Captain William Kidd and Others of the Buccaneers

by John S. C. Abbott

There is manifestly no tendency in misery to make men better. The pirate, with all his woes, grew more obdurate and more cruel. “In these fourteen days,” writes one of his biographers, “he must have literally tasted death and anticipated the horrors of hell.” But this almost demoniac wretchedness led him to no prayers of penitence, and to no promises of amendment. They served only to whet his appetite for revenge.

At length he reached a large ocean bay, about one hundred and twenty miles from Campeachy, appropriately called Gulf Triste. Here, to his immense relief, he found a large ship of buccaneers riding at anchor. He signalled the ship, and a boat was sent to take him on board. With feigned glee the wretch told the story of his adventures. Not a word of penitence was uttered. There was not the slightest recognition that the punishment he had received was merited. On the contrary, he said to the pirates:

“I know of a ship at Campeachy, which is richly laden, and but feebly armed. It can be captured with all ease. Furnish me with a boat and thirty good men, and in a few days I will bring the ship and all its cargo to you.”

His request was granted. The boat was equipped, and he sailed along the coast, assuming that he was a smuggler, with contraband goods. In eight days he reached Campeachy. As the boat entered the harbor, the piratic character of the craft was so concealed that no suspicions were excited. At midnight the pirates cautiously approached the doomed vessel. As the crew supposed themselves safe in the harbor, there was but one sentry pacing the deck. He hailed the boat. Barthelemy, who spoke Spanish perfectly, stood upon the bows, and replied:

“We are a part of the crew. We have a boatload of goods from the land for the vessel, upon which no duty has been paid.”

At that moment the bows of the boat touched the ship. Barthelemy and his crew leaped on board, drawn cutlass in hand. One plunge of a sabre pierced the heart of the sentinel, and he fell dead. A few others who chanced to be on deck were driven below, and the hatches were closed upon them. Scarcely five minutes elapsed ere the thirty pirates, all veteran sailors, were in perfect command of the ship, and all the officers and crew were firmly barricaded, as prisoners, beneath the deck. No noise had been made. No alarm was given to other ships in the harbor. They raised the anchors, spread the sails, and put out to sea.

Thus suddenly the wheel of fortune turned. The trembling fugitive, in danger of the gallows, in rags and starvation, wandering through the wilderness, but a few days before, now found himself treading the deck of one of the finest of Spanish ships, well provisioned, well armed, and with a rich cargo stored in her hold. He was the captain and mostly the owner of the majestic craft. His dictatorial power was recognized by thirty desperate men, ready implicitly to obey his will. The commerce of all seas was apparently within the reach of his piratical grasp.

The imprisoned crew were disposed of as these pirates usually got rid of those who were a trouble to them. They were either crowded into a boat and cut adrift, or landed upon the nearest shore, or thrown into the sea. Familiarity with misery and death rendered the pirates as insensible to human suffering as the fisherman becomes to the struggles of the fish in the bottom of his boat.

Barthelemy, instead of returning with his prize to his comrades in Gulf Triste, spread his sails for Jamaica. He was greatly elated, and boasted loudly of the still greater enterprises which he was about to undertake. With his suddenly found wealth he would create a fleet; he would have crews of five hundred men at his command; his blood-red flag should sweep all seas; he would collect an army and ravage provinces; he would seize some large island, of which he would be the monarch, with his fleets and his armies. Thus the Portuguese pirate dreamed. He did not take God into the account. God had decided otherwise.

It was a beautiful morning, as Barthelemy paced the deck, lost in these ambitious imaginings. The sky was cloudless. A fresh breeze swelled the sails, and delightfully tempered the heat of a tropical sun.