Seventeen priests set sail in the coracle, or boat of basket work covered with leather. They had no fear, for they were holy men, and in those days Christians were immune from peril. Not long before a company of nuns had been blown across the sea and back again, seated on a cloak that rode the waves like a ship. After forty days Brandan’s company found a group of islands peopled by courteous natives. Next they disembarked on what they thought to be a rock to cook a dinner, but it was no rock; it was a whale, that, feeling the sting of flame through his thick hide, rushed off for two miles, carrying their fire on his back. They hastily re-entered their boat before the monster had gained much headway and ere long reached the Paradise of Birds, where they enjoyed the music made by thousands of little creatures with their wings—a music like fiddling. After this came visits to a den of griffins; to a land of grapes such as the Norsemen told about; to a mountain country aflame with the forges of one-eyed people, or cyclops. Twice, on Easter Sunday, they put lambs to death, and so, being blessed for the sacrifice, were allowed to reach the Island of Saints, where an angel bade them take all the precious stones they wished, as they had been created for holy people, but to attempt no exploration beyond that point. No men appeared; still, in order to leave the impress of their calling, St. Malo, one of the company, dug up a giant who had died several years before, preached to him and baptized him. These reformatory services revived the giant a little, though he was pretty far gone, and he died again as soon as the priest stopped preaching. St. Brandan went back to Clonfert, where three thousand monks joined him in good works, and mendicants swarmed from all over the land to benefit by their labor. He often told the people and the brethren of the wonders he had seen in lands Columbus was to rediscover nine hundred years later, and he dwelt with marvelling on the mercy of God as shown to Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Christ, who was encountered in the northern seas, lying naked on an iceberg in silent delight. St. Brandan recognized him by portraits he had seen and hailed him. Judas then told his story; he was roasting in hell when the Lord remembered that once in Joppa this disciple had thrown his cloak over the shoulders of a leper who was agonized by a wind that blew sharp sand into his sores. An angel was sent to tell the doomed one that for this mercy he would be allowed, for one hour in every year, to breathe the wholesome air of the upper world, and stretch his scorched body on the ice. Moved by this tenderness toward the most despised of men, St. Brandan bowed and prayed, just as Judas, with despair in his upturned face, slipped down again to the deeps of fire.
Some men of Ross, Ireland, had killed their king, despite his successful wars against his rival monarchs, some of whose kingdoms were as large as a township. For this offense the heir to the throne, or his advisers, decreed that sixty couples should be set adrift on the ocean, to meet what fate they might. A guard was put along the shore to keep them from landing again, and an easterly gale blew them quickly out of sight of their relatives and friends. For years none dared to seek for them. Conall Ua Corra, of Connaught, had prayed in vain to the Lord for children, so in anger he prayed to the devil, and three boys were born to his wife. The neighbors jeered at them as the fiend’s offspring, and harassed them and made them bitter. They said, one to the other, “If we are really sons of Satan we will justify these taunts,” and collecting all the vicious boys of their village they robbed farmers, ruined churches, killed men who resisted plunder, and were about to murder their father when they were warned in a vision of the eternal punishment they would endure in blazing sulphur pits if they did not repent. Their father had long regretted his hasty prayer to the evil one, and had tried to regain the good-will of heaven by industry, and by giving freely of his substance to the sick and pauperized. By advice of St. Finnen, to whom they confessed, the boys repaired the churches they had injured and mourned the victims of their brutality; yet, as the people doubted their conversion, they resolved to leave the country and go to some land where they would not be constantly exposed to the danger of breaking their good resolves by reproaches and attacks. Where to go? It was suggested by some designing neighbor that if they were to search for the one hundred and twenty exiles they would be doing a service to heaven and the world. This suggestion was promptly acted on. In a frail coracle they swept the sea, discovering strange lands, in one of which the half-forgotten people of Ross were found, living so contentedly that few of them cared to go back. The most exciting incidents of the voyage were the three meetings with the Island of Satan’s Hand, a lone rock in icy waters, where fogs always brooded. At the will of a malignant demon it changed its place from time to time, and it was the hand of this monster, a vast, rude shape looming out of the mist, which endangered all the ships that passed, for it struck at them,—as it did at the coracle of these three voyagers,—injuring hulls, tearing sails, or knocking the crews overboard, when it did not send them to the bottom. If the blow fell short it made the sea boil and sent billows rolling for a mile. Some of the shore folk said it was icebergs that the shipmen saw; but icebergs never sailed so far from the pole, they answered. Despite its wandering habit, the map-makers eventually agreed on a site for this rock of the smiting hand, calling it Satanaxio. It can be seen on charts of the eighteenth century.
