THE PIRAGUA IS PICKED UP BY A GREAT PRIVATEER, AND I FIND MYSELF
AMONG NEW SHIPMATES.
We were within a day’s sail of Jamaica. At the setting of the sun
we had seen, even from our low vessel, the distant outline of the
Blue Mountains. Peralta had the middle watch. I roused up about an
hour and a half before sunrise, and found the piragua heaving upon
smooth, oily swells, all unruffled even by a puff of wind. There was
a great dank mist around us, packing upon the water as thick as smoke
from a man-of-war’s broadside, and the very air seemed loaded with
chill damp. I walked up and down the small fore deck of the piragua,
trying, in my thin garments, to keep myself warm, and whistling for
a breeze to blow away to leeward the filthy fog, which seemed, as it
were, to enclose us round, and to cling and settle in its densest
volume about the piragua. Standing at the bows, I could not see the
stern, and as for the heads of the sails they were lost in the thick
opaque air. It was curious to gaze out upon the water as the black
looking undulations of the sea rolled under us, the mist seeming to
rise and fall with them, and sometimes boiling and eddying from the
motion of the waves, although not a breath of wind strayed over the
ocean. I might have been upon duty about half an hour, when I almost
leaped from the deck with amazement to hear suddenly, coming from
whence I knew not, but ringing shrilly through the thick air, a loud
cry or scream, like that uttered by a man in mortal anguish.
‘Disco,’ I shouted, ‘did you hear that? What was that cry?’
But the Indian, instead of answering me, stood dumb and trembling, as
though struck with terror. Instantly the cry was repeated, and even
louder and more vehemently than before.
‘It is a spirit,’ said the Indian. ‘It is some bad spirit of the fog.
It will come to us and kill us.’
But I heeded not the superstition of the ignorant creature, and
made but one bound to where Peralta lay sound asleep, clutching and
shaking him to arouse him, and telling him in the same breath that
there was either a ship or a boat close aboard of us in the fog.
The pearl merchant and Jenipa were upon their legs in a moment, and
for the space of about ten minutes we listened with all our ears,
but heard no sound, other than the flapping of our sails and the
creaking of the yards, as they rubbed and swayed against the masts.
It was odd that, although both Disco and myself heard the cry so
distinctly repeated, we neither of us could tell the direction from
which it appeared to come. Perhaps the fog affected sounds passing
through it. At all events, although we got out the oars, we knew not
in which way to row, so as to put as much sea as possible between a
ship which might very likely be an enemy, and which would certainly
be more than a match for the light piragua and her crew of four. All
this while the dawn was gradually brightening through the mist; the
fog, which before was of a pitchy darkness, becoming gradually of a
pale grey hue, and then lifting and opening here and there, so as to
show lanes, as it were, and patches of clear air, which, in the next
moment, would be again filled up by rolling masses of the vapour.
However, the mist was evidently thinning as the sun approached to
the horizon, and we watched warily to catch the first glimpse of our
unknown neighbour. Presently, the fog began to change its cold white
hue for a tinge or blush of warm and golden light, which appeared, as
it were, to penetrate and pervade the vapour, and by which we knew
that the sun had risen; while, at the same time, our glimpses into
the ever-shifting lanes and clear spaces continually being formed by
the motion of the seething wreaths and masses of vapour, becoming
every moment longer and clearer—Peralta, who was standing upon the
starboard gunwale of the piragua, suddenly exclaimed, in a low,
earnest tone:
‘There! look there!’
We all turned round at once, and saw, not thirty fathoms from
us, the dusky broadside and towering rigging of a ship. She was
gracefully rocking upon the long seas, the mist all curling round
her, and floating, as it appeared, in blurring patches and masses
among her extended sails, so that the masts and all the fabric of
spars and canvas which they bore were half lost in the bewildering
vapour. We had no time, however, to make any very minute examination
of the stranger. She saw us as soon as we saw her, and half a dozen
men, clustering into the main rigging, shouted out, in French and
English, that we should pull the piragua alongside. I looked at
Peralta. He slightly shrugged his shoulders. ‘If there were but a
bladder full of wind,’ he said.
‘Ho! the piragua ahoy!’ was now again hailed from the strange
ship—‘come alongside, d’ye hear, or it will be the worse for you.’
