Caribbean: a novel Part 6

The sailor hesitated, uncertain as to how to explain that terrible isolation and loss of hope. Then he cleared his throat: 'If ever you get into trouble, you'll need no friend more trustworthy than Diego Mendez,' and he spoke the name with such reverence that Ocampo was driven to ask: 'And who was he?' and the sailor said: 'Our savior,' and Ocampo said: 'Tell me.'

The sailor did not answer directly, for he had important things to say about Mendez and did not propose to be diverted: 'Most young n.o.blemen who s.h.i.+pped with us were swine, especially when handing out orders to the likes of me, but Mendez once said to me: "Those leaks have to be caulked, so let's caulk them," and in the worst days, when we seemed about to sink, he worked the pumps as long as any of us.'

Ocampo nodded in respect for an unknown young n.o.bleman who seemed to have been a paragon, and what the seaman said next proved that he was.

'Mendez was a man without fear. When the rest of us failed to invent some way of escape, he built a canoe. You wouldn't cross a river in it. And he told us: "I will sail it to Espaola and bring back a s.h.i.+p to save you," and in this little craft he did just that. Storms, waves, bad luck on the first try, threatened by Indians, this man Mendez paddled on in his little canoe.' The sailor stopped, crossed himself, and said: "With G.o.d's aid he saved us after our nine months on Jamaica, where we had been sure we would die unknown and unmissed.' He paused again, wiped his eyes, and concluded: 'The Great Admiral, saved from an unmarked grave by the heroism of one man. Because Mendez did paddle all the way to this island and he did find a big s.h.i.+p and he did sail back to Jamaica, where, when he landed, Admiral Coln and the rest of us embraced him.'

In the silence that followed, Ocampo looked not at the sailor, whose emotions overwhelmed him, but at the priest the sailor had brought with him: 'And what brings you here, Father?'

'While the Great Admiral was marooned on Jamaica, convinced that he would die there without ever reporting on his last voyage, he wrote a very long letter to the king and queen, telling them of his adventures and reviewing the high points of his later life. It was the kind of testimonial a good man imagines writing when he is dying and wants his children to know the outlines of his career, a truly remarkable doc.u.ment.'

'Why do you tell me?' Ocampo asked, and the priest said: 'Because a copy of that letter, signed 7 July 1503, was left by Coln when he returned to this island from Jamaica, and I think that before you write your report you ought to know what Coln at the door of death thought about himself. When all the brawling about his errors here and there are forgotten, this is the Cristbal Coln who will live.'

The priest took a breath and began by giving in his own words an account of an unbelievable affront thrown in Coln's face by the governor of Santo Domingo, the port at which he himself had once been viceroy: 'Seeing that a storm we call the hurricano was brewing, Coln sent a message ash.o.r.e advising two actions: "Let me come into your harbor and anchor. Do not dispatch to Spain the fleet that appears ready to sail." Both suggestions were denied, probably because the acting viceroy feared he might lose his sinecure if Coln came ash.o.r.e. The result? Listen to the Great Admiral's report of that hurricane.'

The doc.u.ment the priest read covered many pages, and in reading, he skipped long portions, but the words of certain pa.s.sages reverberated in the air of Ocampo's office like the ringing of some fine bronze bell: 'The tempest was terrible throughout the night, all the s.h.i.+ps were separated, and each one driven to the last extremity, without hope of anything but death; each of them also looked upon the loss of the rest as a matter of certainty. What man was ever born, excepting not even Job, who would not have been ready to die of despair at finding himself as I then was, yet refused permission either to land or put into the harbor which I by G.o.d's mercy had gained for Spain ...

'The distress of my son grieved me to the soul, and the more when I considered his tender age, for he was but thirteen years old, and he enduring so much for so long a time. Our Lord, however, gave him such strength that he encouraged the others, and he worked as if he had been at sea for eighty years ...

