was balm; the islands were enchanted places, abandoned by Spaniard and
Indian, overgrown, serpent-haunted. The reef, the still water, pink or gold, the
gleaming beach, the green plume of the palm, the scarlet birds, the cataracts of
bloom, - the senses swooned with the color, the steaming incense, the warmth,
the wonder of that fantastic world. Sometimes, in the crystal waters near the
land, we sailed over the gardens of the sea gods, and, looking down, saw red
and purple blooms and shadowy waving forests, with rainbow fish for humming
birds. Once we saw below us a sunken ship. With how much gold she had
endowed the wealthy sea, how many long drowned would rise from her rotted
decks when the waves gave up their dead, no man could tell. Away from the ship
darted many-hued fish, gold-disked, or barred and spotted with crimson, or silver
and purple. The dolphin and the tunny and the flying fish swam with us.
Sometimes flights of small birds came to us from the land. Sometimes the sea
was thickly set with full-blown pale red bloom, the jellyfish that was a flower to the
sight and a nettle to the touch. If a storm arose, a fury that raged and threatened,
it presently swept away, and the blue laughed again. When the sun sank, there
arose in the east such a moon as might have been sole light to all the realms of
faery. A beauty languorous and seductive was most absolute empress of the
wonderful land and the wonderful sea.
We were in the hunting grounds, and men went not there to gather flowers. Day
after day we watched for Spanish sails; for the plate fleets went that way, and
some galleass or caravel or galleon might stray aside. At last, in the clear green
bay of a nameless island at which we stopped for water, we found two carracks
come upon the same errand, took them, and with them some slight treasure in
rich cloths and gems. A week later, in a strait between two islands like tinted
clouds, we fought a very great galleon from sunrise to noon, pierced her hull
through and through and silenced her ordnance, then boarded her and found a
king's ransom in gold and silver. When the fighting had ceased and the treasure
was ours, then we four stood side by side on the deck of the slowly sinking
galleon, in front of our prisoners, - of the men who had fought well, of the ashen
priests and the trembling women. Those whom we faced were in high good
humor: they had gold with which to gamble, and wine to drink, and rich clothing
with which to prank their villainous bodies, and prisoners with whom to make
merry. When I ordered the Spaniards to lower their boats, and taking with them
their priests and women row off to one of those two islands, the weather
changed.
We outlived that storm, but how I scarcely know. As Kirby would have done, so
did I; rating my crew like hounds, turning my point this way and that, daring them
to come taste the red death upon it, braving it out like some devil who knows he
is invulnerable. My lord, swinging the cutlass with which he was armed, stood
beside me, knee to knee, and Diccon cursed after me, making quarterstaff play
with his long pike. But it was the minister that won us through. At length they
laughed, and Paradise, standing forward, swore that such a captain and such a
mate were worth the lives of a thousand Spaniards. To pleasure Kirby, they
would depart this once from their ancient usage and let the prisoners go, though
it was passing strange, - it being Kirby's wont to clap prisoners under hatches
