Prince Rupert, the Buccaneer

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

"No, Stephen lad. I will not have you with me as a companion now, because if the worst happened, and the Spaniards took you, they might by chance compel you to show the hiding-place of these much-costing pearls if you knew it."

"Your Highness underrates my poor devotion."

"Not I, lad. I know the spirit is willing, but the flesh may chance to be weak, and if put to the question by these Spaniards, the stoutest might well give way. They are said to be very ingenious with their tormentings. The thing has grown to be an art with them."

"But still your Highness seems to rely upon the buccaneers in the pink as being honest messengers," said Master Laughan, who was somewhat nettled.

"That letter," retorted Prince Rupert drily, "was writ in a cypher, Master Stephen, which none but my dear brother Prince Maurice can read. So does that content you?" And with this he burdened himself with the leather bags of pearls, and a sword to dig with, and was put to the shore in a small canoe, paddled by two of the blacks.

Now, it is no place here to recount anything so impolite as the fishing of manitee, or sea-cows (which the vulgar still confuse with mermaidens), nor any matter so indelicate as the manufacturing of their white flesh into food which will remain sweet for a voyage. And it would be equally disgusting to speak of the turning of turtle on the beaches, and the salting down of their quivering flesh into other provision, or to recount the filling of water-casks in a river's mouth, and the rafting of them off at a canoe's tail, and the parbuckling of them on board at expense of vast throes of weariness and perspiration. Yet, disgusting as they may appear to the genteel at home, these things have to be gone through by all adventurers sailing the seas of the New World. It is the custom of this barbarous tropic, where gentility is a forgotten word, for everyone to bear a hand indifferently; and on this account, Master Laughan, in spite of a most tender nurturing, was fain to work equally with the unsavoury pagan blacks. Even Prince Rupert, after his return from hiding the treasure, applied himself to these horrid trades of butcher and buccaneer, till at length the brigantine was victualled.

A history of the voyage, too, across from Hispaniola to the Spanish Main would form unpleasant reading. The brigantine was a small frail thing of fourteen tons, and none too seaworthy. Howling greedy tempests seemed her daily portion, and she clawed her desperate way across an ocean that was all great noisy hills of yeast and green, and roaring fearsome valleys. Her water-casks leaked and fouled, and her ill-cured food grew tainted. Nothing but constant labour at the pumps kept her on the sea-top, and everything was wet on deck, and sodden in the hutch of a cabin. Salt-water boils were the common ailment, and poor Master Laughan acquired an ugly red spot on the chin that was quite destructive to all comeliness.

It may be owned also that the Prince's sailoring was none of the best; for though he had some acquaintance with the utensils of navigation, he was not skilled in setting off a sea-direction like those wrinkled mariners that have spent a lifetime in the trade. And as a consequence he made but an indifferent landfall, sighting a coast which was wholly savage and desolate, and having no notion whatever whether La Guayra lay to the eastward or to the west. There was nothing for it but experiment; and taking guidance from the tossing of a coin, the brigantine's head was put to the west, till a fishing canoe appeared which gave him further directions; upon which she was driven back to the east again, and ran into the road of La Guayra, and brought up to an anchor there after a further voyage of forty leagues.

Here, then, Prince Rupert found himself in touch with the commencement of his enterprise, and proudly flaunted the St. George's ensign of England at the foremast head of the brigantine, and his own banner from the main. The white flag of truce flew from the mast at the bolt-sprit end.

There were four armed carracks of the Spaniards at anchor in the roads, and he saluted these and the shore batteries with a discharge of his two puny guns; and presently the captain of the port came off from shore in an armed galley to ask his business.