CHAPTER FOUR
BACK PAY
Henry Avery
I
Just outside of Plymouth, in the English county of Devonshire, John Avery kept a tavern, under the patronage for the most part of coastwise and deep-sea sailormen. It was a comfortable place, was that inn of good Master Avery, with its sanded floor, diamond-paned windows, clean tankards, and the good ale and victuals that made the house synonymous with home for the parched mariner off in Malabar or his brother expectantly bumping homeward-bound around the bulk of Africa’s majestic cape.
A good place with a good landlord, but, alas for perfect pleasure, with a landlady not so good. For while mine host endeavored to drink as much as his customer, leaving the score an amicable affair between gentlemen, mine hostess tallied every drink and clawed every broad penny laid upon the table. And how incompatible boozing and bookkeeping are, every one may be presumed to know.
Jack and his wife had one child, a boy whom they called Harry. Perhaps it was for the sake of her son that Mistress Avery was careful to parsimoniousness, for the parents were resolved that Harry should neither follow the sea nor pursue the occupation of a tavern keeper; he was to be a scholar and a gentleman and thus raise the family at least one higher rung on the social ladder. A straw, it is said by wise people, may show which way the wind blows, and a circumstance which occurred when Harry Avery was but six years old may perhaps suggest his possible fulfillment of his parents’ hopes.
For it was when Harry was of those tender years that the ship _Revenge_ paid off at Plymouth, the boatswain of which, at the head of some proper fellows, at once started for Avery’s tavern, to drink up a stout wallet of extra allowance money. With Jack Avery’s company and Mrs. Avery’s accounting they soon got through with ten pounds apiece.
During the sailormen’s besotted sojourn at the tavern little Harry gamboled impishly among them, swinging sea slang back and forth with them, dancing a mimic hornpipe and convulsing them with the expert manipulation of the most approved sea swearing. They prophesied that he would make a good sailor.
Unhappily all this cheeriness departed with their last groat. Mistress Avery turned sour then and bade them begone or she would turn in a riot call to the constable. Night was falling when the groggy seamen piled out to the chilly street to seek the shelter of the gloomy _Revenge_.
But that ship, alas, was not in the harbor. They huddled together and stared first at the vacant harbor and then at each other. Marooned, by tar!
They tacked back to Jack Avery’s, but that gentleman’s shrewish wife met them at the door with the sharp refusal of even a poor night’s lodging in the stable. Little Harry, in the prettiest way, interceded for these interesting strangers, but in vain; they had to warm themselves as best they might by stamping through the town the whole night long.
With the morning, however, the _Revenge_ came back, and the boatswain led his now embittered flock to the waterside. On their way they were met by little Harry Avery, nimble and frolicsome as ever. He followed them to the boat which had put off from the ship to fetch them, and wished loudly that he might go aboard and away with them.
Whereupon the boatswain had a happy thought. Pushing back his three-cornered hat, he scratched his mahogany forehead in deep reflection. Why not take the boy aboard and thus get even with the hard-hearted Mrs. Avery? Everybody roared with glee when this scheme of revenge was broached. Harry was pulled by a great fist into the boat, and his sea adventures were begun.
Safely on their way to the American plantations and well out of sight of land, the boatswain produced his kidnapped pal, who apparently accounted the whole thing the very best joke in the world. For a moment the captain glowered down on his peculiar passenger; but when Harry showed how he could roll out two oaths to the boatswain’s one, his fare was paid, and the captain looked upon him almost with affection.
So bright a little blackguard was Harry that he stole more and more into the grim captain’s heart and twined his wicked little fingers still more firmly about the skipper’s starved emotions. A tiny hammock was made for him close by the captain’s bunk; he was allowed the run of the ship, and the cook was admonished to keep for him the least weevily or oaken portions of the menu. It was a charming sight to see the small chap, perched on a coil of rope, in blasphemous competition with the admiring skipper.
There is no telling how far this friendship might have gone, or whether the captain of the _Revenge_ might not even have adopted him for his own son, had not an incident, as they neared Carolina, severed the comradeship sharply in two. Harry was caught in the act of putting a lighted match to the powder magazine; just an inch more and the ship would have been nothing but a few broken spars and gratings drifting haphazardly upon the sands of the Carolina beach.
The captain turned nasty right away. He banished his little pet into the hold, down among the bilge and the rats, and kept him there till they made port. Rather unkindly he gave the boy to a Carolina planter,--unkindly, of course, not to the boy.
It took the planter three years--for he was a man of monumental patience--fully to realize the nature of the gift; and as he could not wish Harry off on anybody in the colony, the boy’s talents being pretty commonly known, he did the best thing he could and sent him back to England.
Old Jack Avery had died soon after the boy’s leaving England,--some said of a broken heart. What contact Harry made with his mother is not recorded, but it has become a matter of history that young Avery grew up a rogue, and at length, finding the land too hot for him, sought the cool and obscure promenades of his first element,--the sea.
If he belonged anywhere it was to the sea. He even qualified as a navigator with the rank of first mate. In the sixteen-hundred and nineties, the Spanish Government made a bargain with some English merchants to hire coast-guard ships for its troubled South American colonies. Sir James Houblon and several others outfitted a couple of brigs, the _Charles the Second_ and the _James_, for the Spaniard’s business, and it was on the former that Avery was signed as first mate.
Thereafter things came about which made a matter for the King’s court of Old Bailey, sitting in admiralty. Among the persons involved was an ancient mariner by the name of William May, who on his trial has left us a story of the wickedness of Mr. Avery. Unfortunately Harry Avery was not brought to account for his crime, nor, so far as we are aware, for any piracy, but slips from the pages of history with these things unrecorded, probably to end his life as one, not the least evil, among the buccaneering hordes of the Caribbean.
II
Look at the sad plight of me, old Bill May, for thirty-five years in the service of my king and country! Here I lie in the hold of Newgate Gaol, condemned for a pirate and a-tremble like a loose sail in a gale of wind every time the sheriff comes in to read off the list of those appointed for the day to die.
My right forefinger and the top of my thumb I lost just thirty year ago when Admiral Tiddiman fought the Dutch in the harbor of Bergen. On the _Hector_, Captain John Cuttle’s ship, I was. We ran afoul a Dutch broadside, and down we went like a tub with a grindstone in it. Only a score of us came up again, and me, with my maimed hand, had to swim more than an hour for my life.
