if you had not asked for the information. My purpose in coming to this
part of the world is to seek my brother, who was last year captured by
your countrymen at San Juan de Ulua, when, by order of Don Martin
Enriquez, they treacherously attacked the squadron of the English
admiral, John Hawkins, while he was peacefully refitting his ships,
under an agreement whereby they were to be permitted to do so without
let, hindrance, or interference of any kind. My brother, Don Hubert
Saint Leger, is still a prisoner in the hands of your countrymen. My
intention is to secure his release, if he is still alive; and to exact
heavy compensation for his detention--and any discomfort or suffering to
which he may have been subjected; or, if he is dead, to wreak my
vengeance upon his slayers. Therefore, senor, you will be rendering
your countrymen a service--when I have released you--by informing them
of my purpose, and saying, further, that as soon as I have found my
brother, or had him restored to me, I will hold my hand and leave these
shores; but until then I will ravage the Spanish Main from end to end.
Thus, you--and your countrymen also, I hope--will see that it is to the
interest of every Spaniard in the Indies to find my brother and restore
him to me, alive and unhurt, as quickly as possible. And do not forget
to lay full emphasis upon the words `alive and unhurt,' senor, because
if he has been slain, or even injured in any way, I will exact such
terrible reparation as shall linger in the memory of Spaniards for many
a long year. It is in pursuance of my policy of exacting reparation for
my brother's detention that I have captured your ship. I shall take
from her whatever I may find aboard her that will be of use to me; and,
that done, I shall land you all here on the island of Margarita, and
either sink or burn the _Santa Maria_."
"I presume, senor, from what you say, that you hold a commission from
the Queen of England, and that it is she who has dispatched you upon
your mission of retribution, in revenge for the attack upon her ships at
San Juan de Ulua. Is that so?" demanded Don Pasquale.
"No, senor, it is not so," answered George. "The Queen of England knows
nothing of this expedition, which is entirely a private venture of my
own."
"And the senor holds no commission?" continued the Don.
"No commission save what is conferred by this," answered George,
touching his sword.
"Then it would appear that I have fallen into the hands of a common
pirate, senor," remarked Don Pasquale through his teeth.
"If you choose to so regard me," answered George.
"_Bueno_!" remarked the Spaniard. "Then I shall know what to do. There
is no question of how I choose to regard you, senor. You hold no
commission from your Queen, yet you have dared to make war upon the
lieges of his Most Catholic Majesty. Therefore you are a pirate,
neither more nor less. And as soon as it pleases you to release me I
shall make the best of my way to the Main, there to warn my countrymen
of your presence upon the coast, and your alleged object. And you may
rest assured, senor, that within a month from this time every Spanish
ship in these seas will be on the look-out for you. Your career of
piracy will then soon be cut short; and I shall live in the hope of
seeing you hanged as a warning and example to all other pirates."
"That is as may be," retorted George. "You may be assured, Don
Pasquale, that I did not enter upon this expedition without a full
realisation of all the risks which it involved. Let me again impress
upon you the urgency of remembering the words _alive and unhurt_ in
relation to my brother, when you make your report; for if anything has
been allowed to happen to him, I will hold responsible every Spaniard
who falls into my hands. By the way, was there not something that you
were about to add when you were enumerating the items of your ship's
cargo?"
"There was, senor," answered Don Pasquale, "but I was then under the
impression that I had fallen into the hands of a fellow soldier. But
now that I find my captor to be merely a common pirate, it is not
consonant with my honour to afford you any further information."
"As you please, senor," answered George, in nowise ruffled by the Don's
reiteration of the term "pirate," which in those days carried nothing
like the opprobrious signification that it bears to-day. "It matters
not; for I shall cause your ship to be thoroughly searched from stem to
stern before I destroy her. But as you seem to be imbued with so very
strong an animus against me, I must put you in confinement while your
ship is being searched, lest you should feel tempted to do something
which you would afterwards be sorry for." So saying, young Saint Leger
threw open the door of a state-room in the lock of which he observed a
key and, signing to the Spaniard to enter, closed the door and locked
the man in, much to the haughty Don's undisguised disgust. Then, having
first called in a man from the deck to stand sentry over the door, he
went out on deck to see how matters were proceeding there.
