The First of the English: A Novel
spray that is following them; every other energy is employed in keeping
the frail boat safe in her race with the wild waters round them. He has
no trouble with the oarsmen; they row as if they knew their lives
depended on their toil.
So they fly on.
A dark lowering mass upon his right hand indicates the grim Fort of
Lillo. This passed Guy knows he is in the very hands of Alva, in the
Spanish lines. But they dash ahead, passing ships that have broken from
their moorings, and are drifting with the tide; others that have taken
refuge in the various estuaries and coves of the Schelde. No boats are
out this wild night; the storm has driven everything to shelter. No
Spanish galleys patrol the river; but the lights upon the dykes show
that the husbandmen are awake, trying to save their live stock and
themselves.
A little later the lady, who all this time has been compelled to devote
herself to keeping warm by many stampings of tiny feet and clappings of
delicate hands, in which she has been assisted by her attendants,
suddenly says: “Can you not take a little refreshment, Señor Capitan?
Even a glass of wine? Your exertions for my safety have been untiring.”
“For God’s sake don’t take my attention from the boat!” mutters Guy
between set teeth. “We’re running a bend of the river. The wind will be
on our quarter. It is our lives that I’m fighting for.”
Then he settles himself again to the struggle, for the current and wind
are not now exactly together, and it makes his task at the tiller even
more difficult.
But after making this bend, which is just before they reach the water
front of Antwerp, the wind, broken by the land, becomes less fierce,
and the rising tide, which has almost reached its height, grows less
violent and rapid.
“Thank God, we’re over the worst of it,” Guy says with a sigh of
relief. “Now I’ll thank you for a glass of wine, fair lady; the night
is fearfully cold;” this last comes from between chattering teeth.
“Oho!” almost laughs the fair one at his side. “Silk, satin and velvet
are not as conducive to comfort, Señor Capitan, as your storm clothes
and tarpaulins when you first boarded my barge. It is necessary to
suffer in order to be beautiful. Your fine raiment is, I presume, for
some fair lady of Antwerp, Capitan mio.”
“Yes, for a very fair one,” mutters Guy, whose boat cloak has blown
from his shoulders, and whose lace cuffs have brushed the lady’s wrist,
as he holds the silver goblet to his mouth and permits the very finest
old Spanish wine that has ever trinkled down his throat to revive his
circulation and reanimate his chilled form.
The elixir seems to bring his spirits back again, and he laughs.
“Another goblet, please, which I will drink to the fair lady’s health!”
And this being given him, Guy says, with sailor audacity and youthful
ardor, “To you!” looking with all his eyes at the fair one ministering
to him, hoping that their flash will even pierce the darkness. For he
has touched the hand that has tendered the goblet, and it is wondrously
soft and dainty, and the whole bearing and demeanor of his fair
companion is that of bright, vivacious, joyous youth; the youth that
age may envy but never simulate; the youth the gods give but once; the
youth that even inky darkness cannot hide.
Besides, thrown by a quick lurch of the boat, she has been close
against his bosom—once; but in that fleeting touch he has discerned the
figure of a Venus and the agile graces of a Hebe.
“Who in the name of all the saints can she be?” he wonders.
At his audacious toast the lady draws herself away quite hurriedly,
with a subdued ejaculation, partly of surprise, partly of hauteur. A
moment after she laughs the laugh of youth, enchanting, bewitching; and
remarks: “Such toasts will draw upon you the wrath of my duenna.”
“Your duenna! She is not here!”
“Oh, yes. She has been present during our whole journey. My awful
duenna lies on the seat immediately in front of you. The smell of
powder always makes the Countess de Pariza faint. She always becomes
insensible when her ward is in greatest danger. At the first fire by
the Beggars of the Sea she fainted comfortably away, and has been
insensible ever since. When we arrive at Antwerp she will probably have
her sharp eyes open.”
“Then before they do open tell me about yourself,” whispers Guy
gallantly, for he can now devote a little of his time to the lady, into
whose face he would look with admiring eyes did the darkness permit.
“First tell me about yourself,” she answers a little hurriedly, a tone
of interest in her voice that pleases the young gentleman. “The more I
know about you the better I can aid you to become a colonel. What is
your name?”
“Call me Captain Guido,” murmurs Chester in his tenderest voice.
“No other name?”
“I cannot give you my other name. I am absent from my regiment without
leave.”
“Then it will be very difficult to promote you,” laughs the lady. Next
she says: “But since you will not trust me with your name, tell me
something about your former life.”
This Guy does, inventing a story of birth in Hispaniola, various
combats by land and sea for the glory of the flag of Spain in Italy and
the Netherlands, giving the lady beside him an idea that he is devoted
to the Spanish cause, body and soul, a grand hater of all enemies of
Mother Church, and weaving about himself a web of romance and a tissue
of falsehoods that some day may rise up to strike him down; for his
fair companion thinks him a true soldier of Philip of Spain and his
viceroy, Don Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva and Huesca.
“Ah!” she murmurs, “a gallant soldier. I must make you a colonel!”
“And the full name of my benefactress?”
