Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
of Venezuela and upon the doomed city like a blast of the plague.
Leaving their vessels, the buccaneers made a land attack upon the fort
that stood at the mouth of the inlet that led into Lake Maracaibo and
guarded the city.
The Spaniards held out well, and fought with all the might that
Spaniards possess; but after a fight of three hours all was given up
and the garrison fled, spreading terror and confusion before them. As
many of the inhabitants of the city as could do so escaped in boats to
Gibraltar, which lies to the southward, on the shores of Lake
Maracaibo, at the distance of some forty leagues or more.
Then the pirates marched into the town, and what followed may be
conceived. It was a holocaust of lust, of passion, and of blood such
as even the Spanish West Indies had never seen before. Houses and
churches were sacked until nothing was left but the bare walls; men
and women were tortured to compel them to disclose where more treasure
lay hidden.
Then, having wrenched all that they could from Maracaibo, they entered
the lake and descended upon Gibraltar, where the rest of the
panic-stricken inhabitants were huddled together in a blind terror.
The governor of Merida, a brave soldier who had served his king in
Flanders, had gathered together a troop of eight hundred men, had
fortified the town, and now lay in wait for the coming of the pirates.
The pirates came all in good time, and then, in spite of the brave
defense, Gibraltar also fell. Then followed a repetition of the scenes
that had been enacted in Maracaibo for the past fifteen days, only
here they remained for four horrible weeks, extorting money--money!
ever money!--from the poor poverty-stricken, pest-ridden souls crowded
into that fever hole of a town.
Then they left, but before they went they demanded still more
money--ten thousand pieces of eight--as a ransom for the town, which
otherwise should be given to the flames. There was some hesitation on
the part of the Spaniards, some disposition to haggle, but there was
no hesitation on the part of l'Olonoise. The torch was set to the town
as he had promised, whereupon the money was promptly paid, and the
pirates were piteously begged to help quench the spreading flames.
This they were pleased to do, but in spite of all their efforts nearly
half of the town was consumed.
After that they returned to Maracaibo again, where they demanded a
ransom of thirty thousand pieces of eight for the city. There was no
haggling here, thanks to the fate of Gibraltar; only it was utterly
impossible to raise that much money in all of the poverty-stricken
region. But at last the matter was compromised, and the town was
redeemed for twenty thousand pieces of eight and five hundred head of
cattle, and tortured Maracaibo was quit of them.
In the Ile de la Vache the buccaneers shared among themselves two
hundred and sixty thousand pieces of eight, besides jewels and bales
of silk and linen and miscellaneous plunder to a vast amount.
Such was the one great deed of l'Olonoise; from that time his star
steadily declined--for even nature seemed fighting against such a
monster--until at last he died a miserable, nameless death at the
hands of an unknown tribe of Indians upon the Isthmus of Darien.
* * * * *
And now we come to the greatest of all the buccaneers, he who stands
pre-eminent among them, and whose name even to this day is a charm to
call up his deeds of daring, his dauntless courage, his truculent
cruelty, and his insatiate and unappeasable lust for gold--Capt. Henry
Morgan, the bold Welshman, who brought buccaneering to the height and
flower of its glory.
Having sold himself, after the manner of the times, for his passage
across the seas, he worked out his time of servitude at the Barbados.
As soon as he had regained his liberty he entered upon the trade of
piracy, wherein he soon reached a position of considerable prominence.
He was associated with Mansvelt at the time of the latter's descent
upon Saint Catharine's Isle, the importance of which spot, as a center
of operations against the neighboring coasts, Morgan never lost sight
of.
The first attempt that Capt. Henry Morgan ever made against any town
in the Spanish Indies was the bold descent upon the city of Puerto del
Principe in the island of Cuba, with a mere handful of men. It was a
deed the boldness of which has never been outdone by any of a like
nature--not even the famous attack upon Panama itself. Thence they
returned to their boats in the very face of the whole island of Cuba,
aroused and determined upon their extermination. Not only did they
make good their escape, but they brought away with them a vast
amount of plunder, computed at three hundred thousand pieces of eight,
besides five hundred head of cattle and many prisoners held for
ransom.
But when the division of all this wealth came to be made, lo! there
were only fifty thousand pieces of eight to be found. What had become
of the rest no man could tell but Capt. Henry Morgan himself. Honesty
among thieves was never an axiom with him.
Rude, truculent, and dishonest as Captain Morgan was, he seems to have
had a wonderful power of persuading the wild buccaneers under him to
submit everything to his judgment, and to rely entirely upon his word.
In spite of the vast sum of money that he had very evidently made away
with, recruits poured in upon him, until his band was larger and
better equipped than ever.
And now it was determined that the plunder harvest was ripe at Porto
Bello, and that city's doom was sealed. The town was defended by two
strong castles thoroughly manned, and officered by as gallant a
soldier as ever carried Toledo steel at his side. But strong castles
and gallant soldiers weighed not a barleycorn with the buccaneers when
their blood was stirred by the lust of gold.
