Across the Spanish Main Part 14

"And mine," said Roger, "is Roger Trevose; and these two men"--pointing to them in turn--"are Jake Irwin and Walter Bevan."

"Thank you, sir!" answered Evans. "Yonder is my shelter, and when we reach it I will give you my history up to the present, if you care to listen to it, for I feel that I have not much longer to live; this last month has compa.s.sed my death, so great have been the hards.h.i.+ps that I have been obliged to endure. After the storm has ceased somewhat we had better go along the beach and collect any wreckage that happens to come ash.o.r.e. And I pray Heaven that some food may be washed up, for we have very little here to go on with!"

A few minutes later they came to the "shelter", which was merely a deep hole dug in the sand, and roofed over with palm branches and gra.s.s, together with a few bits of plank and timber that had been washed up on the beach.

"Enter, sir, and fellow-seamen," said Evans, "and to such poor hospitality as I can offer you, you are most heartily welcome."

They went in, and the man made a fire with the help of his tinder-box and a few dry sticks that he routed out from a corner. The fire was soon blazing merrily, and they took off their clothes and held them before the flames to dry. Whilst this was being done, the marooned man, whose face even now bore the imprint of death, brought a little food out of his scanty store, and some water, and the party sat down to eat and drink. Then, when the meal was ended, they resumed their clothes, which were now dry, and prepared to listen to the history of the ex-pirate, which he gave to the accompaniment of the beating of rain over their heads, and the tumult of the gale around them.

Meanwhile Cavendish had not forgotten these poor waifs; but, having barely contrived to clear the sh.o.r.e with his squadron, was now being driven away fast to leeward of the island by the furious gale, which as yet gave no sign of blowing itself out.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE MAROONED MAN TELLS HIS STORY.

Crouching over the fire, the marooned man proceeded to tell his story.

"Well," he began, "I must tell you first that I was born in the year 1532, in the town of Monmouth, in Wales, of purely Welsh parents, bearing the ancient name of Evans. In my early youth I kept about the house and tended our flock of sheep, of which we had a great many, on the dear old Welsh mountains. This life suited me well, for I was of a studious frame of mind, fond of learning, and I read and studied much while out on the hills with the sheep. At this time our family was very prosperous; but not long afterwards England began to be torn by those religious struggles, which I doubt not you two older men will well remember, and we were unfortunate enough to have our lands confiscated by that tyrant, King Henry the Eighth, and, from a state of prosperity and the possession of all we could reasonably wish, my family found itself landless, without money, and even without a home. Besides myself, there were two other children, both girls; and what worried my poor parents most was the problem of what to do with us three children.

Fortunately an uncle of my mother--a man whose religious convictions had a habit of changing with the times--had retained all his property, and he undertook to take my two young sisters and bring them up as his own children. This kindness on his part relieved my parents of much anxiety; but there was still the difficulty as to what to do with me.

At last it was decided, in the absence of anything better, that I should go to sea; and accordingly, although I did not at all care for the idea, to sea I had to go, since no other course was open to me. My father secured me a berth as cabin-boy on board a vessel called the _Delight_, trading between London and ports on the Mediterranean, and commanded by a man named Thomas West. It had happened that my father, in the time of his prosperity, had been able to do this man a service, and that was the reason why he took me on board his s.h.i.+p; and I am bound to say that he was always very kind to me. The time for the next voyage came round only too quickly for my liking, and I bade a sad farewell to my father and mother, who somehow sc.r.a.ped up money enough to go to London with me to see me off, little dreaming, poor souls, that they would never see me again."

The pirate's voice shook slightly; he paused for a moment, and brushed the back of his hand across his eyes; then, clearing his throat, he resumed: "We left London in the latter part of the year 1547, when I was very nearly sixteen years of age, and, sailing down the English Channel, we entered the Bay of Biscay and touched at our first port, which was Bordeaux. From thence we sailed again, and--just before Christmas it was, I remember--we cleared the Straits of Jebel-al-Tarik, as the Moors call them, and entered the great inland sea. We coasted down its sh.o.r.es, touching first at Barcelona, for we were not then at war with Spain, and then at Ma.r.s.eilles, from which port we struck across for Sicily, intending to call at Palermo. But on the way there we fell in with a Barbary corsair. Our captain was a brave man, and determined to fight to the last, as he had a very valuable cargo on board. The fight began early in the morning, and the pirate tried at first to ram our s.h.i.+p with his sharp beak; but the wind was good, and our s.h.i.+p was so nimble, and answered her helm so well, that we were able to avoid the rushes of the corsair, although he nearly had us on one occasion.

