So it gave him a shrewd old turn when Captain Norman sought him out, that evening where he sat drinking with his messmates, and told him the Admiral wanted a quiet word with him.
John was shown into what had been the castellan’s rooms, and then Norman’s command post. It looked for all the world like the Justice’s office in London, with a big table and a Turkey carpet, and Morgan sitting at the table in a big chair just as the Justice had sat, with the lamplight flickering on his lean, dark face, and glinting on his black eyes.
“How might I be of service, Admiral sir?” said John, saluting smartly.
“John James, is it?” said Morgan, looking at him.
“Aye, Admiral sir,” said John.
“You were one of the lads found the girl, at Old Providence,” stated Morgan.
“Aye, sir,” said John.
“I meant to send her to Jamaica, you know,” said Morgan, never taking his eyes from John’s. “To keep her as far away from harm as I might. I was sending her home in the
Diana
. Wouldn’t you have done the same?”
“I reckon I would have, sir,” said John.
“I believe she is my goddaughter,” said Morgan, and John felt as cold as though Death had clapped him on the shoulder right heartily. “I thought she might recognize me. I couldn’t get her to speak; I thought her too frightened to speak, and Christ knows she must have seen enough horrors to take her voice away forever.
“But it seems the girl could speak well enough, when she’d anything to say. I came back to see her, in the evening after Bradley’s little fleet sailed; and what should I find but that poor, old, mad bitch, that’s dead now, crooning and singing in the empty cabin.
Where’s my girl,
quoth I.
“Quoth she:
O, she’s gone to fight the Spaniard, that made so great a boast. Revenge, revenge, shell eat his black heart out. She’s told me never to say a word till she was gone. Have I not kept my promise to the letter?
“And so I lost her again.”
John saw well enough that he’d sink himself if he denied anything, so he’d best tell as much of the truth as was to his advantage.
“Admiral sir, she stowed away on the
Mayflower
,” he said. “I didn’t find her till we was three days out. She said she wanted revenge, right enough; wanted to go cut Spanish throats, on account of what they done at Old Providence.”
Morgan kept his dead stare on John, but he nodded ever so slightly.
“And what did you do, John James?”
John took a deep breath. “Why, Admiral sir, I was scared green—a pretty lass like that, amongst the kind of dogs and murderers we had aboard? I knew what you’d said, about killing any man as touched her. So I brought her a lad’s clothes, and I talked to her like she was a little child, see, telling her she could march with us when we took Chagres Castle, only she’d have to disguise herself, and stay hid in my cabin until then. And I slept outside on the deck a’nights, Admiral sir, and God strike me down if that ain’t the truth.”
“And when you came here?”
“I locked her in the cabin, meaning she should stay safe when we went ashore. But damned if she didn’t slip out and swim to the beach, and there wasn’t nothing for it then but keeping her by me in the fighting.”
“Was she wounded in the fray?” Morgan lowered his eyes, at last, to the dagger he was turning between his hands.
“Not she, not that I ever saw,” said John. “I was hurt some, but she danced between them musket-balls like a fairy. The last I saw of her, it was midmorning; she was all right in midmorning. Then Bradley, he got it in the leg, and I pulled him behind a wall… and then I reckon I swounded, Admiral sir. Next I knew, the fighting was over. I been searching for her ever since.”
“So I am informed,” said Morgan.
“Aye. Well,” said John. He watched the dagger turning and turning in the lamplight. Morgan said nothing for a long moment, and then:
“You were Bradley’s aide-de-camp, I believe?”
“Chief gunner and purser’s mate, sir, and I carried the standard on the march,” said John. “Me being taller than anybody.”
“Why then, John James, you’ll be a useful man to keep by me,” said Morgan. “Captain Bradley being dead. For, look you, we’re going up the river next, and I’ll take care you’re at my side by day and by night. We’ll both keep our eyes open for the girl; and you’d best pray to Jesus we find her, and safe too.”
“If we could but find her, sir, I’d forego my share of plunder,” said John. “She weren’t afraid of nothing, Admiral sir. I never seen a girl so brave.”
Morgan turned away and reached for a sheaf of maps.
