The Spanish bales we stowed on board Mr. Drake's hulk. He was not at home, purposely, as I could not help thinking, to ease his conscience, if indeed our piracy went in any way against it.
Only poor Mrs. Drake was there, trying vainly to get her youngest boy away from the taffrail, outside of which he was recklessly climbing at the risk of a sudden grave in the rushing tide. She looked more wan and weary than ever when she saw what our cargo was, and soon seized an occasion to draw me into the cabin for a little comfort.
'Mr. Festing,' she said piteously, 'for God's sake, sir, stop them from this bloody work. They will die in a halter, every one of them. God pardon me for not bearing His punishment without complaint, but what sinful woman was ever chastised with twelve such rods? See, there is blood on your own doublet! Shun this sin, Mr. Festing, for sin it is. How will God ever give us back our dear James if we break His law daily thus? Surely he has been taken in judgment for his and his brothers' wickedness. Frank is as bad as the rest, and leads them on to it. But vengeance is the Lord's, Master Jasper, and not for preachers' sons, for all that men cry out about spoiling the Egyptians.'
I tried hard to comfort the poor woman, feeling deeply for her. I could pity her the more heartily in her misery at the little care or kindness her sons showed for her, seeing I knew what it was to crave unsatisfied for a mother's love.
She had often come to me thus for comfort; yet I never found it a harder task than now, not only because of my own sense of sin, but also from my difficulty in understanding what she felt. At one moment she spoke of her boys as an infliction of Heaven; at another she seemed in terror that she should lose them; nor could I be sure whether her hatred of piracy came from a tenderness for them or the laws.
I could only tell her how I had been drawn into it unawares, and would do all I could to turn them from further crime.
'God bless you for your words, Master Jasper,' she said. 'What should I do if I lost my boys? I see them o' nights dangling in halters, and sometimes again lying in blood with Spanish blades at their hearts. Then I wake and pray God for comfort, till I sleep again; yet I only rise on the morrow to hear more talk of fights, and Spaniards, and wild work.'
'Surely,' said I, 'God has set them apart for some notable work in His service, seeing how they prosper in what they do.'
'Maybe, maybe,' the poor woman answered. 'Yet more times I think it is the devil and not God who is their master; think of it, Master Jasper, twelve of them, and not one a godly preacher like their father. What will God say to me for that? It was my hope and comfort when little Willie came, bless his sweet heart, that he would be my own boy, and God's, till he fell in with the old sword-hilt, and loved it just like all the rest of them; and played all day with it like the others, and grew as heady and masterful as the worst of them.'
'Well, Mrs. Drake,' said I, 'I am as earnest as you to turn them to a better path. You and I must try, under God; yet, in truth, I know not which way to start.'