HOW THEY TOOK THE COMMUNION UNDER THE TREE AT HIGUEROTE
“Follow thee? Follow thee? Wha wad na follow thee? Lang hast
thou looed and trusted us fairly.”
Amyas would have certainly taken the yellow fever, but for one reason,
which he himself gave to Cary. He had no time to be sick while his men
were sick; a valid and sufficient reason (as many a noble soul in
the Crimea has known too well), as long as the excitement of work is
present, but too apt to fail the hero, and to let him sink into the pit
which he has so often over-leapt, the moment that his work is done.
He called a council of war, or rather a sanitary commission, the
next morning; for he was fairly at his wits' end. The men were
panic-stricken, ready to mutiny: Amyas told them that he could not see
any possible good which could accrue to them by killing him, or--(for
there were two sides to every question)--being killed by him; and then
went below to consult. The doctor talked mere science, or nonscience,
about humors, complexions, and animal spirits. Jack Brimblecombe, mere
pulpit, about its being the visitation of God. Cary, mere despair,
though he jested over it with a smile. Yeo, mere stoic fatalism, though
he quoted Scripture to back the same. Drew, the master, had nothing to
say. His “business was to sail the ship, and not to cure calentures.”
Whereon Amyas clutched his locks, according to custom; and at last broke
forth--“Doctor! a fig for your humors and complexions! Can you cure
a man's humors, or change his complexion? Can an Ethiopian change his
skin, or a leopard his spots? Don't shove off your ignorance on God,
sir. I ask you what's the reason of this sickness, and you don't know.
Jack Brimblecombe, don't talk to me about God's visitation; this looks
much more like the devil's visitation, to my mind. We are doing God's
work, Sir John, and He is not likely to hinder us. So down with the
devil, say I. Cary, laughing killed the cat, but it won't cure a
Christian. Yeo, when an angel tells me that it's God's will that we
should all die like dogs in a ditch, I'll call this God's will; but not
before. Drew, you say your business is to sail the ship; then sail her
out of this infernal poison-trap this very morning, if you can, which
you can't. The mischief's in the air, and nowhere else. I felt it run
through me coming down last night, and smelt it like any sewer: and
if it was not in the air, why was my boat's crew taken first, tell me
that?”
There was no answer.
“Then I'll tell you why they were taken first: because the mist, when
we came through it, only rose five or six feet above the stream, and we
were in it, while you on board were above it. And those that were taken
on board this morning, every one of them, slept on the main-deck, and
every one of them, too, was in fear of the fever, whereby I judge two
things,--Keep as high as you can, and fear nothing but God, and we're
all safe yet.”
“But the fog was up to our round-tops at sunrise this morning,” said
Cary.
“I know it: but we who were on the half-deck were not in it so long as
those below, and that may have made the difference, let alone our having
free air. Beside, I suspect the heat in the evening draws the poison out
more, and that when it gets cold toward morning, the venom of it goes
off somehow.”
How it went off Amyas could not tell (right in his facts as he was), for
nobody on earth knew I suppose, at that day; and it was not till
nearly two centuries of fatal experience that the settlers in America
discovered the simple laws of these epidemics which now every child
knows, or ought to know. But common sense was on his side; and Yeo rose
and spoke--
“As I have said before, many a time, the Lord has sent us a very young
Daniel for judge. I remember now to have heard the Spaniards say, how
these calentures lay always in the low ground, and never came more than
a few hundred feet above the sea.”
“Let us go up those few hundred feet, then.”
Every man looked at Amyas, and then at his neighbor.
“Gentlemen, 'Look the devil straight in the face, if you would hit him
in the right place.' We cannot get the ship to sea as she is; and if we
could, we cannot go home empty-handed; and we surely cannot stay here to
die of fever.--We must leave the ship and go inland.”
“Inland?” answered every voice but Yeo's.
“Up those hundred feet which Yeo talks of. Up to the mountains; stockade
a camp, and get our sick and provisions thither.”
“And what next?”
“And when we are recruited, march over the mountains, and surprise St.
Jago de Leon.”
Cary swore a great oath. “Amyas! you are a daring fellow!”
