This last he directed with a smile to Father Smith, who sat impassively in his chair, and added, "We are obliged to you for bed and board, sir, and your unimpeachable Jerez. You may look to see John Coode in trouble soon, and know that you have done your part, albeit reluctantly." He ushered Ebenezer to the door. "Adieu, Father: when you commence your holy war, spare my friend here, who hath pled in your behalf. As for me, Monsieur Casteene himself could never find me. Ignatius vobiscum."
"Et vobiscum diabolus," replied the priest.
Thus they left, Ebenezer too ashamed to bid their host farewell, and, after saddling their horses, struck out along a road that, so Burlingame declared, curved southward in wide arc to the Choptank River ferry, whence they planned to cross to Cambridge, inquire the whereabouts of William Smith, and then proceed to Malden. It was a magnificent autumn day, brisk and bright, and whatever the Laureate's mood, Burlingame's was clearly buoyant.
"One more portion of Smith's history to find!" he cried as their horses ambled down the road. "Only think on't: I may soon learn who I am!"
"Let us hope this William Smith is less refractory," the poet replied. "One may acquire more guilt in learning who he is than the answer can atone for."
Burlingame rode on some minutes in silence before he tried again to begin conversation.
"Methinks Lord Baltimore was ill-advised on the character of that Jesuit, but a general cannot know all of his lieutenants. There is a saying among the Papists, Do not judge the entire priesthood by a priest."
"There is another from the Gospels," said Ebenezer. "By their fruits ye shall know them. ."
"Thou'rt too severe, my friend!" Burlingame showed a measure of impatience. "Is't that you did not sleep enough last night?"
The Laureate blushed. "Last night I had in mind some verses, and wrote them down lest I forget them."
"Indeed! I'm pleased to hear't; you have been too long away from your muse."
The solicitude in his friend's voice removed, at least for the time, Ebenezer's perturbation, and, though he suspected that he was being humored, he smiled and with some shyness said, "Their subject is the salvage Indian, that I am much impressed by."
"Then out on't, I must hear them!"
After some hesitation Ebenezer consented, not especially because he thought Burlingame's eagerness was genuine, but rather because in the welter of conflicting sentiment he experienced towards his friend, his poetic gift was the only ground that in his relations with his former tutor he felt he could stand upon firmly and without abashment. He fished out his notebook from the large pocket of his coat and, leaving his mare to walk without direction, opened to the freshly written couplets.
" 'Twas a salvage we saw yesterday morning that prompted me," he explained, and began to read, his voice jogging with the steps of his horse:
"Scarce had I left the Captains Board
And taking Horse, made Tracks toward
The Chesapeake, when, giving Chase
To flighty Deer, a horrid Face
Came into View: a Salvage 'twas —
We stay'd our Circumbendibus
To look on Him, and He on us.
O'ercoming soon my first Surprize,
I set myself to scrutinize
His Visage wild, his Form exotick
Barb'rous Air, and Dress erotick,
His brawny Shoulders, greas'd and bare
His Member, all devoid of Hair
And swinging free, his painted Skin
And naked Chest, inviting Sin
With Ladies who, their Beauty faded,
Husbands dead, or Pleasures jaded,
Fly from Virtues narrow Way
Into the Forest, there to lay
With Salvages, to their Damnation
Sinning by their Copulation,
Lewdness, Lust, and Fornication,
All at once. ."
"Well writ!" cried Burlingame. "Save for your preachment at the last, 'tis much the same sentiment as my own." He laughed. "I do suspect you had more on your mind last night than just the heathen: all that love-talk makes me yearn for my sweet Portia!"
"Stay," the poet cautioned at once. "Fall not into the vulgar error of the critics, that judge a work ere they know the whole of it. I go on to speculate whence came the Indian."
"Your pardon," Burlingame said. "If the rest is excellent as the first, thou'rt a poet in sooth."
Ebenezer flushed with pleasure and read on, somewhat more forcefully:
"Whence came this barb'rous Salvage Race,
That wanders yet 'oer MARYLANDS Face?
Descend they all from those old Sires,
Remarked by Plato and such like Liars
From lost Atlantis, sunken yet
Beneath the Ocean, cold and wet?
Or is he wiser who ascribes
Their Genesis to those ten Tribes
Of luckless Jews, that broke away
From Israel, and to this Day
Have left no Traces, Signs, or Clews —
Are Salvages but beardless Jews?
Or are they sprung, as some maintain,
From that same jealous, incestuous Cain,
Who with twin Sister fain had lay'd
And whose own Brother anon he slay'd:
Fleeing then Jehovah's Wrath
Did wend his cursed, rambling Path
To MARYLANDS Doorsill, there to hide
In penance for his Fratricide,
And hiding, found no liv'lier Sport
Than siring Heathens, tall and short?
Still others hold, these dark-skinn'd Folk
Escap'd the Deluge all unsoak'd
That carry'd off old Noahs Ark
Upon its long and wat'ry Lark,
And drown'd all Manner of Men save Two:
The Sailors in Old Noahs Crew
(That after all were but a Few),
And this same brawny Salvage Host,
Who, safe behind fair MARYLANDS Coast,
Saw other Mortals sink and die
Whilst they remain'd both high and dry.
Another Faction claims to trace
The Hist'ry of this bare-Bumm'd Race
Back to Mankinds Pucelage,
That Ovid calls the Golden Age:
When kindly Saturn rul'd the Roost.