The Unknown Shore (30 page)

‘Santiago,’ said One-eyed Pedro, shaking his head at it with disapproval.

‘Shall we get there today?’ asked Jack.

‘No,’ said Pedro, ‘we shall not. Not until tomorrow morning. And if I had my way, we should never get there.’ He drew Jack aside, and very earnestly assured him that the city was a place of iniquity and false dealing, extravagance, vice and folly; the pleasures of the city were nothing to the pleasures of driving a well-conducted body of mules – there was no life as happy and innocent as the life of a muleteer, healthy, with excellent company and variety of place; and Jack promised quite well in the trade. It was Pedro’s duty, he said, to deliver Jack and his friends to the governor: but as barefoot sailors of no importance they would certainly be set at liberty, and then Jack must not think of remaining in Santiago, but should repair at once to the muleteers’ inn, where Pedro would engage him, at seven pieces of eight a month and his victuals, but Jack to find himself in ardent spirits. ‘Any time,’ said Pedro, moving forward to guide the yellow godmother on the way down to Santiago, ‘any time at all.’

And ‘Any time,’ he said, patting Jack as if he were a nervous mule, when he left his charges with the sentry outside the governor’s palace in the morning. ‘Remember what I say,’ he called, turning as he went away across the courtyard and laying his finger along his nose to indicate private understanding. ‘You and the ugly one – any time.’

‘His Excellency wishes to see you,’ said a secretary in a black coat. ‘Wait here.’

‘Strike me down,’ said Jack, as they stood uneasily on the black-and-white squares of the marble hall, looking at a most imposing flight of stairs. ‘I wish that we had been able to wash this last week, and that we had a comb among us.’

‘A poncho covers a great deal,’ said Campbell, as if he were trying to convince himself. There was much truth in what he said, however. A poncho is a large piece of cloth with a hole in the middle for one’s head – it is not unlike a tent, the wearer being the pole – and it hangs down in every direction, concealing, in Jack’s case, a very, very old pair of sailcloth trousers, mostly hole, and a little wrinkled shirt that had once belonged to a Jesuit, a gentleman whose charity was larger than his person; the poncho, being long, also covered Jack’s bare and horny feet, rather more like hooves than Cousin Brocas, who prided himself on the elegance of the family leg, would have wished.

‘Toby,’ said Jack, ‘you would oblige me infinitely by taking off that villainous wool thing.’ The Portuguese nightcap, though hardy, was now in the last stages of decay; but Tobias was gliding about the chequered floor at this moment, to see how many moves a knight would need to go from A to B.

‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said don José, appearing suddenly through a small door behind them. ‘I am happy to welcome you to Santiago – most happy – could wish that the circumstances were otherwise – are you all well, all quite well? – you must have suffered cruelly – shocking privations – misery – wet, cold, frightened.’

Jack had not stayed this long among the Spaniards without having learnt to put a thing handsomely. ‘Sir,’ cried he, ‘our sufferings are a trifling price for the honour of seeing Your Excellency and the pleasure of seeing Your Excellency’s dominions.’

‘Just so,’ said Toby.

‘Very good – excellent,’ said don José, who spoke in this way partly because his mind skipped along at a great rate and partly because he thought such a language more suitable for foreigners than a continued flow. ‘All over now, however – you have come into port, and may roll up the sails until the end of the war – the end of the present misunderstanding. And my advice to you, young
gentlemen, is to enjoy yourselves as much as possible until you can be exchanged – youth time for enjoyment, festivity –
nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus –
and Santiago is an excellent place for it.’ With this he bowed, dismissed them and sent an officer to guide them to Dr Gedd’s house.

Dr Gedd appeared to be as happy to see them as if they had been an immense acquisition to his household; Captain Cheap and Mr Hamilton welcomed them heartily; and Paquita, the housekeeper, cook and general organiser – a negress from Panama, as nearly spherical as anything can be in this imperfect world – laid on an unfailing supply of fish, flesh and fowl. Her mission in life was to feed others: hitherto her vocation had been sadly thwarted, for Dr Gedd was content with bread and a bowl of broth – he was a remarkably abstemious man, to Paquita’s fat despair. Captain Cheap and Mr Hamilton had pleased her, as being men of reasonably keen appetite, but Jack, Tobias and Campbell surpassed her fondest hopes; here was walking greed, gluttony in person three times represented, which could be relied upon to eat everything in view, and to rise by night to go questing about for cold meat, a dozen hard-boiled eggs, a basket of pears. In some houses they might have been an embarrassment and a burden; but not in this. Dr Gedd’s patients did not always pay him, but there was none so devoid of grace that he did not bring a present – roses, lilies, a handsome fish, some particularly beautiful peaches, a ham, potted ferns; and sometimes the courtyard behind would be half-filled with kids, lambs, little swine and even calves – all presents, and all, until now, wholly and entirely unwanted.

