CAPTAIN SCARFIELD
PREFACE
[Illustration: CAPTAIN SCARFIELD]
_The author of this narrative cannot recall that, in any history of
the famous pirates, he has ever read a detailed and sufficient account
of the life and death of Capt. John Scarfield. Doubtless some data
concerning his death and the destruction of his schooner might be
gathered from the report of Lieutenant Mainwaring, now filed in the
archives of the Navy Department, but beyond such bald and bloodless
narrative the author knows of nothing, unless it be the little
chap-book history published by Isaiah Thomas in Newburyport about the
year 1821-22, entitled, "A True History of the Life and Death of
Captain Jack Scarfield." This lack of particularity in the history of
one so notable in his profession it is the design of the present
narrative in a measure to supply, and, if the author has seen fit to
cast it in the form of a fictional story, it is only that it may make
more easy reading for those who see fit to follow the tale from this
to its conclusion._
CAPTAIN SCARFIELD
I
Eleazer Cooper, or Captain Cooper, as was his better-known title in
Philadelphia, was a prominent member of the Society of Friends. He was
an overseer of the meeting and an occasional speaker upon particular
occasions. When at home from one of his many voyages he never failed
to occupy his seat in the meeting both on First Day and Fifth Day, and
he was regarded by his fellow townsmen as a model of business
integrity and of domestic responsibility.
More incidental to this history, however, it is to be narrated that
Captain Cooper was one of those trading skippers who carried their own
merchandise in their own vessels which they sailed themselves, and on
whose decks they did their own bartering. His vessel was a swift,
large schooner, the _Eliza Cooper_, _of Philadelphia_, named for his
wife. His cruising grounds were the West India Islands, and his
merchandise was flour and corn meal ground at the Brandywine Mills at
Wilmington, Delaware.
During the War of 1812 he had earned, as was very well known, an
extraordinary fortune in this trading; for flour and corn meal sold at
fabulous prices in the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Danish islands, cut
off, as they were, from the rest of the world by the British blockade.
The running of this blockade was one of the most hazardous maritime
ventures possible, but Captain Cooper had met with such unvaried
success, and had sold his merchandise at such incredible profit that,
at the end of the war, he found himself to have become one of the
wealthiest merchants of his native city.
It was known at one time that his balance in the Mechanics' Bank was
greater than that of any other individual depositor upon the books,
and it was told of him that he had once deposited in the bank a chest
of foreign silver coin, the exchanged value of which, when translated
into American currency, was upward of forty-two thousand dollars--a
prodigious sum of money in those days.
In person, Captain Cooper was tall and angular of frame. His face was
thin and severe, wearing continually an unsmiling, mask-like
expression of continent and unruffled sobriety. His manner was dry and
taciturn, and his conduct and life were measured to the most absolute
accord with the teachings of his religious belief.
He lived in an old-fashioned house on Front Street below Spruce--as
pleasant, cheerful a house as ever a trading captain could return to.
At the back of the house a lawn sloped steeply down toward the river.
To the south stood the wharf and storehouses; to the north an orchard
and kitchen garden bloomed with abundant verdure. Two large chestnut
trees sheltered the porch and the little space of lawn, and when you
sat under them in the shade you looked down the slope between two rows
of box bushes directly across the shining river to the Jersey shore.
At the time of our story--that is, about the year 1820--this property
had increased very greatly in value, but it was the old home of the
Coopers, as Eleazer Cooper was entirely rich enough to indulge his
fancy in such matters. Accordingly, as he chose to live in the same
house where his father and his grandfather had dwelt before him, he
peremptorily, if quietly, refused all offers looking toward the
purchase of the lot of ground--though it was now worth five or six
times its former value.
As was said, it was a cheerful, pleasant home, impressing you when you
entered it with the feeling of spotless and all-pervading
cleanliness--a cleanliness that greeted you in the shining brass
door-knocker; that entertained you in the sitting room with its
stiff, leather-covered furniture, the brass-headed tacks whereof
sparkled like so many stars--a cleanliness that bade you farewell in
the spotless stretch of sand-sprinkled hallway, the wooden floor of
which was worn into knobs around the nail heads by the countless
scourings and scrubbings to which it had been subjected and which left
behind them an all-pervading faint, fragrant odor of soap and warm
water.
Eleazer Cooper and his wife were childless, but one inmate made the
great, silent, shady house bright with life. Lucinda Fairbanks, a
niece of Captain Cooper's by his only sister, was a handsome,
sprightly girl of eighteen or twenty, and a great favorite in the
Quaker society of the city.
