He left soon after breakfast, and, having now filled his water, sailed from the key.
“He’s afraid of me,” said Margaret. “He’s afraid that I come from the Government, to put down privateering. Isn’t that what’s in his mind?”
“No, sir,” said Cammock. “He’s pleased with the notion. He’s a trader. He wants to cut logwood without any fear of guarda-costas. He’ll take all the defence you care to give; but he won’t come cruising with you till he’s got enough friends to stop you taking the lion’s share. He’ll be back to-morrow with some friends.”
Margaret went ashore, after this, to view the key. It was one of the larger keys of the archipelago. It was about a mile long, running east and west, and about a quarter of a mile across at its broadest part. In its highest part it was not more than sixty feet above the water; but the trees rising up above it to great height made it seem hilly. A sandy beach shelved down into the water on the side facing the Isthmus. On the north side the shore was rocky and steep-to, and hemmed about, by a five-mile sweep of reef, in a ring of breakers. Indeed, the reef ringed the key round; but the rocks about the beach did not break the seas. The island could only be approached from the south and east. On the other side neither ship nor boat could come within great-gun-shot. To the east, for a dozen miles or more, an array of palm keys stretched, with reefs in tumult round them. To approach the key from the east one had to sail within these keys, in a channel or fairway known as Springer’s Drive. This channel was bordered to the south by the keys fringing the Isthmus. The double line of keys, separated by three miles of sea, made a sort of palm hedge, or avenue, up to the anchorage. There was good holding-ground and riding in every part of the Drive; but ships usually rode near Springer’s Key, for they could get water there. Unlike most of the keys, it had a spring, which bubbled up strongly on the beach, through an old sunk tar-barrel, some yards beyond the tide-marks. The water was cold and clear, gushing up with a gurgle, making the sand grains dance. The bottom of the cask was covered with rusty iron, old nails, old blades of knives, old round-shot, laid there by sailors, long ago, in the belief that they would make the water medicinal. Some one had dammed up a pool below the cask, for the easier filling of the water-breakers. The water gurgled away, over the lip of the pool, amid a tangle of water plants that bore a profuse sweet blossom, like a daisy. Margaret had never seen a lovelier place. The brightness of the sun on the sea, the green of the trees towering up beyond him, the macaws of all colours, making their mockeries in sweet notes, were beautiful exceedingly. It was all new and strange to him. He half wished that he might be left alone there. He had no longer any wish to succeed. Had Olivia been on the other side of the world, his strength would have gone to make this spot a home for half the ships in the world. They would have lain there, with their sails as awnings, at anchor off the city he had builded. His citizens would have made those islands another Venice, another Athens, a glorious city, a city of noble life and law. All that was in his imagination might have existed, he thought. All the splendour should have come in praise of her. Nothing would have stopped him. In his heart her face would have flowered, that beautiful, pale face, the image of the woman he loved; he would have made his city glorious. Marble bridges should have spanned the channels. His empire would have spread. It would have spread over the sea there, over the keys, over the low coast fringed with mangroves, over the hills, dim in the south, over the crags where the clouds streamed, beyond the great bay, far into the south, past Garachina, past Tumbez, beyond Ylo to the Evangelists. He would have been a king. His ships would have scented all the seas of the world, bringing balms and spice home. Now all that was over, he saw what might have been. It would not now be. He had no wish now to see his city rise. He found his imagination dulled. The woman who had been his imagination, through whom, alone, he had lived imaginatively, walked, a tired shadow, with heavy eyes, in the ship beyond the reef. If he passed her she shuddered, averting her eyes. If he spoke to her—twice he had tried to speak to her—she drew in her breath, her eyes shut; she drew away from him as from a snake. He had no heart left to think of cities. All that he wished now was to do what he could for the merchants who had risked their money. The city would have to wait till the other lover came. The city would rise up glorious from the beauty of some other woman. All his love, and high resolve, and noble effort had come to this, that Olivia thought him something lower than Stukeley, something baser than the beasts.
He walked with Cammock to the island’s eastern end, where a rocky hillock stood out from the trees. He saw that a fort there would command the channel. Six of his long-range guns planted there under cover would be enough to defend the anchorage against any probable attack from guarda-costas. He drew a sketch-plan for a small redoubt, and ordered half his crew ashore to begin the clearing of the ground. He would have a wall of unmortared stones, backed by gabions, leaving embrasures for the six cannon. The outside of the fort would be covered with earth and sand, so that from a little distance it would look like a natural hillock. He caused a dozen men to cut down bejuco cane, and to plait it, while green, into wattle for the gabions. An Indian prince came to him from the Main that afternoon. He entertained him with ceremony, giving gifts of beads and petticoats, with the result that, the next morning, there were fifty natives on the key helping in the clearing of the ground. They, too, were bribed by beads. They were kindly, intelligent fellows, accustomed to be reckoned as the equals of white men, so that Cammock, superintending the work, had to watch his hands, lest they should treat their guests, in the English style, as niggers. The fort, such as it was, was finished on the third day. Its outer face showed from the sea like a sloping hillock, which in a few days would be again green with creepers. Within the wall of gabions, backed by wattle-bound piles, was a gun platform, with dry powder storerooms twenty feet behind each gun. The guns were mounted on iron carriages, and so arranged that each of the six could play across some ninety degrees of the compass. A roof of felt was rigged over each gun to protect the gunners in the rains. Margaret wished to hoist the colours over the fort; but Perrin begged that the new republic might be spared, at any rate till it was worth appropriating. Cammock advised him to refrain, lest the buccaneers should suspect him of playing for the hand of the Crown. So no flag was hoisted, though within the fort, daily, military sentries paced, firing a gun at dawn and sunset.
While the fort was in building some of the Indians cleared a space among the wood. In the clearing they built a great house for the workers: a thatched house twelve feet high, with wattle walls made rainproof. The uprights supported the hammocks at night. Those who slept ashore built always a fire of aromatic leaves in the house’s centre. Before turning in they sprinkled this with water to make a smoke. Those who woke in the night smelt the sweet, strong smoke which made their eyes smart, and heard without the never-ceasing march of the surf, the drone of the dew-flies, and the drowsy twang of the mosquitoes, plagued by the smoke.
Captain Tucket returned after some days with a sample of logwood and a consort. The consort was that Captain Pain who afterwards made such a stir in the Western Gulf. He was a prosperous captain even then. His ship was a fine French-built vessel of great beauty. His crew numbered ninety-seven hands, the very flower of the trade. He seemed suspicious of Margaret, who opened a trade with him on liberal terms. The privateers bought arms and clothes, paying for them with silver and gold; but there was constraint on both sides. The privateers were suspicious. At dinner in the trade-room Captain Pain gave voice to his suspicions.
“You’re a gentleman,” he said. “I don’t know what you want out here.”
“Well,” said Margaret, “I’ve already told you. I’ve a scheme for breaking the Spanish power here. But before I take any violent action I wish to try once again to establish a trade on ordinary, peaceful, European lines. There is no reason why they shouldn’t trade.”
“And if they do,” said Pain, “where do we come in?”