The Flaming Cross of Santa Marta

I . V

I i

S

I

1 ,

V

X

L-V

AT THE SIDE OF DAN RODNEY I FOTTND MYSELF WITH MY

father’s blade in my hand

The

FLAMING CROSS OF SANTA MARTA

BY

ERIC WOOD

5 ) ^

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK : : 1923 : LONDON

rv 6-1 Vi

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

« r c r

OF AMERICA

Contents

CHAPTBR page

I. The Coming of Dan Rodney ... i 11. Rodney Tells His Story ... 22

III. Another Who Knew the Secret . 46

Chapter I

I T is with some reluctance that I sit down to write this story—a reluctance that my readers will under¬ stand before they have gone very far. It is never very pleasant to relive some scenes through which a man passes—scenes in which treachery and near death seem to be such prominent features on the painting that memory conjures up.

And yet, somehow, I feel that I ought to give this story to the world; indeed, I am compelled to, because otherwise some chapters in the history of mankind would be incomplete without it. At least, so think I who passed through some things that I believe the historian would refuse to accept as truth, but for the fact that he who tells of them is such a man as I am now—a man who holds high office in the service of His Majesty King James I, God bless him! For I, Roger Hampsley, Knight, Lord of the Manor of Potton, by his Majesty’s graciousness, am also a master of

I ceremonies at his Court, and a man whose word is worthy of acceptation.

It was not always so; not always, I do mean, that the word that Roger Hampsley spoke would be accepted if it was such things as he told and I am going to write in this book. Truth is a strange creature, the existence of which men oft believe not in unless ^tis vouched for by some one in whom they can trust, despite the appear¬ ance of falseness or exaggeration, which is but another word for untruth.

And that is why I, Roger Hampsley, who never before did set quill to paper to write more than infre¬ quent letters to friends, do sit me down now and write the story of my youth; and if, mayhap as it will be, there is much of Roger Hampsley in the story, be assured of this—^that ’tis only because ’twas I who passed through the strange experiences recounted, and only I—of that I am sure—who could refashion them for the edification and, I hope, the interest, of those who will read the book. No notes have I, for I was never a man of letters; and there is no need for notes. Every incident of those ferocious years of which I write is impressed into my memory as though it had been burned there by fire—^and I, who know, do say that fire could not have burned them deeper than they have been by the hot, searing die of experience.

And so to my story, which begins on a night in December, 1594. Twas the Eve of Christmas, I remember. Eighteen I was on the morrow, but the day to be held no joy for me. How could it? I was only one of a thousand other boys in the city of Bristol who had neither hope nor future before him.

Three months agone my father had died; my dear mother had gone before him, many years. And when he went ’twas found that, ^stead of a fortune for me, there was naught at all; and I had perforce left the grammar school and come back to Bristol, if haply I might find work somewhere amongst the many friends of my father. Bluff Roger, as they had called him, a man free of his money—too free, so ’twould appear —and mighty well sought after. For what ? Just that which he had to give. And not one of those who called themselves friend had aught to offer me except— charity.

The Hampsleys never took charity, and I refused it now. For three months I had lived, though the good Lord knows how. I had carried a man’s chest from dock to inn; I had saddled a man’s horse; had done a spell of common river man’s work, and so had kept soul and body together.

But the blood of Roger Hampsley, who had gone with many a noted captain to the Spanish Main, coursed through my veins, and I liked not the life of a street brat. Fate, so I told myself, held something better than that for me. But what?

Such were my musings as on that Eve of Christmas I stumped down the quayside, afraid neither of the lurking shadows nor of the next man whom I might meet. I was a Hampsley, even if my jerkin bore marks of hard toil and lowly effort, and let the cold blast of the winter’s night and the soddening snow¬ flakes drive in and chill the body beneath. The soul within was warm, and it answered to the call that came—surely to it—out of the dark noisomeness of an alley that, even in that murk, I recognized as being one of the hell spots of Bristol, a place where sailormen were lured and robbed, and ofttimes murdered that no trace might be found of them or of those who had taken from them the earnings of long voyages into sometimes uncharted seas.

