The Book of Buried Treasure Part 23

With tremendous exertion, the party from the _Alerte_ was landed with its tools and stores, and headquarters established close to the ravine which was believed to be the hiding-place of the treasure as indicated by the chart and information of the Finn quartermaster with the scar across his cheek. It was found that there had been no actual landslide, but the ravine was choked with large bowlders which at various times had fallen from the cliffs above. These were packed together by the red earth silting and washing during the rainy season when the ravines were flooded.

Along the whole of the windward coast were found innumerable fragments of wreckage, spars, timbers, barrels. From the position of the island, in the belt of the southeast trade winds, many derelict vessels must have been driven ash.o.r.e. Some of this immense acc.u.mulation of stuff may have lain there for centuries, or ever since vessels first doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Here and there were the gaunt rows of ribs to show where a ship had been stranded bodily, and doubtless much valuable property in silver and gold, in bars, ingots, and doubloons, lies buried in the shattered hulks of these old Dutch East Indiamen, and galleons from Peru.

As particular landmarks near the ravine, the pirate had mentioned three cairns which he and his comrades had heaped up. Sure enough, the previous treasure seekers of the _Aurea_ expedition from England had found the three cairns, but foolishly demolished them on the chance that gold might be buried underneath. Mr. Knight could find traces of only one of them, and he discovered also a water-jar, a broken wheel-barrow and other tools to show where the others had been digging.

The crew of the _Alerte_ were confident that they were at the right place, and they set to work with the most admirable zeal and fort.i.tude, enduring hardships cheerfully, and during the three months of their labors on Trinidad, removing earth and rock literally by the thousands of tons, until the ravine was scooped out to a depth of from eight to twenty feet.

Their vessel had to anchor far off sh.o.r.e, and once forsook them for a fourteen hundred mile voyage to Bahia to get provisions. These London lawyers and other gentlemen unused to toil with the hands became as tough and rough and disreputable to see as the pirates who had been there aforetime. In costume of shirt, trousers, and belt, they became ragged and stained from head to foot with the soil, and presented a uniform, dirty, brownish, yellow appearance like so many Brazilian convicts. Their surf boat was wrecked or upset at almost every attempt to land or to go off to the _Alerte_, and when they were not fishing one another out of the surf, they were diving to recover their submerged and scattered stores. Their leader, Mr. Knight, paid them a tribute of which they must have been proud:

"They had toiled hard and had kept up their spirits all the while and what is really wonderful under circ.u.mstances so calculated to try the temper and wear out the patience, they had got on exceedingly well with each other, and there had been no quarreling or ill feeling of any sort."

At length the melancholy verdict was agreed upon in council. All the bright dreams of carrying home a fortune for every adventurer were reluctantly dismissed. The men were worn to the bone, and it was becoming more and more difficult to maintain communication with the _Alerte_. The prodigious excavation was abandoned, and Mr. Knight indulged himself in a soliloquy as he surveyed the "great trenches, the piled-up mounds of earth, the uprooted rocks, with broken wheelbarrows and blocks, worn-out tools, and other relics of our three months strewn over the ground; and it was sad to think that all the energy of these men had been spent in vain. They well deserved to succeed, and all the more so because they bore their disappointment with so much pluck and cheerfulness."

But, in truth, the expedition had not been in vain. The toilers had been paid in richer stuff than gold. They had lived the true romance, nor could a man of spirit and imagination wish for anything more to his taste than to be encamped on a desert island, with the surf shouting in his ears, the sea birds crying, all hands up with daybreak to dig for buried treasure whose bearings were found on a tarpaulin chart that had belonged to a pirate with a deep scar across his cheek. How it would have delighted the heart of Robert Louis Stevenson to be one of this company of the _Alerte_ at Trinidad! The gallant little vessel, only sixty-four feet long she was, filled away for the West Indies, homeward bound, while the men aboard amused themselves by wondering how many nations might have laid claim to the treasure, had it been found;--England which hoisted its flag on Trinidad in 1770; Portugal because Portuguese from Brazil made a settlement there in 1750; Brazil, because the island lay off her coast; Spain, to whom the treasure had belonged, and Peru from whose cathedral it was taken, and lastly the Roman Church.

