Pirate Gold
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Frederic Jesup Stimson >> Pirate Gold
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The author consistently used a convention in which a long dash,
used to indicate trailed off speech, follows the closing speech
mark, rather than being enclosed within the speech mark. This
convention has been retained throughout.
PIRATE GOLD
by
F. J. STIMSON
(J. S. of Dale)
Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1896
Copyright, 1895 and 1896,
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Copyright, 1896,
by F. J. Stimson.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PART ONE: DISCOVERY 1
PART TWO: ROBBERY 75
PART THREE: RECOVERY 137
PIRATE GOLD
PART ONE: DISCOVERY.
I.
It consisted of a few hundred new American eagles and a few times as
many Spanish doubloons; for pirates like good broad pieces, fit to
skim flat-spun across the waves, or play pitch-and-toss with for men's
lives or women's loves; they give five-dollar pieces or thin British
guineas to the boy who brings them drink, and silver to their
bootblacks, priests, or beggars.
It was contained--the gold--in an old canvas bag, a little rotten and
very brown and mouldy, but tied at the neck by a piece of stout and
tarnished braid of gold. It had no name or card upon it nor letters on
its side, and it lay for nearly thirty years high on a shelf, in an
old chest, behind three tiers of tins of papers, in the deepest corner
of the vault of the old building of the Old Colony Bank.
Yet this money was passed to no one's credit on the bank's books, nor
was it carried as part of the bank's reserve. When the old concern
took out its national charter, in 1863, it did not venture or did not
remember to claim this specie as part of the reality behind its
greenback circulation. It was never merged in other funds, nor
converted, nor put at interest. The bag lay there intact, with one
brown stain of blood upon it, where Romolo de Soto had grasped it
while a cutlass gash was fresh across his hand. And so it was carried,
in specie, in its original package: "Four hundred and twenty-three
American eagles, and fifteen hundred and fifty-six Spanish doubloons;
deposited by ---- De Soto, June twenty-fourth, eighteen hundred and
twenty-nine; _for the benefit of whom it may concern_."
And it concerned very much two people with whom our narration has to
do,--one, James McMurtagh, our hero; the other, Mr. James Bowdoin,
then called Mr. James, member of the firm of James Bowdoin's Sons. For
De Soto, having escaped with his neck, took good pains never to call
for his money.
II.
A very real pirate was De Soto. None of your Captain Kidds, who make
one voyage or so before they are hanged, and even then find time to
bury kegs of gold in every marshy and uncomfortable spot from Maine to
Florida. No, no. De Soto had better uses for his gold than that.
Commonly he traveled with it; and thus he even brought it to Boston
with him on that unlucky voyage in 1829, when Mr. James Bowdoin was
kind enough to take charge of it for him. One wonders what he meant to
do with a bag of gold in Boston in 1829.
This happened on Thursday, the 24th of June. It was the day after Mr.
James Bowdoin's (or Mr. James's, as Jamie McMurtagh and others in the
bank always called him; it was his father who was properly Mr. James
Bowdoin, and his grandfather who was Mr. Bowdoin)--after Mr. James's
Commencement Day; and it was the day after Mr. James's engagement as
junior clerk in the counting-room; and it was the day after Mr.
James's engagement to be married; and it was the day but one after Mr.
James's class's supper at Mr. Porter's tavern in North Cambridge. Ah,
they did things quickly in those days; _ils savoient vivre_.
They had made him a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Arts he had made
himself by paying for that dignity, and all this while the class punch
was fresher in his memory than Latin quantities; for these parchment
honors were a bit overwhelming to one who had gone through his college
course _non clam, sed vi et precario_, as his tutor courteously
phrased it. And then he had gotten out of his college gown into a
beautiful blue frock coat and white duck trousers, and driven into
town and sought for other favors, more of flesh and blood, carried his
other degree with a rush--and Miss Abigail Dowse off to drive with
him. And that evening Mr. James Bowdoin had said to him, "James!"
"Yes, sir," said Mr. James.
"Now you've had your four years at college, and I think it's time you
should be learning something."
"Yes, sir," said Mr. James.
"So I wish you to come down to the counting-room at nine o'clock and
sort the letters."
"Yes, sir," said Mr. James.
Mr. James Bowdoin looked at him suspiciously over his spectacles. "At
eight o'clock; do you hear?"
"I hear, sir," said Mr. James.
