CHAPTER IX
THE “DANGEROUS VOYAGE” AND THE EFFECT OF A NAGGING TONGUE
No story of the West Indies in their relation to the buccaneers would be complete without some mention of Bartholomew Sharp and his marvelous cruise, which even Ringrose, his sailing-master and historian, dubbed “The Dangerous Voyage.”
Of Sharp’s earlier days of pirating we know little, but that he was an adept follower of the profession we may be sure, for his contemporaries spoke of him as “that sea artist and valiant commander” and, to use a slang expression, it took some pirate to win such praise from the corsairs of the Caribbean.
At all events, Sharp evidently found the pickings of the Spanish Main and its neighboring waters too poor for his liking, and, seeking richer fields for his art, gathered together a wild and daring company of some three hundred and fifty men and in April, 1680, sailed for the Isthmus of Panama. Among this choice assortment of companionable spirits were many noteworthy pirates, for Sharp had great deeds in view and aimed to outdo the redoubtable Sir Henry Morgan himself. Ringrose, the historian of the buccaneers, was there; Dampier the buccaneer naturalist [6]; Wafer the surgeon; Watling and Gayny; Jobson the chemist; Coxon and Sawkins and many another. Reaching the isthmus, they disembarked and, emulating Morgan, proceeded to cross the “Bridge of the World” afoot by way of Darien, the wildest and hardest route. This in itself was no mean task, but to the pirates it was only an incident, a somewhat disagreeable means to an end and nothing more. Having gained the shores of the Pacific, they promptly commandeered canoes and without hesitation boldly attacked the Spanish fleet lying in the lee of Perico Island, off the city of Panama.
Then followed a battle which must have satisfied even the most bloodthirsty. As usual, the pirates won the day, captured all the Dons’ ships, and, having thus secured the necessary tools of their trade, they transferred armaments, ammunition, and such treasure as there was, from the smaller ships to a four-hundred-ton galleon known as La Santissima Trinidad or The Most Blessed Trinity. Finally, having scuttled the craft they could not use, they started on a career of piracy which, as a record of successes, battles, murders, mutinies, and bloodshed, has probably never been equaled.
Indeed, so execrable a pirate did Sharp prove himself that even some of his most notorious fellows could no longer stomach him, and Dampier, Gayny, Jobson, and over forty others deserted the company and started back for the Caribbean via the Isthmus of Darien.
Thereupon Sharp was seized with a brilliant idea, an inspiration which had never come to his brother buccaneers, a wild scheme quite worthy of his rash spirit. It was nothing less than to ravage the entire western coast of South America, sail through the Strait of Magellan, and return by sea to his old stamping-ground in the West Indies.
This was “the dangerous voyage,” and while it proved far more dangerous to the unfortunate peoples of the west coast than to the buccaneers, yet the mishaps and adventures of the latter were thrilling enough, and sufficiently numerous to fill a volume. No fiction ever written, no imaginings no matter how vivid could equal Ringrose’s log of The Most Blessed Trinity, as, sailing down the coast, her crew landed and sacked towns, filled market-places with dead and wounded, ravished women, pillaged cathedrals, razed cities, and with sword and torch left a trail of blood and devastation from Panama to Patagonia.
Laden with loot,—with wines and spirits, silver bullion, [7] golden coins, jewels torn from the fingers of terrified women; plate and chalices from desecrated churches; embroidered vestments of murdered priests, treasure won through unspeakable tortures; satins and silks; even hides and tallow,—the battered galleon, scarred by shot and shell, her gilded stern castle hacked away to afford room for guns, her counter charred by fire, her decks blood-stained, cruised ever southward toward the Horn.
