THE WAR MAKER

BEING THE
TRUE STORY OF CAPTAIN GEORGE B. BOYNTON

Photo by Pirie MacDonald

THE
WAR MAKER

BEING THE TRUE STORY OF
CAPTAIN GEORGE B. BOYNTON

By
HORACE SMITH

WITH PORTRAIT

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911

Copyright
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911

Published March, 1911
W. F. Hall Printing Company
Chicago

NOTE

THE hero of this book was a real man, though he has carried to his grave the secret of his true name. It was not Boynton, although it is known that he was born in Fifth Avenue, near Fourteenth Street, New York, May 1, 1842, and that his father was a distinguished surgeon, with an estate on Lake Champlain. He rarely talked of his remarkable life, and recounted in detail to the author of this volume the facts of his career of adventure, only in the closing months of his life.

Captain Boynton was of the type of filibuster that is read of so often, but rarely met with in life. He was a tall, bronzed, athletic, broad-shouldered man, one of the most picturesque and daring of the many soldiers of fortune who have sought adventures over the world. From Hongkong to Valparaiso fighters of all races knew the name of Boynton. From Cape Horn to New York he did not permit himself to be forgotten. Whether exploring the sources of the Orinoco, or hunting elusive supporters for a deserted American President, or battling in the Haytian army, or spying out court secrets in Venezuela, or running a distillery in Brooklyn with Jim Fisk as partner, he was invariably master of himself and continually a personality to be reckoned with. Captain Boynton was the original of the “Soldier of Fortune” in Richard Harding Davis’s story of that name, and gave to Guy Boothby the facts of his novel “The Beautiful White Devil,” with which dashing heroine Captain Boynton was on terms of intimacy. In the account of his life given in this volume fictitious names have in two or three instances been used for persons still living who figured in business deals with him. Otherwise the story is told almost identically as Captain Boynton narrated it to the author.

After escaping death in scores of forms, including a Chinese pirate’s cutlass, an assassin’s dagger, the fire of a file of soldiers at sunrise, and war’s guns, this utterly fearless, cheerfully arrogant retired blockade runner, revolutionist, and hunter of pirates died peacefully in his bed, at a ripe age, on January 19, 1911, in New York City, where he had led a quiet life since 1905, when he voluntarily left Venezuela, after withstanding repeated efforts by President Castro to drive him from the country.

H. S.

New York,
Jan. 25, 1911.

CONTENTS

A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE’S CREED

THROUGHOUT my life I have sought adventure over the face of the world and its waters as other men have hunted and fought for gold or struggled for fame. The love of it, whether through the outcropping of a strain of buccaneer blood that had been held in subjection by generations of placid propriety or as a result of some freak of prenatal suggestion, was born in me, deep-planted and long-rooted. Excitement is as essential to my existence as air and food. Through it my life has been prolonged in activity and my soul perpetuated in youth; when I can no longer enjoy its electrification, Death, as it is so spoken of, will, I hope, come quickly.

To get away from the flat, tiresome, beaten path and find conditions or create situations to gratify the clamorous demand within me has ever been my compelling passion. I have served, all told, under eighteen flags and to each I gave the best that was in me, even though some of them were disappointing in their failure to produce a pleasing amount of excitement. In following my natural bent, which I was powerless, as well as disinclined, to interfere with or alter, to the full length of my capabilities, it perhaps will be considered by some people that I have gone outside of written laws. To such a contention my answer is that I have always been true to my own conscience, which is the known and yet the unknown quantity we all must reckon with, and to my country. In the transportation of arms with which to further fights for freedom or fortune I have flown many flags I had no strictly legal right to fly, over ships that were not what they pretended to be nor what their papers indicated them to be, but never have I taken refuge behind the Stars and Stripes, nor have I ever called on an American minister or consular officer to get me out of the successive scrapes with governments, but most often with misgovernments, into which my warring wanderings have carried me. Red-blooded love of adventure, free from any wanton spirit and with the prospect of financial reward always subordinated, has been the driving force in all of my encounters with good men and bad, with the latter class much in the majority. Therefore I have only scorn for sympathy and contempt for criticism, nor am I troubled with uncanny visions by night nor haunting recollections by day.

There is just one point in my philosophy which I wish to make clear before the Blue Peter is hoisted, and that is that most of the so-called impossibilities we encounter are simply disguised opportunities. Because they are regarded as impossible they are not guarded against and are therefore comparatively easy of accomplishment when they really are possible, as most of them are. Acceptance of this theory, with which every student of the history of warfare will agree, will help to explain my ability to do some of the things which will be told of, that the thoughtless would promptly put down as impossible.

The name by which I am known is one of the contradictions of my life. Save only for my father, who sympathized with my adventurous disposition at the same time that he tried to curb it, I was at war with my family almost from the time I could talk. I am a Republican in politics from the fact that they were active supporters of James Buchanan, and I became a Southern sympathizer simply because they were bitterly opposed to slavery. When I left home to become an adventurer around the globe I buried my real name and I do not propose to uncover it, here or hereafter. I am proud, though, of the fact that my family is descended from a King of Burgundy; for since reaching years of discretion, though I have been as loyal to the United States as any man since 1865, I never have believed in a republican form of government. In the course of my activities I have used many names in many lands, but that of Boynton, which had been in the family for years, stuck to me until I finally adopted it, prefixing a “George” and a “B.,” which really stands for “Boynton.” I made it my business to forget, as soon as they had served my purpose, the different names I took in response to the demand of expediency, but I remember that Kinnear and Henderson were two under which I created some comment on opposite sides of the world.

THE WAR MAKER

CHAPTER I
UNDER FIRE THE FIRST TIME

I  WAS born on May 1, 1842, on Fifth Avenue, New York, not a long way north of Washington Square. My father was a distinguished surgeon and owned a large estate on Lake Champlain, where most of my youthful summers were spent. I had three brothers and two sisters; but not for many years have I known where they are, or whether alive or dead. After having had a private tutor at home I was educated by jumps at the Hinesburgh, Vermont, Academy; at the old Troy Conference Academy at Poultney, Vermont, and at the Burlington, Vermont, Academy, where, young as I was, I became deeply interested in the study of medicine, for which I had inherited a pronounced liking; that was the one point on which I seemed to fit in with the family. I did not stay a great while at any institution because of my success in leading the other students into all sorts of dare-devil pranks, to the detriment of discipline and the despair of the dominies. As an evidence of the inclining twig I remember, with still some feeling of pride, that during one of my last summers on Lake Champlain I organized fifteen boys of the neighborhood into an expedition against the Indians of the far West. We were equipped with blankets stolen from our beds, three flasks of powder, and nearly one hundred pounds of lead, which was to be moulded into bullets for the extermination of the redskins of the world. As Commander-in-Chief I carried the only pistol in the party but we expected to seize additional arms on the way to the battlefields. I had scouts ahead of us and on both flanks and by avoiding the roads and the bank of the lake we managed to evade capture until the third day, although the whole countryside was searching for us, in rather hysterical fashion.

After a somewhat scattered series of escapades, which increased the ire of the family and intensified my dislike of their prosaic protestations, my father solemnly declared his intention of sending me to the United States Naval Academy. It was his idea, as he expressed it, that the discipline which prevailed there would be sufficient to restrain me and at the same time my active imagination would find a vent in my inborn love of the sea. I was delighted with this promised realization of my boyhood dream, for it seemed to me that the career of a naval officer presented greater possibilities of adventure than any other. Former Congressman George P. Marsh, of Burlington, Vermont, an old friend of the family, who afterward was sent to Italy as American Minister and died there, arranged to secure my appointment to Annapolis, and I entered a preparatory school to brush up on the studies required by the entrance examination. The machinery to procure my appointment had been set in motion and I was ready to take the examination when the opening gun of the Civil War was fired at Fort Sumter, on April 12, 1861.

I was immediately seized with a wild desire to be in the fight, but my father would not consent to it, on account of my age. He would not hear to my going into the army as a private but promised that if I would wait a year, and was still of the same mind, he would try to get me a commission. As I have said, my sympathies were with the South but it was more convenient for me to take the other side, and at that moment I was not particular about principles. The family were duly horrified one evening when I went home, after some things I needed, and told them I had enlisted. The next day my father bought my discharge and hustled me out to the little town of Woodstock, Illinois, where I was placed in charge of an uncle who was abjured to keep me from going to war, without regard to anything else that might happen. He prevented me from joining an infantry regiment which was then forming but I got away with a cavalry regiment which was raised in that section some months later, and was made one of its officers. We went to Cairo, Illinois, and from there by transport to Pittsburg Landing, where we arrived just in time to take part in the battle which was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862. My regiment was pitted against the famous Black Horse Cavalry of Mississippi and we came together at the gallop. I was riding a demon of a black horse and, with the bit in his teeth, he charged into the line two or three lengths ahead of the rest. A Confederate officer came at me with his sabre raised. I ducked my head behind my horse’s neck and shot him between the eyes, but just as my pistol cracked his sword cut through my horse’s head to the brain and the point of it laid open my right cheek, from the ear almost to the chin. The horse fell on my leg and held me there, unconscious. In the evening I was picked up and sent to the general hospital, where I stayed for three weeks.

When I was discharged from the hospital I was too weak for active service so I was sent into the Tennessee mountains in charge of a detachment to intercept contraband which was being sent into the South from Cincinnati. We had been there about ten days when, early in the morning, one of the patrols brought in a fine-looking young man, who had been arrested as a spy. There was a refinement about the prisoner that aroused my suspicions, and during the day I satisfied myself that “he” was a woman. While she would not acknowledge her identity, I had reason to believe, and always have been sure in my own mind, that she was none other than Belle Boyd, the famous Confederate spy. I was born with a fondness for women, which then was strong within me, and besides, my heart was with her cause. Therefore it is without apology that I say I arranged things so that she escaped the next night through a window in the shed in which she was confined.

Soon after my return to headquarters I contracted a bad case of malaria and was sent home, which meant back to Woodstock, where I had eloped with a banker’s daughter just before going to the front. I was disgusted with the war and I expressed myself so freely, and was so outspoken in my sympathy for the South, that I made myself extremely unpopular in a very short time. It probably is true, too, as was charged against me, that I swaggered around a lot and presumed on the reputation I had made. At any rate the people set their hearts on hanging me for being a “damned copperhead,” and they might have done it if old man Wellburn, the proprietor of the hotel at which my wife and I were staying, had not helped me to stand off a mob that came after me. I met them at the door with a revolver in each hand and Wellburn was right behind me with quite an arsenal. They suggested that I come out and renounce my principles and make certain promises, or be hanged at the liberty pole. I told them I would renounce nothing and promise less.

“If I am a copperhead,” I told them, “I am a fighting copperhead, while you are neither kind. If you want a fight why don’t you go to the front and get it, instead of staying home and making trouble for a better man, who has fought and bled for the cause you are shouting about? If you prefer a fight here, come on and get it. I’ve got twelve shots here and there will be just thirteen of us in hell or heaven if you try to make good your threat.”

Old Wellburn was known as a fighter and the sight of his weapons added weight to my words, so the crowd concluded to let me have my way about it, and dispersed. That experience intensified my dissatisfaction with the whole business and I sent in my resignation. It was accepted, and when I had thought it all over I considered that I was lucky to have escaped a court-martial. It was fortunate for me that Governor “Dick” Yates and my father were warm friends. The Governor was thoroughly disgusted with the way I had conducted myself, but he stood by me.

I then moved to Chicago, with my wife. She had a small fortune and I had come into considerable money on my twentieth birthday, so we were in easy circumstances. I bought a vinegar works on Kinzie Street; but the dull routine of business was repulsive to me and I sold it in less than a year, after having operated it at a handsome profit, and went on to New York. We stopped at the old St. Nicholas, at Broadway and Spring Street, which was the fashionable hotel in those days.

I was looking for anything that promised excitement. I had heard that Carlos Manuel de Cespedes was fomenting a revolt in Cuba,—afterward known as the “Ten Years’ War,”—and had conceived the idea of taking a hand in it. To my disappointment, I found that no Junta had been established in this country, nor, so far as I could discover, were there any responsible men in New York who were connected with the revolution. While I was wondering how I could get into communication with Cespedes my interest was aroused by a newspaper story of the new blockade runner “Letter B,” which had made one round trip from Bermuda to Beaufort, North Carolina, and was being looked for again by the Federal fleet. The “Letter B”—its name a play on words—was a long, low, powerful, schooner-rigged steamship, built by Laird on the Mersey. Though classed as a fifteen-knot ship she could do sixteen or seventeen, fast going at that time. The story which attracted my attention told all about her and said there was so much money in blockade running that the owners could well afford to lose her after she had made three successful trips.

In five minutes I decided to become a blockade runner and to buy the new and already famous ship, if she was to be had at any price within reason. I bought a letter of credit and took the next ship for Bermuda. On my arrival there I found that the “Letter B” had been expected in for several days from her second trip and that there was considerable anxiety about her. I also learned that her owner was building a second ship on the same lines and for the same trade. A fresh cargo of munitions of war was awaiting the “Letter B,” and a ship was ready to take to England the cotton she would bring. I got acquainted with the agent for the blockade runner and, after making sure that he had an ample power of attorney from her owner, offered to buy her and take the chance that she might never come in. He was not disposed to sell, at first, and wanted me to wait until the arrival of her owner, Joseph Berry, who was daily expected from England.

After waiting and talking with the agent for several days I said to him one morning: “It looks as though your ship has been captured or sunk. I’ll take a gambler’s chance that she hasn’t and will give you fifty thousand dollars for her and twenty-five thousand dollars for the cargo that is waiting for her; you to take the cargo she brings in. I’ll give you three hours to think it over.”

I figured that the waiting cargo of arms was worth a couple of thousand dollars more than my offer but it looked as though I was taking a long chance with my offer for the ship. However, I had a “hunch,” or whatever you want to call it, that she was all right, and I never have had a well-defined “hunch” steer me in anything but a safe course, wherefore I invariably heed them. At the expiration of the time limit there was not a sign of smoke in any direction and the agent accepted my proposition. In half an hour I had a bill of sale for the ship and the warehouse receipts for the cargo of war supplies. At sunset that day a ship came in from England with the former owner. He criticised his agent sharply at first, but found some consolation in the fact that the vessel he was building would soon go into commission. When two more days passed with no sign of the anxiously looked for ship Mr. Berry concluded that he had all the best of the bargain and complimented his agent on his shrewdness.

On the third day the “Letter B” came tearing in, pursued at long range by the U. S. S. “Powhatan,” which proceeded to stand guard over the harbor, keeping well offshore on account of the reefs and shoals that were under her lee. The “Letter B” discharged a full cargo of cotton and was turned over to me. While her cargo of arms was going in I went over her carefully and found her in excellent condition and ready to go right back. She was unloaded in twelve hours and all of her cargo was safely stowed in another forty-eight hours. I took command of her, with John B. Williams, her old captain, as sailing master, and determined to put to sea at once. I knew the “Powhatan” would not be looking for us so soon and planned to catch her off her guard.

There was then no man-of-war entrance to the harbor and it was necessary to enter and leave by daylight. With the sun just high enough to let us get clear of the reefs before dark, and with the “Powhatan” well offshore and at the farthest end of the course she was lazily patrolling, we put to sea. The “Powhatan” saw us sooner than I had expected she would and started to head us off, but she was not quick enough. The moment she swung around I increased our speed to a point which the pilot loudly swore would pile us up on the rocks, but it didn’t, and when we cleared the passage we were all of four miles in the lead. As I had figured, the “Powhatan” did not suppose we would come out for at least a week and was cruising slowly about with fires banked, so it took her some time to get up a full head of steam. She fired three or four shots at us but they fell far short. As soon as it was dark, with all of our lights doused, we turned and headed a little south of west so as to come up to Charleston, South Carolina, which was my objective point, from the south. At sunrise we had the ocean to ourselves.

I started in at once to master practical navigation, the theory of which I knew, and to familiarize myself with the handling of a ship. I stood at the wheel for hours at a time and almost wore out the instruments taking reckonings by the sun and the stars. Navigation came to me naturally, for I loved it, and in three days I would have been willing to undertake a cruise around the world with a Chinese crew.

We arrived off Charleston late in the afternoon and steamed up close inshore until we could make out the smoke of the blockading fleet, standing well out, in a semicircle. Then we dropped back a bit and anchored. All of the conditions shaped themselves to favor us. It was a murky night with a hard blow, which came up late in the afternoon, and when we got under way at midnight a good bit of a sea was running. With the engines held down to about half speed, but ready to do their best in a twinkling, we headed for the harbor, standing as close inshore as we dared go. We passed so close to the blockading ship stationed at the lower end of the crescent that she could not have depressed her guns enough to hit us even if we had been discovered in time, but she did not see us until we had passed her. Then she let go at us with her bow guns and while they did no damage, we were at such close quarters that their flash gave the other ships a glimpse of us as we darted away at full speed. They immediately opened on us but, after the first minute or two, it was a case of haphazard shooting with all of them. They knew how they bore from the channel and, making a guess at the proper allowance for our speed, they blazed away, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. The first shells exploded close around us and some of the fragments came aboard but no one was injured. When I saw where they were firing I threw my ship farther over toward Sullivan’s Island, where she could go on account of her light draft, and sailed quietly along into the harbor at reduced speed. At daylight we went up to the dock and were warmly welcomed.

Before the second night was half over we had everything out of her and a full cargo of cotton aboard and we steamed out at once. I knew the blockaders would not expect us for at least four days and we surprised them just as we had surprised the “Powhatan” at Bermuda. It was a thick night and we sailed right through the fleet, at half speed so as better to avoid detection, but prepared to break and run for it at the crack of a gun, without a shot being fired or an extra light shown. As soon as we were clear of the line we put on full speed and three days later we were safe at Turk’s Island, the most southerly and easterly of the Bahama Islands, off the coast of Florida, which I had selected as a base of operations. Though these islands ought long ago to have come under the Stars and Stripes, as they eventually must, they are still owned by England, and in those days they were a haven and a clearing house for the outsiders who were actively aiding the Confederacy—for a very substantial consideration. Most of the blockade runners, including the “Banshee,” “Siren,” “Robert E. Lee,” “Lady Stirling” and other famous ships, were operating out of Nassau, which had the advantage of closer proximity to the chief Southern ports, being within six hundred miles of Charleston and Wilmington. Turk’s Island was nine hundred miles away, but I never have believed in following the crowd. It is my rule to do things alone and in my own way, as must be the practice of every man who expects to succeed in any dangerous business. It is no part of my philosophy to become a party to a situation in which I may suffer from the mistakes of others or in which others are likely to get into trouble through any fault of mine. The popularity of Nassau caused it to be closely watched by the Federal cruisers that patrolled the Gulf Stream, while the less important islands to the south and east were practically unguarded.

Though precarious for the men who made them so, those were plenteous days for the Bahamas, compared with which the rich tourist toll since levied on the then hated Yankees is but small change. The fortunes yielded by blockade running seemed made by magic, so quick was the process. Cotton that was bought in Charleston or Wilmington for ten cents a pound sold for ten times as much in the Bahamas and there were enormous profits in the return cargoes of military supplies. The captains and crews shared in the proceeds and the health of the Confederacy was drunk continuously, and often riotously. By the time I projected myself temporarily into this golden atmosphere of abnormal activity, running the blockade had become more of a business and less of a romance than it was in the reckless early days of the war. The fleet was made up of fast ships of light draft, especially built to meet the needs and dangers of the trade, and they were so much faster than the warships which hunted them that the percentage captured was relatively very small.

Before leaving Bermuda I had ordered a cargo of munitions of war sent to Turk’s Island. We had to wait nearly a month for this shipment to arrive but the time was well spent in overhauling the engines and putting the “Letter B” in perfect condition.

My second trip to Charleston furnished a degree of excitement that exalted my soul. While we were held up at Turk’s Island the blockading fleet had been strengthened and supplemented by several small and fast boats which cruised around outside of the line. Without knowing this I had decided—it must have been in response to a “hunch”—to make a dash straight through the line and into the harbor. It was fortunate that we followed this plan for they were expecting us to come up from the south, hugging the shore as we had done before, and if we had taken that course they certainly would have sunk us or forced us aground. We were proceeding cautiously but did not think we were close to the danger zone when suddenly one of the patrol ships picked us up and opened fire. Her guns were no better than peashooters but they gave the signal to the fleet and instantly lights popped up all along the line ahead of us. When caught in such a trap, if I had not been thirsting for thrills, I would have shown them our heels, for we could have gotten away without any trouble; but the demon of dare-deviltry seized and gripped me.

