LEONARD LINDSAY;
OR,
THE STORY OF A BUCCANEER.
CHAPTER I.
OF MY BOYHOOD, AND HOW, BEING CAST AWAY AT SEA, I AM
CARRIED TO THE WEST INDIES AGAINST MY WILL.
It was in the fair sunlight of a May morning, in the year of Grace 1672, that that great brave ship, the Golden Grove of Leith, hoisted her broad sails, with many a fluttering pendant and streamer above them, and stood proudly down the Firth of Forth, designing to reach the open ocean, not far from the hill, well known to mariners by the name of the North Berwick Law. On board of the Golden Grove, I, Leonard Lindsay, then in my twenty-second year, was, you must know, a sailor, and I hope a bold one. My father was a fisherman, and, as I may say, his coble was my cradle. Many a rough rocking in truth it bestowed upon me, for it was his use even before I could go alone, to carry me with him a fishing, wrapped up, it may be, in a tattered sail, while my mother, with a creel upon her back, journeyed through the landward towns, and to the houses of the gentry, to sell the spoil of hook and net.
We fared hard and worked hard; for no more industrious folk lived in the fisher-town of Kirk Leslie, a pleasant and goodly spot, lying not far from the East Neuk of Fife, than old Davie Lindsay and Jess, his wife and my mother. Many a weary night and day have come and gone since I beheld that beach whereon I was born; but I can yet shut my eyes and see our cottage and our boat—called the “Royal Thistle”—rocking at the lee of the long rough pier of unhewn whinstone, gathered from the wild muirs around, which ran into the sea and sheltered the little fisher harbour, formed by the burn of Balwearie, where it joins the waters of its black pools to the salt brine. Opposite our house was a pretty green bourock, as we called it, that is to say, a little hill, mostly of bright green turf, with bunches of bent and long grass, which rustled with a sharp sad sound when the east wind blew snell, and creeping cosily into the chimney neuk, we would listen to the roaring of the sea. But the bourock was oftentimes brown with nets or with wet sails stretched there to dry, and below it there lay half-buried in the sand, old boats, mouldering away and masts and oars all shivered, bleaching like big bones in the sun and the rain.
I remember old Davie Lindsay my father well. He was a stern, big man, with a grisly grey beard, shaved but once a month. No fisher on the coast had a surer hand for the tiller, or a firmer gripe to haul aft the sheet of the lugsail in a fresh breeze and a gathering sea. Often when we were rising and falling on the easterly swell, half-a-score miles from Kirk Leslie pier, he loved to tell me old-world tales and sing old-world songs of the sea. Then would he recount how the Rover sunk the bell which good abbot Ignatius, of Aberbrothwick, caused to be placed upon the wild Bell Rock, as a guide to poor mariners; and how the pirate dreed the weird—that is, underwent the fate—he had prepared for himself, and was lost with ship and crew on that very reef. Sometimes, too, he would drop his voice, and when I came close to him, he would speak of great monsters in the sea; of the ocean snake, whose head looked up at the bridge of Stirling, and whose tail went nine times round the Bass; of singing mermaids, who come upon the yellow sands at night, and beguile men with their false lays, till they leave house and home, being bewitched by the glamour of elfin palaces under the brine; and, most terrible of all, of phantom ships with crews of ghosts, which sailors see by the pale glimmerings of the moon, when it shines through the driving scud, upon a mirk midnight and a roaring sea. But, then, if I was frightened and cried, my father would straightway change the theme, and burst out with a strong clear voice into some loud fishing-song, or, what I loved better still, into some brave, ancient ballad, about the fair kingdom of Scotland, and its gallant kings and stalwart knights; and of such, my favourite was the lay of Sir Patrick Spens, for he was both a knight and a sailor.
Oh, I can yet hear my father’s strong voice rising over the dash of the water and the moan of the wind, as he sung the brave voyage of Sir Patrick to Norroway, to bring home the king’s daughter; but his tones would sink and grow hoarse and low, when he chanted the storm, and the perishing of all the fair company on the voyage home.
