For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

CHAPTER XXVI

Certain men, whom misfortune and loss of riches have driven to seek comfort in philosophy, have devoured much paper and spilled an infinity of ink in dispraise of gold and silver, railing at those metals with a plentiful store of scornful epithets, to show their baseness and want of true value.

Had any such been with us now they would have found a very plausible argument for their conclusions. Rolling in gold and silver, we were destitute; though oppressed with wealth, we were poorer than church mice. Willingly we would have given all we had, and more, for one smart, well-furnished frigate in the road.

After the discovery of our forlorn state many were so moved that they cast away their gold, and, losing all hope of escape, gave themselves up to despair; and not without excuse. For we could not doubt but that our pinnaces had been taken, and that our stronghold at Fort Diego would be revealed by the torture of prisoners. Thus all hope of ever getting back to our homes was gone; and the greater part of the company, losing all heart, began to murmur and complain very bitterly against the captains who had brought them to such a pass. I can say no more of the depth to which our spirits sank, or the misery of that hour, than that it was one of those times when Frank Drake's nature rose to its greatest height. He leaped upon a log, and with his clear, cheerful voice addressed them without a note of fear or misgiving, where no one else could discern the smallest ray of encouragement or the forlornest hope of safety.

'Shame on you! shame!' he cried. 'What faint-heartedness is this? If you miscarry, so do I. You venture no further than I. And is this a time to wail and fear? If it be, then is it also a time to hasten to prevent what we fear. If the enemy have prevailed against our pinnaces, which God forbid, yet all is not lost. Only half their work is done. They must have time to search and examine their prisoners as to where our strength lies; and then they will want some time to form their resolution, and quarrel who is to command. Ah! you know not Spaniards. Then they will want time to order a fleet twice or thrice as large as needful; item, time to come to our ships; item, time to resolve upon their method of attack; item, time to find stomach to deliver it. And before all this will be discharged we can get to our ships, if you will so resolve, like the men that you have at divers times shown yourselves.'

'But how? how?' they cried, as he paused.

'Why, now you speak like men,' he said, 'and give a captain heart to save you. By land, I think, we cannot come to them, though our Pedro would have us so try. It is sixteen days' journey thither, and before that the Spaniards will have struck. Yet by sea we may. See you those trees God has sent down the river for you by last night's storm? Of those we can make a raft; and four of us sail aloof the shore and call the ships hither. Of those four I shall be one; who will be the others?'

The words were hardly out of his mouth when Harry had shouted 'I!' and then followed a clamour of 'I's' in English, French, and Spanish, as half the whites and all the blacks offered themselves when they understood what our captain's words should mean. Finally he chose Harry, as having spoken first, and two Frenchmen, who were great swimmers, because our fellow-venturers boldly claimed, as of right, a half-share in every danger as well as in all plunder.

So from despair our captain's resolute words, so cheerfully spoken, raised them all in a short space to a lively hope; and all hands set eagerly to work to bind together some of the trees which the swollen river had brought down.

Meanwhile, more grieved than I can say to think that Harry was going to what seemed almost certain death, in spite of what Frank had said, I went to him to try and dissuade him from his purpose.

'Tush!' said he, 'what is there to fear?'

'Nothing for you to fear, I know well,' I answered; 'it is not that. It is what I fear. I have a most evil foreboding that if you go on this venture we shall never see you again.'

'Well, and what matter?' he laughed; 'a man must die once.'

'Yes,' said I, 'but he need not rot to death in a Spanish prison, or die before his time. The Spanish shallops will be scouring all the coast, and must of a certainty pick you up like half-drowned rats ere ever you reach the Cabeças. Why should you do this when there is no need—you who of us all have most to live for?'

'And what have I to live for,' he answered, with clouding brow, 'that others have not?'

'You know! you know!' I said. 'Give me not the pain or shame of saying what. Nay, hear me then,' I went on, as I saw a bitter reply rising to his lips; and then, determined to leave no means untried to preserve him to the woman I had so cruelly wronged, I told him how I had gone back to Ashtead after that terrible night; how I had seen through the window his dear wife kissing his letter and weeping over his child; how I had marked a hundred signs whereby I knew her love for him was only the more pure and ardent for the trial it had undergone.