In the flashing lights ahead I saw all of the excitement I had been longing for, and with an exultant yell to the helmsman to “tell the engineer to give her hell,” I pushed him aside and seized the wheel. I fondled the spokes lovingly and leaned over them in a tumult of joy. It was the great moment of which I had dreamed from boyhood. I had anticipated that when it came I would be considerably excited and forgetful of all my carefully thought out plans for meeting an emergency, but to my surprise I found that I was as cool as though we were riding at anchor in New York Bay. In the first flash I felt myself grow cold all over and then a gentle current of electricity began running through me, as though my heart had been transformed into a dynamo and my veins into fine wires. The opening gun cleared my mind of all its anxieties and intensified its action. I remember that I took time to analyze my feelings to make sure that I was calm and collected and not stunned and stolid, and that I was silent from choice and not through anything of fear. I counted the blockading ships as their hidden lights flashed out and wondered how their officers and crews enjoyed being dragged out of their first sound sleep by my impertinent little vessel. I measured the distance we would have to go to clear their line and tried to figure out, from a rough calculation as to the number of their guns and the accuracy of their fire, the mathematical probability of our being sunk. Strange though it may seem, the possibility of our capture never occurred to me. We might be sent to the bottom, and would be if it were so decreed by Fate, but otherwise we would get away, and the only other question was as to the nature and extent of our injuries. When we were fairly under their spiteful guns I thought of what great sport it would be if we could only return their fire on something like even terms. I compared the wide, individualistic opportunity of naval warfare with routine battles on land, which are fought by rules laid down for every condition that can arise, and unhesitatingly decided in favor of the sea, with its long-nursed passion for the man who dares its fury, and its despotism over him who fears it.

As though spurred by a human impulse the good little ship sprang forward as she felt the full force of her engines, and never did she make such another race of it as she did that night. In the sea then running and at the speed we were going we would ordinarily have had two men at the wheel, but I found it so easy and so delightful to handle the ship alone that I declined the assistance of Captain Williams, who stood just behind me. Though I am not tall, being not much over five feet and eight inches, nature was kind in giving me a well set up frame and a powerful constitution, devoid of nerves but with muscles of steel,—in those days and for many years after,—and with a reserve supply of strength that made me marvel at its source. Through all of my active life I kept myself in as perfect condition as a trained athlete, despite occasional dissipations ashore, and I never got into a close corner without feeling myself possessed of the strength of half a dozen ordinary men. Consequently the tugs of the wheel as we tore through the water toward Charleston seemed like a child’s pulls on a string.

The widest opening in the already closing line was, luckily, directly in front of us, and I headed for it. The sparks that were streaming from our smokestack and the lights of the patrol which was trying to follow us, gave the blockaders our course as plainly as though it had been noonday, and they closed in from both sides to head us off. Evidently they considered that time was also fleeting for they lost not a moment in getting their guns to going, and shot and shell screamed and sang all around the undaunted “Letter B.” First the mainmast and then the foremast came down with a crash, littering the decks with their gear. A shell carried death into the forecastle. One shot tore away the two forward stanchions of the pilot house and another one smashed through the roof but neither Captain Williams nor I was injured by so much as a splinter. All of our boats and most of our upper works were literally shot to pieces. That we were not sent to the bottom on the run was no tribute to the skill of the Yankee gunners. They could not have been more than half awake when they began firing on us and we were flying so fast that it appeared to disconcert them, even after they got their bearings. If they had taken time to depress their guns the race would have been a short one, but they all wanted to sink us at once, with the result that only one shot struck us below the main deck, and that did very little damage to the ship.

From first to last we must have been under that terrific fire for half an hour but it seemed not more than a few minutes, and it really was with something of regret that I found the shots were falling astern, for I had enjoyed the experience immensely. When we got up to the dock we found that five of our men had been killed and a dozen more or less seriously injured. The ship had not been damaged at all so far as speed and seaworthiness in ordinary weather were concerned, though she looked a wreck. The blockaders thought we were much more seriously injured than was actually the case but their mistake was one that could easily be pardoned. They expected we would be laid up for a month. Consequently when we steamed out on the fourth night, after making only temporary repairs, they were not looking for us and we got through their line without much trouble. A few shots were fired at us when we were almost clear but not one of them came aboard and we were not pursued; they had come to have great respect for our speed. We refitted at Turk’s Island, where we laid up for three weeks.

I made two more trips to Charleston without any very exciting experiences, though we were fired on both times, and then sold the ship to an enterprising Englishman who was waiting for me at Turk’s Island. I had made a comfortable fortune with her and sold her for more than I paid for her. She was in almost as good condition as when I bought her, but I have made it a rule never to overplay my luck, and I knew I had run about as many trips with her as I could expect to make without a change of fortune. I am under the impression that the ship and her new owner were captured on her next trip to Charleston, but am not sure as to that.

CHAPTER II
FILIBUSTERING FOR THE CUBANS

HAVING succeeded as a blockade runner I was ambitious to become a filibuster, which kindred vocation I thought offered even greater opportunities for adventure. Immediately after the sale of the “Letter B,” in the latter part of 1864, I returned to New York, in the hope that the Cespedes revolution in Cuba would have been sprung and a Junta established with which I could work. I found that the revolt was still hatching and that no New York agent had been appointed, so, for want of something better to do, I bought from Benjamin Wood, editor of the New York News, the old Franklin Avenue distillery in Brooklyn. This venture resulted in an open and final rupture with my family, who were virtuously outraged to begin with because of the aid I had given the South as a blockade runner. I left home in a rage and swore that I would never again set foot in it or set eyes on any member of the family, and except for a visit to my father just before he died, not long afterward, I have kept my vow. I was always his favorite son, in spite of my wild love of adventure and the ways into which it led me, and when I got word that he was seriously ill I went to him at once, but I saw no one else in the house except the servants.

The Franklin Avenue distillery was then the largest in the East but it had not been in operation for several years. I put Charles McLaughlin in charge of the plant and set it in motion. Two or three other distilleries were then running in Williamsburg, one of which was owned by Oscar King. I had been in the distillery business only a few months, during which time the property had shown a large profit, when, while attending a performance at the old Grand Opera House with Andrew W. Gill, I met “Jim” Fisk, with whom I had become acquainted in my boyhood days. At the time I had known him he was running a gaudy pedler’s wagon out of Boston. He was laid up for a week by a prank which I played on him in George Steele’s store at Ferrisburg, Vermont, but after that we became good friends.

Fisk, big and loudly dressed and displaying the airs which later helped to earn for him the sobriquet of “Jim Jubilee Junior,” entered the theatre in company with Jay Gould, his new friend and future partner in the looting of the Erie and the great Gold Conspiracy, to say nothing of many minor maraudings into misappropriated millions. In the dramatic surroundings, Gould, half-dwarfed but plainly making up in nerve and shrewdness what he lacked in stature, with his black beard and darting eyes and his careless attire, put me in mind of a pirate, wherein my artistic judgment played me no trick, and, to complete the picture, Fisk suggested himself as the little man’s business agent. Fisk swept his eyes around the theatre with something of a look of challenge, as though he wondered if there were any persons there who knew him, and, if so, how much they knew about him. His roving gaze fell on me and he nodded and smiled. A moment later he excused himself and came over to talk to me, while Gould followed him with his snapping eyes and drove them through me with a searching inquiry which seemed to satisfy him that I was simply an old acquaintance and harbored no predatory plot. Their intimacy was then in its infancy and Gould appeared to be half suspicious of every man with whom Fisk talked.

No doubt it was fate that drew Fisk and me together. He intimated, in his grandiloquent way, that he was in a huckleberry patch where nothing but money grew on the bushes, and asked what I was doing that I looked so prosperous and well satisfied with myself. I told him briefly and he asked me to call on him the next day. I did not go to see him but the following day he called on me at the St. Nicholas Hotel. After we had exchanged confidences regarding our careers he said he wanted to buy a half interest in the distillery and asked me to put a price on it. I told him I did not want a partner. He insisted and said he had influence at Washington, which he afterward proved, and that it would be valuable to us.

“We will make a good team,” he said. “Here,” and he scribbled off a check for one hundred thousand dollars and tossed it over to me, “now we are partners.”

“Not much,” I said, as I tossed it back to him. “I am making too much money for you to get in at that price, even if I wanted you as a partner.”

“All right, then,” he replied, as he wrote out another check for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and handed it to me, “take that. I am in half with you now.”

Before I could enter another objection he stalked out of the room and I let it go at that, for I had a scheme in mind and figured that his influence, if it was as powerful as he claimed, would be useful.

The constant and heavy increase in the tax on spirits had forced all of the distillers except King and me to shut down, and when it finally reached a point where high wines which it cost two dollars and forty cents a gallon to produce, by the ordinary methods and with the payment of the full tax, were selling for one dollar and ninety cents a gallon, King was compelled to go out of business. In the meantime I had devised a scheme for reducing the proof before the tax was paid and then, by a chemical process which operated mechanically, restoring the proof until the product was almost, if not quite, equal to Cologne spirits. My contention was that my process improved the quality of the spirits, which it assuredly did, but the effect of it was that I and not the Government received the full benefit of the change. By Fisk’s advice I engaged Robert Corwin, of Dayton, Ohio, a cousin of the great “Tom” Corwin, and an intimate friend of high officials in the Treasury Department, whose names it is not necessary to mention at this late date, to secure a patent on my process. While the application was pending I was given permission to use my process, the result being that I could operate at a good profit, while the other distillers could not run except at a heavy loss. We were, as a matter of fact, cheating the Government, and I have since thought that it probably was Fisk’s influence rather than any merit in my invention that made it smooth sailing for us, but I did not then look at it in that light. I considered that I was a very clever young man and that I was rightfully entitled to profit by my shrewdness, without any regard to the rights of the Government, or to what rival concerns might think about it.

King and the other distillers, convinced that there was something wrong somewhere, tried repeatedly but in vain to discover our method of operation. Then they complained to Washington and one revenue officer after another came over to investigate us. During the progress of these protests, which in the course of a year or more increased in number and vigor, the revolt in Cuba had broken out and the old sea lust, with its passion for excitement, came over me. I wanted Fisk to buy my interest in the distillery but he suggested that we quit business and we did so, with a profit of about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Fisk and I continued in partnership and in the Summer of 1866 we bought the fast and stanch little steamer “Edgar Stuart,” which had been a blockade runner. We bought a cargo of arms and ammunition, consisting of old Sharps rifles and six mountain guns, and were just putting it on board when the first Cuban Junta came to New York and opened offices on New Street. They sent for me and wanted to buy our cargo and pay for it in bonds of the Cuban Republic, at a big discount. I refused, as we insisted on gold or its equivalent, which has always been my rule in dealing in contraband. They finally arranged that we should be paid part in cash, on the delivery of the arms, and the balance in fine Havana cigars. The Spaniards were not as watchful then as they found it necessary to be later on and the arms were delivered without much trouble at Cape Maysi, at the extreme eastern end of Cuba. On our return the cigars we had received in part payment, in waterproof cases and attached to floats, were thrown overboard in the lower bay, to be picked up by waiting small boats and sold to a tobacco merchant who had a store in the old Stevens House.

By the time we got back the Junta had raised funds from some source and engaged us to deliver several cargoes of arms to the rebels. I was always in command of these expeditions, with a sailing master in charge of the ship, while, in keeping with our agreement, Fisk stayed at home and attended to the Washington end of the business. When we sailed without clearance papers, as we sometimes were compelled to do to avoid detention and arrest, for we were constantly under suspicion, Fisk exerted his influence with such good effect that we never were prosecuted. We made three or four trips to Cape Maysi, and on one occasion took one hundred women and children from there to Cape San Antonio, at the western end of the island, where the rebels were better able to protect them.

In furtherance of their efforts to establish a government and make such a formidable showing as would secure their recognition, especially by the United States, as belligerents, thus making it legal to sell them munitions of war, the revolutionists attempted to build up a navy. Through the Junta they bought the fore and aft schooner “Pioneer,” which was fitted out as a warship and placed in command of Francis Lay Norton, who was given the rank of Admiral of the Cuban Navy. He sailed up through Long Island Sound and out past Montauk Point, where he hoisted the Cuban flag, saluted it, and gravely declared the “Pioneer” in commission. He neglected to wait until he was well out on the high seas before going through with this formality and a revenue cutter which had followed him seized his ship and brought it dismally back to port as a filibuster. I did not then know Norton but we afterward became partners and fought side by side through adventures and exploits more thrilling than any that have ever been told about in fiction, so far as I have read. Without knowing him I had great respect for his nerve but not much for his discretion, as displayed in the “Pioneer” incident, and the intimate association of later years did not change my opinion of him except to increase my admiration for his superb daring.

One night I received a hurry call from the Junta. The “Stuart” was then partly loaded with a fresh supply of arms and was waiting for the rest of the shipment, coming from Bridgeport, Connecticut. The Cubans had been tipped off from Washington that she was to be seized the next day on suspicion of filibustering, which could have been proved easily, and they asked me to take her out that night and call at Baltimore for the rest of the cargo, which would be shipped there direct from Bridgeport. Greatly pleased by this evidence of increased Spanish activity against us and the prospect of some exciting times, I went to the ship without returning to my hotel and we got under way soon after midnight, though with a short crew. At daylight I hove to and repainted and rechristened the ship and presented her with a new set of papers, making it appear that she belonged to William Shannon of Barbadoes and was taking on supplies, including some arms of course, for West Indian planters. We loafed along and the balance of the cargo, which had been sent to Baltimore by express, was waiting for us when we got there. We hustled it on board and were just preparing to sail when the ship was seized by the United States Marshal, under orders from Washington.

“Why, Captain, your new coat of paint isn’t dry yet,” said the marshal. “That ship was the ‘Edgar Stuart’ when you left New York, all right enough.” I protested that I was sailing under the British flag but he only smiled and, naturally, I did not appeal to the British consul for protection. There were fraternal reasons why the marshal and I could talk confidentially, and, though he had no right to do it, he told me that he expected to have a warrant for my arrest in the morning. That made it serious business for me, as I had no desire to become entangled with the authorities even though I had full confidence in Fisk’s ability to get me out of trouble, and I determined to get away, and take my ship with me.

The marshal left three watchmen on the ship to guarantee her continued presence. Edward Coffee, my steward, was a man who knew every angle of his business. Soon after dark he served the watchers with a lunch and followed it with a bottle of wine which had been carefully prepared, though no one could have told it had been tampered with. In ten minutes they were asleep and in twice that time we were out in the stream and headed south. We cleared the Virginia capes at daylight, aroused the surprised guards and loaned them a boat in which they rowed ashore. There was no government ship in those waters that could catch us so we proceeded on our course without any misgivings, leaving it to Fisk to straighten matters out. We delivered the cargo about sixty miles west of Cape Maysi and then went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I wired to Fisk to ascertain the lay of the land. He replied that he had “squared” things with the authorities and it was safe for me to return but that it would be best to leave the ship at Halifax for a while. I accordingly took the train for New York and in two or three weeks Captain Williams followed with the “Stuart,” which had been restored to her real self, though painted a different color than when she left New York.

Our expeditions with the “Stuart” had been so successful that the Spanish Government, through its minister at Washington, had arranged with the Delamater Iron Works, on the Hudson, for the purchase of several small gunboats, each carrying two guns, which were to operate against filibusters. We had not lost a single cargo, either while operating with the Junta or independently of it. In some instances the Spanish cavalry swooped down and captured part of the shipment before the rebels could get all of it back into the bush, but that was in no sense our fault. Fisk had learned the terms of the Spanish minister’s contract with the Delamater Company and the date that was specified for the delivery of the gunboats, but we did not know of a secret and verbal understanding by which they were to be delivered several weeks in advance of that time. The result was that on my next, and last, trip to Cuba I ran full tilt into one of the new boats, as I was not looking for them.

We raised Cape Maysi late in the afternoon and were close inshore and not far from the lighthouse when a little steamer came racing up on our starboard bow. I saw that she was flying the Spanish flag but that meant nothing in those waters and I paid no attention to her, as she was nothing like the ordinary Spanish type of gunboat, for which I was on the lookout. She steamed up to windward of us and I opened my eyes when she fired a blank shot across our bows, as a signal to heave to. I promptly ran up the British flag and kept on my course, whereupon she sent a solid shot just ahead of us. Then I hove to and a lieutenant and boat’s crew came aboard. It looked like a bad case. While the lieutenant was being rowed to the “Stuart” I had a lot of black powder stored under the break of the poop, just below my cabin, and laid a fuse to it. I did this primarily for the purpose of running a strong bluff on the Spaniards, but I had made up my mind that if it came to the worst I would blow up my ship and take a long chance on getting ashore in the small boats. I figured that the commander of the gunboat would stop to pick up those of his crew who were sent skyward by the explosion and that this would allow sufficient time for some of us, at least, to escape, which was much better than to sit still and have all hands captured and executed.

When the lieutenant came aboard he called for my papers and I gave him the usual forged set, which indicated British registry and concealed the nature of the cargo. He was not satisfied and ordered me to open the hatches, which I refused to do. He procured some tools and was having his men open them when I gave the signal to lower the boats quickly, and man them. The Spaniards looked on in wonder but interposed no objection to our hurried departure. Then I ostentatiously lit the fuse in my cabin and as I was getting into my boat I said to the lieutenant: “I wish you luck in going over my cargo. You’ll be in hell in just about three minutes.”

Without asking a question or saying a word the young officer bundled his men and himself into his boat and I lost as little time in hustling my men back onto the “Stuart” and pulling out the fuse, which was a long one, as I had a notion things might turn out just as they did. Had he not flown into a state of panic, which is characteristic of the Latin races, the lieutenant could have pulled out the sputtering fuse, just as I did, and removed the danger, at the same time putting the rest of us in a bad way; but it seemed that such an idea never occurred to him. It was simply a case of matching American nerve against Spanish blood, and I won. The gunboat was half a mile to windward and a choppy sea was running so the lieutenant had his hands full managing his boat and had no time to try to make any signals. I ordered full speed ahead and ran across the gunboat’s bows, dipping our ensign as we passed. The commander of the gunboat, thinking everything was all right, returned our salute and dropped down to pick up the lieutenant. When he got to the small boat and discovered the trick that had been played on him he sent a shot after us, which went a mile away, and gave chase, but it was no use. It was getting dusk by that time and in fifteen minutes it was dark, for there is no twilight in the tropics. I swung around in a wide circle, picked up a little inlet near Gonaives Bay in which the rebels were waiting, and had my cargo unloaded and was headed back for New York before daylight.

Some of the filibustering trips were made at long intervals, on account of the difficulties encountered by the Junta in raising funds, and between two of them, in 1867, I went to Washington, at the invitation of Leonard Swett, of Chicago, and Dr. Fowler, of Springfield, Illinois, and was introduced by them to President Johnson. Swett and Fowler were trying to line up Illinois for Johnson, and Fisk thought it might strengthen his hand in Washington to have me meet the President and offer to assist him in any way I could. A few days later the President sent for me and asked me to become his confidential political agent. He frankly said he doubted the accuracy of reports which had been made to him regarding the feeling in the Middle West toward his nomination for the presidency, and he wanted me to visit that section and advise him as to the real sentiment, with particular reference to Illinois. I accepted, being flattered, I presume, by the idea of being in confidential relations with a President. To give me a standing and clothe me with an air of mystery he appointed me acting chief of the Secret Service, from which he had removed General W. P. Wood. “Andy” was careful to explain, however, that my appointment was not to be announced or generally known for the time being and that he did not want me to bother about the ordinary operations of the Secret Service Bureau, which were in charge of Colonel L. C. Whitely, later appointed chief. Within two months I reported to the President that his friends had flattered him, that he did not have a chance of carrying Illinois, and that sentiment was running strongly against him throughout the West. The insight I thus gained into politics quickly convinced me that it was too dishonorable and not exciting enough for me, so I resigned and went back to filibustering.

If Johnson had ever had a chance of being nominated to succeed himself in the place of power to which he was elevated by the murder of Lincoln, it would have been destroyed by his “swing around the circle,” when he went to Chicago, in 1866, to attend a cornerstone laying in honor of Stephen A. Douglas. During the trip he quarrelled violently with every one who disagreed with his reconstruction policy and descended, in his speeches, to the level of the ward heeler. I never was paid for this secret service work, nor for the expenses I incurred, and my failure to receive vouchers for my salary made it apparent to me that my appointment had not been a formal one. The experience was interesting, however, as a temporary diversion, and I was satisfied to regard it as a quid pro quo for favors Fisk and I had received from the Administration, and which we might expect to continue to receive, and let it go at that. I have no doubt that Mr. Johnson looked at the matter in the same light.

