From the Indians, who remembered him with respect, Thomas Drummond learned that the Spaniards were preparing for a great attack on the settlement, by land and by sea. He thought it insane to wait for this, when a bold stroke might not only prevent it but also raise the spirits of the Scots and check their mutinous discontent. Aboard the Ann on December 15, he wrote a brief and soldierly proposal, sending it to the Council by Robert Turnbull's hand. Let him be given 150 men "that would be willing to take their fate with me" and he would lead them to live and fight in the forests with their Indian allies. Except for arms, ammunition and some provisions they would be no further burden to the Colony, and would not return to it until it was safe from danger. This each man would solemnly swear, and sign his name to the oath in witness.
When he appeared before the Council to argue this proposal he explained that he would raid Portobello, perhaps even Carthagena and release the Dolphins prisoners there. He reminded the Council that there were men of courage and loyalty in the Colony, that many of the officers had recently offered to resign their commissions and remain as ordinary Planters when the others left for Jamaica. Byres was infuriated and frightened. He told the other Councillors that they should not "pin their faith upon another man's sleeve". He said that there were not six weeks' provisions left and none expected from Scotland. How could they think of taking towns? William Vetch was ill again, his spirit too weak to call up the courage he had once shown in the streets of Dunkeld. He let the decision go as the majority wished, and the others were too cowed by the noisy vehemence of Byres' voice to ask how six months' provisions had suddenly become six weeks'. Drummond's offer was refused.
The next day a file of musketeers under an ensign marched into the fort and arrested Alexander Campbell, a carpenter working there. He was manacled and taken aboard the Duke of Hamilton, charged with "mutinous association and villainous design of murder". He appears to have been a simple man with more pride and self-respect than malice. Since the fleet arrived he had frequently declared that in such a noble undertaking as this there should be no difference between the food enjoyed by an officer and that given to a common man. When he heard that the Council had rejected Drummond's proposal he became bolder and more foolish. "A great many officers, volunteers, planters and seamen," he said, or was later charged with saying, "had a design for seizing the Councillors and hanging them if they would not divest themselves of the government in favour of the conspirators." Within the hour he was arrested and his court-martial ordered by the Council.
The Court met in Gibson's cabin on December 18 under the presidency of Major John Ramsay, six captains, three lieutenants and three ensigns. Campbell was now frightened, by the naked swords of his escort, by the witnesses whom he had thought were his comrades, and by the hard faces of these officers whose privileges he had resented. He admitted that he had complained about the food, and had said that the Company's money aboard the flagship should be used to buy more provisions. He had heard, and repeated, the rumour that some of the colonists were to be sold as slaves, but he had been party to no conspiracy and had not wished to hang the Councillors or overthrow their authority.
His unsupported confession of innocence was outweighed by the depositions made against him. He had been "a great seducer of the Colony", deponed William Macleod, and had said that since the Councillors were enriching themselves by denying food to honest men, they should hang. Those of a like mind with him would have no difficulty in seizing the Rising Sun, "for once the old fox, meaning Captain Gibson, were hanged, they'd meet with no resistance." Sergeant Andrew Logan swore that Campbell had asked him to seize the Hope with the men of his company, and sail it to Ireland. Peter McFerran said that the signal for rebellion in the Colony was to have been the waving of a flag. And Sergeant William Robertson declared that Campbell had assured him that if Captain Drummond's proposal were rejected by the Council then those officers who supported it would join the conspiracy. This, to James Byres, would be the most important evidence of all.
Alexander Campbell was found guilty of all the charges laid against him. He was sentenced to death by hanging and was taken from the flagship to the Duke of Hamilton, there to await execution. He was undoubtedly a scapegoat, the expendable victim of cunning men and a complaisant Court. In all the evidence it is clear that he was the servant rather than the instigator of the grand conspiracy. There was, for example, an Ensign Spark who had been the intermediary, so witnesses implied, between ambitious officers and discontented men like Campbell. No action was taken against Spark, however, nor any others for the moment. It may be that the Court was reluctant to worsen a strained situation by advising further investigation.