'My brother was also in the s.h.i.+p that was in the worst condition and the most exposed to danger; and my grief on this account was the greater because I had brought him with me against his will. I have gained no profit from my twenty years of service and toil and danger, and at this moment I do not possess a roof in Spain that I can call my own; if I wish to eat or sleep, I have nowhere to go but some inn or tavern, and most times lack wherewithal to pay the bill ...

'Let those who are accustomed to slander and aspersion ask, while they sit in the security of their home: "Why didst thou do so-and-so under such circ.u.mstances?" I wish they were now embarked upon this voyage. Verily I believe that another journey of another kind awaits them, if there is any reliance to be placed upon our Holy Faith ...

'When I discovered the Indies, I said that they composed the richest lords.h.i.+p in the world. I told you of gold and pearls and precious stones, of spices and the traffic that might be carried on in them. But because these riches were not forthcoming at once I was abused. That punishment now causes me to refrain from relating anything but what the natives tell me. But in this land of Veraguasa I have seen more signs of gold in the first two days than in Espaola in four years, and that the lands of this country cannot be more beautiful or better tilled ...

'For seven years I was at your royal court, and everyone to whom my enterprise was mentioned treated it as ridiculous, but now there is not a man, including even tailors, who does not beg you to be allowed to go discovering. There is reason to believe that they make the voyage only for plunder, and the licenses they get are to the great disparagement of my honor and the detriment to the undertaking itself ...'

At the phrase about even tailors begging for licenses to explore, Ocampo snapped his fingers and said: 'He's right, I've seen them. A score of ne'er-do-wells who couldn't sail a s.h.i.+p or build a shed presuming when they got here to follow in Coln's footsteps.' And the priest waited before reading the solemn, pleading close to this remarkable doc.u.ment written at the edge of the grave: 'I was twenty-eight years old when I came to Your Highnesses' service, and now I have not a hair upon me that is not gray; my body is infirm and all that was left to me, as well as my brothers, has been taken away and sold, even to the cloak that I wore, to my great dishonor. I hope that was done without your Royal knowledge ...

'I am ruined. Hitherto I have wept for others. May Heaven now have mercy upon me, and may the earth weep. With regard to temporal things, I have not even a blancab to offer for prayers, and here in the Indies, I am unable to follow the prescribed forms of religion. Solitary in my troubles, sick and in daily expectation of death, surrounded by millions of hostile savages full of cruelty, I fear my soul will be forgotten if it be separated from my body in this alien land. Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth and justice ...

'I did not come out on this voyage to gain to myself honor or wealth; all hope for such was dead. I came to Your Highnesses with honest purpose of heart and zeal in Your cause. I humbly beseech You that if it please G.o.d to rescue me from this place, you will graciously sanction my pilgrimage to Rome and other Holy Places ...'c With that cry from the depths, the priest finished, and for a while no one spoke, for the words so clearly evoked the embattled spirit of Cristbal Coln that his presence seemed to have entered the room, but then Ocampo broke into a quiet laugh: 'Extraordinary, really! Here is the poor man, marooned, facing death, but he still writes first about his brother and a son. He was Coln to the end.' Then, abruptly, he reached for the letter and read aloud the reference to the pilgrimage: 'Here he is, not home from one disastrous trip and already planning another.' He tapped the letter, leaned back, and looked up at the ceiling: 'I can see him now. Him and his two brothers and his two sons and six or seven nephews, trailing as pilgrims all over Europe and the Holy Lands and complaining about everything.' And he handed back the letter and thanked both the sailor and the priest.

On the night before he left Espaola, with his doc.u.ments in order and his conclusions about the Great Admiral carefully phrased, Ocampo was visited in his quarters once again by Seora Pimentel, whom he hurried forward to greet: 'This is an elegant way to end my long visit. You do me honor, but if I'm any judge, you want to confide some last-minute revelation.'

'Yes. I perceive that your report and the welfare of the numerous Coln hangers-on who are laying claims to whatever fortune he left and his t.i.tles will depend on what you say about Bobadilla, so I think you should know two additional facts. When Coln arrived here in 1502 at the start of his final voyage, he arrived with his four little s.h.i.+ps off our anchorage out there, and Bobadilla, eager to keep Coln from coming ash.o.r.e to contest his authority, refused to allow him entrance to our harbor.

