CHAPTER VI
ANEGADA AND A BIT OF TREASURE-TROVE
North of St. John and so close to it as to appear, from a short distance, but a continuation, lies Tortola, the British isle which played so prominent a part in St. John’s early history. In beauty rivaling its once Danish neighbor, Tortola (or “the island of the turtle dove”) is even more forsaken,—an island of the blest given over to the blacks, the only white men being the resident magistrate and a half-dozen representatives of his Britannic Majesty,—while Roadtown, its capital, is but a tumble-down village of scarcely five hundred souls.
And yet in times gone by Tortola was a prosperous and wealthy island. In Roadtown’s harbor scores of great square-rigged ships rode to their moorings; along the quay, drays, trucks, and carts groaned and squeaked from morn till night. Long lines of black stevedores and porters passed like a procession of restless ants from drougher boats to warehouses and marts. Sloops and long-oared boats manned by toiling slaves came from outlying plantations, laden with hogsheads of molasses, rum, and sugar; with pimento, bay-leaves, and spices; with bales of tobacco and cargoes of fruit. And the waterside taverns echoed to the shouts and songs, the boisterous laughter, and the deep-sea oaths of pigtailed sailormen in glazed hats. And here, too, the sea-rovers gathered, for Tortola, largest of the Virgins, was, like its sisters, a retreat of the buccaneers.
To-day, from time to time, ancient cannon and equally ancient coins are found here and there upon the island and, by common consent, are invariably credited to buccaneer origin. But it is very doubtful that the pirates ever had works or guns ashore at Tortola. As there was nothing to lead me to believe that they had, and as there were so many isles where they did certainly foregather and where associations that link them with the present still remain, I passed Tortola by and told Sam to shape the Vigilant’s course for Anegada, most northerly of the Virgins, and once the buccaneers’ favorite retreat among these little isles.
Close at hand rose the Fat Virgin, or, as it is more commonly and more euphoniously called, Virgin Gorda, a rather barren spot like St. Thomas in miniature with its central peaks thirteen hundred feet above the breaking surf.
Low down and nestling in the lee of Tortola is Norman Island, a tiny speck, like Dead Man’s Chest, notable for its traditions and not for its size or importance; for on Norman Island is said to be buried that huge and entirely mythical treasure of the most widely known pirate of song and story, Captain Kidd.
I doubt if there is a stretch of coast ten miles in length between the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Mexico, or an island or wave-washed rock in the Atlantic or the Caribbean whereon Captain Kidd’s treasure-trove is not supposedly buried. How many thousands of men have searched and dug and toiled to unearth that will-o’-the-wisp hoard no one can say. How much real money has been expended in that same vain quest, it is impossible to estimate, but beyond the shadow of a doubt the money spent in digging for this treasure is greatly in excess of all the gold and other riches William Kidd ever saw or hoped to see. And, oddly enough, there is no proof, no reason even to think that the notorious captain ever buried a cent’s worth of loot on any spot other than Gardiner’s Island, in Long Island Sound, whence it was recovered by those for whom Kidd had placed it in safety there. Strange indeed is the reputation, the fame that has been reared and built about the name of Captain Kidd. It shows what advertising and publicity will do, and how very little the public cares for facts, provided the fiction appeals to the imagination, for Captain Kidd—whose name is a synonym of piracy—was neither a pirate nor a buccaneer.
That he was hanged as a pirate is true, but many a man has been hanged for a murderer who was afterward proved innocent, and the unfortunate Kidd was a victim of circumstances, of avarice, jealousy, and revenge; the victim of what we to-day should call a “frame-up.” Not a particle of evidence worthy of consideration was ever brought forward to show that he was a pirate. Indeed, Captain Kidd, instead of being a pirate, was commissioned to catch pirates, his authority being granted by King William III of Great Britain and addressed to “our trusty and dearly beloved Captain William Kidd, of the ship Adventure, gally.”
Long before this, however, Kidd, who was a native of Greenock, Scotland, was a well-known and highly respected mariner with a reputation, along the American seaboard, for fair and honest dealing. Meeting with various influential and wealthy men who saw in the suppression of pirates and robbing of robbers a handsome profit, the worthy seaman was prevailed upon to set forth under royal warrant to deal summarily with “divers wicked and ill-disposed persons who were committing many and grievous pyraces to the hurt and danger of our loving subjects.”
