Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926
- Автор: Bailey H. C., Bechdolt Jack
- Год: 1926
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
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Its consort, seeing the disaster, asked for quarter; and the Dutchmen were more than surprised not only to have quarter promised, but the promise kept. The surviving ship had a cargo on board of fine goods, gold and silver, lace, brocades, and the like.
The citizens of the little floating republic then voted to take the captured ship into Carthagena and sell it as the prize taken by a French warship. This was done, and Misson used the name of the dead Captain Fourbin to avert suspicion.
Caraccioli was sent ashore with a letter signed Fourbin, “explaining” the capture of the Dutchman and asking the governor, Don Josef de la Zerda, to send the merchants on board the ship to buy the captured wares.
The governor graciously acceded to the request, and not only received the prisoners, but sent the French captain a gift of fresh provisions. The goods brought fifty thousand “pieces of eight.” In return the governor received as a gift a fine piece of brocade.
In his apparently innocent heart the governor was touched. He then wrote “Captain Fourbin” that the galleon St. Josef would sail from Puerto Bello in eight or ten days for Havana and that she had on board silver and gold bars to the value of eight hundred thousand “pieces of eight.” Would “Captain Fourbin” be gracious enough to escort with the Victoire the treasure ship and see that it did not fall into the hands of pirates?
Then it was that Misson and his crew saw the reason for the governor’s surprising kindness. He had an ax to grind. He had been angling for services to which he was not entitled. But magnanimously, even enthusiastically, Misson and his crew decided to accept the governor’s touching commission.
The Victoire hurried off to Puerto Bello. It looked as if the Republic of the Sea would start off with an ample treasury. For, of course, while the republic was founded on sentiments of brotherhood within its borders — or shall we call them sides — its citizens were far from being sentimentalists.
They knew that if the governor had learned of their real identity he would have trained his cannon on them. So that they felt the Spanish galleon would be rightly theirs when it fell into their hands.
But when the Victoire, all avid for its expected prize, hove into Puerto Bello, there was no St. Josef there. The galleon had already set sail. The cornerstone of the new republic’s treasury had slipped away!
“Black Brothers, I Set You Free!”
To have one’s mouth water in anticipation of a Lucullian banquet and then to have it vanish into thin air before one has touched a crumb would be mild disappointment compared to Misson’s when he found that the galleon with eight hundred thousand pieces of eight which he was to escort, had escaped him. So he turned elsewhere for consolation.
He began to pick up crumbs of comfort. A London ship bound for Jamaica cost him but little fighting and yielded four thousand “pieces of eight,” some rum and much sugar. Also there were on board twelve French prisoners. These were only too delighted to join the Republic of the Sea.
Then north of Cuba he captured the Nieuwstadt, a Dutchman carrying eighteen guns. So overawed was Captain Blaes, the commander, at the Victoire bristling with its thirty guns, that he, too, offered but little fight; and the Nieuwstadt became consort ship to the Victoire. Also she had two thousand in gold dust and seventeen black slaves.
Misson rounded up the Dutch captain, crew, and their slaves and proceeded to deliver a long harangue denouncing the institution of slavery.
“Men who sell other men like beasts prove that their religion is nothing more than a grimace! No man is worthy enough to have power over another! You, my poor black brothers, I set you free! I offer you sincerely your choice of life. If you so wish I will set you on shore and let you take your way wherever you please. Or, if you so wish, I shall welcome you to join us as equals in the Republic of the Sea!”
Lectured By the Pirate Chief
To a man the blacks chose to enter as citizens of his republic.
Caraccioli became captain of the Nieuwstadt and the two ships ran into the river Lagoa for cleaning and repairs. Here in the languor of a semitropical climate, in a land where man had no need to toil for fruit, and food grew literally for the mere picking, the citizens of the Republic of the Sea — or if you choose to call them so, the pirates — leisurely enjoyed the taste of life ashore.
In spite of all the sentiments of brotherhood and equality that sincerely prevailed in the Republic of the Sea decorum and man-of-war discipline were strictly maintained. But now they had in their midst Dutch prisoners, who were not part of the republic. There was no check upon them; for although Misson did not consider them brothers, he did treat them as human beings.
But the Dutchmen were tough tars. They had enormous capacity for liquor and corresponding thirst. As Misson, consistently with his humaneness, put little check upon them, the Dutchmen soon hit their full drinking stride. The result was that the most common sight in the daily life of the republic was a drunken carouse.
Then, too, the Dutchmen had a style of their own in profanity. Now, profanity like capacity for liquor, is considered by many men as a talent and become tempting to exhibit. The more soberly speaking citizens of the republic began to envy the Dutchmen’s magnificence of swearing. They began to emulate their style.
What followed seems a little hard to believe; but I could lay before my readers dusty, but impressive documents to prove what I am about to relate. Captain Misson, master pirate, called a meeting of the deep-drinking, free-swearing Dutchmen, and preached them a sermon on the vileness of profanity and drunkenness!
He had to use the Dutch captain as interpreter. But he managed to get every syllable of his sermon understood. His ears, he told them, had been little offended by bad language until they had come on board. His sight had not been annoyed by sottish drunkenness until they had come.
“These practices minister neither to profit nor to pleasure,” he went on.
The leathery Dutchmen could scarcely believe their ears. They began to show their intense amusement. They, hard-drinking, gin-pickled, sea-toughened mariners, were being lectured by a pirate chief in the language and spirit of a small town minister scolding his congregation for drinking and bad language!
“These New-fashioned Pirates”
One more sentence remained to the sermon; and the grins of the congregation were broadening.
“I have only this to add,” Misson concluded. “The next man I see drunk or from whose lips I hear profanity will be tied to a grating and severely whipped. Into the welts on his flesh salt will be rubbed. For every time the offense is repeated the punishment will be doubled.”
Then he stepped down from his pulpit and went about his work. Most of the grins disappeared. And after three Dutchmen had occasion to realize that Misson meant every word he ever uttered, drunkenness and profanity died natural deaths in the Republic of the Sea.
When the two ships were spick and span again the republic took to the sea once more. Off Angola a second Dutch merchant was taken. She had much cloth on board, which gave the citizens of the republic a new wardrobe.
But now there were ninety prisoners to handle; too many for comfort. So all the prisoners were put on board the new prize and allowed to sail away unmolested. It is interesting to read part of the report written by these prisoners of their former captors:
“We were not a little surprised at the regularity, tranquillity, and humanity which we found among these new-fashioned pirates. Indeed eleven of our men, including two sailmakers, one carpenter and an armorer, chose to remain with the pirates rather than go free with us.”