'Kate,' said he, 'when is our marriage to take place?'

'Are you thinking of that still?' replied she, with an air of levity which would once have became her better; 'I hoped this fancy had pa.s.sed out of your head.'

'I may then set out on my voyage, Kate?'

'Why not? We will talk of our plans on your return.'

'But I am going to make the tour of the world, as well as my friend Dampier. Kate, it is the affair of three years!'

'So much the better! it will give us both time for reflection.'

'It is well!' replied the phlegmatic Englishman, and nothing on his polar face betokened an afterthought.

The doors closed, the lights extinguished, Catherine retired to rest the happiest woman in the world. She said to herself: 'Alexander loves me, and has loved me for eight years! he deserves to be rewarded. He has less money than the other, it is a misfortune; but he has more youth and grace, that balances it. As to rank, a master pilot of twenty-four is as far advanced as a captain of forty. Between Selkirk and myself, if the wealth is on my side, on his will be grat.i.tude and little attentions. At all events, I prefer a young husband who will whisper words of love in my ear, to amusing myself by pouring out drink for my lord and master, while he smokes his pipe, with his feet on the brands. Was it not thus that icicle, dressed in blue, called Stradling, talked to me of the pleasures of marriage? And what a name!

But Mistress Selkirk!--that sounds well. In our Scotland, there is the county of Selkirk, the town of Selkirk; there is even a great n.o.bleman of this name, who is something like minister to our Queen Anne, I believe. Who knows? we are perhaps of his family! As for walking about the port arm-in-arm with a captain, I am sure my very dear friends and neighbors would die with jealousy if I took, instead of this scarred captain, a young and handsome man. It is settled. I will marry Alexander; to-morrow I will myself announce it to him. I hope he will not die of joy!'

On the morrow she attired herself as on the day of Selkirk's return, in her beautiful dress of cloth and silk, with the two little curls upon her temples. She thus waited a great part of the day. At last, about four o'clock, Selkirk arrives in haste, his face beaming with joy, and a gleam of triumph in his eye.

'Has he then,' thought Catherine, 'a presentiment of the happiness in store for him?'

'Congratulate me, pretty Kitty,' said the young man, almost out of breath; 'I am appointed mate of the brig Swordfish, which I am to join at Dunbar.'

'How! you are going?'

'In an hour.'

'For a long time?'

'For three years at least. In a fortnight we set sail for the East Indies. It will be a great commercial voyage and a voyage of discovery. Unfortunately William Dampier does not accompany us; but he furnishes funds to the brave Captain Stradling.'

'Stradling!'

'Yes, it is he who has just engaged me, and with whom I am to sail.

Our agreement is signed,--I am mate! I am going to explore the New World! Ah! I would not exchange my fate for that of a king. But time presses; adieu, Kitty, till I see you again!'

'Three years!' murmured Catherine.

And her curls grew straight beneath the cold perspiration that covered her forehead.

CHAPTER III.

The Tour of the World.--The Way to manufacture Negroes--California.

--The Eldorado.--Revolt of Selkirk.--The Log-Book.--Degradation.

--A Free Sh.o.r.e.

The Swordfish, well provisioned, even with guns and ammunition, left Dunbar one morning with a fresh breeze, sailed down the North Sea, pa.s.sed Ireland, France and Spain, the Azores, Canaries, and Cape Verd Islands on the coast of Africa, and, after having stopped for a short time in the harbors of Guinea and Congo, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, amid the traditional tempest.

Entering the Indian Ocean, and pa.s.sing through the Straits of Sunda, she touched at Borneo, and at Java, reached the Southern Sea by the Gulf of Siam, pa.s.sed the Philippine Isles, then, through the vast regions of the Pacific Ocean, pursued the route which had been marked out by the exploring ship of William Dampier in 1686. Like that, the Swordfish remained a few days at the Island of St. Pierre, before launching into that immensity where, during nearly two months, wave only succeeded to wave; at last she reached the coasts of South America, and cast anchor in the Gulf of California.

This gigantic voyage, which seemed as if it must have been attempted under the inspiration of science and with the hope of the most important discoveries, had been undertaken by Stradling with no object but of traffic and even of rapine. These had been the great ends of most of the bold enterprises which had preceded. The Spanish and Portuguese, in their discoveries of new continents, had thought less of glory than of riches; they had conquered the New World only to pillage it; the vanquished who escaped extermination, were forced to dig their native soil, not to render it more fruitful, but to procure from it, for the profit of the vanquisher, the gold it might contain.

Among the European nations, those who had had no part in the conquest now sought to share the spoils. For this the least pretext of war or commerce sufficed.

Stradling availed himself of both these pretences; when he touched at the coasts of Guinea and Congo, it was to obtain negroes whom he expected to sell in America. At Borneo, the opportunity presented itself for an advantageous disposal of the greater part of his black merchandize; as he was a man of resources and not at all scrupulous, he soon found means to replace them.

In the Straits of Sunda, several barques, manned by negroes and Malays, had become entangled in the ma.s.ses of seaweed which are every where floating on the surface of the wave; Stradling encountered them, made the rowers enter his ship, and obligingly took the barques in tow, to extricate them from their difficulty. But those who ascended the side of the Swordfish, descended only to be sold in their turn.

