We were within a day’s sail of Jamaica. At the setting of the sun we had seen, even from our low vessel, the distant outline of the Blue Mountains. Peralta had the middle watch. I roused up about an hour and a half before sunrise, and found the piragua heaving upon smooth, oily swells, all unruffled even by a puff of wind. There was a great dank mist around us, packing upon the water as thick as smoke from a man-of-war’s broadside, and the very air seemed loaded with chill damp. I walked up and down the small fore deck of the piragua, trying, in my thin garments, to keep myself warm, and whistling for a breeze to blow away to leeward the filthy fog, which seemed, as it were, to enclose us round, and to cling and settle in its densest volume about the piragua. Standing at the bows, I could not see the stern, and as for the heads of the sails they were lost in the thick opaque air. It was curious to gaze out upon the water as the black looking undulations of the sea rolled under us, the mist seeming to rise and fall with them, and sometimes boiling and eddying from the motion of the waves, although not a breath of wind strayed over the ocean. I might have been upon duty about half an hour, when I almost leaped from the deck with amazement to hear suddenly, coming from whence I knew not, but ringing shrilly through the thick air, a loud cry or scream, like that uttered by a man in mortal anguish.
‘Disco,’ I shouted, ‘did you hear that? What was that cry?’
But the Indian, instead of answering me, stood dumb and trembling, as though struck with terror. Instantly the cry was repeated, and even louder and more vehemently than before.
‘It is a spirit,’ said the Indian. ‘It is some bad spirit of the fog. It will come to us and kill us.’
[Pg 339]
But I heeded not the superstition of the ignorant creature, and made but one bound to where Peralta lay sound asleep, clutching and shaking him to arouse him, and telling him in the same breath that there was either a ship or a boat close aboard of us in the fog. The pearl merchant and Jenipa were upon their legs in a moment, and for the space of about ten minutes we listened with all our ears, but heard no sound, other than the flapping of our sails and the creaking of the yards, as they rubbed and swayed against the masts. It was odd that, although both Disco and myself heard the cry so distinctly repeated, we neither of us could tell the direction from which it appeared to come. Perhaps the fog affected sounds passing through it. At all events, although we got out the oars, we knew not in which way to row, so as to put as much sea as possible between a ship which might very likely be an enemy, and which would certainly be more than a match for the light piragua and her crew of four. All this while the dawn was gradually brightening through the mist; the fog, which before was of a pitchy darkness, becoming gradually of a pale grey hue, and then lifting and opening here and there, so as to show lanes, as it were, and patches of clear air, which, in the next moment, would be again filled up by rolling masses of the vapour. However, the mist was evidently thinning as the sun approached to the horizon, and we watched warily to catch the first glimpse of our unknown neighbour. Presently, the fog began to change its cold white hue for a tinge or blush of warm and golden light, which appeared, as it were, to penetrate and pervade the vapour, and by which we knew that the sun had risen; while, at the same time, our glimpses into the ever-shifting lanes and clear spaces continually being formed by the motion of the seething wreaths and masses of vapour, becoming every moment longer and clearer—Peralta, who was standing upon the starboard gunwale of the piragua, suddenly exclaimed, in a low, earnest tone:
‘There! look there!’
We all turned round at once, and saw, not thirty[Pg 340] fathoms from us, the dusky broadside and towering rigging of a ship. She was gracefully rocking upon the long seas, the mist all curling round her, and floating, as it appeared, in blurring patches and masses among her extended sails, so that the masts and all the fabric of spars and canvas which they bore were half lost in the bewildering vapour. We had no time, however, to make any very minute examination of the stranger. She saw us as soon as we saw her, and half a dozen men, clustering into the main rigging, shouted out, in French and English, that we should pull the piragua alongside. I looked at Peralta. He slightly shrugged his shoulders. ‘If there were but a bladder full of wind,’ he said.
‘Ho! the piragua ahoy!’ was now again hailed from the strange ship—‘come alongside, d’ye hear, or it will be the worse for you.’
