XII.

THE END

“The rust of arms, the blushing shame of soldiers.” _The Tragedy of Bonduca._

“Let’s sit together thus, and, as we sit, Feed on the sweets of one another’s souls.” _A Wife for a Month._

“A fair end Of our fair loves.” _The Elder Brother._

Ten weeks passed before they felt the time ripe for their attack. By that time Margaret had made a good recovery; his wound was well healed over; he could even use the arm a little. Before leaving the anchorage, he put more guns in the fort, and chose out a garrison to fight them. He had every reason to be pleased with his success. A large part of Springer’s Key had been cleared, under his direction, for plantain-walks and vanilla-patches, as well as for Indian corn. More than a hundred more privateers had come to him, and he had planned with Tucket to load the _Broken Heart_, on his return from Tolu, at a new logwood forest, never yet cut, on the banks of the Azucar. He felt happier than he had felt since leaving England; for now his way seemed clear. His old suspicion of Pain had gone. Pain’s men had worked like slaves to clear the key for culture. It seemed to him that he was going to succeed after all, and that he would, as he had planned, make something of the wasted energies of the men of the account. He had even started Tucket on a dye-works, with half a dozen cauldrons, and a bale of cotton for experiments. The huts of the Indians had been altered and enlarged. Springer’s Key Town was now a walled city, with a few wooden shops, where the _Broken Heart’s_ goods were sold for gold-dust. His thoughts ran much upon gold-dust; for the rivers were full of it, according to the privateers. He went up the Conception River with some Indians and a party of Pain’s men, during the last of the weeks of waiting, to look for gold-dust in the sands. They washed with sieves in several likely places, finding about six ounces in all. The Indians said that there was more higher up, in the rapid upper reaches, in the torrents of the Six Mile Hills, away to the south. On the way downstream, he cut a bundle of mangrove, thinking that the bark might be of use to tanners in Europe, since the Indians dressed hides with it. The damp heat of the Isthmus overcame him. He saw that nothing could be done there. No Europeans would ever do much in such a climate. But at sea in the bright Samballoes, where the winds blew steadily, never dying to a calm, he felt that much could be done. He offered bounties to all who would clear patches for tobacco, arnotto, cochineal, and indigo. Tucket, a steady, shrewd man, who saw a chance of doing what he had always longed to do, helped him ably. The dye-works occupied their mornings together. The rest of the day, after the noon heat, was passed in the supervision and encouragement of the citizens. The brush at Tolu, and the bringing off of Ed, had made him popular. He found that the privateers were fairly well disposed towards him. Even the inscrutable Pain seemed friendly.

It was not an easy matter to rule such citizens. He began by making a rough division of labour. Those who loved hunting went in parties daily to the Main to hunt. Those who liked to work in the islands cut and cleared jungle, planted plantains, tobacco, or arnotto. Others took boats and fished. Some built huts or canoas. Some dug wells and trenches to supply the plantations. Many Indians came to them. Springer’s Key knew a few weeks of bustling prosperity. Margaret began to worry about another problem--the sex problem, the problem of wives for his settlers. Where was he to get white wives for three hundred men? How was he to avoid the horrors of the mixed races? He remembered in Virginia the strange and horrible colonial mixtures, the mixtures of white with red, white with black, black with red, red with all the mixtures, black with all the mixtures, creatures of no known race, of no traditions, horrible sports, the results of momentary lusts, temporary arrangements. One could buy white transported women in Jamaica at thirty pounds apiece. One could buy redemptioners in Virginia for the same sum. Many of the men at work about him had done so, during their lives in the colonies. But how was a nation to be born from convicted thieves, petty larcenists, bawds, procuresses, women burnt in the hand, branded women? He resolved to hurry home as soon as the plantations began to bear, as soon as the Spaniards began to recognize his rights. He must get settlers, honest, reputable settlers. He would have to search England for them, hundreds of them, so that the bright Samballoes might become the world’s garden. He began to know the islands now. He saw them in all their beauty, Venices not yet glorious, sites for the city of his dream. They shone in their blossoms, hedged by the surf, splendid in their beauty. Among these hundreds of islands, these sparkling keys, were homes for the poor of the world, food for the hungry, beauty for the abased, work for the stinted, rest for the exhausted. For an army could feed from them in the morning, and pass on, yet in the evening there would be food for another army. The earth brought forth in bounty. All the fruits of the world grew there. The trade winds smelt of fruit. The bats from the Isthmus darkened the stars at twilight as they came to gorge the fruit; yet in the morning, when they flew screaming to their caves, it was as though they had scattered but a husk or two, scattered a few seeds, a few sucked skins. The sea gave a multitude of fish. The woods were full of game. It was an earthly paradise. It went to his heart to think that he was almost a king here. To the Indians he was more than a king: he was a god.

He loved the Indians. He loved their dignity, their pride in the white man’s friendship, their devoted service. It reminded him of his life at school and of the devotion of small boys to their captain. During his convalescence he had had many talks with an Indian prince, whom the seamen called Don Toro. He had learned from this man to speak a little in the Indian tongue, enough to draw from him something of the Isthmus. He wished to clear the Isthmus of its poisonous tangle of forest, so that the shore might become savannah land, as at Panama. He longed to see the jungle go up in a blaze, in a roaring, marching army of fire, that would cut a blackened swath to the hills, leaping over tree-tops, charring the undergrowth, making good pasture for cattle, for the great, pale Campeachy cattle which his ships should bring there from Sisal. He tried to make Don Toro understand his wish, but failed; for Don Toro was a woodland Indian; the forest was his home. That stroke of policy, the bonfire, would have to wait till he could bring the Indians to help him, and till the logwood on the banks of the rivers had all been cut and shipped. But he wished that all those miles of wood were lying in blackened ashes. It was now the bright, dry season, when the woods were pleasant, musical with bell-birds, sweet with blossoms. In a few weeks there would come the rains, the months of rain, the streaming months, when the trees would rise up from a marsh, when the sound of dropping would become a burden, the months of the white-ribbed mosquito and the yellow fever.

He loved Olivia still. His passion was his life, his imagination. While that fire burned in him the world was a metal from which he could beat brave sparks. He was not sure how she felt towards her husband. He had done his best for her husband. He could not say that there was much chance of a happy life for her. It had been hard to counsel her, doubly hard, for when she spoke gravely her voice thrilled, the tone burned through him like a flame. A little more, and honour would be thrown aside like a rag; the words would come in a rush, sweeping him away. She had never seemed more beautiful than now. She was pale, still; her eyes had dark rings; but she had never seemed more beautiful. She was still mysterious to him, though he knew her better than he had ever known her. She was an exquisite mystery, beautiful, sacred, unthinkable; but not for him, never for him. She would only be a shy friend to him, giving a little, hiding much, never truly herself before him. So much he could see, hating himself for his clumsy walk, for his gravity, for whatever it was, in him, which kept her away. He saw that she was timid, fearful of all rough and rude things, a shy soul, refined, delicate. He guessed that his love for her made her timid of him. Then came the thought of Stukeley, the torment and hate of the thought of Stukeley. He was to restore Stukeley to her, after all these agonizing weeks. They had been bad weeks, weeks of doubt, weeks of wicked opportunity. Had he followed his own heart, during those weeks, he might have wrought upon her, till the thought of Stukeley was loathsome to her. He could see no possible happiness for her in a life with Stukeley, if Stukeley were restored. She might find peace of mind in having him again beside her; but never happiness. He remembered an old phrase of Perrin’s, that women did not wish to be made happy, but to have the men they loved. It seemed true; possibly it explained many horrible tales of faithfulness. It had been a bitter task to plead for Stukeley. It would be bitter to bring him back, and to watch the new peace broken, as he knew it would be, himself making time and place. Still, it had been the right thing; the right was a better thing than love. He bit his lips for loathing when he thought how very far from the right his love for this woman had led him.

Was he right, he wondered, in attacking Tolu, in an attempt to win back Stukeley? The ambush on the beach had been sufficient declaration of war. They had shown that they wished for war. He had put his hand to the plough; it must drive on to the furrow’s end. But how many of his men would fight for a righteous cause when the issue was tried? To help the Indians, ancient lords of America, was a righteous cause, though the ancient lords lay in bones in the caves, dead long ago. Only their grandsons, servile degenerates, or men not yet dispossessed, now lived. And if he helped the Indians, beating the Spaniards, was his colony to sail away, or to have the fruit of their toil? If they were to stay, how soon would the clash come? How soon would the white men burn the forest, so that they might possess the land? When he asked himself this question, he could not honestly say that he was fighting for the Indians’ sake. His men were fighting for loot, like a gang of robbers on a road. And yet. If by their means he broke a corrupt power, so that the islands might become the world’s garden and granary, another Venice, a home of glory and honour, as he prayed, as he truly believed, it was right, the end justified him. Only he must see to it that the Venice rose from all this noisomeness. That was his task. That alone could keep his sword bright. This must be no colony, no refuse heap, where younger sons might work with their hands unseen, and the detected family knave escape his punishment. It must be other than that. When they sailed home from Tolu he would proclaim the republic of the keys; they would agree upon laws together; they would send their first-fruits home. He used to lie in his bunk at night in a trance of prayer that he might make these islands all that he had hoped. It might be, he thought. But there was much to do, and little could be done at once. When they came home from Tolu; perhaps, then, he would see his dream made real. Now and then, in the night watches, he asked himself whether his men would stand success. He remembered how Cammock had said that they would not stand failure. Thinking of Olivia, he knew which was the real test. He began to tremble for the moment of power. St. George became John Bull directly he had killed the dragon. His fine standard in the arts of life made him pray that he might never succeed in that way. Better fail. Failure is spiritual success. What is heaven to those who have the earth.

They sailed from Springer’s Key three hundred strong, packed in the two ships and three sloops. Fifty men remained behind to garrison the key. A party of Indians, under Don Toro, followed the fleet in a large periagua. Each ship in the fleet towed a bunch of canoas in which the attacking force would go ashore. They were very gay with flags when they left the anchorage. They fired guns, and sang, glad of the battle. In a few days a score at least of the singers would be dead in the sand, others would be stricken down, perhaps maimed. Margaret asked Cammock if they ever thought of this before a fight; but he answered, “No.”

“No one would ever fight if he thought,” he said. “I’ve been, now (with other fellows), in three big fights. We’d not got a chance in any one of ’em, if you’d asked before. I was at Panama, where we were all starved and worn, while they’d a fresh army, with a city to fall back on. I was at Perico, and five or six boats of us fought three big ships full of troops. I was at Arica, where about a hundred of us fought what was really a brigade of an army. I don’t think once I heard any say, or even think, as some would be killed and shot.”

“I was in the Low Countries,” said Margaret. “It was the same there. Each man thinks and hopes that it will be the other fellow. Sometimes I feel that if a man thinks with sufficient strength he really makes a sort of intellectual guard about himself. I mean, as faith saved the men in the furnace. What do you think?”

