# Cup of Gold (1929)/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV
PANAMA was a great, lovely city in 1670 when Henry Morgan determined on its destruction; a rich, strong city, and justly called the Cup of Gold. No place in all the raw New World could compare with it in beauty and in wealth.
Over a century before, Balboa had come to the shore of a new ocean. He dressed himself in scoured armor and waded into the Pacific until the gentle water washed his thighs. Then, in an oration, he firmly addressed the sea and claimed all lands it broke on for the crown of Spain. He demanded that the water be tractable and loyal, for it was to be the honored private lake of Castile and Aragon.
Behind Balboa, on the shore, huddled a small grass village of the Indians, and its name was Panama. In the native tongue this signified a place of good fishing. When the soldiers of Spain put torch to the litter of huts, and in its place built a new town, they kept the old name, Panama, which is a song. And soon the meaning justified itself, for out of this little town the nets of Spain were flung to the four directions.
Pedrarias carried the nets to the north and enmeshed the cities of the ancient Mayan race. He was enabled, of his fishing, to send strangely ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/159 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/160 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/161 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/162 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/163 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/164 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/165 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/166 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/167 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/168 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/169 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/170 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/171 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/172 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/173 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/174 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/175 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/176 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/177 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/178 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/179 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/180 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/181 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/182 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/183 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/184 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/185 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/186 ​Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/187 ​A laugh followed his last words. Many of these men had lived in the jungle and had made their livelihood with hunting wild cattle. The captain rubbed their avarice : “Gold and jewels past hope of counting are in the city. Every man of you will be rich if we suc- ceed.”
Their hunger:
“Think of the roasted meats, the barrels of wine in the cellars, the spiced puddings. Imagine them!”
Their lust:
“Women slaves there are in the city, and thou- sands of other women, God knows! Your difficulty will be only in judging which to choose from the multitude that will fall to us. These are not grubby field women, but great ladies who lie in silken beds, How will your skins feel in beds like those, do you suppose?” And last, because he knew them very well, he raised the standard of their vanity. “The names of those who take part in this fight will climb the stairs of history. This is no pillage, but glorious war. Imagine to yourselves the people of Tortuga pointing to you and saying, ‘That man was in the fight at Panama. That man is a hero, and rich.” Think how the women of Goaves will run after you when you go home again. There is the Cup of Gold before you. Will you run away? Many will die in the field to-day, but those who re- main will carry golden Panama home in their pockets.” A hoarse cheer arose. The French kissed their [181] ​hands to Henry Morgan; the Caribs chattered and rolled their eyes. The gourmand Zeerovers looked dully at the white city.
“One thing more,” said the captain. “The troops will be drawn up in a line, if I know these Spanish captains. They like to make as great a show as possible. Your orders are to fire at their center, all of you; and when that center is weakened, then charge and split them.”
They mowed out on the plain, a dense cloud of men. Two hundred marksmen walked in advance, while the rest were grouped behind.
Now Don Juan, the Governor of Panama, stood with his neat army, a long line of foot soldiers in companies of two files. He looked at the rough formation of the enemy with contempt. Almost gayly he signaled for the first advance,
The Spanish cavalry swung out, wheeling and whirling across the plain. Now they formed a V, and now a hollow square. Moving at a fast trot, they went through all the intricate evolutions of a review; they made triangles, T’s. In one moment every sword glanced in the sunlight, then was made to disappear by twisting wrists, and then to flash again. Don Juan groaned with admiration.
“Look at them, my friends; look at Rodriguez, my beloved captain. Ah, Rodriguez! is it really 1 who have taught you these things? Can it be that this is the Rodriguez I held in my arms a little time ago? He was a baby then, but now he is a man and a hero. See the line, the sureness, the pre- cision. See Rodriguez with his troop, my friends. [ 182] ​How may these beasts of buccaneers overcome horsemen like mine?”
Rodriguez, at the head of his troop, seemed to hear the Governor's praise. His shoulders stiffened. He rose in his stirrups and gave the signal for the charge. The bugles sang excitedly. The hooves roared with a hollow rolling sound over the turf. Their coming was like a red wave with a silver crest. Rodriguez turned in his saddle and looked proudly at the hurtling troop behind him, following his orders as though they were the multi-members of one great body governed by his brain. Every saber was lined along a horse’s neck. Rodriguez turned again to look once more at his lovely Panama before the shock. And then the whole troop rode headlong into a marsh. They knew it was there, but in the enthusiasm of the moment, in the excitement of their figures, they had forgotten about it. In a second the horse of Panama was a broken jumble of men and fallen beasts. They were flies caught in a green flypaper.
Don Juan looked dazedly at the pile of writhing, mangled bodies out on the plain, and then he burst into sobs like a child who has seen his bright toy broken in the road. The Governor did not know what to do. His brain was heavy with a red sorrow. He turned about and started plodding homeward. He would go and hear a mass in the Cathedral, he thought.
The Spanish staff had grown frantic. Red and gold uniforms were rushing about in every direction. Every officer shouted commands at the top ​of his voice. The young lieutenant who had brought up the cattle finally made himself heard. “Turn loose the bulls—the bulls,” he cried, over and over, until the others were shouting it also. The Indians who held the bulls tore out the nose rings and began prodding the great beasts forward with their goads. Slowly the herd moved out across the plain. Then a red monster broke into a slow run, and immediately the whole band was running.
“They will trample these robbers into the grass,” said a Spanish officer wisely. “Where they pass, we shall find buttons, pieces of weapons—nothing more—on the bloody ground.”
The bulls galloped slowly toward the rough line of the buccaneers. Suddenly the two hundred marksmen knelt and fired—fired quickly, like men hunting game. A kicking, bellowing wall seemed to rise up in the path of the running animals. Those of the herd that were not crippled halted in their tracks, sniffed the blood, milled, and then stampeded in terror back on the Spanish ranks. The officer was right. Where they passed, nothing remained except buttons and broken weapons and bloody turf.
In the horror of the stampede the buccaneers had charged. Now they dashed into the hole the bulls had made, and drove the split defenders left and right. There were a few war cries, but these were continental soldiers. They could not understand this kind of fighting. These terrible vagrants laughed and killed men with both of their hands. ​The men of Spain held ground for a little while, but then their hearts broke under their fine red coats, and they ran away to hide in the jungle. Little knots of buccaneers pursued them, spitting those who fell exhausted. Soon the defending troops were scattered. Some of them climbed into the trees and hid themselves among the leaves; some lost themselves in the mountains and were never found. The Cup of Gold lay helpless before Henry Morgan.
A crowd of shouting men poured through the undefended gate and up the broad street. At crossing alleys, part of the line changed its course, like a river flowing backwards into its tributaries. Now and then a party would detach itself from the main body and move on one of the imposing houses. There would be kicks on the door, a rush, and the door would fold inward like the cover of an enormous book. The men would crowd through the entrance—cries and a scream or two. An old woman leaned from a window and looked with curiosity at the invaders. Then disappointment showed in her face.
“Hi!” she screamed to a window across the way. “Look at this, will you! These thieves look very much like our own Spaniards. They are not devils at all, but only men.” She seemed to resent their humanity. She withdrew her head as though she renounced them for being only men.
In the afternoon a fire broke out. Tall flames lanced into the sky. A section caught, a street; half the city was burning.
​Henry Morgan went to the Palace of the Governor to establish his quarters, and there, in the doorway, stood Don Juan Perez de Guzman, with a naked rapier in his hand.
“I am the Governor,” he said brokenly. “My people looked to me to defend them against this scourge. I have failed—but perhaps I can manage to kill you.”
Henry Morgan looked at the ground. Something about this hysterical man unnerved him. “I did not set the fire,” he said. “Some of your own slaves did that out of revenge, I think.”