While the “Stuart” was laid up for repairs at one time, during the Cuban expeditions, Capt. Williams and I took the famous “Virginius” out on her first trip, with a cargo of arms from the Junta. The Junta wanted me to keep her but I refused, on account of her size. She was larger than the “Stuart” but no faster, and had quarters for a considerable number of men outside of her crew, which the “Stuart” had not. I foresaw that they would want to use her in transporting men, and to put her into that service would greatly increase the risk of her capture. The ideal vessel for filibustering purposes is a small, stout ship of light draft and high speed, without room, to say nothing of accommodations, for passengers. A large hold is not required, for a mighty valuable cargo of arms can be stowed away in a comparatively small space. The man in command of a filibustering expedition must be prepared for any emergency and needs to have his wits about him every minute. If he is to succeed he cannot think about anything except his cargo and its delivery; he cannot afford to have any men hanging onto his coat and dividing and diverting his attention. Transporting troops is a very different business from carrying arms, and my experience has convinced me that the two cannot well be combined on one ship.

Carrying contraband is dangerous business under the most favorable conditions. The hand of every nation is raised against you; though you be an American the flag of your own country, even, can give you no protection, for you are engaged in an illegal act, however much it may stand for the advancement of humanity and the spread of liberty. Save for those with whom you are allied, and who necessarily are few in number, else they would be recognized as belligerents and given the rights of war, any one who happens along the sea’s highway is liable to take a shot at you or try to capture you, on general principles. Therefore the commander of a filibustering expedition must regard desperate chances as a part of the daily routine, but he is unwise to add to his risks by complicating his mission. He must, too, be in the business chiefly for the love of the adventure it provides as royal payment, for the financial returns, except in cases out of the ordinary, are as nothing compared with the dangers that are encountered.

Just as I had expected, the “Virginius” after many narrow escapes was finally captured by the Spaniards on October 31, 1873, as she was about to land a mixed cargo of men and arms near Santiago. General Cespedes, the life of the revolution, and three of his best fighting chiefs, Generals Ryan, Varona, and Del Sal, who happened to be on board, were summarily executed. This was done, it was claimed, under prior sentences, but as a matter of fact there was not so much as a mockery of a trial, either at the time they were put to death or previously. All of the others who were on board were tried for piracy and promptly convicted, of course. Within a week after the seizure of the ship, Capt. Joseph Fry, her American commander, thirty-six of his crew, and sixteen “passengers,” were lined up and shot to death, with an excess of brutality. The rest of the prisoners, who were to have been similarly disposed of, were saved, not through intervention from Washington whence it should have come, but by the timely arrival of a British warship, whose commander refused to permit any further butchery. England peremptorily compelled the Spanish Government to pay a substantial indemnity for the British subjects who had been thus lawlessly executed, while the United States Government, as an evidence of the protection it gave American citizens in those days, waited twenty-five years before taking vengeance on Spain for the murder of Captain Fry and his companions. But for the “Virginius” Massacre and the bad blood it engendered between America and Spain, Cuba might still be taking orders from Madrid instead of from Washington; had it not been for that never forgotten butchery the blowing up of the “Maine” might have been regarded as an accident.

Along about 1868, after it had run half its length, the Ten Years’ War began to bog down. The Cubans were out of funds and appeared to have lost heart, and it looked as though the revolt would be another failure. There was nothing else doing in this part of the world in which I was interested so I decided to go to Europe, being attracted by the prospect of war between France and Germany and the adventurous possibilities which it suggested.

CHAPTER III
IN LEAGUE WITH THE SPANISH PRETENDER

DURING the Cuban filibustering days I gained more notoriety than I desired, even though it really was not a great deal, and as I did not wish to be known as a trouble-maker on the other side, where the laws against the carrying of contraband were being rigidly enforced on account of the recent “Alabama” affair, I lost my identity while crossing the Atlantic. When I reached London in the latter part of 1868 I was “George MacFarlane,” and in order that I might have an address and ostensible occupation I established the commercial house of George MacFarlane & Co., at 10 Corn Hill. My partner, who really was only a clerk, was a young Englishman named Cunningham, for whom I had been able to do a good turn while I was living in Chicago. I opened an account in the London & Westminster Bank with an initial deposit of close to seventy-five thousand pounds, which gave me a financial standing.

In order to establish my respectability with the British Board of Trade, which exercised a watchful eye and general supervision over the enforcement of the maritime laws, and to build up a reputation for eminent business respectability which would serve as a cover for the illicit but much more exciting operations in which I expected to engage as soon as opportunity offered, and at the same time to throw me naturally in contact with shipping concerns under the most favorable conditions, I bought several small vessels and began shipping general cargoes to and from the Continent, either on my own account or for others. Fate was kind to me in throwing in my way the little steamer “Leckwith,” which I bought at a bargain. She had been built as a yacht for a nobleman but did not suit him. She was not large enough to be used as a passenger boat and her depth of hold was not sufficient to make her profitable as a freighter, but she was exactly the ship I wanted as a carrier of contraband. She registered five hundred and twenty tons and could do seventeen knots when she was pushed. She was small enough to go anywhere, fast enough to beat anything that was likely to chase her, and big enough for my purposes. Until the day I buried her, years afterward, as the only means of destroying damning evidence, she served me faithfully and well, and I doubt if any ship, before or since, has made so much money for her owner.

One of the first shipping firms with which I became acquainted was that of H. Nickell & Son, of Leadenhall Street. They were speculators as well as merchants and I cultivated them, without having to wait long for results. Encouraged by the insurrection against the Bourbons, which had resulted in the abdication and flight to France of Queen Isabella, Don Carlos, the Spanish Pretender, was just then, in 1869, preparing to make his last fight for the long coveted crown of Spain. His chief agent had bought all of the arms and ammunition he could pay for from Kynoch & Co., of Birmingham, which establishment is now, I believe, owned by Joseph Chamberlain and his son and brother, though conducted under the old name, and had contracted with Nickell & Son for their delivery on the northern coast of Spain. They had lost one cargo, through the watchfulness of a Spanish warship, and had nearly come to grief with another, just before I became acquainted with them.

The Pretender’s agent then proposed that Don Carlos pay for the arms when they were delivered, instead of at the factory, as before, and suggested to Nickell & Son that they enter into a contract on that basis, to cover all future purchases.

Old man Nickell was considering this proposition when I met him and, suspecting that I had ideas regarding the sailing of ships that went beyond the uninteresting routine of strictly legitimate commerce, he told me about it, after we had come to know and understand each other a bit. Naturally, it appealed to me and it did not take us long to reach an agreement which, if it would not have blocked our plans and we had wanted to follow the foolish English fashion, would have enabled us to advertise ourselves as “Purveyors Extraordinary of Munitions of War to His Royal Majesty, Don Carlos.” It was agreed that Nickell should buy the arms while I should furnish the ship and deliver them. We were to charge a price commensurate with the risk we assumed, with something added,—for we had reason to believe the Pretender had plenty of money,—and divide the proceeds.

It was stipulated that the first consignment should be delivered to Don Carlos himself at his headquarters near Bilbao, and before accepting the cargo I went there on an iron-ore steamer to reconnoitre. I found that the Pretender’s retreat in the mountains back from Bilbao was in the very heart of that section of Spain which was most loyal to him. Carlist sentiment was almost unanimous in the Provinces of Vizcaya, Alava, and Guipuzcoa, and strong in the adjoining Provinces of Navarre, Catalonia, and Aragon, so there was nothing to fear once we succeeded in getting up the river. Even the city of Bilbao was largely composed of Carlist supporters, but the forts which commanded the river there and at Portugalete, the deep-water port of Bilbao on the coast at the mouth of the river, were manned by unfriendly troops. The two Generals, Prim and Serrano, who were the real rulers of Spain and who placed Prince Amadeo, son of the King of Italy, on the throne a year or so later, were as much opposed to the Carlists as they had been to the Bourbons. They did not propose that the Pretender should gain any ground during the troubled period which they had brought about by the expulsion of Queen Isabella. They knew he was trying to import arms from England and they had so many warships patrolling the northern coast that it practically amounted to a blockade; but, after my experience at Charleston, I did not regard that as a serious matter.

Only a small and light-draft ship could get up the river to the point at which the arms were to be delivered, which was a few miles above Bilbao. I did not care to try it with the “Leckwith” so I chartered a smaller steamer which greatly resembled the “Santa Marta,” a Spanish coastwise ship. To avoid suspicion as to their real destination the rifles and cartridges, in boxes which gave no indication of their contents, were shipped to Antwerp, and I picked them up there. As soon as we were out of sight of land I repainted my ship and made some slight changes in her upper works, until she looked almost exactly like the “Santa Marta.” That name was then painted on her bows and the Spanish flag was hoisted over her. With this precaution I figured that we would avoid any trouble with the forts or any warships we might encounter, and we did; in fact we did not see a single warship. Of course, if we had happened to meet the real “Santa Marta,” we would have had to run for it at least, and it might have been more serious than that, but I simply took a chance that we would not run into her. We saluted the forts as we passed them and they responded without taking two looks at us.

We got over the bar at Bilbao with very little to spare under our keel and went on up the river to the appointed place, where we tied up so close to the steep bank that we threw a plank ashore. A band of gypsies—Gitanos—were camped close by, and in ten minutes they were all over the ship. Among them was a singularly beautiful girl to whom I was drawn. She followed me around the ship, which did not annoy me at all, and insisted on telling my fortune. When I consented she told me, among a lot of other things, that I would be paid a large sum of money in the mountains, and assassinated. Her dire prediction did not cause me a moment’s anxiety, as I have no faith in human ability to discern what the inhuman Fates have prescribed for us, but she was greatly worried by what the cards had told her and begged me, almost with tears in her eyes, to stay away from the mountains. As I then had no thought of going into the hills I assured her that I would do as she advised, whereat she was much relieved.

No messenger from Don Carlos came down to meet us, as had been agreed upon, and after waiting three or four days I sent one of the gypsies to his camp to advise him that the cargo awaited his orders, and the payment for it. He replied that he would send for it and that I should come to his headquarters for the money, as he wished to consult with me about further shipments. He sent along one of his aides to escort me to his camp. The Gitano girl’s warning had made so little impression on me that I did not recall it. It seemed natural enough that Don Carlos should want more arms, as we had expected he would, and that he should want to give personal directions as to where and when they were to be delivered, and without any thought of danger I set forth at once. George Brown, my sailing master, a gigantic Nova Scotian, and Bill Heather, the second officer, accompanied me, as they wished to see the country and, perhaps, the famous Pretender.

The Carlist camp was located well up in the mountains, nearly twelve miles from where we were tied up. Following the aide, we walked diagonally away from the river for about six miles, which brought us to the foothills. Then we switched off to the left for a mile and turned sharply to the right into a canyon, which we followed for three miles or more when it turned to the right again, and a two-mile tramp landed us at the headquarters of the claimant to the Spanish crown. The camp stretched away through the woods that covered the plateau to which we had climbed but we had no opportunity to inspect it, nor to form any intelligent idea as to the number of troops, for right at the head of the canyon was a large square tent, surmounted with a flag bearing the Carlist arms, which we rightly guessed was occupied by the Commander-in-Chief.

We were halted there and after a short wait I was ceremoniously ushered into the august presence of the Pretender. He was standing as I entered, for impressive effect rather than from courtesy, and I am compelled to admit that in personal appearance he had a great advantage over any real King I have ever seen. Perhaps forty years old, he was in the full glory of physical manhood; six feet tall, powerfully built, and unmistakably a Spaniard. He had a full beard and moustache as black as his hair, large dark eyes, a Grecian nose, and a broad high forehead which suggested a higher degree of intellectuality than he possessed. But his cold face was cruel and unscrupulous and I felt—what I afterward found was fact—that his adherents followed him chiefly from principle and were dominated much more by fear than by personal loyalty. Yet, despite a face forbidding to any keen student of human nature, he was an imposing figure, with evidences of royalty that were exaggerated by his manner. He greeted me with frigid formality in contradiction of the warm welcome I had expected, as due a saviour of the Carlist cause, and his first words, spoken in fair English, were a curt statement that he had no money but would pay for my cargo through his London agent within two months.

Chagrined at the manner of my reception and surprised at his attitude, I inquired, with some heat: “How is it possible, Your Majesty, that you are not prepared to carry out the agreement made with your agent who was acting, as he convinced us, with your full authority? Our contract stipulates that my cargo is to be paid for in cash and unless this is complied with I cannot deliver it and we will be compelled to accept no further orders from you.”

“If my agent made such a contract as that,” he retorted with assumed indignation, “he did it on his own responsibility alone and I refuse to be bound by it. I have stated my terms. If you do not care to accede to them you can go to the devil.”

It was plain that I would make no headway in that direction so I went about on the other tack, using honeyed words in place of harsh ones.

“I beg Your Majesty’s pardon,” I said with much deference, “for momentarily losing my temper. It was due to the heat and the long tramp. I am not accustomed to such enervating exercise. I see now that Your Majesty is joking. It could not be otherwise, for the word of a King of Spain is sacred.”

The flattery went home, as I supposed, and while he repeated that he had stated the exact situation, his manner was more friendly.

“You carry the joke admirably, Your Majesty,” I continued. “Had you not been born to rule you would have won fame as an actor. Your mock seriousness would, I fear, cause real seriousness at Madrid if General Prim knew of the extent to which you indulge your capacity for humor.”

When he persisted in his assertion that he was in earnest and did not propose to live up to the contract, I pointed out to him, as discreetly as possible, what the result of such a course would be. “I can only again congratulate you on your art,” I said, “for it would be ridiculous for me to believe you speak seriously. Failure to keep the agreement made by your agent even though, as I now believe, he acted without explicit instructions from you [which I did not believe at all] would destroy your excellent credit, not only with my firm but with all other dealers in revolutionary supplies, and that, of course, is not to be thought of. On the other hand, by paying for this cargo, in compliance with the contract, you will establish your credit more firmly than ever, and I have no doubt you will be able to make your own terms for further shipments. I know that Your Majesty is not only very honest but very wise.”

This argument appeared to convince him and, with a smile as though he really had been only joking, he summoned a venerable Jew, evidently his treasurer, who looked like the original of all pictures of Shylock, and, speaking so rapidly in Spanish that I could hardly understand him, ordered him to pay me twenty-eight thousand pounds, the amount called for by the manifest. The Jew returned in a few minutes with the exact amount, chiefly in Spanish notes of large denomination but with enough gold to make quite a load. While I was waiting for the money he told me he would want thirteen thousand more stands of arms and a million cartridges, which were to be shipped in two cargoes at times and places to be indicated by his agent in London, who would arrange the terms of payment, under specific instructions, to avoid any further misunderstandings. I assured him that they would be sent when and where he wanted them. With the transaction completed Don Carlos dramatically waved me out.

The officer who had piloted us to the camp suggested that we could find our way back to the ship without any trouble, as the trail was clearly defined, and we started back alone. Before we had gone twenty steps Brown asked if I had been paid in cash. I pointed to my bulging pockets and told him I undoubtedly had. He then confessed that he thought we were “in for it.” Six cavalrymen, he said, had started down the trail not long before I left Don Carlos’ tent, and from the action attending their movement he believed that they had been sent out to waylay and rob and probably murder us in the deep canyon into which the ravine from the camp turned. In a flash I recalled the prediction of the gypsy girl and the promise I had given her. I laughed at myself for the spasm of something like fear that came into my mind, yet I was undeniably nervous, for Brown was not a man to form foolish fancies or become unduly alarmed about anything. None of us was armed and if Brown’s suspicion was correct, which I was slow to believe, the troopers would make short work of us.

We had turned a corner that put us out of sight of the camp and were walking slowly along discussing, with deep gravity on the part of Brown and Heather and a partly assumed mock seriousness on my part, the possibilities of the situation and the general cussedness of Spanish character, when I saw a dark face peering at us through the underbrush that matted the trail on both sides. I am not sure, but I think I jumped; anyway, I know I was startled. At the first glance the face looked like nothing but one of the troopers we had been talking about but in an instant I recognized the Gitano girl who had told my fortune and begged me not to go into the mountains. She beckoned to us and we answered her summons, without any unseemly haste, perhaps, but certainly without any delay. Uttering not a word she plunged off at right angles to the trail into deep woods, in which we would have been hopelessly lost in ten minutes, with the three of us following her in Indian file. She led us over a hill and across a wide depression and then over another much higher mountain. There was not so much as a suggestion of a path and it was hard going, yet none of us complained. She brought us out to the trail at the point where we had made our first turn into the foothills. From there it was a straight road to the ship, with open country all around, so there could be no fear of ambuscade or attack.

The tension was relieved and the girl, with tears in her eyes that betrayed her real emotions, threw her arms around my neck and reproached me passionately for violating my promise to her and exposing myself to what she said would have been certain death but for her intervention. It was with difficulty that I released myself from her embrace, while Brown and Heather discreetly and rapidly walked on ahead of us. She said she heard where I had gone when she went to the ship in the morning to see me, and knowing what the plot would be, she had taken the short-cut through the mountains, by which we had returned, to intercept us as we were leaving the camp. The gypsies were loyal to the Carlists through fear of them so she could get no help from her own people, but she had prevailed on her brother to steal up the trail through the canyon to see what happened there, not to verify her suspicions, as she explained, but to prove to us that she was right. An hour after we reached the ship her brother returned and reported to her that six cavalrymen had come down the ravine from the camp and concealed themselves alongside the trail in the canyon just below the turn. After a long wait one of them galloped back toward the camp. He soon returned, after discovering that we had left the trail, and the others went back to camp with him. To Brown and Heather that seemed convincing proof of what would have happened to us but for the gypsy girl; my own notion about it was that what had happened had to happen, and I had not been killed simply because my time had not arrived. Therefore I felt nothing of gratitude; but when I came to analyze my real feeling toward the young woman, whose wondrous black eyes seemed to reflect all of the mystery and witchery of those glorious ages that died with the departure of the Moors, and were silently eloquent of a fine civilization of old centuries, I found that the deep impression her physical charms had made on me had been intensified by her mad affection for me. This made it no easy matter to leave her, but I had no notion of taking her with me, and had to get bluff Bill Heather to half carry her ashore just before the gang plank was pulled in.

Most of the arms had been removed from the ship while we were away and turned over to the guard Don Carlos had sent down. The rest of the cargo was jerked out with all speed and as soon as the last box was on the bank we got under way. We had not gone a quarter of a mile, moving slowly on account of the tortuous channel, when the gypsies came running after us, shouting and waving at us to come back. The cause of their excitement was soon discovered in the presence of my Gitano girl, who had stolen on board at the last minute, while I was below inspecting the engines, and concealed herself until we were under way.

My first impulse was to stop the ship and set her ashore but before I could give the order she came running to me and declared, with an imperious air of authority: “I am going with you, so pay no attention to my foolish people.”

“But, my dear girl, you cannot do that,” I protested. “I shall be accused of having stolen you.”

“You cannot steal what belongs to you,” was her quick reply.

“But I am going to a strange land where there are none of your people and where your language is a strange tongue. You will be lonely and die.”

“I never shall be lonely where you are,” she exclaimed with all the passion of her romantic soul, “and I shall not die unless they kill me here. If you go on I go with you; if I go ashore you go with me.”

Never before having encountered such affection I was content to let her have her way. Her tribesmen followed us, and called down all manner of curious curses on our heads, until they were convinced we had no thought of stopping, when two of them galloped on ahead of us toward Bilbao. They went to the fort, evidently, and told the officer in command that we were aiding Don Carlos, for as soon as we got within hailing distance we were ordered to heave to. We paid no attention to the command, of course, and as the only effect of a warning gun which followed was to increase our speed, they sent half a dozen shots at us, as a matter of duty. One of them shattered the fore-topmast and brought the fore-rigging down by the run; the others went wild. We were fired at from a height and dropping shots seldom hit, though when they do they are generally disastrous. With everything dragging forward, until the gear could be cleared away, we proceeded down the widening river at full speed. Greatly to my surprise we were not even hailed by the fort at the mouth of the river, where I had looked for some serious business, and we continued happily on our way to London.

Soon after our arrival there I established the Gitano girl, to whom I had become deeply attached, in a cottage near Chalk Farm, not far from the city. I left her amply supplied with money and there were other gypsies near there with whom she could fraternize. It is an evidence of the strange way in which my life has been ordered that I never saw her again. When I returned, at the first opportunity, in about two years, I found nothing but a pile of blackened ruins where the cottage had stood. The Gitano girl’s beauty had made her known to the people who lived nearby but they had not seen her for more than a year, and the neighboring gypsies had moved away, no one knew where. I am not much given to regrets, being content to let my destiny work itself out free from senseless protests, yet if my wishes had been consulted I would not have lost my glorious Gitano girl. Possibly the ruined cottage symbolized a love that had burned itself out or it may be that somewhere her spirit is waiting for mine. “Why?” and “When?” are questions that I never attempt to answer.

That experience finished me with Don Carlos. Seven or eight years later, when I was selling arms to Montenegro and Turkey, and not long after he had finally been driven out of Spain, I met him at Claridge’s Hotel in London, as he came in from attending church at the Greek Chapel. He recognized me and, after pausing for a second, offered me his hand, but I refused it.

“What do you mean?” he demanded angrily.

