Now, after the dividing up of the Spanish pearls amongst them, Prince Rupert could no longer retain command over his buccaneers. The cruise was over, and by their laws they were free to go where they liked and do what they listed. All their hearts were set upon one thing—a carousal in Tortuga.

This scheme in no wise suited the Prince. To begin with, he had acquired a vast dislike for that no-gentleman and very vile person, Monsieur D\'Ogeron, the Governor of Tortuga; in the second place (as Master Laughan, his secretary, pointed out), he had no taste for impolite debauches and the company of those painted hussies who lived on the island and sponged on all laden buccaneers; and over all was his intense wish to earn money for the banished King at The Hague, which would in part excuse his unauthorised pawning of the King\'s fleet. So he took for himself the small brigantine, which otherwise would have been burned as useless, and remained at anchor in the little bay of Hispaniola, which was their rendezvous, whilst the pink with the buccaneers got under way for Tortuga, where these rude fellows had determined to fritter all their hard-got gains in one wild carouse.

The pink sailed away with whole rainbows of bunting displayed, drums beating, guns firing, horns braying, and every expression of good-will. The buccaneers who were not occupied in the making of these noises lined the bulwarks and shouted, and drank the Prince\'s toast, so long as voice or standing power remained to them. In deed, so ample was their good humour, that one even drank the toast of Master Stephen Laughan, who, being in truth a maid, was but slenderly popular amongst them, on account of displaying a reserve which, though natural, was beyond their comprehension. And so the slope of ocean swallowed them out of sight, still firing their cannon, and drinking, and flying their flags, as befitted men who feared none that sailed the seas, and were feared by all. Whereupon Prince Rupert and his secretary turned into the standing bed-places in the brigantine\'s small hutch of a cabin, and enjoyed the first sound sleep that had fallen to their lot during three long weeks.

There remained only with Prince Rupert and Master Laughan his faithful secretary, four black negro slaves, which last, having served as pearl divers to the Spaniards, and being very vilely entreated of them, were easily willing to give true service to the Prince during a short season, for the payment of their liberty when that service should be finished. But his Highness was a gentleman of large ideas, and having still some considerable time to occupy before his fleet should be restored to him, he proposed to improve the interval by sailing across to the Spanish Main, and putting to ransom there the great strong city of Caraccas, which lies amongst the mountains, and La Guayra, its roadstead port upon the coast.

At first sight it seems hard to conceive a more harebrained project. La Guayra was defended by forts and batteries; Caraccas, embowered in the coast mountains beyond, was a place of incredible strength. A navy and an army might well be defeated before either of them; and here was this paladin of a Prince proposing to advance against them in one small bark of fourteen tons\' burden, with only one attendant of his own colour, and four black savages who were unreliable even as menial servants. But his Highness had method in his scheme: he was not going to make his attack as Prince Rupert Palatine, but as Prince Rupert\'s envoy, and his weapons were to be the talkings of the herald rather than the rude arms of a man-of-war. Moreover, he had heard much of the beauty and wit of Donna Clotilde, the Governor of Caraccas\' niece, and was minded to inspect her charms with his own proper eyes. He said it was a weary long time since he had seen any woman with the faintest claim to gentility.

The Prince\'s secretary, that was a maid who loved him very dearly (though he, indeed, never discovered her sex), endeavoured hard to dissuade him from the adventure, pointing out the value of his Highness\'s noble life, and the grief that would overwhelm Europe if it were lost in these obscure seas of the New World; but the Prince merrily enough retorted that he had a-many times shown his ability to keep his life within its own proper carcass, and that it was a necessity for him to be up and doing.

"We cannot set King Charles back on his London throne, Stephen lad, by sitting here on our hunkers admiring the sea views," said he. "The Restoration is the purpose of my life at present, and should be the purpose of all those that wish to carry my esteem, which I know you do.

"Now we must get this brigantine victualled for the voyage, and that I leave to you and the blacks. There are no savannahs in this quarter of Hispaniola, and no wild cattle. But there are sea-cows in the water, and these you must cause the blacks to harpoon after their barbarous fashion, and then make shift to bucan the meat ashore as you have seen Simpson, and Watkin, and the other professed hunters do elsewhere.

"For myself, I go now up into the country to make a cache, buccaneer fashion, for the pearls we have already taken. If we return all sound from Caraccas, well and good; they will be here waiting for us. If not, I have sent a letter by the pink to await the fleet on its return, and so if aught happens to us or to the brigantine, the cavaliers can come and dig the treasure up, and carry it away for its appointed use."

"Can your Highness\'s secretary be of help in this matter?"

"No, Stephen lad. I will not have you with me as a companion now, because if the worst happened, and the Spaniards took you, they might by chance compel you to show the hiding-place of these much-costing pearls if you knew it."

"Your Highness underrates my poor devotion."