This threat had hardly been uttered, when, as if to back it, a cannon was fired from the maindeck, and we heard the ball, with a loud whistling hiss, pass above our masts. But the discharge of that gun had an effect which seemed almost miraculous upon the fog, clearing away, and, as it were, condensing and annihilating, by the shock of the explosion the vapour all around—so that we saw, very plainly, a goodly ship of three masts, carrying at least twelve cannons upon a side, with topsails and top-gallant-sails spread, but the yards braced clumsily, the canvas ill set, and much of the rigging in a loose and disorderly condition—the jib indeed hanging in great festoons down from the bowsprit—so that when the ship plunged by the head, the canvas dipped into the sea, from which it would presently arise, the water pouring from the belly of the sail as from a tub. On board this disorderly-looking craft there seemed to be a great swarm of men, who suddenly clustered upon the bulwarks and in the rigging to gaze at us, and one of whom, a varlet with long unkempt hair and torn and dirty linen doublet, suddenly screamed out—
‘Why, comrades, never believe your eyes—if it be not Old Rumbold, of Port Royal in Jamaica, and Heaven[Pg 341] knows how many places besides. What cheer, Old Rumbold?—Hast been a privateering in a bark canoe—or chaffering with and cheating the honest Indians of the Main?’
Peralta seemed in no way put out by this recognition, for he immediately took off his hat very gallantly, and called out that he was heartily glad to meet with so many friends and gallant gentlemen adventurers on the high seas. Upon which the men on board the ship cheered lustily, and shouted to Peralta or Rumbold that he was an honest fellow, and that he must come aboard, with all his people, and that we should have a jovial cruise together. I watched the pearl-merchant, and saw that he was in reality much concerned at this unexpected stoppage of our voyage.
‘Had it not been for that cursed fog,’ he whispered, ‘this would not have happened. But these fellows are savages if their temper be crossed. We must e’en row with the tide and humour them.’
Accordingly the piragua was speedily floating alongside the great ship, and, following Rumbold, as I may now call him, I clambered up the high sides. But what a sight did the deck present to me—a sailor hitherto accustomed to orderly vessels. Strewn everywhere about were great heaps of luggage and ship stores—trunks and mails mingled with coils of rope, and masses of sails—buckets, boat anchors, flags, handspikes, and what not—while, tumbled hither and thither in this chaos, sprawled more than a score of drunken seamen, some of them fast asleep and snoring, with empty bottles and glasses still grasped in their hands—others, still sitting up, babbling and singing, in maudlin fashion, over their liquor—or disputing fiercely with thickened speech and bloodshot eyes. The relics of a feast lay scattered over the decks, slippery with the wine and liquors spilt upon them. There were broken glasses and empty flasks, the smashed fragments of tobacco-pipes, divers dice-boxes, and packs of greasy cards. But the principal object on which my attention dwelt was the form of a stalwart, big-limbed[Pg 342] sailor, who lay with his head resting on the knee of a man who was tending a hurt upon his temples. Looking more closely, I saw that the wounded man had received a desperate slash with a knife, which had laid open the side of his forehead and part of the cheek, narrowly missing the eye. From this gash the blood was pouring fast, while the surgeon, for such he was, who tended the wounded man, cleaned the ghastly cut, from time to time, with sponges dipped in hot water, while he prepared his instruments to sew it up. The patient was insensible, breathing hard and loud, and having his glazed eyes open, and gleaming with a wild, vacant stare. As I gazed, I immediately comprehended that it was the cry uttered by this man, as he was wounded, which had alarmed us in the piragua, and looking towards the bows, I saw a fellow, with his doublet-sleeve all bloody, being marched off in custody by a group of his comrades—all high in oath at the cowardly hound of a Portuguese, (as they called him,) who had used his knife instead of his fists in a quarrel among friends.