This threat had hardly been uttered, when, as if to back it, a cannon
was fired from the maindeck, and we heard the ball, with a loud
whistling hiss, pass above our masts. But the discharge of that gun
had an effect which seemed almost miraculous upon the fog, clearing
away, and, as it were, condensing and annihilating, by the shock of
the explosion the vapour all around—so that we saw, very plainly, a
goodly ship of three masts, carrying at least twelve cannons upon
a side, with topsails and top-gallant-sails spread, but the yards
braced clumsily, the canvas ill set, and much of the rigging in
a loose and disorderly condition—the jib indeed hanging in great
festoons down from the bowsprit—so that when the ship plunged by the
head, the canvas dipped into the sea, from which it would presently
arise, the water pouring from the belly of the sail as from a tub. On
board this disorderly-looking craft there seemed to be a great swarm
of men, who suddenly clustered upon the bulwarks and in the rigging
to gaze at us, and one of whom, a varlet with long unkempt hair and
torn and dirty linen doublet, suddenly screamed out—
‘Why, comrades, never believe your eyes—if it be not Old Rumbold, of
Port Royal in Jamaica, and Heaven knows how many places besides.
What cheer, Old Rumbold?—Hast been a privateering in a bark canoe—or
chaffering with and cheating the honest Indians of the Main?’
Peralta seemed in no way put out by this recognition, for he
immediately took off his hat very gallantly, and called out that he
was heartily glad to meet with so many friends and gallant gentlemen
adventurers on the high seas. Upon which the men on board the ship
cheered lustily, and shouted to Peralta or Rumbold that he was an
honest fellow, and that he must come aboard, with all his people,
and that we should have a jovial cruise together. I watched the
pearl-merchant, and saw that he was in reality much concerned at this
unexpected stoppage of our voyage.
‘Had it not been for that cursed fog,’ he whispered, ‘this would
not have happened. But these fellows are savages if their temper be
crossed. We must e’en row with the tide and humour them.’
Accordingly the piragua was speedily floating alongside the great
ship, and, following Rumbold, as I may now call him, I clambered up
the high sides. But what a sight did the deck present to me—a sailor
hitherto accustomed to orderly vessels. Strewn everywhere about were
great heaps of luggage and ship stores—trunks and mails mingled
with coils of rope, and masses of sails—buckets, boat anchors,
flags, handspikes, and what not—while, tumbled hither and thither
in this chaos, sprawled more than a score of drunken seamen, some
of them fast asleep and snoring, with empty bottles and glasses
still grasped in their hands—others, still sitting up, babbling and
singing, in maudlin fashion, over their liquor—or disputing fiercely
with thickened speech and bloodshot eyes. The relics of a feast lay
scattered over the decks, slippery with the wine and liquors spilt
upon them. There were broken glasses and empty flasks, the smashed
fragments of tobacco-pipes, divers dice-boxes, and packs of greasy
cards. But the principal object on which my attention dwelt was the
form of a stalwart, big-limbed sailor, who lay with his head resting
on the knee of a man who was tending a hurt upon his temples. Looking
more closely, I saw that the wounded man had received a desperate
slash with a knife, which had laid open the side of his forehead and
part of the cheek, narrowly missing the eye. From this gash the blood
was pouring fast, while the surgeon, for such he was, who tended the
wounded man, cleaned the ghastly cut, from time to time, with sponges
dipped in hot water, while he prepared his instruments to sew it up.
The patient was insensible, breathing hard and loud, and having his
glazed eyes open, and gleaming with a wild, vacant stare. As I gazed,
I immediately comprehended that it was the cry uttered by this man,
as he was wounded, which had alarmed us in the piragua, and looking
towards the bows, I saw a fellow, with his doublet-sleeve all bloody,
being marched off in custody by a group of his comrades—all high in
oath at the cowardly hound of a Portuguese, (as they called him,) who
had used his knife instead of his fists in a quarrel among friends.
Meantime, Rumbold seemed to be heartily welcomed by the more sober
part of the crew, with the captain, as I judged him, at their head.
