Getting out to sea strengthened me a little more, and I took heart,
though the evil associations of the _Charles the Second_ pained the
conscience. Very small scrapings had fallen to them since they had left
Joanna, and the mood of the crew was sour.
However, they parliamented together and voted to go to the Gulf of Aden
to find Moorish ships, and perhaps waylay the rich fleet of Mocha,
whose movements they had learned of at Madagascar.
“With that,” said Mr. Every, “we shall make our fortune”,--fortune
being a great word in his mouth.
In those regions the sun is cruel. As we drew on to the gulf the heat
lay upon us like a smothering blanket; nay, like many blankets, so that
the very air one breathed seemed to sear the throat; we went about our
blistered decks nearly naked--to put your hand on one of the guns was
like laying it on a hot oven--and Mr. Every sprawled under an awning
that was rigged over the poop, drinking bomboo[10] and wishing he had
made his fortune and were living in a fine house with a fine wife in
England. Nor had we the comfort of looking toward cooler waters, but
every day drew farther and farther into the furnace.
[10] Grog of limes, sugar, etc.
At the mouth of the Red Sea--red is the color of flame--we fell in with
two ships that were on the same account as we, and the morning after
meeting them met three more ships of bad intent, some being Englishmen
from America--Captains May (no relative of mine) Farrel and Wake--until
you might have supposed a parliament of pirates was meeting. We were
all there for the Mocha fleet; but after riding together a night or two
and exchanging visits we separated, each captain having his own notion
of the place where the fleet we sought would pass.
But wide is the sea and many are its paths, and the Mocha fleet slipped
by us all in the night of Saturday. Next morning the men held a general
consult as to whether we should follow them or not, and after a great
dispute as usual, a vote was taken which fell for pursuit, and so the
Sabbath was desecrated by a wicked chase.
At sundown we came upon a lagging ship of the fleet and took her
without a fight, and with her something of gold and silver, but no
great sum. We put a prize crew aboard but soon called them off again
and left the ship to go her voyage.
There was enough profit in this plunder to cheer our people, and they
became hungry for more. A few days thereafter we spied another sail
and, getting up our anchor, stood to her. Before we came up to her a
haze fell over the sea, which presently turned to a thick fog, thereby
favoring Mr. Every’s enterprise by allowing him to get close and make a
sort of surprise.
When nigh enough we sent a shot across her bows; but she, fearing that
we were a lawless ship, refused to heave back but hauled to the wind
and made off. With the breeze on our starboard quarter, despite the fog
we kept her in sight; and, being the better sailer, we drew down upon
her, so near that we made her out to be the _Gunsway_, East Indiaman.
Mr. Every now yawed his ship occasionally as he worked for the range;
but they opened first at us, giving us a load from their stern-chasers,
which split our larboard foreyard arm and might, had it been a little
cleaner break, put us out of the pursuit. Mr. Every replied with our
bow-chasers, which we learned afterward did them little hurt.
Our captain, wishing to get the range for his broadside more quickly
and the _Gunsway_ beginning to show a chance of escape, we put our helm
down hard, and, coming athwart the bow, fell foul of the _Gunsway_,
so that our larboard cathead was abreast her starboard gangway. Here
we fought muzzle to muzzle--they with brass cannon, we with our iron
ones--as pretty a fight as ever I saw since the days of the old
_Hector_ and the battle of Bergen.
If we had had to fight it out in this fashion the event might
have been uncertain, but Mr. Every--who as I have said was a fine
seaman--cunningly disengaged his ship and managed to back her clear of
the _Gunsway_ and then, bearing up under her stern, let go a broadside.
That finished a fight which could not have been longer than an hour.
The Indiaman put out the white flag; nor could he do less, seeing his
hull and rigging were badly hit and ten of his men lay dead about his
guns. Half a dozen of the pirates were killed and not a few wounded.
During the battle I hauled ammunition and dragged off the wounded to
the hold,--to shirk here would have been to buy a quick end to my life.
Over the bulwarks of the _Gunsway_ our villains poured and ran greedily
about the ship, looking for loot. Presently a great shout went up, and
four men ran from the master’s cabin bearing brass-bound coffers,--the
ship’s treasure.
Somebody with an ax smashed the fastenings, and over the decks there
spilled great piles of gold and silver coins; of pieces-of-eight, for
instance, we afterwards counted not less than one hundred thousand. Add
to this the same number of chequins[11] and you can see that Mr. Every
had made his fortune.
[11] Sequins--worth about $2.25.
The pirates went mad with delight; some danced upon the money, some
threw themselves on the deck and tossed and fingered the coins like
children playing on the sand; while as for Mr. Every, he stood leaning
upon his cutlass, looking down at the shining heaps and laughing.
Nothing would do the men but to divide the spoil then and there, and
the average share was worth one thousand pounds apiece. Five hundred
pounds were given me, though I had been sick, useless and more of a
hindrance than help.
Though this was the wrong sort of saltwater money, I perforce took
it, being in no mind to have myself marked among them. When they had
stripped the _Gunsway_ of everything that could be carried off, they
left her to go on to Surat with her sad tale of crime.
X
With so notable a felony on their souls, all felt that the time had
come to leave those regions entirely. We set off for the Indian coast,
from which it was designed to go to the West Indies. A large body of
men, however, resolved to leave the ship at India; and twenty-five
Frenchmen, fourteen Danes and a company of Englishmen were there set
ashore at their desire. For they were afraid if they came to England
and were caught, they should be hanged, and they thought themselves
more secure among the pagans.
