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Having given
the history of a very plain and quiet buccaneer, who
was a reporter and writer, and who, if he were now living,
would be eligible as a member of an authors' club, we
will pass to the consideration of a regular out and
out pirate, one from whose mast head would have floated
the black flag with its skull and crossbones if that
emblematic piece of bunting had been in use by the pirates
of the period.
This famous buccaneer was called Roc, because he had
to have a name, and his own was unknown, and "the Brazilian,"
because he was born in Brazil, though of Dutch parents.
Unlike most of his fellow practitioners he did not gradually
become a pirate. From his early youth he never had any
intention of being anything else. As soon as he grew
to be a man he became a bloody buccaneer, and at the
first opportunity he joined a pirate crew, and had made
but a few voyages when it was perceived by his companions
that he was destined to become a most remarkable sea
robber. He was offered the command of a ship with a
well armed crew, of marine savages, and in a very short
time after he had set out on his first independent cruise
he fell in with a Spanish ship loaded with silver bullion;
having captured this, he sailed with his prize to Jamaica,
which was one of the great resorts of the English buccaneers.
There his success delighted the community, his talents
for the conduct of great piratical operations soon became
apparent, and he was generally acknowledged as the Head
Pirate of the West Indies.
He was now looked upon as a hero even by those colonists
who had no sympathy with pirates, and as for Esquemeling,
he simply worshipped the great Brazilian desperado.
If he had been writing the life and times of Alexander
the Great, Julius Caesar, or Mr. Gladstone, he could
not have been more enthusiastic in his praises. And
as in The Arabian Nights the roc is described as the
greatest of birds, so, in the eyes of the buccaneer
biographer, this Roc was the greatest of pirates. But
it was not only in the mind of the historian that Roc
now became famous; the better he became known, the more
general was the fear and respect felt for him, and we
are told that the mothers of the islands used to put
their children to sleep by threatening them with the
terrible Roc if they did not close their eyes. This
story, however, I regard with a great deal of doubt;
it has been told of Saladin and many other wicked and
famous men, but I do not believe it is an easy thing
to frighten a child into going to sleep. If I found
it necessary to make a youngster take a nap, I should
say nothing of the condition of affairs in Cuba or of
the persecutions of the Armenians.
This renowned pirate from Brazil must have been a terrible
fellow to look at. He was strong and brawny, his face
was short and very wide, with high cheek-bones, and
his expression probably resembled that of a pug dog.
His eyebrows were enormously large and bushy, and from
under them he glared at his mundane surroundings. He
was not a man whose spirit could be quelled by looking
him steadfastly in the eye. It was his custom in the
daytime to walk about, carrying a drawn cutlass, resting
easily upon his arm, edge up, very much as a fine gentleman
carries his high silk hat, and any one who should impertinently
stare or endeavor to quell his high spirits in any other
way, would probably have felt the edge of that cutlass
descending rapidly through his physical organism.
He was a man who insisted upon being obeyed, and if
any one of his crew behaved improperly, or was even
found idle, this strict and inexorable master would
cut him down where he stood. But although he was so
strict and exacting during the business sessions of
his piratical year, by which I mean when he was cruising
around after prizes, he was very much more disagreeable
when he was taking a vacation. On his return to Jamaica
after one of his expeditions it was his habit to give
himself some relaxation after the hardships and dangers
through which he had passed, and on such occasions it
was a great comfort to Roc to get himself thoroughly
drunk. With his cutlass waving high in the air, he would
rush out into the street and take a whack at every one
whom he met. As far as was possible the citizens allowed
him to have the street to himself, and it was not at
all likely that his visits to Jamaica were looked forward
to with any eager anticipations.
Roc, it may be said, was not only a bloody pirate, but
a blooded one; he was thoroughbred. From the time he
had been able to assert his individuality he had been
a pirate, and there was no reason to suppose that he
would ever reform himself into anything else. There
were no extenuating circumstances in his case; in his
nature there was no alloy, nor moderation, nor forbearance.
The appreciative Esquemeling, who might be called the
Boswell of the buccaneers, could never have met his
hero Roc, when that bushy bearded pirate was running
"amuck" in the streets, but if he had, it is not probable
that his book would have been written. He assures us
that when Roc was not drunk he was esteemed, but at
the same time feared; but there are various ways of
gaining esteem, and Roc’s method certainly succeeded
very well in the case of his literary associate.
As we have seen, the hatred of the Spaniards by the
buccaneers began very early in the settlement of the
West Indies, and in fact, it is very likely that if
there had been no Spaniards there would never have been
any buccaneers; but in all the instances of ferocious
enmity toward the Spaniards there has been nothing to
equal the feelings of Roc, the Brazilian, upon that
subject. His dislike to everything Spanish arose, he
declared, from cruelties which had been practised upon
his parents by people of that nation, and his main principle
of action throughout all his piratical career seems
to have been that there was nothing too bad for a Spaniard.
