The Privateersman

They replied, to James Town, Virginia. I asked them if they could give us a passage there, as we were afraid to proceed in our boat; or if not, would they see us safe into New Providence.

The captain then came forward. He was a very dark man, dark as a mulatto, with keen small eyes, and a hooked nose. I never beheld a more deformed and repulsive countenance.

He said that he could not go to New Providence, as it was out of his way, and that we might easily get there ourselves if we thought proper.

I replied, that the boat was not sufficiently large and seaworthy, and that we had already nearly gone down, and if another gale should come on, we certainly should founder, and again requested that he would take us on board.

“Have you any money to pay for your passage?” inquired he.

“Why,” said I, “common charity and the feelings of a seaman towards sailors in distress should be sufficient to induce you to take us on board, and not leave us to perish; but if you require money,” I replied, “we have more than sufficient to satisfy you.”

“How much?” screamed out a lad of about fourteen, who was the very image of the captain in miniature.

I did not reply to this question, and the captain then said, “What do you propose to do with the boat?”

“Let her go adrift, to be sure,” replied I.

“What have you got on board of her?” said he.

I enumerated, as well as I could recollect, the provisions and stores that we had.

“Well,” replied he, “I will wait till it is a little smoother, and then we will clear the boat and take you on board.”

He then left the gangway, where he had been standing, and we continued to be towed by the brig.

“I do not like that fellow,” said I to the Portuguese captain; “he appears, or pretends, to take us for pirates, but he is more like a pirate himself.”

“He looks like the devil himself,” replied the captain, “and to ask people in our condition to pay for their passage! He is a monster! However, we all have a few doubloons, thank Heaven.”

About an hour afterwards, it being much more moderate, the captain of the brig told us to sheer alongside, and that four of us might come out and the others remain in the boat till she was cleared.

“I think you had better go,” said I to the captain, “for with so much motion I never shall be able to get up the side with my bad knee.”

We then sheered the boat alongside, and the captain and three of our men got on board, but not without difficulty. I saw them go aft and down below with the captain of the brig, but I never saw them on deck again, much to my surprise, although we were more than half an hour before they again hailed us, and told us to come alongside again. During this half-hour my mind misgave me sadly that all was not right, from not seeing the Portuguese captain, or either of the three men, and I took it into my head that the vessel was a pirate; and I knew if such was the case, we should instantly be rifled, if not murdered. I took the precaution of taking off the bandage from my knee, and, having removed the diamond from my neck, I put it under my ham in the cavity, which held it with ease, and then put the bandage on again over it, as I thought they would hardly take a bandage off a bad knee to see if there was anything concealed beneath it. It was with difficulty that I contrived to get on board the brig, and as soon as I had gained the deck, I was ordered to go down into the cabin: as I went aft, I looked round for the Portuguese captain and the men, but could not see them. I contrived, with difficulty, to get down into the cabin, and as soon as I was there I was seized by the arms and held fast by two of the men, while others bound me with seizings.

As the captain was looking on, I inquired into the cause of this outrage. He replied, that we were a parcel of rascally pirates, who would have taken his vessel if he had not been too deep for us; I told him it was false, and that I could easily prove it, as we still had the despatches on board with which we had been charged, and that I could show good proof that I was the same person that I stated myself to be; that I very much feared that we had fallen into the hands of pirates ourselves, but that I would have justice done as soon as we arrived at James Town, without he intended to murder us all before we arrived. His answer was, that he was too old a bird to be caught with such chaff, and that he would secure us and deliver us up to the authorities as soon as he arrived. I replied, in great anger, that he would then be convinced of his error, if it was an error, on his part; that his conduct was infamous, and he looked like a scoundrel, and I believed him to be one.

“You call me a scoundrel, do you,” said he, levelling a pistol at my head.

“You call us scoundrels, do you,” cried the boy I have made mention of, and who was evidently the son of the captain, taking up another pistol in his hand. “Shall I shoot him, father?”

“No, Peleg, not yet; we will pay them all when we get in. Take him away, and put him in irons with the rest,” said the captain; and I was immediately dragged forward between decks through a door in the bulkheads, where I found the Portuguese captain and three seamen already in irons.

“This is pretty treatment,” said he to me.

“Yes, it is, indeed,” replied I; “but I will make him smart for it when we arrive.”

“Shall we ever arrive?” said the Portuguese captain, looking at me and compressing his lips.

“I say, my man,” said I to the seaman who stood over us with a pistol and a cutlass, “who are you, and what are you? Tell us the truth: are you pirates?”

“I never was yet,” replied he, “nor do I mean to be; but our skipper says that you are, and that he knew you as soon as you came alongside. That’s all I can say about it.”

“Why, if we are pirates, as he says, and he recognises us, he must have been in pirates’ company,—that is clear.”

“Well, he may have been, for all I know,” replied the man. “I don’t consider him any very great things; but he is our captain, and we must obey orders.”

The man now brought forward the other three men who had been left in the boat. They told us that the boat had been cleared; all the provisions, stores, sails, etcetera, had been taken out of her;—a proof that she had been gutted and then cut adrift;—that all our bundles were down in the captain’s cabin, and that the ill-looking urchin, his son, had overhauled them, one after another, and handed to his father all the money that he had found; that they had been searched very carefully; and that they had heard the captain say that we were all to be sent up, one by one, and searched in the same manner;—and so it proved. I was first taken aft to have my pockets rummaged by the little villain, and as soon as I had been led forward and again put into irons, the Portuguese captain and three other seamen were sent for and treated in the same way. We inquired of the men what money they had in their bundles and about their persons. They had each man four doubloons at Rio for wages, and the captain had about forty doubloons. I had five hundred pieces-of-eight: so that, altogether, we had been robbed to the tune of about four hundred pounds sterling, independent of our clothes, which were of some value to us; that is, mine were at all events.