“Not a bit. It's the plain path of prudence.”
“So it is, sir,” said old Yeo, “and I follow you in it.”
“And so do I,” squeaked Jack Brimblecombe.
“Nay, then, Jack, thou shalt not outrun me. So I say yes too,” quoth
Cary.
“Mr. Drew?”
“At your service, sir, to live or die. I know naught about stockading;
but Sir Francis would have given the same counsel, I verily believe, if
he had been in your place.”
“Then tell the men that we start in an hour's time. Win over the
Pelicans, Yeo and Drew; and the rest must follow, like sheep over a
hedge.”
The Pelicans, and the liberated galley-slaves, joined the project at
once; but the rest gave Amyas a stormy hour. The great question was,
where were the hills? In that dense mangrove thicket they could not see
fifty yards before them.
“The hills are not three miles to the south-west of you at this moment,”
said Amyas. “I marked every shoulder of them as we ran in.”
“I suppose you meant to take us there?”
The question set a light to a train--and angry suspicions were blazing
up one after another, but Amyas silenced them with a countermine.
“Fools! if I had not wit enow to look ahead a little farther than you
do, where would you be? Are you mad as well as reckless, to rise against
your own captain because he has two strings to his bow? Go my way, I
say, or, as I live, I'll blow up the ship and every soul on board, and
save you the pain of rotting here by inches.”
The men knew that Amyas never said what he did not intend to do; not
that Amyas intended to do this, because he knew that the threat would be
enough. So they, agreed to go; and were reassured by seeing that the old
Pelican's men turned to the work heartily and cheerfully.
There is no use keeping the reader for five or six weary hours, under a
broiling (or rather stewing) sun, stumbling over mangrove roots, hewing
his way through thorny thickets, dragging sick men and provisions up
mountain steeps, amid disappointment, fatigue, murmurs, curses, snakes,
mosquitoes, false alarms of Spaniards, and every misery, save cold,
which flesh is heir to. Suffice it that by sunset that evening they had
gained a level spot, a full thousand feet above the sea, backed by an
inaccessible cliff which formed the upper shoulder of a mighty mountain,
defended below by steep wooded slopes, and needing but the felling of a
few trees to make it impregnable.
Amyas settled the sick under the arched roots of an enormous cottonwood
tree, and made a second journey to the ship, to bring up hammocks and
blankets for them; while Yeo's wisdom and courage were of inestimable
value. He, as pioneer, had found the little brook up which they forced
their way; he had encouraged them to climb the cliffs over which it
fell, arguing rightly that on its course they were sure to find some
ground fit for encampment within the reach of water; he had supported
Amyas, when again and again the weary crew entreated to be dragged no
farther, and had gone back again a dozen times to cheer them upward;
while Cary, who brought up the rear, bullied and cheered on the
stragglers who sat down and refused to move, drove back at the sword's
point more than one who was beating a retreat, carried their burdens for
them, sang them songs on the halt; in all things approving himself the
gallant and hopeful soul which he had always been: till Amyas, beside
himself with joy at finding that the two men on whom he had counted
most were utterly worthy of his trust, went so far as to whisper to them
both, in confidence, that very night--
“Cortez burnt his ships when he landed. Why should not we?”
Yeo leapt upright; and then sat down again, and whispered--
“Do you say that, captain? 'Tis from above, then, that's certain; for
it's been hanging on my mind too all day.”
“There's no hurry,” quoth Amyas; “we must clear her out first, you
know,” while Cary sat silent and musing. Amyas had evidently more
schemes in his head than he chose to tell.
The men were too tired that evening to do much, but ere the sun rose
next morning Amyas had them hard at work fortifying their position. It
was, as I said, strong enough by nature; for though it was commanded by
high cliffs on three sides, yet there was no chance of an enemy coming
over the enormous mountain-range behind them, and still less chance
that, if he came, he would discover them through the dense mass of
trees which crowned the cliff, and clothed the hills for a thousand feet
above. The attack, if it took place, would come from below; and against
that Amyas guarded by felling the smaller trees, and laying them with
their boughs outward over the crest of the slope, thus forming an abatis
(as every one who has shot in thick cover knows to his cost) warranted
to bring up in two steps, horse, dog, or man. The trunks were sawn into
logs, laid lengthwise, and steadied by stakes and mould; and three or
four hours' hard work finished a stockade which would defy anything
but artillery. The work done, Amyas scrambled up into the boughs of the
enormous ceiba-tree, and there sat inspecting his own handiwork, looking
out far and wide over the forest-covered plains and the blue sea beyond,
and thinking, in his simple straightforward way, of what was to be done
next.
