The Log of a Privateersman

by Harry Collingwood

I had carefully explained to my crew beforehand what it was that we had to do; and I had also given instructions that the whole of the work was to be carried forward in absolute silence, no one calling out unless the necessity for so doing was urgent. Consequently, from the moment when we first dropped in over the bulwarks, not a sound save the soft patter of muffled feet was heard aboard the galleon until first the topsails and then the courses were let fall, when, of course, there arose a sound of canvas fluttering in the wind, which, to my excited imagination, seemed loud enough to wake the dead. Then came the sharp cheep, cheep of sheaves upon their pins as the topsails were sheeted home and the yards mast-headed, followed by a still louder flapping of canvas as the jib was hoisted. Then came the dull, heavy crunch of the carpenter’s axe as he smote at the cables. I suppose it was these sounds that awakened the galleon’s crew, for while the carpenter was still hacking away there arose from the interior of the fore-scuttle a loud knocking, and the muffled sounds of voices angrily demanding that the hatch should be lifted. Hoard, however, had been standing by, in expectation of something of this sort, and the moment that there came a pause in the knocking and shouting I heard him informing the prisoners that the ship was in the hands of the English, and that unless they—the Spaniards—immediately ceased their row the whole lot of them would be quickly subjected to certain dreadful pains and penalties which I but imperfectly understood. The threat, however, had the desired effect of quieting our prisoners, who promptly subsided into silence.

It was a somewhat difficult matter to get so big a ship under way in the rather thickly crowded anchorage, and we were obliged at the outset to make a rather long and complicated stern-board, which entailed two or three very narrow shaves of fouling one or another of the craft that were in our way. The sky, however, was clearing fast, the stars were shining brightly through great and rapidly increasing rifts in the clouds and affording us enough light to see what we were about; moreover, the land breeze was piping up strong, and whistling shrilly through our rigging, so that as soon as we were able to swing the yards and get headway upon the lumbering old wagon of a craft, we managed well enough, and contrived to scrape clear of everything; and that, too, without attracting any very serious amount of attention, only one hail—and that, apparently, from somebody more than half drunk—saluting us as we glided with a slow and stately movement out of the anchorage toward the somewhat contracted passage between the island of Tierra Bomba and the Main.

Once fairly clear of the anchorage, and the shipping that encumbered it, we crowded sail upon the old hooker, and were soon booming down toward the chain of shoals at the rate of fully seven knots. And now Hoard once more made himself useful by undertaking to pilot us through the shoals, which he did very successfully, hugging Brujas Island pretty closely, and then bearing almost square away for the Boca Chica channel. A short half-hour sufficed to carry us to the inner end of it; and here our utmost vigilance was called into play in the navigation of the sharply-winding passage. But we managed to achieve it successfully, all still being dark and silent in the San Fernando battery as we passed it, and after an anxious ten minutes I had the satisfaction of feeling Nostra Señora del Carmen rising and falling ponderously upon the swell of the open Caribbean.

In anticipation of the possibility that we might be pursued, I now shaped a course due west, right off the land, that being, in my opinion, the direction in which we were least likely to be looked for, and when we had been running to leeward for about half an hour, and had made an offing of nearly four miles, I burned three portfires simultaneously as a preconcerted signal to the schooner that all was well and that she was to follow us, and an hour later she came foaming up on our weather quarter and hailed us. We now hove-to and sent alongside her the boats that had hitherto been towing astern; and as soon as they were hoisted in we both filled away once more, still standing straight off the land, so that when day dawned I had the satisfaction of finding that we had run the coast out of sight.

We had, of course, long ere this secured our prisoners, numbering in all two hundred and twenty-six men, and now the problem was how to get rid of them; for I did not at all care to have so many men aboard who would require to be constantly watched in order that they might not rise upon and overpower us at some unguarded moment. Happily, the problem was soon solved; for about noon we sighted a trading felucca, bound from Porto Bello to Santa Marta, which the schooner brought to, and as she proved to be a fine, roomy craft I hove-to, lowered the boats, and transhipped our prisoners into her, despite the protests of her unhappy captain, who called all the saints to witness that the food he had on board would not suffice to feed so many men more than a couple of days at most. This objection I met by pointing out to him that he could bear up for Tolu, on the Gulf of Morrosquillo, which he could easily fetch in twenty-four hours, and so left him to settle the matter in whichever way seemed best to him.

