Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
"You shall go upon the very first boat we can catch," said the parson.
He had turned, still holding the bills in his hand, and was now
fingering over the pile of money that yet lay tumbled out upon the
coat. "I wonder, Tom," said he, "if you could spare me a score or so
of these doubloons?"
"You shall have fifty score, if you choose," said Tom, bursting with
gratitude and with generosity in his newly found treasure.
"You are as fine a lad as ever I saw, Tom," said the parson, "and I'll
thank you to the last day of my life."
Tom scooped up a double handful of silver money. "Take it, sir," he
said, "and you may have as much more as you want of it."
He poured it into the dish that the good man made of his hands, and
the parson made a motion as though to empty it into his pocket. Then
he stopped, as though a sudden doubt had occurred to him. "I don't
know that 'tis fit for me to take this pirate money, after all," he
said.
"But you are welcome to it," said Tom.
Still the parson hesitated. "Nay," he burst out, "I'll not take it;
'tis blood money." And as he spoke he chucked the whole double handful
into the now empty chest, then arose and dusted the sand from his
breeches. Then, with a great deal of bustling energy, he helped to tie
the bags again and put them all back into the chest.
They reburied the chest in the place whence they had taken it, and
then the parson folded the precious paper of directions, placed it
carefully in his wallet, and his wallet in his pocket. "Tom," he said,
for the twentieth time, "your fortune has been made this day."
And Tom Chist, as he rattled in his breeches pocket the half dozen
doubloons he had kept out of his treasure, felt that what his friend
had said was true.
* * * * *
As the two went back homeward across the level space of sand Tom Chist
suddenly stopped stock-still and stood looking about him. "'Twas just
here," he said, digging his heel down into the sand, "that they killed
the poor black man."
"And here he lies buried for all time," said Parson Jones; and as he
spoke he dug his cane down into the sand. Tom Chist shuddered. He
would not have been surprised if the ferrule of the cane had struck
something soft beneath that level surface. But it did not, nor was any
sign of that tragedy ever seen again. For, whether the pirates had
carried away what they had done and buried it elsewhere, or whether
the storm in blowing the sand had completely leveled off and hidden
all sign of that tragedy where it was enacted, certain it is that
it never came to sight again--at least so far as Tom Chist and the
Rev. Hilary Jones ever knew.
VII
This is the story of the treasure box. All that remains now is to
conclude the story of Tom Chist, and to tell of what came of him in
the end.
He did not go back again to live with old Matt Abrahamson. Parson
Jones had now taken charge of him and his fortunes, and Tom did not
have to go back to the fisherman's hut.
Old Abrahamson talked a great deal about it, and would come in his
cups and harangue good Parson Jones, making a vast protestation of
what he would do to Tom--if he ever caught him--for running away. But
Tom on all these occasions kept carefully out of his way, and nothing
came of the old man's threatenings.
Tom used to go over to see his foster mother now and then, but always
when the old man was from home. And Molly Abrahamson used to warn him
to keep out of her father's way. "He's in as vile a humor as ever I
see, Tom," she said; "he sits sulking all day long, and 'tis my belief
he'd kill ye if he caught ye."
Of course Tom said nothing, even to her, about the treasure, and he
and the reverend gentleman kept the knowledge thereof to themselves.
About three weeks later Parson Jones managed to get him shipped aboard
of a vessel bound for New York town, and a few days later Tom Chist
landed at that place. He had never been in such a town before, and he
could not sufficiently wonder and marvel at the number of brick
houses, at the multitude of people coming and going along the fine,
hard, earthen sidewalk, at the shops and the stores where goods hung
in the windows, and, most of all, the fortifications and the battery
at the point, at the rows of threatening cannon, and at the
scarlet-coated sentries pacing up and down the ramparts. All this was
very wonderful, and so were the clustered boats riding at anchor in
the harbor. It was like a new world, so different was it from the
sand hills and the sedgy levels of Henlopen.
Tom Chist took up his lodgings at a coffee house near to the town
hall, and thence he sent by the postboy a letter written by Parson
Jones to Master Chillingsworth. In a little while the boy returned
with a message, asking Tom to come up to Mr. Chillingsworth's house
that afternoon at two o'clock.
Tom went thither with a great deal of trepidation, and his heart fell
away altogether when he found it a fine, grand brick house, three
stories high, and with wrought-iron letters across the front.
The counting house was in the same building; but Tom, because of Mr.
Jones's letter, was conducted directly into the parlor, where the
great rich man was awaiting his coming. He was sitting in a
leather-covered armchair, smoking a pipe of tobacco, and with a bottle
of fine old Madeira close to his elbow.
Tom had not had a chance to buy a new suit of clothes yet, and so he
cut no very fine figure in the rough dress he had brought with him
from Henlopen. Nor did Mr. Chillingsworth seem to think very highly of
his appearance, for he sat looking sideways at Tom as he smoked.
"Well, my lad," he said, "and what is this great thing you have to
tell me that is so mightily wonderful? I got what's-his-name--Mr.