To stay there long was impossible; to avenge himself upon La Guayra was
impossible; to go until he had found out whether Frank was alive or dead
seemed at first equally impossible. But were Brimblecombe, Cary, and
those eighty men to be sacrificed a second time to his private interest?
Amyas wept with rage, and then wept again with earnest, honest prayer,
before he could make up his mind. But he made it up. There were a
hundred chances to one that Frank was dead; and if not, he was equally
past their help; for he was--Amyas knew that too well--by this time
in the hands of the Inquisition. Who could lift him from that pit? Not
Amyas, at least! And crying aloud in his agony, “God help him! for I
cannot!” Amyas made up his mind to move. But whither? Many an hour he
thought and thought alone, there in his airy nest; and at last he went
down, calm and cheerful, and drew Cary and Yeo aside. They could not,
he said, refit the ship without dying of fever during the process; an
assertion which neither of his hearers was bold enough to deny. Even
if they refitted her, they would be pretty certain to have to fight the
Spaniards again; for it was impossible to doubt the Indian's story, that
they had been forewarned of the Rose's coming, or to doubt, either, that
Eustace had been the traitor.
“Let us try St. Jago, then; sack it, come down on La Guayra in the rear,
take a ship there, and so get home.”
“Nay, Will. If they have strengthened themselves against us at La
Guayra, where they had little to lose, surely they have done so at St.
Jago, where they have much. I hear the town is large, though new; and
besides, how can we get over these mountains without a guide?”
“Or with one?” said Cary, with a sigh, looking up at the vast walls of
wood and rock which rose range on range for miles. “But it is strange to
find you, at least, throwing cold water on a daring plot.”
“What if I had a still more daring one? Did you ever hear of the golden
city of Manoa?”
Yeo laughed a grim but joyful laugh. “I have, sir; and so have the old
hands from the Pelican and the Jesus of Lubec, I doubt not.”
“So much the better;” and Amyas began to tell Cary all which he had
learned from the Spaniard, while Yeo capped every word thereof with
rumors and traditions of his own gathering. Cary sat half aghast as
the huge phantasmagoria unfolded itself before his dazzled eyes; and at
last--
“So that was why you wanted to burn the ship! Well, after all, nobody
needs me at home, and one less at table won't be missed. So you want to
play Cortez, eh?”
“We shall never need to play Cortez (who was not such a bad fellow after
all, Will), because we shall have no such cannibal fiends' tyranny to
rid the earth of, as he had. And I trust we shall fear God enough not to
play Pizarro.”
So the conversation dropped for the time, but none of them forgot it.
In that mountain-nook the party spent some ten days and more. Several of
the sick men died, some from the fever superadded to their wounds;
some, probably, from having been bled by the surgeon; the others mended
steadily, by the help of certain herbs which Yeo administered, much
to the disgust of the doctor, who, of course, wanted to bleed the poor
fellows all round, and was all but mutinous when Amyas stayed his hand.
In the meanwhile, by dint of daily trips to the ship, provisions
were plentiful enough,--beside the raccoons, monkeys, and other small
animals, which Yeo and the veterans of Hawkins's crew knew how to catch,
and the fruit and vegetables; above all, the delicious mountain cabbage
of the Areca palm, and the fresh milk of the cow-tree, which they
brought in daily, paying well thereby for the hospitality they received.
