With Drake on the Spanish Main Part 3

The leaks having been well caulked, Dennis proceeded to pump the water from the lower parts of the hold. He awaited the next high tide with great eagerness. To his joy the vessel floated, and rode fairly upright on her keel. The tide carried her several yards up the beach, leaving her again high and dry at the ebb.

But Dennis now found himself faced by a difficulty. He wished to get the vessel round the shoulder of the cliff, so that the tide might carry her up the chine to the pool below his hut and sheds. The distance was barely eighty yards, but he had noticed, from the movement of a log floating some little way out, that the set of the current was from north to west; so that if once she were allowed to float free, and felt the force of the current, she would probably drift away in the opposite direction from what he desired. On the other hand, if she were driven too high on the beach, she might stick so firmly in the sand that it would be impossible to move her, and then she would lie at the mercy of the first north-west gale.

His little nautical knowledge was at first at a loss.

"Mirandola, your speechless wisdom is of no avail," he said ruefully, as he sat at his fire one evening, feeding the monkey with pease porridge. "You and I are both landsmen; unlike you, I adventured forth, to gain gold, and fight the don Spaniards, if so the fates should ordain. Here is never a Spaniard to fight, and as for gold, the wealth of Croesus would not at this moment benefit me a jot. If I had been bred to the sea, now, I should not be at this pa.s.s."

But long cogitation, and another visit to the s.h.i.+p, determined a course of action. The windla.s.s, he discovered, was uninjured, and though it was very stiff, he could still manage to turn it. A big jagged rock jutted out from the cliff near the shoulder round which the vessel must be warped. To this rock he carried a rope from the stump of the mainmast and securely fastened it. This would prevent the vessel from drifting out to sea. Then, with a hatchet from the s.h.i.+p's stores he cut a number of thick branches from the trees along the gully, and pitching them into the pool floated them one by one on to the beach alongside the wreck. There was plenty of rope on board to fas.h.i.+on these into a stout raft, on to which, with the aid of the windla.s.s, he lowered a kedge anchor just sufficiently heavy to hold the vessel in a calm. It was a matter of some difficulty to get the anchor so evenly adjusted on the raft that the latter would not turn turtle; but after some patient manoeuvring Dennis arranged it squarely in the centre, and when the tide came in the whole floated with a fair appearance of stability. Then with a long pole Dennis cautiously punted the raft out beyond the gully, paying out as he went a stout cable, connecting the anchor with the windla.s.s. Some thirty yards beyond the gully, at a point near enough in sh.o.r.e to be beyond the reach of the current, he prepared to drop the anchor. It was too heavy for him even to move; the only plan that suggested itself was to bring about what he had up to that moment been most anxious to prevent--the raft must now be intentionally upset. One by one he cut away the las.h.i.+ngs of the outermost logs on the seaward side. At last he felt by the movement of the raft that only his own weight prevented the crazy structure from turning over. He slid from the raft into the sea; the far side sank and the anchor slipped over and went with a thud to the bottom. Then the raft righted itself, and Dennis scrambled aboard.

The rest was easy. When the tide ebbed it carried the wreck inch by inch towards the anchor, for with the aid of the windla.s.s Dennis was able to keep the cable constantly taut, while at the same time he paid out the rope connecting the vessel with the sh.o.r.e. A couple of tides brought him in this way up to the anchor; then, transferring the sh.o.r.e cable to a stout tree some distance up the gully, he slacked off the kedge line when the tide was running up, and allowed the wreck to be carried sh.o.r.ewards. In this way the _Maid Marian_ floated slowly up the gully on the flood, and another couple of tides brought her within a few yards of the pool, which he designed for her permanent harbourage.

Below this there was a narrow bar that threatened to baulk him. At low tide, indeed, he had to shovel away a large amount of sand in the middle of the channel, and once came near losing his temper with Mirandola, who, with well-meant industry, and a quite innocent pleasure, set about scooping back the sand as it was dug out. But the animal tired of this fatiguing amus.e.m.e.nt; the difficulty was overcome; and when at last the vessel rode gently into the little natural harbour below the hut, Dennis hailed the success of his long toil with a cheerful "Huzza!" and broached a cask of sack. Of this indulgence he partly repented, for the monkey seized upon the empty can when he laid it down, and drained it greedily.