Don Juan moved forward with his drawn rapier. “Defend yourself!” he cried.
Captain Morgan did not change his position.
The sword dropped from the Governor’s hand. “I am a coward—a coward,” he cried. “Why did I not strike without speaking? Why did you not oppose me? Ah, I am a coward! I waited too long. I should never have spoken at all, but driven my point into your throat. I wanted to die a moment ago—to die as a kind of atonement for my failure—and to take you with me as a peace offering to my conscience. Panama is gone—and I should be gone, too. It is as though a finger continued to live after the body has died. But I cannot die now. I haven’t the courage. And I cannot kill you. I realize how I pretended. Ah! if I had only acted quickly! If I had not spoken—” He walked away toward the gate and the open country. Henry Morgan watched him drunkenly lurching out of the city.
​The black night came. Nearly all of the city was in flame, a garden of red fire. The tower of the Cathedral crashed down and threw a heaven of sparks into the air. Panama was dying in a bed of flame, and the buccaneers were murdering the people in the streets.
All night the captain sat in the audience chamber while his men brought in the gathered plunder. They piled golden bars on the floor like cord-wood, bars so heavy that two men carried each of them with difficulty. There were little stacks of jewels like glittering haycocks, and in a corner the precious vestments of the church were heaped, the stock of a heavenly old clothes market.
Henry Morgan sat in a tall chair carved in the likeness of many serpents.
“Have you found La Santa Roja?”
“No, sir. The women of the town are more like devils.”
Prisoners were brought in to be put to the torture with a thumbscrew taken from the Spanish prison.
“Kneel! Your wealth? [Silence] Turn, Joe!”
“Mercy! Mercy! I will lead you; I swear it. A cistern near my house.”
Another—
“Kneel! Your wealth? Turn, Joe!”
“I will lead you.”
As regular, ruthless, and unfeeling they were as master slaughterers in a cow pen.
“Have you found La Santa Roja? I will hang all of you if she is harmed.”
​“No one has seen her, sir. The men, except a few, are drunk,”
All through the night— With each confession of wealth concealed, the victim was led out by a party of searchers, and soon they would return, bearing cups and silver plates, jewels, and clothing of colored silk. The glowing treasure in the Hall of Audience was becoming one enormous heap.
And Captain Morgan, wearily:
“Have you found the Red Saint?”
“We have not found her, sir, but we are seeking and inquiring over the whole city. Perhaps in the daylight, sir—”
“Where is Cœur de Gris?”
“I think he is drunk, sir, but—” He looked away from Henry Morgan.
“But what? What do you mean?” the captain cried.
“Nothing; I mean nothing at all, sir. It is almost certain that he is drunk, Only it takes such gallons of wine to make him drunk, and perhaps he has found a friend in the meantime.”
“Did you see him with any one?”
“Yes, sir; I saw him with a woman, and she was drunk. I could swear that Cur de Gris was drunk, too.”
“Did you think the woman might have been La Santa Roja?”
“Oh, no, sir; I am sure it was not she. Only one of the women of the town, sir,”
There was a clash of golden service thrown on the pile.
IV
A yellow dawn crept out of the little painted hills of Panama and grew bolder as it edged across the plain. The sun flashed up from behind a peak, and its golden rays sought for their city. But Panama had died, had felt the quick decay of fire in one red night. But then, as the sun is a fickle sphere, the seeking beams found joy in the new thing. They lighted on the poor ruins, peered into upturned dead faces, raced along the cluttered streets, fell headlong into broken patios. They came to the white Palace of the Governor, leaped through the windows of the audience chamber, and fingered the golden heap on the floor.
Henry Morgan was asleep in the serpent chair. His purple coat was draggled with the mud of the plain. The gray-clad rapier lay on the floor beside him. He was alone in this room, for all the men who had helped to pick the city’s bones during the night had gone away to drink and to sleep.
It was a high, long room, walled with panels of polished cedar. The beams of the ceiling were as black and heavy as old iron. It had been a court of justice, a place of wedding feasts, the hall where ambassadors were toasted or murdered. One door opened on the street; the other, a broad, arched opening, let into a lovely garden about which the Palace lay curled. In the middle of the garden a little marble whale spouted its steady stream into a pool. There were giant plants in red glazed pots, plants with purple leaves and flowers whose petals ​bore arrow heads or hearts or squares in cardinal. There were shrubs, lined with harsh tracery in the mad colors of the jungle. A monkey no larger than a rabbit picked over the gravel of the path, looking for seeds.
On one of the stone seats of the garden a woman was sitting. She pulled a yellow flower to bits while she sang fragments of a tender, silly song—“I would pluck the flower of the day for you, my love, where it grows in the dawning.” Her eyes were black, but opaque. They were the rich, sheening, shallow black of a dead fly’s wings, and under the lids there were sharp little lines. She could draw up the under lids of her eyes so that they shone with laughter, though her mouth remained harsh and placid. Her skin was very pale, her hair straight and black as obsidian.
Now she looked at the sun’s inquisitive light, and now at the arched doorway of the Hall of Audience. Her singing stopped. She listened intently a moment, then started the gentle song again. There was no other sound save the distant cracklings of the fire which still burned among the palm slave huts on the outskirts of the city. The little monkey came at a funny, crooked gallop along the path. He stopped in front of the woman and raised his black paws above his head as though in prayer.
The woman spoke softly to him. “You have learned your lesson well, Chico. Your teacher was a Castilian with a fearful mustache. I am well acquainted with him. Do you know, Chico, he ​wants what he considers my honor. He will not be satisfied until he has added my honor to his own, and then he will be almost boastful. You have no idea of the size and weight of his honor even as it is. But you would be satisfied with a nut, wouldn’t you, Chico?” She dropped a piece of her flower to the tiny beast, whereupon he seized it, put it in his mouth, and spat in disgust.
“Chico! Chico! you forget your teacher! That is all wrong. You will get no woman’s honor by it. Place the flower over your heart, kiss my hand with a loud snapping sound, and then stride off like a fierce sheep out searching for wolves.” She laughed and glanced again toward the doorway. Although there was no sound, she rose and walked quickly toward the Hall of Audience.
Henry Morgan had turned slightly in his chair, and his turning allowed the sunlight to beat upon his eyelids. Suddenly he sat up and stared about him. He looked with satisfaction at the heap of treasure on the floor, then gazed full in the eyes of the woman standing under the broad arch.
“And have you ruined our poor city enough for your satisfaction?” she asked.
“I did not burn the city,” Henry said quickly. “Some of your Spanish slaves set the torch.” The words had been forced from him. He remembered that he was surprised. “Who are you?” he demanded.
She moved a step into the hall. “My name is Ysobel. It was said that you sought me.”
​“Sought you?”
“Yes. I have been called La Santa Roja by certain young idiots,” she said.
“You—the Red Saint?”
He had prepared a picture in his mind, a picture of a young girl with blue, seraphic eyes that would fall before the steady stare of a mouse. These eyes did not fall. Under their soft black surfaces they seemed to be laughing at him, making light of him. This woman’s face was sharp, almost hawk-like. She was beautiful, truly, but hers was the harsh, dangerous beauty of lightning. And her skin was white—not pink at all.
“You are the Red Saint?”
He was not prepared for this change of idea, He was staggered at such a revolt against his preconceptions. But, said his mind, twelve hundred men and more had broken their way through the jungle, had dashed on the city like a brutal wave. Hundreds of humans had died in the agony of wounds, hundreds were crippled, the Cup of Gold was a ruin; and all these things had been done that Henry Morgan might take La Santa Roja. With all this preparation, it must be certain that he loved her. He would not have come if he had not loved her. Whatever the shock of her appearance, he could not circumvent the logic that he loved her. It must be so. Always he had thought of the “Saint” in her name; and now he perceived the reason for the adjective. But a queer feeling was seeping in on him—no logical feeling at all. He remembered such sensations from a time long ​gone; he was drawn, yet repelled by this woman, and he felt her power to embarrass him. Morgan closed his eyes, and the figure of a slender little girl with golden hair stood in the darkness of his brain.