In conclusion, Mr. Knight, to whose fascinating narrative, "The Cruise of the _Alerte_," I am indebted for the foregoing information, sums it up like a true soldier of fortune:

"Well, indeed, it was for us that we had not found the pirates' gold; for we seemed happy enough as we were, and if possessed of this h.o.a.rd, our lives would of a certainty have become a burden to us. We should be too precious to be comfortable. We should degenerate into miserable, fearsome hypochondriacs, careful of our means of transit, dreadfully anxious about what we ate or drank, miserably cautious about everything. 'Better far, no doubt,' exclaimed these cheerful philosophers, 'to remain the careless, happy paupers that we are.'

"'Do you still believe in the existence of the treasure?' is a question that has been often put to me since my return. Knowing all I do, I have very little doubt that the story of the Finn quartermaster is substantially true,--that the treasures of Lima were hidden on Trinidad; but whether they have been taken away, or whether they are still there and we failed to find them because we were not in possession of one link of the directions, I am unable to say."

In later years, E. F. Knight became a war correspondent, and lost an arm in the Boer campaign. I met him at Key West during the Spanish war in which he represented _The London Times_ and found him to be a solid, well-ballasted man who knew what he was about and not at all one to have gone treasure seeking without excellent reasons. That he was adventurous in his una.s.suming way he proved by landing on the Cuban coast near Havana in order to interview the Spanish Captain-General. A newspaper dispatch boat ran close in sh.o.r.e, the skipper risking being blown out of water by the batteries of Morro Castle, and Knight was transferred to a tiny flat-bottomed skiff of the tonnage of a bath-tub.

Equipped with a note-book, revolver, water bottle, and a small package of sandwiches, he said good-by in his very placid manner, and was seen to be standing on his head in the surf a few minutes later. He scrambled ash.o.r.e, probably recalling to mind a similar style of landing on the coast of Trinidad, and vanished in the jungle. That he ran grave danger of being potted for an _Americano_ by the first Spanish patrol he encountered appeared to give him no concern whatever. It was easy to perceive that he must have been the right kind of man to lead a treasure-hunting expedition.

Since the _Alerte_ sailed on her dashing quest in 1889, the pirates'

gold of Trinidad has figured in an adventure even more fantastic. Many readers will doubtless remember the career of the late Baron James Harden-Hickey who attempted to establish a kingdom of his own on the islet of Trinidad. He belonged in another age than this and he was laughed at rather more than he deserved. Duelist, editor, _boulevardier_, fond of the tinsel and trappings of life, he married the daughter of John H. Flagler of the Standard Oil Company and with funds from this excessively commercial source created a throne, a court, and a kingdom. He had seen the island of Trinidad from a British merchant ship in which he went round the Horn in 1888, and the fact that this was a derelict bit of real estate, to which no nation thought it worth while to lay formal claim, appealed to his active imagination.

A would-be king has difficulty in finding a stray kingdom nowadays, and Harden-Hickey bothered his head not in the least over the problem of populating this G.o.d-forsaken jumble of volcanic rock and ashes. Ere long he blossomed forth most gorgeously in Paris and New York as King James I of the Princ.i.p.ality of Trinidad. There was a royal cabinet, a Minister of Foreign Affairs, a Chancellerie, and uniforms, court costumes, and regalia designed by the king himself. Most dazzling of all the equipment was the Order of the Insignia of the Cross of Trinidad, a patent and decoration of n.o.bility to be bestowed on those deemed worthy of the signal honor.

The newspapers bombarded King James I with gibes and jeers, but he took himself with immense, even tragic seriousness, and issued a prospectus of the settlement of his kingdom, inviting an aristocracy of intellect and good breeding to comprise the ruling cla.s.s, while the hard work was to be done by hired menials. He mustered on paper some kind of a list of resources of Trinidad, although he was hard put to name anything very tangible, and laid special stress on the buried treasure. It was to be dug up by the subjects and, if found, to be divided among the patriots who had bought the securities issued by the royal treasury.

