hey were not far north of the Canary Islands, when the sky, which for several days had been overcast, grew very threatening, and theMere Honour, theCygnet, theMarigold, and theStarmade ready to meet what fury the Lord should be pleased to loose upon them. It came, a maniac unchained, and scattered the ships. Darkness accompanied it, and the sea wrinkled beneath its feet. The ships went here and went there; throughout the night they burned lights, and fired many great pieces of ordnance,--not to prevail against their enemy, but to say each to the other: "Here am I, my sister! Go not too far, come not too near!" Their voices were as whispers to the shouting of their foe; beneath the rolling thunders the sound of cannon and culverin were of less account than the grating of pebbles in a furious surge.
Day came and the storm continued, but with night the wind fell and quiet possessed the deep. The sea subsided, and just before dawn the clouds broke, showing a waning moon. Below it suddenly sprang out two lights, one above the other, and to theCygnet, safe, though with her plumage sadly ruffled, came the sound of a gun twice fired.
The darkness faded, the gray light strengthened, and showed to the watchers upon theCygnet'sdecks the ship in distress. It was Baldry's ship, the littleStar. She lay rolling heavily in the heavy sea, her masts gone, her boats swept away, her poop low in the water, her beak-head high, sinking by the stern. Her lights yet burned, ghastly in the dawning; her people, a black swarm upon her forecastle, lay clinging, devouring with their eyes theCygnet'sboats coming for their deliverance across the gray waste. Of theMere Honourand theMarigoldnothing was to be seen.
The swarm descended into the boats, and all pushed off from the doomed ship save a single craft, less crowded than the others, which waited, its occupants gesticulating angry dismay, for the one man who had not left theStar. He stood erect upon her bowsprit, a dark figure outlined against the livid sky.
"IT WAS BALDRY'S SHIP, THE LITTLESTAR"
The watchers upon theCygnet, from Captain to least powder-boy, drew quick breath.
"Ah, sirs, he loved theStarlike a woman!" ejaculated Thynne the master, and, "He swore terribly, but he was a mighty man!" testified the chief gunner. Robin-a-dale swung himself to and fro in an ecstasy of terror. "He rides--he rides so high!" he shrilled. "Higher than the gallows-tree! And he stands so quiet while he rides!"
Upon the poop young Sedley, standing beside his Captain, veiled his eyes with his hand; then, ashamed of his weakness, gazed steadfastly at the lifted figure. Arden, drumming with his fingers upon the rail, looked sidewise at Sir Mortimer Ferne.
"It seems that your quarrel will have to wait some other meeting-place than England," he said. "Perhaps the laws of thatterra incognitato which he goes forbid the duello."
"He will not leave our company yet awhile," answered Ferne, with calmness. "As I thought--."
The dark figure had dropped from the bowsprit of theStarinto the waiting boat, which at once put after its fellows. Behind the deserted ship suddenly streamed out a red banner of the dawn; stark and black against the color, lonely in the path that must be trod, she awaited her end. To the seafaring men who watched her she was as human as themselves--a ship dying alone.
"All that a man hath will he give for his life," quoth Arden, somewhat grimly, for he was no lover of Baldry, and he was now ashamed of the emotion he had shown.
"To go down with her," said Ferne, slowly,--"that had been the act of a madman. And if to live is a thing less fine than would have been that madness, yet--"
He broke off, and turning from theStar, now very near her death, swept with his gaze the billowing ocean. "I would we might see theMere Honourand theMarigold," he said, impatiently. "What is lost is lost, and Captain Baldry as well as we must stand this crippling of our enterprise. But theMere Honourand theMarigoldare of more account than theStar."
Out of a cluster of mariners and landsmen rose Robin-a-dale's shrill cry: "She's going down, down, down! Oh, the white figurehead looks no more into the sea--it turns its face to the sky! Down, down, theStarhas gone down!"
A silence fell upon the decks of theCygnetand upon the overfreighted boats laboring towards her. Overhead mast and spar creaked and the low wind sang in the rigging, but the spirit of man was awed within him. A ship was lost, and the sea was lonely beneath the crimson dawn. Where were theMere Honourand theMarigold, and was all their adventure but a mirage and a cheat? Far away was home, and far away the Indies, and theCygnetwas a little feather tossed between red sky and heaving ocean.
