"Taffy was a Welshman,Taffy was a thief,Taffy came to my houseAnd stole a leg of beef."I went to Taffy's house,Taffy wasn't home,Taffy went to my house,And stole a marrow-bone."
"Taffy was a Welshman,Taffy was a thief,Taffy came to my houseAnd stole a leg of beef.
"I went to Taffy's house,Taffy wasn't home,Taffy went to my house,And stole a marrow-bone."
What happened to Taffy we do not know, but Morgan was a Welshman, Morgan was a thief, and one of his men had stolen a marrow-bone; therefore came trouble. The Frenchman challenged the Englishman; but the latter, being a mean scoundrel, took advantage of his opponent, unfairly stabbed him in the back and killed him.
Now all the Frenchmen in the company rose in furious protest, and Morgan, wishing to pacify them, had the English assassin put in chains, and promised that he would take him to Jamaica and deliver him to justice. But the Frenchmen declined to be satisfied; they had received but very little moneyafter they had pillaged a rich town, and they believed that their English companions were inclined to take advantage of them in every way, and consequently the greater part of them banded together and deliberately deserted Morgan, who was obliged to go back to Jamaica with not more than half his regular forces, doubtless wishing that the cattle on the island of Cuba had been able to get along without marrow-bones.
When the Welsh buccaneer started out on another expedition his company consisted entirely of Englishmen, and was not nearly so large as it had been; when he announced to his followers that he intended to attack the fortified town of Porto Bello, on the mainland, there was a general murmuring among the men, for Porto Bello was one of the strongest towns possessed by the Spaniards, and the buccaneers did not believe that their comparatively small force would be able to take it. But Morgan made them a speech in which he endeavored to encourage them to follow him in this difficult undertaking. One of his arguments was, that although their numbers were small, their hearts were large; but he produced the greatest effect upon them when he said that as they were but a few, each man's share of the booty would be much larger than if it must be divided among a great number. This touched the souls of thepirates, and they vowed to follow their leader wherever he might take them.
The buccaneers found Porto Bello a very hard nut to crack; they landed and marched upon the town, which was defended by several forts or castles. Even when one of these had been taken by assault, and after it had been blown up with all its garrison, who had been taken prisoners, still the town was not intimidated, and the Governor vowed he would never surrender, but would die fighting to the last. The pirates raged like demons; they shot down every man they could see at the cannon or upon the walls, and they made desperate efforts to capture the principal fort, but they did not succeed, and after a long time Morgan began to despair. The garrison was strong and well commanded, and whenever the pirates attempted to scale the wall they were shot down, while fire-pots full of powder, with stones and other missiles, were hurled upon them.
At last the wily Morgan had an idea. He set his men to work to make some ladders high enough to reach to the top of the walls, and wide enough to allow three or four men to go up abreast. If he could get these properly set up, his crew of desperate tiger-cats could make a combined rush and get over the walls. But to carry the ladders and place them would be almost impossible, for the men whobore them would surely be shot down before they could finish the work. But it was not Morgan's plan that his men should carry these ladders. He had captured some convents in the suburbs of the town, with a number of nuns and monks, known as "religious people," and he now ordered these poor creatures, the women as well as the men, to take up the ladders and place them against the walls, believing that the Spanish Governor would not allow his soldiers to fire at these innocent persons whom the pirates had forced to do their will.
But the Governor was determined to defend the town no matter who had to suffer, and so the soldiers fired at the nuns and monks just as though they were buccaneers or any other enemies. The "religious people" cried out in terror, and screamed to their friends not to fire upon them; but the soldiers obeyed the commands of the Governor, while the pirates were swearing terribly behind them and threatening them with their pistols, and so the poor nuns and monks had to press forward, many of them dropping dead or wounded. They continued their work until the ladders were placed, and then over the walls went the pirates, with yells and howls of triumph, and not long after that the town was taken. The Governor died, fighting in the principal fort, and the citizens and soldiers all united in the most vigorous defence; but it was of no use.Each pirate seemed to have not only nine lives, but nine arms, each one wielding a cutlass or aiming a pistol.
When the fighting was over, the second act in the horrible drama took place as usual. The pirates ate, drank, rioted, and committed all manner of outrages and cruelties upon the inhabitants, closing the performance with the customary threat that if the already distressed and impoverished inhabitants did not pay an enormous ransom, their town would be burned.
Before the ransom was paid, the Governor of Panama heard what was going on at Porto Bello, and sent a force to the assistance of the town, but this time the buccaneers did not hastily retreat, Morgan knew of a narrow defile through which the Spanish forces must pass, and there he posted a number of his men, who defended the pass so well that the Spaniards were obliged to retreat. This Governor must have been a student of military science; he was utterly astounded when he heard that this pirate leader, with less than four hundred men, had captured the redoubtable town of Porto Bello, defended by a strong garrison and inhabited by citizens who were brave and accustomed to fighting, and, being anxious to increase his knowledge of improved methods of warfare, he sent a messenger to Morgan "desiring him to send him somesmall pattern of those arms wherewith he had taken with such violence so great a city." The pirate leader received the messenger with much courtesy, and sent to the Governor a pistol and a few balls, "desiring him to accept that slender pattern of the arms wherewith he had taken Porto Bello, and keep them for a twelvemonth; after which time he promised to come to Panama and fetch them away."
This courteous correspondence was continued by the Governor returning the pistol and balls with thanks, and also sending Morgan a handsome gold ring with the message that he need not trouble himself to come to Panama; for, if he did, he would meet with very different fortune from that which had come to him at Porto Bello.
Morgan put the ring on his finger and postponed his reply, and, as soon as the ransom was paid, he put his booty on board his ships and departed. When the spoils of Porto Bello came to be counted, it was found that they were of great value, and each man received a lordly share.
