# Cup of Gold (1929)/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III
THERE were many glittering reputations along the coast of Darien and among the green Caribbean islands when Henry Morgan came to be a buccaneer. In the wine shops of Tortuga were tales of a thousand fortunes made and spent, of fine ships taken and sunk, of gold and plate dumped on the docks like wood.
The Free Brotherhood had grown to be a terrible thing since Pierre le Grand and a little band of hunters slipped out of the woods of Hispaniola and captured the Vice-Admiral of the plate fleet from a canoe. France and Britain and Holland had seen in these islands a good hermitage for their criminals, and for years they had unloaded worthless human freight on the Indies. There was a time in those old nations when any one who could not give a good, virtuous account of himself was crammed into a ship and sent off to be a bond-servant to any man who would pay a small sum for him. And when their time was up, these people stole guns and warred on Spain. It was not strange, for Spain was Catholic and rich, while Huguenots and Lutherans and Church of England men were poor and out at heel. They fought a holy war. Spain had locked up the treasures of the world. If poor, ruined beggars could be reaching a coin through the keyhole, who was the ​worse for it? Who minded except Spain? Surely England and France and Holland took little heed of it. Sometimes they provided the pirates with commissions against Aragon and Castile, so that you might come on a man who, ten years before, had been sent out in a prison ship, carrying the style of “Captain by the grace of the King.”
France had the good of her wayward children at heart, for she sent out twelve hundred women to Tortuga to be the wives of buccaneers. The whole twelve hundred turned to a business more profitable than wifehood immediately they landed, but France could not help that.
They had got their name, these buccaneers, of a time when they were nothing more than cattle-hunters. There was a way of smoking meat by burning small bits of fat and flesh in the fire. This made the meat more savory than usual. It was called the boucan process, and from it the pirates were named.
But after a time these hunters came out of the woods in little, careful groups; then bands formed, and then whole fleets of eight or ten vessels. And finally thousands assembled in Tortuga, and from that spot of safety buzzed about the flanks of Spain.
And Spain could not combat them. Did she hang ten, a hundred joined their ranks; so she fortified her towns and sent her treasures on the sea under the protection of warships filled with soldiers. The numberless vessels of the Spanish colonies were nearly all driven from the sea by the ​fierce buccaneers. Only once in a year did the plate fleet sail out for home.
There were fine names among the Brotherhood, and exploits to make Henry Morgan squirm with jealousy if he had not been so confident of overshadowing them all one day.
Bartolomeo Portugues there was, who took a great prize. But before he could get away with it, he was captured near Campeche. The gibbet was erected on the shore for his hanging. He watched them put it up from his prison aboard ship. And in the night before his execution, he stabbed his guard and swam away, supported by a keg. Before eight days had passed, he came again with pirates in a long canoe and stole the same ship away from the harbor of Campeche. He lost her, of course, in a storm off Cuba, but the story was, nevertheless, told with glee in the taverns.
Roche Braziliano was a Hollander with a chubby face. When he was young he was driven from Brazil by the Portuguese, and from their colony he had taken his name. Curiously, he held no rancor against Portugal. His hatred turned on Spain. He was a kindly, gentle, beloved captain, so only there were no Spaniards about. His men worshiped him, and drank no other toast but to his name. Once, when his ship was wrecked in Castilla de Oro, he killed most of a troop of Spanish horse and used their beasts to ride off on. When the men of Spain were near him, Roche was a foaming beast. It was told that once he roasted prisoners on green spits over a slow fire.
​As the rich shipping was driven from the sea, the buccaneers must be taking villages, and then even towns with forts. Lewis Scot pillaged Campeche and left it a black, smoking pile.
L’Ollonais had come from the Sables d’Ollone, and very rapidly he became the most feared man in the western ocean. He began with a real hatred for Spain and ended with a strong love of cruelty. He had pulled out tongues, and carved his prisoners to pieces with his sword. The Spanish men would far rather have met the devil in any form than L’Ollonais. The whisper of his name emptied the villages in his path of every living unit. It was said that the mice fled to the jungle when he came. Maracaibo he took, and New Gibraltar, and St. James de Leon. Everywhere he slaughtered men for the fierce love of it.
Once, when the blood lust was in him, he had commanded that eighty-seven prisoners be bound and laid in a row on the ground. Then he walked down the line, carrying a whetstone in one hand and a long sword in the other. That day he cut off eighty-seven heads with his own hand.
But L’Ollonais was not content with murdering the Spanish men. He went into the gentle country of Yucatan, where the people lived in ruined stone cities, and where the virgins went crowned with flowers. They were a quiet people in Yucatan, and their race was dying in an inexplicable decay. When L’Ollonais went away, the cities were heaps of stones and ashes, and there were no crowns any more.
​The Indians of Darien were different; fierce, and fearless, and unrelenting. The Spaniards called them Bravos and swore that they were untamable. They had been friends of the pirates because they so hated Spain, but L’Ollonais robbed them and murdered the tribesmen. These Indians waited many years for their vengeance, and at last they caught L’Ollonais when his ship had wrecked on the shores of their country. They built a fire and danced for hours, and then they burned the Frenchman’s body bit by bit before his eyes, a finger and a pinch of flesh at a time.
A lean French gentleman came into a tavern at Tortuga one night, and when they asked his name, seized a large rum keg and hurled it from him.
“Bras de Fer,” he said, and no one ever questioned him farther. It was never known whether his name was hidden for a shame or a sorrow or a hatred, but all the Coast came to know of him as a great, brave captain.
These were men who made phrases to be repeated.