Meantime, Rumbold seemed to be heartily welcomed by the more sober part of the crew, with the captain, as I judged him, at their head. This captain was a long gaunt man, with a slouching gait, and lank black hair falling straight down upon his shoulders. He had such a squint that it was, as I afterwards knew, a common saying in the ship about Le Chiffon Rouge—for such he, being a Frenchman, was called—that no one could tell at any moment whether he was looking forward or aft, up to the vane on the mast-head, or down into the hold. This ill-favoured personage—for besides his squinting eye he had an ugly hare lip, showing tusks which would not have been out of place in the jaw of a boar,—this ill-favoured personage, I say, protested loudly that his good friend Rumbold must positively sail out the cruize with them—that he would not be denied—and that the hills of Jamaica being in sight, for the mist had rapidly cleared away with the rising of the sun, the two Indians could very well carry home the piragua, while hammocks would[Pg 343] be slung aboard for the worthy pearl merchant and his friend—meaning me. The captain was well seconded in these propositions by the chief mate, who was an Englishman, a coarse, fat personage, with bristling red hair, a ferocious expression, and a loud harsh voice. He was called Jerry, and I soon found that he was the real commander of the ship; Le Chiffon Rouge yielding to his judgment in all cases of emergency, and the pair keeping very close together. Now, for my own part, I was much puzzled to know the reason of this welcome, which was so much warmer than we wished for. If the ship was a friendly one, why did not she go her way and leave us to go ours, instead of detaining us prisoners; for that was what the affair actually came to, on board. I saw that Rumbold’s countenance was clouded, and that, although he put a good face on the matter, he would have freely given a round sum for a start of a league or so in the piragua. But wishing was useless. The Indians, who continued in the canoe, were, to their great astonishment, ordered to run for Port Royal, and to take word that Mr. Rumbold had joined the good ship, ‘Saucy Susan,’ for a short run down by the Mosquito coast, and that she might be expected in Jamaica in a few weeks. By this time the morning trade-wind was beginning to blow, and the piragua speedily crept away, wafted by its first faint fannings. Then Jerry suddenly began to bestir himself—
‘Here,’ he shouted, ‘here men, clear away the decks, fore and aft. You, boatswain, get the yards braced, and put all things aloft ship-shape and Bristol fashion. What! d——n my eyes, is the ship to be always in this cursed mess? Here, you two boatswain’s mates, come and kick these drunken hogs. Overboard with barrel and bucket. Draw water, will you, and souse these fellows who are littering the deck, soundly. Curse and confound me, but a parcel of wild Indians would have more decency aboard ship! Doctor, how is that fellow’s skull? We shall serve out the thief who cut him, presently. Come, men, look alive there, or by all the devils[Pg 344] dancing in hell, I’ll make you feel the flat of my cutlass!’
At this energetic speech there was a general bustle on deck. About half of the drunken fellows staggered to their feet, and began to tumble about, half asleep, lurching and pitching against each other, owing to the roll of the ship.
‘Quick, will you there!’ Jerry roared; ‘get the buckets full, and baptise these brandy kegs;’ pointing to the drunkards, who were still sleeping. In a minute a dozen pails were over the ship’s sides, and immediately, amid shouts of jeering and laughter, copious floods of the cooling brine were dashed over the heads and bodies of the snorers, who started up all bewildered, shouting and spluttering, half-choked, and swearing at such scurvy treatment. However, in a few minutes a wonderful transformation was effected—the decks were cleared—those of the crew who had not sufficiently slept off their debauch to be able to resume their duty, were tumbled down the hatches to their hammocks—the yards were braced properly for the course which we were lying—a steady-looking old seaman was at the wheel, and the ‘Saucy Susan’ began to move slowly upon her course, rising heavily to the seas, and butting at them with her great broad bows as they came rolling past.
Meantime, I kept alongside of Rumbold—to whom the captain was explaining, with great gravity, that having last night taken a small Spanish sloop, aboard which there was very excellent wine, the greater part of the crew had been drunk all night, a thing, he admitted, not very seamanlike: ‘But what then—what could he do? Messieurs les aventuriers would have their way.’ Presently, however, stepping forward to confer with Jerry, who was certainly bringing the ship into hand again, in the style of a man who knows his business, Rumbold whispered to me:
‘I know something of this ship. She is manned by the worst set of rogues who sail from Jamaica. There may be some honest men aboard, but both the Frenchman and Jerry, his mate, are as great rascals as ever rode colt[Pg 345] foaled of an acorn, and I doubt it not but that a crew of their choosing will be found to match bravely.’
I inquired what he thought were the reasons which induced them to detain us on board?
‘Why, as to that,’ says he, ‘I doubt not but that some of the rogues have a shrewd guess where I come from, and that I have pearls of price about me. I hardly think they would rob me openly and divide the booty in the face of day, but there are dozens of these cursed jail birds who would think no more of drawing a knife across a man’s weasand while he slept, if that would help them to filch a brass-farthing’s worth, than I would of smoking a whiff of tobacco.’
Then Rumbold asked whether I recognised the young fellow who first hailed him by name? and presently pointed him out, laughing and talking to Jerry. ‘I know the rascal well,’ said the pearl merchant. ‘He hath nimble wits and nimble fingers. I warrant ’twas he first tipped Jerry and the captain the wink in this matter. If it be so, depend upon it that the three intend to keep the thing snug to themselves, and share the plunder—that is, if they can get it.’
Our converse was broken up by the captain and mate walking aft together. The vessel was by this time put into proper trim, and standing on her course, with sails very well set, and swelling gaily in the breeze. The mate looked to windward. ‘I think the weather will hold steady,’ he said. Immediately, the captain shouted out to the boatswain to call all hands, and, presently, in answer to that shrill, sharp whistle, which penetrates down to the very keel of a ship, the crew tumbled upon deck, most of them being by this time sober enough, and trooped aft to the break of the poop, upon which Le Chiffon Rouge and Jerry stood. The ship was then hove to, with her broad maintop-sail laid to the mast, and Le Chiffon Rouge taking off his three-cornered hat, as it was the custom of the captain of a privateer to do when he addressed the whole crew, began to speak in a smooth, plausible fashion, to this effect—
[Pg 346]
‘Last night, gentlemen, as you well know, the “Saucy Susan” captured a Spanish sloop, out of which we took what we wanted, and then dismissed her. You cannot complain, any of you, that you had not as much of the good wine which we found aboard the sloop, as you could swill, with plenty of time and space to drink it in. But, gentlemen, here hath an ugly accident turned out in your revelry, and which it behoves me to inquire into. One of our honourable company hath drawn his knife, and wounded a comrade, in his cups, and that, by all the rules of privateersmen, must be punished. It is not that I much care about a kick on the shins, or a box on the ears, given or taken when the wine cup is full, and the dice-box rattling—but cold steel, comrades, we must keep for the Spaniards, and not get into the habit of polishing our knives against each other’s ribs.’
The crew applauded this address, which seemed reasonable enough; but Rumbold whispered to me, that he would lay his life upon it that either Le Chiffon Rouge, or Jerry, had some cause of spite against the Portuguese; otherwise, said he, the whole ship’s company might hack the flesh off each other’s bones without interference.
‘Now then,’ continued the scowling captain, ‘some of you fetch Vasco, of Lisbon, hither, and Doctor, do you bring up Shambling Ned.’ So, in a few minutes, the Portuguese, with his hands tied behind him, was hurried along the deck, and the wounded man came out of the cabin, leaning upon the surgeon, and looking very pale, his blood still clotted in jelly-looking masses among his long hair. Vasco, in spite of his great name, seemed to me to be as hang-dog looking a rascal as ever I saw, with a low flat forehead, and only one eye. He was a lithe, slightly made young fellow, with a thin, ragged beard and drooping moustache. When he was confronted with the captain and Jerry, the latter cast a look upon him so full of hate and spite, that I soon perceived that Rumbold was in the right in his conjecture. The Portuguese never appeared to notice the wounded man at all.
‘Now, then,’ the captain began, ‘you, Shambling Ned,[Pg 347] ‘tell us how you came by that trench upon your forehead.’
But Shambling Ned, who was, as I have said, a stout seaman, but with a hitch in his gait, from whence he obtained his nickname, gave but a very confused account of the transaction. What between the quantity of wine which he had drunk, and the quantity of blood which he had lost, his wits appeared to be still gone a wool-gathering, and all that he could say was, that he had been playing dice for small stakes with the Portuguese, when they had a quarrel about a cast, and that blows had passed; but who had struck first he really did not know; that in the middle of the scuffle, however, when they were staggering about among their comrades and tripping over the masses of goods and stores which lay upon the deck, he suddenly saw a knife in the hand of his adversary, and, almost at the same instant, he had received the violent cut upon his head, from which the hot blood came pouring down; that after that he knew nothing, until he was brought to himself by the smart of the surgeon’s instrument sewing up the wound.
The evidence of several of the seamen was then taken, but they all gave different accounts; some maintaining that Vasco had begun the fray, and others that Shambling Ned had first seized up a knife himself, so that I saw very plainly that the whole affair was the effect of a drunken squabble, in which one was probably as much to blame as another. At last, however, the young man who had recognised Rumbold, stood forth, and I saw very plainly the glance of intelligence which passed between him and Jerry.
‘Now for Tommy Nixon’s testimony,’said the captain; ‘and I warrant that he will speak more to the purpose than these noddies there, who seem to make no more use of their eyes than if they were boiled gooseberries!’
So Nixon began to speak in a low, whining sort of tone, professing great regret for the disturbance, and particularly that Vasco, whom he said he loved as though he had been his own brother, should have so shamefully[Pg 348] outraged all the laws observed by gentlemen adventurers. Still the truth was the truth; and if he must tell what he knew, it was this, that Vasco having tried to cheat Shambling Ned out of the piece of eight which they were playing for, and having been reproached by the latter for his meanness, had straightway hit Ned in the face; and that when Ned had risen to his feet to defend himself, the Portuguese had immediately drawn his knife and struck the blow, swearing at the same time that he would like to do as much for every Englishman on board the ship.
At this, the Portuguese, who had hitherto stood, with downcast looks, listening to all the evidence, burst out in violent wrath, sputtering vehemently forth his broken English, and almost screaming in his excitement—
‘That a lie—a lie, a lie!’ he shouted. ‘A lie, Nixon—Jerry tell you say that—you liars both I—I no wish to stab my shipmates, but Jerry hate me, and you Jerry friend—and you lie!’
There was a murmur among the men, for it was not difficult to see that Jerry and Nixon had great influence over them, and many a clenched hand was raised against the Portuguese, who, I believe, had certainly cut open Ned’s head, not, however, with premeditation, but in the scuffle and the heat of blood. Meantime, Nixon turned up his eyes to heaven, and shook his uplifted hands, as who should say, ‘Patience—patience, friends, I can afford to bear the calumny.’ Not so Jerry, however. His nature was different; and so, dashing down his hat upon the deck in his rage, with his moustaches bristling, and his flashing eyes fixed upon the culprit, he roared—
‘Here be a pitiful hound of a Portuguese for you, who dare raise his murdering arm to stab a freeborn Englishman, and then asperse the witnesses of the cruel deed! If he remain unpunished for it, I leave this ship, and I would advise all them who don’t take the part of the white-livered scoundrel to do the same—that is, if they don’t want to feel his murdering knife tickling their ribs!’
[Pg 349]
‘Jerry,’ cried out Vasco, all at once, ‘I know what you mean very well. You no care for either blow or stab, that you no get yourself. You stab Nickel, the Dutchman, in Tortugas; you shoot John Cox off St. Christopher’s. You a pretty fellow to talk!’
But here Jerry interrupted him. ‘Now, then,’ he roared, ‘what are you about there, that you don’t clap a marline-spike in the fellow’s jaws? I suppose he intends to bully us out of the ship!’
Instantly half-a-dozen stout fellows threw themselves upon Vasco, who still, however, contrived, before he was effectually gagged, to yell out in broken sentences—
‘Jerry—I say, Jerry—you do this because I prevent you marry my countrywoman, who keep tavern at Tortugas, and tell her, you have one, two, three wife already!’
But Jerry’s orders were speedily obeyed, and the Portuguese—with a stout rope passed through his mouth, keeping the jaws wide open, and made fast to the back of his head—could only grin and flash his one eye upon his successful persecutor. Jerry was now in his glory. His ugly face was all lighted up with the excitement of gratified spite; and roaring to the men, that now they would teach a cowardly Portuguese to lift his hand upon his betters he proposed that, as a punishment for what he had done, Vasco should be made to run the gauntlet, from the mizen-mast forward to the heel of the bowsprit and back again. This proposal was received with acclamations by the rest of the crew, most of whom were brutal fellows enough, and quite under the thumb of Jerry, who, as I have said, was really captain, though he pretended to be only second in command; and so, presently, Le Chiffon Rouge, after whispering to his mate, ordered an old pair of topgallant-sail haulyards to be cut up into lengths of about three feet each. This was soon done, and then each man was armed with a piece of the strong stiff rope, with which, of course, one could strike as with a cudgel. The culprit eyed all these preparations in sulky silence, and made no resistance, even when Jerry[Pg 350] himself, with a devil-like leer of delight in his eyes, tore off his doublet and shirt, leaving his swarthy back bare for the blows which awaited it.
‘That man,’ whispered Rumbold to me, indicating Jerry, ‘is as great a fool as he is a brute. These Portuguese are not the fellows to forget a scar marked upon their backs. Sooner or later, unless he have very marvellous good luck, the knife which cut open Shambling Ned’s head will make itself acquainted with Mr. Jerry’s inward anatomy also.’ In this remark I very cordially agreed; but Jerry seemed to be under very little uneasiness on the score, for he went joking about, showing the men how to grasp the ropes, so as to lay on the most vigorous cuts. The punishment of running the gauntlet is one which its executors can make as light or as heavy as they choose; and in the present instance the culprit did not seem, judging from most of the faces around him, to have much to hope for; while those of the crew who had, perhaps, given and received over many knife-slashes themselves, to have any very great horror of the crime, stood too much in awe of Jerry to favour the culprit.
At length, all being in readiness, and the crew, to the number of fifty-five, ranged in a double line, one on the larboard and the other on the starboard side of the deck, the hands of the Portuguese were tied behind him, and his ankles hampered so as to prevent his taking but little steps. Then Jerry, whose duty it was, as mate, took the poor devil by the ear, and, giving it a wrench, the Portuguese shuffled on until he stood before the first man in the line.
‘Now, Jack,’ said Jerry, ‘here’s the mark for you; let’s see what pith you have got in your muscles.’
So the seaman addressed flourished his rope cudgel aloft, and then brought it down upon the naked back of the Portuguese, with a blow which echoed over the deck, and raised a broad white-coloured bar of flesh, which started up from the shoulder almost to the loin. The sufferer staggered under the weight of the stroke, and immediately all his back, except just where the[Pg 351] scourge fell, turned to a burning red; but he uttered no sound.
‘Very well struck, Jack,’ said the mate, and then dragged the prisoner forward to receive the second blow. Ten minutes passed over at least, before the Portuguese had got through one-half of his punishment, by arriving in the bows of the ship; for Jerry prolonged the torture by stopping to joke with each man before he struck, and advising him to lay it on well. The whole scene was a very brutal one, and I would gladly have left the deck if I could. There was no escape, however, and I saw the poor wretch flogged up one side of the ship and down the other, each blow given by the full strength of an unwearied arm. When the prisoner had completed his miserable walk, he was trembling all over; great drops of sweat were running down his face, and his back, although the skin was not actually cut, was a mass of ugly-coloured swellings.
‘He will faint in a minute,’ said Rumbold, ‘and cheat Jerry of the finishing stroke’
But, as if the mate had been aware of his danger, he hurriedly flourished his scourge round his head, so as to give it the full swing of his brawny arm, and then brought it down upon the sufferer with a buffet which might have broken the spine of a bull, and which drove the wretch who received it flat upon the deck, where he lay stark and motionless.
‘Well,’ said Le Chiffon Rouge, who, being captain, had not personally interfered in the punishment, ‘it is to be hoped that Monsieur Vasco hath had a lesson upon the disadvantages of drawing knives upon comrades.’
‘And upon the disadvantages of making enemies of more powerful men than himself,’ whispered Rumbold. ‘I dare say the fellow is a rascal, but he was flogged, not for cutting open his shipmate’s head, but for preventing the mate from getting a fourth wife.’
‘Here, men,’ roared Jerry, as he twitched up the head of the prostrate man by the hair, and then allowed it to fall with a thump upon the deck, ‘slush this carrion with[Pg 352] a bucketfull of salt water, and then tumble him down the hatchway. I warrant he don’t lie on his back in his hammock for a month of Sundays.’
These orders were speedily carried into effect, and the Portuguese having been taken below, the maintopsail was filled, and the ship again stood upon her course.
In the course of the day, Jerry and Nixon came up to me together, and proposed, very civilly, that, as I was a sailor, I should join the ship for the cruise; in which case, they told me, that I should have my regular share of the prize-money as if I had been on board since they went to sea, about three months ago. Of course I had nothing for it but to agree to the proposal, although I loathed the whole set among whom I had been thus so strangely thrown. ‘Oh,’ thought I, ‘things were different on board the “Will-o’-the-Wisp,” with Stout Jem for a commander, and a hearty set of fellows under him, as honest as they were brave.’ But there was no help for it, and so my name was duly enrolled in the great book of the ‘Saucy Susan.’
