Chapter XXVII: The Voyage

‘The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the light-house top.’

A sky of liquid blue freighted with lazy argosies of clouds; the green lift of the Hoe under, like England on its feet to cry them God speed; drums and fiddles sounding on the quay; sunshine and merriment and colour in infinite variety coming up from the water and going down to it; beyond all, the ships themselves, resplendent painted craft, beflagged and picture-sailed, webbed with glistening shrouds, their fighting tops streaming blood-red pennons, like giant beacons alive with tongues of flame, their prows and side galleries minutely carved and frosted with gilding, coats of arms emblazoned on their poops, eyes of excitement appearing even in their port-holes, where each gun seemed to have thrust up its own little window to peep forth and see what all the fun was about--so, to such views and accompaniments, was brazen Adventure launched in Brion’s day, and so had been his. He had found it all very right and inspiring. He could have seen no reason in the world why serious business should go clothed in drab raiment, as if it feared the issue. Colour had its definite value in the scheme of things, and limbs were no less sturdy nor hearts strong because silk and velvet covered them. There was tough oak under the gilding, as there was invincible valour under the bright feathers and doublets, the shining morions and breastplates. Enterprise, it was felt, lost nothing in a brave send-off, nor would lose again, for all that the ships which now weighed so gallantly should come staggering back to their moorings, after long months of adventure, soiled, battered, befouled, stripped to the very bedrock of their unconquerable stubbornness.

So--ships and music and cheering crowds and dancing water and blue sky and green hills--Brion had seen the picture, and gone down into it and become part of it, until the world was suddenly moving before his eyes, and he had discovered that it was not it that was leaving him but he it. It sounds simple, but it was a wonderful discovery: so also was that which shortly presented himself to himself as something immeasurably small and insignificant, the result of a first experience on the open sea. On land he had had his own little place, which he could always shift at will: here his will was the will of the mutable waters which bore him helpless on their surface. The feeling had a little shocked him in its first realisation; but he had quickly come to appreciate it at its better worth. He had nothing any longer to fret or worry him, because it was quite useless to fret or feel anxiety about anything. As an individual responsible to himself for his actions he had ceased to count; the whole business of himself had been taken over by Destiny. All sense of care seemed to slip away wonderfully under that conviction, he felt in a manner the joy of one suddenly disembodied.

They weighed and sailed on that bright morning of the 9th April, seven of them in all, to wit the _Tiger_ of 140 tons, which was the Admiral’s ship, the _Roebuck_, a fly-boat of like burden, but built for speed and narrow waters, the _Lion_ of 100 tons, the _Elizabeth_ of 50, and a barque, the _Dorothy_, with a couple of small pinnaces for light work. Strictly, it was Sir Walter’s most personal adventure, he chiefly financing it and supplying the majority of the craft; but for reasons already given he did not accompany his own enterprise, though he was there to cheer it on its way. He had come down into that part of the county to attend the wedding of the Mayor of Plymouth--no less a man than the great Francis Drake himself, who had just seized an interval in his abounding duties to marry, for his second wife, the young Mistress Sydenham, heiress to a knightly Somersetshire family--and had taken advantage of his proximity to Plymouth to kill two birds with one stone. He had a great confidence in his brother-in-law, Sir Richard Grenville, to whom he had deputed the command of the expedition, and bade Brion observe him for his excellences as a navigator and a leader of men combined, which made him the ideal character for such an undertaking. All which Brion was quite ready to believe, without unduly criticizing the qualities which made a man what he was; and, indeed, if Sir Richard’s tongue was rough to brutality, he kept the smooth side of it in a quite wonderful way for the young man, for whom he seemed to entertain a curious liking, the first of which he showed by nominating both him and Clerivault to a berth on his own flag-ship, which was a roomy vessel for those days, and well appointed, though lacking in much of the luxury which was an ostentation with some of the famous captains of the time. Even the incomparable Drake had not been guiltless of it, and the Admiral used to inveigh with a fierce scorn against the silver-engraved plate, and the demulcent lutes and violins, and the silken cushions and stifling perfumes with which that mighty sailor had thought fit to furnish his cabin in the _Pelican_. There were no perfumes on the _Tiger_, save of burning gunpowder; but sharp claws and fierce colouring, as was martial and fitting. She carried ten guns a side, and two on her upper deck, and was ready for her spring at any time, though not an ounce of silver adorned either her table or her musket-locks. Music there might be in moderation, since you could not keep natural songsters from singing; but Grenville would have none of it in his own quarters, not even on the offer of young Anthony Russe, who was a gentleman adventurer like Brion, and had a voice like a merry bird’s. He was a captivating young fellow, was this Anthony, one of the few whom Brion had already met in London, and the two soon attached themselves to one another and became fast friends. Attachment, indeed, was a common condition of that life, for what with the colonists, who numbered 108 males in all, and with the crews, and supervisors, and fighting men, the vessels had all that they could pack, though the Admiral’s ship was less crowded than the others. But, fortunately for comfort, the voyage was destined to be, almost from start to finish, a prosperous one, and the only sharp storm they encountered was early met with and soon weathered. They caught it in the Bay of Portugal, which they had reached in three days from the start with a fair following wind, and Brion and Master Anthony were sick and sorry youths until they had rendered unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar’s, and emerged vacant but happy from that chastening ordeal. Thereafter a smooth run of a couple of days brought them to the Canaries, whence they shaped their course south-west for the little Antilles and the island of Dominica, which they made on the seventh of May, after a happy but eventless passage across the Atlantic.

