lived among sailors."

"Among fishermen mostly, your Majesty," I said. "My father was rector in the Broads country." I knew from his remark that someone had been across to my uncle's house to remove all traces of my bridge. My ladder, I knew, would now be dangling from my window, to show by which way I had escaped.

"We want you, Hyde," Mr. Jermyn said. "That is—we shall want you in the event of your joining us, to be our messenger to the West. You will travel continually from Holland to the West of England, generally to the country near Taunton, but sometimes to Exeter, sometimes still further to the West. You will carry letters sewn into the flap of your leather travelling satchel. You will travel alone by your own name, giving out, in case any one should ask you, that you are going to one of certain people, whose names will be given to you. There will be no danger to yourself; for the persons to whom you will be sent are not suspected; indeed one of them is a clergyman. We think that a boy will have less difficulty in getting about the country in its present state than any man, provided,
of course, that you travel by different routes on each journey. If, however, by some extraordinary chance, you should be caught with these letters in your wallet, we shall take steps to bring you off; for we have a good deal of power, in one way or another, by which we get things done. Still, it may well fall out, Hyde, in spite of all our care, that you will come into the hands of men with whom we have no influence. If you should, (remember, it is quite possible) you will be transported, to serve in one of the Virginian or West Indian plantations. That will be the end of you as far as we are concerned. We shan't be able to help you then. If you think the cause is right, join us, provided that you do not think the risks too great."

"If all goes well," said the Duke, "if the summer should prove prosperous, I may be able to reward a faithful servant, even if he is only a boy."

"I will serve your Majesty gladly," I answered. "I should like to join your service."

"Very well then, Jermyn," he said, rising swiftly on his way to the door; "bring him on board at once."

"We're off to Holland tonight, in the schooner there," said Mr. Jermyn. "So put these biscuits in your pocket. Give him another glass of wine, Falk. Now, then. Goodbye, Lane. Goodbye everybody."

"Goodbye," they said. "Goodbye, boy." In another minute we were in the narrow road, within earshot of the tumbling water, going down to the stairs
at the lane end, to take boat. The last that I saw of my uncle's house was the white of my ladder ropes, swinging about against the darkness of the bricks.

"Remember, Hyde," said Mr. Jermyn in a low voice, "that his Majesty is always plain Mr. Scott. Remember that. Remember, too, that you are never to speak to him unless he speaks to you. But you won't have much to do with him. Were you ever at sea, before?"

"No, sir. Only about the Broads in a coracle."

"You'll find it very interesting, then. If you're not seasick. Here we are at the boat. Now, jump in. Get into the bows."

"Mr. Scott" was already snug under a boat-cloak in the sternsheets. As soon as we had stepped in, the boatman shoved off. The boat rippled the water into a gleaming track as she gathered way. We were off. I was on my way to Holland. I was a conspirator, travelling with a King. There ahead of me was the fine hull of the schooner
La Reina,
waiting to carry us to all sorts of adventure, none of them (as I planned them then) so strange, or so terrible, as those which happened to me. As we drew up alongside her, I heard the clack-clack of the sailors heaving at the windlass. They were getting up the anchor, so that we might sail from this horrible city to all the wonderful romance which awaited me, as I thought, beyond, in the great world. Five minutes after I had stepped upon her deck we were gliding down on the ebb, bound for Holland.

"Hyde," said Mr. Jermyn, as we drew past the battery on the Tower platform, "do you see the high ground, beyond the towers there?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Do you know what that is?"

"No, sir."

"That's Tower Hill," he answered, "where traitors, I mean conspirators like you or me, are beheaded. Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, sir," I replied. "To have your head cut off."

"Yes," he said. "With all that hill black with people. The scaffold hung with black making a sort of platform in the middle. Then soldiers, with drums, all round. You put your head over a block, so that your neck rests on the wood. Then the executioner comes at you with an axe. Then your head is shown to the people. 'This is the head of a traitor.' We may all end in that way, on that little hill there. You must be very careful how you carry the letters, Hyde."

After this hint, he showed me a hammock in the schooner's 'tweendecks, telling me that I should soon be accustomed to that kind of bed. "It is a little awkward at first," he said, "especially the getting in part; but, when once snugly in, it is the most comfortable kind of bed in the world." After undressing by the light of a huge ship's lantern, which Mr. Jermyn called a battle-lantern, I turned into my hammock, rather glad to be alone. Now that I was pledged to this
conspiracy business, with some knowledge of what it might lead to, I half wished myself well out of it. The 'tweendecks was much less comfortable than the bedroom which I had left so gaily such a very little time before. I had exchanged a good prison for a bad one. The smell of oranges, so near to the hold in which they were stored, was overpowering, mixed, as it was, with the horrible ship-smell of decaying water (known as bilge-water) which flopped about at each roll a few feet below me. My hammock was slung in a draught from the main hatchway. People came down the hatchway during the night to fetch coils of rope or tackles. Tired as I was, I slept very badly that first night on board ship. The schooner seemed to be full of queer, unrelated movements. The noise of the water slipping past was like somebody talking. The striking of the bells kept me from sleeping. I did not get to sleep till well into the middle watch (about two in the morning) after which I slept brokenly until a rough voice bawled in my eat to get up out of that, as it was time to wash down.

