Nearer and nearer we swept, until the roaring, [[105]]boiling surf was almost under our jib-boom. Then, when I expected to feel the crashing shock and the sickening lurch of a speeding hull pierced by fangs of coral, Sam shouted an order, the great sails were close hauled, and, luffing sharply, the schooner slid through a fifty-foot gut in the thundering breakers and a moment later was floating safely on the glassy waters of the lagoon.
No wonder that here the pirates gathered and laughed at their pursuers. Knowing the reef, familiar with its narrow passages, the pursued could sail in safety to their anchorage while their disgruntled enemies, confronted by the deadly ring of coral, and usually in vessels far too large to pass through even had they known the way, turned back utterly baffled.
Throughout the days of buccaneering—yes, even in the days of that first of all sea-rovers who was neither buccaneer nor pirate, but who paved the way for the buccaneers, Sir Francis Drake—Anegada and its surrounding reef-filled waters was a favorite resort of freebooters. Whether Sir Francis ever visited the Drowned Island or not, no one knows. In his memoirs he makes no mention of it, but his name is perpetuated in the Virgin Isles by Sir Francis Drake Bay, while such names as Gallows Bay, Careenage Bay, Galleon Cove, Hawkins’s [[106]]Point, and Cutlass Reef were beyond question bestowed upon these localities in Anegada by the buccaneers themselves.
Aside from having been a haunt of the buccaneers, Anegada is famed for its innumerable shipwrecks. For many years, in the old sailing-ship days, the Anegadans lived mainly upon the wreckage from vessels that left their bones upon the treacherous reefs about the island. In other words, they were notorious wreckers, and they did not hesitate to murder the shipwrecked crews in order to loot the ill-fated ships. Even to-day the natives spend a deal of time—which, it must be confessed, hangs heavily on their hands—on the lookout for luckless vessels. While no open hostility or violence is shown castaway mariners, the inherited instincts of the inhabitants of the island cannot be controlled, and they look upon every wreck as legitimate loot. All about, in every stage of decay and destruction, are to be seen the gaunt skeletons of ships which have found their final resting-place on Anegada’s reefs, and the native houses are built very largely of odds and ends of wreckage. Here, a hut fashioned from a ship’s galley; there, another made of a partly shattered deck-house; one built of battered hatches or weather-beaten ships’ planking, another roofed with a vessel’s rudder, still others [[107]]with timbers of spars—such are seen on every hand; while every article of any value, such as old metal, cordage, or junk, is collected and saved to be ultimately carried to St. Thomas and disposed of for a few dollars.
As an island, Anegada can boast of no attractions whatsoever. It is quite lacking in scenic beauty, and its inhabitants are miserable folk who win a precarious existence, although there are deposits of copper, silver, and manganese which perchance, in years to come, may be worked and cause this almost forgotten corner of the world to become even more famous than of old.
Anegada also is supposed to hold a pirate treasure of vast size, though why the pirates should have hidden their loot in a haunt of their fellows, whose proclivities they well knew, is a mystery which those who tell of the hidden wealth never attempt to explain. But, unlike so many of the other traditional hiding-places of loot, Anegada furnishes a slight excuse for belief in the tale, for, from time to time, ancient Spanish, French, Dutch, and English coins of gold and silver have been picked up on the beaches and among the coarse grass on the island, while rusty cannon are not infrequently found in the rank underbrush.
As Anegada was never fortified, was never [[108]]of sufficient importance to its owners to warrant a garrison, these mute old guns were no doubt used by the buccaneers. It is quite possible that the freebooters built some manner of stockades or forts and mounted guns; but, even if they did not, they unquestionably carried their artillery and other fittings ashore when refitting and careening their craft, and no doubt kept a reserve supply here on Anegada for emergencies.
Moreover, we know from historical records that the buccaneers did not give up this favorite refuge of theirs without demur when Sir Henry Morgan saw fit to turn his recently knighted back on his old shipmates and sent an expedition from Jamaica to drive the “Brethren” from Anegada. On the contrary, they put up a stiff and lively fight, and while neither side can be said to have been victorious,—for the battle resulted in a draw, and the expedition sent by Sir Henry retired,—yet the corsairs soon drifted away to more secure and less conspicuous retreats. So, for aught we know, the ancient cannon lying forgotten in Anegada may be the very ones that belched forth death and defiance at the men despatched to the Drowned Island by the ex-pirate governor of Jamaica.
The coins, too, may well have been the spoils of piracy and pillage, though by no means necessarily [[109]]a part of buried treasure, as the natives would have us think and—to do them justice—themselves implicitly believe. Far more likely they were dropped from some careless seaman’s pocket or lost in a drunken brawl or gambling quarrel.
In Anegada I was more fortunate than in St. John, for I was shown the rusting, corroded cannon that once had pointed—or so I convinced myself, at least—from the open ports of some swift buccaneering craft and many a time had roared out doom to the terror-stricken men and women on some galleon returning from the mines of Darien to Spain. What tales of adventure and of blood, of desperate fight and swarming, ruthless pirates these old guns might tell could they but speak! But, like the pirates, they are silenced forever, their yawning muzzles snug homes for scuttling soldier-crabs and striped lizards, their ornate decorations all but obliterated by the years of calm and storm, of drenching rain and salt sea-spray. And here they will lie, perhaps, for centuries more, until but a streak of rust upon the earth marks their resting-place.