Ballads of the Fleet and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ballads of the Fleet and Other Poems

A New Edition With several Additional Pieces: By Rennell Rodd

Rodd, Rennell (1858-1941)

[section]

GREENAWAY.

THE STORY OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

I CHILDREN OF THE SEA

II.

II SAN JUAN DE LUA

III.

III THE REPRISAL

[IV].

[IV] ST. JULIAN'S BAY

V THE WIND OF GOD

VI.

VI THE TREASURE GALLEONS

VII.

VII THE WORLD ENCOMPASSED

VIII.

VIII THE HOMECOMING

IX.

IX THE SINGEING OF THE BEARD

X THE ARMADA

XI.

XI THE BURIAL OF DRAKE

THE BALLAD OF RICHARD PEAKE

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

III THE REPRISAL

Being the veracious narrative of John Killigrew, gentleman adventurer, who accompanied Captain Francis Drake on his second voyage to Darien; done into the modern manner.

Oh, sweetly rang the Plymouth bells on the day we put to sea,
When May and June were nearly met and the new leaf on the tree;

And sweetly over Edgcumbe's isle the setting sun declined,
It was Whitsun-Eve of May-time, and the May thrill in the wind.

There were hats that waved and kerchiefs, a cheer rang round the quays
As the fiddler played our anchors up and the new sails took the breeze.

The highlands drew their mantle round, and high up on the Hoe,
And nestling deep in shadowy hills red lights began to show;

But the eager heart looked never back on a world so good to leave,
To the orchard lawns and the cowslip fields and the bells of Whitsun-Eve.

Our captain stood on the Pasha's poop as we won to the open sea;
“Now lay her straight in the sunset track, for it's Westward Ho!” said he.

I sailed with Drake and with Oxenham, and the captain's brother John
With the rest of those who ventured were aboard of the little Swan.

We were three-and-seventy men and boys when the muster-log was told,
And only one of the seventy-three who was thirty summers old.

The crew were Dart and Plymouth men, with the four I brought from Looe,
Jack Basset and the Widdicombes, and my foster-brother Drew.

Two years were gone since the Dragon ship sailed out with the self-same men,
And Drake had won him his right of way to the Gulf of Darien;

And the little Swan got an evil name last year on the Spanish Main,
For the long white wings of the tiny craft were a match for the best of Spain.

The breeze was fair, with the topsails square, and never a reef we flew,
And the heart of our little captain was a fire to the heart of his crew;

It passed to a proverb in after-years with the men who had loved him well—
You were sure of heaven with Gilbert, but with Drake you had daunted hell!

At last we had sight of the Windwards limned like a cloud in the sky,
It was five weeks out from the Lizard, and the second day of July;

And not in vain we had proved those seas and charted the reefs last year,
And laid the course by the star and sun that the venture had to steer,

For we saw strange sails to the eastward, and ran for a week of days
Past flowery cliffs where the blue wave winds through the calm of the island maze.

The men were mad to be landing, but he suffered it not to be
Till our track was lost in the wildering isles, and we struck on the Carib Sea.

We voided the path of traders, ran west yet awhile, and then
Bore down on the midmost channel of the Gulf of Darien;

And we came to the hidden haven he had found two years before,
We anchored under the high cliffs' lee, and at last we went ashore.

We felled the forest timbers and planted a high stockade,
Where they pieced the jointed pinnace under the ceiba's shade;

While we shot the mark with the arquebus, we measured swords in play,
And Drake assigned the prizes that the Dons would have to pay;

The chattering monkeys swarmed to watch and swung on the climbing vine,
The parrots screamed in the branches, but of man was never a sign.

A week from the day we landed they had launched three handy craft,
Twelve-oared and low in the water, and long with a shallow draft.

Their crews were picked and a course was buoyed as the sun dropped low to the west,—
The Devon muscle was good to see on shoulder and arm and chest,—

And the cliffs of the silent haven rang to the helmsman's cries
As the Minion raced the Jesus and the Judith won the prize,

When round the sheltering headland, traced black on the even glow,
Came sailing in a barque of war with a caravel in tow!

In a flash we were back to the Pasha's side, and Oxenham, mighty of lung,
Hailed them over the waters, for he spoke with the Spaniard's tongue;

While the gunners stood to their pieces with linstocks over the breech,
But the answer came in the Devonshire with a “Plague on your foreign speech!”

