In spite of all they could do, poor Mr Jopson, or Cobson, only lived for three or four days after he reached the ship. "His Fatigues, and his Drenching in the Water" had been too much for the poor man. He lay "languishing" in his cot for a few days, babbling of the drugs of Bucklersbury, and thumbing his Greek Testament, and at last passed in his checks, quietly and sadly, and "died there at La Sounds Key." They buried the poor man in the sands, with very genuine sorrow, and then bade the Indians adieu, and gave their dead mate a volley of guns, and so set sail, with the colours at half-mast, for "the more Eastern Isles of the Samballoes."
As for Captain Bartholomew Sharp, in the ship the Trinity, he continued to sail the South Seas with the seventy pirates left to him. Some days after Dampier's party sailed, he took a Guayaquil ship, called the San Pedro, which he had taken fourteen months before off Panama. Aboard her he found nearly 40,000 pieces of eight, besides silver bars, and ingots of gold. He also took a great ship called the San Rosario, the richest ship the buccaneers ever captured. She had many chests of pieces of eight aboard her, and a quantity of wine and brandy. Down in her hold, bar upon bar, "were 700 pigs of plate," rough silver from the mines, not yet fitted for the Lima mint. The pirates thought that this crude silver was tin, and so left it where it lay, in the hold of the Rosario "which we turned away loose into the sea," with the stuff aboard her. One pig of the 700 was brought aboard the pirates "to make bullets of." About two-thirds of it was "melted and squandered," but some of it was left long afterwards, when the Trinity touched at Antigua. Here they gave what was left to "a Bristol man," probably in exchange for a dram of rum. The Bristol man took it home to England "and sold it there for £75 sterling." "Thus," said Ringrose, "we parted with the richest booty we got in the whole voyage." Captain Bartholomew Sharp was responsible for the turning adrift of all this silver. Some of the pirates had asked leave to hoist it aboard the Trinity. But it chanced that, aboard the Rosario, was a Spanish lady, "the beautifullest Creature" that the "Eyes" of Captain Sharp ever beheld. The amorous captain was so inflamed by this beauty that he paid no attention to anything else.
In a very drunken and quarrelsome condition, the pirates worked the Trinity round the Horn, and so home to Barbadoes. They did not dare to land there, for one of the King's frigates, H.M.S. Richmond, was lying at Bridgetown, and the pirates "feared lest the said frigate should seize us." They bore away to Antigua, where Ringrose, and "thirteen more," shipped themselves for England. They landed at Dartmouth on the 26th of March 1682. A few more of the company went ashore at Antigua, and scattered to different haunts. Sharp and a number of pirates landed at Nevis, from whence they shipped for London. The ship the Trinity was left to seven of the gang who had diced away all their money. What became of her is not known.
Sharp and a number of his men were arrested in London, and tried for piracy, but the Spanish Ambassador, who brought the charge, was without evidence and could not obtain convictions. They pleaded that "the Spaniards fired at us first," and that they had acted only in self-defence, so they 'scaped hanging, though Sharp admits that they "were very near it." Three more of the crew were laid by the heels at Jamaica, and one of these was "wheedled into an open confession," and condemned, and hanged. "The other two stood it out, and escaped for want of witnesses."
Of the four men so often quoted in this narrative, only one, so far as we know, died a violent death. This was Basil Ringrose, who was shot at Santa Pecaque a few years later. It is not known how Dampier, Wafer, and Sharp died, but all lived adventurously, and went a-roving, for many years after the Trinity dropped her anchor off Antigua.
They were of that old breed of rover whose port lay always a little farther on; a little beyond the sky-line. Their concern was not to preserve life, "but rather to squander it away"; to fling it, like so much oil, into the fire, for the pleasure of going up in a blaze. If they lived riotously let it be urged in their favour that at least they lived. They lived their vision. They were ready to die for what they believed to be worth doing. We think them terrible. Life itself is terrible. But life was not terrible to them; for they were comrades; and comrades and brothers-in-arms are stronger than life. Those who "live at home at ease" may condemn them. They are free to do so. The old buccaneers were happier than they. The buccaneers had comrades, and the strength to live their own lives. They may laugh at those who, lacking that strength, would condemn them with the hate of impotence.