Cup of Gold (12 page)

There were a great many people in the room sitting at the long tables or leaning against the walls; some, even, were seated on the floor. A little serving girl went among them with a tray of liquors. Some were Italians from the ships of Genoa and Venice, come with rare woods and spices that had been carried overland on camel back from the Indian Ocean to Byzantium. Frenchmen were there from the wine boats of Bordeaux and Calais, with an occasional square-faced, blue-eyed Basque among them. Swedes and Danes and Finns were in from the whalers of the north ocean, dirty men who smelled of decaying blubber; and at some of the tables were cruel Dutchmen who made a business of carrying black slaves from Guinea to Brazil. Scattered among these foreign men were a few Cambrian farmers, looking frightened and self-conscious and alone. They had brought pigs and sheep from the country for victualing the ships, and now were bolting their food so that they might get home again before nightfall. These looked for security to three man o’ war’s men wearing the King’s uniform who talked together by the door.

Young Henry lost himself in the lovely clamor of the room. He was hearing new speech and seeing new sights: the ear-rings of the Genoese; the short knife-like swords of the Dutch; the colors of faces from beef red to wind-bitten brown. All day he might have stood there with no knowledge in him of the passing of time.

A big hand took his elbow, a hand gloved in callouses; and Henry looked down into the broad, guileless face of an Irish seaman.

“Will you be sitting here, young man, along side of an honest sailor out of Cork named Tim?” As he spoke he squeezed violently against his neighbor, flinging him sideways and leaving a narrow space on the bench end for the boy. There are no men like the Irish for being brutally gentle. And Henry, as he took the seat, did not know that the sailor out of Cork had seen his gold piece.

“Thank you,” he said. “And where is it that you go sailing?”

“Ah! any place that ships go I do be sailing,” replied Tim. “I’m an honest sailor out of Cork with no fault on me save never having the shine of a coin to my pocket. And I wonder, now, how I’m to be paying for the fine breakfast, and me with never a shine,” he said slowly and emphatically.

“Why, if you have no money, I’ll buy your breakfast—so you will be telling me of the sea and ships.”

“I knew it was a gentleman you were,” Tim cried. “I knew it the minute my eyes landed on you soft like— And a small drink to be starting with?” He shouted for his drink without waiting for Henry’s consent, and when it came, raised the brown liquor to his eyes.

“Uisquebaugh, the Irish call it. That means water of life; and the English call it ‘Whiskey’—only water. Why! if water had the fine body and honest glow of this, it’s sailing I would give up and take to swimming!” He laughed uproariously and tipped the glass up.

“I’m going to the Indies,” Henry observed, with thought to bring him back to talking of the sea.

“The Indies? Why, so am I, to-morrow in the morning; out for Barbados with knives and sickles and dress goods for the plantations. It’s a good ship—a Bristol ship—but the master’s a hard man all stiff with religion out of the colony at Plymouth. Hell-fire he roars at you and calls it prayer and repentance, but I’m thinking there’s joy in all the burning to him. We’ll all burn a good time if he has his way. I do not understand the religion of him; there’s never an Ave Mary about it, and so how can it be religion at all?”

“Do you think—do you think, perhaps—I could go in your ship with you?” Henry asked chokingly.

The lids drew down over the ingenuous eyes of Tim.

“If it was ten pound you had,” he said slowly, and then, seeing the sorrow on the boy’s face, “five, I mean—”

“I have something over four, now,” Henry broke in with sadness.

“Well, and four might do it, too. You give me your four pound, and I’ll be talking with the master. It’s not a bad man when you get to be knowing him, only queer and religious. No, don’t be looking at me like that. You come along with me. I wouldn’t run off with the four pound of a boy that bought my breakfast at all.” His face bloomed with a great smile.

“Come,” he said; “let’s be drinking that you go with us in the
Bristol Girl
. Uisquebaugh for me and wine of Oporto for you!” Then breakfast arrived and they fell to eating. After a few mouthfuls Henry said:

“My name is Henry Morgan. What is your other name besides Tim?”

And the sailor laughed heartily.

