CHAPTER XI

THE GIBRALTAR OF THE BUCCANEERS

One must search far and wide to find a more beautiful stretch of water than the Bay of Samana. Blue as the azure dome above it, the vast, lake-like expanse cuts into the very heart of the wondrous island for over thirty miles. From the lofty, richly forested mountains that hem it in on the north, to the low, rolling green hills on the south, it stretches for ten miles, and dotting its placid surface are verdant wooded isles. Sheltered by the land from all hard winds, deep enough for the largest ships, protected from the seas and with an area sufficient to afford anchorage for all the navies of the world and to spare, Samana Bay has no equal as a natural harbor in all the Antilles, if, indeed, in the entire world.

Its strategic value is enormous; as a coaling-station and naval base it is without a peer in the West Indies, and once our Government, alive to these facts, came very near purchasing it from the Dominicans. But long before that time the sea-rovers appreciated the manifold advantages of the bay, and here they came to find a retreat wherein they could and did hold their own in safety, though surrounded on every hand by their arch-enemies the Spaniards. Here, almost midway between the shores, a charmingly beautiful islet, about three miles in length and a mile wide, juts, a mass of emerald and ivory, above the blue waters; and here the buccaneers made their headquarters, transforming this Cayo Levantado, as it is called, into a veritable miniature Gibraltar of their own. And toward this one-time stronghold of the pirates the Vigilant rippled, through the waters of the bay that once sheltered many a buccaneer ship, and upon whose shores the first battle between the Europeans and the Indians took place.

It was on the borders of a tiny bay that this memorable but insignificant skirmish occurred which sealed the doom of the red man—a quiet little cove at the edge of the jungle under the towering green hills, and still called by the name Columbus bestowed upon it, Golfo de las Flechas (Bay of the Arrows), in memory of the shower of darts that the Indians poured upon a landing party of Spaniards. The arrows, however, rattled harmlessly upon the invaders’ coats of mail, while, with the answering volley from the armored men, a number of the naked savages were killed. To-day it is very peaceful, and as wild, as uninhabited as when Columbus first entered the great bay. Indeed, it is even more deserted, for the last of the aborigines of the island have been dead two centuries and more, the Spaniards having waged upon them a relentless war of extermination, as a penalty for daring to protect their homes from the white invaders.

Deserted, too, is the little islet The Upraised Cay, to give it a literal equivalent for its Spanish name, though to the corsairs it was ever known as Trade Wind Cay. And off its gleaming coral beach the Vigilant came to rest.

From the schooner’s decks the isle appeared a single rounded hill sloping gently to east and west, with a stretch of abrupt gray limestone cliffs along the northern shore and covered with a wealth of luxuriant vegetation. Before our anchorage a dazzling crescent of white sand swept from a rocky point to a low cape, and just off the spot where the snowy beach ended at the headland a bit of detached rock rose from the sea, a curiously formed islet supporting a mass of tangled shrubbery and vines and worn by the waves to a remarkable semblance of a gigantic turtle. Upon the beach the lazy swell curled in translucent turquoise, and everywhere upon the sand, upon the sea, winging overhead and perching upon the trees, were countless clumsy pelicans and fork-tailed frigate-birds.

Here, undisturbed by man,—for the natives have a superstitious fear of the spot, although they occasionally come here to kill the wild cattle and goats,—the sea-birds breed by thousands and wheel in endless circles above the ruins of the buccaneers’ old stronghold. And what a stronghold it must have been! As I wandered through the thickets and clambered over the old fortifications I no longer marveled that, from this vantage-point, the pirates defied the powers of the world and held it for years despite the efforts of Spain, Britain, France, and Holland to dislodge them.

Everywhere amid the tangled vines and thorny scrub are great cisterns, foundations of buildings, water-sheds, and vaults. Along the cliffs are battlements, embrasures, walls, and loopholes; and leading up the slopes from the landing-place are long flights of stairs, all hewn and carved from the solid rock. What herculean labor is here represented! What unremitting toil of tortured prisoners and slaves! What toll of blood and suffering and death! Here, side by side with the naked blacks, grandees and hidalgos cut and hewed the rock to form their captors’ lair; toiling beneath the blazing sun from dawn to dark; sweating, half-starved, their backs raw and covered with great welts from their brutal driver’s lash, their fingers torn and bleeding from the jagged stone, their faces wan and drawn, their eyes bloodshot and furtive, their bones aching from fever, and their only hope of deliverance the death which would be meted out to them as soon as exhausted muscles and sinews gave way or their work was done.

Centuries have passed since their racked bodies were cast like carrion into the sea or dumped in a common grave in the sand, but their work has endured. To-day, flowering vines trail from the loopholes in the massive battlements the captives chiseled, and great forest trees have sprung up from crevices among the rocks and slowly but surely have riven the walls that defied shot and shell. The houses wherein the buccaneers made merry are roofless and tenanted by land-crabs and lizards, and the hewn water-tanks from which they filled their casks ere starting on their forays are choked with fallen leaves, rotting vegetation, and the gnarled roots of the jungle.

