I dare say you've never heard tell of my wife's grandfather, Captain John Tackabird—or Cap'n Jacka, as he was always called. He was a remarkable man altogether, and he died of a seizure in the Waterloo year; an earnest Methody all his days, and towards the end a highly respected class-leader. To tell you the truth, he wasn't much to look at, being bald as a coot and blind of one eye, besides other defects. His mother let him run too soon, and that made his legs bandy. And then a bee stung him, and all his hair came off. And his eye he lost in a little job with the preventive men; but his lid drooped so, you'd hardly know 'twas missing. He'd a way, too, of talking to himself as he went along, so that folks reckoned him silly. It was queer how that maggot stuck in their heads; for in handling a privateer or a Guernsey cargo—sink the or run it straight—there wasn't his master in Polperro. The very children could tell 'ee.
I'm telling of the year 'five, when the most of the business in Polperro—free-trade and privateering—was managed (as the world knows) by Mr. Zephaniah Job. This Job he came from St. Ann's—by reason of his having shied some person's child out of a window in a fit of temper—and opened school at Polperro, where he taught rule-of-three and mensuration; also navigation, though he only knew about it on paper. By-and-by he became accountant to all the free-trade companies and agent for the Guernsey merchants; and at last blossomed out and opened a bank with 1_l_. and 2_l_. notes, and bigger ones which he drew on Christopher Smith, Esquire, Alderman of London.
Well, this Job was agent for a company of adventurers called the "Pride o' the West," and had ordered a new lugger to be built for them down at Mevagissey. She was called theUnity, 160 tons (that would be about fifty as they measure now), mounting sixteen carriage guns and carrying sixty men, nice and comfortable. She was lying on the ways, ready to launch, and Mr. Job proposed to Cap'n Jacka to sail over to Mevagissey and have a look at her.
Cap'n Jacka was pleased as Punch, of course. He'd quite made up his mind he was to command her, seeing that, first and last, in the oldPridelugger, he had cleared over 40 per cent, for this very Company. So they sailed over and took thorough stock of the new craft, and Jacka praised this and suggested that, and carried on quite as if he'd got captain's orders inside his hat—which was where he usually carried them. Mr. Job looked sidelong down his nose—he was a leggy old galliganter, with stiverish grey hair and a jawbone long enough to make Cap'n Jacka a new pair of shins—and said he, "What do'ee think of her?"
"Well," said Jacka, "any fool can see she'll run, and any fool can see she'll reach. I reckon she'll come about as fast as th' oldPride, and if she don't sit nigher the wind than the new revenue cutter it'll be your sailmaker's fault."
"That's a first-class report," said Mr. Job. "I was thinking of offering you the post of mate in her."
Cap'n Jacka felt poorly all of a sudden. "Aw," he asked, "who's to be skipper, then?"
"The Company was thinkin' of young Dick Hewitt."
"Aw," said Cap'n Jacka again, and shut his mouth tight. Young Dick Hewitt's father had shares in the Company and money to buy votes beside.
"What do'ee think?" asked Mr. Job, still slanting his eye down his nose.
"I'll go home an' take my wife's opinion," said Cap'n Jacka.
So when he got home he told it all to his funny little wife that he doted on like the apple of his one eye. She was a small, round body, with beady eyes that made her look like a doll on a pen-wiper; and she said, of course, that the Company was a parcel of rogues and fools together.
"Young Dick Hewitt is every bit so good a seaman as I be," said Cap'nJacka.
"He's a boaster."
"So he is, but he's a smart seaman for all."
"I declare if the world was to come to an end you'd sit quiet an' never say a word."
"I dessay I should. I'd leave you to speak up for me."
"Baint'ee goin' to saynothin', then?"
"Iss; I'm goin' to lay it before the Lord."
So down 'pon their knees these old souls went upon the limeash, and asked for guidance, and Cap'n Jacka, after a while, stretched out his hand to the shelf for Wesley's Hymns. They always pitched a hymn together before going to bed. When he'd got the book in his hand he saw that 'twasn't Wesley at all, but another that he never studied from the day his wife gave it to him, because it was called the "Only Hymn Book,"[A] and he said the name was as good as a lie. Hows'ever, he opened it now, and came slap on the hymn:—
[Footnote A: Probably "Olney."]
Tho' troubles assail and dangers affright,If foes all should fail and foes all unite,Yet one thing assures us, whatever betide,I trust in all dangers the Lord will provide.
They sang it there and then to the tune of "O all that pass by," and the very next morning Cap'n Jacka walked down and told Mr. Job he was ready to go for mate under young Dick Hewitt.
More than once, the next week or two, he came near to repenting; for Cap'n Dick was very loud about his promotion, especially at the Three Pilchards; and when theUnitycame round and was fitting—very slow, too, by reason of delay with her letters of marque—he ordered Cap'n Jacka back and forth like a stevedore's dog. "There was to be no 'nigh enough' onthislugger"—that was the sort of talk; and oil and rotten-stone for the very gun-swivels. But Jacka knew the fellow, and even admired the great figure and its loud ways. "He's a cap'n, anyhow," he told his wife; "'twon't be 'all fellows to football' while he's in command. And I've seen him handle theGood Intent, under Hockin."
Mrs. Tackabird said nothing. She was busy making sausages and setting down a stug of butter for her man's use on the voyage. But he knew she would be a disappointed woman if he didn't contrive in some honest way to turn the tables on the Company and their new pet. For days together he went about whistling "Tho' troubles assail … "; and the very night before sailing, as they sat quiet, one each side of the hearth, he made the old woman jump by saying all of a sudden, "Coals o' fire!"
"What d'ee mean by that?" she asked.
"Nothin'. I was thinkin' to myself, and out it popped."
"Well, 'tis like a Providence! For, till you said that, I'd clean forgot the sifter for your cuddy fire. Mustn't waste cinders now that you're only a mate."
Being a woman, she couldn't forego that little dig; but she got up there and then and gave the old boy a kiss.
She wouldn't walk down to the quay, though, next day, to see him off, being certain (she said) to lose her temper at the sight of Cap'n Dick carrying on as big as bull's beef, not to mention the sneering shareholders and their wives. So Cap'n Jacka took his congees at his own door, and turned, half-way down the street, and waved a good-bye with the cinder-sifter. She used to say afterwards that this was Providence, too.
TheUnityran straight across until she made Ushant Light; and after cruising about for a couple of days, in moderate weather (it being the first week in April) Cap'n Dick laid her head east and began to nose up Channel, keeping an easy little distance off the French coast. You see, the Channel was full of our ships and neutrals in those days, which made fat work for the French privateers; but the Frenchies' own vessels kept close over on their coast; and even so, the best our boys could expect, nine times out of ten when they'd crossed over, was to run against achasse-maréedodging between Cherbourg and St. Malo or Morlaix, with naval stores or munitions of war.