It remains only to introduce the final and, perhaps, the most
important actor of the narrative--Lieut. James Mainwaring. During the
past twelve months or so he had been a frequent visitor at the Cooper
house. At this time he was a broad-shouldered, red-cheeked, stalwart
fellow of twenty-six or twenty-eight. He was a great social favorite,
and possessed the added romantic interest of having been aboard the
_Constitution_ when she fought the _Guerriere_, and of having, with
his own hands, touched the match that fired the first gun of that
great battle.
Mainwaring's mother and Eliza Cooper had always been intimate friends,
and the coming and going of the young man during his leave of absence
were looked upon in the house as quite a matter of course. Half a
dozen times a week he would drop in to execute some little commission
for the ladies, or, if Captain Cooper was at home, to smoke a pipe of
tobacco with him, to sip a dram of his famous old Jamaica rum, or to
play a rubber of checkers of an evening. It is not likely that either
of the older people was the least aware of the real cause of his
visits; still less did they suspect that any passages of sentiment had
passed between the young people.
[Illustration: "He Had Found the Captain Agreeable and Companionable"
_Illustration from_
SEA ROBBERS OF NEW YORK
_by_ Thomas A. Janvier
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _November_, 1894]
The truth was that Mainwaring and the young lady were very deeply in
love. It was a love that they were obliged to keep a profound secret,
for not only had Eleazer Cooper held the strictest sort of testimony
against the late war--a testimony so rigorous as to render it
altogether unlikely that one of so military a profession as Mainwaring
practiced could hope for his consent to a suit for marriage, but
Lucinda could not have married one not a member of the Society of
Friends without losing her own birthright membership therein. She
herself might not attach much weight to such a loss of membership in
the Society, but her fear of, and her respect for, her uncle led her
to walk very closely in her path of duty in this respect. Accordingly
she and Mainwaring met as they could--clandestinely--and the stolen
moments were very sweet. With equal secrecy Lucinda had, at the
request of her lover, sat for a miniature portrait to Mrs. Gregory,
which miniature, set in a gold medallion, Mainwaring, with a mild,
sentimental pleasure, wore hung around his neck and beneath his shirt
frill next his heart.
In the month of April of the year 1820 Mainwaring received orders to
report at Washington. During the preceding autumn the West India
pirates, and notably Capt. Jack Scarfield, had been more than usually
active, and the loss of the packet _Marblehead_ (which, sailing from
Charleston, South Carolina, was never heard of more) was attributed to
them. Two other coasting vessels off the coast of Georgia had been
looted and burned by Scarfield, and the government had at last aroused
itself to the necessity of active measures for repressing these pests
of the West India waters.
Mainwaring received orders to take command of the _Yankee_, a swift,
light-draught, heavily armed brig of war, and to cruise about the
Bahama Islands and to capture and destroy all the pirates' vessels he
could there discover.
On his way from Washington to New York, where the _Yankee_ was then
waiting orders, Mainwaring stopped in Philadelphia to bid good-by to
his many friends in that city. He called at the old Cooper house. It
was on a Sunday afternoon. The spring was early and the weather
extremely pleasant that day, being filled with a warmth almost as of
summer. The apple trees were already in full bloom and filled all the
air with their fragrance. Everywhere there seemed to be the pervading
hum of bees, and the drowsy, tepid sunshine was very delightful.
At that time Eleazer was just home from an unusually successful voyage
to Antigua. Mainwaring found the family sitting under one of the still
leafless chestnut trees, Captain Cooper smoking his long clay pipe and
lazily perusing a copy of the _National Gazette_. Eleazer listened
with a great deal of interest to what Mainwaring had to say of his
proposed cruise. He himself knew a great deal about the pirates, and,
singularly unbending from his normal, stiff taciturnity, he began
telling of what he knew, particularly of Captain Scarfield--in whom he
appeared to take an extraordinary interest.
Vastly to Mainwaring's surprise, the old Quaker assumed the position
of a defendant of the pirates, protesting that the wickedness of the
accused was enormously exaggerated. He declared that he knew some of
the freebooters very well and that at the most they were poor,
misdirected wretches who had, by easy gradation, slid into their
present evil ways, from having been tempted by the government
authorities to enter into privateering in the days of the late war. He
conceded that Captain Scarfield had done many cruel and wicked deeds,
but he averred that he had also performed many kind and benevolent
actions. The world made no note of these latter, but took care only to
condemn the evil that had been done. He acknowledged that it was true
that the pirate had allowed his crew to cast lots for the wife and the
daughter of the skipper of the _Northern Rose_, but there were none of
his accusers who told how, at the risk of his own life and the lives
of all his crew, he had given succor to the schooner _Halifax_, found
adrift with all hands down with yellow fever. There was no defender
of his actions to tell how he and his crew of pirates had sailed the
pest-stricken vessel almost into the rescuing waters of Kingston
harbor. Eleazer confessed that he could not deny that when Scarfield
had tied the skipper of the _Baltimore Belle_ naked to the foremast of
his own brig he had permitted his crew of cutthroats (who were drunk
at the time) to throw bottles at the helpless captive, who died that
night of the wounds he had received. For this he was doubtless very
justly condemned, but who was there to praise him when he had, at the
risk of his life and in the face of the authorities, carried a cargo
of provisions which he himself had purchased at Tampa Bay to the
Island of Bella Vista after the great hurricane of 1818? In this
notable adventure he had barely escaped, after a two days' chase, the
British frigate _Ceres_, whose captain, had a capture been effected,
would instantly have hung the unfortunate man to the yardarm in spite
of the beneficent mission he was in the act of conducting.