“Yes?” said Cammock. “A man who goes in thinking about himself like that isn’t going to do much with his gun. Besides, he couldn’t.”

“You see them sometimes.”

“Ay,” said Cammock. “You see ’em swaying from side to side to touch their next-hand man. For company. You see ’em all swaying in a row. Like this. Side to side. But the first shot locks the ranks. When they begin to fire they forget it all. They’ve got to manage their guns. And they get all hid in smoke. That’s another comfort. And they can shout, ‘Give ’em hell. Give ’em hell. Give it the hijos del horos.’ But afterwards. What about afterwards?”

“The dead and wounded? Yes,” said Margaret. “Poor wretches lying out without water. Ammunition carts going over them. Camp followers. The night after a battle. I remember my first. It was all still after the firing. Then one heard cries in the stillness, from all round one. Awful cries. Like wild beasts.”

“I never heard that, sir. But I’ve seen blood really running out of a ship’s scuppers. That gives you a turn. That was at Perico. She was coming past us full tilt, under all sail. Her decks were full of men; full. We were only eighteen of us in the long-boat. So we gave her one volley. It was like a deer dropping dead, sir. The ship broached to. There was scarcely a man left standing in her. Their matches set her on fire. I was aboard her afterwards. I never see such a sight.”

“And how many are over there, now, going about the town, to be killed in a few days, not seeing their slayer? Have you ever thought of the soul, captain? It must be startled to be driven from the body like that.”

“The faces are peaceful, sir.”

“Yes. Many are. But the faces one sees in a fight. I never saw a noble expression on a man’s face in a battle. I’ve seen fear, and sickness, and madness. I always feel a compound of all three. What do you feel? I don’t believe you do feel. You are always so wonderful. I wish I had your self-control.”

“I don’t know what I feel, sir. Fear of having my retreat cut off. That’s the thing I worry over. I tell you, sir, frankly. I don’t want that ever to happen to me. I don’t care who knows it.”

“About our battle, captain. We shall land in force to south of the town, while Tucket’s party makes a strong feint on the north wall. We shall creep up along the beach, and attack the south wall as soon as Tucket’s party draws their fire. We ought to be in the town by the time the sun’s at all strong. The canoas will follow us up, and lie below the sea-wall, ready for us. The ships will anchor within gunshot of the town as soon as we hoist English colours.”

“It’d be well to get all hands off soon, sir. They’ll get straggled, looking for loot, and there’s three garrisons--Lobos, Covenas, and Cispata--within an hour or two’s ride of the place. Another thing, they’ll likely take to drinking.”

“We’re not in the town yet, captain.”

“That’ll come, sir.”

“You know, captain, we may be taking our friend back.”

“Yes, sir. The lady, poor thing. She must be suffering now, sir. We’re anxious. But nothing to her, poor thing, wondering if that man’s alive.”

“I’m wondering if we are making more trouble for her by bringing him back to her.”

“He’s not been brought yet, sir.”

“In three days, captain.”

“Maybe so, sir. If you ask me, I say no. She’ll never see him again. I ask Mr. Perrin that. One always comes back to Mr. Perrin. They call him a fool, forward there; but he sees things shrewder than some of these wise ones that tried to drown the duck. He said, ‘No. You’ll never see him again. He’s married to a Spanish girl, and changed his religion, by this time.’ One never believes Mr. Perrin till one finds he was right after all. Then it’s too late.”

“Perhaps,” Margaret said. “He may be right. That may be it. He may be killed in the assault. He may have left the town. We may never see him again. It may be the end. I wonder what sort of life it is going to be for her if it is the end.”

“Life goes on much the same way, sir. Women feel it more than men; they live so cramped. But I always say a man’s a bigger thing than anything he makes. If he makes trouble he’d ought to be big enough to bear it.”

“And if the trouble’s made for him?”

“There’s always more than yourself in the world. Come, sir.”

“I think, captain,” said Margaret, “you’re the only one of us all who comes up prepared and calm, ready for everything. I ought to have been on the Main with you and Morgan, instead of learning Latin at a university. If I ever have a son, I shall send him abroad with you to be a buccaneer.”

They entered the gulf in the darkness of the new moon. They sailed in a clump together, Tucket leading. They sailed without lights, but for the night-lights in the binnacles. They moved in blackness on the sea, great fish making fire-streaks, lumbering whales with their brood. The men aboard them, waiting in the darkness for the word, struck their shins on guns and longed to be off. Few of them took their hammocks from the nettings that night. They passed the hours talking and smoking, in slow sea-walks to and fro, humming old tunes over their pipestems. They had made themselves ready many hours before. Their guns had been oiled and loaded, and their belts filled with cartridges, during the afternoon. All that they had to do now was to buckle on their water-bottles and snapsacks, and get into their boats. They heard the surf tumbling on the Mestizos. Setting stars, like ships’ lights, burned out into the sea. The seamen watched them as they shifted their tides, talking of the past, with its memories, of ships and women, its memories of life and the sun.

The word was given some four miles from the city, lest the Indian sentinels should sight the ships from the walls. The land was like a cloud at that distance, like a sharply defined blackness on the sky, shutting off the rising stars. It was a dark morning; but to the seamen’s eyes it was light enough. They had been on deck since the setting of the watch. They had grown accustomed to the darkness. It was now an hour before the dawn. It was to be a red dawn above Tolu.

Captain Margaret stood with Cammock at the gangway watching his men go over the side to the canoas. All the men of war, twenty of his crew, and a few Indians, fifty men in all, were coming with him from the ship. They loitered about the gangway like sheep at a gap, they seemed a great company. They did not talk much among themselves. One or two, the wags of the fo’c’s’le, made jests about “Tolu soup”; and the laughter spread in the canoas, where the men were packed tightly, like lovers on a bench. One or two of the men, the most intelligent among them, asked to shake hands with Captain Margaret as they passed him at the gangway side. Perrin touched him on the shoulder when about half of them had gone.

“Charles,” he said, “Olivia wants to see you. She’s in the alleyway.”

“In a minute,” he answered. “Good-bye, West.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

“Look after them, captain. Don’t let them shove off without me.”

In the darkness of the alleyway he found Olivia. He could see her great eyes in the oval of her face. She was trembling.

“Well, Olivia,” he said gravely. He took her hands in his, wondering, dully, if he would ever see her again. “I’m just off, Olivia.”

“I wanted to see you,” she said, in a shaking little voice. “I know I’ve only a minute. I tried last night. I want to thank you, Charles. You’ve been good. You’ve been very good to me. Whether you succeed. Or don’t succeed. I mean now. On shore. I. I thank you. Thank you. God keep you.”

“You, too, Olivia.”

He felt that this was the supreme moment of his life, this moment in the dark, with the forms of seamen passing across the door, and the white, beloved face half seen, strained up towards him. He knew that he might kiss her face. Their souls were very near together, nearer, he knew, than they would ever again be. There was the beloved face near his; there was his reward, after all these days, after all this wandering the world.

“Good-bye, Olivia.”

She did not answer, but her hands pressed his hands to her side for a moment.

“We shall be back in a few hours, Olivia.”

“Ah, not that. Not that,” she said, shuddering. “Never that again.”

“Perhaps, Olivia, he may be with us.”

“No,” she said faintly.

“I must go now, Olivia. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” she murmured. “God keep you, Charles.”

He knew that he might kiss her face; but would not. He knew that it was the mood and the moment which brought them thus together. She should never reproach herself. He did not love for pay. He pressed her hands for an instant. “Good-bye then,” he said lightly.

“Thank you,” she said, so lowly that he could hardly hear her.

He knew that she stood there, leaning against the bulkhead in the dark, long after he had reached the deck. It was like waking from a dream to come on deck again.

“Good-bye, Cammock,” he said, putting his emotion from him. “We’ve got our bearings. Don’t stand further in for half an hour. If anything happens. Well. We’ve talked that out. Haven’t we? Good-bye, Edward.”

“Good-bye. Look here, Charles. Here are my pistols. I should like you to have them.”

“Very well,” he said. “Thanks. How do you put them on?” He slung the pistol-belt over his shoulder, in the sea-style. “Good-bye,” he said again. “Look after her.”

He passed quickly down the ladder to the waiting canoas, which still dragged at the gangway with their freights of armed men. A canoa was pulling towards them out of the night; her oars stroked the sea into flame. Gleams of flame broadened at her bows. Little bright sparks scattered from the oar-blades as the rowers feathered.

“Is that you, Captain Margaret?” said Pain’s voice. “I’ve sent Tucket’s party on ahead. They’ve got a mile further to pull than we got. We’re all ready ahead there. You’re all ready and loaded, and your guns flinted?”

“Yes. All ready here, Captain Pain.”

“Your oars are in grummets, ain’t they?”

“Yes, all of them.”

“And you’ve all got white scarves on your arms? Right. The word is ‘Up with her.’”

“‘Up with her.’ You hear that, all of you? The word is ‘Up with her.’”

“Up with her,” the men repeated. “We’ll rally her up for a full due.”

“We’ll shove ahead, then, cap,” said Captain Pain. “If any man speaks above a whisper, mind, we’ll deal with him after.”

“Silence in the boats,” said Margaret. “On a morning so still as this we may be heard a couple of miles off. Sound goes a long way over water. Remember, all hands. No looting. There’s to be no looting. After the city’s taken, we shall hold it to ransom. After the fight, the trumpeter here will sound the assembly in the Plaza. You will all fall in there. Understand?”

“Are you ready in the bows there?”

“All ready, sir.”

“Shove off. Give way together. Make it long, stroke oars.”

“Long and lairy, sir.”

“We’ll follow you, Captain Pain.”

“Right,” came the voice out of the darkness. The hulk of the _Broken Heart_ fell away into the night. The ripple of flame at her bows died astern. The boats drew up into order, Pain’s canoa leading, the other fourteen following close behind, two and two together. There was silence in all the boats, a silence like the hush in a theatre. The wash of the hundred oars, and the slow breathing of the rowers, was all that could be heard. All that could be seen was the advancing oily swell of the water, the gleam where the oars dipped, the track of the great stars dancing on the swell. Dimly one could see the other boats. One could see the transom of Pain’s boat, a ghostly oval, dying away ahead, but never quite gone. Far in front, seeming slowly to climb higher, was the blackness of the shore, from which, very faintly, came the roll of the surf. So they rowed on, in the darkness, pausing sometimes to change their rowers, two hundred men, going to the presence of death.

Their first real sight of the shore was a twinkle of fire upon the beach, below the city. Some infected clothes had been set on fire there the night before. The fire had smouldered all night, and had then broken out, in little leaping tongues, lighting the town’s south gate. Those in the boat wondered when they saw it, thinking that Indians must be camped there, or travellers from Covenas, perhaps, arrived after the shutting of the gates. There was some anxiety lest it should be a signal; but the flames, lighting up the beach, showed them no watchers, and no answering signal shone in the south-west, either from shore or sea. They learned from the fire that they were pointing too near to the city. They swung off four points, and rowed to the south-east, into the shallow water off the mouth of the Pesquero.

