Part 23

Lighter it grew. There was colour in the sky now; the men were surging forward, swearing that they would wait no more. Then from far away, on the farther wall of the town, a cry arose, a cry like a death cry, a cry of alarm. Two shots followed; then yells, shrieks, oaths, the roar of many guns. “Up with her, Tucket,” said the waiting men. Cries sounded within the town, dogs yelped, one or two women screamed, as the firing increased. “Come on,” Margaret called to the pioneers. They splashed out of the water on to the sands, and started towards the city at a run. As they ran, they heard Pain keeping back the ranks till the charge should have been fired. The feet splashed behind them slowly, growing fainter. The fire on the beach grew brighter, they were passing it; the walls were before them, only a hundred yards away. “Against the door,” he said, panting. “Against the hinges. One keg spilled below.” The town was aroused now. They could hear the cries and hurry. Still no sign came from the walls. “Sentinel’s asleep,” said one of the men. “There,” said another. “Up with her. Up with her. We’re seen.” A man showed upon the wall by the gate. “Ahi,” he screamed. “Piratas. Piratas. Piratas. Cuidado. Cuidado.” He fired his gun into the air; the flash shot up like the flash of a blast-charge. There came cries and a noise of running. A few heads showed. The wall spouted fire in a volley. They were up against the wall, against the iron-plated door, piling the kegs against the hinges, tamping them down with sods and stones. Margaret snatched one keg and spilled it along the door-sill. “There,” he said. “There. Now your fuse, fuseman.” The quick-match was thrust into a keg. “Up along the walls, boys. Quick. Scatter. Pronto.” He thrust them sideways. They saw what he wanted. When the imaginations are alert there is little need for speech. No man could have heard him. The racket in the town was uproar like earthquake. The whole wall above them was lit with fire spurts. Mud and plaster were tinkling in a rain upon them. They ran fifty yards like hares, paying out the quick-match. “Now,” said Margaret. The match flashed. A snake of fire rippled from them. They saw the shards of pots gleam, then vanish. They saw old bones, old kettles, all the refuse below the walls. “Down,” he shouted. “Down.” They flung themselves down. The beach to their left flashed, as the pirates fired at the wall.

There came a roar, a rush of fire, a shaking of the land. Mud, brick, stone, shards of iron and wood, all the ruin of the gate, crashed among them, flying far among the trees, thumping them on their backs as they lay. After the roar there was a dismayed silence. A wail of a hurt man sounded, as though the wrecked gate cried. Then with a volley the privateers stormed in. From where he lay, Margaret could watch them plainly; the dawn had broken. He saw them charging, tripping in the sand, their gun-barrels glinting. An Indian led them, a screaming Indian, who danced and spun round, waving his machete. “Lie still,” he shouted to his pioneers. “Let them pass. They’ll shoot you down. Lie still.” With yells and shots the storming party swept up the ruin. “Up with her,” they shouted. “Up with her.” They were clambering over the wreck, tripping, stumbling, kneeling, to fire, clubbing at the guard. “Now,” said Margaret, drawing his sword. They rose up from their nest among the tip. They were with their fellows, they were climbing the heaped stone, amid smoke and oaths and fire-lit faces. Margaret was inside Tolu. The south wall was won.

The land-breeze, very faint now, drifted the smoke slowly. He could see little. He could see in glimpses the whitewashed houses, the line of the south road, a man with his back to a wall, a woman fallen, figures rushing. He could see enough to know that the enemy were making no stand. He ran on up the road to the Plaza, one of a mob. Windows opened above him. People fired from the windows. Women were flinging pots, tiles, braziers. Some one had begun to ring the alarm bell in the church. The broken clang sounded out above the screams and the firing. Now it was all clear before him. He was in the Plaza, shouting to his mob to form. There in front of him the troops were mustering. They were running from their quarters, half clad, in rags, just as they had started from sleep. Heavy fire was rolling at the north wall. Troops were running thither. In the centre of the Plaza, about a cotton tree, a score of Spaniards were forming in line. A halberdier was dressing them. They stood firm, handling their guns, hearkening to their capitan. Margaret saw them clearly, and praised them in his heart for the flower of soldiery. They were of the old Spanish foot, the finest troops in the world. Even as he looked he saw them falling forward. He was among them. His sword jarred him to the shoulder as it struck on a gun-barrel. He saw them about him. They were breaking. They were gathering into clumps. They were being swept into the mob of citizens flying to the east gate.

