Ten weeks passed before they felt the time ripe for their attack. By that time Margaret had made a good recovery; his wound was well healed over; he could even use the arm a little. Before leaving the anchorage, he put more guns in the fort, and chose out a garrison to fight them. He had every reason to be pleased with his success. A large part of Springer’s Key had been cleared, under his direction, for plantain-walks and vanilla-patches, as well as for Indian corn. More than a hundred more privateers had come to him, and he had planned with Tucket to load the Broken Heart, on his return from Tolu, at a new logwood forest, never yet cut, on the banks of the Azucar. He felt happier than he had felt since leaving England; for now his way seemed clear. His old suspicion of Pain had gone. Pain’s men had worked like slaves to clear the key for culture. It seemed to him that he was going to succeed after all, and that he would, as he had planned, make something of the wasted energies of the men of the account. He had even started Tucket on a dye-works, with half a dozen cauldrons, and a bale of cotton for experiments. The huts of the Indians had been altered and enlarged. Springer’s Key Town was now a walled city, with a few wooden shops, where the Broken Heart’s goods were sold for gold-dust. His thoughts ran much upon gold-dust; for the rivers were full of it, according to the privateers. He went up the Conception River with some Indians and a party of Pain’s men, during the last of the weeks of waiting, to look for gold-dust in the sands. They washed with sieves in several likely places, finding about six ounces in all. The Indians said that there was more higher up, in the rapid upper reaches, in the torrents of the Six Mile Hills, away to the south. On the way downstream, he cut a bundle of mangrove, thinking that the bark might be of use to tanners in Europe, since the Indians dressed hides with it. The damp heat of the Isthmus overcame him. He saw that nothing could be done there. No Europeans would ever do much in such a climate. But at sea in the bright Samballoes, where the winds blew steadily, never dying to a calm, he felt that much could be done. He offered bounties to all who would clear patches for tobacco, arnotto, cochineal, and indigo. Tucket, a steady, shrewd man, who saw a chance of doing what he had always longed to do, helped him ably. The dye-works occupied their mornings together. The rest of the day, after the noon heat, was passed in the supervision and encouragement of the citizens. The brush at Tolu, and the bringing off of Ed, had made him popular. He found that the privateers were fairly well disposed towards him. Even the inscrutable Pain seemed friendly.
It was not an easy matter to rule such citizens. He began by making a rough division of labour. Those who loved hunting went in parties daily to the Main to hunt. Those who liked to work in the islands cut and cleared jungle, planted plantains, tobacco, or arnotto. Others took boats and fished. Some built huts or canoas. Some dug wells and trenches to supply the plantations. Many Indians came to them. Springer’s Key knew a few weeks of bustling prosperity. Margaret began to worry about another problem—the sex problem, the problem of wives for his settlers. Where was he to get white wives for three hundred men? How was he to avoid the horrors of the mixed races? He remembered in Virginia the strange and horrible colonial mixtures, the mixtures of white with red, white with black, black with red, red with all the mixtures, black with all the mixtures, creatures of no known race, of no traditions, horrible sports, the results of momentary lusts, temporary arrangements. One could buy white transported women in Jamaica at thirty pounds apiece. One could buy redemptioners in Virginia for the same sum. Many of the men at work about him had done so, during their lives in the colonies. But how was a nation to be born from convicted thieves, petty larcenists, bawds, procuresses, women burnt in the hand, branded women? He resolved to hurry home as soon as the plantations began to bear, as soon as the Spaniards began to recognize his rights. He must get settlers, honest, reputable settlers. He would have to search England for them, hundreds of them, so that the bright Samballoes might become the world’s garden. He began to know the islands now. He saw them in all their beauty, Venices not yet glorious, sites for the city of his dream. They shone in their blossoms, hedged by the surf, splendid in their beauty. Among these hundreds of islands, these sparkling keys, were homes for the poor of the world, food for the hungry, beauty for the abased, work for the stinted, rest for the exhausted. For an army could feed from them in the morning, and pass on, yet in the evening there would be food for another army. The earth brought forth in bounty. All the fruits of the world grew there. The trade winds smelt of fruit. The bats from the Isthmus darkened the stars at twilight as they came to gorge the fruit; yet in the morning, when they flew screaming to their caves, it was as though they had scattered but a husk or two, scattered a few seeds, a few sucked skins. The sea gave a multitude of fish. The woods were full of game. It was an earthly paradise. It went to his heart to think that he was almost a king here. To the Indians he was more than a king: he was a god.
He loved the Indians. He loved their dignity, their pride in the white man’s friendship, their devoted service. It reminded him of his life at school and of the devotion of small boys to their captain. During his convalescence he had had many talks with an Indian prince, whom the seamen called Don Toro. He had learned from this man to speak a little in the Indian tongue, enough to draw from him something of the Isthmus. He wished to clear the Isthmus of its poisonous tangle of forest, so that the shore might become savannah land, as at Panama. He longed to see the jungle go up in a blaze, in a roaring, marching army of fire, that would cut a blackened swath to the hills, leaping over tree-tops, charring the undergrowth, making good pasture for cattle, for the great, pale Campeachy cattle which his ships should bring there from Sisal. He tried to make Don Toro understand his wish, but failed; for Don Toro was a woodland Indian; the forest was his home. That stroke of policy, the bonfire, would have to wait till he could bring the Indians to help him, and till the logwood on the banks of the rivers had all been cut and shipped. But he wished that all those miles of wood were lying in blackened ashes. It was now the bright, dry season, when the woods were pleasant, musical with bell-birds, sweet with blossoms. In a few weeks there would come the rains, the months of rain, the streaming months, when the trees would rise up from a marsh, when the sound of dropping would become a burden, the months of the white-ribbed mosquito and the yellow fever.
