BUCC eae
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BUCCANEERS AND PIRATES
OF OUR COASTS
ieee ake,
Buccaneers and Pirates
of Our Coasts
By
Frank R. Stockton
Author of ‘* Rudder Grange ’”’
With Illustrations by
George Varian and B. West Clinedinst
New York
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1898
«« The pirates climbed up the sides of the man-of-war as if they had : All rights reserved
been twenty-nine cats.’? — Frontispiece.
Copyright, 1897-1898,
By The Century Co.
Copyright, 1898,
By The Macmillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped July, 1898. Reprinted November, 1898.
Norwood Press
‘J. 8. Cusbing G Co. — Berwick G Smith
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
AE NNN SA Ti OE
Chapter
a,
Tl.
Iv.
VI,
VII.
VUl.
IX.
XI.
XII,
XII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX,
Contents
The Bold Buccaneers. i ° °
Some Masters in Piracy ° .
Pupils in Piracy . : ‘i ° . .
Peter the Great
The Story of a Pearl Pirate
The Surprising Adventures of Bartholemy Por-
tuguez
The Pirate who could not Swim
How Bartholemy rested Himself
A Pirate Author - .
The Story of Roc, the Brazilian
A Buccaneer Boom ¥ ;
The Story of L’Olonnois the Cruel .
A Resurrected Pirate .
Villany on a Grand Scale a : . .
A Just Reward
A Pirate Potentate : . . . .
How Morgan was helped by Some Religious
People -
A Piratical Aftermath ; . .
A Tight Place for Morgan. ° :
¥
100
109
119
132
145
153
159
vi Contents
Chapter
XX. The Story of a High-Minded Pirate : Pete lv
XXI. Exit Buccaneer ; Enter Pirate : : Ree fo List of Illustrations
XXII. The Great Blackbeard comes upon the Stage . 200
XXIII. 9D ed
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2 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 posi-
tion 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 alto-
The Bold Buccaneers = :
gether 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 un-
objectionable 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
4 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 conse-
quently 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 an-
chored 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 posses-
sions, they pursued the vessels of the buccaneers
wherever they were seen, and relentlessly destroyed
The Bold Buccaneers 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 be-
came 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 Amer-
ican 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 bucca-
neers 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
6 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 them-
selves, they adopted a general name, —“The Breth-
ren of the Coast.” The outside world, especially
the Spanish world, called them pirates, sea-rob-
bers, buccaneers, —any title which would express
their lawless character, but in their own denomina-
tion of themselves they expressed only their frater-
nal relations ; and for the greater part of their career,
they truly stood by each other like brothers.
Chapter IT
Some Masters in Piracy
\ROM 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 circum-
stances 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 tempta-
tions 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
7
8 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
West Indies.
: — we begin a judicial inquiry into the condi-
on of our fellow-beings, we should try to be as
courteous as we can, but we must be just; conse
* ‘ a
¢ off our hats and bow very
we must still assert that Christopher
ee little ships to dis-
» he was an accredited explorer
» and was bravely sailing forth
Some Masters in Piracy 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 him-
self beyond the boundaries of civilized law. Rob-
bery, 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 legal-
ized 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 buc-
caneers 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.
10 ~=— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
Therefore, it was so easy to sail his ships into the
harbors of defenceless islands, to subjugate the na-
tives, 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 ex-
pedition; 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 pur-
pose, 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 dread-
ful 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
Some Masters in Piracy Il
into the history of this period, we will simply men-
tion the fact that it was on account of his alleged
atrocities that Columbus was superseded in his com-
mand, and sent back in chains to Spain.
There was another noted personage of the six-
teenth century who played the part of pirate in
the new world, and thereby set a most shining ex-
ample 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 dis-
Position, 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 noth-
ing 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 ex-
pedition 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
12 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 cali-
vers, 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 dis-
trustful of themselves; so it happened on this occa-
sion 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
Some Masters in Piracy 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 re-
ceived 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.
14 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 neigh-
borhood of California, he doubled the Cape of Good
Hope, and sailed along the western coast of Africa
to European waters.
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SRF ee A NNR I aR ORI IT a mi
Some Masters in Piracy 15
This grand piratical expedition excited great indig-
nation 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 enter-
prise and commerce, and who afterwards became
thorough-going pirates, without trying to make it
clear that they had shining examples for their nota-
ble careers.
Chapter III
Pupils in Piracy
ish 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 dis-
cover 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 coun-
tries, 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 ;
16
: FTER the discoveries of Columbus, the Span-
Pupils in Piracy 17
but the buccaneers became more and more numer-
ous 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. Fre-
quently they dropped their family names and as-
sumed 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 inde-
pendent 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 in-
flict 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, al-
though they had been born in England, had ceased
Cc
18 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 set-
tlement 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 be-
haved 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 bucca-
neer, in order that he might do what he could for
arcane
ae wo ampere
SNe enero nena en neat
Pupils in Piracy 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 them-
selves when these daring sailors began their lives as
regular pirates ; among these, the idea of organiza-
ton 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,
20 ~+=Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
and laws were made for concerted action. In con-
sequence 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 coun-
tries there were no laws which European nations or
individuals cared to observe. In the West Indies
and the adjacent mainlands there were gold and sil-
ver, 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
een MP hes
Pupils in Piracy 21
Spain, carrying nothing in the way of merchandise
to America, but returning with all the precious met-
als 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 hand-
some 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 buccaneer-
Ing 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 super-
human 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 in-
teresting of these wild and desperate fellows, —
22 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
men who did not combine piracy with discov-
eries and explorations, but who were out-and-out
sea-robbers, and gained in that way all the repu-
tation they ever possessed, — will be told in subse-
quent chapters.
.
|
i
.
)
SNE AE TET ONTO TCT Ne int oe NATE CeCe ET AOE rt
IRE FS
Chapter IV
Peter the Great
YERY 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
23
24 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
been at a pretty low ebb when they found them-
selves 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 pro-
cure 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 be-
fore 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 ofevery 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
ee Ee ee net
enanage si
i ti DON RE NOOR A NIE ed MT 6
erwhenmmarern oes
Peter the Great 26
fine, fat deer, but an immense and scrawny ele-
phant.
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 ques-
tion 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 per-
26 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
ceive 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 conven-
ience. 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
pete ere hem
Peter the Great 27
captain would have found hungry pirates uncomfort-
able persons to question.
But it seemed to Peter and his crew a very diffi-
cult thing indeed to get themselves on board the
man-of-war, so they curbed their ardor and enthusi-
asm, 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
notselessly bored the hole.
This remarkable proceeding showed the desperate
character of these pirates. A great, almost impossi-
ble 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
28 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
should become frightened and try to retreat to the
boat, Peter knew that all would be lost, and conse-
quently 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 pro-
jection 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. Mak-
ing 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
8 A NORE NE A ae
Peter the Great 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 cap-
tain 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 circum-
Stances of himself and his men. But- it worked
30 + Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 pro-
visions, and there was also on board a great quan-
tity 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 sur-
prising 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.
Chapter V
The Story of a Pearl Pirate
2 eet 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
31
32 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 pur-
poses 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 Tor-
tuga 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 mer-
chantmen were brought into Tortuga by the bucca-
neers.
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 Francois, 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 with-
out 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
;
sam
ae
The Story of a Pearl Pirate 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 fish-
ery, — 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
tiver, 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 peace-
able errand; and, in fact, there was no reason what-
ever 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
D
34 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 moun-
tains 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 chal-
lenged 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
aSiveat aa alban
The Story of a Pearl Pirate 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 con-
sidered 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
Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 extraor-
dinary conduct, except that she was taking advan-
tage 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 sus-
picions we may imagine that, at that time, the
robbers who robbed robbers were not all bucca-
neers.
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
« ]
They set all sail, and there was a fine sea-chase.”’
a ae Vig
AEE IMIS LIT
PMNS ILA S IO TD
OTR TES
SEES AA ANSE
EA Ae RIE
ad
ITALY PPS RC
al RT ET ET cee
Te aie k oa canal ae
The Story of a Pearl Pirate 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 F renchman 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.
38 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 Francois 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.
