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PARTISAN REVIEW
of
his
mission. He had been seen off at Washington airport by the
Point IV expert, the Rockefeller Man and the Old Hand of the Latin
American Desk at "State." "We want the whole picture ... remem–
ber, anything we can do ..." they had said. "This
is
the rugged one,"
said the veteran. "It could be the green light for the whole program.
Remember, if you pull it off, it will be something you can carve on
your tombstone." Thus admonished and encouraged, Bradshaw had
embarked on what his wife, a well-educated Smith girl, now involved
in the rites of a painless birth regime, had pleased him by describing
as "terribly exciting." Technical experts had been in the field before
him; it was to be his task to unify their reports into a persuasive docu–
ment tentatively called "A New Frontier for Democracy" and de–
signed to put critics at a moral disadvantage. This material lay on
his lap as the plane hammered through the fields of cloud that
marched with the Gulf Stream. Far below on the timeless main, the
high-buttocked carricks put into the wind, hung like ruffling swans
. . . roundshot through the rigging . . . the silkshod foot on the
bloodied oak . . . the proffered sword, and, in the odorous holds,
loot of the palace-temples of the priest-kings. . . . So Bradshaw's
mind, which gave nervous hospitality to an under-privileged poet,
had addressed itself to the historical "background." He had been
reading:
San Rafael was founded in 1606 by the English pirate Amyas Pen–
ton, self-styled "Admiral," as a base for his freebooting operations in
the Caribbean. Here, he careened the vessels of his "navy" and main–
tained a garrison whose ruffianly personnel exacted tribute from the
countryside. . . .
These were Bradshaw's "ruffianly" precursors and sternly he re–
hearsed in his mind the sober judgments which would make a ma–
ture picture of this storybook history: "Nascent mercantile economy
imposed itself on the primitive theocratic feudalism of the region...."
Penton caused to be demolished a pyramid sacred to the indigenous
population to provide stone for the construction of a breakwater and
massive fortifications. . . .
Well, Bradshaw had thought, he too would be obliged to "cause
to be demolished" a road block or two before the future could take
shape. Godlike above the fat clouds he had been given a moment
