James I
XXXV
A. D. 1608 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
The sentence just quoted, the most beautiful perhaps in English prose, is copied from the History of the World, which Raleigh wrote when a prisoner in the tower, while wee James sat on the throne. It was then that a gentleman and adventurer, Captain John Smith, came home from foreign parts.
At the age of seventeen Mr. Smith was a trooper serving with the Dutch in their war with Spain. As a mariner and gunner he fought in a little Breton ship which captured one of the great galleons of Venice. As an engineer, his inventions of “flying dragons” saved a Hungarian town besieged by the Turks, then captured from the infidel the impregnable city of Stuhlweissenburg. So he became a captain, serving Prince Sigismund at the siege of Reigall. Here the attack was difficult and the assault so long delayed “that the Turks complained they were getting quite fat for want of exercise.” So the Lord Turbishaw, their commander, sent word that the ladies of Reigall longed to see some courtly feat of arms, and asked if any Christian officer would fight him for his head, in single combat. The lot fell to Captain Smith.
In presence of the ladies and both armies, Lord Turbishaw entered the lists on a prancing Arab, in shining armor, and from his shoulders rose great wings of eagle feathers spangled with gold and gems. Perhaps these fine ornaments marred the Turk’s steering, for at the first onset Smith’s lance entered the eye-slit of his visor, piercing between the eyes and through the skull. Smith took the head to his general and kept the charger.
Next morning a challenge came to Smith from the dead man’s greatest friend, by name Grualgo. This time the weapons were lances, and these being shattered, pistols, the fighting being prolonged, and both men wounded, but Smith took Grualgo’s head, his horse and armor.
As soon as his wound was healed, at the request of his officer commanding, Smith sent a letter to the ladies of Reigall, saying he did not wish to keep the heads of their two servants. Would they please send another champion to take the heads and his own? They sent an officer of high rank named Bonni Mulgro. This third fight began with pistols, followed by a prolonged and well-matched duel with battle-axes. Each man in turn reeled senseless in the saddle, but the fight was renewed without gain to either, until the Englishman, letting his weapon slip, made a dive to catch it, and was dragged from his horse by the Turk. Then Smith’s horse, grabbed by the bridle, reared, compelling the Turk to let go, and giving the Christian time to regain his saddle. As Mulgro charged, Smith’s falchion caught him between the plates of his armor, and with a howl of anguish the third champion fell. So it was that Smith won for his coat of arms the three Turks’ heads erased.
After the taking and massacre of Reigall, Smith with his nine English comrades, and his fine squadron of cavalry, joined an army, which was presently caught in the pass of Rothenthurm between a Turkish force and a big Tartar horde. By Smith’s advice, the Christian cavalry got branches of trees soaked in pitch and ablaze, with which they made a night charge, stampeding the Turkish army. Next day the eleven thousand Christians were enclosed by the Tartars, the pass was heaped with thirty thousand dead and wounded men, and with the remnant only two Englishmen escaped. The pillagers found Smith wounded but still alive, and by his jeweled armor, supposed him to be some very wealthy noble, worth holding for ransom. So he was sold into slavery, and sent as a gift by a Turkish chief to his lady in Constantinople. This lady fell in love with her slave, and sent him to her brother, a pasha in the lands north of the Caucasus, begging for kindness to the prisoner until he should be converted to the Moslem faith. But the pasha, furious at his sister’s kindness to a dog of a Christian, had him stripped, flogged, and with a spiked collar of iron riveted on his neck, made servant to wait upon four hundred slaves.
One day the pasha found Smith threshing corn, in a barn some three miles distant from his castle. For some time he amused himself flogging this starved and naked wretch who had once been the champion of a Christian army; but Smith presently caught him a clip behind the ear with his threshing bat, beat his brains out, put on his clothes, mounted his Arab horse, and fled across the steppes into Christian Russia. Through Russia and Poland he made his way to the court of Prince Sigismund, who gave him a purse of fifteen thousand ducats. As a rich man he traveled in Germany, Spain and Morocco, and there made friends with Captain Merstham, whose ship lay at Saffee. He was dining on board one day when a gale drove the ship to sea, and there fell in with two Spanish battle-ships. From noon to dusk they fought, and in the morning Captain Merstham said, “The dons mean to chase us again to-day. They shall have some good sport for their pains.”
“Oh, thou old fox!” cried Smith, slapping him on the shoulders. So after prayers and breakfast the battle began again, Smith in command of the guns, and Merstham pledging the Spaniards in a silver cup of wine, then giving a dram to the men. Once the enemy managed to board the little merchantman, but Merstham and Smith touched off a few bags of powder, blowing away the forecastle with thirty or forty Spaniards. That set the ship on fire, but the English put out the flames and still refused to parley. So afternoon wore into evening and evening into night, when the riddled battle-ships sheered off at last, their scuppers running with blood.