Chapter VI
The Surprising Adventures of Bartholem
Portuguez ;
S we have seen that the buccaneers were
pat mainly English, French, and Dutch sailors,
who were united to make a common pirati-
cal warfare upon the Spaniards in the West Indies,
it may seem a little strange to find a man from Por-
tugal 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 South-
ern 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, act-
ing 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.
39
40 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
It may be here remarked that the name of bucca-
neer was chiefly affected by the English adventurers
on our coast, while the French members of the profes-
sion often preferred the name of “flibustier.” This
word, which has since been corrupted into our famil-
lar “ filibuster,” is said to have been originally a cor-
ruption, 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 fli-
bustier, 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 can-
non, 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 adven-
turers 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’ head-
quarters, and then sailed out very much as if he
Adventures of Bartholemy Portuguez = 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 pro-
truded 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
— find himself confronted by a vicious sword-
sh.
The Spanish merchantmen of that day were gen-
erally well armed, for getting home safely across
the Atlantic was often the most di
treasure-seeking.
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
42 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 under-
stand 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 com-
mon sailors.
Perceiving the foolhardiness of the little vessel,
the Spanish commander determined to give it a les-
son which would teach its captain to understand bet-
ter 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
Adventures of Bartholemy Portuguez 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 broad-
side, the pirate vessel was alongside of her. Bar-
tholemy 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 Span-
44 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
lards 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 sal-
*« The best marksmen, crouching close to the deck, fired and fired
whenever a Spanish head was to be seen.”? —p. 44.
Adventures of Bartholemy Portuguez 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 ac-
counts, must have been nearly all wounded or dis-
abled.
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
r does not seem to have arrived at the stage of de-
7 pravity necessary for this. So he determined not
t to kill his prisoners, but he put them all into a boat
and let them go where they pleased; while he was
46 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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. Con-
sequently 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
PA SO an eS
Adventures of Bartholemy Portuguez 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 attempt-
ing 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 pos-
sessed, 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 for-
tunes 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,
48 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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.
Chapter VII
The Pirate who could not Swim
‘ ,' THEN the little fleet of Spanish vessels,
including the one which had been cap-
tured by Bartholemy Portuguez and his
men, were on their way to Campeachy, they met
with very stormy weather so that they were sepa-
rated, 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
E 49
50 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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
The Pirate who could not Swim 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, be-
cause 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
52 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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, peer-
ing 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 sup-
port him in the water.
Among other things he had found in his rum-
magings about the hold was an old knife, and with
this in his hand he now sat waiting for a good oppor-
tunity to attack his sentinel.
This came soon after nightfall. A man de-
scended 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
<¢ The pirate soon floated out of sight and hearing.’ — p. 53.
The Pirate who could not Swim 53
his two jars, Bartholemy climbed swiftly and noise-
lessly 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 prison-
ers, —and he therefore did not feel safe in immedi-
ately 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 blood-
hounds 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
$4 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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, doubt-
less, animated him very much during the first part
of his journey.
The terrible trials and hardships which Bar-
tholemy 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
The Pirate who could not Swim 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 fright-
ened 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.
56 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 con-
siderable 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, Bar-
tholemy 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
The Pirate who could not Swim 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 jour-
ney 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 impos-
sible for even a stork to walk through this forest,
but as there was no way of getting around it Bar-
tholemy determined to go through it, even if he
58 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 man-
grove forest, never once setting his foot upon the
ground, — by which is meant mud, water, and roots,
—pbut 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.
Chapter VIII
‘
How Bartholemy rested Himself
T was full two weeks from the time that Bar-
| tholemy began his most adventurous and diffi-
cult 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 hard-
ships and dangers were over, and when, instead of
roots and shellfish, he could sit down to good,
plentiful meals, and stretch himself upon a comfort-
able bed, it might have been supposed that Barthol-
emy 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
59
60 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 uncom-
monly bold enterprise that Bartholemy contem-
plated, 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 con-
siderable 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
How Bartholemy rested Himself 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
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 merchan-
dise, and we may here remark that for some reason
62 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 bow! 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 integ-
rity 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 trium-
phant 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
How Bartholemy rested Himself 63
and treasure which had come to them with the cap-
ture 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, alliga-
tors, wild beasts, awful forests impenetrable to com-
mon 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 Portu-
guese found that he had no chance at all. But
64 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 hap-
pened 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 cus-
tomers to come to him, such a man as Bartholemy
would not be likely to do anything so common-
place.
Chapter Ix
A Pirate Author
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 fight-
ing, 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 wasa 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
F 65
L: the days which we are considering there were
66 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 Tor-
tuga, 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 pur-
chasers, 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
A Pirate Author 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 mer-
chandise on hand, the tables, the desks, the station-
ery, 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 cru-
elly in many ways, and to add to his misery, his
Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 some-
thing 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
A Pirate Author
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 there-
fore 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 com-
pany 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, Esquemel-
ing 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 compan-
ions. 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
[ee
70 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
such intelligent attention to the accounts of piratical
depredations and savage sea-fights, as was Esquemel-
ing, 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 pro-
duce 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 get-
ting 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 com-
pleted a book, which he called, “ The Buccaneers of
America, or The True Account of the Most Re-
markable 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
A Pirate Author 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 con-
scientious 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 cour-
tesy, if there happened to be any, while the surli-
ness, 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 gen-
eral, and most of the stories of pirates which we
have already told, and many of the surprising narra-
tions which are to come, have been taken from the
book of this buccaneer historian.
a
Chapter X
The Story of Roc, the Brazilian
AVING given the history of a very plain
and quiet buccaneer, who was a reporter
and writer, and who, if he were now liv-
ing, 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 Bra-
zil, 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 per-
ceived by his companions that he was destined to
72
The Story of «Roc, the Brazilian 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 con-
duct of great piratical operations soon became appar-
ent, 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 Cesar,
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.
74 Buccaneers and Piratgs of Our Coasts
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 re-
sembled 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 cut-
lass, 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 en-
deavor 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 mas-
ter would cut him down where he stood. But
although he was so strict and exacting during the
a eS.
The Story of Roc, the Brazilian 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 any-
thing else. There were no extenuating circum-
stances 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
ig
76 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 Bra-
zilian, 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 quar-
ter 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 noth-
ing 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.
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
*¢In a small boat filled with some of his trusty men, he rowed
quietly into the port.’? —p. 77.
The Story of Roc, the Brazilian 7
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 noth-
ing 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 re-
port, 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
Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 exe-
cuted. 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
The Story of Roc, the Brazilian 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-pre-
server, or of doing any of those ordinary things
which pirates were in the habit of doing when escap-
ing 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 un-
armed 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 hadany. Roc had plenty of
wit, and he used it well. There was a slave, prob-
ably 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
80 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 no-
ticed a large French vessel that was lying at some dis-
tance from the town, and he wrote his letter as if it
had come from the captain of this ship. In the char-
acter 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
il life, would he give quarter to any Spaniard who
might fall into his hands, and he, moreover, threat-
ened 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 <« When the slave came back to Roc, the letter was given to him
were then lying imprisoned in the fortress. with very particular directions.’’— p. 80.
When the slave came back to Roc, the letter was
The Story of Roc, the Brazilian 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 har-
bor, 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 mis-
sion, 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
82 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 Cam-
peachy. It was an unusual thing for a prisoner to
have such powerful friends so near by, and the Gov-
ernor took Roc’s case into most earnest consid-
eration. 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 be-
come quiet citizens in whatever respectable vocation
they might select.
The Story of Roc, the Brazilian 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
84 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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.
The Story of Roc, the Brazilian 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 employ-
ment 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 unsus-
pecting garrison, and, having annihilated these, make
themselves masters of the town.
But their plans did not work very well; they
86 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 horse-
men 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 estima-
tion 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
The Story of Roc, the Brazilian 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 con-
tempt 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 dis-
honesty, 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 es-
teemed and revered, and under other circumstances
he showed those other qualities which Esquemeling
88 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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.
Chapter XI
A Buccaneer Boom
HE 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.
89
go — Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 inter-
fere 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 sea-
men of every nation.
A Buccaneer Boom
Finding that she could do nothing to diminish
the number of the buccaneering vessels, Spain deter-
mined that she would not have so many richly laden
ships of her own upon these dangerous seas; con-
sequently, a change was made in regard to the ship-
ping 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 im-
possible 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 quan-
92 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
tity 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 defence-
less, and even those which boasted fortifications
often fell before the reckless charges of the bucca-
neers. 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 outra-
geous, exacting, and cruel conquerors ever known in
the world. They were governed by no laws of war-
fare; 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
A Buccaneer Boom 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 Span-
ish-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 far-
away 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.
