When we sailed from the Groyne we had a deal of bread and a couple of
hundred pair of woolen stockings; but, wanting beef and more bread,
we stood for the Madeira Islands. The evil disposition of Mr. Every
quickly showed its true kind, for we were sent aboard three English
ships which lay at the islands and looted them under the pretense
of giving receipts for the things we took, with promises of future
payment. Mr. Every laughed a great deal at this.
So too he laughed at our operations on the coast of Guinea, whither we
went from the Madeiras. We sailed into Guinea Gulf under English colors
solely to entice the poor, trusting negroes of the country aboard, who,
when they came supposing we were to trade with them, were despoiled of
their golden trinkets and thrown, chained together, into our hold.
These captives we took from the mainland over to Prince’s Island, in
the gulf, and marketed them with Dutch settlers. When it came to bring
them up on deck we found the dead and the living sometimes chained
together. It was a very great horror.
Being now a proper pirate, Mr. Every at this Prince’s Island fought
two Dane ships. We fair surprised them, not a few of their men being
alongshore. We ran to leeward of the larger one and, opening our ports,
bit into him with twenty guns, the blow of our shot shaking two Danes
out of the shrouds to their deck, like a couple of ripe plums from a
tree. With good spirit the merchantmen made what shift they might with
their half-dozen small pieces, but a musket shot killing the captain of
the one we first attacked, both ships gave in.
Our brave show and talk so affected some of these Danes that a score
of them signed on with Mr. Every. Our one broadside so damaged the
Danish brig that Mr. Every set her afire, and we stood by, watching
the burning and cheering whenever a canister of powder blew up, Mr.
Every standing on our poop, the red of the flames glaring on his face,
nodding his head and laughing with himself.
The smaller vessel we took with us, Mr. Every expecting to make himself
a great admiral at the head of a great pirate fleet, though for sure
it smirches the noble dignity of that honored title to give it to a
miscreant so black.
Many folk--not a few of them of the highest fashion--have come to
Newgate Gaol to see the notorious Captain Every’s men, as if forsooth
our feet were cleft like a goat’s or horns were hid beneath our
forelocks. Some of these have said it was not ingenuous for us who
served by compulsion thus to engage in these villainous combats and
sinful traffickings with slaves. Why, say they, did you not flee from
Mr. Every at the first chance and return to England to make discovery
of his crimes?
There was no first, middle or last chance.
And what a ship it was! In place of discipline there was a disorder
very afflicting to an old king’s man. Each man counted himself the
equal of the other, and although Mr. Every was a hard man and quick to
strike, he was submitted to only because he was a navigator, and none
could take the ship so well as he.
But he could make no general move without having first a consult in
which all hands took part until the confabulation sounded like a tree
full of crows. We called a vote on everything,--the next place for
depredation, the punishment of offenses aboard ship and the amount of
plunder each man should get.
This last was a bone for the dogs to growl and bite about, I can tell
you. Newcomers like the Danes were for having as much from the bag as
the men who had stolen the ship at the Groyne.
“Nay,” said these; “not so, for we brought you the ship, and you give
us nothing but your hands.”
“Good,” quoth the recruits. “Then we can take ourselves off and you may
have your ship and be hanged.”
Thus the tree forked and on its opposite branches bore fruit of bitter
will.
The small Danish sloop we were taking with us from Prince’s Island made
early harvest of the animosity among us. Mr. Every would keep her as a
tender; others were for selling her so that they might paw some money.
“If you sell her,” said certain ones, “what will be the shares of each?”
Thereupon the quarrel flared up, and nothing could be agreed except
that Mr. Every should have two shares; that is, if the highest share
were one thousand pounds, Mr. Every should get two thousand pounds, but
as to the rest there was no concord; the argument being as sharp as if
the money for the sloop were already in the quartermaster’s coffer. The
Frenchmen recruited at the Madeiras were for the arbitrament of the
dirk, seeing which--and that it was time to act--Mr. Every ordered the
twenty-pounder shotted and trained on the sloop. He cut the towline and
said, “Give it her betwixt the wind and the water,” and thereupon old
José, the Spanish gunner, hit her so neatly beneath her lowest ports
that she was not atop the waves more than fifteen minutes.
“Rather she sink than we,” said Mr. Every to the men, who now began to
see that if they could not agree better the whole enterprise would be
ruined.