“Why, if there was ever a name to me but Tim you might find it kicking around in a wheel rut at Cork. The father and mother of me did not wait to be telling me my name. But Tim was on me without giving. Tim is a kind of free name that you can just take and no one to mention it, like the little papers the Dissenters be leaving in the streets, and they scuttling off not to be seen with them. You can breathe Tim like the air, and no one to put hand on you.”

Breakfast over, they went into the street, busy with the trade of carters and orange boys and peddling old women. The town was crying its thousand wares, and it seemed that delicate things from the far, unearthly corners of the world had been brought by the ships and dumped like clods on the dusty counters of Cardiff: lemons; cases of coffee and tea and cocoa; bright Eastern rugs; and the weird medicines of India to make you see things that are not, and to feel pleasures that fly away again. Standing in the streets were barrels and earthen jugs of wine from the banks of the Loire and the Peruvian slopes.

They came again to the docks and the beautiful ships. The smell of tar and sunburned hemp and the sweetness of the sea breathed in to them from off the water. At last, far down the row, Henry saw a great black ship, and
Bristol Girl
painted in letters of gold on her prow. And the town and all the flat hulks became ugly and squalid beside this beauty of the sea. The curved running lines of her and the sensuous sureness of her were tonic things to make you gasp in your breath with pleasure. New white sails clung to her yards like long, slender cocoons of silk worms, and there was fresh yellow paint on her decks. She lay there, lifting slightly on a slow swell, champing, impatient to be flying off to any land of your imagination. A black Sheban queen she was, among the dull brown boats of the harbor.

“Oh, it’s a grand ship—a fine ship,” cried Henry, wonder-struck.

Tim was proud. “But only come aboard of her, and see the fittings—all new. I’ll be talking with the master about you.”

Henry stood in the waist while the big seaman walked aft and pulled his cap before a lean skeleton of a man in a worn uniform.

“I have a boy,” he said, though Henry could not hear; “a boy that’s set his heart in the Indies, and I’m thinking you might be liking to take him, sir.”

The hungry master scowled at him.

“Is he a strong boy who might be some good in the islands, Bo’s’n? So many of them die within the month, and there you have trouble the next trip.”

“He is there, behind me, sir. You can see him yourself, standing there—and very well made and close knit he is, too.”

The hungry master appraised Henry, running his eyes from the sturdy legs to the full chest. His approval grew.

“He is a strong boy, all right; and good work for you, Tim. You shall have drink money of it and a little extra ration of rum at sea. But does he know anything about the arrangement?”

“Never a bit.”

“Well, then, don’t tell him. Put him to working in the galley. He’ll think he’s working out his passage. No use of caterwauling and disturbing the men off watch. Let him find out when he gets there.” The master smiled and paced away from Tim.

“You can be going with us in the ship,” the sailor cried, and Henry could not move for his pleasure. “But,” Tim continued seriously, “the four pound is not enough for passage. You’ll be working a bit in the galley and we sailing.”

“Anything,” Henry said, “anything I’ll do, so only I can go with you.”

“Then let’s ourselves go ashore and have a toast to a fine, free voyage; uisquebaugh for me, and that same grand wine for you.”

They sat in a dusty shop whose walls were lined with bottles of all shapes and volumes, little pudgy flasks to giant demijohns. After a time they sang together, beating out the measures with their hands and smiling foolishly at each other. But at length the warm wine of Oporto filled the boy with a pleasant sadness. He felt that there were tears coming to his eyes, and he was rather glad of it. It would show Tim that he had his sorrows—that he was not just a feather-head boy with a craving to go to the Indies. He would reveal his depths.

“Do you know, Tim,” he said, “there was a girl I came away from, and she was named Elizabeth. Her hair was gold—gold like the morning. And on the night before I came away, I called to her and she came to me in the dark; the dark was all about us like a tent, and cold. She cried and cried for me to stay, even when I told her of the fine things and the trinkets and the silks I would bring back to her in a little time. She would not be comforted at all, and it’s a sad thing on me to be thinking of her crying there for my leaving.” The full tears came into his eyes.