Though it would discourage further plots, the execution of a mean carpenter could embarrass no one but himself. The Councillors were less tolerant. "We have lame and partial proof against several others," they wrote to Edinburgh, "but not so legal as they should be, so we must have patience." James Byres would not endure that patience for long.
During the two days he had left, Campbell was kept in the lamp-lit hold of the Duke of Hamilton, with irons on his wrists and ankles, and a corporal's guard to see that he did not end his agony now by breaking his head against the mainmast foot. Borland visited him frequently, and although Campbell may have found the minister's scalding sermons an unnecessary addition to his punishment he was happy to ask for forgiveness. Or so Borland wrote. "This poor man seemed to die very
penitently___ He said that for some time before this, particularly
since God had recovered him from a late sickness, he had left off prayer to the Lord, and therefore God had justly left him to this sad end." Though Borland seemed more pleased by this graphic illustration of Divine wrath than he was angered by the causes of Campbell's discontent, he and another minister compassionately asked the Council to commute the sentence to banishment. They were told that it was impossible.
There was more anger than penitence in the carpenter's last moment, and a brave defiance in his acceptance of it. Toward two o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, December 20, he was rowed ashore behind a drummer beating. In the south ravelin of the fort, looking across the harbour-mouth, his fellow-carpenters had built a scaffold. As he stood upon it, the noose about his throat, a company of soldiers drawn up in hollow square, and silent crowds on the ships and shore, he remembered those men for whom he was dying. "Lord forgive them who brought me on this lock!" he shouted, and jumped from the scaffold without waiting for the thrust of a drum-major's hand. Byres found another meaning for those last words. "We fancied the rascal expected relief to the last minute."
The next day or the day after, Thomas Drummond was arrested by order of the Council and taken from his sloop to the Duke of Hamilton. There he was locked in a cabin and allowed no visitors. Three other officers were also taken up, Captain Kerr the engineer, Ensign Spark, and a Lieutenant Logan who had come from New York with Drummond. A fifth man placed under guard was Alexander Hamilton. Having loyally returned to the Colony as Overseer of Supplies, he was the natural man to be held responsible for the shortage of provisions. The Council of four was now the instrument of one quixotic man. Vetch had persuaded himself, or had been persuaded by Byres, that his commission referred to the first Colony and that he had no real authority in the second. Lindsay seems to have been a soldier of limited wit, happy to have the weight of his conscience carried on another's shoulders. And Gibson, according to the ministers, accepted all that was done with indifference, thinking only of his pipe and dram. No formal charges were brought against the arrested men, no court-martial was ordered, but to all those who were curious about their ultimate disposal Byres talked of the evidence at Campbell's trial, of an officers' plot to overthrow the Council. There would be proof of Drummond's villainy soon, very soon. There is no record of any protest against the arrests. Weakened by fever and fear, unnerved by the sight of the carpenter's body hanging on its rotting rope, the Planters did nothing. Bound by their solemn oath to serve th
e Company, the Officers would not openly defy its rightful representative. Byres had come to the end of his patience. He had silenced Drummond's opposition to his proposal for a retreat to Jamaica, and by this, his only positive action, he had made himself king.
