PREFACE
The author of this narrative cannot recall that, in any history of the
famous pirates, he has ever read a detailed and sufficient account
of the life and death of Capt. John Scarfield. Doubtless some data
concerning his death and the destruction of his schooner might be
gathered from the report of Lieutenant Mainwaring, now filed in the
archives of the Navy Department, out beyond such bald and bloodless
narrative the author knows of nothing, unless it be the little chap-book
history published by Isaiah Thomas in Newburyport about the year
1821-22, entitled, "A True History of the Life and Death of Captain Jack
Scarfield." This lack of particularity in the history of one so notable
in his profession it is the design of the present narrative in a measure
to supply, and, if the author has seen fit to cast it in the form of a
fictional story, it is only that it may make more easy reading for those
who see fit to follow the tale from this to its conclusion.
I
ELEAZER COOPER, or Captain Cooper, as was his better-known title in
Philadelphia, was a prominent member of the Society of Friends. He was
an overseer of the meeting and an occasional speaker upon particular
occasions. When at home from one of his many voyages he never failed to
occupy his seat in the meeting both on First Day and Fifth Day, and he
was regarded by his fellow townsmen as a model of business integrity and
of domestic responsibility.
More incidental to this history, however, it is to be narrated that
Captain Cooper was one of those trading skippers who carried their own
merchandise in their own vessels which they sailed themselves, and on
whose decks they did their own bartering. His vessel was a swift, large
schooner, the Eliza Cooper, of Philadelphia, named for his wife. His
cruising grounds were the West India Islands, and his merchandise
was flour and corn meal ground at the Brandywine Mills at Wilmington,
Delaware.
During the War of 1812 he had earned, as was very well known, an
extraordinary fortune in this trading; for flour and corn meal sold at
fabulous prices in the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Danish islands, cut
off, as they were, from the rest of the world by the British blockade.
The running of this blockade was one of the most hazardous maritime
ventures possible, but Captain Cooper had met with such unvaried
success, and had sold his merchandise at such incredible profit that,
at the end of the war, he found himself to have become one of the
wealthiest merchants of his native city.
It was known at one time that his balance in the Mechanics' Bank was
greater than that of any other individual depositor upon the books, and
it was told of him that he had once deposited in the bank a chest of
foreign silver coin, the exchanged value of which, when translated
into American currency, was upward of forty-two thousand dollars--a
prodigious sum of money in those days.
In person, Captain Cooper was tall and angular of frame. His face was
thin and severe, wearing continually an unsmiling, mask-like expression
of continent and unruffled sobriety. His manner was dry and taciturn,
and his conduct and life were measured to the most absolute accord with
the teachings of his religious belief.
He lived in an old-fashioned house on Front Street below Spruce--as
pleasant, cheerful a house as ever a trading captain could return to.
At the back of the house a lawn sloped steeply down toward the river. To
the south stood the wharf and storehouses; to the north an orchard and
kitchen garden bloomed with abundant verdure. Two large chestnut trees
sheltered the porch and the little space of lawn, and when you sat under
them in the shade you looked down the slope between two rows of box
bushes directly across the shining river to the Jersey shore.
At the time of our story--that is, about the year 1820--this property
had increased very greatly in value, but it was the old home of the
Coopers, as Eleazer Cooper was entirely rich enough to indulge his fancy
in such matters. Accordingly, as he chose to live in the same
house where his father and his grandfather had dwelt before him, he
peremptorily, if quietly, refused all offers looking toward the purchase
of the lot of ground--though it was now worth five or six times its
former value.
As was said, it was a cheerful, pleasant home, impressing you when you
entered it with the feeling of spotless and all-pervading cleanliness--a
cleanliness that greeted you in the shining brass door-knocker; that
entertained you in the sitting room with its stiff, leather-covered
furniture, the brass-headed tacks whereof sparkled like so many
stars--a cleanliness that bade you farewell in the spotless stretch of
sand-sprinkled hallway, the wooden floor of which was worn into knobs
around the nail heads by the countless scourings and scrubbings to which
it had been subjected and which left behind them an all-pervading faint,
fragrant odor of soap and warm water.
Eleazer Cooper and his wife were childless, but one inmate made the
great, silent, shady house bright with life. Lucinda Fairbanks, a niece
of Captain Cooper's by his only sister, was a handsome, sprightly girl
of eighteen or twenty, and a great favorite in the Quaker society of the
city.