They landed about three miles from the town, and at once formed for action. Some Indian scouts led the party, then came Margaret with a dozen axemen, all carrying powder-kegs, for the destruction of the gate. The _Broken Heart_ men formed the vanguard. Pain’s men followed, in rough order. The boats, with a boat-guard of thirty or forty men, some of whom were leeches, pulled out into the gulf, to prepare lint and salves for the hurt. The landing party looked to their firearms. There was a little confusion and splashing, owing to the narrowness of the beach, which forced some of them to stand in the sea. In a few minutes they were all ready. They set forward, as silently as they could, keeping a fast walk, lest Tucket’s men, now hidden among rocks a mile to the north of the town, should grow weary of waiting. It was still dark night about them; but they knew from the faintness of the wind that it was near dawn. The macaws were waking in the forest. Strange cries, strange primeval noises, sounded in the forest. There were stealthy patterings, quick scuttering droppings, as some animal brushed among the scrub, knocking off the dew. The Indian who walked by Margaret knew what these noises meant. He paused at each sound, as though to make sure that they were really what they seemed. A chicaly-chicaly made her sweet, sharp cry, from somewhere ahead. It touched Margaret to the heart; it was so like the tolling of a cuckoo. The Indian bent his head back and replied, so exactly that the bird answered. Margaret had never before heard this done; though he had read of it. He wondered, as he marched, if all knowledge ranked alike, if all power, all imagination, ranked alike, and whether this Indian, who could apprehend the natures of all these creatures in the wood, were not really a finer product than himself. He could not imitate a chicaly-chicaly, he could not raise the devil, he could not see a three-days’-old track on stones. He wished that in the march to a full life one had not to forget so much. One should have all the powers, all the savage powers even, one should be a divine spirit of apprehension, one should inform the whole world, feeling the pismire’s want as keenly as the saint’s ecstasy. One should be able to apprehend the wild things, the things of the wood, as well as the spirit of a poet in his divine moment. True life is to be alive in every fibre to the divine in all things. He wondered whether the Indians communed with the beasts, getting from them something which the white men ignored; coming, through them, to secrets unknown to white men, secrets of nature, of the universal spirit, of the spirit which binds the herds of peccary, and slinks in the wild cat, and sings in the bell-voiced golden-comb. He thought little of the business in hand. His mind was blank about it. All that he could think of the coming struggle was that he must bring back Stukeley, find him and bring him back, or never go back himself. The men were all round him, some of them even ahead of him by this time, for, going fast as they were, often up to their knees in the sea, it was impossible to keep good order.

After half an hour’s march they forded the Arroyo Francesco and came to the broader sands. Here they all marched in the wash; for now they were within twelve minutes of the town. They could see the dark mass of the town ahead of them, a city of sleepers, no light burning, no one stirring, only a little fire near the gate, and a dog baying in the Plaza. The dawn was beginning to change the darkness; it was growing lighter. The screams of the macaws set the monkeys swearing. The men halted, formed into order, and hurried on for another half-mile. They paused again, only four hundred yards from the walls. The pioneers with the powder-kegs made ready for their dash to the gate. The fusemen, carrying many yards of match, now lit their fuses in the scrub. The army marked time, feeling the chill of the dawn, waiting for Tucket to begin. Margaret could feel that many of his men were nervous, waiting like that, with the light growing above them. They had timed the attack well; but to stand, waiting, while the precious moments passed, was hard. Very soon the sentinels would see them. A low growl of discontent muttered up and down the ranks. Voices urged Margaret to attack at once, without waiting for Tucket. “We shall be seen.” “What’s the good of waiting here?” “Why, Lord love us, we could have took the town by this time.” “Shove ahead.” “This is a bit of ‘up with her,’ I don’t think, waiting ’ere.” There was a tendency to edge forward, to press towards the front, to see what was going on. Margaret urged them back, and passed word to Pain to keep his rear ranks from firing into the backs of the storming party. The rear ranks were the eager ranks, as they always are. The front ranks are nearest to the bullets; they have their minds engaged.

Lighter it grew. There was colour in the sky now; the men were surging forward, swearing that they would wait no more. Then from far away, on the farther wall of the town, a cry arose, a cry like a death cry, a cry of alarm. Two shots followed; then yells, shrieks, oaths, the roar of many guns. “Up with her, Tucket,” said the waiting men. Cries sounded within the town, dogs yelped, one or two women screamed, as the firing increased. “Come on,” Margaret called to the pioneers. They splashed out of the water on to the sands, and started towards the city at a run. As they ran, they heard Pain keeping back the ranks till the charge should have been fired. The feet splashed behind them slowly, growing fainter. The fire on the beach grew brighter, they were passing it; the walls were before them, only a hundred yards away. “Against the door,” he said, panting. “Against the hinges. One keg spilled below.” The town was aroused now. They could hear the cries and hurry. Still no sign came from the walls. “Sentinel’s asleep,” said one of the men. “There,” said another. “Up with her. Up with her. We’re seen.” A man showed upon the wall by the gate. “Ahi,” he screamed. “Piratas. Piratas. Piratas. Cuidado. Cuidado.” He fired his gun into the air; the flash shot up like the flash of a blast-charge. There came cries and a noise of running. A few heads showed. The wall spouted fire in a volley. They were up against the wall, against the iron-plated door, piling the kegs against the hinges, tamping them down with sods and stones. Margaret snatched one keg and spilled it along the door-sill. “There,” he said. “There. Now your fuse, fuseman.” The quick-match was thrust into a keg. “Up along the walls, boys. Quick. Scatter. Pronto.” He thrust them sideways. They saw what he wanted. When the imaginations are alert there is little need for speech. No man could have heard him. The racket in the town was uproar like earthquake. The whole wall above them was lit with fire spurts. Mud and plaster were tinkling in a rain upon them. They ran fifty yards like hares, paying out the quick-match. “Now,” said Margaret. The match flashed. A snake of fire rippled from them. They saw the shards of pots gleam, then vanish. They saw old bones, old kettles, all the refuse below the walls. “Down,” he shouted. “Down.” They flung themselves down. The beach to their left flashed, as the pirates fired at the wall.

There came a roar, a rush of fire, a shaking of the land. Mud, brick, stone, shards of iron and wood, all the ruin of the gate, crashed among them, flying far among the trees, thumping them on their backs as they lay. After the roar there was a dismayed silence. A wail of a hurt man sounded, as though the wrecked gate cried. Then with a volley the privateers stormed in. From where he lay, Margaret could watch them plainly; the dawn had broken. He saw them charging, tripping in the sand, their gun-barrels glinting. An Indian led them, a screaming Indian, who danced and spun round, waving his machete. “Lie still,” he shouted to his pioneers. “Let them pass. They’ll shoot you down. Lie still.” With yells and shots the storming party swept up the ruin. “Up with her,” they shouted. “Up with her.” They were clambering over the wreck, tripping, stumbling, kneeling, to fire, clubbing at the guard. “Now,” said Margaret, drawing his sword. They rose up from their nest among the tip. They were with their fellows, they were climbing the heaped stone, amid smoke and oaths and fire-lit faces. Margaret was inside Tolu. The south wall was won.

The land-breeze, very faint now, drifted the smoke slowly. He could see little. He could see in glimpses the whitewashed houses, the line of the south road, a man with his back to a wall, a woman fallen, figures rushing. He could see enough to know that the enemy were making no stand. He ran on up the road to the Plaza, one of a mob. Windows opened above him. People fired from the windows. Women were flinging pots, tiles, braziers. Some one had begun to ring the alarm bell in the church. The broken clang sounded out above the screams and the firing. Now it was all clear before him. He was in the Plaza, shouting to his mob to form. There in front of him the troops were mustering. They were running from their quarters, half clad, in rags, just as they had started from sleep. Heavy fire was rolling at the north wall. Troops were running thither. In the centre of the Plaza, about a cotton tree, a score of Spaniards were forming in line. A halberdier was dressing them. They stood firm, handling their guns, hearkening to their capitan. Margaret saw them clearly, and praised them in his heart for the flower of soldiery. They were of the old Spanish foot, the finest troops in the world. Even as he looked he saw them falling forward. He was among them. His sword jarred him to the shoulder as it struck on a gun-barrel. He saw them about him. They were breaking. They were gathering into clumps. They were being swept into the mob of citizens flying to the east gate.

Half an hour later the newly risen sun showed him a captured town. In the streets, in the Plaza, everywhere, lay the dead and dying. They lay in heaps in some parts. All the clutter and wreck of war, the clouts, the cast arms, the gear flung away by the fleeing, lay littered in the sands. The walls were chipped and starred with bullet marks. The stink of powder was everywhere. Women still screamed. Wounded men wailed where they lay, with the pitiful whimpering cry, like that of a beaten hound, which sickens all who hear it of the glory of war. Firing was still going on; but the fight was over; the town was in the hands of the privateers.

Margaret found himself at the east gate with Pain. About a dozen of the crew of the _Broken Heart_ stood by him, waiting for orders. He took their names, and told them off to look out at the city gates, and to spike the guns on the sea-wall.

“I’m going to the Governor’s house there, to look for my friend,” he said. “Where’s my trumpeter? Sound the assembly, trumpet. Muster your men, will you, Captain Pain?”

The assembly sounded. The men fell in, answering to their names. The boat-guard with the doctors landed. The captains checked off their lists, scanning the ranks closely whenever a man failed to answer. The men were powder-blackened; some of them were wounded, many were cut about the head. They sent the boat-guard with the doctors to search the streets for the dead and hurt. Thirty-three men were missing, all of them, save one, from the party which had stormed the south wall.

“Strengthen the guards at the gates,” Margaret said. “Captain Tucket, you take the north gate. I’ll see to the east. Captain Pain, will you send a dozen to the south? Keep a sharp look out.”

He picked his own guard and sent them off to their duty. The other gate-guards fell out unwillingly. Some of the privateers were eating their breakfasts in the ranks.

“I’m going to the Governor’s house now,” he said to Pain. “Call me at once if the Spaniards send a trumpet. No straggling. No looting, mind.” As he turned towards the Governor’s house he heard the men behind him snigger. He heard a voice ask Pain if this was to be the new rule, now that Springer’s Key was full of college gents. Pain told the man to take a severe turn.

Margaret drew his pistols as he came near the house; for though most of the inhabitants had fled, a few poor men and slaves still lounged in the streets, having nothing to lose. A single man, richly dressed, might tempt these gangrels. He hailed a negro, who sat in the sun in the Plaza, sucking a wound in his wrist.

“Ho muchacho,” he said in his schoolboy Spanish. “Donde esta la casa del Gobernador?”

The negro waved his unhurt hand towards the house with a gesture full of dignity. Then he continued to suck his wound, like a dog licking a hurt paw.

“Gracias,” Margaret answered. “Pero el hombre Inglès. Donde esta?”