"No, no, my friend," said Dennis, gravely. "Wine maketh glad the heart of man; I do not read that it is anywise a drink for brutes. And all your philosophy would not reconcile me to a drunken Mirandola. 'Be not among wine-bibbers,' says the wisest of kings and men; I bethink me he says also, 'My son, eat thou honey, for it is good!' You shall have honey, my venerable son."

CHAPTER V

The Edge of the Marsh

During his operations about the wreck, Dennis had noticed that the monkey showed a strange aversion for the sea. At low tide, when the vessel was high and dry, he quite cheerfully accompanied his benefactor on board; but as a rule, when he saw the tide rolling in, he chattered angrily, swarmed down the side of the vessel, and posted himself at the nearest point above high-water mark. Only on the one occasion, when he mounted the windla.s.s, did he remain on deck when the tide was at flood; there he seemed to regard himself as out of reach of the waves. Dennis wondered whether the dread of the sea was a characteristic of the monkey tribe, or whether Mirandola had at some time suffered a sea-change which it was determined not to repeat.

He took endless pleasure in studying the amiable creature; and when, his work with the s.h.i.+p being finished, he began once more to take lengthy strolls across the island, he drew a new delight from the companions.h.i.+p of the monkey. The friends.h.i.+p being so firmly established, Mirandola showed off his accomplishments with a freedom he had not displayed when he regarded this newcomer with distrust and suspicion. Dennis laughed to see his antics in the trees. He would curl his long tail about a branch, and swing to and fro with manifest enjoyment. Sometimes, clutching a banana with one hand, he would pick another with one foot, and hold a third to his mouth with the second hand. Sometimes when he saw Dennis holding his forehead in a brown study, he would rub his long gaunt arms over his own brow with a wistful look that brought a smile to the lad's face. He was amiability itself, and showed genuine distress when Dennis took occasion to scold him for some piece of inconvenient prankishness.

Now that his thoughts were no longer engrossed with his salvage work, Dennis more often speculated on his future. The prospect was not very encouraging. Supposing he could carry out his half-formed purpose of building a boat, what chance was there of surviving a voyage across the ocean in a vessel that, untrained as he was in handicraft, must necessarily be a clumsy thing? And unless he could risk an ocean voyage he felt that he had better remain where he was. No European nation but the Spaniards and the Portuguese had settlements on the American coast. What might be expected at the hands of the Spaniards he knew full well. Had he not heard from the lips of one Master John Merridew fearsome tales of their treachery and cruelty? John Merridew had sailed with Captain John Hawkins to the West Indies, with Master Francis Drake as one of the company. Forced by foul weather into the port of St. John de Ulua, the Captain made great account of a certain Spanish gentleman named Augustine de Villa Nueva, and used him like a n.o.bleman. Yet this same Augustine, sitting at dinner one day with the Captain, would certainly have killed him with a poniard which he had secretly in his sleeve, had not one John Chamberlain espied the weapon and prevented the foul deed. And recalling Merridew's narrative, Dennis wondered what had become of those hundred poor wretches who, when victuals ran short, and the s.h.i.+p's company were driven to eat parrots and monkeys and the very rats that swarmed in the hold, preferred to s.h.i.+ft for themselves on sh.o.r.e, rather than starve on s.h.i.+p-board. In imagination he saw that touching scene, when the General, as Merridew called Captain Hawkins, gave to each man five yards of cloth, embraced them in turn, counselled them to serve G.o.d and love one another; and thus courteously bade them a sorrowful farewell, promising, if G.o.d sent him safe to England, to do what he could to bring home such as remained alive. That Captain Hawkins would fulfil his promise Dennis believed; but how many of those Englishmen were still living? He reflected that he at least had food and present safety; compared with theirs his lot was a king's.

But he was not to escape misfortune altogether. One day the storm he had so long been expecting broke over the island, hurling great seas into the mouth of the chine, threatening to dash the _Maid Marian_ against the rocks or sweep her out into the ocean. In the midst of pelting, blinding rain Dennis strove to ensure her safety. She wrenched at her anchor; every moment he feared lest her mooring ropes should be snapped; he could do little but keep a watch on the fastenings. And while he was thus watching, a roaring flood pa.s.sed through the gully from the plateau above, swamping his hut, was.h.i.+ng away some of his hardly-won stores; and the fierce blast tore off the roof of one of his sheds, exposing its contents to all the fury of the weather.

Next day he did what he could to repair the damage. Fortunately much of his perishable goods was contained in stout boxes which he always kept securely fastened, and the things he lost were those he could best spare.

