Cup of Gold quotes

The afternoon passed slowly, procession-like with an end of evening, and on the heels of the evening an excited wind rushed out, rustled in the dry grasses, and fled whimpering across the fields.

Night drew down like a black cowl, and Holy Winter sent his nuncio to Wales.

Beside the high-road which lined the valley, ran up through a cleft in the hills, and so out into the world, there stood an ancient farmhouse built of heavy stones and thatched. The Morgan who had built it played against Time and nearly won.

Beside the high-road which lined the valley, ran up through a cleft in the hills, and so out into the world, there stood an ancient farmhouse built of heavy stones and thatched.

The Morgan who had built it played against Time and nearly won.

Inside the house a fire was burning on the hearth; an iron kettle hung over the blaze, and a black iron oven hid in the coals which fell about the edges of the flame.

It was strange to Old Robert that he, who knew so much more than his neighbors, who had pondered so endlessly, should be not even a good farmer.

Sometimes he imagined he understood too many things ever to do anything well.

And so Old Robert sipped the burned ale of his own experimenting and smiled into the fire. His wife would be whispering excuses for him, he knew, and the laborers in the fields removed their hats to Morgan, not to Robert.

It outraged her nature, for she was one who had, apparently, come into the world to be a scourge to all foolishness. Such matters as had so obviously no connection either with the church or with the prices of things were plainly nonsense.

Old Robert had loved his wife so well and so long that he could think sharp things about her, and the thoughts could not injure his affection.

When she had come home this afternoon, raging over the price of a pair of shoes she hadn’t wanted anyway, he had considered: “Her life is like a book crowded with mighty events.

Young Henry, her son, she worshiped, though of course she could not trust him to have the least idea of what was to his benefit or conducive to his health.

And all of the family loved Mother Morgan and feared her and got in her way.

She had fed them and trimmed the lamp. Breakfast was on the fire. Now she searched about for something to mend, as though she did not mend everything the moment it was torn.

He lay propped on one elbow and stared past the fire into his thoughts. The long gray afternoon, piercing to this mysterious night, had called up strong yearnings in him, the seeds of which were planted months before.

It was a desire for a thing he could not name.

Perhaps the same force moved him which collected the birds into exploring parties and made the animals nervously sniff upwind for the scent of winter.

Young Henry was conscious, this night, that he had lived on for fifteen tedious years without accomplishing any single thing of importance.

And had his mother known his feeling, she would have said, “He is growing.”

And his father would have repeated after her, “Yes, the boy is growing.” But neither would have understood what the other meant.

And his father would have repeated after her, “Yes, the boy is growing.”

But neither would have understood what the other meant.

Henry, if you considered his face, drew from his parents almost equally. His cheek bones were high and hard, his chin firm, his upper lip short and thin like his mother’s.

Wrinkled old Gwenliana was in her seat before the fire, her mind lost in the swimming future. Her clouded eyes were veiled with tomorrow. Behind their vague blue surfaces seemed to crowd the mounting events and circumstances of the world.

She was gone out of the room⁠—gone into pure Time, and that the future.

Old Robert watched the door close behind his wife, then settled himself with turnings as a dog settles.

Robert was smiling with tightened lips. Now and then his eyes wandered to the boy where he knelt on the hearth.

Henry was taut with attention, gluttonously feeding on the words.

When Robert spoke, he avoided Dafydd’s eyes.

“Ah, there is no use in it, Mother.

A great gulf lies between my son and me, but none at all between me and my son.

If I did not know the lean hunger of him so well I might forbid his venturing, and he would run away with anger in his heart for he cannot understand the hunger that’s in me for his staying.

And so—I imagine great dishes of purple porridge, drenched with dragon’s milk, sugared with a sweetness only to be envisioned.

He tests his dreams Mother, and I⁠—God help me!⁠—am afraid to.

”

Mother Morgan said, “Nonsense!” and went back to her work.

She would dissolve this thing by disbelieving it.