A man who has given his limbs for his country to be stretched at Execution Dock with no more to do than if he were a common picklock! Ah! what a port has old Bill May’s ship come to at last!
It does not become a man who has fought for England to whine at the king’s court. But charity begins at home; and from a kindness to the respectable name of May I am taking a quill in my fist to set out in order the things that brought me here--and shouldn’t have--which things the lawyers confabulated me out of properly telling at my trial.
The way the long-gowns[1] talked you would have thought they and not we were the ones to be hanged. Begging everybody’s pardon, I ask who ought to do the most talking--accuser or accused?
[1] Lawyers.
His Lordship, Judge Holt--who was master of the court--was pretty fair, but those king’s counsel blasted the whole dozen or more judges with words, words, words, till I looked to see them all blown through the wall of Old Bailey--and the big bench with ’em. Half the time those lawyers didn’t speak a man’s English, but yammered in a foreign tongue, calling us names we knew not what. Some of it sounded to me like Portugee.[2] Jack Sparkes[3] swore from keel to truck it was Irish. But when we came to talk, how was it then?
[2] Law-latin: “_Hostes humanis generis_”, etc.
[3] A co-defendant.
“Speak to the point, my man.”
And, “What have you more to say?”
If we had had anything to saw, how could we have said it with no lawyer to pilot us over the law language and to throw outlandish words back at our prosecutors?
Nay, more. From jury to judges they were all land crabs. Asks Judge Holt--
“What do you mean by ‘conning a ship?’”
Begging their honors’ pardon, I ask, Could that be a fair trial for sailormen? A baby at the breast ought to know that conning a ship is a-steering of her.
Did I have to ship on the _Charles the Second_? Was I pressed? Never has the press-gang picked up old Bill May when he was sober. How often have I led the gang myself! Who was it grabbed half a score knock-kneed apprentices for the _Hector_ and other of the king’s ships under Admiral Tiddiman? Only Bill May, the pirate.
No, indeed. Captain Brake of the _Wave_, East Indiaman, was begging me to voyage with him to Calicut, but I said, “No, here is Sir James Houblon outfitting _costa-gardas_ for the Spanish South Americas; here,” said I, “is where they need men who can keep an edge to a cutlass, and where I am wanted there I always try to be.”
I was wanted at Bergen against the Dutch thirty year ago, and there I was--as witness my finger and thumb.
Very well, then; here is the start of the affair.
Mr. Don Spaniard could not keep a strong hand on the pirate people himself over in South America, so he comes to England to hire ships and men to go out and help clean his coasts of those pests. Sir James Houblon and some other merchants strike a bargain with Mr. Don Spaniard, and fit out the _Charles the Second_ and the _James_.
I was lying alongshore getting my mind ready to sign with Master Brake on the _Wave_ when I heard this Spanish affair talked about in the “Pig’s Head”, Bristol. As I say, Bill May is never too old to fight on a good side, so I made for the docks straightway and offered myself to Mr. Gibson, master of the _Charles the Second_. An old Navy man he was, and knew me in the past, so he gave me his hand and the rating of quartermaster.
Henry Every[4] was first mate under Captain Gibson, and Mr. Gravet was second mate. A new man to me was Every, but a pleasant, merry one, about forty years old. Not even, though, in his mind. Why he would stand by me while I was at the whipstaff[5] and make me laugh like to throttle myself at the quips that came from him as shot from a well-greased ten-pounder. But a minute later he would be cursing the sea, ships, sailormen and his own hard luck. Time and again he said to me--
[4] Old spelling for Avery.
[5] Helm.
“I’m a man of fortune, and my fortune I’m going to make.”
Queerlike, he spoke, and queerlike I took it. But I never dreamed he was meaning to do a mischief to make his fortune.
Born for the sea he was, and knew a ship like you know the palm of your hand. Hard, too, he could be; I have seen him knock a man to the deck and never leave off laughing.
Strange laugh he had; up in the back of the nose, as it were, and panting like--sort of a snorting. Between us, though, there was no trouble; Henry Every always said I was the properest quartermaster he ever shipped with. He couldn’t bear Gravet; they did not hitch, though nothing outwardly passed from one to the other.
Our orders were first for the Groyne[6] in Spain, there to get instructions and supplies. The _Charles the Second_ and the _James_ left England in the autumn of 1693, and about the new year following we dropped our anchors in the Spanish port. Bad weather had made a job of slow sailing and hard pumping all across the Bay of Biscay, but we cheered ourselves with promises of ease when we should come to the Groyne.
[6] Old name for Corunna.
All hands had four months’ wages due them when we came to port, but not a mother’s son of us could get a penny piece from the commander. The Spaniard is as sluggish in money matters as a waterlogged ship with a broken mast.
There grew to be a lot of hard feeling on both ships, and the two captains, Gibson and Humphries, were much pestered to their faces and much abused behind their backs. I could not see how they were to blame, but they were the only ones the men could look to for their pay and so they had to bear the siege. January came and went; February came and went, March came and went, and April likewise; and not a smell did we get of coin, either Spanish or English.
The sailors at length quit going ashore to be jeered for their poverty and taunted for their misfortune, but moped about the decks and fought with one another, and altogether got to a mischievous turn of mind. Every and Gravet gave plenty of way to each other, while as for my old commander, Captain Gibson, he broke with the worry of it all and took sick to his cabin. Little winds blow ships into strange ports; if the Don had met us with our pay old Bill May’s neck would never have been hauled upon like a mainsail.
III
If the men had a friend among the officers, it was Mr. Every. I thought to see him turn sour with this slow making of his fortune, but not he; the farther into the doldrums we got, the higher he flew his topsails. He praised and petted the crew, spent some money on them, went ashore with them and even made chief cronies of a dozen or so, of whom I am sorry to say that some of my fellows in this condemned hold were a part.
He loitered, too, a good deal over on the _James_, which barnacled a few lengths from us, and made as good friends there as he did on his own ship. When the month of May began, there was always a confabulation going forward, with Mr. Every in the middle of it and certain chosen ones about him. And all the time my old commander lay grievously sick in his bed.
How could I have any idea Mr. Every was stewing a mutiny? Yet so he was. On the 30th of May, in the year 1694, I was at evening in my cabin, thinking of home and wishing I had my wages to send to my poor, good wife at Bristol. At between ten and eleven of the night I felt the ship move.
“Ho!” thinks I. “What does this mean?”
I rushed out in my shirt and stockings to the under deck and from there up the hatchway. The wind hit me full in the face, and I could see the lights of town dropping astern.
