Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer: A Romance of the Spanish Main

Now the tide turned and came creeping in. It had gone out slowly; it had lingered as if reluctant to leave him; but to his distraught vision it returned with the swiftness of a thousand white horses tossing their wind-blown manes. The wind died down; the clouds were dissipated. The night was so very calm, it mocked the storm raging in his soul. And still the silvered water came flooding in; gently – tenderly – caressingly – the little waves lapped the sands. At last they lifted the ghastly head of young Teach – he'd be damnably mouldy a hundred years hence! – and laid it at his feet.

He cursed the rising water, and bade it stay – and heedlessly it came on. It was a tropic sea and the waters were as warm as those of any sun-kissed ocean, but they broke upon his knees with the coldness of eternal ice. They rolled the heavier body of his faithful slave against him – he strove to drive it away with his foot as he had striven to thrust aside the ghastly head, and without avail. The two friends receded as the waves rolled back but they came on again, and again, and again. They had been faithful to him in life, they remained with him in death.

Now the water broke about his waist; now it rose to his breast. He was exhausted; worn out. He hung silent, staring. His mind was busy; his thought went back to that rugged Welsh land where he had been born. He saw himself a little boy playing in the fields that surrounded the farmhouse of his father and mother.

He took again that long trip across the ocean. He lived again in the hot hell of the Caribbean. Old forms of forgotten buccaneers clustered about him. Mansfelt, under whom he had first become prominent himself. There on the horizon rose the walls of a sleeping town. With his companions he slowly crept forward through the underbrush, slinking along like a tiger about to spring upon its prey. The doomed town flamed before his eyes. The shrieks of men, the prayers of women, the piteous cries of little children came into his ears across forty years.

Cannon roared in his ear – the crash of splintered wood, the despairing appeals for mercy, for help, from drowning mariners, as he stood upon a bloody deck watching the rolling of a shattered, sinking ship. Was that water, spray from some tossing wave, or blood, upon his hand?

The water was higher now; it was at his neck. There were Porto Bello, Puerto Principe, and Maracaibo, and Chagres and Panama – ah, Panama! All the fiends of hell had been there, and he had been their chief! They came back now to mock him. They pointed at him, gibbered upon him, threatened him, and laughed – great God, how they laughed!

There was pale-faced, tender-eyed Maria Zerega who had died of the plague, and the baby, the boy. Jamaica, too, swept into his vision. There was his wife shrinking away from him in the very articles of death. There was young Ebenezer Hornigold, dancing right merrily upon the gallows together with others of the buccaneers he had hanged.

The grim figure of the one-eyed boatswain rose before him and leered upon him and swept the other apparitions away. This was La Guayra – yesterday. He had been betrayed. Whose men were those? The men hanging on the walls? And Hornigold had done it – old Ben Hornigold – that he thought so faithful.

He screamed aloud again with hate, he called down curses upon the head of the growing one-eyed apparition. And the water broke into his mouth and stopped him. It called him to his senses for a moment. His present peril overcame the hideous recollection of the past. That water was rising still. Great God! At last he prayed. Lips that had only cursed shaped themselves into futile petitions. There was a God, after all.

The end was upon him, yet with the old instinct of life he lifted himself upon his toes. He raised his arms as far as the chains gave him play and caught the chains themselves and strove to pull, to lift, at last only to hold himself up, a rigid, awful figure. He gained an inch or two, but his fetters held him down. As the water supported him he found little difficulty in maintaining the position for a space. But he could go no higher – if the water rose an inch more that would be the end. He could breathe only between the breaking waves now.

The body of the black was swung against him again and again; the head of young Teach kissed him upon the cheek; and still the water seemed to rise, and rise, and rise. He was a dead man like the other two, indeed he prayed to die, and yet in fear he clung to the chains and held on. Each moment he fancied would be his last. But he could not let go. Oh, God! how he prayed for a storm; that one fierce wave might batter him to pieces; but the waters were never more calm than on that long, still night, the sea never more peaceful than in those awful hours.