This captain was a long gaunt man, with a slouching gait, and lank
black hair falling straight down upon his shoulders. He had such a
squint that it was, as I afterwards knew, a common saying in the
ship about Le Chiffon Rouge—for such he, being a Frenchman, was
called—that no one could tell at any moment whether he was looking
forward or aft, up to the vane on the mast-head, or down into the
hold. This ill-favoured personage—for besides his squinting eye he
had an ugly hare lip, showing tusks which would not have been out
of place in the jaw of a boar,—this ill-favoured personage, I say,
protested loudly that his good friend Rumbold must positively sail
out the cruize with them—that he would not be denied—and that the
hills of Jamaica being in sight, for the mist had rapidly cleared
away with the rising of the sun, the two Indians could very well
carry home the piragua, while hammocks would be slung aboard for
the worthy pearl merchant and his friend—meaning me. The captain
was well seconded in these propositions by the chief mate, who was
an Englishman, a coarse, fat personage, with bristling red hair, a
ferocious expression, and a loud harsh voice. He was called Jerry,
and I soon found that he was the real commander of the ship; Le
Chiffon Rouge yielding to his judgment in all cases of emergency, and
the pair keeping very close together. Now, for my own part, I was
much puzzled to know the reason of this welcome, which was so much
warmer than we wished for. If the ship was a friendly one, why did
not she go her way and leave us to go ours, instead of detaining us
prisoners; for that was what the affair actually came to, on board.
I saw that Rumbold’s countenance was clouded, and that, although he
put a good face on the matter, he would have freely given a round
sum for a start of a league or so in the piragua. But wishing was
useless. The Indians, who continued in the canoe, were, to their
great astonishment, ordered to run for Port Royal, and to take word
that Mr. Rumbold had joined the good ship, ‘Saucy Susan,’ for a short
run down by the Mosquito coast, and that she might be expected in
Jamaica in a few weeks. By this time the morning trade-wind was
beginning to blow, and the piragua speedily crept away, wafted by its
first faint fannings. Then Jerry suddenly began to bestir himself—
‘Here,’ he shouted, ‘here men, clear away the decks, fore and aft.
You, boatswain, get the yards braced, and put all things aloft
ship-shape and Bristol fashion. What! d——n my eyes, is the ship to
be always in this cursed mess? Here, you two boatswain’s mates, come
and kick these drunken hogs. Overboard with barrel and bucket. Draw
water, will you, and souse these fellows who are littering the deck,
soundly. Curse and confound me, but a parcel of wild Indians would
have more decency aboard ship! Doctor, how is that fellow’s skull?
We shall serve out the thief who cut him, presently. Come, men, look
alive there, or by all the devils dancing in hell, I’ll make you
feel the flat of my cutlass!’
At this energetic speech there was a general bustle on deck. About
half of the drunken fellows staggered to their feet, and began to
tumble about, half asleep, lurching and pitching against each other,
owing to the roll of the ship.
‘Quick, will you there!’ Jerry roared; ‘get the buckets full, and
baptise these brandy kegs;’ pointing to the drunkards, who were still
sleeping. In a minute a dozen pails were over the ship’s sides, and
immediately, amid shouts of jeering and laughter, copious floods
of the cooling brine were dashed over the heads and bodies of the
snorers, who started up all bewildered, shouting and spluttering,
half-choked, and swearing at such scurvy treatment. However, in a
few minutes a wonderful transformation was effected—the decks were
cleared—those of the crew who had not sufficiently slept off their
debauch to be able to resume their duty, were tumbled down the
hatches to their hammocks—the yards were braced properly for the
course which we were lying—a steady-looking old seaman was at the
wheel, and the ‘Saucy Susan’ began to move slowly upon her course,
rising heavily to the seas, and butting at them with her great broad
bows as they came rolling past.
Meantime, I kept alongside of Rumbold—to whom the captain was
explaining, with great gravity, that having last night taken a
small Spanish sloop, aboard which there was very excellent wine,
the greater part of the crew had been drunk all night, a thing,
he admitted, not very seamanlike: ‘But what then—what could he
do? _Messieurs les aventuriers_ would have their way.’ Presently,
however, stepping forward to confer with Jerry, who was certainly
bringing the ship into hand again, in the style of a man who knows
his business, Rumbold whispered to me:
‘I know something of this ship. She is manned by the worst set of
rogues who sail from Jamaica. There may be some honest men aboard,
but both the Frenchman and Jerry, his mate, are as great rascals as
ever rode colt foaled of an acorn, and I doubt it not but that a
crew of their choosing will be found to match bravely.’
I inquired what he thought were the reasons which induced them to
detain us on board?
‘Why, as to that,’ says he, ‘I doubt not but that some of the rogues
have a shrewd guess where I come from, and that I have pearls of
price about me. I hardly think they would rob me openly and divide
the booty in the face of day, but there are dozens of these cursed
jail birds who would think no more of drawing a knife across a
man’s weasand while he slept, if that would help them to filch a
brass-farthing’s worth, than I would of smoking a whiff of tobacco.’