I stuck my head up over the hatchway; there was Every conning the ship.
“Breakers ahead!” thought I. “Yaw away, old Bill May, afore you strike.”
Every saw me at that minute.
“You, May,” he roared, nasty, “I believe you do not love this way; get down to your cabin.”
But see what the king’s evidence said about me. One Creagh, a dirty wretch, and now a prisoner right in this gaol for treason with Captain Vaughan, and one time aboard the _Charles the Second_, witnessed that at this going-off of the ship, “I met with William May, the prisoner at the bar. ‘What do you do here?’ says he. I made him no answer but went down to my cabin, and May swore at me and said, ‘You deserve to be shot through the head,’ and he held a pistol at my head.”
Can you imagine a man who has fought for his king and country being a party to the crime of stealing the ship of a fellow subject? Not only that. The ship’s carpenter was a ringleader with Mr. Every in this insurrection, and Creagh--may he be eaten alive with weevils--swore the carpenter said in his hearing--
“Old May I can trust with anything; he is a true cock of the old game and an old sportsman.”
Was ever such a farrago told in a king’s court?
Me, an old bird at the pirate game--me, an old sportsman--me, who would not demean myself to wipe my boots on that carpenter’s neck! Sam Parsons, who is now in Virginia, was standing by when Every drove me to my cabin, and he would swear to my truth.
But does the king call him? Nay. But such treasonable scandalizers as Creagh--they get the run of the deck. Would the king, begging his Majesty’s pardon, bring a witness from Virginia to save a poor sailor’s life? Ask him!
I could not stay down in the cabin for thinking of my old commander and what might be happening to him. I almost cried for my old commander. At the risk of my head I went to his cabin. Two men stood guard at the door with naked cutlasses; I begged leave to go in, and at length they allowed me.
Oh, my poor old commander! He was red with fever, and the chirurgeon was anointing his temples. He got out of bed and began to dress himself, with me there to lend him a steadying hand.
“Ah, faithful May--” he was saying, when in came Mr. Every, smelling of grog, and with a most impudent look.
“I am a man of fortune, Captain,” he said, making a bow, “and my fortune I must seek.”
“I am sorry this happens at this time,” said my poor old commander.
“Come with us, Captain, and you shall still have the command,” replied Mr. Every.
Says Captain Gibson:
“No. I never thought you would have served me so, who have been kind to all of you; and to go on a design against my owner’s orders I will not do it.”
“Then,” said Mr. Every, “prepare to go ashore.”
What honest sailorman would not be plowed in his feelings by his old commander’s plight? Should I have been ashamed though my tears dropped upon the captain’s trembling hand? He looked kindly upon me as I stood there still in my shirt and stockings.
“Go, faithful May,” he said at last. “Nothing will avail now.”
IV
I went back to the deck to get my bearings. From one and another, so far as the tumult which was on the ship permitted, I made out that the taking of the _Charles the Second_ was in this wise:
Mr. Every, using the common grief about the wages to serve his turn, made fellow-plotters of some score of men, both in the _Charles the Second_ and the _James_. The night having been picked out on the calendar, it was agreed that at a given time by the clock one from the _Charles the Second_ should go to the _James_ and say that the _Charles the Second_ was being run off. The officers of the _James_, it was expected, would order out the pinnace in pursuit, when the friends of Mr. Every were to crowd forward, fill the boat, and make for the _Charles the Second_, where instead of arresting her they would turn to and haul together with their companion miscreants of the _Charles the Second_, who in the meantime would have seized the ordnance and ammunitions aboard our ship. The cables of the _Charles the Second_ were to be cut, all but two of her boats turned adrift, and her sails shaken out loose.
Things went smoothly according to plan. At nine o’clock one went from the _Charles the Second_ to the _James_. At the head of the gangway of that ship he found Mr. Druit, mate, on watch. Says he to Mr. Druit--
“Have you seen the drunken boatswain of ours aboard your ship?”
“No,” says Mr. Druit. “Isn’t he aboard of you?”
“Nay,” said the villain conspirator; “he’s not aboard, but mischief is.”
He leaned close to the mate and whispered--
“They’re running off with the _Charles the Second_.”
At once Mr. Druit bellowed for the pinnace to be got out, which, of course, merely gave the ruffians their cue. Twenty-six men, laden with their hammocks and sea gear, immediately rushed forth and manned the pinnace.
“Here--here--” cries Mr. Druit, seeing a wicked game going; but the rascals had their oars in the water and made off in the dark, swearing and singing.
Thereupon Captain Humphries, of the _James_, rushed to the rail and shouted through his speaking-trumpet that his boat was being stolen, to which Mr. Every, likewise through a trumpet, impertinently answered he knew that well enough. So they came to our ship and knotted themselves together with our rascals.
No sooner had the runaways from the _James_ thrown their hammocks to our deck than light sail was set, and we stood out of the harbor, this being the motion which had first brought me a-running from my cabin. At eleven o’clock the topsail was braced back, and we lay to. Mr. Every, who now called himself captain, sent word about the ship that certain ones were free to leave in the pinnace of the _James_ if so they chose. Men of spirit, he said, would stay by the ship and collect their back pay. And he laughed.
V
Right here is the kernel of the case. Did Mr. Every pick the men who should go ashore if they wanted, or was that liberty given to any one? If Mr. Every picked out the people to go, then we who stayed were kept against our wills, and are innocent; if we could have gone and did not, then we are guilty.
We had been acquitted on our first trial for piracy of the ship _Gunsway_, and I am talking now about our second trial, of which the theft of the _Charles the Second_ was made the charge. Hence the king must prove that we were parties to this latter crime. All the king’s evidence swore that any man might go who would,--except the doctor; all of us prisoners at the bar stuck to it that none could leave but by Mr. Every’s say-so.
And whom did the king call?
Creagh. This fellow was one who left the ship when the boat went away for shore. Was he therefore a good, an upright, an honorable man? If he had been, would he have associated himself afterward with Captain Vaughan and gone over to the king’s enemies with Vaughan’s ship, for which very crime he lies manacled with us? How truthful must he be!
Gravet. He too went from our ship; but he was so busy at his going, begging Mr. Every to let him take his sea coffer and his clothes, that he had no means of marking much else that went on. How then did he find time to know so much about my deportment? Says he--
“When we had liberty to go out of the ship, this man May took me by the hand and wished me well home, and bid me remember him to his wife; and was very merry and jocund, and knew whither they were going.”
