Chapter 3 The Black Swan by Rafael Sabatini
Bransome's Prayer
The Centaur left Dominica a little before sunset, and with the wind on her starboard quarter set a westerly course for the Isle of Ayes, so as to give a wide berth to Guadeloupe.
Having conned the ship, the Captain went below to supper, and came in high good-humour to the spacious cabin, flanked to port and starboard by the lesser cabins which his passengers were now occupying.
The great horn windows in the stem stood wide to the air and to the green receding mass of the island, which Captain Bransome announced without a sigh that he would never see again. His good-humour was rooted in the fact that his last call made and his cargo safely stowed, he was now definitely setting his face towards home and the serene ease in the bosom of a family that scarcely knew him. Nevertheless, he went in confidence that, like himself, this family looked forward joyously to his retirement from the sea and to assisting him in garnering the reward for all these years of labour bravely shouldered and for all the perils and hardships confronted without shrinking.
Contentment made him more than ordinarily loquacious, as he sat there in shirt and drawers, a burly, jovial figure at the head of his own table, with Sam, the white-jacketed Negro steward, in attendance and Monsieur de Bernis' servant lending him assistance. A feast was spread that evening. There was fresh meat and turtle and vegetables taken aboard that day, and the roasted flesh of a great albacore that Monsieur de Bernis had caught in the course of the afternoon; and in honour of what to him was a great occasion, Captain Bransome regaled them with a sweet Peruvian wine which his own rude taste accounted very choice.
In this wine Monsieur de Bernis pledged his safe return and many happy years in the bosom of that family of which so far the Captain had seen so little.
'Seems queer,' the Captain said, 'that a man should scarcely know his own children. Unnatural. There's four fine lads well-nigh grown to manhood, and all but strangers to me that got 'em.' A pensive smile lighted the broad ruddy features of his good-humoured face. 'But the future is ours now, and it'll have to make amends to me for the past. Aye, and to that sweet patient woman o' mine who waits at Babbicombe. I'll be beside her now to show her that the years I've been away ha'n't been wasted. And this last voyage o' mine'll prove the most prosperous of all. There's a mort o' money in them hides when we comes to market them at home. Old Lafarche has served me well this trip.'
The mention of the old French trader shifted the current of his thoughts. He looked at Monsieur de Bernis, who sat alone on one side of the board, his back to the light, opposite the Major and the lady who were side by side on the master's right.
'Queer, your meeting the old buccaneer again like that, by chance, after all these years. And queer, too, that I should not have remembered who ye were, for all that your name was kind of familiar, until old Lafarche reminded me.'
'Yes,' de Bernis quietly agreed. 'Life is a matter of queer chances. It made me feel old to meet him and to see into what he has grown. That's the result of beginning life whilst most men are still at school.'
The Major had pricked up his ears. Here were interesting facts. Facts to be investigated.
'D'ye say that French trader was once a buccaneer?'
It was de Bernis who answered him. 'Faith, we were little better at Santa Catalina. And after that we sailed with Morgan.'
'With Morgan?' The Major could hardly believe his ears. 'D'ye mean Henry Morgan?'
'Sir Henry Morgan. Yes. He that is now Governor of Jamaica.'
'But...' The Major paused, frowning. 'D'ye say that you, too, sailed with him? With Morgan?'
Monsieur de Bernis did not seem to remark the incredulity in the other's voice. He answered simply and naturally.
'Why, yes. And I marched with him, too. I was at Porto Bello with him, and at Panama. At Panama I was in command of the French contingent of his forces. We took a proud vengeance then for the blood that was shed at Santa Catalina.'
Miss Priscilla looked brightly alert and eager. Without knowledge of West Indian affairs to perceive the implications that had shocked the Major, she was aware only that here was another story of brave doings, and hoped that Monsieur de Bernis would he induced to tell it. But the Major's face was blank and seemed to have lost some of its high colour. He reflected with satisfaction upon his own shrewdness which had discerned this man's true quality under his airs and graces, his swaggering gallantry and his troubadour arts. In dubbing him an adventurer he had erred on the side of charity.
There fell a long pause, during which Monsieur de Bernis helped himself to a slab of guava cheese and poured himself another cup of the Peruvian wine. He was setting down the squat bottle when at last the Major exploded.
'So that ye're just...just a damned pirate! A damned pirate! And, stab me, ye've the effrontery to confess it!'
Miss Priscilla and the Captain cried out upon him simultaneously in alarm.
'Bart!' ejaculated the lady.
'Major Sands, sir!' exclaimed the Captain.
Condemnation was in the voice of each. But Monsieur de Bernis showed no resentment. He smiled upon their dismay and waved a long fine hand to pacify them.
'A pirate?' Almost he seemed amused. 'Ah, no, A filibuster, please. A buccaneer.'
The Major curled his heavy lip. 'And the difference?'
'The difference? Oh, but all the difference in the world.'
Captain Bransome came to the rescue with the explanation which Monsieur de Bernis seemed to disdain to offer. The buccaneers had a sort of charter behind them. They had been encouraged by the Governments of both England and France, because they had kept in check the rapacity of Spain, confining their raids to Spanish ships and Spanish settlements.
Monsieur de Bernis was moved by this to take up the tale. 'And doing it as I'll swear none others could have done it. You would not sneer, Major Sands, had you crossed Darien with us.'
