How the free traders in the West Indies became smugglers, how by easy stages they passed from the profession of illicit dealing to piracy, are matters that concern history rather than legend. Their name of buccaneers comes from buccan, an Indian word signifying a smoke-house, in which beef and other meats were dried; as one of the earliest enterprises of the rovers was the stealing of Spanish cattle in San Domingo, and the drying of their flesh in the native buccans for use at sea.

A general hatred or jealousy of Spain, that was shared by the English, Dutch, and French, led to the first privateering expeditions. Indeed, throughout the seventeenth century the pirates operated principally against Spain, and were tolerated because of the injury they did to her ships, her people, her property, and her trade. Having finally ruined her commerce, they sacked her colonies, and, the lust for blood and treasure having been roused to a sort of madness, they cast off patriotic allegiances and became mere robbers and outlaws. The history of the successes of L’Ollonois, Morgan, Davis, and the rest, is an exciting though painful one, inasmuch as all sense of right and mercy seems to have been crushed in the breasts of these men by their brutal business. For a handful of dollars they were ready to wreck a city, reduce even its ruins to ashes, slaughter women and babes, and cut the throats of the aged. They were as harsh and treacherous toward one another as they were toward peaceable men, and for acts of rebellion against a leader they were killed off-hand, while it was customary, also, to butcher a sailor whenever a chest of treasure was buried, and place his body on or in the chest, that his ghost might guard it and terrify intruders. Yet the ultimate influence of the buccaneers was for good, inasmuch as they wrested a part of the rich Antilles from the cruel and ignorant Spaniard and gave it to more enlightened powers.

When the freebooting days were at their height there was no harbor of safety between Rio and Halifax; but there was, in every town the rascals visited, an element that profited by their robberies: the keepers of inns, brothels, and gaming-houses, and, lastly, the royal governors. These bloody-fingered varlets would sack a church, get tipsy on the communion wine, and demand the blessing of the priests on the next enterprise of the same kind they had in contemplation. With the chalices, candlesticks, and altar furnishings, they would go to the nearest city, where they were sure of finding this friendly element, and riot away the last piece of metal in their pockets; or, if pipes of wine were among the prizes, any island would serve for a long debauch. Devil’s Island, the place of Dreyfus’s captivity, was a popular rendezvous, though it is so named not because of these gatherings, but because of a particularly unmanageable prisoner who was once confined there.

The governors of some of the West Indies were as keen on the scent of the sea-robbers as the latter were in the chase of merchant-men, and they were unable to see a good many sad goings-on when a few pieces-of-eight were held before their eyes. Gaming was no disgrace in those times, nor was hard drinking, nor coarse speech, and even piracy had a sort of sanction when the victims were people of a nation with whom the buccaneers were at war. Many tales of gamesters’ luck are told, but a couple will suffice. Vent-en-Panne, a Frenchman, had received five hundred crowns as his share of a robbery, and on the first night ashore, at Kingston, Jamaica, he staked and lost it all, with three hundred more that a reckless comrade had lent to him. Though penniless, he was not discouraged. He became a wine-drawer and pipe-lighter in the tavern, and with a few pennies received for tips he bet on the cards again. This time he won, and his fortune mounted to twelve thousand crowns. With this amount in hand he felt he could be virtuous, so he took ship for home, intending to settle in Paris and fulfil the ambition of every honest Frenchman,—to own a furnished room, fish in the Seine, and hear the bands play. He got only as far as Barbadoes, for at that island a rich Jew came aboard, persuaded him to play for a small amount, and lost everything to Vent-en-Panne,—money, houses, sugar, and slaves. The fever was on them both, however, and so soon as the Jew could borrow a little his luck also turned, and Vent-en-Panne was stripped of every sou,—even the clothes he wore. Paris became an iridescent dream, and the gambler found his way to the Tortugas, where he doubtless shipped with Morgan, Teach, or some other of the scourges of the Spanish main.