All day long a careful watch was kept among the branches of the mighty
ceiba-tree. And what a tree that was! The hugest English oak would have
seemed a stunted bush beside it. Borne up on roots, or rather walls,
of twisted board, some twelve feet high, between which the whole
crew, their ammunitions, and provisions, were housed roomily, rose
the enormous trunk full forty feet in girth, towering like some tall
lighthouse, smooth for a hundred feet, then crowned with boughs, each of
which was a stately tree, whose topmost twigs were full two hundred
and fifty feet from the ground. And yet it was easy for the sailors to
ascend; so many natural ropes had kind Nature lowered for their use, in
the smooth lianes which hung to the very earth, often without a knot or
leaf. Once in the tree, you were within a new world, suspended between
heaven and earth, and as Cary said, no wonder if, like Jack when he
climbed the magic bean-stalk, you had found a castle, a giant, and a few
acres of well-stocked park, packed away somewhere amid that labyrinth of
timber. Flower-gardens at least were there in plenty; for every limb was
covered with pendent cactuses, gorgeous orchises, and wild pines; and
while one-half the tree was clothed in rich foliage, the other half,
utterly leafless, bore on every twig brilliant yellow flowers, around
which humming-birds whirred all day long. Parrots peeped in and out of
every cranny, while, within the airy woodland, brilliant lizards basked
like living gems upon the bark, gaudy finches flitted and chirruped,
butterflies of every size and color hovered over the topmost twigs,
innumerable insects hummed from morn till eve; and when the sun went
down, tree-toads came out to snore and croak till dawn. There was more
life round that one tree than in a whole square mile of English soil.
And Amyas, as he lounged among the branches, felt at moments as if he
would be content to stay there forever, and feed his eyes and ears
with all its wonders--and then started sighing from his dream, as he
recollected that a few days must bring the foe upon them, and force
him to decide upon some scheme at which the bravest heart might falter
without shame. So there he sat (for he often took the scout's place
himself), looking out over the fantastic tropic forest at his feet,
and the flat mangrove-swamps below, and the white sheet of foam-flecked
blue; and yet no sail appeared; and the men, as their fear of fever
subsided, began to ask when they would go down and refit the ship, and
Amyas put them off as best he could, till one noon he saw slipping
along the shore from the westward, a large ship under easy sail, and
recognized in her, or thought he did so, the ship which they had passed
upon their way.
If it was she, she must have run past them to La Guayra in the night,
and have now returned, perhaps, to search for them along the coast.
She crept along slowly. He was in hopes that she might pass the river's
mouth: but no. She lay-to close to the shore; and, after a while, Amyas
saw two boats pull in from her, and vanish behind the mangroves.
Sliding down a liane, he told what he had seen. The men, tired of
inactivity, received the news with a shout of joy, and set to work to
make all ready for their guests. Four brass swivels, which they had
brought up, were mounted, fixed in logs, so as to command the path; the
musketeers and archers clustered round them with their tackle ready, and
half-a-dozen good marksmen volunteered into the cotton-tree with their
arquebuses, as a post whence “a man might have very pretty shooting.”
Prayers followed as a matter of course, and dinner as a matter of
course also; but two weary hours passed before there was any sign of the
Spaniards.
Presently a wreath of white smoke curled up from the swamp, and then the
report of a caliver. Then, amid the growls of the English, the Spanish
flag ran up above the trees, and floated--horrible to behold--at the
mast-head of the Rose. They were signalling the ship for more hands;
and, in effect, a third boat soon pushed off and vanished into the
forest.
Another hour, during which the men had thoroughly lost their temper, but
not their hearts, by waiting; and talked so loud, and strode up and down
so wildly, that Amyas had to warn them that there was no need to betray
themselves; that the Spaniards might not find them after all; that they
might pass the stockade close without seeing it; that, unless they hit
off the track at once, they would probably return to their ship for the
present; and exacted a promise from them that they would be perfectly
silent till he gave the word to fire.
Which wise commands had scarcely passed his lips, when, in the path
below, glanced the headpiece of a Spanish soldier, and then another and
another.
“Fools!” whispered Amyas to Cary; “they are coming up in single file,
rushing on their own death. Lie close, men!”
The path was so narrow that two could seldom come up abreast, and so
steep that the enemy had much ado to struggle and stumble upwards. The
men seemed half unwilling to proceed, and hung back more than once;
but Amyas could hear an authoritative voice behind, and presently there
emerged to the front, sword in hand, a figure at which Amyas and Cary
both started.
