A Gentleman Adventurer. A story of Panama, 1698 ... With illustrations by Maynard Brown

Introduction

...... 9 I. THE DARIEN SCHEME , . . . .15 II. JEGON TEEW . . . . . .26 UT. THE LAND OF PROMISE . . . . .42 IV. DEFENCE OR DEFIANCE ? . . . . .54 V. THE MOUNTAIN PATH . . . . .67 VI. FACE TO FACE AT LAST . . . . .78 VII. A SHARP ENCOUNTER . . . . .90 VIII. BACK IN THE FORT ..... 103 IX. IN THE TRAP . . . . . .115 X. A SPANISH RUSE . . . . . .126 XI. AT CLOSE QUARTERS . . . . .139 XII. IN THE SPANIARD'S GRIP . . . . .150 XIII. DEATH TO THE HERETICS ! 159 XIV. THE INQUISITION ...... 176 XV. A TERROR OF THE NIGHT. .... 191 XVI. A SHRED OF HOPE ...... 202 XVII. THE ESCAPE . . . . . .214 Contents 6 CHAP. PAGE XVIII. THE THREE FUGITIVES ..... 226 XIX. HUNGER AND WEAKNESS ..... 237 XX. A CHASM TO CROSS ..... 249 XXI. A SHIP IN THE BAY ..... 261 XXII. THE END OF THE STORY ..... ILLUSTRATIONS — ♦ — PAGE AS HE FELL, JEGON, SPRINGING AT HIM, BORE HIM TO THE EARTH Frontispiece "IT IS DREADFUL TO THINK YOU WILL SACRIFICE ALL THIS," SHE SAID 17 "I SWEAR TO YOU I WILL STAND BY HIM" THE CAPTAIN WAS ISSUING ORDERS "NOW, GENTLEMEN, LISTEN TO THE NEWS !

" 40 47 I'.l HE LEAPED BACK OUT OF REACH, AND GLARED AT HIS 93 OPPONENT 135 LOWERING THE BANNER OF SPAIN THE LAWLESS BAND WHO HELPED MORGAN TO SACK THE 155 PLACE, THIRTY YEARS BEFORE SHE TURNED HEP. EYES UPON HUGH, LYING THERE UNCONSCIOUS 161 PANAMA TO-DAY ....... 179 179 ALL WAITED EAGERLY TO SEE WHAT NOTICE MIGHT BE TAKEN 269 OF THEIR SIGNAL "HOW HAS IT ALL HAPPENED, ALICIA?" SAID HUGH

INTRODUCTION.

— ♦ — sPHE scheme to colonise the Isthmus of Darien in the -*- reign of William III., which forms the ground work of the following narrative, has had considerable attention drawn to it once more — after having been long forgotten — by the recent failure of the attempt to construct the Panama Canal. The idea of the Darien project, which was known under the somewhat grandiloquent title of " The Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies," received the royal sanction on the 26th of June 1695, and to it the Great Seal was affixed. Its purpose was to form an overland route from the city of Panama on the south to Porto BeUo on the north of the Isthmus, and by that route to transport goods going from Europe to the East, or vice versd, and thereby to avoid the long sea voyage round Cape Horn.

But, as will be shown in the following narrative, brilliant as the under taking appeared on paper, it was in reality not feasible in any one particular. Darien was, and is, one of the Introduction 10 most unwholesome spots, if not the most unwholesome spot, on the face of the globe ; the mountains in the Isthmus were only passable by long detours ; rivers intersected what there was of plain ; and, above all, the Spaniards, to whom Darien belonged, while unable to utilise the place itself, resented any attempts on the part of other nations to do so. They therefore attacked the Scottish colonists who attempted to form a settlement there with furious determination, and also applied to other European Powers to prevent the encroachments of the British — an appeal which led to the English king, who was anxious to keep friendly with all countries except the French, withdrawing his sanction from the undertaking.

