for me? Curse you for a villain! speak out, or I will drub you within an
inch of your life, and that inch also! Is there a chance for me, I say!"
But the surgeon shook his head. "Captain Sharkey," said he, "it would be
an ill deed to speak you false. The taint is on you. No man on whom the
leper scales have rested is ever clean again."
Sharkey's head fell forward on his chest, and he sat motionless,
stricken by this great and sudden horror, looking with his smouldering
eyes into his fearsome future. Softly the mate and the surgeon rose from
their places, and stealing out from the poisoned air of the cabin, came
forth into the freshness of the early dawn, with the soft, scent-laden
breeze in their faces and the first red feathers of cloud catching the
earliest gleam of the rising sun as it shot its golden rays over the
palm-clad ridges of distant Hispaniola.
That morning a second council of the Rovers was held at the base of the
mainmast, and a deputation chosen to see the captain. They were
approaching the after-cabins when Sharkey came forth, the old devil in
his eyes, and his bandolier with a pair of pistols over his shoulder.
"Sink you all for villains!" he cried. "Would you dare cross my hawse?
Stand out, Sweetlocks, and I will lay you open! Here, Galloway, Martin,
Foley, stand by me and lash the dogs to their kennel!"
But his officers had deserted him, and there was none to come to his
aid. There was a rush of the pirates. One was shot through the body, but
an instant afterwards Sharkey had been seized and was triced to his own
mainmast. His filmy eyes looked round from face to face, and there was
none who felt the happier for having met them.
"Captain Sharkey," said Sweetlocks, "you have mishandled many of us, and
you have now pistolled John Masters, besides killing Bartholomew, the
carpenter, by braining him with a bucket. All this might have been
forgiven you, in that you have been our leader for years, and that we
have signed articles to serve under you while the voyage lasts. But now
we have heard of this _bona roba_ on board, and we know that you are
poisoned to the marrow, and that while you rot there will be no safety
for any of us, but that we shall all be turned into filth and
corruption. Therefore, John Sharkey, we Rovers of the _Happy Delivery_,
in council assembled, have decreed that while there be yet time, before
the plague spreads, you shall be set adrift in a boat to find such a
fate as Fortune may be pleased to send you."
John Sharkey said nothing, but slowly circling his head, he cursed them
all with his baleful gaze. The ship's dinghy had been lowered, and he,
with his hands still tied, was dropped into it on the bight of a rope.
"Cast her off!" cried Sweetlocks.
"Nay, hold hard a moment, Master Sweetlocks!" shouted one of the crew.
"What of the wench? Is she to bide aboard and poison us all?"
"Send her off with her mate!" cried another, and the Rovers roared their
approval. Driven forth at the end of pikes, the girl was pushed towards
the boat. With all the spirit of Spain in her rotting body she flashed
triumphant glances on her captors.
"Perros! Perros Ingleses! Lepero, Lepero!" she cried in exultation, as
they thrust her over into the boat.
"Good luck, captain! God speed you on your honeymoon!" cried a chorus of
mocking voices, as the painter was unloosed, and the _Happy Delivery_,
running full before the trade-wind, left the little boat astern, a tiny
dot upon the vast expanse of the lonely sea.
* * * * *
Extract from the log of H.M. fifty-gun ship _Hecate_ in her cruise off
the American Main.
"_Jan. 26, 1721._--This day, the junk having become unfit for
food, and five of the crew down with scurvy, I ordered that we
send two boats ashore at the nor'-western point of Hispaniola,
to seek for fresh fruit, and perchance shoot some of the wild
oxen with which the island abounds.
"_7 p.m._--The boats have returned with good store of green
stuff and two bullocks. Mr. Woodruff, the master, reports that
near the landing-place at the edge of the forest was found the
skeleton of a woman, clad in European dress, of such sort as to
show that she may have been a person of quality. Her head had
been crushed by a great stone which lay beside her. Hard by was
a grass hut, and signs that a man had dwelt therein for some
time, as was shown by charred wood, bones and other traces.
There is a rumour upon the coast that Sharkey, the bloody
pirate, was marooned in these parts last year, but whether he
has made his way into the interior, or whether he has been
picked up by some craft, there is no means of knowing. If he be
once again afloat, then I pray that God send him under our
guns."
IV
HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY
The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders. They
were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of their
own. In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the Spaniards they
had some semblance of right upon their side. Their bloody harryings of
the cities of the Main were not more barbarous than the inroads of Spain
upon the Netherlands--or upon the Caribs in these same American lands.