“You are like Elizabeth,” he said, in the dull monotone of one dreaming. “You are like, and yet there is no likeness. Perhaps you master the power she was just learning to handle. I think I love you, but I do not know. I am not sure.”
His eyes had been half closed, and when he opened them there was a real woman before him, not the wraith-like Elizabeth. And she was gazing at him with curiosity, and perhaps, he thought, with some affection. It was queer that she had come to him when no one had forced her to come. She must be fascinated. He reached into his memory for the speeches he had built on his way across the isthmus.
“You must marry me, Elizabeth—Ysobel. I think I love you, Ysobel. You must come away with me and live with me and be my wife, under the protection of my name and of my hand.”
“But I am already married,” she interposed; “quite satisfactorily married.”
He had even foreseen this. During the nights of the march he had planned this campaign as carefully as he might have planned a battle.
“But is it right that two, meeting and flaming white fire, should go apart for stark eternity, should trudge off into bleak infinity; that each of these two should bear black embers of a flame that has not burned itself to death? Is there anything under ​heaven to forbid us this burning? Heaven has given the deathless oil; each of us carries a little torch for the other. Ah, Ysobel—deny it, or shrink from the intruding knowledge if you will. You would vibrate to my touch like the fine body of an old violin.
“You are afraid, I think. There is in your mind a burrowing apprehension of the world; the prying world, the spiteful world. But do you not be fearsome, for I say to you that this world is a blind, doddering worm, knowing three passions only—jealousy, curiosity, and hate. It is easy to defeat the worm, so only you make the heart a universe to itself. The worm, having no heart, cannot conceive the workings of a heart. He lies confounded by the stars of this new system.
“Why do I tell you these things, Ysobel—knowing you will understand them? You must understand them. Perhaps I know by the dark, sweet music of your eyes. Perhaps I can read the throbbing heart-beats on your lips. Your beating heart is a little drum urging me to battle with your fears. Your lips are like twin petals of a red hibiscus.
“And if I find you lovely, am I to be put in fear by a dull circumstance? May I not speak my thought to you whom it most concerns next to myself? Do not let us go apart bearing black embers of a flame that has not burned itself to death.”
When he had started to speak she listened carefully to his words, and then a little pain had flitted across her face; but when he had done there was only amusement in her eyes—that and the lurking ​ridicule under their surfaces. Ysobel laughed softly.
“You forget only one thing, sir,” she said. “I do not burn. I wonder if I shall ever burn again. You do not carry a torch for me—and I hoped you did. I came this morning to see if you did. And I have heard your words so often and so often in Paris and Cordova. I am tired of these words that never change. Is there some book with which aspiring lovers instruct themselves? The Spanish men say the same things, but their gestures are more practiced, and so a little more convincing. You have much to learn.”
She was silent. Henry looked at the floor. His amazement had raised a fog of dullness in his brain.
“I took Panama for you,” he said plaintively.
“Ah—yesterday I hoped you did. Yesterday I dreamed you had, but to-day— I am sorry.” She spoke softly and very sadly.
“When I heard of you and your blustering up and down the ocean, I thought of you, somehow, as the one realist on an earth of vacillation. I dreamed that you would come to me one day, armed with a transcendent, silent lust, and force my body with brutality. I craved a wordless, reasonless brutality. The long thought of it bore me up when I was paraded by my husband. He did not love me. He was flattered with the thought that I loved him. It gave him importance and charm in his own eyes, neither of which were his. He would take me through the streets and his eyes would say, ‘See what I have married! No ordinary man could ​marry such a woman; but then, I am not an ordi- nary man.’ He was afraid of me—a little man, and afraid of me. He would say, ‘With your permission, my dear, I shall exercise the prerogative of a husband.” Ah, the contempt I have for him!
“I wanted force—blind, unreasoning force—and love not for my soul or for some imagined beauty of my mind, but for the white fetish of my body. I do not want softness. I am soft. My husband uses scented lotions on his hands before he touches me, and his fingers are like thick, damp snails. I want the crush of hard muscles, the delicious pain of little hurts.”
She searched his face closely, as though looking once more for a quality which had been lost.
“I thought richly of you once; you grew to be a brazen figure of the night. And now—I find you a babbler, a speaker of sweet, considered words, and rather clumsy about it. I find you are no realist at all, but only a bungling romancer. You want to marry me—to protect me. All men, save one, have wanted to protect me. In every way I am more able to protect myself than you are. From the morning of my first memory I have been made sick with phrases. I have been dressed in epithets and fed endearments. These other men, like you, would not say what they wanted. They, like you, felt it necessary to justify their passion in their own eyes. They, like you, must convince themselves, as well as me, that they loved me.”
Henry Morgan had sunk his head, seemingly in shame. Now he started toward her.
​“But I will force you then,” he cried.
“It is too late— I would perforce think of you standing there, declaiming your considered words. While you wrenched at my clothing, I would picture you fawning before me, blurting out your words. And I should laugh, I'm afraid. I might even protect myself—and you, who should be somewhat an authority on rape, must know the consequence of that. No, you have failed—and I am sorry of your failure.”
“I love you,” he said miserably.
“You speak as though it were some new, tremendous thing. Many men have loved me; hundreds have said they did. But what are you going to do with me, Captain Morgan? My husband is in Peru, and my inheritance is there also.”
“I—I do not know.”
“But am I to be a slave—a prisoner?”
“Yes; I must take you away with me. The men would laugh at me, else. It would ruin discipline.”
“If I must be a slave,” she said, “if I must go away from my own country, I hope I shall be your slave—yours or the property of a charming young buccaneer I met last night. But I do not think you will take me, Captain Morgan. No; I do not think you will force me to go, for I will, perhaps, twist the knife I have already in your breast.”
Henry Morgan was aroused.
“Who was this young buccaneer?” he asked crossly.
“Ah, you perceive the knife,” said Ysobel. “And ​how do I know the fellow? But he was charming, and I should like to see him again.”
The captain's eyes were flaming with rage.
“You will be locked up,” he said harshly. “You will remain in a cell until the time when we go again to Chagres. And we shall see whether this knife you speak of is sharp enough to keep you here in Panama.”
As she followed him across the garden to her jail, her clear laughter rang out. “Captain Morgan, it has just occurred to me—I have begun to see that a great many different kinds of men make the same kind of husband.”
“Get to your cell,” he ordered her.
“Oh—and Captain Morgan, you will find an old woman on the steps of the Palace. My duenna, she is. Send her to me, please. And now, good-by for the time, sir; I must get to my devotions. The sin to be dissolved, Captain Morgan, is truthfulness. It is a bad thing for the soul, truthfulness.”
He went slowly back to his chair in the Hall of Audience. He was filled with a kind of shame for his manhood. It was as though she had plucked his rapier from its scabbard and scratched his face with it while he stood helpless before her. She had beaten him without apparent effort. Now he quailed before the knowledge of his men’s laughter when they discovered his embarrassment. There would be snickering when his back was turned. Groups of pirates would be silent as he passed, and when he had gone they would break into sharp ​laughter. This hidden ridicule was terrifying to Henry Morgan. His hates began to raise their heads; hatreds not for Ysobel, but for his own men who would laugh at him; for the people of Tortuga who would tell the story in the taverns; for the whole Indian Coast.