The cry, I say, came muffled through the snow-filled darkness, and I turned, like a hound for the hare, and slipped me into the enfolding darkness of the evil¬ smelling alley, drawing my cutlass—the one thing I had salved from the ruin of my father and had car¬ ried with me ever since—^as I ran.

Not far did I run, because within half a dozen yards I stumbled into a struggling mass that I could not see, but of which I could hear the heavy breathing, and knew in my heart I was on the spot whence had come the call.

‘'Ho, there!” I cried, and I suppose that in my tense excitement my voice had a manly timbre to it, for there was a scurrying of feet, and with much cursing some one went rushing up the alley. “A cowardly knave, whatever his name!” I exclaimed.

As I spoke a voice seemed to come from the ground beneath me.

“Cowardly indeed/' the voice said; “so cowardly that he will, ere many minutes, be back with a pack at his heels. Help me up, whoever you be. We must away!”

Wondering greatly, I stooped and felt for the man who had spoken, found him, thrust back my cutlass, and helped him to his feet.

“Canst walk, sir?" I asked softly. “Or art so badly injured that-"

“Injured, but not so much that 'tis not within me to get from this place," was the reply. “An you lend me your arm-"

“ ’Tis yours, sir," I said. So, with the stranger leaning heavily upon me, we traced our stumbling foot¬ steps down the alley and so into the snow-filled night that, for all its bitterness, was preferable to the suf¬ focating murk of the alley.

“A safe hiding place, an you know of one," the stranger said quickly.

I, who of sad lot had learned many things, turned to the right and made me for the inn where many times I had spent my last silver coin on a bed and a sup. Old Ben Hatchway, for all his rascality, had been a good friend to me, so good that on this night, when I had been by myself, I had felt that I could strain no farther his hospitality without the wherewithal to pay him. Now, however, with this stranger, thrown as it were into my care by a strange Providence, I was willing to do anything, and especially willing to seek the shelter of the Rope's End, because it was the nearest place I knew where sanctuary of a sort could be obtained,

‘'Whither, friend?" the stranger asked me, and I told him.

“Nay, young man—for I know by the thrill of your voice that you be naught but a youth, though I see you not in this devilish darkness—nay, not there. ’Twas there that villain found me. Young man, an you have not yet tasted it, 'ware o' strong drink. I'll tell you why some other time than now. Now 'tis for us to find a safe place, but 'tis not in the Rope's End we'll find it."

“Sir," I replied, “I know not what 'tis that has hap¬ pened, but methinks I can guess. Thou’rt a sailorman, I doubt not, come home with pockets a-jingle, and been preyed upon by some thievish knave who swore you friendship over your cups. I know the sort. Since the Rope's End is not to your liking, then will we try the cellar of the Widow Sawkins, a good, if but poor, friend of mine since the day I dragged her son from the Channel hereabouts."

“Whither you will, then," said the stranger.

We groped our way through the night until we came, heaven knows how, to the unlighted house beneath which lived the Widow Sawkins. I poked my ragged boot through the paper that served instead of glass, and the woman's voice came hoarsely up:

“Who be it troubles honest folk at this time o’ night?”

“ ’Tis I, Roger Hampsley,” I said, and the widow cackled a laugh that sounded of pleasure. “A night’s rest and shelter for myself and a— a, friend, I seek, though without th’ coin to pay,” I said.

“Nay, there is coin and ’nough to spare,” said the stranger quickly, and before I could muffle his words with my wet, cold hand across his mouth.

“The less you say about coin the better,” I said. “The widow is honest, but there be those who’re not,” I told him, and he chuckled.

A guttering, flickering light was agoing by now in the cellar outside which we stood, and a few moments later the ramshackle door opened and the Widow Sawkins, in a black mobcap that hid the fact she had venerable white hair, and a hideous nightgown of red flannel, stood looking at us.

