Cup of Gold [Золотая чаша] Read online

  He was bitter against these proud relatives who seemed to edge away from him as though he were foul.

  He could not call them silly, for they had impressed him too deeply. They had succeeded in making him feel alone and helpless and very young.

  The narrow ways of Ports Royal were deep with muddy filth, ground to thick liquid by the carts and the numberless bare feet. Port Royal bore the same resemblance to a city as the Palace of the Lieutenant-Governor did to Whitehall. The streets were only narrow alleys lined with dirty wooden houses. And each house had a balcony above the street where people sat and stared at Henry as he passed; stared not with interest, but wearily, as men in sickness watch flies crawling on the ceiling.

  One street seemed to have no inhabitants save only women-black women, and white, and gray women, with fever written on their hollow cheeks. They leaned from their balconies like unclean sirens and softly called as he went by. Then, when he paid no attention to them, they shrieked like angry parrots and screamed curses and spat after him.

  Near the waterfront he came to a kind of tavern with a great crowd gathered in front of it. Standing in the center of the way was a cask of wine with its head staved in, and a big, drunken man in crazy laces and a plumed hat strutted beside it. He passed out cups and basins and even hats full of wine to the reaching men. Now and then he called for a toast and a cheer, and his crowd screamed its acclaim.

  Young Henry sought to pass them in his misery.

  “Come drink my health, young man. “

  “I do not wish to drink,” said Henry.

  “You do not wish to drink?” The big man was overwhelmed with this new situation. Then he recovered his wrath.

  “By God! you will so drink when Captain Dawes that took the supply ship Sangre de Cristo this day week asks you.” The lowering man came close, then suddenly drew a great pistol from his belt and pointed it waveringly at Henry’s breast.

  The boy eyed the pistol.

  “I will drink your health,” he said. And while he drank, an idea came to him. “Let me speak to you alone, Captain Dawes, sir,” and he tugged the pirate into the tavern door. “About your next trip-” he began.

  “My next trip and hell!” the captain roared. “I’ve just taken a good prize, haven’t I? I’ve got money, haven’t I? Then what is this you are squalling about a next trip? Wait till the prize is spent and the wounds healed. Wait till I’ve drained Port Royal dry of wine, and then come talking about the next trip.” He rushed back into the street crowd. “Boys!” he yelled. “Boys, you have not drunk my health for hours.

  Come, shout together now, and then we will sing!”

  Henry walked onward in despair. In the harbor a number of ships were lying at anchor. He approached a sailor sitting in the sand.

  “That one’s fast,” he said, to open the acquaintance.

  “Aye, good enough.”

  “Are there any buccaneers of note in this town?” Henry asked.

  “None but that Dawes, and he’s only a roaring mouse. He takes a little boat loaded with supplies for Campeche, and you’d think it was Panama he brought home for the noise he makes about it. “

  “But are there none others? “

  “Well, there’s one they call Grippo. but he takes no prizes unless they go unarmed. Afraid of his shadow, Grippo.

  Yes, he’s in port with no prize, and drinking black rum on tick, I guess. “

  “Which is his ship?” Henry asked.

  “Why, there she is. They call her Ganymede. They tell that Grippo stole her in Saint Malo when her crew was drunk. He and nine others tumbled the poor stiff wretches overside and made off with the ship for the Indies. Yes, she’s a good craft, but Grippo is no master. A wonder it is that he’s not wrecked her before now. Take Mansveldt; there’s a master for you-a real master. But Mansveldt is in Tortuga.”

  “A good, swift sailor,” Henry observed; “though she could carry more canvas without hurt. How about her guns?”

  “They say she’s over armed if anything.”

  And on that night, Henry found the buccaneer drinking in a hovel on the beach. The man was nearly black; two fat wrinkles cut each cheek as though a silken cord were pulled tight against the flesh until it disappeared. His eyes darted here and there like sentries before a camp of little fears.

  “Are you one they call Grippo?” Henry asked.

  “I took no prize,” the man cried, starting back. “I take no prizes. You have nothing to fasten on me for.”

