Prince Rupert, the Buccaneer

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

If Monsieur D'Ogeron's castle of the cliff was unappetising, the squalid settlement at the head of the harbour was more so. Twice within the first three weeks, ships of the buccaneers sailed in laden with plunder from the Main, and there were some very horrid scenes of debauchery. These men knew no such thing as moderation; lavishness was their sole ideal; and he who could riot away the gains of a year in the carouse of a night was deemed to have the prettiest manners imaginable. The squalid town and its people was a mere nest of harpies, and no one knew this better than the buccaneers themselves. Monsieur D'Ogeron they openly addressed as Skin-the-Pike; the tavern-keepers they treated as though they had been Guinea blacks; but the hussies who met them with their painted smiles on the beach, and who openly flouted them the moment their pockets were drained, were a lure the rude fellows could never resist. They kissed these women, and dandled them on their knees; they lavished their wealth upon them, and sometimes beat them, and ofttimes fought for them; but never did they seem to tire of their vulgar charms.

PRINCE RUPERT SHONE OUT LIKE A VERY PALADIN

To the onlooker, the imbecility of the buccaneers in this matter was as marvellous as it was unpleasant; and it was plain to see that the machinations of the hussies (though it cannot be denied that some had beauty) were as distasteful to Prince Rupert as they were to his humble secretary and companion. They accosted them both on their walks abroad, gibing at the secretary's prim set face. But though his Highness gave them badinage for badinage, as was always his wont with women of whatever condition, they got nothing from him but pretty words gently spiced with mockery.

It was however an orgie in the Governor's castle that put a final term to their stay in Tortuga. A captured ship came in, laden deep with gold and merchandise. A week before it had been manned by seventy Spaniards, and of these twenty-three remained alive. It had been captured by a mere handful of buccaneers who had sailed after it in an open canoe, and these strutted about the decks arrayed in all manner of uncouth finery, whilst their prisoners, half-stripped, attended to the working of the vessel. They brought to an anchor, drove their prisoners into an empty hold, and clapped hatches over them; and then stepped into their boat and rowed to the muddy beach. According to their custom they had made division of the coin on board, and each man came ashore with a canvas bucket full of pieces-of-eight for his day's expenses.

They rowed to the rim of the harbour, singing, and the harpies came down on to the littered beach to meet them. From the castle above we saw them form procession, each with a couple of the hussies on his arms, and fiddlers scraping lustily in the van. There was value enough in the clothes of them to have graced a king's court; gold lace was the only braid; and very uncouthly it sat upon the men, and very vilely upon the hussies. The fiddles squeaked, a fife shrilled, and a couple of side-drums rattled bravely, and away they went with a fine preparatory uproar to the wine shops.

From his chamber in the castle Monsieur D'Ogeron heard the landing, and commenced a bustle of preparation. A feast was to be made ready, of the best, and the buccaneers and all those of the townspeople they chose to bring with them were bidden to it; and after the more solid part of the feast had been despatched, dice boxes were to be brought forward, so that the Governor, who was well skilled in play, might make his guests pay for their entertainment.

Monsieur D'Ogeron gave the orders to his negro cooks and stewards, posted armed guards in convenient niches so that his guests could be handily shot down if they resented any part of the carousal, and then, with his two armed body-servants, Alphonse and Jean Paul, betook himself to the squalid town below, where he was received with shouts, which were not entirely those of compliment.

For three hours he was swallowed up out of vision polite, and then once more reappeared on the road which led to the castle, arm in arm with the chief of the buccaneers, with a procession fifty strong bellowing choruses at their heels. They lurched up the winding pathways, stamped through the grim gateway with its decoration of shrivelled heads, came up the ladders which gave the only entrance from the courtyard, and clattered into the long low hall of the castle, where was set ready for them a feast made up of coarse profusion. On the blackened wood of the table were hogs roasted whole, and great smoking joints of fresh meat, and joints of bucaned meat, and roasted birds, with pimento and other sauces; and before each cover was a great black-jack of liquor set in a little pool of sloppings. To a European eye the feast was rather disgusting than generous; but to the buccaneers, new from the lean fare of shipboard, it was princely; and they pledged the Governor with choking draughts every time they hacked themselves a fresh platterful.