They were not far north of the Canary Islands, when the sky, which for
several days had been overcast, grew very threatening, and the _Mere
Honour_, the _Cygnet_, the _Marigold_, and the _Star_ made ready to meet
what fury the Lord should be pleased to loose upon them. It came, a
maniac unchained, and scattered the ships. Darkness accompanied it, and
the sea wrinkled beneath its feet. The ships went here and went there;
throughout the night they burned lights, and fired many great pieces of
ordnance,--not to prevail against their enemy, but to say each to the
other: "Here am I, my sister! Go not too far, come not too near!" Their
voices were as whispers to the shouting of their foe; beneath the
rolling thunders the sound of cannon and culverin were of less account
than the grating of pebbles in a furious surge.
Day came and the storm continued, but with night the wind fell and
quiet possessed the deep. The sea subsided, and just before dawn the
clouds broke, showing a waning moon. Below it suddenly sprang out two
lights, one above the other, and to the _Cygnet_, safe, though with her
plumage sadly ruffled, came the sound of a gun twice fired.
The darkness faded, the gray light strengthened, and showed to the
watchers upon the _Cygnet's_ decks the ship in distress. It was Baldry's
ship, the little _Star_. She lay rolling heavily in the heavy sea, her
masts gone, her boats swept away, her poop low in the water, her
beak-head high, sinking by the stern. Her lights yet burned, ghastly in
the dawning; her people, a black swarm upon her forecastle, lay
clinging, devouring with their eyes the _Cygnet's_ boats coming for
their deliverance across the gray waste. Of the _Mere Honour_ and the
_Marigold_ nothing was to be seen.
The swarm descended into the boats, and all pushed off from the doomed
ship save a single craft, less crowded than the others, which waited,
its occupants gesticulating angry dismay, for the one man who had not
left the _Star_. He stood erect upon her bowsprit, a dark figure
outlined against the livid sky.
[Illustration: "IT WAS BALDRY'S SHIP, THE LITTLE _STAR_"]
The watchers upon the _Cygnet_, from Captain to least powder-boy, drew
quick breath.
"Ah, sirs, he loved the _Star_ like a woman!" ejaculated Thynne the
master, and, "He swore terribly, but he was a mighty man!" testified the
chief gunner. Robin-a-dale swung himself to and fro in an ecstasy of
terror. "He rides--he rides so high!" he shrilled. "Higher than the
gallows-tree! And he stands so quiet while he rides!"
Upon the poop young Sedley, standing beside his Captain, veiled his eyes
with his hand; then, ashamed of his weakness, gazed steadfastly at the
lifted figure. Arden, drumming with his fingers upon the rail, looked
sidewise at Sir Mortimer Ferne.
"It seems that your quarrel will have to wait some other meeting-place
than England," he said. "Perhaps the laws of that _terra incognita_ to
which he goes forbid the duello."
"He will not leave our company yet awhile," answered Ferne, with
calmness. "As I thought--."
The dark figure had dropped from the bowsprit of the _Star_ into the
waiting boat, which at once put after its fellows. Behind the deserted
ship suddenly streamed out a red banner of the dawn; stark and black
against the color, lonely in the path that must be trod, she awaited her
end. To the seafaring men who watched her she was as human as
themselves--a ship dying alone.
"All that a man hath will he give for his life," quoth Arden, somewhat
grimly, for he was no lover of Baldry, and he was now ashamed of the
emotion he had shown.
"To go down with her," said Ferne, slowly,--"that had been the act of a
madman. And if to live is a thing less fine than would have been that
madness, yet--"
He broke off, and turning from the _Star_, now very near her death,
swept with his gaze the billowing ocean. "I would we might see the _Mere
Honour_ and the _Marigold_," he said, impatiently. "What is lost is
lost, and Captain Baldry as well as we must stand this crippling of our
enterprise. But the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_ are of more account
than the _Star_."