However, Cap'n Dick had very good luck. One morning, about three leagues N.W. of Roscoff, what should he see but a French privateering craft of about fifty tons (new measurement) with an English trader in tow—a London brig, with a cargo of all sorts, that had fallen behind her convoy and been snapped up in mid-channel. Cap'n Dick had the weather-gauge, as well as the legs of the Frenchchasse-marée. She was about a league to leeward when the morning lifted and he first spied her. By seven o'clock he was close, and by eight had made himself master of her and the prize, with the loss of two men only and four wounded, the Frenchman being short-handed, by reason of the crew he'd put into the brig to work her into Morlaix.
This was first-rate business. To begin with, the brig (she was called theMartha Edwards, of London) would yield a tidy little sum for salvage. The wind being fair for Plymouth, Cap'n Dick sent her into that port—her own captain and crew working her, of course, and thirty Frenchmen on board in irons. And at Plymouth she arrived without any mishap.
Then came thechasse-marée. She was called theBean Pheasant,[A] an old craft and powerful leaky; but she mounted sixteen guns, the same as theUnity, and ought to have made a better run from her; but first, she hadn't been able to make her mind to desert her prize pretty well within sight of port; and in the second place her men had a fair job to keep her pumps going. Cap'n Dick considered, and then turned to old Jacka.
[Footnote A: ProbablyBienfaisant.]
"I'm thinking," said he, "I'll have to put you aboard with a prize crew to work her back to Polperro."
"The Lord will provide," said Jacka, though he had looked to see a little more of the fun.
So aboard he went with all his belongings, not forgetting his wife's sausages and the stug of butter and the cinder-sifter. Towards the end of the action about fifteen of the Johnnies had got out the brig's large boat and pulled her ashore, where, no doubt, they reached, safe and sound. So Jacka hadn't more than a dozen prisoners to look after, and prepared for a comfortable little homeward trip.
"I'll just cruise between this and Jersey," said Cap'n Dick; "and at the week-end, if there's nothing doing, we'll put back for home and re-ship you."
So they parted; and by half-past ten Cap'n Jacka had laid theBean Pheasant'shead north-and-by-west, and was reaching along nicely for home with a stiff breeze and nothing to do but keep the pumps going and attend to his eating and drinking between whiles.
The prize made a good deal of water, but was a weatherly craft for all that, and on this point of sailing shipped nothing but what she took in through her seams; the worst of the mischief being forward, where her stem had worked a bit loose with age and started the bends. Cap'n Jacka, however, thought less of the sea—that was working up into a nasty lop—than of the weather, which turned thick and hazy as the wind veered a little to west of south. But even this didn't trouble him much. He had sausages for breakfast and sausages for dinner, and, as evening drew on, and he knew he was well on the right side of the Channel, he knocked out his pipe and began to think of sausages for tea.
Just then one of the hands forward dropped pumping, and sang out that there was a big sail on the starboard bow. "I b'lieve 'tis a frigate, sir," he said, spying between his hands.
So it was. She had sprung on them out of the thick weather. But now Cap'n Jacka could see the white line on her and the ports quite plain, and not two miles away.
"What nation?" he bawled.
"I can't make out as she carries any flag. Losh me! if there bain'tanother!"
Sure as I'm telling you, another frigate there was, likewise standing down towards them under easy canvas, on the same starboard tack a mile astern, but well to windward of the first.
"Whatever they be," said Cap'n Jacka, "they're bound to head us off, and they're bound to hail us. I go get my tea," he said; "for, if they're Frenchmen, 'tis my last meal for months to come."
So he fetched out his frying-pan and plenty sausages and fried away for dear life—with butter too, which was ruinous waste. He shared round the sausages, two to each man, and kept theBean Pheasantto her course until the leading frigate fired a shot across her bows, and ran up the red-white-and-blue; and then, knowing the worst, he rounded-to as meek as a lamb.
The long and short of it was that, inside the hour the dozen Frenchmen were free, and Cap'n Jacka and his men in their place, ironed hand and foot; and theBean Pheasantworking back to France again with a young gentleman of the French navy aboard in command of her.
But 'tis better be lucky born, they say, than a rich man's son. By this time it was blowing pretty well half a gale from sou'-sou'-west, and before midnight a proper gale. TheBean Pheasantbeing kept head to sea, took it smack-and-smack on the breast-bone, which was her leakiest spot; and soon, being down by the head, made shocking weather of it. 'Twas next door to impossible to work the pump forward. Towards one in the morning old Jacka was rolling about up to his waist as he sat, and trying to comfort himself by singing "Tho' troubles assail," when the young French gentleman came running with one of his Johnnies and knocked the irons off the English boys, and told them to be brisk and help work the pumps, or the lugger—that was already hove to—would go down under them.
"But where be you going?" he sings out—or French to that effect. ForJacka was moving aft towards the cuddy there.
Jacka fetched up his best smuggling French, and answered: "This here lugger is going down. Any fool can see that, as you're handling her. And I'm going down on a full stomach."
With that he reached an arm into the cuddy, where he'd stacked his provisions that evening on top of the frying-pan. But the labouring of the ship had knocked everything there of a heap, and instead of the frying-pan he caught hold of his wife's cinder-sifter.
At that moment the Frenchman ran up behind and caught him a kick. "Come out o' that, you old villain, and fall in at the after pump!" said he.
"Aw, very well," said Jack, turning at once—for the cinder-sifter had given him a bright idea; and he went right aft to his comrades. By this time the Frenchmen were busy getting the first gun overboard.
They were so long that Jacka's boys had the after-pump pretty well to themselves, and between spells one or two ran and fetched buckets, making out 'twas for extra baling; and all seemed to be working like niggers. But by-and-by they called out all together with one woeful voice, "The pump is chucked! The pump is chucked!"
At this all the Frenchmen came running, the young officer leading, and crying to know what was the matter.
"A heap of cinders got awash, sir," says Jacka. "The pump's clogged wi' em, and won't work."
"Then we're lost men!" says the officer; and he caught hold by the foremast, and leaned his face against it like a child.
This was Jacka's chance. "'Lost,' is it? Iss, I reckon youbelost!—and inside o' ten minutes, unless you hearken to rayson. Here you be, not twenty mile from the English coast, as I make it, and with a fair wind. Here you be, three times that distance and more from any port o' your own, the wind dead on her nose, and you ram-stamming the weak spot of her at a sea that's knocking the bows to Jericho. Now, Mossoo, you put her about, and run for Plymouth. She may do it. Pitch over a couple of guns forr'ad, and quit messing with a ship you don't understand, an' I'll warn shewilldo it."
The young Frenchy was plucky as ginger. "What! Take her into Plymouth, and be made prisoner. I'll sink first!" says he.
But you see, his crew weren't navy men to listen to him; and they had wives and families, and knew that Cap'n Jacka's was their only chance. In five minutes, for all the officer's stamping and morblewing they had theBean Pheasantabout and were running for the English coast.
Now I must go back and tell you what was happening to theUnityin all this while. About four in the afternoon Cap'n Dick, not liking the look of the weather at all, and knowing that, so long as it lasted, he might whistle for prizes, changed his mind and determined to run back to Polperro, so as to re-ship Cap'n Jacka and the prize crew almost as soon as they arrived. By five o'clock he was well on his way, theUnityskipping along quite as if she enjoyed it; and ran before the gale all that night.