My father’s long home was also the bottom of the sea. One wild March day, the coble left Kirk Leslie pier without me. I staid at home mending a dredge-net with my mother. The easterly har was on the coast, that is to say, thick cold mists and a keen wind. As the sun rose high so did the tempest; we could see nought seaward, for the grey fog was out upon the water, but every wave came white, over and over the pier, from end to end. My mother went to and fro, wan, and praying to herself; as indeed did many another fisher-wife, for they had great cause. The night was awful. I sat cowering beside my mother, who was rocking herself on a settle with her apron over her head; or now and then stole down to the beach, to where men stood with lanterns upon masts to show the harbour mouth to the poor folks at sea. Three boats, with crews pale and worn, made the land before the day; an hour after dawn our coble came tossing to the outside belt of the surf—but she was bottom upwards.
In a month after this, my mother and I went to her father’s, a very old man, and a reverend elder of the kirk. He sent me to school to Dominie Buchanan, a learned carle, who by his own account behoved to be of the race of the great Geordie Buchanan, of whom they tell merry tales, which surely are idle and false, for he was a severe, grave man, and handled the tawse unmercifully, as his royal pupil, gentle King Jamie, could in his time well testify. At school I was diligent, and pleased master and friends.
Afterwards, up to my sixteenth year, I went much a fishing in the boat of Saunders Draugglefute, my maternal uncle, when desiring to see more of my country than could be descried in our furthest voyages between Kirk Leslie pier and the deep-sea fisheries at the back of the Isle of May, I made many coasting trips, for the space of near five years, in the stout brig Jean Livingstone, belonging to Kirkaldy, during which time I twice visited the Thames and the city of London; plying also once each year with a great cargo of herrings to Antwerp, in the Low Countries. But still I wished to see the world further from home, and to this intent preferred rather to go on board the Golden Grove of Leith, as a common sailor, than to be mate of the Jean Livingstone, a promotion which was offered me by John Swanson, skipper and part owner of the brig.
The reason of my coming to think of the Golden Grove was, that the Jean Livingstone having a cargo of goods from Yarmouth to Edinburgh, lay while they were delivered close by the great ship, then preparing at the foot of Leith Wynd for a voyage to Italy, and from thence to divers ports on the Moorish side of the Mediterranean sea. Now Italy was a land which I had long wished to behold, as being once the seat of that great people the Romans, some knowledge of the poetry and philosophy of whom, the worthy Dominie Buchanan had not failed to instil into me, but which I ofttimes felt with pain to be fast fading from my mind. Indeed, I must tell you that it is to the exertions of that learned man that this narrative is altogether owing, for he, seeing, as he was pleased to say, a more congenial soil in my mind for the seeds of his instructions than was presented by the other fisher-boys, took great pains to imbue me with a love for the humanities, which has not deserted me entirely unto this day. After much pondering upon my prospects, I therefore finally made up my mind to offer myself on board of the Golden Grove, which I did, and was accepted without more ado. My friends would have me pause and think of the dangers of unknown coasts, and pirates and robbers of the sea, but I knew Captain John Coxon, of the Golden Grove, to be a stout and experienced seaman, and one who was readily trusted with rich freights—while as to freebooters, when I looked upon the array of culverins, demi-culverins, and falconets ranged upon the decks, and also the show of carabines and patterreroes placed about the masts, with many stout fellows to man and wield them, I felt we could bid defiance to any rover who ever sailed out of Sallee.
Therefore, to make a long story short, we completed our cargo, took in provisions and water, and, as has been said, on a fine May morning, I do not remember the exact day, sailed. The wind was so fair that by even-fall we saw St. Abb’s Head.
And here at the outset of what was to me so adventurous a voyage, I would describe my captain and my shipmates, as well as the stout vessel herself, the latter being indeed a brave craft, with top-gallant forecastle and high poop, surmounted by three great lanterns; but, as the reader will shortly perceive, the Golden Grove and I soon parted company, and I never saw either her or any of her crew again.