It remains only to introduce the final and, perhaps, the most important
actor of the narrative Lieut. James Mainwaring. During the past twelve
months or so he had been a frequent visitor at the Cooper house. At
this time he was a broad-shouldered, red-cheeked, stalwart fellow
of twenty-six or twenty-eight. He was a great social favorite, and
possessed the added romantic interest of having been aboard the
Constitution when she fought the Guerriere, and of having, with his own
hands, touched the match that fired the first gun of that great battle.
Mainwaring's mother and Eliza Cooper had always been intimate friends,
and the coming and going of the young man during his leave of absence
were looked upon in the house as quite a matter of course. Half a dozen
times a week he would drop in to execute some little commission for the
ladies, or, if Captain Cooper was at home, to smoke a pipe of tobacco
with him, to sip a dram of his famous old Jamaica rum, or to play a
rubber of checkers of an evening. It is not likely that either of the
older people was the least aware of the real cause of his visits; still
less did they suspect that any passages of sentiment had passed between
the young people.
The truth was that Mainwaring and the young lady were very deeply in
love. It was a love that they were obliged to keep a profound secret,
for not only had Eleazer Cooper held the strictest sort of testimony
against the late war--a testimony so rigorous as to render it altogether
unlikely that one of so military a profession as Mainwaring practiced
could hope for his consent to a suit for marriage, but Lucinda could not
have married one not a member of the Society of Friends without losing
her own birthright membership therein. She herself might not attach much
weight to such a loss of membership in the Society, but her fear of, and
her respect for, her uncle led her to walk very closely in her path
of duty in this respect. Accordingly she and Mainwaring met as they
could--clandestinely--and the stolen moments were very sweet. With equal
secrecy Lucinda had, at the request of her lover, sat for a miniature
portrait to Mrs. Gregory, which miniature, set in a gold medallion,
Mainwaring, with a mild, sentimental pleasure, wore hung around his neck
and beneath his shirt frill next his heart.
In the month of April of the year 1820 Mainwaring received orders
to report at Washington. During the preceding autumn the West India
pirates, and notably Capt. Jack Scarfield, had been more than usually
active, and the loss of the packet Marblehead (which, sailing from
Charleston, South Carolina, was never heard of more) was attributed
to them. Two other coasting vessels off the coast of Georgia had been
looted and burned by Scarfield, and the government had at last aroused
itself to the necessity of active measures for repressing these pests of
the West India waters.
Mainwaring received orders to take command of the Yankee, a swift,
light-draught, heavily armed brig of war, and to cruise about the Bahama
Islands and to capture and destroy all the pirates' vessels he could
there discover.
On his way from Washington to New York, where the Yankee was then
waiting orders, Mainwaring stopped in Philadelphia to bid good-by to his
many friends in that city. He called at the old Cooper house. It was
on a Sunday afternoon. The spring was early and the weather extremely
pleasant that day, being filled with a warmth almost as of summer. The
apple trees were already in full bloom and filled all the air with their
fragrance. Everywhere there seemed to be the pervading hum of bees, and
the drowsy, tepid sunshine was very delightful.
At that time Eleazer was just home from an unusually successful voyage
to Antigua. Mainwaring found the family sitting under one of the still
leafless chestnut trees, Captain Cooper smoking his long clay pipe and
lazily perusing a copy of the National Gazette. Eleazer listened with
a great deal of interest to what Mainwaring had to say of his proposed
cruise. He himself knew a great deal about the pirates, and, singularly
unbending from his normal, stiff taciturnity, he began telling of what
he knew, particularly of Captain Scarfield--in whom he appeared to take
an extraordinary interest.
Vastly to Mainwaring's surprise, the old Quaker assumed the position
of a defendant of the pirates, protesting that the wickedness of the
accused was enormously exaggerated. He declared that he knew some of the
freebooters very well and that at the most they were poor, misdirected
wretches who had, by easy gradation, slid into their present evil ways,
from having been tempted by the government authorities to enter into
privateering in the days of the late war. He conceded that Captain
Scarfield had done many cruel and wicked deeds, but he averred that he
had also performed many kind and benevolent actions. The world made no
note of these latter, but took care only to condemn the evil that had
been done. He acknowledged that it was true that the pirate had allowed
his crew to cast lots for the wife and the daughter of the skipper of
the Northern Rose, but there were none of his accusers who told how,
at the risk of his own life and the lives of all his crew, he had given
succor to the schooner Halifax, found adrift with all hands down with
yellow fever. There was no defender of his actions to tell how he and
his crew of pirates had sailed the pest-stricken vessel almost into the
rescuing waters of Kingston harbor. Eleazer confessed that he could not
deny that when Scarfield had tied the skipper of the Baltimore Belle
naked to the foremast of his own brig he had permitted his crew of
cutthroats (who were drunk at the time) to throw bottles at the helpless
captive, who died that night of the wounds he had received. For this
he was doubtless very justly condemned, but who was there to praise him
when he had, at the risk of his life and in the face of the authorities,
carried a cargo of provisions which he himself had purchased at Tampa
Bay to the Island of Bella Vista after the great hurricane of 1818? In
this notable adventure he had barely escaped, after a two days' chase,
the British frigate Ceres, whose captain, had a capture been effected,
would instantly have hung the unfortunate man to the yardarm in spite of
the beneficent mission he was in the act of conducting.
