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Micah Clarke

Chapter 3 Of Two Friends of my Youth

Word Count: 1933    |    Released on: 18/11/2017

ort is a sorry and a barren thing unless you have a knowledge of the folk concerned. Be patient, then, while I speak to you of the old friends of my youth, some of whom you may

o those of Hobbes there were few systems ever thought out by man which he had not studied and weighed. Books were far dearer in my boyhood than they are now, and carpenters were less well paid, but old Palmer had neither wife nor child, and spent little on food or

rites, for we would come the earliest and stop the latest to hear the old man talk. No father could have loved his children better than he did us, and he would spare no pains to get at our callow thoughts, and to throw light upon whatever perplexed or troubled us. Like all growing things, we had run our heads against the problem of the universe. We had peeped and pryed with our boyish eyes into those profound depths in wh

tian creed which is of importance. Could you but live among the Romans or the Greeks, in the days before this new doctrine was preached, you would then know the change that it has wrought in the world. How this or that text should be

rmons. See how the luxurious Babylonians were destroyed by the frugal Persians, and how these same Persians when they learned the vices of prosperity were put to the sword by the Greeks. Read on and mark how the sensual Greeks were trodden down by the more robust and hardier Romans, and finally how the Romans, having lost their manly virtues, were subdued by the nations of the north.

ngs, done in blue, red, and green, beginning with the Creation upon his neck and winding up with the Ascension upon his left ankle. Never have I seen such a walking work of art. He was wont to say that had he been owned and his body cast up upon some savage land, the natives might have learned the whole of the blessed gospel from a contemplation of his carcass. Yet with sorrow I must say that the seaman's religion appeared to have all worked into his skin, so that very little was left for inner use. It had broken out upon the surface, like the spotted fever, but his system was clear of it elsewhere. He could sw

is squadron to wheel to the right, or to charge, or to halt, as the case might be, as if he were still with his regiment of horse. Of Blake, too, he had many stories to tell. But even the name of Blake was not so dear to our old sailor as was that of Sir Christopher Mings. Solomon had at one time been his coxswain, and could talk by the hour of those gallant deeds which had distinguished him from the day that he entered the navy as a cabin boy until he fell upon his own quarter-deck, a full admiral of the red, and was borne by his weeping ship's compa

Gulliver to satisfy our love of adventure by telling us of such adventures as never were. Not once in a month did a common newsletter fall into our hands. Personal hazards, therefore, were of more value then than they are now, and the talk of a man like old Solomon was a library in itself. To us it was all real. His husky tones and ill-chosen words were as the voice of an angel, and our eager minds filled in the details and supplied all that was wanting in his narratives. In one evening we have engaged a Sallee rover off the Pillars of Hercules; we have coasted down the shores of the African continent, and seen the great breakers of the Spanish Main foaming upon the yellow sand; we have passed the black ivory merchants with their

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1 Chapter 1 Of Cornet Joseph Clarke of the Ironsides2 Chapter 2 Of my going to school and of my coming thence3 Chapter 3 Of Two Friends of my Youth4 Chapter 4 Of the Strange Fish that we Caught at Spithead5 Chapter 5 Of the Man with the Drooping Lids6 Chapter 6 Of the Letter that came from the Lowlands7 Chapter 7 Of the Horseman who rode from the West8 Chapter 8 Of our Start for the Wars9 Chapter 9 Of a Passage of Arms at the Blue Boar10 Chapter 10 Of our Perilous Adventure on the Plain11 Chapter 11 Of the Lonely Man and the Gold Chest12 Chapter 12 Of certain Passages upon the Moor13 Chapter 13 Of Sir Gervas Jerome, Knight Banneret of the County of Surrey14 Chapter 14 Of the Stiff-legged Parson and his Flock15 Chapter 15 Of our Brush with the King's Dragoons16 Chapter 16 Of our Coming to Taunton17 Chapter 17 Of the Gathering in the Market-square18 Chapter 18 Of Master Stephen Timewell, Mayor of Taunton19 Chapter 19 Of a Brawl in the Night20 Chapter 20 Of the Muster of the Men of the West21 Chapter 21 Of my Hand-grips with the Brandenburger22 Chapter 22 Of the News from Havant23 Chapter 23 Of the Snare on the Weston Road24 Chapter 24 Of the Welcome that met me at Badminton25 Chapter 25 Of Strange Doings in the Boteler Dungeon26 Chapter 26 Of the Strife in the Council27 Chapter 27 Of the Affair near Keynsham Bridge28 Chapter 28 Of the Fight in Wells Cathedral29 Chapter 29 Of the Great Cry from the Lonely House30 Chapter 30 Of the Swordsman with the Brown Jacket31 Chapter 31 Of the Maid of the Marsh and the Bubble which rose from the Bog32 Chapter 32 Of the Onfall at Sedgemoor33 Chapter 33 Of my Perilous Adventure at the Mill34 Chapter 34 Of the Coming of Solomon Sprent35 Chapter 35 Of the Devil in Wig and Gown36 Chapter 36 Of the End of it All37 Appendix