Leonard Lindsay ;

Weeks passed slowly away. Twice a day, in the morning and the afternoon, I mounted to the summit of the highest rock in the island, looking anxiously round for sails, and there, by consent of the Indians, who felt secure in their hiding-place, I piled up a great mass of brushwood, ready for firing as a signal, in case of any English vessel approaching. During these long solitary watches I thought much of my life since I had been carried a prisoner to the West Indies. I thought how many great dangers I had undergone, how many narrow escapes I had made, and I began gradually to entertain the idea whether, upon an opportunity offering, I had better resume a buccaneering life, or set out across the Atlantic for home. I said to myself, ‘I will not return penniless as when I went forth.’ The pearls left to me by poor Rumbold were, as he said, worth fully one thousand pounds, and I doubted not but that my share in the booty captured in the Carthagena galleon, I owning one-third of the schooner which took her, as well as being second officer on board, would come to something very considerable. Here, then, were means upon which I could at once return and bring happiness and wealth to the firesides of Kirkleslie. I brooded over these things much. Lying in the shade of my brushwood pile, watching the buzzing sparkling insects which shot hither and thither in the air—the dragon-fly poising his lithe body, and the brightly painted butterflies flitting from flower to flower, I pondered and turned the question in my mind. My old habits of castle-building came back upon me, and I erected two splendid edifices upon the foundation of the subtle air.

The first was of my lot if I remained in the West Indies, or joined the bold adventurers who were pushing across the isthmus of Darien, to launch upon a career of fortune in the South Sea. I pictured myself the commander of a stout ship of war, nay, the admiral of a fleet of stout ships of war, carrying fire and sword into Panama, Payta, or Acapulco, capturing Spanish galleons by the squadron, and dictating terms to the captive governors of overthrown cities. Then, as I lay thinking, and watching the gorgeous proportions of this air-painted dream, it faded away, and another and a humbler vision rose; it represented the green fields and white beaches of the fair coast of Fife—the straggling cottages of Kirkleslie—the pier of whinstone, stretching forth seawards—the little rippling bay, where the Burn of Balwearie poured its frothing waters into the brine—the green bourocks of bent and waving grass, which surrounded it, marked with their brown patches of dry herring nets, and the rocking boats, riding to their grapnels in the bay. Then I saw approaching the shore a stout brig, lofty in her rig and graceful in her form, and I saw the fishers, and their wives, and their bairns, all running down to the beach, and shouting, with joyful clamour, that here was come Leonard Lindsay’s new brig, the Royal Thistle, fresh from the stocks at Leith.

And there was another consideration too. It is sad to remember it now, but it was joyful to dream of it then. I had a long tryste at Alicant, and I thought how proud I would be, in my own stout ship, to carry my betrothed from her Spanish city to the northern home which she had chosen and which she would love.

If both of these plans were, in the ending, empty and vain, at least one was built on a less airy foundation than the other. I determined not to grasp at overmuch. I decided not to let go the substance for the shadow, and at length I started up from the grass, and with a heart light as that of a boy let loose from school, I shouted, ‘Home, home! the rough winds and the rugged coasts of Scotland before all these teeming lands and summer seas!’

Having once formed this resolution, I was miserable until I had the means of putting it in execution. From the grey dawn to the grey eve I sat upon my watch-tower on the hill; sometimes the Indians accompanied me, and we talked touching the only subject on which they cared to converse—the past glories of Guanhani, and the future happiness of Coyaba. Sometimes I was alone, tossing restlessly upon the turf in my impatience, wondering whether all vessels had ceased to sail the sea, since I saw none,—plucking out my flint and steel every quarter of an hour, to take care that all was ready for firing the beacon at a moment’s notice; or noting any change in the slant of the tradewind, which might cause a vessel to diverge from her course between the islands and the main. Several times I attempted to patch up the broken boat of the ‘Saucy Susan,’ which lay upon a sheltered bit of beach, with the tide flowing in and out of her, but she was injured beyond my powers as a ship carpenter to repair, and besides, had she been afloat and sound, I had nothing of which I could make a sail. The Indians possessed a canoe, but only fit for paddling.

During these tedious weeks, I strained my memory in vain to make out whether I had ever heard of such an island as that on which I stood. In most of the maps of the Caribbean Sea, small specks of nameless isles are laid down in great profusion all round Cape Gracias à Dios, but I knew that these charts were, for the most part, to be little depended upon, except as regarded the great islands and headlands; and I remembered the labyrinth of rocks, islets, and reefs, in which we found the dwarf pilot, and which were not even indicated in any one chart we had on board the ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp.’ The Indians said, that the time of ships coming hither was very uncertain; sometimes two or three passed by in a moon, sometimes two or three moons passed by during which the sea would be sailless; now a passing ship would keep far off, so that her canvas would show not bigger than the wing of a sea-fowl; anon she would anchor in the lee of the island, and lie there for days, filling her water-casks from the rain ponds in the hollows of the rocks, and allowing the men to scamper at large, hunting pigeons and noddies, or searching for turtles’ eggs, all over the island.

