The covenant - James A. Michener [51]
The second tradition was that of the post-office stone. As early as 1501 the captain of a Portuguese vessel passing the Cape came ashore with a letter of instructions to aid future travelers, and after wrapping it in pitched canvas, he placed it under a prominent rock on whose surface he scratched a notice that something of importance lay beneath. Thus the tradition started, and in all succeeding years captains would stop at the Cape, search for post-office stones, pick up letters which might have been left a decade earlier, and deliver them either to Europe or to Java. In 1615 Captain Walter Peyton, in the Expedition at the head of a small fleet, found post-office stones with letters deposited by different ships: James, Globe, Advice, Attendant. Each told of dangers passed, of hopes ahead.
There are few reports of letters ever having been destroyed by enemies. A ship would plow through the Indian Ocean for a year, fighting at port after port, but when it passed the Cape and posted its letters beneath some rock, they became inviolate, and the very soldiers who had fought this ship would, if they landed for refreshing, lift those letters reverently and carry them toward their destination, often dispatching them on a route that would take them through two or three intervening countries.
What was the miracle of the Cape? That no seafaring nation wanted it.
On New Year's Day 1637 a grizzled mariner of Plymouth, England, reached a major decision. Captain Nicholas Saltwood, aged forty-four and a veteran of the northern seas, told his wife, 'Henrietta, I've decided to risk our savings and buy the Acorn.' Forthwith he led her to The Hoe, the town's waterfront, and resting there in the exact spot occupied by Sir Francis Drake's ship in July of 1588, when he waited for the Spanish Armada to come up the Channel, stood a small two-masted ship of one hundred and eighty-three tons.
'It will be dangerous,' he confided. 'Four years absent in the Spice Islands and God knows where. But if we don't venture now . . .'
'If you buy the ship, how will you acquire your trade goods?'
'On our character,' Saltwood said, and once the Acorn was his, he and his wife circulated among the merchants of Plymouth, offering them shares in his bold adventure. From them he wanted no money, only the goods on which he proposed to make his fortune and theirs. On February 3, the day he had hoped to sail, he had a ship well laden.
'And if the sheriff abides his word,' he told his wife, 'we'll take even more,' and they went together to the ironmonger's, and as before, their surety was their appearance and their reputation. They were sturdy people and honest: 'Matthew, I want your lad to keep watch on my foremast. If I raise a blue flag, rush me these nineteen boxes. I'll pay silver for seven. You contribute the dozen, and if the voyage fails, you've lost all. But it will not fail.'
At the door of the mongery he kissed his wife farewell: 'It would not be proper for you to deal with the sheriff. I believe he'll come. You watch for the blue flag, too.' And he was gone.
Three bells had sounded when a cart from Plymouth prison hove into sight, bearing ten manacled men guarded by four marching soldiers and a very stout sheriff, who, when he reached the wharf, called out, 'Captain Saltwood, be you prepared?'
When Saltwood came to the railing the sheriff produced a legal paper, which he passed along for one of his soldiers to read, since he could not: 'Ship Acorn, Captain Saltwood. Do you agree to carry these men condemned to death to some proper spot in the southern seas where they are to be thrown ashore to establish a colony to the honor of King Charles of England?'
'I do,' Saltwood replied. 'And now may I ask you, has the