_The Portuguese Barthelemy._
Commencement of his Career.--Bold Capture.--Brutality of
the Pirates.--Reverses and Captivity.--Barthelemy doomed to
Die.--His Escape.--Sufferings in the Forest.--Reaches Gulf
Triste.--Hardening Effect of his Misfortunes.--His new Piratic
Enterprize.--Wonderful Success.--The Tornado.--Impoverishment
and Ruin.
One of the most bold and renowned of the buccaneers was a Portuguese,
by the name of Barthelemy. He was a man of some property, and followed
the great tide of emigration to the West Indies. At Kingston, Jamaica,
he heard of the great fortunes which were made by buccaneers preying
upon Spanish commerce. Engaging in several expeditions, he became quite
rich. Finally he fitted out a small vessel, at his own expense, which
he armed with four three-pounders, and a crew of thirty desperate men,
armed with muskets, pistols, and sabres. This sloop was fitted out in a
British port, to rob the ships of Spain, just as openly as if it were
bound upon a fishing excursion.
He commenced his cruise upon the southern coast of Cuba. But a few
days passed ere he caught sight of a large ship, richly laden and well
armed, bound from the Spanish colonies in Venezuela to Havana. It had,
as he afterward found, a crew of seventy men, with about the same
number of passengers and marines, and carried twenty guns.
When Barthelemy’s crew saw the size of the ship and the indications of
her strong armament, they hesitated to venture upon an attack. All were
assembled around the mast to discuss the question. The general voice
was discouraging. Barthelemy’s speech was short and decisive. He was a
man of few words and prompt action.
“We came out,” said he, “for prizes. Here is a splendid one. The
opportunity must not be lost. Nothing great can be accomplished without
risk.”
They gave chase. The ship quietly awaited their approach; “as much
astonished at the attack,” writes Thornbury, “as a swallow would be if
it were pursued by a gnat.” The pirates made a desperate endeavor to
board the ship. We are not informed of the particulars of the fight.
The result only is known. After several repulses, and a long and bloody
conflict, the pirates raised shouts of victory on the blood-stained
deck of their prize. Ten of them were killed; four wounded. All on
board the ship but forty were killed. Many of these were severely
maimed with bullet wounds and sword-cuts.
The pirates, having searched the pockets of the dead for their loose
doubloons, threw the bodies overboard. Those helplessly wounded
suffered the same fate. The survivors, after being stripped of
everything valuable, were placed in a boat and cut adrift, to fare
as they might. The prize proved to be worth between eighty and a
hundred thousand dollars. Barthelemy found himself in command of a
truly splendid ship, well armed, and well stored with ammunition and
provisions. He had also his little sloop as a tender. Though he had
a crew of but twenty men, he could at any time double or treble his
number in the thronged ports of Kingston or Tortuga. As he was sailing
around the western end of the Island of Cuba, he came unexpectedly upon
three large ships bound to Havana. The pirate ship was heavily laden
and ploughed the waves slowly. The Spanish ships gave chase; captured
the buccaneers; stripped them; drove them with sabre-strokes under the
hatches, and left them there to meditate upon the reverses of fortune
and their own approaching ignominious death by hanging.
The notoriety of Barthelemy, as one of the most terrible of human
monsters, had spread far and wide. He concealed his name, and his
captors were not aware what a prize they had taken. The ship,
containing the crew of pirates, was separated from the rest by a storm.
She took refuge at Campeachy, on the western coast of the immense
peninsula of Yucatan. Crowds flocked on board to see the pirates
in irons. Among them came one who, in former years, had well known
Barthelemy. Lifting up his hands in astonishment, he proclaimed in
presence of the multitude:
“This is Barthelemy the Portuguese. He is the most wicked rascal in the
world. He has done more harm to Spanish commerce than all the other
pirates put together.”
The glad news spread through the town. There were joyful assemblages in
the streets. All hearts were glowing with the desire to take vengeance
on the man who had put so many Spaniards to death. The people appealed
to the governor to demand the pirate in the name of the king. He was
arrested, more heavily ironed, and placed on board another vessel. A
gibbet was erected upon which to hang him. The governor did not deem
any trial necessary. From his cabin window Barthelemy could see the
workmen building the gallows, upon which he was to be hung in chains,
there to swing, in sunshine and storm, till the action of the elements
should dissolve both skin and bones.
