_The Story is Told by Dom Bartholomew Perestrello, Governor of the
Island of Porto Santo_.
It was on the fifteenth day of August, 1428, and about six o'clock in
the morning, that while taking the air on the seaward side of my house
at Porto Santo, as my custom was after breaking fast, I caught sight
of a pinnace about two leagues distant, and making for the island.
I dare say it is commonly known how I came to the governance of Porto
Santo, to hold it and pass it on to my son Bartholomew; how I sailed
to it in the year 1420 in company with the two honourable captains
John Gonsalvez Zarco and Tristram Vaz; and what the compact was which
we made between us, whereby on reaching Porto Santo these two left me
behind and passed on to discover the greater island of Madeira. And
many can tell with greater or less certainty of our old pilot,
the Spaniard Morales, and how he learned of such an island in his
captivity on the Barbary coast. Of all this you shall hear, and
perhaps more accurately, when I come to my meeting with the
Englishman. But I shall tell first of the island itself, and what were
my hopes of it on the morning when I sighted his pinnace.
In the first warmth of discovering them we never doubted that
these were the Purple Islands of King Juba, the very Garden of the
Hesperides, found anew by us after so many hundreds of years; or that
we had aught to do but sit still in our governments and grow rich
while we feasted. But that was in the year 1420, and the eight years
between had made us more than eight years sadder. In the other island
the great yield of timber had quickly come to an end: for Count Zarco,
returning thither with wife and children in the month of May, 1421,
and purposing to build a city, had set fire to the woods behind the
fennel-fields on the south coast, with intent to clear a way up to the
hills in the centre: and this fire quickly took such hold on the mass
of forest that not ten times the inhabitants could have mastered it.
And so the whole island burned for seven years, at times with a heat
which drove the settlers to their boats. For seven years as surely as
night fell could we in Porto Santo count on the glare of it across the
sea to the south-west, and for seven years the caravels of our prince
and master, Dom Henry, sighted the flame of it on their way southward
to Cape Bojador.
In all this while Count Zarco never lost heart; but, when the timber
began to fail, planted his sugar-canes on the scarcely cooled ashes,
and his young plants of the Malmsey vine--the one sent from Sicily,
the other from Candia, and both by the care of Dom Henry. While he
lives it will never be possible to defeat my friend and old comrade:
and he and I have both lived to see his island made threefold richer
by that visitation which in all men's belief had clean destroyed it.
This planting of vines and sugar-canes began in 1425, the same year
in which the Infante gave me colonists for Porto Santo. But if I had
little of Count Zarco's merit, it is certain I had none of his luck:
for on my small island nothing would thrive but dragon-trees; and we
had cut these in our haste before learning how to propagate them, so
that we had at the same moment overfilled the market with their gum,
or "dragon's blood," and left but a few for a time of better prices.
And, what was far worse, at the suggestion surely of Satan I had
turned three tame rabbits loose upon the island; and from the one doe
were bred in two or three years so many thousands of these pestilent
creatures that when in 1425 we came to plant the vines and canes, not
one green shoot in a million escaped. Thus it happened that by 1428 my
kingdom had become but a barren rock, dependent for its revenues upon
the moss called the orchilla weed of which the darker and better kind
could be gathered only by painful journeys inland.
You may see, therefore, that I had little to comfort me as I paced
before my house that morning. I was Governor of an impoverished rock
on which I had wasted the toil and thought of eight good years of my
prime: my title was hereditary, but I had in those days no son to
inherit it. And when I considered the fortune I had exchanged for
this, and my pleasant days in Dom Henry's service at Sagres, I accused
myself for the most miserable among men.
Now, at the north-western angle of my house, and a little below the
terrace where I walked, there grew a plantation of dragon-trees, one
of the few left upon the island. Each time this sentry-walk of mine
brought me back to the angle I would halt before turning and eye the
trees, sourly pondering on our incredible folly. For, on my first
coming they had grown everywhere, and some with trunks great enough
to make a boat for half a dozen men: but we had cut them down for all
kinds of uses, whenever a man had wanted wood for a shield or a bushel
for his corn, and now they scarce grew fruit enough to fatten the
hogs. It was standing there and eyeing my dragon-trees that over the
tops of them I caught sight of the pinnace plying towards the island.
