Books: The Voyage of the Hoppergrass
E >>
Edmund Lester Pearson >> The Voyage of the Hoppergrass
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11
"Horse-shoe crabs," said Ed Mason.
"I don't know what they were, but I got quite fascinated watching
them, and the first thing I knew the island had grown smaller--"
"The tide was coming in," explained Jimmy.
"But where is your canoe?" I asked him, "what have you done with
it?"
The astonished look came over the young man's face.
"Why, that's so! I wonder where it has gone?"
"Land o' libberty!" said the Captain, "don't yer know?"
"Why, yes, it floated off. While I was watching the tennis-racquet
animals it got loose, somehow--"
"Naturally," observed Captain Bannister, "seein' the tide was
risin', an' I don't s'pose yer pulled it up on the sand."
"And the first thing I knew it was quite a distance from the
island."
"Couldn't you have swum for it?" I demanded.
"Yes; but I didn't want to get all wet,--I--"
And then we all looked at his soaked clothes, and he laughed with
us.
"Somehow, I didn't think of that when you came along," he
admitted.
"But don't you really know where the canoe is?"
'Why, it disappeared around that point, just before I saw your
boat. I really ought to get it again, because Mr. Skeels--that's
the name of the man who owns it--isn't it great? I tried to make
up a poem about him as I came down the river, but I couldn't get
any farther than:
There was an old person named Skeels,
Who lived upon lobsters and eels,--
and he did look as if he lived upon lobsters and eels, too. Or
WITH them. Anyhow, he'll be down to Mr. Pike's tomorrow, asking
for the canoe. And my bag, and suit-case, and all my clothes are
in it, too. So I suppose I'll have to find it. Will it go out to
sea?"
"It can't," said the Captain, "not till the tide turns. We'll
overtake it 'fore long,--you see if we don't."
Sure enough, we did overtake it. We had hardly passed the point of
land when Jimmy Toppan, who spent most of his time standing in the
bow, peering ahead like Leif Ericsson discovering Vinland, sang
out that he had sighted the canoe. It had drifted into some eel-
grass, near the shore, and we had no trouble in getting it. Beside
the bags, there were in the canoe some large sheets of paper, torn
out of a sketch book. These were covered with pictures of the
horse-shoe crabs,--drawn in a very amusing fashion. One sketch
showed an old crab, wearing a mob-cap and sitting up in bed,
drinking tea.
The stranger was delighted to get his belongings. He promptly
changed his wet clothes for a bathing-suit, leaving the wet things
in the sun to dry.
"Now," he said, "I'm all ready to go overboard, but it will be
just like my luck not to fall over at all."
"You stay on the boat," said the Captain, decidedly; "I've rescued
you twice, and that's enough for one day."
"All right, Captain. Though I don't mind being in the water. It's
this desert island business that scares me most to death. There
was the question of food. The--what-do-you-call--'em crabs had
all gone away before you came, and I didn't think much of eating
them cold, anyway. I had a piece of chocolate--"
He laughed and jumped up.
"Here it is," he said, fishing it out from a wet trousers' pocket.
"I was going to divide it so as to have a piece for each day.
That's the way people do when they're shipwrecked, isn't it,
Captain?"
"So they say. Never had to come to that, myself."
"Well, I was stuck right off. For how did I know how many days I
was going to stay on the island? The books on shipwrecks don't say
anything about that. I didn't know whether to divide the chocolate
into five pieces or ten,--they'd have been pretty small, if I'd
had to have made it last for ten days. Do you think it would have
kept me alive for ten days, Captain?"
"I dunno," replied the Captain, "but I guess yer wouldn't have
stayed there so long as that. There'll be six foot of water on
that bar before noon, so yer wouldn't have found the settin' quite
so comfortable. Besides, some of them sharks of yours might have
et yer."
"Well, then," the young man returned, "it was lucky you came when
you did. The water was crowding me rather close. And now, what
shall I do? Will you give me a lift as far as Little Duck Island?
