Complete works of ford m.., p.250
Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 250
He placed the date, at which this consummation could be arrived at, at seven months; he undertook to impede with the Council of the United Provinces any applications that the English agent might make for Edward Colman’s cession as a rebel, and, in the meanwhile, he recommended that Edward Colman should make a voyage or an overland travel in various parts of the provinces, and, whilst he stayed in Amsterdam, to avoid going into the Heerengracht at night, for there the English agent had his lodgings. My lord Scroop had been known to hire bullies that threw pitch-plasters over English outlaws’ faces, and so to ship them to England secretly. Edward Colman thanked him for his advice and stored it carefully in his mind, and, because the man had the reputation of a very honest practitioner who had restored more than three hundred exiles to their native land and, therefore, was little likely to play false and lose that profitable renown, he made that compact with him and dismissed the matter from his well-ordered mind.
He went about only by daylight, for Amsterdam was at that time a port very filled with foreigners, and, though he did not think that any man then there knew of his being there, it might well be that some merchant he had done business with, some sea-captain or some sailor might recognize his face and report his presence to Lord Scroop, the English agent. And, though he was safe to walk the streets by day, it might well be that he could be stunned or stifled in some court, or even overset from his boat in some canal and so taken, at night, aboard of an English ship. So it was part of his plan to take a voyage some whither — even to the New World — after he should have had a letter from Magdalena, which should come with a ship of his, from Rye, in a fortnight. He took, in the meanwhile, a room in the Engelgracht, which is parallel and behind the Keizersgracht, and he devoted himself to the study of ship-building as it was there practised.
This had been one of his chief reasons for selecting Amsterdam as the place of his sojourn, for, though he had seen only a few Dutch ships, he had heard many reports from seamen of how swift and how fitted to carry great cargoes and make great voyages were the ships of little draft that the Hollanders built for sailing in their shallow inland seas. He went, therefore, very little along the broad, white-faced, tall and clean streets of the city. Once or twice he walked in them for his pleasure and entertainment; it amazed him, coming from Rye, which was dirty and crooked and small, to see how the streets spread out and were clean and straight, with square and pointed gables, going upwards like steps towards the heavens, with the red roofs behind. It pleased him to see Holland girls polishing the cobble-stones before their doors, giving to each stone the attention of sand-paper and cloth, because that reminded him of Magdalena. But, for the most part, he took a little boat each morning out along the side-canal, called the Canal of St. Michael, running between the tall house fronts to where, without the walls on the dunes, there were some thirty score of ships, their timbers clean and white, like skeletons of sweet-smelling wood, beneath the skies mostly, but some beneath open roofs so that the men might work even when snow fell. And here, amongst the famous fly-boats, he spent long mornings with measures and plumblines and note-books and his quick eye — long days of absorbed and tranquil work. For, in heart and before everything, he delighted in tools and workmanship, and was a shipbuilder.
And in these famous fly-boats that he could see tacking, engrossed all round him in the shallow waters, he could foresee the regeneration of his town of Rye, with its shallow waters, its sea that came up over miles of mud flats and its setting harbour. It was what he had come out to see, and he took a sensuous delight in learning each detail of keels and transoms, of spars and sails and riggings. He learned, very carefully, all these names in Low Dutch, for he was minded to take back with him a crew of Dutch workmen that should build such ships for him in his yards at home till his own men were taught and fit. His nights he spent with an old shipbuilder, who had been ruined by the Spaniards at Antwerp and wore great horn spectacles, and taught him Dutch words and measurements for pay, or with one or two Dutch youths in his inn, with whom he played draughts or disputed upon points of religion.
His letter from Magdalena taught him that she was well contented to be in his house and to be guided by his old nurse. Anne Jeal, she had heard, had gone to London, but some said she had flown away with a sorcerer; but she, Magdalena, was unmolested and treated honourably, sitting in his seat in the church, and allowed to go out before the wives of eleven other barons in her order of precedence. Her father, however, remained where he had been. And she prayed her husband to be mindful of his safety, to preserve her image in his heart, and to come back to her when there was no more danger and he had learned all that might be for his profit in foreign parts.
It was after he had had this letter, and after he had again consulted with his pardon-broker, that Edward Colman sought out Henry Hudson, the navigator.
He heard the great man’s interviews given to the French and Venetians and the Portuguese, and he considered with himself whether he should stay and make his application, for this, it appeared to him, might prove an expensive enterprise, and he could not forget that his life and fortunes were in some danger. Not a great danger, but some. And he considered that, if he died, he must leave to Magdalena all the money that he could leave there in Holland out of the clutches of the King’s wrathful Majesty and the Star Chamber Court.
Nevertheless, he did not consider that death or forfeiture were very near him, and it behoved a proper man not to take death early and unnaturally into his account, but to lay his plans for the future so that, if he died in the three-scores, he might leave to his heirs a goodly name and heritage. For this he wished to see the New World, so that he might know what merchandises he should best send thither and what he must commission his agents there to buy for him of the savages. For he imagined himself in the future, seated in his town of Rye, building his fly-boats and sending out his fleets to the New World or to other ports in the East if America seemed like to prove unprofitable.
