The Mountain of Gold

by J. D. Davies

  Facey had some of his men in position now, and their muskets cracked as they opened fire on the beasts. It was a futile gesture. I saw the second beast rear up, its deadly jaws opened wide. It took Gibson's head in its mouth and snapped the jaws shut.

  I strode to the starboard rail and leaned hard upon it, desperately gulping air into my lungs and trying to keep the vomit down. Even now, far beyond sixty years afterwards, I shudder when I recall that incident. I pull my blanket tighter around me, and take a sip of port wine to steady myself. For I have witnessed death in many forms—indeed, have caused it in many forms—but I have surely never seen anything to equal the raw and savage devouring of Gibson and Treharne, God rest their souls.

  The ship's company was still subdued when, next morning, we finally came to an anchor off Kasang, another base native town of whitewashed round houses, surrounded by a ditch and a timber stockade. This port sheltered below a red hill, fifty yards or so in height, with small trees on its slopes. Two small Portugee vessels and a Dutchman lay at anchor before it. The two former seemed deserted, their crews either ashore or dead of the last season's fevers, but the Dutchman was making ready for a voyage with some urgency, no doubt prompted in part by the unexpected appearance of an English, and thus potentially hostile, warship; her skipper seemed unconscionably grateful that my only demand upon him was to carry our outgoing mails to sea with him. Unlike most of the so-called 'ports' that we had passed, where men had to wade ashore through swamps or mud flats, this Kasang at least had a decent sand beach, on which canoes were being built or caulked. Women came down to the water's edge in numbers, ready to trade with us: they offered rice, eggs, fruit, cuscus (a kind of gruel of those parts), hens, and in several cases, themselves, a fact that did not go unremarked by my increasingly excited crewmen.

  I granted leave readily enough. The men deserved some respite after all their exertions, and it would take their minds off the horror that had befallen their shipmates. Moreover, the next weeks would be harder still: my crew would have to turn shipwrights to fashion the new craft that we needed to carry all our company further up river, and moving most of our supplies out of Seraph into our new flotilla would be back-breaking work in this climate. Tom Shish would need to repay my pardoning of him many times over, for overseeing the construction of the boats would be his task. Then, if Belem was correct, the voyage itself would be harder than anything we had encountered thus far, struggling against rapids, whirlpools and God knows what else as we ventured further and further into the land of unicorns.

  I was preparing to go ashore myself when O'Dwyer addressed me. He had been more subdued than usual during the latter stages of our voyage; as well he might, I reckoned, for if his story was truly false then every mile brought him nearer to exposure and retribution. O'Dwyer must have had much to contemplate, and now he stared at me with a curious expression.

  'Well, Captain,' he said, 'did you give any more thought to the proposition I broached to you?'

  'Proposition, Colonel?' I asked innocently. 'I recall no proposition, sir.'

  His eyes narrowed and he tilted his head a little, as though searching for something within the recesses of my skull. 'Ah. No. I conceive myself in error, Captain Quinton. My apologies.'

  With that, he and I went ashore. We parted without a word, I to go my way in company with Belem and Francis Gale, O'Dwyer to go his; only his would be attended, discreetly as ever, by relays of my most trusted men.

  This Kasang was but a small place, but it was evidently a hive of trade. Great stocks of cotton, wax, ivory and hides lay under awnings, awaiting a ship to come up the river or an Arab caravan to come down from the north or east. Indeed, I spied two or three Arab factors, unmistakeable in their robes and headdress, but they steered well clear of this young infidel sea-captain. In turn, I trusted that O'Dwyer would steer well clear of them, a trust born of the orders I had issued to my men to ensure he did precisely that. Craftsmen vied with each other to offer us the prized possessions of those parts: scabbards for swords or daggers and round shields, all covered with leather and painted in any design that we chose. I took a conceit to have one with the armorial crest of Ravensden, and Belem's translation of my description enabled a cheerful near-naked savage to produce one in less than an hour. He seemed delighted with his payment—a flask of brandywine—and I was equally delighted with my acquisition, which adorns my wall to this day.