“Is it he?”
“Surely I know those legs among a thousand, though they are in armor.”
“It is my turn for him, now, Cary, remember! Silence, silence, men!”
The Spaniards seemed to feel that they were leading a forlorn hope. Don
Guzman (for there was little doubt that it was he) had much ado to get
them on at all.
“The fellows have heard how gently we handled the Guayra squadron,”
whispers Cary, “and have no wish to become fellow-martyrs with the
captain of the Madre Dolorosa.”
At last the Spaniards get up the steep slope to within forty yards of
the stockade, and pause, suspecting a trap, and puzzled by the complete
silence. Amyas leaps on the top of it, a white flag in his hand; but his
heart beats so fiercely at the sight of that hated figure, that he can
hardly get out the words--
“Don Guzman, the quarrel is between you and me, not between your men and
mine. I would have sent in a challenge to you at La Guayra, but you were
away; I challenge you now to single combat.”
“Lutheran dog, I have a halter for you, but no sword! As you served us
at Smerwick, we will serve you now. Pirate and ravisher, you and yours
shall share Oxenham's fate, as you have copied his crimes, and learn
what it is to set foot unbidden on the dominions of the king of Spain.”
“The devil take you and the king of Spain together!” shouts Amyas,
laughing loudly. “This ground belongs to him no more than it does to
me, but to the Queen Elizabeth, in whose name I have taken as lawful
possession of it as you ever did of Caracas. Fire, men! and God defend
the right!”
Both parties obeyed the order; Amyas dropped down behind the stockade
in time to let a caliver bullet whistle over his head; and the Spaniards
recoiled as the narrow face of the stockade burst into one blaze of
musketry and swivels, raking their long array from front to rear.
The front ranks fell over each other in heaps; the rear ones turned and
ran; overtaken, nevertheless, by the English bullets and arrows, which
tumbled them headlong down the steep path.
“Out, men, and charge them. See! the Don is running like the rest!” And
scrambling over the abattis, Amyas and about thirty followed them fast;
for he had hope of learning from some prisoner his brother's fate.
Amyas was unjust in his last words. Don Guzman, as if by miracle, had
been only slightly wounded; and seeing his men run, had rushed back and
tried to rally them, but was borne away by the fugitives.
However, the Spaniards were out of sight among the thick bushes before
the English could overtake them; and Amyas, afraid lest they should
rally and surround his small party, withdrew sorely against his will,
and found in the pathway fourteen Spaniards, but all dead. For one of
the wounded, with more courage than wisdom, had fired on the English
as he lay; and Amyas's men, whose blood was maddened both by their
desperate situation, and the frightful stories of the rescued
galley-slaves, had killed them all before their captain could stop them.
“Are you mad?” cries Amyas, as he strikes up one fellow's sword. “Will
you kill an Indian?”
And he drags out of the bushes an Indian lad of sixteen, who, slightly
wounded, is crawling away like a copper snake along the ground.
“The black vermin has sent an arrow through my leg; and poisoned too,
most like.”
“God grant not: but an Indian is worth his weight in gold to us now,”
said Amyas, tucking his prize under his arm like a bundle. The lad, as
soon as he saw there was no escape, resigned himself to his fate with
true Indian stoicism, was brought in, and treated kindly enough, but
refused to eat. For which, after much questioning, he gave as a reason,
that he would make them kill him at once; for fat him they should not;
and gradually gave them to understand that the English always (so
at least the Spaniards said) fatted and ate their prisoners like
the Caribs; and till he saw them go out and bury the bodies of the
Spaniards, nothing would persuade him that the corpses were not to be
cooked for supper.