Chapter XII
The Story of L’Olonnois the Cruel
T° 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 scoun-
drel 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
94
The Story of L’Olonnois the Cruel 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 appren-
tices, 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
96 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 fiend-
ish 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 repu-
tation 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,
The Story of L’Olonnois the Cruel 97
scooped up several handfuls of sand, mixed it with
his blood, and with it rubbed his face so that it pre-
sented 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 bucca-
neers who had been captured, and who were impris-
oned in the fortress, had been interrogated over and
H
98 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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
The Story of L’Olonnois the Cruel 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 of wickedness, and the seminary, as it
were, of all manner of pirates.”
Chapter XIII
A Resurrected Pirate
HEN L’Olonnois arrived at Tortuga he
caused great astonishment among his old
associates ; that he had come back a com-
parative 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 vil-
lage 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
100
A Resurrected Pirate 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 Olon-
nois 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, Phe
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
102 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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
A Resurrected Pirate 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 ap-
proaching they supposed them to be boats from
shore, for, as has been said, such vessels were con-
tinually 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
104 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 ex-
pected 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. Butthere was some stout fighting on board ;
the officers came out of their cabins, and some of the
A Resurrected Pirate 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 deter-
mined 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 or-
dered 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
106 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
and begged piteously for his life. L’Olonnois, find-
ing 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 obey-
ing 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-mate-
rials 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 kind-
ness 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
A Resurrected Pirate 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 sur-
rounding 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 pur-
suits, and they feared that when it became known
that no buccaneer was to receive quarter, the Span-
ish colonists would be treated in the same way, no
matter where they might be found and taken. Con-
sequently, 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
108 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 consid-
eration 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 impor-
tant cruise on the high seas, and he also discovered,
much to his surprise, that there were very few pro-
visions 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.
Chapter XIV
Villany on a Grand Scale
HEN L’Olonnois landed on the disrepu-
\V \ table 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 rev-
erenced 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 con-
ceived the plan of getting up a grand expedition to
go forth and capture the important town of Mara-
caibo, in New Venezuela. This was an enterprise
far above the ordinary aims of a buccaneer, and it
would require more than ordinary force to accom-
plish it. He therefore set himself to work to en-
list a large number of men and to equip a fleet of
109
110 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 dar-
ing butcher of the seas.
But in order to equip a fleet, money was neces-
sary as well as men, and therefore L’Olonnois
thought himself very lucky when he succeeded in
interesting the principal piratical capitalist of Tor-
tuga in his undertaking. This was an old and
seasoned buccaneer by the name of Michael de
Basco, who had made money enough by his pirati-
cal 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 under-
take, 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’Olon-
nois set sail for Maracaibo with a fleet of eight
ships. On the way they captured two Spanish ves-
Villany on a Grand Scale II!
»
sels, 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 maraud-
ers, but there were difficulties in the way 5 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
112 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 an-
chored 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 conse-
quently as many as possible hurried away into the
woods and the surrounding country with as many
of their valuables as they could carry. They re-
Villany on a Grand Scale 113
sembled 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 treas-
ures 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’Olon-
nois began to prove how much worse his presence
was than any other misfortune which could have
happened to the town. He tortured the poor pris-
oners, men, women, and children, to make them
tell where they had hidden their treasures, some-
times hacking one of them with his sword, declar-
ing at the same time that if he did not tell where
I
114 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 tor-
ture, 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 bombard-
ment, or any ordinary method of naval warfare ;
but at the first convenient spot he landed all his
Villany on a Grand Scale 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
116 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 con-
fronted 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 Span-
iards 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 con-
sidered a fair fight. Every now and then a buc-
Villany on a Grand Scale 117
caneer 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 buc-
caneers, 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
118 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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.
Chapter XV
A Just Reward
HEN L’Olonnois and his buccaneers en-
tered 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 out-
side of the town might be reénforced 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
119
120 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 proceed-
ings continued, and to prove that they were lower
than the brute beasts they allowed the greater num-
ber of the prisoners collected in the church, to per-
ish 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 what-
ever, and slowly starved.
When L’Olonnois and his fiends 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
A Just Reward ¥2T
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 prom-
ised 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 kind-
ness, 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 ran-
som 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
122 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 any-
thing wicked was ever missed by these pirates.
Consequently L’Olonnois gave orders to drop an-
chor 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 ad-
dition 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
A Just Reward 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 in-
habited 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 jus-
tice 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 accord-
ing to their established code. For the loss of a
124 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 ; fora missing left leg,
four hundred dollars, or four slaves; for an eye ora
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. Theshares 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 prop-
erty 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 tay-
erns 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,
«* The money and spoils were divided among all the buccaneers.’*
—p. 124.
ee
A Just Reward 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’Olon-
nois, 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 com-
mander 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
126 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 am-
buscades 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 citi-
zens surrendered, on condition that they should
ee
A Just Reward 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 rum-
maging 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 every-
thing 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
128 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 un-
expected 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 com-
manded. The smaller vessels now departed for
Tortuga, and after some trouble L’Olonnois suc-
ceeded 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
A Just Reward 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 dis-
covered 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
kK
130 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 buc-
caneers were killed, and L’Olonnois was taken pris-
oner. 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
ernie nwenn a seeeeheeneiaeemmemmaneenmemeneneianeda
A Just Reward 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.
Chapter XVI
A Pirate Potentate
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 bea 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
132
GS cess in the last half of the seventeenth
a iy Ai tcc et
rn Ne ODODE LTE TEE TDD
A Pirate Potentate 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 ser-
vice 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 law-
less 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 immedi-
ately set to work to acquire a knowledge of its
— There was a buccaneer ship about to sail
<= pag on this Morgan enlisted. He
Syees i and very soon showed himself to
e sailor.
_ After three or four voyages he acquired a reputa-
= for remarkable coolness in emergencies, and
ict an ability to take advantage of favorable
: umstances, which was not possessed by many of
‘Ss comrades. These prominent traits in his char-
acter became the foundation of his success. He
134 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
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 Mor-
gan 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 expedi-
tion 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 busi-
ness ; 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 con-
cerned his pen was mightier than their swords, for
had it not been for his account of their deeds very
-armed vessels manned by crews much
periods they faced
Their crimes were
but when they committed cruelties
pel their prisoners to
es, and when they at-
rdered all on board,
membrance that the
A Pirate from Boyhood 275
had a spark of courage in his composition. sali
brave enough when he was attacking an una
crew, but when he had to deal with mig .
capable of inflicting any injury upon him he w
a coward indeed. ee
Sailing in company with one companion vessel, ;
for he had discarded the greater part of his pirate
fleet, — Low sighted a good-sized ship at a we:
able distance, and he and his consort ere ia wad
gave chase, supposing the distant vessel might gets
to be a good prize. It so happened, Abe mae
the ship discovered by Low was an Eng ‘ >:
of-war, the Greyhound, which was cruising along -
coast looking for these very pirates, who had recently
committed some outrageous crimes upon the crews
ant vessels in those waters. —
eas the two ships, with the black flags floating
above them and their decks crowded with desperate
fellows armed with pistols and cutlasses, drew near
to the vessel, of which they expected to meres
prize, they were greatly amazed when she sudden y
turned in her course and delivered a broadside from
her heavy cannon. The pirates returned the oe
for they were well armed with cannon, and t =
was nothing else for them to do but fight, but the
combat was an extremely short one. Low’s consort
was soon disabled by the fire from the eaten
and, as soon as he perceived this, the dastardly
276 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
Low, without any regard for his companions in
arms, and with no thought for anything but his
own safety, immediately stopped fighting, and set-
ting all sail, sped away from the scene of combat as
swiftly as it was possible for the wind to force his
vessel through the water.
The disabled pirate ship was quickly captured, and
not long afterwards twenty-five of her crew were
tried, convicted, and hung near Newport, Rhode
Island. But the arrant Low escaped without injury,
and continued his career of contemptible crime for
some time longer. What finally became of him is
not set down in the histories of piracy. It is not
improbable that if the men under his command were
not too brutally stupid to comprehend his cowardly
unfaithfulness to them, they suddenly removed from
this world one of the least interesting of all base
beings.