  Once in Saint Malo he had been accosted thus, and afterwards they had whipped him on the cross until a hundred sagging mouths opened on his body and every one laughed blood. Grippo had feared all semblance of authority since then.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I think I am going to make your fortune, Grippo,” Henry said with assurance. He knew how to handle this man, for he was a counterpart of the many slaves of the plantation-fearful, and perhaps greedy.

  “What would you do with five hundred English pounds, Grippo?”

  The black man licked his lips and glanced at the empty cup before him. “What must I do for this money?” he whispered.

  “You will sell me the captaincy of the Ganymede.”

  Now Grippo was wary.

  “The Ganymede is worth much more,” he said firmly. “But I do not want to buy the ship-only the captaincy. Look, Grippo! I’ll make this compact with you. I will give you five hundred pounds for a half interest in the Ganymede, and all of her command. Then we will put to sea. I think I know how to win plunder if there be no interference in my company. Grippo, I will give you a writing to this effect. If I fail in one single undertaking in the Ganymede, then you shall have the whole ship back, and you shall keep the five hundred pounds.”

  Grippo still looked into his empty cup, but suddenly he was filled with excitement.

  “Give me money,” he cried out. “Quick! give me the money.” Then-“Oloto! Oloto! bring white wine-white wine-for the love of Christ.”

  CHAPTER III

  THERE were many glittering reputations along the coast of Darien and among the green Caribbean islands when Henry Morgan came to be a buccaneer. In the wine shops of Tortuga were tales of a thousand fortunes made and spent, of fine ships taken and sunk, of gold and plate dumped on the docks like wood.

  The Free Brotherhood had grown to be a terrible thing since Pierre le Grand and a little band of hunters slipped out of the woods of Hispaniola and captured the Vice-Admiral of the plate fleet from a canoe. France and Britain and Holland had seen in these islands a good hermitage for their criminals, and for years they had unloaded worthless human freight on the Indies. There was a time in those old nations when any one who could not give a good, virtuous account of himself was crammed into a ship and sent off to be a bond-servant to any man who would pay a small sum for him. And when their time was up, these people stole guns and warred on Spain. It was not strange, for Spain was Catholic and rich, while Huguenots and Lutherans and Church of England men were poor and out at heel. They fought a holy war. Spain had locked up the treasures of the world. If poor, mined beggars could be reaching a coin through the keyhole, who was the worse for it? Who minded except Spain? Surely England and France and Holland took little heed of it. Sometimes they provided the pirates with commissions against Aragon and Castile, so that you might come on a man who, ten years before, had been sent out in a prison ship, carrying the style of “Captain by the grace of the King.”

  Francehad the good of her wayward children at heart, for she sent out twelve hundred women to Tortuga to be the wives of buccaneers. The whole twelve hundred turned to a business more profitable than wifehood immediately they landed, but France could not help that.

  They had got their name, these buccaneers, of a time when they were nothing more than cattle-hunters.

  There was a way of smoking meat by burning small bits of fat and flesh in the fire. This made the meat more savory than usual. It was called the boucan process, and from it the pi
rates were named.

  But after a time these hunters came out of the woods in little, careful groups; then bands formed, and then whole fleets of eight or ten vessels. And finally thousands assembled in Tortuga, and from that spot of safety buzzed about the flanks of Spain.

  And Spain could not combat them. Did she hang ten, a hundred joined their ranks; so she fortified her towns and sent her treasures on the sea under the protection of warships filled with soldiers. The numberless vessels of the Spanish colonies were nearly all driven from the sea by the fierce buccaneers.

  Only once a year did the plate fleet sail out for home.

  There were fine names among the Brotherhood, and exploits to make Henry Morgan squirm with jealousy if he had not been so confident of overshadowing them all one day.

  Bartolomeo Portugues there was, who took a great prize. But before he could get away with it, he was captured near Campeche. The gibbet was erected on the shore for his hanging. He watched them put it up from his prison aboard ship. And in the night before his execution, he stabbed his guard and swam away, supported by a keg. Before eight days had passed, he came again with pirates in a long canoe and stole the same ship away from theharborof Campeche. He lost her, of course, in a storm off Cuba, but the story was, nevertheless, told with glee in the taverns.

