do. Why, he's one o' us here aboard this galley. 'Twas he that--Hi!
Mr Saint Leger--Mr Saint Leger--what's come to 'e? Here be a vine
brave Devonshire lad askin' about 'e. He's for'ard, sir, on the
larboard side, the fourth bench ahead o' this here one that I be sittin'
on."
There was no response to Cary's call, so George quickly turned and,
striding along the gang-plank, reached the fourth bench, upon which sat
three men, the middle one of which was supporting the senseless form of
his neighbour nearest the gang-plank. Peering down, in the semi-
darkness, George beheld in the senseless one a lean, muscular figure,
his naked body brown with long exposure to the sun and weather, covered,
as were the rest, with a growth of short hairs and, also as were the
rest, with innumerable long cicatrices, some white and evidently the
result of wounds inflicted long ago, but most of them of comparatively
recent date, showing how mercilessly the boatswains were in the habit of
plying their whips. But in the case of the man whom George was then
gazing upon, those more or less ancient scars were almost obliterated by
the blood which was still oozing from some thirty or more long slashes
across the back, shoulders, loins and arms of the senseless one, whose
features were almost hidden by a great, unkempt black beard and
moustache already touched with grey, as was the touzled mop of black
hair upon his head. Yet, through it all, as George's eyes grew
accustomed to the twilight gloom of the place, he was able to recognise
the features of his brother Hubert, obscured as they were with hair,
dirt, and sweat.
"Is he dead?" he demanded of the man who was supporting him.
"Nay, senor, I think not," answered the man. "I believe he has but
swooned under the merciless flogging inflicted by that demon yonder,
whom your shot have slain and so perchance saved from a better merited
death."
"And why did he flog this man so mercilessly?" demanded George in a tone
of terrible calmness.
"Because," answered the man, "it was Hubert, here, who, when he heard
the music from your ship, shouted to us that you were English, and that,
if we would stop rowing, you would take the galley and set us all free."
George raised his head above the combing and shouted to the armourer:
"Miles, come down here at once with your hammer and chisel. There is a
man here--several men--whom I wish to release from their fetters."
"Senor," interposed the man who was supporting Hubert's senseless form,
and who seemed to guess what George required, "if you will feel in the
pocket of that dead boatswain's doublet, you will find the key to unlock
our chains."
"Thanks," responded George as he bent over the dead boatswain; and a
minute later he had unlocked the chain which confined his brother's body
to the bench, and was calling to another man to help him to carry it up
on deck.
"Senor--senor, are you not going to release us also?" demanded Hubert's
comrade, as George turned away to arrange for the dispatch of his
brother to the galleon.
"In good time, _amigo_, in good time," answered George. "A little
patience is all you now need. I will return to you later."
With infinite care Hubert's body was lowered into a boat and dispatched
to the galleon, with an imperative order from George to the surgeon to
treat his patient gently and do his utmost for him. Then the young
captain proceeded to release the remaining Englishmen and send them also
aboard the galleon to be cared for.
And next came the question of what was to be done with the galley-slaves
and the galley. It was a knotty question to decide, for here were a
hundred-and-eighty men, many of whom were no doubt criminals and
desperados of the very worst type; to release whom and turn them loose
upon society involved a tremendous responsibility. Yet after even the
cursory glimpse that George had caught of the life of a galley-slave, he
could not bring himself to hand over those men to the tender mercies of
the Spaniards and so in all probability insure for them a continuance of
life in what Cary had graphically described as a floating hell, which
was a punishment infinitely worse than death, and far too severe for
even the most atrocious crimes. George called Basset to his aid in the
consideration of this momentous question; and finally, at the suggestion
of the latter, he descended again to the ship's interior and sought the
man who had been Hubert's companion on the bench.
"Friend," said he, "you asked me, a little while ago, to release you.
If I were to do so, what would you and your comrades do with
yourselves?"
"It is just what Pedro and I"--indicating his companion upon the
bench--"have been discussing together, senor," answered the man.
"Well," said George, "have you arrived at any decision upon the matter?"
"Yes, senor, we have," was the reply. "We have decided that, even were
you willing to give us the galley, we could not keep the sea very long,
because none of us understand the navigation of a ship, and our
provisions would soon run short; moreover, galleys will only sail before
the wind, and we have had enough of rowing to last us for the rest of
our lives. On the other hand, we are all outlaws, and if we were to
land on the mainland we should be hunted down and killed, sooner or
later, or, worse still, taken and condemned to the galleys afresh. But
outside the Gulf, some two hundred miles or more to the westward, there
is a certain uninhabited island, at which this galley has often called
for water. It is large enough to support four or five times our number,
and although none of us are navigators we could easily find it by simply
following the coast line. Its soil is rich, there are abundant fruit
trees upon it, and plenty of water; we could easily support ourselves in
comfort there, senor; and Pedro and I think that if you will graciously
release us and give us the galley, we could do no better than go there
and settle down upon it."
