Captain William Kidd and Others of the Buccaneers

by John S. C. Abbott

But I cannot torture my readers with a narrative of these horrors. They were dreadful beyond all powers of description. It seems inexplicable that God could have permitted such awful deeds.

Parties, thoroughly armed, were sent out to explore the region for many miles around. One of the slaves promised to conduct Captain Morgan to a river flowing into the lake, where there was a ship and four large boats richly laden with merchandise, taken both from Gibraltar and from Maracaibo. He also promised to lead a party to the place where the governor of Gibraltar was concealed, with most of the females of the city. The capture of the governor, for whom a great ransom could be expected to save him from death by torture, and the capture of the females, were deemed matters of the greatest moment by these demoniac pirates.

Morgan himself took a party of two hundred men, with the slave as a guide, and set out on an expedition to capture the governor and the women. At the same time he dispatched another party of one hundred men in two large boats, to seize the ships. They were to coast along the shores of the solitary lake until they reached the mouth of the river where the vessels of the refugees were concealed.

The governor was on the alert. His scouts watched all the approaches to his retreat. It required a very painful and laborious march of two days for the pirates to reach the spot where the fugitives were intrenched. The governor, with much sagacity, had selected a large island in a river. The region was difficult of approach, leading through the roughest paths of tangled thickets and bogs. God seemed to frown upon the pirates. The rain fell in floods upon them. They were drenched to the skin. Many mountain torrents they were compelled to ford, wading up to the waist through the foaming water. They sank to the hips in the softened marshes. Their shoes were torn from their feet. Their clothes were rent and their skin pierced by the thorns.

When they reached the river they found the current rapid and the channel deep. There were no boats with which to cross. These desperate men were provided for every emergence. They soon constructed canoes and crossed the stream. But in the hurried passage many of the canoes were swamped and the men lost. Upon reaching the island they found that the governor had taken refuge on a densely wooded and craggy mountain. The path which led to the summit, winding through the thickets and the immense rocks, was so narrow that it could only be mounted in single file.

In fording the rivers and wading through the bogs, and breasting the rain and the gale, all of the ammunition of the pirates had been injured, and much of it utterly spoiled. The whole party was in such a condition, that Esquemeling writes:

“If the Spaniards, in that juncture of time, had had but a troop of fifty men, well armed with pikes or spears, they might have entirely destroyed the pirates, without any possible resistance on their side.”

The governor was not aware of this. Prudently he remained upon the defensive. He had several of the soldiers of the garrison with him, and an ample supply of ammunition. His men were admirably posted behind rocks and trees, so that had the pirates persisted in their endeavor to ascend the mountain, every man must have perished. And it is doubtful whether they could have inflicted even a wound upon their unseen assailants.

Morgan perceived that the case was hopeless. Discouraged and maddened he commenced a retreat. Twelve days passed from the time they commenced their enterprise before Morgan, with his diminished and shattered party, returned to Gibraltar. They had, however, captured on the way quite a number of fugitives whom they had found scattered through the woods, and also a considerable amount of money. They took a sort of fiendish pleasure, on their return, in seeing the aged women and the children swept away by the foaming mountain torrents, which they forded. They returned to Gibraltar exasperated, and prepared to inflict severer torture upon all their captives.

The party sent to take the vessels were a little more successful. The Spaniards had unloaded the vessels and conveyed to unknown distances much of their cargoes. Hearing of the approach of the pirates, they fled precipitately, leaving behind them all which they had not removed, or which they could not immediately destroy. Still there were many bales of goods left in the vessels and on the shore. These the pirates seized and carried back to their ships.