Towards three in the morning the wind moderated, and by half-past four the gale had blown itself out. Just about then the look-out came to Cap'n Dick, who had turned in for a spell, and reported two ships' lights, one on each side of them. The chances against their being Frenchmen, out here in this part of the Channel, were about five to two; so Cap'n Dick cracked on; and at daybreak—about a quarter after five—found himself right slap between the very two frigates that had called Jacka to halt the evening before.
One was fetching along on the port tack, and the other on the weather side of him, just making ready to put about. They both ran up the white ensign at sight of him; but this meant nothing. And in a few minutes the frigate to starboard fired a shot across his bows and hoisted her French flag.
Cap'n Dick feigned to take the hint. He shortened sail and rounded at a nice distance under the lee of the enemy—both frigates now lying-to quite contentedly with their sails aback, and lowering their boats. But the first boat had hardly dropped a foot from the davits when he sung out, "Wurroo, lads!" and up again went theUnity'sgreat lug-sail in a jiffy. The Frenchmen, like their sails, were all aback; and before they could fire a gun theUnitywas pinching up to windward of them, with Cap'n Dick at the helm, and all the rest of the crew flat on their stomachs. Off she went under a rattling shower from the enemy's bow-chasers and musketry, and was out of range without a man hurt, and with no more damage than a hole or two in the mizzen-lug. The Frenchmen were a good ten minutes trimming sails and bracing their yards for the chase; and by that time Cap'n Dick had slanted up well on their weather bow. Before breakfast-time he was shaking his sides at the sight of seven hundred-odd Johnnies vainly spreading and trimming more canvas to catch up their lee-way (for at first the lazy dogs had barely unreefed courses after the gale, and still had their topgallant masts housed). Likely enough they had work on hand more important than chasing a small lugger all day; for at seven o'clock they gave up and stood away to the south-east, and left theUnityfree to head back homeward on her old course.
'Twas a surprising feat, to slip out of grasp in this way, and past two broadsides, any gun of which could have sent him to the bottom; and Cap'n Dick wasn't one to miss boasting over it. Even during the chase he couldn't help carrying on in his usual loud and cheeky way, waving good-bye to the Mossoos, offering them a tow-rope, and the like; but now the deck wasn't big enough to hold his swagger, and in their joy of escaping a French prison, the men encouraged him, so that to hear them talk you'd have thought he was Admiral Nelson and Sir Sidney Smith rolled into one.
By nine o'clock they made out the Eddystone on their starboard bow; and a little after—-the morning being bright and clear, with a nice steady breeze—they saw a sail right ahead of them, making in for Plymouth Sound. And who should it be but the oldBean Pheasant, deep as a log! Cap'n Dick cracked along after her, and a picture she was as he drew up close! Six of her guns had gone; her men were baling in two gangs, and still she was down a bit by the head, and her stern yawing like a terrier's tail when his head's in a rabbit-hole. And there at the tiller stood Cap'n Jacka, his bald head shining like a statue of fun, and his one eye twinkling with blessed satisfaction as he cocked it every now and then for a glance over his right shoulder.
"Hullo! What's amiss?" sang out Cap'n Dick, as theUnityfetched within hail.
"Aw, nothin', nothin'. 'Tho' troubles assail an' dangers'—Stiddy there, you old angletwitch!—She's a bit too fond o' smelling the wind, that's all."
As a matter of fact she'd taken more water than Jacka cared to think about, now that the danger was over.
"But what brings 'ee here? An' what cheer wi'you?" he asked.
This was Cap'n Dick's chance. "I've had a run between two French frigates," he boasted, "in broad day, an' given the slip to both!"
"Dear, now!" said Cap'n Jacka. "So have I—in broad day, too. They must ha' been the very same. What did 'ee take out of 'em?"
"Take! They were two war frigates, I tell 'ee!"
"Iss, iss; don't lose your temper. All I managed to take was this young French orcifer here; but I thought, maybe, that you—having a handier craft—"
Jacka chuckled a bit; but he wasn't one to keep a joke going for spite.
"Look-y-here, Cap'n," he said; "I'll hear your tale when we get into dock, and you shall hear mine. What I want 'ee to do just now is to take this here lugger again and sail along in to Plymouth with her as your prize. I wants, if possible, to spare the feelin's of this young gentleman, an' make it look that he was brought in by force. For so he was, though not in the common way. An' I likes the fellow, too, though he do kick terrible hard."
* * * * *
They do say that two days later, when Cap'n Jacka walked up to his own door, he carried the cinder-sifter under his arm; and that, before ever he kissed his wife, he stepped fore and hitched it on a nail right in the middle of the wall over the chimney-piece, between John Wesley and the weather-glass.
We were four in thepatio. And thepatiowas magnificent, with a terrace of marble running round its four sides, and in the middle a fountain splashing in a marble basin. I will not swear to the marble; for I was a boy of ten at the time, and that is a long while ago. But I describe as I recollect. It was a magnificentpatio, at all events, and the house was a palace. And who the owner might be, Felipe perhaps knew. But he was not one to tell, and the rest of us neither knew nor cared.
The two women lay stretched on the terrace, with their heads close together and resting against the house wall. And I sat beside them gnawing a bone. The sun shone over the low eastern wall upon the fountain and upon Felipe perched upon the rim of the basin, with his lame leg stuck out straight and his mouth working as he fastened a nail in the end of his beggar's crutch.
I cannot tell you the hour exactly, but it was early morning, and the date the twenty-fourth of February, 1671. I learnt this later. We in thepatiodid not bother ourselves about the date, for the world had come to an end, and we were the last four left in it. For three weeks we had been playing hide-and-seek with the death that had caught and swallowed everyone else; and for the moment it was quite enough for the women to sleep, for me to gnaw my bone in the shade, and for Felipe to fasten the loose nail in his crutch. Many windows opened on thepatio. Through the nearest, by turning my head a little, I could see into a noble room lined with pictures and heaped with furniture and torn hangings. All of it was ours, or might be, for the trouble of stepping inside and taking possession. But the bone (I had killed a dog for it) was a juicy one, and I felt no inclination to stir. There was the risk, too, of infection—of the plague.
"Hullo!" cried Felipe, slipping on his shoe, with the heel of which he had been hammering. "You awake?"
I put Felipe last of us in order, for he was an old fool. Yet I must say that we owed our lives to him. Why he took so much trouble and spent so much ingenuity in saving them is not to be guessed: for the whole city of Panama comprehended no two lives more worthless than old Doña Teresa's (as we called her) and mine: and as for the Carmelite, Sister Marta, who had joined our adventures two days before, she, poor soul, would have thanked him for putting a knife into her and ending her shame.
But Felipe, though a fool, had a fine sense of irony. And so for three weeks Doña Teresa and I—and for forty-eight hours Sister Marta too—had been lurking and doubling, squatting in cellars crawling on roofs, breaking cover at night to snatch our food, all under Felipe's generalship. And he had carried us through. Perhaps he had a soft corner in his heart for old Teresa. He and she were just of an age, the two most careless-hearted outcasts in Panama; and knew each other's peccadilloes to a hair. I went with Teresa. Heaven knows in what gutter she had first picked me up, but for professional ends I was her starving grandchild, and now reaped the advantages of that dishonouring fiction.