But the buccaneers did not escape unscathed. At many a town they were ignominiously defeated. Even Sharp had his troubles. As was often the case with such rascals,—incredible as it may seem,—the pirate crew, despite their ruthless and villainous lives, had certain ideas of religion. Finding their captain utterly regardless of the Sabbath, and so lacking in even a semblance of piety that he did not hesitate to sack a town or scuttle a ship on that day, they decided that the time had come to end such sacrilegious behavior, and, seizing Sharp, they placed him in irons and dumped him into the already overcrowded hold. Then in his place they appointed a new skipper, one John Watling, an hypocritical old villain who would murder out of hand on Saturday and hold divine services the next morning, when his cutthroat crew would join in singing hymns or repeating prayers, the while wetting their throats with fiery rum. But the consciences of the men were quieted, and the new captain might have safely brought The Most Blessed Trinity safely to the Antilles, had not Fate, in the shape of a bullet through his liver, ended his sanctimonious and bloody career.
As there was no other capable of taking command, the mutineers were compelled to reinstate Sharp, who apparently had been meditating upon his own sins as he sat manacled in the dismal hold, and with only his own thoughts for company had decided to lead a better life henceforth. At any rate, one of the first things he did when the irons were knocked from his wrists and ankles and he found himself once more upon his ship’s quarter-deck, was to intercede for the life of an aged Indian prisoner whom Watling, before his sudden demise, had ordered shot for supposedly giving false information about Arica.
Who would have imagined that the desperate and unconscionable pirate chieftain,—whose greatest enjoyment had been in the screams of captured women, the shrieks of tortured men, the groans of the dying and the roar of cannon—would ever come to this? But the scarred, leather-skinned, shaggy-browed old villain waxed eloquent and drew heartrending pictures of the poor Indian’s empty home, of his wife and children seated in their lowly hut, waiting for the return of their lord and master; and his chronicler even asserts that the suddenly reformed Bartholomew’s voice faltered and tears coursed down his cheeks as he spoke.
Unfortunately for the captive, the captain’s plea was in vain, and his crew, still sullen and mutinous, being determined to put an end to the old Indian, Sharp called for a basin of water and ostentatiously washing his gnarled and blood-stained hands therein, wiped them on the bedraggled and grease-spotted velvet coat he wore, and then, with upturned eyes, declared most impressively and solemnly that he was “clear of the blood of this poor man.” He added, “I will warrant you a hot day for this piece of cruelty whenever we come to fight at Arica,”—a prophecy which was fulfilled in a manner far exceeding his expectations and believed by the freebooters, with their sailors’ superstitions, to be the direct result of the Indian’s death, as they later discovered he had told them nothing but the truth. At Arica scores of the invaders were killed or made prisoners, among them the ships’ two surgeons, and a bare handful of her original crew remained to work the badly battered and strained ship, and reef and handle the patched and shot-riddled sails as she staggered and plunged through the tempestuous, ice-filled seas and freezing gales around the Cape and into the Atlantic through uncharted waters. For they failed to make the Strait of Magellan and won a way where no ship had sailed eastward before. Possibly during his short confinement and his compulsory resignation from leadership, Sharp really did find grace and decide to live an honest life thenceforth; or more likely, being a canny rascal, he had no desire to repeat his experience and determined to give his rebellious crew their full of righteousness. Whatever the reason, there was no further trouble, and The Most Blessed Trinity, having successfully weathered the storms and billows of the Antarctic, went wallowing on her way northward through the Atlantic.
Weather-beaten, storm-strained; her sails in tatters, her rigging gray, ragged, and slack, her spars patched and fished in scores of places; with yard-long weeds upon her leaking bottom, and bearing the scars of many a battle, the one-time Spanish flag-ship worked up the coast, through the doldrums, and into the trades. Her log reveals little but a constant succession of gales and hurricanes, of starvation rations and ceaseless work to keep the old ship afloat and able to sail, until, eighteen months after starting forth on her “most dangerous voyage” she entered the Caribbean and sighted Barbados—the first land seen since passing Patagonia.
But the sea-weary buccaneers were fated not to set foot upon the right little, tight little isle. Within Carlisle Bay lay H. M. S. Richmond, and Sharp, glimpsing the war-ship, promptly squared his battered yards and headed for Antigua.