Now from the little prison across the garden came a shrill voice praying to the Virgin. The penetrating sound charged the whole Palace with a fervent cacophony. Henry Morgan listened with shame-sharpened ears for mockery in the words or in the tone, but there was no mockery. Over and over, a shrill Ave Maria; the tone of a fearful, pleading sinner—Ora pro nobis. A shattered world, and the black skeleton of a golden city—Ora pro nobis. No mockery at all, but brokenhearted repentance reading its poor testimony on the dropping beads. A shrill woman's voice, piercing, insistent—it seemed to be digging at a tremendous, hopeless sin. She had said it was the sin of truthfulness. “I have been honest in my being, and that is a black lie on the soul. Forgive my body its humanity. Forgive my mind which knows its limitations. Pardon my soul for being anchored this little time to both. Ora pro nobis.”
The mad, endless rosary cankered in Henry's brain. At last he seized his rapier and his hat and ran from the hall into the street. Behind him the treasure lay smiling under the slanting sun.
The streets about the Governor's Palace had not been touched by the fire. Captain Morgan walked along the paved way until he came to the ways of ​ruin, Here blackened walls had spilled their stones into the road. Those houses which had been made of cedar were vanished into the frames of smoking ashes which marked their places. Here and there lay murdered citizens grinning their last agony into the sky.
“Their faces will be black before the night,” Henry thought. “I must have them removed or the sickness will come.”
Dallying clouds of smoke still arose from the city, filling the air with the sickly odor of damp things burning. The green hills beyond the plain seemed incredible to Henry Morgan. He regarded them closely and then looked back at the city. This destruction which had seemed so complete, so awful, during the night, was, after all, a pitifully small and circumscribed destruction. Henry had not thought of the hills remaining green and standing. This conquest, then, was more or less unimportant. Yes, the city was in ruins. He had destroyed the city, but the woman who had drawn him to the Cup of Gold eluded him. She escaped while she still lay in his power. Henry winced at his impotence, and shuddered that other people should know it.
A few buccaneers were poking about in the ashes, looking for melted plate which might have escaped the search of the night before. Turning a corner, Henry came upon the little Cockney Jones, and saw him quickly thrust something into his pocket. A flame of rage arose in Captain Morgan. Cœur ​de Gris had said that there was no difference between this epileptic dwarf and Henry Morgan. No difference, indeed! This man was a thief. The rage changed to a fearful lust to hurt the little man, to outrage him, to hold him up to scorn as Henry Morgan had been scorned. The cruel desire made the captain’s lips grow thin and white.
“What have you in your pocket?”
“Nothing—nothing, sir.”
“Let me see what you have in your pocket.” The captain was pointing a heavy pistol.
“It’s nothing, sir—only a little crucifix! I found it.” He drew out a golden cross studded with diamonds, and on it a Christ of ivory. “You see, it’s for my wife,” the Cockney explained.
“Ah! for your Spanish wife!”
“She’s half negro, sir.”
“You know the penalty for concealing spoil?”
Jones looked at the pistol and his face grayed. “You would not— Oh, sir, you would not—” he began chokingly. Then he seemed to be clutched by invisible, huge fingers. His arms dropped stiffly to his sides, his lips sagged open, and a dull, imbecilic light came in to his eyes. There was a little foam on his lips. His whole body twitched like a wooden dancing figure on a string.
Captain Morgan fired.
For a moment the Cockney seemed to grow smaller. His shoulders drew in until they nearly covered his chest, like short wings. His hands clenched, and then the whole contracted mass fell ​to the ground, convulsing like a thick, animate jelly. His lips drew back from his teeth in a last idiot snarl.
Henry Morgan stirred the body with his foot, and a change stirred in his mind. He had killed this man. It was his right to kill, to burn, to plunder—not because he was ethical nor even because he was clever, but because he was strong. Henry Morgan was the master of Panama and all its people. There was no will in Panama save Henry Morgan's will. He could slaughter every human in the country if he so chose. All this was true. No one would deny it. But in the Palace back there was a woman who held his power and his will in contempt, and her contempt was a stronger weapon than his will. She fenced at his embarrassment and touched him at her convenience. But how could that be? he argued. No one was master in Panama but himself, and he had just killed a man to prove it. Under the battering of his arguments the power of Ysobel waned and slowly disappeared. He would go back to the Palace. He would force her as he had promised. This woman had been treated with too much consideration. She did not realize the significance of slavery, nor did she know the iron of Henry Morgan.
He turned about and walked back toward the Palace. In the Hall of Audience he threw off his pistols, but the gray rapier remained at his side.
Ysobel was kneeling before a holy picture in her little whitewashed cell when Henry Morgan burst upon her. The dried duenna shrank into a corner ​at the sight of him, but Ysobel regarded him intently, noted his flushed face, his half-closed, fierce eyes. She heard his heavy breathing, and with a smile of comprehension rose to her feet. Her laughter rang banteringly as she drew a pin from her bodice and assumed the position of a fencer, one foot forward, her left arm held behind her for balance, the pin pointed before her like a foil.
“En garde!” she cried. Then the captain rushed at her. His arms encircled her shoulders and his hands were tearing at her clothing. Ysobel stood quite still, but one hand darted about with its pin—striking, striking—like a small white serpent. Little spots of blood appeared on Henry’s cheeks, on his throat.
“Your eyes next, captain,” she said quietly, and stabbed him thrice on the cheekbone. Henry released her and stepped away, wiping his bloody face with the back of his hand. Ysobel laughed at him. A man may beat—may subject to every violation—a woman who cries and runs away, but he is helpless before one who stands her ground and only laughs.
“I heard a shot,” she said. “I thought perhaps you had killed some one to justify your manhood. But your manhood will suffer now, will it not? Word of this encounter will get about somehow; you know how such things travel. It will be told that you were beaten with a pin in the hands of a woman.” Her tone was gloating and cruel.
Henry’s hand slipped to his side, and the lean rapier crept from its sheath like a frozen serpent. ​The light licked viciously along its lank blade. At last the needle point came out, and the steel turned and pointed at the woman’s breast.
Ysobel grew sick with terror. “I am a sinner,” she said. Then a dawning relief came into her face. She motioned the aged duenna to her and spoke in rapid, clattering Spanish.
“It is true,” said the old woman. “It is true.”
At the end of her speaking, Ysobel thriftily drew aside the webby lace of her mantilla that it might not be spotted with blood. The duenna began interpreting.
“Sir, my mistress says that a true Catholic who dies at the hand of an infidel goes to heaven. This is true. Further, she says that a Catholic woman who dies protecting her holy marriage vow goes straightway to heaven. This also is true. Lastly, she thinks that such a woman might, in course of time, be canonized. Such things have happened. Ah, sir! Captain, be kind! Permit me to kiss her hand, now, before you strike. What grace to have kissed the hand of a living saint! It may do much for my own sinful soul.”
Ysobel spoke to her again.
“My mistress bids you strike; more, she urges it, pleads for the blow. The angels are hovering about her head. She sees the great light, and the holy music is sounding in her ears.”