When Captain Morgan was ready to set out on another expedition, he found plenty of pirates ready to join him, and he commanded all the ships and men whom he enlisted to rendezvous at a place called the Isle of Cows. A fine, large, English ship had recently come to Jamaica from New England, and this vessel also joined Morgan's forces onthe island, where the pirate leader took this ship as his own, being much the best and largest vessel of the fleet.
Besides the ships belonging to Morgan, there was in the harbor where they were now congregated, a fine vessel belonging to some French buccaneers, and Morgan desired very much that this vessel should join his fleet, but the French cherished hard feelings against the English, and would not join them.
Although Morgan was a brave man, his meanness was quite equal to his courage, and he determined to be revenged upon these Frenchmen who had refused to give him their aid, and therefore played a malicious trick upon them. Sometime before, this French vessel, being out of provisions when upon the high seas, had met an English ship, and had taken from her such supplies as it had needed. The captain did not pay for these, being out of money as well as food, not an uncommon thing among buccaneers, but they gave the English notes of exchange payable in Jamaica; but as these notes were never honored, the people of the English ship had never been paid for their provisions.
This affair properly arranged in Morgan's mind, he sent a very polite note to the captain of the French ship and some of his officers, inviting them to dine with him on his own vessel. The Frenchaccepted the invitation, but when Morgan received them on board his ship he did not conduct them down to dinner; instead of that, he began to upbraid them for the manner in which they had treated an English crew, and then he ordered them to be taken down below and imprisoned in the hold. Having accomplished this, and feeling greatly elated by this piece of sly vengeance, he went into his fine cabin, and he and his officers sat down to the grand feast he had prepared.
There were fine times on board this great English ship; the pirates were about to set forth on an important expedition, and they celebrated the occasion by eating and drinking, firing guns, and all manner of riotous hilarity. In the midst of the wild festivities—and nobody knew how it happened—a spark of fire got into the powder magazine, and the ship blew up, sending the lifeless bodies of three hundred English sailors, and the French prisoners, high into the air. The only persons on board who escaped were Morgan and his officers who were in the cabin close to the stern of the vessel, at some distance from the magazine.
This terrible accident threw the pirate fleet into great confusion for a time; but Morgan soon recovered himself, and, casting about to see what was the best thing to be done, it came into his head that he would act the part of the wolf in the fable of thewolf and the lamb. As there was no way of finding out how the magazine happened to explode, he took the ground that the French prisoners whom he had shut up in the hold, had thrown a lighted match into the magazine, wishing thus to revenge themselves even though they should, at the same time, lose their own lives. The people of the French ship bitterly opposed any such view of the case, but their protestations were of no use; they might declare as much as they pleased that it was impossible for them to make the waters muddy, being lower down in the stream than the wolfish pirate who was accusing them, but it availed nothing. Morgan sprang upon them and their ship, and sent them to Jamaica, where, upon his false charge, they were shut up in prison, and so remained for a long time.
Such atrocious wickedness as the treatment of the nuns and monks, described in this chapter, would never have been countenanced in any warfare between civilized nations. But Morgan's pirates were not making war; they were robbers and murderers on a grand scale. They had no right to call themselves civilized; they were worse than barbarians.
Morgan began to upbraid them, and ordered them taken below.--p. 151."Morgan began to upbraid them, and ordered them taken below."—p. 151.
"Morgan began to upbraid them, and ordered them taken below."—p. 151.
Morgan's destination was the isle of Savona, near which a great Spanish fleet was expected to pass, and here he hoped to make some rich prizes. But when he got out to sea he met with contrary and dangerous winds, which delayed him a long time, and eventually when he arrived at Savona, after having landed at various places, where he pillaged, murdered, and burned, according to the extent of his opportunities, he found at least one-half of his men and ships had not arrived. With the small force which he now had with him he could not set out to attack a Spanish fleet, and therefore he was glad to accept the suggestion made to him by a Frenchman who happened to be in his company.
This man had been with L'Olonnois two years before when that bloody pirate had sacked the towns of Maracaibo and Gibraltar; he had made himself perfectly familiar with the fortifications and defences of these towns, and he told Morgan that it wouldbe easy to take them. To be sure they had been thoroughly sacked before, and therefore did not offer the tempting inducements of perfectly fresh towns, such as Port-au-Prince, but still in two years the inhabitants must have gathered together some possessions desirable to pirates, and therefore, although Morgan could not go to these towns with the expectation of reaping a full harvest, he might at least gather up an aftermath which would pay him for his trouble.
So away sailed this horde of ravenous scoundrels for the lake of Maracaibo, at the outer end of which lay the town of Maracaibo, and at the other extremity the town of Gibraltar. When they had sailed near enough to the fortifications they anchored out of sight of the watch-tower and, landing in the night, marched on one of the forts. Here the career of Morgan came very near closing forever. The Spaniards had discovered the approach of the pirates, and this fort had been converted into a great trap in which the citizens hoped to capture and destroy the pirate leader and his men. Everybody had left the fort, the gates were open, and a slow-match, communicating with the magazine, had been lighted just before the last Spaniard had left.
But the oldest and most sagacious of rats would be no more difficult to entrap than was the wilypirate Morgan. When he entered the open gates of the fort and found everything in perfect order, he suspected a trick, and looking about him he soon saw the smouldering match. Instantly he made a dash at it, seized it and extinguished the fire. Had he been delayed in this discovery a quarter of an hour longer, he and his men would have been blown to pieces along with the fort.
Now the pirates pressed on toward the town, but they met with no resistance. The Spaniards, having failed to blow up their dreaded enemies, had retreated into the surrounding country and had left the town. The triumphant pirates spread themselves everywhere. They searched the abandoned town for people and valuables, and every man who cared to do so took one of the empty houses for his private residence. They made the church the common meeting-place where they might all gather together when it was necessary, and when they had spent the night in eating and drinking all the good things they could find, they set out the next day to hunt for the fugitive citizens.