“No prey, no pay,” the Exterminator had bawled, and now every one was saying it. When Captain Lawrence, in a small boat, was assailed by two Spanish frigates, he said to his men, “You have too much experience not to be sensible of your danger, and too much courage to fear it.” This was a fine saying, and on the strength of it his followers captured the two Spanish ships and took them home to Goaves.
​Not all were cruel or even violent men. Some had a curious streak of piety. There was Captain Watling who made it a point to hold divine service every Sabbath, with the whole crew standing uncovered. Daniel once shot a sailor for an irreverence. These buccaneers prayed loudly before battle, and, if they were successful, half of them trooped off to a captured cathedral to sing the Te Deum, while the other half plundered the prize.
Captains of ships maintained the strictest discipline among their men, swiftly punishing insubordination or any other wrong doing which might interfere with their success. There were no such riots at sea as were later tolerated by Kidd and Blackbeard and Lafitte.
But out of the whole history of the Brotherhood, one man towered. There was a Dutchman named Edward Mansveldt. In bravery and in soldiery he was preëminent, for he had taken Granada and St. Augustine in Florida, and St. Catherine's Isle. With a great fleet of ships he had gone cruising along the coasts of Darien and Castilla de Oro, taking what he might lay his hands on. But there was a power of dream in him. Out of his mob of ragamuffin heroes he wanted to make a strong, durable nation, a new, aggressive nation in America. As more and more of the buccaneers flocked to his command, his dream solidified. He consulted the governments of England and France. They were shocked, and forbade him to consider such a thing. A race of pirates not amenable to the gibbets of the crowns? Why, they would be ​plundering everybody. He must not be thinking about it at all.
But still he went on planning and planning his new government. It would be started at St. Catherine’s Isle. He settled a body of his men there, and then went casting about for more to join his new nation. His ship was wrecked near the city of Havana, and Spaniards strangled Edward Mansveldt on the garotte.
These were the men Henry Morgan had set about to lead. And, confidently, he saw no barrier, so only a man planned carefully and considered his chances. These stories and these men were well enough, but they fell short in the large actions. They were improvident and vain. They might help him one day.
Mansveldt was living and Bras de Fer was an old man when Henry Morgan went sailing with black Grippo in the Ganymede.
i
There was excitement and curiosity in Port Royal when Morgan was fitting out the Ganymede for sea. Strange stores and unusual weapons were going into her hold. Drawn on by the quiet confidence of this young man, many sailors volunteered for his crew. The captain found five gunners of reputation in the port and signed them to go with him. When the Ganymede dropped her sails and slipped from the harbor, a crowd of idlers stood on the beach and watched her go.
​They cruised to the coast of Darien looking for prey, but the sea appeared to be swept clean of Spanish craft. One morning, near the port of Cartagena, they sighted the tall red hull of a trading ship. Captain Morgan hid his men. No soul was allowed to show himself. Even the steersman worked in a tiny house, while a dummy wheel swung idly on the deck. Then down on the Spanish boat they bore, and the Spanish crew was overwhelmed. Here came a boat and no man working her. It smacked of witchcraft, or of one of those nameless tragedies of the sea the sailors talked about. Perhaps a plague had killed all the crew, and they could take and sell this ship. But when they were close, three masked guns spouted flame; they fired only at one spot, and when they had done, the rudder of the Spanish ship hung in splinters and she floundered about in no control. Then Captain Morgan, hanging aft, out of range of her broadside, poured shot into her hull until the flag fluttered down. It was the first prize of his planning.
A few days later he brought up with another ship and ran along side to board. The Spanish crew was massed against the bulwarks to repel the attack. And immediately the air was filled with clay powder pots which landed in the thick group and exploded. The Spanish men ran screaming to the shelter of the hold to escape this flashing death.
When Henry Morgan came at last to Tortuga, four prizes followed in his wake, and he had not ​lost a man. It was as easy as he had known it would be. Here were four monuments to his planning. One had only to do the unexpected thing quickly. This was the secret of successful war.
Mansveldt was in Tortuga when Henry Morgan came, and his little eyes glittered as he looked at this plunder. Soon he sent for this new leader.
“You are Captain Morgan who took the four prizes in the harbor?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“And how did you do this thing? The Spanish ships are strongly armed and wary.”
“I did it, sir, with my planning. Many nights have I considered how to do these things. I work with surprise, sir, when other men use only force.”
Mansveldt regarded him with admiration.
“I am fitting out an expedition to take St. Catherine’s Isle,” he said. “Then I am going to form a republic of buccaneers who will fight with a patriotism. Would you like to be Vice-Admiral of this expedition? I have some reputation for picking men.”
The name of Mansveldt was mighty on the seas, and Henry flushed with pleasure.
“I would like it, sir,” he said quickly.
The fleet sailed out, and Captain Morgan was Vice-Admiral. There was a fine assault; the ships threw in their ragged hordes and slaughter walked on the walls. The island could not withstand the fierceness of the attack, and finally the fortress fell. Then the Dutch admiral drew up his government ​and left Henry Morgan in command while he went out to scour the world for recruits. He and his ship were lost and never heard from again. It was said the Spaniards strangled him in Cuba.
Captain Morgan was now the paramount leader of the Spanish Main. Ships flew from the ways to join his fleets, to sail under his command and fight with him and share in his success. He went up against Puerto Bello and sacked the town. The houses were burned and all the helpless citizens were plundered. When Captain Morgan's ships sailed off the jungle was already creeping into the ruins.
For ten years he sailed about the ocean, among the islands and along the green coasts of Tropic America, and his was the greatest name of all who had gone out for plunder. The pirates of the world came flocking to his reputation. People cheered him in Tortuga and Goaves. Numberless men volunteered for every expedition. Now all the Brotherhood waited for Captain Morgan to open a keg of liquor in the streets or to run wild through the town. He never did. Coldly he walked about, clad in a purple coat and gray silk stockings and gray shoes with bows. At his side hung a long rapier no thicker than a pencil, in a scabbard of gray silk.