“In your opinion, now, John James,” he said, in his sharp Welsh voice that made it o-pin-
yun
, “is the girl mad?”
John hesitated.
“No,” he said at last. “Full of fancies, like a girl, and she hates Spain something powerful. But she’s no Mad Maudlin, not she. You didn’t see her fight.”
Morgan eyed him strangely then. John almost thought he was going to smile, but he looked down instead and opened the sheaf.
“Send in Collier and Morris,” he said. “And leave me now.”
John saluted and left, brave as though his conscience was lily-white; though he had to lean against the wall for a minute once he was outside, his knees were knocking so.
Morgan spent most of a week cleaning up Castle Chagres, until the bastion of San Lorenzo was as secure as before Bradley had taken it; more secure, for Morgan gave orders no thatch was to shade the ramparts, though the sentries’ brains roast in the sun like chestnuts. The open ground before the ramparts, where so many had fallen, had become the cemetery, by reason of convenience. Bradley was laid to rest there, among a hundred brave fellows. Like John had done, Morgan walked among the last dead and looked each one in the face.
And he called the Reverend to him and thanked him personal for being the first to get to the bastion, and wrote him out a promissory note for fifty pieces of eight; the which Bob Plum and Dick Pettibone took charge of, lest the Reverend lose it in one of his transports of religious zeal.
Word had got out that the Admiral was looking for a girl who’d stowed away. One eager man came, hat in hand, to say as how he’d glimpsed a white figure paddling away upriver, when they’d gone to the boat landing to see what the Spanish had left behind. This eased John’s heartache a little, and maybe Morgan’s too.
Dick Pettibone, of all people, came weeping to confess something that had weighed on his mind: which was that he and the old woman, in one of her clearer moments, had fell to gossiping about how the girl must be taught once she was back in Jamaica. They’d spoken of corsets, and face powder, and deportment lessons, and table manners, and the frizzing and curling of hair, and how hard it was to teach a girl to walk in tight shoes with high heels. Dick thought the girl might have overheard and, being used to living wild, decided then and there to slip her cable.
Morgan sent Dick away without punishment, and bent his will to getting ready for the expedition.
They left a garrison at Chagres Castle, under Captain Norman, and took the main force of fighting men up the Chagres. Morgan gave orders to travel light, on account of the boats and the river being something low that year, for want of much rain. No provender was brought along. They could forage as they went, Morgan said, at the villages and outposts along the river.
Twelve hundred men crowded into canoes, and rafts, and a few little river-craft the Spanish had left behind them.
For a while the tidal bore took them along the Chagres, flat and mud-colored under the glaring sun. It was pleasant to sit in the waist of the little cargo-boat and look out at the green jungle slipping by, and watch the curious birds and the little monkeys, bearded like old men, that watched them back in wonderment. John might have stretched out for a rest, if there’d been room; but he was crowded in with the Reverend on one side and Tom Blackstone on the other, and Morgan himself behind him by the tillerman.
As the sun rose higher, the force of the tide waned; now it wasn’t so pleasant at all, with the sail hanging slack and the green caymans drifting past them, eyeing them contemptuous-like, as their way fell off. Morgan gave the order to set to the oars. John rose to strip off his waterproof jacket, and hit Jago in the eye with his elbow, at which Jacques had something to say. He didn’t say much of it, though, before Morgan bid them be quiet, not loud but with such threat in his voice that they shut up one and all and bent to the oars.
An hour or more after noon John saw one bare trunk of a dead tree jutting up on the bank off to starboard, so scoured down by rain and wind it was silver-white, and having besides a funny sort of resemblance to something that doesn’t bear mentioning in polite company. He nudged Blackstone and pointed, and there were some sniggers in the boat for a while, until it fell behind them. But a great while later there it was again, to larboard this time; and with a groan John realized that they’d just rowed a long weary way to navigate around a point of land they might have marched straight across in two minutes’ time. The river snaked back and forth on itself like this the whole way.
