Cup of Gold

by John Steinbeck

  Their lust:

  “Women slaves there are in the city, and thousands of other women, God knows! Your difficulty will be only in judging which to choose from the multitude that will fall to us. These are not grubby field women, but great ladies who lie in silken beds. How will your skins feel in beds like those, do you suppose?”

  And last, because he knew them very well, he raised the standard of their vanity.

  “The names of those who take part in this fight will climb the stairs of history. This is no pillage, but glorious war. Imagine to yourselves the people of Tortuga pointing to you and saying, ‘That man was in the fight at Panama. That man is a hero, and rich.’ Think how the women of Goaves will run after you when you go home again. There is the Cup of Gold before you. Will you run away? Many will die in the field to-day, but those who remain will carry golden Panama home in their pockets.”

  A hoarse cheer arose. The French kissed their hands to Henry Morgan; the Caribs chattered and rolled their eyes. The gourmand Zeerovers looked dully at the white city.

  “One thing more,” said the captain. “The troops will be drawn up in a line, if I know these Spanish captains. They like to make as great a show as possible. Your orders are to fire at their center, all of you; and when that center is weakened, then charge and split them.”

  They mowed out on the plain, a dense cloud of men. Two hundred marksmen walked in advance, while the rest were grouped behind.

  Now Don Juan, the Governor of Panama, stood with his neat army, a long line of foot soldiers in companies of two files. He looked at the rough formation of the enemy with contempt. Almost gayly he signaled for the first advance.

  The Spanish cavalry swung out, wheeling and whirling across the plain. Now they formed a V, and now a hollow square. Moving at a fast trot, they went through all the intricate evolutions of a review; they made triangles, T’s. In one moment every sword glanced in the sunlight, then was made to disappear by twisting wrists, and then to flash again. Don Juan groaned with admiration.

  “Look at them, my friends; look at Rodriguez, my beloved captain. Ah, Rodriguez! is it really I who have taught you these things? Can it be that this is the Rodriguez I held in my arms a little time ago? He was a baby then, but now he is a man and a hero. See the line, the sureness, the precision. See Rodriguez with his troop, my friends. How may these beasts of buccaneers overcome horsemen like mine?”

  Rodriguez, at the head of his troop, seemed to hear the Governor’s praise. His shoulders stiffened. He rose in his stirrups and gave the signal for the charge. The bugles sang excitedly. The hooves roared with a hollow rolling sound over the turf. Their coming was like a red wave with a silver crest. Rodriguez turned in his saddle and looked proudly at the hurtling troop behind him, following his orders as though they were the multimembers of one great body governed by his brain. Every saber was lined along a horse’s neck. Rodriguez turned again to look once more at his lovely Panama before the shock. And then the whole troop rode headlong into a marsh. They knew it was there, but in the enthusiasm of the moment, in the excitement of their figures, they had forgotten about it. In a second the horse of Panama was a broken jumble of men and fallen beasts. They were flies caught in a green flypaper.

  Don Juan looked dazedly at the pile of writhing, mangled bodies out on the plain, and then he burst into sobs like a child who has seen his bright toy broken in the road. The Governor did not know what to do. His brain was heavy with a red sorrow. He turned about and started plodding homeward. He would go and hear a mass in the Cathedral, he thought.

  The Spanish staff had grown frantic. Red and gold uniforms were rushing about in every direction. Every officer shouted commands at the top of his voice. The young lieutenant who had brought up the cattle finally made himself heard.

  “Turn loose the bulls—the bulls,” he cried, over and over, until the others were shouting it also. The Indians who held the bulls tore out the nose rings and began prodding the great beasts forward with their goads. Slowly the herd moved out across the plain. Then a red monster broke into a slow run, and immediately the whole band was running.

  “They will trample these robbers into the grass,” said a Spanish officer wisely. “Where they pass, we shall find buttons, pieces of weapons—nothing more—on the bloody ground.”

