“Ecod!” he cried, thumping the stout table screwed to the floor of the cabin and making the tankards dance under the blow, “Walter and I can ask no better fate than to voyage with you to the Indies. We are in quest of fortune, and folk say that the Spaniards have gold for the taking. Here’s to you, Sir Thomas Roe, and here’s to all of us! May we never want nowt, none of us!”
He drained his own tankard and caused a gleam of amusement to flicker on Roe’s face.
“Had you lost your right hand for brawling, Master Sainton,” he said, “you would now lose the left if the King heard your sentiments. Harry a Spaniard, i’ faith! That is rankest heresy nowadays. Yet there is no telling what may befall when we set our course west by south of the Canaries. And now, let me see to your comfort for the night.”
He called a young negro from the depths of the ship; the sudden appearance of the boy’s shining black face in the cabin caused Roger Sainton to start so violently that Roe and Mowbray laughed, while the negro himself displayed all his teeth in a huge grin. Mowbray, during an earlier visit to London, had seen many a dark-skinned man; it was becoming the fashion to have one or more of these ebony-hued servitors in each household with any pretensions to grandeur. But Roger had never before set eyes on the like, and the apparition was unexpected.
“Gad,” said he, reaching for the flagon again, “no wonder the sailor-man thought he saw the devil! ’Tis clear he fancied that this worthy had fallen overboard.”
He stood up, to follow Roe, whereupon the negro’s astonishment was even greater than Roger’s, for the cock’s feathers in the Yorkshireman’s hat swept the ceiling of the cabin, and his belt was nearly on a level with the other’s chin.
“Where him one dam big fighting-man lie, sir?” said the black to Roe. “Dere am no bunk in the ship will hold him half.”
Indeed, this was a minor difficulty which had not been foreseen. In his own cabin, which Roe intended to place temporarily at their service, there were two bunks, but each was a full twelve inches too short for Sainton. They were stoutly built, too, of solid oak and abutting on strong lockers. The only way in which one of them could be made to serve his needs was to cut away the partition, and it was now a very late hour to seek the services of the ship’s carpenter.
“If that is the only drawback, it is solved most readily,” said Roger, and, with his clenched fist, guarded only by a leather glove, he smashed a strong oaken panel out of its dovetailed joints.
The negro’s eyes nearly fell out with amazement, and, indeed, Sir Thomas Roe was not prepared for this simple yet very unusual feat of sheer strength.