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SEA-DOGS ALL!

A Tale of Forest and Sea

by

TOM BEVAN

Author of
  "Red Dickon the Outlaw,"
  "The Fen Robbers,"
  etc., etc.







[Frontispiece: Dolly stood near the fire, her face rosy with the heat]




Thomas Nelson and Sons
London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York
1911




CONTENTS.


       I. The Man in Black
      II. The Plotters
     III. Two Friends
      IV. Johnnie Morgan takes a Walk
       V. Master Windybank
      VI. A Sinister Meeting
     VII. In the Toils
    VIII. Master Windybank walks abroad
      IX. The Hunt
       X. Master Windybank rebels
      XI. Darkness and the River
     XII. Snaring a Flock of Night Ravens
    XIII. A Double Fight
     XIV. What happened in Westbury Steeple
      XV. A Letter from Court
     XVI. To London Town
    XVII. Sir Walter as Chaperon
   XVIII. Three Broken Mariners
     XIX. Paignton Rob's Story
      XX. Rob dines at "Ye Swanne"
     XXI. Morgan goes to Whitehall
    XXII. The Queen
   XXIII. Johnnie sees many Sights
    XXIV. Two Chance Wayfarers
     XXV. Brother Basil
    XXVI. All on a bright March Morning
   XXVII. In Plymouth
  XXVIII. The Parlour of the "Blue Dolphin"
    XXIX. The Widow's House
     XXX. Ho! for the Spanish Main
    XXXI. In the Bay of San Joseph
   XXXII. A Glimpse of the Fabled City
  XXXIII. Wandering in a Maze
   XXXIV. Flood and Fever
    XXXV. A Foe
   XXXVI. The Attack on the Village
  XXXVII. Council Fires in Two Places
 XXXVIII. The Way back
   XXXIX. John Oxenham's Creek
      XL. A Haven of Peace
     XLI. The Trap
    XLII. Captives
   XLIII. In Panama
    XLIV. The Trial
     XLV. For Faith and Country!
    XLVI. The Galley Slaves
   XLVII. Hernando speaks
  XLVIII. The Revolt of the Slaves
    XLIX. Eastward Ho!
       L. Home
      LI. The Forest again--and the Sea




List of Illustrations


Cover art

Dolly stood near the fire, her face rosy with the heat.. _Frontispiece_

The odds were hopelessly against him.




SEA-DOGS ALL!


Chapter I.

THE MAN IN BLACK.

The river-path along the Severn shore at Gatcombe was almost knee-deep
with turbid water, and only a post here and there showed where river
ordinarily ended and firm land began.  Fishers and foresters stood in
the pelting rain and buffeting wind anxiously calculating what havoc
the sudden summer storm might work, helpless themselves to put forth a
hand to save anything from its fury.  Stout doors and firm casements
(both were needed in the river-side hamlet) bent with the fury of the
sou'-wester that beat upon them.  The tide roared up the narrowing
estuary like a mill-race, and the gale tore off the tops of the waves,
raised them with the lashing raindrops, and hurled both furiously
against everything that fringed the shore.  Gatcombe Pill leapt and
plunged muddily between its high, red banks, and the yellow tide surged
up the opening and held back the seething waters like a dam.  There was
black sky above, and many- earth and water below.

The lading jetty against the village only appeared at odd moments above
the tumult of waters, and a couple of timber ships that lay on the
north side, partially loaded, were plunging and leaping at their anchor
cables like two dogs at the end of their chains.  Great oaken logs
bobbed up and down like corks, or raced with the current upstream; the
product of many weeks' timber-cutting in the forest would be scattered
as driftwood from Gloucester to the shores of Devon and Wales.

On the high bank above Gatcombe, one other man, half hidden by the
thick trees, braved the fury of the storm.  There was nothing of the
fisher or forester about him; the pale, worn face and the tall, lean
figure soberly clad in black betokened the monk or the scholar, but
claimed no kinship with them that toiled in the woodlands or won a
living from the dangerous sea.  Leaning against a giant beech that
rocked in wild rhythm with the storm, he watched the wind and tide at
their work of devastation, an odd smile of satisfaction playing about
the corners of his thin lips.

"A hundred candles to St. James for this tempest!" he murmured.  "If
the ships do but break loose and get aground, I will tramp Christendom
for the money to build him a church."  But though the man in black
watched the river for the space of two hours longer, his hopes of utter
destruction were unrealized; the cables held, the rain ceased, the wind
abated, and the tide began to run seawards once more.  Bit by bit the
jetty rose above the swirling waters.  Inshore the sands of the
river-bed were uncovered, and the fishers and wharfmen swarmed along
them and on the pier, saving from the sea the logs of oak that were
within reach.  For a while the man on the cliff watched them; then he
turned aside into the dripping recesses of the forest.  "Comfort
thyself," he said, tapping his bosom as he walked; "the omens are good.
What water hath commenced, the fire shall finish!"

Almost upon the instant a sturdy figure broke from the bushes above
Gatcombe Pill and hurried along the cliff towards the harbour.
Deep-chested, full-throated, weather-stained, compacted of brawn and
sinew, he looked the ruddy-faced, daring sailor-man, every inch of him.
From crown to toe he was clad in homely gray; but if, on the one hand,
the ass peeps out from the borrowed lion's skin, so will royalty shine
through fustian; and the newcomer had the air of a king among men.  He
hallooed to the ships, and then hastily scrambled down the cliff.

Only the groaning of the trees and rustling of the undergrowth hid the
footfalls of the man in black from the ears of the man in gray.  He was
looking for him, but the time when they should meet was not yet come.




Chapter II.

THE PLOTTERS.

The morrow after the storm was windless and genial; the morning stepped
out from the east bearing the promise of a fine day; the tide was
running strongly to the sea.  At Newnham the ferryman stood knee-deep
in the water washing his boat and hoping for a fare.  The man in black
came down and was carried across to Arlingham.  He asked many questions
concerning the tides and the sands.  The water ran like a mill-race
round the Nab, and the stranger crossed himself when he entered the
boat, and again when the ferryman took him on his back to carry him
through the shallow water and the mud.  He paid the penny for the
passage, and then vanished quickly into the trees that shut in the
village of Arlingham from the river.  The boatman watched him curiously