  The bulls galloped slowly toward the rough line of the buccaneers. Suddenly the two hundred marksmen knelt and fired— fired quickly, like men hunting game. A kicking, bellowing wall seemed to rise up in the path of the running animals. Those of the herd that were not crippled halted in their tracks, sniffed the blood, milled, and then stampeded in terror back on the Spanish ranks. The officer was right. Where they passed, nothing remained except buttons and broken weapons and bloody turf.

  In the horror of the stampede the buccaneers had charged. Now they dashed into the hole the bulls had made, and drove the split defenders left and right. There were a few war cries, but these were continental soldiers. They could not understand this kind of fighting. These terrible vagrants laughed and killed men with both of their hands. The men of Spain held ground for a little while, but then their hearts broke under their fine red coats, and they ran away to hide in the jungle. Little knots of buccaneers pursued them, spitting those who fell exhausted. Soon the defending troops were scattered. Some of them climbed into the trees and hid themselves among the leaves; some lost themselves in the mountains and were never found. The Cup of Gold lay helpless before Henry Morgan.

  A crowd of shouting men poured through the undefended gate and up the broad street. At crossing alleys, part of the line changed its course, like a river flowing backwards into its tributaries. Now and then a party would detach itself from the main body and move on one of the imposing houses. There would be kicks on the door, a rush, and the door would fold inward like the cover of an enormous book. The men would crowd through the entrance—cries and a scream or two. An old woman leaned from a window and looked with curiosity at the invaders. Then disappointment showed in her face.

  “Hi!” she screamed to a window across the way. “Look at this, will you! These thieves look very much like our own Spaniards. They are not devils at all, but only men.” She seemed to resent their humanity. She withdrew her head as though she renounced them for being only men.

  In the afternoon a fire broke out. Tall flames lanced into the sky. A section caught, a street; half the city was burning.

  Henry Morgan went to the Palace of the Governor to establish his quarters, and there, in the doorway, stood Don Juan Perez de Guzman, with a naked rapier in his hand.

  “I am the Governor,” he said brokenly. “My people looked to me to defend them against this scourge. I have failed—but perhaps I can manage to kill you.”

  Henry Morgan looked at the ground. Something about this hysterical man unnerved him. “I did not set the fire,” he said. “Some of your own slaves did that out of revenge, I think.”

  Don Juan moved forward with his drawn rapier. “Defend yourself!” he cried.

  Captain Morgan did not change his position.

  The sword dropped from the Governor’s hand. “I am a coward—a coward,” he cried. “Why did I not strike without speaking? Why did you not oppose me? Ah, I am a coward! I waited too long. I should never have spoken at all, but driven my point into your throat. I wanted to die a moment ago—to die as a kind of atonement for my failure—and to take you with me as a peace offering to my conscience. Panama is gone—and I should be gone, too. It is as though a finger continued to live after the body has died. But I cannot die now. I haven’t the courage. And I cannot kill you. I realize how I pretended. Ah! if I had only acted quickly! If I had not spoken—” He walked away toward the gate and the open country. Henry Morgan watched him drunkenly lurching out of the city.

  The black night came. Nearly all of the city was in flame, a garden of red fire. The tower of the Cathedral crashed down and threw a heaven of sparks into the air. Panama was dying in a bed of flame, and the buccaneers we
re murdering the people in the streets.

  All night the captain sat in the audience chamber while his men brought in the gathered plunder. They piled golden bars on the floor like cord-wood, bars so heavy that two men carried each of them with difficulty. There were little stacks of jewels like glittering haycocks, and in a corner the precious vestments of the church were heaped, the stock of a heavenly old clothes market.

  Henry Morgan sat in a tall chair carved in the likeness of many serpents.

  “Have you found La Santa Roja?”

  “No, sir. The women of the town are more like devils.”

  Prisoners were brought in to be put to the torture with a thumbscrew taken from the Spanish prison.

  “Kneel! Your wealth? [Silence] Turn, Joe!”

  “Mercy! Mercy! I will lead you; I swear it. A cistern near my house.”

  Another—

  “Kneel! Your wealth? Turn, Joe!”

  “I will lead you.”

