In the wake of the buccaneers

by A. Hyatt Verrill

And at last Fate—in the guise of good-natured and sympathetic friends in the islands—had made possible my dream and I was cruising one-time pirate waters in a pirate ship. Yes, a real pirate ship, the Vigilant, whose solid teak keel was laid well over a century ago; the oldest boat plying the Caribbean, but still as stanch, seaworthy, and fast as when, manned by sea-rovers, she had swept [[6]]under her cloud of canvas upon some lumbering merchantman or had showed her fleet heels to British corvettes, as, laden with a cargo of “black ivory,” she had crept forth from the fetid mouth of some African river, bound with her human freight for the slave marts of the Antilles. Privateer, pirate, slaver, and man-o’-war she had been in turn through the long years she had sailed the seas. Within her hold were still visible the ring-bolts to which the groaning blacks had been chained. In her timbers were still the wounds of round shot and bullets, and despite her peaceful present-day employment as a packet between the islands, she was yet the typical pirate craft—the “long, low, black schooner with raking masts” so dear to writers of lurid fiction.[1] And we were bound to that erstwhile haunt of the sea-rovers, the Virgin Islands. [[7]]

When Columbus, cruising westward on his second voyage, sighted these green-clad islets rising above the blue Caribbean, he despaired of finding saint’s names for all of them, and so called them collectively “The Virgins,” in honor of the eleven thousand companions of St. Ursula. The name was not inappropriate, for while there were not eleven thousand of the isles, they were far too numerous to be counted. The history of these bits of wave-washed coral and volcanic rock, since their discovery by the great navigator, has been anything but happy and peaceful. The Spaniards, finding neither gold nor precious stones upon them, contented themselves with kidnapping the primitive inhabitants and then, having depopulated the islands, left them severely alone. Later, after a period of varying fortunes and misfortunes, they were parceled off among the European powers, changed hands over and over again, were sold, bartered, and fought for, [[8]]and at last, with the exception of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and one or two others, were dubbed worthless and were virtually forgotten by the nations which had battled so long and bloodily to retain them.

Here in close proximity, often but two or three miles apart, were islands belonging to half a dozen powers,—British, French, Danish, Swedish, Dutch,—with one owned jointly by Holland and France, while close at hand, conveniently and temptingly near, in fact, were rich Spanish possessions. And here, to the eleven thousand Virgins, came the pirates and the buccaneers. So it was fitting that my cruise in the ancient but rejuvenated Vigilant should begin with the Virgin Isles.

Presently, above the impossibly blue sea loomed a bit of land, a tiny, gray-green, barren cay, rimmed with ragged, weather-beaten rocks in whose coves and hollows coral beaches gleamed, white as the beating surf, beyond the turquoise water. Leaning upon the schooner’s rail, I gazed idly and curiously at the little isle, the one break upon the shimmering sea, a lonely spot whose only signs of life were the circling sea-birds hovering over it in clouds.

I turned to the fellow at the wheel—a giant of a man, black as ebony and muscled like a Hercules, [[9]]naked to the waist, his dungaree trousers rolled to his knees and supported by a wisp of scarlet sash, his huge flat feet wide-spread, and a flapping jipijapa hat upon his huge head. His lusterless eyes, bloodshot from constant diving (for he was a sponger by profession), and the huge hoops in his ears, gave him a fierce, wild look, and, glancing at him, one might well have imagined him a member of a pirate crew, a corsair steering toward some doomed prize.

“Sam,” I asked, “what’s that island over there to port?”

The big negro slowly turned his head and gazed at the speck of rock and sand.

“Tha’ ’s Dead Man’s Chest, Chief,” he replied in the soft drawl of the Bahaman.

Dead Man’s Chest! Instantly, at his words, the song made famous by Stevenson flashed through my mind: “Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

Dead Man’s Chest! The little cay at once took on a new interest. Now I could almost picture them yonder,—those shipwrecked men, fifteen of them,—gaunt, fierce-visaged, unshorn; sprawled on the sand in the scanty shade of the twisted sea-grape trees above the surf. Marooned, cast away, but reckless daredevils to the last; gambling in the [[10]]face of death, tossing a gleaming golden doubloon in their final game of chance—the stake, their lives against that one bottle of rum! And then drink and the devil would have done for them as for the rest, and only their whitening bones over which the sea-birds fought and screamed would remain to tell their grim tale.