Two rovers are credited with beating the governor of Jamaica at another game, after they had lost to him a matter of ten thousand crowns,—the earnings of several weeks faithfully devoted to privateering. In order to continue the game (to their complete beggary), the fellows had borrowed from acquaintances in Kingston, who, seeing no way to get their money back, decided to have them imprisoned for debt. Hearing of this plan, the elder of the precious pair reported to the governor that he had a negro whom he would like to sell, cheap, in order to pay his debts and start in a mechanic trade, such as he had followed in years gone by. The governor bade him have the fellow brought in, and finding him to be a sturdy, intelligent man, with a skin as black as the ten of clubs, he bought him and set him at work. Next day the negro had disappeared. Notice and offers of reward were sent to all parts of the island, but nothing came of it. The two ex-pirates followed a peaceful and thriving trade of making keys, possibly for burglars, and in a few years had saved enough to enable them to return to England. Before sailing they called on the ex governor, who had drank and gambled himself into poverty, and emptied a fistful of gold before him.

“That’s for the nigger, with interest,” said one.

“The nigger? What, the one that ran away?” asked the governor.

“Oh, he didn’t run far. Here he is.” And the speaker clapped his companion on the shoulder. “He had only to curl his hair with a hot iron and rub charcoal on his chops to deceive a governor.”

The tickled old fellow drank their health and wished them a safe journey, out of Jamaica.

While luck seemed to bide with the rovers, it was not always smooth sailing on the Spanish seas. Now and then the buccaneers attacked an innocent looking ship that waited until they had come within musket-reach, when it ran up the Spanish standard, opened a dozen ports, and let fly at them with hot-shot and a hail of bullets. Now and again a mutiny would occur, and the victorious either forced the defeated to walk the plank or marooned them on some desolate sand key to perish of thirst and sunstroke.

Blackbeard’s men once found a fishing-vessel drifting off the Burmudas and eagerly boarded her to look for treasure. In a minute they tumbled out of the cabin and scrambled into the sea like the swine possessed of devils. The vessel had but one living man on board, and he had not many hours of life before him, while corpses strewn about the floor were spotted with small-pox. Half of the pirate crew were slain by the pestilence.

When Roberts was cruising off Surinam a supposed war-ship bore down on him in a fog. He pelted her with all his guns, but she kept her way unheeding. The fog then breaking showed that it was not a frigate, but a sloop, which had been magnified by the mist, and he quickly grappled her and sent his men to see what manner of ship she was. Ten or twelve Spaniards lying about the deck with their throats cut proved that some other buccaneer had been before him. As the men were about to leave their floating charnel-house to hold her way whither the gales might send her, a furious swearing in Spanish caused them to shiver and look back. Were the dead speaking? Had some crazed sailor escaped, and was he gibbering from the roundtop? No: it was a parrot in the rigging, and he was saying all he knew.

Montbar, having discovered a company of Spanish on one of the Windward Islands, went ashore with guns, knives, and axes, and destroyed them all, except one. This man told how he and his fellows had been put ashore. They were the crew of a slaver, and were on their way from Africa to Cuba with a cargo of slaves, when the ship began to leak badly. The carpenter, accompanied by several of the more intelligent of the blacks, made a careful inspection of the hold, yet could find no leak; so the constant inflow, that kept all hands at the pumps, was at length declared to be the devil’s work. The slaves wailed and wrung their hands, the captain swore and prayed, the crew toiled to exhaustion. When it seemed as if the ship could not float for another day the island appeared ahead, and quickly loading arms, provisions, and water into the boats, the Spaniards abandoned ship and left the negroes to their fate. Great was their surprise and dismay when the slaves ran, cheering, over the deck, hoisted all sail, and squared away for the eastward, the vessel rising higher in the water as her former crew sat watching her. These blacks, who were confined in the hold, had got possession of knives with which they cut through the outer planking, causing the ship to leak alarmingly. They had also fitted plugs to these leaks, and packed them with oakum, so that when the carpenter made his rounds no water came in. As soon as he returned to the deck the holes were opened again, for it was known that the Antilles were near, and the scheme to frighten their captors to land was successful. These facts the crew learned from the negro cook, who had accompanied them to shore.

