Cup of Gold

by John Steinbeck

  “Orders? No; I—I thought I would like to talk with you— that is all.”

  “To talk with me, sir? But to talk of what?”

  “Well—How are the many little loves you are reputed to have?” the captain asked in an uneasy effort at joviality.

  “Repute is kinder to me than nature, sir.”

  Henry Morgan plunged to his purpose.

  “Listen to me, Cœur de Gris! Can you not imagine that I may need a friend? Can you not think of me as a lonely man? Consider how all my followers are afraid of me. They come for orders, but never to pass a quiet time of day. I know I made this so. It was necessary once, for I had to build up respect before I could command obedience. But now there are times when I should like to be telling my thoughts and talking of something besides war and spoil. For ten years I have ravaged the seas like a silent wolf, and I have no friend anywhere.

  “I have chosen you to be my friend; first, because I like you, and second, because you have not a thing on earth you might be thinking I want to steal. Thus you may like me without fear. It is a strange thing how my men suspect me. I have given a strict accounting for every voyage, yet, if I spoke to them as friends, they would beat their brains to discover my plot. And will you be my friend, Cœur de Gris?”

  “Why, certainly, I will, my Captain, and had I known of such a thing in your mind, I would have been for long. How may I serve you, sir?”

  “Oh, just by talking with me now and then, and by trusting me a little. I have no motive save my loneliness. But you speak and act like a gentleman, Cœur de Gris. May I ask of your family? or do you draw this name about you like a cape, as so many do here on the Main?”

  “It is very simple to tell you of my family. It is said that my father was the great Bras de Fer, and who he was no one ever knew. The people gave me my name, remembering his. My mother is one of the free women of Goaves. She was sixteen when I was born. Hers was a very ancient family, but Huguenot in worship. Their holdings were destroyed in the murders of St. Bartholomew. Thus it came about that they were penniless when my mother was born. And she was picked up by the watch in Paris streets one day and sent to Goaves with a shipload of women vagrants. Bras de Fer found her soon afterwards.”

  “But you say she is a free woman,” said Henry Morgan, scandalized at this young man’s apparent lack of shame. “Surely she has given up this—this practice, now you are successful on the sea. You are taking home enough for both of you, and more.”

  “I know I am, but she continues. I do not mention it, for why should I interfere with what she considers a serious work. She is proud of her position, proud that her callers are the best people in the port. And it pleases her that, although she is nearly forty, she can more than compete with the young, unseasoned squabs who come in every year. Why should I change the gentle course of her ways, even if I could? No, she is a dear, lovely woman, and she has been a good mother to me. Her only fault is that she is filled with over-many little scruples. She nags at me when I am at home, and cries so when I leave. She is dreadfully afraid that I may find some woman who may do me harm.”

  “That is strange, is it not?—considering her life,” said Henry Morgan.

  “Why is it strange? Must they have a different brain in that ancient profession? No, sir; I assure you that her life is immaculate—prayers thrice a day, and there is no finer house in all Goaves than hers. Why, sir, when last I went there, I took with me a scarf which fell to my lot in the division, a glorious thing of gossamer and gold. She would not have it. It belonged about the neck of some woman who put her faith in the Romish church, she said, and it would not be decent for a good Huguenot to wear it. Ah! she worries so about me when I am off to sea. She is terribly afraid I may be hurt, but far more afraid of the tainting of my soul. Such is all my knowledge of my family, sir.”

  Captain Morgan had stepped to a cupboard and brought out some queer little jugs with wine of Peru. There were two necks on each jug, and when the wine was poured out from one, a sweet, whistling sound came from the other.

  “I took these from a Spanish ship,” he said. “Will you drink with me, Cœur de Gris?”

  “I should be very much honored, sir.”

  They sat a long time sipping the wine, then Captain Morgan spoke dreamily.

  “I suppose, Cœur de Gris, that you will one day be stricken with the Red Saint, and then we shall have the bees of Panama buzzing out upon us. I have no doubt she is as jealously guarded as was Helen. You have heard of the Red Saint, have you not?”

