Chapter 4
On went the wondrous tale, with no further interruption from Sir Mortimer, who sat at the head of the table, playing the part of host to Captain Robert Baldry, listening with cold patience to the adventurer's rhodomontade. When spurred by wine there was wont to awaken in Baldry a certain mordant humor, a rough wit, making straight for the mark and clanging harshly against an adversary's shield, a lurid fancy dully illuminating the subject he had in hand. The wild story that he was telling caught the attention of the more thoughtless sort at table; they leaned forward, encouraging him from flight to flight, laughing at each sally of boatswain's wit, ejaculating admiration when the _Star_ and her Captain fairly left the realm of the natural. One splendid lie followed another, until Baldry was caught by his own words, and saw himself thus, and thus, and thus!--a sea-dog confessed, a gatherer of riches, a dealer of death from the poop of the _Star_! In his mind's eye the lost bark swelled to a phantom ship, gigantic, terrible, wrapped with the mist of the sea; while he himself--ah! he himself--
"He struck the mainmast with his hand, The foremast with his knee--"
All that he had been and all that he had done, if man were only something more than man, if devil's luck and devil's power would come to his whistle, if the seed of his nature could defy the iron stricture of the flesh, reaching its height, shooting up into a terrible upas-tree--so for the moment Baldry saw himself. Into his voice came a deep and sonorous note, his black eyes glowed; he began to gesture with his hand, stately as a Spaniard. And then, chancing to glance towards the head of the board, he met the eyes of the man who sat there, his Captain now, whom he must follow! What might he read in their depths? Half-scornful amusement, perhaps, and the contempt of the man who has done what man may do for the yoke-fellow who habitually made claim to supernatural prowess; in addition to the scholar's condemnation of blatant ignorance, the courtier's dislike of unmannerliness, the soldier's scorn of unproved deeds, athwart all the philosophic smile! Baldry, flushing darkly, hated with all his wild might, for that he chose to hate, the man who sat so quietly there, who held with so much ease the knowledge that by right of much beside his commission he was leader of every man within those floating walls. The Captain of the _Star_ struck the table with his hand.
"Ah, I had good help that time! My brother sailed with me--Thomas Baldry, that was master of the _Speedwell_ that went down at Fayal in the Azores.... Didst ever see a ghost, Sir Mortimer Ferne?"
"No," answered Ferne, curtly.
"Then the dead come not to haunt us," said Baldry. "I would have sworn a many had passed before your eyes. Now had I been Thomas Baldry I would have won back."
"That also?" demanded Sir Mortimer. His tone was of simple wonder, and there went round the board a laugh for Baldry's boasting. That adventurer started to his feet, his eyes, that were black, deep-set, and very bright, fixed upon Ferne.
"That also," he answered. "An I should die before our swords cross, that also!"
He turned and left the cabin.
"Now," said Arden, as his heavy footsteps died away, "I had rather gather snow for the Grand Turk than rubies with some I wot of!"
Henry Sedley, a hot red in his cheek, and his dark hair thrown back, turned from staring after the retreating figure. "If I send him my cartel, Sir Mortimer, wilt put me in irons?"
"Ay, that will I," said Ferne, calmly. "Word and deed he but doth after his kind. Well, let him go. For his words, that a man's deeds do haunt him, rising like shadows across his path, I believe full well--but for me the master of the _Speedwell_ makes no stirring.... Take thy lute, Henry Sedley, and sing to us, giving honey after gall! Sing to me of other things than war."
As he spoke he moved to the stern windows, took his seat upon the bench beneath, and leaning on his arm, looked out upon the low red sun and the darkening ocean.
"'Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread: For love is dead: Love is dead, infected With plague of deep disdain--'"
sang Sedley with throbbing sweetness, depth of melancholy passion. The listener's spirit left its chafing, left pride and disdain, and drifted on that melodious tide to far heavens.
"'Weep, neighbors, weep; do you not hear it said That Love is dead? His death-bed peacock's folly; His winding sheet is shame; His will false-seeming wholly; His sole executor blame!'"
rang Sedley's splendid voice. The song ended; the sun sank; on came the invader night. Ferne took the lute and slowly swept its strings.
