Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
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Title: Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
Author: Howard Pyle
Compiler: Merle Johnson
Release date: October 10, 2008 [eBook #26862]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26862
Credits: Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper,
some images courtesy of The Internet Archive, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOWARD PYLE'S BOOK OF PIRATES : FICTION, FACT & FANCY CONCERNING THE BUCCANEERS & MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN ***
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper,
some images courtesy of The Internet Archive, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: The Challenge
Studio April 7 1903.
H. Pyle. del.]
[Illustration:
Howard Pyle's
Book of Pirates
Ye Pirate Bold, as imagined by
a Quaker Gentleman in the--
Farm Lands of Pennsylvania--
Howard Pyle--Chadds Ford
September 13th 1903--]
[Illustration: AN ATTACK ON A GALLEON]
Howard Pyle's
Book of Pirates
Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning
the Buccaneers & Marooners of
the Spanish Main: _From the_
writing & Pictures _of_ Howard
Pyle: _Compiled by_ Merle Johnson
Harper & Brothers _Publishers_
New York & London
* * * * *
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD BY MERLE JOHNSON xi
PREFACE xiii
I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN 3
II. THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 39
III. WITH THE BUCCANEERS 75
IV. TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE BOX 99
V. JACK BALLISTER'S FORTUNES 129
VI. BLUESKIN, THE PIRATE 150
VII. CAPTAIN SCARFIELD 187
VIII. THE RUBY OF KISHMOOR 210
[Illustration]
* * * * *
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
AN ATTACK ON A GALLEON _Frontispiece_
ON THE TOTUGAS _Facing p._ 6
CAPTURE OF THE GALLEON " 10
HENRY MORGAN RECRUITING FOR THE ATTACK " 14
MORGAN AT PORTO BELLO " 16
THE SACKING OF PANAMA " 20
MAROONED " 26
BLACKBEARD BURIES HIS TREASURE " 32
WALKING THE PLANK " 36
"CAPTAIN MALYOE SHOT CAPTAIN BRAND THROUGH THE HEAD" " 40
"SHE WOULD SIT QUITE STILL, PERMITTING BARNABY TO GAZE" " 68
BURIED TREASURE " 76
KIDD ON THE DECK OF THE "ADVENTURE GALLEY" " 85
BURNING THE SHIP " 92
WHO SHALL BE CAPTAIN? " 104
KIDD AT GARDINER'S ISLAND " 108
EXTORTING TRIBUTE FROM THE CITIZENS " 116
"PIRATES USED TO DO THAT TO THEIR CAPTAINS NOW AND THEN" " 124
"JACK FOLLOWED THE CAPTAIN AND THE YOUNG LADY UP THE
CROOKED PATH TO THE HOUSE" " 132
"HE LED JACK UP TO A MAN WHO SAT UPON A BARREL" " 136
"THE BULLETS WERE HUMMING AND SINGING, CLIPPING ALONG THE
TOP OF THE WATER" " 142
"THE COMBATANTS CUT AND SLASHED WITH SAVAGE FURY" " 146
SO THE TREASURE WAS DIVIDED " 154
COLONEL RHETT AND THE PIRATE " 162
THE PIRATE'S CHRISTMAS " 174
"HE LAY SILENT AND STILL, WITH HIS FACE HALF BURIED IN
THE SAND" " 182
"THERE CAP'N GOLDSACK GOES, CREEPING, CREEPING, CREEPING,
LOOKING FOR HIS TREASURE DOWN BELOW!" " 186
"HE HAD FOUND THE CAPTAIN AGREEABLE AND COMPANIONABLE" " 190
THE BUCCANEER WAS A PICTURESQUE FELLOW " 196
THEN THE REAL FIGHT BEGAN " 200
"HE STRUCK ONCE AND AGAIN AT THE BALD, NARROW FOREHEAD
BENEATH HIM" " 206
CAPTAIN KEITT " 212
HOW THE BUCCANEERS KEPT CHRISTMAS " 224
THE BURNING SHIP " 236
DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES " 240
"I AM THE DAUGHTER OF THAT UNFORTUNATE CAPTAIN KEITT" " 244
* * * * *
FOREWORD
Pirates, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolves
who once infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day
conceptions in great degree as drawn by the pen and pencil of Howard
Pyle.
Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenth
century and the first decade of the twentieth, had the fine faculty of
transposing himself into any chosen period of history and making its
people flesh and blood again--not just historical puppets. His
characters were sketched with both words and picture; with both words
and picture he ranks as a master, with a rich personality which makes
his work individual and attractive in either medium.
He was one of the founders of present-day American illustration, and
his pupils and grand-pupils pervade that field to-day. While he bore
no such important part in the world of letters, his stories are modern
in treatment, and yet widely read. His range included historical
treatises concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was);
fiction, with the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of
Old World fairy tales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best
sellers to growing lads; stories of the occult, such as _In Tenebras_
and _To the Soil of the Earth_, which, if newly published, would be
hailed as contributions to our latest cult.
In all these fields Pyle's work may be equaled, surpassed, save in
one. It is improbable that anyone else will ever bring his combination
of interest and talent to the depiction of these old-time Pirates, any
more than there could be a second Remington to paint the now extinct
Indians and gun-fighters of the Great West.
Important and interesting to the student of history, the
adventure-lover, and the artist, as they are, these Pirate stories and
pictures have been scattered through many magazines and books. Here,
in this volume, they are gathered together for the first time, perhaps
not just as Mr. Pyle would have done, but with a completeness and
appreciation of the real value of the material which the author's
modesty might not have permitted.
MERLE JOHNSON.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PREFACE
Why is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly
titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to
make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this
question another--Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had, a
certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Is
there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden
groundwork of the old-time savage? Is there even in these
well-regulated times an unsubdued nature in the respectable mental
household of every one of us that still kicks against the pricks of
law and order? To make my meaning more clear, would not every boy, for
instance--that is, every boy of any account--rather be a pirate
captain than a Member of Parliament? And we ourselves--would we not
rather read such a story as that of Captain Avery's capture of the
East Indian treasure ship, with its beautiful princess and load of
jewels (which gems he sold by the handful, history sayeth, to a
Bristol merchant), than, say, one of Bishop Atterbury's sermons, or
the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of "Theodora and
Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate nature of
most of us there can be but one answer to such a query.
In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales of
derring-do Nelson's battles are all mightily interesting, but, even
in spite of their romance of splendid courage, I fancy that the
majority of us would rather turn back over the leaves of history to
read how Drake captured the Spanish treasure ship in the South Sea,
and of how he divided such a quantity of booty in the Island of Plate
(so named because of the tremendous dividend there declared) that it
had to be measured in quart bowls, being too considerable to be
counted.
Courage and daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always a
redundancy of _vim_ and life to recommend them to the nether man that
lies within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against
the tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have
had much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black
flag. But it is not altogether courage and daring that endear him to
our hearts. There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that
lust for wealth that makes one's fancy revel more pleasantly in the
story of the division of treasure in the pirate's island retreat, the
hiding of his godless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic
beach, there to remain hidden until the time should come to rake the
doubloons up again and to spend them like a lord in polite society,
than in the most thrilling tales of his wonderful escapes from
commissioned cruisers through tortuous channels between the coral
reefs.
And what a life of adventure is his, to be sure! A life of constant
alertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, he
wanders forever aimlessly, homelessly; now unheard of for months, now
careening his boat on some lonely uninhabited shore, now appearing
suddenly to swoop down on some merchant vessel with rattle of
musketry, shouting, yells, and a hell of unbridled passions let loose
to rend and tear. What a Carlislean hero! What a setting of blood and
lust and flame and rapine for such a hero!
Piracy, such as was practiced in the flower of its days--that is,
during the early eighteenth century--was no sudden growth. It was an
evolution, from the semilawful buccaneering of the sixteenth century,
just as buccaneering was upon its part, in a certain sense, an
evolution from the unorganized, unauthorized warfare of the Tudor
period.
For there was a deal of piratical smack in the anti-Spanish ventures
of Elizabethan days. Many of the adventurers--of the Sir Francis Drake
school, for instance--actually overstepped again and again the bounds
of international law, entering into the realms of _de facto_ piracy.
Nevertheless, while their doings were not recognized officially by the
government, the perpetrators were neither punished nor reprimanded for
their excursions against Spanish commerce at home or in the West
Indies; rather were they commended, and it was considered not
altogether a discreditable thing for men to get rich upon the spoils
taken from Spanish galleons in times of nominal peace. Many of the
most reputable citizens and merchants of London, when they felt that
the queen failed in her duty of pushing the fight against the great
Catholic Power, fitted out fleets upon their own account and sent them
to levy good Protestant war of a private nature upon the Pope's
anointed.
Some of the treasures captured in such ventures were immense,
stupendous, unbelievable. For an example, one can hardly credit the
truth of the "purchase" gained by Drake in the famous capture of the
plate ship in the South Sea.
One of the old buccaneer writers of a century later says: "The
Spaniards affirm to this day that he took at that time twelvescore
tons of plate and sixteen bowls of coined money a man (his number
being then forty-five men in all), insomuch that they were forced to
heave much of it overboard, because his ship could not carry it all."
Maybe this was a very greatly exaggerated statement put by the author
and his Spanish authorities, nevertheless there was enough truth in it
to prove very conclusively to the bold minds of the age that
tremendous profits--"purchases" they called them--were to be made from
piracy. The Western World is filled with the names of daring mariners
of those old days, who came flitting across the great trackless ocean
in their little tublike boats of a few hundred tons burden, partly to
explore unknown seas, partly--largely, perhaps--in pursuit of Spanish
treasure: Frobisher, Davis, Drake, and a score of others.
In this left-handed war against Catholic Spain many of the adventurers
were, no doubt, stirred and incited by a grim, Calvinistic,
puritanical zeal for Protestantism. But equally beyond doubt the gold
and silver and plate of the "Scarlet Woman" had much to do with the
persistent energy with which these hardy mariners braved the
mysterious, unknown terrors of the great unknown ocean that stretched
away to the sunset, there in far-away waters to attack the huge,
unwieldy, treasure-laden galleons that sailed up and down the
Caribbean Sea and through the Bahama Channel.
Of all ghastly and terrible things old-time religious war was the most
ghastly and terrible. One can hardly credit nowadays the cold, callous
cruelty of those times. Generally death was the least penalty that
capture entailed. When the Spaniards made prisoners of the English,
the Inquisition took them in hand, and what that meant all the world
knows. When the English captured a Spanish vessel the prisoners were
tortured, either for the sake of revenge or to compel them to disclose
where treasure lay hidden. Cruelty begat cruelty, and it would be hard
to say whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Latin showed himself to be most
proficient in torturing his victim.
When Cobham, for instance, captured the Spanish ship in the Bay of
Biscay, after all resistance was over and the heat of the battle had
cooled, he ordered his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew
and every Spaniard aboard--whether in arms or not--to sew them up in
the mainsail and to fling them overboard. There were some twenty dead
bodies in the sail when a few days later it was washed up on the
shore.
Of course such acts were not likely to go unavenged, and many an
innocent life was sacrificed to pay the debt of Cobham's cruelty.
Nothing could be more piratical than all this. Nevertheless, as was
said, it was winked at, condoned, if not sanctioned, by the law; and
it was not beneath people of family and respectability to take part in
it. But by and by Protestantism and Catholicism began to be at
somewhat less deadly enmity with each other; religious wars were still
far enough from being ended, but the scabbard of the sword was no
longer flung away when the blade was drawn. And so followed a time of
nominal peace, and a generation arose with whom it was no longer
respectable and worthy--one might say a matter of duty--to fight a
country with which one's own land was not at war. Nevertheless, the
seed had been sown; it had been demonstrated that it was feasible to
practice piracy against Spain and not to suffer therefor. Blood had
been shed and cruelty practiced, and, once indulged, no lust seems
stronger than that of shedding blood and practicing cruelty.
Though Spain might be ever so well grounded in peace at home, in the
West Indies she was always at war with the whole world--English,
French, Dutch. It was almost a matter of life or death with her to
keep her hold upon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon
the earthquake of the Reformation, her power was already beginning to
totter and to crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and
from it alone could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold
and silver. So it was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to
keep out the world from her American possessions--a bootless task, for
the old order upon which her power rested was broken and crumbled
forever. But still she strove, fighting against fate, and so it was
that in the tropical America it was one continual war between her and
all the world. Thus it came that, long after piracy ceased to be
allowed at home, it continued in those far-away seas with unabated
vigor, recruiting to its service all that lawless malign element which
gathers together in every newly opened country where the only law is
lawlessness, where might is right and where a living is to be gained
with no more trouble than cutting a throat.
[Illustration: Howard Pyle,
His mark]
Howard Pyle's
Book of Pirates
[Illustration]
Ye Pirate Bold.
It is not because of his life of adventure and daring that I admire
this one of my favorite heroes; nor is it because of blowing winds nor
blue ocean nor balmy islands which he knew so well; nor is it because
of gold he spent nor treasure he hid. He was a man who knew his own
mind and what he wanted.
Howard Pyle
[Illustration]
Chapter I
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
Just above the northwestern shore of the old island of Hispaniola--the
Santo Domingo of our day--and separated from it only by a narrow
channel of some five or six miles in width, lies a queer little hunch
of an island, known, because of a distant resemblance to that animal,
as the Tortuga de Mar, or sea turtle. It is not more than twenty miles
in length by perhaps seven or eight in breadth; it is only a little
spot of land, and as you look at it upon the map a pin's head would
almost cover it; yet from that spot, as from a center of inflammation,
a burning fire of human wickedness and ruthlessness and lust overran
the world, and spread terror and death throughout the Spanish West
Indies, from St. Augustine to the island of Trinidad, and from Panama
to the coasts of Peru.
About the middle of the seventeenth century certain French adventurers
set out from the fortified island of St. Christopher in longboats and
hoys, directing their course to the westward, there to discover new
islands. Sighting Hispaniola "with abundance of joy," they landed, and
went into the country, where they found great quantities of wild
cattle, horses, and swine.
Now vessels on the return voyage to Europe from the West Indies needed
revictualing, and food, especially flesh, was at a premium in the
islands of the Spanish Main; wherefore a great profit was to be turned
in preserving beef and pork, and selling the flesh to homeward-bound
vessels.
The northwestern shore of Hispaniola, lying as it does at the eastern
outlet of the old Bahama Channel, running between the island of Cuba
and the great Bahama Banks, lay almost in the very main stream of
travel. The pioneer Frenchmen were not slow to discover the double
advantage to be reaped from the wild cattle that cost them nothing to
procure, and a market for the flesh ready found for them. So down upon
Hispaniola they came by boatloads and shiploads, gathering like a
swarm of mosquitoes, and overrunning the whole western end of the
island. There they established themselves, spending the time
alternately in hunting the wild cattle and buccanning[1] the meat, and
squandering their hardly earned gains in wild debauchery, the
opportunities for which were never lacking in the Spanish West Indies.
[Footnote 1: Buccanning, by which the "buccaneers" gained their name,
was a process of curing thin strips of meat by salting, smoking, and
drying in the sun.]
At first the Spaniards thought nothing of the few travel-worn
Frenchmen who dragged their longboats and hoys up on the beach, and
shot a wild bullock or two to keep body and soul together; but when
the few grew to dozens, and the dozens to scores, and the scores to
hundreds, it was a very different matter, and wrathful grumblings and
mutterings began to be heard among the original settlers.
But of this the careless buccaneers thought never a whit, the only
thing that troubled them being the lack of a more convenient shipping
point than the main island afforded them.
This lack was at last filled by a party of hunters who ventured across
the narrow channel that separated the main island from Tortuga. Here
they found exactly what they needed--a good harbor, just at the
junction of the Windward Channel with the old Bahama Channel--a spot
where four-fifths of the Spanish-Indian trade would pass by their very
wharves.
There were a few Spaniards upon the island, but they were a quiet
folk, and well disposed to make friends with the strangers; but when
more Frenchmen and still more Frenchmen crossed the narrow channel,
until they overran the Tortuga and turned it into one great curing
house for the beef which they shot upon the neighboring island, the
Spaniards grew restive over the matter, just as they had done upon the
larger island.
Accordingly, one fine day there came half a dozen great boatloads of
armed Spaniards, who landed upon the Turtle's Back and sent the
Frenchmen flying to the woods and fastnesses of rocks as the chaff
flies before the thunder gust. That night the Spaniards drank
themselves mad and shouted themselves hoarse over their victory, while
the beaten Frenchmen sullenly paddled their canoes back to the main
island again, and the Sea Turtle was Spanish once more.
But the Spaniards were not contented with such a petty triumph as that
of sweeping the island of Tortuga free from the obnoxious strangers;
down upon Hispaniola they came, flushed with their easy victory, and
determined to root out every Frenchman, until not one single buccaneer
remained. For a time they had an easy thing of it, for each French
hunter roamed the woods by himself, with no better company than his
half-wild dogs, so that when two or three Spaniards would meet such a
one, he seldom if ever came out of the woods again, for even his
resting place was lost.
But the very success of the Spaniards brought their ruin along with
it, for the buccaneers began to combine together for self-protection,
and out of that combination arose a strange union of lawless man with
lawless man, so near, so close, that it can scarce be compared to any
other than that of husband and wife. When two entered upon this
comradeship, articles were drawn up and signed by both parties, a
common stock was made of all their possessions, and out into the woods
they went to seek their fortunes; thenceforth they were as one man;
they lived together by day, they slept together by night; what one
suffered, the other suffered; what one gained, the other gained. The
only separation that came betwixt them was death, and then the
survivor inherited all that the other left. And now it was another
thing with Spanish buccaneer hunting, for two buccaneers, reckless of
life, quick of eye, and true of aim, were worth any half dozen of
Spanish islanders.
By and by, as the French became more strongly organized for mutual
self-protection, they assumed the offensive. Then down they came upon
Tortuga, and now it was the turn of the Spanish to be hunted off the
island like vermin, and the turn of the French to shout their victory.
Having firmly established themselves, a governor was sent to the
French of Tortuga, one M. le Passeur, from the island of St.
Christopher; the Sea Turtle was fortified, and colonists, consisting
of men of doubtful character and women of whose character there could
be no doubt whatever, began pouring in upon the island, for it was
said that the buccaneers thought no more of a doubloon than of a Lima
bean, so that this was the place for the brothel and the brandy shop
to reap their golden harvest, and the island remained French.
[Illustration: On the Tortugas
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September_, 1887]
Hitherto the Tortugans had been content to gain as much as possible
from the homeward-bound vessels through the orderly channels of
legitimate trade. It was reserved for Pierre le Grand to introduce
piracy as a quicker and more easy road to wealth than the semihonest
exchange they had been used to practice.
Gathering together eight-and-twenty other spirits as hardy and
reckless as himself, he put boldly out to sea in a boat hardly large
enough to hold his crew, and running down the Windward Channel and out
into the Caribbean Sea, he lay in wait for such a prize as might be
worth the risks of winning.
For a while their luck was steadily against them; their provisions and
water began to fail, and they saw nothing before them but starvation
or a humiliating return. In this extremity they sighted a Spanish ship
belonging to a "flota" which had become separated from her consorts.
The boat in which the buccaneers sailed might, perhaps, have served
for the great ship's longboat; the Spaniards outnumbered them three to
one, and Pierre and his men were armed only with pistols and
cutlasses; nevertheless this was their one and their only chance, and
they determined to take the Spanish ship or to die in the attempt.
Down upon the Spaniard they bore through the dusk of the night, and
giving orders to the "chirurgeon" to scuttle their craft under them as
they were leaving it, they swarmed up the side of the unsuspecting
ship and upon its decks in a torrent--pistol in one hand and cutlass
in the other. A part of them ran to the gun room and secured the arms
and ammunition, pistoling or cutting down all such as stood in their
way or offered opposition; the other party burst into the great cabin
at the heels of Pierre le Grand, found the captain and a party of his
friends at cards, set a pistol to his breast, and demanded him to
deliver up the ship. Nothing remained for the Spaniard but to yield,
for there was no alternative between surrender and death. And so the
great prize was won.