Weird tales the natives of the mainland tell of sights witnessed at dead of night upon this little isle. With fear-widened eyes, they whisper of ghostly mail-clad sentinels pacing the old walls, of phantom ships riding upon the waves off the cay, of blood-curdling shouts, songs, and curses coming from no mortal throat but echoing across the bay from this ancient stronghold. Also, fervently crossing themselves the while, they tell of piercing screams, as of lost souls, heard by the humble fishermen plying their trade at night upon the bay, and of mysterious lights, like the flare of torches, that dance and move and flit among the trees of the cay.

Of course there is many a tale of treasure hidden on the island; of vast stores of pirate loot secreted in the subterranean caverns and hewn underground recesses; and one hair-raising story they relate of a treasure-chest in the sea close to the island’s shores, which is plainly visible through the transparent water. Many times, if we are to believe the natives, some unusually brave and covetous man has grappled for this chest, only to find, when he tediously hauled it to the surface, that a hideous demon was seated upon it, who grimaced and leered, and, throwing his slimy, misshapen body upon the terrified man, carried him to the depths of the sea along with the chest of gold he guards so well.

And after all, who can say what treasures may not be concealed upon this Gibraltar of the buccaneers? Countless chests of loot have been carried from triumphant pirate ships to the strip of white sand upon the cay. Many a bale of wondrous silk and cloth of gold and velvet damask has been slashed open with blood-stained cutlasses and flung to the pirates’ mistresses who swarmed about the incoming ships’ cargoes. Here, in the shade of the gnarled sea-grape thickets, scores of the most notorious rascals have lounged and plotted and yarned while quaffing priceless wines from the holy golden chalices snatched from profaned altars. Under the very trees that still rear their green crowns above the ruins the groans of tortured men, the screams of ravished women, and the drunken shouts of rum-crazed rioters have rent the air.

As far as is known, no one has ever salvaged any treasure from Trade Wind Cay. The limestone rock is honeycombed with cavities and caverns wherein whole ships’ cargoes might be stored and none the wiser. But if the pirates hid it here, they hid it well indeed, although so superstitiously afraid of the place are the natives that they would never dare to search.

But probably the buccaneers never secreted loot upon the isle. Indeed, from what we know of the lives and characters of these men, it is pretty safe to assume that they never hid their treasure, but no sooner put foot on dry land than they spent their gold in drinking and debauchery. Of course many of the leaders put away tidy sums for a rainy day, for, as we have seen, more than one of them retired from the wild life and settled down in the islands or in their native land well provided with the wherewithal to live as gentlemen to the end of their days. But it is far more likely that these canny pirate chiefs placed their loot in the keeping of some trusted merchant ashore than that they buried it on wave-washed bits of land, and all our searching among the ruins of Cayo Levantado resulted in the finding of but three corroded pieces of the quaint cross money of the old Spanish padres.

Joseph, who made the discovery, was as pleased as though he had unearthed a chest of pieces of eight, and Trouble and the others of the crew, including even Sam, delved and dug like navvies in the hopes of finding more. No doubt, by going carefully over all the ruins and sifting the earth and mold, one might find many relics of the buccaneers, but aside from a few gun flints, some broken clay pipes curiously ornamented with high-pooped ships upon their bowls, some bits of old crockery and a lead button, the labors of my men resulted in little.

This is scarcely to be wondered at. Unless made of precious metal, bronze, lead, or brass, any small weapons, ornaments, or appurtenances of the pirates would long since have disappeared, for steel and iron corrode and go to pieces in a few years near salt water in a tropical climate, and even the three big cannon that I found below the embrasures of the pirates’ fort were little more than flakes and scales of rust, and were so thoroughly rotten that they could be kicked to pieces.

Moreover, for many years after the buccaneers were at last driven from the island, the place was occupied by the Spanish, then by the French, then by the Haitians, and even by the British (for Samana Bay has belonged to all of these in turn), and no doubt the soldiers, and civilians as well, passed many an hour searching for any treasures or keepsakes they might find. Certain it is that they carried off the old guns, at any rate those of bronze, which the pirates left behind, as well as the stores of shot, for such is a matter of historical record. Some of the very cannon that roared defiance from the buccaneers’ fort—bell-muzzled, highly decorated affairs, with handles on their barrels and elaborate scrollwork over their breeches, are still scattered over Santo Domingo, clumsily mounted on the toy forts or used as posts at street corners in the cities.

And what of the pirates who built this impregnable fastness and fortified this isle in Samana Bay? Were they British, French, or Dutch? And who were the leaders who made their headquarters here? Mainly they were French, members of that great buccaneer colony at Tortuga; for in the days when Cayo Levantado became a buccaneer lair the majority of the British pirates had parted company with their former French associates and had made their headquarters at Port Royal, Jamaica. Unquestionably Samana Bay knew the ships and the ensigns of nearly all the most notorious pirate chieftains, both French and British, and the great Morgan himself, Bartholomew Sharp of Most Blessed Trinity fame, Sawkins and Wafer, Red Legs and Watling, Ringrose and Esquemelling, Bartholomew Portugues, Rock Brasiliano, and even that most execrable and bloodthirsty fiend of all, Francis Lolonais, made Samana Bay their rendezvous and spent many a day at Trade Wind Cay.