But a keener delight by far awaited them in Dr Gedd’s house – news, much more detailed news of the squadron. Already, in Chiloe, they had heard that the English were on the coast; now they learnt that the
Centurion,
the
Gloucester,
the little
Tryall
and even the
Anna
pink had all come round, that they had refitted at Juan Fernandez, and that they were now playing Old Harry with the Spanish shipping. All this news came from people who had been captured by the squadron in various prizes – passengers travelling up and down the coast – and who had been set free whenever opportunity offered. They were all most generous in their praise of the commodore; there was not one who did not acknowledge that he had been well treated,
and the reputation of the Royal Navy (very fortunately for the prisoners) was as high as ever Mr Anson could have wished. One reason for this was the force of contrast: the only English to have reached the Pacific coast before were pirates and buccaneers (Narborough excepted), and their behaviour had often been so wickedly, monstrously cruel that the name of the nation alone filled people with horror and dread. To find that the English could conduct themselves like human beings was therefore a wonderful relief to the Spaniards when they were captured, and in their eyes a strange, angelic light appeared to float about the head of the commodore, and even about the bulky persons of his crew.

And now more news had come: the
Severn
and the
Pearl
were not lost, but only disabled; they had put back, and had reached the coast of Brazil in safety, if not exactly in comfort. But, on the other hand, of all the powerful Spanish squadron not one single ship had yet been able to round the Horn for the defence of the Pacific: they had lost the
Guipuscoa,
their 74, the
Hermiona,
54, the
Sant’ Esteban,
40, and a twenty-gun sloop in the attempt; and the
Asia,
the flagship, lay, a dismasted hulk, in the River Plate. Only the
Esperanza,
of fifty guns, could be patched up well enough for a further essay; she was now at sea, presumably somewhere south of latitude 60, and the Spanish admiral, with many of his officers, had come overland to await her arrival in the Southern Sea. It was they who had brought the news, a few days before Pedro reached Santiago with his charges.

‘They have walked here,’ said Captain Cheap, with marked satisfaction, as he told them about it all. ‘Not that I blame Pizarro, you understand: but it does not allow the Spaniards to crow over us.’

So they had very good, reassuring, comforting news of their friends – news that also tended to restore them in their battered self-esteem – as well as unlimited good food and soft lying, in the world’s most agreeable climate: it seemed that they were doomed to obey the orders of the enemy, to enjoy themselves as much as possible. Then, in an unusually brisk turn of fortune’s wheel, all was changed; where there had been gaiety there was consternation; bitter repining took the place of carefree song; and Dr Gedd’s house became a place of angry mourning.

“What is the matter?’ asked Tobias, as Jack came running into the stable-yard, his poncho flapping with his haste and pale despair on his countenance.

‘Don José has asked us to dinner,’ cried Jack furiously.

‘Very civil in him. Shall be most happy,’ said Tobias, helping a pair of turtle-doves to arrange their eggs.

‘To dinner to meet the Spanish admiral and his officers,’ said Jack. ‘Oh, strike me down,’ he cried, with a low howl, ‘to think of appearing at such a do, in front of the Spanish navy, in this rig. Toby, you are a mighty philosophical cove, but I do not think I can bear the humiliation. Nor can the others. They are all dreadfully moved.’

Even in this century, when clothes mean comparatively little, it is very disagreeable to find oneself in an ordinary jacket when everybody else is in tails: at that time men’s clothes were gorgeous, costly and important; and the chasm between a poncho and the proper dress for an official dinner was immeasurably vast.

Ceremonial clothes were nowhere cheap, and in Chile clothes of European cloth and cut were exceedingly expensive. Dr Gedd was far from rich, and he was known to have lent all his loose money to an apothecary on the edge of insolvency. They were already under such great obligations to him that they could not increase them; and in any case he was away for the next few days, which made the thing materially impossible.

