A few days later he brought up with another ship and ran alongside to board. The Spanish crew was massed against the bulwarks to repel the attack. And immediately the air was filled with clay powder pots which landed in the thick group and exploded. The Spanish men ran screaming to the shelter of the hold to escape this flashing death.
When Henry Morgan came at last to Tortuga, four prizes followed in his wake, and he had not lost a man. It was as easy as he had known it would be. Here were four monuments to his planning. One had only to do the unexpected thing quickly. This was the secret of successful war.
Mansveldt was in Tortuga when Henry Morgan came, and his little eyes glittered as he looked at this plunder. Soon he sent for this new leader.
“You are Captain Morgan who took the four prizes in the harbor?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“And how did you do this thing? The Spanish ships are strongly armed and wary.”
“I did it, sir, with my planning. Many nights have I considered how to do these things. I work with surprise, sir, when other men use only force.”
Mansveldt regarded him with admiration.
“I am fitting out an expedition to take St. Catherine’s Isle,” he said. “Then I am going to form a republic of buccaneers who will fight with a patriotism. Would you like to be Vice-Admiral of this expedition? I have some reputation for picking men.”
The name of Mansveldt was mighty on the seas, and Henry flushed with pleasure.
“I would like it, sir,” he said quickly.
The fleet sailed out, and Captain Morgan was Vice-Admiral. There was a fine assault; the ships threw in their ragged hordes and slaughter walked on the walls. The island could not withstand the fierceness of the attack, and finally the fortress fell. Then the Dutch admiral drew up his government and left Henry Morgan in command while he went out to scour the world for recruits. He and his ship were lost and never heard from again. It was said the Spaniards strangled him in Cuba.
Captain Morgan was now the paramount leader of the Spanish Main. Ships flew from the ways to join his fleets, to sail under his command and fight with him and share in his success. He went up against Puerto Bello and sacked the town. The houses were burned and all the helpless citizens were plundered. When Captain Morgan’s ships sailed off the jungle was already creeping into the ruins.
For ten years he sailed about the ocean, among the islands and along the green coasts of Tropic America, and his was the greatest name of all who had gone out for plunder. The pirates of the world came flocking to his reputation. People cheered him in Tortuga and Goaves. Numberless men volunteered for every expedition. Now all the Brotherhood waited for Captain Morgan to open a keg of liquor in the streets or to run wild through the town. He never did. Coldly he walked about, clad in a purple coat and gray silk stockings and gray shoes with bows. At his side hung a long rapier no thicker than a pencil, in a scabbard of gray silk.
At first the sailors strove to establish a comradeship with him, but he pricked them away with frigid insults. The lessons of the slaves lived on in him. He did not try to buy his popularity, and all the Free Brotherhood showered it upon him—cast their lives and their fortunes on the knees of his success.
II
Ten years of fighting and plundering and burning, and he was thirty. His graying hair seemed to coil more closely to his head. Henry Morgan was successful, the most luck-followed freebooter the world had known, and the men of his profession gave him that admiration he had craved. His enemies—and any man of Spain who had money was his enemy—shuddered at the mention of his name. They had placed him in their fears beside Drake and L’Ollonais.
He had gone out with Grippo in the Ganymede, assured that when his guns roared into a Spanish hull, when he stood embattled on a Spanish deck with cries and clash of iron weapons about him, there would come that flaming happiness his heart desired. These things he had experienced, and there was not even content. The nameless craving in him grew and flexed its claws against his heart. He had thought the adulation of the Brotherhood might salve the wound of his desire; that when the pirates saw the results of his planning and marveled at them, he would be pleased and flattered. And this thing happened. The men fairly fawned on him, and he found that he despised them for it and considered them fools to be taken with such simple things.
Henry had grown lonely in his glory. Old Merlin had spoken truth so long ago, for Captain Morgan had come to his success, and he was alone in his success, with no friend anywhere. The craving of his heart must lie crouched within him. All his fears and sorrows and conceits, his failures and little weaknesses, must be concealed. These, his followers, had gathered to the cry of his success; they would leave him at the first small sign of weakness.
While he was engaged in winning plunder, a little rumor had come stealthily across the isthmus, had floated among the islands and stolen aboard the ships. Men caught the whispered name and listened carefully.
“There is a woman in Panama and she is lovely as the sun. They call her the Red Saint in Panama. All men kneel to her.” Thus said the whispering. The voice grew and grew until men in the taverns drank to La Santa Roja. Young seamen whispered of her in the dog watch. “There is a woman in the Cup of Gold and all men fall before her as heathen kneel before the sun.” They spoke softly of her in the streets of Goaves. No one had seen her; no one could tell the tint of her cheeks or the color of her hair. Yet, in a few years, every man in the wide, wild Main had drunk to the Red Saint, had dreamed of her; many had prayed to La Santa Roja. She became to every man the quest of his heart, bearing the image of some fair young girl left on a European beach to be gloriously colored by the years. And Panama was to every man the nest of his desire. It was a curious thing. In time, no speech among gathered men could end without mention of La Santa Roja. She was become a queer delirium in the minds of the rough pirates, a new virgin for their worship. Many said she was Mary come to live on earth again, and they added her name in their prayers.
Now, when Captain Morgan had taken Puerto Bello, the Governor of Panama was filled with admiration and wonder that such a ragged band of ill-ordered men, and without uniforms, could capture such a city. He sent a messenger asking for a small sample of the weapons which had made this thing possible. Captain Morgan took the runner to a small room that had escaped the general fire.
“Have you seen the woman whom they call the Red Saint in Panama?” he asked.
“I have not seen her, no; but I have heard of her. The young men put only the Blessed Virgin before her in their worship. It is said that she is lovely as the sun.”
“What is her name besides La Santa Roja?”
“I do not know. I have only heard that she is lovely as the sun. They tell in Panama that she came from Cordova and has been to Paris. It is said her family is noble. They tell how she rides great horses, sitting astride, in a meadow guarded with a thick hedge. It is said that in her hand a rapier is a living thing, and that she can fence more skillfully than any man. These things she does in secret that no one may see the crime against her modesty.”
“Ah, well!” said Captain Morgan, “if she be beautiful enough what need has she of modesty. This modesty is only a kind of beauty patch which is put on when there are visitors—an enthralling gesture. I should like to see her ride. And do you know nothing more of her?”
“Only what they say in the taverns, sir—that she has stolen worship from the Blessed Saints.”
Captain Morgan dreamed long in his chair while the runner waited silently. At last Henry shook his head, as though to disengage it of cloying thoughts. He drew a pistol from his belt and gave it to the messenger.
“Take this to Don Juan Perez de Guzman, and say that this is a sample of the weapons we have used in laying Puerto Bello in the dust. But my other weapons are the strong hearts of my followers. I will not send him one of these, but I will bring him a great number. And tell him to keep the pistol for a year, when I myself will come to Panama to receive it from his own hands. Do you understand?”