It was not long before the news of this great exploit and of the vast
treasure gained reached the ears of the buccaneers of Tortuga and
Hispaniola. Then what a hubbub and an uproar and a tumult there was!
Hunting wild cattle and buccanning the meat was at a discount, and the
one and only thing to do was to go a-pirating; for where one such
prize had been won, others were to be had.
In a short time freebooting assumed all of the routine of a regular
business. Articles were drawn up betwixt captain and crew, compacts
were sealed, and agreements entered into by the one party and the
other.
In all professions there are those who make their mark, those who
succeed only moderately well, and those who fail more or less
entirely. Nor did pirating differ from this general rule, for in it
were men who rose to distinction, men whose names, something tarnished
and rusted by the lapse of years, have come down even to us of the
present day.
Pierre Francois, who, with his boatload of six-and-twenty desperadoes,
ran boldly into the midst of the pearl fleet off the coast of South
America, attacked the vice admiral under the very guns of two
men-of-war, captured his ship, though she was armed with eight guns
and manned with threescore men, and would have got her safely away,
only that having to put on sail, their main-mast went by the board,
whereupon the men-of-war came up with them, and the prize was lost.
But even though there were two men-of-war against all that remained of
six-and-twenty buccaneers, the Spaniards were glad enough to make
terms with them for the surrender of the vessel, whereby Pierre
Francois and his men came off scot-free.
Bartholomew Portuguese was a worthy of even more note. In a boat
manned with thirty fellow adventurers he fell upon a great ship off
Cape Corrientes, manned with threescore and ten men, all told.
Her he assaulted again and again, beaten off with the very pressure of
numbers only to renew the assault, until the Spaniards who survived,
some fifty in all, surrendered to twenty living pirates, who poured
upon their decks like a score of blood-stained, powder-grimed devils.
They lost their vessel by recapture, and Bartholomew Portuguese barely
escaped with his life through a series of almost unbelievable
adventures. But no sooner had he fairly escaped from the clutches of
the Spaniards than, gathering together another band of adventurers, he
fell upon the very same vessel in the gloom of the night, recaptured
her when she rode at anchor in the harbor of Campeche under the guns
of the fort, slipped the cable, and was away without the loss of a
single man. He lost her in a hurricane soon afterward, just off the
Isle of Pines; but the deed was none the less daring for all that.
Another notable no less famous than these two worthies was Roch
Braziliano, the truculent Dutchman who came up from the coast of
Brazil to the Spanish Main with a name ready-made for him. Upon the
very first adventure which he undertook he captured a plate ship of
fabulous value, and brought her safely into Jamaica; and when at last
captured by the Spaniards, he fairly frightened them into letting him
go by truculent threats of vengeance from his followers.
Such were three of the pirate buccaneers who infested the Spanish
Main. There were hundreds no less desperate, no less reckless, no less
insatiate in their lust for plunder, than they.
The effects of this freebooting soon became apparent. The risks to be
assumed by the owners of vessels and the shippers of merchandise
became so enormous that Spanish commerce was practically swept away
from these waters. No vessel dared to venture out of port excepting
under escort of powerful men-of-war, and even then they were not
always secure from molestation. Exports from Central and South America
were sent to Europe by way of the Strait of Magellan, and little or
none went through the passes between the Bahamas and the Caribbees.
So at last "buccaneering," as it had come to be generically called,
ceased to pay the vast dividends that it had done at first. The cream
was skimmed off, and only very thin milk was left in the dish.
Fabulous fortunes were no longer earned in a ten days' cruise, but
what money was won hardly paid for the risks of the winning. There
must be a new departure, or buccaneering would cease to exist.
Then arose one who showed the buccaneers a new way to squeeze money
out of the Spaniards. This man was an Englishman--Lewis Scot.
The stoppage of commerce on the Spanish Main had naturally tended to
accumulate all the wealth gathered and produced into the chief
fortified cities and towns of the West Indies. As there no longer
existed prizes upon the sea, they must be gained upon the land, if
they were to be gained at all. Lewis Scot was the first to appreciate
this fact.
Gathering together a large and powerful body of men as hungry for
plunder and as desperate as himself, he descended upon the town of
Campeche, which he captured and sacked, stripping it of everything
that could possibly be carried away.
When the town was cleared to the bare walls Scot threatened to set the
torch to every house in the place if it was not ransomed by a large
sum of money which he demanded. With this booty he set sail for
Tortuga, where he arrived safely--and the problem was solved.
After him came one Mansvelt, a buccaneer of lesser note, who first
made a descent upon the isle of Saint Catharine, now Old Providence,
which he took, and, with this as a base, made an unsuccessful descent
upon Neuva Granada and Cartagena. His name might not have been handed
down to us along with others of greater fame had he not been the
master of that most apt of pupils, the great Captain Henry Morgan,
most famous of all the buccaneers, one time governor of Jamaica, and
knighted by King Charles II.
[Illustration: Capture of the Galleon
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September_, 1887]
After Mansvelt followed the bold John Davis, native of Jamaica, where
he sucked in the lust of piracy with his mother's milk. With only
fourscore men, he swooped down upon the great city of Nicaragua in the
darkness of the night, silenced the sentry with the thrust of a knife,
and then fell to pillaging the churches and houses "without any
respect or veneration."
Of course it was but a short time until the whole town was in an
uproar of alarm, and there was nothing left for the little handful of
men to do but to make the best of their way to their boats. They were
in the town but a short time, but in that time they were able to
gather together and to carry away money and jewels to the value of
fifty thousand pieces of eight, besides dragging off with them a dozen
or more notable prisoners, whom they held for ransom.
And now one appeared upon the scene who reached a far greater height
than any had arisen to before. This was Francois l'Olonoise, who
sacked the great city of Maracaibo and the town of Gibraltar. Cold,
unimpassioned, pitiless, his sluggish blood was never moved by one
single pulse of human warmth, his icy heart was never touched by one
ray of mercy or one spark of pity for the hapless wretches who chanced
to fall into his bloody hands.
Against him the governor of Havana sent out a great war vessel, and
with it a negro executioner, so that there might be no inconvenient
delays of law after the pirates had been captured. But l'Olonoise did
not wait for the coming of the war vessel; he went out to meet it, and
he found it where it lay riding at anchor in the mouth of the river
Estra. At the dawn of the morning he made his attack--sharp,
unexpected, decisive. In a little while the Spaniards were forced
below the hatches, and the vessel was taken. Then came the end. One by
one the poor shrieking wretches were dragged up from below, and one by
one they were butchered in cold blood, while l'Olonoise stood upon the
poop deck and looked coldly down upon what was being done. Among the
rest the negro was dragged upon the deck. He begged and implored that
his life might be spared, promising to tell all that might be asked of
him. L'Olonoise questioned him, and when he had squeezed him dry,
waved his hand coldly, and the poor black went with the rest. Only one
man was spared; him he sent to the governor of Havana with a message
that henceforth he would give no quarter to any Spaniard whom he might
meet in arms--a message which was not an empty threat.
The rise of l'Olonoise was by no means rapid. He worked his way up by
dint of hard labor and through much ill fortune. But by and by, after
many reverses, the tide turned, and carried him with it from one
success to another, without let or stay, to the bitter end.
Cruising off Maracaibo, he captured a rich prize laden with a vast
amount of plate and ready money, and there conceived the design of
descending upon the powerful town of Maracaibo itself. Without loss of
time he gathered together five hundred picked scoundrels from Tortuga,
and taking with him one Michael de Basco as land captain, and two
hundred more buccaneers whom he commanded, down he came into the Gulf
of Venezuela and upon the doomed city like a blast of the plague.
Leaving their vessels, the buccaneers made a land attack upon the fort
that stood at the mouth of the inlet that led into Lake Maracaibo and
guarded the city.
The Spaniards held out well, and fought with all the might that
Spaniards possess; but after a fight of three hours all was given up
and the garrison fled, spreading terror and confusion before them. As
many of the inhabitants of the city as could do so escaped in boats to
Gibraltar, which lies to the southward, on the shores of Lake
Maracaibo, at the distance of some forty leagues or more.
Then the pirates marched into the town, and what followed may be
conceived. It was a holocaust of lust, of passion, and of blood such
as even the Spanish West Indies had never seen before. Houses and
churches were sacked until nothing was left but the bare walls; men
and women were tortured to compel them to disclose where more treasure
lay hidden.
Then, having wrenched all that they could from Maracaibo, they entered
the lake and descended upon Gibraltar, where the rest of the
panic-stricken inhabitants were huddled together in a blind terror.
The governor of Merida, a brave soldier who had served his king in
Flanders, had gathered together a troop of eight hundred men, had
fortified the town, and now lay in wait for the coming of the pirates.
The pirates came all in good time, and then, in spite of the brave
defense, Gibraltar also fell. Then followed a repetition of the scenes
that had been enacted in Maracaibo for the past fifteen days, only
here they remained for four horrible weeks, extorting money--money!
ever money!--from the poor poverty-stricken, pest-ridden souls crowded
into that fever hole of a town.
Then they left, but before they went they demanded still more
money--ten thousand pieces of eight--as a ransom for the town, which
otherwise should be given to the flames. There was some hesitation on
the part of the Spaniards, some disposition to haggle, but there was
no hesitation on the part of l'Olonoise. The torch was set to the town
as he had promised, whereupon the money was promptly paid, and the
pirates were piteously begged to help quench the spreading flames.
This they were pleased to do, but in spite of all their efforts nearly
half of the town was consumed.
After that they returned to Maracaibo again, where they demanded a
ransom of thirty thousand pieces of eight for the city. There was no
haggling here, thanks to the fate of Gibraltar; only it was utterly
impossible to raise that much money in all of the poverty-stricken
region. But at last the matter was compromised, and the town was
redeemed for twenty thousand pieces of eight and five hundred head of
cattle, and tortured Maracaibo was quit of them.
In the Ile de la Vache the buccaneers shared among themselves two
hundred and sixty thousand pieces of eight, besides jewels and bales
of silk and linen and miscellaneous plunder to a vast amount.
Such was the one great deed of l'Olonoise; from that time his star
steadily declined--for even nature seemed fighting against such a
monster--until at last he died a miserable, nameless death at the
hands of an unknown tribe of Indians upon the Isthmus of Darien.
* * * * *
And now we come to the greatest of all the buccaneers, he who stands
pre-eminent among them, and whose name even to this day is a charm to
call up his deeds of daring, his dauntless courage, his truculent
cruelty, and his insatiate and unappeasable lust for gold--Capt. Henry
Morgan, the bold Welshman, who brought buccaneering to the height and
flower of its glory.
Having sold himself, after the manner of the times, for his passage
across the seas, he worked out his time of servitude at the Barbados.
As soon as he had regained his liberty he entered upon the trade of
piracy, wherein he soon reached a position of considerable prominence.
He was associated with Mansvelt at the time of the latter's descent
upon Saint Catharine's Isle, the importance of which spot, as a center
of operations against the neighboring coasts, Morgan never lost sight
of.
The first attempt that Capt. Henry Morgan ever made against any town
in the Spanish Indies was the bold descent upon the city of Puerto del
Principe in the island of Cuba, with a mere handful of men. It was a
deed the boldness of which has never been outdone by any of a like
nature--not even the famous attack upon Panama itself. Thence they
returned to their boats in the very face of the whole island of Cuba,
aroused and determined upon their extermination. Not only did they
make good their escape, but they brought away with them a vast
amount of plunder, computed at three hundred thousand pieces of eight,
besides five hundred head of cattle and many prisoners held for
ransom.
[Illustration: Henry Morgan Recruiting for the Attack
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September_, 1887]
But when the division of all this wealth came to be made, lo! there
were only fifty thousand pieces of eight to be found. What had become
of the rest no man could tell but Capt. Henry Morgan himself. Honesty
among thieves was never an axiom with him.
Rude, truculent, and dishonest as Captain Morgan was, he seems to have
had a wonderful power of persuading the wild buccaneers under him to
submit everything to his judgment, and to rely entirely upon his word.
In spite of the vast sum of money that he had very evidently made away
with, recruits poured in upon him, until his band was larger and
better equipped than ever.
And now it was determined that the plunder harvest was ripe at Porto
Bello, and that city's doom was sealed. The town was defended by two
strong castles thoroughly manned, and officered by as gallant a
soldier as ever carried Toledo steel at his side. But strong castles
and gallant soldiers weighed not a barleycorn with the buccaneers when
their blood was stirred by the lust of gold.
Landing at Puerto Naso, a town some ten leagues westward of Porto
Bello, they marched to the latter town, and coming before the castle,
boldly demanded its surrender. It was refused, whereupon Morgan
threatened that no quarter should be given. Still surrender was
refused; and then the castle was attacked, and after a bitter struggle
was captured. Morgan was as good as his word: every man in the castle
was shut in the guard room, the match was set to the powder magazine,
and soldiers, castle, and all were blown into the air, while through
all the smoke and the dust the buccaneers poured into the town. Still
the governor held out in the other castle, and might have made good
his defense, but that he was betrayed by the soldiers under him. Into
the castle poured the howling buccaneers. But still the governor
fought on, with his wife and daughter clinging to his knees and
beseeching him to surrender, and the blood from his wounded forehead
trickling down over his white collar, until a merciful bullet put an
end to the vain struggle.
Here were enacted the old scenes. Everything plundered that could be
taken, and then a ransom set upon the town itself.
This time an honest, or an apparently honest, division was made of the
spoils, which amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of
eight, besides merchandise and jewels.
The next towns to suffer were poor Maracaibo and Gibraltar, now just
beginning to recover from the desolation wrought by l'Olonoise. Once
more both towns were plundered of every bale of merchandise and of
every piaster, and once more both were ransomed until everything was
squeezed from the wretched inhabitants.
Here affairs were like to have taken a turn, for when Captain Morgan
came up from Gibraltar he found three great men-of-war lying in the
entrance to the lake awaiting his coming. Seeing that he was hemmed in
in the narrow sheet of water, Captain Morgan was inclined to
compromise matters, even offering to relinquish all the plunder he had
gained if he were allowed to depart in peace. But no; the Spanish
admiral would hear nothing of this. Having the pirates, as he thought,
securely in his grasp, he would relinquish nothing, but would sweep
them from the face of the sea once and forever.
That was an unlucky determination for the Spaniards to reach, for
instead of paralyzing the pirates with fear, as he expected it would
do, it simply turned their mad courage into as mad desperation.
A great vessel that they had taken with the town of Maracaibo was
converted into a fire ship, manned with logs of wood in montera caps
and sailor jackets, and filled with brimstone, pitch, and palm leaves
soaked in oil. Then out of the lake the pirates sailed to meet the
Spaniards, the fire ship leading the way, and bearing down directly
upon the admiral's vessel. At the helm stood volunteers, the most
desperate and the bravest of all the pirate gang, and at the ports
stood the logs of wood in montera caps. So they came up with the
admiral, and grappled with his ship in spite of the thunder of all his
great guns, and then the Spaniard saw, all too late, what his opponent
really was.
[Illustration: Morgan at Porto Bello
_Illustration from_
MORGAN
_by_ E. C. Stedman
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _December, 1888_]
He tried to swing loose, but clouds of smoke and almost instantly a
mass of roaring flames enveloped both vessels, and the admiral was
lost. The second vessel, not wishing to wait for the coming of the
pirates, bore down upon the fort, under the guns of which the cowardly
crew sank her, and made the best of their way to the shore. The third
vessel, not having an opportunity to escape, was taken by the pirates
without the slightest resistance, and the passage from the lake was
cleared. So the buccaneers sailed away, leaving Maracaibo and
Gibraltar prostrate a second time.
And now Captain Morgan determined to undertake another venture, the
like of which had never been equaled in all of the annals of
buccaneering. This was nothing less than the descent upon and the
capture of Panama, which was, next to Cartagena, perhaps, the most
powerful and the most strongly fortified city in the West Indies.
In preparation for this venture he obtained letters of marque from the
governor of Jamaica, by virtue of which elastic commission he began
immediately to gather around him all material necessary for the
undertaking.
When it became known abroad that the great Captain Morgan was about
undertaking an adventure that was to eclipse all that was ever done
before, great numbers came flocking to his standard, until he had
gathered together an army of two thousand or more desperadoes and
pirates wherewith to prosecute his adventure, albeit the venture
itself was kept a total secret from everyone. Port Couillon, in the
island of Hispaniola, over against the Ile de la Vache, was the place
of muster, and thither the motley band gathered from all quarters.
Provisions had been plundered from the mainland wherever they could be
obtained, and by the 24th of October, 1670 (O. S.), everything was in
readiness.
The island of Saint Catharine, as it may be remembered, was at one
time captured by Mansvelt, Morgan's master in his trade of piracy. It
had been retaken by the Spaniards, and was now thoroughly fortified by
them. Almost the first attempt that Morgan had made as a master pirate
was the retaking of Saint Catharine's Isle. In that undertaking he had
failed; but now, as there was an absolute need of some such place as a
base of operations, he determined that the place _must_ be taken. And
it was taken.
The Spaniards, during the time of their possession, had fortified it
most thoroughly and completely, and had the governor thereof been as
brave as he who met his death in the castle of Porto Bello, there
might have been a different tale to tell. As it was, he surrendered it
in a most cowardly fashion, merely stipulating that there should be a
sham attack by the buccaneers, whereby his credit might be saved. And
so Saint Catharine was won.
The next step to be taken was the capture of the castle of Chagres,
which guarded the mouth of the river of that name, up which river the
buccaneers would be compelled to transport their troops and provisions
for the attack upon the city of Panama. This adventure was undertaken
by four hundred picked men under command of Captain Morgan himself.
The castle of Chagres, known as San Lorenzo by the Spaniards, stood
upon the top of an abrupt rock at the mouth of the river, and was one
of the strongest fortresses for its size in all of the West Indies.
This stronghold Morgan must have if he ever hoped to win Panama.
The attack of the castle and the defense of it were equally fierce,
bloody, and desperate. Again and again the buccaneers assaulted, and
again and again they were beaten back. So the morning came, and it
seemed as though the pirates had been baffled this time. But just at
this juncture the thatch of palm leaves on the roofs of some of the
buildings inside the fortifications took fire, a conflagration
followed, which caused the explosion of one of the magazines, and in
the paralysis of terror that followed, the pirates forced their way
into the fortifications, and the castle was won. Most of the Spaniards
flung themselves from the castle walls into the river or upon the
rocks beneath, preferring death to capture and possible torture; many
who were left were put to the sword, and some few were spared and held
as prisoners.
So fell the castle of Chagres, and nothing now lay between the
buccaneers and the city of Panama but the intervening and trackless
forests.
And now the name of the town whose doom was sealed was no secret.
Up the river of Chagres went Capt. Henry Morgan and twelve hundred
men, packed closely in their canoes; they never stopped, saving now
and then to rest their stiffened legs, until they had come to a place
known as Cruz de San Juan Gallego, where they were compelled to leave
their boats on account of the shallowness of the water.
Leaving a guard of one hundred and sixty men to protect their boats as
a place of refuge in case they should be worsted before Panama, they
turned and plunged into the wilderness before them.
There a more powerful foe awaited them than a host of Spaniards with
match, powder, and lead--starvation. They met but little or no
opposition in their progress; but wherever they turned they found
every fiber of meat, every grain of maize, every ounce of bread or
meal, swept away or destroyed utterly before them. Even when the
buccaneers had successfully overcome an ambuscade or an attack, and
had sent the Spaniards flying, the fugitives took the time to strip
their dead comrades of every grain of food in their leathern sacks,
leaving nothing but the empty bags.
Says the narrator of these events, himself one of the expedition,
"They afterward fell to eating those leathern bags, as affording
something to the ferment of their stomachs."
Ten days they struggled through this bitter privation, doggedly
forcing their way onward, faint with hunger and haggard with weakness
and fever. Then, from the high hill and over the tops of the forest
trees, they saw the steeples of Panama, and nothing remained between
them and their goal but the fighting of four Spaniards to every one of
them--a simple thing which they had done over and over again.