The rapier point lowered. Henry Morgan turned away and gazed out into the sunlit garden. Little Chico came galloping along the path and sat down in the open doorway. The little beast clasped his ​paws and raised them above his head as though in prayer. The lean rapier made a sharp swishing sound as it drove into its scabbard. And Captain Morgan stooped to pick up the tiny monkey. He walked away stroking Chico’s head with his fore-finger.
v
Henry Morgan lifted a golden cup from the heap of loot. It was a lovely, slender chalice with long curved handles and a rim of silver. Around its outer edge four grotesque lambs chased each other, and inside, on the bottom, a naked girl lifted her arms in sensual ecstasy. The captain turned the cup in his hands. Then, suddenly, he hurled it at a little fiery pyramid of diamonds. The stones scattered from their neat pile with a dry, rustling sound. Henry Morgan turned and went back to his serpent chair. He was thinking of the little Cockney, Jones; thinking of the cold hand of epilepsy which had seized him in his last moment of life. The hand had been always behind him, a giant hand to wring the man’s body until the white drops of agony oozed from his lips. Henry wondered, now, why he had wanted to hurt the little man, to torture him, and finally to kill him. Jones had been shadowed through all his life by a sleepless tormentor. Of course, this murder had been caused by the words of Cœur de Gris who had said that Jones was like Henry Morgan. Yes, he knew it now, and he knew, also, a red shame for his ​trumped charge of thievery. Why could he not have killed the man without explanation?
And Cœur de Gris—where was he now? He had seen Ysobel—that was fairly sure—and she had noticed him. Perhaps she loved Cœur de Gris, with his bright hair and his curious way with women. And how could he keep this young man from knowing his defeat, from hearing the adventure of the pin and all the ignominy of Henry Morgan's dealings with La Santa Roja? The pistol which had killed Jones was lying on the floor. Henry picked it up and methodically went to loading it. He did not fear ridicule from Cœur de Gris, but rather sympathy and understanding. Henry did not want understanding now. His lieutenant would look at him with compassion and some pity; and there would be something superior about the pity, something faintly ironic. It would be the pity of a young, handsome man who condones the amorous failure of one not so handsome. And then, Cœur de Gris was something like a woman for knowing things—something like Ysobel. He gathered information with a mysterious hidden eye.
And the Red Saint. Henry must take her away with him, of course. He could do nothing else. Perhaps, after a long time, she would fall in love with him, but not, surely, because of merits in himself. Her contempt had convinced him that he had no merits; that he was a monstrous being, set apart from other men by unmentionable ugliness. She had not said so much, but she had intimated it. No, he had not the qualities like to draw a woman ​to his side when there were other men about. But perhaps, if she saw no other men, she might ignore the qualities so lacking in him. She might come, at last, to build on something he possessed.
He thought of the last scene with her. Now that he was calm, his wild action seemed the showing off of a thick-legged little boy. But how could any man have done otherwise? She had beaten assault with laughter—sharp, cruel laughter which took his motives out and made sport of them. He might have killed her; but what man could kill a woman who wanted to be killed, who begged to be killed? The thing was impossible. He rammed a bullet into the muzzle of his pistol.
A draggled, unkempt figure came through the doorway. It was Cœur de Gris, a red-eyed, mud-spattered Cœur de Gris with the blood of the battle still on his face. He looked at the heap of treasure.
“We are rich,” he said without enthusiasm,
“Where have you been, Cœur de Gris?”
“Been? Why, I have been drunk. It is good to be drunk after fighting.” He smiled wryly and licked his lips. “It is not so good to stop being drunk. That is like child-birth—necessary, but unpleasant and unornamental.”
“I wanted you by my side,” said Henry Morgan.
“You wanted me? I was informed that you wanted no one—that you were quite complete and happy in yourself—and so I got a little drunker. You see, sir, I did not want to remember your reason for being alone.” He paused. “It was told me, sir, that the Red Saint is here.” Cœur de Gris ​laughed at his own ill-concealed emotion. He changed his manner with an effort of will. His tone became jocular.
“Tell me the truth, sir. It is a small gift to a man to know what he has missed. Many people have no other gift during their whole lives. Tell me, sir, has the sweet enemy fallen? Has the castle of flesh capitulated? Does the standard of Morgan float over the pink tower?”
Henry's face had flushed. The pistol in his hand rose quietly, steadied by an inexorable madness. There was a sharp crash and a white billow of smoke.
Cœur de Gris stood as he was. He seemed to be intently listening to some distant, throbbing sound. Then a grimace of terror spread on his face. His fingers frantically explored his breast and followed a trickle of blood to its source, a small hole in his lung. The little finger edged into the hole. Cœur de Gris smiled again. He was not afraid of certain things. Now that he knew, he was not frightened any more.
Captain Morgan stared stupidly at the pistol in his hand. He seemed surprised to discover it there, startled at its presence.
Cœur de Gris laughed hysterically.
“My mother will hate you,” he cried ruefully. “She will practice all her ancient curses upon you. My mother—” he choked over his breath. “Do not tell her. Make some gleaming lie. Build my poor life up to a golden minaret. Do not let it ​stop like a half-finished tower. But, no—you need build only a foundation. If you give her that, she will continue the structure of heroic memory. She will make for me a tomb of white, inaccurate thoughts.” His throat filled with blood. “Why did you do it, sir?”
The captain looked up from his pistol.
“Do it?” He saw the bloody lips, the torn breast; he started up from his chair and then fell back again. Misery was writing lines about his eyes. “I do not know,” he said. “I must have known, but I have forgotten.”
Cœur de Gris went slowly to his knees. He steadied himself with his knuckles on the floor. “It is my knees, sir; they will not bear me any more,” he apologized. He seemed to be listening for the throbbing sound again. Suddenly his voice rose in bitter complaint.
“It is a legend that dying men think of their deeds done. No— No— I think of what I have not done—of what I might have done in the years that are dying with me. I think of the lips of women have never seen—of the wine that is sleeping in a grape seed—of the quick, warm caress of my mother in Goaves. But mostly I think that I shall never walk about again—never, never stroll in the sunshine nor smell the rich essences the full moon conjures up out of the earth— Sir, why did you do it?”
Henry Morgan was staring at the pistol again. “I do not know,” he muttered sullenly. “I must have known, but I have forgotten. I killed a dog ​once—and I have just killed Jones. I do not know why.”
“You are a great man, captain,” Cœur de Gris said bitterly. “Great men may leave their reasons for the creative hands of their apologists. But I—why, sir, I am nothing any more—nothing. A moment ago I was an excellent swordsman; but now, my being—that which fought, and cursed, and loved—it may never have been, for all I know.” His wrists weakened and he fell to his side and lay there coughing at the obstruction in his throat. Then, for a time, there was no sound in the room save his uneven gasping for breath. But suddenly he raised himself on one elbow and laughed; laughed at some cosmic joke, some jest of the great rolling spheres; laughed triumphantly, as though he had solved a puzzle and found how simple it was. A wave of blood rode to his lips on the laughter, and filled up his throat. The laugh became a gushing sigh, and Cœur de Gris sank slowly to his side and was still, because his lungs would no longer force breath.
Henry still stared at the pistol in his hand. Slowly he raised his eyes to the open window. The streaming rays of the sun made the treasure on the floor glow like a mass of hot metal. His eyes wandered to the body in front of him. He shuddered. And then he went to Cœur de Gris, picked him up, and sat him in a chair. The limp body fell over to one side. Henry straightened it and braced it in an upright position. Then he went back to his serpent chair.
​“I raised my hand like this—” he said, pointing the pistol at Cœur de Gris. “I raised my hand like this. I must have. Cœur de Gris is dead. Like this, I raised it—like this—and pointed— How did I do it?” He bowed his head, then raised it with a chuckle.
“Cœur de Gris!” he said; “Cœur de Gris! I wanted to tell you about La Santa Roja. She rides horses, you know. She has no womanly modesty at all—none at all—and her looks are only moderate.” He peered at the propped figure before him. The eyes of Cœur de Gris had been only half closed, but now the lids slipped down and the eyes began to sink back in his head. On his face was the frozen distortion of his last bitter laughter.
“Cœur de Gris!” the captain shouted. He went quickly to the body and laid his hand on its fore-head.
