“What is this place here? This Boca del Toro? Away to the west here? You sometimes meet here, don’t you, in order to plan a raid?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it a good anchorage? It doesn’t seem to be much of a harbour.”
“No, sir; Toro’s just an anchorage, out of the way, like. We goes to Toro for turtle. Very good turtle on Toro. Them Mosquito boys gets ’em with spears. You see ’em paddle out, Mrs. Stukeley, two of these red Indians in a boat, and they just paddle soft, paddle soft, as still as still, and they come up to the turtles as they lie asleep in the sea, and then. Whang. They dart their fizgigs. They never miss.”
Olivia looked at Cammock with quickened interest; but she did not speak. She was now leaning forward, over the table, resting her chin upon her hands, probably with some vague belief that her throat was beautiful and that these stupid men would never notice it. She may have been conscious of her power. Yet perhaps she was not. She may have given too much of herself to Stukeley; she may have tuned too many of her emotional strings to that one note, to feel how other men regarded her.
“Look, Olivia,” said Margaret. He placed the map before her.
Perrin and Cammock put out each a hand, to hold the curling vellum flat for her. She looked at the map as a sibyl would have looked at the golden scroll; she looked rapt; her great eyes shone so. She put out one hand to flatten the vellum, and to Margaret, watching her, it seemed that her whole nature was expressed in that one act, and that her nature was beautiful, too beautiful for this world. Her finger-tip touched Perrin’s finger-tip, for one instant, as she smoothed the map’s edge; and to Perrin it seemed that his life would be well passed in the service of this lady. She was, oh, wonderfully beautiful, he thought; but not like other women. She was so strange, so mysterious, and her voice thrilled so. In dreams, in those dreams of beauty which move us for days together, he had seen that beauty before; she had come to him, she had saved him; her healing hands had raised him, bringing him peace. “She says nothing,” he said to himself; “but life is often like that. I have talked with people sometimes whose bodies seemed to be corpses. And all the time they were wonderful, possessed of devils and angels.”
As for Cammock, her beauty moved him, too; her voice moved him. In his thoughts he called her “my handsome.” He was moved by her as an old gardener is touched by the beauty of his master’s child. His emotion was partly awe, partly pity. Pity for himself, partly; because he could never now be worthy of moving in her company, although he felt that he would be a better mate for her than the brandy-sipper on the locker-top. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen; she was like a spirit; like a holy thing. Looking at her, as she studied the map, he thought of an image in the cathedral of Panama. He had been with Morgan in the awful march from Chagres. He had fought in the morning, outside Panama, till his face, all bloody and powder-burnt, was black like a devil’s. Then, he remembered, they had stormed old Panama, fighting in the streets, across barricades, over tables, over broken chairs, while the women fired from the roofs. Then they had rushed the Plaza, to see the flames licking at all the glorious city. They had stormed a last barricade to reach the Plaza. There had been twenty starving pirates with him, all blind with drink and rage. They had made a last rush, clubbing and spearing and shooting, killing man, woman, and child. They swore and shrieked as they stamped them under. And then he, with two mates, had opened a postern in the cathedral, and had passed in, from all those shrieks, from all that fire and blood, to an altar, where an image knelt, full of peace, beautiful beyond words, in the quiet of the holy place. He remembered the faint smell of incense, the memory of a scent, which hung about that holy place. The vague scent which Olivia used reminded him of it. “She is like that,” he thought, “and I am that. That still.”
Margaret glanced at Stukeley, who seemed to be asleep. “I suppose, captain,” he said, “I suppose, then, that you would recommend one of these keys in the Samballoes, as you call them?”
“Yes, sir,” said Cammock. “I’ll tell you why. You’re handy for the Indians, that’s one great point. You’re hidden from to seaward, in case the Spanish fleet should come near, going to Portobello fair. You’re within a week’s march of all the big gold mines. You’ve good wood and water handy. And you could careen a treat, if your ship got foul. Beside being nice and central.”