For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

In the business of setting my father's affairs in order I too was a good deal mixed.

'You cannot know too soon,' Sir Fulke said to me, 'what your estate will be. I am one who thinks a lad cannot learn too early to be a good steward, and so thought your father too, Jasper. So from the first I would see you have a say in your own affairs.'

Thus it came about that I was always present when the lawyers came, and though at first I found it irksome, I soon began to take interest in my estate.

Yet one event of these days I must relate, seeing that it was the beginning of things which afterwards played so great a part in my life.

I rode into Rochester one day to see a man of law who dwelt there. As we descended the steep hill that leads from off the downs to the low-lying ground, the whole district was stretched out like a map below us. We could see straight before us the compact little city of Rochester, a mass of red roofs girded with a soft belt of trees, and crowding round the Cathedral and the great Castle, still grim and solid in its decay. About it ran the yellow river in one grand sweep from the bridge to where it turned again between Upnor Castle and the dock at the growing village of Chatham. Right in front of us, where the road was swallowed up between the two round towers of the city gate, was a great crowd. It was no strange thing to see, for hither were wont to gather the mariners from the fleet which rode between the bridge and Upnor and the workmen from the dockyard, that they might gossip and drink at the taverns which lined the way without the gate. To-day, however, it was a greater crowd than usual; so great indeed that we could not pass and had to draw rein.

'What, in the fiend's name,' cried Sir Fulke, 'brings all these stockfish gaping here to block a gentleman's path?'

''Tis Drake, 'tis preaching Drake,' said a good-humoured, weather-beaten sailor who stood by. And sure enough it was; for no sooner were the words out of our friend's mouth than Mr. Drake's jolly red face appeared above the heads of the crowd, as he mounted a stool close to the gate.

'Come, hearken, mariners,' he cried, 'hearken to the Word of God and the whistle of the Lord's boatswain. For the Word of God is like unto a capstan. You can turn it about and about till you tear up the anchor that binds you to earth. Come, then, my lads, and turn it about with me till you tear up the crooked anchor of sin, whereby the devil would moor you to the things of this world.'

This was as much as Sir Fulke could bear, and he cried out, 'What kennel preaching is this? Have you nothing better to liken the blessed Word of God to than a capstan?'

'And wherefore should I not?' cried Drake, not noticing from whom the interruption came. 'What ell of tar-yarn is this, that will take upon him to reprove the similitudes of a preacher to her Majesty's navy? Wherefore, I pray you, should not the Word of God be likened to a capstan, when that blessed servant of the Lord, even Hugh Latimer, did not himself scruple to liken the Mother of God to a saffron-bag?'