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POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING AND COMMUNICATION

Marketing
US Foreign Policy in
the MENA Region
American Presidents vs Non-State Actors

Fouad Touzani
 Political Campaigning and Communication

Series Editor
Darren G. Lilleker, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK
The series explores themes relating to how political organisations promote
themselves and how citizens interpret and respond to their tactics. Politics
is here defined broadly as any activities designed to have an impact on
public policy. The scope of the series thus covers election campaigns, as
well as pressure group campaigns, lobbying, and campaigns instigated by
social and citizen movements.
Research included in the series might focus on the latest strategies and
tactics within political marketing and campaigning, covering topics such
as the strategic use of legacy, digital and social media, the use of big data
and analytics for targeting citizens, and the use of manipulative tactics and
disinformation.
Furthermore, as campaigns are an important interface between the
institutions of power and citizens, they present opportunities to examine
their impact in engaging, involving and mobilizing citizens. Areas of focus
might include attitudes and voting behavior, political polarization and
the campaign environment, public discourse around campaigns, and the
psychologies underpinning civil society and protest movements.
Works may take a narrow or broad perspective. Single-nation case
studies of one specific campaign and comparative cross-national or
temporal studies are equally welcome. The series also welcomes themed
edited collections which explore a central set of research questions.
For an informal discussion for a book in the series, please contact the
series editor Darren Lilleker ([email protected]), or Ambra
Finotello ([email protected]).
This book series is indexed by Scopus.
 Fouad Touzani

Marketing US Foreign
Policy in the MENA
Region
American Presidents vs Non-State Actors
Fouad Touzani
Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdullah
University
Fes, Morocco

ISSN 2662-589X ISSN 2662-5903 (electronic)

Political Campaigning and Communication
ISBN 978-3-031-45142-3 ISBN 978-3-031-45143-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45143-0

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2024

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
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Paper in this product is recyclable.

 To my beloved family which never stopped believing in me.
For my kids whose laughter is my favorite sound.

For my friends who taught me the true meaning of friendship.

To you, dear reader, for making this journey worthwhile.

 Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my thanks and gratitude to the people whose help
was a milestone in the completion of this book. I recognize the invaluable
assistance that you all provided during my research.
I wish to express my sincere appreciation to my colleagues Dr.
Abdelhalim Larbi and Dr. Said Saddiki whose advice, guidance and
encouragement proved monumental towards the success of this book.
I also wish to acknowledge my family’s great support and love. They
kept me going and this book would not have been possible without their
prayers and encouragement.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA): Relating the Definitions
and Theoretical Approaches to the Units of Analysis 2
Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Making: Definitions
and General Trends 2
Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA): A Brief Overview
of the Theoretical Approaches 4
The Scope of the Book: Relating the Definitions
and the Theoretical Approaches to the Units of Analysis 5
The Relationship Between Mass Media, Public Opinion
Interest Groups and Foreign Policy: Synthesizing
the Conceptual and Theoretical Debate 8
Mass Media and Foreign Policy: A Glimpse of the Literature 8
The Relation Between the Public Opinion and Foreign
Policy Making: A Glance at the Scholarly Debate 13
The Influential Role of Interest Groups on Policymaking:
The Conceptual and Theoretical Explanation 17
The Political Impact of Think Tanks: The Scholarly
Debate, Methodological Constraints, and Multiple-stream
Theory 21
2 The Media and US Foreign Policy in the MENA Area:
From the War on Terror to the Arab Spring 25

ix
x CONTENTS

The Presidential Discourse from 9/11 to the Arab Spring:

From a Rhetoric of Fear to a Rhetoric of Democracy 26
George W. Bush and the Rhetoric of Fear in the Post-9/11
Era: Setting the Agenda for the Media 26
Barack Obama: A Temporary Change from Bush’s Rhetoric 47
3 The US Public Opinion: A Marginal Impact on US
Foreign Policy 67
Ronald Reagan and US Intervention in Lebanon
(1982–1984): A Complete Disinterest in the American
Public Opinion 67
The Pre-1983 Bombings on US Marines: Reagan’s
Disinterest in the Public Disapproval of US Military
Presence in Lebanon 67
The Post-1983 Bombings on US Marines: A Continual
Disinterest in Public Opinion 68
George H. W. Bush and the Gulf War (1990–1991):
A Halfhearted Appeal to the Public Opinion 70
Bill Clinton and Iraq: A Strong Public Opinion Support 73
George W Bush and the War on Terror: The Rise and the Fall
of the Presidential Manipulation of US Public Opinion 74
9/11 and Fear: An Insidious Presidential Manipulation
of the Public Opinion 74
The War on Iraq: A Strong Support of US Public Opinion 75
The Post-War Era: The Fall of Bush Rhetoric and the Shift
in the US Public Opinion 76
Barack Obama and the Arab Uprisings: A Partial Appeal
to Public Opinion 77
The American Intervention in Libya: A Skeptical
but Supportive Public Opinion 77
Obama and the Syrian Crisis: An Unprecedented Public
Opinion Impact on the President’s War Plans 79
4 Interest Groups: An Imperfect Impact 83
Interest Groups: Definitions and Classification 83
Interest Groups: A Broadly Defined Concept 83
Interest Groups: A Variously Categorized Concept 84
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 87
 CONTENTS xi

AIPAC’s Lobbying Strategies: A Multivariate Grass-root

Approach to Shaping and Dominating the US Public
Opinion 87
Gaining Access to Policymakers: Various Means, But One
End 93
AIPAC and US Foreign Policy in the MENA Area:
An Imperfect Influence 99
5 Think Tanks: A Circuitous Impact on US Foreign Policy 125
The Typologies of Think Tanks in the US 126
Universities Without Students/Academic Think Tanks 127
Contract Think Tanks 128
Advocacy Think Tanks 128
The Impact of US Think Tanks on US Foreign Policy
in the MENA Region: Case Studies 130
William J. Clinton (1993–2001) and the Shift in US
Foreign Policy: A Significant But Ambivalent Impact
of Think Tanks 130
George W. Bush (2001–2009): A Circuitous Impact
of Conservative Think Tanks 136
Barack Obama (2009–2017): A Unique Case in Many
Ways 143

Summary and Conclusion 151

References 161
Index 171
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Political-media effects on public opinion on the War

on Terror: November 2001-January 2002 (Source Pew
Research Center Surveys) 29
Fig. 2.2 Public attention to Iraq (December 2003–April 2008)
(Source Pew Resource Center) 40
Fig. 2.3 The relationship between reporting on the absence
of WMDs in Iraq and the Americans’ opinion
about the war (Source Pew Research Center Surveys
[February 2004]) 42
Fig. 2.4 The relationship between Abu Ghraib scandal and public
opposition to war (Source Pew Research Center Surveys
[April 2004]) 43
Fig. 2.5 The relationship between attention to news on Iraq
and mistreatment at Guantanamo to Americans’ support
to a withdrawal from Iraq (Source Pew Research Center
Surveys [February, June and December 2004]) 44
Fig. 2.6 Public opinion on Iran (February 2006–December 2012)
(Sources CNN, NBC News/ Wall Street Journal, Gallup
and CBS News surveys) 51
Fig. 2.7 The impact of the US media’s coverage of Benghazi
on Obama’s credibility (Source Pew Research Center
Survey [September and October, 2012]) 60

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book examines how US media, public opinion, interest groups and
think tanks respond to US Presidents’ attempts to market their foreign
policies in the MENA region. Additionally, we discuss whether these
responses yield an impact on US foreign policy in this strategic area. In so
doing, the book answers the following question: Who influences whom
in US foreign policy decision making pertaining to the Middle East and
North Africa?
As for media and interest groups, the scope of the analysis extends from
the war on terror to the so-called Arab Spring, which coincided with the
presidencies of George Bush and Barack Obama. The analysis of the influ-
ence of public opinion extends from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama.
The examination of the impactful role of think tanks will be carried out
in the light of three presidencies; namely, Bill Clinton, George Bush, and
Barack Obama. We examined relevant case studies including critical issues
and events such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Iran nuclear deal, the war
on terror, and the Arab Spring.
This introductory chapter proceeds as follows: It starts with briefly
defining foreign policy and foreign policy making through presenting the
general trends and the theoretical approaches in Foreign Policy Analysis
(FPA). The chapter relates these definitions and theoretical approaches to
the book’s units of analysis, which constitute the focus of each chapter;

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2024
F. Touzani, Marketing US Foreign Policy in the MENA Region,
Political Campaigning and Communication,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45143-0_1
2 F. TOUZANI

namely, media, public opinion, think tanks, and interest groups. This
introduction finishes with presenting a brief synthesis of the conceptual
and theoretical debate pertaining to the relationship between foreign
policy making and the media, public opinion interest groups, and think
tanks. In so doing, we will discuss the role of these non-state actors in
initiating or influencing foreign policy making.

Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA): Relating

the Definitions and Theoretical
Approaches to the Units of Analysis
Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Making: Definitions and General
Trends
As a major sub-field of International Relations, foreign policy seems to
be an elusive concept as there is a lack of consensual definition among IR
scholars. However, most definitions tend to focus on the actions of the
state as the central agent in foreign policy.
Christopher Hill defined foreign policy as “the sum of official external
relations conducted by an independent actor (usually a state) in interna-
tional relations”.1 A similar and more recent definition was provided by
Morin and Paquin who considered foreign policy as “a set of actions or
rules governing the actions of an independent political authority deployed
in the international environment”.2 A more detailed definition of foreign
policy came from Carlsnaes, Risse, and Simmons who elaborated more
on what constitutes a “state”, the state’s actions as well as the targets of
foreign policy:

Those actions which, expressed in the form of explicitly stated goals,

commitments and/or directives, and pursued by governmental repre-
sentatives acting on behalf of their sovereign communities, are directed

1 Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (Palgrave, 2003), p. 3.

2 Jean-Frédéric Morin and Jonathan Paquin, Foreign Policy Analysis: A Toolbox
(Springer, 2018), p. 3.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

towards objectives, conditions and actors- both governmental and non-

governmental- which they want to affect and which lie beyond their
territorial legitimacy.3

These definitions imply an important argument about the concept of

foreign policy making. Foreign policy making is a process that involves
internal actors whose foreign policy decisions are prompted by external
factors. The internal actors are, first and foremost, the states and their
agents such as kings or presidents and parliaments or congresses. The
foreign policy decisions of these state agents are mainly prompted by
actions from external entities. Therefore, foreign policy generally aims
at pursuing the state’s national interests through affecting these external
entities.
However, the fact that state actors act on behalf of their constituen-
cies necessitates taking domestic factors into consideration while making
foreign policy decisions. This requires state actors to make rational deci-
sions through a careful examination of different alternatives in order to
find compromises between domestic constraints and foreign goals. In
so saying, foreign policy making has become a “democratized” process
which involves state and non-state actors. Non-state actors represent the
domestic constraints. Thus, they try to influence foreign policy deci-
sions through different means. In fact, some contemporary definitions of
foreign policy recognize the role of non-state actors in influencing foreign
policies such as the definition suggested by Smith, Hadfield, and Dunne:

Foreign policy, although traditionally linked to the behavior of states, can

apply equally to explaining the behavior of a range of other actors. Thus,
it is perfectly possible to speak of international organizations, transna-
tional companies, regional governments, transnational terrorist groups and
a variety of other non-state-based actors as having and deploying foreign
policies.4

In democratic societies such as the US, the state derives its legitimacy
from its interaction with citizens as well as the institutions that represent

3 Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, Handbook of International

Relations (Sage Publications, 2012), p. 335.
4 Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield, and Tim Dunne, Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases
(Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 2.
4 F. TOUZANI

them and articulate their interests. These societal institutions are the non-
state actors which may play a constraining role on the state’s function to
make foreign policies as Waltz put it: “States are not and never have been
the only international actors …[and] … importance of nonstate actors
and the extent of transnational activities are obvious”.5
In the US and in addition to the public opinion, non-state actors
include political parties, media, think tanks, and various types of interest
groups. From these definitions that provide a broad idea of what is foreign
policy and who makes it, we can say that while state actors remain at
the heart of foreign policy making, non-state actors may play a crucial
constraining role on the state actors’ constitutional function to make
foreign policy.

Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA): A Brief Overview of the Theoretical

Approaches
Foreign policy is analyzed in the light of different theoretical approaches.
While some of these approaches are exclusively conceptualized to analyze
foreign policy, others are borrowed from the mother discipline of Interna-
tional Relations (IR). We can differentiate between three major groups of
theoretical approaches that aim at making sense of foreign policy; namely,
traditional, behavioral, and contemporary approaches.

Traditional Approaches
The traditional approaches of foreign policy analysis are borrowed from
the broader discipline of International Relations. Traditional theories of
IR argue that the nature of the international system has a great impact
on foreign policy decisions. In so saying, they focus on the state’s pursuit
of self-interest as the major factor that guides foreign policy making. This
is often referred to as the rational-choice theory.6 The most important
traditional approaches are idealism and realism.