"How can a gentleman sleep for your thrice-accursed hammering?" was my answer to Felipe Fill-the-Bag.
"The city is very still this morning," he observed, sniffing the air, which was laden still with the scent of burnt cedar-wood. "The English dogs will have turned their backs on us for good. I heard their bugles at daybreak; since then, nothing."
"These are fair quarters, for a change."
He grinned. "They seem to suit the lady, your grandmother. She has not groaned for three hours. I infer that her illustrious sciatica is no longer troubling her."
Our chatter awoke the Carmelite. She opened her eyes, unclasped her hand, which had been locked round one of the old hag's, and sat up blinking, with a smile which died away very pitiably.
"Good morning, Señorita," said I.
She bent over Teresa, but suddenly drew back with a little "Ah!" and stared, holding her breath.
"What is the matter?"
She was on her knees, now; and putting out a hand, touched Teresa's skinny neck with the tips of two fingers.
"What is the matter?" echoed Felipe, coming forward from the fountain.
"She is dead!" said I, dropping the hand which I had lifted.
"Jesu—" began the Carmelite, and stopped: and we stared at one another, all three.
With her eyes wide and fastened on mine, Sister Marta felt for the crucifix and rope of beads which usually hung from her waist. It was gone: but her hands fumbled for quite a minute before the loss came home to her brain. And then she removed her face from us and bent her forehead to the pavement. She made no sound, but I saw her feet writhing.
"Come, come," said Felipe, and found no more to say.
I can guess now a little of what was passing through her unhappy mind. Women are women and understand one another. And Teresa, unclean and abandoned old hulk though she was, had stood by this girl when she came to us flying out of the wrack like a lost ship. "Dear, dear, dear"—I remembered scraps of her talk—"the good Lord is debonair, and knows all about these things. He isn't like a man, as you might say": and again, "Why bless you, He's not going to condemn you for a matter that I could explain in five minutes. 'If it comes to that,' I should say—and I've often noticed that a real gentleman likes you all the better for speaking up—'If it comes to that, Lord, why did You put such bloody-minded pirates into the world?' Now to my thinking"—and I remember her rolling a leaf of tobacco as she said it—"it's a great improvement to the mind to have been through the battle, whether you have won or lost; and that's why, when on earth, He chose the likes of us for company."
This philosophy was not the sort to convince a religious girl: but I believe it comforted her. Women are women, as I said; and when the ship goes down a rotten plank is better than none. So the Carmelite had dropped asleep last night with her hand locked round Teresa's: and so it happened to Teresa this morning to be lamented, and sincerely lamented, by one of the devout. It was almost an edifying end; and the prospect of it, a few days ago, would have tickled her hugely.
"But what did she die of?" I asked Felipe, when we had in delicacy withdrawn to the fountain, leaving the Carmelite alone with her grief.
He opened his mouth and pointed a finger at it.
"But only last evening I offered to share my bone with her: and she told me to keep it for myself."
"Your Excellency does not reason so well as usual," said Felipe, without a smile on his face. "The illustrious defunct had a great affection for her grandchild, which caused her to overlook the ambiguity of the relationship—and other things."
"But do you mean to say—"
"She was a personage of great force of character, and of some virtues which escaped recognition, being unusual. I pray," said he, lifting the rim of his rusty hat, "that her soul may find the last peace! I had the honour to follow her career almost from the beginning. I remember her even as a damsel of a very rare beauty: but even then as I say, her virtues were unusual, and less easily detected than her failings. I, for example, who supposed myself to know her thoroughly, missed reckoning upon her courage, or I had spent last night in seeking food. I am a fool and a pig."
"And consequently, while we slept—"
"Excuse me, I have not slept."
"You have been keeping watch?"
"Not for the buccaneers, my Lord. They left before daybreak. But the dogs of the city are starving, even as we: and like us they have taken to hunting in company. Now this is a handsome courtyard, but the gate does not happen to be too secure."
I shivered. Felipe watched me with an amiable grin.
"But let us not," he continued, "speak contemptuously of our inheritance. It is, after all, a very fair kingdom for three. Captain Morgan and his men are accomplished scoundrels, but careless: they have not that eye for trifles which is acquired in our noble profession, and they have no instinct at all for hiding-places. I assure you this city yet contains palaces to live in, linen and silver plate to keep us comfortable. Food is scarce, I grant, but we shall have wines of the very first quality. We shall live royally. But, alas! Heaven has exacted more than its tithe of my enjoyment. I had looked forward to seeing Teresa in a palace of her own. What a queen she would have made, to be sure!"
"Are we three the only souls in Panama?"
Felipe rubbed his chin. "I think there is one other. But he is a philosopher, and despises purple and linen. We who value them, within reason, could desire no better subject." He arose and treated me to a regal bow. "Shall we inspect our legacy, my brother, and make arrangements for the coronation?"
"We might pick up something to eat on the way," said I.
Felipe hobbled over to the terrace. "Poor old ——," he muttered, touching the corpse with his staff, and dwelling on the vile word with pondering affection. "Señorita," said he aloud, "much grief is not good on an empty stomach. If Juan here will lift her feet—"
We carried Doña Teresa into the large cool room, and laid her on a couch. Felipe tore down the silken hangings from one of the windows and spread them over her to her chin, which he tied up with the yellow kerchief which had been her only headgear for years. The Carmelite meanwhile detached two heavy silver sconces from a great candelabrum and set them by her feet. But we could find no tinder-box to light the candles—big enough for an altar.
"She will do handsomely until evening," said Felipe, and added under his breath, "but we must contrive to fasten the gate of thepatio."
"I will watch by her," said Sister Marta.
Felipe glanced at us and shook his head. I knew he was thinking of the dogs. "That would not do at all, Señorita. 'For the living, the living,' as they say. If we live, we will return this evening and attend to her; but while my poor head remains clear (and Heaven knows how long that will be) there is more important work to be done."
"To bury the dead—"
"It is one of the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy, Señorita, and it won Raphael to the house of Tobit. But in this instance Raphael shuts himself up and we must go to him. While Teresa lived, all was well: but now, with two lives depending on my wits, and my wits not to be depended on for an hour, it does not suit with my conscience to lose time in finding you another protector."
"Butthey—theyhave gone?"
"The Lutheran dogs have gone, and have taken the city's victuals with them."
"I do not want to live, my friend."
"Granted: but I do not think that Juanito, here, is quite of your mind."
She considered for a moment. "I will go with you," she said: and we quitted thepatiotogether.
