“The pirates climbed up the sides of the man-of-war as if
they had been twenty-nine cats.”—Frontispiece.

Buccaneers and Pirates
of Our Coasts

by

FRANK R. STOCKTON

Illustrated

GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers

NEW YORK
by arrangement with The Macmillan Company

Copyright, 1897-1898,
By THE CENTURY CO.

Copyright, 1898, 1926,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

All rights reserved—no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who wishes to quote
brief passages in connection with a review
written for inclusion in magazine or
newspaper.

Set up and electrotyped July, 1898. Reprinted November,
1898; September, 1905; May, 1906; April, October, 1908;
October, 1910; March, 1913; September, 1914; January,
1915; October, 1917.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FOREWORD

Tempting boys to be what they should be—giving
them in wholesome form what they
want—that is the purpose and power of Scouting.
To help parents and leaders of youth
secure books boys like best that are also best
for boys, the Boy Scouts of America organized
EVERY BOY’S LIBRARY. The books included,
formerly sold at prices ranging from $1.50
to $2.00 but, by special arrangement with the
several publishers interested, are now sold in
the EVERY BOY’S LIBRARY Edition at $1.00
per volume.

The books of EVERY BOY’S LIBRARY
were selected by the Library Commission of the
Boy Scouts of America, consisting of George F.
Bowerman, Librarian, Public Library of the
District of Columbia; Harrison W. Craver, Director,
Engineering Societies Library, New
York City; Claude G. Leland, Superintendent,
Bureau of Libraries, Board of Education, New
York City; Edward F. Stevens, Librarian,
Pratt Institute Free Library, Brooklyn, N.Y.,
and Franklin K. Mathiews, Chief Scout Librarian.
Only such books were chosen by the
Commission as proved to be, by a nation wide
canvas, most in demand by the boys themselves.
Their popularity is further attested by the fact
that in the EVERY BOY’S LIBRARY Edition,
more than a million and a quarter copies of
these books have already been sold.

We know so well, are reminded so often of
the worth of the good book and great, that too
often we fail to observe or understand the influence
for good of a boy’s recreational reading.
Such books may influence him for good or ill as
profoundly as his play activities, of which they
are a vital part. The needful thing is to find
stories in which the heroes have the characteristics
boys so much admire—unquenchable
courage, immense resourcefulness, absolute
fidelity, conspicuous greatness. We believe the
books of EVERY BOY’S LIBRARY measurably
well meet this challenge.

Contents

[Pg 1]

Buccaneers and Pirates of Our
Coasts

Chapter I

The Bold Buccaneers

When I was a boy I strongly desired to
be a pirate, and the reason for this was
the absolute independence of that sort of
life. Restrictions of all sorts had become onerous
to me, and in my reading of the adventures of the
bold sea-rovers of the main, I had unconsciously
selected those portions of a pirate’s life which were
attractive to me, and had totally disregarded all the
rest.

In fact, I had a great desire to become what might
be called a marine Robin Hood. I would take
from the rich and give to the poor; I would run
my long, low, black craft by the side of the merchantman,
and when I had loaded my vessel with
the rich stuffs and golden ingots which composed
her cargo, I would sail away to some poor village,
and make its inhabitants prosperous and happy for
[Pg 2]
the rest of their lives by a judicious distribution of
my booty.

I would always be as free as a sea-bird. My
men would be devoted to me, and my word would
be their law. I would decide for myself whether
this or that proceeding would be proper, generous,
and worthy of my unlimited power; when tired
of sailing, I would retire to my island,—the position
of which, in a beautiful semi-tropic ocean, would
be known only to myself and to my crew,—and
there I would pass happy days in the company of
my books, my works of art, and all the various
treasures I had taken from the mercenary vessels
which I had overhauled.

Such was my notion of a pirate’s life. I would
kill nobody; the very sight of my black flag
would be sufficient to put an end to all thought of
resistance on the part of my victims, who would
no more think of fighting me, than a fat bishop
would have thought of lifting his hand against
Robin Hood and his merry men; and I truly
believe that I expected my conscience to have a
great deal more to do in the way of approval of
my actions, than it had found necessary in the
course of my ordinary school-boy life.

I mention these early impressions because I have
a notion that a great many people—and not only
young people—have an idea of piracy not altogether
[Pg 3]
different from that of my boyhood. They
know that pirates are wicked men, that, in fact,
they are sea-robbers or maritime murderers, but
their bold and adventurous method of life, their
bravery, daring, and the exciting character of their
expeditions, give them something of the same charm
and interest which belong to the robber knights of
the middle ages. The one mounts his mailed steed
and clanks his long sword against his iron stirrup,
riding forth into the world with a feeling that he can
do anything that pleases him, if he finds himself
strong enough. The other springs into his rakish
craft, spreads his sails to the wind, and dashes over
the sparkling main with a feeling that he can do
anything he pleases, provided he be strong enough.

The first pirates who made themselves known in
American waters were the famous buccaneers; these
began their career in a very commonplace and unobjectionable
manner, and the name by which they
were known had originally no piratical significance.
It was derived from the French word boucanier,
signifying “a drier of beef.”

Some of the West India islands, especially San
Domingo, were almost overrun with wild cattle of
various kinds, and this was owing to the fact that
the Spaniards had killed off nearly all the natives,
and so had left the interior of the islands to the
herds of cattle which had increased rapidly. There
[Pg 4]
were a few settlements on the seacoast, but the
Spaniards did not allow the inhabitants of these to
trade with any nation but their own, and consequently
the people were badly supplied with the
necessaries of life.

But the trading vessels which sailed from Europe
to that part of the Caribbean Sea were manned by
bold and daring sailors, and when they knew that
San Domingo contained an abundance of beef cattle,
they did not hesitate to stop at the little seaports to
replenish their stores. The natives of the island
were skilled in the art of preparing beef by smoking
and drying it,—very much in the same way in
which our Indians prepare “jerked meat” for
winter use.

But so many vessels came to San Domingo for
beef that there were not enough people on the
island to do all the hunting and drying that was
necessary, so these trading vessels frequently anchored
in some quiet cove, and the crews went on
shore and devoted themselves to securing a cargo
of beef,—not only enough for their own use, but
for trading purposes; thus they became known as
“beef-driers,” or buccaneers.

When the Spaniards heard of this new industry
which had arisen within the limits of their possessions,
they pursued the vessels of the buccaneers
wherever they were seen, and relentlessly destroyed
[Pg 5]
them and their crews. But there were not enough
Spanish vessels to put down the trade in dried beef;
more European vessels—generally English and
French—stopped at San Domingo; more bands
of hunting sailors made their way into the interior.
When these daring fellows knew that the Spaniards
were determined to break up their trade, they became
more determined that it should not be broken
up, and they armed themselves and their vessels so
that they might be able to make a defence against
the Spanish men-of-war.

Thus gradually and almost imperceptibly a state
of maritime warfare grew up in the waters of the
West Indies between Spain and the beef-traders of
other nations; and from being obliged to fight, the
buccaneers became glad to fight, provided that it
was Spain they fought. True to her policy of
despotism and cruelty when dealing with her American
possessions, Spain waged a bitter and bloody
war against the buccaneers who dared to interfere
with the commercial relations between herself and
her West India colonies, and in return, the buccaneers
were just as bitter and savage in their warfare
against Spain. From defending themselves against
Spanish attacks, they began to attack Spaniards
whenever there was any chance of success, at first
only upon the sea, but afterwards on land. The
cruelty and ferocity of Spanish rule had brought
[Pg 6]
them into existence, and it was against Spain and
her possessions that the cruelty and ferocity which
she had taught them were now directed.

When the buccaneers had begun to understand
each other and to effect organizations among themselves,
they adopted a general name,—”The Brethren
of the Coast.” The outside world, especially
the Spanish world, called them pirates, sea-robbers,
buccaneers,—any title which would express
their lawless character, but in their own denomination
of themselves they expressed only their fraternal
relations; and for the greater part of their career,
they truly stood by each other like brothers.

[Pg 7]

Chapter II

Some Masters in Piracy

From the very earliest days of history there
have been pirates, and it is, therefore, not at
all remarkable that, in the early days of the
history of this continent, sea-robbers should have
made themselves prominent; but the buccaneers of
America differed in many ways from those pirates
with whom the history of the old world has made
us acquainted.

It was very seldom that an armed vessel set out
from an European port for the express purpose of
sea-robbery in American waters. At first nearly all
the noted buccaneers were traders. But the circumstances
which surrounded them in the new world
made of them pirates whose evil deeds have never
been surpassed in any part of the globe.

These unusual circumstances and amazing temptations
do not furnish an excuse for the exceptionally
wicked careers of the early American pirates; but
we are bound to remember these causes or we could
not understand the records of the settlement of the
[Pg 8]
West Indies. The buccaneers were fierce and reckless
fellows who pursued their daring occupation
because it was profitable, because they had learned
to like it, and because it enabled them to wreak a
certain amount of vengeance upon the common
enemy. But we must not assume that they inaugurated
the piratical conquests and warfare which
existed so long upon our eastern seacoasts.

Before the buccaneers began their careers, there
had been great masters of piracy who had opened
their schools in the Caribbean Sea; and in order
that the condition of affairs in this country during
parts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may
be clearly understood, we will consider some of the
very earliest noted pirates of the West Indies.

When we begin a judicial inquiry into the condition
of our fellow-beings, we should try to be as
courteous as we can, but we must be just; consequently
a man’s fame and position must not turn us
aside, when we are acting as historical investigators.

Therefore, we shall be bold and speak the truth,
and although we shall take off our hats and bow very
respectfully, we must still assert that Christopher
Columbus was the first who practised piracy in
American waters.

When he sailed with his three little ships to discover
unknown lands, he was an accredited explorer
for the court of Spain, and was bravely sailing forth
[Pg 9]
with an honest purpose, and with the same regard
for law and justice as is possessed by any explorer
of the present day. But when he discovered some
unknown lands, rich in treasure and outside of all
legal restrictions, the views and ideas of the great
discoverer gradually changed. Being now beyond
the boundaries of civilization, he also placed himself
beyond the boundaries of civilized law. Robbery,
murder, and the destruction of property, by
the commanders of naval expeditions, who have no
warrant or commission for their conduct, is the same
as piracy, and when Columbus ceased to be a legalized
explorer, and when, against the expressed wishes,
and even the prohibitions, of the royal personages
who had sent him out on this expedition, he began
to devastate the countries he had discovered, and to
enslave and exterminate their peaceable natives, then
he became a master in piracy, from whom the buccaneers
afterward learned many a valuable lesson.

It is not necessary for us to enter very deeply into
the consideration of the policy of Columbus toward
the people of the islands of the West Indies. His
second voyage was nothing more than an expedition
for the sake of plunder. He had discovered gold
and other riches in the West Indies and he had
found that the people who inhabited the islands were
simple-hearted, inoffensive creatures, who did not
know how to fight and who did not want to fight.
[Pg 10]
Therefore, it was so easy to sail his ships into the
harbors of defenceless islands, to subjugate the natives,
and to take away the products of their mines
and soil, that he commenced a veritable course of
piracy.

The acquisition of gold and all sorts of plunder
seemed to be the sole object of this Spanish expedition;
natives were enslaved, and subjected to
the greatest hardships, so that they died in great
numbers. At one time three hundred of them were
sent as slaves to Spain. A pack of bloodhounds,
which Columbus had brought with him for the purpose,
was used to hunt down the poor Indians when
they endeavored to escape from the hands of the
oppressors, and in every way the island of Hayti,
the principal scene of the actions of Columbus, was
treated as if its inhabitants had committed a dreadful
crime by being in possession of the wealth which
the Spaniards desired for themselves.

Queen Isabella was greatly opposed to these cruel
and unjust proceedings. She sent back to their
native land the slaves which Columbus had shipped
to Spain, and she gave positive orders that no more
of the inhabitants were to be enslaved, and that they
were all to be treated with moderation and kindness.
But the Atlantic is a wide ocean, and Columbus, far
away from his royal patron, paid little attention to
her wishes and commands; without going further
[Pg 11]
into the history of this period, we will simply mention
the fact that it was on account of his alleged
atrocities that Columbus was superseded in his command,
and sent back in chains to Spain.

There was another noted personage of the sixteenth
century who played the part of pirate in
the new world, and thereby set a most shining example
to the buccaneers of those regions. This was
no other than Sir Francis Drake, one of England’s
greatest naval commanders.

It is probable that Drake, when he started out in
life, was a man of very law-abiding and orderly disposition,
for he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth
a naval chaplain, and, it is said, though there is some
doubt about this, that he was subsequently vicar of
a parish. But by nature he was a sailor, and nothing
else, and after having made several voyages in
which he showed himself a good fighter, as well as
a good commander, he undertook, in 1572, an expedition
against the Spanish settlements in the West
Indies, for which he had no legal warrant whatever.

Spain was not at war with England, and when
Drake sailed with four small ships into the port of
the little town of Nombre de Dios in the middle
of the night, the inhabitants of the town were as
much astonished as the people of Perth Amboy
would be if four armed vessels were to steam into
Raritan Bay, and endeavor to take possession of the
[Pg 12]
town. The peaceful Spanish townspeople were not
at war with any civilized nation, and they could not
understand why bands of armed men should invade
their streets, enter the market-place, fire their calivers,
or muskets, into the air, and then sound a
trumpet loud enough to wake up everybody in the
place. Just outside of the town the invaders had
left a portion of their men, and when these heard
the trumpet in the market-place, they also fired their
guns; all this noise and hubbub so frightened the
good people of the town, that many of them jumped
from their beds, and without stopping to dress, fled
away to the mountains. But all the citizens were
not such cowards, and fourteen or fifteen of them
armed themselves and went out to defend their town
from the unknown invaders.

Beginners in any trade or profession, whether it
be the playing of the piano, the painting of pictures,
or the pursuit of piracy, are often timid and distrustful
of themselves; so it happened on this occasion
with Francis Drake and his men, who were
merely amateur pirates, and showed very plainly
that they did not yet understand their business.

When the fifteen Spanish citizens came into the
market-place and found there the little body of
armed Englishmen, they immediately fired upon
them, not knowing or caring who they were. This
brave resistance seems to have frightened Drake
[Pg 13]
and his men almost as much as their trumpets and
guns had frightened the citizens, and the English
immediately retreated from the town. When they
reached the place where they had left the rest of
their party, they found that these had already run
away, and taken to the boats. Consequently Drake
and his brave men were obliged to take off some of
their clothes and to wade out to the little ships. The
Englishmen secured no booty whatever, and killed
only one Spaniard, who was a man who had been
looking out of a window to see what was the matter.

Whether or not Drake’s conscience had anything
to do with the bungling manner in which he made
this first attempt at piracy, we cannot say, but he
soon gave his conscience a holiday, and undertook
some very successful robbing enterprises. He received
information from some natives, that a train
of mules was coming across the Isthmus of Panama
loaded with gold and silver bullion, and guarded
only by their drivers; for the merchants who owned
all this treasure had no idea that there was any one in
that part of the world who would commit a robbery
upon them. But Drake and his men soon proved
that they could hold up a train of mules as easily as
some of the masked robbers in our western country
hold up a train of cars. All the gold was taken,
but the silver was too heavy for the amateur pirates
to carry.

[Pg 14]

Two days after that, Drake and his men came to
a place called “The House of Crosses,” where they
killed five or six peaceable merchants, but were
greatly disappointed to find no gold, although the
house was full of rich merchandise of various kinds.
As his men had no means of carrying away heavy
goods, he burned up the house and all its contents
and went to his ships, and sailed away with the
treasure he had already obtained.

Whatever this gallant ex-chaplain now thought
of himself, he was considered by the Spaniards as an
out-and-out pirate, and in this opinion they were
quite correct. During his great voyage around the
world, which he began in 1577, he came down upon
the Spanish-American settlements like a storm from
the sea. He attacked towns, carried off treasure,
captured merchant-vessels,—and in fact showed
himself to be a thoroughbred and accomplished
pirate of the first class.

It was in consequence of the rich plunder with
which his ships were now loaded, that he made his
voyage around the world. He was afraid to go
back the way he came, for fear of capture, and so,
having passed the Straits of Magellan, and having
failed to find a way out of the Pacific in the neighborhood
of California, he doubled the Cape of Good
Hope, and sailed along the western coast of Africa
to European waters.

[Pg 15]

This grand piratical expedition excited great indignation
in Spain, which country was still at peace
with England, and even in England there were
influential people who counselled the Queen that it
would be wise and prudent to disavow Drake’s
actions, and compel him to restore to Spain the
booty he had taken from his subjects. But Queen
Elizabeth was not the woman to do that sort of
thing. She liked brave men and brave deeds, and
she was proud of Drake. Therefore, instead of
punishing him, she honored him, and went to take
dinner with him on board his ship, which lay at
Deptford.

So Columbus does not stand alone as a grand
master of piracy. The famous Sir Francis Drake,
who became vice-admiral of the fleet which defeated
the Spanish Armada, was a worthy companion of
the great Genoese.

These notable instances have been mentioned
because it would be unjust to take up the history
of those resolute traders who sailed from England,
France, and Holland, to the distant waters of the
western world for the purpose of legitimate enterprise
and commerce, and who afterwards became
thorough-going pirates, without trying to make it
clear that they had shining examples for their notable
careers.

[Pg 16]

Chapter III

Pupils in Piracy

After the discoveries of Columbus, the Spanish
mind seems to have been filled with the
idea that the whole undiscovered world,
wherever it might be, belonged to Spain, and that
no other nation had any right whatever to discover
anything on the other side of the Atlantic, or
to make any use whatever of lands which had been
discovered. In fact, the natives of the new countries,
and the inhabitants of all old countries except
her own, were considered by Spain as possessing no
rights whatever. If the natives refused to pay
tribute, or to spend their days toiling for gold for
their masters, or if vessels from England or France
touched at one of their settlements for purposes
of trade, it was all the same to the Spaniards;
a war of attempted extermination was waged alike
against the peaceful inhabitants of Hispaniola, now
Hayti, and upon the bearded and hardy seamen
from Northern Europe. Under this treatment
the natives weakened and gradually disappeared;
[Pg 17]
but the buccaneers became more and more numerous
and powerful.

The buccaneers were not unlike that class of men
known in our western country as cowboys. Young
fellows of good families from England and France
often determined to embrace a life of adventure, and
possibly profit, and sailed out to the West Indies
to get gold and hides, and to fight Spaniards. Frequently
they dropped their family names and assumed
others more suitable to roving freebooters,
and, like the bold young fellows who ride over our
western plains, driving cattle and shooting Indians,
they adopted a style of dress as free and easy, but
probably not quite so picturesque, as that of the
cowboy. They soon became a very rough set of
fellows, in appearance as well as action, endeavoring
in every way to let the people of the western world
understand that they were absolutely free and independent
of the manners and customs, as well as of
the laws of their native countries.

So well was this independence understood, that
when the buccaneers became strong enough to inflict
some serious injury upon the settlements in the
West Indies, and the Spanish court remonstrated
with Queen Elizabeth on account of what had been
done by some of her subjects, she replied that she
had nothing to do with these buccaneers, who, although
they had been born in England, had ceased
[Pg 18]
for the time to be her subjects, and the Spaniards
must defend themselves against them just as if they
were an independent nation.

But it is impossible for men who have been
brought up in civilized society, and who have been
accustomed to obey laws, to rid themselves entirely
of all ideas of propriety and morality, as soon as
they begin a life of lawlessness. So it happened that
many of the buccaneers could not divest themselves
of the notions of good behavior to which they had
been accustomed from youth. For instance, we are
told of a captain of buccaneers, who, landing at a settlement
on a Sunday, took his crew to church. As it
is not at all probable that any of the buccaneering
vessels carried chaplains, opportunities of attending
services must have been rare. This captain seems to
have wished to show that pirates in church know
what they ought to do just as well as other people;
it was for this reason that, when one of his men behaved
himself in an improper and disorderly manner
during the service, this proper-minded captain arose
from his seat and shot the offender dead.

There was a Frenchman of that period who must
have been a warm-hearted philanthropist, because,
having read accounts of the terrible atrocities of the
Spaniards in the western lands, he determined to
leave his home and his family, and become a buccaneer,
in order that he might do what he could for
[Pg 19]
the suffering natives in the Spanish possessions.
He entered into the great work which he had
planned for himself with such enthusiasm and zeal,
that in the course of time he came to be known as
“The Exterminator,” and if there had been more
people of his philanthropic turn of mind, there
would soon have been no inhabitants whatever upon
the islands from which the Spaniards had driven
out the Indians.

There was another person of that day,—also a
Frenchman,—who became deeply involved in debt
in his own country, and feeling that the principles of
honor forbade him to live upon and enjoy what was
really the property of others, he made up his mind
to sail across the Atlantic, and become a buccaneer.
He hoped that if he should be successful in his new
profession, and should be enabled to rob Spaniards
for a term of years, he could return to France, pay
off all his debts, and afterward live the life of a man
of honor and respectability.

Other ideas which the buccaneers brought with
them from their native countries soon showed themselves
when these daring sailors began their lives as
regular pirates; among these, the idea of organization
was very prominent. Of course it was hard to
get a number of free and untrammelled crews to
unite and obey the commands of a few officers.
But in time the buccaneers had recognized leaders,
[Pg 20]
and laws were made for concerted action. In consequence
of this the buccaneers became a formidable
body of men, sometimes superior to the Spanish
naval and military forces.

It must be remembered that the buccaneers lived
in a very peculiar age. So far as the history of
America is concerned, it might be called the age
of blood and gold. In the newly discovered countries
there were no laws which European nations or
individuals cared to observe. In the West Indies
and the adjacent mainlands there were gold and silver,
and there were also valuable products of other
kinds, and when the Spaniards sailed to their part
of the new world, these treasures were the things for
which they came. The natives were weak and not
able to defend themselves. All the Spaniards had
to do was to take what they could find, and when
they could not find enough they made the poor
Indians find it for them. Here was a part of the
world, and an age of the world, wherein it was the
custom for men to do what they pleased, provided
they felt themselves strong enough, and it was not
to be supposed that any one European nation could
expect a monopoly of this state of mind.

Therefore it was that while the Spaniards robbed
and ruined the natives of the lands they discovered,
the English, French, and Dutch buccaneers robbed
the robbers. Great vessels were sent out from
[Pg 21]
Spain, carrying nothing in the way of merchandise
to America, but returning with all the precious metals
and valuable products of the newly discovered
regions, which could in any way be taken from the
unfortunate natives. The gold mines of the new
world had long been worked, and yielded handsome
revenues, but the native method of operating
them did not satisfy the Spaniards, who forced the
poor Indians to labor incessantly at the difficult task
of digging out the precious metals, until many of
them died under the cruel oppression. Sometimes
the Indians were kept six months under ground,
working in the mines; and at one time, when it
was found that the natives had died off, or had fled
from the neighborhood of some of the rich gold
deposits, it was proposed to send to Africa and get
a cargo of negroes to work the mines.

Now it is easy to see that all this made buccaneering
a very tempting occupation. To capture a
great treasure ship, after the Spaniards had been at
so much trouble to load it, was a grand thing,
according to the pirate’s point of view, and although
it often required reckless bravery and almost superhuman
energy to accomplish the feats necessary in
this dangerous vocation, these were qualities which
were possessed by nearly all the sea-robbers of
our coast; the stories of some of the most interesting
of these wild and desperate fellows,—
[Pg 22]
men who did not combine piracy with discoveries
and explorations, but who were out-and-out
sea-robbers, and gained in that way all the reputation
they ever possessed,—will be told in subsequent
chapters.

[Pg 23]

Chapter IV

Peter the Great

Very prominent among the early regular
buccaneers was a Frenchman who came to
be called Peter the Great. This man
seems to have been one of those adventurers who
were not buccaneers in the earlier sense of the
word (by which I mean they were not traders
who touched at Spanish settlements to procure
cattle and hides, and who were prepared to fight
any Spaniards who might interfere with them),
but they were men who came from Europe
on purpose to prey upon Spanish possessions,
whether on land or sea. Some of them made a
rough sort of settlement on the island of Tortuga,
and then it was that Peter the Great seems to have
come into prominence. He gathered about him a
body of adherents, but although he had a great
reputation as an individual pirate, it seems to have
been a good while before he achieved any success as
a leader.

The fortunes of Peter and his men must have
[Pg 24]
been at a pretty low ebb when they found themselves
cruising in a large, canoe-shaped boat not far
from the island of Hispaniola. There were twenty-nine
of them in all, and they were not able to procure
a vessel suitable for their purpose. They
had been a long time floating about in an aimless
way, hoping to see some Spanish merchant-vessel
which they might attack and possibly capture, but
no such vessel appeared. Their provisions began
to give out, the men were hungry, discontented, and
grumbling. In fact, they were in almost as bad a
condition as were the sailors of Columbus just before
they discovered signs of land, after their long
and weary voyage across the Atlantic.

When Peter and his men were almost on the
point of despair, they perceived, far away upon the
still waters, a large ship. With a great jump, hope
sprang up in the breast of every man. They seized
the oars and pulled in the direction of the distant
craft. But when they were near enough, they saw
that the vessel was not a merchantman, probably
piled with gold and treasure, but a man-of-war
belonging to the Spanish fleet. In fact, it was the
vessel of the vice-admiral. This was an astonishing
and disheartening state of things. It was very
much as if a lion, hearing the approach of probable
prey, had sprung from the thicket where he had
been concealed, and had beheld before him, not a
[Pg 25]
fine, fat deer, but an immense and scrawny elephant.

But the twenty-nine buccaneers in the crew were
very hungry. They had not come out upon those
waters to attack men-of-war, but, more than that,
they had not come out to perish by hunger and
thirst. There could be no doubt that there was
plenty to eat and to drink on that tall Spanish
vessel, and if they could not get food and water
they could not live more than a day or two longer.

Under the circumstances it was not long before
Peter the Great made up his mind that if his men
would stand by him, he would endeavor to capture
that Spanish war-vessel; when he put the question
to his crew they all swore that they would
follow him and obey his orders as long as life was
left in their bodies. To attack a vessel armed with
cannon, and manned by a crew very much larger
than their little party, seemed almost like throwing
themselves upon certain death. But still, there
was a chance that in some way they might get the
better of the Spaniards; whereas, if they rowed
away again into the solitudes of the ocean, they
would give up all chance of saving themselves from
death by starvation. Steadily, therefore, they pulled
toward the Spanish vessel, and slowly—for there was
but little wind—she approached them.

The people in the man-of-war did not fail to perceive
[Pg 26]
the little boat far out on the ocean, and some
of them sent to the captain and reported the fact.
The news, however, did not interest him, for he
was engaged in playing cards in his cabin, and it was
not until an hour afterward that he consented to
come on deck and look out toward the boat which
had been sighted, and which was now much
nearer.

Taking a good look at the boat, and perceiving
that it was nothing more than a canoe, the captain
laughed at the advice of some of his officers, who
thought it would be well to fire a few cannon-shot
and sink the little craft. The captain thought it
would be a useless proceeding. He did not know
anything about the people in the boat, and he did
not very much care, but he remarked that if they
should come near enough, it might be a good thing
to put out some tackle and haul them and their
boat on deck, after which they might be examined
and questioned whenever it should suit his convenience.
Then he went down to his cards.

If Peter the Great and his men could have been
sure that if they were to row alongside the Spanish
vessel they would have been quietly hauled on deck
and examined, they would have been delighted at
the opportunity. With cutlasses, pistols, and knives,
they were more than ready to demonstrate to the
Spaniards what sort of fellows they were, and the
[Pg 27]
captain would have found hungry pirates uncomfortable
persons to question.

But it seemed to Peter and his crew a very difficult
thing indeed to get themselves on board the
man-of-war, so they curbed their ardor and enthusiasm,
and waited until nightfall before approaching
nearer. As soon as it became dark enough they
slowly and quietly paddled toward the great ship,
which was now almost becalmed. There were no
lights in the boat, and the people on the deck of
the vessel saw and heard nothing on the dark waters
around them.

When they were very near the man-of-war,
the captain of the buccaneers—according to the
ancient accounts of this adventure—ordered his
chirurgeon, or surgeon, to bore a large hole in the
bottom of their canoe. It is probable that this
officer, with his saws and other surgical instruments,
was expected to do carpenter work when there were
no duties for him to perform in the regular line of
his profession. At any rate, he went to work, and
noiselessly bored the hole.

This remarkable proceeding showed the desperate
character of these pirates. A great, almost impossible
task was before them, and nothing but absolute
recklessness could enable them to succeed. If his
men should meet with strong opposition from the
Spaniards in the proposed attack, and if any of them
[Pg 28]
should become frightened and try to retreat to the
boat, Peter knew that all would be lost, and consequently
he determined to make it impossible for any
man to get away in that boat. If they could not
conquer the Spanish vessel they must die on her
decks.

When the half-sunken canoe touched the sides
of the vessel, the pirates, seizing every rope or projection
on which they could lay their hands, climbed
up the sides of the man-of-war, as if they had been
twenty-nine cats, and springing over the rail, dashed
upon the sailors who were on deck. These men
were utterly stupefied and astounded. They had
seen nothing, they had heard nothing, and all of a
sudden they were confronted with savage fellows
with cutlasses and pistols.

Some of the crew looked over the sides to see
where these strange visitors had come from, but
they saw nothing, for the canoe had gone to the
bottom. Then they were filled with a superstitious
horror, believing that the wild visitors were devils
who had dropped from the sky, for there seemed
no other place from which they could come. Making
no attempt to defend themselves, the sailors,
wild with terror, tumbled below and hid themselves,
without even giving an alarm.

The Spanish captain was still playing cards, and
whether he was winning or losing, the old historians
[Pg 29]
do not tell us, but very suddenly a newcomer took
a hand in the game. This was Peter the Great,
and he played the ace of trumps. With a great
pistol in his hand, he called upon the Spanish captain
to surrender. That noble commander glanced
around. There was a savage pirate holding a pistol
at the head of each of the officers at the table. He
threw up his cards. The trick was won by Peter
and his men.

The rest of the game was easy enough. When
the pirates spread themselves over the vessel, the
frightened crew got out of sight as well as they
could. Some, who attempted to seize their arms
in order to defend themselves, were ruthlessly cut
down or shot, and when the hatches had been
securely fastened upon the sailors who had fled
below, Peter the Great was captain and owner of
that tall Spanish man-of-war.

It is quite certain that the first thing these pirates
did to celebrate their victory was to eat a rousing
good supper, and then they took charge of the
vessel, and sailed her triumphantly over the waters
on which, not many hours before, they had feared
that a little boat would soon be floating, filled with
their emaciated bodies.

This most remarkable success of Peter the Great
worked a great change, of course, in the circumstances
of himself and his men. But it worked
[Pg 30]
a greater change in the career, and possibly in the
character of the captain. He was now a very rich
man, and all his followers had plenty of money.
The Spanish vessel was amply supplied with provisions,
and there was also on board a great quantity
of gold bullion, which was to be shipped to
Spain. In fact, Peter and his men had booty
enough to satisfy any sensible pirate. Now we all
know that sensible pirates, and people in any sphere
of life who are satisfied when they have enough, are
very rare indeed, and therefore it is not a little surprising
that the bold buccaneer, whose story we are
now telling, should have proved that he merited, in
a certain way, the title his companions had given
him.

Sailing his prize to the shores of Hispaniola,
Peter put on shore all the Spaniards whose services
he did not desire. The rest of his prisoners he
compelled to help his men work the ship, and then,
without delay, he sailed away to France, and there
he retired entirely from the business of piracy, and
set himself up as a gentleman of wealth and leisure.

[Pg 31]

Chapter V

The Story of a Pearl Pirate

The ordinary story of the pirate, or the
wicked man in general, no matter how
successful he may have been in his criminal
career, nearly always ends disastrously, and in that
way points a moral which doubtless has a good
effect on a large class of people, who would be very
glad to do wrong, provided no harm was likely to
come to them in consequence. But the story of
Peter the Great, which we have just told, contains
no such moral. In fact, its influence upon the
adventurers of that period was most unwholesome.

When the wonderful success of Peter the Great
became known, the buccaneering community at
Tortuga was wildly excited. Every bushy-bearded
fellow who could get possession of a small boat, and
induce a score of other bushy-bearded fellows to
follow him, wanted to start out and capture a rich
Spanish galleon, as the great ships, used alike for
war and commerce, were then called.

But not only were the French and English sailors
[Pg 32]
and traders who had become buccaneers excited and
stimulated by the remarkable good fortune of their
companion, but many people of adventurous mind,
who had never thought of leaving England for purposes
of piracy, now became firmly convinced that
there was no business which promised better than
that of a buccaneer, and some of them crossed the
ocean for the express purpose of getting rich by
capturing Spanish vessels homeward bound.

As there were not enough suitable vessels in Tortuga
for the demands of the recently stimulated
industry, the buccaneer settlers went to other parts
of the West Indies to obtain suitable craft, and it is
related that in about a month after the great victory
of Peter the Great, two large Spanish vessels, loaded
with silver bullion, and two other heavily laden merchantmen
were brought into Tortuga by the buccaneers.

