Imaginary LIves (11 page)

Captured at last in New York, Kidd was sent by Lord Bellamont to London where he was tried and hanged on Execution Dock in his red cloak and his gloves. When the hangman placed the black Milan cap over his eyes, Kidd cried out: “Great God! he’s putting his bucket over my head!” The blackened corpse hung in chains for more than twenty years.

WALTER KENNEDY

Unlettered Pirate

Captain Kennedy was an Irishman. He could neither read nor write. Under the great Roberts he rose to the lieutenant grade by merit of his talent for torture. He was perfection itself at the art of tightening a cord around a prisoner’s brow until his eyes popped out, or of tickling his face with a flaming palm leaf. When Darby Mullin was tried for treason aboard the
Corsaire
, Captain Kennedy’s reputation became assured. Seated in a semi-circle behind the wheel house, the judges assembled with their long tobacco pipes around a bowl of punch.

Then the process began. They were about to vote the verdict when someone suggested another pipe before concluding the business. Kennedy rose, drew his clay from his pocket, spat and delivered himself of the following sentiments:

“Great God, sirs, devil take me if we don’t hang me old comrade Darby Mullin. Darby’s a good lad and bugger the man who says he ain’t. And we’re gentlemen o’ fortune. Hell, Darby and me has bunked together: I love him with all me heart, I do. But Great God, sirs, I know him, the bastard. He’ll never repent, devil take me if he will, eh, ain’t that so, Darby me lad? Good God, go ahead and hang him! Hang him by all means. And now, sirs, with the leave o’ the honorable company I’ll just step up and take a good swig to his health.”

This discourse was considered admirable – as great as any of those noble military orations reported by the ancients. Roberts was enchanted, and from that day Kennedy became ambitious. Near Barbados Roberts embarked in a sloop to pursue a Portuguese vessel. During his absence Kennedy forced his shipmates to elect him captain of the
Corsaire
, then sailed away on an enterprise of his own making. He looted and scuttled numerous brigantines and galleys carrying cargoes of sugar or tobacco from Brazil, not to speak of the gold dust and sacks of doubloons and pieces of eight. His black silk flag displayed a death’s head, two cross bones, an hour glass and a heart pierced by an arrow from which fell three drops of blood. With that insignia flying, he one day encountered a peaceable ship from Virginia, under the command of a Quaker named Knot. The pious man had neither rum, pistol, cutlass nor sabre aboard. He was dressed in a long black coat topped by a broad-brimmed hat of the same colour.

“Great God!” exclaimed Kennedy. “Here’s a cheery fellow! Now that’s what I like to see. No harm to my friend Captain Knot who wears such a joyful uniform.”

“Amen,” responded Knot, “so be it.”

Then the pirates threw gifts to the Quaker: thirty moidors, ten rolls of Brazilian tobacco and several packets of emeralds. Brother Knot picked up the moidors, the gems and the tobacco.

“These be welcome gifts,” he said, “for they may be put to pious use. Ah, would to heaven all our friends who scour the seas were moved by such sentiments! The Lord accepts all restitutions. These are the flesh of the calf and the limbs of the idol Dagon that you offer, my friends, as sacrifice. Dagon still rules in these wicked lands and his gold brings evil temptations.”

“Dagon be damned,” roared Kennedy. “Great God, shut that snout of yours and have a drink.” Brother Knot bowed peacefully, though he refused the rum offered him.

“My friends...” he began.

“Great God,” interrupted Kennedy, “call us gentlemen of fortune!”

“Friends and gentlemen,” Knot began for a second time, “strong liquors be goads of temptation our feeble flesh cannot endure. As for you, my friends...”

“Gentlemen of fortune, Great God!” corrected Kennedy.

“As for you, friends and fortunate gentlemen,” continued Brother Knot, “you who be hardened by long years of strife against the Tempter, it is possible, nay, even probable I shall say, that you no longer feel his sting. But we, your friends, should be troubled, gravely troubled...”

“To the devil with your troubles,” said Kennedy. “This man can talk, but I can drink better.

He’ll fetch us to Carolina to see his fine friends who probably own some more limbs of the calf,” the pirate went on. “Eh, Captain Dagon?”

“So be it,” agreed the Quaker. “But my name is Knot.”