Mr. James Bowdoin lost his temper at once. "Oh, you do, do you?" said
he. "You don't want to go to Paris, to Rome,--to make the grand tour
like a gentleman, in short, as I did long before I was your age?"
"No, sir," said Mr. James.
"Then, sir, by gad," said Mr. James Bowdoin, "you may come down at
half past seven--and--and--sweep out the office!"
III.
So it happened that Mr. James was in the counting-room that day; but
that he happened also to be alone requires further explanation. Two
glasses of the old Governor Bowdoin white port had been left untasted
on the dinner-table the night before,--the one, that meant for Mr.
James Bowdoin, who had himself swept out of the room as he made that
last remark about sweeping out the office; the other, that of his son,
Mr. James, who had instantly gone out by the other door, and betaken
himself for sympathy to the home of Miss Abigail Dowse, which stood on
Fort Hill, close by, where the sea breezes blew fresh through the
white June roses, and Mr. James found her walking in the garden path.
"You must tell him," said Miss Dowse, when Mr. James had recounted his
late conversation to her, after such preliminary ceremonies as were
proper--under the circumstances.
So Mr. James walked down to the head of India Wharf the next morning,
determined to make a clean breast of his engagement. The ocean air
came straight in from the clear, blue bay, spice-laden as it swept
along the great rows of warehouses, and a big white ship, topgallant
sails still set, came bulging up the harbor, not sixty minutes from
deep water. Mr. James found McMurtagh already in the office and the
mail well sorted, but he insisted on McMurtagh finding him a broom,
and, wielding that implement on the second pair of stairs (for the
counting-room of James Bowdoin's Sons was really a loft, two flights
up in the old granite building), was discovered there shortly after
by Mr. James Bowdoin. The staircase had not been swept in some years,
and the young man's father made his way up through a cloud of aromatic
dust that Mr. James had raised. He could with difficulty see the door
of his counting-room. This slammed behind him as he entered; and a few
seconds after, Mr. James received a summons through McMurtagh that Mr.
James Bowdoin wished to see him.
"An' don't ye mind if Mr. James Bowdoin is a bit sharp-set the morn,"
said Jamie McMurtagh.
Mr. James nodded; then he went in to his father.
"So, sir, it was you kicking up that devil of a dust outside there,
was it?"
"Yes, sir," says Mr. James. (I have this story from McMurtagh.) "You
told me to sweep out the counting-room."
"Precisely so, sir. I am glad your memory is better than your
intelligence. I told you to sweep _it out_, and not all outdoors in."
Mr. James bowed, and wondered how he was to speak of Miss Dowse at
this moment. The old gentleman chuckled for some minutes; then he
said, "And now, James, it's time you got married."
Mr. James started. "I--I only graduated yesterday, sir," says he.
"Well, sir," answers the old gentleman testily, "you may consider
yourself devilish lucky that you weren't married before! I have got a
house for you"--
"Perhaps, sir, you have even got me a wife?"
"Of course I have; and a devilish fine girl she is, too, I can tell
you!"
"But, sir," says Mr. James, "I--I have made other arrangements."
"The devil you have! Then damme, sir, not a house shall you have from
me,--not a house, sir, not a shingle,--nor the girl, either, by gad!
I'll--I'll"--
"Perhaps, sir," says Mr. James, "you'll wait and marry her yourself?"
"Perhaps I will, sir; and if I do, what of it? Older men than I have
married, I take it! Insolent young dog!"
"May I tell my mother, sir?"
Now, Mrs. James Bowdoin was an august person; and here McMurtagh's
anxiety led him to interfere at any cost. An ill-favored, slight man
was he, stooping of habit; and he came in rubbing his hands and
looking anxiously, one eye on the father, the other on the son, as his
oddly protuberant eyes almost enabled him to do.
"There is a ship coming up the harbor, sir, full-laden, and I think
she flies the signal of James Bowdoin's Sons."
"Damn James Bowdoin's Sons, sir!" says Mr. James Bowdoin. "And as for
you, sir, not a stick or shingle shall you have"--
"If you'll only take the girl, you're welcome to the house, sir," says
Mr. James.
"Oh, I am, am I? Then, by gad, sir, I'll take both houses, and Sam
Dowse's daughter'll live in one, and your mother and I in the other!"
"Sam Dowse's daughter?"
"Yes, sir, Miss Abby Dowse. Have you any objections?"
"Why, she--she's the other arrangement," says Mr. James.
"Oh, she is, is she?"
