VSpring came on Ocracoke, and the adventure sap stirred in Blackbeard’s veins. He stood it until the end of May, then tore his oath in two, kicked the Act of Grace in the face, flung the skull and crossbones to his masthead and sailed off for Charles Town, his minion sloops dancing and bobbing on the waves beside him. He was going shopping, if you please, for medical supplies, a great necessity by reason of his fleet’s method of living and working. He was going to honor Charles Town with his patronage.While this happy surprise for the little colonial seaport was coming around the sea-washed bulk of Cape Fear, a Mr. Wragg and a Mr. Marks, on board a merchantman, were slipping across the Charles Town bar, bound for England. Both were prominent local gentlemen, Mr. Wragg being nothing less than an assemblyman. There were several other passengers on the list, while in the ship’s chest were seven thousand five hundred dollars in broad gold coins and pieces-of-eight.Mr. Marks stood at the stern of the ship and looked a long time at the old town as it dropped away behind them.“Neighbor Wragg,” said he with a gently melancholic sigh, “it will be many a day before we tread the streets of Charles Town again.”Mr. Wragg squeezed his friend’s hand sympathetically.“Only a twelvemonth perhaps,” he suggested. “Take courage, Marks.”They were both poor guessers. Instead of twelve months it was less than twelve days a good deal when Mr. Marks again looked his fellow citizens in the eye and face-to-face. If somebody had told his fortune at cards that night he might have truthfully said that a dark man was coming across the water to see him.“Do you see what I see?” asked the captain of the mate next day, as the gray light of morning was turning all the waters to the look of molten slate. The mate gazed northward.“I count four of ’em,” he said slowly. “Looks like they’re coming right for us.”They were. Very soon a shot whistled over the nightcap of Mr. Marks, who had thrust his head from his cabin with that sense of something amiss peculiar to shipboard.“Heave back the tops’ls,” growled the master.The sails flatted down, and the ship came to. She was quickly circled by Blackbeard’s fleet. The skull grinned amiably at them as the black flag stood out tautly in the wind. Somebody shouted something from the pirate ships; and the merchant captain ordered the boat lowered, andwith two of the crew to row him set off for the marauding flagship.“I’ve been pirated in these waters twenty times,” grumbled the captain, steering with an oar, “so I know what they want.”The pirates wanted everything. They put a prize crew over on the captured brig. Mr. Marks was paged.“Mistah Blackbeard’s compliments, suh,” grinned a big black fellow, looking coy in a hat made of a twisted red silk handkerchief, “and if you be Mistah Marks, suh, will you be so ’bliging as to step over to his ship.”Mr. Marks, with pallid face, looked pathetically at Mr. Wragg, whose sympathy was again subjected to a heavy sight draft.“Why didn’t he send for you, Wragg?” he complained unheroically. “You’re a councilor—you’ve got the precedence.”Mr. Wragg patted him on the shoulder encouragingly.“I’ll advise your family, Marks, if anything happens,” he said kindly; “but I’m sure it won’t.”He felt pretty sure it would.All stood in for Charles Town. Mr. Wragg once or twice thought he saw Mark’s hand waving at him from Blackbeard’s ship, where he and the merchant captain were detained. Or was it poor Mark’s nightcap tossed in a dreadful struggle with the villains? Who could tell?Captors and captives lay at the bar; and Blackbeard sent the longboat off to town, carrying Mr. Marks under guard of Richards and half a dozen nasty rascals. The astonishment of the town was unwordable when it saw the respectable Marks in company so dreadful.But when they heard what Mr. Marks had to tell them their astonishment turned to fighting wrath. For Blackbeard ordered four hundred pounds’ worth of medical supplies delivered to Richards or, first, Mr. Marks would be shot on the spot; second, Mr. Wragg’s head and those of all the other passengers would arrive by the next boat; third, the pride of the province, Charles Town itself, would be blown from its foundations.Governor Johnson was a strong man, and his council were strong men; but here was a puzzle for them. Sixteen years before this they had beaten off the French invaders with a courage that is notable in the history of municipalities; but now the gun was right straight at them, and it looked like hands up.Things were stirring about in Blackbeard’s fleet as well as in the town. Especially when two days went by and no word came over to the bar from Richards or Marks. On the evening of that day, Blackbeard, steeped in rum, lined his hostages along the deck and raved and thrust his awful beard into their faces and generally behaved in a most ungenteel manner.