William Paterson, who was the originator of the project, has been described as a man who was "not a mere visionary or a mere swindler." Yet his nature was of so impetuous a kind that he might well have been supposed to be either. His principal biographer, Sir John Dalrymple, states that he had been educated for the Church and went abroad as a missionary. Other writers of the day say he had been a pirate, or at best a buccaneer, but the greater probability is that, without himself being either, he had been in timately acquainted with men who had been both. If so, it would be easy to comprehend how the Darien scheme arose in his mind. The buccaneers — who Introduction 1 1 derived their name from the boucan or dried meat which often formed the chief food during their expedi tions, dried flesh or fish being known in the Caribbee- Indian tongue as boucan — dated back to an association formed by them in 1524 and lasting until the beginning of the eighteenth century.

These men were originally banded together to resist the Papal Bull of Alexander VI., by which he granted to Spain all lands west of the Azores ; but on disputing this authoritative decree, and on being cruelly treated by the Spaniards for doing so, they devoted themselves to continued warfare against Spain and the Papal assumption. In this warfare they neither gave nor sought quarter. Every Spanish ship on the sea, or city on the shore, was a fair mark for their enterprise and attack, both of which were con sidered by them as a part of a great religious war, a battle of Protestantism against Eomanism. After the attempt of the Spanish Armada, that war was carried on with a fierceness and intensity that had never been previously known. Of the buccaneers at the period of this story, Sir Henry Morgan was the one whose name was most prominent.

The son of a Welsh farmer, he ran away to sea, soon rose to command a ship of his own, and then waged continual war with Spain. He took Porto Bello and Panama,— marching across Darien to the latter, — burnt both to the ground, and, as time went Introduction 12 on, became enormously rich, and so prosperous that Charles II. knighted him for his services, and made him Governor of Jamaica. Dampier was another, whose name is now better remembered than Morgan's, though from a different cause. He was not so famous as Morgan in his conquests, but far more distinguished for his natural gifts and attainments, above all in his extraordinary powers of observation. These observations he embodied in a diary scrupulously kept by him and afterwards published with his travels under the title of A Voyage Round the World, a work which is a text-book to all naval students.

It is to this book we principally owe the knowledge, among other things, that the famous commanders of the buccaneers were consistently devout in their minds if not in their deeds, and that they seldom went into action without previously calling their followers to prayers. Dampier began as an ordinary mariner, rose to be a captain, and was then content to again sink to a subordinate position. There can be httle doubt that Defoe took from his writings the maritime descriptions in many of his novels. Moreover, Dampier had sailed with Alexander Selkirk, who was the original of Eobinson Crusoe. Also he had marched across Darien. Of other great buccaneers there were — though some continued to wear the king's uniform — such men as Introduction 13 Clipperton, Shelvocke, Woodes-Eogers, Cowley, and, in Prance, Gramont and Pointis — all of the period of the Darien enterprise.

Earlier, there had been men bearing such great names as Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Montbar, Basco, Van Horn, and Lolonois. And, strange as it may seem to us in these days of peace and religious toleration, there was, probably, not one of these who did not regard himself as a stalwart Protestant champion, or who failed to consider that with every Spanish or Portuguese ship he captured, or with every Catholic life he took, he had performed a good action. Such men as Jegon Trew, who appears in the following story, were, therefore, not uncommon characters of the period. Half religious fanatics and half rough sea-dogs, to them the brutalities practised on Protestants by the Spaniards, and also on the aboriginal inhabitants of their colonies and their slaves, were maddening, and drove them to the execution of fearful retribution ; while the Spaniards' own boast that there was " no peace beyond the line," was by them held as a fitting justification for unceasing strife.