Or if you haven't got room enough, and I'll be in the way, why,
I'll get in Mr. Skeels' canoe again, and give you an exhibition of
wabbling."
He looked dismally toward the canoe, which we now had in tow
behind the tender. We all told the castaway that we would be glad
to have him stay with us.
"Plenty of sleepin' room on board," said Captain Bannister, "an'
you said you was goin' to Big Duck, didn't yer? You stay with us,
and we'll get yer there all right, tomorrer."
"Do you know many people on Duck Island, Mr. Daddles?" asked Ed
Mason.
The young man turned around.
"Where did you get that name?" he asked.
"It's on that card on your bag."
The owner of the bag examined the label.
"I know who put that on there," he remarked to himself, "well, I
... why ... no, I am going to the island, I suppose, to see a Mr.
Kidd. Relation of the pirate, I hope. He didn't say anything about
it in his letter. Whether he was related to Captain Kidd, I mean."
"You can find out tomorrer," said our skipper, "now we're headin'
for Pingree's Beach to see if we can get a mess of clams of old
man Haskell. Then we'll have dinner, and we can run over to the
inlet at Little Duck in an hour, any time this afternoon."
The breeze was still light, and the "Hoppergrass" made only fair
progress. Soon we were out of the river, and entering Broad Bay.
The sun was high by this time, the air cool and pleasant.
Everything seemed so clear and fresh, that it made us think the
land a poor place in comparison with the water. How hot and dusty
the streets of the town must be at this same minute! We felt sorry
for the people who had to stay there. We had only the clean white
hull of the boat between us and the sparkling water of the bay.
Toward the sky the great white sail of our boat soared up, like
the wing of a giant sea gull, and we went forward as easily and
smoothly as one of the gulls who were gliding through the air, and
dipping to the water a few hundred yards ahead of us. The grass
covered river-banks were far astern now, and the only land ahead
was some low sand-dunes and beaches, hardly to be seen in the
distance.
"Here goes the chocolate," said Mr. Daddles, tossing it overboard,
"once it might have saved my life, but I don't care for it now.
Chocolate flavored with salt-water is pretty poor stuff."
Then he commenced turning over his clothes, which were spread out
in the sun on top of the cabin.
"What made yer say p'r'aps this feller named Kidd was a relation
of the pirate?" asked Captain Bannister. "You'd heard 'bout
Fishback Island, hadn't yer?"
"No, I never heard the name, even."
"What about Fishback Island, Captain?" asked Ed Mason.
"You never heard all them yarns, an' all that diggin' that went on
over there?"
"No, I never heard of it," Ed replied, "are there pirates there?"
"Of course not," said Jimmy Toppan scornfully, "there aren't any
pirates anywhere, now."
"Aren't there?" the Captain inquired. He slacked the sheet a
little, and made it fast with great deliberation. "You better not
be too sure of that, cos' I know where there's plenty of 'em."
"Around here?" I inquired.
Captain Bannister chuckled.
"No, not very near this place. In the China Sea."
"Have you ever seen any of them?"
"A whole junk full of 'em."
"What did they do?"
All four of us spoke at once. Mr. Daddles seemed to be as much
interested as the rest of us.
"Well, they tried to ketch us. But they couldn't. That was all
there was to it, then. But I see six of 'em 'bout a month later in
Hong Kong."
"In Hong Kong! What were they doing there?"
"They was havin' their heads cut off, by a feller with a long
sword. Anyway, I guess they was some of the same crew that chased
us in the junk, cos' they was took by a man-of-war in 'bout the
same place."
"How did they like having their heads cut off?" asked Mr. Daddles.
"Well, yer can't tell 'bout a Chinaman. They didn't seem to mind
it much. They get used to it, yer see."
"Somehow," said Mr. Daddles, "a Chinese pirate doesn't seem like
the real thing to me."
