Book of Pirates | Page 8

went by the board, whereupon the men-of-war
came up with them, and the prize was lost.

But even though there were two men-of-war against all that remained of six-and-twenty
buccaneers, the Spaniards were glad enough to make terms with them for the surrender of
the vessel, whereby Pierre Francois and his men came off scot-free.
Bartholomew Portuguese was a worthy of even more note. In a boat manned with thirty
fellow adventurers he fell upon a great ship off Cape Corrientes, manned with threescore
and ten men, all told.
Her he assaulted again and again, beaten off with the very pressure of numbers only to
renew the assault, until the Spaniards who survived, some fifty in all, surrendered to
twenty living pirates, who poured upon their decks like a score of blood-stained,
powder-grimed devils.
They lost their vessel by recapture, and Bartholomew Portuguese barely escaped with his
life through a series of almost unbelievable adventures. But no sooner had he fairly
escaped from the clutches of the Spaniards than, gathering together another band of
adventurers, he fell upon the very same vessel in the gloom of the night, recaptured her
when she rode at anchor in the harbor of Campeche under the guns of the fort, slipped the
cable, and was away without the loss of a single man. He lost her in a hurricane soon
afterward, just off the Isle of Pines; but the deed was none the less daring for all that.
Another notable no less famous than these two worthies was Roch Braziliano, the
truculent Dutchman who came up from the coast of Brazil to the Spanish Main with a
name ready-made for him. Upon the very first adventure which he undertook he captured
a plate ship of fabulous value, and brought her safely into Jamaica; and when at last
captured by the Spaniards, he fairly frightened them into letting him go by truculent
threats of vengeance from his followers.
Such were three of the pirate buccaneers who infested the Spanish Main. There were
hundreds no less desperate, no less reckless, no less insatiate in their lust for plunder, than
they.
The effects of this freebooting soon became apparent. The risks to be assumed by the
owners of vessels and the shippers of merchandise became so enormous that Spanish
commerce was practically swept away from these waters. No vessel dared to venture out
of port excepting under escort of powerful men-of-war, and even then they were not
always secure from molestation. Exports from Central and South America were sent to
Europe by way of the Strait of Magellan, and little or none went through the passes
between the Bahamas and the Caribbees.
So at last "buccaneering," as it had come to be generically called, ceased to pay the vast
dividends that it had done at first. The cream was skimmed off, and only very thin milk
was left in the dish. Fabulous fortunes were no longer earned in a ten days' cruise, but
what money was won hardly paid for the risks of the winning. There must be a new
departure, or buccaneering would cease to exist.
Then arose one who showed the buccaneers a new way to squeeze money out of the
Spaniards. This man was an Englishman--Lewis Scot.

The stoppage of commerce on the Spanish Main had naturally tended to accumulate all
the wealth gathered and produced into the chief fortified cities and towns of the West
Indies. As there no longer existed prizes upon the sea, they must be gained upon the land,
if they were to be gained at all. Lewis Scot was the first to appreciate this fact.
Gathering together a large and powerful body of men as hungry for plunder and as
desperate as himself, he descended upon the town of Campeche, which he captured and
sacked, stripping it of everything that could possibly be carried away.
When the town was cleared to the bare walls Scot threatened to set the torch to every
house in the place if it was not ransomed by a large sum of money which he demanded.
With this booty he set sail for Tortuga, where he arrived safely--and the problem was
solved.
After him came one Mansvelt, a buccaneer of lesser note, who first made a descent upon
the isle of Saint Catharine, now Old Providence, which he took, and, with this as a base,
made an unsuccessful descent upon Neuva Granada and Cartagena. His name might not
have been handed down to us along with others of greater fame had he not been the
master of that most apt of pupils, the great Captain Henry Morgan, most famous of all the
buccaneers, one time governor of Jamaica, and knighted by King Charles II.
After Mansvelt followed the bold John Davis, native of Jamaica, where he sucked