Chapter I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN

HOWARD PYLE'S BOOK OF PIRATES

Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of the

Spanish Main: From the writing & Pictures of Howard Pyle:

Compiled by Merle Johnson

CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY MERLE JOHNSON

PREFACE

I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN

II. THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND

III. WITH THE BUCCANEERS

IV. TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE BOX

V. JACK BALLISTER'S FORTUNES

VI. BLUESKIN THE PIRATE

VII. CAPTAIN SCARFIELD

FOREWORD

PIRATES, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolves

who once infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day conceptions

in great degree as drawn by the pen and pencil of Howard Pyle.

Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenth

century and the first decade of the twentieth, had the fine faculty of

transposing himself into any chosen period of history and making

its people flesh and blood again--not just historical puppets. His

characters were sketched with both words and picture; with both words

and picture he ranks as a master, with a rich personality which makes

his work individual and attractive in either medium.

He was one of the founders of present-day American illustration, and his

pupils and grand-pupils pervade that field to-day. While he bore no

such important part in the world of letters, his stories are modern in

treatment, and yet widely read. His range included historical treatises

concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was); fiction, with

the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of Old World fairy

tales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best sellers to growing

lads; stories of the occult, such as In Tenebras and To the Soil of the

Earth, which, if newly published, would be hailed as contributions to

our latest cult.

In all these fields Pyle's work may be equaled, surpassed, save in one.

It is improbable that anyone else will ever bring his combination of

interest and talent to the depiction of these old-time Pirates, any more

than there could be a second Remington to paint the now extinct Indians

and gun-fighters of the Great West.

Important and interesting to the student of history, the

adventure-lover, and the artist, as they are, these Pirate stories and

pictures have been scattered through many magazines and books. Here, in

this volume, they are gathered together for the first time, perhaps

not just as Mr. Pyle would have done, but with a completeness and

appreciation of the real value of the material which the author's

modesty might not have permitted. MERLE JOHNSON.

PREFACE

WHY is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly

titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to

make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this

question another--Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had,

a certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Is

there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden groundwork

of the old-time savage? Is there even in these well-regulated times an

unsubdued nature in the respectable mental household of every one of us

that still kicks against the pricks of law and order? To make my meaning

more clear, would not every boy, for instance--that is, every boy of any

account--rather be a pirate captain than a Member of Parliament? And

we ourselves--would we not rather read such a story as that of Captain

Avery's capture of the East Indian treasure ship, with its beautiful

princess and load of jewels (which gems he sold by the handful, history

sayeth, to a Bristol merchant), than, say, one of Bishop Atterbury's

sermons, or the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of

"Theodora and Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate

nature of most of us there can be but one answer to such a query.

In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales of

derring-do Nelson's battles are all mightily interesting, but, even in

spite of their romance of splendid courage, I fancy that the majority of

us would rather turn back over the leaves of history to read how Drake

captured the Spanish treasure ship in the South Sea, and of how he

divided such a quantity of booty in the Island of Plate (so named

because of the tremendous dividend there declared) that it had to be

measured in quart bowls, being too considerable to be counted.

Courage and daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always a

redundancy of vim and life to recommend them to the nether man that lies

within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against the

tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have had

much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black flag. But

it is not altogether courage and daring that endear him to our hearts.

There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that lust for wealth

that makes one's fancy revel more pleasantly in the story of the

division of treasure in the pirate's island retreat, the hiding of his

godless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic beach, there to

remain hidden until the time should come to rake the doubloons up

again and to spend them like a lord in polite society, than in the most

thrilling tales of his wonderful escapes from commissioned cruisers

through tortuous channels between the coral reefs.

And what a life of adventure is his, to be sure! A life of constant

alertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, he

wanders forever aimlessly, homelessly; now unheard of for months, now

careening his boat on some lonely uninhabited shore, now appearing

suddenly to swoop down on some merchant vessel with rattle of musketry,

shouting, yells, and a hell of unbridled passions let loose to rend and

tear. What a Carlislean hero! What a setting of blood and lust and flame

and rapine for such a hero!

Piracy, such as was practiced in the flower of its days--that is, during

the early eighteenth century--was no sudden growth. It was an evolution,

from the semi-lawful buccaneering of the sixteenth century, just as

buccaneering was upon its part, in a certain sense, an evolution from

the unorganized, unauthorized warfare of the Tudor period.

For there was a deal of piratical smack in the anti-Spanish ventures

of Elizabethan days. Many of the adventurers--of the Sir Francis Drake

school, for instance--actually overstepped again and again the bounds

of international law, entering into the realms of de facto piracy.

Nevertheless, while their doings were not recognized officially by the

government, the perpetrators were neither punished nor reprimanded for

their excursions against Spanish commerce at home or in the West Indies;

rather were they commended, and it was considered not altogether a

discreditable thing for men to get rich upon the spoils taken from

Spanish galleons in times of nominal peace. Many of the most reputable

citizens and merchants of London, when they felt that the queen failed

in her duty of pushing the fight against the great Catholic Power,

fitted out fleets upon their own account and sent them to levy good

Protestant war of a private nature upon the Pope's anointed.

Some of the treasures captured in such ventures were immense,

stupendous, unbelievable. For an example, one can hardly credit the

truth of the "purchase" gained by Drake in the famous capture of the

plate ship in the South Sea.

One of the old buccaneer writers of a century later says: "The Spaniards

affirm to this day that he took at that time twelvescore tons of

plate and sixteen bowls of coined money a man (his number being then

forty-five men in all), insomuch that they were forced to heave much of

it overboard, because his ship could not carry it all."

Maybe this was a very greatly exaggerated statement put by the author

and his Spanish authorities, nevertheless there was enough truth in it

to prove very conclusively to the bold minds of the age that tremendous

profits--"purchases" they called them--were to be made from piracy. The

Western World is filled with the names of daring mariners of those old

days, who came flitting across the great trackless ocean in their little

tublike boats of a few hundred tons burden, partly to explore unknown

seas, partly--largely, perhaps--in pursuit of Spanish treasure:

Frobisher, Davis, Drake, and a score of others.

In this left-handed war against Catholic Spain many of the adventurers

were, no doubt, stirred and incited by a grim, Calvinistic, puritanical

zeal for Protestantism. But equally beyond doubt the gold and silver and

plate of the "Scarlet Woman" had much to do with the persistent energy

with which these hardy mariners braved the mysterious, unknown terrors

of the great unknown ocean that stretched away to the sunset, there in

faraway waters to attack the huge, unwieldy, treasure-laden galleons

that sailed up and down the Caribbean Sea and through the Bahama

Channel.

Of all ghastly and terrible things old-time religious war was the most

ghastly and terrible. One can hardly credit nowadays the cold, callous

cruelty of those times. Generally death was the least penalty that

capture entailed. When the Spaniards made prisoners of the English, the

Inquisition took them in hand, and what that meant all the world knows.

When the English captured a Spanish vessel the prisoners were tortured,

either for the sake of revenge or to compel them to disclose where

treasure lay hidden. Cruelty begat cruelty, and it would be hard to

say whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Latin showed himself to be most

proficient in torturing his victim.

When Cobham, for instance, captured the Spanish ship in the Bay of

Biscay, after all resistance was over and the heat of the battle had

cooled, he ordered his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew and

every Spaniard aboard--whether in arms or not--to sew them up in the

mainsail and to fling them overboard. There were some twenty dead bodies

in the sail when a few days later it was washed up on the shore.

Of course such acts were not likely to go unavenged, and many an

innocent life was sacrificed to pay the debt of Cobham's cruelty.

Nothing could be more piratical than all this. Nevertheless, as was

said, it was winked at, condoned, if not sanctioned, by the law; and it

was not beneath people of family and respectability to take part in it.

But by and by Protestantism and Catholicism began to be at somewhat less

deadly enmity with each other; religious wars were still far enough from

being ended, but the scabbard of the sword was no longer flung away

when the blade was drawn. And so followed a time of nominal peace, and a

generation arose with whom it was no longer respectable and worthy--one

might say a matter of duty--to fight a country with which one's own

land was not at war. Nevertheless, the seed had been sown; it had been

demonstrated that it was feasible to practice piracy against Spain and

not to suffer therefor. Blood had been shed and cruelty practiced, and,

once indulged, no lust seems stronger than that of shedding blood and

practicing cruelty.

