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Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
We’re All Underbanked
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Bankonomics, or How Banking Changed and Most of Us
Lost Out
The New Middle Class
The Credit Trap: “Bad Debt” and Real Life
Payday Loans: Making the Best of Poor Options
Living in the Minus: The Millennial Perspective
Borrowing and Saving Under the Radar
Inside the Innovators
Rejecting the New Normal
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Connect with HMH
Footnotes
 Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Servon

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
[email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

WWW.HMHCO.COM

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-544-60231-1

Cover design by Martha Kennedy

Cover photograph by Guy Jarvis

eISBN 978-0-544-61118-4
v1.1216
For C.C. and Milo
Not everything that counts can be counted,
and not everything that can be counted counts.

—WILLIAM BRUCE CAMERON

 Introduction:

WE’RE ALL UNDERBANKED

Growing up in South River, New Jersey, in the late 1960s and

early 70s, I went to our local bank, Pulaski Savings and Loan, with
my father as part of his Saturday errand ritual. We’d start out at the
post office to mail the bills, stop in at Mike the butcher’s shop to buy
meat for the week, and then head to Pulaski Savings and Loan to
deposit my father’s check and take out some cash. I also went to the
bank with my mother on the way home from school on Friday
afternoons, sitting in the passenger seat of our 1976 Ford Elite while
she cashed her teacher’s paycheck at the drive-through. She
deposited most of her pay, which my father would draw on to take
care of the bills, and kept an envelope with a small amount of cash
that she used to pick up milk and bread and pay for school field trips
and the occasional treat until the next payday.
My parents opened my first savings account for me when I was
seven. The teller gave me a green Pulaski passbook with gold
lettering. It made me feel important, like I’d crossed some threshold
and joined a club that bigger kids and grownups got to be a part of.
I brought the passbook to the bank to deposit birthday checks from
my grandparents and, later, babysitting money.
Growing up, I watched my parents write checks to pay the bills
and use cash to buy groceries, clothes, and the infrequent meal out.
I now realize that they were training me to become a particular kind
of financial consumer. Their role modeling was critical, as were their
expectation that I would go to college and their assumption that, by
doing so, I’d get a job that would support me.
When I got my first job cleaning hotel rooms at the age of
fourteen, I deposited my paychecks at Pulaski. Using the bank to
manage my money still felt more like fulfilling an expectation than
making a choice. In the early 1980s I moved away from home to go
to college. I opened an account near campus without thinking much
about it. That’s what all my friends did. I didn’t even know other
options existed.
My parents didn’t get a credit card until after I had left home, and
I got my first—an American Express card—in 1987, the year after I
graduated from college.
The world has changed. These days I do most of my banking
online at odd hours. For my children, going to the bank means
popping over to the nearest ATM to get cash. And on the rare
occasion when I need to visit the teller window, I don’t recognize
any of the bank employees, and they don’t know me. Today banks
are bigger and more expensive to use, and their products are harder
to understand. There’s a lot more fine print than there used to be. In
addition, all kinds of new financial products and services have
become available. Many are coming not from banks, but from
entrepreneurs who are harnessing technology, information, and the
current moment in ways that are disrupting the entire financial-
services industry.
The result? Banks are now catering more and more to the well-off,
leaving the rest of us to pay too much at banks or to settle for
imperfect alternatives such as check cashers and payday lenders.
Check cashers enable people, for a fee, to cash checks, purchase
money orders and prepaid debit cards, wire money, and pay bills.
Payday lenders provide small short-term, high-cost loans.

As a university professor who studies financial services, I wanted to

understand why people were leaving banks and using alternative
financial-services providers when policymakers and consumer
advocates were so convinced that this was a poor decision. I knew I
could get only so far by reading policy reports and academic articles
in my university office. So I got a job as a teller at Rite­Check, a
check casher in the South Bronx, where I could get up close to
people’s decisions. Before working as a teller, I assumed that
mainstream and alternative financial services were separate. Like a
lot of policymakers, I thought educated, middle-class people like me
used banks and that poor people used check cashers and payday
lenders. I figured that people who didn’t use banks aspired to having
a bank account, that becoming “banked” was part of the well-
traveled path of upward mobility. That was my path. And that’s what
the news accounts, policy reports, and research had led me to
believe. I soon learned that the reality is much more complicated.

The consumer financial-services system—the large industry that

consists of (1) mainstream banks, (2) alternative financial services
(check cashers, payday lenders, pawnshops, and so on), and (3)
informal practices such as saving in structured groups of friends or
coworkers—is broken. Over the past four decades, most particularly
since the financial crisis of 2008, banking itself has morphed into a
system that no longer serves the needs of far too many Americans.
What caused this breakdown? First, banking has changed. Starting
in the late 1970s, bank failures, policies that enabled consolidation,
and aggressive marketing of credit to a larger and riskier group
combined to transform banks. They got bigger and they focused less
on consumers. Meanwhile, alternative financial-services providers,
such as check cashers and payday lenders, expanded to fill the gap.
Second, many more Americans are dealing with chronic financial
instability. Declining wages, increased income volatility, and the
erosion of benefits, along with increased costs for health care,
childcare, and education, make it harder to make ends meet. The
one-two punch of these trends has left Americans in a dire situation.
We lack safe, affordable financial products and services when we
need them most.

In 2012 the Wall Street Journal reported that a large number of

Americans left banks in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. For
some, the departure was a way of protesting the role banks played
in a crisis that left them and their neighbors jobless or behind on
their mortgages. Others felt as though they got less value from
banks than they did before. Still others found that they couldn’t
afford banks’ rising fees. Between 2009 and 2013, the percentage of
Americans with a checking account dropped from 92 percent to 88
percent, and the percentage with a savings account dropped from
72 percent to 68 percent.
 A reader, responding to one of my articles, told the story of taking
his young daughter to open a savings account. He was excited to
begin her training as a saver and wanted to show her the magic of
compound interest. (I remember the thrill of watching my own bank
account grow—the money I earned just by leaving it there.) “We put
in fifty dollars,” my reader wrote, “and I had the idea that once a
month we would go to the bank and make a deposit. Then we would
watch the money grow, along with interest.” His plan didn’t pan out.
“The next month we went back to make the next deposit, and lo and
behold, there was only forty-five dollars in the account. Turned out
that the bank was charging for low balances in savings accounts.
End of lesson.” The little girl was crestfallen and the father was
angry. He got the bank to return the five dollars and closed her
account—and his own.
Whether fed up with bank fees, like this reader, or lacking other
options, many Americans have had it with banks. And the banks
don’t seem to care. If profits are your only concern, it doesn’t make
sense to provide savings accounts to children and other people who
don’t have much to save. It costs a lot for banks to collect small
deposits. They’re interested in providing these accounts only if they
can cover their costs by charging fees. But the fees make it irrational
for people to save. The result? A dearth of opportunities for people
to save, a behavior considered important over the long term.
Meanwhile, the use of alternative financial services—check
cashers, payday lenders, and the like—has exploded despite the
perception that these businesses are “predatory,” “sleazy,” and part
of the “poverty industry.” Industry studies estimate that more than
$58 billion in check-cashing transactions took place in 2010, up from
$45 billion in 1990. Payday lending grew from $10 billion in 2001 to
nearly $30 billion in 2012. Some people are attracted to what they
perceive as the advantages offered by the alternatives: superior
service, better product mix, and lower costs.
Many consumers are also using informal financial arrangements,
such as rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) and other
systems worked out among family and friends, to substitute for or
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complement relationships with formal institutions. These consumers
trust people they know more than they trust the banks.
While some have chosen to leave banks, others have been pushed
out. Major banks and credit unions rely on private-sector databases
such as ChexSystems, which keep data on how consumers handle
their deposit accounts at banking institutions. This is how these
databases work. Banks report bounced checks, negative balances,
and other “irregularities” to ChexSystems, which then passes on the
information to banks. A ChexSystems report that includes negative
information about your account is the equivalent of blacklisting—
even after a minor incident like a forty-dollar overdraft, you may be
unable to open an account elsewhere for several years, despite
having resolved all issues related to balance. Banks have closed the
accounts of approximately 6 percent of Americans, without their
consent, after receiving such information. More than one million
people with low incomes have been deemed ineligible for bank
accounts because of ChexSystems.

A graduate student recently wrote me the following note expressing

his frustration with trying to become “banked”:

I’ve been attempting to maintain a bank account with TD

Bank for the past year with little success. When I had a
student account with TD, I wasn’t required to maintain a
monthly minimum . . . I currently work two jobs and yet still
have a hard time actually keeping a healthy positive balance.
I’ve had my account . . . closed three times and have pretty
much given up (at least temporarily) on the idea of
maintaining a checking account. Additionally, in response to
the claim that the maintenance of a bank account is a sign of
stability, I say this: In a labor market such as ours, where the
college diploma has been wholly devalued, where median
wages have remained stagnant for far too long, and where
firms dispense of people as if they were unnecessary
appendages, to what degree is financial stability actually
attainable? And at what cost?
 While people try to adapt to these changing situations,
policymakers’ view of personal finance has remained static. The
Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation (FDIC) conducts the
biannual “National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked
Households.” The survey classifies respondents as “banked” (they
use only banks and credit unions), “unbanked” (they have no bank
account), or “underbanked” (they have bank accounts but continue
to rely on alternative financial services). As of 2013, the year of the
FDIC’s most recent survey, approximately 8 percent of Americans
were unbanked and another 20 percent were underbanked. The
picture looks far worse for people of color. One in five African
American households and nearly 18 percent of Latino households are
unbanked.
Policymakers, alarmed by these statistics, have been working hard
to enfranchise the unbanked and underbanked. They insist that a
formal relationship with a mainstream financial institution will
improve these people’s lives. Convinced that having a bank account
enables one to move up the economic ladder, they paint banks as
the good guys and alternatives as the bad guys. This simplistic view
reflects unstated value judgments. Labeling people as un- or under-
implies that they are somehow deficient, that they’ve made the
wrong choices.
Julie Menin, commissioner for the Department of Consumer Affairs
in New York City, writes that “mainstream banking services are
associated with increased financial stability.” This may be true, but
there’s a chicken-and-egg problem here—do banks make financial
security possible for their customers, or is it the other way around?
Do people with financial security make banks possible? From the
evidence I’ve gathered, mainstream banks aren’t doing a whole lot
for people who aren’t financially stable already. Right now,
alternative and informal practices do a better job of serving many
people’s financial needs, especially among the many Americans who
lack savings or a stable source of income.
My time working as a teller taught me that this reality is truly
complex. Many people—and not just the poor—move in and out of
the banking system. They don’t necessarily “graduate” from
alternative to mainstream. Is the term “alternative” still meaningful
when many people use check cashers as a matter of course and may
have no desire to get a bank account?
My months at RiteCheck answered some of my questions and
raised new ones. I went on to work as a teller and loan collector at
Check Center, a payday lender in Oakland, California. I staffed a
hotline for payday-loan borrowers who were mired in debt and
couldn’t pay off their loans. I interviewed students who had made
difficult decisions to take on debt in order to get the jobs they
wanted, though they felt that they were placing other goals—such as
buying a home or having a family—at risk. I got to know people who
save, lend, and borrow money informally in their communities and
workplaces—strategies completely invisible to most of us. I spoke to
people who work for credit unions, big banks, and small mission-
oriented banks, to get their perspectives. I met with high-ranking
government officials—some of whom understand our complex
current reality and others whose bank-centered view of economic
stability is completely outdated. And I talked to passionate
entrepreneurs who are creating new products, services, and
infrastructure to make the consumer financial-services system work
better for all of us.
Though my work began in a poor neighborhood in the South
Bronx, I quickly realized that the problem was more widespread than
I had thought. I discovered that chronic financial insecurity is
growing among the middle class. In his book The Great Risk Shift,
Jacob Hacker writes that “economic insecurity is not a problem faced
by a small vulnerable segment of the population. It is a problem
faced by a wide swath of Americans . . . Problems once confined to
the working poor . . . have crept up the income ladder to become an
increasingly normal part of middle-class life.” A recent study
conducted by the Center for Financial Services Innovation found that
57 percent of Americans—138 million people—are struggling
financially, more than double the number of adults the FDIC
categorized as unbanked or underbanked in its most recent survey.
 I also learned that categorizing people as banked or unbanked
seems largely irrelevant outside the financial-services industry. Not a
single person I met when I worked as a teller thought of herself in
those terms. Most of the people I met used mainstream, informal,
and alternative financial products and services at different points in
life, depending on what they needed and the resources available to
them. What they all had in common was trying to figure out the best
way to manage finances, in order to meet today’s needs and plan for
the future. To do this, people need to be able to trust the financial
institutions they patronize and the products and services they use.
Yet fewer people today are willing to put their trust in banks.
It’s time to launch a movement that will pressure the public and
private sectors to reform the consumer financial-services industry, in
a way that makes financial health attainable and sustainable for all
Americans. We need an industry that keeps people’s money safe,
provides high-quality, affordable products and services, aligns with
our democratic values, and truly serves people, in the best sense of
that word.
Right now we’re all underbanked, but not in the way Washington
believes us to be. We’re underbanked because the banks that hold
most of our assets do a lousy job of serving us. Mainstream banking
especially doesn’t make sense for many people who are financially
insecure. To figure out what current banking trends mean for them,
I entered the belly of the beast—a small check-cashing store in the
South Bronx.
 1

WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME

The sky is inky black when my alarm clock gongs at 5:30 a.m.
By the time I’ve showered and left the house, it’s 6:20, and I hunch
my shoulders against January’s cold, hurrying the two blocks from
my still-quiet house in Brooklyn to the 7th Avenue F train stop. The
bright light of the station is a shock against the dark, sleepy street. I
find a seat easily and settle in for the ride to Manhattan, where I’ll
change to the 6 train, which will take me to the South Bronx. The
other passengers are mostly dressed in pastel-hued hospital scrubs,
well-worn steel-toe boots, fast-food-worker and security-guard
uniforms. These are the people who make the city work, who toil for
little money and even less financial security.
My down coat conceals my own check casher’s uniform, but my
jeans and sneakers blend right in. Not fully awake yet, I try to re-
create the feeling of being back home in my warm bed by retreating
under my hood and closing my eyes.
I emerge from the subway at 138th Street and Alexander in the
Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx, next to the police
precinct and across from Mitchel Houses, a ten-building high-rise
public-housing project completed in the mid-1960s. Commenters on
a Foursquare site dedicated to Mitchel Houses warn readers about
this area: “Keep to yourself and you’ll survive” and “Don’t come here
after dark. Hide your kids. Hide your wife.” I stop at the Dunkin’
Donuts on the corner of 138th and Willis for a large tea and a
microwaved egg sandwich that will harden into a hockey puck if I
wait too long to eat it. Dunkin’ Donuts is the only national chain on
the three-block strip between the subway station and Rite­Check, the
check casher where I work as a teller. The Bangladeshi cashier, who
has commuted to the South Bronx from Queens along with everyone
else who works here, recognizes me and offers me a free donut. I’ve
become one of the regulars. It’s 7:30. The trains have been good to
me today, so I’m early for my 8:00 a.m. shift; I’m supposed to arrive
at 7:45 for the shift transition. Sitting at the counter and eating my
sandwich, I lose myself in El Diario, the newspaper of Spanish-
speaking New York. They don’t sell the New York Times and the Wall
Street Journal in these parts.
“You see that? White people coming in here now.”
Slowly I tune in to the conversation behind me and realize that the
woman who spoke these words is talking about me. Indeed, I am
the only white person in the store.
The neighborhood is awake now—mothers with children in
uniforms head to school, people stop into bodegas for a quick café
con leche, others, equipped with briefcases or tool belts, hurry to
the train. Marta, my favorite tamale lady, is virtually hidden beneath
layers of sweatshirts and jackets, the scarf around her neck keeping
her hood in place and nearly obscuring her face. Only her dark eyes
are visible as she greets me while ladling steaming arroz con leche
from an enormous orange insulated container into a cup for a
customer. I can smell the milky sweetness, the pungent canela, from
where I stand. Reaching into her granny cart, Marta hands me my
usual—two pollo con salsa verde tamales. I have my money ready in
my gloved hand and place it on her cart as she bags my lunch. She
smiles and then turns to the next customer.

The South Bronx is Exhibit A of what researchers call a “geography

of financial exclusion,” where people tend to use mainstream
financial services like banks less than people do in more affluent
places. Its population of 500,000, including many immigrants and
minorities, has only one bank per 20,000 residents. In Manhattan,
one bank serves every 3,000 residents. More than half of the
residents of Bronx Community Board 1, which includes Mott Haven,
have no bank account; that figure is less than one in ten nationwide.
South Bronx households show evidence of severe financial
distress. Almost three-quarters of Bronx residents have no money
left over after paying the bills—that means fewer trips to Dunkin’
Donuts, or to the toy store, or even to the supermarket. What
money these residents do have often moves through informal
channels and check cashers like RiteCheck rather than banks.
The South Bronx, encompassed within New York’s 15th
Congressional District, consists of the Hunts Point, Morrisania,
Melrose, Tremont, Mott Haven, and Highbridge neighborhoods.
Gentrification may be on its way; a recent article in the New York
Times real-estate section proclaimed that Mott Haven can no longer
be defined by old stereotypes like those perpetuated by the
Foursquare site. “It is going through a gradual reinvention,” writes
the author, “with restaurants opening, scruffy buildings getting
spiffed up, and apartments being built on gap-toothed lots.” But the
South Bronx is still the poorest area in the United States. Forty
percent of its residents live below the poverty line, and nearly half
used food stamps in the year 2010. The federal government’s Home
Owners’ Loan Corporation triggered massive white flight from the
area when it gave vast sections of the area its lowest rating—a D—in
1937.
Home to waves of Polish, Russian, Italian, German, and Irish
immigrants through the 1940s, the area flipped from being two-
thirds non-Latino white in 1950 to being two-thirds black or Puerto
Rican in 1960. In 1969 the New York City welfare department was
accused of “dumping” poor black and Puerto Rican families into
public housing complexes like Mitchel Houses in the South Bronx,
and in that same year the New York City Master Plan deemed 25
percent of the Bronx’s rental units to be “dilapidated or
deteriorating.” An arson epidemic swept through the area in the
1970s; in 1974 there were 34,465 fires in the South Bronx. Urban
legend has it that during Game One of the 1977 World Series, with
the Yankees competing against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the
overhead camera panned out to the neighborhood beyond the
stadium as Howard Cosell announced, “There it is, ladies and
gentlemen. The Bronx is burning.” Cosell never said those words, but
the phrase became a lasting descriptor of the borough during that
era.
President Carter’s 1977 appearance on a burned-out tract on
Charlotte Street to “demonstrate a commitment to cities” was met
with shouts of “Give us money!” and “We want jobs!” During his
presidential campaign in 1980, Ronald Reagan returned to the same
site to make the point that Carter had not made good on his
promise. President Clinton visited twice, in 1995 and again in 2007.
By then, Charlotte Street had been transformed into a well-
maintained strip of single-family homes. Politicians pointed to
Charlotte Street as an urban-policy success even though the
statistics for the South Bronx hadn’t changed all that much.

RiteCheck 12 sits in the middle of the block it shares with two

barbershops, a bodega, a store selling medical supplies, and a large
99 Cent store run by a Chinese family. Most of the two- to seven-
story buildings house apartments above the shops. RiteCheck’s crisp
blue-and-white awning looks fresher than those of the other
businesses, and a sign on the door advertises the 24/7 hours. My
sneakers squeak on the lobby’s white tile floor as I pass between the
two ATMs that flank the space. Posters of happy-looking people
cover the walls. One announces a program for trading in unwanted
gift cards for cash. Another advertises a way to send money to
friends or family members who are doing time in jail. Along the
right-hand wall sit a coin-counting machine and a copier, along with
a counter holding wire-transfer forms for MoneyGram, which enables
customers to send money to people in other countries and within the
United States, and receive it too.
Balancing my tea and tamales in one hand, I rap on the
bulletproof glass of the teller window and wave to Tiffany, who is
finishing up the night shift. She buzzes me through the first door
and, when it closes safely behind me, opens the second door, which
lets me into the room where we work all day, cashing people’s
checks, paying their bills, and selling stamps, MetroCards, and
scratch-off tickets with promising names like “Lucky Dog” and “Black
Pearls.” I clock in and take off my coat, put my lunch in the
refrigerator, and set down my tea and purse.
“Morning, Tiffany. How was the night?”
“Slow, slow, slow.”
 I notice the economics textbook peeking out of her bag. “At least
you got some time to study.”
“Mmmm hmmm.”
Cristina, the senior teller on my shift, sits next to Tiffany. She is
seven months pregnant, her posture perfectly erect as she works at
the back computer, checking the overnight stats.
I find “my” drawer in one of the two gray metal safes along the
wall. The safe is nearly my height and stocked with wrapped bundles
of singles, fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds. One of last
night’s tellers left the drawer there after closing out; it is full of bills
and change, with a stack of neatly rubber-banded MetroCards,
stamps, and scratch-off tickets balanced on top. I count everything,
making sure my tallies match those of the receipt in one of the
drawer’s compartments.
I set up my station, arranging the drawer in a file cabinet next to
me. I turn on my MoneyGram machine and log into Teller­Met­rix, the
software program we use most often. I remove the NEXT WINDOW
PLEASE sign from the bulletproof glass that separates me from the
lobby and wave my first customer forward.

