In the forenoon of September 28 one of the leading tenders hoisted a jack and an ensign, the long-desired signal, and soon the look-outs on all the ships were crying land, land ahead. There had been hope of it for days, started by the flying-fish that hung above a bow-wave, by a man-of-war bird lazily circling. "We saw in head of us," wrote an anonymous diarist aboard the Saint Andrew, "the island of Dezada, in English the Land of Desire, so called by Columbus being the first land that he did see when he came to these seas." It was passed to larboard in the late afternoon, and beyond it the island of Guadaloupe was a purple shadow dissolving into the night. To its waters was committed the body of Andrew Baird, seaman, dead of the bloody flux that day.
The fleet made little way during the night but at dawn, sailing west by north before a freshening wind, it passed between Antigua and Montserrat. At noon it was abreast of the tiny isle of Redonda which reminded Pennecuik, in a moment of uncharacteristic sentiment, of the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. Homesickness was endemic. Surrounded by the Leeward Isles, green jewels bright in the sun, the Scots searched for a rock, the prow of a hill, a curving bay or a cluster of trees that could warm them with the memory of home. At three in the afternoon they passed Nevis, hoisting their ensigns in an answering salute to an unknown vessel anchored offshore, and with more imagination than truth they told each other that the wedge-shaped island was like Castle Rock in Edinburgh when seen from the Roads of Leith. That night the body of Walter Johnson, surgeon's mate, was slipped overboard. Sick of a fever, he tried his own skill upon himself, "got his hands on laudanum liquidum, took too large a dose thereof, and so he slept till death."
By noon the next day the fleet was seven leagues to the southeast of Santa Cruz, a windless day and the sails bleached white against a deep blue sky. As the Landsmen leant idly on the ships' rails, watching the gannets that flew suicidally into the rigging, the Councillors and the Captains came aboard the Saint Andrew. They met in Pennecuik's stifling cabin, its stern windows opened wide to catch the faintest movement of the listless air outside, the reflected sunlight rippling across their tired faces. The Commodore grumbled again about the Drummonds and would have forced a vote in favour of setting them ashore as soon as possible, but once more Jolly and Cunningham persuaded the rest of the Council to leave this unhappy matter until the colony was reached. There was a more important decision to make. By their second sailing orders they should now steer for Crab Island, but they had also to find a pilot who could take them to Darien. Since Paterson was the only man there who had been in these waters, and since it was hoped that he would know and find such a man, his advice may have influenced the proposal finally accepted. It was agreed that the fleet should separate, the Dolphin and the Unicorn (with Paterson aboard) sailing north and east about Santa Cruz for the Danish island of Saint Thomas, and the others making north and west about for Crab Island*. The ships parted after sunset, each firing a farewell gun, the smoke of it white and luminous in the indigo dusk.
On October 1 the Unicorn and the tender anchored in seven fathoms off Saint Thomas, and were still being saluted by the guns of the fort when Pincarton and Paterson were rowed ashore. The lonely Danes made the Scots welcome, giving them sugarcane, pineapples and rum, but Pincarton was uneasy. Four English sloops from Jamaica were lying off the island, and one of them came up to take a closer look at the Unicorn, making no signal and sending no boat until the second day when her captain himself came aboard. He said that he was Richard Moon, bound from New York to Curacao with a cargo of provisions, and Paterson immediately recognised him as a man he had known many years before. They embraced each other warmly, and Moon agreed that since Crab Island was nearer than Curacao it would be plain good sense for him to go there and exchange his provisions for any goods the Scots had.
Ashore in a tavern Paterson also found a pilot, the buccaneer Robert Alliston, now sadly old, white-haired and garrulous. He still had a good conceit of himself, however, confident that he could set the Scots down on any part of the Main they wished. He drank a lot in Pincarton's cabin, talked with maudlin regret of the old days, of the bitter changes that had taken place. Did
* Ile de Vieques, between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Paterson know that Captain Sharpe—Batt Sharpe who sacked Portobello and who crossed the Isthmus with Dampier and Wafer—did Paterson know that after escaping a hanging in England Captain Sharpe had now been taken by the Danes and thrown in prison for 99 years? And where was it they wished to settle, Darien? He remembered it well.