It was Rance the Channel rover in Sir Edmund Horsey's barque,
Grown tired of his privateering in the Downs with de la Mark;

And so he had sailed on fortune's wind right into the heart of the west;
And here was a man to our captain's hand—we were far too few at the best;

For the mettle of Drake had fired us, we were set on the wildest plan
That ever perchance had dazzled the desperate dreams of man;—

On the coast due east from Nombre lay a cluster of isles he knew
Girded in reefs and white with shoals that had daunted an older crew;

He would hide his ships in the wooded isles, and thence with a chosen band
Creep on by night in the launches under the lee of land;

He would enter the port of Nombre, the great treasure-house of Spain,
And carry a year's gold harvest back to his ships again.

So a bond was made and a treaty signed, and the forty with Rance were sworn
To stand by Drake in the venture, and we sailed with the break of morn.

We came to the fir-grown islands—we sounded wary and slow
Till we found a way through the sunken rocks where the ships might pass in tow,

And we laid them up in a shore-locked bay that ran like a lake inland,
With the world-old forest ringing the rim of its silver sand;

We drew the lot and we started, night through we tugged at the oar,
Seventy men in the launches, and with day drew in to the shore;

We fought with the surf and conquered, we slept through the sultry noons,
We woke with the shadow of evening and toiled by the waning moons;

Till the fifth sun sank in a stormy sky, and at last the launches lay
Adrift on a murky midnight off the point of Nombre Bay.

Great clouds shut out the starlight, the moon would be late to rise,
There was one black void of water under one black void of skies;

Far off the long surf thundered on an unseen shingle shore,
And between its measured pulse-beats you felt the silence more;

And the awe of the shifting darkness wrought into each straining sense
Till you heard your own heart beating in the stillness of suspense.

Then eastward rose a glimmer as it might be, faint and dim,
The first white touch of dawning over the ocean rim.

It was only the moon belated, but “Yonder,” he said, “comes day,
One last pull round the headland and Drake will show the way!”

There was hardly a light in Nombre but the lamp at the haven head,
And away beyond at the landing-place where the cresset fires shone red;

So we stole in under the shadow at the edge of the new sea-wall,
While the moon sailed up through a cloudy bank and we heard the sentry call;

There were ten men left in the launches, there were threescore sprang to the land,
And we rushed to the fort at the haven mouth and tumbled the guns in the sand:

But the gunners dropped in the fosses and fled through the night unhurt,
And they roused the sleepy watchmen, and the darkness grew alert:

The great bell tolled from the belfry, it clanged with a sullen stroke,
And rumour swelled to a stormy cry as the shuddering city woke;

For Drake had carried the market-place, and the guards were full in flight
As I fell on their flank with Oxenham, and panic screamed in the night,—

We charged with a babel of horn and drum, we yelled our rallying cry,
And the torches fixed on our ten-foot pikes blazed into the murky sky.

So we fought our way to the treasure-house, and the guards fell back once more,
The bowmen kept them at bow-shot length while we rammed through the iron door,

And we stared on an Empire's ransom in the torchlight's glare, untold
Wedges of silver shoulder high and the Inca's virgin gold.

There were gems imbedded in rough-hewn quartz that caught the flickering gleam,
There were pearls to be had for the snatching, wealth over our wildest dream!

But the great Church bell of Nombre boomed on with its call to arms,
And we heard their war-drums beating and the bugles' shrill alarms,

We heard the rattle of musket fire where our boats were left behind,
While clouds rolled over the moon again and a chill struck into the wind;

“They never must form to rally. Back, lads, to the marketplace!”
And lo! as he sprang to lead us our captain fell on his face:

Long since he had gotten a grisly wound, and his strength had ebbed as it bled,
But our hearts stood still for a moment's space at the thought he had fallen dead;

For a sudden volley had struck the ground, and the sand splashed into our eyes
As we staggered blind from the lightning-flash shot over the purple skies:

Then the tropic rain burst o'er us, and our matchlock fires were drenched,
Our bow-strings would not serve us, and the blazing tow was quenched;

We raised our wounded captain, and we bore him back to the quay,
While he cursed us all for cravens—“Will you lose this chance?” said he.

For his men with a gentle violence had forced him out of the strife—
Not all the gold in the west, they said, would pay for their captain's life.

So the Spanish footmen rallied, and the streets grew live with men,
And we fought with the pike and the musket-butt, and we charged them one to ten.

We laid our wounded under the thwarts with the spoil we had brought away,
And never a man was missing as we pushed out into the bay.

We climbed on board of a seventy-ton, and we cut the hawsers free,
We towed her out, and we hoisted sail, and made for the open sea.

