Part 18

Cammock was not free from trouble; he had his own share. The _Broken Heart_ was no happier to him, though he no longer suffered from Stukeley. The men of war were the cause of the trouble, even as he had feared. They were too independent, they resented control, they had a bad effect upon the ship’s discipline. He had had trouble with them from the very first, when they came aboard drunk, twenty-seven of them, bringing with them, as members of their company, the two deserters from the trading-booth. He had promptly put the two deserters into irons for a night. He had then turned them forward, stopped their rum for the voyage, and forced them to work on deck from eight in the morning till four in the afternoon, on all days, whether it was their watch or not. This had caused a mutiny among the men of war. They had come on deck to demand the return of their mates. Margaret, having called all hands aft, had spoken to them, as Cammock confessed, “like a father.” He had read his commission to them. He had promised them that, if they showed any signs of rebellion, he would land them at an English colony, where they should be drafted into the Navy without mercy. He had then called out the two men who had been most noisy in the mutiny, and had put them in the bilboes abaft the main mast, under a sentry, for the next three days. But though the mutiny was crushed, the ill-feeling remained. The men of war went about their duties sullenly, showing that they resented his action. The fo’c’s’le hands, quick to catch the mutinous temper, became “soldiers,” who loafed and skulked, till the mates, goaded by their insolence, made protest, with a bight of the topgallant brace. Cammock had more than the anxieties of office on his shoulders. He had to walk the poop, the captain of all on board, in a false position. In a sense he was a privateer. Had he been, as he once was, a privateer only, he would have known how to handle the privateers beneath him. He understood them. He could even feel for them; he knew how they felt towards him; when he saw them hanging round the hatch, cursing the cruise and all on board. But in the _Broken Heart_ he was less the privateer than the merchant captain going trading. He had divided interests to manage; he had a divided crew under his command. He could see that the temper of the ship was as bad as it could be. The men were in that difficult state a little on this side of mutiny, always on the verge, never quite declaring, but sullen enough to make their captain’s life an anxious life. He expected that their arrival at Springer’s Key would put them in a better spirit. He wished that he could give them some fighting on the way; for it was the belief of his old commander that there is nothing like the sight of a dead or wounded comrade to make a man look to his leader with trust and thankfulness. Meanwhile he drilled all hands daily at the guns, expecting a refusal of duty at any moment. Thinking of the situation in the quiet of his cabin, he decided that the crew would not stand failure. “If we fail,” he said, “this gang will not try twice. No privateers will. And these aren’t the pick of the Kipe.” He felt that the cruise would fail. His forebodings obsessed him. When he walked the poop at nights, walking athwartships now, not fore and aft, lest the helmsman should attack him from behind, he was sure that he would never see home again. He was always imagining a place of noise and smoke, with himself falling forward on the sand, looking his last, shot in the body. The obsession made him more serious than usual. He borrowed a Testament from Perrin and read the last chapter. Perrin angered him by saying that the last chapter bored him to death.

