The First of the English: A Novel
“Your life won’t be worth a florin.”
“Oh yes it will. The cowardly rowers down there won’t give me any
trouble. You know I learnt the Spanish lingo in Hispaniola, and speak
it so well that I almost despise myself for it. I shall go as a Spanish
officer, under the name used by me in my former visits to Antwerp,
Capitan Guido Amati. I shall pose as the rescuer of that lady in the
boat alongside; that is, if things turn out as I expect. Have the
cutter off the nearest dyke down the river below Fort Lillo to meet me
by to-morrow noon.”
“You are taking your life in your hands. You’re doing more than this,
you are throwing it away,” objects the first officer very anxiously.
“I’d do both for my bonny Queen Bess, whose hand I kissed before
leaving England,” whispers the young man. “Now I will see my prisoner.”
Seizing a rope he swings himself over the low gunwale and a moment
after is standing among his men, who are still on guard in the Spanish
pleasure galley—one second later Guy Chester hears the softest,
sweetest, most coquettishly alluring voice he has ever heard since his
ears opened to the sounds of man—or woman.
CHAPTER II.
THE LADY OF THE BARGE.
No tones have ever thrilled Guy Chester so before, though in the almost
impenetrable gloom of the night its witchery has no assistance from
graceful figure, fascinating face, nor flashing eyes. It is the voice
alone that charms him. It says: “Señor, are you an officer? Have you
authority among these wild men?”
The speaking figure has risen at the commotion made by Chester’s
springing into the boat. Perhaps even in the darkness the lady notes
the salute from his men by which he is received. The tongue in which
the lady speaks is Spanish, pure, refined; the exquisite Spanish of the
Castilian.
“I have, señorita,” replies Guy, answering in the same language, though
his accent and diction are almost barbarous beside her liquid idiom.
The sound of the Spanish language seems to reassure the lady, who,
stepping from beneath the awning that adorns and protects the stern of
the boat, confronts Chester, and in tones that are part pleading and
part commanding, says: “Tell me who you are?”
“A captain in Romero’s regiment of Sicilians. Not born in Spain, as you
may note by my accent,” returns the young Englishman, adding, “My
birthplace was in Hispaniola.”
“Ah! an officer of Spain,” cries the lady joyously; “then your ship is
Spanish?”
“Certainly,” returns the Englishman, who, having made up his mind to
deceive, does it with full hand and wholesome measure.
“Then,” replies the lady, her voice now growing strangely confident and
commanding, “Señor Capitan, you will attend me at once to the city of
Antwerp, guarding me on the way.” A moment after she continues: “And I
hope you will have those wretched Hollander cut-throats, those insolent
Sea Beggars, punished as soon as possible. They have murdered the
captain and soldiers of my barge, they have drowned the poor secretary
of the Marquis de Cetona, Chiapin Vitelli.”
At the name of Vitelli, Chester gives a sudden start. “Certainly,
señorita,” he answers promptly. “Every ruffian of them shall be hanged
to the yard-arm as soon as your barge is out of sight.”
“But you must go with me; I have commanded!”
“Your words are my orders,” says Guy gallantly, trying to keep down a
smile, as he thinks that his fair captive assumes a strange authority.
“The captain of the vessel will attend to the punishment of the
marauders after we have left.”
“You will be ready to accompany me soon.” The tone coming to him in the
darkness is that of one accustomed to command, though marvelously sweet
and winning.
“In fifteen minutes,” answers Chester with soldierly promptness; then
he continues, a touch of gallantry in his voice: “May I not send you
some supper from the vessel? The night is very cold.”
“No, I am well wrapped up. My attendants can chafe my hands, and we
have some excellent Spanish wine and other refreshments in the locker
of the barge. Only be quick, or we shall not be in Antwerp before
morning.”
“As soon as possible I will return.” With these words Guy springs
lightly out of the boat and clambers over the gunwale of his own
vessel.
Then hurriedly drawing aside his first officer, who has been looking
over at this colloquy, he says: “It has all turned out as I wished.
Besides, I know a little more. This dead man in the cabin (whom you
will throw overboard as soon as possible) is the secretary of that
accursed Chiapin Vitelli!”
“The scoundrel who is aiding Alva in his plans against the life of our
sovereign!” interjects Dalton.
“Yes. This thing makes it doubly important that I go to Antwerp. I may
even stay there some days. Keep the boat off and on near the dyke below
Fort Lillo, as I have commanded.”
“You are taking desperate chances,” mutters his subordinate,
dissentingly.
“But they are chances I must take. In case anything happens to me, in
case I—I do not come back, tell my Queen it was for her sake. Return
with the vessel, Dalton, to England and utter to our Sovereign these
words: ‘Be more on your guard of Spanish poison or Spanish dagger than
ever. It is the last warning you will hear from your devoted liegeman,
Guy Stanhope Chester.’”
With this the young captain steps into his cabin, and within ten
minutes, as he re-opens the door, the dim light displays him as a
different man.
No longer the weather-beaten sailor in tarpaulin and sou’wester, but as
gay and debonnaire a young gallant as ever flaunted with the court
ladies of Hampton, or ruffled it in the tennis courts of Windsor or
Westminster.
