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The men who were thus calling him knew well, and Knox himself, more clear of vision than any of them, knew better, that what they were inviting him to was in all probability a violent death. Rough himself perished in the flames at Smithfield; and four months after this vocation Knox was sitting chained and half-naked in the galleys at Rouen, under the lash of a French slave-driver.
The years of degradation as navigating officer of the Maggie fell away from him, as he sprang, agile and half-naked, into the shrouds; a great, hairy demi-god or sea-goblin he lay out along the yards and sprang from place to place with the old exultant thrill of youth and joy in his work. "Overhaul them buntlines an' clewlines," he bawled to an imaginary crew. "Set that main-royal."
But all things have an end, even life imprisonment, and with the middle of January we awoke one morning to find a steamer anchored in the foreground of the picture that had seared itself into our memories. All day long half-naked natives' waded lazily back and forth from the beach to the clumsy tenders, exchanging the meager products of the country for ill-packed merchandise from my own.
It was partly the exaggeration of the times to magnify discoveries, and partly English love of high titles, that attributed such titles as princes, emperors, and kings to the half-naked barbarians and petty chiefs of Virginia. In all the accounts of the colony at this period, no mention is made of women, and it is not probable that any went over with the first colonists.
All stared; for Captain Kneebone, after one historically brief and outspoken visit, had never in all these years set foot in the port. The two young men hurried to the stairs. Chinamen and lanterns crowded the courtyard, stuffed the passage, and still came straggling in at the gate. By the noise and clatter, it might have been a caravan, or a band of half-naked robbers bringing plunder.
The sight that met the eyes of the rescuers was one that filled them with awe, for they saw before them a huge, giant of a white man, half-naked except for a few tattered rags, who wore the long sword of an ancient samurai at his side, a modern revolver at his hip, and bore in his brawny hand the heavy war spear of a head-hunter.
At her man's door she was standing, barefooted, fray-kirtled as of old; but riper, of more assured and triumphant beauty. In her arms a boy-child, lusty and half-naked, struggled to be fed, seeking with both fat hands to forage for himself.
"Approach," said the Prince, mildly, observing that the old and half-naked man that led the victors hesitated to advance. "Thou art the conqueror, fisherman, and to thy hands must I consign the prize." Antonio bent his knee to the deck, and bowed his head lowly ere he obeyed.
The lamplight now shone full upon it; and this time again as he gazed at it he felt a blow in the heart, a blow which was all the deeper, as now, at his parting hour, he found a symbol of his defeat at Rome in that dolent, tragic, half-naked woman, draped in a shred of linen, and weeping between her clasped hands whilst seated on the threshold of the palace whence she had been driven.
Up this way, swift and unerring thus far, 'Tonio, backed by half a dozen half-naked young braves, had guided the cavalry, and never before, so said old Farrier Haney, who had 'listed in the troop at Prescott, and had served here with the previous regiment in '69 never before had he known 'Tonio so excited, so vehement. Beyond all question, 'Tonio's heart was in the chase to-day.
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