One of the adventurers who set out about this
time on a cruise after gold-laden vessels, was a
Frenchman who was known to his countrymen as
Pierre François, and to the English as Peter Francis.
He was a good sailor, and ready for any sort of a
sea-fight, but for a long time he cruised about without
seeing anything which it was worth while to
attempt to capture. At last, when his provisions
began to give out, and his men became somewhat
discontented, Pierre made up his mind that rather
[Pg 33]
than return to Tortuga empty-handed, he would
make a bold and novel stroke for fortune.

At the mouth of one of the large rivers of the
mainland the Spaniards had established a pearl fishery,—for
there was no kind of wealth or treasure,
on the land, under ground, or at the bottom of the
sea, that the Spaniards did not get if it were possible
for them to do so.

Every year, at the proper season, a dozen or more
vessels came to this pearl-bank, attended by a man-of-war
to protect them from molestation. Pierre
knew all about this, and as he could not find any
Spanish merchantmen to rob, he thought he would
go down and see what he could do with the pearl-fishers.
This was something the buccaneers had
not yet attempted, but no one knows what he can
do until he tries, and it was very necessary that this
buccaneer captain should try something immediately.

When he reached the coast near the mouth of the
river, he took the masts out of his little vessel, and
rowed quietly toward the pearl-fishing fleet, as if he
had intended to join them on some entirely peaceable
errand; and, in fact, there was no reason whatever
why the Spaniards should suppose that a boat
full of buccaneers should be rowing along that part
of the coast.

The pearl-fishing vessels were all at anchor, and
the people on board were quietly attending to their
[Pg 34]
business. Out at sea, some distance from the mouth
of the river, the man-of-war was lying becalmed.
The native divers who went down to the bottom
of the sea to bring up the shellfish which contained
the pearls, plunged into the water, and came up wet
and shining in the sun, with no fear whatever of any
sharks which might be swimming about in search of
a dinner, and the people on the vessels opened the
oysters and carefully searched for pearls, feeling as
safe from harm as if they were picking olives in their
native groves.

But something worse than a shark was quietly
making its way over those tranquil waters, and no
banditti who ever descended from Spanish mountains
upon the quiet peasants of a village, equalled
in ferocity the savage fellows who were crouching in
the little boat belonging to Pierre of Tortuga.

This innocent-looking craft, which the pearl-fishers
probably thought was loaded with fruit or
vegetables which somebody from the mainland
desired to sell, was permitted, without being challenged
or interfered with, to row up alongside the
largest vessel of the fleet, on which there were some
armed men and a few cannon.

As soon as Pierre’s boat touched the Spanish
vessel, the buccaneers sprang on board with their
pistols and cutlasses, and a savage fight began. The
Spaniards were surprised, but there were a great
[Pg 35]
many more of them than there were pirates, and
they fought hard. However, the man who makes
the attack, and who is at the same time desperate
and hungry, has a great advantage, and it was not
long before the buccaneers were masters of the
vessel. Those of the Spaniards who were not
killed, were forced into the service of their captors,
and Pierre found himself in command of a very
good vessel.

Now it so happened that the man-of-war was so
far away that she knew nothing of this fight on board
one of the fleet which she was there to watch, and
if she had known of it, she would not have been
able to give any assistance, for there was no wind
by which she could sail to the mouth of the river.
Therefore, so far as she was concerned, Pierre considered
himself safe.

But although he had captured a Spanish ship, he
was not so foolish as to haul down her flag, and run
up his own in her place. He had had very good
success so far, but he was not satisfied. It was
quite probable that there was a rich store of pearls
on board the vessel he had taken, but on the other
vessels of the fleet there were many more pearls,
and these he wanted if he could get them. In fact,
he conceived the grand idea of capturing the whole
fleet.

But it would be impossible for Pierre to attempt
[Pg 36]
anything on such a magnificent scale until he had
first disposed of the man-of-war, and as he had now
a good strong ship, with a much larger crew than
that with which he had set out,—for the Spanish
prisoners would be obliged to man the guns and
help in every way to fight their countrymen,—Pierre
determined to attack the man-of-war.

A land wind began to blow, which enabled
him to make very fair headway out to sea. The
Spanish colors were flying from his topmast, and he
hoped to be able, without being suspected of any
evil designs, to get so near to the man-of-war that
he might run alongside and boldly board her.

But something now happened which Pierre could
not have expected. When the commander of the
war-vessel perceived that one of the fleet under his
charge was leaving her companions and putting out
to sea, he could imagine no reason for such extraordinary
conduct, except that she was taking advantage
of the fact that the wind had not yet reached
his vessel, and was trying to run away with the
pearls she had on board. From these ready suspicions
we may imagine that, at that time, the
robbers who robbed robbers were not all buccaneers.

Soon after the Spanish captain perceived that one
of his fleet was making his way out of the river, the
wind reached his vessel, and he immediately set all
[Pg 37]
sail and started in pursuit of the rascals, whom he
supposed to be his dishonest countrymen.

The breeze freshened rapidly, and when Pierre
and his men saw that the man-of-war was coming
toward them at a good rate of speed, showing plainly
that she had suspicions of them, they gave up all
hope of running alongside of her and boarding her,
and concluded that the best thing they could do
would be to give up their plan of capturing the
pearl-fishing fleet, and get away with the ship they
had taken, and whatever it had on board. So they
set all sail, and there was a fine sea-chase.

The now frightened buccaneers were too anxious
to get away. They not only put on all the sail
which the vessel could carry, but they put on more.
The wind blew harder, and suddenly down came the
mainmast with a crash. This stopped the chase,
and the next act in the performance would have to
be a sea-fight. Pierre and his buccaneers were good
at that sort of thing, and when the man-of-war
came up, there was a terrible time on board those
two vessels. But the Spaniards were the stronger,
and the buccaneers were defeated.

There must have been something in the daring
courage of this Frenchman and his little band of
followers, which gave him favor in the eyes of the
Spanish captain, for there was no other reason for
the good treatment which the buccaneers received.

[Pg 38]

They were not put to the sword nor thrown
overboard, not sent on shore and made to work as
slaves,—three very common methods of treating
prisoners in those days. But they were all set free,
and put on land, where they might go where they
pleased.

This unfortunate result of the bold enterprise
undertaken by Pierre François was deeply deplored,
not only at Tortuga, but in England and in France.
If this bold buccaneer had captured the pearl fleet,
it would have been a victory that would have made
a hero of him on each side of the Atlantic, but had
he even been able to get away with the one vessel
he had seized, he would have been a rich man, and
might have retired to a life of ease and affluence;
the vessel he had captured proved to be one of the
richest laden of the whole fleet, and not only in
the heart of Pierre and his men, but among his
sympathizers in Europe and America, there was
great disappointment at the loss of that mainmast,
which, until it cracked, was carrying him forward to
fame and fortune.

[Pg 39]

Chapter VI

The Surprising Adventures of Bartholemy Portuguez

As we have seen that the buccaneers were
mainly English, French, and Dutch sailors,
who were united to make a common piratical
warfare upon the Spaniards in the West Indies,
it may seem a little strange to find a man from Portugal
who seemed to be on the wrong side of this
peculiar fight which was going on in the new
world between the sailors of Northern and Southern
Europe. But although Portugal is such a close
neighbor of Spain, the two countries have often been
at war with each other, and their interests are by no
means the same. The only advantage that Portugal
could expect from the newly discovered treasures of
the West were those which her seafaring men, acting
with the seafaring men of other nations, should
wrest from Spanish vessels homeward bound.

Consequently, there were Portuguese among the
pirates of those days. Among these was a man
named Bartholemy Portuguez, a famous flibustier.

[Pg 40]

It may be here remarked that the name of buccaneer
was chiefly affected by the English adventurers
on our coast, while the French members of the profession
often preferred the name of “flibustier.” This
word, which has since been corrupted into our familiar
“filibuster,” is said to have been originally a corruption,
being nothing more than the French method
of pronouncing the word “freebooters,” which title
had long been used for independent robbers.

Thus, although Bartholemy called himself a flibustier,
he was really a buccaneer, and his name came
to be known all over the Caribbean Sea. From
the accounts we have of him it appears that he did
not start out on his career of piracy as a poor man.
He had some capital to invest in the business, and
when he went over to the West Indies he took
with him a small ship, armed with four small cannon,
and manned by a crew of picked men, many
of them no doubt professional robbers, and the
others anxious for practice in this most alluring
vocation, for the gold fields of California were
never more attractive to the bold and hardy adventurers
of our country, than were the gold fields of
the sea to the buccaneers and flibustiers of the
seventeenth century.

When Bartholemy reached the Caribbean Sea he
probably first touched at Tortuga, the pirates’ headquarters,
and then sailed out very much as if he
[Pg 41]
had been a fisherman going forth to see what he
could catch on the sea. He cruised about on
the track generally taken by treasure ships going
from the mainland to the Havanas, or the island
of Hispaniola, and when at last he sighted a vessel
in the distance, it was not long before he and his
men had made up their minds that if they were to
have any sport that day it would be with what
might be called most decidedly a game fish, for
the ship slowly sailing toward them was a large
Spanish vessel, and from her portholes there protruded
the muzzles of at least twenty cannon. Of
course, they knew that such a vessel would have a
much larger crew than their own, and, altogether,
Bartholemy was very much in the position of a man
who should go out to harpoon a sturgeon, and who
should find himself confronted by a vicious swordfish.

The Spanish merchantmen of that day were generally
well armed, for getting home safely across
the Atlantic was often the most difficult part of the
treasure-seeking. There were many of these ships,
which, although they did not belong to the Spanish
navy, might almost be designated as men-of-war;
and it was one of these with which our flibustier
had now met.

But pirates and fishermen cannot afford to pick
and choose. They must take what comes to them
[Pg 42]
and make the best of it, and this is exactly the way
in which the matter presented itself to Bartholemy
and his men. They held one of their councils
around the mast, and after an address from their
leader, they decided that come what may, they must
attack that Spanish vessel.

So the little pirate sailed boldly toward the big
Spaniard, and the latter vessel, utterly astonished
at the audacity of this attack,—for the pirates’ flag
was flying,—lay to, head to the wind, and waited,
the gunners standing by their cannon. When the
pirates had come near enough to see and understand
the size and power of the vessel they had
thought of attacking, they did not, as might have
been expected, put about and sail away at the best
of their vessel’s speed, but they kept straight on
their course as if they had been about to fall upon
a great, unwieldy merchantman, manned by common
sailors.

Perceiving the foolhardiness of the little vessel,
the Spanish commander determined to give it a lesson
which would teach its captain to understand better
the relative power of great vessels and little ones,
so, as soon as the pirates’ vessel was near enough,
he ordered a broadside fired upon it. The Spanish
ship had a great many people on board. It had
a crew of seventy men, and besides these there were
some passengers, and regular marines, and knowing
[Pg 43]
that the captain had determined to fire upon the
approaching vessel, everybody had gathered on deck
to see the little pirate ship go down.

But the ten great cannon-balls which were shot
out at Bartholemy’s little craft all missed their aim,
and before the guns could be reloaded or the great
ship be got around so as to deliver her other broadside,
the pirate vessel was alongside of her. Bartholemy
had fired none of his cannon. Such guns
were useless against so huge a foe. What he was
after was a hand-to-hand combat on the deck of the
Spanish ship.

The pirates were all ready for hot work. They
had thrown aside their coats and shirts as if each
of them were going into a prize fight, and, with their
cutlasses in their hands, and their pistols and knives
in their belts, they scrambled like monkeys up
the sides of the great ship. But Spaniards are
brave men and good fighters, and there were more
than twice as many of them as there were of the
pirates, and it was not long before the latter found
out that they could not capture that vessel by
boarding it. So over the side they tumbled as fast
as they could go, leaving some of their number
dead and wounded behind them. They jumped
into their own vessel, and then they put off to a
short distance to take breath and get ready for
a different kind of a fight. The triumphant Spaniards
[Pg 44]
now prepared to get rid of this boat load of
half-naked wild beasts, which they could easily do
if they should take better aim with their cannon
than they had done before.

But to their amazement they soon found that
they could do nothing with the guns, nor were they
able to work their ship so as to get it into position
for effectual shots. Bartholemy and his men laid
aside their cutlasses and their pistols, and took up
their muskets, with which they were well provided.
Their vessel lay within a very short range of the
Spanish ship, and whenever a man could be seen
through the portholes, or showed himself in the
rigging or anywhere else where it was necessary to
go in order to work the ship, he made himself
a target for the good aim of the pirates. The
pirate vessel could move about as it pleased, for it
required but a few men to manage it, and so it
kept out of the way of the Spanish guns, and its
best marksmen, crouching close to the deck, fired
and fired whenever a Spanish head was to be
seen.

For five long hours this unequal contest was kept
up. It might have reminded one of a man with a
slender rod and a long, delicate line, who had hooked
a big salmon. The man could not pull in the salmon,
but, on the other hand, the salmon could not
hurt the man, and in the course of time the big fish
[Pg 45]
would be tired out, and the man would get out his
landing-net and scoop him in.

Now Bartholemy thought he could scoop in the
Spanish vessel. So many of her men had been shot
that the two crews would be more nearly equal.
So, boldly, he ran his vessel alongside the big ship
and again boarded her. Now there was another
great fight on the decks. The Spaniards had ceased
to be triumphant, but they had become desperate,
and in the furious combat ten of the pirates were
killed and four wounded. But the Spaniards fared
worse than that; more than half of the men who
had not been shot by the pirates went down before
their cutlasses and pistols, and it was not long before
Bartholemy had captured the great Spanish ship.

It was a fearful and a bloody victory he had gained.
A great part of his own men were lying dead or
helpless on the deck, and of the Spaniards only forty
were left alive, and these, it appears from the accounts,
must have been nearly all wounded or disabled.

It was a common habit among the buccaneers, as
well as among the Spaniards, to kill all prisoners
who were not able to work for them, but Bartholemy
does not seem to have arrived at the stage of depravity
necessary for this. So he determined not
to kill his prisoners, but he put them all into a boat
and let them go where they pleased; while he was
[Pg 46]
left with fifteen men to work a great vessel which
required a crew of five times that number.

But the men who could conquer and capture a ship
against such enormous odds, felt themselves fully
capable of working her, even with their little crew.
Before doing anything in the way of navigation they
cleared the decks of the dead bodies, taking from
them all watches, trinkets, and money, and then
went below to see what sort of a prize they had
gained. They found it a very good one indeed.
There were seventy-five thousand crowns in money,
besides a cargo of cocoa worth five thousand more,
and this, combined with the value of the ship and
all its fittings, was a great fortune for those days.

When the victorious pirates had counted their
gains and had mended the sails and rigging of their
new ship, they took what they wanted out of their
own vessel, and left her to sink or to float as she
pleased, and then they sailed away in the direction
of the island of Jamaica. But the winds did not
suit them, and, as their crew was so very small, they
could not take advantage of light breezes as they
could have done if they had had men enough. Consequently
they were obliged to stop to get water
before they reached the friendly vicinity of Jamaica.

They cast anchor at Cape St. Anthony on the
west end of Cuba. After a considerable delay at
this place they started out again to resume their
[Pg 47]
voyage, but it was not long before they perceived,
to their horror, three Spanish vessels coming
towards them. It was impossible for a very large
ship, manned by an extremely small crew, to sail away
from those fully equipped vessels, and as to attempting
to defend themselves against the overwhelming
power of the antagonists, that was too absurd to
be thought of even by such a reckless fellow as
Bartholemy. So, when the ship was hailed by the
Spanish vessels he lay to and waited until a boat’s
crew boarded him. With the eye of a nautical man
the Spanish captain of one of the ships perceived
that something was the matter with this vessel, for
its sails and rigging were terribly cut up in the long
fight through which it had passed, and of course
he wanted to know what had happened. When he
found that the great ship was in the possession of a
very small body of pirates, Bartholemy and his men
were immediately made prisoners, taken on board
the Spanish ship, stripped of everything they possessed,
even their clothes, and shut up in the hold.
A crew from the Spanish ships was sent to man the
vessel which had been captured, and then the little
fleet set sail for San Francisco in Campeachy.

An hour had worked a very great change in the fortunes
of Bartholemy and his men; in the fine cabin
of their grand prize they had feasted and sung, and
had gloried over their wonderful success, and now,
[Pg 48]
in the vessel of their captor, they were shut up in
the dark, to be enslaved or perhaps executed.

But it is not likely that any one of them either
despaired or repented; these are sentiments very
little in use by pirates.

[Pg 49]

Chapter VII

The Pirate who could not Swim

When the little fleet of Spanish vessels,
including the one which had been captured
by Bartholemy Portuguez and his
men, were on their way to Campeachy, they met
with very stormy weather so that they were separated,
and the ship which contained Bartholemy and
his companions arrived first at the port for which
they were bound.

The captain, who had Bartholemy and the others
in charge, did not know what an important capture
he had made; he supposed that these pirates were
ordinary buccaneers, and it appears that it was his
intention to keep them as his own private prisoners,
for, as they were all very able-bodied men, they
would be extremely useful on a ship. But when
his vessel was safely moored, and it became known
in the town that he had a company of pirates on
board, a great many people came from shore to see
these savage men, who were probably looked upon
[Pg 50]
very much as if they were a menagerie of wild beasts
brought from foreign lands.

Among the sightseers who came to the ship was
a merchant of the town who had seen Bartholemy
before, and who had heard of his various exploits.
He therefore went to the captain of the vessel and
informed him that he had on board one of the very
worst pirates in the whole world, whose wicked
deeds were well known in various parts of the West
Indies, and who ought immediately to be delivered
up to the civil authorities. This proposal, however,
met with no favor from the Spanish captain, who
had found Bartholemy a very quiet man, and could
see that he was a very strong one, and he did not
at all desire to give up such a valuable addition to
his crew. But the merchant grew very angry, for
he knew that Bartholemy had inflicted great injury
on Spanish commerce, and as the captain would not
listen to him, he went to the Governor of the town
and reported the case. When this dignitary heard
the story he immediately sent a party of officers to
the ship, and commanded the captain to deliver the
pirate leader into their charge. The other men
were left where they were, but Bartholemy was
taken away and confined in another ship. The
merchant, who seemed to know a great deal about
him, informed the authorities that this terrible pirate
had been captured several times, but that he had
[Pg 51]
always managed to escape, and, therefore, he was
put in irons, and preparations were made to execute
him on the next day; for, from what he had heard,
the Governor considered that this pirate was no
better than a wild beast, and that he should be put
to death without even the formality of a trial.

But there was a Spanish soldier on board the ship
who seemed to have had some pity, or perhaps some
admiration, for the daring pirate, and he thought
that if he were to be hung the next day it was no
more than right to let him know it, so that when
he went in to take some food to Bartholemy he
told him what was to happen.

Now this pirate captain was a man who always
wanted to have a share in what was to happen, and
he immediately racked his brain to find out what
he could do in this case. He had never been in a
more desperate situation, but he did not lose heart,
and immediately set to work to free himself from
his irons, which were probably very clumsy affairs.
At last, caring little how much he scratched and tore
his skin, he succeeded in getting rid of his fetters,
and could move about as freely as a tiger in a
cage. To get out of this cage was Bartholemy’s
first object. It would be comparatively easy, because
in the course of time some one would come
into the hold, and the athletic buccaneer thought
that he could easily get the better of whoever might
[Pg 52]
open the hatch. But the next act in this truly
melodramatic performance would be a great deal
more difficult; for in order to escape from the ship
it would be absolutely necessary for Bartholemy to
swim to shore, and he did not know how to swim,
which seems a strange failing in a hardy sailor with
so many other nautical accomplishments. In the
rough hold where he was shut up, our pirate, peering
about, anxious and earnest, discovered two large,
earthen jars in which wine had been brought from
Spain, and with these he determined to make a sort
of life-preserver. He found some pieces of oiled
cloth, which he tied tightly over the open mouths
of the jars and fastened them with cords. He was
satisfied that this unwieldy contrivance would support
him in the water.

Among other things he had found in his rummagings
about the hold was an old knife, and with
this in his hand he now sat waiting for a good opportunity
to attack his sentinel.

This came soon after nightfall. A man descended
with a lantern to see that the prisoner
was still secure,—let us hope that it was not
the soldier who had kindly informed him of his
fate,—and as soon as he was fairly in the hold
Bartholemy sprang upon him. There was a fierce
struggle, but the pirate was quick and powerful,
and the sentinel was soon dead. Then, carrying
[Pg 53]
his two jars, Bartholemy climbed swiftly and noiselessly
up the short ladder, came out on deck in the
darkness, made a rush toward the side of the ship,
and leaped overboard. For a moment he sank
below the surface, but the two air-tight jars quickly
rose and bore him up with them. There was a
bustle on board the ship, there was some random
firing of muskets in the direction of the splashing
which the watch had heard, but none of the balls
struck the pirate or his jars, and he soon floated
out of sight and hearing. Kicking out with his
legs, and paddling as well as he could with one
hand while he held on to the jars with the other,
he at last managed to reach the land, and ran as
fast as he could into the dark woods beyond the
town.

Bartholemy was now greatly in fear that, when
his escape was discovered, he would be tracked by
bloodhounds,—for these dogs were much used by
the Spaniards in pursuing escaping slaves or prisoners,—and
he therefore did not feel safe in immediately
making his way along the coast, which was
what he wished to do. If the hounds should get
upon his trail, he was a lost man. The desperate
pirate, therefore, determined to give the bloodhounds
no chance to follow him, and for three
days he remained in a marshy forest, in the dark
recesses of which he could hide, and where the
[Pg 54]
water, which covered the ground, prevented the
dogs from following his scent. He had nothing
to eat except a few roots of water-plants, but he
was accustomed to privation, and these kept him
alive. Often he heard the hounds baying on the
dry land adjoining the marsh, and sometimes he
saw at night distant torches, which he was sure
were carried by men who were hunting for him.

But at last the pursuit seemed to be given up;
and hearing no more dogs and seeing no more
flickering lights, Bartholemy left the marsh and
set out on his long journey down the coast. The
place he wished to reach was called Golpho Triste,
which was forty leagues away, but where he had
reason to suppose he would find some friends.
When he came out from among the trees, he
mounted a small hill and looked back upon the
town. The public square was lighted, and there
in the middle of it he saw the gallows which had
been erected for his execution, and this sight, doubtless,
animated him very much during the first part
of his journey.

The terrible trials and hardships which Bartholemy
experienced during his tramp along the
coast were such as could have been endured only
by one of the strongest and toughest of men. He
had found in the marsh an old gourd, or calabash,
which he had filled with fresh water,—for he could
[Pg 55]
expect nothing but sea-water during his journey,—and
as for solid food he had nothing but the raw
shellfish which he found upon the rocks; but after
a diet of roots, shellfish must have been a very
agreeable change, and they gave him all the strength
and vigor he needed. Very often he found streams
and inlets which he was obliged to ford, and as he
could see that they were always filled with alligators,
the passage of them was not very pleasant. His
method of getting across one of these narrow streams,
was to hurl rocks into the water until he had frightened
away the alligators immediately in front of
him, and then, when he had made for himself what
seemed to be a free passage, he would dash in and
hurry across.

At other times great forests stretched down to
the very coast, and through these he was obliged to
make his way, although he could hear the roars and
screams of wild beasts all about him. Any one who
is afraid to go down into a dark cellar to get some
apples from a barrel at the foot of the stairs, can
have no idea of the sort of mind possessed by
Bartholemy Portuguez. The animals might howl
around him and glare at him with their shining
eyes, and the alligators might lash the water into
foam with their great tails, but he was bound for
Golpho Triste and was not to be stopped on his
way by anything alive.

[Pg 56]

But at last he came to something not alive, which
seemed to be an obstacle which would certainly get
the better of him. This was a wide river, flowing
through the inland country into the sea. He
made his way up the shore of this river for a considerable
distance, but it grew but little narrower,
and he could see no chance of getting across. He
could not swim and he had no wine-jars now with
which to buoy himself up, and if he had been able
to swim he would probably have been eaten up by
alligators soon after he left the shore. But a man
in his situation would not be likely to give up
readily; he had done so much that he was ready
to do more if he could only find out what to do.

Now a piece of good fortune happened to him,
although to an ordinary traveller it might have been
considered a matter of no importance whatever.
On the edge of the shore, where it had floated
down from some region higher up the river, Bartholemy
perceived an old board, in which there
were some long and heavy rusty nails. Greatly
encouraged by this discovery the indefatigable
traveller set about a work which resembled that
of the old woman who wanted a needle, and who
began to rub a crow-bar on a stone in order to
reduce it to the proper size. Bartholemy carefully
knocked all the nails out of the board, and then
finding a large flat stone, he rubbed down one of
[Pg 57]
them until he had formed it into the shape of a
rude knife blade, which he made as sharp as he
could. Then with these tools he undertook the
construction of a raft, working away like a beaver,
and using the sharpened nails instead of his teeth.
He cut down a number of small trees, and when he
had enough of these slender trunks he bound them
together with reeds and osiers, which he found on
the river bank. So, after infinite labor and trial he
constructed a raft which would bear him on the
surface of the water. When he had launched this
he got upon it, gathering up his legs so as to keep
out of reach of the alligators, and with a long pole
pushed himself off from shore. Sometimes paddling
and sometimes pushing his pole against the bottom,
he at last got across the river and took up his journey
upon dry land.

But our pirate had not progressed very far upon
the other side of the river before he met with a new
difficulty of a very formidable character. This was
a great forest of mangrove trees, which grow in
muddy and watery places and which have many
roots, some coming down from the branches, and
some extending themselves in a hopeless tangle in
the water and mud. It would have been impossible
for even a stork to walk through this forest,
but as there was no way of getting around it Bartholemy
determined to go through it, even if he
[Pg 58]
could not walk. No athlete of the present day, no
matter if he should be a most accomplished circus-man,
could reasonably expect to perform the feat
which this bold pirate successfully accomplished.
For five or six leagues he went through that mangrove
forest, never once setting his foot upon the
ground,—by which is meant mud, water, and roots,—but
swinging himself by his hands and arms,
from branch to branch, as if he had been a great ape,
only resting occasionally, drawing himself upon a
stout limb where he might sit for a while and get
his breath. If he had slipped while he was swinging
from one limb to another and had gone down into
the mire and roots beneath him, it is likely that he
would never have been able to get out alive. But
he made no slips. He might not have had the
agility and grace of a trapeze performer, but his
grasp was powerful and his arms were strong, and
so he swung and clutched, and clutched and swung,
until he had gone entirely through the forest and
had come out on the open coast.

[Pg 59]

Chapter VIII

How Bartholemy rested Himself

It was full two weeks from the time that Bartholemy
began his most adventurous and difficult
journey before he reached the little town
of Golpho Triste, where, as he had hoped, he found
some of his buccaneer friends. Now that his hardships
and dangers were over, and when, instead of
roots and shellfish, he could sit down to good,
plentiful meals, and stretch himself upon a comfortable
bed, it might have been supposed that Bartholemy
would have given himself a long rest, but this
hardy pirate had no desire for a vacation at this
time. Instead of being worn out and exhausted
by his amazing exertions and semi-starvation, he
arrived among his friends vigorous and energetic
and exceedingly anxious to recommence business as
soon as possible. He told them of all that had
happened to him, what wonderful good fortune
had come to him, and what terrible bad fortune had
quickly followed it, and when he had related his
adventures and his dangers he astonished even his
[Pg 60]
piratical friends by asking them to furnish him with
a small vessel and about twenty men, in order that
he might go back and revenge himself, not only for
what had happened to him, but for what would
have happened if he had not taken his affairs into
his own hands.

To do daring and astounding deeds is part of the
business of a pirate, and although it was an uncommonly
bold enterprise that Bartholemy contemplated,
he got his vessel and he got his men, and
away he sailed. After a voyage of about eight days
he came in sight of the little seaport town, and sailing
slowly along the coast, he waited until nightfall
before entering the harbor. Anchored at a considerable
distance from shore was the great Spanish
ship on which he had been a prisoner, and from
which he would have been taken and hung in the
public square; the sight of the vessel filled his soul
with a savage fury known only to pirates and bull
dogs.

As the little vessel slowly approached the great
ship, the people on board the latter thought it was a
trading-vessel from shore, and allowed it to come
alongside, such small craft seldom coming from the
sea. But the moment Bartholemy reached the ship
he scrambled up its side almost as rapidly as he had
jumped down from it with his two wine-jars a few
weeks before, and every one of his crew, leaving
[Pg 61]
their own vessel to take care of itself, scrambled up
after him.

Nobody on board was prepared to defend the
ship. It was the same old story; resting quietly in
a peaceful harbor, what danger had they to expect?
As usual the pirates had everything their own way;
they were ready to fight, and the others were not,
and they were led by a man who was determined to
take that ship without giving even a thought to
the ordinary alternative of dying in the attempt.
The affair was more of a massacre than a combat,
and there were people on board who did not know
what was taking place until the vessel had been
captured.

As soon as Bartholemy was master of the great
vessel he gave orders to slip the cable and hoist the
sails, for he was anxious to get out of that harbor
as quickly as possible. The fight had apparently
attracted no attention in the town, but there were
ships in the port whose company the bold buccaneer
did not at all desire, and as soon as possible he got
his grand prize under way and went sailing out of
the port.

Now, indeed, was Bartholemy triumphant; the
ship he had captured was a finer one and a richer
one than that other vessel which had been taken
from him. It was loaded with valuable merchandise,
and we may here remark that for some reason
[Pg 62]
or other all Spanish vessels of that day which were
so unfortunate as to be taken by pirates, seemed to
be richly laden.

If our bold pirate had sung wild pirate songs, as
he passed the flowing bowl while carousing with his
crew in the cabin of the Spanish vessel he had first
captured, he now sang wilder songs, and passed
more flowing bowls, for this prize was a much
greater one than the first. If Bartholemy could
have communicated his great good fortune to the
other buccaneers in the West Indies, there would
have been a boom in piracy which would have
threatened great danger to the honesty and integrity
of the seafaring men of that region.

But nobody, not even a pirate, has any way of
finding out what is going to happen next, and if
Bartholemy had had an idea of the fluctuations
which were about to occur in the market in which
he had made his investments he would have been
in a great hurry to sell all his stock very much
below par. The fluctuations referred to occurred
on the ocean, near the island of Pinos, and came in
the shape of great storm waves, which blew the
Spanish vessel with all its rich cargo, and its triumphant
pirate crew, high up upon the cruel rocks,
and wrecked it absolutely and utterly. Bartholemy
and his men barely managed to get into a little
boat, and row themselves away. All the wealth
[Pg 63]
and treasure which had come to them with the capture
of the Spanish vessel, all the power which the
possession of that vessel gave them, and all the
wild joy which came to them with riches and power,
were lost to them in as short a space of time as it
had taken to gain them.

In the way of well-defined and conspicuous ups
and downs, few lives surpassed that of Bartholemy
Portuguez. But after this he seems, in the language
of the old English song, “All in the downs.” He
had many adventures after the desperate affair in the
bay of Campeachy, but they must all have turned
out badly for him, and, consequently, very well, it is
probable, for divers and sundry Spanish vessels, and,
for the rest of his life, he bore the reputation of an
unfortunate pirate. He was one of those men
whose success seemed to have depended entirely
upon his own exertions. If there happened to be
the least chance of his doing anything, he generally
did it; Spanish cannon, well-armed Spanish crews,
manacles, imprisonment, the dangers of the ocean
to a man who could not swim, bloodhounds, alligators,
wild beasts, awful forests impenetrable to common
men, all these were bravely met and triumphed
over by Bartholemy.

But when he came to ordinary good fortune, such
as any pirate might expect, Bartholemy the Portuguese
found that he had no chance at all. But
[Pg 64]
he was not a common pirate, and was, therefore,
obliged to be content with his uncommon career.
He eventually settled in the island of Jamaica, but
nobody knows what became of him. If it so happened
that he found himself obliged to make his
living by some simple industry, such as the selling
of fruit upon a street corner, it is likely he never
disposed of a banana or an orange unless he jumped
at the throat of a passer-by and compelled him to
purchase. As for sitting still and waiting for customers
to come to him, such a man as Bartholemy
would not be likely to do anything so commonplace.

[Pg 65]

Chapter IX

A Pirate Author

In the days which we are considering there were
all sorts of pirates, some of whom gained much
reputation in one way and some in another, but
there was one of them who had a disposition different
from that of any of his fellows. He was a regular
pirate, but it is not likely that he ever did much fighting,
for, as he took great pride in the brave deeds
of the Brethren of the Coast, he would have been
sure to tell us of his own if he had ever performed
any. He was a mild-mannered man, and, although
he was a pirate, he eventually laid aside the pistol,
the musket, and the cutlass, and took up the pen,—a
very uncommon weapon for a buccaneer.

This man was John Esquemeling, supposed by
some to be a Dutchman, and by others a native of
France. He sailed to the West Indies in the year
1666, in the service of the French West India
Company. He went out as a peaceable merchant
clerk, and had no more idea of becoming a pirate
[Pg 66]
than he had of going into literature, although he
finally did both.