This being done, I of course took up my quarters with the crew, while Rumbold was accommodated in the great cabin. It was truly a virtuous company in which I found myself enlisted, almost every second man of them having left England after having made it too hot to hold him. One young fellow, with a ready laugh and a quick eye, told me that he had been thrice left for execution in Newgate, and was each time saved by the interest of friends. At last he was sent to the plantations, where he was purchased by a confederate, and set at liberty directly. Another man told me, that he had broken half the jails in England, and boasted that there never was smith made a lock which he could not pick with a rusty nail. A third fellow had been a foot-pad on Blackheath, and fled the country with the Hue and Cry at his heels. There were many more who had been thieves and rogues all their lives, having, indeed, been brought up to that business in the streets of London, in which they had been, as it were, born, and then allowed to run wild like[Pg 353] young savages—their hands against every man, and every man’s hands against them. By one of these men I was told, that he never knew the name of either his father or mother. The first thing he could remember was, that he used to fight with dogs in Lincoln’s Inn Fields for garbage and bones. He slept upon bunks in the streets in summer, and among the ashes in the glass-houses in winter, until having amassed money by many fortunate robberies, for, quoth he, ‘my street education made me sharp,’ he got to live in White Friars, the Mint, and places of that kind, where he cared little for either warrants or thief-takers. ‘I promise you,’ quoth he, ‘the Lord Chief Justice cannot take a man there unless he come backed by a company of musketeers.’ Another of our most virtuous crew had been a highwayman, and used to infest Gradshill, particularly after a ship had been paid off at Chatham, and the seamen came swarming up on the London road to expend their money in town debauchery. Having been apprehended sleeping in an inn on the borders of Epping Forest, where it seems he sometimes lay in wait for Cambridge scholars journeying past, a prosecutor was found to come forward against him at Newgate in very curious fashion. He told me the story himself.
‘There were six of us,’ quoth he, ‘and they had suspicions against all, but no witnesses. The fact was, that they knew very well that we had walked Watling Street, and perhaps other roads also, but they could find no one to prove it. So this was the plan the lawyers hit on. They published a notice in the London Gazette, to say, that six persons, reputed highwaymen, would be publicly exhibited in Newgate, dressed in riding suits, and just as they appeared on the road, so that any one who had been recently robbed might be able to tell whether the thief was in the clutches of the law. So the day came, and we were made, every man of us, to don our riding gear, and then with boot and red doublet, pistols at our belts, and just a morsel of crape dangling from our hats, we were paraded up and down the long galleries, while a crowd of[Pg 354] ladies and court gallants examined us with their glasses, and joked and laughed and coquetted, and told us to turn, first one way and then the other, and said, as each passed by, “No, no, he is not the fellow who robbed me; bring up the next, good master turnkey, and make him turn well round, so that we may see his face to our satisfaction.” It would have been very well, however, if all the remarks had been like these. But, one by one, my poor companions were marked out and carried away. “Here be the very man who eased me of my purse on Gadshill,” quoth a fat grazier of Kent, and stout Tom Clinch was straightway taken to the hold.’ “O’ my life, the rascal who stopped her ladyship’s carriage on Hounslow, and made us all hand over watches and cash,” says a mincing carpet knight, and the fate of brave Moonlight Dick was settled. Even thus our misdeeds came home to us; so that in the space of an hour and a half I stood alone, and then, the crowd of spectators beginning to disperse, I had good hope that my lucky stars would prevail, and that I would be allowed to go forth for lack of evidence. But alas! in the nick of time, just as the captain of Newgate was thinking of turning me adrift with a kick and an oath, up there trips a dainty gentlewoman, whose face I knew in an instant, for I had said some few flattering words in praise of the brilliancy of her eyes, and what not, to which she listened nothing loath, while I conveyed to my own pouch a golden locket she wore, filled with hair, which I warrant you grew never on the bald head of her spouse, an old lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn. So she stared at me very hard, while I twisted my features first one way and then the other, now cocking my eye, now leering it, so that I saw she was mightily puzzled. But just then old Diggory, the thief-taker, fetched me a wipe over the chops; “Take that, you mumper,” says he, “and keep your ugly face quiet till the gentlewoman decide.” But it was no such easy matter for her to pronounce; and at length quo’ my madam, as cool as an’ she had been in a raree-show, and wished to hear the lion roar, “Make him speak, good[Pg 355] master keeper, make him speak, and I shall know the voice.” So says old Diggory, “Come, Helter-Skelter Joe, you hear what the lady says, tip us a few tongue flourishes.” So I commenced grumbling and snorting through my nose, but it wouldn’t do. “Stow that,” says Diggory, “or we shall have the hangman in with his cat-o’-nine tails.” Then I set to gabbling in a high treble, like a dame of Billingsgate whose comrades had stolen her fish,—but it was all in vain, they made me talk in my own voice at last, and quoth the bona roba as soon as she heard the patter, “Oh, good master jailer, it is the villain, indeed.” So I was tried—condemned—left for execution, and I can tell you it took both money and friends to prevent my going up Holborn Hill in a cart.’