Half an hour later the newly risen sun showed him a captured town. In the streets, in the Plaza, everywhere, lay the dead and dying. They lay in heaps in some parts. All the clutter and wreck of war, the clouts, the cast arms, the gear flung away by the fleeing, lay littered in the sands. The walls were chipped and starred with bullet marks. The stink of powder was everywhere. Women still screamed. Wounded men wailed where they lay, with the pitiful whimpering cry, like that of a beaten hound, which sickens all who hear it of the glory of war. Firing was still going on; but the fight was over; the town was in the hands of the privateers.

Margaret found himself at the east gate with Pain. About a dozen of the crew of the _Broken Heart_ stood by him, waiting for orders. He took their names, and told them off to look out at the city gates, and to spike the guns on the sea-wall.

“I’m going to the Governor’s house there, to look for my friend,” he said. “Where’s my trumpeter? Sound the assembly, trumpet. Muster your men, will you, Captain Pain?”

The assembly sounded. The men fell in, answering to their names. The boat-guard with the doctors landed. The captains checked off their lists, scanning the ranks closely whenever a man failed to answer. The men were powder-blackened; some of them were wounded, many were cut about the head. They sent the boat-guard with the doctors to search the streets for the dead and hurt. Thirty-three men were missing, all of them, save one, from the party which had stormed the south wall.

“Strengthen the guards at the gates,” Margaret said. “Captain Tucket, you take the north gate. I’ll see to the east. Captain Pain, will you send a dozen to the south? Keep a sharp look out.”

He picked his own guard and sent them off to their duty. The other gate-guards fell out unwillingly. Some of the privateers were eating their breakfasts in the ranks.

“I’m going to the Governor’s house now,” he said to Pain. “Call me at once if the Spaniards send a trumpet. No straggling. No looting, mind.” As he turned towards the Governor’s house he heard the men behind him snigger. He heard a voice ask Pain if this was to be the new rule, now that Springer’s Key was full of college gents. Pain told the man to take a severe turn.

Margaret drew his pistols as he came near the house; for though most of the inhabitants had fled, a few poor men and slaves still lounged in the streets, having nothing to lose. A single man, richly dressed, might tempt these gangrels. He hailed a negro, who sat in the sun in the Plaza, sucking a wound in his wrist.

“Ho muchacho,” he said in his schoolboy Spanish. “Donde esta la casa del Gobernador?”

The negro waved his unhurt hand towards the house with a gesture full of dignity. Then he continued to suck his wound, like a dog licking a hurt paw.

“Gracias,” Margaret answered. “Pero el hombre Inglès. Donde esta?”

Again the negro waved his hand towards the house, pausing in his suction exactly like a dog. “He,” he said; then bent to suck again.

The house of the Governor fronted the Plaza. It was a big house, with a patio. The lower story had no outer windows, no door. Margaret had to climb the stone steps to the balcony, where a chained monkey leaped up and down in the sun, between bites at a plantain. The door leading to the inner part of the house lay open, just as the fugitives had left it. A woman’s shawl was on the floor. One runner had upset the monkey’s saucer of water. A chair had been upset. As Margaret entered the house, with his pistols cocked, he saw something beneath the chair, something bright, which he took to be a snake. It was the scabbard of a sword, flung aside in a soldier’s hurry. Margaret, pausing on the threshold to listen, wondered if Stukeley had flung it there. He listened intently, expecting to see Stukeley coming from the darkness of the corridor. His mind was busy with the thought of Stukeley. What was he to say to him? What was he to do to him? Suppose Stukeley came out fighting? “I must bring him back,” he repeated. “I must bring him back. He must be brought back.” A step sounded on the stairs behind him. It was West, one of the _Broken Heart’s_ seamen.

“Beg pardon, sir,” the man said, “may I come with you? There’s maybe some of these Dons in the house.”

“Yes,” Margaret answered. “Listen.”

They listened in the doorway for a moment; but the house was still, save for the chinking of the monkey’s chain.

“Gone, sir, I guess,” said West.

