Imaginary LIves Page 8

  He besieged the admiralty with petitions. They finally gave him The Rose of Algiers, carrying eighteen guns, and in 1687 he set sail for the unknown. He was thirty-six years old.

  The Rose of Algiers was manned by a crew of ninety-five. Adderly, the first mate, came from Providence. When the men first learned that Phips had set his course for the island of Hispaniola they were not overjoyed, for Hispaniola was a pirate stronghold while The Rose of Algiers had every appearance of an honest craft.

  When they first touched land the sailors called a council between themselves with the intent of becoming gentlemen of fortune. While they were assembled on a little beach, Phips stood at the prow of The Rose of Algiers, scanning the sea. The ship’s carpenter chanced to overhear the crew’s conspiracy and carried the tale at once to the captain’s cabin.

  Phips ordered one broadside discharged at his mutinous men, then sailed away with several faithful sailors, leaving the rest marooned there, on a barren stretch of the archipelago. Adderly, the mate from Providence, managed to regain the vessel by swimming.

  They came to Hispaniola on a calm sea under a burning sun. Phips asked questions about all the vessels that had foundered in these waters during the past half century, in sight of Port de la Plata. An old Spaniard remembered one, showing Phips the very reef. It was a long, round rock with sides sloping away, down to the far depths of the clear, vibrant water. Perched in the rigging, Adderly laughed to see the waves go whirling in little ripples and eddies, as The Rose of Algiers made a slow tour of the reef, while all the men examined the transparent sea in vain. Phips stood on the fo’castle, tapping his foot, pacing up and down between the winches and spars. Once more The Rose of Algiers made a turn of the reef, but the ocean floor was all alike, with its wet sand patterned in concentric waves, and its feathery sea verdure moving gently to the wash of the current. When The Rose of Algiers came about for her third tour of the reef the sun went down and the sea grew black.

  Then it grew phosphorescent. “There’s treasure,” shouted Adderly through the darkness, pointing to the smoky gold streaking the surface of the sea. But the hot dawn of the tropics revealed an ocean clear and tranquil, and The Rose of Algiers continued her monotonous course. Eight days she held to it, until the men’s eyes burned red from their constant scrutiny of the limpid depths. Phips ran out of provisions. There was nothing to do but depart, so he gave the order and The Rose of Algiers came about. At that moment Adderly spied an unusual cluster of pure white seaweed growing on a side of the reef. He wanted it, so one of the Indians plunged, plucked the thing and brought it up, hanging straight and heavy from his hand. It was strangely heavy, the twisted roots seeming to entwine themselves around some form not unlike a pebble. Adderly swung the roots down against the deck to rid them of this weight, and a bright object rolled out sparkling in the sunlight. Phips yelled aloud. It was a lump of silver worth three hundred pounds. Adderly waved the white seaweed stupidly while the Indians began to dive. Within a few hours the deck was covered with old sacks as hard as stone, petrified, grown over completely with barnacles and little shells. When they were split open with cold chisels and mallets a stream of gold and silver nuggets and pieces of eight came pouring out of the holes. “God be praised!” cried Phips, “our fortune is made.” In all, the treasure amounted to three hundred thousand pounds sterling. Adderly kept repeating, “and all that came out of the root of a white seaweed!” He died at Bermuda several days later, raving mad.

  Phips brought his treasure back. The King of England made him Sir William Phips, naming him High Sheriff of Boston. There he realized his dreams when he built a fine house of red brick on Green Street. He became a man of some importance. It was he who led the campaign against the French possessions, taking Arcadia from de Meneval and de Villebon, whereupon the king made him Governor of Massachusetts and Captain General of Maine and Newfoundland. His strong boxes were now heaped with gold. Then he set out to capture Quebec after gathering up all the loose money in Boston to fund his project. The enterprise failed and the colony was ruined. Phips tried issuing paper money, giving out his own gold in exchange, hoping by that measure to increase the value of the paper. But fortune had turned. The paper could not be upheld and Phips lost everything. Soon he found himself poor, in debt, harassed by his enemies. His prosperity had only lasted eight years. As he was embarking miserably enough, for London, he was arrested in default of twenty thousand pounds at the request of Dudley and Brenton, and was taken to Fleet Prison.