At first the sailors strove to establish a comradeship with him, but he pricked them away with frigid insults. The lessons of the slaves lived on in him. He did not try to buy his popularity, and ​all the Free Brotherhood showered it upon him—cast their lives and their fortunes on the knees of his success.
II
Ten years of fighting and plundering and burning, and he was thirty. His graying hair seemed to coil more closely to his head. Henry Morgan was successful, the most luck-followed freebooter the world had known, and the men of his profession gave him that admiration he had craved. His enemies—and any man of Spain who had money was his enemy—shuddered at the mention of his name. They had placed him in their fears beside Drake and L'Ollonais.
He had gone out with Grippo in the Ganymede, assured that when his guns roared into a Spanish hull, when he stood embattled on a Spanish deck with cries and clash of iron weapons about him, there would come that flaming happiness his heart desired. These things he had experienced, and there was not even content. The nameless craving in him grew and flexed its claws against his heart. He had thought the adulation of the Brotherhood might salve the wound of his desire: that when the pirates saw the results of his planning and marveled at them, he would be pleased and flattered. And this thing happened. The men fairly fawned on him, and he found that he despised them for it and considered them fools to be taken with such simple things.
Henry had grown lonely in his glory. Old Mer​lin had spoken truth so long ago, for Captain Morgan had come to his success, and he was alone in his success, with no friend anywhere. The craving of his heart must lie crouched within him. All his fears and sorrows and conceits, his failures and little weaknesses, must be concealed. These, his followers, had gathered to the cry of his success; they would leave him at the first small sign of weakness.
While he was engaged in winning plunder, a little rumor had come stealthily across the isthmus, had floated among the islands and stolen aboard the ships. Men caught the whispered name and listened carefully.
“There is a woman in Panama and she is lovely as the sun. They call her the Red Saint in Panama. All men kneel to her.” Thus said the whispering. The voice grew and grew until men in the taverns drank to La Santa Roja. Young seamen whispered of her in the dog watch. “There is a woman in the Cup of Gold and all men fall before her as heathen kneel before the sun.” They spoke softly of her in the streets of Goaves. No one had seen her; no one could tell the tint of her cheeks or the color of her hair. Yet, in a few years, every man in the wide, wild Main had drunk to the Red Saint, had dreamed of her; many had prayed to La Santa Roja. She became to every man the quest of his heart, bearing the image of some fair young girl left on a European beach to be gloriously colored by the years. And Panama was to every man the nest of his desire. It was a curious ​thing. In time, no speech among gathered men could end without mention of La Santa Roja. She was become a queer delirium in the minds of the rough pirates, a new virgin for their worship. Many said she was Mary come to live on earth again, and they added her name in their prayers.
Now, when Captain Morgan had taken Puerto Bello, the Governor of Panama was filled with admiration and wonder that such a ragged band of ill-ordered men, and without uniforms, could capture such a city. He sent a messenger asking for a small sample of the weapons which had made this thing possible. Captain Morgan took the runner to a small room that had escaped the general fire.
“Have you seen the woman whom they call the Red Saint in Panama?” he asked.
“I have not seen her, no; but I have heard of her. The young men put only the Blessed Virgin before her in their worship. It is said that she is lovely as the sun.”
“What is her name besides La Santa Roja?”
“I do not know. I have only heard that she is lovely as the sun. They tell in Panama that she came from Cordova and has been to Paris. It is said her family is noble. They tell how she rides great horses, sitting astride, in a meadow guarded with a thick hedge. It is said that in her hand a rapier is a living thing, and that she can fence more skillfully than any man. These things she does in secret that no one may see the crime against her modesty.”
“Ah, well!” said Captain Morgan, “if she be ​beautiful enough what need has she of modesty. This modesty is only a kind of beauty patch which is put on when there are visitors—an enthralling gesture. I should like to see her ride. And do you know nothing more of her?”
“Only what they say in the taverns, sir—that she has stolen worship from the Blessed Saints.”
Captain Morgan dreamed long in his chair while the runner waited silently. At last Henry shook his head, as though to disengage it of cloying thoughts. He drew a pistol from his belt and gave it to the messenger.
“Take this to Don Juan Perez de Guzman, and say that this is a sample of the weapons we have used in laying Puerto Bello in the dust. But my other weapons are the strong hearts of my followers. I will not send him one of these, but I will bring him a great number. And tell him to keep the pistol for a year, when I myself will come to Panama to receive it from his own hands. Do you understand?”
“I do, sir.”
And in a few days the runner came again, bringing the pistol back, and a large square emerald set in a ring.
“My master begs that you accept this stone as a token of his regard. He begs that you do not give yourself the trouble to come to Panama, for then his duty would overwhelm his admiration and force him to hang you to a tree.”
“It is a good message,” said the captain; “a good, brave message. I should like to meet with Don ​Juan if only at sword's points. It has been long since any one defied me. And did you learn more of La Santa Roja?”
“Only what they tell in the streets, sir. I inquired closely for your benefit. I was told that in the streets she wears a thick veil that none may see her face. Some think she does this so that the poor men who meet her will not kill themselves for love. That is all I could learn. Have you further messages, sir?”
“Only repeat that I will go to the Cup of Gold within the year.”
III
Through all his life his will had been like an iron weathervane, steadfastly pointing, always, but never long in one direction. The Indies and the sea and pillage and glory all seemed to have failed him. He had touched all things and watched them pale and shrivel at his touch. And he was lonely. His men regarded him with respect and sullen awe. They were afraid of him, and this state did not feed his vanity as once it had.
