The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer

by Harry Collingwood

It was exactly half-past one o’clock when, after an uneventful voyage, having previously hove-to beyond the Point, lowered their sails, and snugly stored them and the masts away, the six boats from the Nonsuch entered Nombre de Dios harbour and, keeping well within the shadow of the land, crept cautiously along the shore toward the battery, which was to be their first point of attack. There were several ships in the harbour, as could be seen by the number of riding lights dotted about here and there, casting shimmering reflections upon the surface of the placid water; but everything was perfectly quiet, no craft of any description were moving, and if a watch was anywhere set the watchmen were probably fast asleep at that hour, since there was no sound or sign of movement. Yet it struck George as somewhat strange that an air of such absolute security should seem to pervade the port; for things had been said during his visit to San Juan de Ulua which must have caused the authorities there to more than suspect the intention of the Englishmen to descend upon Nombre; and there had been time enough for a fast dispatch boat to make the voyage from the one city to the other, warning Nombre to be on the alert. As young Saint Leger pondered upon these things he grew suspicious that he might quite possibly be blundering into some ingeniously prepared trap, and, calling the boats about him, he gave instructions for the observance of certain additional precautions. But, had he but known, he need not have entertained the slightest anxiety or misgiving; for it afterward transpired that although, as he had all along suspected, the authorities at San Juan had actually dispatched a message to Nombre, recounting in detail all that had happened at the Mexican port, and warning the authorities at Nombre to be on the look out for the English, and to adopt every possible measure to ensure their capture, the vessel bearing the dispatch never reached her destination, and it was shrewdly conjectured that she must have foundered with all hands in the hurricane which the Nonsuch had encountered.

The great bell of the Cathedral was booming out the hour of two a.m. as the six boats swerved toward the shore and advanced in line abreast; and some six minutes later they gently grounded upon the beach, the oars were noiselessly laid in, and each man, grasping his weapons, and stepping quietly over the side, waded ashore, while those who stepped over the bows stood ready to push off the boats again, each with its two boat-keepers, at the low-spoken word of the officer in command. Every man knew exactly what his duty was up to the moment of landing, and did it; and so excellent were the arrangements that within two minutes of grounding the boats were again afloat, while those who had come in them were drawn up in two unequal parties on the beach, the duty of the smaller party, under Mr Richard Basset, being to surprise and capture the shore battery, while the other, numbering some forty men, under Saint Leger’s leadership, was to march upon the Grand Plaza and seize it, and the Governor’s house, which was situated therein. But with so small a force, and the numbers of the enemy unknown, it was necessary to exercise a very considerable amount of precaution lest some unforeseen accident should wreck the entire enterprise; therefore, while the force under George stood to their arms, motionless, close down by the water’s edge, Basset with his contingent crept warily up the sand toward the shore battery and presently were swallowed up within its shadows.

Then ensued an anxious five or six minutes of breathless waiting on the part of George and his company, during which no sound save the gentle wash of the miniature breakers on the shore immediately behind them broke the breathless stillness of the night. Then, from the direction of the battery, there suddenly came to the ears of the eagerly listening party the sounds of subdued scuffling, the faint clink of steel, and a shout which suddenly ended in a choking gurgle. The sounds were by no means loud; indeed, so subdued were they that at double the distance of the listening party from the battery they would probably not be heard at all. Nor did they last long; the whole affair, whether for good or for ill, was over in less than five minutes. But George knew that the termination of it was for good, so far as the English were concerned, for had it been otherwise the subdued sounds of the scuffle would have risen into shouts of alarm and the firing of musketry, instead of dying down again into silence, as they did. And presently a man came running down the beach from the battery, bearing a message from Basset to George to the effect that the former had succeeded in taking the garrison completely by surprise and capturing them and the battery practically without striking a single blow—“and Mester Basset he du zay, zur, that if you’ll give un half an hour he’ll make thicky battery so’s he can hold mun again’ all comers.”

Now, time was pressing, and it was of the utmost importance that the Grand Plaza and its approaches should be secured before the earliest of the inhabitants of the city should be stirring; but it was of at least equal importance that the battery should be rendered capable of being held against attack at least until all the contemplated negotiations had been satisfactorily concluded, since the battery commanded a good part of the city; therefore, after some consideration, George sent back a message to the effect that he and his party would remain where they were for exactly thirty minutes, during which Basset must do all that he could to render his position completely tenable, because at the expiration of that time the advance upon the Grand Plaza would begin. For half an hour, therefore, the party under the command of the young captain crouched, silent and motionless, upon the beach, during the whole of which seemingly endless time George was quaking with apprehension lest some nocturnal prowler, a fisherman, or a boat from one of the craft at anchor in the harbour should appear upon the scene, discover the presence of the lurking Englishmen, and succeed in raising an alarm before a capture could be effected. But fortune seemed to be on their side, for no intruder of any sort appeared, and when at length the half-hour had expired the word was given, and with a little sigh of relief from the strain of suspense, the men rose noiselessly to their feet and moved off in the wake of Dyer, who, knowing the way, was to act as pilot to the party.