As for Stukeley, his senses were gratified; he asked for nothing more from the world. He had every reason to feel satisfied. He had not been arrested in Virginia, that was good; he had broken with his batter-pudding of a wife, that was better; and he was no longer tortured by the prigs of the cabin. He was messing now in the wardroom, with Cottrill and Ramage, visiting Mrs. Inigo openly, whenever he liked; that was best of all. Neither Margaret nor Perrin had spoken to him since he had bragged to them of having broken with Olivia, of having fooled them about her child. Cammock had told him that he was to leave the cabin precincts and that when they wanted him as an interpreter they would send for him; but that until then he would either lie low or go in irons. At the moment he was too pleased with his successes to regret his loss of power. He was content to lie low, and to refrain from offering insults to all who irritated him. He patched up a truce with Mr. Cottrill, whom he found to be good company. He made friends with Smut, the ship’s cat, and taught one of her kittens to walk on bottle-mouths. He made friends with several of the men of war, who had their mess without the wardroom. He would sing “Old Rose” and “Twankydillo” to them, in the fine bass voice of which he was so vain. Like most seafaring men, the privateers thought much of a fine singer. They used to hang about the wardroom door after supper, to hear him singing quietly to himself, going over his trills and gurgles. He had but to come out into the ’tween-decks to find himself a popular idol. Men would rise up from their chests, with real courtesy, as he came among them. If there were singers there they became silent suddenly, tale-tellers ceased in their stories. There came a low murmur of “Good evening, sir. Good evening, Mr. Stukeley. Will you sit down, sir? Are we past the Serranas yet, d’ye know, sir?” till he was entrapped among them. As he did not know sailors, he took all this to be a tribute to his good looks, to his fine physique, to his manner, to his taking conversation. He used to get them to tell him of their lives on the coast, believing that it was a kind of life which might please himself. He inquired also of the life in the Spanish towns, that lazy, luxurious life, with so many opportunities for amassing wealth and for self-indulgence. A buccaneer would handle a guitar, and sing, in a high, false, musical whine, about “my Santa Marta.” Another buccaneer, drumming on his chest-lid, would begin about the Spanish girls and the sack of Porto Bello. Listening to them, down in the half-darkness, Stukeley felt that he, too, would soon taste of that life. He would lie in a grass hammock, fanned by a Spanish-Indian girl, whose great eyes would look into his. Eh? He would eat skewered “soldiers” from the hands of an Indian wife. He would catch fireflies to stick in her hair. Perhaps he would see the sack of a town, with the women crouched in their rooms, waiting for the conquerors. “Brown women; modest, lively little things,” so Raphael Gamage told him.

The days dragged by slowly. The _Broken Heart_ crawled like a slug, leaving a slug’s track on the sea. The bells struck, the sails slatted. The sun arose greyly in mist, then burned the mist away, a spilling spring of light, in a sky like blue fire. Then in the glare of noon the chart was marked, the pencilled dot moved forward in its zigzag, past the Serranas, past Roncif, past the Roncadores. Then the wind came fair for a few days to help her to the south, her bows in a heap of smother. Presently, when the first land-wind came to them, in a faint breath, smelling, as they said, of arnotto roses, there came drifting butterflies, white and blue, very lovely, settling and dying on the deck, like petals from a fruit tree in spring. A strange bird sailed past them, drooping her legs, her wings beating like a mill-wheel, rhythmically, her fierce eyes looking ahead, searching the sky. A tree tumbled in their wash, rolling over and over. A creeper from the branches sank in the wake, its leaves like little green hands, clutching out, far down, among the globes of the bubbles. Then when the sun was sinking, when the air was intense and clear, like the air in a vision, far ahead a bluish mist showed, so dimly, in such blue faintness, that one could not be sure. Till dark they watched it. When the dawn made each cloud a scale of scarlet, edged with fire to the mid-heaven, the mist took outline. Long before sunset the land lay clear, a long purplish line of land, with a gleaming peak or two round which the cloud streamed. It stretched away on each side of them, like an army in rank. Parts of it were dim; its wings were dim; but ahead the hills were gathered close; one could count each fold in them. Margaret, loitering on the poop with Perrin, watched them intently, with emotions which mastered him. A voice seemed to be talking to him. “What went ye out for to see?” it repeated. He had gone out to see this land, to hear the multitudes of sea-fowl scream. There lay the land. Like all lands seen from the sea, it seemed to lure him, to beckon to him, to be full of mystery, of mystery which he could solve.

“So that’s the land,” he said at length. “What do you make of it, Edward?”

“I?” said Edward. “It makes me shudder somehow. It’s the end of something. Change is always horrible to me.”

Cammock joined them, thumbing the leaves of a portolano.

“We’re away to the east, sir,” he said to Margaret. “If you’ll stand in a bit further, sir, we shall open Golden Island clear, before dark. That’ll give me a landfall to go by.”

“And when shall we make Springer’s Key, captain?”