The wretch had a strange power of winning friends. The captain by whom
he was captured wished to save him. Some one secretly conveyed to him
a file. He soon freed himself from his irons. There were in his cabin
two large earthern jars, empty and very buoyant. Carefully he closed
the orifices; bound them loosely together by a strong cord; lowered
them cautiously into the water, when midnight darkness covered the sea.
A sentry was placed at the door of the cabin. He had fallen asleep.
Fearful that he might awake and give the alarm, the pirate stealthily
approached him with a huge knife in his hand. By a well-directed blow
the glittering blade pierced his heart, and the sentinel died without a
struggle or a groan.
The pirate noiselessly dropped himself down into the water. Grasping,
with one hand, the strong cord attached to the two jars, with the other
he slowly paddled himself to the shore. The current floated him to the
very spot where the gibbet was erected. There it stood, in its awful
gloom, with the hangman’s chain dangling from its timbers. Even the
iron-hearted Barthelemy shuddered, as at midnight’s dismal hour, he
contemplated the doom from which he was endeavoring to escape.
He took to the woods. But few of our readers can imagine the
entanglements of the tropical forest through which he struggled.
Conscious that blood-hounds might be put upon his track, he sought a
running stream, and waded along for a great distance in the darkness.
He was torn cruelly by overhanging thorns, and bruised as he stumbled
over rocks and stones. As the morning dawned he hid himself in a pile
of brush, half covered with water.
The windings of the stream were such that he had advanced but a short
distance from the town. The tidings of his escape roused the whole
population. It was known that he could not have forced his way far
through the entanglement of briers and thorns and interlacing vines,
in the few hours between midnight and the dawn. The whole forest
seemed alive with his pursuers. A thousand slaves were shouting in
their barbarian eagerness. Packs of blood-hounds were rushing to and
fro, smelling at every track, and making the forest resound with
their deep-mouthed bayings. The alarm-bells of the city were rolling
forth their loud and solemn peals. Bands of Spanish cavaliers, with
indignation in their hearts and oaths upon their lips, passed within
sight of the hiding wretch; and he heard their vows of vengeance. Thus
passed the wretched day. “The way of the transgressor is indeed hard.”
Barthelemy, bleeding, exhausted, starving and tormented with the bite
of insects, endured these long hours of mental and bodily torture,
until night again darkened the scene. With the darkness he resumed his
terrified flight, he scarcely knew where. His general plan was to reach
some distant seaport in disguise, where he hoped to effect his escape
as a sailor. Every hour he trembled in danger of being caught, and his
only food was roots and berries, and the raw shell-fish he scraped from
the rocks.
He forded streams where he was in imminent danger of being snapped
up by the jaws of crocodiles. He waded through swamps, and narrowly
escaped being suffocated in the mire. His shoes were torn from his
feet, his clothes from his limbs. For fourteen days and nights he
endured these tortures. His only guide was the roar of the ocean.
He was travelling in a southwesterly direction. It was his constant
endeavor to keep the ocean within hearing distance on his right.
There is manifestly no tendency in misery to make men better. The
pirate, with all his woes, grew more obdurate and more cruel. “In
these fourteen days,” writes one of his biographers, “he must have
literally tasted death and anticipated the horrors of hell.” But this
almost demoniac wretchedness led him to no prayers of penitence, and
to no promises of amendment. They served only to whet his appetite for
revenge.
At length he reached a large ocean bay, about one hundred and twenty
miles from Campeachy, appropriately called Gulf Triste. Here, to his
immense relief, he found a large ship of buccaneers riding at anchor.
He signalled the ship, and a boat was sent to take him on board. With
feigned glee the wretch told the story of his adventures. Not a word of
penitence was uttered. There was not the slightest recognition that the
punishment he had received was merited. On the contrary, he said to the
pirates:
“I know of a ship at Campeachy, which is richly laden, and but feebly
armed. It can be captured with all ease. Furnish me with a boat and
thirty good men, and in a few days I will bring the ship and all its
cargo to you.”
