CHAPTER I
AMONG THE CARIBBEES
I had started forth on a novel journey, a trip I had long wanted to take—a cruise in the wake of the buccaneers. Many a time I had traversed the Caribbean, steaming from port to port of those island gems, the Lesser Antilles, that are strung, like emeralds and sapphires, in a great curving chain stretching from our own St. Thomas, five days south of New York, to Trinidad at the mouth of the Orinoco. Many a time, too, I had skirted the coasts, climbed the mountains, and explored the bush of Cuba, Porto Rico, Santo Domingo, and Jamaica. And whenever I had stood upon a liner’s deck and watched the huge-sailed island sloops and schooners courtesying to the sparkling waves and, with lee rails awash, surging through the blue sea toward some distant isle, I had envied those aboard. I had vowed that sooner or later I too would stand upon the heaving deck of a nimble sailing-craft and cruise hither and thither among the islands, going and coming as humor willed, seeing the out-of-the-way places, the little-known islets, the hidden, quiet bays and coves which no churning screws had disturbed and no smoke-belching funnels had besmirched.
No locality is more filled with romance, more remindful of adventurous deeds of the past, more closely associated with the early history of our country than the Caribbean. Here is the islet first sighted by Columbus after his long and thrilling voyage into the west. Here dwelt the conquistadors, the explorers, the voyagers who with fire and blood blazed their trails across the continents of North and South America. Here one may still see the crumbling houses in which such noted old dons as Ponce de Leon, De Soto, Pizarro, Cortez, and others dwelt when Hispaniola (Santo Domingo) was the center of wealth and fashion in New Spain. Here was established the first university of the New World wherein Las Casas taught his pupils a century and more before the Mayflower sailed into Plymouth harbor. Here the great nations of Europe contended for control of the new-found lands, and here cruised the buccaneers, ever seeking their prizes. But to sail these waters and visit these isles in a modern steamship robs them of their greatest charm. Who can visualize gilded, purple-sailed galleons swinging to anchor when buff steel masts, huge funnels, and wireless aërials fill the foreground? Who can picture swashbuckling, roistering pirates when the streets they once trod swarm with jitneys? Who can imagine mail-clad men about to embark on some great adventure when the jetty bears a creaking, wheezing crane, and sweating negro stevedores bustle and crowd and swear? No, to find the romance of these islands, to visualize their past and appreciate their present, one must forego luxuries and leave the beaten path, and, like the voyagers of old, seek new scenes in a white-sailed craft whose motive power is the humming trade wind and whose crew is made up of natives who, in appearance at least, might well have stepped out of the past.
And at last Fate—in the guise of good-natured and sympathetic friends in the islands—had made possible my dream and I was cruising one-time pirate waters in a pirate ship. Yes, a real pirate ship, the Vigilant, whose solid teak keel was laid well over a century ago; the oldest boat plying the Caribbean, but still as stanch, seaworthy, and fast as when, manned by sea-rovers, she had swept under her cloud of canvas upon some lumbering merchantman or had showed her fleet heels to British corvettes, as, laden with a cargo of “black ivory,” she had crept forth from the fetid mouth of some African river, bound with her human freight for the slave marts of the Antilles. Privateer, pirate, slaver, and man-o’-war she had been in turn through the long years she had sailed the seas. Within her hold were still visible the ring-bolts to which the groaning blacks had been chained. In her timbers were still the wounds of round shot and bullets, and despite her peaceful present-day employment as a packet between the islands, she was yet the typical pirate craft—the “long, low, black schooner with raking masts” so dear to writers of lurid fiction. [3] And we were bound to that erstwhile haunt of the sea-rovers, the Virgin Islands.
When Columbus, cruising westward on his second voyage, sighted these green-clad islets rising above the blue Caribbean, he despaired of finding saint’s names for all of them, and so called them collectively “The Virgins,” in honor of the eleven thousand companions of St. Ursula. The name was not inappropriate, for while there were not eleven thousand of the isles, they were far too numerous to be counted. The history of these bits of wave-washed coral and volcanic rock, since their discovery by the great navigator, has been anything but happy and peaceful. The Spaniards, finding neither gold nor precious stones upon them, contented themselves with kidnapping the primitive inhabitants and then, having depopulated the islands, left them severely alone. Later, after a period of varying fortunes and misfortunes, they were parceled off among the European powers, changed hands over and over again, were sold, bartered, and fought for, and at last, with the exception of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and one or two others, were dubbed worthless and were virtually forgotten by the nations which had battled so long and bloodily to retain them.
Here in close proximity, often but two or three miles apart, were islands belonging to half a dozen powers,—British, French, Danish, Swedish, Dutch,—with one owned jointly by Holland and France, while close at hand, conveniently and temptingly near, in fact, were rich Spanish possessions. And here, to the eleven thousand Virgins, came the pirates and the buccaneers. So it was fitting that my cruise in the ancient but rejuvenated Vigilant should begin with the Virgin Isles.