The object of his life was to wage bitter war against
Spanish ships and Spanish settlements. He seldom gave
any quarter to his prisoners, and would often subject
them to horrible tortures in order to make them tell
where he could find the things he wanted. There is nothing
horrible that has ever been written or told about the
buccaneer life, which could not have been told about
Roc, the Brazilian. He was a typical pirate.
Roc was very successful in his enterprises, and took
a great deal of valuable merchandise to Jamaica, but
although he and his crew were always rich men when they
went on shore, they did not remain in that condition
very long. The buccaneers of that day were all very
extravagant, and, moreover, they were great gamblers,
and it was not uncommon for them to lose everything
they possessed before they had been on shore a week.
Then there was nothing for them to do but go on board
their vessels and put out to sea in search of some fresh
prize. So far Roc’s career had been very much like that
of many other Companions of the Coast, differing from
them only in respect to intensity and force, but he
was a clever man with ideas, and was able to adapt himself
to circumstances.
He was cruising about Campeachy without seeing any craft
that was worth capturing, when he thought that it would
be very well for him to go out on a sort of marine scouting
expedition and find out whether or not there were any
Spanish vessels in the bay which were well laden and
which were likely soon to come out. So, with a small
boat filled with some of his trusty men, he rowed quietly
into the port to see what he could discover. If he had
had Esquemeling with him, and had sent that mild-mannered
observer into the harbor to investigate into the state
of affairs, and come back with a report, it would have
been a great deal better for the pirate captain, but
he chose to go himself, and he came to grief. No sooner
did the people on the ships lying in the harbor behold
a boat approaching with a big browed, broad jawed mariner
sitting in the stern, and with a good many more broad
backed, hairy mariners than were necessary, pulling
at the oars, than they gave the alarm. The well known
pirate was recognized, and it was not long before he
was captured. Roc must have had a great deal of confidence
in his own powers, or perhaps he relied somewhat upon
the fear which his very presence evoked. But he made
a mistake this time; he had run into the lion's jaw,
and the lion had closed his teeth upon him.
When the pirate captain and his companions were brought
before the Governor, he made no pretence of putting
them to trial. Buccaneers were outlawed by the Spanish,
and were considered as wild beasts to be killed without
mercy wherever caught. Consequently Roc and his men
were thrown into a dungeon and condemned to be executed.
If, however, the Spanish Governor had known what was
good for himself, he would have had them killed that
night.
During the time that preparations were going on for
making examples of these impertinent pirates, who had
dared to enter the port of Campeachy, Roc was racking
his brains to find some method of getting out of the
terrible scrape into which he had fallen. This was a
branch of the business in which a capable pirate was
obliged to be proficient; if he could not get himself
out of scrapes, he could not expect to be successful.
In this case there was no chance of cutting down sentinels,
or jumping overboard with a couple of wine jars for
a life preserver, or of doing any of those ordinary
things which pirates were in the habit of doing when
escaping from their captors. Roc and his men were in
a dungeon on land, inside of a fortress, and if they
escaped from this, they would find themselves unarmed
in the midst of a body of Spanish soldiers. Their stout
arms and their stout hearts were of no use to them now,
and they were obliged to depend upon their wits if they
had any. Roc had plenty of wit, and he used it well.
There was a slave, probably not a negro nor a native,
but most likely some European who had been made prisoner,
who came in to bring him food and drink, and by the
means of this man the pirate hoped to play a trick upon
the Governor. He promised the slave that if he would
help him, and he told him it would be very easy to do
so, would give him money enough to buy his freedom and
to return to his friends, and this, of course, was a
great inducement to the poor fellow, who may have been
an Englishman or a Frenchman in good circumstances at
home. The slave agreed to the proposals, and the first
thing he did was to bring some writing materials to
Roc, who thereupon began the composition of a letter
upon which he based all his hopes of life and freedom.
When he was coming into the bay, Roc had noticed a large
French vessel that was lying at some distance from the
town, and he wrote his letter as if it had come from
the captain of this ship. In the character of this French
captain he addressed his letter to the Governor of the
town, and in it he stated that he had understood that
certain Companions of the Coast, for whom he had great
sympathy, for the French and the buccaneers were always
good friends, had been captured by the Governor, who,
he heard, had threatened to execute them. Then the French
captain, by the hand of Roc, went on to say that if
any harm should come to these brave men, who had been
taken and imprisoned when they were doing no harm to
anybody, he would swear, in his most solemn manner,
that never, for the rest of his life, would he give
quarter to any Spaniard who might fall into his hands,
and he, moreover, threatened that any kind of vengeance
which should become possible for the buccaneers and
French united, to inflict upon the Spanish ships, or
upon the town of Campeachy, should be taken as soon
as possible after he should hear of any injury that
might be inflicted upon the unfortunate men who were
then lying imprisoned in the fortress.
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