Part 25 (1/2)
Land! land! land! Yes, there it was, far away to the south and west, beside the setting sun, a long blue bar between the criolden sky Land at last, with fresh strea fruits, and free rooht be gold, and gems, and all the wealth of Ind Who knew? Why not? The old world of fact and prose lay thousands of miles behind them, and before them and around them was the realm of wonder and fable, of boundless hope and possibility Sickave God thanks; and all eyes and hands were stretched eagerly toward the far blue cloud, fading as the sun sank down, yet rising higher and broader as the shi+p rushed on before the rich trade-wind, which whispered lovingly round brow and sail, ”I am the faithful friend of those who dare!” ”Blow freshly, freshlier yet, thou good trade-wind, of whoels,breaths to the heirs of His salvation Blow freshlier yet, and save, if not me from death, yet her from worse than death Blow on, and land me at her feet, to call the lost lamb home, and die!”
So azed upon that first outlier of the New World which held his all His cheeks were thin and wasted, and the hectic spot on each glowed cri sun A few one; eray; and overhead, through the dark sapphire depths, the Moon and Venus reigned above the sea
”That should be Barbados, your worshi+p,” said Drew, theis far out, which, Heaven knows, it has no right to be, after such a passage, and God be praised”
”Barbados? I never heard of it”
”Very like, sir: but Yeo and I were here with Captain Drake, and I was here after, too, with poor Captain Barlow; and there is good harborage to the south and west of it, I remember”
”And neither Spaniard, cannibal, or other evil beast,” said Yeo ”A very garden of the Lord, sir, hid away in the seas, for an inheritance to those who love Hi it, if ever he had a chance”
”I recollect now,” said Amyas, ”some talk between him and poor Sir Huone thither instead of to Newfoundland!”
”Nay, then,” said Yeo, ”he is in bliss noith the Lord; and you would not have kept hily as he went, if he could have served his queen thereby But what say you, my masters? How can we do better than to spend a few days here, to get our sick round, before we make the Main, and set to our work?”
All approved the counsel except Frank, as silent
”Come, fellow-adventurer,” said Cary, ”we must have your voice too”
”To my impatience, Will,” said he, aside in a low voice, ”there is but one place on earth, and I as to fly thither: but the counsel is right I approve it”
So the verdict was announced, and received with a hearty cheer by the crew; and long beforethe southern shore of the island, and were feeling their way into the bay where Bridgeto stands All eyes were eagerly fixed on the loooded hills which slept in thestars; all nostrils drank greedily the fragrant air, which swept from the land, laden with the scent of a thousand flowers; all ears welcoe from the monotonous whisper and lap of the water, the hum of insects, the snore of the tree-toads, the plaintive notes of the shore-fohich fill a tropic night with noisy life
At last she stopped; at last the cable rattled through the hawsehole; and then, careless of the chance of lurking Spaniard or Carib, an instinctive cheer burst from every throat Poor fellows! A on shore at once, dark as it was, by re them that it wanted but two hours of day
”Never were two such long hours,” said one young lad, fidgeting up and down
”You never were in the Inquisition,” said Yeo, ”or you'd know better ho tiive God thanks you're where you are”
”I say, Gunner, be there goold to that island?”
”Never heard of none; and so much the better for it,” said Yeo, dryly
”But, I say, Gunner,” said a poor scurvy-stricken cripple, licking his lips, ”be there oranges and liood fruit down to the beach, thank the Lord There comes the dawn at last”
Up flushed the rose, up rushed the sun, and the level rays glittered on the smooth stems of the palm-trees, and threw rainbows across the foailded lonely uplands far ahere now standslines of pelicans went clanging out to sea; the hum of the insects hushed, and a thousand birds burst into jubilant song; a thin blue mist crept upward toward the inner downs, and vanished, leaving thelare; the land-breeze, which had blown fresh out to sea all night, died away into glassy calun
The sick were lifted over the side, and landed boat-load after boat-load on the beach, to stretch themselves in the shade of the palms; and in half-an-hour the whole creere scattered on the shore, except some dozen worthy men, who had volunteered to keep watch and ward on board till noon
And now the first instinctive cry of nature was for fruit! fruit! fruit! The poor lareedily the violet grapes of the creeping shore vine, and staining theirtheir lips with the prickly pears, in spite of Yeo's entreaties and warnings against the thorns Soet at the nuts, doing little thereby but blunt their hatchets; till Yeo and Drew, having mustered half-a-dozen reasonable men, went off inland, and returned in an hour laden with the dainties of that priuavas, and crowned ananas, queen of all the fruits, which they had found by hundreds on the broiling ledges of the low tufa-cliffs; and then all, sitting on the sandy turf, defiant of galliwasps and jackspaniards, and all the weapons of the insect host, partook of the equal banquet, while old blue land-crabs sat in their house-doors and brandished their fists in defiance at the invaders, and solemn cranes stood in the water on the shoals with their heads on one side, andit was since they had seen bipeds without feathers breaking the solitude of their isle
And Frank wandered up and down, silent, but rather in wonder than in sadness, while great Amyas walked after him, his mouth full of junipa-apples, and enacted the part of show air, as one who had seen the wonders already, and was above being astonished at the new!” said Frank, ed around us, even to the tiniest fly and flower; yet we the same, the saether sibylline and unintelligible, answered by: ”Look, Frank, that's a colibri You 've heard of colibris?”