But at length my happy moment arrived—the long-looked for came at last. I ought to have mentioned, that the island upon the windward-side was indented by a large bay, which stretched from one extremity of the land to the other. In the centre of this bay, and near the beach, were various rocky islets and sand-banks, amongst which on arriving I had been driven, and upon each horn of the crescent, long points of high and rugged rock jutted forth into the sea, making that appear a deep bay which was in reality a mere shallow coast indentation. My signal-post, as I called it, was near the centre of the bay, and about a mile from each of the jutting and rocky horns which I have mentioned; the hut of the Indians being among the clefts and bushes beneath.

I was wakened early one morning by the howl of the wind through the trees and precipices above us, and, presently going forth, found it blowing a hard gale right into the bay—the rocky islets before the beach being only now and then to be seen like black specks amid the foam. The gale increased as the day advanced, and about noon, a tremendous breaker swept so high up the beach as to catch the wreck of the ‘Saucy Susan’s’ boat, and fairly to drive it to pieces on the shingle. The day was very dark and dismal, the clouds flying fast and low, and the sea-birds making, in flocks, for the cover of the land. The horizon from my look-out was only a few miles in extent, but within it, the seas broke furiously, and the surf upon either horn of the bay was grand to look at. In the afternoon, I wandered forth alone upon the beach—the Indians, who did not relish such weather, keeping snug at home—and remained for hours in a sheltered nook upon the southern ridge of the bay, watching the great seas rolling in and assaulting the rocks.

The day was wearing away, and the sun was setting behind the island, when I suddenly heard a shout to seaward. Starting up to my feet, I saw about a cable’s length distant from the bluff, on the outside of the bay, and a little to windward, a small sloop, showing but a rag of sail, and struggling hard to weather the point. The bark, though very small, was decked from stem to stern. Had it not been for that, she would not have lived a moment in such a sea. As it was, she bent over, so that I could see three men lying upon the slanting planks, holding on to the weather-rigging, while the steersman, made fast on the weather side to a staunchion of the light rail, which run round the sloop, worked the tiller by means of blocks and tackling. It was an even chance, so far as I could see, whether the sloop would beat round into the bay, or be shivered upon the headland, and I rushed as far out as I could upon the rocks to watch the catastrophe. On she came, plunging and tearing over the seas, hove up aloft, so that she was sometimes almost on a level with the ground I stood on, then ducking into the trough, so that I could only see the top of her tiny mainsail, with the spray of the next coming sea, torn up by the wind, and pelting over and over it. The figures on board held on to the weather-bulwarks, like grim death; but as she closed nearer and nearer with the rocks, I saw two of them kick off their shoes, and strip their doublets. A moment would now decide their fate. The sloop was not half-a-score fathoms from the outermost point, over which the sea boiled white. She sank heavily into a deep foaming trough of sea, and her sail flapped in the lull. Up again, as though cast by a sling! She leaped at the next surge—a blast which made me stagger back on the rocks—almost tearing the mast out of her, and lifting her, as it were, bodily over the furiously ridging and tumbling water. The wave burst in milk-white foam beneath, the spray flying round and over me, but from the very centre, as it appeared, of the seething hissing mass of the rebuffed and broken billow, the gallant little bark flew triumphantly round the rock, and into the bay.

‘Hurrah,’ I shouted; ‘bravely done!’

The men on board caught my words, even through the roar of the surf. He who was steering, and who had been hitherto crouching down, watching the run of the seas, looked up. Could I believe my eyes? Nicky Hamstring!

‘Lindsay! Will Thistle! Hurrah!’ he shouted.

‘Comrade—old comrade!’ I cried, making a speaking-trumpet of my hands. ‘Beach her—run her right through the surf. High and dry—high and dry!’

The sloop was already beyond hearing, but Nicky waved his hand. Up goes the helm, round fly the bows of the bark towards the open white beach of the bay, and shorewards she shoots, leaping from sea to sea!

