Cup of Gold (23 page)

“Panama!” It was almost a groan that answered him.

“Yes, Panama. You have signed articles—and I hang deserters. Look to the spirits of your men. You know something of the wealth of Panama—enough to whet their tongues; and I know the dangers well enough to be sure they are surmountable.”

“But—Panama—” Sawkins began.

“I hang deserters,” Captain Morgan said, and he left the cabin. Cœur de Gris remained to listen. He would report the temper of the men.

There was long silence. Every man was recalling the things he had heard about Panama.

“It is dangerous,” said Sawkins, at last, “dangerous, but goodly rich. And the captain swore he knew the plan of the city and all the dangers of the fight.”

These words brought sudden reassurance. If Captain Morgan knew, then they need not fear. Morgan was infallible. The room filled with nervous, quick conversation.

“Money? They walk on it. I have heard that the Cathedral—”

“But the jungle is impassable.”

“They have good wine in Panama. I tasted some that came from there.”

And all at once, every man seemed to think of the Red Saint.

“Why, that woman is there—La Santa Roja.”

“Yes, that is right. She is there. Who do you suppose will get her?”

“The captain’s not a man for women at all. I think it will be Cœur de Gris, here. He is the most favored of us.”

“Well enough. Cœur de Gris is fated to die on the poniard of some man’s jealousy. I would not mind killing him, because if I did not, some one else would. No, it might be my dagger.”

“What would you do with a woman like that? A rope’s end wouldn’t be the thing, I guess.”

“Well, to tell truth, I have always found those fat doubloons the most perfect instruments of rape. They glitter so.”

“No, no. But see this. Nearly all women will repurchase their diamonds with their virtue. When you have the second, it is an easy thing to reacquire the first.”

“What does old One-arm say about it—The Other Burgundian? Hey! will you be taking the Red Saint for your fat friend there?”

The Other Burgundian bowed.

“There would be no need,” he said. “My friend is very capable. Why, I could tell a tale—” He turned to The Burgundian. “Have I your permission, Emil?”

The Burgundian seemed trying to get through the wall, but he did manage a nod.

“Then I will tell you gentlemen a story,” The Other Burgundian began. “There were four friends in Burgundy; three who squeezed a little sour milk from the dugs of art, and one who had possessions. Also there was a lovely girl in Burgundy; beautiful, accomplished, a veritable Circe, most lovely in the country. And the four friends all fell in love with this sweet exquisite.

“Each one gave her the gifts which were most dear to himself. The first folded his soul in a sonnet and laid it at her feet. The second filled a viol with her name; and I—the third, I mean—painted the rosy image of her face. Thus did we artists bid for her in all friendliness to one another. But the last of the four was the true artist. He was quiet; he was subtle. What an actor! He won her with a superb gesture. He opened his hand—so—and there, on the cushion of his palm, lay a laughing rose pearl. They were married.

“Now, soon after this marriage, Delphine gave evidence of greater virtues than any one had suspected. Not only was this paragon a perfect wife, but she was also the discreet and delightful mistress—not to one, but to all three—of the husband’s friends. And Emil, the husband, did not mind. He loved his friends. Why not? They were his true friends, but poor.

“Ah, where is a force so blind, so idiotic, as public opinion! This time, two deaths and one banishment were born of it. This hydra of a Public Opinion—consider to yourselves what it did! It forced Emil to challenge his three friends. Even then, all might have ended with the kiss, the embrace—‘my honor is whole again, dear friend’—if it had not been for Emil’s deplorable habit of leaving his rapier point in putrefying meat. Two of the men died, and I lost my arm.

“Now, here again comes this Public Opinion, like a blundering, powerful ox. Having forced the duels, it forced the victor out of France. Here is Emil, beside me—lover, swordsman, artist, landowner. The Public Opinion— But I have strayed from the tale in my hatred of this force. What I wanted to tell you is that Emil asks no consideration, no quarter at all. I know it appears that a swarm of hungry ants has been feasting on his spirit; but let great beauty be placed before him, let the Red Saint be mirrored in those eyes, and you shall see and remember what I say. He is quiet; he is subtle; he is an artist. Where other men cry ‘Virility! Force! Rape!’—Emil carries a rose pearl in his pocket as an aphrodisiac.”

