Читать книгу Jack Manly; His Adventures by Sea and Land - James Grant - Страница 7

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We had scarcely lost sight of Cape St. Francis when the wind became light and variable, and one of those dense fogs peculiar to that region settled surely and slowly, densely and darkly, over land and sea. We shortened sail, and sent ahead the jolly-boat with four hands in her, to feel our way as it were; while Paul Reeves kept sounding ever and anon, for in that ocean of strong currents, with a slight wind from the eastward, and a shore of reefs and shoals upon our lee, every precaution was necessary.

The raw cold of a fog upon a wintry sea in that latitude of ice and snow must be felt to be understood. The clear bracing frost, however intense, may be endured; but this chill and murky dampness made one intensely miserable.

As we crept along, a strange sound reached us from time to time.

"What is that?" I asked.

"The voices of the penguins," replied Hartly—"the Baccalao birds. We are off that island; and their cries are as good as fog-guns to people situated as we are. See! the fog lights a bit; and now there is the land about two miles off, on the lee bow!"

As he spoke, the dense bank of vapour which shrouded sea, land, and sky, parted for a few minutes; a gleam of brilliant sunshine fell upon the rough and precipitous rocks of the wild and desert isle named Baccalao, which, in summer and winter, are alike ever whitened by a species of guano, deposited there by the auks or penguins, which we could see hovering above them in countless myriads, uttering shrill cries while they soared, wheeled, and flew hither and thither, as if to warn us of our danger in being so near those treacherous reefs, which are a source of terror to mariners. Their dangers are only seen, however, by the daring egg-gatherers, who come from the mainland in summer, and sling themselves by ropes from the summit of the cliff, to rifle the nests; although these poor birds are specially under the protection of Government, by a proclamation, being sea-marks, or danger-signals (as we found them) in foul or foggy weather.

With some interest I surveyed the stern cliffs of Baccalao, as they were the first land seen by Cabot, the Grand Pilot of England, after ploughing the mighty Atlantic in his little caravel; and he named them in his joy La Prima Vista, though a "vista" grim enough.

"The shore is dark, dreary, and sterile," said I to Hartly.

"Yes," said he, "but there are many strange stories of treasure being buried there by the pirates in old times."

"Do you see that deep chasm in the rocks in the north end of the isle?" said Paul Reeves, lowering his voice impressively as he pointed to the land.

"Yes, it seems quite black among the snow."

"That is not snow, but the deposit of the Baccalao birds," said the mate. "In the old buccaneering times, the pirates are said to have buried their treasure there; and a cask branded with the King's broad arrow, and the name Adventure, was once found in it. Now all the world knows that the Adventure was the ship of the famous Captain Kidd, who cheated King William out of the finest craft in the English navy."

"How?" said I.

"Let us hear," added Hartly.

"At a time when all the seas about the coasts of North and South America and the West India Islands were swarming with buccaneer craft, manned by desperadoes of every country, who made war upon all ships that sailed the ocean and were unable to resist them, the Government of King William III. selected a mariner of doubtful reputation, named Captain William Kidd, who volunteered to root out those sea-hawks, who persecuted the thrifty traders of New Amsterdam."

"King William acted on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief."

"Exactly so, Jack," said Hartly, "for Kidd, though ostensibly a merchant-mariner, was something of a smuggler, and had done a little in the way of picarooning. He was always heard of in out-of-the-way places, departing on voyages no one knew whither, and coming from places never heard of before. Then he was always followed by a crew of well-armed, black-muzzled, drinking, swearing, tearing fellows, who were as flush of money as if they had been at the overhauling of Havannah. But go a-head, Paul."

"Well," resumed the mate, "in 1695 Kidd sailed down Channel in the Adventure galley, of forty-four guns, with a royal pennant flying, duly commissioned by King William to fight all buccaneers, and his crew were all selected by himself. But Master Kidd was barely off the Lizard when he hauled down the King's pennant, hoisted the skull and crossbones, and bore away for the East Indies. He burned two towns in Madeira, and after plundering and sinking every craft he could overmatch, reached the entrance of the Red Sea, where he captured a Queda merchantman, the cargo of which lined the pockets of himself and his followers to their complete satisfaction.

"Queda is a town of Asia, situated on the western coast of the peninsula of Malacca; and so Kidd was cunning enough to attempt passing-off this capture as a crusade against the enemies of Christianity; but, unfortunately for him, the ship was commanded by a Scotchman, and people did not believe in crusaders under Orange William.

"A year or two after this, he was cruising off the American coast, and in dread of the King's ships, which were all on the look-out for him, he ran north as far as Newfoundland, and was alleged to have buried on its coast all the treasure amassed on his long and rambling voyage; but where, no one could exactly say, until the old barrel head, marked Adventure, and bearing the King's broad arrow, found in yonder cavern, seemed to indicate Baccalao as being the place. Moreover, he is known to have run up Conception Bay in quest of the gold and silver rocks which Frobisher and Sir Humphrey Gilbert averred were to be seen there."

"Rocks of gold and silver!" said I, incredulously.

"They are only the fire-stones of the Red Indians, and emit sparks when struck together," said Hartly.[*]

[*] They were the solid iron pyrites which deceived the early navigators who visited these barren shores. In the "List of H.M. Royal Navy for 1701," we find among the "fifth-rates, the Adventure, 120 men, 44 guns."

"His treasure," continued the mate, "if he had any, was never found; though he was, for Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, and Governor of New England, caught him one day in 1701, when swaggering about the streets of Boston, and sent him home to King William, who lost no time in hanging him. But he died as hard as he had lived, for the rope broke with his weight in Execution Dock, so he was reeved up again with a new one.

"He was hung in chains on the banks of the Thames, but his body disappeared in the night, and the sailors in London declared that he could neither be hanged nor chained, as he had a charmed life, having sold his poor soul to the devil. Be that as it may, on the same night, in 1701, my Lord Bellamont was found dead in his bed at Boston, and many affirmed that this event had some connexion with Kidd's mysterious disappearance from the gallows, as he was said to have been seen by some of his old shipmates near the dead Governor's house.

"Fishermen when jigging or trawling off Baccalao in the clear moonlight nights, often saw a solitary man sitting on the rocks at the mouth of yonder cavern, but his figure always seemed to melt away into the moonshine when any one approached; so a story went abroad that the island was haunted by the ghost of a drowned man. However, a stout fellow, named Tom Spiller, who was rather bolder than the rest, and who lived alone at Breakheart Point, where he had a little hut and stage for drying the fish he caught, went off to the island one night, when there was little cloud and a bright moon. The sea was calm, for there was but a puff of wind off the land from time to time.

"Tom Spiller was a brave and devil-may-care kind of fellow, whom I knew well, for he was an old man when I went to sea with him first as a boy, so I have often heard him tell the story without variation or leeway, or shaking out a new reef by way of a change.

"On approaching the island, he saw the solitary figure sitting on the rocks at the mouth of the deep black chasm, motionless, with his head resting, as it were, sorrowfully on the palm of his right hand, and his eyes fixed apparently on the sea that rippled to his feet, though it boiled and roared in white foam over the reefs that lay a few fathoms off outside.

"Tom steered his boat straight for the cave, and now, when the towering rocks of the desert isle were over his head, covered with thousands upon thousands of wild auks, screaming, whirling, and flapping their wings, as if to scare him away; when the deep black chasm in which the sea was gurgling and moaning yawned before him, and everything seemed so weird and wan in the pale moonlight, he did feel queer, and more so when the solitary man, instead of melting into thin air as usual, turned his white face towards him, and arose, just as he let go the halyards, lowered the brown flapping sail, and running his boat into the cave, adroitly noosed a rope over a large stone to moor her, and stepped ashore. Tom's heart was beating wildly and strangely, for he was determined to discover whether this figure, which he had so often seen from the sea, and which had so invariably eluded his brother fishermen, was man, ghost, or devil.

"He perceived that the stranger was clad in an old-fashioned dress, his coat having large metal buttons, broad pocket-flaps, and deep cuffs. He was ghastly pale, his glassy eyes glistened in the moonlight, and dark crimson blood was flowing from what appeared to be a pistol-shot in his left temple.

"'What seek you here?' he asked, in a voice so hollow that the terrified fisherman, who now repented sorely of his rashness, knew not whether the sound came from the spectre's white lips, from the depth of the dreary chasm, or from the sea. 'Speak,' continued the figure, with mournful earnestness; 'what seek you?'

"'To discover who and what you are,' said Tom.

"'May you never be what I was, or what I am,' replied the other, sadly.

"'But what are you?'

"'A restless spirit.'

"Tom's knees bent under him, for the pale eyes of that cold white visage seemed to pierce his soul.

"'A wretched spirit—left here by a fiend to guard his ill-gotten spoil—so begone, I charge you.'

"The fisherman shrank back on hearing these strange words, while the gloomy terrors of the scene—the screaming of the Baccalao birds that whirled in a cloud about him, the dashing of the waves upon the reef, and the mournful gurgle of the backwash within the vast cavern, with the weird glimpses of the moon as the white clouds sailed swiftly past her face—all combined to make this interview a dreadful one.

"Suddenly there was a sound of oars to seaward, the spirit seemed to become excited, and clasped his thin white hands.

"'See! see! he comes!' he exclaimed. 'Kidd the pirate! Kidd, my murderer! But he comes, blessed be God! to release me after a hundred years of restless watching and penance!'

"For you must know that this occurred, as Tom Spiller told me, in 1801.

"'Land ho!' cried a deep hoarse voice from the sea, while Spiller, overcome by terror, shrank behind a fragment of rock.

"'Hilloa!' answered the spirit, in nautical fashion.

"'Clouds and thunder! why the devil don't you show a light?' cried the strange voice, as a large barge full of men shot round a promontory, against which the waves were dashing in foam. On it came—on and on—at every stroke of the oars, till they were all triced up in true man-o'-war fashion as she sheered into the creek, and a man sprang on shore, uttering a tempest of oaths and maledictions.

"Tom Spiller now fancied that they were all dressed in the fashion of a hundred years ago, with deep square-skirted coats, long flowing perriwigs, and little three-cocked hats, and that all were pale, silent, and spectral; in short, it was a boat manned by unquiet spirits! Strangely enough, he felt less afraid of them all than of one, and continued to gaze at them like a person in a dream.

"The man who sprang ashore was a short, squat fellow of ferocious aspect; his battered visage was covered with cuts and patches of black plaster; a hellish spark glittered in each of his eyes. He wore a coarse perriwig with long curls, a three-cocked hat, an old-fashioned blue coat, covered with tarnished lace, and brass buttons; he had also a pair of brass-barrelled Spanish pistols, and a hanger sustained by a broad belt.

"Two ropes were knotted round his neck, which was bare, and pieces of rusty chain were dangling at his wrists and ankles. Then the marrow froze in the bones of Tom Spiller, for he knew that he looked upon William Kidd, the pirate, who had been twice hanged a hundred years before in Execution Dock.

"'Now, you canting, cowardly lubber, why the henckers didn't you hang out a light?' he bellowed in a hoarse voice.

"'I have been in the dark these hundred years,' replied the spirit, meekly.

"'Likely enough; seas and thunder! you were the faintest-hearted fellow in the Adventure.'

"'I suffered sorely at your hands since you captured the ship of Queda, of which I was captain, and made me a prisoner in yon galley.'

"'Bah!' thundered Kidd.

"'I have repented me of my sins in life,' said the spirit, mournfully.

"''Sblood and plunder!' shouted the other, with a diabolical laugh; 'I shot you through the head, as a canting Scotsman, on this night one hundred years ago, and buried you here—you know for what purpose.'

"'That my unquiet spirit might watch your buried treasure,' moaned the other.

"'Right,' chuckled the pirate; 'I shot you as I would have done my lord the Earl of Bellamont, though he was Governor of New England and Admiral of all the seas about it, for that long-snouted Dutch lubber, William of Orange, who sent him to lord it over the Yankees.'

"'I have waited and watched your treasure long, and now am anxious for the repose of the grave.'

"On hearing this, Kidd and his boat's crew laughed, and gnashed their teeth; but a few there were who wept and wailed heavily, and the sound of their lamentation was fearful as it mingled with the chafing of the surge.

"'I have some fine things stowed away here in Baccalao,' said Kidd; 'but I have some that are better still in the haunted Kaatskill Mountain, and at Tapaan Zee, up the Hudson.'

"The spirit-watcher groaned.

"'Since I saw you last, brother, I have been twice hanged and strung in chains on the banks of the Thames—ha! ha! at Gravesend Reach.'

"'Hanged!'

"'Yes, by all the devils in New Amsterdam!—HANGED! Hanged by order of him of pious, glorious, and immortal memory—by Orange Billy, who assassinated the De Witts in Holland, who murdered eighty men, women, and children in cold blood in Scotland; who abandoned his soldiers at Steinkirk; who boiled and burned women alive in London for coining a few brass halfpence; and who departed this life amid the prayers of canting hypocrites and lawn-sleeved parasites, on the 8th day of March, 1701! He roasts now, for some of his pranks, I can tell you! But heave a-head, brother! we must ship our cargo, and be off to-night for Cape Cod at New Amsterdam (or New York, as the folks call it now-a-days), ere the moon wanes or the tide falls. Where is the plunder?'

"The sad spirit-watcher pointed to a place which seemed to have opened in the rocky cavern; and there Tom Spiller could see, by the beams of the moon, heaps of gold and silver vessels, sparkling jewels and trinkets, with veritable pyramids of gold and silver coins of every nation and of every size, piled up in confusion.

"Bewildered by this sight, he permitted rather too much of his figure to be seen; for suddenly a yell of rage came from the spectre boat's crew; and Kidd, drawing one of the long brass pistols from his broad buff girdle, uttered a dreadful oath—