CHAPTER XIV

THE GRANDDADDY OF THE DOLLAR

Having seen all that was to be seen at Tortuga, even clambering up the rocky heights to the ruins of that first ancient buccaneers’ fort overlooking the harbor, we boarded the Vigilant and bore westward for Jamaica.

As Tortuga sank low upon the horizon astern and faded into a soft gray cloud, the lofty mountains about Cape Maysi, Cuba, showed dimly above the sea over our starboard bow, with the mighty bulk of the towering Sierra Maestra of the Pearl of the Antilles faintly outlined, somber, forbidding, in countless peaks against the sky. Then ahead loomed the lonely isle of Navassa, with Haiti’s mountain ranges to the east, and through the Windward Passage the Vigilant swept on.

Navassa, a barren mass of rock fringed with surf beating upon its jagged ledges and wave-carved cliffs, rising in odd terraces from the angry sea to the dull-green summit whereon stands a solitary lighthouse, may hold pirates’ treasure as the Haitians assert, but if it does, that is the only worthwhile thing upon the isle. At all events, if the buccaneers hid treasure here they must have chosen their time in good weather, carried their chests ashore in small boats, and hoisted them upon the forbidding rock by tackle, for there is no natural landing-place, and owing to the swift tides and currents there is no sheltered lee under the shore. Everywhere the rocks rise directly from the waves, and the construction of the lighthouse, radio station, and other buildings proved a colossal task owing to the extreme difficulty of getting material ashore. But Navassa can lay claim to one unique distinction, inasmuch as it is the only island which ever sent an S. O. S. call speeding through the ether.

This happened when the first occupants of the station found themselves on the verge of starvation and almost dying of thirst, the steamer with supplies having failed to arrive. But the “Sparks” in charge was a resourceful chap, and he sent broadcast his plea for help exactly as though Navassa were a derelict ship, and thus brought succor to himself and comrades.

We sped past Navassa, giving it a wide berth, and the only signs of life we saw were the countless thousands of boobies, frigate-birds, and pelicans that make this isolated spot their home. Behind us stretched vast Gonaives Bay, with the island of Gonaives looking like a continent itself, though a mere dot on the map compared with Santo Domingo.

No doubt in the good old days Gonaives was a stamping-ground for the buccaneers, although there is little mention of it in either history or the chronicles of the freebooters. Across the way in Cuba, too, the Spaniards more than once felt the hand of these sea-rovers, and many a Cuban town was sacked and pillaged, notably Puerto Principe (now known as Camaguey), originally built on the northern coast of the island. Indeed, it was the frequency of pirates’ attacks on the town that induced the inhabitants to move inland. But this failed to save them, and Morgan took the inland “port” and burned and slew and robbed.

It was this exploit of Morgan’s which first stamped him as a pirate of prowess. It was his first noteworthy enterprise, and paved the way for all his other famous deeds, or misdeeds. His original intention was to attack Havana, but he was evidently unable to resist Puerto Principe with all its riches—which proved a most unprofitable venture.

The Isle of Pines, now almost exclusively an American settlement, also was once a favorite resort of the buccaneers. Though it was Spanish territory and a dependency of Cuba, yet the few Spaniards who dwelt upon it were friends of the pirates,—an exceptional circumstance,—and gladly welcomed them. But it was merely used as a stopping-place whereon to secure fruits, vegetables, and sea-turtles, being far too near Spanish strongholds to be permanent. The most interesting thing about it which the buccaneers’ chroniclers recorded was the fact that it was infested by huge crocodiles or alligators which, to quote Esquemelling, were “of a corpulency very horrible to the sight” and did not hesitate to attack men. Indeed, he states with all seriousness that the giant reptiles actually attempted to climb up the ship’s gangway and invade the vessel.