Perchance she would answer this; but at this moment the lights of
Antwerp come into view. The whole city’s front is illuminated by moving
lanterns, vessels are being transported to safe anchorages; the immense
shipping of the port is on the alert this night to save themselves from
the flood. The merchants of this, the richest city in all Europe, are
busy on the quays trying to preserve the merchandise of the Indies and
the produce of Northern Europe from damage and wreck from the rising
tide that is sweeping over the half-submerged quays and docks of this
great emporium of sixteenth century commerce.
“Where will you land?” says Guy hurriedly.
Her answer is such that it almost makes the strong man beside her
tremble. She says nonchalantly: “I think you had better take me to the
Citadel.”
“The Cit—a—del,” stammers Guy.
“Yes, Sancho d’Avila, its governor, will be proud to make me welcome
to-night.”
“You can pass the sentries? You know the passwords of the night?”
mutters Chester, feeling himself growing cold at the thought of
entering Alva’s very garrison.
“Certainly. They sent me the words of to-night.”
“Give them to me, please, so that I may pass you through the guard.”
“That of to-night,” she says, “is Jemmingen.”
“And the countersign?”
“Santa Maria de la Cruz. You may need it, being an officer without
leave,” she whispers; then adds with a slight laugh, “I have, perhaps,
saved you from arrest. That is a little earnest of my gratitude.”
They are now speeding past the main town. The English quay is already
behind them, and they are opposite the great middle dock, the huge
warehouses of which are all alight, while gangs of men with waving
torches are on the adjacent wharves and ships, trying to moor the
vessels safe from the rushing flood and to salvage their cargoes, many
of which are already half unloaded. A few Spanish war galleys are in
motion, their slaves toiling at their immense oars towing to places of
more secure anchorage some of the sailing galleons, now helpless in
this heavy gale.
Above all this turmoil and commotion the shouts of sailors, the curses
of captains, the screams of the galley slaves under the lash, the
flashing lights of the town and harbor, for all Antwerp is up this
night, come the silvery chimes of the grand cathedral, whose tower
sounds the quarter of the hour before midnight.
As they pass they are hailed by a patrol boat, but giving the word of
the night, Chester steers his barge upon its course unimpeded and
unstayed.
So they fly past the city proper, skirting a further line of wooden
wharves and quays, behind which can be seen the city walls and
gates—not as strongly built, nor as elaborately fortified as those
protecting the land side of the town, but still garrisoned and guarded,
and their Spanish sentries on the alert, for this night of storm and
flood has roused not only the burghers of Antwerp to save their wares
and chattels, but the Spanish garrison of the place, to see that no
outbreak occurs during this commotion produced by wind and tide.
A few moments after, beyond the Esplanade, or parade ground, that
separates the citadel from the town, can be seen the flickering lights
of the two river bastions of the vast fortification built by Alva, not
to protect, but to dominate and crush this great commercial city which
is now within his hands.
Gazing up the flood, Chester’s quick seaman’s eye discovers the danger
of approaching the massive walls that line the moat. With the tide
running as it does, and the wind blowing as it blows, their boat will
be smashed like an eggshell against the stonework. He speaks hurriedly:
“Is there not some other watergate? If I try to make the landing on
this side it is death. Speak quick, for God’s sake—answer me!”
“Yes! A small sally-port beyond the second bastion.” The liquid voice
beside him is nervous and agitated. The waves of the Schelde are
foaming against the masonry of the Spaniard.
“That’s it!” cries Chester, and steering the boat with rare precision
into the deep moat that surrounds the citadel, which the flood now
makes a rushing torrent, they fly past the great somber Bastion of the
Duke, and a moment later that named after Alva himself. Here, sheltered
to a great extent from the wind behind the massive walls of this
stronghold of Spanish power, the boat makes landing at a small
sally-port situated on a little artificial island in the middle of the
moat, and connected by a light, movable bridge with the main citadel
between the huge bastions of Alva and Paciotto, the latter named after
the great engineer who planned and built this great frowning pentagon
with its five massive redoubts, considered the strongest fortress of
its day.
As the boat makes its landing the sentry stationed there challenges,
and receives as answer from the Englishman the word of the night. At
this the drawbridge is let down and lights from flaming torches flash
upon them, causing Chester to discover what darkness has heretofore
concealed from him, that the boat he has been piloting all this night
is evidently a State galley, whose fittings and awnings are decorated
in exquisite art and ornamented with Spanish stamped leather bearing
the arms of the Viceroy himself. But he has no time to speculate upon
this.
“My duenna,” says the lady hurriedly. “We must rouse her for the sake
of etiquette, Señor Capitan, we must rouse the Countess de Pariza!”
This is easily done, for the court dame has apparently been reviving
for some little time, and a couple of goblets of the same Spanish wine
that had cheered the young sailor bring almost immediate speech to the
chaperone. She ejaculates, looking round with wild eyes: “Holy Virgin!
I am alive. Santa Maria! The citadel of Antwerp. I am saved!”
Then this sentinel of etiquette and punctilio rises and puts a pair of
haughty patrician eyes upon the Englishman, and exclaims hurriedly:
“Who is this man?”
“The gentleman who has preserved us from the Beggars of the Sea,”
answers the young lady of the barge.