“Shake your heads, my pretty landlubbers,” he bellowed; “shake ’em while they’re on your necks, for if Richards don’t come back in the mornin’ your heads will go to town at noon.”The wretched part of it was that the ruffian meant what he said.A messenger came from Richards, however, in the morning, and so reprieved Mr. Wragg and his fellows for a few hours more. The messenger stated that in going from the bar to town the boat in which Marks was being taken capsized and there had been no end of trouble and delay in getting ashore. Further that the provincial council had been called together and were debating Blackbeard’s proposition.Another day or so of strain and another silence from the town. Again Blackbeard stamped about and waved his cutlass and carried on as any obstreperous and brutal drunk might be apt to do. Oh, for a king’s ship to happen along as chucker-out! But king’s ships, like the night watch, are generally anywhere but where they’re needed.Blackbeard filed the frightened hostages forth again. This time he had the machinery of their destruction ready,—a huge black, his great-muscled right arm bare to the shoulder, his hand hefting a bright cutlass. Blackbeard, perched on a keg of powder, beckoned to his captives in mocking solicitude.“Step up, pretties,” he leered, “and get your hair cut.”This was no opera, comic or otherwise. It was a situation to be met, and immediately. One whom history does not remember spoke up. “Cap’n Blackbeard,” said he, talking for his life, “we’ve decided if you’ll be so good as to let us, to join with you if you’re going to take the town. We’ll help you. They’ve betrayed us for a few pills and powders, so we owe them nothing.”“Spoke like a man,” said Blackbeard. “You’re proper men; you’ll be real cocks of the old game. Heave the anchor and shot the guns—the tide will be right in an hour.”Perhaps this was not a heroic subterfuge; but let those judge who have been hostages, helpless in the hands of such a desperado. It saved the lives of a number of folk. For ere the tide lifted them over the bar the longboat returned with Richards, the pirate boatmen and great piles of all sorts of medicines. The town had capitulated. There would come another day, it properly figured, and its wisdom was justified by the event.Blackbeard left the merchant brig and its passengers rocking at the bar, but by an unfortunate oversight he sailed off with the ship’s chest containing the gold coins and the pieces-of-eight.Partnership was dissolved soon after leaving Charles Town. Blackbeard had already apparently decided to abdicate the cocked hat of anadmiral and assume the subordinate rank of a captain. He planned to concentrate his power in his one vessel.So without concern he returned the dissatisfied Bonnet to theRevengeand recalled Richards and the hardiest members of theRevenge’spersonnel, leaving Bonnet with half a dozen hands of indifferent expertness to work the sloop.That accounted for one of his three tenders. The second he resolved to abandon at Topsail Inlet, on his way to Ocracoke. This he effected in the regular Blackbeard fashion by ordering it driven ashore at Topsail Inlet and wrecked. Her crew might make what escape they could from the mess. They could not argue with the forty muzzles of his guns, so crack went the sloop’s hull upon the rocks, while Blackbeard lay by and laughed at the men struggling in the surf.These unfortunates at once went to work saving the sloop’s food and powder, which hard labor was no sooner ended than Blackbeard stood in and came ashore in the boat. He took all the salvaged stores and every first-class seaman among the men and left, leaving nearly a score of his late followers destitute and marooned on a wild and isolated beach. In this way Blackbeard paid for faithfulness.The castaways had nothing to do but huddle about the sand and hope for help. It did not occur to them to go back into the wilderness behind them, perhaps because, as sailors, theywould not trust themselves to any but their wonted environment, perhaps also for the reason that the unsettled interior promised them even scantier succor than the