"That's so," I agreed. I came and sat down with the Captain and Ed
Mason in the cock-pit. "I always think of a pirate as a man with a
black beard, and--"
"A red sash around his waist," put in Ed Mason.
"All stuck full of pistols and things," added Jimmy.
"Guess that kind has all died off," said the Captain.
"All except Black Pedro," remarked Mr. Daddles.
"Never heard of HIM."
"Never HEARD of him?" This in a tone of great surprise. "You never
heard of him either?" said Mr. Daddles, turning to each of us
boys, one after the other. "What have your parents been doing to
let you grow up in ignorance? I'll have to tell you about him,--
he's the very last of the pirates."
"Where does he hang out?" asked the Captain.
"On Rum Island or Alligator Key,--I'm not sure which. The accounts
vary."
The Captain looked at Mr. Daddles in a quizzical fashion. "I guess
you've got a yarn," said he,--"why don't yer let us have it?"
Mr. Daddles was perched on the cabin, swinging his bare legs over
the cock-pit. The Captain was at the wheel, as usual, with his
eyes fixed on the water ahead of us, part of the time, but now and
then raised to look at Mr. Daddles. The latter had a serious,
almost mournful expression on his face, as he told the story of
the last of the pirates.
CHAPTER III
THE LAST OF THE PIRATES
"You know that a great many of the most famous pirates were really
rather small potatoes. Take Captain Kidd, for instance. Why, they
are still disputing whether he was a pirate or not. If he was one,
he didn't take to it until late in life, and he'd been a perfectly
respectable sailor up to that time. They sent him out to catch
pirates, and according to one story he turned pirate himself."
"Well, they hung him for something," said Captain Bannister.
"Yes, sir. They did that because they said he was a pirate, and
that he murdered his mate. He said his mate mutinied, and that he
was justified in killing him. There were a lot of others who went
out to catch pirates, but ended by turning pirates themselves.
Then there were some who just carried on pirating as a kind of
branch business, when other things were dull. What respect can you
have for that kind of a pirate? Some of 'em were wreckers part of
the time, and pirates the other part."
"What are wreckers?" I asked.
"Why, they," explained Mr. Daddles, "made a living by what they
could steal from wrecks. Either they stayed on dangerous shores
and waited for a wreck, or they would deceive sailors by building
false beacons at night so as to toll the ships upon the rocks.
That was a pretty mean sort of thing! They couldn't pick out a
rich galleon, all full of gold ingots, and then fight for the
treasure, like pirates and gentlemen! No; they had to take
whatever came along, and, like as not, all they would get would be
a miserable fishing-shack, loaded with hake and halibut! A real,
simon-pure pirate would have refused to shake hands with a low-
down wrecker, and it would have served him right, too.
"But Black Pedro was the very top-notcher of them all, the finest
flower of piracy. He didn't go pirating just during the summer
months, when his other business was slack. And he would have died
before he'd have been a wrecker. It was a profession, with him.
And an inherited one, too. He was the third of the name. He
started in as cabin boy on the ship of his grand-father,--old
Black Pedro the First. The old man, the grand-father, was captured
once by an Admiral of the English Navy, and taken to Tyburn to be
hanged. You see he was such a prominent pirate that they wouldn't
just string him up to the yard arm, like a common buccaneer. He
was tried with the greatest ceremony, and sentenced to death by
the Lord Chief Justice himself. That was a great feather in his
cap. But when they tried to hang him the crowd around the gallows
liked him so well that they started a riot, and in the excitement
he got away, and a year later he was back on the Spanish Main,
pirating again, with all of his old crew who were still alive,--
about eight of 'em.
"He had to get a new ship, for his old one--the 'Panther,'--had
been sunk in the fight with the English Admiral. So he had one
built for him by a firm in San Domingo, who made a specialty of
pirate ships. It was the very latest thing in that kind of vessel,
strong, swift, heavily armed, and luxuriously furnished. The crew
had a social hall for holding their revels and the cabins were fit
for a king. Even The Plank was solid mahogany."
