The Great Captain Part 4

"I never imagined a more beautiful country nor more lively prospects,"

he wrote; "hills so raised here and there over the valleys; the river winding into divers branches; the plains adjoining without bush or stubble, but all fair, green gra.s.s; the deer crossing in every path; the birds towards the evening singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes, cranes and herons of white, crimson, and carnation, perching on the river's side; the air fresh with a gentle easterly wind, and every stone that we stooped to take up promised either gold or silver by his complexion."

We sailed even into the golden city of Manoa, and there saw the houses with their strange carvings, and their cups and drinking-vessels of precious metal; and the marvellous temple with its hundred images of beaten gold, the eyes of diamonds, and with necklets of rubies large as pigeon's eggs, and garments sewn with pearls and emeralds.

The poor Indians who possessed these treasures were a mild and gentle race, ignorant of how greatly men's pa.s.sions were inflamed by gold and gems, which to them were common matters. They were no savages, but a nation with a certain knowledge of the arts and a civilization after their own manner; and it was touching to see how kindly and sweetly they welcomed the white man among them, although indeed in the s.h.i.+ps were to be found some of the worst rascals that ever sailed out of Plymouth.

However, fear of my lord kept this rascaldom in check; for he loved the Indians, and made it a matter with the Queen that in any expedition to the Guianas there should be no ill-treatment of the gentle race. Indeed he believed honestly that he were better their master than Spain, and so had less compunction in seeking their treasures.

But now a larger expedition was needed, and one that would have the Queen's sanction; and so having feasted our eyes on the delights of this enchanting country we turned our s.h.i.+ps for home, bearing with us gifts of gems and gold with which the Indians had loaded us, and also great stores of roots and plants and many strange matters.

We were not bent on any adventure, for my lord thought only of gaining the Queen's ear, displaying to her the earnest he brought of the treasures of Guiana, and returning thither as fast as might be after fitting out a large fleet of s.h.i.+ps; and then of taking possession in the Queen's name. For greater even than his pa.s.sion for adventure were his love of England and hatred of Spain; and the new policy of pleasing King Philip he loathed with all his heart.

The homeward voyage therefore he spent in writing for the Queen's eye an account of Guiana, which afterwards he magnified into his book "_On the Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and Golden City of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the Provinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, and other Countries, with their Rivers adjoining_."

So we were left again to the story-telling about the mast; and this grew more violent and rank with blood, as though the sight of so much treasure as we had left behind us had inflamed the minds of the tellers.

Yea, we ate and drank blood, it seems to me, now looking back on those recitals; and were thus prepared for what followed.

For lo, one evening we saw far off upon the waters the shape of a great s.h.i.+p. Her p.o.o.p was high out of the water, and apart from her size she was easy to be seen, for as the night gathered she blazed with candles so that she was like a fiery thing upon the waters.

Then there was such a confusion and excitement on the s.h.i.+ps as never have I seen surpa.s.sed. My lord had left his books, and standing by the prow of the Bon Aventure gazed through his telescope upon that far-away vision that hung like a great golden bird against the purple of the after-sunset. There was no doubt in any mind that she was a Spanish galleon by her high p.o.o.p and her great decks above the water. She was indeed none other than the famous treasure-s.h.i.+p, Nuestra Senora del Pilar, and she was riding without any escort.

We extinguished every light we had aboard the s.h.i.+ps, and in cover of the darkness we crept upon her. She was big as a little town, it seemed to me; and for all she was so gayly lit she slept well, for we crept up under her stern, and there was no cry from her lookout. At last we were so near that I could see the image of the Holy Virgin at her masthead, and the lamp burning before it. But the image said nothing to me then.

The great s.h.i.+p was almost motionless on the dark water. Indeed I wondered if she had cast anchor, so still she was; yet how cast anchor in so many fathoms of water?

With much care and m.u.f.fling of our oars we now took to the boats, and as fast as the boats filled they rowed towards the s.h.i.+p. The boat in which I was came up by the p.o.o.p. I looked above me in wonder at all the rows of carven saints and angels, as it were the hierarchy of heaven. Over the side a rope swung noiselessly, as though it had been left there for our purpose. We clambered up it one after another and stood on deck, where was not a living soul, and this puzzled us not a little. But the bulwarks were set round with carven images in little niches, and each had its lamp, and the like on every deck; and that was how the illumination had come.