wide sea before them, on which a coastwise ship might possibly be attracted by their signals. So they lay around listening to thecreak-creak-creakof the occasional sea gull, the thumping and swirling of the inrushing waves and the cracking of the ship’s gear and planking.Before serious privation befell them, however, the hoped-for sail fluttered out of the horizon. They took the shirts from their backs and hopped vehemently up and down the beach and flew to the headlands in a frenzy of inarticulate appeal.Joy unspeakable; they saw the topsails heaved back and the ship come to! Saved! The men massed at the very edge of the water and stared hard at the boat which now put off and came swinging in toward them.“If it ain’t Major Bonnet!”There was a kind of pleasure in the way they said this as the boat’s crew could be identified. They had never expected that the commander of the oldRevengecould ever have looked so good to them. A dozen welcoming hands pulled at the bow of his boat when it grated on the sand.“A dirty deal, boys,” said the major; “a dirty deal to leave ye all like this—all governors of a maroon island.”That was a loved witticism of the major;marooning with him was always to be invested with the dignity of governor of the maroon sand-spit. He had quite a turn for pleasantry. He chuckled, and then got down to business.“Getting to the point, my lads,” he continued, “let us leave this outlaw life which has brought us nothing but grief. Come with me to St. Thomas in the Indies, and we’ll get a privateering commission there against the Spanish dogs, and show ’em the kind of metal that is in a British cutlass.”He put a punch into his proposition by explaining, sympathetically but firmly, that if they refused his offer he would be quite obliged to sail away and leave them still in the governorship of Topsail Inlet.Nobody wanted that distinction, and the marooned left in boatloads for Bonnet’s ship. As they came under her bows they marked that the nameRevengehad been painted out, and in its place were the words,Royal James, being the major’s compliment to the Pretender and a vivid indication of the major’s politics.The tide crept in and washed the last heel mold out of the sands of Topsail Inlet, where the gulls were left to peck speculatively at the protruding nails and tangled cordage of the battered ship, the while they wondered at the ways of that queer creature, Man.Commons were lean on theRoyal James. When the rescued pirates found that there wasnot very much to eat on the ship, the first gush of joy at their deliverance sloughed off quickly.“Ye see, men,” Bonnet explained, “the pantry is pretty low. The first job of a sailorman is to eat, so we may have to stop somebody on our way to St. Thomas and beg a bite.”A very reasonable suggestion.“Somebody” appeared before the cruise was very old. He showed no concern, however, to answer their hail but jammed up into the wind and sped away. That was certainly no proper sea courtesy.To teach the rude fellows a lesson in manners, theRoyal Jamesswung behind and followed fast, and as pursuit was quite in her line she soon pulled down the fleeing traveler and with a shot across his bow brought him to with a bang. Bonnet shoved alongside and soon stuffed his hold and his men with quarters of beef and barrels of rum.That was a fair start. All waist belts were comfortably tight; drooping corners of lips went up and the old zest for piracy swelled and rippled like a flood tide in the veins of the men of theRoyal James. So when with a grin the captain sped the black flag up the lines the general contentment was not grievously shaken.Two Bermuda-bound ships were pulled in the day following the first capture, and the day after that they picked up a fourth. The tally of takes now began to run up smartly. Inside of a weekfive ships were looted, from which a number of recruits were made, including negroes who were delegated to the pumps and the menial jobs with the status of slaves, and whose signs to the sloop’s articles were not invited.Here is a typical haul from one craft: Twenty-six hogsheads and three barrels of rum, valued at fifteen hundred dollars; twenty-five hogsheads of molasses, worth seven or eight hundred dollars; three barrels of sugar, value one hundred and fifty dollars; cotton, indigo, wire cable of varying values, a small amount of French and Spanish coins, one pair of silver buckles and one silver watch. Thus, you see, the boys cleaned up systematically from the hold to the captain’s waistcoat pocket.They peddled their merchandise alongshore, where the business, though more risky than in a happier day, was still keen. They grabbed vessels on the high seas or at anchor in way ports. One captured in the latter situation was theFrancis, and here is her mate, Mr. Killing, who is anxious to tell us himself just how it all happened. Proceed, Mr. Killing.