Though Spain might be ever so well grounded in peace at home, in the

West Indies she was always at war with the whole world--English, French,

Dutch. It was almost a matter of life or death with her to keep her hold

upon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon the earthquake

of the Reformation, her power was already beginning to totter and to

crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and from it alone

could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold and silver. So it

was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to keep out the world from

her American possessions--a bootless task, for the old order upon which

her power rested was broken and crumbled forever. But still she strove,

fighting against fate, and so it was that in the tropical America it was

one continual war between her and all the world. Thus it came that,

long after piracy ceased to be allowed at home, it continued in those

far-away seas with unabated vigor, recruiting to its service all that

lawless malign element which gathers together in every newly opened

country where the only law is lawlessness, where might is right and

where a living is to be gained with no more trouble than cutting a

throat. {signature Howard Pyle His Mark}

HOWARD PILE'S BOOK OF PIRATES

Chapter I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN

JUST above the northwestern shore of the old island of Hispaniola--the

Santo Domingo of our day--and separated from it only by a narrow channel

of some five or six miles in width, lies a queer little hunch of an

island, known, because of a distant resemblance to that animal, as

the Tortuga de Mar, or sea turtle. It is not more than twenty miles in

length by perhaps seven or eight in breadth; it is only a little spot of

land, and as you look at it upon the map a pin's head would almost cover

it; yet from that spot, as from a center of inflammation, a burning fire

of human wickedness and ruthlessness and lust overran the world, and

spread terror and death throughout the Spanish West Indies, from St.

Augustine to the island of Trinidad, and from Panama to the coasts of

Peru.

About the middle of the seventeenth century certain French adventurers

set out from the fortified island of St. Christopher in longboats and

hoys, directing their course to the westward, there to discover new

islands. Sighting Hispaniola "with abundance of joy," they landed, and

went into the country, where they found great quantities of wild cattle,

horses, and swine.

Now vessels on the return voyage to Europe from the West Indies needed

revictualing, and food, especially flesh, was at a premium in the

islands of the Spanish Main; wherefore a great profit was to be turned

in preserving beef and pork, and selling the flesh to homeward-bound

vessels.

The northwestern shore of Hispaniola, lying as it does at the eastern

outlet of the old Bahama Channel, running between the island of Cuba and

the great Bahama Banks, lay almost in the very main stream of travel.

The pioneer Frenchmen were not slow to discover the double advantage to

be reaped from the wild cattle that cost them nothing to procure, and a

market for the flesh ready found for them. So down upon Hispaniola they

came by boatloads and shiploads, gathering like a swarm of mosquitoes,

and overrunning the whole western end of the island. There they

established themselves, spending the time alternately in hunting the

wild cattle and buccanning(1) the meat, and squandering their hardly

earned gains in wild debauchery, the opportunities for which were never

lacking in the Spanish West Indies.

(1) Buccanning, by which the "buccaneers" gained their name,

was of process of curing thin strips of meat by salting,

smoking, and drying in the sun.

At first the Spaniards thought nothing of the few travel-worn Frenchmen

who dragged their longboats and hoys up on the beach, and shot a wild

bullock or two to keep body and soul together; but when the few grew to

dozens, and the dozens to scores, and the scores to hundreds, it was a

very different matter, and wrathful grumblings and mutterings began to

be heard among the original settlers.

But of this the careless buccaneers thought never a whit, the only thing

that troubled them being the lack of a more convenient shipping point

than the main island afforded them.

This lack was at last filled by a party of hunters who ventured across

the narrow channel that separated the main island from Tortuga. Here

they found exactly what they needed--a good harbor, just at the junction

of the Windward Channel with the old Bahama Channel--a spot where

four-fifths of the Spanish-Indian trade would pass by their very

wharves.

There were a few Spaniards upon the island, but they were a quiet folk,

and well disposed to make friends with the strangers; but when more

Frenchmen and still more Frenchmen crossed the narrow channel, until

they overran the Tortuga and turned it into one great curing house for

the beef which they shot upon the neighboring island, the Spaniards grew

restive over the matter, just as they had done upon the larger island.

Accordingly, one fine day there came half a dozen great boatloads

of armed Spaniards, who landed upon the Turtle's Back and sent the

Frenchmen flying to the woods and fastnesses of rocks as the chaff flies

before the thunder gust. That night the Spaniards drank themselves

mad and shouted themselves hoarse over their victory, while the beaten

Frenchmen sullenly paddled their canoes back to the main island again,

and the Sea Turtle was Spanish once more.

But the Spaniards were not contented with such a petty triumph as that

of sweeping the island of Tortuga free from the obnoxious strangers,

down upon Hispaniola they came, flushed with their easy victory, and

determined to root out every Frenchman, until not one single buccaneer

remained. For a time they had an easy thing of it, for each French

hunter roamed the woods by himself, with no better company than his

half-wild dogs, so that when two or three Spaniards would meet such a

one, he seldom if ever came out of the woods again, for even his resting

place was lost.

But the very success of the Spaniards brought their ruin along with it,

for the buccaneers began to combine together for self-protection,

and out of that combination arose a strange union of lawless man with

lawless man, so near, so close, that it can scarce be compared to

any other than that of husband and wife. When two entered upon this

comradeship, articles were drawn up and signed by both parties, a common

stock was made of all their possessions, and out into the woods they

went to seek their fortunes; thenceforth they were as one man; they

lived together by day, they slept together by night; what one suffered,

the other suffered; what one gained, the other gained. The only

separation that came betwixt them was death, and then the survivor

inherited all that the other left. And now it was another thing with

Spanish buccaneer hunting, for two buccaneers, reckless of life, quick

of eye, and true of aim, were worth any half dozen of Spanish islanders.

By and by, as the French became more strongly organized for mutual

self-protection, they assumed the offensive. Then down they came upon

Tortuga, and now it was the turn of the Spanish to be hunted off the

island like vermin, and the turn of the French to shout their victory.

Having firmly established themselves, a governor was sent to the French

of Tortuga, one M. le Passeur, from the island of St. Christopher; the

Sea Turtle was fortified, and colonists, consisting of men of doubtful

character and women of whose character there could be no doubt whatever,

began pouring in upon the island, for it was said that the buccaneers

thought no more of a doubloon than of a Lima bean, so that this was the

place for the brothel and the brandy shop to reap their golden harvest,

and the island remained French.

Hitherto the Tortugans had been content to gain as much as possible from

the homeward-bound vessels through the orderly channels of legitimate

trade. It was reserved for Pierre le Grand to introduce piracy as a

quicker and more easy road to wealth than the semi-honest exchange they

had been used to practice.

Gathering together eight-and-twenty other spirits as hardy and reckless

as himself, he put boldly out to sea in a boat hardly large enough to

hold his crew, and running down the Windward Channel and out into the

Caribbean Sea, he lay in wait for such a prize as might be worth the

risks of winning.

For a while their luck was steadily against them; their provisions and

water began to fail, and they saw nothing before them but starvation

or a humiliating return. In this extremity they sighted a Spanish ship

belonging to a "flota" which had become separated from her consorts.

The boat in which the buccaneers sailed might, perhaps, have served for

the great ship's longboat; the Spaniards out-numbered them three to

one, and Pierre and his men were armed only with pistols and cutlasses;

nevertheless this was their one and their only chance, and they

determined to take the Spanish ship or to die in the attempt. Down upon

the Spaniard they bore through the dusk of the night, and giving orders

to the "chirurgeon" to scuttle their craft under them as they were

leaving it, they swarmed up the side of the unsuspecting ship and upon

its decks in a torrent--pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other. A

part of them ran to the gun room and secured the arms and ammunition,

pistoling or cutting down all such as stood in their way or offered

opposition; the other party burst into the great cabin at the heels of

Pierre le Grand, found the captain and a party of his friends at cards,

set a pistol to his breast, and demanded him to deliver up the ship.

Nothing remained for the Spaniard but to yield, for there was no

alternative between surrender and death. And so the great prize was won.

It was not long before the news of this great exploit and of the vast

treasure gained reached the ears of the buccaneers of Tortuga and

Hispaniola. Then what a hubbub and an uproar and a tumult there was!

Hunting wild cattle and buccanning the meat was at a discount, and the

one and only thing to do was to go a-pirating; for where one such prize

had been won, others were to be had.