Again the negro waved his hand towards the house, pausing in his suction exactly like a dog. “He,” he said; then bent to suck again.

The house of the Governor fronted the Plaza. It was a big house, with a patio. The lower story had no outer windows, no door. Margaret had to climb the stone steps to the balcony, where a chained monkey leaped up and down in the sun, between bites at a plantain. The door leading to the inner part of the house lay open, just as the fugitives had left it. A woman’s shawl was on the floor. One runner had upset the monkey’s saucer of water. A chair had been upset. As Margaret entered the house, with his pistols cocked, he saw something beneath the chair, something bright, which he took to be a snake. It was the scabbard of a sword, flung aside in a soldier’s hurry. Margaret, pausing on the threshold to listen, wondered if Stukeley had flung it there. He listened intently, expecting to see Stukeley coming from the darkness of the corridor. His mind was busy with the thought of Stukeley. What was he to say to him? What was he to do to him? Suppose Stukeley came out fighting? “I must bring him back,” he repeated. “I must bring him back. He must be brought back.” A step sounded on the stairs behind him. It was West, one of the _Broken Heart’s_ seamen.

“Beg pardon, sir,” the man said, “may I come with you? There’s maybe some of these Dons in the house.”

“Yes,” Margaret answered. “Listen.”

They listened in the doorway for a moment; but the house was still, save for the chinking of the monkey’s chain.

“Gone, sir, I guess,” said West.

“Come on, then,” Margaret said. “Cock your pistols and come on.”

They passed through the littered hall into the left-hand corridor. The jalousied shutters were shut on the patio side; but the doors of some of the rooms were open, giving light to the passage. It was a barely furnished house, hung with very old Spanish leather, ant-eaten and mothed and mouldy, falling to pieces. In the first room, a sleeping-room, the mosquito-nets had been torn from the cots, and lay wrecked on the floor with a silver chocolate service. In another, a chair stood against the wall, where a man had stood to snatch arms from a trophy. In another sleeping-room they found the clothes of a man and woman by the cot-sides just as they had been laid the night before, when the couple retired. It was like being in the presence of death to walk that house. It was as though they were looking on the corpse of a house, on a house dug up from the sands, the life of it gone and forgotten, only the pathetic husks left, that had once been helps to men. They opened a shutter and looked out upon the patio. A goat was tethered there, crying to be milked. They heard the stamping of horses. One horse was scraping with his forefeet against the floor of his stall. There was no sign of Stukeley there, no trace of him, nothing to mark his presence.

“Now the other corridor,” Margaret said. They retraced their steps, walking on tiptoe, listening intently. The first room in the other corridor was a dining-room, furnished with heavy Spanish furniture of the great period. A lute lay on the table, among wineglasses half full of wine, a box of Peruvian suckets, a box of candied quinces, a dish of avocat pears. Some one had been playing the lute, the night before. The unknown player had fitted a new string. The broken string lay among the litter where it had been thrown. Flies were black among the suckets. The air smelt of the stale gums which had burnt out before a crucifix on the wall. A shaft of sunlight came through a broken shutter. The dust quivered in it. On the floor, in its road of glory, a column of ants marched, stumbling over crumbs. There was much silver in the room. Over the side-board was a Zurbaran, too full of personality to be religious. Margaret looked at it, sighing, thinking that only lesser artists could save their souls. There was no trace of Stukeley here. “Let’s get out,” he said. “He’s not here.”

“There’s three more rooms,” said West. They entered the Governor’s office.

It was a barer room than the others. It contained a table and a few chairs. There were papers on the table; a locked account book, a list of resident Indians, a list of citizens capable of bearing arms, a diary in cipher. Under the table, in a coffer, were more account books, Cammock’s portolano, and a copy of the same, traced from the originals, now nearly finished.

“You see, West,” said Margaret. “You bear witness that I take these two books?”

“Yes, sir,” said West. He walked over to a corner and picked something up from a chair.

“Isn’t this Mr. Stukeley’s, sir?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, crossing over swiftly. “It’s his hat. And there’s his sword-belt.”

They stood together, looking at the things, wondering how lately the owner had flung them there, as he came in, hot, for the onzas. They felt him to be very near them there. It was as though he were coming sneering towards them, his fine teeth showing. His very words came into Margaret’s mind, with their exact inflections. “Found much? Eh?” Those were the words he would use.

“Hark,” said West suddenly. They listened.

“What did you think you heard?”

“There’s some one speaking in the next room, sir.”

“Listen.”

In the hush, they heard a sound like a sob, a low murmur of words; then a rustling, chinking sound.

“Like some one praying,” West said.

“Careful now,” said Margaret. “Come on after me.” They crept from the office on tiptoe, their pistols ready. In the corridor a board creaked beneath them. They paused guiltily, straining their ears to listen. They heard some one cross the room quietly. Then the door was flung open, letting a glare of light into the corridor. A priest stood before them, holding up a crucifix. Within was a bed. A woman knelt by the bed. Some one lay on the bed, covered with a cloth. Margaret raised his hand, and the priest stepped back, looking at their faces curiously.

“Donde esta el caballero inglès?” Margaret asked. “El señor Stukeley?”

A faint smile showed upon the priest’s mouth.

“Here,” he said in good English. He twitched back the bed-cloth reverently, to show the body of Stukeley lying dead. The face was a dull yellow, the mouth was inflamed. There was no need for further words.

“Vomito,” said the priest.

“Yes,” Margaret said, uncovering. “Vomito.”

“This morning,” the priest said.

The woman rose from the bedside, as though to drive them away. She was a black-eyed, hawk-nosed woman, of a crude and evil beauty. She was dressed in red and brown, in an outlandish style. She spoke in gasps, dreadful to hear; using broken English, laced with oaths and Spanish words. “Damn,” she said. “Damn perros. Cabrones de piratas.”

“De quién es?” Margaret stammered, meaning “Who are you?” He had no gift of tongues.

“Mrs. Stukeley,” the priest said. “The widow. His wife.”

“Me Anna,” said the woman. “Me ’is wife.”

Margaret bowed; words seemed useless. He was only conscious of the horror of it. He had not been prepared for this. He had sat at meat so many times with this corpse. He had seen him so often, full of life and health, going with a laugh to sin, in the pride of the flesh. Now a little thing, the bite of a fly, no more, had brought him to a death among strangers, in this low cot in the wilds, with his beauty turned to horror, and his strength, if anything, a fiery chain upon his soul. There he lay, under an Indian cotton, gone to his reward so soon. Margaret had hated him. He shuddered now to think how he had hated him. Looking at him as he lay there, in all the hideousness of death, he felt the remorse which a death brings. He felt ashamed, as though he had struck the corpse by hating him whom it had covered. “It was my fault,” he said to himself. “It should have been otherwise. One ought to live with this before one.” He saw where he had acted hastily, where he had failed. He knew all that he might have done. What moved him most was the thought that Olivia had loved this man, had loved him tenderly, and that he, Olivia’s lover had never known his character, had never guessed what it was in him which was beautiful to her. Now he would never know. Standing by the side of the corpse, he tasted all the bitterness of one who has failed to apprehend another, and learns of his failure too late. Stukeley was dead now, the old life was dead now. He would to God that he were dead in Stukeley’s place, and that the old life might be lived again. He would to God that this man’s passage to death had been made pleasanter. He blamed himself. He was touched and humbled almost to tears. “If I had only understood,” he thought, “you would not have cast yourself away thus.” Now he had this to tell Olivia.

“You were not what I thought, Stukeley,” he murmured aloud, looking down at the face. “You were not what I thought. You won her love. You were her chosen.

“My God,” he added to himself, “you won her by that very quality of certainty which made you cast her aside.” He stood there trying to create, in his moment of tenderness, fit words with which to tell her, words which might comfort her, staying in her heart. The words which came to him seemed blunt and cold. The only help that he could give to her was to bury this part of her with all reverent and noble rites.

“He was the Governor’s secretary,” said the priest. “He was not here long. Not long in the country. The vomito takes the new-comers.”

“Ah,” said Margaret, starting. “How well you talk English. Look here. Come aside here. We must bury him at once?”

“Before the sun,” the priest said, with a shudder.

“Where is the burial ground?”

He raised his hand in benediction over the corpse, then led Margaret out of the room. West followed them, reverent and awed, speaking in a hushed voice. The priest led them by a back way to the patio, thence by a postern to a side street, a good two hundred yards from the house. The burial-ground was hedged with stone, over which some creepers had grown. Little green lizards were darting among the creepers. They glittered like cut glass. The gate of the cemetery swung open on hinges of raw hide. When they entered, some large rats scuttled to their burrows among the graves.

“Much sickness here,” said the priest. “It is not good to dig deep in the ground.”

“I must dig this grave deep,” Margaret answered. “Look at the rats.”

“They are large,” the priest said. “Much sickness in this poor town.”

“Where can I find a spade?” Margaret asked.

“Who knows?” said the priest. “You will tell your men to find one? Ah?”

“I must do this myself,” he answered.

“But your men on the wall,” said the priest. “And your ship there. Ah?”

Margaret looked towards the west, over the low sea-wall. Some of his men were spiking the guns on the platform. He could hear the click of the malls upon the spikes, as they snapped the soft iron flush with the gun. Beyond them, very far away, were the ships; the tide and the land-wind had set them out to sea again.

“They are waiting for the sea-breeze,” said the priest. “No getting in till chocolate.”

“No,” said Margaret. “Now take me, please, to find a spade.”

“You are not a privateer?” the priest asked. “You do not sack us?”

“No,” he answered. “I am not a pirate. I demand the right to trade, and the recognition of Andria, King of Darien.”

“Don Andria,” the priest said. “Ah? Don Andria, the King. And so we are not sacked.”

“Now let us find a spade.”

They searched for half an hour before they found a spade.

“We do not use spades,” the priest said. “We tickle the earth with our toes and it laughs fruits for us.”

“I will lay him here, West,” Margaret said. “Looking towards England.”

“Sir,” the priest said, “he was a good Catholic. He must look towards the east.”

“Ah,” said Margaret. “And his wife would like that?”

“Yes. Ah, his wife, sir. Poor child. She was only married six weeks.”

“It is sad for her. He did not suffer much, father?”

“Ill for four days. But yesterday he was better. Then the fever grew again. As it does, sir, in some cases. The blood was before the dawn. Like a child, sir. And his eyes turned upon the Cross.”

“Then I will dig the grave here,” Margaret said. “This will be east and west by my watch.” He scratched a narrow oblong with the point of the spade.

“I’ll dig the grave here,” he said.

“Not you. Not in the sun,” the priest said. “There is very much sickness. Your men will dig.”

“I shall dig,” he answered. He felt that he was burying a part of Olivia. He would do her that service. He would make a grave for that unworthy part of her. That act of his should be a part of his penance towards the dead man’s ghost.

“It is very bad to dig this ground,” the priest said. “It is dust of the dead. We do not dig deep except for an Excellency. You see. The rats. Why toil, since God will bring them together at the Resurrection?”

