BOOKS.
AN ENGLISH TREASURY OF ADVENTURE.* THE work before us is the oddest jumble of old Elizabethan and Jacobean tracts describing adventures by sea and land, travels, sea-fights, and strange occurrences. Interspersed with these are numerous poems, songs, and sonnets by the second-rate poets of the period from, say, 1550 to 1700. Yet odd and apparently purposeless as is the jumble, we venture to say that these eight volumes make one of the most delightf al works given to the public for many years. In this pleasant Garner is to be found some of the best reading of the adventurous order that we have ever come across. There is one tract in particular which Mr. Stevenson would have delighted in beyond measure. It is the "true and exact" narration of how an Englishman, Robert Lyde, took a French ship almost single-banded. But the best way of summarising the story told in the delightful old tract is to quote the very ample title-page :—" A true and exact Account of the Retaking of a Ship, called 'The Friends' Adventure,' of Topsham, from the French ; after she had been taken six days, and they were upon the coasts of France with it four days. Where One Englishman and a boy set upon Seven Frenchmen, killed two of them, took the other Five prisoners, and brought the ship and them safe to England. Their Majesties' Customs of the said ship amounted to £1,000 and upwards. Performed and written by Robert Lyde, Mate of the same ship. London : printed for R. Bald- win, near the 'Oxford Arms,' in Warwick Lane. 1693." Every one remembers Mr. Stevenson's Kidnapped, and how Alan Breck and the boy beat a whole ship's crew. Well here is the story at large, only that the boy, instead of "playing up" like David Balfour, is somewhat of a poltroon. Lyde on a previous voyage was taken by a St. Malo privateer, and in the prison at Dinan he and his fellow-prisoners suffered such great cruelty that when be was exchanged and liberated he resolved that be would never be a prisoner again in a French prison. Nevertheless on his very next voyage his ship was again taken by a French privateer and a prize-crew put aboard her. Before, however, the prize-crew got on board Lyde managed to conceal a blunderbuss and ammunition between decks. When the prize-crew were put on board, most of the English crew were taken off, but Lyde and a boy were left behind in The Friend's Adventure,'—i.e., the English ship. Lyde, being only one among so many, was not, of course, kept in irons, but went about the ship making him- self agreeable, and trying to make the Frenchmen drunk by broaching a cask of wine,—a strategy which failed. Lyde then tried to persuade the boy to join him in his plan of mastering the crew, but the boy was a coward, and could not be persuaded, though Lyde, who was much of a Puritan; called him down between decks and read him two or three chapters of the Bible. Apparently the weather was bad, for the ship knocked about the Channel for several days, often in great danger, for the Frenchmen were wretched sailors, and their prisoner despised them heartily. For example :—
"The nearer we came to St. Mob, the surlier the Frenchmen were to me. At twelve a clock, on Saturday night, they called me to the pumps ; as they had done several times before, although I. never went but when I pleased : nor would I do anything else for them, thinking it much inferior for an Englishman to do anything for a Frenchman. But they calling on me several times, at last I turned out, and stood in the Gun Room scuttle; and told the Master that 'I had served two years for the French already, and if I went to France again, I should serve three years.' 'That is bien,' said the Master. Then I told them that I had nothing in the ship to lose : and that if they would not pump themselves, the ship should sink for me.' Then I went and laid myself down again, fully resolved that if they came to haul me out by force, that I would make resistance, and kill or wound as many of them as I could, before I died myself : but they let me alone. All that night, when the boy was awake, I endeavoured to persuade- him to assist me ; but still could not prevail: though I used, ae I had • An English Garner : Ingatherings from our Ili.torn clad Literature. By Edwsrd Arber, F.S.A. 8 vols. London : Constable and 00. done ever since we were taken, many arguments. So that that night, I slept but very little; and when I did slumber at all, I dreamt that I was attacking the Frenchmen. For sleeping or waking, my mind ran still upon the attacking of them. Sunday, at seven in the morning, we being then about five leagues off from Cape Fanil ; I then prayed heartily for a south-south-east wind : and immediately I heard them take in their topsails and haul up the foresail, and brace them aback and lash the helm a lee, and let the ship drive off, with her head to the westward. Then I sent the boy up again, to see if the wind was not come at south-south-east : and he brought me word it was. Then I gave GOD thanks, and rejoiced at his signal providential mercy on me, and for so immediately strengthening my faith, and confirm- ing my hopes of redeeming myself from slavery : and then I renewed my solicitation to the boy to yield to me, but still be would not consent ; which made me think of attempting it myself, and then I went and took a pint of wine, and half a pint of oil, and drank it to make me more fit for action"