A dozen or more of the men, among them Ringrose, landed here—eventually to make their way in safety to England—while The Most Blessed Trinity, with men working ceaselessly at her wheezing pumps, bore away for Nevis. Here, two years after Jamestown had sunk beneath the waves, the wraith-like galleon with her lawless crew came to rest, and the great “sea artist,” having accomplished his harebrained undertaking, turned his battered old hulk over to his fellows and, well laden with riches, sailed for England arrayed in all the gorgeous finery of some murdered grandee.
Thus ended this most remarkable voyage, this greatest of buccaneer adventures; a cruise unequaled in the annals of the sea; the longest, bloodiest, and most successful pirate raid of history.
No doubt, like Red Legs, Sharp settled down in some quiet nook and spent the remainder of his life as a respected squire or gentleman farmer in Sussex or Surrey; for nothing seems to be known of him after he arrived in England, and, having been tried for and acquitted of piracy, he dropped out of sight. But Basil Ringrose, to whom we are indebted for the log of The Most Blessed Trinity, and who, as navigator, was mainly responsible for the safe consummation of her voyage, was far too restless a soul to be content with English lanes and hedgerows and a vine-clad thatched cottage. Once more taking to the buccaneer’s life, he joined a pirate ship bound for the South Seas, and met death off the coast of Mexico after again rounding the Horn.
It was not at all unusual for a pirate to give up the sea and, under an assumed name, live quietly upon the fruits of his labors, with his past quite unsuspected by his neighbors, but it was rarely indeed that an honored and respected gentleman took suddenly to pirating.
Such, however, was the case with a certain Major Stede Bonnet, a rich and finely educated citizen of Barbados and a pillar of the church.
He was a gentleman most highly thought of, a leader of Barbados society, and apparently one of fortune’s favorites. But it seems that there was a fly in the major’s ointment in the person of a nagging, quarrelsome Mrs. Bonnet.
In fact, so unbearable did the major’s life become that at last he decided to choose the less of two evils. Having purchased a sloop, fitted her with guns, assembled a crew, and named his acquisition The Revenge, Major Bonnet bade a thankful farewell to his wife and, on a dark night in 1716, sailed forth from Bridgetown Harbor, bound a-pirating.
Oddly enough, although the gallant if henpecked officer knew nothing whatsoever of seamanship, he seems to have been a somewhat successful and lucky pirate,—albeit a humane one, for it was he who rescued the marooned members of Blackbeard’s crew from their desert isle,—and The Revenge, cruising off our Atlantic coast, took prizes right and left.
In a short time Bonnet’s name was one to conjure with, and a mere mention of it brought terror to the hearts of shipping-men and sailors in every port from Salem to Savannah, while so bold did he become that he had the effrontery to make Gardiner’s Island, in Long Island Sound, his headquarters at various times. For a space, too, he joined forces with the redoubtable Teach, better known as Blackbeard, but the partnership was rather unfortunate, for the scoundrelly Teach robbed the major of his ship and most of his possessions.
This treacherous behavior on the part of a supposed friend made Bonnet melancholy, if we are to believe his biographer, and may have led to his undoing, for shortly afterward—in 1718, to be exact—he was taken prisoner off the Carolinas. He managed to make good his escape in a canoe, but a reward of seventy pounds sterling was offered for him, and the following year he was captured at Sullivan’s Island, was tried in Charleston, and, having been sentenced to death, was hanged at White Point. Possibly poor Major Bonnet was not sorry to find peace even at the end of the hangman’s rope, for his adventures had brought him little more comfort or ease than his home life in Barbados; and it is even doubtful if his widow wept over his demise, or mended her ways. Of her we know nothing; she slips quite out of the story with the departure of her spouse on The Revenge, and even Johnson in his “History of the Pyrates” was too gallant to do more than hint at her character by stating that “This humour of going a pyrating was believed to proceed from a disorder of the mind said to have been occasioned by some discomforts in the marriage state.”