His request was granted. The boat was equipped, and he sailed along
the coast, assuming that he was a smuggler, with contraband goods. In
eight days he reached Campeachy. As the boat entered the harbor, the
piratic character of the craft was so concealed that no suspicions
were excited. At midnight the pirates cautiously approached the doomed
vessel. As the crew supposed themselves safe in the harbor, there was
but one sentry pacing the deck. He hailed the boat. Barthelemy, who
spoke Spanish perfectly, stood upon the bows, and replied:
“We are a part of the crew. We have a boatload of goods from the land
for the vessel, upon which no duty has been paid.”
At that moment the bows of the boat touched the ship. Barthelemy and
his crew leaped on board, drawn cutlass in hand. One plunge of a sabre
pierced the heart of the sentinel, and he fell dead. A few others who
chanced to be on deck were driven below, and the hatches were closed
upon them. Scarcely five minutes elapsed ere the thirty pirates, all
veteran sailors, were in perfect command of the ship, and all the
officers and crew were firmly barricaded, as prisoners, beneath the
deck. No noise had been made. No alarm was given to other ships in the
harbor. They raised the anchors, spread the sails, and put out to sea.
Thus suddenly the wheel of fortune turned. The trembling fugitive, in
danger of the gallows, in rags and starvation, wandering through the
wilderness, but a few days before, now found himself treading the deck
of one of the finest of Spanish ships, well provisioned, well armed,
and with a rich cargo stored in her hold. He was the captain and mostly
the owner of the majestic craft. His dictatorial power was recognized
by thirty desperate men, ready implicitly to obey his will. The
commerce of all seas was apparently within the reach of his piratical
grasp.
The imprisoned crew were disposed of as these pirates usually got rid
of those who were a trouble to them. They were either crowded into a
boat and cut adrift, or landed upon the nearest shore, or thrown into
the sea. Familiarity with misery and death rendered the pirates as
insensible to human suffering as the fisherman becomes to the struggles
of the fish in the bottom of his boat.
Barthelemy, instead of returning with his prize to his comrades in
Gulf Triste, spread his sails for Jamaica. He was greatly elated, and
boasted loudly of the still greater enterprises which he was about to
undertake. With his suddenly found wealth he would create a fleet; he
would have crews of five hundred men at his command; his blood-red flag
should sweep all seas; he would collect an army and ravage provinces;
he would seize some large island, of which he would be the monarch,
with his fleets and his armies. Thus the Portuguese pirate dreamed. He
did not take God into the account. God had decided otherwise.
It was a beautiful morning, as Barthelemy paced the deck, lost in these
ambitious imaginings. The sky was cloudless. A fresh breeze swelled the
sails, and delightfully tempered the heat of a tropical sun.
A few leagues south of the Island of Cuba is the majestic Isle of
Pines. Large as it is, its prominence is lost in the overpowering
grandeur of its sister island. The ship was running along its southern
coast.
A small cloud was seen in the southwestern horizon. Rapidly it
increased in size and blackness. It was a tropical tornado. Already its
roar could be heard as it ploughed and lashed the seas. The terrible
gale struck the ship and whirled it along as though it had been a
bubble. God was there, in his sore displeasure. What could man do?
Nothing. The pirates threw themselves upon their knees, and called upon
the Virgin and all the saints to come and help them. But neither Virgin
nor saint came.
The ship struck the rocks--was dashed to pieces; the silver, the gold,
the cargo, everything disappeared before those terrific blasts. Many
were drowned. Barthelemy and a few of the crew were swept ashore by
the mountain billows. Their clothes were torn from their backs. Their
bodies were sorely bruised, and some of their bones broken, by being
dashed against the rocks. Exhausted, panting, maimed, and half dead,
Barthelemy found himself utterly beggared upon a lonely isle. This was
the work of one short half-hour. This was the disposal God made of the
pirates’ stolen spoil.
A wretched, starving straggler, Barthelemy found his way to Jamaica.
Here he enlisted as a common sailor on board a pirate ship, and we hear
of him no more. Without doubt, he came to a miserable end; and his body
was probably thrown into the sea as food for sharks.