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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Days of the Discoverers, by L. Lamprey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Days of the Discoverers
+
+Author: L. Lamprey
+
+Illustrator: Florence Choate
+               Elizabeth Curtis
+
+Release Date: March 23, 2006 [EBook #18038]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, LN Yaddanapudi and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "'I will tell you where there is plenty of
+it'"--_Frontispiece_]
+
+
+
+
+_GREAT DAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY SERIES_
+
+
+
+
+DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS
+
+BY
+
+L. LAMPREY
+
+_Author of "In the Days of the Guild",
+"Masters of the Guild", etc._
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+
+FLORENCE CHOATE and ELIZABETH CURTIS
+
+
+NEW YORK
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1921, by_
+
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+
+_All rights reserved, including that of translation
+into foreign languages_
+
+
+_Made in the United States of America_
+
+
+
+
+TO FORESTA
+
+
+    Upon the road to Faerie,
+    O there are many sights to see,--
+    Small woodland folk may one discern
+    Housekeeping under leaf and fern,
+    And little tunnels in the grass
+    Where caravans of goblins pass,
+    And airy corsair-craft that float
+    On wings transparent as a mote,--
+    All sorts of curious things can be
+    Upon the road to Faerie!
+
+    Along the wharves of Faerie--
+    There all the winds of Christendie
+    Are musical with hawk-bell chimes,
+    Carillons rung to minstrels' rimes,
+    And silver trumpets bravely blown
+    From argosies of lands unknown,
+    And the great war-drum's wakening roll--
+    The reveillé of heart and soul--
+    For news of all the ageless sea
+    Comes to the quays of Faerie!
+
+    Across the fields to Faerie
+    There is no lack of company,--
+    The world is real, the world is wide,
+    But there be many things beside.
+    Who once has known that crystal spring
+    Shall not lose heart for anything.
+    The blessing of a faery wife
+    Is love to sweeten all your life.
+    To find the truth whatever it be--
+    That is the luck of Faerie!
+
+    _Above the gates of Faerie
+    There bends a wild witch-hazel tree.
+    The fairies know its elfin powers.
+    They wove a garland of the flowers,
+    And on a misty autumn day
+    They crowned their queen--and ran away!
+    And by that gift they made you free
+    Of all the roads of Faerie!_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                       PAGE
+_To Foresta_                           v
+
+I
+ASGARD THE BEAUTIFUL (1348)            1
+_The Viking's Secret_                  17
+
+II
+THE RUNES OF THE WIND-WIFE (1364)      18
+_The Navigators_ (1415-1460)           34
+
+III
+SEA OF DARKNESS (1475)                 35
+_Sunset Song_                          48
+
+IV
+PEDRO AND HIS ADMIRAL (1492)           50
+_The Queen's Prayer_                   65
+
+V
+THE MAN WHO COULD NOT DIE (1493-1494)  66
+_The Escape_                           80
+
+VI
+LOCKED HARBORS (1497)                  81
+_Gray Sails_                           93
+
+VII
+LITTLE VENICE (1500)                   94
+_The Gold Road_                        104
+
+VIII
+THE DOG WITH TWO MASTERS (1512)        105
+_Cold o' the Moon_ (1519)              117
+
+IX
+WAMPUM TOWN (1508-1524)                121
+_The Drum_                             133
+
+X
+THE GODS OF TAXMAR (1512-1519)         134
+_The Legend of Malinche_               148
+
+XI
+THE THUNDER BIRDS (1519-1520)          150
+_Moccasin Flower_                      165
+
+XII
+GIFTS FROM NORUMBEGA (1533-1535)       167
+_The Mustangs_                         181
+
+XIII
+THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN (1528-1536)     182
+_Lone Bayou_ (1542)                    195
+
+XIV
+THE FACE OF THE TERROR (1564)          197
+_The Destroyers_                       214
+
+XV
+THE FLEECE OF GOLD (1561-1577)         215
+_A Watch-dog of England_ (1583)        237
+
+XVI
+LORDS OF ROANOKE (1584)                238
+_The Changelings_                      250
+
+XVII
+THE GARDENS OF HELÊNE (1607-1609)      252
+_The Wooden Shoe_                      269
+
+XVIII
+THE FIRES THAT TALKED (1610)           270
+_Imperialism_                          282
+
+XIX
+ADMIRAL OF NEW ENGLAND (1600-1614)     284
+_The Discoverers_                      299
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY                           300
+
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"'I will tell you where there is plenty of it'" (in color)
+                                                            _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                            FACING
+                                                            PAGE
+
+"'And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by
+two cats'" (in color)                                       4
+
+"Nils marked out an inscription in Runic letters"           30
+
+"The miniature globe took form as the children watched,
+fascinated"                                                 44
+
+"He proposed that Caonaba should put on the gift the
+Spanish captain had brought"                                78
+
+"A sapling, bent down, was attached to a noose ingeniously
+hidden"                                                     86
+
+"The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and
+friendliness" (in color)                                    132
+
+"Cortes flung about his shoulders his own cloak"            146
+
+"Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard" (in color)        162
+
+"Cartier read from his service-book"                        176
+
+"The creatures darkened the plain almost as far as the eye
+could see"                                                  190
+
+"'Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?'"                 204
+
+"Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard"  226
+
+"If he had to wear her fetters, they should at least be
+golden"                                                     244
+
+"The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall"       266
+
+
+
+
+DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ASGARD THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+A red fox ran into the empty church. In the middle of the floor he sat
+up and looked around. Nothing stirred--not the painted figures on the
+wooden walls, nor the boy who now stood in the doorway. This boy was
+gray-eyed and flaxen-haired, and might have been eleven or twelve years
+old. He was looking for the good old priest, Father Ansgar, and the wild
+shy animal eyeing him from the foot of the altar made it only too clear
+that the church, like the village, was deserted.
+
+Father Ansgar was dead of the strange swift pestilence that was called
+in 1348 the Black Death. So also were the sexton, the cooper, the
+shoemaker, and almost all the people of the valley. A ship had come into
+Bergen with the plague on board, and it spread through Norway like a
+grass-fire. Only last week Thorolf Erlandsson[1] had had a father and
+mother, a grandmother, two younger sisters and a brother. Now he was
+alone. In the night the dairy woman and the plowmen at Ormgard farm had
+run away. Other farms and houses were already closed and silent, or
+plundered and burned. Ormgard being remote had at first escaped the
+sickness.
+
+Thorolf turned away from the church door and began to climb the
+mountain. At the lane leading to his home he did not stop, but kept on
+into the woods. It was not so lonely there.
+
+Up and up he climbed, the thrilling scent of fir-balsam in his nostrils,
+the small friendly noises of the forest all about him. Only a few months
+ago he had come down this very road with his father, driving the cattle
+and goats home from the summer pasture. All the other farmers were doing
+the same, and the clear notes of the lure, the long curving horn, used
+for calling the cattle and signaling across valleys, soared from slope
+to slope. There was laughter and shouting and joking all the way down.
+Now the only persons abroad seemed to be thieving ruffians whose greed
+for plunder was more than their fear of the plague.
+
+A thought came to the boy. How could he leave his father's cattle unfed
+and uncared for? What if he were to drive the cows himself to the saeter
+and tend them through the summer? He faced about, resolutely, and began
+to descend the hill.
+
+Within sight of the familiar roofs he heard some one coming from the
+village, on horseback. It proved to be Nils the son of Magnus the son of
+Nils who was called the Bear-Slayer, with a sack of grain and a pair of
+saddlebags on a sedate brown pony. Nils was lame of one foot and no
+taller than a boy of nine, although he was thirteen this month and his
+head was nearly as large as a man's. He had been an orphan from
+baby-hood, and for the last three years had lived in the priest's house
+learning to be a clerk.
+
+"Hoh!" called Nils, "where are you going?"
+
+"To the farm to get our cattle and take them to the saeter. There is no
+one left to do it but me."
+
+"Cattle?" queried the other interestedly, "She will be glad of that."
+
+"She!" said Thorolf, "who?"
+
+"The Wind-wife[2]--Mother Elle, who used to sell wind to the
+sailors--the Finnish woman from Stavanger. She has gathered up a lot of
+children who have no one to look after them and is leading them into the
+mountains. She has Nikolina Sven's daughter Larsson, and Olof and Anders
+Amundson, and half a score of younger ones from different villages. She
+says that if it is God's will for the plague to come to the saeter it
+will come, but it is not there now, and it is in the valleys and the
+towns. She has gone on with the small ones who cannot walk fast, and
+left Olof and Anders and me to bring along the ponies with the loads.
+I'll help you drive your beasts."
+
+Without trouble the lads got the animals out of the byres and headed
+them up the road. Norway is so sharply divided by precipitous mountain
+ranges and deeply-penetrating fiords, that it may be but a few miles
+from a farm near sea level to the high grassy pastures three or four
+thousand feet above it where the cattle are pastured in summer. The
+saeter maidens live there in their cottages from June to September,
+making butter and cheese, tending the herds and doing such other work as
+they can. The saeter belonging to Ormgard and its neighbors was the one
+chosen by Mother Elle as a refuge for her flock.
+
+The forest of magnificent firs through which the road passed presently
+grew less somber, beginning to be streaked with white birches whose
+bright leaves twinkled in the sun. Then it reached the height at which
+evergreens cease to grow. The birches were shorter and sparser, and
+through the thinning woodland appeared glimpses of a treeless pasture
+dotted with scrubby low bushes and clumps of rushes. A glint of clear
+green water betrayed a small lake in a dip of the hills. And now were
+heard sounds most unusual in that lonely place, the high sweet voices of
+children.
+
+Birch trees, little trees, dwarfed by sharp winds and poor soil,
+encircled a level space perhaps ten feet across, carpeted with new soft
+grass, reindeer moss and cupped lichens. Here sat seven or eight
+children eagerly listening to a story told by an older child as she
+divided the ration of fladbrod,[3] wild strawberries from a small basket
+of birchbark, and brown goat's-milk cheese.
+
+"And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two cats--"
+
+Nikolina the daughter of Sven Larsson of the Trolle farm was known
+through all the valley, not only as the sole child of its richest
+farmer, but for the bright blonde hair that covered her shoulders with
+its soft abundance and hung to her waist. Her father would not have it
+cut or braided or even covered save by such a little embroidered cap as
+she wore now. Her scarlet bodice, and blue-black skirt bordered with
+bright woven bands, were of the finest wool; the full-sleeved white
+linen under-dress had been spun and woven and embroidered by skilful and
+loving fingers. Nikolina had lost the roof from over her head, and a
+great deal more than that. Now she was giving her whole mind to the
+little ones of all ages from four to eight, crowding close about her.
+
+[Illustration: "'And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two
+cats'"--_Page_ 4]
+
+"Hi!" called Nils, "where is Mother Elle? See what Thorolf and I have
+got!"
+
+The children scrambled to their feet and gazed with round eyes, their
+small hungry teeth munching their morsels of hard bread. Nikolina
+plucked a bunch of grass for Snow, the foremost cow, and patted her
+as she ate it.
+
+"The little ones were so tired and hungry," she said, "that Mother Elle
+said they might have their supper now, while she and Olof and Anders
+went on to the saeter. This is wonderful! She was saying only this
+morning that she feared all the cattle were dead or stolen."
+
+Within an hour they came in sight of the log huts with turf-covered
+roofs that sloped almost to the ground in the rear. A broad plain
+stretched away beyond, and the new grass was of that vivid green to be
+found in places which deep snow makes pure. Hills enclosed it, and
+beyond, a gleaming network of lake and stream ended in range above range
+of blue and silver peaks. The clear invigorating air was like some
+unearthly wine. The cows at the scent of fresh pasture moved more
+briskly; the pony tossed his head and whinnied. Not far from the
+cottages there came to meet them a little old woman, dark and wiry, with
+bright searching eyes. Her face was wrinkled all over in fine soft
+lines, but her hair was hardly gray at all. She wore a pointed hood and
+girdled tunic of tanned reindeer hide, with leggings and shoes of the
+same. A blanket about her shoulders was draped into a kind of pouch, in
+which she carried on her back a tow-headed, solemn-eyed baby.
+
+"Welcome to you, Thorolf Erlandsson," she said, just as if she had been
+expecting him. "With this good milk we shall fare like the King."
+
+No king, truly, could have supped on food more delicious than that
+enjoyed by Nils and Thorolf on this first night in the saeter. It is
+strange but true that the most exquisite delights are those that money
+cannot buy. No man can taste cold spring water and barley bread in
+absolute perfection who has not paid the poor man's price--hard work and
+keen hunger.
+
+When Nikolina, Karen and Lovisa came up with the smaller children the
+place had already an inhabited, homelike look. There was even a wise old
+raven, almost as large as a gander, whom Nils had christened Munin,
+after Odin's bird. The little ones had all the new milk they could drink
+from their wooden bowls, and were put to bed in the movable wooden
+bed-places, on beds of hay covered with sheepskins and blankets. All
+were asleep before dark, for at that season the night lasted only two or
+three hours. The last thing that Thorolf heard was a happy little pipe
+from the five-year-old Ellida,--
+
+"Now we shall live in Asgard forever and ever."
+
+For all it had to do with the experience of many of the children the
+saeter might really have been Asgard, the Norse paradise. The youngest
+had never before been outside the narrow valley where they were born.
+Ellida and Margit, Didrik and little Peder, could not be convinced that
+they were anywhere but in Asgard the Blest.
+
+Norway had long since become Christian, but the old faith was not
+forgotten. The legends, songs and customs of the people were full of it.
+In the sagas Asgard was described as being on a mountain at the top of
+the world. Around the base of this mountain lay Midgard, the abode of
+mankind. Beyond the great seas, in Utgard, the giants lived. Hel was the
+under-world, the home of evil ghosts and spirits. Tales were told in the
+long winter evenings, of Baldur the god of spring, Loki the crafty, Odin
+the old one-eyed beggar in a hooded cloak, with his two ravens and his
+two tame wolves, Freya the lovely lady of flowers, Elle-folk dancing in
+the moonlight, and little rascally Trolls.
+
+The songs and legends repeated by the old people or chanted by minstrels
+or skalds were more than idle stories--they were the history of a race.
+Children heard over and over again the family records telling in rude
+rhyme the story of centuries. In distant Iceland, Greenland, the
+Shetlands, the Faroes or the Orkneys, a Norseman could tell exactly what
+might be his udall right, or right of inheritance, in the land of his
+fathers.
+
+On Nils and Thorolf, Anders, Olof, Nikolina, Karen and Lovisa, who were
+all over ten years old, rested great responsibility. Mother Elle always
+managed to solve her own problems and expected them to attend to theirs
+without constant direction from her. She told them what there was to be
+done and left them to attend to it.
+
+All were hardy, active youngsters who took to fending for themselves as
+naturally as a day-old chick takes to scratching. In ordinary seasons
+the work at the saeter was heavy, for the maidens must not only follow
+the herds over miles of pasture land, but make butter and cheese for the
+winter from their milking. The few cows that were here now could be
+tethered near by; the milk, when the children had had all they wanted,
+was mostly used in soups, pudding or gröt (porridge). A net or weir
+stretched across the outlet of the lake would fill with fish overnight.
+The streams were full of trout. Mother Elle knew how to make fish-hooks
+of bone, bows and arrows, ropes, and baskets of bark, how to weave
+osiers, how to cure bruises and cuts, how to trap the wild hares,
+grouse and plover and cook them over an open fire. The children found
+plover's eggs and the eggs of other wild fowl. They raised pulse, leeks,
+onions and turnips in a little garden patch. They gathered strawberries,
+cranberries, crowberries, wild currants, black and red, the cloudberry
+and the delicious arctic raspberry which tastes of pineapple. Some
+stores of salt and grain were already at the saeter and the grain-fields
+had been sowed, before the pestilence appeared in the valley.
+
+In the long summer days of these northern mountains, one has the feeling
+that they will never end, that life must go on in an infinite succession
+of still, sunshiny, fragrant hours, filled with the songs of birds, the
+chirr of insects and the distant lowing of cattle. There is time for
+everything. At night comes dreamless slumber, and the morning is like a
+birth into new life.
+
+There was a great deal of singing and story-telling at odd times. A
+group of children making mats or baskets, gathering pease or going after
+berries would beg Nils or Nikolina to tell a story, or Karen would lead
+them in some old song with a familiar refrain. But some of the songs the
+Wind-wife crooned to the baby were not like any the children had heard.
+They were not even in Norwegian.
+
+Thorolf was a silent lad, who would rather listen than talk, and hated
+asking questions. But one day, when he and Nikolina were hunting wild
+raspberries, he asked her if she thought Mother Elle meant to stay in
+the mountains through the winter. Nikolina did not know.
+
+    "'Tis well to be wise but not too wise,
+    'Tis well that to-morrow is hid from our eyes,
+    For in forward-looking forebodings rise,"
+
+she added quaintly. "I have heard her say that it is colder in Greenland
+than it is here."
+
+"Has she been in Greenland?"
+
+"Her father and mother were on the way there when she was little, and
+the ship was wrecked somewhere on the coast. The Skroelings found her
+and took her to live in their country. That is how she learned so much
+about trees and herbs, and how to make bows and arrows and moccasins."
+
+"Moccasins?"
+
+"The little shoes she made for Ellida. And she made a little boat for
+Peder, like their skiffs."
+
+This was interesting. For a private reason, Thorolf held Greenland to be
+the most fascinating of all places.
+
+"Can she speak their language?"
+
+"Of course. I asked her to teach me, and she said that perhaps she would
+some day. The songs that she sings to the little ones are some that the
+Skroeling woman who adopted her used to sing to her when she cried for
+her own mother. One of them begins like this:
+
+    "'Piche Klooskap pechian
+    Machieswi menikok.'"
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+"'Long ago Klooskap came to the island of the partridges.' Klooskap was
+like Odin, or Thor. The priests in Greenland told her he was a devil and
+wouldn't let her talk about him, but the Skroelings had runes for
+everything just like the people in the sagas,--runes for war, and
+healing, and the sea."
+
+"How did she ever get away?"
+
+"Some men came from Westbyrg to cut wood in the forest, and when they
+saw that she was not really a Skroeling they bought her for an iron pot
+and one of them married her. But he was drowned a long time ago."
+
+"I wish I knew the Skroelings' language. Some day I mean to go to
+Greenland."
+
+"Perhaps Mother Elle will teach you. I'll ask her."
+
+The Wind-wife was rather chary of information about the country of the
+Skroelings until Nikolina's coaxing and Thorolf's silent but intense
+interest had taken effect. The country, she said, was rather like
+Norway, with mountains and great forests, lakes and streams, but far
+colder. There were no fiords, and no cities. The people lived in tents
+made of poles covered with bark, or hides. They dressed in the hides of
+wild animals and lived by hunting and fishing. They had no reindeer,
+horses, cattle, sheep or goats, no fowls, no pigs. They could not work
+iron, nor did they spin or weave. The man and woman who had adopted her
+treated her just like their own child.
+
+The stories she had learned from these people were intensely interesting
+to her listeners. There was one about a battle between the wasps and the
+squirrels, and another about the beaver who wanted wings. One was about
+a girl who was married to the Spirit of the Mountain and had a son
+beautiful and straight and like any other boy except that he had stone
+eyebrows. Then there was the tale about Klooskap tying up the White
+Eagle of the Wind so that he could not flap his wings. After a short
+time everything was so dirty and ill-smelling and unhealthy that
+Klooskap had to go back and untie one wing, and let the wind blow to
+clear the air and make the earth once more wholesome.
+
+Wild apples fell, grain ripened, nights lengthened. Long ago the
+twin-flower, violet, wild pansy, forget-me-not and yellow anemone had
+left their fairy haunts, and there remained only the curving fantastic
+fronds of the fern,--the dragon-grass. Then had come brilliant spots and
+splashes of color on the summer slopes--purple butterwort, golden
+ragweed, aconite, buttercup, deep crimson mossy patches of saxifrage,
+rosy heather, catchfly, wild geranium, cinnamon rose. These also
+finished their triumphal procession and went to their Valhalla. Then one
+September morning the children woke to hear the wind screaming as if the
+White Eagle had escaped his prison, and the rain pelting the world.
+
+All summer they had been out, rain or shine, like water-ouzels, but now
+they were glad to sit about the fire with the shutters all closed, and
+the smoke now and then driven down into the room by the storm. Before
+evening the little ones were begging for stories.
+
+"I wish I could remember a saga I heard last Yule," Nikolina said at
+last. "It was about a voyage the Vikings made to a country where the
+people had never seen cattle. When they heard the cattle bellowing they
+all ran away and left the furs they had come to sell."
+
+"Tell all you remember and make up the rest," suggested Karen, but
+Nikolina shook her head.
+
+"One should never do that with a saga."
+
+"I know that tale," spoke up Thorolf suddenly, although he had never in
+his life repeated a saga. "Grandmother used to tell it. In the beginning
+Bjarni Heriulfson the sea-rover, after many years came home to Iceland
+to drink wassail in his father's house. But strangers dwelt there and
+told him that his father was gone to Greenland, and he set sail for that
+land. Soon was the ship swallowed up in a gray mist in which were
+neither sun nor stars. They sailed many days they knew not where, but
+suddenly the fog lifted and the sun revealed to them a coast of low
+hills covered with forest. By this Bjarni thought that it was not
+Greenland but some southerly coast. Therefore turned he northward and
+sailed many days before he sighted the mountains of Greenland and his
+father's house.
+
+"Years afterward returned Bjarni to Iceland, and in his telling of that
+voyage it came to the ears of Leif Ericsson, who asked him many
+questions about the land he had seen. There grew no trees in Iceland or
+Greenland, fit for house-timber, and Leif was minded to find out this
+place of great forests. Thus it came that Leif sailed from Brattahlid in
+Greenland with five and thirty men in a long ship upon a journey of
+discovery.
+
+"First came they to a barren land covered with big flat stones, and this
+Leif named Helluland, the slate land. Southward sailed he for many days
+until he saw a coast covered with wooded hills, and there he landed,
+calling it Markland, the land of woods. Then southward again they bore
+and came to a place where a river flowed out of a lake and fell into the
+sea. The country was pleasant, with good fishing. Leif said that they
+would spend the winter there, and they built wooden cabins well-made and
+warm.
+
+"Then at the season when the leaves are blood-red and bright gold came
+in from the woods Thorkel the German, smacking his lips and making
+strange faces and jabbering in his own language. When they asked what
+ailed him he said that he had found vines loaded with grapes, and having
+seen none since he left his own country, which was a land of vineyards,
+he was out of his senses with delight. Therefore was that country named
+Vinland the Fair. In the spring went Leif home, well pleased, with a
+cargo of timber, but his father being dead he voyaged no more to
+Vinland, but remained to be head of his house.
+
+"Next went Thorvald, Leif's brother, to Vinland and stayed two winters
+in the booths that Leif built, until he was slain in a fight with the
+men of that land. His men buried him there and returned sorrowfully to
+their own land.
+
+"Next went Thorestein, Leif's second brother, forth, with Gudrid his
+wife, to get the body of Thorvald but he died on the voyage and his
+widow returned to Brattahlid.
+
+"Next came to Brattahlid Thorfin Karlsefne, the Viking from Iceland, who
+loved and married Gudrid and from her heard the story of Vinland, and
+desired it for his own. In good time went he forth in a long ship with
+his wife, and there went with him three other valiant ships. They had
+altogether one hundred and sixty men and five women, with cattle, grain
+and all things fit for a settlement. This was seven years after Leif
+Ericsson found Vinland. Among the stores for trading was scarlet cloth,
+which the Skroelings greatly covet, insomuch that one small strip of
+scarlet would buy many rich furs. But when they came to trade, hearing a
+bull bellow, with a great squalling they all ran away and left their
+packs on the ground, nor did they show their faces again for three
+weeks. Snorre, the son of Thorfin Karlsefne, born in Vinland, was three
+years old when the Northmen left that land. They had found the winter
+hard and cold, and in a fight with the Skroelings many had been killed,
+so that they took ship and returned to Iceland.
+
+"They had gone but a little way when one of the ships, which was
+commanded by Bjarni Grimulfsson, lagged so far behind that it lost sight
+of the others. The men then discovered that shipworms[4] had bored the
+hull so that it was about to sink. None could hope to be saved but in
+the stern boat, and that would not hold half of them.
+
+"Then stood Bjarni Grimulfsson forth, and said to his men that in this
+matter there should be no advantage of rank, but they would draw lots,
+who should go in the boat and who remain in the ship. When this had been
+done it was Bjarni's lot to go in the boat. After all had gone down into
+the boat who had the right, an Icelander who had been Bjarni's companion
+made outcry dolefully saying, 'Bjarni, Bjarni, do you leave me here to
+die in the sea? It was not so you promised me when I left my father's
+house.' Then said Bjarni, for the lot was fairly cast, 'What else can be
+done?' Then said the Icelander, 'I think that you should come up into
+the ship and let me go down into the boat.' And indeed no other way
+might be found for him to live. Then answered Bjarni making light of the
+matter, 'Let it be so, since I see that you are so anxious to live and
+so afraid of death; I will return to the ship.' This was done, and the
+men rowing away looked back and saw the ship go down in a great swirl of
+waves with Bjarni and those who remained.
+
+"This tale my grandmother heard from her father, and he from his, and so
+on until the time of that Thorolf Erlandsson who sailed with Bjarni
+Grimulfsson and went down into the sea by his side singing, for he
+feared nothing but to be a coward."
+
+Thorolf's eyes were as proud and his head as high as were his Viking
+forefather's when the worm-riddled galley went to her grave with more
+than half her crew, three hundred and forty years before. In the little
+silence which followed the fire crackled and whistled, the gusty
+rain-drenched wind beat upon the little hut. And then Nils repeated
+musingly the ancient saying from the Runes of Odin,
+
+    "'Cattle die, Kings die,
+    Kindred die, we also die,--
+    One thing never dies,
+    The fair fame of the valiant.'"
+
+Some one knocked at the door. A real Viking in winged helmet and
+scale-armor would hardly have surprised them just then. But it was only
+a tall man in a traveler's cloak and hat, and they made quickly room for
+him to dry himself by the fire, and brought food and drink for him to
+refresh himself.
+
+"I thought that I knew the way to the old place," he said, looking
+about, "but in this tempest I nearly lost myself. Which of you is
+Thorolf Erlandsson?"
+
+The stranger was Syvert Thorolfson, a merchant of Iceland, Thorolf's
+uncle. He brought messages from Nikolina's grandmother in Stavanger, and
+from the Bishop, who was ready to see that all the children who had no
+relatives should be taken care of in Bergen. Within three days Asgard
+the Beautiful was left to the lemming and the raven. Yet the long bright
+summer lived always in the hearts of the children. Years after Thorolf
+remembered the words of the Wind-wife,--
+
+"Make friends with the Skroelings--make friends. Friendship is a rock to
+stand on; hatred is a rock to split on. In the land of Klooskap shall
+you be Klooskap's guest."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] In old Norse families names alternated from father to son. For
+example, Thorolf Erlandsson (Thorolf the son of Erland) would name his
+son after his own father, and the boy would be known as Erland
+Thorolfsson. A daughter was known by her given name and her father's, as
+Sigrid Erlandsdatter. In the case of the farm being of sufficient
+importance for a surname the name might be added, as "Elsie
+Tharaldsdatter Ormgrass."
+
+[2] Northern sailors regard the Finns as wizards.
+
+[3] Fladbrod is the coarse peasant-bread of Norway, made from an
+unfermented dough of barley and oatmeal rolled out into large thin cakes
+and baked. It will keep a long time.
+
+[4] The teredo or shipworm was a serious peril in the days before the
+sheathing of ships. Even tar sheathing was not used until the sixteenth
+century.
+
+
+
+
+THE VIKING'S SECRET
+
+
+    In the days of jarl and hersir, while yet the world was young,
+    And sagas of gods and heroes the grim-lipped minstrel sung,
+    With the beak of his open galley in the sunset's scarlet flame,
+    Over the wild Atlantic the Norseland Viking came.
+
+    Life was a thing to play with,--oh, then the world was wide,
+    With room for man and mammoth, and a goblin life beside.
+    Now we have slain the mammoths, and we have driven the ghosts away,
+    And we read the saga of Vinland in the light of a new-born day.
+
+    We have harnessed the deadly lightnings; we have ridden the restless
+        wave.
+    We have chased the brood of the werewolf back to their noisome cave.
+    But far in the icy Northland, with weird witch-lights aglow,
+    Locked in the Greenland glaciers, is a tale we do not know.
+
+    Out of Brattahlid's portal, southward from Herjulfsness,
+    They came to their new-found kingdom, their Vinland to possess.
+    Armored with careless laughter, strong with a stubborn will,
+    The Vikings found it and lost it--it is undiscovered still!
+
+    Where did they beach their galleys? How were their cabins planned?
+    Who were the fearful Skroelings? What was the Fürdürstrand?
+    What were the grapes of Tyrker? For all that is written or said,
+    The Rune Stones hold the secret of the days of Eric the Red!
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE RUNES OF THE WIND-WIFE
+
+
+Salt and scarred from the northern seas, the _Taernan_, deep-laden with
+herring, nosed in at the Hanse quay in Bergen. Thorolf Erlandsson looked
+grimly up at the huge warehouses. Since the Hanseatic League secured a
+foothold in Norway, in 1343, most Norwegian ports had been losing trade,
+and Bergen, or rather the Hanse merchants in Bergen, had been getting
+it. Between the Danes and the Germans it looked rather as if Norwegians
+were to be crowded out of their own country.
+
+The Hanse traders not only received and sold fish for the Friday markets
+of northern Europe, but sold all kinds of manufactured goods. It was
+said that they had two sets of scales--one for buying and one for
+selling. Norwegians had either to adapt themselves to the new methods or
+give their sons to the ceaseless battle of the open sea. From the Baltic
+and Icelandic fisheries, the North Sea and the Lofoden Islands, their
+ships got the heaviest and the hardest of the sea-harvesting.
+
+But it takes more than hardship to break a Norseman. In his four years
+at sea Thorolf had become tall, broad-shouldered and powerful, and at
+eighteen he looked a grown man. He did more than he promised, and
+listened oftener than he talked, and his only close friend was Nils
+Magnusson, who was now coming down to the wharf. They had known each
+other from boyhood.
+
+Nils had been for three years a clerk in Syvert Thorolfsson's warehouse.
+While not tall he was neither stunted nor crippled, and easily kept pace
+with Thorolf. As he set out the silver-bound horn cups to drink
+_skal_[1] with his friend in his own lodging, the croak and sputter of
+German talk sounded in the street below.
+
+"Behold a new Bergen," observed Nils whimsically. "Let us drink to the
+founding of a new Iceland. Did you go to Greenland?"
+
+"We touched at Kakortok with letters for the Bishop. The people are sick
+and savage with fighting against the Skroelings."
+
+"Now," said Nils, rubbing his long nose, "it is odd that you say that,
+for I was just going to tell you some news. The King has given Paul
+Knutson leave to raise a company to fight against the Skroelings in
+Greenland--and parts beyond. He sails in a month."
+
+"I wish I had known of it."
+
+"I thought you would say that. This is between us two and the candle,
+but Anders Amundson is going, and I am going, and you may go if you
+will."
+
+Thorolf's gray eyes flamed. "What is Knutson like?"
+
+"Well, they may call him Chevalier, but he has the old Viking way with
+him. I said that I had a friend who had long wished to lay his bones in
+a strange land, and he answered, 'If your friend sails with me I would
+prefer to have him bring his bones home again.' He kept a place for
+you."
+
+Three weeks later Thorolf, looking backward as the _Rotge_, (little auk
+or sea-king) stood out to sea, saw the familiar outline of Snaehatten
+against the sunrise and wondered when he should see it again. Like a
+questing raven his mind returned to the summer spent at the saeter, and
+recalled that dark saying of the Wind-wife,--
+
+"In the land of Klooskap shall you be Klooskap's guest."
+
+The galley[2] rode the waves with the bold freedom of her kind. Her keel
+was carved out of a single great tree. Her seasoned oaken timbers,
+overlapping, were riveted together by iron bolts, with the round heads
+outside. Where a timber touched a rib, a strip was cut out on each side,
+forming a block through which a hole was bored. Another hole was bored
+in the rib to match and a rope twisted of the inner bark of the linden
+was put through both holes and knotted. In surf or heavy sea, this
+construction gave the craft a supple strength. Calking was done with
+woolen cloth steeped in pitch. The mast, of a chosen trunk of fir, was
+set upright in a log with ends shaped like a fishtail. The long oarlike
+rudder was on the board or side of the ship to the right of the stern,
+called the starboard or steerboard. The lading was done on the opposite
+side, the larboard or ladderboard. There were ten oars to a side, and a
+single large triangular sail.
+
+Long and narrow, hardly ten feet above the water-line at her lowest, her
+curved prow glancing over the waves like the head of a swimming snake,
+she was no more like the tumbling cargo-ships than a shark is like a
+porpoise. When they were two days out, Nils said to Thorolf,
+
+"A Viking in such a galley would sail to the end of the world. By the
+way, did the Skroelings in Greenland understand that language the
+Wind-wife spoke?"
+
+"I was not there long enough to find out. I once asked a man who knows
+their talk well, and he said it was no tongue that ever he heard."
+
+The Greenland folk welcomed them heartily. Finding that the white men
+had not after all been forgotten by their own people, the natives drew
+off and gave them no more trouble. The Northmen spent the winter in
+sleep, talk, song, and hunting with native guides. Besides the old man
+in white fur, as the polar bear was respectfully called, Arctic foxes,
+walrus, whales and seal abounded. Many of the new-comers became skilful
+in the making and the use of the skin-covered native boats called
+Kayaks. Nils had some skill in carving wood and stone, and could write
+in the Runic script of Elfdal. In the long evenings when winds from the
+cave of the Great Bear buffeted the low huts, he taught Thorolf and
+Anders what he knew, and talked with the Skroelings. But none of them
+understood the runes of the Wind-wife. Their speech was quite different.
+
+Spring came with brief, hot sunshine, and the creeping birches budded on
+the pebbly shore. Encouraged by the reports from Greenland, new
+colonists ventured out, and house-building went on briskly. One day
+Thorolf was summoned to Knutson's headquarters.
+
+"Erlandsson," began the Chevalier, "they say that you have information
+about Vinland[3] and the Skroelings there, from an old woman who lived
+among them. What can you tell me?"
+
+Thorolf told the story of the Wind-wife. Knutson looked interested but
+doubtful.
+
+"I have talked with the oldest colonists," he said, "and they know
+nothing of any Skroelings but those hereabouts. They say also that
+Vinland is hard to come at. Boats venturing south return with tales of
+heavy winds, dense fogs and dangerous cliffs and skerries--or do not
+return at all. One was caught and crushed in the ice, and the crew were
+found on the floe half starved and gnawing bits of hide. In the sagas of
+Vinland the Skroelings are spoken of as fierce and treacherous. To hold
+such a land would need a strong hand. The old woman may have
+forgotten--or the stories may be those of her own people."
+
+Thorolf shook his head. "Nay, my lord. She was not a forgetful
+person--and the language is neither Lapp nor Finn."
+
+"She was very old, you say?"
+
+"I think so. I do not know how old."
+
+"Old people sometimes confuse what they have heard with what they have
+seen. But I shall remember what you have said."
+
+"If he had known the Wind-wife," said Nils when told of this
+conversation, "he would have no doubt."
+
+Knutson wrote to the King, but got no reply for a long time. A ship with
+a cargo of trading stores was sent for, and was wrecked on the Faroes.
+But in the following spring an expedition to Vinland was really planned.
+There was no general desire to take part in it. Many of Knutson's party
+now longed for their native land, where the mountains were drawn swords
+flashing in the sun, and the malachite and silver waters and flowery
+turf, the jeweled scabbards. They dreamed of the lure sounding over the
+valleys, of bright-paired maidens dancing the _spring dans_.
+Nevertheless in due season the _Rotge_ left the Greenland shore and
+pointed her inquiring beak southeast by south. In the _Gudrid_ sailed
+Knutson and his immediate following, with the trading cargo and most of
+the provisions. By keeping well out to sea at first the commander hoped
+to escape the perils of the coast.
+
+This hope was dashed by an Atlantic gale which drove them westward. For
+two days and two nights they were tossed between wind and tide. Toward
+the end of the second night the sound of the waves indicated land to
+starboard. In the growing light they saw a harbor that seemed spacious
+enough for all the ships in the world, sheltered by wooded hills. If
+this were Vinland, it was greater than saga told or skald sang.
+
+They landed to take in fresh water, mend a leak and see the country, but
+found no grapes, no Skroelings nor any sign of Northmen's presence. On
+the rocks grew vineberries, or mountain cranberries, and Knutson thought
+that perhaps these and not true grapes were the fruit found in Vinland.
+He sent a party of a dozen men, Anders and Thorolf leading, to explore
+the forest, ascend some hill if possible and return the same day. He
+himself remained with the ships and kept Nils by him. He rather expected
+that the natives, learning of the strangers' arrival, would be drawn by
+curiosity to visit the bay.
+
+The scouting party followed the banks of the little stream that had
+given them fresh water, Anders leading, Thorolf just behind him. Wind
+stirred softly in the leaves overhead, unseen birds fluttered and
+chirped, sunshine sifting through the maple undergrowth turned it to
+emerald and gold and jasper. Once there was a discordant screech from
+the evergreens, but it was only a brilliant blue jay with crest erect,
+scolding at them. A striped squirrel flashed up the trunk of a tree to
+his hole. Then sudden as lightning, from the bushes they had just
+passed, came a flight of arrows.
+
+Two men were slightly wounded, but most of the arrows were turned by the
+light strong body armor of the Norsemen. The foe remained unseen and
+unheard. Nothing stirred, though the men scanned the woods about them
+with the keen eyes of seamen and hunters.
+
+Thorolf was seized with an inspiration. He went forward a step or two,
+lifted his hand in salutation, and called,--
+
+"Klooskap mech p'maosa?"[4] (Is Klooskap yet alive?)
+
+There was a silence stiller than death. The Norsemen faced the ominous
+thicket without moving a muscle. Some one within it called out something
+which Thorolf did not understand. But no more arrows came. He tried
+another sentence.
+
+"Klooskap k-chi skitap, pechedog latogwesnuk." (Klooskap was a great man
+in the country far to the northward.)
+
+This time he made out the answer. In a swift aside he explained to his
+comrades,--
+
+"'K'putuswin' means 'let us take council.' They want to have a talk."
+
+He managed to convey his assent to the unseen listeners, and every tree,
+rock and log sprouted Skroelings. They were quite unlike the natives of
+Greenland, though of copper-colored complexion.[5] These men--there were
+no women among them,--were tall and sinewy, and wore their coarse black
+hair knotted up on the head with a tuft of feathers. They were naked to
+the waist, and wore fringed breeches of deerskin, and soft shoes
+embroidered in bright colors. Some had necklaces of bears' claws, beads
+or shells, but the only weapons seemed to be the bow and arrow and a
+stone-headed hatchet or club. They stared at the white man half
+curiously and half threateningly.
+
+Then began the queerest conversation that any one present had ever
+heard. Thorolf discovered the wild men's language to be so nearly like
+that learned from the Wind-wife that he could understand it when spoken
+slowly, and in a halting fashion could make them comprehend him. His
+companions listened in wonder. Not even Anders had really believed in
+that language.
+
+At last Thorolf held out his hand, and the leader of the Skroelings came
+forward in a very gingerly manner and took it. Then walking in single
+file, toes pointed straight forward, the savages melted into the forest
+as frost melts in sunshine.
+
+With a broad grin, the first he had worn for some time, Thorolf
+translated.
+
+"He asked why we came here. I told him, to see the country and trade
+with his people. He says that white men have come here before, very long
+ago. I think they were killed and he did not wish to say so. He says
+that the Sagem, the jarl of his people, lives in a castle over there
+somewhere. I told him to give the Sagem greeting from our commander, and
+invite him to visit the place where our ships are. He says that it will
+not be safe for us to go further into the forest until the Skroelings
+have heard who we are and what we are doing here."
+
+"That is very good advice," said Anders with a wry face, as he plucked
+some moss to stanch the wound in his arm. The arrow-head which had made
+it was a shaped piece of flint bound to the shaft with cords of fine
+sinew. "We are too few to get into a general fight. Besides, that is not
+in our orders."
+
+They accordingly went back to the ships, arriving a little before
+sundown. Knutson was greatly interested.
+
+"You have done well," he said. "A boat was hovering about soon after you
+left. This may have been a scouting party sent through the forest to cut
+you off."
+
+All the next day they waited, but nothing happened. On the morning
+after, a large number of boats appeared rounding the headland to the
+south. In the largest sat the Sagem, a very old man wrapped in furs. The
+boats were made of birchbark laced on a wooden framework with fibrous
+roots, like the toy skiff Mother Elle had made for little Peder.
+
+The Skroelings landed, and advanced with great dignity to meet Knutson,
+who was equally ceremonious. Nils and Thorolf had all they could do to
+interpret the old chief's long speech, although many phrases were
+repeated again and again, which made it easier. Knutson made one in
+reply, briefer but quite as polite, and brought out beads, little
+knives, and scarlet cloth from his trading stores. The red cloth and
+beads were received with eagerness, the knives with interest, and after
+a young chief had cut himself, with some awe. The Sagem in his turn
+presented the stranger with skins of the sable, the silver fox and the
+bear. He and a few of the warriors tasted of the food offered them, and
+all the white men were asked to a feast in the village the next day.
+
+So friendly were the Skroelings, in fact, that Knutson determined to
+return to Greenland and see what could be done toward founding a
+settlement here. He would leave part of the men in winter quarters, with
+the _Rotge_ as a means of further explorations, or if necessary, of
+escape. Her captain, Gustav Sigerson, was a cautious, wise and
+experienced seaman. Anders Amundson, as the best hunter of the
+expedition, was to stay, with Nils as clerk and Thorolf as interpreter.
+Booths were erected, stores landed, and on a brilliant day in late
+summer some forty Norsemen and Gothlanders on the shore watched the
+_Gudrid_ slowly fading out of sight.
+
+In talking with the natives Nils and Thorolf observed that their world
+seemed to be infested with demons--particularly water-fiends. A reason
+for this appeared in time. Half a dozen men one day took the stern-boat
+and went a-fishing. They came back white-faced, with a story of a giant
+squid with arms four times as long as the boat, that had risen out of
+the sea and tried to pull them under. Only their skill as rowers had
+saved them. Nils remembered the kraken, of ancient legends, and thought
+he could see why the Skroelings never ventured out to sea in their frail
+canoes. This put an end to plans for exploring along the coast.
+
+The winter was colder than they had expected. This land, so much further
+south than Norway, was bitten by frost as Norway never was. There is
+something in intense cold which is inhuman. When men are shut up
+together in exile by it, all that is bad in them is likely to crop out.
+It might have been worse but for the fortunate friendliness of the
+Skroelings. When scurvy appeared in the camp, their first acquaintance,
+Munumqueh (woodchuck) had his women brew a drink which cured it. He
+showed the white men also how to make pemmican, the compressed meat
+ration of native hunters, and how to construct and use a birch canoe, a
+pair of snowshoes, and a fire-drill. Gustav Sigerson died in the spring,
+and Nils was chosen captain. He and Munumqueh became great cronies, and
+exchanged names, Nils being thereafter known to his native friends as
+the Woodchuck, and bestowing upon Munumqueh the proud name of his
+grandfather, Nils the Bear-Slayer.
+
+"It will never do for us to sit quiet here until Knutson returns," said
+Nils when at Midsummer nothing had been seen of the ships. "We shall be
+at one another's throats or quarreling with the savages." He had been
+inquiring about the nature of the country, and had learned that westward
+a great river led to five inland seas, so connected that canoes could go
+from one to another. Along this chain of waters lived tribes who spoke
+somewhat the same language and traded with one another. Southward lived
+a warlike people who sometimes attacked the lake tribes. Beyond the last
+of the lakes they did not know what the country was like. The waters
+inland were not troubled with the water-demon so far as they knew. Nils,
+Anders and Thorolf held a council and decided to explore the wilderness
+as far as they could go in the _Rotge_. It was nothing more than all
+their ancestors had done. Often, in their invasions of England, France
+and other unknown regions Vikings had gone up one river and come down
+another, and the _Rotge_, for all her iron strength, was no more than a
+wooden shell when stripped.[6]
+
+They set forth, escorted by a flotilla of small canoes, on a clear
+summer morning, and found their progress surprisingly easy. Fish, game
+and berries were plentiful, the villages along the river supplied corn
+and beans, and though it was not always easy to drag the _Rotge_ around
+the carrying-places pointed out by their native guides, they did not
+have to turn back. It was a proud moment when the undefeated crew
+launched their "water-snake" as the Skroelings called her, on the
+shining waters of a great inland sea.
+
+The journey had been a far longer one than they expected, and to natives
+of any other country would have been much more exciting than it was to
+the Norsemen.[7] They had seen cliffs a thousand feet high, cataracts,
+rapids, a multitude of wooded islands, narrow valleys where floating
+misty clouds came and went and the sky looked like a riband. But the
+precipice above Naero Fiord rises four thousand perpendicular feet, and
+the water which laps its base is thousands of feet in depth. The
+Skjaeggedalsfos is loftier than Niagara, and the mist-maidens dance
+along the perilous pathways of a hundred Norwegian cliffs. Nils and
+Thorolf agreed that the Wind-wife was right when she said that the
+country of the Skroelings was like Norway but had no end.
+
+"The trouble is," reflected Nils as he set down the day's happenings on
+a birch-bark scroll, "that nobody will believe us when we tell how great
+the land is."
+
+At the end of the fifth and largest lake they found people with some
+knowledge of the country beyond. It seemed that after crossing the Big
+Woods one came to great open plains where a ferocious and cruel race of
+warriors hunted animals as large as the moose, with hoofs and short
+horns and curly brown fur. This sounded like a cattle country. The lake
+tribes evidently stood in great fear of the plains people, but in spite
+of their evident alarm the Norsemen determined to go and see for
+themselves.[8] Leaving the boat with ten of their company to guard it
+they struck off southwestward through a country of forests, lakes and
+streams. After fourteen days they stopped to make camp and go a-fishing,
+for dried fish would be the most convenient ration for a quick march,
+and they did not intend to spend much more time in exploring.
+
+It seemed to Nils and Thorolf that some mark or monument should be left
+to show how far they had really come. A small natural column of dark
+trap rock was chosen, and while the others fished, or made a seine after
+the native fashion, Nils marked out an inscription in Runic letters,
+which are suited to rough work. Not far from the place where they found
+the stone, and about a day's journey from camp, was a small high island
+in a little lake, the kind of place usually chosen by Vikings for a
+first camp. The stone, set in the middle of this island, would be easily
+seen by any one looking for it, and savages would not see it at all.
+When finished it was rafted across to the island and set up, the
+inscription covering about half of it on both sides. While Nils and
+several others were thus busy, the remainder of the party were trying
+the seine. They reached camp after dark to find their booths in ashes,
+and Nils with his men murdered a little way off, as they had come up
+from the Rune Stone.[9]
+
+[Illustration: "NILS MARKED OUT AN INSCRIPTION IN RUNIC
+LETTERS."--_Page_ 30]
+
+With fury and horror the Norsemen looked upon the destruction. It was
+all Thorolf and the cooler heads could do to keep the rest from
+attacking the first Skroelings they saw. But the mischief had been done,
+without doubt, by the unknown warriors of the plains, who had been
+perhaps watching their advance. They sadly prepared to return to their
+boat. But before they went, Thorolf paddled out to the island on two
+logs, while the others kept guard, and added some lines to the
+inscription on the stone.
+
+They never saw their Vinland again. Knutson, finding the King fighting
+hard against the Danes, gave no further thought to the wilderness.
+Thorolf and a handful of his men finally reached Bergen; Anders
+stayed in Greenland. More than five centuries afterward, a Scandinavian
+farmer, grubbing for stumps in a Minnesota marsh, found overgrown by the
+roots of a tulip tree a stone with an inscription in Runic letters, took
+it to learned men and had it translated.
+
+"8 Goths and 22 Norsemen upon journey of discovery from Vinland
+westward. We had camp by two rocks one day's journey from this stone. We
+were out fishing one day. When we returned home we found ten men red
+with blood and dead. AVM save us from evil.        have ten men
+by the sea to look after our ship 14 days journey from this island. Year
+1362."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Skal or skoal was the Norwegian word used in drinking a health.
+
+[2] The description of the Norse galley is taken from Du Chaillu's "Land
+of the Midnight Sun," in which the construction of one which was
+unearthed at Nydam in Jutland is described (Vol. I. 380). The galley
+"Viking" built in Norway on the model of an actual Viking ship of the
+early Middle Ages, was taken across the Atlantic in 1893 by a Norwegian
+crew of fourteen, anchoring in Lake Michigan, after a voyage in which
+they had no shelter except an awning and cooked their own food as best
+they could.
+
+[3] The question of the actual whereabouts of Leif Ericsson's booths and
+Thorfin Karlsefne's later settlement has never been positively decided.
+The Knutson expedition to Greenland is an historical fact. It left
+Norway about 1354 and returned about 1364. It is not positively known
+that Knutson attempted the rediscovery of Vinland, unless what is known
+as the Kensington Rune Stone is evidence of it. The writer has adopted
+the theory that he did take a party southward, landing at Halifax, and
+left a part of his men there, intending to return with more colonists;
+that on returning to Norway he found the country in the throes of war
+and abandoned any thought of further settlement, leaving his men to find
+their way back as they could.
+
+[4] The Indian phrases and legends referred to as learned by the
+Wind-wife are Abenaki.
+
+[5] According to historians the region along the St. Lawrence and the
+Great Lakes was for a long time inhabited by tribes belonging to the
+great Ojibway nation. Their territory extended nearly to the western
+boundary of what is now Minnesota. Southward were the tribes later known
+as Iroquois.
+
+[6] Accounts of the open galleys of the Northmen agree in describing
+them as small and light compared with the later decked ships. The open
+"sea-serpent" of forty-two feet, with her mast unshipped was heavier but
+not much bigger than the largest Indian carrying-canoes such as were
+used in the fur-trade, and these were taken from the St. Lawrence
+through the Great Lakes. Vikings landing in Europe were prepared not
+only to return by a new route but even to take their boats apart or
+build new ones if necessary.
+
+[7] Bayard Taylor, visiting the Saguenay and the St. Lawrence
+immediately after a sojourn in Norway, speaks of his inability to be
+impressed as others had been, by the height of the cliffs and waterfalls
+of Canada, although fully appreciating the beauty of the scenery.
+
+[Footnote 8: The Sioux or Dakotas, who occupied the Great Plains, were
+hereditary enemies of the Ojibways. In the Ojibway language one name for
+these Plains Indians indicated that they were in the habit of mutilating
+their victims.]
+
+[9] The monument known as the Kensington Rune Stone was found near
+Kensington, Minnesota, and is fully described in the reports of the
+Minnesota Historical Society. It was the subject of many arguments at
+first. Well known authorities pronounced it a forgery, while other well
+known authorities declared it genuine. It was pointed out that the
+language used was not that of the time of Leif Ericsson, but much more
+modern; but later it was found that the inscription was exactly such as
+would have been written about the middle of the fourteenth century, when
+Knutson's expedition was in Greenland. Aside from the obvious lack of
+motive for a forgery, investigation showed that neither the farmer nor
+any one who might have been in a position to bury the stone where it was
+found had any knowledge of Runic writing. Moreover, if the stone had
+been a forgery it would seem that the forger would have used the name of
+some well known leader, whereas no name is mentioned. If Knutson had
+been with the expedition he would certainly have seen to it that his
+presence was recorded.
+
+Otter Tail Lake, just north of the place where the stone was discovered,
+was one of the points marking the boundary between the Ojibway and
+Dakota country. The position of the runes on the stone is precisely what
+it would be if the inscription had been finished, or nearly finished, as
+a guide to future exploration, and the account of the massacre added as
+a warning.
+
+A song commonly sung at the time of the Black Death contains the lines:
+
+    "The Black Plague sped over land and sea
+    And swept so many a board.
+    That will I now most surely believe,
+    It was not with the Lord's will.
+    Help us God and Mary,
+    Save us all from evil."
+
+
+
+
+THE NAVIGATORS
+
+
+    We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,--
+      His gentlemen were we,
+    To dare the gods of Heathendom,
+      Whoever they might be,--
+    To do our master's sovereign will
+      Upon a trackless sea.
+
+    We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,
+      And undismayed we went
+    To fight for Lusitania
+      Wherever we were sent,--
+    The stars had laid our course for us,
+      And we were well content.
+
+    We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,
+      And though our flagship lie
+    Where white the great-winged albatross
+      Came wheeling down the sky,
+    Or black abysses yawned for us,
+      We could not fear to die.
+
+    We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,--
+      Around the Cape of Wrath
+    We sailed our wooden cockleshells--
+      Great pride the pilot hath
+    To voyage to-day the Indian Sea--
+      But we marked out his path!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+SEA OF DARKNESS
+
+
+"Those things that you say cannot be true, Fernao! How do you know that
+the sea turns black and dreadful just behind those heavenly clouds? If
+there are hydras, and gorgons, and sea-snakes that can swallow a ship,
+and a great black hand reaching up out of a whirlpool to drag men down,
+why do we never see them here? Look at that sea, can there be anything
+in the world more beautiful?"
+
+The vehement small speaker waved her slender hand with a gesture that
+seemed to take in half the horizon. The old Moorish garden, overrun with
+the brilliant blossoms that drink their hues from the sea, overlooked
+the harbor. Across the huddled many-colored houses the ten-year-old
+Beatriz and her playfellow Fernao could see the western ocean in a great
+half-circle, bounded by the mysterious line above which three tiny
+caravels had just risen. The sea to-day was exquisite, bluer than the
+heavens that arched above it. The wave-crests looked like a flock of
+sea-doves playing on the sunlit sparkling waters. Fernao from his seat
+on the crumbling wall watched the incoming ships with the far-sighted
+gaze of a sailor. Portuguese through and through, the son and grandson
+of men who had sailed at the bidding of the great Prince Henry, he felt
+that he could speak with authority.[1]
+
+"Of course I am telling you the truth. You are very wise about the
+sea--you who never saw it until two weeks ago! Gil Andrade has been to
+places that you Castilians never even heard of. He has seen whales, and
+mermaids, and the Sea of Darkness itself! He has been to the Gold Coast
+beyond Bojador, where the people are fried black like charcoal, and the
+rivers are too hot to drink."
+
+"Then why didn't he die?" inquired the unbelieving Beatriz.
+
+"Because he didn't stay there long enough. And there are devils in the
+forest, stronger than ten men, and all covered with shaggy hair--"
+
+"I will not listen to such nonsense! Do you think that because I am
+Spanish, and a girl, I am without understanding? Tio Sancho, is it true
+that there is a Sea of Darkness?"
+
+Sancho Serrao was an old seaman, as any one would know by his eyes and
+his walk. For fifty years he had used the sea, as ship-boy, sailor, and
+pilot. His daughter Catharina had been the nurse of Beatriz, and he had
+brought coral, shells and queer toys to the little thing from the time
+she could toddle to his knee.
+
+"What has Fernao been saying to thee, pombinha agreste?" (little
+wood-dove) he asked soberly, though his eyes twinkled ever so little. He
+seated himself as he spoke, on an ancient bench that rested its back
+against the wall just where the wind was sweetest. Under the fragrances
+of ripening vineyards and flowering shrubs there was always the sharp
+clean smell of the sea.
+
+"He believes all that Gil Andrade and Joao Pancado tell him as if it
+were the Credo," Beatriz began, her words flung out like sparks from a
+little crackling fire. "He says that there is a Sea of Darkness out
+away beyond the Falcon Islands, where ships are drawn into a great pit
+under the edge of the world. And he says that ships cannot go too far
+south because the sun is so near it would burn them, and they cannot go
+too far north because the icebergs will catch them and crush them. If I
+were a man, I would sail straight out there, into the sunset, and show
+them what my people dared to do!"
+
+Old Sancho was not all Portuguese. In his veins ran the blood of the
+three great seafaring races of southern Europe--the Genoese, the
+Lusitanian and the Vizcayan--and their jealousies and rivalries amused
+him. He had spent most of his life in the feluccas and caravels of
+Lisbon and Oporto, because when he was young they went where no other
+ships dared even follow; but he did not believe that the last word in
+discovery had been said even by Dom Henriques at Sagres, or the
+Mappe-Monde of Fra Mauro in Venice.
+
+"Not so fast there, velinha (small candle)" he cautioned, raising a
+whimsical forefinger. "So said many of us in our youth. And when we had
+sailed for weeks, and all our provisions were mouldy or weevilly, and
+our water-casks warped and leaking so that we had to catch the rain in
+our shirts, we began to wonder what it was we had come for. The sea
+won't be mocked or threatened. She has ways of her own, the old witch,
+to tame the vainglorious. And 't is true enough," the old pilot went on
+with a quizzing look at Fernao on his insecure perch, "that sailors have
+a bad habit of doubling and trebling their recollections when they find
+anybody who will listen. I don't know why they do it. Maybe it is
+because having told a perfectly true tale which nobody believed, they
+think that a little more or a little less will do no harm. For this you
+must remember, my children,--that at sea many things happen which when
+told no one believes to be true."
+
+"I would believe anything you told me, Tio Sancho," promised Beatriz,
+all love and confidence in her little glowing face.
+
+"Ay, would you now? What if I said that I have seen a ship with all sail
+set coming swiftly before the wind, in a place where no wind was, to
+stir our hair who beheld it--and sailing moreover through the air at the
+height of a tall mast-head above the sea? And a mountain of ice half a
+league long and as high as the Giralda at Seville, floating in a sea as
+blue as this one, and as warm? And islands with mountains that smoke,
+appearing and disappearing in broad daylight? Yet all of these are
+common sights at sea."
+
+"But is there a Sea of Darkness, verily, verily, tio caro?" persisted
+Beatriz. The old man shook his head, with a little quiet smile.
+
+"I'll not say there is not. And I'll not say there is. I saw a Sea of
+Darkness on the second voyage that ever I made, but that's all."
+
+"Oh, tell us all the story!" begged Beatriz, and Fernao silently slid
+from the wall and came closer.
+
+"The commander of our ship was Gonsales Zarco, one of Dom Henriques'
+gentlemen. Years before he'd been caught by a gale on his way to Africa,
+and driven north on to an island that he named because of that, Puerto
+Santo (Holy Haven). So when he came that way again he stopped to see how
+the settlement that was planted there prospered, and found the people in
+great trouble of mind. They showed him that a thick black cloud hung
+upon the sea to the northwest of the island, filling the air to the
+very heavens and never going away; and out of this cloud, they said,
+came strange noises, not like any they had heard before. They dared not
+sail far from their island, for they said that if a man lost sight of
+land thereabouts it was a miracle if he ever returned. They believed
+that place to be the great abyss, the mouth of hell. But learned men
+held the opinion that this cloud hid the island of Cipango, where the
+Seven Bishops had taken refuge from the Moors and the Saracens.
+
+"Certainly the cloud was there, for we all saw it, and when the
+Commander said that he would stay to see whether it would change when
+the moon changed, we liked it not, I can tell you. And when we learned
+that he was minded to sail straight into the darkness and see what lay
+behind it, why, there were some who would have run away--if they could
+have run anywhere but into the sea.
+
+"But we had a Spanish pilot, Morales, who had once been a prisoner in
+Morocco, and there he knew two Englishmen who had sailed these seas in
+time past. Their ship had been lying ready to sail for France, when late
+at night Robert Macham, a gentleman of their country, came hurriedly
+aboard with his lady love whom he had carried off from her home in
+Bristol, and between dark and dawn the captain weighed anchor and was
+off. Then being driven from the course the ship was cast on a thickly
+wooded island with a high mountain in the middle, where they dwelt not
+long, for the lady died, and Macham died of grief. The crew left the
+island and were wrecked in Morocco and made slaves. All this was many
+years before, for the Englishmen had grown old in slavery, and Morales
+himself had grown old since he heard the tale.
+
+"It was the belief of Morales that this was the island of which they
+told, and that the cloud which hung above the waters was the mist
+arising from those dense woods which covered it. The upshot was that the
+commander set sail one morning early and steered straight for the cloud.
+
+"The nearer we came the higher and thicker looked the darkness that
+spread over the sea, and we heard about noon a great roaring of the
+waves. Still Gonsales held his course, and when the wind failed he
+ordered out the boats to tow the ship into the cloud, and I was one of
+those who rowed. As we got closer it was not quite so dark, but the
+roaring was louder, although the sea was smooth. Then through the
+darkness we beheld tall black objects which we guessed to be giants
+walking in the water, but as we came nearer we saw that they were great
+rocks, and before us loomed a high mountain covered with thick woods.
+
+"We found no place to land but a cave under a rock that overhung the
+sea, and that was trodden all over the bottom by the sea-wolves, so that
+Gonsales named it the Camera dos Lobos. The island, because of its
+forests, he called Madeira. When we came back, having taken possession
+of the island for the King, he sent a colony to settle upon it, and the
+first boy and girl born there were named Adam and Eva. The people set
+fire to the trees, which were in their way, and could not put out the
+fire, so that it burned for seven years and all the trees were
+destroyed. And the King gave our commander the right to carry as
+supporters on his coat-of-arms two sea-wolves."
+
+Beatriz drew a long breath. "Weren't you very scared, Tio Sancho?"
+
+"Sailors must not be scared, little one. Or if they are, they must
+never let their arms and legs be scared. We knew that we had to obey
+orders or be dead, so we obeyed. I have been glad many a time since that
+I sailed with Gonsales and old Morales to the discovery of Madeira."
+
+"What are sea-wolves?" asked Fernao.
+
+"Like no beast that ever you saw, my son. They have the fore part of the
+body like a dog or bear, the hind part ending in a tail like a fish, but
+with hair, not scales, on the body; the head has a thick mane, and the
+jaws are large and strong. They are no more seen on that island, for
+they went there only because it was never visited by men."
+
+"Did they try to drive the people away?"
+
+"No; they do not fight men unless men attack them. But the settlers were
+once driven off Puerto Santo by animals, and not very fierce animals at
+that." The old pilot grinned. "They were driven away by rabbits.
+Somebody brought rabbits there and let them loose, and in a few years
+there were so many that everything that was planted was eaten green. The
+people who live on that island now have made a strict rule about
+rabbits."
+
+The children's laughter echoed the dry chuckle of the old man. Then
+Fernao, unwilling to abandon his authorities,--
+
+"But if the Sea of Darkness and the great abyss are not in the western
+ocean, why haven't they found out what really is there?"
+
+"That, my son, is more than I can tell you," said Sancho Serrao, getting
+up. "I sailed where I was told, and I never was told to sail due west
+from Lisbon. But here is a man who can answer your question, if any one
+can. Welcome to my humble dwelling, Senhor Colombo! Shall we go into
+the house, or will you find it pleasanter in the garden?"
+
+The new-comer was a tall man of middle age, although at first sight he
+looked older, because of his white hair. The fresh complexion, alert
+walk, and keen thoughtful blue eyes were those of a man not old in
+either mind or body. He smiled in answer to the greeting, and replied
+with a quick wave of the hand. "Do not disturb yourself, I beg of you,
+my friend. The garden is very pleasant. I have come on an errand of my
+own this time. Did you ever see, in your voyages to Africa or elsewhere,
+any such carving as this?"
+
+He held out a curious worm-eaten bit of reddish brown wood, rudely
+ornamented with carved figures in relief. Old Sancho took it and turned
+it about, examining it with narrowed attentive eyes.
+
+"Where did it come from?" he asked, finally.
+
+"From the beach at Puerto Santo. My little son Diego picked it up, the
+day before I came away from the island."
+
+"Now that is curious. I was just telling the young ones about an
+adventure of my youth, when Gonsales Zarco touched there on his way to
+Madeira. With your good permission I will leave you for a few minutes
+and rummage in an old sea-chest, and see whether there is any flotsam in
+it to compare with this."
+
+Left alone with the stranger, Fernao and Beatriz looked at him with shy
+curiosity. They had seen him before, and knew him to be a mapmaker in
+the King's service, but he had never before been within speaking
+distance. He seemed to like children, for he smiled at them very kindly
+and spoke to them almost at once.
+
+"And you were hearing about the discovery of Madeira?"
+
+"Ay, Senhor," Beatriz answered with demure dignity.
+
+"I live not very far from that island. It seems like living on the
+western edge of the world."
+
+"Senhor," asked Fernao with sudden daring, "what is beyond the edge of
+the world?"
+
+"There is no edge, my boy. The world is round--like an orange."[2]
+
+In all their fancies they had never thought of such a thing as that.
+Beatriz looked at the tall man with silent amazement, and Fernao looked
+as if he would like to ask who could prove the statement. The stranger's
+smile was amused but quite comprehending, as if he was not at all
+surprised that they should doubt him.
+
+"See," he went on, taking an orange from the basket that stood by,
+"suppose this little depression where the stem lost its hold to be
+Jerusalem, the center of our world; then this is Portugal--" he traced
+with the point of a penknife the outline of the great western peninsula.
+"Here you see are the capes--Saint Vincent, Finisterre, the great rock
+the Arabs call Geber-al-Tarif--the Mediterranean--the northern coast of
+Africa--so. Beyond are Arabia and India, and the Spice Islands which we
+do not know all about--then Cathay, where Marco Polo visited the Great
+Khan--you have heard of that? Yes? On the eastern and southern shore of
+Cathay is a great sea in which are many islands--Cipangu here, and to
+the south Java Major and Java Minor. We are told in the Book of Esdras
+that six parts of the earth are land and one part water, so here we cut
+away the skin where there is any sea,--"
+
+The miniature globe took form, like fairy mapmaking, under the
+cosmographer's skilful fingers, and the children watched, fascinated.
+
+[Illustration: "THE MINIATURE GLOBE TOOK FORM AS THE CHILDREN WATCHED,
+FASCINATED."--_Page_ 44]
+
+"But," cried Beatriz wonderingly, "a ship could sail around the world!"
+
+Colombo nodded and smiled. "So it was written in the 'Travels of Sir
+John Maundeville' more than a hundred years ago. But no ship has done
+so."
+
+"Why not?" asked Fernao.
+
+"Chiefly, perhaps, because of tales like that of the Sea of Darkness and
+Satan's hand. And it is true that a ship venturing very far westward is
+drawn out of its course, as if the earth were not a perfect round, but
+sloped upward to the south. My own belief is,"--he seemed for a moment
+to forget that he was talking to children, "that it is not perfectly
+round, but somewhat like this pear,--" he selected a short chubby pear
+from the basket, "and that on this mountain may be a cool and lovely
+region which was once Paradise."
+
+"Oh!" cried Beatriz, her face alight with the glory of the thought. The
+geographer smiled at her and went on.
+
+"Also you see that the ocean is on this side of the earth very much
+greater than the Mediterranean. We do not know how long it would take to
+cross it. I have lately received a map from the famous Florentine
+Toscanelli which--ah!" he interrupted himself, "here comes our good
+friend Master Serrao."
+
+It had taken the pilot longer than he expected to hunt over his relics
+of old voyages, and there was nothing, after all, like the piece of wood
+cast ashore by the Atlantic waves. Old Sancho turned it over, examined
+the edges of the carving, and shook his head.
+
+"No; that is not African work; at least it is not like any work of
+the black men that I have ever seen. They can all work iron, and this
+was made without the use of iron tools; that I am sure of. Some of our
+men were shipwrecked once where they had to make stone and shells serve
+their turn, and I know the look of wood that has been worked with such
+tools. And the wood itself is not like anything I have from Africa. It
+is more like the timber of the East."
+
+Now the stranger's eyes lighted with keener interest.
+
+"You think it may be Indian, do you?"
+
+"It may. But how in the name of Sao Cristobal did it come here? Besides,
+the people of India understand the use of metal as well as we do, or
+better."
+
+"May there not be wild men in remote islands of the Indian seas?"
+
+"That might be. Gil Andrade has been in those parts, and he says there
+are more islands than he could count. I have sometimes had occasion to
+take his stories with a pinch of salt, but if there are islands where
+wild people live they would make such things as this. And now I think of
+it, I once picked up a paddle myself, floating off the Azores, that was
+some such wood as this, but not carved. But the queerest thing I ever
+found was this nut. Look at it."
+
+It was part of a nutshell as big as a man's head and as hard as wood.
+"The inside was quite spoiled," went on the old seaman, "but so far as I
+could judge it was no kin to the palm nuts we get. I kept the shell, and
+I have never found any merchant who could match it. Now the current sets
+toward our coast from the west at a certain point, and that is where all
+these odd things come ashore."
+
+The guest nodded. "My brother-in-law and I have talked much of these
+matters. One of his captains saw some time ago the floating bodies of
+two men, brown-skinned, with straight black hair, not like the natives
+of any part of Europe or Africa. Another thing which is strange, though
+I hold it not as important as they do, is that the people of Madeira
+persistently declare that they see a great island appear and disappear
+to the westward. According to their description it has lofty mountains
+and wooded valleys, and some say it is Atlantis and some Saint Brandan's
+Isle. No ship sailing that way has ever landed there, however."
+
+Sancho's eyes turned seaward. "It is marvelous," he said after a pause,
+"what things men think they see. And you think, senhor, that the world
+is not yet all known to us?'"
+
+"I do not know." Colombo stood up to take his departure. "If God hath
+reserved any great work to be done, He hath also chosen the man who is
+to do it. His tasks are not done by accident, or left to the blind or
+the selfish. Toscanelli thinks that since the world is round, we should
+reach the Indies by sailing due west from this coast, but in that case
+India would seem to be far greater than we have believed. If I had the
+ships and the men I would venture it. But at this time the King is
+altogether taken up with the eastward route to the Indies. It was said
+of old time, 'He that believeth shall not make haste.'"
+
+"But you will sail to Paradise some day, will you not, senhor?" asked
+Beatriz, treasuring the tiny globe in one careful hand while the other
+shaded her eyes from the level rays of the evening sun.
+
+"There is only one way to Paradise, little maid. That is by the will of
+our Lord. And if you, my lad, are the first to sail round the world,
+remember that the sea is His, and He made it. Man makes his own Sea of
+Darkness by ignorance, and hate, and fear."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Prince Henry of Portugal, often called "Henry the Navigator" built
+the first naval observatory in Europe at Sagres. He may be said to have
+laid the foundation of the Portuguese and later Spanish discoveries. In
+the time of Columbus the Mappe-Mondo or Map of the World of a Venetian
+monk was considered the most complete map yet made.
+
+[2] The statement has been carelessly made in some juvenile books
+dealing with the age of discovery, that in the time of Columbus nobody
+knew that the world was round. This of course is not even approximately
+the case. The conception of the earth as a sphere was generally set
+forth in what might be called books of science, and even in some popular
+works like that of Sir John Maundeville, who died in 1372. Its
+acceptance by the public, however, may be said to have followed somewhat
+the course of the Darwinian theory in the nineteenth century. Long after
+evolution was admitted as a truth by scientific men there were schools
+and even colleges which refused to teach it, and in fact it was not
+accepted by the public until the generation which first heard of it had
+died.
+
+
+
+
+SUNSET SONG
+
+
+    Down upon our seaward light,
+      Swept by all the winds that blow,
+    Birds come reeling in their flight--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+    Petrels tossing on the gale,
+    Falcons daring sleet and hail,
+    Curlews whistling high and far,
+    Waifs that cross the harbor bar
+    Borne from isles we do not know--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+
+    Round our island haven blest
+      Waves like drifted mountain snow
+    Break from out the shoreless West--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+    Cast ashore a broken spar
+    Born beneath some alien star,
+    Broken, beaten by the wave--
+    In what far-off unknown grave
+    Lie the hands that shaped it so?
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+
+    Sails upon the gray world's edge
+      Like mute phantoms come and go,--
+    Life and honor men will pledge--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+    For the pearls and gems and gold
+    That the burning Indies hold.
+    Or the Guinea coast they dare
+    With its fever-poisoned air
+    For the slaves they capture so
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+
+    In our chamber small to-night,
+      Fair as love's immortal glow,
+    Shines our silver censer-light--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero_!)
+    What is this that holds thee fast
+    In old histories of the past?
+    Put the time-stained parchments by,
+    Men have sought where dead men lie
+    For the secret thou wouldst know--
+      All too long, Cristofero!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+PEDRO AND HIS ADMIRAL
+
+
+Juan de la Cosa, captain of the _Santa Maria_, was prowling about the
+beach of Gomera in a thoroughly dissatisfied frame of mind. His own
+ship, the _Gallego_ before the Admiral re-christened her and made her
+his flagship, was riding trim as a mallard within sight of his eye. She
+would never have kept the fleet waiting in the Canaries for a little
+thing like a broken rudder.
+
+It was the _Pinta_ that had done this, and it was the veteran pilot's
+private opinion that she would behave much better if her owners, Gomez
+Rascon and Christoval Quintero, had been left behind in Palos. But what
+can you do when you have seized a ship for the service of the Crown, and
+turned her over to a captain who is a rival ship-owner, and her owners
+wish to serve in her crew and not elsewhere? They cannot be blamed for
+liking to keep an eye on their property!
+
+"Capitano!" piped a voice at his elbow. He looked around, and then he
+looked down. An undersized urchin with not much on but a pair of ragged
+breeches stared up at him boldly, hands behind his back. "Do you know
+what ails your ship over there?" He nodded sideways at the disgraced
+_Pinta_.
+
+The accent was that of Bilbao in the captain's own native province,
+Vizcaya. Ordinarily he would have cuffed the speaker heels over head for
+impudence, but the dialect made him pause. Besides, he wanted to hear
+something to confirm his suspicions.
+
+"She is no ship of mine," he growled, "and anyway, what do you know
+about it?"
+
+"I know much more than they think I do. The calkers did not half do
+their work before she left port. I'd like to sail in her if she were
+properly looked after. But when a man goes out on the dolphins' track he
+likes to come home again, you know."
+
+"A man! Do babes take a ship round Bojador? And who may you call
+yourself, zagallo (strong youth)?"
+
+"I am Pedro, son of Pedro who was an escaladero (climber) at the siege
+of Alhama. He was killed on the way home, and my mother died of grief,
+so that I get my bread where the saints put it. People say that they
+unlocked all the jails to get you your crew for the Indies, and now I
+see that it is true."
+
+Juan de la Cosa knew the untamable sauciness of the Vizcayan breed, and
+knew as well the loyalty that went with it. "Son," he said seriously,
+"what do you know of this matter?" The boy put aside his insolence and
+spoke gravely.
+
+"I know that these fellows who have been commanded to serve your Admiral
+hate him, and will make him lose his venture if they can. I would sooner
+put to sea in a meal-tub with myself that I can trust, than in a Cadiz
+galley manned with plotters. When they hauled this fine ship up on the
+beach I asked for a job, and the lazy fellows were glad enough of help.
+I never minded doing their work if they hadn't kicked me. When I heard
+them planning I said to myself, 'Pedro, mi hidalgo, a crow in hand is
+worth two buzzards in the bush waiting to pick your bones.' Your
+Admiral may have to go back to Castile and eat crow.
+
+"They have agreed that they will sail seven hundred leagues and no more,
+since that is the distance from here to the Indies if your map is true.
+If the Admiral refuse to turn back in case land is not found they will
+pitch him into the sea and tell the world that he was star-gazing and
+fell overboard, being an old man and unused to perilous voyages. He
+should get him another crew--if he can."
+
+This was important information. Yet to go back might be more dangerous
+than to go on. The expedition had already been delayed a fortnight with
+making a rudder for the _Pinta_, stopping her leaks, and replacing the
+lateen sails of the _Nina_ with square ones, that she might be able to
+keep up with the others. Another week must pass before they could sail.
+If they returned to Palos it was doubtful whether they could get any men
+at all to replace the disloyal ones. Too much delay might cause the
+withdrawal of Martin Pinzon and his brother Vicente, owners of the
+_Nina_; and if they went, most of the seamen who were worth their salt
+would go also. La Cosa himself in the Admiral's place would go on and
+take the chance of mutiny, trusting in his own power to prevent or
+subdue it.
+
+"Pedro," he said, "have you told this to any one else?"
+
+"Not a soul."
+
+"Would you like to sail with us?"
+
+"Will a wolf bite? Why do you suppose I told you all this?"
+
+"Bite your tongue then, wolf-cub, until I have seen the Admiral. Where
+shall I find you if I want you?"
+
+"Tia Josefa over there lets me sleep in the courtyard."
+
+"Very well--now, off with you."
+
+The Admiral said exactly what the pilot had thought he would say. He
+knew himself to be looked upon with envy and dislike, as a Genoese, and
+the Spaniards who made up his three crews had been collected as with a
+rake from the unwilling Andalusian seaports. It was decided that the
+mutinous sailors should be scattered so that they could not easily act
+together. Pedro was taken on as cabin-boy, for he was thirteen, and
+wiser than his age.
+
+On that May day when Christoval Colón,[1] the hare-brained foreigner
+whom the King and Queen had made an Admiral, read the royal orders in
+the Church of San Jorge in Palos, there was amazement, wrath and horror
+in that small seaport. Queen Ysabel had indeed been so rash as to pledge
+her jewels to meet the cost of this expedition; but the royal
+treasurers, looking over their accounts, noted that Palos owed a fine to
+the Crown which had never been paid. Very good; let Palos contribute the
+use and maintenance of two ships for two months, and let the magistrates
+of the Andalusian ports hunt up shipmasters and crews and supplies. The
+officers of the government came with Colón to enforce this order.
+
+In vain did the Pinzon brothers, who had really been convinced by the
+arguments of Colón, use all their influence to secure him a proper
+equipment. Even after they had themselves enlisted as captains, with
+their own ship the _Nina_, they could not get men enough to go on so
+doubtful a venture. The royal officers finally took to the reckless
+course of pardoning all prisoners guilty of any crime short of murder or
+treason, on condition of their shipping for the voyage. At least half
+the sailors of the three ships were pressed men.
+
+The _Santa Maria_, largest of the three caravels, was ninety feet long
+and twenty broad. She was a decked ship; the others had only the tiny
+cabin and forecastle. A caravel was never intended for long voyages into
+unknown seas. Her builders designed her for coasting trade, not for a
+quick voyage independent of wind and tide; but on the other hand she was
+cheaper to build and to sail than a Genoese galley. The Admiral believed
+that in the end the smallness of the ships would be no disadvantage.
+Among the estuaries, bays and groups of islands which he expected to
+find, they could go anywhere. Including shipmasters, pilots and crews
+the fleet carried eighty-seven men and three ship-boys, besides the
+personal servants of the Admiral, a physician, a surgeon, an interpreter
+and a few adventurers. The interpreter was a converted Jew who could
+speak not only several European languages but Arabic and Chaldean.
+
+"A retinue of servants indeed!" observed Fonseca, the bishop, when the
+door had closed upon the Admiral of the Indies. "Since all enlisted in
+the expedition are at his service, why does he demand lackeys?"
+
+But the head of the Genoese navigator had not been turned by his honors.
+No man cared less for display than he did, personally. He knew very
+well, however, that unless he maintained his own dignity the rabble
+under his command might be emboldened to cut his throat, seize the ships
+and become pirates. The men whom he could trust were altogether too few
+to control those he could not, if it came to an open fight,--but it must
+not be allowed to come to that. It was not agreeable to squabble with
+Fonseca about the number of servants he was allowed to have, but he
+must have personal attendants who were not discharged convicts.
+
+On the open seas, removed from their lamenting and despondent relatives,
+the crews gradually subsided into a state of discipline. The
+quarter-deck is perhaps the severest test of character known. Despite
+themselves the sailors began to feel the serene and kindly strength of
+the man who was their master.
+
+With a tact and understanding as great as his courage and self-command
+Colón told his men more than they had ever known of the Indies. The East
+had for generations been the enchanted treasure-house of Europe. Arabic,
+Venetian, Genoese and Portuguese traders had brought from it spices,
+rare woods, gold, diamonds, pearls, silk, and other foreign luxuries.
+But the wide and varied reading of the Admiral had given him more
+definite information. He told of the gilded temples of Cipangu, the
+porcelain towers of Cathay, rajahs' elephants in gilded and jeweled
+trappings, golden idols with eyes of great glowing gems, thrones of
+ebony inlaid with patterns of diamonds, emeralds and rubies, rich
+cargoes of spices, dyewood, fine cotton and silk, pearl fisheries, the
+White Feast of Cambalu and the Khan's great hall where six thousand
+courtiers gathered. Portugal already was reaching out toward these
+Indies, groping her way around the African coast. Were they, Spaniards
+and Christians, to be outdone by Portuguese and Arab traders? No men
+ever had so great a future. Not only the wealth of the Indies, but the
+glory of winning heathen empires to abandon their idols for the
+Christian faith, was the adventure to which they were pledged; and he
+strove to kindle their spirits from his own.
+
+To Pedro the cabin-boy, listening in silence, it was like an entrance
+into another world. When he asked to be taken on he had been moved
+simply by a boy's desire to go where he had not been before. Now he
+served a demigod, who led men where none had dared go. The Admiral might
+have the glory of rediscovering the western route to the Indies; his
+cabin-boy was discovering him.
+
+The sea was beautifully calm, and there was time for talk and
+speculation. A drifting mast, to which nobody would have given two
+thoughts anywhere else, was pointed out as an evil omen. Pedro grinned
+cheerfully and elevated his nose.
+
+"Do you not believe in omens, Pedro?" asked the Admiral, somewhat
+amused. He had not found many Spaniards who did not.
+
+"One does not believe all one hears, my lord," the youngster answered,
+coolly. "Tia Josefa saw ill omens a dozen times a week, all sure death;
+and she is ninety years old. A mast drifting with the current is usual.
+When I see one drifting against it I will begin to worry."
+
+The jumpy nerves of the sailors were easily upset. They might have been
+calmer if the sea had been less calm. It is hard for Spanish blood to
+endure inaction and suspense together. Day after day a soft strong wind
+wafted them westward. Ruiz, one of the pilots, bluntly declared that he
+did not see how they could ever sail back to Spain against this wind,
+whether they reached the Indies or not.
+
+"Pedro," said the Admiral quietly, "what do you think?"
+
+Pedro hesitated only an instant. "My lord," he answered boldly, "if we
+cannot go back we must go on--around the world."
+
+"So we can," smiled the Admiral. "But it will not come to that." And
+Ruiz, reassured and rather ashamed of his fears, told the other
+grumblers if they had seen as much rough weather as he had they would
+know when they were well off.
+
+But after a time even the pilots took fright. The compass needle no
+longer pointed to the North Star, but half a point or more to the
+northwest of it. They had visions of the fleet helplessly drifting
+without a guide upon a vast unknown sea. It was not then known that the
+action of the magnetic pole upon the needle varies in different parts of
+the earth, but the quick mind of the Admiral found an explanation which
+quieted their fears. He told them that the real north pole was a fixed
+point indeed, but not necessarily the North Star. While this star might
+be in line with the pole when seen from the coast of Spain, it would
+not, of course, be in the same relative position when seen from a point
+hundreds of miles to the west.
+
+On September 15 a meteor fell, which might be another omen--nobody could
+say exactly what it meant. Then about three hundred and sixty leagues
+from the Canaries the ships began to encounter patches of floating
+yellow-green sea-weed, which grew more numerous until the fleet was
+sailing in a vast level expanse of green like an ocean meadow. Tuna fish
+played in the waters; on one of the patches of floating weed rested a
+live crab. A white tropical bird of a kind never known to sleep upon the
+sea came flying toward them, alighting for a moment in the rigging. The
+owners of the _Pinta_ predicted that they would all be caught in this
+ocean morass to starve, or die of thirst, for the light winds were not
+strong enough to drive the ships through it as easily as they had sailed
+at first. The Admiral, quite undisturbed, suggested that in his
+experience land-birds usually meant land not very far away.
+
+Colón always answered frankly the questions put to him, but there was
+one secret which he kept to himself from the beginning. Knowing that he
+would be likely to have trouble when he reached the seven-hundred-league
+limit his crews had set for him, he kept two reckonings. One was for his
+private journal, the other was for all to see. He took the actual
+figures of each day's run as set down in his private record, subtracted
+from them a certain percentage and gave out this revised reckoning to
+the fleet. He, and he alone, knew that they were nearly seven hundred
+leagues from Palos already, instead of five hundred and fifty. According
+to Toscanelli's calculation, by sailing west from the Canaries along the
+thirtieth parallel of latitude he should land somewhere on the coast of
+Cipangu; but the map of Toscanelli might be incorrect. If the ocean
+should prove to be a hundred or more leagues wider than the chart showed
+it, they would have to go on, all the same.
+
+Even after they were out of the seaweed there was something weird and
+unnatural in the sluggish calm of the sea. Light winds blew from the
+west and southwest, but there were no waves, as by all marine experience
+there should have been. On September 25 the sea heaved silently in a
+mysterious heavy swell, without any wind. Then the wind once more
+shifted to the east, and carried them on so smoothly that they could
+talk from one ship to another. Martin Pinzon borrowed the Admiral's
+chart, and it seemed to him that according to this they must be near
+Cipangu. He tossed the chart back to the flagship on the end of a cord,
+and gave himself to scanning the horizon. Ten thousand maravedis had
+been promised by the sovereigns to the first man who actually saw land.
+Suddenly Pinzon shouted, "Tierra! Tierra!" There was a low bank of what
+seemed to be land, about twenty-five leagues away to the southwest. Even
+for this Colón hesitated to turn from his pre-arranged course, but at
+last he yielded to the chorus of pleading and protest which arose from
+his officers, set his helm southwest and found--a cloud-bank.
+
+Again and again during the following days the eager eyes and strained
+nerves of the seamen led to similar disappointments. Land birds
+appeared; some alighted fearlessly on the rigging and sang. Dolphins
+frolicked about the keels. Flying-fish, pursued by their enemy the
+bonito (mackerel), rose from the water in rainbow argosies, and fell
+sometimes inside the caravels. A heron, a pelican and a duck passed,
+flying southwest. By the true reckoning the fleet had sailed seven
+hundred and fifty leagues. Colón wondered whether there could be an
+error in the map, or whether by swerving from their course they had
+passed between islands into the southern sea. Pedro, as sensitive as a
+dog to the moods of his master, watched the Admiral's face as he came
+and went, and wondered in his turn.
+
+The pilots and shipmasters were cautious in expressing their fears
+within hearing of the sailors, for by this time every one in authority
+knew that open mutiny might break out at any moment. On the evening of
+October 10 a delegation of anxious officers came to explain to the
+Admiral that they could not hold the panic-stricken crews. If no land
+appeared within a week their provisions would not last until they
+reached home; they had not enough water to last through the homeward
+voyage even now. The Admiral knew as well as they the horrors of thirst
+and famine at sea, particularly with a crew of the kind they had been
+obliged to ship. What did he intend to do?
+
+The Admiral, seated at his table, finished the sentence he was adding in
+his neat, legible hand to his log, put it aside, put the pen in the case
+which hung at his belt, closed his ink-horn. His quiet eyes rested
+fearlessly on their uneasy faces.
+
+"This expedition," he said calmly, "has been sent out to look for the
+Indies. With God's blessing we shall continue to look for them until we
+find them. Say to the men, however, that if they will wait two or three
+days I think they will see land."
+
+Next morning Pedro was engaged in polishing his master's steel corslet
+and casque, while near by two or three sailors conferred in low tones.
+
+"We have had enough of promises," growled one. "As Rascon says, we are
+like Fray Agostino's donkey, that went over the mountain at a trot,
+trying to reach the bunch of carrots hung on a staff in front of his
+nose."
+
+There was a half-hearted snicker, and one of the men pointed a warning
+thumb at Pedro.
+
+"Oh!" said the speaker. "You heard, you little beggar?"
+
+"I did," said Pedro.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I was waiting for the end of the story. As I heard it the Abbot
+charged the old friar with deceiving the dumb beast, and he said he had
+to, because he was dealing with a donkey!"
+
+Pedro slung the pieces of gleaming plate-mail to his shoulder and added
+as he turned to go, "You need not be afraid that I shall tell the
+Admiral what you were saying. I am not a fool, and he knows how scared
+you are, already."
+
+More signs of land appeared--river weeds, a thorny branch with fresh
+berries like rose-hips, a reed, a piece of wood, a carved staff. As
+always, the vesper hymn to the Virgin was sung on the deck of the
+flagship, and after service the Admiral briefly addressed the men. He
+reminded them of the singular favor of God in granting them so quiet and
+safe a voyage, and recalled his statement made on leaving the Canaries,
+that after they had made seven hundred leagues he expected to be so near
+land that they should not make sail after midnight. He told them that in
+his belief they might find land before morning.
+
+Nobody slept that night. About ten o'clock the Admiral, gazing from the
+top of the castle built up on the poop of the _Santa Maria_, thought
+that far away in the warm darkness he saw a glancing light.
+
+"Pedro," he said to the boy near him, "do you see a light out there?
+Yes? Call Señor Gutierrez and we will see what he makes of it. I have
+come to the pass where I do not trust my own eyes."
+
+Gutierrez saw it, but when Sanchez of Segovia came up, the light had
+vanished. It seemed to come and go as if it were a torch in a
+fishing-boat or in the hand of some one walking. But at two in the
+morning a gun boomed from the _Pinta_. Rodrigo de Triana, one of the
+seamen, had seen land from the mast-head.
+
+The sudden sunrise of the tropics revealed a green Paradise lapped in
+tranquil seas. The ships must have come up toward it between sunset and
+midnight. No one had been able to imagine with any certainty what
+morning would show. But this was no seaport, or coast of any civilized
+land. People were coming down to the shore to watch the approach of the
+ships, but they were wild people, naked and brown, and the sight was
+evidently perfectly new to them.
+
+The Admiral ordered the ships to cast anchor, and the boats were manned
+and armed. He himself in a rich uniform of scarlet held the royal banner
+of Castile, while the brothers Pinzon, commanders of the _Pinta_ and the
+_Nina_, in their boats, had each a banner emblazoned with a green cross
+and the crowned initials of the sovereigns, Fernando and Ysabel. The air
+was clear and soft, the sea was almost transparent, and strange and
+beautiful fruits could be seen among the rich foliage of the trees along
+the shore. The Admiral landed, knelt and kissed the earth, offering
+thanks to God, with tears in his eyes; and the other captains followed
+his example. Then rising, he drew his sword, and calling upon all who
+gathered around him to witness his action, took possession of the
+newly-discovered island in the name of his sovereigns, and gave it the
+name of San Salvador (Holy Savior).
+
+The wild people, terrified at the sight of men coming toward them from
+these great white-winged birds, as they took the ships to be, ran away
+to the woods, but they presently returned, drawn by irresistible
+curiosity. They had no weapons of iron, and one of them innocently took
+hold of a sword by the edge. They were delighted with the colored caps,
+glass beads, hawk-bells and other trifles which were given to them, and
+brought the strangers great balls of spun cotton, cakes of cassava
+bread, fruits, and tame parrots. Pedro went everywhere, and saw
+everything, as only a boy could. Later, when the flagship was cruising
+among the islands, and the Admiral, worn out by long anxiety, lay asleep
+in his cabin, the helmsman, smothering a mighty yawn, called Pedro to
+him.
+
+"See here, young chap," he said, "we are running along the shore of this
+island and there is no difficulty--take my place will you, while I get a
+nap?"
+
+The boy hesitated. He would have asked his master, but his master was
+asleep, and must not be awakened. This helmsman, moreover, was one of
+the men who had been kind to him, ready to answer his questions
+regarding navigation, and loyal to the Admiral. Moreover it was not
+quite the first time that Pedro had been allowed to take this
+responsibility. He accepted it now. The man staggered away and lost
+himself in heavy sleep almost before he lay down.
+
+It was one of the still, breathless nights of the tropic seas. Pedro's
+small strong hands had not grasped the helm for a half-hour before the
+wind freshened, and then a tremendous gust swept down upon the flagship
+hurling her right upon the unknown shore. Pedro strove desperately with
+the fearful odds, but before the half-awakened sailors heard his call
+the _Santa Maria_ was past repair. No lives were lost, but the Admiral
+decided that it would be necessary to leave a part of the men on shore
+as the beginning of a settlement. He would not have chosen to do this
+but for the disaster, for the men who made up these crews were not
+promising material for a colony in a wild land. But he had no choice in
+the matter. The two smaller ships would not hold them all. Pedro,
+shaken with sobs, cast himself at the feet of his master and begged
+forgiveness.
+
+"No one blames you, my son," said the Admiral, more touched than he had
+been for a long time. "Be not so full of sorrow for what cannot be
+helped. The wild people are friendly, the land is kind, and when we have
+sailed back to Spain with our news there will be no difficulty in
+returning with as many ships as we may need. Nay, I will not leave thee
+here, Pedro. I think that now I could not do without thee."
+
+
+NOTE
+
+[1] The name of Columbus took various forms according to the country in
+which he lived. In his native Genoa it would be Cristofero Colombo. In
+Portugal, where he dwelt for many years, it would be Cristobal Colombo,
+and in Spanish Christoval or Cristobal Colón. In Latin, which was the
+common language of all learned men until comparatively recent times, the
+name took the form Christopherus Columbus, which has become in modern
+English Christopher Columbus. In each story the discoverer is spoken of
+as he would have been spoken of by the characters in that particular
+story.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUEEN'S PRAYER
+
+
+    In this Thy world, O blessed Christ,
+      I live but for Thy will,
+    To serve Thy cause and drive Thy foes
+      Before Thy banner still.
+
+    In rich and stately palaces
+      I have my board and bed,
+    But Thou didst tread the wilderness
+      Unsheltered and unfed.
+
+    My gallant squadrons ride at will
+      The undiscover'd sea,
+    But Thou hadst but a fishing-boat
+      On windy Galilee.
+
+    In valiant hosts my men-at-arms
+      Eager to battle go,
+    But Thou hadst not a single blade
+      To fend Thee from the foe.
+
+    Great store of pearls and beaten gold
+      My bold seafarers bring,
+    But Thou hadst not a little coin
+      To pay for Thy lodging.
+
+    The trust that Thou hast placed in me,
+      O may I not betray,
+    Nor fail to save Thy people from
+      The fires of Judgment Day!
+
+    Be strong and stern, O heart, faint heart--
+      Stay not, O woman's hand,
+    Till by this Cross I bear for Thee
+      I have made clean Thy land!
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE MAN WHO COULD NOT DIE
+
+
+"Nombre de San Martin! who is that up there like a cat?"
+
+"Un gato! Cucarucha en palo!"
+
+"If Alonso de Ojeda hears of your calling him a cockroach on a mast, he
+will grind your ribs to a paste with a cudgel (os moliesen las costillas
+a puros palos)!" observed a pale, sharp-faced lad in a shabby doublet.
+The sailor who had made the comparison glanced at him and chuckled.
+
+"Your pardon--hidalgo. I have been at sea so much of late that the
+comparison jumped into my mind. Is he a caballero then?"
+
+"One of the household of the Duke of Medina Coeli. He is always doing
+such things. If he happened to think of flying, he would fly. Every one
+must be good at something."
+
+The performance which they had just been watching would fix the name of
+Ojeda very firmly in the minds of those who saw. Queen Ysabel, happening
+to ascend the tower of the cathedral at Seville with her courtiers and
+ladies, remarked upon the daring and skill of the Moorish builders.
+Everywhere in the newly conquered cities of Granada were their
+magnificent domes and lofty muezzin towers, often seeming like the airy
+minarets of a mirage. The next instant Alonso de Ojeda had walked out
+upon a twenty-foot timber projecting into space two hundred feet above
+the pavement, and at the very end he stood on one leg and waved the
+other in the air. Returning, he rested one foot against the wall and
+flung an orange clean over the top of the tower. He was small, though
+handsome and well-made, and he had now shown a muscular strength of
+which few had suspected him.
+
+It was natural that the sailor should be interested in the people of the
+court, for he had business there. The Admiral of the Indies was making
+his arrangements for his second voyage, and he had desired Juan de la
+Cosa to meet him at Seville. As the pilot stood waiting for the Admiral
+to come out from an interview with Fonseca he had a good look at many of
+the persons who were to join in this second expedition.
+
+"There will be no unlocking the jail doors to scrape together crews for
+this fleet, I warrant you," thought the old sailor exultantly as he
+stood in the shadow of the Giralda watching Castile parade itself before
+the new hero. Here were Diego Colón, a quiet-looking youth, the youngest
+brother of the Admiral; Antonio de Marchena the astronomer, a learned
+monk; Juan Ponce de León, a nobleman from the neighborhood of Cadiz with
+a brilliant military record; Francisco de las Casas with his son
+Bartolomé; and the valiant young courtier whom all Seville had seen
+flirting with death in mid-air.
+
+"Oh, it was nothing," La Cosa heard Ojeda say when Las Casas made some
+kindly compliment on his daring. "I will tell you," he added in a lower
+voice, pulling something small out of his doublet, "I have a sure
+talisman in this little picture of the Virgin. The Bishop gave it to me,
+and I always carry it. In all the dangers one naturally must encounter
+in the service of such a master as mine, it has kept me safe. I have
+never even been wounded."
+
+The Duke of Medina Coeli was in fact a stern master in the school of
+arms. He was always at the front in the wars just concluded between
+Spaniard and Moor, and where he was, there he expected his squires to
+be. There was no place among the youths whose fathers had given him
+charge of their military training, for a lad with a grain of physical
+cowardice. Ojeda moreover had a quick temper and a fiery sense of honor,
+and it really seemed to savor of the miraculous that he had escaped all
+harm. At any rate he had reached the age of twenty-one with unabated
+faith in the little Flemish painting.
+
+"These youngsters--" the veteran seaman said to himself as he looked at
+the straight, proud, keen-faced squires and youthful knights marching
+along the streets of the temporary capital, "now that the Moors are
+vanquished what won't they do in the Indies! I think the golden days
+must be come for Christians. And shall you be a soldier also, my lad?"
+he asked of the sharp-faced boy, who still stood near him.
+
+"My father says not. He wants me to be a lawyer," said the youngster
+indifferently. Then he slipped away as some companions of his own age,
+or a little older, came by, and one said enviously,
+
+"Where have you been, Hernan' Cortes? Lucky you were not with us. My
+faith--" the speaker wriggled expressively, "we caught a drubbing!"
+
+"Told you so," returned the lad addressed, with cool unconcern. "Why
+can't you see when to let go the cat's tail?"
+
+"He has a head on him, that one," the seaman chuckled. "There is always
+one of his sort in every gang of boys. But that young gallant Ojeda! A
+fine young fellow, and as devoted as he is brave." Juan de la Cosa had
+conceived at first sight an admiration and affection for Ojeda which was
+to last as long as they both should live.
+
+The fleet that stately sailed from Cadiz on September 25, 1493, was a
+very different sight from the three shabby little caravels that slipped
+down the Tinto a year and a half before. The Admiral now commanded
+fourteen caravels and three great carracks or store-ships, on board of
+which were horses, mules, cattle, carefully packed shoots of grape-vines
+and sugar-cane, seeds of all kinds, and provisions ready for use. The
+fleet carried nearly fifteen hundred persons,--three hundred more than
+had been arranged for, but the enthusiasm in Spain was boundless. It
+carried also the embittered hatred of Fonseca. The Bishop, having been
+the Queen's confessor, naturally became head of the Department of the
+Indies in order to forward with all zeal the conversion of the native
+races. But when he tried to assert his authority over the Admiral and
+appealed to Fernando and Ysabel to support him, he was told mildly but
+firmly that in the equipment and command of the fleet Colón's judgment
+was best. This royal snub Fonseca never forgave, and he was one of those
+persons who revenge a slight on some one else rather than the one who
+inflicted it. It was also his nature never to forgive any one for
+succeeding in an undertaking which he himself had prophesied would fail.
+
+All seemed in order on the morning of the embarkation. At this time of
+year storms were unlikely, and there was no severity of climate to be
+feared. Half Castile and Aragon had come to see the expedition off. The
+young cavaliers' heads were filled with visions of rich dukedoms and
+principalities in the golden empire upon whose coast the discovered
+islands hung, like pendants of pearl and gold upon the robe of a
+monarch.
+
+The first incident of the voyage was not, however, romantic. The fleet
+touched at the Canary Islands to take on board more animals--goats,
+sheep, swine and fowls, for the Admiral had seen none of these in any of
+the islands he had visited. In fact the people had no domestic animal
+whatever except their strange dumb dogs. The cavaliers, glad of a chance
+to stretch their legs in a space a little greater than the deck of a
+crowded ship, strolled about discussing past and future with large
+freedom.
+
+Ojeda was asking Juan de la Cosa about the nature of the country. It
+seemed to him the ideal field for a man of spirit and high heart. How
+glorious a conquest would it be to abolish the vile superstitions of the
+barbarians and set up the altars of the true faith!
+
+The pilot was a little amused and somewhat doubtful; he knew something
+of savages, and Ojeda and the priests on board did not. It was not, he
+suggested, always easy to convert stubborn heathen. A pig was a small
+animal, but Ojeda would remember that to the Moslem it was as great an
+object of aversion as a lion.
+
+"Ho!" said Ojeda superbly, "that is quite--" He was interrupted by a
+blow that knocked his legs out from under him and landed him on the
+ground in a sitting position with his hat over his eyes.
+
+"Who did that?" he cried, leaping to his feet, hand on sword.
+
+"Only a pig, my lord," the sailor answered choking with half-swallowed
+laughter. It was a pig, which the sailors had goaded to such a state of
+desperation that it had bolted straight into the group as a pig will,
+and was now galloping away, pursued by a great variety of maledictions
+and persons. "They have got the creature now," he added, "You are not
+hurt?" for Ojeda was actually pale with indignation and disgust.
+
+"No," sputtered the youth, "but that pig--that p-pig--" He looked around
+him with an eye which seemed to challenge any beholder of whatever
+condition, to laugh and be instantly run through. Fortunately most of
+those on the wharf had been too much occupied to see Ojeda fall before
+the pig, and just then the trumpets blew, and all hastened to get back
+on board ship.
+
+When an expedition is composed largely of hot-headed youths trained to
+the use of arms, each of whom has a code of honor as sensitive as a
+mimosa plant and as prickly as a cactus, the lot of their commanders is
+not happy. It may have been Ojeda's treasured talisman which saved him
+from several sudden deaths during the following weeks, but Juan de la
+Cosa privately believed it was partly the memory of the pig. The young
+man had what might in another time and civilization have developed into
+a sense of humor. It would not do for a hero with the world before him
+to get himself sent back to Spain because of some trivial personal
+quarrel.
+
+On reaching Hispaniola the adventurers found plenty of real occupation
+awaiting them. The little colony which the Admiral had left at Navidad
+on his first voyage had been wiped out. The natives timidly explained
+that a fierce chief from the interior, Caonaba, had killed or captured
+all the forty men of the garrison and destroyed their fort. Colón was
+obliged to remodel all his plans at a moment's notice. Instead of
+finding a colony well under way, and in control of the wild tribes or at
+least friendly with them, he found the wreck of a luckless attempt at
+settlement, and the kindly native villagers turned aloof and suspicious,
+and living in dread of a second raid by Caonaba. He chose a site for a
+second settlement on the coast, where ships could find a harbor, not far
+from gold-bearing mountains which the natives described and called
+Cibao. This sounded rather like Cipangu.
+
+Ojeda led an exploring party into the mountains, and found gold nuggets
+in the beds of the streams. In March a substantial little town had been
+built, with a church, granary, market-square, and a stone wall around
+the whole. The Admiral then organized an expedition to explore the
+interior.
+
+On March 12, 1494, Colón with his chief officers went out of the gate of
+the settlement, which had been named for the Queen, at the head of four
+hundred men, many of whom were mounted, and all armed with sword,
+cross-bow, lance or arquebus. With casques and breastplates shining in
+the sun, banners flying, pennons fluttering, drums and trumpets
+sounding, they presented a sight which should have brought ambassadors
+from any monarch of the Indies who heard of their approach. But although
+a multitude of savages came from the forest to see, no signs of any such
+capital as that of the Great Khan appeared. At the end of the first
+day's march they camped at the foot of a rocky mountain range with no
+way over it but a footpath, winding over rocks and through dense
+tropical jungles. There appeared to be no roads in the country.
+
+But this was not an impossible situation to the young Spanish cavaliers,
+for in the Moorish wars it had often been necessary to construct a road
+over the mountains. A number of them at once volunteered for the
+service, and with laborers and pioneers, to whom they set an example by
+working as valiantly as they were ready to fight, they made a road for
+the little army, which was named in their honor El Puerto de los
+Hidalgos, the Gentlemen's Pass. When they reached the top of this steep
+defile and could look down upon the land beyond they saw a vast and
+magnificent plain, covered with forests of beautiful trees, blossoming
+meadows and a network of clear lakes and rivers, and dotted here and
+there with thatch-roofed villages. Near the top of the pass a spring of
+cool delicious water bubbled out in a glen shaded by palms and one tall
+and handsome tree of an unknown variety, with wood so hard that it
+turned the ax of a laborer who tried to cut a chip of it. Colón gave the
+plain the name of the Vega Reál or Royal Plain.
+
+Of all the events, exploits and intrigues of those first years in the
+Spanish Indies, no one historian among those who accompanied the
+expedition ever found time to write. Where all was so new, and every
+man, whether priest, cavalier, soldier, sailor, clerk or artisan, had
+his own reasons and his own aims in coming to this land of promise,
+nothing went exactly according to anybody's plans. The Admiral was soon
+convinced that in Hispaniola at least no civilized capital existed. To
+their amazement and amusement the Spaniards found that the savages
+feared their horses more than their weapons. It was discovered after a
+while that horse and rider were at first supposed to be one supernatural
+animal. When the white men dismounted the people fled in horror,
+believing that the ferocious beasts were going to eat them.
+
+It became evident that with the fierce chief Caonaba to reckon with,
+military strength and capacity would be the only means of holding the
+country. The commander could not count on patriotism, religious
+principle or even self-interest to keep the colonists united. In this
+tangled situation one of the few persons who really enjoyed himself was
+Alonso de Ojeda. Instead of spending his time in drinking, quarreling or
+getting himself into trouble with friendly natives, the young man seemed
+bent on proving himself an able and sagacious leader of men. A little
+fortress of logs had been built about eighteen leagues from the
+settlement, in the mining country, defended on all sides but one by a
+little river, the Yanique, and on the remaining side by a deep ditch.
+Gold dust, nuggets, amber, jasper and lapis lazuli had been found in the
+neighborhood, and it was the Admiral's intention to send miners there as
+soon as possible, protected by the fort, which he called San Tomás.
+Ojeda happened to be in command of the garrison, in the absence of his
+superior, when Caonaba came down from his mountains with an immense
+force of hostile tribes. The young lieutenant in his rude eyrie, perched
+on a hill surrounded by the enemy, held off ten thousand savages under
+the Carib chief for more than a month. Finally the chief, whose people
+had never been trained in warfare after the European fashion, found them
+deserting by hundreds, tired of the monotony of the siege. Ojeda did not
+merely stand on the defensive. He was continually sallying forth at the
+head of small but determined companies of Spaniards, whenever the enemy
+came near his stronghold. He never went far enough from his base to be
+captured, but killed off so many of the best warriors of Caonaba that
+the chief himself grew tired of the unprofitable undertaking and
+withdrew his army. During the siege provisions ran short, and when
+things were looking very dark a friendly savage slipped in one night
+with two pigeons for the table of the commander. When they were brought
+to Ojeda, in the council chamber where he was seated consulting with his
+officers, he glanced at the famine-pinched faces about him, took the
+pigeons in his hands and stroked their feathers for an instant.
+
+"It is a pity," he said, "that we have not enough to make a meal. I am
+not going to feast while the rest of you starve," and he gave the birds
+a toss into the air from the open window and turned again to his plans.
+When some one reported the incident to the Admiral his eyes shone.
+
+"I wish we had a few more such commanders," he said.
+
+Caonaba's next move was to form a conspiracy among all the caciques of
+Hispaniola, to join in a grand attack against the white men and wipe
+them out, as he had wiped out the little garrison at Navidad. A friendly
+cacique, Guacanagari, who had been the ally of the Admiral from the
+first, gave him information of this plot, and the danger was seen by
+Colón's acute mind to be desperate indeed. He had only a small force,
+torn by jealousy and private quarrels, and a defensive fight at this
+stage of his enterprise would almost surely be a losing one. The
+territory of Caonaba included the most mountainous and inaccessible part
+of the island, where that wily barbarian could hold out for years; and
+as long as he was loose there would be no safety for white men. To the
+Admiral, who was just recovering from a severe illness, the prospect
+looked very gloomy.
+
+Pedro the Vizcayan cabin-boy, who was his confidential servant, was
+crossing the plaza one day with a basket of fruit, when Alonso de Ojeda
+stopped him to inquire after his master's health.
+
+"His health," said Pedro, "would improve if I had Caonaba's head in this
+basket. I wish somebody would get it."
+
+Ojeda laughed, showing a flash of white teeth under his jaunty
+mustachios. Then he grew thoughtful. "Wait a moment, Pedro," he said.
+"Will you ask the Admiral if he can see me for a few minutes, this
+morning?"
+
+When Ojeda appeared Colón detected a trace of excitement in the young
+man's bearing, and tactfully led the conversation to Caonaba. He frankly
+expressed his perplexity.
+
+"Have you a plan, Ojeda?" he asked with a half smile. "It has been my
+experience, that you usually have."
+
+Ojeda felt a thrill of pleasure, for the Admiral did not scatter his
+compliments broadcast. He admitted that he had a plan.
+
+"Let me hear it," said Colón.
+
+But as the youthful captain unfolded his scheme the cool gray eye of the
+Genoese commander betrayed distinct surprise. It seemed only yesterday
+that this youngster had been a little monkey of a page in the great
+palace of the Duke of Medina Coeli, when he was entertained there, on
+arriving in Spain.
+
+"You see," Ojeda concluded, "I have observed in fighting these people
+that if their leader is killed or captured, they seem to lose their
+heads completely. I think that with a dozen men I can get Caonaba and
+bring him in. If I do not--the loss will not be very great."
+
+"I should not like to lose you," said the Admiral, with his hand on the
+young man's shoulder. "Go, if you will,--but do not sacrifice your own
+life if you can help it."
+
+Ojeda had faith in his talisman, and he also believed that if any man
+could go into Caonaba's territory and come back alive, he was that man.
+He knew that he himself, in the place of the chief, would respect a man
+whom he had not been able to beat.
+
+With ten soldiers he rode up into the mountains, his blood leaping with
+the wild joy of an adventure as great as any in the Song of the Cid. To
+be sure, Caonaba would not in his mountain camp have any such army as
+when he surrounded the fort, for then he commanded whole tribes of
+allies. In case of coming to blows Ojeda believed that he and his men
+with their superior weapons could cut their way out. Still, the odds
+were beyond anything that he had ever heard of.
+
+He found the Carib chief, and began by trying diplomacy. He said that
+his master, the Guamaquima or chief of the Spaniards, had sent him with
+a present. Would he not consent to make a visit to the colony, with a
+view of becoming the Admiral's ally and friend? If he would, he should
+be presented with the bell of the chapel, the voice of the church, the
+wonder of Hispaniola.
+
+Caonaba had heard that bell when he was prowling about the settlement,
+and the temptation to become its owner was great. He finally agreed to
+accompany Ojeda and his handful of Spaniards back to the coast. But
+when they were ready to start, the force of warriors in Caonaba's escort
+was out of all proportion to any peaceful embassy. Ojeda turned to his
+original plan.
+
+He proposed that Caonaba, after bathing in the stream at the foot of the
+mountain, and attiring himself in his finest robe, should put on the
+gift the Spanish captain had brought, a pair of metal bracelets, and
+return to his followers mounted with Ojeda on his horse. The chief's
+eyes glittered as he saw the polished steel of the ornaments Ojeda
+produced. He knew that nothing could so impress his wild followers with
+his power and greatness as his ability to conquer all fear of the
+terrible animals always seen in the vanguard of the white men's army. He
+consented to the plan, and after putting on his state costume, and being
+decorated with the handcuffs, he cautiously mounted behind the young
+commander, and his followers, in awe and admiration, beheld their
+cacique ride.
+
+[Illustration: "HE PROPOSED THAT CAONABA SHOULD PUT ON THE GIFT THE
+SPANISH CAPTAIN HAD BROUGHT."--_Page_ 78]
+
+Ojeda, who was a perfect horseman, made the horse leap, curvet and
+caracole, taking a wider circuit each time, until making a long sweep
+through the forest the two disappeared from the view of the Carib army
+altogether. Ojeda's own men closed in upon him, bound Caonaba hand and
+foot, behind their leader, and thus the chief was taken into the Spanish
+settlement. The conspiracy fell to pieces and the colony was saved.
+
+Caonaba showed no respect to Colón or any one else in the camp while a
+prisoner there, except Ojeda. When Ojeda entered he promptly rose to his
+feet. They had many conversations together, and Caonaba, who evidently
+rather admired the stratagem by which he had been captured, agreed with
+his captor that Ojeda was The Man Who Could Not Die.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The career of Alonso de Ojeda is one of the most picturesque and
+adventurous in early Spanish-American history, and his character is
+typical of the young Spanish cavalier of the age just following the
+discovery of America. The episodes here used, with many others quite as
+dramatic, are described at length in Irving's "Life of Columbus."
+
+
+
+
+THE ESCAPE
+
+
+    Why do you come here, white men, white men?
+      Why do you bend the knee
+    When your priests before you, singing, singing,
+      Lift the cross, the cross of tree?
+
+    Flashing in the sunlight, rainbows waking,
+      Move your mighty oars keeping time.
+    Sailors heave your anchors, chanting, chanting
+      Some strange and mystic rime.
+
+    Pearls and gold we bring you, feathers of our wild birds,
+      Glowing in the sunshine like flowers.
+    Houses we will build you, food and clothing find you,
+      You shall share in all that is ours.
+
+    Why do you frighten us, white men, white men?
+      Can you not be friends for a day?
+    Souls are like the sea-birds, flying, flying,
+      Borne by the sea-wind away.
+
+    Why do you chain us in the mines of the mountains?
+      Why do you hunt us with your hounds?
+    We who were so free, are we evermore to be
+      Prisoned in your narrow hateful bounds?
+
+    One escape is left us, white men, white men,--
+      You cannot forbid our souls to fly
+    To the stars of freedom, far beyond the sunset,--
+      We whom you have captured can die!
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+LOCKED HARBORS
+
+
+"But of what use is a King's patent," said Hugh Thorne of Bristol, "if
+the harbors be locked?"
+
+The Italian merchant glanced up from his papers and smiled, which was
+all the answer the Englishman seemed to expect, for he stormed on, "Here
+have we better fleeces than Spain, better wheat than France, finer
+cattle than the Netherlands, the tin of Cornwall, the flax of Kent and
+Durham, and our people starve or live rudely because of the fettering of
+our trade."
+
+"'T is a sad misfortune," said the merchant. "In a world so great as
+this there is surely room for all to work and all to get reward for
+their labor. But so long as the English merchant guilds wear away their
+time and substance in fighting one another I fear 't will be no better."
+
+Thorne flung his cloak about him with an impatient gesture. "That's
+true," he answered, "the Spaniards hold by Spain, and all the Hanse
+merchants by one another, but our English go every man for himself and
+the devil take the hindmost. I speak freely to you, friend, because you
+have cast in your lot with us West Country folk and are content to be
+called John Cabot."
+
+The other smiled again, his quick childlike smile, and went with his
+guest to the door. When he entered again his small private room a
+dark-eyed boy of five was crawling out from under the table.
+
+"Dad," he inquired solemnly, "vat is a locked harbor?"
+
+John Cabot laughed and swung his little son to his shoulder. "That is a
+great question for a little brain," he said fondly. "But see thee here;
+suppose I put thee in the chest and shut the lid and turn the key; thou
+art locked in and canst not get out--so! But now I put thee out of door
+and set the bandog to guard it; thou art locked out though the door be
+wide open, seest thou? And when I forbid thee to pick up the plums that
+fall on the grass from the Frenchman's damson tree, they are as safe as
+if I locked them in the dresser here, are they not? So 't is when the
+King forbids his people to send their goods to some harbor; it is the
+same as if a great chain were stretched across that harbor with a great
+lock upon it. Now run and play with Ludovico and Santo, Sebastiano mio,
+and be glad thou art free of a pleasant garden."
+
+But Sebastian still hung back, his dark head rubbing softly against his
+father's shoulder. "When I am a great merchant," he announced, "the King
+will let me send my ships all over the world."
+
+John Cabot stroked the wavy dark hair with a lingering, tender touch.
+"God grant thee thy wish, little one," he said. And Sebastian, with a
+shout in answer to a call from the sunny out-of-door world, scampered
+away.
+
+John Cabot, who had been born in Genoa, married while a merchant in
+Venice, and had now lived for many years in Bristol, felt sometimes that
+the life of a trader was like that of a player at dice. And the dice
+were often loaded.
+
+He was a good navigator, or he would not have been a true son of the
+Genoese house of Caboto--Giovanni Caboto translated meant John the
+Captain, and in a city full of sea-captains a man must know more than a
+little of the sea to win that title. He had made a place for himself in
+Venice as Zuan Gaboto, and now he was a known and respected man in the
+second greatest seaport of England, with a house in the quarter of
+Bristol known as "Cathay," the only part of the city where foreigners
+were allowed to live. It had its nickname from the fact that the foreign
+trade of Bristol was largely with the Orient.
+
+English trade in those days was hampered by a multitude of restrictions.
+There were monopolies, there were laws forbidding the export of this and
+that, or the making of goods by any one outside certain guilds, there
+were arrangements favoring foreign traders who had got their foothold
+during the War of the Roses,--when kings needed money from any source
+that would promise it. The Hanse merchants at the Steelyard alone
+controlled the markets of more than a hundred towns. Their grim stone
+buildings rose like a fort commanding London Bridge, and they paid less
+both in duties and customs than English merchants did. They employed no
+English ships, and could underbuy and undersell the English manufacturer
+and the English trader. Their men were all bachelors, with no families
+to found or houses to keep up in England. The farmer might get half
+price for his wool and pay more than one price for whatever he was
+obliged to buy. There was plenty of private exasperation, but no open
+fighting, against this ruling of the London markets by Hamburg, Lübeck,
+Antwerp and Cologne. Cabot's clear head and wide experience plainly
+showed him the enormous waste of such a system, but he did not see how
+to unlock the harbors. Neither, at present, did the King, whose shrewd
+brain was at work on the problem.
+
+Henry Tudor had the thrift of a youth spent in poverty, and the turn for
+finance inherited from Welsh ancestors, but his kingdom was not rich,
+and his throne not over-secure. He was prejudiced against doing anything
+rash, both by nature and by the very limited income of the crown. He had
+given an audience to Bartholomew Columbus while the older brother was
+still haunting the court of Castile with his unfulfilled plans, and had
+gone so far as to tell the Genoese captain to bring his brother
+Christopher to England that he might talk with him. Had it not been for
+Queen Isabella's impulsive decision England instead of Spain might have
+made the lucky throw in the great game of discovery. But by the time
+Bartholomew could get the message to his brother the matter had been
+settled and the expedition was already taking shape. Henry VII. always
+kept one foot on the ground, and until he could see some other way to
+bring wealth into the royal treasury he let the monopolies go on.
+
+In 1495 he took a chance. He gave to John Cabot and his sons a license
+to search "for islands, provinces or regions in the eastern, western or
+northern seas; and, as vassals of the King, to occupy the territories
+that might be found, with an exclusive right to their commerce, on
+paying the King a fifth part of the profits."
+
+It will be noted that this license did not say anything about the
+southern ocean. Already troops of Spanish cavaliers were pouring into
+the seaports, eager to make discoveries by the road of Columbus, and
+Spain would regard as unfriendly any attempt to send English ships in
+that direction. Whatever could be got from the Spanish territories
+Henry would try another way of getting. The year before he had arranged
+to have Prince Arthur, the heir to his throne, marry the fourth daughter
+of the King of Aragon, Catherine, then a little Princess of eleven.
+Prince Arthur died while still a boy, and Catherine became the first
+wife of Henry, afterward Henry VIII. With a Spanish Princess as queen of
+England, there might be an alliance between the two countries. That
+would be better than quarreling with Spain over discoveries which were
+at best uncertain. If Cabot really found anything valuable in the
+northern seas the move might turn out to be a good one. It would make
+England a more powerful member of the Spanish alliance, without taking
+anything which Spain appeared to value.
+
+In May, 1497, properly furnished with provisions and a few such things
+as might show what England had to barter, the little _Matthew_ sailed
+from Bristol under the command of John Cabot with his nineteen-year-old
+son Sebastian and a crew of eighteen--nearly all Englishmen, used to the
+North Atlantic. The King's permission was for five ships, but the wise
+Cabot had heard something of the hardships of the first expeditions to
+Hispaniola, and preferred to keep within his means, and sail with men
+whom he could trust.
+
+But on this voyage they found locked harbors not closed by the order of
+any King but by natural causes,--harbors without inhabitants or means of
+supporting life, and so far north as to be blocked by ice for half the
+year. They sailed seven hundred leagues west and came at last to a rocky
+wooded coast. Now in all the books of travel in Asia, mention had been
+made of an immense territory ruled by the Grand Cham of Tartary, whose
+hordes had nearly overrun Eastern Europe in times not so very long ago.
+The adventures of Marco Polo the Venetian, in a great book sent to Cabot
+by his wife's father, had been the fairy-tale of Sebastian and his
+brothers from the time they were old enough to understand a story. In
+this book it was written how Marco Polo and his companions passed
+through utterly uninhabited wilds in the Great Khan's empire, and
+afterward came to a region of barbarians, who robbed and killed
+travelers. These fierce people lived on the fruits and game of the
+forest, cultivating no fields; they dressed in the skins of wild animals
+and used salt for money. Could this be the place? If so it behooved the
+little party of explorers to be careful. As yet, nobody dreamed that any
+mainland discovered by sailing westward from northern Europe could be
+anything but Asia.
+
+Cautiously they sailed along the rugged shore, but not a human being was
+to be seen. It was the twenty-fourth of June, when by all accounts the
+people of any civilized country should be coasting along from port to
+port fishing or engaged in traffic. The sun blazed hot and clear, but
+the inquisitive noses of the crew scented no cinnamon, cloves or ginger
+in the air. All of these, according to Marco Polo, were in the
+wilderness he crossed, and also great rivers. On crossing one of these
+rivers he had found himself in a populous country with castles and
+cities. Were there no people on this desolate shore--or were they lying
+in wait for the voyagers to land, that they might seize and kill them
+and plunder the ship?
+
+One thing was certain, the air of this strange place made them all more
+thirsty than they ever had been in England, and their water-supply had
+given out. Sebastian and a crew of the younger men tumbled into a
+boat, cross-bow and cutlass at hand, and went ashore to fill the
+barrels, while John Cabot kept an anxious eye on the land. Sebastian
+himself rather relished the adventure.
+
+They found a stream of delicious water,--pure, cold and clear as a
+fountain of Eden. Among the rocks they found creeping vines with rather
+tasteless, bright red berries, in the woods little evergreen herbs with
+leaves like laurel and scarlet spicy berries, dark green mossy vines
+with white berries--but no spice-trees. The forest in fact was rather
+like Norway, according to Ralph Erlandsson, who was a native of
+Stavanger. Sebastian, who was ahead, presently came upon signs of human
+life. A sapling, bent down and held by a rude contrivance of deerhide
+thong and stakes, was attached to a noose so ingeniously hidden that the
+young leader nearly stepped into it. He took it off the tree and looked
+about him. A minute later, from one side and to the rear, a startled
+exclamation came from Robert Thorne of Bristol, who had stepped on a
+similar snare and been jerked off his feet. This was quite enough. The
+party retreated to the ship. On the way back they saw trees that had
+been cut not very long since, and Sebastian picked up a wooden needle
+such as fishermen used in making nets, yet not like any English tool of
+that sort.
+
+[Illustration: "A SAPLING, BENT DOWN, WAS ATTACHED TO A NOOSE
+INGENIOUSLY HIDDEN."--_Page_ 87]
+
+They saw nothing more of the kind, although they sailed some three
+hundred leagues along the coast, nor did they see any sort of tilled
+land. This certainly could not be Cipangu or Cathay with their seaports
+and gilded temples. Whatever else it was, it was a land of wild people,
+savage hunters. John Cabot left on a bold headland where it could not
+fail to be seen, a great cross, with the flag of England and the
+Venetian banner bearing the lion of Saint Mark.
+
+There was wild excitement in Bristol when it was known that the little
+_Matthew_ had come safely into port, after three months' voyaging in
+unknown seas. August of that year found the two Cabots at Westminster
+with their story and their handful of forest trophies, and the excited
+and suspicious Spanish Ambassador was framing a protest to the King and
+a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella.
+
+Henry VII. fingered the wooden needle, pulled the rawhide thong
+meditatively through his fingers, and ate a little handful of the
+wintergreen berries and young leaves. Their pungent flavor wrinkled his
+long nose. This was certainly not any spice that came from the Indies.
+
+"This country you found," he remarked at last, "is not much like New
+Spain."
+
+"Nay, Sire," answered John Cabot simply.
+
+"And I understand,"--the King put the collection of curiosities back
+into the wallet that had held them, "that this represents one fifth at
+least of the gains of the voyage."
+
+Cabot bowed. As a matter of fact there had been no profits.
+
+"My lord,"--the King handed the wallet over to the uneasy Ambassador,
+who had been invited to the conference, "you have heard what our good
+Captain says. If, as you say, Spain claims this landfall, we willingly
+make over to you our--ahem!--share of the emolument." And the Spaniard,
+looking rather foolish, saw nothing better to do than to bow his thanks
+and retire from the presence.
+
+The King turned again to the Cabots.
+
+"Nevertheless," he went on meditatively, "we will not be neglectful of
+you. In another year, if it is still your desire to engage in this work,
+you may have--" a pause--"ten ships armed as you see fit, and manned
+with whatever prisoners are not confined for--high treason. Fish, I
+think you said, abound in those waters? Bacalao--er--that is cod, is it
+not? Now it seems to me that our men of Bristol can go a-fishing on
+those banks without interference from the Hanse merchants, and we shall
+be less dependent on--foreign aid, for the victualing of our tables. And
+there may be some way to Asia through these Northern seas--in which case
+our brother of Spain may not be so nice in his scruples about trespass.
+The Spice Islands are not his but Portugal's. And for your present
+reward,--" the King reached for his lean purse and waggled his gaunt
+foot in its loose worn red shoe "this, and the title of Admiral of your
+new-found land."
+
+He dropped some gold pieces into the hand of John Cabot. In the accounts
+of his treasurer for that year may be seen this item:
+
+"10th August, donation of £10 to him that found the new isle."
+
+In May of the next year another voyage was undertaken by Sebastian, John
+Cabot having died. This time there was a small fleet from Bristol with
+some three hundred men. Sebastian sailed so far north as to be stopped
+by seas full of icebergs, then turning southward discovered the island
+of Newfoundland, landed further south on the mainland, and went as far
+toward the Spanish possessions as the great bay called Chesapeake.
+Meanwhile shoals of little fishing boats, from Bristol, Brittany,
+Lisbon, Rye, and the Vizcayan ports on the north of Spain, crept across
+the gray seas to fish for cod. They held no patent and carried no guns,
+but they made a floating city off the Grand Banks for a brief season,
+settling their own disputes. The people at home found salt fish good
+cheap and wholesome. When Sebastian told the Bristol folk that the fish
+were so thick in these new seas that he could hardly get his ships
+through, they would not believe it. But when Robert Thorne and a dozen
+others had seen the little caplin, the fish which the cod feeds upon,
+swimming inshore by the acre, crowded by the cod behind them, and by
+seal, shark and dogfish hunting the cod, when cod were caught and salted
+down and shown in Bristol, four and five feet long, then Bristol
+swallowed both story and cargo and blessed the name of Cabot.
+
+Sebastian Cabot shook the dust of Bristol off his restless feet more
+than once in the years that followed. Within five years after his voyage
+to the Arctic regions he was cruising about the Caribbean. In 1517 he
+was at the entrance of the great bay on the north coast of Labrador. In
+1524 he was in the service of Spain, and coasting along the eastern
+shores of South America ascended the great river which De Solis had
+named Rio de la Plata, came within sight of the mountains of Peru. But
+for orders from Spain, where Pizarro had secured the governorship of
+that land, Cabot might have been its conqueror. In 1548, after some
+years spent in Spain as pilot major, he came back to England, where he
+was appointed to the position of superintendent of naval affairs. It was
+his work to examine and license pilots, and make charts and maps, and
+some ten years later he died, having founded the company of Merchant
+Adventurers in 1553. This company was entitled to build and send out
+ships for discovery and trade in parts unknown. By uniting merchant
+traders in one body, governed by definite rules, and backed by their
+combined capital, it broke the monopoly of the Hanseatic League and
+finally drove the Hanse merchants out of England. Sebastian Cabot was
+its first governor, holding the office until he died, and has rightly
+been called the father of free trade. He had unlocked the harbors of the
+world to his adopted country, England.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The rules drawn up by Cabot for the merchant adventurers, to be read
+publicly on board ship once a week, are interesting as showing the
+character of the man and the great advance made in welding English trade
+into a company to be guided by the best traditions. For the first time
+captains were required to keep a log, and this one thing, by putting on
+record everything seen and noted by those who sailed strange waters,
+made an increasing fund of knowledge at the service of each navigator.
+Some of the points in the instructions are as follows:
+
+7. "That the merchants and other skilful persons, in writing, shall
+daily write, describe and put in memorie the navigation of each day and
+night, with the points and observations of the lands, tides, elements,
+altitude of the sunne, course of the moon and starres, and the same so
+noted by the order of the master and pilot of every ship to be put in
+writing; the captain-general assembling the masters together once every
+weeke (if winde and weather shall serve) to conferre all the
+observations and notes of the said ships, to the intent it may appeare
+wherein the notes do agree and wherein they dissent, and upon good
+debatement, deliberation and conclusion determined to put the same into
+a common ledger, to remain of record for the companie; the like order to
+be kept in proportioning of the cardes, astrolabes, and other
+instruments prepared for the voyage, at the charge of the companie.
+
+12. "That no blaspheming of God, or detestable swearing, be used in any
+ship, or communication of ribaldrie, filthy tales, or ungodly talk to be
+suffered in the company of any ship, neither dicing, tabling, nor other
+divelish games to be permitted, whereby ensueth not only povertie to the
+players, but also strife, variance, brauling, fighting and oftentimes
+murther.
+
+26. "Every nation and region to be considered advisedly, and not to
+provoke them by any distance, laughing, contempt, or such like; but to
+use them with prudent circumspection, with all gentleness and
+courtesie."
+
+These and other instructions form an ideal far beyond anything found in
+the merchant shipping of any other land at that time, and the wisdom
+which inspired them undoubtedly laid the foundation of the fine and
+noble tradition which formed the best officers of the navy not yet born.
+There was no British navy in the modern sense until a hundred years
+after Cabot's day. In time of war the King impressed all suitable ships
+into his service, if they were not freely offered by private owners. In
+time of peace the monarch was a ship-owner like any other, and such a
+thing as a standing navy was not thought of. Hence the brave, generous,
+and courteous merchant adventurer, when such a man was abroad, was the
+upholder of the honor of his country as well as the upbuilder of her
+commerce.
+
+
+
+
+GRAY SAILS
+
+
+    Gray sails that fill with the winds of the morning,
+      Out upon the Channel or the bleak North sea,
+    Neither cross nor fleur-de-lis goes to your adorning,--
+      Arctic frost and southern gale your tirewomen shall be.
+    Yet when you come home again--home again--home again,
+      Gray sails turn to silver when the keel runs free.
+
+    Gray sails of Plymouth, 'ware the wild Orcades,
+      Gray sails of Lisbon, 'ware the guns of Dieppe.
+    Cross-bows of Genoa, 'ware the wharves of Gades,--
+      You that sail the Spanish Seas may neither trust nor sleep.
+    Yet when you come home again--home again--home again,
+      You shall make the covenant for Kings to keep!
+
+    Gray sails are crowding where the sea-fog sleeping
+      Masks the faces of the folk that throng and traffic there.
+    When the winds are free again and the cod are leaping,
+      All the tongues of Pentecost wake the laughing air.
+    And when they come home again--home again--home again,
+      They shall bring their freedom for the world to share!
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+LITTLE VENICE
+
+
+"Translators," observed Amerigo Vespucci, "are frequently traitors. Now
+who is to be surety that yonder interpreter does not change your words
+in repeating them?"
+
+Alonso de Ojeda touched the hilt of his poniard. "This," he said.
+"Toledo steel speaks all languages."
+
+The Florentine's black eyebrows lifted a little, but he did not pursue
+the subject. Ojeda was not the sort of man likely to be convinced of
+anything he did not believe already, and Vespucci was having too good a
+time to waste it in argument.
+
+This middle-aged, shrewd-looking individual had for half his life been
+chained to the desk, for he had been many years a clerk in the great
+merchant houses of the Medici. Until he was forty years old he had
+hardly gone outside his native city. In the latter half of the fifteenth
+century each Italian city was a little world in itself, with its own
+standards, customs and traditions. The fact that Vespucci spent most of
+his leisure and all of his spare ducats in the collection and study of
+maps and globes and works on geography, was regarded as a proof of mild
+insanity. When he paid one hundred and thirty gold pieces for a
+particularly fine map made by Valsequa in 1439, even his intimate friend
+Soderini called him a fool. Vespucci was himself an expert mapmaker.
+This may have been a reason why, about 1490, the Medici sent him to
+Barcelona to look after their interests in Spain. In Seville he secured
+a position as manager in the house of Juanoto Berardi, who fitted out
+ships for Atlantic voyages. In 1497 he himself sailed for the newly
+discovered islands of the West, and spent more than a year in
+exploration. This taste of travel seemed to have whetted his appetite
+for more, for he was now acting as astronomer and geographer in the
+expedition which Ojeda had organized and Juan de la Cosa fitted out, to
+the coast which Colón had discovered and called Tierre Firme. In the
+seven years since the first voyage of the great Admiral it had become
+the custom to have on board, for expeditions of discovery, a person who
+understood astronomy, the use of the astrolabe and navigation in
+general, and the making of charts and maps. Vespucci was exactly that
+sort of man. However queer it might seem to the young Ojeda to find in a
+clerk forty years old such a fresh and youthful delight in travel, both
+he and La Cosa knew that they had in him a valuable assistant. It was
+generally understood that he meant to write a book about it all.
+
+Vespucci was in fact thinking of his future book when he made that
+speech about translators. He was planning to write the book not in
+Latin, as was usual, but in Italian, making if necessary another copy in
+Latin.
+
+The party had sailed from Puerto Santa Maria on May 20, 1499, taking
+with them a chart which Bishop Fonseca, head of the Department of the
+Indies, furnished. It had been the understanding when Colón received the
+title of Admiral of the Indies that no expedition should be sent out
+without his authority. This understanding Fonseca succeeded in
+persuading the King and Queen to take back, and another order was
+issued, to the effect that no independent expedition was to go out
+without the royal permission. This, practically, meant Fonseca's leave.
+The Bishop signed the permit for Ojeda's undertaking with double
+satisfaction. He was doing a favor for his friend, Bishop Ojeda, cousin
+to this young man, and he was aiming a blow at the hated Genoese
+Admiral, whose very chart he was turning over to the young explorer. All
+sorts of stories had been set afloat about the unfitness of the Admiral
+to hold such an important office. Fonseca had managed to influence the
+Queen so far against him that one Bobadilla had been sent to Hispaniola
+with power to depose Colón and treat him as a criminal,--so cunningly
+were his instructions framed. When the great discoverer was actually
+thrown into prison and sent to Spain manacled like a felon, it might
+have added a few drops of bitterness to his reflections if he had known
+what Ojeda was doing. This youth, whom he had trusted and liked, was now
+looking forward to the conquest of the very region which the Admiral had
+discovered, and using what was supposed to be the Admiral's private
+chart to guide him.
+
+It is not likely, however, that the fiery and impatient Ojeda gave any
+thought to the feelings of the older man. Juan de la Cosa was a leader
+in the expedition, many sailors were enlisted, who had served in former
+voyages of discovery, and above all, Fonseca approved. Ojeda would never
+have dreamed of setting up any personal opinion contrary to the views of
+the Church.
+
+In twenty-four days the fleet arrived upon a coast which no one on board
+had ever seen. It was in fact two hundred leagues further to the south
+than Paria, where the Admiral had touched. The people were taller and
+more vigorous than the Arawaks of Hispaniola, and expert with the bow,
+the lance and the shield. Their bell-shaped houses were of tree-trunks
+thatched with palm leaves, some of them very large. The people wore
+ornaments made of fish-bones, and strings of white and green beads, and
+feather headdresses of the most gorgeous colors. The interpreter told
+Ojeda that the Spaniards' desire of gold and pearls was very puzzling to
+these simple folk, who had never considered them of any especial value.
+In a harbor called Maracapana the fleet was unloaded and careened for
+cleaning. Under the direction of Ojeda and La Cosa a small brigantine
+was built. The people brought venison, fish, cassava bread and other
+provisions willingly, and seemed to think the Spaniards angels. At
+least, that was the version of their talk which reached Ojeda. It was
+here that Amerigo Vespucci made that remark about translators. He had
+not studied accounts of Atlantic voyages for the last few years without
+drawing a few conclusions regarding the nature of savages. When it was
+explained that the natives had neighbors who were cannibals, and that
+they would greatly value the strangers' assistance in fighting them,
+Vespucci came very near making a suggestion. He finally made it to Juan
+de la Cosa instead of to Ojeda. The old pilot chuckled wisely.
+
+"I've got past warning my young gentleman of danger ahead," he said
+good-naturedly. "He can do without fighting just as well as a fish can
+do without water. If I die trying to get him out of some scrape he has
+plunged into head-first, it will be no more than I expect."
+
+Ojeda was, in fact, spoiling for adventure, and joyfully set sail in the
+direction of the Carib Islands. Seven coast natives were on board as
+guides, and pointed out the island inhabited by their especial enemies.
+The shore was lined with fierce-faced savages, painted and feathered,
+armed with bows and arrows, lances and darts and bucklers. Ojeda
+launched his boats, in each of which was a paterero, or small cannon,
+with a number of soldiers crouching down out of sight. The armor of the
+Spaniards protected them from the Indian arrows, while the cotton armor
+of the savages and their light shields were no defense against
+cannon-balls or crossbow-bolts.
+
+When the barbarians leaped into the sea and attacked the boats the
+cannon scattered them, but they rallied and fought more fiercely on
+land. The Spaniards won that day's battle, but the dauntless islanders
+were ready to renew the fight next morning. With his fifty-seven men
+Ojeda routed the whole fighting force of the tribe, made many prisoners,
+plundered and set fire to the villages, and returned to his ships. A
+part of the spoil was bestowed on the seven friendly natives. Ojeda, who
+had not received so much as a scratch, anchored in a bay for three weeks
+to let his wounded recover. There were twenty-one wounded and one
+Spaniard had been killed.
+
+Sailing westward along the coast the fleet presently entered a vast gulf
+like an inland sea, on the eastern side of which was a most curious
+village. Ojeda could hardly believe the evidence of his own eyes. Twenty
+large cone-shaped houses were built on piles driven into the bottom of
+the lake, which in that part was clear and shallow. Each house had its
+drawbridge, and communicated with its neighbors and with the shore by
+means of canoes gliding along the water-ways between the piles. The
+interpreters said it was called Coquibacoa.
+
+"That is no proper name for so marvelous a place," said Ojeda after he
+had tried to pronounce the clucking many-syllabled word. "Is it like
+anything you have seen, Vespucci?"
+
+The Italian had been comparing it with a similar village he had seen on
+his first voyage, on a part of the coast called Lariab. He had an
+instinct, however, that it would not be well to mix his own discoveries
+with those of the present expedition.
+
+"It is rather like Venice," he said demurely.
+
+"That is the name for it," cried Ojeda in high
+delight,--"Venezuela--Little Venice!"
+
+"It would be interesting," observed Vespucci, "to know what names they
+are giving to us. How they stare!"
+
+The people of the village on stilts were evidently as much astonished at
+the strangers as the strangers were at them. They fled into their houses
+and raised the draw-bridges. The men in a squadron of canoes which came
+paddling in from the sea were also terrified. But this did not last
+long. The warriors went into the forest and returned with sixteen young
+girls, four of whom they brought to each ship. While the white men
+wondered what this could mean, several old crones appeared at the doors
+of the houses and began a furious shrieking. This seemed to be a signal.
+The maidens dived into the sea and made for the shore, and a storm of
+arrows came from the canoemen. The fight, however, was not long, and the
+Spaniards won an easy victory, after which they had no further trouble.
+They found a harbor called Maracaibo, and twenty-seven Spaniards at the
+earnest request of the natives were entertained as guests among the
+inland villages for nine days. They were carried from place to place in
+litters or hammocks, and when they returned to the ships every man of
+them had a collection of gifts--rich plumes, weapons, tropical birds and
+animals--but no gold. The monkeys and parrots were very amusing, but
+they did not make up, in the minds of some of the crew, for the gold
+which had not been found.
+
+Ojeda returned from an exploring journey one day with a ruffled temper.
+"A gang of poachers," he sputtered,--"rascally Bristol traders. We shall
+have to teach these folk their place."
+
+"What really happened?" Vespucci inquired privately of Juan de la Cosa.
+The old mariner's eyes twinkled.
+
+"It was funny. You see, we were coming down to the shore, ready to
+return to the ships, when we spied an English ship and some sailors on
+the beach, dancing after they'd caught their fish and eaten 'em. Up
+marches our young caballero with hand on hilt and asks whose men they
+are. But they answered him in a language he can't understand, d'ye see,
+and after some jabbering he makes them understand that he wants to go on
+board to see their captain. I went along, for I'd no mind to leave him
+alone if there should be trouble.
+
+"So soon as I set eyes on the captain I knew him for a chap I'd seen
+years ago in Venice. He did me a good turn there, too, though he was but
+a lad. I knew he was a Bristol man, but I hadn't expected to see him or
+his ship so far from home. He could talk Spanish nearly as well as you
+do.
+
+"'What are you doing here?' asks our worshipful commander.
+
+"'Looking at the sky,' said the other man, cool as a cucumber. 'I think
+we are going to have a storm.'
+
+"'Don't bandy words with me,' says Ojeda. 'You are trespassing on my
+master's dominions.'
+
+"'Your master is the Admiral of the Indies, no?' says the stranger, and
+that pretty near shut our young gentleman's mouth for a minute, for
+between you and me I think he knows that Colón has not been well
+treated. But he only got the more furious.
+
+"'Do you insult me?' says he, and whips out his Toledo blade and bends
+it almost double, to show the quality.
+
+"'Wait a minute, my young hornet,' says the captain--he wasn't much more
+than a boy, himself,--'didn't your master the Duke of Medina Coeli teach
+you better than to irritate a man on the deck of his own ship? Mine can
+sail two leagues to your one, and I'm just leaving for home, so, unless
+you would like to go with me, perhaps you will let this conversation end
+without any more pointed remarks. If I chose, you know, I could drop you
+overboard in sight of your men, to swim ashore. My guns would stave your
+longboat all to pieces. But I've stayed long enough to give the lads a
+chance to have a good meal and a bit of fun--nothing's better than
+dancing, for the spirits, dad always said it was better than either
+fighting or dicing on shipboard. Before we part, though, I'm going to
+give you one piece of advice. Don't stir up these coast natives too
+often. If you do, they'll eat you. They use poisoned arrows in some of
+these parts, and there's no cure for that but a red-hot iron.'
+
+"The caballero's temper is like gunpowder--it flashes up in a second,
+or not at all. He must ha' seen that the captain meant him kindness.
+Anyway, he slips his sword back in the scabbard and says cool as you
+please,
+
+"'Señor, pardon my hasty conclusion. You have of course a perfect right
+to look at the sky, and to dance, if that is your diversion. I should be
+extremely sorry to interfere with your departure. But you will
+understand that when a commander in the service of the sovereigns of
+Aragon and Castile finds intruders within their territory it is his duty
+to make it his affair. I thank you for your warning. Adios,' and he
+makes a little stiff bow and goes over the side, me after him. I looked
+back just as I went over the rail, and the skipper was watching me, and
+I may be mistaken but I believe he winked. I tell you, our little
+captain can do things that would get him run through the body if he were
+any other man."
+
+Vespucci smiled thoughtfully. But this incident may have had something
+to do with his later decision to part company with Ojeda. Vespucci
+continued to explore the coast, and Ojeda sailed northward to the
+islands, where he kidnaped some Indians for slaves. When he returned to
+Cadiz the young adventurer found to his intense disgust that after all
+expenses were paid there remained but five hundred ducats to be divided
+among fifty-five men. This was all the more mortifying because, two
+months before, Pedro Alonso Nino, a captain of Palos, and Christoval
+Guerra of Seville, had come in from a trading voyage in the Indies with
+the richest cargo of gold and pearls ever seen in Cadiz.
+
+Vespucci wrote his book some years later, and as it was the first
+popular account of the new Spanish possessions and was written in a
+lively and entertaining style it had a great reputation. It gave to the
+natives of the country the name which they have ever since
+borne--Indians. A German geographer who much admired the work suggested
+that an appropriate mark of appreciation would be to name the new
+continent America, after Vespucci, and this was done. Vespucci described
+all that he saw and some things of which he heard, using care and
+discretion, and if he suspected that the captain of the Bristol ship was
+Sebastian Cabot, later pilot-major of Spain, he did not say so.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+Amerigo Vespucci has been unjustly accused of endeavoring to steal the
+glory of Columbus, but there is no evidence that he ever contemplated
+anything of the kind. It was a German geographer's suggestion that the
+continent be named America.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLD ROAD
+
+
+    O the Gold Road is a hard road,
+      And it leads beyond the sea,--
+    Some follow it through the altar gates
+      And some to the gallows tree.
+    And they who squander the gold they earn
+      On kin-folk ill to please
+    Go soon to the grave, but he toils in the grave--
+      The miner upon his knees.
+
+    The Gold Road is a dark road--
+      No bird by the wayside sings,
+    No sun shines into the cañons deep,
+      No children's laughter rings.
+    They are slaves who delve in the stubborn rocks
+      For the pittance their labor brings.
+    Their bread is bitter who toil for their own,
+      But they starve who toil for Kings.
+
+    The Gold Road is a small road,--
+      A man must tread it alone,
+    With none to help if he faint or fall,
+      And none to hear his groan.
+    The weight of gold is a weary weight
+      When we toil for the sake of our own--
+    But our masters are branding our hearts and souls
+      With a Christ that is carved in stone!
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE DOG WITH TWO MASTERS
+
+
+"They fight among themselves too much. They need the man with the whip."
+
+"_Bough! wough!_"
+
+"_Yar-r-rh! arrh!--agh!_"
+
+A spirited and entertaining dog-fight was going on just outside the
+house of the governor of Darien. The deep sullen roar of Balboa's big
+hound Leoncico was as unmistakable as the snarling, snapping, furious
+bark of Cacafuego, who belonged to the Bachelor Enciso. The two hated
+each other at sight, months ago. Now they were having it out. The man
+with the whip evidently came on the scene, for there was a final
+crescendo of barks, yelps and growls, followed by silence.
+
+Pizarro's remark, however, did not refer to the dogs but to the
+settlers, who had been rioting over the governorship of the colony. The
+outcome of this disturbance had been the practical seizure of the office
+of captain-general by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. Pizarro himself, and Juan
+de Saavedra, to whom he addressed his comment, had supported Balboa.
+Saavedra did not commit himself further than to answer, with a shrug,
+"Balboa can use the whip on occasion, we all know that. Ah, here he
+comes now."
+
+The man and the dog would have attracted attention anywhere, separately
+or together. The man was well-made and vigorous, with red-brown hair and
+beard, and clear merry eyes, a leader who would rather lead than
+command. The dog was of medium size but very powerful, tawny in color
+with a black muzzle, and the scars on his compact body recorded many
+battles, not with other dogs but with hostile Indians. He had been his
+master's body-guard in several fights, and Balboa sometimes lent him to
+his friends, the dog receiving the same share of plunder that would have
+been due to an armed man. Leoncico is said to have brought his captain
+in this way more than a thousand crowns.
+
+"You called him off, eh, General?" Saavedra asked, bending to stroke the
+terrible head. He and Vasco Nuñez had been friends for years; in fact it
+was Saavedra who had managed the smuggling of Balboa on board the ship
+in a cask, to escape his creditors, when the expedition set out. They
+were intimate, as men are intimate who are different in character but
+alike in feeling and tradition. Pizarro was an outsider and knew it.
+
+"Yes; Enciso's dog would be better for a whipping, perhaps, but I had no
+mind to make the Bachelor any more an enemy than he is. Pizarro,--" he
+turned to the soldier of fortune, with a frank smile, "I have work for
+you to do. It is dangerous, but I know that you do not care for that.
+Pick out six good men, and be ready to see if there is any truth in
+those stories about the Coyba gold mines."
+
+Pizarro's black brows unbent. Nothing could have suited him better than
+just these orders. He was, like Balboa, a native of the province of
+Estremadura in Spain, and being shut out by his low birth from
+advancement in his own land, had come to the colonies in the hope of
+gaining wealth and position by the sword. His reckless courage, iron
+muscle, and a certain cold stubbornness had given him the reputation of
+an able man, but though nearly ten years older than Balboa, he had never
+held any but a subordinate position. He had nearly made up his mind that
+his chance would never come. These hidalgos wanted all the glory as well
+as all the power for themselves. He could not see why Balboa should turn
+the possible discovery of a rich new province over to him, but if the
+gold should be there, Pizarro would get it. He bowed, thanked the
+general, and took his leave.
+
+"General," said Saavedra, "I never like to put my neck in a noose, but
+if you were only Vasco Nuñez I would ask you why you made exactly that
+choice."
+
+Balboa laughed and pulled the ears of Leoncico, who had laid his head in
+full content on his master's knee. "I am always Vasco Nuñez to you,
+_amigo_," he said easily, "as you very well know. Pizarro is a bulldog
+for bravery, and he has a head on his shoulders. Also he is ambitious,
+and this will give him a chance to win renown."
+
+"And keeps him out of mischief for the time being," put in Saavedra
+dryly.
+
+Balboa laughed again. "Why do you ask me questions when you know my mind
+almost as well as I do? You see, now that Enciso is about to go, we
+shall have some freedom to do something besides quarrel among ourselves.
+Gold is an apology for whatever one does, out here. If there is as much
+of it as they say, in this Coyba, the King may be able to gild the walls
+of another salon, and if he puts Pizarro's portrait in it in the place
+of honor I shall not weep over that. There is glory enough for all of
+us, who choose to earn it."
+
+Pizarro and his men had not gone ten miles from Darien before they ran
+into an ambush of Indians armed with slings. The seven Spaniards
+charged instantly, and actually put the enemy to flight, then beat a
+quick retreat. Every man of them despite their body armor had wounds and
+bruises, and one was left disabled upon the field. Balboa met them as
+they limped painfully in. His quick eye took in the situation.
+
+"Only six of you? Where is Francisco Hernan?"
+
+"He was crippled and could not walk," answered Pizarro sulkily; he saw
+what was coming. Balboa's eyes blazed.
+
+"What! You--Spaniards--ran away from savages and left a comrade to die?
+Go back and bring him in!"
+
+Pizarro turned in silence, took his men back over the road just
+traversed, and brought Hernan safely in.
+
+This was one of the many incidents by which the colony learned the
+mettle of the new captain-general. Under his direction exploration of
+the neighboring provinces was undertaken. Balboa with eighty men made a
+friendly visit to Comagre, a cacique who could put three thousand
+fighting men in the field. Comagre and his seven sons entertained the
+white men in a house larger and more like a palace of the Orient than
+any they had before seen. It was one hundred and fifty paces long by
+eighty paces broad, the lower part of the walls built of logs, the
+floors and upper walls of beautiful and ingenious wood-work. The son of
+this cacique presented to Balboa seventy slaves, captives taken by
+himself, and golden ornaments weighing altogether four thousand ounces.
+The gold was at once melted into ingots, or bars of uniform size, for
+purposes of division. One-fifth of it was weighed out for the Crown, the
+rest divided among the members of the expedition. The young cacique
+stood by watching with scornful curiosity as the Spaniards argued and
+squabbled over the allotment. Suddenly he struck up the scales with his
+fist, and the shining treasure tumbled over the porch floor like spilt
+corn.
+
+"Why do you quarrel over this trash?" he asked. "If this gold is so
+precious to you that you leave your homes, invade the land of peaceable
+nations and endure desperate perils, I will tell you where there is
+plenty of it."
+
+The Spaniards' attention was instantly caught and held. The young Indian
+went on, with the same careless contempt, "You see those mountains over
+there? Beyond them is a great sea. The people who dwell on the border of
+that sea have ships almost as big as yours, with sails and oars as yours
+have. The streams in their country are full of gold. The King eats from
+golden dishes, for gold is as common there as iron is among you,"--he
+glanced at the cumbrous armor and weapons of his guests. Indeed the
+panoply of the Spaniards, made necessary by the constant possibility of
+attack, and the weight of their cross-bows and other weapons, was a
+source of continual wonder to the light and nimble Indians, and of much
+weariness and suffering to themselves. Many in time adopted the quilted
+cotton body armor of the natives, and used pikes when they could in
+place of the musketoun, which was like a hand-cannon.
+
+This was not the first time that Balboa and many of the others had heard
+of the Lord of the Golden House, but no one else had told the story with
+such boldness. The young cacique said that to invade this land, a
+thousand warriors would be none too many. He offered to accompany Balboa
+with his own troops, if the white men would go.
+
+Here indeed was an enterprise with glory enough for all. Balboa returned
+to Darien and began preparations. Valdivia, the regidor of the colony,
+had been sent to Hispaniola for provisions, but the supply he brought
+back was absurdly small. One of the serious difficulties encountered by
+all the first settlers in the New World was this matter of provisioning
+the camps. For the Indians the natural fruits and produce of the country
+were sufficient, and they seldom laid up any great store. The small
+surplus of any one chief was soon exhausted by a large body of guests.
+Moreover, the country had no cattle, swine, fowls, goats, no domestic
+food animals whatever, no grain but the maize. The supply of meat and
+grain was thus very small until Spanish planters could clear and
+cultivate their estates. On the march the troops could and did live off
+the country with less trouble.
+
+Balboa decided to send Valdivia back to Hispaniola for more supplies. He
+also sent by him a letter to Diego Colón, son of the great Admiral and
+governor of the island, explaining his need for more troops in view of
+what he had just learned about a new and wealthy kingdom not far away.
+He frankly requested the Governor to use his influence with the King to
+make this discovery possible without delay.
+
+Weeks passed, and Valdivia did not come back. Provisions again became
+scarce. Then a letter from Balboa's friend Zamudio, who had gone to
+Spain in the same ship with the Bachelor Enciso, in order to defend
+Balboa's course. Everything, it seemed, had gone wrong. The King had
+listened to the eloquence of the Bachelor, and would probably send for
+Balboa to come to Spain to answer criminal charges. It was said that he
+meant to send out as governor of Darien, in the place of Balboa, an old
+and wily courtier, one of Fonseca's favorites, named Pedro Arias de
+Avila, and usually called Pedrarias.
+
+"That," said Balboa, handing the letter over to Saavedra to read, "seems
+to mean that the fat has gone into the fire."
+
+"What shall you do?"
+
+"If the King's summons arrives," said Balboa reflectively, "I think I
+will be on the top of that mountain range looking for the sea the
+cacique spoke of."
+
+"I will go at once and make my preparations," assented the other. "Did
+you know that Pizarro has adopted that dog--the Spitfire--Enciso's
+brute?"
+
+"Has the dog adopted him?" laughed Balboa, extracting a thorn with the
+utmost care from the paw of Leoncico.
+
+"That is a shrewd question. You know I have a theory that a man is known
+by his dog. This beast seems to have changed character when he changed
+masters. When Enciso had him he was little more than a puppy, and then
+he was thievish and cowardly. Now he will attack an Indian as savagely
+as Leoncico himself. Pizarro must have put the iron into him."
+
+"Pizarro can," said Balboa carelessly. "He does it with his men. I think
+there is more in that fellow than we have supposed. We shall see--this
+expedition will be a kind of test."
+
+Saavedra, as he went to his own quarters, wondered whether Balboa were
+really as unconscious and unsuspicious as he seemed.
+
+"Like dog, like master," he said to himself. "Cacafuego shifted collars
+as easily as any mongrel does--as readily as Pizarro himself would. I
+think that Leoncico, left here without Balboa, would die. Neither a dog
+or a man has any business with two masters. I wonder whether in the end
+we shall conquer this land, or find that the land has conquered us?"
+
+Balboa set forth with one hundred and ninety picked men and a few
+bloodhounds. Half the company remained on shore at Coyba to guard the
+brigantine and canoes, and with the others Balboa began the ascent of
+the range of mountains from whose heights he hoped to view the sea.
+
+In no other time and country have discoverers encountered the obstacles
+and dangers which confronted the Spaniards who first explored Central
+America. Precipitous mountains, matted jungles, barren deserts, deep and
+swift streams, malarious bogs, and hostile natives often armed with
+poisoned weapons, all were in their way, and they had to make their
+overland journeys on foot, fully armed and often in tropical heat. Even
+when accompanied by Indians familiar with the country, they could count
+on little or nothing in the way of game or other provisions. Balboa's
+friendly ways with the natives had secured him Indian guides and
+porters, but it was difficult work, even so. In four days they traveled
+no more than ten leagues, and it took them from the sixth to the
+twenty-fifth of September to cover the ground between the coast of
+Darien and the foot of the last mountain they must climb. One-third of
+the men had been sent back from time to time, because of illness and
+exhaustion. The party remained for the night in the village of Quaraqua
+at the foot of the mountain, and at dawn they began their ascent, hoping
+to reach the summit before the hottest time of the day. About ten
+o'clock they came out of the thick forest on a high and airy slope of
+the mountain, and the Indians pointed out a hill, from which they said
+the sea was visible.
+
+Then Balboa commanded the others to rest, while he went alone to the
+top.
+
+"And this," muttered Pizarro to the man next him, "is the man who is
+always saying that there is enough glory for all!"
+
+Saavedra's quick ear caught the remark. He smiled rather satirically.
+He, and he alone, knew the true reason for this action of Balboa's.
+
+"Juan," the commander had said to him while they were wading through
+their last swamp, "when we are somewhere near the summit I shall go on
+alone. I want no one with me when I look down the other side of that
+range. Whether I see a mere lake, which these savages may call a sea,
+or--something greater, I am not sure I shall be able to command my
+feelings. I will not be a fool before the men."
+
+Balboa's heart was thumping as he climbed, more with excitement than
+exertion. No one but Saavedra had so much as an inkling of the
+importance his success or failure would have for him personally. The
+whole of his future lay on the unknown other side of that hill. He shut
+his eyes as he reached the top--then opened them upon a glorious view.
+
+A vast blue sea sparkled in the sunshine, only a few leagues away. From
+the mountain top to the shore of this great body of water sloped a wild
+landscape of forest, rock, savanna and winding river. Balboa knelt and
+gave thanks to God.
+
+Then he sprang to his feet and beckoned to his followers, who rushed up
+the hill, the great hound Leoncico bounding far ahead. When all had
+reached the summit Father Andreas de Varo, motioning them to kneel,
+began the chant of Te Deum Laudamus, in which the company joined. The
+notary of the expedition then wrote out a testimonial witnessing that
+Balboa took possession of the sea, all its islands and surrounding
+lands, in the name of the sovereign of Castile; and each man signed it.
+Balboa had a tall tree cut down and made into a cross, which was planted
+on the exact spot where he had stood when he first looked upon the sea.
+A mound of stones was piled up for an additional monument, and the names
+of the sovereigns were carved on neighboring trees. Then Balboa, leading
+his men down the southern slope of the mountain, sent out three scouting
+parties under Francisco Pizarro, Juan de Escaray and Alonso Martin to
+discover the best route to the shore. Martin's party were first to reach
+it, after two days' journey, and found there two large canoes. Martin
+stepped into one of them, calling his companions to witness that he was
+the first European who had ever embarked upon those waters; Blas de
+Etienza, who followed, was the second. They reported their success to
+Balboa, and with twenty-six men the commander set out for the sea-coast.
+The Indian chief Chiapes, whom Balboa had fought and then made his ally,
+accompanied the party with some of his followers. On Michaelmas they
+reached the shore of a great bay, which in honor of the day was
+christened Bay de San Miguel. The tide was out, leaving a beach half a
+league wide covered with mud, and the Spaniards sat down to rest and
+wait. When it turned, it came in so fast that some who had dropped
+asleep found it lapping the bank at their feet, before they were fairly
+roused.
+
+Balboa stood up, and taking a banner which displayed the arms of
+Castile and Leon, and the figure of the Madonna and Child, he drew his
+sword and marched into the sea. In a formal speech he again took
+possession, in the names of the sovereigns, of the seas and lands and
+coasts and ports, the islands of the south, and all kingdoms and
+provinces thereunto appertaining. These rights he declared himself ready
+to maintain "until the day of judgment."
+
+While another document was receiving the signatures of the members of
+the expedition, Saavedra, who was standing near the margin of the bay,
+took up a little water in his hand and tasted it. It was salt.
+
+In the excitement of actually reaching the coast of so broad and
+beautiful a sea, no one had happened to think of finding out whether the
+water was fresh or salt. This discovery made it certain that they had
+found, not a great inland lake, but the ocean itself.