However, we do know, from historical records, that poor Stede was subjected to so lengthy a diatribe by the judge who condemned him (it filled six closely written pages) that even his wife’s scoldings must have seemed mild in comparison, and ere the judge’s long-winded advice as to leading the higher life was ended the major must have become so utterly worn out as actually to long for death.
Aside from Red Legs and the unfortunate Major Bonnet, Barbados, or, for that matter, any of the southern islands, have little to link them with the buccaneers; and as I was following in the wake of these adventurers, and not endeavoring to make a cruise of all the Antilles, the Vigilant sailed away from charming St. Kitts with Santo Domingo as her goal.
There was a long sail ahead, nearly three hundred and fifty miles to cover before we reached our objective point at Samana Bay, but we planned to break the stretch by a stop at St. Croix, one hundred and twenty-five miles from St. Kitts. Over a sparkling, sunny sea, with the wind on our quarter, we sped away from the fair green hills and downs of St. Kitts, left the great cone of Statia and the isolated, beetling peak of Saba looming hazily and like phantom isles to the north, and with a broad wake of suds streaming far astern and a roaring, curling mass of foam beneath our bows, swept across Saba Bank.
It gives one a strange feeling to be sailing across the deep-blue Caribbean far from land and suddenly to look over a ship’s rails and plainly see bottom with its masses of corals, its great starfish, its huge black sea-cucumbers, and its clustered sponges under the keel. Many times have I sailed over Saba Bank, and never can I overcome the impression that the ship is about to touch the ragged coral so clearly visible; and the effect is even more remarkable when one is crossing the bank on a big steamship. Saba Bank extends for nearly forty miles east and west, and almost the same distance north and south, with from six to twenty fathoms of glass-clear water over it; and while in heavy weather large vessels avoid it, because of the huge seas that pile up in the shoal water and the danger of touching a reef, in calm weather they pass unhesitatingly across it.
Beyond Saba Bank we were out of sight of land, and on that wide waste of waters stretching unbroken, even by a sail, to the horizon on every side, the little Vigilant seemed pitifully small. More than ever was I impressed with the courage, the confidence, and the faith in God which led the early voyagers and discoverers over this unknown, uncharted sea in craft far smaller and less seaworthy than the Vigilant. Rarely do we stop to consider what marvelous undertakings and great adventures those ancient voyages were. In miserable tubs—unwieldy, unfit for beating to windward with any degree of success, clumsily sparred, and uncouthly rigged—the daring navigators crossed the broad Atlantic and cruised hither and yon among the reefs and isles of the Caribbean. The wonder is that they did not all pile their timbers upon the ragged coral reefs and low-lying cays, or that they ever managed to find the same island twice. To steer a course across the Caribbean and raise one of the isles above one’s bows is no small undertaking in a well-found vessel and with the aid of modern instruments, and how Columbus and his fellows ever accomplished it, with their crude appliances and with no charts to guide them, is a mystery which ever fills me with wonder.
And as I lolled upon the Vigilant’s deck while our little ship with flowing sheets plunged on to the westward, I also wondered how big Sam could steer so unerringly for St. Croix—or if he could. But he seemed to be perfectly confident of himself, grasping the wheel in those great black hands of his, casting an occasional glance at the bellying sails, balancing himself on his huge sinewy legs to the heave of the deck, and peering straight ahead with no heed to the compass, as though his eyes could pierce the distance and see the hills of St. Croix beyond the horizon.
Each day I took the sun and worked out our position, purely as a precautionary measure; but I never revealed the results to Sam, for I was curious to see just how accurately he could sail by dead reckoning, or instinct, or whatever it was.
Once, as I stood near the taffrail and squinted through my sextant, Sam chuckled, and a broad grin spread over his black, good-natured face.
“Ah don’ guess you think Ah kin mek Santa Cruz, Chief,” he ventured.
“Oh, I’m not worrying over that, Sam,” I replied. “But it’s a good plan to know just where we are, in case of trouble—if a storm should come up and blow us off our course, or anything should happen to you.”