“To-morrow, some time, sir. But we’ll stand in further here, if you don’t mind. There may be some of those friends of ours in the harbour here. A nice little sandy bay in there, sir.”

Soon the hills drew nearer. The line of land became jagged. What had seemed to be the main now showed as islands, a long, low island, dark with mangrove, and to the south of it a sloping peak, wooded to the top, a cone of green, with rocks about it over which the breakers toppled. Margaret could see the line of the breakers advancing towards them, blue and glassy. In the stillness, he could see the curl on the wave, the slow running curl along the line, then the intense brightness of the burst, a momentary marvel of white. He looked at Cammock, who was looking at the wooded hill, full of memories. A few of the men of war, faking a hawser in the waist, stopped their work to look with him. One or two of them, raising their caps, waved to the island. “Good old Golden Island,” they cried. “The good old Golden Island.”

“Yes,” said Captain Cammock to Margaret. “That’s Golden Island. Last time I was ashore there we were three hundred strong, going across the Isthmus. We’d fires on the sands there, I and my brother Bill, roasting crabs together. I remember we chucked pebbles over that palm on the spit there. Queer the palm being there and Bill gone, sir. He could chuck good, too; further’n I could.”

“You were very much attached to your brother, weren’t you?” Margaret asked him.

“I didn’t set much value by him at the time, sir. It’s afterwards one feels it. There’s a little black devil of a reef beyond there, two feet under water at a low spring. You don’t see it, and yet it rips you across all right. Ready oh, Mr. Cottrill. Haul the foot of the mainsail up. Hands about ship. Ease down the hellum.”

They sailed past Golden Island, and past Sasardi, watching the colours of the sunset on the rocks and woods. The brilliant birds flew homing, screaming. A faint smell, sickly sweet, came to them in puffs from the shore. Now and then, in the quiet, they heard the wash of breakers bursting on reefs. The noise kept them company at intervals through the night, as they drove on, under the stars, past Pinos, past Zambo Gandi, towards the Point of San Blas. It burst upon them mournfully, like the blowing of a sea-beast, a wash, a breathing of the sea. When the dawn broke, flashing the flying-fish into silver arrows, they were at their hearts’ desire. The palms on Springer’s Key were trembling, in the light air, before them. The ring of reef on the key’s north side stood up black amid the surf that toppled tirelessly. Pelicans flew past to fish. Macaws screamed from the fruit trees. Two Indians, with gold in their noses, waved to them from their canoe as they paddled softly, to spear cavally. Beyond them, at anchor off the key, was a small sloop. Her men were filling water ashore, wading slowly up the beach with puncheons. The saluting gun, fired by Cammock’s order, made them gather together in a group. One of them waved. Others, still in the boat, rowed out to show the channel. The sun shone bright over the multitude of islands. The sea was so blue that the beauty of her colour was like a truth apprehended. It was so perfect a beauty that Margaret, looking on it, felt that he apprehended the truth.

“Perrin,” he said, “Edward, what do you think of our home?”

“I’m not thinking of that,” he answered. “I think that all these things are images in an intellect. I think, by brooding on them, one passes into that intellect.”

The colours and house-flag blew out clear as the ship came to her berth. The sloop fired a salute; the _Broken Heart_ answered her. Soon she was opposite the little sandy beach in the centre of the key. Her sails drooped, her way checked; then, at Cammock’s shout, the anchor dropped, the cable running with a rattle, making the little fish scurry past, in view, though a fathom down.

“Well, sir,” said Cammock, “we’ve broken the neck of that.”

“Yes, captain. And now?”

“I’ve had the old sail-room turned into a dining-room. It’s laid for breakfast now, sir. I’ve got to see the captain of that sloop and learn the news. That’s the first thing. Call my boat away, boatswain.”

