The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer Part 19

And next came the question of what was to be done with the galley-slaves and the galley. It was a knotty question to decide, for here were a hundred-and-eighty men, many of whom were no doubt criminals and desperados of the very worst type; to release whom and turn them loose upon society involved a tremendous responsibility. Yet after even the cursory glimpse that George had caught of the life of a galley-slave, he could not bring himself to hand over those men to the tender mercies of the Spaniards and so in all probability insure for them a continuance of life in what Cary had graphically described as a floating h.e.l.l, which was a punishment infinitely worse than death, and far too severe for even the most atrocious crimes. George called Ba.s.set to his aid in the consideration of this momentous question; and finally, at the suggestion of the latter, he descended again to the ship's interior and sought the man who had been Hubert's companion on the bench.

"Friend," said he, "you asked me, a little while ago, to release you.

If I were to do so, what would you and your comrades do with yourselves?"

"It is just what Pedro and I"--indicating his companion upon the bench--"have been discussing together, senor," answered the man.

"Well," said George, "have you arrived at any decision upon the matter?"

"Yes, senor, we have," was the reply. "We have decided that, even were you willing to give us the galley, we could not keep the sea very long, because none of us understand the navigation of a ship, and our provisions would soon run short; moreover, galleys will only sail before the wind, and we have had enough of rowing to last us for the rest of our lives. On the other hand, we are all outlaws, and if we were to land on the mainland we should be hunted down and killed, sooner or later, or, worse still, taken and condemned to the galleys afresh. But outside the Gulf, some two hundred miles or more to the westward, there is a certain uninhabited island, at which this galley has often called for water. It is large enough to support four or five times our number, and although none of us are navigators we could easily find it by simply following the coast line. Its soil is rich, there are abundant fruit trees upon it, and plenty of water; we could easily support ourselves in comfort there, senor; and Pedro and I think that if you will graciously release us and give us the galley, we could do no better than go there and settle down upon it."

The rest of the galley-slaves had been listening eagerly to what was being said, as George could easily see; the scheme commended itself to him as an excellent one in itself, moreover it pointed a way out of the double difficulty of how to get rid of the slaves and the galley; he therefore appealed to the listening crowd by saying to them:

"You have all heard your comrade's plan. Are you willing to fall in with it?"

"_Si, senor; si, si. Mille gracias_," replied the slaves, with such perfect unanimity that the young man no longer hesitated.

"So be it," he said. Then, turning to one of the men who was with him, he directed him to release the Spaniard on the bench, and, having done that, to hand him the keys that he might release his comrades; after which he ordered the prisoners, wounded and unwounded, to be pa.s.sed down into the boats, which done, the victors pulled away for the galleon.

But they were scarcely alongside when the galley's sweeps were thrust outboard and the craft was under way again, heading south, with one of the slaves proudly standing at the tiller and leading an enthusiastic cheer as the galley swept at speed close under the towering stern of the galleon.

George's first act, upon returning to the galleon, was to direct Dyer to take the ship to the spot for which they had been aiming when they were intercepted by the galley, and anchor her there; then he descended to the sick bay, to find that under Chichester's skilled hands his brother had not only been revived from his swoon, but also that his terrible wounds had been bathed, treated with a soothing and healing ointment, bound up, and the patient made as comfortable as was possible upon a swinging pallet which the surgeon had caused to be rigged up in order that Hubert might not be disturbed by the motion of the ship, and might lie face down for a few days until the smart had gone out of his wounds and they had begun to heal.

George was greatly affected at the sight of his brother lying there stretched out upon the pallet, with his head resting upon a pillow supported by his arms, and unable to move his body in the least without suffering excruciating agony. But, terrible as Hubert's plight was, he still had spirit enough to make light of it when his brother, kneeling down by the side of the pallet, bent over him and tenderly kissed him on the brow. He smiled happily up into George's face and, with an effort that must have been torment to him, freed his right hand and grasped that of his brother as he murmured:

"You only fired that broadside just in time to save me, old chap.

Another half-minute, and that fiend of a boatswain would have killed me.

I won't ask you now how you happened to find me, that must wait until you have more time to talk and I more strength to listen; moreover, that splendid fellow Chichester has been telling me a bit of the story while he was dressing my wounds. But one thing you must tell me, Georgie.

How is the dear mother?"

The fact that George had nothing but good news to communicate to his brother seemed to cheer the latter amazingly, and caused him to so far forget his fearful injuries that he went on asking question after question until Chichester felt constrained to intervene and imperatively insist that the young captain should go on deck and leave his brother to get a little urgently needed rest.

