Westward Ho!

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Westward Ho!


"They ask to depart with bag and baggage," said he, when he came up.

"God do so to me, and more also, if they carry away a straw!" said Lord
Grey. "Make short work of it, sir!"

"I do not know how that will be, my lord; as I came up a captain shouted
to me off the walls that there were mutineers; and, denying that he
surrendered, would have pulled down the flag of truce, but the soldiers
beat him off."

"A house divided against itself will not stand long, gentlemen. Tell
them that I give no conditions. Let them lay down their arms, and trust
in the Bishop of Rome who sent them hither, and may come to save them
if he wants them. Gunners, if you see the white flag go down, open your
fire instantly. Captain Raleigh, we need your counsel here. Mr. Cary,
will you be my herald this time?"

"A better Protestant never went on a pleasanter errand, my lord."

So Cary went, and then ensued an argument, as to what should be done
with the prisoners in case of a surrender.

I cannot tell whether my Lord Grey meant, by offering conditions which
the Spaniards would not accept, to force them into fighting the quarrel
out, and so save himself the responsibility of deciding on their
fate; or whether his mere natural stubbornness, as well as his just
indignation, drove him on too far to retract: but the council of war
which followed was both a sad and a stormy one, and one which he had
reason to regret to his dying day. What was to be done with the enemy?
They already outnumbered the English; and some fifteen hundred of
Desmond's wild Irish hovered in the forests round, ready to side with
the winning party, or even to attack the English at the least sign of
vacillation or fear. They could not carry the Spaniards away with them,
for they had neither shipping nor food, not even handcuffs enough for
them; and as Mackworth told Winter when he proposed it, the only plan
was for him to make San Josepho a present of his ships, and swim home
himself as he could. To turn loose in Ireland, as Captain Touch urged,
on the other hand, seven hundred such monsters of lawlessness, cruelty,
and lust, as Spanish and Italian condottieri were in those days, was
as fatal to their own safety as cruel to the wretched Irish. All the
captains, without exception, followed on the same side. "What was to be
done, then?" asked Lord Grey, impatiently. "Would they have him murder
them all in cold blood?"

And for a while every man, knowing that it must come to that, and yet
not daring to say it; till Sir Warham St. Leger, the marshal of Munster,
spoke out stoutly: "Foreigners had been scoffing them too long and too
truly with waging these Irish wars as if they meant to keep them alive,
rather than end them. Mercy and faith to every Irishman who would show
mercy and faith, was his motto; but to invaders, no mercy. Ireland was
England's vulnerable point; it might be some day her ruin; a terrible
example must be made of those who dare to touch the sore. Rather pardon
the Spaniards for landing in the Thames than in Ireland!"--till Lord
Grey became much excited, and turning as a last hope to Raleigh, asked
his opinion: but Raleigh's silver tongue was that day not on the side
of indulgence. He skilfully recapitulated the arguments of his
fellow-captains, improving them as he went on, till each worthy soldier
was surprised to find himself so much wiser a man than he had thought;
and finished by one of his rapid and passionate perorations upon his
favorite theme--the West Indian cruelties of the Spaniards, ". . .
by which great tracts and fair countries are now utterly stripped of
inhabitants by heavy bondage and torments unspeakable. Oh, witless
Islanders!" said he, apostrophizing the Irish, "would to Heaven that you
were here to listen to me! What other fate awaits you, if this viper,
which you are so ready to take into your bosom, should be warmed to
life, but to groan like the Indians, slaves to the Spaniard; but to
perish like the Indians, by heavy burdens, cruel chains, plunder and
ravishment; scourged, racked, roasted, stabbed, sawn in sunder, cast to
feed the dogs, as simple and more righteous peoples have perished ere
now by millions? And what else, I say, had been the fate of Ireland
had this invasion prospered, which God has now, by our weak hands,
confounded and brought to naught? Shall we then answer it, my lord,
either to our conscience, our God, or our queen, if we shall set loose
men (not one of whom, I warrant, but is stained with murder on murder)
to go and fill up the cup of their iniquity among these silly sheep?
Have not their native wolves, their barbarous chieftains, shorn, peeled,
and slaughtered them enough already, but we must add this pack of
foreign wolves to the number of their tormentors, and fit the Desmond
with a body-guard of seven, yea, seven hundred devils worse than
himself? Nay, rather let us do violence to our own human nature, and
show ourselves in appearance rigorous, that we may be kind indeed; lest
while we presume to be over-merciful to the guilty, we prove ourselves
to be over-cruel to the innocent."

