The last buccaneer

It is to be supposed that poor Captain Shargeloes mistook, in his fever, the noise and tumult of the merrymaking for the explosion of that conspiracy which had haunted him so grievously; and rushing on deck, intent to die sword in hand, the sight of the great cool plain of heaving waters allured his heated senses beyond resistance. He slipped over the side like a fish, and was gone in a moment. There was no more fooling. A death aboard, to the seaman’s mind, is very likely to bring ill luck; and the men, gathered forward, set quietly to drink themselves full, in accordance with immemorial privilege. Had a storm overtaken us, the whole ship’s company might have gone to join their captain that night—wherever he was. But the sailor concludes a kind of informal treaty with Providence. “I take my chance with your storms and foul weather when I’m sober; I pay my respects morning and evening; but I must be let to drink in peace on the days appointed.” On the whole, the agreement seems to be reasonably well observed on both sides. We ran all night before the favouring trade, beneath the velvet hollow of the heavens and the million million flashing stars; and the seamen lay snoring in heaps upon the deck.

At the council of officers held next day, Mr Dawkins was elected captain, amid universal approval. Someone then opened again the question of touching at Hispaniola instead of Barbadoes; for—it was most unfortunate—there was no doubt but that the men were half-starved.

“If you’ll give a look at the ship’s books, you’ll observe that p’int was settled once before,” said Dawkins. “And settled, in a council, is settled, I reckon.”

It was remarked that Dawkins had himself suggested Hispaniola on the former occasion.

“Yes, I did so. And for why? Because I reckoned it might save a mutiny. Well, you knew better than me—what have sailed the South Seas for twenty year—most on you, by your account of it, and a mutiny we had. Now it’s over, and the course is set to Barbadoes, and to Barbadoes this ship goes,” says Dawkins, stubbornly.

“Put it to the vote, captain,” said one.

Captain Dawkins arose from his seat, leaned forward on the table, supporting himself on his hands, and glared upon us.

“Another word like that,” says he, “and I’ll clap you in the bilboes! You elected me captain, all on you. I didn’t ask you for to do it, I didn’t want it, nor I don’t; but you done it free and spontaneous. Now, I reckon I know my duty, and, what’s more, I know your duty. Enough said. Gentlemen, this council is dis—solved!”

There was an end of opposition; it was not worth risking a quarrel on the point, with our formidable commander. At this time, Hispaniola lay some six hundred miles out of our course; but neither Brandon nor I understood at the time why Mr Dawkins put himself in such a heat. We were presently to discover the reason.

Meanwhile, Captain Dawkins served double rations to the crew, and crowded sail most extravagantly. As long as the trade-wind held we walked along at full seven knots, day and night, in safety. But when it dropped, we spread every stitch of canvas to catch the light airs; and then a blot no bigger than a man’s hand would rise on the sky-line to windward; the watch would be sent rushing aloft to shorten sail; and before they had done, the squall would burst shrieking upon us with a solid weight of wind and a blinding smother of water. Sails would be torn from the bolt-ropes with a noise of cannon, and a man or two, very likely, carried overboard. Then the storm would sweep away to leeward and the sun shine out; and out would go the sails again, the ship staggering and heeling through the surge. Those were dispiriting days for the landsman. There was never an hour when he could lie down to sleep without the dismal possibility of awaking in the next world. As for Dawkins, he scarcely quitted the deck. “You ever seen a ship sailed the way she ought?” he would say. “Well, I’ll show you, my son.”

But the exhibition roused no admiration in the conscientious breast of the owners’ agent. Pomfrett had been deeply mortified by the failure of the stores, for which he was responsible. He had put an innocent confidence in the honesty of Mr Gamaliel; and I have little doubt that the owners winked at the amiable Jew’s transactions, or they would never have set a green hand like Brandon to overlook the business. Gamaliel supplied the stores cheaper than anyone else, and that was all the pious merchants of Bristol cared for. The crew might starve to the bone and rot with scurvy,—crews did, as a rule—but the investors got their percentage, and the ship would come into port somehow. Meanwhile, the owners’ agent took upon himself to suffer along with the men. After the mutiny, and the boatswain’s challenge, Brandon would have no more of the cabin provisions. He had his rations brought from the forward galley; what was fit for the crew, said he, was fit for him. The officers called him a fool for his pains; they told him he was for currying favour with the mariners, and that he would die. But he kept his health by a miracle, for a dog would have turned from the putrid concoctions he fed on. As for the men, they merely added contempt to the dislike and suspicion in which they held the unfortunate agent. And now, on the top of his miseries, came the persuasion that Captain Dawkins was in danger of throwing away the ship by his reckless conduct of her. It is probable that, in his ignorance of the sea, Pomfrett saw more peril than there really was; and so I told him.