And he bowed again, the broad brim of his hat shaking in the wind.

The
Corsaire
dropped anchor in a creek well known to the Quaker man, who promised to return and bring his friends. He did return, that same night, leading a company of military sent by Governor Spotswood of Carolina. The man of God swore to his friends, those fortunate gentlemen, that his only motive was to prevent the introduction of tempting liquors into this profane land. When the pirates were arrested he said:

“Ah, my friends, how mortified I am that this must be!”

“Great God!” said Kennedy. “Mortified is the word.”

He was put in irons and taken to London for trial. Old Bailey got him. He made his mark on all the questionnaires and on the receipt for his capture. His last discourse was delivered on Execution Dock, where the wind from the sea swayed all the corpses of former gentlemen of fortune, still hanging in their chains.

“Great God! what an honour,” said Kennedy, staring at the dangling cadavers. “They’re going to stick me up beside Captain Kidd. He ain’t got any eyes left, but it’s him all right – who else would be wearing such a grand crimson coat? He was elegant, Kidd was. And he could write. He knew his letters, he did; bugger me, what a fine hand! Pardon, Captain (he saluted the shriveled corpse in crimson). They, too, were gentlemen of fortune.”

MAJOR STEDE-BONNET

Pirate by Fancy

Major Stede-Bonnet was a gentleman and a retired soldier living on his plantation in Barbados in the year 1715. His fields of sugar-cane and coffee brought him a good income, and he had the pleasure of smoking tobacco he himself had cultivated. He had been unhappily married, for his wife, it was said, had driven him slightly mad, though his aberrations were only mild ones until after the quarantine. At first, his servants and neighbours humoured them as mere childish fancies.

Major Stede Bonnet’s peculiarity was the following: on every possible occasion he made a scathing denouncement of all who lived and fought on land, then launched forth a flood of praise for seafaring men. The only names sweet in his mouth were those of Avery, Charles Vane, Benjamin Hornigold or Edward Teach, good hardy navigators, in his opinion, true men of enterprise. They were all infesting the seas in the vicinity of the Antilles at that time, but if anyone called them pirates in his hearing Major would exclaim:

“Thank God, then, for these pirates, as you say, who give us an example of such free lives as our forefathers led. They had no rich men in their days, no women coddlers, no slaves to fetch them sugar and cotton and indigo, but one generous God distributing all things and to each man his just part. That’s why I like these fine free fellows who live as companions in fortune, dividing the prizes between them.”

Tramping over his plantation, the Major often stopped to thump some labourer on the shoulder, saying:

“Wouldn’t you be better off now, you fool, if you was stowing those bales away in the hold of a tidy brigantine instead of spilling your sweat in this dust?”

Nearly every evening he called his servants together under a grain shed to read them stories of the great exploits achieved by the pirates of Hispaniola or Turtle Island, for all the gazettes and journals of the day were telling how these men ravaged villages and farms along the coast. The Major read by candlelight, while big blue flies droned around his head.

“Excellent Vane,” he would cry. “Brave Hornigold, a real horn of plenty full of gold! Sublime Avery, loaded with the jewels of the Great Mogul and the kings of Madagascar! Admirable Teach – you who ruled fourteen wives, one after the other, then got rid of them all – you, Teach, who handed over your last one (she was only sixteen) to your friends every night (out of pure generosity, grandeur of the soul and sheer love of science), at Okerecok, that fine island of yours! How happy are they who follow your wake, who drink their rum with you, Blackbeard, master of the
Queen Anne’s
Revenge
!”

The Major’s servants listened to these discourses in silent surprise. His only interruptions were soft little noises when small lizards fell down from the roof, the suction grip of their tiny cupped feet loosened by fright. Shielding the candle with his hand, the Major reviewed famous naval maneouvres with the point of his cane, tracing plans and positions among the tobacco leaves on the floor. He threatened the cradle (that was what the pirates called forty strokes of the lash) to any listener who failed to understand and grasp the finesse of those fili-bustering tactics.

