CHAPTER XVIII
HOW THEY TOOK THE PEARLS AT MARGARITA
P. Henry. Why, what a rascal art thou, then, to praise him so for running! Falstaff. O' horseback, ye cuckoo! but a-foot, he will not budge a foot. P. Henry. Yes, Jack, upon instinct. Falstaff. I grant ye, upon instinct.
Henry IV. Pt. I.
They had slipped past the southern point of Grenada in the night, andwere at last within that fairy ring of islands, on which nature hadconcentrated all her beauty, and man all his sin. If Barbados had beeninvested in the eyes of the newcomers with some strange glory, how muchmore the seas on which they now entered, which smile in almost perpetualcalm, untouched by the hurricane which roars past them far to northward!Sky, sea, and islands were one vast rainbow; though little marked,perhaps, by those sturdy practical sailors, whose main thought was ofSpanish gold and pearls; and as little by Amyas, who, accustomed to thescenery of the tropics, was speculating inwardly on the possibility ofextirpating the Spaniards, and annexing the West Indies to the domainsof Queen Elizabeth. And yet even their unpoetic eyes could not beholdwithout awe and excitement lands so famous and yet so new, aroundwhich all the wonder, all the pity, and all the greed of the age hadconcentrated itself. It was an awful thought, and yet inspiriting, thatthey were entering regions all but unknown to Englishmen, where thepenalty of failure would be worse than death--the torments of theInquisition. Not more than five times before, perhaps, had thosemysterious seas been visited by English keels; but there were thoseon board who knew them well, and too well; who, first of all Britishmariners, had attempted under Captain John Hawkins to trade along thosevery coasts, and, interdicted from the necessaries of life by Spanishjealousy, had, in true English fashion, won their markets at the sword'spoint, and then bought and sold honestly and peaceably therein. The oldmariners of the Pelican and the Minion were questioned all day long forthe names of every isle and cape, every fish and bird; while Frank stoodby, listening serious and silent.
A great awe seemed to have possessed his soul; yet not a sad one: forhis face seemed daily to drink in glory from the glory round him; andmurmuring to himself at whiles, "This is the gate of heaven," he stoodwatching all day long, careless of food and rest, as every forwardplunge of the ship displayed some fresh wonder. Islands and capes hunghigh in air, with their inverted images below them; long sand-hillsrolled and weltered in the mirage; and the yellow flower-beds, and hugethorny cacti like giant candelabra, which clothed the glaring slopes,twisted, tossed, and flickered, till the whole scene seemed one blazingphantom-world, in which everything was as unstable as it was fantastic,even to the sun itself, distorted into strange oval and pear-shapedfigures by the beds of crimson mist through which he sank to rest. Butwhile Frank wondered, Yeo rejoiced; for to the southward of that settingsun a cluster of tall peaks rose from the sea; and they, unless hisreckonings were wrong, were the mountains of Macanao, at the western endof Margarita, the Isle of Pearls, then famous in all the cities ofthe Mediterranean, and at the great German fairs, and second only inrichness to that pearl island in the gulf of Panama, which fifteen yearsbefore had cost John Oxenham his life.
The next day saw them running along the north side of the island, havingpassed undiscovered (as far as they could see) the castle which theSpaniards had built at the eastern end for the protection of the pearlfisheries.
At last they opened a deep and still bight, wooded to the water's edge;and lying in the roadstead a caravel, and three boats by her. And atthat sight there was not a man but was on deck at once, and not a mouthbut was giving its opinion of what should be done. Some were for sailingright into the roadstead, the breeze blowing fresh toward the shore (asit usually does throughout those islands in the afternoon). However,seeing the billows break here and there off the bay's mouth, theythought it better, for fear of rocks, to run by quietly, and thensend in the pinnace and the boat. Yeo would have had them show Spanishcolors, for fear of alarming the caravel; but Amyas stoutly refused,"counting it," he said, "a mean thing to tell a lie in that way, unlessin extreme danger, or for great ends of state."
