KIDD THE PIRATE.
We had scarcely lost sight of Cape St. Francis when the wind became
light and variable, and one of those dense fogs peculiar to that
region settled surely and slowly, densely and darkly, over land and
sea. We shortened sail, and sent ahead the jolly-boat with four
hands in her, to feel our way as it were; while Paul Reeves kept
sounding ever and anon, for in that ocean of strong currents, with a
slight wind from the eastward, and a shore of reefs and shoals upon
our lee, every precaution was necessary.
The raw cold of a fog upon a wintry sea in that latitude of ice and
snow must be felt to be understood. The clear bracing frost, however
intense, may be endured; but this chill and murky dampness made one
intensely miserable.
As we crept along, a strange sound reached us from time to time.
"What is that?" I asked.
"The voices of the penguins," replied Hartly--"the Baccalao birds.
We are off that island; and their cries are as good as fog-guns to
people situated as we are. See! the fog lights a bit; and now there
is the land about two miles off, on the lee bow!"
As he spoke, the dense bank of vapour which shrouded sea, land, and
sky, parted for a few minutes; a gleam of brilliant sunshine fell
upon the rough and precipitous rocks of the wild and desert isle
named Baccalao, which, in summer and winter, are alike ever whitened
by a species of guano, deposited there by the auks or penguins, which
we could see hovering above them in countless myriads, uttering
shrill cries while they soared, wheeled, and flew hither and thither,
as if to warn us of our danger in being so near those treacherous
reefs, which are a source of terror to mariners. Their dangers are
only seen, however, by the daring egg-gatherers, who come from the
mainland in summer, and sling themselves by ropes from the summit of
the cliff, to rifle the nests; although these poor birds are
specially under the protection of Government, by a proclamation,
being sea-marks, or danger-signals (as we found them) in foul or
foggy weather.
With some interest I surveyed the stern cliffs of Baccalao, as they
were the first land seen by Cabot, the Grand Pilot of England, after
ploughing the mighty Atlantic in his little caravel; and he named
them in his joy _La Prima Vista_, though a "vista" grim enough.
"The shore is dark, dreary, and sterile," said I to Hartly.
"Yes," said he, "but there are many strange stories of treasure being
buried there by the pirates in old times."
"Do you see that deep chasm in the rocks in the north end of the
isle?" said Paul Reeves, lowering his voice impressively as he
pointed to the land.
"Yes, it seems quite black among the snow."
"That is _not_ snow, but the deposit of the Baccalao birds," said the
mate. "In the old buccaneering times, the pirates are said to have
buried their treasure there; and a cask branded with the King's broad
arrow, and the name _Adventure_, was once found in it. Now all the
world knows that the _Adventure_ was the ship of the famous Captain
Kidd, who cheated King William out of the finest craft in the English
navy."
"How?" said I.
"Let us hear," added Hartly.
"At a time when all the seas about the coasts of North and South
America and the West India Islands were swarming with buccaneer
craft, manned by desperadoes of every country, who made war upon all
ships that sailed the ocean and were unable to resist them, the
Government of King William III. selected a mariner of doubtful
reputation, named Captain William Kidd, who volunteered to root out
those sea-hawks, who persecuted the thrifty traders of New Amsterdam."
"King William acted on the principle of setting a thief to catch a
thief."
"Exactly so, Jack," said Hartly, "for Kidd, though ostensibly a
merchant-mariner, was something of a smuggler, and had done a little
in the way of picarooning. He was always heard of in out-of-the-way
places, departing on voyages no one knew whither, and coming from
places never heard of before. Then he was always followed by a crew
of well-armed, black-muzzled, drinking, swearing, tearing fellows,
who were as flush of money as if they had been at the overhauling of
Havannah. But go a-head, Paul."
"Well," resumed the mate, "in 1695 Kidd sailed down Channel in the
_Adventure_ galley, of forty-four guns, with a royal pennant flying,
duly commissioned by King William to fight all buccaneers, and his
crew were all selected by himself. But Master Kidd was barely off
the Lizard when he hauled down the King's pennant, hoisted the skull
and crossbones, and bore away for the East Indies. He burned two
towns in Madeira, and after plundering and sinking every craft he
could overmatch, reached the entrance of the Red Sea, where he
captured a Queda merchantman, the cargo of which lined the pockets of
himself and his followers to their complete satisfaction.
