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Porto Bello Gold
BY
ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH
NEW YORK
BRENTANO’S
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1924, by
ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH
_All rights reserved_
First printing, August, 1924
Second printing, September, 1924
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_OTHER NOVELS_
_BY_
ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH
_HISTORICAL_
THE DOOM TRAIL
BEYOND THE SUNSET
_ADVENTURE_
THE TREASURE OF THE BUCOLEON
To R. L. S.
_Oh, Tusitala, you who lie
“Under the wide and starry sky”
On that Samoan hill,
Think not this wretched, miswrought tale
Is meant to breast the thundering gale
Of your great art and skill--
As well the humble trading bark
Might sail to cloudland with the lark!
Be patient, sir, until
We meet on some far height of dreams
And I explain just why it seems
John Silver’s with us still,
And all the raffish, ruffian crew
That you and young Jim Hawkins knew--
They burst Time’s dungeon-grill!_
FENLEY HUNTER, Esq.,
Flushing,
N. Y.
DEAR FEN:
You are responsible for some of the incidents in this roaring yarn,
and for that and other reasons it should be inscribed to you--who, in
your own person, lead a life as swaggeringly varied from the
existence of office, home and country-club as any character I have
created between these covers. If it detains you from the out-trail
for a night or two, persuades you to sample the pleasures of the
sheltered hearth, I shall be rewarded.
Yours,
KING ARTHUR.
Babylon, N. Y.,
Feb. 9, 1924.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I My Father’s Secret
II The One-Legged Man and the Irish Maid
III A Caller in the Night
IV An Inkling of the Plot
V Aboard the Brig
VI Tall Ships and Lawless Men
VII Murray’s Plan
VIII A Wicked Old Man’s Dream
IX The Island
X Hostages
XI Peter Plays at Bowls with Destiny
XII The Treasure Ship
XIII Trouble Boards the _Royal James_
XIV The Dead Man’s Chest
XV Suspicions
XVI Treachery
XVII The Storm
XVIII Disaster
XIX The Attack on the Stockade
XX Prisoners
XXI Flint’s Way
XXII “Fetch aft the Rum, Darby McGraw!”
XXIII Cap’n Bill Bones
XXIV Home
PORTO BELLO GOLD
CHAPTER I
MY FATHER’S SECRET
I was in the counting-room, talking with Peter Corlaer, the chief of
our fur-traders--he was that very day come down-river from the
Iroquois country--when the boy, Darby, ran in from the street.
“The Bristol packet is in, Master Robert,” he cried. “And, oh, sir,
the watermen do say there be a pirate ship off the Hook!”
I remember I laughed at the combination of awe and delight in his
face. He was a raw, bog-trotting bit of a gossoon we had bought at
the last landing of bonded folk, and he talked with a brogue that
thickened whenever he grew excited.
“For the packet, I do not doubt you, Darby,” I answered. “But you
must show me the pirate.”
Peter Corlaer chuckled in his quiet, rumbling way, his huge belly
waggling before him beneath his buckskin hunting-shirt, for all the
world like a monster mold of jelly.
“_Ja_, _ja_, show us der pirates,” he jeered.
Darby flared up in a burst of Irish temper that matched his tangled
red hair.
“I would I were a pirate and had you at my mercy, you butter-tub!” he
raged. “I’ll warrant you’d tread the plank!”
Peter gravely unsheathed his hunting-knife, seized Darby’s flaming
locks and despite his wriggles went through the motions of scalping
him.
“If I tread der plank, first I take your hair, _ja_,” he commented.
“Not if I had my growth,” snapped Darby.
“T’ree growths you must get to fight me, Darby,” rejoined Peter
placidly. “You better ask Mr. Ormerod dot he let you come with me
into the Iroquois country. We make a forest-runner out of you--_ja_!
Dot’s better than a pirate.”
Darby contemplated this, drawing a circle on the floor with the toe
of one boot.
“No,” he decided finally. “I’d rather be a pirate. I know nothing
of your forest, but the sea--ah, that’s the life for me! And sure, a
pirate has more of traveling and adventure than a forest-runner, with
none but red savages and wild beasts to combat. No, no, Master
Peter, I am for the pirates, and I care not how soon it may be.”