“Come on, then,” Margaret said. “Cock your pistols and come on.”

They passed through the littered hall into the left-hand corridor. The jalousied shutters were shut on the patio side; but the doors of some of the rooms were open, giving light to the passage. It was a barely furnished house, hung with very old Spanish leather, ant-eaten and mothed and mouldy, falling to pieces. In the first room, a sleeping-room, the mosquito-nets had been torn from the cots, and lay wrecked on the floor with a silver chocolate service. In another, a chair stood against the wall, where a man had stood to snatch arms from a trophy. In another sleeping-room they found the clothes of a man and woman by the cot-sides just as they had been laid the night before, when the couple retired. It was like being in the presence of death to walk that house. It was as though they were looking on the corpse of a house, on a house dug up from the sands, the life of it gone and forgotten, only the pathetic husks left, that had once been helps to men. They opened a shutter and looked out upon the patio. A goat was tethered there, crying to be milked. They heard the stamping of horses. One horse was scraping with his forefeet against the floor of his stall. There was no sign of Stukeley there, no trace of him, nothing to mark his presence.

“Now the other corridor,” Margaret said. They retraced their steps, walking on tiptoe, listening intently. The first room in the other corridor was a dining-room, furnished with heavy Spanish furniture of the great period. A lute lay on the table, among wineglasses half full of wine, a box of Peruvian suckets, a box of candied quinces, a dish of avocat pears. Some one had been playing the lute, the night before. The unknown player had fitted a new string. The broken string lay among the litter where it had been thrown. Flies were black among the suckets. The air smelt of the stale gums which had burnt out before a crucifix on the wall. A shaft of sunlight came through a broken shutter. The dust quivered in it. On the floor, in its road of glory, a column of ants marched, stumbling over crumbs. There was much silver in the room. Over the side-board was a Zurbaran, too full of personality to be religious. Margaret looked at it, sighing, thinking that only lesser artists could save their souls. There was no trace of Stukeley here. “Let’s get out,” he said. “He’s not here.”

“There’s three more rooms,” said West. They entered the Governor’s office.

It was a barer room than the others. It contained a table and a few chairs. There were papers on the table; a locked account book, a list of resident Indians, a list of citizens capable of bearing arms, a diary in cipher. Under the table, in a coffer, were more account books, Cammock’s portolano, and a copy of the same, traced from the originals, now nearly finished.

“You see, West,” said Margaret. “You bear witness that I take these two books?”

“Yes, sir,” said West. He walked over to a corner and picked something up from a chair.

“Isn’t this Mr. Stukeley’s, sir?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, crossing over swiftly. “It’s his hat. And there’s his sword-belt.”

They stood together, looking at the things, wondering how lately the owner had flung them there, as he came in, hot, for the onzas. They felt him to be very near them there. It was as though he were coming sneering towards them, his fine teeth showing. His very words came into Margaret’s mind, with their exact inflections. “Found much? Eh?” Those were the words he would use.

“Hark,” said West suddenly. They listened.

“What did you think you heard?”

“There’s some one speaking in the next room, sir.”

“Listen.”

In the hush, they heard a sound like a sob, a low murmur of words; then a rustling, chinking sound.

“Like some one praying,” West said.

“Careful now,” said Margaret. “Come on after me.” They crept from the office on tiptoe, their pistols ready. In the corridor a board creaked beneath them. They paused guiltily, straining their ears to listen. They heard some one cross the room quietly. Then the door was flung open, letting a glare of light into the corridor. A priest stood before them, holding up a crucifix. Within was a bed. A woman knelt by the bed. Some one lay on the bed, covered with a cloth. Margaret raised his hand, and the priest stepped back, looking at their faces curiously.

“Donde esta el caballero inglès?” Margaret asked. “El señor Stukeley?”

A faint smile showed upon the priest’s mouth.

“Here,” he said in good English. He twitched back the bed-cloth reverently, to show the body of Stukeley lying dead. The face was a dull yellow, the mouth was inflamed. There was no need for further words.

“Vomito,” said the priest.

“Yes,” Margaret said, uncovering. “Vomito.”

“This morning,” the priest said.

