Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
as bold as brass. "Look ye," says he to the governor, rolling his quid
of tobacco from one cheek to another--"look ye, we're after this and
that, and if we don't get it, why, I'll tell you plain, we'll burn
them bloody crafts of yours that we've took over yonder, and cut the
weasand of every clodpoll aboard of 'em."
There was no answering an argument of such force as this, and the
worshipful governor and the good folk of Charleston knew very well
that Blackbeard and his crew were the men to do as they promised. So
Blackbeard got his medicine, and though it cost the colony two
thousand dollars, it was worth that much to the town to be quit of
him.
They say that while Captain Richards was conducting his negotiations
with the governor his boat's crew were stumping around the streets of
the town, having a glorious time of it, while the good folk glowered
wrathfully at them, but dared venture nothing in speech or act.
Having gained a booty of between seven and eight thousand dollars from
the prizes captured, the pirates sailed away from Charleston Harbor to
the coast of North Carolina.
And now Blackbeard, following the plan adopted by so many others of
his kind, began to cudgel his brains for means to cheat his fellows
out of their share of the booty.
At Topsail Inlet he ran his own vessel aground, as though by accident.
Hands, the captain of one of the consorts, pretending to come to his
assistance, also grounded _his_ sloop. Nothing now remained but for
those who were able to get away in the other craft, which was all that
was now left of the little fleet. This did Blackbeard with some forty
of his favorites. The rest of the pirates were left on the sand spit
to await the return of their companions--which never happened.
As for Blackbeard and those who were with him, they were that much
richer, for there were so many the fewer pockets to fill. But even yet
there were too many to share the booty, in Blackbeard's opinion, and
so he marooned a parcel more of them--some eighteen or twenty--upon a
naked sand bank, from which they were afterward mercifully rescued by
another freebooter who chanced that way--a certain Major Stede Bonnet,
of whom more will presently be said. About that time a royal
proclamation had been issued offering pardon to all pirates in arms
who would surrender to the king's authority before a given date. So up
goes Master Blackbeard to the Governor of North Carolina and makes his
neck safe by surrendering to the proclamation--albeit he kept tight
clutch upon what he had already gained.
And now we find our bold Captain Blackbeard established in the good
province of North Carolina, where he and His Worship the Governor
struck up a vast deal of intimacy, as profitable as it was pleasant.
There is something very pretty in the thought of the bold sea rover
giving up his adventurous life (excepting now and then an excursion
against a trader or two in the neighboring sound, when the need of
money was pressing); settling quietly down into the routine of old
colonial life, with a young wife of sixteen at his side, who made the
fourteenth that he had in various ports here and there in the world.
Becoming tired of an inactive life, Blackbeard afterward resumed his
piratical career. He cruised around in the rivers and inlets and
sounds of North Carolina for a while, ruling the roost and with never
a one to say him nay, until there was no bearing with such a pest any
longer. So they sent a deputation up to the Governor of Virginia
asking if he would be pleased to help them in their trouble.
There were two men-of-war lying at Kicquetan, in the James River, at
the time. To them the Governor of Virginia applies, and plucky
Lieutenant Maynard, of the _Pearl_, was sent to Ocracoke Inlet to
fight this pirate who ruled it down there so like the cock of a walk.
There he found Blackbeard waiting for him, and as ready for a fight as
ever the lieutenant himself could be. Fight they did, and while it
lasted it was as pretty a piece of business of its kind as one could
wish to see. Blackbeard drained a glass of grog, wishing the
lieutenant luck in getting aboard of him, fired a broadside, blew some
twenty of the lieutenant's men out of existence, and totally crippled
one of his little sloops for the balance of the fight. After that, and
under cover of the smoke, the pirate and his men boarded the other
sloop, and then followed a fine old-fashioned hand-to-hand conflict
betwixt him and the lieutenant. First they fired their pistols, and
then they took to it with cutlasses--right, left, up and down, cut and
slash--until the lieutenant's cutlass broke short off at the hilt.
Then Blackbeard would have finished him off handsomely, only up steps
one of the lieutenant's men and fetches him a great slash over the
neck, so that the lieutenant came off with no more hurt than a cut
across the knuckles.
At the very first discharge of their pistols Blackbeard had been shot
through the body, but he was not for giving up for that--not he. As
said before, he was of the true roaring, raging breed of pirates, and
stood up to it until he received twenty more cutlass cuts and five
additional shots, and then fell dead while trying to fire off an empty
pistol. After that the lieutenant cut off the pirate's head, and
sailed away in triumph, with the bloody trophy nailed to the bow of
his battered sloop.
Those of Blackbeard's men who were not killed were carried off to
Virginia, and all of them tried and hanged but one or two, their
names, no doubt, still standing in a row in the provincial records.
But did Blackbeard really bury treasures, as tradition says, along the
sandy shores he haunted?