“I mean, Your Royal Highness,” I replied, with some sarcasm, “that if I am here to shake hands with you it is through no good will of yours, for you tried to have me assassinated in your mountains.” He looked at me hard for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, and walked on.

After settling up with Nickell on the Don Carlos expedition I devoted myself, for a few months, to legitimate commerce. I had bachelor quarters on Russell Square, in London, and divided my time between that city and Paris, where I opened a branch of my mercantile and shipping house at 30 Rue Vivienne. While in Paris I lived at the Grand Hotel and loafed at Charley Wells’ American restaurant nearby on the Rue Scribe. In both London and Paris I read and heard considerable about a picturesque South American named Guzman Blanco. He had been driven out of Venezuela, of which country he was Vice-President, and was said to be then planning a revolt through which he expected to gain the presidency. I was anxious to meet him but was unable to do so, as both of us were moving about a great deal. I had thought of Venezuela before I visited Europe and, attracted by the promised revolt, I decided that I would go to that country as soon as the Franco-Prussian War, which then was almost ready to break out, was over, or before that if it lasted longer than I thought it would. Just before the war began I bought three cargoes of wines at Bordeaux and sent them to London, where I sold them later at a good profit.

During the brief war, which began on July 19, 1870, and ended in the capitulation of the French at Sedan on September first, I had three ships busy with honest cargoes, but I did not get a chance to do any contraband running until just before its close. The Austrian Army was then being rearmed with the improved Werndle rifle, and thousands of the old guns were stored in the arsenal at Vienna.

Nickell had bought a lot of them at a bargain but on account of the war Austria would not release them without a guarantee that they were not to be used against Germany. I was led to believe I could sell five thousand of these rifles to the Committee of Safety at Bordeaux; so I bought that number from Nickell and, with an order for their delivery, I went to Trieste in the “Leckwith.” Charles Lever, the novelist, was then the British consul at Trieste, where he died a year or two later. On the pretence that the arms were for Japan, and that I would be able to establish that fact within a few days, I secured the removal of the guns from Vienna to the Trieste arsenal, which was only a few hundred yards from the dock at which the “Leckwith” was tied up. However, to get them over that short distance and then to get away with them was a problem that puzzled me. I was mulling over it one day in a café when a maudlin young Englishman, who was sitting at the table with me and had been trying to talk to me, pulled out a passport, all plastered with red seals and wax in the old Continental fashion. It was a most formidable and ceremonious looking document and the instant I saw it an inspiration seized me. From the most taciturn I became the most jovial of companions and plied the Englishman with wine until he fell sound asleep.

Then I took the passport from his pocket and hustled off to the arsenal. I had been assiduously cultivating the officers there and was delighted to find the young lieutenant with whom I was best acquainted in charge of the guard. I told him I would have the order for the release of the rifles within an hour and proceeded to celebrate by getting him in the same state in which I had found the convenient Englishman. I sent word to Lorensen, sailing master of the “Leckwith,” to get up a full head of steam, and engaged a dozen big wagons to be at the arsenal in an hour. I arrived with the wagons, waved the gaudy passport in front of the young officer’s face, and without trying to read it he told me to go ahead. We made quick work of getting the boxed arms to the ship and under her hatches, for the guard was changed at four o’clock and my sleepy young friend would be succeeded by an officer who was sober and in his right mind. We were not quite fast enough, however, for just as we were pulling out the new officer of the guard came running down the dock, shouting that he wanted to see the order for the release of the arms. As he was well out of arm’s-reach I made a fussy effort to hand him the passport. Then I opened it out and showed it to him, all the while explaining that it was all right.

He went away shaking his head and I anticipated trouble at the fort at the entrance to the harbor, at the head of the Adriatic, as the channel through which we had to run was narrow. The fort occupied a commanding position and had high walls from the water’s edge, with a free bastion high up. Sure enough, a shot whizzed across our bows as we reached the fort. Immediately I swung the ship in and before they saw I was not going to come to anchor, as they had supposed, we were so close under the walls that they could not bring their guns to bear on us. It was only a very few minutes, however, until they could reach us with their seaward guns, and they let go at us without any delay. The second shot took a bite out of the mainmast and it looked as though they had found our range and would smash us in a jiffy; but the brave little ship was tearing through the water at her top speed and, as we were going directly away from them, was hard to hit. Shells splashed uncomfortably close to us for a few minutes, but save for one shot that carried away some of the ginger-bread work on the stern we were not struck again, and were soon out of reach of anything like accurate fire. The “Leckwith” had stood her first baptism of fire in a way that augured well for her future, and the sign was a good one.

The arms were rushed to Bordeaux and turned over to the Committee of Safety only a few days before the battle of Sedan. I was sufficiently enthusiastic in the cause of France to land them without a proper guarantee of payment, and, in fact, they never were paid for. Everything was turmoil; so after waiting a few days I placed the bill for the arms with an attorney and hurried on to London, en route for Venezuela, where I expected to find more excitement, in which hope I was in no way disappointed. I placed the “Leckwith” and my ships in the hands of Nickell & Co., for charter, and took the first steamer for New York.

CHAPTER IV
LAWLESS LATIN AMERICA

THE first word that reached me on my arrival in New York near the end of September, 1870, was that my wife was seriously ill at her old home in Illinois. She had been on the Continent with relatives of old man Nickell, the ship broker and contraband dealer, during most of the time that I was messing around with Don Carlos and the French, and started home two months ahead of me. She had a very bad trip, her ship having been twenty-six days at sea, and as she was not a good sailor she suffered severely and contracted an illness which proved fatal. I went to her at once and remained at her side until the end, three weeks later. Her death was a severe blow to me. She was an exceptional woman, in that she had much good sense, was not given to chatter, and was a delightful companion. Though she had never become quite reconciled to my adventurously active life, I was devoted to her, and if she had lived I might eventually have settled down and become a respectable and self-respecting business man, in which class, I am bound to say, I would have had little company.

When I returned to New York after the funeral I was greatly depressed and was in a mood for anything that offered excitement. A few days later I found some diversion through a chance meeting with Frank (Francis Lay) Norton, just after he had gone broke in John Morrissey’s uptown gambling house. He knew me, by reputation and through the old Cuban Junta under which both of us had operated, as well as I knew him, and we soon became friends. Later we became partners in some of the most gloriously exciting exploits in which I have been fortunate enough to participate. Norton was a natural-born pirate, and he looked the part. He was then about forty years old, five feet, eight inches tall, thin and wiry and possessed of remarkable strength. His eyes, hair, beard, and moustache were as black as coal. You could feel his eyes looking through you and would almost lose a realizing sense of what was in your mind; it was not hypnotism nor mental or physical dominance but he could almost read your most secret thoughts. He was completely irreligious, cynical, and cold-blooded. Under the most severe tests a slight twitching of the eyes was his only sign of excitement. He was daring to the supreme degree but never foolishly reckless, and I don’t believe he ever experienced the sensation of fear. He was, too, as he needed to be, almost a dead shot in off-hand firing with rifle or pistol, and an expert swordsman.

When I first met him he was wild about the China Sea, where he had spent several thrilling years and made several fortunes, only to lose them as soon as he could find a gambling house, for he was a faro fiend of the most virulent type. He declared that was the only part of the world for us, with regard both to excitement and money, and suggested that we form a partnership and go out there “to do anything that came handy.” Though I had spent money like the proverbial drunken sailor, or worse, for I was born with all the tastes of an aristocrat, I was then worth several hundred thousand dollars, while Norton was worth nothing, so I could not quite see a partnership such as he had in mind. Nor was he able to tempt me away from Venezuela. I had heard so much of that country and of Guzman Blanco that my heart was set on going there before I undertook to explore any other strange lands. The upshot of our many discussions was that I sent Norton to London to take command of the “Leckwith” until I was ready to join him, when it was agreed we should go out in the yacht to his beloved China Sea. I had brought Lars Lorensen, the former sailing master of the “Leckwith” and a brave and loyal Norseman, with me from the other side, as I expected to have need of him in South America.

After Norton’s departure I bought the fore and aft schooner yacht “Juliette,” about eighty tons, fitted her out at New London, Connecticut, for a six months’ cruise, and with Lorensen as sailing master, started for Bermuda to test her seaworthiness. We reached there in five days and proceeded to St. Thomas, where I hoped to find Guzman Blanco. He was not there so we went on to Curacoa, which was then, as it has been ever since, a revolutionary rendezvous. We arrived there in the latter part of December. I found that Guzman was there, and James Faxon, the American consul, introduced me to him at the Willemstad Club, where he was playing billiards with Gen. Pulgar, his chief-of-staff. Before meeting him I had familiarized myself with recent Venezuelan history, as far as it concerned him. I learned that Guzman Blanco’s father, Dr. Antonio Guzman, began political life as private secretary to Simon Bolivar, the famous “Liberator,” and had been prominent in Venezuelan politics for fifty years. He aided in the election of Jose Tadeo Monagas to the presidency and at his request his son, Guzman Blanco, was appointed Secretary of Legation at Washington, where he lived during 1856 and 1857. In the latter year Dr. Guzman had a row with Monagas and was expelled from the country. He went to St. Thomas and was soon joined by his son. There they met Gen. Falcon, who too had been banished by Monagas and was planning a revolt. When Falcon invaded Venezuela in 1859, in what became known as the “Five Years’ War,” Guzman Blanco went with him. In a succession of brilliant victories young Guzman demonstrated his great bravery and military genius and he soon was at the head of a division, later becoming second in command. Falcon entered Caracas in triumph in April, 1863, after devastating most of the country, and was elected President, with Guzman Blanco as Vice-President. In addition to this title Guzman was made Minister of Finance and of Foreign Relations, and in 1864, and again in 1867, he went to Europe to settle the national debt and arrange a new loan. While he was away the second time the old Monagas faction came back to life with enough strength to force Falcon to abandon Caracas, and when Guzman returned from London in 1868 a mob surrounded his house and stoned it. He fled to Europe. He had just returned and was planning an invasion of Venezuela when I met him.

I told him of my efforts the year before to meet him in London and Paris and their purpose; that I was running contraband, more to satisfy my love of adventure than as a business, and I believed I could be useful to him; that South America was prolific of revolutions and I was ambitious to have a hand in them. After he had studied me, asked all sorts of questions, and apparently satisfied himself that I could be relied on, Guzman told me, in a general way, of his plans and asked me to secure for him three thousand old Remington rifles and five hundred thousand cartridges and deliver them as quickly as possible at Curacoa. We sailed for New York the day after the order was given, early in January, and made the trip in just a month. I bought the arms from P. D. Orvis & Co., of Whitehall Street, and we were on our way back within a week. We made the return trip in twenty-eight days and reached Curacoa just before the sunset gun was fired. The entrance to the harbor at Curacoa is very narrow and in those days it was, and I believe still is, closed during the night by a great chain, which was raised at sunset and lowered at sunrise by a powerful windlass.

I went ashore at once and to the club where, instead of Guzman Blanco, whom I expected would be waiting for me, I found Gen. Ortega, who was with Guzman when I first met him and seemed to be fully in his confidence. Ortega handed me a note, bearing what purported to be the signature of Guzman, which directed me to deliver the cargo at a place to be indicated by Ortega, and stated that payment for it would be made on my cabin table. As I was not familiar with Guzman’s writing I showed the signature to Dr. Leon and to old man Jesurun, who owned the shipyard, who knew Guzman well, and both of them pronounced it genuine. I had no suspicion that anything was wrong and took this precaution simply as a matter of ordinary business sense. Ortega directed me to deliver the cargo at Tucacas Point, a little peninsula about one hundred miles west of La Guaira, and said we must put to sea that night, as Guzman was anxiously awaiting the arms. Through exceptional representations of some sort to the commandante he secured the lowering of the chain, and we left at once, arriving off the point the next evening.

Ortega went ashore and returned with a request that I order off the hatches and start the unloading of the cargo in my boats and then go ashore with him and get my money. This was not in accord with my contract with Guzman or with the note Ortega had handed me, but, though I was reminded of my experiences with Don Carlos, I had great confidence in Guzman and did not wish to offend him, so I readily consented to the amended arrangement. As soon as the unloading was well under way I went ashore with Ortega. We climbed the bluff and walked half a mile inland to a mud-thatched hut before which a sentry was pacing. Ortega gave the countersign and we stepped inside, to find Gen. Pulgar, who was chief-of-staff for Guzman when I was introduced to him at the Willemstad Club, wrapped in a chinchora and smoking in a hammock. After shaking hands with him I asked where Guzman was. He replied evasively that he was there instead of Guzman. I told him briefly about my trip, in response to his queries, and then asked him for my money, which Ortega had said was waiting for me. Pulgar smiled and straightened up.

“I told Ortega to deliver that message to you,” he said, “but there is no use mincing words and I may as well tell you that you are my prisoner. Your cargo is being taken care of and will be put to a very different purpose from that which you expected. As I have said, you are my prisoner but I have an offer to make you which, if you accept it, will be to your advantage. Guzman is not an old friend of yours and if you make a profit on your arms it can’t make much difference to you whether you serve him or me. If you will join my forces, of your own free will, I will make you a colonel and give you command of a battalion and when the revolution is over I will pay you for your rifles, just as Guzman agreed to do.”

“You seem to forget,” I replied, “that I have a contract with Gen. Guzman which, as an honorable man, I can’t go back on.”

“Well, you don’t appear to be in a very good position just now to carry it out, do you?” he asked.

I again inquired where Guzman was but a shrug of the shoulders was the only answer I could get to questions along that line. Not knowing as much about Venezuelan revolutions then as I did later I could not fathom this strange situation to my entire satisfaction, but it was my guess that in some way Pulgar had become arrayed against Guzman, and it turned out that I was right.

I told Pulgar that I would give him an answer at gunfire, in the morning, and spent the night with Ortega, under guard. I tried to draw him out but, evidently according to orders, he would not even talk about the weather.

At sunrise we went to see Pulgar. When asked for my decision I inquired what the result would be if his revolution failed.

“Then I am sorry, my dear Captain, but you will lose your cargo, while I will lose my life, which is of infinitely more importance to me. But the revolution will not fail,” he vehemently declared.

As though impressed by his confidence in himself, I announced that I would take a chance with him and accept his offer, with a mental reservation to escape at the first opportunity, for I did not propose to fight against Guzman, and that, I was convinced, was what it amounted to.

“That is excellent,” he said, with the suggestion of a bow. After coffee I went with him to inspect his troops. He had about three thousand men, many of whom were already armed with the rifles I had brought in, and they were strung across the narrow arm of the peninsula in a line almost as ragged as their clothes. I was formally given command of a battalion of three hundred men, and an Indian servant,—I afterward found he had orders to shoot me if I attempted to escape,—was assigned to me. I accompanied Pulgar back to his headquarters, where I was given an old sword and the tarnished shoulder straps of a colonel, these constituting my uniform.

“Now that you have allied yourself with my forces,” he then said, “you will have no use for your ship, for the present at least. She is still lying in the bay and if she remains there she is likely to be captured or cause trouble. You will therefore write a note to the officer in charge of her directing him to proceed to Curacoa and await orders. She will be safe there and,” with a quizzical smile, “you will be safe here. We have no boats but we will signal your ship from the beach that we have word for it.”

I had been expecting this command and, as there was nothing else for me to do, I complied with it at once. It was cutting off my only hope of rescue, though a forlorn one as I was forced to admit, but the adventure which the situation promised to develop was getting into my blood and, to tell the truth, I rather liked the idea of being left to my own resources amid such strange surroundings. Pulgar had told me during the inspection of his camp that we would probably soon be in action, as “some” troops were advancing on him, and if they did not attack him before he was ready to march, he would go out to meet them. He preferred that they should bring the fight to him for all of his men were recruited from that section and knew every foot of the country. When I came to know Venezuela I appreciated that Pulgar required no great prestige to gain a considerable following in that part of the country, for it was a veritable hotbed of revolution, ranking with Maturin in the east and Barquisimeto in the southwest,—three kegs of powder that could be set off by almost any man who had two legs and a sword.

I started in to drill my troops with the idea of making them a really effective fighting force, but it was the most difficult task I had ever undertaken. They were lazy to a degree that passes the understanding of an Anglo-Saxon and they had not the slightest desire to learn even the first principles of the science of war, as it is understood outside of South America. I had been trying to whip them, and others, into some sort of shape for about a week when word was brought in one morning that the enemy was approaching. We had no advance guard out, though I had tried to induce Pulgar to post one, and a few minutes after the scouts had been driven in the action became general, with the forces apparently about evenly matched in numbers. Instead of allowing me to lead my battalion, Pulgar ordered me to remain with him on a little knoll in the rear, from which he made a pretence of directing his forces. He could have accomplished much more in front, for what his men needed was a leader, not a director. They were fighting in Indian fashion, with every man shooting indiscriminately from behind a tree or log, and they paid no attention to commands. I will say for them, though, that they fought hard and stubbornly, but they were gradually driven back, and Pulgar, who had a terrible temper, was furious. All at once the opposing troops were largely reinforced and came with a rush which quickly converted our orderly retreat into a rout. Pulgar, cursing like a madman, dashed madly into the disorganized mass of his liberty-loving louts, with Ortega and the rest of his staff at his heels.

I was left alone and was hesitating as to what I should do when my Indian servant tugged at my trousers leg. “Follow me, Colonel,” he said, “I know where there is a boat.” He started off at the run and covered ground so fast that I had to gallop my horse to keep up with him. He led the way to the beach near where my cargo had been landed and pushed a native boat from under a clump of mangrove trees. We jumped in and shoved off in a hurry, for Ortega and several of his men had just appeared on the bluff above us and were making for us. There were no oars in the boat but we pulled a board loose from the bottom and used it as a paddle. A strong current from the east swept us clear of the peninsula and out to sea; but I was not alarmed, for I figured that we would soon be in the path of coasting vessels. Scattered rifle patter reached us for a long time, indicating that my former comrades-in-arms were being ignominiously chased around in a way that must have been most discouraging to Pulgar. Toward the middle of the afternoon, as we were trying to work in toward the land, the Indian let our paddle get away from him, which left us entirely at the mercy of the elements, and I suspected that we might have fared better if we had stayed on shore.

We drifted around for three days and nights without so much as a glimpse of a distant sail, and without an ounce of food or a mouthful of water, save only such as we were able to suck out of our clothes during and after a providential rain that fell on the second night. On the morning of the fourth day a fog lifted and close to us was a fleet of fishermen from the island of Oruba, twenty miles to the westward of Curacoa. They took us to their island and after we had rested and eaten for two days a fishing boat took us to Curacoa. There I learned from Consul Faxon what had happened in Venezuela. Guzman’s plans had worked out more rapidly than he anticipated when he sent me to New York for arms, and he landed in Venezuela early in February at the head of a small force but with a large army waiting for him. The old Liberals flocked to his standard and with only slight resistance he entered Caracas and proclaimed himself Dictator. His victory was so easily achieved and was so largely a personal one that he did not give to Pulgar the reward to which that general considered himself entitled, and the latter immediately started a new revolution.

When I told Faxon the manner in which I had been imposed on and how I had been impressed into Pulgar’s service, he advised me to go to Caracas at once and tell President Guzman the whole story. Though somewhat dubious as to the result, because of the fear that Guzman would be skeptical, and perhaps brutal, I followed his advice and went on the next steamer. The same ship carried a letter to Guzman from Faxon in which he told him of my experiences and of the precautions I had taken to verify the signature to the order Ortega had given me on my arrival with the arms. From the effect which this letter produced I judge that Faxon also said some very complimentary things about me, but I never had an opportunity to thank him, for he died before I was in Curacoa again.

I called on Guzman after I knew he had received Faxon’s letter, and was welcomed with marked cordiality. “Tell me your whole story,” he said, “but let me assure you, it is believed before it is told.” His face took on an ugly look when I told him how Ortega had tricked me with the forged order and he interrupted me to say that he had sent an officer to Curacoa to await the “Juliette” and direct me to deliver the arms at La Guaira. This officer’s failure to get to me in advance of Ortega had not been satisfactorily explained and had, Guzman said, been severely punished. It was evident that he suspected collusion between his agent and Ortega.

When I had finished Guzman told me he was surrounded by men whom he either suspected or hesitated to trust. He wanted a man whom he could rely on implicitly to watch for evidences of treachery among those around him, and he was kind enough to say he thought me the man for whom he had been looking. He asked me to remain in Caracas for an indefinite time, to mix freely with his entourage and become intimately acquainted with them and ascertain who could be trusted and who were doubtful. I could pose as an American who was studying the country with the idea of making investments, which would explain my interest in things and my desire to cultivate the members of his court. I spoke Spanish well and could also converse easily enough in French, though that language was little used except among the diplomats.

