The Pirates Own Book (22 page)

Darby Mullins urged in his defence, that he served under the king's
commission, and therefore could not disobey his commander without
incurring great punishments; that whenever a ship or ships went out upon
any expedition under the king's commission, the men were never allowed
to call their officers to an account, why they did this, or why they did
that, because such a liberty would destroy all discipline; that if any
thing was done which was unlawful, the officers were to answer it, for
the men did no more than their duty in obeying orders. He was told by
the court, that acting under the commission justified in what was
lawful, but not in what was unlawful. He answered, he stood in need of
nothing to justify him in what was lawful, but the case of seamen must
be very hard, if they must be brought into such danger for obeying the
commands of their officers, and punished for not obeying them; and if
they were allowed to dispute the orders, there could be no such thing as
command kept up at sea.

This seemed to be the best defence the thing could bear; but his taking
a share of the plunder, the seamen's mutinying on board several times,
and taking upon them to control the captain, showed there was no
obedience paid to the commission; and that they acted in all things
according to the custom of pirates and freebooters, which weighing with
the jury, they brought him in guilty with the rest.

As to Capt. Kidd's defence, he insisted much on his own innocence, and
the villainy of his men. He said, he went out in a laudable employment
and had no occasion, being then in good circumstances, to go a pirating;
that the men often mutinied against him, and did as they pleased; that
he was threatened to be shot in the cabin, and that ninety-five left him
at one time, and set fire to his boat, so that he was disabled from
bringing his ship home, or the prizes he took, to have them regularly
condemned, which he said were taken by virtue of a commission under the
broad seal, they having French passes. The captain called one Col.
Hewson to his reputation, who gave him an extraordinary character, and
declared to the court, that he had served under his command, and been in
two engagements with him against the French, in which he fought as well
as any man he ever saw; that there were only Kidd's ship and his own
against Monsieur du Cass, who commanded a squadron of six sail, and they
got the better of him. But this being several years before the facts
mentioned in the indictment were committed, proved of no manner of
service to the prisoner on his trial.

As to the friendship shown to Culliford, a notorious pirate, Kidd
denied, and said, he intended to have taken him, but his men being a
parcel of rogues and villains refused to stand by him, and several of
them ran away from his ship to the said pirate. But the evidence being
full and particular against him, he was found guilty as before
mentioned.

When Kidd was asked what he had to say why sentence should not pass
against him, he answered, that
he had nothing to say, but that he had
been sworn against by perjured and wicked people
. And when sentence was
pronounced, he said,
My Lord, it is a very hard sentence. For my part,
I am the most innocent person of them all, only I have been sworn
against by perjured persons
.

Wherefore about a week after, Capt. Kidd, Nicholas Churchill, James How,
Gabriel Loff, Hugh Parrot, Abel Owen, and Darby Mullins, were executed
at Execution Dock, and afterwards hung up in chains, at some distance
from each other, down the river, where their bodies hung exposed for
many years.

Kidd died hard, for the rope with which he was first tied up broke with
his weight and he tumbled to the ground. He was tied up a second time,
and more effectually. Hence came the story of Kidd's being twice hung.

Such is Captain Kidd's true history; but it has given birth to an
innumerable progeny of traditions. The report of his having buried great
treasures of gold and silver which he actually did before his arrest,
set the brains of all the good people along the coast in a ferment.
There were rumors on rumors of great sums of money found here and there,
sometimes in one part of the country sometimes in another; of coins with
Moorish inscriptions, doubtless the spoils of his eastern prizes.

