In the wake of the buccaneers

by A. Hyatt Verrill

Then followed a battle which must have satisfied even the most bloodthirsty. As usual, the pirates won the day, captured all the Dons’ ships, and, having thus secured the necessary tools of their trade, they transferred armaments, ammunition, and such treasure as there was, from the smaller ships to a four-hundred-ton galleon known as La Santissima Trinidad or The Most Blessed Trinity. Finally, having scuttled the craft they could not [[154]]use, they started on a career of piracy which, as a record of successes, battles, murders, mutinies, and bloodshed, has probably never been equaled.

Indeed, so execrable a pirate did Sharp prove himself that even some of his most notorious fellows could no longer stomach him, and Dampier, Gayny, Jobson, and over forty others deserted the company and started back for the Caribbean via the Isthmus of Darien.

Thereupon Sharp was seized with a brilliant idea, an inspiration which had never come to his brother buccaneers, a wild scheme quite worthy of his rash spirit. It was nothing less than to ravage the entire western coast of South America, sail through the Strait of Magellan, and return by sea to his old stamping-ground in the West Indies.

This was “the dangerous voyage,” and while it proved far more dangerous to the unfortunate peoples of the west coast than to the buccaneers, yet the mishaps and adventures of the latter were thrilling enough, and sufficiently numerous to fill a volume. No fiction ever written, no imaginings no matter how vivid could equal Ringrose’s log of The Most Blessed Trinity, as, sailing down the coast, her crew landed and sacked towns, filled market-places with dead and wounded, ravished women, pillaged cathedrals, razed cities, and with [[155]]sword and torch left a trail of blood and devastation from Panama to Patagonia.

Laden with loot,—with wines and spirits, silver bullion,[2] golden coins, jewels torn from the fingers of terrified women; plate and chalices from desecrated churches; embroidered vestments of murdered priests, treasure won through unspeakable tortures; satins and silks; even hides and tallow,—the battered galleon, scarred by shot and shell, her gilded stern castle hacked away to afford room for guns, her counter charred by fire, her decks blood-stained, cruised ever southward toward the Horn.

But the buccaneers did not escape unscathed. At many a town they were ignominiously defeated. Even Sharp had his troubles. As was often the case with such rascals,—incredible as it may seem,—the pirate crew, despite their ruthless and villainous lives, had certain ideas of religion. Finding their captain utterly regardless of the Sabbath, and so lacking in even a semblance of piety that he did not hesitate to sack a town or scuttle a ship on that day, they decided that the time had come to end such sacrilegious behavior, and, seizing Sharp, they placed him in irons and dumped him into the already [[156]]overcrowded hold. Then in his place they appointed a new skipper, one John Watling, an hypocritical old villain who would murder out of hand on Saturday and hold divine services the next morning, when his cutthroat crew would join in singing hymns or repeating prayers, the while wetting their throats with fiery rum. But the consciences of the men were quieted, and the new captain might have safely brought The Most Blessed Trinity safely to the Antilles, had not Fate, in the shape of a bullet through his liver, ended his sanctimonious and bloody career.

As there was no other capable of taking command, the mutineers were compelled to reinstate Sharp, who apparently had been meditating upon his own sins as he sat manacled in the dismal hold, and with only his own thoughts for company had decided to lead a better life henceforth. At any rate, one of the first things he did when the irons were knocked from his wrists and ankles and he found himself once more upon his ship’s quarter-deck, was to intercede for the life of an aged Indian prisoner whom Watling, before his sudden demise, had ordered shot for supposedly giving false information about Arica.

Who would have imagined that the desperate and unconscionable pirate chieftain,—whose greatest [[157]]enjoyment had been in the screams of captured women, the shrieks of tortured men, the groans of the dying and the roar of cannon—would ever come to this? But the scarred, leather-skinned, shaggy-browed old villain waxed eloquent and drew heartrending pictures of the poor Indian’s empty home, of his wife and children seated in their lowly hut, waiting for the return of their lord and master; and his chronicler even asserts that the suddenly reformed Bartholomew’s voice faltered and tears coursed down his cheeks as he spoke.

Unfortunately for the captive, the captain’s plea was in vain, and his crew, still sullen and mutinous, being determined to put an end to the old Indian, Sharp called for a basin of water and ostentatiously washing his gnarled and blood-stained hands therein, wiped them on the bedraggled and grease-spotted velvet coat he wore, and then, with upturned eyes, declared most impressively and solemnly that he was “clear of the blood of this poor man.” He added, “I will warrant you a hot day for this piece of cruelty whenever we come to fight at Arica,”—a prophecy which was fulfilled in a manner far exceeding his expectations and believed by the freebooters, with their sailors’ superstitions, to be the direct result of the Indian’s death, as they later discovered he had told them nothing but the [[158]]truth. At Arica scores of the invaders were killed or made prisoners, among them the ships’ two surgeons, and a bare handful of her original crew remained to work the badly battered and strained ship, and reef and handle the patched and shot-riddled sails as she staggered and plunged through the tempestuous, ice-filled seas and freezing gales around the Cape and into the Atlantic through uncharted waters. For they failed to make the Strait of Magellan and won a way where no ship had sailed eastward before. Possibly during his short confinement and his compulsory resignation from leadership, Sharp really did find grace and decide to live an honest life thenceforth; or more likely, being a canny rascal, he had no desire to repeat his experience and determined to give his rebellious crew their full of righteousness. Whatever the reason, there was no further trouble, and The Most Blessed Trinity, having successfully weathered the storms and billows of the Antarctic, went wallowing on her way northward through the Atlantic.

Weather-beaten, storm-strained; her sails in tatters, her rigging gray, ragged, and slack, her spars patched and fished in scores of places; with yard-long weeds upon her leaking bottom, and bearing the scars of many a battle, the one-time Spanish flag-ship worked up the coast, through [[159]]the doldrums, and into the trades. Her log reveals little but a constant succession of gales and hurricanes, of starvation rations and ceaseless work to keep the old ship afloat and able to sail, until, eighteen months after starting forth on her “most dangerous voyage” she entered the Caribbean and sighted Barbados—the first land seen since passing Patagonia.