Cup of Gold (24 page)

“It is true,” the captain murmured. “It is true that I want the woman; but that is still more strange.”

“Strange?” Wild resentment broke out in Cœur de Gris. He shouted, “Strange? Why is it strange to be lusting after a woman who is known to be beautiful? Would you call each one of these men strange, or every male thing on earth strange? Or are you endowed with a god-like lust? Do you bear the body of a Titan? Strange! Yes, surely, my Captain; copulation and its contemplation are things completely unique among men!”

Henry Morgan was bewildered, but there was a little terror in him also. He seemed to have witnessed the walking of a loathsome, unbelievable ghost. Could it be that these men felt as he did?

“But I think there is more than lust,” he said. “You cannot understand my yearning. It is as though I strove for some undreamed peace. This woman is the harbor of all my questing. I do not think of her as a female thing with arms and breasts, but as a moment of peace after turmoil, a perfume after rancid filth. Yes, it is strange to me. When I consider the years that are gone away, I am bewildered at my activity. I went to mighty trouble for silly, golden things. I did not know the secret which makes the earth a huge chameleon. My little wars seem the scrambling of a person strange to me, a person who did not know the ways of making the world change color. I mourned, in the old time, when each satisfaction died in my arms. Is it any wonder they all died? I did not know the secret. No, you cannot understand my yearning.”

Cœur de Gris was grasping his aching temples between his hands. “I do not understand!” he cried scornfully. “Do you think I do not understand? I know; to your mind your feelings are new things, discoveries of fresh importance. Your failures are unprecedented. This gigantic conceit will not allow you to believe that this Cockney behind you—yes, he who sometimes rolls on the ground in fits—might have the same hopes and despairs as yourself. You cannot believe that these men feel as deeply as you do. I suppose it would surpass your wildest thought if I should say I want the woman as much as you do, or that I could be telling sweet sentences to La Santa Roja, perhaps, better than you could.”

Captain Morgan had flushed under the lash of words. He did not believe it. It was monstrous to think that these men could feel as he did. Such a comparison made him, somehow, unworthy.

“You wonder why I say these things?” Cœur de Gris continued. “I will tell you. The pain has made me mad, and I am going to die.” He walked on silently for a little distance, then suddenly he screamed and fell heavily to the ground.

For a full minute Captain Morgan looked at him. Then a great, harsh wave seemed to break forth in his chest. He knew that minute how much he had come to love the young lieutenant, knew that he could not bear to lose young Cœur de Gris. Now he had dropped to his knees beside the silent figure.

“Water!” he cried to the nearest buccaneer, and when the fellow only stared at him: “Water! bring water—water!” His hand was hysterically jerking at a pistol in his belt. They brought him water in a hat. All the pirates saw their cold captain kneeling on the ground, stroking the damp, shining hair of Cœur de Gris.

The young man’s eyes opened slowly and he tried to rise.

“I am sorry, sir. The pain in my head, you know— The sun sucked out my wits. But you must get up, sir! The men will lose respect for you if they see you kneeling here.”

“Lie still, boy! Lie quietly! You must not move yet. I am afraid. In a moment I thought you were dead, and all the world shriveled. Lie quietly! Now I am glad. You must not move. Now we will take the Cup of Gold together, and it shall be a chalice of two handles.” He lifted Cœur de Gris and carried him to the shade of a huge tree. The buccaneers rested on the ground while their lieutenant regained his strength.

Cœur de Gris was leaning back against the tree. He was smiling at the captain with a queer womanish affection.

“Am I like the Cockney?” Henry Morgan asked a little wistfully; “like the Cockney with fits?”

Cœur de Gris laughed.

“You know nothing at all about the man. You might be proud to resemble him. I will tell you, for I know that to you he is only a figure of wood to take orders. The man’s name is Jones. All his life he has wanted to be a preacher of the Gospel. He thought his fits were visitations of the Holy Ghost, testing him for some divine mission. Once he stood on a corner and spoke to the people of London, and the watch came upon him as he talked. The law took him as a vagrant and shipped him to the islands.