We know from Esquemelling’s chronicles that in 1673 this isle was a stronghold of the French pirates, for, as we have seen, Monsieur Ogeron also landed here after escaping from his captivity in Porto Rico and recruited a large body of pirates to join him in a second attack on that island. A few years later, too, Le Sieur Maintenon and his corsairs set sail from Samana Bay for Trinidad, which they sacked, afterward accepting for it a ransom of ten thousand pieces of eight; and hence they went forth on their ill-starred attempt to pillage the city of Caracas.

Unfortunately, the history of the buccaneers is very incomplete, and such accounts as were left by Esquemelling, Dampier, Ringrose, and others are mainly concerned with the pirates’ deeds and defeats, rather than with their home life, and dates are woefully lacking. Moreover, the writers were so familiar with the comparatively uninteresting life and doings in the corsairs’ haunts that it never occurred to them that such matters might interest others, while, in addition, few had any fixed abode, but were quite equally at home in Tortuga, Jamaica, Samana Bay, or the Virgin Islands. They were a restless lot, veritable gipsies of the sea; and while certain islands were associated with certain pirate leaders, as Jamaica with Morgan, St. Barts with Montbars, and Tortuga with Ogeron, most of their refuges welcomed any or all of them, and the common run of those who thronged these places owed allegiance to no particular leader, but gladly threw in their lot with any one who proposed an undertaking that promised loot and adventure. Hence we cannot say definitely what great pirate conceived the idea of fortifying Trade Wind Cay, but the chances are that several united to make it what it was, and it certainly was the den of many during the heyday of the freebooters.

In addition to this fortress of the buccaneers, Samana Bay has much in the way of beauty and attraction; and having roamed and delved and dug over the little isle to our hearts’ content we hoisted anchor and cruised about the shores of this great lake-like arm of the sea.

A few miles beyond Cayo Levantado, and nestling at the foot of the green hills on the bay’s northern shores, is the town of Samana, or, to give it its full name, Santa Barbara de Samana; which is charmingly pretty—from a distance. As a town there is little to it, once one steps ashore. It is neither over-clean nor attractive, and it can boast of nothing in the way of old or impressive buildings. It is, however, unique, inasmuch as the negroes who dwell therein and in the vicinity nearly all speak English, being, to use their own quaint phrase, “of American abstraction,” descendants of blacks from the Southern States brought out as laborers when Samana was leased to an American company many years ago. While far more ambitious and industrious than the other natives, they do not by any means make the most of the rich and fertile land whereon they dwell. Never in any part of the tropics have I seen or tasted such enormous and delicious pineapples as are grown here; and wonderful navel oranges, that equal and even excel the much-praised California fruit, go begging at a few cents a hundred.

Farther up the bay—at the very head of it, in fact—and bounded at its western end by a vast mangrove swamp, is the ramshackle, dirty little town of Sanchez, a miserable hole, which, withal, is of vast importance, as it is the tide-water terminus of the railway to the great interior table-land or Vega Real and the cities of La Vega and Santiago.

On the southern side of the bay is wild, uninhabited, heavily forested land, rising in hills and ridges to the mighty bulwarks of the mountains, with their summits nearly two miles above the sea, and sloping eastward to the grassy savannas of the Seybo district. Here at the borders of the low land is Caña Honda Bay (a lovely landlocked body of water surrounded by vast mangrove swamps that are the haunt of countless water-fowl and manatees), whence a road, so called, leads inland toward the savannas and the southern coast of Santo Domingo. All about the entrance to Caña Honda Bay are odd conical limestone hills, resembling strikingly the conventional mountains on ancient maps, and in each and every one there is a cavern. Some of these caves are enormous, penetrating the hills for miles and wondrously hung with stalactites and paved with stalagmites; others are small. Some have entrances high and dry on land, others can be entered only by means of boats, and the mouths of many of them are completely submerged.

In ages past, these caverns were the dwelling-places, or at least the stopping-places, of Indians, and in many of them are vast quantities of sea-shells, among which one finds stone implements and prehistoric pottery. Here, too, the natives declare, is buried treasure, and while even the imaginative Dominicans do not contend that any has ever been found, yet, if the buccaneers ever did hide loot in Santo Domingo, here among these myriad caves was the ideal spot.

Beyond these hills and opposite Trade Wind Cay is a long, sandy point covered with a vast growth of coconut-palms, self-planted from the cargo of a wrecked vessel which went to pieces in the bay years ago; and along the beach quantities of amber may be found. To be sure, no perfect specimens and no large masses have been secured, but the natives gather it, when they are not too lazy to take the trouble, and sell it to the padres, who use it for incense in the churches.

But we upon the Vigilant could spare no time to search for the bits of fossil gum, and so, having made the circuit of the bay, we stood once more to sea and swinging northward heeled to a thrashing wind upon our beam and sped on toward Puerto Plata.