When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
others were absorbed into the fishing-fleets, and a few of the more
reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at
the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the
whole human race.
With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants
by their lavishness and horrified them by their brutalities.
On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations
by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer and
dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that
discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers,
both formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an
account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken
whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with
longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell
into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after
serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his
cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and
salt in front of him. It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his
calling in the Caribbean Gulf.
Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship _Morning Star_, and yet
he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt’s was his final port of
call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old
England. He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he
had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red
pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet
edge of the tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands,
touching here and there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy
and outrage.
Captain Sharkey, of the 20-gun pirate barque _Happy Delivery_, had
passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and with
murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim pleasantries
and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main his
coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was Captain
Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship and her full and valuable lading,
that he struck out to the west as far as Bird’s Island to be out of the
usual track of commerce. And yet even in those solitary waters he had
been unable to shake off sinister traces of Captain Sharkey.
One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship. He
was from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole
survivor of a schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.
For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath
a tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late
captain to be thrown into the boat, “as provisions for the voyage,” but
the seaman had at once committed them to the deep, lest the temptation
should be more than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame
until, at the last moment, the _Morning Star_ had found him in that
madness which is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for
Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this
big New Englander was a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the
only man whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.
Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the
pirate was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the
seaman’s mind as he watched the agent’s boat shooting out from the
custom-house quay.
“I’ll lay you a wager, Morgan,” said he to the first mate, “that the
agent will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his
lips.”
“Well, captain, I’ll have you a silver dollar, and chance it,” said the
rough old Bristol man beside him.
The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
sprang up the ladder.
“Welcome, Captain Scarrow!” he cried. “Have you heard about Sharkey?”
The captain grinned at the mate.
“What devilry has he been up to now?” he asked.
“Devilry! You’ve not heard, then! Why, we’ve got him safe under lock and
key here at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be
hanged to-morrow morning.”
Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken
up by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through
the break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the
front of them with a radiant face turned up to heaven, for he came of
the Puritan stock.
“Sharkey to be hanged!” he cried. “You don’t know, Master Agent, if they
lack a hangman, do you?”
“Stand back!” cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was
even stronger than his interest at the news. “I’ll pay that dollar,
Captain Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet.
How came the villain to be taken?”
“Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried,
but our good little governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it.
‘He’s my meat,’ said he, ‘and I claim the cooking of it.’ If you can
stay till to-morrow morning at ten, you’ll see the point swinging.”
“I wish I could,” said the captain wistfully, “but I am sadly behind
time now. I should start with the evening tide.”
“That you can’t do,” said the agent with decision. “The Governor is
going back with you.”
“The Governor!”
“Yes. He’s had a dispatch from Government to return without delay. The
fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has
been waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains.”
“Well, well!” cried the captain, in some perplexity, “I’m a plain
seaman, and I don’t know much of governors and baronets and their ways.
I don’t remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it’s in
King George’s service, and he asks a cast in the _Morning Star_ as far
as London, I’ll do what I can for him. There’s my own cabin he can have
and welcome. As to the cooking, it’s lobscouse and salmagundy six days
in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks
our galley too rough for his taste.”
“You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow,” said the agent. “Sir
Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague, and it
is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage. Dr. Larousse said
that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not put fresh life in
him. He has a great spirit in him, though, you must not blame him if he
is somewhat short in his speech.”
“He may say what he likes and do what he likes so long as he does not
come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship,” said the captain. “He
is Governor of St. Kitt’s, but I am Governor of the _Morning Star_. And,
by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to my
employer, just as he does to King George.”
“He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
before he leaves.”
“The early morning tide, then.”
“Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night, and he will follow
them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt’s
without seeing Sharkey do the rogue’s hornpipe. His own orders were
instant, so it may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr.
Larousse may attend him upon the journey.”
Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations
which they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was
turned out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which
barrels of fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary
the plain food of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor’s
baggage began to arrive—great ironbound ant-proof trunks, and official
tin packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested
the cocked hat or sword within. And then there came a note, with a
heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.
