Part 40

Captain Rogers smiled.

"Tut! Tut!" said he. "The English can always battle. But--Fathers--you must pay me well for this affair. I demand thirty thousand pieces of eight ($35,000 or about £6,750) as ransom for your fair city. I will give you two days in which to collect it."

The worthy Padres hung their heads.

"You English," said they, "are cruel extortioners."

Yet--in two day's time--the British marched to their boats with colors flying, bugles blowing, and drums beating a rollicking tattoo. Captain Rogers brought up the rear with a few men. He had secured the ransom and fairly smiled with exuberant joy. "Our sailors," says he, "kept continually dropping their pistols, cutlasses, and pole-axes; which shows they had grown careless and very weak--weary of being soldiers--and it was high time that we should be gone from hence to the shores of Merrie England."

Thus, on April 28th, when the Duke and the Duchess weighed anchor and stood out to sea: guns roared: trumpets blew: the men cheered.

"And so," writes the gallant Rogers, "we took leave of the Spaniards very cheerfully, but not half so well pleased as we should have been if we had taken 'em by surprise; for I was well assured from all hands, that at least we should then have got about two hundred thousand pieces of eight in money (£45,000 or $225,000); and in jewels, diamonds, and wrought and unwrought gold and silver."

* * * * *

The owners of the two privateers: the Duke and the Duchess, sat in solemn meeting at the good town of Bristol. It was the month of October, 1711.

The fat Quakers were smiling, for Captain Rogers had brought them back equally fat moneys.

The rugged merchants laughed, for the venture had been a howling success.

"And you were wounded?" said a stockholder, turning to the bronzed sea-rover who stood before them, giving account and reckoning of his journey to the Spanish Main.

"A scratch," replied the stout sea-dog, smiling. "When we tackled a Manila ship on the way home from Guayaquil, I got a ball through the jaw, and a splinter in the left foot. It laid me up for full three weeks, but, gentlemen, a cat and Woodes Rogers both have nine lives."

And even the sober Quaker fathers laughed at this sally.

"You have done well," they said. "We will reward you with money and a good berth. How would you care to be Governor of the Bahamas?"

"Fine!" said Woodes Rogers, chuckling.

And that is the way the old sea-barnacle spent his declining years, dying at the tropic isle on July 16th, 1732. Hail to this Prince of Privateers!

TWILIGHT AT SEA

The twilight hours like birds flew by, As lightly and as free; Ten thousand stars were in the sky, Ten thousand on the sea; For every wave with dimpled face, That leaped up in the air, Had caught a star in its embrace, And held it trembling there.

FORTUNATUS WRIGHT

THE MOST HATED PRIVATEERSMAN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

(1715-1765)

"It was a high counsel which I once heard given to a young person: 'Always do what you are afraid to do.'"--EMERSON.

FORTUNATUS WRIGHT

THE MOST HATED PRIVATEERSMAN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

(1715-1765)

"'Be sure you're right, then go ahead!' was coined by Andrew Jackson, Who was a fighter, tough as nails, and loved to lay the whacks on, He followed out this sage advice, in spite of opposition, While everybody winked and said,--'A Fellow with a Mission!' In other days, in other climes, there lived a seaman daring, Who loved a fight, as well as he,--was just as good at swearing; His name was Wright, and thus in spite of all his foemen said, Old Fortune Wright, was surely right, whene'er he went ahead!"

--Chants of the Eastern Clipper Ships.--1846.