“This Jones, after his term was done, became a pirate to keep from starving. There was a division of spoil from a raid, and to his share fell a woman slave, a Spaniard with negro blood. He married her to save her reputation. He did not know how little was left to save. You see, sir, his wife is a Catholic. She will not let him read the Bible when he is at home. And do you know, sir, he truly believes that thievish circumstance has robbed him of success; not success as you and I know it, but the success that comes of God’s especial favor. He imagines he might have been a Protestant Savonarola.”

“But his fits—” said Henry Morgan. “His horrible fits— I have seen them.”

Again the young man laughed.

“The fits? Ah, the fits are a gift—an heirloom.”

“And you think he feels?”

“Yes, perhaps he does. Remember, he married her to save her name, and kept her with him when he found what that name was. And you will see him bashfully claim a crucifix at the division of spoil. He will take her a crucifix from Panama. Think, man! He is a Separatist from the church. He abhors crucifixes!”

Onward the buccaneers drove themselves toward Panama. They had eaten leather and bitter jungle roots, rodents and snakes and monkeys. Their cheeks were shallow cups under their cheek bones; their eyes glittered with fever. Now that their enthusiasm was gone, they were dragged onward by the knowledge of their captain’s infallibility. Morgan could not fail because he never had failed. Surely he had a plan which would put the gold of the New World in their pockets. And the word gold, though it had lost its meaning of reality, was more important than the word hunger.

On the eighth morning a scout came to Captain Morgan.

“The way is blocked, sir. They have thrown up a little earthwork in front of us and mounted cannons.”

At a command, the head of the wriggling column swung to the left and began to gnaw its way through thicker underbrush. In the evening they came to the top of a small, round hill, and there below them was Panama laved in the golden light of the western sun. Each man searched his neighbors’ face to be assured that this was not his own personal hallucination.

One pirate moved to the hill’s edge. He stopped still and shouted crazily, and then his companions saw him running down the hill, dragging at his sword as he ran. A herd of cattle was feeding in the hollow below them, left there by some blundering Spaniard. In a moment the whole fourteen hundred men were stampeding down the hill. They killed the cows with their swords; they lunged and slashed at the frightened animals. Soon, very soon, the blood was dripping down the beards of the famished men, the red drops falling on their shirts. During that night they gorged themselves into unconsciousness.

While the dark was down, the pirate scouts were ranging over the plain like were-wolves; they slipped to the walls and counted the soldiers before the town.

And early in the morning, Captain Morgan aroused his men and called them together to give them the orders for the day’s fight. Henry Morgan had come to know the buccaneering soul. He lifted out the brains of his men and molded them for battle. He spoke to their fears.

“It is nine days’ journey back to the river mouth where the ships lie—nine days, and no food at all. You could not get to the ships even if you wanted to run away. And here is Panama. While you were sleeping like hogs, the scouts were busy. Before this city, four thousand soldiers are drawn up, with wings of cavalry. These are not countrymen with guns and knives, but drilled soldiers in red coats. This is not all. There are bulls to be loosed against you—against you cattle hunters.” A laugh followed his last words. Many of these men had lived in the jungle and had made their livelihood with hunting wild cattle.

The captain rubbed their avarice:

“Gold and jewels past hope of counting are in the city. Every man of you will be rich if we succeed.”

Their hunger:

“Think of the roasted meats, the barrels of wine in the cellars, the spiced puddings. Imagine them!”

Their lust:

“Women slaves there are in the city, and thousands of other women, God knows! Your difficulty will be only in judging which to choose from the multitude that will fall to us. These are not grubby field women, but great ladies who lie in silken beds. How will your skins feel in beds like those, do you suppose?”

And last, because he knew them very well, he raised the standard of their vanity.

“The names of those who take part in this fight will climb the stairs of history. This is no pillage, but glorious war. Imagine to yourselves the people of Tortuga pointing to you and saying, ‘That man was in the fight at Panama. That man is a hero, and rich.’ Think how the women of Goaves will run after you when you go home again. There is the Cup of Gold before you. Will you run away? Many will die in the field to-day, but those who remain will carry golden Panama home in their pockets.”