I accepted his invitation gladly and a part of the time that I was in Caracas I spent at the Yellow House, the residence of the President, as his guest. Guzman was the handsomest man I have ever known; tall and as straight as a sword, with long black beard and dark eyes, sharp as needles, that could flash fire or friendship. He was magnetic and winning to the last degree and every inch a ruler of men, without the faintest notion as to what fear meant. During the nearly twenty years that he was absolute ruler of Venezuela his temper was the thing most dreaded through all the land. I have seen grizzled generals, descended from the best families of old Spain, turn almost white at the sign of his anger.

Himself a pure Castiliano, he regarded the native Venezuelanos as a vastly inferior race, thereby furnishing another illustration of his good judgment, and there was much of contempt in his attitude toward them. Many times, when they had incurred his displeasure by a display of cowardice or some other fault, I have heard him abuse a quailing crowd of the highest officers in the Venezuelan Army in language much more vigorous and profane than an American policeman would use to a gang of hoodlums. “You are not worth a damn,” he would always tell them in conclusion, “except in proportion to the amount of foreign blood that is in you.” Yet until the day when he was treacherously overthrown, to the great loss of Venezuela, no criticism of his was ever resented nor was there ever a whisper of protest. The people knew their master.

One of the first whom Guzman asked me closely to observe was a young Indian officer named Joachim Crespo, an aide attached to his household. I reported that he could be implicitly trusted, and knowledge of that fact helped me out of a scrape years later, when Crespo was President of Venezuela.

Not more than ten days after my arrival in Caracas Guzman asked me to be in his private sala at ten o’clock the next morning, to meet an old friend. At the appointed hour the Governor of the Casa Publica came in, with a few officers, escorting none other than Gen. Vicento Pulgar, who had put to his service my cargo of arms. Pulgar was in full uniform and bore himself like a hero. His manner was almost contemptuous and his expression was one of amused curiosity rather than fear.

Guzman made him a courtly bow and extended his hand, which Pulgar reluctantly accepted.

“This is an unexpected pleasure,” Guzman said.

“I dare say it is to you, General, but here I am, at your service.”

“I hope you are here as a friend.”

“Whatever General Guzman desires must necessarily be accepted as an accomplished fact.”

Guzman turned to the Governor and asked him the occasion for the call. The Governor replied that they had brought General Pulgar as a prisoner of war.

“Prisoner!” exclaimed Guzman with profound astonishment. “My friend General Pulgar a prisoner! If that is the purpose of your visit you may retire.”

After the officers had departed Guzman turned to Pulgar with a more serious air. “You will be my guest in Caracas until such time as I need you elsewhere,” he said. “I will be pleased to receive a call from you every day.”

Pulgar bowed; no other parole was necessary.

That was Guzman’s way of doing things and it was well understood, especially by men of intellect like Pulgar. No firmer hand than Guzman’s ever ruled but it was ordinarily encased in a velvet glove. His bare hand, which was displayed only when extreme conditions demanded, was a sign of terror.

As Pulgar was leaving he stopped and congratulated me on my safe trip to Caracas. I thanked him, with the same politeness. Neither of us alluded to his seizure of my arms or to my enforced service with him. Pulgar and I subsequently became good friends.

I congratulated Guzman on his diplomacy and his shrewd effort to turn a powerful enemy into a useful friend, though I doubted if he would succeed.

“If I and my good adviser, Captain Boynton, cannot pull the claws of the General, we will have to take the consequences,” he said. From that I understood that I was to keep close watch of Pulgar and report daily, which I did. Everything that I saw and heard indicated that Guzman’s diplomacy would fail. Pulgar told his friends openly that while Guzman seemed very friendly he was not deceived and would kill him at the first opportunity. “Well, he’ll have plenty of opportunity,” said Guzman with a laugh when I reported this to him.

There was a reception at the Yellow House a few nights later. Pulgar was invited and was present. Guzman soon found an opportunity to engage him in conversation. “I have already found that being President of Venezuela has its objectionable features,” sighed Guzman after they had chatted lightly for a few minutes. “One has to listen to so many ridiculous tales. For instance, I have heard many foolish stories about you, one of them being an alleged threat to kill me the first time you have a chance.”

“I don’t know about the others, but I did say that,” replied Pulgar.

Guzman shrugged his shoulders, as though wearied. “How often,” he responded, “we say we are going to do things which we may think we will do but which we never do do.”

“When I get an opportunity that a gentleman can take advantage of, I intend to kill you, General Guzman,” said Pulgar, still smiling.

“Let that be the understanding then,” answered Guzman as he walked away, without displaying the slightest concern.

The very next day Guzman sent Pulgar an invitation to come to the palace at three o’clock and go driving with him. Contrary to his custom he ordered that no guards accompany them. They had not gone a quarter of a mile when one of the front wheels came off and both of them were thrown out in a heap. As they disentangled themselves Pulgar drew a revolver but it was not well out of his pocket before Guzman had him covered with his pistol.

“Ah, you were prepared for me, I see, General,” said Pulgar.

“I am always prepared for friends and enemies alike,” replied Guzman.

They put up their weapons and walked back to the palace.

“I am sorry our ride was so short,” said Guzman.

“It was long enough,” was Pulgar’s reply, “to convert an enemy into a friend.”

“In that case it has been truly delightful,” responded Guzman. They shook hands and that was the end of the Pulgar revolution.

Peace palled on Pulgar and he died not long afterward. As was his right he had the largest funeral ever seen in Venezuela. Without exception he was the bravest man I have ever known. He had all of Frank Norton’s daring and added to it what seemed to be a foolhardy recklessness that times without number carried him right up against old Graybeard’s scythe, yet he always knew the chances he was taking and coolly calculated them. When he was stripped he looked as though he had been run through a threshing machine. From head to foot he was covered with scars left by knives, swords, and bullets of all sizes. In an assault on the fortress at Porto Cabello, years before I knew him, he climbed into an embrasure and over the mouth of a cannon just as it was fired. Had he been a second later he would have been blown to pieces. The explosion burned nearly all the flesh off his legs and reduced them to pipe-stems. He was a tall, handsome man of pure Castilian blood; a revolutionist by birth, breeding, education, and occupation, and his one ambition was to be President of Venezuela. I doubt if that country will ever produce another just like him.

It was known that Guzman favored the introduction of foreign capital to develop the wonderful resources of Venezuela, the full extent of which is not even yet understood, and Caracas was soon over-run with concession hunters. Many of them sought my support and offered me all sorts of inducements, but I told all of them that I had no influence with Guzman and would not use it if I had, in such ways as they desired. I always advised Guzman fully as to whom the concession hunters were and what they wanted. One of those on whom I thus reported was Cyrenius Fitzgerald, an American civil engineer, who sought a concession covering the delta of the Orinoco and a considerable distance up the river, which section then was an unknown land. Guzman wanted a report on it and asked me to visit it, which I did, in company with Fitzgerald and an English engineer named Tucker, who was there making a survey for the railroad which subsequently was built between Caracas and La Guaira. We made the trip on the old government boat “Bolivar,” being away two months and going up the Orinoco as far as Ciudad Bolivar. We went over much of the territory included in the proposed concession and explored many uncharted passages in the delta of the river which had long been safe havens for revolutionists and smugglers. I became enchanted with the country, which was rich in minerals and valuable woods. In reporting to Guzman and talking with him about the project, I found that he was to receive a large block of stock in the enterprise. This concession finally was granted by Guzman in 1883, without any solicitation from me, and thirteen years later it was decreed by fate that I should become manager of the property for the Orinoco Company, Limited, which is now known as the Orinoco Corporation.

CHAPTER V
THE MAROONING OF A TRAITOR

I  HAD been with Guzman Blanco for about a year after he proclaimed himself Dictator of Venezuela, on February 14, 1871, when I began to grow restless again. This was in no sense due to any fault I had to find with Guzman. He had treated me with every mark of friendship and had proved, time and again, that I possessed his entire confidence. He had paid me fifty thousand dollars for the cargo of arms which Pulgar secured through Ortega’s forgery and had been liberal in other financial matters, though I would not accept any direct payment for my confidential services, as I considered myself, in a sense, his guest. But, under the strong hand of Guzman, things were settling down to a humdrum, and I rebelled against peace and order and fretted under the restraint of the land. At sea I could go where I pleased, when I pleased, and do what I pleased; on shore, except for the Yellow House and the evening social events, all of which were alike, my time was largely divided between Madam Santa Amand’s hotel in Caracas and the old Posada Neptuno in La Guaira, and my movements were circumscribed by the part I was playing. Then, too, revolutions were popping in Central America, according to the reports that reached Caracas, and I felt that I was missing a lot of excitement and some business. This latter consideration entered into my thoughts not largely, and at all only because my expenses were greatly in excess of the amounts I received from Guzman in roundabout ways. In those days and for years afterward, I gratified my foolishly extravagant tastes without any regard to the cost of things; it is only within recent years that I have come to understand that money has a value.

With my whole nature clamoring for a change to more strenuous scenes I put the situation up to Guzman and secured his permission to go away, on the promise that I would return within six months. I summoned the “Juliette” from Curacoa and set sail for England, for the double purpose of securing a cargo of arms, with which to add to the joy of living in Central America, and looking up Frank Norton, who had so well planted within me the germ of his China Sea insanity that it was taking root. With the good little ship heeled over to the steady trade winds that fanned my dusky cheek, lovingly as I fancied in my enthusiasm, and with the waters that are nowhere else so blue murmuring a welcome back to them, I was again a rover of the sea and my exultant soul joined in the lyric chorus of the rigging.

We stopped at St. Thomas, that haven of thieves, blacklegs, and revolutionists, and there I met General Baez, brother of Buenaventura Baez, President of Santo Domingo, and his Minister of War. Buenaventura Baez was one of the most interesting characters the romantic West Indies have produced. He was the son of a rich mulatto and was born early in the last century. He coöperated with General Santana in establishing the independence of Santo Domingo and was President from 1849 to 1853, when he was supplanted by Santana, who expelled him from the island. Santana was deposed three years later and Baez, who had spent the interval in New York, resumed the presidency. Two years later he was once more ousted by Santana and forced to live abroad until 1865, when he again assumed the presidency. In 1866 General Pimental headed a successful revolt in favor of General Cabral, and Baez was banished a third time, going to St. Thomas. His star was in eclipse only a short while, however, for the following year he again fought his way to the presidential chair. In the latter part of 1869 he signed two treaties with President Grant, one for the cession of Samana Bay, which probably is the most beautiful harbor in the West Indies and was wanted by our Navy Department for years before these treaties were signed and for many years afterward, and the other for the annexation of the whole island of Santo Domingo to the United States. The people of Santo Domingo approved both of these conventions at an election decreed by Baez in February, 1870, and held under the guns of an American warship, but the United States Senate refused to ratify either treaty. President Grant believed strongly in this annexation, wherein he showed his farsightedness, and a commission which he sent to the island reported, in the Spring of 1871, in favor of the treaty; but sentiment in the Senate was decidedly against it and the measure was not pressed.

If Grant could have lived until to-day he would find considerable satisfaction in the protectorate the United States has assumed over Santo Domingo, which really amounts to American control. The same course must be taken with helpless Hayti, and it may well be that before these lines are read the administration of the finances of the “Black Republic” will have been taken over by American officers; and the American minister, acting under orders from Washington, will be the real ruler of the land, as he is in Santo Domingo. Let me digress here to express the conviction that within ten years every European possession in the West Indies, with the possible exception of Barbadoes, will come under the Stars and Stripes. Even if economic conditions do not compel this change, as they would do sooner or later, it will be made necessary by the completion of the Panama Canal. The United States, though seldom given to any riotous display of good sense, is still too wise a nation to permit a foreign power to have a naval base almost within gunshot of Colon, from which it could strike a quick and destructive blow at the inter-oceanic waterway.

Conditions are ripe for the change. England has made a failure of governing her islands and, in advance of formal retirement, has abandoned her great naval station at Saint Lucia, on which millions of pounds were spent, and withdrawn her warships from the Caribbean. The Danish Islands are a heavy and continuous drain on the Copenhagen treasury that cannot be maintained for many years longer, and Washington years ago, through clear-visioned John Hay, served formal notice on Denmark that the sale of these islands to any nation except the United States would be regarded as an unfriendly act. It was the determination then to keep these islands away from the outstretched hands of Germany, because of their proximity to South America, and there are many more reasons now to prevent their transfer to any foreign power. They are so largely owned by Americans that they are practically American colonies to-day. The French Islands are the most prosperous of all, but only because of a bounty on sugar which the national government is anxious to drop. Holland has no reason for retaining her islands, which are an expense to which no glory attaches. Under American ownership these beauty spots would be restored to their old-time prosperity and no one knows this so well as the islanders themselves. In my judgment it is a matter of only a comparatively few years until England, France, Denmark, and the Netherlands will enter into some arrangement, the details of which I do not attempt to predict, by which all of their Caribbean islands will be turned over to the United States. The only possible exception is Barbadoes, which England may wish to retain as a midway station on her commercial highway to South America, but as that poverty-stricken islet, which has twice disappeared under the sea and then bobbed up again, has no port that could be defended, there might be no objection to such a plan. Cuba is certain to become an American possession, for the Cubans are as incapable of self-government as are the Filipinos, and if Santo Domingo and Hayti are not recognized as children of the United States, they will be its wards. The United States, too, must take a larger hand in the affairs of Central America and Venezuela. The Monroe Doctrine cannot run on one wheel. At the same time that it protects the Latin-American countries from European aggression, it must compel them to pay their debts and maintain order. I am glad, however, that this theory did not obtain in the old days, for it would have robbed me of many exciting episodes.

The defeat of Grant’s annexation project gave Pimental and Cabral an excuse for starting a new revolution, and they were beginning to show their hand when I ran into General Baez at St. Thomas. He knew of my association with Guzman Blanco and at once approached me with a proposition to go to Santo Domingo to aid his brother in the troubles he foresaw. He also suggested that I might undertake a mission to America or Europe in relation to the readjustment of the debts of the island, which even then were becoming burdensome and a source of much anxiety to the party in power, because of the insistent belief of the creditors that they were entitled to their money when it was due. I told him I knew nothing at all about finances but that, if I could get an extension of leave from Guzman, I would consider any practical plan that promised excitement. He said he would consult with his brother and write me at Caracas.

We went on to London, where I learned that Norton was in the Mediterranean with the “Leckwith,” impatiently carrying general cargoes. I left word for him with Nickell & Son that I expected soon to be ready to go out East with him, took on a cargo of arms and headed for Costa Rica, where I had information that a revolution was hatching against Gen. Tomaso Guardia, who had recently come into power. For this trip, I remember, I took the name of “Captain John F. Kinnear.” We had some trouble in getting away, for the British Government was still dead set against filibustering, and in the hope of removing all suspicion I gave our destination as Kingston, Jamaica, though I had no idea of stopping there. I gave the ship a new set of papers, showing British registry, and was, of course, flying the British flag.

We ran into bad weather in the Caribbean and were forced, after all, to put in at Kingston, leaking badly. The ship was so opened up, in fact, that she had to be recalked and have a few new planks, which necessitated putting her in dry dock. The port regulations stipulated that when a ship went in dry dock a general cargo could be left in her, at the option and risk of the owner, but that all explosives and munitions of war must be taken out and stored in the government arsenal, or in some place selected by the commandant. There was nothing for it but to take out our cargo, and five days were consumed in loading and repairing the ship. I had the work hurried with all possible speed, for the mail ship from England was due in nine days after our arrival and I was fearful that she would bring an order for our detention, which, as a matter of fact, she did, as I learned years afterward. When the repairs were completed the governor of the island refused to allow us to reload our cargo, as he had an intimation that the ship was not what she pretended to be. This hint, it developed later, came from Jimmy Donovan, a “sea lawyer” whom I had shipped at the last minute in the hurry of getting away from London. He made what is known on the sea as a “pier-head jump.” On the fourth day I prevailed on the governor to allow us to take on our cargo, but he insisted that the ship must be held, with both anchors down, until further orders. I decided that we would go out that night and so informed Lorensen, the sailing master. Knowing me even as well as he did he laughed incredulously, thinking I was joking, for the channel through the harbor was shaped like the letter “S” and commanded by a fort which could, as he said, blow us out of the water without half trying.

“Just the same,” I said, “we are going to sea or to hell to-night.”

“All right, Captain, but it will be to hell, if I am any judge,” was the quiet reply of the game Lorensen, than whom a braver or better seaman never walked a deck. During the evening he greased all of the blocks so we could start on our problematical journey without any noise. The moon went down at midnight and before it was out of sight we had one anchor up, with a muffled capstan. We were getting up the other when the harbor policeman came along. A few Bank of England notes blinded him and we got under way, with two of the ship’s boats towing us and the tide helping us along. Evidently the fort had orders to look out for us but we caught them napping, apparently, for we were almost past it when we were hailed and ordered to stop. In a minute, without giving us a decent chance to heave to, even had we been so inclined, they whanged away at us. The second shot went clear through us, just below the waterway, and Lorensen, who was with me at the wheel, exclaimed grimly, “Here we go, Captain.”

But he was mistaken, for in the darkness their gunnery was not up to the standard of British marksmanship, for which I have a wholesome respect. They kept at it hard enough but all of their shots went wild, except for one that punched a hole in the port bulwarks forward, though from the way the shells whistled I have no doubt our canvas would have been punctured many times, had it been up. We were soon under cover of the Myrtle Bank Hotel and after that two ships protected us until we were far enough away so that only a chance shot could reach us. When we were well enough out in the harbor so that we could manœuvre and get the full effect of the light breeze that was blowing over the salt flats, we set all of our sails and pulled away.

At daylight I had the carpenter at work fixing up the little damage the fort had done us, and it was well that we were quick about it for during the afternoon we met the old warship “Bellerephon,” which was attached to that station, coming in from a trip around the island ten days ahead of time. We were preparing to salute her when she stopped and hove us to with a blank shot. I don’t think I have ever been more surprised, for there was no wireless telegraph in those days and I could not conceive how she had gotten word that we were suspected of filibustering. While I was racking my brain for some solution of the problem Lorensen ran forward, leaned out over the side, and came back and reported that there was a blue shirt under the bobstay. That explained it, for in those days it was an unwritten law in the British Navy that when a sailor on a merchant ship had any pronounced complaint to make, regarding either his own treatment or general conditions on the vessel, he would hang a shirt in the chains, under the bowsprit, where it would not be seen by the officers unless they were looking for it, as a signal to any warship they met that there was something wrong on board. Whenever and wherever a warship saw a shirt fluttering under the bobstay the vessel was held up and carefully investigated.

I suspected at once that it was Jimmy Donovan who had hung out the shirt, and I had him bucked and gagged and stowed away in the hold before he could have said “Jack Robinson.” Then, quickly, I made an entry on the log which showed that he had been left in the hospital at Kingston, with pernicious fever. By that time the lieutenant from the “Bellerephon” was alongside. When he came aboard I assumed a look of injured innocence and profound surprise. He ordered me to muster the crew aft and called for my papers. To my great satisfaction he merely glanced at the certificate of registry, which was forged, and centred his attention on the crew list. The men answered to their names as he called them off. When he came to Donovan I explained that he had been taken sick at Kingston and left there, and produced the log, which satisfied him.

“Who among you has any complaint to make?” he asked of the men. There was no response, and he repeated the question.

“Don’t be afraid,” he encouraged them. “The ‘Bellerephon’ will protect you. If you have any complaint to make, step out and make it. We will see that you get fair play and, if necessary, take you on board.”

No one moved, and after waiting some time the lieutenant turned to me with the remark that everything seemed to be all right. I told him I had heard of no complaints from any of the men and asked why they had “stood us up.”

“Why, there is a shirt out forward,” he explained. I suggested that perhaps some of the crew had been washing. Hearing my remark a quick-witted fellow named Bill Johnson, who had shipped on my first trip with the “Juliette,” stepped out and said he had washed his shirt that morning and hung it in the chains to dry, without knowing that it meant anything. “I’ve been a sailor for a good many years but that is one signal I never heard of before,” he said.

“Is that true, Bill?” asked the lieutenant with what seemed like just a shade of suspicion.

“It is, sir,” replied Bill with the steady gaze of an honest man.

“He is a ‘True Bill’ all right,” I told the young officer as I shot a grateful look at the grizzled sailor that meant a raise in wages. “He is the oldest man on the ship and one of the best. That shirt signal is a new one on me, too, and I thought I knew all the signs of the sea.”

“Very good, sir,” he replied. “It is quite evidently a mistake.”

He then returned to the “Bellerephon,” which answered our salute, and we squared away for Costa Rica. My mind was free from any further fear of capture, for a stiff breeze was singing over our quarter, and I knew by the time the old warship could get to Kingston and start after us again we would be well out of reach. As soon as she was hull down I mustered the crew aft and complimented Bill on his ready wit and rewarded it. He was with me for years after that and was never known by any other name than “True Bill.”