"Not I, lad. I know the spirit is willing, but the flesh may chance to be weak, and if put to the question by these Spaniards, the stoutest might well give way. They are said to be very ingenious with their tormentings. The thing has grown to be an art with them."

"But still your Highness seems to rely upon the buccaneers in the pink as being honest messengers," said Master Laughan, who was somewhat nettled.

"That letter," retorted Prince Rupert drily, "was writ in a cypher, Master Stephen, which none but my dear brother Prince Maurice can read. So does that content you?" And with this he burdened himself with the leather bags of pearls, and a sword to dig with, and was put to the shore in a small canoe, paddled by two of the blacks.


Now, it is no place here to recount anything so impolite as the fishing of manitee, or sea-cows (which the vulgar still confuse with mermaidens), nor any matter so indelicate as the manufacturing of their white flesh into food which will remain sweet for a voyage. And it would be equally disgusting to speak of the turning of turtle on the beaches, and the salting down of their quivering flesh into other provision, or to recount the filling of water-casks in a river\'s mouth, and the rafting of them off at a canoe\'s tail, and the parbuckling of them on board at expense of vast throes of weariness and perspiration. Yet, disgusting as they may appear to the genteel at home, these things have to be gone through by all adventurers sailing the seas of the New World. It is the custom of this barbarous tropic, where gentility is a forgotten word, for everyone to bear a hand indifferently; and on this account, Master Laughan, in spite of a most tender nurturing, was fain to work equally with the unsavoury pagan blacks. Even Prince Rupert, after his return from hiding the treasure, applied himself to these horrid trades of butcher and buccaneer, till at length the brigantine was victualled.

A history of the voyage, too, across from Hispaniola to the Spanish Main would form unpleasant reading. The brigantine was a small frail thing of fourteen tons, and none too seaworthy. Howling greedy tempests seemed her daily portion, and she clawed her desperate way across an ocean that was all great noisy hills of yeast and green, and roaring fearsome valleys. Her water-casks leaked and fouled, and her ill-cured food grew tainted. Nothing but constant labour at the pumps kept her on the sea-top, and everything was wet on deck, and sodden in the hutch of a cabin. Salt-water boils were the common ailment, and poor Master Laughan acquired an ugly red spot on the chin that was quite destructive to all comeliness.

It may be owned also that the Prince\'s sailoring was none of the best; for though he had some acquaintance with the utensils of navigation, he was not skilled in setting off a sea-direction like those wrinkled mariners that have spent a lifetime in the trade. And as a consequence he made but an indifferent landfall, sighting a coast which was wholly savage and desolate, and having no notion whatever whether La Guayra lay to the eastward or to the west. There was nothing for it but experiment; and taking guidance from the tossing of a coin, the brigantine\'s head was put to the west, till a fishing canoe appeared which gave him further directions; upon which she was driven back to the east again, and ran into the road of La Guayra, and brought up to an anchor there after a further voyage of forty leagues.

Here, then, Prince Rupert found himself in touch with the commencement of his enterprise, and proudly flaunted the St. George\'s ensign of England at the foremast head of the brigantine, and his own banner from the main. The white flag of truce flew from the mast at the bolt-sprit end.

There were four armed carracks of the Spaniards at anchor in the roads, and he saluted these and the shore batteries with a discharge of his two puny guns; and presently the captain of the port came off from shore in an armed galley to ask his business.

The Spaniard was arrogant enough. He drove his galley aboard the brigantine, little recking what damage he did with the rude contact, and demanded with sundry oaths how any Englishman dared to invade those seas, which were given by God and the Pope to his master the King of Spain.

"I am an envoy," quoth the Prince, "to your other master, the Governor of Caraccas, sent by my master, Prince Rupert Palatine."

"I tell you, Se?or," said the Spaniard angrily, "that we can have no dealings with any except my countrymen in these seas. Officially we do not admit the existence of intruders."

"Se?or," said the Prince, "it seems to me that I see in you a very discourteous fellow. I must make my existence apparent to you," said he, and smote the captain of the port lightly across the face with the back of his hand.

The Spaniard whipped out his sword, but the Prince waved off his attack.

"Not now, Se?or," he said. "I will afford you personal satisfaction after I have carried out my other errand. But since you seem to have had the fact of my existence impressed upon you, perhaps now you will guide me to his Excellency the Governor, so that I may deliver his Highness\'s message."

The Spaniard glowered in a black fury.

"If you do not," the Prince went on, "I shall sail away; and when I come back with Rupert\'s fleet, the captain of the port of La Guayra shall be whipped and hanged, if it costs a hundred men to take him."

"You seem sure of being given leave to depart," the fellow sneered.

Prince Rupert shrugged his shoulders, and glanced towards the mast which stood up from the bolt-sprit\'s end.

"Se?or," he said, "I have heard many hard things said against your countrymen, but I never yet heard a Spanish official called an ignorant savage. You do not appear to have seen that piece of white bunting yonder, or I am sure even you would not have hinted at detaining a messenger who came under a flag of truce."