Out of a cluster of mariners and landsmen rose Robin-a-dale's shrill
cry: "She's going down, down, down! Oh, the white figurehead looks no
more into the sea--it turns its face to the sky! Down, down, the _Star_
has gone down!"
A silence fell upon the decks of the _Cygnet_ and upon the overfreighted
boats laboring towards her. Overhead mast and spar creaked and the low
wind sang in the rigging, but the spirit of man was awed within him. A
ship was lost, and the sea was lonely beneath the crimson dawn. Where
were the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_, and was all their adventure
but a mirage and a cheat? Far away was home, and far away the Indies,
and the _Cygnet_ was a little feather tossed between red sky and
heaving ocean.
The thought did not last. As the crowded boats drew alongside, up sprang
the sun, cheering and warming, and at the Captain's command the
musicians of the _Cygnet_ began to play, as at the setting of the watch,
a psalm of thanksgiving. Sailors and volunteers, there had been but
sixty men aboard the _Star_, and all were safe. As they clambered over
the side, a cheer went up from their comrades of the _Cygnet_.
The boat that carried Baldry came last, and that adventurer was the
latest to set foot upon the _Cygnet's_ deck. Her Captain met him with
bared head and outstretched hand.
"We grieve with you, sir, for the loss of the _Star_," he said, gravely
and courteously. "We thank God that no brave man went down with her. The
_Cygnet_ gives you welcome, sir."
The man to whom he spoke ignored alike words and extended hand. A
towering figure, breathing bitter anger at this spite of Fortune, he
turned where he stood and gazed upon the ocean that had swallowed up his
ship. Uncouth of nature, given to boasting, a foster-child of Violence
and Envy, he yet had qualities which had borne him upward and onward
from mean beginnings to where on yesterday he had stood, owner and
Captain of the _Star_, leader of picked men, sea-dog and adventurer as
famed for daredevil courage and boundless endurance as for his
braggadocio vein and sullen temper. Now the _Star_ that he had loved was
at the bottom of the sea; his men, a handful beside the _Cygnet's_
force, must give obedience to her officers; and he himself,--what was he
more than a volunteer aboard his enemy's ship? Captain Robert Baldry,
grinding his teeth, found the situation intolerable.
Sir Mortimer Ferne, biting his lip in a sudden revulsion of feeling, was
of much the same opinion. But that he would follow after courtesy was as
certain as that Baldry would pursue his own will and impulse. Therefore
he spoke again, though scarce as cordially as before:
"We will shape our course for Teneriffe, where (I pray to God) we may
find the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_. If it please Captain Baldry
to then remove into the _Mere Honour_, I make no doubt that the Admiral
will welcome so notable a recruit. In the mean time your men shall be
cared for, and you yourself will command me, sir, in all things that
concern your welfare."
Baldry shot him a look. "I am no maker of pretty speeches," he said.
"You have me in irons. Pray you, show me some dungeon and give me leave
to be alone."
Young Sedley, hotly indignant, muttered something, that was echoed by
the little throng of gentlemen adventurers sailing with Sir Mortimer
Ferne. Arden, leaning against the mast, coolly observant of all, began
to whistle,
"'Of honey and of gall in love there is store:
The honey is much, but the gall is more,'"
thereby bringing upon himself one of Baldry's black glances.
"Lieutenant Sedley," ordered Ferne, sharply, "you will lodge this
gentleman in the cabin next mine own, seeing that he hath all needful
entertainment. Sir, I do expect your company at dinner."
He bowed, then stood at his full height, while Baldry sufficiently
bethought himself to in some sort return the salute, even to give
grudging, half--insolent acknowledgment of the debt he owed the
_Cygnet_. At last he went below--to refuse the bread and meat, but to
drink deep of the _aqua vita_ which Sedley stiffly offered; then to lock
himself in his cabin, bite his nails with rage, and finally, when he had
stared at the sea for a long time, to sink his head into his hands and
weep a man's tears for irrevocable loss.