  As regular, ruthless, and unfeeling they were as master slaughterers in a cow pen.

  “Have you found La Santa Roja? I will hang all of you if she is harmed.”

  “No one has seen her, sir. The men, except a few, are drunk.”

  All through the night— With each confession of wealth concealed, the victim was led out by a party of searchers, and soon they would return, bearing cups and silver plates, jewels, and clothing of colored silk. The glowing treasure in the Hall of Audience was becoming one enormous heap.

  And Captain Morgan, wearily:

  “Have you found the Red Saint?”

  “We have not found her, sir, but we are seeking and inquiring over the whole city. Perhaps in the daylight, sir—”

  “Where is Cœur de Gris?”

  “I think he is drunk, sir, but—” He looked away from Henry Morgan.

  “But what? What do you mean?” the captain cried.

  “Nothing; I mean nothing at all, sir. It is almost certain that he is drunk. Only it takes such gallons of wine to make him drunk, and perhaps he has found a friend in the meantime.”

  “Did you see him with any one?”

  “Yes, sir; I saw him with a woman, and she was drunk. I could swear that Cœur de Gris was drunk, too.”

  “Did you think the woman might have been La Santa Roja?”

  “Oh, no, sir; I am sure it was not she. Only one of the women of the town, sir.”

  There was a clash of golden service thrown on the pile.

  IV

  A yellow dawn crept out of the little painted hills of Panama and grew bolder as it edged across the plain. The sun flashed up from behind a peak, and its golden rays sought for their city. But Panama had died, had felt the quick decay of fire in one red night. But then, as the sun is a fickle sphere, the seeking beams found joy in the new thing. They lighted on the poor ruins, peered into upturned dead faces, raced along the cluttered streets, fell headlong into broken patios. They came to the white Palace of the Governor, leaped through the windows of the audience chamber, and fingered the golden heap on the floor.

  Henry Morgan was asleep in the serpent chair. His purple coat was draggled with the mud of the plain. The gray-clad rapier lay on the floor beside him. He was alone in this room, for all the men who had helped to pick the city’s bones during the night had gone away to drink and to sleep.

  It was a high, long room, walled with panels of polished cedar. The beams of the ceiling were as black and heavy as old iron. It had been a court of justice, a place of wedding feasts, the hall where ambassadors were toasted or murdered. One door opened on the street; the other, a broad, arched opening, let into a lovely garden about which the Palace lay curled. In the middle of the garden a little marble whale spouted its steady stream into a pool. There were giant plants in red glazed pots, plants with purple leaves and flowers whose petals bore arrow heads or hearts or squares in cardinal. There were shrubs, lined with harsh tracery in the mad colors of the jungle. A monkey no larger than a rabbit picked over the gravel of the path, looking for seeds.

  On one of the stone seats of the garden a woman was sitting. She pulled a yellow flower to bits while she sang fragments of a tender, silly song—“I would pluck the flower of the day for you, my love, where it grows in the dawning.” Her eyes were black, but opaque. They were the rich, sheening, shallow black of a dead fly’s wings, and under the lids there were sharp little lines. She could draw up the under lids of her eyes so that they shone with laughter, though her mouth remained harsh and placid. Her skin was very pale, her hair straight and black as obsidian.

  Now she looked at the sun’s inquisitive light, and now at the arched doorway of the Hall of Audience. Her singing stopped. She listened intently a moment, then started the gentle song again. There was no other sound save the distant cracklings of the fire which still burned among the palm slave huts on the outskirts of the city. The little monkey came at a funny, crooked gallop along the path. He stopped in front of the woman and raised his black paws above his head as though in prayer.

  The woman spoke softly to him. “You have learned your lesson well, Chico. Your teacher was a Castilian with a fearful mustache. I am well acquainted with him. Do you know, Chico, he wants what he considers my honor. He will not be satisfied until he has added my honor to his own, and then he will be almost boastful. You have no idea of the size and weight of his honor even as it is. But you would be satisfied with a nut, wouldn’t you, Chico?” She dropped a piece of her flower to the tiny beast, whereupon he seized it, put it in his mouth, and spat in disgust.