“It will be long, not soon, Darby,” said I. “Have you done the
errands my father set you?”
“Every one,” answered he.
“Very well. Then get you into the store-room and sort over the pelts
Peter fetched in. Even a pirate must work.”
He flung off with a scowl as I turned to Peter.
“My father will wish to know the packet has arrived,” I said. “Will
you go with me to the Governor’s? The Council must be on the point
of breaking up, for they have been sitting since noon.”
Peter heaved his enormous body erect. And I marveled, as always
after a period of absence, at his proportions. To one who did not
know him he seemed a butter-tub of a man, as Darby had called him--a
mass of tallow, fat limbs, a pork-barrel of a trunk, a fat slab of a
face upon which showed tiny, insignificant features grotesquely at
variance with the rest of his bulk. His little eyes peered
innocently between rolls of fat which all but masked them. His nose
was a miniature dab, above a mouth a child might have owned.
But under his layers of blubber were concealed muscles of forged
steel, and he was capable of the agility of a catamount. The man had
not lived on the frontier who could face him bare-handed and escape.
“_Ja_,” he said simply. “We go.”
He stood his musket in a corner and slipped off powder-horn and
shot-pouch the while I donned hat and greatcoat, for the air was
still chilly and there was a scum of snow on the ground. We passed
out into Pearl Street and walked westward to Hanover Square, and
there on the farther side of the Square I spied my father, with
Governor Clinton and Lieutenant-Governor Colden.
And it made my heart warm to see how these and several other
gentlemen hung upon his words. There had been those who slandered
him during the uproar over the ’45, for he was known to have been a
Jacobite in his youth; but his friends were more powerful than his
enemies, and I joy to think that he was not the least influential of
those of our leaders who held New York loyal to King George when many
were for casting in our fortunes with the Pretender.
He saw Peter and me as we approached and waved us to him, but at the
same moment there was a slight disturbance on the eastward side of
the Square, and another little group of men came into view
surrounding a grizzled, ruddy-cheeked old fellow, whose salt-stained
blue coat spoke as eloquently of the sea as did his rolling gait. I
could hear his hoarse, roaring voice clear across the Square--
“--ran him tops’ls down; ---- my eyes, I did; and when I get to port
what do I find, but not a King’s ship within----”
My father interrupted him:
“What’s this, Captain Farraday? Do you speak of being chased? I had
thought we were at peace with the world.”
Captain Farraday discarded the listeners who had attended him so far
and stumped across the Square, bellowing his answer in tones which
brought shopkeepers to their doors and women’s heads from upper
windows.
“Chased? That I was, Master Ormerod, by as ----, scoundrelly a
pirate as flouts the King’s majesty i’ the ----”
Here he perceived who accompanied my father. Off came his hat, and
he made an awkward bow.
“Your sarvent, your Excellency! My duty, Master Colden! But I have
no words to withdraw, for all I did not see who was near by to hear
me. Aye, there is more to be said, much more; and matters have come
to a pretty pass when the rascals come north to these ports.”
Peter Corlaer and I joined the little group of merchants who were
with the Governor, and the other curious persons hovered as close as
they dared.
“But I find this hard to give credence to, captain,” said Governor
Clinton pleasantly enough. “Pirates? In these latitudes? We have
not been bothered by such of late.”
Captain Farraday wagged his head stubbornly.
“That’s true enough, I grant your Excellency; and since the peace we
have not been bothered by French privateers, neither. But the day’ll
come we fight the French again, and then the letters of marque will
be scouring the Atlantic north and south. And by the same token,
sir, I bid you remember the pirates are always with us, and clever
devils they are, too; for if they find their trade falling off in one
part they are away at once elsewhere. And the first you know of them
is a score of missing ships and a mariner like myself lucky enough to
give them the slip.”
“You may be right,” acknowledged the Governor. “Tell us more of your
experience. Did you have sight of the ship which pursued you?”
“Sight? Marry, that I did; and uncomfortable close, your Excellency.