+
+Pizarro scowled; he wished that he had not missed this last chance of
+fame. Since he had discovered nothing it was not likely that his name
+should be mentioned in Balboa's report to the King, at all. But Balboa,
+high in expectation of the change which this fortunate adventure would
+make in his career, went on triumphantly exploring the neighboring
+country, gaining here and there considerable quantities of gold and
+pearls. Saavedra, who had inherited an estate in Spain just before the
+expedition started, and expected on his return to Darien to go home to
+look after it, watched Pizarro with growing distrust and anxiety.
+
+"I think you are ready to accuse him of witchcraft," said Balboa lightly
+when Saavedra hinted at his suspicions. "You have not given me one
+positive proof that the man is anything but a rather sulky, unhappy
+brute who has had ill luck."
+
+"He is ill-bred, I tell you," said Saavedra stubbornly. "He is making up
+to the Indians, and that is not like him. We shall have trouble there
+yet."
+
+Balboa laughed and went to his hut, there to fling himself into a
+hammock and take a much-needed nap. Saavedra, coming back in the
+twilight, spied an Indian creeping through the forest toward a window in
+the rear of the hut. He was about to challenge the man when there was a
+yelp from the bushes, and Cacafuego leaped upon the prowler and bore him
+to earth, tearing savagely at his throat and receiving half a dozen
+wounds from the arrows the Indian carried in his hand and in his belt.
+He had been trained by Pizarro to fly at an Indian, and made no
+distinctions. Within an hour or two the poison in the arrow-points began
+to take effect, and the dog died. Whether he had been prowling about in
+search of food--for Pizarro kept him hungry with a view to making his
+temper more touchy--or was looking for his old enemy Leoncico, no one
+would ever know. Balboa looked grave and said nothing.
+
+"The dog is dead--that is all that is absolutely certain," said Saavedra
+grimly. "I wish it had been his master."
+
+
+NOTE
+
+It is recorded that when Pizarro met Balboa with the order for his
+arrest Balboa thus addressed him: "It is not thus, Pizarro, that you
+were wont to greet me!" Pizarro's jealousy and ill-will are evident in
+the recorded facts, though he does not appear to have been actually
+guilty of treachery to his general.
+
+
+
+
+COLD O' THE MOON
+
+
+    Alone with all the stars that rule mankind
+    Ruy Faleiro sought to read the fate
+    Of his close friend--now by the King's rebuke
+    Sent stumbling out of Portugal to seek
+    His fortune on the sea-roads of the world.
+    But when Faleiro read the horoscope
+    It seemed to point to glory--and a grave
+    Beyond the sunset.
+
+                      When Magalhaens heard
+    The prophecy, he smiled, and steadfastly
+    Held on his way to that young Emperor,
+    The blond shy stripling with the Austrian face,
+    And in due time was Admiral of the Fleet
+    To sail the seas that lay beyond the world.
+
+    Mid-August was it when the fleet set forth,
+    December, when in that Brazilian bay,
+    Santa Lucia, they dropped anchor,--then
+    Set up a little altar on the beach
+    And knelt at Mass in that gray solitude.
+
+    Carvagio the pilot knew the place,
+    And said the folk were kindly,--brown, straight-haired,
+    Wore feather mantles, used no poisoned flints,
+    And only ate man's flesh on holidays.
+    Whereat a little daunted, not with fear,
+    The mariners met them running to the shore,
+    Bought swine of them, and plantains, cassava,
+    And for one playing card, the king of clubs,
+    The wild men gave six fowls! There were brown roots
+    Formed like the turnip, chestnut-like in taste
+    And called patata in ship-Spanish--cane
+    Wherefrom is made the sugar and the wine
+    Of Hispaniola, and the pineapple
+    That was like nectar to their sea-parched throats.
+    And thus they feasted and were satisfied.
+
+    Like an enchanted Eden seemed the land,
+    For birds on dazzling many-colored wings
+    Made the trees blossom--parrots red, green, blue,
+    Humming-birds like live jewels in the air,
+    Strange ducks with spoon-shaped bills,--and overhead
+    Like some fantastic frieze of living gold,
+    The little yellow monkeys leaped and swung
+    Chattering of Setebos in their unknown tongue.
+
+    The old men lived beyond their sevenscore years--
+    Or so the people said. They made canots
+    Of logs that they carved out with heated stones.
+    They slept in hamacs, woven cotton swings.
+    Their chiefs were called cacichas--you may find
+    All this put down in the thrice precious book
+    Written by Pigafetta of Vicenza
+    For a queen's pleasure when the voyage was done.
+
+    Then from that shore they sailed, and southward bent,
+    And as the long days lengthened, till the nights
+    Were but star-circled midnight intervals,
+    They wondered of what race and by what seas
+    They should find kings at the antipodes.
+
+    Where a great river flowed into the sea
+    They found sea-lions,--on another isle
+    Strange geese, milk-white and sable, with no wings,
+    Who swam instead of flying, and they called
+    The place the Isle of Penguins.
+
+                                    Then they found
+    A desolate harbor called San Juliano,
+    Where the fierce flame of mutiny broke forth,
+    Spaniard on Portuguese turned treacherously
+    Till in the red midwinter sunrise towered
+    The place of execution, and an end
+    Was made of the two traitors. Outward flashed the sail
+    And left the sea-birds there to tell the tale.
+
+    Beyond there lay a bleak and misty shore,
+    And in the fog a wild gigantic form
+    White-haired, a savage, called a greeting to them.
+    Friendly the huge men were, and took these men,
+    Bearded and strange, for kinfolk of their god,
+    Setebos, from his home beyond the moon,
+    And from their great shoes filled with straw for warmth
+    Magalhaens named them men of Patagonia.
+
+    Westward they steered, and buffeted by winds,
+    They found a narrow channel, where the fleet
+    Halted for council. One returned to Spain
+    Laden with falsehood and with mutiny.
+    On sailed the others valiantly, their hearts
+    Remembering their Admiral's haughty words
+    Flung at his craven captain, "I will see
+    This great voyage to the end, though we should eat
+    The leather from the yards!" And thus they reached
+    The end of that strait path of Destiny,
+    And saw beyond the shining Western Sea.
+
+    Northward the Admiral followed that long coast
+    Past Masafuera--then began his flight
+    Across the great uncharted shining sea.
+    And surely there was never stranger voyage.
+    The winds were gentle toward him, and no more
+    The dreadful laughter of the tempest shrilled,
+    Or down upon them pounced the hurricane.
+    Therefore Magalhaens, giving thanks to God,
+    Named it Pacific, and the lonely sea.
+    Still bore him westward where his heart would be.
+
+    Alone with all the stars of Christendom
+    He set his course,--if he had known his fate
+    Would he have stayed his hand? Before the end
+    Fate the old witch, who often loves to turn
+    A man's words on him, kept the ships becalmed
+    Even to thirst and famine; when instead
+    They fed on leather, gnawed wood, and ate mice
+    As did the Patagonian giants, when
+    They begged such vermin for a savage feast.
+    Then Fate, her jest outworn, blew them to shore
+    On the green islands called the Isles of Thieves,
+    And brought them to more islands--and still more,
+    A kingdom of bright lands in sunny seas.
+    Here did the Admiral land, and raise the Cross
+    Above that heathen realm,--and here went down
+    In battle for strange allies in strange lands.
+
+    So ended his adventure. Yet not so,
+    For the Victoria, faithful to his hand
+    That laid her charge upon her, southward sailed
+    Around the Cape and westward to Seville.
+    El Cano brought her in, and her strange tale
+    Told to the Emperor. "And the Admiral said,"
+    He ended, "that indeed these heathen lands
+    God meant should all be Christian, for He set
+    A cross of stars above the southern sea,
+    A passion-flower upon the southern shore,
+    To be a sign to great adventurers.
+    These be two marvels,--and upon the way
+    We gained a kingdom, but we lost a day!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+WAMPUM TOWN
+
+
+"Elephants' teeth?"
+
+"A fair lot, but I am sick of the Guinea coast. The Lisbon slavers get
+more of black ivory than we do of the white."
+
+The good Jean Parmentier, who asked the question, and the youth called
+Jean Florin, who answered it, were looking at a stanch weather-beaten
+little cargo-ship anchored in the harbor of Dieppe. She had been to the
+Gold Coast, where wild African chiefs conjured elephants' tusks out of
+the mysterious back country and traded them for beads, trinkets and gay
+cloth. In Dieppe this ivory was carved by deft artistic fingers into
+crucifixes, rosaries, little caskets, and other exquisite bibelots.
+African ivory was finer, whiter and firmer than that of India, and when
+thus used was almost as valuable as gold.
+
+But within the last ten years the slave trade had grown more profitable
+than anything else. A Portuguese captain would kidnap or purchase a few
+score negroes, take them, chained and packed together like convicts, to
+Lisbon or Seville and sell them for fat gold moidores and doubloons. The
+Spanish conquistadores had not been ten years in the West Indies before
+they found that Indian slavery did not work. The wild people, under the
+terrible discipline of the mines and sugar plantations, died or killed
+themselves. Planters of Hispaniola declared one negro slave worth a
+dozen Indians.
+
+"I do not wonder that the cacique Hatuey told the priest that he would
+burn forever rather than go to a heaven where Spaniards lived," said
+Jean Florin. "To roast a man is no way to change his religion."
+
+"Some of our folk in Rochelle are of that way of thinking," agreed
+Captain Parmentier dryly. "What say you to a western voyage?"
+
+"Not Brazil? Cabral claims that for Portugal."
+
+"No; the northern seas--the Baccalaos. Of course codfish are not ivory,
+and it is rough service, but Aubert and some of the others think that
+there may be a way to India. Sebastian Cabot tried for it and found only
+icebergs, but Aubert says there is a gulf or strait somewhere south of
+Cabot's course, that leads westward and has never been explored."
+
+"I am tired of the Guinea trade," the youth repeated; "Cape Breton at
+any rate is not Spanish."
+
+"Not yet," said Jean Parmentier with emphasis.
+
+Thus it came about that when Aubert, in 1508, poked the prow of his
+little craft into open water to the west of the great island off which
+men fished for cod, there stood beside him a young man who had been
+learning navigation under his direction, and was now called Jean
+Verassen. His real name was Giovanni Verrazzano, but nobody in Dieppe
+knew who the Florentine Verazzani might be, and during his
+apprenticeship there he had been known as Florin--the Florentine. In his
+boyhood the magnificent Medici, the merchant princes, had ruled
+Florence. After the fall of Constantinople he had seen the mastery of
+the sea pass from Venice to Lisbon. When he left Florence he followed
+the call of the sea-wind westward until now he had cast his lot with
+the seafarers of northern France, the only bit of the Continent that was
+outside the shadow of the mighty power of Spain. That shadow was growing
+bigger and darker year by year. The heir to the Spanish throne, Charles,
+grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, would be emperor of Germany, ruler
+of the Netherlands, King of Aragon, Castile, Granada and Andalusia, and
+sovereign of all the Spanish discoveries in the West; and no one knew
+how far they might extend. France might have to fight for her life.
+
+Meanwhile Norman and Breton fishermen went scudding across the North
+Atlantic every year, like so many petrels. Honfleur, Saint Malo, La
+Rochelle and Dieppe owed their modest prosperity to the cod. Baccalao,
+codfish or stockfish, all its names referred to the beating of the fish
+while drying, with a stick, to make it more tender; it was cheaper and
+more plentiful than any other fish for the Lenten tables and fast-days
+of Europe. The daring French captains found the fishing trade a hard
+life but a clean one.
+
+From the fishermen Aubert and Verrazzano had learned something of the
+nature of the country. Bears would come down to steal fish from under
+the noses of the men. Walrus and seal and myriads of screaming sea-gulls
+greeted them every season. The natives were barbarous and unfriendly.
+North of Newfoundland were two small islands known as the Isles of
+Demons, where nobody ever went. Veteran pilots told of hearing the
+unseen devils howling and shrieking in the air. "Saint Michael!
+tintamarre terrible!" they said, crossing themselves. The young
+Florentine listened and kept his thoughts to himself. He had never seen
+any devils, but he had seen men go mad in the hot fever-mist of African
+swamps, thinking they saw them.
+
+Aubert was not sure whether this was an inlet, a strait or a river
+behind the great barren island. When he had sailed westward for eighty
+leagues the water was still salt. The banks had drawn closer together
+and rude fortifications appeared on the heights. Canoes put forth from
+the wooded shores and surrounded the sailing ship. They were filled with
+copper-colored warriors of threatening aspect.
+
+The French commander did not like what he saw. He was not provisioned
+for a voyage around the world, and if these waters were the eastern
+entrance to a strait he might emerge upon a vast unknown ocean. If on
+the other hand he was at the mouth of a river, to ascend it might result
+in being cut off by hostile savages, which would be most unpleasant. A
+third consideration was that the inhabitants were said to live on fish,
+game, and berries, none of which could be secured, either peaceably or
+by fighting, in an enemy's country. Making hostages of seven young
+savages who climbed his bulwarks without any invitation, he put about
+and sailed away. During the following year the seven wild men were
+exhibited at Rouen and elsewhere.
+
+Aubert had made sure of one thing at least; the land to the west was not
+in the least like the rich islands which the Spanish held in the
+tropics. Except in the brief season when the swarming cod filled the
+seines of the fishermen, it yielded no wealth, not even in slaves, for
+the fierce and shy natives would be almost uncatchable and quite
+impossible to tame.
+
+Francis of Angoulême, the brilliant, reckless and extravagant young
+French King, was hard pushed to get money for his own Court, and was
+not interested in expeditions whose only result might be glory. He
+jested over the threatening Spanish dominion as he did over everything
+else. Italian dukedoms were overrun by troops from France, Spain,
+Austria and Switzerland, and Francis welcomed Italian artists,
+architects and poets to his capital. When the plague attacked Paris he
+removed to one of the royal châteaux in the country or paid visits to
+great noblemen like his cousin Charles de Bourbon. It was in 1522 at
+Moulins, the splendid country estate of the Duc de Bourbon, that the
+monarch met a captain of whom he had heard a great deal--all of it
+gratifying. He had in mind a new enterprise for this Verrazzano.
+
+During the last seven or eight years Verrazzano, like many other
+captains, had been engaged in the peculiar kind of expedition dubbed
+piracy or privateering according to the person speaking. France and
+Spain were neither exactly at peace nor openly at war. The Florentine
+had gone out upon the high seas in command of a ship fitted out and
+armed at his own risk, and fought Spanish galleons wherever he met them.
+This helped to embarrass the King of Spain in his wars abroad. Galleons
+eastward bound were usually treasure-ships. The colonial governors,
+planters, captains and common soldiers took all the gold they could get
+for themselves, and the gold, silver and pearls that went as tribute to
+the royal master in Spain had to run the gauntlet of these fierce and
+fearless sea-wolves. The wealth of the Indies was really a possession of
+doubtful value. It attracted pirates as honey draws flies. When these
+pirates turned a part of their spoils over to kings who were not
+friendly to Spain, it was particularly exasperating.
+
+Francis had asked Verrazzano to come to Moulins because, from what he
+had heard, it seemed to him that here was a man who could take care of
+himself and hold his tongue, and he liked such men. The experience
+reminded the Florentine of the great days of the Medici. Charles de
+Bourbon's palace at Moulins was fit for a king. Unlike most French
+châteaux, which were built on low lands among the hunting forests, it
+stood on a hill in a great park, and was surrounded with terraces,
+fountains, and gardens in the Italian style. Moreover its furniture was
+permanent, not brought in for royal guests and then taken away. The
+richness and beauty of its tapestries, state beds, decorations, and
+other belongings was beyond anything in any royal palace of that time.
+The duke's household included five hundred gentlemen in rich suits of
+Genoese velvet, each wearing a massive gold chain passing three times
+round the neck and hanging low in front; they attended the guests in
+divisions, one hundred at a time.
+
+The feasting was luxurious, and many of its choice dishes were supplied
+by the estate. There were rare fruits and herbs in the gardens, and a
+great variety of game-birds and animals in the park and the forest. But
+there were also imported delicacies--Windsor beans, Genoa artichokes,
+Barbary cucumbers and Milan parsley. The first course consisted of Médoc
+oysters, followed by a light soup. The fish course included the royal
+sturgeon, the dorado or sword-fish, the turbot. Then came heron, cooked
+in the fashion of the day, with sugar, spice and orange-juice; olives,
+capers and sour fruits; pheasants, red-legged partridges, and the
+favorite roast, sucking-pig parboiled and then roasted with a stuffing
+of chopped meats, herbs, raisins and damson plums. There were salads of
+fruit,--such as the King's favorite of oranges, lemons and sugar with
+sweet herbs,--or of herbs, such as parsley and mint with pepper,
+cinnamon and vinegar. For dessert there were Italian ices and
+confectionery, and the Queen's favorite plum, Reine Claude, imported
+from Italy; the white wine called Clairette-au-miel, hypocras,
+gooseberry and plum wines, lemonade, champagne. There was never a King
+who could appreciate such artistic luxury more deeply than Francis I.
+This may be one reason for his warm welcome of Verrazzano, who seemed to
+be able to increase the wealth of his country and his King.
+
+"I have had a very indignant visit from the Spanish ambassador," said
+Francis when they were seated together in a private room. "He says that
+there has been piracy on the high seas, my Verrazzano."
+
+The Italian met the laughing glance of the King with a somber gleam in
+his own dark eyes. "Does one steal from a robber?" he asked. "Not a
+quill of gold-dust nor an ingot of silver nor a seed-pearl comes
+honestly to Spain. It is all cruelty, bribery, slavery. Savonarola
+threatened Lorenzo de' Medici with eternal fires, prince as he was, for
+sins that were peccadilloes beside those of Spanish governors."
+
+"There is something in what you say," assented Francis lightly. "If we
+get the treasure of the Indies without owning the Indies we are
+certainly rid of much trouble. I never heard of Father Adam making any
+will dividing the earth between our brother of Spain and our brother of
+Portugal. Unless they can find such a document--" the laughing face
+hardened suddenly into keen attention, "we may as well take what we can
+get where we can find it. And now about this road to India; what have
+you to suggest?"
+
+Verrazzano outlined his plans in brief speech and clear. The proposed
+voyage might have two objects; one, the finding of a route to Asia if it
+existed; the other, the discovery of other countries from which wealth
+might be gained, in territory not yet explored. Verrazzano pointed out
+the fact that, as the earth was round, the shortest way to India ought
+to be near the pole rather than near the equator, yet far enough to the
+south to escape the danger of icebergs.
+
+"Very well then,"--the King pondered with finger on cheek. "Say as
+little as possible of your preparations, use your own discretion, and if
+any Spaniards try to interfere with you--" the monarch grinned,--"tell
+them that it is my good pleasure that my subjects go where they like."
+
+The Spanish agents in France presently informed their employer that the
+Florentine Verrazzano was again making ready to sail for regions
+unknown. Perhaps he did not himself know where he should go; at any rate
+the spies had not been able to find out.
+
+Two months later news came that before Verrazzano had gone far enough to
+be caught by the squadron lying in wait for him, he had pounced on the
+great carrack which had been sent home by Cortes loaded with Aztec gold.
+In convoying this prize to France he had caught another galleon coming
+from Hispaniola with a cargo of gold and pearls, and the two rich
+trophies were now in the harbor of La Rochelle, where the audacious
+captain was doubtless making ready for another piratical voyage.
+
+Verrazzano made a second start a little later, but was driven back by a
+Biscay storm. Finally, toward the end of the year 1523, he set out once
+more with only one ship, the _Dauphine_, out of his original fleet of
+four, and neither friend nor foe caught a glimpse of him during the
+voyage. In March, 1524, having sailed midway between the usual course of
+the West Indian galleons and the path of the fishers going to and from
+the Banks of Newfoundland, he saw land which he felt sure had not been
+discovered either by ancient or modern explorers.
+
+It was a low shore on which the fine sand, some fifteen feet deep, lay
+drifted into hillocks or dunes. Small creeks and inlets ran inland, but
+there seemed to be no good harbor. Beyond the sand-dunes were forests of
+cypress, palm, bay and other trees, and the wind bore the scent of
+blossoming trees and vines far out to sea. For fifty leagues the
+_Dauphine_ followed the coast southward, looking for a harbor, for
+Verrazzano knew that pearl fisheries and spices were far more likely to
+be found in southern than in northern waters. No harbor appeared. The
+daring navigator knew that if he went too far south he ran some risk of
+encountering a Spanish fleet, and that after his getting two of the most
+valuable cargoes ever sent over seas, they would be patroling all the
+tropical waters in the hope of catching him. He turned north again.
+
+On the shore from time to time little groups of savages appeared moving
+about great bonfires, and watching the ship. They wore hardly any
+clothing except the skin of some small animal like a marten, attached to
+a belt of woven grass; their skins were russet-brown and their thick
+straight black hair was tied in a knot rather like a tail.
+
+"One thing is certain," said young François Parmentier cheerfully,
+"these folk have never seen Spaniards--or Portuguese. Even on the
+Labrador the people ran from us, after Cortereale went slave-stealing
+there."
+
+Verrazzano smiled. Young Parmentier was always full of hope and faith. A
+little later the youth volunteered to be one of a boat's crew sent
+ashore for water, and provided himself with a bagful of the usual
+trinkets for gifts. The surf ran so high that the boat could not land,
+and François leaped overboard and swam ashore. Here he scattered his
+wares among the watching Indians, and then, leaping into the waves
+again, struck out for the boat. But the surf dashed him back upon the
+sand into the very midst of the natives, who seized him by the arms and
+legs and carried him toward the fire, while he yelled with astonishment
+and terror.
+
+Verrazzano was if anything more horrified than François himself; this
+was the son of his oldest friend. The Indians were removing his clothing
+as if they were about to roast him alive. But it appeared presently that
+they only wished to dry his clothes and comfort him, for they soon
+allowed him to return to the boat, seeing this was his earnest desire,
+and watched him with the greatest friendliness as he swam back.
+
+No strait appeared, but at one point Verrazzano, landing and marching
+into the interior with an exploring party, found a vast expanse of water
+on the other side of what seemed a neck of land between the two seas,
+about six miles in width. If this were the South Sea, the same which
+Balboa had seen from the Isthmus of Darien, so narrow a strip of land
+was at least as good or better than anything possessed by Spain.
+Verrazzano continued northward, and found a coast rich in grapes, the
+vines often covering large trees around which the natives kept the
+ground clear of shrubs that might interfere with this natural vineyard.
+Wild roses, violets, lilies, iris and many other plants and flowers,
+some quite unknown to Europe, greeted the admiring gaze of the
+commander. His quick mind pictured a royal garden adorned with these
+foreign shrubs and herbs, the wainscoting and furniture to be made by
+French and Italian joiners from these endless leagues of timber, the
+stately churches and castles which might be built by skilful masons from
+the abundant stone along these shores. Here was a province which, if it
+had not gold, had the material for many luxuries which must otherwise be
+bought with gold, and his clear Italian brain perceived that ingots of
+gold and silver are not the only treasure of kings.
+
+At last the _Dauphine_ came into a harbor or lake three leagues in
+circumference, where more than thirty canoes were assembled, filled with
+people. Suddenly François Parmentier leaped to his feet and waved his
+cap with a shout.
+
+"Now what madness has taken you?" queried Verrazzano.
+
+"I know where we are, that's all. This is Wampum Town,--L'Anormé
+Berge--the Grand Scarp. This is one of their great trading places,
+Captain. Father heard about it at Cape Breton from some south-country
+savages."
+
+"And what may wampum be?" asked Verrazzano coolly.
+
+"'T is the stuff they use for money--bits of shell made into beads and
+strung into a belt. There is an island in this bay where they make it
+out of their shell-fish middens--two kinds--purple and white. On my
+word, this big chief has on a wampum belt now!"
+
+This was interesting information indeed, and the natives seemed prepared
+to traffic in all peace and friendliness. Verrazzano found upon
+investigation that on the north of this bay a very large river, deep at
+the mouth, came down between steep hills. Afterward, following the shore
+to the east, he discovered a fine harbor beyond a three-cornered island.
+Here he met two chiefs of that country, a man of about forty, and a
+young fellow of twenty-four, dressed in quaintly decorated deerskin
+mantles, with chains set with colored stones about their necks. He
+stayed two weeks, refitting the ship with provisions and other
+necessaries, and observing the place. The crew got by trading and as
+gifts the beans and corn cultivated by the people, wild fruits and nuts,
+and furs. Further north they found the tribes less friendly, and at last
+came so near the end of their provision that Verrazzano decided to
+return to France. He reached home July 8, 1524, after having sailed
+along seven hundred leagues of the Atlantic coast.
+
+[Illustration: "The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and
+friendliness"--_Page_ 132]
+
+Francis I. was in the thick of a disastrous war with Spain, and had not
+time just then to consider further explorations. The war was not fairly
+over when a Cadiz warship, in 1527, caught Verrazzano and hanged him as
+a pirate.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The not unnatural conclusion of Verrazzano that what he saw was an ocean
+or a great inland sea led to extraordinary misconceptions in the maps
+and charts of the time. It was not until the early part of the
+seventeenth century that the region was actually explored, by Newport
+and Smith, and found to be only Chesapeake Bay.
+
+
+
+
+THE DRUM
+
+
+    I wake the gods with my sullen boom--
+      I am the Drum!
+    They wait for the blood-red flowers that bloom
+    In the heart of the sacrifice, there in the gloom
+      With terror dumb--
+    I sound the call to his dreadful doom--
+      I am the Drum!
+
+    I was the Serpent, the Sacred Snake--
+      Wolf, bear and fox
+    By the silent shores of river and lake
+    Tread softly, listening lest they wake
+      My voice that mocks
+    The rattle that falling bones will make
+      On barren rocks.
+
+    My banded skin is the voice of the Priest--
+      I am the Drum!
+    I sound the call to the War-God's feast
+    Till Tezcatlipoca's power hath ceased
+      And the White Gods come
+    Out of the fire of the burning East--
+      Hear me, the Drum!
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE GODS OF TAXMAR
+
+
+If the Fathers of the Church had ever been on the other side of the
+world, they would have made new rules for it.
+
+So thought Jerónimo Aguilar, on board a caravel plying between Darien
+and Hispaniola. It was a thought he would hardly have dared think in
+Spain.
+
+He was a dark thin young friar from the mountains near Seville. In 1488
+his mother, waiting, as women must, for news from the wars, vowed that
+if God and the Most Catholic Sovereigns drove out the Moors and sent her
+husband home to her, she would give her infant son to the Church. That
+was twenty-four years ago, and never had the power of the Church been so
+great as it now was. When the young Fray Jerónimo had been moved by
+fiery missionary preaching to give himself to the work among the
+Indians, his mother wept with astonishment and pride.
+
+But the Indies he found were not the Indies he had heard of. Men who
+sailed from Cadiz valiant if rough and hard-bitted soldiers of the
+Cross, turned into cruel adventurers greedy for gold, hard masters
+abusing their power. The innocent wild people of Colón's island Eden
+were charged by the planters with treachery, theft, murderous
+conspiracy, and utter laziness. With a little bitter smile Aguilar
+remembered how the hidalgo, who would not dig to save his life, railed
+at the Indian who died of the work he had never learned to do. It was
+not for a priest to oppose the policy of the Church and the Crown, and
+very few priests attempted it, whatever cruelty they might see. Aguilar
+half imagined that the demon gods of the heathen were battling against
+the invading apostles of the Cross, poisoning their hearts and defeating
+their aims. It was all like an evil enchantment.
+
+These meditations were ended by a mighty buffet of wind that smote the
+caravel and sent it flying northwest. Ourakan was abroad, the Carib god
+of the hurricane, and no one could think of anything thereafter but the
+heaving, tumbling wilderness of black waves and howling tempest and
+hissing spray. Valdivia, regidor of Darien, had been sent to Hispaniola
+by Balboa, the governor, with important letters and a rich tribute of
+gold, to get supplies and reinforcements for the colony. Shipwreck would
+be disastrous to Balboa and his people as well as to the voyagers.
+
+Headlong the staggering ship was driven upon Los Viboros, (The Vipers)
+that infamous group of hidden rocks off Jamaica. She was pounded to
+pieces almost before Valdivia could get his one boat into the water,
+with its crew of twenty men. Without food or drink, sails or proper
+oars, the survivors tossed for thirteen dreadful days on the uncharted
+cross-currents of unknown seas. Seven died of hunger, thirst and
+exposure before the tide that drifted northwest along the coast of the
+mainland caught them and swept them ashore.
+
+None of them had ever seen this coast. Valdivia cherished a faint hope
+that it might be a part of the kingdom of walled cities and golden
+temples, of which they had all heard. There were traces of human
+presence, and they could see a cone-shaped low hill with a stone temple
+or building of some kind on the top. Natives presently appeared, but
+they broke the boat in pieces and dragged the castaways inland through
+the forest to the house of their cacique.
+
+That chief, a villainous looking savage in a thatched hut, looked at
+them as if they had been cattle--or slaves--or condemned heretics. What
+they thought, felt or hoped was nothing to him. He ordered them taken to
+a kind of pen, where they were fed. So great is the power of the body
+over the mind that for a few days they hardly thought of anything but
+the unspeakable joy of having enough to eat and drink, and nothing to do
+but sleep. The cacique visited the enclosure now and then, and looked
+them over with a calculating eye. Aguilar was haunted by the idea that
+this inspection meant something unpleasant.
+
+All too soon the meaning was made known to them. Valdivia and four other
+men who were now less gaunt and famine-stricken than when captured, were
+seized and taken away, to be sacrificed to the gods.
+
+It was the custom of the Mayas of Yucatan to sacrifice human beings,
+captives or slaves for choice, to the gods in whose honor the stone
+pyramids were raised. When the victim had been led up the winding
+stairway to the top, the central figure in a procession of priests and
+attendants, he was laid upon a stone altar and his heart was cut out and
+offered to the idol, after which the body was eaten at a ceremonial
+feast. The eight captives who remained now understood that the food they
+had had was meant merely to fatten them for future sacrifice. Half mad
+with horror, they crouched in the hot moist darkness, and listened to
+the uproar of the savages.
+
+A strong young sailor by the name of Gonzalo Guerrero, who had done
+good service during the hurricane, pulled Jerónimo by the sleeve, "What
+in the name of all the saints can we do, Padre?" he muttered. "José and
+the rest will be raving maniacs."
+
+Aguilar straightened himself and rose to his feet where the rays of the
+moon, white and calm, shone into the enclosure. Lifting his hands to
+heaven he began to pray.
+
+All he had learned from books and from the disputations and sermons of
+the Fathers fell away from him and left only the bare scaffolding, the
+faith of his childhood. At the familiar syllables of the Ave Maria the
+shuddering sailors hushed their cries and oaths and listened, on their
+knees.
+
+This was a handful of castaways in the clutch of a race of man-eaters
+who worshiped demons. But above them bent the tender and pitiful Mother
+of Christ who had seen her Son crucified, and Christ Himself stood
+surrounded by innumerable witnesses. Among the saints were some who had
+died at the hands of the heathen, many who had died by torture. The poor
+and ignorant men who listened were caught up for the moment into the
+vision of Fray Jerónimo and regained their self-control. When the prayer
+was ended Gonzalo Guerrero sprang up, and rallied them to furious labor.
+Under his direction and Aguilar's they dug and wrenched at their cage
+like desperate rats, until they broke away enough of it just to let a
+man's body through. Aguilar was the last to go. He closed the hole and
+heaped rubbish outside it, as rubbish and branches had been piled where
+they were used to sleep, to delay as long as possible the discovery of
+their escape. They got clear away into the depths of the forest.
+
+But for men without provisions or weapons the wilderness of that unknown
+land was only less dreadful than death. Trees and vines barren of fruit,
+streams where a huge horny lizard ate all the fish--El Lagarto he was
+called by the discoverers,--no grain or cattle which might be taken by
+stealth--this was the realm into which they had been exiled. When they
+ventured out of the forest, driven by famine, they were captured by Acan
+Xooc, the cacique of another province, Jamacana. Here they were made
+slaves, to cut wood, carry water and bear burdens. Water was scarce in
+that region. There had been reservoirs, built in an earlier day, but
+these were ruined, and water had to be carried in earthern jars. The
+cacique died, and another named Taxmar succeeded him. Year after year
+passed. The soul of one worn-out white man slipped away, followed by
+another, and another, until only Aguilar and Guerrero were left alive.
+
+Taxmar sent the sailor as a present to a friend, cacique of Chatemal,
+but kept Aguilar for himself, watching his ways.
+
+The cacique was a sagacious heathen of considerable experience, but he
+had never seen a man like this one. Jerónimo was now almost as dark as
+an Indian and had not a scrap of civilized clothing, yet he was unlike
+the other white men, unlike any other slave. He had a string of dried
+berries with a cross made of reeds hung from it, which he sometimes
+appeared to be counting, talking to himself in his own language. Taxmar
+had once seen a slave from the north who had been a priest in his own
+country and knew how to remember things by string-talk, knotting a
+string in a peculiar fashion; but he was not like this man. When the
+white slave saw the crosses carved on their old walls he had eagerly
+asked how they came there, and Taxmar gathered that the cross had some
+meaning in the captive's own religion. He never lied, never stole, never
+got angry, never tattled of the other slaves, never disobeyed orders,
+never lost his temper. Taxmar could not remember when he himself had
+ever been restrained by anything but policy from taking whatever he
+wanted. Here was a man who could deny himself even food at times, when
+he was not compelled to. Taxmar could not understand.
+
+What he did not know was, that when he had escaped from the cannibals
+Aguilar had made a fresh vow to keep with all strictness every vow of
+his priesthood, and to bear his lot with patience and meekness until it
+should be the will of God to free him from the savages. He had begun to
+think that this freedom would never be his in his lifetime, but a vow
+was a vow. He no more suspected that Taxmar was taking note of his
+behavior, than a man standing in front of the lion's cage at the
+menagerie can translate the thoughts behind the great cat's intent eyes.
+
+Taxmar began to try experiments. He invented temptations to put in the
+way of his slave, but Aguilar generally did not seem to see them. One
+day the Indians were shooting at a mark. One came up to Aguilar and
+seized him by the arm.
+
+"How would you like to be shot at?" he said. "These bowmen hit whatever
+they aim at--if they aim at a nose they hit a nose. They can shoot so
+near you that they miss only by the breadth of a grain of corn--or do
+not miss at all."
+
+Aguilar never flinched, although from what he knew of the savages he
+thought nothing more likely than his being set up for a San Sebastian.
+He answered quietly,
+
+"I am your slave, and you can do with me what you please. I think you
+are too wise to destroy one who is both useful and obedient."
+
+The suggestion had been made by the order of Taxmar, and the answer was
+duly reported to him.
+
+It took a long time to satisfy the chief that this man who seemed so
+extraordinary was really what he seemed. He came at last to trust him
+wholly, even making him the steward of his household and leaving him to
+protect his women in his absence. Finding the chief thus disposed,
+Aguilar ventured a suggestion. Guerrera had won great favor with his
+master by his valor in war. Aguilar was shrewd enough to know that
+though it was very pleasant to have his master's confidence, if anything
+happened to Taxmar he might be all the worse off. The only sure way to
+win the respect of these barbarians was by efficiency as a soldier.
+Taxmar upon request gave his steward the military outfit of the
+Mayas--bow and arrows, wicker-work shield, and war-club, with a dagger
+of obsidian, a volcanic stone very hard and capable of being made very
+keen of edge, but brittle. Jerónimo when a boy had been an expert
+archer, and his old skill soon returned. He also remembered warlike
+devices and stratagems he had seen and heard of. Old soldiers chatting
+with his father in the purple twilight had often fought their battles
+over again, and nearly every form of military tactics then known to
+civilized armies had been used in the war in Granada. Naturally the
+young friar had heard more or less discussion of military campaigns in
+Darien. His suggestions were so much to the point that Taxmar had an
+increased respect for the gods of that unknown land of his. If they
+could do so much for this slave, without even demanding any offerings,
+they must be very different from the gods of the Mayas.
+
+In reply to Taxmar's questions, Aguilar, who now spoke the language
+quite well, endeavored to explain the nature of his religion. Not many
+of the Spaniards who expected to convert the Indians went so far as
+this. If they could by any means whatever make their subjects call
+themselves Christians and observe the customs of the Church, it was all
+they attempted. Taxmar was not the sort of person to be converted in
+that informal way. He demanded reasons. If Aguilar advised him against
+having unhappy people murdered to bribe the gods for their help in the
+coming campaign, he wished to know what the objection was, and what the
+white chiefs did in such a case. The idea of sacrificing to one's god,
+not the lives of men, but one's own will and selfish desires, was
+entirely new to him.
+
+While Jerónimo was still wrestling with the problem of making the
+Christian faith clear to one single Indian out of the multitudes of the
+heathen, a neighboring cacique appeared on the scene,--jealous, angry
+and suspicious. He had heard, he said, that Taxmar sought the aid of a
+stranger, who worshiped strange gods, in a campaign directed against his
+neighbors. He wished to know if Taxmar considered this right. In his own
+opinion this stranger ought to be sacrificed to the gods of the Mayas
+after the usual custom, or the gods would be angry,--and then no one
+knew what would happen.
+
+Aguilar thought it possible that Taxmar might reply that the conduct of
+an army was no one's business but the chief's. That would be in line
+with the cacique's character as he knew it. He did not expect that any
+chief in that ancient land would dare to defy its gods openly.
+
+Taxmar did not meet the challenge at once. His deep set opaque black
+eyes and mastiff-like mouth looked as immovable as the carving on the
+basalt stool upon which he sat. The cacique thought he was impressed,
+and concluded triumphantly,
+
+"Who can resist the gods? Let the altar drink the blood of the stranger;
+it is sweet to them and they will sleep, and not wake."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind," said Taxmar, the clicking, bubbling
+Maya talk dropping like water on hot stones. "When a man serves me well,
+I do not reward him with death. My slave's wisdom is greater than the
+craft of Coyotl, and if his gods help me it is because they know enough
+to do right."
+
+The other chief went home in rage and disappointment and offended
+dignity.
+
+No one, who has not tried it, can imagine the sensation of living in a
+hostile land, removed from all that is familiar. Until his captivity
+began Aguilar had never been obliged to act for himself. He had always
+been under the authority of a superior. He had questioned and wondered,
+seen the injustice of this thing and that, but only in his own mind.
+When everything in his past life had been swept away at one stroke, his
+faith alone was left him in the wrecked and distorted world. He had
+never dreamed that Taxmar was learning to respect that faith.
+
+The neighboring cacique now joined Taxmar's enemies with all his army,
+and the councilors took alarm and repeated the suggestion that Aguilar
+should be sacrificed to make sure of the help of the gods. Taxmar again
+spoke plainly.
+
+"Our gods," he said, "have helped us when we were strong and powerful
+and sacrificed many captives in their honor. This man's gods help him
+when he is a slave, alone, far from his people, with nothing to offer in
+sacrifice. We will see now what they will do for my army."
+
+In the battle which followed, the cacique adopted a plan which Aguilar
+suggested. That loyal follower was placed in command of a force hidden
+in the woods near the route by which the enemy would arrive. The hostile
+forces marched past it, and charged upon the front of Taxmar's army. It
+gave way, and they rushed in with triumphant yells. When they were well
+past, Aguilar's division came out of the bushes and took them in the
+rear. At the same instant Taxmar and his warriors faced about and sprang
+at them like a host of panthers. There was a great slaughter, many
+prisoners were taken, among them the cacique himself and many men of
+importance; and Taxmar made a little speech to them upon the wisdom of
+the white man's gods.
+
+In the years that passed the captive's hope of escape faded. Once he had
+thought he might slip away and reach the coast, but he was too carefully
+watched. Even if he could get to the sea from so far inland, without the
+help of the natives, he could not reach any Spanish colony without a
+boat. There were rumors of strange ships filled with bearded men, whose
+weapons were the thunder and the lightning. Old people wagged their
+heads and recalled a prophecy of the priest Chilam Cambal many years
+ago, that a white people, bearded, would come from the east, to overturn
+the images of the gods, and conquer the land.
+
+Hernando de Córdova's squadron came and went; Grijalva's came and went;
+Aguilar heard of them but never saw them. At last, seven long years
+after he came to Jamacana, three coast Indians from the island of
+Cozumel came timidly to the cacique with gifts and a letter. The gifts
+were for Taxmar, to buy his Christian slaves, if he had any, and the
+letter was for them.
+
+Hernando Cortes, coming from Cuba with a squadron to discover and
+conquer the land ruled by the Lord of the Golden House, had stopped at
+Cozumel and there heard of white men held as captives somewhere inland.
+He had persuaded the Indians to send messengers for them, saying that if
+the captives were sent to the sea-coast, at the cape of Cotoche, he
+would leave two caravels there eight days, to wait for them.
+
+While Aguilar read this letter the Indians were telling of the
+water-houses of the strangers, their sharp weapons, their command of
+thunder and lightning, and the wonderful presents they gave in exchange
+for what they wanted. Aguilar's account of the squadron was even more
+complete. He described the dress of the Spaniards, their weapons and
+their manner of life without having seen them at all, and the Indians,
+when asked, said it was so.
+
+Taxmar's acute mind was adjusting itself to this event, which was not
+altogether unexpected. He had heard more than Aguilar had about the
+previous visits of the Spaniards to that coast. He asked Aguilar if he
+thought that the strange warriors would accept him, their countryman, as
+ambassador, and deal mildly with Taxmar and his people, if they let him
+go. Aguilar answered that he thought they would.
+
+Now freedom was within his grasp, and only one thing delayed him. He
+could not leave his comrade Guerrero behind. The sailor had married the
+daughter of a chief and become a great man in his adopted country.
+Aguilar sent Indian messengers with the letter and a verbal message, and
+waited.
+
+Guerrero had never known much about reading, and he had forgotten nearly
+all he knew. He understood, however, that he could now return to Spain.
+Before his eyes rose a picture of the lofty austere sierras, the sunny
+vineyards, the wine, so unlike pulque, the bread, so unlike flat cakes
+of maize, the maidens of Barcelona and Malaga, so very different from
+tattooed Indian girls. And then he surveyed his own brawny arms and
+legs, and felt of his own grotesquely ornamented countenance.
+
+To please the taste of his adopted people he had let himself be
+decorated as they were, for life,--with tattooed pictures, with
+nose-ring, with ear-rings of gold set with rudely cut gems and heavy
+enough to drag down the lobe of the ear. He would cut a figure in the
+streets of Seville. The little boys would run after him as if he were a
+show. He grinned, sighed mightily, and sent word to Aguilar that he
+thought it wiser to stay where he was. Aguilar set out for the coast
+with the Cozumel Indians, but this delay had consumed all of the eight
+days appointed, and when they reached Point Cotoche the caravels had
+gone.
+
+But a broken canoe and a stave from a water-barrel lay on the beach, and
+with the help of the messengers Aguilar patched up the canoe, and with
+the board for a paddle, made the canoe serve his need. Following the
+coast they came to the narrowest part of the channel between the
+mainland and Cozumel, and in spite of a very strong current got across
+to the island. No sooner had they landed when some Spaniards rushed out
+of the bushes, with drawn swords. The Indians were about to fly in
+terror, but Aguilar called to them in their own language to have no
+fear. Then he spoke to the Spaniards in broken Castilian, saying that he
+was a Christian, fell on his knees and thanked God that he had lived to
+hear his own language again.
+
+The Spaniards looked at this strange figure in absolute bewilderment. He
+was to all appearance an Indian. His long hair was braided and wound
+about his head, he had a bow in his hand, a quiver of arrows on his
+back, a bag of woven grass-work hung about his neck by a long cord. The
+pattern of the weaving was a series of interwoven crosses. Cortes,
+giving up hope of rescuing any Christian captives, had left the island,
+but one of his ships had sprung a leak and he had put back. When he saw
+an Indian canoe coming he had sent scouts to see what it might be. They
+now led Jerónimo Aguilar and his Indian companions into the presence of
+the captain-general and his staff. Aguilar saluted Cortes in the Indian
+fashion, by carrying his hand from the ground to his forehead as he
+knelt crouching before him. But Cortes, when he understood who this man
+was, raised him to his feet, embraced him and flung about his shoulders
+his own cloak. Aguilar became his interpreter, and thus was the prophecy
+fulfilled concerning the gods of Taxmar.
+
+[Illustration: "CORTES FLUNG ABOUT HIS SHOULDERS HIS OWN
+CLOAK."--_Page_ 146]
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The story of Jerónimo Aguilar follows the actual facts very closely. The
+account of his adventures will be found in Irving's "Life of Columbus"
+and other works dealing with the history of the Spanish conquests.
+
+
+
+
+A LEGEND OF MALINCHE
+
+
+    O sorcerer Time, turn backward to the shore
+      Where it is always morning, and the birds
+    Are troubadours of all the hidden lore
+      Deeper than any words!
+
+    There lived a maiden once,--O long ago,
+      Ere men were grown too wise to understand
+    The ancient language that they used to know
+      In Quezalcoatl's land.
+
+    Though her own mother sold her for a slave,
+      Her own bright beauty as her only dower,
+    Into her slender hands the conqueror gave
+      A more than queenly power.
+
+    Between her people and the enemy--
+      The fierce proud Spaniard on his conquest bent--
+    Interpreter and interceder, she
+      In safety came and went.
+
+    And still among the wild shy forest folk
+    The birds are singing of her, and her name
+    Lives in that language that her people spoke
+      Before the Spaniard came.
+
+    She is not dead, the daughter of the Sun,--
+      By love and loyalty divinely stirred,
+    She lives forever--so the legends run,--
+      Returning as a bird.
+
+    Who but a white bird in her seaward flight
+      Saw, borne upon the shoulders of the sea,
+    Three tiny caravels--how small and light
+      To hold a world in fee!
+
+    Who but the quezal, when the Spaniards came
+      And plundered all the white imperial town,
+    Saw in a storm of red rapacious flame
+      The Aztec throne go down!
+
+    And when the very rivers talked of gold,
+      The humming-bird upon her lichened nest
+    Strange tales of wild adventure never told
+      Hid in her tiny breast.
+
+    The mountain eagle, circling with the stars,
+      Watched the great Admiral swiftly come and go
+    In his light ship that set at naught the bars
+      Wrought by a giant foe.
+
+    Dull are our years and hard to understand,
+      We dream no more of mighty days to be,
+    And we have lost through delving in the land
+      The wisdom of the sea.
+
+    Yet where beyond the sea the sunset burns,
+      And the trees talk of kings dead long ago,
+    Malinche sings among the giant ferns--
+      Ask of the birds--they know!
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE THUNDER BIRDS
+
+
+"Glory is all very well," said Juan de Saavedra to Pedro de Alvarado as
+the squadron left the island of Cozumel, "but my familiar spirit tells
+me that there is gold somewhere in this barbaric land or Cortes would
+not be with us."
+
+Alvarado's peculiarly sunny smile shone out. He was a ruddy
+golden-haired man, a type unusual in Spaniards, and the natives showed a
+tendency to revere him as the sun-god. Life had treated him very well,
+and he had an abounding good-nature.
+
+"It will be the better," he said comfortably, "if we get both gold and
+glory. I confess I have had my doubts of the gold, for after all, these
+Indians may have more sense than they appear to have."
+
+"People often do, but in what way, especially?"
+
+"_Amigo_, put yourself in the place of one of these caciques, with white
+men bedeviling you for a treasure which you never even troubled yourself
+to pick up when it lay about loose. What can be more easy than to tell
+them that there is plenty of it somewhere else--in the land of your
+enemies? That is Pizarro's theory, at any rate."
+
+Saavedra laughed. "Pizarro is wise in his way, but as I have said,
+Cortes is our commander."
+
+"What has that to do with it?"
+
+"If you had been at Salamanca in his University days you wouldn't ask.
+He never got caught in a scrape, and he always got what he was after."
+
+"And kept it?"
+
+"Is that a little more of Pizarro's wisdom? No; he always shared the
+spoils as even-handedly as you please. But if any of us lost our heads
+and got into a pickle he never was concerned in it--or about it."
+
+"He will lose his, if Velasquez catches him. Remember Balboa."
+
+"Now there is an example of the chances he will take. Cortes first
+convinces the Governor that nobody else is fit to trust with this
+undertaking. Córdova failed; Grijalva failed; Cortes will succeed or
+leave his bones on the field of honor. No sooner are we fairly out of
+harbor than Velasquez tries to whistle us back. He might as well blow
+his trumpets to the sea-gulls. All Cortes wanted was a start. You will
+see--either the Governor will die or be recalled while we are gone, or
+we shall come back so covered with gold and renown that he will not dare
+do anything when we are again within his reach. Somebody's head may be
+lost in this affair, but it will not be that of Hernan' Cortes."
+
+The man of whom they were speaking just then approached, summoning
+Alvarado to him. Saavedra leaned on the rail musing.
+
+"Sometimes," he said to himself, "one hastens a catastrophe by warning
+people of it, but then, that may be because it could not have been
+prevented. Cortes is inclined to make that simple fellow his aide
+because they are so unlike, and so, I suspect, are others. At any rate I
+have done my best to make him see whose leadership is safest."
+
+The fleet was a rather imposing one for those waters. There were eleven
+ships altogether, the flagship and three others being over seventy tons'
+weight, the rest caravels and open brigantines. These were manned by one
+hundred and ten sailors, and carried five hundred and fifty-three
+soldiers, of whom thirty-two were crossbowmen and thirteen arquebusiers.
+There were also about two hundred Indians. Sixteen horses accompanied
+the expedition, and it had ten heavy cannon, four light field-guns,
+called falconets, and a good supply of ammunition. The horses cost
+almost more than the ships that carried them, for they had been brought
+from Spain; but their value in such an undertaking was great.
+
+Hernando Cortes had come out to Cuba when he was nineteen, and that was
+fifteen years ago. Much had been reported concerning an emperor in a
+country to the west, who ruled over a vast territory inhabited by
+copper-colored people rich in gold, who worshiped idols. Cortes had
+observed that Indian tribes, like schoolboys, were apt to divide into
+little cliques and quarreling factions. If the subject tribes did not
+like the Emperor, and were jealous of him and of each other, a foreign
+conqueror had one tool ready to his hand, and it was a tool that Cortes
+had used many times before.
+
+The people of this coast, however, were not at all like the gentle and
+childlike natives Colón had found. From the rescued captive Aguilar, the
+commander learned much of their nature and customs. On his first attempt
+to land, his troops encountered troops of warriors in brilliant
+feathered head-bands and body armor of quilted white cotton. They used
+as weapons the lance, bow and arrows, club, and a curious staff about
+three and a half feet long set with crosswise knife-blades of obsidian.
+Against poisoned arrows, such as the invaders had more than once met,
+neither arquebus nor cannon was of much use, and body armor was no great
+protection, since a scratch on hand or leg would kill a man in a few
+hours. After some skirmishing and more diplomacy, at various points
+along the coast, Cortes landed his force on the island which Grijalva
+had named San Juan de Ulloa, from a mistaken notion that Oloa, the
+native salutation, was the name of the place. The natives had watched
+the "water-houses," as they called them, sailing over the serene blue
+waters, and this tribe, being peaceable folk, sent a pirogue over to the
+island with gifts. There were not only fruits and flowers, but little
+golden ornaments, and the Spanish commander sent some trinkets in
+return. In endeavoring to talk with them Cortes became aware of an
+unusual piece of luck. Aguilar did not understand the language of these
+folk. But at Tabasco, where Cortes had had a fight with the native army,
+some slaves had been presented to him as a peace-offering. Among them
+was a beautiful young girl, daughter of a Mexican chief, who after her
+father's death had been sold as a slave by her own mother, who wished to
+get her inheritance. During her captivity she had learned the dialect
+Aguilar spoke, and the two interpreters between them succeeded in
+translating Cortes's Castilian into the Aztec of Mexico from the first.
+The young girl was later baptized Marina. There being no "r" in the
+Aztec language the people called her Malintzin or Malinche,--Lady
+Marina, the ending "tzin" being a title of respect. She learned
+Castilian with wonderful quickness, and was of great service not only to
+Cortes but to her own people, since she could explain whatever he did
+not understand.
+
+Cortes learned that the name of the ruler of the country was Moteczuma.
+His capital was on the plateau about seventy miles in the interior. This
+coast province, which he had lately conquered, was ruled by one of his
+Aztec governors. Gold was abundant. Moteczuma had great store of it.
+Cortes decided to pitch his camp where afterward stood the capital of
+New Spain.
+
+The friendly Indians brought stakes and mats and helped to build huts,
+native fashion. From all the country round the people flocked to see the
+strange white men, bringing fruit, flowers, game, Indian corn,
+vegetables and native ornaments of all sorts. Some of these they gave
+away and some they bartered. Every soldier and mariner turned trader;
+the place looked like a great fair.
+
+On Easter Day the Aztec governor arrived upon a visit of ceremony.
+Cortes received him in his own tent, with all courtesy, in the presence
+of his officers, all in full uniform. Mass was said, and the Aztec chief
+and his attendants listened with grave politeness. Then the guests were
+invited to a dinner at which various Spanish dishes, wines and
+sweetmeats were served as formally as at court. After this the
+interpreters were summoned for the real business of the day.
+
+The Aztec nobleman wished to know whence and why the strangers had come
+to this country. Cortes answered that he was the subject of a monarch
+beyond seas, as powerful as Moteczuma, who had heard of the Aztec
+Emperor and sent his compliments and some gifts. The governor gracefully
+expressed his willingness to convey both to his royal master. Cortes
+courteously declined, saying that he must himself deliver them. At this
+the governor seemed surprised and displeased; evidently this was not in
+his plan. "You have been here only two days," he said, "and already
+demand an audience with the Emperor?" Then he expressed his astonishment
+at learning that there was any other monarch as great as Moteczuma, and
+sent his attendants to bring a few gifts which he himself had chosen for
+the white chief.
+
+These tributes consisted of ten loads, each as much as a man could
+carry, of fine cotton stuff, mantles of exquisite feather-work, and a
+woven basket full of gold ornaments. Cortes expressed his admiration and
+appreciation of the gifts, and sent for those he had brought for
+Moteczuma. They consisted of an arm-chair, richly carved and painted, a
+crimson cloth cap with a gold medal bearing the device of San Jorge and
+the dragon, and some collars, bracelets and other ornaments of cut
+glass. To the Aztec, who had never seen glass, these appeared wonderful.
+He ventured the remark that a gilt helmet worn by one of the Spanish
+soldiers was like the casque of their god Quetzalcoatl, and he wished
+that Moteczuma could see it. Cortes immediately sent for the helmet and
+handed it to the chief, with the suggestion that he should like to have
+it returned full of the gold of the country in order to compare it with
+the gold of Spain. Spaniards, he said, were subject to a complaint
+affecting the heart, for which gold was a remedy. This was not entirely
+an invention of the commander's fertile brain. Many physicians of those
+days did regard gold as a valuable drug; but only Cortes ever thought of
+making use of the theory to get the gold.
+
+During this polite and interesting conversation Cortes observed certain
+attendants busily making sketches of all that they saw, and on inquiry
+was told that this "picture-writing" would give the Emperor a far
+better idea of the appearance of the strangers than words alone. Upon
+this the Spanish general ordered out the cavalry and artillery and put
+them through their evolutions on the beach. The cannon, whose balls
+splintered great trees, and the horsemen, whose movements the Aztecs
+followed with even more terror than those of the gunners, made a
+tremendous impression. The artists, though scared, stuck to their duty,
+and the strange and terrible beasts, and the thunder-birds whose mouths
+breathed destruction, were drawn for the Emperor to see. After this the
+governor, assuring Cortes that he should have whatever he needed in the
+way of provisions until further orders were received from the Emperor,
+made his adieux and went home.
+
+Then began a diplomatic game between Cortes and the Emperor and the
+various chiefs of the country. The couriers of the imperial government,
+who traveled in relays, could take a message to the capital and return
+in seven or eight days. In due time two ambassadors arrived from
+Moteczuma, with gifts evidently meant to impress the strangers with his
+wealth and power. The embassy was accompanied by the governor of the
+province and about a hundred slaves. Some of these attendants carried
+burning censers from which arose clouds of incense; others unrolled upon
+the ground fine mats on which to place the presents.
+
+Nothing like this had ever been offered to a Spanish conqueror, even by
+Moors, to say nothing of Indians. There were two collars of gold set
+with precious stones; a hundred ounces of gold ore just as it came from
+the mines; a large alligator's-head of gold; six shields covered with
+gold; helmets and necklaces of gold. There were birds made of green
+feathers, the feet, beaks and eyes of gold; a box of feather-work upon
+leather, set with a gold plate weighing seventy ounces; pieces of cloth
+curiously woven with feathers, and others woven in various designs. Most
+gorgeous of all were two great plates as big as carriage wheels, one of
+gold and one of silver, wrought with various devices of plants and
+animals rather like the figures of the zodiac. The wildest tales of the
+most imaginative adventurer never pictured such magnificence. If
+Moteczuma's plan had been to induce the strangers to respect his wishes
+and go home without visiting his capital, it was a complete failure.
+After this proof of the wealth and splendor of the country Cortes had no
+more idea of leaving it than a hound has of abandoning a fresh trail.
+When the envoys gave him Moteczuma's message of regret that it would not
+be possible for them to meet, Cortes replied that he could not think of
+going back to Spain now. The road to the capital might be perilous, but
+what was that to him? Would they not take to the Emperor these slight
+additional tokens of the regard and respect of the Spanish ruler, and
+explain to him how impossible it would be for Cortes to face his own
+sovereign, with the great object of his voyage unfulfilled? There was
+nothing for the embassy to do but to take the message.
+
+While waiting for results, Cortes received a visit from some Indian
+chiefs of the Totonacs, a tribe lately conquered by the Aztecs. Their
+ruler, it seemed, had heard of the white cacique and would like to
+receive him in his capital. Cortes gave them presents and promised to
+come. In the meantime his own men were quarreling, and both parties were
+threatening him. The bolder spirits announced that if he did not make a
+settlement in the country, with or without instructions from the
+governor of Cuba who had sent him out, they would report him to the
+King. The friends of Velazquez accused Cortes of secretly encouraging
+this rebellion, and demanded that as he had now made his discovery, he
+should return to Cuba and report.
+
+Cortes calmly answered that he was quite willing to return at once, and
+ordered the ships made ready. This caused such a storm of wrath and
+disappointment that even those who had urged it quailed. Seeing that the
+time was ripe, the captain-general called his followers together and
+made a speech. He declared that nobody could have the interests of the
+sovereigns and the glory of the Spanish race more at heart than he had.
+He was willing to do whatever was best. If they, his comrades, desired
+to return to Cuba he would go directly. But if they were ready to join
+him, he would found a colony in the name of the sovereigns, with all
+proper officers to govern it, to remain in this rich country and trade
+with the people. In that case, however, he would of course have to
+resign his commission as captain-general of an expedition of discovery.
+
+There was a roar of approval from the army at this alluring suggestion.
+Before most of them fairly knew what they were about they had voted to
+form a colony under the royal authority, elected Cortes governor as soon
+as he resigned his former position, and seen the new governor appoint a
+council in proper form, to aid in the government.
+
+"I knew it," said Saavedra to himself as he went back, alone, to his
+quarters. "Just as people have made up their minds they have got him
+between the door and the jamb, he is somewhere else. When he resigned
+his commission he slipped out from under the government of Cuba, and
+that has no authority over him. He has appointed a council made up of
+his own friends, and now he can hang every one of the Velasquez party if
+they make any trouble. But they won't."
+
+They did not. Cortes sent his flagship to Spain with some of his
+especial friends and some of his particular enemies on board, the
+enemies to get them out of his way, the friends to defend him to the
+King against their accusations. He founded a city which he named Villa
+Rica de Vera Cruz, the Rich Town of the True Cross. Then, as the next
+step toward the invasion of the country, he proceeded to play Indian
+politics.
+
+First he accepted the invitation of the chief of the Totonacs, and
+Moteczuma, hearing of it, sent the tax-gatherers to collect tribute and
+also to demand twenty young men and women to sacrifice to the gods as an
+atonement for having entertained the strangers. Cortes expressed lively
+horror, and advised the chief of the Totonacs to throw the tax-gatherers
+into prison. Then he secretly rescued them and telling them how deeply
+he regretted their misfortunes as innocent men doing their duty to their
+ruler, he sent them on board his own ships for safe-keeping. When the
+Emperor heard what had happened he was enraged against the Totonacs. If
+they wished to escape his vengeance now their only chance was to become
+allies of Cortes.
+
+Thus within a few days after landing, the commander had got all of his
+own followers and a powerful native tribe so bound up with his fortunes
+that they could not desert him without endangering their own skins. He
+now suggested to two of the pilots that they should report five of the
+ships to be in an unseaworthy condition from the borings of the
+teredos--in those days sheathing for hulls had not been invented, and
+the ship-worm was a constant danger, in tropical waters especially. At
+the pilots' report Cortes appeared astonished, but saying that there was
+nothing to do but make the best of it, ordered the ships to be
+dismantled, the cordage, sails and everything that could be of use
+brought on shore, and the stripped hulls scuttled and sunk. Then four
+more were condemned, leaving but one small ship.
+
+There was nearly a riot in the army, marooned in an unknown and
+unfriendly land. Cortes made another speech. He pointed out the fact
+that if they were successful in the expedition to the capital they would
+not need the ships; if they were not, what good would the ships do them
+when they were seventy leagues inland? Those who dared not take the risk
+with him could still return to Cuba in the one ship that was left. "They
+can tell there," he added in a tone which cut the deeper for being so
+very quiet, "how they deserted their commander and their friends, and
+patiently wait until we return with the spoils of the Aztecs."
+
+An instant of breathless silence followed, then somebody shouted. A
+hundred voices took up the cry,--
+
+"To Mexico! To Mexico!"
+
+Of the adventures, the fighting, the wonderful sights and the narrow
+escapes of the march to the capital, Bernal Diaz, who was with the army,
+wrote afterward in bulky volumes. On the seventh day of November, 1519,
+the compact little force of Spaniards, little more than a battalion in
+all, with their Indian allies from the provinces which had rebelled
+against the Emperor, came in sight of the capital. The moment at which
+Cortes, at the head of his followers, rode into the city of Mexico is
+one of the most dramatic in all history. Nothing in any novel of
+adventure compares with it in amazing contrast or tragic possibilities.
+The men of the Age of Cannon met the men of the Age of Stone. The mighty
+Catholic Church confronted a nation of snake-worshiping cannibals. The
+sons of a race that lived in hardy simplicity, a race of fighters, had
+come into a capital where life was more luxurious than it was in
+Seville, Paris or Rome--a heathen capital rich in beauty, wealth and all
+the arts of a barbarian people.
+
+The city had been built on an island in the middle of a salt lake,
+reached by three causeways of masonry four or five miles long and twenty
+or thirty feet wide. At the end near the city each causeway had a wooden
+drawbridge. There were paved streets and water-ways. The houses, built
+around large court-yards, were of red stone, sometimes covered with
+white stucco. The roofs were encircled with battlements and defended
+with towers. Often they were gardens of growing flowers. In the center
+of the city was the temple enclosure, surrounded by an eight-foot stone
+wall. Within this were a score of teocallis, or pyramids flattened at
+the top, the largest, that of the war-god, being about a hundred feet
+high. Stone stairs wound four times around the pyramid, so that
+religious processions appeared and disappeared on their way to the top.
+On the summit was a block of jasper, rounded at top, the altar of human
+sacrifice. Near by were the shrines and altars of the gods. Outside the
+temple enclosure was a huge altar, or embankment, called the
+tzompantli, one hundred and fifty-four feet long, upon which the skulls
+of innumerable victims were arranged. The doorways and walls everywhere
+were carved with the two symbols of the Aztec religion--the cross and
+the snake. Among the birds in the huge aviary of the royal establishment
+were the humming-birds which were sacred to one of the most cruel of the
+gods, and in cages built for them were the rattlesnakes also held
+sacred. Flowers were everywhere--in garlands hung about the city, in the
+hands of the people, on floating islands in the water, in the gardens
+blazing with color.
+
+The Spanish strangers were housed in a great stone palace and
+entertained no less magnificently than the gifts of the Emperor had led
+them to expect. The houses were ceiled with cedar and tapestried with
+fine cotton or feather work. Moteczuma's table service was of gold and
+silver and fine earthenware. The people wore cotton garments, often dyed
+vivid scarlet with cochineal, the men wearing loose cloaks and fringed
+sashes, the women, long robes. Fur capes and feather-work mantles and
+tunics were worn in cold weather; sandals and white cotton hoods
+protected feet and head. The women sometime used a deep violet hair-dye.
+Ear-rings, nose-rings, finger-rings, bracelets, anklets and necklaces
+were of gold and silver.
+
+Moteczuma himself, a tall slender man about forty years old, came to
+meet them in a palanquin shining with gold and canopied with
+feather-work. As he descended from it his attendants laid cotton mats
+upon the ground that he might not soil his feet. He wore the broad
+girdle and square cloak of cotton cloth which other men wore, but of the
+finest weave. His sandals had soles of pure gold. Both cloak and sandals
+were embroidered with pearls, emeralds, and a kind of stone much
+prized by the Aztecs, the chalchivitl, green and white. On his head he
+wore a plumed head-dress of green, the royal color. When Cortes with his
+staff approached the building set apart for their quarters, Moteczuma
+awaited them in the courtyard. From a vase of flowers held by an
+attendant he took a massive gold collar, in which the shell of a certain
+crawfish was set in gold and connected by golden links. Eight golden
+ornaments a span long, wrought to represent the same shell-fish, hung
+from this chain. Moteczuma hung the necklace about the neck of Cortes
+with a graceful little speech of welcome.
+
+[Illustration: "Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard"--_Page_ 162]
+
+The Aztec Emperor was making the best of a situation which he did not
+like at all. In other Mexican cities Cortes had ordered the idols cast
+headlong down the steps of the teocalli, the temples cleansed, and a
+crucifix wreathed in flowers to be set up in place of the red altar
+stained with human blood. He was attended by some seven thousand native
+allies from tribes considered by the Aztecs as wild barbarians. His
+daring behavior and military successes had all been reported to
+Moteczuma by the picture-writing of his scribes. There was a tradition
+among the Aztecs that some day white bearded strangers would come,
+destroy the worship of the old gods of blood and terror, and restore the
+worship of the fair god Quetzalcoatl. Before the white men landed there
+had been earthquakes, meteors and other omens. Would the old gods
+destroy the invaders and all who joined them, or was this the great
+change which the prophets foretold? Who could say?
+
+In the beautiful, terrible city Cortes moved alert and silent, courteous
+to all, every nerve as sensitive to new impressions as a leaf to the
+wind. He knew that strong as the priesthood of the fierce gods
+undoubtedly was, there was surely an undercurrent of rebellion against
+their cruelty and their unlimited power. In a fruitless attempt to keep
+the Spaniards out of the city by the aid of the gods, three hundred
+little children had been sacrificed. If Cortes failed to conquer, by
+peaceful means or otherwise, nothing was more certain than that he and
+all of his followers not killed in the fighting would be butchered on
+the top of those terrible pyramids sooner or later. Yet he looked about
+him and said, under his breath,
+
+"This is the most beautiful city in the world."
+
+"And you think we shall win it for the Cross and the King?" asked
+Saavedra in the same quiet tone.
+
+"We must win," said Cortes, with a spark in his eyes like the flame in
+the heart of a black opal. "There is nothing else to do."
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+In the spelling of the Aztec Emperor's name Cortes' own form is
+used,--"Moteczuma," instead of the commoner "Montezuma." One must read
+Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" for even an approximately adequate
+account of this extraordinary campaign.
+
+
+
+
+MOCCASIN FLOWER
+
+
+    Klooskap's children, the last and least,
+    Bidden to dance at his farewell feast,
+    Under the great moon's wizard light,
+    Over the mountain's drifted white,
+    The Winag'mesuk, the wood-folk small,
+    Came to the feasting the last of all!
+
+    Magic snowshoes they wore that night,
+    Woven of frostwork and sunset light,
+    Round and trim like the Master's own,--
+    Their lances of reed, with a point of bone,
+    Their oval shields of the woven grass,
+    Their leader the mighty Kaktugwaas.
+
+    The Winag'mesuk, the forest folk,
+    They fled from the words that the white man spoke.
+    They were so tired, they were so small,
+    They hardly could find their way back at all,
+    Yet bravely they rallied with shield and lance
+    To dance for Klooskap their Snowshoe Dance!
+
+    Light and swift as the whirling snow
+    They leaped and fluttered aloft, alow.
+    Silent as owls in the white moonlight
+    They pounced and grappled in mimic fight.
+    When they chanted to Klooskap their last farewell
+    He laid on the forest a fairy spell.
+
+    From Little Thunder, from Kaktugwaas,
+    He took the buckler of woven grass,
+    The lance of reed with a point of bone,
+    The rounded footgear like his own,
+    And bade them grow there under the pines
+    While the snowdrifts melt and the sunlight shines!
+
+    The sagamore pines are dark and tall
+    That guard the Norumbega wall.
+    When the clear brooks dance to the flute of spring,
+    And veery and catbird of Klooskap sing,
+    The Winag'mesuk for one short hour
+    Come back for their token of Klooskap's power--
+      Moccasin Flower!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+GIFTS FROM NORUMBEGA
+
+
+"What shall I bring thee then, from the world's end, Reine Margot?"
+asked Alain Maclou. The small girl in the deep fireside recess of a
+Picardy castle-hall considered it gravely.
+
+"There should be three gifts," she said at last, "for so it always is in
+Mère Bastienne's stories. I will have the shoes of silence, the girdle
+of fortune, and diamonds from Norumbega. Tell me again about Norumbega."
+
+"Nay, little one, I must go, to see after the lading of the ship. Fare
+thee well for this time," and the young man bent his tall head above the
+hand of his seven-year-old lady. The graceful, quick-witted and
+imaginative child had been his pet and he her loyal servant these three
+years. It was understood between them that she was really the Queen of
+France, barred from her throne by the Salic Law that forbade any woman
+to rule that country in her own right. Some day he was to discover for
+her a kingdom beyond seas, in which she alone should reign. Of all the
+tales, marvelous, fanciful or tragic, which he or her old nurse had told
+her, she liked best the legend of Norumbega, the city in the wilderness
+which no explorer had ever found. Wherever French, Breton or English
+fishermen had become at all familiar with the Indians they heard of a
+city great and populous, with walls of stone, ruled by a king richer
+than any of their chiefs, but no two stories agreed on the location.
+Some had heard that it was an island, west of Cape Breton; others that
+it was on the bank of a great river to the southward. Maclou had seen at
+a fair one of the Indians brought to France ten years before in the
+_Dauphine_, and spoken to him. According to this Indian the chief town
+of his people was on an island in the mouth of a river where high gray
+walls of rock arose, longer and statelier than the walls of Dieppe. In
+describing these walls the Indian did not indeed say that they encircled
+the city, but no Frenchman could have imagined rock palisades built for
+any other purpose. On the other hand Maclou knew a pilot who had been
+caught in a storm and blown down the coast southwest from the fisheries,
+and he and his crew had seen, from ten or twelve leagues out at sea,
+white and shining battlements on the crest of a mountain far inland.
+When they asked their Indian guides what city it was the slaves trembled
+and showed fear, and declared that none of their people ever went there.
+Had only one man seen the glittering walls it might have been a vision,
+but they had all seen.
+
+If Norumbega really existed, the expedition of Jacques Cartier in 1535
+seemed likely to find it. He had made a voyage the year before with two
+ships and a hundred and twenty men, of whom Maclou had been one. Not
+being prepared to remain through the winter, they had been obliged to
+turn back before they had done more than discover a magnificent bay
+which Cartier named the Bay of Chaleur on account of the July heat, and
+a squarish body of water west of Cape Breton which seemed to be marked
+out on their map as the Square Gulf. Now the veteran of Saint Malo had
+instructions to explore this gulf and see whether any strait existed
+beyond it which might lead to Cathay. On general principles he was to
+find out how great and of what nature the country was. The maps of the
+New World were fairly complete in their outline of the southern
+continent and islands discovered by Spain; it was hoped that this
+expedition might give an equally definite outline to the northern coast.
+Cartier had on his previous voyage caught two young Indians who had come
+from far inland to fish, and brought them back to France. They had since
+learned enough Breton to make themselves understood, and from what they
+said it seemed to Cartier that there might be a far greater land west of
+the fisheries than the mapmakers had supposed. The King, on the other
+hand, was inclined to hope that the lands already found were islands,
+among which might be the coveted route to Cathay. Maclou bent his brows
+over the map and pondered. If Norumbega were found it would be the key
+to the situation, for the people of a great inland city would know, as
+the people of Mexico did, all about their country. Did it exist, or was
+it a fairy tale, born of mirage or a lying brain?
+
+On Whitsunday the sixteenth of May, Carrier and his men went in solemn
+procession to the Cathedral Church of Saint Malo, confessed themselves,
+received the sacrament, and were blessed by the Bishop in his robes of
+state, standing in the choir of the ancient sanctuary. On the following
+Wednesday they set sail with three ships and one hundred and ten men.
+Cartier had been careful to explain to the King that it would be of no
+use to send an expedition to those northern shores unless it could live
+through the winter on its own supplies. The summer was brief, the winter
+severe, and there was no possibility of living on the country while
+exploring it. As such voyages went, the three ships were well
+provisioned. Late in July they came through the Strait of Belle Isle,
+and on Saint Laurence's Day, August 10, found themselves in a small bay
+which Cartier named for that saint. Rounding the western point of a
+great island the little fleet came into a great salt water bay.
+
+"I believe," said Cartier to Maclou as the flagship sailed gaily on over
+the sunlit sparkling waves, "that this must be the place from which all
+the whales in the world come." The great creatures were spouting and
+diving all around the fleet, frolicking like unwieldy puppies. Every one
+was alert for what might be discovered next. None were more lively and
+full of pleased expectation than the two Indian youths. Captives had
+been taken by the white men before, but none had ever returned. Their
+people were undoubtedly mourning them as dead, but would presently see
+them not only alive but fat and happy. They had crossed the great waters
+in the white men's canoe, and lived in the white men's villages, and
+learned their talk. They had been christened Pierre and Kadoc, French
+tongues finding it hard to pronounce their former names.
+
+Cartier called them to him and began to ask questions. He learned that
+the northern coast of the gulf, along which they were sailing, was that
+of a land called Saghwenay, in which was found Caignetdaze, called by
+the white men copper. This gulf led to a great river called Hochelaga.
+They had never heard of any one going all the way to the head of it, but
+the old men might remember. What the name of the country to the south of
+the gulf was, Cartier could not make out. It sounded something like
+Kanacdajikaouah. "Kaou-ah" meant great, or large, and Cartier finally
+set down the rest of the word as Canada, as nearly as the French
+alphabet could spell out the gutturals.
+
+The youths in fact belonged to a tribe in the great confederacy of the
+Kanonghsionni, the People of the Long House--or rather the lengthened
+house, Kanonsa being the word for house, and "ionni" meaning lengthened
+or extended.[1] Five tribes, many generations ago, had united under the
+leadership of the great Ayonhwatha--"he who made the wampum belt."[2]
+They had adopted weaker tribes when they conquered them, exactly as,
+upon the marriage of a daughter, the father built an addition to his
+house for the newly wedded couple. The captives had picked up the Breton
+patois rather easily, but there was nothing in France which was at all
+like an Iroquois bark house, and they had to use the Indian word for it.
+Maclou, who had been studying the native language at odd times during
+the voyage, found that it had no b, f, m, or v, and on the other hand it
+had some noises which were not in any Breton, French or English words,
+though the Indian "n" was rather like the French "nque."
+
+Some fifteen leagues from the salt gulf the water became so fresh that
+Cartier finally gave up the idea that the channel he had entered might
+be a strait. It was still very wide, and if it really was a river it was
+the biggest he had ever seen. Three islands now appeared, opposite the
+mouth of a swift and deep river which came from the northern territory
+called Saghwenay. Cartier sailed up this river for some distance,
+finding high steep hills on both sides, and then continued up the great
+river to find the chief city of the wilderness empire, if it was an
+empire.
+
+No sign had been seen of Norumbega. Presently the keen expectant eye of
+Cartier caught sight of something which went far to shake his faith in
+that romantic citadel. It was a bold headland on the right, which would
+certainly have been chosen by any civilized king in Europe as a site for
+a fortress. Those mighty cliffs would almost make other defenses
+needless. Yet the heights were occupied by nothing more than a wooden
+village, which the interpreters called Stadacona, saying that their
+chief, Daghnacona, was its ruler. Shouts arose from the water's edge as
+some one among the excited Indians recognized on the deck of a great
+winged canoe their own lost countrymen. The interpreters answered with
+joyous whoops. A dozen canoes came paddling out, filled with young
+warriors, and a rapid interchange of guttural Indian talk went on
+between Pierre and Kadoc and their kinfolk. The enthusiasm rose to a
+still higher pitch when strings of beads of all colors were handed down
+to the Indians in the canoes, and presently Daghnacona himself appeared
+to welcome the white men to his country, with dignified Indian eloquence
+and an escort of twelve canoes. This was clearly a good place to stop
+and refit the ships. Cartier took his fleet into a little river not far
+away, and prepared to learn all he could of the country before going on.
+
+The information he got from Daghnacona was not encouraging. This was
+not, it appeared, the chief town of the country. That was many miles up
+the river, and was called Hochelaga. It would not be safe for the white
+men to go there. Their ships might be caught between ice-floes, and the
+falling snow would blind and bewilder them. Cartier glanced at the blue
+autumn sky and smiled. No one is quicker than an Indian to read faces.
+Daghnacona saw that the white chief intended to go, all the same.
+
+Cartier decided to leave the larger ships where they were, and proceed
+up the great river to Hochelaga with a forty-ton pinnace, two boats, and
+about fifty men. Early in the morning, before he was quite ready to
+start, a canoe came down stream, in which were three weird figures
+resembling the devils in a medieval miracle-play. Their faces were jet
+black, they were clothed in hairy skins, and on their heads were great
+horns. As they passed the ships they kept up a monotonous and appalling
+chant, and as their canoe touched the beach all three fell upon their
+faces. Indians, rushing out of the woods, dragged them into a thicket,
+and a great hubbub followed, not a word of which was understood by the
+white men, for the Indian interpreters were there with the rest.
+Presently the interpreters appeared on the beach yelling with fright.
+
+"Pierre! Kadoc!" the annoyed commander called from his quarter-deck,
+"what is all this hullabaloo about?"
+
+"News!" gasped Pierre. "News from Canghyenye! He says white men not come
+to Hochelaga!" And Kadoc chimed in eagerly, "Not go! Not go!"
+
+"Coudouagny?" Cartier repeated to Maclou, completely mystified. "Who can
+that be?"
+
+Further questioning drew out information which sounded as if Coudouagny,
+or Canyengye, were a tribal god. In reality this was the word for "elder
+brother." In that region it was applied to the Tekarihokens, the eldest
+of the five nations in the league of the Long House. They were afterward
+dubbed by their enemies the Mohawks or man-eaters, and the fear for the
+white men's safety which the interpreters expressed may very well have
+been quite genuine.
+
+But the Breton captain had not come across the Atlantic to give up his
+plans for fear of an Indian god, if it was a god, and his reply to the
+warning was to the effect that Coudouagny must be a numskull. More
+seriously he explained to the interpreters that although he had not
+himself spoken with the God of his people his priests had, and he fully
+trusted in the power of his God to protect him. The party set forth at
+the appointed time.
+
+In about two weeks they reached the greatest Indian town that any of
+them had ever seen. It was not the walled city of the Norumbega legend,
+but both Maclou and Cartier had ceased to expect anything of that kind.
+The Indian guides had said that the town was near, and all were dressed
+in their best. A thousand Indians, men, women and children, were on the
+shore to receive them, and the commander at the head of his little troop
+marched into Hochelaga to pay their respects to the chief.
+
+The Indian city was inhabited by several thousand people, living in
+wigwams about a hundred and fifty feet long by fifty wide, built of bark
+over a frame of wood, and arranged around a large open space. The whole
+was surrounded by a stockade of three rows of stakes twelve or fifteen
+feet high. The middle row was set straight, the other two rows five or
+six feet from it and inclining toward it like wigwam-poles. The three
+rows, meeting at the top, were lashed to a ridgepole. Half way down and
+again at the bottom cross-braces were fastened diagonally, making a
+strong wall. Around the inside, near the top, was a gallery reached by
+ladders, on which were piles of stones to be thrown at invaders. Instead
+of being square, or irregular with many angles and outstanding towers,
+like a French walled town, it was perfectly round.
+
+The interpreters afterward explained that each of the houses was
+occupied by several families, as the head of each house shared his
+shelter with his kinfolk. When a daughter was married she brought her
+husband home, as a rule, and her father added an apartment to his house
+by the simple device of taking out the end wall of bark and building on
+another section. Each household had its own stone hearth, the smoke
+escaping through openings in the roof. A common passage-way led through
+the middle of the house. On the sides were rows of bunks covered with
+furs. Weapons hung on the walls, and meat broth or messes of corn and
+beans simmered fragrantly in their kettles. Some of these long houses
+held fifty or sixty people each, and there were over fifty of them in
+all. In that climate, with warlike neighbors, the advantage of such an
+organized community over scattered single wigwams was very great. All
+around were cleared fields dotted with great yellow pumpkins, where corn
+and beans had grown during the past summer.
+
+To the sons of Norman and Breton peasants it was evident that these
+fields had not been cultivated for centuries, like those of France, any
+more than the wall around Hochelaga was the work of stone-masons toiling
+under generations of feudal lords. If this were the chief city of these
+people, they had no Norumbega. But it was very picturesque in its sylvan
+barbaric way, among the limitless forests of scarlet and gold and
+crimson and deep green, which stretched away over the mountains. Upon
+the rude cots in the wigwams as they passed, Cartier's men saw rich and
+glossy furs of the silver fox, the beaver, the mink and the marten,
+which princesses might be proud to wear. Curious bead-work there was
+also on the quivers, pouches, moccasins and belts of these wild people,
+done in white and purple shell beads made and polished by hand and not
+more than a quarter of an inch long and an eighth of an inch thick.
+These were sewn in patterns of animals, birds, fishes and other things
+not unlike the emblems of old families in France. Belts of these beads
+were worn by those who seemed to be the chief men of Hochelaga.
+Porcupine quills were also used in embroidery and head-bands.
+
+The people thronged into the open central space, which was about a
+stone's throw across, some carrying their sick, some their children,
+that the strangers might touch them for healing or for good fortune. The
+old chief, who was called Agouhana, was brought in, helpless from
+paralysis, upon a deerskin litter. When Cartier understood that his
+touch was supposed to have some mysterious magic he rubbed the old man's
+helpless limbs with his own hands, read from his service-book the first
+chapter of the Gospel of Saint John and other passages, and prayed that
+the people who listened might come to know the true faith. Then, after
+beads, rings, brooches and other little gifts had been distributed, the
+trumpets blew, and the white men took their leave. Before they returned
+to their boats the Indians guided them to the top of the hill which rose
+behind the town, from which the surrounding country could be seen.
+Cartier named it Montreal--the Royal Mountain.
+
+[Illustration: "CARTIER READ FROM HIS SERVICE-BOOK."--_Page_ 176]
+
+It was now the first week in October, and the rapids in the river above
+Hochelaga blocked further exploration with a sailing vessel. As for
+going on foot, that was out of the question with winter so near. The
+party returned to Stadacona and went into winter quarters. While they
+had been gone their comrades had built a palisaded fort beside the
+little river where the ships lay moored. They were hardly settled in
+this rude shelter before snow began to fall, and seemed as if it would
+go on forever, softly blanketing the earth with layer on layer of cold
+whiteness. It was waist-deep on the level; the river was frozen solid;
+the drifts were above the sides of the ships, and the ice was four
+inches thick on the bulwarks. The glittering armor of the ice incased
+masts, spars, ropes, and fringed every line of cordage with icicles of
+dazzling brightness. Never was such cold known in France. Maclou
+thought, whimsically, while his teeth chattered beside the fire, of a
+tale he had once told Marguerite of the palace of the Frost King. That
+fierce monarch, and not the guileless Indian chief, was the foe they
+would have to fight for this kingdom.
+
+Their provisions were those of any ship sent on a voyage into unknown
+lands in those days--dried and salted meat and fish, flour and meal to
+be made into cakes or porridge, dried pease, dried beans. For a time the
+Indians visited them, in the bitterest weather, but in December even
+this source of a game supply was cut off, for they came no more. The
+dreaded scurvy broke out, and before long there were hardly a dozen of
+the whole company able to care for the sick. Besides the general misery
+they were tormented by the fear that if the savages knew how feeble they
+were the camp might be attacked and destroyed. Cartier told those who
+had the strength, to beat with sticks on the sides of their bunks, so
+that prowling Indians might believe that the white men were busy at
+work.
+
+But the wild folk were both shrewder and more friendly than the French
+believed. Their medicine-men told Cartier one day that they cured scurvy
+by means of a drink made from the leaves and bark of an evergreen.
+Squaws presently came with a birch-bark kettle of this brew and it
+proved to have such virtues that the sick were cured of scurvy, and in
+some cases of other diseases which they had had for years. Cartier
+afterward wrote in his report that they boiled and drank within a week
+all the foliage of a tree, which the Indians called aneda or tree of
+life, as large as a full-grown oak.[3] Many had died before the remedy
+was learned, and when the weather allowed the fleet to sail for home,
+there were only men enough for two of the ships. The Indians had told of
+other lands where gold and rubies were found, of a nation somewhere in
+the interior, white like the French, of people with but one leg apiece.
+But as it was, the country was a great country, and well worth the
+attention of the King of France. Leaving the cross and the fleur-de-lis
+to mark the place of their discovery, the expedition sailed for France,
+and on July 16, 1536, anchored once more in the port of Saint Malo.
+
+"And there is no Norumbega really?" asked little Margot rather
+dolefully, when the story of the adventure had been told. "And your hair
+is all gray, here, on the side."
+
+"None the less I have gifts for thee, little queen, and such as no Queen
+of France hath in her treasury." Maclou's smile, though a trifle grave,
+had a singular charm as he opened his wallet. Margot nestled closer, her
+eyes bright with excitement.
+
+The first gift was a little pair of shoes of deer-skin dyed green and
+embroidered with pearly white beads on a ground of black and red French
+brocade. They had no heels and no heavy leather soles, and were lined
+with soft white fur; and they fitted the little maid's foot exactly.
+
+The second gift was a girdle of the same beads, purple and white, in a
+pattern of queer stiff sprays. "That," said Alain Maclou, "is the Tree
+of Life that cured us all of the sickness."
+
+The third was a cluster of long slender crystals set in a fragment of
+rock the color of a blush rose.[4]
+
+"'Tis a magic stone, sweetheart. Keep it in the sunshine on thy
+window-ledge, and when summer is over 't will be white as snow. Leave it
+in a snowbank, or in a cellar under wet moss, and 't will turn again to
+rose-color. This I have seen. In the winter nights the Frost King hangs
+his ice-diamonds on every twig and rope and eave, and when they shine in
+the red sunrise they look like these crystals. And I have seen all the
+sky from the zenith to the horizon at midnight full of leaping rose-red
+flames above such a world of ice. 'Tis very beautiful there, Reine
+Margot, and fit kingdom for a fairy queen."
+
+Marguerite turned the strange quartz rock about in her small hands with
+something like awe.
+
+"And the shoes are shoes of silence, for an Indian can go and come in
+them so softly that even a rabbit does not hear. They were made by a
+kind old squaw who would take no pay, and a young warrior gave me the
+wampum belt, and I found the stone one day while I was hunting in the
+forest, so that all three of thy gifts are really gifts from Norumbega."
+
+"I think--I'm rather glad it is not a real city," said Margot with a
+long breath. "It is more like fairyland, just as it is,--and the Frost
+King and the terrible sickness are the two ogres, and the good medicine
+man is a white wizard. It is a very beautiful kingdom, Alain, and I
+think you are the Prince in disguise!"
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Kanonghsionni was the name which the Iroquois gave themselves. It
+appears that at this time they occupied the country along the St.
+Lawrence held some centuries before by the Ojibways and later, in the
+time of Champlain, by the Hurons.
+
+[2] Hiawatha is generally said to have founded the league of the Five
+Nations. Although these nations were united against any attack from
+outside they were not always free from interior enmities and
+dissensions, and the Mohawks in particular were objects of the fear and
+dislike of their neighbors, as the significance of their sobriquet
+clearly shows.
+
+[3] Aneda is said to be the Iroquois word for spruce. When Champlain's
+men were attacked by scurvy in the same neighborhood half a century
+later, the Iroquois no longer lived there, and this remedy was not
+suggested.
+
+[4] Rose quartz has this property.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUSTANGS
+
+
+    Bred to the Game of the World as the Kings and the Emperors played it,
+      Fate and our masters hurled us over the terrible sea.
+    When the sails of the carracks were furled the Game was the Game that
+        we made it,--
+      We that were horses in Spain were gods in a realm to be!
+
+    Swift at the word we sped, we fought in the front of the battle,--
+      Ah, but the wild men fled when they heard us neigh from afar!
+    The field was littered with dead, cut down like slaughtered cattle
+     --Ah, but the earth is red where the Conquistadores are!
+
+    Now does the desert wake and croon of hidalgos coming--
+      Now for her children's sake she is whetting her sword to slay,
+    And the armored squadrons break, and our iron-shod hoofs are drumming
+      On the rocks of the mountain pass--we are free, we are off and away!
+
+    Hush--did a man's foot fall in the pasture where we go straying?
+      Listen--is that the call of a man aware of his right?
+    Hearken, my comrades all--once more the Game they are playing!
+      Masters, we come, we come, to be one with you in the fight!
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN
+
+
+"Cavalry without horses, in ships without sailors, built by blacksmiths
+without forges and carpenters without tools. Now who in Spain will
+believe that?" commented Cabeça de Vaca.
+
+It was the evening of the twenty-first of September, 1528. Five of the
+oddest looking boats ever launched on any sea were drawn up on the shore
+of La Baya de Cavallos, where not a horse was in sight, though there had
+been twoscore a fortnight ago. On the morrow the one-eyed commander of
+the Spaniards, Pamfilo de Narvaez, would marshal his ragamuffin
+expedition into those boats, in the hope of reaching Mexico by sea.
+
+"We shall tell of it when we are grandfathers--if the sea does not take
+us within a week," said Andres Dorantes with a sigh. "I think that God
+does not waste miracles on New Spain."
+
+"Miracles? It is nothing less than a miracle that this fleet was built,"
+said Cabeça de Vaca valiantly. And indeed he had some reason for saying
+so.
+
+Narvaez, with a grant from the King which covered all the territory
+between the Atlantic and the Rio de los Palmas in Mexico, had staked his
+entire private fortune on this venture. He had landed in Baya de le
+Cruz--now Tampa Bay--on the day before Easter. The Indians had some gold
+which they said came "from the north." Cabeça, who was treasurer of the
+expedition, strongly advised against proceeding through a totally
+unknown country on this very sketchy information. But Narvaez consulted
+the pilot, who said he knew of a harbor some distance to the west,
+ordered the ships to meet him there, and with forty horsemen and two
+hundred and sixty men on foot, struck boldly into the interior.
+
+It was an amazing country. It had magnificent forests and almost
+impassable swamps, gorgeous tropical flowers and black bogs infested
+with snakes, alligators and hostile Indians, game of every kind and
+dense jungles into which it retreated. There seemed to be no towns, no
+grain-land and no gold-bearing mountains. The persevering explorers
+crossed half a dozen large rivers and many small ones, wading when they
+could, building rafts or swimming when the water was deep. After between
+three and four months of this, half-starved, shaken with swamp fever,
+weary and bedraggled, they reached the first harbor they had found upon
+the coast they followed, but no ships were there. Whether the ships had
+been wrecked, or put in somewhere only to meet with destruction at the
+hands of the Indians, they never knew.
+
+Narvaez called his officers into consultation, one at a time, as to the
+best course to pursue in this desperate case. They had no provisions, a
+third of the men were sick and more were dropping from exhaustion every
+day, and all agreed that unless they could get away and reach Mexico
+while some of them could still work, there was very little chance that
+they would ever leave the place at all. But they had no tools, no
+workmen and no sailors, and nothing to eat while the ships were
+a-building, even if they knew how to build them. They gave it up for
+that night and prayed for direction.
+
+Next day one of the men proved to have been a carpenter, and another
+came to Cabeça de Vaca with a plan for making bellows of deerskin with a
+wooden frame and nozzle, so that a forge could be worked and whatever
+spare iron they had could be pounded into rude tools. The officers took
+heart. Cross-bows, stirrups, spurs, horse-furniture, reduced to
+scrap-iron, furnished axes, hammers, saws and nails. There was plenty of
+timber in the forests. Those not able to do hard work stripped palmetto
+leaves to use in the place of tow for calking and rigging. Every third
+day one of the horses was killed, the meat served out to the sick and
+the working party, the manes and tails saved to twist into rope with
+palmetto fiber, and the skin of the legs taken off whole and tanned for
+water bottles. At four different times a selected body of soldiers went
+out to get corn from the Indians, peaceably if possible, by force if
+necessary, and on this, with the horse-meat and sometimes fish or
+sea-food caught in the bay, the camp lived and toiled for sixteen
+desperate days. A Greek named Don Theodoro knew how to make pitch for
+the calking, from pine resin. For sails the men pieced together their
+shirts. Not the least wearisome part of their labor was stone-hunting,
+for there were almost no stones in the country, and they must have
+anchors. But at last the boats were finished, of twenty-two cubits in
+length, with oars of savin (fir), and fifty of the men had died from
+fever, hardship or Indian arrows. Each boat must carry between
+forty-five and fifty of those who remained, and this crowded them so
+that it was impossible to move about, and weighted them until the
+gunwales were hardly a hand's breadth above the water. It would have
+been madness to venture out to sea, and they crept along the coast,
+though they well knew that in following all the inlets of that marshy
+shore the length of the voyage would be multiplied several times over.
+When they had been out a week they captured five Indian canoes, and with
+the timbers of these added a few boards to the side of each galley. This
+made it possible to steer in something like a direct line toward Mexico.
+
+On October 30, about the time of vespers, Cabeça de Vaca, who happened
+to be in the lead, discovered the mouth of what seemed to be an immense
+river. There they anchored among islands. They found that the volume of
+water brought down by this river was so great that it freshened the
+sea-water even three miles out. They went up the river a little way to
+try to get fuel to parch their corn, half a handful of raw corn being
+the entire ration for a day. The current and a strong north wind,
+however, drove them back. When they sounded, a mile and a half from
+shore, a line of thirty fathoms found no bottom. After this Narvaez with
+three of the boats kept on along the shore, but the boat commanded by
+Castillo and Dorantes, and that of Cabeça de Vaca, stood out to sea
+before a fair east wind, rowing and sailing, for four days. They never
+again saw or heard of the remainder of the fleet.
+
+On November 5 the wind became a gale. All night the boats drifted, the
+men exhausted with toil, hunger and cold. Cabeça de Vaca and the
+shipmaster were the only men capable of handling an oar in their boat.
+Near morning they heard the tumbling of waves on a beach, and soon
+after, a tremendous wave struck the boat with a force that hurled her up
+on the beach and roused the men who seemed dead, so that they crept on
+hands and knees toward shelter in a ravine. Here some rain-water was
+found, a fire was made and they parched their corn, and here they were
+found by some Indians who brought them food. They still had some of
+their trading stores, from which they produced colored beads and
+hawk-bells. After resting and collecting provisions the indomitable
+Spaniards dug their boat out of the sand and made ready to go on with
+the voyage.
+
+They were but a little way from shore when a great wave struck the
+battered craft, and the cold having loosened their grip on the oars the
+boat was capsized and some of the crew drowned. The rest were driven
+ashore a second time and lost literally everything they had. Fortunately
+some live brands were left from their fire, and while they huddled about
+the blaze the Indians appeared and offered them hospitality. To some of
+the party this seemed suspicious. Were the Indians cannibals? Even when
+they were warmed and fed in a comfortable shelter nobody dared to sleep.
+
+But the Indians had no treacherous intentions whatever, and continued to
+share with the shipwrecked unfortunates their own scanty provision.
+Fever, hunger and despair, reduced the eighty men who had come ashore,
+to less than twenty. All but Cabeça and two others who were helpless
+from fever at last departed on the desperate adventure of trying to find
+their way overland to Mexico. One of the two left behind died and the
+other ran away in delirium, leaving Cabeça de Vaca alone, as the slave
+of the Indians.
+
+He discovered presently that he was of little use to them, for though he
+could have cut wood or carried water, this was squaws' work, and should
+a man be seen doing it every tradition of the tribe would be upset. He
+was of no use as a hunter, for he had not the hawk-like sight of an
+Indian or the Indian instinct for following a trail. He could dig out
+the wild roots they ate, which grew among canes and under water, but
+this was laborious and painful work, which made his hands bleed. With
+tools, or even metal with which to make them, he might have made himself
+the most useful member of the tribe, but as it was, he was even poorer
+than the wretched people among whom he lived, for they knew how to make
+the most of what was in the country, and he had no such training.
+
+The lonely Spaniard studied their language and customs diligently. He
+found that they made knives and arrows of shell, and clothing of woven
+fibers of grass and leaves, and deerskin. They went from one part of the
+country to another according to the food supply. In prickly pear time
+they went into the cactus region to gather the fruit, on which they
+mainly lived during the season. When pinon nuts were ripe they went into
+the mountains and gathered these, threshing them out of the cones to be
+eaten fresh, roasted, or ground into flour for cakes baked on flat
+stones. They had no dishes except baskets and gourd-rinds, and their
+houses were tent-poles covered with hides. When a squaw wished to roast
+a piece of meat she thrust a sharp stick through it. When she wished to
+boil it she filled a large calabash-rind with water, put in it the
+materials of her stew, and threw stones into the fire to heat. When very
+hot these stones were raked out with a loop of twisted green reed or
+willow-shoots and put into the water. When enough had been put in to
+make the water boil, it was kept boiling by changing the cooled stones
+for hotter ones until the meat was cooked.
+
+Many of the baskets made by the squaws were curiously decorated, and
+made of fine reed or fiber sewed in coils with very fine grass-thread,
+so that they were both light and strong. There were cone-shaped
+carrying-baskets borne on the back with a loop passed around the
+forehead; in these the squaws carried grain, fruit, nuts or occasionally
+babies. There were baskets for sifting grain and meal, and a sort of
+flask that would hold water. The materials were gathered from mountains,
+valleys and plains over a range of hundreds of miles--grasses here, bark
+fiber there, dyes in another place, maguey leaves in another, and for
+black figures in decoration the seed-pods called "cat's claws" or the
+stems of maiden-hair fern. A design was not copied exactly, but each
+worker made the pattern in the same general form and sometimes improved
+on it. There was a banded pattern in a diamond-shaped criss-cross almost
+exactly like the shaded markings on a rattlesnake-skin. The Indians
+believed in a goddess or Snake-Mother, who lived underground and knew
+about springs; and as water was the most important thing in that land of
+deserts, they showed respect to the Snake-Mother by baskets decorated in
+her honor. Another design showed a round center with four zigzag lines
+running to the border. This was intended for a lake with four streams
+flowing out of it, widening as they flowed; but it looked rather like a
+cross or a swastika. There was a design in zigzags to represent the
+lightning, and almost all the patterns had to do in some way with lakes,
+rivers, rain, or springs.
+
+As the exile of Spain began to know the country he sometimes ventured on
+journeys alone, without the tribe, to the north, away from the coast. In
+these wanderings he met with tribes whose language was not wholly
+strange, but whose customs and occupations were not exactly like those
+of his own Indians. Once he found a village of deerskin tents where the
+warriors were painting themselves with red clay, for a dance. He
+remembered that the squaws, when he came away some days before, were in
+great lamentation because they had no red paint for their baskets. He
+took out a handful of shells and found that these Indians were only too
+pleased to pay for them in red earth, deerskin, and tassels of deer hair
+dyed red. They would hardly let him go till he promised to come again
+and bring them more shells and shell beads. This suggested to him a way
+in which he might make himself of use and value.
+
+Longer and longer journeys he took, trading shells for new dyes, flint
+arrow-heads, strong basket-reeds, and hides and furs of all sorts,
+learning more and more of the country as he trafficked. Once he found
+families living in a house built of stone and mud bricks, in the crevice
+of a cliff, getting water from a little brook at the base of it, and
+raising corn and vegetables along the waterside. Their houses had no
+real doors. They had trap-doors in the roof, reached by a notched
+tree-trunk inside and one outside. The corn that grew in the little farm
+at the foot of the cliff was of different colors, red, yellow, blue and
+white. Each kind was put in a separate basket. Each kind of meal was
+made separately into thin cakes cooked on a very hot flat stone. A
+handful of the batter was slapped on with the fingers so deftly that
+though the cake was thin, crisp and even, the cook never burned herself.
+The people were always on their guard against roving bands of Indians
+who lived in tipis, or wigwams, and were likely to attack the
+cliff-dwellers at any moment.
+
+Cabeça de Vaca became interested in these wandering tribes, and moved
+north to see what they were like. He found them quite ready to trade
+with him and extremely curious about his wares. They had hides upon
+their tipis of a sort he had not seen before, not smooth, but covered
+with curly brown fur like a big dog's. It was some time before the
+Spanish trader made out what sort of animal wore such a skin, though he
+knew at first sight that it must be a very large one. Finally the old
+medicine man with whom he was talking began to make sketches on the
+inside of one of the great robes. The Spaniard in his turn made
+sketches, drawing a horse, a goat, a bear, a wolf, a bull. When he drew
+the bull the old Indian got excited. He declared that that was very like
+the animal they hunted, but that their bulls had great humped shoulders
+like this--he added a high curved line over the back. Cabeça came to the
+conclusion that it must be some sort of hunchbacked cow, but whatever it
+was, the curly furry hide was comforting on cold nights. The old Indian
+told him a few days after that some of the young men had just come in
+with news of a herd of these great animals moving along one of their
+trails, and if the white men cared to travel with them he could see them
+for himself.
+
+It did not take the trader long to make up his mind. He went with the
+Indians at the slow trot which covers so many miles in a day, and sooner
+than they had expected, they saw from a little rise in the ground a vast
+herd of slowly moving animals which at first the white man took for
+black cattle. But they were not cattle.
+
+There was the huge hump with the curly mane, and there were the short
+horns and slender, neat little legs which had seemed so out of
+proportion in the old Indian's sketch. From their point of view they
+could see the hunters cut out one animal and attack him with their
+arrows and lances without arousing the fears of the rest. The creatures
+moved quietly along, grazing and pawing now and then, darkening the
+plain almost as far as the eye could see. The trader spent several days
+with the tribe, and when he went south again he had a bundle of hides so
+large that he had to drag it on a kind of hurdle made of poles. He had
+helped the Indians decorate some of the hides they had, and whenever he
+did this he wrote his own name, the date, and a few words, somewhere on
+the skin.
+
+[Illustration: "THE CREATURES DARKENED THE PLAIN ALMOST AS FAR AS EYE
+COULD SEE."--_Page_ 191]
+
+"Why do you do this?" asked the medicine man, putting one long bronze
+finger on the strange marks.
+
+"It is a message," said Cabeça de Vaca. "If any of my own people see it
+they will know who made the pictures."
+
+The Indian looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"You are very clever," he said. "You ought to be a medicine-man."
+
+This put another idea into the exile's head. He had seen much of the
+medicine-men in his wanderings, and had studied their ways. Like most
+men of his day who traveled much, he had a rough-and-ready knowledge of
+medicine and surgery. He had sometimes been able to be of service to
+sick and wounded Indians, and whether it was their faith in him, or in
+the virtues of his treatment, his patients usually got well. In
+comparing notes they found that he often prayed and sang in his own
+language while watching with them. In the end he gained a great
+reputation as a sort of combined priest and doctor. He was not too proud
+to adopt some of the methods of the medicine-men when he found them
+effective, especially as regards herbs and other healing medicaments,
+used either in poultices or drinks. From being a poor slave and a burden
+to his masters, he became their great man.
+
+He had been for more than five years among the Indians when another
+tribe of Indians met with his tribe, perhaps drawn by the fame of the
+white medicine-man, and among their captives he recognized with joy
+three of his own comrades--Castillo, Dorantes, and a Barbary negro
+called Estevanico (Little Stephen). He told them of his experience, and
+found them glad to have him teach them whatever of the arts of the
+medicine-man he himself knew. After that, the four friends traveled more
+or less in company, and persuaded the Indians to go westward, where they
+thought that there might be a chance of meeting with some of their own
+people. They finally reached a point at which the Indians explained that
+they dared not go further, because the tribe which held the country
+further west was hostile.
+
+"Send to them," suggested Cabeça, "and tell them we are coming."
+
+After some argument the Indians sent two women, because women would not
+be harmed even in the enemy's country. Then the four comrades set out
+into the new land.
+
+Among them they knew six Indian dialects, and could talk with the people
+after a fashion, wherever they went. Even when two tribes were at war,
+they made a truce, so that they might trade and talk with the strangers.
+At last Castillo saw on the neck of an Indian the buckle of a
+sword-belt, and fastened to it like a pendant the nail of a horse-shoe.
+His heart leaped. He asked the Indian where he got the things. The
+Indian answered,
+
+"They came from heaven."
+
+"Who brought them?" asked Cabeça.
+
+"Men with beards like you," the Indian answered rather timidly, "seated
+on strange animals and carrying long lances. They killed two of our
+people with those lances, and the rest ran away."
+
+Then Cabeça knew that his countrymen must have passed that way. His
+feelings were a strange mixture of joy and grief.
+
+As they went on they came upon more traces of Spaniards, parties of
+slave-hunters from the south. Everywhere they themselves were well
+treated, even by people who were hiding in the mountains for fear of the
+Christians. When Cabeça told the Indians that he was himself a Christian
+they smiled and said nothing; but one night he heard them talking among
+themselves, not knowing that he could understand their talk.
+
+"He is lying, or he is mistaken," they said. "He and his friends come
+from the sunrise, and the Christians from the sunset; they heal the
+sick, the Christians kill the well ones; they wear only a little
+clothing, as we do, the Christians come on horses, with shining garments
+and long lances; these good men take our gifts only to help others who
+need them; the Christians come to rob us and never give any one
+anything."
+
+The next day Cabeça told the Indians that he wished to go back to his
+own people and tell them not to kill and enslave the natives. He
+explained to them that this wickedness was not in any way part of his
+religion, and that the founder of that religion never injured or
+despised the poor, but went about doing good. When he was sure that
+there were Spaniards not many miles away, he took Estevanico, leaving
+the other two Spaniards to rest their tired bones, and with an escort of
+eleven Indians went out to look for his countrymen.
+
+When he found them, they were greatly astonished. Their astonishment did
+not lessen when he told them how he came to be where he was. He sent
+Estevanico back to tell the rest of the party to come, and himself
+remained to talk with Diego de Alcaraz, the leader of the Spanish
+adventurers, and his three followers. They were slave-hunters, like the
+other Spaniards. When, five days afterward Estevanico, Castillo and
+Dorantes came on with an escort of several hundred Indians, all Cabeca's
+determination and diplomacy were taxed to keep the slavers from making a
+raid on the confiding natives then and there. To buy Alcaraz off cost
+nearly all the bows, pouches, finely dressed skins, and other native
+treasures he had gained by trading or received as gifts. In this
+collection were five arrowheads of emerald or something very like that
+stone. It was not in Cabeça de Vaca to break his word to people who
+trusted him. He had suffered every sort of privation; he had traveled
+more than ten thousand miles on foot in his six years among the Indians
+of the Southwest; now he had lost most of his profit from that long
+exile; but he went back to Spain with faith unbroken and honor clear as
+a white diamond.
+
+In May, 1536, he and his companions reached Culiacan in the territory of
+Spain. All the way to the City of Mexico they were feasted and welcomed
+as honored guests. The account which Cabeça de Vaca wrote of his travels
+was the first written description of the country now called Texas,
+Arizona and New Mexico.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+This story follows closely the "Relacion of Cabeca de Vaca." It
+illustrates the resourcefulness, bravery and ingenuity of Spanish
+cavaliers of the heroic age as hardly any other episode does.
+
+
+
+
+LONE BAYOU
+
+
+    De Soto was a gentleman of Spain
+      In those proud years when Spanish chivalry
+    From fierce adventure never did refrain,--
+      Ruler of argosies that ruled the sea,
+    She looked on lesser nations in disdain,
+      As born to trafficking or slavery.
+
+    In shining armor, and with shot and steel
+      Abundantly purveyed for their delight,
+    Banners before whose Cross the foe should kneel,
+      His company embarked--how great a light
+    Through men's perversity to stoop and reel
+      Down through calamity to endless night!
+
+    Yet unsubmissive, obdurately bold,
+      The savages refused to serve their need.
+    They would not guide the conquerors to their gold,
+      Nor though cast in the fire like a weed
+    Or driven by stern compulsion to the fold,
+      Would they abandon their unhallowed creed.
+
+    The forest folk in terror broke and fled
+      Like fish before the fierce pursuing pike.
+    The stubborn chiefs as hostages were led--
+      And in the wilderness, a grisly dyke
+    Of slaves and captives, lay the heathen dead,
+      And the black bayou claims all dead alike.
+
+    Then southward through the haunted bearded trees
+      The Spaniards fought their way--Mauila's fires
+    Devoured their vestments and their chalices,
+      Their sacramental wine and bread--the choirs
+    No longer sang their requiems, and the seas
+      Lay between them and all their sacred spires.
+
+    At last in a lone cabin, where the cane
+      Hid the black mire before the lowly door,
+    De Soto died--although they sought to feign
+      By some pretended magic mirror's lore
+    That still he lived, a gentleman of Spain,--
+      And the dread flood rolled onward to the shore!
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE FACE OF THE TERROR
+
+
+"Paris is no place in these times for a Huguenot lad from Navarre," said
+Dominic de Gourgues, of Mont-de-Marsan in Gascony. "His father, François
+Debré, did me good service in the Spanish Indies. One of these days,
+Philip and his bloodhounds will be pulled down by these young terriers
+they have orphaned."
+
+"If the Jesuits have their way all Huguenots will be exterminated, men,
+women and children," said Laudonnière, with a gleam of melancholy
+sarcasm in his dark pensive eyes. "Life to a Jesuit is quite simple."
+
+"My faith," said Gascon, twisting his mustache, "they may find in that
+case, that other people can be simple too. But I must be off. I thank
+you for making a place for Pierre."
+
+In consequence of this conversation, when Ribault's fleet anchored near
+the River of May, on June 25, 1564, Pierre Debré was hanging to the
+collars of two of Laudonnière's deerhounds and gazing in silent wonder
+at the strange and beautiful land.
+
+"The fairest, fruitfullest and pleasantest land in all the world," Jean
+Ribault had said in his report two years before to Coligny the Great
+Admiral of France. Live-oaks and cedars untouched for a thousand years
+were draped in luxuriant grape-vines or wreathed with the mossy gray
+festoons of "old men's beard." Cypress and pine mingled with the
+shining foliage of magnolia and palm. From the marsh arose on sudden
+startled wings multitudes of water-fowl. The dogs tugged and whined
+eagerly as if they knew that in these vast hunting-forests there was an
+abundance of game. In this rich land, thus far neglected by the Spanish
+conquistadores because it yielded neither gold nor silver, surely the
+Huguenots might find prosperity and peace. Coligny was a Huguenot and a
+powerful friend, and if the French Protestants now hunted into the
+mountains or driven to take refuge in England, could be transplanted to
+America, France might be spared the horrors of religious civil war.
+
+Pierre was thirteen and looked at least three years older. He could not
+remember when his people and their Huguenot neighbors had not lived in
+dread of prison, exile or death. When he was not more than ten years old
+he had guided their old pastor to safety in a mountain cave, and seen
+men die, singing, for their faith. After the death of his father and
+mother he had lived for awhile with his mother's people in Navarre, and
+since they were poor and bread was hard to come by he had run away the
+year before and found his way to Paris, where Dominic de Gourgues had
+found him. If the Huguenots had a safe home he might be able to repay
+the kindness of his cousins. Meanwhile the country, the wild creatures,
+the copper-colored people and the hard work of landing colonists and
+supplies were full of interest and excitement for Pierre.
+
+Satouriona, the Indian chief, showed the French officers the pillar
+which Ribault's party had set up on their previous visit to mark their
+discovery. The faithful savages had kept it wreathed with evergreens
+and decked with offerings of maize and fruits as if it were an altar.
+
+Unfortunately not all the colonists were of heroic mind. Most who had
+left France to seek their fortunes were merchants, craftsman and young
+Huguenot noblemen whose swords were uneasy in time of peace. French
+farm-laborers were mainly serfs on Catholic estates, and landowners did
+not wish to come to the New World. Thus the people of the settlement
+were city folk with little experience or inclination for cultivating the
+soil. The Indians grew tired of supplying the wants of so large a number
+of strangers. Quarrels arose among the French. A discontented group of
+adventurers mutinied and went off on a wild attempt at piracy. They
+plundered two ships in the Spanish Indies and were caught by the Spanish
+governor. The twenty-six who escaped his clutches fled back to the fort,
+which Laudonnière had built and named Carolina. His faithful lieutenant
+La Caille arrested them and dragged them to judgment. "Say what you
+will," said one of the culprits ruefully, "if Laudonnière does not hang
+us I will never call him an honest man." The four leaders were promptly
+sentenced to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to shooting. After
+that order reigned, for a time.
+
+Some of the tradesmen ranged the wilderness, bringing back feather
+mantles, arrows tipped with gold, curiously wrought quivers of beautiful
+fur, wedges of a green stone like beryl. There were reports of a gold
+mine somewhere in the northern mountains. Ribault did not return with
+the expected supplies, the Indians had mostly left the neighborhood, and
+misery and starvation followed, for the game, like the Indians fled the
+presence of the white men. The Governor began to think of crowding the
+survivors into the two little ships he had and returning to France.
+
+Matters were in this unsatisfactory state when Captain John Hawkins in
+his great seven-hundred-ton ship the _Jesus_, with three smaller ones,
+the _Solomon_, the _Tiger_ and the _Swallow_, put in at the River of May
+for a supply of fresh water. He gave them provisions, and offered
+readily to take them back to France on his way to England, but this
+offer Laudonnière declined.
+
+"Monsieur Hawkins is a good fellow," he observed dryly to La Caille,
+"and I am grateful to him, but that is no reason why I should abandon
+this land to his Queen, and that is what he is hoping that I may do."
+
+Others were not so long-sighted. The soldiers and hired workmen raised a
+howl of wrath and disappointment when they heard that they were not to
+sail with Hawkins, and openly threatened to desert and sail without
+leave. Laudonnière answered this threat by the cool statement that he
+had bought one of the English ships, the _Tiger_, with provisions for
+the voyage, and that if they would have a little patience they might
+soon sail for France in their own fleet. Somewhat taken aback they
+ceased their clamor and awaited a favoring wind. Before it came, Ribault
+came sailing back with seven ships, plenty of supplies, and three
+hundred new colonists.
+
+The fleet approached as cautiously as if it were coming to attack the
+colony instead of relieving it, and Laudonnière, who saw many of his
+friends among the new arrivals, presently learned that his enemies among
+the colonists had written to Coligny describing him as arrogant and
+cruel and charging that he was about to set up an independent monarchy
+of his own. The Admiral, three thousand miles away, had decided to ask
+the Governor to resign. Ribault advised him to stay and fight it out,
+but Laudonnière was sick and disheartened. Life was certainly far from
+simple when to use authority was to be accused of treason, and not to
+use it was to foster piracy, and he had had enough of governing colonies
+in remote jungles of the New World. He was going home.
+
+To most of the colonists, however, Ribault's arrival promised an end of
+all their troubles. Stores were landed, tents were pitched, and the
+women and children were bestowed in the most comfortable quarters which
+could be found for them just then. To his great satisfaction Pierre
+found among the arrivals his cousin Barbe and her husband, a carpenter,
+and her three children, Marie, Suzanne and little René. The two young
+girls regarded Cousin Pierre as a hero, especially when they learned
+that the bearskin on the floor of their palmetto hut had but a few
+months ago been the coat of a live black bear. It had been caught
+feasting in the maize-fields of the Indians, by their cousin and another
+youth, and shot with a crossbow bolt by Pierre. They thought the roast
+corn and stewed clams of their first meal ashore the most delicious food
+they had ever tasted, and the three-cornered enclosure in the forest
+with the wilderness all about it, the most wonderful place they had
+seen.
+
+Little did these innocent folk imagine what was brewing in Spain. The
+raid of French pirates upon the Jamaican coast had promptly been
+reported by the Adelantado of that island. Spanish spies at the French
+court had carefully noted the movements of Coligny and Ribault. Pedro
+Menendez de Avila, raising money and men in his native province of
+Asturia in Spain for the conquest of all Florida, learned with horror
+and indignation that its virgin soil had already been polluted by
+heretic Frenchmen.
+
+Menendez had in that very year gained permission from the King of Spain
+to conquer and convert this land at his own cost. In return he was to
+have free trade with the whole Spanish empire, and the title of
+Adelantado or governor of Florida for life--absolute power over all of
+America north of Mexico, for Spain had never recognized any right of
+France or England in the region discovered by Cabot, Cartier, Verrazzano
+or others. Menendez was allowed three years for his tremendous task. He
+was to take with him five hundred men and as many slaves, a suitable
+supply of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and provisions, and sixteen
+priests, four of whom were to be Jesuits. He had also to find ships to
+convey this great expedition.
+
+But Menendez had been playing for big stakes all his life. He was only
+ten years old when he ran away and went to sea on a Barbary pirate ship.
+While yet a lad he was captain of a ship of his own, fighting pirates
+and French privateers. He had served in the West Indies and he had
+commanded fleets. King Philip had never really understood the enormous
+possibilities of Florida until Menendez explained them to him. The soil
+was fertile, the climate good, there might be valuable mines, and there
+were above all countless heathen whom it was the deepest desire of
+Menendez to convert to the true faith. In this last statement he was as
+sincere as he was in the others. He expected to do in Florida what
+Cortes had done in Mexico. Now heresy, the unpardonable sin, burned out
+and stamped out in Spain, had appeared in the province which he had
+bound himself at the cost of a million ducats to make Spanish and
+Catholic. With furious energy he pushed on the work of preparation.
+
+He had assembled in June, 1565, a fleet of thirty-four ships and a force
+of twenty-six hundred men. Arciniega, another commander, was to join him
+with fifteen hundred. On June 29 he sailed from Cadiz in the _San
+Pelayo_, a galleon of nearly a thousand tons, a leviathan for those
+days. Ten other ships accompanied him; the rest of the fleet would
+follow later. It was the plan of Menendez to wipe out the garrison at
+Fort Caroline before Ribault could get there, plant a colony there and
+one on the Chesapeake, to control the northern fisheries for Spain
+alone. On the way a Caribbean tempest scattered the ships and only five
+met at Hispaniola, but Menendez did not wait for the rest. When he
+reached the Florida coast he sent a captain ashore with twenty men to
+find out exactly where on that long, lonely shore line the French colony
+had squatted.
+
+About half past eleven on the night of September 4, the watchman on one
+of the French ships anchored off shore saw the huge _San Pelayo_, the
+Spanish banner lifting sluggishly in the slow wind, coming up from the
+south. Ribault was in the fort, so were most of the troops, and three of
+the ships were anchored inside the bar. The strange fleet came steadily
+nearer, the great flagship moved to windward of Ribault's flagship the
+_Trinity_, and dropped anchor. The others did likewise. Not a word was
+spoken by friend or foe. The Spanish chaplain Mendoza afterward wrote:
+
+"Never since I came into the world did I know such a stillness."
+
+A trumpet sounded on the _San Pelayo_. A trumpet sounded on the
+_Trinity_. Menendez spoke, politely.
+
+[Illustration: "'GENTLEMEN, WHENCE DOES THIS FLEET COME?'"--_Page_ 204]
+
+"Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?"
+
+"From France."
+
+"What is it doing here?"
+
+"Bringing soldiers and supplies to a fort of the King of France in this
+country--where he soon will have many more," flung back the Breton
+captain defiantly.
+
+"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"
+
+This time a score of clear voices reinforced the
+Captain's--"Lutherans--Huguenots--the Reformed Faith--The Religion!" And
+the Captain added, "Who are you yourself?"
+
+"I am Pedro Menendez de Avila, General of the fleet of the King of
+Spain, Don Felipe the Second, who come hither to hang and behead all
+Lutherans whom I find by land or sea, according to instructions from his
+Majesty, which leave me no discretion. These commands I shall obey, as
+you will presently see. At daybreak I shall board your ships. If I find
+there any Catholic he shall be well treated. But every heretic shall
+die."
+
+The reply to the rolling sonorous ultimatum was a shout of derision.
+
+"Ah, if you are a brave man, don't put it off till daylight! Come on now
+and see what you will get!"
+
+Menendez in black fury snapped out a command. Cables were slipped, and
+the towering black hulk of the _San Pelayo_ bore down toward the
+_Trinity_. But the Breton captain was already leading the little fleet
+out of danger, and with all sail set, went out to sea, answering the
+Spanish fire with tart promptness. In the morning Menendez gave up the
+chase and came back to find armed men drawn up on the beach, and all
+the guns of the ships inside the bar pointed in his direction. He
+steered southward and found three ships already unloading in a harbor
+which he named San Augustin and proceeded to fortify.
+
+In Fort Caroline, Pierre Debré, awakened by the sound of firing, ran
+down to the beach, where a crowd was gathering. No one could see
+anything but the flashes of the guns; who or what was attacking the
+ships there was no way of knowing. The first light of dawn showed the
+two fleets far out at sea, and Ribault at once ordered the drums to beat
+"To arms!" They saw the great galleon approach, hover about awhile, and
+bear away south. When the French fleet came back later, one of the
+captains, Cosette, reported that trusting in the speed of his ship he
+had followed the Spaniards to the harbor where they were now landing and
+entrenching themselves.
+
+The terror which haunted the future of every Huguenot in France now
+menaced the New World.
+
+Ribault gave his counsel for an immediate attack by sea, before Menendez
+completed his defense or received reinforcements. Laudonnière was ill in
+bed. The fleet sailed as soon as it could be made ready, and with it
+nearly every able fighting man in the settlement. Pierre, nearly crying
+with wrath and disappointment, was left among the non-combatants at the
+fort. In vain did old Challeux the carpenter try to console him. It
+might be, as Challeux said, that there would be plenty of chances to
+fight after his beard was grown, but now he was missing everything.
+
+That night a terrible storm arose and continued for days. The marshes
+became a boundless sea; the forests were whipped like weeds in the wind.
+Where had the fleet found refuge? or had it been hurled to destruction
+by the rage of wind and sea? Laudonnière, in the driving rain, came from
+his sick-bed to direct the work on the defenses, which were broken down
+in three or four places. Besides the four dog-boys, the cook, the
+brewer, an old cross-bow maker, and the old carpenter, there were two
+shoemakers, a musician, four valets, fourscore camp-followers who did
+not know the use of arms, and the crowd of women and children. The sole
+consolation that could be found in their plight was that in such a storm
+no enemy would be likely to attack them by sea or land. Nevertheless
+Laudonnière divided his force into two watches with an officer for each,
+gave them lanterns and an hour glass for going the rounds, and himself,
+weak with fever, spent each night in the guard-room.
+
+On the night of the nineteenth the tempest became a deluge. The officer
+of the night took pity on the drenched and gasping sentries and
+dismissed them. But on that night five hundred Spaniards were coming
+from San Augustin through almost impassable swamps, their provisions
+spoiled and their powder soaked, under the leadership of the pitiless
+Menendez. The storm had caught Ribault's fleet just as it was about to
+attack on the eleventh, and Menendez had determined to take a force of
+Spaniards overland and attack the fort while its defenders were away.
+With twenty Vizcayan axemen to clear the way and two Indians and a
+renegade Frenchman, François Jean, for a guide, he had bullied,
+threatened and exhorted them through eight days of wading through mud
+waist-deep, creeping around quagmires and pushing by main force through
+palmetto jungles, until two hours before daylight the panting,
+shivering, sullen men stood cursing the country and their commander,
+under their breath, in a pine wood less than a mile from Fort Caroline.
+It was all that Menendez could do to get them to go a rod further. All
+night, he said, he had prayed for help; their provisions and ammunition
+were gone; there was nothing to do but to go on and take the fort. They
+went on.
+
+In the faint light of early morning a trumpeter saw them racing down the
+slope toward the fort and blew the alarm. "Santiago! Santiago!" sounded
+in the ears of the half-awakened French as the Spaniards came through
+the gaps in the defenses and over the ramparts. Fierce faces and
+stabbing pikes were everywhere. Laudonnière snatched sword and buckler,
+rallied his men to the point of greatest danger, fought desperately
+until there was no more hope, and with a single soldier of his guard
+escaped into the woods. Challeux, chisel in hand, on his way to his
+work, swung himself over the palisade and ran like a boy. In the edge of
+the forest he and a few other fugitives paused and looked down upon the
+enclosure of the fort. It was a butchery. Some of the Huguenots in the
+woods decided to return and surrender rather than risk the terrors of
+the wilderness. The Spaniards, they said, were at least men. Six of them
+did return, and were cut down as they came. Pierre Debré side by side
+with a few desperate men who had one of the two light cannon the fort
+possessed, was fighting like a tiger in defense of a corner where a
+group of women and children were crouching.
+
+When Menendez could secure the attention of his maddened men he gave an
+order that women, children and boys under fifteen should be spared. This
+order and the instant's pause it gave came just as the last of the men
+in Pierre's corner went down before the halberds of the Spaniards.
+Pierre leaped the palisade and ran for the forest. Looking back, he saw
+the trembling women and children herded into shelter, but not killed.
+Fifteen of the captured Huguenots were presently hanged; a hundred and
+forty-two had been cut down and lay heaped together on the river bank.
+Pierre plunged into the forest and after days of wandering reached a
+friendly Indian village. The carpenter and the other fugitives who
+escaped were taken to France in the two small ships of Ribault's fleet
+which had not gone to attack the Spanish settlement. Menendez returned
+at leisure to San Augustin, where he knelt and thanked the Lord.
+
+The fate of the men of Ribault's fleet became known through the letters
+which the Spaniards themselves wrote in course of time to their friends
+at home, but chiefly through Menendez's own report to the King. Dominic
+de Gourgues heard of it from Coligny, and his eyes burned with the still
+anger of a naturally impetuous man who has learned in stern schools how
+to keep his temper.
+
+"As I understand it," he said grimly and quietly, "Menendez, in the
+disguise of a sailor, found Ribault and his men shipwrecked and
+starving, some in one place, some in another. He promised them food and
+safety on condition that they should surrender and give up their arms
+and armor. He separated them into lots of ten, each guarded by twenty
+Spaniards. When each lot had been led out of sight of the rest he
+explained that on account of their great numbers and the fewness of his
+own followers he should be compelled to tie their hands before taking
+them into camp, for fear they might capture the camp. At the end of the
+day, when all had reached a certain line which Menendez marked out with
+his cane in the sand, he gave the word to his murderers to butcher
+them."
+
+Coligny bowed his noble gray head.
+
+"And he offered them life if they would renounce their religion,
+whereupon Ribault repeating in French the psalm, 'Lord, remember thou
+me,' they died without other supplication to God or man. On this account
+did Menendez write above the heads of those whom he hanged, 'I do this
+not as to Frenchmen but as to Lutherans.' And no demand for redress has
+as yet been made?"
+
+"One," said the Admiral coolly. "A demand was made by Philip of Spain.
+He has required his brother of France to punish one Gaspé Coligny,
+sometimes known as Admiral, for sending out a Huguenot colony to settle
+in Florida."
+
+The Gascon sprang to his feet muttering something between his teeth. "I
+crave your pardon, my lord," he added with a courteous bow. "I am but a
+plain rough soldier unused to the ways of courts, but it seems to me
+that things being as they are, my duty is quite simple." He bowed
+himself out and left Coligny wondering.
+
+During the following months it was noted that in choosing the men for
+his coming expedition Gourgues appeared to be unusually select. He sold
+his inheritance, borrowed some money of his brother, and fitted out
+three small ships carrying both sails and oars. He enlisted, one by one,
+about a hundred arquebusiers and eighty sailors who could fight either
+by land or sea if necessary. He secured a commission from the King to
+go slave-raiding in Benin, on the coast of Africa. On August 22, 1567,
+he set sail from the mouth of the Charente.
+
+"I should like to know," said one of the trumpeters, Lucas Moreau,
+"whether we are really going slave-catching, or not."
+
+"Why do you think we are not?" asked the pilot, to whom he spoke.
+
+"Because I have seen nothing on board that looks like it. Moreover, he
+was very particular to ask me if I had been in the Spanish Indies, and
+when he heard that I had been in Florida he took me on at once. I was
+out there, you know, when you were, two years ago."
+
+"And you would like to go back?" asked the other, gruffly.
+
+"If there were a chance of killing Menendez, yes," answered Moreau with
+a fierce flash of white teeth.
+
+The trumpeter's guess was a shrewd one. When the tiny fleet reached the
+West Indies, the commander took his men into his confidence and revealed
+the true object of his voyage--to avenge the massacre at Fort Caroline.
+The result proved that he had not misjudged them. Fired by his spirit
+they became so eager that they wanted to push on at once instead of
+waiting for moonlight to pass the dangerous Bahama Channel. They came
+through it without mishap, and at daybreak were anchored at the mouth of
+a river about fifteen leagues north of Fort Caroline. In the growing
+light an Indian army in war paint and feathers, bristling with weapons,
+could be seen waiting on the shore.
+
+"They may think we are Spaniards," said Dominic de Gourgues. "Moreau,
+if you think they will understand you, it might be well for you to speak
+to them."
+
+No sooner had the trumpeter come near enough in a small boat for the
+Indians to recognize him, than yells of joy were heard, for the war
+party was headed by Satouriona himself, who well remembered him. When
+Moreau explained that the French had returned with presents for their
+good friends there was great rejoicing. A council was appointed for the
+next day.
+
+In the morning Satouriona's runners had scoured the country, and the
+woods were full of Indians. The white men landed in military order, and
+in token of friendliness laid aside their arquebuses, and the Indians
+came in without their bows and arrows. Satouriona met Gourgues with
+every sign of friendliness, and seated him at his side upon a wooden
+stool covered with the gray "Spanish moss" that curtained all the trees.
+In the clearing the chiefs and warriors stood or sat around them, ring
+within ring of plumed crests fierce faces and watchful eyes. Satouriona
+described the cruelty of the Spaniards, their abuse of the Indians and
+the miseries of their rule, saying finally,
+
+"A French boy fled to us after the fort was taken, and we adopted him.
+The Spaniards wished to get him to kill him, but we would not give him
+up, for we love the French." He waved his hand, and from the woods at
+one side came, in full Indian costume, bronzed and athletic, Pierre
+Debré.
+
+Greatly as he was surprised and delighted, Gourgues dared not show it
+too plainly, and Pierre had grown almost as self-contained as a veteran
+of twice his years. When the French commander suggested fighting the
+Spaniards Satouriona leaped for joy. He and his warriors asked only to
+be allowed to join in that foray.
+
+"How soon?" asked Gourgues. Satouriona could have his people ready in
+three days.
+
+"Be secret," the Gascon cautioned, "for the enemy must not feel the wind
+of the blow." Satouriona assured him that there was no need of that
+warning, for the Indians hated the Spaniards worse than the French did.
+
+"Pierre," said Gourgues, when he had the lad safe on board ship, "they
+said you were killed."
+
+"I stayed alive to fight Spaniards," said the boy with a flash of the
+eye. "'Sieur Dominic, there are four hundred of them behind their walls,
+where they rebuilt our fort. I have hidden in the trees and counted. But
+you can trust Satouriona. The Spaniards have stolen women, enslaved and
+tortured men, and killed children, and the tribe is mad with hate."
+
+Twenty sailors were left to guard the ships, Gourgues with a hundred and
+sixty Frenchmen took up their march along the seashore; their Indian
+allies slipped around through the forest. With the French went
+Olotoraca, the nephew of the chief, a young brave of distinguished
+reputation, a French pike in his hand. The French met their allies not
+far from the fort, and pounced upon the garrison just as it finished
+dinner, Olotoraca being the first man up the glacis and over the
+unfinished moat. The fort across the river began to cannonade the
+attacking party, who turned four captured guns upon them, and then
+crossed, the French in a large boat which had been brought up the river,
+the Indians swimming. Not one Spaniard escaped. Fifteen were kept alive,
+to be hanged on the very trees from which Menendez had hanged his French
+captives, and over them was set an inscription burned with a hot poker
+on a pine board:
+
+"Not as to Spaniards, but as to Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers."
+
+When not one stone was left upon another in either fort, Dominic de
+Gourgues bade farewell to his Indian allies, and taking with him the lad
+so strangely saved from death and exile, went back to France.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The full history of this dramatic episode is to be found in Parkman's
+"The Pioneers of France in the New World."
+
+
+
+
+THE DESTROYERS
+
+
+    The moon herself doth sail the air
+      As we do sail the sea,
+    Where by Saint Michael's Mount we fare
+      Free as the winds are free.
+    Our keels are bright with elfin gold
+      That mocks the tyrant's gaze,
+    That slips from out his greedy hold
+      And leaves him in amaze.
+
+    White water creaming past her prow
+      The little _Golden Hynde_
+    Bears westward with her treasure now--
+      We'd ship and follow blind,
+    But that he never did require--
+      Our Captain hath us bound
+    Only by force of his desire--
+      The quarry hunts the hound!
+
+    The hunt is up, the hunt is up
+      To the gray Atlantic's bound,--
+    The health of the Queen in a golden cup!--
+      The quarry is hunting the hound!
+    Like steel the stars gleam through the night
+      On armored waves beneath,--
+    As England's honor cold and bright
+      We bear her sword in sheath!
+
+    When that great Empire dies away
+      And none recall her place,
+    Men shall remember our work to-day
+      And tell of our Captain's grace,--
+    How never a woman or child was the worse
+      Wherever our foe we found,
+    Nor their own priests had cause to curse
+      The quarry that hunted the hound!
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE FLEECE OF GOLD
+
+
+White fog, the thick mist of windless marshes, masked the Kentish coast.
+The Medway at flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one maze
+of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays. Nothing was visible an
+oar's length overside but shifting cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely
+in the fog. But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as master
+of his own ship, he knew these waters as he knew the palm of his hand.
+His old captain, dying a bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten
+cargo-ship as reward for his "diligence and fidelity", and at sixteen he
+was captain where six years before he had been ship's-boy.
+
+Scores of daring projects went Catherine-wheeling through his mind as he
+steered seaward through the white enchanted world. In 1561 Spain was the
+bogy of English seaports, most of whose folk were Protestants. There was
+no knowing how long the coast-wise trade would be allowed to go on.
+
+Out of the white mist flashed a whiter face, etched with black brows and
+lashes and a pointed silky beard--the face of a man all in black, whose
+body rose and dipped with the waves among the marsh grass of an eyot. So
+lightly was it held that it might have slipped off in the wake of the
+boat had not Tom Moone the carpenter caught it with a boat-hook. But
+when they had the man on board they found that he was not dead.
+
+Ten minutes before, the young captain would have said that every dead
+Spaniard was so much to the good, but he had the life-saving instinct of
+a Newfoundland dog. He set about reviving the rescued man without
+thinking twice on the subject.
+
+"'T is unlucky," grumbled Will Harvest under his breath. "Take a
+drownded man from the sea and she get one of us--some time."
+
+"Like enough," agreed his master blithely. "But this one's not
+drownded--knocked on the head and robbed, I guess. D'you think we might
+take him to Granny Toothacre's, Tom?"
+
+"I reckon so," returned Tom with a wide grin, "seein' 't is you. If I
+was the one to ask her I'd as lief do it with a brass kittle on my head.
+She don't like furriners."
+
+Drake laughed and brought his craft alongside an old wharf near which an
+ancient farm-house stood, half-hidden by a huge pollard willow. Here,
+when he had seen his guest bestowed in a chamber whose one window looked
+out over the marshes, he stayed to watch with him that night, sending
+the ship on to Chatham in charge of the mate.
+
+"Now what's the lad up to?" queried Will as they caught the ebbing tide.
+"D'ye think he'll find out anything, tending that there Spanisher?"
+
+"Not him. He don't worm secrets out o' nobody. But he's got his reasons,
+I make no doubt. You go teach a duck to swim--and leave Frankie alone,"
+said Moone.
+
+The youth did not analyze the impulse that kept him at the bedside of
+the injured man, but he felt that he desired to know more of him. The
+stranger was gaunt, gray and without jewel, gold chain or signet ring
+to show who he was, but it was the same man who had spoken to him at
+Gravesend five years ago.
+
+A barge-load of London folk had come down to see the launching of the
+_Serchthrift_, the new pinnace of the Muscovy Company, and among them
+was the venerable Sebastian Cabot. Alms were freely distributed that the
+spectators might pray for a fortunate voyage, but Frankie Drake was
+gazing with all his eyes at the veteran navigator. A hand was laid on
+his shoulder, and a friendly voice inquired,
+
+"Did you get your share of the plunder, my son?"
+
+The lad shook his head a trifle impatiently. "I be no beggar," he
+answered. "I be a ship's boy."
+
+"Ay," said the man, "and you seek not the Golden Fleece?"
+
+His eyes laughed, and his long fingers played with a strange jewel that
+glowed like Mars in the midnight of his breast. It was of gold enamel,
+with a splendid ruby in the center, and hanging from it a tiny golden
+ram. Could he mean that? But the crowd surged between them and left the
+boy wondering. He had never spoken to a Spaniard before.
+
+As the fluttering pulse grew stronger and the man roused from his
+stupor, disjointed phrases of sinister meaning fell from his lips. No
+names were used, and much of his talk was in Spanish, but it suggested a
+foul undercurrent of bribery, falsehood and conspiracy hidden by the
+bright magnificence of the young Queen's court. The queer fact seemed to
+be that the speaker appeared himself to be the victim of some Spanish
+plot. Now why should that be, and he a Spaniard?
+
+The young captain turned from the window, into which through the
+clearing air the moon was shining, to find the stranger looking at him
+with sane though troubled eyes.
+
+"The _Golden Fleece_?" he asked in English. Drake shook his head.
+
+"You've had a bad hurt, sir," he said, and briefly explained the
+circumstances.
+
+"Ah," said the man frowning, and was silent.
+
+"If you would wish to send any word to your friends,--" Drake began, and
+hesitated.
+
+"I have no friends here, save my servant Sancho. The _Golden Fleece_
+will sail on Saint James's Eve for Coruna, and he was to meet me at
+Dover and return with me to our own country. In Alcala they know what to
+expect of a Saavedra."
+
+The last words were spoken with a proud assurance that gave the listener
+a tingling sense of something high and indomitable. Saavedra's dark eyes
+were searching his face.
+
+"I fear I trespass on your kindness," he added courteously, "and that I
+have talked some nonsense before I came to myself."
+
+"Nothing of any account, sir," answered the lad quickly. "Mostly it was
+Spanish--and I don't know much o' that. You'll miss your ship if she
+sails so soon, but you're welcome here so long as you like to stay."
+
+"I thank you," said the Spaniard in a relieved tone, adding half to
+himself, "No friends--but one cannot break faith--even with an enemy."
+
+He dropped asleep almost at once after swallowing the cordial which
+Drake held to his lips. The moon came up over the flooded meadows that
+were all silvery lights and black shadow like a fairy realm. The lad
+had never spent a night like this, even when he had seen his master
+die.
+
+When the pearl and rose of a July morning overspread the sky he
+descended, to splash and spatter and souse his rough brown head in a
+bucket of fresh-drawn water, and wheedle the old dame into a good humor.
+
+"What ye hate and fear's bound to come to ye, sooner or later," Granny
+Toothacre grumbled as she stirred her savory broth, "My old man said so
+and I never beleft it--here be I at my time o' life harborin' a
+Spanisher."
+
+"Ah, now, mother,"--Drake laid a brown hand coaxingly on her old
+withered one,--"you'll take good care of him for me, and we'll share the
+ransom."
+
+"Ransom," the old woman muttered, looking after the straight, sturdy
+young figure as it strode down to the wharf, "not much hope o' that. Not
+but what he's a grand gentleman," she admitted, turning the contents of
+her saucepan into her best porringer. "He don't give me a rough word no
+more than if I was a lady."
+
+Drake spent all his leisure during the next fortnight with the Spaniard,
+whose recovery was slow but steady. It was tacitly understood that the
+less said of the incident which had left him stunned and half-drowned
+the better. If those who had sought to kill him knew him to be alive,
+they might try again.
+
+The young seaman had never known a man like this before. In his guest's
+casual talk of his young days one could see as in a mirror the Spain of
+a half-century since, with its audacious daring, its extravagant
+chivalry and its bulldog ferocity.
+
+"They have outgrown us altogether, these young fellows," he said once
+with his quaint half-melancholy smile. "When the King and Queen rode in
+armor at the head of their troops in Granada, our cavaliers dreamed of
+conquering the world--now it has all been conquered."
+
+"Not England," Drake put in quickly.
+
+"Not England--I beg your pardon, my friend. But we have grown heavy with
+gold in these days--and gold makes cowards."
+
+"It never made a coward o' me," laughed the lad. "Belike it'll never
+have the chance."
+
+Through the shadows the old ship's-lantern cast in the rude
+half-timbered room seemed to move the wild figures of that marvellous
+pageant of conquest which began in 1492. Saavedra spoke little of
+himself but much of others--Ojeda, Nicuesa, Balboa, Cortes, Alvarado,
+Pizarro. In his soft slow speech they lived again, while by the stars
+outside, unknown uncharted realms revealed themselves. This man used
+words as a master mariner would use compass and astrolabe.
+
+"Those days when we followed Balboa in his quest for the South Sea," he
+ended, "were worth it all. Gold is nothing if it blinds a man to the
+heavens. You too, my son, may seek the Golden Fleece in good time. May
+the high planets fortify you!"
+
+What room was left for a knight-errant in the Spain of to-day, ruling by
+steel and shot and flame and gold? It must be rather awful, the listener
+reflected, to see your own country go rotten like that in a generation.
+Yet there was no bitterness in the old hidalgo's tranquil eyes. "I have
+been a fool," he said smiling, "but somehow I do not regret it. The
+wound from a poisoned arrow can be seared with red-hot iron, but for the
+creeping poison of the soul--the loss of honor--there is no cure."
+
+When the seamen came to get orders from their young captain, Saavedra
+observed with surprise the lad's clear knowledge of his own trade.
+Francis Drake's old master had seen King Henry's shipwrights discarding
+time-honored models to build for speed, speed and more speed. He had
+seen Fletcher of Rye, in 1539, prove to all the Channel that a ship
+could sail against the wind. All that he knew he had taught his young
+apprentice, and now the boy was free to use it for his own
+work--whatever that should be. Unlike the gilded and perfumed courtiers,
+these men of the sea showed little respect toward the tall ships of
+Spain. Saavedra, pleased that they spoke without reserve in his
+presence, watched the rugged straightforward faces, and wondered.
+
+The time came when they took him and his stocky, silent old servant to
+board a Vizcayan boat. As they caught his last quick smile and farewell
+gesture Will Harvest heaved a rueful sigh. "I never thought to be
+sorrowful at parting with a Don," he said reflectively, "but I be."
+
+"God made men afore the Devil made Dons," growled Tom Moone. "Yon's a
+man."
+
+Drake had gone down the wharf with John Hawkins of Plymouth, a town that
+was warmly defiant of Spain's armed monopoly of sea-trade. Privateers
+were dodging about the trade-routes where Spanish and Portuguese
+galleons, laden with ingots of gold and silver, dyewoods, pearls,
+spices, silks and priceless merchandise, moved as menacing sea-castles.
+Huger and huger galleasses were built, masted and timbered with mighty
+trunks from the virgin forests of the Old World, four and five feet
+thick. The military discipline of the Continent made a warship a
+floating barrack; the decks of a Spanish man-of-war were packed with
+drilled troops like marching engines of destruction, dealing leaden
+death from arquebus and musquetoun. The little ships of Cabot,
+Willoughby and William Hawkins had not exceeded fifty, sixty, at most a
+hundred tons; Philip's leviathans outweighed them more than ten to one.
+What could England do against the landing of such an army? An English
+Admiral would be Jack the Giant-Killer with no magic at his command. Yet
+in the face of all this, under the very noses of the Spanish patrol,
+Protestant craftsmen were escaping from the Inquisition in the
+Netherlands to England, where Elizabeth had contrived to let it be known
+that they were quite welcome.
+
+To a perfectly innocent and lawful coasting trade Drake and his crew now
+added this hazardous passenger service. They were braving imprisonment,
+torture and the stake, for in 1562 no less than twenty-six Englishmen
+were burned alive in Spain, and ten times as many lay in prison. Before
+Drake was twenty all Spanish ports were closed to English trade. He sold
+his ship and joined Hawkins in his more or less contraband trade with
+the West Indies.
+
+With every year of adventure upon the high seas his hatred of the
+tyranny of Spain deepened and strengthened. Yet though Spanish ferocity
+might soak the world in blood, he would not have his men tainted with
+the evil inheritance of the idolaters. It came to be known that El
+Draque did not kill prisoners. His crews fought like demons, but they
+slew no unarmed man, they molested no woman or child. On these terms
+only would he accept allies. Tons of plunder he took, but never a
+helpless life. He landed the shivering crews of his prizes on some
+Spanish island or with a laugh returned to them their empty ships. "A
+dead man's no mortal use to anybody," he would say cheerily, and go on
+using his cock-boats to sink or capture galleys. At twenty-seven,
+beholding for the first time the shining Pacific, he vowed that with
+God's help he would sail an English ship on that sea. Alone upon the
+platform built in a great tree with steps cut in its trunk, to which his
+negro allies the Maroons had guided him, he conceived the sublimely
+audacious plan which he was one day to unfold to Walsingham and the
+Queen.
+
+The air was thick with rumors of war with Spain when Drake arrived in
+London years later, in the company of a new friend, Thomas
+Doughty,--courtier, soldier, scholar, familiar with every shifting
+undercurrent of European court life. Never at a loss for a phrase, ready
+of wit and quick of understanding, Doughty could put into words what the
+frank-hearted young sea-captain had thought and felt and dreamed. Both
+knew the peace with Philip to be only deceptive. Walsingham and
+Leicester were for war; Burleigh for peace; between the two the subtle
+Queen played fast and loose with her powerful enemy.
+
+Drake avowed to Doughty his belief that to strike effectively at the
+gigantic power of Spain, England must raid the colonies--not the West
+Indies alone, but the rich western provinces of Peru and Chili. No one
+had been south of Patagonia since its discovery, sixty years before.
+Geographers still held that beyond the Straits of Magellan a huge
+Antarctic continent existed. From that unknown region of darkness and
+tempest came the great heaving ground-swell, the tidal wave and the
+hurricane. Even Spanish pilots never used the perilous southern route.
+Treasure went overland across the Isthmus. Every year an elephantine
+treasure-ship sailed from Panama westward through the South Sea; and
+there was a rich trade between the American mines and the Orient and the
+Spanish peninsula, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Doughty's
+imagination was fired by the gorgeous possibilities of the idea, and
+when he became the secretary of Christopher Hatton, the Queen's handsome
+Captain of the Guard, he laid the plan before him with all the eloquence
+of his persuasive tongue. Hatton finally obtained from Elizabeth a
+promise to contribute a thousand crowns to the cost of an expedition to
+penetrate the South Seas. This, however, was only on condition that the
+affair should be kept secret, above all from Burleigh, who was certain
+to use every effort to stop it. She had already, in a private audience
+with Drake, been informed of the main features and even the details of
+the scheme, and had assured him that when the time was ripe he should be
+chosen to avenge the long series of injuries which Philip had inflicted
+upon England's honor and her own.
+
+When in mid-November, 1577, Drake ran out of Plymouth with his tiny
+fleet, he had with him all told one hundred and fifty seamen and
+fourteen boys, enlisted for a voyage to Alexandria, although it was
+pretty well known that this was a blind. His flagship, the _Pelican_,
+afterward re-christened the _Golden Hynde_ for Hatton's coat-of-arms,
+was a hundred-ton ship carrying eighteen guns. The _Marygold_, a barque
+of thirty tons and fifteen guns, and the _Swan_, a provision ship of
+fifty tons, were commanded by two of the gentlemen volunteers, Mr. John
+Thomas and Mr. John Chester. Captain John Wynter commanded the
+_Elizabeth_, a new eighty-ton ship, and a fifteen-ton pinnace called
+the _Christopher_ in honor of Hatton, was commanded by Tom Moore. Thomas
+Doughty was commander of the land-soldiers, and his brother John was
+enlisted among the gentlemen adventurers.
+
+All of Drake's experience and sagacity had gone to the fitting out of
+the ships. There were less than fifty men on board besides the regular
+crews, and among them were special artisans, two trained surveyors,
+skilled musicians furnished with excellent instruments, and the
+adventurous sons of some of the best families in England. As page the
+Admiral had his own nephew, Jack Drake. There were stores of wild-fire,
+chain-shot, arquebuses, pistols, bows, and other weapons. The Queen
+herself had sent packets of perfume breathing of rich gardens, and
+Drake's table furniture was of silver gilt, engraved with his arms; even
+some of the cooking utensils were of silver. Nothing was spared which
+became the dignity of England, her Admiral and her Queen. On calm nights
+the sea was alive with music. And on board the little flagship Doughty
+and Drake talked together as those do whose minds answer one another
+like voices in a roundelay.
+
+Men who have time and again run their heads into the jaws of death are
+often inclined to fatalism. Drake had never expressed it in words, but
+he had a feeling that whatever he was meant to do, God would see that he
+did, so long as he gave himself wholly to the work. One evening when the
+Southern Cross was lifting above the darkling sea, and the violins were
+crooning something with a weird burden to it, Doughty mused aloud.
+
+"'T is the strangest thing in life, that whatever we are most averse to,
+that we are fated to do."
+
+"Eh?" said Drake with a laugh, looking up from Eden's translation of
+Pigafetts. "Accordin' to that you can't even trust yourself. D'you look
+to see me set up an image to be worshiped?" Then he added in a lower
+tone, "That's foolish, Tom. God don't shape us to be puppets."
+
+"That sounds like old Saavedra," was Doughty's idle comment. "He had
+great store of antiquated sentiments--like those in the chronicles of
+the paladins. I knew his nephew well--a witty fellow, but visionary. He
+laughed at the old cavalero, but he was fond of him, and our affections
+rule us and ruin us. A man should have no loves nor hates if he would
+get on at court."
+
+Sheer surprise kept the other silent for the moment, and Doughty went
+on,--
+
+"The old man had been in Mexico with Cortes, and might have risen to
+Adelantado in some South American province if he had not been too
+scrupulous to join Pizarro. He was in London, ten or fifteen years
+before I knew him, and I believe he was the destruction of a
+well-considered Spanish plot for the assassination of Her Majesty Queen
+Elizabeth--the assassins nearly killed him. He was left for dead and was
+picked up by some sailors."
+
+"He was in luck." Drake's eyes twinkled.
+
+"They would have been luckier--if they had let the Spanish agents in
+London know they had him. He paid them well of course, but he gave them
+credit for the most exalted motives. All his geese were swans."
+
+"Maybe they acted out o' pure decency," Drake said dryly.
+
+"My Admiral, this is not Utopia." Doughty stroked his beard with a light
+complacent hand. "Seriously, it is not a kindness to expect of men
+without traditions more than they are capable of doing. 'E meglio
+cade dalle fenestre che del tetto.'" (It is better to fall from the
+window than from the roof.)
+
+Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard with the blade
+inlaid with gold and the great ruby in the top of the hilt, which lay on
+the table between them. The shipmaster came in just then with some
+question, and the conversation dropped.
+
+[Illustration: "DRAKE WAS SILENT, FINGERING THE SLENDER MILANESE
+PONIARD."--_Page_ 227]
+
+It was not often that Francis Drake attempted to analyze the character
+and behavior of those about him. Mostly he judged men by a shrewd
+instinct; but that night he lay long awake, watching the witch-lights
+upon the waves from the dancing lanterns. He was acute enough to see
+that Doughty had hit slyly at him over Saavedra's shoulders. Doughty had
+not liked it that Moone should be raised to the rank of captain; he had
+already shown that he regarded himself as second only to Drake in
+command, and the champion of the gentlemen as distinct from the
+mariners. The second officer of every English ship was a practical
+shipmaster whose authority held in all matters concerning navigation.
+The soldiers and their officers were passengers. This was unavoidable in
+view of the new method of English sea-fighting, which depended quite as
+much on the skill of the seamen as on the armed and trained soldier.
+English gunners could give the foe a broadside and slip away before
+their huge adversary could turn. Drake now had two factions to deal
+with, and he bent his brows and set his jaw as he pondered the
+situation. If discord arose, the gentlemen would have to come to order.
+There was no room here for old ideas of caste. Any man too good to haul
+on a rope might go to--Spain.
+
+Doughty had a way of taking it for granted that Drake and he, as
+gentlemen, shared thoughts and feelings not to be comprehended by common
+men. On land this had not seemed offensive, but on blue water, with the
+old sea-chanteys in his ears, in the intimate association of a long
+voyage, Drake found himself resenting it. What was there about the man
+that made his arguments so plausible when one heard them, so false when
+his engaging presence was withdrawn? And yet how devoted, how
+sympathetic, how witty and companionable he could be! Drake found
+himself excusing his friend as if he were a woman,--laughed, sighed, and
+went to sleep.
+
+Presently he began to hear of John Doughty's amusing himself by reading
+palms and playing on the superstitions of the sailors with strange
+prophecies, in which his brother sometimes joined. Drake summoned the
+two to a brief interview in which Thomas Doughty learned that his friend
+on land, frank, boyish and unassuming, was a different person from the
+Admiral of the Fleet. Yet as this impression faded, the brothers
+perversely went on encouraging discord between the gentlemen adventurers
+and the sailors, and foretelling events with sinister aptness.
+
+It grew colder and colder. It should be summer,--but as they crept
+southward they encountered cold and wind beyond that of the North Sea in
+January. The nights grew long; the battering of the gales never ceased;
+the ships lost sight of one another. It was whispered that not only had
+the uncanny brothers foretold the evil weather, but Thomas Doughty had
+boasted of having brought it about. "We'll ha' no luck till we get rid
+of our prophet," said blunt Tom Moone, "and the Lord don't provide no
+whales for the likes o' he."
+
+Drake warned his comrade with an ominous quiet. "Doughty," he said, "if
+you value your neck you keep your reading and writing to what a common
+man can understand--you and your brother. A man can't always prophesy
+for himself, let alone other folk."
+
+"You heard what he said," commented Wynter grimly when the Admiral was
+in his cabin behind closed doors. "Better not raise the devil unless you
+know for sure what he'll do. There's been one gallows planted on this
+coast."
+
+"Sneck up!" laughed Doughty, "he would not dare hang a gentleman!" but
+he felt a creeping chill at the back of his neck.
+
+On the desolate island where the stump of Magellan's gallows stood black
+against a crimson dawn, they landed and the tragedy of estrangement and
+suspicion ended. Thomas Doughty was tried for mutiny and treason before
+a jury of his peers. Every man there held him a traitor, yet he was
+acquitted for lack of evidence. Thus encouraged, Doughty boldly declared
+that they should all smart for this when Burleigh heard of it. What he
+had done to hinder the voyage, he averred, was by Burleigh's orders, for
+before they sailed he had gone to that wily statesman and told him the
+entire scheme.
+
+In a flash of merciless revelation Drake saw the truth. He left Doughty
+to await the verdict, called the companies down to the shore, and there
+told them the story of the expedition from first to last, not
+overlooking the secret orders of the Queen.
+
+"This man was my friend," he said with a break in his voice such as they
+had not heard save at the suffering of a child. "I would not take his
+life,--but if he be worthy of death, I pray you hold up your hands."
+
+There was a breathless instant when none stirred; then every hand was
+raised.
+
+On the next day but one they all sat down to a last feast on that bleak
+and lonely shore; the two comrades drank to each other for the last
+time, shared the sacrament, and embracing, said their farewells. Doughty
+proved that if he could not live a true man he could die like a
+gentleman; the headsman did his work, and Drake pronounced the solemn
+sentence, "Lo! this is the death of traitors!"
+
+In that black hour the boyish laughter went forever from the eyes of the
+Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice. When after a while young
+Jack Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between them, began
+some phrase of blundering boyish affection, the sentence trailed off
+into a stammer.
+
+"He's dead and at peace, Jack," the master said, the words dropping
+wearily, like spent bullets. "He couldn't help being as he was,--I
+reckon. If I'd known he was like that I could ha' stopped him, but I
+never knew--till too late."
+
+Discord among the crews continued, until Drake, rousing from his fitful
+melancholy, called them all together on a Sunday, and mounted to the
+place of the chaplain.
+
+"I am going to preach to-day," he said shortly. Then he unfolded a paper
+and began to read it aloud.
+
+"My masters, I am a very bad orator, for my bringing up hath not been in
+learning; but what I shall speak here let every man take good notice of
+and let him write it down. For I will speak nothing but what I will
+answer it in England, yea, and before Her Majesty." He reminded them of
+the great adventure before them and went on.
+
+"Now by the life of God this mutiny and dissension must cease. Here is
+such controversy between the gentlemen and the sailors that it doth make
+me mad to hear it. I must have the gentleman to haul with the mariner
+and the mariner with the gentleman. I would know him that would refuse
+to set his hand to a rope--but I know there is not any such here.
+
+"Any who desire to go home may go in the _Marygold_, but let them take
+care that they do go home, for if I find them in my way I will sink
+them."
+
+Then beginning with Wynter he reduced every officer to the ranks
+forthwith, reprimanded known offenders, and wound up with this appeal:
+
+"We have set by the ears three mighty sovereigns, and if this voyage
+have not success we shall be a scorning unto our enemies and a blot on
+our country forever. What triumph would it not be for Spain and
+Portugal! The like of this would never more be tried!" Then he gave
+every man his former rank and dismissed them. Moone, meeting Will
+Harvest that night by the light of a bonfire, was the only man who dared
+venture a comment. "We was spoilin' for a lickin'," he said, "and we got
+it. I do hope and trust we'll keep out o' mischief till Frankie gets us
+home to Plymouth, Hol'." Will grinned back cheerfully, and there was a
+subdued laugh from the group about the fire. The fleet was itself again.
+
+Adventure after adventure succeeded, wilder than minstrel ever sang. The
+_Marygold_ went down with all hands; Wynter in the _Elizabeth_,
+believing the Admiral lost, turned homeward; the _Christopher_ and the
+_Swan_ had already been broken up. All alone the little _Golden Hynde_,
+blown southward, sailed around Cape Horn and proved the Antarctic
+continent a myth. Then Drake steered northward after more than two
+month's tossing on the uncharted seas, to revictual his ship in Spanish
+ports, fill his hold with the rich cargoes of one prize ship after
+another, and capture at last the great annual treasure-ship _Nuestra
+Señora de la Concepçion_, nicknamed the _Spitfire_ because she was
+better armed than most of the ships plying on that coast. As they
+ballasted the _Golden Hynde_ with silver from her huge hulk the jesting
+seamen dubbed her the _Spit-silver_. The little flagship was literally
+brimful of silver bars, ingots of gold, pieces of eight, and jewels
+whose value has never been accurately known. The Spanish Adelantados,
+accustomed to trust in their remoteness for defense, frantically looked
+for Drake everywhere except where he was. Warships hung about the
+Patagonian coast to catch him on his way home--surely he could not stay
+at sea forever!
+
+But Drake had other plans. Navigators were still searching for the
+northern passage, the Straits of Anian, and he coasted northward until
+his men were half paralyzed with cold and the creeping chill of the fog.
+From the latitude of Vancouver he turned south again, and put into a
+natural harbor not far from the present San Francisco, which he named
+New Albion because of the white cliffs like the chalk downs of England.
+Here he landed and made camp to refit and repair his flagship. He had
+captured on one prize, two China pilots in whose possession were all the
+secret charts of the Pacific trade.
+
+Indians ventured down from the mountains to the little fort and
+dockyard, wondering and admiring. Parson Fletcher presently came to the
+Admiral with the extraordinary news that they were worshiping the
+English as gods. Horror and laughter contended among the Puritans when
+they found themselves set up as idols of the heathen, and the chaplain
+endeavored by signs to teach the simple savages that the God whom all
+men should worship was invisible in the heavens.
+
+"'T only shows," remarked Moone, with a nail in one corner of his mouth,
+after vehemently dissuading a persistent adorer, "that a man never knows
+what he'll come to. Granny Toothacre used to say that if there's a thing
+you fight against all your life it'll come to you sooner or later."
+
+"So she did," said Drake with a grim smile as he passed. "Takes a woman
+to tell a fortune, after all."
+
+"D'you ever hear what become of the old Don we picked up that time?"
+Moone asked in a lowered voice.
+
+"Not since he sent Frankie the dagger with the gold work and the jewel.
+Why?"
+
+"'Cause the pilot o' the _Spit-silver_ he knowed un. He say the plague
+broke out in the Low Countries, and the old Don took and tended that
+Gallego servant o' his and then he died--not o' the pestilence--just
+wore out like. I reckon maybe he told Mus' Drake. I didn't."
+
+Silence fell. Then Will said thoughtfully, "He won't be Mus' Drake much
+longer--by rights--but you never know what a woman'll do. She keep her
+presents and her favors for them that ha'n't earned 'em--as a rule."
+
+Moone presently hummed half aloud,
+
+    "When I served my master I got my Sunday pudden,
+      When I served the Company I got my bread and cheese.
+    When I served the Queen I got hanged for a pirate,
+      All along o'sailin' on the Carib Seas!"
+
+It was a reckless jest, for every one knew that if Elizabeth were dead
+or married to a Catholic or at peace with Spain when they saw England
+again, it was extremely likely that the gallows would be their reward.