In the afternoon of that day, he went across to the opposite side of the island, as he was wont to do at intervals, to take a look-out from the high cliff there. He wondered whether the storm had cast any other ill-fated vessel upon the sh.o.r.e. But, scanning the whole horizon, he saw nothing but league upon league of restless sea.

"Our solitude is not to be disturbed, Mirandola," he said to the monkey, "for which let us be thankful. Or ought we to deplore it? I wish you could speak, my friend, and tell me something of your history.

Are you the last of your race, I wonder? Well, so am I. I have no kith nor kin; nor, as it appears, have you. I have a humble estate in an island--to be sure, somewhat larger than this. Now I come to think of it, this island is yours; it is a mark of n.o.bility of soul--or is it poverty of spirit? I cannot say--that you do not regard me as a supplanter. Good Holles, my steward, would not brook the intrusion of any adventurer on my lands. Heigh ho! How fares the old fellow, I wonder? How he shook his old head when I acquainted him with my purpose to join Sir Martin Blunt in his voyage to the Spanish Main!

'G.o.d save you, sir!' said he, and asked whether he should sell my whippets! One thing I know, Mirandola: that if it please G.o.d to bring me safe home in season, Holles will give me a faithful account of his stewards.h.i.+p. Let me think I am your steward, good my friend. And now let us return to our honey-pot."

On the way back, Dennis struck somewhat to the left of his usual path, to skirt the marsh on its south-western instead of its north-eastern side. It was far larger in area than when he had first seen it; its outlet was too narrow to carry off the surplusage due to the tremendous rains. Dennis was picking his way around the oozy edge, letting his thoughts travel back to the pleasant land of Devon, when suddenly he was brought up short by the sight of a mark in the soft earth, the strangeness of which mightily surprised and perplexed him. Parallel with his own tracks there ran for a few yards a faint ribbon-like track--such a track as might be made by a large cart wheel that had rested very lightly on the surface. It was a single track: following its course, he found that it disappeared into the water, just as he had seen the mark of a cart wheel disappear into a roadside horse-pond at home.

He looked around. There was nothing to account for the mark. He scouted the idea that it had been actually made by a wheel; a vehicle must have been drawn by animals, and there were no hoof-marks to match.

With all his puzzling he could find no explanation, and though he looked warily about him as he went on his way, with some return of his old feeling of nervousness, he saw no sign to suggest that the island had been visited.

It was a day or two before he again found himself near the marsh. He had been fis.h.i.+ng from the base of the high cliff that formed his usual look-out. A kind of natural pier of broken rock jutted out from the cliff seawards, and the deep water on each side was the favourite resort at high tide of shoals of small fish, which chose it, he supposed, because the depth was not great enough for the ground sharks that sometimes made their appearance off the sh.o.r.e, and the little fish could disport themselves there in security.

Carrying his catch on a string--enough for his own dinner, for Mirandola would not touch it--he pa.s.sed again by the brink of the marsh, and once more was puzzled by the wheel-like track which he had seen before and been unable to explain. The marsh had somewhat shrunk in the interval; the receding water had left more of the track visible: and the outer soil having been baked hard by the sun, the strange imprint was clearer and more definite.

It occurred to Dennis now to attempt to trace the mark in the opposite direction, away from the point where it disappeared in the water. It speedily grew fainter as he came to harder soil, and he lost it altogether where it entered undergrowth which had no doubt been partially submerged when the marsh was at its highest. But after some search he found it again where it emerged from the rank vegetation, and from that point he traced it with little difficulty, for it kept fairly close to the margin of the lake. Its resemblance to the track of a wheel had now ceased; not even the most rickety of carts, driven by a drunken tranter on a Devons.h.i.+re lane, could have made such erratic movements as must have caused this shallow winding mark on the soil.

Dennis followed its curves with persistent curiosity, not unmixed with a vague uneasiness. Mirandola accompanied him, springing lightly from bough to bough of the trees nearest the edge of the marsh, descending with extraordinary quickness and loping along the ground where gaps intervened, or the fringe of the woodland belt took a trend inwards.

At length the tracking came perforce to an end. Again the trail disappeared into the water, and Dennis halted, feeling a little vexed that his patience was, after all, to bear no fruit. He looked round for Mirandola. The monkey had disappeared, exploring, no doubt, thought Dennis, a close-packed thicket that came within a few yards of the mora.s.s, having apparently crowded out all n.o.bler trees save one slender cedar which, dominating the undergrowth, seemed taller than it really was.

