Captain William Kidd and Others of the Buccaneers

by John S. C. Abbott

The pirates, having searched the pockets of the dead for their loose doubloons, threw the bodies overboard. Those helplessly wounded suffered the same fate. The survivors, after being stripped of everything valuable, were placed in a boat and cut adrift, to fare as they might. The prize proved to be worth between eighty and a hundred thousand dollars. Barthelemy found himself in command of a truly splendid ship, well armed, and well stored with ammunition and provisions. He had also his little sloop as a tender. Though he had a crew of but twenty men, he could at any time double or treble his number in the thronged ports of Kingston or Tortuga. As he was sailing around the western end of the Island of Cuba, he came unexpectedly upon three large ships bound to Havana. The pirate ship was heavily laden and ploughed the waves slowly. The Spanish ships gave chase; captured the buccaneers; stripped them; drove them with sabre-strokes under the hatches, and left them there to meditate upon the reverses of fortune and their own approaching ignominious death by hanging.

The notoriety of Barthelemy, as one of the most terrible of human monsters, had spread far and wide. He concealed his name, and his captors were not aware what a prize they had taken. The ship, containing the crew of pirates, was separated from the rest by a storm. She took refuge at Campeachy, on the western coast of the immense peninsula of Yucatan. Crowds flocked on board to see the pirates in irons. Among them came one who, in former years, had well known Barthelemy. Lifting up his hands in astonishment, he proclaimed in presence of the multitude:

“This is Barthelemy the Portuguese. He is the most wicked rascal in the world. He has done more harm to Spanish commerce than all the other pirates put together.”

The glad news spread through the town. There were joyful assemblages in the streets. All hearts were glowing with the desire to take vengeance on the man who had put so many Spaniards to death. The people appealed to the governor to demand the pirate in the name of the king. He was arrested, more heavily ironed, and placed on board another vessel. A gibbet was erected upon which to hang him. The governor did not deem any trial necessary. From his cabin window Barthelemy could see the workmen building the gallows, upon which he was to be hung in chains, there to swing, in sunshine and storm, till the action of the elements should dissolve both skin and bones.

The wretch had a strange power of winning friends. The captain by whom he was captured wished to save him. Some one secretly conveyed to him a file. He soon freed himself from his irons. There were in his cabin two large earthern jars, empty and very buoyant. Carefully he closed the orifices; bound them loosely together by a strong cord; lowered them cautiously into the water, when midnight darkness covered the sea. A sentry was placed at the door of the cabin. He had fallen asleep. Fearful that he might awake and give the alarm, the pirate stealthily approached him with a huge knife in his hand. By a well-directed blow the glittering blade pierced his heart, and the sentinel died without a struggle or a groan.

The pirate noiselessly dropped himself down into the water. Grasping, with one hand, the strong cord attached to the two jars, with the other he slowly paddled himself to the shore. The current floated him to the very spot where the gibbet was erected. There it stood, in its awful gloom, with the hangman’s chain dangling from its timbers. Even the iron-hearted Barthelemy shuddered, as at midnight’s dismal hour, he contemplated the doom from which he was endeavoring to escape.

He took to the woods. But few of our readers can imagine the entanglements of the tropical forest through which he struggled. Conscious that blood-hounds might be put upon his track, he sought a running stream, and waded along for a great distance in the darkness. He was torn cruelly by overhanging thorns, and bruised as he stumbled over rocks and stones. As the morning dawned he hid himself in a pile of brush, half covered with water.

The windings of the stream were such that he had advanced but a short distance from the town. The tidings of his escape roused the whole population. It was known that he could not have forced his way far through the entanglement of briers and thorns and interlacing vines, in the few hours between midnight and the dawn. The whole forest seemed alive with his pursuers. A thousand slaves were shouting in their barbarian eagerness. Packs of blood-hounds were rushing to and fro, smelling at every track, and making the forest resound with their deep-mouthed bayings. The alarm-bells of the city were rolling forth their loud and solemn peals. Bands of Spanish cavaliers, with indignation in their hearts and oaths upon their lips, passed within sight of the hiding wretch; and he heard their vows of vengeance. Thus passed the wretched day. “The way of the transgressor is indeed hard.”

Barthelemy, bleeding, exhausted, starving and tormented with the bite of insects, endured these long hours of mental and bodily torture, until night again darkened the scene. With the darkness he resumed his terrified flight, he scarcely knew where. His general plan was to reach some distant seaport in disguise, where he hoped to effect his escape as a sailor. Every hour he trembled in danger of being caught, and his only food was roots and berries, and the raw shell-fish he scraped from the rocks.

He forded streams where he was in imminent danger of being snapped up by the jaws of crocodiles. He waded through swamps, and narrowly escaped being suffocated in the mire. His shoes were torn from his feet, his clothes from his limbs. For fourteen days and nights he endured these tortures. His only guide was the roar of the ocean. He was travelling in a southwesterly direction. It was his constant endeavor to keep the ocean within hearing distance on his right.