“Enter you, Roger, and Roger’s friend,” she cackled, and we went in without a word. “Mind you the stairs; there be holes through which a body might drop an he not know of them,” she said, as we fol¬ lowed her when she led the way with the rushlight in her hand.

I do remember that I had difficulty in keeping my friend from falling into those same holes, but at last we were in the evil-smelling hole that served the Widow Sawkins and young Joe, her son of eleven, for a home.

“ ’Tis welcome you are, Roger,” the widow said,

*^though there be but bare boards to lie upon, and that foot of yours has made a draught like a ’Lantic wind; and I with no more flour to make a paste to stick a sheet over it. But if you be as tired as me, never a bit will you mind. Put you out the light when it pleases you to sleep.”

Saying which the old woman, as good-hearted as any who ever lived, laid her down upon the bundle of rags in the farther corner of the room, and went, or feigned to go, to sleep, while my friend the stranger and I squatted on the dirty boards and stared at each other.

‘‘ ^Tis a good name you carry, young man,” the stranger said to me at last.

‘^Aye, as good as any Bristol City ever had,” I told him proudly. “But ^tis like to stink in the nostrils ’less the gods do smile upon one who is the last o’ the name!”

“Now I can see your face,” the stranger went on, “by the light of that guttering rush, I do note the re¬ semblance. An you be not son or blood relative of some kind to Bluff Roger Hampsley, then I’m a Dutch¬ man, which heaven forfend! Is’t not so, lad?”

“Aye,” I told him again. “You are no Dutchman 1 ”

He laughed at my sally and seemed highly pleased.

“But know you—knew you—my father, for Bluff Roger was-”

He pulled me up at that with an exclamation.

“Why say you ‘knew’ and ‘was’?” he demanded.

“The good God grant that Bluff Roger has not slipped his mooring/’

“It has seemed well for the good God to put an end to my father’s course,” I told him quietly, and—I could not help it, nor felt ashamed because of it—I had a catch in my throat as I spoke.

“Lad,” the man said after a moment’s silence, and he reached out and took my hand in his, “I’m sorry.”

It was said so simply and yet so sincerely that I could not answer him for my emotion. I loosed my hand from his and buried my head in my hands and wept for the sound of the voice that I should hear no more.

The stranger honored my sorrow and remained silent until at last I had recovered; then, when he saw me look up, he said:

“A good man. Bluff Roger, and if I know aught of faces, he has left him a good son. Bend low, lad, I would tell you something.”

I looked at him through still moist eyes wonderingly, but bent as he requested me.

“Lad,” he whispered softly, “ ’twas to find Roger Hampsley, your father, that I came hither to Bristol. Hast ever heard him speak of Dan Rodney, who sailed shipmate with him across th’ Atlantic?”

“Aye, often, and never a harsh thing had he to say of that same Dan,” I told him. “Sir, an you be Dan Rodney, right well pleased is the son of Roger

Hampsley to meet you, for you were my father’s friend in youth!”

“ ’Tis the same Dan Rodney who speaks tp you now, lad,” the man said, and he gripped my hand again. He stopped speaking awhile, and his eyes seemed to have a far-away look in them, as though they were seeing things of a distant past. The grip tightened, and I knew that he was living, as men oft do, through scenes that belonged to a dead yesterday. “Did Bluff Roger ever tell you,” he started off again, “of that time when he and I, the second time we sailed to far off America, were cast away, two men left of a whole ship’s company? Did he ever tell you that?”

“Aye, he told me that,” I murmured.

“And of how he and I knocked at the door of the King of Spain on the Golden Main, with a rabble of rebellious negroes behind us, and well-nigh captured Panama itself?”

“Aye, even that,” I said. “That and the slave gang to which you were cast when the fight was over and the Dons won. That and the thonged whips, with bit¬ ing steel in them, that wealed your naked backs. I have seen, Dan Rodney, the scars on my father’s back, and for those alone, if naught else, I hate the Dons!”