Several years ago I met Joe Coleman, president of RiteCheck, a

small chain of check-cashing stores operating in the South Bronx and
Harlem. A mutual friend had recommended him as a guest speaker
for a course I was teaching. That week, my students had read
critiques of check cashers that were as negative as they were
predictable: this “shadow” banking system preyed on the most
vulnerable, charging usurious interest rates and high fees. I had
levied those criticisms myself. Even though I had never set foot in a
check-cashing store, I looked forward to calling Joe Coleman to
account.
He arrived at my classroom door in a slightly rumpled gray suit,
his blue eyes bright behind metal-framed glasses. The twenty-three
students in my class eyed him warily as he sat down next to me at
the long seminar table and greeted them. Coleman began to speak
persuasively about the services RiteCheck provides to the people
who live in communities where his stores are located. “These people
don’t have any real alternatives,” he told us. “The banks don’t work
for them. And to tell you the truth, the banks don’t want them.”
Surprisingly, his presentation eventually disarmed us; he was not the
calculating shark we had expected.
Coleman doesn’t like the words “alternative” and “fringe” that
people use to describe the check-cashing industry. He prefers the
word “transactional” because that’s how check cashers make their
money—more transactions lead to bigger profits. “Let me tell you
something about banks and check cashers, about their business
models,” he explained. “Banks want one customer with a million
dollars. Check cashers like us want a million customers with one
dollar.” People who use check cashers come to the physical store
frequently—once a week or more. Each individual transaction doesn’t
cost the customer very much—$1.50 to pay a bill, 89¢ to buy a
money order—but these sums add up, which is one reason why
people often denounce check-cashing businesses. Check cashers
make their money by paying a lot of bills, selling a lot of money
orders, cashing a lot of checks.
When my students asked Coleman about the fees customers pay
to cash their checks, he told us his customers would rather pay a flat
fee that they understand than get hit with unexpected charges and
overdraft fees at a bank. He explained that people trust his tellers
and continue to come back week after week, month after month,
and year after year because they find RiteCheck to be less expensive
than the local bank, and because they value the transparency, the
convenience, and the service they receive. “Let’s say a customer
gets paid on Friday. If he brings his check to us, he gets his money
immediately. He can pay his bills right away, go food shopping over
the weekend. If he goes to the bank, his check won’t clear until
sometime the next week. He’ll be late on his bills. And if he writes a
check and it hits his account before the check he deposited clears,
he’ll be hit with an overdraft fee for more than thirty dollars—much
more than the fee he would have paid us.”
Coleman’s visit raised more questions than it answered.
Policymakers and consumer advocates claim that banks are safer
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and less expensive than check cashers. So why weren’t Coleman’s
customers going to banks?
Conflict between residents and financial-services providers has a
long history in the Bronx. In 1975, Congress passed the Home
Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), which required lending institutions
to report loan data publicly. The community development expert Bill
Frey used HMDA data that same year to determine that the number
of mortgages made in the Bronx over the previous decade had
dropped severely—just when the neighborhood was transitioning
from a white population to black and Latino. Frey also found that the
area’s largest savings banks “had collected hundreds of millions of
dollars in deposits from Bronx residents but issued only a tiny
fraction of this amount in mortgages to them.” In 1980, organizers
and residents used the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 as
leverage to get local banks to pledge funds to underwrite two
hundred new building projects and announce the availability of
loans. This history could easily have driven some residents away
from banks completely. But why did so many people who had
maintained checking and savings accounts in traditional banks also
continue to frequent alternative financial-services providers? What
did the people who worked in check-cashing stores know that so
many analysts failed to see?
Some time after Joe Coleman’s guest lecture, I called him and
asked if he would hire me as a teller. I wanted to understand
firsthand the differences between check cashers, payday lenders,
and banks. Even though Joe’s presentation in my class had been
convincing, a part of me still believed that this type of business had
something to hide. My gut told me I needed to talk to people about
how they made financial decisions rather than try to make sense of
it from the comfort of my West Village office. I didn’t expect
Coleman’s enthusiastic reaction to my proposal. I couldn’t believe
that anyone in the industry would want a professor getting that
close to what happens on the other side of the teller window.
Before I could start my new job, I had to report to a nondescript
office in the West Thirties of Manhattan. Tony, the armed ex-cop
who handled my job screening, handed me an application on a
clipboard. I wasn’t going undercover, but as I read the questions on
the forms—“How much money did you make at your last job?” and
“Highest level of education?”—I realized how odd my responses
would look. I waited anxiously as Tony perused my application. He
merely told me he knew a couple of people who had gone to my
New Jersey high school. Then he fingerprinted me and swabbed the
inside of my cheek to test me for drug use. My credit score was
analyzed, and I answered a hundred yes/no questions on a test
designed to evaluate my honesty and integrity. Virtually every
question was some form of this one: “Is it okay to steal from your
employer?”
Next I attended an orientation at RiteCheck headquarters, a
cramped floor above one of the stores, staffed by a team of smart,
capable women. Six of us had made it through the initial screening,
all Latino women except for me, all younger than me. Some were
chatting and seemed to know one another. All were thrilled to have
landed their jobs. Gigi Guerrero, who ran the orientation, showed us
a PowerPoint presentation that detailed RiteCheck’s policies,
benefits, and perks. Some slides featured photos of staff members,
and a couple of the new tellers recognized people in the photos.
“That’s my cousin!” one said, as a slide taken at the holiday party
appeared. RiteCheck prides itself on being a family business and,
indeed, new teller positions often go to the cousins, siblings, and
friends of current tellers. Many of the managers and office staff
began as tellers.
On my first day, I arrived at my assigned store in my royal-blue
RiteCheck polo shirt, nervous about how things would go. It was late
November, and the store was decorated with a turquoise-and-fuchsia
Christmas tree. Matching tinsel and ornaments adorned the teller
windows. Ana Paula, the manager for the branch, was speaking
Spanish to the two tellers. She quickly switched to English after
buzzing me through the doors. They all seemed apprehensive—I
could imagine how news of my imminent arrival had gone down
when Joe told folks I’d be working the window at their store. Ana
Paula shook my hand and introduced me to Cristina and Joana, the
two other tellers on my shift.
 I hesitated to respond in Spanish because chances were good that
their English was better than my Spanish. But I figured I could at
least make an attempt: “Bueno, podemos hablar en español si
ustedes prefieren.”
“You speak Spanish?” Ana Paula seemed surprised. “They told me
you only spoke English!”
Although my Spanish is far from perfect—and in fact became the
subject of many jokes over the ensuing months—it helped break the
ice.
I was itching to wait on customers, but I first had to pass a
battery of online courses lasting a couple of hours, on topics ranging
from how to use the “Z method” of spotting a bad check to how to
identify “smurfing”—laundering money by breaking down a large
transaction into smaller ones, to avoid tipping off the regulators.
(The term comes from the comic-book characters known as Smurfs,
a large group with many small members.) I spent my first two days
on the job sitting at a computer and working my way through the
modules. Although I passed the courses easily, the information
clogged my brain, and I became convinced that a rogue gang would
hoodwink me, targeting me as an easy mark.
Once I completed my studies, I shadowed Cristina for a couple of
shifts to learn the software programs tellers use to pay bills and to
send money to places like Guatemala, Kazakhstan, and Rikers
Island. I then worked Cristina’s window while she hovered behind
me, helping me with what to do next, guiding me through the more
complex and infrequent transactions that I had not yet observed.
Several weeks passed before I got my own drawer at my own
station, right next to Cristina, so that she could lend a hand when I
needed it, which was a lot.
I had expected check cashing to be something like working the
register at a store, but it was much more complicated. In addition to
mastering the various software programs, I also had to remember
the sequence of steps necessary to cash a check (I was forever
forgetting to put the check through the scanner at the proper
moment). I routinely dealt with hundreds or thousands of dollars
and constantly felt anxious that I would screw up the count.
 The worst part of the day was counting out my drawer at the end
of the shift. While my fellow tellers would be humming to whatever
was playing on 97.9 “La Mega” and talking about their plans for the
evening as they easily squared the contents of their drawers with
what the computer system told them they should have, I would be
frowning, hunched over my drawer. I ran my enormous stack of cash
through the bill counter over and over and never got the same total
twice. We were supposed to close our tills about twenty minutes
before the end of our shift, so that we could leave on time, but it
always took me longer—sometimes much longer—to reconcile my
tallies.
One day several weeks after I started, I counted out and held my
breath while Cristina checked the computer to see how far off I was.
My drawer came out exactly even, not a penny over or under. I was
elated beyond reason. Cristina and Joana high-fived me and
pronounced that I had now “graduated.”
That day was more of a blip than the plateau point of my learning
curve. The very next week I was more than two hundred dollars
short. When one of us was short by such a large amount, we
counted and re-counted everything; we scoured every single
transaction conducted over the course of the eight-hour shift.
Usually we figured it out, but not always. I didn’t find out what I’d
done wrong until the next week. A customer who had come in to
take more than two hundred dollars in cash from her Electronic
Benefits Transfer (EBT) card didn’t have enough money in her
account. When a customer asks for this kind of transaction, we look
her up in the system, swipe her card through a special scanner,
punch in the amount she wants taken out, and then ask the
customer to enter her PIN. The system processes the information
and then spits out a receipt with one of two messages: “approved”
or “insufficient funds.” Apparently I didn’t read the “insufficient
funds” message correctly, or at all. So much for my big “graduation.”
“Que va pasar ahora?” I asked Cristina uneasily. “Van a despedir
me? Puedo pagar doscientos dólares.” I thought I’d be fired. I
offered to pay the money.
 Cristina laughed. “They don’t do that here,” she reassured me.
“Maybe if it keeps happening, yes, but you haven’t been on the job
that long. Everyone makes mistakes. They understand.”
“We’ve all been there,” Joana chimed in, reassuring me that my
error was no big deal.
I did a mental tally of how much I’d been paid for that eight-hour
shift—and figured that between the two hundred dollars I had given
away plus my wages, I probably hadn’t made much money for
RiteCheck that day. I’d been trying to work as quickly as my
colleagues, both of whom were veteran tellers. I envied them their
lightning-fast bill-counting skills, their ability to move between
monitor screens so quickly I could barely keep up even if I was just
watching. My slow pace felt like a liability. I glanced up at the
growing line of customers and felt I wasn’t pulling my weight.
“Don’t worry about fast,” Joana told me. “Take your time and get it
right.”
So I slowed down. My drawer never came out exactly even again,
but I never was short by a large amount.