Surely a pirates' treasure was never before gravely offered among the a.s.sets of a kingdom, but King James had no sense of humor, and the lost treasure was as real to him as any other of his marvelous dreams.

Some work was actually done at Trinidad, building material landed, a vessel chartered to run from Brazil, and a few misguided colonists recruited, when in 1895 the British Government ruthlessly knocked the Princ.i.p.ality of Trinidad into a c.o.c.ked hat and toppled over the throne of King James I. The island was wanted as a cable landing or relay station, and a naval officer raised the red ensign to proclaim annexation by reason of Halley's discovery in 1700. At this Brazil set up a protest on the ground that her Portuguese had been the original settlers. While the diplomats of these two powers were politely locking horns over the question of ownership, that unfortunate monarch, King James I of the Princ.i.p.ality of Trinidad, Baron Harden-Hickey of the Holy Roman Empire, perceived that his realm had been pulled out from under him, so to speak. Whichever nation won the dispute it meant no comfort for him. Trinidad was no longer a derelict island and he was a king without a kingdom.

He surrendered not one jot or t.i.ttle of his rights, and to his Minister of Foreign Affairs he solemnly bequeathed the succession and the claim to proprietorship. And among these rights and privileges was the royal interest in the buried treasure. Harden-Hickey, when he could no longer live a king, died as he thought befitting a gentleman, by his own hand. It seems a pity that he could not have been left alone to play at being king, and to find the pirates' gold.

CHAPTER X

THE LURE OF COCOS ISLAND

It will be recalled that Lord Bellomont, in writing to his government of the seizure of Kidd and his treasure, made mention of "a Pirate committed who goes by the name of Captain Davis, that came pa.s.senger with Kidd from Madagascar. I suppose him to be that Captain Davis that Dampier and Wafer speak of in their printed relations of Voyages, for an extraordinary stout[1] man; but let him be as stout as he will, here he is a prisoner, and shall be forthcoming upon the order I receive from England concerning him."

If Bellomont was right in this surmise, then he had swept into his drag-net one of the most famous and successful buccaneers of the seventeenth century, a man who must have regarded the alleged misdeeds of Kidd as much ado about nothing. Very likely it was this same Captain Edward Davis who may have been at the East Indies on some lawful business of his own, but he had no cause for anxiety at being captured by Bellomont as a suspicious character. He had honorably retired in 1688 from his trade of looting Spanish galleons and treasure towns, in which year the king's pardon was offered all buccaneers who would quit that way of life and claim the benefit of the proclamation.

It is known that he was afterwards in England, where he dwelt in quietness and security. William Dampier mentions him always with peculiar respect. "Though a buccaneer, he was a man of much sterling worth, being an excellent commander, courageous, never rash, and endued in a superior degree with prudence, moderation, and steadiness, qualities in which the buccaneers generally have been most deficient.

His character is not stained with acts of cruelty; on the contrary, wherever he commanded, he restrained the ferocity of his companions.

It is no small testimony to his abilities that the whole of the buccaneers in the South Sea during his time, in every enterprise wherein he bore part, voluntarily placed themselves under his guidance, and paid him obedience as their leader; and no symptom occurs of their having at any time wavered in this respect or shown inclination to set up a rival authority.[2]

During the Kidd proceedings, the Crown officers made out no case against Edward Davis, and he appears at the trial only as a witness in Kidd's behalf. He testified in corroboration of the fact that Kidd had brought home the two French pa.s.ses taken out of his captures, and his experienced mind was quick to recognize the importance of the doc.u.ments as a sound defense against the charges of piracy.