She came up with a so’easter two days past, and at the first I made
her out for a frigate by the top-hamper she carried.”
“A frigate?” protested Master Colden. “So big as that?”
“Aye, sir, my master! And if I have any eye for a ship’s lines and
canvas she was none other than the _Royal James_ that chased me three
days together when I was home-bound from the West Indies in ’43.”
“That would be the vessel of the fellow known usually as Captain
Rip-Rap,” spoke up my father, and there was a quality in his voice
which led me to regard him closely.
It was manifest that he labored in the grip of some strong emotion;
but the only indication of this in his face was a slight rigidity of
feature, and none of the others marked it. I was the more amazed
because my father was a man of iron nerves, and also, though his
earlier years had been starred with a series of extraordinary
adventures, so far as I knew, he had had nothing to do with the sea.
“True for you, Master Ormerod,” answered Captain Farraday; “and since
Henry Morgan died there hath not lived a more complete rogue. One of
my mates was taken by him off Jamaica ten years gone and cites him
for a man of exquisite dress and manners that would befit a London
macaroni, God save us! And moreover, is as arrant a Jacobite as ever
was. Witness the name of his ship.”
“I have heard he sails usually in company,” remarked my father.
“He works with John Flint, who is no less of a rascal, albeit
rougher, according to those unfortunates who have fallen in his path.
Flint sails in the _Walrus_, a tall ship out of Plymouth that was on
the Smyrna run before she fell into his hands. Betwixt them they are
a pretty pair.
“Did you ever hear, gentles, how they sank the Portuguese line-ship
off Madeira for naught but the pleasure o’ destruction? Aye, so they
did. They ha’ the metal to hammer a brace of King’s ships. But they
are wary of such.
“Portuguese, Frenchies, Spaniards or Barbary corsairs they will
assail, but they will not stop for a powder-blow with his Majesty’s
people. Why? I know not, save ’tis never for lack o’ daring.
Mayhap they know if they ever did my Lords of the Admiralty, that
take small account of the sufferings of us poor merchantmen--always
saving your Excellency’s presence--would be stirred to loose a fleet
of stout frigates against ’em.”
Captain Farraday stopped perforce for breath, and Governor Clinton
seized the opportunity to ask with a smile:
“Captain Rip-Rap did you call your pursuer? What manner of name is
this?”
The merchantman shrugged his shoulders.
“Nobody knows, sir. But ’tis the only name he goes by. I ha’ heard
that years past--oh, it may be twenty or more--he stopped a
home-bound Chesapeake packet, and when the master was haled aboard
the first question he asked was ‘did he have any rip-rap in his
cargo?’ For it seems he is singularly partial to that mixture of
snuff. And now, I ha’ been told, his own men give him this name, for
even they do not know for certain that to which he was born.
“’Tis said he was a gentleman who suffered for his political
convictions, but that is as like to be a lie as the truth. All I
know is that he chased me in past the Hook, though the _Anne_ showed
him a clean pair o’ heels and had run him tops’ls down wi’ sunrise
this morning. And when I made the harbor, ’twas to find there was
not a King’s ship to send after him.”
“Yes,” nodded the Governor; “the _Thetis_ frigate sailed for home
with dispatches a week ago. But I will send express to Boston where
Commodore Burrage lies and bid him get to sea without loss of time.
I sympathize with your feelings, Master Farraday, and certes, ’tis
beyond toleration that such scoundrels as Rip-Rap and Flint should be
permitted to flout his Majesty’s Government so openly. Doubt not,
our good commodore will make them rue the day.”
“But doubt it I must, your Excellency,” returned Captain Farraday
with sturdy independence. “An express to Boston, say you? Humph!
That will require two days or three. Another day to put to sea. Two
days, or it may be three, to beat south. Why, my masters, in a
week’s time Rip-Rap and Flint will have wrought whatever fiendish
purpose they have in view and be off beyond reach.”
“Mayhap, mayhap,” said the Governor with a touch of impatience. “But
’tis the best I can do.”
And with Lieutenant-Governor Colden and the rest he made to move off.
Only my father lingered.
