“Under their new captain the Sabbath was rigorously observed, and Ringrose writes, speaking of the first Sunday under Watling’s command, ‘This day was the first Sunday that ever we kept by command and consent since the loss and death of our valiant commander, Captain Sawkins. Our generous-hearted commander threw the dice overboard, finding them in use on the said day.’
“Under Watling, the Trinity sailed to Iquique and there captured several prisoners, among them an aged Indian from whom they sought to obtain information of Arica, which they planned to raid the second time. Evidently, from what transpired, Captain Sharp had seen the error of his ways and had made up his mind to be a most moral pirate in future. Having been released from the hold, he was on deck when the Indian prisoner was questioned, and he protested most vehemently against Watling’s orders to shoot the prisoner because, so the buccaneers imagined, he had not told them the truth. Finding his pleas for the Indian in [[161]]vain, Sharp dipped his hands in a basin of water and dramatically declared, ‘Gentlemen, I am clear of the blood of this old man. And I will warrant you a hot day for this piece of cruelty whenever we come to fight at Arica.’
“And verily did the buccaneers learn to their sorrow how they had misjudged the Indian and how true was Sharp’s prophecy, for Arica had been strongly fortified and garrisoned, just as the captive had related; the buccaneers were ignominiously defeated with heavy loss; Captain Watling and a number of other officers were killed, and the beaten and decimated buccaneers clamored loudly for Bartholomew Sharp once more to take command. Sharp, however, refused at first to listen to them, having had enough of their fickle natures, but finding that, unless he or some one took charge immediately all would be destroyed, he at last consented, and after severe fighting managed to get the survivors to their ship, although the surgeons were left behind. In fact the buccaneers had the closest shave of all their lives at Arica. Not only were they beaten back, killed and wounded by scores, and forced to retreat to the outlying country in disorder, but the Dons were on the point of destroying their boats [[162]]when they were rallied by Sharp, and only by a sharp hand-to-hand struggle did the English succeed in recovering them. Now, however, the men looked upon Sharp with reverence and awe, for not only had he saved their lives, but with the superstition of sailors, they remembered his prophecy, believed he had occult power and cursed the late Watling right and left for having destroyed the Indian prisoner and disregarded Sharp’s warning.
“The buccaneers were now greatly reduced in numbers. They had lost twenty-eight killed and eighteen desperately wounded, as well as about a dozen who had fallen into the Spaniards’ hands, and of the original one hundred and forty men who had set sail on the wild adventure in the Trinity a bare seventy now remained who were in condition to work or fight. But lack of men did not trouble Sharp in the least. Heading northward, they ravished city after city, leaving a trail of blood and smoke behind them, and at last put into the Gulf of Nicoya, battered, weatherbeaten and vastly in need of repairs to both themselves and their ship. But when off San Miguel dissensions had once more arisen, and forty-seven more of the men deserted and headed overland [[163]]across Darien as had those who had gone before. Their experiences were much the same as those others, although as the rainy season had not come on they were more fortunate, but they had many narrow escapes and many adventures nevertheless.
“With his forces now reduced to less than fifty men Sharp put into the Gulf, took prizes of the ships there, raided the villages and by good luck succeeded in making prisoners of some shipwrights and carpenters who were engaged in building ships for the Spaniards. These artizans he impressed into his service and at once proceeded to put the battered Blessed Trinity into condition for the long and dangerous voyage around South America and up the Atlantic to the Antilles. For, despite losses, desertions and all, Sharp and the remaining buccaneers were determined to carry out their original plans. They had now been in the Pacific for over a year, carrying terror far and wide, swooping upon every town or village they could find, capturing vessels and ever managing to escape in their shot-torn, dingy old galleon, and now Sharp planned to make her as staunch and seaworthy as possible with the materials and labor at his command. With almost [[164]]superhuman efforts the deck was taken up and relaid, new planking was put in her shattered sides, the masts were all shortened and the ship was rerigged and refitted from truck to water line. Then Sharp graciously thanked his captive carpenters and presented them with a vessel he had captured as a reward for their services. Then, freeing all the prisoners and most of the slaves they had taken, the buccaneers set sail for the Gulf of Dulce, where the ship was careened and cleaned, it having been impossible to do this at Nicoya. The condition that the craft was in can be imagined as she had not been cleaned, either outside or in, since she had fallen into the buccaneers’ hands—and the Lord only knows when before that. Ringrose states that, ‘when we came to cleanse her hold both myself and several others were struck blind with the filth and nastiness of it.’