Down they poured upon Panama, and out came the Spaniards to meet them;
four hundred horse, two thousand five hundred foot, and two thousand
wild bulls which had been herded together to be driven over the
buccaneers so that their ranks might be disordered and broken. The
buccaneers were only eight hundred strong; the others had either
fallen in battle or had dropped along the dreary pathway through the
wilderness; but in the space of two hours the Spaniards were flying
madly over the plain, minus six hundred who lay dead or dying behind
them.
As for the bulls, as many of them as were shot served as food there
and then for the half-famished pirates, for the buccaneers were never
more at home than in the slaughter of cattle.
Then they marched toward the city. Three hours' more fighting and they
were in the streets, howling, yelling, plundering, gorging,
dram-drinking, and giving full vent to all the vile and nameless lusts
that burned in their hearts like a hell of fire. And now followed the
usual sequence of events--rapine, cruelty, and extortion; only this
time there was no town to ransom, for Morgan had given orders that it
should be destroyed. The torch was set to it, and Panama, one of the
greatest cities in the New World, was swept from the face of the
earth. Why the deed was done, no man but Morgan could tell. Perhaps
it was that all the secret hiding places for treasure might be brought
to light; but whatever the reason was, it lay hidden in the breast of
the great buccaneer himself. For three weeks Morgan and his men abode
in this dreadful place; and they marched away with _one hundred and
seventy-five_ beasts of burden loaded with treasures of gold and
silver and jewels, besides great quantities of merchandise, and six
hundred prisoners held for ransom.
[Illustration: The Sacking of Panama
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September, 1887_]
Whatever became of all that vast wealth, and what it amounted to, no
man but Morgan ever knew, for when a division was made it was found
that there was only _two hundred pieces of eight to each man_.
When this dividend was declared, a howl of execration went up, under
which even Capt. Henry Morgan quailed. At night he and four other
commanders slipped their cables and ran out to sea, and it was said
that these divided the greater part of the booty among themselves. But
the wealth plundered at Panama could hardly have fallen short of a
million and a half of dollars. Computing it at this reasonable figure,
the various prizes won by Henry Morgan in the West Indies would stand
as follows: Panama, $1,500,000; Porto Bello, $800,000; Puerto del
Principe, $700,000; Maracaibo and Gibraltar, $400,000; various
piracies, $250,000--making a grand total of $3,650,000 as the vast
harvest of plunder. With this fabulous wealth, wrenched from the
Spaniards by means of the rack and the cord, and pilfered from his
companions by the meanest of thieving, Capt. Henry Morgan retired from
business, honored of all, rendered famous by his deeds, knighted by
the good King Charles II, and finally appointed governor of the rich
island of Jamaica.
Other buccaneers followed him. Campeche was taken and sacked, and even
Cartagena itself fell; but with Henry Morgan culminated the glory of
the buccaneers, and from that time they declined in power and wealth
and wickedness until they were finally swept away.
The buccaneers became bolder and bolder. In fact, so daring were their
crimes that the home governments, stirred at last by these outrageous
barbarities, seriously undertook the suppression of the freebooters,
lopping and trimming the main trunk until its members were scattered
hither and thither, and it was thought that the organization was
exterminated. But, so far from being exterminated, the individual
members were merely scattered north, south, east, and west, each
forming a nucleus around which gathered and clustered the very worst
of the offscouring of humanity.
The result was that when the seventeenth century was fairly packed
away with its lavender in the store chest of the past, a score or more
bands of freebooters were cruising along the Atlantic seaboard in
armed vessels, each with a black flag with its skull and crossbones at
the fore, and with a nondescript crew made up of the tags and remnants
of civilized and semicivilized humanity (white, black, red, and
yellow), known generally as marooners, swarming upon the decks below.
Nor did these offshoots from the old buccaneer stem confine their
depredations to the American seas alone; the East Indies and the
African coast also witnessed their doings, and suffered from them, and
even the Bay of Biscay had good cause to remember more than one visit
from them.
Worthy sprigs from so worthy a stem improved variously upon the parent
methods; for while the buccaneers were content to prey upon the
Spaniards alone, the marooners reaped the harvest from the commerce of
all nations.
So up and down the Atlantic seaboard they cruised, and for the fifty
years that marooning was in the flower of its glory it was a sorrowful
time for the coasters of New England, the middle provinces, and the
Virginias, sailing to the West Indies with their cargoes of salt fish,
grain, and tobacco. Trading became almost as dangerous as
privateering, and sea captains were chosen as much for their
knowledge of the flintlock and the cutlass as for their seamanship.
As by far the largest part of the trading in American waters was
conducted by these Yankee coasters, so by far the heaviest blows, and
those most keenly felt, fell upon them. Bulletin after bulletin came
to port with its doleful tale of this vessel burned or that vessel
scuttled, this one held by the pirates for their own use or that one
stripped of its goods and sent into port as empty as an eggshell from
which the yolk had been sucked. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
Charleston suffered alike, and worthy ship owners had to leave off
counting their losses upon their fingers and take to the slate to keep
the dismal record.
"Maroon--to put ashore on a desert isle, as a sailor, under pretense
of having committed some great crime." Thus our good Noah Webster
gives us the dry bones, the anatomy, upon which the imagination may
construct a specimen to suit itself.
It is thence that the marooners took their name, for marooning was one
of their most effective instruments of punishment or revenge. If a
pirate broke one of the many rules which governed the particular band
to which he belonged, he was marooned; did a captain defend his ship
to such a degree as to be unpleasant to the pirates attacking it, he
was marooned; even the pirate captain himself, if he displeased his
followers by the severity of his rule, was in danger of having the
same punishment visited upon him which he had perhaps more than once
visited upon another.
The process of marooning was as simple as terrible. A suitable place
was chosen (generally some desert isle as far removed as possible from
the pathway of commerce), and the condemned man was rowed from the
ship to the beach. Out he was bundled upon the sand spit; a gun, a
half dozen bullets, a few pinches of powder, and a bottle of water
were chucked ashore after him, and away rowed the boat's crew back to
the ship, leaving the poor wretch alone to rave away his life in
madness, or to sit sunken in his gloomy despair till death mercifully
released him from torment. It rarely if ever happened that anything
was known of him after having been marooned. A boat's crew from some
vessel, sailing by chance that way, might perhaps find a few chalky
bones bleaching upon the white sand in the garish glare of the
sunlight, but that was all. And such were marooners.
By far the largest number of pirate captains were Englishmen, for,
from the days of good Queen Bess, English sea captains seemed to have
a natural turn for any species of venture that had a smack of piracy
in it, and from the great Admiral Drake of the old, old days, to the
truculent Morgan of buccaneering times, the Englishman did the boldest
and wickedest deeds, and wrought the most damage.
First of all upon the list of pirates stands the bold Captain Avary,
one of the institutors of marooning. Him we see but dimly, half hidden
by the glamouring mists of legends and tradition. Others who came
afterward outstripped him far enough in their doings, but he stands
pre-eminent as the first of marooners of whom actual history has been
handed down to us of the present day.
When the English, Dutch, and Spanish entered into an alliance to
suppress buccaneering in the West Indies, certain worthies of Bristol,
in old England, fitted out two vessels to assist in this laudable
project; for doubtless Bristol trade suffered smartly from the Morgans
and the l'Olonoises of that old time. One of these vessels was named
the _Duke_, of which a certain Captain Gibson was the commander and
Avary the mate.
Away they sailed to the West Indies, and there Avary became impressed
by the advantages offered by piracy, and by the amount of good things
that were to be gained by very little striving.
One night the captain (who was one of those fellows mightily addicted
to punch), instead of going ashore to saturate himself with rum at the
ordinary, had his drink in his cabin in private. While he lay snoring
away the effects of his rum in the cabin, Avary and a few other
conspirators heaved the anchor very leisurely, and sailed out of the
harbor of Corunna, and through the midst of the allied fleet riding at
anchor in the darkness.
By and by, when the morning came, the captain was awakened by the
pitching and tossing of the vessel, the rattle and clatter of the
tackle overhead, and the noise of footsteps passing and repassing
hither and thither across the deck. Perhaps he lay for a while turning
the matter over and over in his muddled head, but he presently rang
the bell, and Avary and another fellow answered the call.
"What's the matter?" bawls the captain from his berth.
"Nothing," says Avary, coolly.
"Something's the matter with the ship," says the captain. "Does she
drive? What weather is it?"
"Oh no," says Avary; "we are at sea."
"At sea?"
"Come, come!" says Avary: "I'll tell you; you must know that I'm the
captain of the ship now, and you must be packing from this here cabin.
We are bound to Madagascar, to make all of our fortunes, and if you're
a mind to ship for the cruise, why, we'll be glad to have you, if you
will be sober and mind your own business; if not, there is a boat
alongside, and I'll have you set ashore."
The poor half-tipsy captain had no relish to go a-pirating under the
command of his backsliding mate, so out of the ship he bundled, and
away he rowed with four or five of the crew, who, like him, refused to
join with their jolly shipmates.
The rest of them sailed away to the East Indies, to try their fortunes
in those waters, for our Captain Avary was of a high spirit, and had
no mind to fritter away his time in the West Indies, squeezed dry by
buccaneer Morgan and others of lesser note. No, he would make a bold
stroke for it at once, and make or lose at a single cast.
On his way he picked up a couple of like kind with himself--two
sloops off Madagascar. With these he sailed away to the coast of
India, and for a time his name was lost in the obscurity of uncertain
history. But only for a time, for suddenly it flamed out in a blaze of
glory. It was reported that a vessel belonging to the Great Mogul,
laden with treasure and bearing the monarch's own daughter upon a holy
pilgrimage to Mecca (they being Mohammedans), had fallen in with the
pirates, and after a short resistance had been surrendered, with the
damsel, her court, and all the diamonds, pearls, silk, silver, and
gold aboard. It was rumored that the Great Mogul, raging at the insult
offered to him through his own flesh and blood, had threatened to wipe
out of existence the few English settlements scattered along the
coast; whereat the honorable East India Company was in a pretty state
of fuss and feathers. Rumor, growing with the telling, has it that
Avary is going to marry the Indian princess, willy-nilly, and will
turn rajah, and eschew piracy as indecent. As for the treasure itself,
there was no end to the extent to which it grew as it passed from
mouth to mouth.
Cracking the nut of romance and exaggeration, we come to the kernel of
the story--that Avary did fall in with an Indian vessel laden with
great treasure (and possibly with the Mogul's daughter), which he
captured, and thereby gained a vast prize.
Having concluded that he had earned enough money by the trade he had
undertaken, he determined to retire and live decently for the rest of
his life upon what he already had. As a step toward this object, he
set about cheating his Madagascar partners out of their share of what
had been gained. He persuaded them to store all the treasure in his
vessel, it being the largest of the three; and so, having it safely in
hand, he altered the course of his ship one fine night, and when the
morning came the Madagascar sloops found themselves floating upon a
wide ocean without a farthing of the treasure for which they had
fought so hard, and for which they might whistle for all the good it
would do them.
[Illustration: Marooned
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September, 1887_]
At first Avary had a great part of a mind to settle at Boston, in
Massachusetts, and had that little town been one whit less bleak and
forbidding, it might have had the honor of being the home of this
famous man. As it was, he did not like the looks of it, so he sailed
away to the eastward, to Ireland, where he settled himself at
Biddeford, in hopes of an easy life of it for the rest of his days.
Here he found himself the possessor of a plentiful stock of jewels,
such as pearls, diamonds, rubies, etc., but with hardly a score of
honest farthings to jingle in his breeches pocket. He consulted with a
certain merchant of Bristol concerning the disposal of the stones--a
fellow not much more cleanly in his habits of honesty than Avary
himself. This worthy undertook to act as Avary's broker. Off he
marched with the jewels, and that was the last that the pirate saw of
his Indian treasure.
Perhaps the most famous of all the piratical names to American ears
are those of Capt. Robert Kidd and Capt. Edward Teach, or
"Blackbeard."
Nothing will be ventured in regard to Kidd at this time, nor in regard
to the pros and cons as to whether he really was or was not a pirate,
after all. For many years he was the very hero of heroes of piratical
fame; there was hardly a creek or stream or point of land along our
coast, hardly a convenient bit of good sandy beach, or hump of rock,
or water-washed cave, where fabulous treasures were not said to have
been hidden by this worthy marooner. Now we are assured that he never
was a pirate, and never did bury any treasure, excepting a certain
chest, which he was compelled to hide upon Gardiner's Island--and
perhaps even it was mythical.
So poor Kidd must be relegated to the dull ranks of simply respectable
people, or semirespectable people at best.
But with "Blackbeard" it is different, for in him we have a real,
ranting, raging, roaring pirate _per se_--one who really did bury
treasure, who made more than one captain walk the plank, and who
committed more private murders than he could number on the fingers of
both hands; one who fills, and will continue to fill, the place to
which he has been assigned for generations, and who may be depended
upon to hold his place in the confidence of others for generations to
come.
Captain Teach was a Bristol man born, and learned his trade on board
of sundry privateers in the East Indies during the old French
war--that of 1702--and a better apprenticeship could no man serve. At
last, somewhere about the latter part of the year 1716, a privateering
captain, one Benjamin Hornigold, raised him from the ranks and put him
in command of a sloop--a lately captured prize--and Blackbeard's
fortune was made. It was a very slight step, and but the change of a
few letters, to convert "privateer" into "pirate," and it was a very
short time before Teach made that change. Not only did he make it
himself, but he persuaded his old captain to join with him.
And now fairly began that series of bold and lawless depredations
which have made his name so justly famous, and which placed him among
the very greatest of marooning freebooters.
"Our hero," says the old historian who sings of the arms and bravery
of this great man--"our hero assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from
that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered
his whole face, and frightened America more than any comet that
appeared there in a long time. He was accustomed to twist it with
ribbons into small tails, after the manner of our Ramillies wig, and
turn them about his ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his
shoulders, with three brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like
bandoleers; he stuck lighted matches under his hat, which, appearing
on each side of his face, and his eyes naturally looking fierce and
wild, made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form
an idea of a Fury from hell to look more frightful."
The night before the day of the action in which he was killed he sat
up drinking with some congenial company until broad daylight. One of
them asked him if his poor young wife knew where his treasure was
hidden. "No," says Blackbeard; "nobody but the devil and I knows where
it is, and the longest liver shall have all."
As for that poor young wife of his, the life that he and his rum-crazy
shipmates led her was too terrible to be told.
For a time Blackbeard worked at his trade down on the Spanish Main,
gathering, in the few years he was there, a very neat little fortune
in the booty captured from sundry vessels; but by and by he took it
into his head to try his luck along the coast of the Carolinas; so off
he sailed to the northward, with quite a respectable little fleet,
consisting of his own vessel and two captured sloops. From that time
he was actively engaged in the making of American history in his small
way.
He first appeared off the bar of Charleston Harbor, to the no small
excitement of the worthy town of that ilk, and there he lay for five
or six days, blockading the port, and stopping incoming and outgoing
vessels at his pleasure, so that, for the time, the commerce of the
province was entirely paralyzed. All the vessels so stopped he held as
prizes, and all the crews and passengers (among the latter of whom was
more than one provincial worthy of the day) he retained as though they
were prisoners of war.
And it was a mightily awkward thing for the good folk of Charleston to
behold day after day a black flag with its white skull and crossbones
fluttering at the fore of the pirate captain's craft, over across the
level stretch of green salt marshes; and it was mightily unpleasant,
too, to know that this or that prominent citizen was crowded down with
the other prisoners under the hatches.
One morning Captain Blackbeard finds that his stock of medicine is
low. "Tut!" says he, "we'll turn no hair gray for that." So up he
calls the bold Captain Richards, the commander of his consort the
_Revenge_ sloop, and bids him take Mr. Marks (one of his prisoners),
and go up to Charleston and get the medicine. There was no task that
suited our Captain Richards better than that. Up to the town he rowed,
as bold as brass. "Look ye," says he to the governor, rolling his quid
of tobacco from one cheek to another--"look ye, we're after this and
that, and if we don't get it, why, I'll tell you plain, we'll burn
them bloody crafts of yours that we've took over yonder, and cut the
weasand of every clodpoll aboard of 'em."
There was no answering an argument of such force as this, and the
worshipful governor and the good folk of Charleston knew very well
that Blackbeard and his crew were the men to do as they promised. So
Blackbeard got his medicine, and though it cost the colony two
thousand dollars, it was worth that much to the town to be quit of
him.
They say that while Captain Richards was conducting his negotiations
with the governor his boat's crew were stumping around the streets of
the town, having a glorious time of it, while the good folk glowered
wrathfully at them, but dared venture nothing in speech or act.
Having gained a booty of between seven and eight thousand dollars from
the prizes captured, the pirates sailed away from Charleston Harbor to
the coast of North Carolina.
And now Blackbeard, following the plan adopted by so many others of
his kind, began to cudgel his brains for means to cheat his fellows
out of their share of the booty.
At Topsail Inlet he ran his own vessel aground, as though by accident.
Hands, the captain of one of the consorts, pretending to come to his
assistance, also grounded _his_ sloop. Nothing now remained but for
those who were able to get away in the other craft, which was all that
was now left of the little fleet. This did Blackbeard with some forty
of his favorites. The rest of the pirates were left on the sand spit
to await the return of their companions--which never happened.
As for Blackbeard and those who were with him, they were that much
richer, for there were so many the fewer pockets to fill. But even yet
there were too many to share the booty, in Blackbeard's opinion, and
so he marooned a parcel more of them--some eighteen or twenty--upon a
naked sand bank, from which they were afterward mercifully rescued by
another freebooter who chanced that way--a certain Major Stede Bonnet,
of whom more will presently be said. About that time a royal
proclamation had been issued offering pardon to all pirates in arms
who would surrender to the king's authority before a given date. So up
goes Master Blackbeard to the Governor of North Carolina and makes his
neck safe by surrendering to the proclamation--albeit he kept tight
clutch upon what he had already gained.
And now we find our bold Captain Blackbeard established in the good
province of North Carolina, where he and His Worship the Governor
struck up a vast deal of intimacy, as profitable as it was pleasant.
There is something very pretty in the thought of the bold sea rover
giving up his adventurous life (excepting now and then an excursion
against a trader or two in the neighboring sound, when the need of
money was pressing); settling quietly down into the routine of old
colonial life, with a young wife of sixteen at his side, who made the
fourteenth that he had in various ports here and there in the world.
Becoming tired of an inactive life, Blackbeard afterward resumed his
piratical career. He cruised around in the rivers and inlets and
sounds of North Carolina for a while, ruling the roost and with never
a one to say him nay, until there was no bearing with such a pest any
longer. So they sent a deputation up to the Governor of Virginia
asking if he would be pleased to help them in their trouble.
There were two men-of-war lying at Kicquetan, in the James River, at
the time. To them the Governor of Virginia applies, and plucky
Lieutenant Maynard, of the _Pearl_, was sent to Ocracoke Inlet to
fight this pirate who ruled it down there so like the cock of a walk.
There he found Blackbeard waiting for him, and as ready for a fight as
ever the lieutenant himself could be. Fight they did, and while it
lasted it was as pretty a piece of business of its kind as one could
wish to see. Blackbeard drained a glass of grog, wishing the
lieutenant luck in getting aboard of him, fired a broadside, blew some
twenty of the lieutenant's men out of existence, and totally crippled
one of his little sloops for the balance of the fight. After that, and
under cover of the smoke, the pirate and his men boarded the other
sloop, and then followed a fine old-fashioned hand-to-hand conflict
betwixt him and the lieutenant. First they fired their pistols, and
then they took to it with cutlasses--right, left, up and down, cut and
slash--until the lieutenant's cutlass broke short off at the hilt.
Then Blackbeard would have finished him off handsomely, only up steps
one of the lieutenant's men and fetches him a great slash over the
neck, so that the lieutenant came off with no more hurt than a cut
across the knuckles.