At that time the French West India Company
had a colonial establishment on the island of Tortuga,
which was principally inhabited, as we have
seen before, by buccaneers in all their various grades
and stages, from beef-driers to pirates. The French
authorities undertook to supply these erratic people
with the goods and provisions which they needed,
and built storehouses with everything necessary for
carrying on the trade. There were plenty of purchasers,
for the buccaneers were willing to buy
everything which could be brought from Europe.
They were fond of good wine, good groceries, good
firearms, and ammunition, fine cutlasses, and very
often good clothes, in which they could disport
themselves when on shore. But they had peculiar
customs and manners, and although they were
willing to buy as much as the French traders had
to sell, they could not be prevailed upon to pay
their bills. A pirate is not the sort of a man who
generally cares to pay his bills. When he gets
goods in any way, he wants them charged to him,
and if that charge includes the features of robbery and
murder, he will probably make no objection. But
as for paying good money for what is received, that
is quite another thing.

That this was the state of feeling on the island
[Pg 67]
of Tortuga was discovered before very long by the
French mercantile agents, who then applied to the
mother country for assistance in collecting the debts
due them, and a body of men, who might be called
collectors, or deputy sheriffs, was sent out to the
island; but although these officers were armed with
pistols and swords, as well as with authority, they
could do nothing with the buccaneers, and after a
time the work of endeavoring to collect debts from
pirates was given up. And as there was no profit
in carrying on business in this way, the mercantile
agency was also given up, and its officers were
ordered to sell out everything they had on hand,
and come home. There was, therefore, a sale, for
which cash payments were demanded, and there
was a great bargain day on the island of Tortuga.
Everything was disposed of,—the stock of merchandise
on hand, the tables, the desks, the stationery,
the bookkeepers, the clerks, and the errand
boys. The living items of the stock on hand were
considered to be property just as if they had been
any kind of merchandise, and were sold as slaves.

Now poor John Esquemeling found himself in
a sad condition. He was bought by one of the
French officials who had been left on the island,
and he described his new master as a veritable
fiend. He was worked hard, half fed, treated cruelly
in many ways, and to add to his misery, his
[Pg 68]
master tantalized him by offering to set him free
upon the payment of a sum of money equal to
about three hundred dollars. He might as well
have been asked to pay three thousand or three
million dollars, for he had not a penny in the
world.

At last he was so fortunate as to fall sick, and
his master, as avaricious as he was cruel, fearing
that this creature he owned might die, and thus be
an entire loss to him, sold him to a surgeon, very
much as one would sell a sick horse to a veterinary
surgeon, on the principle that he might make something
out of the animal by curing him.

His new master treated Esquemeling very well,
and after he had taken medicine and food enough
to set him upon his legs, and had worked for the
surgeon about a year, that kind master offered him
his liberty if he would promise, as soon as he could
earn the money, to pay him one hundred dollars,
which would be a profit to his owner, who had paid
but seventy dollars for him. This offer, of course,
Esquemeling accepted with delight, and having
made the bargain, he stepped forth upon the warm
sands of the island of Tortuga a free and happy
man. But he was as poor as a church mouse.
He had nothing in the world but the clothes on his
back, and he saw no way in which he could make
money enough to keep himself alive until he had
[Pg 69]
paid for himself. He tried various ways of support,
but there was no opening for a young business man
in that section of the country, and at last he came
to the conclusion that there was only one way by
which he could accomplish his object, and he therefore
determined to enter into “the wicked order of
pirates or robbers at sea.”

It must have been a strange thing for a man
accustomed to pens and ink, to yard-sticks and
scales, to feel obliged to enroll himself into a company
of bloody, big-bearded pirates, but a man must
eat, and buccaneering was the only profession open
to our ex-clerk. For some reason or other, certainly
not on account of his bravery and daring, Esquemeling
was very well received by the pirates of Tortuga.
Perhaps they liked him because he was a mild-mannered
man and so different from themselves.
Nobody was afraid of him, every one felt superior to
him, and we are all very apt to like people to whom
we feel superior.

As for Esquemeling himself, he soon came to
entertain the highest opinion of his pirate companions.
He looked upon the buccaneers who had
distinguished themselves as great heroes, and it
must have been extremely gratifying to those savage
fellows to tell Esquemeling all the wonderful things
they had done. In the whole of the West Indies
there was no one who was in the habit of giving
[Pg 70]
such intelligent attention to the accounts of piratical
depredations and savage sea-fights, as was Esquemeling
and if he had demanded a salary as a listener
there is no doubt that it would have been paid to
him.

It was not long before his intense admiration of
the buccaneers and their performances began to produce
in him the feeling that the history of these
great exploits should not be lost to the world, and
so he set about writing the lives and adventures
of many of the buccaneers with whom he became
acquainted.

He remained with the pirates for several years,
and during that time worked very industriously getting
material together for his history. When he
returned to his own country in 1672, having done
as much literary work as was possible among the
uncivilized surroundings of Tortuga, he there completed
a book, which he called, “The Buccaneers of
America, or The True Account of the Most Remarkable
Assaults Committed of Late Years Upon
the Coasts of the West Indies by the Buccaneers,
etc., by John Esquemeling, One of the Buccaneers,
Who Was Present at Those Tragedies.”

From this title it is probable that our literary
pirate accompanied his comrades on their various
voyages and assaults, in the capacity of reporter,
and although he states he was present at many of
[Pg 71]
“those tragedies,” he makes no reference to any
deeds of valor or cruelty performed by himself,
which shows him to have been a wonderfully conscientious
historian. There are persons, however,
who doubt his impartiality, because, as he liked the
French, he always gave the pirates of that nationality
the credit for most of the bravery displayed on their
expeditions, and all of the magnanimity and courtesy,
if there happened to be any, while the surliness,
brutality, and extraordinary wickednesses were
all ascribed to the English. But be this as it may,
Esquemeling’s history was a great success. It was
written in Dutch and was afterwards translated into
English, French, and Spanish. It contained a great
deal of information regarding buccaneering in general,
and most of the stories of pirates which we
have already told, and many of the surprising narrations
which are to come, have been taken from the
book of this buccaneer historian.

[Pg 72]

Chapter X

The Story of Roc, the Brazilian

Having given the history of a very plain
and quiet buccaneer, who was a reporter
and writer, and who, if he were now living,
would be eligible as a member of an Authors’
Club, we will pass to the consideration of a regular
out-and-out pirate, one from whose mast-head would
have floated the black flag with its skull and cross-bones
if that emblematic piece of bunting had been
in use by the pirates of the period.

This famous buccaneer was called Roc, because
he had to have a name, and his own was unknown,
and “the Brazilian,” because he was born in Brazil,
though of Dutch parents. Unlike most of
his fellow-practitioners he did not gradually become
a pirate. From his early youth he never had an
intention of being anything else. As soon as he
grew to be a man he became a bloody buccaneer,
and at the first opportunity he joined a pirate crew,
and had made but a few voyages when it was perceived
by his companions that he was destined to
[Pg 73]
become a most remarkable sea-robber. He was
offered the command of a ship with a well-armed
crew of marine savages, and in a very short time
after he had set out on his first independent cruise
he fell in with a Spanish ship loaded with silver
bullion; having captured this, he sailed with his
prize to Jamaica, which was one of the great resorts
of the English buccaneers. There his success
delighted the community, his talents for the conduct
of great piratical operations soon became apparent,
and he was generally acknowledged as the Head
Pirate of the West Indies.

He was now looked upon as a hero even by those
colonists who had no sympathy with pirates, and as
for Esquemeling, he simply worshipped the great
Brazilian desperado. If he had been writing the
life and times of Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar,
or Mr. Gladstone, he could not have been more
enthusiastic in his praises. And as in The Arabian
Nights the roc is described as the greatest of birds,
so, in the eyes of the buccaneer biographer, this
Roc was the greatest of pirates. But it was not
only in the mind of the historian that Roc now
became famous; the better he became known, the
more general was the fear and respect felt for him,
and we are told that the mothers of the islands used
to put their children to sleep by threatening them
with the terrible Roc if they did not close their eyes.
[Pg 74]
This story, however, I regard with a great deal of
doubt; it has been told of Saladin and many other
wicked and famous men, but I do not believe it is
an easy thing to frighten a child into going to sleep.
If I found it necessary to make a youngster take a
nap, I should say nothing of the condition of affairs
in Cuba or of the persecutions of the Armenians.

This renowned pirate from Brazil must have
been a terrible fellow to look at. He was strong
and brawny, his face was short and very wide, with
high cheek-bones, and his expression probably resembled
that of a pug dog. His eyebrows were
enormously large and bushy, and from under them
he glared at his mundane surroundings. He was
not a man whose spirit could be quelled by looking
him steadfastly in the eye. It was his custom in
the daytime to walk about, carrying a drawn cutlass,
resting easily upon his arm, edge up, very
much as a fine gentleman carries his high silk hat,
and any one who should impertinently stare or endeavor
to quell his high spirits in any other way,
would probably have felt the edge of that cutlass
descending rapidly through his physical organism.

He was a man who insisted upon being obeyed,
and if any one of his crew behaved improperly, or
was even found idle, this strict and inexorable master
would cut him down where he stood. But
although he was so strict and exacting during the
[Pg 75]
business sessions of his piratical year, by which I
mean when he was cruising around after prizes, he
was very much more disagreeable when he was taking
a vacation. On his return to Jamaica after one of his
expeditions it was his habit to give himself some
relaxation after the hardships and dangers through
which he had passed, and on such occasions it was
a great comfort to Roc to get himself thoroughly
drunk. With his cutlass waving high in the air, he
would rush out into the street and take a whack at
every one whom he met. As far as was possible the
citizens allowed him to have the street to himself,
and it was not at all likely that his visits to Jamaica
were looked forward to with any eager anticipations.

Roc, it may be said, was not only a bloody pirate,
but a blooded one; he was thoroughbred. From
the time he had been able to assert his individuality
he had been a pirate, and there was no reason to
suppose that he would ever reform himself into anything
else. There were no extenuating circumstances
in his case; in his nature there was no alloy,
nor moderation, nor forbearance. The appreciative
Esquemeling, who might be called the Boswell of
the buccaneers, could never have met his hero
Roc, when that bushy-bearded pirate was running
“amuck” in the streets, but if he had, it is not
probable that his book would have been written.
He assures us that when Roc was not drunk he was
[Pg 76]
esteemed, but at the same time feared; but there
are various ways of gaining esteem, and Roc’s
method certainly succeeded very well in the case
of his literary associate.

As we have seen, the hatred of the Spaniards by
the buccaneers began very early in the settlement
of the West Indies, and in fact, it is very likely that
if there had been no Spaniards there would never
have been any buccaneers; but in all the instances
of ferocious enmity toward the Spaniards there has
been nothing to equal the feelings of Roc, the Brazilian,
upon that subject. His dislike to everything
Spanish arose, he declared, from cruelties which had
been practised upon his parents by people of that
nation, and his main principle of action throughout
all his piratical career seems to have been that there
was nothing too bad for a Spaniard. The object of
his life was to wage bitter war against Spanish ships
and Spanish settlements. He seldom gave any quarter
to his prisoners, and would often subject them to
horrible tortures in order to make them tell where
he could find the things he wanted. There is nothing
horrible that has ever been written or told about
the buccaneer life, which could not have been told
about Roc, the Brazilian. He was a typical pirate.

“In a small boat filled with some of his trusty men, he rowed
quietly into the port.”—p. 77.]

Roc was very successful, in his enterprises, and
took a great deal of valuable merchandise to Jamaica,
but although he and his crew were always rich men
[Pg 77]
when they went on shore, they did not remain in
that condition very long. The buccaneers of that
day were all very extravagant, and, moreover, they
were great gamblers, and it was not uncommon for
them to lose everything they possessed before they
had been on shore a week. Then there was nothing
for them to do but to go on board their vessels
and put out to sea in search of some fresh prize.
So far Roc’s career had been very much like that
of many other Companions of the Coast, differing
from them only in respect to intensity and force,
but he was a clever man with ideas, and was able to
adapt himself to circumstances.

He was cruising about Campeachy without seeing
any craft that was worth capturing, when he thought
that it would be very well for him to go out on a
sort of marine scouting expedition and find out
whether or not there were any Spanish vessels in
the bay which were well laden and which were likely
soon to come out. So, with a small boat filled with
some of his trusty men, he rowed quietly into the
port to see what he could discover. If he had had
Esquemeling with him, and had sent that mild-mannered
observer into the harbor to investigate
into the state of affairs, and come back with a report,
it would have been a great deal better for the
pirate captain, but he chose to go himself, and he
came to grief. No sooner did the people on the
[Pg 78]
ships lying in the harbor behold a boat approaching
with a big-browed, broad-jawed mariner sitting in
the stern, and with a good many more broad-backed,
hairy mariners than were necessary, pulling at the
oars, than they gave the alarm. The well-known
pirate was recognized, and it was not long before he
was captured. Roc must have had a great deal of
confidence in his own powers, or perhaps he relied
somewhat upon the fear which his very presence
evoked. But he made a mistake this time; he had
run into the lion’s jaw, and the lion had closed his
teeth upon him.

When the pirate captain and his companions
were brought before the Governor, he made no
pretence of putting them to trial. Buccaneers were
outlawed by the Spanish, and were considered as
wild beasts to be killed without mercy wherever
caught. Consequently Roc and his men were
thrown into a dungeon and condemned to be executed.
If, however, the Spanish Governor had
known what was good for himself, he would have
had them killed that night.

During the time that preparations were going on
for making examples of these impertinent pirates,
who had dared to enter the port of Campeachy,
Roc was racking his brains to find some method
of getting out of the terrible scrape into which he
had fallen. This was a branch of the business in
[Pg 79]
which a capable pirate was obliged to be proficient;
if he could not get himself out of scrapes, he could
not expect to be successful. In this case there was
no chance of cutting down sentinels, or jumping
overboard with a couple of wine-jars for a life-preserver,
or of doing any of those ordinary things
which pirates were in the habit of doing when escaping
from their captors. Roc and his men were in
a dungeon on land, inside of a fortress, and if they
escaped from this, they would find themselves unarmed
in the midst of a body of Spanish soldiers.
Their stout arms and their stout hearts were of no
use to them now, and they were obliged to depend
upon their wits if they had any. Roc had plenty of
wit, and he used it well. There was a slave, probably
not a negro nor a native, but most likely some
European who had been made prisoner, who came
in to bring him food and drink, and by the means
of this man the pirate hoped to play a trick upon
the Governor. He promised the slave that if he
would help him,—and he told him it would be very
easy to do so,—he would give him money enough
to buy his freedom and to return to his friends, and
this, of course, was a great inducement to the poor
fellow, who may have been an Englishman or a
Frenchman in good circumstances at home. The
slave agreed to the proposals, and the first thing he
did was to bring some writing-materials to Roc, who
[Pg 80]
thereupon began the composition of a letter upon
which he based all his hopes of life and freedom.

When he was coming into the bay, Roc had noticed
a large French vessel that was lying at some distance
from the town, and he wrote his letter as if it
had come from the captain of this ship. In the character
of this French captain he addressed his letter to
the Governor of the town, and in it he stated that he
had understood that certain Companions of the Coast,
for whom he had great sympathy,—for the French
and the buccaneers were always good friends,—had
been captured by the Governor, who, he heard,
had threatened to execute them. Then the French
captain, by the hand of Roc, went on to say that if
any harm should come to these brave men, who
had been taken and imprisoned when they were
doing no harm to anybody, he would swear, in his
most solemn manner, that never, for the rest of his
life, would he give quarter to any Spaniard who
might fall into his hands, and he, moreover, threatened
that any kind of vengeance which should
become possible for the buccaneers and French
united, to inflict upon the Spanish ships, or upon
the town of Campeachy, should be taken as soon
as possible after he should hear of any injury that
might be inflicted upon the unfortunate men who
were then lying imprisoned in the fortress.

When the slave came back to Roc, the letter was
[Pg 81]
given to him with very particular directions as to
what he was to do with it. He was to disguise
himself as much as possible, so that he should not
be recognized by the people of the place, and then
in the night he was to make his way out of the
town, and early in the morning he was to return as
if he had been walking along the shore of the harbor,
when he was to state that he had been put on
shore from the French vessel in the offing, with a
letter which he was to present to the Governor.

The slave performed his part of the business very
well. The next day, wet and bedraggled, from
making his way through the weeds and mud of the
coast, he presented himself at the fortress with his
letter, and when he was allowed to take it to the
Governor, no one suspected that he was a person
employed about the place. Having fulfilled his mission,
he departed, and when seen again he was the
same servant whose business it was to carry food to
the prisoners.

The Governor read the letter with a disquieted
mind; he knew that the French ship which was
lying outside the harbor was a powerful vessel and
he did not like French ships, anyway. The town
had once been taken and very badly treated by a
little fleet of French and English buccaneers, and he
was very anxious that nothing of the kind should
happen again. There was no great Spanish force in
[Pg 82]
the harbor at that time, and he did not know how
many buccaneering vessels might be able to gather
together in the bay if it should become known that
the great pirate Roc had been put to death in Campeachy.
It was an unusual thing for a prisoner to
have such powerful friends so near by, and the Governor
took Roc’s case into most earnest consideration.
A few hours’ reflection was sufficient to
convince him that it would be very unsafe to tamper
with such a dangerous prize as the pirate Roc, and
he determined to get rid of him as soon as possible.
He felt himself in the position of a man who has
stolen a baby-bear, and who hears the roar of an
approaching parent through the woods; to throw
away the cub and walk off as though he had no idea
there were any bears in that forest would be the
inclination of a man so situated, and to get rid of
the great pirate without provoking the vengeance
of his friends was the natural inclination of the
Governor.

Now Roc and his men were treated well, and
having been brought before the Governor, were told
that in consequence of their having committed no
overt act of disorder they would be set at liberty
and shipped to England, upon the single condition
that they would abandon piracy and agree to become
quiet citizens in whatever respectable vocation
they might select.

[Pg 83]

To these terms Roc and his men agreed without
argument. They declared that they would retire
from the buccaneering business, and that nothing
would suit them better than to return to the ways
of civilization and virtue. There was a ship about
to depart for Spain, and on this the Governor gave
Roc and his men free passage to the other side of
the ocean. There is no doubt that our buccaneers
would have much preferred to have been put on board
the French vessel; but as the Spanish Governor
had started his prisoners on the road to reform,
he did not wish to throw them into the way of
temptation by allowing them to associate with such
wicked companions as Frenchmen, and Roc made
no suggestion of the kind, knowing very well how
greatly astonished the French captain would be if
the Governor were to communicate with him on
the subject.

On the voyage to Spain Roc was on his good
behavior, and he was a man who knew how to
behave very well when it was absolutely necessary:
no doubt there must have been many dull days on
board ship when he would have been delighted to
gamble, to get drunk, and to run “amuck” up and
down the deck. But he carefully abstained from all
these recreations, and showed himself to be such
an able-bodied and willing sailor that the captain
allowed him to serve as one of the crew. Roc knew
[Pg 84]
how to do a great many things; not only could he
murder and rob, but he knew how to turn an honest
penny when there was no other way of filling his
purse. He had learned among the Indians how to
shoot fish with bow and arrows, and on this voyage
across the Atlantic he occupied all his spare time in
sitting in the rigging and shooting the fish which
disported themselves about the vessel. These fish
he sold to the officers, and we are told that in this
way he earned no less than five hundred crowns,
perhaps that many dollars. If this account is true,
fish must have been very costly in those days, but
it showed plainly that if Roc had desired to get
into an honest business, he would have found fish-shooting
a profitable occupation. In every way Roc
behaved so well that for his sake all his men were
treated kindly and allowed many privileges.

But when this party of reformed pirates reached
Spain and were allowed to go where they pleased,
they thought no more of the oaths they had taken
to abandon piracy than they thought of the oaths
which they had been in the habit of throwing right
and left when they had been strolling about on the
island of Jamaica. They had no ship, and not
enough money to buy one, but as soon as they could
manage it they sailed back to the West Indies, and
eventually found themselves in Jamaica, as bold and
as bloody buccaneers as ever they had been.

[Pg 85]

Not only did Roc cast from him every thought of
reformation and a respectable life, but he determined
to begin the business of piracy on a grander scale
than ever before. He made a compact with an old
French buccaneer, named Tributor, and with a large
company of buccaneers he actually set out to take a
town. Having lost everything he possessed, and
having passed such a long time without any employment
more profitable than that of shooting fish with
a bow and arrows, our doughty pirate now desired
to make a grand strike, and if he could take a town
and pillage it of everything valuable it contained,
he would make a very good fortune in a very short
time, and might retire, if he chose, from the active
practice of his profession.

The town which Roc and Tributor determined
to attack was Merida, in Yucatan, and although
this was a bold and rash undertaking, the two
pirates were bold and rash enough for anything.
Roc had been a prisoner in Merida, and on account
of his knowledge of the town he believed that he
and his followers could land upon the coast, and
then quietly advance upon the town without their
approach being discovered. If they could do this,
it would be an easy matter to rush upon the unsuspecting
garrison, and, having annihilated these, make
themselves masters of the town.

But their plans did not work very well; they
[Pg 86]
were discovered by some Indians, after they had
landed, who hurried to Merida and gave notice of
the approach of the buccaneers. Consequently,
when Roc and his companions reached the town
they found the garrison prepared for them, cannons
loaded, and all the approaches guarded. Still the
pirates did not hesitate; they advanced fiercely to
the attack just as they were accustomed to do when
they were boarding a Spanish vessel, but they soon
found that fighting on land was very different from
fighting at sea. In a marine combat it is seldom
that a party of boarders is attacked in the rear by the
enemy, although on land such methods of warfare
may always be expected; but Roc and Tributor
did not expect anything of the kind, and they were,
therefore, greatly dismayed when a party of horsemen
from the town, who had made a wide détour
through the woods, suddenly charged upon their
rear. Between the guns of the garrison and the
sabres of the horsemen the buccaneers had a very
hard time, and it was not long before they were
completely defeated. Tributor and a great many
of the pirates were killed or taken, and Roc, the
Brazilian, had a terrible fall.

This most memorable fall occurred in the estimation
of John Esquemeling, who knew all about the
attack on Merida, and who wrote the account of it.
But he had never expected to be called upon to
[Pg 87]
record that his great hero, Roc, the Brazilian, saved
his life, after the utter defeat of himself and his
companions, by ignominiously running away. The
loyal chronicler had as firm a belief in the absolute
inability of his hero to fly from danger as was shown
by the Scottish Douglas, when he stood, his back
against a mass of stone, and invited his enemies to
“Come one, come all.” The bushy-browed pirate
of the drawn cutlass had so often expressed his contempt
for a soldier who would even surrender, to
say nothing of running away, that Esquemeling
could scarcely believe that Roc had retreated from
his enemies, deserted his friends, and turned his
back upon the principles which he had always so
truculently proclaimed.

But this downfall of a hero simply shows that
Esquemeling, although he was a member of the
piratical body, and was proud to consider himself
a buccaneer, did not understand the true nature of
a pirate. Under the brutality, the cruelty, the dishonesty,
and the recklessness of the sea-robbers
of those days, there was nearly always meanness and
cowardice. Roc, as we have said in the beginning
of this sketch, was a typical pirate; under certain
circumstances he showed himself to have all those
brave and savage qualities which Esquemeling esteemed
and revered, and under other circumstances
he showed those other qualities which Esquemeling
[Pg 88]
despised, but which are necessary to make up the
true character of a pirate.

The historian John seems to have been very
much cut up by the manner in which his favorite
hero had rounded off his piratical career, and after
that he entirely dropped Roc from his chronicles.

This out-and-out pirate was afterwards living in
Jamaica, and probably engaged in new enterprises,
but Esquemeling would have nothing more to do
with him nor with the history of his deeds.

[Pg 89]

Chapter XI

A Buccaneer Boom

The condition of affairs in the West Indies
was becoming very serious in the eyes of
the Spanish rulers. They had discovered
a new country, they had taken possession of it, and
they had found great wealth of various kinds, of
which they were very much in need. This wealth
was being carried to Spain as fast as it could be
taken from the unfortunate natives and gathered
together for transportation, and everything would
have gone on very well indeed had it not been for
the most culpable and unwarranted interference of
that lawless party of men, who might almost be said
to amount to a nationality, who were continually
on the alert to take from Spain everything she
could take from America. The English, French,
and Dutch governments were generally at peace
with Spain, but they sat by quietly and saw their
sailor subjects band themselves together and make
war upon Spanish commerce,—a very one-sided
commerce, it is true.

[Pg 90]

It was of no use for Spain to complain of the
buccaneers to her sister maritime nations. It is not
certain that they could have done anything to interfere
with the operations of the sea-robbers who
originally sailed from their coasts, but it is certain
they did not try to do anything. Whatever was
to be done, Spain must do herself. The pirates
were as slippery as they were savage, and although
the Spaniards made a regular naval war upon them,
they seemed to increase rather than to diminish.
Every time that a Spanish merchantman was taken,
and its gold and silver and valuable goods carried
off to Tortuga or Jamaica, and divided among a lot
of savage and rollicking fellows, the greater became
the enthusiasm among the Brethren of the Coast,
and the wider spread the buccaneering boom. More
ships laden almost entirely with stalwart men, well
provided with arms, and very badly furnished with
principles, came from England and France, and the
Spanish ships of war in the West Indies found that
they were confronted by what was, in many respects,
a regular naval force.

The buccaneers were afraid of nothing; they paid
no attention to the rules of war,—a little ship would
attack a big one without the slightest hesitation,
and more than that, would generally take it,—and
in every way Spain was beginning to feel as if she
were acting the part of provider to the pirate seamen
of every nation.

[Pg 91]

Finding that she could do nothing to diminish
the number of the buccaneering vessels, Spain determined
that she would not have so many richly laden
ships of her own upon these dangerous seas; consequently,
a change was made in regard to the shipping
of merchandise and the valuable metals from
America to her home ports. The cargoes were
concentrated, and what had previously been placed
upon three ships was crowded into the holds and
between the decks of one great vessel, which was so
well armed and defended as to make it almost impossible
for any pirate ship to capture it. In some
respects this plan worked very well, although when
the buccaneers did happen to pounce upon one of
these richly laden vessels, in such numbers and with
such swift ferocity, that they were able to capture it,
they rejoiced over a prize far more valuable than
anything the pirate soul had ever dreamed of before.
But it was not often that one of these great ships
was taken, and for a time the results of Spanish
robbery and cruelty were safely carried to Spain.

But it was very hard to get the better of the
buccaneers; their lives and their fortunes depended
upon this boom, and if in one way they could not
get the gold out of the Spaniards, which the latter
got out of the natives, they would try another.
When the miners in the gold fields find they can
no longer wash out with their pans a paying quantity
[Pg 92]
of the precious metal, they go to work on the
rocks and break them into pieces and crush them
into dust; so, when the buccaneers found it did not
pay to devote themselves to capturing Spanish gold
on its transit across the ocean, many of them changed
their methods of operation and boldly planned to
seize the treasures of their enemy before it was put
upon the ships.

Consequently, the buccaneers formed themselves
into larger bodies commanded by noted leaders, and
made attacks upon the Spanish settlements and
towns. Many of these were found nearly defenceless,
and even those which boasted fortifications
often fell before the reckless charges of the buccaneers.
The pillage, the burning, and the cruelty on
shore exceeded that which had hitherto been known
on the sea. There is generally a great deal more in
a town than there is in a ship, and the buccaneers
proved themselves to be among the most outrageous,
exacting, and cruel conquerors ever known in
the world. They were governed by no laws of warfare;
whatever they chose to do they did. They
respected nobody, not even themselves, and acted
like wild beasts, without the disposition which is
generally shown by a wild beast, to lie down and go
to sleep when he has had enough.

There were times when it seemed as though it
would be safer for a man who had a regard for his
[Pg 93]
life and comfort, to sail upon a pirate ship instead
of a Spanish galleon, or to take up his residence in
one of the uncivilized communities of Tortuga or
Jamaica, instead of settling in a well-ordered Spanish-American
town with its mayor, its officials, and
its garrison.

It was a very strange nation of marine bandits
which had thus sprung into existence on these faraway
waters; it was a nation of grown-up men, who
existed only for the purpose of carrying off that
which other people were taking away; it was a nation
of second-hand robbers, who carried their operations
to such an extent that they threatened to do away
entirely with that series of primary robberies to
which Spain had devoted herself. I do not know
that there were any companies formed in those days
for the prosecution of buccaneering, but I am quite
sure that if there had been, their shares would have
gone up to a very high figure.

[Pg 94]

Chapter XII

The Story of L’Olonnois the Cruel

In the preceding chapter we have seen that the
buccaneers had at last become so numerous
and so formidable that it was dangerous for a
Spanish ship laden with treasure from the new
world to attempt to get out of the Caribbean Sea
into the Atlantic, and that thus failing to find
enough richly laden vessels to satisfy their ardent
cravings for plunder, the buccaneers were forced to
make some change in their methods of criminal
warfare; and from capturing Spanish galleons, they
formed themselves into well-organized bodies and
attacked towns.

Among the buccaneer leaders who distinguished
themselves as land pirates was a thoroughbred scoundrel
by the name of Francis L’Olonnois, who was
born in France. In those days it was the custom
to enforce servitude upon people who were not able
to take care of themselves. Unfortunate debtors
and paupers of all classes were sold to people who
had need of their services. The only difference
[Pg 95]
sometimes between master and servant depended
entirely upon the fact that one had money, and the
other had none. Boys and girls were sold for a
term of years, somewhat as if they had been apprentices,
and it so happened that the boy L’Olonnois
was sold to a master who took him to the West
Indies. There he led the life of a slave until he
was of age, and then, being no longer subject to
ownership, he became one of the freest and most
independent persons who ever walked this earth.

He began his career on the island of Hispaniola,
where he took up the business of hunting and
butchering cattle; but he very soon gave up this
life for that of a pirate, and enlisted as a common
sailor on one of their ships. Here he gave signs
of such great ability as a brave and unscrupulous
scoundrel that one of the leading pirates on the
island of Tortuga gave him a ship and a crew, and
set him up in business on his own account. The
piratical career of L’Olonnois was very much like
that of other buccaneers of the day, except that he
was so abominably cruel to the Spanish prisoners
whom he captured that he gained a reputation for
vile humanity, surpassing that of any other rascal
on the western continent. When he captured a
prisoner, it seemed to delight his soul as much to
torture and mutilate him before killing him as to
take away whatever valuables he possessed. His
[Pg 96]
reputation for ingenious wickedness spread all over
the West Indies, so that the crews of Spanish ships,
attacked by this demon, would rather die on their
decks or sink to the bottom in their ships than be
captured by L’Olonnois.

All the barbarities, the brutalities, and the fiendish
ferocity which have ever been attributed to the
pirates of the world were united in the character of
this inhuman wretch, who does not appear to be so
good an example of the true pirate as Roc, the
Brazilian. He was not so brave, he was not so
able, and he was so utterly base that it would be
impossible for any one to look upon him as a hero.
After having attained in a very short time the reputation
of being the most bloody and wicked pirate
of his day, L’Olonnois was unfortunate enough to
be wrecked upon the coast, not far from the town
of Campeachy. He and his crew got safely to
shore, but it was not long before their presence
was discovered by the people of the town, and the
Spanish soldiers thereupon sallied out and attacked
them. There was a fierce fight, but the Spaniards
were the stronger, and the buccaneers were utterly
defeated. Many of them were killed, and most of
the rest wounded or taken prisoners.

Among the wounded was L’Olonnois, and as he
knew that if he should be discovered he would
meet with no mercy, he got behind some bushes,
[Pg 97]
scooped up several handfuls of sand, mixed it with
his blood, and with it rubbed his face so that it presented
the pallor of a corpse. Then he lay down
among the bodies of his dead companions, and
when the Spaniards afterwards walked over the
battlefield, he was looked upon as one of the
common pirates whom they had killed.

When the soldiers had retired into the town with
their prisoners, the make-believe corpse stealthily
arose and made his way into the woods, where he
stayed until his wounds were well enough for him to
walk about. He divested himself of his great boots,
his pistol belt, and the rest of his piratical costume,
and, adding to his scanty raiment a cloak and hat
which he had stolen from a poor cottage, he boldly
approached the town and entered it. He looked
like a very ordinary person, and no notice was taken
of him by the authorities. Here he found shelter
and something to eat, and he soon began to make
himself very much at home in the streets of
Campeachy.

It was a very gay time in the town, and, as
everybody seemed to be happy, L’Olonnois was
very glad to join in the general rejoicing, and these
hilarities gave him particular pleasure as he found
out that he was the cause of them. The buccaneers
who had been captured, and who were imprisoned
in the fortress, had been interrogated over and
[Pg 98]
over again by the Spanish officials in regard to
L’Olonnois, their commander, and, as they had
invariably answered that he had been killed, the
Spanish were forced to believe the glad tidings, and
they celebrated the death of the monster as the
greatest piece of public good fortune which could
come to their community. They built bonfires,
they sang songs about the death of the black-hearted
buccaneer, and services of thanksgiving were held in
their churches.

All this was a great delight to L’Olonnois, who
joined hands with the young men and women, as
they danced around the bonfires; he assisted in a
fine bass voice in the choruses which told of his
death and his dreadful doom, and he went to church
and listened to the priests and the people as they gave
thanks for their deliverance from his enormities.

