The Golden Galleon
Page 20
CHAPTER XVII.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE.
Four months went by--four months of weary, monotonous waiting--and stillLord Thomas Howard's fleet lay in its old anchorage in the roadstead offthe north of Flores Island. The long-expected homeward-bound treasure_flota_ from the Spanish Main had not yet come in sight. The King ofSpain, who was now well aware of the presence of the English ships atthe Azores, and who knew their drift as surely as did Lord Thomashimself, was sensible of how much the safety of his galleons concernedhis own interests and the interests of his country; and by secret meanshe had communicated with his admirals at Nombre de Dios, causing them todelay their starting; for he chose to hazard the perishing of ships,men, and goods by bringing them over in a season of storms rather thanendanger their falling into our hands.
He had two distinct designs in bringing his fleet home so late. One wasthat he thought that Lord Thomas would have consumed his victuals andhave been forced accordingly to abandon his quest and return to England;and the other was that he might meanwhile gain time to furnish a greatfleet, which he was preparing to act as the guardian of his treasuregalleons. In the first design he found himself deceived, for AdmiralHoward had not been two months at the Western Isles ere he receivedsupplies of victuals from England; and in the second he was equallyprevented, for the Earl of Cumberland, who was then cruising off thecoast of Spain, was keeping a constant watch upon the port of Ferrol,where the new armada was being hurriedly fitted out, and Cumberland wasprepared to send intelligence to Flores to warn Lord Thomas at themoment of danger.
But despite the arrival of supplies from home, the provisions of theEnglish fleet at the Azores were meagre in quantity, and in qualitywretchedly poor, and it was found necessary to add to them by makingfrequent raids upon the nearer islands and taking forcible possessionof food from the islanders' homesteads. The hot summer months of Juneand July had brought additional discomforts to the crews, and early inAugust a pestilent sickness spread from ship to ship. On the _Defiance_a score of men had died before the middle of August, and an equal numberof the ship's company of the _Lion_ were carried off. Sir Robert Crossof the _Bonaventure_ had buried in the sea no fewer than thirty-six ofhis picked men, and the disease in a more or less virulent form had madean entrance upon every one of the Queen's six ships, as well as thevictuallers, fly-boats, and small pinnaces that were of the expedition.Jacob Whiddon's little ship, the _Pilgrim_, had escaped so far with butone death.
On board the _Revenge_ Sir Richard Grenville had much ado to stem thetide of the dread visitation. His ship was small, and her crowded crewhad but indifferent accommodation even when in good health, and when theillness seized them there was little chance of a recovery. The matterwas made worse by the fact that, for want of a more convenient hospital,her sick men were forced to lie upon the ballast, down below, where nofresh air could reach them, where the light of the sun could notpenetrate, and where even the best and freshest food became speedilyrank and nasty. Her surgeons were ignorant men, of a low andill-educated class, to whom the payment of five shillings a week wasconsidered an ample return for the exercise of their profession. Ofmedicine and the laws of health they scarcely knew anything. They couldsaw off a shattered limb or patch a broken head passing well; but theyhad no more than a child's skill in dealing with a sickness that came ofbad sanitation, putrid food, and insidious infection. The ship's lowerdecks were so pestilential that a sound man might hardly hope to gobelow without catching the disease.
At the first it was the men of the commoner sort, the working marinersand the ill-fed soldiers, who were affected, but betimes the gentlemenof the poop were struck down one by one by the fell complaint, and therewere few among them who did not suffer in some wise, if it were no morethan to experience a sickly headache. So general did the complaintsbecome, that many of the men, led by Red Bob, threatened more than onceto break out into open mutiny. They declared that they were beingpoisoned by sour beer and rancid meat, and day after day, as theexpected treasure-ships failed to come into view, the discontent becamestronger and more noisy.