He wondered if he might not make a friend among his followers, but the time he had dwelt alone in the castle of himself had been so long that this thought filled him with a curious, boyish embarrassment. Who among his followers might he his friend? He considered them, remembering their sullen scowls, their gleaming, avaricious eyes at the division of spoil. He felt nothing but contempt for them.
​But there was one whom he had noticed, a young Frenchman who was called Cœur de Gris. Captain Morgan had seen him in action, leaping about the deck like a supple animal while his rapier flicked out in lithe tongues of silver fire. He scorned a cutlass for the long thin blade. And this young man answered his orders with a smile at Captain Morgan. There was respect in his eyes, surely, but no fear, no jealousy, and no suspicion.
“I wonder if this Cœur de Gris would be my friend,” mused Henry Morgan. “It is said that he has left a trail of broken hearts from Cuba to Saint Kit's, and somehow, for this, I fear him a little.”
Captain Morgan sent for the young man, and when he was come, found difficulty in speaking to him.
“Ah—how are you, Cœur de Gris?”
The young man was overwhelmed by any show of warmth from this captain.
“Why, sir, I am very well. Have you orders for me?”
“Orders? No; I—I thought I would like to talk with you—that is all.”
“To talk with me, sir? But to talk of what?”
“Well— How are the many little loves you are reputed to have?” the captain asked in an uneasy effort at joviality.
“Repute is kinder to me than nature, sir.”
Henry Morgan plunged to his purpose.
“Listen to me, Cœur de Gris! Can you not imagine that I may need a friend? Can you not ​think of me as a lonely man? Consider how all my followers are afraid of me. They come for orders, but never to pass a quiet time of day. I know I made this so. It was necessary once, for I had to build up respect before I could command obedience. But now there are times when I should like to be telling my thoughts and talking of something besides war and spoil. For ten years I have ravaged the seas like a silent wolf, and I have no friend anywhere.
“I have chosen you to be my friend; first, because I like you, and second, because you have not a thing on earth you might be thinking I want to steal. Thus you may like me without fear. It is a strange thing how my men suspect me. I have given a strict accounting for every voyage, yet, if I spoke to them as friends, they would beat their brains to discover my plot. And will you be my friend, Cœur de Gris?”
“Why, certainly, I will, my Captain, and had I known of such a thing in your mind, I would have been for long. How may I serve you, sir?”
“Oh, just by talking with me now and then, and by trusting me a little. I have no motive save my loneliness. But you speak and act like a gentleman, Cœur de Gris. May I ask of your family? or do you draw this name about you like a cape, as so many do here on the Main?”
“It is very simple to tell you of my family. It is said that my father was the great Bras de Fer, and who he was no one ever knew. The people gave me my name, remembering his. My mother ​is one of the free women of Goaves. She was sixteen when I was born. Hers was a very ancient family, but Huguenot in worship. Their holdings were destroyed in the murders of St. Bartholomew. Thus it came about that they were penniless when my mother was born. And she was picked up by the watch in Paris streets one day and sent to Goaves with a shipload of women vagrants. Bras de Fer found her soon afterwards."
"But you say she is a free woman," said Henry Morgan, scandalized at this young man's apparent lack of shame. "Surely she has given up this—this practice, now you are successful on the sea. You are taking home enough for both of you, and more."
"I know I am, but she continues. I do not mention it, for why should I interfere with what she considers a serious work. She is proud of her position, proud that her callers are the best people in the port. And it pleases her that, although she is nearly forty, she can more than compete with the young, unseasoned squabs who come in every year. Why should I change the gentle course of her ways, even if I could? No, she is a dear, lovely woman, and she has been a good mother to me. Her only fault is that she is filled with Over-many little scruples. She nags at me when I am at home, and cries so when I leave. She is dreadfully afraid that I may find some woman who may do me harm."
"That is strange, is it not?—considering her life," said Henry Morgan.
"Why is it strange? Must they have a different ​brain in that ancient profession? No, sir; I assure you that her life is immaculate—prayers thrice a day, and there is no finer house in all Goaves than hers. Why, sir, when last I went there, I took with me a scarf which fell to my lot in the division, a glorious thing of gossamer and gold. She would not have it. It belonged about the neck of some woman who put her faith in the Romish church, she said, and it would not be decent for a good Huguenot to wear it. Ah! she worries so about me when I am off to sea. She is terribly afraid I may be hurt, but far more afraid of the tainting of my soul. Such is all my knowledge of my family, sir.”
Captain Morgan had stepped to a cupboard and brought out some queer little jugs with wine of Peru. There were two necks on each jug, and when the wine was poured out from one, a sweet, whistling sound came from the other.
“I took these from a Spanish ship,” he said. “Will you drink with me, Cœur de Gris?”
“I should be very much honored, sir.”
They sat a long time sipping the wine, then Captain Morgan spoke dreamily.
“I suppose, Cœur de Gris, that you will one day be stricken with the Red Saint, and then we shall have the bees of Panama buzzing out upon us. I have no doubt she is as jealously guarded as was Helen. You have heard of the Red Saint, have you not?”
The young man's eyes were glowing with the wine.
​“Heard of her!” he said softly. “Sir, I have dreamed of her and called to her in my sleep. Who has not? Who in all this quarter of the world has not heard of her, and yet who knows any single thing about her? It is a strange thing, the magic of this woman's name. La Santa Roja! La Santa Roja! It conjures up desire in the heart of every man—not active, possible desire, but the ‘if I were handsome, if I were a prince’ kind of desire. The young men make wild plans; some to go disguised to Panama, others to blow it up with quantities of powder. They daydream of carrying the Red Saint off with them. Sir, I have heard a seaman all rotten with disease whispering to himself in the night, ‘If this thing were not on me, I would go adventuring for La Santa Roja.’
