“It will be seven hundred pounds, sir.”
“What will be seven hundred pounds? You seem not to pay attention as you used, Henry. Do listen to this paragraph; it is both entertaining and instructive—”
Henry careened the ship, and when he had scraped and painted her, he named her Elizabeth and put to sea. He had what is known as “hands” to a horseman, a warm feeling of the personality of his boat. He must learn the rules of navigation, of course; but even before that something of the spirit of the ship crept into his soul, and part of him went back to her. It was a steadfast love, a steady understanding of the sea. By the thrill of her deck and the smooth touch of the wheel, he knew instinctively how close he could bring her into the wind. He was like a man who, laying his head on his mistress’ breast, reads the flux of her passions in her breathing.
Now he could have run away from Barbados and gone to plundering in the staunch Elizabeth, but there was no need. His hoard was not great enough and he was too young; and in addition, he felt a curious, shame-faced love for James Flower.
Henry was content for a little while. The lust that all men have in varying degrees—some for the flash of cards, and some for wine, and some for the bodies of women—was, in Henry Morgan, satisfied with the deck’s lunge and pitch and the crack of canvas. The wind, blowing out of a black, dreadful sky, was a cup of wine to him, and a challenge, and a passionate caress.
He sailed to Jamaica with the crops and beat about among the islands. The returns from the plantation mounted, and Henry’s box of coins was growing heavy.
But after a few months, a dull, torturing desire came to him. It was the yearning of the little boy, revivified and strong. The Elizabeth had sated his old lust and left a new one. He thought it was plunder that called him: the beautiful things of silk and gold and the admiration of men, and on these his heart set more zealously than ever.
Henry went to the brown women and the black in the slave huts, striving to dull his hungering if he could not satisfy it; and they received him, cow-eyed and passive, anxious to please. They hoped that of his favor they might receive more food or a jug of rum as a gift. Each time, he came away with disgust and a little pity for their poor, hopeful prostitution.
Once, in the slave dock at Port Royal, he found Paulette and bought her for a servant in the house. She was lithe, yet rounded; fierce and gentle in a moment. Poor little slave of the jumbled bloods, she was Spanish and Carib and Negro and French. The heritage of this rag-bag ancestry was hair like a cataract of black water, eyes as blue as the sea, set in oriental slits, and a golden, golden skin. Hers was a sensuous, passionate beauty—limbs that twinkled like golden flames. Her lips could writhe like slender, twisting serpents or bloom like red flowers. She was a little child, yet old in life. She was a Christian, but she worshiped wood spirits and sang low chants in honor of the Great Snake.
Henry thought of her as a delicate machine perfectly made for pleasure, a sexual contraption. She was like those tall, cool women of the night who ride with the wings of sleep—soulless bodies—bodies of passionate dreams. He built for her a tiny, vine-clad house roofed with banana leaves and there he played at love.
At first Paulette was only grateful to him for bringing her to a lazy, easy life, with comfort and days of little toil, but later she fell frenziedly in love with him. She watched his face like a quick terrier, waiting to jump with wild pleasure at one word or fall fawning in the dust at another.
When Henry was serious or distraught, she was afraid; then she would kneel before her little ebony figure of a jungle god and pray to the Virgin for his love. Sometimes she put out cups of milk for the winged Jun-Jo-Bee which keeps men true. With the frantic, tender arts of her mixed bloods, she strove to hold him surely in her sight. From her body and her hair there came a rich orient odor, for she rubbed herself with sandalwood and myrrh.
When he was gloomy—
“Do you love Paulette?” she would ask. “Do you love Paulette? Are you sure you love Paulette?”
“Why, certainly, I love Paulette. How could a man see Paulette, little, dear Paulette—how touch the lips of sweet Paulette—and not be loving her?” And his eyes would go wandering to the sea below, seeking and seeking along the curved shore.
“But do you surely, surely love Paulette? Come, kiss the little breasts of your own Paulette.”