But L’Olonnois did not waste all his time
chuckling over the baseless rejoicings of the people
of the town. He made himself acquainted with
some of the white slaves, men who had been brought
from England, and finding some of them very
much discontented with their lot, he ventured to
tell them that he was one of the pirates who had
escaped, and offered them riches and liberty if they
would join him in a scheme he had concocted. It
would have been easy enough for him to get away
from the town by himself, but this would have been
[Pg 99]
of no use to him unless he obtained some sort of a
vessel, and some men to help him navigate it. So
he proposed to the slaves that they should steal a
small boat belonging to the master of one of them,
and in this, under cover of the night, the little
party safely left Campeachy and set sail for Tortuga,
which, as we have told, was then the headquarters
of the buccaneers, and “the common place of refuge
of all sorts or wickedness, and the seminary, as it
were, of all manner of pirates.”

[Pg 100]

Chapter XIII

A Resurrected Pirate

When L’Olonnois arrived at Tortuga he
caused great astonishment among his old
associates; that he had come back a comparative
pauper surprised no one, for this was a
common thing to happen to a pirate, but the
wonder was that he got back at all.

He had no money, but, by the exercise of his
crafty abilities, he managed to get possession of a
ship, which he manned with a crew of about a score
of impecunious dare-devils who were very anxious
to do something to mend their fortunes.

Having now become very fond of land-fighting,
he did not go out in search of ships, but directed his
vessel to a little village called de los Cayos, on the
coast of Cuba, for here, he thought, was a chance
for a good and easy stroke of business. This village
was the abode of industrious people, who were
traders in tobacco, hides, and sugar, and who were
obliged to carry on their traffic in a rather peculiar
manner. The sea near their town was shallow, so
[Pg 101]
that large ships could not approach very near, and
thus the villagers were kept busy carrying goods
and supplies in small boats, backwards and forwards
from the town to the vessels at anchor. Here was
a nice little prize that could not get away from him,
and L’Olonnois had plenty of time to make his
preparations to seize it. As he could not sail a ship
directly up to the town, he cruised about the coast
at some distance from de los Cayos, endeavoring to
procure two small boats in which to approach the
town, but although his preparations were made as
quietly as possible, the presence of his vessel was
discovered by some fishermen. They knew that it
was a pirate ship, and some of them who had seen
L’Olonnois recognized that dreaded pirate upon
the deck. Word of the impending danger was
taken to the town, and the people there immediately
sent a message by land to Havana, informing the
Governor of the island that the cruel pirate L’Olonnois
was in a ship a short distance from their village,
which he undoubtedly intended to attack.

When the Governor heard this astonishing tale,
it was almost impossible for him to believe it. The
good news of the death of L’Olonnois had come
from Campeachy to Havana, and the people of the
latter town also rejoiced greatly. To be now told
that this scourge of the West Indies was alive, and
was about to fall upon a peaceful little village on the
[Pg 102]
island over which he ruled, filled the Governor with
rage as well as amazement, and he ordered a well-armed
ship, with a large crew of fighting men, to
sail immediately for de los Cayos, giving the captain
express orders that he was not to come back until
he had obliterated from the face of the earth the
whole of the wretched gang with the exception of
the leader. This extraordinary villain was to be
brought to Havana to be treated as the Governor
should see fit. In order that his commands should
be executed promptly and effectually, the Governor
sent a big negro slave in the ship, who was charged
with the duty of hanging every one of the pirates
except L’Olonnois.

By the time the war-vessel had arrived at de los
Cayos, L’Olonnois had made his preparation to
attack the place. He had procured two large canoes,
and in these he had intended to row up to the town
and land with his men. But now there was a change
in the state of affairs, and he was obliged to alter
his plans. The ordinary person in command of two
small boats, who should suddenly discover that a
village which he supposed almost defenceless, was
protected by a large man-of-war, with cannon and a
well-armed crew, would have altered his plans so
completely that he would have left that part of the
coast of Cuba with all possible expedition. But
the pirates of that day seemed to pay very little
[Pg 103]
attention to the element of odds; if they met an
enemy who was weak, they would fall upon him,
and if they met with one who was a good deal
stronger than themselves, they would fall upon him
all the same. When the time came to fight they
fought.

Of course L’Olonnois could not now row leisurely
up to the town and begin to pillage it as he had
intended, but no intention of giving up his project
entered his mind. As the Spanish vessel was in
his way, he would attack her and get her out of his
way if the thing could be done.

In this new state of affairs he was obliged to use
stratagem, and he also needed a larger force than he
had with him, and he therefore captured some men
who were fishing along the coast and put them into
his canoes to help work the oars. Then by night
he proceeded slowly in the direction of the Spanish
vessel. The man-of-war was anchored not very far
from the town, and when about two o’clock in the
morning the watch on deck saw some canoes approaching
they supposed them to be boats from
shore, for, as has been said, such vessels were continually
plying about those shallow waters. The
canoes were hailed, and after having given an account
of themselves they were asked if they knew anything
about the pirate ship upon the coast. L’Olonnois
understood very well that it would not do for him
[Pg 104]
or his men to make answer to these inquiries, for
their speech would have shown they did not belong
to those parts. Therefore he made one of his
prisoner fishermen answer that they had not seen a
pirate vessel, and if there had been one there, it
must have sailed away when its captain heard the
Spanish ship was coming. Then the canoes were
allowed to go their way, but their way was a very
different one from any which could have been expected
by the captain of the ship.

They rowed off into the darkness instead of going
toward the town, and waited until nearly daybreak,
then they boldly made for the man-of-war, one
canoe attacking her on one side and the other on the
other. Before the Spanish could comprehend what
had happened there were more than twenty pirates
upon their decks, the dreaded L’Olonnois at their
head.

In such a case as this cannon were of no use, and
when the crew tried to rush upon deck, they found
that cutlasses and pistols did not avail very much
better. The pirates had the advantage; they had
overpowered the watch, and were defending the deck
against all comers from below. It requires a very
brave sailor to stick his head out of a hatchway
when he sees three or four cutlasses ready to split it
open. But there was some stout fighting on board;
the officers came out of their cabins, and some of the
[Pg 105]
men were able to force their way out into the
struggle. The pirates knew, however, that they
were but few and that were their enemies allowed to
get on deck they would prove entirely too strong,
and they fought, each scoundrel of them, like three
men, and the savage fight ended by every Spanish
sailor or officer who was not killed or wounded
being forced to stay below decks, where the hatches
were securely fastened down upon them.

L’Olonnois now stood a proud victor on the deck
of his prize, and, being a man of principle, he determined
to live up to the distinguished reputation
which he had acquired in that part of the world.
Baring his muscular and hairy right arm, he clutched
the handle of his sharp and heavy cutlass and ordered
the prisoners to be brought up from below,
one at a time, and conducted to the place where he
stood. He wished to give Spain a lesson which
would make her understand that he was not to be
interfered with in the execution of his enterprises,
and he determined to allow himself the pleasure of
personally teaching this lesson.

As soon as a prisoner was brought to L’Olonnois
he struck off his head, and this performance he
continued, beginning with number one, and going
on until he had counted ninety. The last one
brought to him was the negro slave. This man,
who was not a soldier, was desperately frightened
[Pg 106]
and begged piteously for his life. L’Olonnois, finding
that the man was willing to tell everything he
knew, questioned him about the sending of this
vessel from Havana, and when the poor fellow had
finished by telling that he had come there, not of
his own accord, but simply for the purpose of obeying
his master, to hang all the pirates except their
leader, that great buccaneer laughed, and, finding
he could get nothing more from the negro, cut off
his head likewise, and his body was tumbled into
the sea after those of his companions.

Now there was not a Spaniard left on board the
great ship except one man, who had been preserved
from the fate of the others because L’Olonnois had
some correspondence to attend to, and he needed a
messenger to carry a letter. The pirate captain
went into the cabin, where he found writing-materials
ready to his hand, and there he composed a
letter to the Governor of Havana, a part of which
read as follows: “I shall never henceforward give
quarter unto any Spaniard whatsoever. And I have
great hopes that I shall execute on your own person
the very same punishment I have done to them you
sent against me. Thus I have retaliated the kindness
you designed unto me and my companions.”

When this message was received by the dignified
official who filled the post of Governor of Cuba, he
stormed and fairly foamed at the mouth. To be
[Pg 107]
utterly foiled and discomfited by this resurrected
pirate, and to be afterwards addressed in terms of
such unheard-of insolence and abuse, was more than
he could bear, and, in the presence of many of his
officials and attendants, he swore a terrible oath that
after that hour he would never again give quarter
to any buccaneer, no matter when or where he was
captured, or what he might be doing at the time.
Every man of the wretched band should die as soon
as he could lay hands upon him.

But when the inhabitants of Havana and the surrounding
villages heard of this terrible resolution
of their Governor they were very much disturbed.
They lived in constant danger of attack, especially
those who were engaged in fishing or maritime pursuits,
and they feared that when it became known
that no buccaneer was to receive quarter, the Spanish
colonists would be treated in the same way, no
matter where they might be found and taken. Consequently,
it was represented to the Governor that
his plan of vengeance would work most disastrously
for the Spanish settlers, for the buccaneers could do
far more damage to them than he could possibly do
to these dreadful Brethren of the Coast, and that,
unless he wished to bring upon them troubles
greater than those of famine or pestilence, they
begged that he would retract his oath.

When the high dignitary had cooled down a
[Pg 108]
little, he saw that there was a good deal of sense
in what the representative of the people had said
to him, and he consequently felt obliged, in consideration
of the public safety, to take back what he
had said, and to give up the purpose, which would
have rendered unsafe the lives of so many peaceable
people.

L’Olonnois was now the possessor of a fine vessel
which had not been in the least injured during the
battle in which it had been won. But his little
crew, some of whom had been killed and wounded,
was insufficient to work such a ship upon an important
cruise on the high seas, and he also discovered,
much to his surprise, that there were very few provisions
on board, for when the vessel was sent from
Havana it was supposed she would make but a very
short cruise. This savage swinger of the cutlass
thereupon concluded that he would not try to do
any great thing for the present, but, having obtained
some booty and men from the woe-begone town
of de los Cayos, he sailed away, touching at several
other small ports for the purpose of pillage, and
finally anchoring at Tortuga.

[Pg 109]

Chapter XIV

Villany on a Grand Scale

When L’Olonnois landed on the disreputable
shores of Tortuga, he was received
by all circles of the vicious society of the
island with loud acclamation. He had not only
taken a fine Spanish ship, he had not only bearded
the Governor of Havana in his fortified den, but
he had struck off ninety heads with his own hand.
Even people who did not care for him before reverenced
him now. In all the annals of piracy no
hero had ever done such a deed as this, and the
best records of human butchering had been broken.

Now grand and ambitious ideas began to swell
the head of this champion slaughterer, and he conceived
the plan of getting up a grand expedition to
go forth and capture the important town of Maracaibo,
in New Venezuela. This was an enterprise
far above the ordinary aims of a buccaneer, and it
would require more than ordinary force to accomplish
it. He therefore set himself to work to enlist
a large number of men and to equip a fleet of
[Pg 110]
vessels, of which he was to be chief commander or
admiral. There were a great many unemployed
pirates in Tortuga at that time, and many a brawny
rascal volunteered to sail under the flag of the daring
butcher of the seas.

But in order to equip a fleet, money was necessary
as well as men, and therefore L’Olonnois
thought himself very lucky when he succeeded in
interesting the principal piratical capitalist of Tortuga
in his undertaking. This was an old and
seasoned buccaneer by the name of Michael de
Basco, who had made money enough by his piratical
exploits to retire from business and live on his
income. He held the position of Mayor of the
island and was an important man among his fellow-miscreants.
When de Basco heard of the great
expedition which L’Olonnois was about to undertake,
his whole soul was fired and he could not rest
tamely in his comfortable quarters when such great
things were to be done, and he offered to assist
L’Olonnois with funds and join in the expedition if
he were made commander of the land forces. This
offer was accepted gladly, for de Basco had a great
reputation as a fighter in Europe as well as in
America.

When everything had been made ready, L’Olonnois
set sail for Maracaibo with a fleet of eight
ships. On the way they captured two Spanish vessels,
[Pg 111]

both of which were rich prizes, and at last they
arrived before the town which they intended to
capture.

Maracaibo was a prosperous place of three or four
thousand inhabitants; they were rich people living in
fine houses, and many of them had plantations which
extended out into the country. In every way the
town possessed great attractions to piratical marauders,
but there were difficulties in the way; being
such an important place, of course it had important
defences. On an island in the harbor there was a
strong fort, or castle, and on another island a little
further from the town there was a tall tower, on the
top of which a sentinel was posted night and day to
give notice of any approaching enemy. Between
these two islands was the only channel by which the
town could be approached from the sea. But in
preparing these defences the authorities had thought
only of defending themselves against ordinary naval
forces and had not anticipated the extraordinary
naval methods of the buccaneers who used to be
merely sea-robbers, who fell upon ships after they
had left their ports, but who now set out to capture
not only ships at sea but towns on land.

L’Olonnois had too much sense to run his ships
close under the guns of the fortress, against which
he could expect to do nothing, for the buccaneers
relied but little upon their cannon, and so they paid
[Pg 112]
no more attention to the ordinary harbor than if it
had not been there, but sailed into a fresh-water lake
at some distance from the town, and out of sight of
the tower. There L’Olonnois landed his men, and,
advancing upon the fort from the rear, easily crossed
over to the little island and marched upon the fort.
It was very early in the morning. The garrison
was utterly amazed by this attack from land, and
although they fought bravely for three hours, they
were obliged to give up the defence of the walls,
and as many of them as could do so got out of
the fort and escaped to the mainland and the
town.

L’Olonnois now took possession of the fort, and
then, with the greater part of his men, he returned
to his ships, brought them around to the entrance
of the bay, and then boldly sailed with his whole
fleet under the very noses of the cannon and anchored
in the harbor in front of the town.

When the citizens of Maracaibo heard from the
escaping garrison that the fort had been taken, they
were filled with horror and dismay, for they had no
further means of defence. They knew that the
pirates had come there for no other object than to
rob, pillage, and cruelly treat them, and consequently
as many as possible hurried away into the
woods and the surrounding country with as many
of their valuables as they could carry. They resembled
[Pg 113]
the citizens of a town attacked by the
cholera or the plague, and in fact, they would have
preferred a most terrible pestilence to this terrible
scourge of piracy from which they were about to
suffer.

As soon as L’Olonnois and his wild pirates had
landed in the city they devoted themselves entirely to
eating and drinking and making themselves merry.
They had been on short commons during the latter
part of their voyage, and they had a royal time with
the abundance of food and wine which they found in
the houses of the town. The next day, however,
they set about attending to the business which had
brought them there, and parties of pirates were sent
out into the surrounding country to find the people
who had run away and to take from them the treasures
they had carried off. But although a great
many of the poor, miserable, unfortunate citizens
were captured and brought back to the town, there
was found upon them very little money, and but
few jewels or ornaments of value. And now L’Olonnois
began to prove how much worse his presence
was than any other misfortune which could have
happened to the town. He tortured the poor prisoners,
men, women, and children, to make them
tell where they had hidden their treasures, sometimes
hacking one of them with his sword, declaring
at the same time that if he did not tell where
[Pg 114]
his money was hidden he would immediately set to
work to cut up his family and his friends.

The cruelties inflicted upon the inhabitants by
this vile and beastly pirate and his men were so
horrible that they could not be put into print.
Even John Esquemeling, who wrote the account
of it, had not the heart to tell everything that had
happened. But after two weeks of horror and torture,
the pirates were able to get but comparatively
little out of the town, and they therefore determined
to go somewhere else, where they might do better.

At the southern end of Lake Maracaibo, about
forty leagues from the town which the pirates had
just desolated and ruined, lay Gibraltar, a good-sized
and prosperous town, and for this place
L’Olonnois and his fleet now set sail; but they were
not able to approach unsuspected and unseen, for
news of their terrible doings had gone before them,
and their coming was expected. When they drew
near the town they saw the flag flying from the fort,
and they knew that every preparation had been
made for defence. To attack such a place as this
was a rash undertaking; the Spaniards had perhaps
a thousand soldiers, and the pirates numbered but
three hundred and eighty, but L’Olonnois did not
hesitate. As usual, he had no thought of bombardment,
or any ordinary method of naval warfare;
but at the first convenient spot he landed all his
[Pg 115]
men, and having drawn them up in a body, he made
them an address. He made them understand
clearly the difficult piece of work which was before
them; but he assured them that pirates were so
much in the habit of conquering Spaniards that if
they would all promise to follow him and do their
best, he was certain he could take the town. He
assured them that it would be an ignoble thing
to give up such a grand enterprise as this simply
because they found the enemy strong and so well
prepared to meet them, and ended by stating that if
he saw a man flinch or hold back for a second, he
would pistol him with his own hand. Whereupon
the pirates all shook hands and promised they would
follow L’Olonnois wherever he might lead them.

This they truly did, and L’Olonnois, having a
very imperfect knowledge of the proper way to the
town, led them into a wild bog, where this precious
pack of rascals soon found themselves up to their
knees in mud and water, and in spite of all the
cursing and swearing which they did, they were not
able to press through the bog or get out of it.
In this plight they were discovered by a body of
horsemen from the town, who began firing upon
them. The Spaniards must now have thought that
their game was almost bagged and that all they had
to do was to stand on the edge of the bog and shoot
down the floundering fellows who could not get
[Pg 116]
away from them. But these fellows were bloody
buccaneers, each one of them a great deal harder
to kill than a cat, and they did not propose to stay
in the bog to be shot down. With their cutlasses
they hewed off branches of trees and threw these
down in the bog, making a sort of rude roadway by
means of which they were able to get out on solid
ground. But here they found themselves confronted
by a large body of Spaniards, entrenched
behind earthworks. Cannon and musket were
opened upon the buccaneers, and the noise and
smoke were so terrible they could scarcely hear the
commands of their leaders.

Never before, perhaps, had pirates been engaged
in such a land battle as this. Very soon the Spaniards
charged from behind their earthworks, and
then L’Olonnois and his men were actually obliged
to fly back. If he could have found any way of
retreating to his ships, L’Olonnois would doubtless
have done so, in spite of his doughty words, when
he addressed his men, but this was now impossible,
for the Spaniards had felled trees and had made
a barricade between the pirates and their ships.
The buccaneers were now in a very tight place;
their enemy was behind defences and firing at them
steadily, without showing any intention of coming
out to give the pirates a chance for what they considered
a fair fight. Every now and then a buccaneer
[Pg 117]
would fall, and L’Olonnois saw that as it
would be utterly useless to endeavor to charge the
barricade he must resort to some sort of trickery
or else give up the battle.

Suddenly he passed the word for every man to
turn his back and run away as fast as he could from
the earthworks. Away scampered the pirates, and
from the valiant Spaniards there came a shout of
victory. The soldiers could not be restrained from
following the fugitives and putting to death every
one of the cowardly rascals. Away went the buccaneers,
and after them, hot and furious, came the
soldiers. But as soon as the Spaniards were so far
away from their entrenchments that they could not
get back to them, the crafty L’Olonnois, who ran
with one eye turned behind him, called a halt, his
men turned, formed into battle array, and began an
onslaught upon their pursuing enemy, such as these
military persons had never dreamed of in their
wildest imagination. We are told that over two
hundred Spaniards perished in a very short time.
Before a furious pirate with a cutlass a soldier with
his musket seemed to have no chance at all, and
very soon the Spaniards who were left alive broke
and ran into the woods.

The buccaneers formed into a body and marched
toward the town, which surrendered without firing
a gun, and L’Olonnois and his men, who, but an hour
[Pg 118]
before, had been in danger of being shot down by
their enemy as if they had been rabbits in a pen, now
marched boldly into the centre of the town, pulled
down the Spanish flag, and hoisted their own in its
place. They were the masters of Gibraltar. Never
had ambitious villany been more successful.

[Pg 119]

Chapter XV

A Just Reward

When L’Olonnois and his buccaneers entered
the town of Gibraltar they found
that the greater part of the inhabitants
had fled, but there were many people left, and these
were made prisoners as fast as they were discovered.
They were all forced to go into the great church,
and then the pirates, fearing that the Spaniards outside
of the town might be reënforced and come back
again to attack them, carried a number of cannon
into the church and fortified the building. When
this had been done, they felt safe and began to act
as if they had been a menagerie of wild beasts let
loose upon a body of defenceless men, women, and
children. Not only did these wretched men rush
into the houses, stealing everything valuable they
could find and were able to carry away, but when
they had gathered together all they could discover
they tortured their poor prisoners by every cruel
method they could think of, in order to make them
tell where more treasures were concealed. Many
[Pg 120]
of these unfortunates had had nothing to hide, and
therefore could give no information to their brutal
inquisitors, and others died without telling what
they had done with their valuables. When the
town had been thoroughly searched and sifted, the
pirates sent men out into the little villages and
plantations in the country, and even hunters and
small farmers were captured and made to give up
everything they possessed which was worth taking.

For nearly three weeks these outrageous proceedings
continued, and to prove that they were lower
than the brute beasts they allowed the greater number
of the prisoners collected in the church, to perish
of hunger. There were not provisions enough
in the town for the pirates’ own uses and for these
miserable creatures also, and so, with the exception
of a small quantity of mule flesh, which many of
the prisoners could not eat, they got nothing whatever,
and slowly starved.

When L’Olonnois and his friends had been in
possession of Gibraltar for about a month, they
thought it was time to leave, but their greedy souls
were not satisfied with the booty they had already
obtained, and they therefore sent messages to the
Spaniards who were still concealed in the forests,
that unless in the course of two days a ransom of
ten thousand pieces of eight were paid to them, they
would burn the town to the ground. No matter
[Pg 121]
what they thought of this heartless demand, it
was not easy for the scattered citizens to collect
such a sum as this, and the two days passed without
the payment of the ransom, and the relentless pirates
promptly carried out their threat and set the town
on fire in various places. When the poor Spaniards
saw this and perceived that they were about to lose
even their homes, they sent to the town and promised
that if the pirates would put out the fires they
would pay the money. In the hope of more money,
and not in the least moved by any feeling of kindness,
L’Olonnois ordered his men to help put out
the fires, but they were not extinguished until a
quarter of the town was entirely burned and a fine
church reduced to ashes.

When the buccaneers found they could squeeze
nothing more out of the town, they went on board
their ships, carrying with them all the plunder and
booty they had collected, and among their spoils
were about five hundred slaves, of all ages and both
sexes, who had been offered an opportunity to ransom
themselves, but who, of course, had no money
with which to buy their freedom, and who were
now condemned to a captivity worse than anything
they had ever known before.

Now the eight ships with their demon crews sailed
away over the lake toward Maracaibo. It was
quite possible for them to get out to sea without
[Pg 122]
revisiting this unfortunate town, but as this would
have been a very good thing for them to do, it was
impossible for them to do it; no chance to do anything
wicked was ever missed by these pirates.
Consequently L’Olonnois gave orders to drop anchor
near the city, and then he sent some messengers
ashore to inform the already half-ruined citizens
that unless they sent him thirty thousand pieces of
eight he would enter their town again, carry away
everything they had left, and burn the place to the
ground. The poor citizens sent a committee to
confer with the pirates, and while the negotiations
were going on some of the conscienceless buccaneers
went on shore and carried off from one of the great
churches its images, pictures, and even its bells. It
was at last arranged that the citizens should pay
twenty thousand pieces of eight, which was the
utmost sum they could possibly raise, and, in addition
to this, five hundred head of beef-cattle, and
the pirates promised that if this were done they
would depart and molest the town no more. The
money was paid, the cattle were put on board the
ships, and to the unspeakable relief of the citizens,
the pirate fleet sailed away from the harbor.

But it would be difficult to express the horror
and dismay of those same citizens when, three days
afterward, those pirate ships all came back again.
Black despair now fell upon the town; there was
[Pg 123]
nothing more to be stolen, and these wretches must
have repented that they had left the town standing,
and had returned to burn it down. But when one
man came ashore in a boat bringing the intelligence
that L’Olonnois could not get his largest ship across
a bar at the entrance to the lake, and that he wanted
a pilot to show him the channel, then the spirits of
the people went up like one great united rocket,
bursting into the most beautiful coruscations of
sparks and colors. There was nothing on earth that
they would be so glad to furnish him as a pilot to
show him how to sail away from their shores. The
pilot was instantly sent to the fleet, and L’Olonnois
and his devastating band departed.

They did not go directly to Tortuga, but stopped
at a little island near Hispaniola, which was inhabited
by French buccaneers, and this delay was
made entirely for the purpose of dividing the booty.
It seems strange that any principle of right and justice
should have been regarded by these dishonest
knaves, even in their relations to each other, but
they had rigid rules in regard to the division of their
spoils, and according to these curious regulations
the whole amount of plunder was apportioned among
the officers and crews of the different ships.

Before the regular allotment of shares was made,
the claims of the wounded were fully satisfied according
to their established code. For the loss of a
[Pg 124]
right arm a man was paid about six hundred dollars
or six slaves; for the loss of a left arm, five hundred
dollars, or five slaves; for a missing right leg, five
hundred dollars, or five slaves; for a missing left leg,
four hundred dollars, or four slaves; for an eye or a
finger, one hundred dollars, or one slave. Then the
rest of the money and spoils were divided among all
the buccaneers without reference to what had been paid
to the wounded. The shares of those who had been
killed were given to friends or acquaintances, who
undertook to deliver them to their families.

The spoils in this case consisted of two hundred
and sixty thousand dollars in money and a great
quantity of valuable goods, besides many slaves
and precious stones and jewels. These latter were
apportioned among the men in the most ridiculous
manner, the pirates having no idea of the relative
value of the jewels, some of them preferring large
and worthless colored stones to smaller diamonds
and rubies. When all their wickedly gained property
had been divided, the pirates sailed to Tortuga,
where they proceeded, without loss of time, to get
rid of the wealth they had amassed. They ate,
they drank, they gambled; they crowded the taverns
as taverns have never been crowded before;
they sold their valuable merchandise for a twentieth
part of its value to some of the more level-headed
people of the place; and having rioted, gambled,
[Pg 125]
and committed every sort of extravagance for about
three weeks, the majority of L’Olonnois’ rascally
crew found themselves as poor as when they had
started off on their expedition. It took them
almost as long to divide their spoils as it did to get
rid of them.

As these precious rascals had now nothing to live
upon, it was necessary to start out again and commit
some more acts of robbery and ruin; and L’Olonnois,
whose rapacious mind seems to have been
filled with a desire for town-destroying, projected
an expedition to Nicaragua, where he proposed to
pillage and devastate as many towns and villages
as possible. His reputation as a successful commander
was now so high that he had no trouble in
getting men, for more offered themselves than he
could possibly take.

He departed with seven hundred men and six
ships, stopping on the way near the coast of Cuba,
and robbing some poor fishermen of their boats,
which he would need in shallow water. Their
voyage was a very long one, and they were beset
by calms, and instead of reaching Nicaragua, they
drifted into the Gulf of Honduras. Here they
found themselves nearly out of provisions, and
were obliged to land and scour the country to find
something to eat. Leaving their ships, they began
a land march through the unfortunate region where
[Pg 126]
they now found themselves. They robbed Indians,
they robbed villages; they devastated little towns,
taking everything that they cared for, and burning
what they did not want, and treating the people
they captured with viler cruelties than any in which
the buccaneers had yet indulged. Their great object
was to take everything they could find, and then
try to make the people confess where other things
were hidden. Men and women were hacked to
pieces with swords; it was L’Olonnois’ pleasure,
when a poor victim had nothing to tell, to tear
out his tongue with his own hands, and it is said
that on some occasions his fury was so great that
he would cut out the heart of a man and bite at it
with his great teeth. No more dreadful miseries
could be conceived than those inflicted upon the
peaceful inhabitants of the country through which
these wretches passed. They frequently met ambuscades
of Spaniards, who endeavored to stop
their progress; but this was impossible. The
pirates were too strong in number and too savage
in disposition to be resisted by ordinary Christians,
and they kept on their wicked way.

At last they reached a town called San Pedro,
which was fairly well defended, having around it a
great hedge of prickly thorns; but thorns cannot
keep out pirates, and after a severe fight the citizens
surrendered, on condition that they should
[Pg 127]
have two hours’ truce. This was given, and the
time was occupied by the people in running away
into the woods and carrying off their valuables.
But when the two hours had expired, L’Olonnois
and his men entered the town, and instead of rummaging
around to see what they could find, they
followed the unfortunate people into the woods, for
they well understood what they wanted when they
asked for a truce, and robbed them of nearly everything
they had taken away.

But the capture of this town was not of much
service to L’Olonnois, who did not find provisions
enough to feed his men. Their supplies ran very
low, and it was not long before they were in danger
of starvation. Consequently they made their way
by the most direct course to the coast, where they
hoped to be able to get something to eat. If they
could find nothing else, they might at least catch
fish. On their way every rascal of them prepared
himself a net, made out of the fibres of a certain
plant, which grew in abundance in those regions, in
order that he might catch himself a supper when
he reached the sea.

After a time the buccaneers got back to their
fleet and remained on the coast about three months,
waiting for some expected Spanish ships, which
they hoped to capture. They eventually met with
one, and after a great deal of ordinary fighting and
[Pg 128]
stratagem they boarded and took her, but found
her not a very valuable prize.

Now L’Olonnois proposed to his men that they
should sail for Guatemala, but he met with an unexpected
obstacle; the buccaneers who had enlisted
under him had expected to make great fortunes in
this expedition, but their high hopes had not been
realized. They had had very little booty and very
little food, they were hungry and disappointed and
wanted to go home, and the great majority of them
declined to follow L’Olonnois any farther. But
there were some who declared that they would
rather die than go home to Tortuga as poor as
when they left it, and so remained with L’Olonnois
on the biggest ship of the fleet, which he commanded.
The smaller vessels now departed for
Tortuga, and after some trouble L’Olonnois succeeded
in getting his vessel out of the harbor where
it had been anchored, and sailed for the islands of
de las Pertas. Here he had the misfortune to run
his big vessel hopelessly aground.

When they found it absolutely impossible to get
their great vessel off the sand banks, the pirates set
to work to break her up and build a boat out of her
planks. This was a serious undertaking, but it was
all they could do. They could not swim away, and
their ship was of no use to them as she was. But
when they began to work they had no idea it would
[Pg 129]
take so long to build a boat. It was several months
before the unwieldy craft was finished, and they
occupied part of the time in gardening, planting
French beans, which came to maturity in six weeks,
and gave them some fresh vegetables. They also
had some stores and portable stoves on board their
dismantled ship, and made bread from some wheat
which was among their provisions, thus managing
to live very well.

L’Olonnois was never intended by nature to be
a boat-builder, or anything else that was useful and
honest, and when the boat was finished it was discovered
that it had been planned so badly that it
would not hold them all, so all they could do was
to draw lots to see who should embark in her, for
one-half of them would have to stay until the others
came back to release them. Of course L’Olonnois
went away in the boat, and reached the mouth of
the Nicaragua River. There his party was attacked
by some Spaniards and Indians, who killed more
than half of them and prevented the others from
landing. L’Olonnois and the rest of his men got
safely away, and they might now have sailed back
to the island where they had left their comrades,
for there was room enough for them all in the boat.
But they did nothing of the sort, but went to the
coast of Cartagena.

The pirates left on the island were eventually
[Pg 130]
taken off by a buccaneering vessel, but L’Olonnois
had now reached the end of the string by which the
devil had allowed him to gambol on this earth for
so long a time. On the shores where he had now
landed he did not find prosperous villages, treasure
houses, and peaceful inhabitants, who could be
robbed and tortured, but instead of these he came
upon a community of Indians, who were called by
the Spaniards, Bravos, or wild men. These people
would never have anything to do with the whites.
It was impossible to conquer them or to pacify
them by kind treatment. They hated the white
man and would have nothing to do with him.
They had heard of L’Olonnois and his buccaneers,
and when they found this notorious pirate upon their
shores they were filled with a fury such as they had
never felt for any others of his race.

These bloody pirates had always conquered in
their desperate fights because they were so reckless
and so savage, but now they had fallen among
thoroughbred savages, more cruel and more brutal
and pitiless than themselves. Nearly all the buccaneers
were killed, and L’Olonnois was taken prisoner.
His furious captors tore his living body
apart, piece by piece, and threw each fragment into
the fire, and when the whole of this most inhuman
of inhuman men had been entirely consumed, they
scattered his ashes to the winds so that not a trace
[Pg 131]
should remain on earth of this monster. If, in his
infancy, he had died of croup, the history of the
human race would have lost some of its blackest
pages.

[Pg 132]

Chapter XVI

A Pirate Potentate

Sometime in the last half of the seventeenth
century on a quiet farm in a secluded part of
Wales there was born a little boy baby.
His father was a farmer, and his mother churned,
and tended the cows and the chickens, and there
was no reason to imagine that this gentle little baby,
born and reared in this rural solitude, would become
one of the most formidable pirates that the world
ever knew. Yet such was the case.