At the very first discharge of their pistols Blackbeard had been shot
through the body, but he was not for giving up for that--not he. As
said before, he was of the true roaring, raging breed of pirates, and
stood up to it until he received twenty more cutlass cuts and five
additional shots, and then fell dead while trying to fire off an empty
pistol. After that the lieutenant cut off the pirate's head, and
sailed away in triumph, with the bloody trophy nailed to the bow of
his battered sloop.
Those of Blackbeard's men who were not killed were carried off to
Virginia, and all of them tried and hanged but one or two, their
names, no doubt, still standing in a row in the provincial records.
But did Blackbeard really bury treasures, as tradition says, along the
sandy shores he haunted?
[Illustration: Blackbeard Buries His Treasure
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September, 1887_]
Master Clement Downing, midshipman aboard the _Salisbury_, wrote a
book after his return from the cruise to Madagascar, whither the
_Salisbury_ had been ordered, to put an end to the piracy with which
those waters were infested. He says:
"At Guzarat I met with a Portuguese named Anthony de
Sylvestre; he came with two other Portuguese and two
Dutchmen to take on in the Moor's service, as many Europeans
do. This Anthony told me he had been among the pirates, and
that he belonged to one of the sloops in Virginia when
Blackbeard was taken. He informed me that if it should be my
lot ever to go to York River or Maryland, near an island
called Mulberry Island, provided we went on shore at the
watering place, where the shipping used most commonly to
ride, that there the pirates had buried considerable sums of
money in great chests well clamped with iron plates. As to
my part, I never was that way, nor much acquainted with any
that ever used those parts; but I have made inquiry, and am
informed that there is such a place as Mulberry Island. If
any person who uses those parts should think it worth while
to dig a little way at the upper end of a small cove, where
it is convenient to land, he would soon find whether the
information I had was well grounded. Fronting the landing
place are five trees, among which, he said, the money was
hid. I cannot warrant the truth of this account; but if I
was ever to go there, I should find some means or other to
satisfy myself, as it could not be a great deal out of my
way. If anybody should obtain the benefit of this account,
if it please God that they ever come to England, 'tis hoped
they will remember whence they had this information."
Another worthy was Capt. Edward Low, who learned his trade of
sail-making at good old Boston town, and piracy at Honduras. No one
stood higher in the trade than he, and no one mounted to more lofty
altitudes of bloodthirsty and unscrupulous wickedness. 'Tis strange
that so little has been written and sung of this man of might, for he
was as worthy of story and of song as was Blackbeard.
It was under a Yankee captain that he made his first cruise--down to
Honduras, for a cargo of logwood, which in those times was no better
than stolen from the Spanish folk.
One day, lying off the shore, in the Gulf of Honduras, comes Master
Low and the crew of the whaleboat rowing across from the beach, where
they had been all morning chopping logwood.
"What are you after?" says the captain, for they were coming back with
nothing but themselves in the boat.
"We're after our dinner," says Low, as spokesman of the party.
"You'll have no dinner," says the captain, "until you fetch off
another load."
"Dinner or no dinner, we'll pay for it," says Low, wherewith he up
with a musket, squinted along the barrel, and pulled the trigger.
Luckily the gun hung fire, and the Yankee captain was spared to steal
logwood a while longer.
All the same, that was no place for Ned Low to make a longer stay, so
off he and his messmates rowed in a whaleboat, captured a brig out at
sea, and turned pirates.
He presently fell in with the notorious Captain Lowther, a fellow
after his own kidney, who put the finishing touches to his education
and taught him what wickedness he did not already know.
And so he became a master pirate, and a famous hand at his craft, and
thereafter forever bore an inveterate hatred of all Yankees because of
the dinner he had lost, and never failed to smite whatever one of them
luck put within his reach. Once he fell in with a ship off South
Carolina--the _Amsterdam Merchant_, Captain Williamson, commander--a
Yankee craft and a Yankee master. He slit the nose and cropped the
ears of the captain, and then sailed merrily away, feeling the better
for having marred a Yankee.
New York and New England had more than one visit from the doughty
captain, each of which visits they had good cause to remember, for he
made them smart for it.
Along in the year 1722 thirteen vessels were riding at anchor in front
of the good town of Marblehead. Into the harbor sailed a strange
craft. "Who is she?" say the townsfolk, for the coming of a new vessel
was no small matter in those days.
Who the strangers were was not long a matter of doubt. Up goes the
black flag, and the skull and crossbones to the fore.
"'Tis the bloody Low," say one and all; and straightway all was
flutter and commotion, as in a duck pond when a hawk pitches and
strikes in the midst.
It was a glorious thing for our captain, for here were thirteen Yankee
crafts at one and the same time. So he took what he wanted, and then
sailed away, and it was many a day before Marblehead forgot that
visit.
Some time after this he and his consort fell foul of an English sloop
of war, the _Greyhound_, whereby they were so roughly handled that Low
was glad enough to slip away, leaving his consort and her crew behind
him, as a sop to the powers of law and order. And lucky for them if no
worse fate awaited them than to walk the dreadful plank with a bandage
around the blinded eyes and a rope around the elbows. So the consort
was taken, and the crew tried and hanged in chains, and Low sailed off
in as pretty a bit of rage as ever a pirate fell into.
The end of this worthy is lost in the fogs of the past: some say that
he died of a yellow fever down in New Orleans; it was not at the end
of a hempen cord, more's the pity.
Here fittingly with our strictly American pirates should stand Major
Stede Bonnet along with the rest. But in truth he was only a poor
half-and-half fellow of his kind, and even after his hand was fairly
turned to the business he had undertaken, a qualm of conscience would
now and then come across him, and he would make vast promises to
forswear his evil courses.
However, he jogged along in his course of piracy snugly enough until
he fell foul of the gallant Colonel Rhett, off Charleston Harbor,
whereupon his luck and his courage both were suddenly snuffed out with
a puff of powder smoke and a good rattling broadside. Down came the
"Black Roger" with its skull and crossbones from the fore, and Colonel
Rhett had the glory of fetching back as pretty a cargo of scoundrels
and cutthroats as the town ever saw.
After the next assizes they were strung up, all in a row--evil apples
ready for the roasting.
"Ned" England was a fellow of different blood--only he snapped his
whip across the back of society over in the East Indies and along the
hot shores of Hindustan.
The name of Capt. Howel Davis stands high among his fellows. He was
the Ulysses of pirates, the beloved not only of Mercury, but of
Minerva.
He it was who hoodwinked the captain of a French ship of double the
size and strength of his own, and fairly cheated him into the
surrender of his craft without the firing of a single pistol or the
striking of a single blow; he it was who sailed boldly into the port
of Gambia, on the coast of Guinea, and under the guns of the castle,
proclaiming himself as a merchant trading for slaves.
The cheat was kept up until the fruit of mischief was ripe for the
picking; then, when the governor and the guards of the castle were
lulled into entire security, and when Davis's band was scattered about
wherever each man could do the most good, it was out pistol, up
cutlass, and death if a finger moved. They tied the soldiers back to
back, and the governor to his own armchair, and then rifled wherever
it pleased them. After that they sailed away, and though they had not
made the fortune they had hoped to glean, it was a good snug round sum
that they shared among them.
[Illustration: Walking the Plank
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September, 1887_]
Their courage growing high with success, they determined to attempt
the island of Del Principe--a prosperous Portuguese settlement on the
coast. The plan for taking the place was cleverly laid, and would have
succeeded, only that a Portuguese negro among the pirate crew turned
traitor and carried the news ashore to the governor of the fort.
Accordingly, the next day, when Captain Davis came ashore, he found
there a good strong guard drawn up as though to honor his coming. But
after he and those with him were fairly out of their boat, and well
away from the water side, there was a sudden rattle of musketry, a
cloud of smoke, and a dull groan or two. Only one man ran out from
under that pungent cloud, jumped into the boat, and rowed away; and
when it lifted, there lay Captain Davis and his companions all of a
heap, like a pile of old clothes.
Capt. Bartholomew Roberts was the particular and especial pupil of
Davis, and when that worthy met his death so suddenly and so
unexpectedly in the unfortunate manner above narrated, he was chosen
unanimously as the captain of the fleet, and he was a worthy pupil of
a worthy master. Many were the poor fluttering merchant ducks that
this sea hawk swooped upon and struck; and cleanly and cleverly were
they plucked before his savage clutch loosened its hold upon them.
"He made a gallant figure," says the old narrator, "being dressed in a
rich crimson waistcoat and breeches and red feather in his hat, a gold
chain around his neck, with a diamond cross hanging to it, a sword in
his hand, and two pair of pistols hanging at the end of a silk sling
flung over his shoulders according to the fashion of the pyrates."
Thus he appeared in the last engagement which he fought--that with the
_Swallow_--a royal sloop of war. A gallant fight they made of it,
those bulldog pirates, for, finding themselves caught in a trap
betwixt the man-of-war and the shore, they determined to bear down
upon the king's vessel, fire a slapping broadside into her, and then
try to get away, trusting to luck in the doing, and hoping that their
enemy might be crippled by their fire.
Captain Roberts himself was the first to fall at the return fire of
the _Swallow_; a grapeshot struck him in the neck, and he fell forward
across the gun near to which he was standing at the time. A certain
fellow named Stevenson, who was at the helm, saw him fall, and
thought he was wounded. At the lifting of the arm the body rolled over
upon the deck, and the man saw that the captain was dead. "Whereupon,"
says the old history, "he" [Stevenson] "gushed into tears, and wished
that the next shot might be his portion." After their captain's death
the pirate crew had no stomach for more fighting; the "Black Roger"
was struck, and one and all surrendered to justice and the gallows.
* * * * *
Such is a brief and bald account of the most famous of these pirates.
But they are only a few of a long list of notables, such as Captain
Martel, Capt. Charles Vane (who led the gallant Colonel Rhett, of
South Carolina, such a wild-goose chase in and out among the sluggish
creeks and inlets along the coast), Capt. John Rackam, and Captain
Anstis, Captain Worley, and Evans, and Philips, and others--a score or
more of wild fellows whose very names made ship captains tremble in
their shoes in those good old times.
And such is that black chapter of history of the past--an evil
chapter, lurid with cruelty and suffering, stained with blood and
smoke. Yet it is a written chapter, and it must be read. He who
chooses may read betwixt the lines of history this great truth: Evil
itself is an instrument toward the shaping of good. Therefore the
history of evil as well as the history of good should be read,
considered, and digested.
Chapter II
THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND
[Illustration]
It is not so easy to tell why discredit should be cast upon a man
because of something that his grandfather may have done amiss, but the
world, which is never overnice in its discrimination as to where to
lay the blame, is often pleased to make the innocent suffer in the
place of the guilty.
Barnaby True was a good, honest, biddable lad, as boys go, but yet he
was not ever allowed altogether to forget that his grandfather had
been that very famous pirate, Capt. William Brand, who, after so many
marvelous adventures (if one may believe the catchpenny stories and
ballads that were written about him), was murdered in Jamaica by Capt.
John Malyoe, the commander of his own consort, the _Adventure_ galley.
It has never been denied, that ever I heard, that up to the time of
Captain Brand's being commissioned against the South Sea pirates he
had always been esteemed as honest, reputable a sea captain as could
be.
When he started out upon that adventure it was with a ship, the
_Royal Sovereign_, fitted out by some of the most decent merchants of
New York. The governor himself had subscribed to the adventure, and
had himself signed Captain Brand's commission. So, if the unfortunate
man went astray, he must have had great temptation to do so, many
others behaving no better when the opportunity offered in those
far-away seas where so many rich purchases might very easily be taken
and no one the wiser.
To be sure, those stories and ballads made our captain to be a most
wicked, profane wretch; and if he were, why, God knows he suffered and
paid for it, for he laid his bones in Jamaica, and never saw his home
or his wife and daughter again after he had sailed away on the _Royal
Sovereign_ on that long misfortunate voyage, leaving them in New York
to the care of strangers.
At the time when he met his fate in Port Royal Harbor he had obtained
two vessels under his command--the _Royal Sovereign_, which was the
boat fitted out for him in New York, and the _Adventure_ galley, which
he was said to have taken somewhere in the South Seas. With these he
lay in those waters of Jamaica for over a month after his return from
the coasts of Africa, waiting for news from home, which, when it came,
was of the very blackest; for the colonial authorities were at that
time stirred up very hot against him to take him and hang him for a
pirate, so as to clear their own skirts for having to do with such a
fellow. So maybe it seemed better to our captain to hide his
ill-gotten treasure there in those far-away parts, and afterward to
try and bargain with it for his life when he should reach New York,
rather than to sail straight for the Americas with what he had earned
by his piracies, and so risk losing life and money both.
[Illustration: "Captain Malyoe Shot Captain Brand Through the Head"
_Illustration from_
THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S WEEKLY, _December 19, 1896_]
However that might be, the story was that Captain Brand and his
gunner, and Captain Malyoe of the _Adventure_ and the sailing master
of the _Adventure_ all went ashore together with a chest of money (no
one of them choosing to trust the other three in so nice an affair),
and buried the treasure somewhere on the beach of Port Royal
Harbor. The story then has it that they fell a-quarreling about a
future division of the money, and that, as a wind-up to the affair,
Captain Malyoe shot Captain Brand through the head, while the sailing
master of the _Adventure_ served the gunner of the _Royal Sovereign_
after the same fashion through the body, and that the murderers then
went away, leaving the two stretched out in their own blood on the
sand in the staring sun, with no one to know where the money was hid
but they two who had served their comrades so.
It is a mighty great pity that anyone should have a grandfather who
ended his days in such a sort as this, but it was no fault of Barnaby
True's, nor could he have done anything to prevent it, seeing that he
was not even born into the world at the time that his grandfather
turned pirate, and was only one year old when he so met his tragical
end. Nevertheless, the boys with whom he went to school never tired of
calling him "Pirate," and would sometimes sing for his benefit that
famous catchpenny song beginning thus:
Oh, my name was Captain Brand,
A-sailing,
And a-sailing;
Oh, my name was Captain Brand,
A-sailing free.
Oh, my name was Captain Brand,
And I sinned by sea and land,
For I broke God's just command,
A-sailing free.
'Twas a vile thing to sing at the grandson of so misfortunate a man,
and oftentimes little Barnaby True would double up his fists and would
fight his tormentors at great odds, and would sometimes go back home
with a bloody nose to have his poor mother cry over him and grieve for
him.
Not that his days were all of teasing and torment, neither; for if his
comrades did treat him so, why, then, there were other times when he
and they were as great friends as could be, and would go in swimming
together where there was a bit of sandy strand along the East River
above Fort George, and that in the most amicable fashion. Or, maybe
the very next day after he had fought so with his fellows, he would go
a-rambling with them up the Bowerie Road, perhaps to help them steal
cherries from some old Dutch farmer, forgetting in such adventure what
a thief his own grandfather had been.
Well, when Barnaby True was between sixteen and seventeen years old he
was taken into employment in the countinghouse of Mr. Roger Hartright,
the well-known West India merchant, and Barnaby's own stepfather.
It was the kindness of this good man that not only found a place for
Barnaby in the countinghouse, but advanced him so fast that against
our hero was twenty-one years old he had made four voyages as
supercargo to the West Indies in Mr. Hartright's ship, the _Belle
Helen_, and soon after he was twenty-one undertook a fifth. Nor was it
in any such subordinate position as mere supercargo that he acted, but
rather as the confidential agent of Mr. Hartright, who, having no
children of his own, was very jealous to advance our hero into a
position of trust and responsibility in the countinghouse, as though
he were indeed a son, so that even the captain of the ship had
scarcely more consideration aboard than he, young as he was in years.
As for the agents and correspondents of Mr. Hartright throughout these
parts, they also, knowing how the good man had adopted his interests,
were very polite and obliging to Master Barnaby--especially, be it
mentioned, Mr. Ambrose Greenfield, of Kingston, Jamaica, who, upon the
occasions of his visits to those parts, did all that he could to make
Barnaby's stay in that town agreeable and pleasant to him.
So much for the history of our hero to the time of the beginning of
this story, without which you shall hardly be able to understand the
purport of those most extraordinary adventures that befell him shortly
after he came of age, nor the logic of their consequence after they
had occurred.
For it was during his fifth voyage to the West Indies that the first
of those extraordinary adventures happened of which I shall have
presently to tell.
At that time he had been in Kingston for the best part of four weeks,
lodging at the house of a very decent, respectable widow, by name Mrs.
Anne Bolles, who, with three pleasant and agreeable daughters, kept a
very clean and well-served lodging house in the outskirts of the town.
One morning, as our hero sat sipping his coffee, clad only in loose
cotton drawers, a shirt, and a jacket, and with slippers upon his
feet, as is the custom in that country, where everyone endeavors to
keep as cool as may be--while he sat thus sipping his coffee Miss
Eliza, the youngest of the three daughters, came and gave him a note,
which, she said, a stranger had just handed in at the door, going away
again without waiting for a reply. You may judge of Barnaby's surprise
when he opened the note and read as follows:
MR. BARNABY TRUE.
SIR,--Though you don't know me, I know you, and I tell you
this: if you will be at Pratt's Ordinary on Harbor Street on
Friday next at eight o'clock of the evening, and will
accompany the man who shall say to you, "The _Royal
Sovereign_ is come in," you shall learn something the most
to your advantage that ever befell you. Sir, keep this note,
and show it to him who shall address these words to you, so
to certify that you are the man he seeks.
Such was the wording of the note, which was without address, and
without any superscription whatever.
The first emotion that stirred Barnaby was one of extreme and profound
amazement. Then the thought came into his mind that some witty fellow,
of whom he knew a good many in that town--and wild, waggish pranks
they were--was attempting to play off some smart jest upon him. But
all that Miss Eliza could tell him when he questioned her concerning
the messenger was that the bearer of the note was a tall, stout man,
with a red neckerchief around his neck and copper buckles to his
shoes, and that he had the appearance of a sailorman, having a great
big queue hanging down his back. But, Lord! what was such a
description as that in a busy seaport town, full of scores of men to
fit such a likeness? Accordingly, our hero put away the note into his
wallet, determining to show it to his good friend Mr. Greenfield that
evening, and to ask his advice upon it. So he did show it, and that
gentleman's opinion was the same as his--that some wag was minded to
play off a hoax upon him, and that the matter of the letter was all
nothing but smoke.
Nevertheless, though Barnaby was thus confirmed in his opinion as to
the nature of the communication he had received, he yet determined in
his own mind that he would see the business through to the end, and
would be at Pratt's Ordinary, as the note demanded, upon the day and
at the time specified therein.
Pratt's Ordinary was at that time a very fine and well-known place of
its sort, with good tobacco and the best rum that ever I tasted, and
had a garden behind it that, sloping down to the harbor front, was
planted pretty thick with palms and ferns grouped into clusters with
flowers and plants. Here were a number of little tables, some in
little grottoes, like our Vauxhall in New York, and with red and blue
and white paper lanterns hung among the foliage, whither gentlemen and
ladies used sometimes to go of an evening to sit and drink lime juice
and sugar and water (and sometimes a taste of something stronger), and
to look out across the water at the shipping in the cool of the night.
Thither, accordingly, our hero went, a little before the time
appointed in the note, and passing directly through the Ordinary and
the garden beyond, chose a table at the lower end of the garden and
close to the water's edge, where he would not be easily seen by
anyone coming into the place. Then, ordering some rum and water and a
pipe of tobacco, he composed himself to watch for the appearance of
those witty fellows whom he suspected would presently come thither to
see the end of their prank and to enjoy his confusion.
The spot was pleasant enough; for the land breeze, blowing strong and
full, set the leaves of the palm tree above his head to rattling and
clattering continually against the sky, where, the moon then being
about full, they shone every now and then like blades of steel. The
waves also were splashing up against the little landing place at the
foot of the garden, sounding very cool in the night, and sparkling all
over the harbor where the moon caught the edges of the water. A great
many vessels were lying at anchor in their ridings, with the dark,
prodigious form of a man-of-war looming up above them in the
moonlight.
