"Voyages!" said he. "That one, I'll wager, is Bartholomew Diaz. How often I've sailed with him, as a boy, to the mouth of the Great Fish River! And there is fine old Vasco da Gama! Many a summer afternoon, and I at school, he and I have doubled the cape, put the complaining pilots in irons, and thrown their quadrants into the sea. And Columbus, and Cabot, and the Merchant Adventurers' Company! There's a rank and file for you, if you want actual deeds and fine accomplishment: Hawkins and Drake, Davis and Sir Humphrey Gilbert; and that never-beaten Yorkshireman, Martin Frobisher.
"Yes, here I'll sit in this excellent company," said Charles, and he smiled and patted Anthony's arm. "I'll have nothing to disturb me. I'll lead a rich, full life in this room, Anthony, God bless you; rich and full, and with not a regret in all the world to throw either myself or my friends out of humor."
Christopher Dent sat in his back room, his spectacles on his nose, and a big book in Latin text upon his knee. A cheery fire crackled in the stove; two candles burned upon the table; and a number of other books, each as big as the one Christopher held, lay beside them. Outside the yellow flare lurked the retorts, the rows of bottles, and jars full of pent-up possibilities. Tom Horn sat upon a bench near the stove; he rubbed his knees in the warmth as the little apothecary looked at him over the edge of his spectacles.
"In none of the elder tongues," said Christopher, "is there much to do with the sea. As you say, the ancients were wise; they had a knowledge of many strange things, but they seldom ventured far from land, and the sea, as we know it, was a darkened thing to them. So, knowing nothing of its secrets, they could scarcely agree with what you say. Bear in mind," said Christopher earnestly, "I am not denying; I only announce a lack of authority in the ancients."
"The sea," said Tom Horn in his hushed voice, "has a meaning. It is more than a mass of water, washing around in the hollows of the world."
"I grant you that," said Christopher readily. "I grant you that much active principle is in the sea; it holds many vital elements crystallized and in solution. Soda, for example, is the cinder of sea-plants; and without this friendly alkali we'd many times be brought to a stand. The ocean gives rare and agreeable substances to materia medica, and in time, as we plumb its depth, it will give more."
But Tom Horn shook his head.
"I have watched the sea with the sun on it," he said, "and I've watched it running through the night. Hurricanes blow over it and make it leap and rave; but hurricanes die down, and the sea goes on. It is always muttering," said Tom Horn. "I've listened to it, hour after hour; it's always muttering over something it's hidden. But it never tells; it keeps its secrets well." He looked at Christopher for a long time, and then said, "Captain Weir was buried in the sea."
"Poor man," said the little apothecary. "Poor man, to rest away in the silence of the ocean's depths!"