Mr. Every set off for the West Indies with a light complement, and
attempted no piracy during all that long and wearisome way. We watered
at one or two places, including Ascension, but made no long stop until
we anchored at New Providence.
As we came to this port we were at a loss to know the kind of welcome
that might wait us; so when we anchored we held a consult, and one who
was a clerk drafted a letter to the governor of this Providence Island,
setting out that we desired to come into the town, find anchorage and
have the liberties of the place, for which the men would present the
governor with twenty pieces-of-eight and two pieces of gold, all told,
and Mr. Every, because he had a double share, offered for himself forty
pieces-of-eight and four gold coins.
One Adams was our ambassador, who with a few of our men to form a sort
of honor guard went ashore, while we lay by waiting the result. Our
messengers soon came back with a letter from the governor, saying that
we were welcome and could come and go again when we pleased. Thus for
sixty pieces of silver and six pieces of gold we bought the keys of the
town.
Here the adventure so wickedly begun at the Groyne ended. Most of our
people scattered themselves about these West Indies, where they found
great hospitality for pirates, particularly at this New Providence,
which rivaled Madagascar for folk of this complexion.
Mr. Every made a great friend of the island governor and gave all the
promise in the world of becoming one of the leading malefactors of this
region. Here he found the things he liked, for from these parts real
navies of buccaneers set out to harry the Main itself, the American
provinces,--everywhere, even, as I had seen, over to the far shores of
Africa and India.
As for me, with the money I had from the _Gunsway_ I bought passage on
a ship going to the Virginia plantations.
“Farewell, wicked ship and wicked men,” thought I as the Virginia
vessel passed by the _Charles the Second_ at her moorings. “Farewell,”
said I, gazing at the empty decks on which the sun lay white and hot;
“good riddance, and may you be quickly entombed in the deep waters.”
Had I been a moral philosopher and not a mere sailorman I would have
profited by my reflections.
Would that I had tarried in Virginia, where there is much to a man’s
liking! But no, I longed to be at home and out of the sun; I longed for
the cool vales of Somerset and the sweet evening air which from the
Mendips blows the blue peat smoke about the thatched roofs of simple
cottages; I longed for quietness and rest, and these honest longings
drove me afoul of the cruel courts of justice.
I was still miserably weak when I crawled at length from the docks at
Bristol up into the town. I lay a week in bed at a tavern in the High
Street, afflicted with a return of the dry bellyache.
I felt danger to be about me; for all England over there was little
talk but of the notorious Captain Every; no exaggeration of his crimes
being too great or untrue to go down the gullets of the staring people.
Behind it all was the East India Company, as well as the Mogul rulers,
who dinned continually at the British Government for the punishment and
extermination of pirates.
All of this was to make bad weather for me, yet I was resolved to go
to my lords of the Admiralty and make a plain discovery of all the
things which had taken place. Scarcely able to pull my breeches over my
shrunken knees, I nevertheless paid my score and set out by coach for
London.
The coach had not gone three leagues from town before she was hove to,
and, behold you, the king’s messengers were there, looking for old Bill
May.
“You are one of Every’s men,” they said, hauling me out the gangway.
“We have a warrant to take you.”
“You only anticipate me,” said I, “for I was on my way to London to
discover all.”
They bore me off to Bath in a carriage of their own, and there before
his Grace the Duke of Devonshire I was examined touching my part in Mr.
Every’s enterprise. I made a clear account of all that I have here set
down; but despite that I was remitted to Newgate Gaol to be tried as a
felon.
In this close I found when I came in my old shipmates Joseph Dawson,
Edward Forseith, William Bishop, James Lewis and John Sparkes, with
young Middleton and one Dan, who had crept home by one ship and
another, only to be snatched up as I was. One person and another,
recognizing us for Every’s men, had betrayed us.
We went first to trial on an indictment of piracy of the _Gunsway_.
We were confronted by a bench of more than a dozen judges; we were
harried by a shoal of prosecutors; we were lied about by one witness
and another, yet in spite of all--in spite of all that Dan and
Middleton, a saucy lad aboard our ship, who were King’s evidence; in
spite of the thunderings and belching and blasts of the lawyers, the
jury--true men and good--returned us not guilty.
That put the king’s counsel to be the laughingstock of the country, so
to save their faces they put us to another trial, this time for the
stealing of the _Charles the Second_ at the Groyne. For witnesses they
brought again young Middleton as well as Mr. Gravet, the old second
mate, and the liar Creagh. Not only did these tell of the matter at the
Groyne, but Middleton and one or two others went all over the Indies
and up to New Providence again,--which was a sly way of trying us twice
for one offense.
How the judges and lawyers admonished the jury!
“If you have the true English spirit, if you believe in the Christian
religion--I had almost said, ‘If you love your mother’--you must
convict these rascals at the bar.”
How they belabored the jury which had acquitted us on the first trial;
you would have thought they were nothing other than Frenchmen in
disguise, and the veriest traitors, heretics and homicides. Aye, they
did for us: guilty.
Last night the clerk of St. Sepulcher’s[12], as the custom is, came
under our windows with his bell and cried to those who might have to
die on the morrow to repent their sins. The doleful sound threw me into
a horror; I fear that my name will be in the morning’s death warrant.
[12] The church that stood across from Newgate.