CHAPTER IV

ON THE WAY TO ST. JOHN

Sam had assured me that there were many relics of buccaneer days on St. John, and in St. Thomas his statements had been confirmed by several persons. Moreover, the names of many a bay and cove that broke the coast-line of this near-by neighbor of St. Thomas were associated with the buccaneers, and so, although I had originally planned to pass it by and set sail direct for Anegada, I changed my itinerary to include this neglected Eden of the Virgins.

Sam had rounded up the crew—who, considering that St. Thomas is supposedly “dry,” were, with the exception of Joe, extremely hilarious—and had them safe aboard and under his watchful eye the evening preceding our departure; for the Bahaman, unlike the majority of his race, never believed in putting off until the morrow what could be done the night before.

Many an old-time friend of pre-American days had I met in Charlotte Amalie, and many a toast to the success of my cruise had been drunk in delectable guava-berry cordial and other beverages dear to the Danish West Indians,—a fine, hospitable, easygoing lot,—and it was with real regret that I bade them farewell.

Hardly had the first rosy tints of approaching dawn lightened the eastern sky when Sam routed out his men. The creak and purr of tackle and sheave broke the silence of the sleeping harbor, the capstan clanked and clattered to the rhythm of shuffling black feet upon the deck, and the Vigilant glided slowly from the land as the sun rose above the gently swaying cocoanut-palms and transformed the ancient schooner’s sails to cloth of gold.

To the west as we cleared the land, and looming sharply in the morning light, rose Sail Rock, more than ever the very semblance of a ship. And, my mind filled with thoughts of pirate and of buccaneer, I could picture the solitary pinnacle as a great galleon sailing majestically southward through the narrow channel. There, shimmering in the sun, was the high, ornate stern; along the low, dark waist the creamy foam sparkled brightly; upward in towering pyramids soared the huge, square sails; and toward her—like a falcon after a helpless gull—the Vigilant swept.

How often, I wondered, had the little schooner’s bowsprit swung toward some distant gleam of sail? How many times had her dark-skinned, fierce-faced crew run out the long guns and sent round shot hurtling through the hull and rigging of a prize?

And then Sam spoke:

“Tha’ Sail Rock mos’ cert’n’y do have th’ aspec’ o’ a ship, Chief. Did y’ ever hear o’ th’ ’casion when one o’ th’ ’Merican battle-ships fired on th’ rock for a target, an’ th’ Danes made plenty o’ rumpus an’ humbuggin’ ’bout it?”

The spell was broken. The galleon vanished in thin air. I saw only a curiously formed rock surrounded by screaming sea-birds, and as a smoke-belching, grimy tramp appeared from behind it I turned away and looked toward the soft, deliciously green hills to the eastward—the hills of St. John. And as though she too were suddenly disillusioned and had bethought herself that she was no pirate ship running down a prize, but a law-abiding and peaceful packet carrying an American on an innocent mission, the Vigilant swung about and headed for St. John.

But, as Sam said, the rock did certainly have the “aspec’” of a ship, and I could not blame the bellicose captain of a French frigate who, a century and more ago, sighted the rock one night and, mistaking it for a privateer, ran close and hailed the supposed enemy. No response being forthcoming, he blazed a broadside at the shadowy mass. Back came an echoing thunder of the cannonade, and the rebounding shot, falling on the frigate’s deck, convinced the Frenchman that the privateer was returning his fire.

For hours the battle raged, the French gunners pouring broadside after broadside at the massive cliffs, and not until day dawned did the deluded commander of the frigate discover his mistake and, crestfallen and mortified, creep away, leaving Sail Rock unscathed and triumphant.

Sailing in a fresh breeze, with a buoyant, well-built, easily handled ship under one’s feet, is a never-ending delight to one fond of the water, regardless of what portion of the seven seas one’s craft may be spurning from her bow. But to me no other water is so sparkling, no other wind so free, balmy, and life-giving, as that of the Caribbean; no other sea is so delightful for sailing.

