After the usual tumultuous debate, Cape St. Vincent, Spain, was the place chosen for their happy efforts, there to intercept the lawful merchants in those fairly crowded sea lanes. The selection looked justified by an early capture. But, alas for the disappointments of life, when the cargo was eagerly examined, it was found to be merely a mass of negro slaves being rushed from the Gulf of Guinea to the American plantations, by way of Lisbon, into which the slaver had had to detour through the pressure of adverse circumstances. Little did John Gow realize, as he looked down into that fetid hold, that he was gazing upon one of the major elements of future history and the strife of armed hosts. Probably would not have cared, at that.
Slaves were less desirable even than salt fish; Gow wanted no more mouths to feed. However, he could replenish his sail lockers from the brig’s canvas, as well as obtain a bagful of watches, small coins and personal knickknacks from the crew. Then, too, the gang decided that here was a good chance to be rid of a number of their unprofitable prisoners by a means not too violent. The disposition of prisoners of a pirate was a constant problem throughout the history of the business, because, contrary to the common idea, very few pirates could bring themselves to an utter ferocity in the destruction of their victims after the guns had ceased throbbing and the smoke had curled away from the desecrated waters. The worst of them, Teach, England, Davis, Low, Lewis, all had their hours of compunction, and marooning was not hit upon as a method of wicked torture, but as a compromise to get men out of the way whom they could not feed and who would not work with them, yet without making the ship a shambles. This appears to be true, at least, of English-speaking pirates; when you come to the swart Ladrone villains, many of the Spanish, and the Chinese, there you will find the uttermost of barbarity.
So a group of the forlorn mariners was transferred from the Revenge to the slaver—not at the slaver’s request—and that vessel was then allowed to proceed on its humane occasions.
Lieutenant Williams could not get the point of all this solicitude for mere prisoners. He rather favored the Chinese way.
A French ship next splashed around the Cape and into captivity. A neat find, being freighted with goodly store of oil and wine, even to the solid value of five hundred golden English pounds. Captured, too, like the rest of them, without a blow. As a matter of fact, a fight was exceptional rather than usual, not because merchant masters were cowardly, but because the pirate, often by a trick of false colors, gained a confiding approach until within close range, when he would suddenly bristle his line of muzzle-framing open ports with the snarling demand of money or life. As the old West would have put it, the pirate “got the drop” on his prey.
The dour old Scotch captain, still lamenting the waste of his “fush”, now met the wheel of fortune on one of its most whimsical turns. The Revenge was a little bored with the Scotch friend, and a quarter-deck parliament hit on the artful idea of simply making an entire change of prisoners by bodily shifting the present ones over to the Frenchman and bringing all the Frenchmen to the Revenge. The pirates felt so relieved with the newness of it all that they even gave the puzzled Scot additional sails and some small articles of ship furniture,—only Mr. Williams reserved the right to kick his departing victims down the gangway. A really nasty person, was Williams.
It would be mightily entertaining, no doubt, to know what the feelings of the Scotch skipper were as he found himself thus on another man’s quarter-deck, in another man’s cabin, going through another man’s shipping papers and deeply mystified as to how he was going to explain the extraordinary situation to another man’s owners.
We wonder, too, what the French owners said when their ship finally reported in the person of a master with an outlandish tongue and a truly incredible yarn.
The Scot bobbed away to the horizon, cogitating his own particular problems, when another ship—but of the wrong sort—came smoothly down upon the Revenge.
A French warrior! Gow took her in with a long, slow glass.