OF the nameless classics which were of so much concern to all of us when
we were young, the most important were certainly those salt and
blusterous volumes that told of pirates. It was in vain for kindly
relatives to give us books on Nelson and his like; for their craft,
beautiful though they might be to the eye, had ever the moralities
lurking between decks, and if we met them it was only that we might make
their crews walk the plank, and add new stores of guns and treasure to
the crimson vessel with the sinister flag which it was our pleasure to
command.
And yet the books that gave us this splendid dominion, where are they
now? In truth, I cannot say. Examination of recent boys’ books has
convinced me that the old spirit is lacking, for if pirates are there, it
is only as the hapless victims of horrible British crews with every
virtue save that one which youth should cherish most, the revolutionary
spirit. Who would be a midshipman when he might be a pirate? Yet all
the books would have it so, and even Mr. Kenneth Grahame, who knows
everything that is worth knowing, does not always take the right side in
such matters. The grown-up books are equally unsatisfactory to the
inquiring mind. “Treasure Island,” which is sometimes loosely referred
to as if it were a horn-book for young pirates, hardly touches the main
problems of pirate life at all. Stevenson’s consideration for “youth and
the fond parient” made him leave out all oaths. No ships are taken, no
lovely females captured, nobody walks the plank, and Captain John Silver,
for all the maimed strength and masterfulness that Henley suggested to
the author, falls lamentably short of what a pirate should be. Captain
Teach, of the _Sarah_, in the “Master of Ballantrae,” is better, and
there were the makings of a very good pirate captain in the master
himself, but this section of the book is too short to supply our
requirements. The book must be all pirates. Defoe’s “Captain Singleton”
repents and is therefore disqualified, and Marryat’s “Pirate” is, as
Stevenson said, “written in sand with a saltspoon.” Mr. Clark Russell,
in one of his romances, ingeniously melts a pirate who has been frozen
for a couple of centuries into life, but though he promises well at
first, his is but a torpid ferocity, and ends, as it began, in words.
Nor are the histories of the pirates more satisfying. Captain Johnson’s
“History of Notorious Pirates” I have not seen, but any one who wishes to
lose an illusion can read the trial of William Kidd and a few of his
companions in the State trials of the year 1701. The captain of the
_Adventure Galley_ appears to have done little to merit the name of
pirate beyond killing his gunner with a bucket, and the miserable results
of his pilferings bear no relationship to the enormous hoard associated
with his name in “The Gold Bug” of Poe, though there is certainly a
familiar note in finding included among his captives a number of barrels
of sugar-candy, which were divided in shares among the crew, the captain
himself having forty shares. The Turkish pirates mentioned in “Purchas”
cut a very poor figure. You can read there how four English youths
overcame a prize crew of thirteen men who had been put in the ship
_Jacob_. In a storm they slew the pirate captain, for with the handle of
a pump “they gave him such a palt on the pate as made his brains forsake
the possession of his head.” They then killed three of the other pirates
with “cuttleaxes,” and brought the ship safely into Spain, “where they
sold the nine Turkes for galley-slaves for a good summe of money, and as
I thinke, a great deale more than they were worth.” Not thus would the
chronicles have described the pirates who fought and caroused with such
splendid devotion in my youth. To die beneath the handle of a pump is an
unworthy end for a pirate captain. The “History of the Buccaneers of
America,” written by a brother of Fanny Burney, a book which was the
subject of one of Mr. Andrew Lang’s appreciative essays, is nearer the
mark, for among other notable fellows mentioned therein is one François
L’Olonnois, who put to death the whole crew of a Spanish ship, ninety
men, by beheading them, performing himself the office of executioner.
One of the gentlemen in this book turned buccaneer in order to pay his
debts, while it is told of another that he shot one of his crew in church
for behaving irreverently during Mass. Sir Henry Morgan and Richard
Sawkins performed some pretty feats of piracy, but their main energies
were concerned in the sacking of towns, and the whole book suffers from
an unaccountable prejudice which the author displays against the brave
and hard-working villains of whom he writes.
In truth, these real pirates are disappointing men to meet. They are
usually lacking in fierceness and in fidelity to the pirate ideals of
courage and faithfulness to their comrades, while the fine nobility of
character which was never absent from those other pirates is unknown in
the historical kind. Few, if any, of them merit the old Portuguese
punishment for pirates, which consisted in hanging them from the yards of
their own ship, and setting the latter to drift with the winds and waves
without rudder or sails, an example for rogues and a source of
considerable danger to honest mariners.
If that were a fitting end for great knaves, the meaner ruffians must be
content with the pump-handle and the bucket.
It is hard if our hearts may not go out to those gloomy vessels, with
their cargoes of gold and courage and rum, that sail, it seems, the
mental seas of youth no more. Were they really bad for us, those
sanguinary tussles, those star-lit nights of dissipation? A pinafore
would wipe away a deal of blood, and the rum, though we might drink it
boiling like Quilp, in no wise lessened our interest in home-made cake.
But these regrets are of yesterday, and to-day I must draw what
consolation I may from the kindly comment of Mr. Lang: “Alluring as the
pirate’s profession is, we must not forget that it had a seamy side, and
was by no means all rum and pieces-of-eight. And there is something
repulsive to a generous nature in roasting men because they will not show
you where to steal hogs.”