+But here, at any rate, was one spot not yet haunted by the Spanish
+spectre.
+
+The Indians, persuaded at last that the white chief was not a god,
+insisted on making him their King. They crowned him with a headdress of
+brilliant feathers, in all due ceremony, hung a chain of beads about his
+neck, and looked on with the utmost reverence while Drake fixed to a
+large upright post a tablet claiming the land for the Queen of England,
+and a silver sixpence with the portrait of Elizabeth and the Tudor rose.
+Securely hidden under the tablet in a hollow of the wood were memoranda
+concerning the direction in which, according to the Indians, gold was to
+be found in the streams,--plenty of gold. When she was ready to the last
+rope's end the little ship spread her wings and sailed straight across
+the Pacific, round the Cape of Good Hope, home to England.
+
+Battered and scarred but still seaworthy the _Golden Hynde_ crept into
+Plymouth Sound, where Drake heard that the plague was in the seaport.
+Using this for excuse not to land until he knew his footing, he anchored
+behind Saint Nicholas Island and sent letters to Court.
+
+The sea-dogs who patrolled the Narrow Seas in Elizabeth's time
+understood her better than her courtiers did. To Drake she was still the
+keen-minded woman who, like the jeweled silent birds he had seen in
+tropical jungles, sat in her palace, with enemies all about her alert
+and observant, and ready to seize her if she came within their grasp. He
+knew her waywardness to be half assumed, since to let an enemy know
+what he can count on is fatal. He had not much doubt of her action, but
+he must wait for her to give him his cue.
+
+Within a week came her answer. She demurely suggested that she should be
+pleased to see any curiosities which her good Captain had brought home.
+Drake went up to London, and with him a pack train laden with the cream
+of his spoil. The Spanish Ambassador Mendoza came with furious letters
+from Philip demanding the pirate's head. A Spanish force landed that
+very week in Ireland. Burleigh and the peace party were desperate. All
+that Mendoza could get out of Elizabeth was an order to Edmund Tremayne
+at Plymouth to register the cargo of the _Golden Hynde_ and send it up
+to London that she might see how much the pirate had really taken. At
+the same time Drake himself went down with her private letter to
+Tremayne telling him to look another way while her captain got his share
+of the bullion. Meanwhile she suggested that Philip call his Spaniards
+out of Ireland. Philip snarled that they were private volunteers.
+Elizabeth replied, so was Drake. An inquiry was held, and not a single
+act of cruelty or destruction of property could be proved against any of
+Drake's crews. The men were richly rewarded by their Admiral; the
+_Golden Hynde_ came up to Deptford; a list of the plunder was returned
+to Mendoza; and London waited, excited and curious.
+
+Out of this diplomatic tangle Elizabeth took her own way, as she usually
+did. On April 4, 1581, she suggested to Drake that she would be his
+guest at a banquet on board the little, worm-eaten ship. All the court
+was there, and a multitude of on-lookers besides, for those were the
+days when royalty sometimes dined in public. After the banquet, the
+like of which, as Mendoza wrote his master, had not been seen in England
+since the time of her father, Elizabeth requested Drake to hand her the
+sword she had given him before he left England. "The King of Spain
+demands the head of Captain Drake," she said with a little laugh, "and
+here am I to strike it off." As Drake knelt at her command she handed
+the sword to Marchaumont, the envoy of her French suitor, asking that
+since she was a woman and not trained to the use of weapons, he should
+give the accolade. This open defiance of Philip thus involved in her
+action the second Catholic power of Europe before all the world. Then,
+as Marchaumont gave the three strokes appointed the Queen spoke out
+clearly, while men thrilled with sudden presage of great days to come,--
+
+"Rise up,--Sir Francis Drake!"
+
+
+
+
+A WATCH-DOG OF ENGLAND
+
+
+    Where the Russian Bear stirs blindly in the leash of a mailéd hand,
+    Bright in the frozen sunshine, the domes of Moscow stand,
+
+    Scarlet and blue and crimson, blazing across the snow
+    As they did in the Days of Terror, three hundred years ago.
+
+    Courtiers bending before him, envoys from near and far,
+    Sat in his Hall of Audience Ivan the Terrible Tsar,
+
+    (He of the knout and torture, poison and sword and flame)
+    Yet unafraid before him the English envoy came.
+
+    And he was Sir Jeremy Bowes, born of that golden time
+    When in the soil of Conquest blossomed the flower of Rhyme.
+
+    Dauntless he fronted the Presence,--and the courtiers whispered low,
+    "Doth Elizabeth send us madmen, to tempt the torture so?"
+
+    "Have you heard of that foolhardy Frenchman?" Ivan the Terrible said,--
+    "He came before me covered,--I nailed his hat to his head."
+
+    Then spoke Sir Jeremy Bowes, "I serve the Virgin Queen,--
+    Little is she accustomed to vail her face, I ween.
+
+    "She is Elizabeth Tudor, mighty to bless or to ban,
+    Nor doth her envoy give over at the bidding of any man!
+
+    "Call to your Cossacks and hangmen,--do with me what ye please,
+    But ye shall answer to England when the news flies over seas."
+
+    Ivan smiled on the envoy,--the courtiers saw that smile,
+    Glancing one at the other, holding their breath the while.
+
+    Then spoke the terrible Ivan, "His Queen sits over sea,
+    Yet he hath bid me defiance,--would ye do as much for me?"
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+LORDS OF ROANOKE
+
+
+Primrose garlands in Coombe Wood shone with the pale gold of winter
+sunshine. Violets among dry leaves peered sedately at the pageant of
+spring. In the royal hunting forest of Richmond, venerable trees
+unfolded from their tiny buds canopies like the fairy pavilion of
+Paribanou.
+
+Philip Armadas and Arthur Barlowe, coming up from Kingston, beheld all
+this April beauty with the wistful pleasure of those who bid farewell to
+a dearly beloved land. Within a fortnight Sir Walter Ralegh's two ships,
+which they commanded, would be out upon the gray Atlantic. The Queen
+would lie at Richmond this night, and the two young captains had been
+bidden to court that she might see what manner of men they were.[1]
+
+Armadas, though born in Hull, was the son of a Huguenot refugee. Barlowe
+was English to the back-bone. Both knew more of the ways of ships than
+the ways of courts. Yet for all her magnificence and her tempers
+Elizabeth had a way with her in dealing with practical men. She welcomed
+merchants, builders, captains and soldiers as frankly as she did Italian
+scholars or French gallants. Her attention was as keen when she was
+framing a letter to the Grand Turk securing trade privileges to London
+or Bristol, as when she listened to the graceful flatteries of Spenser
+or Lyly. In this year 1584 she had granted a patent to Ralegh for
+further explorations of the lands north of Florida discovered half a
+century since by Sebastian Cabot. She heaped upon it rights and
+privileges which made Hatton and her other court gallants grind their
+teeth. Ralegh knew well that this was no time for him to be wandering
+about strange coasts. He was therefore fitting out an expedition to make
+a preliminary voyage and report to him what was found.
+
+"'T is like this," Armadas was saying with the buoyant confidence which
+endeared him alike to his patron and his comrade. "North you get the
+scurvy and south the fever, but midway is the climate for a new empire.
+There Englishmen may have timber for their shipyards, and pasture for
+their sheep and cattle, and meadows for their corn. There Flemings and
+Huguenots may live and work in peace. Our sons may be lords and princes
+of a new world, Arthur lad."
+
+"Aye; but there's the Inquisition in the Indies to reckon with,"
+answered Barlowe with his grim half-smile. "And if what we hear of the
+barbarians be true, the men who make the first plantation may be forced
+to plant and build with their left hand and keep their right for
+fighting."
+
+"Oh, the barbarians,--" Armadas began, and paused, for the chatter of
+young voices broke forth in a copse.
+
+"I tell thee salvages be hairy men with tails like monkeys. My uncle he
+has seen them on the Guinea coast."
+
+"Dick, if thou keep not off my heels in the passamezzo--"
+
+"Be not so cholerical, Tom Poope, or the Master'll give thee a tuning.
+Thou'rt not Lord of the Indies yet."
+
+"Faith," chuckled Barlowe, "here be some little eyasses practising a
+fantasy for the Queen's pleasure. Hey, lads, what's all the pother
+about?"[2]
+
+The company emerged half-shamefacedly from the shrubbery, a group of
+youngsters between ten and fourteen, in fanciful costumes of silk and
+brocade, or mimic armor and puffed doublets. The central figure of the
+group was a handsome little lad in a sort of tunic of hairy undressed
+goatskin, a feather head-dress and gilded ornaments. His dark face had a
+sullen look, and he grasped his lance as if about to use it. Another
+urchin, whose great arched eyebrows, rolling eyes and impish mouth
+marked him as the clown of the company, made answer boldly,
+
+"'T is Tom Poope, your lordships, who mislikes the dress he must wear,
+and says if we have but a king and queen of the monkeys to welcome the
+discoverers, the Queen will only laugh at us, and 'a will not stay to be
+laughed at. 'T is a masque of the ventures of Captain Cabot, look you,
+and Tom's the King of the salvages and makes all the long speeches."
+
+"Upon my word, coz," laughed Armadas, "I think we have stumbled upon a
+pretty conceit intended to do honor to our master. Methinks His Royal
+Highness here has the right on't--the man who made that costume never
+saw true Indians."
+
+"Have you seen them, then, sir? Are you a voyager?" asked Tom Poope
+eagerly, his face brightening. "And will you look on and tell us if we
+do it right?"
+
+Barlowe grinned good-humoredly, and Armadas waved a laughing assent.
+They seated themselves upon a grassy bank and the play began.
+
+Before half a dozen speeches had been said it was quite clear that the
+dark-eyed child who played the Indian King was the heart and fire of the
+piece. They were all clever children and well trained, but he alone
+lived his part. His small figure moved with a grace and dignity that
+even his grotesque apparel could not spoil. The costumer had evidently
+built his design for the costume of an Indian chief upon legends of wild
+men drawn from the history of Hanno and his gorillas, adding whatever
+absurdities he had gathered from sailors of the Gold Coast and the
+Caribbean Sea. Armadas, who had made a voyage to Newfoundland and seen
+the stately figure of a sachem outlined against a sunset sky, thought
+that the boy's instinct was truer than the costumer's tradition.
+
+"Let me arrange thy habit, lad," he said when the first scene ended and
+the clown began his dance. With a few deft touches, ripping down one
+side of the tunic and wreathing a girdle of ivy and bracken, he changed
+the whole outline of the figure. With the hairy tunic draped as a cloak,
+and the ungainly plumed head-dress arranged as a warrior's crest, the
+character which had been almost ridiculous became heroic, as the author
+of the masque evidently had intended. The little King's beautiful voice
+changed like the singing of a Cremona violin as he spoke his lines to
+the white stranger:
+
+    "To this our wild domain we welcome thee
+    In honorable hospitality.
+    If Thou dost come as the great Lord of Life,
+    The Lord of bear and wolf, and stag and fox,
+    Leopard and ape, and rabbits of the rocks,
+    We are thy children, as our brothers are,--
+    The furry folk of forest fastnesses,
+    The bright-winged birds that wanton with the breeze,
+    The seal that sport amid the sapphire seas.
+    We worship gods of lightning and of thunder,
+    Of winds and hissing waves, the rainbow's wonder,
+    The fruits and grains, borne by the kindly earth,
+    And all the mysteries of death and birth.
+    Say who you are, and from what realm you hail,
+    White spirits that in winged peraguas sail?
+    If ye be angels, tell us of your heaven.
+    If ye be men, tell us who is your King."
+
+It was not a long play, and had been written by a court poet especially
+for the children, of whose acting the Queen was fond. There were dances
+and songs--a sailor's contra-dance to the music of a horn pipe, a
+stately passamezzo by the Indian court, a madrigal and an ode in
+compliment to the Queen.[3] Finally the leader of the white men planted
+the banner of England on the little knoll, and in the name of his
+sovereign received the homage of the Indians. The last notes of the
+final chorus had just died away when trumpets called from the Thames,
+and the scene melted into chaos. Off ran the players, cramming costumes
+and properties into their wallets as they went, to see the Queen land at
+the water-gate. Amadas and Barlowe took the same direction less
+hurriedly.
+
+"I wonder now," said Armadas thoughtfully, "how much of prophecy there
+may have been in that mascarado? Do you know, old lad, we may be taken
+for gods ourselves in two months' time? God grant they think us not
+devils before we are done!"
+
+"We need have no fear if no Spaniards have landed on that coast before
+us," said Barlowe stolidly. "If they have--no poetical speeches will
+help our cause."
+
+The Queen's great gilded barge with its crimson hangings came sweeping
+up the river just as they joined the company drawn up to receive her.
+The tall graceful figure of Ralegh was nearest her, and when she set
+her small neat foot upon the stone step it was his hand which she
+accepted to steady her in landing. She was a sovereign every inch even
+in her traveling cloak, but when dinner was over, and she took her seat
+in the throne-room, she dazzled the eye with the splendor of gold and
+pearl network over brilliant velvets, the glitter of diamonds among the
+frost-work of Flanders lace. Elizabeth knew how to stage the great Court
+drama as well as any Master of the Revels.
+
+Moreover, what the Queen did, set the fashion for all the courtiers, to
+the profit and prosperity of merchants and craftsmen. Earls might
+secretly writhe at the prospect of entertaining their sovereign with
+suitable magnificence, but the tradesmen and purveyors rubbed their
+hands. When a company of Flemings was employed for four years on the
+carving of the beams and panels of the Middle Temple Hall, or noblemen
+to be in the fashion built new banquet-rooms in the Italian style, with
+long windows and galleries, English, Flemish and Huguenot builders
+flocked to the kingdom. If she took with one hand she gave with the
+other, and it was not without reason that the common folk of England
+long after she was dead called their daughters after "good Queen Bess."
+
+To Armadas and Barlowe it was a novel and splendid pageant. After they
+were presented to the Queen, and expressed their modest thanks for the
+honor of being sent upon her service, they withdrew to a window-recess
+to watch the company. The gentlemen pensioners in gold-embroidered suits
+and lace-edged ruffs, the dignified councilors in richer if darker
+robes, the maids of honor, bright as damask roses moving in the wind,
+all circled around one pale woman with keen gray-blue eyes that never
+betrayed her. A little apart, speaking now and then to some courtier or
+councilor, stood the Spanish Ambassador in somber black and gold, like a
+watchful spider in a garden of rich flowers. Ralegh, careless and
+debonair, gave him a frank salutation as he came to speak to his
+captains.
+
+"You may repent of the venture and wish to stay at Court," he said
+smiling. "The Queen thinks well of ye."
+
+"Not I," growled Barlowe, and Armadas laughed, "My Lord, do you think so
+ill of us as to deem us weathercocks in the wind?"
+
+"You must take care to avoid the clutches of the Inquisition," Ralegh
+added, not lowering his voice noticeably, yet not speaking loud enough
+to be heard by others. "I have hastened the fitting out of the ships and
+delayed your coming to Court lest Philip's ferrets be set on you. The
+life of Kings and Queens is like to a game of chess."
+
+"Of primero rather, it seems to me," said Armadas, "or the game the
+Spanish call ombre. Chess is brain against brain, fair play. In the
+other one may win the game by the fall of the cards--or by cheatery."[4]
+
+"A good simile, Philip," said Ralegh, with shining eyes. "'T is all very
+well to say, as some do, that if old King Harry were alive he'd have our
+Englishmen out of Spanish prisons. But in his day Spain had hardly begun
+her conquests over seas, and the Inquisition had not tasted English
+blood. It was Philip that taught our men primero--and the best player is
+he who can bluff, so playing his hand that his enemy guesses not the
+truth. And the stake in this game is--Empire."
+
+Ralegh's head lifted as if he saw visions. In silence the three
+joined the company now assembling to see the masque of the children.
+Bravely it went, nimbly the dancers footed it, sweetly rang the
+choruses, and well did the little chief and captain play their parts. At
+the end the Queen, saying in merry courtesy that she could do no less
+for him who had found her a kingdom and him who freely gave it,
+presented a ring set with a carnelian heart to Hal Kempe who played
+Cabot, but about the neck of Tom Poope she hung a golden chain, for if
+he had to wear her fetters, she said, they should at least be golden.
+And so the play came to an end, and work began.
+
+[Illustration: "IF HE HAD TO WEAR HER FETTERS, THEY SHOULD AT LEAST BE
+GOLDEN."--_Page_ 245]
+
+On April 27, with a fair wind, the two ships of Ralegh's venture went
+down to the Channel and out upon the western ocean. They had good
+fortune, for not a Spaniard crossed their course. Nine weeks later they
+sighted the coast which the French had once called Carolina. Before they
+were near enough to see it well they caught the scent of a wilderness of
+flowering vines and trees blown seaward, and as they neared the shore
+they saw tall cedars and goodly cypresses, pines and oaks and many other
+trees, some of them quite unknown to English soil. It is written in
+Armadas's journal that the wild grapes were so abundant near the sea
+that sometimes the waves washed over them; and the sands were yellow as
+gold. The first time that an arquebus was fired, great flocks of birds
+rose from the trees, screaming all together like the shouting of an
+army, but there seemed to be no fierce beasts nor indeed any large
+animals.
+
+"With kine, sheep, cattle, and poultry, and such herbs and grain as can
+be brought from England," said Armadas, "this land would sure be a
+paradise on earth."
+
+"You forget the serpent," returned Barlowe, who had been reared by a
+Puritan grandfather and knew his Bible.
+
+"I am not likely to forget our great enemy while the name of Ribault or
+Coligny remains unforgotten," said the other. "All the more reason why
+this land should be kept for the Religion."
+
+Indeed when they landed they found little in the country or the people
+to recall Adam's doom. They set up their English standard upon an island
+and took possession of the domain in the name of Elizabeth of England.
+This island the Indians called Wocoken, and the inlet where the ships
+lay, Ocracoke. They went inland as the guests of the native chiefs, and
+on the island of Roanoke they were entertained by the people of Wingina
+the king, most kindly and hospitably. The sea remained smooth and
+pleasant and the air neither very hot nor very cold, but sweet and
+wholesome. Manteo and Wanchese, two of the Indian warriors, chose to
+sail away with the white men, and in good time the ships returning
+reached Plymouth harbor, early in September of that year. Manteo was
+made Lord of Roanoke, the first and the last of the American Indians to
+bear an English title to his wild estate. The new province was named
+Virginia, with the play upon words favored in that day, for it was a
+virgin country, and its sovereign was the Virgin Queen.
+
+When the two captains came again to London they found the air full of
+the intriguings of Spain. In that year Santa Cruz had organized a plot
+against the Queen's life, discovered almost by chance; in that year it
+became clear that Philip's long chafing against the growing sea-power of
+England and his hatred of such rangers as Drake and Hawkins must sooner
+or later blaze up in war. And by chance also Armadas learned how narrow
+had been their own escape from a Spanish prison.
+
+He had been the guest of a friend at the acting of Master Lyly's new
+masque by the Children of the Chapel at Gray's Inn. Little Tom Poope
+sang Apelles's song and ruffled it afterward among the ladies of the
+court, as lightly as Essex himself. Armadas came out into the dank
+Thames air humming over the dainty verses,--
+
+    "'At last he staked her all his arrows.
+    His mother's doves, and team of sparrows--'"
+
+A small hand slid into his own and pulled him toward a byway.
+
+"Why, how is it with thee, Master Poope? Didst play thy part bravely,
+lad."
+
+"Come," said the boy in a low breathless voice. "I have somewhat to tell
+thee. In here," and he drew Armadas toward a doorway. "'T is my mother's
+lodging--there is nothing to fear."
+
+A woman let them in as if she had been watching for them, opened the
+door into a small plainly furnished private room and vanished.
+
+"Art not going on any more voyages to the Virginias?" asked the boy, his
+eager eyes on the Captain's face.
+
+"Not for the present, my boy. Why? Wouldst like to sail with us, and
+learn more of the ways of Indian Princes?"
+
+"Nay, I have no time for fooling--they'll miss me," said the youngster
+impatiently. "The Spanish Ambassador has his spies upon thee, and thou
+must leave a false scent for them to smell out. He sent his report on
+thee, eight months ago."
+
+"Before we sailed to Roanoke?" queried Armadas with lifted brows.
+
+"Before thou went to Richmond that day. His Excellency quizzed me after
+the masque and asked me did I know when the ships sailed and whither
+they were bound, believing me to be cozened by his gold. I told him they
+were for Florida to find the fountain of youth for the Queen, and would
+sail on May-day!"
+
+A grin of pure delight widened the boy's face, and he wriggled in
+gleeful remembrance where he perched, on a tall oaken chair. "Oh, they
+will swallow any bait, those gudgeons, and some day their folly will be
+the end of them. I would not have them catch thee if they could be
+fooled, and well did I fool them, I tell thee!"
+
+"For--heaven's--sake!" stammered Armadas in amazement. "Little friend,"
+he added gently, "it seems to me that we owe thee life and honor. But
+why didst do it?"
+
+"Why?" The boy's fine dark brows bent in a quick frown. "What a pox
+right had they to be tempting me to be false to the salt that I and they
+had eaten? I hate all Spaniards. I'd ha' done it any way," he added
+shyly, "for to win our game, but I did it for love o' thee because thou
+took my part about the mascarado."
+
+"I think," said Armadas as he took from his wallet a bracelet of Indian
+shell-work hung with baroque pearls, "that all our fine plans would ha'
+come to naught but for thy wise head, young 'un. These be pearls from
+the Virginias, and if you find 'em scorched, that's only because the
+heathen know no other way of opening the oyster-shell but by fire. The
+beads are such as they use for money and call roanoke. The gold of the
+Spanish mines can buy men maybe, but it does not buy such loyalty as
+thine, that's sure. I have no gold to give, lad,--but wear this for a
+love-token. And I think that could the truth be known, the Queen herself
+would freely name thee Lord of Roanoke."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] The name is variously spelled Armadas, Amidas and Amadas. The form
+here used is that of the earliest records. The same is true of the
+spelling "Ralegh."
+
+[2] Companies of children under various names were often employed in the
+acting of plays in the time of Elizabeth. These are the "troops of
+children, little eyasses" alluded to by Shakespeare in "Hamlet." They
+sometimes acted in plays written for them by Lyly and others, and
+sometimes in the popular dramas of the day. Ben Jonson wrote a charming
+epitaph on Salathiel Pavy, one of these little actors, who died at
+thirteen.
+
+[3] The passamezzo, passy-measure or half-measure was a popular
+Elizabethan dance, like the coranto and lavolta.
+
+[4] Primero, or ombre, is said to be the ancestor of our modern game of
+poker. An interesting account of its origin and variations will be found
+in Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer's "Prophetical, Educational and Playing
+Cards."
+
+
+
+
+THE CHANGELINGS
+
+
+    Out on the road to Fairyland where the dreaming children go,
+    There's a little inn at the Sign of the Rose, that all the fairies
+      know,
+    For Titania lodged in that tavern once, and betwixt the night and
+      the day
+    The children that crowded about her there, she stole their hearts away!
+
+    Peaseblossom, Moth and Mustardseed, Agate and Airymouse too,
+    Once were children that laughed and played as children always do,
+    But when Titania kissed their lips, and crowned them with daffodil gold
+    They never forgot what she whispered them, they never knew how to grow
+      old!
+
+    Mothers that wonder why little lads forget their homely ways,
+    And little maids put their dolls aside and take to acting plays,
+    Ah, let them be kings and queens awhile, for there's nothing sad or
+      mean
+    In their innocent thought, and their crowns were wrought by the touch
+      o' the Fairy Queen!
+
+    Close to the heart o' the world they come, the children who know the
+      way
+    To the little low gateway under the rose, where 't is neither night
+      nor day.
+    They see what others can never guess, they hear what we cannot hear,
+    And the loathly dragons that waste our life they never learn to fear.
+
+    The little inn at the Sign of the Rose,--ah, who can forget the place
+    Where Titania danced with the children small and lent them her elfin
+      grace?
+    And wherever they go and whatever they do in the years that turn them
+      gray
+    They never forget the charm she said when she stole their hearts away!
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE GARDENS OF HELÊNE
+
+
+"Is there not any saint of the kitchen, at all?" asked the serious-eyed
+little demoiselle sorting herbs under the pear-tree. Old Jacqueline,
+gathering the tiny fagots into her capacious apron, chuckled wisely.
+
+"There should be, if there isn't. Perhaps the good God thinks that the
+men will take care that there are kitchens, without His help." She
+hobbled briskly into the house. Helêne sat for a few minutes with hands
+folded, her small nose alert as a rabbit's to the marvelous blend of
+odors in the hot sunshiny air.
+
+It was a very agreeable place, that old French garden. There had been a
+kitchen-garden on that very spot for more than five hundred years; at
+least, so said Monsieur Lescarbot the lawyer, and he knew all about the
+history of the world. A part of the old wall had been there in the days
+of the First Crusade, and the rest looked as if it had. When Henry of
+Navarre dined at the Guildhall, before Ivry, they had come to Jacqueline
+for poultry and seasoning. She could show you exactly where she gathered
+the parsley, the thyme, the marjoram, the carrots and the onion for the
+stuffing, and from which tree the selected chestnuts came. A white hen
+proudly promenading the yard at this moment was the direct descendant of
+the fowl chosen for the King's favorite dish of _poulet en casserole_.
+
+But the common herbs were far from being all that this garden held.
+Besides the dozen or more herbs and as many vegetables which all cooks
+used, there were artichokes, cucumbers, peppers of several kinds,
+marigolds, rhubarb, and even two plants of that curious Peruvian
+vegetable with the golden-centered creamy white flowers, called
+po-té-to. Jacqueline's husband, who had been a sea-captain, had brought
+those roots from Brazil, and she,--Helêne,--who was very little then,
+had disgraced herself by gathering the flowers for a nosegay. It was
+after that that Jacqueline had begun to teach her what each plant was
+good for, and how it must be fed and tended. Helêne had grown to feel
+that every plant, shrub or seedling was alive and had thoughts. In the
+delightful fairy tales that Monsieur Marc Lescarbot told her they were
+alive, and talked of her when they left their places at night and held
+moonlight dances.
+
+Lescarbot's thin keen face with the bald forehead and humorous eyes
+appeared now at the grille in the green door. He swept off his béret and
+made a deep bow. "Mademoiselle la bien-aimée de la bonne Sainte Marthe,"
+he said gravely, "may I come in?"
+
+He had a new name for her every time he came, usually a long one. "But
+why Sainte Marthe?" she asked, running to let him in.
+
+"She is the patron saint of cooks and housewives, petite. A good cook
+can do anything. Sainte Marthe entertained the blessed Lord in her own
+home, and was the first nun of the sisterhood she founded. Moreover when
+she was preaching at Aix a fearful dragon by the name of Tarasque
+inhabited the river Rhone, and came out each night to devastate the
+country until Sainte Marthe was the means of his--conversion."
+
+"Oh, go on!" cried Helêne, and Lescarbot sat down on the old bench
+under the pear-tree and began to help with the herbs.
+
+"Sainte Marthe was an excellent cook, and the first thing she did when
+she founded her convent was to plant a kitchen-garden. On Saint John's
+Eve she went into the garden and watered each plant with holy water,
+blessing it in the use of God. People came from miles around to get
+roots and seeds from the garden and to ask for Sainte Marthe's recipes
+for broths and cordials for the sick. Often they brought roots of such
+plants as rhubarb and--er--marigold, which had been imported from
+heathen countries, to be blessed and made wholesome." Lescarbot's eye
+rested on the potato plant, which he distrusted.
+
+"Well. The dragon prowled around and around the convent walls, but of
+course he could not come in. At last he pretended to be sick and sent
+for Sainte Marthe to come and cure him. As soon as she set eyes on him
+she knew what a wicked lie he had told, and resolved to punish him for
+his impudence. Of course all he wanted of her was to get her recipes for
+sauces and stews so that he might cook and eat his victims without
+having indigestion--which is what a good sauce is for. Sainte Marthe
+promised to make him some broth if he would do no harm while she was
+gone, and just to make sure he kept his promise she made him hold out
+his fore-paws and tied them hard and fast with her girdle, while he sat
+with his fore-legs around his--er--knees, and her broomstick thrust
+crosswise between. Then she got out her largest kettle and made a good
+savory broth of all the herbs in her garden--there were three hundred
+and sixty-five kinds. She knew that if he drank it all, the blessed
+herbs would work such a change in his inside that he would be like a
+lamb forever after.
+
+"But one thing neither she nor Tarasque had thought of, and that was,
+that the broth was hot. Of course he always took his food and drink very
+cold. When he smelled its delicious fragrance he opened his mouth wide,
+and she poured it hissing hot down his throat, and it melted him into a
+famous bubbling spring. People go there to be cured of colic."
+
+Helêne drew a long breath. She did not believe that Lescarbot had found
+that story in any book of legends of the saints, but she liked it none
+the worse for that.
+
+"I wonder if Sainte Marthe blessed this garden?" she said.
+
+"I have no doubt she did, and that is why it flourishes from Easter to
+Michaelmas. But I came to-day for a potato. Sieur de Monts desires to
+see one and to understand the method of its cultivation."
+
+"Oh, I know that," cried Helêne, eagerly, and she took one of the queer
+brown roots from the willow basket by the wall. "See, these are its
+eyes, one, two, three--seven eyes in this one. You must cut it in
+pieces, as many pieces as it has eyes, and plant each piece separately;
+and from each eye springs a plant."
+
+"Ah!" said Lescarbot gravely, and he put the potato in his wallet.
+
+For two years Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, and the valiant gentlemen
+Samuel de Champlain, Bienville de Poutrincourt, and others of his
+company, had been striving to maintain a settlement in the grant of La
+Cadie or L'Acadie, between the fortieth and forty-sixth degrees of north
+latitude in the New World, of which the King had made De Monts
+Lieutenant-General. De Monts engaged Champlain, who had already
+explored those coasts, as chief geographer, and the merchant Pontgravé
+was in charge of a store-ship laden with supplies. Fearing the severe
+winter of the St. Lawrence, the party steered south along the coast and
+anchored in a tranquil and beautiful harbor surrounded with forest,
+green lowlands, and hills laced with waterfalls. In his delight with the
+place Poutrincourt declared that he would ask nothing better than to
+make it his home; and he received a grant of the harbor, which he named
+Port Royal. The expedition finally came to rest on an island in a river
+flowing into Passamaquoddy Bay, where they began their settlement. Their
+wooden buildings--a house for their viceroy, one for Champlain and other
+gentlemen, barracks, lodgings, workshops and storehouses,--surrounded a
+square in the middle of which one fine cedar was left standing, while a
+belt of them remained to hedge the island from the north winds. The work
+done, Poutrincourt set sail for France, leaving seventy-nine men to
+spend the winter at Ile Sainte-Croix. Scurvy broke out, and before
+spring almost half the company were in their graves. Spring came, but no
+help from France. It was June 16 before Poutrincourt returned with forty
+men, and two days later Champlain set sail in a fifteen-ton barque with
+De Monts and several others, to explore the coast and discover if
+possible a better place for the colony. They went as far south as Nauset
+Harbor, and Champlain made charts and kept a journal quaintly
+illustrated with figures drawn and painted; but De Monts found no place
+that suited him. Then he bethought himself of the deep sheltered harbor
+of Port Royal, and they removed everything to that new site, on the
+north side of the basin below the mouth of a little river which they
+called the Équille. Even parts of the buildings were taken across the
+Bay of Fundy. But a ship from France brought news to De Monts that
+enemies at court were working against his Company, and leaving Pontgravé
+in command he and Poutrincourt returned home, to see what they could do
+to further the interests of the colony in Paris. Among other things
+Champlain, who had tried without success to make a garden in the sandy
+soil of the island, begged them to provide the settlers with seeds,
+roots, cuttings and implements by which they might raise grain and
+vegetables and other provisions for themselves. This would improve the
+health and also reduce the expenses of the colony, and the land about
+the new site was well adapted for cultivation.
+
+Poutrincourt, foregathering with his friend Lescarbot soon after the
+lawyer had lost nearly all he possessed in a suit, recounted to him the
+woes of the colony, and found with pleasure that in spite of the doleful
+history of the last two years Lescarbot was eager to seek a new career
+in New France.
+
+Helêne came running in one morning in the early spring of 1606, to find
+old Jacqueline on the steps of the root-cellar with a heap of sprouting
+potatoes beside her. Lescarbot was packing away in a panier such as she
+gave him, while under the whitening pear-tree a donkey stood, sleepily
+shaking his ears as he waited for orders.
+
+"Oh, what are you doing, Uncle Marc?" she cried.
+
+"Making ready to go to the land beyond the sunset, Mademoiselle la
+Princesse du Jardin de Paradis," he said smiling. "Sit down while the
+good mother gets the packets of seeds she promised me, and I will tell
+you a story."
+
+All curiosity and wonder, the little maid settled herself on the ancient
+worm-eaten bench, and Lescarbot began.
+
+"It happened one day that men came and told the King that a great realm
+lay beyond the seas, where only wild men and animals lived, and that
+this realm was all his. Now the wild men were not good for anything, for
+they had never been taught anything, but since the winters in that
+country were very cold the animals wore fur coats. The King called to
+him a Chief Huntsman and told him that he might go and collect tribute
+from the fur coats of the animals, and that after he had given the King
+his share, the fur coats of all the animals belonged to him."
+
+"Did the animals know it?"
+
+"I think they did, for they were accustomed to having men try to take
+away their fur coats. All the other hunters were very angry when they
+found that the King had given this order, but the Chief Huntsman told
+them that they might have a share in the hunting, only they must ask his
+permission and pay tribute to the King; and that satisfied them for a
+while.
+
+"The Chief Huntsman sailed to the far country and built a castle for
+himself and his men, and when winter came they found that it was indeed
+very cold--so cold that the wine and the cider froze and had to be given
+out by the pound instead of the pint. But that was not the worst of it.
+There was a dragon."
+
+Helêne's blue eyes grew round with interest.
+
+"A dragon whose poisonous breath tainted the food and caused a terrible
+plague. They prayed to Saint Luke the Physician for help, and he
+appeared to them in a vision and said, 'I cannot do anything for you so
+long as you eat not good food. God made man to live in a garden, not to
+fill himself with salt fish and salt meat and dry bread.' But they could
+not plant a garden in the middle of winter, and they had to wait. When
+the ship went back to France a gallant captain--named Samuel de
+Champlain--sent a letter to a friend of his in France, praying him to
+send a gardener with seeds, roots and cuttings that there might be good
+broths and tisanes and sauces to work magic against the dragon that he
+slay no more of their folk. And, little Helêne, I am filling a pair of
+paniers with those roots and those seeds, and I am going to be a
+gardener beyond the sunset."
+
+Helêne looked grave. To find her friend and playfellow suddenly dropped
+away from her into the middle of a fairy-tale was rather terrifying, but
+it was also thrilling. She slipped down from the bench.
+
+"You shall have cuttings from my very own rose-bushes," said she; and at
+her direction Lescarbot took up very carefully small rose-shoots that
+had rooted themselves around the great bushes,--bushes that bore roses
+white with a faint flush, white with a golden-creamy heart, pure
+snow-white, sunrise pink and deep glowing crimson with a purple shade.
+
+If Lescarbot had been a superstitious man, he might have been inclined
+to gloom during his first sea-voyage, for the ship in which he and
+Poutrincourt set sail from Rochelle on the thirteenth of May, 1606, was
+called the _Jonas_. But instead he joined in all the diversions possible
+in their two months' voyage--harpooning porpoises, fishing for cod off
+the Banks, or dancing on the deck in calm weather,--and in his leisure
+kept a lively and entertaining journal of the adventure. They ran into
+dense fog in which they could see nothing; they saw, when the mist
+cleared, a green and lovely shore, but before it fierce and dangerous
+rocks on which the breakers pounded. Then a storm broke, with rolling
+thunder like a salute of cannon. At last on July 27 they sailed into the
+narrow channel at the entrance of the harbor of Port Royal.
+
+The flag of France, with its golden lilies on a white ground, gleamed in
+the noon sunlight as they came up the bay toward the little group of
+wooden buildings in the edge of the forest. Not a man was to be seen on
+the silent shore; a birch canoe, with one old Indian in it, hovered near
+the landing. A great fear gripped the hearts of Bienville de
+Poutrincourt and Marc Lescarbot. Were Pontgravé and Champlain all dead
+with their people? Had help come too late?
+
+Then from the bastion of the rude fortifications a cannon barked salute,
+and a Frenchman with a gun in his hand came running down to the beach.
+The ship's guns returned the salute, and the trumpets sang loud greeting
+to whoever might be there to hear.
+
+When they had landed they learned what had happened. There were only two
+Frenchmen in the fort; Pontgravé and the others, fearing that the supply
+ship would never arrive, had gone twelve days before in two small ships
+of their own building to look for some of the French fishing fleet who
+might have provisions. The two who remained had volunteered to stay and
+guard the buildings and stores. There was a village of friendly Indians
+near by, and the chief, Membertou, who was more than a hundred years
+old, had seen the distant sail of the _Jonas_ and come to warn the white
+men, who were at dinner. Not knowing whether the strange ship came in
+peace or war, one of the comrades had gone to the platform on which the
+cannon were mounted, and stood ready to do what he could in defense,
+while the other ran down to the shore. When they saw the French flag at
+the mast-head the cannon spoke joyfully in salute.
+
+All was now eager life and activity. Poutrincourt sent out a boat to
+explore the coast, which met the two little ships of Pontgravé and
+Champlain and told the great news. Lescarbot, exploring the meadows
+under the guidance of some of Membertou's people, saw moose with their
+young feeding peacefully upon the lush grass, and beavers building their
+curious habitations in a swamp. Pontgravé took his departure for France
+in the _Jonas_, and Champlain and Poutrincourt began making plans.
+
+The winter in Port Royal had been less severe than the terrible first
+winter of the settlement, on the St. Croix, but the two leaders decided
+to take one of the ramshackle little ships and make another exploring
+voyage along the coast, to see whether some more comfortable site for
+the colony could not be found. There was plenty of leeway to the
+southward, for De Monts was supposed to control everything as far south
+as the present site of Philadelphia; but the coast had never been
+accurately charted by the French further south than Cape Cod.
+
+Lescarbot, who was to command at Port Royal in their absence, had
+already laid out his kitchen-garden and set about spading and planting
+it. The kitchen, the smithy and the bakery were on the south side of the
+quadrangle around which the wooden buildings stood; east of them was the
+arched gateway, protected by a sort of bastion of log-work, from which a
+path led to the water a few paces away; and west of them another bastion
+matched it, mounting the four cannon. The storehouses for ammunition and
+provisions were on the eastern side; on the west were the men's
+quarters, and on the north, a dining-hall and lodgings for the chief men
+of the company, who now numbered fifteen. Lescarbot set some of the men
+to burning over the meadows that they might sow wheat and barley; others
+broke up new soil for the herbs, roots and cuttings he had brought, and
+he himself, hoe in hand, was busiest of all.
+
+"Do not overtask yourself," warned Poutrincourt, pausing beside the
+thin, pale-faced man who knelt in the long shadows of the rainy dawn
+among his neatly-arranged plots. "If you are too zealous you may never
+see France again." Lescarbot laughed and dug a little grave in his
+plantation. "What in heaven's name are those?"
+
+"Potatoes," answered the lawyer-gardener. "The Peruvian root they are
+planting in Ireland."
+
+"But you do not expect to get a crop this year--and in this climate?"
+
+"I don't expect anything at all. I am making the experiment. If they
+come up, good; if they do not, I have seed enough for next year."
+
+The potatoes came up. It was an unusually hot summer, and the situation
+was favorable. If Lescarbot had known the habits of the vegetable he
+might not have thought of putting them into the ground on the last day
+of July, but they grew and flourished, and their odd ivory-and-gold
+blossoms were charming. Lescarbot worked all day in the bracing sunlit
+air, and now and then he hoed and transplanted by moonlight. In the
+evening he read, wrote, or planned out the next day's program.
+
+September came, with cool bright days and a hint of frost at night; the
+lawyer marshalled his forces and harvested the crops. The storehouses,
+already stocked with Pontgravé's abundant provision, were filled to
+overflowing, and they had to dig a makeshift cellar or root-pit under a
+rough shelter for the last of their produce. The potatoes were carefully
+bestowed in huge hampers provided by Membertou's people, who were
+greatly interested in all that the white men did. Old Jacqueline had
+said that they needed "room to breathe," and Lescarbot was taking no
+chances on this unknown American product.
+
+October came; the Indians showed the white men how to grind corn, and
+the carpenters planned a water-mill to be constructed in the spring, to
+take the place of the tedious hand-mill worked by two men. Wild geese
+flew overhead, recalling to the Frenchmen the legends of Saint Gabriel's
+hounds. The forests robed themselves in hues like those of a priceless
+Kashmir shawl, and the squirrels, martens, beavers, otters, weasels,
+which the hunters brought in were in their winter coats. But the
+exploring party had not returned. Lescarbot, who had occupied spare
+moments in preparing a surprise for them when they did return, and
+carefully drilled the men in their parts, began to be secretly anxious.
+But on the morning of November 14, old Membertou, who had appointed
+himself an informal sentinel to patrol the waters near the fort,
+appeared with the news that the chiefs were coming back.
+
+All was excitement in a moment, although Lescarbot privately had to
+admit that he could not even see a sail, to say nothing of recognizing
+the boat or its occupants. But the long-sighted old sagamore was right.
+The party of adventurers, their craft considerably the worse for the
+journey, steering with a pair of oars in place of a rudder, reached the
+landing-place and battered, weary and dilapidated, came up to the fort.
+They were surprised and disappointed to see no one about except a few
+curious Indians peeping from the woods.
+
+As they neared the wooden gateway it was suddenly flung open, and out
+marched a procession of masquers, headed by Neptune in full costume of
+shell-fringed robe, diadem, trident, and garlands of kelp and sea-moss,
+attended by tritons grotesquely attired, and fauns, reinforced by a
+growing audience of Indians, squaws and papooses. This merry company
+greeted the wanderers with music, song and some excellent French verse
+written by Lescarbot for the occasion. Refreshed with laughter and the
+relief of finding all so well conducted, Champlain, Poutrincourt and
+their men went in to have something to eat and drink. Then they spent
+the rest of the day hearing and telling the story of the last three
+months.
+
+It is written down, adorned with drawings, in the journals of Champlain,
+and it was all told over as the men sat around their blazing fires and
+talked, all together, while a light November snow flurried in the air
+outside.
+
+"So you see we lost our rudder in a storm off Mount Désert--" "And the
+autumn gales drove us back before we had fairly passed Port Fortuné--"
+"It came near being Port Malheur for us, and it was for Pierre and
+Jacques le Malouin, poor fellows. They and three others stayed ashore
+for the night and hundreds of Indians attacked them,--oh, but hundreds.
+Well, we heard the uproar--naturally it waked us in a hurry--and up we
+jumped and snatched any weapon that was handy, and piled into the boat
+in our shirts. Two of the shore party were killed and we saw the other
+three running for their boat for dear life, all stuck over with arrows
+like hedgehogs, my faith! So then we landed and charged the Indians, who
+must have thought we were ghosts, for they left off whooping and ran for
+the woods. Our provisions were so far spent that we thought it best to
+return after that, and in any case--it would be as bad, would it not, to
+die of Indians as to die of scurvy?"
+
+"But tell me, my dear fellow," said Champlain when the happy hubbub had
+a little subsided, "how have your gardens prospered? Truly I need not
+ask, in view of the abundance of the dinner you gave us."
+
+Lescarbot smiled. "I think that the saints must have whispered to the
+little plants," he said whimsically, "or else they knew that they must
+grow their best for the honor of France. But perhaps it is not strange.
+I had the seeds and roots from the garden of Helêne."
+
+"And who is Helêne?" asked Champlain with interest. Lescarbot explained.
+
+"It was really wonderful," he said in conclusion, "to see how careful
+she was to remember every herb and plant which might be useful, and to
+ask Jacqueline for some especial recipes for cordials and tisanes for
+the sick. And by the way, Jacqueline told me that the sea-captains
+regard potatoes as especially good to prevent or cure scurvy."
+
+In any case the potato was popular among the exiled Frenchmen. They ate
+it boiled, they ate it parboiled, sliced and fried in deep kettles of
+fat, they ate it in stews, and they ate it--and liked it best of
+all--roasted in the ashes. Jacqueline had said that the water in which
+the root was boiled must always be thrown away, which showed that there
+was something uncanny about it, but whether it was due to the potatoes
+or the general variety of the bill of fare, there was not a case of
+scurvy in the camp all winter.
+
+Soon after his return Champlain broached a plan which he had been
+perfecting during the voyage. The fifteen men of rank formed a society,
+to be called "L'Ordre de Bon-Temps." Each man became Grand-Master in
+turn, for a single day. On that day he was responsible for the
+dinner,--the cooking, catering, buying and serving. When not in office
+he usually spent some days in hunting, fishing and trading with the
+Indians for supplies. He had full authority over the kitchen during his
+reign, and it was a point of honor with each Grand Master to surpass, if
+possible, the abundance, variety and gastronomic excellence of the meals
+of the day before. There was no market to draw upon, but the caterer
+could have steaks and roasts and pies of moose, bear, venison and
+caribou; beavers, otters, hares, trapped for their fur, also helped to
+feed the hunters. Ducks, geese, grouse and plover were to be had for the
+shooting. Sturgeon, trout and other fish might be caught in the bay, or
+speared through the ice of the river. The supplies brought from France,
+with the addition of all this wilderness fare, held out well, and
+Lescarbot expressed the opinion, with which nobody disagreed, that no
+epicure in Paris could dine better in the Rue de l'Ours than the
+pioneers of Port Royal dined that winter.
+
+Ceremony was not neglected, either. At the dinner hour, twelve o'clock,
+the Grand Master of the day entered the dining-hall, a napkin on his
+shoulder, his staff of office in his hand, and the collar of the Order,
+worth about four crowns, about his neck. After him came the
+Brotherhood in procession, each carrying a dish. Indian chiefs were
+often guests at the board; old Membertou was always made welcome.
+Biscuit, bread and many other kinds of food served there were new and
+alluring luxuries to the Indians, and warriors, squaws and children who
+had not seats at table squatted on the floor gravely awaiting their
+portions.
+
+[Illustration: "THE GRAND MASTER OF THE DAY ENTERED THE DINING
+HALL."--_Page_ 266]
+
+The evening meal was less formal. When all were gathered about the fire,
+the Grand Master presented the collar and staff of office to his
+successor, and drank his health in a cup of wine.
+
+The winter was unusually mild; until January they needed nothing warmer
+than their doublets. On the fourteenth, a Sunday, they went boating on
+the river, and came home singing the gay songs of France. A little later
+they went to visit the wheat fields two leagues from the fort, and dined
+merrily out of doors. When the snow melted they saw the little bright
+blades of the autumn sowing already coming up from the rich black soil.
+Winter was over, and work began in good heart. Poutrincourt was not
+above gathering turpentine from the pines and making tar, after a
+process invented by himself. Then late in spring a ship came into harbor
+with news which ended everything. The fur-traders of Normandy, Brittany
+and the Vizcayan ports had succeeded in having the privilege of De Monts
+withdrawn. Hardly more than a year after his arrival Lescarbot left his
+beloved gardens, and in October all the colonists were once more in
+France. Membertou and his Indians bewailed their departure, and held
+them in long remembrance. Wilderness houses soon go back to their
+beginnings, and it was not long before all that was left of the brave
+and gay French colony was a little clearing where the herb of
+immortality, the tansy of Saint Athanase, lifted its golden buttons and
+thick dark green foliage above the remnant of the garden of Helêne.
+
+Yet the experience of that year was not lost. It was the first instance
+of a company of settlers in that northern climate passing the winter
+without illness, discord or trouble with the Indians. Later, in the
+little new settlements of Quebec and Montreal, some of the colonists met
+again under the wise and kindly rule of Champlain. Little Helêne lived
+to bring her own roses to a garden in New France, and teach Indian girls
+the secrets which old Jacqueline taught her. And it is recorded in the
+history of the voyageurs, priests and adventurers of France in the New
+World that wherever they went they were apt to take with them seeds and
+plants of wholesome garden produce, which they planted along their route
+in the hope that they might thus be of service to those who came after
+them.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOODEN SHOE
+
+
+    Amsterdam's the cradle where the race was rocked--
+    All the ships of all the world to her harbor flocked.
+    Rosy with the sea-wind, solid, stubborn, sweet,
+    Played the children by canals, up and down the street.
+    Neltje, Piet and Hendrik, Dirck and Myntje too,--
+    Little Nick of Leyden sailed his wooden shoe.
+
+    "Quarter-deck and cabin--rig her fore-and-aft,"--
+    Thus he murmured wisely as he launched his craft.
+    "Cutlass, pike and musquetoun, howitzer and shot--
+    But our knives and mirrors and beads are worth the lot."
+    Room enough for cargo to last a year or two,
+    In the round amidships of a wooden shoe!
+
+    Bobbing on the waters of the Nieuwe Vlei
+    See the bantam galleot, short and broad and high.
+    Laden for the Indies, trading all the way,
+    Frank and shrewd and cautious, fiery in a fray,--
+    Sagamore and mandarin are all the same to you,
+    Little Nick of Leyden with your wooden shoe!
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE FIRES THAT TALKED
+
+
+All along the coast of Britain, from John o' Groat's to Beachey Head,
+from Saint Michael's Mount to Cape Wrath, twinkled the bonfires on the
+headlands. Henry Hudson, returning from a voyage among icebergs, guessed
+at once what this chain of lights meant. The son of Mary Queen of Scots
+had been crowned in London.[1]
+
+Hudson's keen eyes were unusually grave and thoughtful as the _Muscovy
+Duck_ sailed up to London Pool on the incoming tide. The sailors looked
+even more sober, for most of them were English Protestants, with a few
+Flemings, and John Williams the pilot was an Anabaptist. It was he who
+asked the question of which all were thinking.
+
+"Master Hudson, d'ye think the new King will light them other fires--the
+ones at Smithfield?"
+
+Hudson shook his head. "That's a thing no man can say for certain, John.
+But there's the Low Countries and the Americas to run to. 'T is not as
+it was in Queen Mary's day."
+
+"Aye, but Spain has got all of America, pretty near, and the French are
+nabbing the rest," said the pilot doubtfully.
+
+"Nay, that's a bigger place than you guess, over yonder. Ever see the
+map that Doctor Dee made for Queen Bess near thirty years ago? I
+remember him showing it to my grandsire with the ink scarce dry on it.
+The country Ralegh's people saw has got room for the whole of France and
+England, and plenty timber and corn-land. Sir Walter he knew that."
+
+There was plague in London when they landed, and all sought their
+families in fear and trembling, not knowing what might have come and
+gone in their absence. Hudson's house was at Mortlake on the Thames
+above London, and there he was rejoiced to find all well. Young John
+Hudson was brimful of Mr. Brereton's new Relacion of the Voyage of
+Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and Captain Bartholomew Gilbert to the North
+part of Virginia by permission of the honorable Knight Sir Walter
+Ralegh. Strawberries bigger than those of England, and cherries in
+clusters like grapes, blackbirds with carnation-colored wings, Indians
+who painted their eyebrows white and made faces over mustard, were mixed
+higgledy-piggledy in his bubbling talk. Hudson, turning the pages of the
+new book, saw at once that on this voyage around Cape Cod the little
+ship _Concord_ had sailed seas unknown to him.
+
+"Why won't the Company send you to the Americas, Dad?" the boy asked
+eagerly. "When will I be old enough to go to sea?"
+
+"Wait till ye're fourteen at least, Jack," his father answered. "There's
+much to learn before ye're a master mariner."
+
+In the next few years things were not so well with English mariners as
+they had been. Cecil and Howard, picking a quarrel with Ralegh, had him
+shut up in the Tower. The Dutch were trading everywhere, seizing the
+chances King James missed. But Hudson was in the employ of the Muscovy
+Company like his father and grandfather, and the Russian fur trade was
+making that Company rich.
+
+Captain John Smith, a shrewd-faced soldier with merry eyes, appeared at
+the house one day and told entertaining stories of his campaigns under
+Prince Sigismund of Bohemia. He and the boy John drove the neighbors
+nearly distracted with curiosity, one winter evening, signalling with
+torches from the house to the river.[2] To anxious souls who surmised a
+new Guy Fawkes conspiracy Captain Smith showed how he had once conveyed
+a message to the garrison of a beleaguered city in this way. Here was
+the code. The first half of the alphabet was represented by single
+lights, the second half by pairs. To secure attention three torches were
+shown at equal distances from one another, until a single light flashed
+in response to show that the signal was understood. For any letter from
+A to L a single light was shown and hidden one or more times according
+to the number of the letter from the beginning; thus, three flashes
+meant C; four meant D, and so on. For a letter between M and Z the same
+plan was followed using two torches. The end of a word was signified by
+three lights. In this way Smith had spelled out the message, "On
+Thursday night I will charge on the east; at the alarum, sally you." He
+had, however, translated it into Latin, to make it short.
+
+John Hudson found new interest in Latin.
+
+When Captain Smith began to talk of joining a new colony to go to
+Virginia the boy begged hard to be allowed to go. But just at this time
+the Muscovy Company was sending Henry Hudson to look for a way round
+through northern seas to the Spice Islands. The Dutch were already
+trading in the Portuguese Indies. If England could reach them by a
+shorter route, it would be a very pleasant discovery for the Muscovy
+Company.
+
+Even in 1607 geographers believed in an open polar sea north of Asia.
+Hudson tried the Greenland route. Sailing east of Greenland he found
+himself between that country and the islands named "Nieuwland" by
+William Barents the Dutch navigator in 1596. Their pointed icy mountains
+seemed to push up through the sea. Icebergs crowded the waters like
+miniature peaks of a submerged range. Hudson returned to report to the
+company "no open sea."
+
+In 1608 he was again sent out on the same errand. This time he steered
+further east, between those islands and another group named by Barents
+Nova Zembla. He sailed nearer to the pole than any man had been before
+him, and found whales bigger, finer and more numerous than anywhere
+else. Rounding the North Cape on his way home he made the first recorded
+observation of a sun-spot. In August, when he returned and made his
+report, there was a sensation in the seafaring world.
+
+The Dutch promptly sent whaling ships into the arctic seas, and
+suggested, through Van Meteren the Dutch consul in London, a friend of
+Hudson, that the English navigator should come to Amsterdam and talk of
+entering their service. While there, he received an offer from the
+French Ambassador, suggesting that his services would be welcome to a
+proposed French East India Company. Hearing this, the Dutch hastened to
+secure him, and on April 4, 1609, he sailed from Amsterdam in a yacht of
+eighty tons called the _Half Moon_ and shaped rather like one, manned by
+a crew of twenty, half English and half Netherlanders, and John as
+cabin-boy.
+
+John was in such a state of bliss as a boy can know when sailing on the
+venture of his dreams. His father had told him in confidence that as his
+sailing orders were almost the same as the year before, he did not
+expect to find the northern route to India in that direction. Failing
+this the _Half Moon_ would look for it in the western seas. Of this plan
+he had said nothing in Holland.
+
+He found, as he had expected, that the arctic waters were choked with
+ice, and turning southward he headed for the Faroe Isles. While in
+Holland he had had a letter from Captain John Smith, who had explored
+the regions about Chesapeake Bay. No straits leading to the western
+ocean had been discovered there, and no Sea of Verrazzano. Captain
+Smith's opinion was that if such a passage existed it would be somewhere
+about the fortieth parallel. Explorations had already been made farther
+north. Davis Strait had been discovered some years before by John Davis,
+now dead. Martin Frobisher had found another strait leading northwest.
+Both of these were so far north that they were likely to be ice-bound by
+the time the little _Half Moon_ could reach them. Hudson meant to look
+along the coast further south, and see what could be found there.
+
+The _Half Moon_ took in water at the Faroes and anchored some seven
+weeks later, on July 18, in Penobscot Bay. Her foremast was gone and her
+sails ripped and rent by the gales of the North Atlantic, and the
+carpenter with a selected crew rowed ashore and chose a pine tree for a
+new mast. While this was a-making and the sails were patched up, the
+crew not otherwise engaged went fishing.
+
+"I say," presently observed John Hudson, who knew Brereton's Relacion by
+heart, "this must ha' been the place where they caught so many fish
+that they were 'pestered with Cod' and threw numbers of 'em overboard.
+This makes twenty-seven, Dad, so far."
+
+During that week they caught fifty cod, a hundred lobsters and a halibut
+which John declared to be half as big as the ship. Two French boats
+appeared, full of Indians ready to trade beaver skins for red cloth. The
+strawberry season was past, but John found wild cherries, small, deep
+red, in heavy bunches. When he tried to eat them, however, they were so
+sour that he nearly choked. Cautiously he tasted the big blue
+whortleberries that grew on high bushes; near water, and found them
+delicious. He had been eating them by the handful for some time when he
+became aware that there was a feaster on the other side of the thicket.
+Receiving no reply to his challenge he went to investigate and saw a
+brown bear standing on his hind legs and raking the berries off the
+twigs with both forepaws, into his mouth. At sight of John he dropped on
+all fours and cantered off.
+
+Leaving the bay they cruised along the coast past Cape Cod, and then
+steered southwest for the fortieth parallel. Wind and rain came on in
+the middle of August, and they were blown toward an inlet which Hudson
+decided to be the James. Not knowing how the English governor of
+Jamestown might regard an intrusion by a Dutch ship, he turned north
+again, and on the twenty-eighth of August entered a large bay and took
+soundings. More than once the _Half Moon_, light as she rode, grounded
+on sand-banks, and Hudson shook his head in rueful doubt.
+
+"D' you think the straits are here, Dad?" asked John when he had a
+chance to speak with his father alone.
+
+"Hardly. This is fresh water. It's the mouth of a river."[3]
+
+"Yes, but might there be an isthmus--or the like?"
+
+"A big river with as strong a current as this would not rise on a
+narrow, level strip of land, son. It's bringing down tons of sand to
+make these banks we run into. There's a great wide country inland
+there."
+
+The chanteys of the sailors were heard at daybreak in the lonely sea, as
+the _Half Moon_ went on her way northward. On September 3 the little
+ship edged into another and bigger bay to the north. Whether it was a
+bay or a lake Hudson was at first rather doubtful. The shores were
+inhabited, for little plumes of smoke arose everywhere, and soon from
+all sides log canoes came paddling toward the ship. These Indians were
+evidently not unused to trading, for they brought green tobacco, hemp,
+corn and furs to sell, and some of them knew a few words of French. By
+this, and by signs, they gave Hudson to understand that three rivers, or
+inlets, came into this island-encircled sea, the largest being toward
+the north. Hudson determined to follow this north river and see where it
+led.
+
+As he sailed cautiously into the channel, taking soundings and observing
+the shores, he was puzzled. The tide rose and fell as if this were an
+inlet of the sea, and it was far deeper than an ordinary river. In fact
+it was more like a Norwegian fiord.[4] It might possibly lead to a lake,
+and this lake might have an outlet to the western ocean. That it was a
+strait he did not believe. Even in the English Channel the meeting tides
+of the North Sea and the Atlantic made rough water, and the _Half Moon_
+was drifting as easily as if she were slipping down stream. In any
+event, nothing else had been found, either north or south of this point,
+which could possibly be a strait, and Hudson meant to discover exactly
+what this was before he set sail for Amsterdam.
+
+They passed an Indian village in the woods to the right, and according
+to the Indians who had come on board the place was called
+Sapokanican,[5] and was famous for the making of wampum or shell beads.
+A brook of clear sweet water flowed close by. Presently Hudson anchored
+and sent five men ashore in a boat to explore the right-hand bank of the
+channel. Night came on, and it began to rain, but the boat had not
+returned. Hudson slept but little. In the morning the missing men
+appeared with a tale of disaster. After about two leagues' travel they
+had come to a bay full of islands. Here they had been attacked by two
+canoes carrying twenty-six Indians, and their arrows had killed John
+Colman and wounded two other men. It grew so dark when the rain began
+that they dared not seek the ship, and the current was so strong that
+their grapnel would not hold, so that they had had to row all night.
+
+Sailing only in the day time and anchoring at night the little Dutch
+ship went on to the north, looking between the steep rocky banks like a
+boat carved out of a walnut-shell, in the wooden jaws of a nutcracker.
+After dark, fires twinkled upon the heights, and the lapping waters
+about the quiet keel were all shining with broken stars. The flame
+appeared and vanished like a signal, and John Hudson wondered if the
+Indians knew John Smith's trick of sending a message as far as a beacon
+light could be seen.
+
+One night he climbed up on the poop with the ship's great lantern and
+tried the flashing signals he remembered. Before many minutes two of the
+wild men had drawn near to watch, and although John could not make out
+the meaning of the light that came and went upon the cliffs, it was
+quite clear that they could. One of them waved his mantle in front of
+the lantern, and turning to the boy nodded and grinned good-naturedly.
+The signal fires must have talked to some purpose, for the next day a
+delegation paddled out from the shore to invite the great captain, his
+son and his chief officers to a feast.
+
+When the party arrived at the house of the chief, which was a round
+building, or pavilion, of saplings sheathed with oak bark, mats were
+spread for them to sit upon, and food was served in polished red wooden
+bowls. Two hunters were sent out to bring in game, and returned almost
+at once with pigeons which were immediately dressed and cooked by the
+women. One of the hunters gave John one of the arrowheads used for
+shooting small birds; it was no bigger than his least fingernail and
+made of a red stone like jasper. A fat dog had also been killed, skinned
+and dressed with shell knives, and served as the dish of honor. Hudson
+hastily explained in English to his companions that whether they
+relished dog or not, it would never do to refuse it, as this was a
+special dish for great occasions.
+
+"Dad," said John that night, "do you think any ship with white men ever
+came up here before?"
+
+"No," said Hudson.
+
+"I hope they'll call this the Hudson."
+
+The water was now hardly more than seven feet deep, and the tide rose
+only a few inches. Hudson came reluctantly to the conclusion that there
+was no proceeding further in a ship. He sent a boatload of men several
+leagues up-stream, but they came back with the report that the river was
+much the same so far as they had gone.
+
+During the voyage they had often seen parties of the savages, usually
+friendly but sometimes hostile. Flights of arrows occasionally were
+aimed at the _Half Moon_, and the crew replied with musket-shots which
+sometimes but not always hit the mark. The painted warriors had a way of
+disappearing into the woods like elves. Once, in spite of all endeavors
+to shake him off, a solitary Indian in a small canoe followed along
+under the stern till he saw the chance of climbing up the rudder to the
+cabin window. He stole the pillow off the commander's bed, two shirts,
+and two bandoliers (ammunition-belts), the tinkle of which betrayed him.
+The mate saw him making off with his plunder and shot him, whereupon the
+other Indians paddled off at top speed, some even leaping from their
+canoes to swim ashore. A boat put out and recovered the stolen property,
+and when a swimming Indian caught the side of it to overturn it the cook
+valiantly beat him off with a sword. These with many other adventures
+were duly written down by Robert Juet the mate.
+
+To John Hudson the voyage was a journey of enchantment. Nothing he had
+ever seen was in the least like the glory of the autumn forests,
+mantling the mountains in scarlet, gold, malachite, russet, orange and
+purple. He had been in the gardens at Lambeth where Tradescant the
+famous gardener ruled, but there was more color in a single vivid maple
+standing blood-red in a bit of lowland than in all his Lancaster roses.
+And the great river had its flowers as well. A tall plant like an elfin
+elm covered with thick-set tiny blossoms yellow as broom, grew wild over
+the pastures, and interspersed with this fairy forest were thickets of
+deep lavender daisies with golden centers. In lowland glades were tall
+spikes of cardinal blossoms, and clusters of deep blue flowers like buds
+that never opened. Vines loaded with bunches of scarlet and orange
+berries like waxwork, and others bearing fluffy bunches of silky gray
+down curly as an old man's beard, climbed the trees that overhung the
+stream. The mountains in the upper river came right down to the water
+like the glacis of a giant fort, and fitful winds pounced upon the _Half
+Moon_ and rocked her like a cradle. Once there was a late
+thunder-shower, and the noise of the thunder among the humped ranges was
+for all the world like balls rolling in a great game of bowls played by
+goblins of the mountains.
+
+On the fourth of October, the _Half Moon_ left the island which the
+Indians called Manahatta, passed through the Narrows and sailed for
+Europe. Looking back at those green shores with their bronze
+feather-crowned people watching to see the flight of their strange
+guest, John Hudson felt that when he was a man, he would like nothing
+better than to have an estate on the shores of the noble river, which no
+white boy had ever before set eyes on. Where a great terrace rose, some
+fifty miles above Manahatta, walled around by mountains and almost two
+hundred feet above the river, there should be a fort, of which Captain
+John Smith should be the commander; and in the broadening of the river
+below to form an inland sea, his father's squadron should ride, while
+the Indians of all the upper reaches of the river should come to pay
+tribute and bring wampum, furs and tobacco in exchange for trinkets. And
+on the island at the mouth of the river there would be a great city,
+greater than Antwerp, to which all the ships of the world should come as
+they came now to Antwerp and to London. So dreaming, John Hudson saw
+the shores of this new world vanish in the blue line, where earth and
+sky are one.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] The kindling of bonfires and beacon lights on the accession of a
+sovereign or any other occasion of national rejoicing is a very old
+custom in Britain and is still kept up. At the time of Queen Victoria's
+jubilee trees were planted closely to form a great V on the side of the
+Downs, and when the fires were lighted on Ditchling Beacon and other
+heights the letter stood out black against the close turf of the
+hillside.
+
+[2] The account of Smith's campaigns and signalling code is given in his
+autobiography.
+
+[3] The Delaware.
+
+[4] Some authorities consider the Hudson River to be actually a fiord or
+fjord and not a true river.
+
+[5] Greenwich Village.
+
+
+
+
+IMPERIALISM
+
+
+    The Tailor sat with his goose on the table--
+      (Table of Laws it was, he said)
+    Fashioning uniforms dyed in sable,
+      Picked out with gold and sanguine red.
+
+    "This," he said as he snipped and drafted,
+      "Sublimely foreshadowing cosmic Fate
+    With world-dominion august, resplendent,
+      Will wear, as nothing can wear but Hate!
+
+      "Chimerical dreams of souls romantic
+      Are out of date as an old wife's rune.
+    Britain is doomed as Plato's Republic--"
+      When in at the door came a lilting tune!
+
+        _"Here to-day and gone to-morrow--
+          All in the luck of the road!
+        Didn't come to stay forever,
+          But we'll take our share of the load!"_
+
+      Highlanders, Irish, Danes, Egyptians,
+      Norman or Slav the dialects ran;
+    Something more than a board-school shaped them--
+      Drill and discipline never made man!
+
+    Once they knew Crecy, Hastings, Drogheda,
+      Moscow, Assaye, Khartoum or Glencoe,--
+    Now the old hatreds are tinder for campfires.
+      England has only her world to show!
+
+    They are not dreamers, these men of the Empire,
+      Guarding their land in the old-time way,
+      And this is the style that prevails in the Legions,--
+      "The foe of the past is a friend to-day."
+
+        _"It's a long, long road to the Empire
+          (From Beersheba even to Dan)
+        And the time is rather late for a chronic Hymn of Hate,--
+          And we know the tailor doesn't make the man!"_
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+ADMIRAL OF NEW ENGLAND
+
+
+Barefoot and touzle-headed, in the coarse russet and blue homespun of an
+apprentice, a small boy sidled through the wood. Like a hunted hedgehog,
+he was ready to run or fight. Where a bright brook slid into the
+meadows, he stopped, and looked through new leaves at the infinite blue
+of the sky. Words his grandfather used to read to him came back to his
+mind.
+
+"Let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of
+the mountain."
+
+The Bible which old Joseph Bradford had left to his grandson had been
+taken away, but no one could take away the memory of it. If he had
+dared, Will would have shouted aloud then and there. For all his hunger
+and weariness and dread of the future the strength of the land entered
+into his young soul. He drank of the clear brook, and let it wash away
+the soil of his pilgrimage. Then he curled himself in a hollow full of
+dry leaves, and went to sleep.
+
+When he woke, it was in the edge of the evening. Long shadows pointed
+like lances among the trees. A horse was cropping the grass in a
+clearing, and some one beyond the thicket was reading aloud. For an
+instant he thought himself dreaming of the old cottage at
+Austerfield--but the voice was young and lightsome.
+
+"Where a man can live at all, there can he live nobly."
+
+The reader stopped and laughed out. A lively snarling came from a burrow
+not far away, where two badgers were quarrelling conscientiously.
+
+"Just like folks ye be, a-hectorin' and a-fussin'. What's the great
+question to settle now--predestination or infant baptism?--Why, where
+under the canopy did you come from, you pint o' cider?"
+
+"I be a-travelin'," Will said stoutly.
+
+"Runaway 'prentice, I should guess. I was one myself at fifteen."
+
+"I'm 'leven, goin' on twelve," said the boy, standing as straight as he
+could.
+
+"Any folks?"
+
+"I lived with granddad until he died, four year back."
+
+"And so you're wayfarin', be you? What can you do to get your bread?"
+
+The urchin dug a bare toe into the sod. "I can work," he said
+half-defiantly. "Granddad always said I should be put to school some
+day, but my uncle won't have that. I can read."
+
+"Latin?"
+
+"No--English. Granddad weren't college-bred."
+
+"Nor I--they gave me more lickings than Latin at the grammar school down
+to Alvord, 'cause I would go bird's-nesting and fishing sooner than
+study my _hic_, _haec_, _hoc_. And now I've built me a booth like a wild
+man o' Virginia and come out here to get my Latin that I should ha'
+mastered at thirteen. All the travel-books are in Latin, and you have to
+know it to get on in foreign parts."
+
+"Have you been in foreign parts?"
+
+"Four year--France and Scotland and the Low Countries. But I got enough
+o' seeing Christians kill one another, and says I to myself, John Smith,
+you go see what they're about at home. And here I found our fen-sludgers
+all by the ears over Bishops and Papists and Brownists and such like. In
+Holland they let a man read's Bible in peace."
+
+"Is that the Bible you got there?"
+
+"Nay--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus--a mighty wise old chap, if he was an
+Emperor. And I've got Niccolo Macchiavelli's seven books o' the Art o'
+War. When I'm weary of one I take to t' other, and between times I ride
+a tilt." He waved his hand toward a ring fastened on a tree, and a lance
+and horse-furniture leaning against the trunk.
+
+"Our folks be Separatists," the boy said.
+
+"Well, and what of it?" laughed the young man. "As I was a-reading
+here--a man is what his thoughts make him. Be he Catholic or Church
+Protestant or Baptist, he's what he's o' mind to be, good or bad. Other
+folk's say-so don't stop him--no more than them badgers' worryin' dams
+the brook."
+
+This was a new idea to Will. His hunger for books was so keen that it
+had seemed to him that without them, he would be stupid as the swine.
+John Smith seemed to understand it, for he added,
+
+"You bide here with me awhile, lad. Maybe there's a way for you to get
+learning, yet."
+
+Will shared the leafy booth and simple fare of his new friend for a
+fortnight, doing errands, rubbing down the black horse, Tamlane, and at
+odd times learning his conjugations. When John Smith left his hermitage
+and went to fight against the Turks in Transylvania, he placed a little
+sum of money with a Puritan scholar at Scrooby to pay for the boy's
+schooling for a year or two. The yeoman uncle had a family of his own to
+provide for, and was glad to have Will off his hands.
+
+Transylvania in 1600 was on the very frontier of Christendom. John Smith
+needed all the philosophy he had learned from his favorite author when,
+after many adventures, he was taken prisoner and sent to the
+slave-market of Axopolis to be sold. Bogal, a Turkish pacha, bought the
+young Englishman to send as a gift to his future wife, Charatza
+Tragabigzanda, in Constantinople.
+
+Chained by the neck in gangs of twenties the slaves entered the great
+Moslem city. John Smith was left at the gate of a house exactly like all
+the others in the narrow noisy street. The beauty of an Oriental palace
+is inside the walls. Within the blank outer wall of stone and mud-brick,
+arched roofs, painted and gilded within, were upheld by slender round
+pillars of fine stone--marble, jasper, porphyry, onyx, red syenite,
+highly polished and sometimes brought from old palaces and temples in
+other lands. Intricate carving in marble or in fine hard wood adorned
+the doorways and lattices, and the balconies with their high
+lattice-work railings where the women could see into a room below
+without being seen. In the courtyards fountains plashed in marble
+basins, and from hidden gardens came the breath of innumerable roses. On
+floors of fine mosaic were silken many-hued rugs, brought in caravans
+from Bagdad, Moussoul or Ispahan, and the soft patter of bare feet,
+morocco shoes and light sandals came from the endless vistas of open
+arches. A silken rustling and once a gurgle of soft laughter might have
+told the Englishman that he was watched, but he knew no more what it
+meant than he understood the Arabic mottoes, interwoven with the
+decoration of the blue-and-gold walls.
+
+Charatza's curiosity was aroused at the sight of a slave so tall, ruddy
+and handsome. She sent for him to come into an inner room where she and
+her ladies sat, closely veiled, upon a cushioned divan. Bogal's letter
+said that the slave was a rich Bohemian nobleman whom he had captured in
+battle, and whose ransom would buy Charatza splendid jewels. But when
+spoken to in Bohemian the captive looked perfectly blank. He did not
+seem to understand one word.
+
+Arabic and Turkish were no more successful. At last the young princess
+asked a question in Italian and found herself understood. It did not
+take long for her to find out that the story her lover had written had
+not a word of truth in it. She was as indignant as a spirited girl would
+naturally be.
+
+In one way and another she made opportunities to talk with the
+Englishman and to inquire of others about his career. She presently
+discovered that he was the champion who had beheaded three Turkish
+warriors, one after another, before the walls of the besieged city
+Regall. She made up her mind that when she was old enough to control her
+own fortune, which would be in the not very distant future, she would
+set him free and marry him. Such things had been done in Constantinople,
+and doubtless could be done again.
+
+But meantime Charatza's mother, learning that her daughter had been
+talking to a slave, was not at all pleased and threatened, since he was
+no nobleman and would not be ransomed, to sell him in the market.
+Charatza was used to having her way sooner or later, and managed to have
+him sent instead to her brother, a pacha or provincial governor in
+Tartary. She sent also a letter asking the pacha to be kind to the young
+English slave and give him a chance of learning Turkish and the
+principles of the Koran.
+
+This was far from agreeable to a brother who had already heard of his
+sister's liking for the penniless stranger,--especially as he found that
+the Englishman had no intention of turning Moslem. The slave-master was
+told to treat him with the utmost severity, which meant that his life
+was made almost unbearable. A ring of iron, with a curved iron handle,
+was locked around his neck, his only garment was a tunic of hair-cloth
+belted with undressed hide, he was herded with other Christian slaves
+and a hundred or more Turks and Moors who were condemned criminals, and,
+as the last comer, had to take the kicks and cuffs of all the others.
+The food was coarse and unclean, and only extreme hunger made it
+possible to eat it.
+
+John Smith was not the man to sit down hopelessly under misfortune, and
+he talked with the other Christians whenever chance offered, about
+possible plans of escape. None of them saw any hope of getting away,
+even by joining their efforts. It may be that some of this talk was
+overheard; at any rate Smith was sent after a while to thresh wheat by
+himself in a barn two or three miles from the stone castle where the
+governor lived. The pacha rode up while he was at work and began to
+abuse him, taunting him with being a Christian outcast who had tried to
+set himself above his betters by winning the favor of a Turkish lady.
+The Englishman flew at him like a wildcat, dragged him off his horse and
+broke his skull with the club which was used instead of a flail for
+threshing. Then he dressed himself in the Turk's garments, hid the body
+under a heap of grain, filled a bag with wheat for all his provision,
+mounted the horse of his late master, and rode away northward. He knew
+that Muscovy was in this general direction, and coming to a road marked
+by a cross, rode that way for sixteen days, hiding whenever he heard any
+sound of travelers for fear the iron slave-ring should betray him. At
+last he came to a Russian garrison on the River Don, where he found good
+friends. In 1604, after some other adventures, he came again to England.
+All London was talking of the doings of King James, who in one short
+year had managed to dissatisfy both Catholics and Protestants. Since the
+voyages of Gosnold, Pring and Weymouth there was much interest in
+Virginia. Ralegh was a prisoner in the Tower. There was talk of a
+trading association to be called the London Company, and it was said
+that this company planned a new plantation somewhere north of Roanoke.
+Smith could see the great future which might await an English settlement
+in that rich land. He decided to join the adventurers going out in the
+fleet of Captain Christopher Newport. Before sailing, he went to
+Lincolnshire to bid farewell to his own people, and in the shadow of the
+Tower of Saint Botolph's he espied a tall lad whose look recalled
+something.
+
+"Why," he cried with a hearty clasp of the hand. "'t is thyself grown a
+man, Will! And how goes the Latin?"
+
+"I love it well," the youth answered shyly. "Master Brewster hath also
+instructed me in the Greek. If--if I had known where to send it I would
+have repaid the money you was so kind as to spare."
+
+"Nay, think no more o't--or rather, hand it on to some other young
+book-worm," laughed the bearded and bronzed captain. "And how be all
+your folk?"
+
+The lad's eyes rested wistfully upon the quaint old seaport streets.
+"The Bishop rails upon our congregation," he said. "Holland is better
+than a prison, and we shall go there soon."
+
+Smith's practical mind saw the uselessness of trying to get any
+Non-Conformist taken on by a royal colony in Virginia just then. "'Tis a
+hard case," he said sympathetically, "but we may meet again some day.
+There's room enough in the Americas, the Lord knows, for all the honest
+men England can spare."
+
+Thus they parted, and on April 26, 1607, the Virginia voyagers saw land
+at the mouth of the Chesapeake.
+
+The company was rather top-heavy. Out of the hundred who were enrolled,
+fifty-two were gentlemen adventurers, each of whom thought himself as
+good as the rest and even a little better. No sooner had the ship
+dropped anchor than thirty of them went ashore to roam the forest,
+laughing and shouting as if they had the country to themselves. The
+appearance of five Indians sent them scurrying back to the ship with two
+of their number wounded, for they had no weapons with them. That night
+the sealed orders of the London Company were opened, and it was found
+that the directors had appointed a council of seven to govern the colony
+and choose a president for a year. The colonists were charged to search
+for gold and pearls and for a passage to the East Indies. Nothing more
+original in the way of a colonial enterprise had occurred to the
+directors. Success in these undertakings meant immediate profits with
+which the new Company could compete with Bristol, Antwerp, and the
+Muscovy Company's rich fur trade.
+
+In the list of names for the council appeared that of Captain John
+Smith, which was somewhat embarrassing, since a scandalous tale had been
+set going during the voyage, that he intended to lead a mutiny and make
+himself governor of the colony. This was so far believed that he was
+kept a prisoner through the last part of the voyage. The other
+councilors, Newport, Gosnold, Wingfield, Ratcliffe, Martin and Kendall,
+held their election without him and chose Wingfield president.
+
+Next day the carpenters began work on the shallop, which had been
+shipped in sections, and Wingfield ordered Smith inland with a party of
+armed men, to explore. They saw no Indians, but found a fire where
+oysters were still roasting, and made a good meal off them, though some
+of the luscious shellfish were so large that they had to be cut in
+pieces before they were eaten. Coasting along the bay they discovered a
+river, which was explored when the shallop was launched. Upon this river
+they saw an Indian canoe forty feet long, made of the trunk of a tree
+hollowed out, Indian fashion, with hot stones and shell gouges. They
+found also oysters in abundance and in some of them fresh-water pearls.
+After spending seventeen days in examining the country, they chose for
+their settlement a peninsula on the north side of the river called the
+Powhatans by the Indians, from the tribe living on its banks. This site
+was about forty miles from the sea, and here, on May 13, they moored
+their ships to trees in six fathom of water and named the place
+Jamestown, and the river the King's River.
+
+Thus far the Indians had been friendly, and Wingfield would not have any
+fortifications built, or any military drill, for fear of arousing their
+anger. Captain Kendall, despite orders, constructed a crescent-shaped
+line of fence of untrimmed boughs, but most of the weapons remained in
+packing-cases on board ship. Wingfield, who regarded Smith as a rather
+dangerously outspoken man to have about just then, sent him with Newport
+and twenty others, to explore the river to its head. On the sixth day
+they passed the chief town of the Powhatans. On May 24 they reached the
+head of the river, set up a cross, and proclaimed in the wilderness the
+sovereignty of King James Stuart.
+
+The thrifty eye of the Lincolnshire yeoman observed many things with
+satisfaction during this march. There might not be any gold mines, but
+there was unlimited timber, and the meadows would make as good pasture
+for cattle as any in England. In the forests were red deer and fallow
+deer, bears, otters, beavers, and foxes, besides animals unknown in
+Europe. One moonlight night, while examining deer tracks near a little
+stream, Smith saw humped on a fallen log above it a furry beast about
+the size of a badger, with black face and paws like a bear, and a bushy
+tail with crosswise rings of brown and black. This queer animal was
+eating something, and dipping the food into the water before each
+mouthful. When Smith described it to the Indians he could make nothing
+of the name they gave it, but wrote it down as best he could--Araughcoune.
+Another new kind of creature was of the size of a rabbit, grayish white,
+with black ears and a tail like a rat. It would hang by its tail from a
+tree, until knocked off with a stick, and then curl up with shut eyes
+and pretend to be dead. It was excellent eating when roasted with wild
+yams,--rather like a very small suckling pig, the colonists later
+discovered. For the most part, however, Smith was inclined to think
+they would have to depend upon their provisions and the corn they could
+buy from the Indians.
+
+On returning to Jamestown they found that the Indians had been raiding
+the settlement, the colonists at the time being all at work and taken
+completely by surprise. Seventeen men had been wounded, and a boy
+killed. After this, the men were drilled each day, the guns were
+unpacked and a palisade was begun.
+
+Newport was in a hurry to return to England, and Wingfield now suggested
+that Smith, who was still supposed to be under arrest, should go with
+him and save any further trouble. This did not suit Smith at all. He
+demanded an open trial, got it, and was triumphantly cleared of all
+charges.
+
+Of the privation, dissensions and sickness which followed Newport's
+departure, the bad water, rotten food, constant trouble with savages,
+and the unreasonable demands of the directors of the London Company, all
+historians have told. One story, which Smith was wont to tell with keen
+relish, deals with the instructions of the Company that the Indian
+chief, "King Powhatan," should be crowned with all due ceremony, just at
+a time of year when every hand in the colony was needed for attending to
+the crops. Smith and Newport had just come to a reasonable understanding
+with that astute savage, by which he treated them with real respect; and
+the attention paid him by his "brother James," as he proceeded to call
+the King of England, rather turned his head. He liked the red cloak sent
+him, but had no idea what a crown meant. The raccoon skin mantle which
+he removed when robed in the royal crimson was sent to England and is
+now in a museum at Oxford.
+
+After some years of strenuous toil and adventure John Smith went back
+to London. An explosion of powder, whether accidental or intentional was
+never known, wounded him seriously just before he left Jamestown, and he
+did not recover from it for some time.
+
+"And what is in your mind to do next, Captain?" asked Master William
+Simons the geographer when they had finished, between them, the new map
+of Virginia. Smith's eyes twinkled as he snapped the cover on his
+inkhorn.
+
+"Why, 't is hard for an old rover like me to lie abed when there's man's
+work to be done. You know, the London Company holds only the southern
+division of the King's Patent for Virginia; the north's given to
+Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth. And that's never been settled yet."
+
+"There was a colony of Captain George Popham and Ralegh Gilbert went
+out, five year ago," said Simons doubtfully. "They said they could not
+endure the bitter climate."
+
+"Sho," said Smith impatiently, one stubbed forefinger on the map, "'t is
+in almost the same latitude as France. Maybe they chose the wrong place
+for their plantation. Why, the French trade furs with the savages, all
+up and down the Saint Laurence, and mind the cold no more than nothing
+at all. The first thing we know, the Dutch will be out here finding a
+road to the Indies."
+
+Both men laughed. They had lost faith in that road to fortune.
+
+"Anyhow Hudson didn't find it when they sent him to look for it the year
+afore he died," said Simons, "or they'd be into it now. But what are you
+scheming?"
+
+"First make a voyage of exploration," said Smith. "I ha' talked with one
+and another that told me they taken a draught of the coast, and I ha'
+six or seven of the plots they drew, so different from one another and
+out of proportion they do me as much good as so much waste paper--though
+they cost me more," added the veteran grimly. "With a true map o' the
+coast, we'd know whereabouts we were."
+
+"No gold nor silver, I hear."
+
+"Maybe not. But what commodity in England decays faster than wood? And
+where will you find better forest than along that shore? Build shipyards
+there, and our English folk would make a living off'n that and the
+fisheries. I know how 't was in Boston--the Flemings would salt their
+fish down right aboard the ships when the fleets came in. But men for
+work like this must be men--not tyrants, nor slaves."
+
+John Smith's eyes flashed, and his lips closed so tightly that his thick
+mustaches and beard stuck straight out like a lion's. He had seen a
+plenty of both slavery and tyranny in his life.
+
+In fact there was a neck-and-neck race between the Plymouth Company and
+the Dutch West India Company, for the control of the northern province.
+Dutch fur traders were already on Manhattan Island living in makeshift
+wooden huts, and Adrian Block was exploring Long Island Sound, when John
+Smith went out to map the coast north of Cape Cod for Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges of the Plymouth Company in 1614. The two little English ships
+reached the part of the coast called by the Indians Monhegan in April of
+that year. They had general instructions to meet the cost of the
+expedition, if possible, by whaling, fishing and fur-trading. No true
+whales were found, however, and by the time the ships reached the
+fishing grounds the cod season was nearly past. Mullet and sturgeon were
+plentiful in summer, and while the sailors fished, Smith took a few men
+in a small boat and ranged the coast, trading for furs. Within a
+distance of fifty or sixty miles they got in exchange for such trifles
+as were prized by the Indians, more than a thousand beaver skins, a
+hundred or more martens and as many otter-pelts. On a rocky island four
+leagues from shore, in latitude 431/2, he made a garden in May which gave
+them all salad vegetables through June and July. Not a man of the
+twenty-five was ill even for a day. Cod, they learned, were abundant
+from March to the middle of June, and again from September to November,
+for cor-fish--salt fish or Poor John. The Indians said that the herring
+were more than the hairs of the head. Sturgeon, mullet, salmon, halibut
+and other fish were plentiful. Smith had a vision of comfortable
+independent mariners settled on farms all along the coast, sending their
+fish to market the year round, and sleeping every night at home. It
+seemed to him that here, in a hardy thrifty province which gold-seekers
+and gentlemen adventurers might scorn, he could contentedly end his
+days.
+
+There was a pleasant inlet on the coast of a bold headland, north of
+Cape Cod, which he thought would be his choice for his plantation. This
+headland he had named Cape Tragabigzanda. There were three small round
+islands to be seen far to seaward, which he called the Three Turks'
+Heads. One Sunday, "a faire sunshining day," he climbed a green height
+above Anusquam, and sitting on a huge boulder surveyed the bright and
+peaceful landscape and chose the site for his house. Good stone there
+would be in abundance, and mighty timbers that had been growing for him
+since the days of Noah. In this Province of New England a strong and
+fearless race would found new towns with the old names--Boston,
+Plymouth, Ipswich, Sandwich, Gloucester. So he dreamed until the sun
+went down under a canopy of crimson and gold, while the boat rocked in
+the little bay where he would have his wharf.
+
+In 1619, when English Puritans began preparations for the founding of a
+new colony, he offered his services, but the older men would have none
+of him. He was a "Church of England Protestant" and one of the
+unregenerate with whom they had no fellowship. They took his map as a
+guide, and settled, not on Cape Tragabigzanda, which Prince Charles had
+re-named Cape Anne, but in the bay which he had called Plymouth. He
+spent some years in London writing an account of his adventures, and
+died in 1631 at the age of fifty-two--Captain John Smith, Admiral of New
+England.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The account of Captain John Smith's adventures among the Turks was at
+one time considered apocryphal, but good authorities now see no reason
+to regard his narrative of his own career as in any way inaccurate. The
+perils and strange chances which an adventurous man encountered in such
+times often seem almost incredible in a more peaceful age, but there is
+really no more reason to doubt them than to discredit authentic accounts
+of men like Daniel Boone, Francis Drake, or other men of similar
+disposition.
+
+
+
+
+THE DISCOVERIES
+
+
+    Through tangled mysteries of old romance
+      Knights, Latin, Celt or Saxon, pass a-dream,
+    Seeking the minarets of magic towers
+      Through the witched woods that gleam.
+
+    Stately in trappings thick with gold and gems,
+      Stern-browed and stubborn-eyed, they wandered forth,
+    As children credulous, as strong men brave,
+      To South, and West, and North.
+
+    Our venturous pilots map the windy skies;
+      To serve our pleasure, huger galleons wait.
+    Aflame with more than magic lights, our walls
+      Guard the Manhattan Gate!
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+Among the sources of information from which the historical material of
+this book are drawn are the following works:
+
+Voyages, HAKLUYT
+
+The Discovery of America. JOHN FISKE
+
+Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America. JOHN FISKE
+
+The Conquest of Mexico. PRESCOTT
+
+Two Voyages in New England. J. JOSSELYN
+
+Adventures and Conquests of Magellan. GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE
+
+Narrative and Critical History of America. (Edited by JUSTIN WINSOR)
+
+The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote. WARNER
+
+The Romance of Colonization. G. BARNETT SMITH
+
+Life of Columbus. WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+The Voyage of the Vega. NORDENSKIOLD
+
+The Land of the Midnight Sun. DU CHAILLU
+
+The Court of France. LADY JACKSON
+
+Sailors' Narratives of New England Voyages. (Edited by GEORGE PARKER
+WINSHIP)
+
+Indian Basketry. GEORGE WHARTON JAMES
+
+The Iroquois Book of Rites. HALE
+
+Drake. ALFRED NOYES (_poem_)
+
+Crusaders of New France. WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO
+
+Elizabethan Sea-dogs. WILLIAM WOOD
+
+Young Folks' Book of American Explorers. HIGGINSON
+
+Paradise Found. WILLIAM F. WARREN
+
+Ferdinand and Isabella. PRESCOTT
+
+Pioneers of France in the New World. PARKMAN
+
+Sir Francis Drake. JULIAN CORBETT
+
+Henry the Navigator. MEN OF ACTION SERIES
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Page Problem                    Change/Comment
+
+8    "Helene"                   "Helêne" to match rest of text
+26   same awe                   some awe
+55                              Inserted a comma after 'jeweled
+                                trappings'.
+85                              superfluous comma in "Catherine,
+                                became" removed
+85   valauble                   valuable
+90   good cheap and wholesome.  As in image
+108  comrad                     comrade
+133  'And the White Gods come'  Line indented to match other stanzas.
+150  sqadron                    squadron
+162  religon                    religion
+178  exicitement                excitement
+194  slaves                     slavers
+194  Cabeca                     'Cabeça' as elsewhere
+230  'like spent bullets"       'like spent bullets.'
+232  two month's                As in image
+239  exploratioins              explorations
+247  Amadas                     Armadas
+300                             Inserted '(' before 'Edited by Justin
+                                Winsor)'
+
+
+The following variant spellings in the text have been left unmodified:
+
+"Bacalao" and "Baccalao"
+"Mappe-Mondo" and "Mappe-Monde"
+"'T is" and "'Tis"
+
+The following variant hyphenations in the text have been left unmodified:
+
+"arrow-heads" and "arrowheads"
+"birch-bark" and "birchbark"
+"cross-bow" and "crossbow-bolts"
+"court-yards" and "courtyards"
+"deer-skin" and "deerskin"
+"frost-work" and "frostwork"
+"Grand-Master" and "Grand Master"
+"ink-horn" and "inkhorn"
+"kin-folk" and "kinfolk"
+"sea-weed" and "seaweed"
+"shell-fish" and "shellfish"
+"ship-worm" and "shipworms"]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Days of the Discoverers, by L. Lamprey
+
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+    content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Days of the Discoverers, by
+      L. Lamprey
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Days of the Discoverers, by L. Lamprey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Days of the Discoverers
+
+Author: L. Lamprey
+
+Illustrator: Florence Choate
+               Elizabeth Curtis
+
+Release Date: March 23, 2006 [EBook #18038]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, LN Yaddanapudi and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div>
+<span class="back"><a  href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii"   id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span><br />
+</div>
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 420px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0343-1.jpg" width="420" height="600" alt="&quot;&#39;I will tell you where there is plenty of it&#39;&quot;&mdash;Frontispiece" title="&quot;&#39;I will tell you where there is plenty of it&#39;&quot;&mdash;Frontispiece" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;I will tell you where there is plenty of it&#39;&quot;&mdash;<i>Frontispiece</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div>
+<span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'>[iii]</span>
+</div>
+<h3 class="u"><i>GREAT DAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY SERIES</i></h3>
+<h1>DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS</h1>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>L. LAMPREY</h2>
+<p class="center"><i>Author of "In the Days of the Guild",
+"Masters of the Guild", etc.</i></p>
+<p class="center smcap">illustrated by</p>
+<p class="center smcap">FLORENCE CHOATE and ELIZABETH CURTIS</p>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illus-002.png" width="200" height="200" alt="" title="" />
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="center smcap">new york</p>
+<p class="center">FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY</p>
+<p class="center smcap">publishers</p>
+<hr />
+
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'>[iv]</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1921, by</i></p>
+<p class="center smcap">Frederick A. Stokes Company</p>
+<hr style="width: 15%" />
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved, including that of translation
+into foreign languages</i></p>
+<p class="center"><i>Made in the United States of America</i></p>
+<hr />
+
+<div>
+<span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v"  id="Page_v">[v]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="TO_FORESTA" id="TO_FORESTA"></a>TO FORESTA</h2>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Upon the road to Faerie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O there are many sights to see,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Small woodland folk may one discern<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Housekeeping under leaf and fern,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And little tunnels in the grass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where caravans of goblins pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And airy corsair-craft that float<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On wings transparent as a mote,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All sorts of curious things can be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the road to Faerie!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Along the wharves of Faerie&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There all the winds of Christendie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are musical with hawk-bell chimes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Carillons rung to minstrels' rimes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And silver trumpets bravely blown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From argosies of lands unknown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the great war-drum's wakening roll&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The reveillé of heart and soul&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For news of all the ageless sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes to the quays of Faerie!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Across the fields to Faerie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no lack of company,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world is real, the world is wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But there be many things beside.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who once has known that crystal spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall not lose heart for anything.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blessing of a faery wife<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is love to sweeten all your life.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To find the truth whatever it be&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is the luck of Faerie!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'>[vi]</span></div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Above the gates of Faerie</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>There bends a wild witch-hazel tree.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The fairies know its elfin powers.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>They wove a garland of the flowers,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And on a misty autumn day</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>They crowned their queen&mdash;and ran away!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And by that gift they made you free</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Of all the roads of Faerie!</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii"  id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><table summary="">
+<tr><td></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right; padding-left: 6em">PAGE</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#TO_FORESTA"><i>To Foresta</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_v">v</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#CONTENTS">Contents</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_vii">vii</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">List of Illustrations</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_ix">ix</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">I</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#ASGARD_THE_BEAUTIFUL"><span class="smcap">Asgard the Beautiful</span> (1348)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_VIKINGS_SECRET"><i>The Viking's Secret</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">II</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_RUNES_OF_THE_WIND-WIFE"><span class="smcap">The Runes of the Wind-Wife</span> (1364)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_NAVIGATORS"><i>The Navigators</i> (1415-1460)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">III</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#SEA_OF_DARKNESS"><span class="smcap">Sea of Darkness</span> (1475)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#SUNSET_SONG"><i>Sunset Song</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">IV</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#PEDRO_AND_HIS_ADMIRAL"><span class="smcap">Pedro and His Admiral</span> (1492)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_QUEENS_PRAYER"><i>The Queen's Prayer</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">V</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_MAN_WHO_COULD_NOT_DIE"><span class="smcap">The Man Who Could Not Die</span> (1493-1494)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_ESCAPE"><i>The Escape</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">VI</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#LOCKED_HARBORS"><span class="smcap">Locked Harbors</span> (1497)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#GRAY_SAILS"><i>Gray Sails</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">VII</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#LITTLE_VENICE"><span class="smcap">Little Venice</span> (1500)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_GOLD_ROAD"><i>The Gold Road</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">VIII</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_DOG_WITH_TWO_MASTERS"><span class="smcap">The Dog with Two Masters</span> (1512)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#COLD_O_THE_MOON"><i>Cold o' the Moon</i> (1519)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_117">117</a><span class='pagenum'>[viii]</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">IX</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#WAMPUM_TOWN"><span class="smcap">Wampum Town</span> (1508-1524)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_DRUM"><i>The Drum</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">X</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_GODS_OF_TAXMAR"><span class="smcap">The Gods of Taxmar</span> (1512-1519)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#A_LEGEND_OF_MALINCHE"><i>The Legend of Malinche</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">XI</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_THUNDER_BIRDS"><span class="smcap">The Thunder Birds</span> (1519-1520)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#MOCCASIN_FLOWER"><i>Moccasin Flower</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">XII</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#GIFTS_FROM_NORUMBEGA"><span class="smcap">Gifts from Norumbega</span> (1533-1535)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_MUSTANGS"><i>The Mustangs</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">XIII</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_WHITE_MEDICINE_MAN"><span class="smcap">The White Medicine Man</span> (1528-1536)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#LONE_BAYOU"><i>Lone Bayou</i> (1542)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">XIV</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_FACE_OF_THE_TERROR"><span class="smcap">The Face of the Terror</span> (1564)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_DESTROYERS"><i>The Destroyers</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_214">214</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">XV</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_FLEECE_OF_GOLD"><span class="smcap">The Fleece of Gold</span> (1561-1577)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#A_WATCH-DOG_OF_ENGLAND"><i>A Watch-dog of England</i> (1583)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">XVI</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#LORDS_OF_ROANOKE"><span class="smcap">Lords of Roanoke</span> (1584)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_CHANGELINGS"><i>The Changelings</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">XVII</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_GARDENS_OF_HELENE"><span class="smcap">The Gardens of Helêne</span> (1607-1609)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_WOODEN_SHOE"><i>The Wooden Shoe</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">XVIII</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_FIRES_THAT_TALKED"><span class="smcap">The Fires that Talked</span> (1610)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#IMPERIALISM"><i>Imperialism</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align: center">XIX</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#ADMIRAL_OF_NEW_ENGLAND"><span class="smcap">Admiral of New England</span> (1600-1614)</a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#THE_DISCOVERERS"><i>The Discoverers</i></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" ><a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHY"><span class="smcap">Bibliography</span></a></td><td></td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="">
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"'I will tell you where there is plenty of it'" (in color)</td>
+<td style="text-align: right; padding-left: 2em"><a href="#Page_ii"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"'And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by
+two cats'" (in color)</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"Nils marked out an inscription in Runic letters"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"The miniature globe took form as the children watched,
+fascinated"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"He proposed that Caonaba should put on the gift the
+Spanish captain had brought"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"A sapling, bent down, was attached to a noose ingeniously
+hidden"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and
+friendliness" (in color)</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"Cortes flung about his shoulders his own cloak"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard" (in color)</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"Cartier read from his service-book"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"The creatures darkened the plain almost as far as the eye
+could see"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"'Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?'"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_226">226</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"If he had to wear her fetters, they should at least be
+golden"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: left;" >"The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall"</td><td style="text-align: right"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS</h2>
+
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="ASGARD_THE_BEAUTIFUL" id="ASGARD_THE_BEAUTIFUL"></a>ASGARD THE BEAUTIFUL</h3>
+
+<p>A red fox ran into the empty church. In the
+middle of the floor he sat up and looked
+around. Nothing stirred&mdash;not the painted figures on
+the wooden walls, nor the boy who now stood in the
+doorway. This boy was gray-eyed and flaxen-haired,
+and might have been eleven or twelve years old. He
+was looking for the good old priest, Father Ansgar,
+and the wild shy animal eyeing him from the foot of
+the altar made it only too clear that the church, like
+the village, was deserted.</p>
+
+<p>Father Ansgar was dead of the strange swift
+pestilence that was called in 1348 the Black Death.
+So also were the sexton, the cooper, the shoemaker,
+and almost all the people of the valley. A ship had
+come into Bergen with the plague on board, and it
+spread through Norway like a grass-fire. Only last
+week Thorolf Erlandsson<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1] </a> had had a father and
+mother, a grandmother, two younger sisters and a
+brother. Now he was alone. In the night the dairy
+woman and the plowmen at Ormgard farm had run
+away. Other farms and houses were already closed
+and silent, or plundered and burned. Ormgard being
+remote had at first escaped the sickness.</p>
+
+<p>Thorolf turned away from the church door and
+began to climb the mountain. At the lane leading to <span class='pagenum'>[2]</span>
+his home he did not stop, but kept on into the woods.
+It was not so lonely there.</p>
+
+<p>Up and up he climbed, the thrilling scent of fir-balsam
+in his nostrils, the small friendly noises of the
+forest all about him. Only a few months ago he had
+come down this very road with his father, driving the
+cattle and goats home from the summer pasture. All
+the other farmers were doing the same, and the clear
+notes of the lure, the long curving horn, used for calling
+the cattle and signaling across valleys, soared from
+slope to slope. There was laughter and shouting and
+joking all the way down. Now the only persons
+abroad seemed to be thieving ruffians whose greed for
+plunder was more than their fear of the plague.</p>
+
+<p>A thought came to the boy. How could he leave
+his father's cattle unfed and uncared for? What if
+he were to drive the cows himself to the saeter and
+tend them through the summer? He faced about,
+resolutely, and began to descend the hill.</p>
+
+<p>Within sight of the familiar roofs he heard some
+one coming from the village, on horseback. It proved
+to be Nils the son of Magnus the son of Nils who was
+called the Bear-Slayer, with a sack of grain and a pair
+of saddlebags on a sedate brown pony. Nils was lame
+of one foot and no taller than a boy of nine, although
+he was thirteen this month and his head was nearly as
+large as a man's. He had been an orphan from baby-hood,
+and for the last three years had lived in the
+priest's house learning to be a clerk.</p>
+
+<p>"Hoh!" called Nils, "where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the farm to get our cattle and take them to
+the saeter. There is no one left to do it but me."</p>
+
+<p>"Cattle?" queried the other interestedly, "She will
+be glad of that."<span class='pagenum'>[3]</span></p>
+
+<p>"She!" said Thorolf, "who?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Wind-wife<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>&mdash;Mother Elle, who used to sell
+wind to the sailors&mdash;the Finnish woman from Stavanger.
+She has gathered up a lot of children who have
+no one to look after them and is leading them into the
+mountains. She has Nikolina Sven's daughter Larsson,
+and Olof and Anders Amundson, and half a score
+of younger ones from different villages. She says that
+if it is God's will for the plague to come to the saeter
+it will come, but it is not there now, and it is in the
+valleys and the towns. She has gone on with the small
+ones who cannot walk fast, and left Olof and Anders
+and me to bring along the ponies with the loads. I'll
+help you drive your beasts."</p>
+
+<p>Without trouble the lads got the animals out of the
+byres and headed them up the road. Norway is so
+sharply divided by precipitous mountain ranges and
+deeply-penetrating fiords, that it may be but a few miles
+from a farm near sea level to the high grassy pastures
+three or four thousand feet above it where the cattle
+are pastured in summer. The saeter maidens live
+there in their cottages from June to September, making
+butter and cheese, tending the herds and doing such
+other work as they can. The saeter belonging to
+Ormgard and its neighbors was the one chosen by
+Mother Elle as a refuge for her flock.</p>
+
+<p>The forest of magnificent firs through which the road
+passed presently grew less somber, beginning to be
+streaked with white birches whose bright leaves
+twinkled in the sun. Then it reached the height at
+which evergreens cease to grow. The birches were
+shorter and sparser, and through the thinning woodland
+appeared glimpses of a treeless pasture dotted
+with scrubby low bushes and clumps of rushes. A glint <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+of clear green water betrayed a small lake in a dip of
+the hills. And now were heard sounds most unusual
+in that lonely place, the high sweet voices of children.</p>
+
+<p>Birch trees, little trees, dwarfed by sharp winds and
+poor soil, encircled a level space perhaps ten feet
+across, carpeted with new soft grass, reindeer moss
+and cupped lichens. Here sat seven or eight children
+eagerly listening to a story told by an older child as she
+divided the ration of fladbrod,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> wild strawberries
+from a small basket of birchbark, and brown goat's-milk
+cheese.</p>
+
+<p>"And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn
+by two cats&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Nikolina the daughter of Sven Larsson of the
+Trolle farm was known through all the valley, not only
+as the sole child of its richest farmer, but for the bright
+blonde hair that covered her shoulders with its soft
+abundance and hung to her waist. Her father would
+not have it cut or braided or even covered save by such
+a little embroidered cap as she wore now. Her scarlet
+bodice, and blue-black skirt bordered with bright woven
+bands, were of the finest wool; the full-sleeved white
+linen under-dress had been spun and woven and embroidered
+by skilful and loving fingers. Nikolina had
+lost the roof from over her head, and a great deal
+more than that. Now she was giving her whole mind
+to the little ones of all ages from four to eight, crowding
+close about her.</p>
+<div>
+<span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span><br /></div>
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 436px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0342-1.jpg" width="436" height="600" alt="&quot;&#39;And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two cats&#39;&quot;&mdash;Page 4" title="&quot;&#39;And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two cats&#39;&quot;&mdash;Page 4" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two cats&#39;&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 4</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Hi!" called Nils, "where is Mother Elle? See
+what Thorolf and I have got!"</p>
+
+<p>The children scrambled to their feet and gazed with
+round eyes, their small hungry teeth munching their
+morsels of hard bread. Nikolina plucked a bunch of <span class='pagenum'>[5]</span>
+grass for Snow, the foremost cow, and patted her as
+she ate it.</p>
+
+<p>"The little ones were so tired and hungry," she said,
+"that Mother Elle said they might have their supper
+now, while she and Olof and Anders went on to the
+saeter. This is wonderful! She was saying only this
+morning that she feared all the cattle were dead or
+stolen."</p>
+
+<p>Within an hour they came in sight of the log huts
+with turf-covered roofs that sloped almost to the
+ground in the rear. A broad plain stretched away beyond,
+and the new grass was of that vivid green to be
+found in places which deep snow makes pure. Hills
+enclosed it, and beyond, a gleaming network of lake
+and stream ended in range above range of blue and
+silver peaks. The clear invigorating air was like some
+unearthly wine. The cows at the scent of fresh pasture
+moved more briskly; the pony tossed his head and
+whinnied. Not far from the cottages there came to
+meet them a little old woman, dark and wiry, with
+bright searching eyes. Her face was wrinkled all over
+in fine soft lines, but her hair was hardly gray at all.
+She wore a pointed hood and girdled tunic of tanned
+reindeer hide, with leggings and shoes of the same. A
+blanket about her shoulders was draped into a kind of
+pouch, in which she carried on her back a tow-headed,
+solemn-eyed baby.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome to you, Thorolf Erlandsson," she said,
+just as if she had been expecting him. "With this
+good milk we shall fare like the King."</p>
+
+<p>No king, truly, could have supped on food more delicious
+than that enjoyed by Nils and Thorolf on this
+first night in the saeter. It is strange but true that <span class='pagenum'>[6]</span>
+the most exquisite delights are those that money cannot
+buy. No man can taste cold spring water and
+barley bread in absolute perfection who has not paid
+the poor man's price&mdash;hard work and keen hunger.</p>
+
+<p>When Nikolina, Karen and Lovisa came up with the
+smaller children the place had already an inhabited,
+homelike look. There was even a wise old raven, almost
+as large as a gander, whom Nils had christened
+Munin, after Odin's bird. The little ones had all the
+new milk they could drink from their wooden bowls,
+and were put to bed in the movable wooden bed-places,
+on beds of hay covered with sheepskins and blankets.
+All were asleep before dark, for at that season the night
+lasted only two or three hours. The last thing that
+Thorolf heard was a happy little pipe from the five-year-old
+Ellida,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now we shall live in Asgard forever and ever."</p>
+
+<p>For all it had to do with the experience of many of
+the children the saeter might really have been Asgard,
+the Norse paradise. The youngest had never before
+been outside the narrow valley where they were born.
+Ellida and Margit, Didrik and little Peder, could not
+be convinced that they were anywhere but in Asgard
+the Blest.</p>
+
+<p>Norway had long since become Christian, but the
+old faith was not forgotten. The legends, songs and
+customs of the people were full of it. In the sagas
+Asgard was described as being on a mountain at the
+top of the world. Around the base of this mountain
+lay Midgard, the abode of mankind. Beyond the
+great seas, in Utgard, the giants lived. Hel was the
+under-world, the home of evil ghosts and spirits.
+Tales were told in the long winter evenings, of Baldur
+the god of spring, Loki the crafty, Odin the old one-eyed <span class='pagenum'>[7]</span>
+beggar in a hooded cloak, with his two ravens and
+his two tame wolves, Freya the lovely lady of flowers,
+Elle-folk dancing in the moonlight, and little rascally
+Trolls.</p>
+
+<p>The songs and legends repeated by the old people
+or chanted by minstrels or skalds were more than idle
+stories&mdash;they were the history of a race. Children
+heard over and over again the family records telling
+in rude rhyme the story of centuries. In distant Iceland,
+Greenland, the Shetlands, the Faroes or the Orkneys,
+a Norseman could tell exactly what might be his
+udall right, or right of inheritance, in the land of his
+fathers.</p>
+
+<p>On Nils and Thorolf, Anders, Olof, Nikolina, Karen
+and Lovisa, who were all over ten years old, rested
+great responsibility. Mother Elle always managed to
+solve her own problems and expected them to attend
+to theirs without constant direction from her. She
+told them what there was to be done and left them to
+attend to it.</p>
+
+<p>All were hardy, active youngsters who took to fending
+for themselves as naturally as a day-old chick takes
+to scratching. In ordinary seasons the work at the
+saeter was heavy, for the maidens must not only follow
+the herds over miles of pasture land, but make butter
+and cheese for the winter from their milking. The
+few cows that were here now could be tethered near by;
+the milk, when the children had had all they wanted,
+was mostly used in soups, pudding or gröt (porridge).
+A net or weir stretched across the outlet of the lake
+would fill with fish overnight. The streams were full
+of trout. Mother Elle knew how to make fish-hooks
+of bone, bows and arrows, ropes, and baskets of bark,
+how to weave osiers, how to cure bruises and cuts, how <span class='pagenum'>[8]</span>
+to trap the wild hares, grouse and plover and cook
+them over an open fire. The children found plover's
+eggs and the eggs of other wild fowl. They raised
+pulse, leeks, onions and turnips in a little garden patch.
+They gathered strawberries, cranberries, crowberries,
+wild currants, black and red, the cloudberry and the
+delicious arctic raspberry which tastes of pineapple.
+Some stores of salt and grain were already at the saeter
+and the grain-fields had been sowed, before the pestilence
+appeared in the valley.</p>
+
+<p>In the long summer days of these northern mountains,
+one has the feeling that they will never end,
+that life must go on in an infinite succession of still,
+sunshiny, fragrant hours, filled with the songs of birds,
+the chirr of insects and the distant lowing of cattle.
+There is time for everything. At night comes dreamless
+slumber, and the morning is like a birth into new
+life.</p>
+
+<p>There was a great deal of singing and story-telling
+at odd times. A group of children making mats or
+baskets, gathering pease or going after berries would
+beg Nils or Nikolina to tell a story, or Karen would
+lead them in some old song with a familiar refrain.
+But some of the songs the Wind-wife crooned to the
+baby were not like any the children had heard. They
+were not even in Norwegian.</p>
+
+<p>Thorolf was a silent lad, who would rather listen
+than talk, and hated asking questions. But one day,
+when he and Nikolina were hunting wild raspberries,
+he asked her if she thought Mother Elle meant to
+stay in the mountains through the winter. Nikolina
+did not know.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Tis well to be wise but not too wise,</span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis well that to-morrow is hid from our eyes,</span><span class='pagenum'>[9]</span>
+<span class="i0">For in forward-looking forebodings rise,"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>she added quaintly. "I have heard her say that it is
+colder in Greenland than it is here."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she been in Greenland?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her father and mother were on the way there
+when she was little, and the ship was wrecked somewhere
+on the coast. The Skroelings found her and
+took her to live in their country. That is how she
+learned so much about trees and herbs, and how to
+make bows and arrows and moccasins."</p>
+
+<p>"Moccasins?"</p>
+
+<p>"The little shoes she made for Ellida. And she
+made a little boat for Peder, like their skiffs."</p>
+
+<p>This was interesting. For a private reason, Thorolf
+held Greenland to be the most fascinating of all
+places.</p>
+
+<p>"Can she speak their language?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. I asked her to teach me, and she said
+that perhaps she would some day. The songs that
+she sings to the little ones are some that the Skroeling
+woman who adopted her used to sing to her when she
+cried for her own mother. One of them begins like
+this:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Piche Klooskap pechian</span>
+<span class="i0">Machieswi menikok.'"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"What does it mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Long ago Klooskap came to the island of the
+partridges.' Klooskap was like Odin, or Thor. The
+priests in Greenland told her he was a devil and
+wouldn't let her talk about him, but the Skroelings had <span class='pagenum'>[10]</span>
+runes for everything just like the people in the sagas,&mdash;runes
+for war, and healing, and the sea."</p>
+
+<p>"How did she ever get away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some men came from Westbyrg to cut wood in
+the forest, and when they saw that she was not really
+a Skroeling they bought her for an iron pot and one
+of them married her. But he was drowned a long
+time ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I knew the Skroelings' language. Some
+day I mean to go to Greenland."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps Mother Elle will teach you. I'll ask
+her."</p>
+
+<p>The Wind-wife was rather chary of information
+about the country of the Skroelings until Nikolina's
+coaxing and Thorolf's silent but intense interest had
+taken effect. The country, she said, was rather like
+Norway, with mountains and great forests, lakes and
+streams, but far colder. There were no fiords, and
+no cities. The people lived in tents made of poles
+covered with bark, or hides. They dressed in the
+hides of wild animals and lived by hunting and fishing.
+They had no reindeer, horses, cattle, sheep or goats,
+no fowls, no pigs. They could not work iron, nor did
+they spin or weave. The man and woman who had
+adopted her treated her just like their own child.</p>
+
+<p>The stories she had learned from these people were
+intensely interesting to her listeners. There was one
+about a battle between the wasps and the squirrels,
+and another about the beaver who wanted wings. One
+was about a girl who was married to the Spirit of the
+Mountain and had a son beautiful and straight and like
+any other boy except that he had stone eyebrows.
+Then there was the tale about Klooskap tying up the
+White Eagle of the Wind so that he could not flap <span class='pagenum'>[11]</span>
+his wings. After a short time everything was so dirty
+and ill-smelling and unhealthy that Klooskap had to
+go back and untie one wing, and let the wind blow to
+clear the air and make the earth once more wholesome.</p>
+
+<p>Wild apples fell, grain ripened, nights lengthened.
+Long ago the twin-flower, violet, wild pansy, forget-me-not
+and yellow anemone had left their fairy haunts,
+and there remained only the curving fantastic fronds
+of the fern,&mdash;the dragon-grass. Then had come
+brilliant spots and splashes of color on the summer
+slopes&mdash;purple butterwort, golden ragweed, aconite,
+buttercup, deep crimson mossy patches of saxifrage,
+rosy heather, catchfly, wild geranium, cinnamon
+rose. These also finished their triumphal procession
+and went to their Valhalla. Then one September
+morning the children woke to hear the wind
+screaming as if the White Eagle had escaped his
+prison, and the rain pelting the world.</p>
+
+<p>All summer they had been out, rain or shine, like
+water-ouzels, but now they were glad to sit about the
+fire with the shutters all closed, and the smoke now and
+then driven down into the room by the storm. Before
+evening the little ones were begging for stories.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could remember a saga I heard last Yule,"
+Nikolina said at last. "It was about a voyage the
+Vikings made to a country where the people had never
+seen cattle. When they heard the cattle bellowing they
+all ran away and left the furs they had come to sell."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell all you remember and make up the rest," suggested
+Karen, but Nikolina shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"One should never do that with a saga."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that tale," spoke up Thorolf suddenly, although
+he had never in his life repeated a saga.
+"Grandmother used to tell it. In the beginning Bjarni <span class='pagenum'>[12]</span>
+Heriulfson the sea-rover, after many years came home
+to Iceland to drink wassail in his father's house. But
+strangers dwelt there and told him that his father was
+gone to Greenland, and he set sail for that land. Soon
+was the ship swallowed up in a gray mist in which were
+neither sun nor stars. They sailed many days they
+knew not where, but suddenly the fog lifted and the
+sun revealed to them a coast of low hills covered with
+forest. By this Bjarni thought that it was not Greenland
+but some southerly coast. Therefore turned he
+northward and sailed many days before he sighted the
+mountains of Greenland and his father's house.</p>
+
+<p>"Years afterward returned Bjarni to Iceland, and
+in his telling of that voyage it came to the ears of Leif
+Ericsson, who asked him many questions about the land
+he had seen. There grew no trees in Iceland or Greenland,
+fit for house-timber, and Leif was minded to find
+out this place of great forests. Thus it came that Leif
+sailed from Brattahlid in Greenland with five and thirty
+men in a long ship upon a journey of discovery.</p>
+
+<p>"First came they to a barren land covered with big
+flat stones, and this Leif named Helluland, the slate
+land. Southward sailed he for many days until he
+saw a coast covered with wooded hills, and there he
+landed, calling it Markland, the land of woods. Then
+southward again they bore and came to a place where
+a river flowed out of a lake and fell into the sea. The
+country was pleasant, with good fishing. Leif said
+that they would spend the winter there, and they built
+wooden cabins well-made and warm.</p>
+
+<p>"Then at the season when the leaves are blood-red
+and bright gold came in from the woods Thorkel the
+German, smacking his lips and making strange faces
+and jabbering in his own language. When they asked <span class='pagenum'>[13]</span>
+what ailed him he said that he had found vines loaded
+with grapes, and having seen none since he left his
+own country, which was a land of vineyards, he was
+out of his senses with delight. Therefore was that
+country named Vinland the Fair. In the spring went
+Leif home, well pleased, with a cargo of timber, but
+his father being dead he voyaged no more to Vinland,
+but remained to be head of his house.</p>
+
+<p>"Next went Thorvald, Leif's brother, to Vinland
+and stayed two winters in the booths that Leif built,
+until he was slain in a fight with the men of that land.
+His men buried him there and returned sorrowfully
+to their own land.</p>
+
+<p>"Next went Thorestein, Leif's second brother,
+forth, with Gudrid his wife, to get the body of Thorvald
+but he died on the voyage and his widow
+returned to Brattahlid.</p>
+
+<p>"Next came to Brattahlid Thorfin Karlsefne, the
+Viking from Iceland, who loved and married Gudrid
+and from her heard the story of Vinland, and desired
+it for his own. In good time went he forth in a long
+ship with his wife, and there went with him three other
+valiant ships. They had altogether one hundred and
+sixty men and five women, with cattle, grain and all
+things fit for a settlement. This was seven years after
+Leif Ericsson found Vinland. Among the stores
+for trading was scarlet cloth, which the Skroelings
+greatly covet, insomuch that one small strip of scarlet
+would buy many rich furs. But when they came to
+trade, hearing a bull bellow, with a great squalling they
+all ran away and left their packs on the ground, nor
+did they show their faces again for three weeks.
+Snorre, the son of Thorfin Karlsefne, born in Vinland,
+was three years old when the Northmen left that land. <span class='pagenum'>[14]</span>
+They had found the winter hard and cold, and in a
+fight with the Skroelings many had been killed, so that
+they took ship and returned to Iceland.</p>
+
+<p>"They had gone but a little way when one of the
+ships, which was commanded by Bjarni Grimulfsson,
+lagged so far behind that it lost sight of the others.
+The men then discovered that shipworms<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> had bored
+the hull so that it was about to sink. None could hope
+to be saved but in the stern boat, and that would not
+hold half of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Then stood Bjarni Grimulfsson forth, and said to
+his men that in this matter there should be no advantage
+of rank, but they would draw lots, who should go
+in the boat and who remain in the ship. When this
+had been done it was Bjarni's lot to go in the boat.
+After all had gone down into the boat who had the
+right, an Icelander who had been Bjarni's companion
+made outcry dolefully saying, 'Bjarni, Bjarni, do you
+leave me here to die in the sea? It was not so you
+promised me when I left my father's house.' Then
+said Bjarni, for the lot was fairly cast, 'What else can
+be done?' Then said the Icelander, 'I think that you
+should come up into the ship and let me go down into
+the boat.' And indeed no other way might be found
+for him to live. Then answered Bjarni making light
+of the matter, 'Let it be so, since I see that you are
+so anxious to live and so afraid of death; I will return
+to the ship.' This was done, and the men rowing away
+looked back and saw the ship go down in a great swirl
+of waves with Bjarni and those who remained.</p>
+
+<p>"This tale my grandmother heard from her father,
+and he from his, and so on until the time of that Thorolf
+Erlandsson who sailed with Bjarni Grimulfsson and <span class='pagenum'>[15]</span>
+went down into the sea by his side singing, for he
+feared nothing but to be a coward."</p>
+
+<p>Thorolf's eyes were as proud and his head as high
+as were his Viking forefather's when the worm-riddled
+galley went to her grave with more than half her crew,
+three hundred and forty years before. In the little
+silence which followed the fire crackled and whistled,
+the gusty rain-drenched wind beat upon the little hut.
+And then Nils repeated musingly the ancient saying
+from the Runes of Odin,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Cattle die, Kings die,</span>
+<span class="i0">Kindred die, we also die,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">One thing never dies,</span>
+<span class="i0">The fair fame of the valiant.'"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Some one knocked at the door. A real Viking in
+winged helmet and scale-armor would hardly have
+surprised them just then. But it was only a tall man
+in a traveler's cloak and hat, and they made quickly
+room for him to dry himself by the fire, and brought
+food and drink for him to refresh himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought that I knew the way to the old place,"
+he said, looking about, "but in this tempest I nearly
+lost myself. Which of you is Thorolf Erlandsson?"</p>
+
+<p>The stranger was Syvert Thorolfson, a merchant of
+Iceland, Thorolf's uncle. He brought messages from
+Nikolina's grandmother in Stavanger, and from the
+Bishop, who was ready to see that all the children
+who had no relatives should be taken care of in Bergen.
+Within three days Asgard the Beautiful was
+left to the lemming and the raven. Yet the long
+bright summer lived always in the hearts of the children. <span class='pagenum'>[16]</span>
+Years after Thorolf remembered the words of
+the Wind-wife,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Make friends with the Skroelings&mdash;make friends.
+Friendship is a rock to stand on; hatred is a rock to
+split on. In the land of Klooskap shall you be Klooskap's
+guest."</p>
+
+
+<h4 class="smcap">notes</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+In old Norse families names alternated from father to son. For
+example, Thorolf Erlandsson (Thorolf the son of Erland) would
+name his son after his own father, and the boy would be known as
+Erland Thorolfsson. A daughter was known by her given name and
+her father's, as Sigrid Erlandsdatter. In the case of the farm being
+of sufficient importance for a surname the name might be added, as
+"Elsie Tharaldsdatter Ormgrass."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+Northern sailors regard the Finns as wizards.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+Fladbrod is the coarse peasant-bread of Norway, made from an
+unfermented dough of barley and oatmeal rolled out into large thin
+cakes and baked. It will keep a long time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+The teredo or shipworm was a serious peril in the days before
+the sheathing of ships. Even tar sheathing was not used until the
+sixteenth century.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_VIKINGS_SECRET" id="THE_VIKINGS_SECRET"></a>THE VIKING'S SECRET</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the days of jarl and hersir, while yet the world was young,</span>
+<span class="i0">And sagas of gods and heroes the grim-lipped minstrel sung,</span>
+<span class="i0">With the beak of his open galley in the sunset's scarlet flame,</span>
+<span class="i0">Over the wild Atlantic the Norseland Viking came.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Life was a thing to play with,&mdash;oh, then the world was wide,</span>
+<span class="i0">With room for man and mammoth, and a goblin life beside.</span>
+<span class="i0">Now we have slain the mammoths, and we have driven the ghosts away,</span>
+<span class="i0">And we read the saga of Vinland in the light of a new-born day.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We have harnessed the deadly lightnings; we have ridden the restless wave.</span>
+<span class="i0">We have chased the brood of the werewolf back to their noisome cave.</span>
+<span class="i0">But far in the icy Northland, with weird witch-lights aglow,</span>
+<span class="i0">Locked in the Greenland glaciers, is a tale we do not know.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out of Brattahlid's portal, southward from Herjulfsness,</span>
+<span class="i0">They came to their new-found kingdom, their Vinland to possess.</span>
+<span class="i0">Armored with careless laughter, strong with a stubborn will,</span>
+<span class="i0">The Vikings found it and lost it&mdash;it is undiscovered still!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where did they beach their galleys? How were their cabins planned?</span>
+<span class="i0">Who were the fearful Skroelings? What was the Fürdürstrand?</span>
+<span class="i0">What were the grapes of Tyrker? For all that is written or said,</span>
+<span class="i0">The Rune Stones hold the secret of the days of Eric the Red!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_RUNES_OF_THE_WIND-WIFE" id="THE_RUNES_OF_THE_WIND-WIFE"></a>THE RUNES OF THE WIND-WIFE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Salt and scarred from the northern seas, the <i>Taernan</i>,
+deep-laden with herring, nosed in at the
+Hanse quay in Bergen. Thorolf Erlandsson looked
+grimly up at the huge warehouses. Since the Hanseatic
+League secured a foothold in Norway, in 1343, most
+Norwegian ports had been losing trade, and Bergen,
+or rather the Hanse merchants in Bergen, had been
+getting it. Between the Danes and the Germans it
+looked rather as if Norwegians were to be crowded out
+of their own country.</p>
+
+<p>The Hanse traders not only received and sold fish
+for the Friday markets of northern Europe, but sold
+all kinds of manufactured goods. It was said that they
+had two sets of scales&mdash;one for buying and one for
+selling. Norwegians had either to adapt themselves
+to the new methods or give their sons to the ceaseless
+battle of the open sea. From the Baltic and Icelandic
+fisheries, the North Sea and the Lofoden Islands, their
+ships got the heaviest and the hardest of the sea-harvesting.</p>
+
+<p>But it takes more than hardship to break a Norseman.
+In his four years at sea Thorolf had become tall,
+broad-shouldered and powerful, and at eighteen he
+looked a grown man. He did more than he promised,
+and listened oftener than he talked, and his only close
+friend was Nils Magnusson, who was now coming down <span class='pagenum'>[19]</span>
+to the wharf. They had known each other from boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>Nils had been for three years a clerk in Syvert Thorolfsson's
+warehouse. While not tall he was neither
+stunted nor crippled, and easily kept pace with Thorolf.
+As he set out the silver-bound horn cups to drink <i>skal</i><a name="FNanchor_1_5" id="FNanchor_1_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_5" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
+with his friend in his own lodging, the croak and sputter
+of German talk sounded in the street below.</p>
+
+<p>"Behold a new Bergen," observed Nils whimsically.
+"Let us drink to the founding of a new Iceland. Did
+you go to Greenland?"</p>
+
+<p>"We touched at Kakortok with letters for the
+Bishop. The people are sick and savage with fighting
+against the Skroelings."</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Nils, rubbing his long nose, "it is odd
+that you say that, for I was just going to tell you some
+news. The King has given Paul Knutson leave to raise
+a company to fight against the Skroelings in Greenland&mdash;and
+parts beyond. He sails in a month."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had known of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would say that. This is between
+us two and the candle, but Anders Amundson is going,
+and I am going, and you may go if you will."</p>
+
+<p>Thorolf's gray eyes flamed. "What is Knutson
+like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they may call him Chevalier, but he has the
+old Viking way with him. I said that I had a friend
+who had long wished to lay his bones in a strange
+land, and he answered, 'If your friend sails with me
+I would prefer to have him bring his bones home
+again.' He kept a place for you."</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks later Thorolf, looking backward as
+the <i>Rotge</i>, (little auk or sea-king) stood out to sea,
+saw the familiar outline of Snaehatten against the sunrise <span class='pagenum'>[20]</span>
+and wondered when he should see it again. Like a
+questing raven his mind returned to the summer spent
+at the saeter, and recalled that dark saying of the
+Wind-wife,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In the land of Klooskap shall you be Klooskap's
+guest."</p>
+
+<p>The galley<a name="FNanchor_2_6" id="FNanchor_2_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_6" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> rode the waves with the bold freedom
+of her kind. Her keel was carved out of a single
+great tree. Her seasoned oaken timbers, overlapping,
+were riveted together by iron bolts, with the round
+heads outside. Where a timber touched a rib, a strip
+was cut out on each side, forming a block through
+which a hole was bored. Another hole was bored in
+the rib to match and a rope twisted of the inner bark
+of the linden was put through both holes and knotted.
+In surf or heavy sea, this construction gave the craft
+a supple strength. Calking was done with woolen
+cloth steeped in pitch. The mast, of a chosen trunk
+of fir, was set upright in a log with ends shaped like
+a fishtail. The long oarlike rudder was on the board
+or side of the ship to the right of the stern, called the
+starboard or steerboard. The lading was done on the
+opposite side, the larboard or ladderboard. There
+were ten oars to a side, and a single large triangular
+sail.</p>
+
+<p>Long and narrow, hardly ten feet above the water-line
+at her lowest, her curved prow glancing over the
+waves like the head of a swimming snake, she was no
+more like the tumbling cargo-ships than a shark is like
+a porpoise. When they were two days out, Nils said
+to Thorolf,</p>
+
+<p>"A Viking in such a galley would sail to the end of
+the world. By the way, did the Skroelings in Greenland
+understand that language the Wind-wife spoke?"<span class='pagenum'>[21]</span></p>
+
+<p>"I was not there long enough to find out. I once
+asked a man who knows their talk well, and he said it
+was no tongue that ever he heard."</p>
+
+<p>The Greenland folk welcomed them heartily. Finding
+that the white men had not after all been forgotten
+by their own people, the natives drew off and gave
+them no more trouble. The Northmen spent the winter
+in sleep, talk, song, and hunting with native guides.
+Besides the old man in white fur, as the polar bear was
+respectfully called, Arctic foxes, walrus, whales and
+seal abounded. Many of the new-comers became
+skilful in the making and the use of the skin-covered
+native boats called Kayaks. Nils had some skill in
+carving wood and stone, and could write in the Runic
+script of Elfdal. In the long evenings when winds
+from the cave of the Great Bear buffeted the low huts,
+he taught Thorolf and Anders what he knew, and
+talked with the Skroelings. But none of them understood
+the runes of the Wind-wife. Their speech was
+quite different.</p>
+
+<p>Spring came with brief, hot sunshine, and the creeping
+birches budded on the pebbly shore. Encouraged
+by the reports from Greenland, new colonists ventured
+out, and house-building went on briskly. One day
+Thorolf was summoned to Knutson's headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>"Erlandsson," began the Chevalier, "they say that
+you have information about Vinland<a name="FNanchor_3_7" id="FNanchor_3_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_7" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> and the Skroelings
+there, from an old woman who lived among them.
+What can you tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>Thorolf told the story of the Wind-wife. Knutson
+looked interested but doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>"I have talked with the oldest colonists," he said,
+"and they know nothing of any Skroelings but those
+hereabouts. They say also that Vinland is hard to <span class='pagenum'>[22]</span>
+come at. Boats venturing south return with tales of
+heavy winds, dense fogs and dangerous cliffs and skerries&mdash;or
+do not return at all. One was caught and
+crushed in the ice, and the crew were found on the floe
+half starved and gnawing bits of hide. In the sagas
+of Vinland the Skroelings are spoken of as fierce and
+treacherous. To hold such a land would need a strong
+hand. The old woman may have forgotten&mdash;or the
+stories may be those of her own people."</p>
+
+<p>Thorolf shook his head. "Nay, my lord. She
+was not a forgetful person&mdash;and the language is
+neither Lapp nor Finn."</p>
+
+<p>"She was very old, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so. I do not know how old."</p>
+
+<p>"Old people sometimes confuse what they have
+heard with what they have seen. But I shall remember
+what you have said."</p>
+
+<p>"If he had known the Wind-wife," said Nils when
+told of this conversation, "he would have no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>Knutson wrote to the King, but got no reply for a
+long time. A ship with a cargo of trading stores was
+sent for, and was wrecked on the Faroes. But in the
+following spring an expedition to Vinland was really
+planned. There was no general desire to take part
+in it. Many of Knutson's party now longed for their
+native land, where the mountains were drawn swords
+flashing in the sun, and the malachite and silver waters
+and flowery turf, the jeweled scabbards. They
+dreamed of the lure sounding over the valleys, of
+bright-paired maidens dancing the <i>spring dans</i>.
+Nevertheless in due season the <i>Rotge</i> left the Greenland
+shore and pointed her inquiring beak southeast
+by south. In the <i>Gudrid</i> sailed Knutson and his
+immediate following, with the trading cargo and most <span class='pagenum'>[23]</span>
+of the provisions. By keeping well out to sea at first
+the commander hoped to escape the perils of the
+coast.</p>
+
+<p>This hope was dashed by an Atlantic gale which
+drove them westward. For two days and two nights
+they were tossed between wind and tide. Toward the
+end of the second night the sound of the waves indicated
+land to starboard. In the growing light they
+saw a harbor that seemed spacious enough for all the
+ships in the world, sheltered by wooded hills. If this
+were Vinland, it was greater than saga told or skald
+sang.</p>
+
+<p>They landed to take in fresh water, mend a leak and
+see the country, but found no grapes, no Skroelings nor
+any sign of Northmen's presence. On the rocks grew
+vineberries, or mountain cranberries, and Knutson
+thought that perhaps these and not true grapes were
+the fruit found in Vinland. He sent a party of a
+dozen men, Anders and Thorolf leading, to explore the
+forest, ascend some hill if possible and return the same
+day. He himself remained with the ships and kept
+Nils by him. He rather expected that the natives,
+learning of the strangers' arrival, would be drawn by
+curiosity to visit the bay.</p>
+
+<p>The scouting party followed the banks of the little
+stream that had given them fresh water, Anders leading,
+Thorolf just behind him. Wind stirred softly in
+the leaves overhead, unseen birds fluttered and chirped,
+sunshine sifting through the maple undergrowth turned
+it to emerald and gold and jasper. Once there was a
+discordant screech from the evergreens, but it was only
+a brilliant blue jay with crest erect, scolding at them.
+A striped squirrel flashed up the trunk of a tree to his
+hole. Then sudden as lightning, from the bushes they
+had just passed, came a flight of arrows.<span class='pagenum'>[24]</span></p>
+
+<p>Two men were slightly wounded, but most of the
+arrows were turned by the light strong body armor
+of the Norsemen. The foe remained unseen and unheard.
+Nothing stirred, though the men scanned
+the woods about them with the keen eyes of seamen
+and hunters.</p>
+
+<p>Thorolf was seized with an inspiration. He went
+forward a step or two, lifted his hand in salutation,
+and called,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Klooskap mech p'maosa?"<a name="FNanchor_4_8" id="FNanchor_4_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_8" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> (Is Klooskap
+yet alive?)</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence stiller than death. The Norsemen
+faced the ominous thicket without moving a muscle.
+Some one within it called out something which
+Thorolf did not understand. But no more arrows
+came. He tried another sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"Klooskap k-chi skitap, pechedog latogwesnuk."
+(Klooskap was a great man in the country far to the
+northward.)</p>
+
+<p>This time he made out the answer. In a swift aside
+he explained to his comrades,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'K'putuswin' means 'let us take council.' They
+want to have a talk."</p>
+
+<p>He managed to convey his assent to the unseen listeners,
+and every tree, rock and log sprouted Skroelings.
+They were quite unlike the natives of Greenland,
+though of copper-colored complexion.<a name="FNanchor_5_9" id="FNanchor_5_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_9" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> These men&mdash;there
+were no women among them,&mdash;were tall and
+sinewy, and wore their coarse black hair knotted up on
+the head with a tuft of feathers. They were naked to
+the waist, and wore fringed breeches of deerskin, and
+soft shoes embroidered in bright colors. Some had
+necklaces of bears' claws, beads or shells, but the only
+weapons seemed to be the bow and arrow and a stone-headed <span class='pagenum'>[25]</span>
+hatchet or club. They stared at the white
+man half curiously and half threateningly.</p>
+
+<p>Then began the queerest conversation that any one
+present had ever heard. Thorolf discovered the wild
+men's language to be so nearly like that learned from
+the Wind-wife that he could understand it when spoken
+slowly, and in a halting fashion could make them comprehend
+him. His companions listened in wonder.
+Not even Anders had really believed in that language.</p>
+
+<p>At last Thorolf held out his hand, and the leader of
+the Skroelings came forward in a very gingerly manner
+and took it. Then walking in single file, toes pointed
+straight forward, the savages melted into the forest as
+frost melts in sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>With a broad grin, the first he had worn for some
+time, Thorolf translated.</p>
+
+<p>"He asked why we came here. I told him, to see
+the country and trade with his people. He says that
+white men have come here before, very long ago. I
+think they were killed and he did not wish to say so.
+He says that the Sagem, the jarl of his people, lives in
+a castle over there somewhere. I told him to give the
+Sagem greeting from our commander, and invite him
+to visit the place where our ships are. He says that it
+will not be safe for us to go further into the forest
+until the Skroelings have heard who we are and what
+we are doing here."</p>
+
+<p>"That is very good advice," said Anders with a wry
+face, as he plucked some moss to stanch the wound in
+his arm. The arrow-head which had made it was a
+shaped piece of flint bound to the shaft with cords of
+fine sinew. "We are too few to get into a general
+fight. Besides, that is not in our orders."<span class='pagenum'>[26]</span></p>
+
+<p>They accordingly went back to the ships, arriving a
+little before sundown. Knutson was greatly interested.</p>
+
+<p>"You have done well," he said. "A boat was hovering
+about soon after you left. This may have been
+a scouting party sent through the forest to cut you off."</p>
+
+<p>All the next day they waited, but nothing happened.
+On the morning after, a large number of boats appeared
+rounding the headland to the south. In the
+largest sat the Sagem, a very old man wrapped in furs.
+The boats were made of birchbark laced on a wooden
+framework with fibrous roots, like the toy skiff Mother
+Elle had made for little Peder.</p>
+
+<p>The Skroelings landed, and advanced with great dignity
+to meet Knutson, who was equally ceremonious.
+Nils and Thorolf had all they could do to interpret the
+old chief's long speech, although many phrases were
+repeated again and again, which made it easier. Knutson
+made one in reply, briefer but quite as polite, and
+brought out beads, little knives, and scarlet cloth from
+his trading stores. The red cloth and beads were received
+with eagerness, the knives with interest, and after
+a young chief had cut himself, with some awe. The
+Sagem in his turn presented the stranger with skins of
+the sable, the silver fox and the bear. He and a few
+of the warriors tasted of the food offered them, and all
+the white men were asked to a feast in the village the
+next day.</p>
+
+<p>So friendly were the Skroelings, in fact, that Knutson
+determined to return to Greenland and see what could
+be done toward founding a settlement here. He would
+leave part of the men in winter quarters, with the <i>Rotge</i>
+as a means of further explorations, or if necessary, of
+escape. Her captain, Gustav Sigerson, was a cautious,
+wise and experienced seaman. Anders Amundson, <span class='pagenum'>[27]</span>
+as the best hunter of the expedition, was to stay,
+with Nils as clerk and Thorolf as interpreter. Booths
+were erected, stores landed, and on a brilliant day in
+late summer some forty Norsemen and Gothlanders on
+the shore watched the <i>Gudrid</i> slowly fading out of
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>In talking with the natives Nils and Thorolf observed
+that their world seemed to be infested with demons&mdash;particularly
+water-fiends. A reason for this
+appeared in time. Half a dozen men one day took the
+stern-boat and went a-fishing. They came back white-faced,
+with a story of a giant squid with arms four
+times as long as the boat, that had risen out of the
+sea and tried to pull them under. Only their skill as
+rowers had saved them. Nils remembered the kraken,
+of ancient legends, and thought he could see why the
+Skroelings never ventured out to sea in their frail canoes.
+This put an end to plans for exploring along
+the coast.</p>
+
+<p>The winter was colder than they had expected.
+This land, so much further south than Norway, was
+bitten by frost as Norway never was. There is something
+in intense cold which is inhuman. When men
+are shut up together in exile by it, all that is bad in them
+is likely to crop out. It might have been worse but
+for the fortunate friendliness of the Skroelings.
+When scurvy appeared in the camp, their first acquaintance,
+Munumqueh (woodchuck) had his women brew
+a drink which cured it. He showed the white men
+also how to make pemmican, the compressed meat
+ration of native hunters, and how to construct and use
+a birch canoe, a pair of snowshoes, and a fire-drill.
+Gustav Sigerson died in the spring, and Nils was
+chosen captain. He and Munumqueh became great <span class='pagenum'>[28]</span>
+cronies, and exchanged names, Nils being thereafter
+known to his native friends as the Woodchuck, and bestowing
+upon Munumqueh the proud name of his grandfather,
+Nils the Bear-Slayer.</p>
+
+<p>"It will never do for us to sit quiet here until
+Knutson returns," said Nils when at Midsummer
+nothing had been seen of the ships. "We shall be at
+one another's throats or quarreling with the savages."
+He had been inquiring about the nature of the country,
+and had learned that westward a great river led to five
+inland seas, so connected that canoes could go from one
+to another. Along this chain of waters lived tribes
+who spoke somewhat the same language and traded
+with one another. Southward lived a warlike people
+who sometimes attacked the lake tribes. Beyond the
+last of the lakes they did not know what the country
+was like. The waters inland were not troubled with
+the water-demon so far as they knew. Nils, Anders
+and Thorolf held a council and decided to explore the
+wilderness as far as they could go in the <i>Rotge</i>. It
+was nothing more than all their ancestors had done.
+Often, in their invasions of England, France and other
+unknown regions Vikings had gone up one river and
+come down another, and the <i>Rotge</i>, for all her iron
+strength, was no more than a wooden shell when
+stripped.<a name="FNanchor_6_10" id="FNanchor_6_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_10" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>They set forth, escorted by a flotilla of small canoes,
+on a clear summer morning, and found their progress
+surprisingly easy. Fish, game and berries were plentiful,
+the villages along the river supplied corn and
+beans, and though it was not always easy to drag the
+<i>Rotge</i> around the carrying-places pointed out by their
+native guides, they did not have to turn back. It was
+a proud moment when the undefeated crew launched <span class='pagenum'>[29]</span>
+their "water-snake" as the Skroelings called her, on
+the shining waters of a great inland sea.</p>
+
+<p>The journey had been a far longer one than they
+expected, and to natives of any other country would
+have been much more exciting than it was to the Norsemen.<a name="FNanchor_7_11" id="FNanchor_7_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_11" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+They had seen cliffs a thousand feet high, cataracts,
+rapids, a multitude of wooded islands, narrow
+valleys where floating misty clouds came and went and
+the sky looked like a riband. But the precipice above
+Naero Fiord rises four thousand perpendicular feet,
+and the water which laps its base is thousands of feet
+in depth. The Skjaeggedalsfos is loftier than Niagara,
+and the mist-maidens dance along the perilous pathways
+of a hundred Norwegian cliffs. Nils and Thorolf
+agreed that the Wind-wife was right when she said
+that the country of the Skroelings was like Norway
+but had no end.</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble is," reflected Nils as he set down the
+day's happenings on a birch-bark scroll, "that nobody
+will believe us when we tell how great the land is."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the fifth and largest lake they found
+people with some knowledge of the country beyond.
+It seemed that after crossing the Big Woods one came
+to great open plains where a ferocious and cruel race
+of warriors hunted animals as large as the moose, with
+hoofs and short horns and curly brown fur. This
+sounded like a cattle country. The lake tribes evidently
+stood in great fear of the plains people, but in
+spite of their evident alarm the Norsemen determined
+to go and see for themselves.<a name="FNanchor_8_12" id="FNanchor_8_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_12" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Leaving the boat
+with ten of their company to guard it they struck off
+southwestward through a country of forests, lakes
+and streams. After fourteen days they stopped to
+make camp and go a-fishing, for dried fish would be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+the most convenient ration for a quick march, and
+they did not intend to spend much more time in exploring.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Nils and Thorolf that some mark or
+monument should be left to show how far they had
+really come. A small natural column of dark trap
+rock was chosen, and while the others fished, or made
+a seine after the native fashion, Nils marked out an
+inscription in Runic letters, which are suited to rough
+work. Not far from the place where they found the
+stone, and about a day's journey from camp, was a
+small high island in a little lake, the kind of place
+usually chosen by Vikings for a first camp. The stone,
+set in the middle of this island, would be easily seen by
+any one looking for it, and savages would not see it at
+all. When finished it was rafted across to the island
+and set up, the inscription covering about half of it on
+both sides. While Nils and several others were thus
+busy, the remainder of the party were trying the seine.
+They reached camp after dark to find their booths in
+ashes, and Nils with his men murdered a little way off,
+as they had come up from the Rune Stone.<a name="FNanchor_9_13" id="FNanchor_9_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_13" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 411px;">
+<img src="images/illus-044.png" width="411" height="600" alt="&quot;Nils marked out an inscription in runic letters.&quot;&mdash;Page 30" title="&quot;Nils marked out an inscription in runic letters.&quot;&mdash;Page 30" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Nils marked out an inscription in runic letters.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 30</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>With fury and horror the Norsemen looked upon
+the destruction. It was all Thorolf and the cooler
+heads could do to keep the rest from attacking the
+first Skroelings they saw. But the mischief had been
+done, without doubt, by the unknown warriors of the
+plains, who had been perhaps watching their advance.
+They sadly prepared to return to their boat. But before
+they went, Thorolf paddled out to the island on
+two logs, while the others kept guard, and added some
+lines to the inscription on the stone.</p>
+
+<p>They never saw their Vinland again. Knutson, finding
+the King fighting hard against the Danes, gave no
+further thought to the wilderness. Thorolf and a <span class='pagenum'>[31]</span>
+handful of his men finally reached Bergen; Anders
+stayed in Greenland. More than five centuries
+afterward, a Scandinavian farmer, grubbing for
+stumps in a Minnesota marsh, found overgrown by
+the roots of a tulip tree a stone with an inscription in
+Runic letters, took it to learned men and had it
+translated.</p>
+
+<p>"8 Goths and 22 Norsemen upon journey of discovery
+from Vinland westward. We had camp by two
+rocks one day's journey from this stone. We were
+out fishing one day. When we returned home we
+found ten men red with blood and dead. AVM
+save us from evil. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;have ten men by the sea to
+look after our ship 14 days journey from this island.
+Year 1362." </p>
+
+<hr />
+<h4 class="smcap">notes</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_5" id="Footnote_1_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_5"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+Skal or skoal was the Norwegian word used in drinking a
+health.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_6" id="Footnote_2_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_6"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+The description of the Norse galley is taken from Du Chaillu's
+"Land of the Midnight Sun," in which the construction of one which
+was unearthed at Nydam in Jutland is described (Vol. I. 380). The
+galley "Viking" built in Norway on the model of an actual Viking
+ship of the early Middle Ages, was taken across the Atlantic in 1893
+by a Norwegian crew of fourteen, anchoring in Lake Michigan, after
+a voyage in which they had no shelter except an awning and cooked
+their own food as best they could.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_7" id="Footnote_3_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_7"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+The question of the actual whereabouts of Leif Ericsson's booths
+and Thorfin Karlsefne's later settlement has never been positively
+decided. The Knutson expedition to Greenland is an historical fact.
+It left Norway about 1354 and returned about 1364. It is not positively
+known that Knutson attempted the rediscovery of Vinland, unless
+what is known as the Kensington Rune Stone is evidence of it. The
+writer has adopted the theory that he did take a party southward,
+landing at Halifax, and left a part of his men there, intending to
+return with more colonists; that on returning to Norway he found
+the country in the throes of war and abandoned any thought of further
+settlement, leaving his men to find their way back as they could.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_8" id="Footnote_4_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_8"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+The Indian phrases and legends referred to as learned by the
+Wind-wife are Abenaki.</p></div>
+
+<span class='pagenum'>[32]</span>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_9" id="Footnote_5_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_9"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+According to historians the region along the St. Lawrence and
+the Great Lakes was for a long time inhabited by tribes belonging
+to the great Ojibway nation. Their territory extended nearly to the
+western boundary of what is now Minnesota. Southward were the
+tribes later known as Iroquois.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_10" id="Footnote_6_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_10"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
+Accounts of the open galleys of the Northmen agree in describing
+them as small and light compared with the later decked ships. The
+open "sea-serpent" of forty-two feet, with her mast unshipped was
+heavier but not much bigger than the largest Indian carrying-canoes
+such as were used in the fur-trade, and these were taken from the
+St. Lawrence through the Great Lakes. Vikings landing in Europe
+were prepared not only to return by a new route but even to take
+their boats apart or build new ones if necessary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_11" id="Footnote_7_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_11"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>
+Bayard Taylor, visiting the Saguenay and the St. Lawrence
+immediately after a sojourn in Norway, speaks of his inability to be
+impressed as others had been, by the height of the cliffs and waterfalls
+of Canada, although fully appreciating the beauty of the
+scenery.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_12" id="Footnote_8_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_12"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
+The Sioux or Dakotas, who occupied the Great Plains, were
+hereditary enemies of the Ojibways. In the Ojibway language one
+name for these Plains Indians indicated that they were in the habit
+of mutilating their victims.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_13" id="Footnote_9_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_13"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+The monument known as the Kensington Rune Stone was found
+near Kensington, Minnesota, and is fully described in the reports of
+the Minnesota Historical Society. It was the subject of many arguments
+at first. Well known authorities pronounced it a forgery,
+while other well known authorities declared it genuine. It was
+pointed out that the language used was not that of the time of Leif
+Ericsson, but much more modern; but later it was found that the
+inscription was exactly such as would have been written about the
+middle of the fourteenth century, when Knutson's expedition was in
+Greenland. Aside from the obvious lack of motive for a forgery,
+investigation showed that neither the farmer nor any one who might
+have been in a position to bury the stone where it was found had any
+knowledge of Runic writing. Moreover, if the stone had been a
+forgery it would seem that the forger would have used the name of
+some well known leader, whereas no name is mentioned. If Knutson
+had been with the expedition he would certainly have seen to it that
+his presence was recorded.</p>
+
+<p>Otter Tail Lake, just north of the place where the stone was discovered,
+was one of the points marking the boundary between the
+Ojibway and Dakota country. The position of the runes on the stone
+is precisely what it would be if the inscription had been finished, or
+nearly finished, as a guide to future exploration, and the account of
+the massacre added as a warning.</p><span class='pagenum'>[33]</span>
+
+<p>A song commonly sung at the time of the Black Death contains the
+lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The Black Plague sped over land and sea</span>
+<span class="i0">And swept so many a board.</span>
+<span class="i0">That will I now most surely believe,</span>
+<span class="i0">It was not with the Lord's will.</span>
+<span class="i0">Help us God and Mary,</span>
+<span class="i0">Save us all from evil."</span>
+</div></div></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34"  id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_NAVIGATORS" id="THE_NAVIGATORS"></a>THE NAVIGATORS</h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">His gentlemen were we,</span>
+<span class="i0">To dare the gods of Heathendom,</span>
+<span class="i2">Whoever they might be,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">To do our master's sovereign will</span>
+<span class="i2">Upon a trackless sea.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,</span>
+<span class="i2">And undismayed we went</span>
+<span class="i0">To fight for Lusitania</span>
+<span class="i2">Wherever we were sent,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">The stars had laid our course for us,</span>
+<span class="i2">And we were well content.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,</span>
+<span class="i2">And though our flagship lie</span>
+<span class="i0">Where white the great-winged albatross</span>
+<span class="i2">Came wheeling down the sky,</span>
+<span class="i0">Or black abysses yawned for us,</span>
+<span class="i2">We could not fear to die.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Around the Cape of Wrath</span>
+<span class="i0">We sailed our wooden cockleshells&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Great pride the pilot hath</span>
+<span class="i0">To voyage to-day the Indian Sea&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">But we marked out his path!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="SEA_OF_DARKNESS" id="SEA_OF_DARKNESS"></a>SEA OF DARKNESS</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Those things that you say cannot be true, Fernao!
+How do you know that the sea turns black
+and dreadful just behind those heavenly clouds? If
+there are hydras, and gorgons, and sea-snakes that can
+swallow a ship, and a great black hand reaching up
+out of a whirlpool to drag men down, why do we
+never see them here? Look at that sea, can there
+be anything in the world more beautiful?"</p>
+
+<p>The vehement small speaker waved her slender hand
+with a gesture that seemed to take in half the horizon.
+The old Moorish garden, overrun with the brilliant
+blossoms that drink their hues from the sea, overlooked
+the harbor. Across the huddled many-colored
+houses the ten-year-old Beatriz and her playfellow
+Fernao could see the western ocean in a great half-circle,
+bounded by the mysterious line above which
+three tiny caravels had just risen. The sea to-day was
+exquisite, bluer than the heavens that arched above it.
+The wave-crests looked like a flock of sea-doves playing
+on the sunlit sparkling waters. Fernao from his
+seat on the crumbling wall watched the incoming ships
+with the far-sighted gaze of a sailor. Portuguese
+through and through, the son and grandson of men who
+had sailed at the bidding of the great Prince Henry,
+he felt that he could speak with authority.<a name="FNanchor_1_14" id="FNanchor_1_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_14" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am telling you the truth. You are  <span class='pagenum'>[36]</span>
+very wise about the sea&mdash;you who never saw it until
+two weeks ago! Gil Andrade has been to places that
+you Castilians never even heard of. He has seen
+whales, and mermaids, and the Sea of Darkness itself!
+He has been to the Gold Coast beyond Bojador, where
+the people are fried black like charcoal, and the rivers
+are too hot to drink."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why didn't he die?" inquired the unbelieving
+Beatriz.</p>
+
+<p>"Because he didn't stay there long enough. And
+there are devils in the forest, stronger than ten men,
+and all covered with shaggy hair&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not listen to such nonsense! Do you think
+that because I am Spanish, and a girl, I am without
+understanding? Tio Sancho, is it true that there is a
+Sea of Darkness?"</p>
+
+<p>Sancho Serrao was an old seaman, as any one would
+know by his eyes and his walk. For fifty years he had
+used the sea, as ship-boy, sailor, and pilot. His daughter
+Catharina had been the nurse of Beatriz, and he
+had brought coral, shells and queer toys to the little
+thing from the time she could toddle to his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"What has Fernao been saying to thee, pombinha
+agreste?" (little wood-dove) he asked soberly, though
+his eyes twinkled ever so little. He seated himself as
+he spoke, on an ancient bench that rested its back
+against the wall just where the wind was sweetest.
+Under the fragrances of ripening vineyards and flowering
+shrubs there was always the sharp clean smell of
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"He believes all that Gil Andrade and Joao Pancado
+tell him as if it were the Credo," Beatriz began,
+her words flung out like sparks from a little crackling
+fire. "He says that there is a Sea of Darkness out <span class='pagenum'>[37]</span>
+away beyond the Falcon Islands, where ships are
+drawn into a great pit under the edge of the world.
+And he says that ships cannot go too far south because
+the sun is so near it would burn them, and they
+cannot go too far north because the icebergs will catch
+them and crush them. If I were a man, I would sail
+straight out there, into the sunset, and show them
+what my people dared to do!"</p>
+
+<p>Old Sancho was not all Portuguese. In his veins
+ran the blood of the three great seafaring races of
+southern Europe&mdash;the Genoese, the Lusitanian and
+the Vizcayan&mdash;and their jealousies and rivalries
+amused him. He had spent most of his life in the
+feluccas and caravels of Lisbon and Oporto, because
+when he was young they went where no other ships
+dared even follow; but he did not believe that the last
+word in discovery had been said even by Dom Henriques
+at Sagres, or the Mappe-Monde of Fra Mauro
+in Venice.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so fast there, velinha (small candle)" he cautioned,
+raising a whimsical forefinger. "So said many
+of us in our youth. And when we had sailed for
+weeks, and all our provisions were mouldy or weevilly,
+and our water-casks warped and leaking so that we
+had to catch the rain in our shirts, we began to wonder
+what it was we had come for. The sea won't be
+mocked or threatened. She has ways of her own, the
+old witch, to tame the vainglorious. And 't is true
+enough," the old pilot went on with a quizzing look at
+Fernao on his insecure perch, "that sailors have a
+bad habit of doubling and trebling their recollections
+when they find anybody who will listen. I don't know
+why they do it. Maybe it is because having told a perfectly
+true tale which nobody believed, they think that <span class='pagenum'>[38]</span>
+a little more or a little less will do no harm. For this
+you must remember, my children,&mdash;that at sea many
+things happen which when told no one believes to be
+true."</p>
+
+<p>"I would believe anything you told me, Tio Sancho,"
+promised Beatriz, all love and confidence in her little
+glowing face.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, would you now? What if I said that I have
+seen a ship with all sail set coming swiftly before the
+wind, in a place where no wind was, to stir our hair who
+beheld it&mdash;and sailing moreover through the air at
+the height of a tall mast-head above the sea? And a
+mountain of ice half a league long and as high as the
+Giralda at Seville, floating in a sea as blue as this one,
+and as warm? And islands with mountains that
+smoke, appearing and disappearing in broad daylight?
+Yet all of these are common sights at sea."</p>
+
+<p>"But is there a Sea of Darkness, verily, verily, tio
+caro?" persisted Beatriz. The old man shook his
+head, with a little quiet smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll not say there is not. And I'll not say there is.
+I saw a Sea of Darkness on the second voyage that ever
+I made, but that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, tell us all the story!" begged Beatriz, and
+Fernao silently slid from the wall and came closer.</p>
+
+<p>"The commander of our ship was Gonsales Zarco,
+one of Dom Henriques' gentlemen. Years before
+he'd been caught by a gale on his way to Africa, and
+driven north on to an island that he named because of
+that, Puerto Santo (Holy Haven). So when he came
+that way again he stopped to see how the settlement
+that was planted there prospered, and found the people
+in great trouble of mind. They showed him that
+a thick black cloud hung upon the sea to the northwest <span class='pagenum'>[39]</span>
+of the island, filling the air to the very heavens and
+never going away; and out of this cloud, they said,
+came strange noises, not like any they had heard before.
+They dared not sail far from their island, for
+they said that if a man lost sight of land thereabouts
+it was a miracle if he ever returned. They believed
+that place to be the great abyss, the mouth of hell.
+But learned men held the opinion that this cloud hid the
+island of Cipango, where the Seven Bishops had taken
+refuge from the Moors and the Saracens.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly the cloud was there, for we all saw it,
+and when the Commander said that he would stay to
+see whether it would change when the moon changed,
+we liked it not, I can tell you. And when we learned
+that he was minded to sail straight into the darkness
+and see what lay behind it, why, there were some who
+would have run away&mdash;if they could have run anywhere
+but into the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"But we had a Spanish pilot, Morales, who had
+once been a prisoner in Morocco, and there he knew
+two Englishmen who had sailed these seas in time past.
+Their ship had been lying ready to sail for France,
+when late at night Robert Macham, a gentleman of
+their country, came hurriedly aboard with his lady love
+whom he had carried off from her home in Bristol, and
+between dark and dawn the captain weighed anchor and
+was off. Then being driven from the course the ship
+was cast on a thickly wooded island with a high mountain
+in the middle, where they dwelt not long, for the
+lady died, and Macham died of grief. The crew left
+the island and were wrecked in Morocco and made
+slaves. All this was many years before, for the Englishmen
+had grown old in slavery, and Morales himself
+had grown old since he heard the tale.<span class='pagenum'>[40]</span></p>
+
+<p>"It was the belief of Morales that this was the island
+of which they told, and that the cloud which hung
+above the waters was the mist arising from those dense
+woods which covered it. The upshot was that the commander
+set sail one morning early and steered straight
+for the cloud.</p>
+
+<p>"The nearer we came the higher and thicker looked
+the darkness that spread over the sea, and we heard
+about noon a great roaring of the waves. Still Gonsales
+held his course, and when the wind failed he ordered
+out the boats to tow the ship into the cloud, and
+I was one of those who rowed. As we got closer it
+was not quite so dark, but the roaring was louder, although
+the sea was smooth. Then through the darkness
+we beheld tall black objects which we guessed to
+be giants walking in the water, but as we came nearer
+we saw that they were great rocks, and before us
+loomed a high mountain covered with thick woods.</p>
+
+<p>"We found no place to land but a cave under a
+rock that overhung the sea, and that was trodden all
+over the bottom by the sea-wolves, so that Gonsales
+named it the Camera dos Lobos. The island, because
+of its forests, he called Madeira. When we came
+back, having taken possession of the island for the King,
+he sent a colony to settle upon it, and the first boy and
+girl born there were named Adam and Eva. The people
+set fire to the trees, which were in their way, and
+could not put out the fire, so that it burned for seven
+years and all the trees were destroyed. And the King
+gave our commander the right to carry as supporters
+on his coat-of-arms two sea-wolves."</p>
+
+<p>Beatriz drew a long breath. "Weren't you very
+scared, Tio Sancho?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sailors must not be scared, little one. Or if they <span class='pagenum'>[41]</span>
+are, they must never let their arms and legs be scared.
