Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
The seizure by the pirate of so considerable a person as that of the
Queen of Kishmoor, and of the enormous treasure that he found aboard
her ship, would alone have been sufficient to have established his
fame. But the capture of so extraordinary a prize as that of the
ruby--which was, in itself, worth the value of an entire Oriental
kingdom--exalted him at once to the very highest pinnacle of renown.
Having achieved the capture of this incredible prize, our captain
scuttled the great ship and left her to sink with all on board. Three
Lascars of the crew alone escaped to bear the news of this tremendous
disaster to an astounded world.
As may readily be supposed, it was now no longer possible for Captain
Keitt to hope to live in such comparative obscurity as he had before
enjoyed. His was now too remarkable a figure in the eyes of the world.
Several expeditions from various parts were immediately fitted out
against him, and it presently became no longer compatible with his
safety to remain thus clearly outlined before the eyes of the world.
Accordingly, he immediately set about seeking such security as he
might now hope to find, which he did the more readily since he had
now, and at one cast, so entirely fulfilled his most sanguine
expectations of good fortune and of fame.
Thereafter, accordingly, the adventures of our captain became of a
more apocryphal sort. It was known that he reached the West Indies in
safety, for he was once seen at Port Royal and twice at Spanish Town,
in the island of Jamaica. Thereafter, however, he disappeared; nor was
it until several years later that the world heard anything concerning
him.
One day a certain Nicholas Duckworthy, who had once been gunner aboard
the pirate captain's own ship, _The Good Fortune_, was arrested in the
town of Bristol in the very act of attempting to sell to a merchant of
that place several valuable gems from a quantity which he carried with
him tied up in a red bandanna handkerchief.
In the confession of which Duckworthy afterward delivered himself he
declared that Captain Keitt, after his great adventure, having sailed
from Africa in safety, and so reached the shores of the New World, had
wrecked _The Good Fortune_ on a coral reef off the Windward Islands;
that he then immediately deserted the ship, and together with
Duckworthy himself, the sailing master (who was a Portuguese), the
captain of a brig, _The Bloody Hand_ (a consort of Keitt's), and a
villainous rascal named Hunt (who, occupying no precise position among
the pirates, was at once the instigator of and the partaker in the
greatest part of Captain Keitt's wickednesses), made his way to the
nearest port of safety. These five worthies at last fetched the island
of Jamaica, bringing with them all of the jewels and some of the gold
that had been captured from _The Sun of the East_.
But, upon coming to a division of their booty, it was presently
discovered that the Rajah's ruby had mysteriously disappeared from the
collection of jewels to be divided. The other pirates immediately
suspected their captain of having secretly purloined it, and, indeed,
so certain were they of his turpitude that they immediately set about
taking means to force a confession from him.
In this, however, they were so far unsuccessful that the captain,
refusing to yield to their importunities, had suffered himself to die
under their hands, and had so carried the secret of the hiding place
of the great ruby--if he possessed such a secret--along with him.
Duckworthy concluded his confession by declaring that in his opinion
he himself, the Portuguese sailing master, the captain of _The Bloody
Hand_, and Hunt were the only ones of Captain Keitt's crew who were
now alive; for that _The Good Fortune_ must have broken up in a storm,
which immediately followed their desertion of her; in which event the
entire crew must inevitably have perished.
It may be added that Duckworthy himself was shortly hanged, so that,
if his surmise was true, there were now only three left alive of all
that wicked crew that had successfully carried to its completion the
greatest adventure which any pirate in the world had ever, perhaps,
embarked upon.
I
_Jonathan Rugg_
You may never know what romantic aspirations may lie hidden beneath
the most sedate and sober demeanor.
To have observed Jonathan Rugg, who was a tall, lean, loose-jointed
young Quaker of a somewhat forbidding aspect, with straight, dark hair
and a bony, overhanging forehead set into a frown, a pair of small,
deep-set eyes, and a square jaw, no one would for a moment have
suspected that he concealed beneath so serious an exterior any
appetite for romantic adventure.
Nevertheless, finding himself suddenly transported, as it were, from
the quiet of so sober a town as that of Philadelphia to the tropical
enchantment of Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, the night brilliant
with a full moon that swung in an opal sky, the warm and luminous
darkness replete with the mysteries of a tropical night, and burdened
with the odors of a land breeze, he suddenly discovered himself to be
overtaken with so vehement a desire for some unwonted excitement that,
had the opportunity presented itself, he felt himself ready to
embrace any adventure with the utmost eagerness, no matter whither it
would have conducted him.
At home (where he was a clerk in the countinghouse of a leading
merchant, by name Jeremiah Doolittle), should such idle fancies have
come to him, he would have looked upon himself as little better than a
fool, but now that he found himself for the first time in a foreign
country, surrounded by such strange and unusual sights and sounds, all
conducive to extravagant imaginations, the wish for some extraordinary
and altogether unusual experience took possession of him with a
singular vehemence to which he had heretofore been altogether a
stranger.