  My perambulation was intended to have a purpose. I needed to ensure that we could build our craft without interference, and for that, it would be important to establish good relations with the natives of this place. I planned to visit the local king either that same evening or early on the following day; his 'palace' was some two leagues inland, Belem said. I prayed that this petty potentate would be more immediately tractable than the King of Kombo, and that I would not be surprised again by the unexpected arrival of the Seigneur de Montnoir. In the meantime, I complied with the orders that I had issued to my men: smile, be polite, distribute largesse (such additional commandments as 'thou shalt not get fighting drunk' and 'thou shalt not rape' had been spoken discreetly by my officers to those thought most inclined to break them). Yet as I looked upon the seemingly friendly bare-breasted girls and women of the place, the smile upon my face was akin to that of the local terror, the crocodile. Behind it, I feared how exhausted seamen and soldiers, cooped up for too long aboard ship in this sickly and ferocious country, might behave in such a haven of earthly temptation.

  With the sun approaching its zenith, we sought a place that could provide us with two or three hours' of shelter. Belem led us to the hut of a half-breed of his acquaintance, a river trader named Moreno, and there we partook of palm wine and a little rice. That consumed, we settled ourselves upon the mats and let the heat and the wine take their course. A persistent fly annoyed me, but seemed of no concern to Belem or Moreno, who were already asleep. The hubbub of the town beyond the hut gradually subsided as its inhabitants sought their own shelter. I slipped into that curious place where one is half asleep, and aware of it, and half awake, and aware of it...

  The hubbub was increasing. Francis Gale shook my arm.

  'Those are English voices, Matt,' he said. 'Raised English voices.'

  We got to our feet and ran in the direction of the beach. Despite the searing heat, a large circle had formed upon it: sailors, soldiers, natives alike. Men were screaming derision or encouragement. I pushed my way through the throng, into the heart of the circle...

  John Treninnick was wrestling with the hugest of the soldiers, one Hallett. My men were urging on Treninnick, who in truth needed little encouragement for such combat. He was in a rage, screaming the foulest Cornish oaths, and trying at every thrust to gouge the eyes out of the much taller redcoat. But Hallett was nothing loth. He was using his greater height to advantage, howling defiance at his opponent and trying for a grip on Treninnick's unnaturally short neck, hoping no doubt to throttle the life out of him.

  The audience seemed crazed with bloodlust, like spectators at a bear-biting. In truth, I had feared something of the sort—if not soldier against sailor, then mess against mess or watch against watch. Petty resentments can fester for weeks in the confined space of a ship, where they are restrained by the Articles of War and the boatswain's cane, but putting a crew down upon a welcoming shore can be akin to opening a Pandora's box of violence. Already a few complementary scuffles were breaking out in the crowd.

  'Stop this!' I cried. 'I will not have this brawling and rioting! You represent the honour of England—'

  In truth, I was effective as old Canute; I was unarmed, the crowd's blood was up, Treninnick did not understand English, and as a soldier, Hallett was unlikely to obey a mere sea-captain. I could hardly demean myself by physically pulling them apart, and my boatswain was aboard the Seraph—I could see Lanherne looking on in horror from the quarterdeck .

  Fortunately, Francis Gale had no such concerns. He strode forward, gave Hallett a mighty punch in the st
omach that winded him, then struck Treninnick a fearsome blow on the jaw that drove back even that formidably strong creature. In the brief moment before the two combatants could come to grips with each other again, or turn their combined rage against him, Francis raised his hands in the eternal gesture of supplication and cried, 'Let us pray!'

  The circle of spectators fell sheepishly to their knees. Hallett and Treninnick looked about them and fell reluctantly to the beach in their turn; even if Treninnick did not understand the words, he knew the gestures well enough, and he also knew better than the soldier that thanks to our land's civil wars, Francis Gale was as accomplished and unconventional a fighter as he was a man of God. The chaplain of the Seraph hastily embarked on a recitation of the Fifty-First psalm, enunciating the words slowly and weightily: 'Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness; according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences. Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin.'

  All around me, tempers and enthusiasms calmed, as Francis knew they would (for the Miserere Mei is a distinctly lengthy psalm, especially when delivered at a funereal pace). A mob that had been braying with blood-lust but moments earlier was slowly transformed into as respectable a congregation as one could hope to find.