In all this Eleazer had the air of conducting the case for the
defendant. As he talked he became more and more animated and voluble.
The light went out in his tobacco pipe, and a hectic spot appeared in
either thin and sallow cheek. Mainwaring sat wondering to hear the
severely peaceful Quaker preacher defending so notoriously bloody and
cruel a cutthroat pirate as Capt. Jack Scarfield. The warm and
innocent surroundings, the old brick house looking down upon them, the
odor of apple blossoms and the hum of bees seemed to make it all the
more incongruous. And still the elderly Quaker skipper talked on and
on with hardly an interruption, till the warm sun slanted to the west
and the day began to decline.
That evening Mainwaring stayed to tea and when he parted from Lucinda
Fairbanks it was after nightfall, with a clear, round moon shining in
the milky sky and a radiance pallid and unreal enveloping the old
house, the blooming apple trees, the sloping lawn and the shining
river beyond. He implored his sweetheart to let him tell her uncle and
aunt of their acknowledged love and to ask the old man's consent to
it, but she would not permit him to do so. They were so happy as they
were. Who knew but what her uncle might forbid their fondness? Would
he not wait a little longer? Maybe it would all come right after a
while. She was so fond, so tender, so tearful at the nearness of their
parting that he had not the heart to insist. At the same time it was
with a feeling almost of despair that he realized that he must now be
gone--maybe for the space of two years--without in all that time
possessing the right to call her his before the world.
When he bade farewell to the older people it was with a choking
feeling of bitter disappointment. He yet felt the pressure of her
cheek against his shoulder, the touch of soft and velvet lips to his
own. But what were such clandestine endearments compared to what
might, perchance, be his--the right of calling her his own when he was
far away and upon the distant sea? And, besides, he felt like a coward
who had shirked his duty.
But he was very much in love. The next morning appeared in a drizzle
of rain that followed the beautiful warmth of the day before. He had
the coach all to himself, and in the damp and leathery solitude he
drew out the little oval picture from beneath his shirt frill and
looked long and fixedly with a fond and foolish joy at the innocent
face, the blue eyes, the red, smiling lips depicted upon the
satinlike, ivory surface.
II
For the better part of five months Mainwaring cruised about in the
waters surrounding the Bahama Islands. In that time he ran to earth
and dispersed a dozen nests of pirates. He destroyed no less than
fifteen piratical crafts of all sizes, from a large half-decked
whaleboat to a three-hundred-ton barkentine. The name of the _Yankee_
became a terror to every sea wolf in the western tropics, and the
waters of the Bahama Islands became swept almost clean of the bloody
wretches who had so lately infested it.
But the one freebooter of all others whom he sought--Capt. Jack
Scarfield--seemed to evade him like a shadow, to slip through his
fingers like magic. Twice he came almost within touch of the famous
marauder, both times in the ominous wrecks that the pirate captain had
left behind him. The first of these was the water-logged remains of a
burned and still smoking wreck that he found adrift in the great
Bahama channel. It was the _Water Witch_, of Salem, but he did not
learn her tragic story until, two weeks later, he discovered a part of
her crew at Port Maria, on the north coast of Jamaica. It was, indeed,
a dreadful story to which he listened. The castaways said that they of
all the vessel's crew had been spared so that they might tell the
commander of the _Yankee_, should they meet him, that he might keep
what he found, with Captain Scarfield's compliments, who served it up
to him hot cooked.
Three weeks later he rescued what remained of the crew of the
shattered, bloody hulk of the _Baltimore Belle_, eight of whose crew,
headed by the captain, had been tied hand and foot and heaved
overboard. Again, there was a message from Captain Scarfield to the
commander of the _Yankee_ that he might season what he found to suit
his own taste.
Mainwaring was of a sanguine disposition, with fiery temper. He swore,
with the utmost vehemence, that either he or John Scarfield would have
to leave the earth.