In a short time freebooting assumed all of the routine of a regular

business. Articles were drawn up betwixt captain and crew, compacts were

sealed, and agreements entered into by the one party and the other.

In all professions there are those who make their mark, those who

succeed only moderately well, and those who fail more or less entirely.

Nor did pirating differ from this general rule, for in it were men who

rose to distinction, men whose names, something tarnished and rusted by

the lapse of years, have come down even to us of the present day.

Pierre Francois, who, with his boatload of six-and-twenty desperadoes,

ran boldly into the midst of the pearl fleet off the coast of

South America, attacked the vice admiral under the very guns of two

men-of-war, captured his ship, though she was armed with eight guns and

manned with threescore men, and would have got her safely away, only

that having to put on sail, their mainmast went by the board, whereupon

the men-of-war came up with them, and the prize was lost.

But even though there were two men-of-war against all that remained of

six-and-twenty buccaneers, the Spaniards were glad enough to make terms

with them for the surrender of the vessel, whereby Pierre Francois and

his men came off scot-free.

Bartholomew Portuguese was a worthy of even more note. In a boat manned

with thirty fellow adventurers he fell upon a great ship off Cape

Corrientes, manned with threescore and ten men, all told.

Her he assaulted again and again, beaten off with the very pressure of

numbers only to renew the assault, until the Spaniards who survived,

some fifty in all, surrendered to twenty living pirates, who poured upon

their decks like a score of blood-stained, powder-grimed devils.

They lost their vessel by recapture, and Bartholomew Portuguese

barely escaped with his life through a series of almost unbelievable

adventures. But no sooner had he fairly escaped from the clutches of the

Spaniards than, gathering together another band of adventurers, he fell

upon the very same vessel in the gloom of the night, recaptured her when

she rode at anchor in the harbor of Campeche under the guns of the fort,

slipped the cable, and was away without the loss of a single man. He

lost her in a hurricane soon afterward, just off the Isle of Pines; but

the deed was none the less daring for all that.

Another notable no less famous than these two worthies was Roch

Braziliano, the truculent Dutchman who came up from the coast of Brazil

to the Spanish Main with a name ready-made for him. Upon the very first

adventure which he undertook he captured a plate ship of fabulous value,

and brought her safely into Jamaica; and when at last captured by the

Spaniards, he fairly frightened them into letting him go by truculent

threats of vengeance from his followers.

Such were three of the pirate buccaneers who infested the Spanish

Main. There were hundreds no less desperate, no less reckless, no less

insatiate in their lust for plunder, than they.

The effects of this freebooting soon became apparent. The risks to be

assumed by the owners of vessels and the shippers of merchandise became

so enormous that Spanish commerce was practically swept away from these

waters. No vessel dared to venture out of port excepting under escort

of powerful men-of-war, and even then they were not always secure from

molestation. Exports from Central and South America were sent to Europe

by way of the Strait of Magellan, and little or none went through the

passes between the Bahamas and the Caribbees.

So at last "buccaneering," as it had come to be generically called,

ceased to pay the vast dividends that it had done at first. The cream

was skimmed off, and only very thin milk was left in the dish. Fabulous

fortunes were no longer earned in a ten days' cruise, but what money

was won hardly paid for the risks of the winning. There must be a new

departure, or buccaneering would cease to exist.

Then arose one who showed the buccaneers a new way to squeeze money out

of the Spaniards. This man was an Englishman--Lewis Scot.

The stoppage of commerce on the Spanish Main had naturally tended to

accumulate all the wealth gathered and produced into the chief fortified

cities and towns of the West Indies. As there no longer existed prizes

upon the sea, they must be gained upon the land, if they were to be

gained at all. Lewis Scot was the first to appreciate this fact.

Gathering together a large and powerful body of men as hungry for

plunder and as desperate as himself, he descended upon the town of

Campeche, which he captured and sacked, stripping it of everything that

could possibly be carried away.

When the town was cleared to the bare walls Scot threatened to set the

torch to every house in the place if it was not ransomed by a large sum

of money which he demanded. With this booty he set sail for Tortuga,

where he arrived safely--and the problem was solved.

After him came one Mansvelt, a buccaneer of lesser note, who first made

a descent upon the isle of Saint Catharine, now Old Providence, which he

took, and, with this as a base, made an unsuccessful descent upon Neuva

Granada and Cartagena. His name might not have been handed down to us

along with others of greater fame had he not been the master of that

most apt of pupils, the great Captain Henry Morgan, most famous of

all the buccaneers, one time governor of Jamaica, and knighted by King

Charles II.

After Mansvelt followed the bold John Davis, native of Jamaica, where he

sucked in the lust of piracy with his mother's milk. With only fourscore

men, he swooped down upon the great city of Nicaragua in the darkness of

the night, silenced the sentry with the thrust of a knife, and then

fell to pillaging the churches and houses "without any respect or

veneration."

Of course it was but a short time until the whole town was in an uproar

of alarm, and there was nothing left for the little handful of men to do

but to make the best of their way to their boats. They were in the town

but a short time, but in that time they were able to gather together and

to carry away money and jewels to the value of fifty thousand pieces of

eight, besides dragging off with them a dozen or more notable prisoners,

whom they held for ransom.

And now one appeared upon the scene who reached a far greater height

than any had arisen to before. This was Francois l'Olonoise, who

sacked the great city of Maracaibo and the town of Gibraltar. Cold,

unimpassioned, pitiless, his sluggish blood was never moved by one

single pulse of human warmth, his icy heart was never touched by one ray

of mercy or one spark of pity for the hapless wretches who chanced to

fall into his bloody hands.

Against him the governor of Havana sent out a great war vessel, and with

it a negro executioner, so that there might be no inconvenient delays of

law after the pirates had been captured. But l'Olonoise did not wait for

the coming of the war vessel; he went out to meet it, and he found it

where it lay riding at anchor in the mouth of the river Estra. At the

dawn of the morning he made his attack sharp, unexpected, decisive. In a

little while the Spaniards were forced below the hatches, and the vessel

was taken. Then came the end. One by one the poor shrieking wretches

were dragged up from below, and one by one they were butchered in cold

blood, while l'Olonoise stood upon the poop deck and looked coldly down

upon what was being done. Among the rest the negro was dragged upon the

deck. He begged and implored that his life might be spared, promising to

tell all that might be asked of him. L'Olonoise questioned him, and when

he had squeezed him dry, waved his hand coldly, and the poor black went

with the rest. Only one man was spared; him he sent to the governor of

Havana with a message that henceforth he would give no quarter to any

Spaniard whom he might meet in arms--a message which was not an empty

threat.

The rise of l'Olonoise was by no means rapid. He worked his way up by

dint of hard labor and through much ill fortune. But by and by, after

many reverses, the tide turned, and carried him with it from one success

to another, without let or stay, to the bitter end.

Cruising off Maracaibo, he captured a rich prize laden with a vast

amount of plate and ready money, and there conceived the design of

descending upon the powerful town of Maracaibo itself. Without loss of

time he gathered together five hundred picked scoundrels from Tortuga,

and taking with him one Michael de Basco as land captain, and two

hundred more buccaneers whom he commanded, down he came into the Gulf of

Venezuela and upon the doomed city like a blast of the plague. Leaving

their vessels, the buccaneers made a land attack upon the fort that

stood at the mouth of the inlet that led into Lake Maracaibo and guarded

the city.

The Spaniards held out well, and fought with all the might that

Spaniards possess; but after a fight of three hours all was given up and

the garrison fled, spreading terror and confusion before them. As

many of the inhabitants of the city as could do so escaped in boats to

Gibraltar, which lies to the southward, on the shores of Lake Maracaibo,

at the distance of some forty leagues or more.

Then the pirates marched into the town, and what followed may be

conceived. It was a holocaust of lust, of passion, and of blood such as

even the Spanish West Indies had never seen before. Houses and churches

were sacked until nothing was left but the bare walls; men and women

were tortured to compel them to disclose where more treasure lay hidden.

Then, having wrenched all that they could from Maracaibo, they

entered the lake and descended upon Gibraltar, where the rest of the

panic-stricken inhabitants were huddled together in a blind terror.

The governor of Merida, a brave soldier who had served his king in

Flanders, had gathered together a troop of eight hundred men, had

fortified the town, and now lay in wait for the coming of the pirates.

