Then, out of nothing, out of dimness, there came a moving, a forming, a changing, and I became conscious that I was no longer alone, but that a company, great and illustrious, was assembling by ship-loads upon the beach of La Brea; and that, without word or confusion, five ancient, lofty-sterned, lumbering craft, and a quaint little caravel, lay bow-on to the strand, while one was already being careened on her side in the shoal water of the beach by cumbersome tackle fast to her thick mastheads. Their huge, clumsy hulks were gray with time; their gaping seams told of hot, blistering suns, and upon their decks there lay an array of guns and armament, crudely ancient and unwieldy. Silent men were noiselessly moving about at the command of one most beautiful to behold, in scarlet cloak, and silken hose and doublet of rare elegance, with hat beplumed, and glittering sword, who walked amongst the company as a king.
To and from the ship there moved a ghostly procession of grimy sailors, carrying pitch to the beach, where fires were burning, and the venerable three-deckers were being daubed with the smoking fluid, and made ready for the high seas.
It was a merry company, in truth, of lords and gentlemen, and scholars, too, who came upon my vision, and wonderingly my eyes followed the gallant leader. It seemed to me that I could all but catch his words. He spoke with a poet’s grace, so full of charm and so deliberate, so courtly was his address. His face once turned, I knew him to be English. His fair skin was burned by deep-sea voyaging; his pointed beard just touched the lace of a deep, white ruff, and over his shoulder hung a plume, white and curling. In all my life, I had never seen so gay a gentleman, and I could not get my fill of looking and of wondering.
Could it be that this great company were the revivified followers of the dauntless Sir Walter Raleigh, searching, centuries ago, for El Dorado? And it came to me, in that curious mixing of past and present, of which dreams are made, “Does Sir Walter, with all his wisdom, suspect that here, where he pitches his ships, is to be the great gold mine—some later man’s El Dorado—while he eagerly sails away in futile quest of golden sands that are always just beyond his reach?”
I lifted myself to strain my farthest sight, when lo! all was gone; galleons, gentlemen, scholars, sailors, even the little caravel—all! The sun was beating down upon the black road, the air was blistering; negroes were weighing the buckets of pitch, and the machinery clanked, with deafening indifference, through the quivering air; and up from behind a clump of bushes a red bow, atop of a well-known white hat, chased away the phantoms of long ago. I took off my dark glasses, rubbed my eyes, and, half-dazed, stepped from my enchanted carryall.
CHAPTER III.
THE SPANISH MAIN
I.
STEAMING out of the Gulf of Paria the day before, away from the muddy water of the Orinoco, we had come again through the Dragon’s Mouth, close to that long, eastward-pointing finger of South America that forms one side of this famous gateway, back into the welcome Caribbean Sea. Thence through the night we skirted the South American coast, passing the celebrated pearl-fishing island of Margarita—“The Pearl”—where it was said that a German gunboat with covetous eye had these many months been making careful surveys and taking elaborate soundings—so forehanded, you know! And now we were at anchor in the roadstead of La Guayra, the seaport of Caracas.