“You have letters for me, Captain Farraday?” he asked.
“Aye, indeed, sir--from Master Allen, your agent in London. I was on
my way to deliver ’em. And a goodly store of strouds, axes, knives,
beads, tools, flints and other trade-goods to your account.”
“I will accept the letters at your hands, and even save you the trip
to Pearl Street, captain,” replied my father. “My son, Robert, here,
will visit you aboardship in the morning and take measures to arrange
for transshipping your cargo.”
“I ha’ no quarrel with such terms,” rejoined Captain Farraday,
fishing a silken-wrapped packet from his coat-tail pocket. “Here you
are, Master Ormerod. And I’ll be off to the George Tavern for a bite
of shore food and a mug of mulled ale.”
My father fidgeted the packet in his hands for a moment.
“You are certain ’twas Captain Rip-Rap who chased you?” he asked then.
“I’d swear to his foretops’ls,” answered Farraday confidently. “Mark
you, my master, when I first sighted him I made sure he was a King’s
ship, and I lay to until he was abeam. Then I saw he showed no
colors--and moreover, there was that about him, which I’ll own I can
not put a name to, made me suspicious. So I hoisted colors. And
still he showed none. I fired a gun, and wi’ that he bore up for me,
and I made off, wi’ every sail set; aye, until the sticks groaned.
For I knew he was up to no good purpose, and I made certain that he
was Rip-Rap.
“As I said afore, he chased me once in ’43, and Jenkins he took off
Jamaica in the snow _Cynthia_ out o’ Southampton, when Flint was for
drowning the lot o’ them; but Rip-Rap, in his cold way, says there
was no point to slaying without purpose, and they turned ’em loose in
the longboat. And there’s none left ‘on the Account’ that sail in a
great ship fit to be a King’s frigate, save it be Rip-Rap--Flint’s
_Walrus_ is a tall ship and heavy armed, but hath not the sail-spread
o’ the _Royal James_. Jenkins says _she_ was a Frenchman, and ’tis
to be admitted she hath the fine-run lines the Frenchies build.”
My father was hard put to it to make head against this flow of talk,
but at last he succeeded.
“It was my understanding,” he said, “that Captain Rip-Rap disappeared
from the West Indies during the late war.”
Captain Farraday shrugged his shoulders.
“Like enough. There were too many cruisers o’ both sides at large in
those seas to suit him. But now he knows we ha’ back the piping
times of peace--and when nations are at peace your pirates reap their
harvest. You may lay to that, Master Ormerod.”
“’Tis not to be questioned,” assented my father. “I give you thanks,
captain. Pray call upon me at your leisure, and if I can be of any
service to you I am at your command.”
Captain Farraday stumped off toward the George, a tail of the curious
at his heels, and I grinned to myself at thought of the strong drink
they would offer him in return for his tale. There was no chance of
his being sober inside the twenty-four hours.
My father nodded absently to Peter, who had stood throughout the
entire conversation, his flat face sleepily imperturbable.
“I like it not,” he muttered, as if to himself.
Peter gave him a quick look but said nothing.
“Is there anything wrong, father?” I asked.
He frowned at me, then stared off at the housetops in a way he had,
almost as if he sought to peer beyond the future.
“No--yes--I do not know.”
He broke off abruptly.
“Peter, I am glad you are here,” he added.
“_Ja_,” said Peter vacantly.
“You have not looked at your letters yet,” I reminded him.
“I have no occasion to,” he retorted. “There is that which--But the
street is no place for such conversation. Come home, my boy; come
home.”
We set off over the snowy ground, and the people we passed bowed or
bobbed their heads to my father, for he was a great man in New York,
as great as any after the Governor; but he walked now with his eyes
upon the ground, immersed in thought. And once again as we turned
into Pearl Street he muttered--
“Nay, I like it not.”
Darby McGraw met us at the door, and from his wild gaze I knew him to
be half-expecting to behold the pirates hot-foot at our heels.
“Have you performed your tasks, Darby?” questioned my father as the
lad backed into the counting-room on the right of the entrance hall.
“Yes, master.”