“The 31st of July (1718) between nine and ten of the clock, we came to an anchor about fourteen fathom of water.... In about half an hour’s time I perceived something like a canoo: So they came nearer. I said, here is a canoo a-coming; I wish they be friends. I haledthem and asked them whence they came? They said captain Thomas Richards from St. Thomas’s....“They asked me from whence we came? I told them from Antegoa. They said we were welcome.” (Pirates certainly loved their little joke!) “I said they were welcome, as far as I knew.” (Which you observe was not very far. A man of careful statement, this Mr. Killing.) “So I ordered the men to hand down a rope to them. So soon as they came on board they clapped their hands to their cutlasses; and I said we are taken. So they cursed and swore for a light. I ordered our people to get a light as soon as possible....“When they came into the cabin the first thing they begun with was the pineapples, which they cut down with their cutlasses. They asked me if I would not come and eat along with them? I told them I had but little stomach to eat. They asked me why I looked so melancholy? I told them I looked as well as I could—” (Before we smile at the worthy mate let us wonder a moment how we would have looked in the same fix.)“They asked me what liquor I had on board. I told them some rum and sugar. So they made bowls of punch and went to drinking the Pretender’s health, and hoped to see him king of the English nation—” (This was doubtless the result of Major Bonnet’s treasonable propaganda. Here was an incipient navy for the Pretender had he only known it.) “They then sunga song or two. The next morning ... they hoisted out several hogsheads of molasses and several hogsheads of rum. In the after part of the day two of Bonnet’s men were ordered to the mast to be whipt....“Then Robert Tucker came to me, and told me I must go along with them. I told him I was not fit for their turn, neither were my inclinations that way. After that Major Bonnet himself came to me, and told me I must either go on a maroon shore” (no doubt with his usual little jest about the governorship) “or go along with them, for he designed to take the sloop (Francis) with him.“That evening between eight and nine we were ordered to set sail, but whither I knew not. So we sailed out that night, and I being weary with fatigue, went to sleep; and whether it was with a design or not I can not tell, but we fell to leeward of theRevenge(Royal James); and in the morning Major Bonnet took the speaking trumpet, and told us if we did not keep closer he would fire in upon us and sink us. So then we proceeded on our voyage till we came to Cape Fear.”Thank you, Mr. Mate; you have given us an interesting and living picture of just how these wretches went about their dirty work.
Spring came on Ocracoke, and the adventure sap stirred in Blackbeard’s veins. He stood it until the end of May, then tore his oath in two, kicked the Act of Grace in the face, flung the skull and crossbones to his masthead and sailed off for Charles Town, his minion sloops dancing and bobbing on the waves beside him. He was going shopping, if you please, for medical supplies, a great necessity by reason of his fleet’s method of living and working. He was going to honor Charles Town with his patronage.
While this happy surprise for the little colonial seaport was coming around the sea-washed bulk of Cape Fear, a Mr. Wragg and a Mr. Marks, on board a merchantman, were slipping across the Charles Town bar, bound for England. Both were prominent local gentlemen, Mr. Wragg being nothing less than an assemblyman. There were several other passengers on the list, while in the ship’s chest were seven thousand five hundred dollars in broad gold coins and pieces-of-eight.
Mr. Marks stood at the stern of the ship and looked a long time at the old town as it dropped away behind them.
“Neighbor Wragg,” said he with a gently melancholic sigh, “it will be many a day before we tread the streets of Charles Town again.”
Mr. Wragg squeezed his friend’s hand sympathetically.
“Only a twelvemonth perhaps,” he suggested. “Take courage, Marks.”
