The last buccaneer

I watched the sun visibly declining, until the glowing sphere was half submerged; and across the red semicircle slowly glided the black triangle of a sail. Presently, the sun vanished below the far sea-line, and the grey ghost of a schooner stole across the glimmering water and vanished into the gloom that was thickening under the Point. The voyagers might take their time, now, after so many thousand leagues of chasing; and so might the wretched chronicler of those travels, dragging himself towards the lights that glimmered in the darkness under the hill. But that night Pomfrett and Dawkins and I were sitting at supper again in our own cabin.

But I could not eat; the thought of Murch and his insatiate craving for food stuck in my throat.

“Sick, are you? Well, and I don’t wonder. I’m on’y surprised as a man of Murch’s education didn’t take warning from that there unnatural craving for victuals,” observed old Dawkins, shaking his head. “That was the grave-hunger, that was; the earth a-hungry for its nat’ral food. I seen it before, and never know’d the sign to fail. But it was fate, I reckon.”

My tale draws to its natural conclusion. I have but to seize the loose strands of the rope’s end, and it’s done. Pomfrett had the Blessed Endeavour repaired and floated off, before he touched upon the subject of the dividend to the ship’s company, and then he took a short way with those unfortunate buccaneers. He so contrived that they were all ashore together without boats. Then he sent for the quartermaster, and went round the ship with him, collecting every man’s possessions, which were piled in a heap in the waist. Next came the delicate question of the division of plunder. Since the ship had been stolen, Pomfrett might justly have taken possession of the whole cargo. But he had dipped his hands into the same bucket as themselves; he, too, had been a gentleman of fortune; and, moreover, he had no mind to incur the hazard of being blackmailed for the rest of his life by every stray desperado of Murch’s gang. So he decided to treat the booty gained by the Blessed Endeavour while she was under Mr Murch’s captaincy, as though the old pirate had commanded her in the interests of the rightful owners, but omitting from consideration dead-shares and compensation for wounds. Under this arrangement, himself and Dawkins and I profited with the rest, as though we had been aboard throughout the voyage. The owners, of course, had no part in plunder, as such, as I have before explained in Chapter II. To them belonged all coined money, bar gold and silver ingots, women’s ear-rings, pearls and precious stones, and loose diamonds. The plunder itself, then, including bedding, clothes, gold rings, buckles, buttons, liquors, provisions, arms, ammunition, watches, wrought silver or gold crucifixes, prisoners’ movables generally, and wearing apparel, was equitably divided by the supercargo.

“You’ve a pretty high way with you, hain’t you?” grumbled the quartermaster. “I seen many a dividend, but never a one like this here. Where’s the skipper? Why don’t we wait for Mr Murch, then?”

“We might have to wait long, and it’s a pity to miss the tide,” said Pomfrett, pushing a paper across the table to him. “There’s the formal quittance in full on behalf of the officers and crew. You are to sign for yourself and the men ashore.”

“Not me; not likely,” returned the other, angry and suspicious. “D’ye think I want a knife in my back? The officers and crew have got to be present at this here dividend, themselves.”

“Please yourself,” said Brandon. “It’s that or nothing. I’m stretching a point as it is, though you mayn’t think it.”

But the matter had to be opened much more at large to the quartermaster before he would sign. In fine, it was the beach for him and his mates, whether or no; the choice lay between full pockets and empty.

So he signed at last, and Pomfrett folded the paper, and buttoned his coat upon the document which was both to set him square with his owners and secure him against any future attempt at blackmailing. The long-boat was loaded with the men’s kit and their booty, and sent ashore with the quartermaster, who was left on the beach to do sentry-go over a king’s ransom until such time as the crew should come along. But, they were happily employed in an ale-house some two miles inland; and we of the Blessed Endeavour never saw those scoundrels any more.

We fetched up in Bristol docks on a clear, frosty evening at sunset, the bells chiming somewhere in the darkling town, with its lights glimmering here and there, and the sky over all jewelled with faint stars. Morgan Leroux was waiting on the quay—Brandon had sent her a letter from Morte Bay—and those two went off together to the house of Brandon Pomfrett the elder. Old Dawkins and I were left to keep each other company; and as we sat upon the deserted deck, where everything was so strangely still and motionless, and looked ashore at the darkness closing down upon the packed houses, a kind of melancholy fell upon us.