So holding on their course till they were shut out by the next point,they started; Cary in the largest boat with twenty men, and Amyas inthe smaller one with fifteen more; among whom was John Brimblecombe,who must needs come in his cassock and bands, with an old sword of hisuncle's which he prized mightily.
When they came to the bight's mouth, they found, as they had expected,coral rocks, and too many of them; so that they had to run along theedge of the reef a long way before they could find a passage for theboats. While they were so doing, and those of them who were new to theIndies were admiring through the clear element those living flower-beds,and subaqueous gardens of Nereus and Amphitrite, there suddenly appearedbelow what Yeo called "a school of sharks," some of them nearly as longas the boat, who looked up at them wistfully enough out of their wickedscowling eyes.
"Jack," said Amyas, who sat next to him, "look how that big felloweyes thee: he has surely taken a fancy to that plump hide of thine, andthinks thou wouldst eat as tender as any sucking porker."
Jack turned very pale, but said nothing.
Now, as it befell, just then that very big fellow, seeing a parrot-fishcome out of a cleft of the coral, made at him from below, as did two orthree more; the poor fish finding no other escape, leaped clean into theair, and almost aboard the boat; while just where he had come out ofthe water, three or four great brown shagreened noses clashed togetherwithin two yards of Jack as he sat, each showing its horrible rows ofsaw teeth, and then sank sulkily down again, to watch for a fresh bait.At which Jack said very softly, "In manus tuas, Domine!" and turning hiseyes in board, had no lust to look at sharks any more.
So having got through the reef, in they ran with a fair breeze, thecaravel not being now a musket-shot off. Cary laid her aboard beforethe Spaniards had time to get to their ordnance; and standing up in thestern-sheets, shouted to them to yield. The captain asked boldly enough,in whose name? "In the name of common sense, ye dogs," cries Will; "doyou not see that you are but fifty strong to our twenty?" Whereon up theside he scrambled, and the captain fired a pistol at him. Cary knockedhim over, unwilling to shed needless blood; on which all the crewyielded, some falling on their knees, some leaping overboard; and theprize was taken.
In the meanwhile, Amyas had pulled round under her stern, and boardedthe boat which was second from her, for the nearest was fast alongside,and so a sure prize. The Spaniards in her yielded without a blow, crying"Misericordia;" and the negroes, leaping overboard, swam ashore likesea-dogs. Meanwhile, the third boat, which was not an oar's lengthoff, turned to pull away. Whereby befell a notable adventure: for JohnBrimblecombe, casting about in a valiant mind how he should distinguishhimself that day, must needs catch up a boat-hook, and claw on to herstern, shouting, "Stay, ye Papists! Stay, Spanish dogs!"--by which, aswas to be expected, they being ten to his one, he was forthwith pulledoverboard, and fell all along on his nose in the sea, leaving the hookfast in her stern.
Where, I know not how, being seized with some panic fear (his livelyimagination filling all the sea with those sharks which he had justseen), he fell a-roaring like any town-bull, and in his confusion neverthought to turn and get aboard again, but struck out lustily after theSpanish boat, whether in hope of catching hold of the boat-hook whichtrailed behind her, or from a very madness of valor, no man coulddivine; but on he swam, his cassock afloat behind him, looking for allthe world like a great black monk-fish, and howling and puffing, withhis mouth full of salt water, "Stay, ye Spanish dogs! Help, all goodfellows! See you not that I am a dead man? They are nuzzling already atmy toes! He hath hold of my leg! My right thigh is bitten clean off!Oh that I were preaching in Hartland pulpit! Stay, Spanish dogs! Yield,Papist cowards, least I make mincemeat of you; and take me aboard!Yield, I say, or my blood be on your heads! I am no Jonah; if he swallowme, he will never cast me up again! it is better
to fall into the handsof man, than into the hands of devils with three rows of teeth apiece.In manus tuas. Orate pro anima--!"