Such being the case, one can easily understand how, to Paterson's fervid imagination, the seizing upon Darien, as well as its attempted colonisation, must have appeared not only an undertaking hkely to prove successful, but also one justified by the state of the Introduction 14 times. Nor is it at all certain that he recognised all the chances there were of failure; for he knew that Morgan had crossed the Isthmus with about thirteen hundred men; that the Spaniards frequently passed from one of its shores to the other transporting many valuables ; and doubtless knew, also, that Basil Eingrose, Barty Sharp, and Dampier had done the same ; while all of them had not only succeeded in living in the Isthmus and defying the chmate for a time, but in also defeating and routing the Spaniards who attempted to molest them.

J. B.-B. CHAPTEE I. THE DAKIEN SCHEME. UT they say," exclaimed the girl, looking up at her companion with her large blue eyes, " that he has been a pirate or a buccaneer. Oh, that is dreadful — dreadful to think upon ! Also it is dreadful to think that you will sacrifice all this," and she put her finger on his rich laced uniform, " for such a scheme." " Tut, tut ! Alicia," her companion replied, though his eye did glance regretfully as he spoke over the handsome apparel he wore, " you speak foolishness. My commission in King Louis' Garde du Boi I must have resigned in any case, since your father and you and I are all going home to swear allegiance to the hook-nosed Dutchman. And as for pirates and buccaneers, why, what if Paterson has been one ? Morgan was a buccaneer, yet King Charles made him a knight and Governor of Jamaica ; so was Basco one ; so, too, was Lolonois ; while 'tis but a year ago that Gramont seized on Campeachy ; but, what matters ? / am not going to be a pirate."

" No, Hugh," the girl replied ; " I pray Heaven you are not. But you are going to be the friend of a man who has been one, if all accounts are true." "True or not true, he is a man whom the king — the English king — delights to honour. His great bank alone has thrown all the world at his feet, and where'er he goes he is treated with more respect than an ambassador. Pirate, indeed ! " The speakers were Alicia Bellenden, only child of Lord Bellenden, and Hugh Bellenden, a distant con nection of theirs and a ward of his lordship. Also he was a gentleman of the French king's Garde du Boi, or, as 'twas always written and spoken of, " The Hundred Gentlemen of the House of the King, ' au bee de corbin,'" — viz. "the battle-axes," — and was conse quently ever splendidly arrayed. For the Garde du Boi was the pick or " fine flower " of all the great king's troops; everyone was of gentle birth, most were noble, and all were appointed specially by the monarch himself, generally as a reward for some h. 'IT IS DREADFUL TO THINK YOU WILL SACRIFICE ALL THIS," SHE SAID great service done by the cadet's family.

But, besides their glowing uniform of blue with gold and silver lace, they wore that which stamped them as dandies too — white gauntlets, long boots that shone Hke polished ebony, frills and fal-lals, or lace neckerchiefs ; they were scented with Bouquet du Boi — the great monarch's own special perfume — and they took snuff from gold boxes bearing his medallion on their lids. They could fight too, as Dutch William had found, and so also had his best generals, since they knew them well in consequence of the gentlemen of the guard being allowed in turn to detach themselves from it for special service in the field. And, if any thing else was needed to add to their brilliancy, it was forthcoming in the fact that the wondrous Duke of Lauzun was their colonel. Yet, at the time this history — for such it is — opens, Hugh Bellenden was to resign all this splendour, to doff his handsome uniform, to forget his scents and laces, his rapiers and the sound of the reveille, to cease to be a young officer attached to the court of the most splendid, though also most rococo, monarch in the world, and to sink for ever out of the life of Paris and Marly and Versailles.

For my Lord Bellenden was going home. He was returning to his Scotch estate, or to his London house (sweetly situated in Chelsea fields, with a fair view of Kensington to the north, and the river at his feet), accordingly as he might decide when back in England. And with him was going his daughter, aged seventeen, and his ward and kinsman, aged nineteen. For, since my lord went home to make peace with King William III., and to espouse his cause, Hugh could not very well stay behind to serve the French king, William's most pronounced enemy. Perhaps my lord would never have so gone home, having once followed King James into exile, had not two things arisen to drive him there — namely, his pride and his purse. The former had been wounded by the very man for whom he had risked everything, rank, fortune, possessions, even his head ; for whom he had fought at the Boyne, at Carrickfergus and London derry, and from whom he had no further reward than that James had induced Louis to give Hugh his com mission in the Hundred Gentlemen of the Guard.