Some reported the treasure to have been buried in solitary, unsettled
places about Plymouth and Cape Cod; but by degrees, various other parts,
not only on the eastern coast but along the shores of the Sound, and
even Manhattan and Long Island were gilded by these rumors. In fact the
vigorous measures of Lord Bellamont had spread sudden consternation
among the pirates in every part of the provinces; they had secreted
their money and jewels in lonely out-of-the-way places, about the wild
shores of the sea coast, and dispersed themselves over the country. The
hand of justice prevented many of them from ever returning to regain
their buried treasures, which remain to this day thus secreted, and are
irrecoverably lost. This is the cause of those frequent reports of trees
and rocks bearing mysterious marks, supposed to indicate the spots where
treasure lay hidden; and many have been the ransackings after the
pirates' booty. A rocky place on the shores of Long Island, called
Kidd's Ledge, has received great attention from the money diggers; but
they have not as yet discovered any treasures.

Vincent Benavides was the son of the gaoler of Quirihue in the district
of Conception. He was a man of ferocious manners, and had been guilty of
several murders. Upon the breaking out of the revolutionary war, he
entered the patriot army as a private soldier; and was a serjeant of
grenadiers at the time of the first Chilian revolution. He, however,
deserted to the Spaniards, and was taken prisoner in their service, when
they sustained, on the plains of Maypo, on the 5th of April, 1818, that
defeat which decided their fortunes in that part of America, and secured
the independence of Chili. Benavides, his brother, and some other
traitors to the Chilian cause, were sentenced to death, and brought
forth in the Plaza, or public square of Santiago, in order to be shot.
Benavides, though terribly wounded by the discharge, was not killed; but
he had the presence of mind to counterfeit death in so perfect a manner,
that the imposture was not suspected. The bodies of the traitors were
not buried, but dragged away to a distance, and there left to be
devoured by the gallinazos or vultures. The serjeant who had the
superintendence of this part of the ceremony, had a personal hatred to
Benavides, on account of that person having murdered some of his
relations; and, to gratify his revenge, he drew his sword, and gave the
dead body, (as he thought,) a severe gash in the side, as they were
dragging it along. The resolute Benavides had fortitude to bear this
also, without flinching or even showing the least indication of life;
and one cannot help regretting that so determined a power of endurance
had not been turned to a better purpose.

Benavides lay like a dead man, in the heap of carcasses, until it became
dark; and then, pierced with shot, and gashed by the sword as he was, he
crawled to a neighboring cottage, the inhabitants of which received him
with the greatest kindness, and attended him with the greatest care.

The daring ruffian, who knew the value of his own talents and courage,
being aware that General San Martin was planning the expedition to Peru,
a service in which there would be much of desperation and danger, sent
word to the General that he was alive, and invited him to a secret
conference at midnight, in the same Plaza in which it was believed
Benavides had been shot. The signal agreed upon, was, that they should
strike fire three times with their flints, as that was not likely to be
answered by any but the proper party, and yet was not calculated to
awaken suspicion.

San Martin, alone, and provided with a brace of pistols, met the
desperado; and after a long conference, it was agreed that Benavides
should, in the mean time, go out against the Araucan Indians; but that
he should hold himself in readiness to proceed to Peru, when the
expedition suited.

Having procured the requisite passports, he proceeded to Chili, where,
having again diverted the Chilians, he succeeded in persuading the
commander of the Spanish troops, that he had force sufficient to carry
on the war against Chili; and the commander in consequence retired to
Valdivia, and left Benavides commander of the whole frontier on the
Biobio.

Having thus cleared the coast of the Spanish commander, he went over to
the Araucans, or rather, he formed a band of armed robbers, who
committed every cruelty, and were guilty of every perfidy in the south
of Chili. Whereever Benavides came, his footsteps were marked with
blood, and the old men, the women, and the children, were butchered lest
they should give notice of his motions.