But we could stop neither at Cuba, Gonaives, the Isle of Pines, nor Haiti, and ere nightfall only the heaving sea stretched to the horizon on every hand, and into the golden west the Vigilant bore onward, bound for Jamaica. It was with no little regret that I looked forward to seeing Jamaica, despite its interest and associations with the buccaneers, for it was at this island that I was to part company with the Vigilant and my crew and continue on the last lap of the journey by prosaic steamship.

What a wondrous procession of ships and hardy adventurers had passed this way through centuries past, I thought, as the schooner glided through the gleaming phosphorescent water. Westward from his new-found isles and Cuba, which he thought a continent, had sailed Columbus in his caravels. Across this same sea had come the pennant-bedecked ships of Balboa, Pedrarias, and those countless other adventurers who carved a new world for Spain out of the jungles and mountains of Central and South America. Through these same waves had wallowed the battle-scarred Golden Hind and her fellow ships, with Drake and Hawkins fresh from the conquest of impregnable Porto Bello. Back and forth across this vast blue waste had sailed stately galleons laden with riches, with gilded towering poops gleaming in the sun, scarlet and yellow banners outflung to the breeze, mail-clad grandees and black-robed friars pacing the decks. And swift in their wake had come the dingy, menacing ships of the buccaneers. What scenes of battle and bloodshed had taken place on this tranquil sea beneath the brilliant tropic stars! What shrieks of agony and deadly fear had rung out upon the night; what awful tragedies had the serene moon looked down upon; and what countless rotting hulks and bleaching bones might still lie upon the ocean’s floor countless fathoms under the Vigilant’s keel! Treasure, too, might be there—plate and bullion, precious stones and pearls, which had gone down with the sinking galleons ere the pirates had time to complete their pillage. There, deep in the ooze or on the hard shell sand, they would lie forever: dull, corroded ingots of silver, bars of gold, priceless gems, doubloons and onzas and pieces of eight that men had slaved and murdered and tortured and fought for, then had lost to the world forever.

And speaking of treasure, of pieces of eight, of doubloons, and of onzas,—terms which occur so persistently in every tale or song or history of buccaneer days,—a word or two regarding these coins may not come amiss.

Particularly interesting are the pieces of eight, the coins which are as much a part and parcel of any story of pirates or treasure as the black flag with its skull and cross-bones or the ear-ringed, fierce-whiskered buccaneer, for the piece of eight was the granddaddy of our own American dollar. Not only was it the basis for our standard “cart-wheel,” but our dollar sign, $, is merely an evolution of the ancient symbol for the piece of eight. This famous coin (which is still very common and is known as the “Spanish dollar”) was a silver piece approximately the size of our dollar and with a value of four pesetas or eight reales, from which latter fact it received its name. Roughly, a real was worth twelve and a half cents, or one one hundredth of a doubloon, so that the approximate value of the piece of eight was one dollar; and a doubloon was worth twelve dollars and a half. The onza, or double doubloon of two hundred reales or one hundred pesetas, was equivalent to about twenty-five dollars although to-day the onza, weighing twenty-five grams, is worth intrinsically about seventeen dollars.

In addition to these coins of Spanish mintage there was a fractional currency of a very odd and interesting type known to-day as “cross money.” This consisted of slugs of various sizes cut from the pieces of eight and so hammered as to obliterate the lettering and inscriptions with the exception of the cross-like portion of the Spanish coat of arms. This served as a sort of hall-mark or guarantee that the coin was of sterling fineness, and at times, when the slug did not happen to have the desired portion of the shield upon its surface, a cross was stamped upon it by the priests, as proof that the bit of metal was from a piece of eight.

To this day these quaint and curious coins are still in use among the natives in some portions of the interior of Panama, and while no two are alike in size or shape, yet they all have definite weights. The ancient pieces, dating from the days of the conquistadors and buccaneers, pass from hand to hand as reales and pesetas.