All this, the sights and sounds, the abounding freedom of the life, the foreign ports and foreign people, was to Brion, after the somewhat narrow restrictions of his custom, an incessant novelty and delight. Only one thing so far was wanting to his and to the general content--they had encountered no Spaniard with whom to pick a quarrel on any or no terms, and plain sailing, though pleasant enough in itself, was mere mariners’ satisfaction without that crowning grace to spice it.

This shocking lack of trouble was a subject for discussion one evening between the two young gentlemen, when the fleet had just sailed from Dominica on a north-westerly course. They sat high on the poop-deck where the great horn lanterns were, and in dolefully sarcastic vein acclaimed the perfections of the peace which surrounded them. It was a heavenly evening, indeed; born of the dreams of the south sea, whose bosom, like the bosom of the sleeping beauty, placidly rose and fell to her ‘tender-taken breath’: a dream of crystal air and golden water; of a sun hanging like a bubble of blown amber above the Western horizon; of a surface so still that the ships in their deep reflections seemed as if melting and dissolving into the placid fire which they rode, with scarce enough way on them to keep their steersmen awake. Brion and Master Anthony had supped exuberantly, and, after the way of youth under such circumstances, were in voluble mood. They had come up on deck to escape the reek of the confined cabin, where the Admiral’s company, professional and civilian, still hung about the table over their wine. Anthony had his lute with him, and thrummed it indifferently to extempore recitative or broken scraps of song.

‘“In December” (sang he) “when the days draw to be short,
After November, when the nights wax noisome and long;
As I past by a place privily at a port,
I saw one sit by himself making a song.”’

‘What about?’ said Brion.

‘About the beauties of a quiet life, to be sure,’ answered the musician. ‘Do you not thank your stars for them? I met our general this morning. “Sir,” says I, “we should be your grateful servants.” “For what?” says he. “For taking us from the fighting turmoil of our civil lives,” says I, “and showing us the blessings of a bloodless tranquillity.”’

‘And what did he answer?’

‘Why, I blush for him. He said that if I was looking for trouble he could accommodate me then and there. Poor little Tony!

“His last talk of trifles, who told with his tongue
That few were fast i’ the faith. I freyned that freak,
Whether he wanted wit, or some had done him wrong.
He said, he was little John Nobody, that durst not speak.”’

‘Well, are you not hard to please?’

‘Don’t ask me. I am little John Nobody that durst not speak.’

‘What is it you want?’

‘Never mind. I am little John Nobody that durst not speak.’

