Crouching over the fire, the marooned man proceeded to tell his story.
"Well," he began, "I must tell you first that I was born in the year
1532, in the town of Monmouth, in Wales, of purely Welsh parents,
bearing the ancient name of Evans. In my early youth I kept about the
house and tended our flock of sheep, of which we had a great many, on
the dear old Welsh mountains. This life suited me well, for I was of a
studious frame of mind, fond of learning, and I read and studied much
while out on the hills with the sheep. At this time our family was very
prosperous; but not long afterwards England began to be torn by those
religious struggles, which I doubt not you two older men will well
remember, and we were unfortunate enough to have our lands confiscated
by that tyrant, King Henry the Eighth, and, from a state of prosperity
and the possession of all we could reasonably wish, my family found
itself landless, without money, and even without a home. Besides
myself, there were two other children, both girls; and what worried my
poor parents most was the problem of what to do with us three children.
Fortunately an uncle of my mother--a man whose religious convictions had
a habit of changing with the times--had retained all his property, and
he undertook to take my two young sisters and bring them up as his own
children. This kindness on his part relieved my parents of much
anxiety; but there was still the difficulty as to what to do with me.
At last it was decided, in the absence of anything better, that I should
go to sea; and accordingly, although I did not at all care for the idea,
to sea I had to go, since no other course was open to me. My father
secured me a berth as cabin-boy on board a vessel called the _Delight_,
trading between London and ports on the Mediterranean, and commanded by
a man named Thomas West. It had happened that my father, in the time of
his prosperity, had been able to do this man a service, and that was the
reason why he took me on board his ship; and I am bound to say that he
was always very kind to me. The time for the next voyage came round
only too quickly for my liking, and I bade a sad farewell to my father
and mother, who somehow scraped up money enough to go to London with me
to see me off, little dreaming, poor souls, that they would never see me
again."
The pirate's voice shook slightly; he paused for a moment, and brushed
the back of his hand across his eyes; then, clearing his throat, he
resumed: "We left London in the latter part of the year 1547, when I was
very nearly sixteen years of age, and, sailing down the English Channel,
we entered the Bay of Biscay and touched at our first port, which was
Bordeaux. From thence we sailed again, and--just before Christmas it
was, I remember--we cleared the Straits of Jebel-al-Tarik, as the Moors
call them, and entered the great inland sea. We coasted down its
shores, touching first at Barcelona, for we were not then at war with
Spain, and then at Marseilles, from which port we struck across for
Sicily, intending to call at Palermo. But on the way there we fell in
with a Barbary corsair. Our captain was a brave man, and determined to
fight to the last, as he had a very valuable cargo on board. The fight
began early in the morning, and the pirate tried at first to ram our
ship with his sharp beak; but the wind was good, and our ship was so
nimble, and answered her helm so well, that we were able to avoid the
rushes of the corsair, although he nearly had us on one occasion.
Finding that these tactics did not answer, he drew off and, turning his
broadside to us, lacked us through and through with his ordnance until
we were a mere floating wreck, and half our ship's company lay dead on
our decks. We replied as well as we could; but, being only a
merchant-ship, we were not nearly so heavily armed as the corsair; and,
our men being untrained in warfare, very few of our shot hit him, so
that the rascal was but little the worse. Their captain then hailed us,
and asked whether we would surrender; but the master of the _Delight_
shouted back that if he wanted the ship he must come and take her.
"Whereat he came at us again, and laid himself alongside us, we not
being able to move by this time, owing to our having lost all our masts,
and being so encumbered with wreckage that we could do nothing. About a
hundred fierce and bloodthirsty ruffians swarmed aboard us and began to
cut us down and drive us toward the fore-part of the ship, while we, on
our side, fought bravely enough with what weapons we could lay our hands
on. But at last our gallant captain fell dead, cut down by the scimitar
of a gigantic blackamoor, and the rest of us--very few by that time, I
can assure you,--seeing this, threw down our arms and surrendered to the
corsairs. There were then but seventeen of us left, all told, and not
one of us but had his wound to show as the result of the fight. Five
out of that seventeen, indeed, were so badly wounded that they died of
their hurts before the corsair reached her port, leaving only twelve of
us, all Englishmen, to be sent into slavery. After the corsairs had
removed us to their own ship, they stripped the _Delight_ of all that
she carried, transferring all her cargo to their own hold. They were
greatly pleased at the result of their day's work--for they had made a
good haul--and made all haste to return to their port, which was Tunis.
