The crucial moment came when the clerk of the court called out, “James Stuart Henderson, stand up,” and Judge Williams asked him if he knew of any reason why sentence should not be passed upon him. According to the lawyers, the situation was intensely dramatic. The judge, the prosecuting attorney, and all of the more or less skeptical officials, were boring holes through poor Nourse’s head with their eyes. He had but to open his mouth to clear himself and start every officer in Australia on a hunt for me from which I would have found it hard to escape, but he was true blue. He looked back at the judge bravely and simply said, “No, sir.”
Nourse and Wilson were sentenced to seven years and Leigh to three and one-half years in Pentridge prison. With the time deducted for good behavior, this meant five years and three months for Nourse and Joe and less than three years for Leigh. When the case assumed a more serious aspect than I had believed it would when I bargained with Nourse to take my place, I sent word to him that I would pay him well if he would “play the string out,” and as soon as I left the tomb I deposited five thousand dollars which was to be paid to him when he was released. I spent some time and considerable money in an effort to secure a pardon for my companions, but when I found that was impossible I returned to England, with a promise to be back in Australia by the time their terms expired. On the long trip back to London I spent a lot of time in reproaching myself for the result of the unfortunate cruise. It was the first mistake I had ever made and, while I was not primarily to blame, the responsibility was mine, for I was at fault in not having seen that all of the papers were in proper form. That experience taught me a lesson and I never again fell into a blunder of that sort. The Highland Railway subsequently sold the “Ferret” to run between Albany and Adelaide.
CHAPTER XII
A LAND OF MYSTERY AND MURDER
WITH my return to London in the early eighties, after I had been sent to prison by proxy for seven years in Australia, the old lure of the West Indies, with their continuous riot of revolutions, came over me so strongly that I could not hold out against it, nor did I try. Frank Norton, my old partner in piracy, had the “Queen of the Seas” at the East Indian docks, where he was displaying a ship ventilating apparatus which he had invented. He urged me to go back to the China Sea with him and resume operations against the pirates, but I put him off. Soon after leaving him I ran into an English engineer named Tucker, whom I had known in Venezuela, and from him I learned that Guzman Blanco, the Dictator, was in Paris, his foreign capital, from which he was directing the government of Venezuela through a dummy President, and was anxious to see me. I was not particularly desirous of seeing him, however, for I feared I could not resist him, and I had no wish to again be tied down in Caracas, as I had been before when I was his confidential agent. I was much more interested in reports which reached me, through contraband channels, that a new revolution was shaping up in Costa Rica, and that there was a prospect of trouble in Hayti and even in Venezuela.
I took the first ship for Halifax and went from there to St. John, New Brunswick, where I bought the fore and aft schooner “George V. Richards.” She was a trim-looking craft of about one hundred and eighty tons, and stanch, but, as I discovered later, as faddish as an old maid. We never could trim her to suit her and she never behaved twice the same under similar conditions. In the same weather she would settle back on her stern like a balky mule or sail like a racing yacht, just as the spirit moved her. Yet I was fond of her, for she was a great deal like myself; she had her wits about her all of the time and was at her best in an emergency. I took her to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where I loaded up with old Sharps and Remington rifles and a lot of ammunition, and, after burying them under sixty tons of coal, sailed for Venezuela to see what was going on in Guzman’s absence.
Instead of going direct to La Guaira, where I was well known, I headed for Maracaibo, the city that gave Venezuela its name. Alonzo de Ojeda, who followed Columbus, sailed westward along the coast of Terra Firme, which the Great Discoverer had spoken of as “the most beautiful lands in the world,” to the Gulf of Maracaibo. There he found several Indian villages built on piles and, prompted by this suggestion, he named the land Venezuela, or “Little Venice.” Maracaibo has a splendid harbor for light-draft vessels, and but for the fact that it has been subject to the whims of successive plundering presidents it would now be the chief city of the country. Not only is it the port of a great and rich section of Venezuela, but it is the only outlet for the coffee and other products of a large part of Colombia. Ever since their separation there has been ill-feeling between the two republics, and it has suited the fancy of every Venezuelan president since Guzman’s day, Castro being the chief offender, to spasmodically shut off all communication with Colombia, with consequent disastrous effects to the trade of Maracaibo. As a partial offset to these recurrent embargoes, the city boasts of a brand of yellow fever that has actually made it famous, at least among travellers in South America. It is so mild that it is seldom fatal and wise folks who are ticketed for the interior of Venezuela go to Maracaibo and stay until they have had the fever and become immune.
