“Ay,” he said, grinning, “and Jan was spilt in the water. He got up dripping like a fish, and when the Captain haled him to dry land, and he would mount his beast he overleapt him and a good horse galloped into the forest and so became the goods of the Irishry. I wish,” he added, “that Margery May, at home in pleasant Devon, might have looked on Jan then.”
“I have nothing to do with your jealousies,” I said, as haughty as though I were my lord’s son. “But tell me, Gregory, do you remember me that day?”
“A brown babby, as fat as ever I see,” Gregory answered, still rubbing down his horse. “And as near being spitted by Dan’l Drewe as ever I wish to see. I never liked that work myself, killing o’ babes and sucklings, and fair women, or leaving the babe to die on its mother’s breast. ’Twere lucky for you, Master Wat, them that starved in the forest did not eat you, ere ever you came the way o’ Dan’l’s mercy. Eh, what a fat one you were!”
“But a comely, Gregory?” I asked anxiously. “A noble child? Was I that? And clad in silk and fine woollen, as became my condition?”
“Why, no, Master Walter, but a fat, brown babe; eh, so fat! And nought but rabbit-skins to cover you. You had been good eating for them in the forest.”
“You are rude and dull, Gregory,” said I, leaving him in dudgeon. As I looked back I saw that he had come to the stable door and stood watching me with a gaping mouth. Plainly there was nothing to be learned from Gregory Dabchick.
[pg!37]
CHAPTER III.—OF MY SECRET, THE LORD BOYLE, AND OTHER MATTERS.
In the autumn of that year my lord came back, and in my joy at seeing him again I hardly felt that he was sad. The Lord Essex had prevailed against him with the Queen and he was returned to exile, although one of his ships had brought in a Spanish galleon worth fifty thousand pounds. It must be remembered of him that his passion for discovering the unknown worlds swallowed up all the treasure he was able to discover; so that the sea was never without his ships, and one expedition but led to another.
Had he been differently framed this season at Youghall had been happy enough. For now there was no fighting to be done he led that quiet and pastoral life which might have won him Master Spenser’s title for him, The Shepherd of the Ocean. He delighted himself by planting the strange seeds and roots he had brought from the ends of the earth and seeing them thrive. All his garden ventures were fortunate. The kindly Irish soil suited well with the tobacco, the myrtle, and the fuchsia. At Affane, a little way up the Blackwater, he had his orchards, where already the cherry grew abundantly. There, also, on sunny banks, he sowed in long rows a strange fruit called the potato, whereof the fruit is in the earth, and the leaves above it, and a very pleasant fruit to eat when well boiled, being of a sweet flouriness within.