Oh, the thousand things she chained to Limbo with her incredulity! For many years she had beaten Robert’s wild thoughts with a heavy phalanx of common sense; her troop simply charged in and overwhelmed him. Always he retired wearily and sat smiling for a time.

and what Merlin said might cure young Henry of his yearnings, might keep him here in Cambria for always. That could not be, for there were outland forces, nameless foreign ghosts, calling to him and beckoning from across the mysterious sea.

There was no desire in him for a state or a condition, no picture in his mind of the thing to be when he had followed his longing; but only a burning and a will overpowering to journey outward and outward after the earliest risen star.

The path broke on a top of solid stone, semispherical like the crown of a hat; and on the peak of its rise was the low, round house of Merlin, all fitted of irregular rough rocks, and a conical roof on it like a candle-snuffer.

And you must lose that wild, excited quickening when the sun turns back, the joy of it flooding over you like the surge of a warm wave and choking you with pleasure and relief. No change there; none at all.

Past and future mingle in an odious, eternal now.

”

Henry said, “

I have lost no love, sir, but my dream is over the sea that I do not know.

I know Cambria.”

“I think I understand,” he said softly. “You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man—if only you remain a little child.

All the world’s great have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes caught a firefly.

But if one grow to a man’s mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could—and so, it catches no fireflies.”

and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man—if only you remain a little child. All the world’s great have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes caught a firefly.

But if one grow to a man’s mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could⁠—and so, it catches no fireflies.

”

Dusk was stealing into the mountain creases, filling them with purple mist.

The sun cut itself on a sharp hill and bled into the valleys.

Long shadows of the peaks crept out into the fields like stalking gray cats. When Merlin spoke, it was with a little laugh.

“Yes, you must go, but do not think closely of my words. I may have been trying to impress you with these words.

Old men need a certain silent flattery when they have come to distrust that which is spoken.

Only remember that Merlin talked with you. And if you come on the Welsh folk anywhere, singing my songs that were made so long ago, tell them that you know me; tell them that I am a glorious creature with blue wings.

And if you come on the Welsh folk anywhere, singing my songs that were made so long ago, tell them that you know me; tell them that I am a glorious creature with blue wings. I don’t want to be forgotten, Henry.

That is greater horror to an old man than death⁠—to be forgotten.

”

She was a thing of mystery. All girls and women hoarded something they never spoke of. His mother had terrific secrets about biscuits, and cried, sometimes, for no known reason.

Another life went on inside of women⁠—some women⁠—ran parallel to their outward lives and yet never crossed them.

A year before, Elizabeth had been a pretty child who whispered to the other girls and giggled and pulled hair when he was about; and then suddenly she had changed.

friendly little clusters of rude huts, and the people staring at him as at a stranger. It was a joyous thing to young Henry. Always he had stared at others who were strangers, dreaming their destinations and the delicious mystery that sent them forth.

The name of Stranger made them grand beings with mighty purposes.

And now he was a stranger to be thought about and stared at with a certain reverence. He wanted to shout, “I’m on my way to the Indies,” to widen their dull eyes for them and raise their respect.

At length, when his hands were blue and his face raw with the wild sleet, he crawled into a lonely, stone barn filled with the summer’s hay. It was warm, there, and quiet after the screaming of the wind in his ears.

The hay was sweet with the honey dried in its stems.

Henry burrowed into the soft bed and slept.

He had been alone before, but never so thoroughly alone, among new things, in a place he did not know. The terror was growing and swelling in his breast.

Time had become an idling worm which crawled ahead the merest trifle, stopped and waggled its blind head, and crawled again.

It seemed that hours passed over him like slow, sailing clouds while he lay shivering with fright. At last an owl flew in and circled above him, screeching maniacally.

And rows of coffee and oranges and cane and cocoa grew and ever spread out on the islands. There was some little trouble, of course, when the terms of indenture ran out.

But the slums of London bred new slaves quickly enough, God knew! and the king was never without a fine supply of enemies.

England was becoming a sea power with her governors and palaces and clerks in the New World, and ships of manufactured things were sailing out of Liverpool and Bristol in ever increasing numbers.