Mr. James Bowdoin hesitated a moment, as if in search of some
withering reply, but failed to find it.
"Humph! I thought it was time you came to your senses. Now, here's
the keys, d'ye see? And the house was old Judge Allerton's; it's too
large for his daughter, and, now that you'll marry the girl I've got
for you, I'll let you have it."
"I shall marry what girl I like," says Mr. James; "and as for the
house, damme if I'll take it,--not a stick, sir, not a shingle!"
Mr. James Bowdoin looked at his son for one moment, speechless; then
he slammed out of the room. Mr. James put his foot on the desk and
whistled. McMurtagh rubbed his hands.
IV.
The office in which Mr. James found himself was a small, square, sunny
corner room with four windows, in the third story of the upper angle
of the long block of granite warehouses that lined the wharf. Below
him was the then principal commercial street of the city, full of
bustle, noisy with drays; at the side was the slip of the dock itself,
with its warm, green, swaying water, upon which a jostled crowd of
various craft was rocking sleepily in the summer morning. The floor
of the room was bare. Between the windows, on one side, was an open,
empty stove; on the other were two high desks, with stools. An
eight-day clock ticked comfortably upon the wall, and on either side
of it were two pictures, wood-cuts, eked out with rude splashes of red
and blue by some primitive process of lithography: the one represented
the "Take of a Right Whale in Behring's Sea by the Good Adventure
Barque out of New Bedford;" the other, the "Landing of H. M. Troops in
Boston, His Majesty's Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England,
1766." In the latter picture, the vanes on the town steeples and the
ships in the bay were represented very big, and the town itself very
small; and the dull black and white of the wood-cut was relieved by
one long stream of red, which was H. M. troops landing and marching up
the Long Wharf, and by several splotches of the same, where the troops
were standing, drawn up in line, upon each frigate, and waiting to be
ferried.
A quiet little place the office would have seemed to us; and yet there
was not a sea on earth, probably, that did not bear its bounding ship
sent out from that small office. And if it was still, in there, it had
a cosmopolitan, aromatic smell; for every strange letter or foreign
sample with which the place was littered bespoke the business of the
bright, blue world outside. From the street below came noise enough,
and loud voices of sailors and shipmen in many a foreign tongue. For
in those days we had freedom of the sea and dealings with the world,
and had not yet been taught to cabin all our energies within the
spindle-rooms of cotton-mills. As Mr. James looked out of the window
he saw a full-rigged ship, whose generous lines and clipper rig
bespoke the long-voyage liner, warping slowly up toward the dock, her
fair white lower sails, still wet from the sea, hanging at the yards,
the stiff salt sparkling in the sunlight.
Mr. James Bowdoin was already standing at the pier-head (for it was
indeed their ship of which McMurtagh had been speaking), and Mr. James
made bold to turn the key upon the counting-room and go to join his
father. Here he was standing, side by side with him, swaying his body,
with his thumbs in his waistcoat pocket, in some unconscious
imitation of ownership, when his father caught sight of him and
ordered him sharply back. "Yes, sir," said Mr. James, and moved to the
other angle of the wharf, for he had caught the word "pirates;" and
now, for some reason, the ship had cast her anchor, a hundred yards
outside the dock, while to it from her side a double-manned yawl was
rowing. And amid the blue jackets, above a dark mass of men that
seemed to be bound together by an iron chain, was some strange
rippling of long yellow hair, that the young man had been first to
see. Yet not quite the first, for Jamie McMurtagh was beside him.
Then word was passed rapidly down the pier how this ship of pirates
had been captured, red-handed, her own captain still on board,--the
good ship Alarm having seen a redness in the sky, and heard some
firing in the night before; and how Captain How had put it to his
crew, Would they fight or not? And they had fought, rushing in before
the pirate's long-range guns could get to work, in the early dawn, and
boarding; so now there was talk of prize money.
Young James Bowdoin and McMurtagh were all eyes. The boat rowed up to
the slippery wharf steps; in the bow were the two ringleaders and the
ship's captain, in the waist of the boat the rowers, and in the stern
the rank and file of the pirates, some eight or ten ill-looking
fellows chained together. (The rest of them, the captain remarked
casually, had been shot or lost in the battle; and not much was said
about it.)
The boat was made fast, and the two leaders got up, with Captain How.