The thought did not last. As the crowded boats drew alongside, up sprang the sun, cheering and warming, and at the Captain's command the musicians of theCygnetbegan to play, as at the setting of the watch, a psalm of thanksgiving. Sailors and volunteers, there had been but sixty men aboard theStar, and all were safe. As they clambered over the side, a cheer went up from their comrades of theCygnet.
The boat that carried Baldry came last, and that adventurer was the latest to set foot upon theCygnet'sdeck. Her Captain met him with bared head and outstretched hand.
"We grieve with you, sir, for the loss of theStar," he said, gravely and courteously. "We thank God that no brave man went down with her. TheCygnetgives you welcome, sir."
The man to whom he spoke ignored alike words and extended hand. A towering figure, breathing bitter anger at this spite of Fortune, he turned where he stood and gazed upon the ocean that had swallowed up his ship. Uncouth of nature, given to boasting, a foster-child of Violence and Envy, he yet had qualities which had borne him upward and onward from mean beginnings to where on yesterday he had stood, owner and Captain of theStar, leader of picked men, sea-dog and adventurer as famed for daredevil courage and boundless endurance as for his braggadocio vein and sullen temper. Now theStarthat he had loved was at the bottom of the sea; his men, a handful beside theCygnet'sforce, must give obedience to her officers; and he himself,--what was he more than a volunteer aboard his enemy's ship? Captain Robert Baldry, grinding his teeth, found the situation intolerable.
Sir Mortimer Ferne, biting his lip in a sudden revulsion of feeling, was of much the same opinion. But that he would follow after courtesy was as certain as that Baldry would pursue his own will and impulse. Therefore he spoke again, though scarce as cordially as before:
"We will shape our course for Teneriffe, where (I pray to God) we may find theMere Honourand theMarigold. If it please Captain Baldry to then remove into theMere Honour, I make no doubt that the Admiral will welcome so notable a recruit. In the mean time your men shall be cared for, and you yourself will command me, sir, in all things that concern your welfare."
Baldry shot him a look. "I am no maker of pretty speeches," he said. "You have me in irons. Pray you, show me some dungeon and give me leave to be alone."
Young Sedley, hotly indignant, muttered something, that was echoed by the little throng of gentlemen adventurers sailing with Sir Mortimer Ferne. Arden, leaning against the mast, coolly observant of all, began to whistle,
"'Of honey and of gall in love there is store:The honey is much, but the gall is more,'"
thereby bringing upon himself one of Baldry's black glances.
"Lieutenant Sedley," ordered Ferne, sharply, "you will lodge this gentleman in the cabin next mine own, seeing that he hath all needful entertainment. Sir, I do expect your company at dinner."
He bowed, then stood at his full height, while Baldry sufficiently bethought himself to in some sort return the salute, even to give grudging, half--insolent acknowledgment of the debt he owed theCygnet. At last he went below--to refuse the bread and meat, but to drink deep of theaqua vitawhich Sedley stiffly offered; then to lock himself in his cabin, bite his nails with rage, and finally, when he had stared at the sea for a long time, to sink his head into his hands and weep a man's tears for irrevocable loss.