“But at last it was done and the Trinity sailed forth from the Gulf of Dulce and started on her long deferred voyage to the distant Caribbean. And as they sailed, many a rich prize fell to those upon the one-time galleon. Within ten days after starting, a ship was taken with over forty thousand pieces of eight and, by a strange coincidence, [[165]]this proved to be the same ship from which they had won so much treasure and wine in Panama harbor over a year before. Ship after ship they took, but ever freeing all prisoners and turning them loose in the vessels after they had been looted, for Sharp had no mind to burden himself with hungry mouths which were of no use to him. Down the coast they sailed, avoiding conflicts ashore,—although, truth to tell, there was little to be got after having raided the coast twice within the twelvemonth,—until finally, leaving the last settlements and inhabited lands astern, they bore through cold and stormy seas towards the tip of the continent. They stopped in at Tierra del Fuego, found and mapped uncharted, storm-lashed isles, hunted penguins and seals, and battered by mountainous waves, buffeted by ice-laden gales, crept ever farther south, searching for the entrance to the Strait of Magellan.
“And remember that they had only the crudest instruments with which to navigate, only a rough quadrant for finding their latitude, and no means whatever, save dead reckoning, for determining their longitude. Their ship, despite their efforts to put it in seaworthy shape, was leaky, strained and filled with patched shot holes, and they were [[166]]in one of the stormiest parts of the world in the wildest season of the year. Often their sails were torn to ribbons or carried away, the ship was sheathed in ice, and after tedious beating through storm and sleet for days they would be driven back in a night farther than they had gained in a week. Let me quote a few passages from Ringrose’s log and you will get a better idea of what that handful of grim buccaneers in the Blessed Trinity underwent. Here, for example, under date of November 10th, he says, ‘Day being come the wind increased and at noon blew our mainsail to pieces. Hereupon we were forced to lower the yard and unbend the sail, lying under mizzen. But that too gave way and all the rest of the day we lay a hull in dark weather, foggy and windy, with a huge sea that oftentime rolled over us.’ The next day he reports, ‘All last night we had furious weather with seas higher and higher.’ On November 16th the fore shrouds gave way; for several days hereafter it was ‘so foggy we could not see the stem from the stern’; they narrowly escaped running into icebergs and, to make matters worse, their provisions had run low and the men were on the most scanty rations. Several of the crew were [[167]]frostbitten; others were so benumbed with the intense cold they could not stand, and at last they realized that they could not find the sought-for Straits and that there was nothing for it but to stand on to the eastward through uncharted polar seas in the hopes of rounding Cape Horn.
“Day after day they kept on, bending on new sails as fast as they were carried away; splicing and repairing rigging as it parted; half starved, numb with cold, often unable to secure a sight to learn where they were, but ever grimly heading east and north and blindly plunging into the long, green, storm-swept seas.
“And at last they found they were making northing, the tempests were less severe, the weather was appreciably warmer, and they realized, with heartfelt joy, that they had rounded the Cape and actually were in the Atlantic. By the 7th of December they were well north of Cape Horn—off the mouth of Rio de la Plata, in fact—but they had sighted no land since leaving Tierra del Fuego and had not the least idea how many scores or hundreds of miles they might be from either the South American or the African coast.
“Now the awful struggles the ship had undergone began to tell, and she sprang more leaks, [[168]]until the men, on less than quarter rations, were compelled to toil day and night at the pumps. Yet they were cheered, for the weather was constantly becoming warmer and fairer, and though several men died from the result of frost bites and exposure, the others took heart. But it was maddening for them to see porpoises, dolphins, bonitos and sea birds about their ship and yet be unable to obtain them to eke out their perilously low supply of food. The fish would not take the hook, the birds gave them no chance to shoot, and the haggard, dull-eyed, tattered men watched with hungry eyes the bountiful supply of food quite beyond their reach.