CHAPTER IX

THE PIRATES' h.o.a.rD OF TRINIDAD

Of all the freebooters' treasure for which search is still made by means of curious information having to do with charts and other plausible records, the most famous are those buried on Cocos Islands in the Pacific and on the rocky islet of Trinidad in the South Atlantic.

These places are thousands of miles apart, the former off the coast of Costa Rica, the latter several hundred miles from the nearest land of Brazil and not to be confused with the better known British colony of Trinidad in the Leeward Islands group of the West Indies.

Each of these treasures is of immense value, to be reckoned in millions of dollars, and their stories are closely interwoven because the plunder came from the same source at about the same time. Both narratives are colored by piracy, bloodshed and mystery, that of Cocos Island perhaps the more luridly romantic of the two by reason of an earlier a.s.sociation with the English buccaneers of Dampier's crew.

Each island has been dug over and ransacked at frequent intervals during the last century, and it is safe to predict that expeditions will be fitting out for Cocos or Trinidad for many years to come.

The history of these notable treasures is a knotty skein to disentangle. Athwart its picturesque pages marches a numerous company of bold and imaginative liars, every man of them ready to swear on a stack of Bibles that his is the only true, unvarnished version of the events which caused the gold and jewels and plate to be hidden.

However, when all the fable and fancy are winnowed out, the facts remaining are enough to make any red-blooded adventurer yearn to charter a rakish schooner and muster a crew of kindred spirits.

During the last days of Spanish rule on the west coast of South America, the wealthiest city left of that vast domain won by the Conquistadores and held by the Viceroys, was Lima, the capital of Peru.

Founded in 1535 by Francisco Pizarro, it was the seat of the government of South America for centuries. The Viceregal court was maintained in magnificent state, and the Archbishop of Lima was the most powerful prelate of the continent. Here the religious orders and the Inquisition had their centers. Of the almost incredible amount of gold and silver taken from the mines of the country, much remained in Lima to pile up fortunes for the grandees and officials, or to be fashioned into ma.s.sy ornaments for the palaces, residences, churches, and for the great cathedral which still stands to proclaim the grandeur that was Spain's in the olden days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lima Cathedral]

When Bolivar, the Liberator, succeeded in driving the Spanish out of Venezuela, and in 1819 set up the free republic of Colombia, the ruling cla.s.s of Peru took alarm which increased to panic as soon as it was known that the revolutionary forces were organizing to march south and a.s.sault Lima itself. There was a great running to and fro among the wealthy Spanish merchants, the holders of fat positions under the Viceroy, and the gilded idlers who swaggered and ruffled it on riches won by the swords of their two-fisted ancestors. It was feared that the rebels of Bolivar and San Martin would loot the city, and confiscate the treasure, both public and private, which consisted of bullion, plate, jewels, and coined gold.

Precious property to the value of six million sterling was hurried into the fortress of Lima for safe keeping and after the capture of the city by the army of liberation, Lord Dundonald, the English Admiral in command of the Chilian fleet a.s.sisting the revolutionists, offered to let the Spanish governor depart with two-thirds of this treasure if he would surrender the remainder and give up the fortifications without a fight. The Peruvian liberator, San Martin, set these terms aside, however, and allowed the Spanish garrison to evacuate the place, carrying away the six million sterling. This immense treasure was soon scattered far and wide, by sea and land. It was only part of the riches dispersed by the conquest of San Martin and his patriots. The people of Lima, hoping to send their fortunes safe home to Spain before the plundering invaders should make a clean sweep, put their valuables on board all manner of sailing vessels which happened to be in harbor, and a fugitive fleet of merchantmen steered out from the hostile coast of Peru, the holds piled with gold and silver, the cabins crammed with officials of the state and church and other residents of rank and station. At the same time there was sent to sea the treasure of the great cathedral of Lima, all its jeweled chalices, monstrances, and vestments, the solid gold candle-sticks and shrines, the vast store of precious furniture and ornaments, which had made this one of the richest religious edifices of the world.