And so forth, in more frantic case than ever was Panurge in that hisever-memorable seasickness; till the English, expecting him every minuteto be snapped up by sharks, or brained by the Spaniard's oars, let fly avolley into the fugitives, on which they all leaped overboard like theirfellows; whereon Jack scrambled into the boat, and drawing sword withone hand, while he wiped the water out of his eyes with the other, beganto lay about him like a very lion, cutting the empty air, and crying,"Yield, idolaters! Yield, Spanish dogs!" However, coming to himselfafter a while, and seeing that there was no one on whom to flesh hismaiden steel, he sits down panting in the sternsheets, and beginsstripping off his hose. On which Amyas, thinking surely that the goodfellow had gone mad with some stroke of the sun, or by having falleninto the sea after being overheated with his rowing, bade pullalongside, and asked him in heaven's name what he was doing with hisnether tackle. On which Jack, amid such laughter as may be conceived,vowed and swore that his right thigh was bitten clean through, and tothe bone; yea, and that he felt his hose full of blood; and so wouldhave swooned away for imaginary loss of blood (so strong was thedelusion on him) had not his friends, after much arguing on their part,and anger on his, persuaded him that he was whole and sound.
After which they set to work to overhaul their maiden prize, which theyfound full of hides and salt-pork; and yet not of that alone; for inthe captain's cabin, and also in the sternsheets of the boat whichBrimblecombe had so valorously boarded, were certain frails of leavespacked neatly enough, which being opened were full of goodly pearls,though somewhat brown (for the Spaniards used to damage the color intheir haste and greediness, opening the shells by fire, instead ofleaving them to decay gradually after the Arabian fashion); with whichprize, though they could not guess its value very exactly, they went offcontent enough, after some malicious fellow had set the ship on fire,which, being laden with hides, was no nosegay as it burnt.
Amyas was very angry at this wanton damage, in which his model,Drake, had never indulged; but Cary had his jest ready. "Ah!" said he,"'Lutheran devils' we are, you know; so we are bound to vanish, likeother fiends, with an evil savor."
As soon, however, as Amyas was on board again, he rounded his friendMr. Brimblecombe in the ear, and told him he had better play the man alittle more, roaring less before he was hurt, and keeping his breathto help his strokes, if he wished the crew to listen much to hisdiscourses. Frank, hearing this, bade Amyas leave the offender to him,and so began upon him with--
"Come hither, thou recreant Jack, thou lily-livered Jack, thouhysterical Jack. Tell me now, thou hast read Plato's Dialogues, andAristotle's Logic?"
To which Jack very meekly answered, "Yes."
"Then I will deal with thee after the manner of those ancient sages, andask whether the greater must not contain the less?"
Jack. Yes, sure.
Frank. And that which is more than a part, contain that part, more thanwhich it is?
Jack. Yes, sure.
Frank. Then tell me, is not a priest more than a layman?
Jack (who was always very loud about the dignity of the priesthood,as many of his cloth are, who have no other dignity whereon to stand)answered very boldly, "Of course."
Frank. Then a priest containeth a man, and is a man, and somethingover--viz, his priesthood?
Jack (who saw whither this would lead). I suppose so.
Frank. Then, if a priest show himself no man, he shows himself all themore no priest?
"I'll tell you what, Master Frank," says Jack, "you may be right bylogic; but sharks aren't logic, nor don't understand it neither."
Frank. Nay but, my recalcitrant Jack, my stiff-necked Jack, is it thepart of a man to howl like a pig in a gate, because he thinks that isthere which is not there?
Jack had not a word to say.
Frank. And still more, when if that had been there, it had been the dutyof a brave man to have kept his mouth shut, if only to keep salt waterout, and not add the evil of choking to that of being eaten?
