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For on either side of the landing-place were arranged four or five stout fellows, each with a tall drum, or long earthen trumpet, swelling out in the course of its length into several hollow balls from which arose, the moment the strangers set foot on shore, so deafening a cacophony of howls, and groans, and thumps, as fully to justify Yeo's remark, "They are calling upon their devil, sir."
* In the documents from which I have drawn this veracious history, a note is appended to this point of Yeo's story, which seems to me to smack sufficiently of the old Elizabethan seaman, to be inserted at length. "All so far, and most after, agreeth with Lopez Vaz his tale, taken from his pocket by my Lord Cumberland's mariners at the river Plate, in the year 1586.
Yeo's account was, that he seized the big fellow, who drew a knife on him, and broke loose; the horses, terrified at the scuffle, kicked right and left; one man fell, and the other ran out, calling for help, with Yeo at his heels; "Whereon," said Yeo, "seeing a dozen more on me with clubs and bows, I thought best to shorten the number while I could, ran the rascal through, and stood on my ward; and only just in time I was, what's more; there's two arrows in the house wall, and two or three more in my buckler, which I caught up as I went out, for I had hung it close by the door, you see, sir, to be all ready in case," said the cunning old Philistine-slayer, as they went in after the wounded man.
Osgood had this bear skinned, and said he should send the skin to his family, If he did, it must have been one of the last memorials it ever got from him. I left the two fleets manoeuvring for the wind, in the last chapter. About nine o'clock, the Pike got abeam of the Wolfe, Sir James Yeo's own ship, hoisted her ensign, and fired a few guns to try the range of her shot.
We didn't know then why he was so anxious to stop us, but at five minutes to four, when we were in Yeo's shop, we saw Tulke in broad daylight, with his house-cap on, kissin' an' huggin' a woman on the pavement. Is that decent enough for you?" "I didn't I wasn't." "We saw you!" said Beetle. A new and heaven-cleft path opened before him that instant.
So they started: but as Amyas was getting into the saddle, he saw that there was some stir among the servants, who seemed to keep carefully out of Yeo's way, whispering and nodding mysteriously; and just as his foot was in the stirrup, Anthony, the old butler, plucked him back. "Dear father alive, Mr. Amyas!" whispered he: "and you ben't going by the moor road all alone with that chap?"
The poor lame wretches crawled from place to place plucking greedily the violet grapes of the creeping shore vine, and staining their mouths and blistering their lips with the prickly pears, in spite of Yeo's entreaties and warnings against the thorns.
"Where is my wife, Salvation Yeo?" "With the Lord." "Amen!" says the old man, with a short shudder. "I thought so much; and my two boys?" "With the Lord." The old man catches Yeo by the arm. "How, then?" It is Yeo's turn to shudder now. "Killed in Panama, fighting the Spaniards; sailing with Mr. Oxenham; and 'twas I led 'em into it. May God and you forgive me!"
Yeo's knowledge of his work gives him more than the dexterity which overcomes difficulties as it meets them; it gives him the prescience to avoid them. The steady breeze carried away from us the noise of that great tumult on the bar, and here was a sunny quietude where we heard nothing but the wing of the Mona when it fluttered.
"Gentlemen, 'Look the devil straight in the face, if you would hit him in the right place. We cannot get the ship to sea as she is; and if we could, we cannot go home empty-handed; and we surely cannot stay here to die of fever. We must leave the ship and go inland." "Inland?" answered every voice but Yeo's. "Up those hundred feet which Yeo talks of.
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