“This is an evil country,” Margaret answered, driving the spade into the earth.

“There is fever and death. Very evil,” said the priest. “It is not wholesome to be in the sun, turning the earth, before chocolate. I will go to the widow.”

He left the cemetery, holding a handkerchief across his nose. The rats in their burrow-mouths watched him. One or two of them scuttled to other burrows. They seemed to play a game of general post, with Margaret as the “he.”

“Let me have a go at that spade, Captain Margaret, sir,” said West.

“No. I must do this,” he answered. “It is dangerous at the top. Perhaps deeper down you shall give me a hand. Gather stones from the wall. I want you to keep away from me, West. This soil is full of infection. Here is some tobacco. I want you to smoke, all the time you are here.”

“No, sir,” said West, looking uncomfortable. “Not just now, thank you, sir.”

“It will keep away the infection. You do smoke?”

“Yes, sir. But it wouldn’t be right, sir, nor respectful to Mrs. Stukeley.”

“Ah,” said Margaret, feeling himself rebuked. He dug for a few minutes in silence; it was light, sandy earth, easily shovelled.

“I wish you’d let me do that, sir,” said West.

“No. Not yet, West.”

“He was a big man, too, sir. He’d ’ave been a fine big man if he’d taken care of himself.”

“Yes,” Margaret answered. “He was a beautiful figure.”

“There’s a lot of poor fellows killed, sir,” said West. “But somehow it don’t come ’ome like this one does. That yellow look, after what he was. And the Spanish lady. She wasn’t his real lady, sir.”

“No. She wasn’t his real lady.”

So they talked as they dug turn and turn about for an hour and a half, when they had to stop digging. They were coming to water. The bottom of the grave was an inch or two deep in water.

“We can go no further,” Margaret said. “Now we’ll get stones.” They lined the bed of the grave with stones, and turned to the house for the body.

The priest and the woman had laid the body out. Margaret ripped down one of the long, jalousied shutters for a bier, while West searched in the patio for rope. An old Spanish tapestry of the death of Absalom served as a pall. They carried Stukeley to the grave, the priest preceding them, intoning the burial service. Then, very reverently, they lowered him. West and Margaret went aside after this and gathered a heap of lilies while the woman and priest prayed together.

“Take her away, father,” Margaret whispered. The priest led the woman to the house. She walked like one stunned. Margaret and West leaned over the grave, to look their last on Stukeley. They could see the water soaking into the linen, and above that the frayed body of Absalom, the handsome youth, caught in the thicket, as he rode. The town was noisy beyond them, two hundred yards away. Singing and shouting came from the Plaza. It seemed to Margaret to be the dirge the man would have chosen, this singing and shouting of men.

“Is that gentleman’s service enough, sir?” West asked.

“Quite enough,” he answered. “You heard him say that Mr. Stukeley had changed his religion?”

“I’d feel easier if you’d say a few words, sir.”

He spoke the few words. Then with the shovel he began to fill in the grave, from the foot. He placed many heavy stones among the earth, so that the rats might be foiled. When he had levelled the surface he heaped a cairn of stones at the head, and laid the lilies there. He went to a neighbouring garden, and dug up an arnotto rose-bush, to plant upon the grave. When this had been planted, the rites were over, he could do no more. They stood looking down at the grave for a moment, before they left the graveyard. The singing was loud behind them. In front of them, darkening under the breeze, was the bay, with the ships and sloops running in, distant some two or three miles.

“Come, West,” Margaret said. “I must see after the wounded.” He took a last look at the grave, at the already drooping lilies and dejected rose-bush. “Good-bye, Stukeley,” he murmured. He stooped, and picked some rose-buds, and a little scrap of stone from the grave, putting them carefully in a pocket-case. “Now smoke, West,” he said. “And rub tobacco on your hands.”

He reproached himself for having neglected his wounded for so long; but he knew that Tucket and Pain would look to them. He wished that the singing and shouting would stop. “Old Rose” and “The green grass grew” were not songs which the army in his mind had sung. Thermopylæ was not possible to an army which sang such songs. Pistol-shots marked the singing of each stanza; there were yells and cries. He thought he heard the screams of women. He saw two men come from a house with their arms full of plunder. “My God,” he said to himself bitterly. “Is Stukeley to check me even in death?” He drew his pistols again. “Come on, West,” he cried. He ran to the two looters.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Take that stuff back where you got it.”

“Get ter hell,” said the men. “You ain’t our captain. Who in hell are yer talking to?” Both men were drunk. One of them had been wounded in the head.

“I been doing your dirty work all morning,” said the wounded man, with drunken gravity. “I’m a free man, and I’m getting a little for myself. You ain’t my cap. Wot d’yer talk to us for? Go and see ’em in the Plaza,” said the other man. “Git ter the swamps and shove yer ’ed in.” They rolled off shouting. The noise in the Plaza became louder at each moment. It was useless to shoot the looters; two-thirds of the whole force were looting. Pain himself was looting.

Indeed, the sight of the Plaza haunted Margaret like a nightmare till he died. Of the two hundred men gathered there, hardly thirty were sober. These stood aloof under Tucket, guarding the wounded and laughing at the antics of the rest. A heap of loot was piled under the cotton tree. At every moment a buccaneer added to the pile. Wine casks lay open about the square, with drunken men lying near them, in the sun, too drunk to stir. Other drunkards, with linked arms, danced and sang, making catcalls and obscene noises. A half-conscious girl lay against a wall, gasping, shaken by hysteria. Her wild eyes were hard and dry, her hands clutched the dress across her bosom. Parties of drunken men hacked at doors with axes, and tossed household gear through the windows on to the heads of other drunkards beneath. Some had been torturing a Spaniard with woolding. The man lay dead with the cords about him, his face in the sands. Others, in wantonness, were now firing the church, dancing obscenely about in the priests’ robes. Women were screaming in an upper room. A dozen savages pursued one shrieking woman. They bawled filthy jests to each other as they ran. Margaret stood over her, as she fell, moaning, unable to run further. He drove the ruffians back, threatening them with his sword.

“It’s the cap,” they said. “If the cap wants ’er he must ’ave ’er.” He placed the woman in a house which had been sacked; it seemed the safest place in that lost city. Pain came by him, drunk, dragging a silver tray.

“No looting,” the drunkard called. “Strictly college gents. No looting ’tall. None. Won’t have it. No.” He passed on, crying drunken catcalls. The eastern side of the town, fanned by the breeze, was fast spreading to a blaze. The dry wood crackled as the flame caught. The church roof was pouring smoke. Little flames were licking out from the eaves. “My God. My God,” said Margaret. “And this is my act and deed. My act and deed.” He went to Tucket, who stood with the wounded, grimly watching it all. He could not speak. He could only shake his head, white to the lips.

“How’s this for hell?” said Tucket. “This is Captain Pain.”

“Are the guards at the gates still?” Margaret answered.

“Some of ’em are. Your own men are. Mine are. I never saw men like these, though.”

“Let’s get the wounded to the boats. How many have we? How many men are steady still?”

“Sir,” Tucket answered, “I’ve twenty-five men by me. We lost fourteen killed. There’s nineteen hurt here. That’s fifty-eight. Say there’s twenty at the gates still. That leaves a matter of a hundred and seventy like what you see. Get them hurt into the carts, boys, and start ’em to the boats. Gently does it. That’s you.”

They laid the wounded men in litters and carts, and wheeled them down gently to the canoas. Margaret walked by the side of the carts, talking to the men about their wounds, fanning them with his handkerchief, getting drink for them, wetting their brows with water whenever they passed a cistern. The ships were then coming to anchor within half a mile of the town.

“You won’t be long in the boats,” he told the wounded men. “You’ll soon be in bed on board. You can see the ships. There they are. Do you see?”

He spoke to Tucket, urging that they should withdraw the guards from the east and north gates, lest the Spaniards, guessing what had happened, should attack suddenly, and overpower them.

“I’ve already sent,” said Tucket. “I ain’t goin’ to lose good men because these swine choose to raise hell. This was Captain Pain’s piece. The sooner we’re off the better.”

“I’d sound the assembly,” Margaret said. “But the trumpeter’s drunk.”

“Could we ring the church bell or something, sir?” said one of the men.

“The church is on fire.”

“Beg pardon, sir. But we’d oughtn’t to wait,” said Tucket. “We’d ought to get these fellers on board. The sun’s strong. And we got to make two journeys as it is.”

At the boats they were joined by the north-gate guards, about a dozen men in all.

“We can only send away six canoas at a time,” Margaret said. “That’ll mean twenty-four oars. Two wounded men in each canoa. You can’t put more, comfortably.”

“That’s so,” said Tucket. “Get ’em in, sons. Ask Captain Cammock to fire guns.”

They manned six canoas, and laid the worst cases in the sternsheets. The one sober doctor went with them. He was a clever surgeon, pretty well known all over the Indies as Doctor Glass Case. He had left England under a cloud; it was not known why. No man knew his real name.

“Take them aboard the _Broken Heart_,” Margaret said. “And then come back for the rest. Tell Captain Cammock how things stand here.”

The boats shoved off from the shore below the water-gate. Boat-covers propped on oars made awnings for the wounded. Margaret and Tucket watched them quartering on each other, stringing out into line, some of the stroke oars splashing, so as to spatter water, by request, into the faces of the wounded.

“Gully-shooting,” Tucket said.

“They’re racing,” said Margaret. He thought how strongly these men resembled boys. They never lost a chance of competing. Now, in that hot sun, after seven hours of exertion, they were making the broad oars bend, driving the canoas through it, racing to the ship.

Men came straggling to the water-gate, asking if they were to go aboard. Margaret and Tucket told them to tend the wounded, while they returned to the Plaza to try to bring off the rest of the hands. There was no question of holding the town. The east side was a roaring bonfire. All that they could hope was that the Spaniards would not attack.

“There are three garrisons only twelve miles away,” Margaret said.

“Yes,” Tucket answered. “And them we fit this morning must be in the woods.”

“I thought I could have trusted Pain,” said Margaret. “They would have ransomed the town. It’s a merchant town. Look at all the balsam sheds. And now they’ve thrown it away.”

“That was Captain Pain,” said Tucket. “He said as all he wanted was for you to help him take the town. He’d do the rest, he said. He’s deceived you, sir. Deceived you all along. He was telling his hands just now, he was going to seize your ship, as soon as he got the stuff aboard.”

They were entering the Plaza as Tucket said this. They were just in time to see the church roof fall in, with a sudden uprush of fire. Many of Pain’s men were dragging the loot out of the heat. They were stripped nearly naked. They tossed the heavy silver from hand to hand. Sometimes a piece was flung at a man’s head, and then a fight would begin. At least thirty men lay drunk about the square, too drunk to move. About thirty others formed a rank across the eastern side, firing and clubbing at the rats which ran from the burning houses. They turned and fired at the rats which broke through them. The Plaza hummed with flying bullets. Bullets were chipping the adobe walls. Splintered tiles of a soft warm redness lay in flakes below each house. Whenever a rat was killed, the slayers yelled and screamed, swinging the corpse by the tail, hitting each other in the face. Tears ran down Margaret’s cheeks. He had never before seen a sight like this. He had never seen a mob at work. And these were the men he had led; these were the men who were to found a new nation with him.

