haltingly. "Of course," he continued, "I have discussed the matter with
Don Manuel Rebiera, the late acting Commandant; but I found him
exceedingly difficult and untractable to deal with. When I first
broached the subject to him, I regret to say that he immediately fell
into a most violent rage, and declared, with quite unnecessary vigour,
that he would have nothing whatever to do with the payment of any
indemnity, however small; and when I pointed out to him that the lives
of twelve of our most important and valued citizens hung in the balance,
and might very possibly be sacrificed unless he displayed a very much
larger measure of pliability--well--I will not offend your ears, most
illustrious Capitan, by repeating his exact words, but I may tell you
they were to the effect that he would rather every hostage were hanged,
and the town itself laid in ruins, than suffer the humiliation of being
compelled to pay an indemnity for an action which he, personally,
regarded as perfectly righteous and justifiable. On the whole, senor, I
am inclined to think that it is just as well for all concerned that Don
Manuel is dead; for I am convinced that, had he continued to live, he
would have proved an insuperable bar to every kind of negotiation, and,
quite possibly, have precipitated a further catastrophe. For he was a
Government official, and was possessed, in a very marked degree, of all
the arrogance, the tyrannical, overbearing manner, the blind,
intolerable pride, and the immeasurable contempt for everybody and
everything not official, that so strongly characterises the
representatives of Government in these territories. Yet, on the other
hand, his death places me in a dilemma from which I can see no way of
extricating myself; for the Commandant is so ill that it is impossible
for me to discuss business with him; I dare not act upon my sole,
unsupported authority; and if I have understood you aright,
_illustrissimo_, you will not give the time necessary to communicate
with the Viceroy. So what am I to do?"
"I quite recognise the difficulty of your position, Don Juan," answered
George; "and perhaps the simplest way will be for us to act entirely
upon our own initiative, and so relieve you of all responsibility in the
matter. Therefore, if you will kindly excuse me, I will leave you for a
little while, and will discuss the situation with my officers. And
while I am absent, you will have an opportunity to talk matters over
with these worthy gentlemen, your fellow-citizens, who are in the
unfortunate position of being hostages for a good faith that has been
wantonly broken. Perhaps when I return you may find yourselves able to
make a proposal, or at least offer a suggestion."
Having said which, the young Englishman bowed to his involuntary guests,
and went out on deck, where he invited Basset and Heard to accompany him
to the poop for the purposes of a consultation. That same consultation
proved to be but a very brief affair; for George opened it by clearly
explaining to his fellow adventurers the distinctive features of the
situation, as it then existed, and giving his own views as to the manner
in which it might best be met; whereupon his companions at once agreed
to his suggested course of procedure, daring though this was, and the
conference, if such it might be called, broke up, having lasted less
than a quarter of an hour. Then, while Basset and the purser resumed
the duties upon which they had previously been engaged, Saint Leger
returned to the state cabin to announce to the anxious alcalde and his
companions the decision which had been arrived at.
"Well, senores," he remarked cheerfully, glancing round at the expectant
faces so eagerly raised to his, as he entered the cabin, "I have
discussed with my officers the difficulty which confronts us all, and we
have resolved upon a course of action which I trust will be acceptable
to you. We have come to the conclusion that it is not the inhabitants
of San Juan who are responsible for the occurrences of last night; and
therefore it would be unjust for us to punish them, through you, for
what happened. Therefore if nothing further of an untoward character
occurs during the stay of the _Nonsuch_ in your harbour, your own lives
are safe, and your town will be spared by us--." Here a sigh of
profound relief floated round the cabin, accompanied by a little stir as
the hostages' tense attitudes relaxed and they settled themselves into
more comfortable positions. "But," continued George, "the fact remains
that a daring and treacherous attempt to effect our destruction was made
last night, as of course you are all fully aware; and that attempt must
be very severely punished, and ample compensation exacted.
"Now, it is perfectly clear, from what your respected alcalde has told
us, that the outrage--for I can call it nothing less--was instigated by,
and carried out under the direction of, an official representative of
the Spanish Government; therefore, since that official has placed
himself beyond the reach of punishment, the Government of which he was a
representative, and on behalf of which we are to assume he acted, must
pay the penalty. Fortunately for you and us, who are the parties most
intimately concerned, the means whereby your Government can be most
severely punished, and an ample penalty paid, lie close to hand, in the
plate ships at present in your harbour; and it is our intention to avail
ourselves of that circumstance by confiscating the whole of the treasure
now on board them; and I have accordingly issued orders that they are to
be brought alongside this ship, one after another, and the treasure
removed with all expedition from their strong rooms to our own. In this
way your Government will be the only loser, your own lives and property
will be spared; and we trust that the plan will consequently commend
itself to you. The only feature of the plan which may perhaps be
distasteful to any of you is that I shall feel myself compelled to keep
Don Juan Alvarez, your worthy alcalde, as well as yourselves, a prisoner
until the transfer has been effected; and I do this solely because he
happens to be the only person among you who wields any authority, and it
may possibly be necessary for him to exercise that authority from time
to time, in order to restrain the crews of the various ships from
causing trouble. Now, senores, what think you of my plan?"