In the street where he stood, which was of a shining whiteness and
which reflected the effulgence of the moonlight with an incredible
distinction, he observed, stretching before him, long lines of white
garden walls, overtopped by a prodigious luxuriance of tropical
foliage.
In these gardens, and set close to the street, stood several
pretentious villas and mansions, the slatted blinds and curtains of
the windows of which were raised to admit of the freer entrance of the
cool and balmy air of the night. From within there issued forth bright
lights, together with the exhilarating sound of merry voices laughing
and talking, or perhaps a song accompanied by the tinkling music of a
spinet or of a guitar. An occasional group of figures, clad in light
and summerlike garments, and adorned with gay and startling colors,
passed him through the moonlight; so that what with the brightness and
warmth of the night, together with all these unusual sights and
sounds, it appeared to Jonathan Rugg that he was rather the inhabitant
of some extraordinary land of enchantment and unreality than a dweller
upon that sober and solid world in which he had heretofore passed his
entire existence.
Before continuing this narrative the reader may here be informed that
our hero had come into this enchanted world as the supercargo of the
ship _Susanna Hayes_, of Philadelphia; that he had for several years
proved himself so honest and industrious a servant to the merchant
house of the worthy Jeremiah Doolittle that that benevolent man had
given to his well-deserving clerk this opportunity at once of
gratifying an inclination for foreign travel and of filling a position
of trust that should redound to his individual profit. The _Susanna
Hayes_ had entered Kingston harbor that afternoon, and this was
Jonathan's first night spent in those tropical latitudes, whither his
fancy and his imagination had so often carried him while he stood over
the desk filing the accounts of invoices from foreign parts.
It might be finally added that, had he at all conceived how soon and
to what a degree his sudden inclination for adventure was to be
gratified, his romantic aspirations might have been somewhat dashed at
the prospect that lay before him.
II
_The Mysterious Lady with the Silver Veil_
At that moment our hero suddenly became conscious of the fact that a
small wicket in a wooden gate near which he stood had been opened, and
that the eyes of an otherwise concealed countenance were observing him
with the utmost closeness of scrutiny.
He had hardly time to become aware of this observation of his person
when the gate itself was opened, and there appeared before him, in the
moonlight, the bent and crooked figure of an aged negress. She was
clad in a calamanco raiment, and was further adorned with a variety of
gaudily colored trimmings, vastly suggestive of the tropical world of
which she was an inhabitant. Her woolly head was enveloped, after the
fashion of her people, in the folds of a gigantic and flaming red
turban constructed of an entire pocket handkerchief. Her face was
pock-pitted to an incredible degree, so that what with this deformity,
emphasized by the pouting of her prodigious and shapeless lips, and
the rolling of a pair of eyes as yellow as saffron, Jonathan Rugg
thought that he had never beheld a figure at once so extraordinary and
so repulsive.
It occurred to our hero that here, maybe, was to overtake him such an
adventure as that which he had just a moment before been desiring so
ardently. Nor was he mistaken; for the negress, first looking this way
and then that, with an extremely wary and cunning expression, and
apparently having satisfied herself that the street, for the moment,
was pretty empty of passers, beckoned to him to draw nearer. When he
had approached close enough to her she caught him by the sleeve, and,
instantly drawing him into the garden beyond, shut and bolted the gate
with a quickness and a silence suggestive of the most extravagant
secrecy.
At the same moment a huge negro suddenly appeared from the shadow of
the gatepost, and so placed himself between Jonathan and the gate that
any attempt to escape would inevitably have entailed a conflict, upon
our hero's part, with the sable and giant guardian.
Says the negress, looking very intently at our hero, "Be you afeared,
Buckra?"
"Why, no," quoth Jonathan; "for to tell thee the truth, friend, though
I am a man of peace, being of that religious order known as the
Society of Friends, I am not so weak in person nor so timid in
disposition as to warrant me in being afraid of anyone. Indeed, were I
of a mind to escape, I might, without boasting, declare my belief that
I should be able to push my way past even a better man than thy large
friend who stands so threateningly in front of yonder gate."
At these words the negress broke into so prodigious a grin that, in
the moonlight, it appeared as though the whole lower part of her face
had been transformed into shining teeth. "You be a brave Buckra," said
she, in her gibbering English. "You come wid Melina, and Melina take
you to pretty lady, who want you to eat supper wid her."
Thereupon, and allowing our hero no opportunity to decline this
extraordinary invitation, even had he been of a mind to do so, she
took him by the hand and led him toward the large and imposing house
which commanded the garden. "Indeed," says Jonathan to himself, as he
followed his sable guide--himself followed in turn by the gigantic
negro--"indeed, I am like to have my fill of adventure, if anything is
to be judged from such a beginning as this."
Nor did the interior sumptuousness of the mansion at all belie the
imposing character of its exterior, for, entering by way of an
illuminated veranda, and so coming into a brilliantly lighted hallway