There had not been so much dazzling booty afloat at one time since the galleon plate fleets were in their heyday during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1820 there were no more of those great buccaneers and gentlemen adventurers who had singed the beard of the King of Spain in the wake of Francis Drake. They had sailed and fought and plundered for glory as well as gain, or for revenge as much as for doubloons. Their successors as sea rovers were pirates of low degree, base wretches of a sordid commercialism who preyed on honest merchant skippers of all flags, and had little taste for fighting at close quarters. The older race of sea rogues had been wolves; the pirates of the early nineteenth century were jackals.

Many a one of these gentry got wind of the fabulous treasure that had been sent afloat from Lima, and there is no doubt that much of it failed to reach Spain. While in some instances, these fleeing ships were boarded and scuttled by pirate craft, in others the l.u.s.t of gold was too strong for the seamen to whom the rare cargoes had been entrusted, and they rose and took the riches away from their hapless pa.s.sengers. It has been believed by one treasure seeking expedition after another, even to this day, that Captain Thompson of the British trading brig, _Mary Dear_ received on board in the harbor of Lima as much as twelve million dollars' worth of gold and silver, and that he and his crew, after killing the Spanish owners, sailed north in the Pacific and buried the booty on Cocos Island.

Captain Thompson somehow escaped and joined a famous pirate of that time, Benito Bonito, who acc.u.mulated a large treasure which he also buried on Cocos Island. The British Admiralty records show that Bonito was overhauled in his turn by the frigate _Espiegle_ and that rather than be hanged in chains, he very handsomely blew out his brains on his own deck.

This same treasure of Lima, or part of it, furnished the foundation of the story belonging to the volcanic islet of Trinidad in the South Atlantic. One version of this is that the pirates who chose this hiding-place had been the crew of a fast English schooner in the slave trade. While at sea they disposed of their captain by the unpleasant method of pinning him to the mainmast with a boarding pike through his vitals. Then the black flag was hoisted and with a new skipper they stood to the southward, finding a great amount of plunder in a Portuguese ship which had on board a "Jew diamond dealer" among other valuable items. After taking an East Indiaman, and other tempting craft, they buried the total proceeds on the desolate, uninhabited island of Trinidad, intending to return for it before the end of the cruise.

Unfortunately, for the successful pirates, they ran afoul of a heavily armed and manned merchant vessel which shot away their rudder, tumbled their spars about their rascally ears, boarded them with great spirit and determination, and clapped the shackles on the twenty gentlemen of fortune who had survived the engagement. These were carried into Havana and turned over to the Spanish authorities who gleefully hanged nineteen, not twenty, mark you, for one had to make a marvelous escape in order to hand down the secret of the treasure to posterity. This survivor died in bed in England at a very great age, so the story runs, and of course he had a chart to set the next generation to digging.

The earlier statements of this narrative may be cast aside as worthless. The real, true pirate of Trinidad was not in the slave schooner which captured the "Jew diamond dealer" of the Portuguese ship. An odd confusion of facts caused the mistake. While Benito Bonito was harrying the Spanish shipping of the Pacific and burying his treasure on Cocos Island, there was on the Atlantic a bloodthirsty pirate by the name of Benito de Soto. He was a Spaniard who sailed out of Buenos Aires in the year 1827, bound to Africa to smuggle a cargo of slaves. The crew was composed of French, Spanish, and Portuguese desperadoes, and led by the mate and De Soto they marooned the captain and ran away with the ship on a pirate voyage. They plundered and burned and slaughtered without mercy, their most nefarious exploit being the capture of the British merchant ship _Morning Star_, bound from Ceylon to England in 1828, and carrying as pa.s.sengers several army officers and their wives and twenty-five invalided soldiers. After the most fiendish conduct, De Soto and his crew, drove the survivors into the hold of the _Morning Star_, and fastened the hatches, leaving the vessel to founder, for they had taken care to bore numerous auger holes in her bottom. By a miracle of good fortune, the prisoners forced the hatches and were taken off next day by a pa.s.sing vessel.