Dennis was about to give up the problem as hopeless and go on his way, when suddenly he heard Mirandola chattering in a manner that was new to him. The moment after, the monkey sprang from the thicket into the tree, and climbed with frantic speed to the very top, where he sat gibbering and shaking with terror. Dennis, wondering what had perturbed him, took a step forward, then started back in a cold s.h.i.+ver.

A huge serpent was rearing itself from the midst of the undergrowth and winding its coils about the trunk of the tree.

Mirandola on the topmost branch had now ceased his chattering, and clung, watching the monster with dilated eyes. The poor creature was helpless. To descend from his perch would have been fatal; there was no other tree at hand to which it might escape. Indeed, under the fascination of the serpent's baleful eyes, as it slowly drew its immense coils up the trunk, the monkey lost all power of motion; and Dennis himself, even with the thicket between him and the monster, felt a sort of chill paralysis as he watched its sinister movements. For half a minute he stood rooted to the spot; then, making an effort to throw off this dire oppression, he tried to think of some means of helping the monkey. At that moment of danger, he was conscious for the first time of the strength of his affection for the animal whose companions.h.i.+p had done so much to relieve the awful solitude of the island. Unless he intervened, Mirandola was doomed, and the thought of losing Mirandola filled him with a fierce longing to slay this monster that was crawling inch by inch towards its prey.

His first impulse was to run back to his hut for the gun he kept there ready loaded; but slow as the serpent's progress was, before he could return to the spot the tragedy would have ended. Then he remembered how the reptiles in the woods at home were killed. A blow on the vertebrae crippled them; could he cripple this huge creature, which even yet had not heaved all its length into the tree? His only weapon was the sailor's clasp-knife which he always carried at his girdle. He opened it impulsively, then hesitated. If he failed to hit the vertebrae, and dealt only a flesh wound, he might perchance save the monkey, but could he then save himself? He knew nothing of a boa constrictor's power of movement; yet his instinct told him that, if once enfolded in those monstrous coils, he must inevitably be crushed to death. But he could not stand and see his pet mangled and devoured: the serpent, moving deliberately, as though aware of its victim's paralysis, was not yet beyond his reach. Springing through the undergrowth, he marked a spot some distance from the reptile's tail.

The serpent heard his approach, and turned its head slowly in his direction; but a second later Dennis drove his knife with all his force at the centre of the sleek round ma.s.s.

Next moment he was thrown sprawling on the ground, by a flick of the tail as the upper part of the serpent's body writhed convulsively under the blow. He jerked himself to his feet and leapt away through the undergrowth in panic fear. A few steps brought him to open ground, and then, crus.h.i.+ng down his nervous terror, he looked back. The coils were slipping down the tree, and in a moment it was clear that the serpent's power was gone; its huge bulk moved uncontrollably: its motor force was destroyed. Dennis ventured to enter the thicket again. When the serpent reached the ground, it writhed as he had seen injured eels and earthworms writhe, but its movements were all involuntary; Mirandola was saved.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Dennis saves Mirandola."]

The monkey was now chattering volubly, but still clung to his perch.

Clearly he would not venture to descend while his enemy moved. For some time Dennis watched it; then, feeling that he must put an end to its maimed life, he hurried away to fetch his gun. A bullet in the head: and the reptile lay motionless.

Even then some little time elapsed before Mirandola yielded to Dennis's persuasive calls and slid, still somewhat nervously, to the ground. He avoided the reptile's body, and scampered away with shrill cries to the open. When Dennis overtook him, the monkey sprang upon his shoulder, and so they returned to the hut.

After this thrilling experience Dennis felt somewhat less at ease in his peregrinations of the island. He had come to think that he had nothing to fear there so long as it was unvisited by men. But the thickets that gave hiding to one huge reptile might harbour many more.

Henceforth he walked more warily, and never ventured far from his hut without a gun.

CHAPTER VI

The Spanish Whip

Dennis had given up the idea of building a boat as a means of escape from the island; but now that time again hung heavy on his hands, he reverted to it as a refuge from the tedium of idleness. It promised to give him much labour, for, unless he stripped the planking from the _Maid Marian_, he must needs fell trees for himself, and prepare his timbers as well as his unskill could devise. The trees of the island were for the most part unknown to him; and he was not aware of the Indian practice of hollowing out a cedar trunk with fire or hatchet.