In all this Eleazer had the air of conducting the case for the
defendant. As he talked he became more and more animated and voluble.
The light went out in his tobacco pipe, and a hectic spot appeared
in either thin and sallow cheek. Mainwaring sat wondering to hear the
severely peaceful Quaker preacher defending so notoriously bloody and
cruel a cutthroat pirate as Capt. Jack Scarfield. The warm and innocent
surroundings, the old brick house looking down upon them, the odor
of apple blossoms and the hum of bees seemed to make it all the more
incongruous. And still the elderly Quaker skipper talked on and on with
hardly an interruption, till the warm sun slanted to the west and the
day began to decline.
That evening Mainwaring stayed to tea and when he parted from Lucinda
Fairbanks it was after nightfall, with a clear, round moon shining in
the milky sky and a radiance pallid and unreal enveloping the old house,
the blooming apple trees, the sloping lawn and the shining river beyond.
He implored his sweetheart to let him tell her uncle and aunt of their
acknowledged love and to ask the old man's consent to it, but she would
not permit him to do so. They were so happy as they were. Who knew but
what her uncle might forbid their fondness? Would he not wait a little
longer? Maybe it would all come right after a while. She was so fond, so
tender, so tearful at the nearness of their parting that he had not
the heart to insist. At the same time it was with a feeling almost of
despair that he realized that he must now be gone--maybe for the space
of two years--without in all that time possessing the right to call her
his before the world.
When he bade farewell to the older people it was with a choking feeling
of bitter disappointment. He yet felt the pressure of her cheek against
his shoulder, the touch of soft and velvet lips to his own. But what
were such clandestine endearments compared to what might, perchance, be
his--the right of calling her his own when he was far away and upon the
distant sea? And, besides, he felt like a coward who had shirked his
duty.
But he was very much in love. The next morning appeared in a drizzle of
rain that followed the beautiful warmth of the day before. He had the
coach all to himself, and in the damp and leathery solitude he drew out
the little oval picture from beneath his shirt frill and looked long and
fixedly with a fond and foolish joy at the innocent face, the blue eyes,
the red, smiling lips depicted upon the satinlike, ivory surface.
II
For the better part of five months Mainwaring cruised about in the
waters surrounding the Bahama Islands. In that time he ran to earth and
dispersed a dozen nests of pirates. He destroyed no less than fifteen
piratical crafts of all sizes, from a large half-decked whaleboat to a
three-hundred-ton barkentine. The name of the Yankee became a terror
to every sea wolf in the western tropics, and the waters of the Bahama
Islands became swept almost clean of the bloody wretches who had so
lately infested it.
But the one freebooter of all others whom he sought--Capt. Jack
Scarfield--seemed to evade him like a shadow, to slip through his
fingers like magic. Twice he came almost within touch of the famous
marauder, both times in the ominous wrecks that the pirate captain had
left behind him. The first of these was the water-logged remains of a
burned and still smoking wreck that he found adrift in the great Bahama
channel. It was the Water Witch, of Salem, but he did not learn her
tragic story until, two weeks later, he discovered a part of her crew
at Port Maria, on the north coast of Jamaica. It was, indeed, a dreadful
story to which he listened. The castaways said that they of all the
vessel's crew had been spared so that they might tell the commander of
the Yankee, should they meet him, that he might keep what he found, with
Captain Scarfield's compliments, who served it up to him hot cooked.
Three weeks later he rescued what remained of the crew of the shattered,
bloody hulk of the Baltimore Belle, eight of whose crew, headed by the
captain, had been tied hand and foot and heaved overboard. Again, there
was a message from Captain Scarfield to the commander of the Yankee that
he might season what he found to suit his own taste.
Mainwaring was of a sanguine disposition, with fiery temper. He swore,
with the utmost vehemence, that either he or John Scarfield would have
to leave the earth.