For three weeks Morgan and his men held a devil's carnival in Maracaibo. To tell of the abominable tortures and cruelties which they inflicted upon the poor people, whom they dragged from their hiding-places in the surrounding country, would make our flesh creep and our blood run cold.When they could do no more evil they sailed away up the lake for Gibraltar.
It is not necessary to tell the story of the taking of this town. When Morgan arrived there he found it also entirely deserted. The awful dread of the human beasts who were coming upon them had forced the inhabitants to fly. In the whole town only one man was left, and he was an idiot who had not sense enough to run away. This poor fellow was tortured to tell where his treasures were hid, and when he consented to take them to the place where he had concealed his possessions, they found a few broken earthen dishes, and a little bit of money, about as much as a poor imbecile might be supposed to possess. Thereupon the disappointed fiends cruelly killed him.
For five weeks the country surrounding Gibraltar was the scene of a series of diabolical horrors. The pirates undertook the most hazardous and difficult expeditions in order to find the people who had hidden themselves on islands and in the mountains, and although they obtained a great deal of booty, they met with a good many misfortunes. Some of them were drowned in swollen streams, and others lost much of their pillage by rains and storms.
At last, after having closed his vile proceedings in the ordinary pirate fashion, by threatening to burn the town if he were not paid a ransom, Morganthought it time for him to depart, for if the Spaniards should collect a sufficient force at Maracaibo to keep him from getting out of the lake, he would indeed be caught in a trap. The ransom was partly paid and partly promised, and Morgan and his men departed, carrying with them some hostages for the rest of the ransom due.
When Morgan and his fleet arrived at Maracaibo, they found the town still deserted, but they also discovered that they were caught in the trap which they had feared, out of which they saw no way of escaping. News had been sent the Spanish forces; of the capture and sacking of Maracaibo, and three large men-of-war now lay in the channel below the town which led from the lake into the sea. And more than this, the castle which defended the entrance to the lake, and which the pirates had found empty when they arrived, was now well manned and supplied with a great many cannon, so that for once in their lives these wicked buccaneers were almost discouraged. Their little ships could not stand against the men-of-war; and in any case they could not pass the castle, which was now prepared to blow them to pieces if they should come near enough.
But in the midst of these disheartening circumstances, the pirate leader showed what an arrogant, blustering dare-devil he was, for, instead of admittinghis discomfiture and trying to make terms with the Spaniards, he sent a letter to the admiral of the ships, in which he stated that if he did not allow him a free passage out to sea he would burn every house in Maracaibo. To this insolent threat, the Spanish admiral replied in a long letter, in which he told Morgan that if he attempted to leave the lake he would fire upon his ships, and, if necessary, follow them out to sea, until not a stick of one of them should be left. But in the great magnanimity of his soul he declared that he would allow Morgan to sail away freely, provided he would deliver all the booty he had captured, together with the prisoners and slaves, and promise to go home and abandon buccaneering forever. In case he declined these terms, the admiral declared he would come up the channel in boats filled with his soldiers and put every pirate to the sword.
When Morgan received this letter, he called his men together in the public square of the town, and asked them what they would do, and when these fellows heard that they were asked to give up all their booty, they unanimously voted that they would perish rather than do such an unmanly thing as that. So it was agreed that they would fight themselves out of the lake of Maracaibo, or stay there, dead or alive, as the case might be.
At this important crisis again turned up the man with an idea. This was an inventive buccaneer, who proposed to Morgan that they should take a medium-sized ship which they had captured at the other end of the lake, and make a fire-ship of her. In order that the Spaniards might not suspect the character of this incendiary craft, he proposed that they should fit her up like one of the pirate war-vessels, for in this case the Spaniards would not try to get away from her, but would be glad to have her come near enough for them to capture her.
Morgan was pleased with this plan, and the fire-ship was prepared with all haste. All the pitch, tar, and brimstone in the town were put on board of her, together with other combustibles. On the deck were placed logs of wood, which were dressed up in coats and hats to look like men, and by their sides were muskets and cutlasses. Portholes were made, and in these were placed other logs to representcannon. Thus this merchant vessel, now as inflammable as a pine knot, was made to resemble a somewhat formidable pirate ship. The rest of the fleet was made ready, the valuables and prisoners and slaves were put on board; and they all sailed boldly down toward the Spanish vessels, the fire-ship in front.
When the Spanish admiral saw this insignificant fleet approaching, he made ready to sink it to the bottom, and when the leading vessel made its way directly toward his own ship, as if with the impudent intention of boarding her, he did not fire at her, but let her come on. The few pirates on board the fire-ship ran her up against the side of the great man-of-war; and after making her fast and applying their matches, they immediately slipped overboard, and swam to one of their own vessels before the Spaniards had an idea of what had happened. The fire-ship was soon ablaze, and as the flames quickly spread, the large vessel took fire, and the people on board had scarcely time to get out of her before she sank.
The commander of one of the other ships was so much frightened by what had occurred in so short a space of time that he ran his vessel aground and wrecked her, her men jumping out into the water and making for the land. As for the other ship, the pirates boldly attacked her and captured her,and as she was a very fine vessel, Morgan left his own small vessel, in which he had been commanding his fleet, and took possession of her. Thus, in a very short time, the whole state of affairs was changed. The Spaniards had no ships at all, and Morgan was in command of a very fine vessel, in which he led his triumphant fleet.
Victory is a grand thing to a pirate as it is to every human being who has been engaged in a conflict, but none of the joys of triumph could equal the sordid rapacity of Morgan and his men. They spent days in trying to recover the money and plate which were on board the sunken Spanish ships. The sterns of these projected above water, and a great deal of valuable treasure was recovered from them. The pirates worked very hard at this, although they had not the slightest idea how they were to pass the castle and get away with the plunder after they had obtained it.