"Ah!" says Jack, "that's all very fine; but you know as well as I thatit was not the Spaniards I was afraid of. They were Heaven's handiwork,and I knew how to deal with them; but as for those fiends' spawn ofsharks, when I saw that fellow take the fish alongside, it upset meclean, and there's an end of it!"
Frank. Oh, Jack, Jack, behold how one sin begets another! Just now thouwert but a coward, and now thou art a Manichee. For thou hast imputedto an evil creator that which was formed only for a good end, namely,sharks, which were made on purpose to devour useless carcasses likethine. Moreover, as a brother of the Rose, thou wert bound by the vow ofthy brotherhood to have leaped joyfully down that shark's mouth.
Jack. Ay, very likely, if Mistress Rose had been in his stomach; but Iwanted to fight Spaniards just then, not to be shark-bitten.
Frank. Jack, thy answer savors of self-will. If it is ordained that thoushouldst advance the ends of the Brotherhood by being shark-bitten,or flea-bitten, or bitten by sharpers, to the detriment of thy carnalwealth, or, shortly, to suffer any shame or torment whatsoever, even tostrappado and scarpines, thou art bound to obey thy destiny, and not,after that vain Roman conceit, to choose the manner of thine own death,which is indeed only another sort of self-murder. We therefore considerthee as a cause of scandal, and a rotten and creaking branch, to beexcised by the spiritual arm, and do hereby excise thee, and cut theeoff.
Jack. Nay faith, that's a little too much, Master Frank. How long haveyou been Bishop of Exeter?
Frank. Jack, thy wit being blinded, and full of gross vapors, by reasonof the perturbations of fear (which, like anger, is a short madness,and raises in the phantasy vain spectres,--videlicet, of sharks andSpaniards), mistakes our lucidity. For thy Manicheeism, let his lordshipof Exeter deal with it. For thy abominable howling and caterwauling,offensive in a chained cur, but scandalous in a preacher and a brotherof the Rose, we do hereby deprive thee of thine office of chaplain tothe Brotherhood; and warn thee, that unless within seven days thou dosome deed equal to the Seven Champions, or Ruggiero and Orlando's self,thou shalt be deprived of sword and dagger, and allowed henceforth tocarry no more iron about thee than will serve to mend thy pen.
"And now, Jack," said Amyas, "I will give thee a piece of news. Nowonder that young men, as the parsons complain so loudly, will notlisten to the Gospel, while it is preached to them by men on whom theycannot but look down; a set of softhanded fellows who cannot dig, andare ashamed to beg; and, as my brother has it, must needs be parsonsbefore they are men.
"Frank. Ay, and even though we may excuse that in Popish priests andfriars, who are vowed not to be men, and get their bread shamefullyand rascally by telling sinners who owe a hundred measures to sit downquickly and take their bill and write fifty: yet for a priest of theChurch of England (whose business is not merely to smuggle sinful soulsup the backstairs into heaven, but to make men good Christians by makingthem good men, good gentlemen, and good Englishmen) to show the whitefeather in the hour of need, is to unpreach in one minute all that hehad been preaching his life long.
"I tell thee," says Amyas, "if I had not taken thee for another guesssort of man, I had never let thee have the care of a hundred brave lads'immortal souls--"
And so on, both of them boarding him at once with their heavy shot,larboard and starboard, till he fairly clapped his hands to his earsand ran for it, leaving poor Frank laughing so heartily, that Amyas wasafter all glad the thing had happened, for the sake of the smile whichit put into his sad and steadfast countenance.