Benito de Soto met his end as the result of being wrecked in his own ship off the Spanish coast. He was caught in Gibraltar and hanged by the English Governor. An army officer who saw him turned off related that he was a very proper figure of a pirate, "there was no driveling fears upon him,--he walked firmly at the tail of the fatal cart, gazing sometimes at his coffin, sometimes at the crucifix which he held in his hand. This he frequently pressed to his lips, repeated the prayers spoken in his ear by the attendant clergyman, and seemed regardless of everything but the world to come. The gallows was erected beside the water, and fronting neutral ground. He mounted the cart as firmly as he had walked behind it, and held up his face to Heaven and the beating rain, calm, resigned, but unshaken; and finding the halter too high for his neck, he boldly stepped upon his coffin, and placed his head in the noose. Then watching the first turn of the wheels, he murmured, 'farewell, all,' and leaned forward to facilitate his fall ... The black boy was acquitted at Cadiz, but the men who had fled to the Caracas, as well as those arrested after the wreck, were convicted, executed, their limbs severed and hung on iron hooks, as a warning to all other pirates."

This Benito, who died so much better than he had lived, was not hanged at Havana, it will be perceived, and the version of the Trinidad treasure story already outlined is apparently a hodgepodge of the careers of Benito de Soto, and of Benito of Cocos Island, with a flavor of fact in so far as it refers to the twenty pirates who were carried to Cuba to be strung up, or garroted. The Spanish archives of that island record that this gang was executed and that they had been found guilty of plundering ships sailing from Lima shortly after the city had been entered by the revolutionists. Their a.s.sociation with the island of Trinidad is explained herewith as it was told to E. F. Knight, an Englishman, who organized and commanded an expedition which sailed in search of the treasure in 1889.

There was at that time near Newcastle, England, a retired sea captain who had been in command of an East Indiaman engaged in the opium trade in the years 1848 to 1850. "The China seas were then infested by pirates," said Mr. Knight's informant, "so that his vessel carried a few guns and a larger crew than is usual in these days. He had four quarter-masters, one of whom was a foreigner. The captain was not sure of his nationality but thought he was a Finn. On board the vessel the man went under the name of 'The Pirate' because of a deep scar across his cheek which gave him a somewhat sinister appearance. He was a reserved man, better educated than the ordinary sailor, and possessing a good knowledge of navigation.

"The captain took a liking to him, and showed him kindness on various occasions. This man was attacked by dysentery on the voyage from China to Bombay, and by the time the vessel reached port he was so ill, in spite of the captain's nursing, that he had to be taken to the hospital. He gradually sank, and when he found that he was dying he told the captain, who frequently visited him, that he felt very grateful for the kind treatment given him, and that he would prove his grat.i.tude by revealing a secret which might make his captain one of the richest men in England. He then asked the skipper to go to his chest and take out from it a parcel. This contained a piece of old tarpaulin with a plan of an island of Trinidad upon it.

"The dying soldier told him that at the spot indicated, that is at the base of the mountain known as Sugar Loaf, there was an immense treasure buried, consisting princ.i.p.ally of gold and silver plate and ornaments, the plunder of Peruvian churches which certain pirates had concealed there in the year 1821. Much of this plate, he said, came from the cathedral of Lima, having been carried away from there during the war of independence, when the Spaniards were escaping the country and that among other riches were several ma.s.sive gold candle-sticks.

"He further stated that he was the only survivor of the pirates, as all the others had been captured by the Spaniards and executed in Cuba some years before, and consequently it was probable that no one but himself knew the secret. He then gave the captain instructions as to the exact position of the treasure in the bay under the Sugar Loaf, and enjoined him to go there and search for it, as it was almost certain that it had not been removed."

Mr. Knight, who was a young barrister of London, investigated this story with much diligence, and discovered that the captain aforesaid had sent his son to Trinidad in 1880 to try to identify the marks shown on the old pirate's tarpaulin chart. He landed from a sailing ship, did no digging for lack of equipment, but reported that the place tallied exactly with the description, although a great landslide of reddish earth had covered the place where the treasure was hid. This evidence was so convincing that in 1885 an expedition was organized among several adventurous gentlemen of South Shields who chartered a bark of six hundred tons, the _Aurea_, and fitted her at a large outlay with surf boats, picks, shovels, timber, blasting powder, and other stores. This party found the island almost inaccessible because of the wild, rock-bound coast, the huge breakers which beat about it from all sides, and the lack of harbors and safe anchorage. After immense difficulty, eight men were landed, with a slender store of provisions and a few of the tools. The dismal aspect of the island, the armies of huge land crabs which tried to devour them, the burning heat, and the hard labor without enough food or water, soon disheartened this band of treasure seekers, and they dug no more than a small trench before courage and strength forsook them. Signaling to their ships, they were taken off, worn out and ill, and thus ended the efforts of the expedition.

In the same year, an American skipper chartered a French sailing vessel in Rio Janeiro, and sailed for Trinidad with four Portuguese sailors to do his digging for him. They were ash.o.r.e several days, but found no treasure, and vanished from the story after this brief fling with the dice of fortune. Now, Knight was of different stuff from these other explorers. He was a first-cla.s.s amateur seaman who had sailed his yacht _Falcon_ to South America in 1880, and was both experienced and capable afloat and ash.o.r.e. While bound from Montevideo to Bahia he had touched at Trinidad, curious to see this remote islet so seldom visited. This was before he heard the buried treasure story.

Therefore when he became acquainted, several years later, with the chart and information left by the old pirate, he was able to verify the details of his own knowledge, and he roundly affirmed:

"In the first place, his carefully prepared plan of the island, the minute directions he gave as to the best landing, and his description of the features of the bay on whose sh.o.r.es the treasure was concealed, prove beyond doubt to myself and others who know Trinidad, that he, or if not himself some informant of his, had landed on this so rarely visited islet; and not only landed but pa.s.sed some time on it, and carefully surveyed the approaches to the bay, so as to be able to point out the dangers and show the safest pa.s.sage through the reefs. This information could not have been obtained from any pilot-book. The landing recommended by previous visitors is at the other side of the island. This bay is described by them as inaccessible, and the indications on the Admiralty chart are completely erroneous.

"And beyond this, the quartermaster must have been acquainted with what was taking place in two other distant portions of the world during the year of his professed landing on the desert island. He knew of the escape of pirates with the cathedral plate of Lima. He was also aware that, shortly afterwards, there were hanged in Cuba the crew of a vessel that had committed acts of piracy on the Peruvian coast.

"It is scarcely credible that an ordinary seaman,--even allowing that he was superior in education to the average of his fellows,--could have pieced these facts together so ingeniously into this plausible story."

This argument has merit and it was persuasive enough to cause Knight to buy the staunch cutter _Alerte_, muster a company of gentlemen volunteers, ship a crew, and up anchor from Southampton for Trinidad.

There was never a better found treasure expedition than this in the _Alerte_. The nine partners, each of whom put up one hundred pounds toward the expenses, were chosen from one hundred and fifty eager applicants. Articles of agreement provided that one-twentieth of the treasure recovered was to be received by each adventurer and he in turn bound himself to work hard and obey orders. In the equipment was a drilling apparatus for boring through earth and rock, an hydraulic jack for lifting huge bowlders, portable forge and anvil, iron wheel-barrows, crow-bars, shovels and picks galore, a water distilling plant, a rapid fire gun, and a full complement of repeating rifles and revolvers.

A few days before the _Alerte_ was ready to sail from Southampton an elderly naval officer boarded the cutter and was kind enough to inform Mr. Knight of another buried treasure which he might look for on his route to Trinidad. The story had been hidden for many years among the doc.u.ments of the Admiralty, and as a matter of government record, it is, of course, perfectly authentic. In 1813, the Secretary of the Admiralty instructed Sir Richard Bickerton, commanding at Portsmouth, to send in the first King's ship touching at Madeira a seaman who had given information concerning a hidden treasure, in order that the truth of his story might be tested.