  They locked Sir William Phips in a bare cell.

  The only thing he had saved was the silver nugget that brought him his fortune – the silver nugget from the white seaweed. Fever and despair were on him: death took him by the throat. He struggled, haunted by visions of treasure. The galleon of the Spanish governor Bobadilla had gone down, loaded with gold and silver, in the vicinity of the Bahamas.

  Gaunt with fever and his last, furious hope, Phips sent for the keeper of the prison. Holding out his silver nugget in his shriveled hand, he mumbled crazily:

  “Let me dive – here, see? Here is one of the nuggets of Bobadilla!”

  Then he died. The nugget from the white seaweed paid for his coffin.

  CAPTAIN KIDD

  Pirate

  How this pirate came by the name of Kidd is not altogether clear. The act through which William the Third of England granted him his commission of the Adventure in 1695 began with these words: “To our faithful and well loved captain, William Kidd, commander... greetings.” Certainly from that time on it was a name of war. In battle or manoeuvre some say he always had the elegant habit of wearing delicate kid gloves with revers of Flanders lace.

  Others declare he would cry out during his worst butcheries: “Me? – why, I’m as meek and mild as a new born kid!” Still others there are who say he stored his treasure in sacks made from the skins of young goats, the custom dating from the time he pillaged a ship laden with quicksilver, emptying a thousand bags of this metal which remain buried even now on the slopes of a little hill in Barbados. It is enough to know that his black silk flag was blazoned with a death’s head and the head of a goat, and his seal graven with the same emblems. Some who have hunted the numerous treasures Kidd buried in Asia and America have driven a little goat before them, thinking it would bleat if it crossed the Captain’s path, but no one has ever found his hidden gold.

  Guided by Gabriel Loff, one of Kidd’s old sailors, Blackbeard himself searched the dunes where Fort Providence now stands, finding no more than a few traces of quicksilver oozing up through the sand. All this digging has been useless, for Kidd himself told how his secrets would remain eternally undiscovered because of the “man with the bloody bucket”. He was haunted by this man all his life, and his treasures have been haunted and defended by him ever since.

  Irritated by the enormous amount of piracy in the West Indies, Lord Bellamont, governor of Barbados, fitted out the galley Adventure, obtaining a commander’s commission for Captain Kidd. Long envious of the famous pirate, Ireland, Kidd promised Lord Bellamont he would capture Ireland’s sloop o’ war together with the person of its master and all his crew, and bring them back for execution. The Adventure carried thirty guns and one hundred and fifty men. Kidd first put in at Madeira to take on wine; he then touched at Buena Vista for a supply of salt, and at last reached Santiago where he provisioned his ship completely.

  From that point he set sail for the mouth of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and a little island called the Key of Bab.

  It was there he raised the skull and crossbones and reorganized his crew. Assembled on the ship’s hatch, he swore them all to absolute obedience of the rules of piracy. Each man had a right to vote and a right to equal shares of fresh provisions and strong liquors. Cards and dice were forbidden. All lights out by eight at night; if a man would drink later he must drink on deck under the open sky. The company received neither woman nor boy. Should they be found in disguise, death was the penalty. Guns, pistols and cutla
sses always to be held in readiness. Quarrels to be settled on land with sabre or pistol. Two parts of the spoils were for captain and quartermaster, one and a half parts for mate, bos’un and gunner, one part and a quarter for other officers. Rest for the musicians on the Sabbath Day.

  The first ship encountered was Dutch, commanded by Skipper Mitchel. Kidd broke out the French flag and gave chase. The other vessel raised the same colours, at which Kidd hailed her in French, and when the pirate boarded the Dutch ship with his crew, Skipper Mitchel called out a Frenchman from among his own men to act as interpreter. Kidd asked him if he had a passport, and to his affirmative, replied: “Well, by God, if you’ve got a passport I’ll make you captain of this ship.” Then he had him hanged from the yard-arm, afterwards bringing the Dutchmen up one by one, questioning them, pretending not to hear their Flemish names and condemning them with these words: “French?... the plank!” A plank was swung over the side. All the Dutchmen walked it naked, stepping into the sea at the point of the bos’un’s cutlass.