5 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley

Publication, 1979), pp. 93–94.
6 Chris Alden and Amnon Aran, Foreign Policy Analysis: New Approaches (Routledge,
2017), p. 6.
Another random document with
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husband was removed from her sight. He was living now, Perrin told
her, in the ’tween-decks, having his meals in the wardroom. Perrin,
Margaret, and Cammock had taken to living in their cabins, so that
she might not be oppressed with company. She filled in the unsaid
portion of Perrin’s speech with “living with Mrs. Inigo”; and she knew
from Perrin’s face that he understood her thought, and that she was
right. She liked Perrin more and more as the days passed. She
understood him now, she thought. The world had gentled him by
some such blow as had crushed her. She could never think of him as
the thoroughly foolish man he was. She only thought of him as a
poor hurt waif, almost a woman in many ways, who felt for her
keenly enough to know that he must not show his feeling. She liked
his shy way of coming into the cabin in the late afternoon, when the
steward served the chocolate. He would enter shyly, speaking with a
false air of jocularity, to propose chess, poetry, a game at cards, or a
little music. The time would pass quietly. He would lose that false air
of his; they would talk together almost like sisters, until the change
of the watch at six o’clock. He helped her through her worst days,
nor did she ever know that the tales he told her, the little jokes in his
conversation, were repeated from the talk of the man she hated; as
the hated man had planned, in his blind love for her.
Captain Margaret had his little hell about him; the days were bitter
to him. All day long, and through the night, he had the image of his
dishonour with him. All the weeks of deceit, all the acts of deceit, all
the long strain of pretence; they were all over. They had ended in
her hating and suspecting him. He would lie awake in the night, and
the memory of his deceit would eat into him like acid, burning. He
would blush, lying there in his bunk, at the thought of his baseness;
it stuck in his throat, now that he could see things clearly. He had
eaten dirt in a vile cause; all honest men must loathe him, he
thought. Then came another memory, the memory of Olivia, her
beauty, her paleness, her voice, her sorrow. It was bitter to him to
feel that he was the bitterest part of her sorrow, and that he could
not help her, nor comfort her, but only prompt Perrin to help her. He
tried to tell himself that her beauty was an excuse for him. His love
had been noble enough; it had not been selfish; he had had little joy
of the ignoble things he had done for her sake. He wished that some
spirit would surround his tortured head with heavenly essence, so
that he might see clearly, as God sees, all the moral value of his
acts, all the right and the wrong, in fiery letters, easy to read. She
was very beautiful, and still young. Meanwhile he had his life to live,
and his task to do. It was not going to be an easy task. He was
coming to it broken. His only comfort in these days was the
knowledge that Stukeley had lied when he had said that Olivia was
going to have a child. That horror was removed for ever. Stukeley
had lied. He prayed that some day the patient fates would take
Stukeley, and show him, for an instant, before death, the image of
himself. He needed not to have prayed. To most of us the patient
fates come, holding up that image. Besides, Margaret knew well that
Stukeley had had his image spoiled for him by the accident of his
birth. The man loved animals; was truly kind and thoughtful with
them. He should have been a groom, a hunt groom, with an
alehouse and ostlers for his evenings. Margaret could see Stukeley
holding up his hands, when his image came to him, saying that it
was not his own work, but the work of the drunken fox-hunter his
father, who came home bloody from the mangling of a fox, to give
his little son drink, and to egg him on to kiss the maids.
Cammock was not free from trouble; he had his own share. The
Broken Heart was no happier to him, though he no longer suffered
from Stukeley. The men of war were the cause of the trouble, even
as he had feared. They were too independent, they resented control,
they had a bad effect upon the ship’s discipline. He had had trouble
with them from the very first, when they came aboard drunk,
twenty-seven of them, bringing with them, as members of their
company, the two deserters from the trading-booth. He had
promptly put the two deserters into irons for a night. He had then
turned them forward, stopped their rum for the voyage, and forced
them to work on deck from eight in the morning till four in the
afternoon, on all days, whether it was their watch or not. This had
caused a mutiny among the men of war. They had come on deck to
demand the return of their mates. Margaret, having called all hands
aft, had spoken to them, as Cammock confessed, “like a father.” He
had read his commission to them. He had promised them that, if
they showed any signs of rebellion, he would land them at an
English colony, where they should be drafted into the Navy without
mercy. He had then called out the two men who had been most
noisy in the mutiny, and had put them in the bilboes abaft the main
mast, under a sentry, for the next three days. But though the mutiny
was crushed, the ill-feeling remained. The men of war went about
their duties sullenly, showing that they resented his action. The
fo’c’s’le hands, quick to catch the mutinous temper, became
“soldiers,” who loafed and skulked, till the mates, goaded by their
insolence, made protest, with a bight of the topgallant brace.
Cammock had more than the anxieties of office on his shoulders. He
had to walk the poop, the captain of all on board, in a false position.
In a sense he was a privateer. Had he been, as he once was, a
privateer only, he would have known how to handle the privateers
beneath him. He understood them. He could even feel for them; he
knew how they felt towards him; when he saw them hanging round
the hatch, cursing the cruise and all on board. But in the Broken
Heart he was less the privateer than the merchant captain going
trading. He had divided interests to manage; he had a divided crew
under his command. He could see that the temper of the ship was
as bad as it could be. The men were in that difficult state a little on
this side of mutiny, always on the verge, never quite declaring, but
sullen enough to make their captain’s life an anxious life. He
expected that their arrival at Springer’s Key would put them in a
better spirit. He wished that he could give them some fighting on the
way; for it was the belief of his old commander that there is nothing
like the sight of a dead or wounded comrade to make a man look to
his leader with trust and thankfulness. Meanwhile he drilled all hands
daily at the guns, expecting a refusal of duty at any moment.
Thinking of the situation in the quiet of his cabin, he decided that
the crew would not stand failure. “If we fail,” he said, “this gang will
not try twice. No privateers will. And these aren’t the pick of the
Kipe.” He felt that the cruise would fail. His forebodings obsessed
him. When he walked the poop at nights, walking athwartships now,
not fore and aft, lest the helmsman should attack him from behind,
he was sure that he would never see home again. He was always
imagining a place of noise and smoke, with himself falling forward
on the sand, looking his last, shot in the body. The obsession made
him more serious than usual. He borrowed a Testament from Perrin
and read the last chapter. Perrin angered him by saying that the last
chapter bored him to death.
As for Stukeley, his senses were gratified; he asked for nothing
more from the world. He had every reason to feel satisfied. He had
not been arrested in Virginia, that was good; he had broken with his
batter-pudding of a wife, that was better; and he was no longer
tortured by the prigs of the cabin. He was messing now in the
wardroom, with Cottrill and Ramage, visiting Mrs. Inigo openly,
whenever he liked; that was best of all. Neither Margaret nor Perrin
had spoken to him since he had bragged to them of having broken
with Olivia, of having fooled them about her child. Cammock had
told him that he was to leave the cabin precincts and that when they
wanted him as an interpreter they would send for him; but that until
then he would either lie low or go in irons. At the moment he was
too pleased with his successes to regret his loss of power. He was
content to lie low, and to refrain from offering insults to all who
irritated him. He patched up a truce with Mr. Cottrill, whom he found
to be good company. He made friends with Smut, the ship’s cat, and
taught one of her kittens to walk on bottle-mouths. He made friends
with several of the men of war, who had their mess without the
wardroom. He would sing “Old Rose” and “Twankydillo” to them, in
the fine bass voice of which he was so vain. Like most seafaring
men, the privateers thought much of a fine singer. They used to
hang about the wardroom door after supper, to hear him singing
quietly to himself, going over his trills and gurgles. He had but to
come out into the ’tween-decks to find himself a popular idol. Men
would rise up from their chests, with real courtesy, as he came
among them. If there were singers there they became silent
suddenly, tale-tellers ceased in their stories. There came a low
murmur of “Good evening, sir. Good evening, Mr. Stukeley. Will you
sit down, sir? Are we past the Serranas yet, d’ye know, sir?” till he
was entrapped among them. As he did not know sailors, he took all
this to be a tribute to his good looks, to his fine physique, to his
