Read Ebook: Bantu Beliefs and Magic With particular reference to the Kikuyu and Kamba tribes of Kenya Colony; together with some reflections on East Africa after the war by Hobley C W Charles William Frazer James George Author Of Introduction Etc

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That Man that shall strike another whilst these Articles are in force, shall receive Moses's Law on the bare Back.

That Man that shall snap his Arms, or smoak Tobacco in the Hold, without a cap to his Pipe, or carry a Candle lighted without a Lanthorn, shall suffer the same Punishment as in the former Article.

That Man that shall not keep his Arms clean, fit for an Engagement, or neglect his Business, shall be cut off from his Share, and suffer such other Punishment as the Captain and the Company shall think fit.

If any Man shall lose a Joint in time of an Engagement, shall have 400 Pieces of Eight; if a limb, 800.

If at any time you meet with a prudent Woman, that Man that offers to meddle with her, without her Consent, shall suffer present Death.

These formalities took time and much argument and the drinking of many bowls of punch, and, when once settled, the next business was to make a flag. The Jolly Roger, consisting of a human skull and two crossed thigh-bones, was generally portrayed in black and white. Some crews preferred a study in red and white. More enterprising captains with imagination and taste, such as Captain Bartholomew Roberts, who was a truly remarkable man and the greatest pirate who ever "declared war upon all the world," aimed at something more elaborate. Roberts flew several flags, all made to his own design.

On one was depicted a "human anatomy," holding a rummer, or glass, of punch in one bony hand, and a flaming sword in the other. Another favourite flag of Roberts had a huge portrait of himself, sword in hand, and two skulls.

Another had a "skellington" standing with either foot firmly placed on a skull, and under one skull were embroidered the letters A.B.H., under the other A.M.H., which letters stood for a Barbadian's head and a Martinican's head, to warn any inhabitant of either of these islands what to expect if he was so unfortunate as to be taken prisoner by Bartholomew, who never forgot nor forgave two occasions on which he was very roughly handled by ships from Barbadoes and Martinique.

The weak point in all pirate ships was the lack of discipline. Time and again some successful enterprise, almost completed, was thrown away by lack of discipline. No captain could be certain of his command or crew. If he did anything they disapproved of, the crew would throw him in chains into the hold, or as likely overboard, and elect another. It is on record that one ship had elected thirteen different commanders in a few months. Some of the big men retained their commands, Roberts holding the record, for a pirate, of four years, until his death; while Bartholomew Sharp holds the record for a buccaneer.

Having procured a vessel, perhaps little more than a fishing-boat, sometimes only an open row-boat, the embryo pirates would paddle along some coast until they came across an unsuspecting craft, one not too big for the desperadoes to attack. Hiding their arms, they would row alongside, and then suddenly, with shouts and curses, board the vessel, kill any who resisted, and start a cruise in their new ship, their number being increased by volunteers or forced men from amongst the prize's crew. Cruising thus, the pirates would gradually get together a small fleet of the fastest and best sailing vessels among their prizes and increase their crew as they went along.

Both the buccaneers and the pirates had their favourite haunts and places of rendezvous. These had to be within easy sailing distance of one or more regular trade routes, and at the same time had to be in some quiet spot unlikely to be visited by strange craft, and, besides being sheltered from storms, must have a suitable beach on which their vessels could be careened and the hulls scraped of barnacles and weeds. The greatest stronghold of the buccaneers was at Tortuga, or Turtle Island, a small island lying off the west coast of Hispaniola. Here in their most piping days flourished a buccaneer republic, where the seamen made their own laws and cultivated the land for sugar-cane and yams. Occasionally the Spaniards or the French, without any warning, would swoop down on the settlement and break up the small republic, but sooner or later the buccaneers would be back once again in possession.

The favourite and most flourishing headquarters of the West India pirates was at New Providence Island in the Bahama Islands, occupied to-day by the flourishing town of Nassau, now the headquarters of those worthy descendants of the pirates, the bootleggers, who from the old port carry on their exciting and profitable smuggling of whisky into the United States.

The numerous bays and islands lying off the coast of South Carolina were very popular with the free booters in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; while Port Royal, in Jamaica, was noted from early days as the port from which the most famous buccaneers sailed for the Spanish Main, and to which they returned with their plunder.

The French filibusters and pirates mostly used the Virgin Islands, while the Dutch patronized their own islands of Cura?ao, Saba, and St. Eustatius. But the buccaneers did not allow the chance of nationality to divide them, for Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Dutchmen, all "brethren of the coast," sailed together and plundered the Spaniard in open and equal friendship.