Of his fellow adventurers whom he left upon the poop, only Mortimer Ferne held his tongue from blame of his insupportable temper, or refrained from stories of theStar'sexploits. TheCygnetwas under way, the wind favorable, her white and swelling canvas like clouds against a bright-blue sky, the dolphins playing about her rushing prow, where a golden lady forever kept her eyes upon the deep. In the wind, timber and cordage creaked and sang, while from waist and main-deck came a cheerful sound of men at work repairing what damage the storm had wrought. Thynne the master gave orders in his rumbling bass, then the drum beat for morning service, and, after the godly fashion of the time, there poured from the forecastle, to worship the Lord, mariners and landsmen, gunners, harquebusiers, crossbow and pike men, cabin and powder boys, cook, chirurgeon, and carpenter--all the varied force of that floating castle destined to be dashed like a battering-ram against the power of Spain. The Captain of them all, with his gentlemen and officers about him, paused a moment before moving to his accustomed place, and looked upon his ship from stem to stern, from the thronged decks to the topmost pennant flaunting the sunshine. He found it good, and the salt of life was strong in his nostrils. Inwardly he prayed for the safety of theMere Honour, and theMarigold, but that picture of the sinkingStarhe dismissed as far as might be from his mind. She had been but a small ship--notorious indeed for fights against great odds, for sheer bravado and hairbreadth escapes, but still a small ship, and not to be compared with theCygnet. No life had been forfeited, and Captain Robert Baldry must even digest as best he might his private loss and discomfiture. If, as he walked to his place of honor, and as he stood with English gentlemen about him, with English sailors and soldiers ranged before him giving thanks for deliverance from danger, the Captain of theCygnetheld too high his head; if he at that moment looked upon his life with too conscious a pride, knew too well the difference between himself, steadfast helmsman of all his being, and that untutored nature which drove another from rock to shoal, from shoal to quicksand--yet that knowledge, detestable to all the gods, dragged at his soul but for a moment. He bent his head and prayed for the missing ships, and most heartily for John Nevil, his Admiral, whom he loved; then for Damaris Sedley that she be kept in health and joyousness of mind; and lastly, believing that he but plead for the success of an English expedition against Spain and Antichrist, he prayed for gold and power, a sovereign's gratitude and man's acclaim.
Three days later they came to Teneriffe, and to their great rejoicing found there theMere Honourand theMarigold. The Admiral signalled a council; and Ferne, taking with him Giles Arden, Sedley, and the Captain of the sunkenStar, went aboard theMere Honour, where he was shortly joined by Baptist Manwood from theMarigold, with his lieutenants Wynch and Paget. In his state-cabin, when he had given his Captains welcome, the Admiral sat at table with his wine before him and heard how had fared theCygnetand theMarigold, then listened to Baldry's curt recital of theStar'sill destinies. The story ended, he gave his meed of grave sympathy to the man whose whole estate had been that sunken ship. Baldry sat silent, fingering, as was his continual trick, the hilt of his great Andrew Ferrara. But when the Admiral, with his slow, deliberate courtesy, went on to propose that for this adventure Captain Baldry cast his lot with theMere Honour, he listened, then gave unexpected check.
"I' faith, his berth upon theCygnetliked him well enough, and though he thanked the Admiral, what reason for changing it? In fine, he should not budge, unless, indeed, Sir Mortimer Ferne--" He turned himself squarely so as to face the Captain of theCygnet.
The latter, in the instant that passed before he made any answer to Baldry's challenging look, saw once again that vision of the other morning--the flare of dawn, and high against it one desperate figure, a man just balancing if to keep his life or no, seeing that for the thing he loved there was no rescue. Say that the doomed ship had been theCygnet--would Mortimer Ferne have so cheapened grief, have grown so bitter, be so ready to eat his heart out with envy and despite? Perhaps not; and yet, who knew? TheCygnetwas there, visible through the port windows, lifting against serenest skies her proud bulk, her castellated poop and forecastle, her tall masts and streaming pennants. TheStarwas down below, a hundred leagues from any lover, and the sea was deep upon her, and her guns were silent and her decks untrodden.... He was wearied of Baldry's company, impatient of his mad temper and peasant breeding, very sure that he chose, open-eyed, to torment himself from Teneriffe to America with the sight of a prospering foe merely that that foe might feel a nettle in his unwilling grasp. Yet, so challenged, when had passed that moment, he met Baldry's gloomy eyes, and again assured the adventurer that the presence of so brave a man and redoubted fighter could but do honor to theCygnet.
His words were all that courtesy could desire: if tone and manner were of the coldest, yet Baldry, not being sensitive, and having gained his point, could afford to let that pass. He turned to the Admiral with a short laugh.
"You see, sir, we are yoke-brothers--Sir Mortimer Ferne and I,--though whether God or the devil hath joined us!... Well, the two of us may send some Spanish souls to hell!"
With his yoke-brother, Arden, and Sedley he returned to theCygnet, and that evening at supper, having drunken much sack, began to loudly vaunt the deeds of the drownedStar, magnifying her into a being sentient and heroical, and darkly-wishing that the luck of the expedition be not gone with her to the bottom of the sea.