Chapter XXX
The Pirate of the Gulf
T the beginning of this century there a0 a
A very able and, indeed, talented man living
on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico,
who has been set down in the historical records
of the times as a very important pirate, and who =
described in story and in tradition as a gallant an
romantic freebooter of the sea. This man was Jean
Lafitte, widely known as “ The Pirate of the om
and yet who was, in fact, so little ofa pirate, bes i
may be doubted whether or not he deserves a place
in these stories of American pirates. z
Lafitte was a French blacksmith, and, while sti
a young man, he came with his two brothers to
New Orleans, and set up a shop in Bourbon Street,
where he did a good business in horseshoeing and
in other branches of his trade. But he had a soul
which soared high above his anvil and his bellows,
and perceiving an opportunity to take up a pee
profitable occupation, he gave up blacksmithing, an
with his two brothers as partners became a super-
277
278 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
intendent of privateering and a general manager
of semi-legalized piracy. The business opportunity
which came to the watchful and clear-sighted Lafitte
may be briefly described.
In the early years of this century the Gulf of
Mexico was the scene of operations of small vessels
calling themselves privateers, but in fact pirates.
War had broken out between England and Spain,
on the one side, and France on the other, and conse-
quently the first-named nations were very glad to com-
mission privateers to prey upon the commerce of
France. There were also privateers who had been
sent out by some of the Central American republics
who had thrown off the Spanish yoke, and these,
considering Spanish vessels as their proper booty,
were very much inclined to look upon English
vessels in the same light, as the English and
Spanish were allies. And when a few French pri-
vateers came also upon the scene, they helped to
make the business of legitimate capture of merchant-
men, during the time of war, a very complicated
affair.
But upon one point these privateers, who so
often acted as pirates, because they had not the
spare time in which to work out difficult problems
of nationality, were all agreed: when they had
loaded their ships with booty, they must sail to
some place where it would be safe to dispose of it.
The Pirate of the Gulf 279
So, in course of time, the bay of Barrataria, about
forty miles south of New Orleans and very well
Situated for an illegal settlement, was chosen as a
privateers’ port, and a large and flourishing colony
soon grew up at the head of the bay, to which came
privateers of every nationality to dispose of their
cargoes. :
Of course there was no one in the comparatively
desolate country about Barrataria who could buy the
valuable goods which were brought into that port,
but the great object of the owners of this merchan-
dise was to smuggle it up to New Orleans and
dispose of it. But there could be no legitimate
traffic of this sort, for the United States at the very
beginning of the century was at peace with England,
France, and Spain, and therefore could not receive
into any of her ports, goods which had been capt-
ured from the ships of these nations. Conse-
quently the plunder of the privateering pirates of
Barrataria was brought up to New Orleans in all
sorts of secret and underhand fashions, and sold to
merchants in that city, without the custom house
having anything to do with the importations.
Now this was great business; Jean Lafitte had
a great business mind, and therefore it was not
long after his arrival at Barrataria before he was the
head man in the colony, and director-in-chief of all
its operations. Thus, by becoming a prominent
280 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
figure in a piratical circle, he came to be considered
a pirate, and as such came down to us in the pages
of history.
But, in fact, Lafitte never committed an act of
piracy in his life; he was a blacksmith, and knew
no more about sailing a ship or even the smallest
kind of a boat than he knew about the proper con-
struction of a sonnet. He did not even try, like the
celebrated Bonnet, to find other people who would
navigate a vessel for him, for he had no taste for the
ocean wave, and all that he had to do he did upon
firm, dry land. It is said of him that he was never
at sea but twice in his life: once when he came from
France, and once when he left this country, and on
neither occasion did he sail under the “ Jolly Roger,”
as the pirate flag was sometimes called. For these
reasons it seems scarcely right to call Lafitte a pirate,
but as he has been so generally considered in that
light, we will admit him into the bad company, the
stories of whose lives we are now telling.
The energy and business abilities of Jean Lafitte
soon made themselves felt not only in Barrataria,
but in New Orleans. The privateers found that he
managed their affairs with much discretion and con-
siderable fairness, and, while they were willing to
depend upon him, they were obliged to obey him.
On the other hand, the trade of New Orleans was
very much influenced by the great quantities of
The Pirate of the Gulf 281
goods which under Lafitte’s directions were smuggled
into the city. Many merchants and shopkeepers
who possessed no consciences to speak of were glad
to buy these smuggled goods for very little money
and to sell them at low prices and large profits, but
the respectable business men, who were obliged to
pay market prices for their goods, were greatly dis-
turbed by the large quantities of merchandise which
were continually smuggled into New Orleans and
sold at rates with which they could not compete.
It was toward the end of our war with England,
which began in 1812, that the government of the
United States, urged to speedy action by the increas-
ing complaints of the law-abiding merchants of New
Orleans, determined to send out a small naval force
and entirely break up the illegitimate rendezvous at
Barrataria.
Lafitte’s two brothers were in New Orleans acting
as his agents, and one of them, Dominique, was
arrested and thrown into prison, and Commodore
Patterson, who was commanding at that station, was
ordered to fit out an expedition as quickly as possible
to sail down to Barrataria to destroy the ships found
in the bay, to capture the town, and to confiscate
and seize upon all goods which might be found in
the place.
When Jean Lafitte heard of the vigorous methods
which were about to be taken against him, his pros-
282 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
pects must have been very gloomy ones, for of course
he could not defend his little colony against a regular
naval force, which, although its large vessels could
not sail into the shallow bay, could send out boats
with armed crews against which it would be foolish
for him to contend. But just about this time a
very strange thing happened.
A strong English naval force had taken possession
of Pensacola, Florida, and as an attack upon New
Orleans was contemplated, the British commander,
knowing of Lafitte’s colony at Barrataria, and believ-
ing that these hardy and reckless adventurers would
be very valuable allies in the proposed movement
upon the city, determined to send an ambassador to
Lafitte to see what could be done in the way of
forming an alliance with this powerful leader of semi-
pirates and smugglers.
Accordingly, the sloop of war Sophia, commanded
by Captain Lockyer, was sent to Barrataria to treat
with Lafitte, and when this vessel arrived off the
mouth of the harbor, which she could not enter, she
began firing signal guns in order to attract the at-
tention of the people of the colony. Naturally
enough, the report of the Sophia’s guns created a
great excitement in Barrataria, and all the people
who happened to be at the settlement at that time
crowded out upon the beach to see what they could
see. But the war-vessel was too far away for them
The Pirate of the Gulf 283
to distinguish her nationality, and Lafitte quickly
made up his mind that the only thing for him to do
was to row out to the mouth of the harbor and see
what was the matter. Without doubt he feared
that this was the United States vessel which had
come to break up his settlement. But whether this
was the case or not, he must go out and try the
effect of fair words, for he had no desire whatever
to defend his interests by hard blows.
Before Lafitte reached the vessel he was surprised
to find it was a British man-of-war, not an Ameri-
can, and very soon he saw that a boat was coming
from it and rowing toward him. This boat con-
tained Captain Lockyer and two other officers, be-
sides the men who rowed it; when the two boats
met, the captain told who he was, and asked if Mr.
Lafitte could be found in Barrataria, stating that he
had an important document to deliver tohim. The
cautious Frenchman did not immediately admit that
he was the man for whom the document was in-
tended, but he said that Lafitte was at Barrataria,
and as the two boats rowed together toward shore,
he thought it would be as well to announce his
Position, and did so.
When the crowd of privateersmen saw the officers
in British uniform landing upon their beach, they
were not inclined to receive them kindly, for an
attack had been made upon the place by a small
284 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
British force some time before, and a good deal of
damage had been done. But Lafitte quieted the
angry feelings of his followers, conducted the officers
to his own house, and treated them with great hos-
pitality, which he was able to do in fine style, for
his men brought into Barrataria luxuries from all
parts of the world.
