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It was very natural that Sir Christopher Gardiner should have
been exceedingly perplexed at the information which he had received,
in such a fragmentary manner, from the Ludlows. He
had received nothing by the recent arrival from England, and
according to the tenor of his former letters, affairs had been in
a very hopeful train for the advancement of his own plans.

Just previously to Gardiner's arrival in New England, Sir
Ferdinando had meditated a great change in his schemes. His
fertile imagination suggested to him, that one great obstacle to
his success, lay in the New England Council — of which,
although he was one of its most influential members, he was,
after all, only a fraction, and consequently often hampered in
his plans by want of sympathy, or by direct opposition on the
part of his associates. Another difficulty with which he had to
contend, lay in the instruments with which he had been obliged
to work. He had been disappointed that he had been unable to
inspire his son with any of his enthusiasm. The pictures which
he painted to him did not dazzle him at all. But, while Sir
Ferdinando was casting anxiously about him, and regretting that
the character of his son altogether unfitted him from taking any
part in his design, it so happened that circumstances took him
to the continent, and he chanced one day to meet Sir Christopher
Gardiner at Madrid. Circumstances which we have not
yet time to explain, and an intimate connection with the Gorges
family, which will probably develop itself more fully as this history
proceeds, had made the elder and younger knights familiar

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with each other. Gardiner had then but recently appeared, after
nearly twenty years' absence in foreign climes, during which he
had been disinherited. Strange adventures, in which he had
been an actor, had from time to time been whispered in England.
He had been a pilgrim to the Holy Land — he had been
in many battles, by sea and land, and in the service of many
states. He had dwelt long in Venice, that marble portal
through which so long had flowed the commerce of the world,
and dwelt there in some important, but mysterious capacity. It
was certain that he had been engaged in the celebrated mock
conspiracy of the Duke d'Ossuna against the Republic, in which
the subordinates all lost their lives, while he preserved not only
his head, but increased both his credit and his fortune. Disguised
as a barefooted friar, he had repeatedly passed between
Naples and Venice, without even exciting a suspicion; and
throughout the whole drama, even to the explosion of the conspiracy,
he had been the right hand and most trusty agent of the
Duke, in all his daring, subtle, but unsuccessful schemes. At
this juncture he had suddenly disappeared, as if the earth had
swallowed him. And after men had done speculating, whether
he had been sunk in the lagoons, or whether his friend, the Viceroy
of the Sicilies, had popped him into the crater of Etna, to
prevent any inconvenient blabbing, he had suddenly, after a
long interval, re-appeared in England, which he had left a boy,
and where no man knew his face. Some said he had not always
borne the name he bore. Some whispered that there were potent
reasons for disguise. That he had commanded a band of
Uscoques, or Dalmatian pirates, was believed by some; while
others were perfectly certain that he had distinguished himself
in a memorable action, in which the gallies of the Knights of
St. John had utterly routed and destroyed these scourges of the
Adriatic. He was indeed generally believed to have been a
Knight of Malta; and if so, he was probably not an Uscoque.

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At the same time, it was currently reported that he had married
an English woman of rank and fortune in Rome, and repudiated
her soon afterward for a Cardinal's hat, with the Pope's triple
crown in perspective. Missing the election to St. Peter's chair
by a single vote, they said he had thrown down his hat in a rage,
and had suddenly bolted to the East. Here he was known to
have resided a long time, and was suspected by many wiseacres
of having adopted the koran and the turban, and to have been
rewarded with the pachalic over a dozen different provinces,
whence he was only removed to occupy the station of grand
vizier. Hence he was again driven, by a wild passion which
the chief sultana conceived for him. Reciprocating the sentiment,
but averse to the bowstring, he had made his escape with
the assistance of the chief eunuch; and while the unfortunate
Fatima was sinking to the bottom of the Bosphorus, he was
heartlessly skimming across its surface in the swiftest of feluccas.
The thread of his adventures was snapped again at this moment;
but the wiseacres, tracking him like bloodhounds, came up some
how or other with him in Spain, where he had gone to visit his
friend, the Duke d'Ossuna, who had returned to his country and
made his peace at court. Thence, people said he had been
startled by the unlooked for appearance of his wife, who, after
dodging him through all his windings, from Venice through the
Cardinal's college to the Levant, and so across the Mediterranean
to Spain, had suddenly confronted him in the Escurial.
Giving her the slip, he appeared to have found the seven-leagued
boots, and to have dashed off again to the world's end. The
wiseacres were once more baffled.

A little only of the nonsense which had been talked about him,
may indicate the estimation in which he had at one time been
held, and even shadow forth the probable character of the man
about whom so much mysterious folly had been engendered.
And yet there were undoubtedly a good many truths mixed with

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the absurd gossip which was so greedily swallowed. This history
may probably eliminate the real from the fanciful; — but
at present we are only concerned to account for his intimacy
with Sir Ferdinando Gorges. That doughty old knight, and
most brilliant of schemers, almost fainted upon Gardiner's neck
when he discovered him. He had known him long and well;
and without stating at present the precise relation in which they
stood, let it suffice, that never were two persons better adapted
to be useful and serviceable to each other. Gardiner was very
ready to recommence his adventures on a new scene. His battered
fortunes, he thought, would be admirably recruited by the
creation of a magnificent county palatine in the El Dorado; and
his jaded imagination, palled by his varied and chequered adventures
in the moss-grown world, where he had run his race,
plumed her wings, and soared high again as the visions of a
new empire in a virgin world flashed across him for the first
time.