"What plank?" This from Ed Mason.
"WHAT plank? Did you ever hear such a question? I shouldn't think
you'd ever been to school. Why, THE PLANK,--the one that the
pirates' victims have to walk. Didn't you ever hear of walking the
plank?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, old Black Pedro the First named his new ship 'The Angel of
Death' and he had a picture of the Angel embroidered in black
velvet on his foresail. He was a proud man, I tell you, when he
sailed out of San Domingo on his first voyage. He had a black
velvet suit--made out of some that was left over from the picture
of the Angel--and a red sash around his waist, in the proper
style. This was stuck full of cutlasses and flint-lock pistols,--
four cutlasses and eight pistols. And he had two or three more
pistols in each boot. He had a fierce, black beard, and the most
ferocious face you can imagine. He scared some people to death by
just GLARING at them. And his own son was first mate,--he was
almost as ferocious as old Pedro the First. And HIS son--the
grandson, that is, of Pedro the First--was cabin boy. It was the
boy's first voyage. Before they had been out a week they fell in
with 'El Espiritu Santo,' a private galleon belonging to the King
of Spain. It was loaded with bars of solid gold, and fifteen
chests of gold doubloons. Black Pedro ordered the Jolly Roger
hoisted at all three mast-heads, and went down to his cabin and
stuck six more pistols in his boots. Then the two ships opened
fire on each other with their big guns, and fought for about half
an hour. At the end of that time, the first mate came to the
captain and said:
"'Father, I think it's about time to board her.'
"'Are the scuppers running with blood yet?'
"Pedro the Second went and inspected the scuppers.
"'No,' he said, 'not yet.'
"'Continue firing till they are,' ordered the Captain.
"After about ten minutes more, the mate reported the scuppers
running with blood in the regular manner. Then, and not till then,
did old Pedro give orders to board. That was why he was the prince
of pirates,--it was his attention to details, to the little things
that make up the difference between a real pirate and a mere sea-
thief. You can see what an inheritance the third Pedro had,--how
he was brought up to reverence the best traditions of his calling.
"They laid the 'Angel' alongside the Spanish galleon, and grappled
the two vessels together. Old Pedro led the boarding party, and
when they got to the poop-deck of the galleon they found the
Spanish captain, the first mate, and the cabin-boy waiting for
them with cutlasses. The three Pedros, father, son, and grandson,
engaged them according to rank, and finished them off at the same
moment. The rest of the Spanish crew had been subdued in the
meantime, and it only remained to make them walk the plank, then
transfer the treasure to 'The Angel of Death,' and sail away,
leaving 'El Espiritu Santo' on fire, so she would blow up when the
fire reached her powder magazine.
"When the officers were killed, and the crew and passengers of the
galleon were lined up on deck, awaiting their fate, old Pedro
strode down from the poop-deck, wiping his cutlass.
"'Now,' he said, knowing that all eyes were on him, 'we'll feed
'em to the sharks!'
"And he roared: 'Fetch out The Plank!'
"There was a pause. No one moved.
"'Blood and Bones!' roared old Pedro, 'don't you hear me? Fetch
out The Plank!'
"At this the bo's'n, Aaron Halyard, stepped forward.
"'Oh there you are, are you, Halyard?' bellowed the pirate chief,
'well, why don't you fetch out The Plank? It's your duty,--you're
in charge of it.'
"The bo's'n pulled at his forelock, and bowed to his commander.
"'Beggin' yer pardin, Cap'n,' said he, 'kin I have a word with yer
private-like? Lemme whisper in yer ear, if I may make so bold--'
"'No whispering,' returned his chief, 'no whispering here. What's
the matter with you anyway? And why don't you fetch out The
Plank?'"
