The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer

by Harry Collingwood

“Thank you, Don Martin,” answered George, good-humouredly. “I asked for an opinion, and you have given me yours, frankly and fearlessly; and I imagine, from the expression of approval which I seem to read upon your compatriots’ faces, that their opinion coincides with your own pretty closely. Well, be it so; naturally, you and I regard this whole matter from two very different points of view. Now, what says your worthy alcalde? Is he willing to exercise his authority over the crews of the ships, if necessary, in order to avert further trouble and complications?”

The alcalde rose to his feet and bowing, with the native grace of the high-bred Spaniard, to George, replied:

“Assuredly I will, señor; for the power is in your hands, and you can enforce obedience if you see fit. And anything will be preferable to the useless slaughter which I foresee would inevitably result from ineffective and ill-advised action on the part of our mariners. To avoid that deplorable waste of life, therefore, I am prepared to intervene, should the necessity unhappily arise. At the same time, señor, I feel it due to myself to join my protest to that of my friend, Don Martin de Sylva, and, I think I may add, the rest of us here present, against what I cannot avoid regarding as the tremendously excessive penalty which you are about to impose in retaliation for the ill-judged action of one man, who has already paid with his life for his mistake.” And therewith Don Juan resumed his seat, to the accompaniment of approving murmurs from his companions.

“Very well, then,” said George, composedly; “that matter is also settled. And now, señor, I think it will be advisable that you should accompany me out on deck, and hold yourself ready to act, if required; for, from the sounds which reach me, it would seem that the first of your ships is being hauled alongside; and your intervention may therefore be needed at any moment.”

As it happened, however, no intervention on the part of the alcalde was required; possibly his presence on the poop of the Nonsuch beside George, where he could be distinctly seen by everybody, may have exercised a wholesome restraint upon the Spanish crew; or the sight of the entire crew of the English ship, mustered on deck, armed to the teeth, the gunners standing by their ordnance with lighted matches, may have had something to do with it; be that as it may, the Spanish seamen offered no resistance when it became apparent that the English were about to transfer the treasure from the plate ships’ strong rooms to their own; nay more, they even assisted in the transfer, when commanded to do so, although it must be confessed that they worked with sullen countenances, and many muttered threats and grumblings.

There were twelve plate ships in the harbour, of which number ten were fully loaded; but when it came to inspecting the strong rooms of these ships it was found that all twelve of them had received their full complement of treasure, consisting of silver bars, gold bricks—each separately sewn up in its casing of hide, as transported from the mines—and one large chest of pearls, the proceeds of the whole previous year’s fishing in the adjacent waters. The gold and silver also represented a whole year’s produce of the mines; and so enormous was the quantity of the precious metals that its transfer to the Nonsuch occupied six entire days; while, when at length the task was completed, the Nonsuch, stout ship as she was, floated the deeper by a good five strakes!

The work was completed on a certain day, about an hour after sunset; and at the very urgent request of the alcalde and his friends the hostages, George arranged to leave the port forthwith; for although no actual demonstration had been made against the ship, news had come off from the shore, from time to time, to the effect that the whole town was seething with indignation at the sight of such an enormous amount of treasure being seized by the hated English, while the soldiery were going about the streets breathing fire and slaughter and doing their utmost to incite the town folk to unite with them in a determined effort to recapture the treasure and annihilate the English pirates; while, as the time went on, it became perfectly evident that only the fear of bombardment restrained the civilians from entertaining the proposal; and, even so, the alcalde was in a perfect agony of fear lest, despite all the efforts of his friends ashore, some rash act on the part of the soldiery and the rougher element among the civilians, should yet precipitate a catastrophe. Therefore, no sooner was the last gold brick transferred than the alcalde and his fellow prisoners overwhelmed George with most urgent solicitations that, having now accomplished all he had planned, he would proceed to sea forthwith; which, there being no reason to the contrary, the young captain willingly consented to do. Accordingly, the canvas was loosed, the anchor hove up to the bows; and, the alcalde and his friends having been transferred to the ship alongside, the fasts were cast off, the topsails sheeted home, and under the impulse of a gentle off-shore breeze the Nonsuch stood out of the harbour of San Juan de Ulua, after a sojourn of a full week pregnant with events of great and far-reaching importance. It afterwards transpired that the English had only got away from the port by the bare skin of their teeth; for within twenty-four hours of their departure the belated convoy arrived with the plate ships from Cartagena and Nombre de Dios; and when the Spanish Admiral was made acquainted with the details of George’s daring raid—which was within an hour of his arrival—he was so convulsed with rage that in the height of his passion he ordered the entire convoy to weigh and put to sea again—leaving the newly-arrived plate ships to take care of themselves and their precious cargoes as best they might—with instructions to the captains that they were on no account to return without the English ship. The result of this mad order was that the convoy was absent for three full weeks, during which George, had he only known it, might have returned and filled the Nonsuch with treasure until she would hold no more. But while the Spanish captains were straining their ships to pieces by threshing to the northward under a heavy press of sail, under the conviction that the English were homeward bound and were heading north to avail themselves of the assistance of the Gulf Stream, the heavily-laden Nonsuch was steadily working to windward across the Gulf of Campeche, making for the northern coast of Yucatan, on her way back to the little desert island off the southern coast of Jamaica, where the adventurers had buried their first haul of treasure.