The Admiralty order was entrusted to Captain Hercules Robinson of the _Prometheus_ and in his report he states that "after being introduced to the foreign seaman referred to in the above letter, and reading the notes which had been taken of his information, he charged him to tell no person what he knew or what was his business, that he was to mess with the captain's c.o.xswain, and that no duty would be required of him.

To this the man replied that that was all he desired, that he was willing to give his time, and would ask no remuneration for his intelligence."

While the _Prometheus_ was anch.o.r.ed at Funchal, Madeira, Captain Robinson closely questioned the mysterious seaman whose name was Christian Cruse. He declared that he had been in a hospital ill of yellow fever, several years before, and with him was a shipmate, a Spaniard, who died of the same malady. Before his death he told Cruse that in 1804 he had been in a Spanish ship, from South America to Cadiz, with two millions of silver in chests. When nearing the coast of Spain, they were signaled by a neutral vessel that England had declared war and that Cadiz was blockaded. Rather than risk capture by the British fleet, and unwilling to run all the way back to South America, the captain resolved to try to gain the nearest of the West Indies and save his treasure.

Pa.s.sing to the southward of Madeira, a cl.u.s.ter of small, uninhabited islands, called the Salvages, was sighted. Thereupon the crew decided that it was foolishness to continue the voyage. The captain was accordingly stabbed to death with a dirk, and the ship steered to an anchorage. The chests of Spanish dollars were landed in a small bay, a deep trench dug in the sand above highwater mark, and the treasure snugly buried, the body of the captain deposited in a box on top of it.

The mutineers then sought the Spanish Main where they intended to burn their ship, buy a small vessel under British colors, and return to carry off the two million dollars.

Near Tobago they suffered shipwreck because of poor navigation and only two were saved. One died ash.o.r.e, and the other was the Spanish seaman who made the dying declaration to Christian Cruse in the hospital at Vera Cruz.

Captain Hercules Robinson was a seasoned officer of His Majesty's navy, used to taking sailors' yarns with a grain of salt, but that he was convinced of the good faith of Christian Cruse and of the truth of the narrative is shown by his interesting comments, as he wrote them down a century ago:

"May Cruse not have had some interested object in fabricating this story? Why did he not tell it before? Is not the cold-blooded murder inconceivable barbarity, and the burying the body over the treasure too dramatic and buccaneer-like? Or might not the Spaniard have lied from love of lying and mystifying his simple shipmate, or might he not have been raving?

"As to the first difficulty, I have the strongest conviction of the honesty of Christian Cruse, and I think I could hardly be grossly deceived as to his character, and his disclaiming any reward unless the discovery was made, went to confirm my belief that he was an honest man. And then as to his withholding the information for four or five years, be it remembered that the war with Denmark might have truly shut him out from any intercourse with England. Next as to the wantonness and indifference with which the murder was perpetrated, I am afraid there is no great improbability in this. I have witnessed a disregard of human life in matters of promotion in our service, etc., which makes the conduct of these Spaniards under vehement temptation, and when they could do as they pleased, sufficiently intelligible.

"But certainly the coffin over the treasure looked somewhat theatrical and gave it the air of Sadler's Wells, or a novel, rather than matter of fact. I enquired, therefore, from Christian Cruse why the body of the captain was thus buried, and he replied that he understood the object was, that in case any person should find the marks of their proceedings and dig to discover what they had been about, they might come to the body and go no further."

After further reflection, Captain Robinson convinced himself that the Spanish seaman had been clear-headed when he made his confession to Cruse, and that it would have been beyond him deliberately to invent the statement as fiction. The _Prometheus_ was headed for the Salvages, and arriving off the largest of these islands, a bay was found and a level white patch of beach above high water mark situated as had been described to Christian Cruse. Fifty sailors were sent ash.o.r.e to dig with shovels and boarding pikes, making the sand fly in the hope of winning the reward of a hundred dollars offered to the man who found the murdered captain's coffin.