I remember clearly what manner of day it was; clear and fresh, the
sea scarce heaving, but ruffled under a southerly breeze. The small
vessel, though well enough handled, made a sorry leeway by reason of
her over-tall sides, and lost so much time at every board through the
labour of lowering and rehoisting her great lateen yard that I judged
it would take her three good hours before she came to anchor in the
port below.
I could not find that she had any hostile appearance, yet--as my duty
was--sent down word to the guard to challenge her business before
admitting her; and a little before nine o'clock I put on my coat
and walked down to the haven to look after this with my own eyes. I
arrived almost at the moment when she entered and her crew, with sail
partly lowered, rounded her very cleverly up in the wind.
The guard-boat put off at once and boarded her; and by-and-by came
back with word that the pinnace was English (which by this time I had
guessed), by name the _George of Bristol_, and owned by an Englishman
of quality, who, by reason of his extreme age, desired of my courtesy
that I would come on board and confer with him. This at first I was
unwilling to risk: but seeing her moored well under the five guns of
our fort, and her men so far advanced with the furling of her big sail
that no sudden stroke of treachery could be attempted except to her
destruction, I sent word to the gunners to keep a brisk look-out, and
stepping into the boat was pulled alongside.
At the head of the ladder there met me an aged gentleman, lean and
bald and wrinkled, with narrow eyes and a skin like clear vellum. For
all the heat of the day he wore a furred cloak which reached to his
knees; also a thin gold chain around his neck: and this scrag neck and
the bald head above it stood out from his fur collar as if they had
been a vulture's. By his dress and the embroidered bag at his girdle,
and the clasps of his furred shoes, I made no doubt he was a rich man;
and he leaned on an ebony staff or wand capped with a pretty device of
ivory and gold.
He stood thus, greeting me with as many bobs of the head as a bird
makes when pecking an apple; and at first he poured out a string of
salutations (I suppose) in English, a language with which I have no
familiarity. This he perceived after a moment, and seemed not a little
vexed; but covering himself and turning his back shuffled off to a
door under the poop.
"Martin!" he called in a high broken voice. "Martin!"
A little man of my own country, very yellow and foxy, came running
out, and the pair talked together for a moment before advancing
towards me.
"Your Excellency," the interpreter began, "this is a gentleman of
England who desires that you will dine with him to-day. His name is
Master Thomas d'Arfet, and he has some questions to put to you, of
your country, in private."
"D'Arfet?" I mused: and as my brows went up at the name I caught the
old gentleman watching me with an eye which was sharp enough within
its dulled rim. "Will you answer that I am at his service, but on the
one condition that he comes ashore and dines with _me_."
When this was reported at first Master d'Arfet would have none of it,
but rapped his staff on the desk and raised a score of objections in
his scolding voice. Since I could understand none of them, I added
very firmly that it was my rule; that he could be carried up to my
house on a litter without an ache of his bones; and, in short, that I
must either have his promise or leave the ship.
He would have persisted, I doubt not; but it is ill disputing through
an interpreter, and he ended by giving way with a very poor grace. So
ashore we rowed him with the man Martin, and two of my guard conveyed
him up the hill in a litter, on which he sat for all the world like a
peevish cross'd child. In my great airy dining-room he seemed to cool
down and pick up his better humour by degrees. He spoke but little
during the meal, and that little was mainly addressed to Martin, who
stood behind his chair: but I saw his eyes travelling around the
panelled walls and studying the portraits, the furniture, the neat
table, the many comforts which it clearly astonished him to find on
this forsaken island. Also he as clearly approved of the food and of
my wine of Malmsey. Now and then he would steal a look at my wife
Beatrix, or at one or the other of my three daughters, and again gaze
out at the sea beyond the open window, as though trying to piece it
all together into one picture.
But it was not until the womenfolk had risen and retired that he
unlocked his thoughts to me. And I hold even now that his first
question was a curious one.
"Dom Bartholomew Perestrello, are you a happy man?"
Had it come from his own lips it might have found me better prepared:
but popped at me through the mouth of an interpreter, a servant who
(for all his face told) might have been handing it on a dish, his
question threw me out of my bearings.
"Well, Sir," I found myself answering, "I hope you see that I have
much to thank God for." And while this was being reported to him I
recalled with a twinge my dejected thoughts of the morning. "I have
made many mistakes," I began again.
But without seeming to hear, Master d'Arfet began to dictate to
Martin, who, after a polite pause to give me time to finish if I cared
to, translated in his turn.
"I have told you my name. It is Thomas d'Arfet, and I come from
Bristol. You have heard my name before?"