THE ANGER OF COLONEL FAJARDO
The steamer sighted Cartagena in the rosy mists of dawn. It seemed to rise from the sea and float like a mirage. It was a mass of towers, domes, and battlements, of stone houses tinted pink and yellow with tiled roofs that gleamed and wavered. The surf broke against the wall of enduring masonry which marched around this ancient city of the conquistadores, a mighty wall broken here and there by massive gateways and bastions.
Defiantly facing the sea, secure of itself, this proud stronghold of Cartagena de Indias had been increasingly fortified until it had become impregnable to the foes who, in the very early days, had harried and plundered it. These walls and escarpments, the flanking towers and the guardian forts looming from the nearby hills and forelands, had cost the kings of Spain untold millions drained from the fabulous mines of Potosi. They had been determined to make this Caribbean seaport the Gibraltar of the New World.
The Tarragona changed her course and moved to the southward of the city, past the tall palms clustered on the hot, white beaches. What appeared to be a wide entrance to the harbor was soon revealed, but the breakers frothed against a barrier that ran athwart it like a reef. On the chart this reef was a curiously straight line, as if laid down with a ruler. Richard Cary was shading his eyes with his hand when the chief officer remarked:
“If the Colombians had any get-up and gumption they would blow a hole in that submerged wall and open the old ship channel. It was built across there, God knows how long ago, to keep the buccaneers out. Some building job, that! There must be almost a mile of it.”
“Yes, it was put there after the Englishmen sailed in past the forts and sacked the town,” quickly exclaimed Cary. “It wasn’t there when Drake took Cartagena. He used this Boca Grande.”
It was necessary for the Tarragona to proceed seven miles to the southward and enter the narrow passage of the Boca Chica, tortuous and difficult, and then to make her way through the reaches of a blue lagoon. She passed between the outermost forts, gray and grass-grown, but still resisting the slow processes of decay. On the port side was the Castillo de San Fernando with its crenelated walls and deep embrasures in which rested dismounted brass carronades. In the lee of the lofty water-gate rode a Colombian trading schooner. A few Indian canoes were drawn up on the beach.
On the starboard side, the Castillo de San Juan jutted from the sea like a huge rock. Patches of verdure had found root in the crumbling counterscarps. Flowering vines wreathed the round sentry boxes.
Steaming slowly through the placid lagoon, the Tarragona found a circuitous path to Cartagena. The wharf, the corrugated iron cargo sheds, the railway tracks, were ugly and modern. Looking away from them, however, one saw only the stately seaport of the vanished centuries. Behind its ramparts the galleried streets and shaded plazas drowsed through the heat of the day until the breeze came sweeping from the sea with the setting sun.
The Tarragona had much freight to discharge before resuming the voyage to Santa Marta and filling her holds with bananas. Richard Cary had to be an efficient second mate with his mind on the job while the clattering winches plucked the rope slings filled with cases, bales, and casks from the open hatches. At the noon hour he found leisure to loaf under an awning.