Merry and jocund, and a knowing accomplice! What proof had he that I knew whither we were going? Who but Mr. Every and his ring knew that?
Creagh and Gravet, these two are all that went to the matter of my part in the plot, and Creagh may be discounted for a born liar, trying to serve his ends in his pending treason trial by convicting honest men, while Gravet--even if he told the fact concerning our parting--offered no proof beyond his thin statement that I “knew whither they were going.” Yet when you get down to the bone, I was convicted and handed to the hangman on those five words.
But, say some, how can you explain your being on a mutiny ship, stolen and making off for sea? I claim that Sam Parsons can bear me out touching Mr. Every and me, but Parsons is in Virginia; and there, for all the king cares, he may stay.
Alas!
My poor old commander, Captain Gibson, was lifted into the pinnace, where some seventeen or eighteen men were already gone, and who, when we had tossed them a bailing bucket they cried for, shoved off for town.
Let me ask any man of fair mind this question: How could a hundred men, had they wanted, have gone off in a ship’s pinnace?
When the boat had left we began the business of the ship and, hauling into the wind, made haste to leave those parts. I was deposed from quartermaster and a willing villain put at the whipstaff in my stead. More than half of us knew nothing but that we must be upon unlawful occasions.
The ship thieves were not fifty men, all tallied; yet with their control of our ordnance, fusees and small arms they could terrify the remaining hundred people into obedience to their horrid designs. Less than one in ten aboard could read and write, being for the more part ignorant seamen, easily deceived and commanded. Not only did Mr. Every and his wicked fellows steal a ship, but they kidnapped a crew.
VI
When we sailed from the Groyne we had a deal of bread and a couple of hundred pair of woolen stockings; but, wanting beef and more bread, we stood for the Madeira Islands. The evil disposition of Mr. Every quickly showed its true kind, for we were sent aboard three English ships which lay at the islands and looted them under the pretense of giving receipts for the things we took, with promises of future payment. Mr. Every laughed a great deal at this.
So too he laughed at our operations on the coast of Guinea, whither we went from the Madeiras. We sailed into Guinea Gulf under English colors solely to entice the poor, trusting negroes of the country aboard, who, when they came supposing we were to trade with them, were despoiled of their golden trinkets and thrown, chained together, into our hold.
These captives we took from the mainland over to Prince’s Island, in the gulf, and marketed them with Dutch settlers. When it came to bring them up on deck we found the dead and the living sometimes chained together. It was a very great horror.
Being now a proper pirate, Mr. Every at this Prince’s Island fought two Dane ships. We fair surprised them, not a few of their men being alongshore. We ran to leeward of the larger one and, opening our ports, bit into him with twenty guns, the blow of our shot shaking two Danes out of the shrouds to their deck, like a couple of ripe plums from a tree. With good spirit the merchantmen made what shift they might with their half-dozen small pieces, but a musket shot killing the captain of the one we first attacked, both ships gave in.
Our brave show and talk so affected some of these Danes that a score of them signed on with Mr. Every. Our one broadside so damaged the Danish brig that Mr. Every set her afire, and we stood by, watching the burning and cheering whenever a canister of powder blew up, Mr. Every standing on our poop, the red of the flames glaring on his face, nodding his head and laughing with himself.
The smaller vessel we took with us, Mr. Every expecting to make himself a great admiral at the head of a great pirate fleet, though for sure it smirches the noble dignity of that honored title to give it to a miscreant so black.
Many folk--not a few of them of the highest fashion--have come to Newgate Gaol to see the notorious Captain Every’s men, as if forsooth our feet were cleft like a goat’s or horns were hid beneath our forelocks. Some of these have said it was not ingenuous for us who served by compulsion thus to engage in these villainous combats and sinful traffickings with slaves. Why, say they, did you not flee from Mr. Every at the first chance and return to England to make discovery of his crimes?
There was no first, middle or last chance.
And what a ship it was! In place of discipline there was a disorder very afflicting to an old king’s man. Each man counted himself the equal of the other, and although Mr. Every was a hard man and quick to strike, he was submitted to only because he was a navigator, and none could take the ship so well as he.
But he could make no general move without having first a consult in which all hands took part until the confabulation sounded like a tree full of crows. We called a vote on everything,--the next place for depredation, the punishment of offenses aboard ship and the amount of plunder each man should get.
This last was a bone for the dogs to growl and bite about, I can tell you. Newcomers like the Danes were for having as much from the bag as the men who had stolen the ship at the Groyne.
“Nay,” said these; “not so, for we brought you the ship, and you give us nothing but your hands.”
“Good,” quoth the recruits. “Then we can take ourselves off and you may have your ship and be hanged.”
Thus the tree forked and on its opposite branches bore fruit of bitter will.
The small Danish sloop we were taking with us from Prince’s Island made early harvest of the animosity among us. Mr. Every would keep her as a tender; others were for selling her so that they might paw some money.
“If you sell her,” said certain ones, “what will be the shares of each?”
Thereupon the quarrel flared up, and nothing could be agreed except that Mr. Every should have two shares; that is, if the highest share were one thousand pounds, Mr. Every should get two thousand pounds, but as to the rest there was no concord; the argument being as sharp as if the money for the sloop were already in the quartermaster’s coffer. The Frenchmen recruited at the Madeiras were for the arbitrament of the dirk, seeing which--and that it was time to act--Mr. Every ordered the twenty-pounder shotted and trained on the sloop. He cut the towline and said, “Give it her betwixt the wind and the water,” and thereupon old José, the Spanish gunner, hit her so neatly beneath her lowest ports that she was not atop the waves more than fifteen minutes.
“Rather she sink than we,” said Mr. Every to the men, who now began to see that if they could not agree better the whole enterprise would be ruined.
VII
We turned Cape Lopez, and stopping for water at Annibo,[7] ran onward to the Cape of Good Hope, where we took a small coasting sloop, rifled her and let her go. Thence we came to Madagascar, where we made some stay. I had been here many times before in honest ships, and it was with shame that I now came in with this unlawful company.
[7] Anamaboe.
Not that there was anybody there whose rebuke I feared, for Madagascar was the wickedest place--outside the West Indies--in the ocean; but I was not easy for thinking that I was now one among those whom I had regarded in times past as malefactors. Three years had passed since my last visit, and piracy had swelled so much as to become a very great evil.