The privateer sloop was the _Happy Return_ of Jamaica, Captain Tucket, bound on a roving cruise with twenty men and a French commission. She carried six small guns, and her men wore arms, all of the very choicest make; but her hold was full of goods which Captain Tucket wished to sell. From Jamaica he had brought beads and coloured cloths, with which he was buying gold-dust, wax, and bird-peppers from the Indians. He had also several tons of Guiaquil chocolate and sweetmeats lately taken on the sea. He had come to Springer’s Key, he said, to fill water, before going east along the coast, as far as the ’Seniqua, looking for logwood. Things were quiet, he said, along the Main; there was nothing doing; only a few barcalongas taken. There had been talk at La Sound’s Key of combining and going to the Santa Maria gold-mines, but it had come to nothing. The French and English would not agree upon a leader. For his own part, he said, he believed there was logwood along some of these rivers east there, and he was going to look for it. He was a shrewd, but frank, elderly man.

“Look here,” he said, taking out a handkerchief. “There’s some of it. I dyed that of a slip I cut. None of your business where. There’s a pretty red for you. And I got another dodge I’m working at. Here. What d’you make of these?”

He flung upon the table a few little sticks, some of them crimson, some blue.

“What are these?” said Margaret, examining them. “Are they wax?”

“Yes, sir. Ordinary beeswax.”

“You’ve got them a very beautiful clear colour. Look, Edward. Did you learn the secret yourself?”

“You wouldn’t learn to do them at one of your English colleges, sir.”

“No. Will the colour stand fire?”

“They’re very good coloured wax anyway,” said Captain Tucker, putting them away.

“We was thinking of trying to trade at Tolu,” Cammock said. “Would you care to stand in with us?”

“At Tolu?”

“They may not trade, of course; but----”

“I’ve come here,” Margaret said, “to establish a trade, Captain Tucker. If I’m not allowed to trade with the Spanish towns, I shall trade here, like you, and defend such traders as come to me. All this coast is going to waste. I want to see all you roving traders banded together to make use of it. The Spanish can’t work it. Why should not you join us, with your men, for a beginning?”

“The jackal went a-hunting with the lion, sir. But it wasn’t him got the tender-loin,” said Tucket.

“You mean you’re afraid that my men might impose on yours?”

“Ah come, come, Abel,” said Cammock. “We’re old hands, you and I. It’s all a matter of articles.”

“I must talk it over,” said Abel. “I’ll run over to La Sound’s Key and talk it out with my mates. I won’t say. No, sir. I won’t say. Not one way or the other.”

He left soon after breakfast, and, having now filled his water, sailed from the key.

“He’s afraid of me,” said Margaret. “He’s afraid that I come from the Government, to put down privateering. Isn’t that what’s in his mind?”

“No, sir,” said Cammock. “He’s pleased with the notion. He’s a trader. He wants to cut logwood without any fear of guarda-costas. He’ll take all the defence you care to give; but he won’t come cruising with you till he’s got enough friends to stop you taking the lion’s share. He’ll be back to-morrow with some friends.”

