The Pirates Own Book (17 page)

Immediately after the delivery of the verdict, the acquitted prisoners,
on motion of Mr. Hillard, were directed to be discharged, upon which
several of the others loudly and angrily expressed their dissatisfaction
at the result of the trial. Castillo (
a half-caste
, with an extremely
mild and pleasing countenance,) pointed towards heaven, and called upon
the Almighty to bear witness that he was innocent;
Ruiz
uttered some
words with great vehemence; and
Garcia
said "all were in the same
ship; and it was strange that some should be permitted to escape while
others were punished." Most of them on leaving the Court uttered some
invective against "the
picaro
who had sworn their lives away."

On
Costa
, the cabin boy, (aged 16) being declared "Not Guilty" some
degree of approbation was manifested by the audience, but instantly
checked by the judge, who directed the officers to take into custody,
every one expressing either assent or dissent. We certainly think the
sympathy expressed in favor of
Costa
very ill placed, for although we
have not deemed ourselves at liberty to mention the fact earlier, his
conduct during the whole trial was characterized by the most reckless
effrontery and indecorum. Even when standing up to receive the verdict
of the jury, his face bore an impudent smile, and he evinced the most
total disregard of the mercy which had been extended towards him.

About this time vague rumors reached Corunna, that a Captain belonging
to that place, engaged in the Slave Trade, had turned Pirate, been
captured, and sent to America with his crew for punishment. Report at
first fixed it upon a noted slave-dealer, named Begaro. But the
astounding intelligence soon reached Senora de Soto, that her husband
was the person captured for this startling crime. The shock to her
feelings was terrible, but her love and fortitude surmounted them all;
and she determined to brave the terrors of the ocean, to intercede for
her husband if condemned, and at all events behold him once more. A
small schooner was freighted by her own and husband's father, and in it
she embarked for New-York. After a boisterous passage, the vessel
reached that port, when she learned her husband had already been tried
and condemned to die. The humane people of New-York advised her to
hasten on to Washington, and plead with the President for a pardon. On
arriving at the capital, she solicited an interview with General
Jackson, which was readily granted. From the circumstance of her
husband's having saved the lives of seventy Americans, a merciful ear
was turned to her solicitations, and a pardon for De Soto was given her,
with which she hastened to Boston, and communicated to him the joyful
intelligence.

Andrew Jackson, President of the United States of America, to all to
whom these presents shall come,
Greeting
: Whereas, at the October
Term, 1834, of the Circuit Court of the United States, Bernardo de Soto
was convicted of Piracy, and sentenced to be hung on the 11th day of
March last from which sentence a respite was granted him for three
months, bearing date the third day of March, 1835, also a subsequent
one, dated on the fifth day of June, 1835, for sixty days. And whereas
the said Bernardo de Soto has been represented as a fit subject for
executive clemency—

Now therefore, I, Andrew Jackson, President of the United States of
America, in consideration of the premises, divers good and sufficient
causes me thereto moving, have pardoned, and hereby do pardon the said
Bernardo de Soto, from and after the 11th August next, and direct that
he be then discharged from confinement. In testimony whereof I have
hereunto subscribed my name, and caused the seal of the United States to
be affixed to these presents. Done at the City of Washington the sixth
day of July, AD. 1835, and of the independence of the United States and
sixtieth. Andrew Jackson.

