Howard Pyle's
Book of Pirates
Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning
the Buccaneers & Marooners of
the Spanish Main: _From the_
writing & Pictures _of_ Howard
Pyle: _Compiled by_ Merle Johnson
Harper & Brothers _Publishers_
New York & London
* * * * *
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD BY MERLE JOHNSON xi
PREFACE xiii
I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN 3
II. THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 39
III. WITH THE BUCCANEERS 75
IV. TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE BOX 99
V. JACK BALLISTER'S FORTUNES 129
VI. BLUESKIN, THE PIRATE 150
VII. CAPTAIN SCARFIELD 187
VIII. THE RUBY OF KISHMOOR 210
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS
AN ATTACK ON A GALLEON _Frontispiece_
ON THE TOTUGAS _Facing p._ 6
CAPTURE OF THE GALLEON " 10
HENRY MORGAN RECRUITING FOR THE ATTACK " 14
MORGAN AT PORTO BELLO " 16
THE SACKING OF PANAMA " 20
MAROONED " 26
BLACKBEARD BURIES HIS TREASURE " 32
WALKING THE PLANK " 36
"CAPTAIN MALYOE SHOT CAPTAIN BRAND THROUGH THE HEAD" " 40
"SHE WOULD SIT QUITE STILL, PERMITTING BARNABY TO GAZE" " 68
BURIED TREASURE " 76
KIDD ON THE DECK OF THE "ADVENTURE GALLEY" " 85
BURNING THE SHIP " 92
WHO SHALL BE CAPTAIN? " 104
KIDD AT GARDINER'S ISLAND " 108
EXTORTING TRIBUTE FROM THE CITIZENS " 116
"PIRATES USED TO DO THAT TO THEIR CAPTAINS NOW AND THEN" " 124
"JACK FOLLOWED THE CAPTAIN AND THE YOUNG LADY UP THE
CROOKED PATH TO THE HOUSE" " 132
"HE LED JACK UP TO A MAN WHO SAT UPON A BARREL" " 136
"THE BULLETS WERE HUMMING AND SINGING, CLIPPING ALONG THE
TOP OF THE WATER" " 142
"THE COMBATANTS CUT AND SLASHED WITH SAVAGE FURY" " 146
SO THE TREASURE WAS DIVIDED " 154
COLONEL RHETT AND THE PIRATE " 162
THE PIRATE'S CHRISTMAS " 174
"HE LAY SILENT AND STILL, WITH HIS FACE HALF BURIED IN
THE SAND" " 182
"THERE CAP'N GOLDSACK GOES, CREEPING, CREEPING, CREEPING,
LOOKING FOR HIS TREASURE DOWN BELOW!" " 186
"HE HAD FOUND THE CAPTAIN AGREEABLE AND COMPANIONABLE" " 190
THE BUCCANEER WAS A PICTURESQUE FELLOW " 196
THEN THE REAL FIGHT BEGAN " 200
"HE STRUCK ONCE AND AGAIN AT THE BALD, NARROW FOREHEAD
BENEATH HIM" " 206
CAPTAIN KEITT " 212
HOW THE BUCCANEERS KEPT CHRISTMAS " 224
THE BURNING SHIP " 236
DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES " 240
"I AM THE DAUGHTER OF THAT UNFORTUNATE CAPTAIN KEITT" " 244
* * * * *
FOREWORD
Pirates, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolves
who once infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day
conceptions in great degree as drawn by the pen and pencil of Howard
Pyle.
Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenth
century and the first decade of the twentieth, had the fine faculty of
transposing himself into any chosen period of history and making its
people flesh and blood again--not just historical puppets. His
characters were sketched with both words and picture; with both words
and picture he ranks as a master, with a rich personality which makes
his work individual and attractive in either medium.
He was one of the founders of present-day American illustration, and
his pupils and grand-pupils pervade that field to-day. While he bore
no such important part in the world of letters, his stories are modern
in treatment, and yet widely read. His range included historical
treatises concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was);
fiction, with the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of
Old World fairy tales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best
sellers to growing lads; stories of the occult, such as _In Tenebras_
and _To the Soil of the Earth_, which, if newly published, would be
hailed as contributions to our latest cult.
