Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
misdirected wretches who had, by easy gradation, slid into their
present evil ways, from having been tempted by the government
authorities to enter into privateering in the days of the late war. He
conceded that Captain Scarfield had done many cruel and wicked deeds,
but he averred that he had also performed many kind and benevolent
actions. The world made no note of these latter, but took care only to
condemn the evil that had been done. He acknowledged that it was true
that the pirate had allowed his crew to cast lots for the wife and the
daughter of the skipper of the _Northern Rose_, but there were none of
his accusers who told how, at the risk of his own life and the lives
of all his crew, he had given succor to the schooner _Halifax_, found
adrift with all hands down with yellow fever. There was no defender
of his actions to tell how he and his crew of pirates had sailed the
pest-stricken vessel almost into the rescuing waters of Kingston
harbor. Eleazer confessed that he could not deny that when Scarfield
had tied the skipper of the _Baltimore Belle_ naked to the foremast of
his own brig he had permitted his crew of cutthroats (who were drunk
at the time) to throw bottles at the helpless captive, who died that
night of the wounds he had received. For this he was doubtless very
justly condemned, but who was there to praise him when he had, at the
risk of his life and in the face of the authorities, carried a cargo
of provisions which he himself had purchased at Tampa Bay to the
Island of Bella Vista after the great hurricane of 1818? In this
notable adventure he had barely escaped, after a two days' chase, the
British frigate _Ceres_, whose captain, had a capture been effected,
would instantly have hung the unfortunate man to the yardarm in spite
of the beneficent mission he was in the act of conducting.
In all this Eleazer had the air of conducting the case for the
defendant. As he talked he became more and more animated and voluble.
The light went out in his tobacco pipe, and a hectic spot appeared in
either thin and sallow cheek. Mainwaring sat wondering to hear the
severely peaceful Quaker preacher defending so notoriously bloody and
cruel a cutthroat pirate as Capt. Jack Scarfield. The warm and
innocent surroundings, the old brick house looking down upon them, the
odor of apple blossoms and the hum of bees seemed to make it all the
more incongruous. And still the elderly Quaker skipper talked on and
on with hardly an interruption, till the warm sun slanted to the west
and the day began to decline.
That evening Mainwaring stayed to tea and when he parted from Lucinda
Fairbanks it was after nightfall, with a clear, round moon shining in
the milky sky and a radiance pallid and unreal enveloping the old
house, the blooming apple trees, the sloping lawn and the shining
river beyond. He implored his sweetheart to let him tell her uncle and
aunt of their acknowledged love and to ask the old man's consent to
it, but she would not permit him to do so. They were so happy as they
were. Who knew but what her uncle might forbid their fondness? Would
he not wait a little longer? Maybe it would all come right after a
while. She was so fond, so tender, so tearful at the nearness of their
parting that he had not the heart to insist. At the same time it was
with a feeling almost of despair that he realized that he must now be
gone--maybe for the space of two years--without in all that time
possessing the right to call her his before the world.
When he bade farewell to the older people it was with a choking
feeling of bitter disappointment. He yet felt the pressure of her
cheek against his shoulder, the touch of soft and velvet lips to his
own. But what were such clandestine endearments compared to what
might, perchance, be his--the right of calling her his own when he was
far away and upon the distant sea? And, besides, he felt like a coward
who had shirked his duty.
But he was very much in love. The next morning appeared in a drizzle
of rain that followed the beautiful warmth of the day before. He had
the coach all to himself, and in the damp and leathery solitude he
drew out the little oval picture from beneath his shirt frill and
looked long and fixedly with a fond and foolish joy at the innocent
face, the blue eyes, the red, smiling lips depicted upon the
satinlike, ivory surface.
II
For the better part of five months Mainwaring cruised about in the
waters surrounding the Bahama Islands. In that time he ran to earth
and dispersed a dozen nests of pirates. He destroyed no less than
fifteen piratical crafts of all sizes, from a large half-decked
whaleboat to a three-hundred-ton barkentine. The name of the _Yankee_
became a terror to every sea wolf in the western tropics, and the
waters of the Bahama Islands became swept almost clean of the bloody
wretches who had so lately infested it.
But the one freebooter of all others whom he sought--Capt. Jack
Scarfield--seemed to evade him like a shadow, to slip through his
fingers like magic. Twice he came almost within touch of the famous
marauder, both times in the ominous wrecks that the pirate captain had
left behind him. The first of these was the water-logged remains of a
burned and still smoking wreck that he found adrift in the great
Bahama channel. It was the _Water Witch_, of Salem, but he did not
learn her tragic story until, two weeks later, he discovered a part of
her crew at Port Maria, on the north coast of Jamaica. It was, indeed,
a dreadful story to which he listened. The castaways said that they of
all the vessel's crew had been spared so that they might tell the
commander of the _Yankee_, should they meet him, that he might keep
what he found, with Captain Scarfield's compliments, who served it up
to him hot cooked.