I saw, too, so many more pirating fellows from the West Indies, for the more part Englishmen hailing first from the American provinces, but so outlandish looking a tribe one would never have known them for our countrymen except by their speech, they affecting a Spanish style with bright silk sashes, silk shirts, ruffled breeches; many wearing earrings, and not a few with heavy gold chains about their necks, the true fashion of Caribbean sea robbers. Verily this place had become the very metropolis of rascality, the base for criminal cruises all the way to the Gulf of Aden and the coast of India.
Mr. Every could not come the Madeira game here but had to pay for the provisions he bought and the cows he purchased to slaughter and salt up, for none trafficked here save with a naked blade in one hand and the price in the other.
At Madagascar I took the sickness which even now afflicts me and has reduced me to the poorest state of body and mind ever a man fell into. I was too old for junketing about with pirates, being past sixty years of age, for the long deprivations and exposures of my life at sea--the inclement weather and the intolerable food I had had to endure--made me fit rather for a cottage in my native Mendip Hills, in the parish of Cheddar, rather than in so tan-chasing a fly-by-night company as cruel circumstances had put me.
The ship’s doctor found at Madagascar the chance to quit our way of life and fled the ship, leaving me and a number of other sick men to suffer in our cabins, helpless on the hands of people who were more drunken than kindhearted. How often have I lain on my bed and watched the cook, unstable with rum, tacking and yawing at my threshold, likely on an instant to founder and cast the kid of hot meat upon my head!
Just before we left this wicked and riotous island, one of the Caribbee pirates--an Englishman first from Boston in New England--brought to me the doctor of his ship; a sharp rascal who was sought in his own country for many crimes. This fellow bled me in two ways: one for my good with his lance, the other for his good with his pilfering fingers, for in mauling about my body he slyly stole thirty gold guineas from my belt. He said I ailed with the putrid fever and the dry bellyache. He found me with two diseases; he left me with a third, a burning rancor against the villain which can never be eased save by bleeding; and I have long carried the leech which can suck deep of his venal blood.
Mr. Every now made sail for Joanna.[8]
[8] In the Comoro Islands, Mozambique Channel, off the Madagascar coast.
“Here,” thought I when we anchored, “is a quiet place for old Bill May to die, happy that his last breath should not be drawn on a ship stolen from his king and country.”
With some other sick ones I was put ashore on the beach at Joanna, where they laid us out in a row under the trees, Mr. Every deputing a few men to attend upon us. I was now quite helpless, remaining useless of hands and feet and despairing of my life. In some peace we stayed there all that night, but before noon of the next day three large ships hove in sight--East Indiamen--and Mr. Every, in the greatest fright of being surprised at the roadstead with half his crew ashore, ordered all hands on board and to bring the water kegs and the sick with them. They came with a great running and bustle to carry me away; but said I--
“Leave me here; I have no stomach to fight those three ships; I prefer to lie here and trust myself to my fellow countrymen or to the mercy of the island negroes.”
There being no time to confabulate, the men rushed for their boats without more ado, and soon the _Charles the Second_ was hauled to the wind and off like a hare before the hounds.
The Indiamen came to anchor and made a great business of bringing kegs and barrels for water, boats plying between the shore and the ships. I purposed to apply to them for a passage from this lonely beach and a refuge from the wicked Mr. Every, and so made me a crutch, as is were, from the bough of a tree and with it very painfully I crawled to where the work was going forward.
A fat man with a red face and very white hair was commanding, whose name, a sailor told me, was Captain Edgcomb. To him I applied to be taken aboard his ship, but he--on my confessing I was from the _Charles the Second_--gave me scurrilous language, abusing me before all the people, and vehemently swearing that he would give me passage to Bombay--and there to the hangman. Thus the naughtiness on our ship had become the talk of all the world.
“Aye,” said I, “Captain Edgcomb, sir, rather would I go down with you to Bombay and die according to the law of my country than perish here at the hands of these heathen blackamoors, or among evil pirates.”
He turned away to his work, rumbling in his throat like the end of a thunderstorm.
But others had compassion on me. As they came and went with their water casks some humane men brought me one thing and another to refresh me, encouraging me also with the promise that I should go away with them. At evening the last load was taken. In that boat were the doctor and the purser, both of whom said the captain would send for me to come aboard.
“I am quite ready at any time,” I told them, “for all I have in the world is the clothing that hangs to my back.”
So very hopefully I sat me down upon the sand and watched the sun go down to his rest beyond the far sea line; but more I gazed at the masts and yards of the three ships which stood out so bold and black against the red sky. “They will come soon,” thought I, “for they are getting ready to go,” the men being in the shrouds and out on the footropes.
When it grew dark, lights jumped from porthole to porthole as the men went about the decks setting out the lanterns. I should guess the time to have been past midnight when the anchor chains rattled and the capstan creaked and the chant of the people working it and the clatter of their bars in the drumhead sockets came across the water. “They will be here anon,” thinks I, and I got down as close to the water as I could, that they should lose no effort when the boat came in for me.
But it did not come. Perhaps it was one o’clock when the ship’s lights began to move away--away and away until they went out altogether, and only a long, thin lane of moonlight lay in the wide, empty waste.
My feet felt wet; I looked down and found I was standing in water up to my knees.
How hard is the sea!
VIII
I crawled up the sand and lay stupidly all night, nor thought--nay hardly wished--to see another morning dawn. The blackamoors that rampaged in this island would surely finish me if disease did not, though indeed some had been along the beach when we came in and did us no harm.
Toward noon as I sat under a tree feeling indeed that I was sinking to my end, there came one of the negroes to me. He was a very tall man with a sort of twisted face, the jib of his chin being thrust somewhat to the side rather than in front, which did not make him look pretty. But he wore breeches and a torn shirt, while in his belt was stuck a sailor’s dirk, which was a great wonderment to me. If he were a vulture he should find but bony carrion.
“Hello, Jack!”
I opened my eyes, sure now that the fever had got to my brain.
“Who be you?” I asked, not believing that my ears heard English from a native negro.
He leaned back with his hands on his hips and laughed at my astonishment.
“You know Bednal Green,[9] Jack?”
[9] Bethnal Green, now in the limits of London.
Bednal Green? Aye, Green’s the name and green’s the word. Green! Oh, for the leaves, the grass, the young buds of spring; just one handful of those was worth more than all of those yellow sands, glaring waters and banana skies! Bednal Green! The very word--the name--was like cold water on a gritted tongue! Bednal Green! Aye, had I the choice between the eating room of the “White Duck” Tavern and the palace of the Grand Mogul across the water in India, there would be no bargaining. Did I know Bednal Green!