An army of flat-boats was floating on the River Chagres, each one taxed to the limit of its buoyancy with the men of the Free Brotherhood. Frenchmen there were, wearing striped nightcaps and full, loose pantaloons; Frenchmen who had sailed out of St. Malo or Calais one time, and now had no fatherland to sail back to. Some of the barges were filled with Cockneys, dirty men for the most part, with black teeth and the look of petty thievery about them. There were dour, silent Zeerovers from Holland, lumpishly sitting in their boats, gazing with the dull eyes of gourmands along the course of Chagres.

The heavy, square barges were poled along by Caribs and Cimarones, joyfully fierce men who loved war so well that they could be persuaded to bend their sleek brown shoulders to labor if the reward were blood. One section of the parade of piracy was composed of negroes lately escaped from Spanish servitude. They wore red bandoliers, crossing like wounds on their naked breasts. The leader, a huge buck with a face like a ferocious black moose, wore nothing at all save a broad yellow belt and a cavalier hat, the plume of which hung limply down and curled under his glistening black chin.

The boats, in a long line, edged up the stream. The English shouted tuneless chanteys, swaying their bodies to preserve the rhythm; the French sang softly of the little loves they might have had; and the Cimarones and blacks chattered their endless monologues directed at no one in particular.

And Chagres twisted on ahead in loops and tremendous horseshoe turns. The yellow water, like a frightened, leprous woman, timidly caressed the hulls. On this Chagres you might pole your boat all day, and at night make your camp not half a mile by straight line from the starting place. It was a sluggish, apathetic river of many shallows where the bright sand glittered in the sun. Chagres was a dilettante in the eternal and understood business of rivers—that of getting to the ocean with as little bother and effort as possible. Chagres dreamed about over the country, seemingly reluctant to lose its lazy individuality in the worried sea.

After a time the boats came to a land where the thick jungle rolled to the river’s edge and stopped in a curving crest, like a frozen green wave. There were spotted tigers cruising along through the trees, watching the men with a sad curiosity. Now and then a great snake slipped from the warm log where it had been dozing in the sun, and floated in the water, rearing up its head to see this unheard of procession. Whole clans of excited monkeys dashed about among the vines, pretending to hate disturbance. They howled their indignation and hurled leaves and twigs at the boats. Fourteen hundred outlandish beings had invaded sacred Mother Jungle; the mangiest monkey on earth had, at least, his right of protest.

The day’s heat had come like a breath of fever, heavy and dully bewildering. The songs from the barges thickened and died as though hot blankets had been thrown over the men. The buccaneers sat lifelessly on their benches. But the straining Indians poled on with a steady, swinging motion. The muscles slipped along their fine arms, coiled and uncoiled about their shoulders like restless serpents. Within their brooding brains was a revery of slaughter, a delightful blood dream. “On!” said their brains. “On! Ugh! the battle is two strides nearer. On! On! Ugh! Panama; the savannas of blood are two strides nearer.” The long line of boats writhed up the river like a tremendous jointed snake.

The long ardent day fell back toward evening, and no human had been seen along the river banks. This was a serious matter, for there was no food in the barges. There was no room for food. Every inch was needed for men and weapons. As it was, the water washed over the low decks of the artillery rafts. It was well known that many plantations bordered the river, whereat a hungry army might refresh itself, and this knowledge had sent the pirates foodless toward Panama. All day they had watched for the plantation and had seen nothing but the green tangled jungle.

In the evening, the first boat came abreast of a landing of sticks. A languid coil of smoke rose from behind a planted row of tall trees. With loud cries of joy, the buccaneers leaped from their boats and waded to the shore. Curses and despair; the buildings were burned and deserted. This little smoke drifted from the black heap of what had been a granary, in which no single grain remained for the men to eat. Deep tracks led off into the wet jungle to show where the cattle had been driven away, but the tracks were two days old.