"Luck!" exclaimed Ferne at last, haughtily. "I hate the word. Your luck--my luck--the luck of this our enterprise! It is a craven word, overmuch upon the lips of Christian gentlemen."
"I was not born a gentleman," said Baldry, playing with his knife. "You know that, Sir Mortimer Ferne."
"I'll swear you've taken out no patent since," muttered Arden, whereat his neighbor laughed aloud, and Baldry, pushing back his stool, glared at each in turn.
"I know that a man's will, and not a college of heralds, makes him what he is," said Ferne. "I have known churls in honorable houses and true knights in the common camp. And I submit not my destinies to that gamester Luck: as I deserve and as God wills, so run my race!"
"Oh, every man of us knows our Captain's deserving!" quoth Baldry. "Well, gentlemen, on that occasion of which I was speaking, the devil's own luck being with me, I sunk both the carrack and the galley, and headed theStarfor the castle of Paria."
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 theStarand 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 theStar! 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 theStarstruck the table with his hand.
"Ah, I had good help that time! My brother sailed with me--Thomas Baldry, that was master of theSpeedwellthat 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 theSpeedwellmakes 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, infectedWith 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 saidThat 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 theCygneta 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 thatFaerie Queenewhich 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 theStar, 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 theMere Honourand theMarigoldentered the harbor of New Cadiz, and began to bombard that much-decayed town of the pearl-fishers. TheCygnetkept on to the slight settlement of La Rancheria, and met, emerging in hot haste from a little bay of blue crystal, the galleonSan 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.
yriads 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 theCygnet, 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 hugeSan 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 theCygnet'spoop, 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 theSan JoséRobert 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 betterpassado.--Have atthee, 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, theSan Joséfrom 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 theCygnetaddressed 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 theCygnetand theSan 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 theCygnetdetained, and that was the man who had used the tongue of England and the sword of Spain. With the sunset theMere Honourand theMarigold, having left desolation behind them at New Cadiz, joined theCygnetand her prize where they lay at anchor between the two spits of sand that formed the harbor of La Rancheria.
In theMere Honour'sstate-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 theSan José". If wealth be good, it was worth the looking to, for not theCacafuegohad 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 fleetSan José" vanished, and in his place arose thePhoenix.
Exultant, flushed, many of them bearing wounds, the officers of the expedition and the gentlemen adventurers who had staked with them crowded the cabin of theMere Honour. The sunshine streaming through the windows showed in high light bandaged heads or arms and faces haggard with victory. Wine had been spilled, and in the air there was yet the savor of blood. About each man just breathed some taint of savagery that was not yet beaten back after yesterday's wild outburst and breaking of the bars. In some it took the form of the sleek stillness of the tiger; others were loud-voiced, restless, biting at their nails. Only to a few was it given to bear triumph soberly, with room for other thoughts; to the most it came as a tumultuous passion, an irrational joy, a dazzling bandage to their eyes, beneath which they saw, with an inner vision, wealth a growing snowball and victory their familiar spirit. Among the adventurers from theCygnetthere was, moreover, an intoxication of feeling for the man who had led them in that desperate battle, whose subtle gift it was to strike fire from every soul whose circle touched his own. He was to them among ten thousand the Captain of their choice, not loved the least because of that quality in him which gave ever just the praise which bred strong longing for desert of fame. Now he stood beside the Admiral, and spoke with ardor of the Englishmen who had won that fight, and very tenderly of the dead. They were not a few, for the battle had been long and doubtful. Simply and nobly he spoke, giving praise to thirsty souls. When he had made an end, there was first a silence more eloquent than speech, pregnant with the joy a man may take in his deed when he looks upon it and sees that it is good; then a wild cheer, thrice repeated, for Sir Mortimer Ferne. The name went out of the windows over the sea, and up to every man who sailed the ship. One moment Ferne stood, tasting his reward; then, "Silence, friends!" he said. "To God the victory! And I hear naught of New Cadiz and other fortunate ships." He drew swiftly from its sling his wounded arm and waved it above his head. "The Admiral!" he cried, and then, "TheMarigold!"