Of his fellow adventurers whom he left upon the poop, only Mortimer
Ferne held his tongue from blame of his insupportable temper, or
refrained from stories of the _Star's_ exploits. The _Cygnet_ was under
way, the wind favorable, her white and swelling canvas like clouds
against a bright-blue sky, the dolphins playing about her rushing prow,
where a golden lady forever kept her eyes upon the deep. In the wind,
timber and cordage creaked and sang, while from waist and main-deck came
a cheerful sound of men at work repairing what damage the storm had
wrought. Thynne the master gave orders in his rumbling bass, then the
drum beat for morning service, and, after the godly fashion of the time,
there poured from the forecastle, to worship the Lord, mariners and
landsmen, gunners, harquebusiers, crossbow and pike men, cabin and
powder boys, cook, chirurgeon, and carpenter--all the varied force of
that floating castle destined to be dashed like a battering-ram against
the power of Spain. The Captain of them all, with his gentlemen and
officers about him, paused a moment before moving to his accustomed
place, and looked upon his ship from stem to stern, from the thronged
decks to the topmost pennant flaunting the sunshine. He found it good,
and the salt of life was strong in his nostrils. Inwardly he prayed for
the safety of the _Mere Honour_, and the _Marigold_, but that picture of
the sinking _Star_ he dismissed as far as might be from his mind. She
had been but a small ship--notorious indeed for fights against great
odds, for sheer bravado and hairbreadth escapes, but still a small ship,
and not to be compared with the _Cygnet_. No life had been forfeited,
and Captain Robert Baldry must even digest as best he might his private
loss and discomfiture. If, as he walked to his place of honor, and as he
stood with English gentlemen about him, with English sailors and
soldiers ranged before him giving thanks for deliverance from danger,
the Captain of the _Cygnet_ held too high his head; if he at that moment
looked upon his life with too conscious a pride, knew too well the
difference between himself, steadfast helmsman of all his being, and
that untutored nature which drove another from rock to shoal, from shoal
to quicksand--yet that knowledge, detestable to all the gods, dragged at
his soul but for a moment. He bent his head and prayed for the missing
ships, and most heartily for John Nevil, his Admiral, whom he loved;
then for Damaris Sedley that she be kept in health and joyousness of
mind; and lastly, believing that he but plead for the success of an
English expedition against Spain and Antichrist, he prayed for gold and
power, a sovereign's gratitude and man's acclaim.
Three days later they came to Teneriffe, and to their great rejoicing
found there the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_. The Admiral signalled
a council; and Ferne, taking with him Giles Arden, Sedley, and the
Captain of the sunken _Star_, went aboard the _Mere Honour_, where he
was shortly joined by Baptist Manwood from the _Marigold_, with his
lieutenants Wynch and Paget. In his state-cabin, when he had given his
Captains welcome, the Admiral sat at table with his wine before him and
heard how had fared the _Cygnet_ and the _Marigold_, then listened to
Baldry's curt recital of the _Star's_ ill destinies. The story ended, he
gave his meed of grave sympathy to the man whose whole estate had been
that sunken ship. Baldry sat silent, fingering, as was his continual
trick, the hilt of his great Andrew Ferrara. But when the Admiral, with
his slow, deliberate courtesy, went on to propose that for this
adventure Captain Baldry cast his lot with the _Mere Honour_, he
listened, then gave unexpected check.
"I' faith, his berth upon the _Cygnet_ liked him well enough, and though
he thanked the Admiral, what reason for changing it? In fine, he should
not budge, unless, indeed, Sir Mortimer Ferne--" He turned himself
squarely so as to face the Captain of the _Cygnet_.