  The young man’s eyes were glowing with the wine.

  “Heard of her!” he said softly. “Sir, I have dreamed of her and called to her in my sleep. Who has not? Who in all this quarter of the world has not heard of her, and yet who knows any single thing about her? It is a strange thing, the magic of this woman’s name. La Santa Roja! La Santa Roja! It conjures up desire in the heart of every man—not active, possible desire, but the ‘if I were handsome, if I were a prince’ kind of desire. The young men make wild plans; some to go disguised to Panama, others to blow it up with quantities of powder. They daydream of carrying the Red Saint off with them. Sir, I have heard a seaman all rotten with disease whispering to himself in the night, ‘If this thing were not on me, I would go adventuring for La Santa Roja.’

  “My mother frets and frets there in Goaves, lest I go mad and run to her. She is terrified by this strange woman. ‘Go not near to her, my son,’ she says. ‘This woman is wicked; she is a devil; besides, she is without doubt a Catholic.’ And no one has ever seen her that we know of. We do not know certainly that there exists such a woman as the Red Saint in the Cup of Gold. Ah! she has spread the sea with dreams—with longing dreams. I have been thinking, sir, that perhaps, sometime, the Cup of Gold may go the way of Troy town on account of her.”

  Henry Morgan had filled the glasses again and again. He was slumped forward in his chair, and a little crooked smile was on his mouth.

  “Yes,” he said rather thickly, “she is a danger to the peace of nations and to the peace of men’s minds. The matter is wholly ridiculous, of course. She is probably a shrewish bitch who takes her bright features from the legend. But how might such a legend be started? Your health, Cœur de Gris. You will be a good friend to me and true?”

  “I will, my Captain.”

  And again they sat silently, drinking the rich wine.

  “But there is much suffering bound up in women,” Henry Morgan began, as though he had just finished speaking. “They seem to carry pain about with them in a leaking package. You have loved often, they say, Cœur de Gris. Have you not felt the pain they carry?”

  “No, sir, I do not think I have. Surely I have been assailed by regrets and little sorrows—everyone has; but mostly I have found only pleasure among women.”

  “Ah, you are lucky,” the captain said. “You are filled with luck not to have known the pain. My own life was poisoned by love. This life I lead was forced on me by lost love.”

  “Why, how was that, sir? Surely, I had not thought that you—”

  “I know; I know how I must have changed so that even you laugh a little at the thought of my being in love. I could not now command the affection of the daughter of an Earl.”

  “The daughter of an Earl, sir?”

  “Yes, an Earl’s daughter. We loved too perfectly—too passionately. Once she came to me in a rose garden and lay in my arms until the dark was gone. I thought to run away with her to some new, lovely country, and sink her title in the sea behind us. Perhaps even now I might be living safe in Virginia, with little joys crowding my footstool.”

  “It is a great pity, sir.” Cœur de Gris was truly sorry for this man.

  “Ah, well; her father was informed. On one dark night my arms were pinned to my sides, and she—oh, dear Elizabeth!— was torn away from me. They placed me, still bound, in a ship, and sold me in Barbados. Can you not see, Cœur de Gris, the bitterness that lies restlessly in my heart? During these years, her face has f
ollowed me in all my wanderings. Somehow I feel that I might have made some later move—but her father was a powerful lord.”

  “And did you never go back for her, after your imprisonment was done?”

  Henry Morgan looked down at the floor.

  “No, my friend—I never did.”

  IV

  The legend of the Red Saint grew in his brain like a powerful vine, and a voice came out of the west to coax and mock, to jeer and cozen Henry Morgan. He forgot the sea and his idling ships. The buccaneers were penniless from their long inactivity. They lay about the decks and cursed their captain for a dreaming fool. He struggled madly against the folding meshes of his dream and argued with the voice.

  “May God damn La Santa Roja for sowing the world with an insanity. She has made cut-throats bay the moon like love-sick dogs. She is making me crazy with this vain desire. I must do something—anything—to lay the insistent haunting of this woman I have never seen. I must destroy the ghost. Ah, it is a foolish thing to dream of capturing the Cup of Gold. It would seem that my desire is death.”