  Roche Braziliano was a Hollander with a chubby face. When he was young he was driven from Brazil by the Portuguese, and from their colony he had taken his name. Curiously, he held no rancor against Portugal. His hatred turned on Spain. He was a kindly, gentle, beloved captain, so only there were no Spaniards about. His men worshiped him, and drank no other toast but to his name. Once, when his ship was wrecked in Castilla de Oro, he killed most of a troop of Spanish horse and used their beasts to ride off on. When the men of Spain were near him, Roche was a foaming beast. It was told that once he roasted prisoners on green spits over a slow fire.

  As the rich shipping was driven from the sea, the buccaneers must be taking villages, and then even towns with forts. Lewis Scot pillaged Campeche and left it a black, smoking pile.

  L’Ollonais had come from the Sables d’Ollone, and very rapidly he became the most feared man in the western ocean. He began with a real hatred for Spain and ended with a strong love of cruelty. He had pulled out tongues, and carved his prisoners to pieces with his sword. The Spanish men would far rather have met the devil in any form than L’Ollonais. The whisper of his name emptied the villages in his path of every living unit. It was said that the mice fled to the jungle when he came. Maracaibo he took, and New Gibraltar, and St. James de Leon. Everywhere he slaughtered men for the fierce love of it.

  Once, when the blood lust was in him, he had commanded that eighty-seven prisoners be bound and laid in a row on the ground. Then he walked down the line, carrying a whetstone in one hand and a long sword in the other. That day he cut off eighty-seven heads with his own hand.

  But L’Ollonais was not content with murdering the Spanish men. He went into the gentle country of Yucatan, where the people lived in ruined stone cities, and where the virgins went crowned with flowers. They were a quiet people in Yucatan, and their race was dying in an inexplicable decay. When L’Ollonais went away, the cities were heaps of stones and ashes, and there were no crowns any more.

  The Indians of Darien were different; fierce, and fearless, and unrelenting. The Spaniards called them Bravos and swore that they were untamable. They had been friends of the pirates because they so hated Spain, but L’Ollonais robbed them and murdered the tribesmen. These Indians waited many years for their vengeance, and at last they caught L’Ollonais when his ship had wrecked on the shores of their country. They built a fire and danced for hours, and then they burned the Frenchman’s body bit by bit before his eyes, a finger and a pinch of flesh at a time.

  A lean French gentleman came into a tavern at Tortuga one night, and when they asked his name, seized a large rum keg and hurled it from him.

  “Bras de Fer,” he said, and no one ever questioned him farther. It was never known whether his name was hidden for a shame or a sorrow or a hatred, but all the Coast came to know of him as a great, brave captain.

  These were men who made phrases to be repeated.

  “No prey, no pay,” the Exterminator had bawled, and now every one was saying it. When Captain Lawrence, in a small boat, was assailed by two Spanish frigates, he said to his men, “You have too much experience not to be sensible of your danger, and too much courage to fear it.” This was a fine saying, and on the strength of it his followers captured the two Spanish ships and took them home to Goaves.

  Not all were cruel or even violent men. Some had a curious streak of piety. There was Captain Watling who made it a point to hold divine service every Sabbath, with the whole crew standing uncovered.

  Daniel once shot a sailor for an irreverence. These buccaneers prayed loudly before battle, and, if they were successful, half of them trooped off to a captured cathedral to sing the Te Deum, while the other half plundered the prize.

  Captains of ships maintained the strictest discipline among their men, swiftly punishing insubordination or any other wrong-doing which might interfere with their success. There were no such riots at sea as were later tolerated by Kidd and Blackbeard and Lafitte.

  But out of the whole history of the Brotherhood, one man towered. There was a Dutchman named Edward Mansveldt. In bravery and in soldiery he was preeminent, for he had taken Granada and St.