“Will you be sitting here, young man, alongside of an honest sailor out of Cork named Tim?” As he spoke he squeezed violently against his neighbor, flinging him sideways and leaving a narrow space on the bench end for the boy.

There are no men like the Irish for being brutally gentle.

And Henry, as he took the seat, did not know that the sailor out of Cork had seen his gold piece.

Tim is a kind of free name that you can just take and no one to mention it, like the little papers the Dissenters be leaving in the streets, and they scuttling off not to be seen with them.

You can breathe Tim like the air, and no one to put hand on you.

”

The seamen gathered in the forecastle to boast of her fleetness and the tight shape of her. And in this time Henry exulted like a young god.

The wind’s frenzy was his frenzy.

He would stand on the deck, braced against a mast, face into the wind, cutting it with his chin as the prow cut the water, and a chanting exultation filled his chest to bursting—joy like a pain.

for the winds brought longing to have sweeping wings and the whole, endless sky for scope. The ship was a rocking, quaking prison for him who would fly ahead and up. Ah! to be a god and ride on the storm! not under it.

Here was the intoxication of the winds, a desire which satisfied desire while it led his yearning onward.

He cried for the shoulders of omnipotence, and the elements blew into his muscles a new strength.

Sunday came, a day of sullen fear and foreboding on the Bristol Girl. Henry finished his work in the galley and went on deck. An aged seaman was sitting on a hatch plaiting a long splice.

His fingers seemed each a nimble intelligence as they worked, for their master never looked at them.

Instead, his small blue eyes, after the manner of sailors’ eyes, looked out beyond the end of things.

“These are the ghosts or treasures lost at sea,” the cook went on, “the murder things, emeralds and diamonds and gold; the sins of men, committed for them, stick to them and make them haunt the ocean.

Ay! it’s a poor thing if a sailor will not make a grand tale about it.

”

It was like looking into a fire. One saw nothing, yet only with infinite struggle could he move his eyes; and finally his brain dreamed off, though he was not sleeping.

There is a peace in the tropic oceans which passes a desire for understanding.

Destination is no longer an end, but only to be sailing, sailing, out of the kingdom of time. For months and years they seemed to slip onward, but there was no impatience in the crew.

There is a peace in the tropic oceans which passes a desire for understanding.

Destination is no longer an end, but only to be sailing, sailing, out of the kingdom of time.

For months and years they seemed to slip onward, but there was no impatience in the crew. They did their work, and lay about the deck all in a strange, happy lethargy.

James Flower was not a hard man, and certainly he was not a very brilliant man.

His whole life had been a hunger for ideas⁠—any ideas⁠—the creation of them.

He wanted to conceive ideas, to warm them to throbbing life, then to hurl them on an astonished world. They would go bobbing like stones started down a long hill, awakening an avalanche of admiration. But no ideas came to him.

And so he had grown wistfully old, on the island. His library was the finest in the Indies, and, as far as information went, he was the most learned man anywhere about. But his learning formed no design of the whole.

He had learned without absorbing, remembered without assimilating.

His mind was a sad mass of unrelated facts and theories. In his brain, as on his shelves, Caesar’s Commentaries stood shoulder to shoulder with Democritus and a treatise on spontaneous generation.

He must be cold and distant and insulting to those below him. With few exceptions, they would take insult as the sign of his superiority.

Men always believed him what he seemed to be, and he could seem to be almost anything.

If one were brilliantly dressed, all men presumed him rich and powerful, and treated him accordingly. When he said things as though he meant them, nearly all acted as though he meant them.

And he followed all his teachings. He never gave any man the least hold on him, nor insight into his motives and means and abilities and shortcomings.

Since most men did not believe in themselves, they could not believe in one they understood to be like themselves.

These rules he gleaned gradually from his life, until he was master of the plantation, until James Flower pitifully leaned on his advice and his convictions, and until the Caribs and blacks and felon white men hated and feared him, and yet could make no …

Why, his very name, in the ancient Briton tongue, signified one who lived by the sea. Yes, the ships were calling to him cruelly now.

