In the patio of one of these houses, near enough to the Plaza Real for a confused hum of its activity to carry through the orange-scented shade, stood Dr Gedd, an elderly Scotch physician. This gentleman, having remained loyal both to his forefathers’ religion and to the house of Stuart, found himself a proscribed outlaw in 1715. He had the whole world (or at least the Catholic part of it) before him, and he had a certain amount of money in his pocket: he therefore selected the finest climate in the available world and came to Santiago, where he had spent the last twenty years healing the Spanish rulers of Chile and growing cactuses on his patio. He had flourished: so had the cactuses. There was scarcely room for the gardener in his own garden – huge opuntias threatened him with their innumerable spikes at every turn; just above his head a towering cereus broke into dangerous branches; under his feet, obliging him to walk with a doddering, tip-toe step, uncounted mamillarias stood in tiny pots. But in spite of his exotic surroundings and the Spanish wig on his head, Dr Gedd remained very much a Scotchman. He spoke Castilian with the unmistakable accent of Auchtermuchty, and he now stood poised in his spikey paradise listening with a smile to the tentative howls of a bagpipe from within.
To him now there entered, by a small private green garden door reserved for friends, don Juan de las Matanzas, a jolly Spaniard with three chins and a sky-blue coat, who insinuated his bulk through the barbed perils and let himself down, gasping, towards a seat. Instantly he leapt shrieking to his feet, and Dr Gedd ran for the nearest pair of tweezers – there were many pairs scattered about the patio for the relief of visitors. ‘Those were my spinosissima cuttings,’ he said reproachfully. ‘But do not apologise – do not apologise.’
The bagpipe howled again. Don Juan started nervously, but the machine had been explained to him before, and, recollecting himself, he spread out a handkerchief upon a bare, safe stone step and sat upon it. ‘And is that instrument often played in Scotland, don Patricio?’ he asked. The doctor nodded. ‘Then,’ said don Juan, his eyes already vanishing with the force of amusement, ‘I do not wonder that you left your country. Ha, ha, ha, ha,’ he went on, rocking to and fro and beating his quivering thighs, ‘I wonder you stayed so long.’
‘Now, now,’ cried Dr Gedd testily, ‘that’s mirth enough for today. Have you nothing better to do than insult my exile, for shame? What have you to say?’
‘What a flow of spirits!’ said don Juan, wiping his eyes, ‘what ready wit! – I am an agreeable rattle, am I not? But I have come to tell you that your heretical friends are being looked after. I have a packet from Valparaiso with all sorts of news, and Ramon informs me that the captain-general’s letter to the governor, telling him to send them there, was received last month.’
‘Where are they now?’
Don Juan spread his hands. ‘Who can tell?’ he asked. ‘His Excellency of Valparaiso may have read the letter by now, or he may not. He may read it next month, and act upon it as soon as Saint Isidro’s day: but, on the other hand, he may not. And, my dear friend, if he never thinks of it again, it might be just as well. I have a letter from don Miguel Herrera, of Chiloe, in the same packet, and he tells me that one of the young fellows is a sorcerer and that another of them is a libertine. Listen. “The ugly small heretic cured Dona Maria of her inveterate trembling palsy by removing three asps and a toad from her body. The large yellow-haired one trifled with the affections of the rector’s niece to such an extent that she had to be locked up when they embarked for Valparaiso. He also did so horribly blaspheme that there was an earthquake, which broke, in my house alone, three blue plates, by casting them from a shelf.” Don Patricio, you have quite enough to do with your countrymen,’ said don Juan earnestly, nodding towards the curious sounds of Captain Cheap and Mr Hamilton preparing for Hogmanay, ‘without mingling yourself with libertines and sorcerers, heretical at that.’
Dr Gedd paused, as well he might: and here perhaps it is necessary to observe that the captain and the remainder of the crew of the Wager, having reached Chiloe, gave up the idea of warlike operations against the Spaniards, and surrendered very willingly. They were received as prisoners of war by the governor of the island, who at Captain Cheap’s pressing request sent a boat away southward which presently returned with Mr Hamilton. They were soon let out of prison, and the kind people of Chiloe, overlooking the fact that these were national enemies who, but for misfortune, would have seized their shipping and perhaps burnt their towns, invited them for long visits in one house after another while the administration, in its meditative Spanish way, decided what should be done with them. It was at this time that Tobias, strong in Mr Eliot’s doctrine, performed the cure with which he was reproached, in the town of Chaco, where Jack had also earned his uncomfortable reputation as a blasphemer. They were both staying with a family in which there were a great many daughters – very cheerful girls – and one day an Indian friend, passing by, called in to show them his most recent, proudest acquisition – the printed and coloured likenesses of various saints. The girls, who were all perfectly well brought up in the manner of the country, kissed the saints as they passed them round.
‘I suppose you are too great a heretic to kiss them?’ said the eldest girl.
‘Yes,’ said Jack, and added a rather foolish laugh – ha, ha.
Instantly there came a fearful clap and crack as of thunder, but worse: the ground twitched beneath them: flying dust rose everywhere. It was an earthquake. Everybody ran out of doors, cursing Jack and trampling upon one another unmercifully. The tremor did not last long and it did no great damage, but it cast a damp upon their visit, and it tended to make Jack extremely nervous. He never mentioned a saint again without particular civility and an anxious glance aloft.