The hungry men went back to their boats. Ah, well; they must go hungry to-day. Hunger was a part of war, a matter to be expected and endured. To-morrow, surely, they would come on houses where wine was stored, cold and delicious; corrals where fat cows nodded stupidly, waiting to be slaughtered. A buccaneer—a true buccaneer—would sell out his life for a cup of sour wine or a bit of converse with one of the brown women of half-Spain. These were the joys of life, and a fair thing it was if the man were stabbed before he finished his drink or his conversation; but hunger— Well, to-morrow there would be food surely.

But again the sun arose, a white, fevered ulcer in the sky. There was the river of mad turnings, and along its banks deserted farms, and no food at all. News of this invasion had swept along before them like an appalling message of pestilence. No man or animal remained to greet the buccaneers.

On the third day they found a number of tough green cow hides, and they beat them between stones to soften them for eating. Some of the men had eaten half their belts. Once a little burned maize was discovered in a still burning granary, and several of the pirates died in agony from gorging on it.

The men hunted in the jungle, searched through the trees for any living thing which might be eaten. Even the cats and monkeys seemed to be leagued with Spain. The jungle was silent and creatureless now. No unit of life was left save the flying insects. Now and then a snake was caught and roasted, while its captor sullenly guarded his supper. A few mice came into the pirates’ hands, but these were bolted on the spot for fear of thievery.

After four days of traveling, the river grew too shallow for the boats. The cannons were brought ashore to be dragged by man-power along a narrow path. The buccaneers straggled out in an unkempt column, while ahead of them a swarm of busy Indians, drawing energy from their sanguinary dream, hacked and slashed out the trail through the jungle with their heavy knives. A few small groups of fleeing Spaniards were seen, and now and again small bands of Spanish Indians flushed from the thickets like coveys of frightened quail, but no enemy paused long enough to give fight. Once, beside the trail, a prepared place of ambush was discovered; a wall of earth, and the ashes of many camp-fires. It was deserted. Terror had seized the soldiers sent to fight, and they had run away.

Now the men were dragging themselves nearer and nearer to Panama. Their enthusiasm for the conquest was gone; they cursed their leader for his failure to bring food; they were drawn farther and farther by the sheer force of the example of Captain Morgan.

From the first he had led them, but now, at the head of the exhausted troops, Henry Morgan himself was beginning to doubt whether he wished very greatly to go to Panama. He tried to remember the force which had started him on his way, the magnet of unseen beauty. La Santa Roja had faded in his imagination as his hunger grew. He could not clearly remember his desire. But even though this desire should desert him utterly, he must go on. One failure, one moment of indecision, would scatter his successes like pigeons.

Cœur de Gris was beside him as he had been from the beginning, a haggard Cœur de Gris now, who lurched a little as he walked. Captain Morgan looked with pity and pride at his lieutenant. He saw the eyes like shallow crystal, and a wild light in them as of approaching madness. Captain Morgan felt less lonely with the young man by his side. He knew that Cœur de Gris was grown to be a part of him.

The sun’s heat was falling from the heavens like a burning rain. It struck the ground and then slowly rose again, burdened with dampness and the nauseous odor of rotting leaves and roots. Once Cœur de Gris was driven to his knees by the heat, but immediately he rose to trudge onward. Henry Morgan saw his staggering walk, and glanced at the trail ahead with indecision.

“Perhaps we should be resting here,” he said. “The men are exhausted.”

“But no. We must go on and go on,” Cœur de Gris replied. “If we stop here, the men will only be weaker when we start again.”

Henry Morgan mused: “I wonder why you are so avid in my mission. You move forward when even I begin to doubt myself. What is it that you expect to find in Panama, Cœur de Gris?”

“I expect to find nothing,” the young man said. “Are you trying to trap me into a statement of disloyalty? I know the prize is yours before we arrive. I admit it, sir. But, you see, I am like a great, round stone set in motion down a hill, so much reason have I for going to Panama. You, sir, set me in motion.”

“It is strange that I should so want Panama,” Henry said.

The flushed face of the lieutenant turned on him in anger.

“You do not want Panama. It is the woman you want, not Panama.” His voice was as bitter as his words, and now he was pressing his palms against his temples.