Never, I am sure, should I tire of voyaging this sea in a speedy vessel, of watching the streaming, far-flung wake of verdigris, turquoise, and veridian; of standing in the very eyes of the plunging craft and, with the rushing wind whipping the salt spray in my face, gazing at the hissing, prismatic curling bow wave and the skittering flying-fish like miniature hydroplanes. Never should I weary of watching those wondrous masses of a thousand shades of green rising above the rim of the sea, of seeing the hazy, opalescent forms develop into mile-high mountains, stupendous gorges, and vast, forest-clad hills. Glorious are the saffron-and-pink-hued dawns when the sea seems swept and scoured, so scintillating it is. And equally wonderful are the flaming orange-and-crimson sunsets, with the water mauve, lavender, and royal purple in the fading light of day. Then, when night comes, suddenly and like a black curtain dropped from the zenith, and the myriad gleaming stars spangle the velvety dome of the sky and the Southern Cross glows low in the heavens,—then is the world filled with romance and peace as the gentle rise and fall of the vessel lulls to rest, the creaking tackle and rigging and the soft lapping of the waves whisper a lullaby, and the balmy night wind touches one’s cheek with a caress. If I could have my heart’s desire, I should, I think, choose to spend my declining years sailing the Spanish Main in a swift and handy ship, cruising aimlessly, touching where fancy willed, free as one of the swift-winged frigate-birds, untrammeled as the leaping porpoises.

Being possessed of a passion for the sea and for the ships that sail thereon, and with an even greater fondness for my familiar and beloved Caribbean, I can well understand why the buccaneers loved their wild life.

It was not simply gain, murder, debauchery, or lawlessness that lured them, that kept them ceaselessly reaching, scudding, tacking, and beating back and forth, round and about the Spanish Main. Most of them had more treasure than they could ever need—more than they could ever spend—cached here and there. No, it was largely sheer love of the sea, a resistless desire to feel the heaving decks under their feet, the pure fascination of adventure.

So let us not judge them too harshly. In their day, loot in time of war was legitimate and included the females of the vanquished; slavery flourished; debtors were sold as slaves. Taken all in all, the buccaneers were gentlemanly in their treatment of prisoners according to the customs of their times, while, compared with other forms of death then in vogue, walking the plank was a merciful end.

Besides, men’s tastes, ideas, constitutions, feelings, and sensitiveness vary. Many a man would have found the blazing sun and the spray-sprinkled deck of the Vigilant a most uncomfortable and unpleasant spot, and would have gone mad had he been obliged to sail hither and yon on the old packet. To straddle a yard, soaring back and forth sixty feet above the sea, as must those of my crew, would have been a physical impossibility to thousands. To climb mountains is pure enjoyment to many, and yet I can imagine nothing more irksome. Big Sam, standing there on his firm flat feet, and deftly twirling the wheel, would have found it far harder and more of a strain to write a dozen misspelled lines than to dive for sponges in shark-infested waters day after day. And so we cannot hope to fathom the depths of others’ thoughts, to realize their sensations, or to understand their points of view, and we might just as well give up trying to analyze the buccaneers and, forgetting their shortcomings, enjoy the romance of their lives.

Thus musing, I glanced at Sam; and, remembering that in his veins flowed a bit of the wild blood of Red Lithgow, I asked:

“Sam, how would you like to be a pirate?”

For a brief instant the huge negro looked puzzled,—perhaps thinking the sun had affected my head,—and then a broad, tooth-filled grin spread over his shining black face.

“Lordy, Chief!” he rumbled. “Ah’ spec’ yo’ ’s jus’ tryin’ for to spoof me. The’ ain’t pirates now-’days; th’ parsed on years agone.”

“Aren’t there!” I exclaimed. “You’ve never ridden in a New York taxi, Sam, or dined in an American restaurant, or traveled in a Pullman.”

The Bahaman’s eyes widened.

“Lordy!” he ejaculated. “You don’ is tellin’ me true, Chief?”

