SENTENCED TO DEATH.
I lay within a darkened cell in the prison which formed part of the
ramparts of Lugo. Lay there, a man doomed to death; sentenced to be
burnt at the stake, as a spy taken in a country at war with my own. To
be burnt at the stake on some Sunday morning, because that day was
always a day of festival, because all Lugo would be there to witness,
because from all the country round the peasants would come in to see
the Englishman expire in the flames.
Doomed to death!
Yet not alone. By my side--his right hand nailed to an upright plank!
(so the sentence had run) to which our bodies were to be fastened by
chains--was to stand that other man, Gramont--the pirate and buccaneer
who, as Eaton had testified, had been called the Shark of the Indies.
I had been tried first by the Alcáide of Lugo and the principal
Regidór, assisted by the Bishop of the province, an extremely old
man--and had been soon disposed of. Evidence was forthcoming--there
was plenty of it in Lugo in the shape of French sea-captains and
sailors from the Spanish galleons--that I had fought with the English
at Vigo; also, that I had slain men betwixt the border and here. And,
again, there was the evidence of Eaton that I had travelled from
Rotterdam as the undoubted bearer of the news that the galleons were
approaching Spain.
Also, not content with all this, I was on my way through the land,
gleaning evidence of all that was taking place within it, so as to
furnish, as none could otherwise suppose, information to my countrymen
when I should reach them.
No need for my trial to be spun out; one alone of all these facts was
enough to condemn me, and, after a whispered conference between the
Alcáide, the Regidór and the Bishop, the latter delivered the above
sentence, his voice almost inaudible because of his great age, yet
strong enough for the purpose--powerful enough to reach my ears and
those of the small crowd within the court house; that was sufficient.
So I knew my fate, and knew, too, that it was useless to say aught, to
utter one word. I had lost the game; the stakes would have to be paid
in full.
Then began the unravelling of the history of him who stood beside
me--swarthy, contemptuous--his eyes glancing around that court,
alighting at one moment on the withered form and cadaverous face of
the Bishop, at another on the figure of the Regidór, a moment later on
the Alcáide, a younger, well favoured man, whom I guessed a soldier in
the past or present.
Gramont's condemnation was assured by the part he had played on that
night when he assisted us on the road 'twixt Chantada and Lugo. That
alone would have forfeited his life amidst these Spaniards; yet,
perhaps from curiosity, perhaps because even they doubted whether so
summary an execution, and one so horrible, was merited by that night's
work, they decided to hear the denouncement of Eaton, the story of
Gramont's past life. They bade the former speak, tell all.
And what a story it was he told!
Sitting in a chair near the Bishop, looking nearly as old as that old
man himself, he poured out horror after horror; branded the man by my
side as one too steeped in cruelty to be allowed to live another hour,
if what he said was, indeed, true.
Told how this man had ravaged all the Spanish main--had besieged
Martinique, Nombre de Diós, Campeachy, and scores of other places,
shedding blood like water everywhere--had sunk and plundered ships;
burnt them and the men in them--burnt them alive; gave instances, too,
of cruelty extreme.
"I have known him to tie dead and living together and fling them to
the sharks," he said--"dead and living _Spaniards!_ Also hang them to
the bowsprit by a cord round their waists, a knife placed in one hand,
so that, while freedom was theirs if they chose to sever the rope, a
worse death awaited them when they fell into the water--a death from
sharks, from alligators! Oh, sir, oh, reverend prelate," he continued,
stretching out his hands toward the old, almost blind man, "I have
seen worse than this. Once he and his followers besieged a monastery
full of holy fathers, governed by a bishop saintly as yourself; and
they defended it vigorously, bravely--would have driven this tiger
back but for one thing."
"What?" asked the younger of the judges, the Alcáide. And I noticed
that now, as all through this testifying of Eaton, that Alcáide seemed
less disposed to accept his evidence than the others were. Later on I
knew the reason that so urged him.
"What?" he said.
"Some of the priests had already fallen into his hands and the hands
of his crew. Then they it was whom he forced to advance first against
the monastery--to fire the brass cannon they had brought with them
against their brethren; forced them to do so, so that those brethren
should not know them, should shoot them down first.
"Also," said the Alcáide, "it might have been to prevent their firing
at all. In open war a great commander would, perhaps, have availed
himself of such a cunning ruse."
Then I knew for sure this man had been, or was, a soldier.