The pirates came all in good time, and then, in spite of the brave

defense, Gibraltar also fell. Then followed a repetition of the scenes

that had been enacted in Maracaibo for the past fifteen days, only here

they remained for four horrible weeks, extorting money--money! ever

money!--from the poor poverty-stricken, pest-ridden souls crowded into

that fever hole of a town.

Then they left, but before they went they demanded still more money--ten

thousand pieces of eight--as a ransom for the town, which otherwise

should be given to the flames. There was some hesitation on the part of

the Spaniards, some disposition to haggle, but there was no hesitation

on the part of l'Olonoise. The torch WAS set to the town as he had

promised, whereupon the money was promptly paid, and the pirates were

piteously begged to help quench the spreading flames. This they were

pleased to do, but in spite of all their efforts nearly half of the town

was consumed.

After that they returned to Maracaibo again, where they demanded a

ransom of thirty thousand pieces of eight for the city. There was no

haggling here, thanks to the fate of Gibraltar; only it was utterly

impossible to raise that much money in all of the poverty-stricken

region. But at last the matter was compromised, and the town was

redeemed for twenty thousand pieces of eight and five hundred head of

cattle, and tortured Maracaibo was quit of them.

In the Ile de la Vache the buccaneers shared among themselves two

hundred and sixty thousand pieces of eight, besides jewels and bales of

silk and linen and miscellaneous plunder to a vast amount.

Such was the one great deed of l'Olonoise; from that time his star

steadily declined--for even nature seemed fighting against such a

monster--until at last he died a miserable, nameless death at the hands

of an unknown tribe of Indians upon the Isthmus of Darien.

And now we come to the greatest of all the buccaneers, he who stands

pre-eminent among them, and whose name even to this day is a charm

to call up his deeds of daring, his dauntless courage, his truculent

cruelty, and his insatiate and unappeasable lust for gold--Capt. Henry

Morgan, the bold Welshman, who brought buccaneering to the height and

flower of its glory.

Having sold himself, after the manner of the times, for his passage

across the seas, he worked out his time of servitude at the Barbados. As

soon as he had regained his liberty he entered upon the trade of piracy,

wherein he soon reached a position of considerable prominence. He was

associated with Mansvelt at the time of the latter's descent upon

Saint Catharine's Isle, the importance of which spot, as a center of

operations against the neighboring coasts, Morgan never lost sight of.

The first attempt that Capt. Henry Morgan ever made against any town

in the Spanish Indies was the bold descent upon the city of Puerto del

Principe in the island of Cuba, with a mere handful of men. It was

a deed the boldness of which has never been outdone by any of a like

nature--not even the famous attack upon Panama itself. Thence they

returned to their boats in the very face of the whole island of Cuba,

aroused and determined upon their extermination. Not only did they make

good their escape, but they brought away with them a vast amount of

plunder, computed at three hundred thousand pieces of eight, besides

five hundred head of cattle and many prisoners held for ransom.

But when the division of all this wealth came to be made, lo! there were

only fifty thousand pieces of eight to be found. What had become of the

rest no man could tell but Capt. Henry Morgan himself. Honesty among

thieves was never an axiom with him.

Rude, truculent, and dishonest as Captain Morgan was, he seems to have

had a wonderful power of persuading the wild buccaneers under him to

submit everything to his judgment, and to rely entirely upon his word.

In spite of the vast sum of money that he had very evidently made away

with, recruits poured in upon him, until his band was larger and better

equipped than ever.

And now it was determined that the plunder harvest was ripe at Porto

Bello, and that city's doom was sealed. The town was defended by two

strong castles thoroughly manned, and officered by as gallant a soldier

as ever carried Toledo steel at his side. But strong castles and gallant

soldiers weighed not a barleycorn with the buccaneers when their blood

was stirred by the lust of gold.

Landing at Puerto Naso, a town some ten leagues westward of Porto Bello,

they marched to the latter town, and coming before the castle, boldly

demanded its surrender. It was refused, whereupon Morgan threatened that

no quarter should be given. Still surrender was refused; and then the

castle was attacked, and after a bitter struggle was captured. Morgan

was as good as his word: every man in the castle was shut in the guard

room, the match was set to the powder magazine, and soldiers, castle,

and all were blown into the air, while through all the smoke and the

dust the buccaneers poured into the town. Still the governor held out in

the other castle, and might have made good his defense, but that he was

betrayed by the soldiers under him. Into the castle poured the howling

buccaneers. But still the governor fought on, with his wife and daughter

clinging to his knees and beseeching him to surrender, and the blood

from his wounded forehead trickling down over his white collar, until a

merciful bullet put an end to the vain struggle.

Here were enacted the old scenes. Everything plundered that could be

taken, and then a ransom set upon the town itself.

This time an honest, or an apparently honest, division was made of

the spoils, which amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of

eight, besides merchandise and jewels.

The next towns to suffer were poor Maracaibo and Gibraltar, now just

beginning to recover from the desolation wrought by l'Olonoise. Once

more both towns were plundered of every bale of merchandise and of every

plaster, and once more both were ransomed until everything was squeezed

from the wretched inhabitants.

Here affairs were like to have taken a turn, for when Captain Morgan

came up from Gibraltar he found three great men-of-war lying in the

entrance to the lake awaiting his coming. Seeing that he was hemmed in

the narrow sheet of water, Captain Morgan was inclined to compromise

matters, even offering to relinquish all the plunder he had gained if

he were allowed to depart in peace. But no; the Spanish admiral would

hear nothing of this. Having the pirates, as he thought, securely in

his grasp, he would relinquish nothing, but would sweep them from the

face of the sea once and forever.

That was an unlucky determination for the Spaniards to reach, for

instead of paralyzing the pirates with fear, as he expected it would do,

it simply turned their mad courage into as mad desperation.

A great vessel that they had taken with the town of Maracaibo was

converted into a fire ship, manned with logs of wood in montera caps and

sailor jackets, and filled with brimstone, pitch, and palm leaves soaked

in oil. Then out of the lake the pirates sailed to meet the Spaniards,

the fire ship leading the way, and bearing down directly upon the

admiral's vessel. At the helm stood volunteers, the most desperate and

the bravest of all the pirate gang, and at the ports stood the logs of

wood in montera caps. So they came up with the admiral, and grappled

with his ship in spite of the thunder of all his great guns, and then

the Spaniard saw, all too late, what his opponent really was.

He tried to swing loose, but clouds of smoke and almost instantly a mass

of roaring flames enveloped both vessels, and the admiral was lost. The

second vessel, not wishing to wait for the coming of the pirates, bore

down upon the fort, under the guns of which the cowardly crew sank

her, and made the best of their way to the shore. The third vessel, not

having an opportunity to escape, was taken by the pirates without the

slightest resistance, and the passage from the lake was cleared. So

the buccaneers sailed away, leaving Maracaibo and Gibraltar prostrate a

second time.

And now Captain Morgan determined to undertake another venture, the like

of which had never been equaled in all of the annals of buccaneering.

This was nothing less than the descent upon and the capture of Panama,

which was, next to Cartagena, perhaps, the most powerful and the most

strongly fortified city in the West Indies.

In preparation for this venture he obtained letters of marque from the

governor of Jamaica, by virtue of which elastic commission he began

immediately to gather around him all material necessary for the

undertaking.

When it became known abroad that the great Captain Morgan was about

undertaking an adventure that was to eclipse all that was ever done

before, great numbers came flocking to his standard, until he had

gathered together an army of two thousand or more desperadoes and

pirates wherewith to prosecute his adventure, albeit the venture itself

was kept a total secret from everyone. Port Couillon, in the island of

Hispaniola, over against the Ile de la Vache, was the place of muster,

and thither the motley band gathered from all quarters. Provisions had

been plundered from the mainland wherever they could be obtained, and by

the 24th of October, 1670 (O. S.), everything was in readiness.

The island of Saint Catharine, as it may be remembered, was at one time

captured by Mansvelt, Morgan's master in his trade of piracy. It had

been retaken by the Spaniards, and was now thoroughly fortified by them.

Almost the first attempt that Morgan had made as a master pirate was the

retaking of Saint Catharine's Isle. In that undertaking he had failed;

but now, as there was an absolute need of some such place as a base

of operations, he determined that the place must be taken. And it was

taken.