The baby’s name was Henry Morgan, and as he
grew to be a big boy a distaste for farming grew
with him. So strong was his dislike that when he
became a young man he ran away to the seacoast,
for he had a fancy to be a sailor. There he found
a ship bound for the West Indies, and in this he
started out on his life’s career. He had no money to
pay his passage, and he therefore followed the usual
custom of those days and sold himself for a term of
three years to an agent who was taking out a number
of men to work on the plantations. In the places
[Pg 133]
where these men were enlisted they were termed
servants, but when they got to the new world they
were generally called slaves and treated as such.

When young Morgan reached the Barbadoes he
was resold to a planter, and during his term of service
he probably worked a good deal harder and
was treated much more roughly than any of the
laborers on his father’s farm. But as soon as he
was a free man he went to Jamaica, and there were
few places in the world where a young man could
be more free and more independent than in this lawless
island.

Here were rollicking and blustering “flibustiers,”
and here the young man determined to study piracy.
He was not a sailor and hunter who by the force
of circumstances gradually became a buccaneer, but
he deliberately selected his profession, and immediately
set to work to acquire a knowledge of its
practice. There was a buccaneer ship about to sail
from Jamaica, and on this Morgan enlisted. He
was a clever fellow and very soon showed himself to
be a brave and able sailor.

After three or four voyages he acquired a reputation
for remarkable coolness in emergencies, and
showed an ability to take advantage of favorable
circumstances, which was not possessed by many of
his comrades. These prominent traits in his character
became the foundation of his success. He
[Pg 134]
also proved himself a very good business man, and
having saved a considerable amount of money he
joined with some other buccaneers and bought a
ship, of which he took command. This ship soon
made itself a scourge in the Spanish seas; no other
buccaneering vessel was so widely known and so
greatly feared, and the English people in these
regions were as proud of the young Captain Morgan
as if he had been a regularly commissioned
admiral, cruising against an acknowledged enemy.

Returning from one of his voyages Morgan found
an old buccaneer, named Mansvelt, in Jamaica, who
had gathered together a fleet of vessels with which
he was about to sail for the mainland. This expedition
seemed a promising one to Morgan, and he
joined it, being elected vice-admiral of the fleet of
fifteen vessels. Since the successes of L’Olonnois
and others, attacks upon towns had become very
popular with the buccaneers, whose leaders were
getting to be tired of the retail branch of their business;
that is, sailing about in one ship and capturing
such merchantmen as it might fall in with.

Mansvelt’s expedition took with it not only six
hundred fighting pirates, but one writing pirate, for
John Esquemeling accompanied it, and so far as the
fame and reputation of these adventurers was concerned
his pen was mightier than their swords, for
had it not been for his account of their deeds very
[Pg 135]
little about them would have been known to the
world.

The fleet sailed directly for St. Catherine, an
island near Costa Rica, which was strongly fortified
by the Spaniards and used by them as a station for
ammunition and supplies, and also as a prison.
The pirates landed upon the island and made a
most furious assault upon the fortifications, and
although they were built of stone and well furnished
with cannon, the savage assailants met with their
usual good fortune. They swarmed over the walls
and carried the place at the edge of the cutlass and
the mouth of the pistol. In this fierce fight Morgan
performed such feats of valor that even some
of the Spaniards who had been taken prisoners,
were forced to praise his extraordinary courage and
ability as a leader.

The buccaneers proceeded to make very good
use of their victory. They captured some small
adjoining islands and brought the cannon from
them to the main fortress, which they put in a good
condition of defence. Here they confined all their
prisoners and slaves, and supplied the island with
an abundance of stores and provisions.

It is believed that when Mansvelt formed the
plan of capturing this island he did so with the idea
of founding there a permanent pirate principality,
the inhabitants of which should not consider themselves
[Pg 136]
English, French, or Dutch, but plain pirates,
having a nationality and country of their own. Had
the seed thus planted by Mansvelt and Morgan
grown and matured, it is not unlikely that the whole
of the West Indies might now be owned and inhabited
by an independent nation, whose founders were
the bold buccaneers.

When everything had been made tight and right
at St. Catherine, Mansvelt and Morgan sailed for
the mainland, for the purpose of attacking an inland
town called Nata, but in this expedition they were
not successful. The Spanish Governor of the province
had heard of their approach, and met them with
a body of soldiers so large that they prudently gave
up the attempt,—a proceeding not very common
with them, but Morgan was not only a dare-devil
of a pirate, but a very shrewd Welshman.

They returned to the ships, and after touching
at St. Catherine and leaving there enough men to
defend it, under the command of a Frenchman
named Le Sieur Simon, they sailed for Jamaica.
Everything at St. Catherine was arranged for permanent
occupation; there was plenty of fresh water,
and the ground could be cultivated, and Simon was
promised that additional forces should be sent him
so that he could hold the island as a regular station
for the assembling and fitting out of pirate vessels.

The permanent pirate colony never came to anything;
[Pg 137]
no reënforcements were sent; Mansvelt
died, and the Spaniards gathered together a sufficient
force to retake the island of St. Catherine, and make
prisoners of Simon and his men. This was a blow
to Morgan, who had had great hopes of the fortified
station he thought he had so firmly established, but
after the project failed he set about forming another
expedition.

He was now recognized as buccaneer-in-chief
of the West Indies, and he very soon gathered
together twelve ships and seven hundred men.
Everything was made ready to sail, and the only
thing left to be done was to decide what particular
place they should favor with a visit.

There were some who advised an attack upon
Havana, giving as a reason that in that city there
were a great many nuns, monks, and priests, and
if they could capture them, they might ask as ransom
for them, a sum a great deal larger than they
could expect to get from the pillage of an ordinary
town. But Havana was considered to be too strong
a place for a profitable venture, and after several
suggestions had been made, at last a deserter from
the Spanish army, who had joined them, came forward
with a good idea. He told the pirates of a
town in Cuba, to which he knew the way; it was
named Port-au-Prince, and was situated so far inland
that it had never been sacked. When the pirates
[Pg 138]
heard that there existed an entirely fresh and unpillaged
town, they were filled with as much excited
delight as if they had been a party of school-boys
who had just been told where they might find a
tree full of ripe apples which had been overlooked
by the men who had been gathering the crop.

When Morgan’s fleet arrived at the nearest harbor
to Port-au-Prince, he landed his men and
marched toward the town, but he did not succeed in
making a secret attack, as he had hoped. One of
his prisoners, a Spaniard, let himself drop overboard
as soon as the vessels cast anchor, and swimming
ashore, hurried to Port-au-Prince and informed the
Governor of the attack which was about to be made
on the town. Thus prepared, this able commander
knew just what to do. He marched a body of
soldiers along the road by which the pirates must
come, and when he found a suitable spot he caused
great trees to be cut down and laid across the road,
thus making a formidable barricade. Behind this
his soldiers were posted with their muskets and
their cannon, and when the pirates should arrive
they would find that they would have to do some
extraordinary fighting before they could pass this
well-defended barrier.

When Morgan came within sight of this barricade,
he understood that the Spaniards had discovered
his approach, and so he called a halt. He
[Pg 139]
had always been opposed to unnecessary work, and
he considered that it would be entirely unnecessary
to attempt to disturb this admirable defence, so
he left the road, marched his men into the woods,
led them entirely around the barricades, and then,
after proceeding a considerable distance, emerged
upon a wide plain which lay before the town. Here
he found that he would have to fight his way into
the city, and, probably much to his surprise, his
men were presently charged by a body of cavalry.

Pirates, as a rule, have nothing to do with
horses, either in peace or war, and the Governor of
the town no doubt thought that when his well-armed
horsemen charged upon these men, accustomed
to fighting on the decks of ships, and totally
unused to cavalry combats, he would soon scatter
and disperse them. But pirates are peculiar fighters;
if they had been attacked from above by means
of balloons, or from below by mines and explosives,
they would doubtless have adapted their style of
defence to the method of attack. They always did
this, and according to Esquemeling they nearly
always got the better of their enemies; but we must
remember that in cases where they did not succeed,
as happened when they marched against the town of
Nata, he says very little about the affair and amplifies
only the accounts of their successes.

But the pirates routed the horsemen, and, after
[Pg 140]
a fight of about four hours, they routed all the
other Spaniards who resisted them, and took possession
of the town. Here they captured a great
many prisoners which they shut up in the churches
and then sent detachments out into the country to
look for those who had run away. Then these
utterly debased and cruel men began their usual
course after capturing a town; they pillaged, feasted,
and rioted; they gave no thought to the needs of
the prisoners whom they had shut up in the
churches, many of whom starved to death; they
tortured the poor people to make them tell where
they had hid their treasures, and nothing was too
vile or too wicked for them to do if they thought
they could profit by it. They had come for the express
purpose of taking everything that the people
possessed, and until they had forced from them all
that was of the slightest value, they were not satisfied.
Even when the poor citizens seemed to have
given up everything they owned they were informed
that if they did not pay two heavy ransoms, one to
protect themselves from being carried away into
slavery, and one to keep their town from being
burned, the same punishments would be inflicted
upon them.

For two weeks the pirates waited for the unfortunate
citizens to go out into the country and find
some of their townsmen who had escaped with a
[Pg 141]
portion of their treasure. In those days people
did not keep their wealth in banks as they do now,
but every man was the custodian of most of his own
possessions, and when they fled from the visitation
of an enemy they took with them everything of
value that they could carry. If their fortunes had
been deposited in banks, it would doubtless have
been more convenient for the pirates.

Before the citizens returned Morgan made a discovery:
a negro was captured who carried letters
from the Governor of Santiago, a neighboring city,
to some of the citizens of Port-au-Prince, telling
them not to be in too great a hurry to pay the ransom
demanded by the pirates, because he was coming
with a strong force to their assistance. When
Morgan read these letters, he changed his mind, and
thought it would be a wise thing not to stay in that
region any longer than could be helped. So he
decided not to wait for the unfortunate citizens to
collect the heavy ransom he demanded, but told
them that if they would furnish him with five hundred
head of cattle, and also supply salt and help
prepare the meat for shipment, he would make no
further demands upon them. This, of course, the
citizens were glad enough to do, and when the buccaneers
had carried to the ships everything they had
stolen, and when the beef had been put on board,
they sailed away.

[Pg 142]

Morgan directed the course of the fleet to a small
island on which he wished to land in order that
they might take an account of stock and divide
the profits. This the pirates always did as soon
as possible after they had concluded one of their
nefarious enterprises. But his men were not at all
satisfied with what happened on the island. Morgan
estimated the total value of the booty to be
about fifty thousand dollars, and when this comparatively
small sum was divided, many of the men
complained that it would not give them enough to
pay their debts in Jamaica. They were utterly
astonished that after having sacked an entirely
fresh town they should have so little, and there
is no doubt that many of them believed that their
leader was a man who carried on the business of
piracy for the purpose of enriching himself, while
he gave his followers barely enough to keep them
quiet.

There was, however, another cause of discontent
among a large body of the men; it appears that the
men were very fond of marrow-bones, and while
they were yet at Port-au-Prince and the prisoners
were salting the meat which was to go on the ships,
the buccaneers went about among them and took
the marrow-bones which they cooked and ate while
they were fresh. One of the men, a Frenchman,
had selected a very fine bone, and had put it by
[Pg 143]
his side while he was preparing some other tidbits,
when an Englishman came along, picked up the
bone, and carried it away.

Now even in the chronicles of Mother Goose we
are told of the intimate connection between Welshmen,
thievery, and marrow-bones; for

What happened to Taffy we do not know, but
Morgan was a Welshman, Morgan was a thief, and
one of his men had stolen a marrow-bone; therefore
came trouble. The Frenchman challenged the
Englishman; but the latter, being a mean scoundrel,
took advantage of his opponent, unfairly stabbed
him in the back and killed him.

Now all the Frenchmen in the company rose in
furious protest, and Morgan, wishing to pacify them,
had the English assassin put in chains, and promised
that he would take him to Jamaica and deliver
him to justice. But the Frenchmen declined to be
satisfied; they had received but very little money
[Pg 144]
after they had pillaged a rich town, and they believed
that their English companions were inclined
to take advantage of them in every way, and consequently
the greater part of them banded together
and deliberately deserted Morgan, who was obliged
to go back to Jamaica with not more than half his
regular forces, doubtless wishing that the cattle on
the island of Cuba had been able to get along without
marrow-bones.

[Pg 145]

Chapter XVII

How Morgan was helped by Some Religious People

When the Welsh buccaneer started out on
another expedition his company consisted
entirely of Englishmen, and was not nearly
so large as it had been; when he announced to his
followers that he intended to attack the fortified
town of Porto Bello, on the mainland, there was a
general murmuring among the men, for Porto
Bello was one of the strongest towns possessed by
the Spaniards, and the buccaneers did not believe
that their comparatively small force would be able
to take it. But Morgan made them a speech in
which he endeavored to encourage them to follow
him in this difficult undertaking. One of his arguments
was, that although their numbers were small,
their hearts were large; but he produced the greatest
effect upon them when he said that as they were
but a few, each man’s share of the booty would be
much larger than if it must be divided among a
great number. This touched the souls of the
[Pg 146]
pirates, and they vowed to follow their leader wherever
he might take them.

The buccaneers found Porto Bello a very hard nut
to crack; they landed and marched upon the town,
which was defended by several forts or castles.
Even when one of these had been taken by assault,
and after it had been blown up with all its garrison,
who had been taken prisoners, still the town was
not intimidated, and the Governor vowed he would
never surrender, but would die fighting to the last.
The pirates raged like demons; they shot down
every man they could see at the cannon or upon
the walls, and they made desperate efforts to capture
the principal fort, but they did not succeed, and
after a long time Morgan began to despair. The
garrison was strong and well commanded, and whenever
the pirates attempted to scale the wall they
were shot down, while fire-pots full of powder,
with stones and other missiles, were hurled upon
them.

At last the wily Morgan had an idea. He set
his men to work to make some ladders high enough
to reach to the top of the walls, and wide enough to
allow three or four men to go up abreast. If he
could get these properly set up, his crew of desperate
tiger-cats could make a combined rush and get
over the walls. But to carry the ladders and place
them would be almost impossible, for the men who
[Pg 147]
bore them would surely be shot down before they
could finish the work. But it was not Morgan’s
plan that his men should carry these ladders. He
had captured some convents in the suburbs of the
town, with a number of nuns and monks, known as
“religious people,” and he now ordered these poor
creatures, the women as well as the men, to take up
the ladders and place them against the walls, believing
that the Spanish Governor would not allow
his soldiers to fire at these innocent persons whom
the pirates had forced to do their will.

But the Governor was determined to defend
the town no matter who had to suffer, and so the
soldiers fired at the nuns and monks just as though
they were buccaneers or any other enemies. The
“religious people” cried out in terror, and screamed
to their friends not to fire upon them; but the soldiers
obeyed the commands of the Governor, while
the pirates were swearing terribly behind them and
threatening them with their pistols, and so the poor
nuns and monks had to press forward, many of them
dropping dead or wounded. They continued their
work until the ladders were placed, and then over
the walls went the pirates, with yells and howls of
triumph, and not long after that the town was
taken. The Governor died, fighting in the principal
fort, and the citizens and soldiers all united in
the most vigorous defence; but it was of no use.[Pg 148]
Each pirate seemed to have not only nine lives, but
nine arms, each one wielding a cutlass or aiming a
pistol.

When the fighting was over, the second act in the
horrible drama took place as usual. The pirates
ate, drank, rioted, and committed all manner of
outrages and cruelties upon the inhabitants, closing
the performance with the customary threat that if
the already distressed and impoverished inhabitants
did not pay an enormous ransom, their town would
be burned.

Before the ransom was paid, the Governor of
Panama heard what was going on at Porto Bello,
and sent a force to the assistance of the town, but
this time the buccaneers did not hastily retreat,
Morgan knew of a narrow defile through which
the Spanish forces must pass, and there he posted
a number of his men, who defended the pass so
well that the Spaniards were obliged to retreat.
This Governor must have been a student of military
science; he was utterly astounded when he heard
that this pirate leader, with less than four hundred
men, had captured the redoubtable town of Porto
Bello, defended by a strong garrison and inhabited
by citizens who were brave and accustomed to fighting,
and, being anxious to increase his knowledge
of improved methods of warfare, he sent a messenger
to Morgan “desiring him to send him some
[Pg 149]
small pattern of those arms wherewith he had taken
with such violence so great a city.” The pirate
leader received the messenger with much courtesy,
and sent to the Governor a pistol and a few balls,
“desiring him to accept that slender pattern of the
arms wherewith he had taken Porto Bello, and
keep them for a twelvemonth; after which time he
promised to come to Panama and fetch them away.”

This courteous correspondence was continued by
the Governor returning the pistol and balls with
thanks, and also sending Morgan a handsome gold
ring with the message that he need not trouble himself
to come to Panama; for, if he did, he would
meet with very different fortune from that which
had come to him at Porto Bello.

Morgan put the ring on his finger and postponed
his reply, and, as soon as the ransom was paid, he
put his booty on board his ships and departed.
When the spoils of Porto Bello came to be counted,
it was found that they were of great value, and each
man received a lordly share.

When Captain Morgan was ready to set out on
another expedition, he found plenty of pirates ready
to join him, and he commanded all the ships and
men whom he enlisted to rendezvous at a place
called the Isle of Cows. A fine, large, English
ship had recently come to Jamaica from New England,
and this vessel also joined Morgan’s forces on
[Pg 150]
the island, where the pirate leader took this ship as
his own, being much the best and largest vessel of
the fleet.

Besides the ships belonging to Morgan, there
was in the harbor where they were now congregated,
a fine vessel belonging to some French buccaneers,
and Morgan desired very much that this
vessel should join his fleet, but the French cherished
hard feelings against the English, and would
not join them.

Although Morgan was a brave man, his meanness
was quite equal to his courage, and he determined
to be revenged upon these Frenchmen who
had refused to give him their aid, and therefore
played a malicious trick upon them. Sometime
before, this French vessel, being out of provisions
when upon the high seas, had met an English ship,
and had taken from her such supplies as it had
needed. The captain did not pay for these, being
out of money as well as food, not an uncommon
thing among buccaneers, but they gave the English
notes of exchange payable in Jamaica; but as these
notes were never honored, the people of the English
ship had never been paid for their provisions.

This affair properly arranged in Morgan’s mind,
he sent a very polite note to the captain of the
French ship and some of his officers, inviting them
to dine with him on his own vessel. The French
[Pg 151]
accepted the invitation, but when Morgan received
them on board his ship he did not conduct them
down to dinner; instead of that, he began to upbraid
them for the manner in which they had treated
an English crew, and then he ordered them to be
taken down below and imprisoned in the hold.
Having accomplished this, and feeling greatly elated
by this piece of sly vengeance, he went into his
fine cabin, and he and his officers sat down to the
grand feast he had prepared.

There were fine times on board this great English
ship; the pirates were about to set forth on an important
expedition, and they celebrated the occasion
by eating and drinking, firing guns, and all manner
of riotous hilarity. In the midst of the wild
festivities—and nobody knew how it happened—a
spark of fire got into the powder magazine, and
the ship blew up, sending the lifeless bodies of three
hundred English sailors, and the French prisoners,
high into the air. The only persons on board who
escaped were Morgan and his officers who were in
the cabin close to the stern of the vessel, at some
distance from the magazine.

This terrible accident threw the pirate fleet into
great confusion for a time; but Morgan soon recovered
himself, and, casting about to see what was the
best thing to be done, it came into his head that he
would act the part of the wolf in the fable of the
[Pg 152]
wolf and the lamb. As there was no way of finding
out how the magazine happened to explode, he took
the ground that the French prisoners whom he had
shut up in the hold, had thrown a lighted match
into the magazine, wishing thus to revenge themselves
even though they should, at the same time,
lose their own lives. The people of the French
ship bitterly opposed any such view of the case,
but their protestations were of no use; they might
declare as much as they pleased that it was impossible
for them to make the waters muddy, being
lower down in the stream than the wolfish pirate
who was accusing them, but it availed nothing.
Morgan sprang upon them and their ship, and sent
them to Jamaica, where, upon his false charge, they
were shut up in prison, and so remained for a long
time.

Such atrocious wickedness as the treatment of the
nuns and monks, described in this chapter, would
never have been countenanced in any warfare between
civilized nations. But Morgan’s pirates were
not making war; they were robbers and murderers
on a grand scale. They had no right to call themselves
civilized; they were worse than barbarians.

“Morgan began to upbraid them, and ordered them taken below.”—p. 151.

[Pg 153]

Chapter XVIII

A Piratical Aftermath

Morgan’s destination was the isle of
Savona, near which a great Spanish fleet
was expected to pass, and here he hoped
to make some rich prizes. But when he got out
to sea he met with contrary and dangerous winds,
which delayed him a long time, and eventually when
he arrived at Savona, after having landed at various
places, where he pillaged, murdered, and burned,
according to the extent of his opportunities, he
found at least one-half of his men and ships had not
arrived. With the small force which he now had
with him he could not set out to attack a Spanish
fleet, and therefore he was glad to accept the suggestion
made to him by a Frenchman who happened
to be in his company.

This man had been with L’Olonnois two years
before when that bloody pirate had sacked the towns
of Maracaibo and Gibraltar; he had made himself
perfectly familiar with the fortifications and defences
of these towns, and he told Morgan that it would
[Pg 154]
be easy to take them. To be sure they had been
thoroughly sacked before, and therefore did not offer
the tempting inducements of perfectly fresh towns,
such as Port-au-Prince, but still in two years the
inhabitants must have gathered together some possessions
desirable to pirates, and therefore, although
Morgan could not go to these towns with the
expectation of reaping a full harvest, he might at
least gather up an aftermath which would pay him
for his trouble.

So away sailed this horde of ravenous scoundrels
for the lake of Maracaibo, at the outer end of which
lay the town of Maracaibo, and at the other extremity
the town of Gibraltar. When they had
sailed near enough to the fortifications they anchored
out of sight of the watch-tower and, landing in the
night, marched on one of the forts. Here the
career of Morgan came very near closing forever.
The Spaniards had discovered the approach of the
pirates, and this fort had been converted into a
great trap in which the citizens hoped to capture
and destroy the pirate leader and his men. Everybody
had left the fort, the gates were open, and a
slow-match, communicating with the magazine,
had been lighted just before the last Spaniard
had left.

But the oldest and most sagacious of rats would
be no more difficult to entrap than was the wily
[Pg 155]
pirate Morgan. When he entered the open gates
of the fort and found everything in perfect order, he
suspected a trick, and looking about him he soon
saw the smouldering match. Instantly he made a
dash at it, seized it and extinguished the fire. Had
he been delayed in this discovery a quarter of an
hour longer, he and his men would have been blown
to pieces along with the fort.

Now the pirates pressed on toward the town, but
they met with no resistance. The Spaniards, having
failed to blow up their dreaded enemies, had retreated
into the surrounding country and had left the town.
The triumphant pirates spread themselves everywhere.
They searched the abandoned town for
people and valuables, and every man who cared to
do so took one of the empty houses for his private
residence. They made the church the common
meeting-place where they might all gather together
when it was necessary, and when they had spent the
night in eating and drinking all the good things
they could find, they set out the next day to hunt
for the fugitive citizens.

For three weeks Morgan and his men held a
devil’s carnival in Maracaibo. To tell of the abominable
tortures and cruelties which they inflicted
upon the poor people, whom they dragged from
their hiding-places in the surrounding country,
would make our flesh creep and our blood run cold.
[Pg 156]
When they could do no more evil they sailed away
up the lake for Gibraltar.

It is not necessary to tell the story of the taking
of this town. When Morgan arrived there he
found it also entirely deserted. The awful dread of
the human beasts who were coming upon them had
forced the inhabitants to fly. In the whole town
only one man was left, and he was an idiot who had
not sense enough to run away. This poor fellow
was tortured to tell where his treasures were hid,
and when he consented to take them to the place
where he had concealed his possessions, they found
a few broken earthen dishes, and a little bit of
money, about as much as a poor imbecile might be
supposed to possess. Thereupon the disappointed
fiends cruelly killed him.

For five weeks the country surrounding Gibraltar
was the scene of a series of diabolical horrors. The
pirates undertook the most hazardous and difficult
expeditions in order to find the people who had hidden
themselves on islands and in the mountains, and
although they obtained a great deal of booty, they
met with a good many misfortunes. Some of them
were drowned in swollen streams, and others lost
much of their pillage by rains and storms.

At last, after having closed his vile proceedings
in the ordinary pirate fashion, by threatening to
burn the town if he were not paid a ransom, Morgan
[Pg 157]
thought it time for him to depart, for if the Spaniards
should collect a sufficient force at Maracaibo
to keep him from getting out of the lake, he would
indeed be caught in a trap. The ransom was partly
paid and partly promised, and Morgan and his men
departed, carrying with them some hostages for the
rest of the ransom due.

When Morgan and his fleet arrived at Maracaibo,
they found the town still deserted, but they also
discovered that they were caught in the trap which
they had feared, out of which they saw no way of
escaping. News had been sent the Spanish forces;
of the capture and sacking of Maracaibo, and three
large men-of-war now lay in the channel below the
town which led from the lake into the sea. And
more than this, the castle which defended the entrance
to the lake, and which the pirates had found
empty when they arrived, was now well manned
and supplied with a great many cannon, so that for
once in their lives these wicked buccaneers were
almost discouraged. Their little ships could not
stand against the men-of-war; and in any case they
could not pass the castle, which was now prepared
to blow them to pieces if they should come near
enough.

But in the midst of these disheartening circumstances,
the pirate leader showed what an arrogant,
blustering dare-devil he was, for, instead of admitting
[Pg 158]
his discomfiture and trying to make terms with the
Spaniards, he sent a letter to the admiral of the
ships, in which he stated that if he did not allow
him a free passage out to sea he would burn every
house in Maracaibo. To this insolent threat, the
Spanish admiral replied in a long letter, in which
he told Morgan that if he attempted to leave the
lake he would fire upon his ships, and, if necessary,
follow them out to sea, until not a stick of one of
them should be left. But in the great magnanimity
of his soul he declared that he would allow Morgan
to sail away freely, provided he would deliver all the
booty he had captured, together with the prisoners
and slaves, and promise to go home and abandon
buccaneering forever. In case he declined these
terms, the admiral declared he would come up the
channel in boats filled with his soldiers and put
every pirate to the sword.

When Morgan received this letter, he called his
men together in the public square of the town, and
asked them what they would do, and when these
fellows heard that they were asked to give up all
their booty, they unanimously voted that they
would perish rather than do such an unmanly thing
as that. So it was agreed that they would fight
themselves out of the lake of Maracaibo, or stay
there, dead or alive, as the case might be.

[Pg 159]

Chapter XIX

A Tight Place for Morgan

At this important crisis again turned up the
man with an idea. This was an inventive
buccaneer, who proposed to Morgan that
they should take a medium-sized ship which they
had captured at the other end of the lake, and
make a fire-ship of her. In order that the Spaniards
might not suspect the character of this incendiary
craft, he proposed that they should fit her up
like one of the pirate war-vessels, for in this case
the Spaniards would not try to get away from her,
but would be glad to have her come near enough
for them to capture her.

Morgan was pleased with this plan, and the fire-ship
was prepared with all haste. All the pitch,
tar, and brimstone in the town were put on board
of her, together with other combustibles. On the
deck were placed logs of wood, which were dressed
up in coats and hats to look like men, and by their
sides were muskets and cutlasses. Portholes were
made, and in these were placed other logs to represent[Pg 160]
cannon. Thus this merchant vessel, now as
inflammable as a pine knot, was made to resemble
a somewhat formidable pirate ship. The rest of
the fleet was made ready, the valuables and prisoners
and slaves were put on board; and they all
sailed boldly down toward the Spanish vessels, the
fire-ship in front.

When the Spanish admiral saw this insignificant
fleet approaching, he made ready to sink it to the
bottom, and when the leading vessel made its way
directly toward his own ship, as if with the impudent
intention of boarding her, he did not fire at her,
but let her come on. The few pirates on board the
fire-ship ran her up against the side of the great
man-of-war; and after making her fast and applying
their matches, they immediately slipped overboard,
and swam to one of their own vessels before the
Spaniards had an idea of what had happened. The
fire-ship was soon ablaze, and as the flames quickly
spread, the large vessel took fire, and the people on
board had scarcely time to get out of her before she
sank.

The commander of one of the other ships was so
much frightened by what had occurred in so short
a space of time that he ran his vessel aground and
wrecked her, her men jumping out into the water
and making for the land. As for the other ship,
the pirates boldly attacked her and captured her,
[Pg 161]
and as she was a very fine vessel, Morgan left his
own small vessel, in which he had been commanding
his fleet, and took possession of her. Thus, in
a very short time, the whole state of affairs was
changed. The Spaniards had no ships at all, and
Morgan was in command of a very fine vessel, in
which he led his triumphant fleet.

Victory is a grand thing to a pirate as it is to
every human being who has been engaged in a conflict,
but none of the joys of triumph could equal
the sordid rapacity of Morgan and his men. They
spent days in trying to recover the money and plate
which were on board the sunken Spanish ships.
The sterns of these projected above water, and a
great deal of valuable treasure was recovered from
them. The pirates worked very hard at this,
although they had not the slightest idea how they
were to pass the castle and get away with the
plunder after they had obtained it.

When the wrecks had been stripped of everything
of value, the time came for demanding a ransom for
not burning the town and hanging the prisoners,
and as the poor citizens knew very well what they
might expect, they sent word to the admiral, who
had escaped to the castle, begging him to accede to
the demands of Morgan, and to let the wretched
pirates go. But the admiral, Don Alonso, was a
thoroughbred Spaniard, and he would listen to no
[Pg 162]
such cowardly suggestion. He would consent to
no ransom being paid, and on no account would he
allow the pirates to pass the channel. The citizens,
however, who knew what was good for them, raised
the money, and paid the ransom in coin and cattle,
and Morgan declared that if the admiral would not
let him out of the lake, he would have to attend to
that matter himself.

But before he made another bold stroke against
the enemy his stingy and niggardly spirit urged
him to defend himself against his friends, and before
endeavoring to leave he ordered a division of
the spoils. Many of the goods taken from the two
towns were on board the different vessels of the
fleet, and he was very much afraid that if his comrades,
who commanded the other ships, should be
so fortunate as to get out to sea, they would sail
away with the booty they carried, and he would not
see any of it. Therefore, the booty from every
ship was brought on board his own fine vessel, and
every man was put through an examination as rigid
as if he had been passing a custom house, and was
obliged to prove that he had not concealed or kept
back any money or jewels. The value of the plunder
was very great, and when it had been divided,
according to the scale which Morgan had adopted,
the pirate leader felt safe. He now had his
share of the prizes in his own possession, and
[Pg 163]
that to him was more important than anything else
in the world.

The question of getting away was a very serious
one; the greater part of his fleet consisted of small
vessels which could not defy the guns of the fort,
and as the stout hearts and brawny arms of his followers
could be of no use to him in this dilemma,
Morgan was obliged to fall back upon his own
brains; therefore, he planned a trick.

When everything had been prepared for departure,
Morgan anchored his fleet at a distance from
the castle, but not so far away that the Spaniards
could not observe his movements. Then he loaded
some boats with armed men and had them rowed
ashore on the side of the channel on which the
castle stood. The boats landed behind a little
wood, and there the men, instead of getting out,
crouched themselves down in the bottom of the
boats so that they should not be seen. Then
the boats, apparently empty, were rowed back to
the pirate ships, and in a short time, again full of
men sitting, upright, with their muskets and cutlasses,
they went to the shore, and soon afterwards
returned apparently empty as before.

This performance was repeated over and over
again, until the people in the castle were convinced
that Morgan was putting his men on shore in order
to make a land attack upon the rear of the castle
[Pg 164]
during the night. But the Spanish admiral was
not to be caught by any such clumsy stratagem as
that, and, therefore, in great haste he had his big
cannon moved to the land side of the fort, and
posted there the greater part of his garrison in
order that when the pirates made their assault in
the dead of the night they would meet with a reception
for which they had not bargained.

When it was dark, and the tide began to run
out, the pirate vessels weighed anchor, and they
all drifted down toward the castle. Morgan’s spies
had perceived some of the extraordinary movements
in the Spanish fortifications, and he therefore drifted
down with a good deal of confidence, although, had
his trick been discovered in time it would have gone
very hard with his fleet. It is probable that he had
taken all these chances into consideration and had
felt pretty sure that if the cannon of the fort had
been opened upon them it would not have been the
big ship which carried him and his precious load
which would have been sunk by the great guns, and
that no matter what happened to the smaller vessels
and the men on board them, he and his own ship
would be able to sail away.

But the Spaniards did not perceive the approach
of the drifting fleet, for they were intrepidly waiting
at the back of the castle to make it very hot for the
pirates when they should arrive. Slowly past the
[Pg 165]
great walls of the fort drifted the fleet of buccaneers,
and then, at a signal, every vessel hoisted its sails,
and, with a good wind, sailed rapidly toward the
open sea. The last pirate vessel had scarcely passed
the fort when the Spaniards discovered what was
going on, and in great haste they rolled their cannon
back to the water side of the fort and began
firing furiously, but it was of no use.

