T IS ever the way of crowds to mock what they can not understand. And the good folk of Orfordnesse were in no wise different from other crowds; children thumbed their noses at old Master Thorne; young men sharpened their tongues with witticisms at his expense at the White Hart tavern; the elders shook their heads, saying that no good could come of such doings as his, and there was talk of putting him in the pillory. The very dogs of the haven barked at his threadbare heels when he limped to the ale house.
So that now old Master Thorne rarely showed himself in the village, subsisting no one knew just how, but laboring of nights, as the gleam of a candle in the casement showed. Honest men, it was well known, did not work in the hours of darkness.
So they called him the Mad Cosmographer.
He had gathered in the cottage the fruits of years of wandering, of talks with outland shipmen, of studying mariners' journals and the manuscripts of Oxford. He had brought charts from Paris, and once he had been forced to flee from Spain when he managed to copy fairly the world-map of Ptolemy the Astrologer.
For in Venice and Genoa and Seville the secrets of navigation were jealously guarded; the charts of hidalgos errant were the property of the state, and knowledge of the deviation of the compass, and the use of the cross-staff for observation of the sun were kept from other nations.
But Master Thorne labored of nights comparing charts and drawing the coasts of the Western Ocean and the vague Pacific that was supposed to be no more than a wide strait lying between New Spain and Cathay.
“For, my masters,” he said in the White Hart tavern, “how may our shipmen and navigants set forth an they have not true charts of the outer seas? I have seen the wealth of the new worlds swell the coffers of the dons, and great fleets of caravellas come in from the gold coasts and spiceries. What share have we in this trade?
“The notable navigant, Messer John Cabot, did draw a true and fair mappamundi; where is it to be seen now? Where is the good Cabot? Both have met foul play.”
To this the folk of the village made response with many a wink and covert nudge.
“Take care, Master Thorne. Thou be'st grown so great in opinion, the hidalgos may prick 'ee. Thou may'st drink a bitter browst of thine own brewing.”
Master Thorne always faced his tormentors defiantly, stick in hand, his high quavering voice cutting through all other talk as a boatswain's whistle pierces the rattle of gear.
“Our fortune lies beyond the known seas and we men of England have no heart to seek it.”
“What boots it,” they made answer, “if cargoes of silk and oil and balm come to us from Cathay, out of the Levant in Venetian bottoms? We have enough of our own, God be praised.”
They fared well enough to their thinking with the coast fisheries and the occasional run into Antwerp or Venice. Only the Hollanders and the Spaniards built the tall vessels that could venture beyond the edge of the known world. And they were soon weary of Thorne's warnings and urgings that some one must set out on the longer voyages.
“We hold no traffic wi' the seas of darkness, nor the pagan folk,” they said.
“Aye,” one added, “'tis true beyond peradventure that mariners who sail over the edge of the known seas enter into the realm and dominion of the Evil One.”
“Art mad, Gaffer Thorne,” gibed a tippler. “Art plaguish wi' thy tongue as thy wildling boy Ralph wi' his sword—he that swashes bucklers and ruffles it among the squires of dames in London town.”
“A foul lie,” cried the old man, drawing his weather stained cloak about him and grasping his stick as if it were the hilt of a sword.
It irked his pride that Ralph had never sought for service on the king's ships, and the wits of Orfordnesse knew it.
“Ralph at least is oversea.”
“Nay, Gaffer Thorne, he's opzee—seas over. He's drunk as a lord.”
“I warrant—” another gibe cut through the shout of laughter that went up at this sally—“the Mad Cosmographer hath come to learn if his lad be master of one of the three tall ships that be standing in past the sand spits.”
N THIS moment, when Sir Hugh Willoughby's three ships had been sighted and many of the folk of Orfordnesse had gathered at the White Hart, Ralph Thorne dismounted from a sweat-darkened horse in the courtyard and entered the taproom, pausing for a moment on the threshold when he heard the words of the last speakers.