The Spaniards, during the time of their possession, had fortified it

most thoroughly and completely, and had the governor thereof been as

brave as he who met his death in the castle of Porto Bello, there might

have been a different tale to tell. As it was, he surrendered it in a

most cowardly fashion, merely stipulating that there should be a sham

attack by the buccaneers, whereby his credit might be saved. And so

Saint Catharine was won.

The next step to be taken was the capture of the castle of Chagres,

which guarded the mouth of the river of that name, up which river the

buccaneers would be compelled to transport their troops and provisions

for the attack upon the city of Panama. This adventure was undertaken by

four hundred picked men under command of Captain Morgan himself.

The castle of Chagres, known as San Lorenzo by the Spaniards, stood upon

the top of an abrupt rock at the mouth of the river, and was one of

the strongest fortresses for its size in all of the West Indies. This

stronghold Morgan must have if he ever hoped to win Panama.

The attack of the castle and the defense of it were equally fierce,

bloody, and desperate. Again and again the buccaneers assaulted, and

again and again they were beaten back. So the morning came, and it

seemed as though the pirates had been baffled this time. But just at

this juncture the thatch of palm leaves on the roofs of some of the

buildings inside the fortifications took fire, a conflagration followed,

which caused the explosion of one of the magazines, and in the

paralysis of terror that followed, the pirates forced their way into

the fortifications, and the castle was won. Most of the Spaniards

flung themselves from the castle walls into the river or upon the rocks

beneath, preferring death to capture and possible torture; many who

were left were put to the sword, and some few were spared and held as

prisoners.

So fell the castle of Chagres, and nothing now lay between the

buccaneers and the city of Panama but the intervening and trackless

forests.

And now the name of the town whose doom was sealed was no secret.

Up the river of Chagres went Capt. Henry Morgan and twelve hundred men,

packed closely in their canoes; they never stopped, saving now and then

to rest their stiffened legs, until they had come to a place known as

Cruz de San Juan Gallego, where they were compelled to leave their boats

on account of the shallowness of the water.

Leaving a guard of one hundred and sixty men to protect their boats as

a place of refuge in case they should be worsted before Panama, they

turned and plunged into the wilderness before them.

There a more powerful foe awaited them than a host of Spaniards

with match, powder, and lead--starvation. They met but little or no

opposition in their progress; but wherever they turned they found every

fiber of meat, every grain of maize, every ounce of bread or meal, swept

away or destroyed utterly before them. Even when the buccaneers had

successfully overcome an ambuscade or an attack, and had sent the

Spaniards flying, the fugitives took the time to strip their dead

comrades of every grain of food in their leathern sacks, leaving nothing

but the empty bags.

Says the narrator of these events, himself one of the expedition, "They

afterward fell to eating those leathern bags, as affording something to

the ferment of their stomachs."

Ten days they struggled through this bitter privation, doggedly forcing

their way onward, faint with hunger and haggard with weakness and fever.

Then, from the high hill and over the tops of the forest trees, they saw

the steeples of Panama, and nothing remained between them and their goal

but the fighting of four Spaniards to every one of them--a simple thing

which they had done over and over again.

Down they poured upon Panama, and out came the Spaniards to meet them;

four hundred horse, two thousand five hundred foot, and two thousand

wild bulls which had been herded together to be driven over the

buccaneers so that their ranks might be disordered and broken. The

buccaneers were only eight hundred strong; the others had either

fallen in battle or had dropped along the dreary pathway through the

wilderness; but in the space of two hours the Spaniards were flying

madly over the plain, minus six hundred who lay dead or dying behind

them.

As for the bulls, as many of them as were shot served as food there and

then for the half-famished pirates, for the buccaneers were never more

at home than in the slaughter of cattle.

Then they marched toward the city. Three hours' more fighting and

they were in the streets, howling, yelling, plundering, gorging,

dram-drinking, and giving full vent to all the vile and nameless lusts

that burned in their hearts like a hell of fire. And now followed the

usual sequence of events--rapine, cruelty, and extortion; only this time

there was no town to ransom, for Morgan had given orders that it should

be destroyed. The torch was set to it, and Panama, one of the greatest

cities in the New World, was swept from the face of the earth. Why the

deed was done, no man but Morgan could tell. Perhaps it was that all

the secret hiding places for treasure might be brought to light; but

whatever the reason was, it lay hidden in the breast of the great

buccaneer himself. For three weeks Morgan and his men abode in this

dreadful place; and they marched away with ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE

beasts of burden loaded with treasures of gold and silver and jewels,

besides great quantities of merchandise, and six hundred prisoners held

for ransom.

Whatever became of all that vast wealth, and what it amounted to, no

man but Morgan ever knew, for when a division was made it was found that

there was only TWO HUNDRED PIECES OF EIGHT TO EACH MAN.

When this dividend was declared a howl of execration went up, under

which even Capt. Henry Morgan quailed. At night he and four other

commanders slipped their cables and ran out to sea, and it was said that

these divided the greater part of the booty among themselves. But the

wealth plundered at Panama could hardly have fallen short of a million

and a half of dollars. Computing it at this reasonable figure, the

various prizes won by Henry Morgan in the West Indies would stand as

follows: Panama, $1,500,000; Porto Bello, $800,000; Puerto del

Principe, $700,000; Maracaibo and Gibraltar, $400,000; various piracies,

$250,000--making a grand total of $3,650,000 as the vast harvest of

plunder. With this fabulous wealth, wrenched from the Spaniards by

means of the rack and the cord, and pilfered from his companions by the

meanest of thieving, Capt. Henry Morgan retired from business, honored

of all, rendered famous by his deeds, knighted by the good King Charles

II, and finally appointed governor of the rich island of Jamaica.

Other buccaneers followed him. Campeche was taken and sacked, and even

Cartagena itself fell; but with Henry Morgan culminated the glory of

the buccaneers, and from that time they declined in power and wealth and

wickedness until they were finally swept away.

The buccaneers became bolder and bolder. In fact, so daring were their

crimes that the home governments, stirred at last by these outrageous

barbarities, seriously undertook the suppression of the freebooters,

lopping and trimming the main trunk until its members were scattered

hither and thither, and it was thought that the organization was

exterminated. But, so far from being exterminated, the individual

members were merely scattered north, south, east, and west, each forming

a nucleus around which gathered and clustered the very worst of the

offscouring of humanity.

The result was that when the seventeenth century was fairly packed away

with its lavender in the store chest of the past, a score or more

bands of freebooters were cruising along the Atlantic seaboard in armed

vessels, each with a black flag with its skull and crossbones at the

fore, and with a nondescript crew made up of the tags and remnants of

civilized and semicivilized humanity (white, black, red, and yellow),

known generally as marooners, swarming upon the decks below.

Nor did these offshoots from the old buccaneer stem confine their

depredations to the American seas alone; the East Indies and the African

coast also witnessed their doings, and suffered from them, and even the

Bay of Biscay had good cause to remember more than one visit from them.

Worthy sprigs from so worthy a stem improved variously upon the

parent methods; for while the buccaneers were content to prey upon the

Spaniards alone, the marooners reaped the harvest from the commerce of

all nations.

So up and down the Atlantic seaboard they cruised, and for the fifty

years that marooning was in the flower of its glory it was a sorrowful

time for the coasters of New England, the middle provinces, and the

Virginias, sailing to the West Indies with their cargoes of salt fish,

grain, and tobacco. Trading became almost as dangerous as privateering,

and sea captains were chosen as much for their knowledge of the

flintlock and the cutlass as for their seamanship.

As by far the largest part of the trading in American waters was

conducted by these Yankee coasters, so by far the heaviest blows, and

those most keenly felt, fell upon them. Bulletin after bulletin came

to port with its doleful tale of this vessel burned or that vessel

scuttled, this one held by the pirates for their own use or that one

stripped of its goods and sent into port as empty as an eggshell from

which the yolk had been sucked. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and

Charleston suffered alike, and worthy ship owners had to leave off

counting their losses upon their fingers and take to the slate to keep

the dismal record.

"Maroon--to put ashore on a desert isle, as a sailor, under pretense of

having committed some great crime." Thus our good Noah Webster gives us

the dry bones, the anatomy, upon which the imagination may construct a

specimen to suit itself.