Nombre de Dios was even then a city of considerable size and importance: it was, indeed, the most important Spanish settlement on the Atlantic side of the isthmus, exceeding Cartagena in the number of its inhabitants, and rivalled only by Panama on the whole continent. But when that is said it must not be supposed that it covered a very great extent of ground; moreover, the Grand Plaza did not occupy the exact centre of the city, this point being nearly half a mile further inland, consequently a march of some twenty-five minutes sufficed to enable the party to cover the distance between the beach and their destination. But that march had to be made through narrow, tortuous, unlighted streets and for some forty armed men, complete strangers to the place, to accomplish this during the darkest hour of the night without attracting a certain amount of attention was practically an impossibility, let their precautions against so doing be as elaborate as they might. The wonder was that they did not attract a great deal more attention than they actually did, for although the strictest silence was enjoined upon the members of the party, the tramp of forty men and the unavoidable jingle and rattle of their accoutrements sounded appallingly loud in George’s sensitive ear as they passed along through ways so confined that two vehicles could only have passed each other with the utmost difficulty, and where the high walls and overhanging upper stories reflected back every sound in the breathless stillness of the night. But it was the hour when people sleep most heavily, and although there can be little doubt that the sounds of the party’s progress must have disturbed a good many people along the route, so complete was the sense of security in the city that only very few troubled themselves to rise from their beds to investigate the cause of the disturbance. And of those few it is safe to say that not one really suspected the actual state of affairs at the moment. Thus it was that the daring intruders actually succeeded in eventually reaching the Grand Plaza and securing the command of its every approach without raising a general alarm.

But of course it was not possible that such a state of affairs could endure very long, nor indeed was any serious effort made to prolong it, for, with one party of his men in possession of the Grand Plaza, and another holding the shore battery, George felt that for all practical purposes the town was his, therefore so soon as the Grand Plaza had been secured all further attempts at secrecy and concealment were abandoned; the men moved hither and thither without restraint, and orders were given in tones which, while not unnecessarily loud, were still loud enough to awaken people here and there in the houses facing the square and apprise them that something quite out of the usual order of things was happening. Men began to rise from their beds and go to their windows to investigate, jalousies were thrown back here and there to enable those behind them to obtain a better view, and when, in the dim light afforded by some half a dozen lamps that were permitted to burn all night in the Plaza, armed men were seen to be moving hither and thither, with the feeble light from the lanterns glancing on their weapons, and with lighted matches glowing redly in the linstocks, a few of the bolder inhabitants summoned up courage enough to shout an inquiry as to what was amiss. And when at length the more persistent ones were told, in good Castilian, that yet had in it the suspicion of an alien twang, that nothing was amiss, and were advised to return to their beds and resume their interrupted slumber, suspicion at last began to awake, and instead of returning to bed the citizens proceeded to arouse their households, and to hurriedly dress. Then a few of the more courageous ones—but these were very few—ventured to sally forth into the square to investigate more closely, only to find that each approach was guarded by a small band of sturdy, bushy-bearded men clad in foreign-looking garments, armed to the teeth with most formidable and business-like weapons, and speaking some uncouth and incomprehensible tongue, who gently but firmly refused to allow them passage. At which those citizens returned somewhat precipitately to their houses and, retiring to their back premises, proceeded to discuss the matter with their neighbours out of adjacent windows, or over garden fences, some of them hazarding the opinion that El Draque had returned and, profiting by his previous experience, had surprised the city in the dead of night and secured possession of it. Then, as the opinion spread and, in process of spreading became announced as a certainty, lanterns were lit, spades and mattocks were routed out, and those who had jewels or money to conceal proceeded to conceal them with frantic haste by burying them either in secluded corners of their gardens or beneath the floors of their cellars, while those who had nothing to conceal busied themselves in hastening through the city by its back ways and byways, knocking up their relatives and acquaintances and frightening them out of their wits by informing them that a hostile army had entered the city, the saints knew how, and coming from the saints knew where, and were encamped in the Grand Plaza. At which intelligence the city awoke to life with amazing rapidity, men turned out into the streets and shouted the news to others, or others shouted it to them, women rushed out of their houses weeping, dragging their frightened and screaming children after them, ran aimlessly hither and thither, still further frightening themselves and others as they did so, and then rushed back home again, rightly believing that this was the best and safest place for them; and at least a hundred men in the course of a single hour mounted horses and galloped at breakneck speed to the barracks to acquaint the military commandant of the disaster that had befallen the city, while others again forced their way into the churches and proceeded to ring the bells frantically. By four o’clock in the morning every man, woman and child in the city was broad awake, and the air was vibrant with the discordant clang of bells furiously rung by unaccustomed hands, pealing out above and piercing through that indescribable murmur of sound which tells the hearer that an entire population is swarming the streets, half frenzied with terror, the whole punctuated at frequent intervals by the scream of a woman or child, the shouts of men, and the occasional crack of a musket-shot fired by someone demented with fright and quite irresponsible for his actions.

Meanwhile, having secured possession of the Grand Plaza and made the best dispositions in his power for its defence, George, accompanied by a bodyguard of four men, proceeded to the Governor’s house and, arousing its inmates, demanded an immediate interview with His Excellency Don Sebastian Salvador Alfonso de Albareda, the individual who just then chanced to hold the responsible post of Governor of His Most Catholic Majesty’s city of Nombre de Dios on the Spanish Main.

When first awakened, His Excellency was disposed to be somewhat explosive upon the subject of so untimely an invasion of his slumbers; but when the terrified major domo of the establishment informed him that the city had been surprised and taken possession of by a party of ruffianly English who appeared to have no sense of respect for any earthly thing, and one of whom claimed to be a friend of, or in some way connected with, that redoubtable pirate and most valiant cavalier, El Draque, the Don’s wrath suddenly subsided, for he felt that the matter was indeed of extreme moment, brooking no delay; he therefore gave instructions that the Most Illustrious One who claimed to be the chief ruffian of the lot should be ushered with all due ceremony and respect into His Excellency’s reception room; and while the major domo retired to execute this errand the Governor hastily assumed the garments that he had laid aside a few hours earlier, and in a remarkably brief space of time presented himself before his unwelcome visitor.

Entering the room with stately deliberation, he bowed to George in his grandest manner, and said, as calmly as though interviewing English raiders were an everyday occurrence with him:

“Good morning, señor! You have business with me?”