He had little suspicion of how soon was to befall the ominous
realization of his angry prophecy.
At that time one of the chief rendezvous of the pirates was the little
island of San Jose, one of the southernmost of the Bahama group. Here,
in the days before the coming of the _Yankee_, they were wont to put
in to careen and clean their vessels and to take in a fresh supply of
provisions, gunpowder, and rum, preparatory to renewing their attacks
upon the peaceful commerce circulating up and down outside the
islands, or through the wide stretches of the Bahama channel.
Mainwaring had made several descents upon this nest of freebooters. He
had already made two notable captures, and it was here he hoped
eventually to capture Captain Scarfield himself.
A brief description of this one-time notorious rendezvous of
freebooters might not be out of place. It consisted of a little
settlement of those wattled and mud-smeared houses such as you find
through the West Indies. There were only three houses of a more
pretentious sort, built of wood. One of these was a storehouse,
another was a rum shop, and a third a house in which dwelt a mulatto
woman, who was reputed to be a sort of left-handed wife of Captain
Scarfield's. The population was almost entirely black and brown. One
or two Jews and a half dozen Yankee traders, of hardly dubious
honesty, comprised the entire white population. The rest consisted of
a mongrel accumulation of negroes and mulattoes and half-caste
Spaniards, and of a multitude of black or yellow women and children.
The settlement stood in a bight of the beach forming a small harbor
and affording a fair anchorage for small vessels, excepting it were
against the beating of a southeasterly gale. The houses, or cabins,
were surrounded by clusters of coco palms and growths of bananas, and
a long curve of white beach, sheltered from the large Atlantic
breakers that burst and exploded upon an outer bar, was drawn like a
necklace around the semicircle of emerald-green water.
Such was the famous pirates' settlement of San Jose--a paradise of
nature and a hell of human depravity and wickedness--and it was to
this spot that Mainwaring paid another visit a few days after rescuing
the crew of the _Baltimore Belle_ from her shattered and sinking
wreck.
[Illustration: THE BUCCANEER WAS A PICTURESQUE FELLOW]
As the little bay with its fringe of palms and its cluster of wattle
huts opened up to view, Mainwaring discovered a vessel lying at anchor
in the little harbor. It was a large and well-rigged schooner of two
hundred and fifty or three hundred tons burden. As the _Yankee_
rounded to under the stern of the stranger and dropped anchor in such
a position as to bring her broadside battery to bear should the
occasion require, Mainwaring set his glass to his eye to read the name
he could distinguish beneath the overhang of her stern. It is
impossible to describe his infinite surprise when, the white lettering
starting out in the circle of the glass, he read, _The Eliza Cooper,
of Philadelphia_.
He could not believe the evidence of his senses. Certainly this sink
of iniquity was the last place in the world he would have expected to
have fallen in with Eleazer Cooper.
He ordered out the gig and had himself immediately rowed over to the
schooner. Whatever lingering doubts he might have entertained as to
the identity of the vessel were quickly dispelled when he beheld
Captain Cooper himself standing at the gangway to meet him. The
impassive face of the friend showed neither surprise nor confusion at
what must have been to him a most unexpected encounter.
But when he stepped upon the deck of the _Eliza Cooper_ and looked
about him, Mainwaring could hardly believe the evidence of his senses
at the transformation that he beheld. Upon the main deck were eight
twelve-pound carronade neatly covered with tarpaulin; in the bow a
Long Tom, also snugly stowed away and covered, directed a veiled and
muzzled snout out over the bowsprit.
It was entirely impossible for Mainwaring to conceal his astonishment
at so unexpected a sight, and whether or not his own thoughts lent
color to his imagination, it seemed to him that Eleazer Cooper
concealed under the immobility of his countenance no small degree of
confusion.
After Captain Cooper had led the way into the cabin and he and the
younger man were seated over a pipe of tobacco and the invariable
bottle of fine old Jamaica rum, Mainwaring made no attempt to refrain
from questioning him as to the reason for this singular and ominous
transformation.
"I am a man of peace, James Mainwaring," Eleazer replied, "but there
are men of blood in these waters, and an appearance of great strength
is of use to protect the innocent from the wicked. If I remained in
appearance the peaceful trader I really am, how long does thee suppose
I could remain unassailed in this place?"
It occurred to Mainwaring that the powerful armament he had beheld was
rather extreme to be used merely as a preventive. He smoked for a
while in silence and then he suddenly asked the other point-blank
whether, if it came to blows with such a one as Captain Scarfield,
would he make a fight of it?
