On the first night after supper in the big withdrawing chamber a select company listened in silence while he spoke about it. With him was a bespectacled young man with close-cropped hair called Laurence Keymis in whom Sir Walter greatly confided, John Gilbert, Ralegh’s nephew, and Ralegh’s cousin, Butshead Gorges.
Having left England in February they had reached Trinidad in six weeks and in attacking Port of Spain had captured Don Antonio de Berrio, the Governor of the island. Him they had treated like an honoured guest and from him they had received more news of Dorado, or the city of Manao, which lay some four or five hundred miles up the River Orinoco. Leaving Berrio a captive on board and a garrison to guard his four ships, Ralegh had embarked with a hundred volunteers in five small boats, had crossed a sea as wide as the Straits of Dover with a great tempest blowing, and had attempted to find a way among the maze of great rushing rivers and small treacherous streams which made up the hundred square miles of the Orinoco delta.
Making friends wherever they could of the Indians, who found this marvellous after the cruelty of the Spanish, they had worked their way upstream. Often lost, sometimes stranded for hours and despairing of refloating their boats, short of food and water, unable to land at night because of the dense thickets and forced to sleep in the boats in heavy dews with no shelter, rowing for days against violent currents, menaced by serpents and crocodiles, by whom one of the crew was eaten, they had reached the Caroni, a major tributary of the Orinoco. There they had seen a wonderland of green grass, abounding waterfalls, rich plains, vivid birds and fine fruits, and had met Indians who promised gold and silver in the city of Manao only another 100 miles upstream.
But by now the rains had begun, the great rivers were swollen. All efforts to row against the current had failed even with eight oars aside. Lashed with storms of rain ten times a day, in rags, already adventuring for a month, and 300 miles from the safety of their ships, the men had begun once more to lose heart, and this time Ralegh had yielded to them. At the village of Morequito he had made a friend of the chief, Topiawari, who had told him that if he could return next year with a larger force the Indians would join him in driving out the Spaniards and would acknowledge Queen Ezrabeta as their rightful ruler. Above the tributary river called Cumana, hearing of a gold mine in the interior, Ralegh had sent Laurence Keymis to discover it, and although Keymis had not seen the mine, he had come back with samples of its ore.
So, through storm and flood, landing on islands, seeking and finding new friends among the local tribes, resting a day here and there to dry off and get news of the Spaniards, who were in strength not far away, they neared the mouth of the river again. There, in their tiny boats, they were caught like twigs in a flood and swept the last 100 miles to the sea in a single day. In another violent storm they had sailed the thirty miles back to regain their ships at Trinidad, carrying with them treasures and souvenirs of all sorts, gifts from the Indians, idols in gold, jacynths, loadstones, necklaces.
And so home.
If they had sailed direct they would have come short only of a few men. But Sir Walter had obligations to those who had helped him finance this expedition, the Cecils and the Howards and others, and the venture had brought no big prize. Hence the costly raids on Cumana, Santa Martha and Rio de la Hacha. From the way Sir Walter looked when my father questioned him about them it seemed likely that there was little profit to show for them after all of it. And John Grenville lost; that troubled Sir Walter most of all.
Ralegh’s plans now? To obtain an audience of the Queen and to gain her support for the fitting out of a far larger expedition next spring. Everything was in its favour, Sir Walter said. Here was the prime opportunity for setting the English flag in the most desirable part of South America, for counter-balancing Spain’s power by settling Englishmen abroad in a country where they were bound to prosper. But, he said, he was already himself beggared with the financing of this one trip. He could not set up a second and larger expedition.
It must be an enterprise of state.
“One day I believe Guiana will become an English nation,” he said, “equal to Virginia in beauty and in value. And it could be to England what Peru has been to Spain.”
While he was here my father prevailed on Ralegh to try to stop the further inquisition which was being pressed in the matter of the robbery on the Irish ship. I do not know what was said between them but the next time Sir Walter saw me he looked at me with a new interest and a new frown.
All through the second day the interchange of news went on, for Sir Walter was as ignorant of events in England as we had been of his adventures. He questioned my father closely on the strength of the fleet with which Drake and Hawkins had sailed.
“Garland and Foresight? They served me well in ‘93 off the Azores. None better. Defiance, Bonaventure, Hope? They’re good. And Adventurer? She’s new, likely. That is all except for light craft?” He shook his head. “It’s a handy force and with such leaders may achieve anything. But I have fears. Conditions have changed in the last six years while Francis has been kept on a leading chain. The Spanish have learned by their mistakes, and no objective comes easy now, as it would have done after the sea battle of ‘88. Their ships are better found and better led. Their towns in the West Indies are protected by massive and well-armed forts as we found to our great cost at Cumana. What is worse, they know of Drake’s coming and are prepared. His old genius may lead him to some splendid victory; but I shall not rest easy on his behalf.”
The two barques were to sail on the morning tide and at the same time Sir Walter was leaving overland. On his way he had the sad task of calling at Stowe and telling Lady Mary Grenville that her young son had fallen in battle.
After supper on the evening before he left he was walking with Laurence Keymis on the green sward that led down to the main jetty of Arwenack. It was a fine still evening, and the smoke from their pipes wavered little as it went upward. A dozen seagulls were stalking cautiously across the stonework beyond the lawn trying to reach some scraps of food but constantly put off by the pacing men who, as soon as they were nearly far enough away, turned and came back. Behind this scene was the wide mouth of the river which tonight was the colour of old silk, with the two barques riding silent at anchor on it, and the squat fort and gentle creek of St Mawes beyond.
I was desperate and there was no other time. I went up to the two men and said:
“Sir, may I speak with you?”
Sir Walter stopped in mid-sentence, plainly displeased. “That you are now doing.”
“Sir, I am venturing to ask that, if you go to Guiana again next year, I may come with you.”
“In what capacity?”
“Any that is available.”
“Are you a sailor?”
“Only of small boats. But I could quickly learn.”
“Why are you unsatisfied with your home?”
“It is not just that, sir. I’m seventeen and a base son. It’s time I tried to make my own way.”
“And you think to make your fortune with me?”
“I would hope to be of use, sir; that’s the main thing.”
“Can you shoot?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Read and write?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cook and mend and wash your own clothes?”
“All of these a little.”
“Have you ever been under fire?”
“No, sir. Except once only in the recent Spanish landing, and that was little.”
“By the time I was your age I had already seen bitter fighting at Jarnac and at Moncontour.”