When the wrecks had been stripped of everything of value, the time came for demanding a ransom for not burning the town and hanging the prisoners, and as the poor citizens knew very well what they might expect, they sent word to the admiral, who had escaped to the castle, begging him to accede to the demands of Morgan, and to let the wretched pirates go. But the admiral, Don Alonso, was a thoroughbred Spaniard, and he would listen to nosuch cowardly suggestion. He would consent to no ransom being paid, and on no account would he allow the pirates to pass the channel. The citizens, however, who knew what was good for them, raised the money, and paid the ransom in coin and cattle, and Morgan declared that if the admiral would not let him out of the lake, he would have to attend to that matter himself.
But before he made another bold stroke against the enemy his stingy and niggardly spirit urged him to defend himself against his friends, and before endeavoring to leave he ordered a division of the spoils. Many of the goods taken from the two towns were on board the different vessels of the fleet, and he was very much afraid that if his comrades, who commanded the other ships, should be so fortunate as to get out to sea, they would sail away with the booty they carried, and he would not see any of it. Therefore, the booty from every ship was brought on board his own fine vessel, and every man was put through an examination as rigid as if he had been passing a custom house, and was obliged to prove that he had not concealed or kept back any money or jewels. The value of the plunder was very great, and when it had been divided, according to the scale which Morgan had adopted, the pirate leader felt safe. He now had his share of the prizes in his own possession, andthat to him was more important than anything else in the world.
The question of getting away was a very serious one; the greater part of his fleet consisted of small vessels which could not defy the guns of the fort, and as the stout hearts and brawny arms of his followers could be of no use to him in this dilemma, Morgan was obliged to fall back upon his own brains; therefore, he planned a trick.
When everything had been prepared for departure, Morgan anchored his fleet at a distance from the castle, but not so far away that the Spaniards could not observe his movements. Then he loaded some boats with armed men and had them rowed ashore on the side of the channel on which the castle stood. The boats landed behind a little wood, and there the men, instead of getting out, crouched themselves down in the bottom of the boats so that they should not be seen. Then the boats, apparently empty, were rowed back to the pirate ships, and in a short time, again full of men sitting, upright, with their muskets and cutlasses, they went to the shore, and soon afterwards returned apparently empty as before.
This performance was repeated over and over again, until the people in the castle were convinced that Morgan was putting his men on shore in order to make a land attack upon the rear of the castleduring the night. But the Spanish admiral was not to be caught by any such clumsy stratagem as that, and, therefore, in great haste he had his big cannon moved to the land side of the fort, and posted there the greater part of his garrison in order that when the pirates made their assault in the dead of the night they would meet with a reception for which they had not bargained.
When it was dark, and the tide began to run out, the pirate vessels weighed anchor, and they all drifted down toward the castle. Morgan's spies had perceived some of the extraordinary movements in the Spanish fortifications, and he therefore drifted down with a good deal of confidence, although, had his trick been discovered in time it would have gone very hard with his fleet. It is probable that he had taken all these chances into consideration and had felt pretty sure that if the cannon of the fort had been opened upon them it would not have been the big ship which carried him and his precious load which would have been sunk by the great guns, and that no matter what happened to the smaller vessels and the men on board them, he and his own ship would be able to sail away.
But the Spaniards did not perceive the approach of the drifting fleet, for they were intrepidly waiting at the back of the castle to make it very hot for the pirates when they should arrive. Slowly past thegreat walls of the fort drifted the fleet of buccaneers, and then, at a signal, every vessel hoisted its sails, and, with a good wind, sailed rapidly toward the open sea. The last pirate vessel had scarcely passed the fort when the Spaniards discovered what was going on, and in great haste they rolled their cannon back to the water side of the fort and began firing furiously, but it was of no use.
The pirates sailed on until they were out of danger, and then they anchored and arranged for putting on shore the greater number of their prisoners, who were only an encumbrance to them. As a parting insult, Morgan fired seven or eight of his largest guns at the castle, whose humiliated occupants did not reply by a single shot.
In order to understand what thoroughly contemptible scoundrels these pirates were it may be stated that when Morgan and his men reached Jamaica after a good deal of storm and trouble on the way, they found there many of their comrades who had not been able to join them at their rendezvous at Savona. These unfortunate fellows, who had not known where Morgan had gone and were unable to join him, had endeavored to do some piratical business of their own, but had had very little luck and a great many misfortunes. Morgan's men, with their pockets full of money, jeered and sneered at their poor comrades who had had such hard times,and without any thought of sharing with them the least portion of their own vile gains they treated them with contempt and derision.
The buccaneer, Captain Henry Morgan, was now a very great personage, but with his next expedition, which was a very important one, and in its extent resembled warfare rather than piracy, we shall have little to do because his exploits in this case were not performed on our Atlantic coasts, but over the Isthmus, on the shores of the Pacific.
Morgan raised a great fleet, carrying a little army of two thousand men, and with this he made his way to the other side of the Isthmus and attacked the city of Panama, which, of course, he captured. His terrible deeds at this place resembled those which he performed after the capture of the smaller towns which we have been considering, except that they were on a scale of greater magnitude. Nearly the whole of the town of Panama was burned, and the excesses, cruelties, and pillages of the conquerors were something almost without parallel.
Before marching overland to Panama, Morgan had recaptured the island of St. Catherine, which was a very valuable station for his purposes, and had also taken the castle of Chagres on the mainland near by, and on his return from the conquest and pillage of the unfortunate city he and his forces gathered together at Chagres in order to divide the spoils.