They walked gloomily out into Santiago, spreading melancholy abroad in the quiet, tree-lined streets, and Jack by way of overcoming any philosophy that might linger in Tobias’ mind, explained to him, at considerable length, that it would on the one hand be totally impossible, unheard-of and even cowardly to refuse the invitation; and, on the other, quite unspeakable to accept it. For his part, Tobias would have been content to go in a sack, or even (the weather being what it was) nothing at all; for he had both a humbler and a prouder mind than Jack – humbler in that he did not suppose that anyone would notice him at any time, and prouder in that he did not suppose that he could be improved in any way by gold lace and taffety. But he was very much concerned at Jack’s distress, and he racked his brain to find some cure for it. ‘Suppose,’ he said, ‘I were to teach doña Francisca’s boy Greek, as she desired me to do, that would
be six reals a week; and suppose she had the goodness to pay in advance …’

‘My poor Toby,’ said Jack, ‘at that rate it would take two years’ lessons for a coat for one of us. The boy would be a doddering greybeard before his Greek could set us all up in coats, waistcoats, breeches, shirts, shoes, wigs… Come this way.’

They were in the Calle de Santander, and two turns brought them into the Plaza Real. The crowd was beginning to thin, for noon was approaching, but under the shade of the arcade that bordered the south side of the square, opposite the palace, there were hundreds of people still. ‘There,’ said Jack, stopping outside a tailor’s shop, ‘do you see that? Quite ordinary broadcloth, Toby – just good enough for the country.
Eleven pieces of eight a yard.
Oh strike me down,’ he cried, and stepping back in the violence of his indignation, he fell into the arms of a very splendid Spanish officer.

‘Sir,’ he said, recovering his balance, ‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Sir,’ said the Spanish officer, withdrawing to give himself room for the complex pacing and sweeping necessary to a high Spanish bow, ‘I beg you will have the goodness to accept my excuses. Guiro.’

Jack responded with what elegance his poncho would allow (not very much), and having exhausted his stock of Castilian civilities, merely smiled.

‘Guiro,’ repeated the other. ‘Manuel de Guiro.’

‘Do you think he is swearing at me, Toby?’ whispered Jack.

‘I think it is his name,’ said Tobias. ‘I believe it is a form of introduction: try saying your own.’

‘Byron,’ said Jack, without much conviction, and at once the Spaniard’s face, which had grown a little sombre, brightened: he presented himself to Tobias in the same manner, and invited them to drink chocolate with him. They never let slip any opportunity of nourishment, and accepted in unison.

‘I am the seventh lieutenant of the
Asia,
Admiral Pizarro’s flagship,’ he said, as they sat down. ‘I believe that we are to have the honour of meeting you at don José's on Saturday.’

‘In effect,’ said Jack, ‘don José has had the extreme – what shall I say?’

‘Benevolence,’ said Tobias.

‘– the extreme benevolence to invite us.’

Don Manuel noticed the lack of enthusiasm: he gazed at Jack and Tobias and said ‘Ahem.’ After a short pause he said that he was particularly happy to have encountered them, and that he had intended to call at Dr Gedd’s house in any case, because he felt a strong inclination to offer them his services. His mother and his two sisters had been taken by the
Centurion
in their voyage from Callao to Valparaiso (his family lived in Chile); and they had been restored to their friends quite charmed by their adventure. ‘They expected to be murdered, of course,’ said don Manuel, ‘but it seems that the officers were put out of their cabins to make room for them, and the midshipmen taught Maruja, the small one, how to knit, and sent her ashore with a tame penguin. She continually speaks of them – the aspirant don Augusto Keppel, the aspirant don Guillermo Ransome, the aspirant don Pedro Palafox.’

‘Ha, ha,’ cried Jack, quite shining with delight, ‘so the mouldy old swab has survived. Sir,’ he said, returning to Spanish, ‘you could not have given us greater pleasure.’

‘You are a most amiable and deserving creature,’ Tobias assured him, shaking him warmly by the hand. They now fell into an easy and unrestrained conversation, and don Manuel told them of three months he had spent in England – he had been in one of the first Spanish men-of-war to be taken, and he had had to wait until the Spanish captured some English officers before he could be exchanged. He said that until he had been able to make some arrangements with a neutral merchant, he had been painfully short of money: it was, he thought, a very usual experience; and it was certainly a very disagreeable one.