"Captain Raleigh, Captain Raleigh," said Lord Grey, "the blood of these
men be on your head!"

"It ill befits your lordship," answered Raleigh, "to throw on your
subordinates the blame of that which your reason approves as necessary."

"I should have thought, sir, that one so noted for ambition as Captain
Raleigh would have been more careful of the favor of that queen for
whose smiles he is said to be so longing a competitor. If you have not
yet been of her counsels, sir, I can tell you you are not likely to be.
She will be furious when she hears of this cruelty."

Lord Grey had lost his temper: but Raleigh kept his, and answered
quietly--

"Her majesty shall at least not find me among the number of those who
prefer her favor to her safety, and abuse to their own profit that
over-tenderness and mercifulness of heart which is the only blemish
(and yet, rather like a mole on a fair cheek, but a new beauty) in her
manifold perfections."

At this juncture Cary returned.

"My lord," said he, in some confusion, "I have proposed your terms; but
the captains still entreat for some mitigation; and, to tell you truth,
one of them has insisted on accompanying me hither to plead his cause
himself."

"I will not see him, sir. Who is he?"

"His name is Sebastian of Modena, my lord."

"Sebastian of Modena? What think you, gentlemen? May we make an
exception in favor of so famous a soldier?"

"So villainous a cut-throat," said Zouch to Raleigh, under his breath.

All, however, were for speaking with so famous a man; and in came, in
full armor, a short, bull-necked Italian, evidently of immense strength,
of the true Caesar Borgia stamp.

"Will you please to be seated, sir?" said Lord Grey, coldly.

"I kiss your hands, most illustrious: but I do not sit in an enemy's
camp. Ha, my friend Zouch! How has your signoria fared since we fought
side by side at Lepanto? So you too are here, sitting in council on the
hanging of me."

"What is your errand, sir? Time is short," said the lord deputy.

"Corpo di Bacco! It has been long enough all the morning, for my
rascals have kept me and my friend the Colonel Hercules (whom you know,
doubtless) prisoners in our tents at the pike's point. My lord deputy,
I have but a few words. I shall thank you to take every soldier in the
fort--Italian, Spaniard, and Irish--and hang them up as high as Haman,
for a set of mutinous cowards, with the arch-traitor San Josepho at
their head."

"I am obliged to you for your offer, sir, and shall deliberate presently
as to whether I shall not accept it."

"But as for us captains, really your excellency must consider that we
are gentlemen born, and give us either buena querra, as the Spaniards
say, or a fair chance for life; and so to my business."

"Stay, sir. Answer this first. Have you or yours any commission to show
either from the King of Spain or any other potentate?"

"Never a one but the cause of Heaven and our own swords. And with them,
my lord, we are ready to meet any gentlemen of your camp, man to man,
with our swords only, half-way between your leaguer and ours; and I
doubt not that your lordship will see fair play. Will any gentleman
accept so civil an offer? There sits a tall youth in that corner
who would suit me very well. Will any fit my gallant comrades with
half-an-hour's punto and stoccado?"

There was a silence, all looking at the lord deputy, whose eyes were
kindling in a very ugly way.

"No answer? Then I must proceed to exhortation. So! Will that be
sufficient?"

And walking composedly across the tent, the fearless ruffian quietly
stooped down, and smote Amyas Leigh full in the face.