The next day was Sunday; on which, after divine service (which theycould hardly persuade Jack to read, so shamefaced was he; and as forpreaching after it, he would not hear of such a thing), Amyas readaloud, according to custom, the articles of their agreement; and thenseeing abreast of them a sloping beach with a shoot of clear waterrunning into the sea, agreed that they should land there, was
h theclothes, and again water the ship; for they had found water somewhatscarce at Barbados. On this party Jack Brimblecombe must needs go,taking with him his sword and a great arquebuse; for he had dreamed lastnight (he said) that he was set upon by Spaniards, and was sure that thedream would come true; and moreover, that he did not very much care ifthey did, or if he ever got back alive; "for it was better to die thanbe made an ape, and a scarecrow, and laughed at by the men, and badgeredwith Ramus his logic, and Plato his dialectical devilries, to confesshimself a Manichee, and, for aught he knew, a turbaned Turk, or HebrewJew," and so flung into the boat like a man desperate.
So they went ashore, after Amyas had given strict commands againstletting off firearms, for fear of alarming the Spaniards. There theywashed their clothes, and stretched their legs with great joy, admiringthe beauty of the place, and then began to shoot the seine which theyhad brought on shore with them. "In which," says the chronicler, "wecaught many strange fishes, and beside them, a sea-cow full seven feetlong, with limpets and barnacles on her back, as if she had been a stickof drift-timber. This is a fond and foolish beast: and yet pious withal;for finding a corpse, she watches over it day and night until it decayor be buried. The Indians call her manati; who carries her youngunder her arm, and gives it suck like a woman; and being wounded, shelamenteth aloud with a human voice, and is said at certain seasons tosing very melodiously; which melody, perhaps, having been heard in thoseseas, is that which Mr. Frank reported to be the choirs of the Sirensand Tritons. The which I do not avouch for truth, neither rashly deny,having seen myself such fertility of Nature's wonders that I hold himwho denieth aught merely for its strangeness to be a ribald and anignoramus. Also one of our men brought in two great black fowls whichhe had shot with a crossbow, bodied and headed like a capon, but biggerthan any eagle, which the Spaniards call curassos; which, with thatsea-cow, afterwards made us good cheer, both roast and sodden, for thecow was very dainty meat, as good as a four-months' calf, and tender andfat withal."
After that they set to work filling the casks and barricos, having laidthe boat up to the outflow of the rivulet. And lucky for them it was,as it fell out, that they were all close together at that work, and notabroad skylarking as they had been half-an-hour before.
Now John Brimblecombe had gone apart as soon as they landed, with ashamefaced and doleful countenance; and sitting down under a great tree,plucked a Bible from his bosom, and read steadfastly, girded with hisgreat sword, and his arquebuse lying by him. This too was well for him,and for the rest; for they had not yet finished their watering, whenthere was a cry that the enemy was on them; and out of the wood,not twenty yards from the good parson, came full fifty shot, with amultitude of negroes behind them, and an officer in front on horseback,with a great plume of feathers in his hat, and his sword drawn in hishand.
"Stand, for your lives!" shouted Amyas: and only just in time; for therewas ten good minutes lost in running up and down before he could get hismen into some order of battle. But when Jack beheld the Spaniards, as ifhe had expected their coming, he plucked a leaf and put it into thepage of his book for a mark, laid the book down soberly, caught up hisarquebuse, ran like a mad dog right at the Spanish captain, shot himthrough the body stark dead, and then, flinging the arquebuse at thehead of him who stood next, fell on with his sword like a very Colbrand,breaking in among the arquebuses, and striking right and left such uglystrokes, that the Spaniards (who thought him a very fiend, or Luther'sself come to life to plague them) gave back pell-mell, and shot at himfive or six at once with their arquebuses: but whether from fear of him,or of wounding each other, made so bad play with their pieces, that heonly got one shrewd gall in his thigh, which made him limp for many aday. But as fast as they gave back he came on; and the rest by this timeran up in good order, and altogether nearly forty men well armed. Onwhich the Spaniards turned, and went as fast as they had come, whileCary hinted that, "The dogs had had such a taste of the parson, thatthey had no mind to wait for the clerk and people."
"Come back, Jack! are you mad?" shouted Amyas.