'My husband, a stalwart man, protested: "Excellency, a storm is brewing, and if it develops into a hurricane, his s.h.i.+ps really must be allowed entrance." But the viceroy was adamant, and poor Coln was forced to remain outside, and that very night, as my husband had warned, a tremendous hurricane struck. Have you ever seen one of our hurricanes? They can be terrifying.

'And what do you suppose happened? A major fleet headed for Spain, for which Bobadilla was responsible, was torn apart by the storm-thirty vessels in peril and thirteen lost with five hundred sailors and all their cargoes.'

'What happened to Coln's little four?'

'Great navigator that he was, he maneuvered his s.h.i.+ps majestically, right in the teeth of the hurricane, and saved every one. But even after that display, Bobadilla refused to allow him entrance, so off Coln sailed to his final burst of exploration. He found nothing, and ended on the beach in Jamaica, no gold, no s.h.i.+ps, no hopes, no a.s.signments in the future, with death staring him in the face each day for nearly a year.'

Ocampo, awed by her sagacity and mature judgment, asked if he might seek her guidance on two nagging questions, and she, grateful for his treating her as an intellectual equal, nodded, so he asked: 'Did the petty n.o.bles accuse him because he was Italian?' and she replied with vigor: 'Yes, a few presumptuous idiots. But that was ridiculous, for he wasn't really an Italian any longer. Pure Spanish all the way. So far as we know, he never wrote one word in Italian, because Spanish was his only language, Spain his only home, and good men like my husband were proud to serve under him as their leader.'

'Was he a Jew?'

'Not when I knew him.'

'Was he, perhaps, a renegade converso, living in danger of the stake?'

'When he lived with us after his rescue from the s.h.i.+pwreck in Jamaica, he went to Ma.s.s every day to give thanks.'

That was all she cared to say, but after the licenciado offered her a final cup of coffee from beans grown and roasted on the island, she said: 'He was truly great, that one.' And then, as they were about to part, she stood in the doorway and said: 'One of your misunderstandings really must be corrected. You've been completely misled about Bobadilla. What they told you was popular legend. He wasn't a n.o.bleman. He was never a member of the military Order of Calatrava. That was another man, same name, who died in 1496, four years before our Bobadilla got here.'

'Even so,' Ocampo said, 'it's rather pleasant in a gruesome way to know that your Bobadilla did drown right out there in the harbor from which he had barred the admiral during that hurricane.'

'More local legend. The s.h.i.+p did sink, as we all remember, but he wasn't on it.'

'Where is he?'

'Back in Spain. One of my cousins saw him in Sevilla, large as life and awaiting a new a.s.signment from the king.'

After Seora Pimentel left the room and Ocampo could see her walking sedately along the waterfront on her way home, he said to his scribes: 'There goes the soul of Spain. A woman who brings the best of our land to the Colonies. Her home, the one you saw, is a beacon of civilization in this sea.' Before he finished speaking, his scribes began to laugh, and when he asked, visibly irritated, what they thought amusing about his reflections, the senior one explained: 'That night while you were feasting with the Pimentels in the big room, we were talking with his people in the kitchen, and we began to hear hints-no accusations, you understand-that his finances would not stand scrutiny. His fine house seems to have been built solely with money belonging to the king. His stonemasons were supposed to work for the government, not for him. He uses the king's s.h.i.+ps for carrying on his own trading, and when we asked a few quiet questions we began to discern that he is completely corrupt.'

Ocampo was appalled by these facts, which he should himself have uncovered, but before he could say anything, his junior scribe struck a hard blow: 'Pimentel is a thief, but the members of his wife's family are worse. Real bandits, and she encourages them.'

Ocampo gasped, but the most serious revelation was still to come: 'It is believed that the big chest they keep locked, there in the room where you were, is filled with silver belonging to the king. Three different men have seen Seora Pimentel place money they've given her for the right to do business on the island in that chest. It must contain a fortune, and we think you ought to report this to the king.'

