At the end of seven years, he escaped by something like a miracle, and after visiting Jerusalem, rode off to Josyan, whom he found still faithful to him at heart, though formally the bride of an outrageous heathen, the King of Mounbraunt. To his castle Bevis proceeded, not without blood-curdling adventures on the way, and introduced himself as a poor palmer, welcomed for the sake of her Christian lover by Josyan, though she did not recognise him so soon as did his good horse Arundel, that in its vehement excitement at his voice outdoes the fidelity of Argus; then his springing on its back without touching a stirrup reveals him like the bending of Ulysses’ bow. Having got the king out of the way by means of a somewhat unchivalrous fib, Bevis and Josyan eloped together, meeting encounters which showed how little his long imprisonment had unsteeled the paladin’s sinews. His first feat was to kill a brace of lions at one blow; and next he fell in with a giant named Ascapard who, wounded all over his thirty feet of length, was glad to save his life by becoming Bevis’ page.
It was now high time for our hero to be turning homewards. Several years back, before his imprisonment, he had casually fallen in with one of his cousins, sent to search him out and bring him to the immediate assistance of his uncle Saber, who had fled to the Isle of Wight for refuge from the tyrant Murdour. As the first stage of his journey, Bevis proceeded by sea to Cologne, where the bishop happened to be another uncle of his, so he took the opportunity to have Josyan and Ascapard christened, the latter behaving most irreverently under the rite, so as to play the part of a mediæval gargoyle in the edifying story. The bishop, for his part, used the opportunity of having such a champion at hand to destroy a fiery dragon that infested the country; and in return for this service of some little difficulty, equipped Sir Bevis with a hundred knights, at the head of whom he landed in Hampshire, leaving Josyan at Cologne with Ascapard in attendance.
Under an assumed name, so grown and sun-tanned that his own mother treated the stranger politely, he now introduced himself into the house of Sir Murdour, undertaking to serve him against Saber, but playing a trick on him in the way of carrying off his best horses and arms to the enemy. Before coming to an end with that caitiff, however, Bevis had to return to Cologne to rescue Josyan from certain perils she had got into through her devotion to him; then at last they both joined his uncle in the Isle of Wight. The local Macbeth’s fate now drew to its fifth act. In vain he summoned to his aid both a Scotch and a German army. When he had to do with such prodigies of strength as Bevis and Ascapard, Murdour could expect nothing but to be overthrown, captured, and boiled into hounds’ meat in a great caldron of pitch, brimstone, and lead, as duly befell at Carisbrooke. His wicked wife, hearing how it had fared with him, very properly threw herself from the top of a high tower. His triple army had no more fight in them after the death of their leader, and the delivered citizens of Southampton hailed with joy their true lord, who at last thought himself entitled to wed Josyan after so long and chequered a courtship.
But the author of this long poem is not yet out of breath, and he still takes his hero through what may be called an appendix of adventures, in which Bevis once more goes abroad. King Edgar’s son so much admired Arundel’s form in a horse-race at court, that he tried to steal this peerless steed, and was kicked to death in the stable for his pains. The angry father was for having the horse’s master hanged; but the barons got him off with exile. While wandering homeless, his wife presents him with twin sons, as fresh hostages to their troubled fortune. Ascapard now turns unfaithful, and steals Josyan from him to restore her to her Saracen husband; but after a separation of seven years or so all comes right again, unbelievers and traitors are duly slain as they deserve, and Bevis meets no further check in his triumphant career of baptising heathen lands in blood, if not otherwise. Meanwhile, in his absence, King Edgar spitefully did him further wrong by confiscating the family estate, which the nephew had handed over to Saber. This injury must be redressed by a visit of Bevis to London, where his exploits seem hardly historical. He had now two sturdy sons to back him up, and these being chips of the old block, they easily contrived to kill sixty thousand people in a battle fought about Cheapside and Ludgate Hill, which brought the king to a reasonable mood.
So many men at once were never seen dead,
For the water of Thames for blood wax red
From St Mary Bowe to London Stone.
In short, one of Bevis’ sons won the crown of England, with the hand of its heiress; the brother was provided with a kingdom abroad; and Bevis himself returned to another of his foreign dominions, to live happily ever afterwards till, at a good old age, he, Josyan, and Arundel died within a few minutes of each other, the knight and his true lady sumptuously buried in a church, where even his dead body continued to work miracles.
Thus ended Bevis of Hampton
That was so bold a baron.
Have I said enough to persuade strangers that they are wrong in not stopping at Southampton on a visit to the tourist-haunted Island? To Americans this port should be of special interest, as hence sailed the Mayflower and the Speedwell, freighted with the hopes of a New England, but the smaller vessel proving unseaworthy, the adventurers, all packed on board the Mayflower, finally embarked at Plymouth, which thus gets credit for the departure of an expedition that really set out from Delft Haven, winged by the parting charge of its large-minded pastor. I had the pleasure of recommending a stay at Southampton West to Mr W. D. Howells, who in a recent book owns to having enjoyed it; and indeed there is more to be seen and enjoyed in or about Southampton than at many places better famed in the tourist world.
On the west side of Southampton Water, through outskirts of the New Forest, is soon reached the Boldre River, near the mouth of which stands Lymington, a town before mentioned as pier of the shortest crossing to the Island, at its Yarmouth end, where it has been proposed to make a tunnel from the spit on which Hurst Castle rises. Of Lymington there is not much else to be said, but that it has a look of having come down in the world, its trade of shipbuilding not being what it once was, though the estuary still makes a station for yachts. From the open sea it is separated by flats, that were utilised as salterns. The scenery in the background is more taking, where the edge of the New Forest plantations is soon reached over the heathy swells of Sway Common.