By and by the waters fell. He could not believe it at first. He still hung suspended and waited with bated breath. Was he deceived? No, the waters were surely falling. The seconds seemed minutes to him, the minutes, hours. At last he gained assurance. There was no doubt but that the tide was going down. The waves had risen far, but he had been lifted above them; now they were falling, falling! Yes, and they were bearing away that accursed body and that ghastly head. He was alive still, saved for the time being. The highest waves only touched his breast now. Lower – lower – they moved away. Reluctantly they lingered; but they fell, they fell.

To drown? That was not the judgment of God for him then. What would it be? His head fell forward on his breast – he had fainted in the sudden relief of his undesired salvation.

Long time he hung there and still the tide ebbed away, carrying with it all that was left of the only two who had loved him. He was alone now, surely, save for that watcher in the bushes. After a while consciousness returned to him again, and after the first swift sense of relief there came to him a deeper terror, for he had gone through the horror and anguish of death and had not died. He was alive still, but as helpless as before.

What had the Power he had mocked designed for his end? Was he to watch that ghastly tide come in again and rise, and rise, and rise until it caught him by the throat and threatened to choke him, only to release him as before? Was he to go through that daily torture until he starved or died of thirst? He had not had a bite to eat, a drop to drink, since the day before.

It was morning now. On his right hand the sun sprang from the ocean bed with the same swiftness with which it had departed the night before. Like the tide, it, too, rose, and rose. There was not a cloud to temper the fierceness with which it beat upon his head, not a breath of air to blow across his fevered brow. The blinding rays struck him like hammers of molten iron. He stared at it out of his frenzied, blood-shot eyes and writhed beneath its blazing heat. Before him the white sand burned like smelted silver, beyond him the tremulous ocean seemed to seethe and bubble under the furious fire of the glowing heaven above his head – a vault of flaming topaz over a sapphire sea.

He closed his eyes, but could not shut out the sight – and then the dreams of night came on him again. His terrors were more real, more apparent, more appalling, because he saw his dreaded visions in the full light of day. By and by these faded as the others had done. All his faculties were merged into one consuming desire for water – water. The thirst was intolerable. Unless he could get some his brain would give way. He was dying, dying, dying! Oh, God, he could not die, he was not ready to die! Oh, for one moment of time, for one drop of water – God – God – God!

Suddenly before his eyes there arose a figure. At first he fancied it was another of the apparitions which had companied with him during the awful night and morning; but this was a human figure, an old man, bent, haggard like himself with watching, but with a fierce mad joy in his face. Where had he come from? Who was he? What did he want? The figure glared upon the unhappy man with one fiery eye, and then he lifted before the captive's distorted vision something – what was it – a cup of water? Water – God in heaven – water brimming over the cup! It was just out of reach of his lips – so cool, so sweet, so inviting! He strained at his chains, bent his head, thrust his lips out. He could almost touch it – not quite! He struggled and struggled and strove to break his fetters, but without avail. Those fetters could not be broken by the hand of man. He could not drink – ah, God! – then he lifted his blinded eyes and searched the face of the other.

"Hornigold!" he whispered hoarsely with his parched and stiffened lips. "Is it thou?"

A deep voice beat into his consciousness.

"Ay. I wanted to let you know there was water here. You must be thirsty. You'd like a drink? So would I. There is not enough for both of us. Who will get it? I. Look!"

"Not all, not all!" screamed the old captain faintly, as the other drained the cup. "A little! A drop for me!"

"Not one drop," answered Hornigold, "not one drop! If you were in hell and I held a river in my hand, you would not get a drop! It's gone."

He threw the cup from him.

"I brought you to this – I! Do you recall it? You owe this to me. You had your revenge – this is mine. But it's not over yet. I'm watching you. I shall not come out here again, but I'm watching you, remember that! I can see you!"

"Hornigold, for God's sake, have pity!"

"You know no God; you have often boasted of it – neither do I. And you never knew pity – neither do I!"

"Take that knife you bear – kill me!"

I don't want you to die – not yet. I want you to live – live – a long time, and remember!"