Setting sail from the port of Plymouth, England, in May, 1696, Kidd and his company of one hundred and fifty-five men proceeded to scour the seas in search of the “pyrates.” Either the “wicked and ill-disposed persons” had heard of his mission or else luck was against him: for the pirate-exterminator failed to find pirates to exterminate. Sailors then, as ever, were a disgruntled lot, and Kidd’s crew, growing weary of finding no corsairs with whom to match arms, evidently decided that the next best thing was to emulate them and do a little pirating on their own account. Consequently, the Adventure bore down upon a Moorish ship, the Queda Merchant, which was in command of an English captain, and took possession of her. Whether Kidd, finding his crew had made up their minds to turn pirates, gave in to superior numbers and consented to this temporary lapse from honesty; whether he was actually overpowered and held captive while the capture of the Queda Merchant was taking place, or whether the captain himself was so sorely tempted that he fell, may never be known. At his trial he contended—and very probably with truth—that his crew mutinied, threatened his life, and confined him to his cabin while the piratical venture was being carried out. Whatever the facts were, word of the Adventure’s seizure of the Queda reached the authorities, and Kidd was forthwith declared a pirate.
In the meantime, the Adventure had become unseaworthy, and, transferring his more valuable possessions to his prize, Captain Kidd sailed for Santo Domingo, then known as Hispaniola, with—so he stated—the intention of notifying the authorities. But at Hispaniola the “dearly beloved” William heard that he was “wanted,” and, hastily purchasing a small sloop, he set sail for New England. There, being somewhat doubtful about the reception he might receive, he got into communication with his backers, and secreted what valuables he had, on Gardiner’s Island.
To recount the lengthy proceedings which ensued would avail nothing and would add no interest to Kidd’s story. Suffice it to say that eventually he gave himself up to the authorities in Boston, relying upon promises of a fair trial. From there he was taken as a prisoner to England, and, after innumerable delays, rank perversions of justice, and the breaking of many promises, the unfortunate captain was placed on trial at Old Bailey in May, 1701.
The trial was from first to last a travesty of justice. Instead of confining themselves to the case in hand, Kidd’s accusers charged him with the murder of one of his own men (a gunner named Moore), and the charge of piracy was made secondary. Kidd freely admitted that he had killed Moore, but asserted that the man was mutinous—in fact, the ringleader of those who favored piracy—and that as a master of the ship he had a perfect right to kill a mutineer. As for the charges that he had piratically captured the Queda, Kidd explained as aforementioned that the prize had been taken despite him and not because of him, and that he was on the way to report the unfortunate affair when he touched at Santo Domingo. Throughout the trial, proofs and evidence requested by Kidd and promised him were withheld and only theories were admitted, and such damning evidence as the words of his own men. As a result of this farcical trial, Kidd and six of his men who had remained faithful to their captain were condemned to be hanged at Execution Dock, on May 23d. Protesting his innocence to the very last,—even when the rope gave way and, half-strangled, he was lifted up to be rehanged,—Kidd met his death. Later his body and those of his men were hung in chains down the river, and for many years the rattling skeletons, with clinging shreds of garments and skin, swung in the wind on the dreary mud flats of the Thames, the most disgraceful witnesses to perverted justice that ever passing mariners gazed upon.
But though he died an ignominious death for crimes which he probably never committed, Kidd’s martyrdom resulted in his becoming the most famous character of piratical lore, who left a name which will never die. And this is all the more remarkable because, even if we assumed that all the charges against him were true, he would have been a mediocre pirate, having but one rich prize to his score—a small matter indeed to have been the foundation for such fame and a reputation as the master of them all.
Far more romantic and picturesque than “Bold Captain Kidd” was that other sea-rover whose name is associated with the Virgin Islands, but never heard outside the chronicles of the buccaneers and by those who have delved into the story of the corsairs of the Caribbean.
Perhaps no one who has ever lived is more worthy of the title of Don Quixote of the Deep than this man—the wild, romantic, restless, tireless, and ambitious Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who in his ship Swallow experienced more adventures and met with more romances than any score of other corsairs. Impetuous, high-strung, nervous, the royal pirate could never be idle for a moment; and it was his terror of doing nothing that drove him from privateering to pirating.
