THE SPANIARDS
THE slave-seekers, one hundred and fifty armed men, struck a flag into
the earth before the village and demanded a parley. Their leader or
captain was a tall, black-bearded person, fierce and fell of voice and
aspect. He came to the front and shouted to the Indians in a mixture
of Spanish and Indian words. Also he made friendly-seeming gestures.
“No harm meant—no harm meant! Friends—friends! Your kindred send you
messages—from a happy country—much happier than here where you live!
Let us come into your village and talk.—We have beads and scarlet
cloth—”
But the village kept silence. At Aderhold’s instigation, immediately
after the ship’s first visit, it had digged around itself a shallow
ditch and planted in part a stockade of sharpened stakes, in part a
tall and thorny hedge. Within this manner of wall were gathered some
four hundred souls, counting men, women, and children. Besides the
infants and the small boys and girls there were the old and infirm and
the sick. All were naked of other defence than this one barrier and
the frail, booth-like walls of their huts. They were armed only with
primitive weapons. The word “Spaniard” meant to them ogre and giant.
If they were not truly ogres and giants, the slave-seekers were yet
active, hardened, picked men, trained in cruelty, practised in wiles,
fired with lust of the golden price. When the village held silent, the
leader tried again with blandishments; when there came no answer but
the hot sunshine and the murmur of wood and sea, the company lifted its
flag and advanced with deliberation. From behind the wall came a flight
of spears and arrows. A Spaniard staggered and fell. Some savage arm,
more sinewy than most, had sent a spear full through his neck. There
arose a roar of anger. The men from the ships, the black-bearded one
at their head, rushed forward, came tilt against the stockade and the
thorn hedge.... They had not believed in the stoutness of any defence,
nor of these Indians’ hearts. But driven back, they must believe.
Carrying with them their wounded, they withdrew halfway to the sea and
held council.
In the village they mended the gaps in the wall of stakes and thorny
growth, and that done, watched and waited. The sun rode high, the
children went to sleep.... The old chief—the fighting men, the women
gathered around him—talked with high, ironic passion of days gone by
in this island, in this island group. “They came, and our fathers’
fathers thought they were gods or men like gods! They had their wooden
cross, and they planted it in the sand, side by side with their flag
that says ‘Slay!’ They said that both were pleasing to the Great
Spirit, and that they were his favoured children. They went away and
our fathers’ fathers thought of them as gods and their country as the
house of the Great Spirit.... They who had been children when they came
grew to be men. There were men and men, then, in this land, men and
men! Then the Spaniards came again. They told our fathers that they
came from heavenly shores. They said that there, would our fathers
only go with them in their many ships, they would find their dead
again! Find them living and bright and always young. Find them they
loved. Find their forefathers whom the Great Spirit loved and kept
always about him. Find all they dreamed about. Find happiness.... They
were weak of mind and they believed! They went into the Spaniards’
ships—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Next year the Spaniards came
again and they brought what they said were messages from the red men
who had gone last year to the heavenly shores. It was truly where the
Great Spirit dwelt and where the dead lived again and all the red men
who could should come.... And they whose islands these were were weak
in judgment and listened and believed and went. The Spaniards carried
them away in their ships—men and men and men and women and children.
They loaded their ships with them as though they were nuts or fruit or
fish they had caught, or the gold that they are always seeking. They
carried them away, and next year they came for more. They took these
too. And now this country was growing as it is to-day—trees where once
there were people. But at last one escaped from the ‘heavenly shores,’
and after long toil and suffering reached these islands and told the
truth. So at last when the Spaniards came the people fought them. But
they were strong and the people were weak. And more and more trees grew
where once there had been men! Now”—said the old chief—“I will tell
you about those heavenly shores, for I, too, have been there. I will
tell you of what we from this country do there, and what is done to
us.” He told, circumstantially, a tale of fearful suffering.
Many of the Indians, men and women alike, determined to die rather
than be taken. But many, and perhaps the most, were neither strong
nor stoic, and there was a doubt, Aderhold and Joan felt, and the old
chief felt.... Neither that day nor that night did there befall another
attack. The Spaniards camped upon the shore, but the watching village
saw boats go to and fro between the land and the ships. The night was
dark and they saw moving lanterns. With the dawn one of the ships
slowly felt her way farther into the crooked channel; when she anchored
again she lay much nearer than before, and her row of culverins grinned
against the village. Moreover, three lesser pieces had been dismounted
and brought ashore. In the night-time they had made a platform and
mounted these falcons or sakers.
