Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen ElizabethKingsley, Charles
History
Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth
Kingsley, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603 -- Fiction
Where, I know not how, being seized with some panic fear (his lively
imagination filling all the sea with those sharks which he had just
seen), he fell a-roaring like any town-bull, and in his confusion never
thought to turn and get aboard again, but struck out lustily after the
Spanish boat, whether in hope of catching hold of the boat-hook which
trailed behind her, or from a very madness of valor, no man could
divine; but on he swam, his cassock afloat behind him, looking for all
the world like a great black monk-fish, and howling and puffing, with
his mouth full of salt water, “Stay, ye Spanish dogs! Help, all good
fellows! See you not that I am a dead man? They are nuzzling already at
my toes! He hath hold of my leg! My right thigh is bitten clean off!
Oh that I were preaching in Hartland pulpit! Stay, Spanish dogs! Yield,
Papist cowards, least I make mincemeat of you; and take me aboard!
Yield, I say, or my blood be on your heads! I am no Jonah; if he swallow
me, he will never cast me up again! it is better to fall into the hands
of man, than into the hands of devils with three rows of teeth apiece.
In manus tuas. Orate pro anima--!”
And so forth, in more frantic case than ever was Panurge in that his
ever-memorable seasickness; till the English, expecting him every minute
to be snapped up by sharks, or brained by the Spaniard's oars, let fly a
volley into the fugitives, on which they all leaped overboard like their
fellows; whereon Jack scrambled into the boat, and drawing sword with
one hand, while he wiped the water out of his eyes with the other, began
to lay about him like a very lion, cutting the empty air, and crying,
“Yield, idolaters! Yield, Spanish dogs!” However, coming to himself
after a while, and seeing that there was no one on whom to flesh his
maiden steel, he sits down panting in the sternsheets, and begins
stripping off his hose. On which Amyas, thinking surely that the good
fellow had gone mad with some stroke of the sun, or by having fallen
into the sea after being overheated with his rowing, bade pull
alongside, and asked him in heaven's name what he was doing with his
nether tackle. On which Jack, amid such laughter as may be conceived,
vowed and swore that his right thigh was bitten clean through, and to
the bone; yea, and that he felt his hose full of blood; and so would
have swooned away for imaginary loss of blood (so strong was the
delusion on him) had not his friends, after much arguing on their part,
and anger on his, persuaded him that he was whole and sound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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