| |
| IN sixteen hundred and forty-one, | |
| The regular yearly galleon, | |
| Laden with odorous gums and spice, | |
| India cottons and India rice, | |
| And the richest silks of far Cathay, | 5 |
| Was due at Acapulco Bay. | |
| |
| Due she was, and over-due,— | |
| Galleon, merchandise, and crew, | |
| Creeping along through rain and shine, | |
| Through the tropics, under the line. | 10 |
| |
| The trains were waiting outside the walls, | |
| The wives of sailors thronged the town, | |
| The traders sat by their empty stalls, | |
| And the viceroy himself came down; | |
| The bells in the tower were all a-trip, | 15 |
| Te Deums were on each father’s lip, | |
| The limes were ripening in the sun | |
| For the sick of the coming galleon. | |
| |
| All in vain. Weeks passed away, | |
| And yet no galleon saw the bay: | 20 |
| India goods advanced in price; | |
| The governor missed his favorite spice; | |
| The señoritas mourned for sandal, | |
| And the famous cottons of Coromandel; | |
| And some for an absent lover lost, | 25 |
| And one for a husband,—Donna Julia, | |
| Wife of the captain, tempest-tossed, | |
| In circumstances so peculiar: | |
| Even the fathers, unawares, | |
| Grumbled a little at their prayers; | 30 |
| And all along the coast that year | |
| Votive candles were scarce and dear. | |
| |
| Never a tear bedims the eye | |
| That time and patience will not dry; | |
| Never a lip is curved with pain | 35 |
| That can’t be kissed into smiles again: | |
| And these same truths, as far as I know, | |
| Obtained on the coast of Mexico | |
| More than two hundred years ago, | |
| In sixteen hundred and fifty-one,— | 40 |
| Ten years after the deed was done,— | |
| And folks had forgotten the galleon: | |
| The divers plunged in the Gulf for pearls | |
| White as the teeth of the Indian girls; | |
| The traders sat by their full bazaars; | 45 |
| The mules with many a weary load, | |
| And oxen, dragging their creaking cars, | |
| Came and went on the mountain road. | |
| |
| Where was the galleon all this while: | |
| Wrecked on some lonely coral isle? | 50 |
| Burnt by the roving sea-marauders, | |
| Or sailing north under secret orders? | |
| Had she found the Anian passage famed, | |
| By lying Moldonado claimed, | |
| And sailed through the sixty-fifth degree | 55 |
| Direct to the North Atlantic sea? | |
| Or had she found the “River of Kings,” | |
| Of which De Fonté told such strange things | |
| In sixteen forty? Never a sign, | |
| East or West or under the line, | 60 |
| They saw of the missing galleon; | |
| Never a sail or plank or chip, | |
| They found of the long-lost treasure-ship, | |
| Or enough to build a tale upon. | |
| But when she was lost, and where and how, | 65 |
| Are the facts we ’re coming to just now. | |
| |
| Take, if you please, the chart of that day | |
| Published at Madrid,—por el Rey; | |
| Look for a spot in the old South Sea, | |
| The hundred and eightieth degree | 70 |
| Longitude, west of Madrid: there, | |
| Under the equatorial glare, | |
| Just where the East and West are one, | |
| You ’ll find the missing galleon,— | |
| You ’ll find the “San Gregorio,” yet | 75 |
| Riding the seas, with sails all set, | |
| Fresh as upon the very day | |
| She sailed from Acapulco Bay. | |
| |
| How did she get there? What strange spell | |
| Kept her two hundred years so well, | 80 |
| Free from decay and mortal taint? | |
| What but the prayers of a patron saint? | |
| A hundred leagues from Manilla town | |
| The “San Gregorio’s” helm came down; | |
| Round she went on her heel, and not | 85 |
| A cable’s length from a galliot | |
| That rocked on the waters, just abreast | |
| Of the galleon’s course, which was west-souwest. | |
| |
| Then said the galleon’s commandante, | |
| General Pedro Sobriente | 90 |
| (That was his rank on land and main, | |