"How much, how little of it all is peacock's folly," he said; "who knoweth? Life and Living, Love and Hate, and Honor the bubble, and Shame the Nessus-robe, and Death, which, when all's done, may have no answer to the riddle!--Where is the fixed star, and who knoweth depth from shallow, or himself, or anything?" He struck the lute again, drawing from it a lingering and mournful note.
"Now out upon the man who brought melancholy into fashion!" ejaculated Arden. "In danger the blithest soul alive, when all is well you do ask yourself too many questions! I'll go companion with Robert Baldry, who keeps no fashions save of Mars's devising."
"Why, I am not sad," said Ferne, rousing himself. "Come, I'll dice with thee for fifty ducats and a gold jewel--to be paid from the first ship we take!"
On sailed the ships through tranquil seas, until many days had fallen into their wake, slipping by them like painted clouds of floating seaweed or silver-finned vagrants of the deep. Great calms brooded upon the water, and the sails fell idle, flag and pennant drooped; then the trade-wind blew, and the white ships drove on. They drove into the blue distance, towards unknown ports--known only in that they would surely prove themselves Ports of All Peril. At night the sea burned; a field of gold it ran to horizons jewelled with richer stars than shone at home. Above them, in the vault of heaven, hung the Great Ship, blazed the Southern Cross. Every hour saw the flight of meteors, and their trains, golden argosies of the sky, faded slowly from the dark-blue depths. When the moon arose she was ringed with colors, but the men who gazed upon her said not, "Every hue of the rainbow is there." They said, "See the red gold, the pearls and the emeralds!" The night died suddenly and the day was upon them, an aureate god, lavish of splendor. They hailed him with music; as they pulled and hauled, the seamen sang. Other winds than those of heaven drove them on. High purpose, love of country, religious ecstasy, chivalrous devotion, greed of gain, lust of aggrandizement, lust of power, mad ambitions, ruthless intents--by how strong a current, here crystal clear, there thick and denied, were they swept towards their appointed haven! In cruelty and lust, in the faith of little children and the courage of old demi-gods, they went like homing pigeons; and not a soul, from him who gave command to him who, far aloft, looked out upon the deep, recked or cared that another age would call him pirate or corsair, raising brow and shoulder over the morality of his deeds.
In the realms which they were entering, Truth, shattered into a thousand gleaming fragments, might be held in part, but never wholly. There man's quarry was the false Florimel, and she lured him on and he saw with magically anointed eyes. Too suddenly awakened, the imagination of the time was reeling; its sap ran too fast; wonders of the outer, revelations of the inner, universe crowded too swiftly; the heady wine made now gods, now fools of men. The white light was not for the heirs of that age, nor yet the golden mean. Wonders happened, that they knew, and so like children they looked for strange chances. There was no miracle at which their faith would balk, no illusion whose cobweb tissue they cared to tear away. Give but a grain whereon to build, a phenomenon before which started back, amazed and daunted, the knowledge of the age, and forthwith a mighty imagination leaped upon it, claimed it for its own. There had been but a grain of sand, an inexplicable fact--lo! now, a rounded pearl shot with all the hues of the morning, a miracle of grace or an evidence of diabolic power, to doubt which was heresy!
Adventurers to the Spanish Main believed in devil-haunted seas, in flying islands, in a nation of men whose eyes were set in their shoulders, and of women who cut off the right breast and slew every male child. They believed in a hidden city, from end to end a three days' march, where gold-dust thickened the air, and an Inca drank with his nobles in a garden whose plants waved not in the wind, whose flowers drooped not, whose birds never stirred upon the bough, for all alike were made of gold. They believed in a fair fountain, hard indeed to find, but of such efficacy that the graybeard who dipped in its shining waters stepped forth a youth upon ever-vernal banks.