He found that the task of separating the wounded from the dead and the
disposal of the former as comfortably as might be on board the ships to
which they respectively belonged, was upon the eve of completion,
whereupon, after giving Dyer certain further orders, George called to
Heard, the purser, and a couple of seamen, to accompany him, and again
entering the cabin of the prize, proceeded to subject it to a thorough
systematic search, beginning with the captain's own private state-room.
Here, as George quite expected, they found, in a locked desk, a large
number of documents, including bills of lading, official instructions,
and so on; and among the latter a paper authorising Don Pasquale to
deliver over to Don Martin Enriquez, the Viceroy of Mexico, at San Juan
de Ulua, the sum of one hundred thousand gold pezos, to be used for
payment of the troops and the expenses connected with the government of
the country. This was a prize indeed worth having, and George at once
proceeded to the cabin in which the Don was confined, and apprising him
of the discovery of the document, demanded to be informed where the
money was to be found. But the Don flatly refused to supply the
information, admitting indeed that the treasure was aboard the ship, but
assuring George that it was so carefully concealed that no one but
himself would ever be able to lay hands upon it. Whereupon George
locked the door again, slipped the key in his pocket, and sent for the
carpenter and carpenter's mate of the _Nonsuch_, with instructions to
come aboard the prize forthwith, bringing with them their tools.
George had a very shrewd suspicion that the money was concealed
somewhere down in the run of the ship, that being the part of a vessel
where treasure was usually stored, because there it would be under the
immediate care of the officers and quite out of reach of the crew; as
soon, therefore, as the carpenter and his mate joined them, the search
party entered the ship's lazarette and completely cleared it, sending
all the stores up on deck. Then, not finding any traces of the money,
they tore up the temporary decking, and not to dwell unduly upon this
incident, at length found the treasure, in ten stout, iron-bound cases,
very cunningly stowed away in a secret chamber constructed right down
alongside the ship's keelson. It was a difficult job to get the cases
on deck, they being heavy, and the space in which they were stowed very
confined; but, of course, they managed it at last, and late in the
afternoon the whole was transferred to the _Nonsuch_ and safely stowed
away in her treasure-room. Meanwhile, Dyer had not been idle; and when
the transfer of the treasure had been effected, and George was free to
attend to other matters, the pilot reported that all the arms,
ammunition, and certain pieces of ordnance, had been removed from the
_Santa Maria_, as well as the large quantity of wine, provisions, rope,
canvas, and other matters that might possibly prove useful in the
future, and that--subject of course to George's approval--the prize
might now be abandoned. Whereupon, after carefully perusing Dyer's
detailed list of the matters transferred, George issued orders that the
boats of both ships were to be lowered and the prisoners, wounded and
unwounded, sent down into them, after which the flotilla proceeded,
under a flag of truce, to the settlement, some two miles to windward,
where the Spaniards were landed. There was a tense moment when, as the
flotilla approached the wharf, a body of armed men, numbering about a
hundred, suddenly swung into view from behind a cluster of buildings and
marched down toward the wharf as though intending to dispute the
landing. But when George, in his gig, pulled fearlessly ahead until he
arrived within hail--and within musket-shot--and announced the object of
his coming, adding that, if any treachery were attempted, his ship would
bombard and utterly destroy the settlement, the armed men were hurriedly
marched back again out of sight, and the landing of the prisoners was
accomplished without difficulty or interference.
By the time that the boats got alongside again, after landing the
prisoners, the sun was within an hour of setting, and if the adventurers
desired to reach the open sea again before nightfall--as they most
assuredly did--it was time to bestir themselves. George, therefore,
issued his orders, and while one party of his now pretty well exhausted
crew manned the capstan and proceeded to get the _Nonsuch's_ anchor, a
second were set to work to pass a towing hawser aboard the prize and
make it fast; after which the ships got under way, the _Santa Maria_
being in tow of the _Nonsuch_, and safely accomplished the passage of
the reef just as the sun's upper rim was disappearing beneath the
western horizon in a flaming glory of gold and crimson. Then, as soon
as the ships had secured an offing of some three miles, rendering it
exceedingly unlikely that the prize would drive ashore and again fall
into the hands of her former crew, she was effectually set fire to and
abandoned. This done, the exhausted crew were sent below to get a good
substantial meal, and the deck was left practically in charge of the
officers, the helmsman and a couple of hands to keep a look-out being
air of the crew who were required to keep the deck until the regular
night watches should be resumed.