Sir Richard Grenville held a firm and determined authority over hisship's company, however, for he was a most resolute man, and none daredto openly offend him. He was a man very unquiet in his mind, alwayseager and impatient, and greatly affected to war. It was perhaps fromthis same resolute spirit that he had been able to perform the manyvaliant acts that are recorded of him. At the age of sixteen he haddistinguished himself for bravery and fearlessness in the wars inHungary under the Emperor Maximilian against the Turks; he had fought inthe great sea-fight at Lepanto with the Christians against the Turks,when thirty thousand of the Saracens fell or were taken prisoners, andtwelve thousand Christian slaves were liberated. Also he had takenprominent part in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Of his life inVirginia, whither he went to found the first English colony, many heroicacts are recorded. His rivals thought him harsh and overbearing, andcertify that he exercised a most tyrannical rule over his colonists andshipmates from first to last; and Master Ralph Lane (who is rememberedas being the first to introduce the herb tobacco into England) wrote ofhim in an ample discourse addressed to Sir Walter Raleigh, thatGrenville's pride was intolerable, his ambition insatiable, and that hisproceedings towards them all in Virginia, and to Lane in particular,were unendurable. It seems certain that among the islanders of theAzores he was greatly feared for his severity in leading his men toplunder the homesteads for food for the ships. Some things that arewritten of him show that at times he could be boastful and inclined tobravado.
"He was of so hard a complexion," says Jan van Linschoten in a documentthat is to be found in Hakluyt's _Voyages_, "that as he continued amongthe Spanish captains while they were at dinner or supper with him, hewould carouse three or four glasses of wine, and in a bravery take theglasses between his teeth and crash them in pieces and swallow themdown, so that oftentimes the blood ran out of his mouth, without anyharm at all unto him. And this was told me by divers credible personsthat many times stood and beheld him."
Yet he was a very excellent gentleman, a loyal subject of the Queen, anda very proper Christian. In an age when cruelty in war was common hefought with a truly British sense of fairness, and while the Spaniardstreated their prisoners with unnameable tortures Sir Richard Grenvillewas ever just and humane with the enemies who fell into his hands. Hehated the Spaniards with a fierce envenomed hatred, and was never knownto shrink from an encounter with them, or to neglect a chance ofstriking a blow which should help to lessen their vaunted power upon theseas. No man in his time--not even Drake himself--was more bold or morecourageous in attacking them. His self-confidence and his trust inEnglish pluck were supreme. He considered an Englishman equal to anydozen Spaniards.
On one occasion when he was returning from the Spanish Main in a shipwhich had been sorely battered by storms and badly bored by theteredo-worm, he sighted a richly-laden galleon. His ship could not bebrought to a close encounter, and he had no boats, yet he was bent uponcapturing that galleon. So he made a raft out of the boards of chestsand boxes, took a handful of men with him, and on this frail craftadventured an attack. He brought the raft alongside the galleon andclambered up upon her decks. As soon as his men were all off the raft itfell asunder and sank at the galleon's side, thus cutting off theadventurers' retreat. Yet they captured the galleon and brought her homeas a prize to England.
It was towards the end of the hot month of August that the sickness onboard the _Revenge_, as on board all the other ships of the fleet,became more general and severe. Lord Thomas Howard, realizing at lastthat it was the ships themselves that were unhealthy, and that if hewould preserve his little army from actual dissolution he had betterinstitute an hospital of some sort on shore, issued orders to hisvarious captains, instructing them to land their sick men upon thebeach, where huts and tents and other shelters were erected. Thisproceeding was found to be of vast benefit. Each ship's company was keptsepa
rate in their own shelters, with a goodly number of healthy men toattend to their wants.
Gilbert Oglander and Roland Grenville were among those who were told offto take charge of the _Revenge's_ invalids. Timothy Trollope and RobinRedfern were with them, acting for the greater part of the time aswater-carriers. Red Bob was among the sick, so was Edward Webbe. Hartopremained on board the ship.
It was weary work looking after men who, in the midst of their sickness,were for ever grumbling at the bad food and the lack of good doctors.But the purer air and an abundance of fresh water, together with suchripe fruit as could be procured, gradually brought the sufferers roundto a better condition. The deaths were fewer and the pestilence ceasedto spread. Also on the thirtieth day of the month there arrived twoships from England, sent out by the merchants of Plymouth with a supplyof victuals; and the news of home brought additional cheer to those whohad been lingering here in the Azores for over five months, waiting forthe treasure-ships that they were to waylay and capture, waiting untilthe very clothes on their backs were worn to rags.