“This is a dead thing,” he said musingly. “This is only a dead thing. It will bring flies and sickness. I must have it taken away at once. It will bring the flies into this room. Cœur de Gris! we have been fooled. The woman fences like a man, and she rides horses astride. So much labor lost for us! That’s what we get for believing everything we hear—eh, Cœur de Gris?—But this is only a dead thing, and the flies will come to it.”
He was interrupted by a tramp of feet on the stair. A band of his men entered, driving in their midst a poor frightened Spaniard—a mud-draggled, terrified Spaniard. The lace had been torn from ​his neck, and a little stream of blood ran from one sleeve.
“Here is a Spaniard, sir,” the leader said. “He came to the city bearing a white flag. Shall we respect the white flag, sir? He has silver on his saddle. Shall we kill him, sir? Perhaps he is a spy.”
Henry Morgan ignored the speech. Instead he pointed to the body in the chair.
“That is only a dead thing,” he announced. “That is not Cœur de Gris. I sent Cœur de Gris away. He will be back soon. But that is— I raised my hand like this—do you see?—like this. I know exactly how I did it; I have tried it again and again. But that is a dead thing. It will bring the flies to us.” He cried, “Oh, take it away and bury it in the earth!”
A buccaneer moved to lift the body.
“Don't touch him! Don't dare to touch him! Leave him where he is. He is smiling. Do you see him smile? But the flies— No, leave him. I will care for him myself.”
“This Spaniard, sir; what shall we do with him? Shall we kill him?”
“What Spaniard?”
“Why, this one before you, sir.” He shoved the man forward. Henry seemed to awaken from a deep dream.
“What do you want?” he asked harshly.
The Spaniard struggled with his fright.
“It—it is my wish and the wish of my padrone ​to have speech with one Captain Morgan if he will have the goodness. I am a messenger, Señor—not a spy, as these—these gentlemen suggest.”
“What is your message?” Henry’s voice had become weary.
The messenger took reassurance from his changed tone.
“I come from one man very rich, Señor. You have his wife.”
“I have his wife?”
“She was taken in the city, Señor.”
“Her name?”
“She is the Doña Ysobel Espinoza, Valdez y los Gabilanes, Sefor. The simple people of the city have called her La Santa Roja.”
Henry Morgan regarded him for a long time. “Yes, I have her,” he said finally. “She is in a cell. What does her husband wish?”
“He offers ransom, Señor. He has reason to wish his wife with him again.”
“What ransom does he offer?”
“What would Your Excellency suggest?”
“Twenty thousand pieces of eight,” Henry said quickly.
The messenger was staggered. “Twenty thous— viente mil—” He translated fully to comprehend the enormity of the amount. “I perceive that Your Excellency also wants the woman.”
Henry Morgan looked at the body of Cœur de Gris. “No,” he said; “I want the money.”
Now the messenger was relieved. He had been ​prepared to think this great man a great idiot. “I will do what may be done, Señor. I will come back to you in four days.”
“In three!”
“But if I do not arrive, Señor?”
“If you do not arrive, I shall take the Red Saint away with me and sell her in the slave docks.”
“I shall strive, Señor.”
“Give him courtesy!” the captain commanded. “Do not mistreat him in any way. He is to bring us gold.”
As they were leaving, one man turned back and let his eyes lovingly caress the treasure.
“When is the division to be, sir?”
“In Chagres, fool! Do you think I would divide it now?”
“But, sir, we would like to be having a bit of it in our hands—for the feel of it, sir. We have fought hard, sir.”
“Get out! You'll have none of it in your hands until we come to the ships again. Do you think I want to have you throwing it to the women here? Let the Goaves women get it from you.”
The men went out of the Hall of Audience grumbling a little.
VI
The buccaneers were rioting in Panama. Barrels of wine had been rolled to a large warehouse. The floor had been cleared of its clutter of merchandise, and now a wild dance was in progress. Numbers of women were there, women who had gone over ​to the pirates. They danced and flung about to the shrieking of flutes as though their feet did not sound on the grave of Panama at all. They, dear economists, were gaining back some of the lost treasure, using a weapon more slow, but no less sure, than the sword.
In a corner of the warehouse sat The Burgundian and his one-armed protector.
“See, Emil! That one there— Consider to yourself her hips now!”
“I see her, 'Toine, and it is good of you. Do not think I do not appreciate your trouble for my pleasure. But I am silly enough to have an ideal, even in copulation. This proves to me that I am still an artist, if not a gentleman.”
“But see, Emil. Notice for a moment the fullness of her bosom.”
“No, 'Toine; I see nothing that endangers my rose pearl. I will keep it by me a while yet.”
“But, really, my friend, I think you lose your sense of beauty. Where is that careful eye we used to fear so on our canvases?”
“The eye is here, 'Toine. It is still here. It is your own little eye which makes nymphs of brown mares.”
“Then— Then, Emil, since you persist in your blindness, perhaps you would condescend to loan me your rose pearl. There— I thank you. I shall return it presently.”
Grippo was seated in the middle of the floor, sullenly counting the buttons on his sleeve.
“—eight, nine— There were ten. Some bastard ​has stolen my button. Ah, this world of thieves! It is too much. I would kill for that button. It was my favorite button. One, two, three— Why there are ten. One, two, three, four—” About him the dancers rocked and the air was reeking with the shrill cries of the flutes.
Captain Sawkins glowered at the dancers. He firmly believed that to dance was to go to hell by a short route. Beside him, Captain Zeigler sadly watched the flow of liquor. This Ziegler was called the Tavern Keeper of the Sea. It was his practice, after a raid, to keep the men at sea until they had spent their plunder buying the rum which he supplied. Once he had a mutiny, it is said, because for three months he sailed around and around one island. He could not help it. The men still had money and he still had rum. This night he was saddened by these barrels of liquor which were being drunk without any obbligato of coins ringing on the counter. It was unnatural to him and mischievous.
Henry Morgan was sitting alone in the Hall of Audience. He could barely hear the crying music of the dance. Throughout the day little bands of men had come in, bearing bits of belated treasure dug from the earth or drawn with iron hooks from the cisterns. One old woman had swallowed a diamond to save it, but the searchers dug for that, too, and found it.
Now a gray twilight was in the Hall of Audience. All through the day Henry Morgan had been sitting in his tall chair, and the day had changed ​him. His eyes, those peering eyes which had looked out over a living horizon, were turned inward. He had been looking at himself, looking perplexedly at Henry Morgan. In the years of his life and of his adventuring, he had believed so completely in his purpose, whatever it may have been at the moment, that he had given the matter little thought. But to-day he had considered himself, and, in the gray twilight, he was bewildered at the sight of Henry Morgan. Henry Morgan did not seem worthy, or even important. Those desires and ambitions toward which he had bayed across the world like a scenting hound, were shabby things now he looked inward at himself. And wonderment like the twilight was about him in the Hall of Audience.
As he sat in the half dark, the wrinkled duenna crept in and stood before him. Her voice was like the crumpling of paper.
“My lady wishes to speak with you,” she said. Henry rose and walked heavily after her toward the cell.
A candle was burning before the holy picture on the wall. The madonna represented was a fat, Spanish peasant, holding a flabby child at which she looked with sad astonishment. The priest who painted it meant to put reverence on her face, but he had so little experience with reverence. He had been successful, however, in making it a good portrait of his dull mistress and his child. Four reales, the picture brought him.
​Ysobel sat under the picture. When Henry entered she went quickly to him.
“It is said I am to be ransomed.”
“Your husband sent a messenger.”
“My husband! I am to go back to him? to his scented hands?”
“Yes.”
She pointed to a chair and forced Henry to seat himself.
“You did not understand me,” she said. “You could not understand me. You must know something of the life I have traveled. I must tell you this thing, and then you will understand me, and then—”
She awaited his interest. Henry was silent.