Now came great trouble and dissatisfaction; many of the buccaneers loudly declared that Morgan was taking everything that was really valuable for his own, especially the precious stones and jewels, and that they were getting a very small share of the booty of Panama. There seemed to be good reason for these complaints, for the sum of about two hundred dollars apiece was all that Morgan's men received after their terrible hardships and dangers and the pillage of a very rich town. The murmurings and complaints against Morgan's peculiar methods became louder and more frequent, and at last the wily Welshman began to be afraid that serious trouble would come to him if he did not take care of himself. This, however, he was very capable of doing. Silently and quietly one night, without giving notice to any of the buccaneers at Chagres, except a few who were in his secret, Morgan, in his large ship, sailed away for Jamaica, followed by only a few other vessels, containing some of his favored companions.
When the great body of the buccaneers, the principal portion of which were Frenchmen, found that their leader had deserted them, there was a grand commotion, and if they had been able, the furious men who had had this trick played upon them, would have followed Morgan to treat him as they had so often treated the Spaniards. But they couldnot follow—Morgan had taken great care that this should not happen. Their ships were out of order; they had been left very short of provisions and ammunition, and found that not only were they unable to avenge themselves on their traitor leader, but that it would be very hard for them to get away at all.
Poor Esquemeling, the literary pirate, was one of those who was left behind, and in his doleful state he made the following reflection, which we quote from his book: "Captain Morgan left us all in such a miserable condition as might serve for a lively representation of what rewards attend wickedness at the latter end of life. Whence we ought to have learned how to regulate and amend our actions for the future."
After Morgan had safely reached Jamaica with all his booty, the idea renewed itself in his mind of returning to St. Catherine, fortifying the place and putting it in complete order, and then occupying it as a station for all pirates, with himself the supreme governor and king of the buccaneers. But before he had completed his arrangements for doing this there was a change in the affairs at Jamaica: the king of England, having listened to the complaints of the Spanish crown, had recalled the former Governor and put him on trial to answer for the manner in which he allowed the island to be used by the pirates for their wicked purposes againsta friendly nation, and had sent a new Governor with orders to allow no buccaneers in Jamaica, and in every way to suppress piracy in those parts.
Now the shrewd Morgan saw that his present business was likely to become a very undesirable one, and he accordingly determined to give it up. Having brutally pillaged and most cruelly treated the Spaniards as long as he was able to do so, and having cheated and defrauded his friends and companions to the utmost extent possible, he made up his mind to reform, and a more thoroughly base and contemptible reformed scoundrel was never seen on the face of the earth.
Morgan was now a rich man, and he lost no time in becoming very respectable. He endeavored to win favor with the new Governor, and was so successful that when that official was obliged to return to England on account of his health, he left the ex-pirate in charge of the affairs of the island in the capacity of Deputy-Governor. More than this, King Charles, who apparently had heard of Morgan's great bravery and ability, and had not cared to listen to anything else about him, knighted him, and this preëminent and inhuman water-thief became Sir Henry Morgan.
In his new official capacity Morgan was very severe upon his former associates, and when any of them were captured and brought before him, hecondemned some to be imprisoned and some to be hung, and in every way apparently endeavored to break up the unlawful business of buccaneering.
About this time John Esquemeling betook himself to Europe with all possible despatch, for he had work to do and things to tell with which the Deputy-Governor would have no sympathy whatever. He got away safely, and he wrote his book, and if he had not had this good fortune, the world would have lost a great part of the story of what happened to the soft little baby who was born among the quiet green fields of Wales.
Even during the time that he was Deputy-Governor, Morgan was suspected of sharing in the gains of some buccaneers at the same time that he punished others, and after the death of Charles II. he was sent to England and imprisoned, but what eventually became of him we do not know. If he succeeded in ill-using and defrauding his Satanic Majesty, there is no record of the fact.
After having considered the extraordinary performances of so many of those execrable wretches, the buccaneers, it is refreshing and satisfactory to find that there were exceptions even to the rules which governed the conduct and general make-up of the ordinary pirate of the period, and we are therefore glad enough to tell the story of a man, who, although he was an out-and-out buccaneer, possessed some peculiar characteristics which give him a place of his own in the history of piracy.
In the early part of these sketches we have alluded to a gentleman of France, who, having become deeply involved in debt, could see no way of putting himself in a condition to pay his creditors but to go into business of some kind. He had no mercantile education, he had not learned any profession, and it was therefore necessary for him to do something for which a previous preparation was not absolutely essential.
After having carefully considered all the methodsof making money which were open to him under the circumstances, he finally concluded to take up piracy and literature. Even at the present day it is considered by many persons that one of these branches of industry is a field of action especially adapted to those who have not had the opportunity of giving the time and study necessary in any other method of making a living.
The French gentleman whose adventures we are about to relate was a very different man from John Esquemeling, who was a literary pirate and nothing more. Being of a clerkly disposition, the gentle John did not pretend to use the sabre or the pistol. His part in life was simply to watch his companions fight, burn, and steal, while his only weapon was his pen, with which he set down their exploits and thereby murdered their reputations.
But Monsieur Raveneau de Lussan was both buccaneer and author, and when he had finished his piratical career he wrote a book in which he gave a full account of it, thus showing that although he had not been brought up to a business life, he had very good ideas about money-making.
More than that, he had very good ideas about his own reputation, and instead of leaving his exploits and adventures to be written up by other people,—that is, if any one should think it worth while to do so,—he took that business into his own hands.He was well educated, he had been brought up in good society, and as he desired to return to that society it was natural for him to wish to paint his own portrait as a buccaneer. Pictures of that kind as they were ordinarily executed were not at all agreeable to the eyes of the cultivated classes of France, and so M. de Lussan determined to give his personal attention not only to his business speculations, but to his reputation. He went out as a buccaneer in order to rob the Spaniards of treasure with which to pay his honest debts, and, in order to prevent his piratical career being described in the coarse and disagreeable fashion in which people generally wrote about pirates, he determined to write his own adventures.