‘_Is_ it trouble?’

‘No, peace, of course. But then I am little John Nobody.

“When Captains Courageous, whom death could not daunt,
Did march to the siege of the City of Gaunt,
They mustred their soldiers by two and by three,
And the foremost in battle was Mary Ambree.”

But I durst not speak.’

A dark form came up the stairs, and stood lankly silhouetted against the glowing sky.

‘Is that you, Master Clerivault?’ asked the singer. ‘Is not this peace a lovely thing?’

‘A lovely thing, Sir.’

‘We are well rewarded in it for our enterprise?’

‘Very well rewarded, Sir.’

‘And, so it could last continually, we might count ourselves the very blest of Providence?’

‘God’s ’slid, Sir--I think so.’

‘Look you, Master Clerivault! is not that a Spanish sail under the sun?’

Clerivault spun round. Brion scrambled to his feet:--

‘Where, Tony--where, o’ God’s name?’

‘No, I was mistaken: it was a mosquito on my nose. But, how thankful we should be!’

Brion threw himself upon him and the two struggled and rolled on the deck together. Presently Tony emerged, and, sitting up dishevelled, blew out an eldritch shriek, at the moment that a party, coming from the cabin, set foot on the poop.

‘Who was that?’ said Grenville’s deep voice.

‘’Twas little Johnny Nobody,’ murmured the culprit.

‘O! it’s you, Master Russe,’ said the General. ‘Still looking for trouble?’

‘No, he has just found it, Sir Richard,’ said Brion. ‘A mosquito hath bit his nose.’

Grenville gave a gruff laugh:--

‘All that? By the token, a prick from a Spanish-pike should bring a cry from him to split our mainsail.’

But he liked the boy well enough, and could appreciate at its worth the spirit which chafed under such tame inaction.

Still the fine weather held, while they ran up the Leeward Islands under a halcyon sky, making for St John’s, in the Virgin group, where was reported to be a Spanish settlement. On the 10th May they dropped anchor under the green shores of a little island called Cotesa, a day’s run from St John’s, and there landed, rejoiced to stretch their cramped limbs, and spent the day in rest and pleasant feasting; whence, resuming their course on the 12th they reached St John’s itself, and coming to anchor in a small bay of the island, called the Bay of Mosquitos, at a falcon’s shot from the beach, prepared for the first time for a show of business. Here the best part of the company, going ashore, engaged to throw up a temporary fort, in view of any possible mischief which might be designed them, seeing the nature of their mission, and how the Spaniards, deeming themselves owners of the New World, might desire to nip in the bud any such invasion of their self-elected privileges. And here Brion got his first true estimate of the forceful and tyrannical character of their commander; for Sir Richard, the moment hard action was called for, neither spared nor considered his men at anything less than the utmost which by oaths and violence he could wring out of them. Despatch was necessary, and despatch he would have, even to the exhaustion in such tropic heat of many of the crew. But the result was he got his fort built timely--though much of the wood for it had to be felled and fetched on trucks from a point three miles and more inland--and all the while till it was finished not a Spaniard showed his face. It was set against the estuary of a shallow river which here ran into the sea, and, having its back to the ocean, was encompassed on its two remaining sides with thick woodland. And now, his fort once completed, Sir Richard began to put into effect a design of his, which was to fashion within its shelter yet a third pinnace out of the timber brought down; which was done in something over ten days, and fitted and launched.

During all this time, until the 24th of the month, on which day the company departed from the island, only desultory acquaintance with the Spanish settlers was made. On the 16th there appeared for the first time a party of eight of them, horsemen, who rode out of the woods, and halted at a quarter mile distance to survey the fort; but on ten shot of the Admiral’s force being detached to approach them, they wheeled and galloped away.

Six days later again a body numbering twenty mounted Spaniards appeared on the other side of the river; seeing whom Sir Richard despatched a score of footmen to oppose them, together with two mounted on a couple of horses which had been found and seized on the island. And these two were no other than our young gallants, to whom had been deputed the glad task of leadership in a possible fray.