Ocampo was furious: 'Why didn't you tell me this before?'

'We wanted to be sure.'

'Well, are you?'

'Yes! We've written it here!'

Ocampo accepted their papers, studied one, and pushed them back: 'Burn them.' And when they had lit a fire on the tile floor and destroyed the accusations, he said: 'I'm a soldier. I have but one commission from the king. To inquire into Coln. You and I have done that properly, and now it's time for us to take our report and sail home.'

'Leaving the Pimentels free to continue their abuses?'

'If they don't do the stealing, someone else will,' and he stomped from the room, going for the first time out into the streets alone, while his honor guard remained behind.

He walked toward the sea, and the first building he saw was the fine stone house of the Pimentels, and he laughed at himself: I saw the chest of silver but neglected to investigate what was inside.

Ocampo walked for several hours, reflecting on the confused data he had uncovered, and his straightforward judgment was: Coln, Bobadilla, Pimentel. All honorable men, as Spanish gentlemen are required to be, but also rascals and thieves, as Spanish gentlemen are p.r.o.ne to be. Coln earned his honors, no man on earth more honorably than he, and the king must let his heirs have their rewards, within reason. Bobadilla, if he is really alive, does little harm in pretending to be a knight. And Pimentel, with his silver, will become a marquis or better.

He had a sense of frustration that a simple soldier would feel whose tests of honesty had always been on the battlefield, where a man either did his duty with courage or s.h.i.+rked it in cowardice, and he felt repelled by the complexities and nuances of political life. As he stared out at the sea he cried: 'That town behind me. Everything in it is for sale or prey to thieves ... or already stolen. I would like to be with King Ferdinand on a s.h.i.+p out there, sailing to Sicily for an honest battle. Friend here, foe over there.' But then he wondered: Ferdinand could trust me, but could I trust him?

Stepping toward the water, he ventured a short distance, even though his Cordoba shoes might be damaged, and he looked westward to the island of Jamaica: In all this testimony the only man I would feel I could trust was one I never saw. That fellow Diego Mendez who sailed his canoe across the sea to rescue Coln and his men. Shaking his head in sorrow, he cried with regret: 'Spain! Spain! I wish you could create a thousand such men.'

When Ocampo had calmed down he felt ready to return to his quarters, but as he began walking back he could not resist turning around one more time to gaze out upon this beautiful sea, which would one day be called the Caribbean, and he had a powerful intimation of what the coming centuries portended: I see the men of Spain who come to these islands repeating in perpetuity the behavior of Coln and Pimentel-steal, abuse the natives, place relatives on the king's payroll, think always of self and family, never of the general weal. It's a bad precedent we've established here in Espaola.

* Historically known to the world as Hispaniola. Later the western one-third became Haiti, the eastern two-thirds, the Dominican Republic.

About $70 U.S. at today's rate, but enough to mean luxury for a sailor of that time.

Taino was the name used in several large western Caribbean islands for those peaceful Arawaks who had sought refuge in these islands after the arrival in the small eastern islands of the cannibalistic Caribs in or about the early 1300s.

Father Gaspar's estimate was too generous. An exhaustive census in 1548 could turn up only 490 Arawaks, and in certain other of the western islands the total extinction was complete long before that.

In Central America, really, especially parts of the future Nicaragua and Honduras.

a The Caribbean coast of the modern nation of Panama.

b About one-third of a penny.

c Numerous translations of this long and famous doc.u.ment known as Lettera Rarissima exist in English. Madariago offered a fine one in 1936. Morrison gives a sparkling vernacular version done especially for him in 1963 by Dr. Milton Anastos. One of the best occurs in the Penguin Four Voyages of Columbus by J. M. Cohen in 1969. Wis.h.i.+ng to preserve a more archaic mode, this account uses with certain clarifications the fine translation done in 1849 by R. H. Major.