“My mother frets and frets there in Goaves, lest I go mad and run to her. She is terrified by this strange woman. ‘Go not near to her, my son,’ she says. ‘This woman is wicked; she is a devil; besides, she is without doubt a Catholic.’ And no one has ever seen her that we know of. We do not know certainly that there exists such a woman as the Red Saint in the Cup of Gold. Ah! she has spread the sea with dreams—with longing dreams. I have been thinking, sir, that perhaps, sometime, the Cup of Gold may go the way of Troy town on account of her.”
Henry Morgan had filled the glasses again and again. He was slumped forward in his chair, and a little crooked smile was on his mouth.
“Yes,” he said rather thickly, “she is a danger to ​the peace of nations and to the peace of men’s minds. The matter is wholly ridiculous, of course. She is probably a shrewish' bitch who takes her bright features from the legend. But how might such a legend be started? Your health, Cœur de Gris. You will be a good friend to me and true?”
“I will, my Captain.”
And again they sat silently, drinking the rich wine.
“But there is much suffering bound up in women,” Henry Morgan began, as though he had just finished speaking. “They seem to carry pain about with them in a leaking package. You have loved often, they say, Cœur de Gris. Have you not felt the pain they carry?”
“No, sir, I do not think I have. Surely I have been assailed by regrets and little sorrows—everyone has; but mostly I have found only pleasure among women.”
“Ah, you are lucky,” the captain said. “You are filled with luck not to have known the pain. My own life was poisoned by love. This life I lead was forced on me by lost love.”
“Why, how was that, sir? Surely, I had not thought that you—”
“I know; I know how I must have changed so that even you laugh a little at the thought of my being in love. I could not now command the affection of the daughter of an Earl.”
“The daughter of an Earl, sir?”
“Yes, an Earl’s daughter. We loved too perfectly—too passionately. Once she came to me in ​a rose garden and lay in my arms until the dark was gone. I thought to run away with her to some new, lovely country, and sink her title in the sea behind us. Perhaps even now I might be living safe in Virginia, with little joys crowding my foot-stool.”
“It is a great pity, sir.” Cœur de Gris was truly sorry for this man.
“Ah, well; her father was informed. On one dark night my arms were pinned to my sides, and she—oh, dear Elizabeth!—was torn away from me. They placed me, still bound, in a ship, and sold me in Barbados. Can you not see, Cœur de Gris, the bitterness that lies restlessly in my heart? During these years, her face has followed me in all my wanderings. Somehow I feel that I might have made some later move—but her father was a powerful lord.”
“And did you never go back for her, after your imprisonment was done?”
Henry Morgan looked down at the floor.
“No, my friend—I never did.”
iv
The legend of the Red Saint grew in his brain like a powerful vine, and a voice came out of the west to coax and mock, to jeer and cozen Henry Morgan. He forgot the sea and his idling ships. The buccaneers were penniless from their long inactivity. They lay about the decks and cursed their captain for a dreaming fool. He struggled ​madly against the folding meshes of his dream and argued with the voice.
“May God damn La Santa Roja for sowing the world with an insanity. She has made cut-throats bay the moon like lovesick dogs. She is making me crazy with this vain desire. I must do something—anything—to lay the insistent haunting of this woman I have never seen. I must destroy the ghost. Ah, it is a foolish thing to dream of capturing the Cup of Gold. It would seem that my desire is death.”
And he remembered the hunger which had drawn him from Cambria, for it was duplicated and strengthened now. His thoughts were driving sleep away. When drowsiness crept in on the heels of exhaustion, La Santa Roja came in, too.
“I will take Maracaibo,” he cried in desperation. “I will drown this lusting in a bowl of horror. I will pillage Maracaibo, tear it to pieces, and leave it bleeding in the sand.”
(There is a woman in the Cup of Gold, and they worship her for unnamable beauties.)
“Make the gathering at the Isle de la Vaca! Call in true hearts from the corners of the sea! We go to riches!”
His ships flew out to the bay of Maracaibo and the town was frantic in defense.
“Run into this bottle harbor! Yes, under the guns!”
Cannon balls cried through the air and struck up clouds of dirt from the walls, but the defense held ground.
​“It will not fall? Then take it in assault!”
Powder pots flew over the walls, tearing and maiming the defenders in their burst.
“Who are these wolves?” they cried. “Ah, brothers! we must fight until we die! We must ask no clemency, brothers. If we fall, our dear city—”
Ladders rose against the fort, and a wave of roaring men swarmed over the walls.
“Ah, San Lorenzo! hide us! bear us away! These are no men, but devils. Hear me! Hear me! Quarter! Ah, Jesus! where art thou now?”
“Throw down the walls! Let no two stones stand together!”
(There is a woman in the Cup of Gold, and she is lovely as the sun.)
“Grant no quarter! Kill the Spanish rats! Kill all of them!”
And Maracaibo lay pleading at his feet. Doors were torn from the houses, and the rooms gutted of every movable thing. They herded the women to a church and locked them in. Then the prisoners were brought to Henry Morgan.
“Here is an old man, sir. We are sure he has riches, but he has hidden them away and we can never find any.”
“Then put his feet in the fire!—why, he is a brazen fool! Break his arms!— He will not tell? Put the whip-cord about his temples!— Oh, kill him! kill him and stop his screaming— Perhaps he had no money—”
(There is a woman in Panama—)
​“Have you scratched out every grain of gold? Place the city at ransom! We must have riches after pain.”