On the fatal morning of June 11th, 1835, Don Pedro, Juan Montenegro,
Manuel Castillo, Angel Garcia and Manuel Boyga, were, agreeably to
sentence, summoned to prepare for immediate execution. On the night
previous, a mutual agreement had been entered into to commit suicide.
Angel Garcia made the first attempt by trying to open the veins of each
arm with a piece of glass; but was prevented. In the morning, however,
while preparations were making for the execution, Boyga succeeded in
inflicting a deep gash on the left side of his neck, with a piece of
tin. The officer's eyes had been withdrawn from him scarcely a minute,
before he was discovered lying on his pallet, with a convulsive motion
of his knees, from loss of blood. Medical aid was at hand, the gash
sewed up, but he did not revive. Two Catholic clergymen attended them on
the scaffold, one a Spanish priest. They were executed in the rear of
the jail. When the procession arrived at the foot of the ladder leading
up to the platform of the gallows the Rev. Mr. Varella looking directly
at Capt. Gilbert, said, "Spaniards, ascend to heaven." Don Pedro mounted
with a quick step, and was followed by his comrades at a more moderate
pace, but without the least hesitation. Boyga, unconscious of his
situation and destiny, was carried up in a chair, and seated beneath the
rope prepared for him. Gilbert, Montenegro, Garcia and Castillo all
smiled subduedly as they took their stations on the platform. Soon after
Capt. Gilbert ascended the scaffold, he passed over to where the
apparently lifeless Boyga was seated in the chair, and kissed him.
Addressing his followers, he said, "Boys, we are going to die; but let
us be firm, for we are innocent." To Mr. Peyton, the interpreter, he
said, "I die innocent, but I'll die like a noble Spaniard. Good bye,
brother." The Marshal having read the warrant for their execution, and
stated that de Soto was respited
sixty
and Ruiz
thirty
days, the
ropes were adjusted round the necks of the prisoners, and a slight
hectic flush spread over the countenance of each; but not an eye
quailed, nor a limb trembled, not a muscle quivered. The fatal cord was
now cut, and the platform fell, by which the prisoners were launched
into eternity. After the execution was over, Ruiz, who was confined in
his cell, attracted considerable attention, by his maniac shouts and
singing. At one time holding up a piece of blanket, stained with Boyga's
blood, he gave utterance to his ravings in a sort of recitative, the
burden of which was—"This is the red flag my companions died under!"

After the expiration of Ruiz' second respite, the Marshal got two
surgeons of the United States Navy, who understood the Spanish language,
to attend him in his cell; they, after a patient examination pronounced
his madness a counterfeit, and his insanity a hoax. Accordingly, on the
morning of Sept. 11th, the Marshal, in company with a Catholic priest
and interpreter entered his cell, and made him sensible that longer
evasion of the sentence of the law was impossible, and that he must
surely die. They informed him that he had but half an hour to live, and
retired; when he requested that he might not be disturbed during the
brief space that remained to him, and turning his back to the open
entrance to his cell, he unrolled some fragments of printed prayers, and
commenced reading them to himself. During this interval he neither
spoke, nor heeded those who were watching him; but undoubtedly suffered
extreme mental agony. At one minute he would drop his chin on his bosom,
and stand motionless; at another would press his brow to the wall of his
cell, or wave his body from side to side, as if wrung with unutterable
anguish. Suddenly, he would throw himself upon his knees on the
mattress, and prostrate himself as if in prayer; then throwing his
prayers from him, he would clutch his rug in his fingers, and like a
child try to double it up, or pick it to pieces. After snatching up his
rug and throwing it away again and again, he would suddenly resume his
prayers and erect posture, and stand mute, gazing through the aperture
that admitted the light of day for upwards of a minute. This scene of
imbecility and indecision, of horrible prostration of mind, ceasing in
some degree when the Catholic clergyman re-entered his cell.

At 10 o'clock, the prisoner was removed from the prison, and during his
progress to the scaffold, though the hue of death was on his face, and
he trembled in every joint with fear, he chaunted with a powerful voice
an appropriate service from the Catholic ritual. Several times he turned
round to survey the heavens which at that moment were clear and bright
above him and when he ascended the scaffold after concluding his prayer,
he took one long and steadfast look at the sun, and waited in silence
his fate. His powers, mental and physical had been suddenly crushed with
the appalling reality that surrounded him; his whole soul was absorbed
with one master feeling, the dread of a speedy and violent death. He
quailed in the presence of the dreadful paraphernalia of his punishment,
as much as if he had been a stranger to deeds of blood, and never dealt
death to his fellow man as he ploughed the deep, under the black flag of
piracy, with the motto of "Rob, Kill, and Burn." After adjusting the
rope, a signal was given. The body dropped heavily, and the harsh abrupt
shock must have instantly deprived him of sensation, as there was no
voluntary action of the hands afterwards. Thus terminated his career of
crime in a foreign land without one friend to recognize or cheer him, or
a single being to regret his death.