I looked round on the s.h.i.+pmen in the light of the many shrines. Some had the brown and wholesome faces of seamen, and though they looked fierce and blood-thirsty enough, were yet no worse than any fighting man. But others were no better than Algerine pirates, and carried a knife in their teeth and their pistols at full c.o.c.k, and were as ready to slay and murder as any evil beast. For my lord had sailed with but a handful of his own men amid the sc.u.m of Plymouth rascaldom.

Yet even these did the silence of the great s.h.i.+p somewhat appal. And for myself, though I was as ready for murder and rapine as any, yet was I given pause; and hearing my lord's whisper at my elbow, I turned and looked at him. "What do you make of it, Wat?" he asked. "Do you think it is a trap?"

But ere I could answer him a figure came up the stairway from the cabin.

It was an old man, very tall, and in the garb of a white friar, just such another as I had left sleeping in St. Mary's Tower. The likeness sent a thrill of terror through me. The old man saw us not. He carried a taper in his hand; he was going round doubtless to replenish the lamps if they had gone out. The light from the taper showed a face of much benignancy-an old, kind face. The cowl had fallen back, and the silver tonsure gleamed in the light.

Suddenly some one stirred in our midst, and all at once he knew that we were there. He opened his lips as though to speak. Then some of those pirates were upon him. I saw him lift the great crucifix that hung by his side between them and him. Then he was down, and the knives were hewing him. I thought no more on it, though it turned me sick an instant.

The s.h.i.+p now swarmed with our men rus.h.i.+ng hither and thither in search of treasure. Some were seizing the silver lamps before the shrines, others were tearing down the images. A rush of men swept me from my feet and down the cabin stairs, and I grasped my sword tighter. But here was no enemy. Only rich garments flung hither and thither in the silk-hung rooms, and many signs of the s.h.i.+p having been deserted in haste.

I would have gone further, leaving the place to those who were tearing it to pieces, dragging down the hangings, kicking open the cedar-wood lockers, and pouring the precious wine they found there down their throats; I would have gone further had not my lord prevented me.

"Come up on deck, Wat," he said; "there is a scent of death here that sickens me. I am glad I left my boy on the Bon Aventure."

He dragged me with him. We were hardly up in the pure air before there was a scream from the mad herd below that turned one cold to hear; and as though the devil pursued them they came clambering up the hatches and staircases white as death, and sobered, and began flinging themselves off the sides of the vessel into their boats.

"They would leave us here, Wat, to the terror, whatever it may be," said my lord, "if I had not had with me by good fortune a handful of mine own s.h.i.+pmates. Ah, Gregory Dabchick"-seizing one-"what white devil hast thou seen below-stairs?"

"If you please, none, Captain," cried Dabchick, his breath sobbing; "but a worse thing. There are half a dozen corpses below there, dead of the smallpox. 'Tis a floating pest-house, my lord, and the place reeks with death."

"Ah," said Sir Walter, as we stood waiting for the mob to get off the s.h.i.+p, "the monk would have told us so if those dogs had not murdered him. Doubtless he remained behind when the others fled away, to nurse the living and bury the dead, and solaced himself, poor soul, by setting candles to his saints."

Ere we were put into Plymouth town again there were eighty of our hundred dead of the smallpox; and I was carried ash.o.r.e more dead than alive, to be nursed back to health by the Lady Raleigh's ministering hands.

CHAPTER VII.-OUR LAST YEARS TOGETHER.

I came out of that illness no longer the youth I had been; for G.o.d used the things that had happened me to make a change in my heart. I went very near to death, and I came back to life very grievously disfigured, yea, as though I had been slashed criss-cross with swords, and the sight of one of mine eyes gone. Nevermore should I ruffle it with gallants; and indeed it seemed a bitter and cruel thing to the boy, this ruin of comeliness, so that for long the bitterness was greater than death, yet since then the man has learned to thank the Hand that wielded that most merciful rod.

I was yet but a moping thing, creeping up heavily from death to life, when my lord sailed on that expedition to Cadiz with the Lord Admiral Thomas Howard and his old-time enemy the Lord Ess.e.x, which brought such glory to the English name. I think there was but one part of my old self remained alive in me, and that was my love for Sir Walter, which is wrought so inextricably within the chords of my being that nothing shall disentangle it.