Leaping indeed from sea to sea, but not faster than I sprung from rock to rock, and bank to bank, striving to be upon the beach before her. It was a grand race. I saw Nicky’s crew leap up, as the sloop, now upon an even keel, went scudding like a feather before a hurricane. More sail—more sail! They are shaking out two reefs in the canvas! They will drive her through the breakers in style! Away goes the widened sheet higher and higher up the mast! See how it swells, and tugs, and surges, as though it would pluck the craft out of the water by the very roots, and drag and soar with her through the air! I am running fast, but she heads me. See, Nicky is standing in the stern, and again he waves his hand! Is it in token of hope, or of farewell? A minute will end all. The sloop flies madly into the line of breakers! A sea comes white over and over her! No! she is not down; up she staggers on the crest of the following wave, pouring the water from her sides, and her crew still clinging steadfastly round the mast. On she goes—a dusky spot—a mere tossing morsel amid the wallowing surf, but the brave mast still holds on, the stout canvas still bears her onward, like a bird! There, down into the trough once more, and now aloft again on the very shoulder of a breaking sea, which has hove her up, as a strong man swings a child, and then bearing her recklessly on, dissolves beneath her keel, in a tumbling avalanche of creaming foam, in the centre of which the sloop is carried triumphantly up, upon the wreaths of sea-weed at the very top of high water-mark, and there, as the sea recedes, is left high and dry! No Deal boatmen ever beached a galley more admirably after a wild trip to the Goodwin Sands.

The next moment I had both Nicky Hamstring’s hands in mine! Such a meeting! It was as if he had fallen from the moon upon me! And what a world of inquiries to put to each other. How had I come there? How had he come there? For five minutes it was nothing but such rapid question and answer! Then quoth I, ‘And Stout Jem, and the “Will-o’-the-Wisp?”’

‘They cannot be five miles to windward,’ replied Nicky, ‘and running the same course as we when we saw breakers ahead, and beat round into the bay. The sloop is a Spanish craft we wanted to carry to Jamaica, and we were in company with the schooner all day, until she split her foresail; after which we got the start, and lost sight of her.’

By this time it was getting dark, the gale still blowing furiously.

‘We none of us had the slightest idea of land within a hundred miles,’ said Nicky. ‘I would to God that we had the means of giving Stout Jem notice of what he is running on, while he has still a mile or two of offing.’

I immediately remembered my beacon of piled brushwood, and thanked heaven that I had collected it. But as we were all scampering up the hill towards it, we met the two old Indians coming down to the beach. From a snug place of espial they had seen the meeting between Nicky Hamstring and myself, and rightly conjecturing that they had nothing to fear from one who seemed so much my friend, they had come forth to offer a refuge to the wrecked mariners. Accordingly, leaving them to conduct two of the sailors whom I did not know, to the cave, the third being no other than my old shipmate, Lanscriffe, who shook hands with me heartily, he and Nicky and I were speedily standing beside my beacon. It was now quite dark, and seawards we could descry nought beyond the dull white belt of breakers. A light was speedily struck, and in a minute after it was applied; the brushwood being as dry as tinder, a bright blaze, torn and driven by the wind, rose flickering up into the dark night, casting long rays of light over the waving grass and bushes, and the white and tumbling sea. I had made the pile of brushwood so large, that the beacon was nothing but a great bonfire, and presently the two seamen we had left rejoined us with the Indians, carrying between them a small tar barrel which they had made shift to get at out of the stranded bark, the tide having now ebbed considerably back from it. This was a grand addition to our beacon, and, fed by the fat pitchy unguent, the blaze must have been seen leagues away. That it was seen by those for whom we lit it we soon had a satisfactory token, in the quickly following flashes of several guns, fired by a vessel near a league off at sea. Upon this we descended to the beach again. The Will-o’-the-Wisp, for Nicky Hamstring did not doubt but it was she, presently ran up lanterns to her main and topmast heads, and, in a few moments more, she burned a flaring blue light, which showed the beautiful schooner weltering through the seas close hauled under closely reefed fore and mainsails, but, as we all hoped and believed, holding her own very steadily.

As we sat watching her upon the beach, Nicky Hamstring recounted to me the particulars of the attack upon Carthagena harbour after I had been made prisoner, and the subsequent capture of the galleon. My share of the booty was, it seems, lodged in the hands of Mr. Pratt, at Jamaica, and would be at once made over to me. To narrate all the particulars of the cruise of the Will-o’-the-Wisp after I quitted her, would be no part of my story, and I dismiss it by simply stating, that so many and so great were the prizes which she took, that not a man who sailed under Stout Jem but was, according to his degree, enriched, and returned to Jamaica with money, and plenty of it, in both pockets.