IN THE LATTER YEARS of the sixteenth century, 15671597, two fabled mariners, one Spanish, one English, waged an incessant duel throughout the Caribbean. The two men fought at the extreme western end at Nombre de Dios, and beyond the northern limits at Vera Cruz in Mexico. They fought on the isthmus, the approaches to Panama, at little ports on the coast of South America and at the huge harbor of San Juan in Puerto Rico. But most often they faced each other at Cartagena, the walled city that became in the early 1500s the capital of Spain's empire in the Caribbean. In heritage, training, religion, manner and personal appearance, these men differed conspicuously, but in personal heroism and eagerness to defend their honor they were identical.

The Spaniard was a tall, thin, beardless aristocrat with the hollow-cheeked austerity that El Greco liked to depict in his scowling portraits of Spanish n.o.blemen and church authorities; he usually wore a Toledo blade with an elegant, filigreed hilt, a deadly instrument he was ever ready to wield in defense of King Philip and his Catholic church.

The Englishman was a short, muscular fellow of undistinguished parentage, the owner-master of a small trading s.h.i.+p which he sailed to ports in France and the embattled Netherlands, always keen to protect the interests of Queen Elizabeth and her new Protestant religion. Men under his command said of him: 'He's all gristle and nerves.'

The Spaniard carried the insolent and resonant name of Don Diego Ledesma Paredes y Guzman Orvantes. If he had been a proper Englishman, his name would have been a simple James Ledesma and let it go at that, but the Spanish style had a grace that gave it added attraction. The various names evoked memories for any Spaniard hearing them; for example, on the father's side the Ledesmas had always been notable defenders of the king and to have Ledesma in one's name signified honor. The male branch also sprang from the Paredes family of northern Spain, and its contribution to the last defeat of the Moors in 1492 had been heroic; this was a name worth preserving.

The letter y indicated that whatever names followed belonged to the maternal side of the family, and here the Guzmans were as distinguished as either of the paternal ancestors, while the Orvantes men were considered, at least in the little region from which they came, the most outstanding of the four because of their bravery in helping expel the Moors from Spain. To make things more complex, at his birth adoring and important members of his family had to be honored, so that his full name became Juan Tomas Diego Sebastian Leandro Ledesma Paredes y Guzman Orvantes. But this occasioned no trouble, for everyone called him just Don Diego, omitting the other eight names, laden with honor though they were.

Don Diego was inordinately proud of his family's ancient fame and saw in his three unmarried daughters-Juana, Mara and Isabella-an opportunity to enhance it if he could find acceptable young men to marry them, but he never lost sight of his primary obligation: augmenting his family's present power. As a young naval officer of unusual daring, he had won an enviable reputation for defending against pirates the Spanish armadas which carried Peruvian gold and Panamanian silver across the Caribbean on its way to Sevilla in southern Spain. His bold successes enabled him to rise swiftly to the rank of captain, and in 1556, at the age of only twenty-four, he had been appointed governor at Cartagena. During his first day on the job he issued the order which would characterize his long tenure: 'The Caribbean is a Spanish lake, from which all intruders will be expelled.' The first step he took to enforce this boast was to make his home city of Cartagena so impregnable that no enemy would dare attack it.

Nature a.s.sisted him in this effort, for it had made the city easy to defend: Cartagena stood in the middle of a strange island. Stretching some seven and a half miles along the coast of South America, with one sh.o.r.e beautiful, straight and smooth, and the other resembling an octopus with many arm- and leg-like peninsulas, with vast impenetrable swamps and unscalable cliffs, this island was designed by nature gone mad. To invade its one settlement, Cartagena, was almost impossible. Of course, when an adversary came at Cartagena from the Caribbean he found an approach that appeared both easy and promising, for at the southern tip of the octopus island waited a broad, beautiful entrance into the harbor leading to the city; Boca Grande it was called, Big Mouth. But its allure was deceptive, for it was extremely shallow; and what was worse, to keep out any enemy, Don Diego had commanded that s.h.i.+ps be scuttled in the middle of the pa.s.sage, which meant that not even an alien rowboat could penetrate.