So with these who like an arrow now clave the blue to the point of danger. In this strange half of the world where nature's juggling hand dealt now in supernal beauty, now in horror without a name, how might they, puppets of their age, hold an even balance, know the mirage, know the truth? Inextricably mingled were the threads of their own being, and none could tell warp from woof, or guess the pattern that was weaving or stay the flying shuttle. What if upon the material scroll unrolling before them God had chosen to write strange characters? Was not the parchment His, and how might man question that moving finger?
One day they discerned an island, fair and clear against the horizon--undoubtedly there, although no chart made mention of it. All saw the island; but when one man cried out at the amazing height of its snowy peak another laughed him to scorn, declaring the peak a cloud, and spoke of sand-dunes topped with low bushes. A third clamored of a fair white city, an evident harbor, and the masts of great ships; a fourth, every whit as positive, stood out for unbroken forests and surf upon a lonely reef. While they contended, the island vanished. Then they knew that they had seen St. Brandon's Isle, and in his prayer at the setting of the watch the chaplain made mention of the matter. On a night when all the sea was phosphorescent, Thynne the master saw in the wake of the _Cygnet_ a horned spirit, very black and ugly, leaping from one fiery ripple to another, but when he called on Christ's name, rushing madly away, full tilt into the setting moon. Again, Ferne and young Sedley, pacing the poop beneath a sky of starry splendor, and falling silent after talk that had travelled from Petrarch and Ariosto to that _Faerie Queene_ which Edmund Spenser was writing, heard a faint sweet singing far across the deep. "Hark!" breathed Sedley. "The strange sweet sound.... Surely mermaiden singing!"
"I know not," replied Ferne, his hands upon the railing. "Perchance 'tis so. They say they are fair women.... The sound is gone. I would I might hear thy sister singing."
"How silver and how solemn is the sky!" said his companion. "Perhaps it was the echo of some heavenly strain. There goeth a great star! They say that the fall of such stars is portentous, speaking to men of doom."
His Captain laughed. "Hast added so much astrology to thy store of learning? Now, good-wife Atropos may cut her thread by the light of a comet; but when the comet has flared away and the shearer returned to her place, then in the deep darkness, where even the stars shine not, the shorn thread may feel God's touch, may know it hath yet its uses.... How all the sea grows phosphorescent! and the stars do fall so thickly that there may be men a-dying. Well, before long there will be other giving of swords to Death!"
In the silence which followed his words, lightly spoken as they were, young Sedley, who indeed owed very much to Mortimer Ferne, laid impulsively his hand upon his Captain's hand. "On the night you give your sword to Death, how great a star shall fall! An I go first, I shall know when the trumpet sounds for your coming."
"When I give my sword to Death," said Ferne, absently. "Ay, lad, when I give my sword to Death.... There again, do you not hear the singing? It is the wind, I think, and not the people of the sea. It hath a mocking sound.... When I give my sword to Death."
From the tops above them fell a voice of Stentor. "Sail ho! sail ho!" Upon which they gave for the remainder of the tropic night small attention to aught but warlike matters. With the morning the three ships counted to the general gain the downright sinking of a small fleet from Hispaniola, and the taking therefrom porcelain, many bales of rich silk and rosaries of gold beads, a balass-ruby, twenty wedges of silver, and a chest well lined with ducats.
With this treasure to hark them forward, on and on sailed the ships; and now land birds came to them, and now they passed, floating upon the water, the leafy branch of a strange tree with red, cuplike blossoms. Full--sailed upon the quiet sea they held their course, while the men upon them, eager-eyed and keen, watched for land and for the galleons of Spain. Content with the taking of the _Star_, calamity now kept away from the ships. None upon them died, few were sick, master and captains were kind, mariners and landsmen trusted in their tried might and wealthy promises, and all the gales of heaven prospered the voyage.
On the last day of July, seven weeks from that leave-taking in the tavern of the Triple Tun, they came to the rocky island of Tobago; watered there; then, driven by the constant wind, went on until faint upon the horizon rose the coast of the mainland.