However, kind words, kind looks, and the present of that inestimable
treasure--a knife, brought him to reason; and he told Amyas that he
belonged to a Spaniard who had an “encomienda” of Indians some fifteen
miles to the south-west; that he had fled from his master, and lived
by hunting for some months past; and having seen the ship where she lay
moored, and boarded her in hope of plunder, had been surprised therein
by the Spaniards, and forced by threats to go with them as a guide in
their search for the English. But now came a part of his story which
filled the soul of Amyas with delight. He was an Indian of the Llanos,
or great savannahs which lay to the southward beyond the mountains, and
had actually been upon the Orinoco. He had been stolen as a boy by some
Spaniards, who had gone down (as was the fashion of the Jesuits even
as late as 1790) for the pious purpose of converting the savages by the
simple process of catching, baptizing, and making servants of those
whom they could carry off, and murdering those who resisted their gentle
method of salvation. Did he know the way back again? Who could ask such
a question of an Indian? And the lad's black eyes flashed fire, as Amyas
offered him liberty and iron enough for a dozen Indians, if he would
lead them through the passes of the mountains, and southward to the
mighty river, where lay their golden hopes. Hernando de Serpa, Amyas
knew, had tried the same course, which was supposed to be about one
hundred and twenty leagues, and failed, being overthrown utterly by the
Wikiri Indians; but Amyas knew enough of the Spaniards' brutal method
of treating those Indians, to be pretty sure that they had brought that
catastrophe upon themselves, and that he might avoid it well enough by
that common justice and mercy toward the savages which he had learned
from his incomparable tutor, Francis Drake.
Now was the time to speak; and, assembling his men around him, Amyas
opened his whole heart, simply and manfully. This was their only hope
of safety. Some of them had murmured that they should perish like John
Oxenham's crew. This plan was rather the only way to avoid perishing
like them. Don Guzman would certainly return to seek them; and not only
he, but land-forces from St. Jago. Even if the stockade was not forced,
they would be soon starved out; why not move at once, ere the Spaniards
could return, and begin a blockade? As for taking St. Jago, it was
impossible. The treasure would all be safely hidden, and the town well
prepared to meet them. If they wanted gold and glory, they must seek it
elsewhere. Neither was there any use in marching along the coast, and
trying the ports: ships could outstrip them, and the country was already
warned. There was but this one chance; and on it Amyas, the first and
last time in his life, waxed eloquent, and set forth the glory of the
enterprise, the service to the queen, the salvation of heathens, and
the certainty that, if successful, they should win honor and wealth and
everlasting fame, beyond that of Cortez or Pizarro, till the men, sulky
at first, warmed every moment; and one old Pelican broke out with--
“Yes, sir! we didn't go round the world with you for naught; and watched
your works and ways, which was always those of a gentleman, as you
are--who spoke a word for a poor fellow when he was in a scrape, and saw
all you ought to see, and naught that you ought not. And we'll follow
you, sir, all alone to ourselves; and let those that know you worse
follow after when they're come to their right mind.”
Man after man capped this brave speech; the minority, who, if they liked
little to go, liked still less to be left behind, gave in their consent
perforce; and, to make a long story short, Amyas conquered, and the plan
was accepted.
“This,” said Amyas, “is indeed the proudest day of my life! I have lost
one brother, but I have gained fourscore. God do so to me and more also,
if I do not deal with you according to the trust which you have put in
me this day!”
We, I suppose, are to believe that we have a right to laugh at Amyas's
scheme as frantic and chimerical. It is easy to amuse ourselves with the
premises, after the conclusion has been found for us. We know, now, that
he was mistaken: but we have not discovered his mistake for ourselves,
and have no right to plume ourselves on other men's discoveries. Had we
lived in Amyas's days, we should have belonged either to the many wise
men who believed as he did, or to the many foolish men, who not only
sneered at the story of Manoa, but at a hundred other stories, which we
now know to be true. Columbus was laughed at: but he found a new world,
nevertheless. Cortez was laughed at: but he found Mexico. Pizarro: but
he found Peru. I ask any fair reader of those two charming books, Mr.
Prescott's Conquest of Mexico and his Conquest of Peru, whether the true
wonders in them described do not outdo all the false wonders of Manoa.