Still uneasy about those other Jamaican sloops, Pincarton weighed anchor after four days, sailing out to a roar of seventy guns from his own ships and the walls of the fort.
Pennecuik's squadron had sighted Crab Island on October 1, tacking about it for twenty-four hours before dropping anchor. It was almost entirely covered with rich green trees, and uninhabited except for the monstrous crabs that gave it its name, but when Robert Drummond took the Caledonia on a cruise about it he found a Danish sloop hidden in a narrow bay. Despite his liberal hospitality to Pincarton, the Governor of Saint Thomas had quietly sent this ship to enforce Denmark's claim to Crab Island, her captain further emphasising the point by setting up a tent ashore and unfurling his country's flag. Pennecuik answered this by pitching his own tent beneath the trees on the opposite side of the island and by flying his pennant, the Company's standard, and the saltire of Scotland. According to his journal the Danish protest was more of a formality than a threat, "they were obliged so to do to please their Court, but wished with all their hearts we would settle there, for then they would have a bulwark betwixt them and the Spaniards of Porto Rico who are very troublesome neighbours." Whether he believed this or not, to impress the Danes and to flatter his own vanity he also landed a redcoat guard of sixty men, their arrogant drums beating against the hills at dawn and dusk.
On October 5, a day of thunder, lightning and great rain, Pincarton's ships arrived with the Jamaican sloop. Richard Moon took a hard look at the loading-lists and the displayed samples of wigs and stockings, shoes and slippers, plaiding and hodden grey, needles, nails and horn-spoons, Bibles and Catechisms, and decided that he wanted none of them, certainly not at the ridiculous prices the Scots were asking. Nor would he part with any of his provisions for drafts on the Company's agents in New England. He would sail on to Curacao, he said, and there exchange his cargo for slaves. Paterson saw the danger, and he told the Council that if Moon spread a report that the Scots were over-pricing their goods it would not encourage other traders to visit the Colony. It would be better to sell at a loss and avoid the risk. "To all this I was answered that they were not obliged to take notice of any particular man's assertion as to the overvaluing or ill-buying the goods, but rather to believe the prime cost was as in the Company's invoice; and that they would not be so imposed on by Captain Moon."
Moon shrugged his shoulders and made ready to sail. It was of small consequence to him what these madmen thought or did, but before he left, and upon Paterson's earnest appeal, he promised to bring or send provisions to the Colony when once it was settled. If the Scots had not found a friend, Paterson had at least saved them from making an enemy.
Pennecuik's high-handed contempt for Richard Moon had turned the Council against the trader. Sitting in his tent, a glass in his hand, his wig on the back of his chair, and a scarlet sentry at his door, the Commodore was the same loud-mouthed bully he had been afloat, convinced that he and those sea-captains of his party knew what was best for all. Paterson realised that his earlier hope that things would mend ashore had been mistaken. "Though our Masters at sea had sufficiently taught us that we fresh-water men knew nothing of their salt-water business, yet when at land they were so far from letting us turn the chase that they took upon them to know everything better than we." Pennecuik had now been abandoned by Herries who was exercising his talent for intrigue and malicious gossip on the Drummonds and Vetch. Again the Commodore demanded a court-martial, insisting that
the brothers and their friend be set ashore on Saint Thomas, and again Cunningham and Jolly turned the vote against him. Paterson's respect for the Drummonds (though these hard men had only contempt for him) also persuaded the Council that it could ill-afford to lose them, insufferable though their conceit might sometimes be.
The water-casks were full and it was time to leave. Though their sailing-orders had given the Scots leave to settle the island if it were found to be unoccupied, no one thought the point worth disputing with the bold Dane, his tiny sloop and his fourteen armed men. The fleet sailed in the forenoon of Friday, October 7, after heaving overboard the bodies of James Paterson, gentleman, and Thomas Dalrymple, planter, both dead of the flux. Above the noise of water, wind, and singing ropes, the Scots heard the sad crying of sea-fowl, the excited chattering of monkeys in the retreating trees. One man was left behind. Michael Pearson had stood guard ashore with Captain Maclean's company, and had thought of what had so far happened and what yet might come when the fleet sailed. He was seduced by the gentle beauty of the island and he ran away to the woods with his musket.