  And he remembered the hunger which had drawn him from Cambria, for it was duplicated and strengthened now. His thoughts were driving sleep away. When drowsiness crept in on the heels of exhaustion, La Santa Roja came in, too.

  “I will take Maracaibo,” he cried in desperation. “I will drown this lusting in a bowl of horror. I will pillage Maracaibo, tear it to pieces, and leave it bleeding in the sand.”

  (There is a woman in the Cup of Gold, and they worship her for unnamable beauties.)

  “Make the gathering at the Isle de la Vaca! Call in true hearts from the corners of the sea! We go to riches!”

  His ships flew out to the bay of Maracaibo and the town was frantic in defense.

  “Run into this bottle harbor! Yes, under the guns!”

  Cannon balls cried through the air and struck up clouds of dirt from the walls, but the defense held ground.

  “It will not fall? Then take it in assault!”

  Powder pots flew over the walls, tearing and maiming the defenders in their burst.

  “Who are these wolves?” they cried. “Ah, brothers! we must fight until we die! We must ask no clemency, brothers. If we fall, our dear city—”

  Ladders rose against the fort, and a wave of roaring men swarmed over the walls.

  “Ah, San Lorenzo! hide us! bear us away! These are no men, but devils. Hear me! Hear me! Quarter! Ah, Jesus! where art thou now?”

  “Throw down the walls! Let no two stones stand together!”

  (There is a woman in the Cup of Gold, and she is lovely as the sun.)

  “Grant no quarter! Kill the Spanish rats! Kill all of them!” And Maracaibo lay pleading at his feet. Doors were torn from the houses, and the rooms gutted of every movable thing. They herded the women to a church and locked them in. Then the prisoners were brought to Henry Morgan.

  “Here is an old man, sir. We are sure he has riches, but he has hidden them away and we can never find any.”

  “Then put his feet in the fire!—why, he is a brazen fool! Break his arms!— He will not tell? Put the whip-cord about his temples!— Oh, kill him! kill him and stop his screaming— Perhaps he had no money—”

  (There is a woman in Panama—)

  “Have you scratched out every grain of gold? Place the city at ransom! We must have riches after pain.”

  A fleet of Spanish ships came sailing to the rescue.

  “A Spanish squadron coming? We will fight them! No, no; we shall run from them if we can get away. Our hulls lag in the water with their weight of gold. Kill the prisoners!”

  (—she is lovely as the sun.)

  And Captain Morgan sailed from broken Maracaibo. Two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of eight were in his ships, and rolls of silken stuffs and plates of silver and sacks of spices. There were golden images from the Cathedral, and vestments crusted with embroidery of pearls. And the city was a fire-swept wreck.

  “We are richer than we could have hoped. There will be joy in Tortuga when we come. Every man a hero! We shall have a mad riot of a time.”

  (La Santa Roja is in Panama.)

  “Ah, God! then if I must, I must. But I fear I go to my death. It is a dreadful thing to be attempting. If this is my desire, I must, though I die.” He called young Cœur de Gris to him.

  “You have distinguished yourself in this fight, my friend.”

  “I have done what was necessary, sir.”

  “But you fought finely. I saw you when we engaged. Now I have made you my lieutenant in the field, my second in command. You are brave, you are sagacious, and you are my friend. I can trust you, and who among my men will bear this trust if it be worth his while to fail?”

  “It is a great honor, sir. I will pay you, surely, with my fidelity. My mother will be very pleased.”

  “Yes,” said Captain Morgan; “you are a young fool, and that is a virtue in this business as long as one has a leader. Now the men are straining to get back that they may spend their money. If it were possible they would be pushing the ships to hurry them. What will you do with your money, Cœur de Gris?”

  “Why, I shall send half to my mother. The remaining sum I shall divide in two. Part I shall put away, and on the other I expect to be drunk for a few days, or perhaps a week. It is good to be drunk after fighting.”

  “Drunkenness has never been a pleasure to me,” the captain said. “It makes me very sad. But I have a new venture turning in my brain. Cœur de Gris, what is the richest city of the western world? What place has been immune from the slightest gesture of the Brotherhood? Where might we all make millions?”