Up sprang Amyas, heedless of all the august assembly, and with a single
buffet felled him to the earth.

"Excellent!" said he, rising unabashed. "I can always trust my instinct.
I knew the moment I saw him that he was a cavalier worth letting blood.
Now, sir, your sword and harness, and I am at your service outside!"

The solemn and sententious Englishmen were altogether taken aback by the
Italian's impudence; but Zouch settled the matter.

"Most noble captain, will you be pleased to recollect a certain little
occurrence at Messina, in the year 1575? For if you do not, I do; and
beg to inform this gentleman that you are unworthy of his sword, and
had you, unluckily for you, been an Englishman, would have found the
fashions of our country so different from your own that you would have
been then hanged, sir, and probably may be so still."

The Italian's sword flashed out in a moment: but Lord Grey interfered.

"No fighting here, gentlemen. That may wait; and, what is more, shall
wait till--Strike their swords down, Raleigh, Mackworth! Strike their
swords down! Colonel Sebastian, you will be pleased to return as you
came, in safety, having lost nothing, as (I frankly tell you) you
have gained nothing, by your wild bearing here. We shall proceed to
deliberate on your fate."

"I trust, my lord," said Amyas, "that you will spare this braggart's
life, at least for a day or two. For in spite of Captain Zouch's
warning, I must have to do with him yet, or my cheek will rise up in
judgment against me at the last day."

"Well spoken, lad," said the colonel, as he swung out. "So! worth a
reprieve, by this sword, to have one more rapier-rattle before the
gallows! Then I take back no further answer, my lord deputy? Not even
our swords, our virgin blades, signor, the soldier's cherished bride?
Shall we go forth weeping widowers, and leave to strange embrace the
lovely steel?"

"None, sir, by heaven!" said he, waxing wroth. "Do you come hither,
pirates as you are, to dictate terms upon a foreign soil? Is it not
enough to have set up here the Spanish flag, and claimed the land
of Ireland as the Pope's gift to the Spaniard; violated the laws of
nations, and the solemn treaties of princes, under color of a mad
superstition?"

"Superstition, my lord? Nothing less. Believe a philosopher who has not
said a pater or an ave for seven years past at least. Quod tango
credo, is my motto; and though I am bound to say, under pain of the
Inquisition, that the most holy Father the Pope has given this land of
Ireland to his most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain, Queen Elizabeth
having forfeited her title to it by heresy,--why, my lord, I believe it
as little as you do. I believe that Ireland would have been mine, if I
had won it; I believe religiously that it is not mine, now I have lost
it. What is, is, and a fig for priests; to-day to thee, to-morrow to me.
Addio!" And out he swung.

"There goes a most gallant rascal," said the lord deputy.

"And a most rascally gallant," said Zouch. "The murder of his own page,
of which I gave him a remembrancer, is among the least of his sins."

"And now, Captain Raleigh," said Lord Grey, "as you have been so earnest
in preaching this butchery, I have a right to ask none but you to
practise it."

Raleigh bit his lip, and replied by the "quip courteous--"

"I am at least a man, my lord, who thinks it shame to allow others to do
that which I dare not do myself."

Lord Grey might probably have returned "the countercheck quarrelsome,"
had not Mackworth risen--

"And I, my lord, being in that matter at least one of Captain Raleigh's
kidney, will just go with him to see that he takes no harm by being bold
enough to carry out an ugly business, and serving these rascals as their
countrymen served Mr. Oxenham."

"I bid you good morning, then, gentlemen, though I cannot bid you God
speed," said Lord Grey; and sitting down again, covered his face with
his hands, and, to the astonishment of all bystanders, burst, say the
chroniclers, into tears.

Amyas followed Raleigh out. The latter was pale, but determined, and
very wroth against the deputy.

