Page:Westward Ho! (1855).djvu/370

362 of the prophetess the women wavered, and Amyas, putting on as gentle a face as he could, stepped forward, assuring them in his best Indian that he would harm no one.

"Ebsworthy! Parracombe! Are you grown such savages already, that you have forgotten your captain? Stand up, men, and salute!"

Ebsworthy sprang to his feet, obeyed mechanically, and then slipped behind his bride again, as if in shame. The dreamer turned his head languidly, raised his hand to his forehead, and then returned to his contemplation.

Amyas rested the point of his sword on the ground, and his hands upon the hilt, and looked sadly and solemnly upon the pair. Ebsworthy broke the silence, half reproachfully, half trying to bluster away the coming storm.

"Well, noble captain, so you've hunted out us poor fellows; and want to drag us back again in a halter, I suppose?"

"I came to look for Christians, and I find heathens; for men, and I find swine. I shall leave the heathens to their wilderness, and the swine to their trough. Parracombe!"

"He's too happy to answer you, sir. And why not? What do you want of us? Our two years' vow is out, and we are free men now."

"Free to become like the beasts that perish? You are the queen's servants still, and in her name I charge you"

"Free to be happy," interrupted the man. "With the best of wives, the best of food, a warmer bed than a duke's and a finer garden than an emperor's. As for clothes, why the plague should a man wear them where he don't need them? As for gold, what's the use of it where Heaven sends everything ready-made to your hands? Hearken, Captain Leigh. You've been a good captain to me, and I'll repay you with a bit of sound advice. Give up your gold-hunting, and toiling and moiling after honor and glory, and copy us. Take that fair maid behind you there to wife; pitch here with us; and see if you are not happier in one day than ever you were in all your life before."

"You are drunk, sirrah! William Parracombe! Will you speak to me, or shall I heave you into the stream to sober you?"

"Who calls William Parracombe?" answered a sleepy voice.

"I, fool!—your captain."

"I am not William Parracombe. He is dead long ago of hunger, and labor, and heavy sorrow, and will never see Bideford town any more. He is turned into an Indian now; and he is to sleep, sleep, sleep for a hundred years, till he gets his strength again, poor fellow"

"Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light! A christened Englishman, and living thus the life of a beast?"

"Christ shall give thee light?" answered the same unnatural abstracted voice. "Yes; so the parsons say. And they say too, that He is Lord of heaven and earth. I should have thought His