The devil, who was supposed in this case to have been the enemy instead of the ally of the slavers, often mixed in the affairs of a class that must have filled him with admiration. Some of the pirates are reported to have placed themselves entirely in the hands of the foe of the human race, swearing on strange objects to give their souls to him, and formally burying a Bible on shore as a token that they were through forever with religion and mercy. Yet they were a superstitious lot, fearful of signs and portents, and do not, therefore, appear to have been trusting subjects of His Satanic Majesty. They always had an ear and a coin for a fortune-teller, and early in the eighteenth century there were negroes and Indians in the West Indies and the tropic Americas who openly practised that trade and art of witchcraft for which their white brethren in Salem had been hanged. Their principal customers were pirates and buccaneers, who went to them for a forecast of fortune, and also bought charms that would create fair winds for themselves and typhoons for their enemies. These witches kept open ears in their heads, and information carelessly dropped by the outlaws they sold for an aftermath of gain to the Spaniards, who found truth in so many of the prophesies that they respected the soothsayers and fully believed that the English were the chosen of the fiend.

Among the most trusted of the witches was a withered Indian woman of Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. She was close upon her fifth score of years before she departed this life, but the rumor that she had lived in New Providence since the flood was not denied, for it made her the more regarded. Her best commodity was strings. For a large price she would sell a string in which she had tied several knots, each one of which represented the particular wind that the captain might wish to prosper him on his way. Captain Condent was a blaspheming corsair from the wicked town of New York, who had left that port as quartermaster on a merchant-man and next morning had appeared with a battery of pistols and had calmly taken the ship out of the hands of her officers. This fellow had bought a string from the witch that carried him to the Cape Verdes and back to America, but when he had cut off all the knots, except two or three, he feared that he might run out of winds altogether; so he put upon certain servants of the Lord the task for which he had paid the servant of the devil. He had with him two or three Spanish monks whom he had stolen in the Cape Verdes, though what he wanted of them neither he nor they could have guessed. They were having a most unhappy time of it. Now and then the scallawag sailors would force them upon all fours, and sitting astride their backs would compel them to creep about the deck, pretending to be horses, while Condent whipped them smartly with the rope’s end. Thinking to save his precious twine, he ordered these monks to pray for favoring winds, and he kept them on their marrow bones petitioning from daylight until sunset. Often they would fall exhausted and voiceless. At last, believing that the wind peddler of Nassau had more power over the elements than a shipload of monks, he threw the wretched friars overboard, and, as luck would have it, the wind he wanted came whistling along a few minutes after.

He came to the end of his string at Zanzibar, where he was caught in a tremendous storm, and was in hourly peril of destruction. His masts had cracked, his sails had split, his water barrels had gone by the board. It was time to hold the witch to her bargain. He swung the cord about his head three times, called the woman’s name, and although eight thousand miles of sea and continent lay between them, she heard the call. The string was pulled through his fingers so smartly that it made them burn, and was whisked out of sight in the wind and the spray. Within an hour the gale abated. Next day Condent attempted to make his way by dead reckoning, but whenever he went wrong a bird flew in his face, and a ship crowded with skeletons approached him in the mist. He presently gained the Isle of Bourbon, or Reunion, where his stealings enabled him to cut such a figure in society that he married into the family of the governor and died in an odor of—well, maybe it was sanctity. At all events, he died.

It was a witch also that had foretold the march of the buccaneers across Panama isthmus, and her warning was considered of such importance that the Spanish troops and merchants were notified, though they made but a feeble resistance when the foray actually occurred.