Finding that these tactics did not answer, he drew off and, turning his broadside to us, lacked us through and through with his ordnance until we were a mere floating wreck, and half our s.h.i.+p's company lay dead on our decks. We replied as well as we could; but, being only a merchant-s.h.i.+p, we were not nearly so heavily armed as the corsair; and, our men being untrained in warfare, very few of our shot hit him, so that the rascal was but little the worse. Their captain then hailed us, and asked whether we would surrender; but the master of the _Delight_ shouted back that if he wanted the s.h.i.+p he must come and take her.

"Whereat he came at us again, and laid himself alongside us, we not being able to move by this time, owing to our having lost all our masts, and being so enc.u.mbered with wreckage that we could do nothing. About a hundred fierce and bloodthirsty ruffians swarmed aboard us and began to cut us down and drive us toward the fore-part of the s.h.i.+p, while we, on our side, fought bravely enough with what weapons we could lay our hands on. But at last our gallant captain fell dead, cut down by the scimitar of a gigantic blackamoor, and the rest of us--very few by that time, I can a.s.sure you,--seeing this, threw down our arms and surrendered to the corsairs. There were then but seventeen of us left, all told, and not one of us but had his wound to show as the result of the fight. Five out of that seventeen, indeed, were so badly wounded that they died of their hurts before the corsair reached her port, leaving only twelve of us, all Englishmen, to be sent into slavery. After the corsairs had removed us to their own s.h.i.+p, they stripped the _Delight_ of all that she carried, transferring all her cargo to their own hold. They were greatly pleased at the result of their day's work--for they had made a good haul--and made all haste to return to their port, which was Tunis.

But before bearing up they set fire to our s.h.i.+p, and when we last saw the _Delight_ she was blazing merrily. I make no doubt that she sank shortly afterwards, leaving no trace behind."

"You'm wrong there, mate," broke in Jake Irwin. "Don't you mind that it rained heavily soon afterwards? Well, the rain put out the fire, and an English s.h.i.+p comin' up found her still smoulderin', with enough of her left to show that she was the _Delight_. She brought the news of the loss of the _Delight_ into Plymouth--I remember hearin' all about it,-- and it was thought she had took fire in the ordinary way, and that her crew, havin' gone off in the boats, was a'terwards lost. No one ever gave a thought to pirates or corsairs."

"Ah," resumed Evans, "would to G.o.d that that vessel had come up sooner!

We should have been saved--those left of us--from a living death that lasted for many years. Yes, now you come to mention it, I remember the rain; but we never dreamed that it would put out the fire, for we left her burning furiously. Well, the other s.h.i.+p was too late, and it makes no difference now. But, to get on with my yarn. We reached the port of Tunis about ten days later, and there was much joy there when it was found what a valuable cargo the corsair had brought back; and the joy was all the greater because of the twelve white prisoners, for white slaves are reckoned very valuable in those parts, and there hadn't been any taken for a very long while. We were all put up to auction, and the man who bid highest got the man he fancied. A big Moor from the back-country took a liking for me, for I was a fine strapping youngster then, although you mightn't think it to look at me now. Well, he bought me, but me only; so I said good-bye to my comrades, never expecting to see them again, and we set off with my master's caravan for the interior.

"His home must have been some hundreds of miles in the interior, for it took us over two months of travelling every day to get there. We struck from the town of Tunis south-eastwards, as I could tell by the sun.

After travelling for a long time we came to a big river, with fields of rice on each side of it, and beyond them the burning desert, with hills and mountains behind that again. When we came to the river we left the camels, and proceeded in boats until we came to a mighty waterfall, where we quitted the river for a time, and went a little way overland; then we took to the river again. This we did four times, and at last, after more than two months, travelling all the time, we came to a big town, built all of white stone, very fine to see. All around were green places like parks, with wells of good water in them; and there were palm-trees all about, and palaces of white marble; it was a lovely place for a free man to live in, but for a slave it was dreadful.