  Augustine in Florida, and St. Catherine’s Isle. With a great fleet of ships he had gone cruising along the coasts of Darien and Castilla de Oro, taking what he might lay his hands on. But there was a power of dream in him. Out of his mob of ragamuffin heroes he wanted to make a strong, durable nation, a new, aggressive nation in America. As more and more of the buccaneers flocked to his command, his dream solidified. He consulted the governments of England and France. They were shocked, and forbade him to consider such a thing. A race of pirates not amenable to the gibbets of the crowns? Why, they would be plundering everybody. He must not be thinking about it at all.

  But still he went on planning and planning his new government. It would be started at St. Catherine’s Isle. He settled a body of his men there, and then went casting about for more to join his new nation. His ship was wrecked near the city of Havana, and Spaniards strangled Edward Mansveldt on the garotte.

  These were the men Henry Morgan had set about to lead. And, confidently, he saw no barrier, so only a man planned carefully and considered his chances. These stories and these men were well enough, but they fell short in the large actions. They were improvident and vain. They might help him one day.

  Mansveldt was living and Bras de Fer was an old man when Henry Morgan went sailing with black Grippo in the Ganymede.

  There was excitement and curiosity in Port Royal when Morgan was fitting out the Ganymede for sea.

  Strange stores and unusual weapons were going into her hold. Drawn on by the quiet confidence of this young man, many sailors volunteered for his crew. The captain found five gunners of reputation in the port and signed them to go with him. When the Ganymede dropped her sails and slipped from the harbor, a crowd of idlers stood on the beach and watched her go.

  They cruised to the coast of Darien looking for prey, but the sea appeared to be swept clean of Spanish craft. One morning, near theportof Cartagena, they sighted the tall red hull of a trading ship. Captain Morgan hid his men. No soul was allowed to show himself. Even the steersman worked in a tiny house, while a dummy wheel swung idly on the deck. Then down on the Spanish boat they bore, and the Spanish crew was overwhelmed. Here came a boat and no man working her. It smacked of witchcraft, or of one of those nameless tragedies of the sea the sailors talked about. Perhaps a plague had killed all the crew, and they could take and sell this ship. But when they were close, three masked guns spouted flame; they fired only at one spot, and when they had done, the rudder of the Spanish ship hung in splinters and she floundered about in no control. Then Capt
ain Morgan, hanging aft, out of range of her broadside, poured shot into her hull until the flag fluttered down. It was the first prize of his planning.

  A few days later he brought up with another ship and ran alongside to board. The Spanish crew was massed against the bulwarks to repel the attack. And immediately the air was filled with clay powder pots which landed in the thick group and exploded. The Spanish men ran screaming to the shelter of the hold to escape this flashing death.

  When Henry Morgan came at last to Tortuga, four prizes followed in his wake, and he had not lost a man. It was as easy as he had known it would be. Here were four monuments to his planning. One had only to do the unexpected thing quickly. This was the secret of successful war.

  Mansveldt was in Tortuga when Henry Morgan came, and his little eyes glittered as he looked at this plunder. Soon he sent for this new leader.

  “You are Captain Morgan who took the four prizes in the harbor?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “And how did you do this thing? The Spanish ships are strongly armed and wary.”

  “I did it, sir, with my planning. Many nights have I considered how to do these things. I work with surprise, sir, when other men use only force.”

  Mansveldt regarded him with admiration.

  “I am fitting out an expedition to take St. Catherine’s Isle,” he said. “Then I am going to form a republic of buccaneers who will fight with a patriotism. Would you like to be Vice-Admiral of this expedition? I have some reputation for picking men.”

  The name of Mansveldt was mighty on the seas, and Henry flushed with pleasure.

  “I would like it, sir,” he said quickly.

  The fleet sailed out, and Captain Morgan was Vice-Admiral. There was a fine assault; the ships threw in their ragged hordes and slaughter walked on the walls. The island could not withstand the fierceness of the attack, and finally the fortress fell. Then the Dutch admiral drew up his government and left Henry Morgan in command while he went out to scour the world for recruits. He and his ship were lost and never heard from again. It was said the Spaniards strangled him in Cuba.