God be praised! if it was He that put the burning words in my mouth with which I told my tale and pleaded my cause. Long had I kept it pent up in my heart, for want of courage to tell him, as well as for fear of increasing his grief and his hate for me; and now it flowed with the full strength of the gathered flood which his long coldness had frozen up in me.

What joy was in my heart I cannot tell in words when, ere I had done, he seized my hand in his manly way and said, 'Have your will, brother! Go in my place. If we ever meet again we shall be brothers indeed once more, and brothers we should never have ceased to be had I known you as I should. Let what I do be a token to you. I know the danger of this service as well as you, and never did I think for any man I could turn back from such an attempt when I had offered myself and been chosen. To you, brother, and her, I sacrifice thus my honour in token of how high beyond all words I value this love you have both given me, who deserve it so little.'

Bright shone the sun in my heart, bright as the mid-day fire over our heads, as to the music of a hearty cheer we dropped down the river in our frail bark. Frank was steering her with a rude oar which had been shaped from a young tree, the two Frenchmen stood by with poles in case of need, and I managed the biscuit-bag whereof we had made our sail.

The Cimaroons had bitterly lamented not coming with us, but them Frank would have stay to succour those who remained, since there we had greatest need of them.

'No,' he had said; 'stay here for a little while to conduct my company by land if I return not. Yet, if it please God that I shall once put foot in safety aboard my frigate, I will, God willing, get you all aboard, in despite of all the Spaniards in the Indies.'

With this courageous speech he left the whole company in good heart, because they knew of a surety, since he had so passed his word, that if they were lost it would not be for want of the last effort of the man who best in all the world knew how to save them.

Our voyage was evil enough to have damped any spirits less lifted with joy than mine, or less constant than Frank's. The whole time we were up to our waists in water as we sat, and as soon as we reached the open sea we found the swell so big that each wave surged up to our necks, and we had much ado to hold on. Moreover the sun so burned down upon us, all unprotected as we were, that what with the salt water and the scorching, we soon had little skin left that was not all blisters.

Yet a very smart breeze was blowing from the westwards, so that we made good progress towards the Cabeças, and so kept up our spirits. It was as the sun was getting low that Frank suddenly cried to me, 'Look! look! Jasper, ahead there off the point!'

I looked where he pointed and saw two large pinnaces struggling to weather the headland with oars against the freshening breeze.

'What shall we do?' said I. 'We must drive. We cannot stop. How shall we avoid them?'

'Avoid them!' said Frank, with a merry laugh. 'Why, lad, they are our own, and if we can but make them see, we are saved.'

'Yet perhaps they are prizes to Spaniards,' suggested one of the Frenchmen, 'and are manned by Spaniards.'

'No, monsieur, no,' said Frank; 'you never saw Spaniards row like that. See how they labour, and yet I think they make no head. Pray God they be not cast away on the point!'

Indeed as we drew nearer there seemed no small danger of this. The wind was shifting more and more on to the land as it freshened, and we could see they made a lot of leeway.

'They will never do it,' said Frank; 'they are too short of hands. It is hard to be so near safety, yet so far.'

Even as he spoke we saw them cease rowing and fall slowly under the lee of the point. In a few minutes they were out of sight, and we blankly confessed to ourselves that they must have resolved to ride out the rising gale and the night in the still water behind the point.

It was a bitter disappointment to us, and our new-found joy at finding our pinnaces were still safe gave way to a new-found grief. So intent had we been in watching them that we had not noticed how the shifting wind was driving us a-land. Straight ahead of us was the dark forest-clad point against which the surf was booming and spouting sheets of white spray. It was plain we could never weather it, and that if we continued as we were we must almost certainly be dashed to pieces in the foaming breakers.

