But about this time Francis Drake, happening to come back from the Spanish Main, his vessel heavily laden with silver ingots from some captured galleon, and Guy having set report afloat that his treasure is also in the West Indies, his lordship, in the course of a few days, sends after Chester and tells him that he cannot advance the money himself, but for a commission he can get certain London merchants to advance ten thousand crowns at the terms of payment Guy has offered.
With a jump the young man accepts, and this sum of money being turned over to him, refits his vessel, fills up his crew to fighting strength, which is easy as most of his best men, headed by Dalton and Croker, have never left him, and sets sail for the Netherlands, notwithstanding it is wintry weather now, to arrive in Flushing early in December. Here he has hardly dropped anchor when surprises come upon him.
A boat boards him from the shore and Achille, who now acts as cabin boy, comes screaming down the hatch-way: “Monsieur Oliver! My master, the painter Oliver!”
In a jump, and with a shout of joy, Chester is on [[170]]deck, and Englishman as he is, permits himself to be embraced and kissed, even in sight of his grinning crew for it is Oliver, and he is as one returned from the dead, as Alva has recaptured Mons and gibbeted most of its defenders.
“Come in the cabin and tell me your news. You’re no artist now, you’re only a fighting man,” mutters Guy with a mighty grip of the hand and watery look in his eye, as he gazes on Antony.
“Tell me your news—what of the woman I love?” cries the painter.
“Safe.”
“Thank God!”
“Come in, I’ll tell you.”
In the cabin, each gives to the other revelation that astounds him. Oliver tells of his capture of Mons, how he himself slew the gatekeeper on guard at daybreak as his eight men, concealed in vegetables, and drawn in market carts, passed into the town; how Louis of Nassau, who was in waiting in the wood outside with five hundred horsemen, each with a footman mounted behind, got in, Oliver and his eight heroes holding the gate against the Spanish garrison until they passed the drawbridge. Then the details of Alva’s siege against them; how they hoped for success, having been promised succor from France; next the news of the fête of Catharine de Medici, the awful massacre of St. Bartholomew, when all the best blood of the Huguenots flooded the streets of Paris, and no aid of the dead Coligny could come to them; how Orange was beaten in his attempt to relieve them; how finally he, Oliver, Louis of Nassau, and some others escaped from Alva’s clutches, who, now having no fear of France, with every Huguenot chief struck down, is gathering together a great army of Spanish mercenaries to make the conquest of Holland, intending to use Amsterdam as his center, it being the only town in his hands.