Two days before Christmas, having bought the sloop Society on a bill they hoped the Company would honour, the Councillors decided to send her away with their first report to the Directors. Though signed by all four men, the letter was the voice of James Byres. Admittedly "long and melancholy", it whined, complained, boasted and appealed. The first colonists were a disgrace to Scotland and a reproach to humanity. There was no gold, no silver, no Nicaragua wood, and all who had reported otherwise were fools and knaves. The ships' stewards were also proven knaves, never had there been such a collection of knaves in so small a community. Captain Drummond was in custody for offences whereof there would soon be proof.... Captain Kerr, also in custody, was not fit for service in the Colony and the Council intended to be quit of him. The fort could not be rebuilt without proper tools, and the Colony was thus defenceless. On the other hand, there was no great fear of the Spaniards. The Indians were worthless allies, small and weak, and one Scots grenadier would not find it hard to defeat ten of them at once. The Company knew—and here there was a hint that Byres was frightened by the authority he had assumed —that the undersigned were under no obligation to serve as the government of the Colony, but were honest men and awaited those whom the Directors might send to replace them. "Meantime, we shall not disgracefully lay down the baton so providentially put in our hands."
The Colony now sank into a paralysed inertia that was to last for six weeks. No work was done except that necessary for simple existence. The five hundred men selected for Jamaica, and all the remaining women and children, were sent aboard the Hope of Bo'ness and the Duke of Hamilton. Among them were most of the volunteers who had come from New York with Drummond, those who had sworn to take their fate with him in the jungle, all whom Byres suspected of being "for the taking of towns". While the weather blew steadily from the north, however, the ships could not leave the harbour, for they were as clumsy to windward as their predecessors had been. Nor was the Society allowed to sail, though she could have got through the sea-gate. For reasons that would be clear later, Byres delayed her departure.
Fever was again epidemic. There were never less than two hundred gravely sick men aboard and ashore. At first light each morning, the night's dead were turned over the ships' sides. The ministers, who had hoped that such God-sent suffering would turn men away from viciousness, were disappointed. Mr. Shields preached aboard the flagship upon the text Behold your sins shall find you out, but the colonists remained stubborn in their depravity. "I remember," wrote Borland, "the observation of the Reverend Mr. Shields, that he had conversed with many sorts of people in several parts of the world, and had served as a minister for several years in the Army in Flanders, but he had never seen or been concerned with such a company as this was." The ministers had kept apart from the political squabbles of the Colony. Though they detested Byres, and believed Drummond to be "the most diligent and useful man", they made no protest against his arrest. Byres now ignored them, and no longer invited them to open Council meetings with a prayer. They complained bitterly when they were not given huts ashore, but they would not lift a hammer or an axe to build one for themselves. To stop their mouths perhaps, someone at last gave Stobo and Borland the use of his own hut, but Shields remained aboard the Rising Sun. Even ashore there was no peace from the mockery and blasphemous contempt of the colonists, and when these three humourless men met they often went into the trees for their mournful deliberations. Inter densas umbrosa Cacumina Sylvas, wrote Borland, glumly remembering the dripping leaves above his head.
Their Day of Prayer, Thanksgiving and Humiliation was a dismal failure. Though each preached a long sermon on hellfire and damnation, few came to listen and most of those for the diversion only. They decided that it was neither practicable nor expedient to set up a Presbytery as they had been instructed, and they turned, with relief almost, to their second obligation, the conversion of the Indian. When Robert Turnbull heard of their wish to visit a Cuna village he acquired leave to accompany them with a file of soldiers. They could not have gone far without him, but that was not his reason. He was anxious to talk with Pedro, if that elusive captain were still alive, and to discover what was known of the Spaniards' preparations against the Colony.
They left early in the morning of January 16, crossing by boat to the far shore of the bay and travelling from thence on foot. They climbed so many steep hills and waded so many streams that the wearied Borland lost count of them. By nightfall, when they reached Pedro's village on the banks of the Greater Acla, they were exhausted and wet to the waist. Reports of the little chiefs death, which had come to the first Colony before it left, were false, and he greeted his friend Turnbull with affectionate warmth. He welcomed the ministers too, and although their black broadcloth and white neck-bands were strange to him, he could see by their manner that they were important men. He fed them all on dried fish and meat, plantains and potatoes, and ordered fires to be lit by their hammocks. The Indians listened in polite silence to the ministers' sermons, but were indifferent to their meaning. Perhaps Turnbull was too tired to translate the scriptural homilies that thundered across the firelight, or had not the vocabulary to do the ministers justice, for they later complained that they could not labour in God's vineyard here without an interpreter. The Indians, they said, were a poor and naked people, idle and lazy, more inclined by temperament to adopt a Scotsman's vices than accept his religion.