The pirate captain, as Mr. James remarked, was a splendid-looking
fellow. Captain How said something to him as the boat stopped, and he
looked up and caught Mr. James's eye; and Bowdoin had time to remark
that it was blue and very keen to look upon. Young Bowdoin and
McMurtagh were standing on the very verge of the wharf, and the crowd
around had made a little space for them, as the owners of the ship;
Mr. James Bowdoin was standing farther back with the captain of a file
of soldiers. But the second of the pirates was a swarthy Spaniard,
with as evil-flashing eyes as you would care to see. And it was he
who held in his arms a little girl, almost a baby, whose long yellow
hair had made that note of color in the boat.
They were marched up the steps matted with seaweed; for it was low
tide, and only the barnacles made footing for them. And as the pirate
captain passed young Bowdoin he said, in very good English, "You look
like a gentleman," and rapidly drew from his breast, and placed in
Bowdoin's hands, the bag of gold. So quickly was this done that the
captain had passed and was closely surrounded by the file of soldiers
before Bowdoin could reply; nor had he sought to do so, for, on
looking to McMurtagh for advice, he saw him holding, and in awkward
yet tender manner trying to caress and soothe, the little lady with
the yellow hair. The second pirate had sought to hand her, too, to
Bowdoin, but some caprice had made the little maiden shy, and she had
run and buried her face in the arms of the young-old clerk.
V.
While young Bowdoin's father, with the file of soldiers, marched up
State Street to a magistrate's office, Mr. James and clerk McMurtagh
retired with their spoils to the counting-room. Here these novel
consignments to the old house of James Bowdoin's Sons were safely
deposited on the floor; and the clerk and the young master, eased of
their burdens, but not disembarrassed, looked at one another. The old
clock ticked with unruffled composure; the bag of gold lay gaping on
the wooden floor, where young Bowdoin had untied its mouth to see; and
the little maid had climbed upon McMurtagh's stool, and was playing
with the leaves of the big ledger familiarly, as if pirates' maids and
pirates' treasure were entered on the debit side of every page.
"What shall I do with the money?" asked Bowdoin.
"Count it," said McMurtagh, with a gasp, as if the words were wrung
from him by force of habit.
"And when counted?"
"Enter it in the ledger, Mr. James," said McMurtagh, with another
gasp.
"To whose account?"
"For account--of whom it may concern."
Bowdoin began to count it, and the clock went on ticking; one piece
for each tick of the clock. He did not know many of the pieces; and
McMurtagh, as they were held up to him, broke the silence only to
answer arithmetically, "Doubloon,--value eight dollars two shillings,
New England;" or, "Pistole,--value the half, free of agio." When they
were all counted, McMurtagh opened a new page in the ledger, and a new
account for the house: "June 24, 1829. To credit of Pirates, or Whom
it may concern, sixteen thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven
dollars."
"Pirates!" he muttered; "it's a new account for us to carry. I'll not
be sorry the day we write it off."
Bowdoin, in the frivolity of youth, laughed.
"And now," said McMurtagh, "you must tie up the bag again and seal it,
and I must take it up and put it in the vault of the bank."
"And the little girl?" asked Bowdoin. "We can hardly carry her upon
the books."
"For the benefit of whom it may concern," said the clerk absently.
Bowdoin laughed again.
McMurtagh looked at her and gasped, but this time silently. She had
clambered down from the stool, and was gazing with delight at the old
pictures of the ships; but, as if she understood that she was being
talked about, she turned around and looked at them with large round
eyes.
"What is your name?" said he; and then, "Como se llama V.?" (for we
all knew a little Spanish in those days.)
"Mercedes," said the child.
"I suppose," ventured Bowdoin, "there is some asylum"--
McMurtagh looked dubious; and the little maid, divining that the
discussion of her was unfavorable, fell to tears, and then ran up and
dried them on McMurtagh's business waistcoat.
"You take the gold," said he dryly; "I'll carry the child myself."
"Where?" inquired young Bowdoin, astonished.
"Home," said McMurtagh sharply.
McMurtagh was known to have an old mother and a bedridden father (a
retired drayman, run over in the service of the firm), whom he lived
with, and with some difficulty supported. Yet little could be said
against the plan, as a temporary arrangement, if they were willing to
assume the burden. At all events, before Mr. James could find speech
for objection, McMurtagh was off with the child in his arms, seeking
to soothe her with uncouth words of endearment as he bore her
carefully down the narrow stairs.
James Bowdoin laughed a little, and then grew silent. Finally, his
glance falling on the yellow piles still lying on the floor, he
shoveled them into the bag again and shouldered it up to the bank.