When he had rendered himself formidable by land, he resolved to be
equally powerful upon the sea. He equipped a corsair, with instructions
to capture the vessels of all nations; and as Araucan is directly
opposite the island of Santa Maria, where vessels put in for
refreshment, after having doubled Cape Horn, his situation was well
adapted for his purpose. He was but too successful. The first of his
prizes was the American ship Hero, which he took by surprise in the
night; the second, was the Herculia, a brig belonging to the same
country. While the unconscious crew were proceeding, as usual, to catch
seals on this island, lying about three leagues from the main land of
Arauca, an armed body of men rushed from the woods, and overpowering
them, tied their hands behind them, and left them under a guard on the
beach. These were no other than the pirates, who now took the Herculia's
own boats, and going on board, surprised the captain and four of his
crew, who had remained to take care of the brig; and having brought off
the prisoners from the beach, threw them all into the hold, closing the
hatches over them. They then tripped the vessel's anchor, and sailing
over in triumph to Arauca, were received by Benavides, with a salute of
musketry fired under the Spanish flag, which it was their chief's
pleasure to hoist on that day. In the course of the next night,
Benavides ordered the captain and his crew to be removed to a house on
shore, at some distance from the town; then taking them out, one by one,
he stripped and pillaged them of all they possessed, threatening them
the whole time with drawn swords and loaded muskets. Next morning he
paid the prisoners a visit and ordered them to the capital, called
together the principal people of the town, and desired each to select
one as a servant. The captain and four others not happening to please
the fancy of any one, Benavides, after saying he would himself take
charge of the captain, gave directions, on pain of instant death, that
some one should hold themselves responsible for the other prisoners.
Some days after this they were called together, and required to serve as
soldiers in the pirates army; an order to which they consented, knowing
well by what they had already seen, that the consequence of refusal
would be fatal.

Benavides, though unquestionably a ferocious savage, was, nevertheless,
a man of resource, full of activity, and of considerable energy of
character. He converted the whale spears and harpoons into lances for
his cavalry, and halberts for his sergeants; and out of the sails he
made trowsers for half of his army; the carpenters he set to work making
baggage carts and repairing his boats; the armourers he kept perpetually
at work, mending muskets, and making pikes; managing in this way, to
turn the skill of every one of his prisoners to some useful account. He
treated the officers, too, not unkindly, allowed them to live in his
house, and was very anxious on all occasions, to have their advice
respecting the equipment of his troops.

Upon one occasion, when walking with the captain of the Herculia, he
remarked, that his army was now almost complete in every respect, except
in one essential particular, and it cut him, he said to the soul, to
think of such a deficiency; he had no trumpets for his cavalry, and
added, that it was utterly impossible to make the fellows believe
themselves dragoons, unless they heard a blast in their ears at every
turn; and neither men nor horses would ever do their duty properly, if
not roused to it by the sound of a trumpet; in short he declared, some
device must be hit upon to supply this equipment. The captain, willing
to ingratiate himself with the pirate, after a little reflection,
suggested to him, that trumpets might easily be made of copper sheets on
the bottoms of the vessels he had taken. "Very true," cried the
delighted chief, "how came I not to think of that before?" Instantly
all hands were employed in ripping off the copper, and the armourers
being set to work under his personal superintendence, the whole camp,
before night, resounded with the warlike blasts of the cavalry.

The captain of the ship, who had given him the brilliant idea of the
copper trumpets, had by these means, so far won upon his good will and
confidence, as to be allowed a considerable range to walk on. He of
course, was always looking out for some plan of escape, and at length an
opportunity occurring, he, with the mate of the Ocean, and nine of his
crew, seized two whale boats, imprudently left on the banks of the
river, and rowed off. Before quitting the shore, they took the
precaution of staving all the other boats, to prevent pursuit, and
accordingly, though their escape was immediately discovered, they
succeeded in getting so much the start of the people whom Benavides sent
in pursuit of them, that they reached St. Mary's Island in safety. Here
they caught several seals upon which they subsisted very miserably till
they reached Valparaiso. It was in consequence of their report of
Benavides proceedings made to Sir Thomas Hardy, the commander-in-chief,
that he deemed it proper to send a ship to rescue if possible, the
remaining unfortunate captives at Arauca.