"Hornigold, I'll make amends! I'll be your slave!"

"Ay, crawl and cringe now, you dog! I swore that you should do it! It's useless to beg me for mercy. I know not that word – neither did you. There is nothing left in me but hate – hate for you. I want to see you suffer – "

"The tide! It's coming back. I can't endure this heat and thirst! It won't drown me – "

"Live, then," said the boatswain. "Remember, I watch!"

He threw his glance upward, stopped suddenly, a fierce light in that old eye of his.

"Look up," he cried, "and you will see! Take heart, man. I guess you won't have to wait for the tide, and the sun won't bother you long. Remember, I am watching you!"

He turned and walked away, concealing himself in the copse once more where he could see and not be seen. The realization that he was watched by one whom he could not see, one who gloated over his miseries and sufferings and agonies, added the last touch to the torture of the buccaneer. He had no longer strength nor manhood, he no longer cried out after that one last appeal to the merciless sailor. He did not even look up in obedience to the old man's injunction. What was there above him, beneath him, around him, that could add to his fear? He prayed for death. They were the first and last prayers that had fallen from his lips for fifty years, those that day. Yet when death did come at last he shrank from it with an increasing terror and horror that made all that he had passed through seem like a trifle.

When old Hornigold had looked up he had seen a speck in the vaulted heaven. It was slowly soaring around and around in vast circles, and with each circle coming nearer and nearer to the ground. A pair of keen and powerful eyes were aloft there piercing the distance, looking, searching, in every direction, until at last their glance fell upon the figure upon the rock. The circling stopped. There was a swift rush through the air. A black feathered body passed between the buccaneer and the sun, and a mighty vulture, hideous bird of the tropics, alighted on the sands near by him.

So this was the judgment of God upon this man! For a second his tortured heart stopped its beating. He stared at the unclean thing, and then he shrank back against the rock and screamed with frantic terror. The bird moved heavily back a little distance and stopped, peering at him. He could see it by turning his head. He could drive it no farther. In another moment there was another rush through the air, another, another! He screamed again. Still they came, until it seemed as if the earth and the heavens were black with the horrible birds. High in the air they had seen the first one swooping to the earth, and with unerring instinct, as was their habit, had turned and made for the point from which the first had dropped downward to the shore.

They circled themselves about him. They sat upon the rock above him. They stared at him with their lustful, carrion, jeweled eyes out of their loathsome, featherless, naked heads, drawing nearer – nearer – nearer. He could do no more. His voice was gone. His strength was gone. He closed his eyes, but the sight was still before him. His bleeding, foamy lips mumbled one unavailing word:

"Hornigold!"

From the copse there came no sound, no answer. He sank forward in his chains, his head upon his breast, convulsive shudders alone proclaiming faltering life. Hell had no terror like to this which he, living, suffered.

There was a weight upon his shoulder now fierce talons sank deep into his quivering flesh. In front of his face, before a pair of lidless eyes that glowed like fire, a hellish, cruel beak struck at him. A faint, low, ghastly cry trembled through the still air.

And the resistless tide came in. A man drove away the birds at last before they had quite taken all, for the torn arms still hung in the iron fetters; an old man, blind of one eye, the black patch torn off the hideous hole that had replaced the socket. He capered with the nimbleness of youth before the ghastly remains of humanity still fastened to that rock. He shouted and screamed, and laughed and sang. The sight had been too horrible even for him. He was mad, crazy; his mind was gone. He had his revenge, and it had eaten him up.

The waters dashed, about his feet and seemed to awaken some new idea in his disordered brain.

"What!" he cried, "the tide is in. Up anchor, lads! We must beat out to sea. Captain, I'll follow you. Harry Morgan's way to lead – old Ben Hornigold's to follow – ha, ha! ho, ho!"

He waded out into the water, slowly going deeper and deeper. A wave swept him off his feet. A hideous laugh came floating back over the sea, and then he struck out, and out, and out —

And so the judgment of God was visited upon Sir Henry Morgan and his men at last, and as it was writ of old:

With what measure they had meted out, it had been measured back to them again!