I then reminded the men that, in accordance with my invariable rule when running contraband, I had told all of them the exact nature of our voyage before we were out of sight of land and had offered to set ashore any who did not wish to undertake it, while those who stayed with me were to receive double pay, and a bonus out of the profits in addition, in consideration of the hazardous nature of the trip.

“Therefore,” I told them, “the treachery of Donovan has not only endangered your extra pay and bonus but also placed your freedom in jeopardy. As he was one of your number I will turn him over to you for such punishment as you think his case deserves. I, of course, reserve the right to review your verdict, but I do not believe you will be too lenient with him.” The crew welcomed this announcement with cheers, which could not be regarded as a good omen for the traitor, and a court-martial was organized, with the “bos’n” at the head of it.

Donovan confessed when he was brought before the court, whereupon it was unanimously and speedily decided that he should run the gantlet and be marooned, which verdict I approved, for I believed it to be none too severe. The crew prepared for the first ceremony by knotting a lot of rope ends and tarring them until they were as hard as iron but flexible. They then formed in a double line the full length of the ship and as Donovan ran down the middle of it they laid on so well that he was leaving a trail of blood before he tumbled in a heap at the end. He was then placed in the brig and kept there until we came to a small island off the Costa Rican coast, on which he was landed with enough water and provisions to last him a couple of weeks or more and a flag that he could use to signal any vessel coming his way. There was not a great deal of travel down that way in those days and he may still be there, doing a repetition of the Robinson Crusoe act, though the island was not very large and the boat’s crew that landed him reported that they saw no goats. Donovan was helpless from fear when he was lowered into the boat to be rowed to the island, and begged for mercy, but that was something our cargo did not contain.

The arms we carried were sold to the revolutionists in Costa Rica, being paid for partly in cash and partly in coffee, which I sold at Curacoa. From there I returned to Venezuela and reported to Guzman Blanco, after having been away only about four months. Not long after my arrival in Caracas, where I resumed my old position as confidential agent for Guzman, I received a letter from President Baez asking me to enter his employ, to reorganize his army and aid him in suppressing the revolutionary feeling which was being developed by agents for Pimental and Cabral. He offered to give me a commission as General in the Santo Domingan Army, which he did do later, and to pay me liberally for my services, which he didn’t do. I replied that I had again associated myself with Guzman and that while no length of service had been specified, I wished to remain with him at least a short while, after which I would try to get leave to join the Santo Domingans.

Guzman was paving the way for his election as Constitutional President, which was accomplished the next year, 1873, and all of his friends were working to that end. He was supported by a public sentiment that became practically unanimous, but there were a few who were unalterably opposed to any established order of things and who could not get over the habit of “revoluting,” with or without provocation. During the Fall and Winter these discontented ones gradually drew together under the leadership of General Pulido. Guzman was kept advised as to what they were doing but their following was so small that it caused him no uneasiness and, to further strengthen himself with the people, he determined to take no steps against them until they came out in the open, when he was prepared to crush them. The moment the rebels raised their banners Guzman took the field against them, in person. At the head of an army of four thousand veterans he marched to Valencia where he met Pulido and routed him, following up his scattered forces and almost annihilating them, and the revolt was stamped out with one smashing blow. That was the last hand raised against Guzman for seventeen years; during all of that time he was the absolute dictator of Venezuela. The constitution prohibited the President from succeeding himself so he occupied that office for alternate terms, with an obedient dummy serving in the intervals, which he spent in Europe as Minister Plenipotentiary, directing the government by mail. His rule was wise and progressive. Railroads were built, roads improved, schools established, and real religious liberty took the place of clericalism. He was betrayed, in the end, by his supposed friends, men whom he had raised to prominence and prosperity. Had he been succeeded by a man as strong and able as himself Venezuela would to-day be the foremost country in South America, instead of the one most uncivilized.

Not long after the campaign against Pulido, in which I served on Guzman’s staff, I received another letter from Baez, urging me to come to Santo Domingo. The same mail brought a letter from Baez to Guzman, asking him to grant me leave of absence for a few months to enter his service. Guzman was flattered by this request and with his permission I went to Santo Domingo City in the Spring of 1873, on the “Juliette.”

CHAPTER VI
A SWIFT VENGEANCE

PRESIDENT BAEZ of Santo Domingo was short and thin and had a washed-out look, as though his skin had been faded by chemicals instead of by a three-quarters’ admixture of white blood. He had large full eyes that were shifty and insincere. He was clever but superficial, cunning and treacherous. Had I seen him before I went to his cursed country, to reorganize his army and aid in putting down the growing revolutionary sentiment, I would have remained in Venezuela or gone elsewhere in search of adventure, for he looked a coward and provoked distrust. I had heard of him only as a good fighter but that reputation, I became convinced soon after my first visit to the “palace,” had been earned for him by his former friends and supporters and was in no sense the work of his own sword, at least so far as recent years were concerned. In his earlier days he might have displayed more bravery, and he must have shown some courage to arouse a fighting degree of loyalty that had four times swept the country, but presuming that to be true he had gone back greatly with advancing age. He seemed to have convinced the superstitious mulattoes, with whom the still more fanatical full-blooded blacks were always at war, that he was a real man of destiny whose course could not safely be interfered with, and his successive successes probably were due more to that belief than to any other cause. His brother, the Minister of War, had all of the President’s faults in accentuated form and added to them an inordinate vanity. He was jealous of me from the start. He had expected that I would recommend to him such changes in the “military establishment” as I thought wise, but I insisted on doing things myself and having a free hand, which the President was quite willing to give me, perhaps because he was suspicious of even his own brother.

The “army” was, in reality, not much more than an unorganized body of densely ignorant natives who, as practically the only compensation for their supposed loyalty, were allowed to carry guns, which they did not know how to use. I taught them how to march without getting in each other’s way, how to handle their arms without shooting themselves, and as much discipline as they were amenable to, but I fear my efforts did not go much beyond that even though they did effect a decided improvement. One of my first recommendations to the President was that he buy and fit out two small gunboats with which to patrol the coast and hold in check such revolutionary centres as Monte Cristi, under threat of bombardment. They could also be used, as I pointed out, to transport troops quickly to rebelliously inclined districts. The President thought well of the plan and, though I advised steamers, he directed that the “Juliette,” for which he agreed to pay a fair price, be converted into such a craft. I ordered five small rapid-fire guns sent from England to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and, the revolutionary spirit seemingly having subsided with the improvement in the army, took the “Juliette” there in the Summer of 1873, to have her decks strengthened and mount the cannon. We returned early in the Fall to find that the smouldering revolution had burst into a flame and a large force was marching on Santo Domingo City, and only a few miles away. When I reached the palace the President and his brother were vehemently but vainly advising each other to be brave.

“What shall we do—what shall we do?” demanded the President as I entered the door.

“It strikes me that it might be a good scheme to fight,” I replied, with no attempt to conceal my disgust at their attitude. “In fact, I should say it is up to us to fight, and fight until we are all bloody, if we have to.”

“Yes, yes, but where?” queried the trembling chief executive.

“Go out and meet them,” I advised. “They probably will not be looking for us, as I judge that would be a departure from the established Santo Domingan method of warfare, and we may be able to take them at a disadvantage.”

“No, no,” urged the panic-stricken Minister of War, “let us wait until they get into the city and then bombard them with your guns.”

“Which would mean,” I said, “killing four or five of your own people to every one of the enemy. I am not used to that way of fighting and don’t know how to do it.”

They told me there were about three thousand men in the attacking force. We had more than four thousand men under arms, which gave us the advantage of numbers. The city had no defences worthy the name and I insisted that the thing to do was to go outside and fight it out in the open, while the doughty General, who seemed to be seeking delay more than anything else, was in favor of making a rough-and-tumble of it in the town. The President, who had imbibed something of American ideas during his three years’ residence in New York, and who had apparently regained a little of his nerve while we were canvassing the situation, agreed with me, and, against the continued objections of his brother, we went out to meet the attacking army.

Gen. Baez commanded our centre and right while I commanded our left flank. His reason for wanting to postpone the action was quickly apparent, for he was an arrant coward. He began to give way, before a force that was inferior in both numbers and discipline, with the firing of the first gun, and fell back so rapidly that before I realized it my command was flanked and almost cut off, with the sea on one side of us and the enemy on two others and rapidly closing up the fourth. My men fought surprisingly well until they suddenly discovered that they were almost surrounded, when they promptly went into a panic. Most of them dropped their guns and ran for the city, with an activity of which I had not dreamed them capable, while nearly all of the others, in regular South American fashion, about-faced and joined the rebels on the spot. In a few minutes I was captured, along with about a hundred men who were so numbed by fear that they could neither run nor fight, and had not enough discretion to join the enemy. I was furious over the cowardice of Baez and put up the hardest fight I was capable of, with the satisfaction of putting six or eight blacks on a permanent peace basis, but with my revolver empty and my sword broken I was overwhelmed by the inky cloud. Gen. Baez galloped back to the city and he and his bewildered brother, the President, had barely time to board a small schooner and sail for Curacoa before the capital was in the hands of the rebels. Gen. Ganier d’Aton, a tool of Pimental and Cabral, was at once proclaimed President, and hailed by the populace with the customary acclaim.

Instead of being killed at once, as I had expected to be, I was taken to a small fort on a hill near the town where, on the trumped-up and altogether false charge that I had fomented trouble and brought on civil war, I was tried by drum-head court-martial and sentenced to be shot at sunrise. The verdict was, of course, dictated by revenge, and execution of it was delayed because they wished to gloat over me for a while. This was a little the most serious predicament I had ever been in and, with the idea of taking every chance that was open to me rather than with any distinct hope that it would be answered, I gave the grand hailing sign of a powerful secret order which I had joined while in Caracas. I thought I saw a sergeant raise his eyes but, as he gave no further sign, I concluded that if there had been any movement it had been one of surprise and not of recognition. I was placed in a large sala with windows opening on the courtyard and blank walls on the other three sides. The windows were barred and after satisfying myself that they were secure, and that there was no way of escape, I laid down and smoked, reflecting that if my time had come there was no way of interfering with the programme scheduled for the break of day. The soldiers were drinking and celebrating their victory with shouts and songs, which lessened in volume and vehemence as the night wore on, but two sentries who paced back and forth in front of my room and met under one of the windows religiously kept sober. Now and then a drunken coterie would press their dirty faces against the bars to hurl at me denunciatory bursts of Spanish eloquence, to which I vigorously replied, but these enlivening visits grew less and less frequent, as the consumption of tafia rum increased.

Along about three o’clock, just as I had about made up my mind that in a couple of hours I would be due to start on an indefinite exploration into regions about which nothing is known except that no traveller ever returns from them, I heard a short scuffle at each end of the path the sentries were patrolling and a gurgling noise as though a man was choking. The next moment Lorensen’s voice came softly through the door, “Are you in there, Captain?” I assured him that I was.

“Stand away from the door,” he said, and I obeyed the order with pleasurable alacrity. Three blows with a log of crutch mahogany taken from a pile in the courtyard which had been brought in from the mountains for export, smashed in the door. Lorensen seized my arm and, led by the sergeant who had, after all, recognized the sign I had made and answered it, we climbed down a declivity back of the fort and made our way to the shore, where two boats were waiting for us. The smashing in of the door of my prison aroused the drowsy guard and we were hardly well out of the fort before there was a beating of drums and loud shouts from the few half sober officers, directed at the soundly sleeping soldiers. They finally mustered a detachment which was sent in pursuit of us, but they were not in a condition to move rapidly and did not reach the shore until we were a considerable distance away from it. They fired a few shots in the general direction of the sea but as we were in no danger of being hit we did not raise a gun.

When we got out to the “Juliette” I heard the story of my deliverance. I had been taken prisoner about the middle of the afternoon and it was early in the evening when the death sentence was passed on me. The sergeant, whose name was Alexandro, had understood my signal. He went into the city as soon as he could get away from the fort and, by persistent questioning of the natives, finally ascertained that I was in command of the American ship lying in the harbor,—for I had not hoisted the Santo Domingan flag on the “Juliette.” He then rowed out to the ship and, after telling Lorensen what had happened, through a member of the crew who could speak Spanish, offered to lead a rescuing party to the place where I was confined. He said it would be comparatively easy to get me away as only a small body of troops had been left at the fort, the supply of rum in the city being much larger, and they would be helpless from drink.

Lorensen, being a member of the same order, could well understand why a white man should have taken the deep personal interest in my welfare which Alexandro manifested, but he was suspicious that the negro was seeking to lead him into a trap. He decided, however, to take no chances, so, after warning Alexandro that he would be the first man killed if he attempted any treachery, Lorensen went ashore with sixteen well-armed men, six of whom were left with the boats while the others proceeded to the old fort. They surprised the two sentries at the opposite ends of their beat, throttled them and, as the surest means of preventing an outcry, cut their throats, which accounted for the gurgling noise I had heard. Then they broke in the door of the sala, in which operation they were obliged to make enough noise to arouse the guard.

Such are the obligations of a great secret order.

Men whom I sent ashore reported that President Baez and his brother had fled and the rebels were in full control of the government, and as soon as it was day I sailed close in and bombarded the fort where my execution was to have taken place. There was a great helter-skeltering of rum-soaked braves when the first shells exploded around their ears, but there were some who did not get away, and the crumbling walls came down and buried them. Then we headed for Venezuela again, after an experience that paid me only in excitement. I had not drawn a dollar from Baez and I had been obliged to pay for the changes made in the “Juliette” and for the guns that were brought from England, for I could not find a banker in Halifax who would advance a cent on the letter of credit from the great Republic of Santo Domingo. Still, I figured that the experience had furnished me enough excitement to justify its cost. Several years later I met Gen. Baez again in Murphy’s Hotel at St. Thomas but did not see him until he took a good-natured shot at me. The bullet smashed a pile of dishes on the arm of a waiter ten feet away from me, and from the start that waiter made I would not be surprised to hear that he is running yet around the hills back of Charlotte Amalia.

At Caracas I found that Guzman had been duly elected Constitutional President. He was inaugurating a scheme of public improvements, the country had settled down to business, and the prospect was all for long continued peace, which was displeasing to me and I wanted to get away again. However, Guzman had a plan to keep me busy. There was not then, nor is there now for that matter, a decent map of Venezuela. It was reported from Paris that a Frenchman had gone up the Orinoco to its headwaters and had found that the Casiquiare River, which empties into it, formed a natural canal connecting with the Rio Negro, which runs into the Amazon at Manaos, Brazil. Guzman proposed that I go over this route and seek to verify the Frenchman’s report. Exploring unknown lands has always been as much a passion with me as aiding and abetting revolutions, and I willingly accepted the commission, but, though I did not tell Guzman so, I had no intention of returning to Caracas. As an evidence of my appreciation of his friendship I gave him a Jurgensen watch, which I had had made to order, and the “Juliette,” just as she stood, sending Lorensen and one or two others to London to work under the direction of my agents until I should arrive. He used the good little ship for years as a mail boat between La Guaira and Curacoa. Guzman gave me a Damascus sword of exquisite workmanship, which, not long afterward, I used with good effect on the pirates of the China Sea.

He wanted the exploration made on a grand scale and suggested that he send along a detachment of soldiers. I convinced him that his plan was impracticable, for a small party could get through much more easily than a large one. Late in October I went to Trinidad to outfit for the trip. There, at the old Ice House Hotel, I met two young Britishers who were men after my own heart: Dr. Rogers, a rich Church of England clergyman who preferred the legitimate pleasures of this world to the prospects of the next, and Frank Anderson, son of a wealthy Glasgow merchant and a recent graduate of Edinburgh University. They had come out to hunt for big game and were outfitting for a trip up the Orinoco. When I told them where I was going they expressed a great desire to accompany me and I readily agreed. I was glad to have such good companions for the long and probably dangerous journey, for it was a tradition that there were many “bad Indians” far up the river. I was the commandant of the party, Rogers was the scientist, and Anderson the provider. They had brought out from England two Peacock collapsible boats and to complete our fleet I bought an Orinoco lancha, a large flat-bottomed scow with a single enormous sail.

We went up as far as Ciudad Bolivar, the head of steam navigation, on the old side-wheeler “Bolivar,” and there took to our boats, which were provisioned for six months and carried seven natives to do the hard work. There was only a slight current in the river, which was at low stage as it was then “midsummer”—their winter comes with the rainy season in our midsummer,—while the steady trade wind from the Atlantic blew straight upstream, so we made good progress under sail. It was a lazy trip in the early stages and a tiresome one, for there were only a few dirty hamlets along the way and the llanos stretched away on both sides of us in an interminable monotony. At the confluence of the Apure and Arauca Rivers, two hundred and fifty miles above Ciudad Bolivar, we found a great inland delta, larger and more bewildering than that at the mouth of the Orinoco where there are thirty-six separate channels that have been charted. This delta, like the one on the coast, was formed by the tremendous force and volume of the “midwinter” floods, which had built up so many islands of soft mud that it was at times difficult for us to stick to the main stream.

One of our most interesting experiences was at the junction of the Rio Meta and the Orinoco, one hundred and fifty miles farther on, where we encountered the so-called “musical stones,” of which we had heard marvellous tales from the natives. These are granite cliffs which, we had been told, gave out at sunrise sounds closely resembling the tones of an organ. This mythical music, as we regarded it, caused us to stay here several days and finally, on one very cool morning, by placing our ears to the rocks, we distinctly heard subterranean growls, groans, and whistles, which could without great stretch of the imagination be compared to the notes of an organ, though it must needs be a wheezy one to make the similarity approximately honest. We all knew something about geology and, without pretending to give a scientific conclusion, it was our opinion that the sounds were caused by the hot air of the day, which the rocks retained during the night, being driven out by the cool air of the early morning through narrow fissures that were partially obstructed by thin layers of mica, lying at an angle to the general stratification, which served as reeds. The resultant vibrations were musical enough to produce a weird sensation as we listened to them, and it was easy to imagine the effect they would have on the ignorant and superstitious natives, and the stories for which they furnished a foundation. The Orinoco is navigable as far as the Meta for light-draft steamers at all seasons of the year, but it may be centuries before the “musical stones” become an advertised attraction for tourists.

At Atures, one hundred miles above, and again at Maypures, just beyond, were two rapids around which our boats had to be carried; but with these exceptions it was plain sailing, or paddling, until we crossed the line into Brazil. Another hundred miles beyond the rapids brought us to the jumping-off place of the world—the indescribably filthy little hamlet of San Fernando de Atabapo, built where the Guaviare River comes down from the mountains of Colombia to join the Orinoco. It is on the border of Venezuela and Colombia and its population is largely made up of murderers and escaped convicts from both countries, with a few from near-by Brazil. A number of the leading citizens undertook to waylay us as we were leaving the place but the only result of their misguided effort was that two or three of them received what the law would have administered if it had been given a chance.

From the time we left Ciudad Bolivar we had been sailing through a veritable wilderness, with human habitations few and far between, but after we left San Fernando de Atabapo we travelled through the primeval forest, which came down to the river’s edge on both sides. Its only inhabitants were widely scattered Indians, who were inquisitive enough but not at all ugly. There were miles and miles of magnificent rubber trees, which were especially abundant along the Casiquiare, and great stretches of vanilla and cacao growing wild. The Orinoco is indeed a wasted waterway. The vast empire it drains, covering more than half of Venezuela, is marvellously rich in minerals and in its forests, and could easily be made as rich in agriculture. Yet when we made our trip there were fewer people living along it than there had been four hundred years before when Ordaz, the Spanish explorer, ascended it to the mouth of the Meta, and I doubt if there has been any increase in the population since our visit. Ten Hudson Rivers could be added to or taken from the Orinoco without affecting it, yet it is traversed only by the native lanchas and bongos, or dugouts.

We turned into the Casiquiare River, two hundred miles above San Fernando de Atabapo, with considerable regret, for we would have greatly liked to follow the Orinoco to its unexplored source in the mysterious Parima Mountains, where is said to dwell a race of white Indians, who are popularly supposed to stand guard, with deadly blow pipes shooting darts that produce instant death, over vast treasures of virgin gold. But that would have taken many months more and we were not prepared for so long a trip. The priceless forest which surrounded us was filled with game of all kinds and great snakes, and alive with birds of wondrous plumage. There were so many snakes, in fact, that we anchored our boats at night and slept in them in the middle of the river, where we had nothing to fear but the enormous crocodiles which poked us with their ugly snouts to prevent us from oversleeping. We landed every day to stretch our legs and shoot, with ridiculous ease, enough game to keep us in fresh meat, but we never camped on shore at night.