As for Sir Ferdinando, he probably knew how much to believe
of the various adventures reported — not by Sir Christopher
himself, however, for he was silent and impenetrable — of that
adventurous personage. He cared not whether he was monk or
martyr, Turk or Christian, Knight of Malta or Dalmatian pirate,
cardinal, pope, or vizier. He knew his character thoroughly; —
knew that no better man could possibly be found in the breadth
of England for his purposes. Trained from boyhood to the use
of every weapon, insensible to fatigue, calm in danger, subtle
in scheming, prompt in action, commanding in person, and
above all, untroubled with that inconvenient companion, a conscience,
Sir Christopher seemed to have been expressly compounded
for his great designs.

Gardiner's patience had however been severely tried. To a
man of his impetuous nature, the languor which seemed to
characterize all the proceedings of his English confederates

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caused much annoyance, and the inactivity to which it
doomed him became inexpressibly galling. Saving the society
of Jaspar, and the occasional companionship of the suzerain of
Merry-Mount, to which potentate he imparted just as much, or
as little as he chose, of his own thoughts, his life was passed
either in solitude or in masquerade.

Gardiner, however, possessed a deep knowledge of human
nature, and reading Morton's character at a glance, he saw how
much assistance might be derived from his various qualities and
accomplishments, although his flippancy and recklessness caused
him great uneasiness. In his intercourse with the brethren
at I lymouth, whom he visited in the demure character of a
spiritually-minded and contrite man, he had found how much
irritation existed in the minds of those holy men at the madcap
freaks of Morton and his ragamuffin subjects.

The news which Gardiner had just gathered was very perplexing.
The vessel which brought the intelligence seemed to
have arrived at Plymouth directly after his last visit to that place,
and he now found that by hurrying away he had only gained an
increase of anxiety. As the Ludlows informed him that a new
company of Puritans had obtained a patent from the New England
Council, it seemed pretty certain that Sir Ferdinando's
efforts had been foiled, and that the contemplated dissolution
of the New England Council and division of its territory was
as far off as ever. This new movement disconcerted all his
schemes. His plan, which to a sanguine and scheming nature
like his, seemed not impracticable, of transferring the Plymouth
company to Shawmut, to hold their territory — although that,
of course, was to be kept a secret from them at present —
under a grant from himself, when he should have become lord
proprietor of the whole province; and of occupying all the
important points upon the coast with colonists upon whom he
could rely, required a considerable reinforcement in men,

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money, and every kind of material from England. Concerning
this matter he had repeatedly written to Sir Ferdinando, and
he was anxiously expecting the arrival, during the summer, of at
least a thousand picked men — fellows who had served abroad,
and had been accustomed to a life of adventure — who were to
be occupied in building fortifications at first, and afterwards in
agriculture, fishing, and Indian trading.

Gardiner was at a loss how to act at present. Sir Ferdinando
must have written to him, but his letters might be still at Plymouth;
or they might have been intrusted to some messenger;
or they might have been inclosed, as for particular reasons had
sometimes been done, under cover to William Blaxton, the Solitary
of Shawmut.

While the knight was ruminating upon these matters, the day
was fast declining. At the moment when he had parted from
the Ludlows, he had intended to proceed immediately to his
boat, which he had moored in a little cove about a mile from
their residence. Lost in meditation, however, he had loitered
in the forest longer than he had intended, and he was aroused at
last upon perceiving the almost level beams of the sun piercing
through the mighty pines around. Finding, moreover, that his
thoughts were occasionally wandering from the grave matters
which immediately engaged his attention, to the marble brow
and chiselled features of the beautiful Esther, he checked the
vagrant current of his reflections, and hurried with a rapid and
impatient step to the shore. He found his faithful Indian attendant
seated in the boat, and wondering what had become of
his master. Sketwarroes was an invaluable acquisition, which
Gardiner had made in England. He had been one of a number
of savages kidnapped in the south-eastern region of New England,
by the infamous captain Hunt, and by him sold into slavery.
He had been, however, rescued, brought to England, and protected
by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, in whose service he had

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remained several years; so that the English language being
familiar to him, his services as an interpreter were very valuable
to Gardiner, to whom his friend Sir Ferdinando had intrusted
him.

The sun went down, as the little boat, spreading her light sail
to a faint easterly breeze, slowly cleft her way across the purple
waves. It was already dusk when the first great headland which
interposes itself between Naumkeak and the outer promontory
of Massachusetts Bay was rounded, and within an hour afterward
it fell a flat calm, before a quarter of the little voyage had
been completed.

After watching the stars till past midnight, and waiting in vain
for the faintest breath of wind from any quarter of the horizon,
Gardiner abandoned the helm to Sketwarroes, wrapped himself
in his cloak, and stretched himself calmly to sleep in the bottom
of the boat.