If a man wishes to appear well before the world, it is often a very good thing for him to write his autobiography, especially if there is anything a little shady in his career, and it may be that de Lussan's reputation as a high-minded pirate depends somewhat on the book he wrote after he had put down the sword and taken up the pen; but if he gave a more pleasing color to his proceedings than they really deserved, we ought to be glad of it. For, even if de Lussan the buccaneer was in some degree a creature of the imagination of de Lussan the author, we have a story which is much more pleasing and, in some respects, more romantic than stories ofordinary pirates could possibly be made unless the writer of such stories abandoned fact altogether and plunged blindly into fiction.
Among the good qualities of de Lussan was a pious disposition. He had always been a religious person, and, being a Catholic, he had a high regard and veneration for religious buildings, for priests, and for the services of the church, and when he had crossed the Atlantic in his ship, the crew of which was composed of desperadoes of various nations, and when he had landed upon the western continent, he wished still to conform to the religious manners and customs of the old world.
Having a strong force under his command and possessing, in common with most of the gentlemen of that period, a good military education, it was not long after he landed on the mainland before he captured a small town. The resistance which he met was soon overcome, and our high-minded pirate found himself in the position of a conqueror with a community at his mercy. As his piety now raised itself above all his other attributes, the first thing that he did was to repair to the principal church of the town, accompanied by all his men, and here, in accordance with his commands, a Te Deum was sung and services were conducted by the priests in charge. Then, after having properly performed his religious duties, de Lussan sent his menthrough the town with orders to rob the inhabitants of everything valuable they possessed.
The ransacking and pillaging of the houses continued for some time, but when the last of his men had returned with the booty they had collected, the high-minded chief was dissatisfied. The town appeared to be a good deal poorer than he had expected, and as the collection seemed to be so very small, de Lussan concluded that in some way or other he must pass around the hat again. While he was wondering how he should do this he happened to hear that on a sugar plantation not very far away from the town there were some ladies of rank who, having heard of the approach of the pirates, had taken refuge there, thinking that even if the town should be captured, their savage enemies would not wander into the country to look for spoils and victims.
But these ladies were greatly mistaken. When de Lussan heard where they were, he sent out a body of men to make them prisoners and bring them back to him. They might not have any money or jewels in their possession, but as they belonged to good families who were probably wealthy, a good deal of money could be made out of them by holding them and demanding a heavy ransom for their release. So the ladies were all brought to town and shut up securely until theirfriends and relatives managed to raise enough money to pay their ransom and set them free, and then, I have no doubt, de Lussan advised them to go to church and offer up thanks for their happy deliverance.
As our high-minded pirate pursued his plundering way along the coast of South America, he met with a good many things which jarred upon his sensitive nature—things he had not expected when he started out on his new career. One of his disappointments was occasioned by the manners and customs of the English buccaneers under his command. These were very different from the Frenchmen of his company, for they made not the slightest pretence to piety.
When they had captured a town or a village, the Englishmen would go to the churches, tear down the paintings, chop the ornaments from the altars with their cutlasses, and steal the silver crucifixes, the candlesticks, and even the communion services. Such conduct gave great pain to de Lussan. To rob and destroy the property of churches was in his eyes a great sin, and he never suffered anything of the kind if he could prevent it. When he found in any place which he captured a wealthy religious community or a richly furnished church, he scrupulously refrained from taking anything or of doing damage to property, and contented himself withdemanding heavy indemnity, which the priests were obliged to pay as a return for the pious exemption which he granted them.
But it was very difficult to control the Englishmen. They would rob and destroy a church as willingly as if it were the home of a peaceful family, and although their conscientious commander did everything he could to prevent their excesses, he did not always succeed. If he had known what was likely to happen, his party would have consisted entirely of Frenchmen.
Another thing which disappointed and annoyed the gentlemanly de Lussan was the estimation in which the buccaneers were held by the ladies of the country through which he was passing. He soon found that the women in the Spanish settlements had the most horrible ideas regarding the members of the famous "Brotherhood of the Coast." To be sure, all the Spanish settlers, and a great part of the natives of the country, were filled with horror and dismay whenever they heard that a company of buccaneers was within a hundred miles of their homes, and it is not surprising that this was the case, for the stories of the atrocities and cruelties of these desperadoes had spread over the western world.
But the women of the settlements looked upon the buccaneers with greater fear and abhorrence thanthe men could possibly feel, for the belief was almost universal among them that buccaneers were terrible monsters of cannibal habits who delighted in devouring human beings, especially if they happened to be young and tender. This ignorance of the true character of the invaders of the country was greatly deplored by de Lussan. He had a most profound pity for those simple-minded persons who had allowed themselves to be so deceived in regard to the real character of himself and his men, and whenever he had an opportunity, he endeavored to persuade the ladies who fell in his way that sooner than eat a woman he would entirely abstain from food.
On one occasion, when politely conducting a young lady to a place of confinement, where in company with other women of good family she was to be shut up until their relatives could pay handsome ransoms for their release, he was very much surprised when she suddenly turned to him with tears in her eyes, and besought him not to devour her. This astonishing speech so wounded the feelings of the gallant Frenchman that for a moment he could not reply, and when he asked her what had put such an unreasonable fear in her mind, she could only answer that she thought he looked hungry, and that perhaps he would not be willing to wait until—And there she stopped, for she couldnot bring her mind to say—until she was properly prepared for the table.
"What!" exclaimed the high-minded pirate. "Do you suppose that I would eat you in the street?" And as the poor girl, who was now crying, would make him no answer, he fell into a sombre silence which continued until they had reached their destination.