'"Well, Cap'n,' said the bo's'n, rubbing his hands together,
nervously, 'you know ME. I've been with you ever since you begun.
I was with you in the days of the old 'Panther,' an'--' "'Cut it
short!' shouted Pedro.
"'Well, Cap'n,' the bo's'n repeated, with his knees knocking
together, 'I never was so mortified in all my life--specially in
front of all the gentry here,' pointing his thumb toward the
Spanish prisoners, 'but the fact is, Cap'n, I've clean forgot
where I put The Plank!'
"'Forgot!' screamed old Pedro.
"'Yessir, plumb forgot. I jus' can't remember for the life of me,
where I put her. I know I brought her aboard myself, an' I'd a-
taken my affydavy I put her under my bunk, but when I looked for
her, when we fust sighted this here galleon, strike me foolish if
she was there at all! I asked the cook about it. He'll tell yer so
hisself--an' he--'
"'Cut it short!' Pedro roared again.
"He glared around him--did old Pedro--like an infuriated lion.
Once he raised his cutlass and seemed about to sweep off the
bo's'n's head with it. At last he said in a choked voice--
"'Well, for goodness' sake, think! Can't you remember what you did
with it?'
"Aaron shook his head dumbly. Then as he stood there, quaking, a
sudden gleam of intelligence came into his eye.
"'That's it!' he said,'that's it. The cook wanted an ironin'
board, he said, and he borrowed it--'
"He broke off, and scrambled hastily over the side of 'The Angel
of Death.' Then he rushed below, and in a few minutes came back,
nervously tearing off some sheets of white cloth, which surrounded
the handsome, hand-carved, mahogany Plank.
"'Lucky for you!' bellowed Pedro, 'now put her in place, boys!'
"His men put her in place and the Spanish crew had the pleasure of
starting the long procession of victims who were to go overboard
by that route in the years to come.
"Such was the first fight of 'The Angel of Death' and just such
success (excepting, of course, the hitch about The Plank) rewarded
the efforts of old Pedro for over twenty years. Up and down the
Spanish Main he sailed, and the sight of that foresail, with its
terrible picture of the Black Angel, struck terror to the heart of
every man afloat. Even men-of-war fought shy of the three Pedros.
Once 'The Angel of Death' rounded the Cape of Good Hope and
attacked a treasure fleet on its way back from the Indies. On that
occasion it captured so many chests of gold doubloons that they
quite blocked up the social hall, where the crew used to hold
their revels, and they had to revel on deck, until 'The Angel of
Death' got back to Rum Island, where they buried their treasure.
"Finally, old Pedro the First was taken sick. There was a fight,
early one morning when the air was very damp, between the 'Angel'
and a rich merchantman. The pirate captain got rather over-heated,
during his usual duel with the captain of the merchantman, and
then he foolishly sat down in a draft while he ate his breakfast.
He had a bad attack of rheumatism, and it made it very hard for
him to scramble over the bulwarks when he led a boarding party to
the enemy's decks. The next time they put in at Rum Island the old
man took his bed, dolefully predicting that his end was near.
"'Just at this season, when the plate-ships are all sailing for
Spain,' he grumbled, 'I don't see what I've done to be put upon
this way.'
"He got worse and worse, however, and the best doctors shook their
heads over his case. He called in his son and grandson, and old
Aaron Halyard, the bo's'n,--the same one who came so near to
botching everything in the first fight. He said good-bye to them
all, and gave some good advice to the youngest Pedro,--who was a
fine, promising boy, by this time. Then he passed away, and they
gave him the biggest funeral that had ever been seen on Rum
Island.
"Of course, Black Pedro the Second took up the work right where
the old pirate had left it. It was the season when the galleons
were starting for Spain, loaded down with gold, and as soon as the
funeral was over, the 'Angel' sailed on her regular autumn trip.
Some of the Spanish captains had heard of the death of old Pedro,
and so they weren't quite as cautious as they should have been.
