His story tells us how he was able to save the whole ship's company from destruction more than once, and had more marvellous adventures than there is time here to relate. He tells also how the persecuting lieutenant became his fast friend, and eventually helped him to get his freedom.
For he did regain his liberty in the end, and was given a written permission to go home and earn his living as a fisherman. With this writing in his hand no press-crew would dare to kidnap him again. So back he came to Scarborough, to the red-roofed cottage by the water's edge, to his unmended nets, and to the little daughter with whom we saw him first. Most likely at this time George Fox was still a prisoner in the Castle. If so, one of the very first things Richard did, we may be sure, was to climb the many stone steps up to the Castle and seek his friend in his cheerless prison. The fire smoke and the rain would be forgotten by both men as they talked together, and George Fox's face would light up as he heard the story of the lashings that disappeared and the beatings that left no bruise. He was not a man who laughed easily, but doubtless he laughed once, at any rate, as he listened to Richard's story, when he heard of the huzzaing sailors whose hats fell off into the water because they were so energetically sure that 'Sir Edward was a very merciful man.'
FOOTNOTES:
[38] The Roman Catholic gentry used sometimes to alarm their Protestant neighbours with blood-curdling announcements that the good times of Queen Mary were coming back, and 'faggotts should be deere yet' (G.M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, p. 87).