The gate opened upon a narrow alley, encumbered now with charred beams and heaps of refuse from a burnt house across the way. The fury of the pirates had been extravagant, but careless (as Felipe had said). In their lust of robbing, firing, murdering, they had followed no system; and so it happened that a few houses, even wealthy ones, stood intact, like islands, in the general ruin. For the most part, to be sure, there were houses which hid their comfort behind mean walls. But once or twice we were fairly staggered by the blind rage which had passed over a mansion crowded with valuables and wrecked a dozen poor habitations all around it. The mischief was that from such houses Felipe, our forager, brought reports of wealth to make the mouth water, but nothing to stay the stomach. The meat in the larders was putrid; the bread hard as a stone. We were thankful at last for a few oranges, on which we snatched a breakfast in an angle of ruined wall on the north side of the Cathedral, pricking up our ears at the baying of the dogs as they hunted their food somewhere in the northern suburbs.
I confess that the empty houses gave me the creeps, staring down at me with their open windows while I sucked my orange. In the rooms behind those windows lay dead bodies, no doubt: some mutilated, some swollen with the plague (for during a fortnight now the plague had been busy); all lying quiet up there, with the sun staring in on them. Each window had a meaning in its eye, and was trying to convey it. "If you could only look through me," one said. "The house is empty—come upstairs and see." For me that was an uncomfortable meal. Felipe, too, had lost some of his spirits. The fact is, we had been forced to step aside to pass more than one body stretched at length or huddled in the roadway, and—well, I have told you about the dogs.
Between the Cathedral and the quays scarcely a house remained: for the whole of this side of the city had been built of wood. But beyond this smoking waste we came to the great stone warehouses by the waterside, and the barracks where the Genoese traders lodged their slaves. The shells of these buildings stood, but every one had been gutted and the roofs of all but two or three had collapsed. We picked our way circumspectly now, for here had been the buccaneers' headquarters. But the quays were as desolate as the city. Empty, too, were the long stables where the horses and mules had used to be kept for conveying the royal plate from ocean to ocean. Two or three poor beasts lay in their stalls—slaughtered as unfit for service; the rest, no doubt, were carrying Morgan's loot on the road to Chagres.
Here, beside the stables, Felipe took a sudden turn to the right and struck down a lane which seemed to wind back towards the city between long lines of warehouses. I believe that, had we gone forward another hundred yards, to the quay's edge, we should have seen or heard enough to send us along that lane at the double. As it was, we heard nothing, and saw only the blue bay, the islands shining green under the thin line of smoke blown on the land breeze—no living creature between us and them but a few sea-birds. After we had struck into the lane I turned for another look, and am sure that this was all.
Felipe led the way down the lane for a couple of gunshots; the Carmelite following like a ghost in her white robes, and I close at her heels. He halted before a low door on the left; a door of the most ordinary appearance. It opened by a common latch upon a cobbled passage running between two warehouses, and so narrow that the walls almost met high over our heads. At the end of this passage—which was perhaps forty feet long—we came to a second door, with a grille, and, hanging beside it, an iron bell-handle, at which Felipe tugged.
The sound of the bell gave me a start, for it seemed to come from just beneath my feet. Felipe grinned.
"Brother Bartolomé works like a mole. But good wine needs no bush, myJuanito, as you shall presently own. He takes his own time, though,"Felipe grumbled, after a minute. "It cannot be that—"
He was about to tug again when somebody pushed back the little shutter behind the grille, and a pair of eyes (we could see nothing of the face) gazed out upon us.
"There is no longer need for caution, reverend father," said Felipe, addressing the grille. "The Lutheran dogs have left the city, and we have come to taste your cordial and consult with you on a matter of business."
We heard a bolt slid, and the door opened upon a pale emaciated face and two eyes which clearly found the very moderate daylight too much for them. Brother Bartolomé blinked without ceasing, while he shielded with one hand the thin flame of an earthenware lamp.
"Are you come all on one business?" he asked, his gaze passing from one to another, and resting at length on the Carmelite.
"When the forest takes fire, all beasts are cousins," said Felipe sententiously. Without another question the friar turned and led the way, down a flight of stairs which plunged (for all I could tell) into the bowels of earth. His lamp flickered on bare walls upon which the spiders scurried. I counted twenty steps, and still all below us was dark as a pit; ten more, and I was pulled up with that peculiar and highly disagreeable jar which everyone remembers who has put forward a foot expecting a step, and found himself suddenly on the level. The passage ran straight ahead into darkness: but the friar pushed open a low door in the left-hand wall, and, stepping aside, ushered us into a room, or paved cell, lit by a small lamp depending by a chain from the vaulted roof.
Shelves lined the cell from floor to roof; chests, benches, and work-tables occupied two-thirds of the floor-space: and all were crowded with books, bottles, retorts, phials, and the apparatus of a laboratory. "Crowded," however, is not the word; for at a second glance I recognised the beautiful order that reigned. The deal work-benches had been scoured white as paper; every glass, every metal pan and basin sparkled and shone in the double light of the lamp and of a faint beam of day conducted down from the upper world by a kind of funnel and through a grated window facing the door.
In this queer double light Brother Bartolomé faced us, after extinguishing the small lamp in his hand.
"You say the pirates have left?"
Felipe nodded. "At daybreak. We in this room are all who remain inPanama."
"The citizens will be returning, doubtless, in a day or two. I have no food for you, if that is what you seek. I finished my last crust yesterday."
"That is a pity. But we must forage. Meanwhile, reverend father, a touch of your cordial—"
Brother Bartolomé reached down a bottle from a shelf. It was heavily sealed and decorated with a large green label bearing a scarlet cross. Bottles similarly sealed and labelled lined this shelf and a dozen others. He broke the seal, drew the cork, and fetched three glasses, each of which he held carefully up to the lamplight. Satisfied of their cleanliness, he held the first out to the Carmelite. She shook her head.
"It is against the vow."
He grunted and poured out a glassful apiece for Felipe and me. The first sip brought tears into my eyes: and then suddenly I was filled with sunshine—golden sunshine—and could feel it running from limb to limb through every vein in my small body.
Felipe chuckled. "See the lad looking down at his stomach! Button your jacket, Juanito; the noonday's shining through! Another sip, to the reverend father's health! His brothers run away—the Abbot himself runs: but Brother Bartolomé stays. For he labours for the good of man, and that gives a clear conscience. Behold how just, after all, are the dispositions of Heaven: how blind are the wicked! For three weeks those bloody-minded dogs have been grinning and running about the city: and here under their feet, as in a mine, have lain the two most precious jewels of all—a clear conscience and a liquor which, upon my faith, holy father, cannot be believed in under a second glass."
Brother Bartolomé was refilling the glass, when the Carmelite touched his arm.
"You have been here—all the while?"
"Has it been so long? I have been at work, you see."
"For the good of man," interrupted Felipe. "Time slips away when one works for the good of man."
"And all the while you were distilling this?"
"This—and other things."
"Other things to drink?"
"My daughter, had they caught me, they might have tortured me. I might have held my tongue: but, again, I might not. Under torture one never knows what will happen. But the secret of the liquor had to die with me—that is in the vow. So to be on the safe side I made—other things."
"Father, give me to drink of those other things."
She spoke scarcely above her breath: but her fingers were gripping his arm. He looked straight into her eyes.