He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun
to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard the Governor was an
eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like
a poodle’s coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green
glasses which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from it. A
fierce beak of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in front of
him. His ague had caused him to swathe his throat and chin with a broad
linen cravat, and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown secured by a
cord round the waist. As he advanced he carried his masterful nose high
in the air, but his head turned slowly from side to side in the helpless
manner of the purblind, and he called in a high, querulous voice for the
captain.
“You have my things?” he asked.
“Yes, Sir Charles.”
“Have you wine aboard?”
“I have ordered five cases, sir”
“And tobacco?”
“There is a keg of Trinidad.”
“You play a hand of piquet?”
“Passably well, sir.”
“Then up anchor, and to sea!”
There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly
through the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands. The
decrepit Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon the
quarter-rail.
“You are on Government service now, captain,” said he. “They are
counting the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you
all that she will carry?”
“Every inch, Sir Charles.”
“Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
voyage.”
“I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency’s society,” said the captain.
“But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted.”
“Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out.”
“I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague.”
“Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much.”
“We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.”
“Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
amongst the merchants. But hark!”
He raised his ring-covered hand in the air. From far astern there came
the low deep thunder of cannon.
“It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonishment. “Can it be a
signal for us to put back?”
The Governor laughed.
“You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be hanged this morning.
I ordered the batteries to salute when the rascal was kicking his last,
so that I might know of it out at sea. There’s an end of Sharkey!”
“There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and the crew took up the
cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at
the low, purple line of the vanishing land.
It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge
and so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of
the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting
his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and
Governor smoked their long pipes and drank their claret as three good
comrades should.
“And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked the captain.
“He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor.
“I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil,” remarked
the mate.
“Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” said the Governor.
“I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
eyes,” said Captain Scarrow. “They were of the lightest filmy blue, with
red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?”
“Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others!
But I remember now that the Adjutant-General said that he had such an
eye as you describe, and added that the jury were so foolish as to be
visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them
that he is dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and
if he had laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with
straw and hung him for a figure-head.”
The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a
high, neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so
heartily, for they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who
sailed the western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be
their own. Another bottle was broached to drink for a pleasant voyage,
and the Governor would drink just one other on top of it, so that the
seamen were glad at last to stagger off—the one to his watch and the
other to his bunk. But when after his four hours’ spell the mate came
down again, he was amazed to see the Governor in his Ramillies wig, his
glasses, and his powdering-gown still seated sedately at the lonely
table with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.
“I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt’s when he was sick,” said
he, “and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he
is well.”
The voyage of the _Morning Star_ was a successful one, and in about
three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before
they were half-way across the Atlantic he was, save only for his eyes,
as well as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing
qualities of wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night
passed that he did not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet
he would be out upon deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the
best of them, peering about with his weak eyes, and asking questions
about the sail and the rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of
the sea. And he made up for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining
leave from the captain that the New England seaman—he who had been cast
away in the boat—should lead him about, and above all that he should sit
beside him when he played cards and count the number of the pips, for
unaided he could not tell the king from the knave.
It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey, and the other was his
avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to
lend his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all
respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed
fore-finger upon the card which he should play. Between them there was
little in the pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first
mate, by the time they sighted the Lizard.
And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the
high temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of
opposition or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his
cravat, his masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent
angle, and his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulder. He
cracked it once over the head of the carpenter when the man had
accidentally jostled him upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some
grumbling and talk of mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was of
opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they
should march forward and set upon them until they had trounced the
devilment out of them. “Give me a knife and a bucket!” he cried with an
oath, and could hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with
the spokesman of the seamen.
Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only
answerable to himself at St. Kitt’s, killing became murder upon the high
seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop
of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met
a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his
vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a
stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had
never known a voyage pass so pleasantly.