They were both poor guessers. Instead of twelve months it was less than twelve days a good deal when Mr. Marks again looked his fellow citizens in the eye and face-to-face. If somebody had told his fortune at cards that night he might have truthfully said that a dark man was coming across the water to see him.
“Do you see what I see?” asked the captain of the mate next day, as the gray light of morning was turning all the waters to the look of molten slate. The mate gazed northward.
“I count four of ’em,” he said slowly. “Looks like they’re coming right for us.”
They were. Very soon a shot whistled over the nightcap of Mr. Marks, who had thrust his head from his cabin with that sense of something amiss peculiar to shipboard.
“Heave back the tops’ls,” growled the master.
The sails flatted down, and the ship came to. She was quickly circled by Blackbeard’s fleet. The skull grinned amiably at them as the black flag stood out tautly in the wind. Somebody shouted something from the pirate ships; and the merchant captain ordered the boat lowered, andwith two of the crew to row him set off for the marauding flagship.
“I’ve been pirated in these waters twenty times,” grumbled the captain, steering with an oar, “so I know what they want.”
The pirates wanted everything. They put a prize crew over on the captured brig. Mr. Marks was paged.
“Mistah Blackbeard’s compliments, suh,” grinned a big black fellow, looking coy in a hat made of a twisted red silk handkerchief, “and if you be Mistah Marks, suh, will you be so ’bliging as to step over to his ship.”
Mr. Marks, with pallid face, looked pathetically at Mr. Wragg, whose sympathy was again subjected to a heavy sight draft.
“Why didn’t he send for you, Wragg?” he complained unheroically. “You’re a councilor—you’ve got the precedence.”
Mr. Wragg patted him on the shoulder encouragingly.
“I’ll advise your family, Marks, if anything happens,” he said kindly; “but I’m sure it won’t.”
He felt pretty sure it would.
All stood in for Charles Town. Mr. Wragg once or twice thought he saw Mark’s hand waving at him from Blackbeard’s ship, where he and the merchant captain were detained. Or was it poor Mark’s nightcap tossed in a dreadful struggle with the villains? Who could tell?
Captors and captives lay at the bar; and Blackbeard sent the longboat off to town, carrying Mr. Marks under guard of Richards and half a dozen nasty rascals. The astonishment of the town was unwordable when it saw the respectable Marks in company so dreadful.
But when they heard what Mr. Marks had to tell them their astonishment turned to fighting wrath. For Blackbeard ordered four hundred pounds’ worth of medical supplies delivered to Richards or, first, Mr. Marks would be shot on the spot; second, Mr. Wragg’s head and those of all the other passengers would arrive by the next boat; third, the pride of the province, Charles Town itself, would be blown from its foundations.
Governor Johnson was a strong man, and his council were strong men; but here was a puzzle for them. Sixteen years before this they had beaten off the French invaders with a courage that is notable in the history of municipalities; but now the gun was right straight at them, and it looked like hands up.
Things were stirring about in Blackbeard’s fleet as well as in the town. Especially when two days went by and no word came over to the bar from Richards or Marks. On the evening of that day, Blackbeard, steeped in rum, lined his hostages along the deck and raved and thrust his awful beard into their faces and generally behaved in a most ungenteel manner.
“Shake your heads, my pretty landlubbers,” he bellowed; “shake ’em while they’re on your necks, for if Richards don’t come back in the mornin’ your heads will go to town at noon.”
The wretched part of it was that the ruffian meant what he said.
A messenger came from Richards, however, in the morning, and so reprieved Mr. Wragg and his fellows for a few hours more. The messenger stated that in going from the bar to town the boat in which Marks was being taken capsized and there had been no end of trouble and delay in getting ashore. Further that the provincial council had been called together and were debating Blackbeard’s proposition.