But before bearing up they set fire to our ship, and when we last saw
the _Delight_ she was blazing merrily. I make no doubt that she sank
shortly afterwards, leaving no trace behind."
"You'm wrong there, mate," broke in Jake Irwin. "Don't you mind that it
rained heavily soon afterwards? Well, the rain put out the fire, and an
English ship comin' up found her still smoulderin', with enough of her
left to show that she was the _Delight_. She brought the news of the
loss of the _Delight_ into Plymouth--I remember hearin' all about it,--
and it was thought she had took fire in the ordinary way, and that her
crew, havin' gone off in the boats, was a'terwards lost. No one ever
gave a thought to pirates or corsairs."
"Ah," resumed Evans, "would to God that that vessel had come up sooner!
We should have been saved--those left of us--from a living death that
lasted for many years. Yes, now you come to mention it, I remember the
rain; but we never dreamed that it would put out the fire, for we left
her burning furiously. Well, the other ship was too late, and it makes
no difference now. But, to get on with my yarn. We reached the port of
Tunis about ten days later, and there was much joy there when it was
found what a valuable cargo the corsair had brought back; and the joy
was all the greater because of the twelve white prisoners, for white
slaves are reckoned very valuable in those parts, and there hadn't been
any taken for a very long while. We were all put up to auction, and the
man who bid highest got the man he fancied. A big Moor from the
back-country took a liking for me, for I was a fine strapping youngster
then, although you mightn't think it to look at me now. Well, he bought
me, but me only; so I said good-bye to my comrades, never expecting to
see them again, and we set off with my master's caravan for the
interior.
"His home must have been some hundreds of miles in the interior, for it
took us over two months of travelling every day to get there. We struck
from the town of Tunis south-eastwards, as I could tell by the sun.
After travelling for a long time we came to a big river, with fields of
rice on each side of it, and beyond them the burning desert, with hills
and mountains behind that again. When we came to the river we left the
camels, and proceeded in boats until we came to a mighty waterfall,
where we quitted the river for a time, and went a little way overland;
then we took to the river again. This we did four times, and at last,
after more than two months, travelling all the time, we came to a big
town, built all of white stone, very fine to see. All around were green
places like parks, with wells of good water in them; and there were
palm-trees all about, and palaces of white marble; it was a lovely place
for a free man to live in, but for a slave it was dreadful.
"Well, my masters, I was kept here for ten long years, during which I
learnt the language, and found that the city in which I dwelt was named
Khartoum. Then I began to fall ill; I looked old with suffering, and
could not do the tasks allotted to me. I was whipped, and burnt with
red-hot irons; but even such cruelties as these did not make me do any
more work--for indeed I was more dead than alive,--so at last my master
said he would send me down the river to the sea-coast, and sell me there
as a galley-slave, as I was of no more use to him, while I should be
made to work when I was in the galleys. So, with six others in like
condition, I was sent off one morning, in charge of a guard, down the
river, passing on our way six waterfalls or cataracts, as also many
ruined temples and palaces of great age and beauty, with no men in them.
"After nearly two months of travelling, having passed many towns and
villages on the way, we came one morning to a place on the river where
we halted; and away in the desert I could see three great buildings,
broad and square at the bottom, rising to a great height, and
terminating in a point. I asked about them of our captors, and they
told me that they were tombs of ancient kings of Egypt, and of great
age.
"Leaving these, we went on again, and in course of time came to the city
of Alexandria, where our journey ended. We stayed there several weeks,
and then I--being by this time recovered from my sickness,--with the
other six men, was sold to the captain of a corsair galley, who wanted a
few more slaves to make up his complement of rowers.
"And now began the worst years of my life. For six long years, my
masters, I sweated in a hot sun, with no shelter; toiling at the great
heavy sweeps with the other slaves; always kept to our work by the whip
of the bo'sun. Ah, the torment of those years! The recollection of
them would never leave me, were I to live to the age of the patriarchs
of old. We pursued other craft--mostly merchantmen--and took them; and
those of the slaves who were killed by the shot of the other ships were
replaced by their crews.
"Many a time did I pray that I should be one of those to find death; but
it never came to me, though often enough to the men by my side. At
last, one day we attacked a Spanish vessel--for we had gone down towards
the Straits of Jebel-al-Tarik--that looked like a harmless
merchant-ship, but she proved to be a war-ship disguised on purpose to
take us, and others like us. After more than an hour's fighting, during
which nearly all our men were killed, she took us; and I, with the other
Englishmen on board the galley, gave thanks to God, for we foolishly
thought that all our troubles were now over. But we were soon to find
out our mistake. There was now war between England and Spain, and we
quickly discovered that we had merely made an exchange of masters.
