Coeur de Gris was leaning back against the tree. He was smiling at the captain with a queer womanish affection.
“Am I like the Cockney?” Henry Morgan asked a little wistfully; “like the Cockney with fits?”
Coeur de Gris laughed.
“You know nothing at all about the man. You might be proud to resemble him. I will tell you, for I know that to you he is only a figure of wood to take orders. The man’s name is Jones. All his life he has wanted to be a preacher of the Gospel. He thought his fits were visitations of the Holy Ghost, testing him for some divine mission. Once he stood on a corner and spoke to the people of London, and the watch came upon him as he talked. The law took him as a vagrant and shipped him to the islands.
“This Jones, after his term was done, became a pirate to keep from starving. There was a division of spoil from a raid, and to his share fell a woman slave, a Spaniard with Negro blood. He married her to save her reputation. He did not know how little was left to save. You see, sir, his wife is a Catholic. She will not let him read the Bible when he is at home. And do you know, sir, he truly believes that thievish circumstance has robbed him of success; not success as you and I know it, but the success that comes of God’s especial favor. He imagines he might have been a Protestant Savonarola.”
“But his fits—” said Henry Morgan. “His horrible fits—I have seen them.”
Again the young man laughed.
“The fits? Ah, the fits are a gift—an heirloom.”
“And you think he feels?”
“Yes, perhaps he does. Remember, he married her to save her name, and kept her with him when he found what that name was. And you will see him bashfully claim a crucifix at the division of spoil. He will take her a crucifix from Panama. Think, man! He is a Separatist from the church. He abhors crucifixes!”
III
Onward the buccaneers drove themselves toward Panama. They had eaten leather and bitter jungle roots, rodents and snakes and monkeys. Their cheeks were shallow cups under their cheek bones; their eyes glittered with fever. Now that their enthusiasm was gone, they were dragged onward by the knowledge of their captain’s infallibility. Morgan could not fail because he never had failed. Surely he had a plan which would put the gold of the New World in their pockets. And the word “gold,” though it had lost its meaning of reality, was more important than the word “hunger.”
On the eighth morning a scout came to Captain Morgan.
“The way is blocked, sir. They have thrown up a little earthwork in front of us and mounted cannons.”
At a command, the head of the wriggling column swung to the left and began to gnaw its way through thicker underbrush. In the evening they came to the top of a small, round hill, and there below them was Panama laved in the golden light of the western sun. Each man searched his neighbors’ face to be assured that this was not his own personal hallucination.
One pirate moved to the hill’s edge. He stopped still and shouted crazily, and then his companions saw him running down the hill, dragging at his sword as he ran. A herd of cattle was feeding in the hollow below them, left there by some blundering Spaniard. In a moment the whole fourteen hundred men were stampeding down the hill. They killed the cows with their swords; they lunged and slashed at the frightened animals. Soon, very soon, the blood was dripping down the beards of the famished men, the red drops falling on their shirts. During that night they gorged themselves into unconsciousness.
While the dark was down, the pirate scouts were ranging over the plain like werewolves; they slipped to the walls and counted the soldiers before the town.
And early in the morning, Captain Morgan aroused his men and called them together to give them the orders for the day’s fight. Henry Morgan had come to know the buccaneering soul. He lifted out the brains of his men and molded them for battle. He spoke to their fears.
“It is nine days’ journey back to the river mouth where the ships lie—nine days, and no food at all. You could not get to the ships even if you wanted to run away. And here is Panama. While you were sleeping like hogs, the scouts were busy. Before this city, four thousand soldiers are drawn up, with wings of cavalry. These are not countrymen with guns and knives, but drilled soldiers in red coats. This is not all. There are bulls to be loosed against you—against you cattle hunters.” A laugh followed his last words. Many of these men had lived in the jungle and had made their livelihood with hunting wild cattle.
The captain rubbed their avarice:
“Gold and jewels past hope of counting are in the city. Every man of you will be rich if we succeed.”
Their hunger:
“Think of the roasted meats, the barrels of wine in the cellars, the spiced puddings. Imagine them!”
Their lust:
“Women slaves there are in the city, and thousands of other women, God knows! Your difficulty will be only in judging which to choose from the multitude that will fall to us. These are not grubby field women, but great ladies who lie in silken beds. How will your skins feel in beds like those, do you suppose?”
And last, because he knew them very well, he raised the standard of their vanity.
“The names of those who take part in this fight will climb the stairs of history. This is no pillage, but glorious war. Imagine to yourselves the people of Tortuga pointing to you and saying, ‘That man was in