The Quaker trading captain regarded him for a while in silence. His
look, it seemed to Mainwaring, appeared to be dubitative as to how far
he dared to be frank. "Friend James," he said at last, "I may as well
acknowledge that my officers and crew are somewhat worldly. Of a truth
they do not hold the same testimony as I. I am inclined to think that
if it came to the point of a broil with those men of iniquity, my
individual voice cast for peace would not be sufficient to keep my
crew from meeting violence with violence. As for myself, thee knows
who I am and what is my testimony in these matters."
Mainwaring made no comment as to the extremely questionable manner in
which the Quaker proposed to beat the devil about the stump. Presently
he asked his second question:
"And might I inquire," he said, "what you are doing here and why you
find it necessary to come at all into such a wicked, dangerous place
as this?"
"Indeed, I knew thee would ask that question of me," said the Friend,
"and I will be entirely frank with thee. These men of blood are, after
all, but human beings, and as human beings they need food. I have at
present upon this vessel upward of two hundred and fifty barrels of
flour which will bring a higher price here than anywhere else in the
West Indies. To be entirely frank with thee, I will tell thee that I
was engaged in making a bargain for the sale of the greater part of my
merchandise when the news of thy approach drove away my best
customer."
Mainwaring sat for a while in smoking silence. What the other had told
him explained many things he had not before understood. It explained
why Captain Cooper got almost as much for his flour and corn meal now
that peace had been declared as he had obtained when the war and the
blockade were in full swing. It explained why he had been so strong a
defender of Captain Scarfield and the pirates that afternoon in the
garden. Meantime, what was to be done? Eleazer confessed openly that
he dealt with the pirates. What now was his--Mainwaring's--duty in the
case? Was the cargo of the _Eliza Cooper_ contraband and subject to
confiscation? And then another question framed itself in his mind: Who
was this customer whom his approach had driven away?
As though he had formulated the inquiry into speech the other began
directly to speak of it. "I know," he said, "that in a moment thee
will ask me who was this customer of whom I have just now spoken. I
have no desire to conceal his name from thee. It was the man who is
known as Captain Jack or Captain John Scarfield."
Mainwaring fairly started from his seat. "The devil you say!" he
cried. "And how long has it been," he asked, "since he left you?"
The Quaker skipper carefully refilled his pipe, which he had by now
smoked out. "I would judge," he said, "that it is a matter of four or
five hours since news was brought overland by means of swift runners
of thy approach. Immediately the man of wickedness disappeared." Here
Eleazer set the bowl of his pipe to the candle flame and began puffing
out voluminous clouds of smoke. "I would have thee understand, James
Mainwaring," he resumed, "that I am no friend of this wicked and
sinful man. His safety is nothing to me. It is only a question of
buying upon his part and of selling upon mine. If it is any
satisfaction to thee I will heartily promise to bring thee news if I
hear anything of the man of Belial. I may furthermore say that I think
it is likely thee will have news more or less directly of him within
the space of a day. If this should happen, however, thee will have to
do thy own fighting without help from me, for I am no man of combat
nor of blood and will take no hand in it either way."
It struck Mainwaring that the words contained some meaning that did
not appear upon the surface. This significance struck him as so
ambiguous that when he went aboard the _Yankee_ he confided as much of
his suspicions as he saw fit to his second in command, Lieutenant
Underwood. As night descended he had a double watch set and had
everything prepared to repel any attack or surprise that might be
attempted.
III
Nighttime in the tropics descends with a surprising rapidity. At one
moment the earth is shining with the brightness of the twilight; the
next, as it were, all things are suddenly swallowed into a gulf of
darkness. The particular night of which this story treats was not
entirely clear; the time of year was about the approach of the rainy
season, and the tepid, tropical clouds added obscurity to the darkness
of the sky, so that the night fell with even more startling quickness
than usual. The blackness was very dense. Now and then a group of
drifting stars swam out of a rift in the vapors, but the night was
curiously silent and of a velvety darkness.
[Illustration: THEN THE REAL FIGHT BEGAN]
As the obscurity had deepened, Mainwaring had ordered lanthorns to
be lighted and slung to the shrouds and to the stays, and the faint
yellow of their illumination lighted the level white of the snug
little war vessel, gleaming here and there in a starlike spark upon
the brass trimmings and causing the rows of cannons to assume
curiously gigantic proportions.
For some reason Mainwaring was possessed by a strange, uneasy feeling.
He walked restlessly up and down the deck for a time, and then, still
full of anxieties for he knew not what, went into his cabin to finish
writing up his log for the day. He unstrapped his cutlass and laid it
upon the table, lighted his pipe at the lanthorn and was about
preparing to lay aside his coat when word was brought to him that the
captain of the trading schooner was come alongside and had some
private information to communicate to him.