manner, to his taking conversation. He used to get them to tell him
of their lives on the coast, believing that it was a kind of life which
might please himself. He inquired also of the life in the Spanish
towns, that lazy, luxurious life, with so many opportunities for
amassing wealth and for self-indulgence. A buccaneer would handle
a guitar, and sing, in a high, false, musical whine, about “my Santa
Marta.” Another buccaneer, drumming on his chest-lid, would begin
about the Spanish girls and the sack of Porto Bello. Listening to
them, down in the half-darkness, Stukeley felt that he, too, would
soon taste of that life. He would lie in a grass hammock, fanned by a
Spanish-Indian girl, whose great eyes would look into his. Eh? He
would eat skewered “soldiers” from the hands of an Indian wife. He
would catch fireflies to stick in her hair. Perhaps he would see the
sack of a town, with the women crouched in their rooms, waiting for
the conquerors. “Brown women; modest, lively little things,” so
Raphael Gamage told him.
The days dragged by slowly. The Broken Heart crawled like a slug,
leaving a slug’s track on the sea. The bells struck, the sails slatted.
The sun arose greyly in mist, then burned the mist away, a spilling
spring of light, in a sky like blue fire. Then in the glare of noon the
chart was marked, the pencilled dot moved forward in its zigzag,
past the Serranas, past Roncif, past the Roncadores. Then the wind
came fair for a few days to help her to the south, her bows in a heap
of smother. Presently, when the first land-wind came to them, in a
faint breath, smelling, as they said, of arnotto roses, there came
drifting butterflies, white and blue, very lovely, settling and dying on
the deck, like petals from a fruit tree in spring. A strange bird sailed
past them, drooping her legs, her wings beating like a mill-wheel,
rhythmically, her fierce eyes looking ahead, searching the sky. A tree
tumbled in their wash, rolling over and over. A creeper from the
branches sank in the wake, its leaves like little green hands,
clutching out, far down, among the globes of the bubbles. Then
when the sun was sinking, when the air was intense and clear, like
the air in a vision, far ahead a bluish mist showed, so dimly, in such
blue faintness, that one could not be sure. Till dark they watched it.
When the dawn made each cloud a scale of scarlet, edged with fire
to the mid-heaven, the mist took outline. Long before sunset the
land lay clear, a long purplish line of land, with a gleaming peak or
two round which the cloud streamed. It stretched away on each side
of them, like an army in rank. Parts of it were dim; its wings were
dim; but ahead the hills were gathered close; one could count each
fold in them. Margaret, loitering on the poop with Perrin, watched
them intently, with emotions which mastered him. A voice seemed to
be talking to him. “What went ye out for to see?” it repeated. He
had gone out to see this land, to hear the multitudes of sea-fowl
scream. There lay the land. Like all lands seen from the sea, it
seemed to lure him, to beckon to him, to be full of mystery, of
mystery which he could solve.
“So that’s the land,” he said at length. “What do you make of it,
Edward?”
“I?” said Edward. “It makes me shudder somehow. It’s the end of
something. Change is always horrible to me.”
Cammock joined them, thumbing the leaves of a portolano.
“We’re away to the east, sir,” he said to Margaret. “If you’ll stand
in a bit further, sir, we shall open Golden Island clear, before dark.
That’ll give me a landfall to go by.”
“And when shall we make Springer’s Key, captain?”
“To-morrow, some time, sir. But we’ll stand in further here, if you
don’t mind. There may be some of those friends of ours in the
harbour here. A nice little sandy bay in there, sir.”
Soon the hills drew nearer. The line of land became jagged. What
had seemed to be the main now showed as islands, a long, low
island, dark with mangrove, and to the south of it a sloping peak,
wooded to the top, a cone of green, with rocks about it over which
the breakers toppled. Margaret could see the line of the breakers
advancing towards them, blue and glassy. In the stillness, he could
see the curl on the wave, the slow running curl along the line, then
the intense brightness of the burst, a momentary marvel of white.
He looked at Cammock, who was looking at the wooded hill, full of
memories. A few of the men of war, faking a hawser in the waist,
stopped their work to look with him. One or two of them, raising
their caps, waved to the island. “Good old Golden Island,” they cried.
“The good old Golden Island.”
“Yes,” said Captain Cammock to Margaret. “That’s Golden Island.
Last time I was ashore there we were three hundred strong, going
across the Isthmus. We’d fires on the sands there, I and my brother
Bill, roasting crabs together. I remember we chucked pebbles over
that palm on the spit there. Queer the palm being there and Bill
gone, sir. He could chuck good, too; further’n I could.”
“You were very much attached to your brother, weren’t you?”
Margaret asked him.
“I didn’t set much value by him at the time, sir. It’s afterwards one
feels it. There’s a little black devil of a reef beyond there, two feet
under water at a low spring. You don’t see it, and yet it rips you
across all right. Ready oh, Mr. Cottrill. Haul the foot of the mainsail
up. Hands about ship. Ease down the hellum.”
They sailed past Golden Island, and past Sasardi, watching the
colours of the sunset on the rocks and woods. The brilliant birds flew
homing, screaming. A faint smell, sickly sweet, came to them in
puffs from the shore. Now and then, in the quiet, they heard the
wash of breakers bursting on reefs. The noise kept them company at
intervals through the night, as they drove on, under the stars, past
Pinos, past Zambo Gandi, towards the Point of San Blas. It burst
upon them mournfully, like the blowing of a sea-beast, a wash, a
breathing of the sea. When the dawn broke, flashing the flying-fish
into silver arrows, they were at their hearts’ desire. The palms on
Springer’s Key were trembling, in the light air, before them. The ring
of reef on the key’s north side stood up black amid the surf that
toppled tirelessly. Pelicans flew past to fish. Macaws screamed from
the fruit trees. Two Indians, with gold in their noses, waved to them
from their canoe as they paddled softly, to spear cavally. Beyond
them, at anchor off the key, was a small sloop. Her men were filling
water ashore, wading slowly up the beach with puncheons. The
saluting gun, fired by Cammock’s order, made them gather together
in a group. One of them waved. Others, still in the boat, rowed out
to show the channel. The sun shone bright over the multitude of
islands. The sea was so blue that the beauty of her colour was like a
truth apprehended. It was so perfect a beauty that Margaret, looking
on it, felt that he apprehended the truth.
“Perrin,” he said, “Edward, what do you think of our home?”
“I’m not thinking of that,” he answered. “I think that all these
things are images in an intellect. I think, by brooding on them, one
passes into that intellect.”
The colours and house-flag blew out clear as the ship came to her
berth. The sloop fired a salute; the Broken Heart answered her. Soon
she was opposite the little sandy beach in the centre of the key. Her
sails drooped, her way checked; then, at Cammock’s shout, the
anchor dropped, the cable running with a rattle, making the little fish
scurry past, in view, though a fathom down.
“Well, sir,” said Cammock, “we’ve broken the neck of that.”
“Yes, captain. And now?”
“I’ve had the old sail-room turned into a dining-room. It’s laid for
breakfast now, sir. I’ve got to see the captain of that sloop and learn
the news. That’s the first thing. Call my boat away, boatswain.”
The privateer sloop was the Happy Return of Jamaica, Captain
Tucket, bound on a roving cruise with twenty men and a French
commission. She carried six small guns, and her men wore arms, all
of the very choicest make; but her hold was full of goods which
Captain Tucket wished to sell. From Jamaica he had brought beads
and coloured cloths, with which he was buying gold-dust, wax, and
bird-peppers from the Indians. He had also several tons of Guiaquil
chocolate and sweetmeats lately taken on the sea. He had come to
Springer’s Key, he said, to fill water, before going east along the
coast, as far as the ’Seniqua, looking for logwood. Things were
quiet, he said, along the Main; there was nothing doing; only a few
barcalongas taken. There had been talk at La Sound’s Key of
combining and going to the Santa Maria gold-mines, but it had come
to nothing. The French and English would not agree upon a leader.
For his own part, he said, he believed there was logwood along
some of these rivers east there, and he was going to look for it. He
was a shrewd, but frank, elderly man.
“Look here,” he said, taking out a handkerchief. “There’s some of
it. I dyed that of a slip I cut. None of your business where. There’s a
pretty red for you. And I got another dodge I’m working at. Here.
What d’you make of these?”
He flung upon the table a few little sticks, some of them crimson,
some blue.
“What are these?” said Margaret, examining them. “Are they
wax?”
“Yes, sir. Ordinary beeswax.”
“You’ve got them a very beautiful clear colour. Look, Edward. Did
you learn the secret yourself?”
“You wouldn’t learn to do them at one of your English colleges,
sir.”
“No. Will the colour stand fire?”
“They’re very good coloured wax anyway,” said Captain Tucker,
putting them away.
“We was thinking of trying to trade at Tolu,” Cammock said.
“Would you care to stand in with us?”
“At Tolu?”
“They may not trade, of course; but——”