For three weeks the fleet sailed south-west across the Caribbean toward the Isthmus. It was a bitter time of foetid calms and violent gales. None of the seamen had known such storms, winds that blew up suddenly out of the heat, seas that heaved above the topsail yards, and lightning so bright and sustained at night that it all but blinded the boatswain of the Saint Andrew when he looked up to it in wonder. Twenty-five lives were lost to fever, flux and despair, and among them was the young wife of John Hay, a lieutenant in Captain Charles Forbes's company. She was turned overboard from the Unicorn in the early morning as another gale was rising, and her valediction was a rending report as the main-topgallant sail parted from its yard. On all the ships the sick lay below in their own filth, tormented by the pitching of the deck and the endless noise of the wind. There was little water to ease their burning thirst, for that taken aboard at Crab Island had soon turned foul, and whether they lived or died seemed of little importance when all aboard expected to be drowned at any moment. They had come to the edge of the world and there was no land, though old Alliston, standing by the helmsman of the Saint Andrew, swore that it was near, very near. And then suddenly, dramatically, it was there.
"About two a clock this morning," wrote a diarist on Monday, October 17, "we saw with the lightning black, high stones like land. We lowered most of our sails till break of day, at which
time we found it to be really land, so prodigiously high" A
dark escarpment rose out of the spray, a menacing wall from sea to sky, and the water that broke over the sprit-sail heads was strangely yellow. Alliston recognised this inhospitable coast, naming it to Pennecuik who wrote the words down phonetically in his journal, Nostra Segniora della Popa. It was Spanish land, said the buccaneer with unhappy memories of the times he had walked through Spanish blood, and close by Carthagena. That afternoon, as the fleet turned westward seeking Darien by elimination rather than by good pilotage, the wind dropped and the sea was calm. Still golden yellow, the water rolled like rich cream in the wake of the ships, and Alliston said that it came from some great river to which he gave no name. But it was the colour of hope, of gold, of rich promise.
Two more weeks passed. The winds that carried the ships westward during the day turned against them at night. There were long hours of dispiriting calm, minutes of wild squalls during one of which the Dolphin lost her main-topmast and almost foundered. Sometimes there was land to larboard, high cliffs, the startling green of distant forests, a white fort, the long roll of dangerous surf. And the dying continued. Three midshipmen of a fever, soldiers of the flux, a young Volunteer of "a decay". There died Adam Bennet, son to Sir William Bennet of Grubbet, and Adam Cunningham, brother to Sir William Cunningham of Caprington, both young men of eager ambition who had pressed their families to secure them service with the Company. There died Henry Charters, a cheerful young Volunteer, and there died an English seaman called Malbin. But the death which moved men to tears, particularly Paterson, was that of the Reverend Mr. Thomas James, who had refused to sail without his friend. Four guns were fired over his body as it slipped into the sea.
Toward the end of the month the ships were able to make little way. A great current, which may have been a movement of the sea or the outflow of another river, dragged them eastward and they were forced to tack wearily against it. At last, on October 26, they dropped anchor in ten fathoms with a green ribbon of land to starboard. Alliston would not, or could not say what it was, but he plainly hoped it might be Darien. A boat was sent away from the Unicorn in search of fresh water. When it returned, its casks were still empty, the crew having found no stream, but they brought instead a great pelican, a hundred dead gannets and a live lizard with a licking tongue.
The fleet moved westward again for two days. The smell of land was thick on the air, and there were distant sounds at night. By day dolphins escorted the ships, arching their iridescent backs, but no one had the strength to catch them. A strange malaise fell upon all. Sickness increased, seven more young men died, though the decks were frequently washed with vinegar and the holds purified with smoke. Alliston stubbornly insisted that they must soon come upon the Gulf of Darien and Golden Island, but few believed him. And then, at eight o'clock in the evening of Friday, October 28, he swore that they were there. Off the larboard bow of the Saint Andrew was a bar of dark trees, a line of surf or crystal sand. The Caledonia and the Endeavour stood out to sea as sentinels, but the other ships dropped anchor where they were.
