For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

And why should I not confess the rest since I have unfolded so much? Whether I did wrong I cannot tell. I had abandoned the guide whom all my life I had followed, because, as I thought, he had only led me astray. It was hard to trust to anything again. Often I would play with Harry's rapier and think. I know not if the quick, hard life I had been leading was to blame, but it would not say me Ay or No!

After all my recent toil and labour it was so pleasant, to have her at my side, to look at and talk to. Pleasant, too, it was to see how she was bent on winning me, whether for her father's sake to earn him favour at my hands, or for very wanton love of winning a new kind of conquest, I cannot tell; pleasant, too, to mark how lovingly she sought to ease my pain and beguile the lagging hours, how tenderly she dressed my wound and smoothed my pillow when she bade me sleep. What wonder, then, if I gave myself up to the sweet beguilement! What wonder if, when she had set me to rest and no one was by, I drew the pretty face to mine and our lips met! I know not, I say, how I shall be blamed. She was so sweet and gentle and kind; I was so weak and weary. It was all I had to give; it was the payment most grateful to her. Well! well! It is long past now for good or ill. If any has been so diseased as I in body and spirit and so sweetly tended, lying as I did all day in the murmur and savour of a tropic spring in the midst of those jewelled seas, let him judge me.

There were some among my prisoners who looked on with little ease and twirled their fierce moustaches, but the worldly old Scrivano would not have it otherwise.

'Let them be,' he would say; 'it will not last for ever. A friend at court is worth winning.'

It was when she told me this that I first knew a sweet fear that all she did might not be done in wantonness or even for the prisoners' sakes. Till then I had thought it was only in their behoof she was kind, and I trod my flowery path with a light heart. Now I began to doubt we were come to where thorns were hidden beneath the blossoms by the way, but it was still too fair and pleasant for me to stop. In my weakness I said there was still time enough.

So we continued till near the middle of March, when Mr. Oxenham returned in great heart with a smart frigate laden with a good store of maize and live hogs and hens, which greatly rejoiced us, since we were pining for fresh food. I was nevertheless not so glad to see him back as I had hoped, since now the general was away there was none to prevent him coming on board my ship every day, where he talked so gaily with my Señorita, to her manifest content, that I wished in my heart his voyage had been less fortunate.

I was overjoyed when Frank came back, not only because it put an end to Mr. Oxenham's visits, but also for the news he brought. Off the Cabeças he had met with a frigate of Nicaragua, which he had lightened of a pretty store of gold and her Genoese pilot. This man, who but a week before was at Veragua, had assured our general that the whole coast was palsied with fear of him. So fast had he moved and so suddenly struck that it seemed, so the man said, nothing less than magical, and none knew where their dreaded enemy would next appear. The plain truth was that, eschewing armour after the manner of English mariners, we marched more quickly than the Spaniards ever thought possible, and this greatly increased their fears.

So from Nicaragua to Carthagena they lay shivering in their beds, never knowing if they should sleep the night in peace. Our pilot was only too glad to join his fortunes to ours on promise that his right should be done him, and had led our captain into Veragua harbour, where lay a frigate laden with above a million in gold, not daring to venture forth. But by a new order of watch which they had taken, the pinnace was descried and the attempt abandoned, since there lay a still better chance in the Chagres river.

The galleys that were to waft the gold fleet, the Genoese said, were laid up at Nombre de Dios to be fitted. Thus there was nothing to protect the gold frigates but land soldiers, with whom Frank doubted not he could deal, if he gathered all his whole men together, and to this end he was now returned to join Mr. Oxenham.

The frigate which the Lion had captured, being a very smart one, fell in well with Frank's purpose. She was speedily careened, new tallowed, and launched again, as stout a man-of-war as any on the coast. All the best of our ordnance was set aboard of her, and as soon as Easter was past and the men refreshed Frank set sail with her and the Bear for the Rio Chagres.