Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, Cyrus Townsend Brady [i read book TXT] 📗

wear and bear up on the other tack. The vessel, in fact, like all ships in those days and especially Spanish galleons, had a tendency to go to leeward like a barrel, and only Morgan's resourceful seamanship had saved them from the fatal embraces of the shore long since. The canvas she was carrying was more than she could legitimately bear in such a hurricane. If there had been sea-room Morgan would have stripped her to bare poles long since, but under the circumstances it was necessary for him to retain full control and direction of the ship; so, although he reduced sail to the lowest point, he still spread a little canvas.

The men were filled with apprehension, not only for their lives but, such was their covetousness, for the treasure they had captured, for they stood about a hundred chances to one of losing the ship. Each squall that swept down upon them was harder than the one before. Each time the vessel almost went over on her beam ends, for Morgan would not luff until the last moment, since each time that he did so and lost way temporarily he found himself driven bodily nearer the land. The men would have mutinied had it not been patent to the most stupid mind that their only salvation lay in Morgan. Never had that despicable villain appeared to better advantage than when he stood on the weather quarter overlooking the ship, his long gray hair blown out in the wind, fighting against a foe whose strength was not to be measured by the mind of man, for his life and his ship.

Hornigold and Teach, grasping the wheel assisted by two of the ablest seamen, were steering the ship with exquisite precision. Sweat poured from their brows at the violence of the labor required to control the massive helm. The men lay to windward on the deck, or grouped in clusters around the masts, or hung to the life lines which had been passed in every direction. At Morgan's side stood Velsers and Raveneau, prime seamen both.

"What think ye, gentlemen?" asked Morgan, at last pointing to the point looming fearfully close ahead of them. "Can we weather it?"

"Never!" answered de Lussan, shaking his head. "Well, it has been a short cruise and a merry one. Pity to lose our freightage and lives."

"And you, Velsers?"

"No," said the German, "it can't be done. Why did we ever come to this cursed coast?"

"Avast that!" cried Morgan, thinking quickly. "Gentlemen, we'll club-haul the ship."

"The water's too deep, my captain, to give holding ground to the anchor," urged Raveneau shrugging his shoulders.

"It shoals yonder, I think," answered Morgan. "We'll hold on until the last minute and then try."

"'Tis wasted labor," growled Velsers.

"And certain death to hold on," added the Frenchman.

"Have you anything else to propose, sirs?" asked Morgan sharply. "We can't tack ship against this wind and sea. There's no room to wear. What's to do?"

The men made no answer.

"Forward there!" cried the old buccaneer, and it was astonishing the force and power with which he made himself heard in spite of the roar of the wind and the smash of the sea. "Get the lee anchor off the bows there! L'Ollonois?"

"Ay, ay."

"Run a hawser from the anchor in aft here on the quarter. We'll club-haul the ship. See the cable clear for running."

"Very good, sir," cried the Frenchman, summoning the hardiest hands and the most skilful to carry out his commander's orders.

"Ready it is, sir," answered Hornigold, tightening his grasp on the spokes and nodding his head to his superior.

"To the braces, lads! Obey orders sharply. It's our last chance."

The water was roaring and smashing against the shore not a cable's length away. Usually in those latitudes it deepened tremendously a short distance from the low water mark, and there was a grave question whether or not the anchor, with the scope they could give it, would reach bottom. At any rate it must be tried, and tried now. Morgan had held on as long as he dared. Another minute and they would strike.

"Down helm!" he shouted. "Flow the head sheets! Round in on the fore braces, there! Show that canvas aft!"

The lateen sail on the crossjack yard had been furled, and Morgan, to force her head around, directed the after guard to spring into the mizzen-rigging with a bit of tarpaulin and by exposing it and their bodies to the wind to act as a sail in assisting her to head away from the shore.

"Helm-a-lee! Hard-a-lee!" cried Hornigold, who with his men was grasping the spokes like a giant.

Slowly the old galleon swung up into the wind, the waves beating upon her bows with a noise like crashes of thunder. A moment she hung. She could go no farther.

"She's in irons! Swing that yard!" roared Morgan. "Cut and veer away forward!"

There was a splash as the anchor dropped overboard.

"Hands on that hawser!" he shouted. "Everybody walk away with it!"

The whole crew apparently piled on to the anchor hawser in the hope of pulling the ship's stern around so that the wind would take her on the other bow. She was still hanging in the wind and driving straight on shore.

"Haul away, for God's sake!" cried Morgan; but the hawser came in board through their hands with a readiness and ease that showed the anchor had not taken the ground. The drag of the cable to the anchor, however, and the still unspent impetus of the first swing, turned the galleon's stern slightly to windward. Her head began slowly to fall off.

"She stays! She makes it!" cried the captain. "Meet her with the helm! Let go and haul! Cut away the hawser!"