And if the arriving enemy continued some easy miles to the south, he came upon Boca Chica, Little Mouth, a deep entrance but treacherous because of its extreme narrowness and certain intruding islands. Should a determined s.h.i.+p captain work his way through, he would find himself lost in the first of four distinct bays: big Southern leading into smaller Middle, which led into small Northern, which debouched into tiny Harbor atop which rose the battlements of the city. Cartagena was well-nigh impregnable.

In the late summer of 1566, King Philip of Spain dispatched to Cartagena the kind of investigating amba.s.sador who had tormented Cristbal Coln at Espaola eighty years earlier. But unlike Bobadilla, this man, after the most inquisitive probing, uncovered no malfeasance, though his shrewd report antic.i.p.ated weaknesses that might cause trouble in future years: Don Diego is a brave, honest man who serves Your Majesty admirably. He protects your treasure s.h.i.+ps. He rebuffs pirates. He does not steal. And the word cowardice is unknown to him. You would profit if you had many such governors.

I found only two weaknesses. Don Diego is so vain of his slim, regal appearance that he has taken to calling himself Admiral, even though he is not ent.i.tled to that rank, but since he fights his s.h.i.+ps more resolutely than any of Your Majesty's real admirals, I recommend that this presumption be overlooked.

His other weakness is more troublesome. Having only daughters, he is distressed that the Ledesma name might not be perpetuated, so he brings to Cartagena any male bearing the name and promotes him instantly to some position of power, whether capable or not. I fear that if Your Majesty leaves him long as governor, every position in the city will be occupied by some Ledesma.

My final judgment of the man is one I heard one of his juniors recite late one night: 'Don Diego is an austere n.o.bleman who loves to posture as a military man, but G.o.d help the English pirate who ventures into his lake, for then he charges out, all flags flying to destroy the insolent invader.' I heard him boast: 'My city of Cartagena cannot be invaded by any power on earth.' I agree with him.

Yet even as King Philip read this rea.s.suring statement, there was on the cold east coast of England a tough seafarer, twenty-three years old, with his one small s.h.i.+p, who was swearing in blind fury: 'I shall fight the King of Spain until I die. And I shall exact full recompense for every slave the Dons stole from me. When I'm through, Cartagena will lie in ruins.'

The sailor who made this fiery boast was not a large, aggressive man; only five feet four, of a stocky build and with a bulletlike round head and a jutting chin already covered with a closely trimmed beard, his dominant feature was a pair of sharp blue eyes which could flash fire. Much older seamen had learned to avoid him if trouble brewed, for in any argument he was accustomed to have his way. A difficult, capable young man, he was not only eager to be sailing back to the Caribbean; he was l.u.s.ting to do so. His reasons for this burning hunger were manifold, involving religion and slaves.

His name was Francis Drake, eldest son of a retired seaman who had fathered eleven other children and who, back on land in a Devon village near Plymouth, became a vigorous Protestant clergyman. These were troubled years when England was trying to decide whether it was old Catholic or new Protestant, and on a Whitsunday in 1549 the Catholics of Devon rose in rebellion against the new religion that was being forced upon them. Reverend Drake and his family barely escaped with their lives, and young Francis never forgot the terror he felt that night.

Afraid to return to their old home, the fourteen Drakes scuttled off to a naval base near the mouth of the Thames, and there the family lived miserably in the hulk of a discarded s.h.i.+p. Here again they were made to pay heavily for being Protestants, for when Queen Mary ascended the throne, determined to take all England back to Catholicism, family friends who resisted Mary's order were hanged, and the Drakes themselves barely escaped execution. After this unfortunate second brush with Catholicism, young Francis generated that intense hatred which would dominate his wildly active life.

Toward the end of 1567 he suffered intensely from an additional reason for despising Spaniards-the dreadful thing they had done to his friend Christopher Weed-and, burning for revenge, he hurried out to Plymouth to consult with one of England's greatest sea captains, John Hawkins-whom he called Uncle, although what the precise blood relations.h.i.+p between them was n.o.body knew. Most called the two kinsmen and let it go at that.