He had kept himself a little apart from his brother Englishmen in that room; they were, all the six of them save one, younger than he and rawer; he had little taste for the converse of boys. But when the foreigners were gone he came perforce into the little, curved line of seven, over which the navigator ran his twinkling eyes.
“Ho!” he said, and ran his fingers caressingly in his thick square beard, “here be seven adventurers. Dame, whom will ye best trust to mend my cloaks?”
He took, however, no heed to his wife’s protest that it was not for her to speak; but, with his back still to her and the stove, shot out quickly the query —
“Who among you hath studied the art and mystery of navigation?”
There stood out from among them the one of them that was least young — a man maybe of forty, but thin and weatherbeaten, with a tight-skinned nose and hollowish temples.
“My name is Pember Trewinnoth,” he said, and his voice was a little hollow.
“Sirrah,” Hudson said, “I know that name. You sailed with Devlin to the New Found Land.”
“I have sailed to many places,” the lean man said; his black cloak was a little threadbare, his’ stockings had a hole in them.
“You are a man very useful at a pinch?” Hudson asked. “You know the sails and the ropes? If I fell ill you could mark down the reckonings for me? you have the Dutch language which I have not, and could converse with the crew? You have a little coin and would adventure it — it being your last — upon such a voyage as this?”
“All this I can and will,” Pember Trewinnoth said a shade eagerly, and with a light in his deep-set eyes. “I learned the mystery of navigation of Plymouth pilots.”
“Why, you would be a very proper man,” Hudson said. “If I should die you could step into my shoes.”
“I think,” a fair, heavy boy whispered in Edward Colman’s ear, “that this man will be chosen. We had best go about our affairs.”
“I am minded to wait,” Colman answered. “Why,” the navigator said to Trewinnoth, “you are a very proper man; you may get you gone.” Trewinnoth flushed hideously, and muttered in his throat —
“For why, Henry Hudson?”
“You know too much, Pember Trewinnoth, and have too little coin. I am contracted to the East Indiamen to take no man with me that knoweth the mystery of our craft. They will not that what I discover for them should go forth to the world.”
“Pray you—” Trewinnoth flustered.
“Pray you,” Hudson cried him down; “you and I should never agree; I like not your complexion. You are of the kidney of such men as Mr. Doughty that was hanged for his disagreements in Magellan’s Land by Sir Francis Drake. I know too much of mutinies on the seas: dried meat breedeth mutineers. I will have none with me that can step into my shoes. It shall be life and death to this vessel that I alone can bring it back. I have done, get you gone.”
Trewinnoth did not get him gone, but he sat down behind a pillar, at a drinking-table and called for a filled pipe and muscadel wine to drink. Hudson laughed.
“Now, bully boys,” he said, “who of you hath money to cast upon this adventure? Some of you would be sending merchandise or bringing it along; who be they? Where’s Balthasar Harse that writ to me?”
The fair, heavy boy that had whispered to Colman stepped forward and blushed.
“Why, get you gone, Balthasar Harse,” Hudson cried out; “there is no profit to be won in this adventure, but only the profit of honour, adventure and some learning.”
The boy hung his head and turned upon his heel.
Hudson surveyed the five that still stood before him.
“Now,” he said, “I will ask you, how many of you have £300 to adventure upon the chance of this voyage?”
The four others stood still to signify that they all had it: but Edward Colman moved a little apart.
“Sir,” he said, “I will first discover if the voyage is such a one as shall profit me.”
Hudson gave him a quick glance beneath his brows.
“Gentleman adventurer,” he said, “as to that you shall satisfy yourself hereafter. Now I am about discovering if you be such a man as shall profit me.”
“That is in reason,” Edward Colman answered. Hudson looked at him more carefully, from his face to his shoes and then returned his glance to the other four.
“Now I will ask,” he said, “how many of you do not speak this Holland tongue;” and three of them were sent away because they had no Dutch.
There remained then Edward Colman and a young man of Bideford called Lang; to these two Hudson addressed his words —
“Ye two have each three hundred pounds, ye have each no knowledge of the mystery of navigation; you seek, neither of you, any profit of merchandise; ye have each a passable knowledge of this language here. Let me now test you in this last particular and I have done. The one of you who shall best satisfy me may then ask his questions.”
He paused for a minute, and then said —
“Go now, one of you, to that old man that sitteth at the doorway. To my sorrow he hath no English, for he will sail with me upon this voyage, and I have but three words of High Dutch and none at all of Low. Go, then, to that old Dutchman, and tell him that he shall get himself to my chamber. In my chamber he shall find a little model of this ship, the Half Moon, that shall carry me and maybe one of you. That model is too weighty for such an old man to bear. But tell him to bring me hither the model of her little consort, the Good Hope; he shall bring it with its sprit-sail half-reefed, with a Dutch pennant a-trail from a staff at its stern, and with the water kegs filled and stowed, and the mariner’s compass aboard as if it would make a little voyage out of consort-ship. If you can do that I think you may be of profit to me as an interpreter.” He spoke to Lang of Bideford, “Can you do that thing?”