When Lafitte opened the package of papers which
Captain Lockyer handed to him, he was very much
surprised. Some of them were general proclama-
tions announcing the intention of Great Britain if
the people of Louisiana did not submit to her de-
mands; but the most important document was one
in which Colonel Nichols, commander-in-chief of
the British forces in the Gulf, made an offer to
Lafitte and his followers to become a part of the
British navy, promising to give amnesty to all the
inhabitants of Barrataria, to make their leader a
captain in the navy, and to do a great many other
good things, provided they would join his forces, and
help him to attack the American seaports. In case,
however, this offer. should be refused, the Barrata-
rians were assured that their place would speedily
be attacked, their vessels destroyed, and all their
possessions confiscated.
Lafitte was now in a state of great perplexity.
He did not wish to become a British captain, for
his knowledge of horseshoeing would be of no ser-
The Pirate of the Gulf 285
vice to him in such a capacity; moreover, he had
no love for the British, and his sympathies were
all on the side of the United States in this war.
But here he was with the British commander ask-
ing him to become an ally, and to take up arms
against the United States, threatening at the same
time to destroy him and his colony in case of re-
fusal. On the other hand, there was the United
States at that moment preparing an expedition
for the purpose of breaking up the settlement at
Barrataria, and to do everything which the British
threatened to do, in case Lafitte did not agree to
their proposals.
The chief of Barrataria might have made a poor
show with a cutlass and a brace of pistols, but he
was a long-headed and sagacious man, with a strong
tendency to practical diplomacy. He was in a bad
scrape, and he must act with decision and prompt-
ness, if he wanted to get out of it.
The first thing he did was to gain time by delay-
ing his answer to the proposition brought by Captain
Lockyer. He assured that officer that he must
consult with his people and see what they would do,
and that he must also get rid of some truculent
members of the colony, who would never agree to
act in concert with England, and that therefore he
should not be able to give an answer to Colonel
Nichols for two weeks. Captain Lockyer saw for
286 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
himself that it would not be an easy matter to induce
these independent and unruly fellows, many of whom
already hated England, to enter into the British
service. Therefore he thought it would be wise to
allow Lafitte the time he asked for, and he sailed
away, promising to return in fifteen days.
The diplomatic Lafitte, having finished for a time
his negotiations with the British, lost no time in
communicating with the American authorities. He
sent to Governor Claiborne, of Louisiana, all the
documents he had received from Captain Lockyer,
and wrote him a letter in which he told him every-
thing that had happened, and thus gave to the
United States the first authentic information of the
proposed attack upon Mobile and New Orleans.
He then told the Governor that he had no intention
of fighting against the country he had adopted;
that he was perfectly willing and anxious to aid her
in every manner possible, and that he and his follow-
ers would gladly join the United States against the
British, asking nothing in return except that all
proceedings against Barrataria should be abandoned,
that amnesty should be given to him and his men,
that his brother should be released from prison,
and that an act of oblivion should be passed by
which the deeds of the smugglers of Barrataria
should be condoned and forgotten.
Furthermore, he said that if the United States
The Pirate of the Gulf 287
government did not accede to his proposition, he
would immediately depart from Barrataria with all
his men; for no matter what loss such a proceeding
might prove to him he would not remain ina place
where he might be forced to act against the United
States. Lafitte also wrote to a member of the
Louisiana Legislature, and _ his letters were well
calculated to produce a very good effect in his favor.
The Governor immediately called a council, and
submitted the papers and _ letters received from
Lafitte. When these had been read, two points
were considered by the council, the first being that
the letters and proclamations from the British might
be forgeries concocted by Lafitte for the purpose of
averting the punishment which was threatened by
the United States; and the second, whether or not
it would be consistent with the dignity of the gov-
ernment to treat with this leader of pirates and
smugglers. oe
The consultation resulted in a decision not to
have anything to do with Lafitte in the way of
negotiations, and to hurry forward the preparations
which had been made for the destruction of the
dangerous and injurious settlement at Barrataria.
In consequence of this action of the council, Com-
modore Patterson sailed in a very few days down
the Mississippi and attacked the pirate settlement
at Barrataria with such effect that most of her ships
The Pirate of the Gulf 289
288 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
than their endeavor to employ against the wag
of the United States the band of “hellish bandi
were taken, many prisoners and much valuable
merchandise captured, and the whole place utterly
destroyed. Lafitte, with the greater part of his
men, had fled to the woods, and so escaped capture.
Captain Lockyer at the appointed time arrived
off the harbor of Barrataria and blazed away with
his signal guns for forty-eight hours, but receiving
no answer, and fearing to send a boat into the
harbor, suspecting treachery on the part of Lafitte,
he was obliged to depart in ignorance of what had
happened.
When the papers and letters which had been sent
to Governor Claiborne by Lafitte were made public,
the people of Louisiana and the rest pf the country
did not at all agree with the Governor and his
council in regard to their decision and their subse-
quent action, and Edward Livingston, a distin-
guished lawyer of New York, took the part of
Lafitte. and argued very strongly in favor of his
loyalty and honesty in the affair,
Even when it was discovered that all the infor-
mation which Lafitte had sent was perfectly correct,
and that a formidable attack was about to be made
upon New Orleans, General Jackson, who was in
command in that part of the country, issued a very
savage proclamation against the British method of
making war, and among their wicked deeds he men-
tioned nothing which seemed to him to be worse
commanded by Jean Lafitte!
But public opinion was strongly in favor ¥ “A
ex-pirate of the Gulf, and as things began to loo
more and more serious in regard to New i ei
General Jackson was at last very glad, in spite o
all that he had said, to accept the renewed offers
of Lafitte and his men to assist in the defence of
the city, and in consequence of his change of ce
many of the former inhabitants of Barataria fought
in the battle of New Orleans and did good work.
Their services were so valuable, in fact, that when
the war closed President Madison issued a proc-
lamation in which it was stated that the former
inhabitants of Barrataria, in consequence of having
abandoned their wicked ways of life, and having
assisted in the defence of their country, were now
granted full pardon for all the evil deeds they had
previously committed.
Now Lafitte and his men were free and indepen-
dent citizens of the United States; they could live
where they pleased without fear of molestation, and
could enter into any sort of legal business which
suited their fancy, but this did not satisfy Lafitte.
He had endeavored to take a prompt and honest
stand on the side of his country; his offers had
been treated with contempt and disbelief; he had
U
290 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
been branded as a deceitful knave, and no disposition
had been shown to act justly toward him until his
services became so necessary to the government
that it was obliged to accept them.
Consequently, Lafitte, accompanied by some of
his old adherents, determined to leave a country
where his loyalty had received such unsatisfactory
recognition, and to begin life again in some other
part of the American continent. Not long after
the war he sailed out upon the Gulf of Mexico, —
for what destination it is not known, but probably
for some Central American port, —and as nothing
was ever heard of him or his party, it is believed by
many persons that they all perished in the great
storm which arose soon after their departure. There
were other persons, however, who stated that he
reached Yucatan, where he died on dry land in 1826.
But the end of Lafitte is no more doubtful than
his right to the title given to him by people of a
romantic turn of mind, and other persons of a still
more fanciful disposition might be willing to suppose
that the Gulf of Mexico, indignant at the undeserved
distinction which had come to him, had swallowed
him up in order to put an end to his pretension to
Chapter xxXxXI
The Pirate of the Buried Treasure
MONG all the pirates who have ae *
history, legend, or song; there is one see
name stands preéminent as the ime :
of the dreaded black flag. The name of this = |
will instantly rise in the mind of almost ee ae
for when we speak of pirates we always thin
Captain Kidd.
In fact, however, Captain Kidd was not a typical
pirate, for in many ways he was seaagat —
ordinary marine freebooter, especially w er 2 _
sider him in relation to our own country. oO
pirates who made themselves notorious on our ori
were known as robbers, pillagers, and pene
stroyers of life and property, but Serta =
fame was of another kind. We do a t ‘i vs
him as a pirate who came to carry away the p UES
of American citizens, for nearly all the stories a3
him relate to his arrival at different points pee
shores for the sole purpose of burying an
291
292 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
concealing the rich treasures which he had collected
in other parts of the world.
This novel reputation given a pirate who enriched
our shore by his deposits and took away none of
the possessions of our people could not fail to make
Captain Kidd a most interesting personage, and the
result has been that he has been lifted out of the
sphere of ordinary history and description into
the region of imagination and legendary romance.