"Well, my masters, I was kept here for ten long years, during which I learnt the language, and found that the city in which I dwelt was named Khartoum. Then I began to fall ill; I looked old with suffering, and could not do the tasks allotted to me. I was whipped, and burnt with red-hot irons; but even such cruelties as these did not make me do any more work--for indeed I was more dead than alive,--so at last my master said he would send me down the river to the sea-coast, and sell me there as a galley-slave, as I was of no more use to him, while I should be made to work when I was in the galleys. So, with six others in like condition, I was sent off one morning, in charge of a guard, down the river, pa.s.sing on our way six waterfalls or cataracts, as also many ruined temples and palaces of great age and beauty, with no men in them.

"After nearly two months of travelling, having pa.s.sed many towns and villages on the way, we came one morning to a place on the river where we halted; and away in the desert I could see three great buildings, broad and square at the bottom, rising to a great height, and terminating in a point. I asked about them of our captors, and they told me that they were tombs of ancient kings of Egypt, and of great age.

"Leaving these, we went on again, and in course of time came to the city of Alexandria, where our journey ended. We stayed there several weeks, and then I--being by this time recovered from my sickness,--with the other six men, was sold to the captain of a corsair galley, who wanted a few more slaves to make up his complement of rowers.

"And now began the worst years of my life. For six long years, my masters, I sweated in a hot sun, with no shelter; toiling at the great heavy sweeps with the other slaves; always kept to our work by the whip of the bo'sun. Ah, the torment of those years! The recollection of them would never leave me, were I to live to the age of the patriarchs of old. We pursued other craft--mostly merchantmen--and took them; and those of the slaves who were killed by the shot of the other s.h.i.+ps were replaced by their crews.

"Many a time did I pray that I should be one of those to find death; but it never came to me, though often enough to the men by my side. At last, one day we attacked a Spanish vessel--for we had gone down towards the Straits of Jebel-al-Tarik--that looked like a harmless merchant-s.h.i.+p, but she proved to be a war-s.h.i.+p disguised on purpose to take us, and others like us. After more than an hour's fighting, during which nearly all our men were killed, she took us; and I, with the other Englishmen on board the galley, gave thanks to G.o.d, for we foolishly thought that all our troubles were now over. But we were soon to find out our mistake. There was now war between England and Spain, and we quickly discovered that we had merely made an exchange of masters.

"We were taken on board the Spaniard and the galley was sunk. Her owners were all hanged, being heathens, but we Englishmen were considered heretics, and we were to be reserved for the Holy Inquisition, that that office might convert us from our sins, and 'save us from everlasting flame', as the Spanish Dons put it. We were landed at Cartagena, in Spain, and I, with eight others, was thrown into prison, to await my trial at the hands of the Holy Office. One by one we were tried, and all found guilty of 'heresy'. Then they asked if we would recant. We all refused, with the natural result that we were put to the torture. Oh, my masters, pray daily and nightly that you may never fall into the hands of the Holy Inquisition! Those years that I spent on the galley were as heaven compared to being in the hands of the Dons.

"I will not tell you how they tortured us--for indeed the story will not bear telling,--but I bear the marks of their irons and the rack to this day. My companions steadfastly refused to renounce their faith, and after enduring the most hideous and awful tortures they were burnt alive. I know not whether my tortures were worse than theirs, but at last I could bear them no longer, and I recanted, to gain release from my daily pain. But I was mistaken in supposing that this late conversion was going to save me. I was tortured again, for my past obstinacy, and then, instead of being released, I was sent to their galleys, to spend the remainder of my life therein. By turning Romanist I had indeed saved myself from burning, but not from that living h.e.l.l, the life of a galley-slave.

"I was, then, sent to the galleys, and remained there, how long I know not, but it seemed to be several years. During the time that I was in the Spanish galley--for I remained on the same vessel all the time,--we, together with other vessels, made several attacks upon English s.h.i.+ps, but we were beaten off with heavy loss in every case except one, and that was when we captured a small English merchantman called the _Dainty_, the unfortunate crew of which, I suppose, were put into the Inquisition, as I had been. These many conflicts were productive of heavy casualties among the slaves, many more, indeed, than among the soldiers and sailors who composed our fighting-crew, for, when chasing another vessel, or attacking her broadside to broadside, our enemy generally depressed his guns in order to hull and if possible sink us, as in that way only could they prevent us from running alongside. And every shot that pierced a galley's hull was certain to kill or maim at least four or five slaves. But our masters cared nothing for that; when one crew of galley-slaves was exhausted, another batch was sent for to take their place. There were always plenty of slaves to be had from the Spanish prisons, and the men we got from them were an even more cruel and wicked set of rascals than the men who called themselves our masters.