“I’ve come here,” Margaret said, “to establish a trade, Captain
Tucker. If I’m not allowed to trade with the Spanish towns, I shall
trade here, like you, and defend such traders as come to me. All this
coast is going to waste. I want to see all you roving traders banded
together to make use of it. The Spanish can’t work it. Why should
not you join us, with your men, for a beginning?”
“The jackal went a-hunting with the lion, sir. But it wasn’t him got
the tender-loin,” said Tucket.
“You mean you’re afraid that my men might impose on yours?”
“Ah come, come, Abel,” said Cammock. “We’re old hands, you and
I. It’s all a matter of articles.”
“I must talk it over,” said Abel. “I’ll run over to La Sound’s Key and
talk it out with my mates. I won’t say. No, sir. I won’t say. Not one
way or the other.”
He left soon after breakfast, and, having now filled his water,
sailed from the key.
“He’s afraid of me,” said Margaret. “He’s afraid that I come from
the Government, to put down privateering. Isn’t that what’s in his
mind?”
“No, sir,” said Cammock. “He’s pleased with the notion. He’s a
trader. He wants to cut logwood without any fear of guarda-costas.
He’ll take all the defence you care to give; but he won’t come
cruising with you till he’s got enough friends to stop you taking the
lion’s share. He’ll be back to-morrow with some friends.”
Margaret went ashore, after this, to view the key. It was one of
the larger keys of the archipelago. It was about a mile long, running
east and west, and about a quarter of a mile across at its broadest
part. In its highest part it was not more than sixty feet above the
water; but the trees rising up above it to great height made it seem
hilly. A sandy beach shelved down into the water on the side facing
the Isthmus. On the north side the shore was rocky and steep-to,
and hemmed about, by a five-mile sweep of reef, in a ring of
breakers. Indeed, the reef ringed the key round; but the rocks about
the beach did not break the seas. The island could only be
approached from the south and east. On the other side neither ship
nor boat could come within great-gun-shot. To the east, for a dozen
miles or more, an array of palm keys stretched, with reefs in tumult
round them. To approach the key from the east one had to sail
within these keys, in a channel or fairway known as Springer’s Drive.
This channel was bordered to the south by the keys fringing the
Isthmus. The double line of keys, separated by three miles of sea,
made a sort of palm hedge, or avenue, up to the anchorage. There
was good holding-ground and riding in every part of the Drive; but
ships usually rode near Springer’s Key, for they could get water
there. Unlike most of the keys, it had a spring, which bubbled up
strongly on the beach, through an old sunk tar-barrel, some yards
beyond the tide-marks. The water was cold and clear, gushing up
with a gurgle, making the sand grains dance. The bottom of the cask
was covered with rusty iron, old nails, old blades of knives, old
round-shot, laid there by sailors, long ago, in the belief that they
would make the water medicinal. Some one had dammed up a pool
below the cask, for the easier filling of the water-breakers. The
water gurgled away, over the lip of the pool, amid a tangle of water
plants that bore a profuse sweet blossom, like a daisy. Margaret had
never seen a lovelier place. The brightness of the sun on the sea,
the green of the trees towering up beyond him, the macaws of all
colours, making their mockeries in sweet notes, were beautiful
exceedingly. It was all new and strange to him. He half wished that
he might be left alone there. He had no longer any wish to succeed.
Had Olivia been on the other side of the world, his strength would
have gone to make this spot a home for half the ships in the world.
They would have lain there, with their sails as awnings, at anchor off
the city he had builded. His citizens would have made those islands
another Venice, another Athens, a glorious city, a city of noble life
and law. All that was in his imagination might have existed, he
thought. All the splendour should have come in praise of her.
Nothing would have stopped him. In his heart her face would have
flowered, that beautiful, pale face, the image of the woman he
loved; he would have made his city glorious. Marble bridges should
have spanned the channels. His empire would have spread. It would
have spread over the sea there, over the keys, over the low coast
fringed with mangroves, over the hills, dim in the south, over the
crags where the clouds streamed, beyond the great bay, far into the
south, past Garachina, past Tumbez, beyond Ylo to the Evangelists.
He would have been a king. His ships would have scented all the
seas of the world, bringing balms and spice home. Now all that was
over, he saw what might have been. It would not now be. He had no
wish now to see his city rise. He found his imagination dulled. The
woman who had been his imagination, through whom, alone, he had
lived imaginatively, walked, a tired shadow, with heavy eyes, in the
ship beyond the reef. If he passed her she shuddered, averting her
eyes. If he spoke to her—twice he had tried to speak to her—she
drew in her breath, her eyes shut; she drew away from him as from
a snake. He had no heart left to think of cities. All that he wished
now was to do what he could for the merchants who had risked their
money. The city would have to wait till the other lover came. The
city would rise up glorious from the beauty of some other woman.
All his love, and high resolve, and noble effort had come to this, that
Olivia thought him something lower than Stukeley, something baser
than the beasts.
 He walked with Cammock to the island’s eastern end, where a
rocky hillock stood out from the trees. He saw that a fort there
would command the channel. Six of his long-range guns planted
there under cover would be enough to defend the anchorage against
any probable attack from guarda-costas. He drew a sketch-plan for a
small redoubt, and ordered half his crew ashore to begin the
clearing of the ground. He would have a wall of unmortared stones,
backed by gabions, leaving embrasures for the six cannon. The
outside of the fort would be covered with earth and sand, so that
from a little distance it would look like a natural hillock. He caused a
dozen men to cut down bejuco cane, and to plait it, while green,
into wattle for the gabions. An Indian prince came to him from the
Main that afternoon. He entertained him with ceremony, giving gifts
of beads and petticoats, with the result that, the next morning, there
were fifty natives on the key helping in the clearing of the ground.
They, too, were bribed by beads. They were kindly, intelligent
fellows, accustomed to be reckoned as the equals of white men, so
that Cammock, superintending the work, had to watch his hands,
lest they should treat their guests, in the English style, as niggers.
The fort, such as it was, was finished on the third day. Its outer face
showed from the sea like a sloping hillock, which in a few days
would be again green with creepers. Within the wall of gabions,
backed by wattle-bound piles, was a gun platform, with dry powder
storerooms twenty feet behind each gun. The guns were mounted
on iron carriages, and so arranged that each of the six could play
across some ninety degrees of the compass. A roof of felt was
rigged over each gun to protect the gunners in the rains. Margaret
wished to hoist the colours over the fort; but Perrin begged that the
new republic might be spared, at any rate till it was worth
appropriating. Cammock advised him to refrain, lest the buccaneers
should suspect him of playing for the hand of the Crown. So no flag
was hoisted, though within the fort, daily, military sentries paced,
firing a gun at dawn and sunset.
While the fort was in building some of the Indians cleared a space
among the wood. In the clearing they built a great house for the
workers: a thatched house twelve feet high, with wattle walls made
rainproof. The uprights supported the hammocks at night. Those
who slept ashore built always a fire of aromatic leaves in the house’s
centre. Before turning in they sprinkled this with water to make a
smoke. Those who woke in the night smelt the sweet, strong smoke
which made their eyes smart, and heard without the never-ceasing
march of the surf, the drone of the dew-flies, and the drowsy twang
of the mosquitoes, plagued by the smoke.
Captain Tucket returned after some days with a sample of
logwood and a consort. The consort was that Captain Pain who
afterwards made such a stir in the Western Gulf. He was a
prosperous captain even then. His ship was a fine French-built vessel
of great beauty. His crew numbered ninety-seven hands, the very
flower of the trade. He seemed suspicious of Margaret, who opened
a trade with him on liberal terms. The privateers bought arms and
clothes, paying for them with silver and gold; but there was
constraint on both sides. The privateers were suspicious. At dinner in
the trade-room Captain Pain gave voice to his suspicions.
“You’re a gentleman,” he said. “I don’t know what you want out
here.”
“Well,” said Margaret, “I’ve already told you. I’ve a scheme for
breaking the Spanish power here. But before I take any violent
action I wish to try once again to establish a trade on ordinary,
peaceful, European lines. There is no reason why they shouldn’t
trade.”
“And if they do,” said Pain, “where do we come in?”
“You will be my partner, I hope,” said Margaret. “We will have all
these islands laid out in vanillas, cacao, indigo, anatta, cochineal,
everything. All the Isthmus there will be our estate. We shall trade
with the Spaniards and the whole of Europe.”
“Very nice, too,” said Pain. “But if the Spaniards won’t trade?”