There our hero sat for the best part of an hour, smoking his pipe of
tobacco and sipping his grog, and seeing not so much as a single thing
that might concern the note he had received.
It was not far from half an hour after the time appointed in the note,
when a rowboat came suddenly out of the night and pulled up to the
landing place at the foot of the garden above mentioned, and three or
four men came ashore in the darkness. Without saying a word among
themselves they chose a near-by table and, sitting down, ordered rum
and water, and began drinking their grog in silence. They might have
sat there about five minutes, when, by and by, Barnaby True became
aware that they were observing him very curiously; and then almost
immediately one, who was plainly the leader of the party, called out
to him:
"How now, messmate! Won't you come and drink a dram of rum with us?"
"Why, no," says Barnaby, answering very civilly; "I have drunk enough
already, and more would only heat my blood."
"All the same," quoth the stranger, "I think you will come and drink
with us; for, unless I am mistook, you are Mr. Barnaby True, and I am
come here to tell you that the _Royal Sovereign is come in_."
Now I may honestly say that Barnaby True was never more struck aback
in all his life than he was at hearing these words uttered in so
unexpected a manner. He had been looking to hear them under such
different circumstances that, now that his ears heard them addressed
to him, and that so seriously, by a perfect stranger, who, with
others, had thus mysteriously come ashore out of the darkness, he
could scarce believe that his ears heard aright. His heart suddenly
began beating at a tremendous rate, and had he been an older and wiser
man, I do believe he would have declined the adventure, instead of
leaping blindly, as he did, into that of which he could see neither
the beginning nor the ending. But being barely one-and-twenty years of
age, and having an adventurous disposition that would have carried him
into almost anything that possessed a smack of uncertainty or danger
about it, he contrived to say, in a pretty easy tone (though God knows
how it was put on for the occasion):
"Well, then, if that be so, and if the _Royal Sovereign_ is indeed
come in, why, I'll join you, since you are so kind as to ask me." And
therewith he went across to the other table, carrying his pipe with
him, and sat down and began smoking, with all the appearance of ease
he could assume upon the occasion.
"Well, Mr. Barnaby True," said the man who had before addressed him,
so soon as Barnaby had settled himself, speaking in a low tone of
voice, so there would be no danger of any others hearing the
words--"Well, Mr. Barnaby True--for I shall call you by your name, to
show you that though I know you, you don't know me--I am glad to see
that you are man enough to enter thus into an affair, though you can't
see to the bottom of it. For it shows me that you are a man of mettle,
and are deserving of the fortune that is to befall you to-night.
Nevertheless, first of all, I am bid to say that you must show me a
piece of paper that you have about you before we go a step farther."
"Very well," said Barnaby; "I have it here safe and sound, and see it
you shall." And thereupon and without more ado he fetched out his
wallet, opened it, and handed his interlocutor the mysterious note he
had received the day or two before. Whereupon the other, drawing to
him the candle, burning there for the convenience of those who would
smoke tobacco, began immediately reading it.
This gave Barnaby True a moment or two to look at him. He was a tall,
stout man, with a red handkerchief tied around his neck, and with
copper buckles on his shoes, so that Barnaby True could not but wonder
whether he was not the very same man who had given the note to Miss
Eliza Bolles at the door of his lodging house.
"'Tis all right and straight as it should be," the other said, after
he had so glanced his eyes over the note. "And now that the paper is
read" (suiting his action to his words), "I'll just burn it, for
safety's sake."
And so he did, twisting it up and setting it to the flame of the
candle.
"And now," he said, continuing his address, "I'll tell you what I am
here for. I was sent to ask you if you're man enough to take your life
in your own hands and to go with me in that boat down there? Say
'Yes,' and we'll start away without wasting more time, for the devil
is ashore here at Jamaica--though you don't know what that means--and
if he gets ahead of us, why, then we may whistle for what we are
after. Say 'No,' and I go away again, and I promise you you shall
never be troubled again in this sort. So now speak up plain, young
gentleman, and tell us what is your mind in this business, and whether
you will adventure any farther or not."
If our hero hesitated it was not for long. I cannot say that his
courage did not waver for a moment; but if it did, it was, I say, not
for long, and when he spoke up it was with a voice as steady as could
be.
"To be sure I'm man enough to go with you," he said; "and if you mean
me any harm I can look out for myself; and if I can't, why, here is
something can look out for me," and therewith he lifted up the flap of
his coat pocket and showed the butt of a pistol he had fetched with
him when he had set out from his lodging house that evening.
At this the other burst out a-laughing. "Come," says he, "you are
indeed of right mettle, and I like your spirit. All the same, no one
in all the world means you less ill than I, and so, if you have to use
that barker, 'twill not be upon us who are your friends, but only upon
one who is more wicked than the devil himself. So come, and let us get
away."
Thereupon he and the others, who had not spoken a single word for all
this time, rose from the table, and he having paid the scores of all,
they all went down together to the boat that still lay at the landing
place at the bottom of the garden.
Thus coming to it, our hero could see that it was a large yawl boat
manned with half a score of black men for rowers, and there were two
lanterns in the stern sheets, and three or four iron shovels.
The man who had conducted the conversation with Barnaby True for all
this time, and who was, as has been said, plainly the captain of the
party, stepped immediately down into the boat; our hero followed, and
the others followed after him; and instantly they were seated the boat
was shoved off and the black men began pulling straight out into the
harbor, and so, at some distance away, around under the stern of the
man-of-war.
Not a word was spoken after they had thus left the shore, and
presently they might all have been ghosts, for the silence of the
party. Barnaby True was too full of his own thoughts to talk--and
serious enough thoughts they were by this time, with crimps to trepan
a man at every turn, and press gangs to carry a man off so that he
might never be heard of again. As for the others, they did not seem to
choose to say anything now that they had him fairly embarked upon
their enterprise.
And so the crew pulled on in perfect silence for the best part of an
hour, the leader of the expedition directing the course of the boat
straight across the harbor, as though toward the mouth of the Rio
Cobra River. Indeed, this was their destination, as Barnaby could
after a while see, by the low point of land with a great long row of
coconut palms upon it (the appearance of which he knew very well),
which by and by began to loom up out of the milky dimness of the
moonlight. As they approached the river they found the tide was
running strong out of it, so that some distance away from the stream
it gurgled and rippled alongside the boat as the crew of black men
pulled strongly against it. Thus they came up under what was either a
point of land or an islet covered with a thick growth of mangrove
trees. But still no one spoke a single word as to their destination,
or what was the business they had in hand.
The night, now that they were close to the shore, was loud with the
noise of running tide-water, and the air was heavy with the smell of
mud and marsh, and over all the whiteness of the moonlight, with a few
stars pricking out here and there in the sky; and all so strange and
silent and mysterious that Barnaby could not divest himself of the
feeling that it was all a dream.
So, the rowers bending to the oars, the boat came slowly around from
under the clump of mangrove bushes and out into the open water again.
Instantly it did so the leader of the expedition called out in a sharp
voice, and the black men instantly lay on their oars.
Almost at the same instant Barnaby True became aware that there was
another boat coming down the river toward where they lay, now drifting
with the strong tide out into the harbor again, and he knew that it
was because of the approach of that boat that the other had called
upon his men to cease rowing.
The other boat, as well as he could see in the distance, was full of
men, some of whom appeared to be armed, for even in the dusk of the
darkness the shine of the moonlight glimmered sharply now and then on
the barrels of muskets or pistols, and in the silence that followed
after their own rowing had ceased Barnaby True could hear the chug!
chug! of the oars sounding louder and louder through the watery
stillness of the night as the boat drew nearer and nearer. But he knew
nothing of what it all meant, nor whether these others were friends or
enemies, or what was to happen next.
The oarsmen of the approaching boat did not for a moment cease their
rowing, not till they had come pretty close to Barnaby and his
companions. Then a man who sat in the stern ordered them to cease
rowing, and as they lay on their oars he stood up. As they passed by,
Barnaby True could see him very plain, the moonlight shining full upon
him--a large, stout gentleman with a round red face, and clad in a
fine laced coat of red cloth. Amidship of the boat was a box or chest
about the bigness of a middle-sized traveling trunk, but covered all
over with cakes of sand and dirt. In the act of passing, the
gentleman, still standing, pointed at it with an elegant gold-headed
cane which he held in his hand. "Are you come after this, Abraham
Dawling?" says he, and thereat his countenance broke into as evil,
malignant a grin as ever Barnaby True saw in all of his life.
The other did not immediately reply so much as a single word, but sat
as still as any stone. Then, at last, the other boat having gone by,
he suddenly appeared to regain his wits, for he bawled out after it,
"Very well, Jack Malyoe! Very well, Jack Malyoe! you've got ahead of
us this time again, but next time is the third, and then it shall be
our turn, even if William Brand must come back from hell to settle
with you."
This he shouted out as the other boat passed farther and farther
away, but to it my fine gentleman made no reply except to burst out
into a great roaring fit of laughter.
There was another man among the armed men in the stern of the passing
boat--a villainous, lean man with lantern jaws, and the top of his
head as bald as the palm of my hand. As the boat went away into the
night with the tide and the headway the oars had given it, he grinned
so that the moonlight shone white on his big teeth. Then, flourishing
a great big pistol, he said, and Barnaby could hear every word he
spoke, "Do but give me the word, Your Honor, and I'll put another
bullet through the son of a sea cook."
But the gentleman said some words to forbid him, and therewith the
boat was gone away into the night, and presently Barnaby could hear
that the men at the oars had begun rowing again, leaving them lying
there, without a single word being said for a long time.
By and by one of those in Barnaby's boat spoke up. "Where shall you go
now?" he said.
At this the leader of the expedition appeared suddenly to come back to
himself, and to find his voice again. "Go?" he roared out. "Go to the
devil! Go? Go where you choose! Go? Go back again--that's where we'll
go!" and therewith he fell a-cursing and swearing until he foamed at
the lips, as though he had gone clean crazy, while the black men began
rowing back again across the harbor as fast as ever they could lay
oars into the water.
They put Barnaby True ashore below the old custom house; but so
bewildered and shaken was he by all that had happened, and by what he
had seen, and by the names that he heard spoken, that he was scarcely
conscious of any of the familiar things among which he found himself
thus standing. And so he walked up the moonlit street toward his
lodging like one drunk or bewildered; for "John Malyoe" was the name
of the captain of the _Adventure_ galley--he who had shot Barnaby's
own grandfather--and "Abraham Dawling" was the name of the gunner of
the _Royal Sovereign_ who had been shot at the same time with the
pirate captain, and who, with him, had been left stretched out in the
staring sun by the murderers.
The whole business had occupied hardly two hours, but it was as though
that time was no part of Barnaby's life, but all a part of some other
life, so dark and strange and mysterious that it in no wise belonged
to him.
As for that box covered all over with mud, he could only guess at that
time what it contained and what the finding of it signified.
But of this our hero said nothing to anyone, nor did he tell a single
living soul what he had seen that night, but nursed it in his own
mind, where it lay so big for a while that he could think of little or
nothing else for days after.
Mr. Greenfield, Mr. Hartright's correspondent and agent in these
parts, lived in a fine brick house just out of the town, on the Mona
Road, his family consisting of a wife and two daughters--brisk, lively
young ladies with black hair and eyes, and very fine bright teeth that
shone whenever they laughed, and with a plenty to say for themselves.
Thither Barnaby True was often asked to a family dinner; and, indeed,
it was a pleasant home to visit, and to sit upon the veranda and smoke
a cigarro with the good old gentleman and look out toward the
mountains, while the young ladies laughed and talked, or played upon
the guitar and sang. And oftentimes so it was strongly upon Barnaby's
mind to speak to the good gentleman and tell him what he had beheld
that night out in the harbor; but always he would think better of it
and hold his peace, falling to thinking, and smoking away upon his
cigarro at a great rate.
A day or two before the _Belle Helen_ sailed from Kingston Mr.
Greenfield stopped Barnaby True as he was going through the office to
bid him to come to dinner that night (for there within the tropics
they breakfast at eleven o'clock and take dinner in the cool of the
evening, because of the heat, and not at midday, as we do in more
temperate latitudes). "I would have you meet," says Mr. Greenfield,
"your chief passenger for New York, and his granddaughter, for whom
the state cabin and the two staterooms are to be fitted as here
ordered [showing a letter]--Sir John Malyoe and Miss Marjorie Malyoe.
Did you ever hear tell of Capt. Jack Malyoe, Master Barnaby?"
Now I do believe that Mr. Greenfield had no notion at all that old
Captain Brand was Barnaby True's own grandfather and Capt. John Malyoe
his murderer, but when he so thrust at him the name of that man, what
with that in itself and the late adventure through which he himself
had just passed, and with his brooding upon it until it was so
prodigiously big in his mind, it was like hitting him a blow to so
fling the questions at him. Nevertheless, he was able to reply, with a
pretty straight face, that he had heard of Captain Malyoe and who he
was.
"Well," says Mr. Greenfield, "if Jack Malyoe was a desperate pirate
and a wild, reckless blade twenty years ago, why, he is Sir John
Malyoe now and the owner of a fine estate in Devonshire. Well, Master
Barnaby, when one is a baronet and come into the inheritance of a fine
estate (though I do hear it is vastly cumbered with debts), the world
will wink its eye to much that he may have done twenty years ago. I do
hear say, though, that his own kin still turn the cold shoulder to
him."
To this address Barnaby answered nothing, but sat smoking away at his
cigarro at a great rate.
And so that night Barnaby True came face to face for the first time
with the man who murdered his own grandfather--the greatest beast of a
man that ever he met in all of his life.
That time in the harbor he had seen Sir John Malyoe at a distance and
in the darkness; now that he beheld him near by it seemed to him that
he had never looked at a more evil face in all his life. Not that the
man was altogether ugly, for he had a good nose and a fine double
chin; but his eyes stood out like balls and were red and watery, and
he winked them continually, as though they were always smarting; and
his lips were thick and purple-red, and his fat, red cheeks were
mottled here and there with little clots of purple veins; and when he
spoke his voice rattled so in his throat that it made one wish to
clear one's own throat to listen to him. So, what with a pair of fat,
white hands, and that hoarse voice, and his swollen face, and his
thick lips sticking out, it seemed to Barnaby True he had never seen a
countenance so distasteful to him as that one into which he then
looked.
But if Sir John Malyoe was so displeasing to our hero's taste, why,
the granddaughter, even this first time he beheld her, seemed to him
to be the most beautiful, lovely young lady that ever he saw. She had
a thin, fair skin, red lips, and yellow hair--though it was then
powdered pretty white for the occasion--and the bluest eyes that
Barnaby beheld in all of his life. A sweet, timid creature, who seemed
not to dare so much as to speak a word for herself without looking to
Sir John for leave to do so, and would shrink and shudder whenever he
would speak of a sudden to her or direct a sudden glance upon her.
When she did speak, it was in so low a voice that one had to bend his
head to hear her, and even if she smiled would catch herself and look
up as though to see if she had leave to be cheerful.
As for Sir John, he sat at dinner like a pig, and gobbled and ate and
drank, smacking his lips all the while, but with hardly a word to
either her or Mrs. Greenfield or to Barnaby True; but with a sour,
sullen air, as though he would say, "Your damned victuals and drink
are no better than they should be, but I must eat 'em or nothing." A
great bloated beast of a man!
Only after dinner was over and the young lady and the two misses sat
off in a corner together did Barnaby hear her talk with any ease.
Then, to be sure, her tongue became loose, and she prattled away at a
great rate, though hardly above her breath, until of a sudden her
grandfather called out, in his hoarse, rattling voice, that it was
time to go. Whereupon she stopped short in what she was saying and
jumped up from her chair, looking as frightened as though she had been
caught in something amiss, and was to be punished for it.
Barnaby True and Mr. Greenfield both went out to see the two into
their coach, where Sir John's man stood holding the lantern. And who
should he be, to be sure, but that same lean villain with bald head
who had offered to shoot the leader of our hero's expedition out on
the harbor that night! For, one of the circles of light from the
lantern shining up into his face, Barnaby True knew him the moment he
clapped eyes upon him. Though he could not have recognized our hero,
he grinned at him in the most impudent, familiar fashion, and never so
much as touched his hat either to him or to Mr. Greenfield; but as
soon as his master and his young mistress had entered the coach,
banged to the door and scrambled up on the seat alongside the driver,
and so away without a word, but with another impudent grin, this time
favoring both Barnaby and the old gentleman.
Such were these two, master and man, and what Barnaby saw of them then
was only confirmed by further observation--the most hateful couple he
ever knew; though, God knows, what they afterward suffered should wipe
out all complaint against them.
The next day Sir John Malyoe's belongings began to come aboard the
_Belle Helen_, and in the afternoon that same lean, villainous
manservant comes skipping across the gangplank as nimble as a goat,
with two black men behind him lugging a great sea chest. "What!" he
cried out, "and so you is the supercargo, is you? Why, I thought you
was more account when I saw you last night a-sitting talking with His
Honor like his equal. Well, no matter; 'tis something to have a brisk,
genteel young fellow for a supercargo. So come, my hearty, lend a
hand, will you, and help me set His Honor's cabin to rights."
What a speech was this to endure from such a fellow, to be sure! and
Barnaby so high in his own esteem, and holding himself a gentleman!
Well, what with his distaste for the villain, and what with such
odious familiarity, you can guess into what temper so impudent an
address must have cast him. "You'll find the steward in yonder," he
said, "and he'll show you the cabin," and therewith turned and walked
away with prodigious dignity, leaving the other standing where he was.
As he entered his own cabin he could not but see, out of the tail of
his eye, that the fellow was still standing where he had left him,
regarding him with a most evil, malevolent countenance, so that he had
the satisfaction of knowing that he had made one enemy during that
voyage who was not very likely to forgive or forget what he must
regard as a slight put upon him.
The next day Sir John Malyoe himself came aboard, accompanied by his
granddaughter, and followed by this man, and he followed again by four
black men, who carried among them two trunks, not large in size, but
prodigious heavy in weight, and toward which Sir John and his follower
devoted the utmost solicitude and care to see that they were properly
carried into the state cabin he was to occupy. Barnaby True was
standing in the great cabin as they passed close by him; but though
Sir John Malyoe looked hard at him and straight in the face, he never
so much as spoke a single word, or showed by a look or a sign that he
knew who our hero was. At this the serving man, who saw it all with
eyes as quick as a cat's, fell to grinning and chuckling to see
Barnaby in his turn so slighted.
The young lady, who also saw it all, flushed up red, then in the
instant of passing looked straight at our hero, and bowed and smiled
at him with a most sweet and gracious affability, then the next moment
recovering herself, as though mightily frightened at what she had
done.
The same day the _Belle Helen_ sailed, with as beautiful, sweet
weather as ever a body could wish for.
There were only two other passengers aboard, the Rev. Simon Styles,
the master of a flourishing academy in Spanish Town, and his wife, a
good, worthy old couple, but very quiet, and would sit in the great
cabin by the hour together reading, so that, what with Sir John Malyoe
staying all the time in his own cabin with those two trunks he held so
precious, it fell upon Barnaby True in great part to show attention to
the young lady; and glad enough he was of the opportunity, as anyone
may guess. For when you consider a brisk, lively young man of
one-and-twenty and a sweet, beautiful miss of seventeen so thrown
together day after day for two weeks, the weather being very fair, as
I have said, and the ship tossing and bowling along before a fine
humming breeze that sent white caps all over the sea, and with nothing
to do but sit and look at that blue sea and the bright sky overhead,
it is not hard to suppose what was to befall, and what pleasure it was
to Barnaby True to show attention to her.
But, oh! those days when a man is young, and, whether wisely or no,
fallen in love! How often during that voyage did our hero lie awake in
his berth at night, tossing this way and that without sleep--not that
he wanted to sleep if he could, but would rather lie so awake thinking
about her and staring into the darkness!
Poor fool! He might have known that the end must come to such a fool's
paradise before very long. For who was he to look up to Sir John
Malyoe's granddaughter, he, the supercargo of a merchant ship, and she
the granddaughter of a baronet.