In the early days of the American colonies, virtually all the trade of the world was conducted on the basis of the Spanish piece of eight, and most accounts in America were kept in them. The ordinary symbol used in designating the coins was an eight with a line drawn through it, and on many old invoices and manifests we may find such entries as “10 sacks of coffee $60 required.” Later, when the new-born republic decided to coin its own silver, and melted down the old pieces of eight for bullion, the new coins were based on the Spanish piece of eight; and it was only natural that clerks and accountants should still use the old symbol, and by merely running another line through the figure eight the well-known dollar mark was evolved.

Moreover, the piece of eight, with the doubloons and onzas, paved the way for our metric monetary system, for the doubloon was one hundred reales and the piece of eight one hundred centavos, and the mere change in name from “piece of eight” to “dollar” caused no confusion or difficulties in accounting, as long as the metric system was adopted.

Nevertheless, accountants must have had hard times of it in those days, and the buccaneers, when dividing their loot, must have found it no little task to compute the relative value of the cosmopolitan lot of coins they accumulated. We can picture them there under the palms on some tropic beach, waiting expectantly and impatiently, cursing and passing rough jokes, while one of the crew, who perchance spent his early days upon an office stool, seated upon a cask of rum, with a dirty scrap of paper and a scratchy quill is setting down lists of louis d’or, ducats, pounds sterling, pistoles, guilders, and Heaven knows what, and with a puzzled wrinkle on his scarred brow and chewing at his ragged mustache is striving to convert the heterogeneous loot into understandable terms.

Or perhaps, no clerkly corsair being available, the buccaneers took a shorter cut to the division of their spoils, and, weighing the gold and silver regardless of its origin or its minted value, divided the loot by pound or hundredweight like any other commodity. Such minor matters, apparently, were not of sufficient interest to the pirates’ chroniclers to be recorded; and moreover, in those days, almost any coin, provided it was of gold or silver, would pass freely in any seaport of the Antilles. No doubt the buccaneers were outrageously cheated by the tradesmen and the keepers of bars and gambling-dens, more especially when it came to converting their bullion and jewels into ready cash or its equivalent. Esquemelling remarks on this, and states that gems and jewelry of priceless value were bartered for a song, the buccaneers being utterly ignorant of their worth. But these adventurers cared not a jot whether they were cheated or not as long as they had enough to keep themselves uproariously drunk and to gamble to their hearts’ content. To them money meant merely carousal, and it was not unusual for the rascals to spend several thousand pieces of eight in a few days.

Especially was this true in Port Royal, Jamaica, the richest and wickedest spot in the world, as it was called; the clearing-house of the buccaneers; their most noted headquarters, which undoubtedly harbored more execrable villains and more brave and reckless men than ever have been gathered together in one town before or since. And it was toward Port Royal the Vigilant was sailing through the night.

Still no faintest haze of land showed above the rim of the sea when another glorious day dawned. It is a long sail from Tortuga to Jamaica, and here Sam’s instinct or sixth sense was of no avail and observations were necessary. He had never sailed the course before, and while no doubt he could have found a spot on Jamaica’s bulk (for he could scarcely have missed it if he had come within thirty miles of its shores), to save time and make sure I “shot” the sun and worked out our position, all of which seemed a sort of witchcraft to the members of my crew.

“How are you going to get back to St. Croix?” I asked Sam when, having found our position, I had corrected the Bahaman’s course slightly. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get lost and go on sailing the Caribbean forever, like the Flying Dutchman?”

“Ah don’ ’fraid, Chief,” chuckled Sam. “Ah don’ knows ’bout th’ Dutch gentleman, but ef he did n’ manage for to mek po’t Ah ’m thinkin’ he mos’ cert’n’y was a stoopid nigger’, like Joe say. Why, Lordy, Chief! yo’ jus’ got for to sail east an’ yo ’s boun’ for to mek some islan’! Yo’ can’ ’void doin’ of it, Chief, no, sir. Yo’ can’ sail outen th’ Caribbean ’less yo’ parse ’twix’ some o’ th’ islan’s, an’ yo’ boun’ for to see he. An’ Ah can fotch St. Croix all right, Chief. Ah’ll sail nor’-east till Ah sees Cuba or Sant’ Domingo or Port’ Rico an’ gets mah bearin’s an’ heads for Fredericksted. Don’ worry ’bout me, Chief.”