"Does the man take me for a hangman," said he, "that he speaks to me
thus? But such is the way of the great. If you neglect your duty,
they haul you over the coals; if you do it, you must do it on your
own responsibility. Farewell, Amyas; you will not shrink from me as a
butcher when I return?"

"God forbid! But how will you do it?"

"March one company in, and drive them forth, and let the other cut them
down as they come out.--Pah!"

* * * * *

It was done. Right or wrong, it was done. The shrieks and curses had
died away, and the Fort del Oro was a red shambles, which the soldiers
were trying to cover from the sight of heaven and earth, by dragging the
bodies into the ditch, and covering them with the ruins of the rampart;
while the Irish, who had beheld from the woods that awful warning, fled
trembling into the deepest recesses of the forest. It was done; and
it never needed to be done again. The hint was severe, but it was
sufficient. Many years passed before a Spaniard set foot again in
Ireland.

The Spanish and Italian officers were spared, and Amyas had Don Guzman
Maria Magdalena Sotomayor de Soto duly adjudged to him, as his prize
by right of war. He was, of course, ready enough to fight Sebastian
of Modena: but Lord Grey forbade the duel: blood enough had been shed
already. The next question was, where to bestow Don Guzman till his
ransom should arrive; and as Amyas could not well deliver the gallant
Don into the safe custody of Mrs. Leigh at Burrough, and still less into
that of Frank at Court, he was fain to write to Sir Richard Grenville,
and ask his advice, and in the meanwhile keep the Spaniard with him upon
parole, which he frankly gave,--saying that as for running away, he had
nowhere to run to; and as for joining the Irish he had no mind to turn
pig; and Amyas found him, as shall be hereafter told, pleasant company
enough. But one morning Raleigh entered--

"I have done you a good turn, Leigh, if you think it one. I have talked
St. Leger into making you my lieutenant, and giving you the custody of
a right pleasant hermitage--some castle Shackatory or other in the midst
of a big bog, where time will run swift and smooth with you, between
hunting wild Irish, snaring snipes, and drinking yourself drunk with
usquebaugh over a turf fire."

"I'll go," quoth Amyas; "anything for work." So he went and took
possession of his lieutenancy and his black robber tower, and there
passed the rest of the winter, fighting or hunting all day, and chatting
and reading all the evening, with Senor Don Guzman, who, like a good
soldier of fortune, made himself thoroughly at home, and a general
favorite with the soldiers.

At first, indeed, his Spanish pride and stateliness, and Amyas's English
taciturnity, kept the two apart somewhat; but they soon began, if not
to trust, at least to like each other; and Don Guzman told Amyas, bit by
bit, who he was, of what an ancient house, and of what a poor one; and
laughed over the very small chance of his ransom being raised, and
the certainty that, at least, it could not come for a couple of years,
seeing that the only De Soto who had a penny to spare was a fat old dean
at St. Yago de Leon, in the Caracas, at which place Don Guzman had been
born. This of course led to much talk about the West Indies, and the
Don was as much interested to find that Amyas had been one of Drake's
world-famous crew, as Amyas was to find that his captive was the
grandson of none other than that most terrible of man-hunters, Don
Ferdinando de Soto, the conqueror of Florida, of whom Amyas had read
many a time in Las Casas, "as the captain of tyrants, the notoriousest
and most experimented amongst them that have done the most hurts,
mischiefs, and destructions in many realms." And often enough his blood
boiled, and he had much ado to recollect that the speaker was his guest,
as Don Guzman chatted away about his grandfather's hunts of innocent
women and children, murders of caciques and burnings alive of guides,
"pour encourager les autres," without, seemingly, the least feeling that
the victims were human beings or subjects for human pity; anything, in
short, but heathen dogs, enemies of God, servants of the devil, to be
used by the Christian when he needed, and when not needed killed down
as cumberers of the ground. But Don Guzman was a most finished gentleman
nevertheless; and told many a good story of the Indies, and told it
well; and over and above his stories, he had among his baggage two
books,--the one Antonio Galvano's "Discoveries of the World," a mine
of winter evening amusement to Amyas; and the other, a manuscript book,
which, perhaps, it had been well for Amyas had he never seen. For it was
none other than a sort of rough journal which Don Guzman had kept as a
lad, when he went down with the Adelantado Gonzales Ximenes de Casada,
from Peru to the River of Amazons, to look for the golden country of El
Dorado, and the city of Manoa, which stands in the midst of the White
Lake, and equals or surpasses in glory even the palace of the Inca
Huaynacapac; "all the vessels of whose house and kitchen are of gold
and silver, and in his wardrobe statues of gold which seemed giants, and
figures in proportion and bigness of all the beasts, birds, trees, and
herbs of the earth, and the fishes of the water; and ropes, budgets,
chests, and troughs of gold: yea, and a garden of pleasure in an Island
near Puna, where they went to recreate themselves when they would take
the air of the sea, which had all kind of garden herbs, flowers, and
trees of gold and silver of an invention and magnificence till then
never seen."