As the sun rushed up, they sent a broadside against the wall and the
huts beyond. The flame and thunder terrified, the iron shot wrought
havoc. They sent another round, tore a great gap in the hedge, then
with a shout charged, the whole company, across the open strip.... The
bravest of the village fought desperately, but the breach was made.
Many of the assailants were partly mailed. The Indians’ weapons turned
against steel headpieces and backs and breasts. The Spaniards’ pikes
and cutlasses had advantage; their strength and ruthless practice had
advantage; their name, their face, their voice carried terror to these
forest people. Yet they fought, the braver sort striking twice—for
themselves and for those whose joints were as water. The old chief grew
young again. His eyes breathed fire; he fought and he cried his people
on with a great, chanting voice.... A turn in the confused struggle
brought the black-bearded Spaniard facing Aderhold and Joan. “Mother of
God! What’s here? White skins leading these devils and fighting against
us? Flay you alive—”
Men drove between. There was a great noise, a panting heat, a rocking
and swimming of all things before the eyes. A crying arose. Unlooked
for, suddenly, there had been sent ashore from the ships the final
numbers of their crew and company. Thirty fresh assailants poured with
shouts and lifted weapons through the broken defences.... The fearful
among the Indians, and those who thought slavery better than death,
threw down whatever weapons they bore and made gestures of submission
and entreaty. Others were overpowered. There were many who could not
fight—the sick, the infirm, and aged, many children. The terror of
these and their wailings weakened the hearts of those who did fight.
Moreover, the Spaniards knew what to do. They took a child and threw
it from pike point to pike point, and found Indian words in which to
threaten a like fate to every babe. The Indian mothers cried out to
fight no more.
The slave-seekers came in mass against those who yet struggled. They
cut down the old chief, fighting grimly; they ran him through the body
with a pike and slew him. Aderhold and Joan with others, men and women,
fought before a hut in which had been placed a number of children. A
Spaniard came behind Aderhold and struck him down with a blow upon the
head. He lay for a minute stunned; when his senses cleared all was
over. All were beaten down, cowed, disarmed. Hands would have seized
Joan. She fought them off, sprang into the hut and caught up her child,
then, with her in her arms, came back to Aderhold’s side....
The victors were accustomed to victory. The fighting over, the business
conducted itself according to custom. This affair differed only
from many others in that there had been a resistance of unexpected
firmness. Victory had not been without hurt, without, even, the loss
of Spanish lives. Business, reacting, conducted itself therefore with
something less of contemptuous and careless disregard of pain inflicted
and something more of vindictive willingness to inflict it. The
conquered were driven together and stripped of every belonging which,
by any ingenuity, might be converted into a weapon either against their
masters or their own now wretched lives. The black-bearded captain
told off guards, and beside pike and cutlass the lash appeared....
The ships were to be furnished fruit and cassava cakes and the casks
filled with water. The already slaves were set to the task. Graves
must be dug for the Spanish dead, and these the slaves dug. Their
own dead went unburied. The black-bearded man walked in front of the
rows of captives and with a jerk of his thumb indicated the too badly
wounded, the sick who would not survive the voyage, the too old. These
they put away with sword or dagger or pike thrust. The children were
to go—healthy children had value. At last he came to Aderhold and
Joan. He stood still before them, looked them up and down, his beard
bristling. “Spanish?” he said. “No, no! I think not!—English, then?
English—English—English! How did you come here?”
“Through shipwreck.”
“You taught them to fight us. English—English—English! Well, we shall
see, English!—Are you heretics?”
“If you mean are we of the English Church, we are not of the English
Church.”
“English have no church. There is only one church and religion. Are you
of the Holy Catholic Church and Religion?”
“No.”
“Then,” said the black-bearded man and spat toward them, “I will take
you as a present to those who are.”
