I
It is not so easy to tell why discredit should be cast upon a man because of something his grandfather may have done amiss, but the world, which is never over-nice in its discrimination as to where to lay the blame, is often pleased to make the innocent suffer instead of the guilty.
Barnaby True was a good, honest boy, as boys go, but yet was he not ever allowed altogether to forget that his grandfather had been that very famous pirate, Captain William Brand, who, after so many marvellous adventures (if one may believe the catchpenny stories and ballads that were writ about him), was murdered in Jamaica by Captain John Malyoe, the commander of his own consort, the Adventure galley.
It hath never been denied, that ever I heard, that up to the time of Captain Brand's being commissioned against the South Sea pirates, he had always been esteemed as honest, reputable a sea-captain as could be. When he started out upon that adventure it was with a ship, the Royal Sovereign, fitted out by some of the most decent merchants of New York. Governor Van Dam himself had subscribed to the adventure, and himself had signed Captain Brand's commission. So, if the unfortunate man went astray, he must have had great temptation to do so; many others behaving no better when the opportunity offered in these far-away seas, when so many rich purchases might very easily be taken and no one the wiser.
To be sure those stories and ballads made our captain to be a most wicked, profane wretch; and if he were, why God knows he suffered and paid for it, for he laid his bones in Jamaica, and never saw his home or his wife or his daughter after he had sailed away on the Royal Sovereign on that long, misfortunate voyage, leaving his family behind him in New York to the care of strangers.
At the time when Captain Brand so met his fate in Port Royal Harbor he had increased his flotilla to two vessels—the Royal Sovereign (which was the vessel that had been fitted out for him in New York, a fine brigantine and a good sailer), and the Adventure galley, which he had captured somewhere in the South Seas. This latter vessel he placed in command of a certain John Malyoe whom he had picked up no one knows where—a young man of very good family in England, who had turned red-handed pirate. This man, who took no more thought of a human life than he would of a broom straw, was he who afterwards murdered Captain Brand, as you shall presently hear.
With these two vessels, the Royal Sovereign and the Adventure, Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe swept the Mozambique Channel as clear as a boatswain's whistle, and after three years of piracy, having gained a great booty of gold and silver and pearls, sailed straight for the Americas, making first the island of Jamaica and the harbor of Port Royal, where they dropped anchor to wait for news from home.
But by this time the authorities had been so stirred up against our pirates that it became necessary for them to hide their booty until such time as they might make their peace with the Admiralty Courts at home. So one night Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe, with two others of the pirates, went ashore with two great chests of treasure, which they buried somewhere on the banks of the Cobra River near the place where the old Spanish fort had stood.
What happened after the treasure was thus buried no one may tell. 'Twas said that Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe fell a-quarrelling and that the upshot of the matter was that Captain Malyoe shot Captain Brand through the head, and that the pirate who was with him served Captain Brand's companion after the same fashion with a pistol bullet through the body.
After that the two murderers returned to their vessel, the Adventure galley, and sailed away, carrying the bloody secret of the buried treasure with them.