Sam’s childlike simplicity and his utter innocence were irresistible, and I burst into a roar of laughter.

“I was just speaking figuratively,” I explained. “But honestly, Sam, wouldn’t you like to sail up alongside a ship, leap over her rails with a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other, and murder her crew and take her treasure?”

Sam shook his broad-hatted, kinky head decidedly.

“No-o, sir, Chief!” he declared. “Ah’s a man o’ peace, Ah is, an’ Ah’s no desire for to do nothin’ that’s like what yo’ says. An’ ah’s tellin’ yo’ true, Chief, if Ah sees a man wif a gun or pistol approachin’ me, Ah don’ mek to remain to argify. No, sir! Ah jus’ says to mah feet, ‘The Lord put you on mah laigs for to run, an’ now you obey the Lord.’”

Truly, Red Lithgow’s blood had turned to water in his descendant’s veins!

But now St. John was close aboard, and there were other matters to engage attention besides jollying good-natured, harmless old Sam. Rugged and bold the coast-line loomed above the beating surf. Behind the beetling cliffs and ragged, needle-pointed rocks of the shore rose the rich green hills and mountains, and, like glimpses of fairyland between the outjutting fangs of rock, were cream-white beaches rimmed with turquoise, shaded with nodding palms, and backed by luscious green.

Almost like a continuation of St. Thomas seemed the island, with only the narrow sound three miles in width separating its western tip from its sister isle; while, beyond, Mingo, Grass, Lovango, and Congo cays looked from the distance like low-lying connecting land.

But if the two islands were separated by a thousand miles of sea, there could not be a greater difference in their appearance. St. Thomas—dry, barren, denuded of trees—reminds one of a gray-haired man oppressed with the weight of years; it is as though sere autumn made its abode there. But St. John—fresh, green, forest-clad—is perpetual youth, everlasting summer epitomized in sunshine, sparkling streams, and luxuriant verdure.

Swiftly the Vigilant drew near the island gem, heading in for Rendezvous Bay, once the favorite meeting-place of privateer and freebooter, and off the beach the schooner’s anchor splashed over and dropped swiftly through the crystalline water to the floor of coral sand. Here, in the neighboring bush, I had been told, was to be found many a relic of buccaneer days; but so wild and untouched did the shore appear that it was hard to believe even the buccaneers ever had set foot upon it.

But then, St. John is almost deserted throughout its length and breadth. Yet it was once a prosperous and well-inhabited spot, a land of broad fields, great plantations, and rich estates. Its shores were fortified, its sheltered bays were filled with shipping, and it was a source of envy, dispute, and even bloodshed among the powers. To-day it is all but unknown; its landlocked harbors are bare of ship or sail; its plantations are overgrown with bush; great forest trees have sprung from gardens and have hidden the crumbling remains of once stately residences; its forts are ruins.

St. John is one of the most fertile of the islands, the best by far of all the Virgins, incomparably superior to St. Thomas in point of scenery, climate, and resources, and worth more intrinsically than St. Thomas and St. Croix rolled into one, while Coral Bay is probably the safest and most commodious harbor in the Lesser Antilles. Unlike St. Thomas, it is well watered, with an abundance of streams; it is the source of nearly all the bay-oil which goes to make the famed St. Thomas bay-rum, its waters teem with fish, and as a winter resort it would be ideal. Why, we may ask, is the most attractive of Uncle Sam’s three Virgin Isles in so lamentable a state? It is difficult to say, but present conditions are due largely to its past; for, like human beings with a shady record, the West Indies find it hard to live down a reputation acquired in years gone by, and lands, like individuals, seldom “come back.”

And so, while Sam and his black and brown shipmates are furling the old Vigilant’s sails, a brief outline of St. John’s turbulent history may not come amiss.

Although the Spaniards saw little in the Virgin Isles to attract their cupidity and insatiable lust for gold, and, with so many far richer and more promising lands to loot and ravage, left them alone, yet other Europeans saw promise in them and took possession in the names of their respective sovereigns.