As soon as we had parted company with the felucca, and were fairly under way again, I set to work to search for the treasure, of the actual presence of which on board I had as yet had no time to satisfy myself. Hoard was of opinion that it would be found stowed away in a strong-room beneath the cabin deck, in the position usually occupied by the lazarette, and there, sure enough, I found such a room—a solidly built structure of hard timber, fully six inches thick, plated with iron, the door being secured by three massive iron bars passed through thick iron bands, and secured at either end by heavy iron padlocks, six in all, the keyholes of which were sealed with great seals the size of the palm of my hand. These seals I broke without a particle of hesitation or reverence for the great personage who had caused them to be placed there, and then instituted a hunt for the keys, which resulted, as I had feared it would, in failure. The keys were doubtless at that moment at Cartagena, in the possession of the unfortunate captain of the ship, or in the hands of the official to whose custody the treasure had been confided. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to set the armourer to work upon the padlocks, and by dint of hard work he managed to get them off and the door open by eight bells in the afternoon watch.

The room, when opened, proved to be an apartment measuring about five feet each way, and it was lined inside as well as outside, with thick sheets of iron. But it was more than half full of gold ingots; that is to say the ingots were packed in rows of twenty each athwart the room. There were five rows of twenty each, constituting a tier, and the ingots were stored eight tiers high; so that, if the lower tiers contained the same number of ingots as the top tier, as was pretty certain to be the case, there were eight hundred ingots of solid gold, each weighing approximately half a hundredweight! the ingots being made uniformly of this size and weight in order that they might be conveniently transported from the mines to the coast by means of trains of Indians. I was struck dumb with astonishment and admiration as I stood gazing at the pile of dingy packages, each ingot being tightly sewn up in a wrapper of raw hide. I could scarcely believe my eyes for the moment. Twenty tons of gold! Why, there was a fabulous fortune before me! I reckoned its value roughly, and found that, at the then ruling price of gold, the value of the packages before me approximated well on toward three millions sterling.

Nor was this all. There was a heavy, oaken, iron-bound case, measuring about two feet square by about a foot and a half high. This, I presumed, contained the uncut gems which Hoard had told me were to be sent home in this lumbering old treasure-tub. Man alive! when I came to realise in a measure the approximate value of all this wealth, I tell you I was frightened; fairly terrified to think that I was now responsible for it all. For upon me devolved the task of conveying this enormous wealth safely across the ocean and delivering it into the hands of my owner, to be by him subdivided into the shares to which each of us was entitled. I believe I never realised so vividly as at that moment the manifold perils of the sea: the peril of fire, of tempest, of shipwreck, and of the enemy. And to think that it had all been intrusted to a bottom that, under the most favourable circumstances, could hardly be expected to get up a speed of ten knots, and that consequently was open to capture by the first fast-sailing picaroon that happened to fall in with her. It was positively frightful to merely contemplate such a very likely eventuality. “But, thank goodness,” thought I, “that danger is easily provided against!” And, going on deck, I immediately ordered the ship to be hove-to, and the launch hoisted out, and I also signalled the schooner to close.

It was a lovely evening; the water quite smooth, and a gentle westerly breeze blowing. I determined, therefore, to seize that opportunity to transfer the whole of the treasure to the Sword Fish, in the hold of which craft I considered it would be far safer than where it was then. And, that done, I determined to make my way, first to Jamaica, to pick up a few more hands to help in working the galleon, and then to make the best of my way home without risking the loss of all by engaging in any more fighting, however tempting might be the opportunity. The men went to work cheerily; easily divining my motive for transhipping the treasure, and being, of course, each in his own degree, as anxious for its safety as I was. Moreover, the galleon’s launch was a fine big lump of a boat; so we managed to tranship the whole and get it safely stowed away before sundown. That night I resumed command of the schooner, and turned the command of the galleon over to Saunders, who was a thoroughly steady, reliable fellow.

At midnight, as arranged by me prior to leaving the galleon, both craft hauled up to the northward for Jamaica, and we then found that—so slow was the galleon, with the wind anywhere but on her quarter—the schooner, under mainsail, stay foresail, and jib, was quite able to keep pace with her even when she was carrying topgallant-sails, above which the galleon set nothing. This promised a long, wearisome voyage across the Atlantic, and doubly justified me in transhipping the treasure to the schooner. Nevertheless I looked forward with a great deal of pride to the day when I should take the prize into Weymouth harbour. It was early days, however, to think of that as yet, for there was the whole of the Atlantic and two-thirds of the Caribbean between ourselves and home, with who could say how many chances of shipwreck or capture before that distance could be traversed.