‘Look for trouble, but invite it not,’ were Sir Richard’s sole directions; and the couple went off rejoicing, proud of the trust committed to them, and so far resolved, within discretion, not to abuse it. But at the very outset their hearts fell, for there were the Spaniards already showing a flag of truce, and making signs for a parley.

‘They will not fight,’ said Brion, ‘unless by our will.’

‘I am little Johnny Nobody, and in your hands,’ said Tony.

Two of the Spaniards rode out upon the sands, where the river ran thin and scattered, and Brion and his companion pricked over to meet them. They were typical Southerners, lean and hot-eyed as hawks, but lavish in the sort of courtly ceremonial which precedes a duel to the death with rapiers. One of them spoke quite good English, and it was he addressed himself to the strangers. He opened with elaborate salutations:--

‘Greetings, senores. We make you many welcome to St John’s.’

Brion thanked him, with a return of his courtesy.

‘We take your welcome in good part, Sir,’ said he.

‘Ah!’ said the Spaniard; ‘but not in the best part, since you come to fortify against us in our own land.’

‘It is the mosquitos we wanted to keep out,’ said Brion politely. ‘They are very fierce in this island of yours, Sir.’

Young Russe could not repress a small explosion; but the Spaniard remained as solemn as a church.

‘It is not well, senor,’ he said, ‘so to requite our hospitality.’

‘It is the first we have heard of it,’ said Brion. ‘May I ask, senor, does it extend to supplying us with some things of which we stand in need--fresh meat and water among others?’

‘If I say no, senor, you will seize these things by force, is it so?’

‘The answer, I am afraid, senor, is that we shall.’

The Spaniard considered gravely.

‘_Bien está_,’ he said at last. ‘We will supply you then all you want, and without delaying. I go, senor, to make the instant provision.’

He bowed profoundly, and drew on his rein.

‘Why wouldn’t the hidalgo fight?’ said Russe discontentedly as they rode back.

‘I wouldn’t answer for him yet,’ said Brion.

The General received their report with a grumph, which might have meant satisfaction or incredulity. He bided his time, it seemed. On the following day the new pinnace was launched; and the day after, having in the meanwhile heard or seen nothing of the Spaniards, he marched a considerable company some four miles into the country, to discover, if he might, the reason of the delay; when, failing to obtain any sort of report or satisfaction, out of revenge for the bad faith kept, he fired all the woods thereabouts--which Brion thought privily a mean and senseless action--and so returned to the fort, which he fired also, thereafter re-embarking all his force in preparation to sail the next morning, which was done.

And now, as if in truth Honour gave into his hands the means by which to retaliate on that abuse of her, about evening of the same day they fell in with a Spanish frigate, which, having approached cautiously, they discovered to be abandoned of her crew in a panic at the mere sight of the English flotilla, so that she fell an easy prize to the Admiral: and so was she scarce seized and manned when early in the following morning a second frigate was seen and overtaken, and surrendered without a blow, being found richly freighted, and with some passengers of account in her, who were presently fain to pay ransom in a good round sum for the privilege of their being set ashore on St John’s. Sir Richard despatched these to the island, in one of the new-taken vessels, under custody of Master Ralph Lane--who was the Governor appointed for the forthcoming colony--with orders to this his Lieutenant to proceed to Roxo Bay, on the south-west side, and thence procure salt, of which the fleet stood in need. Which, under the guidance of a Spanish pilot seized on the frigate, Master Lane successfully accomplished, landing on the sands, with a party of twenty men, and immediately entrenching himself about one of the salt-hills, from which he took as much as he required. While so at work a great troop of Spaniards, both horse and foot, came down above the shore as if to dispute the appropriation. But it seemed they durst not advance any further, but contented themselves with watching the spoliation at a distance, and making menacing gestures which counted for nothing. Yet were they in number more than two to one, and many of them mounted, which set Brion, who had been allowed, on his own earnest solicitation, to join this little subsidiary expedition, thinking of what it was that constituted a conquering race. An Englishman, he observed, dared in proportion as the odds were against him, while a Spaniard would dare nothing unless the odds were overwhelmingly in his favour.