"Well, I had been a galley-slave among the Spaniards for some years--how many years, exactly, I cannot tell you, for after a time my senses became so deadened that I could not take the trouble to count up and remember the days and weeks as they pa.s.sed; indeed I became more like an animal than a human being. I had been with the Spaniards for several years, I say, when one day we sighted an English merchantman, as we thought, and chased her. She appeared to be sailing but slowly, and we very soon caught her up, to find that we had walked, or rather sailed, into a deeply-laid trap. The Englishman, it appeared, had adopted a ruse similar to that practised by the Spaniards when they captured the corsair from Alexandria. The English had disguised their vessel--which was a war-s.h.i.+p--to look like an innocent and harmless merchant's trading-vessel, and to r.e.t.a.r.d her speed and allow us to come up with her they had dropped overboard a couple of light spars connected together by a broad piece of stout sail-cloth, the whole of the apparatus being secured to the stern of the vessel by a stout rope. Thus the pa.s.sage of the s.h.i.+p through the water caused this piece of canvas between the two spars to open, when it acted as a drag upon her, and reduced her speed so considerably that we soon overtook her. But no sooner were we well under her guns than she opened fire, and before we could get alongside her she had worked fearful execution both among our fighting-crew and also the slaves. Our eyes were now opened to the true character of the vessel, and the crew no longer had any desire to come to close quarters with her; so they put up their helm and bore away with all speed for Cadiz, the port nearest to us.

"And then began a chase that I shall never forget so long as I live, sirs. With our full crew we might perhaps have been a match for the English s.h.i.+p in point of speed, but half our galley-slaves were killed, and the Englishman, having now cut away his drag, was coming up with us hand over hand. The slave-drivers came down among us, and, standing on the drivers' plank, running down the centre of the galley, drove us to superhuman exertions by the merciless blows of their heavy-thonged whips, the lashes of which were plaited up with small lead b.a.l.l.s on them. They even used the flat of their sword-blades to our backs, and after that, when the English s.h.i.+p still continued to overhaul us, they drew the edges of their weapons along our flesh, making the blood spurt.

We were, as you perhaps know, all manacled together, and at least half our slaves were killed by the enemy's shot. The floor of the vessel was ankle-deep in blood, and the corpses of the dead, still manacled to the living--for there was no time to separate us,--kept time with our strokes as we pulled, in a manner most horrible to look upon. The man next me had had his head cut off by a cannon-shot--I remember at the time wis.h.i.+ng it had been mine,--and with every stroke I pulled his corpse moved also, and with each movement jets of blood gushed up from the torn veins, which were protruding from the gory neck, and flooded me. Well, the vessel still continued to gain on us, and I saw the Spanish dogs of slave-drivers whispering together, and presently they called for buckets of fire. These were brought, full of glowing charcoal, and into them irons were thrust. The unhappy slaves saw what was in store for them, and pulled until their muscles cracked. Soon the irons were white-hot, and the chief driver called to us in Spanish: 'We must escape that cursed heretic-s.h.i.+p yonder. Now, you all see these irons? If I see one of you flagging in your efforts, that man will be branded with them, and when we get into harbour will be handed over to the office of the Holy Inquisition as a heretic and an aider and abettor of heretics.' This cruel threat drove us all nearly mad, and--for we knew what that meant--our muscles cracked again as we laboured on at the oars, hampered as we were by the b.l.o.o.d.y corpses of our fellow-slaves.

For myself, I was away from the centre of the galley, I thank G.o.d! and near an open port, so I got a little air, which refreshed me; but I presently saw one of the poor fellows near the middle of the vessel, where the air was stifling, begin to relax his exertions. He was fainting with the heat and fatigue of the chase. The chief slave-driver, whose name, I remember, was Alvarez, saw it too, and called out: 'Juan, this heretic is fainting; bring the fire-bucket.'

"The man brought it; Alvarez took out a white-hot iron, and--oh, sirs, I cannot describe what then happened, but I can hear that man's shrieks now, as I tell of it! It was awful; and would shrivel my tongue to relate, and your ears to hear. Well, sirs, not to harrow you further by those fearful methods of making us work, we at last got into Cadiz, and escaped the English s.h.i.+p; but more than half of the remaining slaves died from their exertions.