He was launched upon reminiscences. He began to tell them of that incredibly arduous journey made partly on foot and partly by water on the Chagres River. He described the hardships they had confronted and overcome: how for eight days they had gone without food, save an occasional evil-tasting musk-flavoured alligator's egg; how they had been constrained to eat strips of hide, consuming even their own belts to cheat their famished stomachs; and how it was in a spent condition that at last they had staggered into sight of Panama, which, forewarned, had mobilized to receive them, with guns and horses, outnumbering them in men by three to one.
'If the Spaniards had only driven in their cattle from the savannah where we lay the night before the battle, starvation must have made us an easy prey to them. I should not now be telling you of these things. But the cattle were there, the steers and horses, and we took and killed what we required, and ate the flesh almost raw And so, by the grace of God, we found the strength to deliver the attack, and carry the town in the teeth of its defenders.'
'By the grace of God!' said the Major, scandalized. 'It is blasphemy, sir.'
De Bernis was singularly patient.
'Ye're intolerant, Major,' was all he said.
'Of thieving rogues? To be sure, I am. I call a thing by its proper name. Ye can throw no glamour over the sack of Panama, sir. With whatever arts you tell the tale of it, it remains a thieving raid, and the men who took part in it--Morgan and his cut-throats--were just bloodthirsty, thieving scoundrels.'
Before such direct offensiveness Captain Bransome became deeply alarmed. Whatever Monsieur de Bernis might be today, it was certain that, since once he had followed the trade of a buccaneer, there must be wild blood in him. If it were roused, there might he mischief done; and he wanted none of that aboard the Centaur. He was considering intervention, when the Frenchman, who, whatever he may have felt, still betrayed no outward sign of irritation, forestalled him.
'By my faith, Major, do you realize that what you say is almost treason? It is a reproach to your King, who does not share your so sensitive honesty. For if he regarded Henry Morgan as you describe him, he would never have raised him to the dignity of knighthood and made him Governor of Jamaica.'
'And that's the fact,' Captain Bransome supported him, hoping to curb the Major's rashness. 'And ye should also be told that Monsieur de Bernis here holds the appointment of Sir Henry Morgan's lieutenant, to help him keep order upon the seas.'
Contradiction came not from the Major, but from Monsieur de Bernis himself.
'Ah, but that is over now. I have resigned my post. Like yourself, Captain, I am going home to enjoy the rest I have earned.'
'No matter for that. The fact that ye held the post, held the King's commission in spite of Panama and Porto Bello and the rest, should be answer enough for Major Sands.'
But Major Sands was not to be put down. 'Ye know very well that was but setting a thief to catch a thief. You may sing the praises of your buccaneers never so eloquently, sir. But you know they had become such a pest that to deliver the seas of them your friend Henry Morgan was bribed with a knighthood and a King's commission to turn upon his old associates.'
Monsieur de Bernis shrugged, and sank back into his chair, quietly sipping his wine. His manner, faintly contemptuous, showed that he withdrew from the discussion. Captain Bransome took it up in his place.
'However it may have been, we've Sir Henry Morgan to thank for it that we can sail in safety now. That at least will be something to his credit.'
Major sneered. 'He's been constrained to it,' was his grudging admission. 'They've had him home once, and very nearly hanged him for the disloyal way in which he neglected the duty for which he was paid and commissioned. As if loyalty were to be looked for in such men. It was only that danger awakened him to the necessity to keep faith with those who had paid him in advance. I'll own that since then he seems to have gone more vigorously about the business of sweeping the seas clean. But that don't make me forget that it was he and his kind who fouled them.'
'Don't grudge him his due, Major,' Bransome pleaded. 'It's to be doubted if another could ha' done what he has done. It needed him with his own lads behind him to tackle the disorders afloat, and put an end to them.'
But the Major would not yield. In the heat of argument and exasperation he plunged recklessly into matters from which, yesterday, concern for Priscilla had made him steer them. 'Put an end to it? I seem to have heard of a buccaneering villain named Tom Leach who still goes roaring up and clown the Caribbean, setting Morgan at defiance.'
Bransome's face darkened. 'Tom Leach, aye. Rot his soul! But Morgan'll get him. It's known from Campeche to Trinidad and from Trinidad to the Bahamas that Morgan is offering five hundred pounds for the head of the last of the buccaneers.'
Monsieur de Bernis stirred. He set down his wine-glass.
'That is not a buccaneer, Captain. It offends me to hear you say it. Tom Leach is just a nasty pirate.'
'And that's the fact,' Bransome approved him. 'As wicked a cut-throat as was ever loose upon the seas. An inhuman beast, without honour and without mercy, making war upon all, and intent only upon robbery and plunder.'
And he fell to relating horrors of Leach's performance, until de Bernis raised a long graceful hand to check him.
'You nauseate Miss Priscilla.'
Made aware of her pallor, the Captain begged her pardon, and closed the subject with a prayer.
'God send that filthy villain may soon come to moorings in execution dock.'
Miss Priscilla intervened.
'You have talked enough of pirates,' she censured them, and rendered the Major at last aware of his enormity.
She leaned across to Monsieur de Bernis, smiling up at him, perhaps all the more sweetly because she desired to reward him for his admirable patience and self-restraint under provocation that had been gross. 'Monsieur de Bernis, will you not fetch your guitar, and sing to us again?'
The Frenchman rose to do her bidding, whilst Major Sands was left to marvel ill-humouredly that all that had been revealed touching this adventurer's abominable antecedents should have made so little impression upon the lady in his charge. Decidedly she was in urgent need of a season of the sedate dignity of English county life to bring the world into correct perspective to her eyes.