The pirates sailed on until they were out of danger,
and then they anchored and arranged for putting
on shore the greater number of their prisoners, who
were only an encumbrance to them. As a parting
insult, Morgan fired seven or eight of his largest
guns at the castle, whose humiliated occupants did
not reply by a single shot.

In order to understand what thoroughly contemptible
scoundrels these pirates were it may be
stated that when Morgan and his men reached
Jamaica after a good deal of storm and trouble on
the way, they found there many of their comrades
who had not been able to join them at their rendezvous
at Savona. These unfortunate fellows, who
had not known where Morgan had gone and were
unable to join him, had endeavored to do some piratical
business of their own, but had had very little
luck and a great many misfortunes. Morgan’s men,
with their pockets full of money, jeered and sneered
at their poor comrades who had had such hard times,
[Pg 166]
and without any thought of sharing with them the
least portion of their own vile gains they treated
them with contempt and derision.

The buccaneer, Captain Henry Morgan, was
now a very great personage, but with his next expedition,
which was a very important one, and in
its extent resembled warfare rather than piracy, we
shall have little to do because his exploits in this
case were not performed on our Atlantic coasts, but
over the Isthmus, on the shores of the Pacific.

Morgan raised a great fleet, carrying a little army
of two thousand men, and with this he made his
way to the other side of the Isthmus and attacked
the city of Panama, which, of course, he captured.
His terrible deeds at this place resembled those
which he performed after the capture of the smaller
towns which we have been considering, except that
they were on a scale of greater magnitude. Nearly
the whole of the town of Panama was burned, and
the excesses, cruelties, and pillages of the conquerors
were something almost without parallel.

Before marching overland to Panama, Morgan
had recaptured the island of St. Catherine, which
was a very valuable station for his purposes, and
had also taken the castle of Chagres on the mainland
near by, and on his return from the conquest and
pillage of the unfortunate city he and his forces
gathered together at Chagres in order to divide the
spoils.

[Pg 167]

Now came great trouble and dissatisfaction;
many of the buccaneers loudly declared that Morgan
was taking everything that was really valuable for his
own, especially the precious stones and jewels, and
that they were getting a very small share of the
booty of Panama. There seemed to be good reason
for these complaints, for the sum of about two hundred
dollars apiece was all that Morgan’s men received
after their terrible hardships and dangers and
the pillage of a very rich town. The murmurings
and complaints against Morgan’s peculiar methods
became louder and more frequent, and at last the
wily Welshman began to be afraid that serious
trouble would come to him if he did not take care
of himself. This, however, he was very capable of
doing. Silently and quietly one night, without
giving notice to any of the buccaneers at Chagres,
except a few who were in his secret, Morgan, in his
large ship, sailed away for Jamaica, followed by
only a few other vessels, containing some of his
favored companions.

When the great body of the buccaneers, the principal
portion of which were Frenchmen, found that
their leader had deserted them, there was a grand
commotion, and if they had been able, the furious
men who had had this trick played upon them,
would have followed Morgan to treat him as they
had so often treated the Spaniards. But they could
[Pg 168]
not follow—Morgan had taken great care that this
should not happen. Their ships were out of order;
they had been left very short of provisions and ammunition,
and found that not only were they unable
to avenge themselves on their traitor leader, but
that it would be very hard for them to get away at all.

Poor Esquemeling, the literary pirate, was one of
those who was left behind, and in his doleful state
he made the following reflection, which we quote
from his book: “Captain Morgan left us all in such
a miserable condition as might serve for a lively
representation of what rewards attend wickedness at
the latter end of life. Whence we ought to have
learned how to regulate and amend our actions for
the future.”

After Morgan had safely reached Jamaica with
all his booty, the idea renewed itself in his mind of
returning to St. Catherine, fortifying the place and
putting it in complete order, and then occupying it
as a station for all pirates, with himself the supreme
governor and king of the buccaneers. But before
he had completed his arrangements for doing this
there was a change in the affairs at Jamaica: the
king of England, having listened to the complaints
of the Spanish crown, had recalled the former
Governor and put him on trial to answer for
the manner in which he allowed the island to be
used by the pirates for their wicked purposes against
[Pg 169]
a friendly nation, and had sent a new Governor
with orders to allow no buccaneers in Jamaica, and
in every way to suppress piracy in those parts.

Now the shrewd Morgan saw that his present
business was likely to become a very undesirable
one, and he accordingly determined to give it up.
Having brutally pillaged and most cruelly treated
the Spaniards as long as he was able to do so, and
having cheated and defrauded his friends and companions
to the utmost extent possible, he made up
his mind to reform, and a more thoroughly base
and contemptible reformed scoundrel was never
seen on the face of the earth.

Morgan was now a rich man, and he lost no time
in becoming very respectable. He endeavored to
win favor with the new Governor, and was so successful
that when that official was obliged to return
to England on account of his health, he left the
ex-pirate in charge of the affairs of the island in
the capacity of Deputy-Governor. More than this,
King Charles, who apparently had heard of Morgan’s
great bravery and ability, and had not cared
to listen to anything else about him, knighted him,
and this preëminent and inhuman water-thief became
Sir Henry Morgan.

In his new official capacity Morgan was very
severe upon his former associates, and when any of
them were captured and brought before him, he
[Pg 170]
condemned some to be imprisoned and some to be
hung, and in every way apparently endeavored to
break up the unlawful business of buccaneering.

About this time John Esquemeling betook himself
to Europe with all possible despatch, for he had
work to do and things to tell with which the Deputy-Governor
would have no sympathy whatever. He
got away safely, and he wrote his book, and if he
had not had this good fortune, the world would have
lost a great part of the story of what happened to
the soft little baby who was born among the quiet
green fields of Wales.

Even during the time that he was Deputy-Governor,
Morgan was suspected of sharing in the gains
of some buccaneers at the same time that he punished
others, and after the death of Charles II. he
was sent to England and imprisoned, but what
eventually became of him we do not know. If he
succeeded in ill-using and defrauding his Satanic
Majesty, there is no record of the fact.

[Pg 171]

Chapter XX

The Story of a High-Minded Pirate

After having considered the extraordinary
performances of so many of those execrable
wretches, the buccaneers, it is refreshing
and satisfactory to find that there were exceptions
even to the rules which governed the conduct and
general make-up of the ordinary pirate of the period,
and we are therefore glad enough to tell the story of
a man, who, although he was an out-and-out buccaneer,
possessed some peculiar characteristics which
give him a place of his own in the history of piracy.

In the early part of these sketches we have alluded
to a gentleman of France, who, having become
deeply involved in debt, could see no way of putting
himself in a condition to pay his creditors but to go
into business of some kind. He had no mercantile
education, he had not learned any profession, and it
was therefore necessary for him to do something for
which a previous preparation was not absolutely
essential.

After having carefully considered all the methods
[Pg 172]
of making money which were open to him under the
circumstances, he finally concluded to take up piracy
and literature. Even at the present day it is considered
by many persons that one of these branches
of industry is a field of action especially adapted to
those who have not had the opportunity of giving
the time and study necessary in any other method
of making a living.

The French gentleman whose adventures we are
about to relate was a very different man from John
Esquemeling, who was a literary pirate and nothing
more. Being of a clerkly disposition, the gentle
John did not pretend to use the sabre or the pistol.
His part in life was simply to watch his companions
fight, burn, and steal, while his only weapon was his
pen, with which he set down their exploits and
thereby murdered their reputations.

But Monsieur Raveneau de Lussan was both
buccaneer and author, and when he had finished his
piratical career he wrote a book in which he gave a
full account of it, thus showing that although he had
not been brought up to a business life, he had very
good ideas about money-making.

More than that, he had very good ideas about
his own reputation, and instead of leaving his exploits
and adventures to be written up by other people,—that
is, if any one should think it worth while to do
so,—he took that business into his own hands.[Pg 173]
He was well educated, he had been brought up in good
society, and as he desired to return to that society
it was natural for him to wish to paint his own portrait
as a buccaneer. Pictures of that kind as they
were ordinarily executed were not at all agreeable to
the eyes of the cultivated classes of France, and so
M. de Lussan determined to give his personal attention
not only to his business speculations, but to
his reputation. He went out as a buccaneer in
order to rob the Spaniards of treasure with which to
pay his honest debts, and, in order to prevent his
piratical career being described in the coarse and disagreeable
fashion in which people generally wrote
about pirates, he determined to write his own adventures.

If a man wishes to appear well before the world,
it is often a very good thing for him to write his
autobiography, especially if there is anything a little
shady in his career, and it may be that de Lussan’s
reputation as a high-minded pirate depends somewhat
on the book he wrote after he had put down
the sword and taken up the pen; but if he gave a
more pleasing color to his proceedings than they
really deserved, we ought to be glad of it. For,
even if de Lussan the buccaneer was in some degree
a creature of the imagination of de Lussan the author,
we have a story which is much more pleasing and,
in some respects, more romantic than stories of
[Pg 174]
ordinary pirates could possibly be made unless the
writer of such stories abandoned fact altogether and
plunged blindly into fiction.

Among the good qualities of de Lussan was a
pious disposition. He had always been a religious
person, and, being a Catholic, he had a high regard
and veneration for religious buildings, for priests,
and for the services of the church, and when he had
crossed the Atlantic in his ship, the crew of which
was composed of desperadoes of various nations,
and when he had landed upon the western continent,
he wished still to conform to the religious
manners and customs of the old world.

Having a strong force under his command and
possessing, in common with most of the gentlemen
of that period, a good military education, it
was not long after he landed on the mainland before
he captured a small town. The resistance which
he met was soon overcome, and our high-minded
pirate found himself in the position of a conqueror
with a community at his mercy. As his piety now
raised itself above all his other attributes, the first
thing that he did was to repair to the principal
church of the town, accompanied by all his men,
and here, in accordance with his commands, a Te
Deum was sung and services were conducted by the
priests in charge. Then, after having properly performed
his religious duties, de Lussan sent his men
[Pg 175]
through the town with orders to rob the inhabitants
of everything valuable they possessed.

The ransacking and pillaging of the houses continued
for some time, but when the last of his men
had returned with the booty they had collected,
the high-minded chief was dissatisfied. The town
appeared to be a good deal poorer than he had
expected, and as the collection seemed to be so very
small, de Lussan concluded that in some way or
other he must pass around the hat again. While
he was wondering how he should do this he happened
to hear that on a sugar plantation not very
far away from the town there were some ladies of
rank who, having heard of the approach of the
pirates, had taken refuge there, thinking that even
if the town should be captured, their savage enemies
would not wander into the country to look for
spoils and victims.

But these ladies were greatly mistaken. When
de Lussan heard where they were, he sent out a
body of men to make them prisoners and bring
them back to him. They might not have any
money or jewels in their possession, but as they
belonged to good families who were probably
wealthy, a good deal of money could be made out
of them by holding them and demanding a heavy
ransom for their release. So the ladies were all
brought to town and shut up securely until their
[Pg 176]
friends and relatives managed to raise enough money
to pay their ransom and set them free, and then, I
have no doubt, de Lussan advised them to go to
church and offer up thanks for their happy deliverance.

As our high-minded pirate pursued his plundering
way along the coast of South America, he met
with a good many things which jarred upon his sensitive
nature—things he had not expected when he
started out on his new career. One of his disappointments
was occasioned by the manners and customs
of the English buccaneers under his command.
These were very different from the Frenchmen of
his company, for they made not the slightest pretence
to piety.

When they had captured a town or a village, the
Englishmen would go to the churches, tear down
the paintings, chop the ornaments from the altars
with their cutlasses, and steal the silver crucifixes,
the candlesticks, and even the communion services.
Such conduct gave great pain to de Lussan. To
rob and destroy the property of churches was in his
eyes a great sin, and he never suffered anything of
the kind if he could prevent it. When he found in
any place which he captured a wealthy religious
community or a richly furnished church, he scrupulously
refrained from taking anything or of doing
damage to property, and contented himself with
[Pg 177]
demanding heavy indemnity, which the priests were
obliged to pay as a return for the pious exemption
which he granted them.

But it was very difficult to control the Englishmen.
They would rob and destroy a church as
willingly as if it were the home of a peaceful family,
and although their conscientious commander did
everything he could to prevent their excesses, he
did not always succeed. If he had known what
was likely to happen, his party would have consisted
entirely of Frenchmen.

Another thing which disappointed and annoyed
the gentlemanly de Lussan was the estimation in
which the buccaneers were held by the ladies of the
country through which he was passing. He soon
found that the women in the Spanish settlements
had the most horrible ideas regarding the members
of the famous “Brotherhood of the Coast.” To
be sure, all the Spanish settlers, and a great part of
the natives of the country, were filled with horror
and dismay whenever they heard that a company
of buccaneers was within a hundred miles of their
homes, and it is not surprising that this was the
case, for the stories of the atrocities and cruelties
of these desperadoes had spread over the western
world.

But the women of the settlements looked upon
the buccaneers with greater fear and abhorrence than
[Pg 178]
the men could possibly feel, for the belief was almost
universal among them that buccaneers were terrible
monsters of cannibal habits who delighted in devouring
human beings, especially if they happened to
be young and tender. This ignorance of the true
character of the invaders of the country was greatly
deplored by de Lussan. He had a most profound
pity for those simple-minded persons who had allowed
themselves to be so deceived in regard to the
real character of himself and his men, and whenever
he had an opportunity, he endeavored to persuade
the ladies who fell in his way that sooner
than eat a woman he would entirely abstain from
food.

On one occasion, when politely conducting a
young lady to a place of confinement, where in
company with other women of good family she was
to be shut up until their relatives could pay handsome
ransoms for their release, he was very much
surprised when she suddenly turned to him with
tears in her eyes, and besought him not to devour
her. This astonishing speech so wounded the feelings
of the gallant Frenchman that for a moment
he could not reply, and when he asked her what
had put such an unreasonable fear in her mind,
she could only answer that she thought he looked
hungry, and that perhaps he would not be willing to
wait until—And there she stopped, for she could
[Pg 179]
not bring her mind to say—until she was properly
prepared for the table.

“What!” exclaimed the high-minded pirate.
“Do you suppose that I would eat you in the
street?” And as the poor girl, who was now crying,
would make him no answer, he fell into a
sombre silence which continued until they had
reached their destination.

The cruel aspersions which were cast upon his
character by the women of the country were very
galling to the chivalrous soul of this gentleman of
France, and in every way possible he endeavored to
show the Spanish ladies that their opinions of him
were entirely incorrect, and even if his men were
rather a hard lot of fellows, they were not cannibals.

The high-minded pirate had now two principal
objects before him. One was to lay his hand upon
all the treasure he could find, and the other was to
show the people of the country, especially the ladies,
that he was a gentleman of agreeable manners and
a pious turn of mind.

It is highly probable that for some time the hero
of this story did not succeed in his first object as
well as he would have liked. A great deal of treasure
was secured, but some of it consisted of property
which could not be easily turned into cash
or carried away, and he had with him a body of
rapacious and conscienceless scoundrels who were
[Pg 180]
continually clamoring for as large a share of the
available spoils—such as jewels, money, and small
articles of value—as they could induce their commander
to allow them, and, in consequence of this
greediness of his own men, his share of the plunder
was not always as large as it ought to be.

But in his other object he was very much more
successful, and, in proof of this, we have only to relate
an interesting and remarkable adventure which
befell him. He laid siege to a large town, and, as
the place was well defended by fortifications and
armed men, a severe battle took place before it was
captured. But at last the town was taken, and
de Lussan and his men having gone to church to
give thanks for their victory,—his Englishmen
being obliged to attend the services no matter what
they did afterward,—he went diligently to work to
gather from the citizens their valuable and available
possessions. In this way he was brought into personal
contact with a great many of the people of the
town, and among the acquaintances which he made
was that of a young Spanish lady of great beauty.

The conditions and circumstances in the midst of
which this lady found herself after the city had been
taken, were very peculiar. She had been the wife
of one of the principal citizens, the treasurer of the
town, who was possessed of a large fortune, and who
lived in one of the best houses in the place; but
[Pg 181]
during the battle with the buccaneers, her husband,
who fought bravely in defence of the place, was
killed, and she now found herself not only a widow,
but a prisoner in the hands of those ruthless pirates
whose very name had struck terror into the hearts
of the Spanish settlers. Plunged into misery and
despair, it was impossible for her to foresee what was
going to happen to her.

As has been said, the religious services in the
church were immediately followed by the pillage of
the town; every house was visited, and the trembling
inhabitants were obliged to deliver up their
treasures to the savage fellows who tramped through
their halls and rooms, swearing savagely when they
did not find as much as they expected, and laughing
with wild glee at any unusual discovery of jewels or
coin.

The buccaneer officers as well as the men assisted
in gathering in the spoils of the town, and it so
happened that M. Raveneau de Lussan, with his
good clothes and his jaunty hat with a feather in it,
selected the house of the late treasurer of the city
as a suitable place for him to make his investigations.
He found there a great many valuable
articles and also found the beautiful young widow.

The effect produced upon the mind of the lady
when the captain of the buccaneers entered her
house was a very surprising one. Instead of beholding
[Pg 182]
a savage, brutal ruffian, with ragged clothes
and gleaming teeth, she saw a handsome gentleman,
as well dressed as circumstances would permit, very
polite in his manners, and with as great a desire to
transact his business without giving her any more
inconvenience than was necessary, as if he had been
a tax-collector or had come to examine the gas
meter. If all the buccaneers were such agreeable
men as this one, she and her friends had been laboring
under a great mistake.

De Lussan did not complete his examination of
the treasurer’s house in one visit, and during the
next two or three days the young widow not only
became acquainted with the character of buccaneers
in general, but she learned to know this particular
buccaneer very well, and to find out what an entirely
different man he was from the savage fellows who
composed his company. She was grateful to him
for his kind manner of appropriating her possessions,
she was greatly interested in his society,—for
he was a man of culture and information,—and in
less than three days she found herself very much in
love with him. There was not a man in the whole
town who, in her opinion, could compare with this
gallant commander of buccaneers.

It was not very long before de Lussan became
conscious of the favor he had found in the eyes of
this lady; for as a buccaneer could not be expected to
[Pg 183]
remain very long in one place, it was necessary, if this
lady wished the captor of her money and treasure
to know that he had also captured her heart, that she
must not be slow in letting him know the state of
her affections, and being a young person of a very
practical mind she promptly informed de Lussan
that she loved him and desired him to marry her.

The gallant Frenchman was very much amazed
when this proposition was made to him, which was
in the highest degree complimentary. It was very
attractive to him—but he could not understand
it. The lady’s husband had been dead but a few
days—he had assisted in having the unfortunate
gentleman properly buried—and it seemed to him
very unnatural that the young widow should be in
such an extraordinary hurry to prepare a marriage
feast before the funeral baked meats had been
cleared from the table.

There was but one way in which he could explain
to himself this remarkable transition from grief to
a new affection. He believed that the people of
this country were like their fruits and their flowers.
The oranges might fall from the trees, but the
blossoms would still be there. Husband and wives
or lovers might die, but in the tropical hearts of
these people it was not necessary that new affections
should be formed, for they were already there, and
needed only some one to receive them.

[Pg 184]

As he did not undertake his present expedition
for the purpose of marrying ladies, no matter how
beautiful they might be, it is quite natural that
de Lussan should not accept the proffered hand of
the young widow. But when she came to detail
her plans, he found that it would be well worth his
while to carefully consider her project.

The lady was by no means a thoughtless young
creature, carried away by a sudden attachment.
Before making known to de Lussan her preference
for him above all other men, she had given the
subject her most careful and earnest consideration,
and had made plans which in her opinion would
enable the buccaneer captain and herself to settle
the matter to the satisfaction of all parties.

When de Lussan heard the lady’s scheme, he
was as much surprised by her businesslike ability
as he had been by the declaration of her affection
for him. She knew very well that he could not
marry her and take her with him. Moreover, she
did not wish to go. She had no fancy for such
wild expeditions and such savage companions. Her
plans were for peace and comfort and a happy
domestic life. In a word, she desired that the
handsome de Lussan should remain with her.

Of course the gentleman opened his eyes very
wide when he heard this, but she had a great deal
to say upon the subject, and she had not omitted
[Pg 185]
any of the details which would be necessary for the
success of her scheme.

The lady knew just as well as the buccaneer captain
knew that the men under his command would
not allow him to remain comfortably in that town
with his share of the plunder, while they went on
without a leader to undergo all sorts of hardships
and dangers, perhaps defeat and death. If he announced
his intention of withdrawing from the band,
his enraged companions would probably kill him.
Consequently a friendly separation between himself
and his buccaneer followers was a thing not to be
thought of, and she did not even propose it.

Her idea was a very different one. Just as soon
as possible, that very night, de Lussan was to slip
quietly out of the town, and make his way into the
surrounding country. She would furnish him with
a horse, and tell him the way he should take, and
he was not to stop until he had reached a secluded
spot, where she was quite sure the buccaneers would
not be able to find him, no matter how diligently
they might search. When they had entirely failed
in every effort to discover their lost captain, who
they would probably suppose had been killed by
wandering Indians,—for it was impossible that he
could have been murdered in the town without
their knowledge,—they would give him up as lost
and press on in search of further adventures.

[Pg 186]

When the buccaneers were far away, and all
danger from their return had entirely passed, then
the brave and polite Frenchman, now no longer a
buccaneer, could safely return to the town, where
the young widow would be most happy to marry
him, to lodge him in her handsome house, and to
make over to him all the large fortune and estates
which had been the property of her late husband.

This was a very attractive offer surely, a beautiful
woman, and a handsome fortune. But she offered
more than this. She knew that a gentleman who
had once captured and despoiled the town might
feel a little delicacy in regard to marrying and settling
there and becoming one of its citizens, and
therefore she was prepared to remove any objections
which might be occasioned by such considerate
sentiments on his part.

She assured him that if he would agree to her
plan, she would use her influence with the authorities,
and would obtain for him the position of city
treasurer, which her husband had formerly held.
And when he declared that such an astounding performance
must be utterly impossible, she started
out immediately, and having interviewed the Governor
of the town and other municipal officers,
secured their signature to a paper in which they
promised that if M. de Lussan would accept the
proposals which the lady had made, he would be
[Pg 187]
received most kindly by the officers and citizens of
the town; that the position of treasurer would be
given to him, and that all the promises of the lady
should be made good.

Now our high-minded pirate was thrown into a
great quandary, and although at first he had had no
notion whatever of accepting the pleasant proposition
which had been made to him by the young
widow, he began to see that there were many good
reasons why the affection, the high position, and the
unusual advantages which she had offered to him
might perhaps be the very best fortune which he
could expect in this world. In the first place, if he
should marry this charming young creature and
settle down as a respected citizen and an officer of
the town, he would be entirely freed from the necessity
of leading the life of a buccaneer, and this life
was becoming more and more repugnant to him
every day,—not only on account of the highly
disagreeable nature of his associates and their reckless
deeds, but because the country was becoming
aroused, and the resistance to his advances was
growing stronger and stronger. In the next attack
he made upon a town or village he might receive a
musket ball in his body, which would end his career
and leave his debts in France unpaid.

More than that, he was disappointed, as has been
said before, in regard to the financial successes he
[Pg 188]
had expected. At that time he saw no immediate
prospect of being able to go home with money
enough in his pocket to pay off his creditors, and
if he did not return to his native land under those
conditions, he did not wish to return there at all.
Under these circumstances it seemed to be wise and
prudent, that if he had no reason to expect to be
able to settle down honorably and peaceably in
France, to accept this opportunity to settle honorably,
peaceably, and in every way satisfactorily in
America.

It is easy to imagine the pitching and the tossing
in the mind of our French buccaneer. The more
he thought of the attractions of the fair widow and
of the wealth and position which had been offered
him, the more he hated all thoughts of his piratical
crew, and of the dastardly and cruel character of the
work in which they were engaged. If he could have
trusted the officers and citizens of the town, there is
not much doubt that he would have married the
widow, but those officers and citizens were Spaniards,
and he was a Frenchman. A week before the
inhabitants of the place had been prosperous, contented,
and happy. Now they had been robbed,
insulted, and in many cases ruined, and he was commander
of the body of desperadoes who had robbed
and ruined them. Was it likely that they would
forget the injuries which he had inflicted upon them
[Pg 189]
simply because he had married a wealthy lady of the
town and had kindly consented to accept the office
of city treasurer?

It was much more probable that when his men
had really left that part of the country the citizens
would forget all their promises to him and
remember only his conduct toward them, and that
even if he remained alive long enough to marry the
lady and take the position offered him, it would not
be long before she was again a widow and the office
vacant.

So de Lussan shut his eyes to the tempting prospects
which were spread out before him, and preferring
rather to be a live buccaneer than a dead city
treasurer, he told the beautiful widow that he could
not marry her and that he must go forth again into
the hard, unsympathetic world to fight, to burn, to
steal, and to be polite. Then, fearing that if he remained
he might find his resolution weakened, he
gathered together his men and his pillage, and sadly
went away, leaving behind him a joyful town and a
weeping widow.

If the affection of the young Spanish lady for the
buccaneer chief was sufficient to make her take an
interest in his subsequent career, she would probably
have been proud of him, for the ladies of those days
had a high opinion of brave men and successful
warriors. De Lussan soon proved that he was not
[Pg 190]
only a good fighter, but that he was also an able
general, and his operations on the western coast of
South America were more like military campaigns
than ordinary expeditions of lawless buccaneers.

He attacked and captured the city of Panama,
always an attractive prize to the buccaneer forces,
and after that he marched down the western coast
of South America, conquering and sacking many
towns. As he now carried on his business in a
somewhat wholesale way, it could not fail to bring
him in a handsome profit, and in the course of
time he felt that he was able to retire from the
active practice of his profession and to return to
France.

But as he was going back into the circles of
respectability, he wished to do so as a respectable
man. He discarded his hat and plume, he threw
away his great cutlass and his heavy pistols, and
attired in the costume of a gentleman in society he
prepared himself to enter again upon his old life.
He made the acquaintance of some of the French
colonial officers in the West Indies, and obtaining
from them letters of introduction to the Treasurer-General
of France, he went home as a gentleman
who had acquired a fortune by successful enterprises
in the new world.

The pirate who not only possesses a sense of propriety
and a sensitive mind, but is also gifted with
[Pg 191]
an ability to write a book in which he describes his
own actions and adventures, is to be credited with
unusual advantages, and as Raveneau de Lussan
possessed these advantages, he has come down to
posterity as a high-minded pirate.

[Pg 192]

Chapter XXI

Exit Buccaneer; Enter Pirate

The buccaneers of the West Indies and
South America had grown to be a most
formidable body of reckless freebooters.
From merely capturing Spanish ships, laden with
the treasures taken from the natives of the new
world, they had grown strong enough to attack
Spanish towns and cities. But when they became
soldiers and marched in little armies, the patience
of the civilized world began to weaken: Panama,
for instance, was an important Spanish city; England
was at peace with Spain; therefore, when a
military force composed mainly of Englishmen, and
led by a British subject, captured and sacked the
said Spanish city, England was placed in an awkward
position; if she did not interfere with her buccaneers,
she would have a quarrel to settle with Spain.

Therefore it was that a new Governor was sent
to Jamaica with strict orders to use every power he
possessed to put down the buccaneers and to break
up their organization, and it was to this end that he
[Pg 193]
set a thief to catch thieves and empowered the ex-pirate,
Morgan, to execute his former comrades.

But methods of conciliation, as well as threats of
punishment, were used to induce the buccaneers to
give up their illegal calling, and liberal offers were
made to them to settle in Jamaica and become law-abiding
citizens. They were promised grants of land
and assistance of various kinds in order to induce
them to take up the legitimate callings of planters
and traders.

But these offers were not at all tempting to the
Brethren of the Coast; from pirates rampant to
pirates couchant was too great a change, and some
of them, who found it impossible to embark on
piratical cruises, on account of the increasing difficulties
of fitting out vessels, returned to their original
avocations of cattle-butchering and beef-drying,
and some, it is said, chose rather to live among the
wild Indians and share their independent lives,
than to bind themselves to any form of honest
industry.

The French had also been very active in suppressing
the operations of their buccaneers, and
now the Brethren of the Coast, considered as an
organization for preying upon the commerce and
settlers of Spain, might be said to have ceased to
exist. But it must not be supposed that because
buccaneering had died out, that piracy was dead.[Pg 194]
If we tear down a wasps’ nest, we destroy the abode
of a fierce and pitiless community, but we scatter
the wasps, and it is likely that each one of them,
in the unrestricted and irresponsible career to which
he has been unwillingly forced, will prove a much
more angry and dangerous insect than he had ever
been before.

This is what happened to these buccaneers who
would not give up a piratical life; driven away from
Jamaica, from San Domingo, and even from Tortuga,
they retained a resting-place only at New
Providence, an island in the Bahamas, and this they
did not maintain very long. Then they spread
themselves all over the watery world. They were
no longer buccaneers, they were no longer brothers
of any sort or kind, they no longer set out merely
to pillage and fight the Spaniards, but their attacks
were made upon people of every nation. English
ships and French ships, once safe from them, were
a welcome prey to these new pirates, unrestrained
by any kind of loyalty, even by any kind of enmity.
They were more rapacious, they were more cruel,
they were more like fiends than they had ever been
before. They were cowardly and they no longer
proceeded against towns which might be defended,
nor ran up alongside of a man-of-war to boldly
board her in the very teeth of her guns. They
confined themselves to attacks upon peaceable merchant
[Pg 195]
vessels, often robbing them and then scuttling
them, delighted with the spectacle of a ship, with
all its crew, sinking hopelessly into the sea.

The scene of piratical operations in America was
now very much changed. The successors of the
Brothers of the Coast, no longer united by any
bonds of fellowship, but each pirate captain acting
independently in his own wicked way, was coming
up from the West Indies to afflict the seacoast of
our country.

The old buccaneers knew all about our southern
coast, for they were among the very first white men
who ever set foot on the shores of North and South
Carolina before that region had been settled by
colonists, and when the only inhabitants were the
wild Indians. These early buccaneers often used
its bays and harbors as convenient ports of refuge,
where they could anchor, divide spoils, take in fresh
water, and stay as long as they pleased without fear
of molestation. It was natural enough that when
the Spanish-hating buccaneer merged into the independent
pirate, who respected no flag, and preyed
upon ships of every nation, he should feel very
much at home on the Carolina coasts.

As the country was settled, and Charles Town,
now Charleston, grew to be a port of considerable
importance, the pirates felt as much at home in this
region as when it was inhabited merely by Indians.[Pg 196]
They frequently touched at little seaside settlements,
and boldly sailed into the harbor of Charles Town.
But, unlike the unfortunate citizens of Porto Bello
or Maracaibo, the American colonists were not
frightened when they saw a pirate ship anchored in
their harbors, for they knew its crew did not come
as enemies, but as friendly traders.

The early English colonists were not as prosperous
as they might have been if the mother country
had not been so anxious to make money out of
them. They were not allowed to import goods
from any country but England, and if they had products
or crops to export, they must be sold to English
merchants. For whatever they bought they
had to pay the highest prices, and they could not
send into the markets of the world to get the best
value for their own productions.

Therefore it was that a pirate ship was a very
welcome visitor in Charles Town harbor. She was
generally loaded with goods, which, as they were
stolen, her captain could afford to sell very cheaply
indeed, and as there was always plenty of Spanish
gold on board, her crew was not apt to haggle very
much in regard to the price of the spirits, the groceries,
or the provisions which they bought from the
merchants of the town. This friendly commerce
between the pirates and the Carolinians grew to be
so extensive that at one time the larger part of the
[Pg 197]
coin in circulation in those colonies consisted of
Spanish gold pieces, which had been brought
in and used by the pirates for the purchase of
goods.

But a pirate is very seldom a person of discretion,
who knows when to leave well enough alone, and
so, instead of contenting themselves with robbing
and capturing the vessels belonging to people whom
their Charles Town friends and customers would
look upon as foreigners, they boldly sailed up and
down the coast, seeking for floating booty wherever
they might find it, and when a pirate vessel commanded
by an English captain and manned principally
by an English crew, fell in with a big
merchantman flying the English flag, they bore
down upon that vessel, just as if it had been French,
or Spanish, or Dutch, and if the crew were impertinent
enough to offer any resistance, they were cut
down and thrown overboard.

At last the pirates became so swaggeringly bold
and their captains so enterprising in their illegal
trading that the English government took vigorous
measures, not only to break up piracy, but to
punish all colonists who should encourage the freebooters
by commercial dealings with them. At
these laws the pirates laughed, and the colonists
winced, and there were many people in Charles
Town who vowed that if the King wanted them to
[Pg 198]
help him put down piracy, he must show them some
other way of getting imported goods at reasonable
prices. So the pirates went on capturing merchantmen
whenever they had a chance, and the Carolinians
continued to look forward with interest to the
bargain days which always followed the arrival of a
pirate ship. But this state of things did not last,
and the time came when the people of Charles
Town experienced a change of mind. The planters
were now growing large quantities of rice, and
this crop became so valuable that the prosperity
of the colonies greatly increased. And now the
pirates also became very much interested in the
rice crops, and when they had captured four or
five vessels sailing out of Charles Town heavily
laden with rice, the people of that town suddenly
became aware of the true character of a pirate. He
was now in their eyes an unmitigated scoundrel who
not only stole goods from all nations, which he
brought to them and sold at low prices, but he actually
stole their goods, their precious rice which they
were sending to England.