One of the Spanish slavers bound for our coasts was overhauled by the English pirate Lewis. She was a fast sailer and had nearly escaped when Lewis ripped a handful of hair from his head, flung it to the wind, and shouted, “Ho, Satan, keep that till I come.” Instantly the wind rose to a gale. In a few minutes the Spaniard was in the hands of the pirates, and the slaves, being only an encumbrance, were tossed overboard to the sharks, as one might fling away a damaged cargo. One of the black men was a dwarf, gnarly, wrinkled, misshapen, with eyes that blazed like a cat’s in the dark. No sooner had this man been pushed over the side than he uttered an ear-splitting yell, and seemed to bound back to the deck. It was a cat, however, not a human being, that was seen to rush into the cabin, and it looked into Lewis’s face with the same shining, menacing eyes that he had seen in the dwarf. A negro boy who had been spared to act as a servant for the captain having unconsciously roused his anger, Lewis rushed upon him with his sword, cut him through the heart and beat his corpse, the cat sitting by and squealing with glee at the sight. When a mate struck at the animal in a tort of disgust and fear, the creature leaped at him and almost blinded him with its claws. From that time the cat became Lewis’s familiar; was before him at the table, on his pillow when he slept, on his shoulder when he gave orders. The crew agreed that it could be none other than the devil himself. On Lewis’s last night alive, while he was quite drunk, the cat seemed to be whispering into his ear. He arose and staggered away, saying, “The devil says I shall be killed to-night.” An hour later his ship was boarded by French pirates, and Lewis was despatched. After scratching the faces of nearly all the enemy, the cat ran up the mainmast, throwing off sparks and screeching, scrambled to the end of the topsail-yard, and leaped off into the night.

Morgan, the English sea robber, had captured a number of Spanish prisoners in Panama, among them a woman of beauty and distinction, who had been left without other protection than that of a faithless servant during her husband’s absence in Peru. The dignity and refinement of his prisoner made a certain impression on Morgan. After he had put to sea a cabin was reserved for her, she was treated with respect by the crew, but a guard kept her in sight always. The gross nature of the pirate disclosed itself in a few days, when, fresh from a debauch and reeking with the odors of rum, he forced her cabin door and attempted to embrace her. She sprang back with a cry of loathing, and grasping a dagger swore that if he ever intruded himself in her presence again she would drive the weapon into her own heart, since she could never hope to reach his by any means, violent or gentle. In a fit of anger, the pirate ordered his sailors to cast her into the hold among the slaves and hostages, there to endure fever, crowding, hunger, and thirst.

A week or two later these lean, half-dead wretches were kicked out of their dark and stifling dungeon to be sold to some planters. A woman among them asked for a few words with Morgan. Haggard, tear-stained, ragged, neglected as she was, the captain did not at first recognize her as the one whom he had insulted by his show of love. When he did recall her name and state he asked indifferently what she wanted. She told him that an injustice had been done; that she had at first told him it was in her power to buy her liberty, believing it to be so; but her hope was destroyed, and she was so ill and wasted that she would be useless as a slave. As she was going on board of the ship she had whispered to a couple of Spanish priests telling them where her money was concealed, and asking them to pay her ransom with it. They also were under guard, but they persuaded one of the buccaneer officers to go with them, recovered the money, bought their own freedom with it, and ran away. Hearing this, Morgan sent the woman back to Panama, succeeded in capturing the priests, and sold them into slavery.

It is said of Morgan that he had a fire ship, which he would tow as close as possible to the fleets of his enemies, both to draw their fire and kindle a more disastrous one. What appeared to be its crew were logs of wood, placed upright between the bulwarks, each log surmounted by a hat. As to fire, it is recorded that Teach, or Blackbeard, now and then shut himself into his cabin and burned sulphur to prove to his crew that he was a devil. He used to tie his whiskers with red ribbons into pigtails that he tucked over his ears, and he looked the part. Yet he was less of a monster than L’Olonnais, who so hated Spaniards that he would not only slaughter his prisoners, but would bite their hearts like a savage beast after he had cut them out. Beside Blackbeard there was a Redbeard and a Bluebeard. All three of these gentlemen had castles in St. Thomas, and that of Bluebeard had a room in which it is alleged that he killed his wives after the fashion of his Eastern relative.