This opportunity was seized by George to explain to the officers his
more immediate plans. He reminded them that the primary object of the
expedition was to rescue his brother from the Spaniards, and pointed out
to them that since the stroke of good fortune which had fallen to their
lot, that day, had made them masters of enough booty to ensure the
financial success of the expedition, there was now no reason why the
great object of the voyage should be further delayed, and intimated his
intention of heading the ship directly for San Juan de Ulua. And this
was at once agreed to, if not exactly cheerfully, at least with a fairly
good grace; for there were some on board the _Nonsuch_ who, having seen
how apparently easy it was to obtain rich booty, would fain have had the
ship proceed leisurely along the coast, touching at La Guaira, Porto
Cabello, La Hacha, Santa Marta, Cartagena--in fact at every spot along
the Main where the Spaniards had established themselves, holding the
towns to ransom and acquiring all the booty possible while working their
way westward. But George would have none of it, he had already acquired
quite as much booty as he desired to possess at that moment; for he
wanted to keep his men keen, and he knew that nothing saps a man's
courage more, and makes him less willing to engage in a desperate
enterprise, than the possession of ample means, and he feared that if he
acquired too much treasure before he had succeeded in finding and
rescuing his brother, the crew might insist upon abandoning the quest
and returning home to enjoy the fruit of their spoils. Therefore, as
soon as the south-western extremity of Margarita was cleared, the ship's
head was hauled up to west-north-west for the northern extremity of the
peninsula of Yucatan.
On the following forenoon a small island, the northern extremity of
which was studded with numerous outlying rocks, was sighted ahead, and
passed, close to the northward, about an hour before noon; and late on
in the afternoon another and somewhat larger island, grouped about with
innumerable rocky satellites, was sighted and passed to larboard. Then
nothing more was seen until, on the fifth day out from Margarita, about
an hour before midnight, the alarm was suddenly raised that broken water
appeared ahead, and the ship was quickly brought to the wind, on the
starboard tack, just in time to avoid plunging headlong upon a reef
projecting from the northern extremity of a small island, of the
existence of which Dyer declared himself to be utterly ignorant.
Luckily for the adventurers, there was a half-moon riding high in the
sky, which, together with the highly phosphorescent state of the sea,
and the admirable look-out which was being maintained by George's
orders, enabled them to detect the danger in time to avoid it.
Hastily summoned from his bunk, upon the occurrence of the emergency,
George ascended to the poop, and carefully surveyed the situation. To
the northward there appeared what looked like the loom of high land, but
if it was what it appeared to be, it was sufficiently distant to be of
no immediate consequence, and the young commander scarcely favoured it
with a second glance; it was his immediate surroundings that most
insistently claimed his immediate attention, for as a matter of fact the
ship had blundered up against what is now known as the Pedro Bank and
its cays, and there the latter lay, not more than a mile to leeward of
the ship, which was already in discoloured water, with the sea breaking
heavily at no great distance to the north of her and all round four
small islets within easy distance of each other. Fortunately, the
weather was fine, and a very brief study of the situation sufficed to
convince Saint Leger that the ship was not in any danger, now that the
islands had been seen and timely measures taken to avoid running upon
them. But the sight of them had crystallised in his mind an idea that
had been floating there during the last few days, ever since they had
left Margarita, indeed, and he issued orders for sail to be reduced, and
for the ship to dodge to and fro to windward of the islets, keeping them
in sight until the morning. For he had suddenly made up his mind to
devote a few hours to the examination of these islets by daylight, with
the object of determining their suitability as a hiding-place for the
treasure which he now had on board. He regarded it as altogether too
valuable to be risked in a fight with its accompanying possibilities of
capture, and he felt convinced, from occasional remarks which had
reached his ears, that all hands would fight with greater freedom, and
much easier minds, if they felt that, in the event of a reverse, their
loss would be confined to that of the ship, and possibly their own
freedom--strange to say, they were quite willing to risk the latter,
convinced that if they fell into the hands of the enemy their loss of
freedom would be but temporary, but if they chanced to lose the treasure
it would be gone for ever.