Curiously enough, the name of Captain Edward Davis has since been linked with a buried treasure story, that of Cocos Island in the Pacific. Certain it is that he and his comrades took great spoils along the Spanish coasts of South America and the Isthmus, and that he used Cocos Island as a convenient base for careening ship and recuperating the health of his hard-fighting, careless crew. Wafer has given the following description of this popular resort for treasure seekers of modern times:

"The middle of Cocos Island is a steep hill, surrounded with a plain declining to the sea. This plain is thick set with cocoanut trees; but what contributes greatly to the pleasure of the place is that a great many springs of clear and sweet water, rising to the top of the hill, are there gathered as in a deep large basin or pond, and the water having no channel, it overflows the verge of its basin in several places, and runs trickling down in pleasant streams. In some places of its overflowing, the rocky side of the hill being more perpendicular and hanging over the plain beneath, the water pours down in a cataract, so as to leave a dry s.p.a.ce under the spout, and form a kind of arch of water. The freshness which the falling water gives the air in this hot climate makes this a delightful place.

"We did not spare the cocoa-nuts. One day, some of our men being minded to make themselves merry went ash.o.r.e and cut down a great many cocoa-nut trees, from which they gathered the fruit, and drew about twenty gallons of the milk. They then sat down and drank healths to the King and Queen, and drank an excessive quant.i.ty; yet it did not end in drunkenness; but this liquor so chilled and benumbed their nerves that they could neither go nor stand. Nor could they return on board without the help of those who had not been partakers of the frolic, nor did they recover under four or five days' time."[3]

Captain Edward Davis had found this delectable islet during a singularly adventurous voyage. The English buccaneers and the French _filibustiers_ who had long cruised in the West Indies, were driven from their haunts by the vigorous activity of the European governments, and in 1683 an expedition was organized to go pirating against the Spaniards in the Pacific, or the "South Sea." Dampier was of this number, also Captain John Cook, Captain Edward Davis, and Lionel Wafer who wrote the journal of the voyage. The scheme was hatched on the coast of Hispaniola, and after taking two prizes, French vessels, to Virginia to be sold, the company seventy strong, and most of them old hands at this game, stood out from the Chesapeake in an eighteen-gun ship called the _Revenge_.

Off the coast of Guinea they found a large Danish ship which better suited their purpose, wherefore she was carried by boarding. They christened her the _Batchelor's Delight_, and abandoned their old vessel which was burned, "that she might tell no tales." In February of 1684, they rounded Cape Horn and made for the island of Juan Fernandez, which several of the company had previously visited with Watling. Then sailing northward, the ship visited the Galapagos Islands to catch turtle, and bore away for Cocos which was missed because of adverse winds and faulty navigation. On this stretch of the voyage, the _Batchelor's Delight_ pa.s.sed what was known as the Isle of Plate, or Drake's Island, in lat.i.tude 2 min. 42 sec. S., which has an alluring lost treasure story of its own. Says Esquemeling:

"This island received its name from Sir Francis Drake and his famous actions, for here it is reported by tradition that he made the dividend or sharing of that quant.i.ty of plate which he took in the Armada of this sea, distributing it to each man of his company by whole bowls full. The Spaniards affirm to this day that he took at that time twelve score tons of plate, and sixteen bowls of coined money a man, his number being then forty-five men in all. Insomuch that they were forced to heave much of it overboard, because his ship could not carry it all. Hence was this island called by the Spaniards themselves the Isle of Plate, from this great dividend, and by us Drake's Isle."[4]

The mainland of South America, or New Spain, was sighted near Cape Blanco, where Captain John Cook died, and Edward Davis, then quartermaster, was elected commander. He cruised for some time along the coast, learning among other interesting news that at Point Saint Elena, "many years before a rich Spanish ship was driven ash.o.r.e for want of wind to work her, that immediately after she struck she heeled off to seaward and sank in seven or eight fathoms of water, and that no one ever attempted to fish for her because there falls in here a great high sea."[5]

In the bay of Guayaquil, on the coast of Peru, Davis and Swan, who had joined him in a small ship called the _Cygnet_, captured four vessels, three of which had cargoes of negroes. Most of them were let go, to the great disappointment of Dampier who was filled with a mighty scheme of treasure finding which he outlined in these words:

"Never was put into the hands of men a greater opportunity to enrich themselves. We had 1000 negroes, all l.u.s.ty young men and women, and we had 200 tons of flour stored up at the Galapagos Islands. With these negroes we might have gone and settled at Santa Maria on the Isthmus of Darien, and have employed them in getting gold out of the mines there.