An entirely different group of pirates arose in the South Seas, with their headquarters in Madagascar. Here the pirates went farther towards forming a permanent society than at any other time during their history, with the exception of the Barbary corsairs, who had their strongly fortified settlements for many years at Algiers, Tunis, and Sallee.

The origin of the buccaneers is interesting, and I cannot do better than quote the opening chapter of Clark Russell's "Life of William Dampier," in the English Men of Action Series, published by Messrs. Macmillan in 1889. He writes:

The Spaniards, who were jealous of any other nation than their own having a foothold in America, determined to get rid of these wild but hitherto harmless buccaneers. This they accomplished, and in time drove the cattle-hunters out of Hispaniola; and to make sure that the unwelcome visitors should not return, they exterminated all the wild cattle. This was the worst mistake the Spaniards could have made, for these wild men had to look for other means of supporting themselves, and they joined the freebooters and thus began the great period of piracy which was the cause of the ultimate breaking-up of the Spanish power in the West Indies.

Of the life on board buccaneer and pirate ships a somewhat hazy and incomplete picture reaches us. The crews were usually large compared with the number of men carried in other ships, and a state of crowded discomfort must have been the result, especially in some crazy old vessel cruising in the tropics or rounding the Horn in winter. Of the relationship between the sea-rovers and the fair sex it would be best, perhaps, to draw a discreet veil. The pirates and the buccaneers looked upon women simply as the spoils of war, and were as profligate with these as with the rest of their plunder. I do not know if I am disclosing a secret when I mention that my friend Mr. Hyatt Verrill, who is an authority on the subject of the lives of the pirates, is about to publish a book devoted to the love affairs of these gentry. I confess to looking forward with pleasure and a certain degree of trepidation to reading his book and to seeing how he will deal with so delicate a subject.

We know that Sir Henry Morgan was married and provided for his widow in his will.

Captain Kidd, wife, and child, resided in New York, in the utmost conjugal happiness and respectability, but then Kidd was a martyr and no pirate.

Captain Rackam, the dashing "Calico Jack," ran away to sea with the woman pirate, Mrs. Anne Bonny, and they lived together happily on board ship and on land, as did Captain and Mrs. Cobham. The only other pirate I know of who took a "wife" to sea with him was Captain Pease, who flourished in a half-hearted way--half-hearted in the piratical, but not the matrimonial sense--in the middle of the nineteenth century.

A certain settler in New Zealand in the "early days" describes a visit he paid to Captain Pease and his family on board that pirate's handy little schooner, lying at anchor in a quiet cove at that island.

On stepping aboard, the guest was warmly welcomed by a short, red-faced man, bald of head and rotund in figure, of about fifty-five years of age. His appearance suggested a successful grocer rather than a pirate. On the deck were seated two ladies, one nearing middle age, the other young and undoubtedly pretty. At the feet of these ladies sprawled several small children. Captain Pease proceeded to introduce his guest to these as Mrs. Pease No. 1 and Mrs. Pease No. 2. The ladies continued their sewing while a conversation took place on various subjects. Presently, taking out his watch, the pirate turned to the younger lady, observing that it was nearing teatime. Mrs. Pease No. 2, laying down her sewingof course. The A-Kamba, for instance, when on a journey, and when leaving a spot where they have camped, throw a firebrand on their path and pray that the party should reach its destination in safety and proceed together in amity. This is done by the head of the party, the next man throwing a few leaves on the firebrand and stepping on it. It is a pretty custom, although a European of the present day might consider it a somewhat strenuous method of expressing gratitude! But when people are constantly travelling through parts of a country infested with lions, and when their only protection from wild animals is a small camp fire, one can perhaps understand that they should think it advisable to keep on the right side of the deity.

At Kikuyu, a man was once seized with a sudden fit. When he recovered consciousness, he was given a little water. Before drinking it, he promptly poured a few drops in front of him, then on his right side, then on his left. This was meant as a kind of silent prayer of thanksgiving for recovery. He stated that it was his muungu who had attacked him thus.

Charms are also very common. Many of them are in the nature of sympathetic magic, whilst others are merely a form of perpetual prayer, or rather, of materialised prayers. A German missionary, named Brutzer, gives a good example, and describes the charms worn by a Kamba friend; one was worn round his neck tccess with the ladies; but that he was a success there can be no doubt. Perhaps his calling had a good deal to do with this attraction he had for them.

Before bringing this Preface to a conclusion, there is one other aspect of piracy upon which I will touch.

Death, portrayed by a skeleton, was the device on the flag beneath which they fought; and a skeleton was for ever threatening to emerge from its cupboard aboard every pirate vessel.