His heart sailed out, away from him with every passing merchantman.

In the big house he had studied and considered what navigation there was in books, and in the plantation’s little sloop he had gone cruising in the near waters.

The lust that all men have in varying degrees—some for the flash of cards, and some for wine, and some for the bodies of women—was in Henry Morgan, satisfied with the deck’s lunge and pitch and the crack of canvas.

The wind, blowing out of a black, dreadful sky, was a cup of wine to him, and a challenge, and a passionate caress.

He sailed to Jamaica with the crops and beat about among the islands. The returns from the plantation mounted, and Henry’s box of coins was growing heavy.

“Ah, well! It could not last.

The gods slay happiness in jealousy.

Nothing good can last. A gang of bastard sailors roved through the land and carried me off—a little boy to be sold for a slave in the Indies. It was a bitter thing to lose Elizabeth—a bitter thing the years cannot forget.”

“Ah, well! It could not last. The gods slay happiness in jealousy.

Nothing good can last.

A gang of bastard sailors roved through the land and carried me off—a little boy to be sold for a slave in the Indies. It was a bitter thing to lose Elizabeth—a bitter thing the years cannot forget.”

“Bras de Fer,” he said, and no one ever questioned him farther. It was never known whether his name was hidden for a shame or a sorrow or a hatred, but all the Coast came to know of him as a great, brave captain.

These were men who made phrases to be repeated.

“No prey, no pay,” the Exterminator had bawled, and now everyone was saying it.

Augustine in Florida, and St. Catherine’s Isle. With a great fleet of ships he had gone cruising along the coasts of Darien and Castilla de Oro, taking what he might lay his hands on.

But there was a power of dream in him.

Out of his mob of ragamuffin heroes he wanted to make a strong, durable nation, a new, aggressive nation in America. As more and more of the buccaneers flocked to his command, his dream solidified. He consulted the governments of England and France.

And this thing happened. The men fairly fawned on him, and he found that he despised them for it and considered them fools to be taken with such simple things.

Henry had grown lonely in his glory.

Old Merlin had spoken truth so long ago, for Captain Morgan had come to his success, and he was alone in his success, with no friend anywhere. The craving of his heart must lie crouched within him.

no one could tell the tint of her cheeks or the color of her hair. Yet, in a few years, every man in the wide, wild Main had drunk to the Red Saint, had dreamed of her; many had prayed to La Santa Roja.

She became to every man the quest of his heart, bearing the image of some fair young girl left on a European beach to be gloriously colored by the years.

And Panama was to every man the nest of his desire. It was a curious thing. In time, no speech among gathered men could end without mention of La Santa Roja.

And Panama was to every man the nest of his desire. It was a curious thing. In time, no speech among gathered men could end without mention of La Santa Roja.

She was become a queer delirium in the minds of the rough pirates, a new virgin for their worship.

Many said she was Mary come to live on earth again, and they added her name in their prayers.

Through all his life his will had been like an iron weathervane, steadfastly pointing, always, but never long in one direction. The Indies and the sea and pillage and glory all seemed to have failed him.

He had touched all things and watched them pale and shrivel at his touch.

And he was lonely. His men regarded him with respect and sullen awe. They were afraid of him, and this state did not feed his vanity as once it had.

“But there is much suffering bound up in women,” Henry Morgan began, as though he had just finished speaking. “

They seem to carry pain about with them in a leaking package.

You have loved often, they say, Coeur de Gris. Have you not felt the pain they carry?”

surely we shall go on living after death,’ then I might be preparing for the coming life. But here, alone, halfway up the sky, I am afraid that death would interrupt my musing.

The mountains are a kind of poultice for a man’s abstract pain.

Among them he laughs—oh, far more often than he cries.”

They would bring strangers to your house on Sunday afternoons and exhibit you. But, since there are none, of course you are a radical who must be locked up or hanged.

Judgment of insanity is truly the hanging of a man’s mind.

If it be whispered of him that his brain wanders, then nothing he can say will matter to anyone ever again, except as a thing to laugh at.