Before dark two canoes came out from the shore, and almost before the Scots were aware of them several painted Indians had came boldly up the flagship's side to her waist. They were friendly and unafraid, their bows unstrung in their hands and their lances lowered, but at first they said nothing, staring shyly at the Scots with gentle eyes. "We gave them victuals and drink," wrote Pennecuik, "which they used very freely, especially the last." More accurately the Scots deliberately made the Indians drunk, although this was unnecessary, for they were anxious to talk once their shyness passed. They had a few words of English and some indifferent Spanish which Benjamin Spense was called up to interpret. They had seen the Commodore's red pennant flying from the Saint Andrew's fore-peak and had taken it for the English flag, which they had seen many times above the ships of their buccaneer friends. It is doubtful whether they understood the difference between an Englishman and a Scot, if Spense attempted the explanation, for they said that they had been expecting the ships for two years and were happy to see them now that their people were at war with the Spaniards. By midnight they were in a drunken stupor, and were left lying in the scuppers until morning when they were sent away with some old felt hats, knives, and a few twopenny looking-glasses. "With which," wrote Pennecuik, "they seemed extremely pleased."
By morning, too, Alliston had changed his mind. The ships were not in the Gulf but two leagues eastward of Caret Bay, which was itself some miles from Golden Island. The Commodore sent three of his boats to the Bay where their crews found the same Indians they had entertained the night before, offering gifts of cocks, hens and a wild turkey. More valuable even than these was the Indians' assurance that Golden Island was three or four leagues to the west. After turning over two gentlemen who had died of the flux, the ships weighed anchor, joined the Caledonia and Endeavour out to sea and sailed westward in fair weather.
At four o'clock in the afternoon of Monday, October 31, as the bodies of David Hay and John Lucason were turned over from the Unicorn and the Saint Andrew, the blue cap of Golden Island was cried ahead. By dusk the ships had come within a league of it, dropping anchor in 25 fathoms. That night another young Volunteer died, and although there was a rank smell of death aboard the ships there was also a great feeling of relief, a lightening of the heart, as if all believed that the sickness and the dying were now ended.
The fleet moved in to the island at dawn, anchoring again within half a mile of it
. The sea-fowl in the sky were as thick as windblown leaves. The great rock, rising above the five small ships, was topped with glistening trees, and the only break in its black cliffs, the only landing-place was a narrow inlet of sand. Alliston remembered it well. Here had been the rendezvous of the buccaneers before their overland raid on Santa Maria in 1680. Here gathered sun-browned men from many ships, his own among them. Captain Sharpe had tied green and white ribbons to his rallying flag, Cook had drawn a hand and sword on his, and Sawkins had painted his scarlet banner with yellow bars. There had been great fires, the sound of sword on stone, dreams of blood and gold long since ended by old age or a hangman's rope. If Alliston remembered all this with regret, he kept the thought to himself. His work, for what it had been worth, was now done. By luck rather than skill he had brought the Scots where they had wished to come.
That afternoon Pennecuik called the Councillors to his cabin. Whether there was, or was not, a great Gulf of Darien as they had been told, Golden Island was certainly a reality. The lifting of the morning haze had shown the mainland some miles off, and this was undoubtedly theirs to settle. To the south-east could be seen what might be the entrance to a natural harbour, and since there was no safe anchorage off the island it was agreed that it should be immediately explored.
Pennecuik went away to it in his pinnace. He discovered that it was a wide bay formed by a narrow peninsula of high ground that cut it off from the sea, and on either side of its entrance were tall hills which even his limited knowledge could recognise as excellent sites for defensive batteries. The blue water of the bay was still, scarcely moving on its shore of sand, and beyond the mangroves that bordered it was an unbroken forest, rising and falling, rolling toward the emerald ridge of distant mountains. The pinnace went in past a sentinel rock at the entrance and shipped oars. The Scots looked at the green trees, the grey- legged mangroves, listened to the strange calls of unseen birds, and marvelled at the wonder of the land.
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