"My poor child!" was all he said, very low and slow.
"I can touch no other sacrament," she pleaded. "Father, have mercy and give me that one!" She watched his eyes eagerly as they flinched from hers in pity and dwelt for a moment on a tall chest behind her shoulder, against the wall to the right of the door. She glanced round, stepped to the chest, and laid a hand on the lid. "Is it here?" she asked.
But he was beside her on the instant; and stooping, locked down the lid, and drew out the key abruptly.
"Is it here?" she repeated.
"My child, that is an ice-chest. In the liquor, for perfection, the water used has first to be frozen. That chest contains ice, and nothing else."
"Nothing else?" she persisted.
But here Felipe broke in. "The Señorita is off her hinges, father. Much fasting has made her light-headed. And that brings me to my business. You know my head, too, is not strong: good enough for a furlong or two, but not for the mile course. Now if you will shelter these two innocents whilst I forage we shall make a famous household. You have rooms here in plenty; the best-hidden in Panama. But none of us can live without food, and with these two to look after I am hampered. There are the dogs, too. But Felipe knows a trick or two more than the dogs, and if he do not fill your larder by sunset, may his left leg be withered like his right!"
Brother Bartolomé considered. "Here are the keys," said he. "Choose your lodgings and take the boy along with you, for I think the sister here wishes to talk with me alone."
Felipe took the keys and handed me the small lamp, which I held aloft as he limped after me along the dark corridor, tapping its flagged pavement with the nail of his crutch. We passed an iron-studded door which led, he told me, to the crypt of the chapel; and soon after mounted a flight of steps and found ourselves before the great folding doors of the ante-chapel itself, and looked in. Here was daylight again: actual sunlight, falling through six windows high up in the southern wall and resting in bright patches on the stall canopies within. We looked on these bright patches through the interspaces of a great carved screen: but when I would have pressed into the chapel for a better view, Felipe took me by the collar.
"Business first," said he, and pointed up the staircase, which mounted steeply again after its break by the chapel doors. Up we went, and were saluted again by the smell of burnt cedar-wood wafted through lancet windows, barred but unglazed, in the outer wall. The inner wall was blank, of course, being the northern side-wall of the chapel: but we passed one doorway in it with which I was to make better acquaintance. And, about twenty steps higher, we reached a long level corridor and the cells where the brothers slept.
Felipe opened them one by one and asked me to take my choice. All were empty and bare, and seemed to me pretty much alike.
"We have slept in worse, but that is not the point. Be pleased to remember, Juanito, that we are kings now: and as kings we are bound to find the reverend fathers' notions of bedding inadequate. Suppose you collect us half-a-dozen of these mattresses apiece, while I go on and explore."
I chose three cells for Sister Marta, Felipe, and myself, and set about dragging beds and furniture from the others to make us really comfortable. I dare say I spent twenty minutes over this, and, when all was done, perched myself on a stool before the little window of my own bed-room, for a look across the city. It was a very little window indeed, and all I saw was a green patch beyond the northern suburbs, where the rich merchants' gardens lay spread like offerings before a broken-down shrine. Those trees no doubt hid trampled lawns and ruined verandahs: but at such a distance no scar could be seen. The suburbs looked just as they had always looked in early spring.
I was staring out of window, so, and just beginning to wonder why Felipe did not return as he had promised, when there came ringing up the staircase two sharp cries, followed by a long, shrill, blood-freezing scream.
My first thought (I cannot tell you why) was that Felipe must have tumbled downstairs: and without any second thought I had jumped off my chair and was flying down to his help, three stairs at a bound, when another scream and a roar of laughter fetched me up short. The laugh was not Felipe's; nor could I believe it Brother Bartolomé's. In fact it was the laugh of no one man, but of several. The truth leapt on me with a knife, as you might say. The buccaneers had returned.
I told you, a while back, of a small doorway in the inner wall of the staircase. It was just opposite this door that I found myself cowering, trying to close my ears against the abhorrent screams which filled the stairway and the empty corridor above with their echoes. To crawl out of sight—had you lived through those three weeks in Panama you would understand why this was the only thought in my head, and why my knees shook so that I actually crawled on them to the little door, and finding that it opened easily, crept inside and shut it before looking about me.
But even in the act of shutting it I grew aware that the screams and laughter were louder than ever. And a glance around told me that I was not in a room at all, but in the chapel, or rather in a gallery overlooking it, and faced with an open balustrade.
As I crouched there on my knees, they could not see me, nor could I see them; but their laughter and their infernal jabber—for these buccaneers were the sweepings of half-a-dozen nations—came to my ears as distinct as though I stood among them. And under the grip of terror I crawled to the front of the gallery and peered down between its twisted balusters.
I told you, to start with, that Felipe was a crazy old fool: and I dare say you have gathered by this time what shape his craziness took. He had a mania for imagining himself a great man. For days together he might be as sane as you or I; and then, all of a sudden—a chance word would set him off—he had mounted his horse and put on all the airs of the King of Spain, or his Holiness the Pope, or any grandissimo you pleased, from the Governor of Panama upwards. I had known that morning, when he began to prate about our being kings, that the crust of his common-sense was wearing thin. I suppose that after leaving me he must have come across the coffers in which the Abbot kept his robes of state, and that the sight of them started his folly with a twist; for he lay below me on the marble floor of the chapel, arrayed like a prince of the Church. The mitre had rolled from his head; but the folds of a magnificent purple cope, embroidered with golden lilies and lined with white silk, flowed from his twisted shoulders over the black and white chequers of the pavement. And he must have dressed himself with care, too: for beneath the torn hem of the alb his feet and ankles stirred feebly, and caught my eye: and they were clad in silken stockings. He was screaming no longer. Only a moan came at intervals as he lay there, with closed eyes, in the centre of that ring of devils: and on the outer edge of the ring, guarded, stood Brother Bartolomé and the Carmelite. Had we forgotten or been too careless to close the door after us when Brother Bartolomé let us in? I tried to remember, but could not be sure.
The most of the buccaneers—there were eight of them—spoke no Spanish: but there was one, a cross-eyed fellow, who acted as interpreter. And he knelt and held up a bundle of keys which Felipe wore slung from a girdle round his waist.
"Once more, Master Abbot—will you show us your treasures, or will you not?"
Felipe moaned.
"I tell you," Brother Bartolomé spoke up, very short and distinct, "there are no treasures. And if there were, that poor wretch could not show them. He is no Abbot, but a beggar who has lived on charity these twenty years to my knowledge."
"That tongue of yours, friar, needs looking to. I promise you to cut it out and examine it when I have done with your reverend father here. As for the wench at your side—"
"You may do as your cruelty prompts you, Brother Bartolomé interrupted. But that man is no Abbot."
