The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer

by Harry Collingwood

“Your Excellency, the condition you name is an impossible one, not to be considered for an instant. Let us dismiss it, and pass on to the next, if there be a next,” answered George calmly.

“Next?” reiterated the Governor, a trifle tartly, “of course there is a next—several of them, indeed. But it is useless to speak of them until this, perhaps the most important of them all, is settled. Upon what grounds do you assert that my first condition is impossible, señor? You have secured possession of her by craft and in a manner which, if I may be permitted to say so, amounts simply to piracy. Our countries are not at war, señor. Then by what right do you seize a Spanish ship and, worse still, refuse to surrender her to her lawful owners, the representatives of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain?”

“Ah!” returned George, with a great appearance of simplicity, “now there Your Excellency puzzles me. I can’t exactly tell you by what right I do this, and have done a good many other things on the north side of the isthmus; but it is by the same right that justified Don Martin Enriquez, His Most Catholic Majesty’s Viceroy of Mexico, when he attacked the fleet of Admiral Hawkins while he was refitting his ships in the harbour of San Juan de Ulua, last year.”

For a few moments the Governor looked—and was—decidedly “taken aback.” He could find no satisfactory reply to George’s argument, for the sufficient reason that none such existed. But presently he pulled himself together and said:

“The occurrence to which you have referred, señor, was a most deplorable blunder on the Viceroy’s part; but I had no hand in it, and I must refuse to be held responsible for it. You must yourself surely admit that it would be unjust in the extreme to make me answerable for the actions of a man over whom I have no control whatever.”

“Oh, yes,” retorted George, “I quite admit that; and it is not in your personal capacity, but merely as a Spaniard, that I am holding you and all Spaniards responsible for that outrage. And I hold Spaniards generally responsible for it, señor, for the reason that no attempt has been made by any Spaniard to right the wrong that was done. Yourself, for example, when invited to do what you could to rectify the matter, as far as might be, by releasing seventeen Englishmen unlawfully captured during the commission of the ‘blunder,’ curtly refused to take any steps whatever. Hence my presence here, and my capture of this ship. Need I say any more?”

It was necessary for George to say a great deal more before he succeeded in bringing the stiff-necked Don to reason, and in the process of doing so he told His Excellency a few home truths that first sent that functionary into a towering passion and then turned him sick with fear; but at length Don Silvio was brought to see the futility of kicking against the pricks, and finally he gave in with a good grace, the more readily when he learned that eleven out of the seventeen men demanded had already been taken out of the captured galley; he agreed with George that it was scarcely worth while to expose a number of important cities to the horrors of bombardment and valuable ships to the risk of capture for the sake of detaining half a dozen Englishmen in captivity; he therefore at length struck a bargain with the relentless young captain that, in consideration of the latter undertaking to abstain from further molestation of Spanish life and property, he, the Governor of Panama, would forthwith take the necessary steps to have the six Englishmen, or as many of them as happened to be still alive, immediately released and handed over to their own countrymen, signing a document to that effect. This document, drafted by George, with the assistance of Basset, and young Heard, the purser, was quite an elaborate affair, providing for many things, the first of which was the retention of the Cristobal Colon and her cargo by her captors; second, that during the period of waiting for the release of the six Englishmen the authorities of Panama were to daily supply the ship with meat, vegetables, and fruit in sufficient quantities for the requirements of the crew; third, that if it should be found that any of the six Englishmen had succumbed to the hardships incidental to their life as galley-slaves, the sum of ten thousand ducats was to be paid upon each man missing, as compensation to his relatives. There were several other clauses in the agreement, all providing against anything in the nature of treachery on the part of the Spaniards, and to these Don Silvio objected most strenuously, on the ground that they were an insult to the honour of every Spaniard; but George insisted upon their retention, bluntly stating that, after the example which had been set by His Excellency the Viceroy of Mexico, it was impossible for any Englishman to rely upon any Spaniard’s honour. And in return for all this the Englishmen agreed to observe a strict truce for six weeks. The reading of the draft was followed by a tremendous amount of talk and numerous protests, in response to which the stringency of a few of the clauses was somewhat modified, and finally the two fair copies of the agreement were signed there and then, first by the Governor and George as the two contracting parties, and afterwards by the Spanish and English officers as witnesses.

This done, the visitors were entertained on board the galleon to an impromptu luncheon, which, as it was prepared by the Spanish cook, released from the limbo of below for the occasion, and as the viands and wines were drawn from the ship’s stores, was done ample justice to. Then George, accompanied by Basset, went ashore with the Governor and his followers, to be present at an investigation which was to determine the whereabouts of the six Englishmen whose release was in question, and who were ultimately found to have been drafted to a galley named the Tiburon, which, after considerable further research, was discovered to be then stationed at Port Lima. The next business was the preparation of an order to the Governor of Lima to immediately release the six Englishmen “named in the margin” and return them to Panama without delay; and before returning to the ship George had the satisfaction of witnessing the departure of a dispatch boat with the order on board.

On the following day the Spanish crew of the Cristobal Colon were released and sent on shore; and, this done, all tension between the Spaniards and the English was immediately relaxed, the Spaniards, with their high-flown ideas of chivalry, vying with each other in showing the utmost cordiality and attention to their whilom enemies; so that, on the whole, George and his officers, to say nothing of the men, were given a fairly pleasant time during their sojourn at Panama, in return for which they, among other things, assisted materially to extinguish a fire which one night broke out in the city and, for a time, threatened to lay the greater part of it in ashes.

Finally, on the twenty-seventh day after her departure, the dispatch boat returned from Port Lima, bringing with her the six Englishmen, safe and sound, but of course in a somewhat broken condition from their dreadful experiences on board the Tiburon; and thus George Saint Leger at length triumphantly accomplished all that he had undertaken to do when he set out upon his adventurous voyage.