  “But, sir, you do not think— Surely you cannot consider it possible to take—”

  “I will take Panama—even the Cup of Gold.”

  “How may you do this thing? The city is strongly guarded with walls and troops, and the way across the isthmus is nigh impassable but for the burro trail. How will you do this thing?”

  “I must take Panama. I must capture the Cup of Gold.” The captain’s jaw set fiercely.

  Now Cœur de Gris was smiling quietly.

  “Why do you grin at me?” demanded Captain Morgan.

  “I was thinking of a chance remark I made a little time ago, that Panama was like to go the way of Troy town.”

  “Ah! this nameless woman is in your mind. Dismiss her! It may be there exists no such woman.”

  “But then, sir, we are rich enough of this last spoil.”

  “It would be no evil thing to grow richer. I am tired of plundering. I would rest securely.”

  Cœur de Gris hesitated a time, while his eyes were covered with a soft veil.

  “I am thinking, sir, that when we come to Panama every man will be at his friend’s throat over the Red Saint.”

  “Oh, you may trust me to keep order among my men—strict order—though I hang half of them to do it. A while ago I sent word to Panama that I would go there, but I did it as a joke. And I wonder, now, whether they have been fortifying themselves. Perhaps they, too, thought it a joke. Go, now, Cœur de Gris, and speak to no man of this. I make you my ambassador. Let the men throw their gold away. Encourage gambling—here— now—on the ship. Give them an example at the taverns—an expensive example. Then they will be driven to go out with me. I must have an army this time my friend, and even then we may all die. Perhaps that is the chief joy of life—to risk it. Do my work well, Cœur de Gris, and it may be one day you will be richer than you can think.”

  Young Cœur de Gris stood musing by the mast.

  “Our captain, our cold captain, has been bitten by this great, nebulous rumoring. How strange this pattern is! It is as though the Red Saint had been stolen from my arms. My dream is violated. I wonder, when they know, if every man will carry this feeling of a bitter loss—will hate the captain for stealing his desire.”

  V

  Sir Edward Morgan led forces against St. Eustatius, and, while the battle raged, a slim, brown Indian sli
pped up and drove a long knife into his stomach. The Lieutenant-Governor set his lips in a straight, hard line, and crumpled to the ground.

  “My white breeches will be ruined,” he thought. “Why did the devil have to do it, just when we were getting on so nicely. I should have got special thanks from his Majesty, and now I shall not be here to receive them. Heaven! he chose a painful place!” And then the full tragedy struck him.

  “An ordinary knife,” he muttered; “and in the stomach. I should have preferred a sword in the hand of an equal—but a knife—in the stomach! I must look disreputable with all this blood and dirt on me. And I cannot straighten up! Christ! the wretch struck a sensitive spot.”

  His men sadly bore him to Port Royal.

  “It was unavoidable,” he told the Governor; “slipped up on me with a knife and stabbed me in the stomach. Such a little devil he couldn’t reach any higher, I suppose. Report the affair to the Crown, will you, sir? And please do not mention the knife—or the stomach. And now will you leave me with my daughter? I shall be dying soon.”

  Elizabeth stood over him in a darkened room.

  “Are you hurt badly, father?”

  “Yes, quite badly. I shall die presently.”

  “Nonsense, papa; you are only joking to excite me.”

  “Elizabeth, does it sound like nonsense—and have you ever heard me joke? I have several things to speak of, and the time is very short. What will you do? There is little money left. We have been living on my salary ever since the King made his last general suggestion for a loan.”

  “But what are you talking about, papa! You cannot die and leave me here alone and lost in the colonies. You cannot, cannot do it!”

  “Whether I can or not, I shall die presently. Now let us discuss this matter while we can. Perhaps your cousin who has come to such fame through robbery will care for you, Elizabeth. I am pained at the thought, but—but—it is necessary to live—very necessary. And after all, he is your cousin.”

  “I will not believe it. I simply will not believe it. You cannot die!”