Joe Coleman’s former father-in-law, Howard Stein, got into the

check-cashing business in 1949 after returning from Japan following
World War II. A friend told him about his new financial business in
Harlem and invited Stein to become a partner. Stein eventually
bought out the partner and turned that first store on the corner of
Striver’s Row in Harlem into the chain of thirteen RiteCheck stores
that now dot Harlem and the South Bronx.
New York began to regulate check-cashing businesses in 1944. At
that time, policymakers approved of these businesses as a safe place
for servicemen to cash their checks. “They would leave the Navy
Yard,” Stein told me, “and the bartenders would cash their checks if
they bought a drink, but then they’d end up going home drunk with
no money.”
Back when he was growing the business, Stein did everything
from working the window to balancing the books. He has lived the
history of the check-cashing industry. At ninety-two, Stein is known
around the office as “Papí”—a Latino term of endearment. Most of
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damning the mizen-top men. “Lay in to the top, you,” he was
shouting. “Lay down a few of you and clue it up.” Then from just
above her head came the thunder of the slatting sail as the topsail
yard came down. “Away. Away. Lee-ay,” came the startling shouts of
the men on the clue-lines. The sail thundered and jangled. The men
roared at the ropes. Captain Cammock, with his head tilted back,
yelled to them to lay out, and hand the leech in. One phrase struck
upon her sharply. He bade them make it fast, letting the bunt go to
a place she had never heard of. “Pass your gaskets. Pass them yard-
arm gaskets. Get on the yard, you. Stamp that damned bunt down.”
The excited angry tone, the noise, the wild sky, all helped her fears.
She crept back to Stukeley’s side sure that the end was coming, that
the gale was increasing to a hurricane, and that, in a little while,
they would all sink together in some wild whirlpool screamed over by
the seagulls.
On the third day of storm, they managed to beat into Falmouth,
where they anchored off Trefusis Point. It was a wild, wet morning
when they anchored. The wooded combe of Trefusis was hidden in
cloud, which continually whirled off in streamers, as new cloud drove
along, to catch in the tree tops. The Broken Heart was the only ship
in the anchorage; though over against Flushing there were a few
fishing-boats, rocking in the tideway. Captain Margaret went into
Falmouth, with Perrin and Olivia, to engage a maid. Stukeley was too
weak from his sickness to leave the ship. To Margaret it was a sign
that his crime was exceedingly foul.
“You have been badly scared, my friend,” he said to himself, as he
sat down beside Olivia in the boat. “If you persist in leaving England,
after being sick like that.”
Olivia had found comfort in what she took to be her husband’s
nobleness. She was proud that her husband had not abandoned his
ideas because of his bodily distress. By this time, too, she had seen
the potency of sea-sickness. She had seen its effect upon a strong
man. She had got over her first homesick terror of the sea. The
storm had exhilarated her. Up on deck, hanging to the mizen rigging,
behind the weather-cloth, she had felt the rapture of the sea. She
had gone below with her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining,
cheered and delighted. She had been touched, too, by the kindness
of the three men of the afterguard. Cammock had given up his cabin
to the sick man, so that she might have the great cabin to herself, in
peace and quiet. She had been very busy in getting her cabin into
order, even in the tumble of the storm. Now that she had made the
state-room a home she had less terror of the sea.
It was not an easy matter to engage a maid for such a voyage.
They tried at many mean houses, using tempting promises; but
without success. At last they called at the poor-house, where they
had their choice of several. An idiot girl, aged twenty, four old
women who remembered King James, and the widow Inigo, a black
but comely woman, in the prime of life, who had gone under after a
succession of disasters beginning with the death of her husband.
They struck a hard bargain with the widow Inigo, and then bore her
down the hill to buy her an outfit for the voyage. At the mercer’s
shop, where Olivia and the widow made their purchases, Captain
Margaret, following his invariable custom, began a conversation with
one of the shopmen, a youth just out of his apprenticeship.
“How long do you have to stay here every day?”
“About twelve hours, sir. From six till six.”
“That’s a very long day’s work, isn’t it? Do you have those hours
all the year round, or only in the summer?”
“All the year round, sir.”
“And what holidays do you have?”
“Holidays, sir? Easter, and Christmas, and Whitsuntide. Of course
I’ve my Sundays.”
“And how do you pass your spare time?”
“I go out with fellows, sir.”
“And what do you do?”
“Sometimes we dub at something.”
“And what is dub?”
“We put up a bottle somewhere, and then we dub at it.”
“Is that all you do?”
“On Thursdays our club meets. Then we have singing.”
“And do you read at all?”
 “No, sir, I can’t say as I ever do, sir. I don’t want much reading
after the shutters are up.”
“I should have thought that you’d have been a great reader. Don’t
you find your work very interesting?”
“Oh. It’s all right, sir. Like any other work.”
“Yes. But. Take these woollen things, for instance. Don’t you think
of all the hands it has passed through? Don’t you think of the sheep
up on the hills, and the shepherds piping to them, and the great
lonely downs, eh, with nothing but sheep-bells and the wind?”
“No, sir. Not in that light exactly.”
“And then, don’t you think of the brooks where they wash and
shear? And then the great combs and looms, with so many people
combing and weaving and spinning, all helping to make this?” He
picked up the warm woollen shirt, and handled it. “And don’t you
think of the people who will wear these things?”
“No, sir. You see, I’m only a shopman. Mr. Treloar, the owner, he
thinks of all these things.”
“And will not you be a shop-owner, sometime, if you save and
work hard?”
“No, sir. Oh no, sir. I’m only a shopman.”
“Yes; but could you not become a shop-owner? Would you not like
to be one?”
“No, sir. I can’t say as I should, sir.”
“What would you like to be?”
“Of all things, sir?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know, sir. That’s rather a big order, sir.”
“Think.”
“I think, sir, I’d like to be. Don’t let Mr. Burls hear, sir. He’s
listening. I’d like to be one of these buccaneers, sir. Fellows what
goes about fighting the Spaniards. They live an open-air life. Not like
here, sir. Oh, I’d like to lie by a camp-fire, sir, with a lot of big
bronzed men. And to have a gun, sir. And then to attack a city full of
treasure.”
“But I should think that was very dangerous. Isn’t it?”
 “No, sir. Not by all accounts, sir. A poor lot, sir, the Spaniards.
They’re not like us, you know, sir. Our fellows are a bull-dog lot, sir.
The bull-dog breed, sir.”
“Really!”
“Oh yes, sir. Why, sir, only a day or two ago there come the news-
letter from Plymouth. I dare say you saw it, sir. And there was a
Virginia ship at Salcombe, it says. Did you see that bit, sir? And a
forger was escaping from the constables, and he got on board this
ship and bribes the captain, and he carries the man off safe, with
the men-of-war all firing broadsides on him. Oh, it must be fine to
hear the cannon-balls coming whizz.”
“Indeed! A forger, you say?”
“A forger, sir; but he’d done other things as well, sir, of course.
And he’d a lady with him, too, sir.”
“But you wouldn’t like to be that sort of man?”
“No, sir.”
“What would you do to the forger, if you caught him?”
“I should give him up to the constables, sir.”
“And the ship-captain?”
“I don’t know, sir. I haven’t thought about it much, sir.”
“You would support the laws, I hope?”
“Oh yes, sir.”
“Even if he were a buccaneer.”
“Oh, now you’re too hard on me, sir.”
“But he was defying the law. And saving a ruffian from it.”
“Yes, sir. Of course I suppose I should support the laws, as you
say.”
“It would be rather nice to be a buccaneer, and to obey only those
laws which one is strong enough to make for oneself.”
“Yes, sir?”
“To defend the weak and to make money by it. Isn’t that our
maxim?”
The shopman giggled nervously. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m a buccaneer,” said Margaret. “Come with me. Won’t you? You
shall be what you really long to be.”
 “Oh, but I couldn’t leave the shop, sir. Mr. Treloar would never
——”
“Well, think it over,” said Margaret, rising. “I hope you’ll send all
these things down to the landing-stage within an hour. And send this
woman’s box down with them.”
“Oh, I will, sir. You shall find them there, sir.”
Captain Margaret paid the cost, nodded to the shopman, walked
out with Olivia. Mrs. Inigo resigned her box and followed them. They
went to several other shops, made more purchases, trifled away half
an hour at a pastrycook’s, and then set slowly shorewards, talking
little; but looking at the shops with interest. They would see no more
shops for many days. At the mercer’s shop they paused a moment,
for Captain Margaret had just decided to take several rolls of holland
linen, in order that his hands might make summer shirts for
themselves. He left Olivia at the door for a moment, with Mrs. Inigo,
while he hurried within. His friend the shopman hurried up to him.
“Well, what is it?” said Margaret.
“The goods are gone on board, sir,” said the shopman.
“Yes? Well? What is it?”
“I beg pardon, sir. Don’t wish to offend, sir. But are you the
gentleman, the gentleman, the, er, sea-captain. From Salcombe,
sir?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Please, sir, I took the liberty. There was Mr. Russell, the
magistrate, and a gentleman from the fort, sir. They came in about
you just after you’d gone. They were going to inquire about, about
the Salcombe matter, sir.”
“Yes. What did you tell them?”
“I said you’d gone to Penryn, sir, about some beer, sir, for your
sailors.”
“That wasn’t strictly truthful, was it?”
“No, sir. I suppose not, sir. So they went off to Penryn, sir. And I
told your boatmen to take the things aboard, and then wait for you
at the docks.”
“Where are the docks?”
 “Nearly a mile down the harbour, sir. Further on along the road
here. I beg your pardon, sir, but the landing-stage has soldiers on it.”
“Thank you. Have they sent to seize the ship?”
“No, sir. Oh no indeed, sir. I think——”
“Why haven’t they? Did you hear?”
“I think I heard them say, sir, that they had only a warrant for—if I
may say so, as they call it, for you, sir.”
“How far is it to Penryn? I suppose they’ll be back soon?”
“Yes, sir. They might be back at any moment.”
“Thanks. Well. Show me where the docks are. Away to the left
here?”
“Yes, sir. You can’t miss them. If I might come with you, sir.”
“To the Spanish Main?”
“No, sir. I’m afraid I can’t. But to the docks, sir.”
“Can you leave this?”
“It’s my dinner-time, sir.”
“Come on, then. I shall be very much obliged to you. Isn’t this
more exciting than selling woollen shirts?”
“Yes, sir. Indeed. But shirts are useful things, sir.”
“I deny that. They are pernicious things. They are always getting
dirty, and then some poor wretch with an immortal soul must scrub
them in hot water. They are always losing their buttons, and then
other poor wretches have to make new ones and sew them on
again. They are always wearing out, and then other poor wretches
have to begin the silly game again by penning up a few sheep and
cutting their wool away.”
By this time they were outside the door.
“Come, Olivia,” he said carelessly. “We must walk to the docks.
You will be tired to death before you get there.”
“Oh no I shan’t,” she answered. “I love walking.”
“Give me that package,” he replied.
“Now,” he continued to the shopman, “walk as though we were
seeing the sights. Oh. Here’s a butcher’s shop. Now my captain
would never forgive me if I came aboard without a leg of mutton.”
He bought a leg of mutton, handed it to the shopman to carry,
and sauntered on.
 “You must have your jest, I see, sir,” said the shopman.
“Oh yes, if I swing for it,” replied the captain, quoting from a
popular broadside, which had contained the biography of a pirate.
“Hadn’t we better walk a little faster, sir?” said the shopman. He
had no desire to be caught; he was not used to excitements.
“Olivia,” said Captain Margaret, paying no attention to his new
acquaintance, but continuing to saunter leisurely, “when we get on
board I expect you’ll find your husband up and about.”
“Yes,” she answered. “I ought not to have left him for so long. I’ve
hardly seen him for days.”
He had spoken so that the shopman might make no allusions to
the Salcombe affair, casting out a reference to Stukeley’s crime. She
had answered with some little, half-acknowledged wish to pique him.
“To-night,” said Margaret, “in the cabin, we’ll all hold a council of
war to decide our doings on the Main.”
“Yes,” she answered. “And when we get there we shall remember
the council. Things will look very different there.”
“Here. You’ve been talking to Cammock.”
“He’s so amusing,” she answered.
Sauntering in this way, talking nonsense and trifling, they arrived
at the boat-builder’s creek which then did duty for a dock. Their boat
lay off at a little distance; the hands were lying on their oars.
Captain Margaret hailed her; she put in. He handed Olivia into the
sternsheets. Mrs. Inigo, well used to boats from her childhood,
stepped into the bows. The stroke oar arranged the parcels and
placed the leg of mutton behind the backboard. Captain Margaret
turned to the shopman, and walked a few steps with him out of ear-
shot of the boat. He glanced up the anchorage to see if any armed
boat was putting off.
“Don’t wait, sir,” said the shopman. “Lord, sir, think of the risk.
Why don’t you go, sir? It’s frightfully dangerous, sir.”
“You exaggerate the risk,” he answered calmly. “Well, you’ve done
me a good turn. Why did you do me a good turn?”
“Oh sir, I’m sure.”
“I shall often think of you,” said Captain Margaret. “Are you sure
you won’t come with me?”
 “Oh no, sir. I couldn’t really be persuaded, sir.”
“Well, think of us.”
“I shall think of you always, sir. You are a real buccaneer, sir?”
“Oh yes. Real. In my ship yonder, there’s a man who knew
Morgan.”
“I’ve never had anything happen to me, sir, before.”
“Does it make any difference, do you find?”
“Oh, sir.”
“Will you wear this charm of mine to remember me by?” He
detached a small gold jewel, set with symbolical stones. “It is said to
bring success in love. I don’t believe it.”
The man took the symbol as though it were an eggshell.
“Thank you, sir,” he said with fervour. “Thank you very much, sir.”
Then he started violently. “Oh, sir,” he cried, remembering the risk,
“do go, sir. It’s frightfully dangerous, sir.”
“Yes,” said Margaret, “I mustn’t keep the lady waiting. I hope you
run no risk yourself; for warning me?”
“Oh no, sir. I just showed a customer to the docks.”
“And I’m very much obliged. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, sir. Oh, sir, I’m much honoured indeed, sir. I hope we
shall meet again, sir.”
“Well, if we don’t, we shall think of each other, shan’t we?”
“Oh yes, sir.”
“And I shall be on the Main, and you’ll be here. Here on this spot.”
“Often, sir, I suppose I shall be.”
“Good-bye. There is your soldier friend, I think.”
He nodded carelessly towards the bend of the road; then made a
half-bow to the shopman, and stepped into the boat.
“Shove off,” he said. “Back a stroke, port oars. Down starboard
and shove her off.” As he placed the boat-rug over his knees, he
heard the hoofs of horses trotting on the road. “Give way together,”
he said coldly, as the boat swung round. He glanced over his
shoulder at the shopman, half expecting to see the officers beside
him. Then he turned to his boat’s crew. “Come. Shake her up. Shake
her up,” he said. “Rally her out. Give way, now. Put your backs into
it. Come on, now. Toss her up.”
 The stroke quickened, the boat gathered way; she shot out into
the harbour, spreading a ripple. She was a hundred yards out,
keeping a fine steady stroke, when Captain Margaret turned again.
He saw the figure of the shopman pointing towards him, while a
man on horseback stood at his side looking towards the boat.
Another horseman was galloping fast back to town, evidently to get
a boat at the landing-stage.
“They aren’t very clever, these soldiers,” he thought; “but I’ve had
a little luck to-day. Or was it luck? Who knows? It may not have
been luck, after all. It may have been anything but that.”
He drew from the stern-locker a little flag nailed to a batten. He
tied a knot in the flag.
“What are you doing that for?” said Olivia, as he waved the “weft”
in the air.
“It’s a signal to Cammock,” he said, “to get his anchor up, and to
make sail. He’ll pick us up on his way out. There goes his gun. He’s
seen us.”
“Rather hurried, isn’t it?” said Olivia.
“It makes the hands smart,” he answered evasively. “I wonder if
the fort will salute us as the man-of-war did.”
“I hope not,” said Olivia.
“They very likely will,” he answered. “Come. Toss her up, boys.”
“That was a funny little man from the shop,” said Olivia.
“Yes,” he said. “But he told me some interesting things. Very
interesting.”
They talked no more after that till the Broken Heart, under a cloud
of canvas, came reeling down to them, to back her mainyard within
hail, and hoist them all aboard.
“Good-bye, old England,” said Olivia.
“Yes,” said Margaret. “And thank the Lord it is.”
 IV.
A CABIN COUNCIL