“Tha’s right, Chief,” he agreed. “But Ah reckon Ah’d mek some islan’ ’gardless o’ all that. Ah don’t need to know where we is for to get where we’s goin’.”
“Well, how on earth do you do it, Sam?” I asked.
“Lordy! Ah don’ can’ say,” he declared. “Ah jus’ knows where’bouts th’ lan’ is, an’ Ah steers for he.”
I had to let it go at that, for the Bahaman’s sense of direction was as inexplicable to himself as to me; but, after all, while this ability to head directly for a definite speck of land in a waste of waters is staggering to a landsman, is it really any more remarkable than a woodsman’s ability to head across country through forests or over trackless plains and unerringly come to his destination? Perhaps it is the same instinct that guides the carrier-pigeon, the migrating birds, the cat and the dog, and even the lowly toad, across long distances of unknown territory. And if we accept the latest scientific theory that all of these are unconsciously following vibratory waves or flows of electrons, then possibly big Sam was being led across the Caribbean by means of nature’s radio, to which the ordinary mortal’s intellect is not attuned.
As we tore along, reeling off a good eight knots, Joe strolled aft, armed with heavy lines and baited hooks, and, making them fast to the rail, paid them out rapidly astern. Hardly had the first whipping line run out for fifty feet in the creaming wake when there was a flash of silver and gold and Joe began hauling in. But his catch was more than he could handle alone, and I hurried to help him. A moment later we had a magnificent twenty-five-pound albacore flapping on deck, and for the next half-hour the fun was fast and furious. I verily believe we could easily have filled the Vigilant’s hold with fish had we kept on, but when enough Spanish mackerel, albacore, dolphin, and bonito had been secured to provide a fish diet for all on board for the next twenty-four hours, Joe rolled up his lines and betook himself to the galley, carrying the particular specimen he intended for my meal and calling to the men to bring their own.
Sam grinned widely at Joseph’s superior manner.
“Tha’ Turk’ Islan’ boy act like he ain’ th’ same specie wi’ other niggers,” he chuckled. “On’y he Bahaman like mahsel’ Ah guess he don’ ’sociate long o’ me. But, Lordy, Chief, he cert’n’y can cook! Ya-umm!”
“Yep,” I replied; “Joe is inclined to be a bit of a snob, but, as you say, he’s a fine cook—and a mighty faithful boy, too. Are all the Turks Island boys his kind?”
“Not zactly, Chief,” responded Sam. “But the’ does mek to be a bit bumpt’ous. You see, Chief, the’ says as how Gran’ Turk was the islan’ what Columbus foun’ first, n’ the’ argufies as how tha’ meks they th’ firs’ qual’ty niggers in th’ islan’s, Chief.”
I roared with laughter.
“That’s good, Sam!” I cried. “But it’s not so strange, after all. We’ve got people in the States that put on just as many airs because their ancestors came over in the Mayflower.”
“Lord! is tha’ so, Chief?” exclaimed Sam. “Ah never did n’ know white folks bothered ’bout such humbuggin’.”
A moment later, Trouble shouted that land was in sight; and, sure enough, straight before the pitching tip of our jib-boom, a tiny opalescent cloud broke the horizon under the setting sun.
Sam’s instinct had not failed him: he had, figuratively, hit the bull’s-eye first shot, and a triumphant grin spread over his face as he stopped and peered ahead beneath the booms.
Rapidly the land rose before us, an indigo patch against the crimson sky, and ere nightfall we were close in to the island, rocking lazily along on an almost calm sea, our sails flapping, half filled, in the rapidly falling wind, and the boom of the surf and a chorus of night insects coming to us mingled with the scent of flowers, the pungent odor of burning canes, and the earthy smell of newly plowed fields. With scarcely steerage way, the Vigilant crept on through the night and past the twinkling lights of Christiansted; and, gazing up at the myriad brilliant stars, and lulled by the soft murmur of the rippling water and the gentle creaking of the rigging and spars, I fell asleep.