No doubt those curious, kodaking voyagers, whose interest in the old haunts of the buccaneers center mainly on cocktails, jazz, and the cuisine of the hotels, pitied us poor beings who must needs travel by schooner rather than by steam, and thanked their stars that palatial steamships were at their disposal. For my part, I pitied them because they knew not the real joys of cruising the Caribbean, and missed all the romance and fascination that the islands held. And as the sleek white hull dropped lower and lower in the distance and the Blue Mountains of Jamaica rose ever clearer before our bows, I could not help wondering what old Morgan or Sharp would have thought had they raised a steamship on one of their forays. [[257]]
CHAPTER XV
WHERE A PIRATE RULED
Against the soft azure of the tropic sky Jamaica lifts its lofty peaks, crowned with a diadem of clouds, above a sapphire sea. Faint and phantasmal as a vision it hangs above the waves, beautiful as a painting by a master’s hand, as slowly the hills and valleys take on form and substance. Opulently rich, with wooded mountain sides, wide fields of golden cane, and endless banana walks, it is as fair a scene as one could hope to see. As the Vigilant bore steadily toward Kingston, and we watched valley after valley, wave-washed beaches, surf-beaten crags, and endless rows of palms unfold before us, the island seemed a veritable earthly paradise.
But Jamaica’s history is far from that of an Eden, for its past has been one of bloodshed, debauchery, and death. From both God and man it has suffered much, and, as the Vigilant passed the long, low sand spit known as the Palisados and dropped anchor off the quarantine station at Port Royal, we were floating above what was once notorious [[258]]as the wickedest city in the world; for beneath the placid waters here at the harbor mouth are the ruins of old Port Royal, the metropolis of the buccaneers.
Above the beach with the lazily lapping waves, modern Port Royal straggles upon the low, sandy point, a sleepy, sun-drenched spot of no importance save as a barracks and quarantine station. It is hard to realize, as one strolls through the roughly paved lanes or across the broiling-hot parade-ground, that this was once the chief port in the West Indies, the richest city in the New World, and one whose name was synonymous with every deviltry and vice known to man.
And yet there is much of interest to be seen in Port Royal to-day. There is the ancient, crumbling Fort Charles, looking seaward, with its moats and drawbridges, its quaint corners and damp underground rooms. And from the grass-grown embrasures the same ornate guns look grimly forth as in the days when Admiral Nelson was stationed here. Upon a tablet let into the coral-pink bricks is inscribed:
In this place
Dwelt
HORATIO NELSON
You who tread his footprints
Remember his glory [[259]]
Also, leading from a heavily beamed guard-room in one corner of the ancient fortress is a little flight of stairs that opens on a paved platform known as “Nelson’s Quarter-deck.” Here, upon these time-worn flagstones, the famous admiral paced to and fro, no doubt regretting it was not in reality the deck of a great ship, and with longing eyes looked seaward for the French fleet which was expected to attack Port Royal. But the fleet never arrived. Had it attacked Jamaica, the history of the isle would, mayhap, have been very different, for the garrison at Fort Charles was pitifully weak, while the French flotilla was of immense strength. Perchance, too, had the attack been made, Nelson might never have won fame, for he was a mere lad of twenty-one when in 1779 he was placed in charge of the fort at Port Royal.