Imaginary LIves (10 page)

Various princes who disappeared in those days were lighted to their death by Cyril Tourneur’s torch before he killed them.

He would lie in wait along the queen’s highway, hiding near some gravel pit or lime kiln. Selecting his victim from a group of travellers, he would offer to guide the gentleman through the quagmires. At the mouth of the pit he would extinguish his torch and hurl the unsuspecting man into the black hole. The gravel always gave way under their feet and Cyril would roll two enormous stones down to stifle the cries. In the dull glow of the kiln, he would sit through the night watching the cadaver as the lime consumed it.

When Cyril Tourneur had thus satisfied his hatred for kings he was assailed by his hatred of the gods. The divine spark within him urged him on to original creation. He dreamed of founding an entire generation out of his own blood – a race of gods on earth. He looked at his daughter. She was pure and desirable. To carry out his plan under the eyes of heaven he chose a cemetery as the most appropriate scene. Vowing to brave death and create a new humanity in the heart of that destruction decreed by the gods, Cyril Tourneur sought among old, dead bones to engender new ones. He carried out this project on the roof of a charnelhouse.

The end of his life is lost in a haze of obscurity. We may not be sure what pen has given us
The Atheist’s Tragedy
and
The Revenger’s
Tragedy
. One legend pretends that the pride of Cyril Tourneur went still farther. He is said to have raised a black throne in his garden. Several persons have seen him sitting there with his gold crown on his head, though they all ran away, frightened by the long blue aigrettes waving to and fro above him.

He read the poems of Empedocles in the manuscript. He often expressed his admiration for the manner in which the ancient poet died. No one saw the manuscript of Empedocles after Cyril Tourneur disappeared. That year the plague was come again, and the people of London took refuge on barges floating midstream in the Thames. One night a meteor flashed across the face of the moon.

Moving with a sinister roar it whirled like a globe of white fire toward Cyril Tourneur’s house. On his black throne, in his black robes and his golden crown, the man waited for the comet. Like a battle on the stage, an ominous blast of trumpets sounded a funereal fanfare across the night. In a shimmering, sanguine blaze, Cyril Tourneur was borne away to some unknown god in the sombre, stormy regions of the sky.

WILLIAM PHIPS

Treasure Hunter

William Phips was born in 1651 near the mouth of the Kennebec River and those forests from which the shipbuilders cut their lumber. In a Maine village, poor and small, he dreamed his dreams of fortune hunting and adventure for the first time.

There, in the sight of ships and makers of ships, the shifting, changing light from the New England seas brought to his eyes a gleam of sunken gold – a gleam of silver buried beneath the sands. Wealth was out there under the sea, he believed, and he wanted it.

He learned shipbuilding, earned a small stake, journeyed to Boston. Strong in his faith, he repeated this prophecy: “Some day I’ll command a king’s ship and own a fine brick house on Green Street.” In those days numerous shipwrecked Spanish galleons laden with gold lay rotting at the bottom of the Atlantic. Rumours of them stirred William Phips to the soul. When he learned of a mighty one, wrecked years ago near Port de la Plata, he sailed for London after scraping together all the money he could command, planning to fit out an expedition.

He besieged the admiralty with petitions. They finally gave him
The Rose of Algiers
, carrying eighteen guns, and in 1687 he set sail for the unknown. He was thirty-six years old.

The Rose of Algiers
was manned by a crew of ninety-five. Adderly, the first mate, came from Providence. When the men first learned that Phips had set his course for the island of Hispaniola they were not overjoyed, for Hispaniola was a pirate stronghold while
The Rose of Algiers
had every appearance of an honest craft.

When they first touched land the sailors called a council between themselves with the intent of becoming gentlemen of fortune. While they were assembled on a little beach, Phips stood at the prow of
The Rose of Algiers
, scanning the sea. The ship’s carpenter chanced to overhear the crew’s conspiracy and carried the tale at once to the captain’s cabin.

Phips ordered one broadside discharged at his mutinous men, then sailed away with several faithful sailors, leaving the rest marooned there, on a barren stretch of the archipelago. Adderly, the mate from Providence, managed to regain the vessel by swimming.