More, much more, was told by Eaton--'tis best I set down nothing
further--then the end came, The sentence was passed; he, too, was
doomed to die, by my side, on the Sunday that should later be
appointed.
"Break off," the Bishop said. "Justice will be done." Whereupon he
glanced down at his papers--I wondering that he could see them with
those purblind eyes--while, pausing in his attempt to rise, he "Yet
there was another. The youth"--and here I pricked up my ears, for
of Juan I had heard nothing since taken to the prison in the
ramparts--"the youth who fought by the side of this man--this
spy--this _Inglés_. How comes it he is not before us?"
For a moment, as it seemed to me, the Alcáide hesitated, then he said:
"He is not well. He was hurt in the _mêlée_; he cannot be brought
before us for some days. Later, if necessary, he can be tried."
Although I had drawn as far away from Gramont as I could since I had
learned his true nature and character and the bloodshed of which he
had been guilty, I could not prevent myself from letting my eyes fall
on him now; and I saw that for the first time there was a look of
eagerness in his eyes, that he was watching the younger of those
judges, watching as though filled with an intensity of feeling as to
what might next be said.
"If necessary, Capitan Morales," the Regidór said, speaking now for
almost the first time, "if necessary! By all reports he is as bad as
his elder comrades. A wild cat, all say. Why should it not be
necessary?"
"He is very young," the Alcáide replied, undoubtedly confused, "very
young; also he--he--is not well. I should do wrong to produce him
before you in the state he is. As governor I must use my discretion,"
and he made a feint of being engaged with the papers before him.
Then I felt sure that he, too, knew Juan's secret, as I now did.
And I wondered to what advantage he might put that secret on behalf of
Juan. Wondered while I felt glad at the thought which had now risen to
my mind--the thought that, at last, Juan might be saved from our doom.
Again the Bishop said at this time--doubtless his worn old frame was
fatigued by the morning's work:
"Let us rise. There is no more to be done, since--since--this youth
cannot yet be brought before us," and once more he placed his white,
shrunken hands upon the desk in front of him to obtain the necessary
aid to quitting his seat.
But now the governor, whose name was Morales, made a motion of
dissent, accompanying it, however, by soft, respectful words.
"Nay, most reverend father, nay," he said, "not yet, if you will
graciously permit that we continue our examination farther," while as
he spoke the Bishop sank back again with a wearied look of assent. "I
am not satisfied."
"Not satisfied," the old man whispered, while the Regidór also echoed
his words, though in far louder tones. "What is it you are not
satisfied with, Capitan Morales?"
"With that man's testimony," he exclaimed, pointing his finger over
his desk at Eaton. "In no manner of way satisfied," and as he spoke it
almost seemed--I should have believed it to be so in any other country
but Spain, a land of notorious injustice and love of cruelty for the
sake of cruelty--as if the crowd in the court somewhat agreed with
him. Also, even as he spoke, a voice shouted from the midst of those
forming it:
"Ay! How knows he all this? Ask him that."
Glancing my eyes in the direction whence those words came, they fell
upon a man of rude though picturesque appearance, whose voice I
thought it was; a fellow bearded and bronzed, with, in his ears, great
rings of gold; a man whom, I scarce know why, I instantly deemed a
sailor. Perhaps, one of the many who had fled from the galleons or the
French ships of war.
"I am about to ask him that!" exclaimed Morales, though he cast an
angry glance toward the crowd. "It is his answer to that which I
require."
Then all eyes were instantly directed toward Eaton, one pair flaming
like burning coals from beneath their bushy brows--the eyes of
Gramont.
Looking myself at him, noticing the ashy colour of his face as he
heard that unknown voice uprise amidst the people gathered in the
court--as also he heard in reply the words of Morales--noticing, too,
the quivering of his white lips and the look as of a hunted rat that
came into his eyes--I found myself wondering if he had not thought of
how his denunciation of the man by my side was his own accusation
also.
"I ask you," went on Morales, "how you know all these things. None but
an eye-witness, a participator, could have told as much!"
Upon that muttering and gesticulating crowd, upon the shaggy,
black-bearded Asturians and Biscayans--some of them rude mountaineers
from the Gaviara and some even ruder sailors from the wild and
tempest-beaten shores of Galicia--upon the swarthy Spanish women with
knives in their girdles and babes at their bare breasts, there fell a
hush as all listened for his answer--a hush, broken only by his own
halting attempt to find an answer that should be believed--gain
credence not only with the judges, but the people.
