A. Hyatt Verrill

“ There is nothing to prove that Captain Kidd ever had any considerable treasure and the little he had was secreted on Gardiner’s Island and recovered by the men who employed Kidd and for whom it was intended. No, your old hero Kidd was not a pirate nor a buccaneer. On the contrary, he was a much [198] maligned man, a weak, rather cowardly chap, who was the tool of unscrupulous adventurers and paid the penalty for crimes that never were proved against him. And yet, strangely enough, he became noted as the most famous of all pirates and his name is a household word and the epitome of piracy. ”

“ Imagine a lone ship—and a half-burned, far from seaworthy galleon at that—going pirating in the Pacific where every town, every man, every ship was an enemy; where there was not a friendly harbor in which to lie; where Spanish warships were numerous; where there was no buccaneers’ lair in which to refit or provision and secure men, and where the buccaneers were completely cut off, separated by thousands of miles, from their own countrymen. ”

“ One night, for example, he was entertaining two cronies, one his sailing master and the other the pilot who had just brought the ship into port. All were in the best of spirits, smoking, drinking, spinning yarns of the sea in the tiny, stuffy cabin, when Blackbeard, without the least warning, suddenly whipped out a brace of pistols, cocked them, crossed his hands, and before his amazed guests [222] knew what he was about, he blew out the candle and fired his weapons in the direction of the astounded and terrified men. ”

“ On the 28th of January the glad cry came ringing from the masthead and, straining their eyes, the half dead men saw the faint and hazy outline of land upon the horizon. Then cheer after cheer rose from those thirst-cracked throats, the men forgot their troubles, their hunger, their ceaseless toil, for all recognized the welcome bit of earth as the island of Barbados.
“Marvelous indeed had been Ringrose’s navigation. Had he been equipped with a modern sextant, with the latest nautical almanacs and the most perfect chronometer, he could not have done better. ”

“ Martin and, in fact, every other buccaneers’ old haunt, pieces of money are picked up from time to time and from these finds the tales of buried treasure have originated. In all the reliable histories and chronicles of the buccaneers and pirates I have never found any statement or hint that would lead one to think that it was customary for the corsairs to bury or hide their loot. All the tales of pirate captains burying treasure at dead of night and shooting the men who dug the holes are pure fiction with no fact on which to base them. ”

“ Landing about one thousand men, Morgan attempted to take the place by land, but the Spaniards kept up a galling fire, the buccaneers were without provisions—as they had expected to live off their enemies—and at night a pouring rain came on, drenching the buccaneers to the skin. At this time, so tired, hungry and miserable were the men that, had the Dons but known it, they could easily have wiped out the buccaneers with a force of less than one hundred men, and no doubt had they done so Panama would have been saved. ”

“ Surrounded by the armed buccaneers, the prisoners—many of them tender, high-bred ladies and young children—were forced over the rough trail and across rivers. ‘Nothing,’ says Esquemeling, ‘was to be heard save the lamentations, cries, shrieks and doleful sighs of those who were persuaded that Morgan designed to transport them to his own country as slaves.’ Given barely enough food and water to sustain life, many of them wounded, all terrified and frightened, they were forced on by blows, curses, prods with swords or rawhide lashes. ”

“ Finding his ships could not enter the shallow harbor, Morgan embarked in boats and canoes and after terrific fighting silenced one fort after another and took the town. Then began an awful scene of butchery and torture. All that L’Ollonois had done in the stricken town before was repeated a hundredfold. The people, rounded up and shackled, were broken on the wheel, torn to pieces on the rack, spread-eagled and flogged to a pulp. Burning fuses were placed between their fingers and toes. ”

“ Now a packet in the West Indies
“Why, no!” cried Jack.
“How could that be?” demanded Fred.
“Very few people realize that we owe the buccaneers a tremendous debt of gratitude or that they played a most important part in the history of America. They may have been ruthless, cruel, bloodthirsty, unprincipled cut-throats, but if it had not been for the buccaneers the chances are that what is now the United States would have been a colony of Spain or a Spanish-American republic. It was very largely owing to the buccaneers that England retained her supremacy in the West Indies. ”

“ But it certainly is a wonderful example of the irony of fate to think of Kidd winning undying fame as a bold and ruthless pirate when—even if he were guilty—he could not have been charged with taking more than one ship, while others, who destroyed hundreds and ravaged the seas for years, have been totally forgotten. ”

“ Indeed, even Ringrose and his fellows, hardened to slaughter [143] and bloodshed as they were, were amazed at the butchery they had wrought, and, in their journals, Ringrose and Dampier state that ‘blood ran down the decks in whole streams and not one place upon the ships was found that was free of blood.’ And yet this victory, this awful carnage, had been carried out by sixty-eight buccaneers in frail canoes and small boats, truly a most marvelous feat of daring and bravery, and, more remarkable yet, the buccaneers’ losses amounted to but eighteen killed and twenty-two wounded! ”

“ Nevertheless Brasiliano was a brave, a resourceful and a most remarkable man and performed some most noteworthy exploits. On one occasion he was cruising off the coast of Yucatan when a violent storm drove his ship upon the rocks, and he and his men escaped with only their muskets and a slender stock of ammunition. They landed on a desolate, uninhabited stretch of coast midway between Campeche and the Gulf of Triste and, quite undeterred by their plight, commenced an overland march towards the Gulf exactly as Portugues had done. ”

“ Among the shrubbery one may still pick up bits of glass and china, hinges and locks, buttons and stray coins, even an occasional [118] pistol barrel or sword hilt, all warped, misshapen, melted by the flames that wiped Old Panama from the map when Morgan, in his rage, fired the richest city of New Spain and left death and destruction, smoldering ruins and distorted bleeding corpses to testify to the most wanton, ruthless deed ever perpetrated by a buccaneer. ”

“ The French sent out a governor and there at the very threshold of the Dons’ richest possession the handful of buccaneers lived and plied their trade. But although they were composed of half a dozen different races, one and all hated the Spaniards and soon, not content with buccaneering, they became ambitious and with reckless bravery set out in small canoes with the intention of capturing Spanish ships. It seems incredible that these rough, untrained hunters could seize a heavily armed ship swarming with sailors and soldiers, but nevertheless they did. ”

“ Finally, consider the temptation that ever spurred them on and excited their passions and their worst instincts. Gold and riches were to be had for the taking, the Dons were legitimate prey, and they were beyond the pale of the law, if not actually protected by the authorities. Take a crowd of sailors to-day, give them arms and a ship, and license to kill, rob and destroy, and you would find them as reckless, as cruel and as devilish as the old buccaneers, if not more so. And much of their success depended upon the reputation they had for cruelty. ”

“ Le Grand, however, was neither a brutal nor a bloodthirsty wretch, as were many of his successors, and, having impressed as many of the Spanish seamen into his service as he required, he set the others, including the Admiral and the officers, ashore, and set sail with his prize for France. So great was the booty he secured by this one coup that he gave up buccaneering and settled down in France for life. ”

“ Those who had no treasures whose hiding place they could divulge died under their torments, and those who confessed were too far gone to recover. For three terrible weeks this awful work went on, the buccaneers sparing neither young nor old, men, women or children, and daily scouring the countryside to bring new victims to the torture chambers. Then, satisfied he had every cent that it was possible to secure, Morgan loaded his remaining prisoners on his ships and sailed for Gibraltar as L’Ollonois had done. ”

“ As Esquemeling puts it, ‘Yea, few there were but wished themselves at home or at least free from the obligation of that engagement wherein they perceived their lives must be narrowly concerned.’ But they had come too far, had undergone too many hardships, and had the richest city of the New World too near, to falter or turn back and, knowing no quarter would be given them, they swore a solemn oath to fight until death. ”

“ Above the placid Chagres’ mouth old Fort San Lorenzo still frowns down. Its quaint sentry boxes jut from the battered walls; the great guns lie rusting and corroded in the crumbling embrasures; [117] piles of round shot are overgrown with weeds and vines; the cisterns where the Dons dipped the water to quench the flames caused by that blazing arrow are still there. Within the dungeons are rusty leg irons, manacles and heavy chains; the patched walls, where Morgan’s toiling prisoners repaired the breaches of his buccaneers’ attack, are plainly visible ”

“ Fiction has kept alive such men as Morgan, while others, who were far more worthy of being perpetuated, are unknown to the world at large. As I said before, Sharp and his men outdid every other buccaneer and yet not one person in a thousand ever heard of them or the ‘most dangerous voyage.’ ”
“But it seems to me they were really pirates,” said Fred. “They knew the war was over and it was a low, mean trick to tell the Indians to kill the prisoners after the Spaniards had treated them so well.” ”