There the deposit of specie was duly made, the money put in the old
chest and sealed, and he learned that the pirates had been committed
to stand their trial. And he and his father talked it over, and
decided that the child might as well stay with McMurtagh, for the
present at any rate.
But that "present" was long in passing; for the pirates were duly
tried, and all but one of them found guilty, sentenced to be hanged,
and duly executed on an island in the harbor. There were no
sentimentalists about in those days; and their gibbets were erected in
the sand of that harbor island, and their bodies swung for many days
(as these same sentimentalists might now put it) near the sea they had
loved so well; being a due encouragement to other pirates to leave
Boston ships alone. Pity the town has not kept up those tactics with
its railways!
All the common seamen were executed, that is, and Manuel Silva, the
second in command, who had left the little girl with McMurtagh. The
captain, it was proved, had been polite to his two lady captives: the
men safely disposed of, he had placed the best cabin at their command,
and had even gone so far out of his way as to head the ship toward
Boston, on their behalf; promising to place them on board some
fishing-smack, not too far out. Silva had not agreed to this, and it
had led to something like a mutiny on the part of the crew. It was
owing to this, doubtless, that they were captured. De Soto, it was
known, was a married man; moreover, he was new in command, and not
used to pirate ways.
However, this conduct was deemed courteous by the administration at
Washington, and, feminine influence being always potent with Andrew
Jackson, De Soto's sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life;
and shortly after, being taken to a quiet little country prison, he
made interest with the jailer and escaped. It was reported that he
shipped upon an African trader; and, going down the harbor past the
figure of Manuel Silva elegantly outlined against the sky, he bowed
sardonically to the swaying _schema_ of his ancient messmate. It
excited some little comment on the African trader at the time; but the
usual professional _esprit de corps_ keeps sailors from asking too
many questions about the intimate professional conduct of their
messmates in earlier voyages.
But that is why De Soto made no draft upon the credit side of his
account at the Old Colony Bank; and James Bowdoin's Sons continued to
carry the deposit on their books "for the benefit of whom it may
concern." And so McMurtagh, who had taken little Mercedes Silva home
that day, continued to make a home for her there, his old mother and
his father aiding and abetting him in the task; and he carried her
young life, in addition to his other burdens, "for the benefit of whom
it may concern."
"Whom it may concern" is too old a story, in such cases, ever to be
thought of by the actors in them.
VI.
James McMurtagh was one of that vast majority of men who live,
function, work, in their appointed way, and are never heard from, like
a good digestion. This is the grand division which separates them from
those who, be it for good or evil, or weakness even, will be
protagonists. Countless multitudes of such men as Jamie must there be,
to hold the fabric together and make possible the daring spins of you,
my lords Lovelace, and you, Launcelots and Tristrams, and Miss Vivien
here; who weave your paradoxical cross-purposes of tinsel evil in the
sober woof of good.
No one knew, or if he knew remembered, what was Jamie's age. When he
was first taken in by the house, he described himself as a "lad;" but
others had not so described him, or else had taken the word as the
Scotch, not for English youth, but for male humanity,--wide enough to
include a sober under-clerk of doubtful age. Jamie's father had been
a drayman, in the employ of the house, as we have said, until his
middle was bisected by that three-inch tire weighted with six
puncheons of Jamaica rum.
Jamie had been brought over from Scotland when veritably young,--some
months or so; had then been finished in the new-fangled American free
schools, and had come up in the counting-room, the day of the
accident, equipped to feed his broken-backed father, with knowledge
enough to be a bookkeeper, and little enough pride to be a messenger.
Only, he had no spirit of adventure to fit him for a supercargo,--even
that brushed too close upon the protagonist for him; and so he stayed
upon his office stool. While other clerks went away promoted, he
ticked off his life in alternation from the counting-room to the bank;
trustworthy on that well-taught street with any forms of other
people's fortunes, only not to make his own, and even trustworthy, as
we have seen it go unquestioned, with this little Spanish girl.
Jamie took her home to his parents, and for his sake they fell down
and worshiped; with them she lived. The father had had too much rum
upon him to care much for the things remaining in this life; after
such excessive external application, who could blame him for using it
internally more than most? The mother's marital affection, naturally,
was moderated by long practice of mixing him hot tumblers with two
lumps of sugar, and of seeing the thing administered more dear to her
spouse than the ministering angel. But the mother worshiped Jamie, and
Jamie worshiped the little girl; and the years went by.
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