He and his friend were by now in a state of high excitement over the turn of events, and looked from this time to taking nothing less than a ship a day. But in that, alas! they were doomed to disappointment; for, so it happened, only once more in all the voyage were they destined to encounter a Spanish vessel, and then to such sorrowful result as regarded Brion’s happiness that he would have given all the fortune of the past to avert this one blow, could he have foreseen it.

In the meantime, and lacking any signal adventure to recount, the record of the voyage must be condensed. Generally, so far as impressions were concerned, it was to the young traveller one glowing panorama of hot fertile lands and strange races; of aromatic foliage and splendid flowers and luscious fruits; of maize, millet, cassava, plantains, cocoa-nuts, mangoes, yams and pineapples; of game and fish in prodigious abundance; of tropical heats and the ugly sweltering things engendered of them--scorpions, and great toads and lizards, and the malignant mosquitos, which had signalised their departure from St John’s with such an attack in force as had completely routed the invaders, and sent them at the last flying for their ships as if the fourth plague of Egypt were let loose on them.

On the first day of June they came to the great island of Hispaniola, or Little Spain, and, coasting along its northern shore, cast anchor off Isabella, which was the seat of the Spanish settlement, and sent up courteously to notify the Governor of their arrival. Who, having received flattering reports of the General’s chivalry and hospitality to sundry of his countrymen who had been entertained by him, presently, in a day or two, came down to the shore with a score of his gentlemen, with their negroes and servants and a corpulent Spanish priest, all being ready to exchange amenities with the strangers, and to eschew as for the occasion the least thought of mistrust or hostility. And if, on the Spaniard’s part, that was to make a virtue of necessity, certainly they made it, and with a handsome grace and dignity which were all their own, not even being impaired by the sight of the prizes which lay off the shore in full view for any who might to remark. But gentleman fraternised with gentleman, and fellow with fellow, and harmony was the order of the day. The sailors built two spacious bowers of green branches, and thereunder entertained the Spaniards to the best the ships could afford; which the priest found so well, indeed, that under the influence of a ben-bowse, as the seamen called it, he offered to absolve every heretic of them all, and afterwards fell asleep with his head in a dish of custard. After the feast, the Spaniards, not to be outdone in civility, organised a hunt for their visitors, mounting such as would on good horses, and having a herd of white bulls driven down from the hills, from which they selected three that offered good sport. These then they chased for a space of three hours, when all were killed, whereafter the whole company went to rest and wine, well satisfied. An exchange of gifts followed, many handsome presents being bestowed on either side; and on the following day ensued the more serious business of barter, the Englishmen acquiring by way of truck or purchase a quantity of live-stock, besides sugar, ginger, pearls, and some bales of the tobacco then first coming into vogue.

So, with seeming goodwill, whatever secret passions underlay these courtesies, the last compliments were paid, and on the seventh of the month the fleet weighed and departed.

The next day nearly saw the end of the Admiral and some others, among whom were Brion and young Russe, with him. For having rowed in one of the pinnaces to a little island reported to contain seals, they were capsized, trying to land, in the heavy surf, and only escaped through the boat fortuitously righting itself at the critical moment. Thence, still keeping a north-westerly course, they touched at Caicos in the Bahamas, and afterwards at various small islands, until, on the 20th, they fell in with the main of Florida. Sailing therefrom up the coast, on the 23rd, the wind rising with a rough gray sea, they came to within an ace of being wrecked on the point known as Cape Fear, but more by good luck than good seamanship weathered the promontory, and ran to smooth anchorage in a little harbour beyond, which was so full of fish that the morning following, the wind and sea having abated in the interval, as many were caught in one tide as would have supplied all London for a week. And so, two days later, they sighted the land of North Carolina, as it was presently to be called, and running up in shoal water under slack sail to the island of Roanoke, which lay like a long reef or rampart to the main, cast anchor off a place called Wococon, and knew the first part of their business successfully accomplished.