The rest of the galley-slaves had been listening eagerly to what was
being said, as George could easily see; the scheme commended itself to
him as an excellent one in itself, moreover it pointed a way out of the
double difficulty of how to get rid of the slaves and the galley; he
therefore appealed to the listening crowd by saying to them:
"You have all heard your comrade's plan. Are you willing to fall in
with it?"
"_Si, senor; si, si. Mille gracias_," replied the slaves, with such
perfect unanimity that the young man no longer hesitated.
"So be it," he said. Then, turning to one of the men who was with him,
he directed him to release the Spaniard on the bench, and, having done
that, to hand him the keys that he might release his comrades; after
which he ordered the prisoners, wounded and unwounded, to be passed down
into the boats, which done, the victors pulled away for the galleon.
But they were scarcely alongside when the galley's sweeps were thrust
outboard and the craft was under way again, heading south, with one of
the slaves proudly standing at the tiller and leading an enthusiastic
cheer as the galley swept at speed close under the towering stern of the
galleon.
George's first act, upon returning to the galleon, was to direct Dyer to
take the ship to the spot for which they had been aiming when they were
intercepted by the galley, and anchor her there; then he descended to
the sick bay, to find that under Chichester's skilled hands his brother
had not only been revived from his swoon, but also that his terrible
wounds had been bathed, treated with a soothing and healing ointment,
bound up, and the patient made as comfortable as was possible upon a
swinging pallet which the surgeon had caused to be rigged up in order
that Hubert might not be disturbed by the motion of the ship, and might
lie face down for a few days until the smart had gone out of his wounds
and they had begun to heal.
George was greatly affected at the sight of his brother lying there
stretched out upon the pallet, with his head resting upon a pillow
supported by his arms, and unable to move his body in the least without
suffering excruciating agony. But, terrible as Hubert's plight was, he
still had spirit enough to make light of it when his brother, kneeling
down by the side of the pallet, bent over him and tenderly kissed him on
the brow. He smiled happily up into George's face and, with an effort
that must have been torment to him, freed his right hand and grasped
that of his brother as he murmured:
"You only fired that broadside just in time to save me, old chap.
Another half-minute, and that fiend of a boatswain would have killed me.
I won't ask you now how you happened to find me, that must wait until
you have more time to talk and I more strength to listen; moreover, that
splendid fellow Chichester has been telling me a bit of the story while
he was dressing my wounds. But one thing you must tell me, Georgie.
How is the dear mother?"
The fact that George had nothing but good news to communicate to his
brother seemed to cheer the latter amazingly, and caused him to so far
forget his fearful injuries that he went on asking question after
question until Chichester felt constrained to intervene and imperatively
insist that the young captain should go on deck and leave his brother to
get a little urgently needed rest.
As George ascended to the poop, almost dazed with the good fortune which
had enabled him to so unexpectedly deliver his brother from a life that
was one long torment, his ears were greeted with the cries of the
mariners shortening sail; and a few minutes later the galleon's anchor
was dropped in the new berth for which the ship had been making. The
sails were furled, the decks cleared up, ropes coiled down, and every
preparation made for the expected visit of the Governor. And shortly
afterward a large boat, pulling twelve oars, with an awning spread over
the stern sheets, and with the Spanish flag floating from an ensign
staff set up in the stern, was seen coming out of the harbour and
heading toward the _Cristobal Colon_.
Twenty minutes later she ranged up alongside, and a party of ten
Spaniards, dressed most extravagantly in the height of the prevailing
mode, proceeded to climb with more or less difficulty the lofty side of
the galleon, where, as they passed in through the entry port, they were
received by George at the head of his officers. The contrast in
appearance between these popinjays, arrayed in silks and satins of the
most costly description, with splendid jewels round their necks, on
their fingers, and in their ears, their oiled, curled, and perfumed
locks surmounted by jaunty little caps of silk or velvet decorated with
beautiful feathers secured in place by gem-set brooches, and the sturdy
Devon lads, attired mostly in perfectly plain armour not altogether
guiltless of rust, beneath which showed their well-worn clothing, was a
striking one indeed, but there was a stern, business-like look on the
faces of the Englishmen that promptly checked any disposition to sneer
on the part of the Spaniards.
The visitors were of course received with every manifestation of the
most elaborate courtesy on the part of the English, and there was a
tremendous amount of bowing and scraping on the galleon's quarter-deck
before even a word was spoken. Presently, however, a tall, dark
Spaniard, of about forty years of age, his handsome features marked with
an expression of considerable resolution, stepped forward and said, with
a bow:
"Senores, I am the Governor of Panama. Who among you is Senor George
Saint Leger?"