“Aye,” said I, “very well.”
“You have ale at him White Duck?”
Ale at the White Duck--the very place that was running in my mind! I knew then that I was dreaming; that I was out of my head and that I would surely soon die. Verily I had drunk ale in the White Duck; drunk it often of winter mornings when Mistress Brown, in a clean apron, kept the coal fire bright in the grate, and the carters from the country, leaving their wains outside, came stamping in, blowing upon their finger tips and shouting the gossip of the frozen roads. I lost myself in a sort of swoon.
When I came back to my senses I was lying in the old hut of a fisherman, and the big black fellow was fanning my head with a bundle of broad leaves. He must have carried me in from the beach; an easy job, for I was all skin and bones, and he was a giant.
When he saw me open my eyes he bade me fear nothing, that I was in his house and the people of the place would do me no harm. He said that I might call him Jim.
Jim nursed me like I was a baby; he gave me food and drink; he tried to keep me cool at noon and warm at night, and all without pay, for not one penny piece of my few remaining coins would he take. His was just a heart of good will. And in between whiles he told me the strange story of his life.
He had gone to England from Africa on a British ship a long time before and had made his dwelling in London, particularly in this suburb of Bednal Green, where he turned his hand to one thing and another wherever there was need of a man of strength. At length, being of the mind to go to sea again, he had left England in the ship _Rochester_--I knew her very well--bound for the Indies.
But off Guinea they fell into a sea fight with a Frenchman, and were very hardly pressed, their enemy having more guns and men than they. Resolving to make a struggle to the finish, the captain of the _Rochester_--probably to keep his men from fleeing--ordered Jim to cut the longboat adrift from the stern of the ship. Jim went beyond his orders, for after cutting the rope he stayed in the boat and made off with it under cover of the gun smoke.
He had not got a mile away when with a great noise the _Rochester_ blew up, her powder having exploded by accident. He made his way to Guinea and from there, on one ship and another, he had slowly worked his way to this place of Joanna, where he had a mind to settle himself among the native people.
“Why,” said I, “are you so kind to me?”
To this he replied that he had a kindness for plain sailormen; that they suffered much on their ships at the hands of hard masters, and many had, out of their little, often supplied his wants.
For eight weeks black Jim thus cared for me,--a poor, forlorn, marooned seaman, and a sailor’s blessing rests upon him. I owe him my life.
At the end of that time he came one day into the hut and said that a ship was standing in. He had brought my strength up so that I could now walk a little, and I went out into the sunshine and there, sure enough, was a ship,--and it was the ship of Mr. Every. He had evidently come again for water.
Here then was a puzzle for me. Should I go back to him or stay with the good Jim and his people? I am an Englishman and not an African; I would be home again. Jim could not come down to the beach for fear of being taken as a slave, but he and the natives fled back into the island. I bade him good-by with all my heart,--the only friend I was to find in thousands of watery miles.
Mr. Every was down at the boats.
“Hallo, old May,” he said. “We thought you must be dead by now; that the sickness had taken you. You must have been born to be hanged!”
IX
Getting out to sea strengthened me a little more, and I took heart, though the evil associations of the _Charles the Second_ pained the conscience. Very small scrapings had fallen to them since they had left Joanna, and the mood of the crew was sour.
However, they parliamented together and voted to go to the Gulf of Aden to find Moorish ships, and perhaps waylay the rich fleet of Mocha, whose movements they had learned of at Madagascar.
“With that,” said Mr. Every, “we shall make our fortune”,--fortune being a great word in his mouth.
In those regions the sun is cruel. As we drew on to the gulf the heat lay upon us like a smothering blanket; nay, like many blankets, so that the very air one breathed seemed to sear the throat; we went about our blistered decks nearly naked--to put your hand on one of the guns was like laying it on a hot oven--and Mr. Every sprawled under an awning that was rigged over the poop, drinking bomboo[10] and wishing he had made his fortune and were living in a fine house with a fine wife in England. Nor had we the comfort of looking toward cooler waters, but every day drew farther and farther into the furnace.
[10] Grog of limes, sugar, etc.
At the mouth of the Red Sea--red is the color of flame--we fell in with two ships that were on the same account as we, and the morning after meeting them met three more ships of bad intent, some being Englishmen from America--Captains May (no relative of mine) Farrel and Wake--until you might have supposed a parliament of pirates was meeting. We were all there for the Mocha fleet; but after riding together a night or two and exchanging visits we separated, each captain having his own notion of the place where the fleet we sought would pass.
But wide is the sea and many are its paths, and the Mocha fleet slipped by us all in the night of Saturday. Next morning the men held a general consult as to whether we should follow them or not, and after a great dispute as usual, a vote was taken which fell for pursuit, and so the Sabbath was desecrated by a wicked chase.
At sundown we came upon a lagging ship of the fleet and took her without a fight, and with her something of gold and silver, but no great sum. We put a prize crew aboard but soon called them off again and left the ship to go her voyage.
There was enough profit in this plunder to cheer our people, and they became hungry for more. A few days thereafter we spied another sail and, getting up our anchor, stood to her. Before we came up to her a haze fell over the sea, which presently turned to a thick fog, thereby favoring Mr. Every’s enterprise by allowing him to get close and make a sort of surprise.
When nigh enough we sent a shot across her bows; but she, fearing that we were a lawless ship, refused to heave back but hauled to the wind and made off. With the breeze on our starboard quarter, despite the fog we kept her in sight; and, being the better sailer, we drew down upon her, so near that we made her out to be the _Gunsway_, East Indiaman.
Mr. Every now yawed his ship occasionally as he worked for the range; but they opened first at us, giving us a load from their stern-chasers, which split our larboard foreyard arm and might, had it been a little cleaner break, put us out of the pursuit. Mr. Every replied with our bow-chasers, which we learned afterward did them little hurt.
Our captain, wishing to get the range for his broadside more quickly and the _Gunsway_ beginning to show a chance of escape, we put our helm down hard, and, coming athwart the bow, fell foul of the _Gunsway_, so that our larboard cathead was abreast her starboard gangway. Here we fought muzzle to muzzle--they with brass cannon, we with our iron ones--as pretty a fight as ever I saw since the days of the old _Hector_ and the battle of Bergen.