Presently, above the impossibly blue sea loomed a bit of land, a tiny, gray-green, barren cay, rimmed with ragged, weather-beaten rocks in whose coves and hollows coral beaches gleamed, white as the beating surf, beyond the turquoise water. Leaning upon the schooner’s rail, I gazed idly and curiously at the little isle, the one break upon the shimmering sea, a lonely spot whose only signs of life were the circling sea-birds hovering over it in clouds.
I turned to the fellow at the wheel—a giant of a man, black as ebony and muscled like a Hercules, naked to the waist, his dungaree trousers rolled to his knees and supported by a wisp of scarlet sash, his huge flat feet wide-spread, and a flapping jipijapa hat upon his huge head. His lusterless eyes, bloodshot from constant diving (for he was a sponger by profession), and the huge hoops in his ears, gave him a fierce, wild look, and, glancing at him, one might well have imagined him a member of a pirate crew, a corsair steering toward some doomed prize.
“Sam,” I asked, “what’s that island over there to port?”
The big negro slowly turned his head and gazed at the speck of rock and sand.
“Tha’ ’s Dead Man’s Chest, Chief,” he replied in the soft drawl of the Bahaman.
Dead Man’s Chest! Instantly, at his words, the song made famous by Stevenson flashed through my mind: “Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
Dead Man’s Chest! The little cay at once took on a new interest. Now I could almost picture them yonder,—those shipwrecked men, fifteen of them,—gaunt, fierce-visaged, unshorn; sprawled on the sand in the scanty shade of the twisted sea-grape trees above the surf. Marooned, cast away, but reckless daredevils to the last; gambling in the face of death, tossing a gleaming golden doubloon in their final game of chance—the stake, their lives against that one bottle of rum! And then drink and the devil would have done for them as for the rest, and only their whitening bones over which the sea-birds fought and screamed would remain to tell their grim tale.
Dead Man’s Chest! What more fitting than that this bit of ocean-girt land should have been the first of the isles made famous by the buccaneers to greet my eyes, and what more appropriate than that I should have sighted it from the deck of a real pirate craft! Fortunate indeed had I been when her owners delivered the Vigilant into my hands for my cruise, and I pondered, as we sped past wave-beaten Dead Man’s Chest, on the story the Vigilant might tell could she but speak. Then my thoughts were brought back to the present as Sam spoke:
“The’ says as how the’ ’s plenty o’ tr’asure yonder, on Dead Man’s Chest,” he remarked, “but Ah can’ say as how true ’tis, Chief. Plenty folks has s’arched for it, but Ah can’ say as the’ ’s foun’ it. I ’spec’ the’ ’s tr’asure a plenty on th’ cays here ’bout. The’ says as how th’ pirates was num’rous roun’ here.”
“Yes, it was a great place for pirates,” I replied. “You know these islands well, Sam. Have you ever run across any old guns or forts or wrecks on any of them? By the way, what’s your last name?”
Sam grinned.
“Ah got a right funny name, Chief,” he responded. “Ah don’ ’spec’ you ever hear it. It’s Lithgow, Chief.”
Lithgow! What a name to conjure with, in the old buccaneer days! Red Lithgow, the bold, unprincipled pirate chieftain who hailed from Louisiana and met death at the end of a rope from his own yard-arm! Perchance—nay, in all probability—some of the old rascal’s blood still flowed in Sam’s veins; for all through the islands one finds lineal descendants (though they may be brown, black, or yellow) of the buccaneers, whose progeny was legion.
But Sam was again speaking, replying to my first question and telling me that hidden among the brush and weeds on St. John, St. Martin, and others of the Virgins, were numerous old walls, ruins, and cannon which, rumor had it, were relics of the pirates who once made the islands their stronghold.
My itinerary included all of these in turn, and so the Vigilant’s course remained unaltered and with the wind humming through the taut rigging and filling the great straining sails, we rushed on toward St. Thomas, looming like a cloud upon the horizon far ahead.
And now, as the schooner races onward toward the quaint port of Charlotte Amalie, a word about the crew that manned the Vigilant; for Sam was not by any means the only or the most important personage besides myself. A mixed lot they were, but most valuable factors in my cruise and an entertaining lot as well. Originally they were all Virgin Islanders, save Sam, the Bahaman pilot and “captain,” and Joseph, the long-legged, solemn-faced cook, who, notwithstanding his ebony skin and kinky head, dubbed all of his race “stupid niggers,” who found everything not to his liking “pure corruption,” and who proudly boasted of being a Turks Island boy.