“Be off with you, then. I wish not to be disturbed.”
“See can you find us late news of the pirates, Darby,” I added as he
slipped by.
He answered me with a merry scowl, but my father spun on his heel.
“What mean you by that, Robert?” says he.
I was nonplussed.
“Why, naught, sir. Darby is daft on pirates. He----”
Peter Corlaer shut the room-door upon the Irish boy and came toward
us, moving with the swift stealth that was one of his most
astonishing characteristics.
“_Ja_, he does not know,” he said.
“What?” challenged my father.
“What you andt I know,” returned the Dutchman calmly.
“So you know too, Peter?”
“_Ja_.”
I could restrain my impatience no longer.
“What is this mystery?” I demanded. “I thought I knew all the
secrets of the business; but sure, father, I never thought to hear
that we were concerned as a firm with pirates!”
“We are not,” my father answered curtly. “This is a matter of which
you know nothing, Robert, because until now there has been no
occasion for you to know of it.”
He hesitated.
“Peter,” he went on, “must we tell the boy?”
“He is not a boy; he is a man,” said Peter.
I flashed my gratitude to the fat Dutchman in a smile, but he paid me
no attention. My father, too, seemed to forget me. He strode up and
down the counting-room, hands under the skirts of his coat, head
bowed in thought. Tags of phrases escaped his lips:
“I had thought him dead-- Strange, if he bobs up again-- Here is a
problem I had never thought to face-- Mayhap I exaggerate--it cannot
have significance for us-- Certes, it must be accident----”
“_Neen_, he comes for a purpose,” interrupted Peter.
My father stayed his walk in front of Peter by the fireplace wherein
blazed a heap of elm logs.
“Who do you fancy this Captain Rip-Rap to be, Peter? Speak up! You
were right when you said Robert is no longer a boy. If there is
danger here, he deserves to know of it.”
“He is Murray,” replied Corlaer, his squeaking voice an incongruous
contrast with his immense bulk.
“Andrew Murray!” mused my father. “Aye, ’twould be he. I have
suspected it all these years--held it for certainty. But I made sure
when he failed to show himself after the last war that Providence had
attended to him. It seems I was wrong.”
“Whoever he is, this pirate can not do harm to us in New York,” I
made bold to say.
“Be not too sure, Robert,” adjured my father. “He happens to be your
great-uncle.”
He reached up to the rack over the fireplace and selected a long clay
pipe, which he stuffed with tobacco the while I was recovering from
my astonishment.
“Your uncle?” I gasped then.
Corlaer hauled forward a couple of chairs, and we all sat in the
circle of the firelight, my father on one side of me and Peter on the
other. The evening was drawing on apace, and the room was aswarm
with shadows a few feet from the hearth. My father stared long into
the leaping heart of the flames before he answered me.
“No; your mother’s,” he said finally.
“But he was the great trader who conducted the contraband trade with
Canada!” I cried. “I have heard of him. ’Twas he established the
Doom Trail to enable him to supply the French fur-traders with goods
to wean the far savages from us! You have told me of him yourself,
as hath Master Colden. ’Twas he whom you and Corlaer and the
Iroquois fought when you broke down the barriers of the Doom Trail
and won back the fur-trade for our people. Why, ’twas then
you--you----”
I knew the deep feeling my father still had for my long-dead mother,
and I scrupled to stir his memories. He himself took the words from
my lips.
“Yes, ’twas then I came to love your mother. She--she was not such
as you would expect to find allied by any ties with so great a
scoundrel. But she was his niece--past doubt, Robert. She was a
Kerr of Fernieside; her mother had been Murray’s sister. Kerr and
Murray were out together in the ’15; Kerr fell at Sheriffmuir. His
widow died not long afterward, and Murray took poor waif Marjory.
“He did well by her--there’s no denying that. But he always intended
to use her to further his own designs. He had a cold eye for the
future, with no thought except of his own advantage, and if I-- But
there’s no need to go into that. You know, Robert, how Corlaer and
the Seneca chief, Tawannears--he who is now the Guardian of the
Western Door of the Long House--and I were able to smash the vast
power Murray had built up on the frontier.