It is thence that the marooners took their name, for marooning was

one of their most effective instruments of punishment or revenge. If a

pirate broke one of the many rules which governed the particular band

to which he belonged, he was marooned; did a captain defend his ship to

such a degree as to be unpleasant to the pirates attacking it, he

was marooned; even the pirate captain himself, if he displeased his

followers by the severity of his rule, was in danger of having the same

punishment visited upon him which he had perhaps more than once visited

upon another.

The process of marooning was as simple as terrible. A suitable place was

chosen (generally some desert isle as far removed as possible from the

pathway of commerce), and the condemned man was rowed from the ship to

the beach. Out he was bundled upon the sand spit; a gun, a half dozen

bullets, a few pinches of powder, and a bottle of water were chucked

ashore after him, and away rowed the boat's crew back to the ship,

leaving the poor wretch alone to rave away his life in madness, or to

sit sunken in his gloomy despair till death mercifully released him from

torment. It rarely if ever happened that anything was known of him after

having been marooned. A boat's crew from some vessel, sailing by chance

that way, might perhaps find a few chalky bones bleaching upon the white

sand in the garish glare of the sunlight, but that was all. And such

were marooners.

By far the largest number of pirate captains were Englishmen, for,

from the days of good Queen Bess, English sea captains seemed to have

a natural turn for any species of venture that had a smack of piracy

in it, and from the great Admiral Drake of the old, old days, to the

truculent Morgan of buccaneering times, the Englishman did the boldest

and wickedest deeds, and wrought the most damage.

First of all upon the list of pirates stands the bold Captain Avary, one

of the institutors of marooning. Him we see but dimly, half hidden by

the glamouring mists of legends and tradition. Others who came afterward

outstripped him far enough in their doings, but he stands pre-eminent as

the first of marooners of whom actual history has been handed down to us

of the present day.

When the English, Dutch, and Spanish entered into an alliance to

suppress buccaneering in the West Indies, certain worthies of Bristol,

in old England, fitted out two vessels to assist in this laudable

project; for doubtless Bristol trade suffered smartly from the Morgans

and the l'Olonoises of that old time. One of these vessels was named the

Duke, of which a certain Captain Gibson was the commander and Avary the

mate.

Away they sailed to the West Indies, and there Avary became impressed by

the advantages offered by piracy, and by the amount of good things that

were to be gained by very little striving.

One night the captain (who was one of those fellows mightily addicted

to punch), instead of going ashore to saturate himself with rum at the

ordinary, had his drink in his cabin in private. While he lay snoring

away the effects of his rum in the cabin, Avary and a few other

conspirators heaved the anchor very leisurely, and sailed out of the

harbor of Corunna, and through the midst of the allied fleet riding at

anchor in the darkness.

By and by, when the morning came, the captain was awakened by the

pitching and tossing of the vessel, the rattle and clatter of the tackle

overhead, and the noise of footsteps passing and repassing hither and

thither across the deck. Perhaps he lay for a while turning the matter

over and over in his muddled head, but he presently rang the bell, and

Avary and another fellow answered the call.

"What's the matter?" bawls the captain from his berth.

"Nothing," says Avary, coolly.

"Something's the matter with the ship," says the captain. "Does she

drive? What weather is it?"

"Oh no," says Avary; "we are at sea."

"At sea?"

"Come, come!" says Avary: "I'll tell you; you must know that I'm the

captain of the ship now, and you must be packing from this here cabin.

We are bound to Madagascar, to make all of our fortunes, and if you're a

mind to ship for the cruise, why, we'll be glad to have you, if you will

be sober and mind your own business; if not, there is a boat alongside,

and I'll have you set ashore."

The poor half-tipsy captain had no relish to go a-pirating under the

command of his backsliding mate, so out of the ship he bundled, and away

he rowed with four or five of the crew, who, like him, refused to join

with their jolly shipmates.

The rest of them sailed away to the East Indies, to try their fortunes

in those waters, for our Captain Avary was of a high spirit, and had

no mind to fritter away his time in the West Indies squeezed dry by

buccaneer Morgan and others of lesser note. No, he would make a bold

stroke for it at once, and make or lose at a single cast.

On his way he picked up a couple of like kind with himself--two sloops

off Madagascar. With these he sailed away to the coast of India, and for

a time his name was lost in the obscurity of uncertain history. But

only for a time, for suddenly it flamed out in a blaze of glory. It was

reported that a vessel belonging to the Great Mogul, laden with treasure

and bearing the monarch's own daughter upon a holy pilgrimage to Mecca

(they being Mohammedans), had fallen in with the pirates, and after a

short resistance had been surrendered, with the damsel, her court, and

all the diamonds, pearls, silk, silver, and gold aboard. It was rumored

that the Great Mogul, raging at the insult offered to him through his

own flesh and blood, had threatened to wipe out of existence the few

English settlements scattered along the coast; whereat the honorable

East India Company was in a pretty state of fuss and feathers. Rumor,

growing with the telling, has it that Avary is going to marry the

Indian princess, willy-nilly, and will turn rajah, and eschew piracy as

indecent. As for the treasure itself, there was no end to the extent to

which it grew as it passed from mouth to mouth.

Cracking the nut of romance and exaggeration, we come to the kernel of

the story--that Avary did fall in with an Indian vessel laden with great

treasure (and possibly with the Mogul's daughter), which he captured,

and thereby gained a vast prize.

Having concluded that he had earned enough money by the trade he had

undertaken, he determined to retire and live decently for the rest of

his life upon what he already had. As a step toward this object, he set

about cheating his Madagascar partners out of their share of what had

been gained. He persuaded them to store all the treasure in his vessel,

it being the largest of the three; and so, having it safely in hand, he

altered the course of his ship one fine night, and when the morning

came the Madagascar sloops found themselves floating upon a wide ocean

without a farthing of the treasure for which they had fought so hard,

and for which they might whistle for all the good it would do them.

At first Avary had a great part of a mind to settle at Boston, in

Massachusetts, and had that little town been one whit less bleak and

forbidding, it might have had the honor of being the home of this famous

man. As it was, he did not like the looks of it, so he sailed away to

the eastward, to Ireland, where he settled himself at Biddeford, in

hopes of an easy life of it for the rest of his days.

Here he found himself the possessor of a plentiful stock of jewels, such

as pearls, diamonds, rubies, etc., but with hardly a score of honest

farthings to jingle in his breeches pocket. He consulted with a certain

merchant of Bristol concerning the disposal of the stones--a fellow

not much more cleanly in his habits of honesty than Avary himself.

This worthy undertook to act as Avary's broker. Off he marched with

the jewels, and that was the last that the pirate saw of his Indian

treasure.

Perhaps the most famous of all the piratical names to American ears are

those of Capt. Robert Kidd and Capt. Edward Teach, or "Blackbeard."

Nothing will be ventured in regard to Kidd at this time, nor in regard

to the pros and cons as to whether he really was or was not a pirate,

after all. For many years he was the very hero of heroes of piratical

fame, there was hardly a creek or stream or point of land along our

coast, hardly a convenient bit of good sandy beach, or hump of rock, or

water-washed cave, where fabulous treasures were not said to have been

hidden by this worthy marooner. Now we are assured that he never was

a pirate, and never did bury any treasure, excepting a certain chest,

which he was compelled to hide upon Gardiner's Island--and perhaps even

it was mythical.

So poor Kidd must be relegated to the dull ranks of simply respectable

people, or semirespectable people at best.

But with "Blackbeard" it is different, for in him we have a real,

ranting, raging, roaring pirate per se--one who really did bury

treasure, who made more than one captain walk the plank, and who

committed more private murders than he could number on the fingers of

both hands; one who fills, and will continue to fill, the place to which

he has been assigned for generations, and who may be depended upon to

hold his place in the confidence of others for generations to come.

Captain Teach was a Bristol man born, and learned his trade on board of

sundry privateers in the East Indies during the old French war--that of

1702--and a better apprenticeship could no man serve. At last, somewhere

about the latter part of the year 1716, a privateering captain, one

Benjamin Hornigold, raised him from the ranks and put him in command of

a sloop--a lately captured prize and Blackbeard's fortune was made. It

was a very slight step, and but the change of a few letters, to convert

"privateer" into "pirate," and it was a very short time before Teach

made that change. Not only did he make it himself, but he persuaded his

old captain to join with him.

And now fairly began that series of bold and lawless depredations which

have made his name so justly famous, and which placed him among the very

greatest of marooning freebooters.

