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The Johnsons had accepted, but Rob had declined, being resolved to see Raleigh and some other gentlemen adventurers concerning his plans for a recovery of Oxenham's buried treasure. "And now," added the sailor, "I owe ye a debt of hospitality, and am come hither to pay it. The tapster hath my orders, and ye will not refuse to take bite and sup with me this night."
How does that child's-trade sound beside the Psalms, John Squire?" Now it befell that Salvation Yeo, for the very purpose of holding up to ridicule that time-honored melody, had put into it the true nasal twang, and rung it out as merrily as he had done perhaps twelve years before, when he got up John Oxenham's anchor in Plymouth Sound.
But his troubles were only beginning; for word came that the Maroons said that nothing could be done inland till the rains were over, five months hence. This meant a long wait; however, what with making supply depots and picking up prizes here and there, the wet time might pass off well enough. One day Oxenham's crew nearly mutinied over the shortness of provisions.
But Don Andreas sent out scouts "in Search of them," who returned "about an Hour before Sun-set," with "some of their Number," and a message that the rest would join company in the morning. A little after daybreak the land force marched in, and pitched their huts near the river, "at a beachy point of land," perhaps the very one where Oxenham's pinnace had been beached.
Undergrowths choked up the gaps between the trunks of the trees, but a couple of axes cleared a path. The men thronged into the inner space. The ground was hard and overgrown, and certainly had not been touched for a long time. Hopes rose higher than ever. Apparently the ground had never been disturbed since Oxenham's visit. Captain Drake decided to get to work at once.
Oxenham's departure, young Amyas had gone on quietly enough, according to promise, with the exception of certain occasional outbursts of fierceness common to all young male animals, and especially to boys of any strength of character. And now Mrs. Leigh was left to God and her own soul, with this young lion-cub in leash, to tame and train for this life and the life to come.
Yet one of the men, probably one of Oxenham's men, of the name of Robert Pike, now disobeyed those orders. "Having drunken too much aqua-vitæ without water," he forgot himself. He rose from his place in the grass, "enticing a Cimaroon with him," and crept up close to the road, "with intent to have shown his forwardness on the foremost mules."
'Oxenham's "History of the Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement" is a fairly-written statement of what was formerly held and taught. Such words as "substitution," "satisfaction," with all the ideas introduced into the subject from the use of illustrations, e.g. of criminals acquitted, debts discharged, have perplexed it perhaps, rather than explained, what must be beyond explanation.
But when morning came, and they knew by my skin that I was no Indian, and by my speech that I was no Spaniard, they began threatening me with torments, till I confessed that I was an Englishman, and one of Oxenham's crew.
And what was that line of dark objects dangling along the mainyard? A line of hanged men! And, horror of horrors, from the yard-arm close above him, John Oxenham's corpse looked down with grave-light eyes, and beckoned and pointed, as if to show him his way, and strove to speak, and could not, and pointed still, not forward, but back along their course.
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