Nevertheless, things went along very smooth and pleasant, until one
evening, when all came of a sudden to an end. At that time he and the
young lady had been standing for a long while together, leaning over
the rail and looking out across the water through the dusk toward the
westward, where the sky was still of a lingering brightness. She had
been mightily quiet and dull all that evening, but now of a sudden she
began, without any preface whatever, to tell Barnaby about herself and
her affairs. She said that she and her grandfather were going to New
York that they might take passage thence to Boston town, there to meet
her cousin Captain Malyoe, who was stationed in garrison at that
place. Then she went on to say that Captain Malyoe was the next heir
to the Devonshire estate, and that she and he were to be married in
the fall.
But, poor Barnaby! what a fool was he, to be sure! Methinks when she
first began to speak about Captain Malyoe he knew what was coming. But
now that she had told him, he could say nothing, but stood there
staring across the ocean, his breath coming hot and dry as ashes in
his throat. She, poor thing, went on to say, in a very low voice, that
she had liked him from the very first moment she had seen him, and had
been very happy for these days, and would always think of him as a
dear friend who had been very kind to her, who had so little pleasure
in life, and so would always remember him.
Then they were both silent, until at last Barnaby made shift to say,
though in a hoarse and croaking voice, that Captain Malyoe must be a
very happy man, and that if he were in Captain Malyoe's place he would
be the happiest man in the world. Thus, having spoken, and so found
his tongue, he went on to tell her, with his head all in a whirl, that
he, too, loved her, and that what she had told him struck him to the
heart, and made him the most miserable, unhappy wretch in the whole
world.
She was not angry at what he said, nor did she turn to look at him,
but only said, in a low voice, he should not talk so, for that it
could only be a pain to them both to speak of such things, and that
whether she would or no, she must do everything as her grandfather
bade her, for that he was indeed a terrible man.
To this poor Barnaby could only repeat that he loved her with all his
heart, that he had hoped for nothing in his love, but that he was now
the most miserable man in the world.
It was at this moment, so tragic for him, that some one who had been
hiding nigh them all the while suddenly moved away, and Barnaby True
could see in the gathering darkness that it was that villain
manservant of Sir John Malyoe's and knew that he must have overheard
all that had been said.
The man went straight to the great cabin, and poor Barnaby, his brain
all atingle, stood looking after him, feeling that now indeed the last
drop of bitterness had been added to his trouble to have such a wretch
overhear what he had said.
The young lady could not have seen the fellow, for she continued
leaning over the rail, and Barnaby True, standing at her side, not
moving, but in such a tumult of many passions that he was like one
bewildered, and his heart beating as though to smother him.
So they stood for I know not how long when, of a sudden, Sir John
Malyoe comes running out of the cabin, without his hat, but carrying
his gold-headed cane, and so straight across the deck to where Barnaby
and the young lady stood, that spying wretch close at his heels,
grinning like an imp.
"You hussy!" bawled out Sir John, so soon as he had come pretty near
them, and in so loud a voice that all on deck might have heard the
words; and as he spoke he waved his cane back and forth as though he
would have struck the young lady, who, shrinking back almost upon the
deck, crouched as though to escape such a blow. "You hussy!" he bawled
out with vile oaths, too horrible here to be set down. "What do you do
here with this Yankee supercargo, not fit for a gentlewoman to wipe
her feet upon? Get to your cabin, you hussy" (only it was something
worse he called her this time), "before I lay this cane across your
shoulders!"
What with the whirling of Barnaby's brains and the passion into which
he was already melted, what with his despair and his love, and his
anger at this address, a man gone mad could scarcely be less
accountable for his actions than was he at that moment. Hardly knowing
what he did, he put his hand against Sir John Malyoe's breast and
thrust him violently back, crying out upon him in a great, loud,
hoarse voice for threatening a young lady, and saying that for a
farthing he would wrench the stick out of his hand and throw it
overboard.
Sir John went staggering back with the push Barnaby gave him, and then
caught himself up again. Then, with a great bellow, ran roaring at our
hero, whirling his cane about, and I do believe would have struck him
(and God knows then what might have happened) had not his manservant
caught him and held him back.
"Keep back!" cried out our hero, still mighty hoarse. "Keep back! If
you strike me with that stick I'll fling you overboard!"
By this time, what with the sound of loud voices and the stamping of
feet, some of the crew and others aboard were hurrying up, and the
next moment Captain Manly and the first mate, Mr. Freesden, came
running out of the cabin. But Barnaby, who was by this fairly set
agoing, could not now stop himself.
"And who are you, anyhow," he cried out, "to threaten to strike me and
to insult me, who am as good as you? You dare not strike me! You may
shoot a man from behind, as you shot poor Captain Brand on the Rio
Cobra River, but you won't dare strike me face to face. I know who you
are and what you are!"
By this time Sir John Malyoe had ceased to endeavor to strike him, but
stood stock-still, his great bulging eyes staring as though they would
pop out of his head.
"What's all this?" cries Captain Manly, bustling up to them with Mr.
Freesden. "What does all this mean?"
But, as I have said, our hero was too far gone now to contain himself
until all that he had to say was out.
"The damned villain insulted me and insulted the young lady," he
cried out, panting in the extremity of his passion, "and then he
threatened to strike me with his cane. But I know who he is and what
he is. I know what he's got in his cabin in those two trunks, and
where he found it, and whom it belongs to. He found it on the shores
of the Rio Cobra River, and I have only to open my mouth and tell what
I know about it."
At this Captain Manly clapped his hand upon our hero's shoulder and
fell to shaking him so that he could scarcely stand, calling out to
him the while to be silent. "What do you mean?" he cried. "An officer
of this ship to quarrel with a passenger of mine! Go straight to your
cabin, and stay there till I give you leave to come out again."
At this Master Barnaby came somewhat back to himself and into his wits
again with a jump. "But he threatened to strike me with his cane,
Captain," he cried out, "and that I won't stand from any man!"
"No matter what he did," said Captain Manly, very sternly. "Go to your
cabin, as I bid you, and stay there till I tell you to come out again,
and when we get to New York I'll take pains to tell your stepfather of
how you have behaved. I'll have no such rioting as this aboard my
ship."
Barnaby True looked around him, but the young lady was gone. Nor, in
the blindness of his frenzy, had he seen when she had gone nor whither
she went. As for Sir John Malyoe, he stood in the light of a lantern,
his face gone as white as ashes, and I do believe if a look could
kill, the dreadful malevolent stare he fixed upon Barnaby True would
have slain him where he stood.
After Captain Manly had so shaken some wits into poor Barnaby he,
unhappy wretch, went to his cabin, as he was bidden to do, and there,
shutting the door upon himself, and flinging himself down, all dressed
as he was, upon his berth, yielded himself over to the profoundest
passion of humiliation and despair.
There he lay for I know not how long, staring into the darkness,
until by and by, in spite of his suffering and his despair, he dozed
off into a loose sleep, that was more like waking than sleep, being
possessed continually by the most vivid and distasteful dreams, from
which he would awaken only to doze off and to dream again.
It was from the midst of one of these extravagant dreams that he was
suddenly aroused by the noise of a pistol shot, and then the noise of
another and another, and then a great bump and a grinding jar, and
then the sound of many footsteps running across the deck and down into
the great cabin. Then came a tremendous uproar of voices in the great
cabin, the struggling as of men's bodies being tossed about, striking
violently against the partitions and bulkheads. At the same instant
arose a screaming of women's voices, and one voice, and that Sir John
Malyoe's, crying out as in the greatest extremity: "You villains! You
damned villains!" and with the sudden detonation of a pistol fired
into the close space of the great cabin.
Barnaby was out in the middle of his cabin in a moment, and taking
only time enough to snatch down one of the pistols that hung at the
head of his berth, flung out into the great cabin, to find it as black
as night, the lantern slung there having been either blown out or
dashed out into darkness. The prodigiously dark space was full of
uproar, the hubbub and confusion pierced through and through by that
keen sound of women's voices screaming, one in the cabin and the other
in the stateroom beyond. Almost immediately Barnaby pitched headlong
over two or three struggling men scuffling together upon the deck,
falling with a great clatter and the loss of his pistol, which,
however, he regained almost immediately.
What all the uproar meant he could not tell, but he presently heard
Captain Manly's voice from somewhere suddenly calling out, "You bloody
pirate, would you choke me to death?" wherewith some notion of what
had happened came to him like a flash, and that they had been attacked
in the night by pirates.
Looking toward the companionway, he saw, outlined against the darkness
of the night without, the blacker form of a man's figure, standing
still and motionless as a statue in the midst of all this hubbub, and
so by some instinct he knew in a moment that that must be the master
maker of all this devil's brew. Therewith, still kneeling upon the
deck, he covered the bosom of that shadowy figure point-blank, as he
thought, with his pistol, and instantly pulled the trigger.
In the flash of red light, and in the instant stunning report of the
pistol shot, Barnaby saw, as stamped upon the blackness, a broad, flat
face with fishy eyes, a lean, bony forehead with what appeared to be a
great blotch of blood upon the side, a cocked hat trimmed with gold
lace, a red scarf across the breast, and the gleam of brass buttons.
Then the darkness, very thick and black, swallowed everything again.
But in the instant Sir John Malyoe called out, in a great loud voice:
"My God! 'Tis William Brand!" Therewith came the sound of some one
falling heavily down.
The next moment, Barnaby's sight coming back to him again in the
darkness, he beheld that dark and motionless figure still standing
exactly where it had stood before, and so knew either that he had
missed it or else that it was of so supernatural a sort that a leaden
bullet might do it no harm. Though if it was indeed an apparition that
Barnaby beheld in that moment, there is this to say, that he saw it as
plain as ever he saw a living man in all of his life.
This was the last our hero knew, for the next moment somebody--whether
by accident or design he never knew--struck him such a terrible
violent blow upon the side of the head that he saw forty thousand
stars flash before his eyeballs, and then, with a great humming in his
head, swooned dead away.
When Barnaby True came back to his senses again it was to find himself
being cared for with great skill and nicety, his head bathed with
cold water, and a bandage being bound about it as carefully as though
a chirurgeon was attending to him.
He could not immediately recall what had happened to him, nor until he
had opened his eyes to find himself in a strange cabin, extremely well
fitted and painted with white and gold, the light of a lantern shining
in his eyes, together with the gray of the early daylight through the
dead-eye. Two men were bending over him--one, a negro in a striped
shirt, with a yellow handkerchief around his head and silver earrings
in his ears; the other, a white man, clad in a strange outlandish
dress of a foreign make, and with great mustachios hanging down, and
with gold earrings in his ears.
It was the latter who was attending to Barnaby's hurt with such
extreme care and gentleness.
All this Barnaby saw with his first clear consciousness after his
swoon. Then remembering what had befallen him, and his head beating as
though it would split asunder, he shut his eyes again, contriving with
great effort to keep himself from groaning aloud, and wondering as to
what sort of pirates these could be who would first knock a man in the
head so terrible a blow as that which he had suffered, and then take
such care to fetch him back to life again, and to make him easy and
comfortable.
Nor did he open his eyes again, but lay there gathering his wits
together and wondering thus until the bandage was properly tied about
his head and sewed together. Then once more he opened his eyes, and
looked up to ask where he was.
Either they who were attending to him did not choose to reply, or else
they could not speak English, for they made no answer, excepting by
signs; for the white man, seeing that he was now able to speak, and so
was come back into his senses again, nodded his head three or four
times, and smiled with a grin of his white teeth, and then pointed, as
though toward a saloon beyond. At the same time the negro held up our
hero's coat and beckoned for him to put it on, so that Barnaby,
seeing that it was required of him to meet some one without, arose,
though with a good deal of effort, and permitted the negro to help him
on with his coat, still feeling mightily dizzy and uncertain upon his
legs, his head beating fit to split, and the vessel rolling and
pitching at a great rate, as though upon a heavy ground swell.
So, still sick and dizzy, he went out into what was indeed a fine
saloon beyond, painted in white and gilt like the cabin he had just
quitted, and fitted in the nicest fashion, a mahogany table, polished
very bright, extending the length of the room, and a quantity of
bottles, together with glasses of clear crystal, arranged in a hanging
rack above.
Here at the table a man was sitting with his back to our hero, clad in
a rough pea-jacket, and with a red handkerchief tied around his
throat, his feet stretched out before him, and he smoking a pipe of
tobacco with all the ease and comfort in the world.
As Barnaby came in he turned round, and, to the profound astonishment
of our hero, presented toward him in the light of the lantern, the
dawn shining pretty strong through the skylight, the face of that very
man who had conducted the mysterious expedition that night across
Kingston Harbor to the Rio Cobra River.
This man looked steadily at Barnaby True for a moment or two, and then
burst out laughing; and, indeed, Barnaby, standing there with the
bandage about his head, must have looked a very droll picture of that
astonishment he felt so profoundly at finding who was this pirate into
whose hands he had fallen.
"Well," says the other, "and so you be up at last, and no great harm
done, I'll be bound. And how does your head feel by now, my young
master?"
To this Barnaby made no reply, but, what with wonder and the dizziness
of his head, seated himself at the table over against the speaker, who
pushed a bottle of rum toward him, together with a glass from the
swinging shelf above.
He watched Barnaby fill his glass, and so soon as he had done so began
immediately by saying: "I do suppose you think you were treated
mightily ill to be so handled last night. Well, so you were treated
ill enough--though who hit you that crack upon the head I know no more
than a child unborn. Well, I am sorry for the way you were handled,
but there is this much to say, and of that you may believe me, that
nothing was meant to you but kindness, and before you are through with
us all you will believe that well enough."
Here he helped himself to a taste of grog, and sucking in his lips,
went on again with what he had to say. "Do you remember," said he,
"that expedition of ours in Kingston Harbor, and how we were all of us
balked that night?"
"Why, yes," said Barnaby True, "nor am I likely to forget it."
"And do you remember what I said to that villain, Jack Malyoe, that
night as his boat went by us?"
"As to that," said Barnaby True, "I do not know that I can say yes or
no, but if you will tell me, I will maybe answer you in kind."
"Why, I mean this," said the other. "I said that the villain had got
the better of us once again, but that next time it would be our turn,
even if William Brand himself had to come back from hell to put the
business through."
"I remember something of the sort," said Barnaby, "now that you speak
of it, but still I am all in the dark as to what you are driving at."
The other looked at him very cunningly for a little while, his head on
one side, and his eyes half shut. Then, as if satisfied, he suddenly
burst out laughing. "Look hither," said he, "and I'll show you
something," and therewith, moving to one side, disclosed a couple of
traveling cases or small trunks with brass studs, so exactly like
those that Sir John Malyoe had fetched aboard at Jamaica that
Barnaby, putting this and that together, knew that they must be the
same.
Our hero had a strong enough suspicion as to what those two cases
contained, and his suspicions had become a certainty when he saw Sir
John Malyoe struck all white at being threatened about them, and his
face lowering so malevolently as to look murder had he dared do it.
But, Lord! what were suspicions or even certainty to what Barnaby
True's two eyes beheld when that man lifted the lids of the two
cases--the locks thereof having already been forced--and, flinging
back first one lid and then the other, displayed to Barnaby's
astonished sight a great treasure of gold and silver! Most of it tied
up in leathern bags, to be sure, but many of the coins, big and
little, yellow and white, lying loose and scattered about like so many
beans, brimming the cases to the very top.
Barnaby sat dumb-struck at what he beheld; as to whether he breathed
or no, I cannot tell; but this I know, that he sat staring at that
marvelous treasure like a man in a trance, until, after a few seconds
of this golden display, the other banged down the lids again and burst
out laughing, whereupon he came back to himself with a jump.
"Well, and what do you think of that?" said the other. "Is it not
enough for a man to turn pirate for? But," he continued, "it is not
for the sake of showing you this that I have been waiting for you here
so long a while, but to tell you that you are not the only passenger
aboard, but that there is another, whom I am to confide to your care
and attention, according to orders I have received; so, if you are
ready, Master Barnaby, I'll fetch her in directly." He waited for a
moment, as though for Barnaby to speak, but our hero not replying, he
arose and, putting away the bottle of rum and the glasses, crossed the
saloon to a door like that from which Barnaby had come a little while
before. This he opened, and after a moment's delay and a few words
spoken to some one within, ushered thence a young lady, who came out
very slowly into the saloon where Barnaby still sat at the table.
It was Miss Marjorie Malyoe, very white, and looking as though stunned
or bewildered by all that had befallen her.
Barnaby True could never tell whether the amazing strange voyage that
followed was of long or of short duration; whether it occupied three
days or ten days. For conceive, if you choose, two people of flesh and
blood moving and living continually in all the circumstances and
surroundings as of a nightmare dream, yet they two so happy together
that all the universe beside was of no moment to them! How was anyone
to tell whether in such circumstances any time appeared to be long or
short? Does a dream appear to be long or to be short?
The vessel in which they sailed was a brigantine of good size and
build, but manned by a considerable crew, the most strange and
outlandish in their appearance that Barnaby had ever beheld--some
white, some yellow, some black, and all tricked out with gay colors,
and gold earrings in their ears, and some with great long mustachios,
and others with handkerchiefs tied around their heads, and all talking
a language together of which Barnaby True could understand not a
single word, but which might have been Portuguese from one or two
phrases he caught. Nor did this strange, mysterious crew, of God knows
what sort of men, seem to pay any attention whatever to Barnaby or to
the young lady. They might now and then have looked at him and her out
of the corners of their yellow eyes, but that was all; otherwise they
were indeed like the creatures of a nightmare dream. Only he who was
the captain of this outlandish crew would maybe speak to Barnaby a few
words as to the weather or what not when he would come down into the
saloon to mix a glass of grog or to light a pipe of tobacco, and then
to go on deck again about his business. Otherwise our hero and the
young lady were left to themselves, to do as they pleased, with no one
to interfere with them.
[Illustration: "She Would Sit Quite Still, Permitting Barnaby to Gaze"
_Illustration from_
THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S WEEKLY, _December 19, 1896_]
As for her, she at no time showed any great sign of terror or of fear,
only for a little while was singularly numb and quiet, as though dazed
with what had happened to her. Indeed, methinks that wild beast, her
grandfather, had so crushed her spirit by his tyranny and his violence
that nothing that happened to her might seem sharp and keen, as it
does to others of an ordinary sort.
But this was only at first, for afterward her face began to grow
singularly clear, as with a white light, and she would sit quite
still, permitting Barnaby to gaze, I know not how long, into her eyes,
her face so transfigured and her lips smiling, and they, as it were,
neither of them breathing, but hearing, as in another far-distant
place, the outlandish jargon of the crew talking together in the warm,
bright sunlight, or the sound of creaking block and tackle as they
hauled upon the sheets.
Is it, then, any wonder that Barnaby True could never remember whether
such a voyage as this was long or short?
It was as though they might have sailed so upon that wonderful voyage
forever. You may guess how amazed was Barnaby True when, coming upon
deck one morning, he found the brigantine riding upon an even keel, at
anchor off Staten Island, a small village on the shore, and the
well-known roofs and chimneys of New York town in plain sight across
the water.
'Twas the last place in the world he had expected to see.
And, indeed, it did seem strange to lie there alongside Staten Island
all that day, with New York town so nigh at hand and yet so impossible
to reach. For whether he desired to escape or no, Barnaby True could
not but observe that both he and the young lady were so closely
watched that they might as well have been prisoners, tied hand and
foot and laid in the hold, so far as any hope of getting away was
concerned.
All that day there was a deal of mysterious coming and going aboard
the brigantine, and in the afternoon a sailboat went up to the town,
carrying the captain, and a great load covered over with a tarpaulin
in the stern. What was so taken up to the town Barnaby did not then
guess, but the boat did not return again till about sundown.
For the sun was just dropping below the water when the captain came
aboard once more and, finding Barnaby on deck, bade him come down into
the saloon, where they found the young lady sitting, the broad light
of the evening shining in through the skylight, and making it all
pretty bright within.