“Don’t you wish to hear this thing?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, it is short. My life has been short. But I want you to understand me, and then—”
She looked sharply into his face. Henry’s mouth was pinched as though in pain. His eyes contemplated bewilderment. He made no reply to her pause.
“It was this way, you see,” she began. “I was born here in Panama, but my parents sent me to Spain when I was a small child. I lived in a convent in Cordova. I wore gray dresses and lay in watch before the Virgin on my nights given to adoration. Sometimes I went to sleep when I should have been praying. I have suffered for that laxness. When I had been there a number of years, the bravos raided my father’s plantation ​here in Panama and killed all of my family. I was left with no relative save one old grandfather. I was alone, and I was sad. I did not sleep on the floor before the Virgin for a time.
“I had grown handsome, that I knew, for once a Cardinal who was visiting the school looked at me, and his lips trembled, and the great veins stood out on his hands when I kissed his ring. He said, `Peace be with you, my daughter. Have you anything you would like to confess to me privately?’
“I heard the cry of the water sellers over the wall, and I heard the scuffle of a quarrel. Once two men fought with swords in sight of me, where I stood on a stick and looked over the wall. And one night a young man brought a girl to the shadow of the gate and lay with her there within two paces of me. I heard them whisper together, she protesting her fears, and he reassuring her. I fingered my gray gown and wondered whether this boy would plead with me if he knew me. When I spoke to one of the sisters about this night she said, `It is wicked to hear such things, and more wicked to think of them. You must do penance for your curious ears. What gate did you say?’
“The fishmonger would cry, `Come, little gray angels, and look on my basket of catch. Come out of your holy prison, little gray angels.’
“One night I climbed over the wall and went away from the city. I do not mean to tell you of my journeying, but only of the day when I came to Paris. The King was riding through the streets, and his equipage was glittering and gold. I stood ​high on my toes in the crowd of people and watched the courtiers go riding by. Then, suddenly, a dark face was thrust before me, and a strong hand took my arm. I was led to a doorway apart from the people.
“See, Captain; he whipped me with a thong of hard leather he had only for that purpose. His face had something of a beast's snarl hiding very near the surface. But he was free—a bold, free, thief. He killed before he stole—always he killed. And we lived in entryways, and on the floors of churches, and under the land arch of a bridge, and we were free—free from thoughts and free from fears and worries. But once he went away from me, and I found him hanging by the neck on a gallows—oh, a great gallows festooned with men hanging by their necks.
“Can you understand that, Captain? Do you see that as I saw it? And does it mean anything at all to you?” Her eyes were on fire.
“I walked back to Cordova, and my feet were torn. I did penance until my body was torn, but I could not drive out all the evil. I was exorcised, but the devil was deep in me. Can you understand that, Captain?” She looked into Henry's face and saw that he had not been listening. She stood beside him and moved her fingers in his graying hair.
“You are changed,” she said. “Some light is gone out of you. What fear has fallen on you?”
He stirred from his revery.
“I do not know.”
​“I was told that you killed your friend. Is it that which burdens you?”
“I killed him.”
“And do you mourn for him?”
“Perhaps. I do not know. I think I mourn for some other thing which is dead. He might have been a vital half of me, which, dying, leaves me half a man. To-day I have been like a bound slave on a white slab of marble with the gathered vivisectors about me. I was supposed to be a healthy slave, but the scalpels found me sick with a disease called mediocrity.”
“I am sorry,” she said.
“You are sorry? Why are you sorry?”
“I think I am sorry because of your lost light; because the brave, brutal child in you is dead—the boastful child who mocked and thought his mockery shook the throne of God; the confident child who graciously permitted the world to accompany him through space. This child is dead, and I am sorry. I would go with you, now, if I thought it possible to warm the child to life again.”
Henry said, “It is strange. Two days ago I planned to tear a continent out of the set order and crown it with a capital of gold for you. In my mind, I built up an empire for you, and planned the diadem you should wear. And now I dimly remember the person who thought these things. He is an enigmatic stranger on a staggering globe.
“And you— I feel only a slight uneasiness with you. I am not afraid of you any more. I do not ​want you any more. I am filled with a nostalgia for my own black mountains and for the speech of my own people. I am drawn to sit in a deep veranda and to hear the talk of an old man I used to know. I find I am tired of all this bloodshed and struggle for things that will not lie still, for articles that will not retain their value in my hands. It is horrible,” he cried. “I do not want anything any more. I have no lusts, and my desires are dry and rattling. I have only a vague wish for peace and the time to ponder imponderable matters.”
“You will take no more cups of gold,” she said. “You will turn no more vain dreams into unsatisfactory conquests. I am sorry for you, Captain Morgan. And you were not right about the slave. Ill he was, indeed, but not with the illness you have mentioned. But I suppose your sins are great. All men who break the bars of mediocrity commit frightful sins. I shall pray for you to the Holy Virgin, and She will intercede for you at the throne of Heaven. But what am I to do?”
“You will go back to your husband, I suppose.”
“Yes, I will go back. You have made me old, Señor. You have pricked the dream on which my heavy spirit floated. And I wonder whether, in the years to come, you will blame me for the death of your friend.”
Henry flushed quickly.
“I am trying to do something of that sort now,” he said. “It does not seem worth the while to lie any more, and that is only one more proof of dead ​youth. But now, good-by, Ysobel. I wish I loved you now as I thought I did yesterday. Go back to your husband's scented hands.”
She smiled and raised her eyes to the holy picture on the wall. “Peace go with you, dear fool,” she murmured. “Ah, I too have lost my youth, I am old—old—for I cannot console myself with the thought of what you have missed.”
vii
Henry Morgan stood in the doorway of the Hall of Audience and watched a little troupe of Spaniards ride through the streets toward the Palace. The troupe was surrounded on all sides by a mob of buccaneers. First in the line came the messenger, but a changed messenger. Now he was dressed in scarlet silk. The plume of his hat and his sword's scabbard were white in token of peace. Behind him rode six soldiers in silver breast-plates and the Spanish helmets which looked like half mustard seeds. The last soldier led a riderless white mare with crimson trappings and a line of golden bells on its brow band. The white saddle cloth nearly touched the ground. Following the mare were six mules bearing heavy leathern bags, and the group was rear-guarded by six more soldiers.
The cavalcade drew up before the Palace. The messenger leaped from his horse and bowed to Henry Morgan.
“I have here the ransom,” he said. He looked ​worried and tired. The weight of his mission was riding heavily on his spirit. At his command the soldiers carried the leather bags into the Hall of Audience, and only when they were all deposited with the rest of the treasure did the anxiety leave his face.
“Ah,” he said, “it is good. It is the treasure. Twenty thousand pieces of eight—not one lost by the wayside. I invite you to count them, Señor.” He whipped a little dust from his foot. “If my men could have refreshments, Señor; wine—” he suggested.
“Yes. Yes.” Henry motioned to one of his followers. “See that these men have food and drink. Be courteous, as you love life.”
Then he went to the bags to count the ransom. He made little towers of shining coins and moved the towers about on the floor. Money was bright, he thought. It could have been cut in no more charming shape, either. A square would not answer, nor an elipse. And money was really worth more than money. He tumbled a tower and built it up again. It was so extremely certain—money. One knew beforehand what it would do if set in motion; at least, he knew up to a certain point. Beyond that point it did not matter what it accomplished. One might buy wine with money. One had the wine. And if the merchant’s clerk should kill his master for the same coins, it was unfortunate; it was, perhaps, Fate or something like that, but one had his wine just the same.
