Such the land of "El Dorado"—the golden realm!—the home of an everlasting summer! Rob pauses dramatically; he comes to a full stop. How mean is the parlour of the comfortable Wood Street tavern! How paltry its pewter pots and clumsy flagons! How dull its smoky beams and walls!
"Ah! Ah!"—longing sighs echo and re-echo. Then come questions, timidly put at first, for no man would dare to throw suspicion on the seaman's stories. But—but who has seen any of these things?
Who? Why, Rob knows men, who know other men, who have heard from other men, who actually listened to dying Spaniards or faithful natives recounting how they themselves had seen these sights. Rob himself had gazed upon a sack of gold dust brought by a Jesuit missionary from "El Dorado's" kingdom. The monk had shovelled it with his own bare hands from the bed of a shallow lake. Nick Johnson, with a nervous and apologetic cough, announced that he had seen a bag of pearls brought from that same favoured land; and brother Ned, whose memory also got some stimulus from Rob's stories, related how lie met a Spanish prisoner in a Dutch town, who told him that the pebbles in "El Dorado's" land were all pearls or jewels, sometimes one, sometimes the other—just according to the haphazard luck of the thing. Then honest Rob took some more sack, and found that he distinctly remembered meeting a Bideford man on Plymouth Hoe who had sailed with a Bristol captain whose twin brother had shot a no-headed, breast-eyed monster, and had immediately afterwards been stunned by the stone club of a two-headed gentleman of those same parts. 'Twas an exciting adventure altogether, and Rob proceeded to remember the details and relate them. As for the forests, the swamps, the lurking reptiles and ravenous beasts, the huge crabs, venomous snakes, and the fevered ghosts and ghouls that wreathed up after sunset from the pools and rivers—why! Rob had seen all those things for himself. He had also handled bars of gold and lumps of silver, and let pearls run through his fingers like beads. Captain Dawe, Master Morgan, and the ladies might be assured that they had heard but a tithe of the wonders and horrors that might be told them. Ah! that wonderful New World! Brave Rob shook the head that was bereft of an ear. He had talked to them for three hours, but he had no gift of speech, and had been unable to give them any real idea of the glamour and mystery that lay beneath the setting sun.
Nevertheless, he had set each heart and brain pulsing and throbbing with wild dreams. The world was changing for Johnnie Morgan. The admiral and Raleigh had opened his eyes in the glades of the forest, and taught him to look beyond its treetops. Master Jeffreys had extended his view, and all men and all things in London Town seemed to probe deeper into his mind, and find new emotions and desires, and stir them into active life. The grim old Forest of Dean was dwarfing to a mere coppice; the rushing Severn was becoming an insignificant brook. The forester's heart was expanding; his eyes were opening; his arms were stretching forth to grasp that which was finite, yet infinite. He dreamed strange dreams; his eyes started open to behold wondrous visions. The fever of the time was getting into his blood. Vague, half-understood impulses moved him hither and thither. He groped, and touched nothing. He cried out, "What do I want?"
A woman answered the question the very next day.
Chapter XXI.
MORGAN GOES TO WHITEHALL.
In the early forenoon of the next day a man in the livery of Sir Walter came to "Ye Swanne" and asked for Master Morgan. He brought a command that the forester was to repair instantly to Whitehall, as the Queen had intimated that she would see him in the afternoon. The summons threw Johnnie into a small fever of nervous apprehension, and he wished heartily that he had never left his snug homestead at Blakeney. His fingers turned into thumbs, and Dorothy busied herself in fastening points and laces, adjusting his ruff, and setting his cap at the proper angle. Captain Dawe found that sword and belt required his critical attention, and Master Jeffreys started a most elaborate dissertation on court etiquette in "the most polite court in Europe." Johnnie's head buzzed, his mind wandered in a maze; and when at last he stepped out into the sunshine of the streets, he confessed to Mistress Stowe that he felt "like a thief going to be hanged." Captain Dawe had a desire to see the royal palace and its precincts, Jeffreys was wanted at Raleigh's lodgings, so all four gentlemen went westwards.
Along Chepe, through St. Paul's Churchyard, down the hill to the Lud Gate lay their way. Then they crossed the Fleet River and stepped out into Fleet Street. On their left was the palace of Bridewell, stretching down to the green margin of the Thames; on their right the fields went northwards to the villages of Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell, and Islington. The street was thick with dust and crowded with pedestrians and horsemen. Staid burghers walked soberly along, fops strutted, bullies swaggered, gentlefolks went in fitting dignity, and beggars whined for alms at the corners of the narrow lanes that, between the houses, led down to the river. Law students from the Temple were to be met with, chaffering with the market wenches for nuts and apples and bunches of flowers.