Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic

Ah! when I bid the soldiers go below,
Some ’neath the hatches, some beside the slaves,
And bid them stack their muskets all in piles
Beside the foremast, covered by a sail,
The captives guess my plan – I see their smiles
As down the waist the cozened troop defiles,
Staggering and stumbling landsmen, faint and pale.

I say, they guess my plan – to send beneath
The soldiers to the benches where the slaves
Sit, armed with eager nails and eager teeth —
Hate’s nails and teeth more keen than Spanish glaives,
Then wait until the tempest’s waxing might
Shall reach its fiercest, mingling sea and sky,
Then seize the key, unlock the slaves, and smite
The sea-sick soldiers in their helpless plight,
Then bid the Spaniards pull at oar or die.

Past Ferrol Bay each galley ’gins to stoop,
Shuddering before the Biscay demon’s breath.
Down goes a prow – down goes a gaudy poop:
‘The Don’s “Diana” bears the Don to death,’
Quoth I, ‘and see the “Princess” plunge and wallow
Down purple trough, o’er snowy crest of foam:
See! see! the “Royal,” how she tries to follow
By many a glimmering crest and shimmering hollow,
Where gull and petrel scarcely dare to roam.’

Now, three queen-galleys pass Cape Finisterre;
The Armada, dreaming but of ocean-storms,
Thinks not of mutineers with shoulders bare,
Chained, bloody-wealed and pale, on galley-forms,
Each rower murmuring o’er my whispered plan,
Deep-burnt within his brain in words of fire,
‘Rise, every man, to tear to death his man —
Yea, tear as only galley-captives can,
When God’s Revenge sings loud to ocean’s lyre.’

Taller the spectre grows ’mid ocean’s din;
The captain sees the Skeleton and pales:
I give the sign: the slaves cry, ‘Ho for Gwynn!’
‘Teach them,’ quoth I, ‘the way we grip in Wales.’
And, leaping down where hateful boatswains shake,
I win the key – let loose a storm of slaves:
‘When captives hold the whip, let drivers quake,’
They cry; ‘sit down, ye Dons, and row for Drake,
Or drink to England’s Queen in foaming waves.’

We leap adown the hatches; in the dark
We stab the Dons at random, till I see
A spark that trembles like a tinder-spark,
Waxing and brightening, till it seems to be
A fleshless skull, with eyes of joyful fire:
Then, lo: a bony shape with lifted hands —
A bony mouth that chants an anthem dire,
O’ertopping groans, o’ertopping Ocean’s quire —
A skeleton with Inca’s diadem stands!

It sings the song I heard an Indian sing,
Chained by the ruthless Dons to burn at stake,
When priests of Tophet chanted in a ring,
Sniffing man’s flesh at roast for Christ His sake.
The Spaniards hear: they see: they fight no more;
They cross their foreheads, but they dare not speak.
Anon the spectre, when the strife is o’er,
Melts from the dark, then glimmers as before,
Burning upon the conquered galley’s beak.

And now the moon breaks through the night, and shows
The ‘Royal’ bearing down upon our craft —
Then comes a broadside close at hand, which strows
Our deck with bleeding bodies fore and aft.
I take the helm; I put the galley near:
We grapple in silver sheen of moonlit surge.
Amid the ‘Royal’s’ din I laugh to hear
The curse of many a British mutineer,
The crack, crack, crack of boatswain’s biting scourge.

‘Ye scourge in vain,’ quoth I, ‘scourging for life
Slaves who shall row no more to save the Don’;
For from the ‘Royal’s’ poop, above the strife,
Their captain gazes at our Skeleton!
‘What! is it thou, Pirate of “El Dorado”?
He shouts in English tongue. And there, behold!
Stands he, the devil’s commodore, Medrado.
‘Ay! ay!’ quoth I, ‘Spain owes me one strappado
For scuttling Philip’s ship of stolen gold.’

‘I come for that strappado now,’ quoth I.
‘What means yon thing of burning bones?’ he saith.
‘’Tis God’s Revenge cries, “Bloody Spain shall die!”
The king of El Dorado’s name is Death.
Strike home, ye slaves; your hour is coming swift,’
I cry; ‘strong hands are stretched to save you now;
Show yonder spectre you are worth the gift.’
But when the ‘Royal,’ captured, rides adrift,
I look: the skeleton hath left our prow.

When all are slain, the tempest’s wings have fled,
But still the sea is dreaming of the storm: