A. Hyatt Verrill

“ Viewing the island from the sea, one would scarcely dream that a human being dwelt upon this mid-sea pinnacle, but a thousand feet above the water, snugly hidden in an extinct crater as though dropped from the clouds, is a delightfully neat, pretty, and typical Dutch village, which, with the habitual upsidedownness of the Sabans, is called “The Bottom” because it is at the top!
Completely out of the world is Bottom, and yet it is doubtful if any town on earth can boast that so large a percentage of its people have traveled far and wide. ”

“ Under the very trees that still rear their green crowns above the ruins the groans of tortured men, the screams of ravished women, and the drunken shouts of rum-crazed rioters have rent the air.
As far as is known, no one has ever salvaged any treasure from Trade Wind Cay. The limestone rock is honeycombed with cavities and caverns wherein whole ships’ cargoes might be stored and none the wiser. But if the pirates hid it here, they hid it well indeed, although so superstitiously afraid of the place are the natives that they would never dare to search. ”

“ But San Jerome had been built with all the art and skill of the best Spanish engineers; it had been devised to guard the treasures of New Spain, and to guard them well. No ship could enter the port without passing under its guns; no man could approach by land without exposing himself to the [303] ever-watchful sentries and a withering fire of musketry and cannon. It was not only a castle and a group of forts but a citadel as well—a vast pile of massive walls, of moats and battlements, of out jutting sentry-boxes—and ever garrisoned with a thousand men or more. ”

“ Wild was the life that ebbed and flowed in St. Barts in Montbars’s day. Gustavia’s harbor swarmed with swift, long-sparred pirate craft; in the sheltered coves the buccaneers repaired and refitted their ships; under the palms along the beach their rude shelters of sail-cloth were raised, and here after many a long cruise and desperate battle they came to divide their loot and squander it. ”

“ Barely sixty miles of water separates Porto Rico from Santo Domingo,—or, as the Spaniards called it, Hispaniola,—and midway in this strait lies the island of Mona, from which the passage takes its name. Barren, gray, and forbidding, Mona is little more than a mass of austere rock rising above the sea, with Monita or Little Mona at her feet. The only signs of life are the lighthouse and the flocks of screaming sea-birds, but there is a stunted growth of scrub upon the island, and hunting-parties come here at times ”

“ But one and all have been done with an eye to personal gain and not for the good of the world or of the countries where it controls politics, finances, policies, and the very existence of the inhabitants. Like every trust, it is utterly selfish, and in Jamaica it has a strangle hold, controlling business and people, body and soul. With the octopus-like grip of this colossus on the lands about the Caribbean, there can be no successful competition, no open market, no independent profitable enterprise where fruit, and especially bananas, are concerned. ”

“ If I could have my heart’s desire, I should, I think, choose to spend my declining years sailing the Spanish Main in a swift and handy ship, cruising aimlessly, touching where fancy willed, free as one of the swift-winged frigate-birds, untrammeled as the leaping porpoises.
Being possessed of a passion for the sea and for the ships that sail thereon, and with an even greater [63] fondness for my familiar and beloved Caribbean, I can well understand why the buccaneers loved their wild life. ”

“ Alarmed and chagrined to think that the hated British had cracked the vault they had thought so safe, the Spanish had the castle strengthened and enlarged; more heavy guns were mounted and the garrison increased, and the Dons again breathed freely. For sixty years and six the treasure lay safe; the mighty walls resisted all assaults; the cannon roared defiance, and above the battlements Spain’s banner of blood and gold defied the world. ”

“ Within its walls Morgan as well as Nelson and many a lesser light have dwelt and drunk the health of the king, and through storm and battle and cataclysms its walls and battlements have passed unscathed. The earthquake of 1692 wrought devastation and took thousands of lives, but left the old fort solid and strong. And even in 1907, when in a space of a few seconds modern Kingston crumbled to dust and newer forts fell like houses of cards, the flower-decked old fortress at the tip of the Palisados remained unharmed save for a single crack in one of its hoary walls. ”

“ Vigilant’s keel! Treasure, too, might be there—plate and bullion, precious stones and pearls, which had gone down with the sinking galleons ere the pirates had time to complete their pillage. There, deep in the ooze or on the hard shell sand, they would lie forever: dull, corroded ingots of silver, bars of gold, priceless gems, doubloons and onzas and pieces of eight that men had slaved and murdered and tortured and fought for, then had lost to the world forever. ”

“ To-day, when the water is calm, one may still trace the coral-incrusted outlines of the ruined town, while the negro boatmen relate uncanny tales of ghostly pirate ships sailing in the teeth of the wind, riding the crest of storms, ever striving to make the lost port, and of the phantom bells of the pirates’ church tolling the requiem of the dead buccaneers beneath the tempestuous waves. ”

“ The nations, outraged by the effrontery of the pirates, joined forces to wipe them from the seas, and after many a gory battle the lairs of the buccaneers were cleaned up. Here and there a pirate ship still sailed the Caribbean and flew the black flag. On jungle-covered, out-of-the-way cays whose ownership had never been determined, the remnants of the Brethren still had secret retreats. From hiding-places among the reefs or landlocked coves those who survived dashed forth to murder and to pillage unsuspecting merchantmen, but the power of the buccaneers was broken. ”

“ Spread like a map in a great green bowl, surrounded on every side with towering peaks, are neatly walled, carefully tended gardens, and in the center the toy village of white, red-roofed houses separated by narrow lanes between cañon-like walls of stone. Here, in a temperate climate of perpetual June, the fair-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked people dwell, with a few yellow-brown and black Sabans as well, and here, a thousand feet above the surf, they raise potatoes, strawberries, and many Northern vegetables and fruits, as well as all those of the tropics. ”

“ Martin is, in the vernacular of the buccaneers, a “passinge longe sayle,” a run of nearly one hundred miles across the heaving Atlantic rollers surging in through the Anegada Passage. But to one who loves the sea, the tang of salt spray high-flung by a plunging bow, and the heave of a tossing deck, it is a glorious sail. The Vigilant made fine weather of it, and sixteen hours after low-lying Anegada dropped below the horizon astern Anguilla rose like a cloud above the sea before us. ”

“ Indeed, Jamaica’s prosperity was built upon the business of the corsairs, and the port was scarcely more than a clearing-house for them.
Here came the Brethren of the Main from far and near, bringing their treasures: chests of plate and bullion, doubloons, onzas, and castellanos; pieces of eight and louis d’or; altar-pieces ablaze with precious stones; bales of velvets and satins, of silks and brocades; casks of brandy and wines, tobacco [263] and coffee; the cargo of many a scuttled ship and galleon; the booty from many a ravished and sacked town ”

“ Faint and phantasmal as a vision it hangs above the waves, beautiful as a painting by a master’s hand, as slowly the hills and valleys take on form and substance. Opulently rich, with wooded mountain sides, wide fields of golden cane, and endless banana walks, it is as fair a scene as one could hope to see. As the Vigilant bore steadily toward Kingston, and we watched valley after valley, wave-washed beaches, surf-beaten crags, and endless rows of palms unfold before us, the island seemed a veritable earthly paradise. ”

“ But if the meticulous Ringrose could but step into Panama to-day he would find it a very different city from the one he knew. Along the smooth asphalt streets pass scores of jitneys, motor-cars, and rumbling trolley-cars. Busy shops and great stores line the narrow sidewalks, electric lights blaze everywhere at night, people of every color and nationality throng the thoroughfares; motor-driven fire-engines, glorious in red and gold, dash clangingly to infrequent fires. ”

“ Knowing the reef, familiar with its narrow passages, the pursued could sail in safety to their anchorage while their disgruntled enemies, confronted by the deadly ring of coral, and usually in vessels far too large to pass through even had they known the way, turned back utterly baffled.
Throughout the days of buccaneering—yes, even in the days of that first of all sea-rovers who was neither buccaneer nor pirate, but who paved the way for the buccaneers, Sir Francis Drake—Anegada and its surrounding reef-filled waters was a favorite resort of freebooters. ”

“ Yet we may dwell in the very hostelry wherein pirate chieftains reveled and spent their ill-gotten gold; we stroll through little towns which have echoed to the ribald songs and lusty shouts of roistering pirate crews; we sail, in palatial steamships, above the long-forgotten hulks of burned and scuttled galleons, and we haggle with shopkeepers or native boatmen in whose veins may flow the blood of Morgan, Hawkins, or Montbars. ”

“ There is little of the intensely tropical vegetation, the luxuriance and riot of color one associates with the West Indies; and while the mountains are rugged, impressive, cut by stupendous cañon-like valleys, and in places wildly grand, the great forests of gigantic trees, the feeling of being in an untamed wilderness, and the charm of the primeval are lacking. One feels, no matter where he may be upon this island, that Man has conquered it, that there is nothing novel or unusual about it. ”

“ But the pirates’ church, built from the proceeds of robbery and murder, is gone like its builders beneath the sea; the once-busy docks are silent and all but deserted; the warehouses, once [262] filled with casks and bales and barrels, are empty save for rusting chains, bits of cordage, and other odds and ends; the great sail-lofts are bare, and the whole place has the air of a town aloof, communing with itself over its sins and errors of the past, and, like some once-famous courtesan, living in a state of faded gentility away from prying eyes and wagging tongues. ”

“ How different was the Port Royal of olden days—a flourishing, noisy, hustling town of several thousand houses, of thousands of inhabitants, of great warehouses filled almost to bursting, of busy shipyards and a “hard” whereon always a dozen vessels might be seen careened; a port before which scores of armed ships rode ever at anchor; a place whose people were as familiar with the Jolly Roger as with the British ensign; and withal the notorious rendezvous of the English buccaneers. ”

“ Above the beach with the lazily lapping waves, modern Port Royal straggles upon the low, sandy point, a sleepy, sun-drenched spot of no importance save as a barracks and quarantine station. It is hard to realize, as one strolls through the roughly paved lanes or across the broiling-hot parade-ground, that this was once the chief port in the West Indies, the richest city in the New World, and one whose name was synonymous with every deviltry and vice known to man. ”