  “Chico! Chico! you forget your teacher! That is all wrong. You will get no woman’s honor by it. Place the flower over your heart, kiss my hand with a loud snapping sound, and then stride off like a fierce sheep out searching for wolves.” She laughed and glanced again toward the doorway. Although there was no sound, she rose and walked quickly toward the Hall of Audience.

  Henry Morgan had turned slightly in his chair, and his turning allowed the sunlight to beat upon his eyelids. Suddenly he sat up and stared about him. He looked with satisfaction at the heap of treasure on the floor, then gazed full in the eyes of the woman standing under the broad arch.

  “And have you ruined our poor city enough for your satisfaction? ” she asked.

  “I did not burn the city,” Henry said quickly. “Some of your Spanish slaves set the torch.” The words had been forced from him. He remembered that he was surprised. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  She moved a step into the hall. “My name is Ysobel. It was said that you sought me.”

  “Sought you?”

  “Yes. I have been called La Santa Roja by certain young idiots, ” she said.

  “You—the Red Saint?”

  He had prepared a picture in his mind, a picture of a young girl with blue, seraphic eyes that would fall before the steady stare of a mouse. These eyes did not fall. Under their soft black surfaces they seemed to be laughing at him, making light of him. This woman’s face was sharp, almost hawk-like. She was beautiful, truly, but hers was the harsh, dangerous beauty of lightning. And her skin was white—not pink at all.

  “You are the Red Saint?”

  He was not prepared for this change of idea. He was staggered at such a revolt against his preconceptions. But, said his mind, twelve hundred men and more had broken their way through the jungle, had dashed on the city like a brutal wave. Hundreds of humans had died in the agony of wounds, hundreds were crippled, the Cup of Gold was a ruin; and all these things had been done that Henry Morgan might take La Santa Roja. With all this preparation, it must be certain that he loved her. He would not have come if he had not loved her. Whatever the shock of her appearance, he could not circumvent the logic that he loved her. It must be so. Always he had thought of the “Saint” in her name; and now he perceived the reason for the adjective. But a queer feeling was seeping in on him—no logical feeling at all. He remembered such sensations from a time long gone; he was drawn, yet repelled by this woman, and he felt her power
to embarrass him. Morgan closed his eyes, and the figure of a slender little girl with golden hair stood in the darkness of his brain.

  “You are like Elizabeth,” he said, in the dull monotone of one dreaming. “You are like, and yet there is no likeness. Perhaps you master the power she was just learning to handle. I think I love you, but I do not know. I am not sure.”

  His eyes had been half closed, and when he opened them there was a real woman before him, not the wraithlike Elizabeth. And she was gazing at him with curiosity, and perhaps, he thought, with some affection. It was queer that she had come to him when no one had forced her to come. She must be fascinated. He reached into his memory for the speeches he had built on his way across the isthmus.

  “You must marry me, Elizabeth—Ysobel. I think I love you, Ysobel. You must come away with me and live with me and be my wife, under the protection of my name and of my hand.”

  “But I am already married,” she interposed; “quite satisfactorily married.”

  He had even foreseen this. During the nights of the march he had planned this campaign as carefully as he might have planned a battle.

  “But is it right that two, meeting and flaming white fire, should go apart for stark eternity, should trudge off into bleak infinity; that each of these two should bear black embers of a flame that has not burned itself to death? Is there anything under heaven to forbid us this burning? Heaven has given the deathless oil; each of us carries a little torch for the other. Ah, Ysobel—deny it, or shrink from the intruding knowledge if you will. You would vibrate to my touch like the fine body of an old violin.

  “You are afraid, I think. There is in your mind a burrowing apprehension of the world; the prying world, the spiteful world. But do you not be fearsome, for I say to you that this world is a blind, doddering worm, knowing three passions only—jealousy, curiosity, and hate. It is easy to defeat the worm, so only you make the heart a universe to itself. The worm, having no heart, cannot conceive the workings of a heart. He lies confounded by the stars of this new system.