“Captain Chilver’s gone to sea.

Ay, boys, O, boys.
Captain Chilver’s gone to sea
In the brave ‘Benjamin.’ ”
Captain Chilver.

The wind had gone down gradually all through the day. The
morning’s rain had kept down the sea. When the Broken Heart “took
her departure” that evening, from the distant Lizard, Captain
Cammock crossed his main royal, out of lightness of heart. He had a
fair wind and clear weather. He was thankful to have escaped arrest
at Falmouth. “He was within smell of Virginia,” he said; so now he
would crack on and drive her, sending her lee-ports under. The three
days of storm had been of use to him. They had shaken the hands
into shape, and had bettered the ship’s trim. Now, he flattered
himself, he knew what his ship would do, and what his men could
do. He was ready for the Western Ocean. The guns were housed,
their breeches down on the carriage-beds, their tompioned muzzles
lashed to the upper port sills. The light brass quarter-deck guns
were covered with tarpaulin. Life-lines were stretched fore and aft
across the waist. Windsails were set. There were handy-billies
hooked along the hammock nettings ready for use. Forward, on the
fo’c’s’le-head, the hands had gathered to dry the clothes soaked in
the storm. Some of the hands, lying to windward, against the
forward guns, began to sing one of their sea ballads, a dreary old
ballad with a chorus, about the bonny coasts of Barbary. Old Mr.
Cottrill had the dogwatch. The other mate, Mr. Iles, a little “hard
case” from the James River, was playing his fiddle on the booby-
hatch, just abaft the main-bitts. He sang a plaintive ditty to the
music; and though he did not sing well he had listeners who thought
his singing beautiful. Several of the hands, as he knew very well,
were skulking as far aft as they dared, to catch his linked sweetness
as it fell from him. Cocking one leg over the other, he began another
song with a happy ending, no particular meaning, and a certain
blitheness:—

I put it up with a country word.

Tradoodle.