Eagerly I watched, and tried to persuade myself our raft was bearing better room. Every tilt which the waves gave her I tried to fancy was a change of course, but still we drifted to leeward in spite of the rapid headway we made before the rising gale. All at once, as I watched, our head swung round to leeward and all chance was gone. I looked to see the cause and saw Frank very calm and stern with the helm hard up.

'Now, if ever,' said he; 'pray God to help us. Nay, look not scared, Jasper. It is our only chance. We cannot weather the point, and all that is left is to try and beach the raft this side, and then, if we land alive and whole, make about the point to the pinnaces afoot. All which we can well do, if it please God to send us a big wave and a pleasant beach.'

It was indeed a time for prayer. Soon close ahead we could see the breakers rolling in upon the shore rank after rank, a wilderness of boiling foam. I saw the two Frenchmen tighten their belts for the coming struggle. Each of them pulled out a great quoit of gold from his breast. Then they whispered together for a space and put them back. So I kept mine in spite of the danger, if we had to swim, and Frank kept his.

In a few minutes we were at the edge of our peril. Frank steadied the raft before the wind like the master hand he was; a raging mass of foam seemed to rise beneath us and shoot us towards the shore. What was in front we could not see. Like an arrow we flew, nor ever rested till we crashed upon the beach.

With that hoarse and terrible whistle with which the breakers on a shingly shore seem to draw their monstrous breath for a new effort to destroy, the wave that had borne us went screaming back. In a moment we had leaped on the rolling shingle and rushed up the beach as fast as our remaining strength and our shifting foothold would let us.

Again the angry sea swept at us, but it was too late. As once more it retired, drawing its strident breath, we dug hands, feet, and knees into the moving stones till it was gone, and then once more got up and ran. Ere another wave had burst we were in safety, lying breathless upon a flowery bank.

Frank was the first to move. I heard him mutter his words of thanksgiving for our safety, and then he called cheerfully to us in high spirit.

'Up, lads, up,' he said; 'we must lose no time. See yonder light to windward; the gale will lessen in another hour, and the pinnaces as like as not will sail. We will go about the point now as quick as we can, and when we see them run our fastest, like men pursued, to give them a rattling fright, that they may prove their quickness to save us since they have been so slow hitherto. It is but fair dealing to put this jest on them for giving us such an evil sail.'

This we did, and were no sooner come about the point than we saw the blessed sight of our two pinnaces anchored in a quiet cove. Away went Frank running towards them as hard as he could, and we after him crying at the top of our voices. They seemed terribly afraid to see their captain thus suddenly appear with but three followers, and made the greatest speed to take us aboard.

At first Frank did not speak, but sat very solemn and stern, and we, taking our cue from him, did likewise; nor did they ask anything of what our running and sudden appearance might mean. Indeed they feared our news was too terrible for them to be in a hurry to hear it.

'How does all the company?' said one at last.

'Well,' said Frank sullenly, which made them all look more alarmed than ever, till he could bear it no longer, and, bursting into a loud laugh, he drew his golden quoit from his doublet.

'Look there!' he cried, brandishing it in their faces. 'At last our voyage is made!'

And so he told them how we had sped, and told the Frenchmen amongst them how their captain was left behind sore wounded, and comforted them by letting them know how two of his company remained with him, and how it was our intention to rescue him.

'And tell me,' he said, 'how it was you discharged not the order I most straitly gave you to be in the Rio Francisco yesterday?'

'We did our best,' said the commander. 'Yet the gale was so strong from the west that with all our rowing we could get no farther than this.'

'Well, God be praised for His mercy,' said Frank. 'Surely is He wiser than man. Had you done as I said, you would have come to the river in the nick of time to be devoured by seven pinnaces from Nombre de Dios, which I doubt not were fitted out for that purpose. I think they have been driven in for fear of the gale, and will be out again as soon as it abates. Therefore we must make shift to continue our way with oars as soon as possible.'

And this they cheerfully did before an hour was gone. Their short rest and our news seemed to make new men of them, so that, partly by infinite labour at the oars with our help, and partly by an abating of the wind, we came by morning into the Rio Francisco. There we took all our company and treasure aboard, and so sailed back to our frigate, and thence without mishap to our ships.