Three weeks later he rescued what remained of the crew of the
shattered, bloody hulk of the _Baltimore Belle_, eight of whose crew,
headed by the captain, had been tied hand and foot and heaved
overboard. Again, there was a message from Captain Scarfield to the
commander of the _Yankee_ that he might season what he found to suit
his own taste.
Mainwaring was of a sanguine disposition, with fiery temper. He swore,
with the utmost vehemence, that either he or John Scarfield would have
to leave the earth.
He had little suspicion of how soon was to befall the ominous
realization of his angry prophecy.
At that time one of the chief rendezvous of the pirates was the little
island of San Jose, one of the southernmost of the Bahama group. Here,
in the days before the coming of the _Yankee_, they were wont to put
in to careen and clean their vessels and to take in a fresh supply of
provisions, gunpowder, and rum, preparatory to renewing their attacks
upon the peaceful commerce circulating up and down outside the
islands, or through the wide stretches of the Bahama channel.
Mainwaring had made several descents upon this nest of freebooters. He
had already made two notable captures, and it was here he hoped
eventually to capture Captain Scarfield himself.
A brief description of this one-time notorious rendezvous of
freebooters might not be out of place. It consisted of a little
settlement of those wattled and mud-smeared houses such as you find
through the West Indies. There were only three houses of a more
pretentious sort, built of wood. One of these was a storehouse,
another was a rum shop, and a third a house in which dwelt a mulatto
woman, who was reputed to be a sort of left-handed wife of Captain
Scarfield's. The population was almost entirely black and brown. One
or two Jews and a half dozen Yankee traders, of hardly dubious
honesty, comprised the entire white population. The rest consisted of
a mongrel accumulation of negroes and mulattoes and half-caste
Spaniards, and of a multitude of black or yellow women and children.
The settlement stood in a bight of the beach forming a small harbor
and affording a fair anchorage for small vessels, excepting it were
against the beating of a southeasterly gale. The houses, or cabins,
were surrounded by clusters of coco palms and growths of bananas, and
a long curve of white beach, sheltered from the large Atlantic
breakers that burst and exploded upon an outer bar, was drawn like a
necklace around the semicircle of emerald-green water.
Such was the famous pirates' settlement of San Jose--a paradise of
nature and a hell of human depravity and wickedness--and it was to
this spot that Mainwaring paid another visit a few days after rescuing
the crew of the _Baltimore Belle_ from her shattered and sinking
wreck.
As the little bay with its fringe of palms and its cluster of wattle
huts opened up to view, Mainwaring discovered a vessel lying at anchor
in the little harbor. It was a large and well-rigged schooner of two
hundred and fifty or three hundred tons burden. As the _Yankee_
rounded to under the stern of the stranger and dropped anchor in such
a position as to bring her broadside battery to bear should the
occasion require, Mainwaring set his glass to his eye to read the name
he could distinguish beneath the overhang of her stern. It is
impossible to describe his infinite surprise when, the white lettering
starting out in the circle of the glass, he read, _The Eliza Cooper,
of Philadelphia_.
He could not believe the evidence of his senses. Certainly this sink
of iniquity was the last place in the world he would have expected to
have fallen in with Eleazer Cooper.
He ordered out the gig and had himself immediately rowed over to the
schooner. Whatever lingering doubts he might have entertained as to
the identity of the vessel were quickly dispelled when he beheld
Captain Cooper himself standing at the gangway to meet him. The
impassive face of the friend showed neither surprise nor confusion at
what must have been to him a most unexpected encounter.
But when he stepped upon the deck of the _Eliza Cooper_ and looked
about him, Mainwaring could hardly believe the evidence of his senses
at the transformation that he beheld. Upon the main deck were eight
twelve-pound carronade neatly covered with tarpaulin; in the bow a
Long Tom, also snugly stowed away and covered, directed a veiled and
muzzled snout out over the bowsprit.
It was entirely impossible for Mainwaring to conceal his astonishment
at so unexpected a sight, and whether or not his own thoughts lent
color to his imagination, it seemed to him that Eleazer Cooper
concealed under the immobility of his countenance no small degree of
confusion.
After Captain Cooper had led the way into the cabin and he and the
younger man were seated over a pipe of tobacco and the invariable
bottle of fine old Jamaica rum, Mainwaring made no attempt to refrain
from questioning him as to the reason for this singular and ominous
transformation.
"I am a man of peace, James Mainwaring," Eleazer replied, "but there
are men of blood in these waters, and an appearance of great strength
is of use to protect the innocent from the wicked. If I remained in
appearance the peaceful trader I really am, how long does thee suppose
I could remain unassailed in this place?"
It occurred to Mainwaring that the powerful armament he had beheld was
rather extreme to be used merely as a preventive. He smoked for a
while in silence and then he suddenly asked the other point-blank
whether, if it came to blows with such a one as Captain Scarfield,
would he make a fight of it?
The Quaker trading captain regarded him for a while in silence. His
look, it seemed to Mainwaring, appeared to be dubitative as to how far
he dared to be frank. "Friend James," he said at last, "I may as well
acknowledge that my officers and crew are somewhat worldly. Of a truth