The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might
countenance him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any
deed which might shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too
outrageously. Some of them were touched with religion, and it is still
remembered how Sawkins threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and
Daniel pistolled a man before the altar for irreverence.
But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer
mustered at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took
their place. Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of
discipline still lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the
Englands, and the Robertses, there remained some respect for human
sentiment. They were more dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman.
But they in turn were replaced by more savage and desperate men, who
frankly recognised that they would get no quarter in their war with the
human race, and who swore that they would give as little as they got. Of
their histories we know little that is trustworthy. They wrote no
memoirs and left no trace, save an occasional blackened and
blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of the Atlantic. Their deeds
could only be surmised from the long roll of ships which never made
their port.
Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to
be lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque
brutality behind. Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman,
and of the infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the _Happy
Delivery_, was known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the
Orinoco as the dark forerunner of misery and of death.
There were many men, both among the islands and on the main, who had a
blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
Copley Banks, of Kingston. Banks had been one of the leading sugar
merchants of the West Indies. He was a man of position, a member of the
Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
Virginia. His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and their
mother had gone over to bring them back. On their return voyage the
ship, the _Duchess of Cornwall_, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and the
whole family met with an infamous death.
Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a
morose and enduring melancholy. He neglected his business, avoided his
friends, and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen
and seamen. There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at
his pipe, with a set face and a smouldering eye. It was generally
supposed that his misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends
looked at him askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar
him from honest men.
From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea. Sometimes
it was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon,
and approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the
sight of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled
sheep. Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in
with her canvas curved like a lady's bodice, because she had seen a
patched fore-topsail rising slowly above the violet water-line.
Sometimes it was from a Coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama Cay
littered with sun-dried bodies.
Once there came a man who had been mate of a Guineaman, and who had
escaped from the pirate's hands. He could not speak--for reasons which
Sharkey could best supply--but he could write, and he did write, to the
very great interest of Copley Banks. For hours they sat together over
the map, and the dumb man pointed here and there to outlying reefs and
tortuous inlets, while his companion sat smoking in silence, with his
unvarying face and his fiery eyes.
One morning, some two years after his misfortune, Mr. Copley Banks
strode into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness. The
manager stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had shown
any interest in business.
"Good morning, Mr. Banks!" said he.
"Good morning, Freeman. I see that _Ruffling Harry_ is in the Bay."
"Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday."
"I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving
venture to Whydah."
"But her cargo is ready, sir."
"Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the
_Ruffling Harry_ must go slaving to Whydah."
All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
clear the ship once more.
And then Copley Banks began to make preparations for his African voyage.
It appeared that he relied upon force rather than barter for the filling
of his hold, for he carried none of those showy trinkets which savages
love, but the brig was fitted with eight nine-pounder guns and racks
full of muskets and cutlasses. The after sail-room next the cabin was
transformed into a powder magazine, and she carried as many round shot
as a well-found privateer. Water and provisions were shipped for a long
voyage.
But the preparation of his ship's company was most surprising. It made
Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that
his master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or
another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the
firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port--men
whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been
ashamed to furnish them.
There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been present at
the killing of the log-wood cutters, so that his hideous scarlet
disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from
that great crime. He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a
little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking
of Cape Coast Castle.
The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been
shaved, and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom
Sharkey had placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his
experiences to Copley Banks.
These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet uncommented upon in the town of
Kingston. The Commandant of the troops--Major Harvey, of the
Artillery--made serious representations to the Governor.
"She is not a trader, but a small warship," said he. "I think it would
be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the vessel."
"What do you suspect?" asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
broken down with fevers and port wine.
"I suspect," said the soldier, "that it is Stede Bonnet over again."
Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious
character, who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in
his blood, had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the
Caribbean Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the
utmost consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been
accused of being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions
upon their plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
construction.
"Well, Major Harvey," said he, "I am vastly sorry to do anything which
may offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been
under his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for
me but to order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to
her character and destination."
So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
paid a surprise visit to the _Ruffling Harry_, with the result that they
picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented
danger. She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out
against the north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze
upon the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks
revealed his plans to them. He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys
and lads of spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than
starve for a living upon the shore. King's ships were few and weak, and
they could master any trader who might come their way. Others had done
well at the business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no
reason why they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats.
If they were prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to
command them; but if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and
row back to Jamaica.
Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
ship's side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings
of the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted
upon it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.
Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed. Copley
Banks was chosen Captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate
craft, Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
boatswain. There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of the
brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates before.
Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere with
another man's drink! The Captain should have a cabin, but all hands
should be welcome to enter it when they chose.
All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a
whole share extra. He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon
taken out of her. He who boarded her first should have the richest suit
of clothes aboard of her. Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it
man or woman, after his own fashion. If a man flinched from his gun, the
quartermaster should pistol him. These were some of the rules which the
crew of the _Ruffling Harry_ subscribed by putting forty-two crosses at
the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.
So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
over became as well known as that of the _Happy Delivery_. From the
Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders. For a long
time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular, as
the _Ruffling Harry_ was for ever looking in at Sharkey's resorts; but
at last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon's Hole, at
the east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the
_Happy Delivery_, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for
the same purpose.
Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the green trumpeter
ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea. Then he dropped
his boat and went aboard.
Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself. Copley Banks
found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New
England quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians
standing about him. Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance
when Sharkey's pale face and filmy blue eyes were turned upon him.
He was in his shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through
his open red satin long-flapped vest. The scorching sun seemed to have
no power upon his fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though
it had been winter. A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body
and supported a short murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled
belt was stuffed with pistols.
"Sink you for a poacher!" he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
bulwarks. "I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
also! What mean you by fishing in my waters?"
Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
who sees his home at last.
"I am glad that we are of one mind," said he, "for I am myself of
opinion that the seas are not large enough for the two of us. But if you
will take your sword and pistols and come upon a sand-bank with me, then
the world will be rid of a damned villain whichever way it goes."
"Now, this is talking!" cried Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding
out his hand. "I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the
eyes and speak with a full breath. May the devil seize me if I do not
choose you as a consort! But if you play me false, then I will come
aboard of you and gut you upon your own poop."
"And I pledge you the same!" said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
became sworn comrades to each other.
That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and
harried the New York traders and the whale-ships from New England. It
was Copley Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, _House of Hanover_,
but it was Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted
him to death with empty claret-bottles.
Together they engaged the King's ship _Royal Fortune_, which had been
sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long
cruise down the West Indies.
By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
for Sharkey loved a wholehearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the _Ruffling
Harry_. It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself
outside his own ship and away from his own men.
But Copley Banks came often on board the _Happy Delivery_, and joined
Sharkey in many of his morose debauches, so that at last any lingering
misgivings of the latter were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil
that he had done to his new boon companion, for of his many victims how
could he remember the woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such
levity so long ago! When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself
and to his quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their
stay at the Caicos Bank, he saw no reason to refuse.
A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their
fare was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply
together. There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned
Galloway, and Israel Martin, the old buccaneersman. To wait upon them
was the dumb steward, whose head Sharkey split with his glass, because
he had been too slow in the filling of it.
The quartermaster had slipped Sharkey's pistols away from him, for it
was an old joke with him to fire them cross-handed under the table, and
see who was the luckiest man. It was a pleasantry which had cost his
boatswain his leg, so now, when the table was cleared, they would coax
Sharkey's weapons away from him on the excuse of the heat, and lay them
out of his reach.
The Captain's cabin of the _Ruffling Harry_ was in a deck-house upon the
poop, and a sternchaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot
were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates
sang and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up
their glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their
tobacco-pipes. Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices
hoarser, the curses and shoutings more incoherent, until three of the
five had closed their blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads
upon the table.
Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the watchful
steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without came the low
lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor's chanty from the
barque.
In the windless tropical night the words came clearly to their ears:
"A trader sailed from Stepney Town,
Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!
A trader sailed from Stepney Town
With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
Waiting with his yard aback
Out upon the Lowland Sea."
The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the
shot-rack behind him.
"Captain Sharkey," said Copley Banks, "do you remember the _Duchess of
Cornwall_, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
off the Statira Shoal?"
"Curse me if I can bear their names in mind," said Sharkey. "We did as
many as ten ships a week about that time."
"There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will
bring it back to your mind."
Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.
"But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!" he cried. "How came
you to think of it?"
"It was of interest to me," said Copley Banks, "for the woman was my
wife and the lads were my only sons."
Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering
fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame.
He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt. Then
he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round him,
and in an instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like a wild
cat and screamed for help.
"Ned!" he yelled. "Ned! Wake up! Here's damned villainy! Help, Ned,
help!"
But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for
any voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey was
swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a
handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at
them. The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for
the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him. He understood
that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him
at last.
The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
elaborate.