With the Chesterfieldian manners of a duke, painstakingly perfect English, and the dignity of a Spanish grandee, Joseph looked down upon the “stupid niggers” of the crew as from an impregnable height, and fraternized with Sam only, the others being merely tolerated. A right good cook and a faithful boy was Joe, and a never-ending source of amusement because of his assumption of a sort of guardianship over me.
But ere the cruise was over he and Sam and one other were the only remaining members of my original crew. Never did the Vigilant’s mud-hook seek bottom in the limpid waters of some lovely isle that one or more of my sailors did not desert. Not that they had aught of which to complain, or found their duties on the ship irksome, but good American dollars in their pockets, a rich green shore, and chocolate-colored sirens were temptations beyond the black man’s power to resist. Yet never were we short-handed. For every man who left, a score clamored to be taken on, and had the Vigilant been on a pirating adventure I could have filled her to the hatches with as varicolored and vari-charactered a crew as ever swarmed over the bulwarks of a stricken prize.
To the West Indians, every American is a millionaire and a philanthropist, and in their eyes, apparently, he is morally bound to carry each, all, and sundry to that dreamed-of-land the States, the Mecca of every inhabitant of the islands. Wherever the Vigilant folded her white wings and came to rest, we were besieged by a small army of black, brown, yellow, and every intermediate shade, all begging to be allowed to accompany us. For the West Indian is a restless soul, never content unless on the move and caring not a jot where day or night may find him, albeit he is intensely patriotic, and thinks his island preferable to all others and his people the salt of the earth.
Thus it came about that, what with deserters and new-comers, the crew was a sort of kaleidoscopic aggregation, shifting from yellow to brown, from black to tan, from soft-voiced, slurring-tongued “patois men” to h-dropping ’Badians and brogue-speaking Montserratans. And a happy family they were at that—good-naturedly chaffing one another, having long-winded arguments over the respective merits of their various island homes, using preposterous, meaningless words of their own invention. And all and each making life miserable for the hapless natives of that “right little, tight little island” designated on the maps as Barbados, affectionately dubbed “Little England” by its sons and daughters, and also known as “Bimshire Land,” [4] whose natives seem for some strange reason ever to be the butt and the jest of the other islanders, and who are the pariahs of their race, if we are to believe their fellow negroes of the Caribbees.
Never did my men tire of taunting some poor ’Badian with the doggerel verse
A ha’penny loaf an’ a bit o’ salt fish, Da’ ’s wha’ de ’Badian call’ a dish. A bottle o’ soda divided ’twix’ t’ree, Da’ ’s wha’ de ’Badian call’ a spree.
If the ’Badians happened to be in the minority, they bore it as best they might or retorted that “You men awnt civ’lized. You don’ know better’n to wear alpargats to a charch of a Sunday,” a response which usually brought on a loud cracking of tough skulls, as, like enraged goats, the men butted one another’s wool-covered craniums—a contest in which the ’Badian always emerged victorious. For to accuse an islander of wearing alpargatas (the sandal-like footgear brought from Venezuela) to church, is an insult not lightly to be suffered. Indeed, if ever there was a being who outshone Solomon in all his glory, it is the West Indian negro on the Sabbath; and his highest ambition is, in order to draw greater attention to his gorgeous raiment, to possess a pair of brilliant, pumpkin-colored shoes which, to quote his own words, “goes queek, queek when Ah walks in de charch.”
As might be expected, in the constant change and interchange of multicolored flotsam and jetsam, we picked up many a strange and interesting, not to say downright weird, character.
There, for example, was Trouble. He appeared one glorious golden morn as we lay at anchor off St. John, like Aphrodite rising from the sea, his scanty garments dripping with brine; for, being both boatless and penniless, he had used nature’s gifts to win his way from shore to ship like the amphibious creature he proved to be. But, aside from the unexpected manner of his appearance, nothing could have resembled the goddess of the sea less. In fact, he was unquestionably the ugliest and most repulsive representative of the genus Homo and the species Sapiens that I have ever gazed upon—bony and big, with gorilla-like arms and a face so broad and forehead so low that his head appeared to have been forced out of shape by hydraulic pressure, while his natural absence of human-like features had been enhanced by some accident which had deprived him of even the semblance of a nose. There, above his immense mouth, were two huge round holes which, when he grinned,—as he constantly did,—stretched into slits that seemed ever on the point of meeting his ears and literally severing his black face into upper and lower hemispheres.
Like a prize bull-pup, he was so extravagantly ugly that he actually was fascinating, and not until he spoke could I take my eyes from him. And his first words were almost as astounding and unexpected as his appearance:
“Ah’m beggin’ o’ yo’ pawdon, Boss, for mah audacity an’ assumption o’ de manner o’ mah absence o’ dignification for precip’tately discommodin’ yo’, but Ah’d like for to propoun’ de interrogation ef yo’ can absorbinate mah sarvices for a member o’ de crew, sir, for to circumnavigate de islan’s, sir.”