He had little suspicion of how soon was to befall the ominous
realization of his angry prophecy.
At that time one of the chief rendezvous of the pirates was the little
island of San Jose, one of the southernmost of the Bahama group. Here,
in the days before the coming of the Yankee, they were wont to put in
to careen and clean their vessels and to take in a fresh supply of
provisions, gunpowder, and rum, preparatory to renewing their attacks
upon the peaceful commerce circulating up and down outside the islands,
or through the wide stretches of the Bahama channel.
Mainwaring had made several descents upon this nest of freebooters.
He had already made two notable captures, and it was here he hoped
eventually to capture Captain Scarfield himself.
A brief description of this one-time notorious rendezvous of freebooters
might not be out of place. It consisted of a little settlement of those
wattled and mud-smeared houses such as you find through the West Indies.
There were only three houses of a more pretentious sort, built of wood.
One of these was a storehouse, another was a rum shop, and a third a
house in which dwelt a mulatto woman, who was reputed to be a sort
of left-handed wife of Captain Scarfield's. The population was almost
entirely black and brown. One or two Jews and a half dozen Yankee
traders, of hardly dubious honesty, comprised the entire white
population. The rest consisted of a mongrel accumulation of negroes
and mulattoes and half-caste Spaniards, and of a multitude of black or
yellow women and children. The settlement stood in a bight of the beach
forming a small harbor and affording a fair anchorage for small vessels,
excepting it were against the beating of a southeasterly gale. The
houses, or cabins, were surrounded by clusters of coco palms and growths
of bananas, and a long curve of white beach, sheltered from the large
Atlantic breakers that burst and exploded upon an outer bar, was drawn
like a necklace around the semi-circle of emerald-green water.
Such was the famous pirates' settlement of San Jose--a paradise of
nature and a hell of human depravity and wickedness--and it was to this
spot that Mainwaring paid another visit a few days after rescuing the
crew of the Baltimore Belle from her shattered and sinking wreck.
As the little bay with its fringe of palms and its cluster of wattle
huts opened up to view, Mainwaring discovered a vessel lying at anchor
in the little harbor. It was a large and well-rigged schooner of two
hundred and fifty or three hundred tons burden. As the Yankee rounded to
under the stern of the stranger and dropped anchor in such a position
as to bring her broadside battery to bear should the occasion
require, Mainwaring set his glass to his eye to read the name he could
distinguish beneath the overhang of her stern. It is impossible to
describe his infinite surprise when, the white lettering starting out in
the circle of the glass, he read, The Eliza Cooper, of Philadelphia.
He could not believe the evidence of his senses. Certainly this sink of
iniquity was the last place in the world he would have expected to have
fallen in with Eleazer Cooper.
He ordered out the gig and had himself immediately rowed over to the
schooner. Whatever lingering doubts he might have entertained as to the
identity of the vessel were quickly dispelled when he beheld Captain
Cooper himself standing at the gangway to meet him. The impassive face
of the friend showed neither surprise nor confusion at what must have
been to him a most unexpected encounter.
But when he stepped upon the deck of the Eliza Cooper and looked about
him, Mainwaring could hardly believe the evidence of his senses at
the transformation that he beheld. Upon the main deck were eight
twelve-pound carronade neatly covered with tarpaulin; in the bow a Long
Tom, also snugly stowed away and covered, directed a veiled and muzzled
snout out over the bowsprit.
It was entirely impossible for Mainwaring to conceal his astonishment at
so unexpected a sight, and whether or not his own thoughts lent color
to his imagination, it seemed to him that Eleazer Cooper concealed under
the immobility of his countenance no small degree of confusion.
After Captain Cooper had led the way into the cabin and he and the
younger man were seated over a pipe of tobacco and the invariable bottle
of fine old Jamaica rum, Mainwaring made no attempt to refrain
from questioning him as to the reason for this singular and ominous
transformation.
"I am a man of peace, James Mainwaring," Eleazer replied, "but there are
men of blood in these waters, and an appearance of great strength is of
use to protect the innocent from the wicked. If I remained in appearance
the peaceful trader I really am, how long does thee suppose I could
remain unassailed in this place?"
It occurred to Mainwaring that the powerful armament he had beheld was
rather extreme to be used merely as a preventive. He smoked for a while
in silence and then he suddenly asked the other point-blank whether, if
it came to blows with such a one as Captain Scarfield, would he make a
fight of it?