Just when St. John was first settled, or by whom, is not recorded; but in 1687 the papers appointing the governor of the Danish islands included St. John as a Danish possession. Two years previously Barbadians had attempted to settle on the island, but the jealous governor of the Leeward Islands promptly ejected the forty colonists who had established their homes on St. John. From that time on, the little island was a bone of contention between England and Denmark, and although the Danes were anxious to settle and to cultivate St. John they hesitated because of the dog-in-the-manger attitude of the governor of the neighboring British island of Tortola.

It was not until 1717 that, acting under instructions from the Danish West Indian Company, Governor Erik Bredal—arriving in an armed vessel carrying five soldiers with an officer, sixteen negro slaves, and twenty planters—set the flag of Denmark on St. John’s soil and, having duly fired a salute and drunk the king’s health, erected a fort overlooking Coral Bay. But while the little garrison remained loyally to guard this addition to the Danish possessions, the faint-hearted planters withdrew to the more secure shores of St. Thomas until it might be seen how the dreaded British would take the move. And they had not long to wait. No sooner was word carried to the Leeward Islands that the Danes had had the temerity to place their flag upon a fort on St. John than a man-of-war was despatched to St. Thomas, demanding, with dire threats, that the Danes at once withdraw their claims and abandon the fort. But, apparently, stout old Governor Bredal had inherited some of the Viking spirit as well as blood, and instead of meekly acceding to the British demands he promptly sent to Denmark a request for one hundred soldiers to augment his little garrison on St. John. With this reinforcement the Danes felt quite secure, and by 1720 thirty-nine planters were established on the island.

From this nucleus the colony rapidly grew, for the land was fertile and the grants given the settlers were larger than in St. Thomas. By 1733, or only thirteen years after the first real settlement was established, St. John had a population of nearly thirteen hundred, of whom two hundred were whites and the other one thousand and eighty-seven negro slaves. Oddly enough, these settlers were not Danes but Dutch, and to-day the majority of local names and the family names of the few remaining inhabitants are largely Dutch.

But in that same year, 1733, other and more serious troubles than the British beset the islanders, for in November the inhuman treatment accorded the slaves resulted in a bloody revolt. And if we look at the old records we can scarcely blame the negroes, and can almost forgive the fiendish savagery with which they carried on their hopeless struggle for freedom.

Gardelin, who was then governor, was an unusually brutal man even for his time, and in order to prevent the slaves from running away to Porto Rico an inhuman assortment of punishments were decreed. A leader of runaway slaves was to be hanged after having been pinched three times with red-hot irons. Any runaway slave was to forfeit an ear or a leg, or receive one hundred and fifty lashes, according to his owner’s preference. A slave who was cognizant of a plot and did not betray his fellows was branded on the forehead and received one hundred lashes as well, and any black who raised his hand against a white was hanged, or had his right hand cut off, as his accuser chose. To attempt to poison a white man meant to be pinched three times with red-hot irons and then broken on the wheel. Any slave giving information of a conspiracy received a reward of money equal to about ten dollars for every negro named as participating in the plot.

These terrible measures—which every four months were publicly proclaimed to the beat of drums—did not in the least repress the slaves, but, if anything, made matters worse, and the negroes secretly planned to surprise the garrison of the fort, which then consisted of only eight men and two officers. Knowing that an open attack would be fruitless, the slaves resorted to strategy. On the morning of November 23d a small band of them, carrying bundles of firewood, approached the fort, and in reply to the sentry’s challenge stated that they had been ordered to bring the fuel for the use of the soldiers. Not suspecting the smoldering revolt, the sentry allowed them to enter, whereupon the negroes, casting the fagots aside and whipping cane-knives from their bundles, massacred all but one man who had secreted himself under a bed.