All the Indians living in that neighborhood were mortal enemies to the Spaniards, were flushed by successes against them, and for several years had been fast friends of the privateers. Add to which, we should have had the North Sea open to us, and in a short time should have received a.s.sistance from all parts of the West Indies. Many thousands of buccaneers from Jamaica and the French islands would have flocked to us; and we should have been an overmatch for all the force the Spaniards could have brought out of Peru against us."

Soon after this, the little squadron blockaded the Bay of Panama for several weeks, plundering whatever shipping came their way. There they were joined by two hundred Frenchmen and eighty Englishmen, old buccaneers who had crossed the Isthmus of Darien to have a fling in the South Seas. Presently another party of two hundred and sixty-four sea rovers under French command were added to the fleet, besides a strong force of Englishmen led by one Townley. Davis was made commander-in-chief of this formidable combination of ten ships and nine hundred and sixty men, of which the flagship was the _Batchelor's Delight_. They laid in wait for the annual treasure fleet sent by the Viceroy of Peru to Panama and found it, but were beaten off because Davis' confederates lacked his eagerness for fighting at close quarters.

Turning his attention to the mainland, Davis sacked and burned the city of Leon on the lake of Nicaragua. There one of the free-booters killed "was a stout, grey-headed old man of the name of Swan, aged about eighty-four years, who had served under Cromwell, and had ever since made privateering or buccaneering his occupation. This veteran would not be dissuaded from going on the enterprise against Leon; but his strength failed in the march, and after being left on the road he was found by the Spaniards, who endeavored to make him their prisoner; but he refused to surrender, and fired his musket amongst them, having in reserve a pistol still charged; on which he was shot dead."[6]

After this, the force scattered in small bands to plunder on their own account, Davis keeping together the best of the men whom he took to Cocos Island where a considerable stay was made. Thence he ravaged the coast of Peru, capturing many vessels and taking many towns. With booty amounting to five thousand pieces of eight for every man, Davis sailed to Juan Fernandez to refit, intending to proceed from there to the West Indies, but before the ships and men were ready for the long voyage around Cape Horn, many of the buccaneers had lost all their gold at dice, and they could not endure to quit the South Sea empty handed.

Their luckier comrades sailed for the West Indies with Captain Knight, while they chose to remain and try their fortune afresh with Captain Davis, in the _Batchelor's Delight_. They soon fell in with a large party of French and English buccaneers who had formerly cruised with them, and were now engaged in trying to take the rich city of Guayaquil. They were making sorry business of it, however, and in sore need of such a capable leader as Davis. He finished the task with neatness and dispatch and shared in the gorgeous plunder of gold and silver and jewels, reckoned by one of the Frenchmen in his account of the episode at fifteen hundred thousand livres.

Davis was now satisfied to leave the Pacific, but whether he went first to Cocos Island to bury any treasure, history saith not, although tradition roundly affirms that he did. That he and many of his fellow buccaneers frequently resorted to the Galapagos group, as well as tarrying at Cocos, is a matter of record. Of the former islands, Captain Colnet who touched there in 1793, wrote:[7]

"This isle appears to have been a favorite resort of the buccaneers as we found seats made by them of stone and earth, and a considerable number of broken jars scattered about, and some whole, in which the Peruvian wine and liquors of the country are preserved. We also found daggers, nails and other implements. The watering-place of the buccaneers was at this time entirely dried up, and there was only found a small rivulet between two hills, running into the sea, the northernmost of which hills forms the south point of Fresh Water Bay.

There is plenty of wood, but that near the sh.o.r.e is not large enough for other use than firewood."