The Quaker trading captain regarded him for a while in silence. His
look, it seemed to Mainwaring, appeared to be dubitative as to how far
he dared to be frank. "Friend James," he said at last, "I may as well
acknowledge that my officers and crew are somewhat worldly. Of a truth
they do not hold the same testimony as I. I am inclined to think that
if it came to the point of a broil with those men of iniquity, my
individual voice cast for peace would not be sufficient to keep my crew
from meeting violence with violence. As for myself, thee knows who I am
and what is my testimony in these matters."
Mainwaring made no comment as to the extremely questionable manner in
which the Quaker proposed to beat the devil about the stump. Presently
he asked his second question:
"And might I inquire," he said, "what you are doing here and why you
find it necessary to come at all into such a wicked, dangerous place as
this?"
"Indeed, I knew thee would ask that question of me," said the Friend,
"and I will be entirely frank with thee. These men of blood are, after
all, but human beings, and as human beings they need food. I have at
present upon this vessel upward of two hundred and fifty barrels of
flour which will bring a higher price here than anywhere else in the
West Indies. To be entirely frank with thee, I will tell thee that I
was engaged in making a bargain for the sale of the greater part of my
merchandise when the news of thy approach drove away my best customer."
Mainwaring sat for a while in smoking silence. What the other had told
him explained many things he had not before understood. It explained why
Captain Cooper got almost as much for his flour and corn meal now that
peace had been declared as he had obtained when the war and the blockade
were in full swing. It explained why he had been so strong a defender
of Captain Scarfield and the pirates that afternoon in the garden.
Meantime, what was to be done? Eleazer confessed openly that he dealt
with the pirates. What now was his--Mainwaring's--duty in the case? Was
the cargo of the Eliza Cooper contraband and subject to confiscation?
And then another question framed itself in his mind: Who was this
customer whom his approach had driven away?
As though he had formulated the inquiry into speech the other began
directly to speak of it. "I know," he said, "that in a moment thee will
ask me who was this customer of whom I have just now spoken. I have no
desire to conceal his name from thee. It was the man who is known as
Captain Jack or Captain John Scarfield."
Mainwaring fairly started from his seat. "The devil you say!" he cried.
"And how long has it been," he asked, "since he left you?"
The Quaker skipper carefully refilled his pipe, which he had by now
smoked out. "I would judge," he said, "that it is a matter of four or
five hours since news was brought overland by means of swift runners
of thy approach. Immediately the man of wickedness disappeared." Here
Eleazer set the bowl of his pipe to the candle flame and began puffing
out voluminous clouds of smoke. "I would have thee understand, James
Mainwaring," he resumed, "that I am no friend of this wicked and sinful
man. His safety is nothing to me. It is only a question of buying upon
his part and of selling upon mine. If it is any satisfaction to thee I
will heartily promise to bring thee news if I hear anything of the man
of Belial. I may furthermore say that I think it is likely thee will
have news more or less directly of him within the space of a day. If
this should happen, however, thee will have to do thy own fighting
without help from me, for I am no man of combat nor of blood and will
take no hand in it either way."
It struck Mainwaring that the words contained some meaning that did not
appear upon the surface. This significance struck him as so ambiguous
that when he went aboard the Yankee he confided as much of his
suspicions as he saw fit to his second in command, Lieutenant Underwood.
As night descended he had a double watch set and had everything prepared
to repel any attack or surprise that might be attempted.
III
Nighttime in the tropics descends with a surprising rapidity. At one
moment the earth is shining with the brightness of the twilight; the
next, as it were, all things are suddenly swallowed into a gulf of
darkness. The particular night of which this story treats was not
entirely clear; the time of year was about the approach of the rainy
season, and the tepid, tropical clouds added obscurity to the darkness
of the sky, so that the night fell with even more startling quickness
than usual. The blackness was very dense. Now and then a group of
drifting stars swam out of a rift in the vapors, but the night was
curiously silent and of a velvety darkness.
As the obscurity had deepened, Mainwaring had ordered lanthorns to be
lighted and slung to the shrouds and to the stays, and the faint yellow
of their illumination lighted the level white of the snug little war
vessel, gleaming here and there in a starlike spark upon the brass
trimmings and causing the rows of cannons to assume curiously gigantic
proportions.
For some reason Mainwaring was possessed by a strange, uneasy feeling.
He walked restlessly up and down the deck for a time, and then, still
full of anxieties for he knew not what, went into his cabin to finish
writing up his log for the day. He unstrapped his cutlass and laid it
upon the table, lighted his pipe at the lanthorn and was about preparing
to lay aside his coat when word was brought to him that the captain of
the trading schooner was come alongside and had some private information
to communicate to him.