The latter, in the instant that passed before he made any answer to
Baldry's challenging look, saw once again that vision of the other
morning--the flare of dawn, and high against it one desperate figure, a
man just balancing if to keep his life or no, seeing that for the thing
he loved there was no rescue. Say that the doomed ship had been the
_Cygnet_--would Mortimer Ferne have so cheapened grief, have grown so
bitter, be so ready to eat his heart out with envy and despite? Perhaps
not; and yet, who knew? The _Cygnet_ was there, visible through the port
windows, lifting against serenest skies her proud bulk, her castellated
poop and forecastle, her tall masts and streaming pennants. The _Star_
was down below, a hundred leagues from any lover, and the sea was deep
upon her, and her guns were silent and her decks untrodden.... He was
wearied of Baldry's company, impatient of his mad temper and peasant
breeding, very sure that he chose, open-eyed, to torment himself from
Teneriffe to America with the sight of a prospering foe merely that that
foe might feel a nettle in his unwilling grasp. Yet, so challenged, when
had passed that moment, he met Baldry's gloomy eyes, and again assured
the adventurer that the presence of so brave a man and redoubted fighter
could but do honor to the _Cygnet_.
His words were all that courtesy could desire: if tone and manner were
of the coldest, yet Baldry, not being sensitive, and having gained his
point, could afford to let that pass. He turned to the Admiral with a
short laugh.
"You see, sir, we are yoke-brothers--Sir Mortimer Ferne and I,--though
whether God or the devil hath joined us!... Well, the two of us may send
some Spanish souls to hell!"
With his yoke-brother, Arden, and Sedley he returned to the _Cygnet_,
and that evening at supper, having drunken much sack, began to loudly
vaunt the deeds of the drowned _Star_, magnifying her into a being
sentient and heroical, and darkly-wishing that the luck of the
expedition be not gone with her to the bottom of the sea.
"Luck!" exclaimed Ferne at last, haughtily. "I hate the word. Your
luck--my luck--the luck of this our enterprise! It is a craven word,
overmuch upon the lips of Christian gentlemen."
"I was not born a gentleman," said Baldry, playing with his knife. "You
know that, Sir Mortimer Ferne."
"I'll swear you've taken out no patent since," muttered Arden, whereat
his neighbor laughed aloud, and Baldry, pushing back his stool, glared
at each in turn.
"I know that a man's will, and not a college of heralds, makes him what
he is," said Ferne. "I have known churls in honorable houses and true
knights in the common camp. And I submit not my destinies to that
gamester Luck: as I deserve and as God wills, so run my race!"
"Oh, every man of us knows our Captain's deserving!" quoth Baldry.
"Well, gentlemen, on that occasion of which I was speaking, the devil's
own luck being with me, I sunk both the carrack and the galley, and
headed the _Star_ for the castle of Paria."
On went the wondrous tale, with no further interruption from Sir
Mortimer, who sat at the head of the table, playing the part of host to
Captain Robert Baldry, listening with cold patience to the adventurer's
rhodomontade. When spurred by wine there was wont to awaken in Baldry a
certain mordant humor, a rough wit, making straight for the mark and
clanging harshly against an adversary's shield, a lurid fancy dully
illuminating the subject he had in hand. The wild story that he was
telling caught the attention of the more thoughtless sort at table; they
leaned forward, encouraging him from flight to flight, laughing at each
sally of boatswain's wit, ejaculating admiration when the _Star_ and her
Captain fairly left the realm of the natural. One splendid lie followed
another, until Baldry was caught by his own words, and saw himself thus,
and thus, and thus!--a sea-dog confessed, a gatherer of riches, a dealer
of death from the poop of the _Star_! In his mind's eye the lost bark
swelled to a phantom ship, gigantic, terrible, wrapped with the mist of
the sea; while he himself--ah! he himself--
"He struck the mainmast with his hand,
The foremast with his knee--"
All that he had been and all that he had done, if man were only
something more than man, if devil's luck and devil's power would come to
his whistle, if the seed of his nature could defy the iron stricture of
the flesh, reaching its height, shooting up into a terrible
upas-tree--so for the moment Baldry saw himself. Into his voice came a
deep and sonorous note, his black eyes glowed; he began to gesture with
his hand, stately as a Spaniard. And then, chancing to glance towards
the head of the board, he met the eyes of the man who sat there, his
Captain now, whom he must follow! What might he read in their depths?