“Very likely,” said he. “I care nothing about that. I’m responsible, and I won’t have this foolish risk. I shall speak to Dawkins.”

“He’ll put you in irons. He’s a born pirate, you know as well as I.”

“He will not,” said Brandon. “I would run him through if he gave the order. It’s his business to sail the ship to the owners’ satisfaction.”

Mr Dawkins was pacing up and down the poop. Besides the pistol he always carried stuck in his belt, he had worn a sword since his election to the captaincy, and a double brace of pistols in a crimson silk scarf. Saluting the quarterdeck, Pomfrett went up to this formidable commander.

“I should be glad of a talk with you, sir,” said Brandon. “I have a word to say to you that won’t keep.”

“All the samey the provisions?” says Dawkins.

“And as unsavoury, I fear,” said Brandon, unmoved.

“And what may it be, now, Mr Supercargo? Give it mouth. What’s the complaints? I wouldn’t,” said Mr Dawkins, playfully, “give a fig for a super what hadn’t a cargo of complaints.”

“I have to say, sir, on behalf of the owners, that I am dissatisfied with your conduct of the ship, in one particular,” said Brandon, roundly.

“Was you, indeed?” said Dawkins, with unexpected mildness. “Dear me! And if I might make so bold, in what one particular, sir, do the cap’n dis—satisfy Mr Supercargo?”

Brandon explained.

“Well, now, you surprise me, you do, indeed,” said Mr Dawkins, with somewhat ominous levity. “I wasn’t aware of it, I do assure you. Why, I must take a reef on the main-s’l, I see that. I been all wrong. I reckoned the owners was wishful to get their ship into port as soon as might be; that was my mistake, d’ye see. And I take it very kind of you, Mr Pomfrett, to p’int it out. And on my own quarterdeck, too, by the bones of the deep!”

“Mr Dawkins,” said Brandon, stiffly, “I must request you to take this matter seriously. You will be good enough to understand that I am here to see that the owners’ interests are properly served. I have no wish to summon a council; but unless I find my wishes complied with, I shall have no choice but to do so.”

“Very well, Mr Supercargo. Depose me, is it? Well, if it must be, it must, I reckon. On’y, who’s to sail the ship?”

“Navigate her, do you mean? I will!” And Captain Dawkins looked a little blank at the retort. “Come,” Brandon added, “don’t let us quarrel, Mr Dawkins.”

“Quarrel!” said Dawkins, cheerily. “Not a mite of it. And I tell you what, Mr Pomfrett, there’s very few agents, as I’ve ever seen, as would have the marrow to do what you done. Why, they’d be afraid! But you—you don’t give a penny piece for the captain, not you. Duty is duty, says you, and you ups on the quarterdeck like a Queen’s admiral. I admire you, sir, I do, indeed. And I’ll bear your words in mind, don’t you fear. I shan’t forget, I shan’t.”

“You see,” said Brandon, afterwards, to me. “I told you so. Tackle a man face to face, and he listens. I believe Dawkins is a good man enough, only uneducated and a bit reckless. I thought I’d tell him I could navigate the ship, because he presumes on his being the only man aboard who can. I don’t think,” said the owners’ agent, “I shall have much more trouble with Dawkins.”

I was not so sure. I had seen Mr Dawkins’s blue-red visage darken to plum-colour, and his little eyes contract to pin-points, while his teeth showed as he grinned—and I was not so sure. But I thought it a pity further to harass the conscientious agent with my doubts. And a few days of quiet sailing brought us in sight of the low green island of Barbadoes. We dropped anchor in Carlisle Bay, and Pomfrett went ashore to obtain, as the custom is, the Governor’s permission to purchase provisions, leaving me on board, occupied with business. He returned in the evening, having made all arrangements for the supplies to be had aboard upon the following day.

“May I never ship with a worser supercargo than yourself, Mr Pomfrett,” said Dawkins. “I never see a agent so smart with his duty, so help me! But it never does to drive a clipper bark too hard—why, you taught me that, so you did, Mr Pomfrett, now I come to think of it—and if you and Mr Winter would care to take a run ashore, these parts being new to you gentlemen, we would try to make out for a few hours without you.”

None who has not been to sea can comprehend the delight of getting ashore, though the voyage has been never so pleasant. The smell of the land, the firm earth underfoot, the sight of women-folk, and, above all, the taste of fresh food—these common sensations become extraordinary pleasures. We accepted the captain’s kindly offer with joy. Mr Dawkins gave us a letter of introduction addressed to one Mr Jevon Murch, who, said the captain, was a friend of his, and who lived on his plantation some few miles inland.