He stood off and regarded them. Joan with the child sat on the earth,
in the hot sunlight. The child’s terrified crying had hushed; in her
mother’s arms she had sobbed herself to sleep. She lay half covered
by Joan’s skirt, shadowed by her mother’s bending breast and face.
The Spaniard’s countenance twisted until it was like a gargoyle’s for
cruelty and ungenial mirth. Without a word he stooped and with one
great slashing stroke of his dagger slew the child....
They bound Joan, and she lay at last, prostrate upon the earth, her
forehead touching the child’s still feet. Aderhold sat beside the dead
and the living love.... Around was heat and glare, huge suffering,
brute indifference, brute triumph, life brought low, life iron-shod
trampling life, a battlefield of instincts, a welter of emotions,
tendencies in impact, old and deep ideas opposed to ideas ... and all
with which he and Joan were ranged in time and space,—their stream and
current—here and now, as often before and often to come, the loser,
the loser drowning in defeat.... He felt the wide cold, the check, the
bitter diminishing, felt it impersonally for the enormous current, the
stream where there were so many drops; then, because he was man, felt
it for this childish people, felt it, a bitter and overwhelming tide,
for himself and Joan. Woe—woe—there was so much woe in living....
All the rest of that day the enslaved brought food and rolled casks of
water for the ships. When night came they were let to sleep, lying on
the ground, in a herd. Now and again through the darkness rose a sharp
cry of grief, or ran from one to another a sobbing and groaning. But
the most slept heavily, without movement. Dawn came, and the slaves
were roused. They were permitted to eat a little food—and then they
were driven to the shore and into the boats.... Their dead, their
village, their island were severed from them. They were left naked to
the beating of new tides....
Joan and Aderhold were put upon the ship with the darker sails—the
ship that had come first to the island. The hold of this ship was
inexpressibly, fearfully crowded with the enslaved. When the hatches
were closed, it was a black pit, a place of gasping, fighting for
breath. When morning came the Spaniards, seeing that otherwise much
of their property would die and become no man’s property, drew out
several score and penned them in a narrow space upon the deck. Aderhold
and Joan were brought forth with the others, driven here with them,
pressed by the mass close against the ship’s side.
Day crept away, sunset came. The island where they had dwelled was long
fallen from sight. Out of the sea before them, though as yet at some
distance, rose the shape of an outermost islet of this group. When that
should be passed, there would lie an expanse of ocean, and, at last,
driving south, would rise the great island to which they were bound.
The sun dipped below the horizon, but over against it rose the round
and silver moon. By its light could be seen the strengthening outline
of the last island, at length the very curve of surf, the beach and
sombre palms.
Aderhold moved, touched Joan who sat as if in a trance. About them
many of the Indians had fallen asleep or lay, beaten down to a
half-consciousness. At no great distance were the guards. But these
had no fear now of that cowed shipload, and so paid little attention.
Amidships and forward were Spaniards enough, but these talked and swore
or gamed among themselves or gazed at the island without lights by
which they were slipping. Aderhold bent and whispered in Joan’s ear.
For a moment she sat motionless; then slowly the mind returned and
became active, though through dark veils of woe.
She nodded. “Yes, yes! Let us go! If we die we may find her.”
“Wait until that cloud is between us and the moon.”
It came between and the ship and the decks darkened. The two rose with
caution to their feet. About them were darkness, shadowy forms, blended
sounds, but no eye seemed to see what they were about, no voice cried
out an alarm. They were close to the ship’s side—one other moment and
they had swung themselves up, leaped overboard.... They touched the
dark water, went under, rose, struck out. In their ears rang no shout
or sound of discovery. The sucking and turmoil of the water about them
lessened. A fresh wind was blowing and the ship sailed swiftly. She was
no longer huge above them, they came out of her shadow; she was seen at
a slight distance, then at a greater and a greater.... They were free
of her, free also of her consort, the other ship. The wide ocean swept
around.
It swept around save where the island rose. It rose not at all far
away, a quiet and lonely strand. A light surf broke upon its shore.
Sometimes floating, sometimes swimming, the two who would yet have life
gained toward it. They gained toward it until at last they reached it,
came out of the beating surf, and lay with closed eyes and fluttering
breath upon the moonlight-coloured sand.