Mainwaring surmised in an instant that the trader's visit related
somehow to news of Captain Scarfield, and as immediately, in the relief
of something positive to face, all of his feeling of restlessness
vanished like a shadow of mist. He gave orders that Captain Cooper
should be immediately shown into the cabin, and in a few moments
the tall, angular form of the Quaker skipper appeared in the narrow,
lanthorn-lighted space.
Mainwaring at once saw that his visitor was strangely agitated and
disturbed. He had taken off his hat, and shining beads of perspiration
had gathered and stood clustered upon his forehead. He did not reply to
Mainwaring's greeting; he did not, indeed, seem to hear it; but he came
directly forward to the table and stood leaning with one hand upon the
open log book in which the lieutenant had just been writing. Mainwaring
had reseated himself at the head of the table, and the tall figure of
the skipper stood looking down at him as from a considerable height.
"James Mainwaring," he said, "I promised thee to report if I had news of
the pirate. Is thee ready now to hear my news?"
There was something so strange in his agitation that it began to infect
Mainwaring with a feeling somewhat akin to that which appeared to
disturb his visitor. "I know not what you mean, sir!" he cried, "by
asking if I care to hear your news. At this moment I would rather have
news of that scoundrel than to have anything I know of in the world."
"Thou would? Thou would?" cried the other, with mounting agitation. "Is
thee in such haste to meet him as all that? Very well; very well, then.
Suppose I could bring thee face to face with him--what then? Hey? Hey?
Face to face with him, James Mainwaring!"
The thought instantly flashed into Mainwaring's mind that the pirate
had returned to the island; that perhaps at that moment he was somewhere
near at hand.
"I do not understand you, sir," he cried. "Do you mean to tell me that
you know where the villain is? If so, lose no time in informing me, for
every instant of delay may mean his chance of again escaping."
"No danger of that!" the other declared, vehemently. "No danger of that!
I'll tell thee where he is and I'll bring thee to him quick enough!"
And as he spoke he thumped his fist against the open log book. In the
vehemence of his growing excitement his eyes appeared to shine green
in the lanthorn light, and the sweat that had stood in beads upon his
forehead was now running in streams down his face. One drop hung like
a jewel to the tip of his beaklike nose. He came a step nearer to
Mainwaring and bent forward toward him, and there was something so
strange and ominous in his bearing that the lieutenant instinctively
drew back a little where he sat.
"Captain Scarfield sent something to you," said Eleazer, almost in a
raucous voice, "something that you will be surprised to see." And the
lapse in his speech from the Quaker "thee" to the plural "you" struck
Mainwaring as singularly strange.
As he was speaking Eleazer was fumbling in a pocket of his long-tailed
drab coat, and presently he brought something forth that gleamed in the
lanthorn light.
The next moment Mainwaring saw leveled directly in his face the round
and hollow nozzle of a pistol.
There was an instant of dead silence and then, "I am the man you seek!"
said Eleazer Cooper, in a tense and breathless voice.
The whole thing had happened so instantaneously and unexpectedly that
for the moment Mainwaring sat like one petrified. Had a thunderbolt
fallen from the silent sky and burst at his feet he could not have been
more stunned. He was like one held in the meshes of a horrid nightmare,
and he gazed as through a mist of impossibility into the lineaments
of the well-known, sober face now transformed as from within into the
aspect of a devil. That face, now ashy white, was distorted into a
diabolical grin. The teeth glistened in the lamplight. The brows,
twisted into a tense and convulsed frown, were drawn down into black
shadows, through which the eyes burned a baleful green like the eyes
of a wild animal driven to bay. Again he spoke in the same breathless
voice. "I am John Scarfield! Look at me, then, if you want to see
a pirate!" Again there was a little time of silence, through which
Mainwaring heard his watch ticking loudly from where it hung against the
bulkhead. Then once more the other began speaking. "You would chase me
out of the West Indies, would you? G------ --you! What are you come
to now? You are caught in your own trap, and you'll squeal loud enough
before you get out of it. Speak a word or make a movement and I'll blow
your brains out against the partition behind you! Listen to what I say
or you are a dead man. Sing out an order instantly for my mate and my
bos'n to come here to the cabin, and be quick about it, for my finger's
on the trigger, and it's only a pull to shut your mouth forever."