Another day or so of strain and another silence from the town. Again Blackbeard stamped about and waved his cutlass and carried on as any obstreperous and brutal drunk might be apt to do. Oh, for a king’s ship to happen along as chucker-out! But king’s ships, like the night watch, are generally anywhere but where they’re needed.
Blackbeard filed the frightened hostages forth again. This time he had the machinery of their destruction ready,—a huge black, his great-muscled right arm bare to the shoulder, his hand hefting a bright cutlass. Blackbeard, perched on a keg of powder, beckoned to his captives in mocking solicitude.
“Step up, pretties,” he leered, “and get your hair cut.”
This was no opera, comic or otherwise. It was a situation to be met, and immediately. One whom history does not remember spoke up. “Cap’n Blackbeard,” said he, talking for his life, “we’ve decided if you’ll be so good as to let us, to join with you if you’re going to take the town. We’ll help you. They’ve betrayed us for a few pills and powders, so we owe them nothing.”
“Spoke like a man,” said Blackbeard. “You’re proper men; you’ll be real cocks of the old game. Heave the anchor and shot the guns—the tide will be right in an hour.”
Perhaps this was not a heroic subterfuge; but let those judge who have been hostages, helpless in the hands of such a desperado. It saved the lives of a number of folk. For ere the tide lifted them over the bar the longboat returned with Richards, the pirate boatmen and great piles of all sorts of medicines. The town had capitulated. There would come another day, it properly figured, and its wisdom was justified by the event.
Blackbeard left the merchant brig and its passengers rocking at the bar, but by an unfortunate oversight he sailed off with the ship’s chest containing the gold coins and the pieces-of-eight.
Partnership was dissolved soon after leaving Charles Town. Blackbeard had already apparently decided to abdicate the cocked hat of anadmiral and assume the subordinate rank of a captain. He planned to concentrate his power in his one vessel.
So without concern he returned the dissatisfied Bonnet to theRevengeand recalled Richards and the hardiest members of theRevenge’spersonnel, leaving Bonnet with half a dozen hands of indifferent expertness to work the sloop.
That accounted for one of his three tenders. The second he resolved to abandon at Topsail Inlet, on his way to Ocracoke. This he effected in the regular Blackbeard fashion by ordering it driven ashore at Topsail Inlet and wrecked. Her crew might make what escape they could from the mess. They could not argue with the forty muzzles of his guns, so crack went the sloop’s hull upon the rocks, while Blackbeard lay by and laughed at the men struggling in the surf.
These unfortunates at once went to work saving the sloop’s food and powder, which hard labor was no sooner ended than Blackbeard stood in and came ashore in the boat. He took all the salvaged stores and every first-class seaman among the men and left, leaving nearly a score of his late followers destitute and marooned on a wild and isolated beach. In this way Blackbeard paid for faithfulness.
The castaways had nothing to do but huddle about the sand and hope for help. It did not occur to them to go back into the wilderness behind them, perhaps because, as sailors, theywould not trust themselves to any but their wonted environment, perhaps also for the reason that the unsettled interior promised them even scantier succor than the wide sea before them, on which a coastwise ship might possibly be attracted by their signals. So they lay around listening to thecreak-creak-creakof the occasional sea gull, the thumping and swirling of the inrushing waves and the cracking of the ship’s gear and planking.
Before serious privation befell them, however, the hoped-for sail fluttered out of the horizon. They took the shirts from their backs and hopped vehemently up and down the beach and flew to the headlands in a frenzy of inarticulate appeal.
Joy unspeakable; they saw the topsails heaved back and the ship come to! Saved! The men massed at the very edge of the water and stared hard at the boat which now put off and came swinging in toward them.
“If it ain’t Major Bonnet!”
There was a kind of pleasure in the way they said this as the boat’s crew could be identified. They had never expected that the commander of the oldRevengecould ever have looked so good to them. A dozen welcoming hands pulled at the bow of his boat when it grated on the sand.
“A dirty deal, boys,” said the major; “a dirty deal to leave ye all like this—all governors of a maroon island.”
