Prince Rupert, the Buccaneer

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

"As if a mermaiden at sea could have influence over an honest man seeking profit and adventure ashore," said he. "And furthermore," said he, "I don't believe there was a mermaiden at all." With which brave saying he led the way into the bush, the slim secretary following at his heels. The track was easy to follow. The cavaliers, with no knowledge of woodcraft, had cut their way through the bush, taking account of neither swamp nor thicket, and though one could not withhold admiration for their bravery and endurance, it was plain to see that they must have risked marching into an ambush for every yard of advance. Their labours must have been terrific. Even following in the made track taxed all the poor secretary's endurance. The air was a mere stew of heat, made still more horrible by the swarming mosquitoes. Serpents and wild beasts threatened one from the forests, and the morasses stank detestably of fevers.

The work had been done at a heavy enough cost. Scarce a mile was passed without coming upon the carcass of some poor cavalier who had fallen, and been abandoned to die, and forthwith became the focus of a covey of disgusting birds. One man indeed they came upon with a tremour of life still in him, and the birds sitting round like ghouls on neighbouring trees. But he was beyond speech, and indeed passed whilst the Prince stooped over him, and when they left to continue their march, the rustle of wings from behind told that the birds had flown down to commence their meal.

It irks the secretary to record matters so vastly impolite as the above in these memoirs, and indeed many things have been withheld; but in view of the grave events which follow, it is necessary that the desperation of this expedition should be clearly shown. What was the ultimate fate of the unfortunate band of cavaliers that Prince Rupert was following will probably now never be known. That they acted as a decoy, as Watkin had intended, was evident enough, for no less than three large companies of soldiery were despatched from Coro to cut them up. But none of these, so they afterwards stated, came across the raiders, and though they all found their traces, none had skill or endurance sufficient to follow them up. And so it appears that these poor cavaliers were swallowed up by that inhospitable interior which lets not even a rumour of its history escape to the outside world, and whether they were all destroyed, or whether stragglers of them married and settled amongst the Indians, will remain forever a sealed mystery.

But of the two unfortunates who followed in their track, the history of their adventures (though it be merely one of unbroken misfortune) must be given with all its sorrowful detail. Though Rupert would have none of such morbid theory, the secretary, who in most matters agrees with her adored patron to the letter, cannot help recording that from the moment of seeing the mermaiden luck attended none of their efforts. They were bogged in swamps; they were tormented with the flies; they ate fruits which gave them colics, and suffered incessantly from the fevers which are inseparable from these regions. They were, in a word, half beside themselves with the torments which were native to the country, and if the secretary had been alone, or with any other leader, she is free to confess that she would incontinently have lain down to die five times a day. But Rupert struggled doggedly on, and though indeed he cursed aloud the fate which led him to an end in so detestable a country, and sighed a thousand times for one more wild charge in which he might ride to a genteel death at the head of his English troops, he never lost his valiant courage, and never had aught but cheery, pleasant words for his solitary follower. "Fortune may be blacker still, Stephen, lad," he would cry, "if it can invent a deeper tint, but I'll never give in to you over the matter of that mermaiden."

In the end, however, they marched along in a kind of stupor, exchanging no words, and not possessing even the energy to brush away the mosquitoes from their swollen faces. They struggled on, hand-in-hand, clutching at branches and tree trunks for support as they passed them, and the maid, by reason of her fierce love for this adorable Prince, put forth powers of endurance which astonish her even now to look back upon. But when at length, in their blind, half-fainting condition they marched directly into a camp of the Spaniards, they were in no fit state for any elaborate display of attack or defence. It is true that Rupert did run one fellow through the lungs, and the secretary's feebling arm did guard her patron's back through fully two minutes from attack. But the outcome was beyond question. Their swords were trundled out of their hands, and they themselves beat to the ground through sheer weight of blows.

Dully they looked for death, and had no spirit left to resent its arrival. A clubbed arquebuse poised over the head of the Prince, a sword was drawn back to stab through the heart of the secretary. But the officer of the troop came up just then, and was more farseeing than his followers. Prisoners from the English buccaneers were scarce, and naturally he wanted to parade his capture; and, after enjoying this pleasant triumph, why then (as he explained) the Holy Office would be gratified to take over the bodies of two such vile heretics, and presently would make them into a very popular public spectacle.

Wrist and ankle irons are part of the ordinary accoutrements of these Spanish troops, as all Indians they come across they enslave—a very wasteful proceeding, one would think, as the creatures invariably die within the year, and are vastly inferior to blacks from the Guinea coast as labourers. But there the irons were, and quickly the prisoners were made fast and given food and drink, and left to recruit as best they could at the bivouac.

The Spaniards made no further progress with their expedition: the taking of two English prisoners seemed to satisfy their greediest ambition; and when a day had been allowed them to regain strength, the column was put in motion again for a return to Coro. The prisoners were vigilantly guarded, but otherwise they were not ill-treated, for it was part of the captors' plan that they should enter the city looking healthy and vigorous, to give colour to the tale that they had been taken after desperate fighting and resistance. Indeed, the secretary, who, poor creature, was suffering from that seasonable fever which they call the calentura, was given a mule for her conveyance, and had the mortification of seeing her royal patron trudging beside her afoot whether she would or not. But prisoners are not allowed to pick and choose in these matters, and when Master Laughan would have leapt to the ground in spite of the guards, so that the Prince might ride as befitted his station, the fellows coupled that prisoner's heels beneath the belly of the beast so that submission was a sheer necessity.

The Prince too laid strict commands upon the secretary on this matter. "We're in a tight fix," he said, "and we're fools to have got there. As like as not they'll give us a dog's death of it. But they shall have their sport out of me as an unknown Englishman and not as Rupert."

The secretary urged a reversal of this decision.