A fleet of Spanish ships came sailing to the rescue.
“A Spanish squadron coming? We will fight them! No, no; we shall run from them if we can get away. Our hulls lag in the water with their weight of gold. Kill the prisoners!”
(—she is lovely as the sun.)
And Captain Morgan sailed from broken Maracaibo. Two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of eight were in his ships, and rolls of silken stuffs and plates of silver and sacks of spices. There were golden images from the Cathedral, and vestments crusted with embroidery of pearls. And the city was a fire-swept wreck.
“We are richer than we could have hoped. There will be joy in Tortuga when we come. Every man a hero! We shall have a mad riot of a time.”
(La Santa Roja is in Panama.)
“Ah, God! then if I must, I must. But I fear I go to my death. It is a dreadful thing to be attempting. If this is my desire, I must, though I die.” He called young Cœur de Gris to him.
“You have distinguished yourself in this fight, my friend.”
“I have done what was necessary, sir,”
“But you fought finely, I saw you when we engaged. Now I have made you my lieutenant in the field, my second in command. You are brave, ​you are sagacious, and you are my friend. I can trust you, and who among my men will bear this trust if it be worth his while to fail?”
“It is a great honor, sir. I will pay you, surely, with my fidelity. My mother will be very pleased.”
“Yes,” said Captain Morgan; “you are a young fool, and that is a virtue in this business as long as one has a leader. Now the men are straining to get back that they may spend their money. If it were possible they would be pushing the ships to hurry them. What will you do with your money, Cœur de Gris?”
“Why, I shall send half to my mother. The remaining sum I shall divide in two. Part I shall put away, and on the other I expect to be drunk for a few days, or perhaps a week. It is good to be drunk after fighting.”
“Drunkenness has never been a pleasure to me,” the captain said. “It makes me very sad. But I have a new venture turning in my brain. Cœur de Gris, what is the richest city of the western world? What place has been immune from the slightest gesture of the Brotherhood? Where might we all make millions?”
“But, sir, you do not think— Surely you cannot consider it possible to take—”
“I will take Panama—even the Cup of Gold.”
“How may you do this thing? The city is strongly guarded with walls and troops, and the way across the isthmus is nigh impassable but for the burro trail. How will you do this thing?”
​“I must take Panama. I must capture the Cup of Gold.” The captain's jaw set fiercely.
Now Cœur de Gris was smiling quietly.
“Why do you grin at me?” demanded Captain Morgan.
“I was thinking of a chance remark I made a little time ago, that Panama was like to go the way of Troy town.”
“Ah! this nameless woman is in your mind. Dismiss her! It may be there exists no such woman.”
“But then, sir, we are rich enough of this last spoil.”
“It would be no evil thing to grow richer. I am tired of plundering. I would rest securely.”
Cœur de Gris hesitated a time, while his eyes were covered with a soft veil.
“I am thinking, sir, that when we come to Panama every man will be at his friend's throat over the Red Saint.”
“Oh, you may trust me to keep order among my men—strict order—though I hang half of them to do it. A while ago I sent word to Panama that I would go there, but I did it as a joke. And I wonder, now, whether they have been fortifying themselves. Perhaps they, too, thought it a joke. Go, now, Cœur de Gris, and speak to no man of this. I make you my ambassador. Let the men throw their gold away. Encourage gambling—here—now—on the ship. Give them an example at the taverns—an expensive example. Then they will be driven to go out with me. I must have ​an army this time, my friend, and even then we may all die. Perhaps that is the chief joy of life—to risk it. Do my work well, Cœur de Gris, and it may be one day you will be richer than you can think.”
Young Cœur de Gris stood musing by the mast.
“Our captain, our cold captain, has been bitten by this great, nebulous rumoring. How strange this pattern is! It is as though the Red Saint had been stolen from my arms. My dream is violated. I wonder, when they know, if every man will carry this feeling of a bitter loss—will hate the captain for stealing his desire.”
v
Sir Edward Morgan led forces against St. Eustatius, and, while the battle raged, a slim, brown Indian slipped up and drove a long knife into his stomach. The Lieutenant-Governor set his lips in a straight, hard line, and crumpled to the ground.
“My white breeches will be ruined,” he thought. “Why did the devil have to do it, just when we were getting on so nicely. I should have got special thanks from his Majesty, and now I shall not be here to receive them. Heaven! he chose a painful place!” And then the full tragedy struck him.
“An ordinary knife,” he muttered; “and in the stomach. I should have preferred a sword in the hand of an equal—but a knife—in the stomach! ​I must look disreputable with all this blood and dirt on me. And I cannot straighten up! Christ! the wretch struck a sensitive spot.”
His men sadly bore him to Port Royal.
“It was unavoidable,” he told the Governor; “slipped up on me with a knife and stabbed me in the stomach. Such a little devil he couldn't reach any higher, I suppose. Report the affair to the Crown, will you, sir? And please do not mention the knife—or the stomach. And now will you leave me with my daughter? I shall be dying soon.”
Elizabeth stood over him in a darkened room.
“Are you hurt badly, father?”
“Yes, quite badly. I shall die presently.”
“Nonsense, papa; you are only joking to excite me.”
“Elizabeth, does it sound like nonsense—and have you ever heard me joke? I have several things to speak of, and the time is very short. What will you do? There is little money left. We have been living on my salary ever since the King made his last general suggestion for a loan.”
”But what are you talking about, papa! You cannot die and leave me here alone and lost in the colonies. You cannot, cannot do it!”
“Whether I can or not, I shall die presently. Now let us discuss this matter while we can. Perhaps your cousin who has come to such fame through robbery will care for you, Elizabeth. I am pained at the thought, but—but—it is neces​sary to live—very necessary. And after all, he is your cousin.”
