University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.
The Jumping Jenny hoists the black flag, attacks and captures a
superior vessel; and Robin Day finds himself a pirate.

With all the repairs that could be given her, the
Jumping Jenny made such slow progress that, by
daylight, we were not more than ten or fifteen
miles distant from the land, with the wind, which
had suddenly chopped about, blowing us right back
to Pensacola. And to add to our uneasiness, we
could perceive a sail standing out from the bay,
which the Spaniards said could be no other than the
Governor's vessel, the Querida, which there was
reason to believe, had been hastily armed and sent
out to retake us. At the same time, another sail
was discovered, which proved to be a schooner,
making in, with a fair wind, for the bay, and approaching
us very fast. Upon this, Captain Brown,
after surveying the latter vessel from the mast-head,
made a speech, as soon as he had descended, or,
rather, two speeches, one in Spanish, the other in
English, in both which tongues he swore with equal
fluency, declaring that we must “take that schooner,
or hang, every soul of us; because how, we must
have a better ship than we sailed in, if we expected
to escape that blasted Querida, whereof he supposed
she was full of men and guns from the fort, and
would blow us into kingdom-come, unless we could

give her the slip.” And he hinted that a signal of
distress, with our evident crippled condition, would
bring the schooner near enough to make sure of
her.

His words were so manifestly true, and the idea
of capture so unpalatable to every soul on board,
except myself, who desired nothing so much as to
be out of a vessel commanded by such a desperado,
and, perhaps, the negroes, for whose wishes nobody
inquired or cared, that it was straightway resolved
the schooner should, if possible, be taken and converted
to our uses; even the Bloody Volunteers
raising their disconsolate faces from the sloop's side,
over which they had been for a long time all hanging,
and bobbing, and gulping in a row, to retch
out a folorn assurance that they would fight rather
than surrender, if there was any danger of being
hanged by the captors. The Spaniards and sailors,
in particular, avowed themselves ready for action,
and proposed to raise from the hold, where it was
yet lying, the formidable long-tom, by way of preparation;
but Brown swore he was no such lubber
as to put an eighteen-pound shot through the ship
he was just going to sail in, or to display so formidable
an engine to the eyes of men whom he was inviting
to his assistance. And, that there might be
as little room for suspicion as possible, he directed
all the company, with the exception of six or seven
men, to conceal themselves below, keeping themselves
in readiness, with such arms as they could
find, to rush up, when he should give the command.

This order, I found, was not to extend to myself,
whom he arrested, as I was going below, telling me,
with some appearance of his former devilish humour,
that “the quarter-deck was the place for a lieutenant,

and that he expected me to do my duty and fight
like a hell-cat.” I summoned courage, the crisis
being alarming, to assure him that we had very different
ideas of our duties; that I saw no right I had
to attack that schooner or any other, and no right he
had to command me to do so; that I was not his
lieutenant, and would not consent to be so regarded;
and if he was bent upon a desperate course himself,
he might be assured that I was not going to be dragged
into it with him.

To this he vouchsafed to reply, first, that, “as to
the matter of right, I talked like a sucking-pig, and
must hold my jaw for the future, on pain of having it
sliced off with a broadaxe;” secondly, “shiver his
timbers, he loved me, and was willing to make my
fortune; and as for the lieutenancy, sink him, he had
promised I should be his lieutenant, and I should be,
d—n his blood, or else his cook, or his powdermonkey;
for he saw nothing else I was fit for;” and,
finally, as to my assurance I was not going to be
dragged by him into any unlawful act, he told me
“I should be dragg'd through h—ll-fire, if he will'd
it;” and he ended the ferocious reply by warning
me that he was “my captain, and he was Captain
Hellcat, split him, who never had a man say nay to
him; and that upon any grumbling or disobedience
of orders, he would not hesitate to tie me up and
give me a thousand lashes.”