+We knew that we had to obey orders or be dead, so we
+obeyed. I have been glad many a time since that I
+sailed with Gonsales and old Morales to the discovery
+of Madeira."</p>
+
+<p>"What are sea-wolves?" asked Fernao.</p>
+
+<p>"Like no beast that ever you saw, my son. They
+have the fore part of the body like a dog or bear, the
+hind part ending in a tail like a fish, but with hair, not
+scales, on the body; the head has a thick mane, and the
+jaws are large and strong. They are no more seen
+on that island, for they went there only because it was
+never visited by men."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they try to drive the people away?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; they do not fight men unless men attack them.
+But the settlers were once driven off Puerto Santo by
+animals, and not very fierce animals at that." The
+old pilot grinned. "They were driven away by rabbits.
+Somebody brought rabbits there and let them
+loose, and in a few years there were so many that everything
+that was planted was eaten green. The people
+who live on that island now have made a strict rule
+about rabbits."</p>
+
+<p>The children's laughter echoed the dry chuckle of
+the old man. Then Fernao, unwilling to abandon his
+authorities,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But if the Sea of Darkness and the great abyss are
+not in the western ocean, why haven't they found out
+what really is there?"</p>
+
+<p>"That, my son, is more than I can tell you," said
+Sancho Serrao, getting up. "I sailed where I was told,
+and I never was told to sail due west from Lisbon.
+But here is a man who can answer your question, if any
+one can. Welcome to my humble dwelling, Senhor <span class='pagenum'>[42]</span>
+Colombo! Shall we go into the house, or will you find
+it pleasanter in the garden?"</p>
+
+<p>The new-comer was a tall man of middle age, although
+at first sight he looked older, because of his
+white hair. The fresh complexion, alert walk, and
+keen thoughtful blue eyes were those of a man not old
+in either mind or body. He smiled in answer to the
+greeting, and replied with a quick wave of the hand.
+"Do not disturb yourself, I beg of you, my friend.
+The garden is very pleasant. I have come on an errand
+of my own this time. Did you ever see, in your
+voyages to Africa or elsewhere, any such carving as
+this?"</p>
+
+<p>He held out a curious worm-eaten bit of reddish
+brown wood, rudely ornamented with carved figures in
+relief. Old Sancho took it and turned it about, examining
+it with narrowed attentive eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did it come from?" he asked, finally.</p>
+
+<p>"From the beach at Puerto Santo. My little son
+Diego picked it up, the day before I came away from
+the island."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that is curious. I was just telling the young
+ones about an adventure of my youth, when Gonsales
+Zarco touched there on his way to Madeira. With
+your good permission I will leave you for a few minutes
+and rummage in an old sea-chest, and see whether there
+is any flotsam in it to compare with this."</p>
+
+<p>Left alone with the stranger, Fernao and Beatriz
+looked at him with shy curiosity. They had seen him
+before, and knew him to be a mapmaker in the King's
+service, but he had never before been within speaking
+distance. He seemed to like children, for he
+smiled at them very kindly and spoke to them almost
+at once.<span class='pagenum'>[43]</span></p>
+
+<p>"And you were hearing about the discovery of
+Madeira?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, Senhor," Beatriz answered with demure dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"I live not very far from that island. It seems like
+living on the western edge of the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Senhor," asked Fernao with sudden daring, "what
+is beyond the edge of the world?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no edge, my boy. The world is round&mdash;like
+an orange."<a name="FNanchor_1_15" id="FNanchor_1_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_15" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>In all their fancies they had never thought of such
+a thing as that. Beatriz looked at the tall man with
+silent amazement, and Fernao looked as if he would
+like to ask who could prove the statement. The stranger's
+smile was amused but quite comprehending, as if
+he was not at all surprised that they should doubt him.</p>
+
+<p>"See," he went on, taking an orange from the basket
+that stood by, "suppose this little depression where
+the stem lost its hold to be Jerusalem, the center of our
+world; then this is Portugal&mdash;" he traced with the
+point of a penknife the outline of the great western
+peninsula. "Here you see are the capes&mdash;Saint Vincent,
+Finisterre, the great rock the Arabs call Geber-al-Tarif&mdash;the
+Mediterranean&mdash;the northern coast of
+Africa&mdash;so. Beyond are Arabia and India, and the
+Spice Islands which we do not know all about&mdash;then
+Cathay, where Marco Polo visited the Great Khan&mdash;you
+have heard of that? Yes? On the eastern and
+southern shore of Cathay is a great sea in which are
+many islands&mdash;Cipangu here, and to the south Java
+Major and Java Minor. We are told in the Book of
+Esdras that six parts of the earth are land and one
+part water, so here we cut away the skin where there
+is any sea,&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The miniature globe took form, like fairy mapmaking,
+under the cosmographer's skilful fingers, and the
+children watched, fascinated.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 423px;">
+<img src="images/illus-060.png" width="423" height="600" alt="&quot;The miniature globe took form as the children watched, fascinated.&quot;&mdash;Page 44" title="&quot;The miniature globe took form as the children watched, fascinated.&quot;&mdash;Page 44" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The miniature globe took form as the children watched, fascinated.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 44</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"But," cried Beatriz wonderingly, "a ship could sail
+around the world!"</p>
+
+<p>Colombo nodded and smiled. "So it was written in
+the 'Travels of Sir John Maundeville' more than a
+hundred years ago. But no ship has done so."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Fernao.</p>
+
+<p>"Chiefly, perhaps, because of tales like that of the
+Sea of Darkness and Satan's hand. And it is true that
+a ship venturing very far westward is drawn out of its
+course, as if the earth were not a perfect round, but
+sloped upward to the south. My own belief is,"&mdash;he
+seemed for a moment to forget that he was talking to
+children, "that it is not perfectly round, but somewhat
+like this pear,&mdash;" he selected a short chubby pear from
+the basket, "and that on this mountain may be a cool
+and lovely region which was once Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" cried Beatriz, her face alight with the glory
+of the thought. The geographer smiled at her and
+went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Also you see that the ocean is on this side of the
+earth very much greater than the Mediterranean. We
+do not know how long it would take to cross it. I have
+lately received a map from the famous Florentine Toscanelli
+which&mdash;ah!" he interrupted himself, "here
+comes our good friend Master Serrao."</p>
+
+<p>It had taken the pilot longer than he expected to
+hunt over his relics of old voyages, and there was nothing,
+after all, like the piece of wood cast ashore by the
+Atlantic waves. Old Sancho turned it over, examined
+the edges of the carving, and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No; that is not African work; at least it is not like <span class='pagenum'>[45]</span>
+any work of the black men that I have ever seen. They
+can all work iron, and this was made without the use of
+iron tools; that I am sure of. Some of our men were
+shipwrecked once where they had to make stone and
+shells serve their turn, and I know the look of wood
+that has been worked with such tools. And the wood
+itself is not like anything I have from Africa. It is
+more like the timber of the East."</p>
+
+<p>Now the stranger's eyes lighted with keener interest.</p>
+
+<p>"You think it may be Indian, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It may. But how in the name of Sao Cristobal
+did it come here? Besides, the people of India understand
+the use of metal as well as we do, or better."</p>
+
+<p>"May there not be wild men in remote islands of
+the Indian seas?"</p>
+
+<p>"That might be. Gil Andrade has been in those
+parts, and he says there are more islands than he could
+count. I have sometimes had occasion to take his stories
+with a pinch of salt, but if there are islands where
+wild people live they would make such things as this.
+And now I think of it, I once picked up a paddle myself,
+floating off the Azores, that was some such wood
+as this, but not carved. But the queerest thing I ever
+found was this nut. Look at it."</p>
+
+<p>It was part of a nutshell as big as a man's head and
+as hard as wood. "The inside was quite spoiled,"
+went on the old seaman, "but so far as I could judge
+it was no kin to the palm nuts we get. I kept the shell,
+and I have never found any merchant who could match
+it. Now the current sets toward our coast from the
+west at a certain point, and that is where all these odd
+things come ashore."</p>
+
+<p>The guest nodded. "My brother-in-law and I have <span class='pagenum'>[46]</span>
+talked much of these matters. One of his captains saw
+some time ago the floating bodies of two men, brown-skinned,
+with straight black hair, not like the natives
+of any part of Europe or Africa. Another thing which
+is strange, though I hold it not as important as they
+do, is that the people of Madeira persistently declare
+that they see a great island appear and disappear to the
+westward. According to their description it has lofty
+mountains and wooded valleys, and some say it is Atlantis
+and some Saint Brandan's Isle. No ship sailing
+that way has ever landed there, however."</p>
+
+<p>Sancho's eyes turned seaward. "It is marvelous,"
+he said after a pause, "what things men think they see.
+And you think, senhor, that the world is not yet all
+known to us?'"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know." Colombo stood up to take his
+departure. "If God hath reserved any great work to
+be done, He hath also chosen the man who is to do it.
+His tasks are not done by accident, or left to the blind
+or the selfish. Toscanelli thinks that since the world is
+round, we should reach the Indies by sailing due west
+from this coast, but in that case India would seem to
+be far greater than we have believed. If I had the
+ships and the men I would venture it. But at this time
+the King is altogether taken up with the eastward route
+to the Indies. It was said of old time, 'He that believeth
+shall not make haste.'"</p>
+
+<p>"But you will sail to Paradise some day, will you not,
+senhor?" asked Beatriz, treasuring the tiny globe in
+one careful hand while the other shaded her eyes from
+the level rays of the evening sun.</p>
+
+<p>"There is only one way to Paradise, little maid.
+That is by the will of our Lord. And if you, my lad,
+are the first to sail round the world, remember that the <span class='pagenum'>[47]</span>
+sea is His, and He made it. Man makes his own
+Sea of Darkness by ignorance, and hate, and fear."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">notes</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_14" id="Footnote_1_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_14"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+Prince Henry of Portugal, often called "Henry the Navigator"
+built the first naval observatory in Europe at Sagres. He may be
+said to have laid the foundation of the Portuguese and later Spanish
+discoveries. In the time of Columbus the Mappe-Mondo or Map of
+the World of a Venetian monk was considered the most complete map
+yet made.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_15" id="Footnote_1_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_15"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+The statement has been carelessly made in some juvenile books
+dealing with the age of discovery, that in the time of Columbus nobody
+knew that the world was round. This of course is not even approximately
+the case. The conception of the earth as a sphere was generally
+set forth in what might be called books of science, and even in
+some popular works like that of Sir John Maundeville, who died in
+1372. Its acceptance by the public, however, may be said to have
+followed somewhat the course of the Darwinian theory in the nineteenth
+century. Long after evolution was admitted as a truth by
+scientific men there were schools and even colleges which refused to
+teach it, and in fact it was not accepted by the public until the
+generation which first heard of it had died.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></div>
+<h3><a name="SUNSET_SONG" id="SUNSET_SONG"></a>SUNSET SONG</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down upon our seaward light,</span>
+<span class="i2">Swept by all the winds that blow,</span>
+<span class="i0">Birds come reeling in their flight&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">(<i>Ay de mi, Cristofero!</i>)</span>
+<span class="i0">Petrels tossing on the gale,</span>
+<span class="i0">Falcons daring sleet and hail,</span>
+<span class="i0">Curlews whistling high and far,</span>
+<span class="i0">Waifs that cross the harbor bar</span>
+<span class="i0">Borne from isles we do not know&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">(<i>Ay de mi, Cristofero!</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Round our island haven blest</span>
+<span class="i2">Waves like drifted mountain snow</span>
+<span class="i0">Break from out the shoreless West&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">(<i>Ay de mi, Cristofero!</i>)</span>
+<span class="i0">Cast ashore a broken spar</span>
+<span class="i0">Born beneath some alien star,</span>
+<span class="i0">Broken, beaten by the wave&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">In what far-off unknown grave</span>
+<span class="i0">Lie the hands that shaped it so?</span>
+<span class="i2">(<i>Ay de mi, Cristofero!</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sails upon the gray world's edge</span>
+<span class="i2">Like mute phantoms come and go,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Life and honor men will pledge&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">(<i>Ay de mi, Cristofero!</i>)</span>
+<span class="i0">For the pearls and gems and gold</span>
+<span class="i0">That the burning Indies hold.</span>
+<span class="i0">Or the Guinea coast they dare</span>
+<span class="i0">With its fever-poisoned air</span>
+<span class="i0">For the slaves they capture so</span>
+<span class="i2">(<i>Ay de mi, Cristofero!</i>)</span><span class='pagenum'>[49]</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In our chamber small to-night,</span>
+<span class="i2">Fair as love's immortal glow,</span>
+<span class="i0">Shines our silver censer-light&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">(<i>Ay de mi, Cristofero</i>!)</span>
+<span class="i0">What is this that holds thee fast</span>
+<span class="i0">In old histories of the past?</span>
+<span class="i0">Put the time-stained parchments by,</span>
+<span class="i0">Men have sought where dead men lie</span>
+<span class="i0">For the secret thou wouldst know&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">All too long, Cristofero!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="PEDRO_AND_HIS_ADMIRAL" id="PEDRO_AND_HIS_ADMIRAL"></a>PEDRO AND HIS ADMIRAL</h3>
+
+
+<p>Juan de la Cosa, captain of the <i>Santa Maria</i>,
+was prowling about the beach of Gomera in a
+thoroughly dissatisfied frame of mind. His own ship,
+the <i>Gallego</i> before the Admiral re-christened her and
+made her his flagship, was riding trim as a mallard
+within sight of his eye. She would never have kept the
+fleet waiting in the Canaries for a little thing like a
+broken rudder.</p>
+
+<p>It was the <i>Pinta</i> that had done this, and it was the
+veteran pilot's private opinion that she would behave
+much better if her owners, Gomez Rascon and Christoval
+Quintero, had been left behind in Palos. But what
+can you do when you have seized a ship for the service
+of the Crown, and turned her over to a captain who
+is a rival ship-owner, and her owners wish to serve in
+her crew and not elsewhere? They cannot be blamed
+for liking to keep an eye on their property!</p>
+
+<p>"Capitano!" piped a voice at his elbow. He
+looked around, and then he looked down. An undersized
+urchin with not much on but a pair of
+ragged breeches stared up at him boldly, hands behind
+his back. "Do you know what ails your ship over
+there?" He nodded sideways at the disgraced <i>Pinta</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The accent was that of Bilbao in the captain's own
+native province, Vizcaya. Ordinarily he would have
+cuffed the speaker heels over head for impudence, but <span class='pagenum'>[51]</span>
+the dialect made him pause. Besides, he wanted to
+hear something to confirm his suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>"She is no ship of mine," he growled, "and anyway,
+what do you know about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know much more than they think I do. The
+calkers did not half do their work before she left port.
+I'd like to sail in her if she were properly looked after.
+But when a man goes out on the dolphins' track he
+likes to come home again, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"A man! Do babes take a ship round Bojador?
+And who may you call yourself, zagallo (strong
+youth)?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am Pedro, son of Pedro who was an escaladero
+(climber) at the siege of Alhama. He was killed on
+the way home, and my mother died of grief, so that
+I get my bread where the saints put it. People say
+that they unlocked all the jails to get you your crew
+for the Indies, and now I see that it is true."</p>
+
+<p>Juan de la Cosa knew the untamable sauciness of
+the Vizcayan breed, and knew as well the loyalty that
+went with it. "Son," he said seriously, "what do you
+know of this matter?" The boy put aside his insolence
+and spoke gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that these fellows who have been commanded
+to serve your Admiral hate him, and will make
+him lose his venture if they can. I would sooner put
+to sea in a meal-tub with myself that I can trust, than
+in a Cadiz galley manned with plotters. When they
+hauled this fine ship up on the beach I asked for a job,
+and the lazy fellows were glad enough of help. I
+never minded doing their work if they hadn't kicked
+me. When I heard them planning I said to myself,
+'Pedro, mi hidalgo, a crow in hand is worth two buzzards <span class='pagenum'>[52]</span>
+in the bush waiting to pick your bones.' Your
+Admiral may have to go back to Castile and eat
+crow.</p>
+
+<p>"They have agreed that they will sail seven hundred
+leagues and no more, since that is the distance
+from here to the Indies if your map is true. If the
+Admiral refuse to turn back in case land is not found
+they will pitch him into the sea and tell the world that
+he was star-gazing and fell overboard, being an old
+man and unused to perilous voyages. He should get
+him another crew&mdash;if he can."</p>
+
+<p>This was important information. Yet to go back
+might be more dangerous than to go on. The expedition
+had already been delayed a fortnight with making
+a rudder for the <i>Pinta</i>, stopping her leaks, and replacing
+the lateen sails of the <i>Nina</i> with square ones, that
+she might be able to keep up with the others. Another
+week must pass before they could sail. If they returned
+to Palos it was doubtful whether they could get
+any men at all to replace the disloyal ones. Too much
+delay might cause the withdrawal of Martin Pinzon
+and his brother Vicente, owners of the <i>Nina</i>; and if
+they went, most of the seamen who were worth their
+salt would go also. La Cosa himself in the Admiral's
+place would go on and take the chance of mutiny, trusting
+in his own power to prevent or subdue it.</p>
+
+<p>"Pedro," he said, "have you told this to any one
+else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to sail with us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will a wolf bite? Why do you suppose I told
+you all this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bite your tongue then, wolf-cub, until I have seen
+the Admiral. Where shall I find you if I want you?"<span class='pagenum'>[53]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Tia Josefa over there lets me sleep in the courtyard."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well&mdash;now, off with you."</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral said exactly what the pilot had thought
+he would say. He knew himself to be looked upon
+with envy and dislike, as a Genoese, and the Spaniards
+who made up his three crews had been collected as
+with a rake from the unwilling Andalusian seaports.
+It was decided that the mutinous sailors should be scattered
+so that they could not easily act together. Pedro
+was taken on as cabin-boy, for he was thirteen, and
+wiser than his age.</p>
+
+<p>On that May day when Christoval Colón,<a name="FNanchor_1_16" id="FNanchor_1_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_16" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> the hare-brained
+foreigner whom the King and Queen had made
+an Admiral, read the royal orders in the Church of
+San Jorge in Palos, there was amazement, wrath and
+horror in that small seaport. Queen Ysabel had indeed
+been so rash as to pledge her jewels to meet the
+cost of this expedition; but the royal treasurers, looking
+over their accounts, noted that Palos owed a fine
+to the Crown which had never been paid. Very good;
+let Palos contribute the use and maintenance of two
+ships for two months, and let the magistrates of the
+Andalusian ports hunt up shipmasters and crews and
+supplies. The officers of the government came with
+Colón to enforce this order.</p>
+
+<p>In vain did the Pinzon brothers, who had really
+been convinced by the arguments of Colón, use all their
+influence to secure him a proper equipment. Even after
+they had themselves enlisted as captains, with their
+own ship the <i>Nina</i>, they could not get men enough to
+go on so doubtful a venture. The royal officers finally
+took to the reckless course of pardoning all prisoners
+guilty of any crime short of murder or treason, on condition <span class='pagenum'>[54]</span>
+of their shipping for the voyage. At least half
+the sailors of the three ships were pressed men.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Santa Maria</i>, largest of the three caravels, was
+ninety feet long and twenty broad. She was a decked
+ship; the others had only the tiny cabin and forecastle.
+A caravel was never intended for long voyages into
+unknown seas. Her builders designed her for coasting
+trade, not for a quick voyage independent of wind and
+tide; but on the other hand she was cheaper to build
+and to sail than a Genoese galley. The Admiral believed
+that in the end the smallness of the ships would
+be no disadvantage. Among the estuaries, bays and
+groups of islands which he expected to find, they could
+go anywhere. Including shipmasters, pilots and crews
+the fleet carried eighty-seven men and three ship-boys,
+besides the personal servants of the Admiral, a physician,
+a surgeon, an interpreter and a few adventurers.
+The interpreter was a converted Jew who could speak
+not only several European languages but Arabic and
+Chaldean.</p>
+
+<p>"A retinue of servants indeed!" observed Fonseca,
+the bishop, when the door had closed upon the Admiral
+of the Indies. "Since all enlisted in the expedition
+are at his service, why does he demand lackeys?"</p>
+
+<p>But the head of the Genoese navigator had not been
+turned by his honors. No man cared less for display
+than he did, personally. He knew very well, however,
+that unless he maintained his own dignity the rabble
+under his command might be emboldened to cut his
+throat, seize the ships and become pirates. The men
+whom he could trust were altogether too few to control
+those he could not, if it came to an open fight,&mdash;but
+it must not be allowed to come to that. It was
+not agreeable to squabble with Fonseca about the number <span class='pagenum'>[55]</span>
+of servants he was allowed to have, but he must
+have personal attendants who were not discharged convicts.</p>
+
+<p>On the open seas, removed from their lamenting
+and despondent relatives, the crews gradually subsided
+into a state of discipline. The quarter-deck is perhaps
+the severest test of character known. Despite themselves
+the sailors began to feel the serene and kindly
+strength of the man who was their master.</p>
+
+<p>With a tact and understanding as great as his courage
+and self-command Colón told his men more than
+they had ever known of the Indies. The East had
+for generations been the enchanted treasure-house of
+Europe. Arabic, Venetian, Genoese and Portuguese
+traders had brought from it spices, rare woods, gold,
+diamonds, pearls, silk, and other foreign luxuries. But
+the wide and varied reading of the Admiral had given
+him more definite information. He told of the gilded
+temples of Cipangu, the porcelain towers of Cathay,
+rajahs' elephants in gilded and jeweled trappings,
+golden idols with eyes of great glowing gems, thrones
+of ebony inlaid with patterns of diamonds, emeralds
+and rubies, rich cargoes of spices, dyewood, fine cotton
+and silk, pearl fisheries, the White Feast of Cambalu
+and the Khan's great hall where six thousand courtiers
+gathered. Portugal already was reaching out toward
+these Indies, groping her way around the African coast.
+Were they, Spaniards and Christians, to be outdone by
+Portuguese and Arab traders? No men ever had so
+great a future. Not only the wealth of the Indies, but
+the glory of winning heathen empires to abandon their
+idols for the Christian faith, was the adventure to
+which they were pledged; and he strove to kindle their
+spirits from his own.<span class='pagenum'>[56]</span></p>
+
+<p>To Pedro the cabin-boy, listening in silence, it was
+like an entrance into another world. When he asked
+to be taken on he had been moved simply by a boy's
+desire to go where he had not been before. Now he
+served a demigod, who led men where none had dared
+go. The Admiral might have the glory of rediscovering
+the western route to the Indies; his cabin-boy was
+discovering him.</p>
+
+<p>The sea was beautifully calm, and there was time for
+talk and speculation. A drifting mast, to which nobody
+would have given two thoughts anywhere else,
+was pointed out as an evil omen. Pedro grinned cheerfully
+and elevated his nose.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not believe in omens, Pedro?" asked the
+Admiral, somewhat amused. He had not found many
+Spaniards who did not.</p>
+
+<p>"One does not believe all one hears, my lord," the
+youngster answered, coolly. "Tia Josefa saw ill
+omens a dozen times a week, all sure death; and she is
+ninety years old. A mast drifting with the current is
+usual. When I see one drifting against it I will begin
+to worry."</p>
+
+<p>The jumpy nerves of the sailors were easily upset.
+They might have been calmer if the sea had been less
+calm. It is hard for Spanish blood to endure inaction
+and suspense together. Day after day a soft strong
+wind wafted them westward. Ruiz, one of the pilots,
+bluntly declared that he did not see how they could
+ever sail back to Spain against this wind, whether they
+reached the Indies or not.</p>
+
+<p>"Pedro," said the Admiral quietly, "what do you
+think?"</p>
+
+<p>Pedro hesitated only an instant. "My lord," he <span class='pagenum'>[57]</span>
+answered boldly, "if we cannot go back we must go
+on&mdash;around the world."</p>
+
+<p>"So we can," smiled the Admiral. "But it will not
+come to that." And Ruiz, reassured and rather
+ashamed of his fears, told the other grumblers if they
+had seen as much rough weather as he had they
+would know when they were well off.</p>
+
+<p>But after a time even the pilots took fright. The
+compass needle no longer pointed to the North Star,
+but half a point or more to the northwest of it. They
+had visions of the fleet helplessly drifting without a
+guide upon a vast unknown sea. It was not then
+known that the action of the magnetic pole upon the
+needle varies in different parts of the earth, but the
+quick mind of the Admiral found an explanation which
+quieted their fears. He told them that the real north
+pole was a fixed point indeed, but not necessarily the
+North Star. While this star might be in line with the
+pole when seen from the coast of Spain, it would not,
+of course, be in the same relative position when seen
+from a point hundreds of miles to the west.</p>
+
+<p>On September 15 a meteor fell, which might be another
+omen&mdash;nobody could say exactly what it meant.
+Then about three hundred and sixty leagues from the
+Canaries the ships began to encounter patches of floating
+yellow-green sea-weed, which grew more numerous
+until the fleet was sailing in a vast level expanse
+of green like an ocean meadow. Tuna fish played in
+the waters; on one of the patches of floating weed
+rested a live crab. A white tropical bird of a kind
+never known to sleep upon the sea came flying toward
+them, alighting for a moment in the rigging. The
+owners of the <i>Pinta</i> predicted that they would all be <span class='pagenum'>[58]</span>
+caught in this ocean morass to starve, or die of thirst,
+for the light winds were not strong enough to drive
+the ships through it as easily as they had sailed at first.
+The Admiral, quite undisturbed, suggested that in his
+experience land-birds usually meant land not very far
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Colón always answered frankly the questions put to
+him, but there was one secret which he kept to himself
+from the beginning. Knowing that he would be likely
+to have trouble when he reached the seven-hundred-league
+limit his crews had set for him, he kept two
+reckonings. One was for his private journal, the other
+was for all to see. He took the actual figures of each
+day's run as set down in his private record, subtracted
+from them a certain percentage and gave out this revised
+reckoning to the fleet. He, and he alone, knew
+that they were nearly seven hundred leagues from
+Palos already, instead of five hundred and fifty. According
+to Toscanelli's calculation, by sailing west from
+the Canaries along the thirtieth parallel of latitude he
+should land somewhere on the coast of Cipangu; but
+the map of Toscanelli might be incorrect. If the ocean
+should prove to be a hundred or more leagues wider
+than the chart showed it, they would have to go on, all
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>Even after they were out of the seaweed there was
+something weird and unnatural in the sluggish calm of
+the sea. Light winds blew from the west and southwest,
+but there were no waves, as by all marine experience
+there should have been. On September 25 the
+sea heaved silently in a mysterious heavy swell, without
+any wind. Then the wind once more shifted to
+the east, and carried them on so smoothly that they
+could talk from one ship to another. Martin Pinzon <span class='pagenum'>[59]</span>
+borrowed the Admiral's chart, and it seemed to him
+that according to this they must be near Cipangu. He
+tossed the chart back to the flagship on the end of a
+cord, and gave himself to scanning the horizon. Ten
+thousand maravedis had been promised by the sovereigns
+to the first man who actually saw land. Suddenly
+Pinzon shouted, "Tierra! Tierra!" There was a
+low bank of what seemed to be land, about twenty-five
+leagues away to the southwest. Even for this Colón
+hesitated to turn from his pre-arranged course, but at
+last he yielded to the chorus of pleading and protest
+which arose from his officers, set his helm southwest
+and found&mdash;a cloud-bank.</p>
+
+<p>Again and again during the following days the eager
+eyes and strained nerves of the seamen led to similar
+disappointments. Land birds appeared; some
+alighted fearlessly on the rigging and sang. Dolphins
+frolicked about the keels. Flying-fish, pursued by
+their enemy the bonito (mackerel), rose from the
+water in rainbow argosies, and fell sometimes inside
+the caravels. A heron, a pelican and a duck passed,
+flying southwest. By the true reckoning the fleet had
+sailed seven hundred and fifty leagues. Colón wondered
+whether there could be an error in the map, or
+whether by swerving from their course they had passed
+between islands into the southern sea. Pedro, as sensitive
+as a dog to the moods of his master, watched
+the Admiral's face as he came and went, and wondered
+in his turn.</p>
+
+<p>The pilots and shipmasters were cautious in expressing
+their fears within hearing of the sailors, for by
+this time every one in authority knew that open mutiny
+might break out at any moment. On the evening of
+October 10 a delegation of anxious officers came to <span class='pagenum'>[60]</span>
+explain to the Admiral that they could not hold the
+panic-stricken crews. If no land appeared within a
+week their provisions would not last until they reached
+home; they had not enough water to last through the
+homeward voyage even now. The Admiral knew as
+well as they the horrors of thirst and famine at sea,
+particularly with a crew of the kind they had been
+obliged to ship. What did he intend to do?</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral, seated at his table, finished the sentence
+he was adding in his neat, legible hand to his log,
+put it aside, put the pen in the case which hung at his
+belt, closed his ink-horn. His quiet eyes rested fearlessly
+on their uneasy faces.</p>
+
+<p>"This expedition," he said calmly, "has been sent
+out to look for the Indies. With God's blessing we
+shall continue to look for them until we find them.
+Say to the men, however, that if they will wait two or
+three days I think they will see land."</p>
+
+<p>Next morning Pedro was engaged in polishing his
+master's steel corslet and casque, while near by two or
+three sailors conferred in low tones.</p>
+
+<p>"We have had enough of promises," growled one.
+"As Rascon says, we are like Fray Agostino's donkey,
+that went over the mountain at a trot, trying to reach
+the bunch of carrots hung on a staff in front of his
+nose."</p>
+
+<p>There was a half-hearted snicker, and one of the
+men pointed a warning thumb at Pedro.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said the speaker. "You heard, you little
+beggar?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did," said Pedro.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I was waiting for the end of the story. As
+I heard it the Abbot charged the old friar with deceiving <span class='pagenum'>[61]</span>
+the dumb beast, and he said he had to, because he
+was dealing with a donkey!"</p>
+
+<p>Pedro slung the pieces of gleaming plate-mail to his
+shoulder and added as he turned to go, "You need not
+be afraid that I shall tell the Admiral what you were
+saying. I am not a fool, and he knows how scared
+you are, already."</p>
+
+<p>More signs of land appeared&mdash;river weeds, a
+thorny branch with fresh berries like rose-hips, a reed,
+a piece of wood, a carved staff. As always, the vesper
+hymn to the Virgin was sung on the deck of the flagship,
+and after service the Admiral briefly addressed
+the men. He reminded them of the singular favor of
+God in granting them so quiet and safe a voyage, and
+recalled his statement made on leaving the Canaries,
+that after they had made seven hundred leagues he
+expected to be so near land that they should not make
+sail after midnight. He told them that in his belief
+they might find land before morning.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody slept that night. About ten o'clock the
+Admiral, gazing from the top of the castle built up
+on the poop of the <i>Santa Maria</i>, thought that far away
+in the warm darkness he saw a glancing light.</p>
+
+<p>"Pedro," he said to the boy near him, "do you see
+a light out there? Yes? Call Señor Gutierrez and
+we will see what he makes of it. I have come to the
+pass where I do not trust my own eyes."</p>
+
+<p>Gutierrez saw it, but when Sanchez of Segovia came
+up, the light had vanished. It seemed to come and go
+as if it were a torch in a fishing-boat or in the hand of
+some one walking. But at two in the morning a gun
+boomed from the <i>Pinta</i>. Rodrigo de Triana, one of
+the seamen, had seen land from the mast-head.</p>
+
+<p>The sudden sunrise of the tropics revealed a green <span class='pagenum'>[62]</span>
+Paradise lapped in tranquil seas. The ships must have
+come up toward it between sunset and midnight. No
+one had been able to imagine with any certainty what
+morning would show. But this was no seaport, or
+coast of any civilized land. People were coming
+down to the shore to watch the approach of the ships,
+but they were wild people, naked and brown, and the
+sight was evidently perfectly new to them.</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral ordered the ships to cast anchor, and
+the boats were manned and armed. He himself in a
+rich uniform of scarlet held the royal banner of Castile,
+while the brothers Pinzon, commanders of the <i>Pinta</i>
+and the <i>Nina</i>, in their boats, had each a banner emblazoned
+with a green cross and the crowned initials
+of the sovereigns, Fernando and Ysabel. The air
+was clear and soft, the sea was almost transparent, and
+strange and beautiful fruits could be seen among the
+rich foliage of the trees along the shore. The Admiral
+landed, knelt and kissed the earth, offering
+thanks to God, with tears in his eyes; and the other
+captains followed his example. Then rising, he drew
+his sword, and calling upon all who gathered around
+him to witness his action, took possession of the newly-discovered
+island in the name of his sovereigns, and
+gave it the name of San Salvador (Holy Savior).</p>
+
+<p>The wild people, terrified at the sight of men coming
+toward them from these great white-winged birds,
+as they took the ships to be, ran away to the woods,
+but they presently returned, drawn by irresistible
+curiosity. They had no weapons of iron, and one of
+them innocently took hold of a sword by the edge.
+They were delighted with the colored caps, glass beads,
+hawk-bells and other trifles which were given to them, <span class='pagenum'>[63]</span>
+and brought the strangers great balls of spun cotton,
+cakes of cassava bread, fruits, and tame parrots.
+Pedro went everywhere, and saw everything, as only
+a boy could. Later, when the flagship was cruising
+among the islands, and the Admiral, worn out by long
+anxiety, lay asleep in his cabin, the helmsman, smothering
+a mighty yawn, called Pedro to him.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, young chap," he said, "we are running
+along the shore of this island and there is no difficulty&mdash;take
+my place will you, while I get a nap?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy hesitated. He would have asked his master,
+but his master was asleep, and must not be awakened.
+This helmsman, moreover, was one of the men
+who had been kind to him, ready to answer his questions
+regarding navigation, and loyal to the Admiral.
+Moreover it was not quite the first time that Pedro
+had been allowed to take this responsibility. He accepted
+it now. The man staggered away and lost
+himself in heavy sleep almost before he lay down.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the still, breathless nights of the tropic
+seas. Pedro's small strong hands had not grasped the
+helm for a half-hour before the wind freshened, and
+then a tremendous gust swept down upon the flagship
+hurling her right upon the unknown shore. Pedro
+strove desperately with the fearful odds, but before
+the half-awakened sailors heard his call the <i>Santa
+Maria</i> was past repair. No lives were lost, but the
+Admiral decided that it would be necessary to leave a
+part of the men on shore as the beginning of a settlement.
+He would not have chosen to do this but for
+the disaster, for the men who made up these crews were
+not promising material for a colony in a wild land.
+But he had no choice in the matter. The two smaller <span class='pagenum'>[64]</span>
+ships would not hold them all. Pedro, shaken with
+sobs, cast himself at the feet of his master and begged
+forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"No one blames you, my son," said the Admiral,
+more touched than he had been for a long time. "Be
+not so full of sorrow for what cannot be helped. The
+wild people are friendly, the land is kind, and when we
+have sailed back to Spain with our news there will be
+no difficulty in returning with as many ships as we may
+need. Nay, I will not leave thee here, Pedro. I think
+that now I could not do without thee."</p>
+
+<hr />
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_16" id="Footnote_1_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_16"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+The name of Columbus took various forms according to the country
+in which he lived. In his native Genoa it would be Cristofero
+Colombo. In Portugal, where he dwelt for many years, it would be
+Cristobal Colombo, and in Spanish Christoval or Cristobal Colón.
+In Latin, which was the common language of all learned men until
+comparatively recent times, the name took the form Christopherus
+Columbus, which has become in modern English Christopher Columbus.
+In each story the discoverer is spoken of as he would have been
+spoken of by the characters in that particular story.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_QUEENS_PRAYER" id="THE_QUEENS_PRAYER"></a>THE QUEEN'S PRAYER</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In this Thy world, O blessed Christ,</span>
+<span class="i2">I live but for Thy will,</span>
+<span class="i0">To serve Thy cause and drive Thy foes</span>
+<span class="i2">Before Thy banner still.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In rich and stately palaces</span>
+<span class="i2">I have my board and bed,</span>
+<span class="i0">But Thou didst tread the wilderness</span>
+<span class="i2">Unsheltered and unfed.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My gallant squadrons ride at will</span>
+<span class="i2">The undiscover'd sea,</span>
+<span class="i0">But Thou hadst but a fishing-boat</span>
+<span class="i2">On windy Galilee.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In valiant hosts my men-at-arms</span>
+<span class="i2">Eager to battle go,</span>
+<span class="i0">But Thou hadst not a single blade</span>
+<span class="i2">To fend Thee from the foe.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Great store of pearls and beaten gold</span>
+<span class="i2">My bold seafarers bring,</span>
+<span class="i0">But Thou hadst not a little coin</span>
+<span class="i2">To pay for Thy lodging.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The trust that Thou hast placed in me,</span>
+<span class="i2">O may I not betray,</span>
+<span class="i0">Nor fail to save Thy people from</span>
+<span class="i2">The fires of Judgment Day!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Be strong and stern, O heart, faint heart&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Stay not, O woman's hand,</span>
+<span class="i0">Till by this Cross I bear for Thee</span>
+<span class="i2">I have made clean Thy land!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_MAN_WHO_COULD_NOT_DIE" id="THE_MAN_WHO_COULD_NOT_DIE">THE MAN WHO COULD NOT DIE</a></h3>
+
+
+<p>"Nombre de San Martin! who is that up there like a cat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Un gato! Cucarucha en palo!"</p>
+
+<p>"If Alonso de Ojeda hears of your calling him a
+cockroach on a mast, he will grind your ribs to a paste
+with a cudgel (os moliesen las costillas a puros
+palos)!" observed a pale, sharp-faced lad in a shabby
+doublet. The sailor who had made the comparison
+glanced at him and chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"Your pardon&mdash;hidalgo. I have been at sea so
+much of late that the comparison jumped into my mind.
+Is he a caballero then?"</p>
+
+<p>"One of the household of the Duke of Medina
+Coeli. He is always doing such things. If he happened
+to think of flying, he would fly. Every one must
+be good at something."</p>
+
+<p>The performance which they had just been watching
+would fix the name of Ojeda very firmly in the
+minds of those who saw. Queen Ysabel, happening
+to ascend the tower of the cathedral at Seville with her
+courtiers and ladies, remarked upon the daring and
+skill of the Moorish builders. Everywhere in the
+newly conquered cities of Granada were their magnificent
+domes and lofty muezzin towers, often seeming
+like the airy minarets of a mirage. The next instant
+Alonso de Ojeda had walked out upon a twenty-foot <span class='pagenum'>[67]</span>
+timber projecting into space two hundred feet above
+the pavement, and at the very end he stood on one leg
+and waved the other in the air. Returning, he rested
+one foot against the wall and flung an orange clean
+over the top of the tower. He was small, though
+handsome and well-made, and he had now shown a
+muscular strength of which few had suspected him.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural that the sailor should be interested
+in the people of the court, for he had business there.
+The Admiral of the Indies was making his arrangements
+for his second voyage, and he had desired Juan
+de la Cosa to meet him at Seville. As the pilot stood
+waiting for the Admiral to come out from an interview
+with Fonseca he had a good look at many of the persons
+who were to join in this second expedition.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be no unlocking the jail doors to scrape
+together crews for this fleet, I warrant you," thought
+the old sailor exultantly as he stood in the shadow of
+the Giralda watching Castile parade itself before the
+new hero. Here were Diego Colón, a quiet-looking
+youth, the youngest brother of the Admiral; Antonio
+de Marchena the astronomer, a learned monk; Juan
+Ponce de León, a nobleman from the neighborhood of
+Cadiz with a brilliant military record; Francisco de las
+Casas with his son Bartolomé; and the valiant young
+courtier whom all Seville had seen flirting with death
+in mid-air.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was nothing," La Cosa heard Ojeda say
+when Las Casas made some kindly compliment on his
+daring. "I will tell you," he added in a lower voice,
+pulling something small out of his doublet, "I have a
+sure talisman in this little picture of the Virgin. The
+Bishop gave it to me, and I always carry it. In all the
+dangers one naturally must encounter in the service of <span class='pagenum'>[68]</span>
+such a master as mine, it has kept me safe. I have
+never even been wounded."</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of Medina Coeli was in fact a stern master
+in the school of arms. He was always at the front
+in the wars just concluded between Spaniard and Moor,
+and where he was, there he expected his squires to be.
+There was no place among the youths whose fathers
+had given him charge of their military training, for a
+lad with a grain of physical cowardice. Ojeda moreover
+had a quick temper and a fiery sense of honor,
+and it really seemed to savor of the miraculous that he
+had escaped all harm. At any rate he had reached the
+age of twenty-one with unabated faith in the little
+Flemish painting.</p>
+
+<p>"These youngsters&mdash;" the veteran seaman said to
+himself as he looked at the straight, proud, keen-faced
+squires and youthful knights marching along the streets
+of the temporary capital, "now that the Moors are
+vanquished what won't they do in the Indies! I think
+the golden days must be come for Christians. And
+shall you be a soldier also, my lad?" he asked of the
+sharp-faced boy, who still stood near him.</p>
+
+<p>"My father says not. He wants me to be a lawyer,"
+said the youngster indifferently. Then he slipped
+away as some companions of his own age, or a little
+older, came by, and one said enviously,</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been, Hernan' Cortes? Lucky
+you were not with us. My faith&mdash;" the speaker
+wriggled expressively, "we caught a drubbing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Told you so," returned the lad addressed, with
+cool unconcern. "Why can't you see when to let go
+the cat's tail?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has a head on him, that one," the seaman
+chuckled. "There is always one of his sort in every <span class='pagenum'>[69]</span>
+gang of boys. But that young gallant Ojeda! A
+fine young fellow, and as devoted as he is brave."
+Juan de la Cosa had conceived at first sight an admiration
+and affection for Ojeda which was to last as long
+as they both should live.</p>
+
+<p>The fleet that stately sailed from Cadiz on September
+25, 1493, was a very different sight from the
+three shabby little caravels that slipped down the
+Tinto a year and a half before. The Admiral now
+commanded fourteen caravels and three great carracks
+or store-ships, on board of which were horses,
+mules, cattle, carefully packed shoots of grape-vines
+and sugar-cane, seeds of all kinds, and provisions ready
+for use. The fleet carried nearly fifteen hundred persons,&mdash;three
+hundred more than had been arranged
+for, but the enthusiasm in Spain was boundless. It
+carried also the embittered hatred of Fonseca. The
+Bishop, having been the Queen's confessor, naturally
+became head of the Department of the Indies in order
+to forward with all zeal the conversion of the native
+races. But when he tried to assert his authority over
+the Admiral and appealed to Fernando and Ysabel to
+support him, he was told mildly but firmly that in the
+equipment and command of the fleet Colón's judgment
+was best. This royal snub Fonseca never forgave, and
+he was one of those persons who revenge a slight on
+some one else rather than the one who inflicted it. It
+was also his nature never to forgive any one for succeeding
+in an undertaking which he himself had prophesied
+would fail.</p>
+
+<p>All seemed in order on the morning of the embarkation.
+At this time of year storms were unlikely, and
+there was no severity of climate to be feared. Half
+Castile and Aragon had come to see the expedition <span class='pagenum'>[70]</span>
+off. The young cavaliers' heads were filled with visions
+of rich dukedoms and principalities in the golden
+empire upon whose coast the discovered islands hung,
+like pendants of pearl and gold upon the robe of a
+monarch.</p>
+
+<p>The first incident of the voyage was not, however,
+romantic. The fleet touched at the Canary Islands to
+take on board more animals&mdash;goats, sheep, swine
+and fowls, for the Admiral had seen none of these in
+any of the islands he had visited. In fact the people
+had no domestic animal whatever except their strange
+dumb dogs. The cavaliers, glad of a chance to stretch
+their legs in a space a little greater than the deck of a
+crowded ship, strolled about discussing past and future
+with large freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Ojeda was asking Juan de la Cosa about the nature
+of the country. It seemed to him the ideal field for
+a man of spirit and high heart. How glorious a conquest
+would it be to abolish the vile superstitions of the
+barbarians and set up the altars of the true faith!</p>
+
+<p>The pilot was a little amused and somewhat doubtful;
+he knew something of savages, and Ojeda and the
+priests on board did not. It was not, he suggested,
+always easy to convert stubborn heathen. A pig was
+a small animal, but Ojeda would remember that to the
+Moslem it was as great an object of aversion as a
+lion.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho!" said Ojeda superbly, "that is quite&mdash;"
+He was interrupted by a blow that knocked his legs
+out from under him and landed him on the ground in
+a sitting position with his hat over his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Who did that?" he cried, leaping to his feet, hand
+on sword.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a pig, my lord," the sailor answered choking <span class='pagenum'>[71]</span>
+with half-swallowed laughter. It was a pig, which the
+sailors had goaded to such a state of desperation that
+it had bolted straight into the group as a pig will, and
+was now galloping away, pursued by a great variety
+of maledictions and persons. "They have got the
+creature now," he added, "You are not hurt?" for
+Ojeda was actually pale with indignation and disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"No," sputtered the youth, "but that pig&mdash;that
+p-pig&mdash;" He looked around him with an eye which
+seemed to challenge any beholder of whatever condition,
+to laugh and be instantly run through. Fortunately
+most of those on the wharf had been too much
+occupied to see Ojeda fall before the pig, and just then
+the trumpets blew, and all hastened to get back on
+board ship.</p>
+
+<p>When an expedition is composed largely of hot-headed
+youths trained to the use of arms, each of whom
+has a code of honor as sensitive as a mimosa plant and
+as prickly as a cactus, the lot of their commanders is
+not happy. It may have been Ojeda's treasured talisman
+which saved him from several sudden deaths during
+the following weeks, but Juan de la Cosa privately
+believed it was partly the memory of the pig. The
+young man had what might in another time and civilization
+have developed into a sense of humor. It
+would not do for a hero with the world before him to
+get himself sent back to Spain because of some trivial
+personal quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching Hispaniola the adventurers found
+plenty of real occupation awaiting them. The little
+colony which the Admiral had left at Navidad on his
+first voyage had been wiped out. The natives timidly
+explained that a fierce chief from the interior, Caonaba,
+had killed or captured all the forty men of the garrison <span class='pagenum'>[72]</span>
+and destroyed their fort. Colón was obliged to remodel
+all his plans at a moment's notice. Instead of
+finding a colony well under way, and in control of the
+wild tribes or at least friendly with them, he found the
+wreck of a luckless attempt at settlement, and the
+kindly native villagers turned aloof and suspicious, and
+living in dread of a second raid by Caonaba. He
+chose a site for a second settlement on the coast, where
+ships could find a harbor, not far from gold-bearing
+mountains which the natives described and called Cibao.
+This sounded rather like Cipangu.</p>
+
+<p>Ojeda led an exploring party into the mountains, and
+found gold nuggets in the beds of the streams. In
+March a substantial little town had been built, with a
+church, granary, market-square, and a stone wall
+around the whole. The Admiral then organized an
+expedition to explore the interior.</p>
+
+<p>On March 12, 1494, Colón with his chief officers
+went out of the gate of the settlement, which had been
+named for the Queen, at the head of four hundred
+men, many of whom were mounted, and all armed with
+sword, cross-bow, lance or arquebus. With casques
+and breastplates shining in the sun, banners flying,
+pennons fluttering, drums and trumpets sounding, they
+presented a sight which should have brought ambassadors
+from any monarch of the Indies who heard of
+their approach. But although a multitude of savages
+came from the forest to see, no signs of any such capital
+as that of the Great Khan appeared. At the end
+of the first day's march they camped at the foot of a
+rocky mountain range with no way over it but a footpath,
+winding over rocks and through dense tropical
+jungles. There appeared to be no roads in the country.<span class='pagenum'>[73]</span></p>
+
+<p>But this was not an impossible situation to the young
+Spanish cavaliers, for in the Moorish wars it had often
+been necessary to construct a road over the mountains.
+A number of them at once volunteered for the service,
+and with laborers and pioneers, to whom they set an
+example by working as valiantly as they were ready to
+fight, they made a road for the little army, which was
+named in their honor El Puerto de los Hidalgos, the
+Gentlemen's Pass. When they reached the top of
+this steep defile and could look down upon the land
+beyond they saw a vast and magnificent plain, covered
+with forests of beautiful trees, blossoming meadows
+and a network of clear lakes and rivers, and dotted
+here and there with thatch-roofed villages. Near the
+top of the pass a spring of cool delicious water bubbled
+out in a glen shaded by palms and one tall and handsome
+tree of an unknown variety, with wood so hard
+that it turned the ax of a laborer who tried to cut a
+chip of it. Colón gave the plain the name of the
+Vega Reál or Royal Plain.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the events, exploits and intrigues of those
+first years in the Spanish Indies, no one historian among
+those who accompanied the expedition ever found time
+to write. Where all was so new, and every man,
+whether priest, cavalier, soldier, sailor, clerk or artisan,
+had his own reasons and his own aims in coming
+to this land of promise, nothing went exactly according
+to anybody's plans. The Admiral was soon convinced
+that in Hispaniola at least no civilized capital
+existed. To their amazement and amusement the
+Spaniards found that the savages feared their horses
+more than their weapons. It was discovered after
+a while that horse and rider were at first supposed to
+be one supernatural animal. When the white men <span class='pagenum'>[74]</span>
+dismounted the people fled in horror, believing that
+the ferocious beasts were going to eat them.</p>
+
+<p>It became evident that with the fierce chief Caonaba
+to reckon with, military strength and capacity would
+be the only means of holding the country. The commander
+could not count on patriotism, religious principle
+or even self-interest to keep the colonists united.
+In this tangled situation one of the few persons who
+really enjoyed himself was Alonso de Ojeda. Instead
+of spending his time in drinking, quarreling or getting
+himself into trouble with friendly natives, the young
+man seemed bent on proving himself an able and
+sagacious leader of men. A little fortress of logs had
+been built about eighteen leagues from the settlement,
+in the mining country, defended on all sides but one by
+a little river, the Yanique, and on the remaining side
+by a deep ditch. Gold dust, nuggets, amber, jasper
+and lapis lazuli had been found in the neighborhood,
+and it was the Admiral's intention to send miners there
+as soon as possible, protected by the fort, which he
+called San Tomás. Ojeda happened to be in command
+of the garrison, in the absence of his superior, when
+Caonaba came down from his mountains with an immense
+force of hostile tribes. The young lieutenant
+in his rude eyrie, perched on a hill surrounded by the
+enemy, held off ten thousand savages under the Carib
+chief for more than a month. Finally the chief, whose
+people had never been trained in warfare after the
+European fashion, found them deserting by hundreds,
+tired of the monotony of the siege. Ojeda did not
+merely stand on the defensive. He was continually
+sallying forth at the head of small but determined companies
+of Spaniards, whenever the enemy came near
+his stronghold. He never went far enough from his <span class='pagenum'>[75]</span>
+base to be captured, but killed off so many of the best
+warriors of Caonaba that the chief himself grew tired
+of the unprofitable undertaking and withdrew his army.
+During the siege provisions ran short, and when things
+were looking very dark a friendly savage slipped in
+one night with two pigeons for the table of the commander.
+When they were brought to Ojeda, in the
+council chamber where he was seated consulting with
+his officers, he glanced at the famine-pinched faces
+about him, took the pigeons in his hands and stroked
+their feathers for an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pity," he said, "that we have not enough
+to make a meal. I am not going to feast while the
+rest of you starve," and he gave the birds a toss into
+the air from the open window and turned again to his
+plans. When some one reported the incident to the
+Admiral his eyes shone.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we had a few more such commanders," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Caonaba's next move was to form a conspiracy
+among all the caciques of Hispaniola, to join in a grand
+attack against the white men and wipe them out, as he
+had wiped out the little garrison at Navidad. A
+friendly cacique, Guacanagari, who had been the ally
+of the Admiral from the first, gave him information
+of this plot, and the danger was seen by Colón's acute
+mind to be desperate indeed. He had only a small
+force, torn by jealousy and private quarrels, and a defensive
+fight at this stage of his enterprise would almost
+surely be a losing one. The territory of Caonaba
+included the most mountainous and inaccessible part
+of the island, where that wily barbarian could hold out
+for years; and as long as he was loose there would be
+no safety for white men. To the Admiral, who was <span class='pagenum'>[76]</span>
+just recovering from a severe illness, the prospect
+looked very gloomy.</p>
+
+<p>Pedro the Vizcayan cabin-boy, who was his confidential
+servant, was crossing the plaza one day with
+a basket of fruit, when Alonso de Ojeda stopped him
+to inquire after his master's health.</p>
+
+<p>"His health," said Pedro, "would improve if I had
+Caonaba's head in this basket. I wish somebody
+would get it."</p>
+
+<p>Ojeda laughed, showing a flash of white teeth under
+his jaunty mustachios. Then he grew thoughtful.
+"Wait a moment, Pedro," he said. "Will you ask
+the Admiral if he can see me for a few minutes, this
+morning?"</p>
+
+<p>When Ojeda appeared Colón detected a trace of
+excitement in the young man's bearing, and tactfully
+led the conversation to Caonaba. He frankly expressed
+his perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you a plan, Ojeda?" he asked with a half
+smile. "It has been my experience, that you usually
+have."</p>
+
+<p>Ojeda felt a thrill of pleasure, for the Admiral did
+not scatter his compliments broadcast. He admitted
+that he had a plan.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hear it," said Colón.</p>
+
+<p>But as the youthful captain unfolded his scheme the
+cool gray eye of the Genoese commander betrayed distinct
+surprise. It seemed only yesterday that this
+youngster had been a little monkey of a page in the
+great palace of the Duke of Medina Coeli, when he
+was entertained there, on arriving in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," Ojeda concluded, "I have observed in
+fighting these people that if their leader is killed or
+captured, they seem to lose their heads completely. I <span class='pagenum'>[77]</span>
+think that with a dozen men I can get Caonaba and
+bring him in. If I do not&mdash;the loss will not be very
+great."</p>
+
+<p>"I should not like to lose you," said the Admiral,
+with his hand on the young man's shoulder. "Go, if
+you will,&mdash;but do not sacrifice your own life if you
+can help it."</p>
+
+<p>Ojeda had faith in his talisman, and he also believed
+that if any man could go into Caonaba's territory and
+come back alive, he was that man. He knew that he
+himself, in the place of the chief, would respect a man
+whom he had not been able to beat.</p>
+
+<p>With ten soldiers he rode up into the mountains, his
+blood leaping with the wild joy of an adventure as
+great as any in the Song of the Cid. To be sure,
+Caonaba would not in his mountain camp have any
+such army as when he surrounded the fort, for then
+he commanded whole tribes of allies. In case of coming
+to blows Ojeda believed that he and his men with
+their superior weapons could cut their way out. Still,
+the odds were beyond anything that he had ever heard
+of.</p>
+
+<p>He found the Carib chief, and began by trying
+diplomacy. He said that his master, the Guamaquima
+or chief of the Spaniards, had sent him with a present.
+Would he not consent to make a visit to the colony,
+with a view of becoming the Admiral's ally and friend?
+If he would, he should be presented with the bell of
+the chapel, the voice of the church, the wonder of
+Hispaniola.</p>
+
+<p>Caonaba had heard that bell when he was prowling
+about the settlement, and the temptation to become its
+owner was great. He finally agreed to accompany
+Ojeda and his handful of Spaniards back to the coast. <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a><span class='pagenum'>[78]</span>
+But when they were ready to start, the force of warriors
+in Caonaba's escort was out of all proportion to
+any peaceful embassy. Ojeda turned to his original
+plan.</p>
+
+<p>He proposed that Caonaba, after bathing in the
+stream at the foot of the mountain, and attiring himself
+in his finest robe, should put on the gift the Spanish
+captain had brought, a pair of metal bracelets, and
+return to his followers mounted with Ojeda on his
+horse. The chief's eyes glittered as he saw the polished
+steel of the ornaments Ojeda produced. He
+knew that nothing could so impress his wild followers
+with his power and greatness as his ability to conquer
+all fear of the terrible animals always seen in the vanguard
+of the white men's army. He consented to the
+plan, and after putting on his state costume, and being
+decorated with the handcuffs, he cautiously mounted
+behind the young commander, and his followers, in
+awe and admiration, beheld their cacique ride.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span><br /></div>
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 421px;">
+<img src="images/illus-096.png" width="421" height="600" alt="&quot;He proposed that Caonaba should put on the gift the Spanish captain had brought.&quot;&mdash;Page 78" title="&quot;He proposed that Caonaba should put on the gift the Spanish captain had brought.&quot;&mdash;Page 78" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;He proposed that Caonaba should put on the gift the Spanish captain had brought.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 78</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Ojeda, who was a perfect horseman, made the horse
+leap, curvet and caracole, taking a wider circuit each
+time, until making a long sweep through the forest the
+two disappeared from the view of the Carib army altogether.
+Ojeda's own men closed in upon him, bound
+Caonaba hand and foot, behind their leader, and thus
+the chief was taken into the Spanish settlement. The
+conspiracy fell to pieces and the colony was saved.</p>
+
+<p>Caonaba showed no respect to Colón or any one else
+in the camp while a prisoner there, except Ojeda.
+When Ojeda entered he promptly rose to his feet.
+They had many conversations together, and Caonaba,
+who evidently rather admired the stratagem by which
+he had been captured, agreed with his captor that
+Ojeda was The Man Who Could Not Die.<span class='pagenum'>[79]</span></p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+The career of Alonso de Ojeda is one of the most picturesque and
+adventurous in early Spanish-American history, and his character is
+typical of the young Spanish cavalier of the age just following the
+discovery of America. The episodes here used, with many others
+quite as dramatic, are described at length in Irving's "Life of
+Columbus."</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_ESCAPE" id="THE_ESCAPE"></a>THE ESCAPE</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why do you come here, white men, white men?</span>
+<span class="i2">Why do you bend the knee</span>
+<span class="i0">When your priests before you, singing, singing,</span>
+<span class="i2">Lift the cross, the cross of tree?</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Flashing in the sunlight, rainbows waking,</span>
+<span class="i2">Move your mighty oars keeping time.</span>
+<span class="i0">Sailors heave your anchors, chanting, chanting</span>
+<span class="i2">Some strange and mystic rime.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pearls and gold we bring you, feathers of our wild birds,</span>
+<span class="i2">Glowing in the sunshine like flowers.</span>
+<span class="i0">Houses we will build you, food and clothing find you,</span>
+<span class="i2">You shall share in all that is ours.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why do you frighten us, white men, white men?</span>
+<span class="i2">Can you not be friends for a day?</span>
+<span class="i0">Souls are like the sea-birds, flying, flying,</span>
+<span class="i2">Borne by the sea-wind away.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why do you chain us in the mines of the mountains?</span>
+<span class="i2">Why do you hunt us with your hounds?</span>
+<span class="i0">We who were so free, are we evermore to be</span>
+<span class="i2">Prisoned in your narrow hateful bounds?</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One escape is left us, white men, white men,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">You cannot forbid our souls to fly</span>
+<span class="i0">To the stars of freedom, far beyond the sunset,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">We whom you have captured can die!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="LOCKED_HARBORS" id="LOCKED_HARBORS"></a>LOCKED HARBORS</h3>
+
+<p>"But of what use is a King's patent," said Hugh
+Thorne of Bristol, "if the harbors be locked?"</p>
+
+<p>The Italian merchant glanced up from his papers
+and smiled, which was all the answer the Englishman
+seemed to expect, for he stormed on, "Here have we
+better fleeces than Spain, better wheat than France,
+finer cattle than the Netherlands, the tin of Cornwall,
+the flax of Kent and Durham, and our people starve or
+live rudely because of the fettering of our trade."</p>
+
+<p>"'T is a sad misfortune," said the merchant. "In
+a world so great as this there is surely room for all to
+work and all to get reward for their labor. But so
+long as the English merchant guilds wear away their
+time and substance in fighting one another I fear 't will
+be no better."</p>
+
+<p>Thorne flung his cloak about him with an impatient
+gesture. "That's true," he answered, "the Spaniards
+hold by Spain, and all the Hanse merchants by one
+another, but our English go every man for himself
+and the devil take the hindmost. I speak freely to
+you, friend, because you have cast in your lot with us
+West Country folk and are content to be called John
+Cabot."</p>
+
+<p>The other smiled again, his quick childlike smile,
+and went with his guest to the door. When he entered
+again his small private room a dark-eyed boy of
+five was crawling out from under the table.<span class='pagenum'>[82]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Dad," he inquired solemnly, "vat is a locked harbor?"</p>
+
+<p>John Cabot laughed and swung his little son to his
+shoulder. "That is a great question for a little
+brain," he said fondly. "But see thee here; suppose
+I put thee in the chest and shut the lid and turn the
+key; thou art locked in and canst not get out&mdash;so!
+But now I put thee out of door and set the bandog to
+guard it; thou art locked out though the door be wide
+open, seest thou? And when I forbid thee to pick up
+the plums that fall on the grass from the Frenchman's
+damson tree, they are as safe as if I locked them in the
+dresser here, are they not? So 't is when the King
+forbids his people to send their goods to some harbor;
+it is the same as if a great chain were stretched across
+that harbor with a great lock upon it. Now run and
+play with Ludovico and Santo, Sebastiano mio, and
+be glad thou art free of a pleasant garden."</p>
+
+<p>But Sebastian still hung back, his dark head rubbing
+softly against his father's shoulder. "When I am a
+great merchant," he announced, "the King will let me
+send my ships all over the world."</p>
+
+<p>John Cabot stroked the wavy dark hair with a
+lingering, tender touch. "God grant thee thy wish,
+little one," he said. And Sebastian, with a shout in
+answer to a call from the sunny out-of-door world,
+scampered away.</p>
+
+<p>John Cabot, who had been born in Genoa, married
+while a merchant in Venice, and had now lived for
+many years in Bristol, felt sometimes that the life of a
+trader was like that of a player at dice. And the dice
+were often loaded.</p>
+
+<p>He was a good navigator, or he would not have been
+a true son of the Genoese house of Caboto&mdash;Giovanni <span class='pagenum'>[83]</span>
+Caboto translated meant John the Captain, and in a city
+full of sea-captains a man must know more than a
+little of the sea to win that title. He had made a
+place for himself in Venice as Zuan Gaboto, and now
+he was a known and respected man in the second greatest
+seaport of England, with a house in the quarter of
+Bristol known as "Cathay," the only part of the city
+where foreigners were allowed to live. It had its
+nickname from the fact that the foreign trade of
+Bristol was largely with the Orient.</p>
+
+<p>English trade in those days was hampered by a
+multitude of restrictions. There were monopolies,
+there were laws forbidding the export of this and that,
+or the making of goods by any one outside certain
+guilds, there were arrangements favoring foreign traders
+who had got their foothold during the War of the
+Roses,&mdash;when kings needed money from any source
+that would promise it. The Hanse merchants at the
+Steelyard alone controlled the markets of more than a
+hundred towns. Their grim stone buildings rose like
+a fort commanding London Bridge, and they paid less
+both in duties and customs than English merchants
+did. They employed no English ships, and could underbuy
+and undersell the English manufacturer and
+the English trader. Their men were all bachelors,
+with no families to found or houses to keep up in
+England. The farmer might get half price for his
+wool and pay more than one price for whatever he was
+obliged to buy. There was plenty of private exasperation,
+but no open fighting, against this ruling of the
+London markets by Hamburg, Lübeck, Antwerp and
+Cologne. Cabot's clear head and wide experience
+plainly showed him the enormous waste of such a system,
+but he did not see how to unlock the harbors. <span class='pagenum'>[84]</span>
+Neither, at present, did the King, whose shrewd brain
+was at work on the problem.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Tudor had the thrift of a youth spent in poverty,
+and the turn for finance inherited from Welsh
+ancestors, but his kingdom was not rich, and his throne
+not over-secure. He was prejudiced against doing
+anything rash, both by nature and by the very limited
+income of the crown. He had given an audience to
+Bartholomew Columbus while the older brother was
+still haunting the court of Castile with his unfulfilled
+plans, and had gone so far as to tell the Genoese captain
+to bring his brother Christopher to England that
+he might talk with him. Had it not been for Queen
+Isabella's impulsive decision England instead of Spain
+might have made the lucky throw in the great game of
+discovery. But by the time Bartholomew could get
+the message to his brother the matter had been settled
+and the expedition was already taking shape. Henry
+VII. always kept one foot on the ground, and until he
+could see some other way to bring wealth into the royal
+treasury he let the monopolies go on.</p>
+
+<p>In 1495 he took a chance. He gave to John Cabot
+and his sons a license to search "for islands, provinces
+or regions in the eastern, western or northern seas;
+and, as vassals of the King, to occupy the territories
+that might be found, with an exclusive right to their
+commerce, on paying the King a fifth part of the
+profits."</p>
+
+<p>It will be noted that this license did not say anything
+about the southern ocean. Already troops of Spanish
+cavaliers were pouring into the seaports, eager to
+make discoveries by the road of Columbus, and Spain
+would regard as unfriendly any attempt to send English
+ships in that direction. Whatever could be got <span class='pagenum'>[85]</span>
+from the Spanish territories Henry would try another
+way of getting. The year before he had arranged
+to have Prince Arthur, the heir to his throne,
+marry the fourth daughter of the King of Aragon,
+Catherine, then a little Princess of eleven. Prince
+Arthur died while still a boy, and Catherine became
+the first wife of Henry, afterward Henry VIII.
+With a Spanish Princess as queen of England, there
+might be an alliance between the two countries. That
+would be better than quarreling with Spain over discoveries
+which were at best uncertain. If Cabot really
+found anything valuable in the northern seas the
+move might turn out to be a good one. It would make
+England a more powerful member of the Spanish alliance,
+without taking anything which Spain appeared
+to value.</p>
+
+<p>In May, 1497, properly furnished with provisions
+and a few such things as might show what England
+had to barter, the little <i>Matthew</i> sailed from Bristol
+under the command of John Cabot with his nineteen-year-old
+son Sebastian and a crew of eighteen&mdash;nearly
+all Englishmen, used to the North Atlantic.
+The King's permission was for five ships, but the wise
+Cabot had heard something of the hardships of the
+first expeditions to Hispaniola, and preferred to keep
+within his means, and sail with men whom he could
+trust.</p>
+
+<p>But on this voyage they found locked harbors not
+closed by the order of any King but by natural causes,&mdash;harbors
+without inhabitants or means of supporting
+life, and so far north as to be blocked by ice for
+half the year. They sailed seven hundred leagues
+west and came at last to a rocky wooded coast. Now
+in all the books of travel in Asia, mention had been
+made of an immense territory ruled by the Grand <a name='Page_86' id='Page_86'></a><span class='pagenum'>[86]</span>
+Cham of Tartary, whose hordes had nearly overrun
+Eastern Europe in times not so very long ago. The
+adventures of Marco Polo the Venetian, in a great
+book sent to Cabot by his wife's father, had been the
+fairy-tale of Sebastian and his brothers from the time
+they were old enough to understand a story. In this
+book it was written how Marco Polo and his companions
+passed through utterly uninhabited wilds in the
+Great Khan's empire, and afterward came to a region
+of barbarians, who robbed and killed travelers. These
+fierce people lived on the fruits and game of the forest,
+cultivating no fields; they dressed in the skins of wild
+animals and used salt for money. Could this be the
+place? If so it behooved the little party of explorers
+to be careful. As yet, nobody dreamed that any mainland
+discovered by sailing westward from northern
+Europe could be anything but Asia.</p>
+
+<p>Cautiously they sailed along the rugged shore, but
+not a human being was to be seen. It was the twenty-fourth
+of June, when by all accounts the people of any
+civilized country should be coasting along from port
+to port fishing or engaged in traffic. The sun blazed
+hot and clear, but the inquisitive noses of the crew
+scented no cinnamon, cloves or ginger in the air. All
+of these, according to Marco Polo, were in the wilderness
+he crossed, and also great rivers. On crossing
+one of these rivers he had found himself in a populous
+country with castles and cities. Were there no people
+on this desolate shore&mdash;or were they lying in wait
+for the voyagers to land, that they might seize and kill
+them and plunder the ship?</p>
+
+<p>One thing was certain, the air of this strange place
+made them all more thirsty than they ever had been in
+England, and their water-supply had given out. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+Sebastian and a crew of the younger men tumbled into
+a boat, cross-bow and cutlass at hand, and went ashore
+to fill the barrels, while John Cabot kept an anxious
+eye on the land. Sebastian himself rather relished
+the adventure.</p>
+
+<p>They found a stream of delicious water,&mdash;pure,
+cold and clear as a fountain of Eden. Among the
+rocks they found creeping vines with rather tasteless,
+bright red berries, in the woods little evergreen herbs
+with leaves like laurel and scarlet spicy berries, dark
+green mossy vines with white berries&mdash;but no spice-trees.
+The forest in fact was rather like Norway,
+according to Ralph Erlandsson, who was a native of
+Stavanger. Sebastian, who was ahead, presently came
+upon signs of human life. A sapling, bent down and
+held by a rude contrivance of deerhide thong and
+stakes, was attached to a noose so ingeniously hidden
+that the young leader nearly stepped into it. He took
+it off the tree and looked about him. A minute later,
+from one side and to the rear, a startled exclamation
+came from Robert Thorne of Bristol, who had stepped
+on a similar snare and been jerked off his feet. This
+was quite enough. The party retreated to the ship.
+On the way back they saw trees that had been cut not
+very long since, and Sebastian picked up a wooden
+needle such as fishermen used in making nets, yet not
+like any English tool of that sort.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span><br /></div>
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 416px;">
+<img src="images/illus-107.png" width="416" height="600" alt="&quot;A sapling, bent down, was attached to a noose ingeniously hidden.&quot;&mdash;Page 87" title="&quot;A sapling, bent down, was attached to a noose ingeniously hidden.&quot;&mdash;Page 87" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;A sapling, bent down, was attached to a noose ingeniously hidden.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 87</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>They saw nothing more of the kind, although they
+sailed some three hundred leagues along the coast, nor
+did they see any sort of tilled land. This certainly
+could not be Cipangu or Cathay with their seaports and
+gilded temples. Whatever else it was, it was a land
+of wild people, savage hunters. John Cabot left on a
+bold headland where it could not fail to be seen, a <span class='pagenum'>[88]</span>
+great cross, with the flag of England and the Venetian
+banner bearing the lion of Saint Mark.</p>
+
+<p>There was wild excitement in Bristol when it was
+known that the little <i>Matthew</i> had come safely into
+port, after three months' voyaging in unknown seas.
+August of that year found the two Cabots at Westminster
+with their story and their handful of forest
+trophies, and the excited and suspicious Spanish Ambassador
+was framing a protest to the King and a letter
+to Ferdinand and Isabella.</p>
+
+<p>Henry VII. fingered the wooden needle, pulled the
+rawhide thong meditatively through his fingers, and
+ate a little handful of the wintergreen berries and
+young leaves. Their pungent flavor wrinkled his long
+nose. This was certainly not any spice that came from
+the Indies.</p>
+
+<p>"This country you found," he remarked at last,
+"is not much like New Spain."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, Sire," answered John Cabot simply.</p>
+
+<p>"And I understand,"&mdash;the King put the collection
+of curiosities back into the wallet that had held them,
+"that this represents one fifth at least of the gains of
+the voyage."</p>
+
+<p>Cabot bowed. As a matter of fact there had been
+no profits.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord,"&mdash;the King handed the wallet over to
+the uneasy Ambassador, who had been invited to the
+conference, "you have heard what our good Captain
+says. If, as you say, Spain claims this landfall, we
+willingly make over to you our&mdash;ahem!&mdash;share of
+the emolument." And the Spaniard, looking rather
+foolish, saw nothing better to do than to bow his thanks
+and retire from the presence.</p>
+
+<p>The King turned again to the Cabots.<span class='pagenum'>[89]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless," he went on meditatively, "we will
+not be neglectful of you. In another year, if it is still
+your desire to engage in this work, you may have&mdash;"
+a pause&mdash;"ten ships armed as you see fit, and manned
+with whatever prisoners are not confined for&mdash;high
+treason. Fish, I think you said, abound in those
+waters? Bacalao&mdash;er&mdash;that is cod, is it not?
+Now it seems to me that our men of Bristol can go
+a-fishing on those banks without interference from the
+Hanse merchants, and we shall be less dependent on&mdash;foreign
+aid, for the victualing of our tables. And
+there may be some way to Asia through these Northern
+seas&mdash;in which case our brother of Spain may
+not be so nice in his scruples about trespass. The
+Spice Islands are not his but Portugal's. And for
+your present reward,&mdash;" the King reached for his lean
+purse and waggled his gaunt foot in its loose worn red
+shoe "this, and the title of Admiral of your new-found
+land."</p>
+
+<p>He dropped some gold pieces into the hand of John
+Cabot. In the accounts of his treasurer for that year
+may be seen this item:</p>
+
+<p>"10th August, donation of £10 to him that found
+the new isle."</p>
+
+<p>In May of the next year another voyage was undertaken
+by Sebastian, John Cabot having died. This
+time there was a small fleet from Bristol with some
+three hundred men. Sebastian sailed so far north as
+to be stopped by seas full of icebergs, then turning
+southward discovered the island of Newfoundland,
+landed further south on the mainland, and went as far
+toward the Spanish possessions as the great bay called
+Chesapeake. Meanwhile shoals of little fishing boats,
+from Bristol, Brittany, Lisbon, Rye, and the Vizcayan <span class='pagenum'>[90]</span>
+ports on the north of Spain, crept across the gray seas
+to fish for cod. They held no patent and carried no
+guns, but they made a floating city off the Grand
+Banks for a brief season, settling their own disputes.
+The people at home found salt fish good cheap and
+wholesome. When Sebastian told the Bristol folk that
+the fish were so thick in these new seas that he could
+hardly get his ships through, they would not believe it.
+But when Robert Thorne and a dozen others had seen
+the little caplin, the fish which the cod feeds upon,
+swimming inshore by the acre, crowded by the cod
+behind them, and by seal, shark and dogfish hunting the
+cod, when cod were caught and salted down and shown
+in Bristol, four and five feet long, then Bristol swallowed
+both story and cargo and blessed the name of
+Cabot.</p>
+
+<p>Sebastian Cabot shook the dust of Bristol off his
+restless feet more than once in the years that followed.
+Within five years after his voyage to the Arctic regions
+he was cruising about the Caribbean. In 1517 he was
+at the entrance of the great bay on the north coast of
+Labrador. In 1524 he was in the service of Spain,
+and coasting along the eastern shores of South America
+ascended the great river which De Solis had named
+Rio de la Plata, came within sight of the mountains of
+Peru. But for orders from Spain, where Pizarro had
+secured the governorship of that land, Cabot might
+have been its conqueror. In 1548, after some years
+spent in Spain as pilot major, he came back to England,
+where he was appointed to the position of superintendent
+of naval affairs. It was his work to examine and
+license pilots, and make charts and maps, and some ten
+years later he died, having founded the company of
+Merchant Adventurers in 1553. This company was <span class='pagenum'>[91]</span>
+entitled to build and send out ships for discovery and
+trade in parts unknown. By uniting merchant traders
+in one body, governed by definite rules, and backed by
+their combined capital, it broke the monopoly of the
+Hanseatic League and finally drove the Hanse merchants
+out of England. Sebastian Cabot was its first
+governor, holding the office until he died, and has
+rightly been called the father of free trade. He had
+unlocked the harbors of the world to his adopted country,
+England.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+The rules drawn up by Cabot for the merchant adventurers, to be
+read publicly on board ship once a week, are interesting as showing
+the character of the man and the great advance made in welding
+English trade into a company to be guided by the best traditions.
+For the first time captains were required to keep a log, and this one
+thing, by putting on record everything seen and noted by those who
+sailed strange waters, made an increasing fund of knowledge at the
+service of each navigator. Some of the points in the instructions are
+as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>7. "That the merchants and other skilful persons, in writing, shall
+daily write, describe and put in memorie the navigation of each day
+and night, with the points and observations of the lands, tides, elements,
+altitude of the sunne, course of the moon and starres, and the
+same so noted by the order of the master and pilot of every ship to
+be put in writing; the captain-general assembling the masters together
+once every weeke (if winde and weather shall serve) to conferre all
+the observations and notes of the said ships, to the intent it may appeare
+wherein the notes do agree and wherein they dissent, and upon
+good debatement, deliberation and conclusion determined to put the
+same into a common ledger, to remain of record for the companie;
+the like order to be kept in proportioning of the cardes, astrolabes, and
+other instruments prepared for the voyage, at the charge of the
+companie.</p>
+
+<p>12. "That no blaspheming of God, or detestable swearing, be used
+in any ship, or communication of ribaldrie, filthy tales, or ungodly
+talk to be suffered in the company of any ship, neither dicing, tabling,
+nor other divelish games to be permitted, whereby ensueth not only
+povertie to the players, but also strife, variance, brauling, fighting and
+oftentimes murther.</p>
+
+<p>26. "Every nation and region to be considered advisedly, and
+not to provoke them by any distance, laughing, contempt, or such like; <span class='pagenum'>[92]</span>
+but to use them with prudent circumspection, with all gentleness and
+courtesie."</p></div>
+
+<p>These and other instructions form an ideal far beyond anything
+found in the merchant shipping of any other land at that time, and
+the wisdom which inspired them undoubtedly laid the foundation of
+the fine and noble tradition which formed the best officers of the navy
+not yet born. There was no British navy in the modern sense until
+a hundred years after Cabot's day. In time of war the King impressed
+all suitable ships into his service, if they were not freely
+offered by private owners. In time of peace the monarch was a
+ship-owner like any other, and such a thing as a standing navy was
+not thought of. Hence the brave, generous, and courteous merchant
+adventurer, when such a man was abroad, was the upholder of the
+honor of his country as well as the upbuilder of her commerce.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="GRAY_SAILS" id="GRAY_SAILS"></a>GRAY SAILS</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gray sails that fill with the winds of the morning,</span>
+<span class="i2">Out upon the Channel or the bleak North sea,</span>
+<span class="i0">Neither cross nor fleur-de-lis goes to your adorning,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Arctic frost and southern gale your tirewomen shall be.</span>
+<span class="i0">Yet when you come home again&mdash;home again&mdash;home again,</span>
+<span class="i2">Gray sails turn to silver when the keel runs free.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gray sails of Plymouth, 'ware the wild Orcades,</span>
+<span class="i2">Gray sails of Lisbon, 'ware the guns of Dieppe.</span>
+<span class="i0">Cross-bows of Genoa, 'ware the wharves of Gades,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">You that sail the Spanish Seas may neither trust nor sleep.</span>
+<span class="i0">Yet when you come home again&mdash;home again&mdash;home again,</span>
+<span class="i2">You shall make the covenant for Kings to keep!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gray sails are crowding where the sea-fog sleeping</span>
+<span class="i2">Masks the faces of the folk that throng and traffic there.</span>
+<span class="i0">When the winds are free again and the cod are leaping,</span>
+<span class="i2">All the tongues of Pentecost wake the laughing air.</span>
+<span class="i0">And when they come home again&mdash;home again&mdash;home again,</span>
+<span class="i2">They shall bring their freedom for the world to share!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="LITTLE_VENICE" id="LITTLE_VENICE"></a>LITTLE VENICE</h3>
+
+<p>"Translators," observed Amerigo Vespucci,
+"are frequently traitors. Now who is to be
+surety that yonder interpreter does not change your
+words in repeating them?"</p>
+
+<p>Alonso de Ojeda touched the hilt of his poniard.
+"This," he said. "Toledo steel speaks all languages."</p>
+
+<p>The Florentine's black eyebrows lifted a little, but
+he did not pursue the subject. Ojeda was not the sort
+of man likely to be convinced of anything he did not
+believe already, and Vespucci was having too good a
+time to waste it in argument.</p>
+
+<p>This middle-aged, shrewd-looking individual had
+for half his life been chained to the desk, for he had
+been many years a clerk in the great merchant houses
+of the Medici. Until he was forty years old he had
+hardly gone outside his native city. In the latter half
+of the fifteenth century each Italian city was a little
+world in itself, with its own standards, customs and
+traditions. The fact that Vespucci spent most of his
+leisure and all of his spare ducats in the collection and
+study of maps and globes and works on geography,
+was regarded as a proof of mild insanity. When he
+paid one hundred and thirty gold pieces for a particularly
+fine map made by Valsequa in 1439, even his
+intimate friend Soderini called him a fool. Vespucci <span class='pagenum'>[95]</span>
+was himself an expert mapmaker. This may have
+been a reason why, about 1490, the Medici sent him to
+Barcelona to look after their interests in Spain. In
+Seville he secured a position as manager in the house
+of Juanoto Berardi, who fitted out ships for Atlantic
+voyages. In 1497 he himself sailed for the newly discovered
+islands of the West, and spent more than a
+year in exploration. This taste of travel seemed to
+have whetted his appetite for more, for he was now
+acting as astronomer and geographer in the expedition
+which Ojeda had organized and Juan de la Cosa fitted
+out, to the coast which Colón had discovered and called
+Tierre Firme. In the seven years since the first voyage
+of the great Admiral it had become the custom to
+have on board, for expeditions of discovery, a person
+who understood astronomy, the use of the astrolabe
+and navigation in general, and the making of charts
+and maps. Vespucci was exactly that sort of man.
+However queer it might seem to the young Ojeda to
+find in a clerk forty years old such a fresh and youthful
+delight in travel, both he and La Cosa knew that they
+had in him a valuable assistant. It was generally understood
+that he meant to write a book about it all.</p>
+
+<p>Vespucci was in fact thinking of his future book
+when he made that speech about translators. He was
+planning to write the book not in Latin, as was usual,
+but in Italian, making if necessary another copy in
+Latin.</p>
+
+<p>The party had sailed from Puerto Santa Maria on
+May 20, 1499, taking with them a chart which Bishop
+Fonseca, head of the Department of the Indies, furnished.
+It had been the understanding when Colón
+received the title of Admiral of the Indies that no expedition
+should be sent out without his authority. <span class='pagenum'>[96]</span>
+This understanding Fonseca succeeded in persuading
+the King and Queen to take back, and another order
+was issued, to the effect that no independent expedition
+was to go out without the royal permission. This,
+practically, meant Fonseca's leave. The Bishop signed
+the permit for Ojeda's undertaking with double satisfaction.
+He was doing a favor for his friend, Bishop
+Ojeda, cousin to this young man, and he was aiming
+a blow at the hated Genoese Admiral, whose very chart
+he was turning over to the young explorer. All sorts
+of stories had been set afloat about the unfitness of the
+Admiral to hold such an important office. Fonseca
+had managed to influence the Queen so far against him
+that one Bobadilla had been sent to Hispaniola with
+power to depose Colón and treat him as a criminal,&mdash;so
+cunningly were his instructions framed. When the
+great discoverer was actually thrown into prison and
+sent to Spain manacled like a felon, it might have added
+a few drops of bitterness to his reflections if he had
+known what Ojeda was doing. This youth, whom he
+had trusted and liked, was now looking forward to the
+conquest of the very region which the Admiral had discovered,
+and using what was supposed to be the Admiral's
+private chart to guide him.</p>
+
+<p>It is not likely, however, that the fiery and impatient
+Ojeda gave any thought to the feelings of the older
+man. Juan de la Cosa was a leader in the expedition,
+many sailors were enlisted, who had served in former
+voyages of discovery, and above all, Fonseca approved.
+Ojeda would never have dreamed of setting up any
+personal opinion contrary to the views of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>In twenty-four days the fleet arrived upon a coast
+which no one on board had ever seen. It was in fact
+two hundred leagues further to the south than Paria, <span class='pagenum'>[97]</span>
+where the Admiral had touched. The people were
+taller and more vigorous than the Arawaks of Hispaniola,
+and expert with the bow, the lance and the
+shield. Their bell-shaped houses were of tree-trunks
+thatched with palm leaves, some of them very large.
+The people wore ornaments made of fish-bones, and
+strings of white and green beads, and feather headdresses
+of the most gorgeous colors. The interpreter
+told Ojeda that the Spaniards' desire of gold and pearls
+was very puzzling to these simple folk, who had never
+considered them of any especial value. In a harbor
+called Maracapana the fleet was unloaded and careened
+for cleaning. Under the direction of Ojeda and La
+Cosa a small brigantine was built. The people
+brought venison, fish, cassava bread and other provisions
+willingly, and seemed to think the Spaniards
+angels. At least, that was the version of their talk
+which reached Ojeda. It was here that Amerigo Vespucci
+made that remark about translators. He had
+not studied accounts of Atlantic voyages for the last
+few years without drawing a few conclusions regarding
+the nature of savages. When it was explained
+that the natives had neighbors who were cannibals,
+and that they would greatly value the strangers' assistance
+in fighting them, Vespucci came very near making
+a suggestion. He finally made it to Juan de la
+Cosa instead of to Ojeda. The old pilot chuckled
+wisely.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got past warning my young gentleman of danger
+ahead," he said good-naturedly. "He can do
+without fighting just as well as a fish can do without
+water. If I die trying to get him out of some scrape
+he has plunged into head-first, it will be no more than
+I expect."<span class='pagenum'>[98]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ojeda was, in fact, spoiling for adventure, and joyfully
+set sail in the direction of the Carib Islands.
+Seven coast natives were on board as guides, and
+pointed out the island inhabited by their especial enemies.
+The shore was lined with fierce-faced savages,
+painted and feathered, armed with bows and arrows,
+lances and darts and bucklers. Ojeda launched his
+boats, in each of which was a paterero, or small cannon,
+with a number of soldiers crouching down out of
+sight. The armor of the Spaniards protected them
+from the Indian arrows, while the cotton armor of the
+savages and their light shields were no defense against
+cannon-balls or crossbow-bolts.</p>
+
+<p>When the barbarians leaped into the sea and attacked
+the boats the cannon scattered them, but they
+rallied and fought more fiercely on land. The Spaniards
+won that day's battle, but the dauntless islanders
+were ready to renew the fight next morning. With his
+fifty-seven men Ojeda routed the whole fighting force
+of the tribe, made many prisoners, plundered and set
+fire to the villages, and returned to his ships. A part
+of the spoil was bestowed on the seven friendly natives.
+Ojeda, who had not received so much as a scratch,
+anchored in a bay for three weeks to let his wounded
+recover. There were twenty-one wounded and one
+Spaniard had been killed.</p>
+
+<p>Sailing westward along the coast the fleet presently
+entered a vast gulf like an inland sea, on the eastern
+side of which was a most curious village. Ojeda
+could hardly believe the evidence of his own eyes.
+Twenty large cone-shaped houses were built on piles
+driven into the bottom of the lake, which in that part
+was clear and shallow. Each house had its drawbridge,
+and communicated with its neighbors and with <span class='pagenum'>[99]</span>
+the shore by means of canoes gliding along the water-ways
+between the piles. The interpreters said it was
+called Coquibacoa.</p>
+
+<p>"That is no proper name for so marvelous a place,"
+said Ojeda after he had tried to pronounce the clucking
+many-syllabled word. "Is it like anything you have
+seen, Vespucci?"</p>
+
+<p>The Italian had been comparing it with a similar
+village he had seen on his first voyage, on a part of
+the coast called Lariab. He had an instinct, however,
+that it would not be well to mix his own discoveries
+with those of the present expedition.</p>
+
+<p>"It is rather like Venice," he said demurely.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the name for it," cried Ojeda in high
+delight,&mdash;"Venezuela&mdash;Little Venice!"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be interesting," observed Vespucci, "to
+know what names they are giving to us. How they
+stare!"</p>
+
+<p>The people of the village on stilts were evidently as
+much astonished at the strangers as the strangers were
+at them. They fled into their houses and raised the
+draw-bridges. The men in a squadron of canoes
+which came paddling in from the sea were also terrified.
+But this did not last long. The warriors went
+into the forest and returned with sixteen young girls,
+four of whom they brought to each ship. While the
+white men wondered what this could mean, several old
+crones appeared at the doors of the houses and began
+a furious shrieking. This seemed to be a signal. The
+maidens dived into the sea and made for the shore, and
+a storm of arrows came from the canoemen. The
+fight, however, was not long, and the Spaniards won
+an easy victory, after which they had no further
+trouble. They found a harbor called Maracaibo, and <span class='pagenum'>[100]</span>
+twenty-seven Spaniards at the earnest request of the
+natives were entertained as guests among the inland
+villages for nine days. They were carried from place
+to place in litters or hammocks, and when they returned
+to the ships every man of them had a collection of
+gifts&mdash;rich plumes, weapons, tropical birds and animals&mdash;but
+no gold. The monkeys and parrots were
+very amusing, but they did not make up, in the minds
+of some of the crew, for the gold which had not been
+found.</p>
+
+<p>Ojeda returned from an exploring journey one day
+with a ruffled temper. "A gang of poachers," he
+sputtered,&mdash;"rascally Bristol traders. We shall have
+to teach these folk their place."</p>
+
+<p>"What really happened?" Vespucci inquired privately
+of Juan de la Cosa. The old mariner's eyes
+twinkled.</p>
+
+<p>"It was funny. You see, we were coming down to
+the shore, ready to return to the ships, when we spied
+an English ship and some sailors on the beach, dancing
+after they'd caught their fish and eaten 'em. Up
+marches our young caballero with hand on hilt and
+asks whose men they are. But they answered him in
+a language he can't understand, d'ye see, and after
+some jabbering he makes them understand that he
+wants to go on board to see their captain. I went
+along, for I'd no mind to leave him alone if there
+should be trouble.</p>
+
+<p>"So soon as I set eyes on the captain I knew him
+for a chap I'd seen years ago in Venice. He did me a
+good turn there, too, though he was but a lad. I
+knew he was a Bristol man, but I hadn't expected to
+see him or his ship so far from home. He could talk
+Spanish nearly as well as you do.<span class='pagenum'>[101]</span></p>
+
+<p>"'What are you doing here?' asks our worshipful
+commander.</p>
+
+<p>"'Looking at the sky,' said the other man, cool as
+a cucumber. 'I think we are going to have a storm.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't bandy words with me,' says Ojeda. 'You
+are trespassing on my master's dominions.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Your master is the Admiral of the Indies, no?'
+says the stranger, and that pretty near shut our young
+gentleman's mouth for a minute, for between you and
+me I think he knows that Colón has not been well
+treated. But he only got the more furious.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you insult me?' says he, and whips out his
+Toledo blade and bends it almost double, to show the
+quality.</p>
+
+<p>"'Wait a minute, my young hornet,' says the captain&mdash;he
+wasn't much more than a boy, himself,&mdash;'didn't
+your master the Duke of Medina Coeli teach
+you better than to irritate a man on the deck of his
+own ship? Mine can sail two leagues to your one,
+and I'm just leaving for home, so, unless you would
+like to go with me, perhaps you will let this conversation
+end without any more pointed remarks. If I chose,
+you know, I could drop you overboard in sight of your
+men, to swim ashore. My guns would stave your longboat
+all to pieces. But I've stayed long enough to
+give the lads a chance to have a good meal and a bit of
+fun&mdash;nothing's better than dancing, for the spirits,
+dad always said it was better than either fighting or
+dicing on shipboard. Before we part, though, I'm
+going to give you one piece of advice. Don't stir up
+these coast natives too often. If you do, they'll eat
+you. They use poisoned arrows in some of these parts,
+and there's no cure for that but a red-hot iron.'</p>
+
+<p>"The caballero's temper is like gunpowder&mdash;it <span class='pagenum'>[102]</span>
+flashes up in a second, or not at all. He must ha' seen
+that the captain meant him kindness. Anyway, he
+slips his sword back in the scabbard and says cool as
+you please,</p>
+
+<p>"'Señor, pardon my hasty conclusion. You have
+of course a perfect right to look at the sky, and to
+dance, if that is your diversion. I should be extremely
+sorry to interfere with your departure. But
+you will understand that when a commander in the service
+of the sovereigns of Aragon and Castile finds intruders
+within their territory it is his duty to make it
+his affair. I thank you for your warning. Adios,'
+and he makes a little stiff bow and goes over the side,
+me after him. I looked back just as I went over the
+rail, and the skipper was watching me, and I may be
+mistaken but I believe he winked. I tell you, our little
+captain can do things that would get him run
+through the body if he were any other man."</p>
+
+<p>Vespucci smiled thoughtfully. But this incident
+may have had something to do with his later decision
+to part company with Ojeda. Vespucci continued to
+explore the coast, and Ojeda sailed northward to the
+islands, where he kidnaped some Indians for slaves.
+When he returned to Cadiz the young adventurer
+found to his intense disgust that after all expenses were
+paid there remained but five hundred ducats to be divided
+among fifty-five men. This was all the more
+mortifying because, two months before, Pedro Alonso
+Nino, a captain of Palos, and Christoval Guerra of
+Seville, had come in from a trading voyage in the
+Indies with the richest cargo of gold and pearls ever
+seen in Cadiz.</p>
+
+<p>Vespucci wrote his book some years later, and as it
+was the first popular account of the new Spanish possessions <span class='pagenum'>[103]</span>
+and was written in a lively and entertaining
+style it had a great reputation. It gave to the natives
+of the country the name which they have ever since
+borne&mdash;Indians. A German geographer who much
+admired the work suggested that an appropriate mark
+of appreciation would be to name the new continent
+America, after Vespucci, and this was done. Vespucci
+described all that he saw and some things of
+which he heard, using care and discretion, and if he
+suspected that the captain of the Bristol ship was Sebastian
+Cabot, later pilot-major of Spain, he did not say
+so.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+Amerigo Vespucci has been unjustly accused of endeavoring to
+steal the glory of Columbus, but there is no evidence that
+he ever contemplated anything of the kind. It was a German
+geographer's suggestion that the continent be named America.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a></span></div>
+<h3><a name="THE_GOLD_ROAD" id="THE_GOLD_ROAD"></a>THE GOLD ROAD</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O the Gold Road is a hard road,</span>
+<span class="i2">And it leads beyond the sea,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Some follow it through the altar gates</span>
+<span class="i2">And some to the gallows tree.</span>
+<span class="i0">And they who squander the gold they earn</span>
+<span class="i2">On kin-folk ill to please</span>
+<span class="i0">Go soon to the grave, but he toils in the grave&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">The miner upon his knees.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Gold Road is a dark road&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">No bird by the wayside sings,</span>
+<span class="i0">No sun shines into the cañons deep,</span>
+<span class="i2">No children's laughter rings.</span>
+<span class="i0">They are slaves who delve in the stubborn rocks</span>
+<span class="i2">For the pittance their labor brings.</span>
+<span class="i0">Their bread is bitter who toil for their own,</span>
+<span class="i2">But they starve who toil for Kings.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Gold Road is a small road,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">A man must tread it alone,</span>
+<span class="i0">With none to help if he faint or fall,</span>
+<span class="i2">And none to hear his groan.</span>
+<span class="i0">The weight of gold is a weary weight</span>
+<span class="i2">When we toil for the sake of our own&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">But our masters are branding our hearts and souls</span>
+<span class="i2">With a Christ that is carved in stone!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105"  id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_DOG_WITH_TWO_MASTERS" id="THE_DOG_WITH_TWO_MASTERS"></a>THE DOG WITH TWO MASTERS</h3>
+
+<p>"They fight among themselves too much. They
+need the man with the whip."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bough! wough!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Yar-r-rh! arrh!&mdash;agh!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>A spirited and entertaining dog-fight was going on
+just outside the house of the governor of Darien. The
+deep sullen roar of Balboa's big hound Leoncico was as
+unmistakable as the snarling, snapping, furious bark
+of Cacafuego, who belonged to the Bachelor Enciso.
+The two hated each other at sight, months ago. Now
+they were having it out. The man with the whip evidently
+came on the scene, for there was a final crescendo
+of barks, yelps and growls, followed by silence.</p>
+
+<p>Pizarro's remark, however, did not refer to the dogs
+but to the settlers, who had been rioting over the governorship
+of the colony. The outcome of this disturbance
+had been the practical seizure of the office of
+captain-general by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. Pizarro
+himself, and Juan de Saavedra, to whom he addressed
+his comment, had supported Balboa. Saavedra did
+not commit himself further than to answer, with a
+shrug, "Balboa can use the whip on occasion, we all
+know that. Ah, here he comes now."</p>
+
+<p>The man and the dog would have attracted attention
+anywhere, separately or together. The man was
+well-made and vigorous, with red-brown hair and beard, <span class='pagenum'>[106]</span>
+and clear merry eyes, a leader who would rather lead
+than command. The dog was of medium size but very
+powerful, tawny in color with a black muzzle, and the
+scars on his compact body recorded many battles, not
+with other dogs but with hostile Indians. He had been
+his master's body-guard in several fights, and Balboa
+sometimes lent him to his friends, the dog receiving the
+same share of plunder that would have been due to
+an armed man. Leoncico is said to have brought his
+captain in this way more than a thousand crowns.</p>
+
+<p>"You called him off, eh, General?" Saavedra
+asked, bending to stroke the terrible head. He and
+Vasco Nuñez had been friends for years; in fact it
+was Saavedra who had managed the smuggling of
+Balboa on board the ship in a cask, to escape his
+creditors, when the expedition set out. They were
+intimate, as men are intimate who are different in
+character but alike in feeling and tradition. Pizarro
+was an outsider and knew it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Enciso's dog would be better for a whipping,
+perhaps, but I had no mind to make the Bachelor
+any more an enemy than he is. Pizarro,&mdash;" he turned
+to the soldier of fortune, with a frank smile, "I have
+work for you to do. It is dangerous, but I know that
+you do not care for that. Pick out six good men, and
+be ready to see if there is any truth in those stories
+about the Coyba gold mines."</p>
+
+<p>Pizarro's black brows unbent. Nothing could have
+suited him better than just these orders. He was, like
+Balboa, a native of the province of Estremadura in
+Spain, and being shut out by his low birth from advancement
+in his own land, had come to the colonies in
+the hope of gaining wealth and position by the sword.
+His reckless courage, iron muscle, and a certain cold <span class='pagenum'>[107]</span>
+stubbornness had given him the reputation of an able
+man, but though nearly ten years older than Balboa,
+he had never held any but a subordinate position. He
+had nearly made up his mind that his chance would
+never come. These hidalgos wanted all the glory as
+well as all the power for themselves. He could not
+see why Balboa should turn the possible discovery of a
+rich new province over to him, but if the gold should
+be there, Pizarro would get it. He bowed, thanked
+the general, and took his leave.</p>
+
+<p>"General," said Saavedra, "I never like to put my
+neck in a noose, but if you were only Vasco Nuñez I
+would ask you why you made exactly that choice."</p>
+
+<p>Balboa laughed and pulled the ears of Leoncico,
+who had laid his head in full content on his master's
+knee. "I am always Vasco Nuñez to you, <i>amigo</i>," he
+said easily, "as you very well know. Pizarro is a
+bulldog for bravery, and he has a head on his shoulders.
+Also he is ambitious, and this will give him a
+chance to win renown."</p>
+
+<p>"And keeps him out of mischief for the time being,"
+put in Saavedra dryly.</p>
+
+<p>Balboa laughed again. "Why do you ask me questions
+when you know my mind almost as well as I do?
+You see, now that Enciso is about to go, we shall have
+some freedom to do something besides quarrel among
+ourselves. Gold is an apology for whatever one does,
+out here. If there is as much of it as they say, in this
+Coyba, the King may be able to gild the walls of another
+salon, and if he puts Pizarro's portrait in it in
+the place of honor I shall not weep over that. There
+is glory enough for all of us, who choose to earn it."</p>
+
+<p>Pizarro and his men had not gone ten miles from
+Darien before they ran into an ambush of Indians <span class='pagenum'>[108]</span>
+armed with slings. The seven Spaniards charged instantly,
+and actually put the enemy to flight, then beat
+a quick retreat. Every man of them despite their body
+armor had wounds and bruises, and one was left disabled
+upon the field. Balboa met them as they limped
+painfully in. His quick eye took in the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"Only six of you? Where is Francisco Hernan?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was crippled and could not walk," answered
+Pizarro sulkily; he saw what was coming. Balboa's
+eyes blazed.</p>
+
+<p>"What! You&mdash;Spaniards&mdash;ran away from
+savages and left a comrade to die? Go back and
+bring him in!"</p>
+
+<p>Pizarro turned in silence, took his men back over the
+road just traversed, and brought Hernan safely in.</p>
+
+<p>This was one of the many incidents by which the
+colony learned the mettle of the new captain-general.
+Under his direction exploration of the neighboring
+provinces was undertaken. Balboa with eighty men
+made a friendly visit to Comagre, a cacique who could
+put three thousand fighting men in the field. Comagre
+and his seven sons entertained the white men in a
+house larger and more like a palace of the Orient than
+any they had before seen. It was one hundred and
+fifty paces long by eighty paces broad, the lower part
+of the walls built of logs, the floors and upper walls of
+beautiful and ingenious wood-work. The son of this
+cacique presented to Balboa seventy slaves, captives
+taken by himself, and golden ornaments weighing altogether
+four thousand ounces. The gold was at once
+melted into ingots, or bars of uniform size, for purposes
+of division. One-fifth of it was weighed out for
+the Crown, the rest divided among the members of the
+expedition. The young cacique stood by watching <span class='pagenum'>[109]</span>
+with scornful curiosity as the Spaniards argued and
+squabbled over the allotment. Suddenly he struck up
+the scales with his fist, and the shining treasure tumbled
+over the porch floor like spilt corn.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you quarrel over this trash?" he asked.
+"If this gold is so precious to you that you leave your
+homes, invade the land of peaceable nations and endure
+desperate perils, I will tell you where there is
+plenty of it."</p>
+
+<p>The Spaniards' attention was instantly caught and
+held. The young Indian went on, with the same careless
+contempt, "You see those mountains over there?
+Beyond them is a great sea. The people who dwell on
+the border of that sea have ships almost as big as
+yours, with sails and oars as yours have. The streams
+in their country are full of gold. The King eats from
+golden dishes, for gold is as common there as iron is
+among you,"&mdash;he glanced at the cumbrous armor and
+weapons of his guests. Indeed the panoply of the
+Spaniards, made necessary by the constant possibility
+of attack, and the weight of their cross-bows and other
+weapons, was a source of continual wonder to the light
+and nimble Indians, and of much weariness and suffering
+to themselves. Many in time adopted the quilted
+cotton body armor of the natives, and used pikes when
+they could in place of the musketoun, which was like a
+hand-cannon.</p>
+
+<p>This was not the first time that Balboa and many of
+the others had heard of the Lord of the Golden House,
+but no one else had told the story with such boldness.
+The young cacique said that to invade this land, a
+thousand warriors would be none too many. He offered
+to accompany Balboa with his own troops, if the
+white men would go.<span class='pagenum'>[110]</span></p>
+
+<p>Here indeed was an enterprise with glory enough for
+all. Balboa returned to Darien and began preparations.
+Valdivia, the regidor of the colony, had been
+sent to Hispaniola for provisions, but the supply he
+brought back was absurdly small. One of the serious
+difficulties encountered by all the first settlers in the
+New World was this matter of provisioning the camps.
+For the Indians the natural fruits and produce of the
+country were sufficient, and they seldom laid up any
+great store. The small surplus of any one chief was
+soon exhausted by a large body of guests. Moreover,
+the country had no cattle, swine, fowls, goats, no domestic
+food animals whatever, no grain but the
+maize. The supply of meat and grain was thus very
+small until Spanish planters could clear and cultivate
+their estates. On the march the troops could and
+did live off the country with less trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Balboa decided to send Valdivia back to Hispaniola
+for more supplies. He also sent by him a letter to
+Diego Colón, son of the great Admiral and governor
+of the island, explaining his need for more troops in
+view of what he had just learned about a new and
+wealthy kingdom not far away. He frankly requested
+the Governor to use his influence with the King to make
+this discovery possible without delay.</p>
+
+<p>Weeks passed, and Valdivia did not come back.
+Provisions again became scarce. Then a letter from
+Balboa's friend Zamudio, who had gone to Spain in
+the same ship with the Bachelor Enciso, in order to defend
+Balboa's course. Everything, it seemed, had
+gone wrong. The King had listened to the eloquence
+of the Bachelor, and would probably send for Balboa
+to come to Spain to answer criminal charges. It was
+said that he meant to send out as governor of Darien, <span class='pagenum'>[111]</span>i
+in the place of Balboa, an old and wily courtier, one of
+Fonseca's favorites, named Pedro Arias de Avila, and
+usually called Pedrarias.</p>
+
+<p>"That," said Balboa, handing the letter over to
+Saavedra to read, "seems to mean that the fat has
+gone into the fire."</p>
+
+<p>"What shall you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"If the King's summons arrives," said Balboa reflectively,
+"I think I will be on the top of that mountain
+range looking for the sea the cacique spoke of."</p>
+
+<p>"I will go at once and make my preparations," assented
+the other. "Did you know that Pizarro has
+adopted that dog&mdash;the Spitfire&mdash;Enciso's brute?"</p>
+
+<p>"Has the dog adopted him?" laughed Balboa, extracting
+a thorn with the utmost care from the paw of
+Leoncico.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a shrewd question. You know I have a
+theory that a man is known by his dog. This beast
+seems to have changed character when he changed
+masters. When Enciso had him he was little more
+than a puppy, and then he was thievish and cowardly.
+Now he will attack an Indian as savagely as Leoncico
+himself. Pizarro must have put the iron into him."</p>
+
+<p>"Pizarro can," said Balboa carelessly. "He does
+it with his men. I think there is more in that fellow
+than we have supposed. We shall see&mdash;this expedition
+will be a kind of test."</p>
+
+<p>Saavedra, as he went to his own quarters, wondered
+whether Balboa were really as unconscious and unsuspicious
+as he seemed.</p>
+
+<p>"Like dog, like master," he said to himself.
+"Cacafuego shifted collars as easily as any mongrel
+does&mdash;as readily as Pizarro himself would. I think
+that Leoncico, left here without Balboa, would die. <span class='pagenum'>[112]</span>
+Neither a dog or a man has any business with two masters.
+I wonder whether in the end we shall conquer
+this land, or find that the land has conquered us?"</p>
+
+<p>Balboa set forth with one hundred and ninety picked
+men and a few bloodhounds. Half the company remained
+on shore at Coyba to guard the brigantine
+and canoes, and with the others Balboa began the ascent
+of the range of mountains from whose heights he
+hoped to view the sea.</p>
+
+<p>In no other time and country have discoverers encountered
+the obstacles and dangers which confronted
+the Spaniards who first explored Central America.
+Precipitous mountains, matted jungles, barren deserts,
+deep and swift streams, malarious bogs, and hostile
+natives often armed with poisoned weapons, all were
+in their way, and they had to make their overland journeys
+on foot, fully armed and often in tropical heat.
+Even when accompanied by Indians familiar with the
+country, they could count on little or nothing in the
+way of game or other provisions. Balboa's friendly
+ways with the natives had secured him Indian guides
+and porters, but it was difficult work, even so. In
+four days they traveled no more than ten leagues, and
+it took them from the sixth to the twenty-fifth of September
+to cover the ground between the coast of Darien
+and the foot of the last mountain they must climb.
+One-third of the men had been sent back from time to
+time, because of illness and exhaustion. The party
+remained for the night in the village of Quaraqua at
+the foot of the mountain, and at dawn they began their
+ascent, hoping to reach the summit before the hottest
+time of the day. About ten o'clock they came out of
+the thick forest on a high and airy slope of the mountain, <span class='pagenum'>[113]</span>
+and the Indians pointed out a hill, from which
+they said the sea was visible.</p>
+
+<p>Then Balboa commanded the others to rest, while he
+went alone to the top.</p>
+
+<p>"And this," muttered Pizarro to the man next him,
+"is the man who is always saying that there is enough
+glory for all!"</p>
+
+<p>Saavedra's quick ear caught the remark. He smiled
+rather satirically. He, and he alone, knew the true
+reason for this action of Balboa's.</p>
+
+<p>"Juan," the commander had said to him while they
+were wading through their last swamp, "when we are
+somewhere near the summit I shall go on alone. I
+want no one with me when I look down the other side
+of that range. Whether I see a mere lake, which these
+savages may call a sea, or&mdash;something greater, I am
+not sure I shall be able to command my feelings. I
+will not be a fool before the men."</p>
+
+<p>Balboa's heart was thumping as he climbed, more
+with excitement than exertion. No one but Saavedra
+had so much as an inkling of the importance his success
+or failure would have for him personally. The
+whole of his future lay on the unknown other side of
+that hill. He shut his eyes as he reached the top&mdash;then
+opened them upon a glorious view.</p>
+
+<p>A vast blue sea sparkled in the sunshine, only a few
+leagues away. From the mountain top to the shore of
+this great body of water sloped a wild landscape of
+forest, rock, savanna and winding river. Balboa knelt
+and gave thanks to God.</p>
+
+<p>Then he sprang to his feet and beckoned to his followers,
+who rushed up the hill, the great hound Leoncico
+bounding far ahead. When all had reached the <span class='pagenum'>[114]</span>
+summit Father Andreas de Varo, motioning them to
+kneel, began the chant of Te Deum Laudamus, in
+which the company joined. The notary of the expedition
+then wrote out a testimonial witnessing that Balboa
+took possession of the sea, all its islands and surrounding
+lands, in the name of the sovereign of Castile;
+and each man signed it. Balboa had a tall tree cut
+down and made into a cross, which was planted on the
+exact spot where he had stood when he first looked
+upon the sea. A mound of stones was piled up for
+an additional monument, and the names of the sovereigns
+were carved on neighboring trees. Then Balboa,
+leading his men down the southern slope of the
+mountain, sent out three scouting parties under Francisco
+Pizarro, Juan de Escaray and Alonso Martin to
+discover the best route to the shore. Martin's party
+were first to reach it, after two days' journey, and
+found there two large canoes. Martin stepped into
+one of them, calling his companions to witness that he
+was the first European who had ever embarked upon
+those waters; Blas de Etienza, who followed, was the
+second. They reported their success to Balboa, and
+with twenty-six men the commander set out for the
+sea-coast. The Indian chief Chiapes, whom Balboa
+had fought and then made his ally, accompanied the
+party with some of his followers. On Michaelmas
+they reached the shore of a great bay, which in honor
+of the day was christened Bay de San Miguel. The
+tide was out, leaving a beach half a league wide covered
+with mud, and the Spaniards sat down to rest and wait.
+When it turned, it came in so fast that some who had
+dropped asleep found it lapping the bank at their feet,
+before they were fairly roused.</p>
+
+<p>Balboa stood up, and taking a banner which displayed <span class='pagenum'>[115]</span>
+the arms of Castile and Leon, and the figure of
+the Madonna and Child, he drew his sword and
+marched into the sea. In a formal speech he again
+took possession, in the names of the sovereigns, of the
+seas and lands and coasts and ports, the islands of the
+south, and all kingdoms and provinces thereunto appertaining.
+These rights he declared himself ready to
+maintain "until the day of judgment."</p>
+
+<p>While another document was receiving the signatures
+of the members of the expedition, Saavedra, who
+was standing near the margin of the bay, took up a
+little water in his hand and tasted it. It was salt.</p>
+
+<p>In the excitement of actually reaching the coast of so
+broad and beautiful a sea, no one had happened to
+think of finding out whether the water was fresh or
+salt. This discovery made it certain that they had
+found, not a great inland lake, but the ocean itself.</p>
+
+<p>Pizarro scowled; he wished that he had not missed
+this last chance of fame. Since he had discovered
+nothing it was not likely that his name should be mentioned
+in Balboa's report to the King, at all. But Balboa,
+high in expectation of the change which this fortunate
+adventure would make in his career, went on
+triumphantly exploring the neighboring country, gaining
+here and there considerable quantities of gold and
+pearls. Saavedra, who had inherited an estate in
+Spain just before the expedition started, and expected
+on his return to Darien to go home to look after it,
+watched Pizarro with growing distrust and anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are ready to accuse him of witchcraft,"
+said Balboa lightly when Saavedra hinted at his suspicions.
+"You have not given me one positive proof
+that the man is anything but a rather sulky, unhappy
+brute who has had ill luck."<span class='pagenum'>[116]</span></p>
+
+<p>"He is ill-bred, I tell you," said Saavedra stubbornly.
+"He is making up to the Indians, and that is
+not like him. We shall have trouble there yet."</p>
+
+<p>Balboa laughed and went to his hut, there to fling
+himself into a hammock and take a much-needed nap.
+Saavedra, coming back in the twilight, spied an Indian
+creeping through the forest toward a window in the
+rear of the hut. He was about to challenge the man
+when there was a yelp from the bushes, and Cacafuego
+leaped upon the prowler and bore him to earth, tearing
+savagely at his throat and receiving half a dozen
+wounds from the arrows the Indian carried in his hand
+and in his belt. He had been trained by Pizarro to fly
+at an Indian, and made no distinctions. Within an
+hour or two the poison in the arrow-points began to
+take effect, and the dog died. Whether he had been
+prowling about in search of food&mdash;for Pizarro kept
+him hungry with a view to making his temper more
+touchy&mdash;or was looking for his old enemy Leoncico,
+no one would ever know. Balboa looked grave and
+said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"The dog is dead&mdash;that is all that is absolutely
+certain," said Saavedra grimly. "I wish it had been
+his master."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+It is recorded that when Pizarro met Balboa with the order for his
+arrest Balboa thus addressed him: "It is not thus, Pizarro, that you
+were wont to greet me!" Pizarro's jealousy and ill-will are evident
+in the recorded facts, though he does not appear to have been actually
+guilty of treachery to his general.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="COLD_O_THE_MOON" id="COLD_O_THE_MOON"></a>COLD O' THE MOON</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alone with all the stars that rule mankind</span>
+<span class="i0">Ruy Faleiro sought to read the fate</span>
+<span class="i0">Of his close friend&mdash;now by the King's rebuke</span>
+<span class="i0">Sent stumbling out of Portugal to seek</span>
+<span class="i0">His fortune on the sea-roads of the world.</span>
+<span class="i0">But when Faleiro read the horoscope</span>
+<span class="i0">It seemed to point to glory&mdash;and a grave</span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond the sunset.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">When Magalhaens heard</span>
+<span class="i0">The prophecy, he smiled, and steadfastly</span>
+<span class="i0">Held on his way to that young Emperor,</span>
+<span class="i0">The blond shy stripling with the Austrian face,</span>
+<span class="i0">And in due time was Admiral of the Fleet</span>
+<span class="i0">To sail the seas that lay beyond the world.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mid-August was it when the fleet set forth,</span>
+<span class="i0">December, when in that Brazilian bay,</span>
+<span class="i0">Santa Lucia, they dropped anchor,&mdash;then</span>
+<span class="i0">Set up a little altar on the beach</span>
+<span class="i0">And knelt at Mass in that gray solitude.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Carvagio the pilot knew the place,</span>
+<span class="i0">And said the folk were kindly,&mdash;brown, straight-haired,</span>
+<span class="i0">Wore feather mantles, used no poisoned flints,</span>
+<span class="i0">And only ate man's flesh on holidays.</span>
+<span class="i0">Whereat a little daunted, not with fear,</span>
+<span class="i0">The mariners met them running to the shore,</span>
+<span class="i0">Bought swine of them, and plantains, cassava,</span>
+<span class="i0">And for one playing card, the king of clubs,</span>
+<span class="i0">The wild men gave six fowls! There were brown roots</span>
+<span class="i0">Formed like the turnip, chestnut-like in taste</span>
+<span class="i0">And called patata in ship-Spanish&mdash;cane</span>
+<span class="i0">Wherefrom is made the sugar and the wine</span>
+<span class="i0">Of Hispaniola, and the pineapple</span><span class='pagenum'>[118]</span>
+<span class="i0">That was like nectar to their sea-parched throats.</span>
+<span class="i0">And thus they feasted and were satisfied.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like an enchanted Eden seemed the land,</span>
+<span class="i0">For birds on dazzling many-colored wings</span>
+<span class="i0">Made the trees blossom&mdash;parrots red, green, blue,</span>
+<span class="i0">Humming-birds like live jewels in the air,</span>
+<span class="i0">Strange ducks with spoon-shaped bills,&mdash;and overhead</span>
+<span class="i0">Like some fantastic frieze of living gold,</span>
+<span class="i0">The little yellow monkeys leaped and swung</span>
+<span class="i0">Chattering of Setebos in their unknown tongue.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The old men lived beyond their sevenscore years&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Or so the people said. They made canots</span>
+<span class="i0">Of logs that they carved out with heated stones.</span>
+<span class="i0">They slept in hamacs, woven cotton swings.</span>
+<span class="i0">Their chiefs were called cacichas&mdash;you may find</span>
+<span class="i0">All this put down in the thrice precious book</span>
+<span class="i0">Written by Pigafetta of Vicenza</span>
+<span class="i0">For a queen's pleasure when the voyage was done.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then from that shore they sailed, and southward bent,</span>
+<span class="i0">And as the long days lengthened, till the nights</span>
+<span class="i0">Were but star-circled midnight intervals,</span>
+<span class="i0">They wondered of what race and by what seas</span>
+<span class="i0">They should find kings at the antipodes.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where a great river flowed into the sea</span>
+<span class="i0">They found sea-lions,&mdash;on another isle</span>
+<span class="i0">Strange geese, milk-white and sable, with no wings,</span>
+<span class="i0">Who swam instead of flying, and they called</span>
+<span class="i0">The place the Isle of Penguins.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">Then they found</span>
+<span class="i0">A desolate harbor called San Juliano,</span>
+<span class="i0">Where the fierce flame of mutiny broke forth,</span>
+<span class="i0">Spaniard on Portuguese turned treacherously</span><span class='pagenum'>[119]</span>
+<span class="i0">Till in the red midwinter sunrise towered</span>
+<span class="i0">The place of execution, and an end</span>
+<span class="i0">Was made of the two traitors. Outward flashed the sail</span>
+<span class="i0">And left the sea-birds there to tell the tale.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beyond there lay a bleak and misty shore,</span>
+<span class="i0">And in the fog a wild gigantic form</span>
+<span class="i0">White-haired, a savage, called a greeting to them.</span>
+<span class="i0">Friendly the huge men were, and took these men,</span>
+<span class="i0">Bearded and strange, for kinfolk of their god,</span>
+<span class="i0">Setebos, from his home beyond the moon,</span>
+<span class="i0">And from their great shoes filled with straw for warm</span>th
+<span class="i0">Magalhaens named them men of Patagonia.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Westward they steered, and buffeted by winds,</span>
+<span class="i0">They found a narrow channel, where the fleet</span>
+<span class="i0">Halted for council. One returned to Spain</span>
+<span class="i0">Laden with falsehood and with mutiny.</span>
+<span class="i0">On sailed the others valiantly, their hearts</span>
+<span class="i0">Remembering their Admiral's haughty words</span>
+<span class="i0">Flung at his craven captain, "I will see</span>
+<span class="i0">This great voyage to the end, though we should eat</span>
+<span class="i0">The leather from the yards!" And thus they reached</span>
+<span class="i0">The end of that strait path of Destiny,</span>
+<span class="i0">And saw beyond the shining Western Sea.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Northward the Admiral followed that long coast</span>
+<span class="i0">Past Masafuera&mdash;then began his flight</span>
+<span class="i0">Across the great uncharted shining sea.</span>
+<span class="i0">And surely there was never stranger voyage.</span>
+<span class="i0">The winds were gentle toward him, and no more</span>
+<span class="i0">The dreadful laughter of the tempest shrilled,</span>
+<span class="i0">Or down upon them pounced the hurricane.</span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore Magalhaens, giving thanks to God,</span>
+<span class="i0">Named it Pacific, and the lonely sea.</span>
+<span class="i0">Still bore him westward where his heart would be.</span>
+</div><span class='pagenum'>[120]</span>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alone with all the stars of Christendom</span>
+<span class="i0">He set his course,&mdash;if he had known his fate</span>
+<span class="i0">Would he have stayed his hand? Before the end</span>
+<span class="i0">Fate the old witch, who often loves to turn</span>
+<span class="i0">A man's words on him, kept the ships becalmed</span>
+<span class="i0">Even to thirst and famine; when instead</span>
+<span class="i0">They fed on leather, gnawed wood, and ate mice</span>
+<span class="i0">As did the Patagonian giants, when</span>
+<span class="i0">They begged such vermin for a savage feast.</span>
+<span class="i0">Then Fate, her jest outworn, blew them to shore</span>
+<span class="i0">On the green islands called the Isles of Thieves,</span>
+<span class="i0">And brought them to more islands&mdash;and still more,</span>
+<span class="i0">A kingdom of bright lands in sunny seas.</span>
+<span class="i0">Here did the Admiral land, and raise the Cross</span>
+<span class="i0">Above that heathen realm,&mdash;and here went down</span>
+<span class="i0">In battle for strange allies in strange lands.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So ended his adventure. Yet not so,</span>
+<span class="i0">For the Victoria, faithful to his hand</span>
+<span class="i0">That laid her charge upon her, southward sailed</span>
+<span class="i0">Around the Cape and westward to Seville.</span>
+<span class="i0">El Cano brought her in, and her strange tale</span>
+<span class="i0">Told to the Emperor. "And the Admiral said,"</span>
+<span class="i0">He ended, "that indeed these heathen lands</span>
+<span class="i0">God meant should all be Christian, for He set</span>
+<span class="i0">A cross of stars above the southern sea,</span>
+<span class="i0">A passion-flower upon the southern shore,</span>
+<span class="i0">To be a sign to great adventurers.</span>
+<span class="i0">These be two marvels,&mdash;and upon the way</span>
+<span class="i0">We gained a kingdom, but we lost a day!"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>IX</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="WAMPUM_TOWN" id="WAMPUM_TOWN"></a>WAMPUM TOWN</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Elephants' teeth?"</p>
+
+<p>"A fair lot, but I am sick of the Guinea coast.
+The Lisbon slavers get more of black ivory than we do
+of the white."</p>
+
+<p>The good Jean Parmentier, who asked the question,
+and the youth called Jean Florin, who answered it,
+were looking at a stanch weather-beaten little cargo-ship
+anchored in the harbor of Dieppe. She had been
+to the Gold Coast, where wild African chiefs conjured
+elephants' tusks out of the mysterious back country
+and traded them for beads, trinkets and gay cloth.
+In Dieppe this ivory was carved by deft artistic fingers
+into crucifixes, rosaries, little caskets, and other exquisite
+bibelots. African ivory was finer, whiter and
+firmer than that of India, and when thus used was almost
+as valuable as gold.</p>
+
+<p>But within the last ten years the slave trade had
+grown more profitable than anything else. A Portuguese
+captain would kidnap or purchase a few score negroes,
+take them, chained and packed together like
+convicts, to Lisbon or Seville and sell them for fat
+gold moidores and doubloons. The Spanish conquistadores
+had not been ten years in the West Indies before
+they found that Indian slavery did not work.
+The wild people, under the terrible discipline of the
+mines and sugar plantations, died or killed themselves. <span class='pagenum'>[122]</span>
+Planters of Hispaniola declared one negro slave worth
+a dozen Indians.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wonder that the cacique Hatuey told the
+priest that he would burn forever rather than go to a
+heaven where Spaniards lived," said Jean Florin.
+"To roast a man is no way to change his religion."</p>
+
+<p>"Some of our folk in Rochelle are of that way of
+thinking," agreed Captain Parmentier dryly. "What
+say you to a western voyage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not Brazil? Cabral claims that for Portugal."</p>
+
+<p>"No; the northern seas&mdash;the Baccalaos. Of
+course codfish are not ivory, and it is rough service, but
+Aubert and some of the others think that there may be
+a way to India. Sebastian Cabot tried for it and
+found only icebergs, but Aubert says there is a gulf or
+strait somewhere south of Cabot's course, that leads
+westward and has never been explored."</p>
+
+<p>"I am tired of the Guinea trade," the youth repeated;
+"Cape Breton at any rate is not Spanish."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," said Jean Parmentier with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it came about that when Aubert, in 1508,
+poked the prow of his little craft into open water to the
+west of the great island off which men fished for cod,
+there stood beside him a young man who had been
+learning navigation under his direction, and was now
+called Jean Verassen. His real name was Giovanni
+Verrazzano, but nobody in Dieppe knew who the Florentine
+Verazzani might be, and during his apprenticeship
+there he had been known as Florin&mdash;the
+Florentine. In his boyhood the magnificent Medici,
+the merchant princes, had ruled Florence. After the
+fall of Constantinople he had seen the mastery of the
+sea pass from Venice to Lisbon. When he left Florence
+he followed the call of the sea-wind westward <span class='pagenum'>[123]</span>
+until now he had cast his lot with the seafarers of
+northern France, the only bit of the Continent that was
+outside the shadow of the mighty power of Spain.
+That shadow was growing bigger and darker year by
+year. The heir to the Spanish throne, Charles, grandson
+of Ferdinand and Isabella, would be emperor of
+Germany, ruler of the Netherlands, King of Aragon,
+Castile, Granada and Andalusia, and sovereign of all
+the Spanish discoveries in the West; and no one knew
+how far they might extend. France might have to
+fight for her life.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Norman and Breton fishermen went
+scudding across the North Atlantic every year, like so
+many petrels. Honfleur, Saint Malo, La Rochelle and
+Dieppe owed their modest prosperity to the cod. Baccalao,
+codfish or stockfish, all its names referred to
+the beating of the fish while drying, with a stick, to
+make it more tender; it was cheaper and more plentiful
+than any other fish for the Lenten tables and fast-days
+of Europe. The daring French captains found
+the fishing trade a hard life but a clean one.</p>
+
+<p>From the fishermen Aubert and Verrazzano had
+learned something of the nature of the country. Bears
+would come down to steal fish from under the noses of
+the men. Walrus and seal and myriads of screaming
+sea-gulls greeted them every season. The natives
+were barbarous and unfriendly. North of Newfoundland
+were two small islands known as the Isles of Demons,
+where nobody ever went. Veteran pilots told
+of hearing the unseen devils howling and shrieking in
+the air. "Saint Michael! tintamarre terrible!" they
+said, crossing themselves. The young Florentine listened
+and kept his thoughts to himself. He had never
+seen any devils, but he had seen men go mad in the <span class='pagenum'>[124]</span>
+hot fever-mist of African swamps, thinking they saw
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Aubert was not sure whether this was an inlet, a
+strait or a river behind the great barren island. When
+he had sailed westward for eighty leagues the water
+was still salt. The banks had drawn closer together
+and rude fortifications appeared on the heights. Canoes
+put forth from the wooded shores and surrounded
+the sailing ship. They were filled with copper-colored
+warriors of threatening aspect.</p>
+
+<p>The French commander did not like what he saw.
+He was not provisioned for a voyage around the world,
+and if these waters were the eastern entrance to a
+strait he might emerge upon a vast unknown ocean.
+If on the other hand he was at the mouth of a river,
+to ascend it might result in being cut off by hostile
+savages, which would be most unpleasant. A third
+consideration was that the inhabitants were said to live
+on fish, game, and berries, none of which could be secured,
+either peaceably or by fighting, in an enemy's
+country. Making hostages of seven young savages
+who climbed his bulwarks without any invitation, he
+put about and sailed away. During the following year
+the seven wild men were exhibited at Rouen and elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Aubert had made sure of one thing at least; the
+land to the west was not in the least like the rich islands
+which the Spanish held in the tropics. Except in
+the brief season when the swarming cod filled the seines
+of the fishermen, it yielded no wealth, not even in
+slaves, for the fierce and shy natives would be almost
+uncatchable and quite impossible to tame.</p>
+
+<p>Francis of Angoulême, the brilliant, reckless and
+extravagant young French King, was hard pushed to <span class='pagenum'>[125]</span>
+get money for his own Court, and was not interested
+in expeditions whose only result might be glory. He
+jested over the threatening Spanish dominion as he did
+over everything else. Italian dukedoms were overrun
+by troops from France, Spain, Austria and Switzerland,
+and Francis welcomed Italian artists, architects
+and poets to his capital. When the plague attacked
+Paris he removed to one of the royal châteaux in the
+country or paid visits to great noblemen like his cousin
+Charles de Bourbon. It was in 1522 at Moulins, the
+splendid country estate of the Duc de Bourbon, that
+the monarch met a captain of whom he had heard a
+great deal&mdash;all of it gratifying. He had in mind a
+new enterprise for this Verrazzano.</p>
+
+<p>During the last seven or eight years Verrazzano,
+like many other captains, had been engaged in the
+peculiar kind of expedition dubbed piracy or privateering
+according to the person speaking. France and
+Spain were neither exactly at peace nor openly at war.
+The Florentine had gone out upon the high seas in
+command of a ship fitted out and armed at his own risk,
+and fought Spanish galleons wherever he met them.
+This helped to embarrass the King of Spain in his wars
+abroad. Galleons eastward bound were usually treasure-ships.
+The colonial governors, planters, captains
+and common soldiers took all the gold they could get
+for themselves, and the gold, silver and pearls that
+went as tribute to the royal master in Spain had to run
+the gauntlet of these fierce and fearless sea-wolves.
+The wealth of the Indies was really a possession of
+doubtful value. It attracted pirates as honey draws
+flies. When these pirates turned a part of their spoils
+over to kings who were not friendly to Spain, it was
+particularly exasperating.<span class='pagenum'>[126]</span></p>
+
+<p>Francis had asked Verrazzano to come to Moulins
+because, from what he had heard, it seemed to him
+that here was a man who could take care of himself
+and hold his tongue, and he liked such men. The experience
+reminded the Florentine of the great days of
+the Medici. Charles de Bourbon's palace at Moulins
+was fit for a king. Unlike most French châteaux,
+which were built on low lands among the hunting forests,
+it stood on a hill in a great park, and was surrounded
+with terraces, fountains, and gardens in the
+Italian style. Moreover its furniture was permanent,
+not brought in for royal guests and then taken away.
+The richness and beauty of its tapestries, state beds,
+decorations, and other belongings was beyond anything
+in any royal palace of that time. The duke's household
+included five hundred gentlemen in rich suits of
+Genoese velvet, each wearing a massive gold chain
+passing three times round the neck and hanging low
+in front; they attended the guests in divisions, one hundred
+at a time.</p>
+
+<p>The feasting was luxurious, and many of its choice
+dishes were supplied by the estate. There were rare
+fruits and herbs in the gardens, and a great variety of
+game-birds and animals in the park and the forest.
+But there were also imported delicacies&mdash;Windsor
+beans, Genoa artichokes, Barbary cucumbers and Milan
+parsley. The first course consisted of Médoc oysters,
+followed by a light soup. The fish course included the
+royal sturgeon, the dorado or sword-fish, the turbot.
+Then came heron, cooked in the fashion of the day,
+with sugar, spice and orange-juice; olives, capers and
+sour fruits; pheasants, red-legged partridges, and the
+favorite roast, sucking-pig parboiled and then roasted <span class='pagenum'>[127]</span>
+with a stuffing of chopped meats, herbs, raisins and
+damson plums. There were salads of fruit,&mdash;such
+as the King's favorite of oranges, lemons and sugar
+with sweet herbs,&mdash;or of herbs, such as parsley and
+mint with pepper, cinnamon and vinegar. For dessert
+there were Italian ices and confectionery, and the
+Queen's favorite plum, Reine Claude, imported from
+Italy; the white wine called Clairette-au-miel, hypocras,
+gooseberry and plum wines, lemonade, champagne.
+There was never a King who could appreciate
+such artistic luxury more deeply than Francis I. This
+may be one reason for his warm welcome of Verrazzano,
+who seemed to be able to increase the wealth of
+his country and his King.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had a very indignant visit from the Spanish
+ambassador," said Francis when they were seated
+together in a private room. "He says that there has
+been piracy on the high seas, my Verrazzano."</p>
+
+<p>The Italian met the laughing glance of the King
+with a somber gleam in his own dark eyes. "Does
+one steal from a robber?" he asked. "Not a quill
+of gold-dust nor an ingot of silver nor a seed-pearl
+comes honestly to Spain. It is all cruelty, bribery, slavery.
+Savonarola threatened Lorenzo de' Medici with
+eternal fires, prince as he was, for sins that were peccadilloes
+beside those of Spanish governors."</p>
+
+<p>"There is something in what you say," assented
+Francis lightly. "If we get the treasure of the Indies
+without owning the Indies we are certainly rid of
+much trouble. I never heard of Father Adam making
+any will dividing the earth between our brother of
+Spain and our brother of Portugal. Unless they can
+find such a document&mdash;" the laughing face hardened <span class='pagenum'>[128]</span>
+suddenly into keen attention, "we may as well take
+what we can get where we can find it. And now about
+this road to India; what have you to suggest?"</p>
+
+<p>Verrazzano outlined his plans in brief speech and
+clear. The proposed voyage might have two objects;
+one, the finding of a route to Asia if it existed; the
+other, the discovery of other countries from which
+wealth might be gained, in territory not yet explored.
+Verrazzano pointed out the fact that, as the earth
+was round, the shortest way to India ought to be near
+the pole rather than near the equator, yet far enough
+to the south to escape the danger of icebergs.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well then,"&mdash;the King pondered with finger
+on cheek. "Say as little as possible of your preparations,
+use your own discretion, and if any Spaniards
+try to interfere with you&mdash;" the monarch grinned,&mdash;"tell
+them that it is my good pleasure that my subjects
+go where they like."</p>
+
+<p>The Spanish agents in France presently informed
+their employer that the Florentine Verrazzano was
+again making ready to sail for regions unknown. Perhaps
+he did not himself know where he should go; at
+any rate the spies had not been able to find out.</p>
+
+<p>Two months later news came that before Verrazzano
+had gone far enough to be caught by the squadron
+lying in wait for him, he had pounced on the
+great carrack which had been sent home by Cortes
+loaded with Aztec gold. In convoying this prize to
+France he had caught another galleon coming from
+Hispaniola with a cargo of gold and pearls, and the
+two rich trophies were now in the harbor of La
+Rochelle, where the audacious captain was doubtless
+making ready for another piratical voyage.</p>
+
+<p>Verrazzano made a second start a little later, but <span class='pagenum'>[129]</span>
+was driven back by a Biscay storm. Finally, toward
+the end of the year 1523, he set out once more with
+only one ship, the <i>Dauphine</i>, out of his original fleet of
+four, and neither friend nor foe caught a glimpse of
+him during the voyage. In March, 1524, having
+sailed midway between the usual course of the West
+Indian galleons and the path of the fishers going to
+and from the Banks of Newfoundland, he saw land
+which he felt sure had not been discovered either by
+ancient or modern explorers.</p>
+
+<p>It was a low shore on which the fine sand, some fifteen
+feet deep, lay drifted into hillocks or dunes.
+Small creeks and inlets ran inland, but there seemed to
+be no good harbor. Beyond the sand-dunes were forests
+of cypress, palm, bay and other trees, and the wind
+bore the scent of blossoming trees and vines far out to
+sea. For fifty leagues the <i>Dauphine</i> followed the
+coast southward, looking for a harbor, for Verrazzano
+knew that pearl fisheries and spices were far more likely
+to be found in southern than in northern waters. No
+harbor appeared. The daring navigator knew that
+if he went too far south he ran some risk of encountering
+a Spanish fleet, and that after his getting two of
+the most valuable cargoes ever sent over seas, they
+would be patroling all the tropical waters in the hope
+of catching him. He turned north again.</p>
+
+<p>On the shore from time to time little groups of
+savages appeared moving about great bonfires, and
+watching the ship. They wore hardly any clothing
+except the skin of some small animal like a marten, attached
+to a belt of woven grass; their skins were russet-brown
+and their thick straight black hair was tied
+in a knot rather like a tail.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing is certain," said young François Parmentier<span class='pagenum'>[130]</span>
+cheerfully, "these folk have never seen Spaniards&mdash;or
+Portuguese. Even on the Labrador the
+people ran from us, after Cortereale went slave-stealing
+there."</p>
+
+<p>Verrazzano smiled. Young Parmentier was always
+full of hope and faith. A little later the youth volunteered
+to be one of a boat's crew sent ashore for water,
+and provided himself with a bagful of the usual trinkets
+for gifts. The surf ran so high that the boat could
+not land, and François leaped overboard and swam
+ashore. Here he scattered his wares among the watching
+Indians, and then, leaping into the waves again,
+struck out for the boat. But the surf dashed him back
+upon the sand into the very midst of the natives, who
+seized him by the arms and legs and carried him toward
+the fire, while he yelled with astonishment and terror.</p>
+
+<p>Verrazzano was if anything more horrified than
+François himself; this was the son of his oldest friend.
+The Indians were removing his clothing as if they
+were about to roast him alive. But it appeared presently
+that they only wished to dry his clothes and comfort
+him, for they soon allowed him to return to the
+boat, seeing this was his earnest desire, and watched
+him with the greatest friendliness as he swam back.</p>
+
+<p>No strait appeared, but at one point Verrazzano,
+landing and marching into the interior with an exploring
+party, found a vast expanse of water on the other
+side of what seemed a neck of land between the two
+seas, about six miles in width. If this were the South
+Sea, the same which Balboa had seen from the Isthmus
+of Darien, so narrow a strip of land was at least as
+good or better than anything possessed by Spain. Verrazzano
+continued northward, and found a coast rich
+in grapes, the vines often covering large trees around <span class='pagenum'>[131]</span>
+which the natives kept the ground clear of shrubs that
+might interfere with this natural vineyard. Wild
+roses, violets, lilies, iris and many other plants and
+flowers, some quite unknown to Europe, greeted the
+admiring gaze of the commander. His quick mind
+pictured a royal garden adorned with these foreign
+shrubs and herbs, the wainscoting and furniture to be
+made by French and Italian joiners from these endless
+leagues of timber, the stately churches and castles
+which might be built by skilful masons from the abundant
+stone along these shores. Here was a province
+which, if it had not gold, had the material for many
+luxuries which must otherwise be bought with gold, and
+his clear Italian brain perceived that ingots of gold and
+silver are not the only treasure of kings.</p>
+
+<p>At last the <i>Dauphine</i> came into a harbor or lake
+three leagues in circumference, where more than thirty
+canoes were assembled, filled with people. Suddenly
+François Parmentier leaped to his feet and waved his
+cap with a shout.</p>
+
+<p>"Now what madness has taken you?" queried Verrazzano.</p>
+
+<p>"I know where we are, that's all. This is Wampum
+Town,&mdash;L'Anormé Berge&mdash;the Grand Scarp.
+This is one of their great trading places, Captain.
+Father heard about it at Cape Breton from some
+south-country savages."</p>
+
+<p>"And what may wampum be?" asked Verrazzano
+coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is the stuff they use for money&mdash;bits of shell
+made into beads and strung into a belt. There is an
+island in this bay where they make it out of their shell-fish
+middens&mdash;two kinds&mdash;purple and white. On
+my word, this big chief has on a wampum belt now!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This was interesting information indeed, and the
+natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and
+friendliness. Verrazzano found upon investigation
+that on the north of this bay a very large river, deep
+at the mouth, came down between steep hills. Afterward,
+following the shore to the east, he discovered
+a fine harbor beyond a three-cornered island. Here
+he met two chiefs of that country, a man of about
+forty, and a young fellow of twenty-four, dressed in
+quaintly decorated deerskin mantles, with chains set
+with colored stones about their necks. He stayed two
+weeks, refitting the ship with provisions and other necessaries,
+and observing the place. The crew got by
+trading and as gifts the beans and corn cultivated by
+the people, wild fruits and nuts, and furs. Further
+north they found the tribes less friendly, and at last
+came so near the end of their provision that Verrazzano
+decided to return to France. He reached home
+July 8, 1524, after having sailed along seven hundred
+leagues of the Atlantic coast.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 425px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0341-1.jpg" width="425" height="600" alt="&quot;The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and friendliness&quot;&mdash;Page 132" title="&quot;The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and friendliness&quot;&mdash;Page 132" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and friendliness&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 132</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Francis I. was in the thick of a disastrous war with
+Spain, and had not time just then to consider further
+explorations. The war was not fairly over when a
+Cadiz warship, in 1527, caught Verrazzano and
+hanged him as a pirate.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+The not unnatural conclusion of Verrazzano that what he saw was
+an ocean or a great inland sea led to extraordinary misconceptions in
+the maps and charts of the time. It was not until the early part of
+the seventeenth century that the region was actually explored, by
+Newport and Smith, and found to be only Chesapeake Bay.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_DRUM" id="THE_DRUM"></a>THE DRUM</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wake the gods with my sullen boom&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">am the Drum!</span>
+<span class="i0">They wait for the blood-red flowers that bloom</span>
+<span class="i0">In the heart of the sacrifice, there in the gloom</span>
+<span class="i2">With terror dumb&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">I sound the call to his dreadful doom&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">I am the Drum!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I was the Serpent, the Sacred Snake&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Wolf, bear and fox</span>
+<span class="i0">By the silent shores of river and lake</span>
+<span class="i0">Tread softly, listening lest they wake</span>
+<span class="i2">My voice that mocks</span>
+<span class="i0">The rattle that falling bones will make</span>
+<span class="i2">On barren rocks.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My banded skin is the voice of the Priest&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">I am the Drum!</span>
+<span class="i0">I sound the call to the War-God's feast</span>
+<span class="i0">Till Tezcatlipoca's power hath ceased</span>
+<span class="i2">And the White Gods come</span>
+<span class="i0">Out of the fire of the burning East&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Hear me, the Drum!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>X</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_GODS_OF_TAXMAR" id="THE_GODS_OF_TAXMAR"></a>THE GODS OF TAXMAR</h3>
+
+<p>If the Fathers of the Church had ever been on the
+other side of the world, they would have made new
+rules for it.</p>
+
+<p>So thought Jerónimo Aguilar, on board a caravel
+plying between Darien and Hispaniola. It was a
+thought he would hardly have dared think in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>He was a dark thin young friar from the mountains
+near Seville. In 1488 his mother, waiting, as women
+must, for news from the wars, vowed that if God and
+the Most Catholic Sovereigns drove out the Moors
+and sent her husband home to her, she would give her
+infant son to the Church. That was twenty-four
+years ago, and never had the power of the Church
+been so great as it now was. When the young Fray
+Jerónimo had been moved by fiery missionary preaching
+to give himself to the work among the Indians,
+his mother wept with astonishment and pride.</p>
+
+<p>But the Indies he found were not the Indies he had
+heard of. Men who sailed from Cadiz valiant if
+rough and hard-bitted soldiers of the Cross, turned
+into cruel adventurers greedy for gold, hard masters
+abusing their power. The innocent wild people of
+Colón's island Eden were charged by the planters with
+treachery, theft, murderous conspiracy, and utter laziness.
+With a little bitter smile Aguilar remembered
+how the hidalgo, who would not dig to save his life, <span class='pagenum'>[135]</span>
+railed at the Indian who died of the work he had never
+learned to do. It was not for a priest to oppose the
+policy of the Church and the Crown, and very few
+priests attempted it, whatever cruelty they might see.
+Aguilar half imagined that the demon gods of the
+heathen were battling against the invading apostles of
+the Cross, poisoning their hearts and defeating their
+aims. It was all like an evil enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>These meditations were ended by a mighty buffet of
+wind that smote the caravel and sent it flying northwest.
+Ourakan was abroad, the Carib god of the
+hurricane, and no one could think of anything thereafter
+but the heaving, tumbling wilderness of black
+waves and howling tempest and hissing spray. Valdivia,
+regidor of Darien, had been sent to Hispaniola
+by Balboa, the governor, with important letters and a
+rich tribute of gold, to get supplies and reinforcements
+for the colony. Shipwreck would be disastrous to Balboa
+and his people as well as to the voyagers.</p>
+
+<p>Headlong the staggering ship was driven upon Los
+Viboros, (The Vipers) that infamous group of hidden
+rocks off Jamaica. She was pounded to pieces almost
+before Valdivia could get his one boat into the water,
+with its crew of twenty men. Without food or drink,
+sails or proper oars, the survivors tossed for thirteen
+dreadful days on the uncharted cross-currents of unknown
+seas. Seven died of hunger, thirst and exposure
+before the tide that drifted northwest along the coast
+of the mainland caught them and swept them ashore.</p>
+
+<p>None of them had ever seen this coast. Valdivia
+cherished a faint hope that it might be a part of the
+kingdom of walled cities and golden temples, of which
+they had all heard. There were traces of human presence,
+and they could see a cone-shaped low hill with a <span class='pagenum'>[136]</span>
+stone temple or building of some kind on the top.
+Natives presently appeared, but they broke the boat
+in pieces and dragged the castaways inland through the
+forest to the house of their cacique.</p>
+
+<p>That chief, a villainous looking savage in a thatched
+hut, looked at them as if they had been cattle&mdash;or
+slaves&mdash;or condemned heretics. What they thought,
+felt or hoped was nothing to him. He ordered them
+taken to a kind of pen, where they were fed. So great
+is the power of the body over the mind that for a few
+days they hardly thought of anything but the unspeakable
+joy of having enough to eat and drink, and nothing
+to do but sleep. The cacique visited the enclosure now
+and then, and looked them over with a calculating eye.
+Aguilar was haunted by the idea that this inspection
+meant something unpleasant.</p>
+
+<p>All too soon the meaning was made known to them.
+Valdivia and four other men who were now less gaunt
+and famine-stricken than when captured, were seized
+and taken away, to be sacrificed to the gods.</p>
+
+<p>It was the custom of the Mayas of Yucatan to sacrifice
+human beings, captives or slaves for choice, to
+the gods in whose honor the stone pyramids were
+raised. When the victim had been led up the winding
+stairway to the top, the central figure in a procession
+of priests and attendants, he was laid upon a stone
+altar and his heart was cut out and offered to the idol,
+after which the body was eaten at a ceremonial feast.
+The eight captives who remained now understood that
+the food they had had was meant merely to fatten them
+for future sacrifice. Half mad with horror, they
+crouched in the hot moist darkness, and listened to the
+uproar of the savages.</p>
+
+<p>A strong young sailor by the name of Gonzalo Guerrero, <span class='pagenum'>[137]</span>
+who had done good service during the hurricane,
+pulled Jerónimo by the sleeve, "What in the name
+of all the saints can we do, Padre?" he muttered.
+"José and the rest will be raving maniacs."</p>
+
+<p>Aguilar straightened himself and rose to his feet
+where the rays of the moon, white and calm, shone into
+the enclosure. Lifting his hands to heaven he began
+to pray.</p>
+
+<p>All he had learned from books and from the disputations
+and sermons of the Fathers fell away from
+him and left only the bare scaffolding, the faith of his
+childhood. At the familiar syllables of the Ave Maria
+the shuddering sailors hushed their cries and oaths and
+listened, on their knees.</p>
+
+<p>This was a handful of castaways in the clutch of a
+race of man-eaters who worshiped demons. But above
+them bent the tender and pitiful Mother of Christ who
+had seen her Son crucified, and Christ Himself stood
+surrounded by innumerable witnesses. Among the
+saints were some who had died at the hands of the
+heathen, many who had died by torture. The poor
+and ignorant men who listened were caught up for the
+moment into the vision of Fray Jerónimo and regained
+their self-control. When the prayer was ended Gonzalo
+Guerrero sprang up, and rallied them to furious
+labor. Under his direction and Aguilar's they dug
+and wrenched at their cage like desperate rats, until
+they broke away enough of it just to let a man's body
+through. Aguilar was the last to go. He closed the
+hole and heaped rubbish outside it, as rubbish and
+branches had been piled where they were used to sleep,
+to delay as long as possible the discovery of their escape.
+They got clear away into the depths of the
+forest.<span class='pagenum'>[138]</span></p>
+
+<p>But for men without provisions or weapons the wilderness
+of that unknown land was only less dreadful
+than death. Trees and vines barren of fruit, streams
+where a huge horny lizard ate all the fish&mdash;El Lagarto
+he was called by the discoverers,&mdash;no grain or
+cattle which might be taken by stealth&mdash;this was the
+realm into which they had been exiled. When they
+ventured out of the forest, driven by famine, they were
+captured by Acan Xooc, the cacique of another province,
+Jamacana. Here they were made slaves, to cut
+wood, carry water and bear burdens. Water was
+scarce in that region. There had been reservoirs, built
+in an earlier day, but these were ruined, and water had
+to be carried in earthern jars. The cacique died, and
+another named Taxmar succeeded him. Year after
+year passed. The soul of one worn-out white man
+slipped away, followed by another, and another, until
+only Aguilar and Guerrero were left alive.</p>
+
+<p>Taxmar sent the sailor as a present to a friend,
+cacique of Chatemal, but kept Aguilar for himself,
+watching his ways.</p>
+
+<p>The cacique was a sagacious heathen of considerable
+experience, but he had never seen a man like this one.
+Jerónimo was now almost as dark as an Indian and
+had not a scrap of civilized clothing, yet he was unlike
+the other white men, unlike any other slave. He had
+a string of dried berries with a cross made of reeds
+hung from it, which he sometimes appeared to be
+counting, talking to himself in his own language.
+Taxmar had once seen a slave from the north who had
+been a priest in his own country and knew how to remember
+things by string-talk, knotting a string in a
+peculiar fashion; but he was not like this man. When <span class='pagenum'>[139]</span>
+the white slave saw the crosses carved on their old
+walls he had eagerly asked how they came there, and
+Taxmar gathered that the cross had some meaning in
+the captive's own religion. He never lied, never stole,
+never got angry, never tattled of the other slaves,
+never disobeyed orders, never lost his temper. Taxmar
+could not remember when he himself had ever
+been restrained by anything but policy from taking
+whatever he wanted. Here was a man who could deny
+himself even food at times, when he was not compelled
+to. Taxmar could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>What he did not know was, that when he had escaped
+from the cannibals Aguilar had made a fresh
+vow to keep with all strictness every vow of his priesthood,
+and to bear his lot with patience and meekness
+until it should be the will of God to free him from the
+savages. He had begun to think that this freedom
+would never be his in his lifetime, but a vow was a
+vow. He no more suspected that Taxmar was taking
+note of his behavior, than a man standing in front of
+the lion's cage at the menagerie can translate the
+thoughts behind the great cat's intent eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Taxmar began to try experiments. He invented
+temptations to put in the way of his slave, but Aguilar
+generally did not seem to see them. One day the Indians
+were shooting at a mark. One came up to
+Aguilar and seized him by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"How would you like to be shot at?" he said.
+"These bowmen hit whatever they aim at&mdash;if they
+aim at a nose they hit a nose. They can shoot so near
+you that they miss only by the breadth of a grain of
+corn&mdash;or do not miss at all."</p>
+
+<p>Aguilar never flinched, although from what he knew <span class='pagenum'>[140]</span>
+of the savages he thought nothing more likely than his
+being set up for a San Sebastian. He answered
+quietly,</p>
+
+<p>"I am your slave, and you can do with me what you
+please. I think you are too wise to destroy one who is
+both useful and obedient."</p>
+
+<p>The suggestion had been made by the order of Taxmar,
+and the answer was duly reported to him.</p>
+
+<p>It took a long time to satisfy the chief that this
+man who seemed so extraordinary was really what he
+seemed. He came at last to trust him wholly, even
+making him the steward of his household and leaving
+him to protect his women in his absence. Finding the
+chief thus disposed, Aguilar ventured a suggestion.
+Guerrera had won great favor with his master by his
+valor in war. Aguilar was shrewd enough to know
+that though it was very pleasant to have his master's
+confidence, if anything happened to Taxmar he might
+be all the worse off. The only sure way to win the
+respect of these barbarians was by efficiency as a soldier.
+Taxmar upon request gave his steward the military
+outfit of the Mayas&mdash;bow and arrows, wicker-work
+shield, and war-club, with a dagger of obsidian,
+a volcanic stone very hard and capable of being made
+very keen of edge, but brittle. Jerónimo when a boy
+had been an expert archer, and his old skill soon returned.
+He also remembered warlike devices and
+stratagems he had seen and heard of. Old soldiers
+chatting with his father in the purple twilight had often
+fought their battles over again, and nearly every form
+of military tactics then known to civilized armies had
+been used in the war in Granada. Naturally the
+young friar had heard more or less discussion of military
+campaigns in Darien. His suggestions were so <span class='pagenum'>[141]</span>
+much to the point that Taxmar had an increased respect
+for the gods of that unknown land of his. If
+they could do so much for this slave, without even demanding
+any offerings, they must be very different
+from the gods of the Mayas.</p>
+
+<p>In reply to Taxmar's questions, Aguilar, who now
+spoke the language quite well, endeavored to explain
+the nature of his religion. Not many of the Spaniards
+who expected to convert the Indians went so far as
+this. If they could by any means whatever make their
+subjects call themselves Christians and observe the
+customs of the Church, it was all they attempted.
+Taxmar was not the sort of person to be converted in
+that informal way. He demanded reasons. If
+Aguilar advised him against having unhappy people
+murdered to bribe the gods for their help in the coming
+campaign, he wished to know what the objection was,
+and what the white chiefs did in such a case. The idea
+of sacrificing to one's god, not the lives of men, but
+one's own will and selfish desires, was entirely new to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>While Jerónimo was still wrestling with the problem
+of making the Christian faith clear to one single Indian
+out of the multitudes of the heathen, a neighboring
+cacique appeared on the scene,&mdash;jealous, angry and
+suspicious. He had heard, he said, that Taxmar
+sought the aid of a stranger, who worshiped strange
+gods, in a campaign directed against his neighbors.
+He wished to know if Taxmar considered this right.
+In his own opinion this stranger ought to be sacrificed
+to the gods of the Mayas after the usual custom, or the
+gods would be angry,&mdash;and then no one knew what
+would happen.</p>
+
+<p>Aguilar thought it possible that Taxmar might reply <span class='pagenum'>[142]</span>
+that the conduct of an army was no one's business but
+the chief's. That would be in line with the cacique's
+character as he knew it. He did not expect that any
+chief in that ancient land would dare to defy its gods
+openly.</p>
+
+<p>Taxmar did not meet the challenge at once. His
+deep set opaque black eyes and mastiff-like mouth
+looked as immovable as the carving on the basalt stool
+upon which he sat. The cacique thought he was impressed,
+and concluded triumphantly,</p>
+
+<p>"Who can resist the gods? Let the altar drink the
+blood of the stranger; it is sweet to them and they will
+sleep, and not wake."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall do nothing of the kind," said Taxmar, the
+clicking, bubbling Maya talk dropping like water on
+hot stones. "When a man serves me well, I do not
+reward him with death. My slave's wisdom is greater
+than the craft of Coyotl, and if his gods help me it is
+because they know enough to do right."</p>
+
+<p>The other chief went home in rage and disappointment
+and offended dignity.</p>
+
+<p>No one, who has not tried it, can imagine the sensation
+of living in a hostile land, removed from all that
+is familiar. Until his captivity began Aguilar had
+never been obliged to act for himself. He had always
+been under the authority of a superior. He had questioned
+and wondered, seen the injustice of this thing
+and that, but only in his own mind. When everything
+in his past life had been swept away at one stroke, his
+faith alone was left him in the wrecked and distorted
+world. He had never dreamed that Taxmar was
+learning to respect that faith.</p>
+
+<p>The neighboring cacique now joined Taxmar's enemies <span class='pagenum'>[143]</span>
+with all his army, and the councilors took alarm
+and repeated the suggestion that Aguilar should be
+sacrificed to make sure of the help of the gods. Taxmar
+again spoke plainly.</p>
+
+<p>"Our gods," he said, "have helped us when we
+were strong and powerful and sacrificed many captives
+in their honor. This man's gods help him when he is
+a slave, alone, far from his people, with nothing to
+offer in sacrifice. We will see now what they will do
+for my army."</p>
+
+<p>In the battle which followed, the cacique adopted a
+plan which Aguilar suggested. That loyal follower
+was placed in command of a force hidden in the woods
+near the route by which the enemy would arrive. The
+hostile forces marched past it, and charged upon the
+front of Taxmar's army. It gave way, and they
+rushed in with triumphant yells. When they were
+well past, Aguilar's division came out of the bushes and
+took them in the rear. At the same instant Taxmar
+and his warriors faced about and sprang at them like
+a host of panthers. There was a great slaughter,
+many prisoners were taken, among them the cacique
+himself and many men of importance; and Taxmar
+made a little speech to them upon the wisdom of the
+white man's gods.</p>
+
+<p>In the years that passed the captive's hope of escape
+faded. Once he had thought he might slip away and
+reach the coast, but he was too carefully watched.
+Even if he could get to the sea from so far inland,
+without the help of the natives, he could not reach any
+Spanish colony without a boat. There were rumors
+of strange ships filled with bearded men, whose weapons
+were the thunder and the lightning. Old people <span class='pagenum'>[144]</span>
+wagged their heads and recalled a prophecy of the
+priest Chilam Cambal many years ago, that a white
+people, bearded, would come from the east, to overturn
+the images of the gods, and conquer the land.</p>
+
+<p>Hernando de Córdova's squadron came and went;
+Grijalva's came and went; Aguilar heard of them but
+never saw them. At last, seven long years after he
+came to Jamacana, three coast Indians from the island
+of Cozumel came timidly to the cacique with gifts and
+a letter. The gifts were for Taxmar, to buy his
+Christian slaves, if he had any, and the letter was for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Hernando Cortes, coming from Cuba with a squadron
+to discover and conquer the land ruled by the Lord
+of the Golden House, had stopped at Cozumel and
+there heard of white men held as captives somewhere
+inland. He had persuaded the Indians to send messengers
+for them, saying that if the captives were sent
+to the sea-coast, at the cape of Cotoche, he would leave
+two caravels there eight days, to wait for them.</p>
+
+<p>While Aguilar read this letter the Indians were
+telling of the water-houses of the strangers, their sharp
+weapons, their command of thunder and lightning, and
+the wonderful presents they gave in exchange for what
+they wanted. Aguilar's account of the squadron was
+even more complete. He described the dress of the
+Spaniards, their weapons and their manner of life
+without having seen them at all, and the Indians, when
+asked, said it was so.</p>
+
+<p>Taxmar's acute mind was adjusting itself to this
+event, which was not altogether unexpected. He had
+heard more than Aguilar had about the previous visits
+of the Spaniards to that coast. He asked Aguilar if <span class='pagenum'>[145]</span>
+he thought that the strange warriors would accept him,
+their countryman, as ambassador, and deal mildly with
+Taxmar and his people, if they let him go. Aguilar
+answered that he thought they would.</p>
+
+<p>Now freedom was within his grasp, and only one
+thing delayed him. He could not leave his comrade
+Guerrero behind. The sailor had married the daughter
+of a chief and become a great man in his adopted
+country. Aguilar sent Indian messengers with the letter
+and a verbal message, and waited.</p>
+
+<p>Guerrero had never known much about reading, and
+he had forgotten nearly all he knew. He understood,
+however, that he could now return to Spain. Before
+his eyes rose a picture of the lofty austere sierras, the
+sunny vineyards, the wine, so unlike pulque, the bread,
+so unlike flat cakes of maize, the maidens of Barcelona
+and Malaga, so very different from tattooed Indian
+girls. And then he surveyed his own brawny arms and
+legs, and felt of his own grotesquely ornamented
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>To please the taste of his adopted people he had let
+himself be decorated as they were, for life,&mdash;with
+tattooed pictures, with nose-ring, with ear-rings of
+gold set with rudely cut gems and heavy enough to
+drag down the lobe of the ear. He would cut a figure
+in the streets of Seville. The little boys would run
+after him as if he were a show. He grinned, sighed
+mightily, and sent word to Aguilar that he thought it
+wiser to stay where he was. Aguilar set out for the
+coast with the Cozumel Indians, but this delay had consumed
+all of the eight days appointed, and when they
+reached Point Cotoche the caravels had gone.</p>
+
+<p>But a broken canoe and a stave from a water-barrel
+lay on the beach, and with the help of the messengers <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+Aguilar patched up the canoe, and with the board for a
+paddle, made the canoe serve his need. Following the
+coast they came to the narrowest part of the channel
+between the mainland and Cozumel, and in spite of a
+very strong current got across to the island. No
+sooner had they landed when some Spaniards rushed
+out of the bushes, with drawn swords. The Indians
+were about to fly in terror, but Aguilar called to them
+in their own language to have no fear. Then he spoke
+to the Spaniards in broken Castilian, saying that he
+was a Christian, fell on his knees and thanked God that
+he had lived to hear his own language again.</p>
+
+<p>The Spaniards looked at this strange figure in absolute
+bewilderment. He was to all appearance an
+Indian. His long hair was braided and wound about
+his head, he had a bow in his hand, a quiver of arrows
+on his back, a bag of woven grass-work hung about his
+neck by a long cord. The pattern of the weaving was
+a series of interwoven crosses. Cortes, giving up hope
+of rescuing any Christian captives, had left the island,
+but one of his ships had sprung a leak and he had put
+back. When he saw an Indian canoe coming he had
+sent scouts to see what it might be. They now led
+Jerónimo Aguilar and his Indian companions into the
+presence of the captain-general and his staff. Aguilar
+saluted Cortes in the Indian fashion, by carrying his
+hand from the ground to his forehead as he knelt
+crouching before him. But Cortes, when he understood
+who this man was, raised him to his feet, embraced
+him and flung about his shoulders his own
+cloak. Aguilar became his interpreter, and thus was
+the prophecy fulfilled concerning the gods of Taxmar.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 411px;">
+<img src="images/illus-170.png" width="411" height="600" alt="&quot;Cortes flung about his shoulders his own cloak.&quot;&mdash;Page 146" title="&quot;Cortes flung about his shoulders his own cloak.&quot;&mdash;Page 146" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Cortes flung about his shoulders his own cloak.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 146</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+<div><span class='pagenum'>[147]</span></div>
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+The story of Jerónimo Aguilar follows the actual facts very closely.