While day-dawn scowled through a sullen sky, and ever our captain railed,
“Had I been quit of my wound,” he said, “the venture had not failed.”

But we found good store on the capture ship of red and of amber wines,
And our wounds were nigh forgotten when we came to the Isle of Pines.

So Rance took his share of the Nombre gold, and the barque sailed home again,
And that was the first reprisal that we made on the Spanish Main.

But we ran for Cartagena, and we steered right up the port,
'Mid clanging of bells from the churches, and thunder of guns from the fort;

And the launches dashed through the musket fire, and under the Governor's eyes
Laid hands on a Cadiz transport, and carried her out a prize.

He sent the prisoners back to shore in their boats for his good name's sake,
For there never was gentler pirate or kindlier foe than Drake;

But he freed the slaves we had found on board at work in collar and chain,
And thus we won to our service these the deadliest foes of Spain.

It was first at Cartagena we were 'ware of the evil news
That the men of the Holy Office had landed in Vera Cruz.

And they told of our good comrades in the hands of a ruthless foe,
The Judith's men and the Minion's that were left three years ago;

And they told us four great galleons had sailed in the Pasha's track
Because of the raid on Nombre, with an oath to bring us back.

So we made as though we were eastward bound, and scuttled the little Swan
On the rocks near Cartagena, and with nightfall we were gone.

We were sore at heart for the brave little craft, but our hands were all too few
To work one ship with the prizes and to man the launches too.

So we turned and steered for a lonely bay, far out of their mariners' ken,
He had found in a deep reef-sheltered blue elbow of Darien:

Long creeks run up from its shelving shore to the foot of the hills inland,
Where the rain-born torrents cleave their way through the mud swamps and the sand;

Where over the banks untrodden, in mist and in fever-breath,
The silent mangrove forest broods on a world of death;

Their black stems rise from the waters, their thin bent roots divide,
And clutch with crooked fingers the drift of the shifting tide;

We hid our ships in the gloomy creeks, with the topmasts stowed away,
And we built us huts on the upland, with an outlook over the bay.

It were long to tell of the raids we made from our lair in Plenty Cove,
How we built a fort at the forest edge, and our every venture throve;

For thence the swift black launches would creep through the island maze,
By the channels still uncharted to the edge of the great highways;

They would board the coastwise traders becalmed on the tropic nights,
They claimed sea-toll from the victualling ships and fought in a hundred fights;

But we paid the price of rashness, when at last on an evil day
With a weary stroke and a bleeding crew the boats crawled back to the bay

With the tale of a raid too well repelled, of the few that were far too few,
With the mangled bodies of Captain John and my foster-brother Drew.

We dug their graves in the alien world, as a sailor's grave should be,
On a spur of the hill at the forest edge where it looks to the open sea;

And we mourned as you mourn for the first to fall, and there stole on the brooding mind
A thought of the lights last Whitsun-Eve and of all we had left behind.

Now the slaves we had freed and friended were gone to the jungle folk,
The fierce black tribes of the Cimaroons with the links of the chain we broke,

A symbol of peace and friendship, that their great cacique might know
The men of the woods and the men of the sea were at war with a common foe;

They were sprung, they claimed, from the mutineers that had once been a galley's crew,
And a deadly hate of their lords of old was the only law they knew;

They had got them wives of the Indian folk, and here on the free hillside,
In the tracking of game and the plunder of man, they had thriven and multiplied.

So the chiefs came down to our camping ground, and the tribe abode with us there,
And we learned the lore of their forest craft, and the trick of the woodman's snare.

They told us priceless tidings, how the rains were near at hand,
When the hill streams swell in the torrent beds and travel is barred by land,

But so we would wait in our hiding-place till the dry months came again,
When the plate stores cross from the southern sea to the ports on the Spanish Main;

They would guide us over the jungle waste through the crags by an unknown way
To the path of the laden mule-trains, and the road to Nombre Bay.

So the rains came on in their season, and the hills raced down to the seas,
And ever it poured on our cranky thatch, and it dripped in the night of the trees;

The weeks went by in a shadow of gloom till the camp was a dismal fen,
Till the chill of the rain wrought into our souls, and the heart died out of our men.

Then the gray skies broke and the sun pierced through, bu the white mist rose like a shroud
From the ooze and slime of the mangrove creek, and death was abroad in the cloud.

And one by one in the fever camp our men dropped down and died;
There were twenty-and-nine of the seventy-three that are laid there side by side;

Till we cursed the sea and the hoarded gold, and the toil we had spent for its sake;
But stronger than death, and the fear of death, was the quenchless heart of Drake.