Yet, after he had done so much for this last represent ative of a justly fallen family, that representative had gone out of his way to insult him because he would not change his Protestant religion for that of Eome, and because he would not hear of Alicia — the darling of his heart and the apple of his eye — attending his queen to Mass; insulted him, and called him a miserable Scotch Covenanter — which he was not, being indeed no more than a devout follower of the Church of England worship as by law established — and hurled many other injurious epithets at him. The result of all this was that Lord Bellenden's wrath being at last ablaze, he soon put himself in correspondence with his lawful king through the medium of Bishop Burnet, and, receiving positive assurance that he should be welcomed home and all backslidings on his part cheerfully forgotten, was now preparing to shake the dust of France from his feet, as well as to cast Stuart ingratitude for ever away from him and so return.

And now for the other influence, During his long stay in Paris, and when Alicia was growing from a pretty child to a lovely woman, and Hugh from a fine young stripling to a broad-shouldered, handsome man, his lordship had encountered and been much thrown into the society of that marvellous schemer and visionary, William Paterson, a man who had wandered about the world in all sorts of garbs and guises, and who, as Alicia had just then said, was supposed to have been a buccaneer if not a pirate. Else, how did he know of the strange lands he spoke of to everyone, no matter whether Enghsh merchants on 'Change, French duchesses at St. Germains, Whig or Jacobite gentlemen at Edinburgh, petty German princes or Hanse town traders ? — for he knew them all. A wanderer and a schemer this man had ever been, and when the very corporation which his brain had conceived — the Bank of England — refused to re-elect him a director, he began once more these wanderings over the whole face of Europe, moving in the best society because of the one great idea that had succeeded, and flattered and cringed to in that society because of other possible schemes which his busy mind might devise.

Some year or two before this narrative commences, the new project had arisen in his brain. Also it was at this period that he and my Lord Bellenden were thrown much together, and, from meeting at a ball at the house of M. de Louvois, the king's great minister, to becoming firm friends was a matter of very little time ; for soon the one Scotsman unfolded to the other the newest idea that had come into his teeming brain — an idea which promised wealth as great as that of the Indies to those who embarked in it, and which ended in bringing ruin and disaster upon thousands. That scheme was no less than the colonisation of the Isthmus of Darien by Scotsmen, and the creation, on either side of the narrow neck of land, of two cities or ports, to which might be brought on the one shore the wealth of the East and on the other the products of the West, while between them there should be an uninterrupted land passage.

Thus, the voyage from Europe to Asia would be curtailed of more than onehalf its length, the passage round Africa would be abandoned, and the cargoes of the East would simply be deposited on the shores of the Bay of Panama, transported to the Gulf of Darien by land, and so re-shipped to Europe. " But," asked Lord Bellenden, when first the project was opened to him (and the same question was put by many others), " will the state of the country permit of such transport — is it passable ? " And as they so asked they determined to consult maps and charts and books of foreign travel ere embarking on the undertaking. " Is it passable ? " repeated the projector, the man who had been, as Alicia said, a pirate or a buccaneer. " Is it passable ? There is none more so. True, there are mountains in Darien ; but the climate is so soft that roads can easily be constructed ; men can work all day in that pure air ; it is a Paradise !

I have been there " (he did not say in what capacity) ; " I know it well; and also do I know that the natives are ever friendly to the white man, excepting always the Spaniards, whom they hate." " But do not the Spaniards own this isthmus ?" asked another Scotsman, who happened to be in Paris at the time, and was no less a person than Fletcher of Saltoun. " How will they take this venture ? " To any other man than Paterson this question should have exploded his scheme. For, in truth, although Spain did own Darien, the Spaniards did not inhabit it owing to its horribly malarious and poisonous air and its terrible effects upon the health of the white man, and therefore, had Paterson spoken the truth, he would at once have shown how impossible the project was. What he did reply, however, was — " That Spain may consider she has some claim upon Darien is possible ; yet when she never utilises it, what objection can she make to our doing so ?