Half-scornful amusement, perhaps, and the contempt of the man who has
done what man may do for the yoke-fellow who habitually made claim to
supernatural prowess; in addition to the scholar's condemnation of
blatant ignorance, the courtier's dislike of unmannerliness, the
soldier's scorn of unproved deeds, athwart all the philosophic smile!
Baldry, flushing darkly, hated with all his wild might, for that he
chose to hate, the man who sat so quietly there, who held with so much
ease the knowledge that by right of much beside his commission he was
leader of every man within those floating walls. The Captain of the
_Star_ struck the table with his hand.
"Ah, I had good help that time! My brother sailed with me--Thomas
Baldry, that was master of the _Speedwell_ that went down at Fayal in
the Azores.... Didst ever see a ghost, Sir Mortimer Ferne?"
"No," answered Ferne, curtly.
"Then the dead come not to haunt us," said Baldry. "I would have sworn a
many had passed before your eyes. Now had I been Thomas Baldry I would
have won back."
"That also?" demanded Sir Mortimer. His tone was of simple wonder, and
there went round the board a laugh for Baldry's boasting. That
adventurer started to his feet, his eyes, that were black, deep-set, and
very bright, fixed upon Ferne.
"That also," he answered. "An I should die before our swords cross, that
also!"
He turned and left the cabin.
"Now," said Arden, as his heavy footsteps died away, "I had rather
gather snow for the Grand Turk than rubies with some I wot of!"
Henry Sedley, a hot red in his cheek, and his dark hair thrown back,
turned from staring after the retreating figure. "If I send him my
cartel, Sir Mortimer, wilt put me in irons?"
"Ay, that will I," said Ferne, calmly. "Word and deed he but doth after
his kind. Well, let him go. For his words, that a man's deeds do haunt
him, rising like shadows across his path, I believe full well--but for
me the master of the _Speedwell_ makes no stirring.... Take thy lute,
Henry Sedley, and sing to us, giving honey after gall! Sing to me of
other things than war."
As he spoke he moved to the stern windows, took his seat upon the bench
beneath, and leaning on his arm, looked out upon the low red sun and the
darkening ocean.
"'Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread:
For love is dead:
Love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain--'"
sang Sedley with throbbing sweetness, depth of melancholy passion. The
listener's spirit left its chafing, left pride and disdain, and drifted
on that melodious tide to far heavens.
"'Weep, neighbors, weep; do you not hear it said
That Love is dead?
His death-bed peacock's folly;
His winding sheet is shame;
His will false-seeming wholly;
His sole executor blame!'"
rang Sedley's splendid voice. The song ended; the sun sank; on came the
invader night. Ferne took the lute and slowly swept its strings.
"How much, how little of it all is peacock's folly," he said; "who
knoweth? Life and Living, Love and Hate, and Honor the bubble, and Shame
the Nessus-robe, and Death, which, when all's done, may have no answer
to the riddle!--Where is the fixed star, and who knoweth depth from
shallow, or himself, or anything?" He struck the lute again, drawing
from it a lingering and mournful note.
"Now out upon the man who brought melancholy into fashion!" ejaculated
Arden. "In danger the blithest soul alive, when all is well you do ask
yourself too many questions! I'll go companion with Robert Baldry, who
keeps no fashions save of Mars's devising."
"Why, I am not sad," said Ferne, rousing himself. "Come, I'll dice with
thee for fifty ducats and a gold jewel--to be paid from the first
ship we take!"