"Queda is a town of Asia, situated on the western coast of the
peninsula of Malacca; and so Kidd was cunning enough to attempt
passing-off this capture as a crusade against the enemies of
Christianity; but, unfortunately for him, the ship was commanded by a
Scotchman, and people did not believe in crusaders under Orange
William.
"A year or two after this, he was cruising off the American coast,
and in dread of the King's ships, which were all on the look-out for
him, he ran north as far as Newfoundland, and was alleged to have
buried on its coast all the treasure amassed on his long and rambling
voyage; but _where_, no one could exactly say, until the old barrel
head, marked _Adventure_, and bearing the King's broad arrow, found
in yonder cavern, seemed to indicate Baccalao as being the place.
Moreover, he is known to have run up Conception Bay in quest of the
gold and silver rocks which Frobisher and Sir Humphrey Gilbert
averred were to be seen there."
"Rocks of gold and silver!" said I, incredulously.
"They are only the fire-stones of the Red Indians, and emit sparks
when struck together," said Hartly.[*]
[*] They were the solid iron pyrites which deceived the early
navigators who visited these barren shores. In the "List of H.M.
Royal Navy for 1701," we find among the "fifth-rates, the
_Adventure_, 120 men, 44 guns."
"His treasure," continued the mate, "if he had any, was never found;
though _he_ was, for Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, and Governor
of New England, caught him one day in 1701, when swaggering about the
streets of Boston, and sent him home to King William, who lost no
time in hanging him. But he died as hard as he had lived, for the
rope broke with his weight in Execution Dock, so he was reeved up
again with a new one.
"He was hung in chains on the banks of the Thames, but his body
disappeared in the night, and the sailors in London declared that he
could neither be hanged nor chained, as he had a _charmed_ life,
having sold his poor soul to the devil. Be that as it may, on the
_same night_, in 1701, my Lord Bellamont was found dead in his bed at
Boston, and many affirmed that this event had some connexion with
Kidd's mysterious disappearance from the gallows, as he was said to
have been seen by some of his old shipmates near the dead Governor's
house.
"Fishermen when jigging or trawling off Baccalao in the clear
moonlight nights, often saw a solitary man sitting on the rocks at
the mouth of yonder cavern, but his figure always seemed to melt away
into the moonshine when any one approached; so a story went abroad
that the island was haunted by the ghost of a drowned man. However,
a stout fellow, named Tom Spiller, who was rather bolder than the
rest, and who lived alone at Breakheart Point, where he had a little
hut and stage for drying the fish he caught, went off to the island
one night, when there was little cloud and a bright moon. The sea
was calm, for there was but a puff of wind off the land from time to
time.
"Tom Spiller was a brave and devil-may-care kind of fellow, whom I
knew well, for he was an old man when I went to sea with him first as
a boy, so I have often heard him tell the story without variation or
leeway, or shaking out a new reef by way of a change.
"On approaching the island, he saw the solitary figure sitting on the
rocks at the mouth of the deep black chasm, motionless, with his head
resting, as it were, sorrowfully on the palm of his right hand, and
his eyes fixed apparently on the sea that rippled to his feet, though
it boiled and roared in white foam over the reefs that lay a few
fathoms off outside.
"Tom steered his boat straight for the cave, and now, when the
towering rocks of the desert isle were over his head, covered with
thousands upon thousands of wild auks, screaming, whirling, and
flapping their wings, as if to scare him away; when the deep black
chasm in which the sea was gurgling and moaning yawned before him,
and everything seemed so weird and wan in the pale moonlight, he
_did_ feel queer, and more so when the solitary man, instead of
melting into thin air as usual, turned his white face towards him,
and arose, just as he let go the halyards, lowered the brown flapping
sail, and running his boat into the cave, adroitly noosed a rope over
a large stone to moor her, and stepped ashore. Tom's heart was
beating wildly and strangely, for he was determined to discover
whether this figure, which he had so often seen from the sea, and
which had so invariably eluded his brother fishermen, was man, ghost,
or devil.