When at last there was quiet in the cabin, Nevil, a man of Humphrey Gilbert's type, too lofty of mind to care who did the service, so that the service was done, began to speak of the captured galleon. "A noble ship--theStarcome again, glorious in her resurrection robes! Who shall be her captain, teaching her to eschew old ways and serve the Queen?" His eyes rested upon the galleon's conqueror. "Sir Mortimer Ferne, the election lies with you."
Ferne started sharply. "Sir, it is an honor I do not desire! As Admiral, I pray you to name the Captain of thePhoenix."
A breathless hush fell upon the cabin. It was a great thing to be captain of a great ship--so great a thing, so great a chance, that of the adventurers who had bravely fought on yesterday more than one felt his cheek grow hot and the blood drum in his ears. Arden cared not for preferment, but Henry Sedley's eyes were very eager. Baldry, having no hopes of favor, sat like a stone, his great frame rigid, his nails white upon the hilt of his sword, his lips white and sneering beneath his short, black, strongly curling beard.
The pause seemed of the longest; then, "Not so," said the Admiral, quietly. "It is your right. We know that you will make no swerving from your duty to God, the Queen, and every soul that sails upon this adventure, which duty is to strengthen to the uttermost this new sinew of our enterprise. Mailed hand and velvet glove, you know their several uses, and the man whom you shall choose will be one to make the galleon's name resound."
Ferne signed to the steward, and when the tankard was filled, raised the sherris to his lips. "I drink to Captain Robert Baldry, of thePhoenix!" he said, bowed slightly to the man of his nomination, then turned aside to where stood Henry Sedley.
Around the cabin ran a deep murmur of reluctant assent to the wisdom of the choice and of tribute to the man who had just heaped before his personal enemy the pure gold of opportunity. Few were there from whom Baldry had not won dislike, but fewer yet who knew him not for a captain famous for victory against odds, trained for long years in the school of these seas, at once desperate and wary, a man of men for adventure such as theirs. He had made known far and wide the name of that his ship which the sea took, and for thePhoenixhe well might win a yet greater renown.
Now the red blood flooded his face, and he started up, speaking thickly. "You are Admiral of us all, Sir John Nevil! I do understand that it is yours to make disposition in a matter such as this. I take no favor from the hand of Sir Mortimer Ferne!"
"I give you none," said Ferne, coldly. "Favors I keep for friendship, but I deny not justice to my foe."
The Admiral's grave tones prevented Baldry's answer. "Do you appeal to me as Admiral? Then I also adjudge you the command of the galleon. TheStardid very valiantly; look to it that thePhoenixprove no laggard."
"Hear me swear that I will make her more famous than is Drake'sGolden Hind!" cried Baldry, his exultation breaking bounds. "Sir John, you have knowledge of men, and I thank you! Sir Mortimer Ferne, I will give account--"
"Not to me, sir," interrupted Ferne, haughtily. "I have but one account with you, and that my sword shall hereafter audit."
"Sir, I am content!" cried the other, fiercely, then turning again to the Admiral, broke into a laugh that was impish in its glee. "Ah, I've needed to feel my hand on my ship's helm! Sir John, shall I have my sixty tall fellows again, with just a small levy from theMere Honour, theMarigold, and theCygnet?"
"Yes," answered the Admiral, and presently, by his rising, declared the council ended, whereupon the adventurers dispersed to their several ships where they lay at anchor in the crystal harbor, the watchmen in the tops straining eyes, on the decks mariners and soldiers as jubilant as were ever men who did battle on the seas. Only theCygnet'sboat, rocking beneath the stern of theMere Honour, waited for its Captain, who tarried with the Admiral.
In the state-cabin the two men sat for some moments in silence, the Admiral covering with his hand his bearded lips, Ferne with head thrown back against the wall and half-closed eyes. In the strong light with which the cabin was flooded his countenance now showed of a somewhat worn and haggard beauty. Drunken and forgotten was the wine of battle, gone the lofty and impassioned vein; after the exaltation came the melancholy fit, and the man who, mailed in activities, was yet, beneath that armor, a dreamer and a guesser of old riddles, had let the fire burn low, and was gone down into the shadowy places.
"Mortimer," spoke the Admiral, and waited. The other moved, drew a long breath, and then with a short laugh came back to the present.