They came to Hispaniola on a calm sea under a burning sun. Phips asked questions about all the vessels that had foundered in these waters during the past half century, in sight of Port de la Plata. An old Spaniard remembered one, showing Phips the very reef. It was a long, round rock with sides sloping away, down to the far depths of the clear, vibrant water. Perched in the rigging, Adderly laughed to see the waves go whirling in little ripples and eddies, as
The Rose of Algiers
made a slow tour of the reef, while all the men examined the transparent sea in vain. Phips stood on the fo’castle, tapping his foot, pacing up and down between the winches and spars. Once more
The Rose of Algiers
made a turn of the reef, but the ocean floor was all alike, with its wet sand patterned in concentric waves, and its feathery sea verdure moving gently to the wash of the current. When
The Rose of Algiers
came about for her third tour of the reef the sun went down and the sea grew black.

Then it grew phosphorescent. “There’s treasure,” shouted Adderly through the darkness, pointing to the smoky gold streaking the surface of the sea. But the hot dawn of the tropics revealed an ocean clear and tranquil, and
The Rose of Algiers
continued her monotonous course. Eight days she held to it, until the men’s eyes burned red from their constant scrutiny of the limpid depths. Phips ran out of provisions. There was nothing to do but depart, so he gave the order and
The Rose of Algiers
came about. At that moment Adderly spied an unusual cluster of pure white seaweed growing on a side of the reef. He wanted it, so one of the Indians plunged, plucked the thing and brought it up, hanging straight and heavy from his hand. It was strangely heavy, the twisted roots seeming to entwine themselves around some form not unlike a pebble. Adderly swung the roots down against the deck to rid them of this weight, and a bright object rolled out sparkling in the sunlight. Phips yelled aloud. It was a lump of silver worth three hundred pounds. Adderly waved the white seaweed stupidly while the Indians began to dive. Within a few hours the deck was covered with old sacks as hard as stone, petrified, grown over completely with barnacles and little shells. When they were split open with cold chisels and mallets a stream of gold and silver nuggets and pieces of eight came pouring out of the holes. “God be praised!” cried Phips, “our fortune is made.” In all, the treasure amounted to three hundred thousand pounds sterling. Adderly kept repeating, “and all that came out of the root of a white seaweed!” He died at Bermuda several days later, raving mad.

Phips brought his treasure back. The King of England made him Sir William Phips, naming him High Sheriff of Boston. There he realized his dreams when he built a fine house of red brick on Green Street. He became a man of some importance. It was he who led the campaign against the French possessions, taking Arcadia from de Meneval and de Villebon, whereupon the king made him Governor of Massachusetts and Captain General of Maine and Newfoundland. His strong boxes were now heaped with gold. Then he set out to capture Quebec after gathering up all the loose money in Boston to fund his project. The enterprise failed and the colony was ruined. Phips tried issuing paper money, giving out his own gold in exchange, hoping by that measure to increase the value of the paper. But fortune had turned. The paper could not be upheld and Phips lost everything. Soon he found himself poor, in debt, harassed by his enemies. His prosperity had only lasted eight years. As he was embarking miserably enough, for London, he was arrested in default of twenty thousand pounds at the request of Dudley and Brenton, and was taken to Fleet Prison.

They locked Sir William Phips in a bare cell.

The only thing he had saved was the silver nugget that brought him his fortune – the silver nugget from the white seaweed. Fever and despair were on him: death took him by the throat. He struggled, haunted by visions of treasure. The galleon of the Spanish governor Bobadilla had gone down, loaded with gold and silver, in the vicinity of the Bahamas.

Gaunt with fever and his last, furious hope, Phips sent for the keeper of the prison. Holding out his silver nugget in his shriveled hand, he mumbled crazily:

“Let me dive – here, see? Here is one of the nuggets of Bobadilla!”

Then he died. The nugget from the white seaweed paid for his coffin.

CAPTAIN KIDD

Pirate

How this pirate came by the name of Kidd is not altogether clear. The act through which William the Third of England granted him his commission of the
Adventure
in 1695 began with these words: “To our faithful and well loved captain, William Kidd, commander... greetings.” Certainly from that time on it was a name of war. In battle or manoeuvre some say he always had the elegant habit of wearing delicate kid gloves with revers of Flanders lace.