We carried the fair north wind with us all along the English coast, until passing through the straits of Dover, we bade farewell to the white cliffs. Then in two days’ time we saw upon the larboard bow great rocks which form the cape called La Hogue, in France, and passing to the westward of the island of Guernsey, sighted the little isle of Ushant lying off the port of Brest, where the French maintain fleets and great naval stores. Hereabouts the wind changed, veering round to the westward, and speedily rolling in upon us billows so vast that we could well discern that we were no longer in the narrow seas, but exposed to the great strength and fierceness of the Atlantic or Western ocean. Notwithstanding, however, we made good progress; the breeze was not steady but blew in squalls, making it often necessary to hand topsails, and raising great seething seas around us, over which the Golden Grove rode very gallantly. At nightfall, on the eighth day of our voyage, we lost sight of Ushant and entered into the great Bay of Biscay. The sea here runs exceedingly high, tumbling in to the shore in great ridges of blue water; but with a stout ship, well manned, the nature of the waves is not so dangerous as that of the short, boiling surges in the North Sea. And now I come to the accident which so sadly determined my lot for many a day.
On the morning of either the 13th or the 14th of May the weather was squally and unsettled, and the sea irregular and high. About eight o’clock, looking forth to windward, I saw a great blackness in the sky, which I took to be the prelude of a gust of no common strength. At the same moment, the mate of the watch ordered the topmen aloft to hand the topsails, we carrying at the moment no higher canvas. My station was upon the leeward fore-topsail yard-arm, and as I clung by the man-ropes to the great creaking pieces of timber, grasping the fluttering canvas of the sail, I thought I had never seen a finer sight than the great rolling ship below, wallowing and labouring in the white foaming seas, which would sometimes strike her and pour heavy masses of clear green water in a flood over the decks. When we were securing the sail, the motion aloft was very great, we being violently swung from side to side in such wise as might well make giddy even the grizzled head of an old mariner. Meantime, the gust to windward was coming fast; the blackness increased, and a rushing sound, as of the chariot wheels of a host, rose above the rude clamour of the sea. Then, amid great showers of flying brine, which it drove before it, the fierce wind struck the Golden Grove bodily over upon her side. At the same instant, I heard a hoarse voice below summoning the men from the yards down upon deck; but as I was about to obey, the tempest grew terrible. There were great clouds of mist above me, through which I could see nought below but the white patches of waves breaking over the strong bulwarks of the ship. Suddenly the canvas, which had not been quite secured, was torn open, as it were, with a loud screech by the wind, and flapped and banged so that I felt the very mast shake and quiver violently, while I received rude blows from the loose and flying ropes, insomuch as, being half blinded by that and the pelting of the brine, I shut my eyes, and bending down my head grasped the yard firmly in my arms. I might have remained thus three or four seconds, when I heard the loud howl of the wind suddenly increase to a sort of eldritch scream. In a moment, the mast gave two violent jerks, and with the third I heard five or six sounding twangs like the breaking of harp-strings, and immediately a crashing of wood. Then, still clinging to the yard, I was hurried with a mighty rush through the air, and suddenly plunged down into the choking brine, which rose all gurgling over my head, and I knew at the same time that the Golden Grove had carried away her fore-topmast, and that I was overboard in the boiling sea.
By instinct, I suppose, I struggled so to climb upon the floating wreck as to get my head and shoulders above water. Then I saw that I was alone in my misery. I have said that my station was at the outer end of the yard, and I conceive that my shipmates must have gained the top, and from thence, I hoped, the deck. But as for me, I saw nought but speedy drowning for my fate. The seas rose in great foaming peaks and pyramids around me, and the wind drove drenching showers from the crests of the waves down into the hollows. All around gloomy clouds passed swiftly, torn by the squall, but the pitchy darkness which showed where its strength lay, was far down to leeward, and looking thereat as I rose upon a higher sea than common, I faintly descried the ship in a crippled plight, but having managed to put her helm up so as to scud before the storm. She was already near a league away, and leaving me fast; so that the bitterness of death rose up in my very heart. For a moment I thought I might as well die at once, and letting go my hold of the spars, I allowed myself to sink backward into the sea. But God has wisely made man to love life with a clinging love, and to grapple with death as with a grim enemy. Therefore, as the water closed above me, and I felt suffocating, I could not help making a struggle, which soon replaced me on my desolate seat on the floating wreck. I looked at the spars, and saw that the topmast had broken only about a foot beneath the place to which the yard had