A sudden roar of cannon made them turn to look seaward. The _Broken Heart_ was wreathed in smoke from a broadside; but as the smoke blew clear they could see the danger signal; the foretopsail dropping to the cap, and a red weft dipped at the peak. Two musket-shots followed from the fo’c’s’le.

“Danger from the south,” said Margaret. “Here are the garrisons.”

Pain lay in the sand, propped against a wine cask, with his hat tilted over his eyes. Margaret ran to him and shook him. “Up,” he cried. “Wake up, man.”

A man came running from the south gate shouting, “The Dagoes. The Dagoes.” He was bleeding from his mouth. He was gasping his life out as he ran. “Dagoes,” he gurgled. “Dagoes, you.” He stood for a moment, swaying, pointing half round the compass behind him.

“Right, son,” said Tucket. “Take a rest. You’re hit. Lie down.”

The man stared at him stupidly, groping with his hands. “Take. These feathers. Off my teeth,” he gasped, and sank forward gently from his knees, dead.

Tucket kicked Pain savagely.

“Wha’s a marrer? Wharrer hell’s the marrer?” said Pain, struggling to his feet.

“We’re attacked,” said Margaret, shaking him. “Get your men. Lord, man, get your men to the south gate.”

“Hands off, you damcarajo,” he answered angrily. “Why the hell couldn’t you look out? Hadn’t you sense enough to set a sentry? I’m awake. You Port Mahon fiddler. What in hell are you looking at me for? Get the men.”

The guns of the _Broken Heart_ opened fire in succession, blowing white rings over the trucks. Heavy musket-fire was breaking out at the south gate. Some of the rat-catchers ran towards it.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” said Margaret. “You drunken little boor. See what you’ve done. You and your gang of thieves. Look at your work. Look at it. Answer me again and I’ll run you through.”

“Lord’s sake,” Tucket cried. “They’re on to us. Here they are. Cuidado, sons.”

“I’ll talk t’you later,” Pain said. “Up with her, sons. Rally an’ bust ’em.” He unslung his piece, and ran, followed by the others, to the south road. They reached the mouth of it in time to see their fellows scattering towards them from the breach. All the wall was covered with clambering Spaniards, hundreds of them. They came swarming on like a wave of bodies, firing and dropping down to load, firing again, ever firing, till the air was full of fire. Margaret saw privateers running up to support him. They came from all sides, fifty or sixty men in all, enough to make a rough double rank across the street. They made a stand here, at the corner of the Plaza, fighting steadily and well, but losing heavily. Margaret picked up a gun and fired with them, praying only that a bullet might find him soon. He had no thought of anything save that. He had failed. Now he would die unpitied in a hopeless fight against odds. There were several hundreds of Spaniards coming up, and the privateers’ ammunition failed. They were searching the dead for cartridges. Men were running back to the Plaza to search the drunkards for cartridges. A few men climbed to the roof of a house, and fired above the smoke into the enemy. Margaret climbed up with them, so that he might order the battle. He lay on the tiles with the rest, firing and cheering. For ten minutes they lay there, firing till they had no more powder. Then, as the smoke cleared away, he saw that a troop of horse was coming up. He saw the Indian lances swaying like boat-masts in a sea. He climbed down from his perch, at that, and gave the word to retire, fighting, to the boats. He knew that the fight now was only a matter of moments.

The men fell back, losing heavily. The Spaniards pressed on, cheering, trying to flank them. At the boats was a mob of flying drunkards, struggling with the boat-guard. They were trying to get the canoas for the loot. The beach was littered with loot. A couple of thousand pounds’ worth of plate was lying in the sands. Seventy or eighty men were fighting in the water, shouting and damning, tugging the canoas to and fro. They left the canoas when the fight ranged down to the beach. They ran to save the plate from the sands, to snatch the loot from under the feet of the fighters. They shrieked, with tears in their eyes, to the fighters. They struck at them with fists and guns and candlesticks, telling them to save the loot, damn them, save this precious gear, never mind the Dagoes. The fighters struck back at them, clubbing their guns. That was the end of the fighting. The ranks broke. Fighters, drunkards, boat-guard, all the wreck of the force, were jumbled in a mob among the boats, knee-deep in water. Margaret, Tucket, and a few more, managed to keep clear of the mob, and fired at the sallyport as the Spaniards pressed through to end them. Tucket’s mate cooly filled their pockets with cartridges, helping himself from the men about him. Two canoas upset; a third, with only three men in her, drew clear and pulled for the ships. Spaniards were on the walls above them, firing into them from the platform. The dead and dying men were beaten down and stamped on by the herd of wild beasts in the water. Margaret was careless how it ended for him. He had no wish to live. He felt only the horror of having mixed with men like these, of having led them, of having soiled his honour for ever with them. His gun was shattered with a bullet; the wound in his shoulder had broken out again; he could feel his shirt, sized with blood gluing to his skin. He drew his sword, and waited, looking at the walls, watching the heads of the Spaniards showing in glimpses among the smoke. As he looked there came a rush above him. A yard of the wall shattered into dust with a burst. Cammock had opened on the town with his broadside. That saved them.

He was in the water still. Some loaded canoas were pulling clear. The last canoas were loading. A dozen steady men, calmed by the gun-fire, were covering the retreat. One by one they climbed into the canoas, firing over the gunwales, standing up to fire, anxious to have the last word. A canoa which had pulled clear backed up to Margaret, and a voice shouted in his ear. Looking round, he saw that it was Pain, a grimed and bloody scarecrow, still savage with drink.

“You Portuguese get,” the drunkard screamed. “You called me down just now. Did you, by God. You junk-laid carajo. Now I’m even. See?” He swung his knobbed pistol on to Margaret’s brow with a smash, knocking him senseless. “Give way,” he shouted. “Give way. That’s what I give to college gents what gets gay with Captain Pain.”

When Margaret recovered consciousness he was in the last canoa, a hundred yards from the shore. One of the Indians was mopping his brow with water. Tucket, who was steering, was uncorking a rum-flask with his teeth.

“You’ll be all right,” Tucket said. “Take a rinse of this.”

“I’m all right,” he answered, with a little, hysterical laugh. “Where is that man? The man who hit me?”

“Gone aboard your ship,” said Tucket.

“My God,” he answered. “Give way then, quick.”

He sat up, fully roused, splashing water over his head. He felt ill and stupid; but the thought of possible danger to Olivia roused him. Looking back, he saw Tolu blazing above the palm-tree tops, the flames sucking at the forest, scorching the boughs. Looking forward, he saw the _Broken Heart_, with men struggling on her gangway amid the flash of pistols.

“Captain Pain,” Tucket said. “Up with her, boys.”

“I cain’t row no harder,” said one of the men petulantly, like a child about to cry. “I see old Jimmy shot, as I owed the dollar to. It ain’t my fault, cap.”

“If I put any more weight on,” said another rower, “this oar’ll go in the slings. It’s got a chewed slug through the service.”

Margaret noticed then, for the first time, that the canoa had a foot of water in her. There were seven men in her. Tucket, himself, an Indian, and four rowers, all of them wounded.

“Let me take an oar,” he said. “Give me your oar, bowman. You’re hit.”

“I ain’t goin’ to lay up,” the bowman answered. “A sailor don’t lay up, nor he don’t take medicine, not till he’s dying, and then he don’t need to.”

“Let me double-bank the stroke then.”

“You stay still,” Tucket said. “You been as near it as most. We’re the last canoa. D’ye know what that means? We five got an upset boat and righted her. The Spaniards were riding after us finishing the wounded. Robin there, the Indian, saved you. He swam a matter of thirty yards with you before we picked him up. Then we’d to lie-to and bale her out before she sank, with the Dagoes blazing hell at us. As it is, we’re only crawling.”

“Robin,” said Margaret, “I shall tell Don Toro to call you by my name.”

The Indian sucked in his golden nose-plate, and cringed upon his hams, grinning. He was the only happy man in the force, this Indian “sin razon.” Tucket added to his happiness by hailing him with his new name, in his own speech of San Blas pigeon, a jumble of Spanish and Indian, spoken as English.

“You Captain Margaret now, Robin. Sabe? You Capitano. Capitano sobre tula guannah anivego. Mamaubah. Eh? Shennorung Capitano. Muchas mujercillas. Eh?”

Five hundred yards further on the rowers had to rest. They splashed themselves with water, took a drink of spirits, and lay back in the stern-sheets. They were worn out. Margaret was worn out, too. He had no strength left in him. He lay back, dully, watching the ship; noting, though with no intellectual comprehension, an array of men passing down the gangway, making a great noise. It was still, after the roar of the battle. The cries and oaths came down the wind to him, clearly, across the water. He saw three long canoas, full of men, pull clear from the ship’s side, with one man, not very big, standing in the sternsheets of the largest, shrilly cursing at the ship. “That’s my note,” were the only words which he could catch. “That’s my note.” He wondered whose note and what note it could be. But his head was reeling; he didn’t really care.

“There’s a woman in the canoa there,” said one of the rowers.

“My God,” he said, rousing up, as the beaten boxer rises, though spent, at his second’s cheer. “It’s not Mrs. Stukeley? It’s not Mrs. Stukeley?”

“No, sir,” said a rower. “The other lady.”

“Yes,” he said, looking intently. “The other. Mrs. Inigo. What’s happened?”

“Pain’s got your crew,” Tucket answered. “He’s leaving you to the Spaniards.”

Dully, as they passed about the rum-flask, they saw the boats draw up to Pain’s ship. They saw sail made upon her, the sprit-sail for casting, the topgallant-sails in the buntlines. Soon she was under way, lying over to the breeze, sailing a point or two free, bound past the Mestizos to the southward. Her men, gathered on her poop to hoist the mizen, cursed the _Broken Heart_ from the taffrail, firing a volley of pistols at her in farewell. Two of the three sloops sailed at the same time. As they passed away, crowding all sail, foaming at the bows with their eight-knot rush, Margaret heard the chanties at the halliards, a broken music, coming in the gusts of the wind.

Tucket took one of the oars, and sat at the thwart wearily, searching for a helper among the sternsheets. Captain Margaret, the Indian, could not row. The other five were exhausted. “Boys,” he said, “if we don’t get a gait on us, we’ll be sunstruck. We’re losing way, too. The breeze is setting us ashore.”