There were others of the crew, however, more reputable characters, so far as regarded actual roguery, but they were one and all a devil-may-care set, without thought or morals, and only anxious for plunder and debauchery. Several of them had been kidnapped, as they told me, from Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle, London, and other places. These were all of them youths under twenty, and two or three of them had been, they said, sold by their parents. They had all of them, however, managed, after serving for different periods, to make their escape from Virginia, and to find their way into the West Indian seas. They gave doleful accounts of their treatment in the plantations—how they had been flogged and starved, and of the great numbers who had died from fever and sun strokes. Those who had been kidnapped frequently fared worse than the convicted felons, because the former, being generally of tender years, were less able to protect themselves than the old thieves and vagabonds who were transported thither from the jails of England. The reader will easily understand that a great number of the crew of the ‘Saucy Susan’ were but very poor sailors, and clumsy fellows in blowing weather aloft. Indeed, it was sometimes rare sport to see the boatswain and his mates, armed with big rattans, thrashing the skulkers out of their hammocks, and chasing them up to[Pg 356] their duty from all the secret holes and hiding-places in the ship; while Jerry would be storming and raving on the poop, and swearing that he would shoot the last man who got out on the yard in reefing topsails. Among these lubberly rogues, however, there were a handful of prime sailors, chiefly old men, who had swung in hammocks nigh half a century, and had been tossed on every sea all round the world. The great fault they had was, that not a single man of the whole lot would keep sober if he had an opportunity of getting drunk. For all that, however, Jerry was forced to depend upon these sailors, his ‘Mother Carey’s chickens,’ as he called them, for the safe navigation of the ship; knowing very well that, if the rest of the crew were but fresh water seamen, they were as good, with cutlasses and boarding-pikes in their hands, as the most daring veterans of the sea. With these ancient mariners I chiefly consorted, we forming a company who kept somewhat aloof from the rake-helly set we lived among, and during the many calm midwatches I kept on board the ‘Saucy Susan,’ I picked up many legends and tales of the sea from these old men, who had passed long lives upon the face of the waters. I have already given to the reader one story, as a sample of the kind of legends which we Buccaneers loved to listen to, and I shall here add another of the same sort, relating to a notion which was very common amongst seamen of the time of which I speak, but which has now, I believe, except with the most ignorant of the class, wholly died away. I mean, the idea that particular capes or headlands running out into the sea are haunted by evil demons, who hate ships to pass by, and who, therefore, raise tempests to beat them back, and prevent them from doubling the point, or spot of land in question. This belief, no doubt, rose from the general stormy nature of the seas off capes and outstretching tongues of land. The two great capes of the world—the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, many sailors believed to be haunted by most powerful demons, and regarded the awful gales which blew, and the fearful[Pg 357] seas which run thereabouts, as nothing but the work of these Cape devils, if I may call them so, not remembering that the phenomena in question are simply the effect of geographical position and the unchanging laws of the elements. However, I proceed to my story, merely premising that the seaman who told it, and who was an old mariner with a white beard, did devoutly believe in all the extravagancies which I have just mentioned, as well as in the fantastic tale which he told. I give it in rather better language than the narrator made use of; his speech, indeed, being much seasoned with forecastle expressions, not of the most delicate nature. But it is worthy of a new chapter.