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| Stede-Bonnet |
MAJOR STEDE-BONNET
Pirate by Fancy
by Marcel Schwob
Marcel Schwob / El mayor Stede Bonnet
Major Stede-Bonnet was a gentleman and a retired soldier living on his plantation in the Barbadoes in the year 1715. His fields of sugar-cane and coffee brought him a good income, and he had the pleasure of smoking tobacco he himself had cultivated. He had been unhappily married, for his wife, it was said, had driven him slightly mad, though his aberrations were only mild ones until after the quarantine. At first, his servants and neighbors humored them as mere childish fancies.
Major Stede-Bonnet’s peculiarity was the following: on every possible occasion he made a scathing denouncement of all who lived and fought on land, then launched forth a flood of praise for seafaring men. The only names sweet in his mouth were those of Avery, Charles Vane, Benjamin Hornigold or Edward Teach, good hardy navigators, in his opinion, true men of enterprise. They were all infesting the seas in the vicinity of the Antilles at that time, but if anyone called them pirates in his hearing the Major would exclaim:
“Thank God, then, for these pirates, as you say, who give us an example of such free lives as our forefathers led. They had no rich men in their days, no women coddlers, no slaves to fetch them sugar and cotton and indigo, but one generous God distributing all things and to each man his just part. That’s why I like these fine free fellows who live as companions in fortune, dividing the prizes between them.”
Tramping over his plantation, the Major often stopped to thump some laborer on the shoulder, saying:
“Wouldn’t you be better off now, you fool, if you was stowing those bales away in the hold of a tidy brigantine instead of spilling your sweat in this dust?”
Nearly every evening he called his servants together under a grain shed to read them stories of the great exploits achieved by the pirates of Hispaniola or Turtle Island, for all the gazettes and journals of the day were telling how these men ravaged villages and farms along the coast. The Major read by candlelight, while big blue flies droned around his head.
“Excellent Vane,” he would cry. “Brave Hornigold, a real horn of plenty full of gold! Sublime Avery, loaded with the jewels of the Great Mogul and the kings of Madagascar! Admirable Teach—you who ruled fourteen wives, one after the other, then got rid of them all—you, Teach, who handed over your last one (she was only sixteen) to your friends every night (out of pure generosity, grandeur of the soul and sheer love of science), at Okerecok, that fine island of yours! How happy are they who follow your wake, who drink their rum with you, Blackbeard, master of the Queen Anne’s Revenge!”
The Major’s servants listened to these discourses in silent surprise. His only interruptions were soft little noises when small lizards fell down from the roof, the suction grip of their tiny cupped feet loosened by fright. Shielding the candle with his hand, the Major reviewed famous naval maneuvers with the point of his cane, tracing plans and positions among the tobacco leaves on the floor. He threatened the cradle (that was what the pirates called forty strokes of the lash) to any listener who failed to understand and grasp the finesse of those filibustering tactics.
At last Major Stede-Bonnet could resist no longer. He bought an old sloop with ten guns mounted on her, and took on all the essential paraphernalia of piracy, including cutlasses, crossbows, ladders, planks, grappling hooks, hatches, Bibles (to take oath by), kegs of rum, lanterns, soot for blackening faces, pitch, wicks to burn under the fingernails of rich merchants, a mighty supply of black flags with skulls and cross-bones on them, and the name of the vessel—The Revenge. After driving seventy of his domestic servants aboard to be his pirate crew, he set sail in the night, heading due west with the intention of skirting Saint Vincent, tacking back by way of Yucatan and pillaging all the coast as far as Savannah—where he never arrived.
Major Stede-Bonnet knew nothing of the sea or its language. Between the compass and the astrolabe he began to lose his reason completely; he confused mizzen with bos’un, the jib with the brig, the foresail with the fo’castle; he called the wheel the keel, said starboard when he meant larboard and aft when he meant abaft. All those strange words and the disquieting motion of the sea combined to upset him until he wished himself safe ashore on his plantation in the Barbadoes, and would probably have returned without further adventure were it not for his glorious desire to raise the skull and cross-bones at sight of the first vessel encountered. He had neglected to put aboard any provisions, counting as he did on ample loot, but since not a single sail was spied the first night, Major Stede-Bonnet decided to attack a village.
Hailing all his men to the bridge-head he handed out the brand-new cutlasses, urging the crew to their utmost ferocity. From a bucket of soot he proceeded to black his own face, commanding the others to follow suit, which they did with some gayety. Recalling his pirate lore, he judged it best to stimulate his men with a few drinks of some reliable pirate beverage, so he doled out to each one a pint of rum and gunpowder mixed (wine, he knew, was the proper ingredient, but he had none). The servant sailors drank their rations down, though contrary to rule, their faces were not instantly suffused with fury. There was, in fact, a concerted movement both to port and to starboard as they hastened their sooty faces over the rail, offering the mixture to the depths of that villainous sea. By this time The Revenge was all but stranded on the beach of Saint Vincent, so the pirates went staggering ashore.