Then Rumbold asked whether I recognised the young fellow who first
hailed him by name? and presently pointed him out, laughing and
talking to Jerry. ‘I know the rascal well,’ said the pearl merchant.
‘He hath nimble wits and nimble fingers. I warrant ’twas he first
tipped Jerry and the captain the wink in this matter. If it be so,
depend upon it that the three intend to keep the thing snug to
themselves, and share the plunder—that is, if they can get it.’
Our converse was broken up by the captain and mate walking aft
together. The vessel was by this time put into proper trim, and
standing on her course, with sails very well set, and swelling gaily
in the breeze. The mate looked to windward. ‘I think the weather
will hold steady,’ he said. Immediately, the captain shouted out to
the boatswain to call all hands, and, presently, in answer to that
shrill, sharp whistle, which penetrates down to the very keel of a
ship, the crew tumbled upon deck, most of them being by this time
sober enough, and trooped aft to the break of the poop, upon which
Le Chiffon Rouge and Jerry stood. The ship was then hove to, with
her broad maintop-sail laid to the mast, and Le Chiffon Rouge taking
off his three-cornered hat, as it was the custom of the captain of a
privateer to do when he addressed the whole crew, began to speak in a
smooth, plausible fashion, to this effect—
‘Last night, gentlemen, as you well know, the “Saucy Susan” captured
a Spanish sloop, out of which we took what we wanted, and then
dismissed her. You cannot complain, any of you, that you had not as
much of the good wine which we found aboard the sloop, as you could
swill, with plenty of time and space to drink it in. But, gentlemen,
here hath an ugly accident turned out in your revelry, and which it
behoves me to inquire into. One of our honourable company hath drawn
his knife, and wounded a comrade, in his cups, and that, by all the
rules of privateersmen, must be punished. It is not that I much care
about a kick on the shins, or a box on the ears, given or taken when
the wine cup is full, and the dice-box rattling—but cold steel,
comrades, we must keep for the Spaniards, and not get into the habit
of polishing our knives against each other’s ribs.’
The crew applauded this address, which seemed reasonable enough; but
Rumbold whispered to me, that he would lay his life upon it that
either Le Chiffon Rouge, or Jerry, had some cause of spite against
the Portuguese; otherwise, said he, the whole ship’s company might
hack the flesh off each other’s bones without interference.
‘Now then,’ continued the scowling captain, ‘some of you fetch Vasco,
of Lisbon, hither, and Doctor, do you bring up Shambling Ned.’ So,
in a few minutes, the Portuguese, with his hands tied behind him,
was hurried along the deck, and the wounded man came out of the
cabin, leaning upon the surgeon, and looking very pale, his blood
still clotted in jelly-looking masses among his long hair. Vasco, in
spite of his great name, seemed to me to be as hang-dog looking a
rascal as ever I saw, with a low flat forehead, and only one eye. He
was a lithe, slightly made young fellow, with a thin, ragged beard
and drooping moustache. When he was confronted with the captain
and Jerry, the latter cast a look upon him so full of hate and
spite, that I soon perceived that Rumbold was in the right in his
conjecture. The Portuguese never appeared to notice the wounded man
at all.
‘Now, then,’ the captain began, ‘you, Shambling Ned, ‘tell us how
you came by that trench upon your forehead.’
But Shambling Ned, who was, as I have said, a stout seaman, but with
a hitch in his gait, from whence he obtained his nickname, gave but a
very confused account of the transaction. What between the quantity
of wine which he had drunk, and the quantity of blood which he had
lost, his wits appeared to be still gone a wool-gathering, and all
that he could say was, that he had been playing dice for small stakes
with the Portuguese, when they had a quarrel about a cast, and that
blows had passed; but who had struck first he really did not know;
that in the middle of the scuffle, however, when they were staggering
about among their comrades and tripping over the masses of goods and
stores which lay upon the deck, he suddenly saw a knife in the hand
of his adversary, and, almost at the same instant, he had received
the violent cut upon his head, from which the hot blood came pouring
down; that after that he knew nothing, until he was brought to
himself by the smart of the surgeon’s instrument sewing up the wound.