It was astonishing to Mainwaring, in afterward thinking about it all,
how quickly his mind began to recover its steadiness after that first
astonishing shock. Even as the other was speaking he discovered that his
brain was becoming clarified to a wonderful lucidity; his thoughts were
becoming rearranged, and with a marvelous activity and an alertness
he had never before experienced. He knew that if he moved to escape or
uttered any outcry he would be instantly a dead man, for the circle of
the pistol barrel was directed full against his forehead and with the
steadiness of a rock. If he could but for an instant divert that fixed
and deadly attention he might still have a chance for life. With the
thought an inspiration burst into his mind and he instantly put it into
execution; thought, inspiration, and action, as in a flash, were one. He
must make the other turn aside his deadly gaze, and instantly he roared
out in a voice that stunned his own ears: "Strike, bos'n! Strike,
quick!"
Taken by surprise, and thinking, doubtless, that another enemy stood
behind him, the pirate swung around like a flash with his pistol leveled
against the blank boarding. Equally upon the instant he saw the trick
that had been played upon him and in a second flash had turned again.
The turn and return had occupied but a moment of time, but that moment,
thanks to the readiness of his own invention, had undoubtedly saved
Mainwaring's life. As the other turned away his gaze for that brief
instant Mainwaring leaped forward and upon him. There was a flashing
flame of fire as the pistol was discharged and a deafening detonation
that seemed to split his brain. For a moment, with reeling senses, he
supposed himself to have been shot, the next he knew he had escaped.
With the energy of despair he swung his enemy around and drove him with
prodigious violence against the corner of the table. The pirate emitted
a grunting cry and then they fell together, Mainwaring upon the top, and
the pistol clattered with them to the floor in their fall. Even as
he fell, Mainwaring roared in a voice of thunder, "All hands repel
boarders!" And then again, "All hands repel boarders!"
Whether hurt by the table edge or not, the fallen pirate struggled as
though possessed of forty devils, and in a moment or two Mainwaring saw
the shine of a long, keen knife that he had drawn from somewhere about
his person. The lieutenant caught him by the wrist, but the other's
muscles were as though made of steel. They both fought in despairing
silence, the one to carry out his frustrated purposes to kill, the other
to save his life. Again and again Mainwaring felt that the knife had
been thrust against him, piercing once his arm, once his shoulder, and
again his neck. He felt the warm blood streaming down his arm and body
and looked about him in despair. The pistol lay near upon the deck of
the cabin. Still holding the other by the wrist as he could, Mainwaring
snatched up the empty weapon and struck once and again at the bald,
narrow forehead beneath him. A third blow he delivered with all the
force he could command, and then with a violent and convulsive throe the
straining muscles beneath him relaxed and grew limp and the fight was
won.
Through all the struggle he had been aware of the shouts of voices, of
trampling of feet and discharge of firearms, and the thought came to
him, even through his own danger, that the Yankee was being assaulted
by the pirates. As he felt the struggling form beneath him loosen and
dissolve into quietude, he leaped up, and snatching his cutlass, which
still lay upon the table, rushed out upon the deck, leaving the stricken
form lying twitching upon the floor behind him.
It was a fortunate thing that he had set double watches and prepared
himself for some attack from the pirates, otherwise the Yankee would
certainly have been lost. As it was, the surprise was so overwhelming
that the pirates, who had been concealed in the large whaleboat that had
come alongside, were not only able to gain a foothold upon the deck,
but for a time it seemed as though they would drive the crew of the brig
below the hatches.
But as Mainwaring, streaming with blood, rushed out upon the deck, the
pirates became immediately aware that their own captain must have
been overpowered, and in an instant their desperate energy began to
evaporate. One or two jumped overboard; one, who seemed to be the mate,
fell dead from a pistol shot, and then, in the turn of a hand, there was
a rush of a retreat and a vision of leaping forms in the dusky light of
the lanthorns and a sound of splashing in the water below.
The crew of the Yankee continued firing at the phosphorescent wakes of
the swimming bodies, but whether with effect it was impossible at the
time to tell.
IV
The pirate captain did not die immediately. He lingered for three or
four days, now and then unconscious, now and then semi-conscious, but
always deliriously wandering. All the while he thus lay dying, the
mulatto woman, with whom he lived in this part of his extraordinary dual
existence, nursed and cared for him with such rude attentions as the
surroundings afforded. In the wanderings of his mind the same duality
of life followed him. Now and then he would appear the calm, sober,
self-contained, well-ordered member of a peaceful society that his
friends in his faraway home knew him to be; at other times the nether
part of his nature would leap up into life like a wild beast, furious
and gnashing. At the one time he talked evenly and clearly of peaceful
things; at the other time he blasphemed and hooted with fury.
Several times Mainwaring, though racked by his own wounds, sat beside
the dying man through the silent watches of the tropical nights.