“I will not believe it. I simply will not believe it. You cannot die!”
“You must stay with the Governor until you can meet your cousin, Tell him the exact standing of the matter; no fawning—but do not be too proud. Remember he is your own blood cousin, even though he is a robber.” His heavy breathing filled the room. Elizabeth had begun to cry softly, like a child who cannot quite tell whether or not it is hurt. Finally words were forced from Sir Edward's lips.
“I have heard that you can tell a gentleman by the way he dies—but I should like to groan. Robert would have groaned if he had wished. Of course, Robert was queer—but then—he was my own brother—he would have shrieked if he had felt like it. Elizabeth, will you—please—leave the room. I am sorry—but I must groan. Never speak of it— Elizabeth—you promise—never—never to speak of it?”
And when she came again, Sir Edward Morgan was dead.
vi
Spring had come to Cambria, welling up out of the Indies and out of the hot, dry heart of Africa, and this the fifteenth Spring since Henry went away. Old Robert liked to think, and then came curiously to believe, that his son sent the Spring ​to Cambria out of the tropic places. There was a green fur climbing up the hills, and the trees were testing new, fragile leaves in the winds.
Old Robert's face had grown more set. Around his mouth lived less a smile and more a grimace, as though some ancient, anguished smile had frozen there. Ah! the years had been lonely, barren things, with nothing left in their arms for him. He knew the meaning, now, of Gwenliana's words—that age brought nothing with it save a cold, restless waiting; a dull expectancy of a state that might not be imagined with any assurance. Perhaps he waited for the time when Henry would come to him again. But that could scarcely be so. He was not at all sure that he wanted to see Henry any more. It would be disturbing. When one is old, one hates disturbing things.
For a long time he had wondered, “What is Henry doing now? what seeing now?” And then the boy had faded slightly, had come to be like people in old books—not quite real, yet real enough to be remembered. But Robert thought often of this abstract person, his son, of whom he heard wavering rumors now and again.
With waking on the fine morning of the Spring, Robert had said, “I will climb up to see Merlin to-day. Strange how that old man lives under the growing pressure of his years. There must be more than a hundred of them now. His body is a thin wisp—nothing more than a suggestion that here was once a body. But William says, if you can be picking thought out of William's speaking, ​that his voice is golden and strong as always, and that he still talks tremendous nonsense that would not be tolerated at London. It is amazing how this road-mender has his whole life curled like a kitten around four days in London. But I must be going to Merlin. It is not likely that I shall go again.”
The steep, rocky path was a thing of torture to him; more a cruel thing because of his memory of lithe, powerful legs, and lungs as tireless as bellows. Once he had led all comers in the mountain race, but now he climbed a bit, then rested on a stone, and climbed again—up and up into the cleft and over the rock shoulder. It was noon when he came at last to Crag-top.
Merlin met him at the door before he had time to knock, and Merlin had no more changed than the harps and spear-heads hanging to his walls. He seemed to have discarded time like a garment. Merlin came to Robert with no surprise. It was as though he had known of this slow pilgrimage a thousand years before the day had happened.
“It is very long, Robert, since you climbed the path to me, and long since I went down it.” And “down, down” sang the harps. He spoke the language of the strings, and they responded like a distant choir in high mass of the mountains.
“But it's an old man who climbs to you now, Merlin. The trail is a beast enemy to wrestle with. You seem no older. I wonder when you will come to die. Do not your years sometimes argue that question with you?”
​“Why, to speak truthfully, Robert, I have taken it in my mind several times—but always there were too many things to think about. I could not take the time to die. If I did, I might not be able to think ever again.
“For up here, Robert, that furtive hope the valley men call faith becomes a questionable thing. Oh, without doubt, if there were a great many about me, and they all intoning endlessly the chant, ‘There is a wise, kind God; surely we shall go on living after death,’ then I might be preparing for the coming life. But here, alone, halfway up the sky, I am afraid that death would interrupt my musing. The mountains are a kind of poultice for a man's abstract pain, Among them he laughs—oh, far more often than he cries.”
“You know,” said Robert, “my mother, the old Gwenliana, made a last, curious prophecy before she died. ‘This night the world ends,’ she said, ‘and there will be no more earth to walk upon.’”
“Robert, I think she spoke truth. I think her dying words were truth, whatever may have been her other auguries. This gnawing thought comes visiting, sometimes, and because of it I am afraid to die—horribly afraid. If by my living I give life to you, and fresh existence to the fields and trees and all the long green world, it would be an unutterable deed to wipe them all out like a chalk drawing. I must not—yet awhile.
“But enough of these foreboding things. There is no laughter in them. You, Robert, have been too long in the valley of men. Your lips laugh, ​but there is no amusement in your heart. I think you place your lips so, like twigs over a trap, to conceal your pain from God. Once you tried to laugh with all your soul, but you did not make the satirist's concession—that of buying with a little amusement at yourself the privilege of laughing a great deal at others.”
“I know that I am defeated, Merlin, and there seems to be no help for it. Victory, or luck, or whatever you wish to call it, appears to lie hidden in a chosen few as babies' teeth hide under the gums. Of late years this God has played a hard, calculating game with me. There have been moments when I thought he cheated.”
Merlin spoke slowly:
“Once I played against a dear young god with goat's feet, and that game was the reason for my coming here. But then, I made the great concession and signed with sad laughter. Robert, did I not hear a long time past that you were roving in your mind? Surely William stopped by and told me you had grown insane. Did you not do reprehensible things in your rose garden?”