+The account of his adventures will be found in Irving's "Life of
+Columbus" and other works dealing with the history of the Spanish
+conquests.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="A_LEGEND_OF_MALINCHE" id="A_LEGEND_OF_MALINCHE"></a>A LEGEND OF MALINCHE</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O sorcerer Time, turn backward to the shore</span>
+<span class="i2">Where it is always morning, and the birds</span>
+<span class="i0">Are troubadours of all the hidden lore</span>
+<span class="i2">Deeper than any words!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There lived a maiden once,&mdash;O long ago,</span>
+<span class="i2">Ere men were grown too wise to understand</span>
+<span class="i0">The ancient language that they used to know</span>
+<span class="i2">In Quezalcoatl's land.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though her own mother sold her for a slave,</span>
+<span class="i2">Her own bright beauty as her only dower,</span>
+<span class="i0">Into her slender hands the conqueror gave</span>
+<span class="i2">A more than queenly power.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Between her people and the enemy&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">The fierce proud Spaniard on his conquest bent&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Interpreter and interceder, she</span>
+<span class="i2">In safety came and went.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And still among the wild shy forest folk</span>
+<span class="i0">The birds are singing of her, and her name</span>
+<span class="i0">Lives in that language that her people spoke</span>
+<span class="i2">Before the Spaniard came.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She is not dead, the daughter of the Sun,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">By love and loyalty divinely stirred,</span>
+<span class="i0">She lives forever&mdash;so the legends run,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Returning as a bird.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who but a white bird in her seaward flight</span>
+<span class="i2">Saw, borne upon the shoulders of the sea,</span>
+<span class="i0">Three tiny caravels&mdash;how small and light</span>
+<span class="i2">To hold a world in fee!</span>
+</div><span class='pagenum'>[149]</span>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who but the quezal, when the Spaniards came</span>
+<span class="i2">And plundered all the white imperial town,</span>
+<span class="i0">Saw in a storm of red rapacious flame</span>
+<span class="i2">The Aztec throne go down!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when the very rivers talked of gold,</span>
+<span class="i2">The humming-bird upon her lichened nest</span>
+<span class="i0">Strange tales of wild adventure never told</span>
+<span class="i2">Hid in her tiny breast.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The mountain eagle, circling with the stars,</span>
+<span class="i2">Watched the great Admiral swiftly come and go</span>
+<span class="i0">In his light ship that set at naught the bars</span>
+<span class="i2">Wrought by a giant foe.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dull are our years and hard to understand,</span>
+<span class="i2">We dream no more of mighty days to be,</span>
+<span class="i0">And we have lost through delving in the land</span>
+<span class="i2">The wisdom of the sea.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet where beyond the sea the sunset burns,</span>
+<span class="i2">And the trees talk of kings dead long ago,</span>
+<span class="i0">Malinche sings among the giant ferns&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Ask of the birds&mdash;they know!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>XI</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_THUNDER_BIRDS" id="THE_THUNDER_BIRDS"></a>THE THUNDER BIRDS</h3>
+
+<p>"Glory is all very well," said Juan de Saavedra
+to Pedro de Alvarado as the squadron left the
+island of Cozumel, "but my familiar spirit tells me
+that there is gold somewhere in this barbaric land or
+Cortes would not be with us."</p>
+
+<p>Alvarado's peculiarly sunny smile shone out. He
+was a ruddy golden-haired man, a type unusual in
+Spaniards, and the natives showed a tendency to revere
+him as the sun-god. Life had treated him very well,
+and he had an abounding good-nature.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be the better," he said comfortably, "if we
+get both gold and glory. I confess I have had my
+doubts of the gold, for after all, these Indians may
+have more sense than they appear to have."</p>
+
+<p>"People often do, but in what way, especially?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Amigo</i>, put yourself in the place of one of these
+caciques, with white men bedeviling you for a treasure
+which you never even troubled yourself to pick up
+when it lay about loose. What can be more easy than
+to tell them that there is plenty of it somewhere else&mdash;in
+the land of your enemies? That is Pizarro's theory,
+at any rate."</p>
+
+<p>Saavedra laughed. "Pizarro is wise in his way,
+but as I have said, Cortes is our commander."</p>
+
+<p>"What has that to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you had been at Salamanca in his University <span class='pagenum'>[151]</span>
+days you wouldn't ask. He never got caught in a
+scrape, and he always got what he was after."</p>
+
+<p>"And kept it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a little more of Pizarro's wisdom? No;
+he always shared the spoils as even-handedly as you
+please. But if any of us lost our heads and got into
+a pickle he never was concerned in it&mdash;or about it."</p>
+
+<p>"He will lose his, if Velasquez catches him. Remember
+Balboa."</p>
+
+<p>"Now there is an example of the chances he will
+take. Cortes first convinces the Governor that nobody
+else is fit to trust with this undertaking. Córdova
+failed; Grijalva failed; Cortes will succeed or leave
+his bones on the field of honor. No sooner are we
+fairly out of harbor than Velasquez tries to whistle us
+back. He might as well blow his trumpets to the sea-gulls.
+All Cortes wanted was a start. You will see&mdash;either
+the Governor will die or be recalled while we
+are gone, or we shall come back so covered with gold
+and renown that he will not dare do anything when we
+are again within his reach. Somebody's head may be
+lost in this affair, but it will not be that of Hernan'
+Cortes."</p>
+
+<p>The man of whom they were speaking just then approached,
+summoning Alvarado to him. Saavedra
+leaned on the rail musing.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," he said to himself, "one hastens a
+catastrophe by warning people of it, but then, that may
+be because it could not have been prevented. Cortes
+is inclined to make that simple fellow his aide because
+they are so unlike, and so, I suspect, are others. At
+any rate I have done my best to make him see whose
+leadership is safest."</p>
+
+<p>The fleet was a rather imposing one for those waters. <span class='pagenum'>[152]</span>
+There were eleven ships altogether, the flagship and
+three others being over seventy tons' weight, the rest
+caravels and open brigantines. These were manned
+by one hundred and ten sailors, and carried five hundred
+and fifty-three soldiers, of whom thirty-two were
+crossbowmen and thirteen arquebusiers. There were
+also about two hundred Indians. Sixteen horses accompanied
+the expedition, and it had ten heavy cannon,
+four light field-guns, called falconets, and a good supply
+of ammunition. The horses cost almost more than the
+ships that carried them, for they had been brought
+from Spain; but their value in such an undertaking was
+great.</p>
+
+<p>Hernando Cortes had come out to Cuba when he
+was nineteen, and that was fifteen years ago. Much
+had been reported concerning an emperor in a country
+to the west, who ruled over a vast territory inhabited
+by copper-colored people rich in gold, who worshiped
+idols. Cortes had observed that Indian tribes, like
+schoolboys, were apt to divide into little cliques and
+quarreling factions. If the subject tribes did not like
+the Emperor, and were jealous of him and of each
+other, a foreign conqueror had one tool ready to his
+hand, and it was a tool that Cortes had used many
+times before.</p>
+
+<p>The people of this coast, however, were not at all
+like the gentle and childlike natives Colón had found.
+From the rescued captive Aguilar, the commander
+learned much of their nature and customs. On his
+first attempt to land, his troops encountered troops of
+warriors in brilliant feathered head-bands and body
+armor of quilted white cotton. They used as weapons
+the lance, bow and arrows, club, and a curious staff
+about three and a half feet long set with crosswise <span class='pagenum'>[153]</span>
+knife-blades of obsidian. Against poisoned arrows,
+such as the invaders had more than once met, neither
+arquebus nor cannon was of much use, and body armor
+was no great protection, since a scratch on hand or
+leg would kill a man in a few hours. After some
+skirmishing and more diplomacy, at various points
+along the coast, Cortes landed his force on the island
+which Grijalva had named San Juan de Ulloa, from a
+mistaken notion that Oloa, the native salutation, was
+the name of the place. The natives had watched the
+"water-houses," as they called them, sailing over the
+serene blue waters, and this tribe, being peaceable folk,
+sent a pirogue over to the island with gifts. There
+were not only fruits and flowers, but little golden ornaments,
+and the Spanish commander sent some trinkets
+in return. In endeavoring to talk with them Cortes
+became aware of an unusual piece of luck. Aguilar
+did not understand the language of these folk. But
+at Tabasco, where Cortes had had a fight with the
+native army, some slaves had been presented to him as
+a peace-offering. Among them was a beautiful young
+girl, daughter of a Mexican chief, who after her father's
+death had been sold as a slave by her own mother,
+who wished to get her inheritance. During her captivity
+she had learned the dialect Aguilar spoke, and
+the two interpreters between them succeeded in translating
+Cortes's Castilian into the Aztec of Mexico from
+the first. The young girl was later baptized Marina.
+There being no "r" in the Aztec language the people
+called her Malintzin or Malinche,&mdash;Lady Marina, the
+ending "tzin" being a title of respect. She learned
+Castilian with wonderful quickness, and was of great
+service not only to Cortes but to her own people, since
+she could explain whatever he did not understand.<span class='pagenum'>[154]</span></p>
+
+<p>Cortes learned that the name of the ruler of the
+country was Moteczuma. His capital was on the
+plateau about seventy miles in the interior. This
+coast province, which he had lately conquered, was
+ruled by one of his Aztec governors. Gold was abundant.
+Moteczuma had great store of it. Cortes decided
+to pitch his camp where afterward stood the capital
+of New Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The friendly Indians brought stakes and mats and
+helped to build huts, native fashion. From all the
+country round the people flocked to see the strange
+white men, bringing fruit, flowers, game, Indian corn,
+vegetables and native ornaments of all sorts. Some
+of these they gave away and some they bartered.
+Every soldier and mariner turned trader; the place
+looked like a great fair.</p>
+
+<p>On Easter Day the Aztec governor arrived upon a
+visit of ceremony. Cortes received him in his own
+tent, with all courtesy, in the presence of his officers, all
+in full uniform. Mass was said, and the Aztec chief
+and his attendants listened with grave politeness. Then
+the guests were invited to a dinner at which various
+Spanish dishes, wines and sweetmeats were served as
+formally as at court. After this the interpreters were
+summoned for the real business of the day.</p>
+
+<p>The Aztec nobleman wished to know whence and
+why the strangers had come to this country. Cortes
+answered that he was the subject of a monarch beyond
+seas, as powerful as Moteczuma, who had heard of
+the Aztec Emperor and sent his compliments and some
+gifts. The governor gracefully expressed his willingness
+to convey both to his royal master. Cortes
+courteously declined, saying that he must himself deliver
+them. At this the governor seemed surprised <span class='pagenum'>[155]</span>
+and displeased; evidently this was not in his plan.
+"You have been here only two days," he said, "and
+already demand an audience with the Emperor?"
+Then he expressed his astonishment at learning that
+there was any other monarch as great as Moteczuma,
+and sent his attendants to bring a few gifts which he
+himself had chosen for the white chief.</p>
+
+<p>These tributes consisted of ten loads, each as much
+as a man could carry, of fine cotton stuff, mantles of
+exquisite feather-work, and a woven basket full of gold
+ornaments. Cortes expressed his admiration and appreciation
+of the gifts, and sent for those he had
+brought for Moteczuma. They consisted of an arm-chair,
+richly carved and painted, a crimson cloth cap
+with a gold medal bearing the device of San Jorge and
+the dragon, and some collars, bracelets and other ornaments
+of cut glass. To the Aztec, who had never seen
+glass, these appeared wonderful. He ventured the remark
+that a gilt helmet worn by one of the Spanish
+soldiers was like the casque of their god Quetzalcoatl,
+and he wished that Moteczuma could see it. Cortes
+immediately sent for the helmet and handed it to the
+chief, with the suggestion that he should like to have
+it returned full of the gold of the country in order to
+compare it with the gold of Spain. Spaniards, he
+said, were subject to a complaint affecting the heart,
+for which gold was a remedy. This was not entirely
+an invention of the commander's fertile brain. Many
+physicians of those days did regard gold as a valuable
+drug; but only Cortes ever thought of making use of
+the theory to get the gold.</p>
+
+<p>During this polite and interesting conversation
+Cortes observed certain attendants busily making
+sketches of all that they saw, and on inquiry was told <span class='pagenum'>[156]</span>
+that this "picture-writing" would give the Emperor
+a far better idea of the appearance of the strangers
+than words alone. Upon this the Spanish general ordered
+out the cavalry and artillery and put them
+through their evolutions on the beach. The cannon,
+whose balls splintered great trees, and the horsemen,
+whose movements the Aztecs followed with even more
+terror than those of the gunners, made a tremendous
+impression. The artists, though scared, stuck to their
+duty, and the strange and terrible beasts, and the
+thunder-birds whose mouths breathed destruction,
+were drawn for the Emperor to see. After this the
+governor, assuring Cortes that he should have whatever
+he needed in the way of provisions until further
+orders were received from the Emperor, made his
+adieux and went home.</p>
+
+<p>Then began a diplomatic game between Cortes and
+the Emperor and the various chiefs of the country.
+The couriers of the imperial government, who traveled
+in relays, could take a message to the capital and return
+in seven or eight days. In due time two ambassadors
+arrived from Moteczuma, with gifts evidently
+meant to impress the strangers with his wealth and
+power. The embassy was accompanied by the governor
+of the province and about a hundred slaves.
+Some of these attendants carried burning censers from
+which arose clouds of incense; others unrolled upon
+the ground fine mats on which to place the presents.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing like this had ever been offered to a Spanish
+conqueror, even by Moors, to say nothing of Indians.
+There were two collars of gold set with precious
+stones; a hundred ounces of gold ore just as it came
+from the mines; a large alligator's-head of gold; six
+shields covered with gold; helmets and necklaces of <span class='pagenum'>[157]</span>
+gold. There were birds made of green feathers, the
+feet, beaks and eyes of gold; a box of feather-work
+upon leather, set with a gold plate weighing seventy
+ounces; pieces of cloth curiously woven with feathers,
+and others woven in various designs. Most gorgeous
+of all were two great plates as big as carriage wheels,
+one of gold and one of silver, wrought with various
+devices of plants and animals rather like the figures of
+the zodiac. The wildest tales of the most imaginative
+adventurer never pictured such magnificence. If
+Moteczuma's plan had been to induce the strangers to
+respect his wishes and go home without visiting his
+capital, it was a complete failure. After this proof
+of the wealth and splendor of the country Cortes had
+no more idea of leaving it than a hound has of abandoning
+a fresh trail. When the envoys gave him
+Moteczuma's message of regret that it would not be
+possible for them to meet, Cortes replied that he could
+not think of going back to Spain now. The road to
+the capital might be perilous, but what was that to
+him? Would they not take to the Emperor these
+slight additional tokens of the regard and respect of
+the Spanish ruler, and explain to him how impossible
+it would be for Cortes to face his own sovereign, with
+the great object of his voyage unfulfilled? There was
+nothing for the embassy to do but to take the message.</p>
+
+<p>While waiting for results, Cortes received a visit
+from some Indian chiefs of the Totonacs, a tribe lately
+conquered by the Aztecs. Their ruler, it seemed, had
+heard of the white cacique and would like to receive
+him in his capital. Cortes gave them presents and
+promised to come. In the meantime his own men
+were quarreling, and both parties were threatening
+him. The bolder spirits announced that if he did not <span class='pagenum'>[158]</span>
+make a settlement in the country, with or without instructions
+from the governor of Cuba who had sent
+him out, they would report him to the King. The
+friends of Velazquez accused Cortes of secretly encouraging
+this rebellion, and demanded that as he had
+now made his discovery, he should return to Cuba and
+report.</p>
+
+<p>Cortes calmly answered that he was quite willing to
+return at once, and ordered the ships made ready.
+This caused such a storm of wrath and disappointment
+that even those who had urged it quailed. Seeing that
+the time was ripe, the captain-general called his followers
+together and made a speech. He declared that
+nobody could have the interests of the sovereigns and
+the glory of the Spanish race more at heart than he
+had. He was willing to do whatever was best. If
+they, his comrades, desired to return to Cuba he would
+go directly. But if they were ready to join him, he
+would found a colony in the name of the sovereigns,
+with all proper officers to govern it, to remain in this
+rich country and trade with the people. In that case,
+however, he would of course have to resign his commission
+as captain-general of an expedition of discovery.</p>
+
+<p>There was a roar of approval from the army at
+this alluring suggestion. Before most of them fairly
+knew what they were about they had voted to form a
+colony under the royal authority, elected Cortes governor
+as soon as he resigned his former position, and
+seen the new governor appoint a council in proper form,
+to aid in the government.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it," said Saavedra to himself as he went
+back, alone, to his quarters. "Just as people have
+made up their minds they have got him between the <span class='pagenum'>[159]</span>
+door and the jamb, he is somewhere else. When he
+resigned his commission he slipped out from under the
+government of Cuba, and that has no authority over
+him. He has appointed a council made up of his own
+friends, and now he can hang every one of the Velasquez
+party if they make any trouble. But they
+won't."</p>
+
+<p>They did not. Cortes sent his flagship to Spain
+with some of his especial friends and some of his particular
+enemies on board, the enemies to get them out
+of his way, the friends to defend him to the King
+against their accusations. He founded a city which he
+named Villa Rica de Vera Cruz, the Rich Town of the
+True Cross. Then, as the next step toward the invasion
+of the country, he proceeded to play Indian
+politics.</p>
+
+<p>First he accepted the invitation of the chief of the
+Totonacs, and Moteczuma, hearing of it, sent the tax-gatherers
+to collect tribute and also to demand twenty
+young men and women to sacrifice to the gods as an
+atonement for having entertained the strangers.
+Cortes expressed lively horror, and advised the chief
+of the Totonacs to throw the tax-gatherers into prison.
+Then he secretly rescued them and telling them how
+deeply he regretted their misfortunes as innocent men
+doing their duty to their ruler, he sent them on board
+his own ships for safe-keeping. When the Emperor
+heard what had happened he was enraged against the
+Totonacs. If they wished to escape his vengeance
+now their only chance was to become allies of Cortes.</p>
+
+<p>Thus within a few days after landing, the commander
+had got all of his own followers and a powerful
+native tribe so bound up with his fortunes that they
+could not desert him without endangering their own <span class='pagenum'>[160]</span>
+skins. He now suggested to two of the pilots that
+they should report five of the ships to be in an unseaworthy
+condition from the borings of the teredos&mdash;in
+those days sheathing for hulls had not been invented,
+and the ship-worm was a constant danger, in tropical
+waters especially. At the pilots' report Cortes appeared
+astonished, but saying that there was nothing to
+do but make the best of it, ordered the ships to be
+dismantled, the cordage, sails and everything that
+could be of use brought on shore, and the stripped
+hulls scuttled and sunk. Then four more were condemned,
+leaving but one small ship.</p>
+
+<p>There was nearly a riot in the army, marooned in
+an unknown and unfriendly land. Cortes made another
+speech. He pointed out the fact that if they
+were successful in the expedition to the capital they
+would not need the ships; if they were not, what good
+would the ships do them when they were seventy
+leagues inland? Those who dared not take the risk
+with him could still return to Cuba in the one ship that
+was left. "They can tell there," he added in a tone
+which cut the deeper for being so very quiet, "how
+they deserted their commander and their friends, and
+patiently wait until we return with the spoils of the
+Aztecs."</p>
+
+<p>An instant of breathless silence followed, then somebody
+shouted. A hundred voices took up the cry,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"To Mexico! To Mexico!"</p>
+
+<p>Of the adventures, the fighting, the wonderful
+sights and the narrow escapes of the march to the
+capital, Bernal Diaz, who was with the army, wrote
+afterward in bulky volumes. On the seventh day of
+November, 1519, the compact little force of Spaniards,
+little more than a battalion in all, with their Indian <span class='pagenum'>[161]</span>
+allies from the provinces which had rebelled against
+the Emperor, came in sight of the capital. The moment
+at which Cortes, at the head of his followers,
+rode into the city of Mexico is one of the most dramatic
+in all history. Nothing in any novel of adventure
+compares with it in amazing contrast or tragic
+possibilities. The men of the Age of Cannon met the
+men of the Age of Stone. The mighty Catholic
+Church confronted a nation of snake-worshiping cannibals.
+The sons of a race that lived in hardy simplicity,
+a race of fighters, had come into a capital where
+life was more luxurious than it was in Seville, Paris
+or Rome&mdash;a heathen capital rich in beauty, wealth
+and all the arts of a barbarian people.</p>
+
+<p>The city had been built on an island in the middle
+of a salt lake, reached by three causeways of masonry
+four or five miles long and twenty or thirty feet wide.
+At the end near the city each causeway had a wooden
+drawbridge. There were paved streets and water-ways.
+The houses, built around large court-yards,
+were of red stone, sometimes covered with white stucco.
+The roofs were encircled with battlements and defended
+with towers. Often they were gardens of
+growing flowers. In the center of the city was the
+temple enclosure, surrounded by an eight-foot stone
+wall. Within this were a score of teocallis, or pyramids
+flattened at the top, the largest, that of the war-god,
+being about a hundred feet high. Stone stairs
+wound four times around the pyramid, so that religious
+processions appeared and disappeared on their way to
+the top. On the summit was a block of jasper, rounded
+at top, the altar of human sacrifice. Near by were the
+shrines and altars of the gods. Outside the temple
+enclosure was a huge altar, or embankment, called the <a name='Page_162' id='Page_162'></a><span class='pagenum'>[162]</span>
+tzompantli, one hundred and fifty-four feet long, upon
+which the skulls of innumerable victims were arranged.
+The doorways and walls everywhere were carved with
+the two symbols of the Aztec religion&mdash;the cross and
+the snake. Among the birds in the huge aviary of the
+royal establishment were the humming-birds which were
+sacred to one of the most cruel of the gods, and in
+cages built for them were the rattlesnakes also held
+sacred. Flowers were everywhere&mdash;in garlands hung
+about the city, in the hands of the people, on floating
+islands in the water, in the gardens blazing with color.</p>
+
+<p>The Spanish strangers were housed in a great stone
+palace and entertained no less magnificently than the
+gifts of the Emperor had led them to expect. The
+houses were ceiled with cedar and tapestried with fine
+cotton or feather work. Moteczuma's table service
+was of gold and silver and fine earthenware. The people
+wore cotton garments, often dyed vivid scarlet with
+cochineal, the men wearing loose cloaks and fringed
+sashes, the women, long robes. Fur capes and feather-work
+mantles and tunics were worn in cold weather;
+sandals and white cotton hoods protected feet and
+head. The women sometime used a deep violet hair-dye.
+Ear-rings, nose-rings, finger-rings, bracelets,
+anklets and necklaces were of gold and silver.</p>
+
+<p>Moteczuma himself, a tall slender man about forty
+years old, came to meet them in a palanquin shining
+with gold and canopied with feather-work. As he descended
+from it his attendants laid cotton mats upon
+the ground that he might not soil his feet. He wore
+the broad girdle and square cloak of cotton cloth which
+other men wore, but of the finest weave. His sandals
+had soles of pure gold. Both cloak and sandals were
+embroidered with pearls, emeralds, and a kind of stone <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+much prized by the Aztecs, the chalchivitl, green and
+white. On his head he wore a plumed head-dress of
+green, the royal color. When Cortes with his staff
+approached the building set apart for their quarters,
+Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard. From a
+vase of flowers held by an attendant he took a massive
+gold collar, in which the shell of a certain crawfish was
+set in gold and connected by golden links. Eight
+golden ornaments a span long, wrought to represent
+the same shell-fish, hung from this chain. Moteczuma
+hung the necklace about the neck of Cortes with a
+graceful little speech of welcome.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 427px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0340-1.jpg" width="427" height="600" alt="&quot;Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard&quot;&mdash;Page 162" title="&quot;Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard&quot;&mdash;Page 162" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 162</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Aztec Emperor was making the best of a situation
+which he did not like at all. In other Mexican
+cities Cortes had ordered the idols cast headlong down
+the steps of the teocalli, the temples cleansed, and a
+crucifix wreathed in flowers to be set up in place of the
+red altar stained with human blood. He was attended
+by some seven thousand native allies from tribes considered
+by the Aztecs as wild barbarians. His daring
+behavior and military successes had all been reported
+to Moteczuma by the picture-writing of his scribes.
+There was a tradition among the Aztecs that some day
+white bearded strangers would come, destroy the worship
+of the old gods of blood and terror, and restore
+the worship of the fair god Quetzalcoatl. Before the
+white men landed there had been earthquakes, meteors
+and other omens. Would the old gods destroy the
+invaders and all who joined them, or was this the great
+change which the prophets foretold? Who could
+say?</p>
+
+<p>In the beautiful, terrible city Cortes moved alert and
+silent, courteous to all, every nerve as sensitive to new
+impressions as a leaf to the wind. He knew that <span class='pagenum'>[164]</span>
+strong as the priesthood of the fierce gods undoubtedly
+was, there was surely an undercurrent of rebellion
+against their cruelty and their unlimited power. In
+a fruitless attempt to keep the Spaniards out of the
+city by the aid of the gods, three hundred little children
+had been sacrificed. If Cortes failed to conquer, by
+peaceful means or otherwise, nothing was more certain
+than that he and all of his followers not killed in
+the fighting would be butchered on the top of those
+terrible pyramids sooner or later. Yet he looked about
+him and said, under his breath,</p>
+
+<p>"This is the most beautiful city in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think we shall win it for the Cross and
+the King?" asked Saavedra in the same quiet tone.</p>
+
+<p>"We must win," said Cortes, with a spark in his eyes
+like the flame in the heart of a black opal. "There is
+nothing else to do."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+In the spelling of the Aztec Emperor's name Cortes' own form is
+used,&mdash;"Moteczuma," instead of the commoner "Montezuma." One
+must read Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" for even an approximately
+adequate account of this extraordinary campaign.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="MOCCASIN_FLOWER" id="MOCCASIN_FLOWER"></a>MOCCASIN FLOWER</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Klooskap's children, the last and least,</span>
+<span class="i0">Bidden to dance at his farewell feast,</span>
+<span class="i0">Under the great moon's wizard light,</span>
+<span class="i0">Over the mountain's drifted white,</span>
+<span class="i0">The Winag'mesuk, the wood-folk small,</span>
+<span class="i0">Came to the feasting the last of all!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Magic snowshoes they wore that night,</span>
+<span class="i0">Woven of frostwork and sunset light,</span>
+<span class="i0">Round and trim like the Master's own,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Their lances of reed, with a point of bone,</span>
+<span class="i0">Their oval shields of the woven grass,</span>
+<span class="i0">Their leader the mighty Kaktugwaas.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Winag'mesuk, the forest folk,</span>
+<span class="i0">They fled from the words that the white man spoke.</span>
+<span class="i0">They were so tired, they were so small,</span>
+<span class="i0">They hardly could find their way back at all,</span>
+<span class="i0">Yet bravely they rallied with shield and lance</span>
+<span class="i0">To dance for Klooskap their Snowshoe Dance!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Light and swift as the whirling snow</span>
+<span class="i0">They leaped and fluttered aloft, alow.</span>
+<span class="i0">Silent as owls in the white moonlight</span>
+<span class="i0">They pounced and grappled in mimic fight.</span>
+<span class="i0">When they chanted to Klooskap their last farewell</span>
+<span class="i0">He laid on the forest a fairy spell.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From Little Thunder, from Kaktugwaas,</span>
+<span class="i0">He took the buckler of woven grass,</span>
+<span class="i0">The lance of reed with a point of bone,</span>
+<span class="i0">The rounded footgear like his own,</span>
+<span class="i0">And bade them grow there under the pines</span>
+<span class="i0">While the snowdrifts melt and the sunlight shines!</span><span class='pagenum'>[166]</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sagamore pines are dark and tall</span>
+<span class="i0">That guard the Norumbega wall.</span>
+<span class="i0">When the clear brooks dance to the flute of spring,</span>
+<span class="i0">And veery and catbird of Klooskap sing,</span>
+<span class="i0">The Winag'mesuk for one short hour</span>
+<span class="i0">Come back for their token of Klooskap's power&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i4">Moccasin Flower!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>XII</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="GIFTS_FROM_NORUMBEGA" id="GIFTS_FROM_NORUMBEGA"></a>GIFTS FROM NORUMBEGA</h3>
+
+<p>"What shall I bring thee then, from the world's
+end, Reine Margot?" asked Alain Maclou.
+The small girl in the deep fireside recess of a Picardy
+castle-hall considered it gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"There should be three gifts," she said at last, "for
+so it always is in Mère Bastienne's stories. I will have
+the shoes of silence, the girdle of fortune, and diamonds
+from Norumbega. Tell me again about Norumbega."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, little one, I must go, to see after the lading
+of the ship. Fare thee well for this time," and the
+young man bent his tall head above the hand of his
+seven-year-old lady. The graceful, quick-witted and
+imaginative child had been his pet and he her loyal
+servant these three years. It was understood between
+them that she was really the Queen of France, barred
+from her throne by the Salic Law that forbade any
+woman to rule that country in her own right. Some
+day he was to discover for her a kingdom beyond
+seas, in which she alone should reign. Of all the tales,
+marvelous, fanciful or tragic, which he or her old
+nurse had told her, she liked best the legend of Norumbega,
+the city in the wilderness which no explorer
+had ever found. Wherever French, Breton or English
+fishermen had become at all familiar with the
+Indians they heard of a city great and populous, with
+walls of stone, ruled by a king richer than any of their <span class='pagenum'>[168]</span>
+chiefs, but no two stories agreed on the location.
+Some had heard that it was an island, west of Cape
+Breton; others that it was on the bank of a great
+river to the southward. Maclou had seen at a fair
+one of the Indians brought to France ten years before
+in the <i>Dauphine</i>, and spoken to him. According to
+this Indian the chief town of his people was on an
+island in the mouth of a river where high gray walls
+of rock arose, longer and statelier than the walls of
+Dieppe. In describing these walls the Indian did
+not indeed say that they encircled the city, but no
+Frenchman could have imagined rock palisades built
+for any other purpose. On the other hand Maclou
+knew a pilot who had been caught in a storm and
+blown down the coast southwest from the fisheries,
+and he and his crew had seen, from ten or twelve
+leagues out at sea, white and shining battlements on
+the crest of a mountain far inland. When they asked
+their Indian guides what city it was the slaves trembled
+and showed fear, and declared that none of their people
+ever went there. Had only one man seen the glittering
+walls it might have been a vision, but they had
+all seen.</p>
+
+<p>If Norumbega really existed, the expedition of
+Jacques Cartier in 1535 seemed likely to find it. He
+had made a voyage the year before with two ships and
+a hundred and twenty men, of whom Maclou had been
+one. Not being prepared to remain through the
+winter, they had been obliged to turn back before they
+had done more than discover a magnificent bay which
+Cartier named the Bay of Chaleur on account of the
+July heat, and a squarish body of water west of Cape
+Breton which seemed to be marked out on their map
+as the Square Gulf. Now the veteran of Saint Malo
+had instructions to explore this gulf and see whether <span class='pagenum'>[169]</span>
+any strait existed beyond it which might lead to Cathay.
+On general principles he was to find out how great and
+of what nature the country was. The maps of the
+New World were fairly complete in their outline of
+the southern continent and islands discovered by Spain;
+it was hoped that this expedition might give an equally
+definite outline to the northern coast. Cartier had on
+his previous voyage caught two young Indians who had
+come from far inland to fish, and brought them back to
+France. They had since learned enough Breton to
+make themselves understood, and from what they said
+it seemed to Cartier that there might be a far greater
+land west of the fisheries than the mapmakers had
+supposed. The King, on the other hand, was inclined
+to hope that the lands already found were islands,
+among which might be the coveted route to Cathay.
+Maclou bent his brows over the map and pondered.
+If Norumbega were found it would be the key to the
+situation, for the people of a great inland city would
+know, as the people of Mexico did, all about their
+country. Did it exist, or was it a fairy tale, born of
+mirage or a lying brain?</p>
+
+<p>On Whitsunday the sixteenth of May, Carrier and
+his men went in solemn procession to the Cathedral
+Church of Saint Malo, confessed themselves, received
+the sacrament, and were blessed by the Bishop in his
+robes of state, standing in the choir of the ancient
+sanctuary. On the following Wednesday they set sail
+with three ships and one hundred and ten men. Cartier
+had been careful to explain to the King that it
+would be of no use to send an expedition to those northern
+shores unless it could live through the winter on
+its own supplies. The summer was brief, the winter
+severe, and there was no possibility of living on the <span class='pagenum'>[170]</span>
+country while exploring it. As such voyages went,
+the three ships were well provisioned. Late in July
+they came through the Strait of Belle Isle, and on
+Saint Laurence's Day, August 10, found themselves in
+a small bay which Cartier named for that saint.
+Rounding the western point of a great island the little
+fleet came into a great salt water bay.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe," said Cartier to Maclou as the flagship
+sailed gaily on over the sunlit sparkling waves, "that
+this must be the place from which all the whales in the
+world come." The great creatures were spouting and
+diving all around the fleet, frolicking like unwieldy
+puppies. Every one was alert for what might be discovered
+next. None were more lively and full of
+pleased expectation than the two Indian youths. Captives
+had been taken by the white men before, but none
+had ever returned. Their people were undoubtedly
+mourning them as dead, but would presently see them
+not only alive but fat and happy. They had crossed
+the great waters in the white men's canoe, and lived in
+the white men's villages, and learned their talk. They
+had been christened Pierre and Kadoc, French tongues
+finding it hard to pronounce their former names.</p>
+
+<p>Cartier called them to him and began to ask questions.
+He learned that the northern coast of the gulf,
+along which they were sailing, was that of a land called
+Saghwenay, in which was found Caignetdaze, called by
+the white men copper. This gulf led to a great river
+called Hochelaga. They had never heard of any one
+going all the way to the head of it, but the old men
+might remember. What the name of the country to
+the south of the gulf was, Cartier could not make out.
+It sounded something like Kanacdajikaouah. "Kaou-ah"
+meant great, or large, and Cartier finally set <span class='pagenum'>[171]</span>
+down the rest of the word as Canada, as nearly as the
+French alphabet could spell out the gutturals.</p>
+
+<p>The youths in fact belonged to a tribe in the great
+confederacy of the Kanonghsionni, the People of the
+Long House&mdash;or rather the lengthened house, Kanonsa
+being the word for house, and "ionni" meaning
+lengthened or extended.<a name="FNanchor_1_24" id="FNanchor_1_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_24" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Five tribes, many generations
+ago, had united under the leadership of the great
+Ayonhwatha&mdash;"he who made the wampum belt."<a name="FNanchor_2_25" id="FNanchor_2_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_25" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+They had adopted weaker tribes when they conquered
+them, exactly as, upon the marriage of a daughter, the
+father built an addition to his house for the newly
+wedded couple. The captives had picked up the Breton
+patois rather easily, but there was nothing in France
+which was at all like an Iroquois bark house, and they
+had to use the Indian word for it. Maclou, who had
+been studying the native language at odd times during
+the voyage, found that it had no b, f, m, or v, and on
+the other hand it had some noises which were not in
+any Breton, French or English words, though the Indian
+"n" was rather like the French "nque."</p>
+
+<p>Some fifteen leagues from the salt gulf the water
+became so fresh that Cartier finally gave up the idea
+that the channel he had entered might be a strait. It
+was still very wide, and if it really was a river it was
+the biggest he had ever seen. Three islands now appeared,
+opposite the mouth of a swift and deep river
+which came from the northern territory called Saghwenay.
+Cartier sailed up this river for some distance,
+finding high steep hills on both sides, and then
+continued up the great river to find the chief city of
+the wilderness empire, if it was an empire.</p>
+
+<p>No sign had been seen of Norumbega. Presently
+the keen expectant eye of Cartier caught sight of something <span class='pagenum'>[172]</span>
+which went far to shake his faith in that romantic
+citadel. It was a bold headland on the right, which
+would certainly have been chosen by any civilized king
+in Europe as a site for a fortress. Those mighty cliffs
+would almost make other defenses needless. Yet the
+heights were occupied by nothing more than a wooden
+village, which the interpreters called Stadacona, saying
+that their chief, Daghnacona, was its ruler. Shouts
+arose from the water's edge as some one among the
+excited Indians recognized on the deck of a great
+winged canoe their own lost countrymen. The interpreters
+answered with joyous whoops. A dozen canoes
+came paddling out, filled with young warriors, and a
+rapid interchange of guttural Indian talk went on between
+Pierre and Kadoc and their kinfolk. The enthusiasm
+rose to a still higher pitch when strings of
+beads of all colors were handed down to the Indians
+in the canoes, and presently Daghnacona himself appeared
+to welcome the white men to his country, with
+dignified Indian eloquence and an escort of twelve
+canoes. This was clearly a good place to stop and
+refit the ships. Cartier took his fleet into a little river
+not far away, and prepared to learn all he could of the
+country before going on.</p>
+
+<p>The information he got from Daghnacona was not
+encouraging. This was not, it appeared, the chief
+town of the country. That was many miles up the
+river, and was called Hochelaga. It would not be
+safe for the white men to go there. Their ships might
+be caught between ice-floes, and the falling snow would
+blind and bewilder them. Cartier glanced at the blue
+autumn sky and smiled. No one is quicker than an
+Indian to read faces. Daghnacona saw that the white
+chief intended to go, all the same.<span class='pagenum'>[173]</span></p>
+
+<p>Cartier decided to leave the larger ships where they
+were, and proceed up the great river to Hochelaga
+with a forty-ton pinnace, two boats, and about fifty
+men. Early in the morning, before he was quite ready
+to start, a canoe came down stream, in which were
+three weird figures resembling the devils in a medieval
+miracle-play. Their faces were jet black, they were
+clothed in hairy skins, and on their heads were great
+horns. As they passed the ships they kept up a monotonous
+and appalling chant, and as their canoe touched
+the beach all three fell upon their faces. Indians,
+rushing out of the woods, dragged them into a thicket,
+and a great hubbub followed, not a word of which was
+understood by the white men, for the Indian interpreters
+were there with the rest. Presently the interpreters
+appeared on the beach yelling with fright.</p>
+
+<p>"Pierre! Kadoc!" the annoyed commander
+called from his quarter-deck, "what is all this hullabaloo
+about?"</p>
+
+<p>"News!" gasped Pierre. "News from Canghyenye!
+He says white men not come to Hochelaga!"
+And Kadoc chimed in eagerly, "Not go! Not go!"</p>
+
+<p>"Coudouagny?" Cartier repeated to Maclou, completely
+mystified. "Who can that be?"</p>
+
+<p>Further questioning drew out information which
+sounded as if Coudouagny, or Canyengye, were a tribal
+god. In reality this was the word for "elder
+brother." In that region it was applied to the Tekarihokens,
+the eldest of the five nations in the league
+of the Long House. They were afterward dubbed by
+their enemies the Mohawks or man-eaters, and the fear
+for the white men's safety which the interpreters expressed
+may very well have been quite genuine.</p>
+
+<p>But the Breton captain had not come across the Atlantic <span class='pagenum'>[174]</span>
+to give up his plans for fear of an Indian god,
+if it was a god, and his reply to the warning was to the
+effect that Coudouagny must be a numskull. More
+seriously he explained to the interpreters that although
+he had not himself spoken with the God of his people
+his priests had, and he fully trusted in the power of
+his God to protect him. The party set forth at the
+appointed time.</p>
+
+<p>In about two weeks they reached the greatest Indian
+town that any of them had ever seen. It was not the
+walled city of the Norumbega legend, but both Maclou
+and Cartier had ceased to expect anything of that kind.
+The Indian guides had said that the town was near,
+and all were dressed in their best. A thousand Indians,
+men, women and children, were on the shore to
+receive them, and the commander at the head of his
+little troop marched into Hochelaga to pay their respects
+to the chief.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian city was inhabited by several thousand
+people, living in wigwams about a hundred and fifty
+feet long by fifty wide, built of bark over a frame of
+wood, and arranged around a large open space. The
+whole was surrounded by a stockade of three rows of
+stakes twelve or fifteen feet high. The middle row
+was set straight, the other two rows five or six feet
+from it and inclining toward it like wigwam-poles.
+The three rows, meeting at the top, were lashed to a
+ridgepole. Half way down and again at the bottom
+cross-braces were fastened diagonally, making a strong
+wall. Around the inside, near the top, was a gallery
+reached by ladders, on which were piles of stones to
+be thrown at invaders. Instead of being square, or
+irregular with many angles and outstanding towers,
+like a French walled town, it was perfectly round.<span class='pagenum'>[175]</span></p>
+
+<p>The interpreters afterward explained that each of
+the houses was occupied by several families, as the head
+of each house shared his shelter with his kinfolk.
+When a daughter was married she brought her husband
+home, as a rule, and her father added an apartment
+to his house by the simple device of taking out
+the end wall of bark and building on another section.
+Each household had its own stone hearth, the smoke
+escaping through openings in the roof. A common
+passage-way led through the middle of the house. On
+the sides were rows of bunks covered with furs.
+Weapons hung on the walls, and meat broth or messes
+of corn and beans simmered fragrantly in their
+kettles. Some of these long houses held fifty or sixty
+people each, and there were over fifty of them in all.
+In that climate, with warlike neighbors, the advantage
+of such an organized community over scattered single
+wigwams was very great. All around were cleared
+fields dotted with great yellow pumpkins, where corn
+and beans had grown during the past summer.</p>
+
+<p>To the sons of Norman and Breton peasants it was
+evident that these fields had not been cultivated for
+centuries, like those of France, any more than the wall
+around Hochelaga was the work of stone-masons toiling
+under generations of feudal lords. If this were
+the chief city of these people, they had no Norumbega.
+But it was very picturesque in its sylvan barbaric way,
+among the limitless forests of scarlet and gold and
+crimson and deep green, which stretched away over the
+mountains. Upon the rude cots in the wigwams as they
+passed, Cartier's men saw rich and glossy furs of the
+silver fox, the beaver, the mink and the marten, which
+princesses might be proud to wear. Curious bead-work
+there was also on the quivers, pouches, moccasins <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+and belts of these wild people, done in white and purple
+shell beads made and polished by hand and not
+more than a quarter of an inch long and an eighth of
+an inch thick. These were sewn in patterns of animals,
+birds, fishes and other things not unlike the emblems
+of old families in France. Belts of these beads
+were worn by those who seemed to be the chief men
+of Hochelaga. Porcupine quills were also used in embroidery
+and head-bands.</p>
+
+<p>The people thronged into the open central space,
+which was about a stone's throw across, some carrying
+their sick, some their children, that the strangers might
+touch them for healing or for good fortune. The old
+chief, who was called Agouhana, was brought in, helpless
+from paralysis, upon a deerskin litter. When Cartier
+understood that his touch was supposed to have
+some mysterious magic he rubbed the old man's helpless
+limbs with his own hands, read from his service-book
+the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint John and
+other passages, and prayed that the people who listened
+might come to know the true faith. Then, after
+beads, rings, brooches and other little gifts had been
+distributed, the trumpets blew, and the white men took
+their leave. Before they returned to their boats the
+Indians guided them to the top of the hill which rose
+behind the town, from which the surrounding country
+could be seen. Cartier named it Montreal&mdash;the
+Royal Mountain.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 413px;">
+<img src="images/illus-204.png" width="413" height="600" alt="&quot;Cartier read from his service-book.&quot;&mdash;Page 176" title="&quot;Cartier read from his service-book.&quot;&mdash;Page 176" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Cartier read from his service-book.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 176</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was now the first week in October, and the rapids
+in the river above Hochelaga blocked further exploration
+with a sailing vessel. As for going on foot, that
+was out of the question with winter so near. The
+party returned to Stadacona and went into winter
+quarters. While they had been gone their comrades <span class='pagenum'>[177]</span>
+had built a palisaded fort beside the little river where
+the ships lay moored. They were hardly settled in this
+rude shelter before snow began to fall, and seemed as
+if it would go on forever, softly blanketing the earth
+with layer on layer of cold whiteness. It was waist-deep
+on the level; the river was frozen solid; the drifts
+were above the sides of the ships, and the ice was four
+inches thick on the bulwarks. The glittering armor
+of the ice incased masts, spars, ropes, and fringed every
+line of cordage with icicles of dazzling brightness.
+Never was such cold known in France. Maclou
+thought, whimsically, while his teeth chattered beside
+the fire, of a tale he had once told Marguerite of the
+palace of the Frost King. That fierce monarch, and
+not the guileless Indian chief, was the foe they would
+have to fight for this kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Their provisions were those of any ship sent on a
+voyage into unknown lands in those days&mdash;dried and
+salted meat and fish, flour and meal to be made into
+cakes or porridge, dried pease, dried beans. For a
+time the Indians visited them, in the bitterest weather,
+but in December even this source of a game supply was
+cut off, for they came no more. The dreaded scurvy
+broke out, and before long there were hardly a dozen
+of the whole company able to care for the sick. Besides
+the general misery they were tormented by the
+fear that if the savages knew how feeble they were the
+camp might be attacked and destroyed. Cartier told
+those who had the strength, to beat with sticks on the
+sides of their bunks, so that prowling Indians might
+believe that the white men were busy at work.</p>
+
+<p>But the wild folk were both shrewder and more
+friendly than the French believed. Their medicine-men
+told Cartier one day that they cured scurvy by <span class='pagenum'>[178]</span>
+means of a drink made from the leaves and bark of
+an evergreen. Squaws presently came with a birch-bark
+kettle of this brew and it proved to have such
+virtues that the sick were cured of scurvy, and in some
+cases of other diseases which they had had for years.
+Cartier afterward wrote in his report that they boiled
+and drank within a week all the foliage of a tree, which
+the Indians called aneda or tree of life, as large as a
+full-grown oak.<a name="FNanchor_3_26" id="FNanchor_3_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_26" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Many had died before the remedy
+was learned, and when the weather allowed the fleet to
+sail for home, there were only men enough for two of
+the ships. The Indians had told of other lands where
+gold and rubies were found, of a nation somewhere in
+the interior, white like the French, of people with but
+one leg apiece. But as it was, the country was a great
+country, and well worth the attention of the King of
+France. Leaving the cross and the fleur-de-lis to mark
+the place of their discovery, the expedition sailed for
+France, and on July 16, 1536, anchored once more in
+the port of Saint Malo.</p>
+
+<p>"And there is no Norumbega really?" asked little
+Margot rather dolefully, when the story of the adventure
+had been told. "And your hair is all gray, here,
+on the side."</p>
+
+<p>"None the less I have gifts for thee, little queen,
+and such as no Queen of France hath in her treasury."
+Maclou's smile, though a trifle grave, had a singular
+charm as he opened his wallet. Margot nestled closer,
+her eyes bright with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>The first gift was a little pair of shoes of deer-skin
+dyed green and embroidered with pearly white beads
+on a ground of black and red French brocade. They
+had no heels and no heavy leather soles, and were lined <span class='pagenum'>[179]</span>
+with soft white fur; and they fitted the little maid's
+foot exactly.</p>
+
+<p>The second gift was a girdle of the same beads,
+purple and white, in a pattern of queer stiff sprays.
+"That," said Alain Maclou, "is the Tree of Life that
+cured us all of the sickness."</p>
+
+<p>The third was a cluster of long slender crystals set
+in a fragment of rock the color of a blush rose.<a name="FNanchor_4_27" id="FNanchor_4_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_27" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>"'Tis a magic stone, sweetheart. Keep it in the
+sunshine on thy window-ledge, and when summer is
+over 't will be white as snow. Leave it in a snowbank,
+or in a cellar under wet moss, and 't will turn again to
+rose-color. This I have seen. In the winter nights
+the Frost King hangs his ice-diamonds on every twig
+and rope and eave, and when they shine in the red
+sunrise they look like these crystals. And I have seen
+all the sky from the zenith to the horizon at midnight
+full of leaping rose-red flames above such a world of
+ice. 'Tis very beautiful there, Reine Margot, and fit
+kingdom for a fairy queen."</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite turned the strange quartz rock about
+in her small hands with something like awe.</p>
+
+<p>"And the shoes are shoes of silence, for an Indian
+can go and come in them so softly that even a rabbit
+does not hear. They were made by a kind old squaw
+who would take no pay, and a young warrior gave me
+the wampum belt, and I found the stone one day while
+I was hunting in the forest, so that all three of thy
+gifts are really gifts from Norumbega."</p>
+
+<p>"I think&mdash;I'm rather glad it is not a real city,"
+said Margot with a long breath. "It is more like
+fairyland, just as it is,&mdash;and the Frost King and the
+terrible sickness are the two ogres, and the good medicine <span class='pagenum'>[180]</span>
+man is a white wizard. It is a very beautiful kingdom,
+Alain, and I think you are the Prince in disguise!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">notes</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_24" id="Footnote_1_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_24"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+Kanonghsionni was the name which the Iroquois gave themselves.
+It appears that at this time they occupied the country along the St.
+Lawrence held some centuries before by the Ojibways and later, in
+the time of Champlain, by the Hurons.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_25" id="Footnote_2_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_25"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+Hiawatha is generally said to have founded the league of the
+Five Nations. Although these nations were united against any attack
+from outside they were not always free from interior enmities
+and dissensions, and the Mohawks in particular were objects of the
+fear and dislike of their neighbors, as the significance of their
+sobriquet clearly shows.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_26" id="Footnote_3_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_26"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+Aneda is said to be the Iroquois word for spruce. When
+Champlain's men were attacked by scurvy in the same neighborhood
+half a century later, the Iroquois no longer lived there, and this remedy
+was not suggested.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_27" id="Footnote_4_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_27"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+Rose quartz has this property.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_MUSTANGS" id="THE_MUSTANGS"></a>THE MUSTANGS</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bred to the Game of the World as the Kings and the Emperors played it,</span>
+<span class="i2">Fate and our masters hurled us over the terrible sea.</span>
+<span class="i0">When the sails of the carracks were furled the Game was the Game that we made it,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">We that were horses in Spain were gods in a realm to be!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Swift at the word we sped, we fought in the front of the battle,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Ah, but the wild men fled when they heard us neigh from afar!</span>
+<span class="i0">The field was littered with dead, cut down like slaughtered cattle</span>
+<span class="i2">&mdash;Ah, but the earth is red where the Conquistadores are!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now does the desert wake and croon of hidalgos coming&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Now for her children's sake she is whetting her sword to slay,</span>
+<span class="i0">And the armored squadrons break, and our iron-shod hoofs are drumming</span>
+<span class="i2">On the rocks of the mountain pass&mdash;we are free, we are off and away!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hush&mdash;did a man's foot fall in the pasture where we go straying?</span>
+<span class="i2">Listen&mdash;is that the call of a man aware of his right?</span>
+<span class="i0">Hearken, my comrades all&mdash;once more the Game they are playing!</span>
+<span class="i2">Masters, we come, we come, to be one with you in the fight!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>XIII</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_WHITE_MEDICINE_MAN" id="THE_WHITE_MEDICINE_MAN"></a>THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN</h3>
+
+<p>"Cavalry without horses, in ships without sailors,
+built by blacksmiths without forges and carpenters
+without tools. Now who in Spain will believe
+that?" commented Cabeça de Vaca.</p>
+
+<p>It was the evening of the twenty-first of September,
+1528. Five of the oddest looking boats ever launched
+on any sea were drawn up on the shore of La Baya de
+Cavallos, where not a horse was in sight, though there
+had been twoscore a fortnight ago. On the morrow
+the one-eyed commander of the Spaniards, Pamfilo de
+Narvaez, would marshal his ragamuffin expedition into
+those boats, in the hope of reaching Mexico by sea.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall tell of it when we are grandfathers&mdash;if
+the sea does not take us within a week," said Andres
+Dorantes with a sigh. "I think that God does not
+waste miracles on New Spain."</p>
+
+<p>"Miracles? It is nothing less than a miracle that
+this fleet was built," said Cabeça de Vaca valiantly.
+And indeed he had some reason for saying so.</p>
+
+<p>Narvaez, with a grant from the King which covered
+all the territory between the Atlantic and the Rio de
+los Palmas in Mexico, had staked his entire private
+fortune on this venture. He had landed in Baya de
+le Cruz&mdash;now Tampa Bay&mdash;on the day before Easter.
+The Indians had some gold which they said
+came "from the north." Cabeça, who was treasurer
+of the expedition, strongly advised against proceeding <span class='pagenum'>[183]</span>
+through a totally unknown country on this very sketchy
+information. But Narvaez consulted the pilot, who
+said he knew of a harbor some distance to the west,
+ordered the ships to meet him there, and with forty
+horsemen and two hundred and sixty men on foot,
+struck boldly into the interior.</p>
+
+<p>It was an amazing country. It had magnificent forests
+and almost impassable swamps, gorgeous tropical
+flowers and black bogs infested with snakes, alligators
+and hostile Indians, game of every kind and dense jungles
+into which it retreated. There seemed to be no
+towns, no grain-land and no gold-bearing mountains.
+The persevering explorers crossed half a dozen large
+rivers and many small ones, wading when they could,
+building rafts or swimming when the water was deep.
+After between three and four months of this, half-starved,
+shaken with swamp fever, weary and bedraggled,
+they reached the first harbor they had found upon
+the coast they followed, but no ships were there.
+Whether the ships had been wrecked, or put in somewhere
+only to meet with destruction at the hands of
+the Indians, they never knew.</p>
+
+<p>Narvaez called his officers into consultation, one at
+a time, as to the best course to pursue in this desperate
+case. They had no provisions, a third of the men
+were sick and more were dropping from exhaustion
+every day, and all agreed that unless they could get
+away and reach Mexico while some of them could still
+work, there was very little chance that they would ever
+leave the place at all. But they had no tools, no
+workmen and no sailors, and nothing to eat while the
+ships were a-building, even if they knew how to build
+them. They gave it up for that night and prayed for
+direction.<span class='pagenum'>[184]</span></p>
+
+<p>Next day one of the men proved to have been a carpenter,
+and another came to Cabeça de Vaca with a
+plan for making bellows of deerskin with a wooden
+frame and nozzle, so that a forge could be worked
+and whatever spare iron they had could be pounded
+into rude tools. The officers took heart. Cross-bows,
+stirrups, spurs, horse-furniture, reduced to scrap-iron,
+furnished axes, hammers, saws and nails. There was
+plenty of timber in the forests. Those not able to do
+hard work stripped palmetto leaves to use in the place
+of tow for calking and rigging. Every third day one
+of the horses was killed, the meat served out to the
+sick and the working party, the manes and tails saved
+to twist into rope with palmetto fiber, and the skin of
+the legs taken off whole and tanned for water bottles.
+At four different times a selected body of soldiers went
+out to get corn from the Indians, peaceably if possible,
+by force if necessary, and on this, with the horse-meat
+and sometimes fish or sea-food caught in the bay, the
+camp lived and toiled for sixteen desperate days. A
+Greek named Don Theodoro knew how to make pitch
+for the calking, from pine resin. For sails the men
+pieced together their shirts. Not the least wearisome
+part of their labor was stone-hunting, for there were
+almost no stones in the country, and they must have
+anchors. But at last the boats were finished, of
+twenty-two cubits in length, with oars of savin (fir),
+and fifty of the men had died from fever, hardship or
+Indian arrows. Each boat must carry between forty-five
+and fifty of those who remained, and this crowded
+them so that it was impossible to move about, and
+weighted them until the gunwales were hardly a hand's
+breadth above the water. It would have been madness
+to venture out to sea, and they crept along the <span class='pagenum'>[185]</span>
+coast, though they well knew that in following all the
+inlets of that marshy shore the length of the voyage
+would be multiplied several times over. When they
+had been out a week they captured five Indian canoes,
+and with the timbers of these added a few boards to
+the side of each galley. This made it possible to steer
+in something like a direct line toward Mexico.</p>
+
+<p>On October 30, about the time of vespers, Cabeça
+de Vaca, who happened to be in the lead, discovered
+the mouth of what seemed to be an immense river.
+There they anchored among islands. They found that
+the volume of water brought down by this river was
+so great that it freshened the sea-water even three
+miles out. They went up the river a little way to try
+to get fuel to parch their corn, half a handful of raw
+corn being the entire ration for a day. The current
+and a strong north wind, however, drove them back.
+When they sounded, a mile and a half from shore, a
+line of thirty fathoms found no bottom. After this
+Narvaez with three of the boats kept on along the
+shore, but the boat commanded by Castillo and Dorantes,
+and that of Cabeça de Vaca, stood out to sea
+before a fair east wind, rowing and sailing, for four
+days. They never again saw or heard of the remainder
+of the fleet.</p>
+
+<p>On November 5 the wind became a gale. All night
+the boats drifted, the men exhausted with toil, hunger
+and cold. Cabeça de Vaca and the shipmaster were
+the only men capable of handling an oar in their boat.
+Near morning they heard the tumbling of waves on
+a beach, and soon after, a tremendous wave struck
+the boat with a force that hurled her up on the beach
+and roused the men who seemed dead, so that they
+crept on hands and knees toward shelter in a ravine. <span class='pagenum'>[186]</span>
+Here some rain-water was found, a fire was made and
+they parched their corn, and here they were found by
+some Indians who brought them food. They still had
+some of their trading stores, from which they produced
+colored beads and hawk-bells. After resting
+and collecting provisions the indomitable Spaniards
+dug their boat out of the sand and made ready to go
+on with the voyage.</p>
+
+<p>They were but a little way from shore when a great
+wave struck the battered craft, and the cold having
+loosened their grip on the oars the boat was capsized
+and some of the crew drowned. The rest were driven
+ashore a second time and lost literally everything they
+had. Fortunately some live brands were left from
+their fire, and while they huddled about the blaze the
+Indians appeared and offered them hospitality. To
+some of the party this seemed suspicious. Were the
+Indians cannibals? Even when they were warmed and
+fed in a comfortable shelter nobody dared to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>But the Indians had no treacherous intentions whatever,
+and continued to share with the shipwrecked unfortunates
+their own scanty provision. Fever, hunger
+and despair, reduced the eighty men who had
+come ashore, to less than twenty. All but Cabeça and
+two others who were helpless from fever at last departed
+on the desperate adventure of trying to find
+their way overland to Mexico. One of the two left
+behind died and the other ran away in delirium, leaving
+Cabeça de Vaca alone, as the slave of the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>He discovered presently that he was of little use
+to them, for though he could have cut wood or carried
+water, this was squaws' work, and should a man
+be seen doing it every tradition of the tribe would be
+upset. He was of no use as a hunter, for he had not <span class='pagenum'>[187]</span>
+the hawk-like sight of an Indian or the Indian instinct
+for following a trail. He could dig out the wild roots
+they ate, which grew among canes and under water,
+but this was laborious and painful work, which made
+his hands bleed. With tools, or even metal with
+which to make them, he might have made himself the
+most useful member of the tribe, but as it was, he was
+even poorer than the wretched people among whom
+he lived, for they knew how to make the most of what
+was in the country, and he had no such training.</p>
+
+<p>The lonely Spaniard studied their language and customs
+diligently. He found that they made knives and
+arrows of shell, and clothing of woven fibers of grass
+and leaves, and deerskin. They went from one part
+of the country to another according to the food supply.
+In prickly pear time they went into the cactus
+region to gather the fruit, on which they mainly lived
+during the season. When pinon nuts were ripe they
+went into the mountains and gathered these, threshing
+them out of the cones to be eaten fresh, roasted, or
+ground into flour for cakes baked on flat stones.
+They had no dishes except baskets and gourd-rinds, and
+their houses were tent-poles covered with hides.
+When a squaw wished to roast a piece of meat she
+thrust a sharp stick through it. When she wished to
+boil it she filled a large calabash-rind with water, put
+in it the materials of her stew, and threw stones into
+the fire to heat. When very hot these stones were
+raked out with a loop of twisted green reed or willow-shoots
+and put into the water. When enough had
+been put in to make the water boil, it was kept boiling
+by changing the cooled stones for hotter ones until
+the meat was cooked.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the baskets made by the squaws were <span class='pagenum'>[188]</span>
+curiously decorated, and made of fine reed or fiber
+sewed in coils with very fine grass-thread, so that they
+were both light and strong. There were cone-shaped
+carrying-baskets borne on the back with a loop passed
+around the forehead; in these the squaws carried grain,
+fruit, nuts or occasionally babies. There were baskets
+for sifting grain and meal, and a sort of flask
+that would hold water. The materials were gathered
+from mountains, valleys and plains over a range of
+hundreds of miles&mdash;grasses here, bark fiber there,
+dyes in another place, maguey leaves in another, and
+for black figures in decoration the seed-pods called
+"cat's claws" or the stems of maiden-hair fern. A
+design was not copied exactly, but each worker made
+the pattern in the same general form and sometimes
+improved on it. There was a banded pattern in a
+diamond-shaped criss-cross almost exactly like the
+shaded markings on a rattlesnake-skin. The Indians
+believed in a goddess or Snake-Mother, who lived underground
+and knew about springs; and as water was
+the most important thing in that land of deserts, they
+showed respect to the Snake-Mother by baskets decorated
+in her honor. Another design showed a round
+center with four zigzag lines running to the border.
+This was intended for a lake with four streams flowing
+out of it, widening as they flowed; but it looked rather
+like a cross or a swastika. There was a design in zigzags
+to represent the lightning, and almost all the patterns
+had to do in some way with lakes, rivers, rain, or
+springs.</p>
+
+<p>As the exile of Spain began to know the country he
+sometimes ventured on journeys alone, without the
+tribe, to the north, away from the coast. In these
+wanderings he met with tribes whose language was not <span class='pagenum'>[189]</span>
+wholly strange, but whose customs and occupations
+were not exactly like those of his own Indians. Once
+he found a village of deerskin tents where the warriors
+were painting themselves with red clay, for a dance.
+He remembered that the squaws, when he came away
+some days before, were in great lamentation because
+they had no red paint for their baskets. He took out
+a handful of shells and found that these Indians were
+only too pleased to pay for them in red earth, deerskin,
+and tassels of deer hair dyed red. They would
+hardly let him go till he promised to come again and
+bring them more shells and shell beads. This suggested
+to him a way in which he might make himself
+of use and value.</p>
+
+<p>Longer and longer journeys he took, trading shells
+for new dyes, flint arrow-heads, strong basket-reeds,
+and hides and furs of all sorts, learning more and more
+of the country as he trafficked. Once he found families
+living in a house built of stone and mud bricks, in
+the crevice of a cliff, getting water from a little brook
+at the base of it, and raising corn and vegetables along
+the waterside. Their houses had no real doors.
+They had trap-doors in the roof, reached by a notched
+tree-trunk inside and one outside. The corn that grew
+in the little farm at the foot of the cliff was of different
+colors, red, yellow, blue and white. Each kind was
+put in a separate basket. Each kind of meal was made
+separately into thin cakes cooked on a very hot flat
+stone. A handful of the batter was slapped on with
+the fingers so deftly that though the cake was thin,
+crisp and even, the cook never burned herself. The
+people were always on their guard against roving bands
+of Indians who lived in tipis, or wigwams, and were
+likely to attack the cliff-dwellers at any moment.<a name='Page_190' id='Page_190'></a><span class='pagenum'>[190]</span></p>
+
+<p>Cabeça de Vaca became interested in these wandering
+tribes, and moved north to see what they were like.
+He found them quite ready to trade with him and extremely
+curious about his wares. They had hides upon
+their tipis of a sort he had not seen before, not smooth,
+but covered with curly brown fur like a big dog's. It
+was some time before the Spanish trader made out
+what sort of animal wore such a skin, though he knew
+at first sight that it must be a very large one. Finally
+the old medicine man with whom he was talking began
+to make sketches on the inside of one of the
+great robes. The Spaniard in his turn made sketches,
+drawing a horse, a goat, a bear, a wolf, a bull. When
+he drew the bull the old Indian got excited. He declared
+that that was very like the animal they hunted,
+but that their bulls had great humped shoulders like
+this&mdash;he added a high curved line over the back.
+Cabeça came to the conclusion that it must be some
+sort of hunchbacked cow, but whatever it was, the curly
+furry hide was comforting on cold nights. The old
+Indian told him a few days after that some of the
+young men had just come in with news of a herd of
+these great animals moving along one of their trails,
+and if the white men cared to travel with them he
+could see them for himself.</p>
+
+<p>It did not take the trader long to make up his mind.
+He went with the Indians at the slow trot which covers
+so many miles in a day, and sooner than they had expected,
+they saw from a little rise in the ground a vast
+herd of slowly moving animals which at first the white
+man took for black cattle. But they were not cattle.</p>
+
+<p>There was the huge hump with the curly mane, and
+there were the short horns and slender, neat little legs
+which had seemed so out of proportion in the old Indian's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+sketch. From their point of view they could see
+the hunters cut out one animal and attack him with
+their arrows and lances without arousing the fears of
+the rest. The creatures moved quietly along, grazing
+and pawing now and then, darkening the plain almost
+as far as the eye could see. The trader spent several
+days with the tribe, and when he went south again he
+had a bundle of hides so large that he had to drag it
+on a kind of hurdle made of poles. He had helped the
+Indians decorate some of the hides they had, and whenever
+he did this he wrote his own name, the date, and
+a few words, somewhere on the skin.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 407px;">
+<img src="images/illus-220.png" width="407" height="600" alt="&quot;The creatures darkened the plain almost as far as eye could see.&quot;&mdash;Page 191" title="&quot;The creatures darkened the plain almost as far as eye could see.&quot;&mdash;Page 191" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The creatures darkened the plain almost as far as eye could see.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 191</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Why do you do this?" asked the medicine man,
+putting one long bronze finger on the strange marks.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a message," said Cabeça de Vaca. "If any
+of my own people see it they will know who made the
+pictures."</p>
+
+<p>The Indian looked at him thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very clever," he said. "You ought to be
+a medicine-man."</p>
+
+<p>This put another idea into the exile's head. He had
+seen much of the medicine-men in his wanderings, and
+had studied their ways. Like most men of his day
+who traveled much, he had a rough-and-ready knowledge
+of medicine and surgery. He had sometimes
+been able to be of service to sick and wounded Indians,
+and whether it was their faith in him, or in the virtues
+of his treatment, his patients usually got well. In
+comparing notes they found that he often prayed and
+sang in his own language while watching with them.
+In the end he gained a great reputation as a sort of
+combined priest and doctor. He was not too proud to
+adopt some of the methods of the medicine-men when
+he found them effective, especially as regards herbs <span class='pagenum'>[192]</span>
+and other healing medicaments, used either in poultices
+or drinks. From being a poor slave and a burden to
+his masters, he became their great man.</p>
+
+<p>He had been for more than five years among the
+Indians when another tribe of Indians met with his
+tribe, perhaps drawn by the fame of the white medicine-man,
+and among their captives he recognized with
+joy three of his own comrades&mdash;Castillo, Dorantes,
+and a Barbary negro called Estevanico (Little Stephen).
+He told them of his experience, and found
+them glad to have him teach them whatever of the arts
+of the medicine-man he himself knew. After that, the
+four friends traveled more or less in company, and
+persuaded the Indians to go westward, where they
+thought that there might be a chance of meeting with
+some of their own people. They finally reached a
+point at which the Indians explained that they dared
+not go further, because the tribe which held the country
+further west was hostile.</p>
+
+<p>"Send to them," suggested Cabeça, "and tell them
+we are coming."</p>
+
+<p>After some argument the Indians sent two women,
+because women would not be harmed even in the enemy's
+country. Then the four comrades set out into
+the new land.</p>
+
+<p>Among them they knew six Indian dialects, and
+could talk with the people after a fashion, wherever
+they went. Even when two tribes were at war, they
+made a truce, so that they might trade and talk with
+the strangers. At last Castillo saw on the neck of an
+Indian the buckle of a sword-belt, and fastened to it
+like a pendant the nail of a horse-shoe. His heart
+leaped. He asked the Indian where he got the things.
+The Indian answered,</p>
+
+<p>"They came from heaven."<span class='pagenum'>[193]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Who brought them?" asked Cabeça.</p>
+
+<p>"Men with beards like you," the Indian answered
+rather timidly, "seated on strange animals and carrying
+long lances. They killed two of our people with
+those lances, and the rest ran away."</p>
+
+<p>Then Cabeça knew that his countrymen must have
+passed that way. His feelings were a strange mixture
+of joy and grief.</p>
+
+<p>As they went on they came upon more traces of
+Spaniards, parties of slave-hunters from the south.
+Everywhere they themselves were well treated, even
+by people who were hiding in the mountains for fear
+of the Christians. When Cabeça told the Indians
+that he was himself a Christian they smiled and said
+nothing; but one night he heard them talking among
+themselves, not knowing that he could understand
+their talk.</p>
+
+<p>"He is lying, or he is mistaken," they said. "He
+and his friends come from the sunrise, and the Christians
+from the sunset; they heal the sick, the Christians
+kill the well ones; they wear only a little clothing,
+as we do, the Christians come on horses, with shining
+garments and long lances; these good men take our
+gifts only to help others who need them; the Christians
+come to rob us and never give any one anything."</p>
+
+<p>The next day Cabeça told the Indians that he wished
+to go back to his own people and tell them not to kill
+and enslave the natives. He explained to them that
+this wickedness was not in any way part of his religion,
+and that the founder of that religion never injured or
+despised the poor, but went about doing good. When
+he was sure that there were Spaniards not many miles
+away, he took Estevanico, leaving the other two Spaniards
+to rest their tired bones, and with an escort of <span class='pagenum'>[194]</span>
+eleven Indians went out to look for his countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>When he found them, they were greatly astonished.
+Their astonishment did not lessen when he told them
+how he came to be where he was. He sent Estevanico
+back to tell the rest of the party to come, and himself
+remained to talk with Diego de Alcaraz, the leader
+of the Spanish adventurers, and his three followers.
+They were slave-hunters, like the other Spaniards.
+When, five days afterward Estevanico, Castillo and
+Dorantes came on with an escort of several hundred
+Indians, all Cabeca's determination and diplomacy
+were taxed to keep the slavers from making a raid on
+the confiding natives then and there. To buy Alcaraz
+off cost nearly all the bows, pouches, finely dressed
+skins, and other native treasures he had gained by trading
+or received as gifts. In this collection were five
+arrowheads of emerald or something very like that
+stone. It was not in Cabeça de Vaca to break his word
+to people who trusted him. He had suffered every sort
+of privation; he had traveled more than ten thousand
+miles on foot in his six years among the Indians of the
+Southwest; now he had lost most of his profit from
+that long exile; but he went back to Spain with faith
+unbroken and honor clear as a white diamond.</p>
+
+<p>In May, 1536, he and his companions reached Culiacan
+in the territory of Spain. All the way to the City
+of Mexico they were feasted and welcomed as honored
+guests. The account which Cabeça de Vaca wrote of
+his travels was the first written description of the country
+now called Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+This story follows closely the "Relacion of Cabeca de Vaca." It
+illustrates the resourcefulness, bravery and ingenuity of Spanish
+cavaliers of the heroic age as hardly any other episode does.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="LONE_BAYOU" id="LONE_BAYOU"></a>LONE BAYOU</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">De Soto was a gentleman of Spain</span>
+<span class="i2">In those proud years when Spanish chivalry</span>
+<span class="i0">From fierce adventure never did refrain,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Ruler of argosies that ruled the sea,</span>
+<span class="i0">She looked on lesser nations in disdain,</span>
+<span class="i2">As born to trafficking or slavery.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In shining armor, and with shot and steel</span>
+<span class="i2">Abundantly purveyed for their delight,</span>
+<span class="i0">Banners before whose Cross the foe should kneel,</span>
+<span class="i2">His company embarked&mdash;how great a light</span>
+<span class="i0">Through men's perversity to stoop and reel</span>
+<span class="i2">Down through calamity to endless night!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet unsubmissive, obdurately bold,</span>
+<span class="i2">The savages refused to serve their need.</span>
+<span class="i0">They would not guide the conquerors to their gold,</span>
+<span class="i2">Nor though cast in the fire like a weed</span>
+<span class="i0">Or driven by stern compulsion to the fold,</span>
+<span class="i2">Would they abandon their unhallowed creed.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The forest folk in terror broke and fled</span>
+<span class="i2">Like fish before the fierce pursuing pike.</span>
+<span class="i0">The stubborn chiefs as hostages were led&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">And in the wilderness, a grisly dyke</span>
+<span class="i0">Of slaves and captives, lay the heathen dead,</span>
+<span class="i2">And the black bayou claims all dead alike.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then southward through the haunted bearded trees</span>
+<span class="i2">The Spaniards fought their way&mdash;Mauila's fires</span>
+<span class="i0">Devoured their vestments and their chalices,</span>
+<span class="i2">Their sacramental wine and bread&mdash;the choirs</span>
+<span class="i0">No longer sang their requiems, and the seas</span>
+<span class="i2">Lay between them and all their sacred spires.</span>
+</div><span class='pagenum'>[196]</span>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At last in a lone cabin, where the cane</span>
+<span class="i2">Hid the black mire before the lowly door,</span>
+<span class="i0">De Soto died&mdash;although they sought to feign</span>
+<span class="i2">By some pretended magic mirror's lore</span>
+<span class="i0">That still he lived, a gentleman of Spain,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">And the dread flood rolled onward to the shore!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>XIV</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_FACE_OF_THE_TERROR" id="THE_FACE_OF_THE_TERROR"></a>THE FACE OF THE TERROR</h3>
+
+<p>"Paris is no place in these times for a Huguenot
+lad from Navarre," said Dominic de Gourgues,
+of Mont-de-Marsan in Gascony. "His father, François
+Debré, did me good service in the Spanish Indies.
+One of these days, Philip and his bloodhounds will be
+pulled down by these young terriers they have orphaned."</p>
+
+<p>"If the Jesuits have their way all Huguenots will be
+exterminated, men, women and children," said Laudonnière,
+with a gleam of melancholy sarcasm in his dark
+pensive eyes. "Life to a Jesuit is quite simple."</p>
+
+<p>"My faith," said Gascon, twisting his mustache,
+"they may find in that case, that other people can be
+simple too. But I must be off. I thank you for making
+a place for Pierre."</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of this conversation, when Ribault's
+fleet anchored near the River of May, on June
+25, 1564, Pierre Debré was hanging to the collars of
+two of Laudonnière's deerhounds and gazing in silent
+wonder at the strange and beautiful land.</p>
+
+<p>"The fairest, fruitfullest and pleasantest land in
+all the world," Jean Ribault had said in his report two
+years before to Coligny the Great Admiral of France.
+Live-oaks and cedars untouched for a thousand years
+were draped in luxuriant grape-vines or wreathed with
+the mossy gray festoons of "old men's beard." Cypress <span class='pagenum'>[198]</span>
+and pine mingled with the shining foliage of
+magnolia and palm. From the marsh arose on sudden
+startled wings multitudes of water-fowl. The
+dogs tugged and whined eagerly as if they knew that
+in these vast hunting-forests there was an abundance
+of game. In this rich land, thus far neglected by the
+Spanish conquistadores because it yielded neither gold
+nor silver, surely the Huguenots might find prosperity
+and peace. Coligny was a Huguenot and a powerful
+friend, and if the French Protestants now hunted into
+the mountains or driven to take refuge in England,
+could be transplanted to America, France might be
+spared the horrors of religious civil war.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre was thirteen and looked at least three years
+older. He could not remember when his people and
+their Huguenot neighbors had not lived in dread of
+prison, exile or death. When he was not more than
+ten years old he had guided their old pastor to safety
+in a mountain cave, and seen men die, singing, for
+their faith. After the death of his father and mother
+he had lived for awhile with his mother's people in
+Navarre, and since they were poor and bread was hard
+to come by he had run away the year before and found
+his way to Paris, where Dominic de Gourgues had
+found him. If the Huguenots had a safe home he
+might be able to repay the kindness of his cousins.
+Meanwhile the country, the wild creatures, the copper-colored
+people and the hard work of landing colonists
+and supplies were full of interest and excitement for
+Pierre.</p>
+
+<p>Satouriona, the Indian chief, showed the French officers
+the pillar which Ribault's party had set up on
+their previous visit to mark their discovery. The
+faithful savages had kept it wreathed with evergreens <span class='pagenum'>[199]</span>
+and decked with offerings of maize and fruits as if it
+were an altar.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately not all the colonists were of heroic
+mind. Most who had left France to seek their fortunes
+were merchants, craftsman and young Huguenot
+noblemen whose swords were uneasy in time of peace.
+French farm-laborers were mainly serfs on Catholic
+estates, and landowners did not wish to come to the
+New World. Thus the people of the settlement were
+city folk with little experience or inclination for cultivating
+the soil. The Indians grew tired of supplying
+the wants of so large a number of strangers. Quarrels
+arose among the French. A discontented group
+of adventurers mutinied and went off on a wild attempt
+at piracy. They plundered two ships in the
+Spanish Indies and were caught by the Spanish governor.
+The twenty-six who escaped his clutches fled
+back to the fort, which Laudonnière had built and
+named Carolina. His faithful lieutenant La Caille arrested
+them and dragged them to judgment. "Say
+what you will," said one of the culprits ruefully, "if
+Laudonnière does not hang us I will never call him an
+honest man." The four leaders were promptly sentenced
+to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted
+to shooting. After that order reigned, for a time.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the tradesmen ranged the wilderness, bringing
+back feather mantles, arrows tipped with gold,
+curiously wrought quivers of beautiful fur, wedges of
+a green stone like beryl. There were reports of a
+gold mine somewhere in the northern mountains. Ribault
+did not return with the expected supplies, the
+Indians had mostly left the neighborhood, and misery
+and starvation followed, for the game, like the Indians
+fled the presence of the white men. The Governor <span class='pagenum'>[200]</span>
+began to think of crowding the survivors into the two
+little ships he had and returning to France.</p>
+
+<p>Matters were in this unsatisfactory state when Captain
+John Hawkins in his great seven-hundred-ton ship
+the <i>Jesus</i>, with three smaller ones, the <i>Solomon</i>, the
+<i>Tiger</i> and the <i>Swallow</i>, put in at the River of May for
+a supply of fresh water. He gave them provisions,
+and offered readily to take them back to France on
+his way to England, but this offer Laudonnière declined.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Hawkins is a good fellow," he observed
+dryly to La Caille, "and I am grateful to him, but that
+is no reason why I should abandon this land to his
+Queen, and that is what he is hoping that I may do."</p>
+
+<p>Others were not so long-sighted. The soldiers and
+hired workmen raised a howl of wrath and disappointment
+when they heard that they were not to sail with
+Hawkins, and openly threatened to desert and sail
+without leave. Laudonnière answered this threat by
+the cool statement that he had bought one of the English
+ships, the <i>Tiger</i>, with provisions for the voyage,
+and that if they would have a little patience they might
+soon sail for France in their own fleet. Somewhat
+taken aback they ceased their clamor and awaited a
+favoring wind. Before it came, Ribault came sailing
+back with seven ships, plenty of supplies, and three
+hundred new colonists.</p>
+
+<p>The fleet approached as cautiously as if it were coming
+to attack the colony instead of relieving it, and
+Laudonnière, who saw many of his friends among the
+new arrivals, presently learned that his enemies among
+the colonists had written to Coligny describing him as
+arrogant and cruel and charging that he was about to
+set up an independent monarchy of his own. The Admiral, <span class='pagenum'>[201]</span>
+three thousand miles away, had decided to ask
+the Governor to resign. Ribault advised him to stay
+and fight it out, but Laudonnière was sick and disheartened.
+Life was certainly far from simple when to
+use authority was to be accused of treason, and not to
+use it was to foster piracy, and he had had enough of
+governing colonies in remote jungles of the New
+World. He was going home.</p>
+
+<p>To most of the colonists, however, Ribault's arrival
+promised an end of all their troubles. Stores were
+landed, tents were pitched, and the women and children
+were bestowed in the most comfortable quarters
+which could be found for them just then. To his
+great satisfaction Pierre found among the arrivals his
+cousin Barbe and her husband, a carpenter, and her
+three children, Marie, Suzanne and little René. The
+two young girls regarded Cousin Pierre as a hero, especially
+when they learned that the bearskin on the
+floor of their palmetto hut had but a few months ago
+been the coat of a live black bear. It had been caught
+feasting in the maize-fields of the Indians, by their
+cousin and another youth, and shot with a crossbow
+bolt by Pierre. They thought the roast corn and
+stewed clams of their first meal ashore the most delicious
+food they had ever tasted, and the three-cornered
+enclosure in the forest with the wilderness all
+about it, the most wonderful place they had seen.</p>
+
+<p>Little did these innocent folk imagine what was
+brewing in Spain. The raid of French pirates upon
+the Jamaican coast had promptly been reported by the
+Adelantado of that island. Spanish spies at the
+French court had carefully noted the movements of
+Coligny and Ribault. Pedro Menendez de Avila,
+raising money and men in his native province of Asturia <span class='pagenum'>[202]</span>
+in Spain for the conquest of all Florida, learned
+with horror and indignation that its virgin soil had already
+been polluted by heretic Frenchmen.</p>
+
+<p>Menendez had in that very year gained permission
+from the King of Spain to conquer and convert this
+land at his own cost. In return he was to have free
+trade with the whole Spanish empire, and the title of
+Adelantado or governor of Florida for life&mdash;absolute
+power over all of America north of Mexico, for
+Spain had never recognized any right of France or
+England in the region discovered by Cabot, Cartier,
+Verrazzano or others. Menendez was allowed three
+years for his tremendous task. He was to take with
+him five hundred men and as many slaves, a suitable
+supply of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and provisions,
+and sixteen priests, four of whom were to be Jesuits.
+He had also to find ships to convey this great expedition.</p>
+
+<p>But Menendez had been playing for big stakes all
+his life. He was only ten years old when he ran away
+and went to sea on a Barbary pirate ship. While yet
+a lad he was captain of a ship of his own, fighting pirates
+and French privateers. He had served in the
+West Indies and he had commanded fleets. King
+Philip had never really understood the enormous possibilities
+of Florida until Menendez explained them to
+him. The soil was fertile, the climate good, there
+might be valuable mines, and there were above all
+countless heathen whom it was the deepest desire of
+Menendez to convert to the true faith. In this last
+statement he was as sincere as he was in the others.
+He expected to do in Florida what Cortes had done in
+Mexico. Now heresy, the unpardonable sin, burned
+out and stamped out in Spain, had appeared in the <span class='pagenum'>[203]</span>
+province which he had bound himself at the cost of a
+million ducats to make Spanish and Catholic. With
+furious energy he pushed on the work of preparation.</p>
+
+<p>He had assembled in June, 1565, a fleet of thirty-four
+ships and a force of twenty-six hundred men.
+Arciniega, another commander, was to join him with
+fifteen hundred. On June 29 he sailed from Cadiz in
+the <i>San Pelayo</i>, a galleon of nearly a thousand tons,
+a leviathan for those days. Ten other ships accompanied
+him; the rest of the fleet would follow later.
+It was the plan of Menendez to wipe out the garrison at
+Fort Caroline before Ribault could get there, plant a
+colony there and one on the Chesapeake, to control the
+northern fisheries for Spain alone. On the way a
+Caribbean tempest scattered the ships and only five met
+at Hispaniola, but Menendez did not wait for the
+rest. When he reached the Florida coast he sent a
+captain ashore with twenty men to find out exactly
+where on that long, lonely shore line the French colony
+had squatted.</p>
+
+<p>About half past eleven on the night of September 4,
+the watchman on one of the French ships anchored off
+shore saw the huge <i>San Pelayo</i>, the Spanish banner
+lifting sluggishly in the slow wind, coming up from the
+south. Ribault was in the fort, so were most of the
+troops, and three of the ships were anchored inside
+the bar. The strange fleet came steadily nearer, the
+great flagship moved to windward of Ribault's flagship
+the <i>Trinity</i>, and dropped anchor. The others
+did likewise. Not a word was spoken by friend or
+foe. The Spanish chaplain Mendoza afterward
+wrote:</p>
+
+<p>"Never since I came into the world did I know such
+a stillness."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A trumpet sounded on the <i>San Pelayo</i>. A trumpet
+sounded on the <i>Trinity</i>. Menendez spoke, politely.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 416px;">
+<img src="images/illus-236.png" width="416" height="600" alt="&quot;&#39;Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?&#39;&quot;&mdash;Page 204" title="&quot;&#39;Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?&#39;&quot;&mdash;Page 204" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?&#39;&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 204</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?"</p>
+
+<p>"From France."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bringing soldiers and supplies to a fort of the
+King of France in this country&mdash;where he soon will
+have many more," flung back the Breton captain defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"</p>
+
+<p>This time a score of clear voices reinforced
+the Captain's&mdash;"Lutherans&mdash;Huguenots&mdash;the Reformed
+Faith&mdash;The Religion!" And the Captain
+added, "Who are you yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am Pedro Menendez de Avila, General of the
+fleet of the King of Spain, Don Felipe the Second, who
+come hither to hang and behead all Lutherans whom
+I find by land or sea, according to instructions from
+his Majesty, which leave me no discretion. These
+commands I shall obey, as you will presently see. At
+daybreak I shall board your ships. If I find there any
+Catholic he shall be well treated. But every heretic
+shall die."</p>
+
+<p>The reply to the rolling sonorous ultimatum was a
+shout of derision.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, if you are a brave man, don't put it off till
+daylight! Come on now and see what you will get!"</p>
+
+<p>Menendez in black fury snapped out a command.
+Cables were slipped, and the towering black hulk of
+the <i>San Pelayo</i> bore down toward the <i>Trinity</i>. But
+the Breton captain was already leading the little fleet
+out of danger, and with all sail set, went out to sea,
+answering the Spanish fire with tart promptness. In
+the morning Menendez gave up the chase and came <span class='pagenum'>[205]</span>
+back to find armed men drawn up on the beach, and all
+the guns of the ships inside the bar pointed in his direction.
+He steered southward and found three ships
+already unloading in a harbor which he named San
+Augustin and proceeded to fortify.</p>
+
+<p>In Fort Caroline, Pierre Debré, awakened by the
+sound of firing, ran down to the beach, where a crowd
+was gathering. No one could see anything but the
+flashes of the guns; who or what was attacking the
+ships there was no way of knowing. The first light of
+dawn showed the two fleets far out at sea, and Ribault
+at once ordered the drums to beat "To arms!" They
+saw the great galleon approach, hover about awhile,
+and bear away south. When the French fleet came
+back later, one of the captains, Cosette, reported that
+trusting in the speed of his ship he had followed the
+Spaniards to the harbor where they were now landing
+and entrenching themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The terror which haunted the future of every
+Huguenot in France now menaced the New World.</p>
+
+<p>Ribault gave his counsel for an immediate attack by
+sea, before Menendez completed his defense or received
+reinforcements. Laudonnière was ill in bed. The
+fleet sailed as soon as it could be made ready, and with
+it nearly every able fighting man in the settlement.
+Pierre, nearly crying with wrath and disappointment,
+was left among the non-combatants at the fort. In
+vain did old Challeux the carpenter try to console him.
+It might be, as Challeux said, that there would be
+plenty of chances to fight after his beard was grown,
+but now he was missing everything.</p>
+
+<p>That night a terrible storm arose and continued for
+days. The marshes became a boundless sea; the forests
+were whipped like weeds in the wind. Where had <span class='pagenum'>[206]</span>
+the fleet found refuge? or had it been hurled to destruction
+by the rage of wind and sea? Laudonnière, in
+the driving rain, came from his sick-bed to direct the
+work on the defenses, which were broken down in
+three or four places. Besides the four dog-boys, the
+cook, the brewer, an old cross-bow maker, and the old
+carpenter, there were two shoemakers, a musician, four
+valets, fourscore camp-followers who did not know the
+use of arms, and the crowd of women and children.
+The sole consolation that could be found in their plight
+was that in such a storm no enemy would be likely to
+attack them by sea or land. Nevertheless Laudonnière
+divided his force into two watches with an officer
+for each, gave them lanterns and an hour glass for
+going the rounds, and himself, weak with fever, spent
+each night in the guard-room.</p>
+
+<p>On the night of the nineteenth the tempest became
+a deluge. The officer of the night took pity on the
+drenched and gasping sentries and dismissed them.
+But on that night five hundred Spaniards were coming
+from San Augustin through almost impassable swamps,
+their provisions spoiled and their powder soaked, under
+the leadership of the pitiless Menendez. The
+storm had caught Ribault's fleet just as it was about to
+attack on the eleventh, and Menendez had determined
+to take a force of Spaniards overland and attack the
+fort while its defenders were away. With twenty
+Vizcayan axemen to clear the way and two Indians and
+a renegade Frenchman, François Jean, for a guide, he
+had bullied, threatened and exhorted them through
+eight days of wading through mud waist-deep, creeping
+around quagmires and pushing by main force
+through palmetto jungles, until two hours before daylight
+the panting, shivering, sullen men stood cursing <span class='pagenum'>[207]</span>
+the country and their commander, under their breath,
+in a pine wood less than a mile from Fort Caroline.
+It was all that Menendez could do to get them to go a
+rod further. All night, he said, he had prayed for
+help; their provisions and ammunition were gone;
+there was nothing to do but to go on and take the fort.
+They went on.</p>
+
+<p>In the faint light of early morning a trumpeter saw
+them racing down the slope toward the fort and blew
+the alarm. "Santiago! Santiago!" sounded in the
+ears of the half-awakened French as the Spaniards
+came through the gaps in the defenses and over the
+ramparts. Fierce faces and stabbing pikes were
+everywhere. Laudonnière snatched sword and buckler,
+rallied his men to the point of greatest danger,
+fought desperately until there was no more hope, and
+with a single soldier of his guard escaped into the
+woods. Challeux, chisel in hand, on his way to his
+work, swung himself over the palisade and ran like a
+boy. In the edge of the forest he and a few other
+fugitives paused and looked down upon the enclosure
+of the fort. It was a butchery. Some of the Huguenots
+in the woods decided to return and surrender
+rather than risk the terrors of the wilderness. The
+Spaniards, they said, were at least men. Six of them
+did return, and were cut down as they came. Pierre
+Debré side by side with a few desperate men who had
+one of the two light cannon the fort possessed, was
+fighting like a tiger in defense of a corner where a
+group of women and children were crouching.</p>
+
+<p>When Menendez could secure the attention of his
+maddened men he gave an order that women, children
+and boys under fifteen should be spared. This order
+and the instant's pause it gave came just as the last of <span class='pagenum'>[208]</span>
+the men in Pierre's corner went down before the halberds
+of the Spaniards. Pierre leaped the palisade
+and ran for the forest. Looking back, he saw the
+trembling women and children herded into shelter, but
+not killed. Fifteen of the captured Huguenots were
+presently hanged; a hundred and forty-two had been
+cut down and lay heaped together on the river bank.
+Pierre plunged into the forest and after days of wandering
+reached a friendly Indian village. The carpenter
+and the other fugitives who escaped were taken
+to France in the two small ships of Ribault's fleet
+which had not gone to attack the Spanish settlement.
+Menendez returned at leisure to San Augustin, where
+he knelt and thanked the Lord.</p>
+
+<p>The fate of the men of Ribault's fleet became known
+through the letters which the Spaniards themselves
+wrote in course of time to their friends at home, but
+chiefly through Menendez's own report to the King.
+Dominic de Gourgues heard of it from Coligny, and
+his eyes burned with the still anger of a naturally impetuous
+man who has learned in stern schools how to
+keep his temper.</p>
+
+<p>"As I understand it," he said grimly and quietly,
+"Menendez, in the disguise of a sailor, found Ribault
+and his men shipwrecked and starving, some in one
+place, some in another. He promised them food and
+safety on condition that they should surrender and
+give up their arms and armor. He separated them
+into lots of ten, each guarded by twenty Spaniards.
+When each lot had been led out of sight of the rest he
+explained that on account of their great numbers and
+the fewness of his own followers he should be compelled
+to tie their hands before taking them into camp, <span class='pagenum'>[209]</span>
+for fear they might capture the camp. At the end of
+the day, when all had reached a certain line which
+Menendez marked out with his cane in the sand, he
+gave the word to his murderers to butcher them."</p>
+
+<p>Coligny bowed his noble gray head.</p>
+
+<p>"And he offered them life if they would renounce
+their religion, whereupon Ribault repeating in French
+the psalm, 'Lord, remember thou me,' they died without
+other supplication to God or man. On this account
+did Menendez write above the heads of those
+whom he hanged, 'I do this not as to Frenchmen but
+as to Lutherans.' And no demand for redress has as
+yet been made?"</p>
+
+<p>"One," said the Admiral coolly. "A demand was
+made by Philip of Spain. He has required his
+brother of France to punish one Gaspé Coligny, sometimes
+known as Admiral, for sending out a Huguenot
+colony to settle in Florida."</p>
+
+<p>The Gascon sprang to his feet muttering something
+between his teeth. "I crave your pardon, my lord,"
+he added with a courteous bow. "I am but a plain
+rough soldier unused to the ways of courts, but it seems
+to me that things being as they are, my duty is quite
+simple." He bowed himself out and left Coligny
+wondering.</p>
+
+<p>During the following months it was noted that in
+choosing the men for his coming expedition Gourgues
+appeared to be unusually select. He sold his inheritance,
+borrowed some money of his brother, and fitted
+out three small ships carrying both sails and oars. He
+enlisted, one by one, about a hundred arquebusiers and
+eighty sailors who could fight either by land or sea if
+necessary. He secured a commission from the King <span class='pagenum'>[210]</span>
+to go slave-raiding in Benin, on the coast of Africa.
+On August 22, 1567, he set sail from the mouth of the
+Charente.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to know," said one of the trumpeters,
+Lucas Moreau, "whether we are really going slave-catching,
+or not."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you think we are not?" asked the pilot,
+to whom he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have seen nothing on board that looks
+like it. Moreover, he was very particular to ask me
+if I had been in the Spanish Indies, and when he heard
+that I had been in Florida he took me on at once. I
+was out there, you know, when you were, two years
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>"And you would like to go back?" asked the other,
+gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>"If there were a chance of killing Menendez, yes,"
+answered Moreau with a fierce flash of white teeth.</p>
+
+<p>The trumpeter's guess was a shrewd one. When
+the tiny fleet reached the West Indies, the commander
+took his men into his confidence and revealed the true
+object of his voyage&mdash;to avenge the massacre at Fort
+Caroline. The result proved that he had not misjudged
+them. Fired by his spirit they became so eager
+that they wanted to push on at once instead of waiting
+for moonlight to pass the dangerous Bahama Channel.
+They came through it without mishap, and at
+daybreak were anchored at the mouth of a river about
+fifteen leagues north of Fort Caroline. In the growing
+light an Indian army in war paint and feathers,
+bristling with weapons, could be seen waiting on the
+shore.</p>
+
+<p>"They may think we are Spaniards," said Dominic <span class='pagenum'>[211]</span>
+de Gourgues. "Moreau, if you think they will understand
+you, it might be well for you to speak to them."</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the trumpeter come near enough in
+a small boat for the Indians to recognize him, than
+yells of joy were heard, for the war party was headed
+by Satouriona himself, who well remembered him.
+When Moreau explained that the French had returned
+with presents for their good friends there was great
+rejoicing. A council was appointed for the next day.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Satouriona's runners had scoured the
+country, and the woods were full of Indians. The
+white men landed in military order, and in token of
+friendliness laid aside their arquebuses, and the Indians
+came in without their bows and arrows. Satouriona
+met Gourgues with every sign of friendliness, and
+seated him at his side upon a wooden stool covered
+with the gray "Spanish moss" that curtained all the
+trees. In the clearing the chiefs and warriors stood
+or sat around them, ring within ring of plumed crests
+fierce faces and watchful eyes. Satouriona described
+the cruelty of the Spaniards, their abuse of the Indians
+and the miseries of their rule, saying finally,</p>
+
+<p>"A French boy fled to us after the fort was taken,
+and we adopted him. The Spaniards wished to get
+him to kill him, but we would not give him up, for we
+love the French." He waved his hand, and from the
+woods at one side came, in full Indian costume, bronzed
+and athletic, Pierre Debré.</p>
+
+<p>Greatly as he was surprised and delighted, Gourgues
+dared not show it too plainly, and Pierre had grown
+almost as self-contained as a veteran of twice his years.
+When the French commander suggested fighting the
+Spaniards Satouriona leaped for joy. He and his <span class='pagenum'>[212]</span>
+warriors asked only to be allowed to join in that foray.</p>
+
+<p>"How soon?" asked Gourgues. Satouriona could
+have his people ready in three days.</p>
+
+<p>"Be secret," the Gascon cautioned, "for the enemy
+must not feel the wind of the blow." Satouriona assured
+him that there was no need of that warning, for
+the Indians hated the Spaniards worse than the French
+did.</p>
+
+<p>"Pierre," said Gourgues, when he had the lad safe
+on board ship, "they said you were killed."</p>
+
+<p>"I stayed alive to fight Spaniards," said the boy
+with a flash of the eye. "'Sieur Dominic, there are
+four hundred of them behind their walls, where they
+rebuilt our fort. I have hidden in the trees and
+counted. But you can trust Satouriona. The Spaniards
+have stolen women, enslaved and tortured men,
+and killed children, and the tribe is mad with hate."</p>
+
+<p>Twenty sailors were left to guard the ships, Gourgues
+with a hundred and sixty Frenchmen took up their
+march along the seashore; their Indian allies slipped
+around through the forest. With the French went
+Olotoraca, the nephew of the chief, a young brave of
+distinguished reputation, a French pike in his hand.
+The French met their allies not far from the fort, and
+pounced upon the garrison just as it finished dinner,
+Olotoraca being the first man up the glacis and over
+the unfinished moat. The fort across the river began
+to cannonade the attacking party, who turned four captured
+guns upon them, and then crossed, the French in
+a large boat which had been brought up the river, the
+Indians swimming. Not one Spaniard escaped. Fifteen
+were kept alive, to be hanged on the very trees
+from which Menendez had hanged his French captives, <span class='pagenum'>[213]</span>
+and over them was set an inscription burned with a hot
+poker on a pine board:</p>
+
+<p>"Not as to Spaniards, but as to Traitors, Robbers,
+and Murderers."</p>
+
+<p>When not one stone was left upon another in either
+fort, Dominic de Gourgues bade farewell to his Indian
+allies, and taking with him the lad so strangely saved
+from death and exile, went back to France.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+The full history of this dramatic episode is to be found in Parkman's
+"The Pioneers of France in the New World."</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_DESTROYERS" id="THE_DESTROYERS"></a>THE DESTROYERS</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The moon herself doth sail the air</span>
+<span class="i2">As we do sail the sea,</span>
+<span class="i0">Where by Saint Michael's Mount we fare</span>
+<span class="i2">Free as the winds are free.</span>
+<span class="i0">Our keels are bright with elfin gold</span>
+<span class="i2">That mocks the tyrant's gaze,</span>
+<span class="i0">That slips from out his greedy hold</span>
+<span class="i2">And leaves him in amaze.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">White water creaming past her prow</span>
+<span class="i2">The little <i>Golden Hynde</i></span>
+<span class="i0">Bears westward with her treasure now&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">We'd ship and follow blind,</span>
+<span class="i0">But that he never did require&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Our Captain hath us bound</span>
+<span class="i0">Only by force of his desire&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">The quarry hunts the hound!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The hunt is up, the hunt is up</span>
+<span class="i2">To the gray Atlantic's bound,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">The health of the Queen in a golden cup!&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">The quarry is hunting the hound!</span>
+<span class="i0">Like steel the stars gleam through the night</span>
+<span class="i2">On armored waves beneath,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">As England's honor cold and bright</span>
+<span class="i2">We bear her sword in sheath!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When that great Empire dies away</span>
+<span class="i2">And none recall her place,</span>
+<span class="i0">Men shall remember our work to-day</span>
+<span class="i2">And tell of our Captain's grace,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">How never a woman or child was the worse</span>
+<span class="i2">Wherever our foe we found,</span>
+<span class="i0">Nor their own priests had cause to curse</span>
+<span class="i2">The quarry that hunted the hound!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>XV</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_FLEECE_OF_GOLD" id="THE_FLEECE_OF_GOLD"></a>THE FLEECE OF GOLD</h3>
+
+<p>White fog, the thick mist of windless marshes,
+masked the Kentish coast. The Medway at
+flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one
+maze of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays.
+Nothing was visible an oar's length overside but shifting
+cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely in the fog.
+But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as
+master of his own ship, he knew these waters as he
+knew the palm of his hand. His old captain, dying a
+bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten cargo-ship
+as reward for his "diligence and fidelity", and at sixteen
+he was captain where six years before he had been
+ship's-boy.</p>
+
+<p>Scores of daring projects went Catherine-wheeling
+through his mind as he steered seaward through the
+white enchanted world. In 1561 Spain was the bogy
+of English seaports, most of whose folk were Protestants.
+There was no knowing how long the coast-wise
+trade would be allowed to go on.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the white mist flashed a whiter face, etched
+with black brows and lashes and a pointed silky beard&mdash;the
+face of a man all in black, whose body rose and
+dipped with the waves among the marsh grass of an
+eyot. So lightly was it held that it might have slipped
+off in the wake of the boat had not Tom Moone the
+carpenter caught it with a boat-hook. But when they
+had the man on board they found that he was not
+dead.<span class='pagenum'>[216]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes before, the young captain would have
+said that every dead Spaniard was so much to the good,
+but he had the life-saving instinct of a Newfoundland
+dog. He set about reviving the rescued man without
+thinking twice on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is unlucky," grumbled Will Harvest under his
+breath. "Take a drownded man from the sea and
+she get one of us&mdash;some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Like enough," agreed his master blithely. "But
+this one's not drownded&mdash;knocked on the head and
+robbed, I guess. D'you think we might take him to
+Granny Toothacre's, Tom?"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon so," returned Tom with a wide grin,
+"seein' 't is you. If I was the one to ask her I'd as
+lief do it with a brass kittle on my head. She don't
+like furriners."</p>
+
+<p>Drake laughed and brought his craft alongside an
+old wharf near which an ancient farm-house stood,
+half-hidden by a huge pollard willow. Here, when he
+had seen his guest bestowed in a chamber whose one
+window looked out over the marshes, he stayed to
+watch with him that night, sending the ship on to
+Chatham in charge of the mate.</p>
+
+<p>"Now what's the lad up to?" queried Will as they
+caught the ebbing tide. "D'ye think he'll find out anything,
+tending that there Spanisher?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not him. He don't worm secrets out o' nobody.
+But he's got his reasons, I make no doubt. You go
+teach a duck to swim&mdash;and leave Frankie alone," said
+Moone.</p>
+
+<p>The youth did not analyze the impulse that kept
+him at the bedside of the injured man, but he felt that
+he desired to know more of him. The stranger was
+gaunt, gray and without jewel, gold chain or signet <span class='pagenum'>[217]</span>
+ring to show who he was, but it was the same man who
+had spoken to him at Gravesend five years ago.</p>
+
+<p>A barge-load of London folk had come down to see
+the launching of the <i>Serchthrift</i>, the new pinnace of
+the Muscovy Company, and among them was the venerable
+Sebastian Cabot. Alms were freely distributed
+that the spectators might pray for a fortunate voyage,
+but Frankie Drake was gazing with all his eyes at the
+veteran navigator. A hand was laid on his shoulder,
+and a friendly voice inquired,</p>
+
+<p>"Did you get your share of the plunder, my son?"</p>
+
+<p>The lad shook his head a trifle impatiently. "I be
+no beggar," he answered. "I be a ship's boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said the man, "and you seek not the Golden
+Fleece?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes laughed, and his long fingers played with
+a strange jewel that glowed like Mars in the midnight
+of his breast. It was of gold enamel, with a splendid
+ruby in the center, and hanging from it a tiny golden
+ram. Could he mean that? But the crowd surged
+between them and left the boy wondering. He had
+never spoken to a Spaniard before.</p>
+
+<p>As the fluttering pulse grew stronger and the man
+roused from his stupor, disjointed phrases of sinister
+meaning fell from his lips. No names were used, and
+much of his talk was in Spanish, but it suggested a foul
+undercurrent of bribery, falsehood and conspiracy hidden
+by the bright magnificence of the young Queen's
+court. The queer fact seemed to be that the speaker
+appeared himself to be the victim of some Spanish
+plot. Now why should that be, and he a Spaniard?</p>
+
+<p>The young captain turned from the window, into <span class='pagenum'>[218]</span>
+which through the clearing air the moon was shining,
+to find the stranger looking at him with sane though
+troubled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>Golden Fleece</i>?" he asked in English.
+Drake shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You've had a bad hurt, sir," he said, and briefly
+explained the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said the man frowning, and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"If you would wish to send any word to your
+friends,&mdash;" Drake began, and hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no friends here, save my servant Sancho.
+The <i>Golden Fleece</i> will sail on Saint James's Eve for
+Coruna, and he was to meet me at Dover and return
+with me to our own country. In Alcala they know
+what to expect of a Saavedra."</p>
+
+<p>The last words were spoken with a proud assurance
+that gave the listener a tingling sense of something
+high and indomitable. Saavedra's dark eyes were
+searching his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear I trespass on your kindness," he added
+courteously, "and that I have talked some nonsense
+before I came to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing of any account, sir," answered the lad
+quickly. "Mostly it was Spanish&mdash;and I don't know
+much o' that. You'll miss your ship if she sails so
+soon, but you're welcome here so long as you like to
+stay."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you," said the Spaniard in a relieved tone,
+adding half to himself, "No friends&mdash;but one cannot
+break faith&mdash;even with an enemy."</p>
+
+<p>He dropped asleep almost at once after swallowing
+the cordial which Drake held to his lips. The moon
+came up over the flooded meadows that were all silvery
+lights and black shadow like a fairy realm. The lad <span class='pagenum'>[219]</span>
+had never spent a night like this, even when he had
+seen his master die.</p>
+
+<p>When the pearl and rose of a July morning overspread
+the sky he descended, to splash and spatter and
+souse his rough brown head in a bucket of fresh-drawn
+water, and wheedle the old dame into a good humor.</p>
+
+<p>"What ye hate and fear's bound to come to ye,
+sooner or later," Granny Toothacre grumbled as she
+stirred her savory broth, "My old man said so and I
+never beleft it&mdash;here be I at my time o' life harborin'
+a Spanisher."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, now, mother,"&mdash;Drake laid a brown hand
+coaxingly on her old withered one,&mdash;"you'll take good
+care of him for me, and we'll share the ransom."</p>
+
+<p>"Ransom," the old woman muttered, looking after
+the straight, sturdy young figure as it strode down to
+the wharf, "not much hope o' that. Not but what
+he's a grand gentleman," she admitted, turning the contents
+of her saucepan into her best porringer. "He
+don't give me a rough word no more than if I was a
+lady."</p>
+
+<p>Drake spent all his leisure during the next fortnight
+with the Spaniard, whose recovery was slow but steady.
+It was tacitly understood that the less said of the incident
+which had left him stunned and half-drowned the
+better. If those who had sought to kill him knew
+him to be alive, they might try again.</p>
+
+<p>The young seaman had never known a man like this
+before. In his guest's casual talk of his young days
+one could see as in a mirror the Spain of a half-century
+since, with its audacious daring, its extravagant chivalry
+and its bulldog ferocity.</p>
+
+<p>"They have outgrown us altogether, these young
+fellows," he said once with his quaint half-melancholy <span class='pagenum'>[220]</span>
+smile. "When the King and Queen rode in armor at
+the head of their troops in Granada, our cavaliers
+dreamed of conquering the world&mdash;now it has all
+been conquered."</p>
+
+<p>"Not England," Drake put in quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not England&mdash;I beg your pardon, my friend.
+But we have grown heavy with gold in these days&mdash;and
+gold makes cowards."</p>
+
+<p>"It never made a coward o' me," laughed the lad.
+"Belike it'll never have the chance."</p>
+
+<p>Through the shadows the old ship's-lantern cast in
+the rude half-timbered room seemed to move the wild
+figures of that marvellous pageant of conquest which
+began in 1492. Saavedra spoke little of himself but
+much of others&mdash;Ojeda, Nicuesa, Balboa, Cortes, Alvarado,
+Pizarro. In his soft slow speech they lived
+again, while by the stars outside, unknown uncharted
+realms revealed themselves. This man used words as
+a master mariner would use compass and astrolabe.</p>
+
+<p>"Those days when we followed Balboa in his quest
+for the South Sea," he ended, "were worth it all.
+Gold is nothing if it blinds a man to the heavens. You
+too, my son, may seek the Golden Fleece in good time.
+May the high planets fortify you!"</p>
+
+<p>What room was left for a knight-errant in the Spain
+of to-day, ruling by steel and shot and flame and gold?
+It must be rather awful, the listener reflected, to see
+your own country go rotten like that in a generation.
+Yet there was no bitterness in the old hidalgo's tranquil
+eyes. "I have been a fool," he said smiling, "but
+somehow I do not regret it. The wound from a poisoned
+arrow can be seared with red-hot iron, but for the
+creeping poison of the soul&mdash;the loss of honor&mdash;there
+is no cure."<span class='pagenum'>[221]</span></p>
+
+<p>When the seamen came to get orders from their
+young captain, Saavedra observed with surprise the
+lad's clear knowledge of his own trade. Francis
+Drake's old master had seen King Henry's shipwrights
+discarding time-honored models to build for speed,
+speed and more speed. He had seen Fletcher of Rye,
+in 1539, prove to all the Channel that a ship could sail
+against the wind. All that he knew he had taught
+his young apprentice, and now the boy was free to use
+it for his own work&mdash;whatever that should be. Unlike
+the gilded and perfumed courtiers, these men of
+the sea showed little respect toward the tall ships of
+Spain. Saavedra, pleased that they spoke without reserve
+in his presence, watched the rugged straightforward
+faces, and wondered.</p>
+
+<p>The time came when they took him and his stocky,
+silent old servant to board a Vizcayan boat. As they
+caught his last quick smile and farewell gesture Will
+Harvest heaved a rueful sigh. "I never thought to
+be sorrowful at parting with a Don," he said reflectively,
+"but I be."</p>
+
+<p>"God made men afore the Devil made Dons,"
+growled Tom Moone. "Yon's a man."</p>
+
+<p>Drake had gone down the wharf with John Hawkins
+of Plymouth, a town that was warmly defiant of
+Spain's armed monopoly of sea-trade. Privateers
+were dodging about the trade-routes where Spanish
+and Portuguese galleons, laden with ingots of gold and
+silver, dyewoods, pearls, spices, silks and priceless merchandise,
+moved as menacing sea-castles. Huger and
+huger galleasses were built, masted and timbered with
+mighty trunks from the virgin forests of the Old
+World, four and five feet thick. The military discipline
+of the Continent made a warship a floating barrack; <span class='pagenum'>[222]</span>
+the decks of a Spanish man-of-war were packed
+with drilled troops like marching engines of destruction,
+dealing leaden death from arquebus and musquetoun.
+The little ships of Cabot, Willoughby and
+William Hawkins had not exceeded fifty, sixty, at most
+a hundred tons; Philip's leviathans outweighed them
+more than ten to one. What could England do
+against the landing of such an army? An English
+Admiral would be Jack the Giant-Killer with no magic
+at his command. Yet in the face of all this, under the
+very noses of the Spanish patrol, Protestant craftsmen
+were escaping from the Inquisition in the Netherlands
+to England, where Elizabeth had contrived to let it
+be known that they were quite welcome.</p>
+
+<p>To a perfectly innocent and lawful coasting trade
+Drake and his crew now added this hazardous passenger
+service. They were braving imprisonment, torture
+and the stake, for in 1562 no less than twenty-six
+Englishmen were burned alive in Spain, and ten times
+as many lay in prison. Before Drake was twenty all
+Spanish ports were closed to English trade. He sold
+his ship and joined Hawkins in his more or less contraband
+trade with the West Indies.</p>
+
+<p>With every year of adventure upon the high seas his
+hatred of the tyranny of Spain deepened and strengthened.
+Yet though Spanish ferocity might soak the
+world in blood, he would not have his men tainted with
+the evil inheritance of the idolaters. It came to be
+known that El Draque did not kill prisoners. His
+crews fought like demons, but they slew no unarmed
+man, they molested no woman or child. On these
+terms only would he accept allies. Tons of plunder he
+took, but never a helpless life. He landed the shivering
+crews of his prizes on some Spanish island or with <span class='pagenum'>[223]</span>
+a laugh returned to them their empty ships. "A dead
+man's no mortal use to anybody," he would say cheerily,
+and go on using his cock-boats to sink or capture galleys.
+At twenty-seven, beholding for the first time
+the shining Pacific, he vowed that with God's help he
+would sail an English ship on that sea. Alone upon
+the platform built in a great tree with steps cut in its
+trunk, to which his negro allies the Maroons had
+guided him, he conceived the sublimely audacious plan
+which he was one day to unfold to Walsingham and the
+Queen.</p>
+
+<p>The air was thick with rumors of war with Spain
+when Drake arrived in London years later, in the company
+of a new friend, Thomas Doughty,&mdash;courtier,
+soldier, scholar, familiar with every shifting undercurrent
+of European court life. Never at a loss for a
+phrase, ready of wit and quick of understanding,
+Doughty could put into words what the frank-hearted
+young sea-captain had thought and felt and dreamed.
+Both knew the peace with Philip to be only deceptive.
+Walsingham and Leicester were for war; Burleigh for
+peace; between the two the subtle Queen played fast
+and loose with her powerful enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Drake avowed to Doughty his belief that to strike
+effectively at the gigantic power of Spain, England
+must raid the colonies&mdash;not the West Indies alone,
+but the rich western provinces of Peru and Chili. No
+one had been south of Patagonia since its discovery,
+sixty years before. Geographers still held that beyond
+the Straits of Magellan a huge Antarctic continent
+existed. From that unknown region of darkness
+and tempest came the great heaving ground-swell, the
+tidal wave and the hurricane. Even Spanish pilots
+never used the perilous southern route. Treasure went <a name='Page_224' id='Page_224'></a><span class='pagenum'>[224]</span>
+overland across the Isthmus. Every year an elephantine
+treasure-ship sailed from Panama westward
+through the South Sea; and there was a rich trade between
+the American mines and the Orient and the
+Spanish peninsula, by way of the Cape of Good Hope.
+Doughty's imagination was fired by the gorgeous possibilities
+of the idea, and when he became the secretary
+of Christopher Hatton, the Queen's handsome Captain
+of the Guard, he laid the plan before him with all
+the eloquence of his persuasive tongue. Hatton
+finally obtained from Elizabeth a promise to contribute
+a thousand crowns to the cost of an expedition to penetrate
+the South Seas. This, however, was only on condition
+that the affair should be kept secret, above all
+from Burleigh, who was certain to use every effort to
+stop it. She had already, in a private audience with
+Drake, been informed of the main features and even
+the details of the scheme, and had assured him that
+when the time was ripe he should be chosen to avenge
+the long series of injuries which Philip had inflicted
+upon England's honor and her own.</p>
+
+<p>When in mid-November, 1577, Drake ran out of
+Plymouth with his tiny fleet, he had with him all told
+one hundred and fifty seamen and fourteen boys, enlisted
+for a voyage to Alexandria, although it was
+pretty well known that this was a blind. His flagship,
+the <i>Pelican</i>, afterward re-christened the <i>Golden
+Hynde</i> for Hatton's coat-of-arms, was a hundred-ton
+ship carrying eighteen guns. The <i>Marygold</i>, a
+barque of thirty tons and fifteen guns, and the <i>Swan</i>,
+a provision ship of fifty tons, were commanded by two
+of the gentlemen volunteers, Mr. John Thomas and
+Mr. John Chester. Captain John Wynter commanded
+the <i>Elizabeth</i>, a new eighty-ton ship, and a <span class='pagenum'>[225]</span>
+fifteen-ton pinnace called the <i>Christopher</i> in honor of
+Hatton, was commanded by Tom Moore. Thomas
+Doughty was commander of the land-soldiers, and his
+brother John was enlisted among the gentlemen adventurers.</p>
+
+<p>All of Drake's experience and sagacity had gone to
+the fitting out of the ships. There were less than fifty
+men on board besides the regular crews, and among
+them were special artisans, two trained surveyors,
+skilled musicians furnished with excellent instruments,
+and the adventurous sons of some of the best families
+in England. As page the Admiral had his own
+nephew, Jack Drake. There were stores of wild-fire,
+chain-shot, arquebuses, pistols, bows, and other weapons.
+The Queen herself had sent packets of perfume
+breathing of rich gardens, and Drake's table furniture
+was of silver gilt, engraved with his arms; even some
+of the cooking utensils were of silver. Nothing was
+spared which became the dignity of England, her Admiral
+and her Queen. On calm nights the sea was
+alive with music. And on board the little flagship
+Doughty and Drake talked together as those do whose
+minds answer one another like voices in a roundelay.</p>
+
+<p>Men who have time and again run their heads into
+the jaws of death are often inclined to fatalism.
+Drake had never expressed it in words, but he had a
+feeling that whatever he was meant to do, God would
+see that he did, so long as he gave himself wholly to
+the work. One evening when the Southern Cross was
+lifting above the darkling sea, and the violins were
+crooning something with a weird burden to it,
+Doughty mused aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is the strangest thing in life, that whatever we
+are most averse to, that we are fated to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" said Drake with a laugh, looking up from <a name='Page_226' id='Page_226'></a><span class='pagenum'>[226]</span>
+Eden's translation of Pigafetts. "Accordin' to that
+you can't even trust yourself. D'you look to see me
+set up an image to be worshiped?" Then he added
+in a lower tone, "That's foolish, Tom. God don't
+shape us to be puppets."</p>
+
+<p>"That sounds like old Saavedra," was Doughty's
+idle comment. "He had great store of antiquated
+sentiments&mdash;like those in the chronicles of the paladins.
+I knew his nephew well&mdash;a witty fellow, but
+visionary. He laughed at the old cavalero, but he
+was fond of him, and our affections rule us and ruin
+us. A man should have no loves nor hates if he would
+get on at court."</p>
+
+<p>Sheer surprise kept the other silent for the moment,
+and Doughty went on,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The old man had been in Mexico with Cortes, and
+might have risen to Adelantado in some South American
+province if he had not been too scrupulous to join
+Pizarro. He was in London, ten or fifteen years before
+I knew him, and I believe he was the destruction
+of a well-considered Spanish plot for the assassination
+of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth&mdash;the assassins
+nearly killed him. He was left for dead and was
+picked up by some sailors."</p>
+
+<p>"He was in luck." Drake's eyes twinkled.</p>
+
+<p>"They would have been luckier&mdash;if they had let
+the Spanish agents in London know they had him. He
+paid them well of course, but he gave them credit for
+the most exalted motives. All his geese were swans."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe they acted out o' pure decency," Drake
+said dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"My Admiral, this is not Utopia." Doughty
+stroked his beard with a light complacent hand.
+"Seriously, it is not a kindness to expect of men without <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+traditions more than they are capable of doing.
+'E meglio cade dalle fenestre che del tetto.'" (It is
+better to fall from the window than from the roof.)</p>
+
+<p>Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese
+poniard with the blade inlaid with gold and the great
+ruby in the top of the hilt, which lay on the table between
+them. The shipmaster came in just then with
+some question, and the conversation dropped.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 416px;">
+<img src="images/illus-260.png" width="416" height="600" alt="&quot;Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard.&quot;&mdash;Page 227" title="&quot;Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard.&quot;&mdash;Page 227" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 227</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was not often that Francis Drake attempted to
+analyze the character and behavior of those about him.
+Mostly he judged men by a shrewd instinct; but that
+night he lay long awake, watching the witch-lights upon
+the waves from the dancing lanterns. He was acute
+enough to see that Doughty had hit slyly at him over
+Saavedra's shoulders. Doughty had not liked it that
+Moone should be raised to the rank of captain; he had
+already shown that he regarded himself as second only
+to Drake in command, and the champion of the gentlemen
+as distinct from the mariners. The second
+officer of every English ship was a practical shipmaster
+whose authority held in all matters concerning navigation.
+The soldiers and their officers were passengers.
+This was unavoidable in view of the new method
+of English sea-fighting, which depended quite as much
+on the skill of the seamen as on the armed and trained
+soldier. English gunners could give the foe a broadside
+and slip away before their huge adversary could
+turn. Drake now had two factions to deal with, and
+he bent his brows and set his jaw as he pondered the
+situation. If discord arose, the gentlemen would have
+to come to order. There was no room here for old
+ideas of caste. Any man too good to haul on a rope
+might go to&mdash;Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Doughty had a way of taking it for granted that <span class='pagenum'>[228]</span>
+Drake and he, as gentlemen, shared thoughts and feelings
+not to be comprehended by common men. On
+land this had not seemed offensive, but on blue water,
+with the old sea-chanteys in his ears, in the intimate association
+of a long voyage, Drake found himself resenting
+it. What was there about the man that made
+his arguments so plausible when one heard them, so
+false when his engaging presence was withdrawn?
+And yet how devoted, how sympathetic, how witty and
+companionable he could be! Drake found himself excusing
+his friend as if he were a woman,&mdash;laughed,
+sighed, and went to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he began to hear of John Doughty's amusing
+himself by reading palms and playing on the superstitions
+of the sailors with strange prophecies, in which
+his brother sometimes joined. Drake summoned the
+two to a brief interview in which Thomas Doughty
+learned that his friend on land, frank, boyish and unassuming,
+was a different person from the Admiral of
+the Fleet. Yet as this impression faded, the brothers
+perversely went on encouraging discord between the
+gentlemen adventurers and the sailors, and foretelling
+events with sinister aptness.</p>
+
+<p>It grew colder and colder. It should be summer,&mdash;but
+as they crept southward they encountered cold and
+wind beyond that of the North Sea in January. The
+nights grew long; the battering of the gales never
+ceased; the ships lost sight of one another. It was
+whispered that not only had the uncanny brothers foretold
+the evil weather, but Thomas Doughty had boasted
+of having brought it about. "We'll ha' no luck till
+we get rid of our prophet," said blunt Tom Moone,
+"and the Lord don't provide no whales for the likes
+o' he."<span class='pagenum'>[229]</span></p>
+
+<p>Drake warned his comrade with an ominous quiet.
+"Doughty," he said, "if you value your neck you keep
+your reading and writing to what a common man can
+understand&mdash;you and your brother. A man can't
+always prophesy for himself, let alone other folk."</p>
+
+<p>"You heard what he said," commented Wynter
+grimly when the Admiral was in his cabin behind closed
+doors. "Better not raise the devil unless you know
+for sure what he'll do. There's been one gallows
+planted on this coast."</p>
+
+<p>"Sneck up!" laughed Doughty, "he would not dare
+hang a gentleman!" but he felt a creeping chill at the
+back of his neck.</p>
+
+<p>On the desolate island where the stump of Magellan's
+gallows stood black against a crimson dawn, they
+landed and the tragedy of estrangement and suspicion
+ended. Thomas Doughty was tried for mutiny and
+treason before a jury of his peers. Every man there
+held him a traitor, yet he was acquitted for lack of evidence.
+Thus encouraged, Doughty boldly declared
+that they should all smart for this when Burleigh heard
+of it. What he had done to hinder the voyage, he
+averred, was by Burleigh's orders, for before they
+sailed he had gone to that wily statesman and told him
+the entire scheme.</p>
+
+<p>In a flash of merciless revelation Drake saw the
+truth. He left Doughty to await the verdict, called
+the companies down to the shore, and there told them
+the story of the expedition from first to last, not overlooking
+the secret orders of the Queen.</p>
+
+<p>"This man was my friend," he said with a break in
+his voice such as they had not heard save at the suffering
+of a child. "I would not take his life,&mdash;but if he
+be worthy of death, I pray you hold up your hands."<span class='pagenum'>[230]</span></p>
+
+<p>There was a breathless instant when none stirred;
+then every hand was raised.</p>
+
+<p>On the next day but one they all sat down to a last
+feast on that bleak and lonely shore; the two comrades
+drank to each other for the last time, shared the sacrament,
+and embracing, said their farewells. Doughty
+proved that if he could not live a true man he could die
+like a gentleman; the headsman did his work, and
+Drake pronounced the solemn sentence, "Lo! this is
+the death of traitors!"</p>
+
+<p>In that black hour the boyish laughter went forever
+from the eyes of the Admiral, and the careless mirth
+from his voice. When after a while young Jack
+Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between
+them, began some phrase of blundering boyish affection,
+the sentence trailed off into a stammer.</p>
+
+<p>"He's dead and at peace, Jack," the master said,
+the words dropping wearily, like spent bullets. "He
+couldn't help being as he was,&mdash;I reckon. If I'd
+known he was like that I could ha' stopped him, but I
+never knew&mdash;till too late."</p>
+
+<p>Discord among the crews continued, until Drake,
+rousing from his fitful melancholy, called them all together
+on a Sunday, and mounted to the place of the
+chaplain.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to preach to-day," he said shortly.
+Then he unfolded a paper and began to read it aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"My masters, I am a very bad orator, for my bringing
+up hath not been in learning; but what I shall
+speak here let every man take good notice of and let
+him write it down. For I will speak nothing but what
+I will answer it in England, yea, and before Her Majesty."
+He reminded them of the great adventure before
+them and went on.<span class='pagenum'>[231]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Now by the life of God this mutiny and dissension
+must cease. Here is such controversy between the gentlemen
+and the sailors that it doth make me mad to
+hear it. I must have the gentleman to haul with the
+mariner and the mariner with the gentleman. I would
+know him that would refuse to set his hand to a rope&mdash;but
+I know there is not any such here.</p>
+
+<p>"Any who desire to go home may go in the <i>Marygold</i>,
+but let them take care that they do go home, for
+if I find them in my way I will sink them."</p>
+
+<p>Then beginning with Wynter he reduced every officer
+to the ranks forthwith, reprimanded known
+offenders, and wound up with this appeal:</p>
+
+<p>"We have set by the ears three mighty sovereigns,
+and if this voyage have not success we shall be a scorning
+unto our enemies and a blot on our country forever.
+What triumph would it not be for Spain and Portugal!
+The like of this would never more be tried!" Then
+he gave every man his former rank and dismissed them.
+Moone, meeting Will Harvest that night by the light
+of a bonfire, was the only man who dared venture a
+comment. "We was spoilin' for a lickin'," he said,
+"and we got it. I do hope and trust we'll keep out o'
+mischief till Frankie gets us home to Plymouth, Hol'."
+Will grinned back cheerfully, and there was a subdued
+laugh from the group about the fire. The fleet
+was itself again.</p>
+
+<p>Adventure after adventure succeeded, wilder than
+minstrel ever sang. The <i>Marygold</i> went down with
+all hands; Wynter in the <i>Elizabeth</i>, believing the Admiral
+lost, turned homeward; the <i>Christopher</i> and the
+<i>Swan</i> had already been broken up. All alone the little
+<i>Golden Hynde</i>, blown southward, sailed around
+Cape Horn and proved the Antarctic continent a myth. <span class='pagenum'>[232]</span>
+Then Drake steered northward after more than two
+month's tossing on the uncharted seas, to revictual
+his ship in Spanish ports, fill his hold with the rich cargoes
+of one prize ship after another, and capture at
+last the great annual treasure-ship <i>Nuestra Señora de
+la Concepçion</i>, nicknamed the <i>Spitfire</i> because she was
+better armed than most of the ships plying on that
+coast. As they ballasted the <i>Golden Hynde</i> with silver
+from her huge hulk the jesting seamen dubbed her
+the <i>Spit-silver</i>. The little flagship was literally brimful
+of silver bars, ingots of gold, pieces of eight, and
+jewels whose value has never been accurately known.
+The Spanish Adelantados, accustomed to trust in their
+remoteness for defense, frantically looked for Drake
+everywhere except where he was. Warships hung
+about the Patagonian coast to catch him on his way
+home&mdash;surely he could not stay at sea forever!</p>
+
+<p>But Drake had other plans. Navigators were still
+searching for the northern passage, the Straits of
+Anian, and he coasted northward until his men were
+half paralyzed with cold and the creeping chill of the
+fog. From the latitude of Vancouver he turned south
+again, and put into a natural harbor not far from the
+present San Francisco, which he named New Albion because
+of the white cliffs like the chalk downs of England.
+Here he landed and made camp to refit and repair
+his flagship. He had captured on one prize, two
+China pilots in whose possession were all the secret
+charts of the Pacific trade.</p>
+
+<p>Indians ventured down from the mountains to the
+little fort and dockyard, wondering and admiring.
+Parson Fletcher presently came to the Admiral with
+the extraordinary news that they were worshiping the
+English as gods. Horror and laughter contended <span class='pagenum'>[233]</span>
+among the Puritans when they found themselves set
+up as idols of the heathen, and the chaplain endeavored
+by signs to teach the simple savages that the God whom
+all men should worship was invisible in the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>"'T only shows," remarked Moone, with a nail
+in one corner of his mouth, after vehemently dissuading
+a persistent adorer, "that a man never knows what
+he'll come to. Granny Toothacre used to say that if
+there's a thing you fight against all your life it'll come
+to you sooner or later."</p>
+
+<p>"So she did," said Drake with a grim smile as he
+passed. "Takes a woman to tell a fortune, after
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"D'you ever hear what become of the old Don we
+picked up that time?" Moone asked in a lowered voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Not since he sent Frankie the dagger with the
+gold work and the jewel. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Cause the pilot o' the <i>Spit-silver</i> he knowed un.
+He say the plague broke out in the Low Countries,
+and the old Don took and tended that Gallego servant
+o' his and then he died&mdash;not o' the pestilence&mdash;just
+wore out like. I reckon maybe he told Mus' Drake.
+I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>Silence fell. Then Will said thoughtfully, "He
+won't be Mus' Drake much longer&mdash;by rights&mdash;but
+you never know what a woman'll do. She keep her
+presents and her favors for them that ha'n't earned
+'em&mdash;as a rule."</p>
+
+<p>Moone presently hummed half aloud,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When I served my master I got my Sunday pudden,</span>
+<span class="i2">When I served the Company I got my bread and cheese.</span>
+<span class="i0">When I served the Queen I got hanged for a pirate,</span>
+<span class="i2">All along o'sailin' on the Carib Seas!"</span>
+</div></div><div><span class='pagenum'>[234]</span></div>
+
+<p>It was a reckless jest, for every one knew that if
+Elizabeth were dead or married to a Catholic or at
+peace with Spain when they saw England again, it was
+extremely likely that the gallows would be their reward.
+But here, at any rate, was one spot not yet
+haunted by the Spanish spectre.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians, persuaded at last that the white chief
+was not a god, insisted on making him their King.
+They crowned him with a headdress of brilliant feathers,
+in all due ceremony, hung a chain of beads about
+his neck, and looked on with the utmost reverence while
+Drake fixed to a large upright post a tablet claiming the
+land for the Queen of England, and a silver sixpence
+with the portrait of Elizabeth and the Tudor rose.
+Securely hidden under the tablet in a hollow of the
+wood were memoranda concerning the direction in
+which, according to the Indians, gold was to be found
+in the streams,&mdash;plenty of gold. When she was
+ready to the last rope's end the little ship spread her
+wings and sailed straight across the Pacific, round the
+Cape of Good Hope, home to England.</p>
+
+<p>Battered and scarred but still seaworthy the <i>Golden
+Hynde</i> crept into Plymouth Sound, where Drake heard
+that the plague was in the seaport. Using this for excuse
+not to land until he knew his footing, he anchored
+behind Saint Nicholas Island and sent letters to Court.</p>
+
+<p>The sea-dogs who patrolled the Narrow Seas in
+Elizabeth's time understood her better than her courtiers
+did. To Drake she was still the keen-minded
+woman who, like the jeweled silent birds he had seen
+in tropical jungles, sat in her palace, with enemies all
+about her alert and observant, and ready to seize her
+if she came within their grasp. He knew her waywardness
+to be half assumed, since to let an enemy <span class='pagenum'>[235]</span>
+know what he can count on is fatal. He had not much
+doubt of her action, but he must wait for her to give
+him his cue.</p>
+
+<p>Within a week came her answer. She demurely
+suggested that she should be pleased to see any curiosities
+which her good Captain had brought home.
+Drake went up to London, and with him a pack train
+laden with the cream of his spoil. The Spanish Ambassador
+Mendoza came with furious letters from
+Philip demanding the pirate's head. A Spanish force
+landed that very week in Ireland. Burleigh and the
+peace party were desperate. All that Mendoza could
+get out of Elizabeth was an order to Edmund Tremayne
+at Plymouth to register the cargo of the <i>Golden
+Hynde</i> and send it up to London that she might see
+how much the pirate had really taken. At the same
+time Drake himself went down with her private letter
+to Tremayne telling him to look another way while
+her captain got his share of the bullion. Meanwhile
+she suggested that Philip call his Spaniards out of
+Ireland. Philip snarled that they were private volunteers.
+Elizabeth replied, so was Drake. An inquiry
+was held, and not a single act of cruelty or destruction
+of property could be proved against any of
+Drake's crews. The men were richly rewarded by
+their Admiral; the <i>Golden Hynde</i> came up to Deptford;
+a list of the plunder was returned to Mendoza;
+and London waited, excited and curious.</p>
+
+<p>Out of this diplomatic tangle Elizabeth took her
+own way, as she usually did. On April 4, 1581, she
+suggested to Drake that she would be his guest at a
+banquet on board the little, worm-eaten ship. All the
+court was there, and a multitude of on-lookers besides,
+for those were the days when royalty sometimes dined <span class='pagenum'>[236]</span>
+in public. After the banquet, the like of which, as
+Mendoza wrote his master, had not been seen in England
+since the time of her father, Elizabeth requested
+Drake to hand her the sword she had given him before
+he left England. "The King of Spain demands the
+head of Captain Drake," she said with a little laugh,
+"and here am I to strike it off." As Drake knelt at
+her command she handed the sword to Marchaumont,
+the envoy of her French suitor, asking that since she
+was a woman and not trained to the use of weapons,
+he should give the accolade. This open defiance of
+Philip thus involved in her action the second Catholic
+power of Europe before all the world. Then, as
+Marchaumont gave the three strokes appointed the
+Queen spoke out clearly, while men thrilled with sudden
+presage of great days to come,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Rise up,&mdash;Sir Francis Drake!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="A_WATCH-DOG_OF_ENGLAND" id="A_WATCH-DOG_OF_ENGLAND"></a>A WATCH-DOG OF ENGLAND</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where the Russian Bear stirs blindly in the leash of a mailéd hand,</span>
+<span class="i0">Bright in the frozen sunshine, the domes of Moscow stand,</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Scarlet and blue and crimson, blazing across the snow</span>
+<span class="i0">As they did in the Days of Terror, three hundred years ago.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Courtiers bending before him, envoys from near and far,</span>
+<span class="i0">Sat in his Hall of Audience Ivan the Terrible Tsar,</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">(He of the knout and torture, poison and sword and flame)</span>
+<span class="i0">Yet unafraid before him the English envoy came.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And he was Sir Jeremy Bowes, born of that golden time</span>
+<span class="i0">When in the soil of Conquest blossomed the flower of Rhyme.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dauntless he fronted the Presence,&mdash;and the courtiers whispered low,</span>
+<span class="i0">"Doth Elizabeth send us madmen, to tempt the torture so?"</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Have you heard of that foolhardy Frenchman?" Ivan the Terrible said,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">"He came before me covered,&mdash;I nailed his hat to his head."</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then spoke Sir Jeremy Bowes, "I serve the Virgin Queen,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Little is she accustomed to vail her face, I ween.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"She is Elizabeth Tudor, mighty to bless or to ban,</span>
+<span class="i0">Nor doth her envoy give over at the bidding of any man!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Call to your Cossacks and hangmen,&mdash;do with me what ye please,</span>
+<span class="i0">But ye shall answer to England when the news flies over seas."</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ivan smiled on the envoy,&mdash;the courtiers saw that smile,</span>
+<span class="i0">Glancing one at the other, holding their breath the while.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then spoke the terrible Ivan, "His Queen sits over sea,</span>
+<span class="i0">Yet he hath bid me defiance,&mdash;would ye do as much for me?"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>XVI</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="LORDS_OF_ROANOKE" id="LORDS_OF_ROANOKE"></a>LORDS OF ROANOKE</h3>
+
+<p>Primrose garlands in Coombe Wood shone
+with the pale gold of winter sunshine. Violets
+among dry leaves peered sedately at the pageant of
+spring. In the royal hunting forest of Richmond,
+venerable trees unfolded from their tiny buds canopies
+like the fairy pavilion of Paribanou.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Armadas and Arthur Barlowe, coming up
+from Kingston, beheld all this April beauty with the
+wistful pleasure of those who bid farewell to a dearly
+beloved land. Within a fortnight Sir Walter Ralegh's
+two ships, which they commanded, would be out
+upon the gray Atlantic. The Queen would lie at Richmond
+this night, and the two young captains had been
+bidden to court that she might see what manner of
+men they were.<a name="FNanchor_1_30" id="FNanchor_1_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_30" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>Armadas, though born in Hull, was the son of a
+Huguenot refugee. Barlowe was English to the back-bone.
+Both knew more of the ways of ships than the
+ways of courts. Yet for all her magnificence and her
+tempers Elizabeth had a way with her in dealing with
+practical men. She welcomed merchants, builders,
+captains and soldiers as frankly as she did Italian
+scholars or French gallants. Her attention was as
+keen when she was framing a letter to the Grand Turk
+securing trade privileges to London or Bristol, as when
+she listened to the graceful flatteries of Spenser or
+Lyly. In this year 1584 she had granted a patent to <span class='pagenum'>[239]</span>
+Ralegh for further explorations of the lands north of
+Florida discovered half a century since by Sebastian
+Cabot. She heaped upon it rights and privileges
+which made Hatton and her other court gallants grind
+their teeth. Ralegh knew well that this was no time
+for him to be wandering about strange coasts. He
+was therefore fitting out an expedition to make a preliminary
+voyage and report to him what was found.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is like this," Armadas was saying with the
+buoyant confidence which endeared him alike to his
+patron and his comrade. "North you get the scurvy
+and south the fever, but midway is the climate for a
+new empire. There Englishmen may have timber for
+their shipyards, and pasture for their sheep and cattle,
+and meadows for their corn. There Flemings and
+Huguenots may live and work in peace. Our sons may
+be lords and princes of a new world, Arthur lad."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye; but there's the Inquisition in the Indies to
+reckon with," answered Barlowe with his grim half-smile.
+"And if what we hear of the barbarians be
+true, the men who make the first plantation may be
+forced to plant and build with their left hand and keep
+their right for fighting."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the barbarians,&mdash;" Armadas began, and
+paused, for the chatter of young voices broke forth in
+a copse.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell thee salvages be hairy men with tails like
+monkeys. My uncle he has seen them on the Guinea
+coast."</p>
+
+<p>"Dick, if thou keep not off my heels in the passamezzo&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Be not so cholerical, Tom Poope, or the Master'll
+give thee a tuning. Thou'rt not Lord of the Indies
+yet."<span class='pagenum'>[240]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Faith," chuckled Barlowe, "here be some little
+eyasses practising a fantasy for the Queen's pleasure.
+Hey, lads, what's all the pother about?"<a name="FNanchor_2_31" id="FNanchor_2_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_31" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>The company emerged half-shamefacedly from the
+shrubbery, a group of youngsters between ten and fourteen,
+in fanciful costumes of silk and brocade, or mimic
+armor and puffed doublets. The central figure of the
+group was a handsome little lad in a sort of tunic of
+hairy undressed goatskin, a feather head-dress and
+gilded ornaments. His dark face had a sullen look,
+and he grasped his lance as if about to use it. Another
+urchin, whose great arched eyebrows, rolling eyes and
+impish mouth marked him as the clown of the company,
+made answer boldly,</p>
+
+<p>"'T is Tom Poope, your lordships, who mislikes
+the dress he must wear, and says if we have but a king
+and queen of the monkeys to welcome the discoverers,
+the Queen will only laugh at us, and 'a will not stay to
+be laughed at. 'T is a masque of the ventures of Captain
+Cabot, look you, and Tom's the King of the
+salvages and makes all the long speeches."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, coz," laughed Armadas, "I think
+we have stumbled upon a pretty conceit intended to do
+honor to our master. Methinks His Royal Highness
+here has the right on't&mdash;the man who made that
+costume never saw true Indians."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen them, then, sir? Are you a voyager?"
+asked Tom Poope eagerly, his face brightening.
+"And will you look on and tell us if we do it
+right?"</p>
+
+<p>Barlowe grinned good-humoredly, and Armadas
+waved a laughing assent. They seated themselves
+upon a grassy bank and the play began.</p>
+
+<p>Before half a dozen speeches had been said it was <span class='pagenum'>[241]</span>
+quite clear that the dark-eyed child who played the Indian
+King was the heart and fire of the piece. They
+were all clever children and well trained, but he alone
+lived his part. His small figure moved with a grace
+and dignity that even his grotesque apparel could not
+spoil. The costumer had evidently built his design
+for the costume of an Indian chief upon legends of wild
+men drawn from the history of Hanno and his gorillas,
+adding whatever absurdities he had gathered from
+sailors of the Gold Coast and the Caribbean Sea.
+Armadas, who had made a voyage to Newfoundland
+and seen the stately figure of a sachem outlined against
+a sunset sky, thought that the boy's instinct was truer
+than the costumer's tradition.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me arrange thy habit, lad," he said when the
+first scene ended and the clown began his dance. With
+a few deft touches, ripping down one side of the tunic
+and wreathing a girdle of ivy and bracken, he changed
+the whole outline of the figure. With the hairy tunic
+draped as a cloak, and the ungainly plumed head-dress
+arranged as a warrior's crest, the character which had
+been almost ridiculous became heroic, as the author of
+the masque evidently had intended. The little King's
+beautiful voice changed like the singing of a Cremona
+violin as he spoke his lines to the white stranger:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To this our wild domain we welcome thee</span>
+<span class="i0">In honorable hospitality.</span>
+<span class="i0">If Thou dost come as the great Lord of Life,</span>
+<span class="i0">The Lord of bear and wolf, and stag and fox,</span>
+<span class="i0">Leopard and ape, and rabbits of the rocks,</span>
+<span class="i0">We are thy children, as our brothers are,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">The furry folk of forest fastnesses,</span>
+<span class="i0">The bright-winged birds that wanton with the breeze,</span>
+<span class="i0">The seal that sport amid the sapphire seas.</span>
+<span class="i0">We worship gods of lightning and of thunder,</span>
+<span class="i0">Of winds and hissing waves, the rainbow's wonder,</span>
+<span class="i0">The fruits and grains, borne by the kindly earth,</span>
+<span class="i0">And all the mysteries of death and birth.</span>
+<span class="i0">Say who you are, and from what realm you hail,</span>
+<span class="i0">White spirits that in winged peraguas sail?</span>
+<span class="i0">If ye be angels, tell us of your heaven.</span>
+<span class="i0">If ye be men, tell us who is your King."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was not a long play, and had been written by a
+court poet especially for the children, of whose acting
+the Queen was fond. There were dances and songs&mdash;a
+sailor's contra-dance to the music of a horn pipe, a
+stately passamezzo by the Indian court, a madrigal and
+an ode in compliment to the Queen.<a name="FNanchor_3_32" id="FNanchor_3_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_32" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Finally the
+leader of the white men planted the banner of England
+on the little knoll, and in the name of his sovereign
+received the homage of the Indians. The last
+notes of the final chorus had just died away when
+trumpets called from the Thames, and the scene melted
+into chaos. Off ran the players, cramming costumes
+and properties into their wallets as they went, to see
+the Queen land at the water-gate. Amadas and Barlowe
+took the same direction less hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder now," said Armadas thoughtfully, "how
+much of prophecy there may have been in that mascarado?
+Do you know, old lad, we may be taken for
+gods ourselves in two months' time? God grant they
+think us not devils before we are done!"</p>
+
+<p>"We need have no fear if no Spaniards have landed
+on that coast before us," said Barlowe stolidly. "If
+they have&mdash;no poetical speeches will help our cause."</p>
+
+<p>The Queen's great gilded barge with its crimson
+hangings came sweeping up the river just as they joined
+the company drawn up to receive her. The tall graceful <span class='pagenum'>[243]</span>
+figure of Ralegh was nearest her, and when she set
+her small neat foot upon the stone step it was his hand
+which she accepted to steady her in landing. She was
+a sovereign every inch even in her traveling cloak, but
+when dinner was over, and she took her seat in the
+throne-room, she dazzled the eye with the splendor
+of gold and pearl network over brilliant velvets, the
+glitter of diamonds among the frost-work of Flanders
+lace. Elizabeth knew how to stage the great Court
+drama as well as any Master of the Revels.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, what the Queen did, set the fashion for
+all the courtiers, to the profit and prosperity of merchants
+and craftsmen. Earls might secretly writhe at
+the prospect of entertaining their sovereign with suitable
+magnificence, but the tradesmen and purveyors
+rubbed their hands. When a company of Flemings
+was employed for four years on the carving of the
+beams and panels of the Middle Temple Hall, or
+noblemen to be in the fashion built new banquet-rooms
+in the Italian style, with long windows and galleries,
+English, Flemish and Huguenot builders flocked to the
+kingdom. If she took with one hand she gave with
+the other, and it was not without reason that the common
+folk of England long after she was dead called
+their daughters after "good Queen Bess."</p>
+
+<p>To Armadas and Barlowe it was a novel and
+splendid pageant. After they were presented to the
+Queen, and expressed their modest thanks for the
+honor of being sent upon her service, they withdrew
+to a window-recess to watch the company. The gentlemen
+pensioners in gold-embroidered suits and lace-edged
+ruffs, the dignified councilors in richer if darker
+robes, the maids of honor, bright as damask roses moving
+in the wind, all circled around one pale woman <a name='Page_244' id='Page_244'></a><span class='pagenum'>[244]</span>
+with keen gray-blue eyes that never betrayed her. A
+little apart, speaking now and then to some courtier
+or councilor, stood the Spanish Ambassador in somber
+black and gold, like a watchful spider in a garden of
+rich flowers. Ralegh, careless and debonair, gave him
+a frank salutation as he came to speak to his captains.</p>
+
+<p>"You may repent of the venture and wish to stay
+at Court," he said smiling. "The Queen thinks well
+of ye."</p>
+
+<p>"Not I," growled Barlowe, and Armadas laughed,
+"My Lord, do you think so ill of us as to deem us
+weathercocks in the wind?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must take care to avoid the clutches of the
+Inquisition," Ralegh added, not lowering his voice
+noticeably, yet not speaking loud enough to be heard
+by others. "I have hastened the fitting out of the
+ships and delayed your coming to Court lest Philip's
+ferrets be set on you. The life of Kings and Queens
+is like to a game of chess."</p>
+
+<p>"Of primero rather, it seems to me," said Armadas,
+"or the game the Spanish call ombre. Chess is brain
+against brain, fair play. In the other one may win the
+game by the fall of the cards&mdash;or by cheatery."<a name="FNanchor_4_33" id="FNanchor_4_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_33" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>"A good simile, Philip," said Ralegh, with shining
+eyes. "'T is all very well to say, as some do, that if
+old King Harry were alive he'd have our Englishmen
+out of Spanish prisons. But in his day Spain had
+hardly begun her conquests over seas, and the Inquisition
+had not tasted English blood. It was Philip that
+taught our men primero&mdash;and the best player is he
+who can bluff, so playing his hand that his enemy
+guesses not the truth. And the stake in this game
+is&mdash;Empire."</p>
+
+<p>Ralegh's head lifted as if he saw visions. In silence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+the three joined the company now assembling to see
+the masque of the children. Bravely it went, nimbly
+the dancers footed it, sweetly rang the choruses, and
+well did the little chief and captain play their parts.
+At the end the Queen, saying in merry courtesy that
+she could do no less for him who had found her a
+kingdom and him who freely gave it, presented a ring
+set with a carnelian heart to Hal Kempe who played
+Cabot, but about the neck of Tom Poope she hung a
+golden chain, for if he had to wear her fetters, she
+said, they should at least be golden. And so the play
+came to an end, and work began.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 412px;">
+<img src="images/illus-280.png" width="412" height="600" alt="&quot;If he had to wear her fetters, they should at least be golden.&quot;&mdash;Page 245" title="&quot;If he had to wear her fetters, they should at least be golden.&quot;&mdash;Page 245" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;If he had to wear her fetters, they should at least be golden.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 245</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On April 27, with a fair wind, the two ships of
+Ralegh's venture went down to the Channel and out
+upon the western ocean. They had good fortune, for
+not a Spaniard crossed their course. Nine weeks later
+they sighted the coast which the French had once
+called Carolina. Before they were near enough to
+see it well they caught the scent of a wilderness of flowering
+vines and trees blown seaward, and as they
+neared the shore they saw tall cedars and goodly cypresses,
+pines and oaks and many other trees, some of
+them quite unknown to English soil. It is written in
+Armadas's journal that the wild grapes were so abundant
+near the sea that sometimes the waves washed
+over them; and the sands were yellow as gold. The
+first time that an arquebus was fired, great flocks of
+birds rose from the trees, screaming all together like
+the shouting of an army, but there seemed to be no
+fierce beasts nor indeed any large animals.</p>
+
+<p>"With kine, sheep, cattle, and poultry, and such
+herbs and grain as can be brought from England,"
+said Armadas, "this land would sure be a paradise on
+earth."<span class='pagenum'>[246]</span></p>
+
+<p>"You forget the serpent," returned Barlowe, who
+had been reared by a Puritan grandfather and knew
+his Bible.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not likely to forget our great enemy while
+the name of Ribault or Coligny remains unforgotten,"
+said the other. "All the more reason why this land
+should be kept for the Religion."</p>
+
+<p>Indeed when they landed they found little in the
+country or the people to recall Adam's doom. They
+set up their English standard upon an island and took
+possession of the domain in the name of Elizabeth of
+England. This island the Indians called Wocoken,
+and the inlet where the ships lay, Ocracoke. They
+went inland as the guests of the native chiefs, and on
+the island of Roanoke they were entertained by the
+people of Wingina the king, most kindly and hospitably.
+The sea remained smooth and pleasant and the
+air neither very hot nor very cold, but sweet and wholesome.
+Manteo and Wanchese, two of the Indian warriors,
+chose to sail away with the white men, and in
+good time the ships returning reached Plymouth harbor,
+early in September of that year. Manteo was
+made Lord of Roanoke, the first and the last of the
+American Indians to bear an English title to his wild
+estate. The new province was named Virginia, with
+the play upon words favored in that day, for it was a
+virgin country, and its sovereign was the Virgin Queen.</p>
+
+<p>When the two captains came again to London they
+found the air full of the intriguings of Spain. In that
+year Santa Cruz had organized a plot against the
+Queen's life, discovered almost by chance; in that year
+it became clear that Philip's long chafing against the
+growing sea-power of England and his hatred of such
+rangers as Drake and Hawkins must sooner or later <span class='pagenum'>[247]</span>
+blaze up in war. And by chance also Armadas learned
+how narrow had been their own escape from a Spanish
+prison.</p>
+
+<p>He had been the guest of a friend at the acting of
+Master Lyly's new masque by the Children of the
+Chapel at Gray's Inn. Little Tom Poope sang
+Apelles's song and ruffled it afterward among the ladies
+of the court, as lightly as Essex himself. Armadas
+came out into the dank Thames air humming over the
+dainty verses,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'At last he staked her all his arrows.</span>
+<span class="i0">His mother's doves, and team of sparrows&mdash;'"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A small hand slid into his own and pulled him
+toward a byway.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how is it with thee, Master Poope? Didst
+play thy part bravely, lad."</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said the boy in a low breathless voice.
+"I have somewhat to tell thee. In here," and he
+drew Armadas toward a doorway. "'T is my mother's
+lodging&mdash;there is nothing to fear."</p>
+
+<p>A woman let them in as if she had been watching
+for them, opened the door into a small plainly furnished
+private room and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"Art not going on any more voyages to the Virginias?"
+asked the boy, his eager eyes on the Captain's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for the present, my boy. Why? Wouldst
+like to sail with us, and learn more of the ways of
+Indian Princes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I have no time for fooling&mdash;they'll miss
+me," said the youngster impatiently. "The Spanish
+Ambassador has his spies upon thee, and thou must
+leave a false scent for them to smell out. He sent his
+report on thee, eight months ago."<span class='pagenum'>[248]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Before we sailed to Roanoke?" queried Armadas
+with lifted brows.</p>
+
+<p>"Before thou went to Richmond that day. His
+Excellency quizzed me after the masque and asked me
+did I know when the ships sailed and whither they
+were bound, believing me to be cozened by his gold. I
+told him they were for Florida to find the fountain of
+youth for the Queen, and would sail on May-day!"</p>
+
+<p>A grin of pure delight widened the boy's face, and
+he wriggled in gleeful remembrance where he perched,
+on a tall oaken chair. "Oh, they will swallow any
+bait, those gudgeons, and some day their folly will be
+the end of them. I would not have them catch thee
+if they could be fooled, and well did I fool them, I
+tell thee!"</p>
+
+<p>"For&mdash;heaven's&mdash;sake!" stammered Armadas
+in amazement. "Little friend," he added gently, "it
+seems to me that we owe thee life and honor. But
+why didst do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" The boy's fine dark brows bent in a
+quick frown. "What a pox right had they to be
+tempting me to be false to the salt that I and they had
+eaten? I hate all Spaniards. I'd ha' done it any
+way," he added shyly, "for to win our game, but I
+did it for love o' thee because thou took my part about
+the mascarado."</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Armadas as he took from his wallet
+a bracelet of Indian shell-work hung with baroque
+pearls, "that all our fine plans would ha' come to
+naught but for thy wise head, young 'un. These be
+pearls from the Virginias, and if you find 'em scorched,
+that's only because the heathen know no other way of
+opening the oyster-shell but by fire. The beads are
+such as they use for money and call roanoke. The <span class='pagenum'>[249]</span>
+gold of the Spanish mines can buy men maybe, but it
+does not buy such loyalty as thine, that's sure. I have
+no gold to give, lad,&mdash;but wear this for a love-token.
+And I think that could the truth be known, the Queen
+herself would freely name thee Lord of Roanoke."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">notes</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_30" id="Footnote_1_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_30"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+The name is variously spelled Armadas, Amidas and Amadas.
+The form here used is that of the earliest records. The same is true
+of the spelling "Ralegh."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_31" id="Footnote_2_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_31"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+Companies of children under various names were often employed
+in the acting of plays in the time of Elizabeth. These are the
+"troops of children, little eyasses" alluded to by Shakespeare in
+"Hamlet." They sometimes acted in plays written for them by
+Lyly and others, and sometimes in the popular dramas of the day.
+Ben Jonson wrote a charming epitaph on Salathiel Pavy, one of these
+little actors, who died at thirteen.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_32" id="Footnote_3_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_32"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+The passamezzo, passy-measure or half-measure was a popular
+Elizabethan dance, like the coranto and lavolta.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_33" id="Footnote_4_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_33"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+Primero, or ombre, is said to be the ancestor of our modern game
+of poker. An interesting account of its origin and variations will be
+found in Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer's "Prophetical, Educational
+and Playing Cards."</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_CHANGELINGS" id="THE_CHANGELINGS"></a>THE CHANGELINGS</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out on the road to Fairyland where the dreaming children go,</span>
+<span class="i0">There's a little inn at the Sign of the Rose, that all the fairies know,</span>
+<span class="i0">For Titania lodged in that tavern once, and betwixt the night and the day</span>
+<span class="i0">The children that crowded about her there, she stole their hearts away!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Peaseblossom, Moth and Mustardseed, Agate and Airymouse too,</span>
+<span class="i0">Once were children that laughed and played as children always do,</span>
+<span class="i0">But when Titania kissed their lips, and crowned them with daffodil gold</span>
+<span class="i0">They never forgot what she whispered them, they never knew how to grow old!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mothers that wonder why little lads forget their homely ways,</span>
+<span class="i0">And little maids put their dolls aside and take to acting plays,</span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, let them be kings and queens awhile, for there's nothing sad or mean</span>
+<span class="i0">In their innocent thought, and their crowns were wrought by the touch o' the Fairy Queen!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Close to the heart o' the world they come, the children who know the way</span>
+<span class="i0">To the little low gateway under the rose, where 't is neither night nor day.</span>
+<span class="i0">They see what others can never guess, they hear what we cannot hear,</span>
+<span class="i0">And the loathly dragons that waste our life they never learn to fear.</span>
+</div><span class='pagenum'>[251]</span>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The little inn at the Sign of the Rose,&mdash;ah, who can forget the place</span>
+<span class="i0">Where Titania danced with the children small and lent them her elfin grace?</span>
+<span class="i0">And wherever they go and whatever they do in the years that turn them gray</span>
+<span class="i0">They never forget the charm she said when she stole their hearts away!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>XVII</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_GARDENS_OF_HELENE" id="THE_GARDENS_OF_HELENE"></a>THE GARDENS OF HELÊNE</h3>
+
+<p>"Is there not any saint of the kitchen, at all?" asked
+the serious-eyed little demoiselle sorting herbs under
+the pear-tree. Old Jacqueline, gathering the tiny
+fagots into her capacious apron, chuckled wisely.</p>
+
+<p>"There should be, if there isn't. Perhaps the good
+God thinks that the men will take care that there are
+kitchens, without His help." She hobbled briskly into
+the house. Helêne sat for a few minutes with hands
+folded, her small nose alert as a rabbit's to the marvelous
+blend of odors in the hot sunshiny air.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very agreeable place, that old French garden.
+There had been a kitchen-garden on that very
+spot for more than five hundred years; at least, so said
+Monsieur Lescarbot the lawyer, and he knew all about
+the history of the world. A part of the old wall had
+been there in the days of the First Crusade, and the
+rest looked as if it had. When Henry of Navarre
+dined at the Guildhall, before Ivry, they had come
+to Jacqueline for poultry and seasoning. She could
+show you exactly where she gathered the parsley, the
+thyme, the marjoram, the carrots and the onion for
+the stuffing, and from which tree the selected chestnuts
+came. A white hen proudly promenading the yard at
+this moment was the direct descendant of the fowl
+chosen for the King's favorite dish of <i>poulet en casserole</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But the common herbs were far from being all that <span class='pagenum'>[253]</span>
+this garden held. Besides the dozen or more herbs
+and as many vegetables which all cooks used, there
+were artichokes, cucumbers, peppers of several kinds,
+marigolds, rhubarb, and even two plants of that curious
+Peruvian vegetable with the golden-centered
+creamy white flowers, called po-té-to. Jacqueline's
+husband, who had been a sea-captain, had brought
+those roots from Brazil, and she,&mdash;Helêne,&mdash;who was
+very little then, had disgraced herself by gathering the
+flowers for a nosegay. It was after that that Jacqueline
+had begun to teach her what each plant was
+good for, and how it must be fed and tended.
+Helêne had grown to feel that every plant, shrub or
+seedling was alive and had thoughts. In the delightful
+fairy tales that Monsieur Marc Lescarbot told her
+they were alive, and talked of her when they left their
+places at night and held moonlight dances.</p>
+
+<p>Lescarbot's thin keen face with the bald forehead
+and humorous eyes appeared now at the grille in the
+green door. He swept off his béret and made a deep
+bow. "Mademoiselle la bien-aimée de la bonne Sainte
+Marthe," he said gravely, "may I come in?"</p>
+
+<p>He had a new name for her every time he came,
+usually a long one. "But why Sainte Marthe?" she
+asked, running to let him in.</p>
+
+<p>"She is the patron saint of cooks and housewives,
+petite. A good cook can do anything. Sainte Marthe
+entertained the blessed Lord in her own home, and was
+the first nun of the sisterhood she founded. Moreover
+when she was preaching at Aix a fearful dragon
+by the name of Tarasque inhabited the river Rhone,
+and came out each night to devastate the country until
+Sainte Marthe was the means of his&mdash;conversion."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, go on!" cried Helêne, and Lescarbot sat <span class='pagenum'>[254]</span>
+down on the old bench under the pear-tree and began
+to help with the herbs.</p>
+
+<p>"Sainte Marthe was an excellent cook, and the first
+thing she did when she founded her convent was to
+plant a kitchen-garden. On Saint John's Eve she went
+into the garden and watered each plant with holy
+water, blessing it in the use of God. People came
+from miles around to get roots and seeds from the
+garden and to ask for Sainte Marthe's recipes for
+broths and cordials for the sick. Often they brought
+roots of such plants as rhubarb and&mdash;er&mdash;marigold,
+which had been imported from heathen countries, to
+be blessed and made wholesome." Lescarbot's eye
+rested on the potato plant, which he distrusted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well. The dragon prowled around and around
+the convent walls, but of course he could not come in.
+At last he pretended to be sick and sent for Sainte
+Marthe to come and cure him. As soon as she set
+eyes on him she knew what a wicked lie he had told,
+and resolved to punish him for his impudence. Of
+course all he wanted of her was to get her recipes for
+sauces and stews so that he might cook and eat his
+victims without having indigestion&mdash;which is what a
+good sauce is for. Sainte Marthe promised to make
+him some broth if he would do no harm while she was
+gone, and just to make sure he kept his promise she
+made him hold out his fore-paws and tied them hard
+and fast with her girdle, while he sat with his fore-legs
+around his&mdash;er&mdash;knees, and her broomstick
+thrust crosswise between. Then she got out her
+largest kettle and made a good savory broth of all
+the herbs in her garden&mdash;there were three hundred
+and sixty-five kinds. She knew that if he drank it all,
+the blessed herbs would work such a change in his <span class='pagenum'>[255]</span>
+inside that he would be like a lamb forever after.</p>
+
+<p>"But one thing neither she nor Tarasque had
+thought of, and that was, that the broth was hot. Of
+course he always took his food and drink very cold.
+When he smelled its delicious fragrance he opened his
+mouth wide, and she poured it hissing hot down his
+throat, and it melted him into a famous bubbling
+spring. People go there to be cured of colic."</p>
+
+<p>Helêne drew a long breath. She did not believe
+that Lescarbot had found that story in any book of
+legends of the saints, but she liked it none the worse for
+that.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if Sainte Marthe blessed this garden?"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no doubt she did, and that is why it flourishes
+from Easter to Michaelmas. But I came to-day
+for a potato. Sieur de Monts desires to see one and
+to understand the method of its cultivation."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know that," cried Helêne, eagerly, and she
+took one of the queer brown roots from the willow
+basket by the wall. "See, these are its eyes, one, two,
+three&mdash;seven eyes in this one. You must cut it in
+pieces, as many pieces as it has eyes, and plant each
+piece separately; and from each eye springs a plant."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Lescarbot gravely, and he put the potato
+in his wallet.</p>
+
+<p>For two years Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, and
+the valiant gentlemen Samuel de Champlain, Bienville
+de Poutrincourt, and others of his company, had been
+striving to maintain a settlement in the grant of La
+Cadie or L'Acadie, between the fortieth and forty-sixth
+degrees of north latitude in the New World, of
+which the King had made De Monts Lieutenant-General.