As George ascended to the p.o.o.p, almost dazed with the good fortune which had enabled him to so unexpectedly deliver his brother from a life that was one long torment, his ears were greeted with the cries of the mariners shortening sail; and a few minutes later the galleon's anchor was dropped in the new berth for which the ship had been making. The sails were furled, the decks cleared up, ropes coiled down, and every preparation made for the expected visit of the Governor. And shortly afterward a large boat, pulling twelve oars, with an awning spread over the stern sheets, and with the Spanish flag floating from an ensign staff set up in the stern, was seen coming out of the harbour and heading toward the _Cristobal Colon_.

Twenty minutes later she ranged up alongside, and a party of ten Spaniards, dressed most extravagantly in the height of the prevailing mode, proceeded to climb with more or less difficulty the lofty side of the galleon, where, as they pa.s.sed in through the entry port, they were received by George at the head of his officers. The contrast in appearance between these popinjays, arrayed in silks and satins of the most costly description, with splendid jewels round their necks, on their fingers, and in their ears, their oiled, curled, and perfumed locks surmounted by jaunty little caps of silk or velvet decorated with beautiful feathers secured in place by gem-set brooches, and the st.u.r.dy Devon lads, attired mostly in perfectly plain armour not altogether guiltless of rust, beneath which showed their well-worn clothing, was a striking one indeed, but there was a stern, business-like look on the faces of the Englishmen that promptly checked any disposition to sneer on the part of the Spaniards.

The visitors were of course received with every manifestation of the most elaborate courtesy on the part of the English, and there was a tremendous amount of bowing and sc.r.a.ping on the galleon's quarter-deck before even a word was spoken. Presently, however, a tall, dark Spaniard, of about forty years of age, his handsome features marked with an expression of considerable resolution, stepped forward and said, with a bow:

"Senores, I am the Governor of Panama. Who among you is Senor George Saint Leger?"

"I am he, at Your Excellency's service," answered George, with a corresponding bow.

"_You_?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Governor, incredulously. "Why, you are only a boy. Where is your leader? It is he with whom my present business is concerned."

"Your Excellency," responded George, "I have the honour to be the captain of the company you see about you."

"Ten thousand pardons, senor!" exclaimed the Governor, bowing low. "I trust that you will magnanimously forgive my hasty expression of surprise. I ought to have remembered that in your gallant nation age does not necessarily count, and that among you are many very young men who are doing work that fills us of maturer years with astonishment, admiration and envy. Again I crave your pardon for my exceedingly stupid mistake. It is you, then, senor, who addressed this letter to me?" And he drew forth from a wallet at his belt George's letter to him.

"Even so, Your Excellency," acknowledged George.

"And in it you say that you wish to treat with me for the release of seventeen Englishmen sent here as prisoners from Nombre de Dios. Very well, senor; I am prepared to treat with you upon that matter; but it must be upon certain conditions. And the first of those conditions is that you unconditionally surrender this ship to her captain and officers, whom I have brought with me in order that they may receive her at your hands."

"Your Excellency, the condition you name is an impossible one, not to be considered for an instant. Let us dismiss it, and pa.s.s on to the next, if there be a next," answered George calmly.

"Next?" reiterated the Governor, a trifle tartly, "of course there is a next--several of them, indeed. But it is useless to speak of them until this, perhaps the most important of them all, is settled. Upon what grounds do you a.s.sert that my first condition is impossible, senor? You have secured possession of her by craft and in a manner which, if I may be permitted to say so, amounts simply to piracy. Our countries are not at war, senor. Then by what right do you seize a Spanish ship and, worse still, refuse to surrender her to her lawful owners, the representatives of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain?"

"Ah!" returned George, with a great appearance of simplicity, "now there Your Excellency puzzles me. I can't exactly tell you by what right I do this, and have done a good many other things on the north side of the isthmus; but it is by the same right that justified Don Martin Enriquez, His Most Catholic Majesty's Viceroy of Mexico, when he attacked the fleet of Admiral Hawkins while he was refitting his ships in the harbour of San Juan de Ulua, last year."

For a few moments the Governor looked--and was--decidedly "taken aback."

He could find no satisfactory reply to George's argument, for the sufficient reason that none such existed. But presently he pulled himself together and said:

"The occurrence to which you have referred, senor, was a most deplorable blunder on the Viceroy's part; but I had no hand in it, and I must refuse to be held responsible for it. You must yourself surely admit that it would be unjust in the extreme to make me answerable for the actions of a man over whom I have no control whatever."

"Oh, yes," retorted George, "I quite admit that; and it is not in your personal capacity, but merely as a Spaniard, that I am holding you and all Spaniards responsible for that outrage. And I hold Spaniards generally responsible for it, senor, for the reason that no attempt has been made by any Spaniard to right the wrong that was done. Yourself, for example, when invited to do what you could to rectify the matter, as far as might be, by releasing seventeen Englishmen unlawfully captured during the commission of the 'blunder,' curtly refused to take any steps whatever. Hence my presence here, and my capture of this ship. Need I say any more?"