“And so he does. News of him comes out of the south on a light, inaccurate wind.

Rumor has wings like bats.

It is said that he rules a wild race of pirates; that he has captured towns and pillaged cities. The English are elated, and call him a hero and a patriotic man—and so do I, sometimes.

“So,” Merlin mused, “he has come to be the great man he thought he wanted to be. If this is true, then he is not a man. He is still a little boy and wants the moon. I suppose he is rather unhappy about it.

Those who say children are happy, forget their childhood.

I wonder how long he can stave off manhood.

In the native tongue this signified a place of good fishing. When the soldiers of Spain put torch to the litter of huts, and in its place built a new town, they kept the old name,

Panama, which is a song.

And soon the meaning justified itself, for out of this little town the nets of Spain were flung to the four directions.

Balboa would have strengthened the walls and flooded the approach. Pizarro’s army would have been halfway across the isthmus, by this time, to meet the oncoming buccaneers. But those brave times were past.

The merchants of Panama thought only of their possessions, their lives, and their souls⁠—in the order named.

They never considered belting on swords or toiling at the disintegrated walls. That was for the soldiers of the King, who were paid good money to protect the citizens. The Governor must see to the defense.

In the crowd of shipping lay three slim, clean sloops from New England. They had not come to fight, but to trade—powder for plunder, whisky for gold.

Powder and whisky were the two great weapons of offense.

And besides, these Plymouth men would buy old, useless ships for the iron and cordage they contained.

If they were given time to think of Panama, they would run home out of dread, for stories of the power and protection of the Cup of Gold had been told in all their islands for over half a century.

Panama was a cloud city, an eerie, half-unearthly place, and armed with lightnings.

Of course, there were those who believed the streets paved with golden cobbles, and certain church windows carved from single emeralds. These legends would draw them on, if only they had no time to think of the hazards as well.

Black Grippo was there, an old man now, and sagging under his unimportant infamies.

He had come, finally, to regard his God as a patient policeman whom one might possibly outwit.

Lately he had reasoned that he might flee his sins by a general confession and reconfirmation in his mother church, and this he intended to do when one more expedition should provide him with a golden candlestick to bear to the confessing priest by way …

On this Chagres you might pole your boat all day, and at night make your camp not half a mile by straight line from the starting place. It was a sluggish, apathetic river of many shallows where the bright sand glittered in the sun.

Chagres was a dilettante in the eternal and understood business of rivers⁠—that of getting to the ocean with as little bother and effort as possible.

Chagres dreamed about over the country, seemingly reluctant to lose its lazy individuality in the worried sea.

It was a sluggish, apathetic river of many shallows where the bright sand glittered in the sun. Chagres was a dilettante in the eternal and understood business of rivers—that of getting to the ocean with as little bother and effort as possible.

Chagres dreamed about over the country, seemingly reluctant to lose its lazy individuality in the worried sea.

After a time the boats came to a land where the thick jungle rolled to the river’s edge and stopped in a curving crest, like a frozen green wave. There were spotted tigers cruising along through the trees, watching the men with a sad curiosity.

Whole clans of excited monkeys dashed about among the vines, pretending to hate disturbance. They howled their indignation and hurled leaves and twigs at the boats.

Fourteen hundred outlandish beings had invaded sacred Mother Jungle; the mangiest monkey on earth had, at least, his right of protest.

The day’s heat had come like a breath of fever, heavy and dully bewildering. The songs from the barges thickened and died as though hot blankets had been thrown over the men. The buccaneers sat lifelessly on their benches.

These were the joys of life, and a fair thing it was if the man were stabbed before he finished his drink or his conversation; but hunger—Well, tomorrow there would be food surely.

But again the sun arose, a white, fevered ulcer in the sky.

There was the river of mad turnings, and along its banks deserted farms, and no food at all. News of this invasion had swept along before them like an appalling message of pestilence. No man or animal remained to greet the buccaneers.

La Santa Roja had faded in his imagination as his hunger grew. He could not clearly remember his desire. But even though this desire should desert him utterly, he must go on.

