Cup of Gold by Steinbeck, John

Henry Morgan was aroused.

“Who was this young buccaneer?” he asked crossly.

“Ah, you perceive the knife,” said Ysobel. “And how do I know the fellow? But he was charming, and I should like to see him again.”

The captain’s eyes were flaming with rage.

“You will be locked up,” he said harshly. “You will re­main in a cell until the time when we go again to Chagres. And we shall see whether this knife you speak of is sharp enough to keep you here in Panama.”

As she followed him across the garden to her jail, her clear laughter rang out. “Captain Morgan, it has just occurred to me—I have begun to see that a great many differ­ent kinds of men make the same kind of husband.”

“Get to your cell,” he ordered her.

“Oh—and Captain Morgan, you will find an old woman on the steps of the Palace. My duenna, she is. Send her to me, please. And now, good-by for the time, sir; I must get to my devotions. The sin to be dissolved, Captain Morgan, is truthfulness. It is a bad thing for the soul, truthfulness.”

He went slowly back to his chair in the Hall of Audi­ence. He was filled with a kind of shame for his man­hood. It was as though she had plucked his rapier from its scabbard and scratched his face with it while he stood helpless before her. She had beaten him without apparent effort. Now he quailed before the knowledge of his men’s laughter when they discovered his embarrassment. There would be snickering when his back was turned. Groups of pirates would be silent as he passed, and when he had gone they would break into sharp laughter. This hidden ridicule was terrifying to Henry Morgan. His hates began to raise their heads; hatreds not for Ysobel, but for his town men who would laugh at him; for the people of Tortuga who would tell the story in the taverns; for the whole Indian Coast.

Now from the little prison across the garden came a shrill voice praying to the Virgin. The penetrating sound charged the whole Palace with a fervent cacophony. Henry Morgan listened with shame-sharpened ears for mockery in the words or in the tone, but there was no mockery. Over and over, a shrill Ave Maria; the tone of a fearful, pleading sinner—Ora pro nobis. A shattered world, and the black skeleton of a golden city—Ora pro nobis. No mockery at all, but brokenhearted repentance reading its poor testimony on the dropping beads. A shrill woman’s voice, piercing, insistent—it seemed to be digging at a tre­mendous, hopeless sin. She had said it was the sin of truthfulness. “I have been honest in my being, and that is a black lie on the soul. Forgive my body its humanity. Forgive my mind which knows its limitations. Pardon my soul for being anchored this little time to both. Ora pro nobis.”

The mad, endless rosary cankered in Henry’s brain. At last he seized his rapier and his hat and ran from the hail into the street. Behind him the treasure lay smiling under the slanting sun.

The streets about the Governor’s Palace had not been touched by the fire. Captain Morgan walked along the paved way until he came to the ways of ruin. Here black­ened walls had spilled their stones into the road. Those houses which had been made of cedar were vanished into the frames of smoking ashes which marked their places. Here and there lay murdered citizens grinning their last agony into the sky.

“Their faces will be black before the night,” Henry thought. “I must have them removed or the sickness will come.”

Dallying clouds of smoke still arose from the city, filling the air with the sickly odor of damp things burning. The green hills beyond the plain seemed incredible to Henry Morgan. He regarded them closely and then looked back at the city. This destruction which had seemed so complete, so awful, during the night, was, after all, a pitifully small and circumscribed destruction. Henry had not thought of the hills remaining green and standing. This conquest, then, was more or less unimportant. Yes, the city was in ruins. He had destroyed the city, but the wom­an who had drawn him to the Cup of Gold eluded him. She escaped while she still lay in his power. Henry winced at his impotence, and shuddered that other people should know it.

A few buccaneers were poking about in the ashes, look­ing for melted plate which might have escaped the search of the night before. Turning a corner, Henry came upon the little Cockney Jones, and saw him quickly thrust something into his pocket. A flame of rage arose in Captain Morgan. Coeur de Gris had said that there was no difference between this epileptic dwarf and Henry Mor­gan. No difference, indeed! This man was a thief. The rage changed to a fearful lust to hurt the little man, to outrage him, to hold him up to scorn as Henry Morgan had been scorned. The cruel desire made the captain’s lips grow thin and white.

“What have you in your pocket?”

“Nothing—nothing, sir.”

“Let me see what you have in your pocket.” The captain was pointing a heavy pistol.

“It’s nothing, sir—only a little crucifix! I found it.” He drew out a golden cross studded with diamonds, and on it a Christ of ivory. “You see, it’s for my wife,” the Cockney explained.

“Ah! for your Spanish wife!”

“She’s half Negro, sir.”

“You know the penalty for concealing spoil?”

Jones looked at the pistol and his face grayed. “You would not—Oh, sir, you would not—” he began chokingly. Then he seemed to be clutched by invisible, huge fingers. His arms dropped stiffly to his sides, his lips sagged open, and a dull, imbecilic light came into his eyes. There was a little foam on his lips. His whole body twitched like a wooden dancing figure on a string.

Captain Morgan fired.

For a moment the Cockney seemed to grow smaller. His shoulders drew in until they nearly covered his chest, like short wings. His hands clenched, and then the whole contracted mass fell to the ground, convulsing like a thick, animate jelly. His lips drew back from his teeth in a last idiot snarl.

Henry Morgan stirred the body with his foot, and a change stirred in his mind. He had killed this man. It was his right to kill, to burn, to plunder—not because he was ethical nor even because he was clever, but be­cause he was strong. Henry Morgan was the master of Panama and all its people. There was no will in Panama save Henry Morgan’s will. He could slaughter every hu­man in the country if he so chose. All this was true. No one would deny it. But in the Palace back there was a woman who held his power and his will in contempt, and her contempt was a stronger weapon than his will. She fenced at his embarrassment and touched him at her con­venience. But how could that be? he argued. No one was master in Panama but himself, and he had just killed a man to prove it. Under the battering of his arguments the power of Ysobel waned and slowly disappeared. He would go back to the Palace. He would force her as he had prom­ised. This woman had been treated with too much con­sideration. She did not realize the significance of slavery, nor did she know the iron of Henry Morgan.

He turned about and walked back toward the Palace. In the Hall of Audience he threw off his pistols, but the gray rapier remained at his side.

Ysobel was kneeling before a holy picture in her little whitewashed cell when Henry Morgan burst upon her. The dried duenna shrank into a corner at the sight of him, but Ysobel regarded him intently, noted his flushed face, his half-closed, fierce eyes. She heard his heavy breathing, and with a smile of comprehension rose to her feet. Her laughter rang banteringly as she drew a pin from her bodice and assumed the position of a fencer, One foot forward, her left arm held behind her for balance, the pin pointed before her like a foil.

“En garde!” she cried. Then the captain rushed at her. His arms encircled her shoulders and his hands were tear­ing at her clothing. Ysobel stood quite still, but one hand darted about with its pin—striking, striking—like a small white serpent. Little spots of blood appeared on Henry’s cheeks, on his throat.

“Your eyes next, Captain,” she said quietly, and stabbed him thrice on the cheekbone. Henry released her and stepped away, wiping his bloody face with the back of his hand. Ysobel laughed at him. A man may beat—may sub­ject to every violation—a woman who cries and runs away, but he is helpless before one who stands her ground and only laughs.

“I heard a shot,” she said. “I thought perhaps you had killed some one to justify your manhood. But your man­hood will suffer now, will it not? Word of this encounter will get about somehow; you know how such things travel. It will be told that you were beaten with a pin in the hands of a woman.” Her tone was gloating and cruel.