"I am he, at Your Excellency's service," answered George, with a
corresponding bow.
"_You_?" ejaculated the Governor, incredulously. "Why, you are only a
boy. Where is your leader? It is he with whom my present business is
concerned."
"Your Excellency," responded George, "I have the honour to be the
captain of the company you see about you."
"Ten thousand pardons, senor!" exclaimed the Governor, bowing low. "I
trust that you will magnanimously forgive my hasty expression of
surprise. I ought to have remembered that in your gallant nation age
does not necessarily count, and that among you are many very young men
who are doing work that fills us of maturer years with astonishment,
admiration and envy. Again I crave your pardon for my exceedingly
stupid mistake. It is you, then, senor, who addressed this letter to
me?" And he drew forth from a wallet at his belt George's letter to
him.
"Even so, Your Excellency," acknowledged George.
"And in it you say that you wish to treat with me for the release of
seventeen Englishmen sent here as prisoners from Nombre de Dios. Very
well, senor; I am prepared to treat with you upon that matter; but it
must be upon certain conditions. And the first of those conditions is
that you unconditionally surrender this ship to her captain and
officers, whom I have brought with me in order that they may receive her
at your hands."
"Your Excellency, the condition you name is an impossible one, not to be
considered for an instant. Let us dismiss it, and pass on to the next,
if there be a next," answered George calmly.
"Next?" reiterated the Governor, a trifle tartly, "of course there is a
next--several of them, indeed. But it is useless to speak of them until
this, perhaps the most important of them all, is settled. Upon what
grounds do you assert that my first condition is impossible, senor? You
have secured possession of her by craft and in a manner which, if I may
be permitted to say so, amounts simply to piracy. Our countries are not
at war, senor. Then by what right do you seize a Spanish ship and,
worse still, refuse to surrender her to her lawful owners, the
representatives of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain?"
"Ah!" returned George, with a great appearance of simplicity, "now there
Your Excellency puzzles me. I can't exactly tell you by what right I do
this, and have done a good many other things on the north side of the
isthmus; but it is by the same right that justified Don Martin Enriquez,
His Most Catholic Majesty's Viceroy of Mexico, when he attacked the
fleet of Admiral Hawkins while he was refitting his ships in the harbour
of San Juan de Ulua, last year."
For a few moments the Governor looked--and was--decidedly "taken aback."
He could find no satisfactory reply to George's argument, for the
sufficient reason that none such existed. But presently he pulled
himself together and said:
"The occurrence to which you have referred, senor, was a most deplorable
blunder on the Viceroy's part; but I had no hand in it, and I must
refuse to be held responsible for it. You must yourself surely admit
that it would be unjust in the extreme to make me answerable for the
actions of a man over whom I have no control whatever."
"Oh, yes," retorted George, "I quite admit that; and it is not in your
personal capacity, but merely as a Spaniard, that I am holding you and
all Spaniards responsible for that outrage. And I hold Spaniards
generally responsible for it, senor, for the reason that no attempt has
been made by any Spaniard to right the wrong that was done. Yourself,
for example, when invited to do what you could to rectify the matter, as
far as might be, by releasing seventeen Englishmen unlawfully captured
during the commission of the `blunder,' curtly refused to take any steps
whatever. Hence my presence here, and my capture of this ship. Need I
say any more?"
It was necessary for George to say a great deal more before he succeeded
in bringing the stiff-necked Don to reason, and in the process of doing
so he told His Excellency a few home truths that first sent that
functionary into a towering passion and then turned him sick with fear;
but at length Don Silvio was brought to see the futility of kicking
against the pricks, and finally he gave in with a good grace, the more
readily when he learned that eleven out of the seventeen men demanded
had already been taken out of the captured galley; he agreed with George
that it was scarcely worth while to expose a number of important cities
to the horrors of bombardment and valuable ships to the risk of capture
for the sake of detaining half a dozen Englishmen in captivity; he
therefore at length struck a bargain with the relentless young captain
that, in consideration of the latter undertaking to abstain from further
molestation of Spanish life and property, he, the Governor of Panama,
would forthwith take the necessary steps to have the six Englishmen, or
as many of them as happened to be still alive, immediately released and
handed over to their own countrymen, signing a document to that effect.