“Then we shall declare that they’ve no right here, and that we, in
the name of the rest of the world, have a right to assist the rightful
owners of the country, who wish us to trade.”
“And then a governor’ll come, and stop our going on the account,”
said Pain.
 “Yes. But if he does,” said Margaret, “you must see that with the
Isthmus in your hands you’ll be better off than you are now. What
do you do now? You pick up a boatful of sugar once a month, and
share a crown a man. Then you run short of food and go to Toro for
turtle.”
“That’s it, Pete,” said Cammock.
“Your scheme’s very pretty,” Pain said. “But you’re a gentleman. I
ain’t a gentleman myself, thank God, and I don’t know what your
game is. You’re either a bit off your biscuit, or you’re in with the
Government. That’s my candid opinion.”
“All right,” said Margaret. “We won’t go into that.”
At this moment Stukeley entered, a little flown with rum, from the
ward-room dinner.
“Hello, Maggy,” he said. “I’ve come to talk with Captain Pain here.
Your servant, captain. I suppose these twisters here have been
talking about and about it. Eh? They make a man sick, I say. Eh?
Hold your tongue, Maggy. Wait till you’re spoken to. I’ve got
something to say. The men of war—my friends in the ’tween-decks
there—they’ve been talking with me while you’ve been talking here.
You talk all day, and leave off just where you were.”
“And what have you done?” said Perrin.
“I’m not addressing you, Pilly.”
“Do you come as the spokesman of the men of war?” Margaret
asked.
“Yes, I do, my little Maggy.”
“Gamage is a shy, retiring soul,” Perrin said.
“He isn’t a crawler, anyway.”
“Well,” Cammock said, “let’s have the message. Here’s Captain
Pete waiting on us.”
“Right,” Stukeley said, sitting down at the table. “Then I’m to tell
you that the men of war want to know when they’re going to have
what they came for. They’re sick of doing sentry-go in the ant-heap
yonder. They signed for a roving life.”
“They signed to obey our orders,” Cammock said. “They’ll get all
the roving they’ve a need for soon enough.”
 “So they say,” Stukeley answered. “If you don’t give it them they’ll
take it, and half your crew besides.”
“I’ll look after my crew,” Cammock said.
“Not with Captain Tucket and Captain Pain here,” said Stukeley,
grinning. “You see. If you cut up nasty, Cammock. Why. You’ve a
very good ship, and a lot of useful weapons in your hold. Long
eighteens. Eh? Carry a mile and a quarter. What’s to stop us putting
you ashore. Eh?”
“That’s what we did to the Frenchman,” Cammock said. “D’you
remember, Pete?”
“At the Isla Vache,” said Pain, looking down modestly. “I
remember.”
He spoke with such a strange inflection that none there could
guess his meaning, though all looked at him curiously. He turned to
Stukeley with attention, as though expecting something more.
“So,” Stukeley continued, “your humble servants of the ’tween-
decks ask that you will give them a brush. Or——”
“Or what?”
“They’ll ask Captain Pain here to find them hammock-space.”
Captain Pain seemed to search Stukeley’s face for something
further.
“You seem determined to put me in a queer position, mister,” he
said. “But come now, Mr. Margaret. What’s wrong with having a go
at Tolu? We’ve a hundred and ninety men. Why not?”
“I must trade, or try to trade. I’ve told you. I’m a merchant.”
“Quite right, sir,” said Tucket. “I’m a merchant, too. I’d be only too
glad to trade.”
“They won’t let you,” said Stukeley. “So why not look at the
position honestly.”
“Well. Trade. Try it,” said Pain. “If you try it, you’ll get a sickener.
Then you’ll fight all the better, after.”
“They used to trade,” said Cammock. “I’ve known a lot of
interloping done. At Maracaibo they traded.”
“They won’t now,” Pain said. “Any man caught trading without the
King’s license is up for the everlasting prison remediless. You don’t
believe me. You try.”
 “I shall try,” Margaret said.
“Right O,” said Pain. “Then we’ll sail to-morrow. Our two ships will
keep out of sight of land. We could lie by among them Bernadoes.
You can send in samples with your interpreter in Captain Tucket’s
sloop. If they see a big ship standing in they’ll fire at her. So send
the sloop. They’ll not listen to you. They’ll likely fire at the sloop. So
the next morning we’ll land and take the town. There’s twenty
pound a man in Tolu. Silver.”
Cammock, to give Margaret the cue, for he knew that Pain held
the whip hand, said that he approved. “That sounds like business,”
he said. “This is Tolu, Captain Margaret.” He pulled out a quarto
pocket-book containing elaborate charts of many places on the Main.
The book had been the work of many days, and of many hands, for
some of the charts had been copied, some made on the spot, some
taken in fight, others bought, or drawn from hearsay, or
bequeathed. It contained manuscript notes worth a lot of money to
a good many people. “This is Tolu, sir. In Morrosquillo Gulf here. This
long beach runs twenty miles. It’s all hard sand, shelving, and
shallowish water in the gulf. Then back of the town there’s forest.
But all very flat land, as far as Cispata. Ain’t that so, Pete?”
“Flat as your palm. Them’s nice maps you got, Lion.”
“Yes. I got some nice ones of these here islands. Every anchorage
and spring marked. Basil done them. You remember Basil, Pete. He
was a very good drawer.”
“Doctor Basil? Yes. He drawed a tooth of mine once.”
“Ah? Now as for Tolu, Captain Margaret. It’s a walled town. But
the only guns are in the sea-wall. And the wall ain’t much more than
gabions. Not much stone about it. If it comes to fighting, we’ll land
on the beach away south here, and creep up, wading, along the
beach, so as to arrive about dawn.”
“Well, Captain Pain,” said Margaret. “We’ll sail to-morrow. We’ll see
which of us is right.”
He smiled pleasantly, but his thoughts were bitter. He saw that to
succeed on the Main one needed to be one of the crowd. Pain there,
the inscrutable, pale man, had long ago decided how to use him. He,
a cultured gentleman, with a King’s commission, was in Pain’s hands.
He must either go with Pain, or lose his crew. His crew would follow
Pain at a nod. If he tried to coerce either Pain or his crew, he saw
that there would be trouble. The Broken Heart would be taken from
him. He had not thought of this chance; but he remembered a word
of Cammock’s: “Give them some little success, and they’ll do
anything.” If this trading venture prospered, he could proceed to
Jamaica, he could come to some treaty with the Spaniards, pledging
himself to put down privateering. If the trading venture failed, then
it would rest with him to make a conquest of the Indies, to gather all
these thieves into a company, and strike at Spain till she tottered.
After Tolu, and Tolu would have to be a success, he would lead them
against Cartagena. Then he might be able to make a head. At
present he was a “new standard.” He understood Pain’s point of
view. He knew that he must appear to Pain as an uppish youth who
thought that he knew more than old hands. He would show them
that he did know more.
“By the way, Pete,” Cammock said, “what come of George Bond?”
Pete laughed. “Oh, him,” he said. “He went to Portobel, and joined
the Spaniards.”
“How did the Spaniards treat him?” Perrin asked. He had heard of
that wild spirit from Cammock.
“Dunno,” said Pain carelessly. “Give him a position in the
Government, I heard.” He turned to Cammock. “One of Bill Knight’s
lot was in Panama a year ago,” he continued. “He said he was got to
be a big one there.”
“Ah?” said Cammock. “Well. It’s right, too. There’s very good
openings for a man in a Spanish town here.”
“Indeed,” said Margaret. “I should have thought there was bitter
feeling.”
“Not a bit of it, sir. There’s only the religious trouble.”
“That didn’t worry George much,” Pete said.
After this the conversation died down, till Stukeley asked if a
herald from a landing party ran risk of being shot.
“No,” said Pain. “I done it two or three times. You go ashore under
a white flag, holding up your hands, and then they come and
blindfold you, and take you into the town. Then you say your piece
to the Governor, and then you come back.”
“Then,” said Stukeley, “you’d better prime me now in what you
want said, Maggy. I must have a set speech ready for anything the
old cove asks me.”
“That’s quite true. I’m glad you reminded me. We’ll go into it. To-
morrow morning, then, Captain Pain. But I wish you could have
waited till my ship was scrubbed.”
“Time enough, Mr. Margaret,” Pain answered. “We’ll careen her
when we come back.”
He went on deck with Cammock, leaving Margaret to instruct
Stukeley in the matter of his speech to the Spanish Governor. One
speech, which ran, “Your Excellency, I hold my King’s commission. If
you permit me to trade here I pledge my honour to assist your King
against his enemies in these seas,” seemed to Stukeley to be a
pleasant jest. He repeated it, grinning, till he had it letter perfect.
Then he repeated it in Spanish, and left the cabin, laughing.
“Come back here a moment, Stukeley,” Margaret called. “I’ve got
something I want to say to you.”
“What now?” Stukeley answered.
“Stukeley,” he said, “we’re going on a dangerous business to-
morrow. I want you before we leave the ship to see your wife. Will
you do that? I don’t want to preach. I only ask you to realize what it
might be to her if anything happened to you.”
“I’ll manage my own relations with my wife,” he answered.
“Stukeley, she’s a long way from friends. Life isn’t very sweet to
her.”
“I’ll make it a good deal sourer if you come crawling round. Well,
I’ll see her. Now then. No more. Good night, Captain Maggy.”
The door slammed behind him with a clatter of swinging hooks.
Margaret was alone, his face buried in his hands, with his world
tottering about him, ready to fall.
 XI.
THE FLAG OF TRUCE

