LITMIR.BIZ

THE GOLDEN GALLEON.

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I.

       Table of Contents

      TIMOTHY TROLLOPE.

      "TIM," said Peter Trollope, looking up from the oily whetstone that lay on the edge of the table in front of him, and slowly wiping the blade of the razor on the broad palm of his hand, "I want thee to go fetch me some more herbs."

      "Herbs?" repeated Tim from the far corner of the shop, where he was sprawling upon the floor side by side with a very ugly-looking bull-dog.

      "Ay," returned his father, running the edge of the razor along his thumb-nail to test its keenness. "My stock is at an end, and I have none left to make up the physic for Cap'n Cruse's sick wife. 'Tis some hellebore roots that I need most, and a little meadow-saffron and jasmine, and, if thou canst come upon them, a handful of yew-berries. You will find them all in Modbury Park if I make no mistake—over against the plantation of fir-trees where we saw the dead hind. I'd have thee go there this morning; and see that thou tarry not over long by the way, for I shall need thy help in distilling them."

      Timothy rose slowly to his feet. There was a look of glum discontent on his face. It was evident that he was in nowise willing to obey his father's behest.

      "What!" cried Peter, glancing at the lad with sharp reproof. "Dost object to the journey? Now, prithee, what wild boy's adventure hast thou on hand that is more to thy humour?"

      Timothy looked dreamily out through the little latticed window towards the quay, and his eyes wandered for a time among the masts and riggings of the ships.

      "I was but thinking to go out for a sail in Ambrose Pennington's fishing-boat," he said in a sulky undertone.

      "A plague on your fishing-boats!" exclaimed Peter somewhat angrily. "Y'are for ever thinking of the sea and ships and all such mischievous inventions! I'll not have it, look you. And to-day, so please you, you'll do my bidding and go fetch me these herbs, and there's an end on't."

      Timothy made no answer, for at this moment a hairy-faced mariner entered the shop, making a great noise upon the sanded floor with his heavy sea-boots.

      "Give you good-morning, Master Whiddon," said Peter Trollope with a bow and a smile, as he offered the man a chair in the middle of the room. "What may be your honour's will?"

      "Trim me my beard, Master Trollope," returned the seaman, seating himself in the chair and stretching out his legs in front of him; "and tell me your news; for 'tis a good two years since I was last ashore in Plymouth, and I am full eager, as you may be sure, to learn all that hath happened in my absence."

      Timothy opened a little locker under the window and drew forth a large canvas wallet, which he strapped over his shoulder. Then he crossed over to a door and disappeared into an inner room behind the shop, leaving his father to attend to his customer and retail news that to the boy, at all events, was as stale as a last year's chestnut.

      Peter Trollope was a barber-surgeon. He carried on his useful art (for in his deft hands it was in truth an art) at the sign of the Pestle and Mortar, down against Sutton Pool. He was a great man in Plymouth town, by reason of his entertaining talk and his skill alike in surgery and in hairdressing; and his little shop was the lounging-place of all the idle young gallants of the port, who came in to discuss the latest news from London, to gossip about their neighbours' affairs and about the ships, or to learn the tricks and fashions in the new art of taking tobacco. Men who had received sword-wounds in street frays or damaged skulls in tavern brawls came to him to have their hurts dressed and plastered; he had a famous tincture for the toothache, a certain remedy for melancholy, and at curing the common ailments of children and old women no doctor in the town could beat him. Mariners just home after a long voyage came to him to have their overgrown locks shorn and their beards singed. Poor workmen and apprentices came to him to be polled for twopence, were soon trimmed round as a cheese, and dismissed with a hearty "God speed you, my master!" There were many high and mighty gentlemen among his customers too, I do assure you; for he had starched the beard of the great Sir Walter Raleigh, curled the moustachios of brave Sir Francis Drake, and tied up the lovelocks of courtly Sir Anthony Killigrew.

      The Pestle and Mortar stood facing the busy wharf at the corner of one of the narrow alleys that led up into the town. The upper windows of the house looked out across the Pool, where all the ships and fishing-boats were harboured. From these upper windows you could, if you had only been there, see down upon the ships' decks and watch the brown-faced seamen at their work of discharging the merchandise that they had brought from distant climes; and in the street below there was the channel where, on wet days, the rain-water rushed by in a deep stream; and where, when the rain had ceased, young Timothy Trollope and his playmates used to go out in their bare feet and sail their tiny boats, and imagine these bits of rough-hewn stick to be Spanish galleons, laden with gold, or corsair galleys with cargoes of Christian captives for the slave-markets of Algiers.

      Timothy's games had always some connection with ships (which, I suppose, was natural enough, seeing that he had been born and brought up in sight of the sea, and with the smell of tar rope and bilge-water for ever in his nostrils), and all his boyish ambitions were of travel and adventure, fostered, it may be, by the travellers' talk he had heard from the mariners who gossiped with his father in the barber's shop.

      Many of these adventurous mariners, remembering past benefits that they had received at the hands of the kindly barber-surgeon, or perhaps being short of money (as they ofttimes were, in spite of the vast treasures that they had voyaged and fought for in far-off regions), had given or sold to him many relics of their travels in foreign lands, and the shop was a veritable museum of curiosities from all parts of the known world. Here was a live poll-parrot brought home by one of Sir Richard Grenville's seamen from Virginia; the jaws of a giant shark that had been killed by John Hawkins' boatswain off the west coast of Africa; a Turk's scimitar, a Patagonian's war-club, a red Indian's tobacco-pipe, an Icelander's harpoon, and even some of the so-called gold brought back by Sir Martin Frobisher from distant Greenland. People who had never crossed the seas regarded these things with wonder and reverence, but seamen were wont to scoff at them, and to declare that they were but the sweepings and refuse of ships' cabins. Peter Trollope, however, was proud of his curious collection; and often, when business was slack, he would sit in his chair by the fire and look at the things each in turn, and grumble that Providence had not made him an adventurer instead of a quiet, stay-at-home barber-surgeon.

      Master Thomas Cavendish, the great explorer, when he was fitting out his ship, the Hugh Gallant, for his voyage round the world, had once said to him:

      "Peter, thou art too good a man to be wasting thy palmiest days at the clipping of hair. Those strong big limbs of thine should rather be employed in the hauling of ropes, the shifting of heavy guns, or fighting against the Spaniards. Now, my ship will be a-sailing out of Plymouth Sound in a few days'

Скачать книгу