The Pest of the West.
The merchants of Bristol sent in a petition to His Majesty the King, saying that the trade of the port was being ruined, that their ships were taken, that the supplies of sugar and tobacco must run short, and that, while the ladies would suffer as to their coffee, there would soon be no snuff ground up for the titillation of the noses of the king’s liege subjects.
Always the same story—Commodore Junk, in command of a long, low, fast-sailing schooner, was here, there, and everywhere. This sugar and coffee-laden ship was plundered and burnt off Kingston port, so near that the glow of the fire was seen. That brig, full of choice mahogany logs, was taken near Belize. A fine Bristol bark, just out of the great port of South Carolina, full of the choicest tobacco-leaf, was taken the next week. And so on, and so on. Ships from Caracas, from the Spanish, French, and Dutch settlements, heavily-laden, or from England outward bound, were seized. All was fish that came to the pirate’s net, and if the vessels were foreign, so much the worse for them, the buccaneer captain dealing out his favours with fairly balanced hand till the shores of the great gulf and the islands that formed the eastern barrier rang with the news of his deeds.
Government heard what was said, and replied that five years before they had sent out a ship to capture Commodore Junk, that there was a severe engagement, and the captain was taken and hung, and afterwards gibbeted off the port where his deeds obtained most fame.
To which the Bristol merchants replied in a further petition that though it was as the Government stated, Commodore Junk’s body had been taken down from the gibbet soon after it was hung up, that he had come to life again, and that his deeds were now ten times worse than before.
Moreover, that somewhere or another on the western shores of the great Mexican Gulf, he had a retreat where he lived in great luxury when ashore; that maidens, wives, and widows had been captured and taken there to live a life of terrible captivity; that many bloody deeds had been done after desperate fighting, men being compelled to walk the plank or sent adrift in small boats far from land; and that, though spies had been sent out, no one had been able to discover the mysterious retreat, even the Indians who had been bribed to go returning with their heads minus their ears, or else with strange tales that the buccaneer was under the protection of the great thunder gods, whose home was in the burning mountains, and that it was useless to try to destroy him and his crew.
Moreover, the men of Bristol said that it was a crying shame that their ships and cargoes should not have adequate protection, seeing what a deal they paid to the revenue for the goods they imported, and that one of His Majesty’s ships ought to be more than a match for all the thunder gods in Central America, and His Majesty’s petitioners would ever pray.
The king’s minister of the time said that the men of Bristol were a set of old women, and that it was all nonsense about Commodore Junk; and for some months longer nothing was done. Then came such an angry clamour and such lengthy accounts of the crimes the buccaneer had committed that the Government concluded that they must do something, and gave their orders accordingly.
The result was that one day Captain Humphrey Armstrong walked along the Mall in his big boots, which creaked loudly over the gravel. The gold lace on his uniform glittered in the sunshine; and as he wore his cocked hat all on one side, and rested his left hand upon the hilt of his sword, which hung awkwardly across him, mixed up with the broad skirts of his coat, he looked as fine and gallant a specimen of humanity as was to be found in the king’s service.
The officers of the king’s guards, horse and foot, stared at him, and more than one pair of bright eyes rested with satisfaction on the handsome, manly face, as the captain went along smiling with satisfaction and apparently conceit.