'Pity you will not sail with us, Mr. Festing,' said Mr. Oxenham with a winning courtesy of manner. 'A man who can stand up to a throng of swaggerers like that should try his hand on Spaniards.'
'Why, so he has,' cried Frank,' and to their cost; but now he will be doing nothing but ram home most portentous charges of words into paper ordnance with a quill rammer. Heaven knows what giants they will bring down when they go off!'
We all laughed together, for I cannot say what it was to me to meet these two in the midst of my loneliness. I gladly accepted their invitation to a tavern, where we could talk in peace. For not only was I overjoyed to be with Frank again, but I was much taken with Mr. Oxenham.
He was a tall, well-dressed man with a very handsome face, and such courageous eyes that I did not wonder they had daunted the Paul's man. 'Tis true I should have liked him better had it not been for an amorous look he wore over all his manliness. Yet who was I to judge him for that? His talk was very pleasant, for he had been a rover from his youth, and spoke of what he had seen freely, without boasting. We sat drinking a long time, and talked of the glories of the West and a sailor's life, for which he had conceived a romantic enthusiasm.
'Ah, Mr. Festing,' burst out Mr. Oxenham at last, 'it is a pity you will not sail with us to the West, since you are bent on travel. I envy you your learning in these things, but none who have not seen can picture their glory. Compared with them, to potter about Europe from one pestered town to another, from one crowded country to another, is like the paddling of a duckling in a puddle beside the everlasting flight of the god-like albatross, that never lights, not even for love. This old world is gray, and worn, and stifling. Over there it is all colour and sunlight and freedom; where the golden land brings forth without labour, and he who will may pass through and enjoy. Why, when once you come to that Paradise where all is so wide and fresh and lovely, you lift your hands in wonder, as you look back to this dull corner far away, that your life can ever have been so little as to come within the bounds of such a prison; you shall hardly believe there was ever room here for aught large enough to cause a moment's grief or joy for your expanded soul. There you can see Nature and know at last what beauty is. There at last you shall drink her fragrant breath, feel the richness of her warm embrace, revel in the azure and rose colour and golden sheen that make up her divine beauty, and lie in her arms to know at last what it means to say, "This is delight."'
'And think, lad,' cried Frank, who hardly, I think, can have seen with Mr. Oxenham's eyes, 'think that it is Spaniards who have ravished this rich beauty. It is these idolatrous hell-hounds of Antichrist who have possessed this Shulamite woman whom the Lord had reserved as a bride for his saints. It will be a glorious smiting of them. Their lust has made them sleepy and womanish. They are puffed up into silly security with their Spanish pride. Why, man, they will leave whole estates in charge of one slave, and send out trains of a hundred Indians or more laden with gold with but a single negro over them. I know it all now. I know every way in and out, and every course and time their ships will sail, and I know harbours, lad, where none could ever find us, where we can lie in wait and pounce out like cats on the good things that come by. And then they have not a walled town on the coast, that I know of. We can swoop down on the Dons and be away again, made men, or ever they have time to wake up out of their beds. Why will not men see what there is to be done, if they will only do? One such stroke as I have in mind will do more to undo Antichrist than all your thinking. Yet you scholars will not see it, but will not cease your idle disputing and dreaming till the angels shall come down and cry to you in voice of thunder, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?"'
His words struck me very deep, and I began to see how idle was our scholars' contempt for men of action. So, with ever-growing interest, I listened as we talked together till long after supper, and Frank unfolded every detail of his plan in his honest practical way. Mr. Oxenham, moreover, ceased not to paint his glowing pictures not only of what was known of those regions, but also of the fairyland beyond, where no Christian had yet trod,—the unknown lands where he set my fancy playing with his till my imagination, on which I had already heaped so much that was inflammable from my books, was all on fire.
As for my reason, Frank's sound sense was enough to satisfy that, and his taunt at my standing still and gazing up into heaven while others were doing touched my pride nearly. What wonder, then, that when the time came to bid them good-night, when I saw before me my lonely lodging, when I pictured the blank morrow and all my life beyond, empty of hope or joy or fellowship, when they urged me once more most earnestly to sail with them, that I could not resist!
They were pressing on me the very course in which I could follow Mr. Follet's strangely-worded advice more fully and nobly than I had ever dreamed. In place of my faith a sense of destiny seemed to have come to me, and to be speaking clearly in this chance meeting. If there was anything in man's harmony with the music of the spheres, sure it was the wild adventurous war-note of the universal gamut that I heard far off in the height of heaven sounding low and clear for my soul's response.
My quest for Harry was forgotten, and with it whatever else tied me to the old life, which now began to seem but a body of death. For that strange voice had come over the wide ocean and whispered its witching summons in my ear also. I could not choose but obey.