A light blue velvet cap surmounted by two long white plumes fastened by
a diamond clasp is on his youthful head; round his neck a long Spanish
collar of the lace of Venice; his velvet doublet slashed with silver
and satin; his hose and trunks of the finest silk of France; his high
Spanish boots of the softest bronze morocco leather. In this gallant
garb, with his blue, flashing eyes, and laughing lips and curly hair,
Guy Stanhope Chester makes as brave a figure as even Dudley, Earl of
Leicester, himself, when he charmed the Queen of England and her maids
of honor.
Perhaps even more so, for his face is honest and his smile sincere,
though there is a determined expression in his face as he steps out of
his cabin and examines carefully the priming of the two long pistols he
has in his belt, and thrusts his hand in his bosom to be sure that the
long, keen poniard is in its place, and claps his hand on sword hilt to
assure himself that his trusty long Toledo cut-and-thrust rapier is
right to his hand. For the chances of this visit to the great city of
the Netherlands, which Alva holds in his grasp, mean to him the chances
of not merely success nor failure, but the chances of life and death.
With the caution of common sense, Guy has given himself the appearance
of Catholic and Spanish cavalier; he has discarded the medal of the
Gueux and wears instead, quite ostentatiously, a rosary of golden beads
and ornamented cross.
In making this change he has displaced from his bosom a miniature set
in diamonds, a portrait of a girl of wondrous Castilian beauty, upon
which he has cast eyes of longing and muttered these curious words: “My
only prize from all of Alva’s treasures I captured for my queen—if I
could gain the original.”
Altogether the gallant array of Guy Chester makes a sensation on his
quarter-deck, even affecting the imperturbable sea robber, Dirk Duyvel,
who sits just outside the cabin calmly counting his three hundred
florins. This worthy remarks: “Hel en duivel! but she must be a pretty
wench!” And his first lieutenant, aye, even the second, venture to
crack a joke or two upon his appearance, Dalton remarking: “By the Four
Evangelists! This foray means love as well as blood!”
And the second mate, who is hardly more than a chunky round-faced boy,
gives a wild guffaw as he whispers into his skipper’s ear: “Take me
with you, please, Captain Chester, for your cruise on shore. There are
other ladies in the boat besides the one for whom you are arrayed!”
“My poor boy, the run on shore would be the death of you,” remarks the
captain, then he suddenly strides back into the cabin, muttering to
himself: “By the Seven Champions of Christendom, that voice has nearly
made me lose my common sense. I was going without any money; that would
have been very dangerous.”
With these words he empties into his pocket from one of the lockers of
his cabin a small bag of Spanish gold, and thrusts into the other a
loose assortment of Spanish florins, Dutch crowns and Netherland
stivers. As he turns away, catching view of himself in a small mirror
of Venetian glass that is set in the cabin side between the two stern
port holes, Guy Chester suddenly ejaculates: “And I was forgetting my
boat cloak also. That would have been comfortable in this nor’wester.”
As he speaks he throws over his finery a long ample cloak of English
wool, and the next second he is over the side of the ship into the
Spanish barge, which, being cleared rapidly of his men, is now cast off
from the ship.
At this he, going to the stern, takes the tiller in his hand and cries
out in commanding Spanish: “Give way, ye dogs of rowers! The man who
straightens his back or misses his stroke until we are at Antwerp dies
by my hand.” For he fears that the slightest fault of cadence in the
stroke may put the boat broadside to the wind and current, which would
be fatal in this chop sea, rapid tide and strong gale.
“You seem to be a seaman as well as a soldier,” remarks the young
Spanish lady, by whose side he is now seated.
“Yes, I have done a little of everything in the way of fighting, both
by land and sea,” returns Guy, drawing somewhat closer to the alluring
voice.
“I shall always look upon you,” murmurs the lady, “as my preserver of
this night.”
Then she astounds and almost horrifies him, for she says patronizingly:
“This has been a lucky night for you. Señor Capitan; for this I will
have you made a Colonel!”
This assertion is made by the sweet voice beside him as confidently as
if it came from the Queen of Spain herself. Its very assurance sends a
cold thrill down the Englishman’s back. “Who the deuce can she be?” he
wonders. “I am putting my head into Alva’s very hand in escorting her
to Antwerp.”
But to turn back is now impossible. The boat is already in the main
current; both wind and tide are now sweeping them to Antwerp on the
flood, that bears beside them the bodies of drowned men and cattle,
giving evidence of the devastation the ocean is working upon the
Netherlands.
“And whom am I to thank for this wondrous promotion?” Guy ventures
insinuatingly, for he is now desperately curious to know the name of
the lady sitting beside him.
“You may call me Doña Hermoine,” answers the fair one in a tone that
indicates that she is sufficiently well known to be recognizable
without any further description or attachment. A moment after she
speaks to one of her attendants, who is kneeling beside her, chafing
her hands, for the night is very cold, saying quietly: “That will do,
Alida, try to warm yourself.”
“Yes, Excelentisima,” answers the girl.
This high-sounding title only adds to a curiosity that Chester can
gratify no further. He is compelled to devote every faculty of his
mind, every muscle of his body, to keeping the boat dead before the
wind and current as it flies up the Schelde. A single false movement of
the rudder might cause it to broach, and that would be destruction on
this wild night.
He can scarce find time to direct the attendants of the lady to place
tarpaulins at her back and to protect her as much as possible from the