I put my clothes on hurriedly, wondering where I should find a basin in which to wash myself. I could see none in the 'tweendecks; but I supposed that there would be some in the cabins, which opened off the 'tweendecks on each side. Now a 'tweendecks (I may as well tell you here) is nothing more than a deck of a ship below the upper deck. If some of my readers
have never been in a ship, let them try to imagine themselves descending from the upper deck—where all the masts stand—by a ladder fixed in a square opening known as a hatchway. About six feet down this ladder is the 'tweendecks, a long narrow room, with a ceiling so low that unless you bend, you bump your head against the beams. If you will imagine a long narrow room, only six feet high, you will know what a 'tweendecks is like. Only in a real 'tweendecks it is always rather dark, for the windows (if you care to call them so) are thick glass bull's-eyes which let in very little light. A glare of light comes down the hatchways. Away from the hatchways a few battle-lanterns are hung, to keep up some pretence of light in the darkest corners. At one end of this long narrow room in
La Reina
a wooden partition, running right across from side to side, made a biggish chamber called "the cabin," where the officers took their meals. A little further along the room, one on each side of it, were two tiny partitioned cabins, about seven feet square, in which the officers slept, two in each cabin one above the other, in shelf-beds, or bunks. My hammock had been slung between these cabins, a little forward of them. When I turned out, I saw that the rest of the 'tweendecks was piled with stores of all kinds, lashed down firmly to ringbolts. Right forward, in the darkness of the ship's bows, I saw other hammocks where the sailors slept.

I was wondering what I was to do about washing, when the rough man who had called me a few minutes before came down to ask me why I was not up on deck. I said that I was wondering where I could wash myself.

"Wash yourself," he said. "You haven't made yourself dirty yet. You don't wash at sea till your work's done for the day. Why, haven't you lashed your hammock yet?"

"Please, sir," I said, "I don't know how."

"Well, for once," he said, "I'll show you how. Tomorrow you'll do it for yourself."

"There," he said, when he had lashed up the hammock, by what seemed to me to be art-magic, "don't you say you don't know how to lash a 'ammick. I've showed you once. Now shove it in the rack there. Up on deck with you."

I ran up the ladder to the deck, thinking that this was not at all the kind of service which I had expected. When I got to the deck I felt happier; for it was a lovely bright morning. The schooner was under all sail, tearing along at what seemed to me to be great speed. We were out at sea now. England lay behind us, some miles away. I could see the windows gleaming in a little town on the shore. Ships were in sight, with rollers of foam whitening under them. Gulls dipped after fish. The clouds drove past. A fishing boat piled with fish was labouring up to London, her sails dark with spray. On the deck of the schooner some
barefooted sailors were filling the wash-deck tubs at a hand-pump. One man was at work high aloft on the topsail yard, sitting across the yard with his legs dangling down, keeping his seat (as I thought) by balance. I found the scene so delightful that I gazed at it like a boy in a trance. I was still staring, when the surly boor who had called me (he was the schooner's mate it seemed) came up behind me.

"Well," he said, in the rough, bullying speech of a sailor, "do ye see it?"

"See what, sir?"

"What you're looking at."

"Yes, sir," I answered.

"Then you got no butter in your eyes, then. Why ain't you at work?"

"What am I to do, sir?"

"Do," he said. "Ain't you Mr. Scott's servant?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then get a bucket of fresh water out of the cask there. Take this scrubber. You'll find some soap in the locker there. Now scrub out the cabin as quick as you know how."

He showed me down to the cabin. It was a dingy, dirty little room about twelve feet square over all, but made, in reality, much smaller by the lockers which ran along each side.

It was lighted by two large wooden ports, known as "chase ports," through which the chase guns or "stern-chasers" pointed. Only one gun (a long three pounder on a swivel) was mounted; for guns take up a lot of room. With two guns in that little cabin there would not have been room enough to swing a cat. You need six feet for the proper swinging of a cat, so a man-of-war boatswain told me. The cat meant is the cat of nine tails with which they used to flog seamen. To flog properly one needs a good swing, so my friend said.

"There you are," said the mate of the schooner. "Now down on your knees. Scrub the floor here. See you get it mucho blanco."

He left me feeling much ashamed at having to work like a common ship's boy, instead of like a prince's page, which is what I had thought myself. Like many middle-class English boys I had been brought up to look on manual work as degrading. I was filled with shame at having to scrub this dirty deck. I, who, only yesterday, had lorded it over Ephraim, as though I were a superior being. You boys who go to good schools try to learn a little humbleness. You may think your parents very fine gentlefolk; but in the world, outside a narrow class, the having gentle parents will not help one much. It may be that you, for all your birth, have neither the instincts nor the intellect to preserve the gentility your parents made for you. You are no gentleman till you have proved it. Your right level may be the level of the betting publican, or of the sneak-thief, or of things even lower than these. It is
nothing to be proud of that your parents are rich enough to keep your hands clean of joyless, killing toil, at an age when many better men are old in slavery. Try to be thankful for it; not proud. Leisure is the most sacred thing life has. A wise man would give his left hand for leisure. You that have it given to you by the mercy of gentle birth, regard it as a trust; make noble use of it. Many great men waste half their energies in the struggle for that which you regard, poor fools, as your right, as something to brag of.

I had never scrubbed a floor in my life; but I had seen it done, without taking much account of the art in it. I set to work, feeling more degraded each moment, as the hardness of the deck began to make my knees sore. When I had done about half of the cabin (in a lazy, neglectful way, leaving patches unscrubbed, only just wetted over, so as to seem clean to a chance observer) I thought that I would do no more; but wait till Mr. Jermyn came to me. I would tell him that I wished to go home, that I was not going to be a common sailor, but a trusted messenger, with a lot more to the same tune, meaning, really, that I hated this job of washing decks like poison. I daresay, if the truth were known, the sudden change in my fortunes had made me a little homesick. But even so, I was skulking work which had been given to me. What was worse, I was being dishonest. For I was pretending to do the work, even when I took least trouble with it. At last I took
it into my head to wet the whole floor with water, meaning to do no more to it. While I was doing this the mate came into the cabin.