“Hate the Dons I” breathed Rodney. “An you hate them as I hate them, and as Bluff Roger hated them, then heaven help the Dons I”

“The which heaven does, since it keeps me here in

Bristol City when I would be carrying a reddened cut¬ lass down the Spanish Main!” I cried.

All my boyish dreams came back to me—dreams that had had their birth in the stories that my dear father had told me when o’ nights we sat beside the wood fire and listened to the wind howling outside; dreams that had never come to pass because my father had always said that while he lived no son of his should go into the hell’s maw that men called the Spanish Main.

‘‘Bluff Roger himself!” exclaimed Rodney. “So like to him you are, lad! I mind me of that day when he and I, aided by a slave, did slip from the mine gang at Santa Marta, and he vowed that some time he would go back, an heaven spared him, to take full account of the Dons! Nay, listen awhile, lad”—as I was about to speak—“listen awhile, though I doubt not you have had the story time and again. Bluff Roger and I walked, marched, crawled across the Isthmus from the Southern Sea to the Atlantic. We strove to make the coast far away from Maracaibo, but Providence works strangely, lad, and it took us, for its own purposes, to Maracaibo, and there, riding at anchor, our bloodshot, tired eyes saw that which gave them new light and life. Two—

“English ships, ’twas so my father told me,” I could not help but say.

“Aye, lad,” Dan Rodney said. “With a half-drunk mob o’ men aboard ’em, fresh from the sack of Mara-

II caibo. Well, lad, we minded not their drunkenness, but we thought much o* the welcome they gave us in their maudlin. And deep-laden were those ships with the spoils o^ the sacking and the ransom for the saving of the city.**

“Treasure that was lost ere a month was gone,** I told him, remembering what my father had oft re¬ counted. “Aye, *tis an old story, but a good one!**

“Good indeed,** said Rodney. “Good, too, was it when, after a fight with a couple of Spanish men-o*- war, which sunk one of our ships, the other, that on which your father and I sailed, was taken. What, lad, you doubt the goodness of’t? You know naught more than that your father, hurled overboard by a shot that ripped the deck from beneath him, somehow managed to live for a night and a day and a night, until he was picked up and got him back in God’s good time to Bristol here!’*

“How knew you that?’* I demanded wonderingly.

Dan Rodney chuckled grimly, I thought, but he went on with the story that I was now anxious to hear, since *twas new to me.

“How knew I ?’’ he asked. “The ship was captured, and we men who could not die were sent to the mine gangs—my second spell, mind you, lad. *Twas while I was there that another Englishman, out of Port Royal in a ship that suffered a like fate to ours, came in his chains, and *twas from him I learned the story of Bluff Roger. Sam Portface—*twas the man*s name; his face one side was birthmarked as with the wine of Spain—was aboard the ship that picked up Roger, and when the ships went into Port Royal awhile after, your father, with a chest full of Spanish pieces of eight, his share o’ the cruise o’ plunder ’long the Main, took him aboard a vessel bound for England, as he’d told me he would. ‘An I get my hands upon enough of Spanish gold,’ he’d often said, ‘ ’tis Bristol City for me.’

“And so I knew,” went on Rodney, “that England meant Bristol for Bluff Roger Hampsley. Twenty years agone, son—twenty years! ’Tis a long time!”

Dan Rodney dropped into a dreamy state, as though he were again looking back along the vivid past.

“Twenty years 1” he said presently. “Twenty years 1 And now—he’s gone. Nay, lad, he’s here. He’ll never be gone while you are here! D’you hear me, lad? To me you’re Roger Hampsley!”

“Aye,” I agreed, wondering whether the man's brain was turned by the thump upon the head where the big swelling showed.

“That’s it, lad; and I’ve come those thousands of leagues to find you, Roger. Thousands o’ leagues, with a king’s ransom in my pocket!”

“S-sh!” I said quickly, turning round, afraid lest Widow Sawkins should be still awake.