+De Monts engaged Champlain, who had already <span class='pagenum'>[256]</span>
+explored those coasts, as chief geographer, and
+the merchant Pontgravé was in charge of a store-ship
+laden with supplies. Fearing the severe winter of the
+St. Lawrence, the party steered south along the coast
+and anchored in a tranquil and beautiful harbor surrounded
+with forest, green lowlands, and hills laced
+with waterfalls. In his delight with the place Poutrincourt
+declared that he would ask nothing better than
+to make it his home; and he received a grant of the
+harbor, which he named Port Royal. The expedition
+finally came to rest on an island in a river flowing into
+Passamaquoddy Bay, where they began their settlement.
+Their wooden buildings&mdash;a house for their
+viceroy, one for Champlain and other gentlemen, barracks,
+lodgings, workshops and storehouses,&mdash;surrounded
+a square in the middle of which one fine cedar
+was left standing, while a belt of them remained to
+hedge the island from the north winds. The work
+done, Poutrincourt set sail for France, leaving seventy-nine
+men to spend the winter at Ile Sainte-Croix.
+Scurvy broke out, and before spring almost half the
+company were in their graves. Spring came, but no
+help from France. It was June 16 before Poutrincourt
+returned with forty men, and two days later
+Champlain set sail in a fifteen-ton barque with De
+Monts and several others, to explore the coast and
+discover if possible a better place for the colony.
+They went as far south as Nauset Harbor, and Champlain
+made charts and kept a journal quaintly illustrated
+with figures drawn and painted; but De Monts
+found no place that suited him. Then he bethought
+himself of the deep sheltered harbor of Port Royal,
+and they removed everything to that new site, on the
+north side of the basin below the mouth of a little <span class='pagenum'>[257]</span>
+river which they called the Équille. Even parts of the
+buildings were taken across the Bay of Fundy. But
+a ship from France brought news to De Monts that
+enemies at court were working against his Company,
+and leaving Pontgravé in command he and Poutrincourt
+returned home, to see what they could do to
+further the interests of the colony in Paris. Among
+other things Champlain, who had tried without success
+to make a garden in the sandy soil of the island,
+begged them to provide the settlers with seeds, roots,
+cuttings and implements by which they might raise
+grain and vegetables and other provisions for themselves.
+This would improve the health and also reduce
+the expenses of the colony, and the land about the
+new site was well adapted for cultivation.</p>
+
+<p>Poutrincourt, foregathering with his friend Lescarbot
+soon after the lawyer had lost nearly all he possessed
+in a suit, recounted to him the woes of the
+colony, and found with pleasure that in spite of the
+doleful history of the last two years Lescarbot was
+eager to seek a new career in New France.</p>
+
+<p>Helêne came running in one morning in the early
+spring of 1606, to find old Jacqueline on the steps of
+the root-cellar with a heap of sprouting potatoes beside
+her. Lescarbot was packing away in a panier such
+as she gave him, while under the whitening pear-tree a
+donkey stood, sleepily shaking his ears as he waited
+for orders.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what are you doing, Uncle Marc?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Making ready to go to the land beyond the sunset,
+Mademoiselle la Princesse du Jardin de Paradis,"
+he said smiling. "Sit down while the good mother
+gets the packets of seeds she promised me, and I will
+tell you a story."<span class='pagenum'>[258]</span></p>
+
+<p>All curiosity and wonder, the little maid settled
+herself on the ancient worm-eaten bench, and Lescarbot
+began.</p>
+
+<p>"It happened one day that men came and told the
+King that a great realm lay beyond the seas, where
+only wild men and animals lived, and that this realm
+was all his. Now the wild men were not good for
+anything, for they had never been taught anything, but
+since the winters in that country were very cold the
+animals wore fur coats. The King called to him a
+Chief Huntsman and told him that he might go and
+collect tribute from the fur coats of the animals, and
+that after he had given the King his share, the fur
+coats of all the animals belonged to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Did the animals know it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think they did, for they were accustomed to having
+men try to take away their fur coats. All the
+other hunters were very angry when they found that
+the King had given this order, but the Chief Huntsman
+told them that they might have a share in the
+hunting, only they must ask his permission and pay
+tribute to the King; and that satisfied them for a while.</p>
+
+<p>"The Chief Huntsman sailed to the far country
+and built a castle for himself and his men, and when
+winter came they found that it was indeed very cold&mdash;so
+cold that the wine and the cider froze and had to
+be given out by the pound instead of the pint. But
+that was not the worst of it. There was a dragon."</p>
+
+<p>Helêne's blue eyes grew round with interest.</p>
+
+<p>"A dragon whose poisonous breath tainted the food
+and caused a terrible plague. They prayed to Saint
+Luke the Physician for help, and he appeared to them
+in a vision and said, 'I cannot do anything for you so
+long as you eat not good food. God made man to live <span class='pagenum'>[259]</span>
+in a garden, not to fill himself with salt fish and salt
+meat and dry bread.' But they could not plant a garden
+in the middle of winter, and they had to wait.
+When the ship went back to France a gallant captain&mdash;named
+Samuel de Champlain&mdash;sent a letter to a
+friend of his in France, praying him to send a gardener
+with seeds, roots and cuttings that there might be
+good broths and tisanes and sauces to work magic
+against the dragon that he slay no more of their folk.
+And, little Helêne, I am filling a pair of paniers with
+those roots and those seeds, and I am going to be a
+gardener beyond the sunset."</p>
+
+<p>Helêne looked grave. To find her friend and playfellow
+suddenly dropped away from her into the middle
+of a fairy-tale was rather terrifying, but it was also
+thrilling. She slipped down from the bench.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have cuttings from my very own rose-bushes,"
+said she; and at her direction Lescarbot took
+up very carefully small rose-shoots that had rooted
+themselves around the great bushes,&mdash;bushes that bore
+roses white with a faint flush, white with a golden-creamy
+heart, pure snow-white, sunrise pink and deep
+glowing crimson with a purple shade.</p>
+
+<p>If Lescarbot had been a superstitious man, he might
+have been inclined to gloom during his first sea-voyage,
+for the ship in which he and Poutrincourt set sail from
+Rochelle on the thirteenth of May, 1606, was called
+the <i>Jonas</i>. But instead he joined in all the diversions
+possible in their two months' voyage&mdash;harpooning
+porpoises, fishing for cod off the Banks, or dancing
+on the deck in calm weather,&mdash;and in his leisure kept
+a lively and entertaining journal of the adventure.
+They ran into dense fog in which they could see nothing;
+they saw, when the mist cleared, a green and <span class='pagenum'>[260]</span>
+lovely shore, but before it fierce and dangerous rocks
+on which the breakers pounded. Then a storm broke,
+with rolling thunder like a salute of cannon. At last
+on July 27 they sailed into the narrow channel at the
+entrance of the harbor of Port Royal.</p>
+
+<p>The flag of France, with its golden lilies on a white
+ground, gleamed in the noon sunlight as they came
+up the bay toward the little group of wooden buildings
+in the edge of the forest. Not a man was to be
+seen on the silent shore; a birch canoe, with one old
+Indian in it, hovered near the landing. A great fear
+gripped the hearts of Bienville de Poutrincourt and
+Marc Lescarbot. Were Pontgravé and Champlain all
+dead with their people? Had help come too late?</p>
+
+<p>Then from the bastion of the rude fortifications a
+cannon barked salute, and a Frenchman with a gun
+in his hand came running down to the beach. The
+ship's guns returned the salute, and the trumpets sang
+loud greeting to whoever might be there to hear.</p>
+
+<p>When they had landed they learned what had happened.
+There were only two Frenchmen in the fort;
+Pontgravé and the others, fearing that the supply
+ship would never arrive, had gone twelve days before
+in two small ships of their own building to look for
+some of the French fishing fleet who might have provisions.
+The two who remained had volunteered to
+stay and guard the buildings and stores. There was a
+village of friendly Indians near by, and the chief,
+Membertou, who was more than a hundred years old,
+had seen the distant sail of the <i>Jonas</i> and come to warn
+the white men, who were at dinner. Not knowing
+whether the strange ship came in peace or war, one of
+the comrades had gone to the platform on which the
+cannon were mounted, and stood ready to do what <span class='pagenum'>[261]</span>
+he could in defense, while the other ran down to the
+shore. When they saw the French flag at the mast-head
+the cannon spoke joyfully in salute.</p>
+
+<p>All was now eager life and activity. Poutrincourt
+sent out a boat to explore the coast, which met the
+two little ships of Pontgravé and Champlain and told
+the great news. Lescarbot, exploring the meadows
+under the guidance of some of Membertou's people,
+saw moose with their young feeding peacefully upon
+the lush grass, and beavers building their curious habitations
+in a swamp. Pontgravé took his departure
+for France in the <i>Jonas</i>, and Champlain and Poutrincourt
+began making plans.</p>
+
+<p>The winter in Port Royal had been less severe than
+the terrible first winter of the settlement, on the St.
+Croix, but the two leaders decided to take one of the
+ramshackle little ships and make another exploring
+voyage along the coast, to see whether some more
+comfortable site for the colony could not be found.
+There was plenty of leeway to the southward, for De
+Monts was supposed to control everything as far south
+as the present site of Philadelphia; but the coast had
+never been accurately charted by the French further
+south than Cape Cod.</p>
+
+<p>Lescarbot, who was to command at Port Royal in
+their absence, had already laid out his kitchen-garden
+and set about spading and planting it. The kitchen,
+the smithy and the bakery were on the south side of
+the quadrangle around which the wooden buildings
+stood; east of them was the arched gateway, protected
+by a sort of bastion of log-work, from which
+a path led to the water a few paces away; and west
+of them another bastion matched it, mounting the four
+cannon. The storehouses for ammunition and provisions <span class='pagenum'>[262]</span>
+were on the eastern side; on the west were the
+men's quarters, and on the north, a dining-hall and
+lodgings for the chief men of the company, who now
+numbered fifteen. Lescarbot set some of the men to
+burning over the meadows that they might sow wheat
+and barley; others broke up new soil for the herbs,
+roots and cuttings he had brought, and he himself,
+hoe in hand, was busiest of all.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not overtask yourself," warned Poutrincourt,
+pausing beside the thin, pale-faced man who knelt in
+the long shadows of the rainy dawn among his neatly-arranged
+plots. "If you are too zealous you may
+never see France again." Lescarbot laughed and dug
+a little grave in his plantation. "What in heaven's
+name are those?"</p>
+
+<p>"Potatoes," answered the lawyer-gardener. "The
+Peruvian root they are planting in Ireland."</p>
+
+<p>"But you do not expect to get a crop this year&mdash;and
+in this climate?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't expect anything at all. I am making the
+experiment. If they come up, good; if they do not, I
+have seed enough for next year."</p>
+
+<p>The potatoes came up. It was an unusually hot
+summer, and the situation was favorable. If Lescarbot
+had known the habits of the vegetable he might
+not have thought of putting them into the ground on
+the last day of July, but they grew and flourished, and
+their odd ivory-and-gold blossoms were charming.
+Lescarbot worked all day in the bracing sunlit air,
+and now and then he hoed and transplanted by moonlight.
+In the evening he read, wrote, or planned out
+the next day's program.</p>
+
+<p>September came, with cool bright days and a hint
+of frost at night; the lawyer marshalled his forces <span class='pagenum'>[263]</span>
+and harvested the crops. The storehouses, already
+stocked with Pontgravé's abundant provision, were
+filled to overflowing, and they had to dig a makeshift
+cellar or root-pit under a rough shelter for the last
+of their produce. The potatoes were carefully bestowed
+in huge hampers provided by Membertou's
+people, who were greatly interested in all that the
+white men did. Old Jacqueline had said that they
+needed "room to breathe," and Lescarbot was taking
+no chances on this unknown American product.</p>
+
+<p>October came; the Indians showed the white men
+how to grind corn, and the carpenters planned a water-mill
+to be constructed in the spring, to take the place
+of the tedious hand-mill worked by two men. Wild
+geese flew overhead, recalling to the Frenchmen the
+legends of Saint Gabriel's hounds. The forests robed
+themselves in hues like those of a priceless Kashmir
+shawl, and the squirrels, martens, beavers, otters,
+weasels, which the hunters brought in were in their
+winter coats. But the exploring party had not returned.
+Lescarbot, who had occupied spare moments
+in preparing a surprise for them when they did return,
+and carefully drilled the men in their parts, began to be
+secretly anxious. But on the morning of November
+14, old Membertou, who had appointed himself an informal
+sentinel to patrol the waters near the fort, appeared
+with the news that the chiefs were coming
+back.</p>
+
+<p>All was excitement in a moment, although Lescarbot
+privately had to admit that he could not even see
+a sail, to say nothing of recognizing the boat or its
+occupants. But the long-sighted old sagamore was
+right. The party of adventurers, their craft considerably
+the worse for the journey, steering with a pair <span class='pagenum'>[264]</span>
+of oars in place of a rudder, reached the landing-place
+and battered, weary and dilapidated, came up to the
+fort. They were surprised and disappointed to see
+no one about except a few curious Indians peeping
+from the woods.</p>
+
+<p>As they neared the wooden gateway it was suddenly
+flung open, and out marched a procession of masquers,
+headed by Neptune in full costume of shell-fringed
+robe, diadem, trident, and garlands of kelp and sea-moss,
+attended by tritons grotesquely attired, and
+fauns, reinforced by a growing audience of Indians,
+squaws and papooses. This merry company greeted
+the wanderers with music, song and some excellent
+French verse written by Lescarbot for the occasion.
+Refreshed with laughter and the relief of finding all
+so well conducted, Champlain, Poutrincourt and their
+men went in to have something to eat and drink. Then
+they spent the rest of the day hearing and telling the
+story of the last three months.</p>
+
+<p>It is written down, adorned with drawings, in the
+journals of Champlain, and it was all told over as the
+men sat around their blazing fires and talked, all together,
+while a light November snow flurried in the
+air outside.</p>
+
+<p>"So you see we lost our rudder in a storm off
+Mount Désert&mdash;" "And the autumn gales drove us
+back before we had fairly passed Port Fortuné&mdash;"
+"It came near being Port Malheur for us, and it was
+for Pierre and Jacques le Malouin, poor fellows.
+They and three others stayed ashore for the night and
+hundreds of Indians attacked them,&mdash;oh, but hundreds.
+Well, we heard the uproar&mdash;naturally it
+waked us in a hurry&mdash;and up we jumped and snatched
+any weapon that was handy, and piled into the boat in <span class='pagenum'>[265]</span>
+our shirts. Two of the shore party were killed and we
+saw the other three running for their boat for dear
+life, all stuck over with arrows like hedgehogs, my
+faith! So then we landed and charged the Indians,
+who must have thought we were ghosts, for they left
+off whooping and ran for the woods. Our provisions
+were so far spent that we thought it best to return
+after that, and in any case&mdash;it would be as bad, would
+it not, to die of Indians as to die of scurvy?"</p>
+
+<p>"But tell me, my dear fellow," said Champlain when
+the happy hubbub had a little subsided, "how have
+your gardens prospered? Truly I need not ask, in
+view of the abundance of the dinner you gave us."</p>
+
+<p>Lescarbot smiled. "I think that the saints must
+have whispered to the little plants," he said whimsically,
+"or else they knew that they must grow their
+best for the honor of France. But perhaps it is not
+strange. I had the seeds and roots from the garden
+of Helêne."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is Helêne?" asked Champlain with interest.
+Lescarbot explained.</p>
+
+<p>"It was really wonderful," he said in conclusion,
+"to see how careful she was to remember every herb
+and plant which might be useful, and to ask Jacqueline
+for some especial recipes for cordials and tisanes for
+the sick. And by the way, Jacqueline told me that
+the sea-captains regard potatoes as especially good to
+prevent or cure scurvy."</p>
+
+<p>In any case the potato was popular among the exiled
+Frenchmen. They ate it boiled, they ate it parboiled,
+sliced and fried in deep kettles of fat, they
+ate it in stews, and they ate it&mdash;and liked it best of
+all&mdash;roasted in the ashes. Jacqueline had said that
+the water in which the root was boiled must always be <a name='Page_266' id='Page_266'></a><span class='pagenum'>[266]</span>
+thrown away, which showed that there was something
+uncanny about it, but whether it was due to the
+potatoes or the general variety of the bill of fare,
+there was not a case of scurvy in the camp all winter.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after his return Champlain broached a plan
+which he had been perfecting during the voyage. The
+fifteen men of rank formed a society, to be called
+"L'Ordre de Bon-Temps." Each man became Grand-Master
+in turn, for a single day. On that day he
+was responsible for the dinner,&mdash;the cooking, catering,
+buying and serving. When not in office he usually
+spent some days in hunting, fishing and trading with the
+Indians for supplies. He had full authority over the
+kitchen during his reign, and it was a point of honor
+with each Grand Master to surpass, if possible, the
+abundance, variety and gastronomic excellence of the
+meals of the day before. There was no market to
+draw upon, but the caterer could have steaks and
+roasts and pies of moose, bear, venison and caribou;
+beavers, otters, hares, trapped for their fur, also
+helped to feed the hunters. Ducks, geese, grouse and
+plover were to be had for the shooting. Sturgeon,
+trout and other fish might be caught in the bay, or
+speared through the ice of the river. The supplies
+brought from France, with the addition of all this
+wilderness fare, held out well, and Lescarbot expressed
+the opinion, with which nobody disagreed, that no epicure
+in Paris could dine better in the Rue de l'Ours
+than the pioneers of Port Royal dined that winter.</p>
+
+<p>Ceremony was not neglected, either. At the dinner
+hour, twelve o'clock, the Grand Master of the
+day entered the dining-hall, a napkin on his shoulder,
+his staff of office in his hand, and the collar of the
+Order, worth about four crowns, about his neck. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+After him came the Brotherhood in procession, each
+carrying a dish. Indian chiefs were often guests at
+the board; old Membertou was always made welcome.
+Biscuit, bread and many other kinds of food served
+there were new and alluring luxuries to the Indians,
+and warriors, squaws and children who had not seats
+at table squatted on the floor gravely awaiting their
+portions.</p>
+
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">[Illustrations]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 421px;">
+<img src="images/illus-304.png" width="421" height="600" alt="&quot;The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall.&quot;&mdash;Page 266" title="&quot;The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall.&quot;&mdash;Page 266" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall.&quot;&mdash;<i>Page 266</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The evening meal was less formal. When all were
+gathered about the fire, the Grand Master presented
+the collar and staff of office to his successor, and drank
+his health in a cup of wine.</p>
+
+<p>The winter was unusually mild; until January they
+needed nothing warmer than their doublets. On the
+fourteenth, a Sunday, they went boating on the river,
+and came home singing the gay songs of France. A
+little later they went to visit the wheat fields two
+leagues from the fort, and dined merrily out of doors.
+When the snow melted they saw the little bright blades
+of the autumn sowing already coming up from the rich
+black soil. Winter was over, and work began in good
+heart. Poutrincourt was not above gathering turpentine
+from the pines and making tar, after a process invented
+by himself. Then late in spring a ship came
+into harbor with news which ended everything. The
+fur-traders of Normandy, Brittany and the Vizcayan
+ports had succeeded in having the privilege of De
+Monts withdrawn. Hardly more than a year after
+his arrival Lescarbot left his beloved gardens, and in
+October all the colonists were once more in France.
+Membertou and his Indians bewailed their departure,
+and held them in long remembrance. Wilderness
+houses soon go back to their beginnings, and it was
+not long before all that was left of the brave and gay <span class='pagenum'>[268]</span>
+French colony was a little clearing where the herb of
+immortality, the tansy of Saint Athanase, lifted its
+golden buttons and thick dark green foliage above the
+remnant of the garden of Helêne.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the experience of that year was not lost. It
+was the first instance of a company of settlers in that
+northern climate passing the winter without illness,
+discord or trouble with the Indians. Later, in the little
+new settlements of Quebec and Montreal, some of
+the colonists met again under the wise and kindly
+rule of Champlain. Little Helêne lived to bring her
+own roses to a garden in New France, and teach Indian
+girls the secrets which old Jacqueline taught her.
+And it is recorded in the history of the voyageurs,
+priests and adventurers of France in the New World
+that wherever they went they were apt to take with
+them seeds and plants of wholesome garden produce,
+which they planted along their route in the hope that
+they might thus be of service to those who came after
+them.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_WOODEN_SHOE" id="THE_WOODEN_SHOE"></a>THE WOODEN SHOE</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Amsterdam's the cradle where the race was rocked&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">All the ships of all the world to her harbor flocked.</span>
+<span class="i0">Rosy with the sea-wind, solid, stubborn, sweet,</span>
+<span class="i0">Played the children by canals, up and down the street.</span>
+<span class="i0">Neltje, Piet and Hendrik, Dirck and Myntje too,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Little Nick of Leyden sailed his wooden shoe.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Quarter-deck and cabin&mdash;rig her fore-and-aft,"&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Thus he murmured wisely as he launched his craft.</span>
+<span class="i0">"Cutlass, pike and musquetoun, howitzer and shot&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">But our knives and mirrors and beads are worth the lot."</span>
+<span class="i0">Room enough for cargo to last a year or two,</span>
+<span class="i0">In the round amidships of a wooden shoe!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bobbing on the waters of the Nieuwe Vlei</span>
+<span class="i0">See the bantam galleot, short and broad and high.</span>
+<span class="i0">Laden for the Indies, trading all the way,</span>
+<span class="i0">Frank and shrewd and cautious, fiery in a fray,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Sagamore and mandarin are all the same to you,</span>
+<span class="i0">Little Nick of Leyden with your wooden shoe!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_FIRES_THAT_TALKED" id="THE_FIRES_THAT_TALKED"></a>THE FIRES THAT TALKED</h3>
+
+<p>All along the coast of Britain, from John o'
+Groat's to Beachey Head, from Saint Michael's
+Mount to Cape Wrath, twinkled the bonfires on the
+headlands. Henry Hudson, returning from a voyage
+among icebergs, guessed at once what this chain of
+lights meant. The son of Mary Queen of Scots had
+been crowned in London.<a name="FNanchor_1_34" id="FNanchor_1_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_34" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>Hudson's keen eyes were unusually grave and
+thoughtful as the <i>Muscovy Duck</i> sailed up to London
+Pool on the incoming tide. The sailors looked even
+more sober, for most of them were English Protestants,
+with a few Flemings, and John Williams the pilot was
+an Anabaptist. It was he who asked the question of
+which all were thinking.</p>
+
+<p>"Master Hudson, d'ye think the new King will light
+them other fires&mdash;the ones at Smithfield?"</p>
+
+<p>Hudson shook his head. "That's a thing no man
+can say for certain, John. But there's the Low Countries
+and the Americas to run to. 'T is not as it was
+in Queen Mary's day."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, but Spain has got all of America, pretty near,
+and the French are nabbing the rest," said the pilot
+doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, that's a bigger place than you guess, over
+yonder. Ever see the map that Doctor Dee made for
+Queen Bess near thirty years ago? I remember him <span class='pagenum'>[271]</span>
+showing it to my grandsire with the ink scarce dry on
+it. The country Ralegh's people saw has got room for
+the whole of France and England, and plenty timber
+and corn-land. Sir Walter he knew that."</p>
+
+<p>There was plague in London when they landed, and
+all sought their families in fear and trembling, not
+knowing what might have come and gone in their absence.
+Hudson's house was at Mortlake on the
+Thames above London, and there he was rejoiced to
+find all well. Young John Hudson was brimful of
+Mr. Brereton's new Relacion of the Voyage of Captain
+Bartholomew Gosnold and Captain Bartholomew
+Gilbert to the North part of Virginia by permission of
+the honorable Knight Sir Walter Ralegh. Strawberries
+bigger than those of England, and cherries in
+clusters like grapes, blackbirds with carnation-colored
+wings, Indians who painted their eyebrows white and
+made faces over mustard, were mixed higgledy-piggledy
+in his bubbling talk. Hudson, turning the pages of
+the new book, saw at once that on this voyage around
+Cape Cod the little ship <i>Concord</i> had sailed seas unknown
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why won't the Company send you to the Americas,
+Dad?" the boy asked eagerly. "When will I be
+old enough to go to sea?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait till ye're fourteen at least, Jack," his father
+answered. "There's much to learn before ye're a
+master mariner."</p>
+
+<p>In the next few years things were not so well with
+English mariners as they had been. Cecil and Howard,
+picking a quarrel with Ralegh, had him shut up in
+the Tower. The Dutch were trading everywhere,
+seizing the chances King James missed. But Hudson
+was in the employ of the Muscovy Company like his <span class='pagenum'>[272]</span>
+father and grandfather, and the Russian fur trade was
+making that Company rich.</p>
+
+<p>Captain John Smith, a shrewd-faced soldier with
+merry eyes, appeared at the house one day and told
+entertaining stories of his campaigns under Prince Sigismund
+of Bohemia. He and the boy John drove the
+neighbors nearly distracted with curiosity, one winter
+evening, signalling with torches from the house to the
+river.<a name="FNanchor_2_35" id="FNanchor_2_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_35" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> To anxious souls who surmised a new Guy
+Fawkes conspiracy Captain Smith showed how he had
+once conveyed a message to the garrison of a beleaguered
+city in this way. Here was the code. The
+first half of the alphabet was represented by single
+lights, the second half by pairs. To secure attention
+three torches were shown at equal distances from one
+another, until a single light flashed in response to show
+that the signal was understood. For any letter from
+A to L a single light was shown and hidden one or more
+times according to the number of the letter from the
+beginning; thus, three flashes meant C; four meant D,
+and so on. For a letter between M and Z the same
+plan was followed using two torches. The end of a
+word was signified by three lights. In this way Smith
+had spelled out the message, "On Thursday night I
+will charge on the east; at the alarum, sally you." He
+had, however, translated it into Latin, to make it short.</p>
+
+<p>John Hudson found new interest in Latin.</p>
+
+<p>When Captain Smith began to talk of joining a new
+colony to go to Virginia the boy begged hard to be allowed
+to go. But just at this time the Muscovy Company
+was sending Henry Hudson to look for a way
+round through northern seas to the Spice Islands. The
+Dutch were already trading in the Portuguese Indies.
+If England could reach them by a shorter route, it <span class='pagenum'>[273]</span>
+would be a very pleasant discovery for the Muscovy
+Company.</p>
+
+<p>Even in 1607 geographers believed in an open polar
+sea north of Asia. Hudson tried the Greenland route.
+Sailing east of Greenland he found himself between
+that country and the islands named "Nieuwland" by
+William Barents the Dutch navigator in 1596. Their
+pointed icy mountains seemed to push up through the
+sea. Icebergs crowded the waters like miniature peaks
+of a submerged range. Hudson returned to report
+to the company "no open sea."</p>
+
+<p>In 1608 he was again sent out on the same errand.
+This time he steered further east, between those islands
+and another group named by Barents Nova Zembla.
+He sailed nearer to the pole than any man had been
+before him, and found whales bigger, finer and more
+numerous than anywhere else. Rounding the North
+Cape on his way home he made the first recorded observation
+of a sun-spot. In August, when he returned
+and made his report, there was a sensation in the seafaring
+world.</p>
+
+<p>The Dutch promptly sent whaling ships into the arctic
+seas, and suggested, through Van Meteren the
+Dutch consul in London, a friend of Hudson, that the
+English navigator should come to Amsterdam and talk
+of entering their service. While there, he received an
+offer from the French Ambassador, suggesting that his
+services would be welcome to a proposed French East
+India Company. Hearing this, the Dutch hastened to
+secure him, and on April 4, 1609, he sailed from Amsterdam
+in a yacht of eighty tons called the <i>Half Moon</i>
+and shaped rather like one, manned by a crew of
+twenty, half English and half Netherlanders, and John
+as cabin-boy.<span class='pagenum'>[274]</span></p>
+
+<p>John was in such a state of bliss as a boy can know
+when sailing on the venture of his dreams. His father
+had told him in confidence that as his sailing orders
+were almost the same as the year before, he did not
+expect to find the northern route to India in that direction.
+Failing this the <i>Half Moon</i> would look for it in
+the western seas. Of this plan he had said nothing
+in Holland.</p>
+
+<p>He found, as he had expected, that the arctic waters
+were choked with ice, and turning southward he headed
+for the Faroe Isles. While in Holland he had had a
+letter from Captain John Smith, who had explored the
+regions about Chesapeake Bay. No straits leading to
+the western ocean had been discovered there, and no
+Sea of Verrazzano. Captain Smith's opinion was that
+if such a passage existed it would be somewhere about
+the fortieth parallel. Explorations had already been
+made farther north. Davis Strait had been discovered
+some years before by John Davis, now dead. Martin
+Frobisher had found another strait leading northwest.
+Both of these were so far north that they were likely to
+be ice-bound by the time the little <i>Half Moon</i> could
+reach them. Hudson meant to look along the coast
+further south, and see what could be found there.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Half Moon</i> took in water at the Faroes and
+anchored some seven weeks later, on July 18, in Penobscot
+Bay. Her foremast was gone and her sails ripped
+and rent by the gales of the North Atlantic, and the
+carpenter with a selected crew rowed ashore and chose
+a pine tree for a new mast. While this was a-making
+and the sails were patched up, the crew not otherwise
+engaged went fishing.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," presently observed John Hudson, who
+knew Brereton's Relacion by heart, "this must ha' been <span class='pagenum'>[275]</span>
+the place where they caught so many fish that they were
+'pestered with Cod' and threw numbers of 'em overboard.
+This makes twenty-seven, Dad, so far."</p>
+
+<p>During that week they caught fifty cod, a hundred
+lobsters and a halibut which John declared to be half
+as big as the ship. Two French boats appeared, full
+of Indians ready to trade beaver skins for red cloth.
+The strawberry season was past, but John found wild
+cherries, small, deep red, in heavy bunches. When he
+tried to eat them, however, they were so sour that he
+nearly choked. Cautiously he tasted the big blue
+whortleberries that grew on high bushes; near water,
+and found them delicious. He had been eating them
+by the handful for some time when he became aware
+that there was a feaster on the other side of the thicket.
+Receiving no reply to his challenge he went to investigate
+and saw a brown bear standing on his hind legs
+and raking the berries off the twigs with both forepaws,
+into his mouth. At sight of John he dropped
+on all fours and cantered off.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the bay they cruised along the coast past
+Cape Cod, and then steered southwest for the fortieth
+parallel. Wind and rain came on in the middle of
+August, and they were blown toward an inlet which
+Hudson decided to be the James. Not knowing how
+the English governor of Jamestown might regard an
+intrusion by a Dutch ship, he turned north again, and
+on the twenty-eighth of August entered a large bay and
+took soundings. More than once the <i>Half Moon</i>,
+light as she rode, grounded on sand-banks, and Hudson
+shook his head in rueful doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"D' you think the straits are here, Dad?" asked
+John when he had a chance to speak with his father
+alone.<span class='pagenum'>[276]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Hardly. This is fresh water. It's the mouth of
+a river."<a name="FNanchor_3_36" id="FNanchor_3_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_36" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but might there be an isthmus&mdash;or the like?"</p>
+
+<p>"A big river with as strong a current as this would
+not rise on a narrow, level strip of land, son. It's
+bringing down tons of sand to make these banks we
+run into. There's a great wide country inland there."</p>
+
+<p>The chanteys of the sailors were heard at daybreak
+in the lonely sea, as the <i>Half Moon</i> went on her way
+northward. On September 3 the little ship edged into
+another and bigger bay to the north. Whether it was
+a bay or a lake Hudson was at first rather doubtful.
+The shores were inhabited, for little plumes of smoke
+arose everywhere, and soon from all sides log canoes
+came paddling toward the ship. These Indians were
+evidently not unused to trading, for they brought green
+tobacco, hemp, corn and furs to sell, and some of them
+knew a few words of French. By this, and by signs,
+they gave Hudson to understand that three rivers, or
+inlets, came into this island-encircled sea, the largest
+being toward the north. Hudson determined to follow
+this north river and see where it led.</p>
+
+<p>As he sailed cautiously into the channel, taking
+soundings and observing the shores, he was puzzled.
+The tide rose and fell as if this were an inlet of the sea,
+and it was far deeper than an ordinary river. In fact
+it was more like a Norwegian fiord.<a name="FNanchor_4_37" id="FNanchor_4_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_37" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> It might possibly
+lead to a lake, and this lake might have an outlet to the
+western ocean. That it was a strait he did not believe.
+Even in the English Channel the meeting tides of the
+North Sea and the Atlantic made rough water, and the
+<i>Half Moon</i> was drifting as easily as if she were slipping
+down stream. In any event, nothing else had been
+found, either north or south of this point, which could <span class='pagenum'>[277]</span>
+possibly be a strait, and Hudson meant to discover exactly
+what this was before he set sail for Amsterdam.</p>
+
+<p>They passed an Indian village in the woods to the
+right, and according to the Indians who had come on
+board the place was called Sapokanican,<a name="FNanchor_5_38" id="FNanchor_5_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_38" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> and was
+famous for the making of wampum or shell beads. A
+brook of clear sweet water flowed close by. Presently
+Hudson anchored and sent five men ashore in a boat
+to explore the right-hand bank of the channel. Night
+came on, and it began to rain, but the boat had not returned.
+Hudson slept but little. In the morning the
+missing men appeared with a tale of disaster. After
+about two leagues' travel they had come to a bay full of
+islands. Here they had been attacked by two canoes
+carrying twenty-six Indians, and their arrows had killed
+John Colman and wounded two other men. It grew
+so dark when the rain began that they dared not seek
+the ship, and the current was so strong that their grapnel
+would not hold, so that they had had to row all
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Sailing only in the day time and anchoring at night
+the little Dutch ship went on to the north, looking between
+the steep rocky banks like a boat carved out of a
+walnut-shell, in the wooden jaws of a nutcracker.
+After dark, fires twinkled upon the heights, and the lapping
+waters about the quiet keel were all shining with
+broken stars. The flame appeared and vanished like
+a signal, and John Hudson wondered if the Indians
+knew John Smith's trick of sending a message as far as
+a beacon light could be seen.</p>
+
+<p>One night he climbed up on the poop with the ship's
+great lantern and tried the flashing signals he remembered.
+Before many minutes two of the wild men had
+drawn near to watch, and although John could not make <span class='pagenum'>[278]</span>
+out the meaning of the light that came and went upon
+the cliffs, it was quite clear that they could. One of
+them waved his mantle in front of the lantern, and
+turning to the boy nodded and grinned good-naturedly.
+The signal fires must have talked to some purpose, for
+the next day a delegation paddled out from the shore to
+invite the great captain, his son and his chief officers to
+a feast.</p>
+
+<p>When the party arrived at the house of the chief,
+which was a round building, or pavilion, of saplings
+sheathed with oak bark, mats were spread for them to
+sit upon, and food was served in polished red wooden
+bowls. Two hunters were sent out to bring in game,
+and returned almost at once with pigeons which were
+immediately dressed and cooked by the women. One
+of the hunters gave John one of the arrowheads used
+for shooting small birds; it was no bigger than his least
+fingernail and made of a red stone like jasper. A fat
+dog had also been killed, skinned and dressed with
+shell knives, and served as the dish of honor. Hudson
+hastily explained in English to his companions that
+whether they relished dog or not, it would never do to
+refuse it, as this was a special dish for great occasions.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad," said John that night, "do you think any
+ship with white men ever came up here before?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Hudson.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope they'll call this the Hudson."</p>
+
+<p>The water was now hardly more than seven feet
+deep, and the tide rose only a few inches. Hudson
+came reluctantly to the conclusion that there was no
+proceeding further in a ship. He sent a boatload of
+men several leagues up-stream, but they came back with
+the report that the river was much the same so far as
+they had gone.<span class='pagenum'>[279]</span></p>
+
+<p>During the voyage they had often seen parties of
+the savages, usually friendly but sometimes hostile.
+Flights of arrows occasionally were aimed at the <i>Half
+Moon</i>, and the crew replied with musket-shots which
+sometimes but not always hit the mark. The painted
+warriors had a way of disappearing into the woods
+like elves. Once, in spite of all endeavors to shake
+him off, a solitary Indian in a small canoe followed
+along under the stern till he saw the chance of climbing
+up the rudder to the cabin window. He stole the
+pillow off the commander's bed, two shirts, and two
+bandoliers (ammunition-belts), the tinkle of which betrayed
+him. The mate saw him making off with his
+plunder and shot him, whereupon the other Indians
+paddled off at top speed, some even leaping from their
+canoes to swim ashore. A boat put out and recovered
+the stolen property, and when a swimming Indian
+caught the side of it to overturn it the cook valiantly
+beat him off with a sword. These with many other adventures
+were duly written down by Robert Juet the
+mate.</p>
+
+<p>To John Hudson the voyage was a journey of enchantment.
+Nothing he had ever seen was in the least
+like the glory of the autumn forests, mantling the mountains
+in scarlet, gold, malachite, russet, orange and
+purple. He had been in the gardens at Lambeth
+where Tradescant the famous gardener ruled, but there
+was more color in a single vivid maple standing blood-red
+in a bit of lowland than in all his Lancaster roses.
+And the great river had its flowers as well. A tall
+plant like an elfin elm covered with thick-set tiny blossoms
+yellow as broom, grew wild over the pastures, and
+interspersed with this fairy forest were thickets of
+deep lavender daisies with golden centers. In lowland <span class='pagenum'>[280]</span>
+glades were tall spikes of cardinal blossoms, and
+clusters of deep blue flowers like buds that never
+opened. Vines loaded with bunches of scarlet and
+orange berries like waxwork, and others bearing fluffy
+bunches of silky gray down curly as an old man's beard,
+climbed the trees that overhung the stream. The
+mountains in the upper river came right down to the
+water like the glacis of a giant fort, and fitful winds
+pounced upon the <i>Half Moon</i> and rocked her like a
+cradle. Once there was a late thunder-shower, and
+the noise of the thunder among the humped ranges was
+for all the world like balls rolling in a great game of
+bowls played by goblins of the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth of October, the <i>Half Moon</i> left the
+island which the Indians called Manahatta, passed
+through the Narrows and sailed for Europe. Looking
+back at those green shores with their bronze feather-crowned
+people watching to see the flight of their
+strange guest, John Hudson felt that when he was a
+man, he would like nothing better than to have an estate
+on the shores of the noble river, which no white
+boy had ever before set eyes on. Where a great terrace
+rose, some fifty miles above Manahatta, walled
+around by mountains and almost two hundred feet
+above the river, there should be a fort, of which Captain
+John Smith should be the commander; and in the
+broadening of the river below to form an inland sea,
+his father's squadron should ride, while the Indians of
+all the upper reaches of the river should come to pay
+tribute and bring wampum, furs and tobacco in exchange
+for trinkets. And on the island at the mouth
+of the river there would be a great city, greater than
+Antwerp, to which all the ships of the world should
+come as they came now to Antwerp and to London. <span class='pagenum'>[281]</span>
+So dreaming, John Hudson saw the shores of this new
+world vanish in the blue line, where earth and sky are
+one.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">notes</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_34" id="Footnote_1_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_34"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+The kindling of bonfires and beacon lights on the accession of a
+sovereign or any other occasion of national rejoicing is a very old
+custom in Britain and is still kept up. At the time of Queen Victoria's
+jubilee trees were planted closely to form a great V on the side of
+the Downs, and when the fires were lighted on Ditchling Beacon and
+other heights the letter stood out black against the close turf of the
+hillside.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_35" id="Footnote_2_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_35"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+The account of Smith's campaigns and signalling code is given
+in his autobiography.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_36" id="Footnote_3_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_36"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+The Delaware.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_37" id="Footnote_4_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_37"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+Some authorities consider the Hudson River to be actually a fiord
+or fjord and not a true river.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_38" id="Footnote_5_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_38"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+Greenwich Village.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="IMPERIALISM" id="IMPERIALISM"></a>IMPERIALISM</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Tailor sat with his goose on the table&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">(Table of Laws it was, he said)</span>
+<span class="i0">Fashioning uniforms dyed in sable,</span>
+<span class="i2">Picked out with gold and sanguine red.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"This," he said as he snipped and drafted,</span>
+<span class="i2">"Sublimely foreshadowing cosmic Fate</span>
+<span class="i0">With world-dominion august, resplendent,</span>
+<span class="i0">Will wear, as nothing can wear but Hate!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"Chimerical dreams of souls romantic</span>
+<span class="i2">Are out of date as an old wife's rune.</span>
+<span class="i0">Britain is doomed as Plato's Republic&mdash;"</span>
+<span class="i2">When in at the door came a lilting tune!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>"Here to-day and gone to-morrow&mdash;</i></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>All in the luck of the road!</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Didn't come to stay forever,</i></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>But we'll take our share of the load!"</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Highlanders, Irish, Danes, Egyptians,</span>
+<span class="i2">Norman or Slav the dialects ran;</span>
+<span class="i0">Something more than a board-school shaped them&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">Drill and discipline never made man!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once they knew Crecy, Hastings, Drogheda,</span>
+<span class="i2">Moscow, Assaye, Khartoum or Glencoe,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Now the old hatreds are tinder for campfires.</span>
+<span class="i2">England has only her world to show!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They are not dreamers, these men of the Empire,</span>
+<span class="i2">Guarding their land in the old-time way,</span>
+<span class="i2">And this is the style that prevails in the Legions,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2">"The foe of the past is a friend to-day."</span>
+</div><span class='pagenum'>[283]</span>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>"It's a long, long road to the Empire</i></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>(From Beersheba even to Dan)</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>And the time is rather late for a chronic Hymn of Hate,&mdash;</i></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>And we know the tailor doesn't make the man!"</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></div>
+
+<h2>XIX</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="ADMIRAL_OF_NEW_ENGLAND" id="ADMIRAL_OF_NEW_ENGLAND"></a>ADMIRAL OF NEW ENGLAND</h3>
+
+<p>Barefoot and touzle-headed, in the coarse russet
+and blue homespun of an apprentice, a small
+boy sidled through the wood. Like a hunted hedgehog,
+he was ready to run or fight. Where a bright
+brook slid into the meadows, he stopped, and looked
+through new leaves at the infinite blue of the sky.
+Words his grandfather used to read to him came back
+to his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout
+from the top of the mountain."</p>
+
+<p>The Bible which old Joseph Bradford had left to
+his grandson had been taken away, but no one could
+take away the memory of it. If he had dared, Will
+would have shouted aloud then and there. For all
+his hunger and weariness and dread of the future the
+strength of the land entered into his young soul. He
+drank of the clear brook, and let it wash away the soil
+of his pilgrimage. Then he curled himself in a hollow
+full of dry leaves, and went to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>When he woke, it was in the edge of the evening.
+Long shadows pointed like lances among the trees. A
+horse was cropping the grass in a clearing, and some
+one beyond the thicket was reading aloud. For an instant
+he thought himself dreaming of the old cottage
+at Austerfield&mdash;but the voice was young and lightsome.<span class='pagenum'>[285]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Where a man can live at all, there can he live
+nobly."</p>
+
+<p>The reader stopped and laughed out. A lively
+snarling came from a burrow not far away, where two
+badgers were quarrelling conscientiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Just like folks ye be, a-hectorin' and a-fussin'.
+What's the great question to settle now&mdash;predestination
+or infant baptism?&mdash;Why, where under the canopy
+did you come from, you pint o' cider?"</p>
+
+<p>"I be a-travelin'," Will said stoutly.</p>
+
+<p>"Runaway 'prentice, I should guess. I was one myself
+at fifteen."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm 'leven, goin' on twelve," said the boy, standing
+as straight as he could.</p>
+
+<p>"Any folks?"</p>
+
+<p>"I lived with granddad until he died, four year
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"And so you're wayfarin', be you? What can you
+do to get your bread?"</p>
+
+<p>The urchin dug a bare toe into the sod. "I can
+work," he said half-defiantly. "Granddad always said
+I should be put to school some day, but my uncle won't
+have that. I can read."</p>
+
+<p>"Latin?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;English. Granddad weren't college-bred."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I&mdash;they gave me more lickings than Latin at
+the grammar school down to Alvord, 'cause I would
+go bird's-nesting and fishing sooner than study my
+<i>hic</i>, <i>haec</i>, <i>hoc</i>. And now I've built me a booth like a
+wild man o' Virginia and come out here to get my
+Latin that I should ha' mastered at thirteen. All the
+travel-books are in Latin, and you have to know it to
+get on in foreign parts."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been in foreign parts?"<span class='pagenum'>[286]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Four year&mdash;France and Scotland and the Low
+Countries. But I got enough o' seeing Christians kill
+one another, and says I to myself, John Smith, you go
+see what they're about at home. And here I found our
+fen-sludgers all by the ears over Bishops and Papists
+and Brownists and such like. In Holland they let a
+man read's Bible in peace."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the Bible you got there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay&mdash;Marcus Aurelius Antoninus&mdash;a mighty
+wise old chap, if he was an Emperor. And I've got
+Niccolo Macchiavelli's seven books o' the Art o' War.
+When I'm weary of one I take to t' other, and between
+times I ride a tilt." He waved his hand toward a
+ring fastened on a tree, and a lance and horse-furniture
+leaning against the trunk.</p>
+
+<p>"Our folks be Separatists," the boy said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and what of it?" laughed the young man.
+"As I was a-reading here&mdash;a man is what his thoughts
+make him. Be he Catholic or Church Protestant or
+Baptist, he's what he's o' mind to be, good or bad.
+Other folk's say-so don't stop him&mdash;no more than
+them badgers' worryin' dams the brook."</p>
+
+<p>This was a new idea to Will. His hunger for books
+was so keen that it had seemed to him that without
+them, he would be stupid as the swine. John Smith
+seemed to understand it, for he added,</p>
+
+<p>"You bide here with me awhile, lad. Maybe there's
+a way for you to get learning, yet."</p>
+
+<p>Will shared the leafy booth and simple fare of his
+new friend for a fortnight, doing errands, rubbing
+down the black horse, Tamlane, and at odd times learning
+his conjugations. When John Smith left his hermitage
+and went to fight against the Turks in Transylvania,
+he placed a little sum of money with a Puritan <span class='pagenum'>[287]</span>
+scholar at Scrooby to pay for the boy's schooling for a
+year or two. The yeoman uncle had a family of his
+own to provide for, and was glad to have Will off his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>Transylvania in 1600 was on the very frontier of
+Christendom. John Smith needed all the philosophy
+he had learned from his favorite author when, after
+many adventures, he was taken prisoner and sent to
+the slave-market of Axopolis to be sold. Bogal, a
+Turkish pacha, bought the young Englishman to send
+as a gift to his future wife, Charatza Tragabigzanda,
+in Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>Chained by the neck in gangs of twenties the slaves
+entered the great Moslem city. John Smith was left
+at the gate of a house exactly like all the others in the
+narrow noisy street. The beauty of an Oriental palace
+is inside the walls. Within the blank outer wall of
+stone and mud-brick, arched roofs, painted and gilded
+within, were upheld by slender round pillars of fine
+stone&mdash;marble, jasper, porphyry, onyx, red syenite,
+highly polished and sometimes brought from old
+palaces and temples in other lands. Intricate carving
+in marble or in fine hard wood adorned the doorways
+and lattices, and the balconies with their high lattice-work
+railings where the women could see into a room
+below without being seen. In the courtyards fountains
+plashed in marble basins, and from hidden gardens
+came the breath of innumerable roses. On floors of
+fine mosaic were silken many-hued rugs, brought in
+caravans from Bagdad, Moussoul or Ispahan, and the
+soft patter of bare feet, morocco shoes and light sandals
+came from the endless vistas of open arches. A
+silken rustling and once a gurgle of soft laughter might
+have told the Englishman that he was watched, but he <span class='pagenum'>[288]</span>
+knew no more what it meant than he understood the
+Arabic mottoes, interwoven with the decoration of the
+blue-and-gold walls.</p>
+
+<p>Charatza's curiosity was aroused at the sight of a
+slave so tall, ruddy and handsome. She sent for him
+to come into an inner room where she and her ladies
+sat, closely veiled, upon a cushioned divan. Bogal's
+letter said that the slave was a rich Bohemian nobleman
+whom he had captured in battle, and whose ransom
+would buy Charatza splendid jewels. But when
+spoken to in Bohemian the captive looked perfectly
+blank. He did not seem to understand one word.</p>
+
+<p>Arabic and Turkish were no more successful. At
+last the young princess asked a question in Italian and
+found herself understood. It did not take long for her
+to find out that the story her lover had written had not
+a word of truth in it. She was as indignant as a spirited
+girl would naturally be.</p>
+
+<p>In one way and another she made opportunities to
+talk with the Englishman and to inquire of others about
+his career. She presently discovered that he was the
+champion who had beheaded three Turkish warriors,
+one after another, before the walls of the besieged
+city Regall. She made up her mind that when she was
+old enough to control her own fortune, which would
+be in the not very distant future, she would set him
+free and marry him. Such things had been done in
+Constantinople, and doubtless could be done again.</p>
+
+<p>But meantime Charatza's mother, learning that her
+daughter had been talking to a slave, was not at all
+pleased and threatened, since he was no nobleman and
+would not be ransomed, to sell him in the market.
+Charatza was used to having her way sooner or later,
+and managed to have him sent instead to her brother, a <span class='pagenum'>[289]</span>
+pacha or provincial governor in Tartary. She sent
+also a letter asking the pacha to be kind to the young
+English slave and give him a chance of learning Turkish
+and the principles of the Koran.</p>
+
+<p>This was far from agreeable to a brother who had
+already heard of his sister's liking for the penniless
+stranger,&mdash;especially as he found that the Englishman
+had no intention of turning Moslem. The slave-master
+was told to treat him with the utmost severity,
+which meant that his life was made almost unbearable.
+A ring of iron, with a curved iron handle, was locked
+around his neck, his only garment was a tunic of hair-cloth
+belted with undressed hide, he was herded with
+other Christian slaves and a hundred or more Turks
+and Moors who were condemned criminals, and, as the
+last comer, had to take the kicks and cuffs of all the
+others. The food was coarse and unclean, and only
+extreme hunger made it possible to eat it.</p>
+
+<p>John Smith was not the man to sit down hopelessly
+under misfortune, and he talked with the other Christians
+whenever chance offered, about possible plans of
+escape. None of them saw any hope of getting away,
+even by joining their efforts. It may be that some of
+this talk was overheard; at any rate Smith was sent
+after a while to thresh wheat by himself in a barn two
+or three miles from the stone castle where the governor
+lived. The pacha rode up while he was at work
+and began to abuse him, taunting him with being a
+Christian outcast who had tried to set himself above
+his betters by winning the favor of a Turkish lady.
+The Englishman flew at him like a wildcat, dragged
+him off his horse and broke his skull with the club
+which was used instead of a flail for threshing. Then
+he dressed himself in the Turk's garments, hid the body <span class='pagenum'>[290]</span>
+under a heap of grain, filled a bag with wheat for all
+his provision, mounted the horse of his late master,
+and rode away northward. He knew that Muscovy
+was in this general direction, and coming to a road
+marked by a cross, rode that way for sixteen days,
+hiding whenever he heard any sound of travelers for
+fear the iron slave-ring should betray him. At last he
+came to a Russian garrison on the River Don, where he
+found good friends. In 1604, after some other adventures,
+he came again to England. All London was
+talking of the doings of King James, who in one short
+year had managed to dissatisfy both Catholics and
+Protestants. Since the voyages of Gosnold, Pring and
+Weymouth there was much interest in Virginia.
+Ralegh was a prisoner in the Tower. There was talk
+of a trading association to be called the London Company,
+and it was said that this company planned a new
+plantation somewhere north of Roanoke. Smith could
+see the great future which might await an English settlement
+in that rich land. He decided to join the adventurers
+going out in the fleet of Captain Christopher
+Newport. Before sailing, he went to Lincolnshire to
+bid farewell to his own people, and in the shadow of
+the Tower of Saint Botolph's he espied a tall lad whose
+look recalled something.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," he cried with a hearty clasp of the hand.
+"'t is thyself grown a man, Will! And how goes the
+Latin?"</p>
+
+<p>"I love it well," the youth answered shyly. "Master
+Brewster hath also instructed me in the Greek. If&mdash;if
+I had known where to send it I would have repaid
+the money you was so kind as to spare."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, think no more o't&mdash;or rather, hand it on
+to some other young book-worm," laughed the bearded <span class='pagenum'>[291]</span>
+and bronzed captain. "And how be all your folk?"</p>
+
+<p>The lad's eyes rested wistfully upon the quaint old
+seaport streets. "The Bishop rails upon our congregation,"
+he said. "Holland is better than a prison,
+and we shall go there soon."</p>
+
+<p>Smith's practical mind saw the uselessness of trying
+to get any Non-Conformist taken on by a royal colony
+in Virginia just then. "'Tis a hard case," he said sympathetically,
+"but we may meet again some day.
+There's room enough in the Americas, the Lord knows,
+for all the honest men England can spare."</p>
+
+<p>Thus they parted, and on April 26, 1607, the Virginia
+voyagers saw land at the mouth of the Chesapeake.</p>
+
+<p>The company was rather top-heavy. Out of the
+hundred who were enrolled, fifty-two were gentlemen
+adventurers, each of whom thought himself as good as
+the rest and even a little better. No sooner had the
+ship dropped anchor than thirty of them went ashore
+to roam the forest, laughing and shouting as if they
+had the country to themselves. The appearance of
+five Indians sent them scurrying back to the ship with
+two of their number wounded, for they had no weapons
+with them. That night the sealed orders of the London
+Company were opened, and it was found that the
+directors had appointed a council of seven to govern
+the colony and choose a president for a year. The
+colonists were charged to search for gold and pearls
+and for a passage to the East Indies. Nothing more
+original in the way of a colonial enterprise had occurred
+to the directors. Success in these undertakings
+meant immediate profits with which the new Company
+could compete with Bristol, Antwerp, and the
+Muscovy Company's rich fur trade.<span class='pagenum'>[292]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the list of names for the council appeared that of
+Captain John Smith, which was somewhat embarrassing,
+since a scandalous tale had been set going during
+the voyage, that he intended to lead a mutiny and make
+himself governor of the colony. This was so far believed
+that he was kept a prisoner through the last part
+of the voyage. The other councilors, Newport, Gosnold,
+Wingfield, Ratcliffe, Martin and Kendall, held
+their election without him and chose Wingfield president.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the carpenters began work on the shallop,
+which had been shipped in sections, and Wingfield ordered
+Smith inland with a party of armed men, to explore.
+They saw no Indians, but found a fire where
+oysters were still roasting, and made a good meal off
+them, though some of the luscious shellfish were so
+large that they had to be cut in pieces before they were
+eaten. Coasting along the bay they discovered a river,
+which was explored when the shallop was launched.
+Upon this river they saw an Indian canoe forty feet
+long, made of the trunk of a tree hollowed out, Indian
+fashion, with hot stones and shell gouges. They found
+also oysters in abundance and in some of them fresh-water
+pearls. After spending seventeen days in examining
+the country, they chose for their settlement a
+peninsula on the north side of the river called the Powhatans
+by the Indians, from the tribe living on its banks.
+This site was about forty miles from the sea, and here,
+on May 13, they moored their ships to trees in six
+fathom of water and named the place Jamestown, and
+the river the King's River.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far the Indians had been friendly, and Wingfield
+would not have any fortifications built, or any military
+drill, for fear of arousing their anger. Captain <span class='pagenum'>[293]</span>
+Kendall, despite orders, constructed a crescent-shaped
+line of fence of untrimmed boughs, but most of the
+weapons remained in packing-cases on board ship.
+Wingfield, who regarded Smith as a rather dangerously
+outspoken man to have about just then, sent him with
+Newport and twenty others, to explore the river to its
+head. On the sixth day they passed the chief town
+of the Powhatans. On May 24 they reached the head
+of the river, set up a cross, and proclaimed in the wilderness
+the sovereignty of King James Stuart.</p>
+
+<p>The thrifty eye of the Lincolnshire yeoman observed
+many things with satisfaction during this march.
+There might not be any gold mines, but there was unlimited
+timber, and the meadows would make as good
+pasture for cattle as any in England. In the forests
+were red deer and fallow deer, bears, otters, beavers,
+and foxes, besides animals unknown in Europe. One
+moonlight night, while examining deer tracks near a
+little stream, Smith saw humped on a fallen log above
+it a furry beast about the size of a badger, with black
+face and paws like a bear, and a bushy tail with crosswise
+rings of brown and black. This queer animal
+was eating something, and dipping the food into the
+water before each mouthful. When Smith described
+it to the Indians he could make nothing of the name
+they gave it, but wrote it down as best he could&mdash;Araughcoune.
+Another new kind of creature was of
+the size of a rabbit, grayish white, with black ears and
+a tail like a rat. It would hang by its tail from a tree,
+until knocked off with a stick, and then curl up with
+shut eyes and pretend to be dead. It was excellent
+eating when roasted with wild yams,&mdash;rather like a
+very small suckling pig, the colonists later discovered.
+For the most part, however, Smith was inclined to think <span class='pagenum'>[294]</span>
+they would have to depend upon their provisions and
+the corn they could buy from the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>On returning to Jamestown they found that the Indians
+had been raiding the settlement, the colonists at
+the time being all at work and taken completely by surprise.
+Seventeen men had been wounded, and a boy
+killed. After this, the men were drilled each day, the
+guns were unpacked and a palisade was begun.</p>
+
+<p>Newport was in a hurry to return to England, and
+Wingfield now suggested that Smith, who was still
+supposed to be under arrest, should go with him and
+save any further trouble. This did not suit Smith at
+all. He demanded an open trial, got it, and was triumphantly
+cleared of all charges.</p>
+
+<p>Of the privation, dissensions and sickness which followed
+Newport's departure, the bad water, rotten food,
+constant trouble with savages, and the unreasonable
+demands of the directors of the London Company, all
+historians have told. One story, which Smith was
+wont to tell with keen relish, deals with the instructions
+of the Company that the Indian chief, "King
+Powhatan," should be crowned with all due ceremony,
+just at a time of year when every hand in the colony
+was needed for attending to the crops. Smith and
+Newport had just come to a reasonable understanding
+with that astute savage, by which he treated them with
+real respect; and the attention paid him by his "brother
+James," as he proceeded to call the King of England,
+rather turned his head. He liked the red cloak
+sent him, but had no idea what a crown meant. The
+raccoon skin mantle which he removed when robed in
+the royal crimson was sent to England and is now in a
+museum at Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>After some years of strenuous toil and adventure <span class='pagenum'>[295]</span>
+John Smith went back to London. An explosion of
+powder, whether accidental or intentional was never
+known, wounded him seriously just before he left
+Jamestown, and he did not recover from it for some
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is in your mind to do next, Captain?"
+asked Master William Simons the geographer when
+they had finished, between them, the new map of Virginia.
+Smith's eyes twinkled as he snapped the cover
+on his inkhorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, 't is hard for an old rover like me to lie
+abed when there's man's work to be done. You know,
+the London Company holds only the southern division
+of the King's Patent for Virginia; the north's given to
+Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth. And that's never been
+settled yet."</p>
+
+<p>"There was a colony of Captain George Popham
+and Ralegh Gilbert went out, five year ago," said Simons
+doubtfully. "They said they could not endure the
+bitter climate."</p>
+
+<p>"Sho," said Smith impatiently, one stubbed forefinger
+on the map, "'t is in almost the same latitude as
+France. Maybe they chose the wrong place for their
+plantation. Why, the French trade furs with the savages,
+all up and down the Saint Laurence, and mind the
+cold no more than nothing at all. The first thing we
+know, the Dutch will be out here finding a road to the
+Indies."</p>
+
+<p>Both men laughed. They had lost faith in that
+road to fortune.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow Hudson didn't find it when they sent him
+to look for it the year afore he died," said Simons,
+"or they'd be into it now. But what are you scheming?"<span class='pagenum'>[296]</span></p>
+
+<p>"First make a voyage of exploration," said Smith.
+"I ha' talked with one and another that told me they
+taken a draught of the coast, and I ha' six or seven of
+the plots they drew, so different from one another and
+out of proportion they do me as much good as so much
+waste paper&mdash;though they cost me more," added the
+veteran grimly. "With a true map o' the coast, we'd
+know whereabouts we were."</p>
+
+<p>"No gold nor silver, I hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe not. But what commodity in England decays
+faster than wood? And where will you find better
+forest than along that shore? Build shipyards
+there, and our English folk would make a living off'n
+that and the fisheries. I know how 't was in Boston&mdash;the
+Flemings would salt their fish down right aboard
+the ships when the fleets came in. But men for work
+like this must be men&mdash;not tyrants, nor slaves."</p>
+
+<p>John Smith's eyes flashed, and his lips closed so
+tightly that his thick mustaches and beard stuck straight
+out like a lion's. He had seen a plenty of both slavery
+and tyranny in his life.</p>
+
+<p>In fact there was a neck-and-neck race between the
+Plymouth Company and the Dutch West India Company,
+for the control of the northern province. Dutch
+fur traders were already on Manhattan Island living
+in makeshift wooden huts, and Adrian Block was exploring
+Long Island Sound, when John Smith went out
+to map the coast north of Cape Cod for Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges of the Plymouth Company in 1614. The two
+little English ships reached the part of the coast called
+by the Indians Monhegan in April of that year. They
+had general instructions to meet the cost of the expedition,
+if possible, by whaling, fishing and fur-trading.
+No true whales were found, however, and by the time <span class='pagenum'>[297]</span>
+the ships reached the fishing grounds the cod season
+was nearly past. Mullet and sturgeon were plentiful
+in summer, and while the sailors fished, Smith took a
+few men in a small boat and ranged the coast, trading
+for furs. Within a distance of fifty or sixty miles they
+got in exchange for such trifles as were prized by the
+Indians, more than a thousand beaver skins, a hundred
+or more martens and as many otter-pelts. On a rocky
+island four leagues from shore, in latitude 431/2, he
+made a garden in May which gave them all salad vegetables
+through June and July. Not a man of the
+twenty-five was ill even for a day. Cod, they learned,
+were abundant from March to the middle of June, and
+again from September to November, for cor-fish&mdash;salt
+fish or Poor John. The Indians said that the herring
+were more than the hairs of the head. Sturgeon, mullet,
+salmon, halibut and other fish were plentiful.
+Smith had a vision of comfortable independent mariners
+settled on farms all along the coast, sending their fish
+to market the year round, and sleeping every night at
+home. It seemed to him that here, in a hardy thrifty
+province which gold-seekers and gentlemen adventurers
+might scorn, he could contentedly end his days.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pleasant inlet on the coast of a bold
+headland, north of Cape Cod, which he thought would
+be his choice for his plantation. This headland he had
+named Cape Tragabigzanda. There were three small
+round islands to be seen far to seaward, which he called
+the Three Turks' Heads. One Sunday, "a faire sunshining
+day," he climbed a green height above Anusquam,
+and sitting on a huge boulder surveyed the bright
+and peaceful landscape and chose the site for his house.
+Good stone there would be in abundance, and mighty
+timbers that had been growing for him since the days <span class='pagenum'>[298]</span>
+of Noah. In this Province of New England a strong
+and fearless race would found new towns with the old
+names&mdash;Boston, Plymouth, Ipswich, Sandwich, Gloucester.
+So he dreamed until the sun went down under
+a canopy of crimson and gold, while the boat rocked in
+the little bay where he would have his wharf.</p>
+
+<p>In 1619, when English Puritans began preparations
+for the founding of a new colony, he offered his
+services, but the older men would have none of him.
+He was a "Church of England Protestant" and one of
+the unregenerate with whom they had no fellowship.
+They took his map as a guide, and settled, not on Cape
+Tragabigzanda, which Prince Charles had re-named
+Cape Anne, but in the bay which he had called Plymouth.
+He spent some years in London writing an account
+of his adventures, and died in 1631 at the age of
+fifty-two&mdash;Captain John Smith, Admiral of New
+England.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4 class="smcap">note</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p>
+The account of Captain John Smith's adventures among the Turks
+was at one time considered apocryphal, but good authorities now see no
+reason to regard his narrative of his own career as in any way
+inaccurate. The perils and strange chances which an adventurous
+man encountered in such times often seem almost incredible in a more
+peaceful age, but there is really no more reason to doubt them than
+to discredit authentic accounts of men like Daniel Boone, Francis
+Drake, or other men of similar disposition.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_DISCOVERERS" id="THE_DISCOVERERS"></a>THE DISCOVERERS</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Through tangled mysteries of old romance</span>
+<span class="i2">Knights, Latin, Celt or Saxon, pass a-dream,</span>
+<span class="i0">Seeking the minarets of magic towers</span>
+<span class="i2">Through the witched woods that gleam.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Stately in trappings thick with gold and gems,</span>
+<span class="i2">Stern-browed and stubborn-eyed, they wandered forth,</span>
+<span class="i0">As children credulous, as strong men brave,</span>
+<span class="i2">To South, and West, and North.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our venturous pilots map the windy skies;</span>
+<span class="i2">To serve our pleasure, huger galleons wait.</span>
+<span class="i0">Aflame with more than magic lights, our walls</span>
+<span class="i2">Guard the Manhattan Gate!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div><span class="back"><a href="#CONTENTS">[Contents]</a></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></div>
+
+<h3><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>Among the sources of information from which the historical
+material of this book are drawn are the following works:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>Voyages, <span class="smcap">Hakluyt</span></li>
+
+<li>The Discovery of America. <span class="smcap">John Fiske</span></li>
+
+<li>Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America. <span class="smcap">John Fiske</span></li>
+
+<li>The Conquest of Mexico. <span class="smcap">Prescott</span></li>
+
+<li>Two Voyages in New England. <span class="smcap">J. Josselyn</span></li>
+
+<li>Adventures and Conquests of Magellan. <span class="smcap">George Makepeace
+Towle</span></li>
+
+<li>Narrative and Critical History of America. (Edited by <span class="smcap">Justin
+Winsor</span>)</li>
+
+<li>The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote. <span class="smcap">Warner</span></li>
+
+<li>The Romance of Colonization. <span class="smcap">G. Barnett Smith</span></li>
+
+<li>Life of Columbus. <span class="smcap">Washington Irving</span></li>
+
+<li>The Voyage of the Vega. <span class="smcap">Nordenskiold</span></li>
+
+<li>The Land of the Midnight Sun. <span class="smcap">Du Chaillu</span></li>
+
+<li>The Court of France. <span class="smcap">Lady Jackson</span></li>
+
+<li>Sailors' Narratives of New England Voyages. (Edited by
+<span class="smcap">George Parker Winship</span>)</li>
+
+<li>Indian Basketry. <span class="smcap">George Wharton James</span></li>
+
+<li>The Iroquois Book of Rites. <span class="smcap">Hale</span></li>
+
+<li>Drake. <span class="smcap">Alfred Noyes</span> (<i>poem</i>)</li>
+
+<li>Crusaders of New France. <span class="smcap">William Bennett Munro</span></li>
+
+<li>Elizabethan Sea-dogs. <span class="smcap">William Wood</span></li>
+
+<li>Young Folks' Book of American Explorers. <span class="smcap">Higginson</span></li>
+
+<li>Paradise Found. <span class="smcap">William F. Warren</span></li>
+
+<li>Ferdinand and Isabella. <span class="smcap">Prescott</span></li>
+
+<li>Pioneers of France in the New World. <span class="smcap">Parkman</span></li>
+
+<li>Sir Francis Drake. <span class="smcap">Julian Corbett</span></li>
+
+<li>Henry the Navigator. <span class="smcap">Men of Action Series</span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h4 class="smcap">the end</h4>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/endpaper-0344-1.jpg" width="700" height="522" alt="End paper illustration" title="End paper illustration" />
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3>
+
+<table cellpadding="10" summary="">
+<tr class="u"><td style="text-align: right;">Page</td><td>Problem</td><td>Change/Comment</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">8</td><td>"Helene"</td><td>"Helêne" to match rest of text</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">26</td><td>same awe</td><td>some awe</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">55</td><td></td><td>Inserted a comma after 'jeweled trappings'.</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">85</td><td></td><td>superfluous comma in "Catherine, became" removed</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">85</td><td>valauble</td><td>valuable</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">90</td><td>good cheap and wholesome.</td><td>As in image</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">108</td><td>comrad</td><td>comrade</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">133</td><td>'And the White Gods come'</td><td>Line indented to match other stanzas.</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">150</td><td>sqadron</td><td>squadron</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">162</td><td>religon</td><td>religion</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">178</td><td>exicitement</td><td>excitement</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">194</td><td>slaves</td><td>slavers</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">194</td><td>Cabeca</td><td>'Cabeça' as elsewhere</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">230</td><td>'like spent bullets"</td><td>'like spent bullets.'</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">232</td><td>two month's</td><td>As in image</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">239</td><td>exploratioins</td><td>explorations</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">247</td><td>Amadas</td><td>Armadas</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align: right;">300</td><td></td><td>Inserted '(' before 'Edited by <span class="smcap">Justin Winsor</span>)'</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The following variant spellings in the text have been left unmodified:</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li>"Bacalao" and "Baccalao"</li>
+<li>"Mappe-Mondo" and "Mappe-Monde"</li>
+<li>"'T is" and "'Tis"</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>The following variant hyphenations in the text have been left unmodified:</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li>"arrow-heads" and "arrowheads"</li>
+<li>"birch-bark" and "birchbark"</li>
+<li>"cross-bow" and "crossbow-bolts"</li>
+<li>"court-yards" and "courtyards"</li>
+<li>"deer-skin" and "deerskin"</li>
+<li>"frost-work" and "frostwork"</li>
+<li>"Grand-Master" and "Grand Master"</li>
+<li>"ink-horn" and "inkhorn"</li>
+<li>"kin-folk" and "kinfolk"</li>
+<li>"sea-weed" and "seaweed"</li>
+<li>"shell-fish" and "shellfish"</li>
+<li>"ship-worm" and "shipworms"</li>
+</ol>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Days of the Discoverers, by L. Lamprey
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+</body>
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+
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@@ -0,0 +1,9532 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Days of the Discoverers, by L. Lamprey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Days of the Discoverers
+
+Author: L. Lamprey
+
+Illustrator: Florence Choate
+               Elizabeth Curtis
+
+Release Date: March 23, 2006 [EBook #18038]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, LN Yaddanapudi and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "'I will tell you where there is plenty of
+it'"--_Frontispiece_]
+
+
+
+
+_GREAT DAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY SERIES_
+
+
+
+
+DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS
+
+BY
+
+L. LAMPREY
+
+_Author of "In the Days of the Guild",
+"Masters of the Guild", etc._
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+
+FLORENCE CHOATE and ELIZABETH CURTIS
+
+
+NEW YORK
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1921, by_
+
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+
+_All rights reserved, including that of translation
+into foreign languages_
+
+
+_Made in the United States of America_
+
+
+
+
+TO FORESTA
+
+
+    Upon the road to Faerie,
+    O there are many sights to see,--
+    Small woodland folk may one discern
+    Housekeeping under leaf and fern,
+    And little tunnels in the grass
+    Where caravans of goblins pass,
+    And airy corsair-craft that float
+    On wings transparent as a mote,--
+    All sorts of curious things can be
+    Upon the road to Faerie!
+
+    Along the wharves of Faerie--
+    There all the winds of Christendie
+    Are musical with hawk-bell chimes,
+    Carillons rung to minstrels' rimes,
+    And silver trumpets bravely blown
+    From argosies of lands unknown,
+    And the great war-drum's wakening roll--
+    The reveille of heart and soul--
+    For news of all the ageless sea
+    Comes to the quays of Faerie!
+
+    Across the fields to Faerie
+    There is no lack of company,--
+    The world is real, the world is wide,
+    But there be many things beside.
+    Who once has known that crystal spring
+    Shall not lose heart for anything.
+    The blessing of a faery wife
+    Is love to sweeten all your life.
+    To find the truth whatever it be--
+    That is the luck of Faerie!
+
+    _Above the gates of Faerie
+    There bends a wild witch-hazel tree.
+    The fairies know its elfin powers.
+    They wove a garland of the flowers,
+    And on a misty autumn day
+    They crowned their queen--and ran away!
+    And by that gift they made you free
+    Of all the roads of Faerie!_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                       PAGE
+_To Foresta_                           v
+
+I
+ASGARD THE BEAUTIFUL (1348)            1
+_The Viking's Secret_                  17
+
+II
+THE RUNES OF THE WIND-WIFE (1364)      18
+_The Navigators_ (1415-1460)           34
+
+III
+SEA OF DARKNESS (1475)                 35
+_Sunset Song_                          48
+
+IV
+PEDRO AND HIS ADMIRAL (1492)           50
+_The Queen's Prayer_                   65
+
+V
+THE MAN WHO COULD NOT DIE (1493-1494)  66
+_The Escape_                           80
+
+VI
+LOCKED HARBORS (1497)                  81
+_Gray Sails_                           93
+
+VII
+LITTLE VENICE (1500)                   94
+_The Gold Road_                        104
+
+VIII
+THE DOG WITH TWO MASTERS (1512)        105
+_Cold o' the Moon_ (1519)              117
+
+IX
+WAMPUM TOWN (1508-1524)                121
+_The Drum_                             133
+
+X
+THE GODS OF TAXMAR (1512-1519)         134
+_The Legend of Malinche_               148
+
+XI
+THE THUNDER BIRDS (1519-1520)          150
+_Moccasin Flower_                      165
+
+XII
+GIFTS FROM NORUMBEGA (1533-1535)       167
+_The Mustangs_                         181
+
+XIII
+THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN (1528-1536)     182
+_Lone Bayou_ (1542)                    195
+
+XIV
+THE FACE OF THE TERROR (1564)          197
+_The Destroyers_                       214
+
+XV
+THE FLEECE OF GOLD (1561-1577)         215
+_A Watch-dog of England_ (1583)        237
+
+XVI
+LORDS OF ROANOKE (1584)                238
+_The Changelings_                      250
+
+XVII
+THE GARDENS OF HELENE (1607-1609)      252
+_The Wooden Shoe_                      269
+
+XVIII
+THE FIRES THAT TALKED (1610)           270
+_Imperialism_                          282
+
+XIX
+ADMIRAL OF NEW ENGLAND (1600-1614)     284
+_The Discoverers_                      299
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY                           300
+
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"'I will tell you where there is plenty of it'" (in color)
+                                                            _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                            FACING
+                                                            PAGE
+
+"'And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by
+two cats'" (in color)                                       4
+
+"Nils marked out an inscription in Runic letters"           30
+
+"The miniature globe took form as the children watched,
+fascinated"                                                 44
+
+"He proposed that Caonaba should put on the gift the
+Spanish captain had brought"                                78
+
+"A sapling, bent down, was attached to a noose ingeniously
+hidden"                                                     86
+
+"The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and
+friendliness" (in color)                                    132
+
+"Cortes flung about his shoulders his own cloak"            146
+
+"Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard" (in color)        162
+
+"Cartier read from his service-book"                        176
+
+"The creatures darkened the plain almost as far as the eye
+could see"                                                  190
+
+"'Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?'"                 204
+
+"Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard"  226
+
+"If he had to wear her fetters, they should at least be
+golden"                                                     244
+
+"The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall"       266
+
+
+
+
+DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ASGARD THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+A red fox ran into the empty church. In the middle of the floor he sat
+up and looked around. Nothing stirred--not the painted figures on the
+wooden walls, nor the boy who now stood in the doorway. This boy was
+gray-eyed and flaxen-haired, and might have been eleven or twelve years
+old. He was looking for the good old priest, Father Ansgar, and the wild
+shy animal eyeing him from the foot of the altar made it only too clear
+that the church, like the village, was deserted.
+
+Father Ansgar was dead of the strange swift pestilence that was called
+in 1348 the Black Death. So also were the sexton, the cooper, the
+shoemaker, and almost all the people of the valley. A ship had come into
+Bergen with the plague on board, and it spread through Norway like a
+grass-fire. Only last week Thorolf Erlandsson[1] had had a father and
+mother, a grandmother, two younger sisters and a brother. Now he was
+alone. In the night the dairy woman and the plowmen at Ormgard farm had
+run away. Other farms and houses were already closed and silent, or
+plundered and burned. Ormgard being remote had at first escaped the
+sickness.
+
+Thorolf turned away from the church door and began to climb the
+mountain. At the lane leading to his home he did not stop, but kept on
+into the woods. It was not so lonely there.
+
+Up and up he climbed, the thrilling scent of fir-balsam in his nostrils,
+the small friendly noises of the forest all about him. Only a few months
+ago he had come down this very road with his father, driving the cattle
+and goats home from the summer pasture. All the other farmers were doing
+the same, and the clear notes of the lure, the long curving horn, used
+for calling the cattle and signaling across valleys, soared from slope
+to slope. There was laughter and shouting and joking all the way down.
+Now the only persons abroad seemed to be thieving ruffians whose greed
+for plunder was more than their fear of the plague.
+
+A thought came to the boy. How could he leave his father's cattle unfed
+and uncared for? What if he were to drive the cows himself to the saeter
+and tend them through the summer? He faced about, resolutely, and began
+to descend the hill.
+
+Within sight of the familiar roofs he heard some one coming from the
+village, on horseback. It proved to be Nils the son of Magnus the son of
+Nils who was called the Bear-Slayer, with a sack of grain and a pair of
+saddlebags on a sedate brown pony. Nils was lame of one foot and no
+taller than a boy of nine, although he was thirteen this month and his
+head was nearly as large as a man's. He had been an orphan from
+baby-hood, and for the last three years had lived in the priest's house
+learning to be a clerk.
+
+"Hoh!" called Nils, "where are you going?"
+
+"To the farm to get our cattle and take them to the saeter. There is no
+one left to do it but me."
+
+"Cattle?" queried the other interestedly, "She will be glad of that."
+
+"She!" said Thorolf, "who?"
+
+"The Wind-wife[2]--Mother Elle, who used to sell wind to the
+sailors--the Finnish woman from Stavanger. She has gathered up a lot of
+children who have no one to look after them and is leading them into the
+mountains. She has Nikolina Sven's daughter Larsson, and Olof and Anders
+Amundson, and half a score of younger ones from different villages. She
+says that if it is God's will for the plague to come to the saeter it
+will come, but it is not there now, and it is in the valleys and the
+towns. She has gone on with the small ones who cannot walk fast, and
+left Olof and Anders and me to bring along the ponies with the loads.
+I'll help you drive your beasts."
+
+Without trouble the lads got the animals out of the byres and headed
+them up the road. Norway is so sharply divided by precipitous mountain
+ranges and deeply-penetrating fiords, that it may be but a few miles
+from a farm near sea level to the high grassy pastures three or four
+thousand feet above it where the cattle are pastured in summer. The
+saeter maidens live there in their cottages from June to September,
+making butter and cheese, tending the herds and doing such other work as
+they can. The saeter belonging to Ormgard and its neighbors was the one
+chosen by Mother Elle as a refuge for her flock.
+
+The forest of magnificent firs through which the road passed presently
+grew less somber, beginning to be streaked with white birches whose
+bright leaves twinkled in the sun. Then it reached the height at which
+evergreens cease to grow. The birches were shorter and sparser, and
+through the thinning woodland appeared glimpses of a treeless pasture
+dotted with scrubby low bushes and clumps of rushes. A glint of clear
+green water betrayed a small lake in a dip of the hills. And now were
+heard sounds most unusual in that lonely place, the high sweet voices of
+children.
+
+Birch trees, little trees, dwarfed by sharp winds and poor soil,
+encircled a level space perhaps ten feet across, carpeted with new soft
+grass, reindeer moss and cupped lichens. Here sat seven or eight
+children eagerly listening to a story told by an older child as she
+divided the ration of fladbrod,[3] wild strawberries from a small basket
+of birchbark, and brown goat's-milk cheese.
+
+"And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two cats--"
+
+Nikolina the daughter of Sven Larsson of the Trolle farm was known
+through all the valley, not only as the sole child of its richest
+farmer, but for the bright blonde hair that covered her shoulders with
+its soft abundance and hung to her waist. Her father would not have it
+cut or braided or even covered save by such a little embroidered cap as
+she wore now. Her scarlet bodice, and blue-black skirt bordered with
+bright woven bands, were of the finest wool; the full-sleeved white
+linen under-dress had been spun and woven and embroidered by skilful and
+loving fingers. Nikolina had lost the roof from over her head, and a
+great deal more than that. Now she was giving her whole mind to the
+little ones of all ages from four to eight, crowding close about her.
+
+[Illustration: "'And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two
+cats'"--_Page_ 4]
+
+"Hi!" called Nils, "where is Mother Elle? See what Thorolf and I have
+got!"
+
+The children scrambled to their feet and gazed with round eyes, their
+small hungry teeth munching their morsels of hard bread. Nikolina
+plucked a bunch of grass for Snow, the foremost cow, and patted her
+as she ate it.
+
+"The little ones were so tired and hungry," she said, "that Mother Elle
+said they might have their supper now, while she and Olof and Anders
+went on to the saeter. This is wonderful! She was saying only this
+morning that she feared all the cattle were dead or stolen."
+
+Within an hour they came in sight of the log huts with turf-covered
+roofs that sloped almost to the ground in the rear. A broad plain
+stretched away beyond, and the new grass was of that vivid green to be
+found in places which deep snow makes pure. Hills enclosed it, and
+beyond, a gleaming network of lake and stream ended in range above range
+of blue and silver peaks. The clear invigorating air was like some
+unearthly wine. The cows at the scent of fresh pasture moved more
+briskly; the pony tossed his head and whinnied. Not far from the
+cottages there came to meet them a little old woman, dark and wiry, with
+bright searching eyes. Her face was wrinkled all over in fine soft
+lines, but her hair was hardly gray at all. She wore a pointed hood and
+girdled tunic of tanned reindeer hide, with leggings and shoes of the
+same. A blanket about her shoulders was draped into a kind of pouch, in
+which she carried on her back a tow-headed, solemn-eyed baby.
+
+"Welcome to you, Thorolf Erlandsson," she said, just as if she had been
+expecting him. "With this good milk we shall fare like the King."
+
+No king, truly, could have supped on food more delicious than that
+enjoyed by Nils and Thorolf on this first night in the saeter. It is
+strange but true that the most exquisite delights are those that money
+cannot buy. No man can taste cold spring water and barley bread in
+absolute perfection who has not paid the poor man's price--hard work and
+keen hunger.
+
+When Nikolina, Karen and Lovisa came up with the smaller children the
+place had already an inhabited, homelike look. There was even a wise old
+raven, almost as large as a gander, whom Nils had christened Munin,
+after Odin's bird. The little ones had all the new milk they could drink
+from their wooden bowls, and were put to bed in the movable wooden
+bed-places, on beds of hay covered with sheepskins and blankets. All
+were asleep before dark, for at that season the night lasted only two or
+three hours. The last thing that Thorolf heard was a happy little pipe
+from the five-year-old Ellida,--
+
+"Now we shall live in Asgard forever and ever."
+
+For all it had to do with the experience of many of the children the
+saeter might really have been Asgard, the Norse paradise. The youngest
+had never before been outside the narrow valley where they were born.
+Ellida and Margit, Didrik and little Peder, could not be convinced that
+they were anywhere but in Asgard the Blest.
+
+Norway had long since become Christian, but the old faith was not
+forgotten. The legends, songs and customs of the people were full of it.
+In the sagas Asgard was described as being on a mountain at the top of
+the world. Around the base of this mountain lay Midgard, the abode of
+mankind. Beyond the great seas, in Utgard, the giants lived. Hel was the
+under-world, the home of evil ghosts and spirits. Tales were told in the
+long winter evenings, of Baldur the god of spring, Loki the crafty, Odin
+the old one-eyed beggar in a hooded cloak, with his two ravens and his
+two tame wolves, Freya the lovely lady of flowers, Elle-folk dancing in
+the moonlight, and little rascally Trolls.
+
+The songs and legends repeated by the old people or chanted by minstrels
+or skalds were more than idle stories--they were the history of a race.
+Children heard over and over again the family records telling in rude
+rhyme the story of centuries. In distant Iceland, Greenland, the
+Shetlands, the Faroes or the Orkneys, a Norseman could tell exactly what
+might be his udall right, or right of inheritance, in the land of his
+fathers.
+
+On Nils and Thorolf, Anders, Olof, Nikolina, Karen and Lovisa, who were
+all over ten years old, rested great responsibility. Mother Elle always
+managed to solve her own problems and expected them to attend to theirs
+without constant direction from her. She told them what there was to be
+done and left them to attend to it.
+
+All were hardy, active youngsters who took to fending for themselves as
+naturally as a day-old chick takes to scratching. In ordinary seasons
+the work at the saeter was heavy, for the maidens must not only follow
+the herds over miles of pasture land, but make butter and cheese for the
+winter from their milking. The few cows that were here now could be
+tethered near by; the milk, when the children had had all they wanted,
+was mostly used in soups, pudding or groet (porridge). A net or weir
+stretched across the outlet of the lake would fill with fish overnight.
+The streams were full of trout. Mother Elle knew how to make fish-hooks
+of bone, bows and arrows, ropes, and baskets of bark, how to weave
+osiers, how to cure bruises and cuts, how to trap the wild hares,
+grouse and plover and cook them over an open fire. The children found
+plover's eggs and the eggs of other wild fowl. They raised pulse, leeks,
+onions and turnips in a little garden patch. They gathered strawberries,
+cranberries, crowberries, wild currants, black and red, the cloudberry
+and the delicious arctic raspberry which tastes of pineapple. Some
+stores of salt and grain were already at the saeter and the grain-fields
+had been sowed, before the pestilence appeared in the valley.
+
+In the long summer days of these northern mountains, one has the feeling
+that they will never end, that life must go on in an infinite succession
+of still, sunshiny, fragrant hours, filled with the songs of birds, the
+chirr of insects and the distant lowing of cattle. There is time for
+everything. At night comes dreamless slumber, and the morning is like a
+birth into new life.
+
+There was a great deal of singing and story-telling at odd times. A
+group of children making mats or baskets, gathering pease or going after
+berries would beg Nils or Nikolina to tell a story, or Karen would lead
+them in some old song with a familiar refrain. But some of the songs the
+Wind-wife crooned to the baby were not like any the children had heard.
+They were not even in Norwegian.
+
+Thorolf was a silent lad, who would rather listen than talk, and hated
+asking questions. But one day, when he and Nikolina were hunting wild
+raspberries, he asked her if she thought Mother Elle meant to stay in
+the mountains through the winter. Nikolina did not know.
+
+    "'Tis well to be wise but not too wise,
+    'Tis well that to-morrow is hid from our eyes,
+    For in forward-looking forebodings rise,"
+
+she added quaintly. "I have heard her say that it is colder in Greenland
+than it is here."
+
+"Has she been in Greenland?"
+
+"Her father and mother were on the way there when she was little, and
+the ship was wrecked somewhere on the coast. The Skroelings found her
+and took her to live in their country. That is how she learned so much
+about trees and herbs, and how to make bows and arrows and moccasins."
+
+"Moccasins?"
+
+"The little shoes she made for Ellida. And she made a little boat for
+Peder, like their skiffs."
+
+This was interesting. For a private reason, Thorolf held Greenland to be
+the most fascinating of all places.
+
+"Can she speak their language?"
+
+"Of course. I asked her to teach me, and she said that perhaps she would
+some day. The songs that she sings to the little ones are some that the
+Skroeling woman who adopted her used to sing to her when she cried for
+her own mother. One of them begins like this:
+
+    "'Piche Klooskap pechian
+    Machieswi menikok.'"
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+"'Long ago Klooskap came to the island of the partridges.' Klooskap was
+like Odin, or Thor. The priests in Greenland told her he was a devil and
+wouldn't let her talk about him, but the Skroelings had runes for
+everything just like the people in the sagas,--runes for war, and
+healing, and the sea."
+
+"How did she ever get away?"
+
+"Some men came from Westbyrg to cut wood in the forest, and when they
+saw that she was not really a Skroeling they bought her for an iron pot
+and one of them married her. But he was drowned a long time ago."
+
+"I wish I knew the Skroelings' language. Some day I mean to go to
+Greenland."
+
+"Perhaps Mother Elle will teach you. I'll ask her."
+
+The Wind-wife was rather chary of information about the country of the
+Skroelings until Nikolina's coaxing and Thorolf's silent but intense
+interest had taken effect. The country, she said, was rather like
+Norway, with mountains and great forests, lakes and streams, but far
+colder. There were no fiords, and no cities. The people lived in tents
+made of poles covered with bark, or hides. They dressed in the hides of
+wild animals and lived by hunting and fishing. They had no reindeer,
+horses, cattle, sheep or goats, no fowls, no pigs. They could not work
+iron, nor did they spin or weave. The man and woman who had adopted her
+treated her just like their own child.
+
+The stories she had learned from these people were intensely interesting
+to her listeners. There was one about a battle between the wasps and the
+squirrels, and another about the beaver who wanted wings. One was about
+a girl who was married to the Spirit of the Mountain and had a son
+beautiful and straight and like any other boy except that he had stone
+eyebrows. Then there was the tale about Klooskap tying up the White
+Eagle of the Wind so that he could not flap his wings. After a short
+time everything was so dirty and ill-smelling and unhealthy that
+Klooskap had to go back and untie one wing, and let the wind blow to
+clear the air and make the earth once more wholesome.
+
+Wild apples fell, grain ripened, nights lengthened. Long ago the
+twin-flower, violet, wild pansy, forget-me-not and yellow anemone had
+left their fairy haunts, and there remained only the curving fantastic
+fronds of the fern,--the dragon-grass. Then had come brilliant spots and
+splashes of color on the summer slopes--purple butterwort, golden
+ragweed, aconite, buttercup, deep crimson mossy patches of saxifrage,
+rosy heather, catchfly, wild geranium, cinnamon rose. These also
+finished their triumphal procession and went to their Valhalla. Then one
+September morning the children woke to hear the wind screaming as if the
+White Eagle had escaped his prison, and the rain pelting the world.
+
+All summer they had been out, rain or shine, like water-ouzels, but now
+they were glad to sit about the fire with the shutters all closed, and
+the smoke now and then driven down into the room by the storm. Before
+evening the little ones were begging for stories.
+
+"I wish I could remember a saga I heard last Yule," Nikolina said at
+last. "It was about a voyage the Vikings made to a country where the
+people had never seen cattle. When they heard the cattle bellowing they
+all ran away and left the furs they had come to sell."
+
+"Tell all you remember and make up the rest," suggested Karen, but
+Nikolina shook her head.
+
+"One should never do that with a saga."
+
+"I know that tale," spoke up Thorolf suddenly, although he had never in
+his life repeated a saga. "Grandmother used to tell it. In the beginning
+Bjarni Heriulfson the sea-rover, after many years came home to Iceland
+to drink wassail in his father's house. But strangers dwelt there and
+told him that his father was gone to Greenland, and he set sail for that
+land. Soon was the ship swallowed up in a gray mist in which were
+neither sun nor stars. They sailed many days they knew not where, but
+suddenly the fog lifted and the sun revealed to them a coast of low
+hills covered with forest. By this Bjarni thought that it was not
+Greenland but some southerly coast. Therefore turned he northward and
+sailed many days before he sighted the mountains of Greenland and his
+father's house.
+
+"Years afterward returned Bjarni to Iceland, and in his telling of that
+voyage it came to the ears of Leif Ericsson, who asked him many
+questions about the land he had seen. There grew no trees in Iceland or
+Greenland, fit for house-timber, and Leif was minded to find out this
+place of great forests. Thus it came that Leif sailed from Brattahlid in
+Greenland with five and thirty men in a long ship upon a journey of
+discovery.
+
+"First came they to a barren land covered with big flat stones, and this
+Leif named Helluland, the slate land. Southward sailed he for many days
+until he saw a coast covered with wooded hills, and there he landed,
+calling it Markland, the land of woods. Then southward again they bore
+and came to a place where a river flowed out of a lake and fell into the
+sea. The country was pleasant, with good fishing. Leif said that they
+would spend the winter there, and they built wooden cabins well-made and
+warm.
+
+"Then at the season when the leaves are blood-red and bright gold came
+in from the woods Thorkel the German, smacking his lips and making
+strange faces and jabbering in his own language. When they asked what
+ailed him he said that he had found vines loaded with grapes, and having
+seen none since he left his own country, which was a land of vineyards,
+he was out of his senses with delight. Therefore was that country named
+Vinland the Fair. In the spring went Leif home, well pleased, with a
+cargo of timber, but his father being dead he voyaged no more to
+Vinland, but remained to be head of his house.
+
+"Next went Thorvald, Leif's brother, to Vinland and stayed two winters
+in the booths that Leif built, until he was slain in a fight with the
+men of that land. His men buried him there and returned sorrowfully to
+their own land.
+
+"Next went Thorestein, Leif's second brother, forth, with Gudrid his
+wife, to get the body of Thorvald but he died on the voyage and his
+widow returned to Brattahlid.
+
+"Next came to Brattahlid Thorfin Karlsefne, the Viking from Iceland, who
+loved and married Gudrid and from her heard the story of Vinland, and
+desired it for his own. In good time went he forth in a long ship with
+his wife, and there went with him three other valiant ships. They had
+altogether one hundred and sixty men and five women, with cattle, grain
+and all things fit for a settlement. This was seven years after Leif
+Ericsson found Vinland. Among the stores for trading was scarlet cloth,
+which the Skroelings greatly covet, insomuch that one small strip of
+scarlet would buy many rich furs. But when they came to trade, hearing a
+bull bellow, with a great squalling they all ran away and left their
+packs on the ground, nor did they show their faces again for three
+weeks. Snorre, the son of Thorfin Karlsefne, born in Vinland, was three
+years old when the Northmen left that land. They had found the winter
+hard and cold, and in a fight with the Skroelings many had been killed,
+so that they took ship and returned to Iceland.
+
+"They had gone but a little way when one of the ships, which was
+commanded by Bjarni Grimulfsson, lagged so far behind that it lost sight
+of the others. The men then discovered that shipworms[4] had bored the
+hull so that it was about to sink. None could hope to be saved but in
+the stern boat, and that would not hold half of them.
+
+"Then stood Bjarni Grimulfsson forth, and said to his men that in this
+matter there should be no advantage of rank, but they would draw lots,
+who should go in the boat and who remain in the ship. When this had been
+done it was Bjarni's lot to go in the boat. After all had gone down into
+the boat who had the right, an Icelander who had been Bjarni's companion
+made outcry dolefully saying, 'Bjarni, Bjarni, do you leave me here to
+die in the sea? It was not so you promised me when I left my father's
+house.' Then said Bjarni, for the lot was fairly cast, 'What else can be
+done?' Then said the Icelander, 'I think that you should come up into
+the ship and let me go down into the boat.' And indeed no other way
+might be found for him to live. Then answered Bjarni making light of the
+matter, 'Let it be so, since I see that you are so anxious to live and
+so afraid of death; I will return to the ship.' This was done, and the
+men rowing away looked back and saw the ship go down in a great swirl of
+waves with Bjarni and those who remained.
+
+"This tale my grandmother heard from her father, and he from his, and so
+on until the time of that Thorolf Erlandsson who sailed with Bjarni
+Grimulfsson and went down into the sea by his side singing, for he
+feared nothing but to be a coward."
+
+Thorolf's eyes were as proud and his head as high as were his Viking
+forefather's when the worm-riddled galley went to her grave with more
+than half her crew, three hundred and forty years before. In the little
+silence which followed the fire crackled and whistled, the gusty
+rain-drenched wind beat upon the little hut. And then Nils repeated
+musingly the ancient saying from the Runes of Odin,
+
+    "'Cattle die, Kings die,
+    Kindred die, we also die,--
+    One thing never dies,
+    The fair fame of the valiant.'"
+
+Some one knocked at the door. A real Viking in winged helmet and
+scale-armor would hardly have surprised them just then. But it was only
+a tall man in a traveler's cloak and hat, and they made quickly room for
+him to dry himself by the fire, and brought food and drink for him to
+refresh himself.
+
+"I thought that I knew the way to the old place," he said, looking
+about, "but in this tempest I nearly lost myself. Which of you is
+Thorolf Erlandsson?"
+
+The stranger was Syvert Thorolfson, a merchant of Iceland, Thorolf's
+uncle. He brought messages from Nikolina's grandmother in Stavanger, and
+from the Bishop, who was ready to see that all the children who had no
+relatives should be taken care of in Bergen. Within three days Asgard
+the Beautiful was left to the lemming and the raven. Yet the long bright
+summer lived always in the hearts of the children. Years after Thorolf
+remembered the words of the Wind-wife,--
+
+"Make friends with the Skroelings--make friends. Friendship is a rock to
+stand on; hatred is a rock to split on. In the land of Klooskap shall
+you be Klooskap's guest."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] In old Norse families names alternated from father to son. For
+example, Thorolf Erlandsson (Thorolf the son of Erland) would name his
+son after his own father, and the boy would be known as Erland
+Thorolfsson. A daughter was known by her given name and her father's, as
+Sigrid Erlandsdatter. In the case of the farm being of sufficient
+importance for a surname the name might be added, as "Elsie
+Tharaldsdatter Ormgrass."
+
+[2] Northern sailors regard the Finns as wizards.
+
+[3] Fladbrod is the coarse peasant-bread of Norway, made from an
+unfermented dough of barley and oatmeal rolled out into large thin cakes
+and baked. It will keep a long time.
+
+[4] The teredo or shipworm was a serious peril in the days before the
+sheathing of ships. Even tar sheathing was not used until the sixteenth
+century.
+
+
+
+
+THE VIKING'S SECRET
+
+
+    In the days of jarl and hersir, while yet the world was young,
+    And sagas of gods and heroes the grim-lipped minstrel sung,
+    With the beak of his open galley in the sunset's scarlet flame,
+    Over the wild Atlantic the Norseland Viking came.
+
+    Life was a thing to play with,--oh, then the world was wide,
+    With room for man and mammoth, and a goblin life beside.
+    Now we have slain the mammoths, and we have driven the ghosts away,
+    And we read the saga of Vinland in the light of a new-born day.
+
+    We have harnessed the deadly lightnings; we have ridden the restless
+        wave.
+    We have chased the brood of the werewolf back to their noisome cave.
+    But far in the icy Northland, with weird witch-lights aglow,
+    Locked in the Greenland glaciers, is a tale we do not know.
+
+    Out of Brattahlid's portal, southward from Herjulfsness,
+    They came to their new-found kingdom, their Vinland to possess.
+    Armored with careless laughter, strong with a stubborn will,
+    The Vikings found it and lost it--it is undiscovered still!
+
+    Where did they beach their galleys? How were their cabins planned?
+    Who were the fearful Skroelings? What was the Fuerduerstrand?
+    What were the grapes of Tyrker? For all that is written or said,
+    The Rune Stones hold the secret of the days of Eric the Red!
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE RUNES OF THE WIND-WIFE
+
+
+Salt and scarred from the northern seas, the _Taernan_, deep-laden with
+herring, nosed in at the Hanse quay in Bergen. Thorolf Erlandsson looked
+grimly up at the huge warehouses. Since the Hanseatic League secured a
+foothold in Norway, in 1343, most Norwegian ports had been losing trade,
+and Bergen, or rather the Hanse merchants in Bergen, had been getting
+it. Between the Danes and the Germans it looked rather as if Norwegians
+were to be crowded out of their own country.
+
+The Hanse traders not only received and sold fish for the Friday markets
+of northern Europe, but sold all kinds of manufactured goods. It was
+said that they had two sets of scales--one for buying and one for
+selling. Norwegians had either to adapt themselves to the new methods or
+give their sons to the ceaseless battle of the open sea. From the Baltic
+and Icelandic fisheries, the North Sea and the Lofoden Islands, their
+ships got the heaviest and the hardest of the sea-harvesting.
+
+But it takes more than hardship to break a Norseman. In his four years
+at sea Thorolf had become tall, broad-shouldered and powerful, and at
+eighteen he looked a grown man. He did more than he promised, and
+listened oftener than he talked, and his only close friend was Nils
+Magnusson, who was now coming down to the wharf. They had known each
+other from boyhood.
+
+Nils had been for three years a clerk in Syvert Thorolfsson's warehouse.
+While not tall he was neither stunted nor crippled, and easily kept pace
+with Thorolf. As he set out the silver-bound horn cups to drink
+_skal_[1] with his friend in his own lodging, the croak and sputter of
+German talk sounded in the street below.
+
+"Behold a new Bergen," observed Nils whimsically. "Let us drink to the
+founding of a new Iceland. Did you go to Greenland?"
+
+"We touched at Kakortok with letters for the Bishop. The people are sick
+and savage with fighting against the Skroelings."
+
+"Now," said Nils, rubbing his long nose, "it is odd that you say that,
+for I was just going to tell you some news. The King has given Paul
+Knutson leave to raise a company to fight against the Skroelings in
+Greenland--and parts beyond. He sails in a month."
+
+"I wish I had known of it."
+
+"I thought you would say that. This is between us two and the candle,
+but Anders Amundson is going, and I am going, and you may go if you
+will."
+
+Thorolf's gray eyes flamed. "What is Knutson like?"
+
+"Well, they may call him Chevalier, but he has the old Viking way with
+him. I said that I had a friend who had long wished to lay his bones in
+a strange land, and he answered, 'If your friend sails with me I would
+prefer to have him bring his bones home again.' He kept a place for
+you."
+
+Three weeks later Thorolf, looking backward as the _Rotge_, (little auk
+or sea-king) stood out to sea, saw the familiar outline of Snaehatten
+against the sunrise and wondered when he should see it again. Like a
+questing raven his mind returned to the summer spent at the saeter, and
+recalled that dark saying of the Wind-wife,--
+
+"In the land of Klooskap shall you be Klooskap's guest."
+
+The galley[2] rode the waves with the bold freedom of her kind. Her keel
+was carved out of a single great tree. Her seasoned oaken timbers,
+overlapping, were riveted together by iron bolts, with the round heads
+outside. Where a timber touched a rib, a strip was cut out on each side,
+forming a block through which a hole was bored. Another hole was bored
+in the rib to match and a rope twisted of the inner bark of the linden
+was put through both holes and knotted. In surf or heavy sea, this
+construction gave the craft a supple strength. Calking was done with
+woolen cloth steeped in pitch. The mast, of a chosen trunk of fir, was
+set upright in a log with ends shaped like a fishtail. The long oarlike
+rudder was on the board or side of the ship to the right of the stern,
+called the starboard or steerboard. The lading was done on the opposite
+side, the larboard or ladderboard. There were ten oars to a side, and a
+single large triangular sail.
+
+Long and narrow, hardly ten feet above the water-line at her lowest, her
+curved prow glancing over the waves like the head of a swimming snake,
+she was no more like the tumbling cargo-ships than a shark is like a
+porpoise. When they were two days out, Nils said to Thorolf,
+
+"A Viking in such a galley would sail to the end of the world. By the
+way, did the Skroelings in Greenland understand that language the
+Wind-wife spoke?"
+
+"I was not there long enough to find out. I once asked a man who knows
+their talk well, and he said it was no tongue that ever he heard."
+
+The Greenland folk welcomed them heartily. Finding that the white men
+had not after all been forgotten by their own people, the natives drew
+off and gave them no more trouble. The Northmen spent the winter in
+sleep, talk, song, and hunting with native guides. Besides the old man
+in white fur, as the polar bear was respectfully called, Arctic foxes,
+walrus, whales and seal abounded. Many of the new-comers became skilful
+in the making and the use of the skin-covered native boats called
+Kayaks. Nils had some skill in carving wood and stone, and could write
+in the Runic script of Elfdal. In the long evenings when winds from the
+cave of the Great Bear buffeted the low huts, he taught Thorolf and
+Anders what he knew, and talked with the Skroelings. But none of them
+understood the runes of the Wind-wife. Their speech was quite different.
+
+Spring came with brief, hot sunshine, and the creeping birches budded on
+the pebbly shore. Encouraged by the reports from Greenland, new
+colonists ventured out, and house-building went on briskly. One day
+Thorolf was summoned to Knutson's headquarters.
+
+"Erlandsson," began the Chevalier, "they say that you have information
+about Vinland[3] and the Skroelings there, from an old woman who lived
+among them. What can you tell me?"
+
+Thorolf told the story of the Wind-wife. Knutson looked interested but
+doubtful.
+
+"I have talked with the oldest colonists," he said, "and they know
+nothing of any Skroelings but those hereabouts. They say also that
+Vinland is hard to come at. Boats venturing south return with tales of
+heavy winds, dense fogs and dangerous cliffs and skerries--or do not
+return at all. One was caught and crushed in the ice, and the crew were
+found on the floe half starved and gnawing bits of hide. In the sagas of
+Vinland the Skroelings are spoken of as fierce and treacherous. To hold
+such a land would need a strong hand. The old woman may have
+forgotten--or the stories may be those of her own people."
+
+Thorolf shook his head. "Nay, my lord. She was not a forgetful
+person--and the language is neither Lapp nor Finn."
+
+"She was very old, you say?"
+
+"I think so. I do not know how old."
+
+"Old people sometimes confuse what they have heard with what they have
+seen. But I shall remember what you have said."
+
+"If he had known the Wind-wife," said Nils when told of this
+conversation, "he would have no doubt."
+
+Knutson wrote to the King, but got no reply for a long time. A ship with
+a cargo of trading stores was sent for, and was wrecked on the Faroes.
+But in the following spring an expedition to Vinland was really planned.
+There was no general desire to take part in it. Many of Knutson's party
+now longed for their native land, where the mountains were drawn swords
+flashing in the sun, and the malachite and silver waters and flowery
+turf, the jeweled scabbards. They dreamed of the lure sounding over the
+valleys, of bright-paired maidens dancing the _spring dans_.
+Nevertheless in due season the _Rotge_ left the Greenland shore and
+pointed her inquiring beak southeast by south. In the _Gudrid_ sailed
+Knutson and his immediate following, with the trading cargo and most of
+the provisions. By keeping well out to sea at first the commander hoped
+to escape the perils of the coast.
+
+This hope was dashed by an Atlantic gale which drove them westward. For
+two days and two nights they were tossed between wind and tide. Toward
+the end of the second night the sound of the waves indicated land to
+starboard. In the growing light they saw a harbor that seemed spacious
+enough for all the ships in the world, sheltered by wooded hills. If
+this were Vinland, it was greater than saga told or skald sang.
+
+They landed to take in fresh water, mend a leak and see the country, but
+found no grapes, no Skroelings nor any sign of Northmen's presence. On
+the rocks grew vineberries, or mountain cranberries, and Knutson thought
+that perhaps these and not true grapes were the fruit found in Vinland.
+He sent a party of a dozen men, Anders and Thorolf leading, to explore
+the forest, ascend some hill if possible and return the same day. He
+himself remained with the ships and kept Nils by him. He rather expected
+that the natives, learning of the strangers' arrival, would be drawn by
+curiosity to visit the bay.
+
+The scouting party followed the banks of the little stream that had
+given them fresh water, Anders leading, Thorolf just behind him. Wind
+stirred softly in the leaves overhead, unseen birds fluttered and
+chirped, sunshine sifting through the maple undergrowth turned it to
+emerald and gold and jasper. Once there was a discordant screech from
+the evergreens, but it was only a brilliant blue jay with crest erect,
+scolding at them. A striped squirrel flashed up the trunk of a tree to
+his hole. Then sudden as lightning, from the bushes they had just
+passed, came a flight of arrows.
+
+Two men were slightly wounded, but most of the arrows were turned by the
+light strong body armor of the Norsemen. The foe remained unseen and
+unheard. Nothing stirred, though the men scanned the woods about them
+with the keen eyes of seamen and hunters.
+
+Thorolf was seized with an inspiration. He went forward a step or two,
+lifted his hand in salutation, and called,--
+
+"Klooskap mech p'maosa?"[4] (Is Klooskap yet alive?)
+
+There was a silence stiller than death. The Norsemen faced the ominous
+thicket without moving a muscle. Some one within it called out something
+which Thorolf did not understand. But no more arrows came. He tried
+another sentence.
+
+"Klooskap k-chi skitap, pechedog latogwesnuk." (Klooskap was a great man
+in the country far to the northward.)
+
+This time he made out the answer. In a swift aside he explained to his
+comrades,--
+
+"'K'putuswin' means 'let us take council.' They want to have a talk."
+
+He managed to convey his assent to the unseen listeners, and every tree,
+rock and log sprouted Skroelings. They were quite unlike the natives of
+Greenland, though of copper-colored complexion.[5] These men--there were
+no women among them,--were tall and sinewy, and wore their coarse black
+hair knotted up on the head with a tuft of feathers. They were naked to
+the waist, and wore fringed breeches of deerskin, and soft shoes
+embroidered in bright colors. Some had necklaces of bears' claws, beads
+or shells, but the only weapons seemed to be the bow and arrow and a
+stone-headed hatchet or club. They stared at the white man half
+curiously and half threateningly.
+
+Then began the queerest conversation that any one present had ever
+heard. Thorolf discovered the wild men's language to be so nearly like
+that learned from the Wind-wife that he could understand it when spoken
+slowly, and in a halting fashion could make them comprehend him. His
+companions listened in wonder. Not even Anders had really believed in
+that language.
+
+At last Thorolf held out his hand, and the leader of the Skroelings came
+forward in a very gingerly manner and took it. Then walking in single
+file, toes pointed straight forward, the savages melted into the forest
+as frost melts in sunshine.
+
+With a broad grin, the first he had worn for some time, Thorolf
+translated.
+
+"He asked why we came here. I told him, to see the country and trade
+with his people. He says that white men have come here before, very long
+ago. I think they were killed and he did not wish to say so. He says
+that the Sagem, the jarl of his people, lives in a castle over there
+somewhere. I told him to give the Sagem greeting from our commander, and
+invite him to visit the place where our ships are. He says that it will
+not be safe for us to go further into the forest until the Skroelings
+have heard who we are and what we are doing here."
+
+"That is very good advice," said Anders with a wry face, as he plucked
+some moss to stanch the wound in his arm. The arrow-head which had made
+it was a shaped piece of flint bound to the shaft with cords of fine
+sinew. "We are too few to get into a general fight. Besides, that is not
+in our orders."
+
+They accordingly went back to the ships, arriving a little before
+sundown. Knutson was greatly interested.
+
+"You have done well," he said. "A boat was hovering about soon after you
+left. This may have been a scouting party sent through the forest to cut
+you off."
+
+All the next day they waited, but nothing happened. On the morning
+after, a large number of boats appeared rounding the headland to the
+south. In the largest sat the Sagem, a very old man wrapped in furs. The
+boats were made of birchbark laced on a wooden framework with fibrous
+roots, like the toy skiff Mother Elle had made for little Peder.
+
+The Skroelings landed, and advanced with great dignity to meet Knutson,
+who was equally ceremonious. Nils and Thorolf had all they could do to
+interpret the old chief's long speech, although many phrases were
+repeated again and again, which made it easier. Knutson made one in
+reply, briefer but quite as polite, and brought out beads, little
+knives, and scarlet cloth from his trading stores. The red cloth and
+beads were received with eagerness, the knives with interest, and after
+a young chief had cut himself, with some awe. The Sagem in his turn
+presented the stranger with skins of the sable, the silver fox and the
+bear. He and a few of the warriors tasted of the food offered them, and
+all the white men were asked to a feast in the village the next day.
+
+So friendly were the Skroelings, in fact, that Knutson determined to
+return to Greenland and see what could be done toward founding a
+settlement here. He would leave part of the men in winter quarters, with
+the _Rotge_ as a means of further explorations, or if necessary, of
+escape. Her captain, Gustav Sigerson, was a cautious, wise and
+experienced seaman. Anders Amundson, as the best hunter of the
+expedition, was to stay, with Nils as clerk and Thorolf as interpreter.
+Booths were erected, stores landed, and on a brilliant day in late
+summer some forty Norsemen and Gothlanders on the shore watched the
+_Gudrid_ slowly fading out of sight.
+
+In talking with the natives Nils and Thorolf observed that their world
+seemed to be infested with demons--particularly water-fiends. A reason
+for this appeared in time. Half a dozen men one day took the stern-boat
+and went a-fishing. They came back white-faced, with a story of a giant
+squid with arms four times as long as the boat, that had risen out of
+the sea and tried to pull them under. Only their skill as rowers had
+saved them. Nils remembered the kraken, of ancient legends, and thought
+he could see why the Skroelings never ventured out to sea in their frail
+canoes. This put an end to plans for exploring along the coast.
+
+The winter was colder than they had expected. This land, so much further
+south than Norway, was bitten by frost as Norway never was. There is
+something in intense cold which is inhuman. When men are shut up
+together in exile by it, all that is bad in them is likely to crop out.
+It might have been worse but for the fortunate friendliness of the
+Skroelings. When scurvy appeared in the camp, their first acquaintance,
+Munumqueh (woodchuck) had his women brew a drink which cured it. He
+showed the white men also how to make pemmican, the compressed meat
+ration of native hunters, and how to construct and use a birch canoe, a
+pair of snowshoes, and a fire-drill. Gustav Sigerson died in the spring,
+and Nils was chosen captain. He and Munumqueh became great cronies, and
+exchanged names, Nils being thereafter known to his native friends as
+the Woodchuck, and bestowing upon Munumqueh the proud name of his
+grandfather, Nils the Bear-Slayer.
+
+"It will never do for us to sit quiet here until Knutson returns," said
+Nils when at Midsummer nothing had been seen of the ships. "We shall be
+at one another's throats or quarreling with the savages." He had been
+inquiring about the nature of the country, and had learned that westward
+a great river led to five inland seas, so connected that canoes could go
+from one to another. Along this chain of waters lived tribes who spoke
+somewhat the same language and traded with one another. Southward lived
+a warlike people who sometimes attacked the lake tribes. Beyond the last
+of the lakes they did not know what the country was like. The waters
+inland were not troubled with the water-demon so far as they knew. Nils,
+Anders and Thorolf held a council and decided to explore the wilderness
+as far as they could go in the _Rotge_. It was nothing more than all
+their ancestors had done. Often, in their invasions of England, France
+and other unknown regions Vikings had gone up one river and come down
+another, and the _Rotge_, for all her iron strength, was no more than a
+wooden shell when stripped.[6]
+
+They set forth, escorted by a flotilla of small canoes, on a clear
+summer morning, and found their progress surprisingly easy. Fish, game
+and berries were plentiful, the villages along the river supplied corn
+and beans, and though it was not always easy to drag the _Rotge_ around
+the carrying-places pointed out by their native guides, they did not
+have to turn back. It was a proud moment when the undefeated crew
+launched their "water-snake" as the Skroelings called her, on the
+shining waters of a great inland sea.
+
+The journey had been a far longer one than they expected, and to natives
+of any other country would have been much more exciting than it was to
+the Norsemen.[7] They had seen cliffs a thousand feet high, cataracts,
+rapids, a multitude of wooded islands, narrow valleys where floating
+misty clouds came and went and the sky looked like a riband. But the
+precipice above Naero Fiord rises four thousand perpendicular feet, and
+the water which laps its base is thousands of feet in depth. The
+Skjaeggedalsfos is loftier than Niagara, and the mist-maidens dance
+along the perilous pathways of a hundred Norwegian cliffs. Nils and
+Thorolf agreed that the Wind-wife was right when she said that the
+country of the Skroelings was like Norway but had no end.
+
+"The trouble is," reflected Nils as he set down the day's happenings on
+a birch-bark scroll, "that nobody will believe us when we tell how great
+the land is."
+
+At the end of the fifth and largest lake they found people with some
+knowledge of the country beyond. It seemed that after crossing the Big
+Woods one came to great open plains where a ferocious and cruel race of
+warriors hunted animals as large as the moose, with hoofs and short
+horns and curly brown fur. This sounded like a cattle country. The lake
+tribes evidently stood in great fear of the plains people, but in spite
+of their evident alarm the Norsemen determined to go and see for
+themselves.[8] Leaving the boat with ten of their company to guard it
+they struck off southwestward through a country of forests, lakes and
+streams. After fourteen days they stopped to make camp and go a-fishing,
+for dried fish would be the most convenient ration for a quick march,
+and they did not intend to spend much more time in exploring.
+
+It seemed to Nils and Thorolf that some mark or monument should be left
+to show how far they had really come. A small natural column of dark
+trap rock was chosen, and while the others fished, or made a seine after
+the native fashion, Nils marked out an inscription in Runic letters,
+which are suited to rough work. Not far from the place where they found
+the stone, and about a day's journey from camp, was a small high island
+in a little lake, the kind of place usually chosen by Vikings for a
+first camp. The stone, set in the middle of this island, would be easily
+seen by any one looking for it, and savages would not see it at all.
+When finished it was rafted across to the island and set up, the
+inscription covering about half of it on both sides. While Nils and
+several others were thus busy, the remainder of the party were trying
+the seine. They reached camp after dark to find their booths in ashes,
+and Nils with his men murdered a little way off, as they had come up
+from the Rune Stone.[9]
+
+[Illustration: "NILS MARKED OUT AN INSCRIPTION IN RUNIC
+LETTERS."--_Page_ 30]
+
+With fury and horror the Norsemen looked upon the destruction. It was
+all Thorolf and the cooler heads could do to keep the rest from
+attacking the first Skroelings they saw. But the mischief had been done,
+without doubt, by the unknown warriors of the plains, who had been
+perhaps watching their advance. They sadly prepared to return to their
+boat. But before they went, Thorolf paddled out to the island on two
+logs, while the others kept guard, and added some lines to the
+inscription on the stone.
+
+They never saw their Vinland again. Knutson, finding the King fighting
+hard against the Danes, gave no further thought to the wilderness.
+Thorolf and a handful of his men finally reached Bergen; Anders
+stayed in Greenland. More than five centuries afterward, a Scandinavian
+farmer, grubbing for stumps in a Minnesota marsh, found overgrown by the
+roots of a tulip tree a stone with an inscription in Runic letters, took
+it to learned men and had it translated.
+
+"8 Goths and 22 Norsemen upon journey of discovery from Vinland
+westward. We had camp by two rocks one day's journey from this stone. We
+were out fishing one day. When we returned home we found ten men red
+with blood and dead. AVM save us from evil.        have ten men
+by the sea to look after our ship 14 days journey from this island. Year
+1362."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Skal or skoal was the Norwegian word used in drinking a health.
+
+[2] The description of the Norse galley is taken from Du Chaillu's "Land
+of the Midnight Sun," in which the construction of one which was
+unearthed at Nydam in Jutland is described (Vol. I. 380). The galley
+"Viking" built in Norway on the model of an actual Viking ship of the
+early Middle Ages, was taken across the Atlantic in 1893 by a Norwegian
+crew of fourteen, anchoring in Lake Michigan, after a voyage in which
+they had no shelter except an awning and cooked their own food as best
+they could.
+
+[3] The question of the actual whereabouts of Leif Ericsson's booths and
+Thorfin Karlsefne's later settlement has never been positively decided.
+The Knutson expedition to Greenland is an historical fact. It left
+Norway about 1354 and returned about 1364. It is not positively known
+that Knutson attempted the rediscovery of Vinland, unless what is known
+as the Kensington Rune Stone is evidence of it. The writer has adopted
+the theory that he did take a party southward, landing at Halifax, and
+left a part of his men there, intending to return with more colonists;
+that on returning to Norway he found the country in the throes of war
+and abandoned any thought of further settlement, leaving his men to find
+their way back as they could.
+
+[4] The Indian phrases and legends referred to as learned by the
+Wind-wife are Abenaki.
+
+[5] According to historians the region along the St. Lawrence and the
+Great Lakes was for a long time inhabited by tribes belonging to the
+great Ojibway nation. Their territory extended nearly to the western
+boundary of what is now Minnesota. Southward were the tribes later known
+as Iroquois.
+
+[6] Accounts of the open galleys of the Northmen agree in describing
+them as small and light compared with the later decked ships. The open
+"sea-serpent" of forty-two feet, with her mast unshipped was heavier but
+not much bigger than the largest Indian carrying-canoes such as were
+used in the fur-trade, and these were taken from the St. Lawrence
+through the Great Lakes. Vikings landing in Europe were prepared not
+only to return by a new route but even to take their boats apart or
+build new ones if necessary.
+
+[7] Bayard Taylor, visiting the Saguenay and the St. Lawrence
+immediately after a sojourn in Norway, speaks of his inability to be
+impressed as others had been, by the height of the cliffs and waterfalls
+of Canada, although fully appreciating the beauty of the scenery.
+
+[Footnote 8: The Sioux or Dakotas, who occupied the Great Plains, were
+hereditary enemies of the Ojibways. In the Ojibway language one name for
+these Plains Indians indicated that they were in the habit of mutilating
+their victims.]
+
+[9] The monument known as the Kensington Rune Stone was found near
+Kensington, Minnesota, and is fully described in the reports of the
+Minnesota Historical Society. It was the subject of many arguments at
+first. Well known authorities pronounced it a forgery, while other well
+known authorities declared it genuine. It was pointed out that the
+language used was not that of the time of Leif Ericsson, but much more
+modern; but later it was found that the inscription was exactly such as
+would have been written about the middle of the fourteenth century, when
+Knutson's expedition was in Greenland. Aside from the obvious lack of
+motive for a forgery, investigation showed that neither the farmer nor
+any one who might have been in a position to bury the stone where it was
+found had any knowledge of Runic writing. Moreover, if the stone had
+been a forgery it would seem that the forger would have used the name of
+some well known leader, whereas no name is mentioned. If Knutson had
+been with the expedition he would certainly have seen to it that his
+presence was recorded.
+
+Otter Tail Lake, just north of the place where the stone was discovered,
+was one of the points marking the boundary between the Ojibway and
+Dakota country. The position of the runes on the stone is precisely what
+it would be if the inscription had been finished, or nearly finished, as
+a guide to future exploration, and the account of the massacre added as
+a warning.
+
+A song commonly sung at the time of the Black Death contains the lines:
+
+    "The Black Plague sped over land and sea
+    And swept so many a board.
+    That will I now most surely believe,
+    It was not with the Lord's will.
+    Help us God and Mary,
+    Save us all from evil."
+
+
+
+
+THE NAVIGATORS
+
+
+    We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,--
+      His gentlemen were we,
+    To dare the gods of Heathendom,
+      Whoever they might be,--
+    To do our master's sovereign will
+      Upon a trackless sea.
+
+    We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,
+      And undismayed we went
+    To fight for Lusitania
+      Wherever we were sent,--
+    The stars had laid our course for us,
+      And we were well content.
+
+    We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,
+      And though our flagship lie
+    Where white the great-winged albatross
+      Came wheeling down the sky,
+    Or black abysses yawned for us,
+      We could not fear to die.
+
+    We were Prince Henry's gentlemen,--
+      Around the Cape of Wrath
+    We sailed our wooden cockleshells--
+      Great pride the pilot hath
+    To voyage to-day the Indian Sea--
+      But we marked out his path!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+SEA OF DARKNESS
+
+
+"Those things that you say cannot be true, Fernao! How do you know that
+the sea turns black and dreadful just behind those heavenly clouds? If
+there are hydras, and gorgons, and sea-snakes that can swallow a ship,
+and a great black hand reaching up out of a whirlpool to drag men down,
+why do we never see them here? Look at that sea, can there be anything
+in the world more beautiful?"
+
+The vehement small speaker waved her slender hand with a gesture that
+seemed to take in half the horizon. The old Moorish garden, overrun with
+the brilliant blossoms that drink their hues from the sea, overlooked
+the harbor. Across the huddled many-colored houses the ten-year-old
+Beatriz and her playfellow Fernao could see the western ocean in a great
+half-circle, bounded by the mysterious line above which three tiny
+caravels had just risen. The sea to-day was exquisite, bluer than the
+heavens that arched above it. The wave-crests looked like a flock of
+sea-doves playing on the sunlit sparkling waters. Fernao from his seat
+on the crumbling wall watched the incoming ships with the far-sighted
+gaze of a sailor. Portuguese through and through, the son and grandson
+of men who had sailed at the bidding of the great Prince Henry, he felt
+that he could speak with authority.[1]
+
+"Of course I am telling you the truth. You are very wise about the
+sea--you who never saw it until two weeks ago! Gil Andrade has been to
+places that you Castilians never even heard of. He has seen whales, and
+mermaids, and the Sea of Darkness itself! He has been to the Gold Coast
+beyond Bojador, where the people are fried black like charcoal, and the
+rivers are too hot to drink."
+
+"Then why didn't he die?" inquired the unbelieving Beatriz.
+
+"Because he didn't stay there long enough. And there are devils in the
+forest, stronger than ten men, and all covered with shaggy hair--"
+
+"I will not listen to such nonsense! Do you think that because I am
+Spanish, and a girl, I am without understanding? Tio Sancho, is it true
+that there is a Sea of Darkness?"
+
+Sancho Serrao was an old seaman, as any one would know by his eyes and
+his walk. For fifty years he had used the sea, as ship-boy, sailor, and
+pilot. His daughter Catharina had been the nurse of Beatriz, and he had
+brought coral, shells and queer toys to the little thing from the time
+she could toddle to his knee.
+
+"What has Fernao been saying to thee, pombinha agreste?" (little
+wood-dove) he asked soberly, though his eyes twinkled ever so little. He
+seated himself as he spoke, on an ancient bench that rested its back
+against the wall just where the wind was sweetest. Under the fragrances
+of ripening vineyards and flowering shrubs there was always the sharp
+clean smell of the sea.
+
+"He believes all that Gil Andrade and Joao Pancado tell him as if it
+were the Credo," Beatriz began, her words flung out like sparks from a
+little crackling fire. "He says that there is a Sea of Darkness out
+away beyond the Falcon Islands, where ships are drawn into a great pit
+under the edge of the world. And he says that ships cannot go too far
+south because the sun is so near it would burn them, and they cannot go
+too far north because the icebergs will catch them and crush them. If I
+were a man, I would sail straight out there, into the sunset, and show
+them what my people dared to do!"
+
+Old Sancho was not all Portuguese. In his veins ran the blood of the
+three great seafaring races of southern Europe--the Genoese, the
+Lusitanian and the Vizcayan--and their jealousies and rivalries amused
+him. He had spent most of his life in the feluccas and caravels of
+Lisbon and Oporto, because when he was young they went where no other
+ships dared even follow; but he did not believe that the last word in
+discovery had been said even by Dom Henriques at Sagres, or the
+Mappe-Monde of Fra Mauro in Venice.
+
+"Not so fast there, velinha (small candle)" he cautioned, raising a
+whimsical forefinger. "So said many of us in our youth. And when we had
+sailed for weeks, and all our provisions were mouldy or weevilly, and
+our water-casks warped and leaking so that we had to catch the rain in
+our shirts, we began to wonder what it was we had come for. The sea
+won't be mocked or threatened. She has ways of her own, the old witch,
+to tame the vainglorious. And 't is true enough," the old pilot went on
+with a quizzing look at Fernao on his insecure perch, "that sailors have
+a bad habit of doubling and trebling their recollections when they find
+anybody who will listen. I don't know why they do it. Maybe it is
+because having told a perfectly true tale which nobody believed, they
+think that a little more or a little less will do no harm. For this you
+must remember, my children,--that at sea many things happen which when
+told no one believes to be true."
+
+"I would believe anything you told me, Tio Sancho," promised Beatriz,
+all love and confidence in her little glowing face.
+
+"Ay, would you now? What if I said that I have seen a ship with all sail
+set coming swiftly before the wind, in a place where no wind was, to
+stir our hair who beheld it--and sailing moreover through the air at the
+height of a tall mast-head above the sea? And a mountain of ice half a
+league long and as high as the Giralda at Seville, floating in a sea as
+blue as this one, and as warm? And islands with mountains that smoke,
+appearing and disappearing in broad daylight? Yet all of these are
+common sights at sea."
+
+"But is there a Sea of Darkness, verily, verily, tio caro?" persisted
+Beatriz. The old man shook his head, with a little quiet smile.
+
+"I'll not say there is not. And I'll not say there is. I saw a Sea of
+Darkness on the second voyage that ever I made, but that's all."
+
+"Oh, tell us all the story!" begged Beatriz, and Fernao silently slid
+from the wall and came closer.
+
+"The commander of our ship was Gonsales Zarco, one of Dom Henriques'
+gentlemen. Years before he'd been caught by a gale on his way to Africa,
+and driven north on to an island that he named because of that, Puerto
+Santo (Holy Haven). So when he came that way again he stopped to see how
+the settlement that was planted there prospered, and found the people in
+great trouble of mind. They showed him that a thick black cloud hung
+upon the sea to the northwest of the island, filling the air to the
+very heavens and never going away; and out of this cloud, they said,
+came strange noises, not like any they had heard before. They dared not
+sail far from their island, for they said that if a man lost sight of
+land thereabouts it was a miracle if he ever returned. They believed
+that place to be the great abyss, the mouth of hell. But learned men
+held the opinion that this cloud hid the island of Cipango, where the
+Seven Bishops had taken refuge from the Moors and the Saracens.
+
+"Certainly the cloud was there, for we all saw it, and when the
+Commander said that he would stay to see whether it would change when
+the moon changed, we liked it not, I can tell you. And when we learned
+that he was minded to sail straight into the darkness and see what lay
+behind it, why, there were some who would have run away--if they could
+have run anywhere but into the sea.
+
+"But we had a Spanish pilot, Morales, who had once been a prisoner in
+Morocco, and there he knew two Englishmen who had sailed these seas in
+time past. Their ship had been lying ready to sail for France, when late
+at night Robert Macham, a gentleman of their country, came hurriedly
+aboard with his lady love whom he had carried off from her home in
+Bristol, and between dark and dawn the captain weighed anchor and was
+off. Then being driven from the course the ship was cast on a thickly
+wooded island with a high mountain in the middle, where they dwelt not
+long, for the lady died, and Macham died of grief. The crew left the
+island and were wrecked in Morocco and made slaves. All this was many
+years before, for the Englishmen had grown old in slavery, and Morales
+himself had grown old since he heard the tale.
+
+"It was the belief of Morales that this was the island of which they
+told, and that the cloud which hung above the waters was the mist
+arising from those dense woods which covered it. The upshot was that the
+commander set sail one morning early and steered straight for the cloud.
+
+"The nearer we came the higher and thicker looked the darkness that
+spread over the sea, and we heard about noon a great roaring of the
+waves. Still Gonsales held his course, and when the wind failed he
+ordered out the boats to tow the ship into the cloud, and I was one of
+those who rowed. As we got closer it was not quite so dark, but the
+roaring was louder, although the sea was smooth. Then through the
+darkness we beheld tall black objects which we guessed to be giants
+walking in the water, but as we came nearer we saw that they were great
+rocks, and before us loomed a high mountain covered with thick woods.
+
+"We found no place to land but a cave under a rock that overhung the
+sea, and that was trodden all over the bottom by the sea-wolves, so that
+Gonsales named it the Camera dos Lobos. The island, because of its
+forests, he called Madeira. When we came back, having taken possession
+of the island for the King, he sent a colony to settle upon it, and the
+first boy and girl born there were named Adam and Eva. The people set
+fire to the trees, which were in their way, and could not put out the
+fire, so that it burned for seven years and all the trees were
+destroyed. And the King gave our commander the right to carry as
+supporters on his coat-of-arms two sea-wolves."
+
+Beatriz drew a long breath. "Weren't you very scared, Tio Sancho?"
+
+"Sailors must not be scared, little one. Or if they are, they must
+never let their arms and legs be scared. We knew that we had to obey
+orders or be dead, so we obeyed. I have been glad many a time since that
+I sailed with Gonsales and old Morales to the discovery of Madeira."
+
+"What are sea-wolves?" asked Fernao.
+
+"Like no beast that ever you saw, my son. They have the fore part of the
+body like a dog or bear, the hind part ending in a tail like a fish, but
+with hair, not scales, on the body; the head has a thick mane, and the
+jaws are large and strong. They are no more seen on that island, for
+they went there only because it was never visited by men."
+
+"Did they try to drive the people away?"
+
+"No; they do not fight men unless men attack them. But the settlers were
+once driven off Puerto Santo by animals, and not very fierce animals at
+that." The old pilot grinned. "They were driven away by rabbits.
+Somebody brought rabbits there and let them loose, and in a few years
+there were so many that everything that was planted was eaten green. The
+people who live on that island now have made a strict rule about
+rabbits."
+
+The children's laughter echoed the dry chuckle of the old man. Then
+Fernao, unwilling to abandon his authorities,--
+
+"But if the Sea of Darkness and the great abyss are not in the western
+ocean, why haven't they found out what really is there?"
+
+"That, my son, is more than I can tell you," said Sancho Serrao, getting
+up. "I sailed where I was told, and I never was told to sail due west
+from Lisbon. But here is a man who can answer your question, if any one
+can. Welcome to my humble dwelling, Senhor Colombo! Shall we go into
+the house, or will you find it pleasanter in the garden?"
+
+The new-comer was a tall man of middle age, although at first sight he
+looked older, because of his white hair. The fresh complexion, alert
+walk, and keen thoughtful blue eyes were those of a man not old in
+either mind or body. He smiled in answer to the greeting, and replied
+with a quick wave of the hand. "Do not disturb yourself, I beg of you,
+my friend. The garden is very pleasant. I have come on an errand of my
+own this time. Did you ever see, in your voyages to Africa or elsewhere,
+any such carving as this?"
+
+He held out a curious worm-eaten bit of reddish brown wood, rudely
+ornamented with carved figures in relief. Old Sancho took it and turned
+it about, examining it with narrowed attentive eyes.
+
+"Where did it come from?" he asked, finally.
+
+"From the beach at Puerto Santo. My little son Diego picked it up, the
+day before I came away from the island."
+
+"Now that is curious. I was just telling the young ones about an
+adventure of my youth, when Gonsales Zarco touched there on his way to
+Madeira. With your good permission I will leave you for a few minutes
+and rummage in an old sea-chest, and see whether there is any flotsam in
+it to compare with this."
+
+Left alone with the stranger, Fernao and Beatriz looked at him with shy
+curiosity. They had seen him before, and knew him to be a mapmaker in
+the King's service, but he had never before been within speaking
+distance. He seemed to like children, for he smiled at them very kindly
+and spoke to them almost at once.
+
+"And you were hearing about the discovery of Madeira?"
+
+"Ay, Senhor," Beatriz answered with demure dignity.
+
+"I live not very far from that island. It seems like living on the
+western edge of the world."
+
+"Senhor," asked Fernao with sudden daring, "what is beyond the edge of
+the world?"
+
+"There is no edge, my boy. The world is round--like an orange."[2]
+
+In all their fancies they had never thought of such a thing as that.
+Beatriz looked at the tall man with silent amazement, and Fernao looked
+as if he would like to ask who could prove the statement. The stranger's
+smile was amused but quite comprehending, as if he was not at all
+surprised that they should doubt him.
+
+"See," he went on, taking an orange from the basket that stood by,
+"suppose this little depression where the stem lost its hold to be
+Jerusalem, the center of our world; then this is Portugal--" he traced
+with the point of a penknife the outline of the great western peninsula.
+"Here you see are the capes--Saint Vincent, Finisterre, the great rock
+the Arabs call Geber-al-Tarif--the Mediterranean--the northern coast of
+Africa--so. Beyond are Arabia and India, and the Spice Islands which we
+do not know all about--then Cathay, where Marco Polo visited the Great
+Khan--you have heard of that? Yes? On the eastern and southern shore of
+Cathay is a great sea in which are many islands--Cipangu here, and to
+the south Java Major and Java Minor. We are told in the Book of Esdras
+that six parts of the earth are land and one part water, so here we cut
+away the skin where there is any sea,--"
+
+The miniature globe took form, like fairy mapmaking, under the
+cosmographer's skilful fingers, and the children watched, fascinated.
+
+[Illustration: "THE MINIATURE GLOBE TOOK FORM AS THE CHILDREN WATCHED,
+FASCINATED."--_Page_ 44]
+
+"But," cried Beatriz wonderingly, "a ship could sail around the world!"
+
+Colombo nodded and smiled. "So it was written in the 'Travels of Sir
+John Maundeville' more than a hundred years ago. But no ship has done
+so."
+
+"Why not?" asked Fernao.
+
+"Chiefly, perhaps, because of tales like that of the Sea of Darkness and
+Satan's hand. And it is true that a ship venturing very far westward is
+drawn out of its course, as if the earth were not a perfect round, but
+sloped upward to the south. My own belief is,"--he seemed for a moment
+to forget that he was talking to children, "that it is not perfectly
+round, but somewhat like this pear,--" he selected a short chubby pear
+from the basket, "and that on this mountain may be a cool and lovely
+region which was once Paradise."
+
+"Oh!" cried Beatriz, her face alight with the glory of the thought. The
+geographer smiled at her and went on.
+
+"Also you see that the ocean is on this side of the earth very much
+greater than the Mediterranean. We do not know how long it would take to
+cross it. I have lately received a map from the famous Florentine
+Toscanelli which--ah!" he interrupted himself, "here comes our good
+friend Master Serrao."
+
+It had taken the pilot longer than he expected to hunt over his relics
+of old voyages, and there was nothing, after all, like the piece of wood
+cast ashore by the Atlantic waves. Old Sancho turned it over, examined
+the edges of the carving, and shook his head.
+
+"No; that is not African work; at least it is not like any work of
+the black men that I have ever seen. They can all work iron, and this
+was made without the use of iron tools; that I am sure of. Some of our
+men were shipwrecked once where they had to make stone and shells serve
+their turn, and I know the look of wood that has been worked with such
+tools. And the wood itself is not like anything I have from Africa. It
+is more like the timber of the East."
+
+Now the stranger's eyes lighted with keener interest.
+
+"You think it may be Indian, do you?"
+
+"It may. But how in the name of Sao Cristobal did it come here? Besides,
+the people of India understand the use of metal as well as we do, or
+better."
+
+"May there not be wild men in remote islands of the Indian seas?"
+
+"That might be. Gil Andrade has been in those parts, and he says there
+are more islands than he could count. I have sometimes had occasion to
+take his stories with a pinch of salt, but if there are islands where
+wild people live they would make such things as this. And now I think of
+it, I once picked up a paddle myself, floating off the Azores, that was
+some such wood as this, but not carved. But the queerest thing I ever
+found was this nut. Look at it."
+
+It was part of a nutshell as big as a man's head and as hard as wood.
+"The inside was quite spoiled," went on the old seaman, "but so far as I
+could judge it was no kin to the palm nuts we get. I kept the shell, and
+I have never found any merchant who could match it. Now the current sets
+toward our coast from the west at a certain point, and that is where all
+these odd things come ashore."
+
+The guest nodded. "My brother-in-law and I have talked much of these
+matters. One of his captains saw some time ago the floating bodies of
+two men, brown-skinned, with straight black hair, not like the natives
+of any part of Europe or Africa. Another thing which is strange, though
+I hold it not as important as they do, is that the people of Madeira
+persistently declare that they see a great island appear and disappear
+to the westward. According to their description it has lofty mountains
+and wooded valleys, and some say it is Atlantis and some Saint Brandan's
+Isle. No ship sailing that way has ever landed there, however."
+
+Sancho's eyes turned seaward. "It is marvelous," he said after a pause,
+"what things men think they see. And you think, senhor, that the world
+is not yet all known to us?'"
+
+"I do not know." Colombo stood up to take his departure. "If God hath
+reserved any great work to be done, He hath also chosen the man who is
+to do it. His tasks are not done by accident, or left to the blind or
+the selfish. Toscanelli thinks that since the world is round, we should
+reach the Indies by sailing due west from this coast, but in that case
+India would seem to be far greater than we have believed. If I had the
+ships and the men I would venture it. But at this time the King is
+altogether taken up with the eastward route to the Indies. It was said
+of old time, 'He that believeth shall not make haste.'"
+
+"But you will sail to Paradise some day, will you not, senhor?" asked
+Beatriz, treasuring the tiny globe in one careful hand while the other
+shaded her eyes from the level rays of the evening sun.
+
+"There is only one way to Paradise, little maid. That is by the will of
+our Lord. And if you, my lad, are the first to sail round the world,
+remember that the sea is His, and He made it. Man makes his own Sea of
+Darkness by ignorance, and hate, and fear."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Prince Henry of Portugal, often called "Henry the Navigator" built
+the first naval observatory in Europe at Sagres. He may be said to have
+laid the foundation of the Portuguese and later Spanish discoveries. In
+the time of Columbus the Mappe-Mondo or Map of the World of a Venetian
+monk was considered the most complete map yet made.
+
+[2] The statement has been carelessly made in some juvenile books
+dealing with the age of discovery, that in the time of Columbus nobody
+knew that the world was round. This of course is not even approximately
+the case. The conception of the earth as a sphere was generally set
+forth in what might be called books of science, and even in some popular
+works like that of Sir John Maundeville, who died in 1372. Its
+acceptance by the public, however, may be said to have followed somewhat
+the course of the Darwinian theory in the nineteenth century. Long after
+evolution was admitted as a truth by scientific men there were schools
+and even colleges which refused to teach it, and in fact it was not
+accepted by the public until the generation which first heard of it had
+died.
+
+
+
+
+SUNSET SONG
+
+
+    Down upon our seaward light,
+      Swept by all the winds that blow,
+    Birds come reeling in their flight--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+    Petrels tossing on the gale,
+    Falcons daring sleet and hail,
+    Curlews whistling high and far,
+    Waifs that cross the harbor bar
+    Borne from isles we do not know--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+
+    Round our island haven blest
+      Waves like drifted mountain snow
+    Break from out the shoreless West--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+    Cast ashore a broken spar
+    Born beneath some alien star,
+    Broken, beaten by the wave--
+    In what far-off unknown grave
+    Lie the hands that shaped it so?
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+
+    Sails upon the gray world's edge
+      Like mute phantoms come and go,--
+    Life and honor men will pledge--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+    For the pearls and gems and gold
+    That the burning Indies hold.
+    Or the Guinea coast they dare
+    With its fever-poisoned air
+    For the slaves they capture so
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero!_)
+
+    In our chamber small to-night,
+      Fair as love's immortal glow,
+    Shines our silver censer-light--
+      (_Ay de mi, Cristofero_!)
+    What is this that holds thee fast
+    In old histories of the past?
+    Put the time-stained parchments by,
+    Men have sought where dead men lie
+    For the secret thou wouldst know--
+      All too long, Cristofero!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+PEDRO AND HIS ADMIRAL
+
+
+Juan de la Cosa, captain of the _Santa Maria_, was prowling about the
+beach of Gomera in a thoroughly dissatisfied frame of mind. His own
+ship, the _Gallego_ before the Admiral re-christened her and made her
+his flagship, was riding trim as a mallard within sight of his eye. She
+would never have kept the fleet waiting in the Canaries for a little
+thing like a broken rudder.
+
+It was the _Pinta_ that had done this, and it was the veteran pilot's
+private opinion that she would behave much better if her owners, Gomez
+Rascon and Christoval Quintero, had been left behind in Palos. But what
+can you do when you have seized a ship for the service of the Crown, and
+turned her over to a captain who is a rival ship-owner, and her owners
+wish to serve in her crew and not elsewhere? They cannot be blamed for
+liking to keep an eye on their property!
+
+"Capitano!" piped a voice at his elbow. He looked around, and then he
+looked down. An undersized urchin with not much on but a pair of ragged
+breeches stared up at him boldly, hands behind his back. "Do you know
+what ails your ship over there?" He nodded sideways at the disgraced
+_Pinta_.
+
+The accent was that of Bilbao in the captain's own native province,
+Vizcaya. Ordinarily he would have cuffed the speaker heels over head for
+impudence, but the dialect made him pause. Besides, he wanted to hear
+something to confirm his suspicions.
+
+"She is no ship of mine," he growled, "and anyway, what do you know
+about it?"
+
+"I know much more than they think I do. The calkers did not half do
+their work before she left port. I'd like to sail in her if she were
+properly looked after. But when a man goes out on the dolphins' track he
+likes to come home again, you know."
+
+"A man! Do babes take a ship round Bojador? And who may you call
+yourself, zagallo (strong youth)?"
+
+"I am Pedro, son of Pedro who was an escaladero (climber) at the siege
+of Alhama. He was killed on the way home, and my mother died of grief,
+so that I get my bread where the saints put it. People say that they
+unlocked all the jails to get you your crew for the Indies, and now I
+see that it is true."
+
+Juan de la Cosa knew the untamable sauciness of the Vizcayan breed, and
+knew as well the loyalty that went with it. "Son," he said seriously,
+"what do you know of this matter?" The boy put aside his insolence and
+spoke gravely.
+
+"I know that these fellows who have been commanded to serve your Admiral
+hate him, and will make him lose his venture if they can. I would sooner
+put to sea in a meal-tub with myself that I can trust, than in a Cadiz
+galley manned with plotters. When they hauled this fine ship up on the
+beach I asked for a job, and the lazy fellows were glad enough of help.
+I never minded doing their work if they hadn't kicked me. When I heard
+them planning I said to myself, 'Pedro, mi hidalgo, a crow in hand is
+worth two buzzards in the bush waiting to pick your bones.' Your
+Admiral may have to go back to Castile and eat crow.
+
+"They have agreed that they will sail seven hundred leagues and no more,
+since that is the distance from here to the Indies if your map is true.
+If the Admiral refuse to turn back in case land is not found they will
+pitch him into the sea and tell the world that he was star-gazing and
+fell overboard, being an old man and unused to perilous voyages. He
+should get him another crew--if he can."
+
+This was important information. Yet to go back might be more dangerous
+than to go on. The expedition had already been delayed a fortnight with
+making a rudder for the _Pinta_, stopping her leaks, and replacing the
+lateen sails of the _Nina_ with square ones, that she might be able to
+keep up with the others. Another week must pass before they could sail.
+If they returned to Palos it was doubtful whether they could get any men
+at all to replace the disloyal ones. Too much delay might cause the
+withdrawal of Martin Pinzon and his brother Vicente, owners of the
+_Nina_; and if they went, most of the seamen who were worth their salt
+would go also. La Cosa himself in the Admiral's place would go on and
+take the chance of mutiny, trusting in his own power to prevent or
+subdue it.
+
+"Pedro," he said, "have you told this to any one else?"
+
+"Not a soul."
+
+"Would you like to sail with us?"
+
+"Will a wolf bite? Why do you suppose I told you all this?"
+
+"Bite your tongue then, wolf-cub, until I have seen the Admiral. Where
+shall I find you if I want you?"
+
+"Tia Josefa over there lets me sleep in the courtyard."
+
+"Very well--now, off with you."
+
+The Admiral said exactly what the pilot had thought he would say. He
+knew himself to be looked upon with envy and dislike, as a Genoese, and
+the Spaniards who made up his three crews had been collected as with a
+rake from the unwilling Andalusian seaports. It was decided that the
+mutinous sailors should be scattered so that they could not easily act
+together. Pedro was taken on as cabin-boy, for he was thirteen, and
+wiser than his age.
+
+On that May day when Christoval Colon,[1] the hare-brained foreigner
+whom the King and Queen had made an Admiral, read the royal orders in
+the Church of San Jorge in Palos, there was amazement, wrath and horror
+in that small seaport. Queen Ysabel had indeed been so rash as to pledge
+her jewels to meet the cost of this expedition; but the royal
+treasurers, looking over their accounts, noted that Palos owed a fine to
+the Crown which had never been paid. Very good; let Palos contribute the
+use and maintenance of two ships for two months, and let the magistrates
+of the Andalusian ports hunt up shipmasters and crews and supplies. The
+officers of the government came with Colon to enforce this order.
+
+In vain did the Pinzon brothers, who had really been convinced by the
+arguments of Colon, use all their influence to secure him a proper
+equipment. Even after they had themselves enlisted as captains, with
+their own ship the _Nina_, they could not get men enough to go on so
+doubtful a venture. The royal officers finally took to the reckless
+course of pardoning all prisoners guilty of any crime short of murder or
+treason, on condition of their shipping for the voyage. At least half
+the sailors of the three ships were pressed men.
+
+The _Santa Maria_, largest of the three caravels, was ninety feet long
+and twenty broad. She was a decked ship; the others had only the tiny
+cabin and forecastle. A caravel was never intended for long voyages into
+unknown seas. Her builders designed her for coasting trade, not for a
+quick voyage independent of wind and tide; but on the other hand she was
+cheaper to build and to sail than a Genoese galley. The Admiral believed
+that in the end the smallness of the ships would be no disadvantage.
+Among the estuaries, bays and groups of islands which he expected to
+find, they could go anywhere. Including shipmasters, pilots and crews
+the fleet carried eighty-seven men and three ship-boys, besides the
+personal servants of the Admiral, a physician, a surgeon, an interpreter
+and a few adventurers. The interpreter was a converted Jew who could
+speak not only several European languages but Arabic and Chaldean.
+
+"A retinue of servants indeed!" observed Fonseca, the bishop, when the
+door had closed upon the Admiral of the Indies. "Since all enlisted in
+the expedition are at his service, why does he demand lackeys?"
+
+But the head of the Genoese navigator had not been turned by his honors.
+No man cared less for display than he did, personally. He knew very
+well, however, that unless he maintained his own dignity the rabble
+under his command might be emboldened to cut his throat, seize the ships
+and become pirates. The men whom he could trust were altogether too few
+to control those he could not, if it came to an open fight,--but it must
+not be allowed to come to that. It was not agreeable to squabble with
+Fonseca about the number of servants he was allowed to have, but he
+must have personal attendants who were not discharged convicts.
+
+On the open seas, removed from their lamenting and despondent relatives,
+the crews gradually subsided into a state of discipline. The
+quarter-deck is perhaps the severest test of character known. Despite
+themselves the sailors began to feel the serene and kindly strength of
+the man who was their master.
+
+With a tact and understanding as great as his courage and self-command
+Colon told his men more than they had ever known of the Indies. The East
+had for generations been the enchanted treasure-house of Europe. Arabic,
+Venetian, Genoese and Portuguese traders had brought from it spices,
+rare woods, gold, diamonds, pearls, silk, and other foreign luxuries.
+But the wide and varied reading of the Admiral had given him more
+definite information. He told of the gilded temples of Cipangu, the
+porcelain towers of Cathay, rajahs' elephants in gilded and jeweled
+trappings, golden idols with eyes of great glowing gems, thrones of
+ebony inlaid with patterns of diamonds, emeralds and rubies, rich
+cargoes of spices, dyewood, fine cotton and silk, pearl fisheries, the
+White Feast of Cambalu and the Khan's great hall where six thousand
+courtiers gathered. Portugal already was reaching out toward these
+Indies, groping her way around the African coast. Were they, Spaniards
+and Christians, to be outdone by Portuguese and Arab traders? No men
+ever had so great a future. Not only the wealth of the Indies, but the
+glory of winning heathen empires to abandon their idols for the
+Christian faith, was the adventure to which they were pledged; and he
+strove to kindle their spirits from his own.
+
+To Pedro the cabin-boy, listening in silence, it was like an entrance
+into another world. When he asked to be taken on he had been moved
+simply by a boy's desire to go where he had not been before. Now he
+served a demigod, who led men where none had dared go. The Admiral might
+have the glory of rediscovering the western route to the Indies; his
+cabin-boy was discovering him.
+
+The sea was beautifully calm, and there was time for talk and
+speculation. A drifting mast, to which nobody would have given two
+thoughts anywhere else, was pointed out as an evil omen. Pedro grinned
+cheerfully and elevated his nose.
+
+"Do you not believe in omens, Pedro?" asked the Admiral, somewhat
+amused. He had not found many Spaniards who did not.
+
+"One does not believe all one hears, my lord," the youngster answered,
+coolly. "Tia Josefa saw ill omens a dozen times a week, all sure death;
+and she is ninety years old. A mast drifting with the current is usual.
+When I see one drifting against it I will begin to worry."
+
+The jumpy nerves of the sailors were easily upset. They might have been
+calmer if the sea had been less calm. It is hard for Spanish blood to
+endure inaction and suspense together. Day after day a soft strong wind
+wafted them westward. Ruiz, one of the pilots, bluntly declared that he
+did not see how they could ever sail back to Spain against this wind,
+whether they reached the Indies or not.
+
+"Pedro," said the Admiral quietly, "what do you think?"
+
+Pedro hesitated only an instant. "My lord," he answered boldly, "if we
+cannot go back we must go on--around the world."
+
+"So we can," smiled the Admiral. "But it will not come to that." And
+Ruiz, reassured and rather ashamed of his fears, told the other
+grumblers if they had seen as much rough weather as he had they would
+know when they were well off.
+
+But after a time even the pilots took fright. The compass needle no
+longer pointed to the North Star, but half a point or more to the
+northwest of it. They had visions of the fleet helplessly drifting
+without a guide upon a vast unknown sea. It was not then known that the
+action of the magnetic pole upon the needle varies in different parts of
+the earth, but the quick mind of the Admiral found an explanation which
+quieted their fears. He told them that the real north pole was a fixed
+point indeed, but not necessarily the North Star. While this star might
+be in line with the pole when seen from the coast of Spain, it would
+not, of course, be in the same relative position when seen from a point
+hundreds of miles to the west.
+
+On September 15 a meteor fell, which might be another omen--nobody could
+say exactly what it meant. Then about three hundred and sixty leagues
+from the Canaries the ships began to encounter patches of floating
+yellow-green sea-weed, which grew more numerous until the fleet was
+sailing in a vast level expanse of green like an ocean meadow. Tuna fish
+played in the waters; on one of the patches of floating weed rested a
+live crab. A white tropical bird of a kind never known to sleep upon the
+sea came flying toward them, alighting for a moment in the rigging. The
+owners of the _Pinta_ predicted that they would all be caught in this
+ocean morass to starve, or die of thirst, for the light winds were not
+strong enough to drive the ships through it as easily as they had sailed
+at first. The Admiral, quite undisturbed, suggested that in his
+experience land-birds usually meant land not very far away.
+
+Colon always answered frankly the questions put to him, but there was
+one secret which he kept to himself from the beginning. Knowing that he
+would be likely to have trouble when he reached the seven-hundred-league
+limit his crews had set for him, he kept two reckonings. One was for his
+private journal, the other was for all to see. He took the actual
+figures of each day's run as set down in his private record, subtracted
+from them a certain percentage and gave out this revised reckoning to
+the fleet. He, and he alone, knew that they were nearly seven hundred
+leagues from Palos already, instead of five hundred and fifty. According
+to Toscanelli's calculation, by sailing west from the Canaries along the
+thirtieth parallel of latitude he should land somewhere on the coast of
+Cipangu; but the map of Toscanelli might be incorrect. If the ocean
+should prove to be a hundred or more leagues wider than the chart showed
+it, they would have to go on, all the same.
+
+Even after they were out of the seaweed there was something weird and
+unnatural in the sluggish calm of the sea. Light winds blew from the
+west and southwest, but there were no waves, as by all marine experience
+there should have been. On September 25 the sea heaved silently in a
+mysterious heavy swell, without any wind. Then the wind once more
+shifted to the east, and carried them on so smoothly that they could
+talk from one ship to another. Martin Pinzon borrowed the Admiral's
+chart, and it seemed to him that according to this they must be near
+Cipangu. He tossed the chart back to the flagship on the end of a cord,
+and gave himself to scanning the horizon. Ten thousand maravedis had
+been promised by the sovereigns to the first man who actually saw land.
+Suddenly Pinzon shouted, "Tierra! Tierra!" There was a low bank of what
+seemed to be land, about twenty-five leagues away to the southwest. Even
+for this Colon hesitated to turn from his pre-arranged course, but at
+last he yielded to the chorus of pleading and protest which arose from
+his officers, set his helm southwest and found--a cloud-bank.
+
+Again and again during the following days the eager eyes and strained
+nerves of the seamen led to similar disappointments. Land birds
+appeared; some alighted fearlessly on the rigging and sang. Dolphins
+frolicked about the keels. Flying-fish, pursued by their enemy the
+bonito (mackerel), rose from the water in rainbow argosies, and fell
+sometimes inside the caravels. A heron, a pelican and a duck passed,
+flying southwest. By the true reckoning the fleet had sailed seven
+hundred and fifty leagues. Colon wondered whether there could be an
+error in the map, or whether by swerving from their course they had
+passed between islands into the southern sea. Pedro, as sensitive as a
+dog to the moods of his master, watched the Admiral's face as he came
+and went, and wondered in his turn.
+
+The pilots and shipmasters were cautious in expressing their fears
+within hearing of the sailors, for by this time every one in authority
+knew that open mutiny might break out at any moment. On the evening of
+October 10 a delegation of anxious officers came to explain to the
+Admiral that they could not hold the panic-stricken crews. If no land
+appeared within a week their provisions would not last until they
+reached home; they had not enough water to last through the homeward
+voyage even now. The Admiral knew as well as they the horrors of thirst
+and famine at sea, particularly with a crew of the kind they had been
+obliged to ship. What did he intend to do?
+
+The Admiral, seated at his table, finished the sentence he was adding in
+his neat, legible hand to his log, put it aside, put the pen in the case
+which hung at his belt, closed his ink-horn. His quiet eyes rested
+fearlessly on their uneasy faces.
+
+"This expedition," he said calmly, "has been sent out to look for the
+Indies. With God's blessing we shall continue to look for them until we
+find them. Say to the men, however, that if they will wait two or three
+days I think they will see land."
+
+Next morning Pedro was engaged in polishing his master's steel corslet
+and casque, while near by two or three sailors conferred in low tones.
+
+"We have had enough of promises," growled one. "As Rascon says, we are
+like Fray Agostino's donkey, that went over the mountain at a trot,
+trying to reach the bunch of carrots hung on a staff in front of his
+nose."
+
+There was a half-hearted snicker, and one of the men pointed a warning
+thumb at Pedro.
+
+"Oh!" said the speaker. "You heard, you little beggar?"
+
+"I did," said Pedro.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I was waiting for the end of the story. As I heard it the Abbot
+charged the old friar with deceiving the dumb beast, and he said he had
+to, because he was dealing with a donkey!"
+
+Pedro slung the pieces of gleaming plate-mail to his shoulder and added
+as he turned to go, "You need not be afraid that I shall tell the
+Admiral what you were saying. I am not a fool, and he knows how scared
+you are, already."
+
+More signs of land appeared--river weeds, a thorny branch with fresh
+berries like rose-hips, a reed, a piece of wood, a carved staff. As
+always, the vesper hymn to the Virgin was sung on the deck of the
+flagship, and after service the Admiral briefly addressed the men. He
+reminded them of the singular favor of God in granting them so quiet and
+safe a voyage, and recalled his statement made on leaving the Canaries,
+that after they had made seven hundred leagues he expected to be so near
+land that they should not make sail after midnight. He told them that in
+his belief they might find land before morning.
+
+Nobody slept that night. About ten o'clock the Admiral, gazing from the
+top of the castle built up on the poop of the _Santa Maria_, thought
+that far away in the warm darkness he saw a glancing light.
+
+"Pedro," he said to the boy near him, "do you see a light out there?
+Yes? Call Senor Gutierrez and we will see what he makes of it. I have
+come to the pass where I do not trust my own eyes."
+
+Gutierrez saw it, but when Sanchez of Segovia came up, the light had
+vanished. It seemed to come and go as if it were a torch in a
+fishing-boat or in the hand of some one walking. But at two in the
+morning a gun boomed from the _Pinta_. Rodrigo de Triana, one of the
+seamen, had seen land from the mast-head.
+
+The sudden sunrise of the tropics revealed a green Paradise lapped in
+tranquil seas. The ships must have come up toward it between sunset and
+midnight. No one had been able to imagine with any certainty what
+morning would show. But this was no seaport, or coast of any civilized
+land. People were coming down to the shore to watch the approach of the
+ships, but they were wild people, naked and brown, and the sight was
+evidently perfectly new to them.
+
+The Admiral ordered the ships to cast anchor, and the boats were manned
+and armed. He himself in a rich uniform of scarlet held the royal banner
+of Castile, while the brothers Pinzon, commanders of the _Pinta_ and the
+_Nina_, in their boats, had each a banner emblazoned with a green cross
+and the crowned initials of the sovereigns, Fernando and Ysabel. The air
+was clear and soft, the sea was almost transparent, and strange and
+beautiful fruits could be seen among the rich foliage of the trees along
+the shore. The Admiral landed, knelt and kissed the earth, offering
+thanks to God, with tears in his eyes; and the other captains followed
+his example. Then rising, he drew his sword, and calling upon all who
+gathered around him to witness his action, took possession of the
+newly-discovered island in the name of his sovereigns, and gave it the
+name of San Salvador (Holy Savior).
+
+The wild people, terrified at the sight of men coming toward them from
+these great white-winged birds, as they took the ships to be, ran away
+to the woods, but they presently returned, drawn by irresistible
+curiosity. They had no weapons of iron, and one of them innocently took
+hold of a sword by the edge. They were delighted with the colored caps,
+glass beads, hawk-bells and other trifles which were given to them, and
+brought the strangers great balls of spun cotton, cakes of cassava
+bread, fruits, and tame parrots. Pedro went everywhere, and saw
+everything, as only a boy could. Later, when the flagship was cruising
+among the islands, and the Admiral, worn out by long anxiety, lay asleep
+in his cabin, the helmsman, smothering a mighty yawn, called Pedro to
+him.
+
+"See here, young chap," he said, "we are running along the shore of this
+island and there is no difficulty--take my place will you, while I get a
+nap?"
+
+The boy hesitated. He would have asked his master, but his master was
+asleep, and must not be awakened. This helmsman, moreover, was one of
+the men who had been kind to him, ready to answer his questions
+regarding navigation, and loyal to the Admiral. Moreover it was not
+quite the first time that Pedro had been allowed to take this
+responsibility. He accepted it now. The man staggered away and lost
+himself in heavy sleep almost before he lay down.