Jones's--letter, and now I am ready to hear what you have to say."
But if he thought but little of his visitor's appearance at first, he
soon changed his sentiments toward him, for Tom had not spoken twenty
words when Mr. Chillingsworth's whole aspect changed. He straightened
himself up in his seat, laid aside his pipe, pushed away his glass of
Madeira, and bade Tom take a chair.
He listened without a word as Tom Chist told of the buried treasure,
of how he had seen the poor negro murdered, and of how he and Parson
Jones had recovered the chest again. Only once did Mr. Chillingsworth
interrupt the narrative. "And to think," he cried, "that the villain
this very day walks about New York town as though he were an honest
man, ruffling it with the best of us! But if we can only get hold of
these log books you speak of. Go on; tell me more of this."
When Tom Chist's narrative was ended, Mr. Chillingsworth's bearing was
as different as daylight is from dark. He asked a thousand questions,
all in the most polite and gracious tone imaginable, and not only
urged a glass of his fine old Madeira upon Tom, but asked him to stay
to supper. There was nobody to be there, he said, but his wife and
daughter.
Tom, all in a panic at the very thought of the two ladies, sturdily
refused to stay even for the dish of tea Mr. Chillingsworth offered
him.
He did not know that he was destined to stay there as long as he
should live.
"And now," said Mr. Chillingsworth, "tell me about yourself."
"I have nothing to tell, Your Honor," said Tom, "except that I was
washed up out of the sea."
"Washed up out of the sea!" exclaimed Mr. Chillingsworth. "Why, how
was that? Come, begin at the beginning, and tell me all."
Thereupon Tom Chist did as he was bidden, beginning at the very
beginning and telling everything just as Molly Abrahamson had often
told it to him. As he continued, Mr. Chillingsworth's interest changed
into an appearance of stronger and stronger excitement. Suddenly he
jumped up out of his chair and began to walk up and down the room.
"Stop! stop!" he cried out at last, in the midst of something Tom was
saying. "Stop! stop! Tell me; do you know the name of the vessel that
was wrecked, and from which you were washed ashore?"
"I've heard it said," said Tom Chist, "'twas the _Bristol Merchant_."
"I knew it! I knew it!" exclaimed the great man, in a loud voice,
flinging his hands up into the air. "I felt it was so the moment you
began the story. But tell me this, was there nothing found with you
with a mark or a name upon it?"
"There was a kerchief," said Tom, "marked with a T and a C."
"Theodosia Chillingsworth!" cried out the merchant. "I knew it! I knew
it! Heavens! to think of anything so wonderful happening as this! Boy!
boy! dost thou know who thou art? Thou art my own brother's son. His
name was Oliver Chillingsworth, and he was my partner in business, and
thou art his son." Then he ran out into the entryway, shouting and
calling for his wife and daughter to come.
* * * * *
So Tom Chist--or Thomas Chillingsworth, as he now was to be
called--did stay to supper, after all.
* * * * *
This is the story, and I hope you may like it. For Tom Chist became
rich and great, as was to be supposed, and he married his pretty
cousin Theodosia (who had been named for his own mother, drowned in
the _Bristol Merchant_).
He did not forget his friends, but had Parson Jones brought to New
York to live.
As to Molly and Matt Abrahamson, they both enjoyed a pension of ten
pounds a year for as long as they lived; for now that all was well
with him, Tom bore no grudge against the old fisherman for all the
drubbings he had suffered.
The treasure box was brought on to New York, and if Tom Chist did not
get all the money there was in it (as Parson Jones had opined he
would) he got at least a good big lump of it.
And it is my belief that those log books did more to get Captain Kidd
arrested in Boston town and hanged in London than anything else that
was brought up against him.
Chapter V
JACK BALLISTER'S FORTUNES
I
We, of these times, protected as we are by the laws and by the number
of people about us, can hardly comprehend such a life as that of the
American colonies in the early part of the eighteenth century, when it
was possible for a pirate like Capt. Teach, known as Blackbeard, to
exist, and for the governor and the secretary of the province in which
he lived perhaps to share his plunder, and to shelter and to protect
him against the law.
At that time the American colonists were in general a rough, rugged
people, knowing nothing of the finer things of life. They lived mostly
in little settlements, separated by long distances from one another,
so that they could neither make nor enforce laws to protect
themselves. Each man or little group of men had to depend upon his or
their own strength to keep what belonged to them, and to prevent
fierce men or groups of men from seizing what did not belong to them.
It is the natural disposition of everyone to get all that he can.
Little children, for instance, always try to take away from others
that which they want, and to keep it for their own. It is only by
constant teaching that they learn that they must not do so; that they
must not take by force what does not belong to them. So it is only by
teaching and training that people learn to be honest and not to take
what is not theirs. When this teaching is not sufficient to make a man
learn to be honest, or when there is something in the man's nature
that makes him not able to learn, then he only lacks the opportunity
to seize upon the things he wants, just as he would do if he were a
little child.