Though his youngest brother, the lad we loved, dropped down in his strength and prime,
And I saw great tears in the stern blue eyes for the first and only time,—

Yet he came and went with a cheery smile, he sat by each sick man's bed,
He nerved the doubting surgeons, and at night bore out his dead.

We dug him a grave by Captain John at the head of that line of mounds,—
They will rise up first on the judgment dawn when the last great muster sounds;

They will call their lads to quarters, and my foster-brother Drew
Will pipe on his boatswain's whistle that the men of the Pasha knew,

And I pray the Lord have mercy, when the angel reads the scrolls,
For the bitter death that they died out there, on those poor seamen's souls.

For look you it is sweet and well in the day we come to die,
To know familiar presences and kindred faces by;

To watch from sheltering windows wide the happy light that plays
On pleasant scenes that seem to soothe the ebbing of our days;

To see the shadows lengthen down the quiet fields we knew,
And the farewell sunset purpling the distant hills of blue;

While tender voices whisper near with gently bated breath,
So softly in its season falls the kindly kiss of death.

But it's ill to pass in the wilderness on the bed of wattled reeds,
With only the swamp to cool the fire of the fever that it breeds.

Yet they that march in England's van have such grim death to face,
And alien suns shall bleach the skulls of our unquiet race.

The desert wastes shall gather them, the red sand choke their groans,
And every tide of all the seas roll up their restless bones.

So there we endured and conquered; the evil drew to an end,
The murmur hushed in his greater loss, and the sick began to mend.

And yet we were hardly a score in all that were strong to march and fight,
When the scouts brought news from Nombre of the Plate Fleet hove in sight;

But thirty men of the Cimaroons marched out with their great cacique,
And they suffered us bear no burdens from the day we left the creek.

We struck through the gloom of the forest, where the dark arms lace and cross,
And the huge dead trunks rot slowly under their pall of moss,

Where there dwells eternal silence, and never the sunlight breaks
The roof that tents the twilight of a sleep where no life wakes.

They found us a track where no track was, and we crept on their noiseless trail,
Through the steamy shade and the fungus slime, to the world of a fairy tale.

We climbed the Cordilleras, up steps of the mountain rills
That yet ran full with the overflow from the springs in the heart of the hills;

We passed through untrodden valleys where the shrubs had an odour of balm,
And the wild wood creatures dwelt unscared in the old primeval calm;

The sap of those trees ran white like milk, the wounds in the bark ran blood,
The fruit hung luscious on every bough, and the ripe fruit grew by the bud;

The cotton blanched in a silky tuft, the bamboos waved their flags,
The acacia pods were a sabre's length, and the wild gourd clung to the crags.

We came to a break in the mountain chain at end of a weary day,
A pass hewn deep in the great rock wall, and the late moon rose that way;

The upland hollow was dense with bush, and the grass rose shoulder high,
There was nought to see for its forest ring but the stars far up in the sky;

And lone in a jungle clearing one monster ceiba stood,
The last of a race of giants of the patriarchal wood;

Its wide arms stretched to the rock's high crest, and its branches bar on bar
Were the rungs of a mighty ladder that reached right up to the star;

The great lianes wound through them and drooped to the earth again,
And myriad blooms of orchids had life from the living chain;

They pitched our camp in the mighty roots, and they waved their hands on high,
And they said, “Climb up, Señores, for this is the Mountain's Eye!”

So Drake swung up through the creepers, and he scaled the ancient tree,
And first of all living Englishmen had a sight of the Golden Sea.

Beneath him forests lay in gloom, dim gorges wound between
White crags like billows cresting in the moonlight's marble sheen.

Behind the vast Atlantic rolled, and widening glimmering west
The sister ocean rose and took the moon-kiss on her breast.

He clambered down with a bursting heart, and fell on his bended knee,
And awe came over us all who watched as he said, “Go up and see!”

And I went aloft through the twisted coils, and Oxenham climbed, and then
The mariners each went up in turn to the last of the Pasha's men:

And the mystic secret was no more hid, and the jealous lords of Spain
Had veiled the face of the virgin sea and had barred her gates in vain!

We stood ringed round together, bared heads by the flickering fire,
We sang the Nunc Dimittis, and Jack Basset led the choir;

And we swore the oath of a fellowship in the shade of the ceiba-tree,
We would never rest till an English keel had sailed on the Golden Sea.