She made no sign that she had heard, and there came only the level breathing of her as she lay on her bed of rags.

“There goes my wagging tongue again,” Dan said. “The same tongue that got me into that brawl. But none so bad a tongue, after all, Roger, since it found me you! Bend lower and listen.”

I was sitting beside him now, and leaned over so that my ear was almost touching his lips when he spoke again.

“Did Bluff Roger ever tell you how he rescued me in that march across the Isthmus when a tribe o’ natives cut me off while I was asleep and he was a-huntin’ food? No? A brave man, and a close-tongued one, Bluff Roger was, and never a man to drive the wind through his own trumpet. He followed that tribe for a hundred miles, and one night he crept into the mud hut where I lay bound ready for the roasting—^aye, the roasting, I tell you, Roger! Those rascals lost their feast!” He chuckled gleefully as he thought of it. “ ’Twas Bluff Roger who broke the head of the cook with his only weapon, the iron chain-links that dangled from his wrist, because we’d ne’er been able to get them off. And in the darkness he bit through the thongs that bound me. He got me free, and we passed out into the night and went back the way we had come. That’s how Bluff Roger saved Dan Rodney!”

“Never such a story did he tell me,” I said, with, I doubt not, flashing eyes.

“ ’Tis a story a man would ne’er forget,” Rodney said. “Twenty years I’ve had it here,” and he placed his roughened hand upon his heart. “And I’ve come back too late for old Roger, but soon enough for young Roger. How old be you, lad ?”

‘‘Eighteen, sir,” I told him.

“And I was twenty-five in those days,” Rodney said. “Your father—let me see, he would be about thirty-five, eh? A father to me he was, and a father Fm going to be to his son, an his son let me!”

He looked up at me with his clean brown eyes, and I knew that I, a waif of Bristol City, had found a friend. He saw my answer in my own eyes, and he nodded, pleased.

“ ’Twas Will Shakespeare, lad, was’t not, who said that there’s a destiny that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will? Aye, lad, even sailormen a’ times know what the landlubbers write! And this is destiny, lad. What else ? That I should come from the Span¬ ish Main after twenty years and find you, the son of the man I sought, so that I might repay him for what he had done for me! A king’s ransom, did I say, lad? Nay, ’tis a kingdom’s! Art ready to claim it, lad?”

I do confess that, even now, I was bewildered at the man and his rambling tale, and I could but look at him awhile in silence while I tried to grasp his meaning.

“Nay, lad, the rum’s out now!” he said with a sheep¬ ish grin. “ ’Twas rum that loosed my tongue in the Rope’s End, but that crack about the head drove it out. Here ’neath this shirt o’ mine I have the key to a treas¬ ure house that-”

He ceased suddenly and sprang to his feet, as I did also, for at that moment there had come a splintering of wood, and a snow-smothered figure tumbled in through the smashed window frame. Widow Sawkins screamed as she jumped from her rags, the boy in the other corner yelled with fright, while Dan Rodney made a dart at my cutlass, drew it out and sprang for the man who had entered so unceremoniously. The intruder was on his feet by this time, and the viciousbladed knife that he held in his hand gleamed in the rushlight^s flicker.

He was a big man and bearded, with a white scar that stretched from his right eye down to his chin. He had writ all over him the name of a seafarer. But who he was I knew not until, with a snarl of rage, Dan Rodney, springing for him, said:

“My friend of the Rope’s End.”

That was all that was said between them. But they fought—fought as though they were plowing their way through battle aboard a ship. Round the room they went, and the poor sticks of Widow Sawkins ceased to be of what small value they had been. Rod¬ ney, despite the advantage of the cutlass’s length, could not get within the other’s guard, since the latter had, besides his knife, a knobbed stick that methought would spoil the one thing left me by my father. I stood hugging the wall, begrimed and damp, wondering how I might be able to help my new-found friend, seeing that I had neither weapon nor opportunity to break in upon their Titan fight. Widow Sawkins and her boy

i6 were cringing in the farther corner, both too much afraid by now, methinks, to scream. Not that scream¬ ing would matter, since in that alleyway small heed was taken of folks^ brawls—there were too many. So ’twas a wordless battle that was fought and a silent audience that watched it, though an I were silent I was wide-eyed and watchful indeed, seeking a chance that seemed would never come.

