Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
the warm evening, and walking up and down in front of his own door. He
immediately conducted them into the house, where, his wife having
fetched a candle, and two others of the village folk being present,
the good man having asked several questions as to their names and
their age and where they were from, the ceremony was performed, and
the certificate duly signed by those present--excepting the men who
had come ashore from the brigantine, and who refused to set their
hands to any paper.
The same sailboat that had taken the captain up to the town in the
afternoon was waiting for them at the landing place, whence, the
captain, having wished them Godspeed, and having shaken Barnaby very
heartily by the hand, they pushed off, and, coming about, ran away
with the slant of the wind, dropping the shore and those strange
beings alike behind them into the night.
As they sped away through the darkness they could hear the creaking of
the sails being hoisted aboard of the brigantine, and so knew that she
was about to put to sea once more. Nor did Barnaby True ever set eyes
upon those beings again, nor did anyone else that I ever heard tell
of.
It was nigh midnight when they made Mr. Hartright's wharf at the foot
of Wall Street, and so the streets were all dark and silent and
deserted as they walked up to Barnaby's home.
You may conceive of the wonder and amazement of Barnaby's dear
stepfather when, clad in a dressing gown and carrying a lighted candle
in his hand, he unlocked and unbarred the door, and so saw who it was
had aroused him at such an hour of the night, and the young and
beautiful lady whom Barnaby had fetched with him.
The first thought of the good man was that the _Belle Helen_ had come
into port; nor did Barnaby undeceive him as he led the way into the
house, but waited until they were all safe and sound in privity
together before he should unfold his strange and wonderful story.
"This was left for you by two foreign sailors this afternoon,
Barnaby," the good old man said, as he led the way through the hall,
holding up the candle at the same time, so that Barnaby might see an
object that stood against the wainscoting by the door of the dining
room.
Nor could Barnaby refrain from crying out with amazement when he saw
that it was one of the two chests of treasure that Sir John Malyoe had
fetched from Jamaica, and which the pirates had taken from the _Belle
Helen_. As for Mr. Hartright, he guessed no more what was in it than
the man in the moon.
The next day but one brought the _Belle Helen_ herself into port, with
the terrible news not only of having been attacked at night by
pirates, but also that Sir John Malyoe was dead. For whether it was
the sudden shock of the sight of his old captain's face--whom he
himself had murdered and thought dead and buried--flashing so out
against the darkness, or whether it was the strain of passion that
overset his brains, certain it is that when the pirates left the
_Belle Helen_, carrying with them the young lady and Barnaby and the
traveling trunks, those left aboard the _Belle Helen_ found Sir John
Malyoe lying in a fit upon the floor, frothing at the mouth and black
in the face, as though he had been choked, and so took him away to his
berth, where, the next morning about ten o'clock, he died, without
once having opened his eyes or spoken a single word.
As for the villain manservant, no one ever saw him afterward; though
whether he jumped overboard, or whether the pirates who so attacked
the ship had carried him away bodily, who shall say?
Mr. Hartright, after he had heard Barnaby's story, had been very
uncertain as to the ownership of the chest of treasure that had been
left by those men for Barnaby, but the news of the death of Sir John
Malyoe made the matter very easy for him to decide. For surely if
that treasure did not belong to Barnaby, there could be no doubt that
it must belong to his wife, she being Sir John Malyoe's legal heir.
And so it was that that great fortune (in actual computation amounting
to upward of sixty-three thousand pounds) came to Barnaby True, the
grandson of that famous pirate, William Brand; the English estate in
Devonshire, in default of male issue of Sir John Malyoe, descended to
Captain Malyoe, whom the young lady was to have married.
As for the other case of treasure, it was never heard of again, nor
could Barnaby ever guess whether it was divided as booty among the
pirates, or whether they had carried it away with them to some strange
and foreign land, there to share it among themselves.
And so the ending of the story, with only this to observe, that
whether that strange appearance of Captain Brand's face by the light
of the pistol was a ghostly and spiritual appearance, or whether he
was present in flesh and blood, there is only to say that he was never
heard of again; nor had he ever been heard of till that time since the
day he was so shot from behind by Capt. John Malyoe on the banks of
the Rio Cobra River in the year 1733.
Chapter III
WITH THE BUCCANEERS
_Being an Account of Certain Adventures that Befell Henry Mostyn Under
Capt. H. Morgan in the Year 1665-66_
I
Although this narration has more particularly to do with the taking of
the Spanish vice admiral in the harbor of Porto Bello, and of the
rescue therefrom of Le Sieur Simon, his wife and daughter (the
adventure of which was successfully achieved by Captain Morgan, the
famous buccaneer), we shall, nevertheless, premise something of the
earlier history of Master Harry Mostyn, whom you may, if you please,
consider as the hero of the several circumstances recounted in these
pages.