But what reason was there to think them false? One quarter, perhaps, of
America had been explored, and yet in that quarter two empires had been
already found, in a state of mechanical, military, and agricultural
civilization superior, in many things, to any nation of Europe. Was
it not most rational to suppose that in the remaining three-quarters
similar empires existed? If a second Mexico had been discovered in the
mountains of Parima, and a second Peru in those of Brazil, what right
would any man have had to wonder? As for the gold legends, nothing was
told of Manoa which had not been seen in Peru and Mexico by the bodily
eyes of men then living. Why should not the rocks of Guiana have been
as full of the precious metals (we do not know yet that they are not) as
the rocks of Peru and Mexico were known to be? Even the details of the
story, its standing on a lake, for instance, bore a probability with
them. Mexico actually stood in the centre of a lake--why should not
Manoa? The Peruvian worship centred round a sacred lake--why not that
of Manoa? Pizarro and Cortez, again, were led on to their desperate
enterprises by the sight of small quantities of gold among savages, who
told them of a civilized gold-country near at hand; and they found that
those savages spoke truth. Why was the unanimous report of the Carib
tribes of the Orinoco to be disbelieved, when they told a similar tale?
Sir Richard Schomburgk's admirable preface to Raleigh's Guiana proves,
surely, that the Indians themselves were deceived, as well as deceivers.
It was known, again, that vast quantities of the Peruvian treasure had
been concealed by the priests, and that members of the Inca family had
fled across the Andes, and held out against the Spaniards. Barely fifty
years had elapsed since then;--what more probable than that this remnant
of the Peruvian dynasty and treasure still existed? Even the story of
the Amazons, though it may serve Hume as a point for his ungenerous and
untruthful attempt to make Raleigh out either fool or villain, has
come from Spaniards, who had with their own eyes seen the Indian women
fighting by their husbands' sides, and from Indians, who asserted the
existence of an Amazonian tribe. What right had Amyas, or any man, to
disbelieve the story? The existence of the Amazons in ancient Asia, and
of their intercourse with Alexander the Great, was then an accredited
part of history, which it would have been gratuitous impertinence to
deny. And what if some stories connected these warlike women with the
Emperor of Manoa, and the capital itself? This generation ought surely
to be the last to laugh at such a story, at least as long as the
Amazonian guards of the King of Dahomey continue to outvie the men in
that relentless ferocity, with which they have subdued every neighboring
tribe, save the Christians of Abbeokuta. In this case, as in a hundred
more, fact not only outdoes, but justifies imagination; and Amyas spoke
common sense when he said to his men that day--
“Let fools laugh and stay at home. Wise men dare and win. Saul went to
look for his father's asses, and found a kingdom; and Columbus, my men,
was called a madman for only going to seek China, and never knew, they
say, until his dying day, that he had found a whole new world instead
of it. Find Manoa? God only, who made all things, knows what we may find
beside!”
So underneath that giant ceiba-tree, those valiant men, reduced by
battle and sickness to some eighty, swore a great oath, and kept that
oath like men. To search for the golden city for two full years to come,
whatever might befall; to stand to each other for weal or woe; to obey
their officers to the death; to murmur privately against no man, but
bring all complaints to a council of war; to use no profane oaths, but
serve God daily with prayer; to take by violence from no man, save from
their natural enemies the Spaniards; to be civil and merciful to all
savages, and chaste and courteous to all women; to bring all booty and
all food into the common stock, and observe to the utmost their faith
with the adventurers who had fitted out the ship; and finally, to march
at sunrise the next morning toward the south, trusting in God to be
their guide.
“It is a great oath, and a hard one,” said Brimblecombe; “but God will
give us strength to keep it.” And they knelt all together and received
the Holy Communion, and then rose to pack provisions and ammunition,
and lay down again to sleep and to dream that they were sailing home
up Torridge stream--as Cavendish, returning from round the world, did
actually sail home up Thames but five years afterwards--“with mariners
and soldiers clothed in silk, with sails of damask, and topsails of
cloth of gold, and the richest prize which ever was brought at one time
unto English shores.”
* * * * *
The Cross stands upright in the southern sky. It is the middle of the
night. Cary and Yeo glide silently up the hill and into the camp,
and whisper to Amyas that they have done the deed. The sleepers are
awakened, and the train sets forth.