The buccaneers of other voyages than these may have landed at Cocos Island to leave their treasure. Heaven knows they found plenty of it in those waters. There was Captain Bartholomew Sharp, for example, with whom Dampier had sailed several years before. He took a Guayaquil ship called the _San Pedro_ off Panama, and aboard her found nearly forty thousand pieces of eight, besides silver, silver bars and ingots of gold, and a little later captured the tall galleon _Rosario_, the richest prize ever boarded by the buccaneers. She had many chests of pieces of eight, and a quant.i.ty of wine and brandy. Down in her hold, bar upon bar, "were 700 pigs of plate," rough silver from the mines, not yet made ready for the Lima mint. The pirates thought this crude silver was tin, and so left it where it lay, in the hold of the _Rosario_, "which we turned away loose into the sea,"[8] with the precious stuff aboard her. One pig of the seven hundred was taken aboard the _Trinity_ of Captain Sharp "to make bullets of." About two-thirds of it was "melted and squandered," but a fragment remained when the ship touched at Antigua, homeward bound, and was given to a "Bristol man" in exchange for a drink of rum. He sold it in England for seventy-five pounds sterling.

"Thus," says Basil Ringrose, "we parted with the richest booty we got on the whole voyage." Captain Bartholomew Sharp may have been thinking of something else than the cargo of silver, for aboard the _Rosario_ was a woman, "the beautifullest Creature that his Eyes had ever beheld," while Ringrose calls her "the most beautiful woman that I ever saw in the South Seas."

Of these wild crews that flung away their lives and their treasure to enrich romance and tradition, it has been said:

"They were of that old breed of rover whose port lay always a little farther on; a little beyond the sky-line. Their concern was not to preserve life, but rather to squander it away; to fling it, like so much oil, into the fire, for the pleasure of going up in a blaze. If they lived riotously, let it be urged in their favor that at least they lived. They lived their vision. They were ready to die for what they believed to be worth doing. We think them terrible. Life itself is terrible. But life was not terrible to them, for they were comrades; and comrades and brothers-in-arms are stronger than life. Those who live at home at ease may condemn them. The old buccaneers were happier than they. The buccaneers had comrades and the strength to lead their own lives."[9]

This stout old breed had long since vanished when Cocos Island once more became the theater of buried treasure legend. The versions of this latter story agree in the essential particular that it was Captain Thompson of the merchant brig _Mary Dear_ who stole the twelve million dollars' worth of plate, jewels, and gold coin which had been entrusted to him by the Spanish residents of Lima in 1820, and buried them on Cocos Island. Then, after he had joined the crew of the pirate, Benito Bonito, and somehow managed to escape alive when that enterprising gentleman came to grief, he tried to return to Cocos Island to recover the fabulous treasure.

The account of his later wanderings and adventures, as handed down in its most trustworthy form, has been the inspiration of several modern treasure-seeking expeditions. It is related that a native of Newfoundland, Keating by name, while sailing from England in 1844, met a man of middle age, "handsome in appearance and having about him something of an air of mystery which had an attraction of its own."

This was, of course, none other than Captain Thompson of the _Mary Dear_. He became friendly with Keating and when they landed at Newfoundland, the latter asked him to accept the hospitality of his home. The stranger, who appeared anxious to avoid public notice, remained for some time with Keating, and wishing to make some return for his kindness, at length confided that he was one of the two survivors of Benito Bonito's crew, and possessed a secret which would make them immensely rich. If Keating could persuade one of the merchants of Newfoundland to fit out a vessel, they would sail to the Pacific and fetch home enough treasure to buy the whole island.

Keating believed the strange tale and pa.s.sed it on to a ship-owner who agreed to furnish a vessel provided one Captain Bogue should go in command of the expedition. While preparations were under way, Thompson was inconsiderate enough to die, but it goes without saying that he left a map carefully marked with crosses and bearings. Keating and Bogue set sail with this precious doc.u.ment, and after a long and tedious voyage into the Pacific, they cast anchor off Cocos Island.