“I know,” said Tim softly. “I know it’s a sad thing to a man to be leaving a girl and running off to sea. Haven’t I left hundreds of them—and all beautiful? But here’s another cup to you, boy. Wine is better to a woman than all the sweet pastes of France, and a man drinking it. Wine makes every woman lovely. Ah! if the homely ones would only put out a little font of wine in the doors of their houses like the holy water to a church, there would be more marriage in the towns. A man would never know the lack they had for looks. But have another cup of the grand wine, sad boy, and it may be a princess, and you leaving her behind you.”

They were starting for the Indies—the fine, far Indies where boys’ dreams lived. The great sun of the morning lay struggling in gray mist, and on the deck the seamen swarmed like the angry populace of a broken hive. There were short orders and sailors leaping up the shrouds to edge along the yards. Circling men were singing the song of the capstan while the anchors rose out of the sea and clung to the sides like brown, dripping moths.

Off for the Indies—the white sails knew it as they flung out and filled delicately as silken things; the black ship knew it and rode proudly on the fleeing tide before a fresh little morning wind. Carefully the
Bristol Girl
crept out of the shipping and down the long channel.

The mist was slowly mixing with the sky. Now the coast of Cambria became blue and paler blue until it faded into the straight horizon like a mad vision of the desert. The black mountains were a cloud, and then a trifle of pale smoke; then Cambria was gone, as though it had never been.

Porlock they passed on the port side, and Illfracombe, and many vague villages tucked in the folds of Devon. The fair, sweet wind carried them by Stratton and Camelford. Cornwall was slipping off behind them, league on blue league. Then Land’s End, the pointed tip of Britain’s chin; and, as they rounded to the southward, Winter came in at last.

The sea rose up and snarled at them, while the ship ran before the crying dogs of the wind like a strong, confident stag; ran bravely under courses and spritsail. The wind howled out of Winter’s home in the north, and the
Bristol Girl
mocked it across its face to the southwest. It was cold; the freezing shrouds twanged in the wind like great harp strings plucked by a demented giant, and the yards groaned their complaint to the tugging sails.

Four wild days the persistent storm chased them out to sea with the ship in joy at the struggle. The seamen gathered in the forecastle to boast of her fleetness and the tight shape of her. And in this time Henry exulted like a young god. The wind’s frenzy was his frenzy. He would stand on the deck, braced against a mast, face into the wind, cutting it with his chin as the prow cut the water, and a chanting exultation filled his chest to bursting—joy like a pain. The cold wiped off the lenses of his eyes so that he saw more clearly into the drawn distance lying in a circle around him. Here was the old desire surfeited with a new; for the winds brought longing to have sweeping wings and the whole, endless sky for scope. The ship was a rocking, quaking prison for him who would fly ahead and up. Ah! to be a god and ride on the storm! not under it. Here was the intoxication of the winds, a desire which satisfied desire while it led his yearning onward. He cried for the shoulders of omnipotence, and the elements blew into his muscles a new strength.

Then, as quickly as the devil servants of the year had rushed at them, they slunk away, leaving a clear, clean sea. The ship rode under full sail before the eternal trade wind. It is a fresh, fair wind out of heaven, breathed by the God of Navigation for the tall ships with sails. All the tension was gone from them; the sailors played about the deck like wild, strong children— for there is young happiness in the trade wind.

Sunday came, a day of sullen fear and foreboding on the
Bristol Girl
. Henry finished his work in the galley and went on deck. An aged seaman was sitting on a hatch plaiting a long splice. His fingers seemed each a nimble intelligence as they worked, for their master never looked at them. Instead, his small blue eyes, after the manner of sailors’ eyes, looked out beyond the end of things.

“So you would know the secrets of the lines?” he said, without moving his gaze from the horizon. “Well, you must just watch. It’s so long I’ve been doing it that my old head has forgotten how; only my fingers remember. If I think what I’m doing I get muddled up. Will you be a sailor and go aloft one day?”

“Why, I’d like to, if I could learn the workings,” Henry said.

“It’s not so hard to learn the workings. You must learn first to bear things that landsmen never heard of. That’s the first thing. It’s very cruel, but you may never leave it once you start. Here I’ve been trying to take my old hulk ashore and berth it in front of a fire for a dozen years. I want to think awhile and die. But it’s no use. Every time I find myself running my legs off to get aboard some ship or other.”