“Was it not sin enough, and wickedness,

Thus like a rotten rascal to abuse
The name of Heav’n, the tie of marriage,
The honour of thy friends, the expectation,
Of all that thought thee virtuous, with rebellion,
After forgiveness, too?”
The Woman’s Prize.

In the morning, when they were under way, with the two little hills
of Pinos astern of them, and the ship’s bows turned towards
Morrosquillo, far to the east, still two days distant, Captain Margaret
sent Perrin to the cabin to request an audience with Olivia. As he
had feared, she refused to see him. She sat, pale and exhausted, at
the table, Perrin said, too weary of life to ask whither they were
bound, or to ask the nature of their consorts, now sailing easily,
under reduced sail, near the lumbering Broken Heart, foul with long
weeks at sea. She did not care what happened; but, finding Perrin
importunate, she left the cabin, and for two days saw no one. On
the second day the ships anchored between Ceycen and the
Overfalls, in a harbour shut away by wooden keys, from which the
brooks fell pleasantly, with a rippling chatter, that was drowsy and
delightsome, after the glare of the sun on the sea, in the hot calms.
They loaded the sloop with samples during the afternoon, and chose
out hands to go in her. Stukeley was to go as herald and interpreter,
Margaret as principal, in case the matter came to a conference;
while as crew they picked ten from the Broken Heart, five from Pain,
five from Tucket, all good shots, well armed. Perrin was to stay
aboard with Cammock, so that Olivia might have a friend aboard, in
case the sloop was lost.
 After breakfast, Margaret made a last attempt to speak with her.
He entered the cabin unannounced, to find her sitting alone, in a
black gown, a Bible before her, and her face all pale, her eyes with
dark rings round them. She looked up as he entered, then sank
back, closing her eyes, with a sharp intake of her breath.
“What do you want with me?” she asked in a hard voice. “Have
you come to see if—if——”
“Olivia,” he answered, “I’ve come to tell you that I’m going to a
town, now. There’s danger. I’m going with. I mean. Your husband is
coming. It’s a dangerous service. I want you to try to realize that.
That your husband’s going on a dangerous service. That you might
like to see him.”
“Yes,” she answered. “That I might like to see him. Go on.”
“That is all,” he said. “Except that I may not see you again. That I
wouldn’t like.” The words dragged; his mouth was quite dry. He
stumbled in his speech and began again.
“Olivia,” he said. “My conduct. I thought I acted for the best. I ask
you to forgive me.”
“Forgive you?” she said. “Thank you. But I’ve no wish to. You lied
to me from the moment I came into the ship. You lied at Salcombe.
At Falmouth. All the voyage. In Virginia. And then you thought you
had lied enough for your purpose. You let me learn the truth.”
“Yes,” he answered, “I lied. I lied to save you.”
“Ah,” she said, with disgust. “You lied to save me, till it was too
late for me to hear the truth.”
“Olivia,” he continued, “I won’t speak more of myself. Your
husband. I think he wants. He wants to see you. There may be
danger. He wants to see you. He wants to say good-bye. I am going
now,” he added. “Olivia, we’ve been in each other’s lives a long time.
Could you. Could you let this.” He stumbled in his speech again. She
did not help him. His throat was dry like a kiln; he seemed unable to
speak. “I am going now,” he said again. “I’ll send your husband to
you.” He bowed, and left the cabin. As he closed the door he
thought that he could not remember his last sight of her. He could
not remember her face as it had last looked upon him.
 In the alleyway he met Stukeley coming from Cammock’s state-
room.
“I was looking for you,” said Stukeley. “We’re waiting for you. It’s
time we went.”
“Your wife’s in the cabin,” he answered. “She’s waiting for you. To
say good-bye.” As he spoke, the cabin door opened, and Olivia came
out into the alley-way.
“Tom,” she said, “where are you going with this man?”
“Hello, Livy,” he answered. “I’m just going ashore, to interview the
Spaniards.”
“He says that there is danger.”
“Danger? Rubbish. You ass, Maggy. Why can’t you keep your head
shut?”
“Oh. So perhaps he lied again.”
“I’ll leave you,” Margaret said, turning away.
“No. Do not go,” she answered. “I’ve something to say to you,
Tom. I want you to hear it, Charles. Tom, there’s danger in going
ashore here. Oh, I know it. I know it. Tom, dear, since we came here
there’s been something between us always. Ever since. Tom, dear,
you were afraid that I should be angry. Unforgiving. You might have
trusted me, Tom. You were afraid I should hate you. I wasn’t very
wise. It was so sudden. And I wasn’t myself, Tom. It’s not too late,
dear. Don’t let it be too late, Tom.” She paused, looking to her
husband for the answer she had put into his mouth. Stukeley found
it hard to answer. “Oh, Tom, I want you back. I want you back.”
“There, Livy,” Stukeley said. “There, Livy.” He took her in his arms
and kissed her. “When I come back, dear,” he added. “I must go
now. I’m going ashore.”
“Don’t go, Tom. Oh, Tom, don’t go. There’s danger. You may be
hurt. Charles, tell him.”
“It’s all right, old girl. They all swore there’s not the slightest
danger. We shall be back by four o’clock if the wind holds.”
“There’s danger,” Margaret said.
“Tom, you wouldn’t leave me at a moment like this.”
“I must, Livy.” A thought seemed to strike him. “Look here, Livy. It
must be our first step to—to our new life together. To a new life out
here.”
“Tom, my darling, are you sure there’s no danger?”
“There is no danger. None. How many more times?”
“Charles,” she said, “come here. I’ve been. Been. Not myself. I
spoke cruelly. I want you to forgive me, Charles. Take my hand. And
yours, Tom. This is going to be the beginning of a new life together.
Will you let it be that, Charles? You will, Tom?”
“Yes,” said Tom.
“It shall be that,” Margaret said. They shook hands in the
alleyway, making their bonds of peace.
“You’re my Tom again now,” she said lowly. “I’ve forgotten all the
rest, dear.”
“Right,” he said, kissing her. “I was a beast. Good-bye, dear.”
“Not a beast,” she said. “Never that.”
Margaret turned aside, crushing his hat-brim, wondering what new
misery was in store for her. He walked softly out on deck, leaving the
two to their farewell. Perrin said something to him. Cammock was
not in sight. A little knot of men stood in the waist, idly watching the
sloop.
Presently Stukeley came from the alleyway with a grin upon his
face. “Anything for a quiet life,” he said. “Down into the boat with
you, Maggy.”
As they shoved off from the Broken Heart, Olivia waved to them
from her state-room port. Margaret felt a pang of remorse that he
had not shaken hands with Perrin, nor spoken with Cammock, before
leaving the ship. He was nearly alongside the sloop when he saw
Cammock’s hat above the poop nettings.
“He’s hailing you, Captain Margaret,” said the stroke oar.
“Oars a moment.” The men lay on their oars, watching the drops
fall from the blades into the sea. The roar of Cammock sounded.
“What does he say?” said Margaret. “I can’t make out.”
“Something about a map, I think he said, sir.”
“Did you hear, Stukeley?”
“Map or tap, or something. But let’s go on. We’re late.”
“No. I must hear. Back a stroke, port oars. Why, starboard. I’ll pull
back to find out. Way together.”
 Fifty yards nearer to the ship they again lay on their oars. This
time the hail was clear.
“Have you seen my book of maps?”
“No,” Margaret shouted. “You had it in your pocket last night.”
“What’s that you say?”
“You had it in your pocket last night.”
“Yes. But I can’t find it.”
“I’ve not had it. Ask Mr. Perrin.” He sat down in his seat, Cammock
shouted a farewell, to which Margaret raised his hand in salute.
“He’s lost his book of maps,” said Margaret to Stukeley.
“Nothing can be lost in a ship,” said Stukeley. “Besides, what’s a
book of maps?”
“That book was worth a good deal. The Spaniards would pay a
high price for it. With all those charts to help them, they could put
down privateering when they pleased.”
“Oh, rubbish,” said Stukeley, swinging himself up the sloop’s side.
“He could easy get duplicates.”
The sloop was already under sail. The men climbed aboard, and
let the boat drag astern. The helm was put up a little, the fore sheet
was let draw. Soon, as the boom swung over, straining the blocks,
when the mainsail filled, they slipped clear the anchorage. Looking
over the rail, they saw the nettings of the two ships lined with men,
some of whom waved caps in farewell.
Captain Tucket came to command his sloop. He talked little; for he
was trying a new dye. He was boiling a handkerchief in a pan of
herbs, over a little brazier fixed on the deck. The experiment made
him silent; but in moments of enthusiasm he spoke a few words,
stirring the mess with a fid.
“What colour are you trying to get?” Margaret asked.
“One of them bright greens the Indians get.”
“You never will, cap,” said the helmsman. “Them Indians use
moss; a kind of tree moss. I’ve seed ’em do it.”
“Well, if this don’t turn out a green, I’ll wash in it.”
“What’s the matter, Stukeley? Is anything the matter?” Stukeley
had burst out laughing without apparent reason.
 “Nothing’s the matter,” Stukeley answered. “I was thinking of my
interview with the Governor.”
It was high noon when they arrived at Tolu Road. They hoisted a
white flag, and stood in boldly till they were a mile to the south-west
of the town. Here the sloop was hove-to, while the men prepared for
their journey. The six oarsmen of the whale-boat stuffed loaded
pistols within their shirts, and laid their muskets in oilskin cases
below the thwarts. Margaret and Stukeley sat in the sternsheets,
both wearing their swords. Tucket, who steered with an oar, was
armed with pistols. A flag of truce was hoisted in the boat. Tucket
told his mate to keep a sharp look out in the sloop, and to run in to
pick them up “if anything happened.” Then the little lugsail was
hoisted, and the boat began to move towards the town.
Margaret was disappointed with himself as the boat crept on
towards the town. He had so often lived over this adventure in his
fancy that the reality seemed tame to him. He was disappointed with
the look of the city; it seemed but a mean place; a church, a fort, a
few stone houses, a gleam of red pantiles against the forest, and a
mud wall ringing it in. The bell tinkled in the belfry, tinkled
continually, jerked by a negro who had had no orders to stop. It
seemed to Margaret that a bell was out of place in that half-savage
town. It was not a Christian town. Those were not Christians on the
beach. They were Indians, negroes, convicts, runaways, half-breeds.
They needed some bloodier temple than that old church in the
square. They needed a space in the forest, lit by fires in the night.
They needed the reek of sacrifice and the clang of gongs. And this
was the place he had sailed to. Here his life’s venture was to be put
to the touch. Here, in this place, this little old squalid city between
the sea and the jungle. All the long anxieties were to be resolved
there. There on the sand, beyond the spume of the breakers, the
doubts were to end. He could not bring himself to care. His thoughts
ran on the pale face of Olivia, on her words to him, on the possibility
of a new life for her.
“Stukeley,” he said, speaking very quietly in his hearer’s ear, “look
here. I want to say this. After this business, if you care, would you
like to settle in Jamaica or somewhere? Or in France? You and
Olivia? You could draw on me, you know. We could start something
together.”
Stukeley seemed to measure the distance between the boat and
the shore. He looked at Margaret with a gleam of humour in his
eyes.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll think it over.”