“ No doubt they were defeated repeatedly and nothing said of the matter, and if the Spaniards’ story were told it might read very differently. Now that I have told you of Morgan, of the ruthless buccaneers, such as Portugues, L’Ollonois and their kind, let me tell you of the most remarkable expedition ever undertaken by the buccaneers; a trip without a parallel in history [130] and which, for sheer daredevil bravery, indomitable courage, splendid seamanship and wonderful adventures is worthy of a place in the history of the greatest navigators and discoverers of the world. ”

“ The Earl of Cumberland, a graduate of Oxford with the degree of M.A., a wealthy peer, romantic, picturesque, a courtier, a noted gambler and a man of tremendous personal strength and courage. In his youth he had taken part in the attack on the Spanish Armada under Drake and had been made a Knight of the Garter and was a great favorite with Queen Elizabeth. In fact, through some favor, the queen had presented the Earl with one of her gloves—a claret-colored, diamond-studded thing which the dashing adventurer invariably wore tucked through the band of his broad-brimmed plumed hat. ”

“ Women, unable to endure, fell upon their knees and implored Morgan to permit them to go back to their loved ones to live in huts of straw as they had no houses left, but to one and all he replied, with a laugh, that he came not to hear lamentations and cries but to gain money. Often, the women and children would stagger and fall, and if unable to rise were pistoled or run [114] through, the others staggering over their dead bodies. And yet, in the midst of this awful march, Morgan exhibited that strange paradoxical nature of his and performed a gallant and commendable act. ”

“ A pirate is any one who preys upon shipping or steals merchandise in a boat, and he may be and usually is a sneaking, cowardly rascal without a redeeming feature. Moreover, a pirate preys on any one and every one, and while some pirates, such as the Vikings, confined their forays to certain nations and their ships and did not molest others, yet most pirates loot, murder and destroy with impartiality and fall upon their own countrymen or others alike. But the buccaneers were very different. ”

“ It is the hardest thing in the world to down tradition and oddly enough the more false tradition is the harder it seems to be to correct it. Despite everything, Kidd will, no doubt, continue to remain the favorite pirate of romance and story, and to the end of time Kidd’s treasure will still, in imagination, be buried here, there and everywhere along the coasts.
“We scarcely ever hear of ‘Blackbeard’s treasure,’ of ‘Morgan’s treasure’ or of ‘Bonnet’s treasure,’ although each and every one of those rascals was a pirate and took vast sums and may [199] have buried their loot for all we know. ”

“ After tremendous efforts he managed to withdraw these nails and with infinite patience whetted them against stones until he secured a sharp knifelike edge. Just think of that, boys, when you read of modern hardships endured by men left to their own resources in a forest. Imagine rubbing a ship’s spike back and forth upon a stone until it has been transformed into a knife! ”

“ Her high and ornately gilded poop was in the way, and with axes and hatchets the buccaneers hacked and chopped away the galleries and moldings, knocked off a tier or two of cabins and, hastily boarding it up, mounted guns with their grim muzzles protruding from what once had been the stained glass windows. Ports were cut in bulwarks and topsides, the decks were stripped of all unnecessary gear, the rigging was overhauled, and the ship with the holy name was ready for her most unholy work. ”

“ CHAPTER III MORGAN AND HIS ROAD TO FAME
“Ugh!” exclaimed Jack, as his father ceased speaking. “Wasn’t he the most awful creature! Gosh, I always thought the buccaneers were brave men and heroes.”
“There is no question of their bravery,” replied Mr. Bickford, “and L’Ollonois was an exceptionally cruel villain. But as a rule the buccaneers were no more cruel or bloodthirsty than the Spaniards or even their more respectable countrymen. You must remember that human standards have changed a great deal since the days of the buccaneers. In their time human life was held very cheaply. ”

“ They cruised along the coast, captured all the ships they saw and either sunk them or, cutting away all but one mast, filled them with their prisoners and set them adrift to sink or sail as the fates decreed. Sharp at times showed intense cruelty, and whenever priests were taken he ordered them butchered out of hand and often tossed them overboard while still living. Ringrose says, ‘Such cruelties, though I abhorred very much in my heart, yet here was I forced to hold my tongue as having no authority to oversway them.’ And they captured many a town, too. ”