Originally sailing forth to aid his king’s cause against Spain, Prince Rupert departed from Ireland in 1648, with a fleet of seven ships and accompanied by his brother, Prince Maurice, who captained the Defiance. To paraphrase Longfellow, wild was the life they led, many the souls that sped, for the next five years, and the handsome, brilliant prince, whose “sparkish” dress was ever the envy and admiration of all beholders, mingled piracy and knight errantry in an inextricable manner. Indeed, this wilful scion of royalty was ever a champion of the ladies and an irresistible lover, and even when—long before he took to the sea—he was a prisoner at Linz, he managed to win the heart of the governor’s daughter.
But even this musketeer of the sea was fated for the buccaneer’s usual short life and merry one. Being caught in a storm among the Virgin Islands one September night, his fleet was driven ashore on low-lying, reef-guarded Anegada, and of all that company few remained to tell the tale. While the Swallow escaped and Prince Rupert survived, Prince Maurice was lost, and, heartbroken, the pirate prince set sail for home, in his crippled ship, and landed in France in 1653. But the blow had saddened him, the sea no longer called, and quietly and obscurely he lived in his home at Spring Gardens, England, until in 1682 he succumbed to a fever and passed away, almost unknown and unnoticed.
What a contrast was his life to that of Captain Kidd! The one a romantic, reckless, chivalrous, venturesome pirate, never content save in the thick of battle, and yet dying in his bed, his deeds forgotten, his name dying with him. The other a meek, timid, vacillating seaman, lacking the courage to keep his crew in check and dying a felon’s death on the gibbet, and yet living on through the centuries, his name woven into countless tales and verses, and by a single deed—which it is doubtful that he ever performed—making himself immortal as the greatest pirate of them all! And as desolate Anegada rose like some sinister sea-monster upon the horizon, I thought of how unjust is fame and how little men’s real deeds count in the reputation they gain.
Ringed round with jagged coral reefs marked by the angry surf, the island is guarded more efficiently than with a battery of guns. So low it is that often it is called the “Drowned” or “Overflowed” Island, for in heavy weather the waves actually sweep across it in places. Nearly twelve miles it stretches in length, with a breadth of barely two miles, and its only inhabitants are blacks; while on its great landlocked lagoons or ponds the grotesque rose-and-scarlet flamingos still find sanctuary.
As we approached this bit of sodden land which meant so much to the buccaneers of old, there seemed to be no entrance through the churning, seething cauldron of foam that stretched away in a stupendous semicircle. But Sam never faltered. Shading his reddened eyes with a huge black hand, he peered intently shoreward, and then, with a twirl of the wheel and a bellowed order to the crew, headed the plunging Vigilant straight for the white water. Breathlessly I waited, and great was my trust in Sam or I most certainly should have hastily donned a life-preserver and said my prayers, for to all appearances the Bahaman had decided that this was a fitting spot on which to pile the ancient Vigilant’s bones.
Nearer and nearer we swept, until the roaring, boiling surf was almost under our jib-boom. Then, when I expected to feel the crashing shock and the sickening lurch of a speeding hull pierced by fangs of coral, Sam shouted an order, the great sails were close hauled, and, luffing sharply, the schooner slid through a fifty-foot gut in the thundering breakers and a moment later was floating safely on the glassy waters of the lagoon.
No wonder that here the pirates gathered and laughed at their pursuers. Knowing the reef, familiar with its narrow passages, the pursued could sail in safety to their anchorage while their disgruntled enemies, confronted by the deadly ring of coral, and usually in vessels far too large to pass through even had they known the way, turned back utterly baffled.
Throughout the days of buccaneering—yes, even in the days of that first of all sea-rovers who was neither buccaneer nor pirate, but who paved the way for the buccaneers, Sir Francis Drake—Anegada and its surrounding reef-filled waters was a favorite resort of freebooters. Whether Sir Francis ever visited the Drowned Island or not, no one knows. In his memoirs he makes no mention of it, but his name is perpetuated in the Virgin Isles by Sir Francis Drake Bay, while such names as Gallows Bay, Careenage Bay, Galleon Cove, Hawkins’s Point, and Cutlass Reef were beyond question bestowed upon these localities in Anegada by the buccaneers themselves.