They found out their mistake very quick, however, and the 'Angel'
had a most profitable voyage. Gold and silver from the mines of
Peru, diamonds from Brazil, rubies and other kinds of precious
stones,--oh, I tell you, the pirates sailed back to Rum Island
that winter, chuckling with glee at the thought of the wealth they
had won. They had with them the Governor General of the Antilles,
a Spanish grandee of the very highest kind. They held him for
ransom, and made the King of Spain pay fifty thousand dollars to
get him back. 'The Angel of Death' got to be such a scourge of the
seas that half a dozen men-of-war were sent out by England, Spain
and Portugal to try to catch her. But she was the fleetest ship on
the ocean, and she always gave them the slip. Once she got caught
in a tight place, between Rum Island and Alligator Key. The
pursuer was a Portuguese man-of-war, and the pirate vessel turned
and fought so fiercely that the enemy was put to flight.
"So it went on for many years. The boy, Pedro, had worked his way
up, by sheer merit--no favoritism--until he was now first mate.
Then it came his father's turn to pass on, as the first Pedro had
passed. The 'Angel' had put in at Alligator Key, for a few weeks
one summer, and while they were there some friend presented the
captain with a water-melon. He ate it at supper that night, and as
it was unripe, it disagreed with him. Several glasses of ice-
water, which he drank with the melon, had the effect of making him
still worse. Next morning another of the Pedros was gone, and
Pedro the Third was now captain of 'The Angel of Death' and leader
of the pirate crew."
Mr. Daddles paused in his story and came and sat down with Ed and
me in the cock-pit.
"When 'The Angel of Death' sailed on her next trip, she was
probably the most dangerous pirate ship that was ever afloat. You
see they were all of them experienced men. They had years of
practice behind them. They knew their ship, and they knew the
ocean. There wasn't a shoal or a passage, an inlet or a creek from
one end of the Spanish Main to the other that they didn't know.
Black Pedro spread terror into far corners of the ocean, where
neither his father nor grand-father had ever been heard of. They
would have been proud indeed, if they could have seen their son.
He wore a black velvet suit, with a red sash, just like his grand-
father before him. That had become the official costume in the
family. He had made no change in it, except to add one or two more
pistols in the sash.
"One autumn, after Black Pedro the Third had been captain for
about a dozen or fifteen years, 'The Angel of Death' had a
terrible fight with the biggest galleon she had ever tackled,--
'The Santa Maria Sanctissima,' a ship so huge that she towered far
above the pirate vessel. While the great guns were roaring, and
the cannon-balls flying, Black Pedro stood amid the smoke, in his
velvet suit, his black beard bristling with rage, and his face
bearing an expression ten times more ferocious than his grand-
father's at its worst. He noted carefully the precise moment when
the scuppers were running with blood, and then gave the signal for
boarding. 'The Santa Maria Sanctissima' was so high that they had
to use scaling-ladders to reach her deck, but the pirates soon
swarmed on board, the captain was slain by Black Pedro, the rest
of the crew walked The Plank, and 'The Angel of Death' sailed back
to Rum Island with her booty.
"It was the richest she had ever captured. 'The Santa Maria
Sanctissima' carried an enormous cargo of gold, intended for a
great castle in Spain, and it took four days to unload the
treasure at the pirates' lair, and six more days to bury it in the
ground. Think how they felt when the last shovelful of earth was
put in, how the sense of work well done filled their breasts with
satisfaction! But on that very day disaster of the most terrible
kind was hanging over them, and less than twenty-four hours lay
between them and dire calamity.
"Early in the evening, on the day after they had buried the last
gold bar, Black Pedro sat on the veranda of his cottage, smoking
his pipe. This cottage was his regular dwelling place, while he
was at Rum Island. From the veranda he could look out over the
bay, where 'The Angel of Death' lay at anchor. The men's quarters
were down the hill, near the beach.
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11