After following the Casiquiare for one hundred and fifty miles or more we came to the parting of the ways—the point at which the Rio Negro, coming down from the foothills of the Andes, five hundred miles away, divides to feed both the Orinoco and the Amazon—and solved the mystery of the two rivers. There was no connecting canal of slack water, as the Frenchman was said to have reported. The Rio Negro, a wide and deep stream, forms the boundary between Venezuela and Colombia for nearly two hundred miles. At two degrees north latitude, or about one hundred and twenty miles from the equator, it divides, the smaller part, approximately one-third of the volume, forming the Casiquiare, which runs east for a short distance and then north to the Orinoco, while the main stream runs south and then east until it empties into the Amazon at Manaos. Though we had no map to guide us the situation seemed plain when we reached the larger river, which fed the Casiquiare, and by following the downward course of that stream until we were certain it was the Rio Negro, we settled the question.

Just below the junction of the Ucayari River with the Rio Negro, almost directly under the equator, we came to a succession of falls and rapids around which we made a portage. From there on, through the same silent wilderness of natural wealth that we had traversed for weeks, we leisurely sailed and drifted down to the Amazon, for the blistering heat discouraged all physical effort that was not mandatory. It was not until we reached the lower reaches of the river that we found men gathering rubber, and they were taking only ounces where tons were at their hands. We reached Manaos early in May, 1874. We had been six months on the trip and had covered all of two thousand miles which, everything considered, was fast travelling. Aside from its educational value the exploration had been delightful, and though tired from living so long in cramped quarters we were all in better health than when we left Trinidad.

My companions, who rejoiced in having been thrown in the way of greater sport and more interesting experiences than they had expected to find, were ready to return to England and I arranged to go with them. After resting for a week or two we went down to Para on a river boat and thence to Rio Janiero on one of the Lloyd Brazilero steamships. From there we sailed for England on the Royal Mail steamship “Elbe,” commanded by Captain Moir, who was in command of the “Trent” when Mason and Slidell were taken off. On the way across I compiled a full report of the exploring trip which I mailed to Guzman, with a promise that I would return to Venezuela within a few years. I left my British friends at Southampton and went to London to join Frank Norton and start for the China Sea, of which he had pictured so much that was good in my sight.

CHAPTER VII
PREYING ON PIRATES

AS a boy it was my ambition to fight Indians, but if I had known as much about them then as I do now, I would have selected pirates. They have none of the claims on life which the real, red, native Americans enjoy, and they can be fought on the glorious sea instead of on land, which adds to the inherent excitement. It was in the Summer of 1874 that I made my first plunge into piracy, for, with all of the trimmings and aids to deception stripped away, that was what it really amounted to. I did not know into just what I was being led when I embarked in this new enterprise; but I am frank to say that it would have made no difference, for a free translation of the word “pirate” is “adventure of the first order,” and that was what I was looking for.

When I reached London, after my strange escape from execution in Santo Domingo and the exploration of the headwaters of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro, Frank Norton was coming up from the Mediterranean with the “Leckwith,” carrying a general cargo, and I had not long to wait for him. He was joyous when I told him I was ready to accompany him to the China Sea, which he had pictured as an El Dorado of excitement, with many golden Manoas that might be converted into Bank of England notes. There was to be no filibustering there for we had no thought of playing against the concert of Europe with our one little fiddle, even had there been any prospective revolutions worth the hatching; but Norton insisted that there was plenty of adventure to be found and much money to be made in handling equally illegitimate cargoes which included no explosives or munitions of war. As he was familiar with that part of the world I took his word for it, without going into minute details. He said we would need the “Leckwith” and two ships to carry on the business to the best advantage, so I selected the “Surprise,” an American brig, and the “Florence,” a topsail schooner, both stout, fast ships. I put Lorensen on the “Leckwith” as sailing master, George Brown on the “Surprise,” and old Bill Heather on the “Florence.” The “Surprise” took on a general cargo for Japan and was ordered to rendezvous at Hong Kong, while the “Florence” loaded for Singapore. Norton and I followed in the “Leckwith.” Two brass cannon were mounted in place of the yacht’s guns she carried and we took on board four small carronades, a French mitrailleuse, and several hundred rifles, cutlasses, and side arms, with an abundance of ammunition, all of which were stored in the hold.

Before our departure I had printed on parchment, in exact imitation of the genuine, certificates of registry in English, Dutch, German, French, and Spanish, and seals made to correspond to them. These I filled out, as occasion demanded, in the name the particular ship bore at the time, and in the nationality which I thought would furnish the best protection. I also had certificates of health, consular clearances and bills of health, custom house clearances, and shipping certificates printed in different languages. Forged service certificates were also issued to old men of long service who were competent officers but who could not pass the technical examinations provided for in the amended maritime laws. These and the certificates of registry were aged with a solution of iron and, if necessary, rubbed on the cabin floor to add to their years. I had used similar forged papers while filibustering in the West Indies but had never had such an elaborate outfit, though I was never afterward without it. With these papers I could give a ship a registry under any flag and make it appear that she had come from any port that suited my purpose. They were signed with an illegible scrawl, as are the genuine. To further complicate matters the “Leckwith” was supplied with a telescopic smokestack which, when lowered, was completely hidden. She was schooner-rigged and could be transformed into a fore and aft schooner by dousing the stack and housing the yards on the foremast, or into a brig by putting yards on the mainmast. Similar changes of rig could be made on the “Florence” and “Surprise.” I never used a ship on which this could not be done. The efficacy of these precautions is proved by the fact that I have never lost a cargo of contraband, though I have handled scores of them.

With provision made for all of the deception and trickery which experience and foresight could suggest we headed for Singapore, to begin a career of adventure such as my wild mind never had conceived, even in its dearest dreams. On the long trip out I whiled away the time in an effort to evolve a torpedo of a new type. I had been interested in high explosives all my life and had long believed that a non-dirigible torpedo could be devised which would be an improvement on our own Harvey,—which was towed in a bridle and was not practicable for a greater distance than two or three hundred yards,—and which would have advantages over the dirigible type. To facilitate my experiments I had on board a lot of sheet brass and before the end of the trip I had developed a torpedo that I regarded as perfection and which I afterward used with success, though it finally got me into trouble in South America. It was six feet long, thirty inches in diameter, and shaped like a fat cigar. The inside was lined with air cylinders to give it the required buoyancy, and inside of these was packed the explosive charge, of wet gun-cotton or dynamite. It was towed by a wire or small rope attached to the blunt nose, from which projected six spider-like arms two feet long, and alternating with these were six shorter arms extending outward from the thickest part of the torpedo. The forcing backward of any one of these arms cut off a shear pin and released a spring which set off a fulminate of mercury cap. This exploded a disc of dry gun-cotton which set off the main charge. The shear pins were of copper wire of any desired thickness, but were intended to be only thick enough to prevent the arms from being forced backward, and the torpedo discharged, by the current of a river or by the resistance of the water when being towed or by small driftwood which might be encountered.

The buoyancy of the loaded torpedo could easily be calculated and by means of the air cylinders it could be kept awash or floated just below the surface, the latter being the preferred method when it was to be used during the day. The towing wire or rope was kept on the surface or just below it by small floats, distributed at such distances that they would attract no attention even in the improbable event of their being seen. The torpedo was intended to be towed across the course of the vessel that was to be destroyed. The moment the ship’s bow picked up the towing rope her fate was settled, for whether the rope was fifty yards or five miles long it was simply a question of time until the torpedo was dragged alongside and exploded by the pressure of one of the arms against the side of the vessel. The torpedo could be towed astern of a ship or a launch or even an innocent rowboat. In river work it could be stretched across the stream with a line at each end, the shorter one being only strong enough to withstand the current, so it would part easily when the unfriendly ship picked up the line attached to the nose of the torpedo. I was greatly pleased with my invention and it was not long until I had an opportunity to prove that it was a complete success.

We reached Singapore more than a month ahead of the “Florence” and on our arrival there Norton unfolded his whole scheme to me. The gist of it was that we were to prey on the pirates who infested the China Sea, and particularly that part of it lying between Singapore, Sumatra, and Borneo, which was dotted with islands and beautifully suited by nature to their plundering profession. Every ship going to Europe from China, Indo-China, Siam, and from the Philippines and the network of islands to the south of them, as well as vessels coming up from the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Sunda, between Sumatra and Java, had to run the gantlet of this piratical nest, and many were the good ships that ended their cruises there, along with their passengers and crews. It was here the pirates held out last in their long and bloody fight against civilization, as the present state of mankind in general is called. The British Government had been trying for years to put an end to their operations but there were so many of the islands, and the opportunities for concealment and escape were so numerous, that the undertaking was a gigantic one. It was not until years after my tragic appearance on this stage that it was officially announced that piracy had been suppressed. Even that long delayed declaration was not altogether true, for in that accursed region, now well known but yet mysterious, piracy is still being carried on, even to this day, though in a small and desultory way. There were a few islands farther north, off the southern coast of Indo-China, among which the pirates sometimes rendezvoused to lay in wait for their prey, but in ordinary weather it was easy for ships to keep clear of these danger spots. But they could not avoid those islands lying northeast of Singapore, and it was there that most of the merchantmen were looted.

The pirates were chiefly Chinese, with a considerable number of Malays and some Dyaks. As to bravery and bloodthirstiness there was little choice between them. They were all desperate villains and their thirst for gold was exceeded only by their truly Oriental cunning. When they fell from wounds they would watch for an opportunity to hamstring their opponents or disembowel them with their long, crooked knives, which were as sharp as razors. After we discovered this devilish trait no quarter was ever shown them. When one of them fell he was shot through the head or stabbed, to make sure that he would do no further harm. Nothing else could be done with such an enemy. The Chinese operated chiefly in large junks, with which they could go well out to sea. Most of them carried guns of considerable size, while all of them were supplied with a multitude of stink-pots,—their favorite weapon. These were round earthenware pots, twelve or fifteen inches in diameter, filled with a black mixture of the consistency of moist earth, which was lighted just before the missile was thrown. They were handled in a sling, such as every small boy has used but on a larger scale, and could be thrown with great accuracy for one hundred feet or more. When the pot struck the opposing ship it broke open and the contents spread out on the deck, giving off a thick, pungent, and vile-smelling smoke which would quickly produce complete asphyxiation if it was inhaled at close range. If the smoking mass was left long enough undisturbed it would set fire to the ship. The pirates themselves were largely immune to this horrible smoke and under its cover, following a rain of stink-pots, they would board a ship almost unseen and have her defenders, whom they always outnumbered, at a great disadvantage from the start. When fighting at close quarters the Chinese used long, curved swords, something like a Turkish yataghan, while the Malays were armed with the krese, a short, double-edged sword with serrated edges. Both were murderous weapons and the pirates were graduated experts in the use of them; in fact, they preferred their butcher knives to firearms, for they were miserable marksmen. As soon as an engagement became general they would throw away their guns and pistols and use their swords, with both hands, striking powerful, chopping blows.

The Malays and Dyaks used proas or feluccas, light, strong, low-lying vessels from sixty to one hundred feet in length, from ten to sixteen feet wide, and five or six feet deep, with less than three feet draft. They were rigged with two large lateen sails and were very fast. The only material difference between them was that the proas were supplied with long sweeps with which they could be driven along at a fair rate of speed when there was no wind. The junks were used for outside work, while the proas and feluccas kept close inshore, seldom going more than fifteen miles out. On account of their shallow draft they were easily hidden in the mouths of rivers and creeks, and when so concealed they could not be seen at a distance of half a mile.

It was this ease of escape, and the fact that unless they were caught red-handed conviction was impossible, which combined to make the stamping out of the pirates such a tremendous task. The junks always carried just enough cargo to enable them to pose, technically, as peaceful traders and, with the aid of their friends afloat and ashore, they could easily prove an alibi, or anything else that was needed. When closely pursued by a suspicious warship and certain to be overhauled and inspected, they would throw overboard their surplus of arms and, if necessary, any loot they happened to have on board, to remove all incriminating evidence. Through an elaborate system of spies the pirate chiefs were constantly advised as to the movements of the warships and kept their craft as far away from them as possible. Thus it was that unless a cruiser happened along just as a merchantman was being looted, and her crew butchered, or immediately afterward, the chance of capturing the scoundrels was remote. Even with the large retributive fleet of cruisers and gunboats that finally was established in those waters, beauteous and romantic but thickly dotted with villainous havens, the number of piracies that were punished, including the joyous justice which Norton and I meted out, was trifling when compared with the total of murder and robbery.

The chief of a large section of the Chinese pirates was old Moy Sen, a rich Chinaman who lived in a handsome home in Canton and posed as a legitimate trader. He owned a large fleet of junks and one steamer, and there was not a ship that left Hong Kong with a rich cargo that he did not know all about. The evil genius of the Malays was a shrewd scoundrel known as Leandrio, and he and Moy Sen operated under what would be known to-day as a “gentlemen’s agreement,” by which they divided up the territory, in a general way, and did not interfere with each other. As a matter of fact there were practically no honest trading ships in that section, with the exception of the big merchantmen engaged in the export trade. All of the coasting ships were either pirates themselves, when the conditions were favorable, or were in league with the pirates, to whom they carried information as to the value of cargoes being prepared for shipment and their probable date of departure. The result was that there was not a ship, except the easily distinguished merchantman, which we did not come to regard as legitimate prey.

Norton argued that the pirates were bound to keep on robbing and burning and murdering in spite of anything we could do, and that we could derive plenty of excitement and large profits by robbing them. Incidentally, he contended, we would put a lot of them out of business for good and all, thus contributing to the end desired by all nations. I fell in with his plan heartily, for, while I cared little for the money that was to be made, it promised as lively adventures as I could wish for. It was arranged that I should pose as Dr. Burnet, a rich English physician who was cruising in his private yacht for his health. To make it appear that they were engaged in legitimate commerce, the “Florence” and “Surprise” were to carry some general cargoes from port to port among the islands but were to so shape their cruises that they would be at certain fixed points on or about given dates, so that we could keep closely in touch with them. They were to be given large crews and so heavily armed as to be safe from piratical attacks. The “Leckwith” was to do all of the preying on the pirates and the loot we took from them was to be turned over to the other ships at the meeting places. This would make it unnecessary for us to put into port often as we could use our sails a great deal and husband our coal. This arrangement, and the changes which could quickly be made in the rig of all the ships, would, we figured, remove us from suspicion, for a long time at least. Agencies for our legitimate cargoes were established in Sumatra, on the island of Banca, where there were extensive tin mines, in Borneo and Rajah Brooke’s independent government of Sarawak in North Borneo, and at other convenient places. It was arranged that the bulk of our loot should be sent to a firm of Chinamen at Singapore, who dealt largely in dishonest cargoes but were absolutely honest with their clients.

With the schedules of the “Florence” and “Surprise” established and with the “Leckwith’s” bunkers stuffed with coal, we headed for the islands in search of pirates. We then had a crew of about seventy-five men, though at different times we had as few as fifty and as many as one hundred, independent of the “black gang” in the fire and engine rooms. The crews of the three ships were frequently interchanged, except for about fifteen especially brave and reckless fellows who were always kept on the “Leckwith.” With all of our sails set and in the guise of a trading ship we sometimes trapped the pirates into coming alongside and grappling with us, which made it easy work for us, but when we had reason to think they had valuable booty on board we went at them full tilt under steam and took it away from them. All of our guns, which were always unshipped when we went into port, were close up against the rail and were concealed under what looked like deck cargo, but it was the work of only a moment to cast off their covering and lower a section of the bulwarks long enough to give them a wide radius of action.

Our first experience was a profitable one. When near the “hunting grounds” we lowered the smokestack, got up our canvas, and sailed along awaiting developments. We were getting in among the islands when we met a big junk which had just looted and scuttled a richly laden Brazilian barkentine. She had much more than enough on board to pay her for one trip, but cupidity got the better of her commander and he put about and came after us, thinking we were only a trading schooner but might have something on board worth taking. We made a pretence of trying to get away, which we could have done, for the “Leckwith” footed fast even under sail, but in reality we eased our sheets to hasten matters along. When he was close astern of us, with the wind abeam, we luffed up, got out guns ready for action in a jiffy and, as we crossed his bows, raked him fore and aft with our carronades, which were loaded almost to the muzzle with slugs and nails. Before he could change his course, with his decks littered with dead and mangled, we came about and gave him a broadside at close quarters, along with a deadly rifle fire from the hitherto unseen members of the crew who had been concealed in the ’tween decks. He replied to this blast with a lot of stink-pots, only a few of which came aboard and were tossed into the sea before any ill effects were felt from their nauseating fumes, and a weak and poorly directed fire from his guns. Taken completely by surprise and with more than half of their number littering the reddened deck, the pirates were panic-stricken. Before they could regain their senses we came about again and gave them another broadside which took all the fight out of them, if there had been any left, and put them at our mercy. As we ranged alongside, keeping up a rifle fire but disdaining any further use of our guns, they managed to launch a couple of boats and all who could get into them pulled for the nearest island. When we threw our grappling irons and hauled in on them the few survivors who had strength enough left to get to the rail threw themselves overboard and swam for it. The first man aboard of the junk had one of his legs almost severed by the wicked sword of a badly wounded Chinaman, and after that bit of fiendishness our men lost no time in making sure that the rest of them were really dead. We took out of the junk fully one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of specie, silk, tea, porcelain, and drugs and then set fire to her, leaving her to bury her own dead.

After that easily won victory we trapped and sank half a dozen proas and feluccas in the same way, though with more spirited resistance in some cases, for we were so anxious to get things to going that we threw off our mask before we had them at such close quarters as we got the junk. We had two men killed in these engagements and a dozen more or less seriously injured. Norton sustained an ugly cut on the leg that sent him to the hospital and I got a slash on the arm that gave me considerable trouble for a few days. In only one instance did a ship get away from us and that was when two proas attacked us on either side in a dead calm that settled before we could get steam up. We could not change our position, while they manœuvred with their long oars and one of them escaped, though she took a lot of dead with her. We got nothing from them to speak of but there was excitement in extenso and we gloried in it. Norton had not overdrawn the picture of the adventurous China Sea.

We had turned our cargo over to the “Florence,” along with a number of wounded men, and were back among the islands, though outside of the regular course of sailing ships, when early one evening a full-rigged ship hove in sight. She passed us but was not more than six miles away when we saw flashes that told us she had been attacked. We had our fires banked, for it was just at the break of the monsoon when the weather is variable and the winds uncertain, so we lost no time in going to her assistance. As we closed in we saw a Malay felucca on each side of her and the pirates swarming on her decks, with the crew putting up a brave fight. Running the “Leckwith” up on her starboard quarter, we threw our men aboard of her and they went at the pirates savagely from the rear. I led the boarding party for it looked as though it would be one of the kind of fights that I never would miss. In those days I was young, athletic, and vigorous and I had rather have a fight with death at one end of it than anything else. No matter where I went, or what the odds against us, I knew the men of the “Leckwith” would be at my heels, for a braver set of dare-devils never lived.

The Malays outnumbered us more than two to one, but we went at them with a fury that was new to them, and were slowly forcing them back toward their one good boat—we had smashed the other one to bits when we slammed alongside—when a beautiful white yacht came tearing up on the port quarter and sent three boatloads of men to our assistance in such smart style that I took her to be a gunboat, though the quick glance I took at her showed her lines to be unusually fine for a warship. Her party clambered over the bows under command of a stockily built young officer wearing what looked like the uniform of a naval captain, and we had the pirates between us. I understood later, when I learned who and what they were, why these reinforcements, instead of discouraging the Malays, caused them to fight with renewed desperation. But they could not withstand our combined rush and the last of them soon went over the side into their proa, which drifted away into the darkness when they cut her loose. However, in the last few minutes of fighting the young British officer, as I took him to be, sustained a savage cut in his right shoulder, and after we had laid aside our dead and given our wounded rough attention I was surprised to receive an inquiry from him as to whether we had a surgeon on board. I replied that I was a surgeon and, taking him aboard the “Leckwith,” dressed his wound on the cabin table. I then saw that his uniform was that of a captain, but not of a naval officer. He told me his name was Deverell but when I asked him the name of his ship he answered evasively, and I had learned the ways of the China Sea too well to press the question.

“Your wound is rather a bad one,” I told him, “and is likely to require further attention. I am simply loafing and expect to be cruising in this neighborhood for some time, even though it does seem to be pretty thick with pirates. I will be glad to have you call on me if I can be of any service to you.”

He mystified me still more when he replied: “We know you, Doctor, and will know where to find you if it becomes necessary to take further advantage of your kindness.”

I had not time just then to think much about the strange incident, for the fight had been a bloody one and there were many men who needed attention. We had six men killed and there were fully twenty-five more with injuries of some sort. When I came to look myself over I found that one bullet had grazed the top of my head and another my chest, while the right shoulder of my jacket had been sliced off by a cut that, had it been properly placed, would have taken my arm with it. My only injury was a trifling flesh wound on my leg. Had I been less of a fatalist narrow escapes of that kind, to which I grew accustomed, might have affected my nerves, but instead they were only entertaining. It interested me, in every fight, to see just how close I had come to being killed, knowing full well that death could not add my name to the list until my time came, and that then there would be no way of avoiding it.