In a word, he has been made a hero of fiction and
song. It may be well, then, to assume that there
are two Captain Kidds, —one the Kidd of legend
and story, and the other the Kidd of actual fact, and
we will consider, one at a time, the two characters in
which we know the man.
As has been said before, nearly all the stories of
the legendary Captain Kidd relate to his visits along
our northern coast, and even to inland points, for
the purpose of concealing the treasures which had
been amassed in other parts of the world.
Thus if we were to find ourselves in almost any
village or rural settlement along the coast of New
Jersey or Long Island, and were to fall in with any
old resident who was fond of talking to strangers, he
would probably point out to us the blackened and
weather-beaten ribs of a great ship which had been
wrecked on the sand bar off the coast during a terri-
ble storm long ago; he would show us where the
bathing was pleasant and s
the best place for fishing, an
293
The Pirate of the Buried Treasure
afe; he would tell us of
d probably show us the
ch from which
high bluff a little back from the bea
hawk
: : d to escape the toma
the Indian maiden ge then he would be almost
ver : j
of her enraged lover, ere it was said
h
sure to tell us of the secluded spot w
can Kidd and his pirates once buried a lot of
treasure. 5
if we should ask our garrulous guide why this
treasure had not been dug up by the et gae
the place, he would probably shake his she .
declare that personally he knew nothing a ee
but that it was generally believed that it tea 2
and he had heard that there had been peop oe
had tried to find it, but if they did find any they
never said anything about it, and it was his segs
that if Captain Kidd ever put any-gold or si Er op
precious stones under the ground on that par
the coast these treasures were all there yet.
Further questioning would probably develop the
fact that there was a certain superstition which an
vented a great many people from interfering Mar
the possible deposits which Captain Kidd had “st
in their neighborhood, and although few ee
would be able to define exactly the foundation of t :
superstition, it was generally supposed that oe oO
the pirates’ treasures were guarded by pirate ghosts.
In that case, of course, timid individuals would be
294 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
deterred from going out by themselves at night, —
for that was the Proper time to dig for buried treas-
ure, —and as it would not have
» many of the spots reputed
to be the repositories of buried treasure have never
been disturbed.
In spite of the fear of ghosts, in spite of the want
of accurate knowledge in regard to favored localities,
in spite of hardships, previous disappointments, or
expected ridicule, a great many extensive excavations
have been made in the sands or the
coasts of our northern States, and even in quiet
woods lying miles from the sea, to which it would
have been necessary for the pira
goods in wagons, people have dug and hoped and
have gone away sadly to attend to more sensible
business, and far up some of our rivers — where a
pirate vessel never floated — people have dug with
the same hopeful anxiety, and have stopped digging
in the same condition of dejected disappointment,
soil along the
the operations on the gold
Companies were organized,
stock was issued and subscribed for, and the excava-
tions were conducted under the direction of skilful
treasure-seeking engineers.
It is said that not long ago a company was organ-
The Pirate of the Buried Treasure 295
i r
ized in Nova Scotia for the purpose eo pecs ies
Captain Kidd’s treasures in a place which 1 ee
probable Captain Kidd never saw. A - dest
tion having been made, the water from the s W8
in and filled it up, but the work was gi ae
long enough to procure steam pumps eee ea
the big hole could be drained. At last ace suliage
treasures had not been reached, and origi ame
mentioned only to show sie this aa
tinues even to the pres .
te ee legend which differs somewhat ger
the ordinary run of these stories, and it is ae
about a little island on the coast of Cape “0
which is called Hannah Screecher’s Island, and this
is the way its name came to it.
Choan Kidd while sailing along the coast, =
ing for a suitable place to bury somite eee re 2
this island adapted to his purpose, and landed the :
with his savage crew, and his bags and boxes, -
his gold and precious stones. It was said to be t .
habit of these pirates, whenever they made a deposi
on the coast, to make the hole big enough not only
to hold the treasure they wished to deposit there,
but the body of one of the crew, — who was buried
with the valuables in order that his spirit might
act as a day and night watchman to frighten away
people who might happen to be digging in that
particular spot.
296 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
The story relates that somewhere on the coast
Captain Kidd had captured a young lady named
Hannah, and not knowing what to do with her, and
desiring not to commit an unnecessary extravagance
by disposing of a useful sailor, he determined to kill
Hannah, and bury her with the treasure, in order
that she might keep away intruders until he came
for it.
It was very natural that when Hannah was
brought on shore and found out what was going
to be done with her, she should screech in a
most dreadful manner, and although the pirates
soon silenced her and covered her up, they did not
succeed in silencing her spirit, and ever since that
time, — according to the stories told by some of
the older inhabitants of Cape Cod, — there may be
heard in the early dusk of the evening the screeches
of Hannah coming across the water from her little
island to the mainland.
Mr. James Herbert Morse has written a ballad
founded upon this peculiar incident, and with the
permission of the author we give it here: —
Tue Lapy Hannan.
«« Now take my hand,”’ quoth Captain Kidd,
«« The air is blithe, I scent the meads.’?
He led her up the starlit sands,
Out of the rustling reeds.
The Pirate of the Buried Treasure
The great white owl then beat his breast,
Athwart the cedars whirred and flew ;
we ”
«¢ 'There’s death in our handsome captain s eyes
Murmured the pirate’s crew.
And long they lay upon their oars
And cursed the silence and the chill ;
They cursed the wail of the rising wind,
For no man dared be still.
Of ribald songs they sang a score —
To stifle the midnight sobs and sighs,
They told wild tales of the Indian Main,
To drown the far-off cries.
But when they ceased, and Captain Kidd
Came down the sands of Dead Neck Isle,
«« My lady wearies,”’ he grimly said,
«« And she would rest awhile.
«¢ Pye made her a bed —’ tis here, itis there,
And she shall wake, be it soon or long,
Where grass is green and wild birds sing
And the wind makes undersong.
«« Be quick, my men, and give a hand,
She loved soft furs and silken stuff,
Jewels of gold and silver bars,
And she shall have enough.
«« With silver bars and golden ore,
So fine a lady she shall be,
A many suitor shall seek her long,
As they sought Penelope.
297
298 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
«« And if a lover would win her hand,
No lips e’er kissed a hand so white,
And if a lover would hear her sing,
She sings at owlet light,
*« But if a lover would win her gold,
And his hands be strong to lift the lid,
Tis here, ’tis there, ’tis everywhere —
In the chest,’? quoth Captain Kidd.
They lifted long, they lifted well,
Ingots of gold, and silver bars,
And silken plunder from wild, wild wars,
But where they laid them, no man can tell,
Though known to a thousand stars.
But the ordinary Kidd stories are very much the
same, and depend a good deal upon the character
of the coast and upon the imagination of the peo-
ple who live in that region. We will give one
of them as a sample, and from this a number of
very good pirate stories could be manufactured by
ingenious persons.
It was a fine summer night late in the seven-
teenth century. A young man named Abner Stout,
in company with his wife Mary, went out for a walk
upon the beach. They lived in a little village near
the coast of New Jersey. Abner was a good car-
penter, but a poor man; but he and his wife were
very happy with each other, and as they walked
The Pirate of the Buried Treasure 299
toward the sea in the light of the full moon, no
young lovers could have been more gay.
When they reached a little bluff covered with
low shrubbery, which was the first spot from which
they could have a full view of the ocean, Abner
suddenly stopped, and pointed out to Mary an
unusual sight. There, as plainly in view as if it
had been broad daylight, was a vessel lying at the
entrance of the little bay. The sails were furled,
and it was apparently anchored.
For a minute Abner gazed in utter amazement
at the sight of this vessel, for no ships, large or
small, came to this little lonely bay. There was a
harbor two or three miles farther up the coast to
which all trading craft repaired. What could the
strange ship want here?
This unusual visitor to the little-bay was a very
low and very long, black schooner, with tall masts
which raked forward, and with something which
looked very much like a black flag fluttering in its
rigging. Now the truth struck into the soul of
Abner. “Hide yourself, Mary,” he whispered.
“Tt is a'pirate ship!” And almost at the same
instant the young man and his wife laid themselves
flat on the ground among the bushes, but they were
very careful, each of them, to take a position which
would allow them to peep out through the twigs
and leaves upon the scene before them.