I had been sick to death during that time when Sir Walter had wrestled vainly with the Queen for an expedition to Guiana, and been discomfited.

For truly her will was bra.s.s and iron; nothing for man, however great, to prevail against, and for long her face had been turned away from him, and seemed like to remain so.

I was getting well, with no heart to recover, when the reports came of the Cadiz expedition. It was glorious summer weather, and my Lady Raleigh, whose patience was more than human with me, would have me carried to the lawn under shade of trees; and there laid on my pillows I would listen to her proud recitals of her lord's heroic deeds.

It was on the 21st of June that the fleet entered Cadiz Harbor. My lord was on board the Water Sprite; and he had no sooner entered than he received the fire of seventeen great galleons. But as though she had been indeed spirit and not body, the Sprite went unharmed. Raleigh blew his trumpets upon them in a great blare of defiance. Near at hand lay the St. Philip and the St. Andrew, the two s.h.i.+ps foremost in that attack on the Revenge in which the brave Sir Richard Greville had fallen.

"These," wrote he, "were the marks I shot at, being resolved to be revenged for the Revenge, or to second her with my own life.... Having no hope of my fly-boats to board, and the Earl and my Lord Thomas having both promised to second me, I laid out a way by the side of the Philip to shake hands with her, for with the wind we could not get aboard; which when she and the rest perceived they all let slip and ran aground, tumbling into the sea heaps of soldiers as thick as if coals had been poured out of a sack in many parts at once, some drowned and some sticking in the mud. The Philip burned itself, the St. Andrew and the St. Matthew were recovered by our boats ere they could get out to fire them. The spectacle was very lamentable, for many drowned themselves; many, half-burned, leaped into the water; very many hanging by the rope's end by the s.h.i.+p's side, under the water even to the lips; many swimming with grievous wounds, and withal so huge a fire and so great a tearing of ordnance in the great Philip and the rest, when the fire came to them, as if a man had a desire to see h.e.l.l itself it was there most lively figured. Ourselves spared the lives of all after the victory, but the Flemings, who did little or nothing in the fight, used merciless slaughter, till they were by myself, and afterwards by the Lord Admiral, beaten off."

"The poor Spaniards!" cried my Lady Raleigh with tears, even while she was proudest; but as for me, I had no heart to rejoice or to be sorry, being so marred myself, and scarce anything alive in me except my love for her lord, and even that pulsed faintly.

He came home to be hailed with such cheers and shouts by the common people as pleased the Queen but little, for she liked not to be eclipsed by a subject. Besides, the victory gave her little treasure; and she grew more and more miserly. Though my lord was glorious with wounds, she even refused to look upon him, which led me to say, as I have said often since, that the greatness of those Tudors lay chiefly in their hard usage of those who made them great. However, there was to gauge a deeper depth when the Stuart came to England's throne.

I had feared my lord's face when he came to look on me in my disfigurement, for he loved beauty, so that I scarcely dared to lift my one sound eye to his. Yet when I had found courage to do so I found nothing but love in his regard, and he embraced me as a father might, kissing my seamed cheek and calling me his dear lad. And young Walter likewise; for in the years that followed, during which we continued the tender friends.h.i.+p that had sprung up between us at the first, I have never once seen in his manner that pity which I could not have borne.

But the end of our misfortunes was not yet. Elizabeth died, and the son of Mary of Scotland succeeded; and now my lord antic.i.p.ated no more ill than came, for the Stuart truckled to King Philip as never a Tudor had done, and 'twas like the Spaniard's first demand would be that the most glorious of his enemies should be laid away beyond power of annoying him more. So it was that presently my lord was accused of being joined with the Lord Cobham in a plot to bring the Lady Arabella Stuart to the throne, and was cast into the Tower.

Then began that long martyrdom which is the everlasting disgrace of the meanest of Kings. He had made friends with his mother's slayer. What was to be looked for from him? But to shut an eagle in a cage, to clip a sea-bird's wings, to confine in a little s.p.a.ce the n.o.blest, freest spirit that lived, and the loyalist to England! This remained for Mary Stuart's son to do.