"Our diminished crew was replenished by a lot of men from the prisons of Spain, and among them was a man named Jose Leirya. This man was my evil genius; and, as he marked the turning-point in my life from good to evil, I may as well describe his appearance; for he is on these seas now, and I wish you to know the man, so that if you should meet him with a sufficient force to capture him, you may recognise the villain. He was sent down to the galley one morning with a number of other men, to make up her complement afresh after the encounter with the Englishman.

I recognised him for a leader of men the moment he came aboard the galley, and, as he was chained next to me on the same tier, I had ample opportunity for observing his appearance. He was an enormously tall and broad man, of extremely dark complexion. He said he was of Portugal, but I should say he had more Moorish blood in him than anything else.

He wore his hair long, and it fell in thick black ringlets over his broad shoulders. A huge moustache concealed his lips, and a long black beard hid his chin; indeed the man was so hairy that he had the appearance of being an ape rather than a man. One of his eyes--which were jet black in colour, with whites which turned red when he flew into a rage--had a very perceptible cast in it; the left eye, I remember it was. His nose had been broken, and had a tremendous twist to starboard; and he had lost his right ear in a stabbing affray in the streets of Lisbon. In the left he now wears a huge gold ear-ring, shaped something like a nut, with an enormous emerald set in it. Such was the exterior appearance of the man who was to change both my life and that of others, Jose Leirya, murderer and galley-slave, then mutineer, and, lastly, pirate and villain of villains, slayer of hundreds of innocent folk, slave-dealer, incendiary, and bloodthirsty monster, for whom no death is bad enough. Remember my description of the man, sirs, for he presents the very same appearance at the present day. I should know, for but two short months since I was on his vessel; and, G.o.d forgive me, I believe I was not much better than he. But to continue my yarn. This man came aboard with about a hundred others; and I perceived at once--although our jailers did not seem to notice the fact--that there was some kind of arrangement or understanding between Jose Leirya and a number of the new galley-slaves. What it meant I did not know until afterwards. We left Cadiz, and our captain, thinking perhaps that the Mediterranean Sea was not suitable for his enterprises, determined to take the galley to the West Indies and try his fortune there. So we started away across the great Atlantic Ocean.

"As I have told you, Jose Leirya was chained next to me; but he never once spoke to me until after we had left the Western Isles. A few days after that, however, he one evening disclosed to me his plan for seizing the galley, and I then knew what the understanding had been between himself and a large number of the prisoners who came aboard the galley with him. On a certain night--which would fall about eight days later-- at midnight, on a given signal, all were to rise and overpower the soldiers and sailors of the s.h.i.+p, seize her for ourselves, and use her for our own purposes. You will ask, how were we to get rid of our manacles? Well, it was thus arranged, sirs. Jose Leirya had brought on board, cunningly concealed in his clothing, a number of small saws, of exceeding fine temper and sharpness. They would cut through our manacles as a knife cuts through wood. These he gave out to some of the slaves, and on the night arranged they were to cut the links of their iron manacles and pa.s.s the tools on to the others. This would, of course, leave the iron rings round our wrists and ankles, but we should be free to move and fight; and after we had won the s.h.i.+p we could get the rings off at our leisure. The saws were given out one by one, the greatest care being taken that they were not discovered, and immediately after dark on the eventful night we began to cut our fetters, the galley being then under sail and the oars laid in. By midnight we were ready, and waiting for the signal. It came as a shrill whistle from Leirya's lips. At the sound we all swarmed up on deck; and, as most of the officers and seamen were asleep below, we quickly overcame the watch.

We gave no quarter, knowing that none would be given to us, and we took no prisoners. Then, going to the companion-hatches, we cried 'Fire!'

and as our former masters came running up in their s.h.i.+rts, they were seized and flung overboard. None of them suspected any plot, and the vessel was soon in our hands.