But Jack (who had not all this time spoken one word) followed themas fiercely as ever, till, reaching a great blow at one of thearquebusiers, he caught his foot in a root; on which down he went, andstriking his head against the ground, knocked out of himself all thebreath he had left (which between fatness and fighting was not much),and so lay. Amyas, seeing the Spaniards gone, did not care to pursuethem: but picked up Jack, who, staring about, cried, "Glory be! glorybe!--How many have I killed? How many have I killed?"
"Nineteen, at the least," quoth Cary, "and seven with one backstroke;" and then showed Brimblecombe the captain lying dead, and twoarquebusiers, one of which was the fugitive by whom he came to his fall,beside three or four more who were limping away wounded, some of them bytheir fellows' shot.
"There!" said Jack, pausing and blowing, "will you laugh at me any more,Mr. Cary; or say that I cannot fight, because I am a poor parson's son?"
Cary took him by the hand, and asked pardon of him for his scoffing,saying that he had that day played the best man of all of them; andJack, who never bore malice, began laughing in his turn, and--
"Oh, Mr. Cary, we have all known your pleasant ways, ever since you usedto put drumble-drones into my desk to Bideford school." And so they wentto the boats, and pulled off, thanking God (as they had need to do) fortheir great deliverance: while all the boats' crew rejoiced over Jack,who after a while grew very faint (having bled a good deal withoutknowing it), and made as little of his real wound as he made much theday before of his imaginary one.
Frank asked him that evening how he came to show so cool and approved avalor in so sudden a mishap.
"Well, my masters," said Jack, "I don't deny that I was very downcast onaccount of what you said, and the scandal which I had given to the crew;but as it happened, I was reading there under the tree, to fortify myspirits, the history of the ancient worthies, in St. Paul his eleventhchapter to the Hebrews; and just as I came to that, 'out of weaknesswere made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armiesof the aliens,' arose the cry of the Spaniards. At which, gentlemen,thinking in myself that I fought in just so good a cause as they, and,as I hoped, with like faith, there came upon me so strange an assuranceof victory, that I verily believed in myself that if there had beena ten thousand of them, I should have taken no hurt. Wherefore," saidJack, modestly, "there is no credit due to me, for there was no valorin me whatsoever, but only a certainty of safety; and any coward wouldfight if he knew that he were to have all the killing and none of thescratches."
Which words he next day, being Sunday, repeated in his sermon which hemade on that chapter, with which all, even Salvation Yeo himself, werewell content and edified, and allowed him to be as godly a preacher ashe was (in spite of his simple ways) a valiant and true-hearted comrade.
They brought away the Spanish officer's sword (a very good blade), andalso a great chain of gold which he wore about his neck; both of whichwere allotted to Brimblecombe as his fair prize; but he, accepting thesword, steadfastly refused the chain, entreating Amyas to put it intothe common stock; and when Amyas refused, he cut it into links anddistributed it among those of the boat's crew who had succored him,winning thereby much good-will. "And indeed" (says the chronicler),"I never saw in that worthy man, from the first day of ourschool-fellowship till he was laid in his parish church of Hartland(where he now sleeps in peace), any touch of that sin of covetousnesswhich has in all ages, and in ours no less than others, beset especially(I know not why) them who minister about the sanctuary. But this man,though he was ugly and lowly in person, and in understanding simple, andof breeding but a poor parson's son, had yet in him a spirit so lovingand cheerful, so lifted from base and selfish purposes to the worshipof duty, and to a generosity rather knightly than sacerdotal, that allthrough his life he seemed to think only that it was more blessed togive than to receive. And all that wealth which he gained in the wars hedispersed among his sisters and the poo
r of his parish, living unmarriedtill his death like a true lover and constant mourner (as shall be saidin place), and leaving hardly wherewith to bring his body to thegrave. At whom if we often laughed once, we should now rather envy him,desiring to be here what he was, that we may be hereafter where he is.Amen."
Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth Page 18