The evidence of several of the seamen was then taken, but they all
gave different accounts; some maintaining that Vasco had begun the
fray, and others that Shambling Ned had first seized up a knife
himself, so that I saw very plainly that the whole affair was
the effect of a drunken squabble, in which one was probably as
much to blame as another. At last, however, the young man who had
recognised Rumbold, stood forth, and I saw very plainly the glance of
intelligence which passed between him and Jerry.
‘Now for Tommy Nixon’s testimony,’said the captain; ‘and I warrant
that he will speak more to the purpose than these noddies there,
who seem to make no more use of their eyes than if they were boiled
gooseberries!’
So Nixon began to speak in a low, whining sort of tone, professing
great regret for the disturbance, and particularly that Vasco, whom
he said he loved as though he had been his own brother, should
have so shamefully outraged all the laws observed by gentlemen
adventurers. Still the truth was the truth; and if he must tell what
he knew, it was this, that Vasco having tried to cheat Shambling Ned
out of the piece of eight which they were playing for, and having
been reproached by the latter for his meanness, had straightway hit
Ned in the face; and that when Ned had risen to his feet to defend
himself, the Portuguese had immediately drawn his knife and struck
the blow, swearing at the same time that he would like to do as much
for every Englishman on board the ship.
At this, the Portuguese, who had hitherto stood, with downcast looks,
listening to all the evidence, burst out in violent wrath, sputtering
vehemently forth his broken English, and almost screaming in his
excitement—
‘That a lie—a lie, a lie!’ he shouted. ‘A lie, Nixon—Jerry tell you
say that—you liars both I—I no wish to stab my shipmates, but Jerry
hate me, and you Jerry friend—and you lie!’
There was a murmur among the men, for it was not difficult to see
that Jerry and Nixon had great influence over them, and many a
clenched hand was raised against the Portuguese, who, I believe, had
certainly cut open Ned’s head, not, however, with premeditation, but
in the scuffle and the heat of blood. Meantime, Nixon turned up his
eyes to heaven, and shook his uplifted hands, as who should say,
‘Patience—patience, friends, I can afford to bear the calumny.’ Not
so Jerry, however. His nature was different; and so, dashing down his
hat upon the deck in his rage, with his moustaches bristling, and his
flashing eyes fixed upon the culprit, he roared—
‘Here be a pitiful hound of a Portuguese for you, who dare raise his
murdering arm to stab a freeborn Englishman, and then asperse the
witnesses of the cruel deed! If he remain unpunished for it, I leave
this ship, and I would advise all them who don’t take the part of the
white-livered scoundrel to do the same—that is, if they don’t want to
feel his murdering knife tickling their ribs!’
‘Jerry,’ cried out Vasco, all at once, ‘I know what you mean very
well. You no care for either blow or stab, that you no get yourself.
You stab Nickel, the Dutchman, in Tortugas; you shoot John Cox off
St. Christopher’s. You a pretty fellow to talk!’
But here Jerry interrupted him. ‘Now, then,’ he roared, ‘what are
you about there, that you don’t clap a marline-spike in the fellow’s
jaws? I suppose he intends to bully us out of the ship!’
Instantly half-a-dozen stout fellows threw themselves upon Vasco, who
still, however, contrived, before he was effectually gagged, to yell
out in broken sentences—
‘Jerry—I say, Jerry—you do this because I prevent you marry my
countrywoman, who keep tavern at Tortugas, and tell her, you have
one, two, three wife already!’
But Jerry’s orders were speedily obeyed, and the Portuguese—with a
stout rope passed through his mouth, keeping the jaws wide open,
and made fast to the back of his head—could only grin and flash his
one eye upon his successful persecutor. Jerry was now in his glory.
His ugly face was all lighted up with the excitement of gratified
spite; and roaring to the men, that now they would teach a cowardly
Portuguese to lift his hand upon his betters he proposed that, as
a punishment for what he had done, Vasco should be made to run the
gauntlet, from the mizen-mast forward to the heel of the bowsprit
and back again. This proposal was received with acclamations by the
rest of the crew, most of whom were brutal fellows enough, and quite
under the thumb of Jerry, who, as I have said, was really captain,
though he pretended to be only second in command; and so, presently,
Le Chiffon Rouge, after whispering to his mate, ordered an old pair
of topgallant-sail haulyards to be cut up into lengths of about three
feet each. This was soon done, and then each man was armed with a
piece of the strong stiff rope, with which, of course, one could
strike as with a cudgel. The culprit eyed all these preparations in
sulky silence, and made no resistance, even when Jerry himself, with
a devil-like leer of delight in his eyes, tore off his doublet and
shirt, leaving his swarthy back bare for the blows which awaited it.