Margaret rose up wearily, like a man in a dream, and sat down to row at the thwart. They pulled a ragged stroke together. They were too tired to do much. They pulled a few strokes, and paused, to look round. Then pulled again painfully and again paused. One of the men took up a pistol and fired into the air. “We’ll never make it,” he said. He fired again and again, till some one in the ship caught sight of them and fired in reply. A boat manned by half a dozen men put off to them, veering out line astern, so that those aboard might heave them in at the capstan. Cammock and Perrin were two of the rowers, the only two who could pull an oar; the negro steward steered. The rest of them rowed like marines on pay-day going through the platoon. The wounded and weary smiled to see them; they had never seen such rowing. Slowly they drew up. Margaret saw Perrin and Cammock glancing over their shoulders at him. They cheered and waved when they saw him. He waved his unhurt arm to them. The canoa swung round and backed alongside. Cammock, laying in his oar, shifted his towing-line to the bow, and bent to it the painter of Tucket’s canoa, so that the boats might tow together. “Let your oars swing fore and aft, boys,” he said. He lifted his voice, and yelled to the ship to heave in. “Well, sir,” he said, coming aft alongside Margaret. “And how are you? I’m glad to see you alive. The men said you were killed.”

“I’m all right,” he said. “But we had. We had enough, over there. What has happened in the ship?”

“Well, sir,” said Cammock. “Pain’s gone off with most of what were left to us. That’s what happened.”

“Tell me,” Margaret said. “How was it?”

“I was on deck with Mr. Perrin till the last canoas were putting off,” Cammock answered. “We’d been working the guns. We saw there was rather a mess. Then the doctor sends for us two to help him take off Jowett’s leg. So we went into the wardroom, where he was working. We heard the boats come alongside, and Pain lashing out like a chocalatto-north; so when we got the arteries fast, and Jowett in a cot, we ran on deck to see if you were safe and to see what the row was. They’d been making enough row to caulk a flagship. That was too late, then. Pain had been saying that you were dead, that you’d spoiled the show and got a hundred of ’em killed. God knows what he hadn’t said. More’n half of them were drunk. Our lot had been up all night. So by the time we got on deck they were bundling their bags into the canoas. There was that Fraser fellow going down the gangway with one of our guns. I knocked him back where he belonged. Then they began to fire. I’ll show you my hat when we get aboard. Then they tried to rush the gangway. So I cut the fall, and spilled ’em off it. We’d a lively fight for a few minutes. Pain and Ackett’s lots (Ackett’s lot weren’t so bad) went off then. It was them really kept Pain back a bit. They said they’d play hell with Springer’s Key for me. Ackett’s lot said I’d better stand in with them. They said they’d seen you corpsed on the beach.”

“He wasn’t far off it,” Tucket said. “But for this capitano here.”

“Mrs. Inigo went off with Iles,” said Perrin. “They’ve gone with Pain and the rest.”

“The rest. The rest. What rest? We must have lost. Oh, my God,” said Margaret weakly. “We must have lost half. Was any roll called?”

“No,” said Perrin. “Twelve of your men went to your sloop, Captain Tucket, after bringing off some wounded. They said there was hell to pay ashore, so they stayed here. That was before the attack. And you’ve five more here; seventeen that makes, besides your ship-keepers.”

“We’ve got eleven left,” Cammock said, “besides nineteen wounded and the doctor. Not counting them. Tucket, we got thirty-nine able-bodied between us. Twenty-four of them yours.”

“By the way, I’ve got your maps, Cammock,” Margaret said. “Here they are. I’m sorry they’re so wet. I fell in the sea coming off.”

Cammock took the maps with a groan. “Thank you very much, sir,” he said. “But I don’t much value the maps, though, when I think of what’s happened.”

“It must have been hell,” said Perrin.

“Yes,” Margaret answered. “It was hell.”

“Why didn’t Pain take the ship?” Perrin asked. “That’s what puzzles me.”

“Afraid you’d government friends, sir. Besides. He thought if he took your men the Dagoes’d get you.”

Very slowly the men at the capstan walked the canoas to the side. Margaret stood on his own deck again, asking himself how many years had gone since he last stood there. The guns were cast loose. Round shot, fallen from the garlands, rolled to and fro as the ship rolled. The decks were littered with wads. Smears, as of lamp-black, showed where the gun-sponges had been dropped. The hammock-nettings were fire-pocked and filthy. There were marks of blood on the coamings, where wounded men had lain, waiting to be carried below.

“Charles,” said Perrin, “you come to the cabin and lie down. I’ll fetch Olivia to you. She’s with the wounded. What about Stukeley?”

“He’s dead, Edward. He died of yellow fever this morning. I buried him.”

“My God. Dead?”

“Yes. He was married there.”

“He deserted then, that time?”

“Yes.”

“And so he’s dead. The dead are.”

“The dead are our only links with God, I think,” Margaret said gravely. “I’ve been in hell to-day, Edward. In hell. In hell.”

He lay down on the window-seat in the cabin, where Stukeley had so often lain. The breeze had swung the ship head to sea. He had only to turn his head to see the fire of Tolu, burning below its pillar of cloud. The sea-wall spurted with smoke at intervals. The flashes were very white and bright, not like the smoke of firelocks. Cammock came in to him with a mess of cold poultice for his head.

“We’re getting under way, sir,” he said. “The Dagoes are blowing the spikes out of their guns. They’ll be firing soon. We’re cutting our cable, sir. We haven’t strength to weigh. Tucket the same. Mrs. Stukeley is coming to you, sir. I told her you were hurt. She wants you not to get up, sir.”

He then went away. By and by Olivia entered.

“Don’t get up, Charles,” she said. “Oh. Don’t get up.”

He raised himself to greet her, looking at her sadly. She came up to him and took his hand, and sat at his side.

“Olivia,” he said gently. “Olivia, I bring another sorrow for you. Your husband is dead, Olivia. He died this morning.”

“Yes,” she answered quietly. “I knew he would be dead.”

He tried to read her thought; but his head was stupid with pain; he could not. He saw only the calm, pale face with that quality of mystery upon it which is upon all beauty.

“I feel for your sorrow,” he stammered.

“Yes, Charles,” she answered. “You feel for my sorrow, I know.”

“Olivia,” he said, “would it pain you too much to hear. To hear about it?”

“You ought not to be talking with your wound, Charles.”

“I must tell you, Olivia. If you can bear it. It may be harder to-morrow.”

“Tell me then,” she said. “If you feel. If you wish. I am quite calm, Charles. Tell me everything.”

“He died of yellow fever, Olivia. In the Governor’s house there. The tall house above the bastion there.”

“I can’t look, Charles. Don’t tell me where. I’m. Yes?”

“He was ill for four days,” Margaret continued. “They thought he was getting better yesterday.”

“They, Charles? Who were ‘they’?”

“The Governor and a priest, Olivia.”

“He was in the Governor’s house,” she said. “As a friend?”

“A secretary there.” His mouth had grown very dry; it was hard to answer these questions.

“Then he stole the book of maps, Charles?”

“Yes.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes. I found it.”

“Was there fighting? Fighting in the town? Was he alone when he died?”

“He died before the fighting began. An hour or two before.”

“Who was with him, Charles?”

“A priest was with him.”

“A Roman Catholic priest?”

“Yes. I found the priest in the room with him. The priest had attended him. At the end.”

“He had become a Roman Catholic?”

“Yes, Olivia.”

“I want to picture it, Charles. Was there fighting in the town when you. When you found him?”

“There was a little firing. But the men were at breakfast. I heard a few shots. Distant shots. So. So I left the men. And West and I made a grave. We buried him there, Olivia. The priest. There was a service.”

“And then. What happened then, Charles?”

“I picked these rosebuds, and this pebble, Olivia. From the grave. For you.”

The rosebuds were crushed and dropping. She took them in the hollow of her hand. There was a grace in all that she did. The holding out of her delicate palm was beautiful; the movement showed curiously her exquisite refinement; it was as though she had said some beautiful thing; her mind showed in it. She took the relics, looking not at them, but at Charles, her eyes swimming with tears, her dear mind wild with tears.

“Thank you,” she said, on a sob. “You planted the roses, Charles? You thought of it.”

He did not answer. He turned his head, to look out over Tolu. The ship was moving slowly, heading out over the gulf; the fiery town was dwindling; the wake whirled pale bubbles about the rudder.

“I think no other man would have thought of it,” she said quietly.

“Ah,” he said, sighing.

“Charles,” she said, “tell me now, will you. That’s over. That part. What happened in the town?”

“The men got drunk, Olivia, and set the town on fire. They sacked the place. When I came back to the Plaza. Oh, I can’t. I can’t.”

“You sent off the wounded, then, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“I helped them, down in the ward-room. Oh, poor fellows. I asked them about the battle. I think I’ve. I think, Charles, I’ve come very near to the world in these last days. They told me a little. Then I heard firing. We were busy below, with a sheet over the ports to keep out the sun. Some of them are dreadfully hurt. I couldn’t see what was happening. But I knew you were attacked. Then the cannon overhead began. The ship shook. Then a wounded man came down. He said you were dead, Charles. It was like the end of everything.”

“It was, Olivia,” he said.

“I know now, Charles, what war is.”

“You didn’t see that water,” he answered. “Oh, not that water. My act and deed. All of it. All of it by me. And there was a girl in the Plaza. I’m disgraced. Oh, I shall never. It’s all over. All over after to-day.”

“No, Charles. Don’t say that. You. At Springer’s Key. You can begin again there. With better men.”

“Springer’s Key will be a failure, too,” he said bitterly. “Oh, Olivia,” he added, going off into an hysterical laugh, “that water gets on my nerves. There were two upset boats, and they can’t right them.”

“Charles,” she said, frightened. “You’re hurt. You’re hit again.”

“I think my old wound has broken out,” he said.

“Lie down,” she answered, rising swiftly, to lay the relics on the table. “I’ll see to it at once. Why didn’t I think?”

“I’ll get Perrin,” he said. “Don’t you. You mustn’t. Oh, Olivia, you’ve enough without me.”

She ripped the coat of soiled linen with the scissors in her chatelaine. The old negro, coming in with chocolate, brought hot water for her. Together they dressed the wound with balsam and pitoma leaf, binding it with Indian cotton. The steward brought in fruit and bread. They ate and drank together, mechanically, not as though they wanted food.

“Olivia,” Margaret said, “you are in great sorrow. Some of it, Olivia, perhaps all of it, is due to me. I want you. I want you to feel that I feel for you. Feel deeply. Oh, my God. I’m sorry for you. You poor woman.”

“Charles,” she said, “you mustn’t think. You’ve no right. You mustn’t think that. That what has happened was due to you. Don’t, Charles. You won’t, I know. I see too clearly what happened. I see your mind, Charles, all along. I understand.” She knelt very swiftly and kissed his hand. “There,” she said, very white. “I understand.”

Margaret closed his eyes, then looked at a gleam of flame far distant, and at the blue band on the bows of Tucket’s sloop, plunging the sea into milk within hail of him.

“You were right, Olivia,” he said, in a shaking voice. “I shall never reap my plantations yonder.”

“No,” she answered. “Nor I.”

There was silence between them for a little while.