  Morgan Facey arrived just then, flustered, red of face and out of breath; he had been reconnoitring the approaches to the town, considering its defensibility in the event of an attack by a rival native kingdom or Montnoir's French troops. I acquainted him with the situation. He shook his head sadly, for we both had the same thought: so much for our intent to impress the natives with the sobriety and restraint of our English race.

  When the psalm finally concluded, we ordered all soldiers and sailors back to the ship. Then Facey and I confronted the two miscreants, Martin Lanherne coming across from Seraph to interpret for Treninnick.

  'He thieved my new dagger-scabbard,' said Hallett. 'Just bought it, that I had. Put my head down to sleep through the noon-day, and when I was wakened, it had gone.'

  Once the charge had been translated to him, Treninnick launched into an impassioned stream of vitriolic Cornish. 'He denies it,' said Lanherne. 'Says he's never seen the scabbard. Says he's no thief.'

  This struck home with me; I knew Treninnick well, and although he would readily crack a man's skull if provoked, he was at least an honest brute.

  Facey interrogated Hallett anew. 'If you were asleep and did not see this man take the scabbard,' he asked, 'then why did you accuse him of stealing it?'

  Hallett shrugged. 'He was seen taking it. By the colonel. He woke me and told me.'

  Facey and I exchanged a horrified glance. 'Colonel O'Dwyer?' I gasped.

  'Aye, sir,' said Hallett, who (as Facey told me later) was an impressionable creature of little intelligence. To such, the word of such a grand officer as a colonel would be unimpeachable.

  'Then where,' I asked with mounting dread, 'is Colonel O'Dwyer now?'

  Lanherne's face fell, and he hastened in search of Polzeath and Tremar, who were meant to be watching the renegade during that hour. He returned with two mortified Cornishman. The colonel had found a native woman, they said, and had retired to a hut with her. They had watched the hut, and he had not seemed to emerge from it. But now, when they and Lanherne had entered it, they found the hut empty. Colonel Brian Doyle O'Dwyer had disappeared.

  The renegade's defection had been expected for so very long, yet now it had happened, a palpable sense of shock pervaded the crew of the Seraph. Some of it was tinged with shame; my trusted Cornish followers who had kept watch over the Irishman at Santa Cruz de Tenerife had come to look on it as a cheerful private game in which they colluded with their captain, regarding the surveillance of the renegade as a matter of personal pride. Polzeath and Tremar were especially mortified, but their shame was reflected in every quarter of the ship, for men knew full well that they had been duped into spectating and scuffling upon the beach. O'Dwyer had done his work well. To create a diversion by pitting a soldier against a sailor was ingenious enough (such contests being certain to attract an ample audience of both breeds), but to set Hallett and Treninnick at odds was cunning indeed; Treninnick, virtually the mascot of my Cornish following, was bound to attract sympathy and support in large measure, but his strength and Hallett's size would guarantee a lengthy fight.

  With a heavy heart, I ordered a council-of-war to meet in the steerage of the Seraph. We would have to make at least a token search for O'Dwyer, even though I knew full well that it was likely to be little more than a forlorn gesture. Before I ordered the despatch of this futile expedition, I decided that it was time for a reckoning with the man who seemed to have done more than most to bring us to this pass. Thus I summoned the pilot, Jesus Sebastian Belem, to my cabin.

  'Well, old man,' I said bitterly, 'you might be a cripple, but you have led us all a merry dance these last weeks, I think.'

  'Captain?'

  'You and O'Dwyer. I've seen the two of you in secret conclave—aye, no doubt plotting the means by which he would be able to escape!'

  The old man was impassive; more impassive than I would have been if faced with such a serious charge. 'You are mistaken, Captain,' he said. 'Colonel O'Dwyer wished only to learn from me something of these parts. Of the temper of the King of Kasang and his neighbours, and of the nature of the country round about. Nothing beyond matters of fact.'

  A calmer, older Matthew Quinton would have asked what those 'matters of fact' were, but at that time I still had too much youthful impatience, exacerbated by the heat and my anger at the Irishman's flight.