On sailed the ships through tranquil seas, until many days had fallen
into their wake, slipping by them like painted clouds of floating
seaweed or silver-finned vagrants of the deep. Great calms brooded upon
the water, and the sails fell idle, flag and pennant drooped; then the
trade-wind blew, and the white ships drove on. They drove into the blue
distance, towards unknown ports--known only in that they would surely
prove themselves Ports of All Peril. At night the sea burned; a field of
gold it ran to horizons jewelled with richer stars than shone at home.
Above them, in the vault of heaven, hung the Great Ship, blazed the
Southern Cross. Every hour saw the flight of meteors, and their trains,
golden argosies of the sky, faded slowly from the dark-blue depths. When
the moon arose she was ringed with colors, but the men who gazed upon
her said not, "Every hue of the rainbow is there." They said, "See the
red gold, the pearls and the emeralds!" The night died suddenly and the
day was upon them, an aureate god, lavish of splendor. They hailed him
with music; as they pulled and hauled, the seamen sang. Other winds than
those of heaven drove them on. High purpose, love of country, religious
ecstasy, chivalrous devotion, greed of gain, lust of aggrandizement,
lust of power, mad ambitions, ruthless intents--by how strong a current,
here crystal clear, there thick and denied, were they swept towards
their appointed haven! In cruelty and lust, in the faith of little
children and the courage of old demi-gods, they went like homing
pigeons; and not a soul, from him who gave command to him who, far
aloft, looked out upon the deep, recked or cared that another age would
call him pirate or corsair, raising brow and shoulder over the morality
of his deeds.
In the realms which they were entering, Truth, shattered into a thousand
gleaming fragments, might be held in part, but never wholly. There man's
quarry was the false Florimel, and she lured him on and he saw with
magically anointed eyes. Too suddenly awakened, the imagination of the
time was reeling; its sap ran too fast; wonders of the outer,
revelations of the inner, universe crowded too swiftly; the heady wine
made now gods, now fools of men. The white light was not for the heirs
of that age, nor yet the golden mean. Wonders happened, that they knew,
and so like children they looked for strange chances. There was no
miracle at which their faith would balk, no illusion whose cobweb tissue
they cared to tear away. Give but a grain whereon to build, a phenomenon
before which started back, amazed and daunted, the knowledge of the age,
and forthwith a mighty imagination leaped upon it, claimed it for its
own. There had been but a grain of sand, an inexplicable fact--lo! now,
a rounded pearl shot with all the hues of the morning, a miracle of
grace or an evidence of diabolic power, to doubt which was heresy!
Adventurers to the Spanish Main believed in devil-haunted seas, in
flying islands, in a nation of men whose eyes were set in their
shoulders, and of women who cut off the right breast and slew every male
child. They believed in a hidden city, from end to end a three days'
march, where gold-dust thickened the air, and an Inca drank with his
nobles in a garden whose plants waved not in the wind, whose flowers
drooped not, whose birds never stirred upon the bough, for all alike
were made of gold. They believed in a fair fountain, hard indeed to
find, but of such efficacy that the graybeard who dipped in its shining
waters stepped forth a youth upon ever-vernal banks.
So with these who like an arrow now clave the blue to the point of
danger. In this strange half of the world where nature's juggling hand
dealt now in supernal beauty, now in horror without a name, how might
they, puppets of their age, hold an even balance, know the mirage, know
the truth? Inextricably mingled were the threads of their own being, and
none could tell warp from woof, or guess the pattern that was weaving or
stay the flying shuttle. What if upon the material scroll unrolling
before them God had chosen to write strange characters? Was not the
parchment His, and how might man question that moving finger?