In his wanderings he now began to take note of the different species, with a view to selecting one that would best suit his tools.

One day, when he was strolling through the woodland on this errand, he was amazed, and not a little alarmed, to hear, from some spot far to his right, what seemed to him to be the ring of axes. He halted, incredulous. The island, he was a.s.sured, had no other inhabitant; yet he could not be mistaken; the sound of tree-felling reminded him of home, and he felt a sudden deep yearning for the combes and holts of far-off Devon. But this feeling was immediately quelled by a sense of danger. Who were these woodcutters? No friends, he was sure; he had given up hope of finding friends upon these remote coasts. And if not friends, discovery by these spelt death to him, or slavery to which death would be preferable.

He was minded to turn about and seek safety in his hut. Built upon the edge of the chine, it could only be discovered by careful exploration of the woodland, and the chine was all but invisible from the sea.

There he might remain in hiding, with a fair chance that he would not be found. But this first impulse pa.s.sed. He felt an overmastering curiosity to see who these visitors were. Whence had they come, he wondered? Why, if they came from the distant mainland, had they crossed the sea? He could not suppose that wood was lacking upon the sh.o.r.es of the great continent.

Slowly, with infinite caution, he began to thread his way towards the sound. There were open s.p.a.ces amid the woodland; these he durst not cross, but kept always in the shelter of the trees. He dreaded lest Mirandola should betray him by a cry; but the monkey leapt from bough to bough almost noiselessly, as if he too had taken alarm from the unwonted sound. A few weeks before, Dennis himself would have found it difficult to make his way through the woods and the undergrowth without giving signs of his presence by the snapping of twigs or the rustle of parting foliage; but the abiding sense of danger which had oppressed him during his earlier pa.s.sages across the island had bred in him a wariness of movement that was now almost as instinctive as in the wild creatures whose lives depended on their caution.

Guiding himself by the sounds, he was drawn towards a grove of trees that lay about two hundred yards from the southern beach. Only a day or two before he had struck his hatchet into one of them, and concluded from its soft white sappy rind that it would not provide fit timber for his boat. Yet it was clearly these trees upon which the unseen woodmen were at work. He stole forward, and coming to a dense fringe of undergrowth beyond which the grove lay, he edged his way into the thicket, and very stealthily pressed the foliage aside until he got a view of what was doing.

The trees grew somewhat far apart, and across a fairly open s.p.a.ce he saw the strangers whose unexpected presence was causing him such concern. Five men, stripped to the waist, were hard at work with axes.

Four of them had dusky skins of reddish hue; the fifth, a short, thickset, brawny man, the muscles of whose arms showed like great globes, was clearly a white man, though his hands and arms were stained a bright scarlet quite different from the red duskiness of southern natives, or the red-brown caused by exposure to sun and wind. As they moved, the five men clanked the chains that fettered their ankles to stout logs of wood. A little apart stood three men looking on, laughing and talking together in a tongue strange to Dennis. They were big swarthy fellows, with soft wide-brimmed hats, each decked with a feather, brown leather doublets and hose, and long boots. Each bore a caliver and a whip.

The sun was high in the heavens, its beams beating down through the trees upon the unprotected backs of the toilers. Sweat was pouring from them. The trees were thick, some at least two yards in circ.u.mference; to cut them through needed no slight exertion. The white labourer paused to draw his arm across his reeking brow. Then one of the watchers strolled across from the tree against which he had been lolling, and raising his whip, brought the thong with a stinging cut across the back of the slave who had dared to intermit his labours.

A red streak showed livid on the white skin. For a moment it seemed to Dennis, watching the scene, that the victim was about to turn upon his a.s.sailant with the axe, his sole weapon. An expression of deadly rage writhed the features of his red, bearded face. His grip tightened upon the axe. But he controlled his impulse with an effort. The warder laughed brutally, flung a taunt, and cracked his whip in the air in challenge and menace. Sullenly the woodman resumed his task, and his persecutor, with another laugh, turned and rejoined his companions, applauded by their grins.

Dennis felt himself stung to anger. This swarthy ruffian, he doubted not, was a Spaniard, a subject of King Philip, once the consort of an English queen. It was not a pleasant introduction to the race dominating the Americas. Apparently Mirandola liked them no better than he, for at the first sight of the strangers the monkey had fled away. Dennis found him a good quarter-mile distant when, taking advantage of an interval during which the Spaniards ate and drank, and the flagging toilers rested, he strode away to a banana grove to refresh himself.