300 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
There seemed to be a good deal of commotion
on board the black schooner, and very soon a large
boat pushed off from her side, and the men in it
began rowing rapidly toward the shore, apparently
making for a spot on the beach, not far from the
bluff on which Abner and Mary were concealed.
“Let us get up and run,” whispered Mary, trem-
bling from head to toe. “They are pirates, and
they are coming here!”
“Lie still! Lie still!” said Abner. “If we get
up and leave these bushes, we shall be seen, and
then they will be after us! Lie still, and do not
move a finger!”
The trembling Mary obeyed her husband, and
they both lay quite still, scarcely breathing, with
eyes wide open. The boat rapidly approached
the shore. Abner counted ten men rowing and
one man sitting in the stern. The boat seemed
to be heavily loaded, and the oarsmen rowed hard.
Now the boat was run through the surf to the
beach, and its eleven occupants jumped out. There
was no mistaking their character. They were true
pirates. They had great cutlasses and pistols, and
one of them was very tall and broad shouldered,
and wore an old-fashioned cocked hat.
“That’s Captain Kidd,” whispered Abner to his
wife, and she pressed his hand to let him know that
she thought he must be right.
««'The boat was run through the surf to the beach.’’ —Pp. 300,
The Pirate of the Buried Treasure 301
Now the men came up high upon the beach, and
began looking about here and there as if they were
searching for something. Mary was filled with |
horror for fear they should come to that bluff to
search, but Abner knew there was no danger of ; |
that. They had probably come to those shores
to bury treasure, as if they were great sea-turtles
coming up upon the beach to lay their eggs, and
ns they were now looking for some good spot where :
they might dig. q
Presently the tall man gave some orders in a low
voice, and then his men left him to himself, and
went back to the boat. There was a great pine tree
standing back a considerable distance from the
water, battered and racked by storms, but still a
| tough old tree. Toward this the pirate captain
stalked, and standing close to it, with his back
against it, he looked up into the sky. It was plain
that he was looking for a star. There were very
few of these luminaries to be seen in the heavens,
for the moon was so bright. But as Abner looked
in the direction in which the pirate captain gazed,
he saw a star still bright in spite of the moonlight.
With his eyes fixed upon this star, the pirate
captain now stepped forward, making long strides.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Then he
stopped, plunged his right heel in the soft ground,
and turned squarely about to the left, so that his
302 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
broad back was now parallel with a line drawn from
the pine tree to the star.
At right angles to this line the pirate now stepped
forward, making as before seven long paces. Then
he stopped, dug his heel into the ground, and beck-
oned to his men. Up they came running, carrying
picks and spades, and with great alacrity they began
to dig at the place where the captain had marked
with his heel.
It was plain that these pirates were used to mak-
ing excavations, for it was not long before the hole
was so deep that those within it could not be
seen. Then the captain gave an order to cease
digging, and he and all the pirates went back to
the boat.
For about half an hour, —though Mary thought
it was a longer time than that, — those pirates
worked very hard carrying great boxes and bags
from the boat to the excavation. When everything
had been brought up, two of the pirates went down
into the hole, and the others handed to them the
various packages. Skilfully and quickly they worked,
doubtless storing their goods with great care, until
nearly everything which had been brought from the
boat had been placed in the deep hole. Some rolls
of goods were left upon the ground which Mary
thought were carpets, but which Abner believed to
be rich Persian rugs, or something of that kind.
—
««'Two of the pirates went down into the hole.’ —Pp. 302.
The Pirate of the Buried Treasure 303
Now the captain stepped aside, and picking up
from the sand some little sticks and reeds, he
selected ten of them, and with these in one hand,
and with their ends protruding a short distance
above his closed fingers, he rejoined his men.
They gathered before him, and he held out toward
them the hand which contained the little sticks.
“They’re drawing lots!” gasped Abner, and Mary
trembled more than she had done yet.
Now the lots were all drawn, and one man, appar-
ently a young pirate, stepped out from among his
fellows. His head was bowed, and his arms were
folded across his manly chest. The captain spoke
a few words, and the young pirate advanced alone
to the side of the deep hole.
Mary now shut her eyes tight, tight; but Abner’s
were wide open. There was a sudden gleam of cut-
lasses in the air; there was one short, plaintive
groan, and the body of the young pirate fell into
the hole. Instantly all the other goods, furs, rugs,
or whatever they were, were tumbled in upon him.
Then the men began to shovel in the earth and
sand, and in an incredibly short time the hole was
filled up even with the ground about it.
Of course all the earth and sand which had been
taken out of the hole could not now be put back
into it. But these experienced treasure-hiders knew
exactly what to do with it. A spadeful at a time,
304 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
the soil which could not be replaced was carried
to the sea, and thrown out into the water, and when
the whole place had been carefully smoothed over,
the pirates gathered sticks and stones, and little
bushes, and great masses of wild cranberry vines,
and scattered them about over the place so that
it soon looked exactly like the rest of the beach
about it.
Then the tall captain gave another low command,
the pirates returned to their boat, it was pushed off,
and rapidly rowed back to the schooner. Up came
the anchor, up went the dark sails. The low, black
schooner was put about, and very soon she was dis-
appearing over the darkening waters, her black flag
fluttering fiercely high above her.
“ Now, let us run,” whispered poor Mary, who,
although she had not seen everything, imagined a
great deal; for as the pirates were getting into their
boat she had opened her eyes and had counted them,
and there were only nine beside the tall captain.
Abner thought that her advice was very good,
and starting up out of the brushwood they hastened
home as fast as their legs would carry them.
The next day Abner seemed to be a changed
man. He had work to do, but he neglected it.
Never had such a thing happened before! For
hours he sat in front of the house, looking up into
the sky, counting one, two, three, four, five, six,
The Pirate of the Buried Treasure 305
seven. Then he would twist himself around on
the little bench, and count seven more.
This worthy couple lived in a small house which
had a large cellar, and during the afternoon of that
day Abner busied himself in clearing out this cellar,
and taking out of it everything which it had con-
tained. His wife asked no questions. In her soul
she knew what Abner was thinking about.
Supper was over, and most of the people in the
village were thinking of going to bed, when Abner
said to Mary, “ Let us each take a spade, and I will
carry a pail, and we will go out upon the beach for
a walk. If any oneshould see us, they would think
that we were going to dig for clams.”
“Oh, no, dear Abner!” cried Mary. “We must
not digthere! Think of that young pirate. Almost
the first thing we would come to would be him!”
“IT have thought of that,” said Abner; “but do
you not believe that the most Christian act that you
and I could do would be to take him out and place
him in a proper grave near by?”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Mary, “do not say such
a thing as that! Think of his ghost! They killed
him and put him there, that his ghost might guard
their treasure. You know, Abner, as well as I do,
that this is their dreadful fashion !”
“T know all about that,” said Abner, “and that
is the reason I wish to go to-night. I do not be-
x
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306 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
-lieve there has yet been time enough for his ghost
to form. But let us take him out now, dear Mary,
and lay him reverently away,—and then!” He
looked at her with flashing eyes.
“But, Abner,” said she, “do you think we have
the right?”
“Of course we have,” said he. “ Those treas-
ures do not belong to the pirates. If we take them
they are treasure-trove, and legally ours. And
think, dear Mary, how poor we are to-night, and
how rich we may be to-morrow ! Come, get the
pail. We must be off.”
Running nearly all the way, — for they were in
such a hurry they could not walk,— Abner and
Mary soon reached the bluff, and hastily scrambling
down to the beach below, they stood upon the
dreadful spot where Captain Kidd and his pirates
had stood the night before. There was the old
battered pine tree, reaching out two of its bare arms
encouragingly toward them.
Without loss of time Abner walked up to the
tree, put his back to it, and then looked up into
the sky. Now he called Mary to him. Which
star do you think he looked at, good wife?” said
he. “There is a bright one low down, and then
there is another one a little higher up, and farther
to the right, but it is fainter.”
“It would be the bright one, I think,” said
The Pirate of the Buried Treasure 307
Mary. And then Abner, his eyes fixed upon the
bright star, commenced to stride. One, two, three,
four, five, six, seven. Turning squarely around to
the left he again made seven paces. And now he
beckoned vigorously to Mary to come and dig.