One failure, one moment of indecision, would scatter his successes like pigeons.

Coeur de Gris was beside him as he had been from the beginning, a haggard Coeur de Gris now, who lurched a little as he walked. Captain Morgan looked with pity and pride at his lieutenant.

“But I think there is more than lust,” he said. “You cannot understand my yearning. It is as though I strove for some undreamed peace.

This woman is the harbor of all my questing.

I do not think of her as a female thing with arms and breasts, but as a moment of peace after turmoil, a perfume after rancid filth. Yes, it is strange to me.

Coeur de Gris was grasping his aching temples between his hands. “I do not understand!” he cried scornfully. “Do you think I do not understand?

I know; to your mind your feelings are new things, discoveries of fresh importance.

Your failures are unprecedented. This gigantic conceit will not allow you to believe that this Cockney behind you—yes, he who sometimes rolls on the ground in fits—might have the same hopes and despairs as yourself.

Coeur de Gris was grasping his aching temples between his hands. “I do not understand!” he cried scornfully. “Do you think I do not understand? I know; to your mind your feelings are new things, discoveries of fresh importance.

Your failures are unprecedented.

This gigantic conceit will not allow you to believe that this Cockney behind you—yes, he who sometimes rolls on the ground in fits—might have the same hopes and despairs as yourself. You cannot believe that these men feel as deeply as you do.

Now that their enthusiasm was gone, they were dragged onward by the knowledge of their captain’s infallibility. Morgan could not fail because he never had failed. Surely he had a plan which would put the gold of the New World in their pockets.

And the word “gold,” though it had lost its meaning of reality, was more important than the word “hunger.”

On the eighth morning a scout came to Captain Morgan.

And early in the morning, Captain Morgan aroused his men and called them together to give them the orders for the day’s fight. Henry Morgan had come to know the buccaneering soul.

He lifted out the brains of his men and molded them for battle.

He spoke to their fears.

These eyes did not fall. Under their soft black surfaces they seemed to be laughing at him, making light of him. This woman’s face was sharp, almost hawk-like.

She was beautiful, truly, but hers was the harsh, dangerous beauty of lightning.

And her skin was white—not pink at all.

that each of these two should bear black embers of a flame that has not burned itself to death? Is there anything under heaven to forbid us this burning?

Heaven has given the deathless oil; each of us carries a little torch for the other.

Ah, Ysobel—deny it, or shrink from the intruding knowledge if you will. You would vibrate to my touch like the fine body of an old violin.

I wonder if I shall ever burn again. You do not carry a torch for me—and I hoped you did. I came this morning to see if you did. And I have heard your words so often and so often in Paris and Cordova.

I am tired of these words that never change.

Is there some book with which aspiring lovers instruct themselves? The Spanish men say the same things, but their gestures are more practiced, and so a little more convincing. You have much to learn.”

You do not carry a torch for me—and I hoped you did. I came this morning to see if you did. And I have heard your words so often and so often in Paris and Cordova. I am tired of these words that never change.

Is there some book with which aspiring lovers instruct themselves?

The Spanish men say the same things, but their gestures are more practiced, and so a little more convincing. You have much to learn.”

I find you are no realist at all, but only a bungling romancer. You want to marry me—to protect me. All men, save one, have wanted to protect me. In every way I am more able to protect myself than you are.

From the morning of my first memory I have been made sick with phrases.

I have been dressed in epithets and fed endearments. These other men, like you, would not say what they wanted. They, like you, felt it necessary to justify their passion in their own eyes.

You want to marry me—to protect me. All men, save one, have wanted to protect me. In every way I am more able to protect myself than you are. From the morning of my first memory I have been made sick with phrases.

I have been dressed in epithets and fed endearments.

These other men, like you, would not say what they wanted. They, like you, felt it necessary to justify their passion in their own eyes. They, like you, must convince themselves, as well as me, that they love me.”

My duenna, she is. Send her to me, please. And now, goodbye for the time, sir; I must get to my devotions. The sin to be dissolved, Captain Morgan, is truthfulness.