Was I dreaming, or had the climate affected my brain? I literally gasped.
But the next instant I had recovered myself, for I knew that this noseless apparition with his wide mouth filled with long words could have originated in but one locality in all the islands, Antigua, whose dusky inhabitants seem to pride themselves upon the amplitude of the words they can command, regardless of their meaning or aptness.
“What’s your name, and what can you do?” I asked, more as a formality than anything else, for I never dreamed of taking this creature on.
The noseless negro scratched his head and wiggled his bare toes.
“Ah was christened wi’ de cognomen o’ Henry Francis William Nelson Wellington Shand, sir,” he replied; and then, as an afterthought, “but Ah’m most usually designated by de name o’ Trouble, sir.”
“Trouble!” I exclaimed.
“Yaas, sir,” responded the grinning negro, instantly. “Thank yo’ sir, for mekkin’ acceptance o’ mah sarvices, sir. Ah’ll endeavor for to conduc’ mahself wif circumspection an’ implicitness. Ah’s a sailor, sir, an’ Ah’m not expandulatin’ buncomb when Ah takes upon mahself de assumptiveness o’ de assertion, sir.”
I was speechless,—so astounded at the man’s “assumptiveness” that he had been hired that I could not find words to inform him of his mistake,—and by the time I recovered from my astonishment he had disappeared in the forecastle.
Sam stood by, chuckling to himself.
“Ah ’spec’s he may be a good sailor, Chief,” he vouchsafed. “An’ we’re in need o’ two han’s, Chief.”
“All right, Sam,” I replied. “I suppose he doesn’t need a nose to run aloft or tail onto a rope.”
And so Trouble came unto us, but if ever a man belied his name it was “Henry Francis William Nelson Wellington Shand, sir,” for Trouble was a very treasure of a hand. He was as much at home in the water as on land or deck, and when, later, our anchor fouled one day, in fifteen fathoms, Trouble made nothing of diving down and releasing the fluke from its lodgment under a mass of coral and rock, while the height of his enjoyment was to challenge Sam to dive overboard and kill a big shark in a single-handed duel beneath the sea. And Sam, though a diver by profession, who had killed many a man-eater with a blow of his long, keen-bladed knife, freely admitted Trouble’s amphibious superiority.
Aloft he was a very monkey; he was ever scouring decks or polishing brass; he was as good-natured as he was ugly, and even dignified Joseph unbent and passed many a half-hour chinning with this weird waif of the sea. As for the other members of the crew, after one or two tests and trials they abandoned all attempts to out-talk or out-argue him, for his ready flow of multisyllabled words left them floundering in a vocabulary totally inadequate to cope with Trouble’s “expandulations” and “supercil’ous methodictions.” On one occasion I overheard a bit of argument between our Antiguan find and a recent addition to the crew—for the older members invariably egged on new recruits to argue with Trouble.
I do not know what the argument had been about nor what the new man had said, but as he was a French mulatto from Dominica,—or, as the other islanders have it, a “patois man,”—I presume he had been referring in no complimentary terms to Henry Francis et cetera’s native heath.
“Yo’ worthless specimen o’ misguided humanity yo’!” exclaimed Trouble. “Yo’ insignificant an’ fragment’ry yaller element! For wherefo’ yo’ have de audacity to let yo’ imagination direc’ yo’ to dat assumption? Who yo’ t’ink yo’ addressin’ in dat highfalutin’, presumptious, dictatious manner? Ah desire yo’ to distinc’ly an’ def’nitely absorbinate de eminen’ly interestin’ an’ important info’mation Ah’s propoundin’, an’ if yo’ declinates to precip’tately reconsider de sentiments yo’ jus’ expressed an’ at once an’ immediately an’ hereby and in witness whereof retrac’ yo’ asservations once, forever, an’ henceforth, der’ ’s boun’ for to occur a casulty an’ a deceased patois nigger, an’ de gentleman is goin’ for to be compulsified for to discommode hisself to acquire another incumbent for to fill de work what yo’ lack o’ intellec’ don’ fit yo’ for.”
Needless to say, in the face of this dire threat—which to the fear-stricken recipient savored of an incantation by a witch doctor or “obeah man”—the French islander promptly and “precip’tately” reconsidered and retracted whatever it was that had inadvertently brought on Trouble’s outburst.
To the last day of the voyage Trouble was with us in name if not in spirit, and never did I regret that he had hired himself, so to speak.
Aside from him and Sam and Joe, the only fixture was a red-haired, freckle-faced Montserratan boy whom I could not resist employing on account of his rich brogue and who served as cabin-boy, laundryman, and clown, and with the ready wit of his wild Irish ancestors kept us all in good humor throughout the cruise.