"My friend ... How iron is our destiny! Do I hate that man too greatly? One might say, I think, that I loved him well, seeing that I have lent my shoulder for him to climb upon."
"Mortimer, Mortimer," said Nevil, "you know that I love you. My friend, I pray you to somewhat beware yourself. I think there is in your veins a subtle poison may work you harm."
Ferne looked steadfastly upon him. "What is its name?"
The other shook his head. "I know not. It is subtle. Perhaps it is pride--ambition too inwrought with fairest qualities to show as such,--security of your self of selves too absolute. Perhaps I mistake and your blood doth run as healthfully as a child's. But you are of those who ever breed in others speculation, wilding fancies.... When a man doth all things too well, what is there left for God to do but to break and crumble and remould? If I do you wrong, blame, if you will, my love, which is jealous for you--friend whom I value, soldier and knight whom I have ever thought the fair ensample of our time!"
"I hold many men, known and unknown, within myself," said Ferne, slowly. "I think it is always so with those of my temper. But over that hundred I am centurion."
"God forgive me if I misjudge one of their number," answered the other. "The centurion I have never doubted nor will doubt."
Another silence; then, "Will you see that Spaniolated Englishman, my prisoner?" asked Sir Mortimer. "He is under charge without."
The Admiral put to his lips a golden whistle, and presently there stood in the cabin a slight man of not unpleasing countenance--blue eyes, brown hair, unfurrowed brow, and beneath a scant and silky beard a chin as softly rounded as a woman's.--His name and estate? Francis Sark, gentleman.--English? So born and bred, cousin and sometime servant to my lord of Shrewsbury.--And what did my English gentleman, my cousin to an English nobleman, upon the galleonSan José? Alack, sirs! were Englishmen upon Spanish ships so unknown a spectacle?
"I have found them," quoth the Admiral, "rowing in Spanish galleys, naked, scarred, chained, captives and martyrs."
Said Ferne, "You, sir, fought in Milan mail, standing beside the captain of soldiers from Nueva Cordoba."
"And if I did," answered boldly their prisoner, "none the less was I slave and captive, constrained to serve detested masters. Where needs must I fight, I fought to the purpose. Doth not the galley-slave pull strongly at the oar, though the chase be English and of his own blood?"
"He toils under the whip," said Ferne. "Now what whip did the Spaniard use?"
"He is dead, and his men await succor on that lonely coast where you left them," was Master Francis Sark's somewhat singular reply. "There is left in the fortress of Nueva Cordoba a single company of soldiers; the battery at the river's mouth hath another. Luiz de Guardiola commands the citadel, and he is a strong man, but Pedro Mexia at the Bocca is so easy-going that his sentinels nod their nights away. In the port ride two caravels--eighty tons, no more--and their greatest gun a demi-cannon. The town is a cowardly place of priests, women, and rich men, but it holds every peso of this year's treasure gathered against the coming of the plate-fleet. There is much silver with pearls from Margarita, and crescents of gold from Guiana, and it all lies in a house of white stone on the north side of the square. Mayhap De Guardiola up in the fortress watches, but all else, from Mexia to the last muleteer, think themselves as safe as in the lap of the Blessed Virgin. The plate-fleet stays at Cartagena, because of the illness of its Admiral, Don Juan de Maeda y Espinosa.... I show you, sirs, a bird's nest worth the robbing."
"You are a galley-slave the most circumstantial I have ever met," said Ferne. "If there are nets about this tree, I will wring your neck for the false songster that you are."
"You shall go with us bird's-nesting," said the Admiral.
"That falls in with my humor," Master Sark made answer. "For, look you, there are such things as a heavy score and an ancient grudge, to say nothing of true service to a true Queen."
"Then," quoth the other, "you shall feed fat your grudge. But if what you have told me is leasing and not truth, I will hang you from the yard-arm of my ship!"
"It is God's truth," swore the other.
Thus it was that, having, like all English adventurers upon Spanish seas, to trust to strange guides, theMere Honour, theCygnet, theMarigold, and thePhoenixshaped their course for the mainland and Nueva Cordoba, where were bars of silver, pearls, and gold crescents, and up in the castle that fierce hawk De Guardiola, who cared little for the town that was young and weak, but much for gold, the fortress, and his own grim will and pleasure.