been lowered. Nearly the whole of the foretop and the top-gallant masts of the Golden Grove, with the fragments of the foretopsail, which had been rent almost into ribbons, and the yard to which they were fastened lay therefore in the sea. I clambered in from the end of the yard, and took up my position where the mast and it crossed each other; making myself fast thereto with one of the numerous ends of broken rope which abounded, and for near an hour sat dismal and almost broken-hearted, unheedful of how the waves tossed me to and fro, or how they sometimes burst over and almost stifled me. I was somewhat roused by a feeling of warmth, and looking abroad saw that the clouds had broken, and that the sun was shining brightly on the sea. The wind was also abated, and the waves not combing so violently, I was more at ease. Then I heard that terrible sound—the sound of the sea alone—which no one who has listened to save he who has swam far from any vessel, or who, like myself, has clung to a driving spar. On the beach you hear the surf, where the waves burst upon rock or sand; on shipboard you hear the dashing of the billows on counter and prow; and, above them all, the sigh of the wind and the groaning of timbers and masts. But to hear the sea alone, you must be alone upon the sea. I will tell you of the noise: it is as of a great multitudinous hiss, rising universally about you—the buzz of the fermenting and yeasty waves. There are no deep, hollow rumblings; except for that hissing, seething sound, the great billows rise and sink in silence; and you look over a tumbling waste of blue or green water, all laced, and dashed, and variegated with a thousand stripes, and streaks, and veins of white glancing froth, which embroider, as it were with lace, the dark masses of heaving and falling ocean. Hearing this sound, and seeing this sight, I tossed until the sun got high and warm. I felt no very poignant anguish, for my soul was clothed, as it were, in a species of lethargy—the livery of despair. Sometimes only I tried to pray, but thoughts and tongue would grow benumbed together.
Once, indeed, I was for a time aroused. I heard a sharp little dash in the water, and a soft quackle, as of a sea-fowl. Looking up, I descried beside me two ducks of that species which we, in the Scottish seas, called marrots; they are white on the breast and neck, and brown above, and have very bright, glancing, yellow eyes. Moreover, they dive, and use their short wings under water, as other fowls do theirs in flying. By the appearance of these creatures I knew that land was, at farthest, within two days’ sail. There—tilting gaily over each sea—they swam for hours, seeming to look at me; sometimes they would dive, but they never went far from the wreck, always coming up and riding head to wind, with their keen yellow eyes fixed as I thought upon the poor drowning mariner. They seemed tame and fearless—for, indeed, what should they dread from me? Once, in a sort of melancholy mirth, I raised my arm threateningly, but they stirred neither wing nor leg to flee, lifting over seas which would make a great man-of-war work and groan to her very keel, but which these feathered ships, built by God, could outride without a film of down being washed aside from their white breasts.
The sun having attained its zenith began to descend the westerly skies, and the afternoon was fair and warm, the wind now blowing but a summer breeze. Sometimes, when on the crest of the swell, I looked anxiously for a sail, but I saw nought save the bright horizon, against which the sharp outlines of the waves rose and fell in varying curves and ridges; so that now again I resigned myself to death, and covering my face with my hands, I, as it were, moaned, rather than sung inwardly to myself, many verses of psalms, which, when I was but a little child, I had repeated at my mother’s knee. Meantime, I began to feel a stiffening and a heavy drowsiness over all my limbs and upon my soul. When I opened my eyes the heaving waters turned into divers colours before my sight, so that I knew that my brain was wandering, and that my soul was departing. Howbeit, a holy tranquillity came down upon me. The blue sea appeared to melt away, and I saw—but dimly—the green bourock and the sweet soft swarded links of the Balwearie burn, with the brown herring nets drying on the windy grass. The place seemed holy and still; the sun was hot, and none were stirring, and presently I knew it was a summer’s sabbath day, for from out the open windows of the grey old kirk there came a low sound of psalmody, and I heard, as it were, in my brain, the voices of the congregation, as they sang—
After this, there came on me silence and darkness, I having gradually fallen into a fit or trance.
I was roused by rude shocks and pulls, and a confused clamour of voices. Opening my eyes with effort, I saw surging upon the broken water, close to the spars, a ship’s boat with men, one of whom—he who rowed the boat oar—had grasped the collar of my sea doublet, and was hauling me into the pinnace, in which effort he succeeded, ere I could well make out whereabouts I was. At the same time several voices asked, in two different languages, what was my name and country, and how I came there. Now, of both of these tongues I had some smattering, the one being French and the other Low Dutch, of which I had heard and picked up somewhat in my several voyages up the river Scheldt to Antwerp.