"He may be Saint Peter himself, and these the keys of Heaven and Hell. But I and my camarados are going to find out what they open, as sure as my name is Evan Evans." And he knotted a cord round Felipe's forehead and began to twist. The Carmelite put her hands over her eyes and would have fallen: but one of her guards held her up, while another slipped both arms round her neck from behind and held her eyelids wide open with finger and thumb. I believe—I hope—that Felipe was past feeling by this time, as he certainly was past speech. He did not scream again, and it was only for a little while that he moaned. But even when the poor fool's head dropped on his shoulder, and the life went out of him, they did not finish with the corpse until, in their blasphemous sport, they had hoisted it over the altar and strapped it there with its arms outstretched and legs dangling.
"Now I think it is your turn," said the scoundrel Evans, turning toBrother Bartolomé with a grin.
"I regret that we cannot give you long, for we returned from Tavoga this morning to find Captain Morgan already on the road. It will save time if you tell us at once what these keys open."
"Certainly I will tell you," said the friar, and stretched out a hand for the bunch. "This key for instance, is useless: it opens the door of the wicket by which you entered. This opens the chest which, as a rule, contains the holy vessels; but it too, is useless, since the chest is empty of all but the silver chalices and a couple of patens. Will you send one of your men to prove that I speak truth? This, again, is the key of my own cell—"
"Where your reverence entertains the pretty nuns who come for absolution."
"After that," said Brother Bartolomé, pointing a finger towards the altar and the poor shape dangling, "you might disdain small brutalities."
The scoundrel leaned his back against a carved bench-end and nodded his head slowly. "Master friar, you shall have a hard death."
"Possibly. This, as I was saying, is the key of my cell, where I decoct the liquor for which this house is famous. Of our present stock the bulk lies in the cellars, to which this"—and he held up yet another key—"will admit you. Yes, that is it," as one of the pirates produced a bottle and held it under his nose.
"Eh? Let me see it." The brute Evans snatched the bottle. "Is this the stuff?" he demanded, holding it up to the sunlight which streamed down red on his hand from the robe of a martyr in one of the painted windows above. He pulled out his heavy knife, and with the back of it knocked off the bottle-neck.
"I will trouble you to swear to the taste," said he.
"I taste it only when our customers complain. They have not complained now for two-and-twenty years."
"Nevertheless you will taste it."
"You compel me?"
"Certainly I compel you. I am not going to be poisoned if I can help it. Drink, I tell you!"
Brother Bartolomé shrugged his shoulders. "It is against the vow … but, under compulsion … and truly I make it even better than I used," he wound up, smacking his thin lips as he handed back the bottle.
The buccaneer took it, watching his face closely. "Here's death to the Pope!" said he, and tasted it, then took a gulp. "The devil, but it is hot!" he exclaimed, the tears springing into his eyes.
"Certainly, if you drink it in that fashion. But why not try it with ice?"
"Ice?"
"You will find a chestful in my cell. Here is the key; which, by the way, has no business with this bunch. Felipe, yonder, who was always light-fingered, must have stolen it from my work-bench."
"Hand it over. One must go to the priests to learn good living. Here, Jacques le Bec!" He rattled off an order to a long-nosed fellow at his elbow, who saluted and left the chapel, taking the key.
"We shall need a cup to mix it in," said Brother Bartolomé quietly.
One of the pirates thrust the silver chalices into his hands: for the bottle had been passed from one man to another, and they were thirsty for more. Brother Bartolomé took it, and looked at the Carmelite. For the moment nobody spoke: and a queer feeling came over me in my hiding. This quiet group of persons in the quiet chapel—it seemed to me impossible they could mean harm to one another, that in a minute or two the devil would be loose among them. There was no menace in the posture of any one of them, and in Brother Bartolomé's there was certainly no hint of fear. His back was towards me, but the Carmelite stood facing my gallery, and I looked straight into her eyes as they rested on the cups, and in them I read anxiety indeed, but not fear. It was something quite different from fear.
The noise of Jacques le Bec's footstep in the ante-chapel broke this odd spell of silence. The man Evans uncrossed his legs and took a pace to meet him. "Here, hand me a couple of bottles. How much will the cups hold?"
"A bottle and a half, or thereabouts: that is, if you allow for the ice."
Jacques carried the bottles in a satchel, and a block of ice in a wrapper under his left arm. He handed over the satchel, set down the ice on the pavement and began to unwrap it. At a word from Evans he fell to breaking it up with the pommel of his sword.
"We must give it a minute or two to melt," Evans added. And again a silence fell, in which I could hear the lumps of ice tinkling as they knocked against the silver rims of the chalices.
"The ice is melted. Is it your pleasure that I first taste this also?"Brother Bartolomé spoke very gravely and deliberately.
"I believe," sneered Evans, "that on these occasions the religious are the first to partake."
The friar lifted one of the chalices and drank. He held it to his lips with a hand that did not shake at all; and, having tasted, passed it on to Evans without a word or a glance. His eyes were on the Carmelite, who had taken half a step forward with palms held sidewise to receive the chalice he still held in his right hand. He guided it to her lips, and his left hand blessed her while she drank. Almost before she had done, the Frenchman, Jacques le Bec, snatched it.
The Carmelite stood, swaying. Brother Bartolomé watched the cups as they went full circle.
Jacques le Bec, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, spoke a word or two rapidly in French.
Brother Bartolomé turned to Evans. "Yes, I go with you. For you, my child!"—He felt for his crucifix and held it over the Carmelite, who had dropped on her knees before him. At the same time, with his left hand, he pointed towards the altar. "For these, the mockery of the Crucified One which themselves have prepared!"
I saw Evans pull out his knife and leap. I saw him like a man shot, drop his arm and spin right-about as two screams rang out from the gallery over his head. It must have been I who screamed: and to me, now, that is the inexplicable part of it. I cannot remember uttering the screams: yet I can see Evans as he turned at the sound of them.
Yet it was I who screamed, and who ran for the door and, still screaming, dashed out upon the staircase. Up the stairs I ran: along the corridor: and up a second staircase.
The sunshine broke around me. I was on the leads of the roof, and Panama lay spread at my feet like a trodden garden. I listened: no footsteps were following. Far away from the westward came the notes of a bugle—faint, yet clear. In the northern suburbs the dogs were baying. I listened again. I crept to the parapet of the roof and saw the stained eastern window of the chapel a few yards below me, saw its painted saints and martyrs, outlined in lead, dull against the noonday glow. And from within came no sound at all.
The Story is Told by Dom Bartholomew Perestrello, Governor of the Island of Porto Santo.
It was on the fifteenth day of August, 1428, and about six o'clock in the morning, that while taking the air on the seaward side of my house at Porto Santo, as my custom was after breaking fast, I caught sight of a pinnace about two leagues distant, and making for the island.
I dare say it is commonly known how I came to the governance of Porto Santo, to hold it and pass it on to my son Bartholomew; how I sailed to it in the year 1420 in company with the two honourable captains John Gonsalvez Zarco and Tristram Vaz; and what the compact was which we made between us, whereby on reaching Porto Santo these two left me behind and passed on to discover the greater island of Madeira. And many can tell with greater or less certainty of our old pilot, the Spaniard Morales, and how he learned of such an island in his captivity on the Barbary coast. Of all this you shall hear, and perhaps more accurately, when I come to my meeting with the Englishman. But I shall tell first of the island itself, and what were my hopes of it on the morning when I sighted his pinnace.