Now the greater part of this treasure (and be it remembered that these
wonders were hardly exaggerated, and that there were many men alive then
who had beheld them, as they had worse things, "with their corporal and
mortal eyes") was hidden by the Indians when Pizarro conquered Peru and
slew Atahuallpa, son of Huaynacapac; at whose death, it was said, one
of the Inca's younger brothers fled out of Peru, and taking with him
a great army, vanquished all that tract which lieth between the great
Rivers of Amazons and Baraquan, otherwise called Maranon and Orenoque.

There he sits to this day, beside the golden lake, in the golden city,
which is in breadth a three days' journey, covered, he and his court,
with gold dust from head to foot, waiting for the fulfilment of the
ancient prophecy which was written in the temple of Caxamarca, where his
ancestors worshipped of old; that heroes shall come out of the West, and
lead him back across the forests to the kingdom of Peru, and restore him
to the glory of his forefathers.

Golden phantom! so possible, so probable, to imaginations which were yet
reeling before the actual and veritable prodigies of Peru, Mexico, and
the East Indies. Golden phantom! which has cost already the lives
of thousands, and shall yet cost more; from Diego de Ordas, and Juan
Corteso, and many another, who went forth on the quest by the Andes, and
by the Orinoco, and by the Amazons; Antonio Sedenno, with his ghastly
caravan of manacled Indians, "on whose dead carcasses the tigers being
fleshed, assaulted the Spaniards;" Augustine Delgado, who "came to a
cacique, who entertained him with all kindness, and gave him beside much
gold and slaves, three nymphs very beautiful, which bare the names
of three provinces, Guanba, Gotoguane, and Maiarare. To requite which
manifold courtesies, he carried off, not only all the gold, but all the
Indians he could seize, and took them in irons to Cubagua, and sold them
for slaves; after which, Delgado was shot in the eye by an Indian, of
which hurt he died;" Pedro d'Orsua, who found the cinnamon forests of
Loxas, "whom his men murdered, and afterwards beheaded Lady Anes his
wife, who forsook not her lord in all his travels unto death," and many
another, who has vanished with valiant comrades at his back into the
green gulfs of the primaeval forests, never to emerge again. Golden
phantom! man-devouring, whose maw is never satiate with souls of heroes;
fatal to Spain, more fatal still to England upon that shameful day, when
the last of Elizabeth's heroes shall lay down his head upon the block,
nominally for having believed what all around him believed likewise
till they found it expedient to deny it in order to curry favor with the
crowned cur who betrayed him, really because he alone dared to make one
last protest in behalf of liberty and Protestantism against the incoming
night of tyranny and superstition. Little thought Amyas, as he devoured
the pages of that manuscript, that he was laying a snare for the life of
the man whom, next to Drake and Grenville, he most admired on earth.