"He perceived that the stranger was clad in an old-fashioned dress,
his coat having large metal buttons, broad pocket-flaps, and deep
cuffs. He was ghastly pale, his glassy eyes glistened in the
moonlight, and dark crimson blood was flowing from what appeared to
be a pistol-shot in his left temple.
"'What seek you here?' he asked, in a voice so hollow that the
terrified fisherman, who now repented sorely of his rashness, knew
not whether the sound came from the spectre's white lips, from the
depth of the dreary chasm, or from the sea. 'Speak,' continued the
figure, with mournful earnestness; 'what seek you?'
"'To discover who and what you are,' said Tom.
"'May you never be what I was, or what I am,' replied the other,
sadly.
"'But what are you?'
"'A restless spirit.'
"Tom's knees bent under him, for the pale eyes of that cold white
visage seemed to pierce his soul.
"'A wretched spirit--left here by a fiend to guard his ill-gotten
spoil--so begone, I charge you.'
"The fisherman shrank back on hearing these strange words, while the
gloomy terrors of the scene--the screaming of the Baccalao birds that
whirled in a cloud about him, the dashing of the waves upon the reef,
and the mournful gurgle of the backwash within the vast cavern, with
the weird glimpses of the moon as the white clouds sailed swiftly
past her face--all combined to make this interview a dreadful one.
"Suddenly there was a sound of oars to seaward, the spirit seemed to
become excited, and clasped his thin white hands.
"'See! see! he comes!' he exclaimed. 'Kidd the pirate! Kidd, my
murderer! But he comes, blessed be God! to release me after a
hundred years of restless watching and penance!'
"For you must know that this occurred, as Tom Spiller told me, in
1801.
"'Land ho!' cried a deep hoarse voice from the sea, while Spiller,
overcome by terror, shrank behind a fragment of rock.
"'Hilloa!' answered the spirit, in nautical fashion.
"'Clouds and thunder! why the devil don't you show a light?' cried
the strange voice, as a large barge full of men shot round a
promontory, against which the waves were dashing in foam. On it
came--on and on--at every stroke of the oars, till they were all
triced up in true man-o'-war fashion as she sheered into the creek,
and a man sprang on shore, uttering a tempest of oaths and
maledictions.
"Tom Spiller now fancied that they were all dressed in the fashion of
a hundred years ago, with deep square-skirted coats, long flowing
perriwigs, and little three-cocked hats, and that all were pale,
silent, and spectral; in short, it was a boat manned by unquiet
spirits! Strangely enough, he felt less afraid of them _all_ than of
_one_, and continued to gaze at them like a person in a dream.
"The man who sprang ashore was a short, squat fellow of ferocious
aspect; his battered visage was covered with cuts and patches of
black plaster; a hellish spark glittered in each of his eyes. He
wore a coarse perriwig with long curls, a three-cocked hat, an
old-fashioned blue coat, covered with tarnished lace, and brass
buttons; he had also a pair of brass-barrelled Spanish pistols, and a
hanger sustained by a broad belt.
"_Two_ ropes were knotted round his neck, which was bare, and pieces
of rusty chain were dangling at his wrists and ankles. Then the
marrow froze in the bones of Tom Spiller, for he knew that he looked
upon William Kidd, the pirate, who had been _twice_ hanged a hundred
years before in Execution Dock.
"'Now, you canting, cowardly lubber, why the henckers didn't you hang
out a light?' he bellowed in a hoarse voice.
"'I have been in the dark these hundred years,' replied the spirit,
meekly.
"'Likely enough; seas and thunder! you were the faintest-hearted
fellow in the _Adventure_.'
"'I suffered sorely at your hands since you captured the ship of
Queda, of which I was captain, and made me a prisoner in yon galley.'
"'Bah!' thundered Kidd.
"'I have repented me of my sins in life,' said the spirit, mournfully.
"''Sblood and plunder!' shouted the other, with a diabolical laugh;
'I shot you through the head, as a canting Scotsman, on this night
one hundred years ago, and buried you here--you know for what
purpose.'
"'That my unquiet spirit might watch your buried treasure,' moaned
the other.