| A regular custom of old Spain), | |
| “My pilot is dead of scurvy: may | |
| I ask the longitude, time, and day?” | |
| The first two given and compared; | 95 |
| The third,—the commandante stared! | |
| |
| “The first of June? I make it second.” | |
| Said the stranger, “Then you ’ve wrongly reckoned; | |
| I make it first: as you came this way, | |
| You should have lost—d’ ye see—a day; | 100 |
| Lost a day, as plainly see, | |
| On the hundred and eightieth degree.” | |
| “Lost a day?” “Yes: if not rude, | |
| When did you make east longitude?” | |
| “On the ninth of May,—our patron’s day.” | 105 |
| “On the ninth?—you had no ninth of May! | |
| Eighth and tenth was there; but stay”— | |
| Too late; for the galleon bore away. | |
| |
| Lost was the day they should have kept,— | |
| Lost unheeded and lost unwept; | 110 |
| Lost in a way that made search vain, | |
| Lost in the trackless and boundless main; | |
| Lost like the day of Job’s awful curse, | |
| In his third chapter, third and fourth verse. | |
| Wrecked was their patron’s only day: | 115 |
| What would the holy fathers say? | |
| |
| Said the Fray Antonio Estavan, | |
| The galleon’s chaplain,—a learned man,— | |
| “Nothing is lost that you can regain; | |
| And the way to look for a thing is plain | 120 |
| To go where you lost it, back again. | |
| Back with your galleon till you see | |
| The hundred and eightieth degree. | |
| Wait till the rolling year goes round, | |
| And there will the missing day be found; | 125 |
| For you ’ll find—if computation ’s true— | |
| That sailing east will give to you | |
| Not only one ninth of May, but two,— | |
| One for the good saint’s present cheer, | |
| And one for the day we lost last year.” | 130 |
| |
| Back to the spot sailed the galleon; | |
| Where, for a twelvemonth, off and on | |
| The hundred and eightieth degree, | |
| She rose and fell on a tropic sea; | |
| But lo! when it came to the ninth of May, | 135 |
| All of a sudden becalmed she lay | |
| One degree from that fatal spot, | |
| Without the power to move a knot; | |
| And of course the moment she lost her way, | |
| Gone was her chance to save that day. | 140 |
| |
| To cut a lengthening story short, | |
| She never saved it. Made the sport | |
| Of evil spirits and baffling wind, | |
| She was always before or just behind,— | |
| One day too soon, or one day too late; | 145 |
| And the sun, meanwhile, would never wait. | |
| She had two eighths, as she idly lay, | |
| Two tenths, but never a ninth of May. | |
| And there she rides through two hundred years | |
| Of dreary penance and anxious fears; | 150 |
| Yet through the grace of the saint she served | |
| Captain and crew are still preserved. | |
| |
| By a computation that still holds good, | |
| Made by the Holy Brotherhood, | |
| The “San Gregorio” will cross that line | 155 |
| In nineteen hundred and thirty-nine,— | |
| Just three hundred years to a day | |
| From the time she lost the ninth of May. | |
| And the folk in Acapulco town, | |
| Over the waters, looking down, | 160 |
| Will see in the glow of the setting sun | |
| The sails of the missing galleon, | |
| And the royal standard of Philip Rey; | |
| The gleaming mast and glistening spar, | |
| As she nears the surf of the outer bar. | 165 |
| A Te Deum sung on her crowded deck, | |
| An odor of spice along the shore, | |
| A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck,— | |
| And the yearly galleon sails no more | |
| In or out of the olden bay; | 170 |
| For the blessed patron has found his day. | |
| |
| Such is the legend. Hear this truth: | |
| Over the trackless past, somewhere, | |
| Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, | |
| Only regained by faith and prayer, | 175 |
| Only recalled by prayer and plaint. | |
| Each lost day has its patron saint! | |
| |