Although he had received an education superior to that of his companions, Selkirk shared in the prejudices of his times; he had therefore found nothing objectionable in seeing his captain exchange at Congo little mirrors, a few gla.s.s beads, half a dozen useless guns, and some gallons of brandy, for men still young and vigorous, torn from their country and their families. Their skin was of another color, their heads woolly; this was a profitable traffic, recognized by governments; but when he saw Stradling seize the property of others to refill his empty hold, he could not control his indignation and boldly expressed it:

'It is for their salvation,' replied the captain, without emotion; 'we will make Christians of them.'

On approaching the Vermilion Sea, a deep gulf which separates California from the American continent, and makes it almost an island, the Malays were rubbed with a mixture of tar and dragon's blood, dissolved in a caustic oil, to give to their olive skins a deeper shade, and their flat noses and silky hair making them pa.s.s for Yolof negroes, they were exchanged at Cape St. Lucas, along with the rest, for pearls and native productions.

The young mate thought this proceeding not less mean and dishonorable than the first; he made new observations.

'Nothing now remains to be done, captain,' said he, 'but to shave and besmear with tar the monkey you have just bought, and to include it among your new race of negroes.'

This time, the captain looked at him askance, and shrugged his shoulders without replying.

The storm was beginning to growl in the distance.

It was not without a secret object that, in his course through the Southern Sea, Stradling had first of all aimed at California.

He devoted an entire month to cruising along both sh.o.r.es of this almost island, and penetrating all the bays of the Vermilion Sea; he hoped to find there a pa.s.sage to an unknown land, then predicted and coveted by all navigators. What was this land? The _Eldorado_!

Although I would hasten over these details of the voyage to arrive at the more important events of this history; now that the recent discovery of the immense mines of gold buried beneath the hills of California has aroused the entire world, that the name alone of _Sacramento_ seems to fill with gold the mouth which p.r.o.nounces it, there is a curious fact, perhaps entirely unknown, which I cannot pa.s.s over in silence.

After the middle of the sixteenth century, and long before the seventeenth, a vague rumor, a confused tradition, had located, in the neighborhood of the Vermilion Sea, a famed land, whose rivers rolled over gold, and whose mountains rested on golden foundations; the treasures of Mexico and Peru were nothing in comparison with those which were to be gathered there. An ingot of native gold was talked of, of a _pepite_ or eighty pounds weight.

It was a grape from the promised land.

This marvellous country had been named, in advance, _Eldorado_.

Among the bold Argonauts of these two centuries, there was a contest as to who should first raise his flag over this new Colchis, defended, it was said, by the Apaches, a terrible, sanguinary and cannibal race, whom Cortez himself could not subdue. This land of gold some had located in New Biscay or New Mexico; others, in the pretended kingdoms of Sonora and Quivira; then, after several ineffectual attempts, the possibility of reaching it was denied; learned men, from the various academies of Europe, proved that the _Eldorado_ was not a country, but a dream; on this subject the Old World laughed at the New; the Argonauts became discouraged, and during a century the subject was named only to be ridiculed.

And yet, in spite of sceptics and scoffers, the _Eldorado_ existed. It existed where tradition had placed it, on the sh.o.r.es of this Vermilion Sea, now the Gulf of California. For once, popular opinion had the advantage over scientific dissertations and philosophic denials; there, where, according to the Dictionary of Alcedo, nothing had been discovered but mines of pewter! where Jacques Baegert had indeed acknowledged the presence of gold, but _in meagre veins_; where Raynal had named as curiosities only fishes and pearls, declaring, in California, _the sea richer than the land_; where in our own times M.

Humboldt discovered nothing but cylindrical cacti, on a sandy soil, remained buried, as a deposit for future ages, this treasure of the world, which seemed to be waiting in order to leave its native soil, the moment of falling into the hands of a commercial and industrious people, that of the United States.

This _Eldorado_, Stradling sought in vain; he therefore decided to pursue his route along the coast of Mexico, now under the French flag, when he found an opportunity for traffic with the natives, colonists or savages; now under the English flag, when he wished to exercise his trade of corsair, an easy profession, for since the disaster of Vigo, the Spanish had abandoned their transatlantic possessions to themselves.

The Spanish soldiery of America then found themselves, in the presence of European adventurers, in that state of pusillanimous inferiority in which had been, at the period of the conquest, the subjects of the Incas and Montezuma before the soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro. The time was not already far pa.s.sed, when a few bands of freebooters, from France, England and Holland, had well nigh wrested from his Majesty, the King of Spain and the Indies, the most extensive and wealthy of his twenty-two hereditary kingdoms.

Stradling was following in the footsteps of these freebooters.

Recently, two little cities on the coast had been put under contribution for the supplies of the Swordfish; there had been resistance, a threatened attack, a parley, and capitulation; in this affair, the young mate had n.o.bly distinguished himself both as a combatant and a negotiator, and yet the captain had not deigned to give him a share in his distribution of compliments.