The indignant citizens of Charles Town took a
bold stand, and such a bold one it was that when
part of a crew of pirates, who had been put ashore
by their comrades on account of a quarrel, made
their way to the town, thinking they could tell a
tale of shipwreck and rely upon the friendship of
[Pg 199]
their old customers, they were taken into custody,
and seven out of the nine were hanged.

The occasional repetition of such acts as this,
and the exhibition of dangling pirates, hung up like
scarecrows at the entrance of the harbors, dampened
the ardor of the freebooters a good deal, and for
some years they kept away from the harbor of
Charles Town, which had once been to them such
a friendly port.

[Pg 200]

Chapter XXII

The Great Blackbeard comes upon the Stage

So long as the people of the Carolinas were
prosperous and able to capture and execute
pirates who interfered with their trade
the Atlantic sea-robbers kept away from their ports,
but this prosperity did not last. Indian wars broke
out, and in the course of time the colonies became
very much weakened and impoverished, and then it
was that the harbor of Charles Town began to be
again interesting to the pirates.

About this time one of the most famous of sea-robbers
was harassing the Atlantic coast of North
America, and from New England to the West
Indies, he was known as the great pirate Blackbeard.
This man, whose real name was Thatch, was a most
terrible fellow in appearance as well as action. He
wore a long, heavy, black beard, which it was his
fancy to separate into tails, each one tied with a
colored ribbon, and often tucked behind his ears.
Some of the writers of that day declared that the
sight of this beard would create more terror in any
[Pg 201]
port of the American seaboard than would the
sudden appearance of a fiery comet. Across his
brawny breast he carried a sort of a sling in which
hung not less than three pairs of pistols in leathern
holsters, and these, in addition to his cutlass and a
knife or two in his belt, made him a most formidable-looking
fellow.

Some of the fanciful recreations of Blackbeard
show him to have been a person of consistent purpose.
Even in his hours of rest when he was not
fighting or robbing, his savage soul demanded some
interesting excitement. Once he was seated at
table with his mate and two or three sailors, and
when the meal was over he took up a pair of
pistols, and cocking them put them under the table.
This peculiar action caused one of the sailors to
remember very suddenly that he had something to
do on deck, and he immediately disappeared. But
the others looked at their captain in astonishment,
wondering what he would do next. They soon
found out; for crossing the pistols, still under the
table, he fired them. One ball hit the mate in the
leg, but the other struck no one. When asked
what he meant by this strange action, he replied that
if he did not shoot one of his men now and then
they would forget what sort of a person he was.

At another time he invented a game; he gathered
his officers and crew together and told them that
[Pg 202]
they were going to play that they were living in the
lower regions. Thereupon the whole party followed
him down into the hold. The hatches and all the
other openings were closed, and then Blackbeard
began to illuminate the scene with fire and brimstone.
The sulphur burned, the fumes rose, a
ghastly light spread over the countenances of the
desperadoes, and very soon some of them began to
gasp and cough and implore the captain to let in
some fresh air, but Blackbeard was bound to have
a good game, and he proceeded to burn more brimstone.
He laughed at the gasping fellows about
him and declared that he would be just as willing to
breathe the fumes of sulphur as common air. When
at last he threw open the hatches, some of the men
were almost dead, but their stalwart captain had not
even sneezed.

In the early part of the eighteenth century Blackbeard
made his headquarters in one of the inlets on
the North Carolina coast, and there he ruled as
absolute king, for the settlers in the vicinity seemed
to be as anxious to oblige him as the captains of the
merchantmen sailing along the coast were anxious
to keep out of his way. On one of his voyages
Blackbeard went down the coast as far as Honduras,
where he took a good many prizes, and as some of
the crews of the captured vessels enlisted under him
he sailed north with a stronger force than ever
[Pg 203]
before, having a large ship of forty guns, three
smaller vessels, and four hundred men. With this
little fleet Blackbeard made for the coast of South
Carolina, and anchored outside the harbor of Charles
Town. He well understood the present condition
of the place and was not in the least afraid that the
citizens would hang him up on the shores of the
bay.

Blackbeard began work without delay. Several
well-laden ships—the Carolinians having no idea
that pirates were waiting for them—came sailing
out to sea and were immediately captured. One of
these was a very important vessel, for it not only
carried a valuable cargo, but a number of passengers,
many of them people of note, who were on their
way to England. One of these was a Mr. Wragg,
who was a member of the Council of the Province.
It might have been supposed that when Blackbeard
took possession of this ship, he would have been
satisfied with the cargo and the money which he
found on board, and having no use for prominent
citizens, would have let them go their way; but he
was a trader as well as a plunderer, and he therefore
determined that the best thing to do in this case
was to put an assorted lot of highly respectable
passengers upon the market and see what he could
get for them. He was not at the time in need of
money or provisions, but his men were very much
[Pg 204]
in want of medicines, so he decided to trade off his
prisoners for pills, potions, plasters, and all sorts of
apothecary’s supplies.

He put three of his pirates in a boat, and with
them one of the passengers, a Mr. Marks, who was
commissioned as Blackbeard’s special agent, with
orders to inform the Governor that if he did not
immediately send the medicines required, amounting
in value to about three hundred pounds, and
if he did not allow the pirate crew of the boat to
return in safety, every one of the prisoners would
be hanged from the yard-arm of his ship.

The boat rowed away to the distant town, and
Blackbeard waited two days for its return, and then
he grew very angry, for he believed that his messengers
had been taken into custody, and he came
very near hanging Mr. Wragg and all his companions.
But before he began to satisfy his vengeance,
news came from the boat. It had been upset in
the bay, and had had great trouble in getting to
Charles Town, but it had arrived there at last.
Blackbeard now waited a day or two longer; but
as no news came from Mr. Marks, he vowed he
would not be trifled with by the impudent people
of Charles Town, and swore that every man,
woman, and child among the prisoners should
immediately prepare to be hanged.

Of course the unfortunate prisoners in the pirate
[Pg 205]
ship were in a terrible state of mind during the
absence of Mr. Marks. They knew very well that
they could expect no mercy from Blackbeard if the
errand should be unsuccessful, and they also knew
that the Charles Town people would not be likely
to submit to such an outrageous demand upon
them; so they trembled and quaked by day and
by night, and when at last they were told to get ready
to be hanged, every particle of courage left them, and
they proposed to Blackbeard that if he would spare
their lives, and that if it should turn out that their
fellow-citizens had decided to sacrifice them for the
sake of a few paltry drugs, they would take up the
cause of the pirates; they would show Blackbeard
the best way to sail into the harbor, and they would
join with him and his men in attacking the city
and punishing the inhabitants for their hard-hearted
treatment of their unfortunate fellow-citizens.

This proposition pleased Blackbeard immensely; it
would have been like a new game to take Mr. Wragg
to the town and make him fight his fellow-members
of the Council of the Province, and so he rescinded
his order for a general execution, and bade his prisoners
prepare to join with his pirates when he
should give the word for an assault upon their
city.

In the meantime there was a terrible stir in
Charles Town. When the Governor and citizens
[Pg 206]
received the insolent and brutal message of Blackbeard
they were filled with rage as well as consternation,
and if there had been any way of going out
to sea to rescue their unhappy fellow-citizens, every
able-bodied man in the town would have enlisted in
the expedition. But they had no vessels of war, and
they were not even in a position to arm any of the
merchantmen in the harbor. It seemed to the
Governor and his council that there was nothing
for them to do but to submit to the demands of
Blackbeard, for they very well knew that he was a
scoundrel who would keep his word, and also that
whatever they did must be done quickly, for there
were the three swaggering pirates in the town, strutting
about the streets as if they owned the place.
If this continued much longer, it would be impossible
to keep the infuriated citizens from falling
upon these blustering rascals and bringing their impertinence
to a summary end. If this should happen,
it would be a terrible thing, for not only would
Mr. Wragg and his companions be put to death,
but the pirates would undoubtedly attack the town,
which was in a very poor position for defence.

Consequently the drugs were collected with all
possible haste, and Mr. Marks and the pirates were
sent with them to Blackbeard. We do not know
whether or not that bedizened cutthroat was satisfied
with the way things turned out; for having
[Pg 207]
had the idea of going to Charles Town and obliging
the prisoners to help him confiscate the drugs and
chemicals, he may have preferred this unusual proceeding
to a more commonplace transaction; but as
the medicine had arrived he accepted it, and having
secured all possible booty and money from the ships
he had captured, and had stripped his prisoners of
the greater part of their clothing, he set them on
shore to walk to Charles Town as well as they
could. They had a miserably difficult time, making
their way through the woods and marshes, for there
were women and children among them who were
scarcely equal to the journey. One of the children
was a little boy, the son of Mr. Wragg, who afterward
became a very prominent man in the colonies.
He rose to such a high position, not only among
his countrymen, but in the opinion of the English
government, that when he died, about the beginning
of the Revolution, a tablet to his memory was placed
in Westminster Abbey, which is, perhaps, the first
instance of such an honor being paid to an
American.

Having now provided himself with medicines
enough to keep his wild crew in good physical
condition, no matter how much they might feast
and frolic on the booty they had obtained from
Charles Town, Blackbeard sailed back to his North
Carolina haunts and took a long vacation, during
[Pg 208]
which time he managed to put himself on very good
terms with the Governor and officials of the country.
He had plenty of money and was willing to spend
it, and so he was allowed to do pretty much as he
pleased, provided he kept his purse open and did
not steal from his neighbors.

But Blackbeard became tired of playing the part
of a make-believe respectable citizen, and having
spent the greater part of his money, he wanted to
make some more. Consequently he fitted out a
small vessel, and declaring that he was going on a
legitimate commercial cruise, he took out regular
papers for a port in the West Indies and sailed
away, as if he had been a mild-mannered New England
mariner going to catch codfish. The officials
of the town of Bath, from which he sailed, came
down to the ship and shook hands with him and
hoped he would have good success.

After a moderate absence he returned to Bath,
bringing with him a large French merchant vessel,
with no people on board, but loaded with a valuable
cargo of sugar and other goods. This vessel he
declared he had found deserted at sea, and he therefore
claimed it as a legitimate prize. Knowing the
character of this bloody pirate, and knowing how
very improbable it was that the captain and all the
crew of a valuable merchant vessel, with nothing
whatever the matter with her, would go out into
[Pg 209]
their boats and row away, leaving their ship to become
the property of any one who might happen
along, it may seem surprising that the officials of
Bath appeared to have no doubt of the truth of
Blackbeard’s story, and allowed him freely to land
the cargo on the French ship and store it away as
his own property.

But people who consort with pirates cannot be
expected to have very lively consciences, and although
there must have been persons in the town
with intelligence enough to understand the story of
pitiless murder told by that empty vessel, whose
very decks and masts must have been regarded as
silent witnesses that her captain and crew did not
leave her of their own free will, no one in the town
interfered with the thrifty Blackbeard or caused any
public suspicion to fall upon the propriety of his
actions.

[Pg 210]

Chapter XXIII

A True-Hearted Sailor draws his Sword

Feeling now quite sure that he could do
what he pleased on shore as well as at sea,
Blackbeard swore more, swaggered more, and
whenever he felt like it, sailed up and down the
coast and took a prize or two to keep the pot boiling
for himself and his men.

On one of these expeditions he went to Philadelphia,
and having landed, he walked about to see
what sort of a place it was, but the Governor of the
state, hearing of his arrival, quickly arranged to let
him know that the Quaker city allowed no black-hearted
pirate, with a ribbon-bedecked beard, to
promenade on Chestnut and Market streets, and
promptly issued a warrant for the sea-robber’s arrest.
But Blackbeard was too sharp and too old a criminal
to be caught in that way, and he left the city
with great despatch.

The people along the coast of North Carolina
became very tired of Blackbeard and his men. All
[Pg 211]
sorts of depredations were committed on vessels,
large and small, and whenever a ship was boarded
and robbed or whenever a fishing-vessel was laid
under contribution, Blackbeard was known to be at
the bottom of the business, whether he personally
appeared or not. To have this busy pirate for a
neighbor was extremely unpleasant, and the North
Carolina settlers greatly longed to get rid of him.
It was of no use for them to ask their own State
Government to suppress this outrageous scoundrel,
and although their good neighbor, South Carolina,
might have been willing to help them, she was too
poor at that time and had enough to do to take care
of herself.

Not knowing, or not caring for the strong feeling
of the settlers against him, Blackbeard continued
in his wicked ways, and among other crimes he captured
a small vessel and treated the crew in such a
cruel and atrocious manner that the better class of
North Carolinians vowed they would stand him no
longer, and they therefore applied to Governor
Spotswood, of Virginia, and asked his aid in putting
down the pirates. The Virginians were very willing
to do what they could for their unfortunate neighbors.
The legislature offered a reward for the capture
of Blackbeard or any of his men; but the
Governor, feeling that this was not enough, determined
to do something on his own responsibility,
[Pg 212]
for he knew very well that the time might come
when the pirate vessels would begin to haunt Virginia
waters.

There happened to be at that time two small
British men-of-war in Hampton Roads, and although
the Governor had no authority to send
these after the pirates, he fitted out two sloops at
his own expense and manned them with the best
fighting men from the war-vessels. One of the
sloops he put under Captain Brand, and the other
under Captain Maynard, both brave and experienced
naval officers. All preparations were made
with the greatest secrecy—for if Blackbeard had
heard of what was going on, he would probably
have decamped—and then the two sloops went out
to sea with a commission from the Governor to capture
Blackbeard, dead or alive. This was a pretty
heavy contract, but Brand and Maynard were courageous
men and did not hesitate to take it.

The Virginians had been informed that the pirate
captain and his men were on a vessel in Ocracoke
Inlet, and when they arrived they found, to their
delight, that Blackbeard was there. When the
pirates saw the two armed vessels sailing into the
inlet, they knew very well that they were about to be
attacked, and it did not take them long to get ready
for a fight, nor did they wait to see what their enemy
was about to do. As soon as the sloops were near
[Pg 213]
enough, Blackbeard, without waiting for any preliminary
exercises, such as a demand for surrender or
any nonsense of that sort, let drive at the intruders
with eight heavily loaded cannon.

Now the curtain had been rung up, and the play
began, and a very lively play it was. The guns
of the Virginians blazed away at the pirate ship,
and they would have sent out boats to board her
had not Blackbeard forestalled them. Boarding
was always a favorite method of fighting with the
pirates. They did not often carry heavy cannon,
and even when they did, they had but little fancy
for battles at long distances. What they liked was
to meet foes face to face and cut them down on
their own decks. In such combats they felt at
home, and were almost always successful, for there
were few mariners or sailors, even in the British
navy, who could stand against these brawny, glaring-eyed
dare-devils, who sprang over the sides of
a vessel like panthers, and fought like bulldogs.
Blackbeard had had enough cannonading, and he
did not wait to be boarded. Springing into a
boat with about twenty of his men, he rowed to
the vessel commanded by Maynard, and in a
few minutes he and his pirates surged on board
her.

Now there followed on the decks of that sloop
one of the most fearful hand-to-hand combats
[Pg 214]
known to naval history. Pirates had often attacked
vessels where they met with strong resistance, but
never had a gang of sea-robbers fallen in with such
bold and skilled antagonists as those who now confronted
Blackbeard and his crew. At it they went,—cut,
fire, slash, bang, howl, and shout. Steel
clashed, pistols blazed, smoke went up, and blood
ran down, and it was hard in the confusion for a
man to tell friend from foe. Blackbeard was everywhere,
bounding from side to side, as he swung his
cutlass high and low, and though many a shot was
fired at him, and many a rush made in his direction,
every now and then a sailor went down beneath his
whirling blade.

But the great pirate had not boarded that ship
to fight with common men. He was looking for
Maynard, the commander. Soon he met him, and
for the first time in his life he found his match.
Maynard was a practised swordsman, and no matter
how hard and how swiftly came down the cutlass
of the pirate, his strokes were always evaded, and
the sword of the Virginian played more dangerously
near him. At last Blackbeard, finding that he could
not cut down his enemy, suddenly drew a pistol,
and was about to empty its barrels into the very
face of his opponent, when Maynard sent his sword-blade
into the throat of the furious pirate; the
great Blackbeard went down upon his back on the
[Pg 215]
deck, and in the next moment Maynard put an end
to his nefarious career. Their leader dead, the few
pirates who were left alive gave up the fight, and
sprang overboard, hoping to be able to swim
ashore, and the victory of the Virginians was
complete.

The strength, toughness, and extraordinary vitality
of these feline human beings, who were known
as pirates, has often occasioned astonishment in ordinary
people. Their sun-tanned and hairy bodies
seemed to be made of something like wire, leather,
and India rubber, upon which the most tremendous
exertions, and even the infliction of severe wounds,
made but little impression. Before Blackbeard fell,
he received from Maynard and others no less than
twenty-five wounds, and yet he fought fearlessly to
the last, and when the panting officer sheathed his
sword, he felt that he had performed a most signal
deed of valor.

When they had broken up the pirate nest in
Ocracoke Inlet, the two sloops sailed to Bath,
where they compelled some of the unscrupulous
town officials to surrender the cargo which had
been stolen from the French vessel and stored
in the town by Blackbeard; then they sailed
proudly back to Hampton Roads, with the head
of the dreaded Blackbeard dangling from the end
of the bowsprit of the vessel he had boarded, and
[Pg 216]
on whose deck he had discovered the fact, before
unknown to him, that a well-trained, honest man
can fight as well as the most reckless cutthroat who
ever decked his beard with ribbons, and swore
enmity to all things good.

[Pg 217]

Chapter XXIV

A Greenhorn under the Black Flag

Early in the eighteenth century there lived
at Bridgetown, in the island of Barbadoes, a
very pleasant, middle-aged gentleman named
Major Stede Bonnet. He was a man in comfortable
circumstances, and had been an officer in the British
army. He had retired from military service, and had
bought an estate at Bridgetown, where he lived in
comfort and was respected by his neighbors.

But for some reason or other this quiet and reputable
gentleman got it into his head that he would
like to be a pirate. There were some persons who
said that this strange fancy was due to the fact that
his wife did not make his home pleasant for him,
but it is quite certain that if a man wants an excuse
for robbing and murdering his fellow-beings he
ought to have a much better one than the bad
temper of his wife. But besides the general reasons
why Major Bonnet should not become a pirate,
and which applied to all men as well as himself,
there was a special reason against his adoption of
[Pg 218]
the profession of a sea-robber, for he was an out-and-out
landsman and knew nothing whatever of nautical
matters. He had been at sea but very little,
and if he had heard a boatswain order his man to
furl the keel, to batten down the shrouds, or to
hoist the forechains to the topmast yard, he would
have seen nothing out of the way in these commands.
He was very fond of history, and very
well read in the literature of the day. He was
accustomed to the habits of good society, and knew
a great deal about farming and horses, cows and
poultry, but if he had been compelled to steer a
vessel, he would not have known how to keep her
bow ahead of her stern.

But notwithstanding this absolute incapacity for
such a life, and the absence of any of the ordinary
motives for abandoning respectability and entering
upon a career of crime, Major Bonnet was determined
to become a pirate, and he became one. He
had money enough to buy a ship and to fit her out
and man her, and this he quietly did at Bridgetown,
nobody supposing that he was going to do anything
more than start off on some commercial cruise.
When everything was ready, his vessel slipped out
of the harbor one night, and after he was sailing
safely on the rolling sea he stood upon the quarter-deck
and proclaimed himself a pirate. It might not
be supposed that this was necessary, for the seventy
[Pg 219]
men on board his ship were all desperate cutthroats,
of various nationalities, whom he had found in the
little port, and who knew very well what was expected
of them when they reached the sea. But if
Stede Bonnet had not proclaimed himself a pirate,
it is possible that he might not have believed, himself,
that he was one, and so he ran up the black
flag, with its skeleton or skull and cross-bones, he
girded on a great cutlass, and, folding his arms, he
ordered his mate to steer the vessel to the coast of
Virginia.

Although Bonnet knew so little about ships and
the sea, and had had no experience in piracy, his
men were practised seamen, and those of them who
had not been pirates before were quite ready and
very well fitted to become such; so when this green
hand came into the waters of Virginia he actually
took two or three vessels and robbed them of their
cargoes, burning the ships, and sending the crews
on shore.

This had grown to be a common custom among
the pirates, who, though cruel and hard-hearted, had
not the inducements of the old buccaneers to torture
and murder the crews of the vessels which they captured.
They could not hate human beings in general
as the buccaneers hated the Spaniards, and so
they were a little more humane to their prisoners,
setting them ashore on some island or desert coast,
[Pg 220]
and letting them shift for themselves as best they
might. This was called marooning, and was somewhat
less heartless than the old methods of getting
rid of undesirable prisoners by drowning or beheading
them.

As Bonnet had always been rather conventional
in his ideas and had respected the customs of the
society in which he found himself, he now adopted
all the piratical fashions of the day, and when he
found himself too far from land to put the captured
crew on shore, he did not hesitate to make them
“walk the plank,” which was a favorite device of the
pirates whenever they had no other way of disposing
of their prisoners. The unfortunate wretches, with
their hands tied behind them, were compelled, one
by one, to mount a plank which was projected over
the side of the vessel and balanced like a see-saw,
and when, prodded by knives and cutlasses, they
stepped out upon this plank, of course it tipped up,
and down they went into the sea. In this way,
men, women, and children slipped out of sight
among the waves as the vessel sailed merrily on.

In one branch of his new profession Bonnet rapidly
became proficient. He was an insatiable robber
and a cruel conqueror. He captured merchant
vessels all along the coast as high up as New England,
and then he came down again and stopped for
a while before Charles Town harbor, where he took
[Pg 221]
a couple of prizes, and then put into one of the
North Carolina harbors, where it was always easy
for a pirate vessel to refit and get ready for further
adventures.

Bonnet’s vessel was named the Revenge, which was
about as ill suited to the vessel as her commander
was ill fitted to sail her, for Bonnet had nobody to
revenge himself upon unless, indeed, it were his
scolding wife. But a good many pirate ships were
then called the Revenge, and Bonnet was bound to
follow the fashion, whatever it might be.

Very soon after he had stood upon the quarter-deck
and proclaimed himself a pirate his men had
discovered that he knew no more about sailing than
he knew about painting portraits, and although
there were under-officers who directed all the nautical
operations, the mass of the crew conceived a great
contempt for a landsman captain. There was much
grumbling and growling, and many of the men would
have been glad to throw Bonnet overboard and take
the ship into their own hands. But when any
symptoms of mutiny showed themselves, the pirates
found that although they did not have a sailor in
command over them, they had a very determined
and relentless master. Bonnet knew that the captain
of a pirate ship ought to be the most severe and
rigid man on board, and so, at the slightest sign of insubordination,
his grumbling men were put in chains
[Pg 222]
or flogged, and it was Bonnet’s habit at such times
to strut about the deck with loaded pistols, threatening
to blow out the brains of any man who dared to
disobey him. Recognizing that although their captain
was no sailor he was a first-class tyrant, the
rebellious crew kept their grumbling to themselves
and worked his ship.

Bonnet now pointed the bow of the Revenge
southward—that is, he requested somebody else to
see that it was done—and sailed to the Bay of
Honduras, which was a favorite resort of the pirates
about that time. And here it was that he first met
with the famous Captain Blackbeard. There can be
no doubt that our amateur pirate was very glad indeed
to become acquainted with this well-known professional,
and they soon became good friends. Blackbeard
was on the point of organizing an expedition,
and he proposed that Bonnet and his vessel should
join it. This invitation was gladly accepted, and
the two pirate captains started out on a cruise together.
Now the old reprobate, Blackbeard, knew
everything about ships and was a good navigator,
and it was not long before he discovered that his
new partner was as green as grass in regard to all
nautical affairs. Consequently, after having thought
the matter over for a time, he made up his mind
that Bonnet was not at all fit to command such a
fine vessel as the one he owned and had fitted out,
[Pg 223]
and as pirates make their own laws, and perhaps do
not obey them if they happen not to feel like it,
Blackbeard sent for Bonnet to come on board his
ship, and then, in a manner as cold-blooded as if
he had been about to cut down a helpless prisoner,
Blackbeard told Bonnet that he was not fit to be a
pirate captain, that he intended to keep him on
board his own vessel, and that he would send somebody
to take charge of the Revenge.

This was a fall indeed, and Bonnet was almost
stunned by it. An hour before he had been proudly
strutting about on the deck of a vessel which belonged
to him, and in which he had captured many
valuable prizes, and now he was told he was to stay
on Blackbeard’s ship and make himself useful in
keeping the log book, or in doing any other easy
thing which he might happen to understand. The
green pirate ground his teeth and swore bitterly
inside of himself, but he said nothing openly; on
Blackbeard’s ship Blackbeard’s decisions were not
to be questioned.

[Pg 224]

Chapter XXV

Bonnet again to the Front

It must not be supposed that the late commander
of the Revenge continued to be satisfied,
as he sat in the cabin of Blackbeard’s
vessel and made the entries of the day’s sailing
and various performances. He obeyed the orders
of his usurping partner because he was obliged to
do so, but he did not hate Blackbeard any the less
because he had to keep quiet about it. He accompanied
his pirate chief on various cruises, among
which was the famous expedition to the harbor of
Charles Town where Blackbeard traded Mr. Wragg
and his companions for medicines.

Having a very fine fleet under him, Blackbeard
did a very successful business for some time, but
feeling that he had earned enough for the present,
and that it was time for him to take one of his
vacations, he put into an inlet in North Carolina,
where he disbanded his crew. So long as he was on
shore spending his money and having a good time, he
did not want to have a lot of men about him who
[Pg 225]
would look to him to support them when they had
spent their portion of the spoils. Having no further
use for Bonnet, he dismissed him also, and did
not object to his resuming possession of his own
vessel. If the green pirate chose to go to sea again
and perhaps drown himself and his crew, it was
a matter of no concern to Blackbeard.

But this was a matter of very great concern to Stede
Bonnet, and he proceeded to prove that there were
certain branches of the piratical business in which
he was an adept, and second to none of his fellow-practitioners.
He wished to go pirating again, and
saw a way of doing this which he thought would
be far superior to any of the common methods. It
was about this time that King George of England,
very desirous of breaking up piracy, issued a proclamation
in which he promised pardon to any pirate
who would appear before the proper authorities,
renounce his evil practices, and take an oath of allegiance.
It also happened that very soon after this
proclamation had been issued, England went to war
with Spain. Being a man who kept himself posted
in the news of the world, so far as it was possible,
Bonnet saw in the present state of affairs a very
good chance for him to play the part of a wolf in
sheep’s clothing, and he proceeded to begin his new
piratical career by renouncing piracy. So leaving
the Revenge in the inlet, he journeyed overland to[Pg 226]
Bath; there he signed pledges, took oaths, and did
everything that was necessary to change himself
from a pirate captain to a respectable commander
of a duly authorized British privateer. Returning
to his vessel with all the papers in his pocket necessary
to prove that he was a loyal and law-abiding
subject of Great Britain, he took out regular clearance
papers for St. Thomas, which was a British
naval station, and where he declared he was going
in order to obtain a commission as a privateer.

Now the wily Bonnet had everything he wanted
except a crew. Of course it would not do for him,
in his present respectable capacity, to go about enlisting
unemployed pirates, but at this point fortune
again favored him; he knew of a desert island not
very far away where Blackbeard, at the end of his
last cruise, had marooned a large party of his men.
This heartless pirate had not wanted to take all of
his followers into port, because they might prove
troublesome and expensive to him, and so he had
put a number of them on this island, to live or die
as the case might be. Bonnet went over to this
island, and finding the greater part of these men still
surviving, he offered to take them to St. Thomas
in his vessel if they would agree to work the ship
to port. This proposition was of course joyfully
accepted, and very soon the Revenge was manned
with a complete crew of competent desperadoes.

[Pg 227]

All these operations took a good deal of time,
and, at last, when everything was ready for Bonnet
to start out on his piratical cruise, he received
information which caused him to change his mind,
and to set forth on an errand of a very different
kind. He had supposed that Blackbeard, whom he
had never forgiven for the shameful and treacherous
manner in which he had treated him, was still on
shore enjoying himself, but he was told by the
captain of a small trading vessel that the old pirate
was preparing for another cruise, and that he was
then in Ocracoke Inlet. Now Bonnet folded his
arms and stamped his feet upon the quarter-deck.
The time had come for him to show that the name
of his vessel meant something. Never before had
he had an opportunity for revenging himself on
anybody, but now that hour had arrived. He
would revenge himself upon Blackbeard!

The implacable Bonnet sailed out to sea in a
truly warlike frame of mind. He was not going
forth to prey upon unresisting merchantmen; he
was on his way to punish a black-hearted pirate, a
faithless scoundrel, who had not only acted knavishly
toward the world in general, but had behaved most
disloyally and disrespectfully toward a fellow pirate
chief. If he could once run the Revenge alongside
the ship of the perfidious Blackbeard, he would
show him what a green hand could do.

[Pg 228]

When Bonnet reached Ocracoke Inlet, he was
deeply disappointed to find that Blackbeard had
left that harbor, but he did not give up the pursuit.
He made hot chase after the vessel of his pirate
enemy, keeping a sharp lookout in hopes of discovering
some signs of him. If the enraged Bonnet
could have met the ferocious Blackbeard face to
face, there might have been a combat which would
have relieved the world of two atrocious villains,
and Captain Maynard would have been deprived of
the honor of having slain the most famous pirate
of the day.

Bonnet was a good soldier and a brave man,
and although he could not sail a ship, he understood
the use of the sword even better, perhaps,
than Blackbeard, and there is good reason to believe
that if the two ships had come together, their respective
crews would have allowed their captains to
fight out their private quarrel without interference,
for pirates delight in a bloody spectacle, and this
would have been to them a rare diversion of the
kind.

But Bonnet never overtook Blackbeard, and the
great combat between the rival pirates did not take
place. After vainly searching for a considerable
time for a trace or sight of Blackbeard, the baffled
Bonnet gave up the pursuit and turned his mind to
other objects. The first thing he did was to change
[Pg 229]
the name of his vessel; if he could not be revenged,
he would not sail in the Revenge. Casting
about in his mind for a good name, he decided to
call her the Royal James. Having no intention of
respecting his oaths or of keeping his promises, he
thought that, as he was going to be disloyal, he
might as well be as disloyal as he could, and so he
gave his ship the name assumed by the son of James
the Second, who was a pretender to the throne, and
was then in France plotting against the English government.

The next thing he did was to change his own
name, for he thought this would make matters better
for him if he should be captured after entering
upon his new criminal career. So he called himself
Captain Thomas, by which name he was afterwards
known.

When these preliminaries had been arranged, he
gathered his crew together and announced that instead
of going to St. Thomas to get a commission
as a privateer, he had determined to keep on in his
old manner of life, and that he wished them to
understand that not only was he a pirate captain,
but that they were a pirate crew. Many of the men
were very much surprised at this announcement,
for they had thought it a very natural thing for
the green-hand Bonnet to give up pirating after he
had been so thoroughly snubbed by Blackbeard, and
[Pg 230]
they had not supposed that he would ever think
again of sailing under a black flag.

However, the crew’s opinion of the green-hand
captain had been a good deal changed. In his various
cruises he had learned a good deal about navigation,
and could now give very fair orders, and his furious
pursuit of Blackbeard had also given him a reputation
for reckless bravery which he had not enjoyed
before. A man who was chafing and fuming for a
chance of a hand-to-hand conflict with the greatest
pirate of the day must be a pretty good sort of
a fellow from their point of view. Moreover, their
strutting and stalking captain, so recently balked of
his dark revenge, was a very savage-looking man,
and it would not be pleasant either to try to persuade
him to give up his piratical intention, or to decline
to join him in carrying it out; so the whole of the
crew, minor officers and men, changed their minds
about going to St. Thomas, and agreed to hoist
the skull and cross-bones, and to follow Captain
Bonnet wherever he might lead.

Bonnet now cruised about in grand style and
took some prizes on the Virginia coast, and then
went up into Delaware Bay, where he captured such
ships as he wanted, and acted generally in the most
domineering and insolent fashion. Once, when he
stopped near the town of Lewes, in order to send
some prisoners ashore, he sent a message to the officers
[Pg 231]
of the town to the effect that if they interfered
with his men when they came ashore, he would open
fire upon the town with his cannon, and blow every
house into splinters. Of course the citizens, having
no way of defending themselves, were obliged to
allow the pirates to come on shore and depart
unmolested.

Then after this the blustering captain captured
two valuable sloops, and wishing to take them along
with him without the trouble of transferring their
cargoes to his own vessel, he left their crews on
board, and ordered them to follow him wherever he
went. Some days after that, when one of the
vessels seemed to be sailing at too great a distance,
Bonnet quickly let her captain know that he was
not a man to be trifled with, and sent him the message
that if he did not keep close to the Royal James,
he would fire into him and sink him to the bottom.