“Yes, surely I love Paulette. There! I have kissed them and the charm is made. Now do be still a little. Hear the pounding of the frogs. I wonder what startled the old bearded monkey in the tree there; some slave, perhaps, out stealing fruit.” And his eyes would go wandering restlessly to sea.
As the year went on, the soil of her love thrust up strong vines of choking fear. She knew that when he finally deserted her she would be far more than just alone. She might be forced to kneel in the field rows and dig about the plants with her fingers as the other women did. And then, one day, she would be led to the hut of a great negro with powerful muscles, and he would bruise her little golden body in his beast’s clutch and make her pregnant of a black child—a strong, black child that could toil and strain in the sun when it was grown. This happened to all the other slave women of the island. The half of her mind that was very old shuddered at this thought, and that same old mind knew well that Henry would leave her one day.
Then, to her child’s mind, appeared the doorway for the passage of her fright. If only he would marry her—impossible it seemed, yet stranger things had been—if only he would marry her, then she need never fear. For those strange beings, wives, were, in some curious way, by some divine intent, shielded from ugly and uncomfortable things. Ah! she had seen them in Port Royal, surrounded by their men to keep foul contact off, breathing through scented cloths to deaden the vile smells, and sometimes with little pellets of cotton in their ears to stop the cursing of the streets from entering. And Paulette knew—had she not been told?—that in their homes they lay in great, soft beds, and languidly gave orders to their slaves.
This was the blessed state she dared to hope for. And her body was not enough, she knew. Often it failed in its soft potency. If she fed him full of love, he did not come again to her bower for a time; and when she refused him to make his passion mount, either he went sullenly away or laughed and flung her roughly on the low, palm couch. She must cast about for some compelling force, some very powerful means to make him marry her.
When Henry went away with cocoa for Port Royal, she was scarcely sane. She knew his love for the ship, his passion for the sea, and she was furiously jealous of them. In her mind she saw him fondle the wheel with the strong, dear touch of lover’s fingers. Ah! she could scratch and tear that wheel which robbed her.
She must make him love Paulette more than the ships, more than the sea, or anything on earth, so that he would marry her. Then she could walk haughtily among the huts and spit at the slaves; then she need never think of grubbing in the earth or bearing strong black children; then she would have red cloth to wear, and a silver chain to go about her neck. It was even possible that once in a long while her dinner might be brought to her while she lay in bed, pretending to be ill. She wriggled her toes in delight at such a thought, and made up the insulting things she would say to one fat negress with a spiteful tongue, when only she should be a wife. That old, fat wretch had called Paulette a slut before a gathering. Paulette had pulled out lots of hair before she could be held with her arms to her sides—but still, that black one should see, one day. Paulette would have her whipped on the cross.
While Henry was away a trading ship came into port, and Paulette went to the beach to see the things she brought and to watch the wind-brown sailors come ashore. And one of them, a great, broad Irishman, laden with black rum, pursued and captured her against a pile of boxes. Strong and quick, she struggled to elude him, but he held her tightly, swaying though he was.
“I’ve caught a fairy to mend my shoes,” he laughed, and peered into her face. “Sure enough, ’tis a fairy.” And then he saw tha
t she was small and very beautiful, and he spoke tenderly and low.
“You’re a lovely fairy—lovelier than the eyes of me have ever seen. Could a slim little body like you be thinking anything about a great, ugly hulk like me, I wonder? Come off and marry me, and you shall have anything ’tis in the power of a sailor to give you.”
“No!” she cried. “No!” and slipped under his arm and away. The sailor sat in the sand staring dully before him.
“ ’Twas a dream,” he whispered; “ ’twas only a dream from the spirits. There’s no such thing to be happening to a poor sailor. No; for sailors there be pretty hags with sharp, hard eyes to say, ‘Come! money first, sweetheart mine.’ ”
But now Paulette had found the way to make Henry marry her. She would contrive to get drunkenness on him, would trap him with wine, and there would be a priest nearby to come at her hushed call. Oh, surely, stranger things had been!