Oftentimes upon these occasions as he looked at the thin, lean face
babbling and talking so aimlessly, he wondered what it all meant. Could
it have been madness--madness in which the separate entities of good and
bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence? He chose to
think that this was the case. Who, within his inner consciousness, does
not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling against the stern,
adamantine bonds of morality and decorum? Were those bonds burst
asunder, as it was with this man, might not the wild beast rush forth,
as it had rushed forth in him, to rend and to tear? Such were the
questions that Mainwaring asked himself. And how had it all come about?
By what easy gradations had the respectable Quaker skipper descended
from the decorum of his home life, step by step, into such a gulf of
iniquity? Many such thoughts passed through Mainwaring's mind, and he
pondered them through the still reaches of the tropical nights while he
sat watching the pirate captain struggle out of the world he had so long
burdened. At last the poor wretch died, and the earth was well quit of
one of its torments.
A systematic search was made through the island for the scattered crew,
but none was captured. Either there were some secret hiding places upon
the island (which was not very likely) or else they had escaped in boats
hidden somewhere among the tropical foliage. At any rate they were gone.
Nor, search as he would, could Mainwaring find a trace of any of the
pirate treasure. After the pirate's death and under close questioning,
the weeping mulatto woman so far broke down as to confess in broken
English that Captain Scarfield had taken a quantity of silver money
aboard his vessel, but either she was mistaken or else the pirates had
taken it thence again and had hidden it somewhere else.
Nor would the treasure ever have been found but for a most fortuitous
accident. Mainwaring had given orders that the Eliza Cooper was to be
burned, and a party was detailed to carry the order into execution. At
this the cook of the Yankee came petitioning for some of the Wilmington
and Brandywine flour to make some plum duff upon the morrow, and
Mainwaring granted his request in so far that he ordered one of the
men to knock open one of the barrels of flour and to supply the cook's
demands.
The crew detailed to execute this modest order in connection with the
destruction of the pirate vessel had not been gone a quarter of an hour
when word came back that the hidden treasure had been found.
Mainwaring hurried aboard the Eliza Cooper, and there in the midst of
the open flour barrel he beheld a great quantity of silver coin buried
in and partly covered by the white meal. A systematic search was now
made. One by one the flour barrels were heaved up from below and burst
open on the deck and their contents searched, and if nothing but the
meal was found it was swept overboard. The breeze was whitened with
clouds of flour, and the white meal covered the surface of the ocean for
yards around.
In all, upward of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was found
concealed beneath the innocent flour and meal. It was no wonder the
pirate captain was so successful, when he could upon an instant's notice
transform himself from a wolf of the ocean to a peaceful Quaker trader
selling flour to the hungry towns and settlements among the scattered
islands of the West Indies, and so carrying his bloody treasure safely
into his quiet Northern home.
In concluding this part of the narrative it may be added that a wide
strip of canvas painted black was discovered in the hold of the Eliza
Cooper. Upon it, in great white letters, was painted the name, "The
Bloodhound." Undoubtedly this was used upon occasions to cover the real
and peaceful title of the trading schooner, just as its captain had, in
reverse, covered his sanguine and cruel life by a thin sheet of morality
and respectability.
This is the true story of the death of Capt. Jack Scarfield.
The Newburyport chap-book, of which I have already spoken, speaks only
of how the pirate disguised himself upon the ocean as a Quaker trader.
Nor is it likely that anyone ever identified Eleazer Cooper with the
pirate, for only Mainwaring of all the crew of the Yankee was exactly
aware of the true identity of Captain Scarfield. All that was ever known
to the world was that Eleazer Cooper had been killed in a fight with the
pirates.
In a little less than a year Mainwaring was married to Lucinda
Fairbanks. As to Eleazer Cooper's fortune, which eventually came into
the possession of Mainwaring through his wife, it was many times a
subject of speculation to the lieutenant how it had been earned. There
were times when he felt well assured that a part of it at least was the
fruit of piracy, but it was entirely impossible to guess how much more
was the result of legitimate trading.
For a little time it seemed to Mainwaring that he should give it all up,
but this was at once so impracticable and so quixotic that he presently
abandoned it, and in time his qualms and misdoubts faded away and he
settled himself down to enjoy that which had come to him through his
marriage.
In time the Mainwarings removed to New York, and ultimately the fortune
that the pirate Scarfield had left behind him was used in part to
found the great shipping house of Mainwaring & Bigot, whose famous
transatlantic packet ships were in their time the admiration of the
whole world.