If we had had to fight it out in this fashion the event might have been uncertain, but Mr. Every--who as I have said was a fine seaman--cunningly disengaged his ship and managed to back her clear of the _Gunsway_ and then, bearing up under her stern, let go a broadside.
That finished a fight which could not have been longer than an hour. The Indiaman put out the white flag; nor could he do less, seeing his hull and rigging were badly hit and ten of his men lay dead about his guns. Half a dozen of the pirates were killed and not a few wounded.
During the battle I hauled ammunition and dragged off the wounded to the hold,--to shirk here would have been to buy a quick end to my life.
Over the bulwarks of the _Gunsway_ our villains poured and ran greedily about the ship, looking for loot. Presently a great shout went up, and four men ran from the master’s cabin bearing brass-bound coffers,--the ship’s treasure.
Somebody with an ax smashed the fastenings, and over the decks there spilled great piles of gold and silver coins; of pieces-of-eight, for instance, we afterwards counted not less than one hundred thousand. Add to this the same number of chequins[11] and you can see that Mr. Every had made his fortune.
[11] Sequins--worth about $2.25.
The pirates went mad with delight; some danced upon the money, some threw themselves on the deck and tossed and fingered the coins like children playing on the sand; while as for Mr. Every, he stood leaning upon his cutlass, looking down at the shining heaps and laughing.
Nothing would do the men but to divide the spoil then and there, and the average share was worth one thousand pounds apiece. Five hundred pounds were given me, though I had been sick, useless and more of a hindrance than help.
Though this was the wrong sort of saltwater money, I perforce took it, being in no mind to have myself marked among them. When they had stripped the _Gunsway_ of everything that could be carried off, they left her to go on to Surat with her sad tale of crime.
X
With so notable a felony on their souls, all felt that the time had come to leave those regions entirely. We set off for the Indian coast, from which it was designed to go to the West Indies. A large body of men, however, resolved to leave the ship at India; and twenty-five Frenchmen, fourteen Danes and a company of Englishmen were there set ashore at their desire. For they were afraid if they came to England and were caught, they should be hanged, and they thought themselves more secure among the pagans.
Mr. Every set off for the West Indies with a light complement, and attempted no piracy during all that long and wearisome way. We watered at one or two places, including Ascension, but made no long stop until we anchored at New Providence.
As we came to this port we were at a loss to know the kind of welcome that might wait us; so when we anchored we held a consult, and one who was a clerk drafted a letter to the governor of this Providence Island, setting out that we desired to come into the town, find anchorage and have the liberties of the place, for which the men would present the governor with twenty pieces-of-eight and two pieces of gold, all told, and Mr. Every, because he had a double share, offered for himself forty pieces-of-eight and four gold coins.
One Adams was our ambassador, who with a few of our men to form a sort of honor guard went ashore, while we lay by waiting the result. Our messengers soon came back with a letter from the governor, saying that we were welcome and could come and go again when we pleased. Thus for sixty pieces of silver and six pieces of gold we bought the keys of the town.
Here the adventure so wickedly begun at the Groyne ended. Most of our people scattered themselves about these West Indies, where they found great hospitality for pirates, particularly at this New Providence, which rivaled Madagascar for folk of this complexion.
Mr. Every made a great friend of the island governor and gave all the promise in the world of becoming one of the leading malefactors of this region. Here he found the things he liked, for from these parts real navies of buccaneers set out to harry the Main itself, the American provinces,--everywhere, even, as I had seen, over to the far shores of Africa and India.
As for me, with the money I had from the _Gunsway_ I bought passage on a ship going to the Virginia plantations.
“Farewell, wicked ship and wicked men,” thought I as the Virginia vessel passed by the _Charles the Second_ at her moorings. “Farewell,” said I, gazing at the empty decks on which the sun lay white and hot; “good riddance, and may you be quickly entombed in the deep waters.”
Had I been a moral philosopher and not a mere sailorman I would have profited by my reflections.
Would that I had tarried in Virginia, where there is much to a man’s liking! But no, I longed to be at home and out of the sun; I longed for the cool vales of Somerset and the sweet evening air which from the Mendips blows the blue peat smoke about the thatched roofs of simple cottages; I longed for quietness and rest, and these honest longings drove me afoul of the cruel courts of justice.
I was still miserably weak when I crawled at length from the docks at Bristol up into the town. I lay a week in bed at a tavern in the High Street, afflicted with a return of the dry bellyache.
I felt danger to be about me; for all England over there was little talk but of the notorious Captain Every; no exaggeration of his crimes being too great or untrue to go down the gullets of the staring people. Behind it all was the East India Company, as well as the Mogul rulers, who dinned continually at the British Government for the punishment and extermination of pirates.
All of this was to make bad weather for me, yet I was resolved to go to my lords of the Admiralty and make a plain discovery of all the things which had taken place. Scarcely able to pull my breeches over my shrunken knees, I nevertheless paid my score and set out by coach for London.
The coach had not gone three leagues from town before she was hove to, and, behold you, the king’s messengers were there, looking for old Bill May.
“You are one of Every’s men,” they said, hauling me out the gangway. “We have a warrant to take you.”
“You only anticipate me,” said I, “for I was on my way to London to discover all.”
They bore me off to Bath in a carriage of their own, and there before his Grace the Duke of Devonshire I was examined touching my part in Mr. Every’s enterprise. I made a clear account of all that I have here set down; but despite that I was remitted to Newgate Gaol to be tried as a felon.
In this close I found when I came in my old shipmates Joseph Dawson, Edward Forseith, William Bishop, James Lewis and John Sparkes, with young Middleton and one Dan, who had crept home by one ship and another, only to be snatched up as I was. One person and another, recognizing us for Every’s men, had betrayed us.
We went first to trial on an indictment of piracy of the _Gunsway_. We were confronted by a bench of more than a dozen judges; we were harried by a shoal of prosecutors; we were lied about by one witness and another, yet in spite of all--in spite of all that Dan and Middleton, a saucy lad aboard our ship, who were King’s evidence; in spite of the thunderings and belching and blasts of the lawyers, the jury--true men and good--returned us not guilty.
That put the king’s counsel to be the laughingstock of the country, so to save their faces they put us to another trial, this time for the stealing of the _Charles the Second_ at the Groyne. For witnesses they brought again young Middleton as well as Mr. Gravet, the old second mate, and the liar Creagh. Not only did these tell of the matter at the Groyne, but Middleton and one or two others went all over the Indies and up to New Providence again,--which was a sly way of trying us twice for one offense.