For a few moments dead silence reigned in the cabin, the fact being that
the Dons were literally smitten speechless by the paralysing enormity of
the proposed insult and injury to the dignity of that Government which,
in their eyes, was only a shade less sacred than the Church, and their
first emotion was one of overwhelming indignation against those whose
colossal insolence and audacity rendered them capable of such an
overwhelmingly humiliating proposal. But the offence to their national
pride was quickly swamped by considerations of their own personal
safety, and as one man they soon came to the conclusion that anything--
yes, _anything_, even the humiliation of their king, was better than the
sacrifice of their own lives and the destruction of their own property
which would be involved in a retaliatory bombardment and sack of the
town. If the Government chose to leave San Juan de Ulua in so
defenceless a condition as to render such an outrage possible, then let
Government suffer the humiliation and the loss! Such were, in
substance, the dominant thoughts in the minds of the alcalde and his
fellow prisoners; and at length, perceiving that none of the others were
willing to speak, one, Don Martin de Sylva, the oldest as well as the
most prominent and important of the hostages, rose to his feet and said,
slowly and impressively:
"Senor Capitan, you have asked for our opinion of your most astounding
proposal; and I will give you mine, which I put forward as my own
exclusively, and which I do not pretend to advance as in the slightest
degree representative of those of my companions. In the first place, I
must be permitted to remind you that, although one of the avowed
purposes of your visit to our city is to avenge and exact compensation
for an attack upon your countrymen in our harbour, last year, which we
all deplore and deprecate, you have as yet offered us no proof of your
authority for such action, which, for all that we know, may have been
taken actually without the knowledge of those who are legitimately
entitled to regard themselves as the injured parties; therefore I think
you must acknowledge that it is not surprising if we and our Government
have been slow to recognise your claims. You may have been duly
accredited by Her Majesty the Queen of England to exact the reparation
which you demand; but, if so, I think you ought to have submitted your
credentials when you made your claim, and that claim, I venture to
suggest, should have been made in proper diplomatic form, instead of
being, as it was, a mere threat. But if you hold no credentials from
Her Majesty, and your authority is self-imposed, the conduct of which I
complain is quite comprehensible, and although it may be in the highest
degree irregular I am prepared to admit that it is not altogether
unjustifiable, since I understand that your own brother was, and indeed
still is, a sufferer from the attack upon Admiral Hawkins' fleet. Your
claim on his behalf I am willing to admit is not outrageously
unreasonable, and I deeply regret that it was not immediately _met_ and
promptly discharged. The most unfortunate feature of the whole affair
is of course the action which that misguided and over-zealous fool,
Rebiera, took during the early hours of this morning. That action
completely disarms us and perhaps--I only say _perhaps_--justifies you,
in a measure, in the stupendous demand which you are now making. For my
own part, I have no hesitation in expressing the opinion that, as
reparation only, your demands are excessive and far beyond all
reasonable bounds. But if they are intended--as I gather they are--to
be regarded also as a wholesome chastisement of our Government for an
act of treachery on the part of one of its officials, then I have
nothing further to say. You have the power to exact what terms you
please, and if you choose to exercise that power, we have not the means
to prevent you. For myself, all I can say is that I am very grateful to
you that you have been so fair-minded as to admit the innocence of
myself and my fellow hostages in connection with an affair over which we
have had no control, yet for which you might, had you so chosen, have
exacted our lives as a penalty." Having thus delivered himself, the old
Don bowed gravely and resumed his seat.
"Thank you, Don Martin," answered George, good-humouredly. "I asked for
an opinion, and you have given me yours, frankly and fearlessly; and I
imagine, from the expression of approval which I seem to read upon your
compatriots' faces, that their opinion coincides with your own pretty
closely. Well, be it so; naturally, you and I regard this whole matter
from two very different points of view. Now, what says your worthy
alcalde? Is he willing to exercise his authority over the crews of the
ships, if necessary, in order to avert further trouble and
complications?"