The rest, from Brion’s point of view, appeared all a grotesque gallanty-show, in which the pieces and the action moved according to some fantastic law having no known relation to a man’s normal experiences. It was an absorbing, yet, somehow, an unearthly dream of expeditions made in the ships’ boats up steaming rivers to barbarous kraals miscalled towns; of oily brick-red skins clothed in hides like chasubles; of beads and wampum; of mahogany-faced warriors, and squaws with their long black hair bound in chaplets of white coral, and carcanets of pearls, sometimes, hanging from the lobes of their ears; of councils and calumets and pow-wows and tomtoms. The ostensible object of all the palaver was to flatter the local monarch, one Wingina, into suffering the settlement within his territory of a band of foreign interlopers, and so consolidating a sort of provisional agreement said to have been made with him by the Captains Amadas and Barlowe who had conducted the expedition of the year before. It was an early example, in fact, of the peaceful penetration which has not the least intention of taking no for an answer, and was characterised by all the blunders common to that state of mind. The force which was resolved to insist had not the wit to disguise itself, and at the first sign of opposition betrayed its real purpose. It happened in this way. The expedition inland in the boats, which were four in number, and all fully manned, armed, and victualled for a week’s trip, came by the so-called towns of Pomeiok, Aquascogok and Secotan, and was well entertained by the savages in all places. But it so happened that, at the second-named, a silver cup belonging to the Admiral was stolen by a redskin, and not being delivered to him, as he had demanded, on his return, Sir Richard, in his swift, relentless way, burned and spoiled the town and the crops standing about it, so that the place was made a waste and all its people fled. Now the savages had hitherto behaved with great forbearance and hospitality, so that hardly a day passed but what they had brought for the fleet offerings of fat bucks, conies, hares, fish, and divers gourds and fruits, and this was their return. What could they think, then, of the true meaning of this ‘peaceful penetration,’ but that it was the first insidious step towards their own ousting and perhaps extermination? The consequences were what any but a blunder-headed martinet might have foreseen. So long as the show of force remained to overawe them, the natives maintained an hypocritical attitude of friendliness and conciliation; the moment the same was withdrawn, they vented their spite and fury upon the colonists remaining, so starving and harassing them that the poor men were glad to seize an opportunity to escape at the end of a year, while some subsequent attempts by others to procure a footing in the land met with even worse disaster, all engaged in them being attacked by the savages and miserably slain, only their bones remaining stark on the beach to witness to their fate.

Brion, who with his friend and Clerivault was present at that deed of wanton destruction, had the sense and the humanity to deplore its folly as much as its wickedness.

‘It is not so,’ he said, ‘that we shall establish our lady’s fame for reason and sweet justice. He wrongs us as much as the land he misrepresents.’

‘We shall leave but footprints of sorrow where we came with palms of love,’ said Clerivault, in a melancholy voice. ‘May God forgive us!’

‘And these poor devils, the colonists,’ quoth Master Russe, ‘who will have to reap what we have sown.’

However, the mischief was done, and no talking could mend it. Its immediate effect, even, was to produce in the savages an increased show of deference and propitiation, of the sort wholly to deceive so poor a psychologist as the Admiral. He imagined them definitely cowed, and on that supposition acted with an arrogance which hitherto he had made shift to repress. The rest of the history of the expedition consisted of establishing the colonists in the land, with the stores and victuals brought for their accommodation; of cruisings and explorations up and down the coast; of interviews with the king’s brother, Grangino, and of one with Wingina himself, whom the Admiral, taking a strong escort with him, travelled to see in his own savage capital of Weapomeiok. Brion was not invited to this excursion; but he had plenty otherwise to engage and interest him in the way of divers sport on land and water, and of keenly observing and studying the habits and customs of the strange people among whom a curious fate had cast him.

So the time of their stay drew to an end, being from first to last two whole months while they lay and cruised off the coast; and on the 25th August the _Tiger_, much lightened, weighed anchor--the rest of the fleet having been sent on some twenty days ahead--and set her sails for home.