Robert smiled bitterly. “That was one of this God's tricks,” he said. “I will tell you how it was. One day, when I was pulling the dead leaves from my roses, it came upon me to make a symbol. This is no unusual thing. How often do men stand on hill tops with their arms outstretched, how often kneel in prayer and cross themselves. I pulled a bloom and threw it into the air, and the petals showered down about me. It seemed that this ​act gathered up and told the whole story of my life in a gesture. Then the loveliness of white petals on black earth absorbed me, and I forgot my symbol. I threw another and another, until the ground was snowed with rose leaves. Suddenly I looked up and saw a dozen men standing about laughing at me. They had come by from church. ‘Hee!’ they said, ‘Robert has lost his mind. Hee! his sense is slipping out of him. Ho! he is a child again, throwing rose petals.’ It seemed a crazed God who could allow this thing.”
Merlin was shaking with a silent glee.
“Oh, Robert! Robert! why must you blame the world when it protects itself against you? I think God and the world are one to you. If there were ten people in the valley below who liked the look of rose leaves on the ground, you would only be a very queer person, interesting and something of a curiosity. They would bring strangers to your house on Sunday afternoons and exhibit you. But, since there are none, of course you are a radical who must be locked up or hanged. Judgment of insanity is truly the hanging of a man's mind. If it be whispered of him that his brain wanders, then nothing he can say will matter to any one ever again, except as a thing to laugh at.
“Can you not see, Robert? People have so often been hurt and trapped and tortured by ideas and contraptions which they did not understand, that they have come to believe all things passing their understanding are vicious and evil—things to be ​stamped out and destroyed by the first comer. They only protect themselves, thus, against the ghastly hurts that can come to them from little things grown up.”
“I know,” said Robert; “I know all that, and I do not cry out against it. My great complaint is that the only possession I carry about with me is a bag of losses. I am the owner solely of the memory of things I used to have. Perhaps it is well—for I seem to love them more now that I have them not. But I cannot understand how this fortune may be born hidden in a chosen few. My own son assaults and keeps each one of his desires, if the winds tell truth.”
“You had a son, Robert; I remember now. I think I prophesied that he would rule some world or other if he did not grow up.”
“And so he does. News of him comes out of the south on a light, inaccurate wind. Rumor has wings like bats. It is said that he rules a wild race of pirates; that he has captured towns and pillaged cities. The English are elated, and call him a hero and a patriotic man—and so do I, sometimes. But I fear if I were a Spaniard, he would be only a successful robber. I have heard—though I do not believe it; I do not want to believe it—that he has tortured prisoners.”
“So,” Merlin mused, “he has come to be the great man he thought he wanted to be, If this is true, then he is not a man. He is still a little boy and wants the moon. I suppose he is rather un​happy about it. Those who say children are happy, forget their childhood. I wonder how long he can stave off manhood.
“Robert, have you seen those great black ants which are born with wings? They fly a day or two, then drop their wings and fall upon the ground to crawl for all their lives. I wonder when your son will drop his wings. Is it not strange, Robert, how, among men, this crawling is revered—how children tear at their wings, so they may indulge in this magnificent crawling?”
“What makes boys grow to men?” Robert asked. “What circumstance rots out their wing roots?”
“Why, a great many never have wings, and some tear them off for themselves; some are sudden things and others very tedious. I do not know them all, but mine was ridicule—a kind of self-ridicule. I loved a small girl in the valley, and I suppose she was beautiful. I hope I was handsome. I made a song for her and called her the Bride of Orpheus. I rather fancied myself Orpheus, then. But she considered marriage with a deity as some manner of a crime against nature. She lectured me. Every man, so she said, owed it to something or other—his family or his community or himself, I forget just what—to make a success of himself. She was vague as to the nature of success, but she made it very plain that song was not a structure of success. And deities she abhorred, especially pagan deities. There was a man with lands and houses who was reassuringly human. Even in my old age I think spitefully that ​he was deplorably human. So they were married, and ridicule gnawed off my wings.
“I paraded murder and suicide and fields of glory through my mind to fight this little paining ridicule. In my shame, I thought to lock up my songs from the world, so that never again might people hear them. The world did not even know when I was gone. No little groups of people came to plead with me to return—and I had promised the ridicule they would. My bitten wings dropped; I was a man and did not want the moon. And when I tried to sing again, my voice had grown husky like a drover's voice, and my songs were thick with forethoughts and plannings.”
“I wonder how I grew,” Robert said. “I do not remember. Perhaps my youth went out of me sticking to coins—or perhaps it lives in those lands I used to dream of. But Henry is swimming in his dreams, and sometimes I am very jealous of him.
“Do you know, Merlin, there is a thing which has appeared strange to me. My mother, Gwenliana, thought she had the second sight, and we humored her because she took such joy of it. And on the night that Henry went away, she cast a picture of his life. Merlin, nearly all her words have come to be the truth. Can these thoughts have come on her like a series of bright paintings? It is a strange, unlikely thing.”
“Perhaps she read his desire, Robert, and sensed the strength of his desire. I taught old Gwenliana many things which had to do with magic; she was very apt at reading signs—and faces.”
​Old Robert rose to stretch himself. “Ah, well—I must be going now. It takes a weary time for such an aged man to be getting down the path. It will be night when I am home again. Here is William coming with his pick which was an appendage born to him. I will be going down a bit in his company and learning the way of things at London. You must love words, Merlin, to be making so many of them; and I must love pain, to be engendering it against myself.
“And, Merlin, I think you are a trickster and a fraud; every time I have gone away from you it has been with the conviction that you have said mighty things, yet, on thinking, I could never recall any of them. I think you work a subtle conjuring with the soft voice of you, and your harps.”
And as he went down the path, the hanging harps crooned after him the Sorcerer's Farewell.