The captain of the port gritted his teeth.

"Well," he said, "I shall shift the responsibility from my own shoulders. News of your arrival shall be sent up to his Excellency at Caraccas, and until his reply comes down, you will stay in your vessel here, and not shift anchor from the roads. Have you any name you wish his Excellency to hear?"

"You may say that the Prince\'s message is carried by Master Thomas Benson, who rode by his side throughout all the English wars, and who was honoured also by the friendship of his martyred Majesty, the late King. Master Benson\'s attendant is Master Stephen Laughan, Prince Rupert\'s own secretary."

"And to what purport is this message?"

"You may inform his Excellency that it concerns grave matters which are first to be delivered to his ear alone, and which are not such as an envoy would gabble into the lugs of underlings."

"Master Benson," said the Spaniard, "when you have finished your embassage, and are free to stand up before my sword, I shall kill you.

"Assuredly you shall have the chance," said the Prince; "and you will not be the first jack-in-office who has bought a lesson in manners dearer than he expected."

With that, the captain of the port went back to his galley, not trusting himself to speak further; the whips of her boatswains cracked; the chained slaves strained at their oars; and the galley foamed away to the land. She was run upon the beach, and discharged her people on to the shore. The buildings swallowed them out of sight, and the first move of the Prince\'s scheme was played.


For two days the little brigantine swung to her cable within gunshot of the forts, a thing of notice only to the sun and the seafowl; and tediously enough the work of waiting fell upon her people. The stress of labour was over; there was naught to do but eat the rotten victual and watch the tiny vessel swing over the sullen swells of the roadstead—all to a fine spicing of anxiety. But Prince Rupert showed a vast philosophy of patience, and Master Laughan (the boil on whose chin was subsiding) made shift to follow his example. Then came a summons from the shore: his Excellency, Don Jaime de Soto, the Governor of Caraccas, would grant an audience to Prince Rupert\'s envoy.

Never, perhaps, has an embassy on so weighty a matter set forth upon its business in less bravery of apparel. Neither the Prince nor his Secretary had procured a change of clothing since they left Tortuga two long months before, and in that time much had befallen. The sun, the seas, the tearing brambles of the forests, and the greedy weapons of enemies, had all warred against their attire, and had reduced it to mere masses of stained rags, which were barely decent. When the pair of them landed upon La Guayra beach, the onlookers raised a jeer of derision. But this soon died away. Unlike the rude French and English buccaneers, the Spanish of the New World know how to appreciate birth and natural dignity, and the majesty of Rupert\'s port could not be disguised either by squalid rags, or the plebeian name of "Master Thomas Benson." Litters borne of four awaited them, and in these they journeyed up the six miles of steep which separate Caraccas City from La Guayra, its port.

There was no blindfolding, no attempt to hide anything. The way lay through a narrow gorge of the mountains, and it was cut by no less than twenty-three forts, each with drawbridge, bastions, cannon and soldiers. It was an entrance incredibly strong, and the city beyond was well worth the expenditure in defence. Its sacred edifices were gorgeous; its profane buildings were palaces; and it lay there under the sun, the choicest jewel in all the Spanish New World. A more appetising spot to plunder never met a would-be raider\'s eye.

Most gorgeous of all was the palace of Don Jaime, the Governor, and the state he kept was in full accordance with his dignity. The patio swarmed with glittering soldiers; the piazzas were brilliant with finely dressed courtiers; rich tapestries bedecked the walls of the chambers, richer flowers adorned the galleries. Don Jaime himself was a little old white-haired man, as punctilious in his dress as in his speech and mannerisms.

Through all this splendour, "Master Thomas Benson" in his mean equipment marched, not one whit abashed, and showed his Excellency a grand manner, equal to his own. He presented his credentials and besought a private interview.

"It is my habit, sir," said the Governor, "to discuss all matters of State in my Board of Council."

"I have his Highness\'s strict injunctions to deliver my message to your Excellency\'s ear alone. But after the news are yours, it will be in your Excellency\'s power to hand them on if you so see fit."

"Sir," said the Governor, "I have a curiosity to know what so gallant a gentleman as Prince Rupert can have to say to me." He gave instructions, and those of his attendants who were in the chamber left, closing the doors behind them. "And now, Master Benson?"

"My message, your Excellency, is short. His Majesty, King Charles the Second, has been thrust out of his lawful kingdom by the present odious rebellion, and keeps his Court at The Hague. His revenues are slim, and he has sent Prince Rupert abroad with the fleet to recruit them. I am here as his Highness\'s messenger to hope that you will see your way to assist the good cause by a substantial loan."

"The treasury of Caraccas is very empty just now, Master Benson. The honoured needs of my own master, the King of Spain, have of late been large."

"Ten thousand pieces-of-eight was the sum I was instructed to mention."

"You come to the wrong place for it, sir. Even if I was to apply to the Holy C............