When we got to clearing up the decks nearly sixty dead Malays were thrown overboard. The merchantman, which was an English bark, had twelve of her crew killed and so many of the survivors were badly cut up that only six men were fit for duty. We left enough of our men on board to work the ship and convoyed her to within two hundred miles of Singapore, where, with a fair wind and a smooth sea, she was able to proceed without danger. That episode netted us not only a glorious fight but a great reputation as the friend and protector of honest shipping. In fact, it brought us too much fame, for when we put into Labuan, a British island off the north coast of Borneo, for coal, after seeing the merchantman safely on her way, and reported the incident, we had to get out in a hurry to avoid a lot of innocent questions as to who Dr. Burnet was and where he came from.

On our way back to the islands from Labuan we sighted the mysterious yacht whose commander I had attended. Evidently she was looking for us for she changed her course as soon as she made us out, and sent a boat alongside with a request that I come aboard, as the captain was very ill. I found him suffering with surgical fever, as I had predicted, and in rather a bad way. I dressed his wound and treated him and stood by for three or four days, visiting him twice a day and returning immediately to the “Leckwith,” for while my services were plainly appreciated it seemed that I was not wanted on the strange ship any longer than was necessary. There was an air of mystery about her that puzzled and fascinated me. As I entered Deverell’s cabin on my first visit I thought I heard the rustle of a skirt in the passageway behind me. Before I could make any inquiry Deverell, as though reading my mind, requested me to ask him no questions about anything relating to the ship. On my last visit, when I told him he needed no further attention, he said, after thanking me, “I am master here and I am not. No doubt things seem strange to you, and they really are stranger than you think, but I cannot tell you more now. Fate seems to have thrown us together, however, and I believe we shall see more of each other and get better acquainted. I hope so. Good-bye.”

Cruising westward after parting company with the ship of mystery we ran right into a series of profitable engagements. Four ships had left Hong Kong together but only one got through. The booty which the pirates took from the others we captured from them, in two small junks and three large proas, which we destroyed. We transferred our cargo to the “Florence,” near South Natuna Island, and stood off to the north while she headed for Singapore. We were three or four hours away from her when I had a strange presentiment that I should have stayed with her. The feeling was so strong that I put the “Leckwith” about, caught up with her, and went on board, with my traps. Expecting to have a lot of idle time I took along my torpedo, with which I was still experimenting.

A week later we were in a particularly dangerous place, near where the Brazilian barkentine had been scuttled. Late in the afternoon as we entered a narrow passage, we sighted a big proa close to an island on the port bow, and less than half a mile farther on we came on another one partly hidden in the mouth of a creek in a larger island on the starboard hand. There was not a sign of life on either one of them but I knew their crews were close by and felt that we were in for it. I was fussing with the torpedo when we came upon them and it struck me that this would be a good chance to put it to the test, if both of them attacked us at once, which I supposed they would do. We had neither fulminate of mercury nor gun-cotton aboard but I had been working to overcome that very difficulty and had arranged the firing pin so that it would discharge a cartridge into an explosive charge of black powder. We packed the chamber with powder, and filled enough air cylinders to keep the torpedo afloat, bent on a towing line of new manila rope, one hundred fathoms long, and had everything in readiness by the time it was dark.

We kept a sharp lookout and it was not long until we heard the soft chug of oars off the starboard bow. Our whaleboat, which was manned and waiting, at once set off in a course which, we figured, would carry the towing line across the bow of the proa. A few minutes later we made out the other proa coming up astern on the port side. The pair of them got so close that it looked as though something had gone wrong with my torpedo and I was just about to divide our crew to meet them on both sides when there was a flash and a roar less than fifty yards away, and the complete success of my invention was demonstrated. The proa was thrown out of the water, turned over, and badly smashed up. We never knew how many of her crew were killed by the explosion but not many could have escaped. The other craft swung around to board us but we riddled it with full charges from the fore and aft carronades and it began to sink. The survivors took to the water and a lot of them attacked the whaleboat, which had towed the torpedo, as it was making its way back to the ship. The boat’s crew were prepared for them and their heavy cutlasses chopped off every hand that grasped the gunwale and split open every head they could reach.

At Singapore, where we discharged our cargo, our agents reported that Moy Sen was vowing vengeance on us for the loot we had wrested from him and the havoc we had spread among his fleet, and that he had caused the report to be actively circulated at Hong Kong that the “Leckwith” was not a private yacht but a pirate, preying on legitimate commerce. As a result many robberies with which we had nothing at all to do were being laid at our door, and we were advised to be cautious. We worked our way back to the rendezvous and, after consulting with Norton, I took my interpreter, Ah Fen, who was half “Chinkie” and half Malay, from the “Leckwith” and went to Hong Kong on the “Surprise” to see just what was going on.

CHAPTER VIII
“THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL”

“THE Beautiful White Devil,” a woman pirate whom I at first regarded as a purely fanciful being, born of the unreal atmosphere of the East, came into my life, in which she was destined to play a most important part, at Hong Kong in the early days of 1876. I had gone there in search of authentic information concerning the attitude and plans of old Moy Sen, overlord of all the Chinese pirates, who was reported to have declared an intention to bury my harassing ships and all on board of them, in return for our vigorous operations against him. This threat had given a new interest to a game of which I was beginning to tire, for I had then been waging war on the pirates for more than a year, and it was getting monotonous. I landed quietly at night from the “Surprise,” which remained far out in the roadstead, and went to the old Queen’s Hotel, where I clung to my role of a rich English physician, travelling for his health, but assumed a new name, which I cannot recall. My “Chinkie” interpreter, Ah Fen, I sent on up to Canton to secretly gain such information as he could pick up from a relative in the camp of the boss buccaneer of the China Sea.

While waiting for his report I lounged around the hotel and steered my casual conversation with the habitués toward the subject in which I was most interested. Soon I began to hear weird stories of a woman pirate who, while never molesting honest merchantmen, preyed mercilessly and successfully on the Chinese and Malay pirates, just as Norton and I were doing. It was said that she was exquisitely beautiful of face and diabolically black of heart; that she led her band of cut-throats in person and gloried in the shedding of black and yellow blood by the barrel. Her recreation from wholesale butchery was found in the companionship of occasional white men whom she ran across and who gladly accompanied her to her retreat, located no one knew where, only to be killed when she wearied of them. According to these tales, which I at first regarded as purely imaginative, she travelled in a steam yacht of phenomenal speed and had never failed in her desperate exploits. Though she had been in the business for years no one in Hong Kong had ever seen her and she was known only as the “Beautiful White Devil,” which name, from all accounts, was well suited to her. It occurred to me at once that if such a woman really did exist it might have been her ship that came to our assistance on the night of our battle with the Malays on the deck of the British bark, and whose captain I had attended under strange circumstances, and I saw visions of a meeting and perhaps closer acquaintance with her; but they were only fleeting fancies, for I could not make myself believe the tales that were told me. Not but what I wanted to believe them, and tried to, for next to adventure I loved a beautiful woman; if the two could be combined, the result would be an absolutely ideal condition, even though the feminine fancy did run to murder; but my reason told me I was dreaming of the impossible.

However, after I had heard the report of Ah Fen, who returned in about two weeks, bubbling over with information and gossip, I put more confidence in what I had been told, for he repeated the same wild story, with elaborations and variations. It was a well established fact in the minds of Moy Sen and his followers, he said, that there actually was a woman pirate who preyed on and destroyed the regular pirates, and she was as much hated as we were, or more, for she had been following that calling, with much energy, for years. It was said she had inherited an avenging oath against the pirates from some male member of her family, who had been a terror to them before her, and she was carrying it out with fanatical fervor. This was the story brought in by pirates who had escaped from junks and proas she had attacked, and who gave thrilling accounts of her demoniacal fury in leading her men. Moy Sen, my interpreter reported, was swearing renewed vengeance on both of us but, inasmuch as the lady seemed to bear a charmed life, he proposed to go after me first. He attributed to me the destruction of some of his junks that I had never seen, while, to balance accounts, the robbery of some of his ships which I had looted was laid at the door of my woman contemporary. This convinced me that there was a woman pirate, or, which I still believed to be more likely, a man masquerading as a woman, and that the pirate chief had confused our exploits. He was setting some sort of a trap for me, according to the inside gossip picked up by Ah Fen, and was determined to sweep the sea clear of my ships, at least.

I had sent the “Surprise” away as soon as she landed me, with orders to return in a month, ostensibly in search of cargo, and pick me up. She was about due when a man called at my hotel one evening and asked if an English physician was stopping there. I was pointed out to him in the billiard room and as he came toward me I recognized Captain Deverell, but he was as formal as a stranger and I took my cue from that and did not indicate that I knew him. He asked if he could consult with me and I took him to my room, where he assumed a much more cordial air.

“I called,” he said, “to invite you to take a cruise with me so that we may get better acquainted and I can show you my appreciation of your kindness of a few weeks ago.”

“How long will you be out?” I asked.

“A week or a month; whatever time suits your pleasure.”

I did some quick thinking. If there was a woman pirate it was her ship that Deverell commanded, I was sure. If I accepted his invitation I might go the way of other men whom, if the reports I had heard were to be trusted, she had picked up, and who never returned. Whether she was a “Devil” or whether it was her ship from which the invitation came I could not ask without showing some apprehension that would be impolite. Besides, I had previously been requested by Deverell to ask him no questions about himself or his ship and I inferred that this inhibition was still in force; if he had wanted me to know more than he had indicated he would have volunteered the information. It was an uncanny proceeding, yet the very mystery of it attracted me as a magnet does steel. Furthermore, here was a brand new adventure, right within my grasp, and if it was to end my career then it was because my time had come, and that was all there was to it.

With my thoughts running in that channel a decision was quickly reached and I told Deverell I would be glad to go with him. I packed my bag and turned it over to a man whom Deverell summoned from the street. Ah Fen was instructed to watch for the “Surprise,” rejoin the “Leckwith,” and report to Norton what he had told me, and tell him to have me picked up at Hong Kong in a month or six weeks. Late in the evening we went to the Bund where a boat that was waiting at an out-of-the-way landing up near the native quarter took us out to the ship, which was lying fully six miles offshore, well beyond the usual anchorage. It was the same ship I had seen several times before but her rig had been so altered, by taking the rake out of her stack and shortening her spars, and by changing her upper works, that I could not have recognized her if I had seen her under any other conditions. Her sides were discolored and dirty, due to the skilful use of paint, and she looked like an old tramp. But on board of her were all the comforts and conveniences of a yacht, with the discipline of a warship. She was about the size of the “Leckwith,” registering probably five hundred tons net, and with the removal of her dummy superstructure which concealed six carronades, her deck was clear, except for the wheelhouse and the captain’s room behind it. The gun deck below was devoted entirely to living quarters arranged with an eye to comfort. Those for the crew ran back to amidships, for she carried all of a hundred men. Abaft of them were the officers’ quarters and in the stern, cut off from the rest of the ship, were the rooms of the real commander, which were large and sumptuously furnished.

As soon as we were on board it was “Up anchor and full speed to sea.” Appropriately enough, I was given the cabin of the surgeon, who had died recently, to which fact I owed my presence on the ship. Deverell took me into his room and we talked until midnight. Soon after we got under way he satisfied my silent impatience by throwing open a panel and exposing a life-size painting of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

“Is that the Beautiful White Devil?” I asked, unable longer to restrain the questions that were choking me.

“That is our Queen,” he replied gravely, “and it is by that name alone that she is known to us and spoken of on this ship.”

“She certainly is entitled to the first part of the name by which she is known ashore, whether or not she deserves the last section of it,” I said, with open admiration.

His answer left no doubt as to whose ship I was on. “That picture may do partial justice to her face but it is impossible that it could portray the beauty of her heart. Instead of being cold-blooded and bloodthirsty, as you seem to have heard, she is tender and sympathetic and she has devoted a great part of her money to the relief of suffering humanity. She deprecates killing even villainous Malays and Chinks, but she will not be defeated, cost what it will. Never since I joined the ship have I seen a wanton act of cruelty.”

“What is her life, and what is the motive of it?” I asked.

“She will have to tell you that herself, but before you see her I want to warn you. Every man who sees the Queen falls in love with her, and if you think you are going to be like the rest you had better go over the side right now.”

“How is one to keep from falling in love with her?” I inquired, with some anxiety, still lost in admiration of the lovely face on the canvas.

“If one philosophizes and keeps his love to himself it is all right, but this lady is not to be won by any man. She has devoted her life to a particular purpose and we have devoted our lives to her.”

“That sounds very romantic and interesting,” I observed, already half suspicious that Deverell himself was in love with her. “What is the special purpose to which you are all pledged?”

A shrug of the shoulders and a smile made up the only answer.

Deverell then closed the panel and made me the subject of conversation. He asked all manner of questions about my life, and when I brought the story down to the China Sea he showed a familiarity with my movements which indicated a system of spies that aroused my admiration, and I was free in expressing it. It was through their elaborate system, he admitted, that they had learned I was in Hong Kong and where I was stopping. He admitted, too, that they had been in touch with me from the day I entered their waters and had come to regard me as a kindred soul, to which fact I owed my invitation from their Queen.

It was considerably after eight bells before I retired but my sleep was not long or heavy, for the strangeness of the situation and its possibilities impressed me, not with fear but with exultant expectancy. At breakfast time Deverell, wearing a smart uniform, escorted me aft to the private quarters of the Queen, which reminded me of those of an officer of flag rank in the American Navy. They had the same private galley and air of exclusiveness of a flagship, but they were much more spacious and were fitted out with a daintiness that bespoke generations of culture. The dining-room was a reproduction in miniature of those one finds in the best homes of England, with nothing about it to suggest the sea. Back of it and separated from it by odd Chinese curtains, was a luxurious lounging room, with large ports cut through the over-hang. On one side of it was the Queen’s sitting-room and library, and on the other her boudoir.

I was ushered into the dining-room and in a moment the Queen appeared. As she parted the curtains and paused for just an instant in the doorway with an air of diffidence, I was transfixed by her marvellous beauty, to which, as Deverell had said, the painted picture had done only partial justice. Tall, and with the figure and the manner of a goddess, I was fascinated by her eyes, deep blue and filled with sentiment and sympathy; eyes that could never be brutal but which must yearn for love and tenderness; not the eyes of a woman born to command, for there was a softness about them that was almost pleading, but of one created with a desire to be herself commanded and dominated by a stronger nature. Through them she looked at me as a child might look, but with more of understanding, yet as much of curiosity. Unconfined, her hair, when I saw it, would have swept the floor, but it was twisted into a great black, glistening crown; a little detail that made her appear more than ever the Queen.

Deverell started to introduce me but she interrupted him. “I already know Dr. Burnet,” she said, as she swept toward me with superb grace and infinite charm of manner and extended her hand, small and soft.

“And I feel that I already know you” was a blunder into which her eyes led me.

Instantly the look of animation which had come into her wonderful eyes gave way to one of sadness. “But I fear,” she said, “that the reports you have heard regarding me are very different from those I have had concerning you, and which caused me to want to meet you, that I might thank you for your kindness to Captain Deverell.”

I stumbled into another tactless reply: “I have only one fault to find with what I have been told. You should be known as ‘The Beautiful White Angel.’” It was not a polite thing to say but I was hopelessly, almost heedlessly, in love, and it always has been my way to go straight at things.

Her answer, only through her eyes, that if I was not, in fact, a very ordinary individual I had made a very commonplace remark, so added to my embarrassment that we had talked about the weather and the sea for some time before I got back to my mooring and felt reasonably secure. Before breakfast was over we were getting along better, though I could not have concealed the admiration I did not express. At the end of the meal the Queen and I retired to the lounging room, Deverell going forward to look after the ship. His attitude toward her was one of devotion that amounted almost to homage, which she accepted as her right, and he spoke of and to her only as “Queen.” Naturally, I addressed her in the same way, as that was the only name Deverell had used when he started to introduce me, and I then knew her by no other.

“We are headed for my retreat,” she explained. “I want you to see it, and your visit there will give us an opportunity to get better acquainted. I should like to have you stay with us as long as you can. I will put you down in Hong Kong or Singapore on three or four days’ notice.”

I assured her the prospect was delightful. With a bow and a smile that encouraged veritable loquacity she asked me to tell her all about myself, and she displayed so much interest in my different filibustering expeditions, and the adventures that grew out of them, that I gradually told her the whole story. When my recital brought me to the China Sea her interest became even more lively, as to details, but she displayed the same intimate knowledge of my movements, in a general way, that Deverell had shown.

In the course of the numerous long talks which followed, I felt that I was regaining some of the ground I had lost by my blunders in my first bewilderment, and though my infatuation grew stronger every time I was in her magnetic presence, which charged my whole being with the electrical energy of life at its best, I said not another word to her about it, on the ship. As we came to understand each other better she asked me to tell her all I had heard about her. I was surprised, but I knew she meant me to be perfectly frank with her, so I repeated, in a general way, the vague and vapory whisperings as to her wonderful beauty, on the one hand, and her alleged bloodthirstiness and wantonness on the other, which latter stories, I told her, could not be tolerated for an instant by any one who had ever seen her. She smiled bitterly.

“I never have cared what people said or thought of me,” she said very slowly, “until recently. Far from enjoying the life I have been compelled to lead, I have suffered from it. It has been hard, and I have had to face and solve its problems alone. Craving friendship as flowers do the sun, and needing it as much, I have had to cut myself off from the world and try to make myself believe that I have neither heart nor conscience. When we get home I will tell you the story of my life, as you have told me yours.”

On the afternoon of the third day out from Hong Kong we ran into a group of islands, off to the eastward of the regular course to Singapore. Just as dinner was announced a flag was waved from the bridge and, following Deverell’s eyes, I made out an answering signal on the steep side of a small island just ahead of us. We were close inshore and I scanned the bank closely but could see no sign of either a landing or an opening. I was anxious to see what was to follow but a messenger brought word that the Queen was waiting dinner for me. Deverell did not dine with us but joined us as we were having coffee. The ship slowed down while we were at dinner and finally the screw stopped. Immediately the Queen led the way to the deck, where she had ordered coffee served.

“This,” she said at the head of the stairway, “is my kingdom—without a king. Isn’t it beautiful?”

I was a little in doubt as to whether her inquiry related to the scenery or the absence of a male ruler, but, without being able to distinguish clearly in the gathering tropic darkness, I assured her that it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, wherein, when day dawned, I found I had not exaggerated. We were at the head of an oval lake, perhaps a mile and a half long, with mountains, whose ascent began close to the shore, rising crescent-shaped around it. There was a small village, composed of English cottages and native huts, at the end of the lake nearest to us. On three sides of the lake was a narrow beach, which widened at the village; the fourth side, toward the sea, was a perpendicular bluff, sixty feet or more high. I searched it for the passage through which we had entered the lake but nothing could I see but a bare wall of dark rock. The Queen watched me as I studied the situation and smiled at my perplexity. “Wait until to-morrow,” she laughed. “It would never do to let you into all of our secrets at once. You had best retire early, for we will go ashore at sunrise,” and she disappeared.

While we had been talking the topmasts were lowered, which I did not quite understand, and the fires drawn, and soon I was alone on deck, with a solitary watchman forward. There was no moon but under the soft light of the stars, low-hung and with a brilliancy seen only at or near the equator, I sat in silent wonder and admiration for hours. I was up again before it was full daylight and watched the lowering of the Queen’s launch. She appeared with the sun, accompanied by a Dyak woman whom I had not seen before, and we landed at a little stone dock in front of the village. All of the inhabitants, consisting of about fifty English and Scotch men and women, some with silvered locks and bent backs, and some of them crippled by the pirates, and nearly as many natives, crowded the pier to meet her, their manner one of the greatest affection and deference. We walked through the village, which was a model of neatness, and on up a winding path for nearly a mile, when a sharp turn around a flank of the mountain brought us to a large bungalow—the palace of the Queen. It was so situated that it could not be seen from the sea, at any point, but just around the turn and not fifty yards from the house was a deep shadowed bower from which there was a clear view of the ocean for two-thirds of the way around the compass. This was the outside sitting-room of the Queen and here breakfast was served. While it was being prepared she made herself more beautiful by changing her dress of European style for a native costume of flowing silk so becoming that I wondered at her ever wearing anything else.

After breakfast she looked down at the little town and far out to sea in silence for a long time, and then told me the story of her life. Her name, she said, was Katherine Crofton. Her father was one of the younger branches of a family which was headed by a Baron. The family crest was a sheaf of wheat and the motto “God grants the increase.” Her branch of the family had lived in the south of Ireland for several generations. Another branch had long lived at Derry Willow in the County Leitrim. Her father was a lieutenant commander in the British Navy and to prevent an accident he disobeyed the order of an incompetent and arrogant superior officer. In a quarrel that followed her father knocked his superior down and otherwise abused him, for which he was court-martialled and dismissed.