"We were taken on board the Spaniard and the galley was sunk. Her
owners were all hanged, being heathens, but we Englishmen were
considered heretics, and we were to be reserved for the Holy
Inquisition, that that office might convert us from our sins, and `save
us from everlasting flame', as the Spanish Dons put it. We were landed
at Cartagena, in Spain, and I, with eight others, was thrown into
prison, to await my trial at the hands of the Holy Office. One by one
we were tried, and all found guilty of `heresy'. Then they asked if we
would recant. We all refused, with the natural result that we were put
to the torture. Oh, my masters, pray daily and nightly that you may
never fall into the hands of the Holy Inquisition! Those years that I
spent on the galley were as heaven compared to being in the hands of the
Dons.
"I will not tell you how they tortured us--for indeed the story will not
bear telling,--but I bear the marks of their irons and the rack to this
day. My companions steadfastly refused to renounce their faith, and
after enduring the most hideous and awful tortures they were burnt
alive. I know not whether my tortures were worse than theirs, but at
last I could bear them no longer, and I recanted, to gain release from
my daily pain. But I was mistaken in supposing that this late
conversion was going to save me. I was tortured again, for my past
obstinacy, and then, instead of being released, I was sent to their
galleys, to spend the remainder of my life therein. By turning Romanist
I had indeed saved myself from burning, but not from that living hell,
the life of a galley-slave.
"I was, then, sent to the galleys, and remained there, how long I know
not, but it seemed to be several years. During the time that I was in
the Spanish galley--for I remained on the same vessel all the time,--we,
together with other vessels, made several attacks upon English ships,
but we were beaten off with heavy loss in every case except one, and
that was when we captured a small English merchantman called the
_Dainty_, the unfortunate crew of which, I suppose, were put into the
Inquisition, as I had been. These many conflicts were productive of
heavy casualties among the slaves, many more, indeed, than among the
soldiers and sailors who composed our fighting-crew, for, when chasing
another vessel, or attacking her broadside to broadside, our enemy
generally depressed his guns in order to hull and if possible sink us,
as in that way only could they prevent us from running alongside. And
every shot that pierced a galley's hull was certain to kill or maim at
least four or five slaves. But our masters cared nothing for that; when
one crew of galley-slaves was exhausted, another batch was sent for to
take their place. There were always plenty of slaves to be had from the
Spanish prisons, and the men we got from them were an even more cruel
and wicked set of rascals than the men who called themselves our
masters.
"Well, I had been a galley-slave among the Spaniards for some years--how
many years, exactly, I cannot tell you, for after a time my senses
became so deadened that I could not take the trouble to count up and
remember the days and weeks as they passed; indeed I became more like an
animal than a human being. I had been with the Spaniards for several
years, I say, when one day we sighted an English merchantman, as we
thought, and chased her. She appeared to be sailing but slowly, and we
very soon caught her up, to find that we had walked, or rather sailed,
into a deeply-laid trap. The Englishman, it appeared, had adopted a
ruse similar to that practised by the Spaniards when they captured the
corsair from Alexandria. The English had disguised their vessel--which
was a war-ship--to look like an innocent and harmless merchant's
trading-vessel, and to retard her speed and allow us to come up with her
they had dropped overboard a couple of light spars connected together by
a broad piece of stout sail-cloth, the whole of the apparatus being
secured to the stern of the vessel by a stout rope. Thus the passage of
the ship through the water caused this piece of canvas between the two
spars to open, when it acted as a drag upon her, and reduced her speed
so considerably that we soon overtook her. But no sooner were we well
under her guns than she opened fire, and before we could get alongside
her she had worked fearful execution both among our fighting-crew and
also the slaves. Our eyes were now opened to the true character of the
vessel, and the crew no longer had any desire to come to close quarters
with her; so they put up their helm and bore away with all speed for
Cadiz, the port nearest to us.