“There,” he said. “There, steward. Gee. Hey? I can sing all right,
all right. What’s that song youse was singing? You know. That one
about the girl with the wig?”
“Oh, seh,” said the old negro, Mr. Iles’s chief listener. “Oh, seh. I
can’t sing with music. I haven’t had the occasionals to do that, seh.”
“By gee, steward,” said Mr. Iles, turning to go below to his cabin in
the ’tween-decks, “if you can’t sing to music, b’ gee I don’t think you
can sing much.”
Mr. Cottrill turned to Captain Cammock.
“A smart young sailor, sir,” he said. “Mr. Iles keeps ’em going, sir.”
“Yes,” said Cammock. “He knows a lot for his age. A smart young
man, Mr. Iles, as you say, mister. He fiddles pretty, too.”
“I don’t hold with fiddling in a man,” said Mr. Cottrill. “It’s not
natural. But it keeps the mind employed, they say.”
“Yes,” said Cammock, “and so does making up tunes. Did you
never make up tunes, when you was a boy, mister, walking the
poop?”
“I come in like a head sea,” said Mr. Cottrill. “The only times I
walked the poop was to relieve the helm, or to take in the mizen.”
“Well. And ain’t you glad?” said Cammock. “It’s the only way to
learn.”
“It is that, sir,” said Cottrill. “I guess, sir,” he added, “if this wind
holds, we’ll be out of sight of land by dawn.”
The boy reported eight bells.
“Make it,” said Cottrill.
The boy struck the bell eight times.
 “You boy,” said Cammock, “when you walk the lee poop at night,
you’ll not go clump, clump, the way you done last night. There’s a
lady in the cabin. Let me see what boots you’re wearing. I thought
so. They’re the kind of boots would wear a hole in a wall. Hold up
them soles, and give us the end of the main-brace there. There, my
son. I give you the end this time. You wear them boots after dark
again, and you’ll get the bight, higher up.”
The watch was mustered and set. Captain Cammock went below,
pleased to think that he had saved Olivia from the trouble of
complaining about the boy.
He went direct to the great cabin; for he knew that there was to
be a council of war. There was much to be discussed; there was
much for him to tell them. He hoped very much that his sea-sick
friend Tom Stukeley would be put in a watch. “And then,” he said to
himself, “you shall toe the line.” In the cabin he found Perrin and
Margaret playing some simple card-game with Olivia, for counters.
Stukeley lay at half-length upon the window-seat, sipping brandy. He
was evidently cured of his sickness; though very weak from it.
He looked up as Cammock entered, took a good pull at his drink,
and called to Margaret.
“You were going to have some sort of parish meeting here. Here’s
the beadle. Suppose you begin, and get it over.”
He took another pull at the brandy. “Take a seat, beadle,” he said
insolently.
Perrin and Margaret bit their lips, and slowly, almost fearfully,
lifted their eyes to Cammock’s face. The old pirate had turned purple
beneath his copper; but Olivia’s presence bridled him. He looked at
Stukeley for a moment, then spun round on one heel, in the way he
had learned in some ship’s forecastle, and walked out of the cabin.
“I must get my charts,” he said thickly.
“Stukeley,” said Margaret lightly, “Captain Cammock is the captain
of this ship.”
“Yes,” said Stukeley. “And I wish he knew his place as well as I
know it.”
“I must ask you to remember that he commands here.”
“Of course,” said Olivia, rather nettled.
 “I hope, Stukeley,” said Perrin, “I hope you won’t quarrel with him.
We’re going a long voyage together.”
“Lord,” said Stukeley. “What a stew you two make. You might be
two old women.”
“Tom dear,” said Olivia, “is that open window too much for you?”
In the diversion caused by the shutting of the window, Captain
Cammock took his seat, laying a book of charts on the table before
him. “Now, Captain Margaret, sir. Will you begin? I don’t rightly know
what it is you want discussed.”
“Very well,” said Margaret. “I’ll begin.”
He leaned back in his chair, and looked first at Olivia, then at
Stukeley, then at Cammock, who, he thought, looked very splendid,
with his long black hair falling over his shoulders, and his grim
beauty, like a bronze, thrusting from his scarlet scarf.
“I don’t think you know,” he said, “at any rate, not perfectly, what
it is I intend doing. This ship is mine, as I think you all know. But her
cargo—it’s a general cargo, worth a good deal of money where we
are going to—is the property of several London merchants, who
expect me to make a profit for them. I want you to get it out of your
heads that I’m doing this for love, either of adventure, or of my
fellow-men. I believe I shall get adventure, and help my fellow-men.
But the venture is, primarily, a business venture. If the business part
fails, the whole thing will come to nothing. As you know, a part of
the cargo is consigned to Virginia, and we go to Virginia direct. But
we shall only stay there long enough to buy up the pick of the
tobacco crop with our goods, and take in fresh water. Our real
destination is the Isthmus of Darien.”
“What part of the Isthmus, sir?” said Cammock.
“You’ll have to tell us that. Fill Captain Cammock’s glass, Perrin.”
“Thank you, Mr. Perrin,” said Cammock. He bowed to Olivia and
drank. “Go on, sir.”
“You see,” continued Margaret. “Well I must apologize, captain. It
was part of my arrangement with Captain Cammock that he should
not be told about our destination, nor about our plans, till we had
left England. I need hardly say, captain, that that was not, well, not
my desire. The merchants who consigned the cargo insisted on it. To
tell the truth, it was only on the pledge of secrecy that the Board of
Trade and Plantations gave me my commission.”
“Then you’ve got a commission, sir?” said Cammock.
“Yes. A limited one. But still. Had our plans been bruited abroad,
we should have had a lot of opposition.”
“Who’d have taken the sweat to lift a finger to stop you?” said
Stukeley.
“The West Indian merchants,” replied Margaret. “And the
Chartered Brazil Wood Company, and the Spanish ambassador,
among others, would have given us a lot of opposition. In fact, had
the Spaniards known of it, we might have spared ourselves the
trouble of sailing.”
“Hear, hear, sir,” said Cammock quietly.
“Our friend the beadle knows his job,” said Stukeley.
“Fill Captain Cammock’s glass, Edward.”
“Fill mine, too, please, waiter,” said Stukeley.
“To continue,” said Margaret. “Had the Spaniards known, we
should have found the place of our intended settlement in the hands
of Spanish troops.”
“Settlement?” said Stukeley.
“Yes. A settlement. To be short, my plan is to land on the Isthmus,
found an English colony, and open up a trade, a real trade, mind
you, with the Indians of Darien. Now that is the rough outline of the
scheme. Now, Captain Cammock. Now comes your part. I’m going to
cross-examine you. You know the Isthmus thoroughly. Have you
landed on the Main? I know you have, of course. But we must begin
at the beginning.”
“I been there a many times, right along. Mostly looking for food,”
said Cammock.
“Did you ever meet the Indians?”
“I’ve been up agin all kinds of Indians.”
“Are there many kinds?”
“There’s three kinds.”
“Three? What are the three?”
“I don’t mind telling you, sir. There’s one kind comes and says, ‘O
Sieur,’ and brings you these great bananas and spears fish for you.
There’s some sense in them ones. Give ’em a handful of beads and
they’ll fill you a pannikin of gold dust. They’re getting spoiled, of
course, like everything else. But where they ain’t been got at they’re
good still. That’s one kind.”
“And the others?”
“There’s another kind no one seen. They say they’re white, this
second kind. They live in the woods; in stone houses, too, for the
matter of that. And they wear gold masks. No one ever seen ’em,
mind you. But you lay out in the woods near ’em, and the first night
you’ll hear like singing all round you.”
“Singing?”
“Like little birds. I never like singing like what that is. You only get
it the first night.”
“Oh. That’s very curious. What happens then?”
“The second night, if you lay out in the woods, you get your ’ed
cut off. You find your corp in the morning, that’s what you find.”
“Why do they cut your head off?” said Perrin.
“Their idea of fun, I s’pose,” said Cammock, with a grin. “Come to
that, a corp is a funny thing with no ’ed. They take the ’eds and
pickle them after: I’ve seen ’em.”
“What do they do with the heads?” asked Perrin, “when they’ve
pickled them?”
“They wear ’em round their necks, for ornament,” said Cammock.
“If one of them ducks gets a reglar necklace, like a dozen ’eds, he
thinks he’s old Sir Henry.”
“Sir Henry?”
“Like a Admiral,” explained the buccaneer.
“Ah. And what’s the third kind?”
“I don’t mind telling you. I was cruising one time. I was with an
English crew, too. And four of our men went ashore there, near
Cape Codera. They didn’t come back, so we went to look for them.
We found ashes, where a fire’d been. And we found hands, lying in
the ashes.”
“Hands?” said Perrin.
“With fingers on them, some of them,” said the pirate calmly.
“Some of them was ate all off. And there was a skull lying. And bits
of one man tied to a tree. I’ve never liked Indians from that day, not
what you might call love them.”
“So that’s the third kind,” said Captain Margaret. “I take it that
these two last kinds don’t suffer much from the Spaniards?”
“Not unless sometimes they get a tough one,” said the pirate,
“they don’t.”
“And the other kind, the first kind?”
“They’re melancholy ducks. No use at all,” said Cammock. “Of
course they suffer. It’s a wonder to me they don’t get it worse.
They’d ought to. If it rained soup they’d be going out with forks.
They ain’t got the sense we have, or something. ‘O Sieur,’ they say.
The French taught ’em that. ‘O Sieur.’ ‘Come and kick us,’ that’s what
it really amounts to.” He looked at Olivia, half fearing that she would
be shocked.
“Could they do anything, under a capable man, do you think?”
said Perrin.
“We’d one with us in the Trinity,” said Cammock. “William his
name was. Yes, William, after my poor brother. Captain Sharp was
capable, all right, in his limits; William was capable too, I guess; I
don’t remember him gettin’ it. Yes. I think they’d do. Ah, but they
ain’t got the sense. No, I don’t know as they’d ever do very much.”
“Was your brother with you in town?” asked Captain Margaret.
“Why isn’t he here with you?”
“Who? Bill? No, sir. He died. Off of La Serena. Rum did him. He’d
no sense to drink rum the way he drank it. I was sorry to lose Bill.
I’d my fair share of trouble that passage.”
“Have some more drink, your glass is empty,” said Perrin.
“It’s thirsty work talking, as the parson said,” answered the pirate,
holding out his glass. He looked at Perrin not unfavourably. Perrin
mixed him another punch, and brought out a clean clay pipe from a
little locker to the left of the fireplace.
“You’re a thoughtful young fellow to me,” said Captain Cammock,
regarding him with favour. His thought was, “You’d make a steward,
perhaps, boiled down a bit”; but this he kept to himself. “Was you
ever at sea before, sir?” he asked politely.
“Only across the Channel,” said Perrin.
 “Well, it’s a hard life,” said the pirate. “Salue. Salue.” He jerked his
head towards his hosts, and gulped the liquor. “It’s a hard life. Ah.
You don’t know how hard it is, sitting here by the fire.” He looked
moodily into the little bogey stove, which had been lighted to air the
cabin.
“What made you take to it, Captain Cammock?” said Perrin.
“Just a girl,” said the captain. “I thought I’d make money that way,
so’s we could marry.”
“Are you married, might I ask?” said Captain Margaret.
“No,” he answered surlily. “No. A single man.”
He seemed upset by the question, for he became moody. He
glared at the fire, and drummed with one foot against the leg of his
chair.
“Tell me,” said Captain Margaret. “You don’t think that I could do
much among the Indians, do you?”
“You mean, if you settled there?”
“Yes, if I landed, built a fort, and opened a trading station. And
got the Indian chiefs to bring in gold, and cocoa, or whatever else
there is.”
“You could only do that in among the Samballoes.”
“The islands along the Isthmus?”
“Yes. That’s your only place.”
“Would it be possible?”
“I dunno as it would. No, I reckon it wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You couldn’t. The Dagoes are too strong. They’d send from Porto
Bello, or they’d send overland perhaps, from Panama. They’d get
yer. Then you’d have ginger, working on the forts in Portobel. Lots of
’em end that way on the Main. Yes, sir, the Main’s a queer place.”
“Queer?”
“We lost a boat’s crew once, east there, by Tolu or that. A
handsome fellow her bow oar was. Bigger’n you he was. Handsome
Jim Sanders, that was him. He worked on the forts in Portobel. We
rescued him a year later, quite by accident. There was red cuts all
over him; and all he could do was sing.”
“Sing?”
 “Just sing. This was what he sung. He sung all the time. No. He
didn’t laugh. He just whined a little and sang.”
The pirate dropped his voice to a whimper and sang:—

“Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,

Learned to pipe when he was young,
And all the tunes that he could play
Was over the hills and far away.