Mainwaring surmised in an instant that the trader's visit related
somehow to news of Captain Scarfield, and as immediately, in the
relief of something positive to face, all of his feeling of
restlessness vanished like a shadow of mist. He gave orders that
Captain Cooper should be immediately shown into the cabin, and in a
few moments the tall, angular form of the Quaker skipper appeared in
the narrow, lanthorn-lighted space.
Mainwaring at once saw that his visitor was strangely agitated and
disturbed. He had taken off his hat, and shining beads of perspiration
had gathered and stood clustered upon his forehead. He did not reply
to Mainwaring's greeting; he did not, indeed, seem to hear it; but he
came directly forward to the table and stood leaning with one hand
upon the open log book in which the lieutenant had just been writing.
Mainwaring had reseated himself at the head of the table, and the tall
figure of the skipper stood looking down at him as from a considerable
height.
"James Mainwaring," he said, "I promised thee to report if I had news
of the pirate. Is thee ready now to hear my news?"
There was something so strange in his agitation that it began to
infect Mainwaring with a feeling somewhat akin to that which appeared
to disturb his visitor. "I know not what you mean, sir!" he cried, "by
asking if I care to hear your news. At this moment I would rather have
news of that scoundrel than to have anything I know of in the world."
"Thou would? Thou would?" cried the other, with mounting agitation.
"Is thee in such haste to meet him as all that? Very well; very well,
then. Suppose I could bring thee face to face with him--what then?
Hey? Hey? Face to face with him, James Mainwaring!"
The thought instantly flashed into Mainwaring's mind that the pirate
had returned to the island; that perhaps at that moment he was
somewhere near at hand.
"I do not understand you, sir," he cried. "Do you mean to tell me that
you know where the villain is? If so, lose no time in informing me,
for every instant of delay may mean his chance of again escaping."
"No danger of that!" the other declared, vehemently. "No danger of
that! I'll tell thee where he is and I'll bring thee to him quick
enough!" And as he spoke he thumped his fist against the open log
book. In the vehemence of his growing excitement his eyes appeared to
shine green in the lanthorn light, and the sweat that had stood in
beads upon his forehead was now running in streams down his face. One
drop hung like a jewel to the tip of his beaklike nose. He came a step
nearer to Mainwaring and bent forward toward him, and there was
something so strange and ominous in his bearing that the lieutenant
instinctively drew back a little where he sat.
"Captain Scarfield sent something to you," said Eleazer, almost in a
raucous voice, "something that you will be surprised to see." And the
lapse in his speech from the Quaker "thee" to the plural "you" struck
Mainwaring as singularly strange.
As he was speaking Eleazer was fumbling in a pocket of his
long-tailed drab coat, and presently he brought something forth that
gleamed in the lanthorn light.
The next moment Mainwaring saw leveled directly in his face the round
and hollow nozzle of a pistol.
There was an instant of dead silence and then, "I am the man you
seek!" said Eleazer Cooper, in a tense and breathless voice.
The whole thing had happened so instantaneously and unexpectedly that
for the moment Mainwaring sat like one petrified. Had a thunderbolt
fallen from the silent sky and burst at his feet he could not have
been more stunned. He was like one held in the meshes of a horrid
nightmare, and he gazed as through a mist of impossibility into the
lineaments of the well-known, sober face now transformed as from
within into the aspect of a devil. That face, now ashy white, was
distorted into a diabolical grin. The teeth glistened in the
lamplight. The brows, twisted into a tense and convulsed frown, were
drawn down into black shadows, through which the eyes burned a baleful
green like the eyes of a wild animal driven to bay. Again he spoke in
the same breathless voice. "I am John Scarfield! Look at me, then, if
you want to see a pirate!" Again there was a little time of silence,
through which Mainwaring heard his watch ticking loudly from where it
hung against the bulkhead. Then once more the other began speaking.
"You would chase me out of the West Indies, would you? G---- ---- you!
What are you come to now? You are caught in your own trap, and you'll
squeal loud enough before you get out of it. Speak a word or make a
movement and I'll blow your brains out against the partition behind
you! Listen to what I say or you are a dead man. Sing out an order
instantly for my mate and my bos'n to come here to the cabin, and be
quick about it, for my finger's on the trigger, and it's only a pull
to shut your mouth forever."
It was astonishing to Mainwaring, in afterward thinking about it all,
how quickly his mind began to recover its steadiness after that first
astonishing shock. Even as the other was speaking he discovered that
his brain was becoming clarified to a wonderful lucidity; his thoughts
were becoming rearranged, and with a marvelous activity and an
alertness he had never before experienced. He knew that if he moved to
escape or uttered any outcry he would be instantly a dead man, for the
circle of the pistol barrel was directed full against his forehead and
with the steadiness of a rock. If he could but for an instant divert
that fixed and deadly attention he might still have a chance for life.