She laid her snare for him on his first night back from sea—a large stone flagon filled with Peruvian wine, and a priest, bribed with a stolen coin, waiting in the shadow of a tree. Henry was very tired. He had gone out short-handed and helped to work the ship himself. The little vine-clothed hut was a pleasant, restful place to him. A full white moon cast silver splashes in the sea below and strewed the ground with scarves of purple light. Sweetly there sang a little jungle breeze among the palms.
She brought the wine and filled a cup for him.
“Do you love Paulette?”
“Ah, yes! as God sees me, I love Paulette; dear, sweet Paulette. ” Another cup, and still, persistently—
“Are you so sure you love Paulette?”
“Paulette is a little star hanging to my breast by a silver chain.”
Another cup.
“Do you love none other save only your Paulette?”
“I came longingly to find Paulette; the thought of her sailed on the sea with me.” And his arms locked tightly around her little golden waist.
Another and another and another; then his arms fell away from her and his hands clenched. The girl cried fearfully,
“Oh! do you love Paulette?” for Henry had grown morose and strange and cold.
“I shall tell you of an old time,” he said hoarsely. “I was a little boy, a joyous little boy, yet old enough to love. There was a girl—and she was named Elizabeth—the daughter of a wealthy squire. Ah! she was lovely as this night about us, quiet and lovely as that slender palm tree under the moon. I loved her with that love a man may exercise but once. Even our hearts seemed to go hand in hand. How I remember the brave plans we told—she and I, there, sitting on a hillside in the night. We were to live in a great house and have dear children growing up about us. You can never know such love, Paulette.
“Ah, well! It could not last. The gods slay happiness in jealousy. Nothing good can last. A gang of bastard sailors roved through the land and carried me off—a little boy to be sold for a slave in the Indies. It was a bitter thing to lose Elizabeth— a bitter thing the years cannot forget.” And he was weeping softly by her side.
Paulette was bewildered by the change in him. She stroked his hair and his eyes, until his breath came more calmly. Then she began again, with almost hopeless patience, like a teacher questioning a dull child.
“But—do you love Paulette?”
He leaped up and glared at her.
“You? Love you? Why, you are just a little animal! a pretty little golden animal, for sure, but a form of flesh—no more. May one worship a god merely because he is big, or cherish a land which has no virtue save its breadth, or love a woman whose whole realm is her flesh? Ah, Paulette! you have no soul at all! Elizabeth had a white winged soul. I love you—yes— with what you have to be loved—the body. But Elizabeth—I loved Elizabeth with my soul.”
Paulette was puzzled.
“What is this soul?” she asked. “And how may I get one if I have not one already? And where is this soul of yours that I have never seen it or heard it at all? And if they cannot be seen, or heard, or touched, how do you know she had this soul?”
“Hush!” he cried furiously. “Hush! or I box your mouth and have you whipped on the cross. You speak of things beyond you. What can you know of love that lies without your fleshly juggling?”
VI
Christmas came to the Hot Tropics, the fourth Christmas of Henry’s servitude. And James Flower brought him a small box done up with colored string.
“It is a gift of the season,” he said, and his eyes sparkled with delight while Henry untied the package. There was a little teakwood box, and in it, lying on the scarlet silk of its lining, the torn fragments of his slavery. Henry took the shreds of paper from the box and stared at them, and then he laughed unsteadily and put his head down on his hands.
“Now you are no longer a servant, but my son,” the planter said. “Now you are my son, whom I have taught strange knowledges—and I shall teach you more, far more. We will live here always and talk together in the evenings.”
Henry raised his head.
“Oh! but I cannot, cannot stay. I must be off a-buccaneering.”
“You—you cannot stay? But, Henry, I have planned our life. You would not leave me here alone.”