For now that the Nonsuch was loaded down with so fabulously rich a freight, the first consideration of its new owners was to temporarily deposit it in some place of safety while they pursued their quest of the missing Hubert Saint Leger, lest haply misfortune should befall them and, losing their ship, they should lose their treasure also. And now it was that George had his eyes opened, for the first time, to one at least of the disadvantages of so stupendous a stroke of good fortune as had been his and his companions’. For their haul of treasure had been so enormous that the men had got tired of handling it before its transfer had been completed; nay more, they were actually satisfied with the amount of their wealth; and when George first announced his intention of burying it with the rest, prior to pursuing his search for his lost brother, there were those among his crew who loudly protested that they were now rich enough to return at once to England with what they had; that it would simply be a tempting of Providence to pursue the adventure further, and that, for their part, they had had quite enough of the Indies. But Saint Leger speedily quelled these murmurs by mustering the crew and reading to them the Articles of Agreement which all had signed, and which clearly set forth the objects with which the voyage had been undertaken, among which was distinctly specified the finding and deliverance of Mr Hubert Saint Leger. And having read these Articles, George proceeded to inform the crew of his determination to hold all hands to their bargain, reminded them of the pains and penalties provided by way of punishment for breaches, or even attempted breaches, of any Article of the covenant, and wound up by declaring that, rather than abandon his search for his brother, he would maroon the malcontents and leave them to find their way back home as best they could. And, as the malcontents proved after all to be but a small proportion of the crew, this threat quietened them, at least for the time being, and no further murmurs were heard.

On the morning of the ninth day after their departure from the harbour of San Juan de Ulua the adventurers sighted Cape Catoche, the most northerly point of the Peninsula of Yucatan, broad on the lee bow, tacked two hours later and made a stretch off the land until sunset, when they tacked again to the southward; and on the following day at noon their reckoning showed that they had accomplished their passage through the Strait of Yucatan and were once more in the Caribbean Sea. Eight days later the treasure island was sighted from aloft at sunrise; and by noon the Nonsuch with her cargo of treasure was safely at anchor under the lee of the island, and as close to the beach as it was prudent to take her. As soon as the canvas was furled and everything made snug aloft, all hands were piped to dinner; and at the conclusion of the meal two boats were lowered and manned, their crews well provided with mattocks, shovels, and other implements for digging, and were dispatched to the shore under the command of Dyer, who had by this time sufficiently recovered from his hurts to be able to sit in a chair and supervise the operations of the working party. And while these were busily engaged in the excavation of a pit capacious enough to receive the enormous amount of treasure in the hold of the Nonsuch, George with the remainder of the crew was as busily employed in getting the treasure up on deck in readiness for its transfer to the shore, and making such preparations as they deemed necessary for its adequate protection.

The particular part of the treasure about which Saint Leger was most anxious was the chest of pearls. He had not the most remote idea as to its value, but he knew that it must be almost fabulous; and he knew also how easily the delicate gems might be injured by damp penetrating to them from the surrounding earth; he therefore took the most elaborate precautions for their protection, those precautions being initiated immediately after the departure of the ship from San Juan. His first step was to have the junction of the lid with the box carefully and effectively caulked with cotton; and when this was done to his satisfaction he caused the exterior of the box to be painted several coats of thick paint, with the object of rendering the wood damp-proof. But, not content with this, he further caused the sailmaker to make two canvas coats to fit tightly over the chest, one coat over the other, and each coat securely fastened by a lacing. Then, when the paint on the chest itself was quite dry, the first canvas coat was slipped on, carefully laced, and then painted four coats, each coat of paint being allowed to dry before the next was applied. Then the second canvas coat was put on, the reverse way of the first, and secured. This was then coated several times with Stockholm tar, to preserve it from decay; and finally, when the last coat of tar was quite dry, the exterior was thickly coated with boiling pitch, as a culminating precaution, after which George decided that he had done everything possible for the preservation of the pearls and that they must now be left to take their chance.