  'Damnation, Belem,' I cried, 'you as good as supported the traitor in his story! Before Holmes and myself, aboard the Jersey, you actually encouraged the idea that there was a mountain of gold. Why in God's name did you do that, man, unless you were some sort of confederate of his? Why give credence to this foul lie from the blackest of liars?'

  Belem looked at me curiously. 'Captain,' he said, 'with respect, I had never encountered Colonel O'Dwyer before that day, and I never said that there was such a mountain. I said there were tales of gold mines beyond Barraconda, which is true. Has always been true, since first I came upon this river. But tales do not mean that those mines really exist. I said that Moorish caravans came across the desert from the very north of Africa and traded in gold, which is also true, and that the chiefs of these parts wear much gold—as for that, Captain, use the evidence of your own eyes.' So O'Dwyer's tale of the great journey across the desert might well have been truth—omitting only the mountain at the end of it. 'Now, if men wish to construct a legend of an entire mountain of gold from these half-truths and rumours, well, that it is their affair.' I was dimly aware of some noise upon the deck above, but thought nothing of it. 'It seems to me, Captain,' Belem continued, 'that this is just what your Prince Rupert has done, since first I knew him in these parts ten years ago. A great warrior, but a—what is the word you English use?—ah yes, a romantic. That is it. And if the romantic prince has convinced your king that ten years of wishful thinking has transformed the stories he heard on this river into a real mountain—and if your king is fool enough to believe him, and this man O'Dwyer too—well, that is their affair, and do not blame Jesus Sebastian Belem for it. Besides,' said the ancient Belem, smiling at last, 'consider my position, Captain Quinton. I am an old man. A very old man, and a cripple. My only income comes from the pilotage of this river, for I am fit for no task ashore. Now, I have observed that those who come seeking the mountain of gold are prepared to pay much higher fees for pilotage. Your Prince Rupert, for one. He paid me a true prince's ransom. So, Captain, consider this.' The old man looked at me levelly. 'If men come here wishing to find a mountain of gold, do you really believe I would tell them it does not exist?'

  The door of my cabin opened, and an impossible apparition stood framed within it.

  'And why should you, when in truth it does so?' said Brian Doyle O'Dwyer.

  Twenty-Three

/>   I had convinced myself that I would never see the renegade's face again, or hear his silken words. I was shaken to my core. For his part, O'Dwyer simply dismissed Belem—aboard my ship!—and smiled that insufferable, charming smile that I had seen and resented so often since our first meeting.

  'My apologies, Captain,' he said, 'I should have sent you word. I should have expected you to be concerned for my safety, and to wish to know my whereabouts.' He said it with an apparent absence of irony. 'An appalling breach of military etiquette on my part. But I encountered this Arab factor, you see, and thought he might be a useful man to furnish provisions for our expedition to come. And in truth, it was good to be able to speak the Arabic again, if only for an hour or two.'

  I struggled with my emotions. There was relief, certainly; but along with it came anger and doubt. Above all, doubt. The man could have slipped away, that much was certain. He had escaped the sentinels I appointed to watch him, and had he so wished, he could have been far away from Kasang. Yet there he was, as confident and arrogant as ever, lording it in my half of the captain's cabin of the Seraph. His presence raised the most potent of questions. For all these months, had I been wrong about Brian Doyle O'Dwyer? And if I had been wrong about him, had I also been wrong about the mountain of gold itself?

  Somehow, I managed to say, 'We were indeed concerned for you, Colonel. We were on the point of sending out parties to search for you.'

  I should have tackled the man over the blatant lie he had told to the soldier, Hallett, but such rational thoughts were driven away by the shock of the Irishman's reappearance. As, perhaps, he had intended.

  'How touching,' said O'Dwyer, pleasantly. 'But you need have no more concerns about me, Captain Quinton, for I am quite safe, as you can see. Never safer, I think. Now, the ship is at a mooring after a long and arduous voyage, and days of hard work lie ahead for soldiers and sailors alike—building the canoes to take us upstream, and so forth. And your crew has had its shore leave curtailed, entirely because of my inconsiderate behaviour. Thus, might not an evening of festivity at my personal expense be appropriate, Captain?'