A PIRATE BETRAYED.

Otago Witness, Issue 1970, 22 August 1889, Page 31

A PIRATE BETRAYED.

A prominent pirate of the seventeenth century was Captain Charles Vane, the details 'of whose career would, however, read much like some already given in the lives of earlier freebooters. One incident at the end of hio life is presented to show how much distrust often existed among the pirates themselves. Vane was at last wrecked on a small uninhabited island near the Bay of Honduras; his vessel was completely losb and most of his men drowned. He resided there some weeks, being leduced to great straits. While Vane was upon this island a ship put in from Jamaica for water, the captain of which, one Holford, an old pirate, happened to be an acquaintance of Vane's, He thought this a good opportunity to get off, and accordingly applied to his friend ; but Holford absolutelj refused him, saying to him : " Charles, I can't trust you on board my ship unless I carry you as a prisoner ; for I shall have you caballing with my men, knocking me on the head, and running away with my ship pirating." Vane made all the protestations of honour in the world to him ; but it seems Captain Holford was too intimately acquainted with him to place any confidence in his words or oaths. He told him that he might easily get off if he had a mind to it. " I am going down the bay," said he, " and shall return hither in about a month ; and if I find you upon the island when I come back, I will carry you to Jamaica and there hang you 1 " " How can I get away 1 " answered Vane. " Are there not fishermen's dories upon the beach. Can'fc you take one of them ? " replied Holford. "Whatl" replied Vane; " would you have me steal a dory, then 1 " " Do you make it a matter of conscience ? " replied Holford, "to steal a dory, when you have been a common robber and pirate, stealing ships and cargoes, and plundering all mankind that fell in your way. Stay here if you are so squeamish ; " and he left him to consider the matter. After Captain Holford's departure another ship put into the Bmall island on her way home for some water. None of the company knowing -Vane, he easily passed his examination, and so was shipped for the voyage. One would be apt to think that Vane was now pretty safe, and likely to escape the fate which his crimes had merited; but here a cross accident happened which ruined all. Holford, returning from the bay, was met by this ship, and the captains being very well acquainted with each other, Holford was invited to dine aboard, which he did. As he passed, along to the