"Our hero," says the old historian who sings of the arms and bravery of

this great man--"our hero assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that

large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole

face, and frightened America more than any comet that appeared there

in a long time. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons into small

tails, after the manner of our Ramillies wig, and turn them about his

ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders, with three

brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like bandoleers; he stuck lighted

matches under his hat, which, appearing on each side of his face, and

his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a

figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a Fury from hell to look

more frightful."

The night before the day of the action in which he was killed he sat up

drinking with some congenial company until broad daylight. One of them

asked him if his poor young wife knew where his treasure was hidden.

"No," says Blackbeard; "nobody but the devil and I knows where it is,

and the longest liver shall have all."

As for that poor young wife of his, the life that he and his rum-crazy

shipmates led her was too terrible to be told.

For a time Blackbeard worked at his trade down on the Spanish Main,

gathering, in the few years he was there, a very neat little fortune in

the booty captured from sundry vessels; but by and by he took it into

his head to try his luck along the coast of the Carolinas; so off

he sailed to the northward, with quite a respectable little fleet,

consisting of his own vessel and two captured sloops. From that time he

was actively engaged in the making of American history in his small way.

He first appeared off the bar of Charleston Harbor, to the no small

excitement of the worthy town of that ilk, and there he lay for five

or six days, blockading the port, and stopping incoming and outgoing

vessels at his pleasure, so that, for the time, the commerce of the

province was entirely paralyzed. All the vessels so stopped he held as

prizes, and all the crews and passengers (among the latter of whom was

more than one provincial worthy of the day) he retained as though they

were prisoners of war.

And it was a mightily awkward thing for the good folk of Charleston to

behold day after day a black flag with its white skull and crossbones

fluttering at the fore of the pirate captain's craft, over across the

level stretch of green salt marshes; and it was mightily unpleasant,

too, to know that this or that prominent citizen was crowded down with

the other prisoners under the hatches.

One morning Captain Blackbeard finds that his stock of medicine is low.

"Tut!" says he, "we'll turn no hair gray for that." So up he calls the

bold Captain Richards, the commander of his consort the Revenge sloop,

and bids him take Mr. Marks (one of his prisoners), and go up to

Charleston and get the medicine. There was no task that suited our

Captain Richards better than that. Up to the town he rowed, as bold as

brass. "Look ye," says he to the governor, rolling his quid of tobacco

from one cheek to another--"look ye, we're after this and that, and if

we don't get it, why, I'll tell you plain, we'll burn them bloody crafts

of yours that we've took over yonder, and cut the weasand of every

clodpoll aboard of 'em."

There was no answering an argument of such force as this, and the

worshipful governor and the good folk of Charleston knew very well

that Blackbeard and his crew were the men to do as they promised. So

Blackbeard got his medicine, and though it cost the colony two thousand

dollars, it was worth that much to the town to be quit of him.

They say that while Captain Richards was conducting his negotiations

with the governor his boat's crew were stumping around the streets of

the town, having a glorious time of it, while the good folk glowered

wrathfully at them, but dared venture nothing in speech or act.

Having gained a booty of between seven and eight thousand dollars from

the prizes captured, the pirates sailed away from Charleston Harbor to

the coast of North Carolina.

And now Blackbeard, following the plan adopted by so many others of his

kind, began to cudgel his brains for means to cheat his fellows out of

their share of the booty.

At Topsail Inlet he ran his own vessel aground, as though by accident.

Hands, the captain of one of the consorts, pretending to come to his

assistance, also grounded HIS sloop. Nothing now remained but for those

who were able to get away in the other craft, which was all that was

now left of the little fleet. This did Blackbeard with some forty of his

favorites. The rest of the pirates were left on the sand spit to await

the return of their companions--which never happened.

As for Blackbeard and those who were with him, they were that much

richer, for there were so many the fewer pockets to fill. But even yet

there were too many to share the booty, in Blackbeard's opinion, and so

he marooned a parcel more of them--some eighteen or twenty--upon a naked

sand bank, from which they were afterward mercifully rescued by another

freebooter who chanced that way--a certain Major Stede Bonnet, of whom

more will presently be said. About that time a royal proclamation had

been issued offering pardon to all pirates in arms who would surrender

to the king's authority before a given date. So up goes Master

Blackbeard to the Governor of North Carolina and makes his neck safe by

surrendering to the proclamation--albeit he kept tight clutch upon what

he had already gained.

And now we find our bold Captain Blackbeard established in the good

province of North Carolina, where he and His Worship the Governor struck

up a vast deal of intimacy, as profitable as it was pleasant. There is

something very pretty in the thought of the bold sea rover giving up his

adventurous life (excepting now and then an excursion against a trader

or two in the neighboring sound, when the need of money was pressing);

settling quietly down into the routine of old colonial life, with a

young wife of sixteen at his side, who made the fourteenth that he had

in various ports here and there in the world.

Becoming tired of an inactive life, Blackbeard afterward resumed his

piratical career. He cruised around in the rivers and inlets and sounds

of North Carolina for a while, ruling the roost and with never a one to

say him nay, until there was no bearing with such a pest any longer. So

they sent a deputation up to the Governor of Virginia asking if he would

be pleased to help them in their trouble.

There were two men-of-war lying at Kicquetan, in the James River, at the

time. To them the Governor of Virginia applies, and plucky Lieutenant

Maynard, of the Pearl, was sent to Ocracoke Inlet to fight this pirate

who ruled it down there so like the cock of a walk. There he found

Blackbeard waiting for him, and as ready for a fight as ever the

lieutenant himself could be. Fight they did, and while it lasted it

was as pretty a piece of business of its kind as one could wish to

see. Blackbeard drained a glass of grog, wishing the lieutenant luck

in getting aboard of him, fired a broadside, blew some twenty of the

lieutenant's men out of existence, and totally crippled one of his

little sloops for the balance of the fight. After that, and under cover

of the smoke, the pirate and his men boarded the other sloop, and then

followed a fine old-fashioned hand-to-hand conflict betwixt him and the

lieutenant. First they fired their pistols, and then they took to it

with cutlasses--right, left, up and down, cut and slash--until the

lieutenant's cutlass broke short off at the hilt. Then Blackbeard would

have finished him off handsomely, only up steps one of the lieutenant's

men and fetches him a great slash over the neck, so that the lieutenant

came off with no more hurt than a cut across the knuckles.

At the very first discharge of their pistols Blackbeard had been shot

through the body, but he was not for giving up for that--not he. As said

before, he was of the true roaring, raging breed of pirates, and stood

up to it until he received twenty more cutlass cuts and five additional

shots, and then fell dead while trying to fire off an empty pistol.

After that the lieutenant cut off the pirate's head, and sailed away in

triumph, with the bloody trophy nailed to the bow of his battered sloop.

Those of Blackbeard's men who were not killed were carried off to

Virginia, and all of them tried and hanged but one or two, their names,

no doubt, still standing in a row in the provincial records.

But did Blackbeard really bury treasures, as tradition says, along the

sandy shores he haunted?

Master Clement Downing, midshipman aboard the Salisbury, wrote a book

after his return from the cruise to Madagascar, whither the Salisbury

had been ordered, to put an end to the piracy with which those waters

were infested. He says:

"At Guzarat I met with a Portuguese named Anthony de Sylvestre; he came

with two other Portuguese and two Dutchmen to take on in the Moor's

service, as many Europeans do. This Anthony told me he had been among

the pirates, and that he belonged to one of the sloops in Virginia when

Blackbeard was taken. He informed me that if it should be my lot ever

to go to York River or Maryland, near an island called Mulberry Island,

provided we went on shore at the watering place, where the shipping used

most commonly to ride, that there the pirates had buried considerable

sums of money in great chests well clamped with iron plates. As to my

part, I never was that way, nor much acquainted with any that ever used

those parts; but I have made inquiry, and am informed that there is such

a place as Mulberry Island. If any person who uses those parts should

think it worth while to dig a little way at the upper end of a small

cove, where it is convenient to land, he would soon find whether the

information I had was well grounded. Fronting the landing place are five

trees, among which, he said, the money was hid. I cannot warrant the

truth of this account; but if I was ever to go there, I should find some

means or other to satisfy myself, as it could not be a great deal out

of my way. If anybody should obtain the benefit of this account, if it

please God that they ever come to England, 'tis hoped they will remember

whence they had this information."