The scarred-faced man was a real fighter, but—the blood coursed through my veins as I saw it—so was Dan Rodney; and in my mind’s eye I could see him and my father standing side by side driving death through ranks of Dons on the Main. I longed to take my father’s place.

A crazy chair, caught by a swinging blow from the bearded man’s stick—a blow meant for Dan, but eluded with amazing agility—came scattering across the floor, and a leg of it struck me full upon the shin and made me hop. There was strength behind the man’s blow, in faith. I stopped me on the instant and had that wood in my hand. I saw me in it a weapon, not much a one, but still a weapon, and I doubted not that I might make use of it.

The bound that friend Dan had made away from the cmcling stick had brought him nigh unto me, and I, a little confused, raised my chair leg instinctively. 1 knew that the other fellow would be over too before a moment gone. He was, with a bound that planted him before Dan Rodney, with stick uplifted and—I saw it on the instant—his knife held, in a hand that was at the shoulder, ready to be thrown. Dan must have seen it, too, for he ducked as he dodged aside; but I, with a weapon that I could well afford to lose, hurled the leg straight for the ugly face, and caught it full in the thick-lipped mouth where yellow teeth gleamed.

A strong arm and a good throw, which brought a howl from the man and made him drop the knife that might have bit into Dan Rodney or into me.

And then, as his hand went up to the reddening mouth, Dan sprang. My father’s cutlass flashed in the weak gleam of Widow Sawkins’s light, struck, bit, and the intruder jumped back, knocking over the light as he did so; and I heard the heavy thump of running feet, the crazy door—I knew it only by the sounds—was wholly wrenched from its hinge and fell with a clatter to the floor.

^‘He goes, the dog!” bellowed Rodney. “With me, lad I”

I knew that my strangely met friend was for follow¬ ing the rascal, whose footsteps I had heard creaking the worn stairs.

“Nay, Dan,” I cried. “There lurks danger and-”

“A fig for danger, an I get my sword into that hound’s hide,” roared my companion, and I knew that it was useless for me to argue. So I followed him as

i8 he went into the night of snow, only, as I did antici^- pate, to see no signs of our assailant.

No signs, have I written? Nay, there were signs— of footprints in the snow, but they led, as we found when we followed them, into the main port thorough¬ fare, and were swallowed up in many another.

‘‘What now, lad?” growled Dan Rodney, and I knew not what to say, except:

“ ’Tis for you, Dan, to plan. There is Widow Sawkins’s, and-”

“Not there, lad, not there,” the sea dog muttered. “An that rogue still be set on that which he has begun, the Widow Sawkins will have him as visitor again, and maybe with his scurvy friends. Therefore can we not go back.”

“Therefore, so't seems to me,” I told him, “should we go back, and not leave that poor woman defense¬ less in her broken home.”

“Nay, lad, the worthy woman will not come to harm. That rogue seeks not her, but me—me and that which I have. As for her home, ere I do leave Bristol City she shall have such a home as she has not seen these many years. Whither go we, then?”

Now I do say that I was hard put to it to suggest. I forgot that Rodney had spoken of money, and 'twas not until he said: “A good bed, for good money,” that I remembered.

“Then will we to the Flaming Cross,” I said. “And-”

“Hist, you fool!” came Rodney’s voice, to my aston¬ ishment, and he grasped me by the shoulder. “Say not those words!”

“An a man may not speak of an inn which shelters sailormen,” I said, “ ’tis a strange thing! What is’t you mean?”

“Forgive me, lad,” Rodney said. “Nerves like a frayed rope’s end, methinks I have. Yet lead me, an you know the way, to this place of which you speak. ’Tis passing strange!”