‘That man,’ whispered Rumbold to me, indicating Jerry, ‘is as great a
fool as he is a brute. These Portuguese are not the fellows to forget
a scar marked upon their backs. Sooner or later, unless he have very
marvellous good luck, the knife which cut open Shambling Ned’s head
will make itself acquainted with Mr. Jerry’s inward anatomy also.’
In this remark I very cordially agreed; but Jerry seemed to be under
very little uneasiness on the score, for he went joking about,
showing the men how to grasp the ropes, so as to lay on the most
vigorous cuts. The punishment of running the gauntlet is one which
its executors can make as light or as heavy as they choose; and in
the present instance the culprit did not seem, judging from most of
the faces around him, to have much to hope for; while those of the
crew who had, perhaps, given and received over many knife-slashes
themselves, to have any very great horror of the crime, stood too
much in awe of Jerry to favour the culprit.
At length, all being in readiness, and the crew, to the number of
fifty-five, ranged in a double line, one on the larboard and the
other on the starboard side of the deck, the hands of the Portuguese
were tied behind him, and his ankles hampered so as to prevent his
taking but little steps. Then Jerry, whose duty it was, as mate, took
the poor devil by the ear, and, giving it a wrench, the Portuguese
shuffled on until he stood before the first man in the line.
‘Now, Jack,’ said Jerry, ‘here’s the mark for you; let’s see what
pith you have got in your muscles.’
So the seaman addressed flourished his rope cudgel aloft, and then
brought it down upon the naked back of the Portuguese, with a blow
which echoed over the deck, and raised a broad white-coloured bar of
flesh, which started up from the shoulder almost to the loin. The
sufferer staggered under the weight of the stroke, and immediately
all his back, except just where the scourge fell, turned to a
burning red; but he uttered no sound.
‘Very well struck, Jack,’ said the mate, and then dragged the
prisoner forward to receive the second blow. Ten minutes passed over
at least, before the Portuguese had got through one-half of his
punishment, by arriving in the bows of the ship; for Jerry prolonged
the torture by stopping to joke with each man before he struck, and
advising him to lay it on well. The whole scene was a very brutal
one, and I would gladly have left the deck if I could. There was no
escape, however, and I saw the poor wretch flogged up one side of the
ship and down the other, each blow given by the full strength of an
unwearied arm. When the prisoner had completed his miserable walk, he
was trembling all over; great drops of sweat were running down his
face, and his back, although the skin was not actually cut, was a
mass of ugly-coloured swellings.
‘He will faint in a minute,’ said Rumbold, ‘and cheat Jerry of the
finishing stroke’
But, as if the mate had been aware of his danger, he hurriedly
flourished his scourge round his head, so as to give it the full
swing of his brawny arm, and then brought it down upon the sufferer
with a buffet which might have broken the spine of a bull, and which
drove the wretch who received it flat upon the deck, where he lay
stark and motionless.
‘Well,’ said Le Chiffon Rouge, who, being captain, had not personally
interfered in the punishment, ‘it is to be hoped that Monsieur Vasco
hath had a lesson upon the disadvantages of drawing knives upon
comrades.’
‘And upon the disadvantages of making enemies of more powerful men
than himself,’ whispered Rumbold. ‘I dare say the fellow is a rascal,
but he was flogged, not for cutting open his shipmate’s head, but for
preventing the mate from getting a fourth wife.’
‘Here, men,’ roared Jerry, as he twitched up the head of the
prostrate man by the hair, and then allowed it to fall with a thump
upon the deck, ‘slush this carrion with a bucketfull of salt water,
and then tumble him down the hatchway. I warrant he don’t lie on his
back in his hammock for a month of Sundays.’
These orders were speedily carried into effect, and the Portuguese
having been taken below, the maintopsail was filled, and the ship
again stood upon her course.
In the course of the day, Jerry and Nixon came up to me together, and
proposed, very civilly, that, as I was a sailor, I should join the
ship for the cruise; in which case, they told me, that I should have
my regular share of the prize-money as if I had been on board since
they went to sea, about three months ago. Of course I had nothing
for it but to agree to the proposal, although I loathed the whole
set among whom I had been thus so strangely thrown. ‘Oh,’ thought I,
‘things were different on board the “Will-o’-the-Wisp,” with Stout
Jem for a commander, and a hearty set of fellows under him, as honest
as they were brave.’ But there was no help for it, and so my name was
duly enrolled in the great book of the ‘Saucy Susan.’