And all this pile of golden vessels, these crosses ​and candlesticks and pearl vestments, would be money like this. These bars of gold and silver would be cut into round flakes and each flake stamped with a picture. The picture would be more than a picture. Like the kiss of a saint, it would endow the flake with power; the picture would give it a character and a curious, compelling soul. He flung the coins into a heap and patiently set about to rebuild them. Enough towers for Jerusalem!
Now Ysobel came from the patio and stood beside him.
“What an amount of money,” she said. “Is that my ransom?”
“Yes; it is the gold which purchases you.”
“But what a very great deal! Am I worth that much, do you think?”
“To your husband you are. He paid it for you.” He moved ten towers into a line.
“And to you—how much? How many of these golden chips?”
“You must have been worth that much to me. I stated the price.”
“Wouldn't they skip well on the water!” she said. “How they would skip! Do you know, I can throw like a boy, with my arm bent.”
“It was said you were capable,” he announced.
“But am I really worth that much?”
“The money is here, and you are to go. It has bought you. A thing must be worth what is paid for it, or there could be no trade.”
“It is good,” she said. “It is comforting to know ​one's value to a real. Have you any idea of your worth, Captain?”
Henry Morgan said, “If I were ever captured and a ransom demanded for me, I would not be worth a copper penny. These dogs of mine would laugh and shrug. A new captain would rise to lead them, and I—well, I would be subject to the pleasure of my captors, and I think I could foretell their pleasure. You see, I have been at revaluing myself in the last few days. I may have some value to historians because I have destroyed a few things. The builder of your Cathedral is forgotten even now, but I, who burned it, may be remembered for a hundred years or so. And that may mean something or other about mankind.”
“But what is there about me that is worth all this gold?” she insisted. “Is it my arms, do you suppose? My hair? Or is it that I am the embodiment of my husband's vanity?”
“I do not know,” said Henry. “With the revaluation of myself, the whole economic system of emotions and persons has changed. To-day, were I to demand a ransom, perhaps you would not be flattered.”
“Do you so hate me, Captain Morgan?”
“No, I do not hate you; but you are one of the stars of my firmament which has proven to be a meteor.”
“That is not gallant, sir. That is quite different from your speech of a few days past,” she observed spitefully.
​“No. It is not gallant. I think that hereafter I shall be gallant for two reasons only—money and advancement. I tried to be gallant for the pure, joyous looks of things. You see, I was honest with myself before and I am honest with myself now. These two honesties are antithetical.”
“You are bitter.”
“No; I am not even bitter. The food that bitterness feeds on is gone out of me.”
“I am going now,” she said softly and wistfully. “Have you nothing more to say to me about myself? Nothing more to ask of me?”
“Nothing,” he answered, and immediately went to piling the coins again.
The messenger entered from the street. He had drunk deeply, for the removed burden of his mission had made him joyous. He bowed to Ysobel and to Henry Morgan; bowed warily, with an eye to his balance.
“We must go, Señor,” he announced loudly. “The way is long.” He led Ysobel to the white mare and helped her into the saddle. Then, at his signal, the column moved off down the street. Ysobel looked back once as they started, and it seemed that she had taken a mood from Henry Morgan, for there was a puzzled smile on her lips. But then she bent her head over the mare's neck; she was intently studying the mare's white mane.
The messenger had remained standing at Henry's side in the doorway. Together they watched the fluid line of riders swing away while ​the sunlight glinted on the soldiers' armor. In the center of the troupe, the white mare seemed a pearl in a setting of silver.
The messenger put his hand on Henry's shoulder.
“We know how to understand each other, we men of responsibilities,” he said drunkenly. “It is not as though we were children to have secrets. We are men, brave men and strong. We may confide in each other. You may tell me the thing nearest your heart if you wish, Señor.”
Henry shook the hand from his shoulder. “I have nothing to tell you,” he said brusquely.
“Ah; but then I will tell you something. Perhaps you wondered why the husband of this woman was willing to pay such a vast sum for her. She is only a woman, you say. There are many women to be had more cheaply—some for a real or two. Her husband is a fool, you say. But I would not have you think that of my master. He is no fool. I will tell you how it is. Her grandfather still lives, and he is the owner of ten silver mines and fifty leagues of fertile land in Peru. Doña Ysobel is the heiress. Now if she were killed or carried off— But you understand, Señor— Poof! The fortune into the King's arms!” He laughed at the cleverness of his reasoning. “We understand each other, Señor. We have tough skulls—not the soft heads of chickens. Twenty thousand—it is nothing to be reckoned against ten silver mines. Ah, yes; we understand each other, we men of responsibilities.”
He clambered into his saddle and rode away still ​laughing. Henry Morgan saw him join the undulating cavalcade; and now there was a ruby with the pearl in the silver setting.
Captain Morgan went back to the treasure. He sat on the floor and took the coins into his hands. “The most human of all human traits is inconsistency,” he thought. “It is a shock to learn this thing, almost as great a shock to a man as the realization of his humanity. And why must we learn that last? In all the mad incongruity, the turgid stultiloquy of life, I felt, at least, securely anchored to myself. Whatever the vacillations of other people, I thought myself terrifically constant. But now, here I am, dragging a frayed line, and my anchor gone. I do not know whether the rope was cut or merely worn away, but my anchor is gone. And I am sailing around and around an island in which there is no iron.” He let the gold pieces slip through his fingers. “But perhaps here is my iron for the making of a new anchor,” he thought. “This is hard and heavy. Its value may fluctuate somewhat in the economic currents, but at least it has a purpose, and only one purpose. It is an absolute assurance of security. Yes, perhaps this is the one true anchor; the one thing a man may be utterly sure of. Its claws hook tightly to comfort and security. Strangely, I have a craving for them both.”
“But other men have a share in this gold,” part of his brain argued.
“No, my dear conscience; we have an end of acting now. I have put on new glasses; rather ​they have been locked about my head, and I must order my life in accordance with the world I see through these new lenses. I see that honesty—public honesty—may be a ladder to a higher, more valuable crime; veracity a means to more subtle dissimulation. No; these men have no rights they can enforce. These men were too free with the rights of others to deserve consideration.” He stumbled happily on the thought. “They steal, and so shall their plunder be stolen.
“But I said I was finished with evasions and conscience drugging. What have I to do with right, now—or reason, or logic, or conscience? I want this money. I want security and comfort, and I have the power between my hands to take both. It may not be the ideal of youth, but I think it has been the world's practice from the beginning. Luckily, perhaps, the world is not operated by youth. And besides,” he said, “these fools of men do not deserve any of it. They would be throwing it away in the brothels when we came home again.”
VIII
The buccaneers went out of ruined Panama. They carried all of the treasure with them across the isthmus on the backs of mules. When at last Chagres was reached, they were exhausted; nevertheless, the following day was set for the division of spoils. In order that this might be facilitated, the whole of the treasure was stored in one ship, the great galleon which had been com- ​manded by a Duke before the pirates captured it. From this center the plunder was to be divided. Captain Morgan was in good spirits. The journey was over, he told the men, and it was time for pleasure. He rolled out forty kegs of rum onto the beach.
Early in the morning, a sleepy pirate opened his red eyes and looked toward the sea. He saw the water where the galleon had been. He called his comrades, and in a moment the shore was lined with disappointed men who wistfully searched the horizon. The galleon had put to sea during the night, and all the wealth of Panama had gone with her.
There was rage among the buccaneers. They would give chase; they would run down the fugitive and torture Captain Morgan. But they could not pursue. The other ships were worthless. Some lay on the sandy bottom with great holes punched in their sides; of others, the masts were sawed nearly through.
Then there was cursing and violence on the beach. They swore brotherhood in the name of revenge. They planned the horror of the retribution. And they scattered. Some starved; some were tortured by the Indians. The Spaniards caught and strangled some of them, and England virtuously hanged a few.