For about ten minutes they dug, and then they
laid bare a great mass of rock. “This isn’t the
place,” cried Abner. “I must begin again. I did
not look at the right star. I will take the other one.”
For the greater part of that night Abner and
Mary remained upon the beach. Abner would
put his back against the tree, fix his eyes upon an-
other star, stride forward seven paces, and then
seven to the left, and he would come upon a little
scrubby pine tree. Of course that was not the place.
The moon soon began to set, and more stars
came out, so that Abner had*a greater choice.
Again and again he made his measurements, and
every time that he came to the end of his second
seven paces, he found that it would have been im-
possible for the pirates to make their excavation
there.
There was clearly something wrong. Abner
thought that he had not selected the right star, and
Mary thought that his legs were not long enough.
“That pirate captain,” quoth she, “had a long and
manly stride. Seven of his paces would go a far
greater distance than seven of yours, Abner.”
a ae aT
SS
308 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
Abner made his paces a little longer; but although
he and his wife kept up their work until they could
see the early dawn, they found no spot where it
would be worth while to dig, and so mournfully
they returned to their home and their empty cellar.
As long as the moonlight lasted, Abner and
Mary went to the little beach at the head of the bay,
and made their measurements and their searches, but
although they sometimes dug a little here and there,
they always found that they had not struck the place
where the pirate’s treasure had been buried.
When at last they gave up their search, and con-
cluded to put their household goods back into their
cellar, they told the tale to some of the neighbors,
and other people went out and dug, not only at the
place which had been designated, but miles up and
down the coast, and then the story was told and
retold, and so it has lasted until the present day.
What has been said about the legendary Captain
Kidd will give a very good idea of the estimation in
which this romantic being has been, and still is, held
in various parts of the country, and, of all the legiti-
mate legends about him, there is not one which
recounts his piratical deeds upon our coast. The
reason for this will be seen when we consider, in
the next chapter, the life and character of the real
Captain Kidd.
Chapter XXXII
The Real Captain Kidd
ILLIAM KIDD, or Robert Kidd, as he
\ \ is sometimes called, was a sailor in the
merchant service who had a wife and fam-
ily in New York. He was a very respectable man
and had a good reputation as a seaman, and about
1690, when there was war between England and
France, Kidd was given the command of a priva-
teer, and having had two or three engagements with
French vessels he showed himself to be a brave
fighter and a prudent commander.
Some years later he sailed to England, and, while
there, he received an appointment of a peculiar
character. It was at the time when the King of
England was doing his best to put down the pirates
of the:American coast, and Sir George Bellomont,
the recently appointed Governor of New York,
recommended Captain Kidd as a very suitable man
to command a ship to be sent out to suppress
piracy. When Kidd agreed to take the position
of chief of marine police, he was not employed by
309
310 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
the Crown, but by a small company of gentlemen
of capital, who formed themselves into a sort of
trust company, or society for the prevention of cru-
elty to merchantmen, and the object of their associa-
tion was not only to put down pirates, but to put
some money in their own pockets as well.
Kidd was furnished with two commissions, one
appointing him a privateer with authority to capture
French vessels, and the other empowering him to
seize and destroy all pirate ships. Kidd was ordered
in his mission to keep a strict account of all booty
captured, in order that it might be fairly divided
among those who were stockholders in the enter-
prise, one-tenth of the total proceeds being reserved
for the King.
Kidd sailed from England in the Adventure, a
large ship with thirty guns and eighty men, and on
his way to America he captured a French ship
which he carried to New York. Here he arranged
to make his crew a great deal larger than had been
thought necessary in England, and, by offering a
fair share of the property he might confiscate on
piratical or French ships, he induced a great many
able seamen to enter his service, and when the 4a-
venture left New York she carried a crew of one
hundred and fifty-five men.
With a fine ship and a strong crew, Kidd now
sailed out of the harbor with the ostensible purpose
The Real Captain Kidd 311
of putting down piracy in American waters, but the
methods of this legally appointed marine policeman
were very peculiar, and, instead of cruising up and
down our coast, he gayly sailed away to the island
of Madeira, and then around the Cape of Good
Hope to Madagascar and the Red Sea, thus getting
himself as far out of his regular beat as any New
York constable would have been had he undertaken
to patrol the dominions of the Khan of Tartary.
By the time Captain Kidd reached that part of
the world he had been at sea for nearly a year
without putting down any pirates or capturing any
French ships. In fact, he had made no money
whatever for himself or. the stockholders of the
company which had sent him out. His men, of
course, must have been very much surprised at this
unusual neglect of his own and his employers’ inter-
ests, but when he reached the Red Sea, he boldly
informed them that he had made a change in his
business, and had decided that he would be no
longer a suppressor of piracy, but would become a
pirate himself; and, instead of taking prizes of
French ships only, — which he was legally empow-
ered to do,— he would try to capture any valuable
ship he could find on the seas, no matter to what
nation it belonged. He then went on to state that
his present purpose in coming into those oriental
waters was to capture the rich fleet from Mocha
312 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
which was due in the lower part of the Red Sea
about that time.
The crew of the Adventure, who must have been
tired of having very little to do and making no
money, expressed their entire approbation of their
captain’s change of purpose, and readily agreed to
become pirates.
Kidd waited a good while for the Mocha fleet,
but it did not arrive, and then he made his first
venture in actual piracy. He overhauled a Moor-
ish vessel which was commanded by an English
captain, and as England was not at war with
Morocco, and as the nationality of the ship’s
commander should have protected him, Kidd thus
boldly broke the marine laws which governed the
civilized world and stamped himself an out-and-out
pirate. After the exercise of considerable cruelty
he extorted from his first prize a small amount of
money; and although he and his men did not gain
very much booty, they had whetted their appetites
for more, and Kidd cruised savagely over the
eastern seas in search of other spoils.
After a time the /dventure fell in with a fine
English ship, called the Royal Captain, and
although she was probably laden with a rich cargo,
Kidd did not attack her. His piratical character
was not yet sufficiently formed to give him the
disloyal audacity which would enable him with his
The Real Captain Kidd 313
English ship and his English crew, to fall upon
another English ship manned by another English
crew. In time his heart might be hardened, but he
felt that he could not begin with this sort of thing
just yet. So the Adventure saluted the Royal Cap-
tain with ceremonious politeness, and each vessel
passed quietly on its way. But this conscientious
consideration did not suit Kidd’s crew. They had
already had a taste of booty, and they were hungry
for more, and when the fine English vessel, of
which they might so easily have made a prize, was
allowed to escape them, they were loud in their
complaints and grumblings,
One of the men, a gunner, named William
Moore, became actually impertinent upon the sub-
Ject, and he and Captain Kidd had a violent
quarrel, in the course of which the captain picked
up a heavy iron-bound bucket and struck the dis-
satisfied gunner on the head with it. The blow
was such a powerful one that the man’s skull was
broken, and he died the next day.
Captain Kidd's conscience seems to have been a
good deal in his way; for although he had been
sailing about in various eastern waters, taking
prizes wherever he could, he was anxious that
reports of his misdeeds should not get home before
him. Having captured a fine vessel bound west-
ward, he took from her all the booty he could, and
314 Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
then proceeded to arrange matters so that the capt-
ure of this ship should appear to be a legal
transaction. The ship was manned by Moors and
commanded by a Dutchman, and of course Kidd
had no right to touch it, but the sharp-witted and
business-like pirate selected one of the passengers
and made him sign a paper declaring that he was a
Frenchman, and that he commanded the ship.
When this statement had been sworn to before
witnesses, Kidd put the document in his pocket so
that if he were called upon to explain the trans-
action he might be able to show that he had good
reason to suppose that he had captured a French
ship, which, of course, was all right and proper.
Kidd now ravaged the East India waters with
great success and profit, and at last he fell in with a
very fine ship from Armenia, called the Quedagh
Merchant, commanded by an Englishman. Kidd’s
conscience had been growing harder and harder
every day, and he did not now hesitate to attack
any vessel. The great merchantman was captured,
and proved to be one of the most valuable prizes
ever taken by a pirate, for Kidd’s own share of the
spoils amounted to more than sixty thousand dol-
lars. This was such a grand haul that Kidd lost
no time in taking his prize to some place where he
might safely dispose of her cargo, and get rid of her
passengers. Accordingly he sailed for Madagascar.
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