At last Major Stede-Bonnet could resist no longer. He bought an old sloop with ten guns mounted on her, and took on all the essential paraphernalia of piracy, including cutlasses, cross-bows, ladders, planks, grappling hooks, hatches, Bibles (to take oath by), kegs of rum, lanterns, soot for blackening faces, pitch, wicks to burn under the fingernails of rich merchants, a mighty supply of black flags with skulls and cross-bones on them, and the name of the vessel –
The Revenge
. After driving seventy of his domestic servants aboard to be his pirate crew, he set sail in the night, heading due west with the intention of skirting Saint Vincent, tacking back by way of Yucatan and pillaging all the coast as far as Savannah – where he never arrived.

Major Stede-Bonnet knew nothing of the sea or its language. Between the compass and the astrolabe he began to lose his reason completely; he confused mizzen with bos’un, the jib with the brig, the foresail with the fo’castle; he called the wheel the keel, said starboard when he meant larboard and aft when he meant abaft. All those strange words and the disquieting motion of the sea combined to upset him until he wished himself safe ashore on his plantation in Barbados, and would probably have returned without further adventure were it not for his glorious desire to raise the skull and cross-bones at sight of the first vessel encountered. He had neglected to put aboard any provisions, counting as he did on ample loot, but since not a single sail was spied the first night, Major Stede-Bonnet decided to attack a village.

Hailing all his men to the bridge head he handed out the brand-new cutlasses, urging the crew to their utmost ferocity. From a bucket of soot he proceeded to black his own face, commanding the others to follow suit, which they did with some élan.

Recalling his pirate lore, he judged it best to stimulate his men with a few drinks of some reliable pirate beverage, so he doled out to each one a pint of rum and gunpowder mixed (wine, he knew, was the proper ingredient, but he had none). The servant sailors drank their rations down, though contrary to rule, their faces were not instantly suffused with fury. There was, in fact, a concerted movement both to port and to starboard as they hastened their sooty faces over the rail, offering the mixture to the depths of that villainous sea. By this time
The
Revenge
was all but stranded on the beach of Saint Vincent, so the pirates went staggering ashore.

It was morning. The astonished faces of the villagers somehow failed to excite a great deal of piratical frenzy; even Major Stede-Bonnet was not overmuch disposed to do violence. He showed his ferocity, however, by purchasing rice, vegetables and salt pork which he paid for (in a noble buccaneer manner, it seemed to him) with two kegs of rum and some old rope. When his crew had humbly pushed
The Revenge
afloat the Major again set out to sea, proud of his first conquest.

He sailed all that day and all that night without the faintest notion of what wind propelled him. Towards the dawn of the second day, while he slept propped up against the wheel-house, much discomforted by his cutlass and blunderbuss, Major Stede-Bonnet was aroused by a shout.

“Sloop ahoy!”

Rising, he saw another ship standing off at about one cable length. In her prow was a man with a big full beard. A small black flag floated from her pinnacle.

“Hoist our death flag! hoist our death lag!” commanded the Major hurriedly. As he thought it over, his proper title was the title of a landlubber soldier, so he decided to take a new name immediately, following the illustrious example set by famous leaders of his new profession. He answered without further delay:

“Sloop
The Revenge
, commanded by me, Captain Thomas, with my companions in fortune.” The man with the beard burst out laughing.

“Well met,” he roared. “Comrade, we can both drift awhile. Come, have a go of rum with me aboard
The Queen Anne’s Revenge
.”

And Major Stede-Bonnet realized he was about to meet Captain Teach, alias Blackbeard, most famous of all the pirates he had so admired.

But the Major’s joy was not now as acute as he thought it would be, for he had a notion that he might presently be losing his splendid piratical liberty. He went rather grimly over to Teach who received him with much ceremony, glass in hand.

“Comrade,” Blackbeard began, you please me infinitely, but your navigating shows no prudence. So if you trust me, Captain Thomas, you will stay here while I send a brave able fellow by the name of Richards to sail your sloop for you. On Blackbeard’s ship you will find all the freedom due a gentleman of fortune.”

Major Stede-Bonnet dared not refuse. They took away his cutlass and his blunderbuss. He was sworn in on a hatch (Blackbeard could not suffer the sight of a Bible), given his ration of biscuits and rum, promised his share in future prizes. The Major had never dreamed a pirate’s life could be so orderly. When he sailed away from Barbados he had been a gentleman fancying himself a pirate. Now that he was to become a real pirate aboard
The
Queen Anne’s Revenge
, he no longer fancied the life so ardently.