"What, with thy devilish glasses again!" exclaimed the admiral, as the chaplain descended the ladder and entered the door of the poop without replying.
Almost immediately afterwards he reappeared, bearing in his arms a machine which very closely resembled something between those now used by a photographer and the theodolite of an engineer, for it consisted of a little oaken box, containing a long brass tube, with a multitude of little mirrors, screws, and glasses, Concave and convex, the whole being propped on three legs triangularly, and forming their apex. For want of a better name, this mysterious apparatus was christened by the unlettered crew, "Father Zuill's hurdy-gurdy," and it was a source of secret ridicule with some and of curiosity with others; for whenever he was seen to level his lenses at distant objects, there was a confident expectation that they would go off with a report like a brass cannon. The Romans used moveable types for stamping their names upon cloth and vessels of clay; thus they were very near discovering the whole art of printing. Father Zuill used lenses, and was quite as near discovering the telescope, yet no such idea ever occurred to him. Considering the whole affair as a mere whim-wham or harmless foible, the admiral, Barton, Falconer, the boatswain, and gunner, watched his operations, and made many a covert joke upon them; but the crew, who had long since tired of experiments which ended in nothing, were grouped forward watching the approaching ships, or dozing away the hours on the sunny deck.
Father Zuill levelled his lenses and arranged his glasses in such a way that the bright morning sun, then straight astern, shone lull upon one end, while the other was pointed at the head-most ship, which was now on the lee bow, and beating hard up against a head wind.
"Sir Alexander Mathieson will never sail ahead of us in a sunny day, Father Zuill," said Falconer, laughing; "for he fears your operating on his canvas, and burning holes in it;—what he calls your 'damnable hurdy-gurdy.'"
"Now, Father Zuill, dost thou really believe in the power of these bits of looking-glass?" asked the admiral; who, with an incredulous smile on his honest face, and his hands thrust into the pockets of his gaberdine, had been watching the futile attempts of the chaplain to ignite the white canvas of the head-most ship.
"As truly as I believe that Archimedes burned the Roman fleet with glasses at the siege of Syracuse!" retorted the chaplain. "He used concave mirrors; and if I could only construct a parabolic speculum, the focus of which would reach three bowshots off, and burn there, does it not indubitably follow, that by increasing the scale, I might construct another which would consume a city at three leagues, and scorch to death all who were in it? Hear me, sirs. If one mirror will light a spot one-fourth of its size, at a certain distance, assuredly we may presume that the reflected light of a hundred mirrors, all bearing on the same spot, will render the heat unbearable, and bring the light to that refulgent point at which it engendereth fire. So sayeth Anthemius, who used hexagonal mirrors surrounded by others; and so say Tzetzes, Zonaras, Lucian, and others. We read in ancient history, that the ships of Marcellus were consumed to ashes at the distance of a bowshot, when the sun's rays were at noon. I have heard of as much being done by two concave specula composed of polished brass. A little study, admiral, would make plain to thee (who use the cross-staff for striking the meridian), the geometrical mode of discovering the rectilineal propagation of heat and light, as it was understood by Eustathius and Ptolemy. Thou understandest me?"
"May I never more go to sea, if I do," replied the admiral, scratching his beard in sore perplexity. "I think all this sounds as like sorcery as one ropeyarn seems like another. No, no! the gunner to his lintstock, the steersman to his helm, and the cook to the foresheet. Thou to thy book lear, and I to my seamanship. By my father's soul! I would put more reliance in a good cannon-royale with a smooth bore, and a calm sea under the counter, than in all the glass hurdy-gurdies that ever were seen!"
By this time the Yellow Frigate had the wind upon her beam, and she was close upon the two vessels, which proved to be merely merchant-traders of Blackness, whose crews had seen nothing of the English ships in question; and the admiral was beginning to fear that Jamie Gair had been mistaken, or that he had been sent on some false errand, for purposes unknown. His ships then stood close in shore, and steered again for the Tay, under easy sail; and as they were near the dangerous rock named the Carrwick, Master Wad, the gunner, took the helm, and steered on the spire of the old Cistertian kirk at Crail.
"I agree wi' the admiral, Sir David," said the boatswain to the captain of the arquebussiers, as they leaned over the larboard bulwark, gazing at the coast of Fife, which was then sparkling under a brilliant noon-day sun; "and I believe there is mickie mair o' sorcery than theology in Father Zuill's box o' glasses. I never kent o' man, wife, or bairn that throve under the influence o' sic fause contrivances."
"Yet it may not be magic," replied Falconer; "for the same thing was thought of our mariner's compass when it was invented. For there are many things in nature, Archy, which such simple fellows as thou and I cannot comprehend."