  Moore was Kidd’s gunner. Moore was drunk.

  Raising his voice he asked: “Captain, why are you killing these men?” Kidd picked up a heavy bucket and went for him, and Moore fell with his brains spilling out of a skull split wide. There were matted hairs glued to the bucket in a curd of blood, so Kidd ordered it washed, but none of the crew would ever use it again. They left it hanging in the rigging.

  A voice unheard by any save himself cried out behind Kidd’s shoulder: “Fill a bucket!” He whirled on it but his cutlass slashed only empty air, and he wiped a fleck of foam from his lips. Then he hanged some Armenians. When Kidd attacked the Lark he slept stretched out on his bunk after the division of the loot. Waking in a heavy sweat he called for water to bathe himself. A sailor brought it in a pewter basin. Staring at that common receptacle Kidd exclaimed: “Is that what you bring a gentleman of fortune... a bucket of blood?” The sailor fled; later Kidd drove him from the ship, marooning him on a remote rock with a rifle, a powder horn and a flask of water. When Captain Kidd buried his famous treasures in so many lonely places he had no other reason but the persuasion that his murdered gunner came every night with his bloody bucket to dig up the gold and hurl it into the sea.

  Captured at last in New York, Kidd was sent by Lord Bellamont to London where he was tried and hanged on Execution Dock in his red cloak and his gloves. When the hangman placed the black Milan cap over his eyes, Kidd cried out: “Great God! he’s putting his bucket over my head!” The blackened corpse hung in chains for more than twenty years.

  WALTER KENNEDY

  Unlettered Pirate

  Captain Kennedy was an Irishman. He could neither read nor write. Under the great Roberts he rose to the lieutenant grade by merit of his talent for torture. He was perfection itself at the art of tightening a cord around a prisoner’s brow until his eyes popped out, or of tickling his face with a flaming palm leaf. When Darby Mullin was tried for treason aboard the Corsaire, Captain Kennedy’s reputation became assured. Seated in a semi-circle behind the wheel house, the judges assembled with their long tobacco pipes around a bowl of punch.

  Then the process began. They were about to vote the verdict when someone suggested another pipe before concluding the business. Kennedy rose, drew his clay from his pocket, spat and delivered himself of the following sentiments:

  “Great God, sirs, devil take me if we don’t hang me old comrade Darby Mullin. Darby’s a good lad and bugger the man who says he ain’t. And we’re gentlemen o’ fortune. Hell, Darby and me has bunked together: I love him with all me heart, I do. But Great God, sirs, I know him, the bastard. He’ll never repent, devil take me if he will, eh, ain’t that so, Darby me lad? Good God, go ahead and hang him! Hang him by all means. And now, sirs, with the leave o’ the honorable company I’ll just step up and take a good swig to his health.”

  This discourse was considered admirable – as great as any of those noble military orations reported by the ancients. Roberts was enchanted, and from that day Kennedy became ambitious. Near Barbados Roberts embarked in a sloop to pursue a Portuguese vessel. During his absence Kennedy forced his shipmates to elect him captain of the Corsaire, then sailed away on an enterprise of his own making. He looted and scuttled numerous brigantines and galleys carrying cargoes of sugar or tobacco from Brazil, not to speak of the gold dust and sacks of doubloons and pieces of eight. His black silk flag displayed a death’s head, two cross bones, an hour glass and a heart pierced by an arrow from which fell three drops of blood. With that insignia flying, he one day encountered a peaceable ship from Virginia, under the command of a Quaker named Knot. The pious man had neither rum, pistol, cutlass nor sabre aboard. He was dressed in a long black coat topped by a broad-brimmed hat of the same colour.

  “Great God!” exclaimed Kennedy. “Here’s a cheery fellow! Now that’s what I like to see. No harm to my friend Captain Knot who wears such a joyful uniform.”

  “Amen,” responded Knot, “so be it.”

  Then the pirates threw gifts to the Quaker: thirty moidors, ten rolls of Brazilian tobacco and several packets of emeralds. Brother Knot picked up the moidors, the gems and the tobacco.