It was necessary for George to say a great deal more before he succeeded in bringing the stiff-necked Don to reason, and in the process of doing so he told His Excellency a few home truths that first sent that functionary into a towering pa.s.sion and then turned him sick with fear; but at length Don Silvio was brought to see the futility of kicking against the p.r.i.c.ks, and finally he gave in with a good grace, the more readily when he learned that eleven out of the seventeen men demanded had already been taken out of the captured galley; he agreed with George that it was scarcely worth while to expose a number of important cities to the horrors of bombardment and valuable ships to the risk of capture for the sake of detaining half a dozen Englishmen in captivity; he therefore at length struck a bargain with the relentless young captain that, in consideration of the latter undertaking to abstain from further molestation of Spanish life and property, he, the Governor of Panama, would forthwith take the necessary steps to have the six Englishmen, or as many of them as happened to be still alive, immediately released and handed over to their own countrymen, signing a doc.u.ment to that effect.

This doc.u.ment, drafted by George, with the a.s.sistance of Ba.s.set, and young Heard, the purser, was quite an elaborate affair, providing for many things, the first of which was the retention of the _Cristobal Colon_ and her cargo by her captors; second, that during the period of waiting for the release of the six Englishmen the authorities of Panama were to daily supply the ship with meat, vegetables, and fruit in sufficient quant.i.ties for the requirements of the crew; third, that if it should be found that any of the six Englishmen had succ.u.mbed to the hardships incidental to their life as galley-slaves, the sum of ten thousand ducats was to be paid upon each man missing, as compensation to his relatives. There were several other clauses in the agreement, all providing against anything in the nature of treachery on the part of the Spaniards, and to these Don Silvio objected most strenuously, on the ground that they were an insult to the honour of every Spaniard; but George insisted upon their retention, bluntly stating that, after the example which had been set by His Excellency the Viceroy of Mexico, it was impossible for any Englishman to rely upon any Spaniard's honour.

And in return for all this the Englishmen agreed to observe a strict truce for six weeks. The reading of the draft was followed by a tremendous amount of talk and numerous protests, in response to which the stringency of a few of the clauses was somewhat modified, and finally the two fair copies of the agreement were signed there and then, first by the Governor and George as the two contracting parties, and afterwards by the Spanish and English officers as witnesses.

This done, the visitors were entertained on board the galleon to an impromptu luncheon, which, as it was prepared by the Spanish cook, released from the limbo of below for the occasion, and as the viands and wines were drawn from the ship's stores, was done ample justice to.

Then George, accompanied by Ba.s.set, went ash.o.r.e with the Governor and his followers, to be present at an investigation which was to determine the whereabouts of the six Englishmen whose release was in question, and who were ultimately found to have been drafted to a galley named the _Tiburon_, which, after considerable further research, was discovered to be then stationed at Port Lima. The next business was the preparation of an order to the Governor of Lima to immediately release the six Englishmen "named in the margin" and return them to Panama without delay; and before returning to the ship George had the satisfaction of witnessing the departure of a dispatch boat with the order on board.

On the following day the Spanish crew of the _Cristobal Colon_ were released and sent on sh.o.r.e; and, this done, all tension between the Spaniards and the English was immediately relaxed, the Spaniards, with their high-flown ideas of chivalry, vying with each other in showing the utmost cordiality and attention to their whilom enemies; so that, on the whole, George and his officers, to say nothing of the men, were given a fairly pleasant time during their sojourn at Panama, in return for which they, among other things, a.s.sisted materially to extinguish a fire which one night broke out in the city and, for a time, threatened to lay the greater part of it in ashes.

Finally, on the twenty-seventh day after her departure, the dispatch boat returned from Port Lima, bringing with her the six Englishmen, safe and sound, but of course in a somewhat broken condition from their dreadful experiences on board the _Tiburon_; and thus George Saint Leger at length triumphantly accomplished all that he had undertaken to do when he set out upon his adventurous voyage.

By this time Hubert Saint Leger had sufficiently recovered from his terrible injuries to be able to rise and dress without a.s.sistance, while all the other rescued English were doing well, their only desire now being to return home to their relatives and friends as soon as possible.

Therefore, there now being nothing to longer detain them at Panama, on the day after the return of the dispatch boat and the formal surrender of the six Englishmen, George and his officers bade farewell to the city and its inhabitants, and weighed anchor for the south, glad enough to escape to the pure breezes of the sea once more.