Landing at Puerto Naso, a town some ten leagues westward of Porto
Bello, they marched to the latter town, and coming before the castle,
boldly demanded its surrender. It was refused, whereupon Morgan
threatened that no quarter should be given. Still surrender was
refused; and then the castle was attacked, and after a bitter struggle
was captured. Morgan was as good as his word: every man in the castle
was shut in the guard room, the match was set to the powder magazine,
and soldiers, castle, and all were blown into the air, while through
all the smoke and the dust the buccaneers poured into the town. Still
the governor held out in the other castle, and might have made good
his defense, but that he was betrayed by the soldiers under him. Into
the castle poured the howling buccaneers. But still the governor
fought on, with his wife and daughter clinging to his knees and
beseeching him to surrender, and the blood from his wounded forehead
trickling down over his white collar, until a merciful bullet put an
end to the vain struggle.
Here were enacted the old scenes. Everything plundered that could be
taken, and then a ransom set upon the town itself.
This time an honest, or an apparently honest, division was made of the
spoils, which amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of
eight, besides merchandise and jewels.
The next towns to suffer were poor Maracaibo and Gibraltar, now just
beginning to recover from the desolation wrought by l'Olonoise. Once
more both towns were plundered of every bale of merchandise and of
every piaster, and once more both were ransomed until everything was
squeezed from the wretched inhabitants.
Here affairs were like to have taken a turn, for when Captain Morgan
came up from Gibraltar he found three great men-of-war lying in the
entrance to the lake awaiting his coming. Seeing that he was hemmed in
in the narrow sheet of water, Captain Morgan was inclined to
compromise matters, even offering to relinquish all the plunder he had
gained if he were allowed to depart in peace. But no; the Spanish
admiral would hear nothing of this. Having the pirates, as he thought,
securely in his grasp, he would relinquish nothing, but would sweep
them from the face of the sea once and forever.
That was an unlucky determination for the Spaniards to reach, for
instead of paralyzing the pirates with fear, as he expected it would
do, it simply turned their mad courage into as mad desperation.
A great vessel that they had taken with the town of Maracaibo was
converted into a fire ship, manned with logs of wood in montera caps
and sailor jackets, and filled with brimstone, pitch, and palm leaves
soaked in oil. Then out of the lake the pirates sailed to meet the
Spaniards, the fire ship leading the way, and bearing down directly
upon the admiral's vessel. At the helm stood volunteers, the most
desperate and the bravest of all the pirate gang, and at the ports
stood the logs of wood in montera caps. So they came up with the
admiral, and grappled with his ship in spite of the thunder of all his
great guns, and then the Spaniard saw, all too late, what his opponent
really was.
He tried to swing loose, but clouds of smoke and almost instantly a
mass of roaring flames enveloped both vessels, and the admiral was
lost. The second vessel, not wishing to wait for the coming of the
pirates, bore down upon the fort, under the guns of which the cowardly
crew sank her, and made the best of their way to the shore. The third
vessel, not having an opportunity to escape, was taken by the pirates
without the slightest resistance, and the passage from the lake was
cleared. So the buccaneers sailed away, leaving Maracaibo and
Gibraltar prostrate a second time.
And now Captain Morgan determined to undertake another venture, the
like of which had never been equaled in all of the annals of
buccaneering. This was nothing less than the descent upon and the
capture of Panama, which was, next to Cartagena, perhaps, the most
powerful and the most strongly fortified city in the West Indies.
In preparation for this venture he obtained letters of marque from the
governor of Jamaica, by virtue of which elastic commission he began
immediately to gather around him all material necessary for the
undertaking.
When it became known abroad that the great Captain Morgan was about
undertaking an adventure that was to eclipse all that was ever done
before, great numbers came flocking to his standard, until he had
gathered together an army of two thousand or more desperadoes and
pirates wherewith to prosecute his adventure, albeit the venture
itself was kept a total secret from everyone. Port Couillon, in the
island of Hispaniola, over against the Ile de la Vache, was the place
of muster, and thither the motley band gathered from all quarters.
Provisions had been plundered from the mainland wherever they could be
obtained, and by the 24th of October, 1670 (O. S.), everything was in
readiness.
The island of Saint Catharine, as it may be remembered, was at one
time captured by Mansvelt, Morgan's master in his trade of piracy. It
had been retaken by the Spaniards, and was now thoroughly fortified by
them. Almost the first attempt that Morgan had made as a master pirate
was the retaking of Saint Catharine's Isle. In that undertaking he had
failed; but now, as there was an absolute need of some such place as a
base of operations, he determined that the place _must_ be taken. And
it was taken.
The Spaniards, during the time of their possession, had fortified it