  “These be welcome gifts,” he said, “for they may be put to pious use. Ah, would to heaven all our friends who scour the seas were moved by such sentiments! The Lord accepts all restitutions. These are the flesh of the calf and the limbs of the idol Dagon that you offer, my friends, as sacrifice. Dagon still rules in these wicked lands and his gold brings evil temptations.”

  “Dagon be damned,” roared Kennedy. “Great God, shut that snout of yours and have a drink.” Brother Knot bowed peacefully, though he refused the rum offered him.

  “My friends...” he began.

  “Great God,” interrupted Kennedy, “call us gentlemen of fortune!”

  “Friends and gentlemen,” Knot began for a second time, “strong liquors be goads of temptation our feeble flesh cannot endure. As for you, my friends...”

  “Gentlemen of fortune, Great God!” corrected Kennedy.

  “As for you, friends and fortunate gentlemen,” continued Brother Knot, “you who be hardened by long years of strife against the Tempter, it is possible, nay, even probable I shall say, that you no longer feel his sting. But we, your friends, should be troubled, gravely troubled...”

  “To the devil with your troubles,” said Kennedy. “This man can talk, but I can drink better.

  He’ll fetch us to Carolina to see his fine friends who probably own some more limbs of the calf,” the pirate went on. “Eh, Captain Dagon?”

  “So be it,” agreed the Quaker. “But my name is Knot.”

  And he bowed again, the broad brim of his hat shaking in the wind.

  The Corsaire dropped anchor in a creek well known to the Quaker man, who promised to return and bring his friends. He did return, that same night, leading a company of military sent by Governor Spotswood of Carolina. The man of God swore to his friends, those fortunate gentlemen, that his only motive was to prevent the introduction of tempting liquors into this profane land. When the pirates were arrested he said:

  “Ah, my friends, how mortified I am that this must be!”

  “Great God!” said Kennedy. “Mortified is the word.”

  He was put in irons and taken to London for trial. Old Bailey got him. He made his mark on all the questionnaires and on the receipt for his capture. His last discourse was delivered on Execution Dock, where the wind from the sea swayed all the corpses of former gentlemen of fortune, still hanging in their chains.

  “Great God! what an honour,” said Kennedy, staring at the dangling cadavers. “They’re going to stick me up beside Captain Kidd. He ain’t got any eyes left, but it’s him all right – who else would be wearing such a grand crimson coat? He was elegant, Kidd was. And he could write. He knew his letters, he did; bugger me, what a fine hand! Pardon, Captain (he saluted the shriveled corpse in crimson). They, too, were gentlemen of fortune.”

  MAJOR
 STEDE-BONNET

  Pirate by Fancy

  Major Stede-Bonnet was a gentleman and a retired soldier living on his plantation in Barbados in the year 1715. His fields of sugar-cane and coffee brought him a good income, and he had the pleasure of smoking tobacco he himself had cultivated. He had been unhappily married, for his wife, it was said, had driven him slightly mad, though his aberrations were only mild ones until after the quarantine. At first, his servants and neighbours humoured them as mere childish fancies.

  Major Stede Bonnet’s peculiarity was the following: on every possible occasion he made a scathing denouncement of all who lived and fought on land, then launched forth a flood of praise for seafaring men. The only names sweet in his mouth were those of Avery, Charles Vane, Benjamin Hornigold or Edward Teach, good hardy navigators, in his opinion, true men of enterprise. They were all infesting the seas in the vicinity of the Antilles at that time, but if anyone called them pirates in his hearing Major would exclaim:

  “Thank God, then, for these pirates, as you say, who give us an example of such free lives as our forefathers led. They had no rich men in their days, no women coddlers, no slaves to fetch them sugar and cotton and indigo, but one generous God distributing all things and to each man his just part. That’s why I like these fine free fellows who live as companions in fortune, dividing the prizes between them.”

  Tramping over his plantation, the Major often stopped to thump some labourer on the shoulder, saying:

  “Wouldn’t you be better off now, you fool, if you was stowing those bales away in the hold of a tidy brigantine instead of spilling your sweat in this dust?”