"'Right,' chuckled the pirate; 'I shot you as I would have done my
lord the Earl of Bellamont, though he was Governor of New England and
Admiral of all the seas about it, for that long-snouted Dutch lubber,
William of Orange, who sent him to lord it over the Yankees.'
"'I have waited and watched your treasure long, and now am anxious
for the repose of the grave.'
"On hearing this, Kidd and his boat's crew laughed, and gnashed their
teeth; but a few there were who wept and wailed heavily, and the
sound of their lamentation was fearful as it mingled with the chafing
of the surge.
"'I have some fine things stowed away here in Baccalao,' said Kidd;
'but I have some that are better still in the haunted Kaatskill
Mountain, and at Tapaan Zee, up the Hudson.'
"The spirit-watcher groaned.
"'Since I saw you last, brother, I have been twice hanged and strung
in chains on the banks of the Thames--ha! ha! at Gravesend Reach.'
"'Hanged!'
"'Yes, by all the devils in New Amsterdam!--HANGED! Hanged by order
of him of pious, glorious, and immortal memory--by Orange Billy, who
assassinated the De Witts in Holland, who murdered eighty men, women,
and children in cold blood in Scotland; who abandoned his soldiers at
Steinkirk; who boiled and burned women alive in London for coining a
few brass halfpence; and who departed this life amid the prayers of
canting hypocrites and lawn-sleeved parasites, on the 8th day of
March, 1701! He roasts now, for some of his pranks, I can tell you!
But heave a-head, brother! we must ship our cargo, and be off
to-night for Cape Cod at New Amsterdam (or New York, as the folks
call it now-a-days), ere the moon wanes or the tide falls. Where is
the plunder?'
"The sad spirit-watcher pointed to a place which seemed to have
opened in the rocky cavern; and there Tom Spiller could see, by the
beams of the moon, heaps of gold and silver vessels, sparkling jewels
and trinkets, with veritable pyramids of gold and silver coins of
every nation and of every size, piled up in confusion.
"Bewildered by this sight, he permitted rather too much of his figure
to be seen; for suddenly a yell of rage came from the spectre boat's
crew; and Kidd, drawing one of the long brass pistols from his broad
buff girdle, uttered a dreadful oath--
"'A spy!' he exclaimed; 'take _that_ and perish!'
"He fired full at the head of Tom, who felt the ball pass through his
brain like a red-hot arrow, and he sank upon the rocks--where he
found himself lying stiff enough when he awoke next morning, and saw
the Baccalao birds wheeling about in the sunshine."
"So the whole affair was only a dream!" said I.
"I cannot say," replied Reeves; "for strangely enough, an old Spanish
pistol, with a strong smell of powder about it, and 'W. K.' on the
butt, was lying on the rocks by his side. Tom lost no time, you may
be assured, in jumping into his boat, and clapping on all sail to
leave the island astern; but after that night the spirit was seen no
more at the mouth of the cavern, for Kidd had come to release him, or
to take away his treasure."
"And Tom Spiller?"
"Forsook his hut at Breakheart Point, and went to sea for many years:
he felt unhappy, for the parsons say that folks always are so who
have conversed with ghosts; but his mind dwelt for ever on the
treasure in the cavern, and he never ceased to spin yarns about it,
and express hopes that some, if not all that he saw, might yet
remain. He returned to Breakheart Point about twenty years ago, an
old and white-haired man; and one night, accompanied by three men
armed with picks and shovels, sailed in search of the treasure; but
they never reached the island, for a tempest came on and drove their
boat to the northward. He tried to fetch Ragged Harbour, but was
blown right across Conception Bay for more than thirty miles, and was
drowned at La Cabo Bueno Vista, on a rock called, to this hour,
Spiller's Point.
"As for Captain Kidd, he has never been seen since, though some folks
hereabout say he commands the _Black Schooner_, which has overhauled
so many of our merchantmen and escaped the Queen's cruisers. So that
is my yarn, Mr. Manly."
"Steady, Paul, steady," said Hartly; "the fog has concealed your
haunted island again."
"Steady it is, sir; but we had better take a pull at these larboard
tacks, otherwise we may not be able to clear the three rocks that lie
to the northward of Baccalao; and I think we can hear the breakers
already!"