This being done, I of course took up my quarters with the crew, while
Rumbold was accommodated in the great cabin. It was truly a virtuous
company in which I found myself enlisted, almost every second man
of them having left England after having made it too hot to hold
him. One young fellow, with a ready laugh and a quick eye, told me
that he had been thrice left for execution in Newgate, and was each
time saved by the interest of friends. At last he was sent to the
plantations, where he was purchased by a confederate, and set at
liberty directly. Another man told me, that he had broken half the
jails in England, and boasted that there never was smith made a lock
which he could not pick with a rusty nail. A third fellow had been
a foot-pad on Blackheath, and fled the country with the Hue and Cry
at his heels. There were many more who had been thieves and rogues
all their lives, having, indeed, been brought up to that business
in the streets of London, in which they had been, as it were, born,
and then allowed to run wild like young savages—their hands against
every man, and every man’s hands against them. By one of these men
I was told, that he never knew the name of either his father or
mother. The first thing he could remember was, that he used to fight
with dogs in Lincoln’s Inn Fields for garbage and bones. He slept
upon bunks in the streets in summer, and among the ashes in the
glass-houses in winter, until having amassed money by many fortunate
robberies, for, quoth he, ‘my street education made me sharp,’ he got
to live in White Friars, the Mint, and places of that kind, where he
cared little for either warrants or thief-takers. ‘I promise you,’
quoth he, ‘the Lord Chief Justice cannot take a man there unless
he come backed by a company of musketeers.’ Another of our most
virtuous crew had been a highwayman, and used to infest Gradshill,
particularly after a ship had been paid off at Chatham, and the
seamen came swarming up on the London road to expend their money in
town debauchery. Having been apprehended sleeping in an inn on the
borders of Epping Forest, where it seems he sometimes lay in wait for
Cambridge scholars journeying past, a prosecutor was found to come
forward against him at Newgate in very curious fashion. He told me
the story himself.
‘There were six of us,’ quoth he, ‘and they had suspicions against
all, but no witnesses. The fact was, that they knew very well that
we had walked Watling Street, and perhaps other roads also, but they
could find no one to prove it. So this was the plan the lawyers hit
on. They published a notice in the _London Gazette_, to say, that six
persons, reputed highwaymen, would be publicly exhibited in Newgate,
dressed in riding suits, and just as they appeared on the road, so
that any one who had been recently robbed might be able to tell
whether the thief was in the clutches of the law. So the day came,
and we were made, every man of us, to don our riding gear, and then
with boot and red doublet, pistols at our belts, and just a morsel of
crape dangling from our hats, we were paraded up and down the long
galleries, while a crowd of ladies and court gallants examined us
with their glasses, and joked and laughed and coquetted, and told us
to turn, first one way and then the other, and said, as each passed
by, “No, no, he is not the fellow who robbed me; bring up the next,
good master turnkey, and make him turn well round, so that we may see
his face to our satisfaction.” It would have been very well, however,
if all the remarks had been like these. But, one by one, my poor
companions were marked out and carried away. “Here be the very man
who eased me of my purse on Gadshill,” quoth a fat grazier of Kent,
and stout Tom Clinch was straightway taken to the hold.’ “O’ my life,
the rascal who stopped her ladyship’s carriage on Hounslow, and made
us all hand over watches and cash,” says a mincing carpet knight, and
the fate of brave Moonlight Dick was settled. Even thus our misdeeds
came home to us; so that in the space of an hour and a half I stood
alone, and then, the crowd of spectators beginning to disperse, I
had good hope that my lucky stars would prevail, and that I would
be allowed to go forth for lack of evidence. But alas! in the nick
of time, just as the captain of Newgate was thinking of turning me
adrift with a kick and an oath, up there trips a dainty gentlewoman,
whose face I knew in an instant, for I had said some few flattering
words in praise of the brilliancy of her eyes, and what not, to which
she listened nothing loath, while I conveyed to my own pouch a golden
locket she wore, filled with hair, which I warrant you grew never on
the bald head of her spouse, an old lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn. So she
stared at me very hard, while I twisted my features first one way and
then the other, now cocking my eye, now leering it, so that I saw she
was mightily puzzled. But just then old Diggory, the thief-taker,
fetched me a wipe over the chops; “Take that, you mumper,” says he,
“and keep your ugly face quiet till the gentlewoman decide.” But it
was no such easy matter for her to pronounce; and at length quo’
my madam, as cool as an’ she had been in a raree-show, and wished
to hear the lion roar, “Make him speak, good master keeper, make
him speak, and I shall know the voice.” So says old Diggory, “Come,
Helter-Skelter Joe, you hear what the lady says, tip us a few tongue
flourishes.” So I commenced grumbling and snorting through my nose,
but it wouldn’t do. “Stow that,” says Diggory, “or we shall have
the hangman in with his cat-o’-nine tails.” Then I set to gabbling
in a high treble, like a dame of Billingsgate whose comrades had
stolen her fish,—but it was all in vain, they made me talk in my
own voice at last, and quoth the bona roba as soon as she heard the
patter, “Oh, good master jailer, it is the villain, indeed.” So I was
tried—condemned—left for execution, and I can tell you it took both
money and friends to prevent my going up Holborn Hill in a cart.’