I therefore, trying to muster my senses, replied truthfully that my name was Leonard Lindsay—that I was a Scotsman, a mariner of the ship Golden Grove, of Leith, wherefrom I had fallen overboard, the spar to which I clung having been, as, indeed, they might perceive, blown away in tempestuous weather.
At this they consulted in a low tone amongst themselves. They were all seafaring men, mostly very swarthy, and tanned by the sun and the wind. They wore long black hair, and silver and gold earrings, which glanced amid their greasy curls. Only two were fair and blue-eyed—namely, the men who first addressed me in Flemish or Dutch. After remaining for a brief time beside the spars, and seeming to consult as to whether they were worthy to be made a prize of, they decided in the negative, and dipping their oars into the water, rowed away, the steersman narrowly watching the run of the seas, so as to avoid being broached-to and swamped. In the meantime, I had clambered from the bottom of the boat, and looking over the bows, saw, not more than a third of a mile from us, a bark, which appeared to be both small and frail to contend with such a sea. The manner of her rig was new and strange to me, for she carried two masts, both very stout and short, and above them were two great supple yards, upon which was spread a good show of canvas, each sail being of that triangular form, called by the seamen who use them, lateen. In fine, the ship belonged to a port on the Mediterranean coast of France, and was of the class named feluccas.
It was necessary to approach the vessel with great caution, inasmuch as she rolled and surged excessively. We therefore came slowly up, under her lee-quarter, and a man, of very dark complexion, and the fieryest eyes I ever saw, jumped up upon the gunwale, and hailed the boat in French, but talking so rapidly, that I could make nothing of it. Then, a line having been thrown on board, it was made fast to me, and without more ado, I was soused into the sea, and dragged on board the felucca, where I lay panting on the deck, while the crew—very wild and fierce-looking sailors—amused themselves with my wretched appearance. Presently, however, the man who had hailed the boat, and who seemed to have great authority on board, came up to me, and putting the rest aside, said more deliberately than before, but still in French, and with a peculiar accent—
‘You are not, then, a Spaniard?’
I mustered my few words of French, and answered, that—‘I was not, but a Scotsman.’
Without more ado, he stooped over me, and searched my pockets. They contained some small English coins, being groats and silver pennies, and also a letter, which Captain Swanson, of the Jean Livingstone, had written to me to Leith. The sight of these things appeared to satisfy his doubts, for he spoke a few words in a kinder tone to those about him, and presently leaving me, a man dressed in a tarnished livery, like a lackey, brought me a great cup of hot distilled waters, which I greedily swallowed, and found myself comforted and refreshed. Being, however, much exhausted from the length of time which I had passed in the water, I laid me down upon a heap of sails in the forecastle, and being taken but little notice of, thanked God, inwardly, for my deliverance, and began to drop off to sleep. Only beforehand, like a sailor, I observed the course of the ship. The wind being westerly, and she being close hauled, and labouring heavily to windward, I deemed, and with truth, that her destination must be across the Atlantic. But whithersoever she went, with my then feelings, mattered little; I was saved from an early death, and grateful for my escape, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
When I wakened it was dark night, and the first watch was set. As the wind, however, was now very steady, and the sea not only lower but regular, the men were mostly lying and dozing about the deck, except he that conned and he that steered. Seeing me stirring, a sailor presently came to me with a lantern in his hand, and, to my great joy, addressed me in English, asking me from whence I came, and the particulars of my disaster. Having shortly informed him, I requested that he would tell me what the ship was, which had rescued me, and what manner of treatment I might expect at the hands of the captain and crew. At first, he made as if he would put off talking of these matters, but as I was importunate, he asked me in turn, whether I had not heard of the great association of men of all nations, but principally Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Hollanders, who carried on a constant warfare with the Spaniards among the islands of the West Indies, and along the coast of Darien, sometimes even crossing that narrow neck of land, and descending with fire and sword upon Panama and other towns of the South Sea. To this I replied, that certainly I had heard of these companies, but only very partially and nothing distinctly, that they were, I supposed, the adventurers called Flibustiers or Buccaneers, and more anciently the ‘Brethren of the Coast.’ My new friend made answer moodily, that I should most probably have ample means of learning more of these Freebooters ere I put my foot on British ground again—‘That is,’ says he, ‘after you have either escaped or served your time.’