And if she does object, what form can her objections take ? She is now decrepit and broken down, torpid and paralysed, her navy in decay, her finances exhausted, her very people worn out. What can she do against Great Britain ? " It was strange that among all to whom he uttered these words, as he did daily in one capital or another to which he wandered, none ever thought to suggest that Great Britain might not, perhaps, be disposed to espouse as a national cause the interests of that which was at best a company formed to undertake a com mercial enterprise ; yet, until later, none ever did so think. Thus, blindly, and believing implicitly in the picture drawn by a man who, at his best, was an enthusiast and a visionary, and had only known Darien in its few fine and salubrious months, and who, at his worst, was an adventurer in the most unfavourable sense of the word, two countries, if not three, allowed themselves to be drawn into the scheme.

And of all the persons whose fortunes, whose lives, and whose happiness were imperilled by this project, there were none more affected than Lord Bellenden and his niece and kins man. For to Alicia it brought for many months a heart-aching and a misery that were almost as bitter as death, and to Hugh it brought — but this you shall read. For it is to describe all that befell him and her — befell him, the once brilliant young guardsman of the Great Louis, and her, the sweet, tender girl whose life was bound up in his — that this narrative is written. CHAPTEE II. JEGON TREW. T was in the saloon of the house at St, Germains, which Lord Bellenden had occupied ever since he followed James II. to France, in 1688, that we saw Alicia and Hugh talking together; it is at Edin burgh that we now meet with them.

For France was abandoned for ever, and with France that little family had taken leave also of the last Stuart and his cause. " My lord," said James, looking very old and worn as he sat, or rather reclined, in the velvet chair above which— oh, hollow mockery ! — the imitation crown of England was set, "my lord, you have come to take your leave of me, have you ? So, so. Well, you are not the first by many ; even my children did that long ago, when my fortunes fell. Yet you must be near the last. There are few adherents to the Stuart now ; soon, unless my brother Louis protects my son, there will be no Stuart. Yet I do not blame you ; you are wise to make terms with those that be. And, Lord Bellenden, I hope we part at peace ; for we shall never meet again." " Sire ! " exclaimed the viscount, while in his throat there rose a lump and in his eyes there came a mist, for the sad figure of the fallen king, and his sadder words, had touched him deeply, — " sire, I do indeed hope so.

For, though it is our religion which parts us, as, alas ! it has parted your Majesty from all who would have loved and served you, I shall ever think of you as one whom I revered. Sire, permit me to kiss your hand, and so depart. And — and — God bless your Majesty." " Amen," said James. " I need His blessing. Fare well," — and, sinking back in his chair, he relapsed into the lethargy which in his last years so grew upon him. But ere this small family could be uprooted from the spot where they had dwelt in voluntary exile so long — for 'twas now 1698 ; so that they had been abroad ten years — there were many other partings to be made. First, there was the Grand Monarque — that strange figure of grandeur and littleness — to be taken leave of ; the man who starved his people, raised his hand and his cane in threats to his generals and field-marshals, and yet took off his hat to a maidservant if he passed t her on the staircase !

Then there was the whilom favourite, now the wife, from whom gentle Alicia always shrank as from some horrid thing; and also there was the other queen, wife of James, who wept over the girl, and kissed and caressed her, and called her by pretty little Italian names of endearment, and prayed that she might be happy always. And the mare, Eoselle, that she rode morning and evening ; ah ! that was indeed a bitter parting, when she flung her arms around its neck and stroked and kissed its soft muzzle, and lamented how it could not go to England with her too. Then there were the poor of Versailles and St. Germains whom she had succoured and be friended, unhappy people who had often nothing else but coarse herbs and roots to eat. For Hugh there were his comrades to be taken leave of, those brilliant beaux whose ruffles were so perfumed and whose swords were so keen.