Aside from having been a haunt of the buccaneers, Anegada is famed for its innumerable shipwrecks. For many years, in the old sailing-ship days, the Anegadans lived mainly upon the wreckage from vessels that left their bones upon the treacherous reefs about the island. In other words, they were notorious wreckers, and they did not hesitate to murder the shipwrecked crews in order to loot the ill-fated ships. Even to-day the natives spend a deal of time—which, it must be confessed, hangs heavily on their hands—on the lookout for luckless vessels. While no open hostility or violence is shown castaway mariners, the inherited instincts of the inhabitants of the island cannot be controlled, and they look upon every wreck as legitimate loot. All about, in every stage of decay and destruction, are to be seen the gaunt skeletons of ships which have found their final resting-place on Anegada’s reefs, and the native houses are built very largely of odds and ends of wreckage. Here, a hut fashioned from a ship’s galley; there, another made of a partly shattered deck-house; one built of battered hatches or weather-beaten ships’ planking, another roofed with a vessel’s rudder, still others with timbers of spars—such are seen on every hand; while every article of any value, such as old metal, cordage, or junk, is collected and saved to be ultimately carried to St. Thomas and disposed of for a few dollars.
As an island, Anegada can boast of no attractions whatsoever. It is quite lacking in scenic beauty, and its inhabitants are miserable folk who win a precarious existence, although there are deposits of copper, silver, and manganese which perchance, in years to come, may be worked and cause this almost forgotten corner of the world to become even more famous than of old.
Anegada also is supposed to hold a pirate treasure of vast size, though why the pirates should have hidden their loot in a haunt of their fellows, whose proclivities they well knew, is a mystery which those who tell of the hidden wealth never attempt to explain. But, unlike so many of the other traditional hiding-places of loot, Anegada furnishes a slight excuse for belief in the tale, for, from time to time, ancient Spanish, French, Dutch, and English coins of gold and silver have been picked up on the beaches and among the coarse grass on the island, while rusty cannon are not infrequently found in the rank underbrush.
As Anegada was never fortified, was never of sufficient importance to its owners to warrant a garrison, these mute old guns were no doubt used by the buccaneers. It is quite possible that the freebooters built some manner of stockades or forts and mounted guns; but, even if they did not, they unquestionably carried their artillery and other fittings ashore when refitting and careening their craft, and no doubt kept a reserve supply here on Anegada for emergencies.
Moreover, we know from historical records that the buccaneers did not give up this favorite refuge of theirs without demur when Sir Henry Morgan saw fit to turn his recently knighted back on his old shipmates and sent an expedition from Jamaica to drive the “Brethren” from Anegada. On the contrary, they put up a stiff and lively fight, and while neither side can be said to have been victorious,—for the battle resulted in a draw, and the expedition sent by Sir Henry retired,—yet the corsairs soon drifted away to more secure and less conspicuous retreats. So, for aught we know, the ancient cannon lying forgotten in Anegada may be the very ones that belched forth death and defiance at the men despatched to the Drowned Island by the ex-pirate governor of Jamaica.
The coins, too, may well have been the spoils of piracy and pillage, though by no means necessarily a part of buried treasure, as the natives would have us think and—to do them justice—themselves implicitly believe. Far more likely they were dropped from some careless seaman’s pocket or lost in a drunken brawl or gambling quarrel.
In Anegada I was more fortunate than in St. John, for I was shown the rusting, corroded cannon that once had pointed—or so I convinced myself, at least—from the open ports of some swift buccaneering craft and many a time had roared out doom to the terror-stricken men and women on some galleon returning from the mines of Darien to Spain. What tales of adventure and of blood, of desperate fight and swarming, ruthless pirates these old guns might tell could they but speak! But, like the pirates, they are silenced forever, their yawning muzzles snug homes for scuttling soldier-crabs and striped lizards, their ornate decorations all but obliterated by the years of calm and storm, of drenching rain and salt sea-spray. And here they will lie, perhaps, for centuries more, until but a streak of rust upon the earth marks their resting-place.