The _Cristobal Colon_ proved to be a somewhat dull sailer, nevertheless the adventurers made good progress down the western seaboard of South America, the voyage being wholly uneventful save for the usual experiences of mariners, and, missing the Straits of Magellan, the galleon rounded the Horn in the embrace of a bl.u.s.tering westerly gale, on the forty-third day after their departure from Panama, by which time all the invalids were perfectly recovered and not only fit but eager for duty. True, the weather which they encountered during the fortnight that they were in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn proved rather trying to all hands, accustomed as they had now become to the enervating climate of the tropics, but it was by this time early summer in the southern hemisphere, and although the air was keen it was also bracing, and Chichester, the surgeon, stoutly maintained that a taste of it was all that was needed to set everybody perfectly right.

Then followed the long weary drag up the eastern coast of South America, and everybody was rejoiced when, on a certain glorious morning of the last month of the year, they rounded the north-eastern angle of the continent--now known as Cape San Roque--and bore away to the westward for the creek where the _Nonsuch_ still--as they hoped--lay securely hidden. And at this point in the voyage they were exceptionally favoured by the elements, for they accomplished their second pa.s.sage of the Line without a minute's delay from calms. On the last day of the year they sailed past Trinidad, joyfully recognising its lofty heights and its three distinct entrances to the gulf as they pa.s.sed; and on the evening of January 15th, 1570, they entered the hidden harbour near Nombre, where they had left the _Nonsuch_, and found her apparently not a penny the worse for her five months' sojourn there. For Lukabela, the Cimarrone chief, had so scrupulously fulfilled his promise to look after the ship that a party of twenty men had been camped on the beach for the past five months, and had every day visited her and thoroughly soused her deck and upper works with water.

Immediately upon the arrival of the _Cristobal Colon_ in the cove, a messenger was dispatched to Lukabela with the news; and within a couple of hours he appeared on board to personally welcome his friends upon their return. George at once concluded an arrangement with the chief for the supply of a strong gang of men to a.s.sist in refitting the _Nonsuch_; and on the following day the work was energetically begun, and so strenuously carried forward that ten days later the vessel was ready for sea. All that now remained was to suitably reward the Cimarrones for their services, and this George did upon so lavish a scale that Lukabela there and then vowed to hold himself and his tribe henceforth at the service of any and every Englishman who might visit those waters. The Englishmen were then divided into two parties proportionate to the tonnage of the ships, George resuming the command of the _Nonsuch_, while he put Hubert--now completely recovered, and a strong, robust, handsome man once more--in command of the galleon. This made both ships very short-handed, but it was the only arrangement possible, for during their voyage round from Panama the cargo of the galleon had been overhauled, and found to be so enormously rich, and of such great bulk, that it was deemed unwise to entrust it and the rest of the treasure to a single ship; therefore on a certain glorious January morning all hands went to work to unmoor both ships, and by mid-day they were clear of the cove and heading north for the treasure island, which they reached five days later. But during that five days' voyage it had become so clear to all that both ships must be thoroughly cleared of weed before the voyage across the Atlantic was undertaken, that they decided to careen them before proceeding further. This was accordingly done, the work occupying all hands for three months; but when it was done both craft were fit in every respect to battle with the spring gales which they knew awaited them.

Finally, they sailed from the treasure island on the fifth day of May, 1570, and working their way to the north-east between the islands of Cuba and San Domingo, hit the Gulf Stream, which swept them to windward as they struggled northward against the north-east trade-wind. This proved to be the most tedious and wearisome part of their pa.s.sage; for upon clearing the trades they were fortunate enough to run into a succession of strong westerly winds, before which they went foaming and rolling across the Atlantic at a merry rate, arriving in Plymouth Sound within two hours of each other, on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of July, 1570, to the joy of everybody concerned, after an absence from home of just over fifteen months.

The part.i.tion of the treasure was immediately proceeded with; and so enormous was its amount that even the lowest grade of mariner received sufficient to render him independent in a modest way for the remainder of his life, while as for George, he was--after old Simon Radlett, the owner of the _Nonsuch_--easily the richest man in all Plymouth, his share being sufficient not only for his own needs but also for those of his brother Hubert, with whom he insisted upon an equal division, despite the energetic and long-continued protests of the elder brother.

For a time there was a possibility that George's exploits on the Spanish Main and at Panama might involve him in serious trouble with the Queen; indeed he and old Simon Radlett were summoned to London to give an account of themselves. Luckily, however, for them, the Catholics were at the moment making themselves obnoxious in the matter of conspiracies in favour of Mary, Queen of Scots, while Philip of Spain was also out of Elizabeth's favour; consequently Her Majesty was just in the right mood to be favourably impressed by the straightforward story which George had to tell; and his account of the doings of the Inquisition at San Juan de Ulua, and the atrocities practised upon the galley-slave prisoners, as witnessed by himself, excited such lively sympathy in the Queen's breast that, instead of sending them to the Tower, as they at one time more than half-expected, she knighted them both and sent them back to Plymouth happy in the full a.s.surance of her most gracious favour.

THE END.