It is a bad thing for the soul, truthfulness.

”

“Your eyes next, Captain,” she said quietly, and stabbed him thrice on the cheekbone. Henry released her and stepped away, wiping his bloody face with the back of his hand. Ysobel laughed at him.

A man may beat⁠—may subject to every violation⁠—a woman who cries and runs away, but he is helpless before one who stands her ground and only laughs.

“I heard a shot,” she said. “I thought perhaps you had killed someone to justify your manhood. But your manhood will suffer now, will it not? Word of this encounter will get about somehow; you know how such things travel.

“Tell me the truth, sir.

It is a small gift to a man to know what he has missed.

Many people have no other gift during their whole lives. Tell me, sir, has the sweet enemy fallen? Has the castle of flesh capitulated? Does the standard of Morgan float over the pink tower?”

“Tell me the truth, sir. It is a small gift to a man to know what he has missed.

Many people have no other gift during their whole lives.

Tell me, sir, has the sweet enemy fallen? Has the castle of flesh capitulated? Does the standard of Morgan float over the pink tower?”

“You will turn no more vain dreams into unsatisfactory conquests. I am sorry for you, Captain Morgan. And you were not right about the slave. Ill he was, indeed, but not with the illness you have mentioned. But I suppose your sins are great.

All men who break the bars of mediocrity commit frightful sins.

I shall pray for you to the Holy Virgin, and She will intercede for you at the throne of Heaven. But what am I to do?”

“The money is here, and you are to go. It has bought you.

A thing must be worth what is paid for it, or there could be no trade.

”

“No; I am not even bitter.

The food that bitterness feeds on is gone out of me.

”

“No, my dear conscience; we have an end of acting now. I have put on new glasses; rather they have been locked about my head, and I must order my life in accordance with the world I see through these new lenses.

I see that honesty⁠—public honesty⁠—may be a ladder to a higher, more valuable crime; veracity a means to more subtle dissimulation.

No; these men have no rights they can enforce. These men were too free with the rights of others to deserve consideration.” He stumbled happily on the thought. “They steal, and so shall their plunder be stolen.

“

My dear, any man makes a good husband if he is properly looked after.

”

“The deeds were not great, nor very dreadful.

Nothing is as good or as bad as the telling of it.

”

“But if it is wisdom, then wisdom is experience beating about in an orderly brain, kicking over the files. And how could I be otherwise than worldly.

And cynicism is the moss which collects on a rolling stone.

”

“

Pity is misplaced in a public servant or a robber.

A man may do what it is profitable to do. You yourself have demonstrated two of these premises. Let us see you labor with the third,” the King said acidly.

“Come! drink!” he said. “We must have life, and perhaps later, song. Tell us a tale, Captain, and drink while you tell it.

Wine adds capitals and asterisks to a good tale⁠—a true story.

”

Said John Evelyn, “How could it be otherwise?

If great men were not fools, the world would have been destroyed long ago.

How could it be otherwise? Folly and distorted vision are the foundations of greatness.”

“I wish to go on with Henry Morgan. He has a knack for piracy which makes him great. Immediately you imagine him as a great ruler. You make him Lieutenant-Governor. In this you are like the multitude.

You believe that if a man do one thing magnificently, he should be able to do all things equally well.

If a man be eminently successful in creating an endless line of mechanical doodads of some excellence, you conceive him capable of leading armies or maintaining governments. You think that because you are a good king you should be as good a lover—or vice-versa.”

“

I have never known any man to tell the truth to or about a woman.

Why is that, John?”

Sir Henry Morgan sat on the Judge’s Bench at Port Royal. Before him, on the floor, lay a slab of white sunlight like a blinding tomb.

Throughout the room an orchestra of flies sang their symphony of boredom.

The droning voices of counsel were only louder instruments against the humming obbligato. Court officials went about sleepily, and the cases moved on.

Sir Henry laughed. “That is more or less true. It is not my fault, but it is true.

Civilization will split up a character, and he who refuses to split goes under.

”