Upward and southward ever: but whither, who can tell? They hardly think
of the whither; but go like sleep-walkers, shaken out of one land of
dreams, only to find themselves in another and stranger one. All around
is fantastic and unearthly; now each man starts as he sees the figures
of his fellows, clothed from head to foot in golden filigree; looks up,
and sees the yellow moonlight through the fronds of the huge tree-ferns
overhead, as through a cloud of glittering lace. Now they are hewing
their way through a thicket of enormous flags; now through bamboos forty
feet high; now they are stumbling over boulders, waist-deep in cushions
of club-moss; now they are struggling through shrubberies of heaths and
rhododendrons, and woolly incense-trees, where every leaf, as they brush
past, dashes some fresh scent into their faces, and
“The winds, with musky wing,
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and cassia's balmy smells.”
Now they open upon some craggy brow, from whence they can see far below
an ocean of soft cloud, whose silver billows, girdled by the mountain
sides, hide the lowland from their sight.
And from beneath the cloud strange voices rise; the screams of thousand
night-birds, and wild howls, which they used at first to fancy were the
cries of ravenous beasts, till they found them to proceed from nothing
fiercer than an ape. But what is that deeper note, like a series
of muffled explosions,--arquebuses fired within some subterranean
cavern,--the heavy pulse of which rolls up through the depths of the
unseen forest? They hear it now for the first time, but they will hear
it many a time again; and the Indian lad is hushed, and cowers close
to them, and then takes heart, as he looks upon their swords and
arquebuses; for that is the roar of the jaguar, “seeking his meat from
God.”
But what is that glare away to the northward? The yellow moon is ringed
with gay rainbows; but that light is far too red to be the reflection
of any beams of hers. Now through the cloud rises a column of black and
lurid smoke; the fog clears away right and left around it, and shows
beneath, a mighty fire.
The men look at each other with questioning eyes, each half suspecting,
and yet not daring to confess their own suspicions; and Amyas whispers
to Yeo--
“You took care to flood the powder?”
“Ay, ay, sir, and to unload the ordnance too. No use in making a noise
to tell the Spaniards our whereabouts.”
Yes; that glare rises from the good ship Rose. Amyas, like Cortez of
old, has burnt his ship, and retreat is now impossible. Forward into the
unknown abyss of the New World, and God be with them as they go!
The Indian knows a cunning path: it winds along the highest ridges of
the mountains; but the travelling is far more open and easy.
They have passed the head of a valley which leads down to St. Jago.
Beneath that long shining river of mist, which ends at the foot of
the great Silla, lies (so says the Indian lad) the rich capital of
Venezuela; and beyond, the gold-mines of Los Teques and Baruta, which
first attracted the founder Diego de Losada; and many a longing eye is
turned towards it as they pass the saddle at the valley head; but the
attempt is hopeless, they turn again to the left, and so down towards
the rancho, taking care (so the prudent Amyas had commanded) to break
down, after crossing, the frail rope bridge which spans each torrent and
ravine.
They are at the rancho long before daybreak, and have secured there,
not only fourteen mules, but eight or nine Indians stolen from off
the Llanos, like their guide, who are glad enough to escape from their
tyrants by taking service with them. And now southward and away, with
lightened shoulders and hearts; for they are all but safe from pursuit.
The broken bridges prevent the news of their raid reaching St. Jago
until nightfall; and in the meanwhile, Don Guzman returns to the river
mouth the next day to find the ship a blackened wreck, and the camp
empty; follows their trail over the hills till he is stopped by a broken
bridge; surmounts that difficulty, and meets a second; his men are
worn out with heat, and a little afraid of stumbling on the heretic
desperadoes, and he returns by land to St. Jago; and when he arrives
there, has news from home which gives him other things to think of than
following those mad Englishmen, who have vanished into the wilderness.
“What need, after all, to follow them?” asked the Spaniards of each
other. “Blinded by the devil, whom they serve, they rush on in search of
certain death, as many a larger company has before them, and they will
find it, and will trouble La Guayra no more forever.” “Lutheran dogs and
enemies of God,” said Don Guzman to his soldiers, “they will leave their
bones to whiten on the Llanos, as may every heretic who sets foot on
Spanish soil!”
Will they do so, Don Guzman? Or wilt thou and Amyas meet again upon a
mightier battlefield, to learn a lesson which neither of you yet has
learned?