“Charles,” she added, “we both had Darien schemes.”

“Yes, Olivia.”

“They came to nothing. Because. There. We were too wild to see what, what we were building with.”

“Yes, Olivia. And you reap sorrow. And I dishonour.”

“Not that, Charles. We reap the world.”

“Ah no, Olivia. This is the end of everything. For me it is.”

“No, Charles,” she said. “We were living in one little corner of our hearts, you and I. In fool’s paradises. We were prisoners. This is not the end. We only begin here.”

He sighed, thinking of the shame of the morning’s work in Tolu. “My father’s sword,” he thought. “In that cause.”

“Charles,” she asked, “haven’t you. Something more to tell me?”

He thought for a moment, dully, wondering in his blurred brain if she wished to hear more of the battle.

“No,” he said. “No. That is the end.”

She stood up, facing him, her great eyes looking down on him.

“I must go now to the wounded,” she said softly. “Edward and the doctor will be wanting me. God bless you, Charles.”

“God bless you, Olivia. And comfort you.”

Before she left the cabin she turned and spoke again.

“He was married, Charles,” she said. “You never told me that.”

“Yes, Olivia, he was married.”

“I knew that, Charles. I saw him so clearly. With a woman with a cruel face. Oh, I knew it. It was generous of you not to tell me. But I knew all the time.”

Late that night, in the darkened cabin, Olivia leaned upon the port-sill, looking out over the rudder eddies, as they spun away in fire rings, brightening and dying. She propped the cushions at her back, so that she might rest her head. The nightmare of the past was ashes to her. That evil fire had burned out, as Tolu had burned out. The past and Tolu lay smouldering together somewhere, beyond Fuerte there, beyond the Mestizos. The embers lay red there, crusted in ash.

She had come to see clearly in the pain of her sorrow. She saw her life laid bare and judged. She saw the moral values of things. Great emotions are our high tides. They brim our natures, as a tide brims the flood-marks, bringing strangeness out of the sea, wild birds and amber. She had relics in her hand; rosebuds and a pebble, “feathers and dust.” The rosebuds had spilled their petals. She looked at them there, turning them over with her fingers, holding them to the open port to see them. There was no moon; but the great stars gave the night a kind of glimmering clearness. The sea heaved silvery with star-tracks. Fish broke the water to flame. The scutter of a settling sea-bird made a path of bright scales a few yards from her. She laid the relics on the port-sill, near the open window. Very gently she pushed the pebble into the water, leaning forward to see the gleam of its fall. One by one she pushed the rosebuds over, till they were all gone too. She watched the petals float away into the wake, chased by the sea-birds. They were out of sight in a moment, but the gulls mewed as they quarrelled over them, voices in the darkness, crying in the air aloft. Olivia leaned there, looking after them, for many minutes. Then she drew close the window and covered her eyes with her hands.

It took them five days to win back to the Samballoes. They entered Springer’s Drive a little before noon, eagerly looking out towards the anchorage. No ships lay there, no guns greeted them from the fort. Margaret and Cammock, walking the poop together, knew that Pain had been before them. A thin expanse of smoke wavered and drifted in films among the trees. When it drove down into the palms, after rising above their level, it scattered the macaws, making them cry out. The flagstaff lay prone, like a painted finger, pointing down the spit to the sea. Tucket’s sloop was fifty yards ahead of the ship, plunging in a smother. There was a cockling sea that morning, the reefs were running white, they gleamed milky for fifty yards about them. There was no other sign of life about the island. The smoke was so thin that it was like mist. The beach, which had so lately been thronged, was busy now with crabs, which scuttled and sidled, tearing at the manchineel trees. A wounded man limped down the sand and waved to them. Margaret, going in in his boat, saw that it was the seaman West.

“I been here two days, sir,” he said, “waiting for you. I been living on sapadillies. There been awful times, sir.”

“What has happened, man?”

“I came from the town, Tolu town, in one of the sloops, sir,” the man answered. “The _Lively_, as they called her. When we come here, Captain Pain got all the men you left, all the guard like, to sign on with him. Then he set the town on fire, and scoffed all your gear, the guns and powder and that. So I got away and hid in the wood. I was afraid they want me to join ’em, or put a knife into me. Then I saw ’em flog that Don Toro, and two other Indians. He flog ’em on the beach, and sent ’em back to the Main, sir. He said that would put all them Indians off giving you a hand in the future.”

“What a devil the man must be,” Margaret said.

“So I stayed hidden, sir, ever since, hoping no Indians would come over and find me.”

“So that’s the end,” said Margaret to himself. He would not go ashore there. He could see the ruins of his city, a mass of fallen earth, a heap of ashes, a sprouting crop blasted. He would never set foot there again. That dream had ended like the other, in savagery, in waste, in cruelty. He would let it end. The fallen gabions of the fort would soon be tangled with grasses. In three months there would be shrubs on the city site. The key would be jungle again, the Indians would be savage again, the privateers would be plundering vagabonds again. The dream was over. All that he could do now was to proceed to Jamaica, to sell his goods there, before sailing for England, a beaten man, threatened by the law.

Tucket’s men helped his crew to fill fresh water. Tucket offered to take seven of the slightly wounded men in his ship in exchange for five unhurt men from his own crew. As the men were willing to exchange, this brought the _Broken Heart’s_ complement to twenty men; enough, at a strain, for the passage to Jamaica, if no enemy threatened and no storm arose. When the water had been filled, and the manger stacked with wood, the men gathered stores of fruit. They were ready to sail then. Margaret gave the Indian Robin enough goods to make him a chief in his own land. He made gifts to all of Tucket’s crew. To Tucket himself he gave a pair of pistols, choice weapons, made by the best artist in Paris. Tucket asked for his address, in writing.

“I shall come and look you up, one day,” he said, as he put the paper in his pocket. “I shall be coming home to set up dyer. We’ll have a great yarn, that day.”

“I shall expect you,” Margaret said. “You shall dye for me. But won’t you come home now, captain? With me?”

“No, sir,” he answered. “I want to get that green the Indians get. Then I’ll come home.”

“I’m sorry,” Margaret said. “Good-bye, then, Captain Tucket. I wonder if we shall ever meet again.”

“Well. We met. Haven’t we? We neither of us expected to.”

“Good-bye, then. Let me hear from you, if a ship is going home from here?”

“I will, indeed, sir. So long. So long, Lion.”

“So long,” said Cammock.

They were under way again, close-hauled to the breeze, going out of Springer’s Drive to the east of Caobos. All the Holandès keys were roaring with surf. The palms were bending. The smoke from the key astern trailed in a faint streamer towards the Grullos. That was the last picture which Margaret formed of the keys. The sun bright, the palms lashing, the noise of the surf like a battle, the welter of the surf like milk on the reefs. Tucket was in his sloop now, with all hands gathered on deck, their faces turned to him. The men of the _Broken Heart_ were gathered at the hammock nettings. Margaret thought of the sadness of parting. Two men had shaken hands only a moment before. Now there was this gulf of sea between them. To-morrow they would be many miles apart; and who knew whether they would ever meet again, for all their wandering.

The bells of the ships rang out together, a furious peal. Cammock, standing on a gun, took off his hat, and called for three cheers for the sloop. The sloop’s men cheered the ship. The men of the _Broken Heart_ answered with a single cheer. The bells rang out again, the colours dipped, the guns thundered, startling the pelicans. Tucket had turned away now, to help to secure his guns. His helmsman let the sloop go off three points. She was slipping fast away now, bound towards Zambo-Gandi. Now the figures of the men could no longer be recognized. She was hidden behind the palms of Puyadas. Tucket was gone. Margaret never saw him again.

“That breaks the neck of that,” said Cammock. “All gone, main-topgallant yard?”

“All gone, main-topgallant yard, sir.”

“Then hoist away.”

Under all sail the _Broken Heart_ swayed seawards, treading down the rollers, creaming a track across the sea, dark now in its blueness, with crinkling wind-ruffles. When the night fell, shutting out the Main, and the stars climbed out, solemn and golden, she was in the strength of the trade, rolling to the northward, circled by the gleams of dolphins, hurrying in sudden fires.

After dark that night Margaret sat on the locker-top, looking at the wake, as it shone below him about the rudder. He was thinking over his manifold failure, feeling disgraced and stained, a defeated, broken man. Olivia entered quietly from the alleyway. He only felt her enter. There was no light in the cabin. The steward was busy with the wounded.

“Is that you, Olivia?” he asked, knowing that it was she. He felt in his heart the gladness which her presence always gave to him. Life could always be noble, he thought, with that beautiful woman in the world.

“Yes, Charles,” she answered. “I’ve been with the wounded. They’re better. How are your wounds?”

“Better, thanks. They’re always better at night.”

She drew up a chair and sat down beside him.

“Charles,” she said, “I want you not to brood. Not to grieve. That’s all over, Charles.”

“Not the dishonour,” he said. “That will never be over.”

“There is no dishonour, Charles. You failed. The only glory is failure. All artists fail. But one sees what they saw. You see that in their failure.”

“Ah. Sometimes.”

“I see that in yours, Charles.”

“Thank you, Olivia.”

“I shall always see that, Charles, when I see you.”

“My city.”

“Yes. Your city, Charles.”

“It was for you, Olivia. My city.”

“I am proud,” she said humbly.

“It failed, Olivia. It’s in ruins. Yonder.”

“Charles,” she said, kneeling, taking both his hands, hiding her face against him, “it is in my heart. That city. Our city.”

She trembled against him, drawing her breath. He held her with his unhurt arm, waiting till the dear face would lift, pale in that darkness, to the laying of the gold foundation.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The Grant Richards edition (London, 1908) was consulted for most of the changes listed below.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ alleyway/alley-way, gold dust/gold-dust, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Formatting: abandon the use of drop-caps.

Punctuation: quotation mark pairings/nestings and missing commas.

[Chapter III]

Change “Hands up anchor, _bosum_.” to _bosun_.

“looking aloft at the boy on the _maintopgallantyard_” to _maintopgallant yard_.

“_Whereever_ that vague perfume lingers, something of the old” to _Wherever_.

[Chapter V]

“We’ll, go on with this at Accomac, Stukeley.” delete first comma.

“That man up on the yard there was once a slave in _Virgina_” to _Virginia_.

[Chapter VI]

(“It’ll annoy old _Brandy-face_,” he thought.) to _Brandyface_.

“The long chase-guns were trained _athwart-ships_” to _athwartships_.

“The table was rimmed with a _patten_ to keep the plates from falling” to _batten_.

[Chapter IX]

“and so they lose, either way, But you know, Olivia, you are” change second comma to a period.

“so that the _dicussion_ came to an end before it had well begun” to _discussion_.

[Chapter XI]

“Margaret knocked the lance aside with _difficultly_” to _difficulty_.

[Chapter XII]

(said another rower, “this _oar’l_ go in the slings.) to _oar’ll_.

“As they _pased_ away, crowding all sail, foaming at the bows” to _passed_.

[End of text]