After a time Bonnet put into a North Carolina
port in order to repair the Royal James, which was
becoming very leaky, and seeing no immediate
legitimate way of getting planks and beams enough
with which to make the necessary repairs, he captured
a small sloop belonging in the neighborhood,
and broke it up in order to get the material he
needed to make his own vessel seaworthy.

Now the people of the North Carolina coast very
seldom interfered with pirates, as we have seen, and
[Pg 232]
it is likely that Bonnet might have stayed in port
as long as he pleased, and repaired and refitted his
vessel without molestation if he had bought and
paid for the planks and timber he required. But
when it came to boldly seizing their property, that
was too much even for the people of the region,
and complaints of Bonnet’s behavior spread from
settlement to settlement, and it very soon became
known all down the coast that there was a pirate in
North Carolina who was committing depredations
there and was preparing to set out on a fresh cruise.

When these tidings came to Charles Town, the
citizens were thrown into great agitation. It had
not been long since Blackbeard had visited their
harbor, and had treated them with such brutal insolence,
and there were bold spirits in the town
who declared that if any effort by them could prevent
another visitation of the pirates, that effort
should be made. There was no naval force in the
harbor which could be sent out to meet the pirates,
who were coming down the coast; but Mr. William
Rhett, a private gentleman of position in the place,
went to the Governor and offered to fit out, at
his own expense, an expedition for the purpose
of turning away from their city the danger which
threatened it.

[Pg 233]

Chapter XXVI

The Battle of the Sand Bars

When that estimable private gentleman,
Mr. William Rhett, of Charles Town,
had received a commission from the Governor
to go forth on his own responsibility and meet
the dreaded pirate, the news of whose depredations
had thrown the good citizens into such a fever of
apprehension, he took possession, in the name of
the law, of two large sloops, the Henry and the Sea-Nymph,
which were in the harbor, and at his own
expense he manned them with well-armed crews, and
put on board of each of them eight small cannon.
When everything was ready, Mr. Rhett was in command
of a very formidable force for those waters,
and if he had been ready to sail a few days sooner,
he would have had an opportunity of giving his
men some practice in fighting pirates before they
met the particular and more important sea-robber
whom they had set out to encounter. Just as his
vessel was ready to sail, Mr. Rhett received news
that a pirate ship had captured two or three merchantmen
[Pg 234]
just outside the harbor, and he put out to
sea with all possible haste and cruised up and down
the coast for some time, but he did not find this
most recent depredator, who had departed very
promptly when he heard that armed ships were
coming out of the harbor.

Now Mr. Rhett, who was no more of a sailor
than Stede Bonnet had been when he first began his
seafaring life, boldly made his way up the coast to
the mouth of Cape Fear River, where he had been
told the pirate vessel was lying. When he reached
his destination, Mr. Rhett found that it would not
be an easy thing to ascend the river, for the reason
that the pilots he had brought with him knew
nothing about the waters of that part of the coast,
and although the two ships made their way very
cautiously, it was not long after they had entered the
river before they got out of the channel, and it being
low tide, both of them ran aground upon sand bars.

This was a very annoying accident, but it was
not disastrous, for the sailing masters who commanded
the sloops knew very well that when the
tide rose, their vessels would float again. But it prevented
Mr. Rhett from going on and making an
immediate attack upon the pirate vessel, the topmasts
of which could be plainly seen behind a high
headland some distance up the river.

Of course Bonnet, or Captain Thomas, as he now
[Pg 235]
chose to be called, soon became aware of the fact
that two good-sized vessels were lying aground near
the mouth of the river, and having a very natural
curiosity to see what sort of craft they were, he
waited until nightfall and then sent three armed
boats to make observations. When these boats
returned to the Royal James and reported that the
grounded vessels were not well-loaded trading craft,
but large sloops full of men and armed with cannon,
Bonnet (for we prefer to call him by his old name)
had good reason to fold his arms, knit his brows,
and strut up and down the deck. He was sure that
the armed vessels came from Charles Town, and there
was no reason to doubt that if the Governor of
South Carolina had sent two ships against him the
matter was a very serious one. He was penned
up in the river, he had only one fighting vessel to
contend against two, and if he could not succeed in
getting out to sea before he should be attacked by
the Charles Town ships, there would be but little
chance of his continuing in his present line of
business. If the Royal James had been ready to
sail, there is no doubt that Bonnet would have
taken his chance of finding the channel in the dark,
and would have sailed away that night without
regard to the cannonading which might have been
directed against him from the two stranded vessels.

But as it was impossible to get ready to sail,[Pg 236]
Bonnet went to work with the greatest energy to get
ready to fight. He knew that when the tide rose
there would be two armed sloops afloat, and that
there would be a regular naval battle on the quiet
waters of Cape Fear River. All night his men
worked to clear the decks and get everything in
order for the coming combat, and all night Mr.
Rhett and his crews kept a sharp watch for any
unexpected move of the enemy, while they loaded
their guns, their pistols, and their cannon, and put
everything in order for action.

Very early in the morning the wide-awake crews
of the South Carolina vessels, which were now afloat
and at anchor, saw that the topmasts of the pirate
craft were beginning to move above the distant
headland, and very soon Bonnet’s ship came out
into view, under full sail, and as she veered around
they saw that she was coming toward them. Up
went the anchors and up went the sails of the
Henry and the Sea-Nymph, and the naval battle
between the retired army officer who had almost
learned to be a sailor, and the private gentleman
from South Carolina, who knew nothing whatever
about managing ships, was about to begin.

It was plain to the South Carolinians that the
great object of the pirate captain was to get out to
sea just as soon as he could, and that he was coming
down the river, not because he wished to make an
[Pg 237]
immediate attack upon them, but because he hoped
to slip by them and get away. Of course they
could follow him upon the ocean and fight him if
their vessels were fast enough, but once out of the
river with plenty of sea-room, he would have twenty
chances of escape where now he had one.

But Mr. Rhett did not intend that the pirates
should play him this little trick; he wanted to fight
the dastardly wretches in the river, where they
could not get away, and he had no idea of letting
them sneak out to sea. Consequently as the Royal
James, under full sail, was making her way down
the river, keeping as far as possible from her two
enemies, Mr. Rhett ordered his ships to bear down
upon her so as to cut off her retreat and force her
toward the opposite shore of the river. This man[oe]uvre
was performed with great success. The two
Charles Town sloops sailed so boldly and swiftly
toward the Royal James that the latter was obliged
to hug the shore, and the first thing the pirates
knew they were stuck fast and tight upon a sand bar.
Three minutes afterward the Henry ran upon a
sand bar, and there being enough of these obstructions
in that river to satisfy any ordinary demand,
the Sea-Nymph very soon grounded herself upon
another of them. But unfortunately she took up
her permanent position at a considerable distance
from her consort.

[Pg 238]

Here now were the vessels which were to conduct
this memorable sea-fight, all three fast in the sand
and unable to move, and their predicament was
made the worse by the fact that it would be five
hours before the tide would rise high enough for
any one of them to float. The positions of the
three vessels were very peculiar and awkward; the
Henry and the Royal James were lying so near to
each other that Mr. Rhett could have shot Major
Bonnet with a pistol if the latter gentleman had
given him the chance, and the Sea-Nymph was so
far away that she was entirely out of the fight, and
her crew could do nothing but stand and watch
what was going on between the other two vessels.

But although they could not get any nearer each
other, nor get away from each other, the pirates and
Mr. Rhett’s crew had no idea of postponing the
battle until they should be afloat and able to fight
in the ordinary fashion of ships; they immediately
began to fire at each other with pistols, muskets, and
cannon, and the din and roar was something that
must have astonished the birds and beasts and fishes
of that quiet region.

As the tide continued to run out of the river, and
its waters became more and more shallow, the two
contending vessels began to careen over to one side,
and, unfortunately for the Henry, they both careened
in the same direction, and in such a manner that the
[Pg 239]
deck of the Royal James was inclined away from the
Henry, while the deck of the latter leaned toward
her pirate foe. This gave a great advantage to
Bonnet and his crew, for they were in a great measure
protected by the hull of their vessel, whereas
the whole deck of the Henry was exposed to the fire
of the pirates. But Mr. Rhett and his South
Carolinians were all brave men, and they blazed
away with their muskets and pistols at the pirates
whenever they could see a head above the rail of
the Royal James, while with their cannon they kept
firing at the pirate’s hull.

For five long hours the fight continued, but the
cannon carried by the two vessels must have been
of very small calibre, for if they had been firing at
such short range and for such a length of time with
modern guns, they must have shattered each other
into kindling wood. But neither vessel seems
to have been seriously injured, and although there
were a good many men killed on both sides, the
combat was kept up with great determination and
fury. At one time it seemed almost certain that
Bonnet would get the better of Mr. Rhett, and he
ordered his black flag waved contemptuously in the
air while his men shouted to the South Carolinians
to come over and call upon them, but the South
Carolina boys answered these taunts with cheers
and fired away more furiously than ever.

[Pg 240]

The tide was now coming in, and everybody on
board the two fighting vessels knew very well that
the first one of them which should float would have
a great advantage over the other, and would probably
be the conqueror. In came the tide, and still the
cannons roared and the muskets cracked, while the
hearts of the pirates and the South Carolinians
almost stood still as they each watched the other
vessel to see if she showed any signs of floating.

At last such signs were seen; the Henry was further
from the shore than the Royal James, and she
first felt the influence of the rising waters. Her
masts began to straighten, and at last her deck was
level, and she floated clear of the bottom while her
antagonist still lay careened over on her side. Now
the pirates saw there was no chance for them; in a
very short time the other Carolina sloop would be
afloat, and then the two vessels would bear down
upon them and utterly destroy both them and their
vessel. Consequently upon the Royal James there
was a general disposition to surrender and to make
the best terms they could, for it would be a great
deal better to submit and run the chance of a trial
than to keep up the fight against enemies so much
superior both in numbers and ships, who would
soon be upon them.

But Bonnet would not listen to one word of
surrender. Rather than give up the fight he declared
[Pg 241]
he would set fire to the powder magazine of
the Royal James and blow himself, his ship, and his
men high up into the air. Although he had not a
sailor’s skill, he possessed a soldier’s soul, and in
spite of his being a dastardly and cruel pirate he was
a brave man. But Bonnet was only one, and his
crew numbered dozens, and notwithstanding his furiously
dissenting voice it was determined to surrender,
and when Mr. Rhett sailed up to the Royal
James, intending to board her if the pirates still
showed resistance, he found them ready to submit
to terms and to yield themselves his prisoners.

Thus ended the great sea-fight between the private
gentlemen, and thus ended Stede Bonnet’s career.
He and his men were taken to Charles Town, where
most of the pirate crew were tried and executed.
The green-hand pirate, who had wrought more
devastation along the American coast than many a
skilled sea-robber, was held in custody to await his
trial, and it seems very strange that there should
have been a public sentiment in Charles Town which
induced the officials to treat this pirate with a certain
degree of respect simply from the fact that his station
in life had been that of a gentleman. He was a
much more black-hearted scoundrel than any of his
men, but they were executed as soon as possible
while his trial was postponed and he was allowed
privileges which would never have been accorded a
[Pg 242]
common pirate. In consequence of this leniency he
escaped and had to be retaken by Mr. Rhett. It
was so long before he was tried that sympathy for
his misfortunes arose among some of the tender-hearted
citizens of Charles Town whose houses he
would have pillaged and whose families he would
have murdered if the exigencies of piracy had rendered
such action desirable.

Finding that other people were trying to save his
life, Bonnet came down from his high horse and tried
to save it himself by writing piteous letters to the
Governor, begging for mercy. But the Governor
of South Carolina had no notion of sparing a pirate
who had deliberately put himself under the protection
of the law in order that he might better pursue
his lawless and wicked career, and the green hand,
with the black heart, was finally hung on the same
spot where his companions had been executed.

[Pg 243]

Chapter XXVII

A Six Weeks’ Pirate

About the time of Stede Bonnet’s terminal
adventures a very unpretentious pirate
made his appearance in the waters of New
York. This was a man named Richard Worley,
who set himself up in piracy in a very small way,
but who, by a strict attention to business, soon
achieved a remarkable success. He started out as
a scourge upon the commerce of the Atlantic Ocean
with only an open boat and eight men. In this
small craft he went down the coast of New Jersey
taking everything he could from fishing boats and
small trading vessels until he reached Delaware Bay,
and here he made a bold stroke and captured a
good-sized sloop.

When this piratical outrage was reported at Philadelphia,
it created a great sensation, and people talked
about it until the open boat with nine men grew
into a great pirate ship filled with roaring desperadoes
and cutthroats. From Philadelphia the news
was sent to New York, and that government was
[Pg 244]
warned of the great danger which threatened the
coast. As soon as this alarming intelligence was
received, the New Yorkers set to work to get up an
expedition which should go out to sea and endeavor
to destroy the pirate vessel before it could enter
their port, and work havoc among their merchantmen.

It may seem strange that a small open boat with
nine men could stir up such a commotion in these
two great provinces of North America, but if we can
try to imagine the effect which would be produced
among the inhabitants of Staten Island, or in the
hearts of the dwellers in the beautiful houses on the
shores of the Delaware River, by the announcement
that a boat carrying nine desperate burglars was to
be expected in their neighborhood, we can better
understand what the people of New York and
Philadelphia thought when they heard that Worley
had captured a sloop in Delaware Bay.

The expedition which left New York made a very
unsuccessful cruise. It sailed for days and days,
but never saw a sign of a boat containing nine men,
and it returned disappointed and obliged to report
no progress. With Worley, however, progress had
been very decided. He captured another sloop, and
this being a large one and suitable to his purposes,
he took possession of it, gave up his open boat, and
fitted out his prize as a regular piratical craft. With
[Pg 245]
a good ship under his command, Captain Worley
now enlarged his sphere of action; on both shores
of Delaware Bay, and along the coast of New Jersey,
he captured everything which came in his way, and
for about three weeks he made the waters in those
regions very hot for every kind of peaceable commercial
craft. If Worley had been in trade, his
motto would have been “Quick sales and small
profits,” for by day and by night, the New York’s
Revenge, which was the name he gave to his new
vessel, cruised east and west and north and south,
losing no opportunity of levying contributions of
money, merchandise, food, and drink upon any
vessel, no matter how insignificant it might be.

The Philadelphians now began to tremble in their
shoes; for if a boat had so quickly grown into a
sloop, the sloop might grow into a fleet, and they
had all heard of Porto Bello, and the deeds of the
bloody buccaneers. The Governor of Pennsylvania,
recognizing the impending danger and the necessity
of prompt action, sent to Sandy Hook, where there
was a British man-of-war, the Ph[oe]nix, and urged
that this vessel should come down into Delaware
Bay and put an end to the pirate ship which was
ravaging those waters. Considering that Worley
had not been engaged in piracy for much more than
four weeks, he had created a reputation for enterprise
and industry, which gave him a very important
[Pg 246]
position as a commerce destroyer, and a large man-of-war
did not think that he was too small game for
her to hunt down, and so she set forth to capture or
destroy the audacious Worley. But never a Worley
of any kind did she see. While the Ph[oe]nix was
sailing along the coast, examining all the coves and
harbors of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the New
York’s Revenge put out to sea, and then proceeded
southward to discover a more undisturbed field of
operation.

We will now leave Worley’s vessel sailing
southward, and go for a time to Charles Town,
where some very important events were taking
place. The Governor of South Carolina had been
very much afraid that the pirates in general would
take some sort of revenge for the capture of Stede
Bonnet, who was then in prison awaiting trial, and
that if he should be executed, Charles Town might
be visited by an overpowering piratical force, and
he applied to England to have a war-vessel sent to
the harbor. But before any relief of this kind
could be expected, news came to Charles Town
that already a celebrated pirate, named Moody, was
outside of the harbor, capturing merchant vessels,
and it might be that he was only waiting for the
arrival of other pirate ships to sail into the harbor
and rescue Bonnet.

Now the Charles Town citizens saw that they
[Pg 247]
must again act for themselves, and not depend
upon the home government. If there were pirates
outside the harbor, they must be met and fought
before they could come up to the city; and the
Governor and the Council decided immediately to
fit out a little fleet. Four merchant vessels were
quickly provided with cannon, ammunition, and
men, and the command of this expedition would
undoubtedly have been given to Mr. Rhett had it
not been that he and the Governor had quarrelled.
There being no naval officers in Charles Town,
their fighting vessels had to be commanded by
civilians, and Governor Johnson now determined
that he would try his hand at carrying on a sea-fight.
Mr. Rhett had done very well; why should
not he?

Before the Governor’s little fleet of vessels, one of
which was the Royal James, captured from Bonnet,
was quite ready to sail, the Governor received news
that his preparations had not been made a moment
too soon, for already two vessels, one a large ship,
and the other an armed sloop, had come into the
outer harbor, and were lying at anchor off Sullivan’s
Island. It was very likely that Moody, having
returned from some outside operation, was waiting
there for the arrival of other pirate ships, and that
it was an important thing to attack him at once.

As it was very desirable that the pirates should
[Pg 248]
not be frightened away before the Charles Town
fleet could reach them, the vessels of the latter were
made to look as much like mere merchantmen as
possible. Their cannon were covered, and the
greater part of the crews was kept below, out of
sight. Thus the four ships came sailing down the
bay, and early in the morning made their appearance
in the sight of the pirates. When the ship
and the big sloop saw the four merchant vessels
sailing quietly out of the harbor, they made immediate
preparations to capture them. Anchors were
weighed, sails were set, and with a black flag flying
from the topmast of each vessel, the pirates steered
toward the Charles Town fleet, and soon approached
near enough to the King William, which was the
foremost of the fleet, to call upon her captain to
surrender. But at that moment Governor Johnson,
who was on board the Mediterranean, and could hear
the insolent pirate shouting through his speaking-trumpet,
gave a preconcerted signal. Instantly
everything was changed. The covers were jerked
off from the cannon of the pretended merchantmen,
armed men poured up out of the holds, the flag of
England was quickly raised on each one of them,
and the sixty-eight guns of the combined fleet
opened fire upon the astonished pirates.

The ship which seemed to be the more formidable
of the enemy’s vessels had run up so close to
[Pg 249]
her intended prey that two of Governor Johnson’s
vessels, the Sea-Nymph and the Royal James, once
so bitterly opposed to each other, but now fighting
together in honest comradeship, were able to go
between her and the open sea and so cut off her
retreat.

But if the captain of the pirate ship could not get
away, he showed that he was very well able to fight,
and although the two vessels which had made him
the object of their attack were pouring cannon balls
and musket shot upon him, he blazed away with
his cannon and his muskets. The three vessels
were so near each other that sometimes their yard-arms
almost touched, so that this terrible fight seemed
almost like a hand-to-hand conflict. For four hours
the roaring of the cannon, the crushing of timbers,
the almost continuous discharge of musketry were
kept up, while the smoke of the battle frequently
almost prevented the crews of the contending ships
from seeing each other. Not so very far away the
people of Charles Town, who were standing on the
shores of their beautiful harbor, could see the fierce
fight which was going on, and great was the excitement
and anxiety throughout the city.

But the time came when two ships grew too
much for one, and as the Royal James and the Sea-Nymph
were able to take positions by which they
could rake the deck of the pirate vessel, many of
[Pg 250]
her men gave up the fight and rushed down into
the hold to save their lives. Then both the Charles
Town vessels bore down upon the pirate and
boarded her, and now there was another savage
battle with pistols and cutlasses. The pirate captain
and several of his crew were still on deck,
and they fought like wounded lions, and it was not
until they had all been cut down or shot that victory
came to the men of Charles Town.

Very soon after this terrible battle was over the
waiting crowds in the city saw a glorious sight; the
pirate ship came sailing slowly up the harbor, a captured
vessel, with the Sea-Nymph on one side and the
Royal James on the other, the colors of the Crown
flying from the masts of each one of the three.

The other pirate ship, which was quite large,
seemed to be more fortunate than her companion,
for she was able to get out to sea, and spreading all
her sails she made every effort to escape. Governor
Johnson, however, had no idea of letting her
get away if he could help it. When a civilian goes
out to fight a sea-battle he naturally wants to show
what he can do, and Governor Johnson did not mean
to let people think that Mr. Rhett was a better
naval commander than he was. He ordered the
Mediterranean and the King William to put on all
sail, and away they went after the big ship. The
retreating pirates did everything they could to effect
[Pg 251]
escape, throwing over their cannon, and even their
boats, in order to lighten their ship, but it was of no
use. The Governor’s vessels were the faster sailers,
and when the King William got near enough to fire
a few cannon balls into the flying ship, the latter
hauled down the black flag and without hesitation
lay to and surrendered.

It was plain enough that this ship was not manned
by desperate pirates, and when Governor Johnson
went on board of her he found her to be not really
a pirate ship, but an English vessel which not long
before had been captured by the pirates in whose
company she had visited Charles Town harbor.
She had been bringing over from England a company
of convicts and what were called “covenant
servants,” who were going to the colonies to be disposed
of to the planters for a term of years.
Among these were thirty-six women, and when the
South Carolinians went below they were greatly
surprised to find the hold crowded with these unfortunate
creatures, some of whom were nearly frightened
to death. At the time of this vessel’s capture
the pirate captain had enlisted some of the convicts
into his crew, as he needed men, and putting on
board of his prize a few pirates to command her,
the ship had been worked by such of her own crew
and passengers as were willing to serve under
pirates, while the others were shut up below.

[Pg 252]

Here was a fine prize taken with very little trouble,
and the King William and the Mediterranean
returned to Charles Town with their captured ship,
to be met with the shouts and cheers of the delighted
citizens, already excited to a high pitch by the previous
arrival of the captured pirate sloop.

But Governor Johnson met with something else
which made a stronger impression on him than the
cheers of his townspeople, and this was the great
surprise of finding that he had not fought and
conquered the pirate Moody; without suspecting
such a thing, he had crushed and utterly annihilated
the dreaded Worley, whose deeds had created such
a consternation in northern waters, and whose threatened
approach had sent a thrill of excitement all
down the coast. When this astonishing news became
known, the flags of the city were waved more
wildly, and the shouts and cheers rose higher.

Thus came to an end, in the short time of six
weeks, the career of Richard Worley, who, without
doubt, did more piratical work in less time than any
sea-robber on record.

[Pg 253]

Chapter XXVIII

The Story of Two Women Pirates

The history of the world gives us many instances
of women who have taken the parts
of men, almost always acquitting themselves
with as much credit as if they had really
belonged to the male sex, and, in our modern days,
these instances are becoming more frequent than
ever before. Joan of Arc put on a suit of armor
and bravely led an army, and there have been many
other fighting women who made a reputation for
themselves; but it is very seldom that we hear of a
woman who became a pirate. There were, however,
two women pirates who made themselves very
well known on our coast.

The most famous of these women pirates was
named Mary Reed. Her father was an English
captain of a trading vessel, and her mother sailed
with him. This mother had had an elder child, a
son, and she also had a mother-in-law in England
from whom she expected great things for her little
boy. But the boy died, and Mrs. Reed, being
[Pg 254]
afraid that her mother-in-law would not be willing
to leave any property to a girl, determined to play a
little trick, and make believe that her second child
was also a boy.

Consequently, as soon as the little girl, who, from
her birth had been called Mary by her father and
mother, was old enough to leave off baby clothes,
she put on boy’s clothes, and when the family returned
to England a nice little boy appeared before
his grandmother; but all this deception amounted
to nothing, for the old lady died without leaving
anything to the pretended boy. Mary’s mother
believed that her child would get along better in the
world as a boy than she would as a girl, and therefore
she still dressed her in masculine clothes, and
put her out to service as a foot-boy, or one of those
youngsters who now go by the name of “Buttons.”

But Mary did not fancy blacking boots and running
errands. She was very well satisfied to be a
boy, but she wanted to live the kind of a boy’s life
which would please her fancy, and as she thought
life on the ocean wave would suit her very well, she
ran away from her employer’s house and enlisted on
board a man-of-war as a powder monkey.

After a short time, Mary found that the ocean
was not all that she expected it to be, and when she
had grown up so that she looked like a good strapping
fellow, she ran away from the man-of-war when
[Pg 255]
it was in an English port, and went to Flanders,
and there she thought she would try something new,
and see whether or not she would like a soldier’s
life better than that of a sailor. She enlisted in a
regiment of foot, and in the course of time she
became a very good soldier and took part in several
battles, firing her musket and charging with her
bayonet as well as any of the men beside her.

But there is a great deal of hard work connected
with infantry service, and although she was eager
for the excitement of battle with the exhilarating
smell of powder and the cheering shouts of her
fellow-soldiers, Mary did not fancy tramping on
long marches, carrying her heavy musket and knapsack.
She got herself changed into a regiment of
cavalry, and here, mounted upon a horse, with the
encumbrances she disliked to carry comfortably
strapped behind her, Mary felt much more at ease,
and much better satisfied. But she was not destined
to achieve fame as a dashing cavalry man with foaming
steed and flashing sabre. One of her comrades
was a very prepossessing young fellow, and Mary
fell in love with him, and when she told him she
was not really a cavalry man but a cavalry woman,
he returned her affection, and the two agreed that
they would quit the army, and set up domestic life
as quiet civilians. They were married, and went
into the tavern-keeping business. They were both
[Pg 256]
fond of horses, and did not wish to sever all connection
with the method of life they had just given
up, and so they called their little inn the Three
Horse Shoes, and were always glad when any one
of their customers came riding up to their stables,
instead of simply walking in their door.

But this domestic life did not last very long.
Mary’s husband died, and, not wishing to keep a
tavern by herself, she again put on the dress of a
man and enlisted as a soldier. But her military
experience did not satisfy her, and after all she
believed that she liked the sea better than the land,
and again she shipped as a sailor on a vessel bound
for the West Indies.

Now Mary’s desire for change and variety seemed
likely to be fully satisfied. The ship was taken by
English pirates, and as she was English and looked
as if she would make a good freebooter, they compelled
her to join them, and thus it was that she got
her first idea of a pirate’s life. When this company
disbanded, she went to New Providence and enlisted
on a privateer, but, as was very common on such vessels
commissioned to perform acts of legal piracy, the
crew soon determined that illegal piracy was much
preferable, so they hoisted the black flag, and began
to scourge the seas.

Mary Reed was now a regular pirate, with a cutlass,
pistol, and every outward appearance of a daring
[Pg 257]
sea-robber, except that she wore no bristling
beard, but as her face was sunburned and seamed
by the weather, she looked mannish enough to
frighten the senses out of any unfortunate trader
on whose deck she bounded in company with her
shouting, hairy-faced companions. It is told of her
that she did not fancy the life of a pirate, but she
seemed to believe in the principle of whatever is
worth doing is worth doing well; she was as ready
with her cutlass and her pistol as any other ocean
bandit.

But although Mary was a daring pirate, she was
also a woman, and again she fell in love. A very
pleasant and agreeable sailor was taken prisoner by
the crew of her ship, and Mary concluded that she
would take him as her portion of the spoils. Consequently,
at the first port they touched she became
again a woman and married him, and as they had
no other present method of livelihood he remained
with her on her ship. Mary and her husband had
no real love for a pirate’s life, and they determined
to give it up as soon as possible, but the chance to
do so did not arrive. Mary had a very high regard
for her new husband, who was a quiet, amiable
man, and not at all suited to his present life, and
as he had become a pirate for the love of her, she
did everything she could to make life easy for
him.

[Pg 258]

She even went so far as to fight a duel in his
place, one of the crew having insulted him, probably
thinking him a milksop who would not resent
an affront. But the latent courage of Mary’s husband
instantly blazed up, and he challenged the
insulter to a duel. Although Mary thought her
husband was brave enough to fight anybody, she
thought that perhaps, in some ways, he was a milksop
and did not understand the use of arms nearly
as well as she did. Therefore, she made him stay on
board the ship while she went to a little island near
where they were anchored and fought the duel with
sword and pistol. The man pirate and the woman
pirate now went savagely to work, and it was not
long before the man pirate lay dead upon the sand,
while Mary returned to an admiring crew and a
grateful husband.

During her piratical career Mary fell in with another
woman pirate, Anne Bonny, by name, and these
women, being perhaps the only two of their kind,
became close friends. Anne came of a good family.
She was the daughter of an Irish lawyer, who went
to Carolina and became a planter, and there the
little girl grew up. When her mother died she
kept the house, but her disposition was very much
more masculine than feminine. She was very quick-tempered
and easily enraged, and it is told of her
that when an Englishwoman, who was working as
[Pg 259]
a servant in her father’s house, had irritated Anne
by some carelessness or impertinence, that hot-tempered
young woman sprang upon her and
stabbed her with a carving-knife.

It is not surprising that Anne soon showed a
dislike for the humdrum life on a plantation, and
meeting with a young sailor, who owned nothing
in the world but the becoming clothes he wore, she
married him. Thereupon her father, who seems
to have been as hot-headed as his daughter, promptly
turned her out of doors. The fiery Anne was glad
enough to adopt her husband’s life, and she went to
sea with him, sailing to New Providence. There
she was thrown into an entirely new circle of society.
Pirates were in the habit of congregating at this
place, and Anne was greatly delighted with the
company of these daring, dashing sea-robbers, of
whose exploits she had so often heard. The more
she associated with the pirates, the less she cared for
the plain, stupid sailors, who were content with the
merchant service, and she finally deserted her husband
and married a Captain Rackham, one of the
most attractive and dashing pirates of the day.

Anne went on board the ship of her pirate husband,
and as she was sure his profession would
exactly suit her wild and impetuous nature, she
determined also to become a pirate. She put on
man’s clothes, girded to her side a cutlass, and hung
[Pg 260]
pistols in her belt. During many voyages Anne
sailed with Captain Rackham, and wherever there
was pirate’s work to do, she was on deck to do it.
At last the gallant captain came to grief. He was
captured and condemned to death. Now there was
an opportunity for Anne’s nature to assert itself,
and it did, but it was a very different sort of nature
from that of Mary Reed. Just before his execution
Anne was admitted to see her husband, but
instead of offering to do anything that might comfort
him or palliate his dreadful misfortune, she
simply stood and contemptuously glared at him.
She was sorry, she said, to see him in such a predicament,
but she told him plainly that if he had
had the courage to fight like a man, he would not
then be waiting to be hung like a dog, and with
that she walked away and left him.

On the occasion when Captain Rackham had
been captured, Mary Reed and her husband were
on board his ship, and there was, perhaps, some
reason for Anne’s denunciation of the cowardice
of Captain Rackham. As has been said, the two
women were good friends and great fighters, and
when they found the vessel engaged in a fight with
a man-of-war, they stood together upon the deck
and boldly fought, although the rest of the crew,
and even the captain himself, were so discouraged
by the heavy fire which was brought to bear on
them, that they had retreated to the hold.

[Pg 261]

Mary and Anne were so disgusted at this exhibition
of cowardice, that they rushed to the hatchways
and shouted to their dastardly companions to come
up and help defend the ship, and when their entreaties
were disregarded they were so enraged that
they fired down into the hold, killing one of the
frightened pirates and wounding several others.
But their ship was taken, and Mary and Anne, in
company with all the pirates who had been left alive,
were put in irons and carried to England.

When she was in prison, Mary declared that she
and her husband had firmly intended to give up
piracy and become private citizens. But when she
was put on trial, the accounts of her deeds had
a great deal more effect than her words upon her
judges, and she was condemned to be executed.
She was saved, however, from this fate by a fever
of which she died soon after her conviction.

The impetuous Anne was also condemned, but
the course of justice is often very curious and difficult
to understand, and this hard-hearted and sanguinary
woman was reprieved and finally pardoned.
Whether or not she continued to disport herself
as a man we do not know, but it is certain that she
was the last of the female pirates.

There are a great many things which women can
do as well as men, and there are many professions
and lines of work from which they have been long
[Pg 262]
debarred, and for which they are most admirably
adapted, but it seems to me that piracy is not one
of them. It is said that a woman’s nature is apt to
carry her too far, and I have never heard of any man
pirate who would allow himself to become so enraged
against the cowardice of his companions that
he would deliberately fire down into the hold of
a vessel containing his wife and a crowd of his
former associates.

[Pg 263]

Chapter XXIX

A Pirate from Boyhood

About the beginning of the eighteenth century
there lived in Westminster, England,
a boy who very early in life made a choice
of a future career. Nearly all boys have ideas upon
this subject, and while some think they would like
to be presidents or generals of armies, others fancy
that they would prefer to be explorers of unknown
countries or to keep candy shops. But it generally
happens that these youthful ideas are never carried
out, and that the boy who would wish to sell candy
because he likes to eat it, becomes a farmer on the
western prairie, where confectionery is never seen,
and the would-be general determines to study for
the ministry.

But Edward Low, the boy under consideration,
was a different sort of a fellow. The life of a robber
suited his youthful fancy, and he not only adopted
it at a very early age, but he stuck to it until the
end of his life. He was much stronger and bolder
than the youngsters with whom he associated, and
[Pg 264]
he soon became known among them as a regular
land pirate. If a boy possessed anything which
Ned Low desired, whether it happened to be an
apple, a nut, or a farthing, the young robber gave
chase to him, and treated him as a pirate treats a
merchant vessel which he has boarded.