"And then began a chase that I shall never forget so long as I live,
sirs. With our full crew we might perhaps have been a match for the
English ship in point of speed, but half our galley-slaves were killed,
and the Englishman, having now cut away his drag, was coming up with us
hand over hand. The slave-drivers came down among us, and, standing on
the drivers' plank, running down the centre of the galley, drove us to
superhuman exertions by the merciless blows of their heavy-thonged
whips, the lashes of which were plaited up with small lead balls on
them. They even used the flat of their sword-blades to our backs, and
after that, when the English ship still continued to overhaul us, they
drew the edges of their weapons along our flesh, making the blood spurt.
We were, as you perhaps know, all manacled together, and at least half
our slaves were killed by the enemy's shot. The floor of the vessel was
ankle-deep in blood, and the corpses of the dead, still manacled to the
living--for there was no time to separate us,--kept time with our
strokes as we pulled, in a manner most horrible to look upon. The man
next me had had his head cut off by a cannon-shot--I remember at the
time wishing it had been mine,--and with every stroke I pulled his
corpse moved also, and with each movement jets of blood gushed up from
the torn veins, which were protruding from the gory neck, and flooded
me. Well, the vessel still continued to gain on us, and I saw the
Spanish dogs of slave-drivers whispering together, and presently they
called for buckets of fire. These were brought, full of glowing
charcoal, and into them irons were thrust. The unhappy slaves saw what
was in store for them, and pulled until their muscles cracked. Soon the
irons were white-hot, and the chief driver called to us in Spanish: `We
must escape that cursed heretic-ship yonder. Now, you all see these
irons? If I see one of you flagging in your efforts, that man will be
branded with them, and when we get into harbour will be handed over to
the office of the Holy Inquisition as a heretic and an aider and abettor
of heretics.' This cruel threat drove us all nearly mad, and--for we
knew what that meant--our muscles cracked again as we laboured on at the
oars, hampered as we were by the bloody corpses of our fellow-slaves.
For myself, I was away from the centre of the galley, I thank God! and
near an open port, so I got a little air, which refreshed me; but I
presently saw one of the poor fellows near the middle of the vessel,
where the air was stifling, begin to relax his exertions. He was
fainting with the heat and fatigue of the chase. The chief
slave-driver, whose name, I remember, was Alvarez, saw it too, and
called out: `Juan, this heretic is fainting; bring the fire-bucket.'
"The man brought it; Alvarez took out a white-hot iron, and--oh, sirs, I
cannot describe what then happened, but I can hear that man's shrieks
now, as I tell of it! It was awful; and would shrivel my tongue to
relate, and your ears to hear. Well, sirs, not to harrow you further by
those fearful methods of making us work, we at last got into Cadiz, and
escaped the English ship; but more than half of the remaining slaves
died from their exertions.
"Our diminished crew was replenished by a lot of men from the prisons of
Spain, and among them was a man named Jose Leirya. This man was my evil
genius; and, as he marked the turning-point in my life from good to
evil, I may as well describe his appearance; for he is on these seas
now, and I wish you to know the man, so that if you should meet him with
a sufficient force to capture him, you may recognise the villain. He
was sent down to the galley one morning with a number of other men, to
make up her complement afresh after the encounter with the Englishman.
I recognised him for a leader of men the moment he came aboard the
galley, and, as he was chained next to me on the same tier, I had ample
opportunity for observing his appearance. He was an enormously tall and
broad man, of extremely dark complexion. He said he was of Portugal,
but I should say he had more Moorish blood in him than anything else.
He wore his hair long, and it fell in thick black ringlets over his
broad shoulders. A huge moustache concealed his lips, and a long black
beard hid his chin; indeed the man was so hairy that he had the
appearance of being an ape rather than a man. One of his eyes--which
were jet black in colour, with whites which turned red when he flew into
a rage--had a very perceptible cast in it; the left eye, I remember it
was. His nose had been broken, and had a tremendous twist to starboard;
and he had lost his right ear in a stabbing affray in the streets of
Lisbon. In the left he now wears a huge gold ear-ring, shaped something
like a nut, with an enormous emerald set in it. Such was the exterior
appearance of the man who was to change both my life and that of others,
Jose Leirya, murderer and galley-slave, then mutineer, and, lastly,
pirate and villain of villains, slayer of hundreds of innocent folk,
slave-dealer, incendiary, and bloodthirsty monster, for whom no death is
bad enough. Remember my description of the man, sirs, for he presents
the very same appearance at the present day. I should know, for but two
short months since I was on his vessel; and, God forgive me, I believe I
was not much better than he. But to continue my yarn. This man came
aboard with about a hundred others; and I perceived at once--although
our jailers did not seem to notice the fact--that there was some kind of
arrangement or understanding between Jose Leirya and a number of the new
galley-slaves. What it meant I did not know until afterwards. We left
Cadiz, and our captain, thinking perhaps that the Mediterranean Sea was
not suitable for his enterprises, determined to take the galley to the
West Indies and try his fortune there. So we started away across the
great Atlantic Ocean.