There’s many like handsome Jim. I’ve knowed a many go that way.
The Main’s a hard place, the same as the sea is, if you come to
that.”
“Ah,” said Perrin. “How ghastly.”
Captain Margaret said nothing; for in his lively fancy he saw a half-
naked man, lying on the deck, surrounded by pirates, who watched
him with a sort of hard pity. The sun shone strongly upon the
picture, so that the brass cannon gleamed. Out of the wrecked
man’s body came a snatch of a nursery rhyme, with a pathetic tune.
He felt the horror of it; he saw how the pirates shifted on their feet
and looked at each other. He was tempted to ask, “Had one of your
men a hare-lip?” for in the picture which his fancy formed a hare-
lipped pirate stood out strangely, seemingly stirred by that horror on
the deck. “Fancy,” he thought. “Pure fancy.”
“Let me fill your glass, Cammock,” he said. He poured another
dose into the glass.
“Salue,” said the pirate.
A red log, burned through, fell with a crash inside the stove.
“Sparks,” said the pirate. “Sparks. We give the Dagoes sparks for
that lot.” He paused a moment. “Yes, Captain Margaret,” he went on.
“And that’s the way you’d best.”
“What way is that?” asked the captain.
“Well. It’s like this,” said the captain. “Your trading lay—I’m
speaking as a sailor, you understand—is all Barney’s bull. It’s got
more bugs than brains, as you might say. But you don’t want to go
trading. What d’yer want to go trading for? You’d only get et by
sand-flies, even if you did make a profit. What you want to do. You
got a big ship. You’d easy get hands enough. Well, what I say is,
why not go for one of the towns? Morgan done it. Sharp done it. Old
John Coxon done it, for I was with him. And the French and Dutch
done it, too; don’t I know it. If you come on ’em with a sort of a
hawky pounce you get ’em every time. Profit, too. There’s twenty or
thirty pound a man in it. Besides ransoms. There’s no work in it, like
in trading. If you’re trading, you got to watch your stores, you got to
watch the Indians, you got to kowtow to the chiefs. Pah. It’s a poor
job, trade is. It’s not a seaman’s job. But you come down on the
towns. Why. Half your life. I wish I’d been wise when I was a young
man. That’s what I ought to a done, ’stead of logwood cutting.”
“What towns would you advise?” said Captain Margaret, smiling.
“Well. Here’s a map.” Cammock opened his book to show a map of
the Terra Firme from La Vera Cruz to Trinidad. “It’s rough,” he
explained. “But it’ll just show you. All them red dots is towns. And
what I say is, take them. That’s the only way you’ll help the Indians,
as you call it. Help them? You won’t help them much when you get
among them, I’ll tell you that much. The Main alters people.”
“Oh,” said Margaret quietly. “So that’s what you think. Why do you
think that? What reason can you give?”
“Well, take it on military grounds, sir,” said Cammock. “You’ll have
to admit it on military grounds.”
Stukeley pretended to choke with laughter; it was an offensive
act.
“Stukeley’s turning sick again,” said Perrin dryly.
“Well. On military grounds then,” said Margaret. “I want to hear
your reason.”
“Look, sir. Look at my two fists. This right fist, here, is Carta-Yaina.
This left fist is Portobel or La Vera Cruz. Now these here counters.
You’ll excuse my taking your counters, Mrs. Stukeley. These here
counters are the Samballoes islands in between. Now. On military
grounds. Suppose I knock my fists together. The counters get a
nasty jounce.”
“I see,” said Margaret. “We should be the nut between two
crackers.”
 “Yes, sir. You would. And take it as a matter of business. You’d be
on the trade route, or jolly near it, between the crackers; besides
being able to flank the overland route from Panama to Portobel.
They’d never set still to let you establish yourself among them. Why,
you’d as well ask them to cut their own throats. You’d have to
destroy their towns first. Portobel’s nothing very much. It’s been
took twice within the last few years; but you can never really settle
Portobel till you settle Panama; and to do that you’d want a fleet in
the South Sea to settle Lima. To make yourself secure. Quite secure.
Secure enough for the King of England to back you up. You know
what that means. The enemy beat, and the spoils your own, that’s
what makes King James your friend. God save him, I say, and bring
him glory. To put yourself in that position, you’d have to take the
two big naval ports on the North Sea, both of them. Carta-Yaina and
La Vera Cruz. For jabbing an enemy’s no use at all. A prick here and
there’s nothing. Nothing at all. Smash the naval ports first, and then
the place is your own. Go for the main stem and you’ll get the whole
tree. Upset Carta-Yaina alone, and La Vera Cruz wouldn’t bother you
very bad; but till Carta-Yaina’s yours—— Well, honestly, Captain
Margaret, you’ll never be let settle down, not on the Isthmus. But. I
don’t know so much. It might. I’ll think it over.”
During Cammock’s speech, Stukeley had made occasional
offensive interruptions; but he said nothing when Cammock ended.
Olivia, being ignorant of the exact nature of the question discussed,
through her ignorance of geography, waited for her husband to
speak. Perrin, who had gone into the matter thus far with Margaret,
to his own boredom, now waited, half asleep, for his friend to say
something more. He hoped that no one would ask him for an
opinion that evening. He knew nothing much about it, one way or
the other, and cared little; believing only that his friend, who could
do no wrong, would be the man to uphold against all comers. As the
active part of him, never very violent now, was idle to-night, he gave
himself up to torpor, keeping his mind a blank, paying little attention
to the words of any one. To Cammock, whom he liked, he was
polite. Indeed, Cammock’s glass was seldom less than half-full all
through the evening. Now and then he wished that the meeting
would end, so that he could turn in. He lay back in his chair, looking
at the faces of the company, wishing that he had his friend’s charm,
and Cammock’s bodily strength, and Stukeley’s insolent carriage. It
must be good, he thought, to be indifferent, like that, to people’s
feelings. And if he had all three gifts, what would he do with it? He
looked at Olivia, as she sat there, upright in her chair, listening
carefully to all that he said. “Yes,” he thought, “you’re taking it all in,
all that you understand, and thinking what you’ll make your husband
do. And you’re beautiful,” he added to himself. “In that black silk,
with the green about your hair, you’re—— Yes, Charles was right. I
never saw it before. You’re beautiful.”
“Olivia,” he said aloud, “will you let me get you a little wine and
some fruit? This must be so awfully dull for you.”
“Oh, I like it,” she answered quickly. “I like it.”
“Do you, really?” said Margaret. “Well. We’ll go on. Let me see
your map, Captain Cammock.”
He took the dirty piece of vellum from Captain Cammock, and
examined the coast-line. There were manuscript notes written here
and there across the Isthmus. Captain Margaret read: “Don Andrea’s
Cuntrey.” “K Golden Cap went with Capt S from here.” “The Indians
washes for Gold on this Side.” Mountains and forests had been
added to the map in water-colours. A ship or two, under all plain
sail, showed upon the seas. In among the islands a hand had added
soundings and anchorages in red ink. He looked among the network
of islands, remembering the many stories he had read of them,
fascinated by the thought that here, before him, was one who could
make that marked piece of vellum significant.
“Tell me,” he said. “These keys here. La Sound’s Key and
Springer’s Key. Are they well known to your people?”
“Yes,” said the pirate.
“Do the Spaniards ever search among these islands? Do they send
guarda-costas?”
“Not them. Not to hurt. They’ve no really organized force on the
Main. Nor’ve they got any charts to go by. They aren’t hard any
longer. Only soft, the Spaniards. Why, there’s often a matter of a
dozen sail of privateers come to them keys, at the one time.”
 “Why do they come there?”
“Water, sir. Then the Indians bring gold dust. Sometimes they land
and go for a cruise ashore. Lots of ’em make money that way, where
the Spaniards don’t expect them.”
“Have they buildings there?”
“No. When they careen their ships, the Indians build huts for
them. Very nice, too, the huts are. Palmeto and that.”
“Then the Indians are friendly?”
“Yes. Sometimes there’s a row, of course.”
“Why don’t the privateers combine, to found a kingdom there?
They could so easily.”
“They never agree among ’emselves,” said the pirate.
“Quarrelsome ducks. That’s what they are.”
“And if a strong man got hold of them and made them agree?”
“Then. Yes. Perhaps. They might be a thundering great nation.
But then there’s the Main. It changes people. It’s hard to say. It’s
different from talking by the fire.”
“Well,” said Captain Margaret. “I shall try it. I believe it could be
done. And it’s worth trying.”
“I believe you’d do it, if any one. Morgan’d ’ave done it perhaps.
But Sir Henry was weak you know. Rum. Well, sir. If you can do it.
You’ll be in the story-books.”
“What is this place here? This Boca del Toro? Away to the west
here? You sometimes meet here, don’t you, in order to plan a raid?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it a good anchorage? It doesn’t seem to be much of a
harbour.”
“No, sir; Toro’s just an anchorage, out of the way, like. We goes to
Toro for turtle. Very good turtle on Toro. Them Mosquito boys gets
’em with spears. You see ’em paddle out, Mrs. Stukeley, two of these
red Indians in a boat, and they just paddle soft, paddle soft, as still
as still, and they come up to the turtles as they lie asleep in the sea,
and then. Whang. They dart their fizgigs. They never miss.”
Olivia looked at Cammock with quickened interest; but she did not
speak. She was now leaning forward, over the table, resting her chin
upon her hands, probably with some vague belief that her throat
was beautiful and that these stupid men would never notice it. She
may have been conscious of her power. Yet perhaps she was not.
She may have given too much of herself to Stukeley; she may have
tuned too many of her emotional strings to that one note, to feel
how other men regarded her.
“Look, Olivia,” said Margaret. He placed the map before her.
Perrin and Cammock put out each a hand, to hold the curling
vellum flat for her. She looked at the map as a sibyl would have
looked at the golden scroll; she looked rapt; her great eyes shone
so. She put out one hand to flatten the vellum, and to Margaret,
watching her, it seemed that her whole nature was expressed in that
one act, and that her nature was beautiful, too beautiful for this
world. Her finger-tip touched Perrin’s finger-tip, for one instant, as
she smoothed the map’s edge; and to Perrin it seemed that his life
would be well passed in the service of this lady. She was, oh,
wonderfully beautiful, he thought; but not like other women. She
was so strange, so mysterious, and her voice thrilled so. In dreams,
in those dreams of beauty which move us for days together, he had
seen that beauty before; she had come to him, she had saved him;
her healing hands had raised him, bringing him peace. “She says
nothing,” he said to himself; “but life is often like that. I have talked
with people sometimes whose bodies seemed to be corpses. And all
the time they were wonderful, possessed of devils and angels.”
As for Cammock, her beauty moved him, too; her voice moved
him. In his thoughts he called her “my handsome.” He was moved
by her as an old gardener is touched by the beauty of his master’s
child. His emotion was partly awe, partly pity. Pity for himself, partly;
because he could never now be worthy of moving in her company,
although he felt that he would be a better mate for her than the
brandy-sipper on the locker-top. She was the most beautiful thing he
had ever seen; she was like a spirit; like a holy thing. Looking at her,
as she studied the map, he thought of an image in the cathedral of
Panama. He had been with Morgan in the awful march from
Chagres. He had fought in the morning, outside Panama, till his face,
all bloody and powder-burnt, was black like a devil’s. Then, he
remembered, they had stormed old Panama, fighting in the streets,
across barricades, over tables, over broken chairs, while the women
fired from the roofs. Then they had rushed the Plaza, to see the
flames licking at all the glorious city. They had stormed a last
barricade to reach the Plaza. There had been twenty starving pirates
with him, all blind with drink and rage. They had made a last rush,
clubbing and spearing and shooting, killing man, woman, and child.
They swore and shrieked as they stamped them under. And then he,
with two mates, had opened a postern in the cathedral, and had
passed in, from all those shrieks, from all that fire and blood, to an
altar, where an image knelt, full of peace, beautiful beyond words, in
the quiet of the holy place. He remembered the faint smell of
incense, the memory of a scent, which hung about that holy place.
The vague scent which Olivia used reminded him of it. “She is like
that,” he thought, “and I am that. That still.”
Margaret glanced at Stukeley, who seemed to be asleep. “I
suppose, captain,” he said, “I suppose, then, that you would