Talking in this manner, the first part of the night wore away, and, as it waxed late, the gale began to lull. You may be sure in all our converse we never took our eyes from the schooner’s lights, which rose and sank regularly upon the seas. But we were soon relieved of our anxiety regarding her, by observing that she rather clawed away from the shore than approached it, and we knew well that not an eye would be closed aboard the schooner that eventful night. About midnight the heavy clouds to windward began to break, and the schooner burnt another blue light, by which we saw that she had a reef out of her sails, and was standing on and off snugly enough, the sea going down very fast.

Thereupon we all retired to the cave, the Indians doing the honours of their abode with such simple grace, that Nicky called them two brown old gentlemen without clothes, and swore that he would run the risk of being wrecked again to be so kindly tended. It was indeed a happy meal! Lanscriffe and his comrades had gone down to the stranded ship, and returned laden with good cheer, and every few minutes, as we ate, and drank, and laughed, one of us would start up and run out to see how the schooner fared, and come back with the news that the wind was going down more and more, and that our friends were all safe, a league from the rocks, and riding as snugly as though the schooner were lying in a millpond.

‘And all the old faces are still on board?’ quoth I.

‘Every one of them,’ answered Nicky; ‘all our old party of the Marmousettes in Hispaniola, from Stout Jem down to Blue Peter, and, indeed, almost every man we shipped in Jamaica, including Mr. Bell, who hath become such a reformed character, that it seems as if that keel-hauling, which you remember, has had the most beneficial effect in washing the roguery out of him.’

‘And the negro,’ says I; ‘the Spanish negro, we captured fishing for pisareros off Carthagena?’

‘Oh! he was sent ashore with the sailors of the galleon, who, I hear, landed at Porto Bello.’

‘There was,’ says I, ‘on board that galleon, one old man, a merchant—’

‘He who told Stout Jem that you had escaped from the Spaniards at Carthagena—a grave and reverend old man,’ said Nicky. ‘He bore his loss so tranquilly, that I thought, and others thought it too, that he went over the side of the galleon into the boat with some of the most precious parts of his goods concealed upon, his person. A sly old fox, to be sure.’

To tell the truth, I was not sorry to hear this.

‘We got enough from him as it was, Nicky,’ I said.

‘Humph!’ quoth Nicky, ‘I must say we did.’

The grey dawn found the schooner anchored in the bay, and before sunrise Nicky and I, having obtained the canoe of the Indians for the purpose, leaped on board.

I almost shook Captain Jem out of his hammock, into which, poor man, he had only just turned, after seeing that all was safe with the ground tackle, and that the weather looked settled.

‘Captain Jem! Captain Jem!’ I cried; ‘you told the merchant on board the galleon, that you loved me as a son, and here is your son come back again to you!’

I will not try to reduce to words the shout of delight with which the hearty old fellow jumped clean out of his hammock, and clutching my hands in both of his, danced me round and round the little cabin. It was a thorough welcome home, and almost induced me to falter in my resolution of immediately returning to Scotland. But the feeling lasted but for a moment. I loved my comrades, but I loved kith and kin more, and now I had that to carry back to them which would bring grateful tears to many an eye.

And now my story is told.

I have bidden a solemn farewell to the representatives of the blood of the old caciques, and the ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’ is under weigh, bound direct for Jamaica, from whence I can easily procure a passage home. Her buccaneering cruise, of which I saw so little, is ended. She lies deep in the water, freighted with the spoils of the proud Spaniards, who vainly swore that theirs alone would be the empire and the treasure of the New World. Her merry crew will shortly be dispersed, and never rock in hammocks in one ship again. Stout Jem is bound for Europe, and mayhap we will go together. Nicky Hamstring, true to his opinion, that the New World is a merrier one than the Old, talks of enlisting under the banner of Captain Morgan, to march with him across the mountains to the great South Sea. Each has his plans, and every man’s plan is different from his neighbour’s. May they all prosper!

And now I bid my readers a kind good by!

I have told them roughly, but truly, as much of my life as was the ‘Story of a Buccaneer.’ If they have found it stirring enough to while away a leisure hour, I am content. But if from it they have learned something of the real truth concerning Buccaneers, how the order sprung naturally from the greed of the Spaniards to make a monopoly of America—how the Buccaneers lived by sea and land—how they hunted, and sailed, and made war—how there were good and bad, honest hearts and rogues among them—in short, if they have learned what manner of men the Buccaneers were, and what manner of lives they led—then I shall be more than content; I shall think that I have served the memories of my brave countrymen who sleep beneath those western seas, and that I have given to the world some information, not without its uses, touching an interesting chapter of our maritime history.

THE END.

Woodfall & Kinder, Printers, Milford Lane, Strand, London, W.C.