But Don Guzman, on the other hand, seemed to have an instinct that that
book might be a fatal gift to his captor; for one day ere Amyas had
looked into it, he began questioning the Don about El Dorado. Whereon
Don Guzman replied with one of those smiles of his, which (as Amyas said
afterwards) was so abominably like a sneer, that he had often hard work
to keep his hands off the man--

"Ah! You have been eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, senor?
Well; if you have any ambition to follow many another brave captain
to the pit, I know no shorter or easier path than is contained in that
little book."

"I have never opened your book," said Amyas; "your private manuscripts
are no concern of mine: but my man who recovered your baggage read
part of it, knowing no better; and now you are at liberty to tell me as
little as you like."

The "man," it should be said, was none other than Salvation Yeo, who
had attached himself by this time inseparably to Amyas, in quality of
body-guard: and, as was common enough in those days, had turned soldier
for the nonce, and taken under his patronage two or three rusty bases
(swivels) and falconets (four-pounders), which grinned harmlessly enough
from the tower top across the cheerful expanse of bog.

Amyas once asked him, how he reconciled this Irish sojourn with his vow
to find his little maid? Yeo shook his head.

"I can't tell, sir, but there's something that makes me always to think
of you when I think of her; and that's often enough, the Lord knows.
Whether it is that I ben't to find the dear without your help; or
whether it is your pleasant face puts me in mind of hers; or what, I
can't tell; but don't you part me from you, sir, for I'm like Ruth,
and where you lodge I lodge; and where you go I go; and where you
die--though I shall die many a year first--there I'll die, I hope and
trust; for I can't abear you out of my sight; and that's the truth
thereof."

So Yeo remained with Amyas, while Cary went elsewhere with Sir Warham
St. Leger, and the two friends met seldom for many months; so that
Amyas's only companion was Don Guzman, who, as he grew more familiar,
and more careless about what he said and did in his captor's presence,
often puzzled and scandalized him by his waywardness. Fits of deep
melancholy alternated with bursts of Spanish boastfulness, utterly
astonishing to the modest and sober-minded Englishman, who would often
have fancied him inspired by usquebaugh, had he not had ocular proof of
his extreme abstemiousness.

"Miserable?" said he, one night in one of these fits. "And have I not
a right to be miserable? Why should I not curse the virgin and all the
saints, and die? I have not a friend, not a ducat on earth; not even a
sword--hell and the furies! It was my all: the only bequest I ever had
from my father, and I lived by it and earned by it. Two years ago I had
as pretty a sum of gold as cavalier could wish--and now!"--

"What is become of it, then? I cannot hear that our men plundered you of
any."

"Your men? No, senor! What fifty men dared not have done, one woman did!
a painted, patched, fucused, periwigged, bolstered, Charybdis, cannibal,
Megaera, Lamia! Why did I ever go near that cursed Naples, the common
sewer of Europe? whose women, I believe, would be swallowed up by
Vesuvius to-morrow, if it were not that Belphegor is afraid of their
making the pit itself too hot to hold him. Well, sir, she had all of
mine and more; and when all was gone in wine and dice, woodcocks' brains
and ortolans' tongues, I met the witch walking with another man. I had
a sword and a dagger; I gave him the first (though the dog fought well
enough, to give him his due), and her the second; left them lying across
each other, and fled for my life,--and here I am! after twenty years of
fighting, from the Levant to the Orellana--for I began ere I had a
hair on my chin--and this is the end!--No, it is not! I'll have that El
Dorado yet! the Adelantado made Berreo, when he gave him his daughter,
swear that he would hunt for it, through life and death.--We'll see
who finds it first, he or I. He's a bungler; Orsua was a bungler--Pooh!
Cortes and Pizarro? we'll see whether there are not as good Castilians
as they left still. I can do it, senor. I know a track, a plan; over the
Llanos is the road; and I'll be Emperor of Manoa yet--possess the jewels
of all the Incas; and gold, gold! Pizarro was a beggar to what I will
be!"