“My mother frets and frets there in Goaves, lest I go mad and run to her. She is terrified by this strange woman. ‘Go not near to her, my son,’ she says. ‘This woman is wicked; she is a devil; besides, she is without doubt a Catholic.’ And no one has ever seen her that we know of. We do not know certainly that there exists such a woman as the Red Saint in the Cup of Gold. Ah! she has spread the sea with dreams—with longing dreams. I have been thinking, sir, that perhaps, sometime, the Cup of Gold may go the way of Troy town on account of her.”
Henry Morgan had filled the glasses again and again. He was slumped forward in his chair, and a little crooked smile was on his mouth.
“Yes,” he said rather thickly, “she is a danger to the peace of nations and to the peace of men’s minds. The matter is wholly ridiculous, of course. She is probably a shrewish bitch who takes her bright features from the legend. But how might such a legend be started? Your health, Coeur de Gris. You will be a good friend to me and true?”
“I will, my Captain.”
And again they sat silently, drinking the rich wine.
“But there is much suffering bound up in women,” Henry Morgan began, as though he had just finished speaking. “They seem to carry pain about with them in a leaking package. You have loved often, they say, Coeur de Gris. Have you not felt the pain they carry?”
“No, sir, I do not think I have. Surely I have been assailed by regrets and little sorrows—everyone has; but mostly I have found only pleasure among women.”
“Ah, you are lucky,” the captain said. “You are filled with luck not to have known the pain. My own life was poisoned by love. This life I lead was forced on me by lost love.”
“Why, how was that, sir? Surely, I had not thought that you—”
“I know; I know how I must have changed so that even you laugh a little at the thought of my being in love. I could not now command the affection of the daughter of an Earl.”
“The daughter of an Earl, sir?”
“Yes, an Earl’s daughter. We loved too perfectly—too passionately. Once she came to me in a rose garden and lay in my arms until the dark was gone. I thought to run away with her to some new, lovely country, and sink her title in the sea behind us. Perhaps even now I might be living safe in Virginia, with little joys crowding my footstool.”
“It is a great pity, sir.” Coeur de Gris was truly sorry for this man.
“Ah, well; her father was informed. On one dark night my arms were pinned to my sides, and she—oh, dear Elizabeth!—was torn away from me. They placed me, still bound, in a ship, and sold me in Barbados. Can you not see, Coeur de Gris, the bitterness that lies restlessly in my heart? During these years, her face has followed me in all my wanderings. Somehow I feel that I might have made some later move—but her father was a powerful lord.”
“And did you never go back for her, after your imprisonment was done?”
Henry Morgan looked down at the floor.
“No, my friend—I never did.”
IV
The legend of the Red Saint grew in his brain like a powerful vine, and a voice came out of the west to coax and mock, to jeer and cozen Henry Morgan. He forgot the sea and his idling ships. The buccaneers were penniless from their long inactivity. They lay about the decks and cursed their captain for a dreaming fool. He struggled madly against the folding meshes of his dream and argued with the voice.
“May God damn La Santa Roja for sowing the world with an insanity. She has made cutthroats bay the moon like lovesick dogs. She is making me crazy with this vain desire. I must do something—anything—to lay the insistent haunting of this woman I have never seen. I must destroy the ghost. Ah, it is a foolish thing to dream of capturing the Cup of Gold. It would seem that my desire is death.”
And he remembered the hunger which had drawn him from Cambria, for it was duplicated and strengthened now. His thoughts were driving sleep away. When drowsiness crept in on the heels of exhaustion, La Santa Roja came in, too.
“I will take Maracaibo,” he cried in desperation. “I will drown this lusting in a bowl of horror. I will pillage Maracaibo, tear it to pieces, and leave it bleeding in the sand.
(There is a woman in the Cup of Gold, and they worship her for unnamable beauties.)
“Make the gathering at the Isle de la Vaca! Call in true hearts from the corners of the sea! We go to riches!”
His ships flew out to the bay of Maracaibo and the town was frantic in defense.
“Run into this bottle harbor! Yes, under the guns!”
Cannon balls cried through the air and struck up clouds of dirt from the walls, but the defense held ground.
“It will not fall? Then take it in assault!”
Powder pots flew over the walls, tearing and maiming the defenders in their burst.
“Who are these wolves?” they cried. “Ah, brothers! we must fight until we die! We must ask no clemency, brothers. If we fall, our dear city—”
Ladders rose against the fort, and a wave of roaring men swarmed over the walls.
“Ah, San Lorenzo! hide us! bear us away! These are no men, but devils. Hear me! Hear me! Quarter! Ah, Jesus! where art thou now?”
“Throw down the walls! Let no two stones stand together!”
(There is a woman in the Cup of Gold, and she is lovely as the sun.)
“Grant no quarter! Kill the Spanish rats! Kill all of them!”
And Maracaibo lay pleading at his feet. Doors were torn from the houses, and the rooms gutted of every movable thing. They herded the women to a church and locked them in. Then the prisoners were brought to Henry Morgan.
“Here is an old man, sir. We are sure he has riches, but he has hidden them away and we can never find any.”
“Then put his feet in the fire!—why, he is a brazen fool! Break his arms!—He will not tell? Put the whip-cord about his temples!—Oh, kill him! kill him and stop his screaming—Perhaps he had no money—”
(There is a woman in Panama—)
“Have you scratched out every grain of gold? Place the city at ransom! We must have riches after pain.”
A fleet of Spanish ships came sailing to the rescue.
“A Spanish squadron coming? We will fight them! No, no; we shall run from them if we can get away. Our hulls lag in the water with their weight of gold. Kill the prisoners!”
(—she is lovely as the sun.)
And Captain Morgan sailed from broken Maracaibo. Two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of eight were in his ships, and rolls of silken stuffs and plates of silver and sacks of spices. There were golden images from the Cathedral, and vestments crusted with embroidery of pearls. And the city was a fire-swept wreck.
“We are richer than we could have hoped. There will be joy in Tortuga when we come. Every man a hero! We shall have a mad riot of a time.”
(La Santa Roja is in Panama.)
“Ah, God! then if I must, I must. But I fear I go to my death. It is a dreadful thing to be attempting. If this is my desire, I must, though I die.” He called young Coeur de Gris to him.
“You have distinguished yourself in this fight, my friend.”
“I have done what was necessary, sir.”
“But you fought finely. I saw you when we engaged. Now I have made you my lieutenant in the field, my second in command. You are brave, you are sagacious, and you are my friend. I can trust you, and who among my men will bear this trust if it be worth his while to fail?”
“It is a great honor, sir. I will pay you, surely, with my fidelity. My mother will be very pleased.”
“Yes,” said Captain Morgan; “you are a young fool, and that is a virtue in this business as long as one has a leader. Now the men are straining to get back that they may spend their money. If it were possible they would be pushing the ships to hurry them. What will you do with your money, Coeur de Gris?”
“Why, I shall send half to my mother. The remaining sum I shall divide in two. Part I shall put away, and on the other I expect to be drunk for a few days, or perhaps a week. It is good to be drunk after fighting.”