This document, drafted by George, with the assistance of Basset, and
young Heard, the purser, was quite an elaborate affair, providing for
many things, the first of which was the retention of the _Cristobal
Colon_ and her cargo by her captors; second, that during the period of
waiting for the release of the six Englishmen the authorities of Panama
were to daily supply the ship with meat, vegetables, and fruit in
sufficient quantities for the requirements of the crew; third, that if
it should be found that any of the six Englishmen had succumbed to the
hardships incidental to their life as galley-slaves, the sum of ten
thousand ducats was to be paid upon each man missing, as compensation to
his relatives. There were several other clauses in the agreement, all
providing against anything in the nature of treachery on the part of the
Spaniards, and to these Don Silvio objected most strenuously, on the
ground that they were an insult to the honour of every Spaniard; but
George insisted upon their retention, bluntly stating that, after the
example which had been set by His Excellency the Viceroy of Mexico, it
was impossible for any Englishman to rely upon any Spaniard's honour.
And in return for all this the Englishmen agreed to observe a strict
truce for six weeks. The reading of the draft was followed by a
tremendous amount of talk and numerous protests, in response to which
the stringency of a few of the clauses was somewhat modified, and
finally the two fair copies of the agreement were signed there and then,
first by the Governor and George as the two contracting parties, and
afterwards by the Spanish and English officers as witnesses.
This done, the visitors were entertained on board the galleon to an
impromptu luncheon, which, as it was prepared by the Spanish cook,
released from the limbo of below for the occasion, and as the viands and
wines were drawn from the ship's stores, was done ample justice to.
Then George, accompanied by Basset, went ashore with the Governor and
his followers, to be present at an investigation which was to determine
the whereabouts of the six Englishmen whose release was in question, and
who were ultimately found to have been drafted to a galley named the
_Tiburon_, which, after considerable further research, was discovered to
be then stationed at Port Lima. The next business was the preparation
of an order to the Governor of Lima to immediately release the six
Englishmen "named in the margin" and return them to Panama without
delay; and before returning to the ship George had the satisfaction of
witnessing the departure of a dispatch boat with the order on board.
On the following day the Spanish crew of the _Cristobal Colon_ were
released and sent on shore; and, this done, all tension between the
Spaniards and the English was immediately relaxed, the Spaniards, with
their high-flown ideas of chivalry, vying with each other in showing the
utmost cordiality and attention to their whilom enemies; so that, on the
whole, George and his officers, to say nothing of the men, were given a
fairly pleasant time during their sojourn at Panama, in return for which
they, among other things, assisted materially to extinguish a fire which
one night broke out in the city and, for a time, threatened to lay the
greater part of it in ashes.
Finally, on the twenty-seventh day after her departure, the dispatch
boat returned from Port Lima, bringing with her the six Englishmen, safe
and sound, but of course in a somewhat broken condition from their
dreadful experiences on board the _Tiburon_; and thus George Saint Leger
at length triumphantly accomplished all that he had undertaken to do
when he set out upon his adventurous voyage.
By this time Hubert Saint Leger had sufficiently recovered from his
terrible injuries to be able to rise and dress without assistance, while
all the other rescued English were doing well, their only desire now
being to return home to their relatives and friends as soon as possible.
Therefore, there now being nothing to longer detain them at Panama, on
the day after the return of the dispatch boat and the formal surrender
of the six Englishmen, George and his officers bade farewell to the city
and its inhabitants, and weighed anchor for the south, glad enough to
escape to the pure breezes of the sea once more.
The _Cristobal Colon_ proved to be a somewhat dull sailer, nevertheless
the adventurers made good progress down the western seaboard of South
America, the voyage being wholly uneventful save for the usual
experiences of mariners, and, missing the Straits of Magellan, the
galleon rounded the Horn in the embrace of a blustering westerly gale,
on the forty-third day after their departure from Panama, by which time
all the invalids were perfectly recovered and not only fit but eager for
duty. True, the weather which they encountered during the fortnight
that they were in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn proved rather trying to
all hands, accustomed as they had now become to the enervating climate
of the tropics, but it was by this time early summer in the southern
hemisphere, and although the air was keen it was also bracing, and
Chichester, the surgeon, stoutly maintained that a taste of it was all
that was needed to set everybody perfectly right.
Then followed the long weary drag up the eastern coast of South America,
and everybody was rejoiced when, on a certain glorious morning of the
last month of the year, they rounded the north-eastern angle of the
continent--now known as Cape San Roque--and bore away to the westward
for the creek where the _Nonsuch_ still--as they hoped--lay securely
hidden. And at this point in the voyage they were exceptionally
favoured by the elements, for they accomplished their second passage of
the Line without a minute's delay from calms. On the last day of the
year they sailed past Trinidad, joyfully recognising its lofty heights
and its three distinct entrances to the gulf as they passed; and on the
evening of January 15th, 1570, they entered the hidden harbour near
Nombre, where they had left the _Nonsuch_, and found her apparently not
a penny the worse for her five months' sojourn there. For Lukabela, the
Cimarrone chief, had so scrupulously fulfilled his promise to look after
the ship that a party of twenty men had been camped on the beach for the
past five months, and had every day visited her and thoroughly soused
her deck and upper works with water.