The woman rose from the bedside, as though to drive them away. She was a black-eyed, hawk-nosed woman, of a crude and evil beauty. She was dressed in red and brown, in an outlandish style. She spoke in gasps, dreadful to hear; using broken English, laced with oaths and Spanish words. “Damn,” she said. “Damn perros. Cabrones de piratas.”

“De quién es?” Margaret stammered, meaning “Who are you?” He had no gift of tongues.

“Mrs. Stukeley,” the priest said. “The widow. His wife.”

“Me Anna,” said the woman. “Me ’is wife.”

Margaret bowed; words seemed useless. He was only conscious of the horror of it. He had not been prepared for this. He had sat at meat so many times with this corpse. He had seen him so often, full of life and health, going with a laugh to sin, in the pride of the flesh. Now a little thing, the bite of a fly, no more, had brought him to a death among strangers, in this low cot in the wilds, with his beauty turned to horror, and his strength, if anything, a fiery chain upon his soul. There he lay, under an Indian cotton, gone to his reward so soon. Margaret had hated him. He shuddered now to think how he had hated him. Looking at him as he lay there, in all the hideousness of death, he felt the remorse which a death brings. He felt ashamed, as though he had struck the corpse by hating him whom it had covered. “It was my fault,” he said to himself. “It should have been otherwise. One ought to live with this before one.” He saw where he had acted hastily, where he had failed. He knew all that he might have done. What moved him most was the thought that Olivia had loved this man, had loved him tenderly, and that he, Olivia’s lover had never known his character, had never guessed what it was in him which was beautiful to her. Now he would never know. Standing by the side of the corpse, he tasted all the bitterness of one who has failed to apprehend another, and learns of his failure too late. Stukeley was dead now, the old life was dead now. He would to God that he were dead in Stukeley’s place, and that the old life might be lived again. He would to God that this man’s passage to death had been made pleasanter. He blamed himself. He was touched and humbled almost to tears. “If I had only understood,” he thought, “you would not have cast yourself away thus.” Now he had this to tell Olivia.

“You were not what I thought, Stukeley,” he murmured aloud, looking down at the face. “You were not what I thought. You won her love. You were her chosen.

“My God,” he added to himself, “you won her by that very quality of certainty which made you cast her aside.” He stood there trying to create, in his moment of tenderness, fit words with which to tell her, words which might comfort her, staying in her heart. The words which came to him seemed blunt and cold. The only help that he could give to her was to bury this part of her with all reverent and noble rites.

“He was the Governor’s secretary,” said the priest. “He was not here long. Not long in the country. The vomito takes the new-comers.”

“Ah,” said Margaret, starting. “How well you talk English. Look here. Come aside here. We must bury him at once?”

“Before the sun,” the priest said, with a shudder.

“Where is the burial ground?”

He raised his hand in benediction over the corpse, then led Margaret out of the room. West followed them, reverent and awed, speaking in a hushed voice. The priest led them by a back way to the patio, thence by a postern to a side street, a good two hundred yards from the house. The burial-ground was hedged with stone, over which some creepers had grown. Little green lizards were darting among the creepers. They glittered like cut glass. The gate of the cemetery swung open on hinges of raw hide. When they entered, some large rats scuttled to their burrows among the graves.

“Much sickness here,” said the priest. “It is not good to dig deep in the ground.”

“I must dig this grave deep,” Margaret answered. “Look at the rats.”

“They are large,” the priest said. “Much sickness in this poor town.”

“Where can I find a spade?” Margaret asked.

“Who knows?” said the priest. “You will tell your men to find one? Ah?”

“I must do this myself,” he answered.

“But your men on the wall,” said the priest. “And your ship there. Ah?”

Margaret looked towards the west, over the low sea-wall. Some of his men were spiking the guns on the platform. He could hear the click of the malls upon the spikes, as they snapped the soft iron flush with the gun. Beyond them, very far away, were the ships; the tide and the land-wind had set them out to sea again.

“They are waiting for the sea-breeze,” said the priest. “No getting in till chocolate.”

“No,” said Margaret. “Now take me, please, to find a spade.”

“You are not a privateer?” the priest asked. “You do not sack us?”

“No,” he answered. “I am not a pirate. I demand the right to trade, and the recognition of Andria, King of Darien.”

“Don Andria,” the priest said. “Ah? Don Andria, the King. And so we are not sacked.”