In the first warmth of discovering them we never doubted that these were the Purple Islands of King Juba, the very Garden of the Hesperides, found anew by us after so many hundreds of years; or that we had aught to do but sit still in our governments and grow rich while we feasted. But that was in the year 1420, and the eight years between had made us more than eight years sadder. In the other island the great yield of timber had quickly come to an end: for Count Zarco, returning thither with wife and children in the month of May, 1421, and purposing to build a city, had set fire to the woods behind the fennel-fields on the south coast, with intent to clear a way up to the hills in the centre: and this fire quickly took such hold on the mass of forest that not ten times the inhabitants could have mastered it. And so the whole island burned for seven years, at times with a heat which drove the settlers to their boats. For seven years as surely as night fell could we in Porto Santo count on the glare of it across the sea to the south-west, and for seven years the caravels of our prince and master, Dom Henry, sighted the flame of it on their way southward to Cape Bojador.
In all this while Count Zarco never lost heart; but, when the timber began to fail, planted his sugar-canes on the scarcely cooled ashes, and his young plants of the Malmsey vine—the one sent from Sicily, the other from Candia, and both by the care of Dom Henry. While he lives it will never be possible to defeat my friend and old comrade: and he and I have both lived to see his island made threefold richer by that visitation which in all men's belief had clean destroyed it.
This planting of vines and sugar-canes began in 1425, the same year in which the Infante gave me colonists for Porto Santo. But if I had little of Count Zarco's merit, it is certain I had none of his luck: for on my small island nothing would thrive but dragon-trees; and we had cut these in our haste before learning how to propagate them, so that we had at the same moment overfilled the market with their gum, or "dragon's blood," and left but a few for a time of better prices. And, what was far worse, at the suggestion surely of Satan I had turned three tame rabbits loose upon the island; and from the one doe were bred in two or three years so many thousands of these pestilent creatures that when in 1425 we came to plant the vines and canes, not one green shoot in a million escaped. Thus it happened that by 1428 my kingdom had become but a barren rock, dependent for its revenues upon the moss called the orchilla weed of which the darker and better kind could be gathered only by painful journeys inland.
You may see, therefore, that I had little to comfort me as I paced before my house that morning. I was Governor of an impoverished rock on which I had wasted the toil and thought of eight good years of my prime: my title was hereditary, but I had in those days no son to inherit it. And when I considered the fortune I had exchanged for this, and my pleasant days in Dom Henry's service at Sagres, I accused myself for the most miserable among men.
Now, at the north-western angle of my house, and a little below the terrace where I walked, there grew a plantation of dragon-trees, one of the few left upon the island. Each time this sentry-walk of mine brought me back to the angle I would halt before turning and eye the trees, sourly pondering on our incredible folly. For, on my first coming they had grown everywhere, and some with trunks great enough to make a boat for half a dozen men: but we had cut them down for all kinds of uses, whenever a man had wanted wood for a shield or a bushel for his corn, and now they scarce grew fruit enough to fatten the hogs. It was standing there and eyeing my dragon-trees that over the tops of them I caught sight of the pinnace plying towards the island. I remember clearly what manner of day it was; clear and fresh, the sea scarce heaving, but ruffled under a southerly breeze. The small vessel, though well enough handled, made a sorry leeway by reason of her over-tall sides, and lost so much time at every board through the labour of lowering and rehoisting her great lateen yard that I judged it would take her three good hours before she came to anchor in the port below.
I could not find that she had any hostile appearance, yet—as my duty was—sent down word to the guard to challenge her business before admitting her; and a little before nine o'clock I put on my coat and walked down to the haven to look after this with my own eyes. I arrived almost at the moment when she entered and her crew, with sail partly lowered, rounded her very cleverly up in the wind.
The guard-boat put off at once and boarded her; and by-and-by came back with word that the pinnace was English (which by this time I had guessed), by name theGeorge of Bristol, and owned by an Englishman of quality, who, by reason of his extreme age, desired of my courtesy that I would come on board and confer with him. This at first I was unwilling to risk: but seeing her moored well under the five guns of our fort, and her men so far advanced with the furling of her big sail that no sudden stroke of treachery could be attempted except to her destruction, I sent word to the gunners to keep a brisk look-out, and stepping into the boat was pulled alongside.
At the head of the ladder there met me an aged gentleman, lean and bald and wrinkled, with narrow eyes and a skin like clear vellum. For all the heat of the day he wore a furred cloak which reached to his knees; also a thin gold chain around his neck: and this scrag neck and the bald head above it stood out from his fur collar as if they had been a vulture's. By his dress and the embroidered bag at his girdle, and the clasps of his furred shoes, I made no doubt he was a rich man; and he leaned on an ebony staff or wand capped with a pretty device of ivory and gold.
He stood thus, greeting me with as many bobs of the head as a bird makes when pecking an apple; and at first he poured out a string of salutations (I suppose) in English, a language with which I have no familiarity. This he perceived after a moment, and seemed not a little vexed; but covering himself and turning his back shuffled off to a door under the poop.
"Martin!" he called in a high broken voice. "Martin!"
A little man of my own country, very yellow and foxy, came running out, and the pair talked together for a moment before advancing towards me.
"Your Excellency," the interpreter began, "this is a gentleman ofEngland who desires that you will dine with him to-day. His name isMaster Thomas d'Arfet, and he has some questions to put to you, ofyour country, in private."
"D'Arfet?" I mused: and as my brows went up at the name I caught the old gentleman watching me with an eye which was sharp enough within its dulled rim. "Will you answer that I am at his service, but on the one condition that he comes ashore and dines withme."
When this was reported at first Master d'Arfet would have none of it, but rapped his staff on the desk and raised a score of objections in his scolding voice. Since I could understand none of them, I added very firmly that it was my rule; that he could be carried up to my house on a litter without an ache of his bones; and, in short, that I must either have his promise or leave the ship.
He would have persisted, I doubt not; but it is ill disputing through an interpreter, and he ended by giving way with a very poor grace. So ashore we rowed him with the man Martin, and two of my guard conveyed him up the hill in a litter, on which he sat for all the world like a peevish cross'd child. In my great airy dining-room he seemed to cool down and pick up his better humour by degrees. He spoke but little during the meal, and that little was mainly addressed to Martin, who stood behind his chair: but I saw his eyes travelling around the panelled walls and studying the portraits, the furniture, the neat table, the many comforts which it clearly astonished him to find on this forsaken island. Also he as clearly approved of the food and of my wine of Malmsey. Now and then he would steal a look at my wife Beatrix, or at one or the other of my three daughters, and again gaze out at the sea beyond the open window, as though trying to piece it all together into one picture.
But it was not until the womenfolk had risen and retired that he unlocked his thoughts to me. And I hold even now that his first question was a curious one.
"Dom Bartholomew Perestrello, are you a happy man?"
Had it come from his own lips it might have found me better prepared: but popped at me through the mouth of an interpreter, a servant who (for all his face told) might have been handing it on a dish, his question threw me out of my bearings.