Ultimately Lyde got a sort of half-consent from the wretched boy, and then went to work after this fashion :—
"The boy's asking me these several questions did encourage me to hope that he would at last be prevailed with to stand by me : and still he proceeded in his inquiries, and asked me, 'How I did intend to attack them ? ' I told him, 'I would take the crow [crowbar] of iron, and hold it with both hands in the middle of it ; and go into the [Great] Cabin, and knock down one with the claws, and strike the point into the other that lay by his side in the cabin ! and I would wound the Master in his cabin ! and do thou take the drive-bolt [a long iron pin for driving out bolts], and be sure to knock down the man at the helm ! so soon as you hear me strike the first blow ; for otherwise if he should hear the !blow, he may come into the cabin, and lay hold on me, before I should overcome them three.' And I resolved to myself, of which I said nothing to the boy, that if they should all rise against me before I could get into the cabin, I would strike at them, and either kill them or do them as much hurt as I could before I died myself : concluding that after I had once begun, if I should yield, then I should certainly die by them ; and therefore did resolve to sell my life as dear as I could. Then the boy asked me,' What he should do when he had knocked down the man at the helm ? ' I -told him, 'He should stand without the [Great] Cabin door, and not stir from thence, but to have his eye upon the two Frenchmen that were upon deck : and not to come into the cabin to me, unless he observed them coming towards the cabin ; and then he should tell me of it, and come into the cabin. At nine in the morning, the two men upon deck went to pumping. Then I turned out from the sail, where the boy and I then lay, and pulled off my coat that I might be the more nimble in the action : and having [but] little hair, I hauled off my cap, that if they had -the fortune to knock me in the head, they might kill me with it. Having fitted myself for the action, I went up the Gun Room _scuttle into the Steerage, to see what posture they were in ; and being satisfied therein, I leapt down the scuttle and went to the boy : who seeing me resolved upon the action, with an earnest entreaty to him to join with me ; he, at last, did consent. Then the boy coming to me, I leapt up the Gun Room scuttle, and said, 'LORD! be with us, and strengthen us in the action !' : and then I told the boy that the drive-bolt was by the scuttle in -the Steerage. Then I went softly aft into the Cabin, and put my back against the bulk head, and took the iron crow (it was laying without the Cabin door), and held it with both my hands in the middle of it, and put my legs abroad to shorten myself, because the Cabin was very low."
How this Homeric battle was actually fought we shall leave it to our readers to find out. We will only say that the story is told with a realism and a detail that is positively ghastly, and that ultimately Robert Lyde mastered the vessel and brought her safe to harbour. Lyde's navigation was, however, as -daring and reckless as his fighting, and forms a very exciting -episode in the story. It is most characteristically English that this tale of heroism ends in a good bout with the lawyers, owners, freighters, and Lyde going hammer and tongs at it in the Law-courts. There was one suit in the Court of Admiralty and another in Chancery, but Lyde prevailed, though, as he says, he ended his law and most of his money together. It is also characteristic of his race that Lyde really seems prouder of his success in the Courts than on the
We have quoted the best story in the Garner, but there are a dozen others almost as good,—tales of attacks on Spanish ships, stories of fights with Barbary corsairs, of imprisonments among the Moors and Turks, of the horrors of the Inquisition, and of wanderings in Mexico and the Indies, mostly told by the sturdy subjects of Elizabeth. We cannot, of course, deal with them in detail, but will only beg our readers to go to the Garner itself. The poetry they will probably find dull and pedantic, for the minor poets of Elizabeth were no more readable than those of Victoria. The prose tracts, however, cannot but afford them a rare delight. 'There are plots and incidents enough to keep a dozen novelists going for twenty years.
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