The seamen who guarded us, and who relieved each other every watch, were not at all surly or ill-natured. I asked one of them during the night-watch whether he thought the captain would take our lives.

“No,” said he; “we will not allow that. You may be pirates, as he says, although we do not think you are; but if pirates, you shall have fair play; that we have all made up our minds to. No hanging first, and trying afterwards.”

I had a long conversation with this man, who appeared very much inclined to be sociable. He told me that the vessel was named the Transcendant; that she sailed from Virginia to the West Indies, and that some times she went to England; that the captain of her was also the owner, but where he came from, or what he was, they did not know, except that he was a Virginian,—they believed so, for that he had a tobacco estate there, which was carried on by his eldest son. He called the captain a stingy, miserly fellow, who would sacrifice any man’s life to save a shilling, and that there were odd stories about him at James Town.

I was well satisfied with my conversation with this man, as it assured me that our lives would not be taken, and I had no fear of the result upon my arrival at James Town, for, as I have mentioned before, Mr Trevannion had vessels which sailed to that port, and I well recollected the names of the parties to whom the vessel and cargo were consigned.

On the following day the captain of the brig, followed by his ill-favoured son, came forward and looked at us as we sat in irons, upon which I addressed him:

“You have put me in irons, Sir, when I threw myself upon your protection. You have robbed us of our money to the amount of nearly 400 pounds, and you detain our other property. I now again desire that I may be released. I offered to convince you that I was a person of property, but you refused to listen to me. Now, Sir, I will tell you that I am a partner in the house of Trevannion, at Liverpool, and that we have vessels that trade between James Town and that port. Our vessels are consigned to Messrs Fairbrother and Wilcocks, of James Town, and on my arrival I will soon prove that to you; and also not only make you surrender the property you have robbed us of, but I will make you smart pretty handsomely for your treatment of us; that you may depend upon.”

“Fairbrother and Wilcocks,” muttered he; “confound the fellow. Oh,” said he, turning to me, “you got the name of that firm from some ship you have plundered and sunk, I suppose. No, no, that won’t do,—old birds are not to be caught with chaff.”

“I believe you to have been a pirate yourself, if you are not one now,” replied I; “at all events you are a thief and a paltry villain—but our time will come.”

“Yes, it will,” said the captain of the xebeque; “and remember, you scoundrel, if you can escape and buy off justice, you shall not escape seven Portuguese knives,—mind you that.”

“No, no,” cried the Portuguese sailors; “stop till we are on shore, and then come on shore if you dare.”

“I say, father,” said young Hopeful, “this looks like mischief; better hang them, I reckon, than to be stuck like pigs. They look as if they’d do it, don’t they?”

I shall never forget the diabolical expression of the captain of the brig after the Portuguese sailors had done speaking. He had a pistol at his belt, which he drew out.

“That’s right, shoot ’em, father; dead men tell no tales, as you have always said.”

“No, no,” said the seaman who was on guard, motioning them back with his cutlass, “there will be no shooting nor hanging either; we are all sworn to that. If so be they be pirates, there’s the law of the country to condemn them; and if they be not pirates, why then that’s another story.”

The captain looked at the seaman as if he could have shot him if he dared. Then turned round hastily and went back to the cabin, followed by his worthy offspring.

For seven days we remained in irons, when we heard land announced by the sailors on deck, and the brig’s head was put towards it. At night she was hove-to, and the next morning again stood in, and we perceived that we were in smooth water. Towards night the anchor was let go, and we asked the guard if we had arrived at James Town.

He replied, “No, but we were in a river on the coast, but he did not know what river it was nor did any of the crew, nor could they tell why the captain had anchored there. But they had seen several canoes with Indians cross the river, but that there appeared to be no white settlement that they could discover.” The mystery was, however, cleared up on the following morning. A small boat, which could barely hold eight people, was lowered from the stern, and hauled up alongside. We were taken up, one by one, the scoundrel of a captain having first stripped each of us to our trousers, not even allowing us a shirt. We were ordered to get into the boat. As soon as we were all in, and our weight brought the boat down to her gunnel, two oars were handed to us, and then the captain of the brig said:

“Now, you rascally pirates, I might have hanged you all, and I would have done so, for I know you well. I recollect your faces when you plundered the ‘Eliza,’ when I was off Porto Rico; but if I put you in prison at James Town, I shall have to wait two or three months until the court sits, and I cannot be detained for such scoundrels as you; so now you may pull on shore, and get on how you can. Shove off, directly, or I’ll put a bullet through your brains.”

“Hold fast,” cried I, “and let him fire if he dares. You men belonging to the Transcendant, I call you to witness this treatment. Your captain has robbed us of a large sum of money, and now turns us adrift, so as to compel us to land among savages, who may kill us immediately. I appeal to you, will you permit this cruelty and injustice? If you are English, I conceive you will not.”

There was some talk and expostulation with the captain of the brig, in consequence of what I said; but while it was going on, the captain’s son leaned over the side, and with his knife cut the painter, or rope which held the boat, and as the tide was running on very strong, in less than half a minute we were a long way astern of the brig, and drifting fast up the river.