There was no end to that imprisonment. Again I went with him to the Tower; while my lady had a lodging without the walls. Young Walter still fought, as his father had before him, the battles of England by land and sea. And I was my lord's squire in the Tower, and had as much glory and love in it as though 'twere the Field of Cloth of Gold.

For now I was to witness the greatness of his spirit. When it had been borne in upon him that this imprisonment was like to have no end, he fretted not as he did in those two months long ago, but solaced his heart by the writing of that great _History of the World_ which remains his monument. Also religion came sweetly to his aid, for that which had been out of sight in his wild, seafaring days now leaped up like a flame. Indeed never have I seen a greater tranquillity. He also occupied himself with the distilling of sweet waters and medicinal herbs; and the Governor of the Tower, who loved him, permitted that his still should be set up in the Governor's garden, where also he took up again his old gardening ways. Indeed he kept his pain as being a captive out of sight after the first, and contented himself heroically; although his lady, poor soul, deafened the court with her prayers for her brave Wat, as though it were not the Spaniard who had turned the key upon him.

Nor yet was he forgotten by his old lovers, the common people. They waited in crowds to see him walk upon the terrace. The sailors shouted for him as the s.h.i.+ps came up the river. As the years pa.s.sed, and his feats became a legend, ladies and cavaliers came praying from the lieutenant of the Tower a word with the lion-heart. Still he wore his velvets and silks and damasks; still he blazed with jewels: no dusty prisoner, but a splendid knight, pacing the terrace while summers and winters went.

Even the Queen came thither with her young son begging his "strawberry water" to cure her of an ailment; and if the mother returned not it was not so with the son. The young Prince Henry came again and again, and being a youth of high and generous spirit, loved my lord in time near as well as we did, who had seen his glories. "None save my father," he quoth bitterly, "would have kept such a bird in a cage."

His relation with my lord came in time to be as that of master and pupil, for he would pace with him for hours while my lord discoursed on the arts of peace and war and the duties of a prince to his subjects. So great grew the tenderness between them that I doubt not if the young Prince had lived my lord would have stood at his right hand. But that was not to be: he died untimely, and the last prayer on his lips was for the freeing of his friend.

The dead Prince's prayer was forgotten; but presently when the King wanted money he remembered the treasures of Guiana and those gifts my lord had brought to Queen Elizabeth. 'Twas as mean a bargain as ever was made. My lord was to have his liberty. He was to find the money for the s.h.i.+ps and the men; but whatever treasure the gold mines in the Orinoco yielded was to fall to the King. On these conditions, and that he was not to meddle with the Spaniards, my lord set out. I went with him; and young Walter also sailed. He who had been a n.o.ble and gallant youth was now become a n.o.ble and gallant man, and my lord had great hopes of him; but, alas, Death mows down the fairest and the most promising.

From the first the thing was ill-fated. We were not so far sailed when fever broke out and ravaged the s.h.i.+ps. Now there is nothing like a pestilence for breaking the heart and reducing the spirit in men; and ere ever we reached Guiana sh.o.r.es there was grumbling a-s.h.i.+pboard and mutiny in the air. And when we were come there it was to find the Spaniards, with forces of s.h.i.+ps and men guarding the mouth of the river; for all our secrets had been betrayed to them.

Nor would it matter what force the Spaniards had, nor would any murmur have arisen if but the Captain had been at our head. But he, alas, was laid low by the sickness; and his men without him as a shepherdless flock that is driven hither and thither and blown upon by winds of confusion. For when they found the Spanish defences they cried out that they had been betrayed, and would go no further.

Then young Walter, that inheritor of all braveries, leaped to the front and offered to creep ash.o.r.e, past the line of the Spaniards, and reach the mines if so he might, and return with reports upon them. Also Captain Keymis, one of the bravest of Raleigh's seamen, would go with him. With tender embracings and partings did father and son say farewell, that never were to look on each other in this life again. For a party of Spaniards did set upon our dear Wat and his brave companion, together with the little force that went with them; and shouting to his men to come on, Wat fell, hacked to pieces by Spanish swords.

Captain Keymis escaped to bring back the tale of disaster and a report that there was no gold to be had at the mines now, whatever had been. So the men murmured more; though my lord, sick as he was, would himself go in search of the mines and in pursuit of the Spaniards that had slain his son. But none would follow him.