One day they discerned an island, fair and clear against the
horizon--undoubtedly there, although no chart made mention of it. All
saw the island; but when one man cried out at the amazing height of its
snowy peak another laughed him to scorn, declaring the peak a cloud, and
spoke of sand-dunes topped with low bushes. A third clamored of a fair
white city, an evident harbor, and the masts of great ships; a fourth,
every whit as positive, stood out for unbroken forests and surf upon a
lonely reef. While they contended, the island vanished. Then they knew
that they had seen St. Brandon's Isle, and in his prayer at the setting
of the watch the chaplain made mention of the matter. On a night when
all the sea was phosphorescent, Thynne the master saw in the wake of the
_Cygnet_ a horned spirit, very black and ugly, leaping from one fiery
ripple to another, but when he called on Christ's name, rushing madly
away, full tilt into the setting moon. Again, Ferne and young Sedley,
pacing the poop beneath a sky of starry splendor, and falling silent
after talk that had travelled from Petrarch and Ariosto to that _Faerie
Queene_ which Edmund Spenser was writing, heard a faint sweet singing
far across the deep. "Hark!" breathed Sedley. "The strange sweet
sound.... Surely mermaiden singing!"
"I know not," replied Ferne, his hands upon the railing. "Perchance 'tis
so. They say they are fair women.... The sound is gone. I would I might
hear thy sister singing."
"How silver and how solemn is the sky!" said his companion. "Perhaps it
was the echo of some heavenly strain. There goeth a great star! They say
that the fall of such stars is portentous, speaking to men of doom."
His Captain laughed. "Hast added so much astrology to thy store of
learning? Now, good-wife Atropos may cut her thread by the light of a
comet; but when the comet has flared away and the shearer returned to
her place, then in the deep darkness, where even the stars shine not,
the shorn thread may feel God's touch, may know it hath yet its uses....
How all the sea grows phosphorescent! and the stars do fall so thickly
that there may be men a-dying. Well, before long there will be other
giving of swords to Death!"
In the silence which followed his words, lightly spoken as they were,
young Sedley, who indeed owed very much to Mortimer Ferne, laid
impulsively his hand upon his Captain's hand. "On the night you give
your sword to Death, how great a star shall fall! An I go first, I shall
know when the trumpet sounds for your coming."
"When I give my sword to Death," said Ferne, absently. "Ay, lad, when I
give my sword to Death.... There again, do you not hear the singing? It
is the wind, I think, and not the people of the sea. It hath a mocking
sound.... When I give my sword to Death."
From the tops above them fell a voice of Stentor. "Sail ho! sail ho!"
Upon which they gave for the remainder of the tropic night small
attention to aught but warlike matters. With the morning the three ships
counted to the general gain the downright sinking of a small fleet from
Hispaniola, and the taking therefrom porcelain, many bales of rich silk
and rosaries of gold beads, a balass-ruby, twenty wedges of silver, and
a chest well lined with ducats.
With this treasure to hark them forward, on and on sailed the ships; and
now land birds came to them, and now they passed, floating upon the
water, the leafy branch of a strange tree with red, cuplike blossoms.
Full--sailed upon the quiet sea they held their course, while the men
upon them, eager-eyed and keen, watched for land and for the galleons of
Spain. Content with the taking of the _Star_, calamity now kept away
from the ships. None upon them died, few were sick, master and captains
were kind, mariners and landsmen trusted in their tried might and
wealthy promises, and all the gales of heaven prospered the voyage.
On the last day of July, seven weeks from that leave-taking in the
tavern of the Triple Tun, they came to the rocky island of Tobago;
watered there; then, driven by the constant wind, went on until faint
upon the horizon rose the coast of the mainland.
The mountains of Maccanoa in the island of Margarita loomed before them;
they passed Coche, and on a night when light clouds obscured the moon
approached the pearl islet of Cubagua. With the dawn the _Mere Honour_
and the _Marigold_ entered the harbor of New Cadiz, and began to bombard
that much-decayed town of the pearl-fishers. The _Cygnet_ kept on to the
slight settlement of La Rancheria, and met, emerging in hot haste from
a little bay of blue crystal, the galleon _San José_, one thousand tons,
commanded by Antonio de Castro, very richly laden, sailing from Puerto
Bello to Santo Domingo, and carrying, moreover, a company of soldiers
from Nueva Cordoba on the mainland to Pampatar in Margarita.