Now and again one of the boats grounded, and all her crew had to clamber out amongst the mangrove roots and work her off, which was a muddy, nasty business, and many a man climbed back onto the thwarts and settled down, only to yell with horror as he spied a leech on his bare leg. They did no real harm; the
boucaniers
amongst them quite coolly took them off by holding the hot bowls of their pipes against the nasty things. John was grateful for his boots, all the same.
And now and again, and more and more as they went higher up the river, the way branched, with two or three or five riverlets flowing into it, and here were the deserted huts of Indians. John and his mates kept a sharp eye out, but no arrows came sailing out at them from anywhere. Men left off rowing and peered through the green shadows, scratching their heads.
Each time, though, Morgan conferred with the tillerman in a low voice and then directed them the way they must go on. He watched from the stern, his face somber, and John could tell he wasn’t any too happy about the time this was taking.
By twilight, when the monkeys and the birds began to scream loud, they’d made no more than eighteen miles up the Chagres. Then around a bend, they came out suddenly on an open place and glimpsed roof-beams, and John nudged the Reverend.
“Best you start considering how sinful them Papists are, messmate,” he said. “There’s our dinner, but we’ll have to fight for it.”
“What is this place, Admiral?” Tom Blackstone inquired, looking back over his shoulder.
“De los Barcos,” said Morgan, drawing his pistol. He was staring at the empty landing. John knew well enough that
barcos
meant boats, like as the place was a port; but there weren’t any boats in sight but their own, and not a cry nor a rustle from the huts, but only a thin plume of smoke going up from a bed of gray ash where a fire had been. Even the birds and the monkeys had fallen silent.
“Two volunteers to go ashore,” said Morgan, and Jago stood up brisk and jumped lightly to the bank, with Jacques scrambling after him. They walked in warily amongst the sheds and huts, but nothing attacked. Slipping into the trees they circled the place, before coming back and reporting all was deserted. Morgan gave the order to go ashore; a little late, for hungry men were already scrambling up the banks with cutlasses drawn, eager to kill something.
But, as it turned out, the Spanish hadn’t left so much as a goat nor a chicken behind to be slaughtered. No maize, no manioc cakes, scarcely even a dry stick of firewood; poking around in the ashes of the open fire, John realized the villagers must have heaped everything they couldn’t take away in the boats there and burned it. He noticed something more too; someone had been there since the fire had burned down, for here and there in the ashes were the tracks of small naked feet.
Morgan, following John’s gaze, saw them too.
“Would you know the print of her foot?” he asked John, quietly. John swallowed hard and nodded.
“Well then, that’s something,” said Morgan, and laughed. He had a sick look in his eyes, as though it had just occurred to him (as indeed it had) that the Spanish might well have played this game at every village along the Chagres.
But he turned round and made a fine speech to the rest of his men, about what cowards the Spaniards were, to clear out so before an enemy, and how if they were like to be so bold at Panama herself, why, the privateers might just stroll in and help themselves to the riches there. If there was no food here, what then? He was no weakling, that a night of fasting would do him any harm, nor were they.
There was some grumbling, but most men didn’t mind it too much, as it was such a relief to be ashore after being bent over an oar or a paddle all blessed day. So sentry-duty was assigned, and those not on watch at the boats pulled down some of the huts and built cheerful fires, around which they sprawled, lighting up their pipes.
Sleep came sweet and easy to most of them, even with the mosquitoes, but not to John. He lay awake a great while, looking up at the stars and wondering where the girl was, whether he had missed her by hours or days. He got up once and saw Morgan sitting awake in the lead boat, watching the fires ashore; he reckoned Morgan must be wondering the same thing.
Whether or not he’d slept much himself, Morgan had them up early and back in the boats, rowing on. This day passed much as the first one had, except it was harder; for the river narrowed and grew shallower, and now and again they came to great snags of dead trees, that must be dredged and hacked and hauled to clear their way. The heat was fearful, except when cloudbursts drenched them; but they were cunning enough to catch the rainwater in every vessel they had, and eased their thirst at least.
The sun had sunk down low in the west when they spotted a great cross on a hillside, made of two logs stripped and carved; Morgan nodded and said, “This should be Cruz de Juan Gallego. Weapons at the ready, if you please.”