That was a loved witticism of the major;marooning with him was always to be invested with the dignity of governor of the maroon sand-spit. He had quite a turn for pleasantry. He chuckled, and then got down to business.
“Getting to the point, my lads,” he continued, “let us leave this outlaw life which has brought us nothing but grief. Come with me to St. Thomas in the Indies, and we’ll get a privateering commission there against the Spanish dogs, and show ’em the kind of metal that is in a British cutlass.”
He put a punch into his proposition by explaining, sympathetically but firmly, that if they refused his offer he would be quite obliged to sail away and leave them still in the governorship of Topsail Inlet.
Nobody wanted that distinction, and the marooned left in boatloads for Bonnet’s ship. As they came under her bows they marked that the nameRevengehad been painted out, and in its place were the words,Royal James, being the major’s compliment to the Pretender and a vivid indication of the major’s politics.
The tide crept in and washed the last heel mold out of the sands of Topsail Inlet, where the gulls were left to peck speculatively at the protruding nails and tangled cordage of the battered ship, the while they wondered at the ways of that queer creature, Man.
Commons were lean on theRoyal James. When the rescued pirates found that there wasnot very much to eat on the ship, the first gush of joy at their deliverance sloughed off quickly.
“Ye see, men,” Bonnet explained, “the pantry is pretty low. The first job of a sailorman is to eat, so we may have to stop somebody on our way to St. Thomas and beg a bite.”
A very reasonable suggestion.
“Somebody” appeared before the cruise was very old. He showed no concern, however, to answer their hail but jammed up into the wind and sped away. That was certainly no proper sea courtesy.
To teach the rude fellows a lesson in manners, theRoyal Jamesswung behind and followed fast, and as pursuit was quite in her line she soon pulled down the fleeing traveler and with a shot across his bow brought him to with a bang. Bonnet shoved alongside and soon stuffed his hold and his men with quarters of beef and barrels of rum.
That was a fair start. All waist belts were comfortably tight; drooping corners of lips went up and the old zest for piracy swelled and rippled like a flood tide in the veins of the men of theRoyal James. So when with a grin the captain sped the black flag up the lines the general contentment was not grievously shaken.
Two Bermuda-bound ships were pulled in the day following the first capture, and the day after that they picked up a fourth. The tally of takes now began to run up smartly. Inside of a weekfive ships were looted, from which a number of recruits were made, including negroes who were delegated to the pumps and the menial jobs with the status of slaves, and whose signs to the sloop’s articles were not invited.
Here is a typical haul from one craft: Twenty-six hogsheads and three barrels of rum, valued at fifteen hundred dollars; twenty-five hogsheads of molasses, worth seven or eight hundred dollars; three barrels of sugar, value one hundred and fifty dollars; cotton, indigo, wire cable of varying values, a small amount of French and Spanish coins, one pair of silver buckles and one silver watch. Thus, you see, the boys cleaned up systematically from the hold to the captain’s waistcoat pocket.
They peddled their merchandise alongshore, where the business, though more risky than in a happier day, was still keen. They grabbed vessels on the high seas or at anchor in way ports. One captured in the latter situation was theFrancis, and here is her mate, Mr. Killing, who is anxious to tell us himself just how it all happened. Proceed, Mr. Killing.