With the thought an inspiration burst into his mind and he instantly
put it into execution; thought, inspiration, and action, as in a
flash, were one. He must make the other turn aside his deadly gaze,
and instantly he roared out in a voice that stunned his own ears:
"Strike, bos'n! Strike, quick!"
Taken by surprise, and thinking, doubtless, that another enemy stood
behind him, the pirate swung around like a flash with his pistol
leveled against the blank boarding. Equally upon the instant he saw
the trick that had been played upon him and in a second flash had
turned again. The turn and return had occupied but a moment of time,
but that moment, thanks to the readiness of his own invention, had
undoubtedly saved Mainwaring's life. As the other turned away his gaze
for that brief instant Mainwaring leaped forward and upon him. There
was a flashing flame of fire as the pistol was discharged and a
deafening detonation that seemed to split his brain. For a moment,
with reeling senses, he supposed himself to have been shot, the next
he knew he had escaped. With the energy of despair he swung his enemy
around and drove him with prodigious violence against the corner of
the table. The pirate emitted a grunting cry and then they fell
together, Mainwaring upon the top, and the pistol clattered with them
to the floor in their fall. Even as he fell, Mainwaring roared in a
voice of thunder, "All hands repel boarders!" And then again, "All
hands repel boarders!"
Whether hurt by the table edge or not, the fallen pirate struggled as
though possessed of forty devils, and in a moment or two Mainwaring
saw the shine of a long, keen knife that he had drawn from somewhere
about his person. The lieutenant caught him by the wrist, but the
other's muscles were as though made of steel. They both fought in
despairing silence, the one to carry out his frustrated purposes to
kill, the other to save his life. Again and again Mainwaring felt that
the knife had been thrust against him, piercing once his arm, once his
shoulder, and again his neck. He felt the warm blood streaming down
his arm and body and looked about him in despair. The pistol lay near
upon the deck of the cabin. Still holding the other by the wrist as he
could, Mainwaring snatched up the empty weapon and struck once and
again at the bald, narrow forehead beneath him. A third blow he
delivered with all the force he could command, and then with a violent
and convulsive throe the straining muscles beneath him relaxed and
grew limp and the fight was won.
Through all the struggle he had been aware of the shouts of voices, of
trampling of feet and discharge of firearms, and the thought came to
him, even through his own danger, that the _Yankee_ was being
assaulted by the pirates. As he felt the struggling form beneath him
loosen and dissolve into quietude, he leaped up, and snatching his
cutlass, which still lay upon the table, rushed out upon the deck,
leaving the stricken form lying twitching upon the floor behind him.
It was a fortunate thing that he had set double watches and prepared
himself for some attack from the pirates, otherwise the _Yankee_ would
certainly have been lost. As it was, the surprise was so overwhelming
that the pirates, who had been concealed in the large whaleboat that
had come alongside, were not only able to gain a foothold upon the
deck, but for a time it seemed as though they would drive the crew of
the brig below the hatches.
But as Mainwaring, streaming with blood, rushed out upon the deck, the
pirates became immediately aware that their own captain must have
been overpowered, and in an instant their desperate energy began to
evaporate. One or two jumped overboard; one, who seemed to be the
mate, fell dead from a pistol shot, and then, in the turn of a hand,
there was a rush of a retreat and a vision of leaping forms in the
dusky light of the lanthorns and a sound of splashing in the water
below.
The crew of the _Yankee_ continued firing at the phosphorescent wakes
of the swimming bodies, but whether with effect it was impossible at
the time to tell.
IV
The pirate captain did not die immediately. He lingered for three or
four days, now and then unconscious, now and then semi-conscious, but
always deliriously wandering. All the while he thus lay dying, the
mulatto woman, with whom he lived in this part of his extraordinary
dual existence, nursed and cared for him with such rude attentions as
the surroundings afforded. In the wanderings of his mind the same
duality of life followed him. Now and then he would appear the calm,
sober, self-contained, well-ordered member of a peaceful society that
his friends in his far-away home knew him to be; at other times the
nether part of his nature would leap up into life like a wild beast,
furious and gnashing. At the one time he talked evenly and clearly of
peaceful things; at the other time he blasphemed and hooted with fury.
Several times Mainwaring, though racked by his own wounds, sat beside
the dying man through the silent watches of the tropical nights.
Oftentimes upon these occasions as he looked at the thin, lean face
babbling and talking so aimlessly, he wondered what it all meant.