The collector of customs at Maracaibo “borrowed” a fine rifle from me, which is one of the South American varieties of graft, and put me up at the club, where I was thrown in friendly contact with the people I wished to meet. I found that General Alcantara was acting as dummy President while Guzman was enjoying himself in Europe, and I soon satisfied myself, from remarks dropped by his friends in response to my guarded inquiries, that he was ambitious to become the ruler of Venezuela in fact as well as in name. The movement to overthrow Guzman was, in fact, taking definite form, and I sold a part of my arms to Alcantara’s friends. They wanted to buy the entire cargo, but I refused to part with it, on the ground that the bulk of it had been contracted for elsewhere. It was apparent that serious trouble was brewing for Guzman and, instead of proceeding to Costa Rica, I sailed for La Guaira, intending to visit Caracas and look the situation over at close range.
At the capital there was the same undercurrent of revolt against the dictatorship of Guzman, which was being secretly encouraged by the partisans of the acting President. I called at the Yellow House to pay my respects to Alcantara, whom I had known in Guzman’s army, and in the course of our conversation he suggested that I remain in Caracas and become his friend, as I had been Guzman’s. He did not tell me of his real ambition in so many words, but I needed no binoculars to see what was in his mind. I at once wrote Guzman fully, telling him of Alcantara’s treachery and describing the situation as I had found it, and then sailed for Costa Rica. Guzman had also heard of what was going on through other sources and, as I subsequently learned, he returned to Venezuela a few months later, before the revolt that was being hatched had broken its shell. The government was promptly turned over to him by Alcantara, who at once started to leave the country, evidently fearing that if he remained he would be summarily sent to San Carlos, then as now the unhappy home of political prisoners. He started for La Guaira by the old post road, along which were a number of public houses. In one of these he met a party of politicians and while with them he died suddenly. It was charged by Alcantara’s friends that he was poisoned by order of Guzman, who suspected that he was going away to launch a revolution, but the friends of Guzman claimed that he ate heartily of rich salads while in a heated condition and died from acute indigestion. The latter version of it has always been my view, for Guzman was not the man to have an enemy, nor even a friend who had played him false, put out of the way in such fashion. Guzman was a dictator to his finger tips, but he was nothing of a murderer.
The Costa Ricans were, I found, making one of their periodical but always futile efforts to depose their President, General Tomaso Guardia, and I had no difficulty in disposing of my arms and ammunition, which I exchanged for a cargo of coffee. I might have joined the revolution had I not become convinced that it had no more chance of success than those which had preceded it. Gen. Guardia, who ruled until he died, was one of the few strong men Central America has produced. He was the Diaz of Costa Rica and as much of a dictator as Guzman Blanco, whom he greatly resembled in his friendship for foreigners and his contempt for the natives. When he heard of a political leader, so called, who was trying to stir up trouble, Gen. Guardia would send for him and say: “Your health has not been good for some time. I see that you are failing. You need a long trip. Go to Europe and stay a year,” or two years or five, according to circumstances. A couple of trusted lieutenants were assigned to stay with the politely condemned exile, “to see that he wanted for nothing,” and he never failed to take the next ship for foreign shores. Another presidential method was to summon some discontented one, who was planning an insurrection, and make him a member of the Cabinet. Flattered by this honor the new Minister was easily tempted to come out with exaggerated expressions of confidence in Gen. Guardia and his government. Thereupon the President would kick him into the street. “There,” he would say to the natives, “you see, all that man wanted was money. He is nothing of a patriot.”
Guardia always smiled, whether he was sentencing a man to exile or ejecting him from his shifting Cabinet; he regarded the natives as only children. By such methods as these he made himself master of the country, and the little rebellions which sprang up from time to time were quickly suppressed. One of the foreigners for whom he developed a great liking was Dr. W. R. Bross, a New York physician who was at Port Limon with a party of engineers who were building a railroad from the coast into the interior. While on a visit to Port Limon the President discovered that Dr. Bross had much more skill than any of the physicians at the capital. He wanted him to go to Europe with him and, when this proposition was rejected, urged him to accompany him to San Jose, the capital, and become his private physician, at a salary he was to name himself. This offer was also turned down. Had Dr. Bross been more worldly, and less devoted to the men who were in his care, he could have secured concessions worth millions of dollars, for Gen. Guardia was more than generous to his friends.