'Well, it is not so much that,' said the Sergeant. 'For when I was sergeant-groom under the Signor John Peter Pugliano, esquire of the Emperor's stables, the word always went that a man who could manage a horse could manage anything, save it were a woman, by your worship's leave. So I think a ship will not come amiss to me, being in relation to a horse but a wet lifeless thing.'
'But yet, Sergeant,' said I, 'of a wholly different nature.'
'I know not that, sir,' said he. 'The ancients were wiser than we in these matters, saving your worship's learning, and, as I have been told, placed amongst their ensigns military the horse, as being sacred to the god Neptune as well as to Mars, and the symbol of immoderate fury of attack on sea as well as on land. Moreover in your tilting of one ship against another you have an image or imitation of the crowning glory of horsemanship.'
'But we English do not use this method,' I answered, 'and hold it only fit for Turks and Spaniards, and such like, who, having no skill in sailing and seamanship, are compelled to use galleys propelled with oars.'
'Mass!' said Culverin, 'had I known that I should have sailed even less willingly than I did. What you say may be right, yet I hold that to sail with a lance at your bows is the more honourable and soldierly method. But let that pass. Doubtless by further contemplation I shall discover further similitudes between the horse and the ship. Since I hear what you say, sir, I see nothing in which they are alike save in respect of their prancing—a quality I would gladly forego in the present case, seeing that I am like to find little comfort in it.'
As we spoke Harry came out of the captain's cabin, and Sergeant Culverin had to leave to accompany his master back to the Swan. My brother, good heart, did his best to bid me farewell as of old, but what between my shamefacedness to see his careworn look and damped spirit, and his own too recent sense of the great wrong I had done him, our leave-taking was cold and formal, for all he tried so hard to forgive.
CHAPTER XVII
Our wind held so fair and steady at north-east that on the ninth day we sighted Porto Santo in the Madeiras, and two days later the Canaries. So persuaded was our captain of a very good passage, and so earnest to give the Spaniards no inkling of our purpose, that he would not touch for water, but held on without once dropping anchor or striking sail till the thirty-fifth day.
In spite of the terrible shock my sudden meeting with Harry had given to my spirits, and in spite of my despair at being condemned to face my shame and sorrow for I knew not how many months, I could not but feel a calm grow over me as we proceeded. None can tell, save he who has tried it, what it is to a perturbed spirit to sail on day after day over those sunny seas with all the magic of the West before. Less and less I brooded over the old life, and more and more on the glory of the new, till, as Frank had said, the past seemed to grow small, and a faint hope arose in me that my crime was not too great for pardon, seeing that I knew how hard my brother would try to forgive.