Could it have been madness--madness in which the separate entities of
good and bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence?
He chose to think that this was the case. Who, within his inner
consciousness, does not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling
against the stern, adamantine bonds of morality and decorum? Were
those bonds burst asunder, as it was with this man, might not the wild
beast rush forth, as it had rushed forth in him, to rend and to tear?
Such were the questions that Mainwaring asked himself. And how had it
all come about? By what easy gradations had the respectable Quaker
skipper descended from the decorum of his home life, step by step,
into such a gulf of iniquity? Many such thoughts passed through
Mainwaring's mind, and he pondered them through the still reaches of
the tropical nights while he sat watching the pirate captain struggle
out of the world he had so long burdened. At last the poor wretch
died, and the earth was well quit of one of its torments.
[Illustration: "He Struck Once and Again at the Bald, Narrow Forehead
Beneath Him"
_Illustration from_
CAPTAIN SCARFIELD
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
THE NORTHWESTERN MILLER, _December_ 18, 1897]
A systematic search was made through the island for the scattered
crew, but none was captured. Either there were some secret hiding
places upon the island (which was not very likely) or else they had
escaped in boats hidden somewhere among the tropical foliage. At any
rate they were gone.
Nor, search as he would, could Mainwaring find a trace of any of the
pirate treasure. After the pirate's death and under close questioning,
the weeping mulatto woman so far broke down as to confess in broken
English that Captain Scarfield had taken a quantity of silver money
aboard his vessel, but either she was mistaken or else the pirates had
taken it thence again and had hidden it somewhere else.
Nor would the treasure ever have been found but for a most fortuitous
accident.
Mainwaring had given orders that the _Eliza Cooper_ was to be burned,
and a party was detailed to carry the order into execution. At this
the cook of the _Yankee_ came petitioning for some of the Wilmington
and Brandywine flour to make some plum duff upon the morrow, and
Mainwaring granted his request in so far that he ordered one of the
men to knock open one of the barrels of flour and to supply the cook's
demands.
The crew detailed to execute this modest order in connection with the
destruction of the pirate vessel had not been gone a quarter of an
hour when word came back that the hidden treasure had been found.
Mainwaring hurried aboard the _Eliza Cooper_, and there in the midst
of the open flour barrel he beheld a great quantity of silver coin
buried in and partly covered by the white meal. A systematic search
was now made. One by one the flour barrels were heaved up from below
and burst open on the deck and their contents searched, and if nothing
but the meal was found it was swept overboard. The breeze was whitened
with clouds of flour, and the white meal covered the surface of the
ocean for yards around.
In all, upward of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was found
concealed beneath the innocent flour and meal. It was no wonder the
pirate captain was so successful, when he could upon an instant's
notice transform himself from a wolf of the ocean to a peaceful Quaker
trader selling flour to the hungry towns and settlements among the
scattered islands of the West Indies, and so carrying his bloody
treasure safely into his quiet Northern home.
In concluding this part of the narrative it may be added that a wide
strip of canvas painted black was discovered in the hold of the _Eliza
Cooper_. Upon it, in great white letters, was painted the name, "The
Bloodhound." Undoubtedly this was used upon occasions to cover the
real and peaceful title of the trading schooner, just as its captain
had, in reverse, covered his sanguine and cruel life by a thin sheet
of morality and respectability.
This is the true story of the death of Capt. Jack Scarfield.
The Newburyport chap-book, of which I have already spoken, speaks only
of how the pirate disguised himself upon the ocean as a Quaker trader.
Nor is it likely that anyone ever identified Eleazer Cooper with the
pirate, for only Mainwaring of all the crew of the _Yankee_ was
exactly aware of the true identity of Captain Scarfield. All that was
ever known to the world was that Eleazer Cooper had been killed in a
fight with the pirates.
In a little less than a year Mainwaring was married to Lucinda
Fairbanks. As to Eleazer Cooper's fortune, which eventually came into
the possession of Mainwaring through his wife, it was many times a
subject of speculation to the lieutenant how it had been earned. There
were times when he felt well assured that a part of it at least was
the fruit of piracy, but it was entirely impossible to guess how much
more was the result of legitimate trading.
For a little time it seemed to Mainwaring that he should give it all
up, but this was at once so impracticable and so quixotic that he
presently abandoned it, and in time his qualms and misdoubts faded
away and he settled himself down to enjoy that which had come to him
through his marriage.
In time the Mainwarings removed to New York, and ultimately the
fortune that the pirate Scarfield had left behind him was used in part
to found the great shipping house of Mainwaring & Bigot, whose famous
transatlantic packet ships were in their time the admiration of the
whole world.
[Illustration]