“Why, now, shipmate,” says Dawkins, “we had ought to been happy, you and me, not to mention the young turtle-doves yonder; though I reckon them being inexperienced, they think they’re in heaven, having fetched up safe and hearty, and chock-a-block with plunder, too. But we ain’t not to say hilarious, are we now? No, says you, not properly so. Ah, well, things is so, shipmate. I reckon we wants a good rousing supper with plenty liquor, to start us on the Jerusalem tack, shipmate.”

And certainly, when, a little later, we found ourselves seated at the table of Uncle Brandon Pomfrett, not even Mrs A.’s sour countenance could stay our hilarity. Old Dawkins presently found his tongue, getting to his feet and leaning forward on the table in his old way.

“Here’s to you, gentlemen o’ fortune all, and you, ma’am, what’s a lady o’ fortune, by what I hear,” shouts Dawkins, glass in hand. “Gentlemen of fortune all, by the bones of the deep! For if you don’t sail yourselves, you sends us on the account, and ‘there’s many a man gone on this cruise, what never has come back’—ah, many a good seaman! Not a dozen men left, out o’ ninety hands! Ah, it’s you that stays at home is the bold ones, for every man that’s drowned in the deep or cast away, or perished in mortal pain and sickness, or gets shot or stabbed or what not, why, his blood’s at your door. Ah, it is! No wonder you goes to church so frequent, and pipes all hands to prayers twice daily. Lord!” says Dawkins, staring hard at Pomfrett the elder, and turning his little, lighted eyes upon Mrs A., who paled visibly, “as I look at you, lady and gentleman born, I could swear I see the blood a-spotting your white hands. But what cheer! The longest liver takes all, and the chaplain can square the dividend, I reckon. What’s he draw pay and rations for, else?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. If those good ship-owners, Mrs A. and Mr Pomfrett, never heard the truth before, they heard it, then, from Mr Dawkins’s vinous lips. But that gallant seaman, not in the least understanding the situation, kindly relieved our embarrassment by incontinently breaking into song; and the rest of the evening went pleasantly enough, for we told the whole history of our adventures; only suppressing Mr Dawkins’s share in them to the extent of setting our detention in Barbadoes to the sole account of the late Mr Murch.

The rest is soon told. When the owners came to overhaul the accounts, Sir Henry Morgan’s silver was, at Morgan’s request, made over to them. They never knew to whom it had originally belonged. The sacrifice was the easier, because Murch had left the bag of diamonds he took in Cartagena in Morgan’s keeping, and the supercargo saw no reason for including that little piece of booty in the Book of Plunder. And, as soon as might be, the two were married, of course. Pomfrett goes no more to sea; he is become a country gentleman and a Justice of the Peace; and I know no life better worth living, if you own a taste for it. As for me, I am sufficiently occupied with that leisurely study of the ancients, to which Mr Murch had looked forward with such admirable enthusiasm. And as for Captain Dawkins, he would not touch his plunder. “No, no,” said he. “Why, inside of a month old Dawkins would come a-begging to your door, as poor as the day he were born. No, don’t you give Dawkins no money, if you love him, no more than a matter of a few dollars, drawn weekly, you understand. And don’t you give him no more, not if he was to beg on his bended knees.”

So Pomfrett invested Mr Dawkins’s little fortune, and bought him a white cottage by the water-side, with a stout sail-boat moored at the garden foot, and a flagstaff in a gravelled square, bordered with sea-shells. There the old gentleman entertains his old friend, the Reverend Jeremiah Ramsbottom, who is understood to be piloting Mr Dawkins’s soul on the straight course to the Golden Gates.

“I never knowed,” says Dawkins, “that religion were that easy. Why, a child could learn it! You ain’t got to do nothing, on’y avoid several things what a man of my age and experience don’t want to do anything but avoid, and believe what the chaplain tells you to believe. Believe! Why, there ain’t anything a seaman can’t believe, I often think, if he lays his mind to it. That,” says Dawkins, with a wink, “is the benefit of being a sailor, d’ye see. And to think o’ the many poor seamen drowned, what ain’t had my opportunities! Ah, well, they’re all right, too; we’ll meet again, I reckon—

FINIS