And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island,
they had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As
evening fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from
Winchelsea, with the long dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front
of her. Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland, and
Sir Charles might meet the king’s ministers at Westminster before the
evening. The boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were met for
a last turn of cards in the cabin, the faithful American still serving
as eyes to the Governor. There was a good stake upon the table, for the
sailors had tried on this last night to win their losses back from their
passenger. Suddenly he threw all his cards down, and swept all the money
into his long-flapped silken waistcoat.
“The game’s mine!” said he.
“Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!” cried Captain Scarrow; “you have not
played out the hand, and we are not the losers.”
“Sink you for a liar!” said the Governor. “I tell you that I _have_
played out the hand, and that you _are_ a loser.” He whipped off his wig
and his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a
pair of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.
“Good God!” cried the mate. “It’s Sharkey!”
The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway
had put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in
each of his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the
scattered cards in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing
laugh.
“Captain Sharkey is the name, gentlemen,” said he, “and this is Roaring
Ned Galloway, the quartermaster of the _Happy Delivery_. We made it hot,
and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and him in an oarless
boat. You dogs—you poor, fond, water-hearted dogs—we hold you at the end
of our pistols!”
“You may shoot, or you may not!” cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon
the breast of his frieze jacket. “If it’s my last breath, Sharkey, I
tell you that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and
hell-fire in store for you!”
“There’s a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he’s going to
make a pretty death of it!” cried Sharkey. “There’s no one aft save the
man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you’ll need it soon.
Is the dinghy astern, Ned?”
“Ay, ay, captain!”
“And the other boats scuttled?”
“I bored them all in three places.”
“Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
hadn’t quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you’d like to ask
me?”
“I believe you’re the devil himself!” cried the captain. “Where is the
Governor of St. Kitt’s?”
“When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut. When
I broke prison I learnt from my friends—for Captain Sharkey has those
who love him in every port—that the Governor was starting for Europe
under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah and I paid
him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you with such of
his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide these
tell-tale eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a Governor should. Now,
Ned, you can get to work upon them.”
“Help! Help! Watch ahoy!” yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate’s
pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox.
Scarrow rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his
mouth, and threw his other arm round his waist.
“No use, Master Scarrow,” said Sharkey. “Let us see you go down on your
knees and beg for your life.”
“I’ll see you—” cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.
“Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?”
“No; not if you twist it off.”
“Put an inch of your knife into him.”
“You may put six inches, and then I won’t.”
“Sink me, but I like his spirit!” cried Sharkey. “Put your knife in your
pocket, Ned. You’ve saved your skin, Scarrow, and it’s a pity so stout a
man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can pick up
a living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since you have
lain at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up, Ned.”
“To the stove, captain?”
“Tut, tut! there’s a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
Galloway, unless they are called for, or I’ll let you know which one of
us two is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the
table.”
“Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!” said the quartermaster. “You
surely do not mean to let him go?”
“If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still
for me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you
dare to question my orders?”
“Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!” said the quartermaster,
and, lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the
quick dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spreadeagled hands and feet
with a rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with
the long cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of St.
Kitt’s.
“Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you,” said the pirate.
“If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had
your cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand
with the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and
we shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a
smack, when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can
get a barque, and when he has a barque he’ll soon have a full-rigged
ship of his own—so make haste into London town, or I may be coming back,
after all, for the _Morning Star_.”
Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and
dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he
rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through
the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.
“Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!” he screamed. “Cutlasses and pistols!
Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the pirate, is in
yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo’sun, and tumble into
the boats all hands.”
Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
more.
“The boats are scuttled!” they cried. “They are leaking like a sieve.”
The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at
every point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor
the promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away lay
a fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net.
Close to them was the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the
shining swell.
“They are dead men!” cried the captain. “A shout all together, boys, to
warn them of their danger.”
But it was too late.
At that very moment the dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat.
There were two rapid pistol-shots, a scream, and then another
pistol-shot, followed by silence. The clustering fishermen had
disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze
came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled,
and the little craft crept out with her nose to the Atlantic.