"I have--heard--it said--heard it told," he whispered, in quavering
tones. "'Twas common talk in all the Indies--his name hated--dreaded.
Used as a means to fright the timid--to----"
He paused. For, like a storm that howls across the seas, sweeping all
before it in its course, another voice, a deeper, fuller, more
sonorous one, swept through that court and drowned his; the voice of
the lost man by my side.
"Hear me, you judges," he cried, confronting all--standing there with
his manacled hands in front of him, yet his form erect, his glance
contemptuous, his eyes fire. "Hear me. Let me tell all. I have the
right--the last on earth granted to one such as I--for one who sees
and reads his doom in all your faces. Give me your leave to speak."
"Speak!" the Bishop murmured, his tones almost inaudible. "Speak--yet
hope nothing."
"Hope!" Gramont said. "Hope! What should I hope? Nothing! in truth.
No more than I fear aught. I am the man this one charges me with
being--am Gramont. That is enough. Gramont, the filibuster--one of a
hundred of your countrymen, of Frenchmen, of Englishmen. But," and
he glanced proudly around the court, "the leader of them all, of
almost all. Yet, if I am guilty, who is there in the Indies that is
innocent? Was Morgan, the English bulldog?--yet his king made him
deputy-governor of his fairest isle. Was Basco, Lolonois--is Pointis?
Answer me that. And, you of Spain, you, one of her bishops, you, one
of her soldiers," and he glanced at each of them, "how often has one
of you blessed the ships that sailed from your shores laden with men
of my calling--how often have men of your trade," again he glanced at
Morales, "belonged to mine? Yet now I, a Frenchman, a comrade in arms
of you Spanish, am judged by the words of such as that"--and this time
his eyes fell on Eaton.
Also all in the court looked at him again.
"Now," went on Gramont, "hear who and what he is--hear, too, how he
knows all that I have done. He was my servant--my ship's steward
once--then rose through lust of cruelty to be my mate and second in
command. And he it was who first whispered that the captured monks and
priests, as he terms them, should be sent against the monastery at
Essequibo. Only--he has forgotten, his memory fails--they were not
monks and priests--but _nuns_."
"No, no, no!" shrieked Eaton, as a tumult indescribable arose within
the court, while now the mountaineers and seamen howled, "burn him and
let the other go," and the fierce dark-eyed women clutched their babes
closer to their breasts, fingering the hilts of the knives in their
girdles at the same time.
"Nuns! Holy nuns!" the Bishop gasped. "Great God!"
"Ay! Holy nuns. And hear one more word from me; it is the truth,
though it avails me nothing. I was not at Essequibo then, was far
away, was, in truth, at Cape Blanco. And he--he--James Eaton, was the
man."
There rose more tumult and more uproar--it seemed as though all the
men in the court would force the barrier that separated them from the
judges and from Eaton and us, the prisoners--would slay that villain,
that monstrous wretch, upon the spot. But at a look from the Alcáide
some of the alguazils and men-at-arms by that barrier, thrust and
pushed them back, and made a line between them and the body of the
court.
"Again listen," Gramont went on, when some silence had at last been
obtained. "It is my last word. I was not there--was gone--the band was
broken up, dispersed. From Spain had come an order from your king that
those who desisted were to be pardoned; from Louis of France came the
same news by Pointis. And I was one who so desisted, took service
under Louis, was made his lieutenant. Also I was on my way to France
when I was cast away. Cast away, after leaving my child, my wealth, in
that man's hands for safe keeping. He drove the one from him with
curses and cruelty, he stole the other. And--hear more--those galleons
coming to Cadiz were bringing that stolen wealth to him--because I
knew that it was so I came in them to Spain, hoping by my disguise to
meet him, to wrench it back from him, to call him to account for his
treatment of my girl."
On the court there had come a hush--as the calm comes after the storm;
hardly any spoke now--yet all, from Bishop downward, regarded Eaton,
trembling, shivering there.
And once more in that hush, Gramont's voice uprose again.
"For myself I care not. Do with me what you will. But, remember, I
denounce him, that man there, as pirate and buccaneer ten times more
bloodthirsty and cruel than any other who ever ravaged the Indies; I
denounce him, the denouncer, as thief, filibuster and spy. Do with me
what you will--only take heed. Spare him not. And if you seek
corroboration of my word, demand it of him who is my fellow-prisoner,
demand the truth from Juan Belmonte."