In the year 1664 our hero's father embarked from Portsmouth, in
England, for the Barbados, where he owned a considerable sugar
plantation. Thither to those parts of America he transported with
himself his whole family, of whom our Master Harry was the fifth of
eight children--a great lusty fellow as little fitted for the Church
(for which he was designed) as could be. At the time of this story,
though not above sixteen years old, Master Harry Mostyn was as big and
well-grown as many a man of twenty, and of such a reckless and
dare-devil spirit that no adventure was too dangerous or too
mischievous for him to embark upon.
At this time there was a deal of talk in those parts of the Americas
concerning Captain Morgan, and the prodigious successes he was having
pirating against the Spaniards.
This man had once been an indentured servant with Mr. Rolls, a sugar
factor at the Barbados. Having served out his time, and being of
lawless disposition, possessing also a prodigious appetite for
adventure, he joined with others of his kidney, and, purchasing a
caravel of three guns, embarked fairly upon that career of piracy the
most successful that ever was heard of in the world.
Master Harry had known this man very well while he was still with Mr.
Rolls, serving as a clerk at that gentleman's sugar wharf, a tall,
broad-shouldered, strapping fellow, with red cheeks, and thick red
lips, and rolling blue eyes, and hair as red as any chestnut. Many
knew him for a bold, gruff-spoken man, but no one at that time
suspected that he had it in him to become so famous and renowned as he
afterward grew to be.
The fame of his exploits had been the talk of those parts for above a
twelvemonth, when, in the latter part of the year 1665, Captain
Morgan, having made a very successful expedition against the Spaniards
into the Gulf of Campeche--where he took several important purchases
from the plate fleet--came to the Barbados, there to fit out another
such venture, and to enlist recruits.
He and certain other adventurers had purchased a vessel of some five
hundred tons, which they proposed to convert into a pirate by cutting
portholes for cannon, and running three or four carronades across her
main deck. The name of this ship, be it mentioned, was the _Good
Samaritan_, as ill-fitting a name as could be for such a craft, which,
instead of being designed for the healing of wounds, was intended
to inflict such devastation as those wicked men proposed.
Here was a piece of mischief exactly fitted to our hero's tastes;
wherefore, having made up a bundle of clothes, and with not above a
shilling in his pocket, he made an excursion into the town to seek for
Captain Morgan. There he found the great pirate established at an
ordinary, with a little court of ragamuffins and swashbucklers
gathered about him, all talking very loud, and drinking healths in raw
rum as though it were sugared water.
And what a fine figure our buccaneer had grown, to be sure! How
different from the poor, humble clerk upon the sugar wharf! What a
deal of gold braid! What a fine, silver-hilted Spanish sword! What a
gay velvet sling, hung with three silver-mounted pistols! If Master
Harry's mind had not been made up before, to be sure such a spectacle
of glory would have determined it.
This figure of war our hero asked to step aside with him, and when
they had come into a corner, proposed to the other what he intended,
and that he had a mind to enlist as a gentleman adventurer upon this
expedition. Upon this our rogue of a buccaneer captain burst out
a-laughing, and fetching Master Harry a great thump upon the back,
swore roundly that he would make a man of him, and that it was a pity
to make a parson out of so good a piece of stuff.
Nor was Captain Morgan less good than his word, for when the _Good
Samaritan_ set sail with a favoring wind for the island of Jamaica,
Master Harry found himself established as one of the adventurers
aboard.
II
Could you but have seen the town of Port Royal as it appeared in the
year 1665 you would have beheld a sight very well worth while looking
upon. There were no fine houses at that time, and no great counting
houses built of brick, such as you may find nowadays, but a crowd of
board and wattled huts huddled along the streets, and all so gay with
flags and bits of color that Vanity Fair itself could not have been
gayer. To this place came all the pirates and buccaneers that infested
those parts, and men shouted and swore and gambled, and poured out
money like water, and then maybe wound up their merrymaking by dying
of fever. For the sky in these torrid latitudes is all full of clouds
overhead, and as hot as any blanket, and when the sun shone forth it
streamed down upon the smoking sands so that the houses were ovens and
the streets were furnaces; so it was little wonder that men died like
rats in a hole. But little they appeared to care for that; so that
everywhere you might behold a multitude of painted women and Jews and
merchants and pirates, gaudy with red scarfs and gold braid and all
sorts of odds and ends of foolish finery, all fighting and gambling
and bartering for that ill-gotten treasure of the be-robbed Spaniard.
Here, arriving, Captain Morgan found a hearty welcome, and a message
from the governor awaiting him, the message bidding him attend His
Excellency upon the earliest occasion that offered. Whereupon, taking
our hero (of whom he had grown prodigiously fond) along with him, our
pirate went, without any loss of time, to visit Sir Thomas Modiford,
who was then the royal governor of all this devil's brew of
wickedness.
They found His Excellency seated in a great easy-chair, under the
shadow of a slatted veranda, the floor whereof was paved with brick.
He was clad, for the sake of coolness, only in his shirt, breeches,
and stockings, and he wore slippers on his feet. He was smoking a
great cigarro of tobacco, and a goblet of lime juice and water and rum
stood at his elbow on a table. Here, out of the glare of the heat, it