For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

It seemed to all men a plain work of God for the encouraging of our allies that the very next day our general, with two frigates besides the pinnaces, came sailing into 'Port Plenty.' So he now named our haven, having seen by this first voyage how well we could supply ourselves from the victuallers that sailed to Nombre de Dios and Carthagena, and from the Indians about the Rio Grande, as well as from the Spanish storehouses thereon.

'If a man may judge by this fair beginning,' said he when we came to speak of it, 'no name was ever better bestowed, for besides a great store of provision which we obtained from the river, I have taken five or six frigates and a bark, laden with live hogs, hens, maize, and other provision which we require. But I gave away all the prizes, except the two best, to the Spaniards for their pain in supplying us so bountifully; and there are those we kept.'

He pointed to where the two captured frigates lay, and went on to tell me how he had obtained what was dearer to him than victuals, and that was divers opinions of himself that prevailed amongst the Spaniards. It was always his way while he kindly entertained his prisoners to get them to speak about himself, and if their answers were to his mind I think they often got off the more lightly. His enemies, for even that noble spirit has enemies in these backbiting times, set this down to a sordid love of flattery, but I know it was from no such cause. For love of merriment he did it, no less than to encourage his men, who joyed to hear the dread their captain begot amongst the Spaniards. No man ever knew better than he how to win the confidence and respect of his men, and this was one way he used to that end. And no man was ever more laughter-loving than he, and no jest did he love so much as to hear how he frightened the Spaniards. For those reasons and no other he was wont to question his prisoners, and I hold it foul slander to say that heroic navigator was pleased with sordid flattery.

I remember well his first words were of this when, the same day that he returned to Port Plenty, I boarded his frigate with Jack.

'Why, Jasper,' says he, taking my hand in his cheery way, 'you have missed a merry time in chasing Cimaroons, though God be praised that has so blessed your search. What think you they say of me, man? It is a jest worth more laughter than all the company could furnish in a month. Why, man, they say it is a devil. None but a devil or a saint, they swear, with but a handful of men could have quietly entered and held the Treasure-House of the mightiest emperor under the sun as we did. And since, being a "Lutheran dog," I am no saint, I must perforce be a devil, and you, my lad, an imp of Satan.'

'By which sharp reasoning,' says Mr. Oxenham, 'they save their gentility when they run away.'

'And like Christian gentlemen,' cried Harry, 'when the fiend appears cry, "Get thee behind me, Satan," and incontinently turn their backs.'

'Yet,' said I, 'it seems to me that they would serve their gentility better by a more courteous appellation of their enemy.'

'And so your true Castilian does,' says Frank. 'For all the wrong they have done me, yet I hold your true Castilian a gentleman and a man of honour, and no coward. Such a one I took off Tolu, and as we supped together on the good things which for our trouble in chasing him he had felt bound to bestow on us, he told a different tale, and set no horns on my head.'

'No,' broke in Harry; 'it was all your most chastened, precise, five-foot-in-the-blade, good manners. "By your most high-bred courtesy," says he, "I now know for truth what gentlemen say of the valiant Captain Drake, whose felicity and valour are so pre-eminent that Sir Mars, the god of war, and Sir Neptune, the god of the sea, seem to wait on all his attempts, which same notwithstanding are eclipsed, overshadowed, and put out of countenance by the nobility and generosity of his carriage towards the vanquished, whereby defeat is made sweeter than victory." And with such like good report he continued to discharge his great pieces in the captain's honour all supper-time till we were wellnigh deafened with the thunders of his courtesy.'