The cruel aspersions which were cast upon his character by the women of the country were very galling to the chivalrous soul of this gentleman of France, and in every way possible he endeavored to show the Spanish ladies that their opinions of him were entirely incorrect, and even if his men were rather a hard lot of fellows, they were not cannibals.
The high-minded pirate had now two principal objects before him. One was to lay his hand upon all the treasure he could find, and the other was to show the people of the country, especially the ladies, that he was a gentleman of agreeable manners and a pious turn of mind.
It is highly probable that for some time the hero of this story did not succeed in his first object as well as he would have liked. A great deal of treasure was secured, but some of it consisted of property which could not be easily turned into cash or carried away, and he had with him a body of rapacious and conscienceless scoundrels who werecontinually clamoring for as large a share of the available spoils—such as jewels, money, and small articles of value—as they could induce their commander to allow them, and, in consequence of this greediness of his own men, his share of the plunder was not always as large as it ought to be.
But in his other object he was very much more successful, and, in proof of this, we have only to relate an interesting and remarkable adventure which befell him. He laid siege to a large town, and, as the place was well defended by fortifications and armed men, a severe battle took place before it was captured. But at last the town was taken, and de Lussan and his men having gone to church to give thanks for their victory,—his Englishmen being obliged to attend the services no matter what they did afterward,—he went diligently to work to gather from the citizens their valuable and available possessions. In this way he was brought into personal contact with a great many of the people of the town, and among the acquaintances which he made was that of a young Spanish lady of great beauty.
The conditions and circumstances in the midst of which this lady found herself after the city had been taken, were very peculiar. She had been the wife of one of the principal citizens, the treasurer of the town, who was possessed of a large fortune, and who lived in one of the best houses in the place; butduring the battle with the buccaneers, her husband, who fought bravely in defence of the place, was killed, and she now found herself not only a widow, but a prisoner in the hands of those ruthless pirates whose very name had struck terror into the hearts of the Spanish settlers. Plunged into misery and despair, it was impossible for her to foresee what was going to happen to her.
As has been said, the religious services in the church were immediately followed by the pillage of the town; every house was visited, and the trembling inhabitants were obliged to deliver up their treasures to the savage fellows who tramped through their halls and rooms, swearing savagely when they did not find as much as they expected, and laughing with wild glee at any unusual discovery of jewels or coin.
The buccaneer officers as well as the men assisted in gathering in the spoils of the town, and it so happened that M. Raveneau de Lussan, with his good clothes and his jaunty hat with a feather in it, selected the house of the late treasurer of the city as a suitable place for him to make his investigations. He found there a great many valuable articles and also found the beautiful young widow.
The effect produced upon the mind of the lady when the captain of the buccaneers entered her house was a very surprising one. Instead of beholdinga savage, brutal ruffian, with ragged clothes and gleaming teeth, she saw a handsome gentleman, as well dressed as circumstances would permit, very polite in his manners, and with as great a desire to transact his business without giving her any more inconvenience than was necessary, as if he had been a tax-collector or had come to examine the gas meter. If all the buccaneers were such agreeable men as this one, she and her friends had been laboring under a great mistake.
De Lussan did not complete his examination of the treasurer's house in one visit, and during the next two or three days the young widow not only became acquainted with the character of buccaneers in general, but she learned to know this particular buccaneer very well, and to find out what an entirely different man he was from the savage fellows who composed his company. She was grateful to him for his kind manner of appropriating her possessions, she was greatly interested in his society,—for he was a man of culture and information,—and in less than three days she found herself very much in love with him. There was not a man in the whole town who, in her opinion, could compare with this gallant commander of buccaneers.
It was not very long before de Lussan became conscious of the favor he had found in the eyes of this lady; for as a buccaneer could not be expected toremain very long in one place, it was necessary, if this lady wished the captor of her money and treasure to know that he had also captured her heart, that she must not be slow in letting him know the state of her affections, and being a young person of a very practical mind she promptly informed de Lussan that she loved him and desired him to marry her.
The gallant Frenchman was very much amazed when this proposition was made to him, which was in the highest degree complimentary. It was very attractive to him—but he could not understand it. The lady's husband had been dead but a few days—he had assisted in having the unfortunate gentleman properly buried—and it seemed to him very unnatural that the young widow should be in such an extraordinary hurry to prepare a marriage feast before the funeral baked meats had been cleared from the table.
There was but one way in which he could explain to himself this remarkable transition from grief to a new affection. He believed that the people of this country were like their fruits and their flowers. The oranges might fall from the trees, but the blossoms would still be there. Husband and wives or lovers might die, but in the tropical hearts of these people it was not necessary that new affections should be formed, for they were already there, and needed only some one to receive them.
As he did not undertake his present expedition for the purpose of marrying ladies, no matter how beautiful they might be, it is quite natural that de Lussan should not accept the proffered hand of the young widow. But when she came to detail her plans, he found that it would be well worth his while to carefully consider her project.
The lady was by no means a thoughtless young creature, carried away by a sudden attachment. Before making known to de Lussan her preference for him above all other men, she had given the subject her most careful and earnest consideration, and had made plans which in her opinion would enable the buccaneer captain and herself to settle the matter to the satisfaction of all parties.
When de Lussan heard the lady's scheme, he was as much surprised by her businesslike ability as he had been by the declaration of her affection for him. She knew very well that he could not marry her and take her with him. Moreover, she did not wish to go. She had no fancy for such wild expeditions and such savage companions. Her plans were for peace and comfort and a happy domestic life. In a word, she desired that the handsome de Lussan should remain with her.
Of course the gentleman opened his eyes very wide when he heard this, but she had a great deal to say upon the subject, and she had not omittedany of the details which would be necessary for the success of her scheme.