It was morning. The astonished faces of the villagers somehow failed to excite a great deal of piratical frenzy; even Major Stede-Bonnet was not overmuch disposed to do violence. He showed his ferocity, however, by purchasing rice, vegetables and salt pork which he paid for (in a noble buccaneer manner, it seemed to him) with two kegs of rum and some old rope. When his crew had humbly pushed The Revenge afloat the Major again set out to sea, proud of his first conquest.
He sailed all that day and all that night without the faintest notion what wind propelled him. Towards the dawn of the second day, while he slept propped up against the wheel-house, much discomforted by his cutlass and blunderbuss, Major StedeBonnet was aroused by a shout.
“Sloop ahoy!”
Rising, he saw another ship standing off at about one cable length. In her prow was a man with a big full beard. A small black flag floated from her pinnacle.
“Hoist our death flag! hoist our death flag!” commanded the Major hurriedly.
As he thought it over, his proper title was the title of a landlubber soldier, so he decided to take a new name immediately, following the illustrious example set by famous leaders of his new profession. He answered without further delay:
“Sloop The Revenge, commanded by me. Captain Thomas, with my companions in fortune.”
The man with the beard burst out laughing.
“Well met,” he roared. “Comrade, we can both drift awhile. Come, have a go of rum with me aboard The Queen Anne’s Revenge."
And Major Stede-Bonnet realized he was about to meet Captain Teach, alias Blackbeard, most famous of all the pirates he had so admired. But the Major’s joy was not now as acute as he thought it would be, for he had a notion that he might presently be losing his splendid piratical liberty. He went rather grimly over to Teach who re¬ ceived him with much ceremony, glass in hand.
“Comrade,” Blackbeard began, “you please me infinitely, but your navigating shows no prudence. So if you trust me. Captain Thomas, you will stay here while I send a brave able fellow by the name of Bichards to sail your sloop for you. On Blackbeard’s ship you will find all the freedom due a gentleman of fortune.”
Major Stede-Bonnet dared not refuse. They took away his cutlass and his blunderbuss. He was sworn in on a hatch (Blackbeard could not suffer the sight of a Bible), given his ration of biscuits and rum, promised his share in future prizes. The Major had never dreamed a pirate’s life could be so orderly. When he sailed away from the Barbadoes he had been a gentleman fancying himself a pirate. Now that he was to become a real pirate aboard The Queen Anne's Revenge he no longer fancied the life so ardently.
Submitting to Blackbeard’s rages and the ocean’s terrors he led that existence for three months, assisting his master in thirteen captures; finally returning to his own sloop, The Revenge under Richard’s command. It was a fortunate and prudent change, for the following night Blackbeard was attacked at the entrance of Okerecok Island by Lieutenant Maynard of Bathtown. Blackbeard was killed in the resulting combat and the Lieutenant sailed away with the pirate’s head swinging from his bowsprit.
For several weeks poor Captain Thomas fled in the direction of South Carolina. Advised of his coming, the governor of Charlestown sent a Colonel Rhet with orders to effect his arrest at the Sullivan Islands. Captain Thomas allowed himself to be taken. Under the name of Major StedeBonnet (which he speedily resumed), he was led back to Charlestown in some pomp. Held in jail until November the tenth, 1718, he appeared at that date before a court of the admiralty. Chief Justice Nicholas Trot condemned him to death with the delightful address that follows:
“Major Stede-Bonnet, you have been convicted on two charges of piracy. In as much as you have pillaged something like thirteen ships you could easily be convicted on eleven additional charges. Two, however, have been found sufficient (said Nicholas Trot) for those two are contrary to our divine law, ‘Thou shalt not steal’ (Ex. 20, 15) and the apostle Saint Paul expressly declared: ‘Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God’ (I Cor. 6, 10). You are further guilty of homicide (said Nicholas Trot), and assassins ‘Shall dwell forever in a burning lake of fire and sulphur’ (Apoc. 21, 8) (said Nicholas Trot), ‘shall dwell with the devouring fire’ (Is. 33, 14.) Ah, Major Stede-Bonnet, I have reason to fear the religious principles imbued in your youth (said Nicholas Trot), have been sadly corrupted by your wicked life and your too nice application to the literature, and the vain philosophy of our time, for had your delight been in ‘The law of the Lord’ (said Nicholas Trot), had you ‘Meditated upon it night and day’ (Ps. 1, 2), you would have found by now that ‘His word is a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path’ (Ps. 119, 105.) But since you have not minded this you must fly to the ‘Lamb of God’ (said Nicholas Trot), ‘which taketh away the sin of the world’ on the promise that ‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out* (Jno. 6, 37). If you return to him now (said Nicholas Trot), like the vineyard laborers in the parable of the eleventh hour (Mat. 20, 6, 9), he can yet receive you. But for the present (said Nicholas Trot), the court pronounces that you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead.”
Major Stede-Bonnet, having listened with all compunction to this discourse by the chief justice, was hanged that same day at Charlestown as a thief and a pirate.
Marcel Schwob
Imaginary Lives
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