“We smashed him so utterly, discrediting him too withal, that he was
obliged to flee the province; and even his friends, the French, would
have none of him--at least, aboveboard. I have always fancied he
still served their interests at large; for he is at bottom a most
fanatical Jacobite, and eke sincere in a queer, twisted way. Aye,
there is that about him which is difficult to understand, Robert.
Himself, he hath no hesitation in believing he serves high purposes
of state in all he does.”
“But a pirate!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, that is nothing to him!”
“Not’ing,” agreed Peter. “He was a pirate on der landt.”
“Only a madman could lay claim to serving the State as a pirate,” I
objected.
“You speak with overconfidence,” rebuked my father. “There are men
alive today who can remember when Morgan and Davis and Dampier and
many another brave fellow of the same kidney lived by piracy and
served the King at one and the same time. Some of ’em were hung in
the end, and Morgan died a knight. It can be done.”
“How?”
“Consider, my boy! Murray--your great-uncle, mind you!--is a
Jacobite. For our present Government he hath only hatred and
contempt. Any means by which that Government was undermined would
seem to him justifiable as aiding to bring about its downfall. Look
to the fantastic humor of the man in naming his ship the _Royal
James_!”
“If he be, indeed, the man you think he is,” I returned, none too
well pleased with the thought of having a pirate for a great-uncle.
My father laughed kindly, and tapped me on the knee with his free
hand.
“I know how you feel, dear lad,” he said. “’Twas so identically your
mother talked. Bless her heart! We were fresh married when the
precious rascal sent us by one of his tarry-breeks that necklace
which lies now in my strong-box--the loot of some Indian queen
mayhap. Afterward--after she had died--when you were scarce
breeched--he sent again; those silver plates upon the sideboard in
the dining-room. Dishonestly come by, of course; but what was I to
do? I could not cast them in the river, nor did I know how to return
them to him. And after that again came a third messenger, this time
with no more than a letter in which he condoled with me upon the loss
of her whom we had both reverenced above all others!
“Then, I admit, I could have strangled him, for had he been
successful in his plans he would have mated her with a Frenchman who
was servant to the Foul Fiend. Yet in his way he cared for her, and
he took much interest in all she did. By hook or crook he had word
of us, however far he wandered. He knew when you were born. He knew
when she died. And now that you have reached manhood he shows his
sails outside Sandy Hook. I do not know what it means, Robert, but I
like it not! I like it not!”
“But we are not at sea,” I protested. “We are in New York. There
are soldiers in Fort George. Commodore Burrage will be down from
Boston anon. What can a pirate ship, what can two pirate ships,
effect against us? Why, the city train-bands----”
“’Tis not force I dread,” my father cut me off. “’Tis the infernal
cleverness of a warped mind.”
“_Ja_,” agreed Peter.
My father thrust the stem of his pipe toward him.
“You feel it, too, old friend?” he cried then.
“If Murray is here he means no goodt,” the Dutchman answered
ponderously. “No pirate comes nort’ in der coldt weather for just
fun. _Neen_! Here is too much danger; no places to run andt hide.”
“Aye, you have the right of it,” assented my father. “And there have
been those who claimed New York town was not so innocent of pirates
as might appear upon the surface. Murray and his like must sell the
goods they steal, and to that end they require connections with
traders here and elsewhere. In Governor Burnet’s time we used to
watch the Whale’s Head Tavern and other like hang-outs of the more
desperate sort, but I am bound to admit we caught no bigger game than
an occasional mutineer or deserter. Yet I know there are merchants
in the town none too particular in their dealings, and not every ship
that makes port is as peaceful as she seems by any means.”
“At the least, sir, we are on the alert,” I said.
My father laughed, and Corlaer’s ridiculous, simpering giggle echoed
his grim mirth.
“An intelligent foe discounts so much upon launching his venture,” my
father answered. “Let us hope we have a modicum of luck to aid us.
Whatever plan Murray hath in trend ’twill come to us unexpected and
adroit in execution. But tush. There’s the dinner-bell. A truce to
foreboding!”