The search lasted only one day because the anchorage was unsafe and Captain Robinson was under orders to return to Madeira. Arriving there, other orders recalled his ship to England for emergency duty and the treasure hunt was abandoned. So far as known, no other attempt had been made to find the chests of dollars until Mr. Knight decided to act on the information and explore the Salvages in pa.s.sing.

Of this little group of islands it was decided by the company of the _Alerte_ that the one called the Great Piton most closely answered the description given Christian Cruse by the Spanish pirate. A bay was found with a strip of white sand above high-water mark, and Mr. Knight and his shipmates pitched a camp nearby and had the most sanguine expectations of bringing to light the rude coffin of the murdered captain.

A series of trenches was opened up after a systematic plan, and some crumbling bones discovered, but the ship's surgeon refused to swear that they had belonged to a human being. The trouble was that the surface of the place had been considerably changed by the action of waves and weather, which made the Admiralty charts of a century before very misleading. The destination of the _Alerte_ was Trinidad, after all, and the visit to the Salvages was only an incident, so the search was abandoned after four days. In all probability, the treasure of the Salvages is still in its hiding-place, and any adventurous young gentlemen seeking a field of operations will do well to consult for themselves the doc.u.mentary evidence of Captain Hercules Robinson and Christian Cruse, as filed among the records of the British Admiralty Office.

Trinidad is a much more difficult island to explore than any of the Salvages group. In fact, this forbidding ma.s.s of volcanic rock is a little bit of inferno. It is sometimes impossible to make a landing through the surf for weeks at a time, and when a boat makes the attempt in the most favorable circ.u.mstances, the venture is a hazard of life and death. As a vivid summary of the aspect of this lonely treasure island, I quote from Mr. Knight, because he is the only man who has ever described Trinidad at first hand:

"As we neared it, the features of this extraordinary place could gradually be distinguished. The north side, that which faced us, is the most barren and desolate portion of the island, and appears to be utterly inaccessible. Here the mountains rise sheer from the boiling surf,--fantastically shaped of volcanic rock; cloven by frightful ravines; lowering in perpendicular precipices; in places overhanging threateningly, and, where the mountains have been shaken to pieces by the fires and earthquakes of volcanic action, huge landslips slope steeply in the yawning ravines,--landslips of black and red volcanic debris, and loose rocks large as houses, ready on the slightest disturbance to roll down, crashing, into the abysses below. On the summit of the island there floats almost constantly, even on the clearest day, a wreath of dense vapor, never still, but rolling and twisting into strange shapes as the wind eddies among the crags. And above this cloud-wreath rise mighty pinnacles of coal-black rock, like the spires of some gigantic Gothic cathedral piercing the blue southern sky. It would be impossible to convey in words a just idea of the mystery of Trinidad. The very coloring seemed unearthly, in places dismal black, and in others the fire-consumed crags are of strange metallic hues, vermilion red and copper yellow. When one lands on its sh.o.r.es, this uncanny impression is enhanced. It bears all the appearances of being an accursed spot, whereupon no creatures can live, save the hideous land-crabs and foul and cruel sea birds."

An ideal place, this, for pirates to bury treasure, you will agree, and good for nothing else under Heaven. The South Atlantic Directory, the shipmaster's guide, states that "the surf is often incredibly great, and has been seen to break over a bluff which is two hundred feet high." Trinidad was first visited by Halley, the astronomer, after whom the famous comet was named, who called there in 1700 when he was a captain in the Royal Navy. Captain Amos Delano, the Yankee pioneer in the Far Eastern trade, made a call in 1803, prompted by curiosity, but as a rule mariners have given the island a wide berth, now and then touching there when in need of water or fresh meat in the shape of turtles.

At one time the Portuguese attempted to found a settlement on Trinidad, probably before the forests had been killed by some kind of volcanic upheaval. The ruins of their stone huts are still to be seen as humble memorials of a great race of explorers and colonists in the golden age of that nation.