+
+It was one of the still, breathless nights of the tropic seas. Pedro's
+small strong hands had not grasped the helm for a half-hour before the
+wind freshened, and then a tremendous gust swept down upon the flagship
+hurling her right upon the unknown shore. Pedro strove desperately with
+the fearful odds, but before the half-awakened sailors heard his call
+the _Santa Maria_ was past repair. No lives were lost, but the Admiral
+decided that it would be necessary to leave a part of the men on shore
+as the beginning of a settlement. He would not have chosen to do this
+but for the disaster, for the men who made up these crews were not
+promising material for a colony in a wild land. But he had no choice in
+the matter. The two smaller ships would not hold them all. Pedro,
+shaken with sobs, cast himself at the feet of his master and begged
+forgiveness.
+
+"No one blames you, my son," said the Admiral, more touched than he had
+been for a long time. "Be not so full of sorrow for what cannot be
+helped. The wild people are friendly, the land is kind, and when we have
+sailed back to Spain with our news there will be no difficulty in
+returning with as many ships as we may need. Nay, I will not leave thee
+here, Pedro. I think that now I could not do without thee."
+
+
+NOTE
+
+[1] The name of Columbus took various forms according to the country in
+which he lived. In his native Genoa it would be Cristofero Colombo. In
+Portugal, where he dwelt for many years, it would be Cristobal Colombo,
+and in Spanish Christoval or Cristobal Colon. In Latin, which was the
+common language of all learned men until comparatively recent times, the
+name took the form Christopherus Columbus, which has become in modern
+English Christopher Columbus. In each story the discoverer is spoken of
+as he would have been spoken of by the characters in that particular
+story.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUEEN'S PRAYER
+
+
+    In this Thy world, O blessed Christ,
+      I live but for Thy will,
+    To serve Thy cause and drive Thy foes
+      Before Thy banner still.
+
+    In rich and stately palaces
+      I have my board and bed,
+    But Thou didst tread the wilderness
+      Unsheltered and unfed.
+
+    My gallant squadrons ride at will
+      The undiscover'd sea,
+    But Thou hadst but a fishing-boat
+      On windy Galilee.
+
+    In valiant hosts my men-at-arms
+      Eager to battle go,
+    But Thou hadst not a single blade
+      To fend Thee from the foe.
+
+    Great store of pearls and beaten gold
+      My bold seafarers bring,
+    But Thou hadst not a little coin
+      To pay for Thy lodging.
+
+    The trust that Thou hast placed in me,
+      O may I not betray,
+    Nor fail to save Thy people from
+      The fires of Judgment Day!
+
+    Be strong and stern, O heart, faint heart--
+      Stay not, O woman's hand,
+    Till by this Cross I bear for Thee
+      I have made clean Thy land!
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE MAN WHO COULD NOT DIE
+
+
+"Nombre de San Martin! who is that up there like a cat?"
+
+"Un gato! Cucarucha en palo!"
+
+"If Alonso de Ojeda hears of your calling him a cockroach on a mast, he
+will grind your ribs to a paste with a cudgel (os moliesen las costillas
+a puros palos)!" observed a pale, sharp-faced lad in a shabby doublet.
+The sailor who had made the comparison glanced at him and chuckled.
+
+"Your pardon--hidalgo. I have been at sea so much of late that the
+comparison jumped into my mind. Is he a caballero then?"
+
+"One of the household of the Duke of Medina Coeli. He is always doing
+such things. If he happened to think of flying, he would fly. Every one
+must be good at something."
+
+The performance which they had just been watching would fix the name of
+Ojeda very firmly in the minds of those who saw. Queen Ysabel, happening
+to ascend the tower of the cathedral at Seville with her courtiers and
+ladies, remarked upon the daring and skill of the Moorish builders.
+Everywhere in the newly conquered cities of Granada were their
+magnificent domes and lofty muezzin towers, often seeming like the airy
+minarets of a mirage. The next instant Alonso de Ojeda had walked out
+upon a twenty-foot timber projecting into space two hundred feet above
+the pavement, and at the very end he stood on one leg and waved the
+other in the air. Returning, he rested one foot against the wall and
+flung an orange clean over the top of the tower. He was small, though
+handsome and well-made, and he had now shown a muscular strength of
+which few had suspected him.
+
+It was natural that the sailor should be interested in the people of the
+court, for he had business there. The Admiral of the Indies was making
+his arrangements for his second voyage, and he had desired Juan de la
+Cosa to meet him at Seville. As the pilot stood waiting for the Admiral
+to come out from an interview with Fonseca he had a good look at many of
+the persons who were to join in this second expedition.
+
+"There will be no unlocking the jail doors to scrape together crews for
+this fleet, I warrant you," thought the old sailor exultantly as he
+stood in the shadow of the Giralda watching Castile parade itself before
+the new hero. Here were Diego Colon, a quiet-looking youth, the youngest
+brother of the Admiral; Antonio de Marchena the astronomer, a learned
+monk; Juan Ponce de Leon, a nobleman from the neighborhood of Cadiz with
+a brilliant military record; Francisco de las Casas with his son
+Bartolome; and the valiant young courtier whom all Seville had seen
+flirting with death in mid-air.
+
+"Oh, it was nothing," La Cosa heard Ojeda say when Las Casas made some
+kindly compliment on his daring. "I will tell you," he added in a lower
+voice, pulling something small out of his doublet, "I have a sure
+talisman in this little picture of the Virgin. The Bishop gave it to me,
+and I always carry it. In all the dangers one naturally must encounter
+in the service of such a master as mine, it has kept me safe. I have
+never even been wounded."
+
+The Duke of Medina Coeli was in fact a stern master in the school of
+arms. He was always at the front in the wars just concluded between
+Spaniard and Moor, and where he was, there he expected his squires to
+be. There was no place among the youths whose fathers had given him
+charge of their military training, for a lad with a grain of physical
+cowardice. Ojeda moreover had a quick temper and a fiery sense of honor,
+and it really seemed to savor of the miraculous that he had escaped all
+harm. At any rate he had reached the age of twenty-one with unabated
+faith in the little Flemish painting.
+
+"These youngsters--" the veteran seaman said to himself as he looked at
+the straight, proud, keen-faced squires and youthful knights marching
+along the streets of the temporary capital, "now that the Moors are
+vanquished what won't they do in the Indies! I think the golden days
+must be come for Christians. And shall you be a soldier also, my lad?"
+he asked of the sharp-faced boy, who still stood near him.
+
+"My father says not. He wants me to be a lawyer," said the youngster
+indifferently. Then he slipped away as some companions of his own age,
+or a little older, came by, and one said enviously,
+
+"Where have you been, Hernan' Cortes? Lucky you were not with us. My
+faith--" the speaker wriggled expressively, "we caught a drubbing!"
+
+"Told you so," returned the lad addressed, with cool unconcern. "Why
+can't you see when to let go the cat's tail?"
+
+"He has a head on him, that one," the seaman chuckled. "There is always
+one of his sort in every gang of boys. But that young gallant Ojeda! A
+fine young fellow, and as devoted as he is brave." Juan de la Cosa had
+conceived at first sight an admiration and affection for Ojeda which was
+to last as long as they both should live.
+
+The fleet that stately sailed from Cadiz on September 25, 1493, was a
+very different sight from the three shabby little caravels that slipped
+down the Tinto a year and a half before. The Admiral now commanded
+fourteen caravels and three great carracks or store-ships, on board of
+which were horses, mules, cattle, carefully packed shoots of grape-vines
+and sugar-cane, seeds of all kinds, and provisions ready for use. The
+fleet carried nearly fifteen hundred persons,--three hundred more than
+had been arranged for, but the enthusiasm in Spain was boundless. It
+carried also the embittered hatred of Fonseca. The Bishop, having been
+the Queen's confessor, naturally became head of the Department of the
+Indies in order to forward with all zeal the conversion of the native
+races. But when he tried to assert his authority over the Admiral and
+appealed to Fernando and Ysabel to support him, he was told mildly but
+firmly that in the equipment and command of the fleet Colon's judgment
+was best. This royal snub Fonseca never forgave, and he was one of those
+persons who revenge a slight on some one else rather than the one who
+inflicted it. It was also his nature never to forgive any one for
+succeeding in an undertaking which he himself had prophesied would fail.
+
+All seemed in order on the morning of the embarkation. At this time of
+year storms were unlikely, and there was no severity of climate to be
+feared. Half Castile and Aragon had come to see the expedition off. The
+young cavaliers' heads were filled with visions of rich dukedoms and
+principalities in the golden empire upon whose coast the discovered
+islands hung, like pendants of pearl and gold upon the robe of a
+monarch.
+
+The first incident of the voyage was not, however, romantic. The fleet
+touched at the Canary Islands to take on board more animals--goats,
+sheep, swine and fowls, for the Admiral had seen none of these in any of
+the islands he had visited. In fact the people had no domestic animal
+whatever except their strange dumb dogs. The cavaliers, glad of a chance
+to stretch their legs in a space a little greater than the deck of a
+crowded ship, strolled about discussing past and future with large
+freedom.
+
+Ojeda was asking Juan de la Cosa about the nature of the country. It
+seemed to him the ideal field for a man of spirit and high heart. How
+glorious a conquest would it be to abolish the vile superstitions of the
+barbarians and set up the altars of the true faith!
+
+The pilot was a little amused and somewhat doubtful; he knew something
+of savages, and Ojeda and the priests on board did not. It was not, he
+suggested, always easy to convert stubborn heathen. A pig was a small
+animal, but Ojeda would remember that to the Moslem it was as great an
+object of aversion as a lion.
+
+"Ho!" said Ojeda superbly, "that is quite--" He was interrupted by a
+blow that knocked his legs out from under him and landed him on the
+ground in a sitting position with his hat over his eyes.
+
+"Who did that?" he cried, leaping to his feet, hand on sword.
+
+"Only a pig, my lord," the sailor answered choking with half-swallowed
+laughter. It was a pig, which the sailors had goaded to such a state of
+desperation that it had bolted straight into the group as a pig will,
+and was now galloping away, pursued by a great variety of maledictions
+and persons. "They have got the creature now," he added, "You are not
+hurt?" for Ojeda was actually pale with indignation and disgust.
+
+"No," sputtered the youth, "but that pig--that p-pig--" He looked around
+him with an eye which seemed to challenge any beholder of whatever
+condition, to laugh and be instantly run through. Fortunately most of
+those on the wharf had been too much occupied to see Ojeda fall before
+the pig, and just then the trumpets blew, and all hastened to get back
+on board ship.
+
+When an expedition is composed largely of hot-headed youths trained to
+the use of arms, each of whom has a code of honor as sensitive as a
+mimosa plant and as prickly as a cactus, the lot of their commanders is
+not happy. It may have been Ojeda's treasured talisman which saved him
+from several sudden deaths during the following weeks, but Juan de la
+Cosa privately believed it was partly the memory of the pig. The young
+man had what might in another time and civilization have developed into
+a sense of humor. It would not do for a hero with the world before him
+to get himself sent back to Spain because of some trivial personal
+quarrel.
+
+On reaching Hispaniola the adventurers found plenty of real occupation
+awaiting them. The little colony which the Admiral had left at Navidad
+on his first voyage had been wiped out. The natives timidly explained
+that a fierce chief from the interior, Caonaba, had killed or captured
+all the forty men of the garrison and destroyed their fort. Colon was
+obliged to remodel all his plans at a moment's notice. Instead of
+finding a colony well under way, and in control of the wild tribes or at
+least friendly with them, he found the wreck of a luckless attempt at
+settlement, and the kindly native villagers turned aloof and suspicious,
+and living in dread of a second raid by Caonaba. He chose a site for a
+second settlement on the coast, where ships could find a harbor, not far
+from gold-bearing mountains which the natives described and called
+Cibao. This sounded rather like Cipangu.
+
+Ojeda led an exploring party into the mountains, and found gold nuggets
+in the beds of the streams. In March a substantial little town had been
+built, with a church, granary, market-square, and a stone wall around
+the whole. The Admiral then organized an expedition to explore the
+interior.
+
+On March 12, 1494, Colon with his chief officers went out of the gate of
+the settlement, which had been named for the Queen, at the head of four
+hundred men, many of whom were mounted, and all armed with sword,
+cross-bow, lance or arquebus. With casques and breastplates shining in
+the sun, banners flying, pennons fluttering, drums and trumpets
+sounding, they presented a sight which should have brought ambassadors
+from any monarch of the Indies who heard of their approach. But although
+a multitude of savages came from the forest to see, no signs of any such
+capital as that of the Great Khan appeared. At the end of the first
+day's march they camped at the foot of a rocky mountain range with no
+way over it but a footpath, winding over rocks and through dense
+tropical jungles. There appeared to be no roads in the country.
+
+But this was not an impossible situation to the young Spanish cavaliers,
+for in the Moorish wars it had often been necessary to construct a road
+over the mountains. A number of them at once volunteered for the
+service, and with laborers and pioneers, to whom they set an example by
+working as valiantly as they were ready to fight, they made a road for
+the little army, which was named in their honor El Puerto de los
+Hidalgos, the Gentlemen's Pass. When they reached the top of this steep
+defile and could look down upon the land beyond they saw a vast and
+magnificent plain, covered with forests of beautiful trees, blossoming
+meadows and a network of clear lakes and rivers, and dotted here and
+there with thatch-roofed villages. Near the top of the pass a spring of
+cool delicious water bubbled out in a glen shaded by palms and one tall
+and handsome tree of an unknown variety, with wood so hard that it
+turned the ax of a laborer who tried to cut a chip of it. Colon gave the
+plain the name of the Vega Real or Royal Plain.
+
+Of all the events, exploits and intrigues of those first years in the
+Spanish Indies, no one historian among those who accompanied the
+expedition ever found time to write. Where all was so new, and every
+man, whether priest, cavalier, soldier, sailor, clerk or artisan, had
+his own reasons and his own aims in coming to this land of promise,
+nothing went exactly according to anybody's plans. The Admiral was soon
+convinced that in Hispaniola at least no civilized capital existed. To
+their amazement and amusement the Spaniards found that the savages
+feared their horses more than their weapons. It was discovered after a
+while that horse and rider were at first supposed to be one supernatural
+animal. When the white men dismounted the people fled in horror,
+believing that the ferocious beasts were going to eat them.
+
+It became evident that with the fierce chief Caonaba to reckon with,
+military strength and capacity would be the only means of holding the
+country. The commander could not count on patriotism, religious
+principle or even self-interest to keep the colonists united. In this
+tangled situation one of the few persons who really enjoyed himself was
+Alonso de Ojeda. Instead of spending his time in drinking, quarreling or
+getting himself into trouble with friendly natives, the young man seemed
+bent on proving himself an able and sagacious leader of men. A little
+fortress of logs had been built about eighteen leagues from the
+settlement, in the mining country, defended on all sides but one by a
+little river, the Yanique, and on the remaining side by a deep ditch.
+Gold dust, nuggets, amber, jasper and lapis lazuli had been found in the
+neighborhood, and it was the Admiral's intention to send miners there as
+soon as possible, protected by the fort, which he called San Tomas.
+Ojeda happened to be in command of the garrison, in the absence of his
+superior, when Caonaba came down from his mountains with an immense
+force of hostile tribes. The young lieutenant in his rude eyrie, perched
+on a hill surrounded by the enemy, held off ten thousand savages under
+the Carib chief for more than a month. Finally the chief, whose people
+had never been trained in warfare after the European fashion, found them
+deserting by hundreds, tired of the monotony of the siege. Ojeda did not
+merely stand on the defensive. He was continually sallying forth at the
+head of small but determined companies of Spaniards, whenever the enemy
+came near his stronghold. He never went far enough from his base to be
+captured, but killed off so many of the best warriors of Caonaba that
+the chief himself grew tired of the unprofitable undertaking and
+withdrew his army. During the siege provisions ran short, and when
+things were looking very dark a friendly savage slipped in one night
+with two pigeons for the table of the commander. When they were brought
+to Ojeda, in the council chamber where he was seated consulting with his
+officers, he glanced at the famine-pinched faces about him, took the
+pigeons in his hands and stroked their feathers for an instant.
+
+"It is a pity," he said, "that we have not enough to make a meal. I am
+not going to feast while the rest of you starve," and he gave the birds
+a toss into the air from the open window and turned again to his plans.
+When some one reported the incident to the Admiral his eyes shone.
+
+"I wish we had a few more such commanders," he said.
+
+Caonaba's next move was to form a conspiracy among all the caciques of
+Hispaniola, to join in a grand attack against the white men and wipe
+them out, as he had wiped out the little garrison at Navidad. A friendly
+cacique, Guacanagari, who had been the ally of the Admiral from the
+first, gave him information of this plot, and the danger was seen by
+Colon's acute mind to be desperate indeed. He had only a small force,
+torn by jealousy and private quarrels, and a defensive fight at this
+stage of his enterprise would almost surely be a losing one. The
+territory of Caonaba included the most mountainous and inaccessible part
+of the island, where that wily barbarian could hold out for years; and
+as long as he was loose there would be no safety for white men. To the
+Admiral, who was just recovering from a severe illness, the prospect
+looked very gloomy.
+
+Pedro the Vizcayan cabin-boy, who was his confidential servant, was
+crossing the plaza one day with a basket of fruit, when Alonso de Ojeda
+stopped him to inquire after his master's health.
+
+"His health," said Pedro, "would improve if I had Caonaba's head in this
+basket. I wish somebody would get it."
+
+Ojeda laughed, showing a flash of white teeth under his jaunty
+mustachios. Then he grew thoughtful. "Wait a moment, Pedro," he said.
+"Will you ask the Admiral if he can see me for a few minutes, this
+morning?"
+
+When Ojeda appeared Colon detected a trace of excitement in the young
+man's bearing, and tactfully led the conversation to Caonaba. He frankly
+expressed his perplexity.
+
+"Have you a plan, Ojeda?" he asked with a half smile. "It has been my
+experience, that you usually have."
+
+Ojeda felt a thrill of pleasure, for the Admiral did not scatter his
+compliments broadcast. He admitted that he had a plan.
+
+"Let me hear it," said Colon.
+
+But as the youthful captain unfolded his scheme the cool gray eye of the
+Genoese commander betrayed distinct surprise. It seemed only yesterday
+that this youngster had been a little monkey of a page in the great
+palace of the Duke of Medina Coeli, when he was entertained there, on
+arriving in Spain.
+
+"You see," Ojeda concluded, "I have observed in fighting these people
+that if their leader is killed or captured, they seem to lose their
+heads completely. I think that with a dozen men I can get Caonaba and
+bring him in. If I do not--the loss will not be very great."
+
+"I should not like to lose you," said the Admiral, with his hand on the
+young man's shoulder. "Go, if you will,--but do not sacrifice your own
+life if you can help it."
+
+Ojeda had faith in his talisman, and he also believed that if any man
+could go into Caonaba's territory and come back alive, he was that man.
+He knew that he himself, in the place of the chief, would respect a man
+whom he had not been able to beat.
+
+With ten soldiers he rode up into the mountains, his blood leaping with
+the wild joy of an adventure as great as any in the Song of the Cid. To
+be sure, Caonaba would not in his mountain camp have any such army as
+when he surrounded the fort, for then he commanded whole tribes of
+allies. In case of coming to blows Ojeda believed that he and his men
+with their superior weapons could cut their way out. Still, the odds
+were beyond anything that he had ever heard of.
+
+He found the Carib chief, and began by trying diplomacy. He said that
+his master, the Guamaquima or chief of the Spaniards, had sent him with
+a present. Would he not consent to make a visit to the colony, with a
+view of becoming the Admiral's ally and friend? If he would, he should
+be presented with the bell of the chapel, the voice of the church, the
+wonder of Hispaniola.
+
+Caonaba had heard that bell when he was prowling about the settlement,
+and the temptation to become its owner was great. He finally agreed to
+accompany Ojeda and his handful of Spaniards back to the coast. But
+when they were ready to start, the force of warriors in Caonaba's escort
+was out of all proportion to any peaceful embassy. Ojeda turned to his
+original plan.
+
+He proposed that Caonaba, after bathing in the stream at the foot of the
+mountain, and attiring himself in his finest robe, should put on the
+gift the Spanish captain had brought, a pair of metal bracelets, and
+return to his followers mounted with Ojeda on his horse. The chief's
+eyes glittered as he saw the polished steel of the ornaments Ojeda
+produced. He knew that nothing could so impress his wild followers with
+his power and greatness as his ability to conquer all fear of the
+terrible animals always seen in the vanguard of the white men's army. He
+consented to the plan, and after putting on his state costume, and being
+decorated with the handcuffs, he cautiously mounted behind the young
+commander, and his followers, in awe and admiration, beheld their
+cacique ride.
+
+[Illustration: "HE PROPOSED THAT CAONABA SHOULD PUT ON THE GIFT THE
+SPANISH CAPTAIN HAD BROUGHT."--_Page_ 78]
+
+Ojeda, who was a perfect horseman, made the horse leap, curvet and
+caracole, taking a wider circuit each time, until making a long sweep
+through the forest the two disappeared from the view of the Carib army
+altogether. Ojeda's own men closed in upon him, bound Caonaba hand and
+foot, behind their leader, and thus the chief was taken into the Spanish
+settlement. The conspiracy fell to pieces and the colony was saved.
+
+Caonaba showed no respect to Colon or any one else in the camp while a
+prisoner there, except Ojeda. When Ojeda entered he promptly rose to his
+feet. They had many conversations together, and Caonaba, who evidently
+rather admired the stratagem by which he had been captured, agreed with
+his captor that Ojeda was The Man Who Could Not Die.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The career of Alonso de Ojeda is one of the most picturesque and
+adventurous in early Spanish-American history, and his character is
+typical of the young Spanish cavalier of the age just following the
+discovery of America. The episodes here used, with many others quite as
+dramatic, are described at length in Irving's "Life of Columbus."
+
+
+
+
+THE ESCAPE
+
+
+    Why do you come here, white men, white men?
+      Why do you bend the knee
+    When your priests before you, singing, singing,
+      Lift the cross, the cross of tree?
+
+    Flashing in the sunlight, rainbows waking,
+      Move your mighty oars keeping time.
+    Sailors heave your anchors, chanting, chanting
+      Some strange and mystic rime.
+
+    Pearls and gold we bring you, feathers of our wild birds,
+      Glowing in the sunshine like flowers.
+    Houses we will build you, food and clothing find you,
+      You shall share in all that is ours.
+
+    Why do you frighten us, white men, white men?
+      Can you not be friends for a day?
+    Souls are like the sea-birds, flying, flying,
+      Borne by the sea-wind away.
+
+    Why do you chain us in the mines of the mountains?
+      Why do you hunt us with your hounds?
+    We who were so free, are we evermore to be
+      Prisoned in your narrow hateful bounds?
+
+    One escape is left us, white men, white men,--
+      You cannot forbid our souls to fly
+    To the stars of freedom, far beyond the sunset,--
+      We whom you have captured can die!
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+LOCKED HARBORS
+
+
+"But of what use is a King's patent," said Hugh Thorne of Bristol, "if
+the harbors be locked?"
+
+The Italian merchant glanced up from his papers and smiled, which was
+all the answer the Englishman seemed to expect, for he stormed on, "Here
+have we better fleeces than Spain, better wheat than France, finer
+cattle than the Netherlands, the tin of Cornwall, the flax of Kent and
+Durham, and our people starve or live rudely because of the fettering of
+our trade."
+
+"'T is a sad misfortune," said the merchant. "In a world so great as
+this there is surely room for all to work and all to get reward for
+their labor. But so long as the English merchant guilds wear away their
+time and substance in fighting one another I fear 't will be no better."
+
+Thorne flung his cloak about him with an impatient gesture. "That's
+true," he answered, "the Spaniards hold by Spain, and all the Hanse
+merchants by one another, but our English go every man for himself and
+the devil take the hindmost. I speak freely to you, friend, because you
+have cast in your lot with us West Country folk and are content to be
+called John Cabot."
+
+The other smiled again, his quick childlike smile, and went with his
+guest to the door. When he entered again his small private room a
+dark-eyed boy of five was crawling out from under the table.
+
+"Dad," he inquired solemnly, "vat is a locked harbor?"
+
+John Cabot laughed and swung his little son to his shoulder. "That is a
+great question for a little brain," he said fondly. "But see thee here;
+suppose I put thee in the chest and shut the lid and turn the key; thou
+art locked in and canst not get out--so! But now I put thee out of door
+and set the bandog to guard it; thou art locked out though the door be
+wide open, seest thou? And when I forbid thee to pick up the plums that
+fall on the grass from the Frenchman's damson tree, they are as safe as
+if I locked them in the dresser here, are they not? So 't is when the
+King forbids his people to send their goods to some harbor; it is the
+same as if a great chain were stretched across that harbor with a great
+lock upon it. Now run and play with Ludovico and Santo, Sebastiano mio,
+and be glad thou art free of a pleasant garden."
+
+But Sebastian still hung back, his dark head rubbing softly against his
+father's shoulder. "When I am a great merchant," he announced, "the King
+will let me send my ships all over the world."
+
+John Cabot stroked the wavy dark hair with a lingering, tender touch.
+"God grant thee thy wish, little one," he said. And Sebastian, with a
+shout in answer to a call from the sunny out-of-door world, scampered
+away.
+
+John Cabot, who had been born in Genoa, married while a merchant in
+Venice, and had now lived for many years in Bristol, felt sometimes that
+the life of a trader was like that of a player at dice. And the dice
+were often loaded.
+
+He was a good navigator, or he would not have been a true son of the
+Genoese house of Caboto--Giovanni Caboto translated meant John the
+Captain, and in a city full of sea-captains a man must know more than a
+little of the sea to win that title. He had made a place for himself in
+Venice as Zuan Gaboto, and now he was a known and respected man in the
+second greatest seaport of England, with a house in the quarter of
+Bristol known as "Cathay," the only part of the city where foreigners
+were allowed to live. It had its nickname from the fact that the foreign
+trade of Bristol was largely with the Orient.
+
+English trade in those days was hampered by a multitude of restrictions.
+There were monopolies, there were laws forbidding the export of this and
+that, or the making of goods by any one outside certain guilds, there
+were arrangements favoring foreign traders who had got their foothold
+during the War of the Roses,--when kings needed money from any source
+that would promise it. The Hanse merchants at the Steelyard alone
+controlled the markets of more than a hundred towns. Their grim stone
+buildings rose like a fort commanding London Bridge, and they paid less
+both in duties and customs than English merchants did. They employed no
+English ships, and could underbuy and undersell the English manufacturer
+and the English trader. Their men were all bachelors, with no families
+to found or houses to keep up in England. The farmer might get half
+price for his wool and pay more than one price for whatever he was
+obliged to buy. There was plenty of private exasperation, but no open
+fighting, against this ruling of the London markets by Hamburg, Luebeck,
+Antwerp and Cologne. Cabot's clear head and wide experience plainly
+showed him the enormous waste of such a system, but he did not see how
+to unlock the harbors. Neither, at present, did the King, whose shrewd
+brain was at work on the problem.
+
+Henry Tudor had the thrift of a youth spent in poverty, and the turn for
+finance inherited from Welsh ancestors, but his kingdom was not rich,
+and his throne not over-secure. He was prejudiced against doing anything
+rash, both by nature and by the very limited income of the crown. He had
+given an audience to Bartholomew Columbus while the older brother was
+still haunting the court of Castile with his unfulfilled plans, and had
+gone so far as to tell the Genoese captain to bring his brother
+Christopher to England that he might talk with him. Had it not been for
+Queen Isabella's impulsive decision England instead of Spain might have
+made the lucky throw in the great game of discovery. But by the time
+Bartholomew could get the message to his brother the matter had been
+settled and the expedition was already taking shape. Henry VII. always
+kept one foot on the ground, and until he could see some other way to
+bring wealth into the royal treasury he let the monopolies go on.
+
+In 1495 he took a chance. He gave to John Cabot and his sons a license
+to search "for islands, provinces or regions in the eastern, western or
+northern seas; and, as vassals of the King, to occupy the territories
+that might be found, with an exclusive right to their commerce, on
+paying the King a fifth part of the profits."
+
+It will be noted that this license did not say anything about the
+southern ocean. Already troops of Spanish cavaliers were pouring into
+the seaports, eager to make discoveries by the road of Columbus, and
+Spain would regard as unfriendly any attempt to send English ships in
+that direction. Whatever could be got from the Spanish territories
+Henry would try another way of getting. The year before he had arranged
+to have Prince Arthur, the heir to his throne, marry the fourth daughter
+of the King of Aragon, Catherine, then a little Princess of eleven.
+Prince Arthur died while still a boy, and Catherine became the first
+wife of Henry, afterward Henry VIII. With a Spanish Princess as queen of
+England, there might be an alliance between the two countries. That
+would be better than quarreling with Spain over discoveries which were
+at best uncertain. If Cabot really found anything valuable in the
+northern seas the move might turn out to be a good one. It would make
+England a more powerful member of the Spanish alliance, without taking
+anything which Spain appeared to value.
+
+In May, 1497, properly furnished with provisions and a few such things
+as might show what England had to barter, the little _Matthew_ sailed
+from Bristol under the command of John Cabot with his nineteen-year-old
+son Sebastian and a crew of eighteen--nearly all Englishmen, used to the
+North Atlantic. The King's permission was for five ships, but the wise
+Cabot had heard something of the hardships of the first expeditions to
+Hispaniola, and preferred to keep within his means, and sail with men
+whom he could trust.
+
+But on this voyage they found locked harbors not closed by the order of
+any King but by natural causes,--harbors without inhabitants or means of
+supporting life, and so far north as to be blocked by ice for half the
+year. They sailed seven hundred leagues west and came at last to a rocky
+wooded coast. Now in all the books of travel in Asia, mention had been
+made of an immense territory ruled by the Grand Cham of Tartary, whose
+hordes had nearly overrun Eastern Europe in times not so very long ago.
+The adventures of Marco Polo the Venetian, in a great book sent to Cabot
+by his wife's father, had been the fairy-tale of Sebastian and his
+brothers from the time they were old enough to understand a story. In
+this book it was written how Marco Polo and his companions passed
+through utterly uninhabited wilds in the Great Khan's empire, and
+afterward came to a region of barbarians, who robbed and killed
+travelers. These fierce people lived on the fruits and game of the
+forest, cultivating no fields; they dressed in the skins of wild animals
+and used salt for money. Could this be the place? If so it behooved the
+little party of explorers to be careful. As yet, nobody dreamed that any
+mainland discovered by sailing westward from northern Europe could be
+anything but Asia.
+
+Cautiously they sailed along the rugged shore, but not a human being was
+to be seen. It was the twenty-fourth of June, when by all accounts the
+people of any civilized country should be coasting along from port to
+port fishing or engaged in traffic. The sun blazed hot and clear, but
+the inquisitive noses of the crew scented no cinnamon, cloves or ginger
+in the air. All of these, according to Marco Polo, were in the
+wilderness he crossed, and also great rivers. On crossing one of these
+rivers he had found himself in a populous country with castles and
+cities. Were there no people on this desolate shore--or were they lying
+in wait for the voyagers to land, that they might seize and kill them
+and plunder the ship?
+
+One thing was certain, the air of this strange place made them all more
+thirsty than they ever had been in England, and their water-supply had
+given out. Sebastian and a crew of the younger men tumbled into a
+boat, cross-bow and cutlass at hand, and went ashore to fill the
+barrels, while John Cabot kept an anxious eye on the land. Sebastian
+himself rather relished the adventure.
+
+They found a stream of delicious water,--pure, cold and clear as a
+fountain of Eden. Among the rocks they found creeping vines with rather
+tasteless, bright red berries, in the woods little evergreen herbs with
+leaves like laurel and scarlet spicy berries, dark green mossy vines
+with white berries--but no spice-trees. The forest in fact was rather
+like Norway, according to Ralph Erlandsson, who was a native of
+Stavanger. Sebastian, who was ahead, presently came upon signs of human
+life. A sapling, bent down and held by a rude contrivance of deerhide
+thong and stakes, was attached to a noose so ingeniously hidden that the
+young leader nearly stepped into it. He took it off the tree and looked
+about him. A minute later, from one side and to the rear, a startled
+exclamation came from Robert Thorne of Bristol, who had stepped on a
+similar snare and been jerked off his feet. This was quite enough. The
+party retreated to the ship. On the way back they saw trees that had
+been cut not very long since, and Sebastian picked up a wooden needle
+such as fishermen used in making nets, yet not like any English tool of
+that sort.
+
+[Illustration: "A SAPLING, BENT DOWN, WAS ATTACHED TO A NOOSE
+INGENIOUSLY HIDDEN."--_Page_ 87]
+
+They saw nothing more of the kind, although they sailed some three
+hundred leagues along the coast, nor did they see any sort of tilled
+land. This certainly could not be Cipangu or Cathay with their seaports
+and gilded temples. Whatever else it was, it was a land of wild people,
+savage hunters. John Cabot left on a bold headland where it could not
+fail to be seen, a great cross, with the flag of England and the
+Venetian banner bearing the lion of Saint Mark.
+
+There was wild excitement in Bristol when it was known that the little
+_Matthew_ had come safely into port, after three months' voyaging in
+unknown seas. August of that year found the two Cabots at Westminster
+with their story and their handful of forest trophies, and the excited
+and suspicious Spanish Ambassador was framing a protest to the King and
+a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella.
+
+Henry VII. fingered the wooden needle, pulled the rawhide thong
+meditatively through his fingers, and ate a little handful of the
+wintergreen berries and young leaves. Their pungent flavor wrinkled his
+long nose. This was certainly not any spice that came from the Indies.
+
+"This country you found," he remarked at last, "is not much like New
+Spain."
+
+"Nay, Sire," answered John Cabot simply.
+
+"And I understand,"--the King put the collection of curiosities back
+into the wallet that had held them, "that this represents one fifth at
+least of the gains of the voyage."
+
+Cabot bowed. As a matter of fact there had been no profits.
+
+"My lord,"--the King handed the wallet over to the uneasy Ambassador,
+who had been invited to the conference, "you have heard what our good
+Captain says. If, as you say, Spain claims this landfall, we willingly
+make over to you our--ahem!--share of the emolument." And the Spaniard,
+looking rather foolish, saw nothing better to do than to bow his thanks
+and retire from the presence.
+
+The King turned again to the Cabots.
+
+"Nevertheless," he went on meditatively, "we will not be neglectful of
+you. In another year, if it is still your desire to engage in this work,
+you may have--" a pause--"ten ships armed as you see fit, and manned
+with whatever prisoners are not confined for--high treason. Fish, I
+think you said, abound in those waters? Bacalao--er--that is cod, is it
+not? Now it seems to me that our men of Bristol can go a-fishing on
+those banks without interference from the Hanse merchants, and we shall
+be less dependent on--foreign aid, for the victualing of our tables. And
+there may be some way to Asia through these Northern seas--in which case
+our brother of Spain may not be so nice in his scruples about trespass.
+The Spice Islands are not his but Portugal's. And for your present
+reward,--" the King reached for his lean purse and waggled his gaunt
+foot in its loose worn red shoe "this, and the title of Admiral of your
+new-found land."
+
+He dropped some gold pieces into the hand of John Cabot. In the accounts
+of his treasurer for that year may be seen this item:
+
+"10th August, donation of L10 to him that found the new isle."
+
+In May of the next year another voyage was undertaken by Sebastian, John
+Cabot having died. This time there was a small fleet from Bristol with
+some three hundred men. Sebastian sailed so far north as to be stopped
+by seas full of icebergs, then turning southward discovered the island
+of Newfoundland, landed further south on the mainland, and went as far
+toward the Spanish possessions as the great bay called Chesapeake.
+Meanwhile shoals of little fishing boats, from Bristol, Brittany,
+Lisbon, Rye, and the Vizcayan ports on the north of Spain, crept across
+the gray seas to fish for cod. They held no patent and carried no guns,
+but they made a floating city off the Grand Banks for a brief season,
+settling their own disputes. The people at home found salt fish good
+cheap and wholesome. When Sebastian told the Bristol folk that the fish
+were so thick in these new seas that he could hardly get his ships
+through, they would not believe it. But when Robert Thorne and a dozen
+others had seen the little caplin, the fish which the cod feeds upon,
+swimming inshore by the acre, crowded by the cod behind them, and by
+seal, shark and dogfish hunting the cod, when cod were caught and salted
+down and shown in Bristol, four and five feet long, then Bristol
+swallowed both story and cargo and blessed the name of Cabot.
+
+Sebastian Cabot shook the dust of Bristol off his restless feet more
+than once in the years that followed. Within five years after his voyage
+to the Arctic regions he was cruising about the Caribbean. In 1517 he
+was at the entrance of the great bay on the north coast of Labrador. In
+1524 he was in the service of Spain, and coasting along the eastern
+shores of South America ascended the great river which De Solis had
+named Rio de la Plata, came within sight of the mountains of Peru. But
+for orders from Spain, where Pizarro had secured the governorship of
+that land, Cabot might have been its conqueror. In 1548, after some
+years spent in Spain as pilot major, he came back to England, where he
+was appointed to the position of superintendent of naval affairs. It was
+his work to examine and license pilots, and make charts and maps, and
+some ten years later he died, having founded the company of Merchant
+Adventurers in 1553. This company was entitled to build and send out
+ships for discovery and trade in parts unknown. By uniting merchant
+traders in one body, governed by definite rules, and backed by their
+combined capital, it broke the monopoly of the Hanseatic League and
+finally drove the Hanse merchants out of England. Sebastian Cabot was
+its first governor, holding the office until he died, and has rightly
+been called the father of free trade. He had unlocked the harbors of the
+world to his adopted country, England.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The rules drawn up by Cabot for the merchant adventurers, to be read
+publicly on board ship once a week, are interesting as showing the
+character of the man and the great advance made in welding English trade
+into a company to be guided by the best traditions. For the first time
+captains were required to keep a log, and this one thing, by putting on
+record everything seen and noted by those who sailed strange waters,
+made an increasing fund of knowledge at the service of each navigator.
+Some of the points in the instructions are as follows:
+
+7. "That the merchants and other skilful persons, in writing, shall
+daily write, describe and put in memorie the navigation of each day and
+night, with the points and observations of the lands, tides, elements,
+altitude of the sunne, course of the moon and starres, and the same so
+noted by the order of the master and pilot of every ship to be put in
+writing; the captain-general assembling the masters together once every
+weeke (if winde and weather shall serve) to conferre all the
+observations and notes of the said ships, to the intent it may appeare
+wherein the notes do agree and wherein they dissent, and upon good
+debatement, deliberation and conclusion determined to put the same into
+a common ledger, to remain of record for the companie; the like order to
+be kept in proportioning of the cardes, astrolabes, and other
+instruments prepared for the voyage, at the charge of the companie.
+
+12. "That no blaspheming of God, or detestable swearing, be used in any
+ship, or communication of ribaldrie, filthy tales, or ungodly talk to be
+suffered in the company of any ship, neither dicing, tabling, nor other
+divelish games to be permitted, whereby ensueth not only povertie to the
+players, but also strife, variance, brauling, fighting and oftentimes
+murther.
+
+26. "Every nation and region to be considered advisedly, and not to
+provoke them by any distance, laughing, contempt, or such like; but to
+use them with prudent circumspection, with all gentleness and
+courtesie."
+
+These and other instructions form an ideal far beyond anything found in
+the merchant shipping of any other land at that time, and the wisdom
+which inspired them undoubtedly laid the foundation of the fine and
+noble tradition which formed the best officers of the navy not yet born.
+There was no British navy in the modern sense until a hundred years
+after Cabot's day. In time of war the King impressed all suitable ships
+into his service, if they were not freely offered by private owners. In
+time of peace the monarch was a ship-owner like any other, and such a
+thing as a standing navy was not thought of. Hence the brave, generous,
+and courteous merchant adventurer, when such a man was abroad, was the
+upholder of the honor of his country as well as the upbuilder of her
+commerce.
+
+
+
+
+GRAY SAILS
+
+
+    Gray sails that fill with the winds of the morning,
+      Out upon the Channel or the bleak North sea,
+    Neither cross nor fleur-de-lis goes to your adorning,--
+      Arctic frost and southern gale your tirewomen shall be.
+    Yet when you come home again--home again--home again,
+      Gray sails turn to silver when the keel runs free.
+
+    Gray sails of Plymouth, 'ware the wild Orcades,
+      Gray sails of Lisbon, 'ware the guns of Dieppe.
+    Cross-bows of Genoa, 'ware the wharves of Gades,--
+      You that sail the Spanish Seas may neither trust nor sleep.
+    Yet when you come home again--home again--home again,
+      You shall make the covenant for Kings to keep!
+
+    Gray sails are crowding where the sea-fog sleeping
+      Masks the faces of the folk that throng and traffic there.
+    When the winds are free again and the cod are leaping,
+      All the tongues of Pentecost wake the laughing air.
+    And when they come home again--home again--home again,
+      They shall bring their freedom for the world to share!
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+LITTLE VENICE
+
+
+"Translators," observed Amerigo Vespucci, "are frequently traitors. Now
+who is to be surety that yonder interpreter does not change your words
+in repeating them?"
+
+Alonso de Ojeda touched the hilt of his poniard. "This," he said.
+"Toledo steel speaks all languages."
+
+The Florentine's black eyebrows lifted a little, but he did not pursue
+the subject. Ojeda was not the sort of man likely to be convinced of
+anything he did not believe already, and Vespucci was having too good a
+time to waste it in argument.
+
+This middle-aged, shrewd-looking individual had for half his life been
+chained to the desk, for he had been many years a clerk in the great
+merchant houses of the Medici. Until he was forty years old he had
+hardly gone outside his native city. In the latter half of the fifteenth
+century each Italian city was a little world in itself, with its own
+standards, customs and traditions. The fact that Vespucci spent most of
+his leisure and all of his spare ducats in the collection and study of
+maps and globes and works on geography, was regarded as a proof of mild
+insanity. When he paid one hundred and thirty gold pieces for a
+particularly fine map made by Valsequa in 1439, even his intimate friend
+Soderini called him a fool. Vespucci was himself an expert mapmaker.
+This may have been a reason why, about 1490, the Medici sent him to
+Barcelona to look after their interests in Spain. In Seville he secured
+a position as manager in the house of Juanoto Berardi, who fitted out
+ships for Atlantic voyages. In 1497 he himself sailed for the newly
+discovered islands of the West, and spent more than a year in
+exploration. This taste of travel seemed to have whetted his appetite
+for more, for he was now acting as astronomer and geographer in the
+expedition which Ojeda had organized and Juan de la Cosa fitted out, to
+the coast which Colon had discovered and called Tierre Firme. In the
+seven years since the first voyage of the great Admiral it had become
+the custom to have on board, for expeditions of discovery, a person who
+understood astronomy, the use of the astrolabe and navigation in
+general, and the making of charts and maps. Vespucci was exactly that
+sort of man. However queer it might seem to the young Ojeda to find in a
+clerk forty years old such a fresh and youthful delight in travel, both
+he and La Cosa knew that they had in him a valuable assistant. It was
+generally understood that he meant to write a book about it all.
+
+Vespucci was in fact thinking of his future book when he made that
+speech about translators. He was planning to write the book not in
+Latin, as was usual, but in Italian, making if necessary another copy in
+Latin.
+
+The party had sailed from Puerto Santa Maria on May 20, 1499, taking
+with them a chart which Bishop Fonseca, head of the Department of the
+Indies, furnished. It had been the understanding when Colon received the
+title of Admiral of the Indies that no expedition should be sent out
+without his authority. This understanding Fonseca succeeded in
+persuading the King and Queen to take back, and another order was
+issued, to the effect that no independent expedition was to go out
+without the royal permission. This, practically, meant Fonseca's leave.
+The Bishop signed the permit for Ojeda's undertaking with double
+satisfaction. He was doing a favor for his friend, Bishop Ojeda, cousin
+to this young man, and he was aiming a blow at the hated Genoese
+Admiral, whose very chart he was turning over to the young explorer. All
+sorts of stories had been set afloat about the unfitness of the Admiral
+to hold such an important office. Fonseca had managed to influence the
+Queen so far against him that one Bobadilla had been sent to Hispaniola
+with power to depose Colon and treat him as a criminal,--so cunningly
+were his instructions framed. When the great discoverer was actually
+thrown into prison and sent to Spain manacled like a felon, it might
+have added a few drops of bitterness to his reflections if he had known
+what Ojeda was doing. This youth, whom he had trusted and liked, was now
+looking forward to the conquest of the very region which the Admiral had
+discovered, and using what was supposed to be the Admiral's private
+chart to guide him.
+
+It is not likely, however, that the fiery and impatient Ojeda gave any
+thought to the feelings of the older man. Juan de la Cosa was a leader
+in the expedition, many sailors were enlisted, who had served in former
+voyages of discovery, and above all, Fonseca approved. Ojeda would never
+have dreamed of setting up any personal opinion contrary to the views of
+the Church.
+
+In twenty-four days the fleet arrived upon a coast which no one on board
+had ever seen. It was in fact two hundred leagues further to the south
+than Paria, where the Admiral had touched. The people were taller and
+more vigorous than the Arawaks of Hispaniola, and expert with the bow,
+the lance and the shield. Their bell-shaped houses were of tree-trunks
+thatched with palm leaves, some of them very large. The people wore
+ornaments made of fish-bones, and strings of white and green beads, and
+feather headdresses of the most gorgeous colors. The interpreter told
+Ojeda that the Spaniards' desire of gold and pearls was very puzzling to
+these simple folk, who had never considered them of any especial value.
+In a harbor called Maracapana the fleet was unloaded and careened for
+cleaning. Under the direction of Ojeda and La Cosa a small brigantine
+was built. The people brought venison, fish, cassava bread and other
+provisions willingly, and seemed to think the Spaniards angels. At
+least, that was the version of their talk which reached Ojeda. It was
+here that Amerigo Vespucci made that remark about translators. He had
+not studied accounts of Atlantic voyages for the last few years without
+drawing a few conclusions regarding the nature of savages. When it was
+explained that the natives had neighbors who were cannibals, and that
+they would greatly value the strangers' assistance in fighting them,
+Vespucci came very near making a suggestion. He finally made it to Juan
+de la Cosa instead of to Ojeda. The old pilot chuckled wisely.
+
+"I've got past warning my young gentleman of danger ahead," he said
+good-naturedly. "He can do without fighting just as well as a fish can
+do without water. If I die trying to get him out of some scrape he has
+plunged into head-first, it will be no more than I expect."
+
+Ojeda was, in fact, spoiling for adventure, and joyfully set sail in the
+direction of the Carib Islands. Seven coast natives were on board as
+guides, and pointed out the island inhabited by their especial enemies.
+The shore was lined with fierce-faced savages, painted and feathered,
+armed with bows and arrows, lances and darts and bucklers. Ojeda
+launched his boats, in each of which was a paterero, or small cannon,
+with a number of soldiers crouching down out of sight. The armor of the
+Spaniards protected them from the Indian arrows, while the cotton armor
+of the savages and their light shields were no defense against
+cannon-balls or crossbow-bolts.
+
+When the barbarians leaped into the sea and attacked the boats the
+cannon scattered them, but they rallied and fought more fiercely on
+land. The Spaniards won that day's battle, but the dauntless islanders
+were ready to renew the fight next morning. With his fifty-seven men
+Ojeda routed the whole fighting force of the tribe, made many prisoners,
+plundered and set fire to the villages, and returned to his ships. A
+part of the spoil was bestowed on the seven friendly natives. Ojeda, who
+had not received so much as a scratch, anchored in a bay for three weeks
+to let his wounded recover. There were twenty-one wounded and one
+Spaniard had been killed.
+
+Sailing westward along the coast the fleet presently entered a vast gulf
+like an inland sea, on the eastern side of which was a most curious
+village. Ojeda could hardly believe the evidence of his own eyes. Twenty
+large cone-shaped houses were built on piles driven into the bottom of
+the lake, which in that part was clear and shallow. Each house had its
+drawbridge, and communicated with its neighbors and with the shore by
+means of canoes gliding along the water-ways between the piles. The
+interpreters said it was called Coquibacoa.
+
+"That is no proper name for so marvelous a place," said Ojeda after he
+had tried to pronounce the clucking many-syllabled word. "Is it like
+anything you have seen, Vespucci?"
+
+The Italian had been comparing it with a similar village he had seen on
+his first voyage, on a part of the coast called Lariab. He had an
+instinct, however, that it would not be well to mix his own discoveries
+with those of the present expedition.
+
+"It is rather like Venice," he said demurely.
+
+"That is the name for it," cried Ojeda in high
+delight,--"Venezuela--Little Venice!"
+
+"It would be interesting," observed Vespucci, "to know what names they
+are giving to us. How they stare!"
+
+The people of the village on stilts were evidently as much astonished at
+the strangers as the strangers were at them. They fled into their houses
+and raised the draw-bridges. The men in a squadron of canoes which came
+paddling in from the sea were also terrified. But this did not last
+long. The warriors went into the forest and returned with sixteen young
+girls, four of whom they brought to each ship. While the white men
+wondered what this could mean, several old crones appeared at the doors
+of the houses and began a furious shrieking. This seemed to be a signal.
+The maidens dived into the sea and made for the shore, and a storm of
+arrows came from the canoemen. The fight, however, was not long, and the
+Spaniards won an easy victory, after which they had no further trouble.
+They found a harbor called Maracaibo, and twenty-seven Spaniards at the
+earnest request of the natives were entertained as guests among the
+inland villages for nine days. They were carried from place to place in
+litters or hammocks, and when they returned to the ships every man of
+them had a collection of gifts--rich plumes, weapons, tropical birds and
+animals--but no gold. The monkeys and parrots were very amusing, but
+they did not make up, in the minds of some of the crew, for the gold
+which had not been found.
+
+Ojeda returned from an exploring journey one day with a ruffled temper.
+"A gang of poachers," he sputtered,--"rascally Bristol traders. We shall
+have to teach these folk their place."
+
+"What really happened?" Vespucci inquired privately of Juan de la Cosa.
+The old mariner's eyes twinkled.
+
+"It was funny. You see, we were coming down to the shore, ready to
+return to the ships, when we spied an English ship and some sailors on
+the beach, dancing after they'd caught their fish and eaten 'em. Up
+marches our young caballero with hand on hilt and asks whose men they
+are. But they answered him in a language he can't understand, d'ye see,
+and after some jabbering he makes them understand that he wants to go on
+board to see their captain. I went along, for I'd no mind to leave him
+alone if there should be trouble.
+
+"So soon as I set eyes on the captain I knew him for a chap I'd seen
+years ago in Venice. He did me a good turn there, too, though he was but
+a lad. I knew he was a Bristol man, but I hadn't expected to see him or
+his ship so far from home. He could talk Spanish nearly as well as you
+do.
+
+"'What are you doing here?' asks our worshipful commander.
+
+"'Looking at the sky,' said the other man, cool as a cucumber. 'I think
+we are going to have a storm.'
+
+"'Don't bandy words with me,' says Ojeda. 'You are trespassing on my
+master's dominions.'
+
+"'Your master is the Admiral of the Indies, no?' says the stranger, and
+that pretty near shut our young gentleman's mouth for a minute, for
+between you and me I think he knows that Colon has not been well
+treated. But he only got the more furious.
+
+"'Do you insult me?' says he, and whips out his Toledo blade and bends
+it almost double, to show the quality.
+
+"'Wait a minute, my young hornet,' says the captain--he wasn't much more
+than a boy, himself,--'didn't your master the Duke of Medina Coeli teach
+you better than to irritate a man on the deck of his own ship? Mine can
+sail two leagues to your one, and I'm just leaving for home, so, unless
+you would like to go with me, perhaps you will let this conversation end
+without any more pointed remarks. If I chose, you know, I could drop you
+overboard in sight of your men, to swim ashore. My guns would stave your
+longboat all to pieces. But I've stayed long enough to give the lads a
+chance to have a good meal and a bit of fun--nothing's better than
+dancing, for the spirits, dad always said it was better than either
+fighting or dicing on shipboard. Before we part, though, I'm going to
+give you one piece of advice. Don't stir up these coast natives too
+often. If you do, they'll eat you. They use poisoned arrows in some of
+these parts, and there's no cure for that but a red-hot iron.'
+
+"The caballero's temper is like gunpowder--it flashes up in a second,
+or not at all. He must ha' seen that the captain meant him kindness.
+Anyway, he slips his sword back in the scabbard and says cool as you
+please,
+
+"'Senor, pardon my hasty conclusion. You have of course a perfect right
+to look at the sky, and to dance, if that is your diversion. I should be
+extremely sorry to interfere with your departure. But you will
+understand that when a commander in the service of the sovereigns of
+Aragon and Castile finds intruders within their territory it is his duty
+to make it his affair. I thank you for your warning. Adios,' and he
+makes a little stiff bow and goes over the side, me after him. I looked
+back just as I went over the rail, and the skipper was watching me, and
+I may be mistaken but I believe he winked. I tell you, our little
+captain can do things that would get him run through the body if he were
+any other man."
+
+Vespucci smiled thoughtfully. But this incident may have had something
+to do with his later decision to part company with Ojeda. Vespucci
+continued to explore the coast, and Ojeda sailed northward to the
+islands, where he kidnaped some Indians for slaves. When he returned to
+Cadiz the young adventurer found to his intense disgust that after all
+expenses were paid there remained but five hundred ducats to be divided
+among fifty-five men. This was all the more mortifying because, two
+months before, Pedro Alonso Nino, a captain of Palos, and Christoval
+Guerra of Seville, had come in from a trading voyage in the Indies with
+the richest cargo of gold and pearls ever seen in Cadiz.
+
+Vespucci wrote his book some years later, and as it was the first
+popular account of the new Spanish possessions and was written in a
+lively and entertaining style it had a great reputation. It gave to the
+natives of the country the name which they have ever since
+borne--Indians. A German geographer who much admired the work suggested
+that an appropriate mark of appreciation would be to name the new
+continent America, after Vespucci, and this was done. Vespucci described
+all that he saw and some things of which he heard, using care and
+discretion, and if he suspected that the captain of the Bristol ship was
+Sebastian Cabot, later pilot-major of Spain, he did not say so.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+Amerigo Vespucci has been unjustly accused of endeavoring to steal the
+glory of Columbus, but there is no evidence that he ever contemplated
+anything of the kind. It was a German geographer's suggestion that the
+continent be named America.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLD ROAD
+
+
+    O the Gold Road is a hard road,
+      And it leads beyond the sea,--
+    Some follow it through the altar gates
+      And some to the gallows tree.
+    And they who squander the gold they earn
+      On kin-folk ill to please
+    Go soon to the grave, but he toils in the grave--
+      The miner upon his knees.
+
+    The Gold Road is a dark road--
+      No bird by the wayside sings,
+    No sun shines into the canons deep,
+      No children's laughter rings.
+    They are slaves who delve in the stubborn rocks
+      For the pittance their labor brings.
+    Their bread is bitter who toil for their own,
+      But they starve who toil for Kings.
+
+    The Gold Road is a small road,--
+      A man must tread it alone,
+    With none to help if he faint or fall,
+      And none to hear his groan.
+    The weight of gold is a weary weight
+      When we toil for the sake of our own--
+    But our masters are branding our hearts and souls
+      With a Christ that is carved in stone!
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE DOG WITH TWO MASTERS
+
+
+"They fight among themselves too much. They need the man with the whip."
+
+"_Bough! wough!_"
+
+"_Yar-r-rh! arrh!--agh!_"
+
+A spirited and entertaining dog-fight was going on just outside the
+house of the governor of Darien. The deep sullen roar of Balboa's big
+hound Leoncico was as unmistakable as the snarling, snapping, furious
+bark of Cacafuego, who belonged to the Bachelor Enciso. The two hated
+each other at sight, months ago. Now they were having it out. The man
+with the whip evidently came on the scene, for there was a final
+crescendo of barks, yelps and growls, followed by silence.
+
+Pizarro's remark, however, did not refer to the dogs but to the
+settlers, who had been rioting over the governorship of the colony. The
+outcome of this disturbance had been the practical seizure of the office
+of captain-general by Vasco Nunez de Balboa. Pizarro himself, and Juan
+de Saavedra, to whom he addressed his comment, had supported Balboa.
+Saavedra did not commit himself further than to answer, with a shrug,
+"Balboa can use the whip on occasion, we all know that. Ah, here he
+comes now."
+
+The man and the dog would have attracted attention anywhere, separately
+or together. The man was well-made and vigorous, with red-brown hair and
+beard, and clear merry eyes, a leader who would rather lead than
+command. The dog was of medium size but very powerful, tawny in color
+with a black muzzle, and the scars on his compact body recorded many
+battles, not with other dogs but with hostile Indians. He had been his
+master's body-guard in several fights, and Balboa sometimes lent him to
+his friends, the dog receiving the same share of plunder that would have
+been due to an armed man. Leoncico is said to have brought his captain
+in this way more than a thousand crowns.
+
+"You called him off, eh, General?" Saavedra asked, bending to stroke the
+terrible head. He and Vasco Nunez had been friends for years; in fact it
+was Saavedra who had managed the smuggling of Balboa on board the ship
+in a cask, to escape his creditors, when the expedition set out. They
+were intimate, as men are intimate who are different in character but
+alike in feeling and tradition. Pizarro was an outsider and knew it.
+
+"Yes; Enciso's dog would be better for a whipping, perhaps, but I had no
+mind to make the Bachelor any more an enemy than he is. Pizarro,--" he
+turned to the soldier of fortune, with a frank smile, "I have work for
+you to do. It is dangerous, but I know that you do not care for that.
+Pick out six good men, and be ready to see if there is any truth in
+those stories about the Coyba gold mines."
+
+Pizarro's black brows unbent. Nothing could have suited him better than
+just these orders. He was, like Balboa, a native of the province of
+Estremadura in Spain, and being shut out by his low birth from
+advancement in his own land, had come to the colonies in the hope of
+gaining wealth and position by the sword. His reckless courage, iron
+muscle, and a certain cold stubbornness had given him the reputation of
+an able man, but though nearly ten years older than Balboa, he had never
+held any but a subordinate position. He had nearly made up his mind that
+his chance would never come. These hidalgos wanted all the glory as well
+as all the power for themselves. He could not see why Balboa should turn
+the possible discovery of a rich new province over to him, but if the
+gold should be there, Pizarro would get it. He bowed, thanked the
+general, and took his leave.
+
+"General," said Saavedra, "I never like to put my neck in a noose, but
+if you were only Vasco Nunez I would ask you why you made exactly that
+choice."
+
+Balboa laughed and pulled the ears of Leoncico, who had laid his head in
+full content on his master's knee. "I am always Vasco Nunez to you,
+_amigo_," he said easily, "as you very well know. Pizarro is a bulldog
+for bravery, and he has a head on his shoulders. Also he is ambitious,
+and this will give him a chance to win renown."
+
+"And keeps him out of mischief for the time being," put in Saavedra
+dryly.
+
+Balboa laughed again. "Why do you ask me questions when you know my mind
+almost as well as I do? You see, now that Enciso is about to go, we
+shall have some freedom to do something besides quarrel among ourselves.
+Gold is an apology for whatever one does, out here. If there is as much
+of it as they say, in this Coyba, the King may be able to gild the walls
+of another salon, and if he puts Pizarro's portrait in it in the place
+of honor I shall not weep over that. There is glory enough for all of
+us, who choose to earn it."
+
+Pizarro and his men had not gone ten miles from Darien before they ran
+into an ambush of Indians armed with slings. The seven Spaniards
+charged instantly, and actually put the enemy to flight, then beat a
+quick retreat. Every man of them despite their body armor had wounds and
+bruises, and one was left disabled upon the field. Balboa met them as
+they limped painfully in. His quick eye took in the situation.
+
+"Only six of you? Where is Francisco Hernan?"
+
+"He was crippled and could not walk," answered Pizarro sulkily; he saw
+what was coming. Balboa's eyes blazed.
+
+"What! You--Spaniards--ran away from savages and left a comrade to die?
+Go back and bring him in!"
+
+Pizarro turned in silence, took his men back over the road just
+traversed, and brought Hernan safely in.
+
+This was one of the many incidents by which the colony learned the
+mettle of the new captain-general. Under his direction exploration of
+the neighboring provinces was undertaken. Balboa with eighty men made a
+friendly visit to Comagre, a cacique who could put three thousand
+fighting men in the field. Comagre and his seven sons entertained the
+white men in a house larger and more like a palace of the Orient than
+any they had before seen. It was one hundred and fifty paces long by
+eighty paces broad, the lower part of the walls built of logs, the
+floors and upper walls of beautiful and ingenious wood-work. The son of
+this cacique presented to Balboa seventy slaves, captives taken by
+himself, and golden ornaments weighing altogether four thousand ounces.
+The gold was at once melted into ingots, or bars of uniform size, for
+purposes of division. One-fifth of it was weighed out for the Crown, the
+rest divided among the members of the expedition. The young cacique
+stood by watching with scornful curiosity as the Spaniards argued and
+squabbled over the allotment. Suddenly he struck up the scales with his
+fist, and the shining treasure tumbled over the porch floor like spilt
+corn.
+
+"Why do you quarrel over this trash?" he asked. "If this gold is so
+precious to you that you leave your homes, invade the land of peaceable
+nations and endure desperate perils, I will tell you where there is
+plenty of it."
+
+The Spaniards' attention was instantly caught and held. The young Indian
+went on, with the same careless contempt, "You see those mountains over
+there? Beyond them is a great sea. The people who dwell on the border of
+that sea have ships almost as big as yours, with sails and oars as yours
+have. The streams in their country are full of gold. The King eats from
+golden dishes, for gold is as common there as iron is among you,"--he
+glanced at the cumbrous armor and weapons of his guests. Indeed the
+panoply of the Spaniards, made necessary by the constant possibility of
+attack, and the weight of their cross-bows and other weapons, was a
+source of continual wonder to the light and nimble Indians, and of much
+weariness and suffering to themselves. Many in time adopted the quilted
+cotton body armor of the natives, and used pikes when they could in
+place of the musketoun, which was like a hand-cannon.
+
+This was not the first time that Balboa and many of the others had heard
+of the Lord of the Golden House, but no one else had told the story with
+such boldness. The young cacique said that to invade this land, a
+thousand warriors would be none too many. He offered to accompany Balboa
+with his own troops, if the white men would go.
+
+Here indeed was an enterprise with glory enough for all. Balboa returned
+to Darien and began preparations. Valdivia, the regidor of the colony,
+had been sent to Hispaniola for provisions, but the supply he brought
+back was absurdly small. One of the serious difficulties encountered by
+all the first settlers in the New World was this matter of provisioning
+the camps. For the Indians the natural fruits and produce of the country
+were sufficient, and they seldom laid up any great store. The small
+surplus of any one chief was soon exhausted by a large body of guests.
+Moreover, the country had no cattle, swine, fowls, goats, no domestic
+food animals whatever, no grain but the maize. The supply of meat and
+grain was thus very small until Spanish planters could clear and
+cultivate their estates. On the march the troops could and did live off
+the country with less trouble.
+
+Balboa decided to send Valdivia back to Hispaniola for more supplies. He
+also sent by him a letter to Diego Colon, son of the great Admiral and
+governor of the island, explaining his need for more troops in view of
+what he had just learned about a new and wealthy kingdom not far away.
+He frankly requested the Governor to use his influence with the King to
+make this discovery possible without delay.
+
+Weeks passed, and Valdivia did not come back. Provisions again became
+scarce. Then a letter from Balboa's friend Zamudio, who had gone to
+Spain in the same ship with the Bachelor Enciso, in order to defend
+Balboa's course. Everything, it seemed, had gone wrong. The King had
+listened to the eloquence of the Bachelor, and would probably send for
+Balboa to come to Spain to answer criminal charges. It was said that he
+meant to send out as governor of Darien, in the place of Balboa, an old
+and wily courtier, one of Fonseca's favorites, named Pedro Arias de
+Avila, and usually called Pedrarias.
+
+"That," said Balboa, handing the letter over to Saavedra to read, "seems
+to mean that the fat has gone into the fire."
+
+"What shall you do?"
+
+"If the King's summons arrives," said Balboa reflectively, "I think I
+will be on the top of that mountain range looking for the sea the
+cacique spoke of."
+
+"I will go at once and make my preparations," assented the other. "Did
+you know that Pizarro has adopted that dog--the Spitfire--Enciso's
+brute?"
+
+"Has the dog adopted him?" laughed Balboa, extracting a thorn with the
+utmost care from the paw of Leoncico.
+
+"That is a shrewd question. You know I have a theory that a man is known
+by his dog. This beast seems to have changed character when he changed
+masters. When Enciso had him he was little more than a puppy, and then
+he was thievish and cowardly. Now he will attack an Indian as savagely
+as Leoncico himself. Pizarro must have put the iron into him."
+
+"Pizarro can," said Balboa carelessly. "He does it with his men. I think
+there is more in that fellow than we have supposed. We shall see--this
+expedition will be a kind of test."
+
+Saavedra, as he went to his own quarters, wondered whether Balboa were
+really as unconscious and unsuspicious as he seemed.
+
+"Like dog, like master," he said to himself. "Cacafuego shifted collars
+as easily as any mongrel does--as readily as Pizarro himself would. I
+think that Leoncico, left here without Balboa, would die. Neither a dog
+or a man has any business with two masters. I wonder whether in the end
+we shall conquer this land, or find that the land has conquered us?"
+
+Balboa set forth with one hundred and ninety picked men and a few
+bloodhounds. Half the company remained on shore at Coyba to guard the
+brigantine and canoes, and with the others Balboa began the ascent of
+the range of mountains from whose heights he hoped to view the sea.
+
+In no other time and country have discoverers encountered the obstacles
+and dangers which confronted the Spaniards who first explored Central
+America. Precipitous mountains, matted jungles, barren deserts, deep and
+swift streams, malarious bogs, and hostile natives often armed with
+poisoned weapons, all were in their way, and they had to make their
+overland journeys on foot, fully armed and often in tropical heat. Even
+when accompanied by Indians familiar with the country, they could count
+on little or nothing in the way of game or other provisions. Balboa's
+friendly ways with the natives had secured him Indian guides and
+porters, but it was difficult work, even so. In four days they traveled
+no more than ten leagues, and it took them from the sixth to the
+twenty-fifth of September to cover the ground between the coast of
+Darien and the foot of the last mountain they must climb. One-third of
+the men had been sent back from time to time, because of illness and
+exhaustion. The party remained for the night in the village of Quaraqua
+at the foot of the mountain, and at dawn they began their ascent, hoping
+to reach the summit before the hottest time of the day. About ten
+o'clock they came out of the thick forest on a high and airy slope of
+the mountain, and the Indians pointed out a hill, from which they said
+the sea was visible.
+
+Then Balboa commanded the others to rest, while he went alone to the
+top.
+
+"And this," muttered Pizarro to the man next him, "is the man who is
+always saying that there is enough glory for all!"
+
+Saavedra's quick ear caught the remark. He smiled rather satirically.
+He, and he alone, knew the true reason for this action of Balboa's.
+
+"Juan," the commander had said to him while they were wading through
+their last swamp, "when we are somewhere near the summit I shall go on
+alone. I want no one with me when I look down the other side of that
+range. Whether I see a mere lake, which these savages may call a sea,
+or--something greater, I am not sure I shall be able to command my
+feelings. I will not be a fool before the men."
+
+Balboa's heart was thumping as he climbed, more with excitement than
+exertion. No one but Saavedra had so much as an inkling of the
+importance his success or failure would have for him personally. The
+whole of his future lay on the unknown other side of that hill. He shut
+his eyes as he reached the top--then opened them upon a glorious view.
+
+A vast blue sea sparkled in the sunshine, only a few leagues away. From
+the mountain top to the shore of this great body of water sloped a wild
+landscape of forest, rock, savanna and winding river. Balboa knelt and
+gave thanks to God.
+
+Then he sprang to his feet and beckoned to his followers, who rushed up
+the hill, the great hound Leoncico bounding far ahead. When all had
+reached the summit Father Andreas de Varo, motioning them to kneel,
+began the chant of Te Deum Laudamus, in which the company joined. The
+notary of the expedition then wrote out a testimonial witnessing that
+Balboa took possession of the sea, all its islands and surrounding
+lands, in the name of the sovereign of Castile; and each man signed it.
+Balboa had a tall tree cut down and made into a cross, which was planted
+on the exact spot where he had stood when he first looked upon the sea.
+A mound of stones was piled up for an additional monument, and the names
+of the sovereigns were carved on neighboring trees. Then Balboa, leading
+his men down the southern slope of the mountain, sent out three scouting
+parties under Francisco Pizarro, Juan de Escaray and Alonso Martin to
+discover the best route to the shore. Martin's party were first to reach
+it, after two days' journey, and found there two large canoes. Martin
+stepped into one of them, calling his companions to witness that he was
+the first European who had ever embarked upon those waters; Blas de
+Etienza, who followed, was the second. They reported their success to
+Balboa, and with twenty-six men the commander set out for the sea-coast.
+The Indian chief Chiapes, whom Balboa had fought and then made his ally,
+accompanied the party with some of his followers. On Michaelmas they
+reached the shore of a great bay, which in honor of the day was
+christened Bay de San Miguel. The tide was out, leaving a beach half a
+league wide covered with mud, and the Spaniards sat down to rest and
+wait. When it turned, it came in so fast that some who had dropped
+asleep found it lapping the bank at their feet, before they were fairly
+roused.
+
+Balboa stood up, and taking a banner which displayed the arms of
+Castile and Leon, and the figure of the Madonna and Child, he drew his
+sword and marched into the sea. In a formal speech he again took
+possession, in the names of the sovereigns, of the seas and lands and
+coasts and ports, the islands of the south, and all kingdoms and
+provinces thereunto appertaining. These rights he declared himself ready
+to maintain "until the day of judgment."
+
+While another document was receiving the signatures of the members of
+the expedition, Saavedra, who was standing near the margin of the bay,
+took up a little water in his hand and tasted it. It was salt.
+
+In the excitement of actually reaching the coast of so broad and
+beautiful a sea, no one had happened to think of finding out whether the
+water was fresh or salt. This discovery made it certain that they had
+found, not a great inland lake, but the ocean itself.
+
+Pizarro scowled; he wished that he had not missed this last chance of
+fame. Since he had discovered nothing it was not likely that his name
+should be mentioned in Balboa's report to the King, at all. But Balboa,
+high in expectation of the change which this fortunate adventure would
+make in his career, went on triumphantly exploring the neighboring
+country, gaining here and there considerable quantities of gold and
+pearls. Saavedra, who had inherited an estate in Spain just before the
+expedition started, and expected on his return to Darien to go home to
+look after it, watched Pizarro with growing distrust and anxiety.
+
+"I think you are ready to accuse him of witchcraft," said Balboa lightly
+when Saavedra hinted at his suspicions. "You have not given me one
+positive proof that the man is anything but a rather sulky, unhappy
+brute who has had ill luck."
+
+"He is ill-bred, I tell you," said Saavedra stubbornly. "He is making up
+to the Indians, and that is not like him. We shall have trouble there
+yet."
+
+Balboa laughed and went to his hut, there to fling himself into a
+hammock and take a much-needed nap. Saavedra, coming back in the
+twilight, spied an Indian creeping through the forest toward a window in
+the rear of the hut. He was about to challenge the man when there was a
+yelp from the bushes, and Cacafuego leaped upon the prowler and bore him
+to earth, tearing savagely at his throat and receiving half a dozen
+wounds from the arrows the Indian carried in his hand and in his belt.
+He had been trained by Pizarro to fly at an Indian, and made no
+distinctions. Within an hour or two the poison in the arrow-points began
+to take effect, and the dog died. Whether he had been prowling about in
+search of food--for Pizarro kept him hungry with a view to making his
+temper more touchy--or was looking for his old enemy Leoncico, no one
+would ever know. Balboa looked grave and said nothing.
+
+"The dog is dead--that is all that is absolutely certain," said Saavedra
+grimly. "I wish it had been his master."
+
+
+NOTE
+
+It is recorded that when Pizarro met Balboa with the order for his
+arrest Balboa thus addressed him: "It is not thus, Pizarro, that you
+were wont to greet me!" Pizarro's jealousy and ill-will are evident in
+the recorded facts, though he does not appear to have been actually
+guilty of treachery to his general.
+
+
+
+
+COLD O' THE MOON
+
+
+    Alone with all the stars that rule mankind
+    Ruy Faleiro sought to read the fate
+    Of his close friend--now by the King's rebuke
+    Sent stumbling out of Portugal to seek
+    His fortune on the sea-roads of the world.
+    But when Faleiro read the horoscope
+    It seemed to point to glory--and a grave
+    Beyond the sunset.
+
+                      When Magalhaens heard
+    The prophecy, he smiled, and steadfastly
+    Held on his way to that young Emperor,
+    The blond shy stripling with the Austrian face,
+    And in due time was Admiral of the Fleet
+    To sail the seas that lay beyond the world.
+
+    Mid-August was it when the fleet set forth,
+    December, when in that Brazilian bay,
+    Santa Lucia, they dropped anchor,--then
+    Set up a little altar on the beach
+    And knelt at Mass in that gray solitude.
+
+    Carvagio the pilot knew the place,
+    And said the folk were kindly,--brown, straight-haired,
+    Wore feather mantles, used no poisoned flints,
+    And only ate man's flesh on holidays.
+    Whereat a little daunted, not with fear,
+    The mariners met them running to the shore,
+    Bought swine of them, and plantains, cassava,
+    And for one playing card, the king of clubs,
+    The wild men gave six fowls! There were brown roots
+    Formed like the turnip, chestnut-like in taste
+    And called patata in ship-Spanish--cane
+    Wherefrom is made the sugar and the wine
+    Of Hispaniola, and the pineapple
+    That was like nectar to their sea-parched throats.
+    And thus they feasted and were satisfied.
+
+    Like an enchanted Eden seemed the land,
+    For birds on dazzling many-colored wings
+    Made the trees blossom--parrots red, green, blue,
+    Humming-birds like live jewels in the air,
+    Strange ducks with spoon-shaped bills,--and overhead
+    Like some fantastic frieze of living gold,
+    The little yellow monkeys leaped and swung
+    Chattering of Setebos in their unknown tongue.
+
+    The old men lived beyond their sevenscore years--
+    Or so the people said. They made canots
+    Of logs that they carved out with heated stones.
+    They slept in hamacs, woven cotton swings.
+    Their chiefs were called cacichas--you may find
+    All this put down in the thrice precious book
+    Written by Pigafetta of Vicenza
+    For a queen's pleasure when the voyage was done.
+
+    Then from that shore they sailed, and southward bent,
+    And as the long days lengthened, till the nights
+    Were but star-circled midnight intervals,
+    They wondered of what race and by what seas
+    They should find kings at the antipodes.
+
+    Where a great river flowed into the sea
+    They found sea-lions,--on another isle
+    Strange geese, milk-white and sable, with no wings,
+    Who swam instead of flying, and they called
+    The place the Isle of Penguins.
+
+                                    Then they found
+    A desolate harbor called San Juliano,
+    Where the fierce flame of mutiny broke forth,
+    Spaniard on Portuguese turned treacherously
+    Till in the red midwinter sunrise towered
+    The place of execution, and an end
+    Was made of the two traitors. Outward flashed the sail
+    And left the sea-birds there to tell the tale.
+
+    Beyond there lay a bleak and misty shore,
+    And in the fog a wild gigantic form
+    White-haired, a savage, called a greeting to them.
+    Friendly the huge men were, and took these men,
+    Bearded and strange, for kinfolk of their god,
+    Setebos, from his home beyond the moon,
+    And from their great shoes filled with straw for warmth
+    Magalhaens named them men of Patagonia.
+
+    Westward they steered, and buffeted by winds,
+    They found a narrow channel, where the fleet
+    Halted for council. One returned to Spain
+    Laden with falsehood and with mutiny.
+    On sailed the others valiantly, their hearts
+    Remembering their Admiral's haughty words
+    Flung at his craven captain, "I will see
+    This great voyage to the end, though we should eat
+    The leather from the yards!" And thus they reached
+    The end of that strait path of Destiny,
+    And saw beyond the shining Western Sea.
+
+    Northward the Admiral followed that long coast
+    Past Masafuera--then began his flight
+    Across the great uncharted shining sea.
+    And surely there was never stranger voyage.
+    The winds were gentle toward him, and no more
+    The dreadful laughter of the tempest shrilled,
+    Or down upon them pounced the hurricane.
+    Therefore Magalhaens, giving thanks to God,
+    Named it Pacific, and the lonely sea.
+    Still bore him westward where his heart would be.
+
+    Alone with all the stars of Christendom
+    He set his course,--if he had known his fate
+    Would he have stayed his hand? Before the end
+    Fate the old witch, who often loves to turn
+    A man's words on him, kept the ships becalmed
+    Even to thirst and famine; when instead
+    They fed on leather, gnawed wood, and ate mice
+    As did the Patagonian giants, when
+    They begged such vermin for a savage feast.
+    Then Fate, her jest outworn, blew them to shore
+    On the green islands called the Isles of Thieves,
+    And brought them to more islands--and still more,
+    A kingdom of bright lands in sunny seas.
+    Here did the Admiral land, and raise the Cross
+    Above that heathen realm,--and here went down
+    In battle for strange allies in strange lands.
+
+    So ended his adventure. Yet not so,
+    For the Victoria, faithful to his hand
+    That laid her charge upon her, southward sailed
+    Around the Cape and westward to Seville.
+    El Cano brought her in, and her strange tale
+    Told to the Emperor. "And the Admiral said,"
+    He ended, "that indeed these heathen lands
+    God meant should all be Christian, for He set
+    A cross of stars above the southern sea,
+    A passion-flower upon the southern shore,
+    To be a sign to great adventurers.
+    These be two marvels,--and upon the way
+    We gained a kingdom, but we lost a day!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+WAMPUM TOWN
+
+
+"Elephants' teeth?"
+
+"A fair lot, but I am sick of the Guinea coast. The Lisbon slavers get
+more of black ivory than we do of the white."
+
+The good Jean Parmentier, who asked the question, and the youth called
+Jean Florin, who answered it, were looking at a stanch weather-beaten
+little cargo-ship anchored in the harbor of Dieppe. She had been to the
+Gold Coast, where wild African chiefs conjured elephants' tusks out of
+the mysterious back country and traded them for beads, trinkets and gay
+cloth. In Dieppe this ivory was carved by deft artistic fingers into
+crucifixes, rosaries, little caskets, and other exquisite bibelots.
+African ivory was finer, whiter and firmer than that of India, and when
+thus used was almost as valuable as gold.
+
+But within the last ten years the slave trade had grown more profitable
+than anything else. A Portuguese captain would kidnap or purchase a few
+score negroes, take them, chained and packed together like convicts, to
+Lisbon or Seville and sell them for fat gold moidores and doubloons. The
+Spanish conquistadores had not been ten years in the West Indies before
+they found that Indian slavery did not work. The wild people, under the
+terrible discipline of the mines and sugar plantations, died or killed
+themselves. Planters of Hispaniola declared one negro slave worth a
+dozen Indians.
+
+"I do not wonder that the cacique Hatuey told the priest that he would
+burn forever rather than go to a heaven where Spaniards lived," said
+Jean Florin. "To roast a man is no way to change his religion."
+
+"Some of our folk in Rochelle are of that way of thinking," agreed
+Captain Parmentier dryly. "What say you to a western voyage?"
+
+"Not Brazil? Cabral claims that for Portugal."
+
+"No; the northern seas--the Baccalaos. Of course codfish are not ivory,
+and it is rough service, but Aubert and some of the others think that
+there may be a way to India. Sebastian Cabot tried for it and found only
+icebergs, but Aubert says there is a gulf or strait somewhere south of
+Cabot's course, that leads westward and has never been explored."
+
+"I am tired of the Guinea trade," the youth repeated; "Cape Breton at
+any rate is not Spanish."
+
+"Not yet," said Jean Parmentier with emphasis.
+
+Thus it came about that when Aubert, in 1508, poked the prow of his
+little craft into open water to the west of the great island off which
+men fished for cod, there stood beside him a young man who had been
+learning navigation under his direction, and was now called Jean
+Verassen. His real name was Giovanni Verrazzano, but nobody in Dieppe
+knew who the Florentine Verazzani might be, and during his
+apprenticeship there he had been known as Florin--the Florentine. In his
+boyhood the magnificent Medici, the merchant princes, had ruled
+Florence. After the fall of Constantinople he had seen the mastery of
+the sea pass from Venice to Lisbon. When he left Florence he followed
+the call of the sea-wind westward until now he had cast his lot with
+the seafarers of northern France, the only bit of the Continent that was
+outside the shadow of the mighty power of Spain. That shadow was growing
+bigger and darker year by year. The heir to the Spanish throne, Charles,
+grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, would be emperor of Germany, ruler
+of the Netherlands, King of Aragon, Castile, Granada and Andalusia, and
+sovereign of all the Spanish discoveries in the West; and no one knew
+how far they might extend. France might have to fight for her life.
+
+Meanwhile Norman and Breton fishermen went scudding across the North
+Atlantic every year, like so many petrels. Honfleur, Saint Malo, La
+Rochelle and Dieppe owed their modest prosperity to the cod. Baccalao,
+codfish or stockfish, all its names referred to the beating of the fish
+while drying, with a stick, to make it more tender; it was cheaper and
+more plentiful than any other fish for the Lenten tables and fast-days
+of Europe. The daring French captains found the fishing trade a hard
+life but a clean one.
+
+From the fishermen Aubert and Verrazzano had learned something of the
+nature of the country. Bears would come down to steal fish from under
+the noses of the men. Walrus and seal and myriads of screaming sea-gulls
+greeted them every season. The natives were barbarous and unfriendly.
+North of Newfoundland were two small islands known as the Isles of
+Demons, where nobody ever went. Veteran pilots told of hearing the
+unseen devils howling and shrieking in the air. "Saint Michael!
+tintamarre terrible!" they said, crossing themselves. The young
+Florentine listened and kept his thoughts to himself. He had never seen
+any devils, but he had seen men go mad in the hot fever-mist of African
+swamps, thinking they saw them.
+
+Aubert was not sure whether this was an inlet, a strait or a river
+behind the great barren island. When he had sailed westward for eighty
+leagues the water was still salt. The banks had drawn closer together
+and rude fortifications appeared on the heights. Canoes put forth from
+the wooded shores and surrounded the sailing ship. They were filled with
+copper-colored warriors of threatening aspect.
+
+The French commander did not like what he saw. He was not provisioned
+for a voyage around the world, and if these waters were the eastern
+entrance to a strait he might emerge upon a vast unknown ocean. If on
+the other hand he was at the mouth of a river, to ascend it might result
+in being cut off by hostile savages, which would be most unpleasant. A
+third consideration was that the inhabitants were said to live on fish,
+game, and berries, none of which could be secured, either peaceably or
+by fighting, in an enemy's country. Making hostages of seven young
+savages who climbed his bulwarks without any invitation, he put about
+and sailed away. During the following year the seven wild men were
+exhibited at Rouen and elsewhere.
+
+Aubert had made sure of one thing at least; the land to the west was not
+in the least like the rich islands which the Spanish held in the
+tropics. Except in the brief season when the swarming cod filled the
+seines of the fishermen, it yielded no wealth, not even in slaves, for
+the fierce and shy natives would be almost uncatchable and quite
+impossible to tame.
+
+Francis of Angouleme, the brilliant, reckless and extravagant young
+French King, was hard pushed to get money for his own Court, and was
+not interested in expeditions whose only result might be glory. He
+jested over the threatening Spanish dominion as he did over everything
+else. Italian dukedoms were overrun by troops from France, Spain,
+Austria and Switzerland, and Francis welcomed Italian artists,
+architects and poets to his capital. When the plague attacked Paris he
+removed to one of the royal chateaux in the country or paid visits to
+great noblemen like his cousin Charles de Bourbon. It was in 1522 at
+Moulins, the splendid country estate of the Duc de Bourbon, that the
+monarch met a captain of whom he had heard a great deal--all of it
+gratifying. He had in mind a new enterprise for this Verrazzano.
+
+During the last seven or eight years Verrazzano, like many other
+captains, had been engaged in the peculiar kind of expedition dubbed
+piracy or privateering according to the person speaking. France and
+Spain were neither exactly at peace nor openly at war. The Florentine
+had gone out upon the high seas in command of a ship fitted out and
+armed at his own risk, and fought Spanish galleons wherever he met them.
+This helped to embarrass the King of Spain in his wars abroad. Galleons
+eastward bound were usually treasure-ships. The colonial governors,
+planters, captains and common soldiers took all the gold they could get
+for themselves, and the gold, silver and pearls that went as tribute to
+the royal master in Spain had to run the gauntlet of these fierce and
+fearless sea-wolves. The wealth of the Indies was really a possession of
+doubtful value. It attracted pirates as honey draws flies. When these
+pirates turned a part of their spoils over to kings who were not
+friendly to Spain, it was particularly exasperating.
+
+Francis had asked Verrazzano to come to Moulins because, from what he
+had heard, it seemed to him that here was a man who could take care of
+himself and hold his tongue, and he liked such men. The experience
+reminded the Florentine of the great days of the Medici. Charles de
+Bourbon's palace at Moulins was fit for a king. Unlike most French
+chateaux, which were built on low lands among the hunting forests, it
+stood on a hill in a great park, and was surrounded with terraces,
+fountains, and gardens in the Italian style. Moreover its furniture was
+permanent, not brought in for royal guests and then taken away. The
+richness and beauty of its tapestries, state beds, decorations, and
+other belongings was beyond anything in any royal palace of that time.
+The duke's household included five hundred gentlemen in rich suits of
+Genoese velvet, each wearing a massive gold chain passing three times
+round the neck and hanging low in front; they attended the guests in
+divisions, one hundred at a time.
+
+The feasting was luxurious, and many of its choice dishes were supplied
+by the estate. There were rare fruits and herbs in the gardens, and a
+great variety of game-birds and animals in the park and the forest. But
+there were also imported delicacies--Windsor beans, Genoa artichokes,
+Barbary cucumbers and Milan parsley. The first course consisted of Medoc
+oysters, followed by a light soup. The fish course included the royal
+sturgeon, the dorado or sword-fish, the turbot. Then came heron, cooked
+in the fashion of the day, with sugar, spice and orange-juice; olives,
+capers and sour fruits; pheasants, red-legged partridges, and the
+favorite roast, sucking-pig parboiled and then roasted with a stuffing
+of chopped meats, herbs, raisins and damson plums. There were salads of
+fruit,--such as the King's favorite of oranges, lemons and sugar with
+sweet herbs,--or of herbs, such as parsley and mint with pepper,
+cinnamon and vinegar. For dessert there were Italian ices and
+confectionery, and the Queen's favorite plum, Reine Claude, imported
+from Italy; the white wine called Clairette-au-miel, hypocras,
+gooseberry and plum wines, lemonade, champagne. There was never a King
+who could appreciate such artistic luxury more deeply than Francis I.
+This may be one reason for his warm welcome of Verrazzano, who seemed to
+be able to increase the wealth of his country and his King.
+
+"I have had a very indignant visit from the Spanish ambassador," said
+Francis when they were seated together in a private room. "He says that
+there has been piracy on the high seas, my Verrazzano."
+
+The Italian met the laughing glance of the King with a somber gleam in
+his own dark eyes. "Does one steal from a robber?" he asked. "Not a
+quill of gold-dust nor an ingot of silver nor a seed-pearl comes
+honestly to Spain. It is all cruelty, bribery, slavery. Savonarola
+threatened Lorenzo de' Medici with eternal fires, prince as he was, for
+sins that were peccadilloes beside those of Spanish governors."
+
+"There is something in what you say," assented Francis lightly. "If we
+get the treasure of the Indies without owning the Indies we are
+certainly rid of much trouble. I never heard of Father Adam making any
+will dividing the earth between our brother of Spain and our brother of
+Portugal. Unless they can find such a document--" the laughing face
+hardened suddenly into keen attention, "we may as well take what we can
+get where we can find it. And now about this road to India; what have
+you to suggest?"
+
+Verrazzano outlined his plans in brief speech and clear. The proposed
+voyage might have two objects; one, the finding of a route to Asia if it
+existed; the other, the discovery of other countries from which wealth
+might be gained, in territory not yet explored. Verrazzano pointed out
+the fact that, as the earth was round, the shortest way to India ought
+to be near the pole rather than near the equator, yet far enough to the
+south to escape the danger of icebergs.
+
+"Very well then,"--the King pondered with finger on cheek. "Say as
+little as possible of your preparations, use your own discretion, and if
+any Spaniards try to interfere with you--" the monarch grinned,--"tell
+them that it is my good pleasure that my subjects go where they like."
+
+The Spanish agents in France presently informed their employer that the
+Florentine Verrazzano was again making ready to sail for regions
+unknown. Perhaps he did not himself know where he should go; at any rate
+the spies had not been able to find out.
+
+Two months later news came that before Verrazzano had gone far enough to
+be caught by the squadron lying in wait for him, he had pounced on the
+great carrack which had been sent home by Cortes loaded with Aztec gold.
+In convoying this prize to France he had caught another galleon coming
+from Hispaniola with a cargo of gold and pearls, and the two rich
+trophies were now in the harbor of La Rochelle, where the audacious
+captain was doubtless making ready for another piratical voyage.
+
+Verrazzano made a second start a little later, but was driven back by a
+Biscay storm. Finally, toward the end of the year 1523, he set out once
+more with only one ship, the _Dauphine_, out of his original fleet of
+four, and neither friend nor foe caught a glimpse of him during the
+voyage. In March, 1524, having sailed midway between the usual course of
+the West Indian galleons and the path of the fishers going to and from
+the Banks of Newfoundland, he saw land which he felt sure had not been
+discovered either by ancient or modern explorers.
+
+It was a low shore on which the fine sand, some fifteen feet deep, lay
+drifted into hillocks or dunes. Small creeks and inlets ran inland, but
+there seemed to be no good harbor. Beyond the sand-dunes were forests of
+cypress, palm, bay and other trees, and the wind bore the scent of
+blossoming trees and vines far out to sea. For fifty leagues the
+_Dauphine_ followed the coast southward, looking for a harbor, for
+Verrazzano knew that pearl fisheries and spices were far more likely to
+be found in southern than in northern waters. No harbor appeared. The
+daring navigator knew that if he went too far south he ran some risk of
+encountering a Spanish fleet, and that after his getting two of the most
+valuable cargoes ever sent over seas, they would be patroling all the
+tropical waters in the hope of catching him. He turned north again.
+
+On the shore from time to time little groups of savages appeared moving
+about great bonfires, and watching the ship. They wore hardly any
+clothing except the skin of some small animal like a marten, attached to
+a belt of woven grass; their skins were russet-brown and their thick
+straight black hair was tied in a knot rather like a tail.
+
+"One thing is certain," said young Francois Parmentier cheerfully,
+"these folk have never seen Spaniards--or Portuguese. Even on the
+Labrador the people ran from us, after Cortereale went slave-stealing
+there."
+
+Verrazzano smiled. Young Parmentier was always full of hope and faith. A
+little later the youth volunteered to be one of a boat's crew sent
+ashore for water, and provided himself with a bagful of the usual
+trinkets for gifts. The surf ran so high that the boat could not land,
+and Francois leaped overboard and swam ashore. Here he scattered his
+wares among the watching Indians, and then, leaping into the waves
+again, struck out for the boat. But the surf dashed him back upon the
+sand into the very midst of the natives, who seized him by the arms and
+legs and carried him toward the fire, while he yelled with astonishment
+and terror.
+
+Verrazzano was if anything more horrified than Francois himself; this
+was the son of his oldest friend. The Indians were removing his clothing
+as if they were about to roast him alive. But it appeared presently that
+they only wished to dry his clothes and comfort him, for they soon
+allowed him to return to the boat, seeing this was his earnest desire,
+and watched him with the greatest friendliness as he swam back.
+
+No strait appeared, but at one point Verrazzano, landing and marching
+into the interior with an exploring party, found a vast expanse of water
+on the other side of what seemed a neck of land between the two seas,
+about six miles in width. If this were the South Sea, the same which
+Balboa had seen from the Isthmus of Darien, so narrow a strip of land
+was at least as good or better than anything possessed by Spain.
+Verrazzano continued northward, and found a coast rich in grapes, the
+vines often covering large trees around which the natives kept the
+ground clear of shrubs that might interfere with this natural vineyard.
+Wild roses, violets, lilies, iris and many other plants and flowers,
+some quite unknown to Europe, greeted the admiring gaze of the
+commander. His quick mind pictured a royal garden adorned with these
+foreign shrubs and herbs, the wainscoting and furniture to be made by
+French and Italian joiners from these endless leagues of timber, the
+stately churches and castles which might be built by skilful masons from
+the abundant stone along these shores. Here was a province which, if it
+had not gold, had the material for many luxuries which must otherwise be
+bought with gold, and his clear Italian brain perceived that ingots of
+gold and silver are not the only treasure of kings.
+
+At last the _Dauphine_ came into a harbor or lake three leagues in
+circumference, where more than thirty canoes were assembled, filled with
+people. Suddenly Francois Parmentier leaped to his feet and waved his
+cap with a shout.
+
+"Now what madness has taken you?" queried Verrazzano.
+
+"I know where we are, that's all. This is Wampum Town,--L'Anorme
+Berge--the Grand Scarp. This is one of their great trading places,
+Captain. Father heard about it at Cape Breton from some south-country
+savages."
+
+"And what may wampum be?" asked Verrazzano coolly.
+
+"'T is the stuff they use for money--bits of shell made into beads and
+strung into a belt. There is an island in this bay where they make it
+out of their shell-fish middens--two kinds--purple and white. On my
+word, this big chief has on a wampum belt now!"
+
+This was interesting information indeed, and the natives seemed prepared
+to traffic in all peace and friendliness. Verrazzano found upon
+investigation that on the north of this bay a very large river, deep at
+the mouth, came down between steep hills. Afterward, following the shore
+to the east, he discovered a fine harbor beyond a three-cornered island.
+Here he met two chiefs of that country, a man of about forty, and a
+young fellow of twenty-four, dressed in quaintly decorated deerskin
+mantles, with chains set with colored stones about their necks. He
+stayed two weeks, refitting the ship with provisions and other
+necessaries, and observing the place. The crew got by trading and as
+gifts the beans and corn cultivated by the people, wild fruits and nuts,
+and furs. Further north they found the tribes less friendly, and at last
+came so near the end of their provision that Verrazzano decided to
+return to France. He reached home July 8, 1524, after having sailed
+along seven hundred leagues of the Atlantic coast.
+
+[Illustration: "The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and
+friendliness"--_Page_ 132]
+
+Francis I. was in the thick of a disastrous war with Spain, and had not
+time just then to consider further explorations. The war was not fairly
+over when a Cadiz warship, in 1527, caught Verrazzano and hanged him as
+a pirate.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The not unnatural conclusion of Verrazzano that what he saw was an ocean
+or a great inland sea led to extraordinary misconceptions in the maps
+and charts of the time. It was not until the early part of the
+seventeenth century that the region was actually explored, by Newport
+and Smith, and found to be only Chesapeake Bay.
+
+
+
+
+THE DRUM
+
+
+    I wake the gods with my sullen boom--
+      I am the Drum!
+    They wait for the blood-red flowers that bloom
+    In the heart of the sacrifice, there in the gloom
+      With terror dumb--
+    I sound the call to his dreadful doom--
+      I am the Drum!
+
+    I was the Serpent, the Sacred Snake--
+      Wolf, bear and fox
+    By the silent shores of river and lake
+    Tread softly, listening lest they wake
+      My voice that mocks
+    The rattle that falling bones will make
+      On barren rocks.
+
+    My banded skin is the voice of the Priest--
+      I am the Drum!
+    I sound the call to the War-God's feast
+    Till Tezcatlipoca's power hath ceased
+      And the White Gods come
+    Out of the fire of the burning East--
+      Hear me, the Drum!
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE GODS OF TAXMAR
+
+
+If the Fathers of the Church had ever been on the other side of the
+world, they would have made new rules for it.
+
+So thought Jeronimo Aguilar, on board a caravel plying between Darien
+and Hispaniola. It was a thought he would hardly have dared think in
+Spain.
+
+He was a dark thin young friar from the mountains near Seville. In 1488
+his mother, waiting, as women must, for news from the wars, vowed that
+if God and the Most Catholic Sovereigns drove out the Moors and sent her
+husband home to her, she would give her infant son to the Church. That
+was twenty-four years ago, and never had the power of the Church been so
+great as it now was. When the young Fray Jeronimo had been moved by
+fiery missionary preaching to give himself to the work among the
+Indians, his mother wept with astonishment and pride.
+
+But the Indies he found were not the Indies he had heard of. Men who
+sailed from Cadiz valiant if rough and hard-bitted soldiers of the
+Cross, turned into cruel adventurers greedy for gold, hard masters
+abusing their power. The innocent wild people of Colon's island Eden
+were charged by the planters with treachery, theft, murderous
+conspiracy, and utter laziness. With a little bitter smile Aguilar
+remembered how the hidalgo, who would not dig to save his life, railed
+at the Indian who died of the work he had never learned to do. It was
+not for a priest to oppose the policy of the Church and the Crown, and
+very few priests attempted it, whatever cruelty they might see. Aguilar
+half imagined that the demon gods of the heathen were battling against
+the invading apostles of the Cross, poisoning their hearts and defeating
+their aims. It was all like an evil enchantment.
+
+These meditations were ended by a mighty buffet of wind that smote the
+caravel and sent it flying northwest. Ourakan was abroad, the Carib god
+of the hurricane, and no one could think of anything thereafter but the
+heaving, tumbling wilderness of black waves and howling tempest and
+hissing spray. Valdivia, regidor of Darien, had been sent to Hispaniola
+by Balboa, the governor, with important letters and a rich tribute of
+gold, to get supplies and reinforcements for the colony. Shipwreck would
+be disastrous to Balboa and his people as well as to the voyagers.
+
+Headlong the staggering ship was driven upon Los Viboros, (The Vipers)
+that infamous group of hidden rocks off Jamaica. She was pounded to
+pieces almost before Valdivia could get his one boat into the water,
+with its crew of twenty men. Without food or drink, sails or proper
+oars, the survivors tossed for thirteen dreadful days on the uncharted
+cross-currents of unknown seas. Seven died of hunger, thirst and
+exposure before the tide that drifted northwest along the coast of the
+mainland caught them and swept them ashore.
+
+None of them had ever seen this coast. Valdivia cherished a faint hope
+that it might be a part of the kingdom of walled cities and golden
+temples, of which they had all heard. There were traces of human
+presence, and they could see a cone-shaped low hill with a stone temple
+or building of some kind on the top. Natives presently appeared, but
+they broke the boat in pieces and dragged the castaways inland through
+the forest to the house of their cacique.
+
+That chief, a villainous looking savage in a thatched hut, looked at
+them as if they had been cattle--or slaves--or condemned heretics. What
+they thought, felt or hoped was nothing to him. He ordered them taken to
+a kind of pen, where they were fed. So great is the power of the body
+over the mind that for a few days they hardly thought of anything but
+the unspeakable joy of having enough to eat and drink, and nothing to do
+but sleep. The cacique visited the enclosure now and then, and looked
+them over with a calculating eye. Aguilar was haunted by the idea that
+this inspection meant something unpleasant.
+
+All too soon the meaning was made known to them. Valdivia and four other
+men who were now less gaunt and famine-stricken than when captured, were
+seized and taken away, to be sacrificed to the gods.
+
+It was the custom of the Mayas of Yucatan to sacrifice human beings,
+captives or slaves for choice, to the gods in whose honor the stone
+pyramids were raised. When the victim had been led up the winding
+stairway to the top, the central figure in a procession of priests and
+attendants, he was laid upon a stone altar and his heart was cut out and
+offered to the idol, after which the body was eaten at a ceremonial
+feast. The eight captives who remained now understood that the food they
+had had was meant merely to fatten them for future sacrifice. Half mad
+with horror, they crouched in the hot moist darkness, and listened to
+the uproar of the savages.
+
+A strong young sailor by the name of Gonzalo Guerrero, who had done
+good service during the hurricane, pulled Jeronimo by the sleeve, "What
+in the name of all the saints can we do, Padre?" he muttered. "Jose and
+the rest will be raving maniacs."
+
+Aguilar straightened himself and rose to his feet where the rays of the
+moon, white and calm, shone into the enclosure. Lifting his hands to
+heaven he began to pray.
+
+All he had learned from books and from the disputations and sermons of
+the Fathers fell away from him and left only the bare scaffolding, the
+faith of his childhood. At the familiar syllables of the Ave Maria the
+shuddering sailors hushed their cries and oaths and listened, on their
+knees.
+
+This was a handful of castaways in the clutch of a race of man-eaters
+who worshiped demons. But above them bent the tender and pitiful Mother
+of Christ who had seen her Son crucified, and Christ Himself stood
+surrounded by innumerable witnesses. Among the saints were some who had
+died at the hands of the heathen, many who had died by torture. The poor
+and ignorant men who listened were caught up for the moment into the
+vision of Fray Jeronimo and regained their self-control. When the prayer
+was ended Gonzalo Guerrero sprang up, and rallied them to furious labor.
+Under his direction and Aguilar's they dug and wrenched at their cage
+like desperate rats, until they broke away enough of it just to let a
+man's body through. Aguilar was the last to go. He closed the hole and
+heaped rubbish outside it, as rubbish and branches had been piled where
+they were used to sleep, to delay as long as possible the discovery of
+their escape. They got clear away into the depths of the forest.
+
+But for men without provisions or weapons the wilderness of that unknown
+land was only less dreadful than death. Trees and vines barren of fruit,
+streams where a huge horny lizard ate all the fish--El Lagarto he was
+called by the discoverers,--no grain or cattle which might be taken by
+stealth--this was the realm into which they had been exiled. When they
+ventured out of the forest, driven by famine, they were captured by Acan
+Xooc, the cacique of another province, Jamacana. Here they were made
+slaves, to cut wood, carry water and bear burdens. Water was scarce in
+that region. There had been reservoirs, built in an earlier day, but
+these were ruined, and water had to be carried in earthern jars. The
+cacique died, and another named Taxmar succeeded him. Year after year
+passed. The soul of one worn-out white man slipped away, followed by
+another, and another, until only Aguilar and Guerrero were left alive.
+
+Taxmar sent the sailor as a present to a friend, cacique of Chatemal,
+but kept Aguilar for himself, watching his ways.
+
+The cacique was a sagacious heathen of considerable experience, but he
+had never seen a man like this one. Jeronimo was now almost as dark as
+an Indian and had not a scrap of civilized clothing, yet he was unlike
+the other white men, unlike any other slave. He had a string of dried
+berries with a cross made of reeds hung from it, which he sometimes
+appeared to be counting, talking to himself in his own language. Taxmar
+had once seen a slave from the north who had been a priest in his own
+country and knew how to remember things by string-talk, knotting a
+string in a peculiar fashion; but he was not like this man. When the
+white slave saw the crosses carved on their old walls he had eagerly
+asked how they came there, and Taxmar gathered that the cross had some
+meaning in the captive's own religion. He never lied, never stole, never
+got angry, never tattled of the other slaves, never disobeyed orders,
+never lost his temper. Taxmar could not remember when he himself had
+ever been restrained by anything but policy from taking whatever he
+wanted. Here was a man who could deny himself even food at times, when
+he was not compelled to. Taxmar could not understand.
+
+What he did not know was, that when he had escaped from the cannibals
+Aguilar had made a fresh vow to keep with all strictness every vow of
+his priesthood, and to bear his lot with patience and meekness until it
+should be the will of God to free him from the savages. He had begun to
+think that this freedom would never be his in his lifetime, but a vow
+was a vow. He no more suspected that Taxmar was taking note of his
+behavior, than a man standing in front of the lion's cage at the
+menagerie can translate the thoughts behind the great cat's intent eyes.
+
+Taxmar began to try experiments. He invented temptations to put in the
+way of his slave, but Aguilar generally did not seem to see them. One
+day the Indians were shooting at a mark. One came up to Aguilar and
+seized him by the arm.
+
+"How would you like to be shot at?" he said. "These bowmen hit whatever
+they aim at--if they aim at a nose they hit a nose. They can shoot so
+near you that they miss only by the breadth of a grain of corn--or do
+not miss at all."
+
+Aguilar never flinched, although from what he knew of the savages he
+thought nothing more likely than his being set up for a San Sebastian.
+He answered quietly,
+
+"I am your slave, and you can do with me what you please. I think you
+are too wise to destroy one who is both useful and obedient."
+
+The suggestion had been made by the order of Taxmar, and the answer was
+duly reported to him.
+
+It took a long time to satisfy the chief that this man who seemed so
+extraordinary was really what he seemed. He came at last to trust him
+wholly, even making him the steward of his household and leaving him to
+protect his women in his absence. Finding the chief thus disposed,
+Aguilar ventured a suggestion. Guerrera had won great favor with his
+master by his valor in war. Aguilar was shrewd enough to know that
+though it was very pleasant to have his master's confidence, if anything
+happened to Taxmar he might be all the worse off. The only sure way to
+win the respect of these barbarians was by efficiency as a soldier.
+Taxmar upon request gave his steward the military outfit of the
+Mayas--bow and arrows, wicker-work shield, and war-club, with a dagger
+of obsidian, a volcanic stone very hard and capable of being made very
+keen of edge, but brittle. Jeronimo when a boy had been an expert
+archer, and his old skill soon returned. He also remembered warlike
+devices and stratagems he had seen and heard of. Old soldiers chatting
+with his father in the purple twilight had often fought their battles
+over again, and nearly every form of military tactics then known to
+civilized armies had been used in the war in Granada. Naturally the
+young friar had heard more or less discussion of military campaigns in
+Darien. His suggestions were so much to the point that Taxmar had an
+increased respect for the gods of that unknown land of his. If they
+could do so much for this slave, without even demanding any offerings,
+they must be very different from the gods of the Mayas.
+
+In reply to Taxmar's questions, Aguilar, who now spoke the language
+quite well, endeavored to explain the nature of his religion. Not many
+of the Spaniards who expected to convert the Indians went so far as
+this. If they could by any means whatever make their subjects call
+themselves Christians and observe the customs of the Church, it was all
+they attempted. Taxmar was not the sort of person to be converted in
+that informal way. He demanded reasons. If Aguilar advised him against
+having unhappy people murdered to bribe the gods for their help in the
+coming campaign, he wished to know what the objection was, and what the
+white chiefs did in such a case. The idea of sacrificing to one's god,
+not the lives of men, but one's own will and selfish desires, was
+entirely new to him.
+
+While Jeronimo was still wrestling with the problem of making the
+Christian faith clear to one single Indian out of the multitudes of the
+heathen, a neighboring cacique appeared on the scene,--jealous, angry
+and suspicious. He had heard, he said, that Taxmar sought the aid of a
+stranger, who worshiped strange gods, in a campaign directed against his
+neighbors. He wished to know if Taxmar considered this right. In his own
+opinion this stranger ought to be sacrificed to the gods of the Mayas
+after the usual custom, or the gods would be angry,--and then no one
+knew what would happen.
+
+Aguilar thought it possible that Taxmar might reply that the conduct of
+an army was no one's business but the chief's. That would be in line
+with the cacique's character as he knew it. He did not expect that any
+chief in that ancient land would dare to defy its gods openly.
+
+Taxmar did not meet the challenge at once. His deep set opaque black
+eyes and mastiff-like mouth looked as immovable as the carving on the
+basalt stool upon which he sat. The cacique thought he was impressed,
+and concluded triumphantly,
+
+"Who can resist the gods? Let the altar drink the blood of the stranger;
+it is sweet to them and they will sleep, and not wake."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind," said Taxmar, the clicking, bubbling
+Maya talk dropping like water on hot stones. "When a man serves me well,
+I do not reward him with death. My slave's wisdom is greater than the
+craft of Coyotl, and if his gods help me it is because they know enough
+to do right."
+
+The other chief went home in rage and disappointment and offended
+dignity.
+
+No one, who has not tried it, can imagine the sensation of living in a
+hostile land, removed from all that is familiar. Until his captivity
+began Aguilar had never been obliged to act for himself. He had always
+been under the authority of a superior. He had questioned and wondered,
+seen the injustice of this thing and that, but only in his own mind.
+When everything in his past life had been swept away at one stroke, his
+faith alone was left him in the wrecked and distorted world. He had
+never dreamed that Taxmar was learning to respect that faith.
+
+The neighboring cacique now joined Taxmar's enemies with all his army,
+and the councilors took alarm and repeated the suggestion that Aguilar
+should be sacrificed to make sure of the help of the gods. Taxmar again
+spoke plainly.
+
+"Our gods," he said, "have helped us when we were strong and powerful
+and sacrificed many captives in their honor. This man's gods help him
+when he is a slave, alone, far from his people, with nothing to offer in
+sacrifice. We will see now what they will do for my army."
+
+In the battle which followed, the cacique adopted a plan which Aguilar
+suggested. That loyal follower was placed in command of a force hidden
+in the woods near the route by which the enemy would arrive. The hostile
+forces marched past it, and charged upon the front of Taxmar's army. It
+gave way, and they rushed in with triumphant yells. When they were well
+past, Aguilar's division came out of the bushes and took them in the
+rear. At the same instant Taxmar and his warriors faced about and sprang
+at them like a host of panthers. There was a great slaughter, many
+prisoners were taken, among them the cacique himself and many men of
+importance; and Taxmar made a little speech to them upon the wisdom of
+the white man's gods.
+
+In the years that passed the captive's hope of escape faded. Once he had
+thought he might slip away and reach the coast, but he was too carefully
+watched. Even if he could get to the sea from so far inland, without the
+help of the natives, he could not reach any Spanish colony without a
+boat. There were rumors of strange ships filled with bearded men, whose
+weapons were the thunder and the lightning. Old people wagged their
+heads and recalled a prophecy of the priest Chilam Cambal many years
+ago, that a white people, bearded, would come from the east, to overturn
+the images of the gods, and conquer the land.
+
+Hernando de Cordova's squadron came and went; Grijalva's came and went;
+Aguilar heard of them but never saw them. At last, seven long years
+after he came to Jamacana, three coast Indians from the island of
+Cozumel came timidly to the cacique with gifts and a letter. The gifts
+were for Taxmar, to buy his Christian slaves, if he had any, and the
+letter was for them.
+
+Hernando Cortes, coming from Cuba with a squadron to discover and
+conquer the land ruled by the Lord of the Golden House, had stopped at
+Cozumel and there heard of white men held as captives somewhere inland.
+He had persuaded the Indians to send messengers for them, saying that if
+the captives were sent to the sea-coast, at the cape of Cotoche, he
+would leave two caravels there eight days, to wait for them.
+
+While Aguilar read this letter the Indians were telling of the
+water-houses of the strangers, their sharp weapons, their command of
+thunder and lightning, and the wonderful presents they gave in exchange
+for what they wanted. Aguilar's account of the squadron was even more
+complete. He described the dress of the Spaniards, their weapons and
+their manner of life without having seen them at all, and the Indians,
+when asked, said it was so.
+
+Taxmar's acute mind was adjusting itself to this event, which was not
+altogether unexpected. He had heard more than Aguilar had about the
+previous visits of the Spaniards to that coast. He asked Aguilar if he
+thought that the strange warriors would accept him, their countryman, as
+ambassador, and deal mildly with Taxmar and his people, if they let him
+go. Aguilar answered that he thought they would.
+
+Now freedom was within his grasp, and only one thing delayed him. He
+could not leave his comrade Guerrero behind. The sailor had married the
+daughter of a chief and become a great man in his adopted country.
+Aguilar sent Indian messengers with the letter and a verbal message, and
+waited.
+
+Guerrero had never known much about reading, and he had forgotten nearly
+all he knew. He understood, however, that he could now return to Spain.
+Before his eyes rose a picture of the lofty austere sierras, the sunny
+vineyards, the wine, so unlike pulque, the bread, so unlike flat cakes
+of maize, the maidens of Barcelona and Malaga, so very different from
+tattooed Indian girls. And then he surveyed his own brawny arms and
+legs, and felt of his own grotesquely ornamented countenance.
+
+To please the taste of his adopted people he had let himself be
+decorated as they were, for life,--with tattooed pictures, with
+nose-ring, with ear-rings of gold set with rudely cut gems and heavy
+enough to drag down the lobe of the ear. He would cut a figure in the
+streets of Seville. The little boys would run after him as if he were a
+show. He grinned, sighed mightily, and sent word to Aguilar that he
+thought it wiser to stay where he was. Aguilar set out for the coast
+with the Cozumel Indians, but this delay had consumed all of the eight
+days appointed, and when they reached Point Cotoche the caravels had
+gone.
+
+But a broken canoe and a stave from a water-barrel lay on the beach, and
+with the help of the messengers Aguilar patched up the canoe, and with
+the board for a paddle, made the canoe serve his need. Following the
+coast they came to the narrowest part of the channel between the
+mainland and Cozumel, and in spite of a very strong current got across
+to the island. No sooner had they landed when some Spaniards rushed out
+of the bushes, with drawn swords. The Indians were about to fly in
+terror, but Aguilar called to them in their own language to have no
+fear. Then he spoke to the Spaniards in broken Castilian, saying that he
+was a Christian, fell on his knees and thanked God that he had lived to
+hear his own language again.
+
+The Spaniards looked at this strange figure in absolute bewilderment. He
+was to all appearance an Indian. His long hair was braided and wound
+about his head, he had a bow in his hand, a quiver of arrows on his
+back, a bag of woven grass-work hung about his neck by a long cord. The
+pattern of the weaving was a series of interwoven crosses. Cortes,
+giving up hope of rescuing any Christian captives, had left the island,
+but one of his ships had sprung a leak and he had put back. When he saw
+an Indian canoe coming he had sent scouts to see what it might be. They
+now led Jeronimo Aguilar and his Indian companions into the presence of
+the captain-general and his staff. Aguilar saluted Cortes in the Indian
+fashion, by carrying his hand from the ground to his forehead as he
+knelt crouching before him. But Cortes, when he understood who this man
+was, raised him to his feet, embraced him and flung about his shoulders
+his own cloak. Aguilar became his interpreter, and thus was the prophecy
+fulfilled concerning the gods of Taxmar.
+
+[Illustration: "CORTES FLUNG ABOUT HIS SHOULDERS HIS OWN
+CLOAK."--_Page_ 146]
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The story of Jeronimo Aguilar follows the actual facts very closely. The
+account of his adventures will be found in Irving's "Life of Columbus"
+and other works dealing with the history of the Spanish conquests.
+
+
+
+
+A LEGEND OF MALINCHE
+
+
+    O sorcerer Time, turn backward to the shore
+      Where it is always morning, and the birds
+    Are troubadours of all the hidden lore
+      Deeper than any words!
+
+    There lived a maiden once,--O long ago,
+      Ere men were grown too wise to understand
+    The ancient language that they used to know
+      In Quezalcoatl's land.
+
+    Though her own mother sold her for a slave,
+      Her own bright beauty as her only dower,
+    Into her slender hands the conqueror gave
+      A more than queenly power.
+
+    Between her people and the enemy--
+      The fierce proud Spaniard on his conquest bent--
+    Interpreter and interceder, she
+      In safety came and went.
+
+    And still among the wild shy forest folk
+    The birds are singing of her, and her name
+    Lives in that language that her people spoke
+      Before the Spaniard came.
+
+    She is not dead, the daughter of the Sun,--
+      By love and loyalty divinely stirred,
+    She lives forever--so the legends run,--
+      Returning as a bird.
+
+    Who but a white bird in her seaward flight
+      Saw, borne upon the shoulders of the sea,
+    Three tiny caravels--how small and light
+      To hold a world in fee!
+
+    Who but the quezal, when the Spaniards came
+      And plundered all the white imperial town,
+    Saw in a storm of red rapacious flame
+      The Aztec throne go down!
+
+    And when the very rivers talked of gold,
+      The humming-bird upon her lichened nest
+    Strange tales of wild adventure never told
+      Hid in her tiny breast.
+
+    The mountain eagle, circling with the stars,
+      Watched the great Admiral swiftly come and go
+    In his light ship that set at naught the bars
+      Wrought by a giant foe.
+
+    Dull are our years and hard to understand,
+      We dream no more of mighty days to be,
+    And we have lost through delving in the land
+      The wisdom of the sea.
+
+    Yet where beyond the sea the sunset burns,
+      And the trees talk of kings dead long ago,
+    Malinche sings among the giant ferns--
+      Ask of the birds--they know!
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE THUNDER BIRDS
+
+
+"Glory is all very well," said Juan de Saavedra to Pedro de Alvarado as
+the squadron left the island of Cozumel, "but my familiar spirit tells
+me that there is gold somewhere in this barbaric land or Cortes would
+not be with us."
+
+Alvarado's peculiarly sunny smile shone out. He was a ruddy
+golden-haired man, a type unusual in Spaniards, and the natives showed a
+tendency to revere him as the sun-god. Life had treated him very well,
+and he had an abounding good-nature.
+
+"It will be the better," he said comfortably, "if we get both gold and
+glory. I confess I have had my doubts of the gold, for after all, these
+Indians may have more sense than they appear to have."
+
+"People often do, but in what way, especially?"
+
+"_Amigo_, put yourself in the place of one of these caciques, with white
+men bedeviling you for a treasure which you never even troubled yourself
+to pick up when it lay about loose. What can be more easy than to tell
+them that there is plenty of it somewhere else--in the land of your
+enemies? That is Pizarro's theory, at any rate."
+
+Saavedra laughed. "Pizarro is wise in his way, but as I have said,
+Cortes is our commander."
+
+"What has that to do with it?"
+
+"If you had been at Salamanca in his University days you wouldn't ask.
+He never got caught in a scrape, and he always got what he was after."
+
+"And kept it?"
+
+"Is that a little more of Pizarro's wisdom? No; he always shared the
+spoils as even-handedly as you please. But if any of us lost our heads
+and got into a pickle he never was concerned in it--or about it."
+
+"He will lose his, if Velasquez catches him. Remember Balboa."
+
+"Now there is an example of the chances he will take. Cortes first
+convinces the Governor that nobody else is fit to trust with this
+undertaking. Cordova failed; Grijalva failed; Cortes will succeed or
+leave his bones on the field of honor. No sooner are we fairly out of
+harbor than Velasquez tries to whistle us back. He might as well blow
+his trumpets to the sea-gulls. All Cortes wanted was a start. You will
+see--either the Governor will die or be recalled while we are gone, or
+we shall come back so covered with gold and renown that he will not dare
+do anything when we are again within his reach. Somebody's head may be
+lost in this affair, but it will not be that of Hernan' Cortes."
+
+The man of whom they were speaking just then approached, summoning
+Alvarado to him. Saavedra leaned on the rail musing.
+
+"Sometimes," he said to himself, "one hastens a catastrophe by warning
+people of it, but then, that may be because it could not have been
+prevented. Cortes is inclined to make that simple fellow his aide
+because they are so unlike, and so, I suspect, are others. At any rate I
+have done my best to make him see whose leadership is safest."
+
+The fleet was a rather imposing one for those waters. There were eleven
+ships altogether, the flagship and three others being over seventy tons'
+weight, the rest caravels and open brigantines. These were manned by one
+hundred and ten sailors, and carried five hundred and fifty-three
+soldiers, of whom thirty-two were crossbowmen and thirteen arquebusiers.
+There were also about two hundred Indians. Sixteen horses accompanied
+the expedition, and it had ten heavy cannon, four light field-guns,
+called falconets, and a good supply of ammunition. The horses cost
+almost more than the ships that carried them, for they had been brought
+from Spain; but their value in such an undertaking was great.
+
+Hernando Cortes had come out to Cuba when he was nineteen, and that was
+fifteen years ago. Much had been reported concerning an emperor in a
+country to the west, who ruled over a vast territory inhabited by
+copper-colored people rich in gold, who worshiped idols. Cortes had
+observed that Indian tribes, like schoolboys, were apt to divide into
+little cliques and quarreling factions. If the subject tribes did not
+like the Emperor, and were jealous of him and of each other, a foreign
+conqueror had one tool ready to his hand, and it was a tool that Cortes
+had used many times before.
+
+The people of this coast, however, were not at all like the gentle and
+childlike natives Colon had found. From the rescued captive Aguilar, the
+commander learned much of their nature and customs. On his first attempt
+to land, his troops encountered troops of warriors in brilliant
+feathered head-bands and body armor of quilted white cotton. They used
+as weapons the lance, bow and arrows, club, and a curious staff about
+three and a half feet long set with crosswise knife-blades of obsidian.
+Against poisoned arrows, such as the invaders had more than once met,
+neither arquebus nor cannon was of much use, and body armor was no great
+protection, since a scratch on hand or leg would kill a man in a few
+hours. After some skirmishing and more diplomacy, at various points
+along the coast, Cortes landed his force on the island which Grijalva
+had named San Juan de Ulloa, from a mistaken notion that Oloa, the
+native salutation, was the name of the place. The natives had watched
+the "water-houses," as they called them, sailing over the serene blue
+waters, and this tribe, being peaceable folk, sent a pirogue over to the
+island with gifts. There were not only fruits and flowers, but little
+golden ornaments, and the Spanish commander sent some trinkets in
+return. In endeavoring to talk with them Cortes became aware of an
+unusual piece of luck. Aguilar did not understand the language of these
+folk. But at Tabasco, where Cortes had had a fight with the native army,
+some slaves had been presented to him as a peace-offering. Among them
+was a beautiful young girl, daughter of a Mexican chief, who after her
+father's death had been sold as a slave by her own mother, who wished to
+get her inheritance. During her captivity she had learned the dialect
+Aguilar spoke, and the two interpreters between them succeeded in
+translating Cortes's Castilian into the Aztec of Mexico from the first.
+The young girl was later baptized Marina. There being no "r" in the
+Aztec language the people called her Malintzin or Malinche,--Lady
+Marina, the ending "tzin" being a title of respect. She learned
+Castilian with wonderful quickness, and was of great service not only to
+Cortes but to her own people, since she could explain whatever he did
+not understand.
+
+Cortes learned that the name of the ruler of the country was Moteczuma.
+His capital was on the plateau about seventy miles in the interior. This
+coast province, which he had lately conquered, was ruled by one of his
+Aztec governors. Gold was abundant. Moteczuma had great store of it.
+Cortes decided to pitch his camp where afterward stood the capital of
+New Spain.
+
+The friendly Indians brought stakes and mats and helped to build huts,
+native fashion. From all the country round the people flocked to see the
+strange white men, bringing fruit, flowers, game, Indian corn,
+vegetables and native ornaments of all sorts. Some of these they gave
+away and some they bartered. Every soldier and mariner turned trader;
+the place looked like a great fair.
+
+On Easter Day the Aztec governor arrived upon a visit of ceremony.
+Cortes received him in his own tent, with all courtesy, in the presence
+of his officers, all in full uniform. Mass was said, and the Aztec chief
+and his attendants listened with grave politeness. Then the guests were
+invited to a dinner at which various Spanish dishes, wines and
+sweetmeats were served as formally as at court. After this the
+interpreters were summoned for the real business of the day.
+
+The Aztec nobleman wished to know whence and why the strangers had come
+to this country. Cortes answered that he was the subject of a monarch
+beyond seas, as powerful as Moteczuma, who had heard of the Aztec
+Emperor and sent his compliments and some gifts. The governor gracefully
+expressed his willingness to convey both to his royal master. Cortes
+courteously declined, saying that he must himself deliver them. At this
+the governor seemed surprised and displeased; evidently this was not in
+his plan. "You have been here only two days," he said, "and already
+demand an audience with the Emperor?" Then he expressed his astonishment
+at learning that there was any other monarch as great as Moteczuma, and
+sent his attendants to bring a few gifts which he himself had chosen for
+the white chief.
+
+These tributes consisted of ten loads, each as much as a man could
+carry, of fine cotton stuff, mantles of exquisite feather-work, and a
+woven basket full of gold ornaments. Cortes expressed his admiration and
+appreciation of the gifts, and sent for those he had brought for
+Moteczuma. They consisted of an arm-chair, richly carved and painted, a
+crimson cloth cap with a gold medal bearing the device of San Jorge and
+the dragon, and some collars, bracelets and other ornaments of cut
+glass. To the Aztec, who had never seen glass, these appeared wonderful.
+He ventured the remark that a gilt helmet worn by one of the Spanish
+soldiers was like the casque of their god Quetzalcoatl, and he wished
+that Moteczuma could see it. Cortes immediately sent for the helmet and
+handed it to the chief, with the suggestion that he should like to have
+it returned full of the gold of the country in order to compare it with
+the gold of Spain. Spaniards, he said, were subject to a complaint
+affecting the heart, for which gold was a remedy. This was not entirely
+an invention of the commander's fertile brain. Many physicians of those
+days did regard gold as a valuable drug; but only Cortes ever thought of
+making use of the theory to get the gold.
+
+During this polite and interesting conversation Cortes observed certain
+attendants busily making sketches of all that they saw, and on inquiry
+was told that this "picture-writing" would give the Emperor a far
+better idea of the appearance of the strangers than words alone. Upon
+this the Spanish general ordered out the cavalry and artillery and put
+them through their evolutions on the beach. The cannon, whose balls
+splintered great trees, and the horsemen, whose movements the Aztecs
+followed with even more terror than those of the gunners, made a
+tremendous impression. The artists, though scared, stuck to their duty,
+and the strange and terrible beasts, and the thunder-birds whose mouths
+breathed destruction, were drawn for the Emperor to see. After this the
+governor, assuring Cortes that he should have whatever he needed in the
+way of provisions until further orders were received from the Emperor,
+made his adieux and went home.
+
+Then began a diplomatic game between Cortes and the Emperor and the
+various chiefs of the country. The couriers of the imperial government,
+who traveled in relays, could take a message to the capital and return
+in seven or eight days. In due time two ambassadors arrived from
+Moteczuma, with gifts evidently meant to impress the strangers with his
+wealth and power. The embassy was accompanied by the governor of the
+province and about a hundred slaves. Some of these attendants carried
+burning censers from which arose clouds of incense; others unrolled upon
+the ground fine mats on which to place the presents.
+
+Nothing like this had ever been offered to a Spanish conqueror, even by
+Moors, to say nothing of Indians. There were two collars of gold set
+with precious stones; a hundred ounces of gold ore just as it came from
+the mines; a large alligator's-head of gold; six shields covered with
+gold; helmets and necklaces of gold. There were birds made of green
+feathers, the feet, beaks and eyes of gold; a box of feather-work upon
+leather, set with a gold plate weighing seventy ounces; pieces of cloth
+curiously woven with feathers, and others woven in various designs. Most
+gorgeous of all were two great plates as big as carriage wheels, one of
+gold and one of silver, wrought with various devices of plants and
+animals rather like the figures of the zodiac. The wildest tales of the
+most imaginative adventurer never pictured such magnificence. If
+Moteczuma's plan had been to induce the strangers to respect his wishes
+and go home without visiting his capital, it was a complete failure.
+After this proof of the wealth and splendor of the country Cortes had no
+more idea of leaving it than a hound has of abandoning a fresh trail.
+When the envoys gave him Moteczuma's message of regret that it would not
+be possible for them to meet, Cortes replied that he could not think of
+going back to Spain now. The road to the capital might be perilous, but
+what was that to him? Would they not take to the Emperor these slight
+additional tokens of the regard and respect of the Spanish ruler, and
+explain to him how impossible it would be for Cortes to face his own
+sovereign, with the great object of his voyage unfulfilled? There was
+nothing for the embassy to do but to take the message.
+
+While waiting for results, Cortes received a visit from some Indian
+chiefs of the Totonacs, a tribe lately conquered by the Aztecs. Their
+ruler, it seemed, had heard of the white cacique and would like to
+receive him in his capital. Cortes gave them presents and promised to
+come. In the meantime his own men were quarreling, and both parties were
+threatening him. The bolder spirits announced that if he did not make a
+settlement in the country, with or without instructions from the
+governor of Cuba who had sent him out, they would report him to the
+King. The friends of Velazquez accused Cortes of secretly encouraging
+this rebellion, and demanded that as he had now made his discovery, he
+should return to Cuba and report.
+
+Cortes calmly answered that he was quite willing to return at once, and
+ordered the ships made ready. This caused such a storm of wrath and
+disappointment that even those who had urged it quailed. Seeing that the
+time was ripe, the captain-general called his followers together and
+made a speech. He declared that nobody could have the interests of the
+sovereigns and the glory of the Spanish race more at heart than he had.
+He was willing to do whatever was best. If they, his comrades, desired
+to return to Cuba he would go directly. But if they were ready to join
+him, he would found a colony in the name of the sovereigns, with all
+proper officers to govern it, to remain in this rich country and trade
+with the people. In that case, however, he would of course have to
+resign his commission as captain-general of an expedition of discovery.
+
+There was a roar of approval from the army at this alluring suggestion.
+Before most of them fairly knew what they were about they had voted to
+form a colony under the royal authority, elected Cortes governor as soon
+as he resigned his former position, and seen the new governor appoint a
+council in proper form, to aid in the government.
+
+"I knew it," said Saavedra to himself as he went back, alone, to his
+quarters. "Just as people have made up their minds they have got him
+between the door and the jamb, he is somewhere else. When he resigned
+his commission he slipped out from under the government of Cuba, and
+that has no authority over him. He has appointed a council made up of
+his own friends, and now he can hang every one of the Velasquez party if
+they make any trouble. But they won't."
+
+They did not. Cortes sent his flagship to Spain with some of his
+especial friends and some of his particular enemies on board, the
+enemies to get them out of his way, the friends to defend him to the
+King against their accusations. He founded a city which he named Villa
+Rica de Vera Cruz, the Rich Town of the True Cross. Then, as the next
+step toward the invasion of the country, he proceeded to play Indian
+politics.
+
+First he accepted the invitation of the chief of the Totonacs, and
+Moteczuma, hearing of it, sent the tax-gatherers to collect tribute and
+also to demand twenty young men and women to sacrifice to the gods as an
+atonement for having entertained the strangers. Cortes expressed lively
+horror, and advised the chief of the Totonacs to throw the tax-gatherers
+into prison. Then he secretly rescued them and telling them how deeply
+he regretted their misfortunes as innocent men doing their duty to their
+ruler, he sent them on board his own ships for safe-keeping. When the
+Emperor heard what had happened he was enraged against the Totonacs. If
+they wished to escape his vengeance now their only chance was to become
+allies of Cortes.
+
+Thus within a few days after landing, the commander had got all of his
+own followers and a powerful native tribe so bound up with his fortunes
+that they could not desert him without endangering their own skins. He
+now suggested to two of the pilots that they should report five of the
+ships to be in an unseaworthy condition from the borings of the
+teredos--in those days sheathing for hulls had not been invented, and
+the ship-worm was a constant danger, in tropical waters especially. At
+the pilots' report Cortes appeared astonished, but saying that there was
+nothing to do but make the best of it, ordered the ships to be
+dismantled, the cordage, sails and everything that could be of use
+brought on shore, and the stripped hulls scuttled and sunk. Then four
+more were condemned, leaving but one small ship.
+
+There was nearly a riot in the army, marooned in an unknown and
+unfriendly land. Cortes made another speech. He pointed out the fact
+that if they were successful in the expedition to the capital they would
+not need the ships; if they were not, what good would the ships do them
+when they were seventy leagues inland? Those who dared not take the risk
+with him could still return to Cuba in the one ship that was left. "They
+can tell there," he added in a tone which cut the deeper for being so
+very quiet, "how they deserted their commander and their friends, and
+patiently wait until we return with the spoils of the Aztecs."
+
+An instant of breathless silence followed, then somebody shouted. A
+hundred voices took up the cry,--
+
+"To Mexico! To Mexico!"
+
+Of the adventures, the fighting, the wonderful sights and the narrow
+escapes of the march to the capital, Bernal Diaz, who was with the army,
+wrote afterward in bulky volumes. On the seventh day of November, 1519,
+the compact little force of Spaniards, little more than a battalion in
+all, with their Indian allies from the provinces which had rebelled
+against the Emperor, came in sight of the capital. The moment at which
+Cortes, at the head of his followers, rode into the city of Mexico is
+one of the most dramatic in all history. Nothing in any novel of
+adventure compares with it in amazing contrast or tragic possibilities.
+The men of the Age of Cannon met the men of the Age of Stone. The mighty
+Catholic Church confronted a nation of snake-worshiping cannibals. The
+sons of a race that lived in hardy simplicity, a race of fighters, had
+come into a capital where life was more luxurious than it was in
+Seville, Paris or Rome--a heathen capital rich in beauty, wealth and all
+the arts of a barbarian people.
+
+The city had been built on an island in the middle of a salt lake,
+reached by three causeways of masonry four or five miles long and twenty
+or thirty feet wide. At the end near the city each causeway had a wooden
+drawbridge. There were paved streets and water-ways. The houses, built
+around large court-yards, were of red stone, sometimes covered with
+white stucco. The roofs were encircled with battlements and defended
+with towers. Often they were gardens of growing flowers. In the center
+of the city was the temple enclosure, surrounded by an eight-foot stone
+wall. Within this were a score of teocallis, or pyramids flattened at
+the top, the largest, that of the war-god, being about a hundred feet
+high. Stone stairs wound four times around the pyramid, so that
+religious processions appeared and disappeared on their way to the top.
+On the summit was a block of jasper, rounded at top, the altar of human
+sacrifice. Near by were the shrines and altars of the gods. Outside the
+temple enclosure was a huge altar, or embankment, called the
+tzompantli, one hundred and fifty-four feet long, upon which the skulls
+of innumerable victims were arranged. The doorways and walls everywhere
+were carved with the two symbols of the Aztec religion--the cross and
+the snake. Among the birds in the huge aviary of the royal establishment
+were the humming-birds which were sacred to one of the most cruel of the
+gods, and in cages built for them were the rattlesnakes also held
+sacred. Flowers were everywhere--in garlands hung about the city, in the
+hands of the people, on floating islands in the water, in the gardens
+blazing with color.
+
+The Spanish strangers were housed in a great stone palace and
+entertained no less magnificently than the gifts of the Emperor had led
+them to expect. The houses were ceiled with cedar and tapestried with
+fine cotton or feather work. Moteczuma's table service was of gold and
+silver and fine earthenware. The people wore cotton garments, often dyed
+vivid scarlet with cochineal, the men wearing loose cloaks and fringed
+sashes, the women, long robes. Fur capes and feather-work mantles and
+tunics were worn in cold weather; sandals and white cotton hoods
+protected feet and head. The women sometime used a deep violet hair-dye.
+Ear-rings, nose-rings, finger-rings, bracelets, anklets and necklaces
+were of gold and silver.
+
+Moteczuma himself, a tall slender man about forty years old, came to
+meet them in a palanquin shining with gold and canopied with
+feather-work. As he descended from it his attendants laid cotton mats
+upon the ground that he might not soil his feet. He wore the broad
+girdle and square cloak of cotton cloth which other men wore, but of the
+finest weave. His sandals had soles of pure gold. Both cloak and sandals
+were embroidered with pearls, emeralds, and a kind of stone much
+prized by the Aztecs, the chalchivitl, green and white. On his head he
+wore a plumed head-dress of green, the royal color. When Cortes with his
+staff approached the building set apart for their quarters, Moteczuma
+awaited them in the courtyard. From a vase of flowers held by an
+attendant he took a massive gold collar, in which the shell of a certain
+crawfish was set in gold and connected by golden links. Eight golden
+ornaments a span long, wrought to represent the same shell-fish, hung
+from this chain. Moteczuma hung the necklace about the neck of Cortes
+with a graceful little speech of welcome.
+
+[Illustration: "Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard"--_Page_ 162]
+
+The Aztec Emperor was making the best of a situation which he did not
+like at all. In other Mexican cities Cortes had ordered the idols cast
+headlong down the steps of the teocalli, the temples cleansed, and a
+crucifix wreathed in flowers to be set up in place of the red altar
+stained with human blood. He was attended by some seven thousand native
+allies from tribes considered by the Aztecs as wild barbarians. His
+daring behavior and military successes had all been reported to
+Moteczuma by the picture-writing of his scribes. There was a tradition
+among the Aztecs that some day white bearded strangers would come,
+destroy the worship of the old gods of blood and terror, and restore the
+worship of the fair god Quetzalcoatl. Before the white men landed there
+had been earthquakes, meteors and other omens. Would the old gods
+destroy the invaders and all who joined them, or was this the great
+change which the prophets foretold? Who could say?
+
+In the beautiful, terrible city Cortes moved alert and silent, courteous
+to all, every nerve as sensitive to new impressions as a leaf to the
+wind. He knew that strong as the priesthood of the fierce gods
+undoubtedly was, there was surely an undercurrent of rebellion against
+their cruelty and their unlimited power. In a fruitless attempt to keep
+the Spaniards out of the city by the aid of the gods, three hundred
+little children had been sacrificed. If Cortes failed to conquer, by
+peaceful means or otherwise, nothing was more certain than that he and
+all of his followers not killed in the fighting would be butchered on
+the top of those terrible pyramids sooner or later. Yet he looked about
+him and said, under his breath,
+
+"This is the most beautiful city in the world."
+
+"And you think we shall win it for the Cross and the King?" asked
+Saavedra in the same quiet tone.
+
+"We must win," said Cortes, with a spark in his eyes like the flame in
+the heart of a black opal. "There is nothing else to do."
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+In the spelling of the Aztec Emperor's name Cortes' own form is
+used,--"Moteczuma," instead of the commoner "Montezuma." One must read
+Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" for even an approximately adequate
+account of this extraordinary campaign.
+
+
+
+
+MOCCASIN FLOWER
+
+
+    Klooskap's children, the last and least,
+    Bidden to dance at his farewell feast,
+    Under the great moon's wizard light,
+    Over the mountain's drifted white,
+    The Winag'mesuk, the wood-folk small,
+    Came to the feasting the last of all!
+
+    Magic snowshoes they wore that night,
+    Woven of frostwork and sunset light,
+    Round and trim like the Master's own,--
+    Their lances of reed, with a point of bone,
+    Their oval shields of the woven grass,
+    Their leader the mighty Kaktugwaas.
+
+    The Winag'mesuk, the forest folk,
+    They fled from the words that the white man spoke.
+    They were so tired, they were so small,
+    They hardly could find their way back at all,
+    Yet bravely they rallied with shield and lance
+    To dance for Klooskap their Snowshoe Dance!
+
+    Light and swift as the whirling snow
+    They leaped and fluttered aloft, alow.
+    Silent as owls in the white moonlight
+    They pounced and grappled in mimic fight.
+    When they chanted to Klooskap their last farewell
+    He laid on the forest a fairy spell.
+
+    From Little Thunder, from Kaktugwaas,
+    He took the buckler of woven grass,
+    The lance of reed with a point of bone,
+    The rounded footgear like his own,
+    And bade them grow there under the pines
+    While the snowdrifts melt and the sunlight shines!
+
+    The sagamore pines are dark and tall
+    That guard the Norumbega wall.
+    When the clear brooks dance to the flute of spring,
+    And veery and catbird of Klooskap sing,
+    The Winag'mesuk for one short hour
+    Come back for their token of Klooskap's power--
+      Moccasin Flower!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+GIFTS FROM NORUMBEGA
+
+
+"What shall I bring thee then, from the world's end, Reine Margot?"
+asked Alain Maclou. The small girl in the deep fireside recess of a
+Picardy castle-hall considered it gravely.
+
+"There should be three gifts," she said at last, "for so it always is in
+Mere Bastienne's stories. I will have the shoes of silence, the girdle
+of fortune, and diamonds from Norumbega. Tell me again about Norumbega."
+
+"Nay, little one, I must go, to see after the lading of the ship. Fare
+thee well for this time," and the young man bent his tall head above the
+hand of his seven-year-old lady. The graceful, quick-witted and
+imaginative child had been his pet and he her loyal servant these three
+years. It was understood between them that she was really the Queen of
+France, barred from her throne by the Salic Law that forbade any woman
+to rule that country in her own right. Some day he was to discover for
+her a kingdom beyond seas, in which she alone should reign. Of all the
+tales, marvelous, fanciful or tragic, which he or her old nurse had told
+her, she liked best the legend of Norumbega, the city in the wilderness
+which no explorer had ever found. Wherever French, Breton or English
+fishermen had become at all familiar with the Indians they heard of a
+city great and populous, with walls of stone, ruled by a king richer
+than any of their chiefs, but no two stories agreed on the location.
+Some had heard that it was an island, west of Cape Breton; others that
+it was on the bank of a great river to the southward. Maclou had seen at
+a fair one of the Indians brought to France ten years before in the
+_Dauphine_, and spoken to him. According to this Indian the chief town
+of his people was on an island in the mouth of a river where high gray
+walls of rock arose, longer and statelier than the walls of Dieppe. In
+describing these walls the Indian did not indeed say that they encircled
+the city, but no Frenchman could have imagined rock palisades built for
+any other purpose. On the other hand Maclou knew a pilot who had been
+caught in a storm and blown down the coast southwest from the fisheries,
+and he and his crew had seen, from ten or twelve leagues out at sea,
+white and shining battlements on the crest of a mountain far inland.
+When they asked their Indian guides what city it was the slaves trembled
+and showed fear, and declared that none of their people ever went there.
+Had only one man seen the glittering walls it might have been a vision,
+but they had all seen.
+
+If Norumbega really existed, the expedition of Jacques Cartier in 1535
+seemed likely to find it. He had made a voyage the year before with two
+ships and a hundred and twenty men, of whom Maclou had been one. Not
+being prepared to remain through the winter, they had been obliged to
+turn back before they had done more than discover a magnificent bay
+which Cartier named the Bay of Chaleur on account of the July heat, and
+a squarish body of water west of Cape Breton which seemed to be marked
+out on their map as the Square Gulf. Now the veteran of Saint Malo had
+instructions to explore this gulf and see whether any strait existed
+beyond it which might lead to Cathay. On general principles he was to
+find out how great and of what nature the country was. The maps of the
+New World were fairly complete in their outline of the southern
+continent and islands discovered by Spain; it was hoped that this
+expedition might give an equally definite outline to the northern coast.
+Cartier had on his previous voyage caught two young Indians who had come
+from far inland to fish, and brought them back to France. They had since
+learned enough Breton to make themselves understood, and from what they
+said it seemed to Cartier that there might be a far greater land west of
+the fisheries than the mapmakers had supposed. The King, on the other
+hand, was inclined to hope that the lands already found were islands,
+among which might be the coveted route to Cathay. Maclou bent his brows
+over the map and pondered. If Norumbega were found it would be the key
+to the situation, for the people of a great inland city would know, as
+the people of Mexico did, all about their country. Did it exist, or was
+it a fairy tale, born of mirage or a lying brain?
+
+On Whitsunday the sixteenth of May, Carrier and his men went in solemn
+procession to the Cathedral Church of Saint Malo, confessed themselves,
+received the sacrament, and were blessed by the Bishop in his robes of
+state, standing in the choir of the ancient sanctuary. On the following
+Wednesday they set sail with three ships and one hundred and ten men.
+Cartier had been careful to explain to the King that it would be of no
+use to send an expedition to those northern shores unless it could live
+through the winter on its own supplies. The summer was brief, the winter
+severe, and there was no possibility of living on the country while
+exploring it. As such voyages went, the three ships were well
+provisioned. Late in July they came through the Strait of Belle Isle,
+and on Saint Laurence's Day, August 10, found themselves in a small bay
+which Cartier named for that saint. Rounding the western point of a
+great island the little fleet came into a great salt water bay.
+
+"I believe," said Cartier to Maclou as the flagship sailed gaily on over
+the sunlit sparkling waves, "that this must be the place from which all
+the whales in the world come." The great creatures were spouting and
+diving all around the fleet, frolicking like unwieldy puppies. Every one
+was alert for what might be discovered next. None were more lively and
+full of pleased expectation than the two Indian youths. Captives had
+been taken by the white men before, but none had ever returned. Their
+people were undoubtedly mourning them as dead, but would presently see
+them not only alive but fat and happy. They had crossed the great waters
+in the white men's canoe, and lived in the white men's villages, and
+learned their talk. They had been christened Pierre and Kadoc, French
+tongues finding it hard to pronounce their former names.
+
+Cartier called them to him and began to ask questions. He learned that
+the northern coast of the gulf, along which they were sailing, was that
+of a land called Saghwenay, in which was found Caignetdaze, called by
+the white men copper. This gulf led to a great river called Hochelaga.
+They had never heard of any one going all the way to the head of it, but
+the old men might remember. What the name of the country to the south of
+the gulf was, Cartier could not make out. It sounded something like
+Kanacdajikaouah. "Kaou-ah" meant great, or large, and Cartier finally
+set down the rest of the word as Canada, as nearly as the French
+alphabet could spell out the gutturals.
+
+The youths in fact belonged to a tribe in the great confederacy of the
+Kanonghsionni, the People of the Long House--or rather the lengthened
+house, Kanonsa being the word for house, and "ionni" meaning lengthened
+or extended.[1] Five tribes, many generations ago, had united under the
+leadership of the great Ayonhwatha--"he who made the wampum belt."[2]
+They had adopted weaker tribes when they conquered them, exactly as,
+upon the marriage of a daughter, the father built an addition to his
+house for the newly wedded couple. The captives had picked up the Breton
+patois rather easily, but there was nothing in France which was at all
+like an Iroquois bark house, and they had to use the Indian word for it.
+Maclou, who had been studying the native language at odd times during
+the voyage, found that it had no b, f, m, or v, and on the other hand it
+had some noises which were not in any Breton, French or English words,
+though the Indian "n" was rather like the French "nque."
+
+Some fifteen leagues from the salt gulf the water became so fresh that
+Cartier finally gave up the idea that the channel he had entered might
+be a strait. It was still very wide, and if it really was a river it was
+the biggest he had ever seen. Three islands now appeared, opposite the
+mouth of a swift and deep river which came from the northern territory
+called Saghwenay. Cartier sailed up this river for some distance,
+finding high steep hills on both sides, and then continued up the great
+river to find the chief city of the wilderness empire, if it was an
+empire.
+
+No sign had been seen of Norumbega. Presently the keen expectant eye of
+Cartier caught sight of something which went far to shake his faith in
+that romantic citadel. It was a bold headland on the right, which would
+certainly have been chosen by any civilized king in Europe as a site for
+a fortress. Those mighty cliffs would almost make other defenses
+needless. Yet the heights were occupied by nothing more than a wooden
+village, which the interpreters called Stadacona, saying that their
+chief, Daghnacona, was its ruler. Shouts arose from the water's edge as
+some one among the excited Indians recognized on the deck of a great
+winged canoe their own lost countrymen. The interpreters answered with
+joyous whoops. A dozen canoes came paddling out, filled with young
+warriors, and a rapid interchange of guttural Indian talk went on
+between Pierre and Kadoc and their kinfolk. The enthusiasm rose to a
+still higher pitch when strings of beads of all colors were handed down
+to the Indians in the canoes, and presently Daghnacona himself appeared
+to welcome the white men to his country, with dignified Indian eloquence
+and an escort of twelve canoes. This was clearly a good place to stop
+and refit the ships. Cartier took his fleet into a little river not far
+away, and prepared to learn all he could of the country before going on.
+
+The information he got from Daghnacona was not encouraging. This was
+not, it appeared, the chief town of the country. That was many miles up
+the river, and was called Hochelaga. It would not be safe for the white
+men to go there. Their ships might be caught between ice-floes, and the
+falling snow would blind and bewilder them. Cartier glanced at the blue
+autumn sky and smiled. No one is quicker than an Indian to read faces.
+Daghnacona saw that the white chief intended to go, all the same.
+
+Cartier decided to leave the larger ships where they were, and proceed
+up the great river to Hochelaga with a forty-ton pinnace, two boats, and
+about fifty men. Early in the morning, before he was quite ready to
+start, a canoe came down stream, in which were three weird figures
+resembling the devils in a medieval miracle-play. Their faces were jet
+black, they were clothed in hairy skins, and on their heads were great
+horns. As they passed the ships they kept up a monotonous and appalling
+chant, and as their canoe touched the beach all three fell upon their
+faces. Indians, rushing out of the woods, dragged them into a thicket,
+and a great hubbub followed, not a word of which was understood by the
+white men, for the Indian interpreters were there with the rest.
+Presently the interpreters appeared on the beach yelling with fright.
+
+"Pierre! Kadoc!" the annoyed commander called from his quarter-deck,
+"what is all this hullabaloo about?"
+
+"News!" gasped Pierre. "News from Canghyenye! He says white men not come
+to Hochelaga!" And Kadoc chimed in eagerly, "Not go! Not go!"
+
+"Coudouagny?" Cartier repeated to Maclou, completely mystified. "Who can
+that be?"
+
+Further questioning drew out information which sounded as if Coudouagny,
+or Canyengye, were a tribal god. In reality this was the word for "elder
+brother." In that region it was applied to the Tekarihokens, the eldest
+of the five nations in the league of the Long House. They were afterward
+dubbed by their enemies the Mohawks or man-eaters, and the fear for the
+white men's safety which the interpreters expressed may very well have
+been quite genuine.
+
+But the Breton captain had not come across the Atlantic to give up his
+plans for fear of an Indian god, if it was a god, and his reply to the
+warning was to the effect that Coudouagny must be a numskull. More
+seriously he explained to the interpreters that although he had not
+himself spoken with the God of his people his priests had, and he fully
+trusted in the power of his God to protect him. The party set forth at
+the appointed time.
+
+In about two weeks they reached the greatest Indian town that any of
+them had ever seen. It was not the walled city of the Norumbega legend,
+but both Maclou and Cartier had ceased to expect anything of that kind.
+The Indian guides had said that the town was near, and all were dressed
+in their best. A thousand Indians, men, women and children, were on the
+shore to receive them, and the commander at the head of his little troop
+marched into Hochelaga to pay their respects to the chief.
+
+The Indian city was inhabited by several thousand people, living in
+wigwams about a hundred and fifty feet long by fifty wide, built of bark
+over a frame of wood, and arranged around a large open space. The whole
+was surrounded by a stockade of three rows of stakes twelve or fifteen
+feet high. The middle row was set straight, the other two rows five or
+six feet from it and inclining toward it like wigwam-poles. The three
+rows, meeting at the top, were lashed to a ridgepole. Half way down and
+again at the bottom cross-braces were fastened diagonally, making a
+strong wall. Around the inside, near the top, was a gallery reached by
+ladders, on which were piles of stones to be thrown at invaders. Instead
+of being square, or irregular with many angles and outstanding towers,
+like a French walled town, it was perfectly round.
+
+The interpreters afterward explained that each of the houses was
+occupied by several families, as the head of each house shared his
+shelter with his kinfolk. When a daughter was married she brought her
+husband home, as a rule, and her father added an apartment to his house
+by the simple device of taking out the end wall of bark and building on
+another section. Each household had its own stone hearth, the smoke
+escaping through openings in the roof. A common passage-way led through
+the middle of the house. On the sides were rows of bunks covered with
+furs. Weapons hung on the walls, and meat broth or messes of corn and
+beans simmered fragrantly in their kettles. Some of these long houses
+held fifty or sixty people each, and there were over fifty of them in
+all. In that climate, with warlike neighbors, the advantage of such an
+organized community over scattered single wigwams was very great. All
+around were cleared fields dotted with great yellow pumpkins, where corn
+and beans had grown during the past summer.
+
+To the sons of Norman and Breton peasants it was evident that these
+fields had not been cultivated for centuries, like those of France, any
+more than the wall around Hochelaga was the work of stone-masons toiling
+under generations of feudal lords. If this were the chief city of these
+people, they had no Norumbega. But it was very picturesque in its sylvan
+barbaric way, among the limitless forests of scarlet and gold and
+crimson and deep green, which stretched away over the mountains. Upon
+the rude cots in the wigwams as they passed, Cartier's men saw rich and
+glossy furs of the silver fox, the beaver, the mink and the marten,
+which princesses might be proud to wear. Curious bead-work there was
+also on the quivers, pouches, moccasins and belts of these wild people,
+done in white and purple shell beads made and polished by hand and not
+more than a quarter of an inch long and an eighth of an inch thick.
+These were sewn in patterns of animals, birds, fishes and other things
+not unlike the emblems of old families in France. Belts of these beads
+were worn by those who seemed to be the chief men of Hochelaga.
+Porcupine quills were also used in embroidery and head-bands.
+
+The people thronged into the open central space, which was about a
+stone's throw across, some carrying their sick, some their children,
+that the strangers might touch them for healing or for good fortune. The
+old chief, who was called Agouhana, was brought in, helpless from
+paralysis, upon a deerskin litter. When Cartier understood that his
+touch was supposed to have some mysterious magic he rubbed the old man's
+helpless limbs with his own hands, read from his service-book the first
+chapter of the Gospel of Saint John and other passages, and prayed that
+the people who listened might come to know the true faith. Then, after
+beads, rings, brooches and other little gifts had been distributed, the
+trumpets blew, and the white men took their leave. Before they returned
+to their boats the Indians guided them to the top of the hill which rose
+behind the town, from which the surrounding country could be seen.
+Cartier named it Montreal--the Royal Mountain.
+
+[Illustration: "CARTIER READ FROM HIS SERVICE-BOOK."--_Page_ 176]
+
+It was now the first week in October, and the rapids in the river above
+Hochelaga blocked further exploration with a sailing vessel. As for
+going on foot, that was out of the question with winter so near. The
+party returned to Stadacona and went into winter quarters. While they
+had been gone their comrades had built a palisaded fort beside the
+little river where the ships lay moored. They were hardly settled in
+this rude shelter before snow began to fall, and seemed as if it would
+go on forever, softly blanketing the earth with layer on layer of cold
+whiteness. It was waist-deep on the level; the river was frozen solid;
+the drifts were above the sides of the ships, and the ice was four
+inches thick on the bulwarks. The glittering armor of the ice incased
+masts, spars, ropes, and fringed every line of cordage with icicles of
+dazzling brightness. Never was such cold known in France. Maclou
+thought, whimsically, while his teeth chattered beside the fire, of a
+tale he had once told Marguerite of the palace of the Frost King. That
+fierce monarch, and not the guileless Indian chief, was the foe they
+would have to fight for this kingdom.
+
+Their provisions were those of any ship sent on a voyage into unknown
+lands in those days--dried and salted meat and fish, flour and meal to
+be made into cakes or porridge, dried pease, dried beans. For a time the
+Indians visited them, in the bitterest weather, but in December even
+this source of a game supply was cut off, for they came no more. The
+dreaded scurvy broke out, and before long there were hardly a dozen of
+the whole company able to care for the sick. Besides the general misery
+they were tormented by the fear that if the savages knew how feeble they
+were the camp might be attacked and destroyed. Cartier told those who
+had the strength, to beat with sticks on the sides of their bunks, so
+that prowling Indians might believe that the white men were busy at
+work.
+
+But the wild folk were both shrewder and more friendly than the French
+believed. Their medicine-men told Cartier one day that they cured scurvy
+by means of a drink made from the leaves and bark of an evergreen.
+Squaws presently came with a birch-bark kettle of this brew and it
+proved to have such virtues that the sick were cured of scurvy, and in
+some cases of other diseases which they had had for years. Cartier
+afterward wrote in his report that they boiled and drank within a week
+all the foliage of a tree, which the Indians called aneda or tree of
+life, as large as a full-grown oak.[3] Many had died before the remedy
+was learned, and when the weather allowed the fleet to sail for home,
+there were only men enough for two of the ships. The Indians had told of
+other lands where gold and rubies were found, of a nation somewhere in
+the interior, white like the French, of people with but one leg apiece.
+But as it was, the country was a great country, and well worth the
+attention of the King of France. Leaving the cross and the fleur-de-lis
+to mark the place of their discovery, the expedition sailed for France,
+and on July 16, 1536, anchored once more in the port of Saint Malo.
+
+"And there is no Norumbega really?" asked little Margot rather
+dolefully, when the story of the adventure had been told. "And your hair
+is all gray, here, on the side."
+
+"None the less I have gifts for thee, little queen, and such as no Queen
+of France hath in her treasury." Maclou's smile, though a trifle grave,
+had a singular charm as he opened his wallet. Margot nestled closer, her
+eyes bright with excitement.
+
+The first gift was a little pair of shoes of deer-skin dyed green and
+embroidered with pearly white beads on a ground of black and red French
+brocade. They had no heels and no heavy leather soles, and were lined
+with soft white fur; and they fitted the little maid's foot exactly.
+
+The second gift was a girdle of the same beads, purple and white, in a
+pattern of queer stiff sprays. "That," said Alain Maclou, "is the Tree
+of Life that cured us all of the sickness."
+
+The third was a cluster of long slender crystals set in a fragment of
+rock the color of a blush rose.[4]
+
+"'Tis a magic stone, sweetheart. Keep it in the sunshine on thy
+window-ledge, and when summer is over 't will be white as snow. Leave it
+in a snowbank, or in a cellar under wet moss, and 't will turn again to
+rose-color. This I have seen. In the winter nights the Frost King hangs
+his ice-diamonds on every twig and rope and eave, and when they shine in
+the red sunrise they look like these crystals. And I have seen all the
+sky from the zenith to the horizon at midnight full of leaping rose-red
+flames above such a world of ice. 'Tis very beautiful there, Reine
+Margot, and fit kingdom for a fairy queen."
+
+Marguerite turned the strange quartz rock about in her small hands with
+something like awe.
+
+"And the shoes are shoes of silence, for an Indian can go and come in
+them so softly that even a rabbit does not hear. They were made by a
+kind old squaw who would take no pay, and a young warrior gave me the
+wampum belt, and I found the stone one day while I was hunting in the
+forest, so that all three of thy gifts are really gifts from Norumbega."
+
+"I think--I'm rather glad it is not a real city," said Margot with a
+long breath. "It is more like fairyland, just as it is,--and the Frost
+King and the terrible sickness are the two ogres, and the good medicine
+man is a white wizard. It is a very beautiful kingdom, Alain, and I
+think you are the Prince in disguise!"
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Kanonghsionni was the name which the Iroquois gave themselves. It
+appears that at this time they occupied the country along the St.
+Lawrence held some centuries before by the Ojibways and later, in the
+time of Champlain, by the Hurons.
+
+[2] Hiawatha is generally said to have founded the league of the Five
+Nations. Although these nations were united against any attack from
+outside they were not always free from interior enmities and
+dissensions, and the Mohawks in particular were objects of the fear and
+dislike of their neighbors, as the significance of their sobriquet
+clearly shows.
+
+[3] Aneda is said to be the Iroquois word for spruce. When Champlain's
+men were attacked by scurvy in the same neighborhood half a century
+later, the Iroquois no longer lived there, and this remedy was not
+suggested.
+
+[4] Rose quartz has this property.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUSTANGS
+
+
+    Bred to the Game of the World as the Kings and the Emperors played it,
+      Fate and our masters hurled us over the terrible sea.
+    When the sails of the carracks were furled the Game was the Game that
+        we made it,--
+      We that were horses in Spain were gods in a realm to be!
+
+    Swift at the word we sped, we fought in the front of the battle,--
+      Ah, but the wild men fled when they heard us neigh from afar!
+    The field was littered with dead, cut down like slaughtered cattle
+     --Ah, but the earth is red where the Conquistadores are!
+
+    Now does the desert wake and croon of hidalgos coming--
+      Now for her children's sake she is whetting her sword to slay,
+    And the armored squadrons break, and our iron-shod hoofs are drumming
+      On the rocks of the mountain pass--we are free, we are off and away!
+
+    Hush--did a man's foot fall in the pasture where we go straying?
+      Listen--is that the call of a man aware of his right?
+    Hearken, my comrades all--once more the Game they are playing!
+      Masters, we come, we come, to be one with you in the fight!
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN
+
+
+"Cavalry without horses, in ships without sailors, built by blacksmiths
+without forges and carpenters without tools. Now who in Spain will
+believe that?" commented Cabeca de Vaca.
+
+It was the evening of the twenty-first of September, 1528. Five of the
+oddest looking boats ever launched on any sea were drawn up on the shore
+of La Baya de Cavallos, where not a horse was in sight, though there had
+been twoscore a fortnight ago. On the morrow the one-eyed commander of
+the Spaniards, Pamfilo de Narvaez, would marshal his ragamuffin
+expedition into those boats, in the hope of reaching Mexico by sea.
+
+"We shall tell of it when we are grandfathers--if the sea does not take
+us within a week," said Andres Dorantes with a sigh. "I think that God
+does not waste miracles on New Spain."
+
+"Miracles? It is nothing less than a miracle that this fleet was built,"
+said Cabeca de Vaca valiantly. And indeed he had some reason for saying
+so.
+
+Narvaez, with a grant from the King which covered all the territory
+between the Atlantic and the Rio de los Palmas in Mexico, had staked his
+entire private fortune on this venture. He had landed in Baya de le
+Cruz--now Tampa Bay--on the day before Easter. The Indians had some gold
+which they said came "from the north." Cabeca, who was treasurer of the
+expedition, strongly advised against proceeding through a totally
+unknown country on this very sketchy information. But Narvaez consulted
+the pilot, who said he knew of a harbor some distance to the west,
+ordered the ships to meet him there, and with forty horsemen and two
+hundred and sixty men on foot, struck boldly into the interior.
+
+It was an amazing country. It had magnificent forests and almost
+impassable swamps, gorgeous tropical flowers and black bogs infested
+with snakes, alligators and hostile Indians, game of every kind and
+dense jungles into which it retreated. There seemed to be no towns, no
+grain-land and no gold-bearing mountains. The persevering explorers
+crossed half a dozen large rivers and many small ones, wading when they
+could, building rafts or swimming when the water was deep. After between
+three and four months of this, half-starved, shaken with swamp fever,
+weary and bedraggled, they reached the first harbor they had found upon
+the coast they followed, but no ships were there. Whether the ships had
+been wrecked, or put in somewhere only to meet with destruction at the
+hands of the Indians, they never knew.
+
+Narvaez called his officers into consultation, one at a time, as to the
+best course to pursue in this desperate case. They had no provisions, a
+third of the men were sick and more were dropping from exhaustion every
+day, and all agreed that unless they could get away and reach Mexico
+while some of them could still work, there was very little chance that
+they would ever leave the place at all. But they had no tools, no
+workmen and no sailors, and nothing to eat while the ships were
+a-building, even if they knew how to build them. They gave it up for
+that night and prayed for direction.