Hawkins was a remarkable seaman, one of the greatest the world would know, for in a day when compa.s.ses were uncertain and there were no means of determining longitude, no powerful guns or reliable medicines or any of the appurtenances which later captains would take for granted, he drove his s.h.i.+ps far and wide through storm and enemy action, always bringing them to safe and profitable harbor.

Thirty-five years old, he was of medium stature, with small head, steel-gray eyes that did not blink, big mustache and small beard to make him look more impressive; he had oversized ears of which he was ashamed and a bulldog determination which never flared into excessive posturing. He was a man's man, and from those who served under him he exacted a loyalty that verged on fanaticism. To sail with John Hawkins was the ultimate challenge for a seafaring man.

Curiously, he was not by nature a warrior; he thought of himself as a merchant and a navigator who would go to any lengths to avoid a battle at sea. When he drifted from one Spanish-held island to the next, selling his slaves, officials he encountered had no cause for fear, for they had learned that he did not sack cities or burn towns.

Now, as he sat with Francis Drake in a building used as naval headquarters overlooking Plymouth Sound, he suspected that once more he might have to dampen his nephew's headstrong energy, but before he could issue words of caution, Drake's seething fury exploded: 'Uncle, I must sail with you on your next voyage to the Caribbean. Now more than ever.'

Hawkins placed a restraining hand on Drake's knee: 'Mad desire for revenge is never a sound base for action, Francis. I'm almost afraid to take you with me.'

'But I have cause, Uncle. The Spaniards ...' and a great hatred burned through his words.

'Must I remind you? If you do sail with me, it's so we can sell our slaves to the Spaniards, not fight against them.'

'I'll trade with them all right ... at the point of a gun ... my gun.'

'I would like to take you with me. I need men of your courage when we're on the Slave Coast. Pirates, Portuguese adventurers trying to steal our slaves, the flotsam of the world always attacking English s.h.i.+ps.'

'That's the kind of action I seek,' Drake said eagerly, but again his uncle reproved him: 'To fight off pirates in Africa, yes. To fight our peaceful Spanish customers in the Caribbean, no.'

'Peaceful Spanish customers?! Let me tell you about those peaceful Spanish customers. Early this year, at Ro de la Hacha,' and Drake spat out the Spanish name as if he loathed it, 'the governor lured me ash.o.r.e with my ninety slaves, which he offered to buy. But when the time came to pay me, he whistled for his soldiers. They drove me back to my s.h.i.+p, and he kept my slaves. Paid me nothing.'

'It happens, Francis. My slaves have often been stolen by corrupt officials. But the slaves I have left I sell to honest officials at strong prices. In your battle with the Dons, you came home a winner, did you not?'

Drake leaped to his feet: 'Uncle! Forty of those slaves were mine! Not the queen's! I paid for them in Africa with my own money. Those Dons stole my profits from me, personally. And I've sworn I'll get them back.'

Hawkins, growing impatient, snapped: 'Don't be a fool. Never allow revenge to get in your way of earning a decent profit.'

'You don't understand,' Drake blurted out. Then he whistled for a young sailor of nineteen to join them: 'Tell Captain Hawkins what happened to Christopher Weed.' Then, turning to his uncle, he explained: 'You remember young Weed? Son of Fleet Preacher Timothy Weed?' and Hawkins said: 'I know him.'

'No more,' Drake said with iron grating against his words. Then, to the sailor: 'Tell my uncle what happened to my friend Weed.'

'We sailed from Plymouth,' the young sailor said, 'to trade our goods for those of Venice. But as we pa.s.sed the Spanish coast our little s.h.i.+p was captured and we were thrown in prison. They announced that since we were Englishmen, we had to be heretics and must be duly punished.'

'Then what?' Drake asked, eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

'Half our crew recanted-said they'd always been faithful Catholics and were still. They were lashed for having ventured into Spanish waters, then released. The other half, and I was one, refused to recant, so we were sentenced to the galleys. Six years ... ten years ... life.'

'And you? How many years?'

'Ten, but our s.h.i.+p was attacked by pirates and I escaped.'

'G.o.d was watching over you. But what of Christopher Weed and the other two?'