What Turnbull had learned from Pedro put him in no mood to linger while Mr. Shields or Mr. Stobo explained the significance of the Sabbath to an uncomprehending audience that counted time by the moon. He wanted to talk with other headmen, and at dawn the next day he ordered a march, moving westward to the Lesser Acla. At every village the Scots were welcomed kindly, and at each Turnbull's anxiety to return to Caledonia was increased. Believing that they might reach it more quickly, and with less strain on the ministers, if they travelled by way of the coast, he led the party back to the Greater Acla and turned northward along its banks to the sea. The ministers stumbled wearily behind the soldiers, marvelling at wide savannahs of moving grass, the vermilion flash of startled birds, cool parks of stately trees. At the mouth of the river they saw Golden Island, serene in a seaward mist, and believed that they were but a short walk from their harbour. Some way along the shore to the east, said Borland, they came to a rocky point, and moved inland again to approach the shore on its other side.
But here we travelled so long and by such crooked turnings and through such thickets of tall and dark woods that we quite lost ourselves, and were bewildered, that we knew not what way to move, nor how to extricate ourselves. Standing still, therefore, in our bewildered and melancholy condition, we heard the noise of the sea, and judged it to be our only surest guide to wind ourselves out of our present labyrinth. Therefore we turned our course directly toward the noise of the waves, and a very difficult and uncomfortable passage we had in striving to get through the thorny thickets of woods in our way, and with much ado at length we got safely into the open air by the sea.
Here was no sandy walk, however, but an angry coastline of breaking waves, and rather than move inland again Turnbull led the party along the edge of the water. "We were washen with waves... and the various windings and bendings of the coast made our way much longer; sometimes we had steep rocks to pass over, which we must climb with our hands and feet." They had eaten nothing since leaving the last village on the Acla, and they had no water to drink. All were exhausted, but Shields was scarcely able to walk and became so feeble that Borland feared he would die. At last they found a spring, breaking from the rocks above and as heaven-sent, they said, as the well was to Hagar in the wilderness when her child was like to die. It gave Shields the strength to continue. By dusk they saw the bare topsail y
ards of their ships above the trees. "The Lord leading the blind by a way they knew not," quoted Borland, with little gratitude to Turnbull, "preserving our going out and our coming in, and as our day was, so making our strength to be."
The Lieutenant went straight to the Council. From the information the Indians had given him, he said, he beheved that the Barliavento Fleet and an army from Santa Maria would shortly attack the Colony. Byres was unimpressed. He would fight any Spaniard who came, but Caledonia was impregnable from the sea and nobody but a fool would attack it from the woods. A week later, under strong pressure from the company commanders, he agreed that some guns should be landed from the ships and mounted in the embrasures of the fort.
But he would not release Drummond or Thomas Kerr.
"This was now a smiling Providence upon us, but alas...!"
Caledonia, February 1700
From the Woods of Caledonia, Mr. Stobo wrote at the head of the letter, February 2,1700, Reverend Sir.... The three ministers were alone in the Shades of Love, away from the stench and profanity of New Edinburgh, composing a letter to the Moderator. They thought it their duty to inform him of the sad and afflicted state of the Colony. The source and fountain cause of all its miseries were the colonists themselves. Our land hath spewed out its scum.... They were perverse, pernicious and mean, without religion, reason, honesty or honour. We could not prevail to get their wickedness restrained, nor the growth of it stopped. God has punished them with a sore and contagious sickness, taking away as a terrible example some of his own jewels and excellent ones. This sickness, for some time abated, is now returned in its former rage
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