Then we dropped down the gorges, and we came on the second day
To the meeting of roads in a mountain pass, and they said, “There winds the way!”

And we looked once more on the western sea, and saw from the ridge afar
The fleets of the sister ocean in the roads of Panama.

The black folk sent their scouts to spy while the moon was sultry yet,
And they saw the mule-trains gathered to march when the sun should set.

So we chose a place in the level way and the narrow strait of the pass,
Between the gates of the east and west, and hid in the jungle grass;

And there we had ease of our weariness as we lay by twos and threes
Through the trance of the burning noontide in shadow of rocks and trees.

They rolled us leaves of a priceless herb that grew in their hill domain,
Whose fumes are better than meat and drink, a drug to the heart and brain;

And our limbs, worn out with the mountain march, were soothed with a sweet relief
As our lips inhaled its fragrance, and our souls forgot their grief.

Then the sun went down on the western sea, the stars in the east grew bright,
And the fireflies lit their lanterns in the sudden tropic night;

And since the moon would be late to rise each man drew on his shirt
Outside of his seaman's jersey, and we lay by our arms alert.

There were twenty men in the ambush with the breast-high grass for screen,
On either side of the mountain track, and a bow-shot's length between.

The drowsy night air hummed with life, the forest things gave tongue,
While measured on the throbbing pulse the minutes dragged along.

Then far and faint on rustling breaths that seemed to move in sleep,
We could hear the mule-bells tinkle far down the misty deep;

And ever they mounted nearer, till we heard the hide-whips crack,
Till the echoes rang with the jangling chime, and the hoofs that slipped on the track.

They hummed an air as they rode along, the guards at the head of the line,
They rode right into the ambush, and then Drake gave the sign;

And the night was rent with a wild war-cry, the bolt rang keen from the bow,
The black men sprang to the pack-mules' heads, and we all dashed out on the foe.

The escort stood for one moment's space in the jungle path at bay,
And then fled clattering madly back, or on to Nombre Bay.

And we loosed the packs, and we lashed the mules behind them left and right,
And headlong down the desperate paths they galloped through the night.

But all the cost of our voyage was paid us a thousandfold
In the gems we took from the rifled packs and the red Potosi gold;

And as for the silver ingots that we had no hands to bear,
We stuffed them into the crannied rocks and under the tree-roots near.

Then we clambered up by the hill-stream's course, though the way was dark to find,
Where our feet on the dripping boulders would leave no trail behind.

We were far away on the mountain's crest before the alarm had spread,
When dawn broke rosy wakening out of her ocean bed;

For panic grew with the morning light, gave wings to the evil news,
And they landed guns from the ships of war, and they armed at Venta Cruz.

And still folks say that in Panama you may hear the settlers tell
How the Dragon came in his devil-ship, and he made a league with hell;

For their own guards saw the black fiends swarm and gather at his call,
And they cross themselves as they tell the tale: “From such God save us all!”

But we went down by the pathless crags through the thorn-brakes' tangled coil,
Where the face of the cliff was sheerest, bent under the weight of spoil:

And we came to the edge of ocean at eve on the second day,—
Our hearts were glad for the salt waves' smell and the beat of the tossing spray,—

We came to the gorge with its winding stream where our trysting-place should be,
And there were our launches hidden in a sheltered arm from the sea;

And there were our comrades waiting, grown hearty and hale once more,
And wild at the sight of the treasure loads that our black companions bore.

We gave the chiefs to their hearts' desire of our arms and stores and loot,
And we left them all the launches and a Spanish prize to boot;

And we got on board of our own good ship, we tested spar and mast,
Streamed all the silken pennants and shook sail out at last.

We skirted Cartagena with the red cross at our main,
To fire one last defiance to King Philip and to Spain:

And gaily through the tropic sea we ran before the wind,
And left the name of Francis Drake and the fear of God behind.

Oh, sweetly rang the Sabbath bells across from shore to shore
The merry August morning when we sighted home once more;

We heard them ring to matins from Cawsand and the Rame,
And sweetly up the off-shore wind the homely voices came.

We thundered out our last salute to the Admiral of the Port,
And old John Hawkins answered with the guns in Plymouth fort.

But how the folk streamed out of church, and hurried down the Hoe,
And left the parson preaching, all lads in Plymouth know.

So there, my sons, the tale must end of what we did afloat,
You must ask good Master Walsingham what Philip's envoy wrote.

They say Mendoza still protests—and long he may in vain,—
But Spain will pause before she breaks her solemn bond again.