From Lauzun, not yet a duke, but only Count de Puiguilhem, down to the latest porte-drapeau, or ensign, — a bright-eyed boy of sixteen, himself a marquis, — all had to be parted with, caroused with, and taken sad leave of. For they would never come together again, these comrades of the palace, no, not even in war and as adversaries, since the great king had only released Hugh from his service on condition that, come what might, he would never draw sword against France after having once served her. And since now Hugh could neither fight against France nor for her, he concluded that his days of soldiering were over. For fighting France, or fighting for her, made up almost all the military exploits of those times. Often and often in the days to come — the days which I am about to record — Hugh looked back from his misery and his raggedness to the time when he served in the King's Guard, wore his brilliant uniform, and fed off the best in the mirrored galleries of Versailles.

And so, when the farewells were made, the three passed from France to England, and thence swiftly to Scotland. Here, since the summer was at hand, and the period fixed for the expedition to sail, in which it was arranged that Hugh was to go as representative of his father and some others of the Scotch nobility, they found Edinburgh in a state of the greatest excitement. " Ah, Alicia ! " said Hugh, bursting into the room where she sat engaged in writing to some girl-friend whom she had left behind in France, " I have just ridden back from Leith, where all is in turmoil over our preparations. For the vessels are in, which the Company have bought from Amsterdam and Hamburg, and already the cargoes are being got on board. Oh, Alicia, who would not be going to Darien ? Why, 'tis as good as riding in the King's Guard."

" For one," replied the girl, looking up from her page and throwing back her curls, — for as yet, at least, she had adopted none of the monstrosities in the shape of head-dresses so common to the ladies of the period, — " for one, I wish you were not going. It is enough, I think, that my father has embarked his money in the undertaking," — Lord Bellenden had taken three thousand pounds' worth of shares in the Company, a large sum for those days, and especially for a noble man who had become somewhat impoverished by his adherence to a fallen dynasty, — " to say nothing of England being, 'tis said, already opposed to the scheme." " Opposed to the scheme ? When was England not opposed to any-scheme that was for the benefit of Scotland ? Yet, England or no England, I tell you, sweetheart, I am right glad to be going.

I am no longer a soldier, so I will be a sailor, or, at least, a gentleman adventurer." " Sweetheart ? " she repeated, " sweetheart ? I think you can scarce regard me as that, scarce think of me as your future wife, if you are willing to run such mad risks. Heaven alone knows what will be the end of all." " Why, what should be the end of all, but wealth and fortune ? We shall found a new city — 'tis already decided 'tis to be called New Edinburgh — that shall rival Panama in wealth, and tempt other Morgans to try and sack it. Though they shall never do that if I become governor of it, as Paterson says I may be if all goes as we hope — or, at least, military commandant. And oh, Alicia, you should see our cargoes ! They would make you envious — perhaps, too, make you laugh, sweet coz — if anything can ever make you laugh again, you look so melancholy."

" Why should they make her laugh ? " asked a deep, solemn voice behind him, and, looking round, he saw his relative, Lord Bellenden, who had lifted the tapestried hangings of the door and was standing regarding them. Certainly he was not very prone to laughter himself, being ever a grave, self-contained man : one who had seen troublesome times and drawn from them something of their sombreness. And though, hke so many Scottish and English noblemen and gentry, he had now bowed the knee and taken the oath of allegiance to William, he reproached himself inwardly for having deserted the Stuarts, whom, in his heart, he felt to be the lawful rulers. " Why should the cargoes make her laugh ? " he repeated, as Hugh gave him a morning salutation. " They have cost enough, Heaven knows." " Because, uncle," replied Hugh, claiming a relationship which did not really exist, though he always regarded and called him thus, — " because, uncle, they are of such a strange nature that one cannot but laugh at them.