To me, scarcely an hour after first I set foot upon the island, came an extraordinary-looking individual. Tightly drawn across his bony cheeks was his yellow parchment-like skin, bristling with stubble as black as jet and as coarse as wire. Below his great hooked nose sprouted a huge, unkempt mustachio of raven hue, and deep within its shadow gleamed yellow fangs as long and sharp as those of a wolf. Almost like bare and browned bone his forehead shone under lank black hair, and below lowering, bushy brows his reddened eyes gleamed with the unnatural fire of fever, so deep within their sockets that they seemed mere pin points of glowing light. A huge ring of tortoise-shell hung in one long-lobed, pointed ear; tattered rags of many hues draped his bony frame, and a stained and battered hat covered his disheveled locks. A veritable apparition he seemed—the ghost of some long-dead pirate. An involuntary shudder, an uncontrollable chill of repugnance, ran through me as, shaking as with the palsy—or craven fear of the hangman’s noose—he fixed those fierce eyes upon me and in a dry, cracked voice, such as one might expect from the dead, asked in broken English if I cared to purchase old coins. At my affirmative reply he fumbled in his rags, drew forth a dirty bit of bunting that had once been part of the scarlet banner of England, and, untying its many knots, dumped a dozen bits of metal into his unsteady, claw-like hand.
Rusty, corroded, dirt-covered, and utterly impossible of identification were the coins, if coins they were. As I examined them the fellow stood silent but shaking, and moving his long, unshaven lower jaw about as though chewing an imaginary quid of tobacco. To my questions as to where he had obtained the things, he waved a taloned hand in an indefinite arc and replied that he had picked them up about the island, and asked in a plaintive voice if they were worth a shilling to me.
To him, no doubt, a single silver coin bearing his Britannic Majesty’s head and the stamp of the British mint was a miniature fortune, for despite his savage, piratical looks, he was, I found, a bit of flotsam literally cast up by the sea, the sole survivor of a Portuguese whaling-schooner which had foundered on the reefs a dozen years before, and who, for some incomprehensible reason, refused to leave this barren, half-inundated bit of land whereon Fate had so inconsiderately placed him. How he lived no one knew, for he toiled not and neither did he spin, but wandered about aimlessly, gathering shell-fish and sea-birds’ eggs, begging tobacco and cast-off garments from the negroes, and spending long hours and days by himself, poking about with a stick and seeking for chance relics such as he now had brought to me. I doubt if ever in those ten years since he first found himself the one survivor of his ship he had ever jingled as much silver in his pockets as I handed him in exchange for his little treasure-trove. And for good measure I added a plug of tobacco and a supply of quinine pills, while Sam presented him with a shirt—which was so much too large for his skeleton frame that had he but sewed the tails together it would have served him for a complete one-piece suit—and Joseph fed him until he could eat no more.
Then, as though he had accomplished a mission he had sworn to fulfil, he expressed his intention of forsaking Anegada and implored me to carry him to some port whence he could work or beg a passage to Fayal. Eventually we left him at St. Kitts, a far more human-looking creature than when first I gazed upon him on the beach at Anegada; and no doubt in time he once more basked in the sun and trod the picturesque streets of his Azores home.
When in due course of time and at my leisure I scraped the incrustation of limestone soil and the corrosion of centuries from the disks which he had brought to me, I gazed in amazement at what my efforts disclosed. Truly, Manuel had earned all we did for him and more, for in that handful of coins he had patiently and aimlessly gathered were two Spanish doubloons, three pieces of eight, a castellano, and two spade-guineas! What a collection to weave story and romance about! What relics of those wild days to lure one’s imagination and conjectures!
As Anegada sank below the horizon, and the tossing manes of the white horses on the reef mingled with the white-caps and were lost, I felt that my visit had been well rewarded; for did I not possess coins with which pirates had gambled, bits of gold and silver won by murder, torture, and bloodshed! Yes, perhaps the very ones with which the ill-fated fifteen gambled life against a bottle of rum on Dead Man’s Chest. For who can say aught of the travels of these coins? Who can trace their multitude of owners as they passed from hand to hand, from pocket to pocket, from ship to ship, from land to land through the centuries, to come to rest for a time in Anegada’s sands and at last to be treasured and guarded and admired in a land which was but a howling wilderness when the rude bits of metal were first struck from the dies?