Margaret went ashore, after this, to view the key. It was one of the larger keys of the archipelago. It was about a mile long, running east and west, and about a quarter of a mile across at its broadest part. In its highest part it was not more than sixty feet above the water; but the trees rising up above it to great height made it seem hilly. A sandy beach shelved down into the water on the side facing the Isthmus. On the north side the shore was rocky and steep-to, and hemmed about, by a five-mile sweep of reef, in a ring of breakers. Indeed, the reef ringed the key round; but the rocks about the beach did not break the seas. The island could only be approached from the south and east. On the other side neither ship nor boat could come within great-gun-shot. To the east, for a dozen miles or more, an array of palm keys stretched, with reefs in tumult round them. To approach the key from the east one had to sail within these keys, in a channel or fairway known as Springer’s Drive. This channel was bordered to the south by the keys fringing the Isthmus. The double line of keys, separated by three miles of sea, made a sort of palm hedge, or avenue, up to the anchorage. There was good holding-ground and riding in every part of the Drive; but ships usually rode near Springer’s Key, for they could get water there. Unlike most of the keys, it had a spring, which bubbled up strongly on the beach, through an old sunk tar-barrel, some yards beyond the tide-marks. The water was cold and clear, gushing up with a gurgle, making the sand grains dance. The bottom of the cask was covered with rusty iron, old nails, old blades of knives, old round-shot, laid there by sailors, long ago, in the belief that they would make the water medicinal. Some one had dammed up a pool below the cask, for the easier filling of the water-breakers. The water gurgled away, over the lip of the pool, amid a tangle of water plants that bore a profuse sweet blossom, like a daisy. Margaret had never seen a lovelier place. The brightness of the sun on the sea, the green of the trees towering up beyond him, the macaws of all colours, making their mockeries in sweet notes, were beautiful exceedingly. It was all new and strange to him. He half wished that he might be left alone there. He had no longer any wish to succeed. Had Olivia been on the other side of the world, his strength would have gone to make this spot a home for half the ships in the world. They would have lain there, with their sails as awnings, at anchor off the city he had builded. His citizens would have made those islands another Venice, another Athens, a glorious city, a city of noble life and law. All that was in his imagination might have existed, he thought. All the splendour should have come in praise of her. Nothing would have stopped him. In his heart her face would have flowered, that beautiful, pale face, the image of the woman he loved; he would have made his city glorious. Marble bridges should have spanned the channels. His empire would have spread. It would have spread over the sea there, over the keys, over the low coast fringed with mangroves, over the hills, dim in the south, over the crags where the clouds streamed, beyond the great bay, far into the south, past Garachina, past Tumbez, beyond Ylo to the Evangelists. He would have been a king. His ships would have scented all the seas of the world, bringing balms and spice home. Now all that was over, he saw what might have been. It would not now be. He had no wish now to see his city rise. He found his imagination dulled. The woman who had been his imagination, through whom, alone, he had lived imaginatively, walked, a tired shadow, with heavy eyes, in the ship beyond the reef. If he passed her she shuddered, averting her eyes. If he spoke to her--twice he had tried to speak to her--she drew in her breath, her eyes shut; she drew away from him as from a snake. He had no heart left to think of cities. All that he wished now was to do what he could for the merchants who had risked their money. The city would have to wait till the other lover came. The city would rise up glorious from the beauty of some other woman. All his love, and high resolve, and noble effort had come to this, that Olivia thought him something lower than Stukeley, something baser than the beasts.

He walked with Cammock to the island’s eastern end, where a rocky hillock stood out from the trees. He saw that a fort there would command the channel. Six of his long-range guns planted there under cover would be enough to defend the anchorage against any probable attack from guarda-costas. He drew a sketch-plan for a small redoubt, and ordered half his crew ashore to begin the clearing of the ground. He would have a wall of unmortared stones, backed by gabions, leaving embrasures for the six cannon. The outside of the fort would be covered with earth and sand, so that from a little distance it would look like a natural hillock. He caused a dozen men to cut down bejuco cane, and to plait it, while green, into wattle for the gabions. An Indian prince came to him from the Main that afternoon. He entertained him with ceremony, giving gifts of beads and petticoats, with the result that, the next morning, there were fifty natives on the key helping in the clearing of the ground. They, too, were bribed by beads. They were kindly, intelligent fellows, accustomed to be reckoned as the equals of white men, so that Cammock, superintending the work, had to watch his hands, lest they should treat their guests, in the English style, as niggers. The fort, such as it was, was finished on the third day. Its outer face showed from the sea like a sloping hillock, which in a few days would be again green with creepers. Within the wall of gabions, backed by wattle-bound piles, was a gun platform, with dry powder storerooms twenty feet behind each gun. The guns were mounted on iron carriages, and so arranged that each of the six could play across some ninety degrees of the compass. A roof of felt was rigged over each gun to protect the gunners in the rains. Margaret wished to hoist the colours over the fort; but Perrin begged that the new republic might be spared, at any rate till it was worth appropriating. Cammock advised him to refrain, lest the buccaneers should suspect him of playing for the hand of the Crown. So no flag was hoisted, though within the fort, daily, military sentries paced, firing a gun at dawn and sunset.