It had been a tremendous feat of seamanship and bade fair to be successful. It was yet touch and go, however, and the breakers were perilously near. They were writhing around her forefoot now, yet the wind was at last coming in over the other bow.

"We're safe!" cried Morgan. "Flatten in forward! Haul aft the sheets and braces!"

At that instant there was a terrific crash heard above the roar of the tempest. The foretopmast of the _Almirante Recalde_ carried sharply off at the hounds. Relieved of the pressure, she shot up into the wind once more and drove straight into the seething seas. They were lost with their treasure, their hopes, and their crimes! At the mercy of wind and wave!

The men were as quick to see the danger as was Morgan. They came rushing aft baring their weapons, pouring curses and imprecations upon him. He stood with folded arms, a scornful smile on his old face, looking upon them, Carib watching and ready by his side. In another second, with a concussion which threw them all to the deck, the doomed ship struck heavily upon the sands.


BOOK III


WHICH TREATS OF THE TANGLED LOVE AFFAIRS OF THE PEARL OF CARACAS

CHAPTER IX


DISCLOSES THE HOPELESS PASSION BETWEEN DONNA MERCEDES DE LARA AND CAPTAIN DOMINIQUE ALVARADO, THE COMMANDANTE OF LA GUAYRA

Captain Dominique Alvarado stood alone on the plaza of the ancient castle which for over a century had been the home of the governors of La Guayra. He was gazing listlessly down over the parapet which bordered the bare sheer precipice towering above the seaport town. There was nothing in his eyes, but a great deal in his heavy heart.

Captain Alvarado, who filled the honorable station of commandante of the port, was a soldier of proven courage. The _protégé_ and favorite officer of his serene highness the Count Alvaro de Lara, Grandee of Spain and Viceroy of Venezuela, he had been honored with great responsibilities, which he had discharged to the satisfaction of his master. From a military point of view the office of Governor of La Guayra, which he then filled, was of sufficient importance to entitle him to high position and much consideration in the vice-regal court of Caracas.

Of unknown parentage, Alvarado had been received into the family of the viceroy when an infant. He had been carefully reared, almost as he had been de Lara's son, and had been given abundant opportunity to distinguish himself. In the course of his short life he had managed to amass a modest fortune by honorable means. He was young and handsome; he had been instructed, for the viceroy had early shown partiality for him, in the best schools in the New World. His education had been ripened and polished by a sojourn of several years in Europe, not only at the court of Madrid but also at that of Versailles, where the Count de Lara had been sent as ambassador to the Grand Monarch during a period in which, for the sake of supervising the education of his only daughter, he had temporarily absented himself from his beloved Venezuela. That an unknown man should have been given such opportunities, should have been treated with so much consideration, was sufficient commentary on the unprecedented kindness of heart of the old Hidalgo who represented the failing power of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain, Carlos II., the Bewitched, in the new world. Whatever his origin, therefore, he had been brought up as a Spanish soldier and gentleman, and the old count was openly proud of him.

With assured station, ample means, increasing reputation; with youth, health, and personal good looks, the young Governor should have been a happy man. But it was easy to see from the heavy frown upon his sunny face--for he was that rare thing in Spain, a blue-eyed blond who at first sight might have been mistaken for an Englishman--that his soul was filled with melancholy. And well it might be, for Alvarado was the victim of a hopeless passion for Mercedes de Lara, the Viceroy's daughter, known from one end of the Caribbean to the other, from her beauty and her father's station, as the Pearl of Caracas.

Nor was his present sadness due to unrequited passion, for he was confident that the adoration of his heart was met with an adequate response from its object. Indeed, it was no secret to him that Mercedes loved him with a devotion which matched his own. It was not that; but her father had announced his intention to betroth the girl to Don Felipe de Tobar y Bobadilla, a young gentleman of ancient lineage and vast wealth, who had been born in America and was the reputed head in the Western Hemisphere of the famous family whose name he bore.

The consent of Donna Mercedes to the betrothal had not been asked. That was a detail which was not considered necessary by parents in the year of grace 1685, and especially by Spanish parents. That she should object to the engagement, or refuse to carry out her father's plan never crossed the Viceroy's imagination. That she might love another, was an idea to which he never gave a thought. It was the business of a well-brought-up Spanish maiden to be a passive instrument in the carrying out of her father's views, especially in things matrimonial, in which, indeed, love found little room for entrance. But Donna Mercedes loved Captain Alvarado and she cared nothing for Don Felipe. Not that Don Felipe was disagreeable to her, or to any one. He was a Spanish gentleman in every sense of the word, handsome, distinguished, proud, and gallant--but she did not, could not, love him. To complicate matters still further de Tobar was Captain Alvarado's cherished companion and most