The moment we set foot on the quay we were surrounded by a mob of negroes, clamouring to be taken as guides.

“Take me, massa, take me,” shouted a huge buck negro, forcing his way through the crowd. “Me white man; don’t hab dese dirty black men, massa. Dirty black men, git ’way wid yer!”

The gentleman was as black as a boot; but I suppose he had a drop of white blood somewhere in his ancestry. We took him on that valuation. He brought us through the streets of white houses with green shutters, where noisy crews of black men were haling sugar-barrels as big as cottages down to the wharves, and out into the sugar-cane plantations. We walked along the narrow lanes, cut through the green groves, and on either side the slaves were hard at work in the fainting heat, the men extinguished beneath wide, shallow hats as big as a cart-wheel, with a little red button in the centre; the women clad in blue stuff, with gaudy handkerchiefs bound about their heads.

Here were Christian serfs as well as heathen: white men brought from England and sold like any black stuff from the Guinea coast, sweating under the eye and the whip of the overseer.

“It’s a crime and a disgrace,” said Pomfrett, whose simple soul was quickly aroused to indignation. “How can they bear it? Why don’t they mutiny? Why don’t they kill the planter? Why don’t they kill themselves? And what sort of persons are these planters, to make slaves of white men?”

“The same sort of persons as the citizens at home, who make slaves of black men,” I said. “The same as your respected relative, Mrs A., for example.”

“Not at all—not in the least,” cried the ardent Pomfrett. “The blacks are born to it. They’re never so happy as when they’re slaves.”

“Cap’n Morgan, he was slave on plantation,” put in the negro, cheerfully. “Then he buccaneer. Afterwards he Governor Jamaica.”

“And afterwards he died in prison,” said Pomfrett.

“Po’ man,” said the black. “Massa Murch, he one of Morgan’s men,” he added.

We were naturally eager, upon this information, to see one who had sailed under that renowned admiral of the old buccaneers; who had taken part, very likely, in the sack of Panama, and seen the cities of Maracaibo and Gibraltar put to ransom in the teeth of the whole Spanish fleet.

“Morgan was a Bristol man, too,” says Pomfrett. “That’s a coincidence. But Murch must be an oldish man; it’s over thirty years since Morgan took to honest courses. I wonder how Dawkins came to know him.”

“Dawkins is a pirate,” I said. “I always told you so.”

“Dawkins,” retorted Brandon, stoutly, “is a good man.”

We were come by this time to the entrance of an avenue of cedars, whose lofty aisle of dark green foliage framed, in a diminishing perspective, a squat white house with a wide verandah, crouched beneath a little hill of tropical foliage. Our negro stopped; his errand, he said, was done,—that was Mr Murch’s house. He stood shifting from one leg to the other, his white eyeballs glancing on every side, holding out his dingy paw for his fee, in a terrible hurry to be gone. As the money touched his palm he was off like an arrow.

“He doesn’t seem to relish the neighbourhood,” Pomfrett observed, staring after the fleeing figure. “It seems quiet enough.”

It was quiet, indeed. The breeze hummed in the vast, feathery tree-tops, the grasshoppers chirped, and the droning of the flies was like the turning of a wheel; but these monotonous sounds made but an undercurrent in the deep stillness. Not a soul was in sight. The low, secret-looking house with the green shutters stood to all appearance wholly deserted, as we approached. The whole place was noiseless as a dream. I had a fancy, indeed, that I was walking in a dream, as we came to the neatly raked sand in front of the verandah, upon which our footsteps made no sound, and noted the shuttered windows, and spied in vain for any sign of habitation. But Pomfrett had no such fancies.

“I suppose these people sleep in the day-time. We’ll make ’em rouse and bitt,” said he, and rapped smartly on the door.

It was opened with unexpected promptness by an old, white-haired negro. We asked him if Mr Jevon Murch were within. Instead of answering, the black opened his mouth and, gaping at us horribly, pointed down that red cavern. Our eyes following his gesture, we saw that his tongue had been cut out. Pomfrett had the letter of introduction in his hand. Still fearfully staring, he offered it mechanically to this nightmare of a negro, who took it, nodded, flashed a grin upon us, and shut the door in our faces.

We looked at one another, not without dismay.

“Oh, dear me!” said Pomfrett, with great gravity. “What next, I wonder?”

The hot silence settled thick about us, as we waited on the threshold.