Martin Hyde by John Masefield

faithful servant, even if he is only a boy."
    "I will serve your Majesty gladly," I answered. "I should like to join your service."
    "Very well then, Jermyn," he said, rising swiftly on his way to the door; "bring him on board at once."
    "We're off to Holland tonight, in the schooner there," said Mr. Jermyn. "So put these biscuits in your pocket. Give him another glass of wine, Falk. Now, then. Goodbye, Lane. Goodbye everybody."
    "Goodbye," they said. "Goodbye, boy." In another minute we were in the narrow road, within earshot of the tumbling water, going down to the stairs


at the lane end, to take boat. The last that I saw of my uncle's house was the white of my ladder ropes, swinging about against the darkness of the bricks.
    "Remember, Hyde," said Mr. Jermyn in a low voice, "that his Majesty is always plain Mr. Scott. Remember that. Remember, too, that you are never to speak to him unless he speaks to you. But you won't have much to do with him. Were you ever at sea, before?"
    "No, sir. Only about the Broads in a coracle."
    "You'll find it very interesting, then. If you're not seasick. Here we are at the boat. Now, jump in. Get into the bows."
    "Mr. Scott" was already snug under a boat-cloak in the sternsheets. As soon as we had stepped in, the boatman shoved off. The boat rippled the water into a gleaming track as she gathered way. We were off. I was on my way to Holland. I was a conspirator, travelling with a King. There ahead of me was the fine hull of the schooner La Reina, waiting to carry us to all sorts of adventure, none of them (as I planned them then) so strange, or so terrible, as those which happened to me. As we drew up alongside her, I heard the clack-clack of the sailors heaving at the windlass. They were getting up the anchor, so that we might sail from this horrible city to all the wonderful romance which awaited me, as I thought, beyond, in the great world. Five minutes after I had stepped upon her deck we were gliding down on the ebb, bound for Holland.
    "Hyde," said Mr. Jermyn, as we drew past the battery on the Tower platform, "do you see the high ground, beyond the towers there?"
    "Yes, sir," I said.
    "Do you know what that is?"
    "No, sir."
    "That's Tower Hill," he answered, "where traitors, I mean conspirators like you or me, are beheaded. Do you know what that means?"
    "Yes, sir," I replied. "To have your head cut off."
    "Yes," he said. "With all that hill black with people. The scaffold hung with black making a sort of platform in the middle. Then soldiers, with drums, all round. You put your head over a block, so that your neck rests on the wood. Then the executioner comes at you with an axe. Then your head is shown to the people. 'This is the head of a traitor.' We may all end in that way, on that little hill there. You must be very careful how you carry the letters, Hyde."
    After this hint, he showed me a hammock in the schooner's 'tweendecks, telling me that I should soon be accustomed to that kind of bed. "It is a little awkward at first," he said, "especially the getting in part; but, when once snugly in, it is the most comfortable kind of bed in the world." After undressing by the light of a huge ship's lantern, which Mr. Jermyn called a battle-lantern, I turned into my hammock, rather glad to be alone. Now that I was pledged to this


conspiracy business, with some knowledge of what it might lead to, I half wished myself well out of it. The 'tweendecks was much less comfortable than the bedroom which I had left so gaily such a very little time before. I had exchanged a good prison for a bad one. The smell of oranges, so near to the hold in which they were stored, was overpowering, mixed, as it was, with the horrible ship-smell of decaying water (known as bilge-water) which flopped about at each roll a few feet below me. My hammock was slung in a draught from the main hatchway. People came down the hatchway during the night to fetch coils of rope or tackles. Tired as I was, I slept