The mountains of Maccanoa in the island of Margarita loomed before them; they passed Coche, and on a night when light clouds obscured the moon approached the pearl islet of Cubagua. With the dawn the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_ entered the harbor of New Cadiz, and began to bombard that much-decayed town of the pearl-fishers. The _Cygnet_ kept on to the slight settlement of La Rancheria, and met, emerging in hot haste from a little bay of blue crystal, the galleon _San José_, one thousand tons, commanded by Antonio de Castro, very richly laden, sailing from Puerto Bello to Santo Domingo, and carrying, moreover, a company of soldiers from Nueva Cordoba on the mainland to Pampatar in Margarita.
IV
Myriads of sea-birds, frightened by the thunder of the guns, fled screaming; the palm-fringed shores of the bay showed through the smoke brown and dim and far removed; hot indeed was the tropic morning in the core of that murk and flame and ear-splitting sound. Each of the combatants carried three tiers of ordnance; in each the guns were served by masters at their trade. Cannons and culverins, sakers and falcons, rent the air; then the _Cygnet_, having the wind of the Spaniard, laid her aboard, and the harquebusiers, caliver, and crossbow-men also began to speak. Together with the great guns they spoke to such effect that the fight became very deadly. Twice the English strove to enter the huge _San José_, and twice the Spaniards, thick upon her as swarming bees, beat them back with sword and pike and blinding volleys from their musketeers. From the tops fell upon them stones and heated pitch; the hail-shot mowed them down; swordsmen and halberdiers thrust many from their footing, loosening forevermore their clutching fingers, forever stayed the hoarse shout in their throats. Many fell into the sea and were drowned before the soul could escape through gaping wounds; others reached their own decks to die there, or to lie writhing at the feet of the unhurt, who might not stay for the need of any comrade. At the second repulse there arose from the galleon a deafening cry of triumph.
Ferne, erect against the break of the _Cygnet's_ poop, drawing a cloth tight with teeth and hand above a wound in his arm from which the blood was streaming, smiled at the sound, knotted his tourniquet; then for the third time sprang upon that slanting, deadly bridge of straining ropes. His sword flashed above his head.
"Follow me--follow me!" he cried, and his face, turned over his shoulder, looked upon his men. A drifting smoke wreath obscured his form; then it passed, and he stood in the galleon's storm of shot, poised above them, a single figure breathing war. Seen through the glare, the face was serene; only the eyes commanded and compelled. The voice rang like a trumpet. "St. George and Merry England! Come on, men!--come on, come on!"
They poured over the side and across the chasm dividing them from their foes. A resistless force they came, following the gleam of a lifted sword, the "On--on!" of a loved leader's voice. Sir Mortimer touched the galleon's side, ran through the body a man of Seville whose sword-point offered at his throat, and stood the next moment upon the poop of the _San José_ Robert Baldry, a cutlass between his teeth, sprang after him; then came Sedley and Arden and the tide of the English.
The Spanish captain met his death, as was fitting, at Ferne's hand; the commandant of the soldiers fell to the share of Henry Sedley. The young man fought with dilated eyes, and white lips pressed together. Sir Mortimer, who fought with narrowed eyes, who, quite ungarrulous by nature, yet ever grew talkative in such an hour as this, found time to note his lieutenant's deeds, to throw to the brother of the woman he loved a "Well done, dear lad!" Sedley held his head high; his leader's praise wrought in him like wine. He had never seen a man who did not his best beneath the eyes of Sir Mortimer Ferne.... There, above the opposite angle of the poop, red gold, now seen but dimly through the reek of the guns, now in a moment of clear sunshine flaunting it undefiled, streamed the Spanish flag. Between him and that emblem of world-power the press was thick, for around it at bay were gathered many valiant men of Spain, fighting for their own. They who by the law of the strong were to inherit from them had yet to break that phalanx. Sedley threw himself forward, beat down a veteran of the Indies, swept on towards the goal of that hated banner. His enemies withstood him, closed around him; in a moment he was cut off from the English, was gazing into Death's eyes. With desperate courage he strove to thrust aside the spectre, but it came nearer,--and nearer,--and nearer. The blood from a cut across his temple was blinding him. He dashed it from him, and then--that was not Death's face, but his Captain's.... Death slunk away. Ferne, whose dagger had made that rescue, whose sword was rapidly achieving for the two of them a wizard's circle, chided and laughed as he fought:
"What, lad! wouldst have played Samson among the Philistines? A man should better know his strength.--There, señor! a St. George for your San Jago!--Well done again, Henry Sedley! but I must show you a better _passado_.--Have at _thee_, Don Inches!--Ah, Captain Baldry, Giles Arden, good Humphrey, give you welcome! Here's room for Englishmen.--Well, die, then, pertinacious señor!--Now, now, Henry Sedley, there are lions yet in your path, but not so many. Have at their golden banner an you prize the toy! No, Arden, no--let him take it single-handed. Our first battle is far behind us.... Now who leads here, since I think that he who did command is dead? Is it you, señor?"