A thousand years before Columbus it was reported that tropic islands had been discovered and ruled by Archbishop Oppas, of Spain, who was fain to leave his country because he had betrayed his king to the Moors. He found a race friendly and gentle, sharing with one another whatever was given to them, as not knowing selfishness. This prelate burned his ships, that his people might not return, laid off the largest island into seven bishoprics, and, impressing the natives into his service, built churches and convents, for there were women in his company whom he placed in nunneries. This island, which figures on early maps as Antillia and as Behaim, was known also as the Land of the Seven Cities, from its seven bishoprics. When Coronado heard of the pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico, he may have confounded them with the towns of Oppas, and to this day the seven cities of Cibola are a legend of our desert. Harold’s Norsemen were told by the wild Skraelings of Maine of a pale-faced people farther south, who walked in processions, carrying white banners and chanting.
Near Florida was the island of Bimini, with its fountain of youth. Juan and Luis Ponce de Leon sought it vainly among the Bahamas, then crossed to Florida and kept up the search among the pine barrens, the moss-bearded cypresses, the snaky swamps, and alligator infested rivers. The Indians, strong, active, healthy with their simple, outdoor life, their ignorance of wine and European diseases, seemed so favored that the Spaniards believed they must have bathed in the magic fountain and drank its waters. Green Cove Spring, near Magnolia, is the one where Luis bathed, hoping that he had found at last the restorative fountain; but an angry Indian shot a poisoned arrow through his body, and neither prayers nor water stayed long the little life that was in him. So the spring is in the unfound Bimini, after all.
The Buccaneers
How the free traders in the West Indies became smugglers, how by easy stages they passed from the profession of illicit dealing to piracy, are matters that concern history rather than legend. Their name of buccaneers comes from buccan, an Indian word signifying a smoke-house, in which beef and other meats were dried; as one of the earliest enterprises of the rovers was the stealing of Spanish cattle in San Domingo, and the drying of their flesh in the native buccans for use at sea.
A general hatred or jealousy of Spain, that was shared by the English, Dutch, and French, led to the first privateering expeditions. Indeed, throughout the seventeenth century the pirates operated principally against Spain, and were tolerated because of the injury they did to her ships, her people, her property, and her trade. Having finally ruined her commerce, they sacked her colonies, and, the lust for blood and treasure having been roused to a sort of madness, they cast off patriotic allegiances and became mere robbers and outlaws. The history of the successes of L’Ollonois, Morgan, Davis, and the rest, is an exciting though painful one, inasmuch as all sense of right and mercy seems to have been crushed in the breasts of these men by their brutal business. For a handful of dollars they were ready to wreck a city, reduce even its ruins to ashes, slaughter women and babes, and cut the throats of the aged. They were as harsh and treacherous toward one another as they were toward peaceable men, and for acts of rebellion against a leader they were killed off-hand, while it was customary, also, to butcher a sailor whenever a chest of treasure was buried, and place his body on or in the chest, that his ghost might guard it and terrify intruders. Yet the ultimate influence of the buccaneers was for good, inasmuch as they wrested a part of the rich Antilles from the cruel and ignorant Spaniard and gave it to more enlightened powers.
When the freebooting days were at their height there was no harbor of safety between Rio and Halifax; but there was, in every town the rascals visited, an element that profited by their robberies: the keepers of inns, brothels, and gaming-houses, and, lastly, the royal governors. These bloody-fingered varlets would sack a church, get tipsy on the communion wine, and demand the blessing of the priests on the next enterprise of the same kind they had in contemplation. With the chalices, candlesticks, and altar furnishings, they would go to the nearest city, where they were sure of finding this friendly element, and riot away the last piece of metal in their pockets; or, if pipes of wine were among the prizes, any island would serve for a long debauch. Devil’s Island, the place of Dreyfus’s captivity, was a popular rendezvous, though it is so named not because of these gatherings, but because of a particularly unmanageable prisoner who was once confined there.
The governors of some of the West Indies were as keen on the scent of the sea-robbers as the latter were in the chase of merchant-men, and they were unable to see a good many sad goings-on when a few pieces-of-eight were held before their eyes. Gaming was no disgrace in those times, nor was hard drinking, nor coarse speech, and even piracy had a sort of sanction when the victims were people of a nation with whom the buccaneers were at war. Many tales of gamesters’ luck are told, but a couple will suffice. Vent-en-Panne, a Frenchman, had received five hundred crowns as his share of a robbery, and on the first night ashore, at Kingston, Jamaica, he staked and lost it all, with three hundred more that a reckless comrade had lent to him. Though penniless, he was not discouraged. He became a wine-drawer and pipe-lighter in the tavern, and with a few pennies received for tips he bet on the cards again. This time he won, and his fortune mounted to twelve thousand crowns. With this amount in hand he felt he could be virtuous, so he took ship for home, intending to settle in Paris and fulfil the ambition of every honest Frenchman,—to own a furnished room, fish in the Seine, and hear the bands play. He got only as far as Barbadoes, for at that island a rich Jew came aboard, persuaded him to play for a small amount, and lost everything to Vent-en-Panne,—money, houses, sugar, and slaves. The fever was on them both, however, and so soon as the Jew could borrow a little his luck also turned, and Vent-en-Panne was stripped of every sou,—even the clothes he wore. Paris became an iridescent dream, and the gambler found his way to the Tortugas, where he doubtless shipped with Morgan, Teach, or some other of the scourges of the Spanish main.