The Fountain of Youth :: :: University of Virginia Library

(Officer's cabin.)
Sanchez.
What think'st thou the Biminians may be like?

Garcia.
I know not what to think or to expect.
Some say that they are dwarfs and others giants.
Some say they are amphibious men whose cities
Are built in lakes, and paved like oozy Venice
With dark-green water. They can stay for hours
Like otters at the bottom; then rise up
And shoot a flight of arrows; which, when done,
They dive once more.

Sanchez.
Pedrillo says they live
In subterranean labyrinths like rabbits,
With issues imperceptible to man;
And often, of a sudden in the desert,
From cities unsuspected under-foot,
Armies start up, or vanish all at once
Leaving the landscape bare.

Morasquez.
I know a man
Who says their cities stand on giant trees
High overhead: each forest is a city,
Up in the starry sky. They wear their hair
In one black rope that hangs along their back,
And, when their father dies, they dress in yellow.

Garcia.
No, those are the Chineses of Cathay
That mourn in yellow: the Biminians mourn
In black like Christians.

Carpaza.
What of their religion?

Sanchez.
Some say that they are worshippers of fire,
And others that they worship their own souls.
I know a monk who says they are Nestorians,
Worse than all Jews and Moslems.

Cucheres.
Thou art wrong.
I know an Indian at Hispaniola,

Whose brother once was wrecked upon their coast:
And so I know for certain what they worship.
They have as goddess a terrific flower,
A sort of Venus' fly-trap, so gigantic
That it can eat a man with as much ease
As ours can eat a fly, and once a month
They feed it with a slave.

Sanchez.
The thing may be,
For things as strange have been. But on the whole
It seems more likely that they be Nestorians,
Or heretics of some sort.—This is clear,
That whatsoever be their faith, its root
Must be outrooted, just as has been done
In Guatemala. They use bloodhounds there:
Balboa has them trained on wicker figures
In human shape, and filled with carrion flesh;
Each hound is entered on the army list,
And gets a soldier's pay. Balboa says
That if the Indians now can understand
The doctrine of the Trinity, 'tis thanks
To these same hounds; he calls them his confessors.

Carpaza.
It is a pity that we cannot use
His hounds at home to teach the Moors their prayers,
A year or two, and they would be good Christians.
What sayest thou, Sanchez?

(Enter Agrippa.)
Sanchez.
Aye, it is a pity
The king is overkind: he should have rooted
Their race and their religion out of Spain
After Granada.

Agrippa.
Talking of the Moslem?

Morasquez.
Yes, and how to treat them.

Agrippa.

I will tell you:
Give a guitar, and you shall have a ballad.

I will tell you how, returning
From the far Arabian seas,
Once I set a bonfire burning
When I served the Portuguese.

Under Vasco we had rounded
Tempest Cape to India's shore,
And with Lisbon lead had sounded
Seas that none had sailed before,

And bombarded town and village
Of the coast, exacting gold;
Filling up the ships with pillage,
Higher than the hulls could hold;

Crazing with an unknown thunder
Every shaved and turbaned head;
Heaping higher still the plunder
And the bodies of the dead;

Till each Soldan, gemmed and sooty,
Trembled in his yellow shoes;
Never were such piles of booty
Captured in a single cruise.

Then to Muscat, where we sighted
On our path a Moslem sail;
On its sluggishness we lighted
Like a hawk upon a quail.

Mecca pilgrims in a vessel
Large and heavy, sailing slow,
Crowded as when insects nestle,
Head-dressed like the Moors we know.

Vasco cried, ‘I know their turban:
Moorish vermin, one and all;
We'll baptize them, as Pope Urban
Recommends, with cannon-ball.’

It was no slight work to board her:
Every devil fought like five;
But at last, by Vasco's order,
Not one man was left alive.

But the children and the women
Still remained upon the ship,
Waiting for the fatal omen
That should fall from Vasco's lip.

And the Admiral said, ‘Listen;
For the women we've no room;
Twenty children we can christen,
Choose them, thou, ere fall of gloom.’

So I from the ship selected
Twenty children, with a boat;
But, ere rowing back, reflected,
Shall I burn, or let her float?

‘She will serve instead of torches
To light back my men and me
If the women find it scorches,
They can jump into the sea.’

And I lit a fuse and threw it
'Mid the tackle dry as hay,
Where the wind of nightfall blew it
Gently; and we rowed away.

When sufficient distance sheltered,
On our oars we lay a spell,
Where the vessel, when it weltered,
Could not suck us down to hell.

Night had gathered. Like a spire,
Of a sudden by-and-by,
Shot the pinnacle of fire,
Dazzling-white from sea to sky.

Then all reddened, and the water
Round the ship for miles away,
Took the lurid hue of slaughter,
And the vividness of day.

As we watched it never dimming,
But with radiance that increased,
Something from the ship came swimming—
Something—was it man or beast?

Round it sputtered glowing ashes
Like a rain of bright red blood;
We could see the head by flashes
Struggling through the crimson flood.

While for half a mile or nearly
It pursued its lurid track,
Till we saw a woman clearly,
With a child upon her back.

`By the Gospel! it's another
Little Christian to baptize,
Being brought us by its mother—
I can see its head and eyes.

‘What a zeal for the salvation
Of her little suckling calf;
Swim, and save it from damnation!
She's too fond of it by half.’

And we watched her progress, betting,
Would she reach us, no or yes?
We could see that she was getting
Weaker in her swimmer's stress.

But she managed still to reach us
And her gurgling shouts were wild,
In her lingo to beseech us
To have mercy on her child.

So we took it from her shoulder,
As she grappled to the boat;
Back into the sea we rolled her,
With a handspike in her throat.

Juan
(who has entered unnoticed, in time to hear the end of Agrippa's story).
Thou art a base coward.

Agrippa.
Ha, what's that? Say it again.

Juan.
Thou art a base, base coward.

Agrippa
(springing at him with his dagger).
Take that!

(Juan snatches his wrist and averts the blow. They roll on the ground together, over and over. Juan wrenches the dagger out of Agrippa's grasp and holds it to his throat.)
Juan.
Shall I stick it in thy throat? There, keep thy dog's
life—I make thee a present of it. But stick no more
handspikes in women's throats.

[The others separate them and exeunt.