Pirate tales from the law

by Arthur M. Harris

With the loot of the sheriff’s house on board, the Revenge dropped down the coast a way for another job of “provisioning.” They made a fruitless attempt there, and then drew over to an island known as Calf Sound, where was the home of a Mr. Fea, an old schoolmate of John Gow. The pirate felt he could not leave those parts without saying how-do to one who in the past had shared with him the same dominie’s birch. In getting to the island, however, Gow dropped his anchor too close inshore, so that when it came time to shift he would not be able to avail himself of the wind. Too much wine from the Honeyman cellars probably.

So the pirate chief wrote a little friendly note to Mr. Fea, begging the loan of a boat to assist in heaving off the ship by carrying out an anchor, and promising solemnly that the favor would not be rewarded with any violence to Mr. Fea’s boat or servants. This last clause suggests that Gow knew the word of warning against him was spread abroad over the land.

The bewhiskered messenger who made the contact with Mr. Fea did not notice Fea’s boat, which happened to have been drawn up on the beach out of sight behind some rocks. Mr. Fea took advantage of the messenger’s oversight and returned to his old chum Jack a very vague answer, the purport of which was that Mr. Fea deplored his inability to oblige. By that time evening was at hand, and Mr. Fea ordered his servants to run the boat into the water, sink her in the shallows whence she could be readily recovered and secrete her gear.

Jock and Tam and Donald were hastily pulling out the mast and rolling up the canvas and unshipping the rigging when they heard the grate of a keel on the sharp pebbles, from which, by the passing of a scud of thin cloud from before the moon, they saw five men slide quietly out, not so quietly, however, that the variety of weapons on shoulders and belts did not slightly jingle. The three servants peered breathlessly over the rocks and marked the movements of the invaders as they set off directly for Mr. Fea’s house. Quickly they threw the boat’s trappings beneath a bowlder, thrust the boat itself nose down into the water, where she quickly filled and settled, then turned and ran for the house, where they arrived shortly before the pirates, who were approaching, stumbling and swearing, through the unfamiliar dark.

Mr. Fea ordered all of his servants out of the house, but to remain in the vicinity, and if he should come out, one or two of them were to follow him at a discreet distance. Alone, he prepared to answer the thundering banging upon his front door.

Calmly, quite without panic, Mr. Fea invited the delegation into the hall. They came and peered cautiously about. There was no sight or sound of any one but the master of the house; only the candles burned in their long silver sticks, and a fire against the raw spring night smoked on the wide hearth.

“There is no one here, my friends,” said Mr. Fea. “May I ask—”

“You may,” growled the bo’sun, thumping his musket butt on the polished floor. “We want your boat to pull us off—we’ve got out of the wind, d’ye mind? Cap’n says give us the boat and we’ll leave yer joolry.”

“Jack Gow could have anything he wanted from an old schoolmate,” smiled Mr. Fea, like one who, in a pinch, would not object to being a pirate himself, “but Jack is asking a little too much, when you come to think of it. Here is Jack—a good boy, too, even if he was a little rough at school—come back to his old home only to be published a pirate; but, says I when I heard this, ‘Little Johnny Gow a pirate?’ ‘Never in this world,’ said I, and many on the Sound can bear me out on this. ‘But he is,’ said they, and a bad, pillaging, plundering sea dog he is, to be sure. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘you are welcome to the notion, but as for me, I stand by little Johnny Gow.’ But, now, hark’ee, suppose I had a boat, and suppose I said to Johnny Gow, ‘Here, heave off with this boat,’ what d’ ye imagine would happen to me? Why, inside of no time at all, I’d be fast in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh as an aider and abettor of pirates. As men of the world, you know you can’t talk to some people when a notion’s stuck in their heads, can ye now?”

In this way Mr. Fea turned the edge of the tense minute. With one pretext and another, he wooed the delegation down to the village tavern, where he opened wide his purse and they opened still more widely their mouths, into which that liquid flowed which is authoritatively reputed to steal away the brains. The pirates mellowed, got to slapping Mr. Fea jolting whacks on the shoulder and constantly pledged him with their mugs. Opportunely, their host, so bland, so hospitable and, although they did not realize it, so sober, excused himself a second, and, stepping out, called Tam and Donald quickly and bade them scamper to the beach and destroy the pirate’s boat. This done, they were to come back to the tavern and send in some kind of casual word which would give him excuse to leave his company a second time.