These phrases naturally threw me into great trouble, and I earnestly asked what he signified by them.
‘Why,’ he replied, ‘that you will be sold as an apprentice, or in other words, as a slave, to the French West India company, in the Isle of Tortugas, on the northern coast of Hispaniola, whither we are bound.’
At these words I grew sick at heart. ‘Better,’ I said, ‘to have allowed me drown in that sea than to have rescued me only to sell me into slavery.’
‘Not so,’ answered my companion, something sternly. ‘You are young, and have a thousand hopes before you. The Hand that miraculously preserved you this day is ever stretched out in wisdom and mercy, readier to help than to chastise.’
At this I could not avoid looking steadfastly at my Englishman; such phrases being little apt to fall from the lips of sailors. By the light of the lantern, I saw that he was a tall and stout old man, with something of great grandeur, as I thought, in his high brow and serene eyes. He could not have been much younger than sixty-five, but he was still a very strong great man, with a presence and bearing not like those of a wild sailor who has lived, as I may say, all his life with his hands in the tar-bucket. After some pause he went on to inform me, that besides himself there was no Englishman amongst the crew, and that he counted upon being safely put ashore at Tortugas, from whence he could get to Jamaica; for, as he said, he was not unknown to the hunters and privateers who frequented the former island. In reply to my entreaties, that he would endeavour to take me with him, he said it was not possible; for although the captain might consent, yet that many of the crew were greedy low fellows, who would not render up a maravedi of the profits, to which, by the articles of the voyage, it seems that they were all in some sort and in different proportions entitled.
‘But be thankful,’ said my comrade, ‘that you are not a Spaniard; for had you but a drop of the blood of that people in your veins, a speedy death would be the best fate you could hope for on board a ship commanded by Louis Montbars.’
‘Why,’ said I, ‘is he so inveterate against the people of Spain?’
‘I find,’ returned the Englishman, ‘that you do indeed know little of the adventurers of the West Indies, if you have never heard of one of the most noted captains of them all. He is a gentleman of good birth, of Languedoc in France. In his early manhood, having taken great interest in reading various relations of the barbarities committed by the Spaniards upon the ancient and inoffensive Indians, the inhabitants of the islands and the main discovered by Christopher Columbus and his coadjutors and successors, Montbars, being, like many in the South of France, a man of warm and fierce passions and feelings, made a solemn vow to God and the Virgin, that the whole of his future life should be devoted to the task of revenging upon every Spaniard who might be placed in his power the injuries received at the hands of their fathers, alike by the fierce Charibs of the islands, and the gentle Peruvians of the main. To this intent, he spent all his patrimony in fitting out a ship, in which he sailed to the West Indies, and speedily made his name so famous, and so terrible to the Spaniards, that they call him in their language, ‘The Exterminator,’ and know that they can hope for not one moment’s life after they come into his power. In general,’ pursued my informant, ‘he is grave, staid, and courteous, unless his mind run upon what I cannot but think the sort of bloody madness wherewith he is afflicted. And then, indeed, and more especially when in action with the Spaniards, he demeans himself more like a raging demon than a Christian man. He has lately had occasion to visit his native land, and I being also in Paris on my own business, and hearing that he proposed to set forth again, joined him as a mariner, but to be put ashore after the voyage at the island of Tortugas.’
This was the substance of our conversation that night After which the quartermaster came to me, and saying, he understood that I had been a fisherman in my youth, and so must needs know how to make nets; and that they were in want of some seine nets for use in the keys or small islands of the Indies, I might therefore, by making them, pay my passage. To this arrangement I very willingly acceded, and the next day had a hammock assigned to me, and set about my task of net-making, which was pleasant enough, pursued in fine weather upon the deck; although, indeed, my heart was heavy and sore with thinking of what was before me.