Others declare he would cry out during his worst butcheries: “Me? – why, I’m as meek and mild as a new born kid!” Still others there are who say he stored his treasure in sacks made from the skins of young goats, the custom dating from the time he pillaged a ship laden with quicksilver, emptying a thousand bags of this metal which remain buried even now on the slopes of a little hill in Barbados. It is enough to know that his black silk flag was blazoned with a death’s head and the head of a goat, and his seal graven with the same emblems. Some who have hunted the numerous treasures Kidd buried in Asia and America have driven a little goat before them, thinking it would bleat if it crossed the Captain’s path, but no one has ever found his hidden gold.

Guided by Gabriel Loff, one of Kidd’s old sailors, Blackbeard himself searched the dunes where Fort Providence now stands, finding no more than a few traces of quicksilver oozing up through the sand. All this digging has been useless, for Kidd himself told how his secrets would remain eternally undiscovered because of the “man with the bloody bucket”. He was haunted by this man all his life, and his treasures have been haunted and defended by him ever since.

Irritated by the enormous amount of piracy in the West Indies, Lord Bellamont, governor of Barbados, fitted out the galley
Adventure
, obtaining a commander’s commission for Captain Kidd. Long envious of the famous pirate, Ireland, Kidd promised Lord Bellamont he would capture Ireland’s sloop o’ war together with the person of its master and all his crew, and bring them back for execution. The
Adventure
carried thirty guns and one hundred and fifty men. Kidd first put in at Madeira to take on wine; he then touched at Buena Vista for a supply of salt, and at last reached Santiago where he provisioned his ship completely.

From that point he set sail for the mouth of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and a little island called the Key of Bab.

It was there he raised the skull and crossbones and reorganized his crew. Assembled on the ship’s hatch, he swore them all to absolute obedience of the rules of piracy. Each man had a right to vote and a right to equal shares of fresh provisions and strong liquors. Cards and dice were forbidden. All lights out by eight at night; if a man would drink later he must drink on deck under the open sky. The company received neither woman nor boy. Should they be found in disguise, death was the penalty. Guns, pistols and cutlasses always to be held in readiness. Quarrels to be settled on land with sabre or pistol. Two parts of the spoils were for captain and quartermaster, one and a half parts for mate, bos’un and gunner, one part and a quarter for other officers. Rest for the musicians on the Sabbath Day.

The first ship encountered was Dutch, commanded by Skipper Mitchel. Kidd broke out the French flag and gave chase. The other vessel raised the same colours, at which Kidd hailed her in French, and when the pirate boarded the Dutch ship with his crew, Skipper Mitchel called out a Frenchman from among his own men to act as interpreter. Kidd asked him if he had a passport, and to his affirmative, replied: “Well, by God, if you’ve got a passport I’ll make you captain of this ship.” Then he had him hanged from the yard-arm, afterwards bringing the Dutchmen up one by one, questioning them, pretending not to hear their Flemish names and condemning them with these words: “French?... the plank!” A plank was swung over the side. All the Dutchmen walked it naked, stepping into the sea at the point of the bos’un’s cutlass.

Moore was Kidd’s gunner. Moore was drunk.

Raising his voice he asked: “Captain, why are you killing these men?” Kidd picked up a heavy bucket and went for him, and Moore fell with his brains spilling out of a skull split wide. There were matted hairs glued to the bucket in a curd of blood, so Kidd ordered it washed, but none of the crew would ever use it again. They left it hanging in the rigging.

A voice unheard by any save himself cried out behind Kidd’s shoulder: “Fill a bucket!” He whirled on it but his cutlass slashed only empty air, and he wiped a fleck of foam from his lips. Then he hanged some Armenians. When Kidd attacked the
Lark
he slept stretched out on his bunk after the division of the loot. Waking in a heavy sweat he called for water to bathe himself. A sailor brought it in a pewter basin. Staring at that common receptacle Kidd exclaimed: “Is that what you bring a gentleman of fortune... a bucket of blood?” The sailor fled; later Kidd drove him from the ship, marooning him on a remote rock with a rifle, a powder horn and a flask of water. When Captain Kidd buried his famous treasures in so many lonely places he had no other reason but the persuasion that his murdered gunner came every night with his bloody bucket to dig up the gold and hurl it into the sea.