Master Clement Downing, midshipman aboard the _Salisbury_, wrote a
book after his return from the cruise to Madagascar, whither the
_Salisbury_ had been ordered, to put an end to the piracy with which
those waters were infested. He says:
"At Guzarat I met with a Portuguese named Anthony de
Sylvestre; he came with two other Portuguese and two
Dutchmen to take on in the Moor's service, as many Europeans
do. This Anthony told me he had been among the pirates, and
that he belonged to one of the sloops in Virginia when
Blackbeard was taken. He informed me that if it should be my
lot ever to go to York River or Maryland, near an island
called Mulberry Island, provided we went on shore at the
watering place, where the shipping used most commonly to
ride, that there the pirates had buried considerable sums of
money in great chests well clamped with iron plates. As to
my part, I never was that way, nor much acquainted with any
that ever used those parts; but I have made inquiry, and am
informed that there is such a place as Mulberry Island. If
any person who uses those parts should think it worth while
to dig a little way at the upper end of a small cove, where
it is convenient to land, he would soon find whether the
information I had was well grounded. Fronting the landing
place are five trees, among which, he said, the money was
hid. I cannot warrant the truth of this account; but if I
was ever to go there, I should find some means or other to
satisfy myself, as it could not be a great deal out of my
way. If anybody should obtain the benefit of this account,
if it please God that they ever come to England, 'tis hoped
they will remember whence they had this information."
Another worthy was Capt. Edward Low, who learned his trade of
sail-making at good old Boston town, and piracy at Honduras. No one
stood higher in the trade than he, and no one mounted to more lofty
altitudes of bloodthirsty and unscrupulous wickedness. 'Tis strange
that so little has been written and sung of this man of might, for he
was as worthy of story and of song as was Blackbeard.
It was under a Yankee captain that he made his first cruise--down to
Honduras, for a cargo of logwood, which in those times was no better
than stolen from the Spanish folk.
One day, lying off the shore, in the Gulf of Honduras, comes Master
Low and the crew of the whaleboat rowing across from the beach, where
they had been all morning chopping logwood.
"What are you after?" says the captain, for they were coming back with
nothing but themselves in the boat.
"We're after our dinner," says Low, as spokesman of the party.
"You'll have no dinner," says the captain, "until you fetch off
another load."
"Dinner or no dinner, we'll pay for it," says Low, wherewith he up
with a musket, squinted along the barrel, and pulled the trigger.
Luckily the gun hung fire, and the Yankee captain was spared to steal
logwood a while longer.
All the same, that was no place for Ned Low to make a longer stay, so
off he and his messmates rowed in a whaleboat, captured a brig out at
sea, and turned pirates.
He presently fell in with the notorious Captain Lowther, a fellow
after his own kidney, who put the finishing touches to his education
and taught him what wickedness he did not already know.
And so he became a master pirate, and a famous hand at his craft, and
thereafter forever bore an inveterate hatred of all Yankees because of
the dinner he had lost, and never failed to smite whatever one of them
luck put within his reach. Once he fell in with a ship off South
Carolina--the _Amsterdam Merchant_, Captain Williamson, commander--a
Yankee craft and a Yankee master. He slit the nose and cropped the
ears of the captain, and then sailed merrily away, feeling the better
for having marred a Yankee.
New York and New England had more than one visit from the doughty
captain, each of which visits they had good cause to remember, for he
made them smart for it.
Along in the year 1722 thirteen vessels were riding at anchor in front
of the good town of Marblehead. Into the harbor sailed a strange
craft. "Who is she?" say the townsfolk, for the coming of a new vessel
was no small matter in those days.
Who the strangers were was not long a matter of doubt. Up goes the
black flag, and the skull and crossbones to the fore.
"'Tis the bloody Low," say one and all; and straightway all was
flutter and commotion, as in a duck pond when a hawk pitches and
strikes in the midst.
It was a glorious thing for our captain, for here were thirteen Yankee
crafts at one and the same time. So he took what he wanted, and then
sailed away, and it was many a day before Marblehead forgot that
visit.
Some time after this he and his consort fell foul of an English sloop
of war, the _Greyhound_, whereby they were so roughly handled that Low
was glad enough to slip away, leaving his consort and her crew behind
him, as a sop to the powers of law and order. And lucky for them if no
worse fate awaited them than to walk the dreadful plank with a bandage
around the blinded eyes and a rope around the elbows. So the consort
was taken, and the crew tried and hanged in chains, and Low sailed off
in as pretty a bit of rage as ever a pirate fell into.
The end of this worthy is lost in the fogs of the past: some say that
he died of a yellow fever down in New Orleans; it was not at the end
of a hempen cord, more's the pity.
Here fittingly with our strictly American pirates should stand Major
Stede Bonnet along with the rest. But in truth he was only a poor
half-and-half fellow of his kind, and even after his hand was fairly
turned to the business he had undertaken, a qualm of conscience would
now and then come across him, and he would make vast promises to