"As I have told you, Jose Leirya was chained next to me; but he never
once spoke to me until after we had left the Western Isles. A few days
after that, however, he one evening disclosed to me his plan for seizing
the galley, and I then knew what the understanding had been between
himself and a large number of the prisoners who came aboard the galley
with him. On a certain night--which would fall about eight days later--
at midnight, on a given signal, all were to rise and overpower the
soldiers and sailors of the ship, seize her for ourselves, and use her
for our own purposes. You will ask, how were we to get rid of our
manacles? Well, it was thus arranged, sirs. Jose Leirya had brought on
board, cunningly concealed in his clothing, a number of small saws, of
exceeding fine temper and sharpness. They would cut through our
manacles as a knife cuts through wood. These he gave out to some of the
slaves, and on the night arranged they were to cut the links of their
iron manacles and pass the tools on to the others. This would, of
course, leave the iron rings round our wrists and ankles, but we should
be free to move and fight; and after we had won the ship we could get
the rings off at our leisure. The saws were given out one by one, the
greatest care being taken that they were not discovered, and immediately
after dark on the eventful night we began to cut our fetters, the galley
being then under sail and the oars laid in. By midnight we were ready,
and waiting for the signal. It came as a shrill whistle from Leirya's
lips. At the sound we all swarmed up on deck; and, as most of the
officers and seamen were asleep below, we quickly overcame the watch.
We gave no quarter, knowing that none would be given to us, and we took
no prisoners. Then, going to the companion-hatches, we cried `Fire!'
and as our former masters came running up in their shirts, they were
seized and flung overboard. None of them suspected any plot, and the
vessel was soon in our hands.
"We then took counsel among ourselves to elect officers, and determine
upon our future movements. Jose Leirya was, of course, elected captain,
and, for some reason that I cannot make out, I was chosen for first
mate. Then for our plans. We were about in the middle of the North
Atlantic, perhaps a little more than half-way to the West Indian
Islands; so we determined to run there, take a ship on our way, if we
could, and if not, capture one in the first port we could reach--for the
galley was of little use to us for our purposes. Ah! if I had but
known, if I could but have foreseen what was to happen in the future,
what deeds I should be called upon to do, rather would I have suffered
death by torture than have joined in the mutiny! But I did not then
know that Jose Leirya intended to become a pirate, or that he meditated
those awful atrocities that have made men curse his name, and swear to
hunt him down and make his end worse than a dog's! At length, when the
ship had been ours for a matter of fifteen days, and was approaching the
islands, our lookout one afternoon reported a large ship coming up from
the westward. Our hearts leaped with anticipation, but we kept a very
cautious lookout lest she should prove to be a war-vessel. As she came
nearer, however, we saw that she was a large merchant-vessel flying the
flag of Spain--that country that we had grown to hate with a hatred
passing words. She had not noticed us as yet, for we lay low in the
water and had no sail set. As soon, however, as she saw us coming
toward her, she made all sail to escape, and we followed in full
pursuit. Then, finding that we _were_ gaining upon her, she went about,
evidently with the intention of returning to the islands; but she was
doomed to be our prey. Every man of us, even Leirya himself, joined the
crew of oarsmen below, leaving only the helmsman on deck to steer and to
report progress to us below. Thus every oar was fully manned, and we
swept along after her, gaining on her hand over hand, until about the
middle of the afternoon the man at the helm threw us alongside her--for
she was unarmed with cannon and could not fire at us--and we all swarmed
up from below and on to her decks. Such was our ferocity that we
cleared their deck at once, leaving dead and wounded in our path, the
whole of whom--quick and dead alike--we at once flung overboard.
"We did not require the galley any longer, so we took all her guns and
arms, and furnished the ship with them, sinking the galley afterwards,
and thus hiding all trace of our former crime. We got under way
directly after this, still making for the islands, and then provisions
and wine, of which there were plenty on the ship, were got up, and we
caroused and made merry for the rest of the day.
"We soon found that the new vessel was not suitable for us; but she was
ere long the means of enabling us to obtain another to suit our purpose,
without any loss of life to us."