Accordingly the ship dodged off and on during the remaining hours of the
night, and at daybreak George was called, and at once proceeded into the
foretop, accompanied by Dyer, where the pair again carefully
reconnoitred their surroundings. From this elevation it was seen that
the four islets occupied the south-eastern extremity of a shoal, or
bank, of somewhat irregular shape, widening out from a point at its
eastern extremity, to a width of some twenty-five miles at the spot
occupied by the islets, and stretching away in a westerly direction to
the very verge of the horizon, and possibly farther still. The four
islets lay in a group, about four miles apart, nearly equidistant from
each other, and ran in a direction approximately North-North-East, and
South-South-West, the most southerly islet standing quite close to the
edge of the shoal. The one next it to the northward, which was the
largest of them all, was only a very small affair, being about half a
mile long by about a quarter of a mile broad. But it was the
northernmost islet that chiefly appealed to George. All of them were
low and shaggy with stunted bush, but this one stood higher out of the
water than any of the others, being some twelve or fifteen feet high at
its highest part; moreover it had a few coconut trees upon it, which the
others had not, and the young captain was quick to see how usefully
these might be employed as landmarks in the event of his determining to
bury the treasure there. Accordingly, as soon as he and his companion
had familiarised themselves with the features of the place, George
descended to the deck and took command of the ship, leaving Dyer perched
aloft to act as pilot and con the ship to her anchorage. Half an hour
later the _Nonsuch_, having slid round the tail of a reef that jutted
out about half a mile from the southern extremity of the island, clewed
up her canvas and came to an anchor at a distance of less than a quarter
of a mile from the beautifully smooth, sandy beach, and all hands went
below to breakfast.
As George more than half-expected, there was a very marked disposition
to murmur and to betray strong dissatisfaction when it came to be known
that the captain had called a halt at this little group of desolate,
uninteresting islets with the express object of burying the rich booty
that had been so easily acquired, some of the malcontents going so far
as to express aloud their firm conviction that when once the islets had
been lost sight of it would be impossible to ever find them again. And
such a fear was by no means ill-founded, for it must be remembered that
when George Saint Leger embarked upon his great adventure the science of
navigation was in a very different condition from what it now is.
Latitude was only determinable very roughly by means of one or another
of two crude instruments, one of which was called the _astrolabe_ and
the other the _cross staff_, while there was no method of determining
the longitude at all, save by what is now known as the "dead reckoning,"
that is to say, a more or less careful record of the courses steered and
the distances sailed; hence when mariners ventured out of sight of land
their only means of reaching any desired point was to sail north or
south until they reached the latitude of their port, and then steer east
or west, as the case might be, until they arrived at their destination,
this plan being further complicated by the intrusion of obstacles in the
shape of headlands and what not in the way. But George Saint Leger
happened to be better equipped in this respect than perhaps any other
man of his time; for as has already been mentioned, he was a lad of
ideas, and one of those ideas was that there ought to be some way of
ascertaining the longitude of a ship, if one could but hit upon it; and
further, that such a way having been found, a mariner might fearlessly
venture out of sight of land, remain out of sight of it as long as he
pleased, and go whither he pleased, with the certainty of being able to
find his way back again. Then, with this postulate firmly fixed in his
mind, he had set himself to work in his leisure time to thrash out the
question of accurately determining the longitude of an unknown place in
relation to a known place. He was convinced that the world was round,
globular in shape, although there were many learned men who disputed
this assertion, and he also knew that the world revolved on its own axis
once in twenty-four hours. Also he knew that when the sun, in the
course of its apparent passage round the earth, attained its highest
point in the heavens, it was noon at that place, and his astrolabe
afforded him the means of determining that moment. Then, still
following the train of thought connected with the earth's diurnal
revolution upon its axis whereby the sun was brought to the meridian
every day at noon, he had not much difficulty in reasoning out the fact
that it cannot possibly be noon at any two or more places at the same
moment unless they happen to be situated on the same meridian, or, in
other words, are of the same longitude. From this to the assurance that
the difference in time between any two places was equivalent to the
difference in longitude between them was an easy step, and led naturally
enough to the next, which was that, if he happened to possess a time-
piece showing, say, the time at Plymouth, he could, by comparing this
with the moment of noon somewhere else, as ascertained by his astrolabe,
determine the exact distance of that place east or west of Plymouth.