The Spanish Consul having requested that the bodies might not be given
to the faculty, they were interred at night under the direction of the
Marshal, in the Catholic burial-ground at Charlestown. There being no
murder committed with the piracy, the laws of the United States do not
authorize the court to order the bodies for dissection.

The following narrative of the career of a desperate pirate who was
executed in Gibraltar in the month of January, 1830, is one of two
letters from the pen of the author of "the Military Sketch-Book." The
writer says Benito de Soto "had been a prisoner in the garrison for
nineteen months, during which time the British Government spared neither
the pains not expense to establish a full train of evidence against him.
The affair had caused the greatest excitement here, as well as at Cadiz,
owing to the development of the atrocities which marked the character of
this man, and the diabolical gang of which he was the leader. Nothing
else is talked of; and a thousand horrors are added to his guilt, which,
although he was guilty enough, he has no right to bear. The following is
all the authentic information I could collect concerning him. I have
drawn it from his trial, from the confession of his accomplices, from
the keeper of his prison, and not a little from his own lips. It will be
found more interesting than all the tales and sketches furnished in the
'Annuals,' magazines, and other vehicles of invention, from the simple
fact—that it is truth and not fiction."

Benito de Soto was a native of a small village near Courna; he was bred
a mariner, and was in the guiltless exercise of his calling at Buenos
Ayres, in the year 1827. A vessel was there being fitted out for a
voyage to the coast of Africa, for the smuggling of slaves; and as she
required a strong crew, a great number of sailors were engaged, amongst
whom was Soto. The Portuguese of South America have yet a privilege of
dealing in slaves on a certain part of the African coast, but it was the
intention of the captain of this vessel to exceed the limits of his
trade, and to run farther down, so as to take his cargo of human beings
from a part of the country which was proscribed, in the certainty of
being there enabled to purchase slaves at a much lower rate than he
could in the regular way; or, perhaps, to take away by force as many as
he could stow away into his ship. He therefore required a considerable
number of hands for the enterprise; and in such a traffic, it may be
easily conceived, that the morals of the crew could not be a subject of
much consideration with the employer. French, Spanish, Portuguese, and
others, were entered on board, most of them renegadoes, and they set
sail on their evil voyage, with every hope of infamous success.

Those who deal in evil carry along with them the springs of their own
destruction, upon which they will tread, in spite of every caution, and
their imagined security is but the brink of the pit into which they are
to fall. It was so with the captain of this slave-ship. He arrived in
Africa, took in a considerable number of slaves, and in order to
complete his cargo, went on shore, leaving his mate in charge of the
vessel. This mate was a bold, wicked, reckless and ungovernable spirit,
and perceiving in Benito de Soto a mind congenial with his own, he fixed
on him as a fit person to join in a design he had conceived, of running
away with the vessel, and becoming a pirate. Accordingly the mate
proposed his plan to Soto, who not only agreed to join in it, but
declared that he himself had been contemplating a similar enterprise
during the voyage. They both were at once of a mind, and they lost no
time in maturing their plot.

Their first step was to break the matter to the other members of the
crew. In this they proceeded cautiously, and succeeded so far as to
gain over twenty-two of the whole, leaving eighteen who remained
faithful to their trust. Every means were used to corrupt the well
disposed; both persuasion and threats were resorted to, but without
effect, and the leader of the conspiracy, the mate, began to despair of
obtaining the desired object. Soto, however, was not so easily
depressed. He at once decided on seizing the ship upon the strength of
his party: and without consulting the mate, he collected all the arms of
the vessel, called the conspirators together, put into each of their
possession a cutlass and a brace of pistols, and arming himself in like
manner, advanced at the head of the gang, drew his sword, and declared
the mate to be the commander of the ship, and the men who joined him
part owners. Still, those who had rejected the evil offer remained
unmoved; on which Soto ordered out the boats, and pointing to the land,
cried out, "There is the African coast; this is our ship—one or the
other must be chosen by every man on board within five minutes."