Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth

“Then, friend,” replied the other, a Dominican, like Gerundio, but of a darker and sterner complexion, “corrupt human nature would within a week discover some fresh bauble, for which to kill and be killed in vain.”

“What is that, Fray Gerundio?” asked the bishop again.

“I merely remarked, that it were well for the world if all mankind were to put up the same prayer as the hoopoes.”

“World, sir? What do you know about the world? Convert your Indians, sir, if you please, and leave affairs of state to your superiors. You will excuse him, senors” (turning to the Dons, and speaking in a lower tone). “A very worthy and pious man, but a poor peasant’s son; and beside—you understand. A little wrong here; too much fasting and watching, I fear, good man.” And the bishop touched his forehead knowingly, to signify that Fray Gerundio’s wits were in an unsatisfactory state.

The Fray heard and saw with a quiet smile. He was one of those excellent men whom the cruelties of his countrymen had stirred up (as the darkness, by mere contrast, makes the light more bright), as they did Las Casas, Gasca, and many another noble name which is written in the book of life, to deeds of love and pious daring worthy of any creed or age. True Protestants, they protested, even before kings, against the evil which lay nearest them, the sin which really beset them; true liberals, they did not disdain to call the dark-skinned heathen their brothers; and asserted in terms which astonish us, when we recollect the age in which they were spoken, the inherent freedom of every being who wore the flesh and blood which their Lord wore; true martyrs, they bore witness of Christ, and received too often the rewards of such, in slander and contempt. Such an one was Fray Gerundio; a poor, mean, clumsy-tongued peasant’s son, who never could put three sentences together, save when he waxed eloquent, crucifix in hand, amid some group of Indians or negroes. He was accustomed to such rebuffs as the bishop’s; he took them for what they were worth, and sipped his wine in silence; while the talk went on.

“They say,” observed the commandant, “that a very small Plate-fleet will go to Spain this year.”

“What else?” says the intendant. “What have we to send, in the name of all saints, since these accursed English Lutherans have swept us out clean?”

“And if we had anything to send,” says the sea-captain, “what have we to send it in? That fiend incarnate, Drake—”

“Ah!” said his holiness; “spare my ears! Don Pedro, you will oblige my weakness by not mentioning that man;—his name is Tartarean, unfit for polite lips. Draco—a dragon—serpent—the emblem of Diabolus himself—ah! And the guardian of the golden apples of the West, who would fain devour our new Hercules, his most Catholic majesty. Deceived Eve, too, with one of those same apples—a very evil name, senors—a Tartarean name,—Tita!”

“Um!”

“Fill my glass.”

“Nay,” cried the colonel, with a great oath, “this English fellow is of another breed of serpent from that, I warrant.”

“Your reason, senor; your reason?”

“Because this one would have seen Eve at the bottom of the sea, before he let her, or any one but himself, taste aught which looked like gold.”

“Ah, ah!—very good! But—we laugh, valiant senors, while the Church weeps. Alas for my sheep!”

“And alas for their sheepfold! It will be four years before we can get Cartagena rebuilt again. And as for the blockhouse, when we shall get that rebuilt, Heaven only knows, while his majesty goes on draining the Indies for his English Armada. The town is as naked now as an Indian’s back.”

“Baptista Antonio, the surveyor, has sent home by me a relation to the king, setting forth our defenceless state. But to read a relation and to act on it are two cocks of very different hackles, bishop, as all statesmen know. Heaven grant we may have orders by the next fleet to fortify, or we shall be at the mercy of every English pirate!”

“Ah, that blockhouse!” sighed the bishop. “That was indeed a villainous trick. A hundred and ten thousand ducats for the ransom of the town! After having burned and plundered the one-half—and having made me dine with them too, ah! and sit between the—the serpent, and his lieutenant-general—and drunk my health in my own private wine—wine that I had from Xeres nine years ago, senors and offered, the shameless heretics, to take me to England, if I would turn Lutheran, and find me a wife, and make an honest man of me—ah! and then to demand fresh ransom for the priory and the fort—perfidious!”

“Well,” said the colonel, “they had the law of us, the cunning rascals, for we forgot to mention anything but the town, in the agreement. Who would have dreamed of such a fetch as that?”

“So I told my good friend the prior, when he came to me to borrow the thousand crowns. It was Heaven’s will. Unexpected like the thunderbolt, and to be borne as such. Every man must bear his own burden. How could I lend him aught?”

“Your holiness’s money had been all carried off by them before,” said the intendant, who knew, and none better, the exact contrary.

“Just so—all my scanty savings! desolate in my lone old age. Ah, senors, had we not had warning of the coming of these wretches from my dear friend the Marquess of Santa Cruz, whom I remember daily in my prayers, we had been like to them who go down quick into the pit. I too might have saved a trifle, had I been minded: but in thinking too much of others, I forgot myself, alas!”

“Warning or none, we had no right to be beaten by such a handful,” said the sea-captain; “and a shame it is, and a shame it will be, for many a day to come.”

“Do you mean to cast any slur, sir, upon the courage and conduct of his Catholic majesty’s soldiers?” asked the colonel.

“I?—No; but we were foully beaten, and that behind our barricades too, and there’s the plain truth.”