How the judges and lawyers admonished the jury!
“If you have the true English spirit, if you believe in the Christian religion--I had almost said, ‘If you love your mother’--you must convict these rascals at the bar.”
How they belabored the jury which had acquitted us on the first trial; you would have thought they were nothing other than Frenchmen in disguise, and the veriest traitors, heretics and homicides. Aye, they did for us: guilty.
Last night the clerk of St. Sepulcher’s[12], as the custom is, came under our windows with his bell and cried to those who might have to die on the morrow to repent their sins. The doleful sound threw me into a horror; I fear that my name will be in the morning’s death warrant.
[12] The church that stood across from Newgate.
XI
Mr. May’s premonition was justified by the event. On Wednesday, November 26, 1696, at Execution Dock--which overlooks the Thames at Blackwall, and was the usual place of punishment for Admiralty felons--he and his fellow defendants were hanged.
Reading his quaint story (which in substance was his evidence at his trial) we get the idea that if he and his fellow accused were to be convicted at all it should have been for the capture of the _Gunsway_ and not for the theft of the _Charles the Second_. Mr. May is borne out by the record when he says that he was convicted of the latter offense by the five words of Mate Gravet: to wit, that May knew of the plot.
But there was no proof to support Gravet’s statement other than the word of one Creagh, to whom, as we have seen, Mr. May rather bitterly alludes, and accuses of seeking to serve his own interest in a serious scrape in which he had become involved. Creagh would seem quite unreliable. He had been one of the men who had left the _Charles the Second_ at the Groyne, on Henry Avery’s invitation to all who had not spirit enough to go along with him and collect their back pay to depart more or less in peace. Reaching England again, he fell in with an adventurous young chap by the name of Vaughan, who was then signing men on the _Loyal Clancarty_, a small sloop which Vaughan planned to, and did, turn over to the service of the then exiled Stuart king, James the Second, and in which Vaughan disturbed the shipping of the government until he was run down and captured in the Channel, after a fight in which the attackers had to wade to the _Clancarty_ through the shallows, with their weapons over their heads to keep them dry. He and his crew were taken first to Dover Castle, where the warden who registered them remarked that most of them were drunk at the time, to be removed later to Newgate, in which latter prison, by what was certainly a very odd circumstance, Creagh again met old shipmates of the _Charles the Second_ from whom he had parted at the Groyne. With the terrible charge of high treason lying upon him, Creagh saw his chance and, expecting thus to purchase clemency in his own affair, eagerly proffered his testimony against the alleged pirates, and was accepted. Thus there was a great premium upon the conviction of Mr. May and the others.
His character was brought out most damagingly at his own later trial on the Vaughan business, during which his own brother was forced to take the stand and brand him a liar and a rogue; a petty, sneaking rascal, apparently, who did not hesitate to pilfer the poor resources of his relatives.
He might have been telling the truth about Mr. May, but surely not beyond a doubt.
If he is eliminated, then it was only a case of Gravet’s word against Mr. May’s. There is nothing to be said against Gravet; he was under no charge, no peculiar advantage would be his for furthering a conviction, and his testimony was given in a pretty straightforward, manly sort of way. But Mr. May argues that the situation at the Groyne itself supports his own explanation of his conduct,--that the boat which Avery allowed to leave with those who were unwilling to go could not possibly hold the whole company of the brig and that he was one of those thus forced to stay behind.
It must be remembered, as Mr. May points out, that he and his co-defendants had already been tried and acquitted of the piracy of the _Gunsway_, where, although it is not reported, that trial must have been more likely, in the nature of things, to result in a conviction, for Mr. May admits that he was an accomplice in that crime, though present under a sort of duress. That the government was shocked at the verdict in that case is very plain from the words of the judges and prosecutors in the second case, where as Mr. May indicates, extraordinary pressure was brought to bear to keep the jury from straying out of the way as did the former one.
Somehow, Mr. May’s account lacks an ultimate convincingness, but it may be said for him at this late day that, technically, there is a very grave doubt of his guilt. His is the story of old dog Tray: willingly or unwillingly, he was in bad company and to that unfortunate circumstance he must lay a large portion of his misfortunes.
And what befell the naughty Henry Avery?
Mr. May’s narrative cannot give us that information because Mr. May never saw his captain after they separated in the West Indies. At the turn of the new century, we know he was still in the black books of the British Admiralty, for an Act of Grace--that is a blanket pardon to all pirates who should give up their wicked ways by such and such a date--issued a few years after Mr. May’s demise, specifically excepts from its clement scope, “William Kidd and Henry Every, alias Bridgman.”
Now, a yarn is told of the end of Henry Avery, which may be summarized for what it is worth--probably not very much--for it is outside of judicial records and consequently corrupted by legend. The effect of it is that Avery continued in the West Indies, pirating the Spanish Main, even to the Carolinas, until, satisfied that he had finally earned a competence and an honorable retirement and with something of that longing for home which is not altogether absent, apparently, from even a pirate’s tattooed bosom, he decided to turn him again home.
He had an embarrassment of riches, if ever a man had. According to the story, he had bags of diamonds taken from the _Gunsway_, of fabulous value. Mr. May’s trial suggests that the loot of that ship was money, and nobody says anything about diamonds, but the historian we are now, with a caution, quoting says it was diamonds, and diamonds it shall be.
In due time, he got back to Bristol, but now found that he could not sell his diamonds without incurring suspicion as an evil-doer. He tried Ireland, as a place where folks might be less shrewdly curious, but he discovered that the Irish were as much struck as the English by the incongruity, say, of an egg-sized diamond flashing and coruscating in a scarred and pitchy palm,--a feeling not immediately dispelled by the extraordinarily sinister face above them.
Back to England--truly a millionaire tramp--where he foolishly resolved to put his trust in merchants. Behind their aldermanic robes and unimpeachable integrity, he expected to be able to put his unique stock-in-trade on the market, which, indeed, he seems to have done, but when he solicited his corpulent agents for an accounting he was met by great round eyes and insulted mouths.
“Diamonds? What are you talking about? Diamonds? Begone, you rogue, what do we know of diamonds.”
It sounds like some aspects of human nature, but whether it is history, is not for us to vouch.
So Henry stewed a trip or two in a coasting forecastle,--where, had he a mind to, he could have told the simple seamen a thrilling story of the sea,--and then curled up and died, “not worth a groat.”
Morally, at any rate.