CHAPTER XIII.
OUTWARD BOUND.
THE Revenge lay at anchor in the midst of many merchant ships, pinnaces, and fly-boats,—a very gallant ship, with her carved and gilded bulwarks, with her tall, stout masts, with her silken, swallow-tailed banners flying from her masts and yards, her great standard, bearing the royal arms, at her forecastle. At her maintop the glorious flag of St George's Cross was fluttering in the breeze—the flag under which so many great seamen had beforetime traded, explored, and fought in England's honour, that Drake and Cavendish had borne round the world, that Lancaster carried to the East Indies and Frobisher to the far north; the flag that had blown triumphant against the Spaniards off Gravelines three years before this time, and that was destined soon to wave with less good fortune though not with less glory over the shot-torn wreck of the Revenge herself.
Gilbert had been on board many times during the past two weeks while the business of preparation and victualling was in progress. He had explored the vessel from stem to stern, from the high, square forecastle, where the bowsprit rose steeply upward, and carried at its outer end a small mast with its sprit-topsail; and back aft to the sloping quarter-deck and the higher poop-deck, where a narrow strip of railed platform ran athwart from side to side above the water. He had been below to the main-deck where the heaviest guns were carried, and below that again to the lower deck that was dark and airless as a pit. He had even climbed the tall main-mast and stood upon the gallery, whence in time of battle the ship's archers and musketeers were wont to shoot down upon their enemy alongside. He would willingly have climbed the bonaventure mast also, and crept up to the high peak of the long lateen yard that towered aloft above the ship's stern lantern, but one of the men in authority had warned him against the danger of such an attempt.
Now, when he mounted the ladder at the vessel's side and passed through the gangway upon the main-deck, he was met by Roland Grenville, who was arrayed in all the bravery of a new shining corselet, a pair of new leathern trunk-hose, a coarse blue cloth doublet, and a wide seaman's hat. Roland greeted him heartily, bade him salute the quarter-deck, and then conducted him below to the large cabin, reserved for what were in those days called gentlemen volunteers, most of whom were young men of good families, who entered the naval service not as actual officers or midshipmen but as captain's servants. For in Queen Elizabeth's time it was customary for each captain of a man-of-war to be allowed two personal servants for every fifty of his crew. Such servants or cabin-boys were almost invariably recruited from among the captain's relations, friends, or followers. Sir Richard Grenville had in this manner appointed his own son Roland and Master Gilbert Oglander.
When the two lads had eaten some ship's biscuits and bacon, and drunk between them a tankard of small ale, they went out upon the upper deck and loitered there for a while, until Gilbert requested his companion to show him over the ship and tell him about her guns. Young Grenville, having already spent some three years upon the sea, could point out all matters of interest, and explain the uses of all maritime instruments and implements of warfare. He was himself a very skilful gunner, and he took especial delight in showing Gilbert the ship's ordnance.
The Revenge mounted forty "great ordnance" of brass, including cannon-royal, demi-cannon, and culverins for firing a broadside. Of these the cannon-royal were the largest, having a range of a mile's distance, weighing four tons, and being twelve feet in length. Their mouths gaped through the round portholes of the main-deck. The demi-cannon were a foot longer, but a ton lighter. But in many parts of the vessel there were other smaller swivel-guns, such as sakers, falcons, minions, fowlers, and murdering-pieces. The murdering-pieces were mounted one on the after part of the forecastle and the other on the fore part of the poop, and they pointed inboard, so that their shot might be discharged into the midst of the enemy when attempting to board her.
"But these guns in especial are not ofttimes used," explained Roland Grenville, "for you must know, Oglander, that in these days our sea-fights come but seldom to a matter of boarding. 'Tis rarely I have seen great execution done with them; no, nor even with the bow and arrow, small-shot, or the sword. I am not sure, indeed, that in the whole course of the Armada fight there was a single occasion on which the Spaniards gained a footing on an English deck. The battle was chiefly gained by our great artillery breaking down masts and yards, tearing, raking, and bilging the enemy's ships."
There were many things for Gilbert to see and to admire: the racks where the arquebuses were kept, the bows of divers shapes and sizes and the cases of arrows, the pikes, the granadoes, the piles of hollow brass balls and earthen pots covered with quarter bullets and filled with gunpowder, which, as Roland explained, would make an incredible slaughter in a crowd of Spaniards; the stacks of crossbar, langrel and chain shot, and the many implements for wild-fire, wherewith to strike burning into a ship's side to fire her. And, finally, the powder magazines and the rows of hanging cartridge-cases, in which, during an action, the ship's boys were wont to carry up the gunpowder to the gunners.
They went forward into the seamen's quarters, where they found a motley crew of mariners—many of them well-tried voyagers with gray hairs and weather-beaten faces, many burly men of war, who bore in their scarred cheeks and broken limbs the traces of bygone battles. Some were young lads starting full joyously on their first enterprise, and among them, too, were many lawless fellows, pirates and robbers, who had been taken out of Plymouth prison and forced upon the ship, in the foolish belief that when removed from the scenes of their past misdeeds they would change into good and peaceful servants. The crew had been on board some two days, and now they were lying about in lazy groups, regaling themselves with the ale that had been served out to them, making a better acquaintance with each other, and boasting of the great things they had done, and the yet greater things they expected to do in this coming voyage.