recommend one of these keys in the Samballoes, as you call them?”
“Yes, sir,” said Cammock. “I’ll tell you why. You’re handy for the
Indians, that’s one great point. You’re hidden from to seaward, in
case the Spanish fleet should come near, going to Portobello fair.
You’re within a week’s march of all the big gold mines. You’ve good
wood and water handy. And you could careen a treat, if your ship
got foul. Beside being nice and central.”
“Which of these two keys do you recommend?”
“La Sound’s Key is the most frequented,” answered Cammock.
“You often have a dozen sloops in at La Sound’s. They careen there
a lot. You see there’s mud to lay your ship ashore on. And very good
brushwood if you wish to give her a breaming.”
“I see. And the Indians come there, you say?”
“Oh yes, sir. There’s an Indian village on the Main just opposite.
Full of Indians always. La Sound’s is an exchange, as you might say.”
“If I went there, in this big ship, should I be likely to get into
touch with the privateer captains? I mean, to make friends with
them.”
“You’d meet them all there, from time to time, sir—Coxon, Tristian,
Yanky Dutch, Mackett; oh, all of them.”
 “All friends of yours?”
“No, sir. Some of them is French and Dutch. They come from
Tortuga and away east by Curaçoa. That’s a point I can tell you
about. Don’t you make too free with the French and Dutch, sir. You
stick by your own countrymen. I’ll tell you why, sir. If you let them
ducks in to share, the first you’ll know is they’ve put in a claim for
their own country. They’ll say that the settlement is theirs; that
we’re intruding on them. Oh, they will. I know ’em. And they’ll trick
you, too. They’ll get their own men-of-war to come and kick you out,
like they done at St. Kitts, and at Tortuga.”
“That would hardly suit. But is La Sound’s more of a French and
Dutch resort than Springer’s?”
“Yes, sir. Since Captain Sharp’s raid. Ever since that, we’ve been as
it were more separated. And then there was trouble at the isle of
Ash; they done us out of a sloop; so we done them in return.
Springer’s is the place the Englishmen goes to, now. Oh, and Golden
Island, this easterly island here. But Springer’s Key is the best of
them. Though we goes to La Sound’s Key, mind you, whenever we’re
planning a raid.”
“Then—— By the way. Who is Springer?”
“He was a privateer, sir. He got lost on the Main one time. He was
in Alleston’s ship at that time. He got lost, out hunting for warree.
He wandered around in the woods there, living on sapadilloes, till
one day he come to a river, and floated down it on a log. He’d sense
enough for that. Generally men go mad in the woods at the end of
the first day.”
“Mad,” said Olivia. “But why do they do that?”
“It’s the loneliness, Mrs. Stukeley. You seem shut in, in those
woods. Shut in. A great green wall. It seems to laugh at you. And
you get afraid, and then you get thirsty. Oh, I’ve felt it. You go mad.
Lucky for you, you do, Mrs. Stukeley.”
“How horrible. Isn’t that awful, Charles?”
“Yes. Awful. But Springer kept his head, you say?”
“No, sir. I’m inclined to think Springer got a turn. The sun’ll give it
you. Or that green wall laughing; or just thirst. When I talked with
Springer, he told me as he come to a little stone city on a hill, all
grown over with green. An old ruined city. About a hundred houses.
Quite small. And what d’you think was in it, Mrs. Stukeley?”
“I don’t know at all. Nothing very horrible, I hope. No. Not if it’s
going to be horrible.”
“Well. It was horrible. But there was gold on every one of them.
Gold plates. Gold masks. And gold all over the rooms. Now if that’s
true, it’s mighty queer. But I think he’d got a turn, ma’am. I don’t
think things was right with Springer. Living all alone in the woods,
and then living all alone on the key. It very likely put him off. I was
to have gone with him, searching for it, one time; but I never did.”
Stukeley seemed to wake up suddenly.
“You must have been a fool,” he said.
“Why? Acos I thought of going?” said Cammock.
“No. Because you didn’t go. I suppose you know which river he
came down. And whereabouts he got on the log?”
“Oh yes,” said Cammock; “better than I know you, Mr. Stukeley.”
“What d’you mean?” said Stukeley.
“Nothing,” said Cammock. “The very last time I saw Ed Springer,
we talked it all out. And he told me all he remembered, and we
worked it out together, whereabouts he must have got to. You see,
Mrs. Stukeley, Springer went a long way. He was lost—— And we
were going to look for it together.”
“Why didn’t you?” said Stukeley. “Were you afraid?”
“Yes,” replied Cammock curtly; “I was.”
Thinking that there would be an open quarrel, Captain Margaret
interrupted. “And you think Springer’s Key would be the best for us?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here is Springer’s Key on the map. Come here, Stukeley, and just
cast your eye over it.”
Stukeley advanced, and put his hand on Olivia’s shoulder, drawing
her against him, as he leaned over to see the map. She stroked the
caressing hand, only conscious of the pleasure of her husband’s
caress. She had no thought of what the sight meant to Margaret.
Perrin felt for his friend. “Put it to the vote, Charles,” he said
hastily.
 “Very well then,” said Margaret. “Shall we decide then? To go to
Springer’s Key?”
“Is it a pleasant place?” said Olivia. “Don’t, Tom.” She gave the
hand a little slap.
“Very pleasant, Mrs. Stukeley. A island with huge big cedars on it
—aromatic cedars—as red as blood; and all green parrots. Wells.
Good drinking wells. Wonderful flowers. If you’re fond of flowers,
ma’am.”
“What sorts are they?”
“Arnotto roses, and yellow violet trees. Oh, lots of them.”
“Oh, then, Springer’s Key, certainly.”
“Springer’s Key,” said Stukeley and Perrin.
“The ayes have it.”
“Very well, then,” said Margaret. “We’ll decide for Springer’s Key.”
“One other thing, sir,” said Cammock. “There’s the difficulty about
men. We’ve forty-five men in the ship here, mustering boys and
idlers. And that’s not enough. It’s not enough to attract allies. Of
course, I quite see, if you’d shipped more in London, in a ship of this
size, it would have looked odd. It might have attracted notice. The
Spaniards watch the Pool a sight more’n you think. But you want
more. And you want choice weapons for them.” He paused for a
second to watch Captain Margaret’s face, then, seeing no change
upon it, continued, “I know you got twenty long brass eighteens
among the ballast.”
“How did you know that?” said Margaret.
“Well, you have, sir,” said Cammock, grinning, “and small-arms in
proportion. You can fortify Springer’s with a third of that lot. Now
you want another forty or fifty men, at least, and then you’ll be boss
dog. Every privateer captain will come saying, ‘Oh, Massa’ to you.”
“Yes,” said Perrin. “It seems to me that there’ll be a difficulty in
getting men. You see we want really a drill force.”
“No difficulty about men in Virginia, sir. Lots of good men, regular
old standards, tough as hickory, at Accomac, and along the James
River.”
“What do they do there?” said Perrin.
 “Lots of ’em come there,” said Cammock evasively. “They tobacco
plants, and they trap them things with fur on, and some on ’em
fishes. Lots of ’em come there.”
“Where from?” asked Captain Margaret pointedly.
“Most everywhere,” said Cammock, looking on the deck.
“Campeachy?” said the captain.
“Most everywhere, sir,” repeated Cammock.
“Writs hard to serve there?”
“Every one has his misfortunes,” said Cammock hotly. “But they’re
a better lot there than you’d get anywhere in the islands, let me tell
you that. I’ve known a power of men among them, fine men. They
might be a bit rough and that; but they do stand by a fellow.”
“Yes,” said Captain Margaret, “I dare say. But I don’t want them to
stand by a fellow. I want them to stand by an idea.”
“They’ll stand by anything so long as you’ve a commission,” said
Captain Cammock.
“And obey orders?”
“Now, sir. In England, everybody knuckles down to squires and
lords. But among the privateers there aren’t any squires and lords.
Nor in Virginia, where the old privateers tobacco plants. A man
stands by what he is in himself. If you can persuade the privateers
that you’re a better man than their captains; and some of them are
clever generals, mind. They’ve been fighting Spaniards all their lives.
Well. You persuade ’em that you’re a better man. You show ’em that.
And they’ll be your partners. As for hands in the ship here, and
ship’s discipline. They aren’t particularly good at being ordered
about. They’re accustomed to being free, and having their share in
the councils. But you give them some little success on the Main, and
you’ll find they’ll follow you anywhere. You give out that you’re going
against Tolu, say. You take Tolu, say, and give ’em ten pound a
man.”
“Then they’ll want to go ashore to spend it.”
“Not if you give ’em a dice-box or two. You won’t be able to wage
them, like you wage hands, at sixteen shillen a month.”
Olivia, who seemed disconcerted at the thought of sitting down at
a council with a crowd of ragged sailors, now asked if it would not
be possible to wage them, if they explained the circumstances.
“You say they are tobacco-planting in Virginia. Why should they
not plant on the Main and supply all the ships which come to us,
besides fighting the Spaniards when the crops are growing?”
“That’s what you must do,” said Cammock. “Get the steadiest men
you can. Plant your crops, when you’ve cleared a patch of ground.
Hit the Spaniards hard at the first try. That’ll bring all the privateers
to you. Hit ’em again hard at a bigger port; and I do believe, sir,
you’ll have two or three thousand skilled troops flocking to you. Old
Mansvelt, the old Dutchman. You know who I mean. He tried to do
what you are trying. That was at Santa Katalina. But he died, and
Morgan had to do it all over again. Then Morgan had his chance.
He’d fifteen hundred men and a lot of ships. He’d taken Chagres and
Porto Bello. He had the whole thing in his hands. With all the spoil of
Panama to back him up. The Isthmus was ours, sir. The whole of
Spanish America was in that man’s hands. But no. Come-day-go-day.
He went off and got drunk in Port Royal; got a chill the first week;
got laid up for a time; then, when he did get better, he entered
Jamaica politics. The new governor kept him squared. The new
governor was afraid of him. But what he done you can do. You have
a little success, and make a name for yourself, and you’ll have a
thousand men in no time. That’s enough to drive the Spaniards off
the North Sea. When you’ve driven ’em all off, the King’ll step in.
The King of England, I mean. He’ll knight you, and give you a bottle-
washing job alongside his kitchen sink. Your settlement’ll be given to
one of these Sirs in Jamaica. There, sir. I wish you luck.”
The meeting was now broken up. Perrin brought from his cabin a
box of West Indian conserves and a packet of the famous Peruvian
sweetmeats. He offered them to Olivia, then to all the company. The
steward brought round wine and strong waters. Mrs. Inigo, passing
through the cabin with a curtsey, left hot water in Olivia’s state-
room. She wore a black gown and white cap. She looked very
handsome. She walked with the grace of the Cornish women. She
reminded Captain Cammock of the Peruvian ladies whom he had
captured before Arica battle. They, too, had worn black, and had
walked like queens. He remembered how frightened they had been,
when they were first brought aboard from the prize. Olivia followed
Mrs. Inigo into the state-room. “I must just see if she’s got
everything she wants,” she murmured. She remained in the state-
room for a few minutes talking with Mrs. Inigo. Perrin noticed that
Stukeley looked very hard at Mrs. Inigo as she passed through with
the jug. He decided that Stukeley would need watching.
“Where are you putting her?” said Stukeley.
“Who? Mrs. Inigo?” said Margaret. “Along the alleyway, to the
starboard, in the big cabin which was once the sail-room.”
“I see,” said Stukeley.
“By the way, Stukeley,” said Margaret. “Now that you’ve got over
your sickness, would you like to be one of us? And will you stand a
watch? I’m going to stand two watches a day with the mate’s watch,
and Edward here will do the same with the starboard watch.”
“I’ll think it over,” said Stukeley, evidently not much pleased. “I’ll
think it over. I think I’ve listened to enough jaw for one night. I’m
going to turn in.”
Margaret, quick to save Olivia from something which he thought
might annoy her, made a neat parry. “Oh, don’t say that, Stukeley.
Come on deck for a blow; then we’ll have a glass of punch apiece.”
“Come on,” said Perrin, attempting, with an ill grace, the manner
of a jovial schoolboy. “Come on, my son. Catch hold of his other
arm, Charles.”
As he seized Stukeley’s arm to give him a heave, Stukeley poked
him in the wind, and tripped him as he stepped backward. “What’re
you sitting down for?” he said, with a rough laugh.
Perrin was up in a second. He seized a heavy decanter, and hove it
into Stukeley’s face. Stukeley in guarding the blow received a sharp
crack upon the elbow. Margaret and Cammock pulled Perrin aside,
under a heavy fire of curses.
“What d’ye mean by losing your temper? Hey?” said Stukeley.
Margaret drew Perrin out of the cabin. “Good night, Stukeley,” he
said as he passed the door.
He left Cammock standing by his chair, looking into Stukeley’s
face. There was a pause for a moment.