Another worthy was Capt. Edward Low, who learned his trade of

sail-making at good old Boston town, and piracy at Honduras. No one

stood higher in the trade than he, and no one mounted to more lofty

altitudes of bloodthirsty and unscrupulous wickedness. 'Tis strange that

so little has been written and sung of this man of might, for he was as

worthy of story and of song as was Blackbeard.

It was under a Yankee captain that he made his first cruise--down to

Honduras, for a cargo of logwood, which in those times was no better

than stolen from the Spanish folk.

One day, lying off the shore, in the Gulf of Honduras, comes Master Low

and the crew of the whaleboat rowing across from the beach, where they

had been all morning chopping logwood.

"What are you after?" says the captain, for they were coming back with

nothing but themselves in the boat.

"We're after our dinner," says Low, as spokesman of the party.

"You'll have no dinner," says the captain, "until you fetch off another

load."

"Dinner or no dinner, we'll pay for it," says Low, wherewith he up with

a musket, squinted along the barrel, and pulled the trigger.

Luckily the gun hung fire, and the Yankee captain was spared to steal

logwood a while longer.

All the same, that was no place for Ned Low to make a longer stay, so

off he and his messmates rowed in a whaleboat, captured a brig out at

sea, and turned pirates.

He presently fell in with the notorious Captain Lowther, a fellow after

his own kidney, who put the finishing touches to his education and

taught him what wickedness he did not already know.

And so he became a master pirate, and a famous hand at his craft, and

thereafter forever bore an inveterate hatred of all Yankees because of

the dinner he had lost, and never failed to smite whatever one of

them luck put within his reach. Once he fell in with a ship off South

Carolina--the Amsterdam Merchant, Captain Williamson, commander--a

Yankee craft and a Yankee master. He slit the nose and cropped the ears

of the captain, and then sailed merrily away, feeling the better for

having marred a Yankee.

New York and New England had more than one visit from the doughty

captain, each of which visits they had good cause to remember, for he

made them smart for it.

Along in the year 1722 thirteen vessels were riding at anchor in front

of the good town of Marblehead. Into the harbor sailed a strange craft.

"Who is she?" say the townsfolk, for the coming of a new vessel was no

small matter in those days.

Who the strangers were was not long a matter of doubt. Up goes the black

flag, and the skull and crossbones to the fore.

"'Tis the bloody Low," say one and all; and straightway all was flutter

and commotion, as in a duck pond when a hawk pitches and strikes in the

midst.

It was a glorious thing for our captain, for here were thirteen Yankee

crafts at one and the same time. So he took what he wanted, and then

sailed away, and it was many a day before Marblehead forgot that visit.

Some time after this he and his consort fell foul of an English sloop

of war, the Greyhound, whereby they were so roughly handled that Low was

glad enough to slip away, leaving his consort and her crew behind him,

as a sop to the powers of law and order. And lucky for them if no worse

fate awaited them than to walk the dreadful plank with a bandage around

the blinded eyes and a rope around the elbows. So the consort was taken,

and the crew tried and hanged in chains, and Low sailed off in as pretty

a bit of rage as ever a pirate fell into.

The end of this worthy is lost in the fogs of the past: some say that he

died of a yellow fever down in New Orleans; it was not at the end of a

hempen cord, more's the pity.

Here fittingly with our strictly American pirates should stand Major

Stede Bonnet along with the rest. But in truth he was only a poor

half-and-half fellow of his kind, and even after his hand was fairly

turned to the business he had undertaken, a qualm of conscience would

now and then come across him, and he would make vast promises to

forswear his evil courses.

However, he jogged along in his course of piracy snugly enough until he

fell foul of the gallant Colonel Rhett, off Charleston Harbor, whereupon

his luck and his courage both were suddenly snuffed out with a puff of

powder smoke and a good rattling broadside. Down came the "Black Roger"

with its skull and crossbones from the fore, and Colonel Rhett had the

glory of fetching back as pretty a cargo of scoundrels and cutthroats as

the town ever saw.

After the next assizes they were strung up, all in a row--evil apples

ready for the roasting.

"Ned" England was a fellow of different blood--only he snapped his whip

across the back of society over in the East Indies and along the hot

shores of Hindustan.

The name of Capt. Howel Davis stands high among his fellows. He was the

Ulysses of pirates, the beloved not only of Mercury, but of Minerva.

He it was who hoodwinked the captain of a French ship of double the size

and strength of his own, and fairly cheated him into the surrender of

his craft without the firing of a single pistol or the striking of a

single blow; he it was who sailed boldly into the port of Gambia, on the

coast of Guinea, and under the guns of the castle, proclaiming himself

as a merchant trading for slaves.

The cheat was kept up until the fruit of mischief was ripe for the

picking; then, when the governor and the guards of the castle were

lulled into entire security, and when Davis's band was scattered about

wherever each man could do the most good, it was out pistol, up cutlass,

and death if a finger moved. They tied the soldiers back to back, and

the governor to his own armchair, and then rifled wherever it pleased

them. After that they sailed away, and though they had not made the

fortune they had hoped to glean, it was a good snug round sum that they

shared among them.

Their courage growing high with success, they determined to attempt the

island of Del Principe--a prosperous Portuguese settlement on the

coast. The plan for taking the place was cleverly laid, and would have

succeeded, only that a Portuguese negro among the pirate crew turned

traitor and carried the news ashore to the governor of the fort.

Accordingly, the next day, when Captain Davis came ashore, he found

there a good strong guard drawn up as though to honor his coming. But

after he and those with him were fairly out of their boat, and well away

from the water side, there was a sudden rattle of musketry, a cloud of

smoke, and a dull groan or two. Only one man ran out from under that

pungent cloud, jumped into the boat, and rowed away; and when it lifted,

there lay Captain Davis and his companions all of a heap, like a pile of

old clothes.

Capt. Bartholomew Roberts was the particular and especial pupil

of Davis, and when that worthy met his death so suddenly and so

unexpectedly in the unfortunate manner above narrated, he was chosen

unanimously as the captain of the fleet, and he was a worthy pupil of

a worthy master. Many were the poor fluttering merchant ducks that this

sea hawk swooped upon and struck; and cleanly and cleverly were they

plucked before his savage clutch loosened its hold upon them.

"He made a gallant figure," says the old narrator, "being dressed in a

rich crimson waistcoat and breeches and red feather in his hat, a gold

chain around his neck, with a diamond cross hanging to it, a sword in

his hand, and two pair of pistols hanging at the end of a silk sling

flung over his shoulders according to the fashion of the pyrates."

Thus he appeared in the last engagement which he fought--that with the

Swallow--a royal sloop of war. A gallant fight they made of it, those

bulldog pirates, for, finding themselves caught in a trap betwixt the

man-of-war and the shore, they determined to bear down upon the king's

vessel, fire a slapping broadside into her, and then try to get away,

trusting to luck in the doing, and hoping that their enemy might be

crippled by their fire.

Captain Roberts himself was the first to fall at the return fire of the

Swallow; a grapeshot struck him in the neck, and he fell forward across

the gun near to which he was standing at the time. A certain fellow

named Stevenson, who was at the helm, saw him fall, and thought he was

wounded. At the lifting of the arm the body rolled over upon the deck,

and the man saw that the captain was dead. "Whereupon," says the old

history, "he" [Stevenson] "gushed into tears, and wished that the next

shot might be his portion." After their captain's death the pirate crew

had no stomach for more fighting; the "Black Roger" was struck, and one

and all surrendered to justice and the gallows.

Such is a brief and bald account of the most famous of these pirates.

But they are only a few of a long list of notables, such as Captain

Martel, Capt. Charles Vane (who led the gallant Colonel Rhett, of South

Carolina, such a wild-goose chase in and out among the sluggish creeks

and inlets along the coast), Capt. John Rackam, and Captain Anstis,

Captain Worley, and Evans, and Philips, and others--a score or more of

wild fellows whose very names made ship captains tremble in their shoes

in those good old times.

And such is that black chapter of history of the past--an evil chapter,

lurid with cruelty and suffering, stained with blood and smoke. Yet

it is a written chapter, and it must be read. He who chooses may

read betwixt the lines of history this great truth: Evil itself is an

instrument toward the shaping of good. Therefore the history of evil as

well as the history of good should be read, considered, and digested.