For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

'Now sing a psalm,' said the dying man; 'just for comfort's sake—for comfort's sake.'

So on that still and lonely tropic sea we raised with our rough voices a homely English hymn, to the deep diapason of the booming surf sounding outside the islands. As we ended he smiled, and I saw his lips moved. I leaned down to hear what he said.

'Frank will forgive me,' the low murmur said, 'when you tell him how it was. He was always good to us, Frank was, and always knew best. He will understand. Frank always underst——'

So his murmur ceased; and that brave youth, my friend, passed peacefully away as the sun went down. And within an hour Allen's soul followed his captain's.

Next day we buried them both on the island, thinking much of the high hopes we had of our governor's greatness had he lived, and deeply lamenting the cheerful, steadfast spirit that was gone from amongst us. As for the simple Cimaroons, they were beside themselves with grief, and would have performed strange idolatrous ceremonies about his grave had we suffered it, but the sailors would not let them go near, save once a day to cover it with fresh flowers. This was their only comfort, save a sure hope that, now his brother was killed, Frank would be no longer content with gold, but would want to 'wash his elbows' in Spanish blood.

CHAPTER XXI

Wearily the weeks went by after John Drake's death. What with the miserable effect it had upon the whole company and the continual rains, it was all that Harry and I could do to keep the men in good heart. Indeed, our lives at that time were far from easy, not only in respect of our spirits, because of our grief, but also in respect of our bodies, because of the wet and cold, and, above all, the legions of a certain grievous insect, which the constant rain seemed to engender of the mud upon our islands.

We had suffered from them all along the coast, but never so grievously as here. The Spaniards call them 'mosquitoes.' They are insects of the bigness and similitude of reasonable gnats, but for ferocity, persistence, and trumpeting past anything we know in England. We often marvelled for what purpose they could have been made, unless it were to punish Spaniards. Yet this reason halts, for a mariner who had sailed in a ship of the Muscovy Company reported to us that he had felt and seen them as bad, or worse, in the country of the Samoits and Permians upon the Muscovy Sea.

Yet by constant work in strengthening our fort, and hunting with the Cimaroons on the Main, no less than by every pastime Harry could devise, we managed to keep in health till the general returned. It was towards the end of November that he came back, with a prize of some ninety tons, which, as well as his pinnaces, was laden with all manner of provisions, not forgetting several botijos of good Spanish wine.