The captain commanded Barnaby to be seated, for he had something of
moment to say to him; whereupon, as soon as Barnaby had taken his
place alongside the young lady, he began very seriously, with a
preface somewhat thus: "Though you may think me the captain of this
brigantine, young gentleman, I am not really so, but am under orders,
and so have only carried out those orders of a superior in all these
things that I have done." Having so begun, he went on to say that
there was one thing yet remaining for him to do, and that the greatest
thing of all. He said that Barnaby and the young lady had not been
fetched away from the _Belle Helen_ as they were by any mere chance of
accident, but that 'twas all a plan laid by a head wiser than his, and
carried out by one whom he must obey in all things. He said that he
hoped that both Barnaby and the young lady would perform willingly
what they would be now called upon to do, but that whether they did it
willingly or no, they must, for that those were the orders of one who
was not to be disobeyed.
You may guess how our hero held his breath at all this; but whatever
might have been his expectations, the very wildest of them all did not
reach to that which was demanded of him. "My orders are these," said
the other, continuing: "I am to take you and the young lady ashore,
and to see that you are married before I quit you; and to that end a
very good, decent, honest minister who lives ashore yonder in the
village was chosen and hath been spoken to and is now, no doubt,
waiting for you to come. Such are my orders, and this is the last
thing I am set to do; so now I will leave you alone together for five
minutes to talk it over, but be quick about it, for whether willing or
not, this thing must be done."
Thereupon he went away, as he had promised, leaving those two alone
together, Barnaby like one turned into stone, and the young lady, her
face turned away, flaming as red as fire in the fading light.
Nor can I tell what Barnaby said to her, nor what words he used, but
only, all in a tumult, with neither beginning nor end he told her that
God knew he loved her, and that with all his heart and soul, and that
there was nothing in all the world for him but her; but, nevertheless,
if she would not have it as had been ordered, and if she were not
willing to marry him as she was bidden to do, he would rather die than
lend himself to forcing her to do such a thing against her will.
Nevertheless, he told her she must speak up and tell him yes or no,
and that God knew he would give all the world if she would say "yes."
All this and more he said in such a tumult of words that there was no
order in their speaking, and she sitting there, her bosom rising and
falling as though her breath stifled her. Nor may I tell what she
replied to him, only this, that she said she would marry him. At this
he took her into his arms and set his lips to hers, his heart all
melting away in his bosom.
So presently came the captain back into the saloon again, to find
Barnaby sitting there holding her hand, she with her face turned away,
and his heart beating like a trip hammer, and so saw that all was
settled as he would have it. Wherewith he wished them both joy, and
gave Barnaby his hand.
The yawlboat belonging to the brigantine was ready and waiting
alongside when they came upon deck, and immediately they descended to
it and took their seats. So they landed, and in a little while were
walking up the village street in the darkness, she clinging to his
arm as though she would swoon, and the captain of the brigantine and
two other men from aboard following after them. And so to the
minister's house, finding him waiting for them, smoking his pipe in
the warm evening, and walking up and down in front of his own door. He
immediately conducted them into the house, where, his wife having
fetched a candle, and two others of the village folk being present,
the good man having asked several questions as to their names and
their age and where they were from, the ceremony was performed, and
the certificate duly signed by those present--excepting the men who
had come ashore from the brigantine, and who refused to set their
hands to any paper.
The same sailboat that had taken the captain up to the town in the
afternoon was waiting for them at the landing place, whence, the
captain, having wished them Godspeed, and having shaken Barnaby very
heartily by the hand, they pushed off, and, coming about, ran away
with the slant of the wind, dropping the shore and those strange
beings alike behind them into the night.
As they sped away through the darkness they could hear the creaking of
the sails being hoisted aboard of the brigantine, and so knew that she
was about to put to sea once more. Nor did Barnaby True ever set eyes
upon those beings again, nor did anyone else that I ever heard tell
of.
It was nigh midnight when they made Mr. Hartright's wharf at the foot
of Wall Street, and so the streets were all dark and silent and
deserted as they walked up to Barnaby's home.
You may conceive of the wonder and amazement of Barnaby's dear
stepfather when, clad in a dressing gown and carrying a lighted candle
in his hand, he unlocked and unbarred the door, and so saw who it was
had aroused him at such an hour of the night, and the young and
beautiful lady whom Barnaby had fetched with him.
The first thought of the good man was that the _Belle Helen_ had come
into port; nor did Barnaby undeceive him as he led the way into the
house, but waited until they were all safe and sound in privity
together before he should unfold his strange and wonderful story.
"This was left for you by two foreign sailors this afternoon,
Barnaby," the good old man said, as he led the way through the hall,
holding up the candle at the same time, so that Barnaby might see an
object that stood against the wainscoting by the door of the dining
room.
Nor could Barnaby refrain from crying out with amazement when he saw
that it was one of the two chests of treasure that Sir John Malyoe had
fetched from Jamaica, and which the pirates had taken from the _Belle
Helen_. As for Mr. Hartright, he guessed no more what was in it than
the man in the moon.
The next day but one brought the _Belle Helen_ herself into port, with
the terrible news not only of having been attacked at night by
pirates, but also that Sir John Malyoe was dead. For whether it was
the sudden shock of the sight of his old captain's face--whom he
himself had murdered and thought dead and buried--flashing so out
against the darkness, or whether it was the strain of passion that
overset his brains, certain it is that when the pirates left the
_Belle Helen_, carrying with them the young lady and Barnaby and the
traveling trunks, those left aboard the _Belle Helen_ found Sir John
Malyoe lying in a fit upon the floor, frothing at the mouth and black
in the face, as though he had been choked, and so took him away to his
berth, where, the next morning about ten o'clock, he died, without
once having opened his eyes or spoken a single word.
As for the villain manservant, no one ever saw him afterward; though
whether he jumped overboard, or whether the pirates who so attacked
the ship had carried him away bodily, who shall say?
Mr. Hartright, after he had heard Barnaby's story, had been very
uncertain as to the ownership of the chest of treasure that had been
left by those men for Barnaby, but the news of the death of Sir John
Malyoe made the matter very easy for him to decide. For surely if
that treasure did not belong to Barnaby, there could be no doubt that
it must belong to his wife, she being Sir John Malyoe's legal heir.
And so it was that that great fortune (in actual computation amounting
to upward of sixty-three thousand pounds) came to Barnaby True, the
grandson of that famous pirate, William Brand; the English estate in
Devonshire, in default of male issue of Sir John Malyoe, descended to
Captain Malyoe, whom the young lady was to have married.
As for the other case of treasure, it was never heard of again, nor
could Barnaby ever guess whether it was divided as booty among the
pirates, or whether they had carried it away with them to some strange
and foreign land, there to share it among themselves.
And so the ending of the story, with only this to observe, that
whether that strange appearance of Captain Brand's face by the light
of the pistol was a ghostly and spiritual appearance, or whether he
was present in flesh and blood, there is only to say that he was never
heard of again; nor had he ever been heard of till that time since the
day he was so shot from behind by Capt. John Malyoe on the banks of
the Rio Cobra River in the year 1733.
Chapter III
WITH THE BUCCANEERS
_Being an Account of Certain Adventures that Befell Henry Mostyn Under
Capt. H. Morgan in the Year 1665-66_
[Illustration]
I
Although this narration has more particularly to do with the taking of
the Spanish vice admiral in the harbor of Porto Bello, and of the
rescue therefrom of Le Sieur Simon, his wife and daughter (the
adventure of which was successfully achieved by Captain Morgan, the
famous buccaneer), we shall, nevertheless, premise something of the
earlier history of Master Harry Mostyn, whom you may, if you please,
consider as the hero of the several circumstances recounted in these
pages.
In the year 1664 our hero's father embarked from Portsmouth, in
England, for the Barbados, where he owned a considerable sugar
plantation. Thither to those parts of America he transported with
himself his whole family, of whom our Master Harry was the fifth of
eight children--a great lusty fellow as little fitted for the Church
(for which he was designed) as could be. At the time of this story,
though not above sixteen years old, Master Harry Mostyn was as big and
well-grown as many a man of twenty, and of such a reckless and
dare-devil spirit that no adventure was too dangerous or too
mischievous for him to embark upon.
At this time there was a deal of talk in those parts of the Americas
concerning Captain Morgan, and the prodigious successes he was having
pirating against the Spaniards.
This man had once been an indentured servant with Mr. Rolls, a sugar
factor at the Barbados. Having served out his time, and being of
lawless disposition, possessing also a prodigious appetite for
adventure, he joined with others of his kidney, and, purchasing a
caravel of three guns, embarked fairly upon that career of piracy the
most successful that ever was heard of in the world.
Master Harry had known this man very well while he was still with Mr.
Rolls, serving as a clerk at that gentleman's sugar wharf, a tall,
broad-shouldered, strapping fellow, with red cheeks, and thick red
lips, and rolling blue eyes, and hair as red as any chestnut. Many
knew him for a bold, gruff-spoken man, but no one at that time
suspected that he had it in him to become so famous and renowned as he
afterward grew to be.
The fame of his exploits had been the talk of those parts for above a
twelvemonth, when, in the latter part of the year 1665, Captain
Morgan, having made a very successful expedition against the Spaniards
into the Gulf of Campeche--where he took several important purchases
from the plate fleet--came to the Barbados, there to fit out another
such venture, and to enlist recruits.
He and certain other adventurers had purchased a vessel of some five
hundred tons, which they proposed to convert into a pirate by cutting
portholes for cannon, and running three or four carronades across her
main deck. The name of this ship, be it mentioned, was the _Good
Samaritan_, as ill-fitting a name as could be for such a craft, which,
instead of being designed for the healing of wounds, was intended
to inflict such devastation as those wicked men proposed.
[Illustration: BURIED TREASURE]
Here was a piece of mischief exactly fitted to our hero's tastes;
wherefore, having made up a bundle of clothes, and with not above a
shilling in his pocket, he made an excursion into the town to seek for
Captain Morgan. There he found the great pirate established at an
ordinary, with a little court of ragamuffins and swashbucklers
gathered about him, all talking very loud, and drinking healths in raw
rum as though it were sugared water.
And what a fine figure our buccaneer had grown, to be sure! How
different from the poor, humble clerk upon the sugar wharf! What a
deal of gold braid! What a fine, silver-hilted Spanish sword! What a
gay velvet sling, hung with three silver-mounted pistols! If Master
Harry's mind had not been made up before, to be sure such a spectacle
of glory would have determined it.
This figure of war our hero asked to step aside with him, and when
they had come into a corner, proposed to the other what he intended,
and that he had a mind to enlist as a gentleman adventurer upon this
expedition. Upon this our rogue of a buccaneer captain burst out
a-laughing, and fetching Master Harry a great thump upon the back,
swore roundly that he would make a man of him, and that it was a pity
to make a parson out of so good a piece of stuff.
Nor was Captain Morgan less good than his word, for when the _Good
Samaritan_ set sail with a favoring wind for the island of Jamaica,
Master Harry found himself established as one of the adventurers
aboard.
II
Could you but have seen the town of Port Royal as it appeared in the
year 1665 you would have beheld a sight very well worth while looking
upon. There were no fine houses at that time, and no great counting
houses built of brick, such as you may find nowadays, but a crowd of
board and wattled huts huddled along the streets, and all so gay with
flags and bits of color that Vanity Fair itself could not have been
gayer. To this place came all the pirates and buccaneers that infested
those parts, and men shouted and swore and gambled, and poured out
money like water, and then maybe wound up their merrymaking by dying
of fever. For the sky in these torrid latitudes is all full of clouds
overhead, and as hot as any blanket, and when the sun shone forth it
streamed down upon the smoking sands so that the houses were ovens and
the streets were furnaces; so it was little wonder that men died like
rats in a hole. But little they appeared to care for that; so that
everywhere you might behold a multitude of painted women and Jews and
merchants and pirates, gaudy with red scarfs and gold braid and all
sorts of odds and ends of foolish finery, all fighting and gambling
and bartering for that ill-gotten treasure of the be-robbed Spaniard.
Here, arriving, Captain Morgan found a hearty welcome, and a message
from the governor awaiting him, the message bidding him attend His
Excellency upon the earliest occasion that offered. Whereupon, taking
our hero (of whom he had grown prodigiously fond) along with him, our
pirate went, without any loss of time, to visit Sir Thomas Modiford,
who was then the royal governor of all this devil's brew of
wickedness.
They found His Excellency seated in a great easy-chair, under the
shadow of a slatted veranda, the floor whereof was paved with brick.
He was clad, for the sake of coolness, only in his shirt, breeches,
and stockings, and he wore slippers on his feet. He was smoking a
great cigarro of tobacco, and a goblet of lime juice and water and rum
stood at his elbow on a table. Here, out of the glare of the heat, it
was all very cool and pleasant, with a sea breeze blowing violently in
through the slats, setting them a-rattling now and then, and stirring
Sir Thomas's long hair, which he had pushed back for the sake of
coolness.
The purport of this interview, I may tell you, concerned the rescue of
one Le Sieur Simon, who, together with his wife and daughter, was held
captive by the Spaniards.
[Illustration]
This gentleman adventurer (Le Sieur Simon) had, a few years before,
been set up by the buccaneers as governor of the island of Santa
Catharina. This place, though well fortified by the Spaniards, the
buccaneers had seized upon, establishing themselves thereon, and so
infesting the commerce of those seas that no Spanish fleet was safe
from them. At last the Spaniards, no longer able to endure these
assaults against their commerce, sent a great force against the
freebooters to drive them out of their island stronghold. This they
did, retaking Santa Catharina, together with its governor, his wife,
and daughter, as well as the whole garrison of buccaneers.
This garrison was sent by their conquerors, some to the galleys, some
to the mines, some to no man knows where. The governor himself--Le
Sieur Simon--was to be sent to Spain, there to stand his trial for
piracy.
The news of all this, I may tell you, had only just been received in
Jamaica, having been brought thither by a Spanish captain, one Don
Roderiguez Sylvia, who was, besides, the bearer of dispatches to the
Spanish authorities relating the whole affair.
Such, in fine, was the purport of this interview, and as our hero and
his captain walked back together from the governor's house to the
ordinary where they had taken up their inn, the buccaneer assured his
companion that he purposed to obtain those dispatches from the Spanish
captain that very afternoon, even if he had to use force to seize
them.
All this, you are to understand, was undertaken only because of the
friendship that the governor and Captain Morgan entertained for Le
Sieur Simon. And, indeed, it was wonderful how honest and how faithful
were these wicked men in their dealings with one another. For you must
know that Governor Modiford and Le Sieur Simon and the buccaneers were
all of one kidney--all taking a share in the piracies of those times,
and all holding by one another as though they were the honestest men
in the world. Hence it was they were all so determined to rescue Le
Sieur Simon from the Spaniards.
III
Having reached his ordinary after his interview with the governor,
Captain Morgan found there a number of his companions, such as usually
gathered at that place to be in attendance upon him--some, those
belonging to the _Good Samaritan_; others, those who hoped to obtain
benefits from him; others, those ragamuffins who gathered around him
because he was famous, and because it pleased them to be of his court
and to be called his followers. For nearly always your successful
pirate had such a little court surrounding him.
Finding a dozen or more of these rascals gathered there, Captain
Morgan informed them of his present purpose--that he was going to find
the Spanish captain to demand his papers of him, and calling upon them
to accompany him.
With this following at his heels, our buccaneer started off down the
street, his lieutenant, a Cornishman named Bartholomew Davis, upon one
hand and our hero upon the other. So they paraded the streets for the
best part of an hour before they found the Spanish captain. For
whether he had got wind that Captain Morgan was searching for him, or
whether, finding himself in a place so full of his enemies, he had
buried himself in some place of hiding, it is certain that the
buccaneers had traversed pretty nearly the whole town before they
discovered that he was lying at a certain auberge kept by a Portuguese
Jew. Thither they went, and thither Captain Morgan entered with the
utmost coolness and composure of demeanor, his followers crowding
noisily in at his heels.
The space within was very dark, being lighted only by the doorway and
by two large slatted windows or openings in the front.
In this dark, hot place--not over-roomy at the best--were gathered
twelve or fifteen villainous-appearing men, sitting at tables and
drinking together, waited upon by the Jew and his wife. Our hero had
no trouble in discovering which of this lot of men was Captain Sylvia,
for not only did Captain Morgan direct his glance full of war upon
him, but the Spaniard was clad with more particularity and with more
show of finery than any of the others who were there.
Him Captain Morgan approached and demanded his papers, whereunto the
other replied with such a jabber of Spanish and English that no man
could have understood what he said. To this Captain Morgan in turn
replied that he must have those papers, no matter what it might cost
him to obtain them, and thereupon drew a pistol from his sling and
presented it at the other's head.
At this threatening action the innkeeper's wife fell a-screaming, and
the Jew, as in a frenzy, besought them not to tear the house down
about his ears.
Our hero could hardly tell what followed, only that all of a sudden
there was a prodigious uproar of combat. Knives flashed everywhere,
and then a pistol was fired so close to his head that he stood like
one stunned, hearing some one crying out in a loud voice, but not
knowing whether it was a friend or a foe who had been shot. Then
another pistol shot so deafened what was left of Master Harry's
hearing that his ears rang for above an hour afterward. By this time
the whole place was full of gunpowder smoke, and there was the sound
of blows and oaths and outcrying and the clashing of knives.
As Master Harry, who had no great stomach for such a combat, and no
very particular interest in the quarrel, was making for the door, a
little Portuguese, as withered and as nimble as an ape, came ducking
under the table and plunged at his stomach with a great long knife,
which, had it effected its object, would surely have ended his
adventures then and there. Finding himself in such danger, Master
Harry snatched up a heavy chair, and, flinging it at his enemy, who
was preparing for another attack, he fairly ran for it out of the
door, expecting every instant to feel the thrust of the blade betwixt
his ribs.
A considerable crowd had gathered outside, and others, hearing the
uproar, were coming running to join them. With these our hero stood,
trembling like a leaf, and with cold chills running up and down his
back like water at the narrow escape from the danger that had
threatened him.
Nor shall you think him a coward, for you must remember he was hardly
sixteen years old at the time, and that this was the first affair of
the sort he had encountered. Afterward, as you shall learn, he showed
that he could exhibit courage enough at a pinch.
While he stood there, endeavoring to recover his composure, the while
the tumult continued within, suddenly two men came running almost
together out of the door, a crowd of the combatants at their heels.
The first of these men was Captain Sylvia; the other, who was pursuing
him, was Captain Morgan.
As the crowd about the door parted before the sudden appearing of
these, the Spanish captain, perceiving, as he supposed, a way of
escape opened to him, darted across the street with incredible
swiftness toward an alleyway upon the other side. Upon this, seeing
his prey like to get away from him, Captain Morgan snatched a pistol
out of his sling, and resting it for an instant across his arm, fired
at the flying Spaniard, and that with so true an aim that, though the
street was now full of people, the other went tumbling over and over
all of a heap in the kennel, where he lay, after a twitch or two, as
still as a log.
At the sound of the shot and the fall of the man the crowd scattered
upon all sides, yelling and screaming, and the street being thus
pretty clear, Captain Morgan ran across the way to where his victim
lay, his smoking pistol still in his hand, and our hero following
close at his heels.
Our poor Harry had never before beheld a man killed thus in an instant
who a moment before had been so full of life and activity, for when
Captain Morgan turned the body over upon its back he could perceive at
a glance, little as he knew of such matters, that the man was
stone-dead. And, indeed, it was a dreadful sight for him who was
hardly more than a child. He stood rooted for he knew not how long,
staring down at the dead face with twitching fingers and shuddering
limbs. Meantime a great crowd was gathering about them again.
[Illustration]
As for Captain Morgan, he went about his work with the utmost coolness
and deliberation imaginable, unbuttoning the waistcoat and the shirt
of the man he had murdered with fingers that neither twitched nor
shook. There were a gold cross and a bunch of silver medals hung by a
whipcord about the neck of the dead man. This Captain Morgan broke
away with a snap, reaching the jingling baubles to Harry, who took
them in his nerveless hand and fingers that he could hardly close upon
what they held.