“The 31st of July (1718) between nine and ten of the clock, we came to an anchor about fourteen fathom of water.... In about half an hour’s time I perceived something like a canoo: So they came nearer. I said, here is a canoo a-coming; I wish they be friends. I haledthem and asked them whence they came? They said captain Thomas Richards from St. Thomas’s....“They asked me from whence we came? I told them from Antegoa. They said we were welcome.” (Pirates certainly loved their little joke!) “I said they were welcome, as far as I knew.” (Which you observe was not very far. A man of careful statement, this Mr. Killing.) “So I ordered the men to hand down a rope to them. So soon as they came on board they clapped their hands to their cutlasses; and I said we are taken. So they cursed and swore for a light. I ordered our people to get a light as soon as possible....“When they came into the cabin the first thing they begun with was the pineapples, which they cut down with their cutlasses. They asked me if I would not come and eat along with them? I told them I had but little stomach to eat. They asked me why I looked so melancholy? I told them I looked as well as I could—” (Before we smile at the worthy mate let us wonder a moment how we would have looked in the same fix.)“They asked me what liquor I had on board. I told them some rum and sugar. So they made bowls of punch and went to drinking the Pretender’s health, and hoped to see him king of the English nation—” (This was doubtless the result of Major Bonnet’s treasonable propaganda. Here was an incipient navy for the Pretender had he only known it.) “They then sunga song or two. The next morning ... they hoisted out several hogsheads of molasses and several hogsheads of rum. In the after part of the day two of Bonnet’s men were ordered to the mast to be whipt....“Then Robert Tucker came to me, and told me I must go along with them. I told him I was not fit for their turn, neither were my inclinations that way. After that Major Bonnet himself came to me, and told me I must either go on a maroon shore” (no doubt with his usual little jest about the governorship) “or go along with them, for he designed to take the sloop (Francis) with him.“That evening between eight and nine we were ordered to set sail, but whither I knew not. So we sailed out that night, and I being weary with fatigue, went to sleep; and whether it was with a design or not I can not tell, but we fell to leeward of theRevenge(Royal James); and in the morning Major Bonnet took the speaking trumpet, and told us if we did not keep closer he would fire in upon us and sink us. So then we proceeded on our voyage till we came to Cape Fear.”
“The 31st of July (1718) between nine and ten of the clock, we came to an anchor about fourteen fathom of water.... In about half an hour’s time I perceived something like a canoo: So they came nearer. I said, here is a canoo a-coming; I wish they be friends. I haledthem and asked them whence they came? They said captain Thomas Richards from St. Thomas’s....
“They asked me from whence we came? I told them from Antegoa. They said we were welcome.” (Pirates certainly loved their little joke!) “I said they were welcome, as far as I knew.” (Which you observe was not very far. A man of careful statement, this Mr. Killing.) “So I ordered the men to hand down a rope to them. So soon as they came on board they clapped their hands to their cutlasses; and I said we are taken. So they cursed and swore for a light. I ordered our people to get a light as soon as possible....
“When they came into the cabin the first thing they begun with was the pineapples, which they cut down with their cutlasses. They asked me if I would not come and eat along with them? I told them I had but little stomach to eat. They asked me why I looked so melancholy? I told them I looked as well as I could—” (Before we smile at the worthy mate let us wonder a moment how we would have looked in the same fix.)
“They asked me what liquor I had on board. I told them some rum and sugar. So they made bowls of punch and went to drinking the Pretender’s health, and hoped to see him king of the English nation—” (This was doubtless the result of Major Bonnet’s treasonable propaganda. Here was an incipient navy for the Pretender had he only known it.) “They then sunga song or two. The next morning ... they hoisted out several hogsheads of molasses and several hogsheads of rum. In the after part of the day two of Bonnet’s men were ordered to the mast to be whipt....
“Then Robert Tucker came to me, and told me I must go along with them. I told him I was not fit for their turn, neither were my inclinations that way. After that Major Bonnet himself came to me, and told me I must either go on a maroon shore” (no doubt with his usual little jest about the governorship) “or go along with them, for he designed to take the sloop (Francis) with him.
“That evening between eight and nine we were ordered to set sail, but whither I knew not. So we sailed out that night, and I being weary with fatigue, went to sleep; and whether it was with a design or not I can not tell, but we fell to leeward of theRevenge(Royal James); and in the morning Major Bonnet took the speaking trumpet, and told us if we did not keep closer he would fire in upon us and sink us. So then we proceeded on our voyage till we came to Cape Fear.”
Thank you, Mr. Mate; you have given us an interesting and living picture of just how these wretches went about their dirty work.