He had the pleasure of seeing several of his old shipmates of the Mexican brought into Montego Bay, whence they were carried to Kingston and ceremoniously hanged by the neck. Among them was Baltizar, pilot of the pirate schooner, and in the words of Captain Lincoln:
“He was an old man, and as Jamieson said, it was a melancholy and heart-rending sight to see him borne to execution with those gray hairs which might have been venerable in virtuous old age, now a reproach and shame to this hoary villain, for he was full of years and old in iniquity.”
You may be sure that the picaresque Scotch rover, who had been so faithful and kind, found a warm welcome at the fireside of Captain Lincoln and in the taverns of the Boston waterside. He was contented to lead the humdrum life of virtue and sailed with the skipper as mate in a new schooner on several voyages to the West Indies. In his later years he tired of the offshore trade and joined the fishing-fleet out of Hingham during the summer months, while in the winter he taught navigation to the young sailors of the neighborhood who aspired to rise to a mate’s or master’s berth.
His grave is on the shore of Cape Cod, and as Captain Lincoln wrote of him, “Peace to his ashes. They rest in a strange land, far from his kindred and his native country.”
According to his own account, Jamieson was of a very respectable family in Greenock. His father was a cloth merchant of considerable wealth, but being left an orphan, he had run away to sea and engaged in an astonishing variety of adventures. Of him Captain Lincoln said:
He had received a polite education and was of a very gentlemanly deportment. He spoke several languages and was skilled in drawing and painting. He had travelled extensively and his wide fund of information made him a most entertaining companion. His observations on the character of different nations were very liberal; with a playful humorousness quite free from bigotry and narrow prejudice.
An entertaining companion and philosopher, indeed, whose outlook had been mellowed by the broadening influence of piracy, and you and I would like nothing better than to have sat down with this reformed gentleman of fortune a hundred years ago and listened to his playful comments on the virtues and the vices of mankind, and his wondrous yarns of men and ships and the winds that tramp the world.
Perhaps as he moved so sedately in the ordered life of Boston and Hingham, or fared to the southward again as mate of a trading-schooner, he shivered at recollection of that day in Kingston when ten of his old shipmates of the Mexican dangled from the gallows-tree and the populace crowded to enjoy the diverting spectacle. And in his dreams he may have heard the wailing voice of Pedro Nondre, when the rope broke and he fell to the ground alive: “Mercy! mercy! they kill me without cause! Oh, good Christians, protect me. Is there no Christian in this land? Muero innocente! Adios, para siempre adios!”
A true tale this, every word of it, as are all the others in this book, but lacking one essential thing to make it complete. There is no mention in the diary of Captain Lincoln to bring us the comforting assurance that Bolidar, the swaggering lieutenant, and his diminutive blackguard of a chief received the solicitous attention of the hangman, as they handsomely deserved.