He loved Olivia still. His passion was his life, his imagination. While that fire burned in him the world was a metal from which he could beat brave sparks. He was not sure how she felt towards her husband. He had done his best for her husband. He could not say that there was much chance of a happy life for her. It had been hard to counsel her, doubly hard, for when she spoke gravely her voice thrilled, the tone burned through him like a flame. A little more, and honour would be thrown aside like a rag; the words would come in a rush, sweeping him away. She had never seemed more beautiful than now. She was pale, still; her eyes had dark rings; but she had never seemed more beautiful. She was still mysterious to him, though he knew her better than he had ever known her. She was an exquisite mystery, beautiful, sacred, unthinkable; but not for him, never for him. She would only be a shy friend to him, giving a little, hiding much, never truly herself before him. So much he could see, hating himself for his clumsy walk, for his gravity, for whatever it was, in him, which kept her away. He saw that she was timid, fearful of all rough and rude things, a shy soul, refined, delicate. He guessed that his love for her made her timid of him. Then came the thought of Stukeley, the torment and hate of the thought of Stukeley. He was to restore Stukeley to her, after all these agonizing weeks. They had been bad weeks, weeks of doubt, weeks of wicked opportunity. Had he followed his own heart, during those weeks, he might have wrought upon her, till the thought of Stukeley was loathsome to her. He could see no possible happiness for her in a life with Stukeley, if Stukeley were restored. She might find peace of mind in having him again beside her; but never happiness. He remembered an old phrase of Perrin’s, that women did not wish to be made happy, but to have the men they loved. It seemed true; possibly it explained many horrible tales of faithfulness. It had been a bitter task to plead for Stukeley. It would be bitter to bring him back, and to watch the new peace broken, as he knew it would be, himself making time and place. Still, it had been the right thing; the right was a better thing than love. He bit his lips for loathing when he thought how very far from the right his love for this woman had led him.
Was he right, he wondered, in attacking Tolu, in an attempt to win back Stukeley? The ambush on the beach had been sufficient declaration of war. They had shown that they wished for war. He had put his hand to the plough; it must drive on to the furrow’s end. But how many of his men would fight for a righteous cause when the issue was tried? To help the Indians, ancient lords of America, was a righteous cause, though the ancient lords lay in bones in the caves, dead long ago. Only their grandsons, servile degenerates, or men not yet dispossessed, now lived. And if he helped the Indians, beating the Spaniards, was his colony to sail away, or to have the fruit of their toil? If they were to stay, how soon would the clash come? How soon would the white men burn the forest, so that they might possess the land? When he asked himself this question, he could not honestly say that he was fighting for the Indians’ sake. His men were fighting for loot, like a gang of robbers on a road. And yet. If by their means he broke a corrupt power, so that the islands might become the world’s garden and granary, another Venice, a home of glory and honour, as he prayed, as he truly believed, it was right, the end justified him. Only he must see to it that the Venice rose from all this noisomeness. That was his task. That alone could keep his sword bright. This must be no colony, no refuse heap, where younger sons might work with their hands unseen, and the detected family knave escape his punishment. It must be other than that. When they sailed home from Tolu he would proclaim the republic of the keys; they would agree upon laws together; they would send their first-fruits home. He used to lie in his bunk at night in a trance of prayer that he might make these islands all that he had hoped. It might be, he thought. But there was much to do, and little could be done at once. When they came home from Tolu; perhaps, then, he would see his dream made real. Now and then, in the night watches, he asked himself whether his men would stand success. He remembered how Cammock had said that they would not stand failure. Thinking of Olivia, he knew which was the real test. He began to tremble for the moment of power. St. George became John Bull directly he had killed the dragon. His fine standard in the arts of life made him pray that he might never succeed in that way. Better fail. Failure is spiritual success. What is heaven to those who have the earth.
They sailed from Springer’s Key three hundred strong, packed in the two ships and three sloops. Fifty men remained behind to garrison the key. A party of Indians, under Don Toro, followed the fleet in a large periagua. Each ship in the fleet towed a bunch of canoas in which the attacking force would go ashore. They were very gay with flags when they left the anchorage. They fired guns, and sang, glad of the battle. In a few days a score at least of the singers would be dead in the sand, others would be stricken down, perhaps maimed. Margaret asked Cammock if they ever thought of this before a fight; but he answered, “No.”
“No one would ever fight if he thought,” he said. “I’ve been, now (with other fellows), in three big fights. We’d not got a chance in any one of ’em, if you’d asked before. I was at Panama, where we were all starved and worn, while they’d a fresh army, with a city to fall back on. I was at Perico, and five or six boats of us fought three big ships full of troops. I was at Arica, where about a hundred of us fought what was really a brigade of an army. I don’t think once I heard any say, or even think, as some would be killed and shot.”
“I was in the Low Countries,” said Margaret. “It was the same there. Each man thinks and hopes that it will be the other fellow. Sometimes I feel that if a man thinks with sufficient strength he really makes a sort of intellectual guard about himself. I mean, as faith saved the men in the furnace. What do you think?”
“Yes?” said Cammock. “A man who goes in thinking about himself like that isn’t going to do much with his gun. Besides, he couldn’t.”
“You see them sometimes.”