Lang put his finger beneath his hat to scratch his head.
“Why, I will try,” he said. And he betook him towards the door where an old Dutchman with a flat cap was gazing gloomily at the floor.
Hudson looked at Edward Colman.
“From your smile I perceive that you can do this thing,” he said.
“It was said that I was born smiling,” Edward Colman answered. “But I can do this thing, and talk in Low Dutch of most things about a ship.”
“Your smile I like,” Hudson said, “for it argues a contented mind. And of all things upon the sea the most to be feared is discontent, for there have been few pilots but have had to contend with mutinies from Christopher Columbus’s day till Devlin’s. That ragged man whom first I sent away did mutiny against Devlin; I know his name well, so I was short with him.”
He looked aside and saw the mutineer’s cloak edge that showed from beside the pillar, where he sat smoking his pipe and drinking.
“Will he foment a meeting here?” he asked impatiently, but he added, “Why, this is a public room for guests,” and fell to gazing thoughtfully at his stout and heavy feet.
Young Lang of Bideford came back, still scratching his head.
“I can make nowt on’t,” he said. “I can speak all your Dutch of merchandise, but not this of shipping.”
Hudson spoke to Edward Colman, “Go you!” he said.
The old Dutchman at the door, where he sat upon a bench, with very large red hands, and ears and red eyelids, was very angry. He spat at the sand on the floor and muttered. He had high boots painted yellow, little black trousers and a narrow jerkin of blue worked on the breast with a pentagon in white wool, to avert spells and witchcraft. His little beard, white and crisp, stood out like a brush all round his face.
“What sort of man is this?” he asked the floor. “A heathen English pilot that sends madmen to me to ask for toys.”
“Old man, a good day,” Edward Colman said in Dutch. The old man turned his questions from the floor to his interlocutor.
“What voyage shall this be?” he said. “Assuredly where we turn the ship’s nose corpses shall lie at the bottom of the sea, and no ship may sail over corpses. Ill-omen’d! Ill-omen’d!”
“Venerable senior,” Edward Colman smiled, “the navigator is not mad. He asked for no toys, but he desires the model of the pinnace from his room, with a little sprit-sai! half-reefed and your Dutch pennant a-trail from its staff at the stern, and the water kegs filled and stowed, and the mariner’s compass aboard and all made ready for a little voyage apart.”
The old Dutchman stood upon his legs.
“That boy asked for toys for this English navigator to play with,” he asseverated.
“Oh, belike,” Edward Colman answered, “the boy, knowing no better word, spoke of toys when he should have said models.”
“Young sir,” the old man answered, and the blue eyes between the red lids were full of an obstinate misgiving, “it is a very ill-omen when the first word that a shipmate or captain sends you upon a voyage are mad words.” He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and gazed at the floor. “If I were not still poor after thirty voyages never would I go with this mad Englishman, for ‘mad words, mad witches, mad weather,’ the proverb says. And this man’s first words are mad.”
“Pray you begone upon mine errand,” Edward Colman answered.
The old Dutchman turned slowly upon his heel, and then stayed to utter —
“This will be an evil voyage. I counsel you, go not with us if such your purpose is, for I am very certain that you or I shall not come back again, but we shall die by devil’s craft or hags of the sea.’’
“Pray you begone upon mine errand,” Edward Colman repeated. The old man reluctantly pushed the door open and, shaking his white head, disappeared.
When he returned he had in his huge red hand the little pretty model of the Half Moon’s consort, and he still shook his head.
“Tell this mad and doomed navigator,” he said, “that I can find no Dutch pennant to trail at the stern. And that, too, is an ill-omen. I counsel you not to go upon this voyage. I like not this man, he is too fat to be a sailor and he whistles when he speaks.”
When Edward Colman told Hudson that the old man could not find the pennant, Hudson looked negligently at the little boat, and then asked quickly —
“Tell me this: Why, if you know no navigation, you are conversant with the terms of shipping?”
“Because,” Edward Colman answered, “I am a builder of ships, and am come here to see how fly-boats are builded.”
“And how have you the Dutch tongue?”
“Because I am wedded to a Dutch maid after many years’ courting.”
“And why will you sail with me?”
“Sir,” Edward Colman answered, “I am not very certain that I shall sail with you; but if I do so sail it is because you shall voyage in a fly-boat, and I am minded to build fly-boats, and I would fain see how fly-boats are fitted for such seas as you shall sail in.”
“Well,” Hudson said, “the Half Moon is a very good fly-boat. You may see much that you are desirous to see.”
“Moreover,” Edward Colman said, “it is good for my health that I make a voyage of some six or seven months.”
Hudson smote his thigh.
“Mother,” he said to his wife, “look upon this young man and say if he is such a one as I may trust.” And, without waiting for her protests, he went on, “If you be not a Papist I will not ask after your health and its reasons. But I was very certain, when first I glanced upon you, that you were not one of those that sought navigation or great journeys because you were avid of gallant adventures.”
Edward Colman answered, “I am no Papist and have done no murder, and it is true that I am not avid of adventure, but seek merely knowledge how I may advance my trade in shipping from a little harbour that is much choked up.”