The papers Captain Morgan found in a wallet in an inner breast pocket
of the Spaniard's waistcoat. These he examined one by one, and finding
them to his satisfaction, tied them up again, and slipped the wallet
and its contents into his own pocket.
Then for the first time he appeared to observe Master Harry, who,
indeed, must have been standing, the perfect picture of horror and
dismay. Whereupon, bursting out a-laughing, and slipping the pistol he
had used back into its sling again, he fetched poor Harry a great slap
upon the back, bidding him be a man, for that he would see many such
sights as this.
But indeed, it was no laughing matter for poor Master Harry, for it
was many a day before his imagination could rid itself of the image of
the dead Spaniard's face; and as he walked away down the street with
his companions, leaving the crowd behind them, and the dead body where
it lay for its friends to look after, his ears humming and ringing
from the deafening noise of the pistol shots fired in the close room,
and the sweat trickling down his face in drops, he knew not whether
all that had passed had been real, or whether it was a dream from
which he might presently awaken.
IV
The papers Captain Morgan had thus seized upon as the fruit of the
murder he had committed must have been as perfectly satisfactory to
him as could be, for having paid a second visit that evening to
Governor Modiford, the pirate lifted anchor the next morning and made
sail toward the Gulf of Darien. There, after cruising about in those
waters for about a fortnight without falling in with a vessel of
any sort, at the end of that time they overhauled a caravel bound from
Porto Bello to Cartagena, which vessel they took, and finding her
loaded with nothing better than raw hides, scuttled and sank her,
being then about twenty leagues from the main of Cartagena. From the
captain of this vessel they learned that the plate fleet was then
lying in the harbor of Porto Bello, not yet having set sail thence,
but waiting for the change of the winds before embarking for Spain.
Besides this, which was a good deal more to their purpose, the
Spaniards told the pirates that the Sieur Simon, his wife, and
daughter were confined aboard the vice admiral of that fleet, and that
the name of the vice admiral was the _Santa Maria y Valladolid_.
[Illustration: KIDD ON THE DECK OF THE _Adventure Galley_]
So soon as Captain Morgan had obtained the information he desired he
directed his course straight for the Bay of Santo Blaso, where he
might lie safely within the cape of that name without any danger of
discovery (that part of the mainland being entirely uninhabited) and
yet be within twenty or twenty-five leagues of Porto Bello.
Having come safely to this anchorage, he at once declared his
intentions to his companions, which were as follows:
That it was entirely impossible for them to hope to sail their vessel
into the harbor of Porto Bello, and to attack the Spanish vice admiral
where he lay in the midst of the armed flota; wherefore, if anything
was to be accomplished, it must be undertaken by some subtle design
rather than by open-handed boldness. Having so prefaced what he had to
say, he now declared that it was his purpose to take one of the ship's
boats and to go in that to Porto Bello, trusting for some opportunity
to occur to aid him either in the accomplishment of his aims or in the
gaining of some further information. Having thus delivered himself, he
invited any who dared to do so to volunteer for the expedition,
telling them plainly that he would constrain no man to go against his
will, for that at best it was a desperate enterprise, possessing only
the recommendation that in its achievement the few who undertook it
would gain great renown, and perhaps a very considerable booty.
And such was the incredible influence of this bold man over his
companions, and such was their confidence in his skill and cunning,
that not above a dozen of all those aboard hung back from the
undertaking, but nearly every man desired to be taken.
Of these volunteers Captain Morgan chose twenty--among others our
Master Harry--and having arranged with his lieutenant that if nothing
was heard from the expedition at the end of three days he should sail
for Jamaica to await news, he embarked upon that enterprise, which,
though never heretofore published, was perhaps the boldest and the
most desperate of all those that have since made his name so famous.
For what could be a more unparalleled undertaking than for a little
open boat, containing but twenty men, to enter the harbor of the third
strongest fortress of the Spanish mainland with the intention of
cutting out the Spanish vice admiral from the midst of a whole fleet
of powerfully armed vessels, and how many men in all the world do you
suppose would venture such a thing?
But there is this to be said of that great buccaneer: that if he
undertook enterprises so desperate as this, he yet laid his plans so
well that they never went altogether amiss. Moreover, the very
desperation of his successes was of such a nature that no man could
suspect that he would dare to undertake such things, and accordingly
his enemies were never prepared to guard against his attacks. Aye, had
he but worn the king's colors and served under the rules of honest
war, he might have become as great and as renowned as Admiral Blake
himself.
But all that is neither here nor there; what I have to tell you now is
that Captain Morgan in this open boat with his twenty mates reached
the Cape of Salmedina toward the fall of day. Arriving within view of
the harbor they discovered the plate fleet at anchor, with two
men-of-war and an armed galley riding as a guard at the mouth of the
harbor, scarce half a league distant from the other ships. Having
spied the fleet in this posture, the pirates presently pulled down
their sails and rowed along the coast, feigning to be a Spanish vessel
from Nombre de Dios. So hugging the shore, they came boldly within the
harbor, upon the opposite side of which you might see the fortress a
considerable distance away.
Being now come so near to the consummation of their adventure, Captain
Morgan required every man to make an oath to stand by him to the last,
whereunto our hero swore as heartily as any man aboard, although his
heart, I must needs confess, was beating at a great rate at the
approach of what was to happen. Having thus received the oaths of all
his followers, Captain Morgan commanded the surgeon of the expedition
that, when the order was given, he, the medico, was to bore six holes
in the boat, so that, it sinking under them, they might all be
compelled to push forward, with no chance of retreat. And such was the
ascendancy of this man over his followers, and such was their awe of
him, that not one of them uttered even so much as a murmur, though
what he had commanded the surgeon to do pledged them either to victory
or to death, with no chance to choose between. Nor did the surgeon
question the orders he had received, much less did he dream of
disobeying them.
By now it had fallen pretty dusk, whereupon, spying two fishermen in a
canoe at a little distance, Captain Morgan demanded of them in Spanish
which vessel of those at anchor in the harbor was the vice admiral,
for that he had dispatches for the captain thereof. Whereupon the
fishermen, suspecting nothing, pointed to them a galleon of great size
riding at anchor not half a league distant.
[Illustration]
Toward this vessel accordingly the pirates directed their course, and
when they had come pretty nigh, Captain Morgan called upon the surgeon
that now it was time for him to perform the duty that had been laid
upon him. Whereupon the other did as he was ordered, and that so
thoroughly that the water presently came gushing into the boat in
great streams, whereat all hands pulled for the galleon as though
every next moment was to be their last.
And what do you suppose were our hero's emotions at this time? Like
all in the boat, his awe of Captain Morgan was so great that I do
believe he would rather have gone to the bottom than have questioned
his command, even when it was to scuttle the boat. Nevertheless, when
he felt the cold water gushing about his feet (for he had taken off
his shoes and stockings) he became possessed with such a fear of being
drowned that even the Spanish galleon had no terrors for him if he
could only feel the solid planks thereof beneath his feet.
Indeed, all the crew appeared to be possessed of a like dismay, for
they pulled at the oars with such an incredible force that they were
under the quarter of the galleon before the boat was half filled with
water.
Here, as they approached, it then being pretty dark and the moon not
yet having risen, the watch upon the deck hailed them, whereupon
Captain Morgan called out in Spanish that he was Capt. Alvarez
Mendazo, and that he brought dispatches for the vice admiral.
But at that moment, the boat being now so full of water as to be
logged, it suddenly tilted upon one side as though to sink beneath
them, whereupon all hands, without further orders, went scrambling up
the side, as nimble as so many monkeys, each armed with a pistol in
one hand and a cutlass in the other, and so were upon deck before the
watch could collect his wits to utter any outcry or to give any other
alarm than to cry out, "Jesu bless us! who are these?" at which words
somebody knocked him down with the butt of a pistol, though who it was
our hero could not tell in the darkness and the hurry.
Before any of those upon deck could recover from their alarm or those
from below come up upon deck, a part of the pirates, under the
carpenter and the surgeon, had run to the gun room and had taken
possession of the arms, while Captain Morgan, with Master Harry and a
Portuguese called Murillo Braziliano, had flown with the speed of the
wind into the great cabin.
Here they found the captain of the vice admiral playing at cards with
the Sieur Simon and a friend, Madam Simon and her daughter being
present.
Captain Morgan instantly set his pistol at the breast of the Spanish
captain, swearing with a most horrible fierce countenance that if he
spake a word or made any outcry he was a dead man. As for our hero,
having now got his hand into the game, he performed the same service
for the Spaniard's friend, declaring he would shoot him dead if he
opened his lips or lifted so much as a single finger.
All this while the ladies, not comprehending what had occurred, had
sat as mute as stones; but now having so far recovered themselves as
to find a voice, the younger of the two fell to screaming, at which
the Sieur Simon called out to her to be still, for these were friends
who had come to help them, and not enemies who had come to harm them.
All this, you are to understand, occupied only a little while, for in
less than a minute three or four of the pirates had come into the
cabin, who, together with the Portuguese, proceeded at once to bind
the two Spaniards hand and foot, and to gag them. This being done to
our buccaneer's satisfaction, and the Spanish captain being stretched
out in the corner of the cabin, he instantly cleared his countenance
of its terrors, and bursting forth into a great loud laugh, clapped
his hand to the Sieur Simon's, which he wrung with the best will in
the world. Having done this, and being in a fine humor after this his
first success, he turned to the two ladies. "And this, ladies," said
he, taking our hero by the hand and presenting him, "is a young
gentleman who has embarked with me to learn the trade of piracy. I
recommend him to your politeness."
Think what a confusion this threw our Master Harry into, to be sure,
who at his best was never easy in the company of strange ladies! You
may suppose what must have been his emotions to find himself thus
introduced to the attention of Madam Simon and her daughter, being at
the time in his bare feet, clad only in his shirt and breeches, and
with no hat upon his head, a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the
other. However, he was not left for long to his embarrassments, for
almost immediately after he had thus far relaxed, Captain Morgan fell
of a sudden serious again, and bidding the Sieur Simon to get his
ladies away into some place of safety, for the most hazardous part of
this adventure was yet to occur, he quitted the cabin with Master
Harry and the other pirates (for you may call him a pirate now) at his
heels.
Having come upon deck, our hero beheld that a part of the Spanish crew
were huddled forward in a flock like so many sheep (the others being
crowded below with the hatches fastened upon them), and such was the
terror of the pirates, and so dreadful the name of Henry Morgan, that
not one of those poor wretches dared to lift up his voice to give any
alarm, nor even to attempt an escape by jumping overboard.
At Captain Morgan's orders, these men, together with certain of his
own company, ran nimbly aloft and began setting the sails, which, the
night now having fallen pretty thick, was not for a good while
observed by any of the vessels riding at anchor about them.
Indeed, the pirates might have made good their escape, with at most
only a shot or two from the men-of-war, had it not then been about the
full of the moon, which, having arisen, presently discovered to those
of the fleet that lay closest about them what was being done aboard
the vice admiral.
At this one of the vessels hailed them, and then after a while, having
no reply, hailed them again. Even then the Spaniards might not
immediately have suspected anything was amiss but only that the vice
admiral for some reason best known to himself was shifting his
anchorage, had not one of the Spaniards aloft--but who it was Captain
Morgan was never able to discover--answered the hail by crying out
that the vice admiral had been seized by the pirates.
At this the alarm was instantly given and the mischief done, for
presently there was a tremendous bustle through that part of the fleet
lying nighest the vice admiral--a deal of shouting of orders, a
beating of drums, and the running hither and thither of the crews.
But by this time the sails of the vice admiral had filled with a
strong land breeze that was blowing up the harbor, whereupon the
carpenter, at Captain Morgan's orders, having cut away both anchors,
the galleon presently bore away up the harbor, gathering headway every
moment with the wind nearly dead astern. The nearest vessel was the
only one that for the moment was able to offer any hindrance. This
ship, having by this time cleared away one of its guns, was able to
fire a parting shot against the vice-admiral, striking her somewhere
forward, as our hero could see by a great shower of splinters that
flew up in the moonlight.
At the sound of the shot all the vessels of the flota not yet
disturbed by the alarm were aroused at once, so that the pirates had
the satisfaction of knowing that they would have to run the gantlet of
all the ships between them and the open sea before they could reckon
themselves escaped.
And, indeed, to our hero's mind it seemed that the battle which
followed must have been the most terrific cannonade that was ever
heard in the world. It was not so ill at first, for it was some while
before the Spaniards could get their guns clear for action, they being
not the least in the world prepared for such an occasion as this. But
by and by first one and then another ship opened fire upon the
galleon, until it seemed to our hero that all the thunders of heaven
let loose upon them could not have created a more prodigious uproar,
and that it was not possible that they could any of them escape
destruction.
By now the moon had risen full and round, so that the clouds of smoke
that rose in the air appeared as white as snow. The air seemed full of
the hiss and screaming of shot, each one of which, when it struck the
galleon, was magnified by our hero's imagination into ten times its
magnitude from the crash which it delivered and from the cloud of
splinters it would cast up into the moonlight. At last he suddenly
beheld one poor man knocked sprawling across the deck, who, as he
raised his arm from behind the mast, disclosed that the hand was gone
from it, and that the shirt sleeve was red with blood in the
moonlight. At this sight all the strength fell away from poor Harry,
and he felt sure that a like fate or even a worse must be in store for
him.
But, after all, this was nothing to what it might have been in broad
daylight, for what with the darkness of night, and the little
preparation the Spaniards could make for such a business, and the
extreme haste with which they discharged their guns (many not
understanding what was the occasion of all this uproar), nearly all
the shot flew so wide of the mark that not above one in twenty struck
that at which it was aimed.
Meantime Captain Morgan, with the Sieur Simon, who had followed him
upon deck, stood just above where our hero lay behind the shelter of
the bulwark. The captain had lit a pipe of tobacco, and he stood now
in the bright moonlight close to the rail, with his hands behind him,
looking out ahead with the utmost coolness imaginable, and paying no
more attention to the din of battle than though it were twenty leagues
away. Now and then he would take his pipe from his lips to utter an
order to the man at the wheel. Excepting this he stood there hardly
moving at all, the wind blowing his long red hair over his shoulders.
[Illustration: BURNING THE SHIP]
Had it not been for the armed galley the pirates might have got the
galleon away with no great harm done in spite of all this
cannonading, for the man-of-war which rode at anchor nighest to them
at the mouth of the harbor was still so far away that they might have
passed it by hugging pretty close to the shore, and that without any
great harm being done to them in the darkness. But just at this
moment, when the open water lay in sight, came this galley pulling out
from behind the point of the shore in such a manner as either to head
our pirates off entirely or else to compel them to approach so near to
the man-of-war that that latter vessel could bring its guns to bear
with more effect.
This galley, I must tell you, was like others of its kind such as you
may find in these waters, the hull being long and cut low to the water
so as to allow the oars to dip freely. The bow was sharp and projected
far out ahead, mounting a swivel upon it, while at the stern a number
of galleries built one above another into a castle gave shelter to
several companies of musketeers as well as the officers commanding
them.
Our hero could behold the approach of this galley from above the
starboard bulwarks, and it appeared to him impossible for them to hope
to escape either it or the man-of-war. But still Captain Morgan
maintained the same composure that he had exhibited all the while,
only now and then delivering an order to the man at the wheel, who,
putting the helm over, threw the bows of the galleon around more to
the larboard, as though to escape the bow of the galley and get into
the open water beyond. This course brought the pirates ever closer and
closer to the man-of-war, which now began to add its thunder to the
din of the battle, and with so much more effect that at every
discharge you might hear the crashing and crackling of splintered
wood, and now and then the outcry or groaning of some man who was
hurt. Indeed, had it been daylight, they must at this juncture all
have perished, though, as was said, what with the night and the
confusion and the hurry, they escaped entire destruction, though more
by a miracle than through any policy upon their own part.
Meantime the galley, steering as though to come aboard of them, had
now come so near that it, too, presently began to open its musketry
fire upon them, so that the humming and rattling of bullets were
presently added to the din of cannonading.
In two minutes more it would have been aboard of them, when in a
moment Captain Morgan roared out of a sudden to the man at the helm to
put it hard a starboard. In response the man ran the wheel over with
the utmost quickness, and the galleon, obeying her helm very readily,
came around upon a course which, if continued, would certainly bring
them into collision with their enemy.
It is possible at first the Spaniards imagined the pirates intended to
escape past their stern, for they instantly began backing oars to keep
them from getting past, so that the water was all of a foam about
them; at the same time they did this they poured in such a fire of
musketry that it was a miracle that no more execution was accomplished
than happened.
As for our hero, methinks for the moment he forgot all about
everything else than as to whether or no his captain's maneuver would
succeed, for in the very first moment he divined, as by some instinct,
what Captain Morgan purposed doing.
At this moment, so particular in the execution of this nice design, a
bullet suddenly struck down the man at the wheel. Hearing the sharp
outcry, our Harry turned to see him fall forward, and then to his
hands and knees upon the deck, the blood running in a black pool
beneath him, while the wheel, escaping from his hands, spun over until
the spokes were all of a mist.
In a moment the ship would have fallen off before the wind had not our
hero, leaping to the wheel (even as Captain Morgan shouted an order
for some one to do so), seized the flying spokes, whirling them back
again, and so bringing the bow of the galleon up to its former course.
In the first moment of this effort he had reckoned of nothing but of
carrying out his captain's designs. He neither thought of cannon balls
nor of bullets. But now that his task was accomplished, he came
suddenly back to himself to find the galleries of the galley aflame
with musket shots, and to become aware with a most horrible sinking of
the spirits that all the shots therefrom were intended for him. He
cast his eyes about him with despair, but no one came to ease him of
his task, which, having undertaken, he had too much spirit to resign
from carrying through to the end, though he was well aware that the
very next instant might mean his sudden and violent death. His ears
hummed and rang, and his brain swam as light as a feather. I know not
whether he breathed, but he shut his eyes tight as though that might
save him from the bullets that were raining about him.
[Illustration]
At this moment the Spaniards must have discovered for the first time
the pirates' design, for of a sudden they ceased firing, and began to
shout out a multitude of orders, while the oars lashed the water all
about with a foam. But it was too late then for them to escape, for
within a couple of seconds the galleon struck her enemy a blow so
violent upon the larboard quarter as nearly to hurl our Harry upon the
deck, and then with a dreadful, horrible crackling of wood, commingled
with a yelling of men's voices, the galley was swung around upon her
side, and the galleon, sailing into the open sea, left nothing of her
immediate enemy but a sinking wreck, and the water dotted all over
with bobbing heads and waving hands in the moonlight.
And now, indeed, that all danger was past and gone, there were plenty
to come running to help our hero at the wheel. As for Captain Morgan,
having come down upon the main deck, he fetches the young helmsman a
clap upon the back. "Well, Master Harry," says he, "and did I not tell
you I would make a man of you?" Whereat our poor Harry fell
a-laughing, but with a sad catch in his voice, for his hands trembled
as with an ague, and were as cold as ice. As for his emotions, God
knows he was nearer crying than laughing, if Captain Morgan had but
known it.
Nevertheless, though undertaken under the spur of the moment, I
protest it was indeed a brave deed, and I cannot but wonder how many
young gentlemen of sixteen there are to-day who, upon a like occasion,
would act as well as our Harry.
V
The balance of our hero's adventures were of a lighter sort than those
already recounted, for the next morning the Spanish captain (a very
polite and well-bred gentleman) having fitted him out with a shift of
his own clothes, Master Harry was presented in a proper form to the
ladies. For Captain Morgan, if he had felt a liking for the young man
before, could not now show sufficient regard for him. He ate in the
great cabin and was petted by all. Madam Simon, who was a fat and
red-faced lady, was forever praising him, and the young miss, who was
extremely well-looking, was as continually making eyes at him.
She and Master Harry, I must tell you, would spend hours together, she
making pretense of teaching him French, although he was so possessed
with a passion of love that he was nigh suffocated with it. She, upon
her part, perceiving his emotions, responded with extreme good nature
and complacency, so that had our hero been older, and the voyage
proved longer, he
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