The poop was a shambles, the _San José_ from stem to stern in sorry case. Underfoot lay the dead and wounded, her guns were silenced, her men-at-arms overmastered. They had fought with desperate bravery, but the third attack of the English had been elemental in its force. A rushing wave, a devastating flame, they had swept the ship, and defeat was the portion of their foes. Waist and forecastle were won, but upon the poop a remnant yet struggled, though in weakness and despair. It was to one of this band that the Captain of the _Cygnet_ addressed his latest words. Even as he spoke he parried the other's thrust, and felt that it had been given but half-heartedly. He had used the Spanish tongue, but when an answer came from the mailed figure before him it was couched in English.
"Not so, valiant sir," it said, and there was in the voice some haste and eagerness. "Say rather I am led. Alas! when a man fights with his sword alone, his will being traitor to his hand!"
"Since it is with the sword alone you fight, Spaniard with an English tongue," replied his antagonist, "I do advise you to go seek your sword, seeing that without it you are naught." As he spoke he sent the other's weapon hurtling into the sea.
Its owner made a gesture of acquiescence. "I surrender," he said; then in an undertone: "He yonder with the plume, now that De Castro lies dead, is your fittest quarry. Drag him down and the herd is yours."
Ferne stared, then curled his lip. "Gramercy for your hint," he said. "I pray you that henceforth we become the best of strangers."
A shout arose, and Sedley bore down upon them, his right arm high, crumpled in his hand the folds, tarnished with smoke, riddled by shot, of the great ensign. It was the beginning of the end. Half an hour later the red cross of St. George usurped the place of the golden flag. That same afternoon the _Cygnet_ and the _San José_--the latter now manned by an English crew, with her former masters under hatches--appeared before La Rancheria, stormed the little settlement, and found there a slight treasure of pearls. More than this was accomplished, for, boat-load after boat-load, the Spanish survivors of the fight were transferred from the galleon to a strip of lonely shore, and there left to shift for themselves. One only of all that force the Captain of the _Cygnet_ detained, and that was the man who had used the tongue of England and the sword of Spain. With the sunset the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_, having left desolation behind them at New Cadiz, joined the _Cygnet_ and her prize where they lay at anchor between the two spits of sand that formed the harbor of La Rancheria.
In the _Mere Honour's_ state-cabin the Admiral of the expedition formally embraced and thanked his Captain, whose service to the common cause had been so great. It was, indeed, of magnitude. Not many hours had passed between the frenzy of battle and this sunshiny morning; but time had been made and strength had been found to look to the cargo of the _San José_". If wealth be good, it was worth the looking to, for not the _Cacafuego_ had a richer lading. Gold and silver, ingots and bars and wrought images, they found, and a great store of precious stones. To cap all fortune, there was the galleon's self, a great ship, seaworthy yet, despite the wounds of yesterday, mounting many guns, well supplied with powder, ammunition, and military stores, English now in heart, and lacking nothing but an English name. This they gave her that same day. In the smoke and thunder of every cannon royal within the fleet _San José_" vanished, and in his place arose the _Phoenix_.