The rest was easy; he went to a certain watchmaker in London and ordered
the best watch that could be made for money, the cost of it absorbing
most of his savings; and this watch, carefully regulated and rated,
showing Plymouth time, he took with him when he embarked upon his great
adventure in the _Nonsuch_, and by means of it he had succeeded in
ascertaining pretty accurately the longitude of Barbados, Trinidad, and
Margarita, and intended also to ascertain the longitude of the islet
upon which he proposed to bury his treasure. All this he explained to
his crew as well as he could drive so abstruse a matter into their thick
heads, and although it is more than doubtful whether any of them
understood his explanation, they understood at least that "the Cap'n"
was assuring them that he possessed some occult means of finding the
islets again, and with that they were fain to be satisfied. It never
occurred to them, poor souls, that if the captain lost his watch, or
allowed it to run down, his means of finding the islets again would be
gone, otherwise it is exceedingly unlikely that they would ever have
agreed to his taking the risk.
As soon as breakfast was over, one of the boats was lowered, and George,
accompanied by half a dozen men provided with pickaxes and shovels, went
ashore, to prepare a suitable hiding-place for the treasure, while Dyer,
and Heard, the purser, assisted by the sailmaker, swathed the chest
containing the pearls in several folds of tarred canvas, the outer coat
of all being thickly smeared with pitch, in order to preserve the
delicate gems from injury through being buried in more or less damp
earth. The shore party had no difficulty in selecting a suitable spot
for the burial, the precise point being determinable again at any time
by a series of carefully taken and equally carefully recorded cross
bearings; and by the time that a hole of suitable dimensions and depth
had been excavated, a signal was flying on board the _Nonsuch_ that all
the preparations there had been completed and that the treasure was
ready for removal, with the result that before the arrival of mid-day
the whole of the treasure was safely deposited in its hiding-place, the
soil shovelled back into the hole and well rammed down, and all traces
of the excavation carefully obliterated. Then all hands returned to the
ship just in time for George to make his noontide observations for the
determination of the position of the islets. The anchor was then hove
up and the _Nonsuch_ stood out to sea again, while, despite their
captain's assurances to the contrary, most of the crew were more than
half convinced that they would never again set eyes upon the treasure
which they had taken so much trouble to put out of sight.
Three uneventful days later land was sighted on the larboard bow, and
late in the afternoon the headland at the north-eastern extremity of
Yucatan peninsula was passed at a distance of some twelve miles, and the
course was altered to due west for the run along the northern coast of
the peninsula. It was near this spot that, just a year earlier, the
squadron under Captain Hawkins' command had encountered the two
successive hurricanes which had played such havoc with them as to compel
them to run to San Juan de Ulua to refit, with the result that
irremediable disaster had overtaken them; and Dyer, who had looked
forward with considerable trepidation to the time when he would again be
called upon to sail those treacherous seas, was loud in his
thanksgivings for the good fortune which had thus far attended them, for
nothing could be more satisfactory and delightful than the weather which
the voyagers were now experiencing, the only drawback to their content
being an unaccountably heavy sea into which they ran about midnight, and
which Dyer was inclined to regard as the forerunner of the much dreaded
hurricane. With the passage of the hours, however, the violence of the
sea manifested a tendency to moderate, which caused the more experienced
ones among the crew to arrive at the conclusion that, instead of being
the forerunner of a hurricane, the turbulent sea was merely the
aftermath of one which had very recently blown itself out.