The alcalde rose to his feet and bowing, with the native grace of the
high-bred Spaniard, to George, replied:
"Assuredly I will, senor; for the power is in your hands, and you can
enforce obedience if you see fit. And anything will be preferable to
the useless slaughter which I foresee would inevitably result from
ineffective and ill-advised action on the part of our mariners. To
avoid that deplorable waste of life, therefore, I am prepared to
intervene, should the necessity unhappily arise. At the same time,
senor, I feel it due to myself to join my protest to that of my friend,
Don Martin de Sylva, and, I think I may add, the rest of us here
present, against what I cannot avoid regarding as the tremendously
excessive penalty which you are about to impose in retaliation for the
ill-judged action of one man, who has already paid with his life for his
mistake." And therewith Don Juan resumed his seat, to the accompaniment
of approving murmurs from his companions.
"Very well, then," said George, composedly; "that matter is also
settled. And now, senor, I think it will be advisable that you should
accompany me out on deck, and hold yourself ready to act, if required;
for, from the sounds which reach me, it would seem that the first of
your ships is being hauled alongside; and your intervention may
therefore be needed at any moment."
As it happened, however, no intervention on the part of the alcalde was
required; possibly his presence on the poop of the _Nonsuch_ beside
George, where he could be distinctly seen by everybody, may have
exercised a wholesome restraint upon the Spanish crew; or the sight of
the entire crew of the English ship, mustered on deck, armed to the
teeth, the gunners standing by their ordnance with lighted matches, may
have had something to do with it; be that as it may, the Spanish seamen
offered no resistance when it became apparent that the English were
about to transfer the treasure from the plate ships' strong rooms to
their own; nay more, they even assisted in the transfer, when commanded
to do so, although it must be confessed that they worked with sullen
countenances, and many muttered threats and grumblings.
There were twelve plate ships in the harbour, of which number ten were
fully loaded; but when it came to inspecting the strong rooms of these
ships it was found that all twelve of them had received their full
complement of treasure, consisting of silver bars, gold bricks--each
separately sewn up in its casing of hide, as transported from the
mines--and one large chest of pearls, the proceeds of the whole previous
year's fishing in the adjacent waters. The gold and silver also
represented a whole year's produce of the mines; and so enormous was the
quantity of the precious metals that its transfer to the _Nonsuch_
occupied six entire days; while, when at length the task was completed,
the _Nonsuch_, stout ship as she was, floated the deeper by a good five
strakes!
The work was completed on a certain day, about an hour after sunset; and
at the very urgent request of the alcalde and his friends the hostages,
George arranged to leave the port forthwith; for although no actual
demonstration had been made against the ship, news had come off from the
shore, from time to time, to the effect that the whole town was seething
with indignation at the sight of such an enormous amount of treasure
being seized by the hated English, while the soldiery were going about
the streets breathing fire and slaughter and doing their utmost to
incite the town folk to unite with them in a determined effort to
recapture the treasure and annihilate the English pirates; while, as the
time went on, it became perfectly evident that only the fear of
bombardment restrained the civilians from entertaining the proposal;
and, even so, the alcalde was in a perfect agony of fear lest, despite
all the efforts of his friends ashore, some rash act on the part of the
soldiery and the rougher element among the civilians, should yet
precipitate a catastrophe. Therefore, no sooner was the last gold brick
transferred than the alcalde and his fellow prisoners overwhelmed George
with most urgent solicitations that, having now accomplished all he had
planned, he would proceed to sea forthwith; which, there being no reason
to the contrary, the young captain willingly consented to do.
Accordingly, the canvas was loosed, the anchor hove up to the bows; and,
the alcalde and his friends having been transferred to the ship
alongside, the fasts were cast off, the topsails sheeted home, and under
the impulse of a gentle off-shore breeze the _Nonsuch_ stood out of the
harbour of San Juan de Ulua, after a sojourn of a full week pregnant
with events of great and far-reaching importance. It afterwards
transpired that the English had only got away from the port by the bare
skin of their teeth; for within twenty-four hours of their departure the
belated convoy arrived with the plate ships from Cartagena and Nombre de
Dios; and when the Spanish Admiral was made acquainted with the details
of George's daring raid--which was within an hour of his arrival--he was
so convulsed with rage that in the height of his passion he ordered the
entire convoy to weigh and put to sea again--leaving the newly-arrived
plate ships to take care of themselves and their precious cargoes as
best they might--with instructions to the captains that they were on no
account to return without the English ship. The result of this mad
order was that the convoy was absent for three full weeks, during which
George, had he only known it, might have returned and filled the
_Nonsuch_ with treasure until she would hold no more. But while the
Spanish captains were straining their ships to pieces by threshing to
the northward under a heavy press of sail, under the conviction that the
English were homeward bound and were heading north to avail themselves
of the assistance of the Gulf Stream, the heavily-laden _Nonsuch_ was
steadily working to windward across the Gulf of Campeche, making for the
northern coast of Yucatan, on her way back to the little desert island
off the southern coast of Jamaica, where the adventurers had buried
their first haul of treasure.