“Very well,” Margaret said. “There comes the captain. What
strange little horses. Are they imported, Captain Tucket?”
“No, sir. This country horses. Imported horses die of the heat, or
the change of grass. Beyond Carta-yaina there’s very good horse
country.”
The rabble on the beach drew back now towards the town,
handling their arms. Half a dozen horsemen rode as though to meet
the boat, almost to the lip of the sea. One of them, a negro, who
held his stirrups with his toes, carried a pennon.
“The lad on the pinto’s the capataz,” said Tucket in his beard.
“Stand up with the flag in the bows there. Down sail. Let your oars
swing fore and aft in their grummets, ready to back her off. Wave
your flag of truce, Ed. Don’t shake your pistols out though. Stand by,
Captain Stukeley.”
“Are they friendly, do you think?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, Stukeley,” Margaret said. “This little case contains a ring for
the Governor. Say that you trust that it may have the felicity to fit.”
“I will,” said Stukeley. “They carry some plate on their headstalls,
don’t they?” He put the case in his pocket.
The bow man waved his flag of truce, then lowered it, and knelt,
waiting for the shock of the grounding. Very gently, in the wash of
little waves and slipping shingle, the boat’s nose took the sand.
Captain Margaret stepped across the thwarts, holding a white cloth
in his hand. Watching his time, he leaped nimbly beyond the water,
and uncovered. Stukeley followed him, jumping clumsily. It seemed
to Margaret, as he turned sharply, thinking that the man had fallen,
that a book in Stukeley’s inner pocket was surely Cammock’s map-
book. It half jolted out as the coat flew open. It was a glimpse,
nothing more. Perhaps he was wrong. The two men stood
uncovered before the horsemen, who watched them with the grave
eyes of animals. An elderly man among the riders rode forward for a
pace or two, uncovering with a gesture full of dignity. He had the
bearing of a soldier. It seemed to Margaret that the gesture
explained the might of Spain. Stukeley advanced towards the
horseman with his hat beating against his knee. He spoke quietly in
Spanish. After a few words, the elderly man dismounted, and the
two walked to and fro together, talking with a grave politeness,
which seemed to extend to the listeners, whether they understood
or not.
Presently Stukeley bowed very low to the captain, and walked
jauntily to Margaret. “It’s all right,” he said. “I think they’ll do your
business for you. They’re very friendly. They’re going to take me to
see the Governor.”
“Am I to come?”
“Only one man, he says. I may have to stay to dinner.”
“You think you run no risk? I’m willing to come if you think you
run any. I ought to share it.”
“They’re all right. There’s no risk. But he offers a hostage.”
“One of those cut-throats?”
“It ain’t very polite to accept. Eh? I’ll go alone. He knows you’ve a
commission. I’ve shown him that duplicate. It’s all right. I’ll go off
now. So long, my Maggy. Con Dios, caballero. Try and keep warm on
the sands here.”
He saluted the boat’s crew, gave Margaret a queer glance, and
rejoined the capataz, who bowed to them gravely. The negro with
the pennon led the dismounted horse. The capataz walked with
Stukeley, followed by the other troopers. They went slowly towards
the gate of the city. The troopers made their horses curvet and
passage, clashing their silver gear. Margaret stood at the lip of the
water, watching them, till they had passed within the gate, followed
by the rabble.
The boatmen held that it would not be politic to return to the
sloop. “It might seem as we didn’t trust them,” Tucket said. So they
rigged the boat-rug as an awning over the sternsheets, and whiled
away the time, suffering much from the heat. It was a stifling day.
The time passed slowly, with many calls for the water-breaker. They
made their dinner of plantains, then smoked, exchanging stories,
longing for Stukeley’s return. Margaret found the time less irksome
than he had expected; for Tucket began to talk, out of a full heart,
about the subjects dear to him. He had never had such a listener
before. Margaret drew him out, with his usual sympathy, till the
man’s inmost life was bare before him. Such woods would take a
polish, and such other woods would take a stain; and such and such
resins, why should they not stain a wood to all colours of the
rainbow, if treated with care in the right way? It would be fine,
Captain Tucket said, to be a chemist, and have nothing else to do
but to watch your dye vats all day long. Vats of indigo, of anatta, of
cochineal, all the lovely colours, and—— Say. If one could get a
green that showed the light in it, like the water breaking on a reef.
The hours passed; it was nearly three o’clock; but still no Stukeley.
“The Guv’nor dines late,” said one of the men.
“I guess it’s difficult to get away from the donnas,” said another.
The others laughed; for Stukeley’s faults were well known.
“I dunno, sir,” said Tucket. “It seems a bit odd.”
“He seemed very sanguine about it,” Margaret answered.
“I ain’t much charmed with your friend myself,” said Tucket. “I
don’t trust that Master Stukeley.”
“You don’t think he’s deserted? Is that your meaning?”
“Well, I wouldn’t a trusted him to be my interpreter,” Tucket
answered, with the growl of one whose superior wisdom, now
proved, is proved too late. “We could a give you Thomas Gandy.
He’d have done as good. He knows Spanish just like a book, Tom do.
And you could a trusted Tom with your life. Now you ain’t on too
good terms with the Mr. Stukeley feller.”
“Shall I go into the town, then? To see if anything’s wrong?”
“Why, no, sir. That’s putting your joint in the fire to hot your soup.
Stay here, sir.”
“Well, we’ll wait a little longer. What d’you say to bathing?”
“It’s not really safe, sir. There’s cat-fish on this coast. Besides, we
better not get all over the place like shifting backstays. Them
Dagoes might come some of their monkey-tricks.”
 “The town is quiet enough.”
“Siesta time,” said one of the men. “They likes a doss in the
afternoon.”
“I dunno what to think,” Tucket said. “But ’t’ain’t too wholesome,
to my mind.”
“He said he might be kept for dinner.”
“He could a sent word. Or they’d a sent dinner here. I’ve knowed
Dagoes do that. You got good eyes, Ed. What d’you make of the
woods there, back of the sand?” He turned to Margaret. “He’d been
with the Indians three or four years, Ed done. He sees things in
brush like that, just like an animal.”
All hands stared into the wall of green, which rose up eighty yards
away, beyond the line of the sand. The trees towered up, notching
the sky with their outlines. The sun blazed down upon them, till they
flashed, as though their leaves were green steel. They made a wall
of forest, linked, tangled, criss-crossed, hiding an inner darkness. A
parrot was tearing at a blossom high up on a creeper, flinging out
the petals with little wicked twists of his head. He showed up clearly
against the sky in that strong light.
“Nothing wrong there,” said Ed. “Look at the parrot.”
They looked at the parrot, and laughed to hear him abuse the
flower.
“They’re the kind you can learn to speak, sir,” said a seaman. “I’ve
known some of them birds swear, you would think it was real. Some
of them can do it in Spanish.”
“The Spaniards don’t swear,” said another man.
“They’ve got caramba,” said the first. “Caramba. That’s the same
as God damn is in English.”
“Funny way of saying it,” said the other.
“Some one’s in that brush,” said the man called Ed. “See the
paharo?”
Something had startled the parrot. He leaped up with a scream
from his liane, made a half-circle in the air, and flew away, wavering,
along the coast. One or two other birds rose as quietly as moths,
and flitted into the night of the wood. A deer stepped out on to the
beach daintily, picking her steps. She sniffed towards the town,
listened, seemed to hear something, caught sight of the boat, and
fled. Then came a sudden chattering of monkeys, a burst of abusive
crying, lasting only for a moment.
“D’ye see anything, Ed?”
“There’s plenty of ’em, cap, I guess.”
“Can you hear ’em? Lay your head on the ground.”
“The wash of the sea’s too loud. I can’t hear nothing.”
“They’re coming from the town, are they?”
“Sure.”
“Is there a road at the back of that wood?” Margaret asked.
“No, sir. I guess not. The Dagoes use the beach as a road.”
“Yes,” said a seaman. “They go to Covenas. A town along there.
They always go by the beach.”
“Do you know this place, then?”
“I worked on them walls a year, once. I’d ought to know it.”
“D’ye make out anything more, Ed?”
“They’re not far off yet, I guess, cap.”
“Do you think it’s an ambush, Captain Tucket?” Margaret asked.
“No saying, mister. May as well make ready,” he answered. “We’ll
lay out our boat’s kedge to seaward, so as we can warp off in a
hurry.”
They rowed the boat out into the bay, dropped their kedge, and
backed her stern-first to the beach. They struck the awning, hoisted
sail, and laid their oars in the thole-pins. They waited for another
half-hour, watching the mysterious forest.
“I guess we’ll go off to the sloop, cap,” said a seaman. “He’s give
us the flying foretopsail.”
“Them paharos is back among them berries,” said Ed. “I guess it
was boys come for plantains.”
“I dunno,” said Tucket. “It’s odd our man ain’t come.”
“I must go up to the town to find out about him,” Margaret said. “I
can’t wait like this.”
“I wouldn’t, sir,” said Tucket. “What do you say, boys?”
“No,” said the men. “No. It wouldn’t do.”
“But I got him to go. I can’t let him get into trouble through me.
I’m responsible. I must see about him. I can’t go back without him.”
 “He’s give you the foresheet, sir,” said one of the men.
“Yes. The son of a gun. I guess he has,” said another.
“There’s some one in that brush,” said Ed. “Them paharos has
topped their booms for keeps.”
“Well,” said Margaret, taking out his white cloth, noting the wild,
frightened flight of a half-dozen parrots, “I’m going to the some one,
to find out.” He leaped from the sternsheets into the shallow water,
and began to wade ashore, holding his cloth.
“Don’t you try it. You come back, sir,” called Tucket.
Margaret heard some one (he thought it was Ed’s voice) saying,
“He’s brave all right,” and then, behind him, came the click of
gunlocks. He glanced back, and saw that two of the men in the
sternsheets had taken out their guns, while a third man laid other
loaded guns ready to their hands. Ed called to him as he turned.
“You come back, sir.” Then, seeing that his words were of no avail,
he leaped into the water and caught him by the arm. “Back to the
boat, sir,” he said. “It’s not you only. It might be us.”
“I must find out about my friend,” said Margaret. “I can’t leave
him as he is.”
“Bring him back, Ed. Make him come back,” called the boatmen.
“Now you go back,” Ed repeated, grinning, “or I’ll have to put
you.” He looked up suddenly at the forest. “My Santa Marta!” he
cried. “Into the boat. Here they are.” He thrust Margaret backwards
towards his fellows, and instantly bent down to shove the boat clear.
Both were up to their knees in water at the boat’s side. Some one, it
was the man who had worked in Tolu, leaned out and grabbed at
Margaret’s collar.
“Look out, sons!” cried Tucket.
At the instant a swarm of men burst from the edge of the forest.
One or two of them who were mounted charged in at a gallop. The
others ran down, crying, firing their guns as they ran. The water
about the boat was splashed violently, as though some one flung
pebbles edgewise from a height. Margaret drew his sword and
turned. He saw a horse come down within twenty yards of him.
Some one shouted “Crabs” derisively. Half a dozen fierce faces
seemed staring on him, rushing on him, their mouths open, their