Marjorie Read online

  CHAPTER XV

  UTOPIA HO!

  I have purposely left out of these pages the record of the voyage. Onesuch voyage is much like another, and though it was all new to me itwould not be new to others. I might like to dwell again upon the firstland we made, the Island of St. Jago, where we had civil entertainmentof a Portuguese gentleman and of a negro Romish priest, with a merryheart and merry heels. My mother would have loved to go marketing inthat place, for I bought no less than one hundred sweet oranges for halfa paper of pins, and five fat hens for the other half of the paper. Icould talk of our becalms and our storms and our crossing the Line, andof our trouble with the travado-wind. But as I do not wish to weary withthe repetition of an oft-told tale, I will say no more of our voyageuntil we came to the Cape which is so happily named of Good Hope. It wasa very wonderful voyage for me; it would not seem a very wonderfulvoyage to others, who have either made it themselves or who know out ofbook knowledge all and more than all that I could tell them. But I maysay that I was a very different lad when we came to the Cape from thelad who had got on board of the Royal Christopher so many monthsearlier. I was but a pale-faced boy when I sailed, only a landsman, andno great figure as a landsman. But when we came to the Cape I was socoloured by the winds and the suns and the open life that my face andhands were well-nigh of the tint of burnished copper. I had always beena fairly strong lad; but now my strength was multiplied many times, and,thanks to my dear master, my skill to use that strength was marvellouslyadvanced. Which proved to be of infinite service to me and others betterthan myself by-and-by.

  We stayed some little time at Cape Town; how long now I do not closelyremember, but, as I think, a matter of four weeks or more. For theCaptain had some old friends amongst the Dutch colony, and there werecertain matters of revictualling the ship to be thought of, and Lancelotlonged for a little shooting and hunting. For my part, I was by no meansloth to tread the soil again, for, though I love the sea dearly, I haveno hatred for firm earth as other seamen have, but look upon myself as akind of amphibious animal, and like the land and the water impartially.And there was a great joy and wonder to me to see a new country and anew town--I, who knew of no other town than Sendennis, and knew no moreof London than of Grand Cairo, or of the capital of the Mogul. Iremember that we stayed some days under the roof of a leading Dutchmerchant of the place, who entertained us very handsomely, and that hisbrother, who was a somewhat younger man than he, and who spoke ourEnglish tongue well, took Lancelot and me many times a-shooting anda-fishing, and that we had some rare and savage sport. For the town isbut a small one, and there is excellent sport to be had well-nigh at itsback doors, as it were. I should have loved dearly to have wanderedinward far inland towards the great mountains, for I heard wonderfultales, both from the Dutchmen and their black men, of treasures that thebowels of these mountains were said to hold. Of course that was out ofthe question, with the Royal Christopher waiting for her fate; but thetales fired me with memories of those Eastern tales that I have told youof, and I longed to out-rival Master Sindbad.

  I cannot conscientiously affirm that I was sorry to leave Cape Town, andthe wines that the Dutch settlers made, and the amazing Hottentots, andthe other marvels of that my first experience of strange distantcountries. We were all the better for our rest, Marjorie and CaptainAmber, Lancelot, the colonists, the crew, and, in a word, all ourfellowship. But we were all eager to be on the way again, for verydifferent reasons. Captain Amber, because he was keen to place his footupon his Land of Promise; Lancelot, because he wished what his unclewished; Marjorie, because she wished to be with Lancelot; I myself, muchout of eager, restless curiosity for new places and new adventures. ForI was so simple in those days that the mere crossing of the seas seemedto me to be an adventure, a thing that I came later to regard as no moreadventurous than the hiring of a hackney-coach. But in my heart I knewthat the main reason for my bliss in boarding the Royal Christopher layin the closer intimacy it gave me with maid Marjorie. In the littlekingdom of the ship, where all in a sense were friends and adventurerstogether, there was less than on land to remind me that for me to dreammyself her lover went far to prove me lunatic. So I was blithe to beafloat again. As for Cornelys Jensen, we were to learn soon enough inwhat direction lay his pleasure to be ploughing the high seas again.