+
+Next day one of the men proved to have been a carpenter, and another
+came to Cabeca de Vaca with a plan for making bellows of deerskin with a
+wooden frame and nozzle, so that a forge could be worked and whatever
+spare iron they had could be pounded into rude tools. The officers took
+heart. Cross-bows, stirrups, spurs, horse-furniture, reduced to
+scrap-iron, furnished axes, hammers, saws and nails. There was plenty of
+timber in the forests. Those not able to do hard work stripped palmetto
+leaves to use in the place of tow for calking and rigging. Every third
+day one of the horses was killed, the meat served out to the sick and
+the working party, the manes and tails saved to twist into rope with
+palmetto fiber, and the skin of the legs taken off whole and tanned for
+water bottles. At four different times a selected body of soldiers went
+out to get corn from the Indians, peaceably if possible, by force if
+necessary, and on this, with the horse-meat and sometimes fish or
+sea-food caught in the bay, the camp lived and toiled for sixteen
+desperate days. A Greek named Don Theodoro knew how to make pitch for
+the calking, from pine resin. For sails the men pieced together their
+shirts. Not the least wearisome part of their labor was stone-hunting,
+for there were almost no stones in the country, and they must have
+anchors. But at last the boats were finished, of twenty-two cubits in
+length, with oars of savin (fir), and fifty of the men had died from
+fever, hardship or Indian arrows. Each boat must carry between
+forty-five and fifty of those who remained, and this crowded them so
+that it was impossible to move about, and weighted them until the
+gunwales were hardly a hand's breadth above the water. It would have
+been madness to venture out to sea, and they crept along the coast,
+though they well knew that in following all the inlets of that marshy
+shore the length of the voyage would be multiplied several times over.
+When they had been out a week they captured five Indian canoes, and with
+the timbers of these added a few boards to the side of each galley. This
+made it possible to steer in something like a direct line toward Mexico.
+
+On October 30, about the time of vespers, Cabeca de Vaca, who happened
+to be in the lead, discovered the mouth of what seemed to be an immense
+river. There they anchored among islands. They found that the volume of
+water brought down by this river was so great that it freshened the
+sea-water even three miles out. They went up the river a little way to
+try to get fuel to parch their corn, half a handful of raw corn being
+the entire ration for a day. The current and a strong north wind,
+however, drove them back. When they sounded, a mile and a half from
+shore, a line of thirty fathoms found no bottom. After this Narvaez with
+three of the boats kept on along the shore, but the boat commanded by
+Castillo and Dorantes, and that of Cabeca de Vaca, stood out to sea
+before a fair east wind, rowing and sailing, for four days. They never
+again saw or heard of the remainder of the fleet.
+
+On November 5 the wind became a gale. All night the boats drifted, the
+men exhausted with toil, hunger and cold. Cabeca de Vaca and the
+shipmaster were the only men capable of handling an oar in their boat.
+Near morning they heard the tumbling of waves on a beach, and soon
+after, a tremendous wave struck the boat with a force that hurled her up
+on the beach and roused the men who seemed dead, so that they crept on
+hands and knees toward shelter in a ravine. Here some rain-water was
+found, a fire was made and they parched their corn, and here they were
+found by some Indians who brought them food. They still had some of
+their trading stores, from which they produced colored beads and
+hawk-bells. After resting and collecting provisions the indomitable
+Spaniards dug their boat out of the sand and made ready to go on with
+the voyage.
+
+They were but a little way from shore when a great wave struck the
+battered craft, and the cold having loosened their grip on the oars the
+boat was capsized and some of the crew drowned. The rest were driven
+ashore a second time and lost literally everything they had. Fortunately
+some live brands were left from their fire, and while they huddled about
+the blaze the Indians appeared and offered them hospitality. To some of
+the party this seemed suspicious. Were the Indians cannibals? Even when
+they were warmed and fed in a comfortable shelter nobody dared to sleep.
+
+But the Indians had no treacherous intentions whatever, and continued to
+share with the shipwrecked unfortunates their own scanty provision.
+Fever, hunger and despair, reduced the eighty men who had come ashore,
+to less than twenty. All but Cabeca and two others who were helpless
+from fever at last departed on the desperate adventure of trying to find
+their way overland to Mexico. One of the two left behind died and the
+other ran away in delirium, leaving Cabeca de Vaca alone, as the slave
+of the Indians.
+
+He discovered presently that he was of little use to them, for though he
+could have cut wood or carried water, this was squaws' work, and should
+a man be seen doing it every tradition of the tribe would be upset. He
+was of no use as a hunter, for he had not the hawk-like sight of an
+Indian or the Indian instinct for following a trail. He could dig out
+the wild roots they ate, which grew among canes and under water, but
+this was laborious and painful work, which made his hands bleed. With
+tools, or even metal with which to make them, he might have made himself
+the most useful member of the tribe, but as it was, he was even poorer
+than the wretched people among whom he lived, for they knew how to make
+the most of what was in the country, and he had no such training.
+
+The lonely Spaniard studied their language and customs diligently. He
+found that they made knives and arrows of shell, and clothing of woven
+fibers of grass and leaves, and deerskin. They went from one part of the
+country to another according to the food supply. In prickly pear time
+they went into the cactus region to gather the fruit, on which they
+mainly lived during the season. When pinon nuts were ripe they went into
+the mountains and gathered these, threshing them out of the cones to be
+eaten fresh, roasted, or ground into flour for cakes baked on flat
+stones. They had no dishes except baskets and gourd-rinds, and their
+houses were tent-poles covered with hides. When a squaw wished to roast
+a piece of meat she thrust a sharp stick through it. When she wished to
+boil it she filled a large calabash-rind with water, put in it the
+materials of her stew, and threw stones into the fire to heat. When very
+hot these stones were raked out with a loop of twisted green reed or
+willow-shoots and put into the water. When enough had been put in to
+make the water boil, it was kept boiling by changing the cooled stones
+for hotter ones until the meat was cooked.
+
+Many of the baskets made by the squaws were curiously decorated, and
+made of fine reed or fiber sewed in coils with very fine grass-thread,
+so that they were both light and strong. There were cone-shaped
+carrying-baskets borne on the back with a loop passed around the
+forehead; in these the squaws carried grain, fruit, nuts or occasionally
+babies. There were baskets for sifting grain and meal, and a sort of
+flask that would hold water. The materials were gathered from mountains,
+valleys and plains over a range of hundreds of miles--grasses here, bark
+fiber there, dyes in another place, maguey leaves in another, and for
+black figures in decoration the seed-pods called "cat's claws" or the
+stems of maiden-hair fern. A design was not copied exactly, but each
+worker made the pattern in the same general form and sometimes improved
+on it. There was a banded pattern in a diamond-shaped criss-cross almost
+exactly like the shaded markings on a rattlesnake-skin. The Indians
+believed in a goddess or Snake-Mother, who lived underground and knew
+about springs; and as water was the most important thing in that land of
+deserts, they showed respect to the Snake-Mother by baskets decorated in
+her honor. Another design showed a round center with four zigzag lines
+running to the border. This was intended for a lake with four streams
+flowing out of it, widening as they flowed; but it looked rather like a
+cross or a swastika. There was a design in zigzags to represent the
+lightning, and almost all the patterns had to do in some way with lakes,
+rivers, rain, or springs.
+
+As the exile of Spain began to know the country he sometimes ventured on
+journeys alone, without the tribe, to the north, away from the coast. In
+these wanderings he met with tribes whose language was not wholly
+strange, but whose customs and occupations were not exactly like those
+of his own Indians. Once he found a village of deerskin tents where the
+warriors were painting themselves with red clay, for a dance. He
+remembered that the squaws, when he came away some days before, were in
+great lamentation because they had no red paint for their baskets. He
+took out a handful of shells and found that these Indians were only too
+pleased to pay for them in red earth, deerskin, and tassels of deer hair
+dyed red. They would hardly let him go till he promised to come again
+and bring them more shells and shell beads. This suggested to him a way
+in which he might make himself of use and value.
+
+Longer and longer journeys he took, trading shells for new dyes, flint
+arrow-heads, strong basket-reeds, and hides and furs of all sorts,
+learning more and more of the country as he trafficked. Once he found
+families living in a house built of stone and mud bricks, in the crevice
+of a cliff, getting water from a little brook at the base of it, and
+raising corn and vegetables along the waterside. Their houses had no
+real doors. They had trap-doors in the roof, reached by a notched
+tree-trunk inside and one outside. The corn that grew in the little farm
+at the foot of the cliff was of different colors, red, yellow, blue and
+white. Each kind was put in a separate basket. Each kind of meal was
+made separately into thin cakes cooked on a very hot flat stone. A
+handful of the batter was slapped on with the fingers so deftly that
+though the cake was thin, crisp and even, the cook never burned herself.
+The people were always on their guard against roving bands of Indians
+who lived in tipis, or wigwams, and were likely to attack the
+cliff-dwellers at any moment.
+
+Cabeca de Vaca became interested in these wandering tribes, and moved
+north to see what they were like. He found them quite ready to trade
+with him and extremely curious about his wares. They had hides upon
+their tipis of a sort he had not seen before, not smooth, but covered
+with curly brown fur like a big dog's. It was some time before the
+Spanish trader made out what sort of animal wore such a skin, though he
+knew at first sight that it must be a very large one. Finally the old
+medicine man with whom he was talking began to make sketches on the
+inside of one of the great robes. The Spaniard in his turn made
+sketches, drawing a horse, a goat, a bear, a wolf, a bull. When he drew
+the bull the old Indian got excited. He declared that that was very like
+the animal they hunted, but that their bulls had great humped shoulders
+like this--he added a high curved line over the back. Cabeca came to the
+conclusion that it must be some sort of hunchbacked cow, but whatever it
+was, the curly furry hide was comforting on cold nights. The old Indian
+told him a few days after that some of the young men had just come in
+with news of a herd of these great animals moving along one of their
+trails, and if the white men cared to travel with them he could see them
+for himself.
+
+It did not take the trader long to make up his mind. He went with the
+Indians at the slow trot which covers so many miles in a day, and sooner
+than they had expected, they saw from a little rise in the ground a vast
+herd of slowly moving animals which at first the white man took for
+black cattle. But they were not cattle.
+
+There was the huge hump with the curly mane, and there were the short
+horns and slender, neat little legs which had seemed so out of
+proportion in the old Indian's sketch. From their point of view they
+could see the hunters cut out one animal and attack him with their
+arrows and lances without arousing the fears of the rest. The creatures
+moved quietly along, grazing and pawing now and then, darkening the
+plain almost as far as the eye could see. The trader spent several days
+with the tribe, and when he went south again he had a bundle of hides so
+large that he had to drag it on a kind of hurdle made of poles. He had
+helped the Indians decorate some of the hides they had, and whenever he
+did this he wrote his own name, the date, and a few words, somewhere on
+the skin.
+
+[Illustration: "THE CREATURES DARKENED THE PLAIN ALMOST AS FAR AS EYE
+COULD SEE."--_Page_ 191]
+
+"Why do you do this?" asked the medicine man, putting one long bronze
+finger on the strange marks.
+
+"It is a message," said Cabeca de Vaca. "If any of my own people see it
+they will know who made the pictures."
+
+The Indian looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"You are very clever," he said. "You ought to be a medicine-man."
+
+This put another idea into the exile's head. He had seen much of the
+medicine-men in his wanderings, and had studied their ways. Like most
+men of his day who traveled much, he had a rough-and-ready knowledge of
+medicine and surgery. He had sometimes been able to be of service to
+sick and wounded Indians, and whether it was their faith in him, or in
+the virtues of his treatment, his patients usually got well. In
+comparing notes they found that he often prayed and sang in his own
+language while watching with them. In the end he gained a great
+reputation as a sort of combined priest and doctor. He was not too proud
+to adopt some of the methods of the medicine-men when he found them
+effective, especially as regards herbs and other healing medicaments,
+used either in poultices or drinks. From being a poor slave and a burden
+to his masters, he became their great man.
+
+He had been for more than five years among the Indians when another
+tribe of Indians met with his tribe, perhaps drawn by the fame of the
+white medicine-man, and among their captives he recognized with joy
+three of his own comrades--Castillo, Dorantes, and a Barbary negro
+called Estevanico (Little Stephen). He told them of his experience, and
+found them glad to have him teach them whatever of the arts of the
+medicine-man he himself knew. After that, the four friends traveled more
+or less in company, and persuaded the Indians to go westward, where they
+thought that there might be a chance of meeting with some of their own
+people. They finally reached a point at which the Indians explained that
+they dared not go further, because the tribe which held the country
+further west was hostile.
+
+"Send to them," suggested Cabeca, "and tell them we are coming."
+
+After some argument the Indians sent two women, because women would not
+be harmed even in the enemy's country. Then the four comrades set out
+into the new land.
+
+Among them they knew six Indian dialects, and could talk with the people
+after a fashion, wherever they went. Even when two tribes were at war,
+they made a truce, so that they might trade and talk with the strangers.
+At last Castillo saw on the neck of an Indian the buckle of a
+sword-belt, and fastened to it like a pendant the nail of a horse-shoe.
+His heart leaped. He asked the Indian where he got the things. The
+Indian answered,
+
+"They came from heaven."
+
+"Who brought them?" asked Cabeca.
+
+"Men with beards like you," the Indian answered rather timidly, "seated
+on strange animals and carrying long lances. They killed two of our
+people with those lances, and the rest ran away."
+
+Then Cabeca knew that his countrymen must have passed that way. His
+feelings were a strange mixture of joy and grief.
+
+As they went on they came upon more traces of Spaniards, parties of
+slave-hunters from the south. Everywhere they themselves were well
+treated, even by people who were hiding in the mountains for fear of the
+Christians. When Cabeca told the Indians that he was himself a Christian
+they smiled and said nothing; but one night he heard them talking among
+themselves, not knowing that he could understand their talk.
+
+"He is lying, or he is mistaken," they said. "He and his friends come
+from the sunrise, and the Christians from the sunset; they heal the
+sick, the Christians kill the well ones; they wear only a little
+clothing, as we do, the Christians come on horses, with shining garments
+and long lances; these good men take our gifts only to help others who
+need them; the Christians come to rob us and never give any one
+anything."
+
+The next day Cabeca told the Indians that he wished to go back to his
+own people and tell them not to kill and enslave the natives. He
+explained to them that this wickedness was not in any way part of his
+religion, and that the founder of that religion never injured or
+despised the poor, but went about doing good. When he was sure that
+there were Spaniards not many miles away, he took Estevanico, leaving
+the other two Spaniards to rest their tired bones, and with an escort of
+eleven Indians went out to look for his countrymen.
+
+When he found them, they were greatly astonished. Their astonishment did
+not lessen when he told them how he came to be where he was. He sent
+Estevanico back to tell the rest of the party to come, and himself
+remained to talk with Diego de Alcaraz, the leader of the Spanish
+adventurers, and his three followers. They were slave-hunters, like the
+other Spaniards. When, five days afterward Estevanico, Castillo and
+Dorantes came on with an escort of several hundred Indians, all Cabeca's
+determination and diplomacy were taxed to keep the slavers from making a
+raid on the confiding natives then and there. To buy Alcaraz off cost
+nearly all the bows, pouches, finely dressed skins, and other native
+treasures he had gained by trading or received as gifts. In this
+collection were five arrowheads of emerald or something very like that
+stone. It was not in Cabeca de Vaca to break his word to people who
+trusted him. He had suffered every sort of privation; he had traveled
+more than ten thousand miles on foot in his six years among the Indians
+of the Southwest; now he had lost most of his profit from that long
+exile; but he went back to Spain with faith unbroken and honor clear as
+a white diamond.
+
+In May, 1536, he and his companions reached Culiacan in the territory of
+Spain. All the way to the City of Mexico they were feasted and welcomed
+as honored guests. The account which Cabeca de Vaca wrote of his travels
+was the first written description of the country now called Texas,
+Arizona and New Mexico.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+This story follows closely the "Relacion of Cabeca de Vaca." It
+illustrates the resourcefulness, bravery and ingenuity of Spanish
+cavaliers of the heroic age as hardly any other episode does.
+
+
+
+
+LONE BAYOU
+
+
+    De Soto was a gentleman of Spain
+      In those proud years when Spanish chivalry
+    From fierce adventure never did refrain,--
+      Ruler of argosies that ruled the sea,
+    She looked on lesser nations in disdain,
+      As born to trafficking or slavery.
+
+    In shining armor, and with shot and steel
+      Abundantly purveyed for their delight,
+    Banners before whose Cross the foe should kneel,
+      His company embarked--how great a light
+    Through men's perversity to stoop and reel
+      Down through calamity to endless night!
+
+    Yet unsubmissive, obdurately bold,
+      The savages refused to serve their need.
+    They would not guide the conquerors to their gold,
+      Nor though cast in the fire like a weed
+    Or driven by stern compulsion to the fold,
+      Would they abandon their unhallowed creed.
+
+    The forest folk in terror broke and fled
+      Like fish before the fierce pursuing pike.
+    The stubborn chiefs as hostages were led--
+      And in the wilderness, a grisly dyke
+    Of slaves and captives, lay the heathen dead,
+      And the black bayou claims all dead alike.
+
+    Then southward through the haunted bearded trees
+      The Spaniards fought their way--Mauila's fires
+    Devoured their vestments and their chalices,
+      Their sacramental wine and bread--the choirs
+    No longer sang their requiems, and the seas
+      Lay between them and all their sacred spires.
+
+    At last in a lone cabin, where the cane
+      Hid the black mire before the lowly door,
+    De Soto died--although they sought to feign
+      By some pretended magic mirror's lore
+    That still he lived, a gentleman of Spain,--
+      And the dread flood rolled onward to the shore!
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE FACE OF THE TERROR
+
+
+"Paris is no place in these times for a Huguenot lad from Navarre," said
+Dominic de Gourgues, of Mont-de-Marsan in Gascony. "His father, Francois
+Debre, did me good service in the Spanish Indies. One of these days,
+Philip and his bloodhounds will be pulled down by these young terriers
+they have orphaned."
+
+"If the Jesuits have their way all Huguenots will be exterminated, men,
+women and children," said Laudonniere, with a gleam of melancholy
+sarcasm in his dark pensive eyes. "Life to a Jesuit is quite simple."
+
+"My faith," said Gascon, twisting his mustache, "they may find in that
+case, that other people can be simple too. But I must be off. I thank
+you for making a place for Pierre."
+
+In consequence of this conversation, when Ribault's fleet anchored near
+the River of May, on June 25, 1564, Pierre Debre was hanging to the
+collars of two of Laudonniere's deerhounds and gazing in silent wonder
+at the strange and beautiful land.
+
+"The fairest, fruitfullest and pleasantest land in all the world," Jean
+Ribault had said in his report two years before to Coligny the Great
+Admiral of France. Live-oaks and cedars untouched for a thousand years
+were draped in luxuriant grape-vines or wreathed with the mossy gray
+festoons of "old men's beard." Cypress and pine mingled with the
+shining foliage of magnolia and palm. From the marsh arose on sudden
+startled wings multitudes of water-fowl. The dogs tugged and whined
+eagerly as if they knew that in these vast hunting-forests there was an
+abundance of game. In this rich land, thus far neglected by the Spanish
+conquistadores because it yielded neither gold nor silver, surely the
+Huguenots might find prosperity and peace. Coligny was a Huguenot and a
+powerful friend, and if the French Protestants now hunted into the
+mountains or driven to take refuge in England, could be transplanted to
+America, France might be spared the horrors of religious civil war.
+
+Pierre was thirteen and looked at least three years older. He could not
+remember when his people and their Huguenot neighbors had not lived in
+dread of prison, exile or death. When he was not more than ten years old
+he had guided their old pastor to safety in a mountain cave, and seen
+men die, singing, for their faith. After the death of his father and
+mother he had lived for awhile with his mother's people in Navarre, and
+since they were poor and bread was hard to come by he had run away the
+year before and found his way to Paris, where Dominic de Gourgues had
+found him. If the Huguenots had a safe home he might be able to repay
+the kindness of his cousins. Meanwhile the country, the wild creatures,
+the copper-colored people and the hard work of landing colonists and
+supplies were full of interest and excitement for Pierre.
+
+Satouriona, the Indian chief, showed the French officers the pillar
+which Ribault's party had set up on their previous visit to mark their
+discovery. The faithful savages had kept it wreathed with evergreens
+and decked with offerings of maize and fruits as if it were an altar.
+
+Unfortunately not all the colonists were of heroic mind. Most who had
+left France to seek their fortunes were merchants, craftsman and young
+Huguenot noblemen whose swords were uneasy in time of peace. French
+farm-laborers were mainly serfs on Catholic estates, and landowners did
+not wish to come to the New World. Thus the people of the settlement
+were city folk with little experience or inclination for cultivating the
+soil. The Indians grew tired of supplying the wants of so large a number
+of strangers. Quarrels arose among the French. A discontented group of
+adventurers mutinied and went off on a wild attempt at piracy. They
+plundered two ships in the Spanish Indies and were caught by the Spanish
+governor. The twenty-six who escaped his clutches fled back to the fort,
+which Laudonniere had built and named Carolina. His faithful lieutenant
+La Caille arrested them and dragged them to judgment. "Say what you
+will," said one of the culprits ruefully, "if Laudonniere does not hang
+us I will never call him an honest man." The four leaders were promptly
+sentenced to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to shooting. After
+that order reigned, for a time.
+
+Some of the tradesmen ranged the wilderness, bringing back feather
+mantles, arrows tipped with gold, curiously wrought quivers of beautiful
+fur, wedges of a green stone like beryl. There were reports of a gold
+mine somewhere in the northern mountains. Ribault did not return with
+the expected supplies, the Indians had mostly left the neighborhood, and
+misery and starvation followed, for the game, like the Indians fled the
+presence of the white men. The Governor began to think of crowding the
+survivors into the two little ships he had and returning to France.
+
+Matters were in this unsatisfactory state when Captain John Hawkins in
+his great seven-hundred-ton ship the _Jesus_, with three smaller ones,
+the _Solomon_, the _Tiger_ and the _Swallow_, put in at the River of May
+for a supply of fresh water. He gave them provisions, and offered
+readily to take them back to France on his way to England, but this
+offer Laudonniere declined.
+
+"Monsieur Hawkins is a good fellow," he observed dryly to La Caille,
+"and I am grateful to him, but that is no reason why I should abandon
+this land to his Queen, and that is what he is hoping that I may do."
+
+Others were not so long-sighted. The soldiers and hired workmen raised a
+howl of wrath and disappointment when they heard that they were not to
+sail with Hawkins, and openly threatened to desert and sail without
+leave. Laudonniere answered this threat by the cool statement that he
+had bought one of the English ships, the _Tiger_, with provisions for
+the voyage, and that if they would have a little patience they might
+soon sail for France in their own fleet. Somewhat taken aback they
+ceased their clamor and awaited a favoring wind. Before it came, Ribault
+came sailing back with seven ships, plenty of supplies, and three
+hundred new colonists.
+
+The fleet approached as cautiously as if it were coming to attack the
+colony instead of relieving it, and Laudonniere, who saw many of his
+friends among the new arrivals, presently learned that his enemies among
+the colonists had written to Coligny describing him as arrogant and
+cruel and charging that he was about to set up an independent monarchy
+of his own. The Admiral, three thousand miles away, had decided to ask
+the Governor to resign. Ribault advised him to stay and fight it out,
+but Laudonniere was sick and disheartened. Life was certainly far from
+simple when to use authority was to be accused of treason, and not to
+use it was to foster piracy, and he had had enough of governing colonies
+in remote jungles of the New World. He was going home.
+
+To most of the colonists, however, Ribault's arrival promised an end of
+all their troubles. Stores were landed, tents were pitched, and the
+women and children were bestowed in the most comfortable quarters which
+could be found for them just then. To his great satisfaction Pierre
+found among the arrivals his cousin Barbe and her husband, a carpenter,
+and her three children, Marie, Suzanne and little Rene. The two young
+girls regarded Cousin Pierre as a hero, especially when they learned
+that the bearskin on the floor of their palmetto hut had but a few
+months ago been the coat of a live black bear. It had been caught
+feasting in the maize-fields of the Indians, by their cousin and another
+youth, and shot with a crossbow bolt by Pierre. They thought the roast
+corn and stewed clams of their first meal ashore the most delicious food
+they had ever tasted, and the three-cornered enclosure in the forest
+with the wilderness all about it, the most wonderful place they had
+seen.
+
+Little did these innocent folk imagine what was brewing in Spain. The
+raid of French pirates upon the Jamaican coast had promptly been
+reported by the Adelantado of that island. Spanish spies at the French
+court had carefully noted the movements of Coligny and Ribault. Pedro
+Menendez de Avila, raising money and men in his native province of
+Asturia in Spain for the conquest of all Florida, learned with horror
+and indignation that its virgin soil had already been polluted by
+heretic Frenchmen.
+
+Menendez had in that very year gained permission from the King of Spain
+to conquer and convert this land at his own cost. In return he was to
+have free trade with the whole Spanish empire, and the title of
+Adelantado or governor of Florida for life--absolute power over all of
+America north of Mexico, for Spain had never recognized any right of
+France or England in the region discovered by Cabot, Cartier, Verrazzano
+or others. Menendez was allowed three years for his tremendous task. He
+was to take with him five hundred men and as many slaves, a suitable
+supply of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and provisions, and sixteen
+priests, four of whom were to be Jesuits. He had also to find ships to
+convey this great expedition.
+
+But Menendez had been playing for big stakes all his life. He was only
+ten years old when he ran away and went to sea on a Barbary pirate ship.
+While yet a lad he was captain of a ship of his own, fighting pirates
+and French privateers. He had served in the West Indies and he had
+commanded fleets. King Philip had never really understood the enormous
+possibilities of Florida until Menendez explained them to him. The soil
+was fertile, the climate good, there might be valuable mines, and there
+were above all countless heathen whom it was the deepest desire of
+Menendez to convert to the true faith. In this last statement he was as
+sincere as he was in the others. He expected to do in Florida what
+Cortes had done in Mexico. Now heresy, the unpardonable sin, burned out
+and stamped out in Spain, had appeared in the province which he had
+bound himself at the cost of a million ducats to make Spanish and
+Catholic. With furious energy he pushed on the work of preparation.
+
+He had assembled in June, 1565, a fleet of thirty-four ships and a force
+of twenty-six hundred men. Arciniega, another commander, was to join him
+with fifteen hundred. On June 29 he sailed from Cadiz in the _San
+Pelayo_, a galleon of nearly a thousand tons, a leviathan for those
+days. Ten other ships accompanied him; the rest of the fleet would
+follow later. It was the plan of Menendez to wipe out the garrison at
+Fort Caroline before Ribault could get there, plant a colony there and
+one on the Chesapeake, to control the northern fisheries for Spain
+alone. On the way a Caribbean tempest scattered the ships and only five
+met at Hispaniola, but Menendez did not wait for the rest. When he
+reached the Florida coast he sent a captain ashore with twenty men to
+find out exactly where on that long, lonely shore line the French colony
+had squatted.
+
+About half past eleven on the night of September 4, the watchman on one
+of the French ships anchored off shore saw the huge _San Pelayo_, the
+Spanish banner lifting sluggishly in the slow wind, coming up from the
+south. Ribault was in the fort, so were most of the troops, and three of
+the ships were anchored inside the bar. The strange fleet came steadily
+nearer, the great flagship moved to windward of Ribault's flagship the
+_Trinity_, and dropped anchor. The others did likewise. Not a word was
+spoken by friend or foe. The Spanish chaplain Mendoza afterward wrote:
+
+"Never since I came into the world did I know such a stillness."
+
+A trumpet sounded on the _San Pelayo_. A trumpet sounded on the
+_Trinity_. Menendez spoke, politely.
+
+[Illustration: "'GENTLEMEN, WHENCE DOES THIS FLEET COME?'"--_Page_ 204]
+
+"Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?"
+
+"From France."
+
+"What is it doing here?"
+
+"Bringing soldiers and supplies to a fort of the King of France in this
+country--where he soon will have many more," flung back the Breton
+captain defiantly.
+
+"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"
+
+This time a score of clear voices reinforced the
+Captain's--"Lutherans--Huguenots--the Reformed Faith--The Religion!" And
+the Captain added, "Who are you yourself?"
+
+"I am Pedro Menendez de Avila, General of the fleet of the King of
+Spain, Don Felipe the Second, who come hither to hang and behead all
+Lutherans whom I find by land or sea, according to instructions from his
+Majesty, which leave me no discretion. These commands I shall obey, as
+you will presently see. At daybreak I shall board your ships. If I find
+there any Catholic he shall be well treated. But every heretic shall
+die."
+
+The reply to the rolling sonorous ultimatum was a shout of derision.
+
+"Ah, if you are a brave man, don't put it off till daylight! Come on now
+and see what you will get!"
+
+Menendez in black fury snapped out a command. Cables were slipped, and
+the towering black hulk of the _San Pelayo_ bore down toward the
+_Trinity_. But the Breton captain was already leading the little fleet
+out of danger, and with all sail set, went out to sea, answering the
+Spanish fire with tart promptness. In the morning Menendez gave up the
+chase and came back to find armed men drawn up on the beach, and all
+the guns of the ships inside the bar pointed in his direction. He
+steered southward and found three ships already unloading in a harbor
+which he named San Augustin and proceeded to fortify.
+
+In Fort Caroline, Pierre Debre, awakened by the sound of firing, ran
+down to the beach, where a crowd was gathering. No one could see
+anything but the flashes of the guns; who or what was attacking the
+ships there was no way of knowing. The first light of dawn showed the
+two fleets far out at sea, and Ribault at once ordered the drums to beat
+"To arms!" They saw the great galleon approach, hover about awhile, and
+bear away south. When the French fleet came back later, one of the
+captains, Cosette, reported that trusting in the speed of his ship he
+had followed the Spaniards to the harbor where they were now landing and
+entrenching themselves.
+
+The terror which haunted the future of every Huguenot in France now
+menaced the New World.
+
+Ribault gave his counsel for an immediate attack by sea, before Menendez
+completed his defense or received reinforcements. Laudonniere was ill in
+bed. The fleet sailed as soon as it could be made ready, and with it
+nearly every able fighting man in the settlement. Pierre, nearly crying
+with wrath and disappointment, was left among the non-combatants at the
+fort. In vain did old Challeux the carpenter try to console him. It
+might be, as Challeux said, that there would be plenty of chances to
+fight after his beard was grown, but now he was missing everything.
+
+That night a terrible storm arose and continued for days. The marshes
+became a boundless sea; the forests were whipped like weeds in the wind.
+Where had the fleet found refuge? or had it been hurled to destruction
+by the rage of wind and sea? Laudonniere, in the driving rain, came from
+his sick-bed to direct the work on the defenses, which were broken down
+in three or four places. Besides the four dog-boys, the cook, the
+brewer, an old cross-bow maker, and the old carpenter, there were two
+shoemakers, a musician, four valets, fourscore camp-followers who did
+not know the use of arms, and the crowd of women and children. The sole
+consolation that could be found in their plight was that in such a storm
+no enemy would be likely to attack them by sea or land. Nevertheless
+Laudonniere divided his force into two watches with an officer for each,
+gave them lanterns and an hour glass for going the rounds, and himself,
+weak with fever, spent each night in the guard-room.
+
+On the night of the nineteenth the tempest became a deluge. The officer
+of the night took pity on the drenched and gasping sentries and
+dismissed them. But on that night five hundred Spaniards were coming
+from San Augustin through almost impassable swamps, their provisions
+spoiled and their powder soaked, under the leadership of the pitiless
+Menendez. The storm had caught Ribault's fleet just as it was about to
+attack on the eleventh, and Menendez had determined to take a force of
+Spaniards overland and attack the fort while its defenders were away.
+With twenty Vizcayan axemen to clear the way and two Indians and a
+renegade Frenchman, Francois Jean, for a guide, he had bullied,
+threatened and exhorted them through eight days of wading through mud
+waist-deep, creeping around quagmires and pushing by main force through
+palmetto jungles, until two hours before daylight the panting,
+shivering, sullen men stood cursing the country and their commander,
+under their breath, in a pine wood less than a mile from Fort Caroline.
+It was all that Menendez could do to get them to go a rod further. All
+night, he said, he had prayed for help; their provisions and ammunition
+were gone; there was nothing to do but to go on and take the fort. They
+went on.
+
+In the faint light of early morning a trumpeter saw them racing down the
+slope toward the fort and blew the alarm. "Santiago! Santiago!" sounded
+in the ears of the half-awakened French as the Spaniards came through
+the gaps in the defenses and over the ramparts. Fierce faces and
+stabbing pikes were everywhere. Laudonniere snatched sword and buckler,
+rallied his men to the point of greatest danger, fought desperately
+until there was no more hope, and with a single soldier of his guard
+escaped into the woods. Challeux, chisel in hand, on his way to his
+work, swung himself over the palisade and ran like a boy. In the edge of
+the forest he and a few other fugitives paused and looked down upon the
+enclosure of the fort. It was a butchery. Some of the Huguenots in the
+woods decided to return and surrender rather than risk the terrors of
+the wilderness. The Spaniards, they said, were at least men. Six of them
+did return, and were cut down as they came. Pierre Debre side by side
+with a few desperate men who had one of the two light cannon the fort
+possessed, was fighting like a tiger in defense of a corner where a
+group of women and children were crouching.
+
+When Menendez could secure the attention of his maddened men he gave an
+order that women, children and boys under fifteen should be spared. This
+order and the instant's pause it gave came just as the last of the men
+in Pierre's corner went down before the halberds of the Spaniards.
+Pierre leaped the palisade and ran for the forest. Looking back, he saw
+the trembling women and children herded into shelter, but not killed.
+Fifteen of the captured Huguenots were presently hanged; a hundred and
+forty-two had been cut down and lay heaped together on the river bank.
+Pierre plunged into the forest and after days of wandering reached a
+friendly Indian village. The carpenter and the other fugitives who
+escaped were taken to France in the two small ships of Ribault's fleet
+which had not gone to attack the Spanish settlement. Menendez returned
+at leisure to San Augustin, where he knelt and thanked the Lord.
+
+The fate of the men of Ribault's fleet became known through the letters
+which the Spaniards themselves wrote in course of time to their friends
+at home, but chiefly through Menendez's own report to the King. Dominic
+de Gourgues heard of it from Coligny, and his eyes burned with the still
+anger of a naturally impetuous man who has learned in stern schools how
+to keep his temper.
+
+"As I understand it," he said grimly and quietly, "Menendez, in the
+disguise of a sailor, found Ribault and his men shipwrecked and
+starving, some in one place, some in another. He promised them food and
+safety on condition that they should surrender and give up their arms
+and armor. He separated them into lots of ten, each guarded by twenty
+Spaniards. When each lot had been led out of sight of the rest he
+explained that on account of their great numbers and the fewness of his
+own followers he should be compelled to tie their hands before taking
+them into camp, for fear they might capture the camp. At the end of the
+day, when all had reached a certain line which Menendez marked out with
+his cane in the sand, he gave the word to his murderers to butcher
+them."
+
+Coligny bowed his noble gray head.
+
+"And he offered them life if they would renounce their religion,
+whereupon Ribault repeating in French the psalm, 'Lord, remember thou
+me,' they died without other supplication to God or man. On this account
+did Menendez write above the heads of those whom he hanged, 'I do this
+not as to Frenchmen but as to Lutherans.' And no demand for redress has
+as yet been made?"
+
+"One," said the Admiral coolly. "A demand was made by Philip of Spain.
+He has required his brother of France to punish one Gaspe Coligny,
+sometimes known as Admiral, for sending out a Huguenot colony to settle
+in Florida."
+
+The Gascon sprang to his feet muttering something between his teeth. "I
+crave your pardon, my lord," he added with a courteous bow. "I am but a
+plain rough soldier unused to the ways of courts, but it seems to me
+that things being as they are, my duty is quite simple." He bowed
+himself out and left Coligny wondering.
+
+During the following months it was noted that in choosing the men for
+his coming expedition Gourgues appeared to be unusually select. He sold
+his inheritance, borrowed some money of his brother, and fitted out
+three small ships carrying both sails and oars. He enlisted, one by one,
+about a hundred arquebusiers and eighty sailors who could fight either
+by land or sea if necessary. He secured a commission from the King to
+go slave-raiding in Benin, on the coast of Africa. On August 22, 1567,
+he set sail from the mouth of the Charente.
+
+"I should like to know," said one of the trumpeters, Lucas Moreau,
+"whether we are really going slave-catching, or not."
+
+"Why do you think we are not?" asked the pilot, to whom he spoke.
+
+"Because I have seen nothing on board that looks like it. Moreover, he
+was very particular to ask me if I had been in the Spanish Indies, and
+when he heard that I had been in Florida he took me on at once. I was
+out there, you know, when you were, two years ago."
+
+"And you would like to go back?" asked the other, gruffly.
+
+"If there were a chance of killing Menendez, yes," answered Moreau with
+a fierce flash of white teeth.
+
+The trumpeter's guess was a shrewd one. When the tiny fleet reached the
+West Indies, the commander took his men into his confidence and revealed
+the true object of his voyage--to avenge the massacre at Fort Caroline.
+The result proved that he had not misjudged them. Fired by his spirit
+they became so eager that they wanted to push on at once instead of
+waiting for moonlight to pass the dangerous Bahama Channel. They came
+through it without mishap, and at daybreak were anchored at the mouth of
+a river about fifteen leagues north of Fort Caroline. In the growing
+light an Indian army in war paint and feathers, bristling with weapons,
+could be seen waiting on the shore.
+
+"They may think we are Spaniards," said Dominic de Gourgues. "Moreau,
+if you think they will understand you, it might be well for you to speak
+to them."
+
+No sooner had the trumpeter come near enough in a small boat for the
+Indians to recognize him, than yells of joy were heard, for the war
+party was headed by Satouriona himself, who well remembered him. When
+Moreau explained that the French had returned with presents for their
+good friends there was great rejoicing. A council was appointed for the
+next day.
+
+In the morning Satouriona's runners had scoured the country, and the
+woods were full of Indians. The white men landed in military order, and
+in token of friendliness laid aside their arquebuses, and the Indians
+came in without their bows and arrows. Satouriona met Gourgues with
+every sign of friendliness, and seated him at his side upon a wooden
+stool covered with the gray "Spanish moss" that curtained all the trees.
+In the clearing the chiefs and warriors stood or sat around them, ring
+within ring of plumed crests fierce faces and watchful eyes. Satouriona
+described the cruelty of the Spaniards, their abuse of the Indians and
+the miseries of their rule, saying finally,
+
+"A French boy fled to us after the fort was taken, and we adopted him.
+The Spaniards wished to get him to kill him, but we would not give him
+up, for we love the French." He waved his hand, and from the woods at
+one side came, in full Indian costume, bronzed and athletic, Pierre
+Debre.
+
+Greatly as he was surprised and delighted, Gourgues dared not show it
+too plainly, and Pierre had grown almost as self-contained as a veteran
+of twice his years. When the French commander suggested fighting the
+Spaniards Satouriona leaped for joy. He and his warriors asked only to
+be allowed to join in that foray.
+
+"How soon?" asked Gourgues. Satouriona could have his people ready in
+three days.
+
+"Be secret," the Gascon cautioned, "for the enemy must not feel the wind
+of the blow." Satouriona assured him that there was no need of that
+warning, for the Indians hated the Spaniards worse than the French did.
+
+"Pierre," said Gourgues, when he had the lad safe on board ship, "they
+said you were killed."
+
+"I stayed alive to fight Spaniards," said the boy with a flash of the
+eye. "'Sieur Dominic, there are four hundred of them behind their walls,
+where they rebuilt our fort. I have hidden in the trees and counted. But
+you can trust Satouriona. The Spaniards have stolen women, enslaved and
+tortured men, and killed children, and the tribe is mad with hate."
+
+Twenty sailors were left to guard the ships, Gourgues with a hundred and
+sixty Frenchmen took up their march along the seashore; their Indian
+allies slipped around through the forest. With the French went
+Olotoraca, the nephew of the chief, a young brave of distinguished
+reputation, a French pike in his hand. The French met their allies not
+far from the fort, and pounced upon the garrison just as it finished
+dinner, Olotoraca being the first man up the glacis and over the
+unfinished moat. The fort across the river began to cannonade the
+attacking party, who turned four captured guns upon them, and then
+crossed, the French in a large boat which had been brought up the river,
+the Indians swimming. Not one Spaniard escaped. Fifteen were kept alive,
+to be hanged on the very trees from which Menendez had hanged his French
+captives, and over them was set an inscription burned with a hot poker
+on a pine board:
+
+"Not as to Spaniards, but as to Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers."
+
+When not one stone was left upon another in either fort, Dominic de
+Gourgues bade farewell to his Indian allies, and taking with him the lad
+so strangely saved from death and exile, went back to France.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The full history of this dramatic episode is to be found in Parkman's
+"The Pioneers of France in the New World."
+
+
+
+
+THE DESTROYERS
+
+
+    The moon herself doth sail the air
+      As we do sail the sea,
+    Where by Saint Michael's Mount we fare
+      Free as the winds are free.
+    Our keels are bright with elfin gold
+      That mocks the tyrant's gaze,
+    That slips from out his greedy hold
+      And leaves him in amaze.
+
+    White water creaming past her prow
+      The little _Golden Hynde_
+    Bears westward with her treasure now--
+      We'd ship and follow blind,
+    But that he never did require--
+      Our Captain hath us bound
+    Only by force of his desire--
+      The quarry hunts the hound!
+
+    The hunt is up, the hunt is up
+      To the gray Atlantic's bound,--
+    The health of the Queen in a golden cup!--
+      The quarry is hunting the hound!
+    Like steel the stars gleam through the night
+      On armored waves beneath,--
+    As England's honor cold and bright
+      We bear her sword in sheath!
+
+    When that great Empire dies away
+      And none recall her place,
+    Men shall remember our work to-day
+      And tell of our Captain's grace,--
+    How never a woman or child was the worse
+      Wherever our foe we found,
+    Nor their own priests had cause to curse
+      The quarry that hunted the hound!
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE FLEECE OF GOLD
+
+
+White fog, the thick mist of windless marshes, masked the Kentish coast.
+The Medway at flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one maze
+of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays. Nothing was visible an
+oar's length overside but shifting cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely
+in the fog. But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as master
+of his own ship, he knew these waters as he knew the palm of his hand.
+His old captain, dying a bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten
+cargo-ship as reward for his "diligence and fidelity", and at sixteen he
+was captain where six years before he had been ship's-boy.
+
+Scores of daring projects went Catherine-wheeling through his mind as he
+steered seaward through the white enchanted world. In 1561 Spain was the
+bogy of English seaports, most of whose folk were Protestants. There was
+no knowing how long the coast-wise trade would be allowed to go on.
+
+Out of the white mist flashed a whiter face, etched with black brows and
+lashes and a pointed silky beard--the face of a man all in black, whose
+body rose and dipped with the waves among the marsh grass of an eyot. So
+lightly was it held that it might have slipped off in the wake of the
+boat had not Tom Moone the carpenter caught it with a boat-hook. But
+when they had the man on board they found that he was not dead.
+
+Ten minutes before, the young captain would have said that every dead
+Spaniard was so much to the good, but he had the life-saving instinct of
+a Newfoundland dog. He set about reviving the rescued man without
+thinking twice on the subject.
+
+"'T is unlucky," grumbled Will Harvest under his breath. "Take a
+drownded man from the sea and she get one of us--some time."
+
+"Like enough," agreed his master blithely. "But this one's not
+drownded--knocked on the head and robbed, I guess. D'you think we might
+take him to Granny Toothacre's, Tom?"
+
+"I reckon so," returned Tom with a wide grin, "seein' 't is you. If I
+was the one to ask her I'd as lief do it with a brass kittle on my head.
+She don't like furriners."
+
+Drake laughed and brought his craft alongside an old wharf near which an
+ancient farm-house stood, half-hidden by a huge pollard willow. Here,
+when he had seen his guest bestowed in a chamber whose one window looked
+out over the marshes, he stayed to watch with him that night, sending
+the ship on to Chatham in charge of the mate.
+
+"Now what's the lad up to?" queried Will as they caught the ebbing tide.
+"D'ye think he'll find out anything, tending that there Spanisher?"
+
+"Not him. He don't worm secrets out o' nobody. But he's got his reasons,
+I make no doubt. You go teach a duck to swim--and leave Frankie alone,"
+said Moone.
+
+The youth did not analyze the impulse that kept him at the bedside of
+the injured man, but he felt that he desired to know more of him. The
+stranger was gaunt, gray and without jewel, gold chain or signet ring
+to show who he was, but it was the same man who had spoken to him at
+Gravesend five years ago.
+
+A barge-load of London folk had come down to see the launching of the
+_Serchthrift_, the new pinnace of the Muscovy Company, and among them
+was the venerable Sebastian Cabot. Alms were freely distributed that the
+spectators might pray for a fortunate voyage, but Frankie Drake was
+gazing with all his eyes at the veteran navigator. A hand was laid on
+his shoulder, and a friendly voice inquired,
+
+"Did you get your share of the plunder, my son?"
+
+The lad shook his head a trifle impatiently. "I be no beggar," he
+answered. "I be a ship's boy."
+
+"Ay," said the man, "and you seek not the Golden Fleece?"
+
+His eyes laughed, and his long fingers played with a strange jewel that
+glowed like Mars in the midnight of his breast. It was of gold enamel,
+with a splendid ruby in the center, and hanging from it a tiny golden
+ram. Could he mean that? But the crowd surged between them and left the
+boy wondering. He had never spoken to a Spaniard before.
+
+As the fluttering pulse grew stronger and the man roused from his
+stupor, disjointed phrases of sinister meaning fell from his lips. No
+names were used, and much of his talk was in Spanish, but it suggested a
+foul undercurrent of bribery, falsehood and conspiracy hidden by the
+bright magnificence of the young Queen's court. The queer fact seemed to
+be that the speaker appeared himself to be the victim of some Spanish
+plot. Now why should that be, and he a Spaniard?
+
+The young captain turned from the window, into which through the
+clearing air the moon was shining, to find the stranger looking at him
+with sane though troubled eyes.
+
+"The _Golden Fleece_?" he asked in English. Drake shook his head.
+
+"You've had a bad hurt, sir," he said, and briefly explained the
+circumstances.
+
+"Ah," said the man frowning, and was silent.
+
+"If you would wish to send any word to your friends,--" Drake began, and
+hesitated.
+
+"I have no friends here, save my servant Sancho. The _Golden Fleece_
+will sail on Saint James's Eve for Coruna, and he was to meet me at
+Dover and return with me to our own country. In Alcala they know what to
+expect of a Saavedra."
+
+The last words were spoken with a proud assurance that gave the listener
+a tingling sense of something high and indomitable. Saavedra's dark eyes
+were searching his face.
+
+"I fear I trespass on your kindness," he added courteously, "and that I
+have talked some nonsense before I came to myself."
+
+"Nothing of any account, sir," answered the lad quickly. "Mostly it was
+Spanish--and I don't know much o' that. You'll miss your ship if she
+sails so soon, but you're welcome here so long as you like to stay."
+
+"I thank you," said the Spaniard in a relieved tone, adding half to
+himself, "No friends--but one cannot break faith--even with an enemy."
+
+He dropped asleep almost at once after swallowing the cordial which
+Drake held to his lips. The moon came up over the flooded meadows that
+were all silvery lights and black shadow like a fairy realm. The lad
+had never spent a night like this, even when he had seen his master
+die.
+
+When the pearl and rose of a July morning overspread the sky he
+descended, to splash and spatter and souse his rough brown head in a
+bucket of fresh-drawn water, and wheedle the old dame into a good humor.
+
+"What ye hate and fear's bound to come to ye, sooner or later," Granny
+Toothacre grumbled as she stirred her savory broth, "My old man said so
+and I never beleft it--here be I at my time o' life harborin' a
+Spanisher."
+
+"Ah, now, mother,"--Drake laid a brown hand coaxingly on her old
+withered one,--"you'll take good care of him for me, and we'll share the
+ransom."
+
+"Ransom," the old woman muttered, looking after the straight, sturdy
+young figure as it strode down to the wharf, "not much hope o' that. Not
+but what he's a grand gentleman," she admitted, turning the contents of
+her saucepan into her best porringer. "He don't give me a rough word no
+more than if I was a lady."
+
+Drake spent all his leisure during the next fortnight with the Spaniard,
+whose recovery was slow but steady. It was tacitly understood that the
+less said of the incident which had left him stunned and half-drowned
+the better. If those who had sought to kill him knew him to be alive,
+they might try again.
+
+The young seaman had never known a man like this before. In his guest's
+casual talk of his young days one could see as in a mirror the Spain of
+a half-century since, with its audacious daring, its extravagant
+chivalry and its bulldog ferocity.
+
+"They have outgrown us altogether, these young fellows," he said once
+with his quaint half-melancholy smile. "When the King and Queen rode in
+armor at the head of their troops in Granada, our cavaliers dreamed of
+conquering the world--now it has all been conquered."
+
+"Not England," Drake put in quickly.
+
+"Not England--I beg your pardon, my friend. But we have grown heavy with
+gold in these days--and gold makes cowards."
+
+"It never made a coward o' me," laughed the lad. "Belike it'll never
+have the chance."
+
+Through the shadows the old ship's-lantern cast in the rude
+half-timbered room seemed to move the wild figures of that marvellous
+pageant of conquest which began in 1492. Saavedra spoke little of
+himself but much of others--Ojeda, Nicuesa, Balboa, Cortes, Alvarado,
+Pizarro. In his soft slow speech they lived again, while by the stars
+outside, unknown uncharted realms revealed themselves. This man used
+words as a master mariner would use compass and astrolabe.
+
+"Those days when we followed Balboa in his quest for the South Sea," he
+ended, "were worth it all. Gold is nothing if it blinds a man to the
+heavens. You too, my son, may seek the Golden Fleece in good time. May
+the high planets fortify you!"
+
+What room was left for a knight-errant in the Spain of to-day, ruling by
+steel and shot and flame and gold? It must be rather awful, the listener
+reflected, to see your own country go rotten like that in a generation.
+Yet there was no bitterness in the old hidalgo's tranquil eyes. "I have
+been a fool," he said smiling, "but somehow I do not regret it. The
+wound from a poisoned arrow can be seared with red-hot iron, but for the
+creeping poison of the soul--the loss of honor--there is no cure."
+
+When the seamen came to get orders from their young captain, Saavedra
+observed with surprise the lad's clear knowledge of his own trade.
+Francis Drake's old master had seen King Henry's shipwrights discarding
+time-honored models to build for speed, speed and more speed. He had
+seen Fletcher of Rye, in 1539, prove to all the Channel that a ship
+could sail against the wind. All that he knew he had taught his young
+apprentice, and now the boy was free to use it for his own
+work--whatever that should be. Unlike the gilded and perfumed courtiers,
+these men of the sea showed little respect toward the tall ships of
+Spain. Saavedra, pleased that they spoke without reserve in his
+presence, watched the rugged straightforward faces, and wondered.
+
+The time came when they took him and his stocky, silent old servant to
+board a Vizcayan boat. As they caught his last quick smile and farewell
+gesture Will Harvest heaved a rueful sigh. "I never thought to be
+sorrowful at parting with a Don," he said reflectively, "but I be."
+
+"God made men afore the Devil made Dons," growled Tom Moone. "Yon's a
+man."
+
+Drake had gone down the wharf with John Hawkins of Plymouth, a town that
+was warmly defiant of Spain's armed monopoly of sea-trade. Privateers
+were dodging about the trade-routes where Spanish and Portuguese
+galleons, laden with ingots of gold and silver, dyewoods, pearls,
+spices, silks and priceless merchandise, moved as menacing sea-castles.
+Huger and huger galleasses were built, masted and timbered with mighty
+trunks from the virgin forests of the Old World, four and five feet
+thick. The military discipline of the Continent made a warship a
+floating barrack; the decks of a Spanish man-of-war were packed with
+drilled troops like marching engines of destruction, dealing leaden
+death from arquebus and musquetoun. The little ships of Cabot,
+Willoughby and William Hawkins had not exceeded fifty, sixty, at most a
+hundred tons; Philip's leviathans outweighed them more than ten to one.
+What could England do against the landing of such an army? An English
+Admiral would be Jack the Giant-Killer with no magic at his command. Yet
+in the face of all this, under the very noses of the Spanish patrol,
+Protestant craftsmen were escaping from the Inquisition in the
+Netherlands to England, where Elizabeth had contrived to let it be known
+that they were quite welcome.
+
+To a perfectly innocent and lawful coasting trade Drake and his crew now
+added this hazardous passenger service. They were braving imprisonment,
+torture and the stake, for in 1562 no less than twenty-six Englishmen
+were burned alive in Spain, and ten times as many lay in prison. Before
+Drake was twenty all Spanish ports were closed to English trade. He sold
+his ship and joined Hawkins in his more or less contraband trade with
+the West Indies.
+
+With every year of adventure upon the high seas his hatred of the
+tyranny of Spain deepened and strengthened. Yet though Spanish ferocity
+might soak the world in blood, he would not have his men tainted with
+the evil inheritance of the idolaters. It came to be known that El
+Draque did not kill prisoners. His crews fought like demons, but they
+slew no unarmed man, they molested no woman or child. On these terms
+only would he accept allies. Tons of plunder he took, but never a
+helpless life. He landed the shivering crews of his prizes on some
+Spanish island or with a laugh returned to them their empty ships. "A
+dead man's no mortal use to anybody," he would say cheerily, and go on
+using his cock-boats to sink or capture galleys. At twenty-seven,
+beholding for the first time the shining Pacific, he vowed that with
+God's help he would sail an English ship on that sea. Alone upon the
+platform built in a great tree with steps cut in its trunk, to which his
+negro allies the Maroons had guided him, he conceived the sublimely
+audacious plan which he was one day to unfold to Walsingham and the
+Queen.
+
+The air was thick with rumors of war with Spain when Drake arrived in
+London years later, in the company of a new friend, Thomas
+Doughty,--courtier, soldier, scholar, familiar with every shifting
+undercurrent of European court life. Never at a loss for a phrase, ready
+of wit and quick of understanding, Doughty could put into words what the
+frank-hearted young sea-captain had thought and felt and dreamed. Both
+knew the peace with Philip to be only deceptive. Walsingham and
+Leicester were for war; Burleigh for peace; between the two the subtle
+Queen played fast and loose with her powerful enemy.
+
+Drake avowed to Doughty his belief that to strike effectively at the
+gigantic power of Spain, England must raid the colonies--not the West
+Indies alone, but the rich western provinces of Peru and Chili. No one
+had been south of Patagonia since its discovery, sixty years before.
+Geographers still held that beyond the Straits of Magellan a huge
+Antarctic continent existed. From that unknown region of darkness and
+tempest came the great heaving ground-swell, the tidal wave and the
+hurricane. Even Spanish pilots never used the perilous southern route.
+Treasure went overland across the Isthmus. Every year an elephantine
+treasure-ship sailed from Panama westward through the South Sea; and
+there was a rich trade between the American mines and the Orient and the
+Spanish peninsula, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Doughty's
+imagination was fired by the gorgeous possibilities of the idea, and
+when he became the secretary of Christopher Hatton, the Queen's handsome
+Captain of the Guard, he laid the plan before him with all the eloquence
+of his persuasive tongue. Hatton finally obtained from Elizabeth a
+promise to contribute a thousand crowns to the cost of an expedition to
+penetrate the South Seas. This, however, was only on condition that the
+affair should be kept secret, above all from Burleigh, who was certain
+to use every effort to stop it. She had already, in a private audience
+with Drake, been informed of the main features and even the details of
+the scheme, and had assured him that when the time was ripe he should be
+chosen to avenge the long series of injuries which Philip had inflicted
+upon England's honor and her own.
+
+When in mid-November, 1577, Drake ran out of Plymouth with his tiny
+fleet, he had with him all told one hundred and fifty seamen and
+fourteen boys, enlisted for a voyage to Alexandria, although it was
+pretty well known that this was a blind. His flagship, the _Pelican_,
+afterward re-christened the _Golden Hynde_ for Hatton's coat-of-arms,
+was a hundred-ton ship carrying eighteen guns. The _Marygold_, a barque
+of thirty tons and fifteen guns, and the _Swan_, a provision ship of
+fifty tons, were commanded by two of the gentlemen volunteers, Mr. John
+Thomas and Mr. John Chester. Captain John Wynter commanded the
+_Elizabeth_, a new eighty-ton ship, and a fifteen-ton pinnace called
+the _Christopher_ in honor of Hatton, was commanded by Tom Moore. Thomas
+Doughty was commander of the land-soldiers, and his brother John was
+enlisted among the gentlemen adventurers.
+
+All of Drake's experience and sagacity had gone to the fitting out of
+the ships. There were less than fifty men on board besides the regular
+crews, and among them were special artisans, two trained surveyors,
+skilled musicians furnished with excellent instruments, and the
+adventurous sons of some of the best families in England. As page the
+Admiral had his own nephew, Jack Drake. There were stores of wild-fire,
+chain-shot, arquebuses, pistols, bows, and other weapons. The Queen
+herself had sent packets of perfume breathing of rich gardens, and
+Drake's table furniture was of silver gilt, engraved with his arms; even
+some of the cooking utensils were of silver. Nothing was spared which
+became the dignity of England, her Admiral and her Queen. On calm nights
+the sea was alive with music. And on board the little flagship Doughty
+and Drake talked together as those do whose minds answer one another
+like voices in a roundelay.
+
+Men who have time and again run their heads into the jaws of death are
+often inclined to fatalism. Drake had never expressed it in words, but
+he had a feeling that whatever he was meant to do, God would see that he
+did, so long as he gave himself wholly to the work. One evening when the
+Southern Cross was lifting above the darkling sea, and the violins were
+crooning something with a weird burden to it, Doughty mused aloud.
+
+"'T is the strangest thing in life, that whatever we are most averse to,
+that we are fated to do."
+
+"Eh?" said Drake with a laugh, looking up from Eden's translation of
+Pigafetts. "Accordin' to that you can't even trust yourself. D'you look
+to see me set up an image to be worshiped?" Then he added in a lower
+tone, "That's foolish, Tom. God don't shape us to be puppets."
+
+"That sounds like old Saavedra," was Doughty's idle comment. "He had
+great store of antiquated sentiments--like those in the chronicles of
+the paladins. I knew his nephew well--a witty fellow, but visionary. He
+laughed at the old cavalero, but he was fond of him, and our affections
+rule us and ruin us. A man should have no loves nor hates if he would
+get on at court."
+
+Sheer surprise kept the other silent for the moment, and Doughty went
+on,--
+
+"The old man had been in Mexico with Cortes, and might have risen to
+Adelantado in some South American province if he had not been too
+scrupulous to join Pizarro. He was in London, ten or fifteen years
+before I knew him, and I believe he was the destruction of a
+well-considered Spanish plot for the assassination of Her Majesty Queen
+Elizabeth--the assassins nearly killed him. He was left for dead and was
+picked up by some sailors."
+
+"He was in luck." Drake's eyes twinkled.
+
+"They would have been luckier--if they had let the Spanish agents in
+London know they had him. He paid them well of course, but he gave them
+credit for the most exalted motives. All his geese were swans."
+
+"Maybe they acted out o' pure decency," Drake said dryly.
+
+"My Admiral, this is not Utopia." Doughty stroked his beard with a light
+complacent hand. "Seriously, it is not a kindness to expect of men
+without traditions more than they are capable of doing. 'E meglio
+cade dalle fenestre che del tetto.'" (It is better to fall from the
+window than from the roof.)
+
+Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard with the blade
+inlaid with gold and the great ruby in the top of the hilt, which lay on
+the table between them. The shipmaster came in just then with some
+question, and the conversation dropped.
+
+[Illustration: "DRAKE WAS SILENT, FINGERING THE SLENDER MILANESE
+PONIARD."--_Page_ 227]
+
+It was not often that Francis Drake attempted to analyze the character
+and behavior of those about him. Mostly he judged men by a shrewd
+instinct; but that night he lay long awake, watching the witch-lights
+upon the waves from the dancing lanterns. He was acute enough to see
+that Doughty had hit slyly at him over Saavedra's shoulders. Doughty had
+not liked it that Moone should be raised to the rank of captain; he had
+already shown that he regarded himself as second only to Drake in
+command, and the champion of the gentlemen as distinct from the
+mariners. The second officer of every English ship was a practical
+shipmaster whose authority held in all matters concerning navigation.
+The soldiers and their officers were passengers. This was unavoidable in
+view of the new method of English sea-fighting, which depended quite as
+much on the skill of the seamen as on the armed and trained soldier.
+English gunners could give the foe a broadside and slip away before
+their huge adversary could turn. Drake now had two factions to deal
+with, and he bent his brows and set his jaw as he pondered the
+situation. If discord arose, the gentlemen would have to come to order.
+There was no room here for old ideas of caste. Any man too good to haul
+on a rope might go to--Spain.
+
+Doughty had a way of taking it for granted that Drake and he, as
+gentlemen, shared thoughts and feelings not to be comprehended by common
+men. On land this had not seemed offensive, but on blue water, with the
+old sea-chanteys in his ears, in the intimate association of a long
+voyage, Drake found himself resenting it. What was there about the man
+that made his arguments so plausible when one heard them, so false when
+his engaging presence was withdrawn? And yet how devoted, how
+sympathetic, how witty and companionable he could be! Drake found
+himself excusing his friend as if he were a woman,--laughed, sighed, and
+went to sleep.
+
+Presently he began to hear of John Doughty's amusing himself by reading
+palms and playing on the superstitions of the sailors with strange
+prophecies, in which his brother sometimes joined. Drake summoned the
+two to a brief interview in which Thomas Doughty learned that his friend
+on land, frank, boyish and unassuming, was a different person from the
+Admiral of the Fleet. Yet as this impression faded, the brothers
+perversely went on encouraging discord between the gentlemen adventurers
+and the sailors, and foretelling events with sinister aptness.
+
+It grew colder and colder. It should be summer,--but as they crept
+southward they encountered cold and wind beyond that of the North Sea in
+January. The nights grew long; the battering of the gales never ceased;
+the ships lost sight of one another. It was whispered that not only had
+the uncanny brothers foretold the evil weather, but Thomas Doughty had
+boasted of having brought it about. "We'll ha' no luck till we get rid
+of our prophet," said blunt Tom Moone, "and the Lord don't provide no
+whales for the likes o' he."
+
+Drake warned his comrade with an ominous quiet. "Doughty," he said, "if
+you value your neck you keep your reading and writing to what a common
+man can understand--you and your brother. A man can't always prophesy
+for himself, let alone other folk."
+
+"You heard what he said," commented Wynter grimly when the Admiral was
+in his cabin behind closed doors. "Better not raise the devil unless you
+know for sure what he'll do. There's been one gallows planted on this
+coast."
+
+"Sneck up!" laughed Doughty, "he would not dare hang a gentleman!" but
+he felt a creeping chill at the back of his neck.
+
+On the desolate island where the stump of Magellan's gallows stood black
+against a crimson dawn, they landed and the tragedy of estrangement and
+suspicion ended. Thomas Doughty was tried for mutiny and treason before
+a jury of his peers. Every man there held him a traitor, yet he was
+acquitted for lack of evidence. Thus encouraged, Doughty boldly declared
+that they should all smart for this when Burleigh heard of it. What he
+had done to hinder the voyage, he averred, was by Burleigh's orders, for
+before they sailed he had gone to that wily statesman and told him the
+entire scheme.
+
+In a flash of merciless revelation Drake saw the truth. He left Doughty
+to await the verdict, called the companies down to the shore, and there
+told them the story of the expedition from first to last, not
+overlooking the secret orders of the Queen.
+
+"This man was my friend," he said with a break in his voice such as they
+had not heard save at the suffering of a child. "I would not take his
+life,--but if he be worthy of death, I pray you hold up your hands."
+
+There was a breathless instant when none stirred; then every hand was
+raised.
+
+On the next day but one they all sat down to a last feast on that bleak
+and lonely shore; the two comrades drank to each other for the last
+time, shared the sacrament, and embracing, said their farewells. Doughty
+proved that if he could not live a true man he could die like a
+gentleman; the headsman did his work, and Drake pronounced the solemn
+sentence, "Lo! this is the death of traitors!"
+
+In that black hour the boyish laughter went forever from the eyes of the
+Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice. When after a while young
+Jack Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between them, began
+some phrase of blundering boyish affection, the sentence trailed off
+into a stammer.
+
+"He's dead and at peace, Jack," the master said, the words dropping
+wearily, like spent bullets. "He couldn't help being as he was,--I
+reckon. If I'd known he was like that I could ha' stopped him, but I
+never knew--till too late."
+
+Discord among the crews continued, until Drake, rousing from his fitful
+melancholy, called them all together on a Sunday, and mounted to the
+place of the chaplain.
+
+"I am going to preach to-day," he said shortly. Then he unfolded a paper
+and began to read it aloud.
+
+"My masters, I am a very bad orator, for my bringing up hath not been in
+learning; but what I shall speak here let every man take good notice of
+and let him write it down. For I will speak nothing but what I will
+answer it in England, yea, and before Her Majesty." He reminded them of
+the great adventure before them and went on.
+
+"Now by the life of God this mutiny and dissension must cease. Here is
+such controversy between the gentlemen and the sailors that it doth make
+me mad to hear it. I must have the gentleman to haul with the mariner
+and the mariner with the gentleman. I would know him that would refuse
+to set his hand to a rope--but I know there is not any such here.
+
+"Any who desire to go home may go in the _Marygold_, but let them take
+care that they do go home, for if I find them in my way I will sink
+them."
+
+Then beginning with Wynter he reduced every officer to the ranks
+forthwith, reprimanded known offenders, and wound up with this appeal:
+
+"We have set by the ears three mighty sovereigns, and if this voyage
+have not success we shall be a scorning unto our enemies and a blot on
+our country forever. What triumph would it not be for Spain and
+Portugal! The like of this would never more be tried!" Then he gave
+every man his former rank and dismissed them. Moone, meeting Will
+Harvest that night by the light of a bonfire, was the only man who dared
+venture a comment. "We was spoilin' for a lickin'," he said, "and we got
+it. I do hope and trust we'll keep out o' mischief till Frankie gets us
+home to Plymouth, Hol'." Will grinned back cheerfully, and there was a
+subdued laugh from the group about the fire. The fleet was itself again.
+
+Adventure after adventure succeeded, wilder than minstrel ever sang. The
+_Marygold_ went down with all hands; Wynter in the _Elizabeth_,
+believing the Admiral lost, turned homeward; the _Christopher_ and the
+_Swan_ had already been broken up. All alone the little _Golden Hynde_,
+blown southward, sailed around Cape Horn and proved the Antarctic
+continent a myth. Then Drake steered northward after more than two
+month's tossing on the uncharted seas, to revictual his ship in Spanish
+ports, fill his hold with the rich cargoes of one prize ship after
+another, and capture at last the great annual treasure-ship _Nuestra
+Senora de la Concepcion_, nicknamed the _Spitfire_ because she was
+better armed than most of the ships plying on that coast. As they
+ballasted the _Golden Hynde_ with silver from her huge hulk the jesting
+seamen dubbed her the _Spit-silver_. The little flagship was literally
+brimful of silver bars, ingots of gold, pieces of eight, and jewels
+whose value has never been accurately known. The Spanish Adelantados,
+accustomed to trust in their remoteness for defense, frantically looked
+for Drake everywhere except where he was. Warships hung about the
+Patagonian coast to catch him on his way home--surely he could not stay
+at sea forever!
+
+But Drake had other plans. Navigators were still searching for the
+northern passage, the Straits of Anian, and he coasted northward until
+his men were half paralyzed with cold and the creeping chill of the fog.
+From the latitude of Vancouver he turned south again, and put into a
+natural harbor not far from the present San Francisco, which he named
+New Albion because of the white cliffs like the chalk downs of England.
+Here he landed and made camp to refit and repair his flagship. He had
+captured on one prize, two China pilots in whose possession were all the
+secret charts of the Pacific trade.
+
+Indians ventured down from the mountains to the little fort and
+dockyard, wondering and admiring. Parson Fletcher presently came to the
+Admiral with the extraordinary news that they were worshiping the
+English as gods. Horror and laughter contended among the Puritans when
+they found themselves set up as idols of the heathen, and the chaplain
+endeavored by signs to teach the simple savages that the God whom all
+men should worship was invisible in the heavens.
+
+"'T only shows," remarked Moone, with a nail in one corner of his mouth,
+after vehemently dissuading a persistent adorer, "that a man never knows
+what he'll come to. Granny Toothacre used to say that if there's a thing
+you fight against all your life it'll come to you sooner or later."
+
+"So she did," said Drake with a grim smile as he passed. "Takes a woman
+to tell a fortune, after all."
+
+"D'you ever hear what become of the old Don we picked up that time?"
+Moone asked in a lowered voice.
+
+"Not since he sent Frankie the dagger with the gold work and the jewel.
+Why?"
+
+"'Cause the pilot o' the _Spit-silver_ he knowed un. He say the plague
+broke out in the Low Countries, and the old Don took and tended that
+Gallego servant o' his and then he died--not o' the pestilence--just
+wore out like. I reckon maybe he told Mus' Drake. I didn't."
+
+Silence fell. Then Will said thoughtfully, "He won't be Mus' Drake much
+longer--by rights--but you never know what a woman'll do. She keep her
+presents and her favors for them that ha'n't earned 'em--as a rule."
+
+Moone presently hummed half aloud,
+
+    "When I served my master I got my Sunday pudden,
+      When I served the Company I got my bread and cheese.
+    When I served the Queen I got hanged for a pirate,
+      All along o'sailin' on the Carib Seas!"
+
+It was a reckless jest, for every one knew that if Elizabeth were dead
+or married to a Catholic or at peace with Spain when they saw England
+again, it was extremely likely that the gallows would be their reward.
+But here, at any rate, was one spot not yet haunted by the Spanish
+spectre.
+
+The Indians, persuaded at last that the white chief was not a god,
+insisted on making him their King. They crowned him with a headdress of
+brilliant feathers, in all due ceremony, hung a chain of beads about his
+neck, and looked on with the utmost reverence while Drake fixed to a
+large upright post a tablet claiming the land for the Queen of England,
+and a silver sixpence with the portrait of Elizabeth and the Tudor rose.
+Securely hidden under the tablet in a hollow of the wood were memoranda
+concerning the direction in which, according to the Indians, gold was to
+be found in the streams,--plenty of gold. When she was ready to the last
+rope's end the little ship spread her wings and sailed straight across
+the Pacific, round the Cape of Good Hope, home to England.
+
+Battered and scarred but still seaworthy the _Golden Hynde_ crept into
+Plymouth Sound, where Drake heard that the plague was in the seaport.
+Using this for excuse not to land until he knew his footing, he anchored
+behind Saint Nicholas Island and sent letters to Court.
+
+The sea-dogs who patrolled the Narrow Seas in Elizabeth's time
+understood her better than her courtiers did. To Drake she was still the
+keen-minded woman who, like the jeweled silent birds he had seen in
+tropical jungles, sat in her palace, with enemies all about her alert
+and observant, and ready to seize her if she came within their grasp. He
+knew her waywardness to be half assumed, since to let an enemy know
+what he can count on is fatal. He had not much doubt of her action, but
+he must wait for her to give him his cue.
+
+Within a week came her answer. She demurely suggested that she should be
+pleased to see any curiosities which her good Captain had brought home.
+Drake went up to London, and with him a pack train laden with the cream
+of his spoil. The Spanish Ambassador Mendoza came with furious letters
+from Philip demanding the pirate's head. A Spanish force landed that
+very week in Ireland. Burleigh and the peace party were desperate. All
+that Mendoza could get out of Elizabeth was an order to Edmund Tremayne
+at Plymouth to register the cargo of the _Golden Hynde_ and send it up
+to London that she might see how much the pirate had really taken. At
+the same time Drake himself went down with her private letter to
+Tremayne telling him to look another way while her captain got his share
+of the bullion. Meanwhile she suggested that Philip call his Spaniards
+out of Ireland. Philip snarled that they were private volunteers.
+Elizabeth replied, so was Drake. An inquiry was held, and not a single
+act of cruelty or destruction of property could be proved against any of
+Drake's crews. The men were richly rewarded by their Admiral; the
+_Golden Hynde_ came up to Deptford; a list of the plunder was returned
+to Mendoza; and London waited, excited and curious.
+
+Out of this diplomatic tangle Elizabeth took her own way, as she usually
+did. On April 4, 1581, she suggested to Drake that she would be his
+guest at a banquet on board the little, worm-eaten ship. All the court
+was there, and a multitude of on-lookers besides, for those were the
+days when royalty sometimes dined in public. After the banquet, the
+like of which, as Mendoza wrote his master, had not been seen in England
+since the time of her father, Elizabeth requested Drake to hand her the
+sword she had given him before he left England. "The King of Spain
+demands the head of Captain Drake," she said with a little laugh, "and
+here am I to strike it off." As Drake knelt at her command she handed
+the sword to Marchaumont, the envoy of her French suitor, asking that
+since she was a woman and not trained to the use of weapons, he should
+give the accolade. This open defiance of Philip thus involved in her
+action the second Catholic power of Europe before all the world. Then,
+as Marchaumont gave the three strokes appointed the Queen spoke out
+clearly, while men thrilled with sudden presage of great days to come,--
+
+"Rise up,--Sir Francis Drake!"
+
+
+
+
+A WATCH-DOG OF ENGLAND
+
+
+    Where the Russian Bear stirs blindly in the leash of a mailed hand,
+    Bright in the frozen sunshine, the domes of Moscow stand,
+
+    Scarlet and blue and crimson, blazing across the snow
+    As they did in the Days of Terror, three hundred years ago.
+
+    Courtiers bending before him, envoys from near and far,
+    Sat in his Hall of Audience Ivan the Terrible Tsar,
+
+    (He of the knout and torture, poison and sword and flame)
+    Yet unafraid before him the English envoy came.
+
+    And he was Sir Jeremy Bowes, born of that golden time
+    When in the soil of Conquest blossomed the flower of Rhyme.
+
+    Dauntless he fronted the Presence,--and the courtiers whispered low,
+    "Doth Elizabeth send us madmen, to tempt the torture so?"
+
+    "Have you heard of that foolhardy Frenchman?" Ivan the Terrible said,--
+    "He came before me covered,--I nailed his hat to his head."
+
+    Then spoke Sir Jeremy Bowes, "I serve the Virgin Queen,--
+    Little is she accustomed to vail her face, I ween.
+
+    "She is Elizabeth Tudor, mighty to bless or to ban,
+    Nor doth her envoy give over at the bidding of any man!
+
+    "Call to your Cossacks and hangmen,--do with me what ye please,
+    But ye shall answer to England when the news flies over seas."
+
+    Ivan smiled on the envoy,--the courtiers saw that smile,
+    Glancing one at the other, holding their breath the while.
+
+    Then spoke the terrible Ivan, "His Queen sits over sea,
+    Yet he hath bid me defiance,--would ye do as much for me?"
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+LORDS OF ROANOKE
+
+
+Primrose garlands in Coombe Wood shone with the pale gold of winter
+sunshine. Violets among dry leaves peered sedately at the pageant of
+spring. In the royal hunting forest of Richmond, venerable trees
+unfolded from their tiny buds canopies like the fairy pavilion of
+Paribanou.
+
+Philip Armadas and Arthur Barlowe, coming up from Kingston, beheld all
+this April beauty with the wistful pleasure of those who bid farewell to
+a dearly beloved land. Within a fortnight Sir Walter Ralegh's two ships,
+which they commanded, would be out upon the gray Atlantic. The Queen
+would lie at Richmond this night, and the two young captains had been
+bidden to court that she might see what manner of men they were.[1]
+
+Armadas, though born in Hull, was the son of a Huguenot refugee. Barlowe
+was English to the back-bone. Both knew more of the ways of ships than
+the ways of courts. Yet for all her magnificence and her tempers
+Elizabeth had a way with her in dealing with practical men. She welcomed
+merchants, builders, captains and soldiers as frankly as she did Italian
+scholars or French gallants. Her attention was as keen when she was
+framing a letter to the Grand Turk securing trade privileges to London
+or Bristol, as when she listened to the graceful flatteries of Spenser
+or Lyly. In this year 1584 she had granted a patent to Ralegh for
+further explorations of the lands north of Florida discovered half a
+century since by Sebastian Cabot. She heaped upon it rights and
+privileges which made Hatton and her other court gallants grind their
+teeth. Ralegh knew well that this was no time for him to be wandering
+about strange coasts. He was therefore fitting out an expedition to make
+a preliminary voyage and report to him what was found.
+
+"'T is like this," Armadas was saying with the buoyant confidence which
+endeared him alike to his patron and his comrade. "North you get the
+scurvy and south the fever, but midway is the climate for a new empire.
+There Englishmen may have timber for their shipyards, and pasture for
+their sheep and cattle, and meadows for their corn. There Flemings and
+Huguenots may live and work in peace. Our sons may be lords and princes
+of a new world, Arthur lad."
+
+"Aye; but there's the Inquisition in the Indies to reckon with,"
+answered Barlowe with his grim half-smile. "And if what we hear of the
+barbarians be true, the men who make the first plantation may be forced
+to plant and build with their left hand and keep their right for
+fighting."
+
+"Oh, the barbarians,--" Armadas began, and paused, for the chatter of
+young voices broke forth in a copse.
+
+"I tell thee salvages be hairy men with tails like monkeys. My uncle he
+has seen them on the Guinea coast."
+
+"Dick, if thou keep not off my heels in the passamezzo--"
+
+"Be not so cholerical, Tom Poope, or the Master'll give thee a tuning.
+Thou'rt not Lord of the Indies yet."
+
+"Faith," chuckled Barlowe, "here be some little eyasses practising a
+fantasy for the Queen's pleasure. Hey, lads, what's all the pother
+about?"[2]
+
+The company emerged half-shamefacedly from the shrubbery, a group of
+youngsters between ten and fourteen, in fanciful costumes of silk and
+brocade, or mimic armor and puffed doublets. The central figure of the
+group was a handsome little lad in a sort of tunic of hairy undressed
+goatskin, a feather head-dress and gilded ornaments. His dark face had a
+sullen look, and he grasped his lance as if about to use it. Another
+urchin, whose great arched eyebrows, rolling eyes and impish mouth
+marked him as the clown of the company, made answer boldly,
+
+"'T is Tom Poope, your lordships, who mislikes the dress he must wear,
+and says if we have but a king and queen of the monkeys to welcome the
+discoverers, the Queen will only laugh at us, and 'a will not stay to be
+laughed at. 'T is a masque of the ventures of Captain Cabot, look you,
+and Tom's the King of the salvages and makes all the long speeches."
+
+"Upon my word, coz," laughed Armadas, "I think we have stumbled upon a
+pretty conceit intended to do honor to our master. Methinks His Royal
+Highness here has the right on't--the man who made that costume never
+saw true Indians."
+
+"Have you seen them, then, sir? Are you a voyager?" asked Tom Poope
+eagerly, his face brightening. "And will you look on and tell us if we
+do it right?"
+
+Barlowe grinned good-humoredly, and Armadas waved a laughing assent.
+They seated themselves upon a grassy bank and the play began.
+
+Before half a dozen speeches had been said it was quite clear that the
+dark-eyed child who played the Indian King was the heart and fire of the
+piece. They were all clever children and well trained, but he alone
+lived his part. His small figure moved with a grace and dignity that
+even his grotesque apparel could not spoil. The costumer had evidently
+built his design for the costume of an Indian chief upon legends of wild
+men drawn from the history of Hanno and his gorillas, adding whatever
+absurdities he had gathered from sailors of the Gold Coast and the
+Caribbean Sea. Armadas, who had made a voyage to Newfoundland and seen
+the stately figure of a sachem outlined against a sunset sky, thought
+that the boy's instinct was truer than the costumer's tradition.
+
+"Let me arrange thy habit, lad," he said when the first scene ended and
+the clown began his dance. With a few deft touches, ripping down one
+side of the tunic and wreathing a girdle of ivy and bracken, he changed
+the whole outline of the figure. With the hairy tunic draped as a cloak,
+and the ungainly plumed head-dress arranged as a warrior's crest, the
+character which had been almost ridiculous became heroic, as the author
+of the masque evidently had intended. The little King's beautiful voice
+changed like the singing of a Cremona violin as he spoke his lines to
+the white stranger:
+
+    "To this our wild domain we welcome thee
+    In honorable hospitality.
+    If Thou dost come as the great Lord of Life,
+    The Lord of bear and wolf, and stag and fox,
+    Leopard and ape, and rabbits of the rocks,
+    We are thy children, as our brothers are,--
+    The furry folk of forest fastnesses,
+    The bright-winged birds that wanton with the breeze,
+    The seal that sport amid the sapphire seas.
+    We worship gods of lightning and of thunder,
+    Of winds and hissing waves, the rainbow's wonder,
+    The fruits and grains, borne by the kindly earth,
+    And all the mysteries of death and birth.
+    Say who you are, and from what realm you hail,
+    White spirits that in winged peraguas sail?
+    If ye be angels, tell us of your heaven.
+    If ye be men, tell us who is your King."
+
+It was not a long play, and had been written by a court poet especially
+for the children, of whose acting the Queen was fond. There were dances
+and songs--a sailor's contra-dance to the music of a horn pipe, a
+stately passamezzo by the Indian court, a madrigal and an ode in
+compliment to the Queen.[3] Finally the leader of the white men planted
+the banner of England on the little knoll, and in the name of his
+sovereign received the homage of the Indians. The last notes of the
+final chorus had just died away when trumpets called from the Thames,
+and the scene melted into chaos. Off ran the players, cramming costumes
+and properties into their wallets as they went, to see the Queen land at
+the water-gate. Amadas and Barlowe took the same direction less
+hurriedly.
+
+"I wonder now," said Armadas thoughtfully, "how much of prophecy there
+may have been in that mascarado? Do you know, old lad, we may be taken
+for gods ourselves in two months' time? God grant they think us not
+devils before we are done!"
+
+"We need have no fear if no Spaniards have landed on that coast before
+us," said Barlowe stolidly. "If they have--no poetical speeches will
+help our cause."
+
+The Queen's great gilded barge with its crimson hangings came sweeping
+up the river just as they joined the company drawn up to receive her.
+The tall graceful figure of Ralegh was nearest her, and when she set
+her small neat foot upon the stone step it was his hand which she
+accepted to steady her in landing. She was a sovereign every inch even
+in her traveling cloak, but when dinner was over, and she took her seat
+in the throne-room, she dazzled the eye with the splendor of gold and
+pearl network over brilliant velvets, the glitter of diamonds among the
+frost-work of Flanders lace. Elizabeth knew how to stage the great Court
+drama as well as any Master of the Revels.
+
+Moreover, what the Queen did, set the fashion for all the courtiers, to
+the profit and prosperity of merchants and craftsmen. Earls might
+secretly writhe at the prospect of entertaining their sovereign with
+suitable magnificence, but the tradesmen and purveyors rubbed their
+hands. When a company of Flemings was employed for four years on the
+carving of the beams and panels of the Middle Temple Hall, or noblemen
+to be in the fashion built new banquet-rooms in the Italian style, with
+long windows and galleries, English, Flemish and Huguenot builders
+flocked to the kingdom. If she took with one hand she gave with the
+other, and it was not without reason that the common folk of England
+long after she was dead called their daughters after "good Queen Bess."
+
+To Armadas and Barlowe it was a novel and splendid pageant. After they
+were presented to the Queen, and expressed their modest thanks for the
+honor of being sent upon her service, they withdrew to a window-recess
+to watch the company. The gentlemen pensioners in gold-embroidered suits
+and lace-edged ruffs, the dignified councilors in richer if darker
+robes, the maids of honor, bright as damask roses moving in the wind,
+all circled around one pale woman with keen gray-blue eyes that never
+betrayed her. A little apart, speaking now and then to some courtier or
+councilor, stood the Spanish Ambassador in somber black and gold, like a
+watchful spider in a garden of rich flowers. Ralegh, careless and
+debonair, gave him a frank salutation as he came to speak to his
+captains.
+
+"You may repent of the venture and wish to stay at Court," he said
+smiling. "The Queen thinks well of ye."
+
+"Not I," growled Barlowe, and Armadas laughed, "My Lord, do you think so
+ill of us as to deem us weathercocks in the wind?"
+
+"You must take care to avoid the clutches of the Inquisition," Ralegh
+added, not lowering his voice noticeably, yet not speaking loud enough
+to be heard by others. "I have hastened the fitting out of the ships and
+delayed your coming to Court lest Philip's ferrets be set on you. The
+life of Kings and Queens is like to a game of chess."
+
+"Of primero rather, it seems to me," said Armadas, "or the game the
+Spanish call ombre. Chess is brain against brain, fair play. In the
+other one may win the game by the fall of the cards--or by cheatery."[4]
+
+"A good simile, Philip," said Ralegh, with shining eyes. "'T is all very
+well to say, as some do, that if old King Harry were alive he'd have our
+Englishmen out of Spanish prisons. But in his day Spain had hardly begun
+her conquests over seas, and the Inquisition had not tasted English
+blood. It was Philip that taught our men primero--and the best player is
+he who can bluff, so playing his hand that his enemy guesses not the
+truth. And the stake in this game is--Empire."
+
+Ralegh's head lifted as if he saw visions. In silence the three
+joined the company now assembling to see the masque of the children.
+Bravely it went, nimbly the dancers footed it, sweetly rang the
+choruses, and well did the little chief and captain play their parts. At
+the end the Queen, saying in merry courtesy that she could do no less
+for him who had found her a kingdom and him who freely gave it,
+presented a ring set with a carnelian heart to Hal Kempe who played
+Cabot, but about the neck of Tom Poope she hung a golden chain, for if
+he had to wear her fetters, she said, they should at least be golden.
+And so the play came to an end, and work began.
+
+[Illustration: "IF HE HAD TO WEAR HER FETTERS, THEY SHOULD AT LEAST BE
+GOLDEN."--_Page_ 245]
+
+On April 27, with a fair wind, the two ships of Ralegh's venture went
+down to the Channel and out upon the western ocean. They had good
+fortune, for not a Spaniard crossed their course. Nine weeks later they
+sighted the coast which the French had once called Carolina. Before they
+were near enough to see it well they caught the scent of a wilderness of
+flowering vines and trees blown seaward, and as they neared the shore
+they saw tall cedars and goodly cypresses, pines and oaks and many other
+trees, some of them quite unknown to English soil. It is written in
+Armadas's journal that the wild grapes were so abundant near the sea
+that sometimes the waves washed over them; and the sands were yellow as
+gold. The first time that an arquebus was fired, great flocks of birds
+rose from the trees, screaming all together like the shouting of an
+army, but there seemed to be no fierce beasts nor indeed any large
+animals.
+
+"With kine, sheep, cattle, and poultry, and such herbs and grain as can
+be brought from England," said Armadas, "this land would sure be a
+paradise on earth."
+
+"You forget the serpent," returned Barlowe, who had been reared by a
+Puritan grandfather and knew his Bible.
+
+"I am not likely to forget our great enemy while the name of Ribault or
+Coligny remains unforgotten," said the other. "All the more reason why
+this land should be kept for the Religion."
+
+Indeed when they landed they found little in the country or the people
+to recall Adam's doom. They set up their English standard upon an island
+and took possession of the domain in the name of Elizabeth of England.
+This island the Indians called Wocoken, and the inlet where the ships
+lay, Ocracoke. They went inland as the guests of the native chiefs, and
+on the island of Roanoke they were entertained by the people of Wingina
+the king, most kindly and hospitably. The sea remained smooth and
+pleasant and the air neither very hot nor very cold, but sweet and
+wholesome. Manteo and Wanchese, two of the Indian warriors, chose to
+sail away with the white men, and in good time the ships returning
+reached Plymouth harbor, early in September of that year. Manteo was
+made Lord of Roanoke, the first and the last of the American Indians to
+bear an English title to his wild estate. The new province was named
+Virginia, with the play upon words favored in that day, for it was a
+virgin country, and its sovereign was the Virgin Queen.
+
+When the two captains came again to London they found the air full of
+the intriguings of Spain. In that year Santa Cruz had organized a plot
+against the Queen's life, discovered almost by chance; in that year it
+became clear that Philip's long chafing against the growing sea-power of
+England and his hatred of such rangers as Drake and Hawkins must sooner
+or later blaze up in war. And by chance also Armadas learned how narrow
+had been their own escape from a Spanish prison.
+
+He had been the guest of a friend at the acting of Master Lyly's new
+masque by the Children of the Chapel at Gray's Inn. Little Tom Poope
+sang Apelles's song and ruffled it afterward among the ladies of the
+court, as lightly as Essex himself. Armadas came out into the dank
+Thames air humming over the dainty verses,--
+
+    "'At last he staked her all his arrows.
+    His mother's doves, and team of sparrows--'"
+
+A small hand slid into his own and pulled him toward a byway.
+
+"Why, how is it with thee, Master Poope? Didst play thy part bravely,
+lad."
+
+"Come," said the boy in a low breathless voice. "I have somewhat to tell
+thee. In here," and he drew Armadas toward a doorway. "'T is my mother's
+lodging--there is nothing to fear."
+
+A woman let them in as if she had been watching for them, opened the
+door into a small plainly furnished private room and vanished.
+
+"Art not going on any more voyages to the Virginias?" asked the boy, his
+eager eyes on the Captain's face.
+
+"Not for the present, my boy. Why? Wouldst like to sail with us, and
+learn more of the ways of Indian Princes?"
+
+"Nay, I have no time for fooling--they'll miss me," said the youngster
+impatiently. "The Spanish Ambassador has his spies upon thee, and thou
+must leave a false scent for them to smell out. He sent his report on
+thee, eight months ago."
+
+"Before we sailed to Roanoke?" queried Armadas with lifted brows.
+
+"Before thou went to Richmond that day. His Excellency quizzed me after
+the masque and asked me did I know when the ships sailed and whither
+they were bound, believing me to be cozened by his gold. I told him they
+were for Florida to find the fountain of youth for the Queen, and would
+sail on May-day!"
+
+A grin of pure delight widened the boy's face, and he wriggled in
+gleeful remembrance where he perched, on a tall oaken chair. "Oh, they
+will swallow any bait, those gudgeons, and some day their folly will be
+the end of them. I would not have them catch thee if they could be
+fooled, and well did I fool them, I tell thee!"
+
+"For--heaven's--sake!" stammered Armadas in amazement. "Little friend,"
+he added gently, "it seems to me that we owe thee life and honor. But
+why didst do it?"
+
+"Why?" The boy's fine dark brows bent in a quick frown. "What a pox
+right had they to be tempting me to be false to the salt that I and they
+had eaten? I hate all Spaniards. I'd ha' done it any way," he added
+shyly, "for to win our game, but I did it for love o' thee because thou
+took my part about the mascarado."
+
+"I think," said Armadas as he took from his wallet a bracelet of Indian
+shell-work hung with baroque pearls, "that all our fine plans would ha'
+come to naught but for thy wise head, young 'un. These be pearls from
+the Virginias, and if you find 'em scorched, that's only because the
+heathen know no other way of opening the oyster-shell but by fire. The
+beads are such as they use for money and call roanoke. The gold of the
+Spanish mines can buy men maybe, but it does not buy such loyalty as
+thine, that's sure. I have no gold to give, lad,--but wear this for a
+love-token. And I think that could the truth be known, the Queen herself
+would freely name thee Lord of Roanoke."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] The name is variously spelled Armadas, Amidas and Amadas. The form
+here used is that of the earliest records. The same is true of the
+spelling "Ralegh."
+
+[2] Companies of children under various names were often employed in the
+acting of plays in the time of Elizabeth. These are the "troops of
+children, little eyasses" alluded to by Shakespeare in "Hamlet." They
+sometimes acted in plays written for them by Lyly and others, and
+sometimes in the popular dramas of the day. Ben Jonson wrote a charming
+epitaph on Salathiel Pavy, one of these little actors, who died at
+thirteen.
+
+[3] The passamezzo, passy-measure or half-measure was a popular
+Elizabethan dance, like the coranto and lavolta.
+
+[4] Primero, or ombre, is said to be the ancestor of our modern game of
+poker. An interesting account of its origin and variations will be found
+in Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer's "Prophetical, Educational and Playing
+Cards."
+
+
+
+
+THE CHANGELINGS
+
+
+    Out on the road to Fairyland where the dreaming children go,
+    There's a little inn at the Sign of the Rose, that all the fairies
+      know,
+    For Titania lodged in that tavern once, and betwixt the night and
+      the day
+    The children that crowded about her there, she stole their hearts away!
+
+    Peaseblossom, Moth and Mustardseed, Agate and Airymouse too,
+    Once were children that laughed and played as children always do,
+    But when Titania kissed their lips, and crowned them with daffodil gold
+    They never forgot what she whispered them, they never knew how to grow
+      old!
+
+    Mothers that wonder why little lads forget their homely ways,
+    And little maids put their dolls aside and take to acting plays,
+    Ah, let them be kings and queens awhile, for there's nothing sad or
+      mean
+    In their innocent thought, and their crowns were wrought by the touch
+      o' the Fairy Queen!
+
+    Close to the heart o' the world they come, the children who know the
+      way
+    To the little low gateway under the rose, where 't is neither night
+      nor day.
+    They see what others can never guess, they hear what we cannot hear,
+    And the loathly dragons that waste our life they never learn to fear.
+
+    The little inn at the Sign of the Rose,--ah, who can forget the place
+    Where Titania danced with the children small and lent them her elfin
+      grace?
+    And wherever they go and whatever they do in the years that turn them
+      gray
+    They never forget the charm she said when she stole their hearts away!
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE GARDENS OF HELENE
+
+
+"Is there not any saint of the kitchen, at all?" asked the serious-eyed
+little demoiselle sorting herbs under the pear-tree. Old Jacqueline,
+gathering the tiny fagots into her capacious apron, chuckled wisely.
+
+"There should be, if there isn't. Perhaps the good God thinks that the
+men will take care that there are kitchens, without His help." She
+hobbled briskly into the house. Helene sat for a few minutes with hands
+folded, her small nose alert as a rabbit's to the marvelous blend of
+odors in the hot sunshiny air.
+
+It was a very agreeable place, that old French garden. There had been a
+kitchen-garden on that very spot for more than five hundred years; at
+least, so said Monsieur Lescarbot the lawyer, and he knew all about the
+history of the world. A part of the old wall had been there in the days
+of the First Crusade, and the rest looked as if it had. When Henry of
+Navarre dined at the Guildhall, before Ivry, they had come to Jacqueline
+for poultry and seasoning. She could show you exactly where she gathered
+the parsley, the thyme, the marjoram, the carrots and the onion for the
+stuffing, and from which tree the selected chestnuts came. A white hen
+proudly promenading the yard at this moment was the direct descendant of
+the fowl chosen for the King's favorite dish of _poulet en casserole_.
+
+But the common herbs were far from being all that this garden held.
+Besides the dozen or more herbs and as many vegetables which all cooks
+used, there were artichokes, cucumbers, peppers of several kinds,
+marigolds, rhubarb, and even two plants of that curious Peruvian
+vegetable with the golden-centered creamy white flowers, called
+po-te-to. Jacqueline's husband, who had been a sea-captain, had brought
+those roots from Brazil, and she,--Helene,--who was very little then,
+had disgraced herself by gathering the flowers for a nosegay. It was
+after that that Jacqueline had begun to teach her what each plant was
+good for, and how it must be fed and tended. Helene had grown to feel
+that every plant, shrub or seedling was alive and had thoughts. In the
+delightful fairy tales that Monsieur Marc Lescarbot told her they were
+alive, and talked of her when they left their places at night and held
+moonlight dances.
+
+Lescarbot's thin keen face with the bald forehead and humorous eyes
+appeared now at the grille in the green door. He swept off his beret and
+made a deep bow. "Mademoiselle la bien-aimee de la bonne Sainte Marthe,"
+he said gravely, "may I come in?"
+
+He had a new name for her every time he came, usually a long one. "But
+why Sainte Marthe?" she asked, running to let him in.
+
+"She is the patron saint of cooks and housewives, petite. A good cook
+can do anything. Sainte Marthe entertained the blessed Lord in her own
+home, and was the first nun of the sisterhood she founded. Moreover when
+she was preaching at Aix a fearful dragon by the name of Tarasque
+inhabited the river Rhone, and came out each night to devastate the
+country until Sainte Marthe was the means of his--conversion."
+
+"Oh, go on!" cried Helene, and Lescarbot sat down on the old bench
+under the pear-tree and began to help with the herbs.
+
+"Sainte Marthe was an excellent cook, and the first thing she did when
+she founded her convent was to plant a kitchen-garden. On Saint John's
+Eve she went into the garden and watered each plant with holy water,
+blessing it in the use of God. People came from miles around to get
+roots and seeds from the garden and to ask for Sainte Marthe's recipes
+for broths and cordials for the sick. Often they brought roots of such
+plants as rhubarb and--er--marigold, which had been imported from
+heathen countries, to be blessed and made wholesome." Lescarbot's eye
+rested on the potato plant, which he distrusted.
+
+"Well. The dragon prowled around and around the convent walls, but of
+course he could not come in. At last he pretended to be sick and sent
+for Sainte Marthe to come and cure him. As soon as she set eyes on him
+she knew what a wicked lie he had told, and resolved to punish him for
+his impudence. Of course all he wanted of her was to get her recipes for
+sauces and stews so that he might cook and eat his victims without
+having indigestion--which is what a good sauce is for. Sainte Marthe
+promised to make him some broth if he would do no harm while she was
+gone, and just to make sure he kept his promise she made him hold out
+his fore-paws and tied them hard and fast with her girdle, while he sat
+with his fore-legs around his--er--knees, and her broomstick thrust
+crosswise between. Then she got out her largest kettle and made a good
+savory broth of all the herbs in her garden--there were three hundred
+and sixty-five kinds. She knew that if he drank it all, the blessed
+herbs would work such a change in his inside that he would be like a
+lamb forever after.
+
+"But one thing neither she nor Tarasque had thought of, and that was,
+that the broth was hot. Of course he always took his food and drink very
+cold. When he smelled its delicious fragrance he opened his mouth wide,
+and she poured it hissing hot down his throat, and it melted him into a
+famous bubbling spring. People go there to be cured of colic."
+
+Helene drew a long breath. She did not believe that Lescarbot had found
+that story in any book of legends of the saints, but she liked it none
+the worse for that.
+
+"I wonder if Sainte Marthe blessed this garden?" she said.
+
+"I have no doubt she did, and that is why it flourishes from Easter to
+Michaelmas. But I came to-day for a potato. Sieur de Monts desires to
+see one and to understand the method of its cultivation."
+
+"Oh, I know that," cried Helene, eagerly, and she took one of the queer
+brown roots from the willow basket by the wall. "See, these are its
+eyes, one, two, three--seven eyes in this one. You must cut it in
+pieces, as many pieces as it has eyes, and plant each piece separately;
+and from each eye springs a plant."
+
+"Ah!" said Lescarbot gravely, and he put the potato in his wallet.
+
+For two years Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, and the valiant gentlemen
+Samuel de Champlain, Bienville de Poutrincourt, and others of his
+company, had been striving to maintain a settlement in the grant of La
+Cadie or L'Acadie, between the fortieth and forty-sixth degrees of north
+latitude in the New World, of which the King had made De Monts
+Lieutenant-General. De Monts engaged Champlain, who had already
+explored those coasts, as chief geographer, and the merchant Pontgrave
+was in charge of a store-ship laden with supplies. Fearing the severe
+winter of the St. Lawrence, the party steered south along the coast and
+anchored in a tranquil and beautiful harbor surrounded with forest,
+green lowlands, and hills laced with waterfalls. In his delight with the
+place Poutrincourt declared that he would ask nothing better than to
+make it his home; and he received a grant of the harbor, which he named
+Port Royal. The expedition finally came to rest on an island in a river
+flowing into Passamaquoddy Bay, where they began their settlement. Their
+wooden buildings--a house for their viceroy, one for Champlain and other
+gentlemen, barracks, lodgings, workshops and storehouses,--surrounded a
+square in the middle of which one fine cedar was left standing, while a
+belt of them remained to hedge the island from the north winds. The work
+done, Poutrincourt set sail for France, leaving seventy-nine men to
+spend the winter at Ile Sainte-Croix. Scurvy broke out, and before
+spring almost half the company were in their graves. Spring came, but no
+help from France. It was June 16 before Poutrincourt returned with forty
+men, and two days later Champlain set sail in a fifteen-ton barque with
+De Monts and several others, to explore the coast and discover if
+possible a better place for the colony. They went as far south as Nauset
+Harbor, and Champlain made charts and kept a journal quaintly
+illustrated with figures drawn and painted; but De Monts found no place
+that suited him. Then he bethought himself of the deep sheltered harbor
+of Port Royal, and they removed everything to that new site, on the
+north side of the basin below the mouth of a little river which they
+called the Equille. Even parts of the buildings were taken across the
+Bay of Fundy. But a ship from France brought news to De Monts that
+enemies at court were working against his Company, and leaving Pontgrave
+in command he and Poutrincourt returned home, to see what they could do
+to further the interests of the colony in Paris. Among other things
+Champlain, who had tried without success to make a garden in the sandy
+soil of the island, begged them to provide the settlers with seeds,
+roots, cuttings and implements by which they might raise grain and
+vegetables and other provisions for themselves. This would improve the
+health and also reduce the expenses of the colony, and the land about
+the new site was well adapted for cultivation.
+
+Poutrincourt, foregathering with his friend Lescarbot soon after the
+lawyer had lost nearly all he possessed in a suit, recounted to him the
+woes of the colony, and found with pleasure that in spite of the doleful
+history of the last two years Lescarbot was eager to seek a new career
+in New France.
+
+Helene came running in one morning in the early spring of 1606, to find
+old Jacqueline on the steps of the root-cellar with a heap of sprouting
+potatoes beside her. Lescarbot was packing away in a panier such as she
+gave him, while under the whitening pear-tree a donkey stood, sleepily
+shaking his ears as he waited for orders.
+
+"Oh, what are you doing, Uncle Marc?" she cried.
+
+"Making ready to go to the land beyond the sunset, Mademoiselle la
+Princesse du Jardin de Paradis," he said smiling. "Sit down while the
+good mother gets the packets of seeds she promised me, and I will tell
+you a story."
+
+All curiosity and wonder, the little maid settled herself on the ancient
+worm-eaten bench, and Lescarbot began.
+
+"It happened one day that men came and told the King that a great realm
+lay beyond the seas, where only wild men and animals lived, and that
+this realm was all his. Now the wild men were not good for anything, for
+they had never been taught anything, but since the winters in that
+country were very cold the animals wore fur coats. The King called to
+him a Chief Huntsman and told him that he might go and collect tribute
+from the fur coats of the animals, and that after he had given the King
+his share, the fur coats of all the animals belonged to him."
+
+"Did the animals know it?"
+
+"I think they did, for they were accustomed to having men try to take
+away their fur coats. All the other hunters were very angry when they
+found that the King had given this order, but the Chief Huntsman told
+them that they might have a share in the hunting, only they must ask his
+permission and pay tribute to the King; and that satisfied them for a
+while.
+
+"The Chief Huntsman sailed to the far country and built a castle for
+himself and his men, and when winter came they found that it was indeed
+very cold--so cold that the wine and the cider froze and had to be given
+out by the pound instead of the pint. But that was not the worst of it.
+There was a dragon."
+
+Helene's blue eyes grew round with interest.
+
+"A dragon whose poisonous breath tainted the food and caused a terrible
+plague. They prayed to Saint Luke the Physician for help, and he
+appeared to them in a vision and said, 'I cannot do anything for you so
+long as you eat not good food. God made man to live in a garden, not to
+fill himself with salt fish and salt meat and dry bread.' But they could
+not plant a garden in the middle of winter, and they had to wait. When
+the ship went back to France a gallant captain--named Samuel de
+Champlain--sent a letter to a friend of his in France, praying him to
+send a gardener with seeds, roots and cuttings that there might be good
+broths and tisanes and sauces to work magic against the dragon that he
+slay no more of their folk. And, little Helene, I am filling a pair of
+paniers with those roots and those seeds, and I am going to be a
+gardener beyond the sunset."
+
+Helene looked grave. To find her friend and playfellow suddenly dropped
+away from her into the middle of a fairy-tale was rather terrifying, but
+it was also thrilling. She slipped down from the bench.
+
+"You shall have cuttings from my very own rose-bushes," said she; and at
+her direction Lescarbot took up very carefully small rose-shoots that
+had rooted themselves around the great bushes,--bushes that bore roses
+white with a faint flush, white with a golden-creamy heart, pure
+snow-white, sunrise pink and deep glowing crimson with a purple shade.
+
+If Lescarbot had been a superstitious man, he might have been inclined
+to gloom during his first sea-voyage, for the ship in which he and
+Poutrincourt set sail from Rochelle on the thirteenth of May, 1606, was
+called the _Jonas_. But instead he joined in all the diversions possible
+in their two months' voyage--harpooning porpoises, fishing for cod off
+the Banks, or dancing on the deck in calm weather,--and in his leisure
+kept a lively and entertaining journal of the adventure. They ran into
+dense fog in which they could see nothing; they saw, when the mist
+cleared, a green and lovely shore, but before it fierce and dangerous
+rocks on which the breakers pounded. Then a storm broke, with rolling
+thunder like a salute of cannon. At last on July 27 they sailed into the
+narrow channel at the entrance of the harbor of Port Royal.
+
+The flag of France, with its golden lilies on a white ground, gleamed in
+the noon sunlight as they came up the bay toward the little group of
+wooden buildings in the edge of the forest. Not a man was to be seen on
+the silent shore; a birch canoe, with one old Indian in it, hovered near
+the landing. A great fear gripped the hearts of Bienville de
+Poutrincourt and Marc Lescarbot. Were Pontgrave and Champlain all dead
+with their people? Had help come too late?
+
+Then from the bastion of the rude fortifications a cannon barked salute,
+and a Frenchman with a gun in his hand came running down to the beach.
+The ship's guns returned the salute, and the trumpets sang loud greeting
+to whoever might be there to hear.
+
+When they had landed they learned what had happened. There were only two
+Frenchmen in the fort; Pontgrave and the others, fearing that the supply
+ship would never arrive, had gone twelve days before in two small ships
+of their own building to look for some of the French fishing fleet who
+might have provisions. The two who remained had volunteered to stay and
+guard the buildings and stores. There was a village of friendly Indians
+near by, and the chief, Membertou, who was more than a hundred years
+old, had seen the distant sail of the _Jonas_ and come to warn the white
+men, who were at dinner. Not knowing whether the strange ship came in
+peace or war, one of the comrades had gone to the platform on which the
+cannon were mounted, and stood ready to do what he could in defense,
+while the other ran down to the shore. When they saw the French flag at
+the mast-head the cannon spoke joyfully in salute.
+
+All was now eager life and activity. Poutrincourt sent out a boat to
+explore the coast, which met the two little ships of Pontgrave and
+Champlain and told the great news. Lescarbot, exploring the meadows
+under the guidance of some of Membertou's people, saw moose with their
+young feeding peacefully upon the lush grass, and beavers building their
+curious habitations in a swamp. Pontgrave took his departure for France
+in the _Jonas_, and Champlain and Poutrincourt began making plans.
+
+The winter in Port Royal had been less severe than the terrible first
+winter of the settlement, on the St. Croix, but the two leaders decided
+to take one of the ramshackle little ships and make another exploring
+voyage along the coast, to see whether some more comfortable site for
+the colony could not be found. There was plenty of leeway to the
+southward, for De Monts was supposed to control everything as far south
+as the present site of Philadelphia; but the coast had never been
+accurately charted by the French further south than Cape Cod.
+
+Lescarbot, who was to command at Port Royal in their absence, had
+already laid out his kitchen-garden and set about spading and planting
+it. The kitchen, the smithy and the bakery were on the south side of the
+quadrangle around which the wooden buildings stood; east of them was the
+arched gateway, protected by a sort of bastion of log-work, from which a
+path led to the water a few paces away; and west of them another bastion
+matched it, mounting the four cannon. The storehouses for ammunition and
+provisions were on the eastern side; on the west were the men's
+quarters, and on the north, a dining-hall and lodgings for the chief men
+of the company, who now numbered fifteen. Lescarbot set some of the men
+to burning over the meadows that they might sow wheat and barley; others
+broke up new soil for the herbs, roots and cuttings he had brought, and
+he himself, hoe in hand, was busiest of all.
+
+"Do not overtask yourself," warned Poutrincourt, pausing beside the
+thin, pale-faced man who knelt in the long shadows of the rainy dawn
+among his neatly-arranged plots. "If you are too zealous you may never
+see France again." Lescarbot laughed and dug a little grave in his
+plantation. "What in heaven's name are those?"
+
+"Potatoes," answered the lawyer-gardener. "The Peruvian root they are
+planting in Ireland."
+
+"But you do not expect to get a crop this year--and in this climate?"
+
+"I don't expect anything at all. I am making the experiment. If they
+come up, good; if they do not, I have seed enough for next year."
+
+The potatoes came up. It was an unusually hot summer, and the situation
+was favorable. If Lescarbot had known the habits of the vegetable he
+might not have thought of putting them into the ground on the last day
+of July, but they grew and flourished, and their odd ivory-and-gold
+blossoms were charming. Lescarbot worked all day in the bracing sunlit
+air, and now and then he hoed and transplanted by moonlight. In the
+evening he read, wrote, or planned out the next day's program.
+
+September came, with cool bright days and a hint of frost at night; the
+lawyer marshalled his forces and harvested the crops. The storehouses,
+already stocked with Pontgrave's abundant provision, were filled to
+overflowing, and they had to dig a makeshift cellar or root-pit under a
+rough shelter for the last of their produce. The potatoes were carefully
+bestowed in huge hampers provided by Membertou's people, who were
+greatly interested in all that the white men did. Old Jacqueline had
+said that they needed "room to breathe," and Lescarbot was taking no
+chances on this unknown American product.
+
+October came; the Indians showed the white men how to grind corn, and
+the carpenters planned a water-mill to be constructed in the spring, to
+take the place of the tedious hand-mill worked by two men. Wild geese
+flew overhead, recalling to the Frenchmen the legends of Saint Gabriel's
+hounds. The forests robed themselves in hues like those of a priceless
+Kashmir shawl, and the squirrels, martens, beavers, otters, weasels,
+which the hunters brought in were in their winter coats. But the
+exploring party had not returned. Lescarbot, who had occupied spare
+moments in preparing a surprise for them when they did return, and
+carefully drilled the men in their parts, began to be secretly anxious.
+But on the morning of November 14, old Membertou, who had appointed
+himself an informal sentinel to patrol the waters near the fort,
+appeared with the news that the chiefs were coming back.
+
+All was excitement in a moment, although Lescarbot privately had to
+admit that he could not even see a sail, to say nothing of recognizing
+the boat or its occupants. But the long-sighted old sagamore was right.
+The party of adventurers, their craft considerably the worse for the
+journey, steering with a pair of oars in place of a rudder, reached the
+landing-place and battered, weary and dilapidated, came up to the fort.
+They were surprised and disappointed to see no one about except a few
+curious Indians peeping from the woods.
+
+As they neared the wooden gateway it was suddenly flung open, and out
+marched a procession of masquers, headed by Neptune in full costume of
+shell-fringed robe, diadem, trident, and garlands of kelp and sea-moss,
+attended by tritons grotesquely attired, and fauns, reinforced by a
+growing audience of Indians, squaws and papooses. This merry company
+greeted the wanderers with music, song and some excellent French verse
+written by Lescarbot for the occasion. Refreshed with laughter and the
+relief of finding all so well conducted, Champlain, Poutrincourt and
+their men went in to have something to eat and drink. Then they spent
+the rest of the day hearing and telling the story of the last three
+months.
+
+It is written down, adorned with drawings, in the journals of Champlain,
+and it was all told over as the men sat around their blazing fires and
+talked, all together, while a light November snow flurried in the air
+outside.
+
+"So you see we lost our rudder in a storm off Mount Desert--" "And the
+autumn gales drove us back before we had fairly passed Port Fortune--"
+"It came near being Port Malheur for us, and it was for Pierre and
+Jacques le Malouin, poor fellows. They and three others stayed ashore
+for the night and hundreds of Indians attacked them,--oh, but hundreds.
+Well, we heard the uproar--naturally it waked us in a hurry--and up we
+jumped and snatched any weapon that was handy, and piled into the boat
+in our shirts. Two of the shore party were killed and we saw the other
+three running for their boat for dear life, all stuck over with arrows
+like hedgehogs, my faith! So then we landed and charged the Indians, who
+must have thought we were ghosts, for they left off whooping and ran for
+the woods. Our provisions were so far spent that we thought it best to
+return after that, and in any case--it would be as bad, would it not, to
+die of Indians as to die of scurvy?"
+
+"But tell me, my dear fellow," said Champlain when the happy hubbub had
+a little subsided, "how have your gardens prospered? Truly I need not
+ask, in view of the abundance of the dinner you gave us."
+
+Lescarbot smiled. "I think that the saints must have whispered to the
+little plants," he said whimsically, "or else they knew that they must
+grow their best for the honor of France. But perhaps it is not strange.
+I had the seeds and roots from the garden of Helene."
+
+"And who is Helene?" asked Champlain with interest. Lescarbot explained.
+
+"It was really wonderful," he said in conclusion, "to see how careful
+she was to remember every herb and plant which might be useful, and to
+ask Jacqueline for some especial recipes for cordials and tisanes for
+the sick. And by the way, Jacqueline told me that the sea-captains
+regard potatoes as especially good to prevent or cure scurvy."
+
+In any case the potato was popular among the exiled Frenchmen. They ate
+it boiled, they ate it parboiled, sliced and fried in deep kettles of
+fat, they ate it in stews, and they ate it--and liked it best of
+all--roasted in the ashes. Jacqueline had said that the water in which
+the root was boiled must always be thrown away, which showed that there
+was something uncanny about it, but whether it was due to the potatoes
+or the general variety of the bill of fare, there was not a case of
+scurvy in the camp all winter.
+
+Soon after his return Champlain broached a plan which he had been
+perfecting during the voyage. The fifteen men of rank formed a society,
+to be called "L'Ordre de Bon-Temps." Each man became Grand-Master in
+turn, for a single day. On that day he was responsible for the
+dinner,--the cooking, catering, buying and serving. When not in office
+he usually spent some days in hunting, fishing and trading with the
+Indians for supplies. He had full authority over the kitchen during his
+reign, and it was a point of honor with each Grand Master to surpass, if
+possible, the abundance, variety and gastronomic excellence of the meals
+of the day before. There was no market to draw upon, but the caterer
+could have steaks and roasts and pies of moose, bear, venison and
+caribou; beavers, otters, hares, trapped for their fur, also helped to
+feed the hunters. Ducks, geese, grouse and plover were to be had for the
+shooting. Sturgeon, trout and other fish might be caught in the bay, or
+speared through the ice of the river. The supplies brought from France,
+with the addition of all this wilderness fare, held out well, and
+Lescarbot expressed the opinion, with which nobody disagreed, that no
+epicure in Paris could dine better in the Rue de l'Ours than the
+pioneers of Port Royal dined that winter.
+
+Ceremony was not neglected, either. At the dinner hour, twelve o'clock,
+the Grand Master of the day entered the dining-hall, a napkin on his
+shoulder, his staff of office in his hand, and the collar of the Order,
+worth about four crowns, about his neck. After him came the
+Brotherhood in procession, each carrying a dish. Indian chiefs were
+often guests at the board; old Membertou was always made welcome.
+Biscuit, bread and many other kinds of food served there were new and
+alluring luxuries to the Indians, and warriors, squaws and children who
+had not seats at table squatted on the floor gravely awaiting their
+portions.
+
+[Illustration: "THE GRAND MASTER OF THE DAY ENTERED THE DINING
+HALL."--_Page_ 266]
+
+The evening meal was less formal. When all were gathered about the fire,
+the Grand Master presented the collar and staff of office to his
+successor, and drank his health in a cup of wine.
+
+The winter was unusually mild; until January they needed nothing warmer
+than their doublets. On the fourteenth, a Sunday, they went boating on
+the river, and came home singing the gay songs of France. A little later
+they went to visit the wheat fields two leagues from the fort, and dined
+merrily out of doors. When the snow melted they saw the little bright
+blades of the autumn sowing already coming up from the rich black soil.
+Winter was over, and work began in good heart. Poutrincourt was not
+above gathering turpentine from the pines and making tar, after a
+process invented by himself. Then late in spring a ship came into harbor
+with news which ended everything. The fur-traders of Normandy, Brittany
+and the Vizcayan ports had succeeded in having the privilege of De Monts
+withdrawn. Hardly more than a year after his arrival Lescarbot left his
+beloved gardens, and in October all the colonists were once more in
+France. Membertou and his Indians bewailed their departure, and held
+them in long remembrance. Wilderness houses soon go back to their
+beginnings, and it was not long before all that was left of the brave
+and gay French colony was a little clearing where the herb of
+immortality, the tansy of Saint Athanase, lifted its golden buttons and
+thick dark green foliage above the remnant of the garden of Helene.
+
+Yet the experience of that year was not lost. It was the first instance
+of a company of settlers in that northern climate passing the winter
+without illness, discord or trouble with the Indians. Later, in the
+little new settlements of Quebec and Montreal, some of the colonists met
+again under the wise and kindly rule of Champlain. Little Helene lived
+to bring her own roses to a garden in New France, and teach Indian girls
+the secrets which old Jacqueline taught her. And it is recorded in the
+history of the voyageurs, priests and adventurers of France in the New
+World that wherever they went they were apt to take with them seeds and
+plants of wholesome garden produce, which they planted along their route
+in the hope that they might thus be of service to those who came after
+them.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOODEN SHOE
+
+
+    Amsterdam's the cradle where the race was rocked--
+    All the ships of all the world to her harbor flocked.
+    Rosy with the sea-wind, solid, stubborn, sweet,
+    Played the children by canals, up and down the street.
+    Neltje, Piet and Hendrik, Dirck and Myntje too,--
+    Little Nick of Leyden sailed his wooden shoe.
+
+    "Quarter-deck and cabin--rig her fore-and-aft,"--
+    Thus he murmured wisely as he launched his craft.
+    "Cutlass, pike and musquetoun, howitzer and shot--
+    But our knives and mirrors and beads are worth the lot."
+    Room enough for cargo to last a year or two,
+    In the round amidships of a wooden shoe!
+
+    Bobbing on the waters of the Nieuwe Vlei
+    See the bantam galleot, short and broad and high.
+    Laden for the Indies, trading all the way,
+    Frank and shrewd and cautious, fiery in a fray,--
+    Sagamore and mandarin are all the same to you,
+    Little Nick of Leyden with your wooden shoe!
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE FIRES THAT TALKED
+
+
+All along the coast of Britain, from John o' Groat's to Beachey Head,
+from Saint Michael's Mount to Cape Wrath, twinkled the bonfires on the
+headlands. Henry Hudson, returning from a voyage among icebergs, guessed
+at once what this chain of lights meant. The son of Mary Queen of Scots
+had been crowned in London.[1]
+
+Hudson's keen eyes were unusually grave and thoughtful as the _Muscovy
+Duck_ sailed up to London Pool on the incoming tide. The sailors looked
+even more sober, for most of them were English Protestants, with a few
+Flemings, and John Williams the pilot was an Anabaptist. It was he who
+asked the question of which all were thinking.
+
+"Master Hudson, d'ye think the new King will light them other fires--the
+ones at Smithfield?"
+
+Hudson shook his head. "That's a thing no man can say for certain, John.
+But there's the Low Countries and the Americas to run to. 'T is not as
+it was in Queen Mary's day."
+
+"Aye, but Spain has got all of America, pretty near, and the French are
+nabbing the rest," said the pilot doubtfully.
+
+"Nay, that's a bigger place than you guess, over yonder. Ever see the
+map that Doctor Dee made for Queen Bess near thirty years ago? I
+remember him showing it to my grandsire with the ink scarce dry on it.
+The country Ralegh's people saw has got room for the whole of France and
+England, and plenty timber and corn-land. Sir Walter he knew that."
+
+There was plague in London when they landed, and all sought their
+families in fear and trembling, not knowing what might have come and
+gone in their absence. Hudson's house was at Mortlake on the Thames
+above London, and there he was rejoiced to find all well. Young John
+Hudson was brimful of Mr. Brereton's new Relacion of the Voyage of
+Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and Captain Bartholomew Gilbert to the North
+part of Virginia by permission of the honorable Knight Sir Walter
+Ralegh. Strawberries bigger than those of England, and cherries in
+clusters like grapes, blackbirds with carnation-colored wings, Indians
+who painted their eyebrows white and made faces over mustard, were mixed
+higgledy-piggledy in his bubbling talk. Hudson, turning the pages of the
+new book, saw at once that on this voyage around Cape Cod the little
+ship _Concord_ had sailed seas unknown to him.
+
+"Why won't the Company send you to the Americas, Dad?" the boy asked
+eagerly. "When will I be old enough to go to sea?"
+
+"Wait till ye're fourteen at least, Jack," his father answered. "There's
+much to learn before ye're a master mariner."
+
+In the next few years things were not so well with English mariners as
+they had been. Cecil and Howard, picking a quarrel with Ralegh, had him
+shut up in the Tower. The Dutch were trading everywhere, seizing the
+chances King James missed. But Hudson was in the employ of the Muscovy
+Company like his father and grandfather, and the Russian fur trade was
+making that Company rich.
+
+Captain John Smith, a shrewd-faced soldier with merry eyes, appeared at
+the house one day and told entertaining stories of his campaigns under
+Prince Sigismund of Bohemia. He and the boy John drove the neighbors
+nearly distracted with curiosity, one winter evening, signalling with
+torches from the house to the river.[2] To anxious souls who surmised a
+new Guy Fawkes conspiracy Captain Smith showed how he had once conveyed
+a message to the garrison of a beleaguered city in this way. Here was
+the code. The first half of the alphabet was represented by single
+lights, the second half by pairs. To secure attention three torches were
+shown at equal distances from one another, until a single light flashed
+in response to show that the signal was understood. For any letter from
+A to L a single light was shown and hidden one or more times according
+to the number of the letter from the beginning; thus, three flashes
+meant C; four meant D, and so on. For a letter between M and Z the same
+plan was followed using two torches. The end of a word was signified by
+three lights. In this way Smith had spelled out the message, "On
+Thursday night I will charge on the east; at the alarum, sally you." He
+had, however, translated it into Latin, to make it short.
+
+John Hudson found new interest in Latin.
+
+When Captain Smith began to talk of joining a new colony to go to
+Virginia the boy begged hard to be allowed to go. But just at this time
+the Muscovy Company was sending Henry Hudson to look for a way round
+through northern seas to the Spice Islands. The Dutch were already
+trading in the Portuguese Indies. If England could reach them by a
+shorter route, it would be a very pleasant discovery for the Muscovy
+Company.
+
+Even in 1607 geographers believed in an open polar sea north of Asia.
+Hudson tried the Greenland route. Sailing east of Greenland he found
+himself between that country and the islands named "Nieuwland" by
+William Barents the Dutch navigator in 1596. Their pointed icy mountains
+seemed to push up through the sea. Icebergs crowded the waters like
+miniature peaks of a submerged range. Hudson returned to report to the
+company "no open sea."
+
+In 1608 he was again sent out on the same errand. This time he steered
+further east, between those islands and another group named by Barents
+Nova Zembla. He sailed nearer to the pole than any man had been before
+him, and found whales bigger, finer and more numerous than anywhere
+else. Rounding the North Cape on his way home he made the first recorded
+observation of a sun-spot. In August, when he returned and made his
+report, there was a sensation in the seafaring world.
+
+The Dutch promptly sent whaling ships into the arctic seas, and
+suggested, through Van Meteren the Dutch consul in London, a friend of
+Hudson, that the English navigator should come to Amsterdam and talk of
+entering their service. While there, he received an offer from the
+French Ambassador, suggesting that his services would be welcome to a
+proposed French East India Company. Hearing this, the Dutch hastened to
+secure him, and on April 4, 1609, he sailed from Amsterdam in a yacht of
+eighty tons called the _Half Moon_ and shaped rather like one, manned by
+a crew of twenty, half English and half Netherlanders, and John as
+cabin-boy.
+
+John was in such a state of bliss as a boy can know when sailing on the
+venture of his dreams. His father had told him in confidence that as his
+sailing orders were almost the same as the year before, he did not
+expect to find the northern route to India in that direction. Failing
+this the _Half Moon_ would look for it in the western seas. Of this plan
+he had said nothing in Holland.
+
+He found, as he had expected, that the arctic waters were choked with
+ice, and turning southward he headed for the Faroe Isles. While in
+Holland he had had a letter from Captain John Smith, who had explored
+the regions about Chesapeake Bay. No straits leading to the western
+ocean had been discovered there, and no Sea of Verrazzano. Captain
+Smith's opinion was that if such a passage existed it would be somewhere
+about the fortieth parallel. Explorations had already been made farther
+north. Davis Strait had been discovered some years before by John Davis,
+now dead. Martin Frobisher had found another strait leading northwest.
+Both of these were so far north that they were likely to be ice-bound by
+the time the little _Half Moon_ could reach them. Hudson meant to look
+along the coast further south, and see what could be found there.
+
+The _Half Moon_ took in water at the Faroes and anchored some seven
+weeks later, on July 18, in Penobscot Bay. Her foremast was gone and her
+sails ripped and rent by the gales of the North Atlantic, and the
+carpenter with a selected crew rowed ashore and chose a pine tree for a
+new mast. While this was a-making and the sails were patched up, the
+crew not otherwise engaged went fishing.
+
+"I say," presently observed John Hudson, who knew Brereton's Relacion by
+heart, "this must ha' been the place where they caught so many fish
+that they were 'pestered with Cod' and threw numbers of 'em overboard.
+This makes twenty-seven, Dad, so far."
+
+During that week they caught fifty cod, a hundred lobsters and a halibut
+which John declared to be half as big as the ship. Two French boats
+appeared, full of Indians ready to trade beaver skins for red cloth. The
+strawberry season was past, but John found wild cherries, small, deep
+red, in heavy bunches. When he tried to eat them, however, they were so
+sour that he nearly choked. Cautiously he tasted the big blue
+whortleberries that grew on high bushes; near water, and found them
+delicious. He had been eating them by the handful for some time when he
+became aware that there was a feaster on the other side of the thicket.
+Receiving no reply to his challenge he went to investigate and saw a
+brown bear standing on his hind legs and raking the berries off the
+twigs with both forepaws, into his mouth. At sight of John he dropped on
+all fours and cantered off.
+
+Leaving the bay they cruised along the coast past Cape Cod, and then
+steered southwest for the fortieth parallel. Wind and rain came on in
+the middle of August, and they were blown toward an inlet which Hudson
+decided to be the James. Not knowing how the English governor of
+Jamestown might regard an intrusion by a Dutch ship, he turned north
+again, and on the twenty-eighth of August entered a large bay and took
+soundings. More than once the _Half Moon_, light as she rode, grounded
+on sand-banks, and Hudson shook his head in rueful doubt.
+
+"D' you think the straits are here, Dad?" asked John when he had a
+chance to speak with his father alone.
+
+"Hardly. This is fresh water. It's the mouth of a river."[3]
+
+"Yes, but might there be an isthmus--or the like?"
+
+"A big river with as strong a current as this would not rise on a
+narrow, level strip of land, son. It's bringing down tons of sand to
+make these banks we run into. There's a great wide country inland
+there."
+
+The chanteys of the sailors were heard at daybreak in the lonely sea, as
+the _Half Moon_ went on her way northward. On September 3 the little
+ship edged into another and bigger bay to the north. Whether it was a
+bay or a lake Hudson was at first rather doubtful. The shores were
+inhabited, for little plumes of smoke arose everywhere, and soon from
+all sides log canoes came paddling toward the ship. These Indians were
+evidently not unused to trading, for they brought green tobacco, hemp,
+corn and furs to sell, and some of them knew a few words of French. By
+this, and by signs, they gave Hudson to understand that three rivers, or
+inlets, came into this island-encircled sea, the largest being toward
+the north. Hudson determined to follow this north river and see where it
+led.
+
+As he sailed cautiously into the channel, taking soundings and observing
+the shores, he was puzzled. The tide rose and fell as if this were an
+inlet of the sea, and it was far deeper than an ordinary river. In fact
+it was more like a Norwegian fiord.[4] It might possibly lead to a lake,
+and this lake might have an outlet to the western ocean. That it was a
+strait he did not believe. Even in the English Channel the meeting tides
+of the North Sea and the Atlantic made rough water, and the _Half Moon_
+was drifting as easily as if she were slipping down stream. In any
+event, nothing else had been found, either north or south of this point,
+which could possibly be a strait, and Hudson meant to discover exactly
+what this was before he set sail for Amsterdam.
+
+They passed an Indian village in the woods to the right, and according
+to the Indians who had come on board the place was called
+Sapokanican,[5] and was famous for the making of wampum or shell beads.
+A brook of clear sweet water flowed close by. Presently Hudson anchored
+and sent five men ashore in a boat to explore the right-hand bank of the
+channel. Night came on, and it began to rain, but the boat had not
+returned. Hudson slept but little. In the morning the missing men
+appeared with a tale of disaster. After about two leagues' travel they
+had come to a bay full of islands. Here they had been attacked by two
+canoes carrying twenty-six Indians, and their arrows had killed John
+Colman and wounded two other men. It grew so dark when the rain began
+that they dared not seek the ship, and the current was so strong that
+their grapnel would not hold, so that they had had to row all night.
+
+Sailing only in the day time and anchoring at night the little Dutch
+ship went on to the north, looking between the steep rocky banks like a
+boat carved out of a walnut-shell, in the wooden jaws of a nutcracker.
+After dark, fires twinkled upon the heights, and the lapping waters
+about the quiet keel were all shining with broken stars. The flame
+appeared and vanished like a signal, and John Hudson wondered if the
+Indians knew John Smith's trick of sending a message as far as a beacon
+light could be seen.
+
+One night he climbed up on the poop with the ship's great lantern and
+tried the flashing signals he remembered. Before many minutes two of the
+wild men had drawn near to watch, and although John could not make out
+the meaning of the light that came and went upon the cliffs, it was
+quite clear that they could. One of them waved his mantle in front of
+the lantern, and turning to the boy nodded and grinned good-naturedly.
+The signal fires must have talked to some purpose, for the next day a
+delegation paddled out from the shore to invite the great captain, his
+son and his chief officers to a feast.
+
+When the party arrived at the house of the chief, which was a round
+building, or pavilion, of saplings sheathed with oak bark, mats were
+spread for them to sit upon, and food was served in polished red wooden
+bowls. Two hunters were sent out to bring in game, and returned almost
+at once with pigeons which were immediately dressed and cooked by the
+women. One of the hunters gave John one of the arrowheads used for
+shooting small birds; it was no bigger than his least fingernail and
+made of a red stone like jasper. A fat dog had also been killed, skinned
+and dressed with shell knives, and served as the dish of honor. Hudson
+hastily explained in English to his companions that whether they
+relished dog or not, it would never do to refuse it, as this was a
+special dish for great occasions.
+
+"Dad," said John that night, "do you think any ship with white men ever
+came up here before?"
+
+"No," said Hudson.
+
+"I hope they'll call this the Hudson."
+
+The water was now hardly more than seven feet deep, and the tide rose
+only a few inches. Hudson came reluctantly to the conclusion that there
+was no proceeding further in a ship. He sent a boatload of men several
+leagues up-stream, but they came back with the report that the river was
+much the same so far as they had gone.
+
+During the voyage they had often seen parties of the savages, usually
+friendly but sometimes hostile. Flights of arrows occasionally were
+aimed at the _Half Moon_, and the crew replied with musket-shots which
+sometimes but not always hit the mark. The painted warriors had a way of
+disappearing into the woods like elves. Once, in spite of all endeavors
+to shake him off, a solitary Indian in a small canoe followed along
+under the stern till he saw the chance of climbing up the rudder to the
+cabin window. He stole the pillow off the commander's bed, two shirts,
+and two bandoliers (ammunition-belts), the tinkle of which betrayed him.
+The mate saw him making off with his plunder and shot him, whereupon the
+other Indians paddled off at top speed, some even leaping from their
+canoes to swim ashore. A boat put out and recovered the stolen property,
+and when a swimming Indian caught the side of it to overturn it the cook
+valiantly beat him off with a sword. These with many other adventures
+were duly written down by Robert Juet the mate.
+
+To John Hudson the voyage was a journey of enchantment. Nothing he had
+ever seen was in the least like the glory of the autumn forests,
+mantling the mountains in scarlet, gold, malachite, russet, orange and
+purple. He had been in the gardens at Lambeth where Tradescant the
+famous gardener ruled, but there was more color in a single vivid maple
+standing blood-red in a bit of lowland than in all his Lancaster roses.
+And the great river had its flowers as well. A tall plant like an elfin
+elm covered with thick-set tiny blossoms yellow as broom, grew wild over
+the pastures, and interspersed with this fairy forest were thickets of
+deep lavender daisies with golden centers. In lowland glades were tall
+spikes of cardinal blossoms, and clusters of deep blue flowers like buds
+that never opened. Vines loaded with bunches of scarlet and orange
+berries like waxwork, and others bearing fluffy bunches of silky gray
+down curly as an old man's beard, climbed the trees that overhung the
+stream. The mountains in the upper river came right down to the water
+like the glacis of a giant fort, and fitful winds pounced upon the _Half
+Moon_ and rocked her like a cradle. Once there was a late
+thunder-shower, and the noise of the thunder among the humped ranges was
+for all the world like balls rolling in a great game of bowls played by
+goblins of the mountains.
+
+On the fourth of October, the _Half Moon_ left the island which the
+Indians called Manahatta, passed through the Narrows and sailed for
+Europe. Looking back at those green shores with their bronze
+feather-crowned people watching to see the flight of their strange
+guest, John Hudson felt that when he was a man, he would like nothing
+better than to have an estate on the shores of the noble river, which no
+white boy had ever before set eyes on. Where a great terrace rose, some
+fifty miles above Manahatta, walled around by mountains and almost two
+hundred feet above the river, there should be a fort, of which Captain
+John Smith should be the commander; and in the broadening of the river
+below to form an inland sea, his father's squadron should ride, while
+the Indians of all the upper reaches of the river should come to pay
+tribute and bring wampum, furs and tobacco in exchange for trinkets. And
+on the island at the mouth of the river there would be a great city,
+greater than Antwerp, to which all the ships of the world should come as
+they came now to Antwerp and to London. So dreaming, John Hudson saw
+the shores of this new world vanish in the blue line, where earth and
+sky are one.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] The kindling of bonfires and beacon lights on the accession of a
+sovereign or any other occasion of national rejoicing is a very old
+custom in Britain and is still kept up. At the time of Queen Victoria's
+jubilee trees were planted closely to form a great V on the side of the
+Downs, and when the fires were lighted on Ditchling Beacon and other
+heights the letter stood out black against the close turf of the
+hillside.
+
+[2] The account of Smith's campaigns and signalling code is given in his
+autobiography.
+
+[3] The Delaware.
+
+[4] Some authorities consider the Hudson River to be actually a fiord or
+fjord and not a true river.
+
+[5] Greenwich Village.
+
+
+
+
+IMPERIALISM
+
+
+    The Tailor sat with his goose on the table--
+      (Table of Laws it was, he said)
+    Fashioning uniforms dyed in sable,
+      Picked out with gold and sanguine red.
+
+    "This," he said as he snipped and drafted,
+      "Sublimely foreshadowing cosmic Fate
+    With world-dominion august, resplendent,
+      Will wear, as nothing can wear but Hate!
+
+      "Chimerical dreams of souls romantic
+      Are out of date as an old wife's rune.
+    Britain is doomed as Plato's Republic--"
+      When in at the door came a lilting tune!
+
+        _"Here to-day and gone to-morrow--
+          All in the luck of the road!
+        Didn't come to stay forever,
+          But we'll take our share of the load!"_
+
+      Highlanders, Irish, Danes, Egyptians,
+      Norman or Slav the dialects ran;
+    Something more than a board-school shaped them--
+      Drill and discipline never made man!
+
+    Once they knew Crecy, Hastings, Drogheda,
+      Moscow, Assaye, Khartoum or Glencoe,--
+    Now the old hatreds are tinder for campfires.
+      England has only her world to show!
+
+    They are not dreamers, these men of the Empire,
+      Guarding their land in the old-time way,
+      And this is the style that prevails in the Legions,--
+      "The foe of the past is a friend to-day."
+
+        _"It's a long, long road to the Empire
+          (From Beersheba even to Dan)
+        And the time is rather late for a chronic Hymn of Hate,--
+          And we know the tailor doesn't make the man!"_
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+ADMIRAL OF NEW ENGLAND
+
+
+Barefoot and touzle-headed, in the coarse russet and blue homespun of an
+apprentice, a small boy sidled through the wood. Like a hunted hedgehog,
+he was ready to run or fight. Where a bright brook slid into the
+meadows, he stopped, and looked through new leaves at the infinite blue
+of the sky. Words his grandfather used to read to him came back to his
+mind.
+
+"Let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of
+the mountain."
+
+The Bible which old Joseph Bradford had left to his grandson had been
+taken away, but no one could take away the memory of it. If he had
+dared, Will would have shouted aloud then and there. For all his hunger
+and weariness and dread of the future the strength of the land entered
+into his young soul. He drank of the clear brook, and let it wash away
+the soil of his pilgrimage. Then he curled himself in a hollow full of
+dry leaves, and went to sleep.
+
+When he woke, it was in the edge of the evening. Long shadows pointed
+like lances among the trees. A horse was cropping the grass in a
+clearing, and some one beyond the thicket was reading aloud. For an
+instant he thought himself dreaming of the old cottage at
+Austerfield--but the voice was young and lightsome.
+
+"Where a man can live at all, there can he live nobly."
+
+The reader stopped and laughed out. A lively snarling came from a burrow
+not far away, where two badgers were quarrelling conscientiously.
+
+"Just like folks ye be, a-hectorin' and a-fussin'. What's the great
+question to settle now--predestination or infant baptism?--Why, where
+under the canopy did you come from, you pint o' cider?"
+
+"I be a-travelin'," Will said stoutly.
+
+"Runaway 'prentice, I should guess. I was one myself at fifteen."
+
+"I'm 'leven, goin' on twelve," said the boy, standing as straight as he
+could.
+
+"Any folks?"
+
+"I lived with granddad until he died, four year back."
+
+"And so you're wayfarin', be you? What can you do to get your bread?"
+
+The urchin dug a bare toe into the sod. "I can work," he said
+half-defiantly. "Granddad always said I should be put to school some
+day, but my uncle won't have that. I can read."
+
+"Latin?"
+
+"No--English. Granddad weren't college-bred."
+
+"Nor I--they gave me more lickings than Latin at the grammar school down
+to Alvord, 'cause I would go bird's-nesting and fishing sooner than
+study my _hic_, _haec_, _hoc_. And now I've built me a booth like a wild
+man o' Virginia and come out here to get my Latin that I should ha'
+mastered at thirteen. All the travel-books are in Latin, and you have to
+know it to get on in foreign parts."
+
+"Have you been in foreign parts?"
+
+"Four year--France and Scotland and the Low Countries. But I got enough
+o' seeing Christians kill one another, and says I to myself, John Smith,
+you go see what they're about at home. And here I found our fen-sludgers
+all by the ears over Bishops and Papists and Brownists and such like. In
+Holland they let a man read's Bible in peace."
+
+"Is that the Bible you got there?"
+
+"Nay--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus--a mighty wise old chap, if he was an
+Emperor. And I've got Niccolo Macchiavelli's seven books o' the Art o'
+War. When I'm weary of one I take to t' other, and between times I ride
+a tilt." He waved his hand toward a ring fastened on a tree, and a lance
+and horse-furniture leaning against the trunk.
+
+"Our folks be Separatists," the boy said.
+
+"Well, and what of it?" laughed the young man. "As I was a-reading
+here--a man is what his thoughts make him. Be he Catholic or Church
+Protestant or Baptist, he's what he's o' mind to be, good or bad. Other
+folk's say-so don't stop him--no more than them badgers' worryin' dams
+the brook."
+
+This was a new idea to Will. His hunger for books was so keen that it
+had seemed to him that without them, he would be stupid as the swine.
+John Smith seemed to understand it, for he added,
+
+"You bide here with me awhile, lad. Maybe there's a way for you to get
+learning, yet."
+
+Will shared the leafy booth and simple fare of his new friend for a
+fortnight, doing errands, rubbing down the black horse, Tamlane, and at
+odd times learning his conjugations. When John Smith left his hermitage
+and went to fight against the Turks in Transylvania, he placed a little
+sum of money with a Puritan scholar at Scrooby to pay for the boy's
+schooling for a year or two. The yeoman uncle had a family of his own to
+provide for, and was glad to have Will off his hands.
+
+Transylvania in 1600 was on the very frontier of Christendom. John Smith
+needed all the philosophy he had learned from his favorite author when,
+after many adventures, he was taken prisoner and sent to the
+slave-market of Axopolis to be sold. Bogal, a Turkish pacha, bought the
+young Englishman to send as a gift to his future wife, Charatza
+Tragabigzanda, in Constantinople.
+
+Chained by the neck in gangs of twenties the slaves entered the great
+Moslem city. John Smith was left at the gate of a house exactly like all
+the others in the narrow noisy street. The beauty of an Oriental palace
+is inside the walls. Within the blank outer wall of stone and mud-brick,
+arched roofs, painted and gilded within, were upheld by slender round
+pillars of fine stone--marble, jasper, porphyry, onyx, red syenite,
+highly polished and sometimes brought from old palaces and temples in
+other lands. Intricate carving in marble or in fine hard wood adorned
+the doorways and lattices, and the balconies with their high
+lattice-work railings where the women could see into a room below
+without being seen. In the courtyards fountains plashed in marble
+basins, and from hidden gardens came the breath of innumerable roses. On
+floors of fine mosaic were silken many-hued rugs, brought in caravans
+from Bagdad, Moussoul or Ispahan, and the soft patter of bare feet,
+morocco shoes and light sandals came from the endless vistas of open
+arches. A silken rustling and once a gurgle of soft laughter might have
+told the Englishman that he was watched, but he knew no more what it
+meant than he understood the Arabic mottoes, interwoven with the
+decoration of the blue-and-gold walls.
+
+Charatza's curiosity was aroused at the sight of a slave so tall, ruddy
+and handsome. She sent for him to come into an inner room where she and
+her ladies sat, closely veiled, upon a cushioned divan. Bogal's letter
+said that the slave was a rich Bohemian nobleman whom he had captured in
+battle, and whose ransom would buy Charatza splendid jewels. But when
+spoken to in Bohemian the captive looked perfectly blank. He did not
+seem to understand one word.
+
+Arabic and Turkish were no more successful. At last the young princess
+asked a question in Italian and found herself understood. It did not
+take long for her to find out that the story her lover had written had
+not a word of truth in it. She was as indignant as a spirited girl would
+naturally be.
+
+In one way and another she made opportunities to talk with the
+Englishman and to inquire of others about his career. She presently
+discovered that he was the champion who had beheaded three Turkish
+warriors, one after another, before the walls of the besieged city
+Regall. She made up her mind that when she was old enough to control her
+own fortune, which would be in the not very distant future, she would
+set him free and marry him. Such things had been done in Constantinople,
+and doubtless could be done again.
+
+But meantime Charatza's mother, learning that her daughter had been
+talking to a slave, was not at all pleased and threatened, since he was
+no nobleman and would not be ransomed, to sell him in the market.
+Charatza was used to having her way sooner or later, and managed to have
+him sent instead to her brother, a pacha or provincial governor in
+Tartary. She sent also a letter asking the pacha to be kind to the young
+English slave and give him a chance of learning Turkish and the
+principles of the Koran.
+
+This was far from agreeable to a brother who had already heard of his
+sister's liking for the penniless stranger,--especially as he found that
+the Englishman had no intention of turning Moslem. The slave-master was
+told to treat him with the utmost severity, which meant that his life
+was made almost unbearable. A ring of iron, with a curved iron handle,
+was locked around his neck, his only garment was a tunic of hair-cloth
+belted with undressed hide, he was herded with other Christian slaves
+and a hundred or more Turks and Moors who were condemned criminals, and,
+as the last comer, had to take the kicks and cuffs of all the others.
+The food was coarse and unclean, and only extreme hunger made it
+possible to eat it.
+
+John Smith was not the man to sit down hopelessly under misfortune, and
+he talked with the other Christians whenever chance offered, about
+possible plans of escape. None of them saw any hope of getting away,
+even by joining their efforts. It may be that some of this talk was
+overheard; at any rate Smith was sent after a while to thresh wheat by
+himself in a barn two or three miles from the stone castle where the
+governor lived. The pacha rode up while he was at work and began to
+abuse him, taunting him with being a Christian outcast who had tried to
+set himself above his betters by winning the favor of a Turkish lady.
+The Englishman flew at him like a wildcat, dragged him off his horse and
+broke his skull with the club which was used instead of a flail for
+threshing. Then he dressed himself in the Turk's garments, hid the body
+under a heap of grain, filled a bag with wheat for all his provision,
+mounted the horse of his late master, and rode away northward. He knew
+that Muscovy was in this general direction, and coming to a road marked
+by a cross, rode that way for sixteen days, hiding whenever he heard any
+sound of travelers for fear the iron slave-ring should betray him. At
+last he came to a Russian garrison on the River Don, where he found good
+friends. In 1604, after some other adventures, he came again to England.
+All London was talking of the doings of King James, who in one short
+year had managed to dissatisfy both Catholics and Protestants. Since the
+voyages of Gosnold, Pring and Weymouth there was much interest in
+Virginia. Ralegh was a prisoner in the Tower. There was talk of a
+trading association to be called the London Company, and it was said
+that this company planned a new plantation somewhere north of Roanoke.
+Smith could see the great future which might await an English settlement
+in that rich land. He decided to join the adventurers going out in the
+fleet of Captain Christopher Newport. Before sailing, he went to
+Lincolnshire to bid farewell to his own people, and in the shadow of the
+Tower of Saint Botolph's he espied a tall lad whose look recalled
+something.
+
+"Why," he cried with a hearty clasp of the hand. "'t is thyself grown a
+man, Will! And how goes the Latin?"
+
+"I love it well," the youth answered shyly. "Master Brewster hath also
+instructed me in the Greek. If--if I had known where to send it I would
+have repaid the money you was so kind as to spare."
+
+"Nay, think no more o't--or rather, hand it on to some other young
+book-worm," laughed the bearded and bronzed captain. "And how be all
+your folk?"
+
+The lad's eyes rested wistfully upon the quaint old seaport streets.
+"The Bishop rails upon our congregation," he said. "Holland is better
+than a prison, and we shall go there soon."
+
+Smith's practical mind saw the uselessness of trying to get any
+Non-Conformist taken on by a royal colony in Virginia just then. "'Tis a
+hard case," he said sympathetically, "but we may meet again some day.
+There's room enough in the Americas, the Lord knows, for all the honest
+men England can spare."
+
+Thus they parted, and on April 26, 1607, the Virginia voyagers saw land
+at the mouth of the Chesapeake.
+
+The company was rather top-heavy. Out of the hundred who were enrolled,
+fifty-two were gentlemen adventurers, each of whom thought himself as
+good as the rest and even a little better. No sooner had the ship
+dropped anchor than thirty of them went ashore to roam the forest,
+laughing and shouting as if they had the country to themselves. The
+appearance of five Indians sent them scurrying back to the ship with two
+of their number wounded, for they had no weapons with them. That night
+the sealed orders of the London Company were opened, and it was found
+that the directors had appointed a council of seven to govern the colony
+and choose a president for a year. The colonists were charged to search
+for gold and pearls and for a passage to the East Indies. Nothing more
+original in the way of a colonial enterprise had occurred to the
+directors. Success in these undertakings meant immediate profits with
+which the new Company could compete with Bristol, Antwerp, and the
+Muscovy Company's rich fur trade.
+
+In the list of names for the council appeared that of Captain John
+Smith, which was somewhat embarrassing, since a scandalous tale had been
+set going during the voyage, that he intended to lead a mutiny and make
+himself governor of the colony. This was so far believed that he was
+kept a prisoner through the last part of the voyage. The other
+councilors, Newport, Gosnold, Wingfield, Ratcliffe, Martin and Kendall,
+held their election without him and chose Wingfield president.
+
+Next day the carpenters began work on the shallop, which had been
+shipped in sections, and Wingfield ordered Smith inland with a party of
+armed men, to explore. They saw no Indians, but found a fire where
+oysters were still roasting, and made a good meal off them, though some
+of the luscious shellfish were so large that they had to be cut in
+pieces before they were eaten. Coasting along the bay they discovered a
+river, which was explored when the shallop was launched. Upon this river
+they saw an Indian canoe forty feet long, made of the trunk of a tree
+hollowed out, Indian fashion, with hot stones and shell gouges. They
+found also oysters in abundance and in some of them fresh-water pearls.
+After spending seventeen days in examining the country, they chose for
+their settlement a peninsula on the north side of the river called the
+Powhatans by the Indians, from the tribe living on its banks. This site
+was about forty miles from the sea, and here, on May 13, they moored
+their ships to trees in six fathom of water and named the place
+Jamestown, and the river the King's River.
+
+Thus far the Indians had been friendly, and Wingfield would not have any
+fortifications built, or any military drill, for fear of arousing their
+anger. Captain Kendall, despite orders, constructed a crescent-shaped
+line of fence of untrimmed boughs, but most of the weapons remained in
+packing-cases on board ship. Wingfield, who regarded Smith as a rather
+dangerously outspoken man to have about just then, sent him with Newport
+and twenty others, to explore the river to its head. On the sixth day
+they passed the chief town of the Powhatans. On May 24 they reached the
+head of the river, set up a cross, and proclaimed in the wilderness the
+sovereignty of King James Stuart.
+
+The thrifty eye of the Lincolnshire yeoman observed many things with
+satisfaction during this march. There might not be any gold mines, but
+there was unlimited timber, and the meadows would make as good pasture
+for cattle as any in England. In the forests were red deer and fallow
+deer, bears, otters, beavers, and foxes, besides animals unknown in
+Europe. One moonlight night, while examining deer tracks near a little
+stream, Smith saw humped on a fallen log above it a furry beast about
+the size of a badger, with black face and paws like a bear, and a bushy
+tail with crosswise rings of brown and black. This queer animal was
+eating something, and dipping the food into the water before each
+mouthful. When Smith described it to the Indians he could make nothing
+of the name they gave it, but wrote it down as best he could--Araughcoune.
+Another new kind of creature was of the size of a rabbit, grayish white,
+with black ears and a tail like a rat. It would hang by its tail from a
+tree, until knocked off with a stick, and then curl up with shut eyes
+and pretend to be dead. It was excellent eating when roasted with wild
+yams,--rather like a very small suckling pig, the colonists later
+discovered. For the most part, however, Smith was inclined to think
+they would have to depend upon their provisions and the corn they could
+buy from the Indians.
+
+On returning to Jamestown they found that the Indians had been raiding
+the settlement, the colonists at the time being all at work and taken
+completely by surprise. Seventeen men had been wounded, and a boy
+killed. After this, the men were drilled each day, the guns were
+unpacked and a palisade was begun.
+
+Newport was in a hurry to return to England, and Wingfield now suggested
+that Smith, who was still supposed to be under arrest, should go with
+him and save any further trouble. This did not suit Smith at all. He
+demanded an open trial, got it, and was triumphantly cleared of all
+charges.
+
+Of the privation, dissensions and sickness which followed Newport's
+departure, the bad water, rotten food, constant trouble with savages,
+and the unreasonable demands of the directors of the London Company, all
+historians have told. One story, which Smith was wont to tell with keen
+relish, deals with the instructions of the Company that the Indian
+chief, "King Powhatan," should be crowned with all due ceremony, just at
+a time of year when every hand in the colony was needed for attending to
+the crops. Smith and Newport had just come to a reasonable understanding
+with that astute savage, by which he treated them with real respect; and
+the attention paid him by his "brother James," as he proceeded to call
+the King of England, rather turned his head. He liked the red cloak sent
+him, but had no idea what a crown meant. The raccoon skin mantle which
+he removed when robed in the royal crimson was sent to England and is
+now in a museum at Oxford.
+
+After some years of strenuous toil and adventure John Smith went back
+to London. An explosion of powder, whether accidental or intentional was
+never known, wounded him seriously just before he left Jamestown, and he
+did not recover from it for some time.
+
+"And what is in your mind to do next, Captain?" asked Master William
+Simons the geographer when they had finished, between them, the new map
+of Virginia. Smith's eyes twinkled as he snapped the cover on his
+inkhorn.
+
+"Why, 't is hard for an old rover like me to lie abed when there's man's
+work to be done. You know, the London Company holds only the southern
+division of the King's Patent for Virginia; the north's given to
+Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth. And that's never been settled yet."
+
+"There was a colony of Captain George Popham and Ralegh Gilbert went
+out, five year ago," said Simons doubtfully. "They said they could not
+endure the bitter climate."
+
+"Sho," said Smith impatiently, one stubbed forefinger on the map, "'t is
+in almost the same latitude as France. Maybe they chose the wrong place
+for their plantation. Why, the French trade furs with the savages, all
+up and down the Saint Laurence, and mind the cold no more than nothing
+at all. The first thing we know, the Dutch will be out here finding a
+road to the Indies."
+
+Both men laughed. They had lost faith in that road to fortune.
+
+"Anyhow Hudson didn't find it when they sent him to look for it the year
+afore he died," said Simons, "or they'd be into it now. But what are you
+scheming?"
+
+"First make a voyage of exploration," said Smith. "I ha' talked with one
+and another that told me they taken a draught of the coast, and I ha'
+six or seven of the plots they drew, so different from one another and
+out of proportion they do me as much good as so much waste paper--though
+they cost me more," added the veteran grimly. "With a true map o' the
+coast, we'd know whereabouts we were."
+
+"No gold nor silver, I hear."
+
+"Maybe not. But what commodity in England decays faster than wood? And
+where will you find better forest than along that shore? Build shipyards
+there, and our English folk would make a living off'n that and the
+fisheries. I know how 't was in Boston--the Flemings would salt their
+fish down right aboard the ships when the fleets came in. But men for
+work like this must be men--not tyrants, nor slaves."
+
+John Smith's eyes flashed, and his lips closed so tightly that his thick
+mustaches and beard stuck straight out like a lion's. He had seen a
+plenty of both slavery and tyranny in his life.
+
+In fact there was a neck-and-neck race between the Plymouth Company and
+the Dutch West India Company, for the control of the northern province.
+Dutch fur traders were already on Manhattan Island living in makeshift
+wooden huts, and Adrian Block was exploring Long Island Sound, when John
+Smith went out to map the coast north of Cape Cod for Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges of the Plymouth Company in 1614. The two little English ships
+reached the part of the coast called by the Indians Monhegan in April of
+that year. They had general instructions to meet the cost of the
+expedition, if possible, by whaling, fishing and fur-trading. No true
+whales were found, however, and by the time the ships reached the
+fishing grounds the cod season was nearly past. Mullet and sturgeon were
+plentiful in summer, and while the sailors fished, Smith took a few men
+in a small boat and ranged the coast, trading for furs. Within a
+distance of fifty or sixty miles they got in exchange for such trifles
+as were prized by the Indians, more than a thousand beaver skins, a
+hundred or more martens and as many otter-pelts. On a rocky island four
+leagues from shore, in latitude 431/2, he made a garden in May which gave
+them all salad vegetables through June and July. Not a man of the
+twenty-five was ill even for a day. Cod, they learned, were abundant
+from March to the middle of June, and again from September to November,
+for cor-fish--salt fish or Poor John. The Indians said that the herring
+were more than the hairs of the head. Sturgeon, mullet, salmon, halibut
+and other fish were plentiful. Smith had a vision of comfortable
+independent mariners settled on farms all along the coast, sending their
+fish to market the year round, and sleeping every night at home. It
+seemed to him that here, in a hardy thrifty province which gold-seekers
+and gentlemen adventurers might scorn, he could contentedly end his
+days.
+
+There was a pleasant inlet on the coast of a bold headland, north of
+Cape Cod, which he thought would be his choice for his plantation. This
+headland he had named Cape Tragabigzanda. There were three small round
+islands to be seen far to seaward, which he called the Three Turks'
+Heads. One Sunday, "a faire sunshining day," he climbed a green height
+above Anusquam, and sitting on a huge boulder surveyed the bright and
+peaceful landscape and chose the site for his house. Good stone there
+would be in abundance, and mighty timbers that had been growing for him
+since the days of Noah. In this Province of New England a strong and
+fearless race would found new towns with the old names--Boston,
+Plymouth, Ipswich, Sandwich, Gloucester. So he dreamed until the sun
+went down under a canopy of crimson and gold, while the boat rocked in
+the little bay where he would have his wharf.
+
+In 1619, when English Puritans began preparations for the founding of a
+new colony, he offered his services, but the older men would have none
+of him. He was a "Church of England Protestant" and one of the
+unregenerate with whom they had no fellowship. They took his map as a
+guide, and settled, not on Cape Tragabigzanda, which Prince Charles had
+re-named Cape Anne, but in the bay which he had called Plymouth. He
+spent some years in London writing an account of his adventures, and
+died in 1631 at the age of fifty-two--Captain John Smith, Admiral of New
+England.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The account of Captain John Smith's adventures among the Turks was at
+one time considered apocryphal, but good authorities now see no reason
+to regard his narrative of his own career as in any way inaccurate. The
+perils and strange chances which an adventurous man encountered in such
+times often seem almost incredible in a more peaceful age, but there is
+really no more reason to doubt them than to discredit authentic accounts
+of men like Daniel Boone, Francis Drake, or other men of similar
+disposition.
+
+
+
+
+THE DISCOVERIES
+
+
+    Through tangled mysteries of old romance
+      Knights, Latin, Celt or Saxon, pass a-dream,
+    Seeking the minarets of magic towers
+      Through the witched woods that gleam.
+
+    Stately in trappings thick with gold and gems,
+      Stern-browed and stubborn-eyed, they wandered forth,
+    As children credulous, as strong men brave,
+      To South, and West, and North.
+
+    Our venturous pilots map the windy skies;
+      To serve our pleasure, huger galleons wait.
+    Aflame with more than magic lights, our walls
+      Guard the Manhattan Gate!
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+Among the sources of information from which the historical material of
+this book are drawn are the following works:
+
+Voyages, HAKLUYT
+
+The Discovery of America. JOHN FISKE
+
+Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America. JOHN FISKE
+
+The Conquest of Mexico. PRESCOTT
+
+Two Voyages in New England. J. JOSSELYN
+
+Adventures and Conquests of Magellan. GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE
+
+Narrative and Critical History of America. (Edited by JUSTIN WINSOR)
+
+The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote. WARNER
+
+The Romance of Colonization. G. BARNETT SMITH
+
+Life of Columbus. WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+The Voyage of the Vega. NORDENSKIOLD
+
+The Land of the Midnight Sun. DU CHAILLU
+
+The Court of France. LADY JACKSON
+
+Sailors' Narratives of New England Voyages. (Edited by GEORGE PARKER
+WINSHIP)
+
+Indian Basketry. GEORGE WHARTON JAMES
+
+The Iroquois Book of Rites. HALE
+
+Drake. ALFRED NOYES (_poem_)
+
+Crusaders of New France. WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO
+
+Elizabethan Sea-dogs. WILLIAM WOOD
+
+Young Folks' Book of American Explorers. HIGGINSON
+
+Paradise Found. WILLIAM F. WARREN
+
+Ferdinand and Isabella. PRESCOTT
+
+Pioneers of France in the New World. PARKMAN
+
+Sir Francis Drake. JULIAN CORBETT
+
+Henry the Navigator. MEN OF ACTION SERIES
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Page Problem                    Change/Comment
+
+8    "Helene"                   "Helene" to match rest of text
+26   same awe                   some awe
+55                              Inserted a comma after 'jeweled
+                                trappings'.
+85                              superfluous comma in "Catherine,
+                                became" removed
+85   valauble                   valuable
+90   good cheap and wholesome.  As in image
+108  comrad                     comrade
+133  'And the White Gods come'  Line indented to match other stanzas.
+150  sqadron                    squadron
+162  religon                    religion
+178  exicitement                excitement
+194  slaves                     slavers
+194  Cabeca                     'Cabeca' as elsewhere
+230  'like spent bullets"       'like spent bullets.'
+232  two month's                As in image
+239  exploratioins              explorations
+247  Amadas                     Armadas
+300                             Inserted '(' before 'Edited by Justin
+                                Winsor)'
+
+
+The following variant spellings in the text have been left unmodified:
+
+"Bacalao" and "Baccalao"
+"Mappe-Mondo" and "Mappe-Monde"
+"'T is" and "'Tis"
+
+The following variant hyphenations in the text have been left unmodified:
+
+"arrow-heads" and "arrowheads"
+"birch-bark" and "birchbark"
+"cross-bow" and "crossbow-bolts"
+"court-yards" and "courtyards"
+"deer-skin" and "deerskin"
+"frost-work" and "frostwork"
+"Grand-Master" and "Grand Master"
+"ink-horn" and "inkhorn"
+"kin-folk" and "kinfolk"
+"sea-weed" and "seaweed"
+"shell-fish" and "shellfish"
+"ship-worm" and "shipworms"]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Days of the Discoverers, by L. Lamprey
+
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