The lady knew just as well as the buccaneer captain knew that the men under his command would not allow him to remain comfortably in that town with his share of the plunder, while they went on without a leader to undergo all sorts of hardships and dangers, perhaps defeat and death. If he announced his intention of withdrawing from the band, his enraged companions would probably kill him. Consequently a friendly separation between himself and his buccaneer followers was a thing not to be thought of, and she did not even propose it.
Her idea was a very different one. Just as soon as possible, that very night, de Lussan was to slip quietly out of the town, and make his way into the surrounding country. She would furnish him with a horse, and tell him the way he should take, and he was not to stop until he had reached a secluded spot, where she was quite sure the buccaneers would not be able to find him, no matter how diligently they might search. When they had entirely failed in every effort to discover their lost captain, who they would probably suppose had been killed by wandering Indians,—for it was impossible that he could have been murdered in the town without their knowledge,—they would give him up as lost and press on in search of further adventures.
When the buccaneers were far away, and all danger from their return had entirely passed, then the brave and polite Frenchman, now no longer a buccaneer, could safely return to the town, where the young widow would be most happy to marry him, to lodge him in her handsome house, and to make over to him all the large fortune and estates which had been the property of her late husband.
This was a very attractive offer surely, a beautiful woman, and a handsome fortune. But she offered more than this. She knew that a gentleman who had once captured and despoiled the town might feel a little delicacy in regard to marrying and settling there and becoming one of its citizens, and therefore she was prepared to remove any objections which might be occasioned by such considerate sentiments on his part.
She assured him that if he would agree to her plan, she would use her influence with the authorities, and would obtain for him the position of city treasurer, which her husband had formerly held. And when he declared that such an astounding performance must be utterly impossible, she started out immediately, and having interviewed the Governor of the town and other municipal officers, secured their signature to a paper in which they promised that if M. de Lussan would accept the proposals which the lady had made, he would bereceived most kindly by the officers and citizens of the town; that the position of treasurer would be given to him, and that all the promises of the lady should be made good.
Now our high-minded pirate was thrown into a great quandary, and although at first he had had no notion whatever of accepting the pleasant proposition which had been made to him by the young widow, he began to see that there were many good reasons why the affection, the high position, and the unusual advantages which she had offered to him might perhaps be the very best fortune which he could expect in this world. In the first place, if he should marry this charming young creature and settle down as a respected citizen and an officer of the town, he would be entirely freed from the necessity of leading the life of a buccaneer, and this life was becoming more and more repugnant to him every day,—not only on account of the highly disagreeable nature of his associates and their reckless deeds, but because the country was becoming aroused, and the resistance to his advances was growing stronger and stronger. In the next attack he made upon a town or village he might receive a musket ball in his body, which would end his career and leave his debts in France unpaid.
More than that, he was disappointed, as has been said before, in regard to the financial successes hehad expected. At that time he saw no immediate prospect of being able to go home with money enough in his pocket to pay off his creditors, and if he did not return to his native land under those conditions, he did not wish to return there at all. Under these circumstances it seemed to be wise and prudent, that if he had no reason to expect to be able to settle down honorably and peaceably in France, to accept this opportunity to settle honorably, peaceably, and in every way satisfactorily in America.
It is easy to imagine the pitching and the tossing in the mind of our French buccaneer. The more he thought of the attractions of the fair widow and of the wealth and position which had been offered him, the more he hated all thoughts of his piratical crew, and of the dastardly and cruel character of the work in which they were engaged. If he could have trusted the officers and citizens of the town, there is not much doubt that he would have married the widow, but those officers and citizens were Spaniards, and he was a Frenchman. A week before the inhabitants of the place had been prosperous, contented, and happy. Now they had been robbed, insulted, and in many cases ruined, and he was commander of the body of desperadoes who had robbed and ruined them. Was it likely that they would forget the injuries which he had inflicted upon themsimply because he had married a wealthy lady of the town and had kindly consented to accept the office of city treasurer?
It was much more probable that when his men had really left that part of the country the citizens would forget all their promises to him and remember only his conduct toward them, and that even if he remained alive long enough to marry the lady and take the position offered him, it would not be long before she was again a widow and the office vacant.
So de Lussan shut his eyes to the tempting prospects which were spread out before him, and preferring rather to be a live buccaneer than a dead city treasurer, he told the beautiful widow that he could not marry her and that he must go forth again into the hard, unsympathetic world to fight, to burn, to steal, and to be polite. Then, fearing that if he remained he might find his resolution weakened, he gathered together his men and his pillage, and sadly went away, leaving behind him a joyful town and a weeping widow.
If the affection of the young Spanish lady for the buccaneer chief was sufficient to make her take an interest in his subsequent career, she would probably have been proud of him, for the ladies of those days had a high opinion of brave men and successful warriors. De Lussan soon proved that he was notonly a good fighter, but that he was also an able general, and his operations on the western coast of South America were more like military campaigns than ordinary expeditions of lawless buccaneers.
He attacked and captured the city of Panama, always an attractive prize to the buccaneer forces, and after that he marched down the western coast of South America, conquering and sacking many towns. As he now carried on his business in a somewhat wholesale way, it could not fail to bring him in a handsome profit, and in the course of time he felt that he was able to retire from the active practice of his profession and to return to France.
But as he was going back into the circles of respectability, he wished to do so as a respectable man. He discarded his hat and plume, he threw away his great cutlass and his heavy pistols, and attired in the costume of a gentleman in society he prepared himself to enter again upon his old life. He made the acquaintance of some of the French colonial officers in the West Indies, and obtaining from them letters of introduction to the Treasurer-General of France, he went home as a gentleman who had acquired a fortune by successful enterprises in the new world.
The pirate who not only possesses a sense of propriety and a sensitive mind, but is also gifted withan ability to write a book in which he describes his own actions and adventures, is to be credited with unusual advantages, and as Raveneau de Lussan possessed these advantages, he has come down to posterity as a high-minded pirate.