There were others of the crew, however, more reputable characters,
so far as regarded actual roguery, but they were one and all a
devil-may-care set, without thought or morals, and only anxious
for plunder and debauchery. Several of them had been kidnapped, as
they told me, from Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle, London, and other
places. These were all of them youths under twenty, and two or three
of them had been, they said, sold by their parents. They had all
of them, however, managed, after serving for different periods, to
make their escape from Virginia, and to find their way into the
West Indian seas. They gave doleful accounts of their treatment in
the plantations—how they had been flogged and starved, and of the
great numbers who had died from fever and sun strokes. Those who had
been kidnapped frequently fared worse than the convicted felons,
because the former, being generally of tender years, were less able
to protect themselves than the old thieves and vagabonds who were
transported thither from the jails of England. The reader will easily
understand that a great number of the crew of the ‘Saucy Susan’ were
but very poor sailors, and clumsy fellows in blowing weather aloft.
Indeed, it was sometimes rare sport to see the boatswain and his
mates, armed with big rattans, thrashing the skulkers out of their
hammocks, and chasing them up to their duty from all the secret
holes and hiding-places in the ship; while Jerry would be storming
and raving on the poop, and swearing that he would shoot the last man
who got out on the yard in reefing topsails. Among these lubberly
rogues, however, there were a handful of prime sailors, chiefly
old men, who had swung in hammocks nigh half a century, and had
been tossed on every sea all round the world. The great fault they
had was, that not a single man of the whole lot would keep sober
if he had an opportunity of getting drunk. For all that, however,
Jerry was forced to depend upon these sailors, his ‘Mother Carey’s
chickens,’ as he called them, for the safe navigation of the ship;
knowing very well that, if the rest of the crew were but fresh
water seamen, they were as good, with cutlasses and boarding-pikes
in their hands, as the most daring veterans of the sea. With these
ancient mariners I chiefly consorted, we forming a company who kept
somewhat aloof from the rake-helly set we lived among, and during
the many calm midwatches I kept on board the ‘Saucy Susan,’ I picked
up many legends and tales of the sea from these old men, who had
passed long lives upon the face of the waters. I have already given
to the reader one story, as a sample of the kind of legends which
we Buccaneers loved to listen to, and I shall here add another of
the same sort, relating to a notion which was very common amongst
seamen of the time of which I speak, but which has now, I believe,
except with the most ignorant of the class, wholly died away. I mean,
the idea that particular capes or headlands running out into the
sea are haunted by evil demons, who hate ships to pass by, and who,
therefore, raise tempests to beat them back, and prevent them from
doubling the point, or spot of land in question. This belief, no
doubt, rose from the general stormy nature of the seas off capes and
outstretching tongues of land. The two great capes of the world—the
Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, many sailors believed to be haunted
by most powerful demons, and regarded the awful gales which blew,
and the fearful seas which run thereabouts, as nothing but the work
of these Cape devils, if I may call them so, not remembering that
the phenomena in question are simply the effect of geographical
position and the unchanging laws of the elements. However, I proceed
to my story, merely premising that the seaman who told it, and
who was an old mariner with a white beard, did devoutly believe
in all the extravagancies which I have just mentioned, as well as
in the fantastic tale which he told. I give it in rather better
language than the narrator made use of; his speech, indeed, being
much seasoned with forecastle expressions, not of the most delicate
nature. But it is worthy of a new chapter.