For years I have been planning an expedition up the Orinoco, to locate a gold mine. The fabled mine is near Spanish settlements and these may present hazards to any English force. A Spaniard, a Captain Berrio, is entrenched there, along the River. The expedition will tax my resources but I am determined for the sake of the Crown: to carry out my plans I will require several shallow draft frigates and several small boats; there are no accurate maps and the mine is in fever jungle. Certes a month or two will go into exploration, hacking this way and that. The roguish crew of prison perverts will contribute their share of complications, no doubt of that, my friend. Console yourself that you will never know such an experience as dealing with deckloads of cutthroats. To be a voyageur you must condone scapegoats, assassins, rapists, thieves...but you know our maritime history. I have been accused of bad voyages...who has not made bad voyages who dared voyages? If this expedition can be materialed the victualing will be a matter of months. Wish me well...wish me God’s speed.
I am contributing £3,000, and it seemeth to me this Empire is reserved for Her Majesty and the Nation. I can find the gold King of Cundinamarca: el hombre dorado. Who knows, as in Sergas de Esplandián, we may reach the Island of California, inhabited by Amazon women with passionate hearts and great strength, where there is abundant gold.
There were other letters in this vein, about his future. As explorer he was to the manner born. Thou canst not be false to any man—his letters seemed to say.
The Tower
Like our ship Revenge I am surrounded by an armada of enemies, all my pikes splintered. In the beginning of the fight I had a hundred for me; volleys, boardings, and enterings have done their damage...this composition and exile are the dullest and longest in the history of our Tower; the book I am writing is for Prince Frederick, a slow, slow tacking about; yet you, who respect writing, realize the salvation. Tell me, friend, that I will fare well with my History of the World...
It is still my error that I never assisted him: it was my error to have shut my mind: there are many I could have helped as I went along. But to pass by someone great—that is great misfortune.
I hear him telling about how he burned the town of San José; I hear him telling about the treachery of the Tarawa Indians; his terrible thirst when his ship ran out of water at sea; he is boarding a Spanish frigate, raiding for guns...
’Sblood, the Spanish are a cruel lot, chaining the caciques, scorching their naked bodies with hot bacon, beating them, starving them, decapitating them...
The Tower
Write to me, lad, before thought’s relicts utterly obsess me and the ghouls remove me in their stinking chains. I have seen and heard them, ghouls and ghosts of this town and tower, seen and heard them cringe and bully, nightlong. Stones multiply their menace. There’s an old seadog from Dublin crumpled in a cell here, a grumbling bag: he claims he used to sail with me; by his own confession he is the murderer of his crippled father. He is to be freed in the Spring. Freed? Free—are we ever free, my lad? When I sniff the brined air I am hard put not to cast myself off the Tower—I still hope to see the sails double-reefed and porpoises rising off the bow...