I found, in short, that Captain Brown on land,
and Captain Hellcat at sea, were two very different
persons; and that, however much I might have detested
the one, there remained for me nothing but to
fear the other. My spirit was not heroic enough to
rise in arms against an oppressor, who talked of
broadaxes, and a thousand lashes, not to speak of the
metaphorical fires of doom, as if nothing could be

more natural to him than to employ them as instruments
of authority and punishment; and I confess,
with as much shame as is proper to the occasion,
that his savage menaces terrified me into immediate
submission; in which state I remained as long as it
was my miserable fate to continue in his hands.

In the meanwhile, Brown had completed his preparations
for the attack, by arming the men he kept
on deck, who were the Spanish felons, three or four
of the sailors, and Skipper Duck, with pistols and
cutlasses brought from below; which arms were laid
about in places whence the men could snatch them
up in a moment, and where there was no fear they
could be seen by the people in the schooner. He
then hoisted a flag of distress, which was no sooner
seen by the schooner, than she stood directly for us,
and came so near that, by some manœuvre or trick,
which I did not exactly understand, Brown managed
to make her run afoul of his own vessel; which no
sooner happened than he gave a terrible yell, more
like the scream of an Indian than any thing else, and
leaped on board the schooner, followed by the Spaniards
and sailors; while the rest of the company, the
remaining sailors, the negroes, and the Bloody Volunteers,
came tumbling up from the hold, to complete
by their appearance the victory which would
have been just as easily won without them.

There were but five men on board the schooner,
which was but a small one: they had no arms to
resist us, and they were so terrified at this most
unexpected assault from men into whose power they
had been drawn by their humanity, that they yielded
at once and fell upon their knees, piteously begging
for their lives. Nor had I, who, in pursuance of
orders which I feared to disobey, crept, all of a tremble,
into the schooner with the others, the least

thought that any harm would be done them; because
it was so needless, and they had not provoked it by
resistance. But, alas, I had not yet attained a full
conception of the character of Brown; who, with a
most murderous spirit, called out to “give the rascals
no quarter,” fired his pistols at them, as he
jumped upon the deck, and then rushed upon them
with his cutlass, followed by the Spaniards; who,
whether the whole thing had been arranged between
them and Brown before, or whether his devilish
example awoke a sudden and equally devilish spirit
of imitation, as is most probable, were as forward
and active as himself; and the poor men were immediately
butchered before my eyes.

The horror with which this brutal and wanton
slaughter filled my whole mind, was shared by
others of the company, and especially by the Bloody
Volunteers and two or three of the English sailors,
as I could see by their countenances, turned upon
one another with looks of fear and inquiry. Like
me, they seemed to wonder what could have urged
Brown to such a massacre; a mystery which was
presently explained by his exclaiming, “There,
d—n my blood! the thing is done, and there is no
backing out of it. Now, my jolly dogs, the sea is
before you and the gallows behind you—the gallows
or the yard-arm, d'ye see, blast me; whereof, on
one or the other there's not a man of you but must
swing, the moment he turns his face backward.
So a free life is the word for all, because, shiver me,
my hearties, you can't help it; a free life and a jolly
one. And here you are with a good vessel under
you; and here am I, d—n my blood, Hellcat by
name, to command you—to show you where gold
grows on the sea, that may be hauled up by bucketsfull,
and where to spend it without fear of law or

lawyer. So, say the word, sink me, a gallows on
shore, or a cruise under the sign of the Hellcat!”

It was plain from his own words, that Brown had
murdered the poor wretches for the purpose of
making pirates of us all, whether we would or not;
for after such a deed of blood, which, in the eyes
of the law must dye us all with nearly equal hues,
few felt that any thing remained but to adopt the
outlaw life on which he himself was evidently
bent. Or if any there were, they were like me,
too much overcome by fear of the ruthless desperado
to utter a single word of remonstrance. The
Spaniards received the proposal of a cruise with
cries of approbation, the Englishmen shook hands
and said, “if they were to be hang'd, they must be,
and there was no helping it;” the negroes asked
Massa Hellcat, as they called him, if they were to
be free, provided they turned pirates also, and upon
Brown saying they should be “as free as blackbirds,”
they uttered a huzzah, and said they could cut throats
as well as any body. The Bloody Volunteers said
nothing: horror and sea-sickness together subdued
them to submission.