“That blow would have felled an ox,” he cried, and Mowbray told him how Roger once, in the market square of Richmond, had, for a wager, brought down an old bull with a straight punch between the eyes.
Now, the negro not only saw and heard, but he talked of these things to the watch, and they, in their turn, related them to others of the ship’s company in the early morning. It chanced that a half-caste Spanish cook, hired because he knew the speech of the natives of Guiana, was among the auditory, and he stole to the cabin wherein the two Englishmen lay sleeping soundly. Mere idle curiosity impelled him to gaze at the man who could perform such prodigies, and, having gaped sufficiently, he went ashore for a farewell carouse with certain cronies in Alsatia.
Not the great men of the world, but their petty myrmidons, are oft the mainspring of the events which shape the destinies not alone of individuals but of nations. Even Pedro, the half-caste, might have dispensed with the day’s drinking bout had his cup been fashioned of the magic crystal which enables credulous people to see future events in its shadowy mirror! Assuredly, some of the sights therein would have sated his desire for stimulant.
Mowbray and Sainton were aroused by an unusual movement. At first they hardly knew where they were, and it was passing strange that the floor should heave and the walls creak.
Mowbray sprang from his bunk quickly and looked through the open door to see if it were possible that the ship had cast off from her moorings during the night. The frowning battlements of the Tower, dimly visible through a pelting rain, showed that his first surmise was incorrect. The Defiance was anchored securely enough, but a high wind had lashed the river into turbulence, and the storm which threatened over night had burst with fury over London.
Roger, too, awoke.
“Gad,” he cried, “I dreamt I was being hanged as a cutpurse, and I felt the branch of an oak-tree swaying as I swung in the wind.”
“You will have many such visions if you mix Brown Devon and Alicant with the wines of Burgundy in your midnight revels,” said Walter, cheerfully. To his ordered senses had come the memory of the garden and Nellie Roe’s kiss. He hailed the bad weather with glee. Men would be loth to stir abroad, and, if Sir Thomas Roe’s arrangements permitted, he could foresee another meeting with Eleanor that evening.
“At times you talk but scurvy sense,” grumbled Sainton, pulling on his huge boots. “’Tis the lack of a pasty, washed down by any one of the good liquors you name, that hath disordered my stomach and sent its fasting vapors to my brain. By the cross of Osmotherly, I could eat the haunch of a horse.”
“Without there!” shouted Mowbray. “Where is the black summoned by Sir Thomas Roe to wait on us?”