Frank looked at the living ge, over soly to call its mate, and whirred and danced with it round and round the flower-starred bushes, flashi+ng fresh rainbows at every shi+fting of the lights
Frank watched solemnly awhile, and then: ”Qualis Natura formatrix, si talis formata? Oh my God, how fair must be Thy real world, if even Thy phantoms are so fair!”
”Phantohost, Frank, but a jolly little honey-sucker, with a ife, and children no bigger than peas, but yet solid greedy little fellows enough, I'll warrant”
”Not phantoood fellow, but in the sense of those who know the worthlessness of all below”
”I'll tell you what, brother Frank, you are a great deal wiser than me, I know; but I can't abide to see you turn up your nose as it were at God's good earth See now, God s; and never a one; and yet they were as pretty as they are now, ever since theof the world And why do you think God could have put them here, then, but to please Hiht of theh to please God, is good enough to please you and me”
”Your rebuke is just, dear old siive ht ht me no peace, I presume at moments, sinner that I am, to bethe trees of the garden, Amyas; and so e, and be content hat He sends Why should we long for the next world, before we are fit even for this one?”
”And in the h, at least here in Barbados”
”Do you believe,” asked Frank, trying to turn his own thoughts, ”in those tales of the Spaniards, that the Sirens and Tritons are heard singing in these seas?”
”I can't tell There's more fish in the water than ever came out of it, and more wonders in the world, I'll warrant, than we ever dreamt of; but I was never in these parts before; and in the South Sea, I h Yeo says he has heard fair ht up in the Gulf, far away from land”
”The Spaniards report that at certain seasons choirs of these ny their watery loves It may be so For Nature, which has peopled the land with rational souls, ether barren of them; above all, e remember that the ocean is as it were the very fount of all fertility, and its slime (as the most learned hold with Thales of Miletus) that pris were one by one concocted Therefore, the ancients feigned wisely that Venus, the ned the plastic force of nature, was born of the sea-foa from the deep, floated ashore upon the isles of Greece”
”I don't knohat plastic force is; but I wish I had had the luck to be by when the pretty poppet ca I ever saw to that was side of us ere in the South Seas, and would have coain for a lot of naughty packs, and I verily believe they were no better Look at the butterflies, now! Don't you wish you were a boy again, and not too proud to go catching theether through the glorious tropic woods, and then returned to the beach to find the sick already grown cheerful, andcould not stir froth with every step
”Well done, lads!” cried Amyas, ”keep a cheerful mind We will have theto us, and those that can dance may”
And so those four days were spent; and the ave the, however, to wash the clothes, take in fresh water, and store up a good supply of such fruit as seemed likely to keep; until, tired with fruitless raold, which they expected to find in every bush, in spite of Yeo's warnings that none had been heard of on the island, they were fain to lounge about, full-grown babies, picking up shells and sea-fans to take hooutis out of the hollow trees, with shout and laughter, and tor they could come near, till not a land-crab dare look out of his hole, or an armadillo unroll hiain to the ard, unconscious pioneers of all the wealth, and commerce, and beauty, and science which has in later centuries em of all the tropic seas
CHAPTER XVIII
HOW THEY TOOK THE PEARLS AT MARGARITA
P Henry Why, what a rascal art thou, then, to praise hi! Falstaff O' horseback, ye cuckoo! but a-foot, he will not budge a foot P Henry Yes, Jack, upon instinct Falstaff I grant ye, upon instinct
Henry IV Pt I
They had slipped past the southern point of Grenada in the night, and were at last within that fairy ring of islands, on which nature had concentrated all her beauty, and man all his sin If Barbados had been invested in the eyes of the newcolory, how much more the seas on which they now entered, which smile in almost perpetual calm, untouched by the hurricane which roars past them far to northward! Sky, sea, and islands were one vast rainbow; though little marked, perhaps, by those sturdy practical sailors, whose old and pearls; and as little by Amyas, who, accusto inwardly on the possibility of extirpating the Spaniards, and annexing the West Indies to the domains of Queen Elizabeth And yet even their unpoetic eyes could not behold without awe and excitement lands so famous and yet so new, around which all the wonder, all the pity, and all the greed of the age had concentrated itself It was an awful thought, and yet inspiriting, that they were entering regions all but unknown to Englishmen, where the penalty of failure would be worse than death-- the torments of the Inquisition Not more than five times before, perhaps, had those lish keels; but there were those on board who knew them well, and too well; who, first of all British mariners, had atte those very coasts, and, interdicted from the necessaries of life by Spanish jealousy, had, in true English fashi+on, won their ht and sold honestly and peaceably therein The old mariners of the Pelican and the Minion were questioned all day long for the names of every isle and cape, every fish and bird; while Frank stood by, listening serious and silent
A great awe seemed to have possessed his soul; yet not a sad one: for his face seelory round hiate of heaven,” he stood watching all day long, careless of food and rest, as every forward plunge of the shi+p displayed soh in air, with their inverted i sand-hills rolled and weltered in the e thorny cacti like giant candelabra, which clothed the glaring slopes, twisted, tossed, and flickered, till the whole scene see was as unstable as it was fantastic, even to the sun itself, distorted into strange oval and pear-shaped figures by the beds of crih which he sank to rest But while Frank wondered, Yeo rejoiced; for to the southward of that setting sun a cluster of tall peaks rose fro, were the arita, the Isle of Pearls, then fareat German fairs, and second only in richness to that pearl island in the gulf of Panama, which fifteen years before had cost John Oxenha the north side of the island, having passed undiscovered (as far as they could see) the castle which the Spaniards had built at the eastern end for the protection of the pearl fisheries