“Now let us find a spade.”

They searched for half an hour before they found a spade.

“We do not use spades,” the priest said. “We tickle the earth with our toes and it laughs fruits for us.”

“I will lay him here, West,” Margaret said. “Looking towards England.”

“Sir,” the priest said, “he was a good Catholic. He must look towards the east.”

“Ah,” said Margaret. “And his wife would like that?”

“Yes. Ah, his wife, sir. Poor child. She was only married six weeks.”

“It is sad for her. He did not suffer much, father?”

“Ill for four days. But yesterday he was better. Then the fever grew again. As it does, sir, in some cases. The blood was before the dawn. Like a child, sir. And his eyes turned upon the Cross.”

“Then I will dig the grave here,” Margaret said. “This will be east and west by my watch.” He scratched a narrow oblong with the point of the spade.

“I’ll dig the grave here,” he said.

“Not you. Not in the sun,” the priest said. “There is very much sickness. Your men will dig.”

“I shall dig,” he answered. He felt that he was burying a part of Olivia. He would do her that service. He would make a grave for that unworthy part of her. That act of his should be a part of his penance towards the dead man’s ghost.

“It is very bad to dig this ground,” the priest said. “It is dust of the dead. We do not dig deep except for an Excellency. You see. The rats. Why toil, since God will bring them together at the Resurrection?”

“This is an evil country,” Margaret answered, driving the spade into the earth.

“There is fever and death. Very evil,” said the priest. “It is not wholesome to be in the sun, turning the earth, before chocolate. I will go to the widow.”

He left the cemetery, holding a handkerchief across his nose. The rats in their burrow-mouths watched him. One or two of them scuttled to other burrows. They seemed to play a game of general post, with Margaret as the “he.”

“Let me have a go at that spade, Captain Margaret, sir,” said West.

“No. I must do this,” he answered. “It is dangerous at the top. Perhaps deeper down you shall give me a hand. Gather stones from the wall. I want you to keep away from me, West. This soil is full of infection. Here is some tobacco. I want you to smoke, all the time you are here.”

“No, sir,” said West, looking uncomfortable. “Not just now, thank you, sir.”

“It will keep away the infection. You do smoke?”

“Yes, sir. But it wouldn’t be right, sir, nor respectful to Mrs. Stukeley.”

“Ah,” said Margaret, feeling himself rebuked. He dug for a few minutes in silence; it was light, sandy earth, easily shovelled.

“I wish you’d let me do that, sir,” said West.

“No. Not yet, West.”

“He was a big man, too, sir. He’d ’ave been a fine big man if he’d taken care of himself.”

“Yes,” Margaret answered. “He was a beautiful figure.”

“There’s a lot of poor fellows killed, sir,” said West. “But somehow it don’t come ’ome like this one does. That yellow look, after what he was. And the Spanish lady. She wasn’t his real lady, sir.”

“No. She wasn’t his real lady.”

So they talked as they dug turn and turn about for an hour and a half, when they had to stop digging. They were coming to water. The bottom of the grave was an inch or two deep in water.

“We can go no further,” Margaret said. “Now we’ll get stones.” They lined the bed of the grave with stones, and turned to the house for the body.

The priest and the woman had laid the body out. Margaret ripped down one of the long, jalousied shutters for a bier, while West searched in the patio for rope. An old Spanish tapestry of the death of Absalom served as a pall. They carried Stukeley to the grave, the priest preceding them, intoning the burial service. Then, very reverently, they lowered him. West and Margaret went aside after this and gathered a heap of lilies while the woman and priest prayed together.

“Take her away, father,” Margaret whispered. The priest led the woman to the house. She walked like one stunned. Margaret and West leaned over the grave, to look their last on Stukeley. They could see the water soaking into the linen, and above that the frayed body of Absalom, the handsome youth, caught in the thicket, as he rode. The town was noisy beyond them, two hundred yards away. Singing and shouting came from the Plaza. It seemed to Margaret to be the dirge the man would have chosen, this singing and shouting of men.

“Is that gentleman’s service enough, sir?” West asked.

“Quite enough,” he answered. “You heard him say that Mr. Stukeley had changed his religion?”

“I’d feel easier if you’d say a few words, sir.”