Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer Part 39

IN WHICH SIR HENRY MORGAN APPEALS UNAVAILINGLY ALIKE TO THE PITY OF WOMAN, THE FORGIVENESS OF PRIEST, THE FRIENDs.h.i.+P OF COMRADE, AND THE HATRED OF MEN

"And bless me also, my father," cried Mercedes, kneeling by Alvarado's side.

"Most willingly, my fair daughter," answered the old man. "A fit helpmate indeed thou hast shown thyself for so brave a soldier. By your leave, your Excellency. You will indulge an old man's desire to bless the marriage of the son as he did that of the mother? No obstacle, I take it, now exists to prevent this most happy union."

"None," answered the Viceroy, as the young people rose and stood before him, "and glad I am that this happy solution of our difficulties has come to pa.s.s."

"And when, sir," questioned the priest further, "may I ask that you design----"

"The sooner the better," said the Viceroy smiling grimly. "By the ma.s.s, reverend father, I'll feel easier when he hath her in his charge!"

"I shall prove as obedient to thee as wife, Don Francisco----" said Mercedes with great spirit, turning to him.

"Nay, call me Alvarado, sweet lady," interrupted her lover.

"Alvarado then, if you wish--for it was under that name that I first loved thee--I shall prove as obedient a wife to thee as I was a dutiful daughter to thee, my father."

"'Tis not saying o'er much," commented the Viceroy, but smiling more kindly as he said the words. "Nay, I'll take that back, Mercedes, or modify it. Thou hast, indeed, been to me all that a father could ask, until----"

"'Twas my fault, your Excellency. On me be the punishment," interrupted the lover.

"Thou shalt have it with Mercedes," answered the Viceroy, laughing broadly now. "What say ye, gentlemen?"

"My lord," said Agramonte, from his age and rank a.s.suming to speak for the rest, "there is not one of us who would not give all he possessed to stand in the young Lord de Guzman's place."

"Well, well," continued the old man, "when we have restored order in the town we shall have a wedding ceremony--say to-morrow."

"Ay, ay, to-morrow, to-morrow!" cried the cavaliers.

"Your Excellency, there is one more thing yet to be done," said Alvarado as soon as he could be heard.

"Art ever making objections, Captain Alvarado--Don Francisco, that is.

We might think you had reluctance to the bridal," exclaimed the Viceroy in some little surprise. "What is it now?"

"The punishment of this man."

"I gave him into your hands."

"By G.o.d!" shouted old Hornigold, "I wondered if in all this fathering and mothering and sweethearting and giving in marriage he had forgot----"

"Not so. The postponement but makes it deeper," answered Alvarado gravely. "Rest satisfied."

"And I shall have my revenge in full measure?"

"In full, in overflowing measure, senor."

"Do you propose to shoot me?" asked the buccaneer chieftain coolly. "Or behead me?"

"That were a death for an honorable soldier taken in arms and forced to bide the consequences of his defeat. It is not meet for you," answered Alvarado.

"What then? You'll not hang me? Me! A knight of England! Sometime Governor of Jamaica!"

"These t.i.tles are nothing to me. And hanging is the death we visit upon the common criminal, a man who murders or steals, or blasphemes. Your following may expect that. For you there is----"

"You don't mean to burn me alive, do you?"

"Were you simply a heretic that might be meet, but you are worse----"

"What do you mean?" cried the buccaneer, carried away by the cold-blooded menace in Alvarado's words. "Neither lead, nor steel, nor rope, nor fire!"

"Neither one nor the other, sir."

"Is it the wheel? The rack? The thumbscrew? Sink me, ye shall see how an Englishman can die! Even from these I flinch not."

"Nor need you, from these, for none of them shall be used," continued the young soldier, with such calculating ferocity in his voice that in spite of his dauntless courage and intrepidity the blood of Morgan froze within his veins.

"Death and destruction!" he shouted. "What is there left?"

"You shall die, senor, not so much by the hand of man as by the act of G.o.d."

"G.o.d! I believe in none. There is no G.o.d!"

"That you shall see."

"Your Excellency, my lords! I appeal to you to save me from this man, not my son but my nephew----"

"S'death, sirrah!" shouted the Viceroy, enraged beyond measure by the allusion to any relations.h.i.+p, "not a drop of your base blood pollutes his veins. I have given you over to him. He will attend to you."

"What means he to do then?"

"You shall see."

"When?"

"To-morrow."

The sombre, sinister, although unknown purpose of the Spaniards had new terrors lent to it by the utter inability of the buccaneer to foresee what was to be his punishment. He was a man of the highest courage, the stoutest heart, yet in that hour he was astonied. His knees smote together; he clenched his teeth in a vain effort to prevent their chattering. All his devilry, his a.s.surance, his fort.i.tude, his strength, seemed to leave him. He stood before them suddenly an old, a broken man, facing a doom portentous and terrible, without a spark of strength or resolution left to meet it, whatever it might be. And for the first time in his life he played the craven, the coward. He moistened his dry lips and looked eagerly from one face to another in the dark and gloomy ring that encircled him.

"Lady," he said at last, turning to Mercedes as the most likely of his enemies to befriend him, "you are a woman. You should be tender hearted.

You don't want to see an old man, old enough to be your father, suffer some unknown, awful torture? Plead for me! Ask your lover. He will refuse you nothing now."

There was a dead silence in the room. Mercedes stared at the miserable wretch making his despairing appeal as if she were fascinated.

"Answer him," said her stern old father, "as a Spanish gentlewoman should."

It was a grim and terrible age. The gospel under which all lived in those days was not that of the present. It was a gospel writ in blood, and fire, and steel.