"We then took counsel among ourselves to elect officers, and determine upon our future movements. Jose Leirya was, of course, elected captain, and, for some reason that I cannot make out, I was chosen for first mate. Then for our plans. We were about in the middle of the North Atlantic, perhaps a little more than half-way to the West Indian Islands; so we determined to run there, take a s.h.i.+p on our way, if we could, and if not, capture one in the first port we could reach--for the galley was of little use to us for our purposes. Ah! if I had but known, if I could but have foreseen what was to happen in the future, what deeds I should be called upon to do, rather would I have suffered death by torture than have joined in the mutiny! But I did not then know that Jose Leirya intended to become a pirate, or that he meditated those awful atrocities that have made men curse his name, and swear to hunt him down and make his end worse than a dog's! At length, when the s.h.i.+p had been ours for a matter of fifteen days, and was approaching the islands, our lookout one afternoon reported a large s.h.i.+p coming up from the westward. Our hearts leaped with antic.i.p.ation, but we kept a very cautious lookout lest she should prove to be a war-vessel. As she came nearer, however, we saw that she was a large merchant-vessel flying the flag of Spain--that country that we had grown to hate with a hatred pa.s.sing words. She had not noticed us as yet, for we lay low in the water and had no sail set. As soon, however, as she saw us coming toward her, she made all sail to escape, and we followed in full pursuit. Then, finding that we _were_ gaining upon her, she went about, evidently with the intention of returning to the islands; but she was doomed to be our prey. Every man of us, even Leirya himself, joined the crew of oarsmen below, leaving only the helmsman on deck to steer and to report progress to us below. Thus every oar was fully manned, and we swept along after her, gaining on her hand over hand, until about the middle of the afternoon the man at the helm threw us alongside her--for she was unarmed with cannon and could not fire at us--and we all swarmed up from below and on to her decks. Such was our ferocity that we cleared their deck at once, leaving dead and wounded in our path, the whole of whom--quick and dead alike--we at once flung overboard.

"We did not require the galley any longer, so we took all her guns and arms, and furnished the s.h.i.+p with them, sinking the galley afterwards, and thus hiding all trace of our former crime. We got under way directly after this, still making for the islands, and then provisions and wine, of which there were plenty on the s.h.i.+p, were got up, and we caroused and made merry for the rest of the day.

"We soon found that the new vessel was not suitable for us; but she was ere long the means of enabling us to obtain another to suit our purpose, without any loss of life to us."

CHAPTER TEN.

WILLIAM EVANS CONTINUES HIS YARN.

"We were now about two days' sail from the island of Porto Rico, and we had discovered from the s.h.i.+p's papers that it was from the Port of San Juan in that island that she had recently sailed.

"The name of the craft was the _Villa de Vera Cruz_, and our plan was to re-christen her, alter her rig and general appearance, and sail boldly into the Port of San Juan, hoping to be taken for some vessel just arrived from Spain or elsewhere. Then, if unmolested, we should examine the harbour; and, if it were found to contain any vessel suitable for our purpose, the plan was that we were to wait for nightfall, and then board the other vessel by means of the boats, capture her, and sail out of the harbour again before daylight with both vessels. And when once well out of sight of land, and reasonably safe from pursuit, all the survivors of her crew, if any, were to be killed and flung overboard.

All stores, cargo, and guns were to be transferred to the new capture, and our present craft sunk--as we had done with the galley.

"It had become a saying with us that 'dead men tell no tales'; so it was agreed to kill every soul we captured, taking care that none escaped us.

We should thus--so we believed--keep our movements secret for some considerable period at any rate. For--it is useless for me to attempt to disguise the fact--we had not been in possession of our prize twenty-four hours ere we had agreed to start piracy in earnest, preying on all nations, and selecting some nook where we could hide what treasure we captured.

"Well, we duly arrived in the roads of San Juan, and anch.o.r.ed well out of gunshot from the forts, seemingly without exciting any suspicion whatever. We carefully examined the roadstead, and there, sure enough, was just the craft for our purpose; but she was lying right under the guns of the fort. She was a pretty vessel: schooner-rigged, very low in the water, and--as we found out when we took her--of very deep draught; broad in the beam, and 'flush-decked' fore and aft, with no raised fore or after castles. We could see, by her open ports, that she carried twelve guns of a side--nine-pounders they were,--with a long gun forward of her foremast that threw a thirty-two pound shot. She was therefore quite heavily armed enough for our purpose, and there would be no need to transfer our old guns to her when she was captured; and we should thus be saved a great deal of labour. Her masts were very long and tapering, with a big rake aft, and from a distance the vessel looked overmasted; but when one got on board her one saw that her great width of beam gave her the stiffness necessary to carry such lofty masts with their corresponding spread of sail. In short, she was just what we wanted, and, indeed, we could not have had a s.h.i.+p better suited to our purpose even though we had built her ourselves. Needless to say, we determined to cut her out from under the guns of the fort, and capture her, at any risk, that very night. During the day we got up our arms, loaded our pistols, sharpened up our swords and cutla.s.ses, and got all ready for the night attack. We were in a fever of impatience to try our luck, and could hardly bring ourselves to wait until dark, still less until midnight, which we decided was the earliest hour at which we could make an attempt. So great was our excitement and impatience that we strove to allay them by drinking raw spirits continually; and by night we were mad with drink, the only effect of which was to turn us into a gang of demons who would stop at nothing. It was perhaps due to the drink--though we did not know it--that we actually took the vessel after all; for we encountered a most stubborn resistance; and had there been any people in the fort, they would certainly have opened fire upon us, and we should have been killed to a man. Luckily, as it happened, for us, there was a carnival in progress in the town that night, and nearly every man in the place was attending it. Those who had not got leave deserted, and went all the same, even to the last sentry; so that when we made our attack there was not a solitary soldier in the fort.