In all these fields Pyle's work may be equaled, surpassed, save in
one. It is improbable that anyone else will ever bring his combination
of interest and talent to the depiction of these old-time Pirates, any
more than there could be a second Remington to paint the now extinct
Indians and gun-fighters of the Great West.
Important and interesting to the student of history, the
adventure-lover, and the artist, as they are, these Pirate stories and
pictures have been scattered through many magazines and books. Here,
in this volume, they are gathered together for the first time, perhaps
not just as Mr. Pyle would have done, but with a completeness and
appreciation of the real value of the material which the author's
modesty might not have permitted.
MERLE JOHNSON.
PREFACE
Why is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly
titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to
make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this
question another--Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had, a
certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Is
there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden
groundwork of the old-time savage? Is there even in these
well-regulated times an unsubdued nature in the respectable mental
household of every one of us that still kicks against the pricks of
law and order? To make my meaning more clear, would not every boy, for
instance--that is, every boy of any account--rather be a pirate
captain than a Member of Parliament? And we ourselves--would we not
rather read such a story as that of Captain Avery's capture of the
East Indian treasure ship, with its beautiful princess and load of
jewels (which gems he sold by the handful, history sayeth, to a
Bristol merchant), than, say, one of Bishop Atterbury's sermons, or
the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of "Theodora and
Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate nature of
most of us there can be but one answer to such a query.
In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales of
derring-do Nelson's battles are all mightily interesting, but, even
in spite of their romance of splendid courage, I fancy that the
majority of us would rather turn back over the leaves of history to
read how Drake captured the Spanish treasure ship in the South Sea,
and of how he divided such a quantity of booty in the Island of Plate
(so named because of the tremendous dividend there declared) that it
had to be measured in quart bowls, being too considerable to be
counted.
Courage and daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always a
redundancy of _vim_ and life to recommend them to the nether man that
lies within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against
the tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have
had much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black
flag. But it is not altogether courage and daring that endear him to
our hearts. There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that
lust for wealth that makes one's fancy revel more pleasantly in the
story of the division of treasure in the pirate's island retreat, the
hiding of his godless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic
beach, there to remain hidden until the time should come to rake the
doubloons up again and to spend them like a lord in polite society,
than in the most thrilling tales of his wonderful escapes from
commissioned cruisers through tortuous channels between the coral
reefs.
And what a life of adventure is his, to be sure! A life of constant
alertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, he
wanders forever aimlessly, homelessly; now unheard of for months, now
careening his boat on some lonely uninhabited shore, now appearing
suddenly to swoop down on some merchant vessel with rattle of
musketry, shouting, yells, and a hell of unbridled passions let loose
to rend and tear. What a Carlislean hero! What a setting of blood and
lust and flame and rapine for such a hero!
Piracy, such as was practiced in the flower of its days--that is,
during the early eighteenth century--was no sudden growth. It was an
evolution, from the semilawful buccaneering of the sixteenth century,
just as buccaneering was upon its part, in a certain sense, an
evolution from the unorganized, unauthorized warfare of the Tudor
period.
For there was a deal of piratical smack in the anti-Spanish ventures
of Elizabethan days. Many of the adventurers--of the Sir Francis Drake
school, for instance--actually overstepped again and again the bounds
of international law, entering into the realms of _de facto_ piracy.
Nevertheless, while their doings were not recognized officially by the
government, the perpetrators were neither punished nor reprimanded for
their excursions against Spanish commerce at home or in the West
Indies; rather were they commended, and it was considered not
altogether a discreditable thing for men to get rich upon the spoils
taken from Spanish galleons in times of nominal peace. Many of the
most reputable citizens and merchants of London, when they felt that
the queen failed in her duty of pushing the fight against the great
Catholic Power, fitted out fleets upon their own account and sent them
to levy good Protestant war of a private nature upon the Pope's
anointed.
Some of the treasures captured in such ventures were immense,
stupendous, unbelievable. For an example, one can hardly credit the