Indeed, it is said that the notorious Morgan more than once shot down some scoffing buccaneer who had the temerity to interrupt the sermon, and that, on his own ship, whenever a clergyman fell into his clutches, he compelled the prisoner to hold service. History fails to relate what disposal the famous [[266]]chieftain made of the unfortunate priest or minister thereafter, but he probably compelled him to walk the plank or ended his career in some equally abrupt and pleasant manner, for that was “Harry Morgan’s way,” as he was fond of boasting.
But the church at Port Royal was the veriest mockery, and not one jot did it influence the behavior or the lives of the town’s execrable denizens. Notoriously a pirates’ resort, winked at by the British (indeed, encouraged by the government as long as the buccaneers preyed upon the Spaniards and left British ships in peace), the city grew and prospered until one pleasant day in June—the seventh, to be exact—in 1692, when, as though an outraged God could no longer suffer this blot upon the universe, Port Royal was wiped from the face of the earth in an instant. Without warning, with no time granted the carousing, roistering fiends to repent, an earthquake shook the island to its foundations, and Port Royal, with over three thousand of its houses, nearly all its inhabitants, and all its vast accumulated treasures, dropped bodily into the sea.
One can picture the awful scenes of that fatal day: the terror-stricken people rushing, shrieking, from the crumbling houses and through the heaving, rocking streets as the first tremors rent the [[267]]town; the drunken pirates stumbling red-eyed and cursing from brothel and drinking-place, as timbers splintered and masonry fell, and ruthlessly cutting down all who hampered their flight. And all in vain. Tripping over the bodies of their fellows, choking the narrow streets, felled by tumbling walls, milling, pushing, crowding; befuddled with rum; the solid ground dropping from beneath their feet; blaspheming, screaming, the mob fought madly to save their worthless lives, until, swallowed by the inrushing water, overwhelmed by the relentless sea, men, women, and children, merchant and pirate, harlot and slave, innocent and guilty, were buried deep beneath the waves, while on the placid surface of the harbor floating bits of wreckage, a few struggling figures, and countless corpses were all that marked the scene of the awful punishment meted out.
And above the limit of the devastation, serene, uninjured, aloof, Fort Charles still gazed seaward. Of all Port Royal the old fortress alone remained—this and a few gruesome, buzzard-picked skeletons turning, twisting in the wind, swinging by their creaking chains from the gibbets beyond reach of the waves.
At one fell swoop Port Royal, the buccaneers’ stronghold, had been wiped from the face of the [[268]]earth, never to be rebuilt. To-day, when the water is calm, one may still trace the coral-incrusted outlines of the ruined town, while the negro boatmen relate uncanny tales of ghostly pirate ships sailing in the teeth of the wind, riding the crest of storms, ever striving to make the lost port, and of the phantom bells of the pirates’ church tolling the requiem of the dead buccaneers beneath the tempestuous waves.
A few survivors there were, who had found refuge in boats or ships or who had escaped from the stampede to higher ground, and these, spared as by a miracle, saw the error of their ways and, repenting of their sins, moved across the bay and founded the city of Kingston. They had been taught a wholesome lesson. Piracy was given up in favor of honest pursuits, and as, in the years that followed, the buccaneers were driven from the Caribbean, Kingston grew and prospered, order reigned, and peaceable planters, honest merchants, and vast estates brought wealth and riches to the isle in place of pirates’ loot and corsairs’ treasures.
But Nemesis seems ever to hover above the fair island whose early prosperity was built on bloodshed and villainy. From time to time destructive hurricanes have swept it, leveling buildings, destroying crops, and killing people, as in 1880, when [[269]]thirty lives were lost in Kingston and most of the wharves as well as countless houses were destroyed. Fire swept the town in 1882, leveling over six hundred buildings, and then came the earthquake and fire of 1907, which snuffed out the lives of over one thousand persons, crumpled Kingston to dust, and wrought awful havoc upon the isle.
And as though these acts of God were not enough, between times there have been wars and bloodshed and to spare. Uprising slaves burned, slaughtered, and destroyed. The Cimmaroons or runaway blacks waged a relentless guerrilla warfare, and bandits and brigands made life and property insecure for years. From the very beginning of its history, Jamaica has been a stage for deeds of violence. Indeed, its turbulent days were inaugurated when first Columbus beached his unseaworthy ships on the northern coast in June, 1503. Here he remained for a year, until rescued by an expedition from Santo Domingo,—twelve months of mutiny, suffering, and hardship,—and here he saved his men and himself from death by impressing the Indians with his famous prophecy of the moon’s eclipse.
The site of his encampment, known as Christopher’s Cove, is between St. Ann’s Bay and Anotta Bay, and is one of the most historic places on the [[270]]island, although, aside from its natural beauties, with its lovely beaches, its transparent water, and its setting of luxuriant foliage, there is nothing to be seen. Needless to say, Columbus, who discovered Jamaica in 1494, claimed it for the King of Spain, and Spanish it remained until 1655, when the British, under sturdy Admiral Penn and General Venables, vanquished the Dons and established the capital at Spanish Town in 1664.
It was during this period of warfare between the great nations that thousands of negro slaves escaped and, fleeing to the fastnesses of mountain and forest, became transformed into a half-savage race known as Cimmaroons, or, more commonly, Maroons. Fortifying themselves in the almost impenetrable mountain jungles, the Maroons harassed the planters, murdered and robbed travelers, burnt estates and outlying hamlets, and wreaked deviltry and destruction for years. Expedition after expedition was sent against them unsuccessfully, until, in the end, the British were forced to meet the wild negroes halfway, and, despairing of conquering them, made a treaty whereby the Maroons were granted their freedom and twenty-five hundred acres of land.