"At length the hour came; we got our boats over noiselessly, and pulled away toward the schooner. It was dark as the inside of a wolf's mouth, and there was but little phosph.o.r.escence in the water. We pulled with m.u.f.fled oars, and were nearly alongside her, when someone on board must have caught a glimpse of the faint flash as our oars dipped, for we heard a voice giving the alarm on board in Spanish. Seemingly they did not want us to know that they were on the alert, and reckoned on giving us the surprise we intended for them; but we had caught the low words of warning, and knew that they were ready for us. We laid our boats alongside one another, and held a whispered council, as a result of which we very slowly and cautiously pulled round to the farther side of the vessel, and boarded her silently there, falling upon the Spaniards in the rear. This was the saving of us, for they had lined the bulwarks on the other side, and had we attempted to board on that side we should never have been successful.

"The fight was fierce and grim, and, strangely enough, silent; there was not a cry, save the groans and moans of the wounded and dying. We struggled and fought in silence, and in the dark it was difficult to tell friend from foe. At length, to make my long story a little shorter, we drove them below, and, cutting the vessel's cable, made sail for the open sea. We had agreed to show a red light to our own vessel, as a signal for her to slip out also, if we were successful; so we looked round for a red lantern, and presently found one. The signal was made, and immediately answered by three flashes of a white light from our old s.h.i.+p, as decided upon before leaving her. Both craft were soon under way for the open sea, and kept each other in view by the light of the stars; and at daybreak we could only just see the land. We kept on, however, until mid-day, to make ourselves doubly safe, by which time we had run the land out of sight; when both craft were hove-to. Then the crew of the prize were brought up on deck; and as we were, after our recent rights, very short-handed, we gave them the choice of joining us or of walking the plank. They were, for the most part, a rascally lot of men, and did not need the persuasion of 'the plank' to join us; indeed they seemed glad to have the opportunity. By this means we replenished our crew, and our total number now exceeded by forty-nine that which we were before taking the galley. We had, therefore, a crew of two hundred and twenty-five men, which was a big crew for so small a s.h.i.+p. But then, as Leirya said, we had to provide against casualties.

Seventeen men walked the plank, rather than join us, and after that we made the necessary transfer of stores and other material, and sank our old vessel. We were now ready and well equipped for our piratical undertaking, and we started at once on our nefarious career.

"I cannot recount to you all that took place, for many long years have pa.s.sed since I first threw in my lot with that scoundrel, Jose Leirya; but we took countless s.h.i.+ps, and acc.u.mulated a vast amount of treasure, the most part of which is buried in a certain spot. I know the bay where the hiding-place is; but exactly where the 'cache' itself is I know not. Of that, however, a little later on. To shorten my story--of which I expect you are now heartily tired--I will pa.s.s over my life and experiences during the years that I have been with the pirate, until about six months ago. But I must tell you first that, what with fights, disease, punishment by death, accident, and so on, our crew gradually changed until I and two others, with Jose Leirya himself, were the only survivors of the original galley-slaves. The other men hated me, and for some time had been putting about false reports of me, and other matters to my great harm, until at length Leirya said he would get rid of me. The men clamoured for my death, for I had often sent others of them to their death; but Jose refused to kill me, as I had been so long with him. He promised to maroon me, however, and the scoundrels had to be satisfied with that promise. They made many attempts, however, to murder me, but I escaped them all.