Once in possession of the fort, the slaves fired three guns as a signal, and instantly a general slaughter of the whites began. The first place to fall was the Caroline Estate, where the presiding judge of St. John was murdered together with his daughter and twenty-five men, women, and children. But as was ever the case in negro revolts in the West Indies, a few slaves who had been fortunate enough to have kind and humane masters remained faithful, and as a result many of the planters were warned in time to escape. Accompanied by their faithful blacks, these people sought refuge at Peter Duerloo’s plantation at Little Cinnamon Bay, known nowadays as K. C. Bay, on the northwestern coast. This estate was in effect a fortification, as it was situated on a height and was armed with two cannon; and, moreover, it was within easy distance of St. Thomas. Reaching the place in safety, the women and children were despatched to outlying cays, and messages were sent to Charlotte Amalie telling of the revolt and beseeching assistance.

Hardly had the appeal been sent and the defenses strengthened when the horde of blood-crazed negroes arrived; but instead of finding easy victims they were met with a fusillade which wrought havoc among them, and, demoralized and frightened, they drew off. Before they could summon enough courage to attack the estate again, eighteen soldiers arrived by boat from St. Thomas and a larger body landed at Coral Bay. But although the troops relieved the refugees at Little Cinnamon Bay, they could not suppress the revolt nor capture the negroes, who held the entire island with the exception of the estate of Peter Duerloo. Having disposed of the few remaining planters, the slaves burned and pillaged, firing cane-fields, wrecking and destroying buildings and machinery, and doing everything in their power to transform the fair and fertile land into a desolated wilderness. Unable to cope with the situation, the Danes called on their one-time enemies for aid, and a British frigate, which happened to be at Tortola, sent her boats’ crews of bluejackets to the island. But even these allies were unsuccessful, and, being ambushed, were forced to retreat with heavy loss.

A second attempt on the part of the British to aid the Danes, resulted in an ignominious defeat when in 1734 volunteers from Nevis sought to conquer the victorious negroes. With a loss of several killed and more wounded ere they had really set foot on St. John the English beat a hasty retreat and left the Danes to their own devices. By now the Danes, deserted by the British, had become desperate and sought to induce the French in Martinique to help them, offering to the French four fifths of all negroes taken prisoners. This was a strong temptation, and two Martinique barks sailed for the stricken island, carrying a force of two hundred and twenty men. Forcing a landing at Coral Bay, this large company,—who had had much experience in putting down uprisings in the French possessions,—augmented by the Danish and local forces numbering nearly two hundred men, began a systematic guerrilla warfare, hunting down and killing the revolting slaves wherever these were found. As an island less than ten miles in length and but four miles wide is easily covered by four hundred determined men, the negroes were very soon put to death or captured. A few, rather than surrender and suffer the tortures which they knew would be their lot, committed suicide, and one band of twenty-five were found all of whom had taken their own lives.

By May 24th the revolt was over. Only fourteen slaves were still at liberty, and these soon gave themselves up, relying on a promise of pardon. But, as usual, a promise to a negro was not looked upon as binding, and the fourteen were promptly executed. What the French gained is hard to see, for from the records it appears there were no living negroes to be turned over to the Martinicans as their share, the twenty-seven rebels who had been captured during the fighting having been tortured and put to death as a grim warning to others.

During the insurrection many of the St. John planters moved bag and baggage to Tortola. But, despite these desertions and the almost complete loss of everything on the island, the place rapidly recovered, and by 1789 had a population of over twenty-four hundred, consisting of about one hundred and seventy whites and over twenty-two hundred slaves. Indeed, this was the period of St. John’s greatest prosperity. From that time on the island’s fortunes slowly declined, until, to-day, it is doubtful if a complete census of the island would show eight hundred human beings, including the Moravian missionaries at Emmaus. There are no towns, the only settlements being at Cruz Bay, where there are fewer than two hundred people, East End with fewer than one hundred, and Emmaus with about fifty.

By burning charcoal, making baskets, fishing, gathering and distilling bay-leaves, and raising a few cattle and some garden truck, the natives make an easy if not very luxurious living, while all that remains to testify to the island’s former prosperity are the crumbling ruins of the mills, the overgrown walls and courtyards of the estate buildings, and the remains of the forts upon the hills.