“It is folly,” I said. “We will never serve. And if they send enough of us to this place, we will rise and swarm upon your pitiful troops, and take this empire for Queen Bess.”
“I pray you, no such talk,” said the Portugal mildly, “or the hotbloods here will have your heads.”
“Does it matter?”
“It might, to you, when the moment comes.”
Torner said, “What counsel can you give us?”
“Patience, endurance, silence. Offer no defiance, and hope for better days. The death of the governor puts everything into paralysis here, for he was such a man as holds the center of all authority, and when he is gone there is only empty air, a vacuum through which whirlwinds swirl.”
This governor who had lately died, he told us, was one Paulo Dias de Novais. The garrison had elected its captain-major, Luiz Serrão, to his place. “Serrão in his time was a fine soldier. But he is old and weary,” said Barbosa, “and he is forced to fight a war little to his liking. I think he will make no disposition of you twain until his other problems are behind him. And that day may never arrive.”
“So we will rot here without limit?” I demanded.
“Jesus and Mary give you comfort,” the good Portugal said gently. “Better for you that you had never left England, but here you are, and I will remember you in my devotions, for I think it will be long before you see daylight again.”
In that, however, the kind Barbosa was mistaken.
Hardly a day later we were called out of our dungeon and summoned to the governor’s palace for an audience with this Serrão. He was old and heavy, and he sat in a slouching way, breathing thickly, for that he was fleshy and ill, with unhealthy grayish skin and beads of sweat bright all over him. For a long while he stared at us as if we were some strange beasts of foul stench, and I looked back at him with rage and detestation, for that this man was our single foe here, the one with power of life and death over us, and stood between us and home, and I knew he would not set us loose.
At last he said, “The letters tell me you are dangerous brigands, that sought to overwhelm the government of the Brazils. Is this so?”
“Brigands, yes,” I answered. “But all we sought was some of the gold of the Indies, out of the treasure-ships of the Rio de la Plata.” There seemed no purpose in holding to the pretense that we were innocent Virginia settlers, when we were plainly condemned here.
“You speak our language well, though your accent is poor.”
“It is the language that is poor. I speak it as well as it deserves.”
“Oh? Are you so full of fire, then? That you rail at the man who owns your life?”
“I rail at you because you own my life, sir.”
“I did not ask for you,” said Serrão. “To me you are a burden, a thorn in my side.”
“We did not ask for you, either.”
Serrão peered into my eyes. “Shall I feed you to the coccodrillos, and be rid of your nation? You are a buzzing in my ears. Saint Michael spare me from receiving more of you.”
“And Saint George spare us from dwelling long among you.”
“Be silent!”
At that sudden outroar from the sluggish and ailing Serrão, Torner looked toward me and said, “For Jesu sake, Andy, don’t enrage the old man!”
Serrão said, “The other English, he understands nothing of our speech?”
“Very little,” said I. “Afterwards will I convey the meanings to him.”
“Is he as full of wrath as you?”
“More,” I said. “His tongue trembles with disgust of all your kind, but he can say it only in English.”
Serrão nodded, as though hardly caring that we were such firebrand rogues, and fell silent again. He toyed with some carving at his belt, and picked at his nails with his dagger: a fat old soldier, who must once have been valiant and quick, though there was little sign of that now. Very likely he was sore vexed with Paulo Dias for dying at such a time. He looked up after a while and said, “What am I to do with you.”
“Put us aboard the next ship for Lisbon, and we will find our way from there to England.”
The old man laughed. “Yes, and give you a thousandweight of ivory to recompense you for your time in our hands, also. Are you good sailors, brigand?”
“Excellent good.”
“What skills do you have?”
“I am a pilot,” I said coolly, “and my companion is a gunner.”
These lies did I tell to make us seem more important, for had I said we were mere deckhands I feared the Portugals would value us little, and perhaps slit our throats to have no more trouble of caring for us. In this I think I was right. Serrão said in a mumble, “A pilot. Good. Very good. Our pinnace that plies between here and Masanganu is short-handed of crew, and we will let you serve aboard it.”
“That we will not do,” I replied.
“Are you defiant?”
“Indeed.”
He made a scowl, as though I had struck him with my fist in the rolls of fat at his belly, and had let some air out of him. I kept my eyes glittering cold. Yet strangely I found my loathing of him difficult to maintain: he was old, he was ailing, he was weary, he was mortal, and by an accident of fate he sat in judgment over me, which perhaps he liked no more than I did. I took this to be weakness and softheadedness in me, and attempted to banish such a way of thinking, and glowered down upon him as I might upon some sly and cozening Italian Cardinal who lay nightly with his own sister.
Serrão said, “Why do you refuse?”
“I am Queen Bess’ to command, but not yours, and surely not King Philip’s.”
“Talk not to me of King Philip. He is no king of mine, except by distant decree, of which I know nothing. I ask you to go on our pinnace, that has need of crew.”
“Crew it yourself, old man.”
He seemed to be holding himself in check. In a slow steady way he said, “What are my choices? I could slay you out of hand, and say you were determined heretics that preached falsely to the blacks. But no, I am not hot for that path. I could send you to your dungeon, and let you stink and moulder down there until your bones shine through your skin. Is that to your liking? But then I must feed you once in a time, and otherwise give care to you. Or else you could serve under our command.”
“That we will not, if we must rot for it, or feed your coccodrillos with our flesh.”
Serrão lapsed back against his chair and drummed with his fingertips on its arm, which was made of some scaly serpent-skin, and said, “You are stubborn and you are stupidly stubborn. So be it: back to your cell.”
The guards began to tumble us from the room.
Torner looked to me and said, “What is it?”
“We are offered berths on some ships of theirs. I have told him nay, we will not serve.”
“Brave fellow!”
Brave indeed, but perhaps not without folly. For as we hied ourselves back through the soul-frying sticky heat toward the depths and bowels of the fortress, I felt an alteration of my position coming over me. I thought to myself that I was being noble but nobly foolish in my patriotism. They could well leave us in the dungeon a year or five or forever. We might conceivably die down there of the damp, or of a spider’s bite, or of some inner flux, in two more weeks. How would that serve the Queen? How would that serve our own needs and dreams? Was it not better to obey these Portugals, and come up into the sunlight, and do their bidding until perhaps they pardoned us? I would find it hard to enter their service, but it might be either that or perish, and to perish out of stubborn patriotism may be a fine thing, but not half so fine as seeing England again.