The end of most of the pirates and a large proportion of the buccaneers was a sudden and violent one, and few of them died in their beds. Many were killed in battle, numbers of them were drowned. Not a few drank themselves to death with strong Jamaica rum, while many of the buccaneers died of malaria and yellow fever contracted in the jungles of Central America, and most of the pirates who survived these perils lived only to be hanged.

It is recorded of a certain ex-prizefighter and pirate, Dennis McCarthy, who was about to be hanged at New Providence Island in 1718, that, as he stood on the gallows, all bedecked with coloured ribbons, as became a boxer, he told his admiring audience that his friends had often, in joke, told him he would die in his shoes; and so, to prove them liars, he kicked off his shoes amongst the crowd, and so died without them.

The trial of a pirate was usually a rough and ready business, and the culprit seldom received the benefit of any doubt that might exist.

If he made any defence at all, it was usually to plead that he had been forced to join the pirates against his wish, and that he had long been waiting for an opportunity to escape.

Once condemned to death, and the date of execution decided, the prisoner, if at Newgate, was handed over to the good offices of the prison Ordinary; or, if in New England, to such vigorous apostles of Christianity as the Rev. Cotton or the Rev. Increase Mather. The former of these two famous theologians was pastor of the North Church in Boston, and the author of a very rare work published in 1695, called "An History of Some Criminals Executed in This Land." Cotton Mather preached many a "hanging" sermon to condemned pirates, a few of which can still be read. One of these, preached in 1704, is called "A Brief Discourse occasioned by a Tragical Spectacle of a Number of Miserables under Sentence of Death for Piracy."

The Reverend Doctor made a speciality of these "hanging" sermons, and was a thorough master of his subject, as is shown by the following passage taken from the above "Brief Discourse":

"The Privateering Stroke so easily degenerates into the Piratical; and the Privateering Trade is usually carried on with an Unchristian Temper, and proves an Inlet unto so much Debauchery and Iniquity."

On the Sunday previous to an execution the condemned pirates were taken to church to listen to a sermon while they were "exhibited" to the crowded and gaping congregation. On the day of the execution a procession was formed, which marched from the gaol to the gallows.

At the head was carried a silver oar, the emblem from very early days of a pirate execution. Arrived at the gibbet, the prisoner, who always dressed himself in his, or someone else's, best clothes, would doff his hat and make a speech.

Sometimes the bolder spirits would speak in a defiant and unrepentant way; but most of them professed a deep repentance for their sins and warned their listeners to guard against the temptation of drink and avarice. After the prisoner's death the bodies of the more notorious pirates were taken down and hanged in chains at some prominent spot where ships passed, in order to be a warning to any mariners who had piratical leanings.

Men that are virtuous serve the Lord; And the Devil's by his friends ador'd; And as they merit get a place Amidst the bless'd or hellish race; Pray then ye learned clergy show Where can this brute, Tom Goldsmith, go? Whose life was one continual evil Striving to cheat God, Man and Devil.

THE PIRATES' WHO'S WHO

AISA. Barbary corsair.

A famous Mediterranean pirate, and one of Dragut's admirals in the sixteenth century.

ALCANTRA, CAPTAIN MANSEL.

ALEXANDER, JOHN.

A Scotch buccaneer; one of Captain Sharp's crew. Drowned on May 9th, 1681. Captain Sharp, with a party of twenty-four men, had landed on the Island of Chiva, off the coast of Peru, and taken several prisoners, amongst whom was a shipwright and his man, who were actually at work building two great ships for the Spaniards. Sharp, thinking these men would be very useful to him, took them away, with all their tools and a quantity of ironwork, in a dory, to convey them off to his ship. But the dory, being overladen, sank, and Alexander was drowned. On the evening of May 12th his body was found; which they took up, and next day "threw him overboard, giving him three French vollies for his customary ceremony."

ALI BASHA.

Of Algiers. Barbary corsair.

Conquered the Kingdom of Tunis in the sixteenth century, and captured many Maltese galleys. He brought the development of organized piracy to its greatest perfection.

In 1571 Ali Basha commanded a fleet of no fewer than 250 Moslem galleys in the battle of Lepanto, when he was severely defeated, but escaped with his life.

ALLESTON, CAPTAIN.

Commanded a vessel of eighteen tons, no guns, and a crew of twenty-four. In March, 1679, sailed in company with eight other vessels, under command of Captain Harris, to the Coast of Darien, and marched on foot across the isthmus, on his way attacking and sacking Santa Maria.

AMAND or ANNAND, ALEXANDER.

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