The evening before his execution the young man I spoke of sent to entreat me to visit him. I gladly acceded to his wish. I found him heavily ironed and chained to the ground, in a room with a strongly-grated window, where three of his piratical shipmates were also confined. These latter were Spaniards, and dark ferocious-looking ruffians they seemed—more like beasts than men with immortal souls, so brutalising are the effects of habitual crime.
They regarded me as I entered with glances of furious hate, for they recognised me as having belonged to the ship which captured them, and, had they not been manacled, they would, I truly believe, have rushed at me to satisfy their longing for vengeance, but their chains, fortunately for me, holding them down, they again sank into the sullen apathy from which my appearance had roused them.
Sitting down on a low stool, furnished by the gaoler, I expressed my willingness to afford the prisoner every aid in my power that his awful state demanded.
“You were kind to me, sir, when I lay wounded, from the first, on our passage here, and I thought you would excuse me speaking to you,” he answered, looking furtively around as if some one was watching him. “Oh, sir, there are many, many things weighing like hot lead upon my mind, and I must tell them to some fellow-creature before I am sent on my last voyage, or I should have to come back again to haunt this world, which is already sick of me and my crimes. Oh, sir, it is dreadful to think of dying when one has lived as I have done; yet my life for some years has been one of misery, ever haunted by a hideous spirit or a being of— There it is, sir! see, see! I knew that I could not talk of him without his coming! There, there, there!” he shrieked out.
I exerted all my powers to soothe the mind of the poor wretch, throwing in such observations as I thought might tend to bring him to think on the new state of existence he was about to enter. Pirate as he was, I felt that he was still a fellow-creature, and who can tell what strong temptations might have led him into crime? Who among us can say how we should have withstood the same? Let us feel grateful that we have received the benefit of a religious education, and pray Heaven to keep us from sin. Seeing that until he had relieved his mind by a narration of the circumstances in his career which pressed most heavily on it, he would be unable to attend to me, I told him that I was prepared to listen to anything he might have to say. On this he immediately commenced a sketch of his life in almost the following words:—
The Confessions of a Pirate.
“I am a Devonshire man, and was born near Salcombe. A wild-looking place is Salcombe Range. My father’s cottage stood on the hill facing directly down the bay, or range, as they call it in the west country, so that the only view I remember in childhood was that of the dark cliffs on each side of its entrance, with its heaving and foaming waters; the only music I ever heard, their hollow melancholy sound.
“My father had been an officer of excise at Plymouth, and, having somehow or other made his fortune, retired here to end his days. This he soon did, for, shortly after I was born, my mother dying, he took to drinking harder than ever—he was never a very sober man—and before I was seven years old I was left an orphan. I had now no one to look after me, except an old woman, whose chief occupation was mixing smuggled spirits to fit them for the market; when she used to taste and taste the stuff till she went reeling to bed. I consequently had plenty of time and opportunity to follow my own inclinations, and was early taught all sorts of wild pranks by boys older than myself.
“For some time my principal employment consisted in dodging the steps of the revenue officers, both when a run was about to be made, and afterwards when the tubs and cases were to be carried up the country. I could neither read nor write, and as for religion, I never heard of it; indeed, I was as ignorant as could well be. At last, the clergyman of the parish took compassion on my unprotected state; and the old woman who had charge of me dying, like my father, in a fit of drunkenness, he sent for me up to his house, and asked me if I should like to go to school. Though I did not know what school meant, I answered ‘Yes,’ for I wanted to go somewhere; it little signified to me where. As I was treated kindly I got on very well, so that in three years I was considered one of the best scholars in the school, though at the same time one of the wildest. The vicar was a strict man, and, though he expressed himself satisfied with my progress, I was never a favourite of his.