“Sir,” said Henry, “I must be off a-buccaneering. Why, in all my years it has been the one aim. I must go, sir.”
“But, Henry, dear Henry, you shall have half my plantation, and all of it when I am dead—if only you will stay with me.”
“That may not be,” young Henry cried. “I must be off to make me a name. It is not given that I live a planter. Sir, there are plannings in my head that have grown perfect with pondering. And nothing may be allowed to interfere with them.”
James Flower slumped forward in his chair.
“It will be very lonely here without you. I don’t quite know what I shall do without you.”
Henry’s mind carried him back to that old time, with Robert smiling into the fire and saying these same words—“It will be so lonely here without you, son.” He wondered if his mother still sat coldly upright and silent. Surely she would have got over it. People always got over the things they feared so much. And then he thought of small Paulette who would be crying with terror in her hut when he told her.
“There is a little servant girl,” he said; “little Paulette. I have protected her. And if I have ever pleased you, will you do these things for me? Always, always keep her in the house and never let her be sent to the fields, nor whipped, nor bred with any of the blacks. Will you do these things for me surely?”
“Of course I will,” James Flower said. “Ah, but it has been good to have you here, Henry—good to hear your voice in the evening. What will I do in the evening now? There is none to take your place, for you have very truly been my son. It will be lonely here without you, boy.”
Said Henry, “The toiling I have done in your service has been more than repaid with the knowledge you have poured into my ears these same evenings. And I shall miss you, sir, more than I can say. But can’t you understand? I must go a-buccaneering and take a Spanish town, for the thought is on me that if a man planned carefully, and considered his chances and the men he had, the thing might well be done. I have studied the ancient wars, and I must be making a name for myself and a fortune. Then, when I have the admiration of men, perhaps I shall come back to you, sir, and we may sit and talk again in the evenings. You will remember my wish about Paulette?”
“Who is Paulette?” the planter asked.
“Why, the servant girl I mentioned. Never let her go with the slaves, because I am fond of her.”
“Ah, yes! I remember. And where do you go now, Henry?”
“To Jamaica. My uncle, Sir Edward, has long been Lieutenant-Governor there in Port Royal. But I have never seen him—well, because I was a bond-servant, and he is a gentleman. I have a letter to him that my father gave me years past. Perhaps he will help me to buy a ship for my plundering.”
“I would help you buy a ship. You have been
very good to me,” the planter said hopefully.
Now Henry was dipped in a kind of shame, for in the box under his bed there glistened a pile of golden coins—over a thousand pounds.
“No,” he said, “no; I have more payment in your teaching and in the father you have been to me than money could ever equal.” Now he was going, Henry knew that he had grown to love this red-faced, wistful man.
Strong, glistening blacks pulled at the oars of the canoe, and it went skimming toward an anchored ship, a ship commissioned by the States-General to carry black slaves from Guinea to the islands. James Flower, sitting in the canoe’s stern, was very red and very silent. But as they neared the ship’s side, he lifted up his head and spoke pleadingly to Henry.
“There are books on the shelves that you have never read.”
“I shall come back, one day, and read them.”
“There are things in my mind I have never told you, boy.”
“When I have the admiration of men, I shall come to you and you shall tell them to me.”
“You swear it?”
“Well—yes, I swear.”
“And how long will it take you to do these things, Henry?”
“I cannot tell; one year—or ten—or twenty. I must make a very admirable name.” Henry was climbing over the ship’s side.
“I shall be lonely in the evenings, son.”
“And I, too, sir. Look! we cast off! Good-by, sir. You will remember Paulette?”
“Paulette?—Paulette?—Ah, yes; I remember.”
VII
Henry Morgan came to the English town of Port Royal and left his baggage on the beach while he went looking for his uncle.
“Do you know where I may find the Lieutenant-Governor?” he asked in the streets.
“His palace is yonder, young man, and who knows he may be in it.”
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