He was bitter against these proud relatives who seemed to edge away from him as though he were foul. He could not call them silly, for they had impressed him too deeply. They had succeeded in making him feel alone and helpless and very young.
The narrow ways of Ports Royal were deep with muddy filth, ground to thick liquid by the carts and the numberless bare feet. Port Royal bore the same resemblance to a city as the Palace of the Lieutenant-Governor did to Whitehall. The streets were only narrow alleys lined with dirty wooden houses. And each house had a balcony above the street where people sat and stared at Henry as he passed; stared not with interest, but wearily, as men in sickness watch flies crawling on the ceiling.
One street seemed to have no inhabitants save only women—black women, and white, and gray women, with fever written on their hollow cheeks. They leaned from their balconies like unclean sirens and softly called as he went by. Then, when he paid no attention to them, they shrieked like angry parrots and screamed curses and spat after him.
Near the waterfront he came to a kind of tavern with a great crowd gathered in front of it. Standing in the center of the way was a cask of wine with its head staved in, and a big, drunken man in crazy laces and a plumed hat strutted beside it. He passed out cups and basins and even hats full of wine to the reaching men. Now and then he called for a toast and a cheer, and his crowd screamed its acclaim.
Young Henry sought to pass them in his misery.
“Come drink my health, young man.”
“I do not wish to drink,” said Henry.
“You do not wish to drink?” The big man was overwhelmed with this new situation. Then he recovered his wrath.
“By God! you will so drink when Captain Dawes that took the supply ship Sangre de Cristo this day week asks you.” The lowering man came close, then suddenly drew a great pistol from his belt and pointed it waveringly at Henry’s breast.
The boy eyed the pistol.
“I will drink your health,” he said. And while he drank, an idea came to him. “Let me speak to you alone, Captain Dawes, sir,” and he tugged the pirate into the tavern door. “About your next trip—” he began.
“My next trip and hell!” the captain roared. “I’ve just taken a good prize, haven’t I? I’ve got money, haven’t I? Then what is this you are squalling about a next trip? Wait till the prize is spent and the wounds healed. Wait till I’ve drained Port Royal dry of wine, and then come talking about the next trip.” He rushed back into the street crowd. “Boys!” he yelled. “Boys, you have not drunk my health for hours. Come, shout together now, and then we will sing!”
Henry walked onward in despair. In the harbor a number of ships were lying at anchor. He approached a sailor sitting in the sand.
“That one’s fast,” he said, to open the acquaintance.
“Aye, good enough.”
“Are there any buccaneers of note in this town?” Henry asked.
“None but that Dawes, and he’s only a roaring mouse. He takes a little boat loaded with supplies for Campeche, and you’d think it was Panama he brought home for the noise he makes about it.”
“But are there none others?”
“Well, there’s one they call Grippo. but he takes no prizes unless they go unarmed. Afraid of his shadow, Grippo. Yes, he’s in port with no prize, and drinking black rum on tick, I guess.”
“Which is his ship?” Henry asked.
“Why, there she is. They call her Ganymede. They tell that Grippo stole her in Saint Malo when her crew was drunk. He and nine others tumbled the poor stiff wretches overside and made off with the ship for the Indies. Yes, she’s a good craft, but Grippo is no master. A wonder it is that he’s not wrecked her before now. Take Mansveldt; there’s a master for you—a real master. But Mansveldt is in Tortuga.”
“A good, swift sailor,” Henry observed; “though she could carry more canvas without hurt. How about her guns?”
“They say she’s over armed if anything.”
And on that night, Henry found the buccaneer drinking in a hovel on the beach. The man was nearly black; two fat wrinkles cut each cheek as though a silken cord were pulled tight against the flesh until it disappeared. His eyes darted here and there like sentries before a camp of little fears.
“Are you one they call Grippo?” Henry asked.
“I took no prize,” the man cried, starting back. “I take no prizes. You have nothing to fasten on me for.” Once in Saint Malo he had been accosted thus, and afterwards they had whipped him on the cross until a hundred sagging mouths opened on his body and every one laughed blood. Grippo had feared all semblance of authority since then.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I think I am going to make your fortune, Grippo,” Henry said with assurance. He knew how to handle this man, for he was a counterpart of the many slaves of the plantation—fearful, and perhaps greedy. “What would you do with five hundred English pounds, Grippo?”
The black man licked his lips and glanced at the empty cup before him. “What must I do for this money?” he whispered.
“You will sell me the captaincy of the Ganymede.”
Now Grippo was wary.
“The Ganymede is worth much more,” he said firmly. “But I do not want to buy the ship—only the captaincy. Look, Grippo! I’ll make this compact with you. I will give you five hundred pounds for a half interest in the Ganymede, and all of her command. Then we will put to sea. I think I know how to win plunder if there be no interference in my company. Grippo, I will give you a writing to this effect. If I fail in one single undertaking in the Ganymede, then you shall have the whole ship back, and you shall keep the five hundred pounds.”
Grippo still looked into his empty cup, but suddenly he was filled with excitement.
“Give me money,” he cried out. “Quick! give me the money.” Then—“Oloto! Oloto! bring white wine—white wine—for the love of Christ.”
CHAPTER III
THERE were many glittering reputations along the coast of Darien and among the green Caribbean islands when Henry Morgan came to be a buccaneer. In the wine shops of Tortuga were tales of a thousand fortunes made and spent, of fine ships taken and sunk, of gold and plate dumped on the docks like wood.
The Free Brotherhood had grown to be a terrible thing since Pierre le Grand and a little band of hunters slipped out of the woods of Hispaniola and captured the Vice-Admiral of the plate fleet from a canoe. France and Britain and Holland had seen in these islands a good hermitage for their criminals, and for years they had unloaded worthless human freight on the Indies. There was a time in those old nations when any one who could not give a good, virtuous account of himself was crammed into a ship and sent off to be a bond-servant to any man who would pay a small sum for him. And when their time was up, these people stole guns and warred on Spain. It was not strange, for Spain was Catholic and rich, while Huguenots and Lutherans and Church of England men were poor and out at heel. They fought a holy war. Spain had locked up the treasures of the world. If poor, mined beggars could be reaching a coin through the keyhole, who was the worse for it? Who minded except Spain? Surely England and France and Holland took little heed of it. Sometimes they provided the pirates with commissions against Aragon and Castile, so that you might come on a man who, ten years before, had been sent out in a prison ship, carrying the style of “Captain by the grace of the King.”
France had the good of her wayward children at heart, for she sent out twelve hundred women to Tortuga to be the wives of buccaneers. The whole twelve hundred turned to a business more profitable than wifehood immediately they landed, but France could not help that.
They had got their name, these buccaneers, of a time when they were nothing more than cattle-hunters. There was a way of smoking meat by burning small bits of fat and flesh in the fire. This made the meat more savory than usual. It was called the boucan process, and from it the pirates were named.
But after a time these hunters came out of the woods in little, careful groups; then bands formed, and then whole fleets of eight or ten vessels. And finally thousands assembled in Tortuga, and from that spot of safety buzzed about the flanks of Spain.