A hoarse cheer arose. The French kissed their hands to Henry Morgan; the Caribs chattered and rolled their eyes. The gourmand Zeerovers looked dully at the white city.

“One thing more,” said the captain. “The troops will be drawn up in a line, if I know these Spanish captains. They like to make as great a show as possible. Your orders are to fire at their center, all of you; and when that center is weakened, then charge and split them.”

They mowed out on the plain, a dense cloud of men. Two hundred marksmen walked in advance, while the rest were grouped behind.

Now Don Juan, the Governor of Panama, stood with his neat army, a long line of foot soldiers in companies of two files. He looked at the rough formation of the enemy with contempt. Almost gayly he signaled for the first advance.

The Spanish cavalry swung out, wheeling and whirling across the plain. Now they formed a V, and now a hollow square. Moving at a fast trot, they went through all the intricate evolutions of a review; they made triangles, T’s. In one moment every sword glanced in the sunlight, then was made to disappear by twisting wrists, and then to flash again. Don Juan groaned with admiration.

“Look at them, my friends; look at Rodriguez, my beloved captain. Ah, Rodriguez! is it really I who have taught you these things? Can it be that this is the Rodriguez I held in my arms a little time ago? He was a baby then, but now he is a man and a hero. See the line, the sureness, the precision. See Rodriguez with his troop, my friends. How may these beasts of buccaneers overcome horsemen like mine?”

Rodriguez, at the head of his troop, seemed to hear the Governor’s praise. His shoulders stiffened. He rose in his stirrups and gave the signal for the charge. The bugles sang excitedly. The hooves roared with a hollow rolling sound over the turf. Their coming was like a red wave with a silver crest. Rodriguez turned in his saddle and looked proudly at the hurtling troop behind him, following his orders as though they were the multimembers of one great body governed by his brain. Every saber was lined along a horse’s neck. Rodriguez turned again to look once more at his lovely Panama before the shock. And then the whole troop rode headlong into a marsh. They knew it was there, but in the enthusiasm of the moment, in the excitement of their figures, they had forgotten about it. In a second the horse of Panama was a broken jumble of men and fallen beasts. They were flies caught in a green flypaper.

Don Juan looked dazedly at the pile of writhing, mangled bodies out on the plain, and then he burst into sobs like a child who has seen his bright toy broken in the road. The Governor did not know what to do. His brain was heavy with a red sorrow. He turned about and started plodding homeward. He would go and hear a mass in the Cathedral, he thought.

The Spanish staff had grown frantic. Red and gold uniforms were rushing about in every direction. Every officer shouted commands at the top of his voice. The young lieutenant who had brought up the cattle finally made himself heard.

“Turn loose the bulls—the bulls,” he cried, over and over, until the others were shouting it also. The Indians who held the bulls tore out the nose rings and began prodding the great beasts forward with their goads. Slowly the herd moved out across the plain. Then a red monster broke into a slow run, and immediately the whole band was running.

“They will trample these robbers into the grass,” said a Spanish officer wisely. “Where they pass, we shall find buttons, pieces of weapons—nothing more—on the bloody ground.”

The bulls galloped slowly toward the rough line of the buccaneers. Suddenly the two hundred marksmen knelt and fired— fired quickly, like men hunting game. A kicking, bellowing wall seemed to rise up in the path of the running animals. Those of the herd that were not crippled halted in their tracks, sniffed the blood, milled, and then stampeded in terror back on the Spanish ranks. The officer was right. Where they passed, nothing remained except buttons and broken weapons and bloody turf.

In the horror of the stampede the buccaneers had charged. Now they dashed into the hole the bulls had made, and drove the split defenders left and right. There were a few war cries, but these were continental soldiers. They could not understand this kind of fighting. These terrible vagrants laughed and killed men with both of their hands. The men of Spain held ground for a little while, but then their hearts broke under their fine red coats, and they ran away to hide in the jungle. Little knots of buccaneers pursued them, spitting those who fell exhausted. Soon the defending troops were scattered. Some of them climbed into the trees and hid themselves among the leaves; some lost themselves in the mountains and were never found. The Cup of Gold lay helpless before Henry Morgan.