“Beaten, sir! Do you apply such a term to the fortunes of war? What more could our governor have done? Had we not the ways filled with poisoned caltrops, guarded by Indian archers, barred with butts full of earth, raked with culverins and arquebuses? What familiar spirit had we, sir, to tell us that these villains would come along the sea-beach, and not by the high-road, like Christian men?”

“Ah!” said the bishop, “it was by intuition diabolic, I doubt not, that they took that way. Satanas must need help those who serve him; and for my part, I can only attribute (I would the captain here had piety enough to do so) the misfortune which occurred to art-magic. I believe these men to have been possessed by all fiends whatsoever.”

“Well, your holiness,” said the colonel, “there may have been devilry in it; how else would men have dared to run right into the mouths of our cannon, fire their shot against our very noses, and tumble harmless over those huge butts of earth?”

“Doubtless by force of the fiends which raged with them,” interposed the bishop.

“And then, with their blasphemous cries, leap upon us with sword and pike? I myself saw that Lieutenant-General Carlisle hew down with one stroke that noble young gentleman the ensign-bearer, your excellency’s sister’s son’s nephew, though he was armed cap-a-pie. Was not art-magic here? And that most furious and blaspheming Lutheran Captain Young, I saw how he caught our general by the head, after the illustrious Don Alonzo had given him a grievous wound, threw him to the earth, and so took him. Was not art-magic here?”

“Well, I say,” said the captain, “if you are looking for art-magic, what say you to their marching through the flank fire of our galleys, with eleven pieces of ordnance, and two hundred shot playing on them, as if it had been a mosquito swarm? Some said my men fired too high: but that was the English rascals’ doing, for they got down on the tide beach. But, senor commandant, though Satan may have taught them that trick, was it he that taught them to carry pikes a foot longer than yours?”

“Ah, well,” said the bishop, “sacked are we; and San Domingo, as I hear, in worse case than we are; and St. Augustine in Florida likewise; and all that is left for a poor priest like me is to return to Spain, and see whether the pious clemency of his majesty, and of the universal Father, may not be willing to grant some small relief or bounty to the poor of Mary—perhaps—(for who knows?) to translate to a sphere of more peaceful labor one who is now old, senors, and weary with many toils—Tita! fill our glasses. I have saved somewhat—as you may have done, senors, from the general wreck; and for the flock, when I am no more, illustrious senors, Heaven’s mercies are infinite; new cities will rise from the ashes of the old, new mines pour forth their treasures into the sanctified laps of the faithful, and new Indians flock toward the life-giving standard of the Cross, to put on the easy yoke and light burden of the Church, and—”

“And where shall I be then? Ah, where? Fain would I rest, and fain depart. Tita! sling my hammock. Senors, you will excuse age and infirmities. Fray Gerundio, go to bed!”

And the Dons rose to depart, while the bishop went on maundering,—

“Farewell! Life is short. Ah! we shall meet in heaven at last. And there are really no more pearls?”

“Not a frail; nor gold either,” said the intendant.

“Ah, well! Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than—Tita!”

“My breviary—ah! Man’s gratitude is short-lived, I had hoped—You have seen nothing of the Senora Bovadilla?”

“No.”

“Ah! she promised:—but no matter—a little trifle as a keepsake—a gold cross, or an emerald ring, or what not—I forget. And what have I to do with worldly wealth!—Ah! Tita! bring me the casket.”

And when his guests were gone, the old man began mumbling prayers out of his breviary, and fingering over jewels and gold, with the dull greedy eyes of covetous old age.

“Ah!—it may buy the red hat yet!—Omnia Romae venalia! Put it by, Tita, and do not look at it too much, child. Enter not into temptation. The love of money is the root of all evil; and Heaven, in love for the Indian, has made him poor in this world, that he may be rich in faith. Ah!—Ugh!—So!”

And the old miser clambered into his hammock. Tita drew the mosquito net over him, wrapt another round her own head, and slept, or seemed to sleep; for she coiled herself up upon the floor, and master and slave soon snored a merry bass to the treble of the mosquitoes.

It was long past midnight, and the moon was down. The sentinels, who had tramped and challenged overhead till they thought their officers were sound asleep, had slipped out of the unwholesome rays of the planet to seek that health and peace which they considered their right, and slept as soundly as the bishop’s self.

Two long lines glided out from behind the isolated rocks of the Morro Grande, which bounded the bay some five hundred yards astern of the galleon. They were almost invisible on the glittering surface of the water, being perfectly white; and, had a sentinel been looking out, he could only have descried them by the phosphorescent flashes along their sides.

Now the bishop had awoke, and turned himself over uneasily; for the wine was dying out within him, and his shoulders had slipped down, and his heels up, and his head ached! so he sat upright in his hammock, looked out upon the bay, and called Tita.

“Put another pillow under my head, child! What is that? a fish?”

Tita looked. She did not think it was a fish: but she did not choose to say so; for it might have produced an argument, and she had her reasons for not keeping his holiness awake.

The bishop looked again; settled that it must be a white whale, or shark, or other monster of the deep; crossed himself, prayed for a safe voyage, and snored once more.

Presently the cabin-door opened gently, and the head of the senor intendant appeared.