“Well, it’s your funeral, Sam,” I laughed. “But I suppose the longest way round is the shortest way home in your case.”

Sam looked puzzled, and a perplexed frown wrinkled his forehead.

“Yaas, sir,” he ventured at last. “Ah guess tha’s so, Chief; but, beggin’ yo’ pardon, Ah don’ un’erstan’ ’bout the fun’ral. Ah thinks yo’ mus’ be mistook, Chief; it’s mah weddin’ Ah’s goin’ to, an’ not a fun’ral, Chief.”

“Oho! so that’s it!” I exclaimed. “Why, you rascal, I thought you were too old to get married! Who’s the lucky young lady, Sam?”

The Bahaman shifted uneasily, and half turned his face; I could almost imagine that he blushed under his black skin.

“Tha’s why Ah’m goin’ to mek to get married,” he vouchsafed finally. “’Cause Ah’m gettin’ ’long in years, Chief. Long’s Ah’m young an’ fit the’ ain’ call for to take on th’ troubles o’ a companion, Chief. Lordy, the’s trouble ’nough by mahself! An’ Ah don’ have a home, rightly speakin’, Chief. But when Ah mek to get ol’ Ah jus’ mus’ cert’n’y fin’ some companion for to look arfter me.”

I roared. The idea of Sam needing any one to look after him was ludicrous; and, moreover, he was far from old—barely forty, I imagined.

“But who’s the girl?” I queried. “Some one you met this trip, I suppose. What is she—black, brown, or yellow, Sam?”

“Lordy, Chief!” exclaimed Sam, in genuine surprise. “Ah can’ say. Ah ain’ foun’ her as yet, Chief! Ah’m goin’ for to—”

But whatever Sam was “goin’ for to” do was left untold, for at this stage of the conversation the man who had been sent aloft called out that land was in sight, and all attention was turned to the faint and misty outlines that rose, dream-like and unreal, like pearly shadows against the sky.

Rapidly the mountains took on form and shape, though still many miles away, and presently we spied ahead a slender column of sooty smoke, the first sign of a ship we had seen since leaving Navassa astern. Soon the masts and funnels of the steamer rose above the horizon, below them a shimmering white hull developed, and half an hour later we swept past one of the “great white fleet” of the United Fruit Company, outward bound from Kingston. Upon her decks were scores of passengers and her rails were lined with curious tourists as the Vigilant, burying her bows under the sparkling froth-capped waves and reeling onward before the trade-wind like a drunken man, passed the big liner to which the tumbling seas were merely ripples.

Perhaps they took us for some island packet; perchance they thought us fishermen; or, maybe, when we ran up the Stars and Stripes in salute, they realized that we were simply cruising. Probably not a soul among the hundreds that crowded the steamer’s deck dreamed that they were gazing at an historic craft; that the little schooner—a mere speck beside the towering fruit boat—had sailed the seas a century and more before the first sailing-vessel of the fruit company carried bananas from Jamaica to New York. For that matter, a life-time before Fulton’s first steamboat trundled slowly up the Hudson.

No doubt those curious, kodaking voyagers, whose interest in the old haunts of the buccaneers center mainly on cocktails, jazz, and the cuisine of the hotels, pitied us poor beings who must needs travel by schooner rather than by steam, and thanked their stars that palatial steamships were at their disposal. For my part, I pitied them because they knew not the real joys of cruising the Caribbean, and missed all the romance and fascination that the islands held. And as the sleek white hull dropped lower and lower in the distance and the Blue Mountains of Jamaica rose ever clearer before our bows, I could not help wondering what old Morgan or Sharp would have thought had they raised a steamship on one of their forays.