For now that the _Nonsuch_ was loaded down with so fabulously rich a
freight, the first consideration of its new owners was to temporarily
deposit it in some place of safety while they pursued their quest of the
missing Hubert Saint Leger, lest haply misfortune should befall them
and, losing their ship, they should lose their treasure also. And now
it was that George had his eyes opened, for the first time, to one at
least of the disadvantages of so stupendous a stroke of good fortune as
had been his and his companions'. For their haul of treasure had been
so enormous that the men had got tired of handling it before its
transfer had been completed; nay more, they were actually _satisfied_
with the amount of their wealth; and when George first announced his
intention of burying it with the rest, prior to pursuing his search for
his lost brother, there were those among his crew who loudly protested
that they were now rich enough to return at once to England with what
they had; that it would simply be a tempting of Providence to pursue the
adventure further, and that, for their part, they had had quite enough
of the Indies. But Saint Leger speedily quelled these murmurs by
mustering the crew and reading to them the Articles of Agreement which
all had signed, and which clearly set forth the objects with which the
voyage had been undertaken, among which was distinctly specified the
finding and deliverance of Mr Hubert Saint Leger. And having read
these Articles, George proceeded to inform the crew of his determination
to hold all hands to their bargain, reminded them of the pains and
penalties provided by way of punishment for breaches, or even attempted
breaches, of any Article of the covenant, and wound up by declaring
that, rather than abandon his search for his brother, he would maroon
the malcontents and leave them to find their way back home as best they
could. And, as the malcontents proved after all to be but a small
proportion of the crew, this threat quietened them, at least for the
time being, and no further murmurs were heard.
On the morning of the ninth day after their departure from the harbour
of San Juan de Ulua the adventurers sighted Cape Catoche, the most
northerly point of the Peninsula of Yucatan, broad on the lee bow,
tacked two hours later and made a stretch off the land until sunset,
when they tacked again to the southward; and on the following day at
noon their reckoning showed that they had accomplished their passage
through the Strait of Yucatan and were once more in the Caribbean Sea.
Eight days later the treasure island was sighted from aloft at sunrise;
and by noon the _Nonsuch_ with her cargo of treasure was safely at
anchor under the lee of the island, and as close to the beach as it was
prudent to take her. As soon as the canvas was furled and everything
made snug aloft, all hands were piped to dinner; and at the conclusion
of the meal two boats were lowered and manned, their crews well provided
with mattocks, shovels, and other implements for digging, and were
dispatched to the shore under the command of Dyer, who had by this time
sufficiently recovered from his hurts to be able to sit in a chair and
supervise the operations of the working party. And while these were
busily engaged in the excavation of a pit capacious enough to receive
the enormous amount of treasure in the hold of the _Nonsuch_, George
with the remainder of the crew was as busily employed in getting the
treasure up on deck in readiness for its transfer to the shore, and
making such preparations as they deemed necessary for its adequate
protection.
The particular part of the treasure about which Saint Leger was most
anxious was the chest of pearls. He had not the most remote idea as to
its value, but he knew that it must be almost fabulous; and he knew also
how easily the delicate gems might be injured by damp penetrating to
them from the surrounding earth; he therefore took the most elaborate
precautions for their protection, those precautions being initiated
immediately after the departure of the ship from San Juan. His first
step was to have the junction of the lid with the box carefully and
effectively caulked with cotton; and when this was done to his
satisfaction he caused the exterior of the box to be painted several
coats of thick paint, with the object of rendering the wood damp-proof.
But, not content with this, he further caused the sailmaker to make two
canvas coats to fit tightly over the chest, one coat over the other, and
each coat securely fastened by a lacing. Then, when the paint on the
chest itself was quite dry, the first canvas coat was slipped on,
carefully laced, and then painted four coats, each coat of paint being
allowed to dry before the next was applied. Then the second canvas coat
was put on, the reverse way of the first, and secured. This was then
coated several times with Stockholm tar, to preserve it from decay; and
finally, when the last coat of tar was quite dry, the exterior was
thickly coated with boiling pitch, as a culminating precaution, after
which George decided that he had done everything possible for the
preservation of the pearls and that they must now be left to take their
chance.
It took the crew a full fortnight to transfer to the shore, bury, and
cover up the treasure in such a manner as effectually to obliterate all
traces of their operations; and on the morning of the fifteenth day
after their arrival they hove up the anchor and made sail southward for
Nombre de Dios, where George hoped to obtain some clue to the
whereabouts of his brother Hubert.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
HOW THEY LOST TWO MEN, AND ENCOUNTERED A HURRICANE.