I soon discovered that my Englishman’s appellation, by which he was known, was Richard Wright, although that was not, indeed, as I afterwards found, his proper name. The crew were now reasonably kind to me, and the more so because Wright, whom they seemed to respect, took me in some sort under his protection, and upon the whole I found myself not ill off. The Captain mixed very familiarly with the men, as is common on board of privateers, and sometimes he would recite to them tales of the cruelties of the Spaniards to the Indians; how in Hispaniola the numbers of these latter were reduced in fifteen years from a million to sixty thousand; how the Spaniards worked them to a miserable death in the gold mines, or hunted them with blood-hounds through the mountains, feeding the dogs only upon the victims’ flesh; how the Spaniards would often kill these miserable people for mere diversion, or for wagers, or to keep their hands in, as they called it; and how many of these white savages had made a vow—ay, and kept it—that, for a certain time, they would destroy thirteen Indians every morning before breakfast, in honour of our Saviour and the twelve apostles! With such relations, and all of them I believe to be true, would Montbars seek to stir up the deadly wrath of the ship’s company against the Spaniards. But, in truth, this was a flame which required but little fanning, it being my opinion that had the Spaniards behaved like angels rather than demons, still the great body of ordinary Buccaneers would be content to treat them as the latter, so long as they possessed fair towns and rich mines ashore, and many treasure-ships and galleons at sea. Notwithstanding, however, it must be confessed that there never being a nation more proud, cruel, and arrogant than these Spanish—at least, in all that refers to their American dominions—so there never was a people more justly to be despoiled of their ill-gotten gains.
But these are considerations apart from my narrative. Our voyage was reasonably prosperous, the west wind having soon given place to more favourable breezes, and at length, but not until after many teasing calms, which delayed our progress, the first welcome farmings of the trade wind caught our sails, and we glided swiftly towards the setting sun, over the great heaving ocean swells and undulations, from whose shining sides flying fishes would leap briskly forth, and within which, the water being wondrously clear, we usually saw, on looking over the low bulwarks of the bark, swift dolphins, which swam round and round us, even when our ship was sailing three leagues an hour, and many smaller fishes, one individual of which, called by sailors a bonetta, about a foot long and of a reddish colour, swam for three days and three nights just before our cutwater, so that the men began, as it were, to know that fish, and used to feed it with crumbs from the end of the bowsprit.
About the 6th of June, the weather being then very hot, with light breezes, we crossed the line, as it is called, not of course the true equator or equinox, but the tropic of Cancer. This was, according to the custom of the sea, a great festival on board, those who had not passed that way before being obliged to submit to the ceremony of baptism, as they call it, which was performed after the manner then in use amongst French ships, as follows:—
The master’s mate dressed himself in a strange sort of garment, fashioned so as to be ridiculous and burlesque, and reaching to his heels, with a hat or cap made to match. In his right hand he held a great clumsy wooden sword; in his left a pot of ink. His face he had besmirched with soot, and he wore an uncouth necklace made of strings of blocks or pulleys, such as are used in the rigging for ropes to pass through. Thus accoutred, all the novices knelt down before him, while he favoured the shoulders of each with a smart slap of the sword, smearing also a great cross upon his brows, or sometimes over all his face with the ink. Immediately after, the novice was drenched with dozens of buckets of water, and the ceremony ended by his depositing his offering, as they call it, of a bottle of brandy, which must be placed in perfect silence at the foot of the mainmast. For myself, I underwent the mummery with the rest, and had, fortunately, sufficient in my pocket to contribute my bottle of brandy. One of the Hollanders on board told me that their mode of baptism was different; they either insisting upon a ransom, according to the station of the novice, or hoisting him to the main yard and from thence dropping him into the sea three several times. ‘If, however,’ said my informant, a simple man, ‘he be hoisted a fourth time in the name of the Prince of Orange, or of the master of the vessel, his honour is reckoned more than ordinary.’ In case of the ship—I speak still of the Hollanders—never having passed that place before, the captain is bound to give the mariners a small runlet of wine, which if he neglect to do, they maintain that they may cut the stem off the vessel. But in French and in Dutch ships, the profits accruing from the ceremony are kept by the master’s mate, and spent upon the arrival in port, in a general debauch by all the seamen.