But none of this made him half so nervous as the dreadful things that happened to him in Castro, the other town. Here they stayed with the parson, a very amiable old gentleman who was looked after by his equally amiable sister, a widow much valued by all hands for her mutton pies; but she had a daughter, a strong young lady with a moustache and a singularly aggressive way of champing on her pipe. Most of the women of Chiloe smoked a pipe, but few with the zeal of Señorita Marta; it was said that whenever she was in a rage, smoke would pour from her ears. She decided that she would marry Jack, who was really quite a good-looking fellow, now that he was fed again – pink, cheerful face and a bright blue eye – and she sent her uncle to tell him that he must be converted at once, so that the match could be announced without delay. It is impossible to describe Jack’s sufferings for the remainder of his stay in Castro: his face grew wan, his eyes grew dull, and he could scarcely eat more than five meals a day; and indeed he never (or hardly ever) smiled again until they were aboard the ship that was to carry them to Valparaiso, and even then he waited until they were well out of sight of land.
At Valparaiso Captain Cheap and Mr Hamilton, who had kept their commissions and who were therefore known as officers, were sent up to Santiago, received by don José, and paroled, with liberty to live where they chose – in the event, with Dr Gedd, who hurried to offer them his hospitality as soon as he heard of their presence in the town. It is a very remarkable fact that they should have kept their commissions throughout all their complicated miseries: but it was usual then, for according to the rules of war as it was fought at that time, any officer taken without his king’s commission could be hanged as a pirate. As for Jack, Tobias and Campbell, they had nothing to show – the midshipmen because they had never had any papers, and Tobias because he had lost his – and they were therefore treated as ordinary seamen. Captain Cheap (who, as he recovered, changed out of recognition) tried to explain the peculiar status of midshipmen in the Royal Navy as soon as he reached Santiago, and he pressed hard to have them released; but nobody paid much attention to him – the officials had the whole of Chile to look after, and although some of them were quite amiable, it seemed to them that it would be time to look into the question in a year or two, or perhaps three; and in the meantime the y
oung fellows might very well stay in Valparaiso – the more so as they did not sound at all desirable.
‘In my opinion,’ said don Juan de las Matanzas, picking a spine from his leg with sedulous care, ‘it would have been better if you had never worried don José about it at all. They would be far better in Valparaiso. Sorcerers and libertines, don Patricio, my dear, are far better in Valparaiso.’
‘I wonder where they are now?’ repeated Dr Gedd.
‘A hundred to one they are still in Valparaiso,’ said don Juan, ‘and I think that an unofficial word to my cousin Zurbaran will keep them there.’ He spoke not from any ill-will towards the prisoners, but from the warmth of his friendship for Dr Gedd, who had several times impoverished himself by his generosity and who, at this time, was far from rich – only his more honourable patients paid him, for he had never pressed a debtor in his life, and fully half his visits were among the poor.
But don Juan was mistaken. The governor of Valparaiso was an avaricious old man; he was quite blind and very near his tomb, but he was as grasping as ever. It had appeared to him that these unwelcome prisoners of war might possibly fall to his charge, that he might not be reimbursed for the few mouldy potatoes that he allowed them, that this might last for years; and he had seized the first opportunity of being shot of them. Within an hour of receiving the order to send the captives to Santiago he had begun working upon a plan for doing so without expense, and now the same brilliant sun that shone upon the Plaza Real beheld them toiling up the Cuchillo pass, singing vehemently, as they urged on the beautiful shining mules, that ‘they were tarpaulin jackets, huzzay, huzzay', and that, in consequence, they would still love the billows, by night and by day, the dear little billows, by night and by day.
They were nominally subject to One-eyed Pedro, the muleteer, but Pedro’s train consisted of one hundred and four mules, all laden with valuable goods from Valparaiso to Santiago, and nearly a quarter of them new beasts, unaccustomed to his direction; he had no time to be playing the turnkey. The journey had not begun at all well: Pedro had been called to the governor, had been told that he must take the prisoners to Santiago, and that he should have nothing for his pains, because prisoners of war came under the same heading as official parcels, which he was obliged by law to deliver free. He was to have nothing for their sustenance on the road, either. ‘They can fast perfectly well for five days,’ said the governor. ‘They are accustomed to hardship. A mere five days is nothing to them.’
Pedro had set out, therefore, with a certain tendency to hate his charges: but he was a good-natured man under his dark, murderous exterior, and the official parcels showed such zeal in pursuing the more brutish and uneducated mules and bringing them to order that before the first day was over he was reconciled to their presence. Their way led over high passes and broad plains, and in the plains the mules – the new and wanton mules – strayed regularly from the dutiful band which followed their godmother, a little old yellow mare with a bell, and in the narrow roads among the rocks the dutiful mules retorted upon the others by biting and kicking them. There was plenty of scope for helpfulness; they exerted themselves, and Pedro’s esteem for them grew day by day. In the evenings, when they lay, full-fed by Pedro’s kindness, wrapped in their ponchos round the fire, he would tell them of the nature and antecedents of each of his mules, about mules in general and his life as a muleteer.
Now they reached the top of the pass; the narrow path cut into the worn rocks gave way to an open space, and there below them stretched the broad, dun plain, with a silver river winding through it, and far over, against the great snow-topped wall of the Andes, the city of Santiago.
‘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.
The Unknown Shore Page 29