cabin he ohanced to cast his eye down in the hold, and there saw Cha*le» Vane at work. He immediately spoke to the captain, \ saying : "Do you <know whom you have aboard there?" " Why, said he, " I shipped the man tb.B other day at an island where he had been cast away, and he seems to be a brisk hand." " I tell you," replied Captain Holford, " it is Vane, the notorious pirate." <l If it be he," replied the other, « I won't keep him." "Why, then," said Holford, "I'll send and take him aboard, and surrender him at Jamaica." This being settled, Captain Holford, as soon aa he returned to hie ship, sent his mate armed, to Vane, who had bis pistol ready cocked, and told him he was his prisoner. No man daring to make opposition, he was brought aboard and put into irons ; and when Captain Holford arrived at Jamaica he delivered up his old acquaintance to justice, at which place he was tried, convicted, and executed, as was some time before Vane's companion, Eobert Deal, who was brought J thither by one of the men-of-war. "It is clear," says the original narrator, I " from this how little ancient friendship will j avail a great villain when he is deprived of the power that had before supported and rendered him formidable." — From " The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, and Heroism," for June. ROYALTY UnDISGHJISE. A grave historian of the Church tells us a very good story of that prince of bullies, King Henry VIII. When out hunting once j in the neighbourhood of Heading Abbey he got separated from his attendants, and was invited to dinner by the abbot, who took him to be one of the king's guards. The j hungry monarch ate so largely of a " sirloyn " of beef as to excite the envy of the ■ churchman, who declared he would give j £100 to be able to feed so heartily on ! beef. The unrecognised King departed, and the abbot probably had forgotten all about his somewhat unmannerly remark upon his visitor's appetite, when a pursuivant arrived at the abbey with orders from King Henry that the churchman was to return with the messenger to London. Puzzled and alarmed the abbot went accordingly, and on his arrival in town was immediately committed to an apartment in the Tower, where, on a diet of bread and water, he spent some anxious days and nights in the vain attempt to conceive how he had incurred the King's displeasure. '-At last," says the historian, " a sir-loyn of beef was set before him, on which the abbot fed, and verified the proverb that two hungry meals make the third a glutton. In springs King Henry out of a private lobby, where he had placed himself, the invisible spectator of the abbot's behaviour. 'My lord,' quoth the King, • presently deposit your £100 in gold, or else no going hence all the days of your life.' "' The King, it appeared, had found in the casual remark of his host an opportunity for playing a practical joke, and at the same time turning an honest penny or two — a pretty penny, by the way, was £100 in gold in those days — and the unlucky churchman, it is said, had to hand up the money before he was permitted to carry out of the Tower his receipt for 4 the enjoyment of " sir-loyn " of beef. Monarchs in times gone by seem, many of them, to have been very fond of assuming disguises and suddenly blazing out upon their startled subjects in all the power and pomp of kingship. There is not so much of this sort of thing done now ; partly, perhaps, because ideas of kingly dignity have undergone some changes, and it may be in some measure because in these days of photography and telegraphs and daily papers and universal omniscience, disguises are more troublesome and difficult. Nevertheless, even in our times, rulers have amused themselves in this way. The late Sultan of Turkey, the monarch who came over to England a few years ago, was said occasionally to go^out in disguise among his subjects. He drove out one night quite alone and carefully disguised, and presently lounged into a cassino in Constantinople, where he called for a cup of coffee, and inveigled those around him into a conversation about the Sultan and bis i government. His companions, fortunately | for themselves, seem to have had nothing | but good to report of Abdul Aziz himself, though thej had some fault to find with some of his Ministers. But while the conversation was going on, somebody whispered the awful hint—" The Padishah himself 1 " Of course criticism was instantly dropped, and his Majesty and all his people and all their ways and works were absolutely perfect. The Sultan, perceiving that he was recognised, is said to have taken a portrait from his pocket, and to have asked the company if it was like-the Sultan. " Not a bit. Such a portrait as that was mere filth and rubbish ; whereas the portrait of the Sultan everybody knew shone like several suns. The mere picture of hia Majesty's benign countenance diffused blessings wherever it was permitted to shine." The Sultan could probably get plenty of this sort of thing at home, and finding that the interest of the conversation had come to an end, the great man took his departure, forgetting, it is said, to pay for his coffee. This was certainly a little infra dig. for a European monarch in the nineteenth century, In times gone by there have been Turkish rulers who have done a good deal in this way ; and some Eussian emperors have been given to the same kind of thing, but not in very recent times; though, at least, one very recent occupant of the Russian throne seems to have been quite morbidly anxious to know what the world had to say of him. It is said that the Emperor Nicholas had all the newspapers and magazines in Europe regularly searched for allusions to himself, and he would be tickled or annoyed by the slightest allusion of the obscurest scribbler in any of them. But so far as we are aware he never condescended to personal disguise in order to learn other people's opinions' of him. If he had done as one of his imperial predecessors is said to have done in order to learn all he could about his people and their opinion of his government, and to gratify his whim for playing the part of an earthly providence, he would only have been • mercilessly ridiculed for the puerile absurdity of the pastime. This mighty

emperor, one of the Ivans, it has been recorded, once went through a whole village in the guise of a beggar, knocking at every door and imploring a night's shelter. He was repulsed at every house but the last and the poorest in the place. Here he was kindly received, and food and shelter were given to him, notwithstanding that the good woman of the house was expecting a little addition to her family circle. The pretended tramp spent the night beneath the lowly roof, and in the morning went on his way, promising to fetch a sponsor for the child. He had not been gone long when the village was startled by the announcement that the Emperor was coming down towards it, and gilded coaches and flashing armour and clattering horsemen were seen approaching in the distance. The hospitable little household came out with the rest to see the splendid cortege go by, but were terribly alarmed when the Imperial guards drew up before their own door and the Emperor himself alighted. He had come to reward exemplary virtue in lowly life by standing sponsor for the newly-born child, and by otherwise liberally rewarding the kindness he had received. From the days of Haroun Alraschid to our times history affords innumerable instances of this dramatic kind of performance, and one reason perhaps why it has very generally dropped in real life is that the surprises afforded by the disguises of kings and princes have been so freely adopted on the stage. If Queen Victoria were to adopt little artifices of this kind, she would not add to her renown for charity or beneficent interest in the welfare of her people; she would only get the discredit of resorting to rather stagey methods of posing as a benevolent sovereign. In the "Percy Anecdotes" we find an amusing story of the great Emperor Charles V, who, unlike the Emperor Nicholas, seems to have been, or who, at any rate, affected to be, too modest to listen to an account of his life and doings which some of his flatterers had prepared for his edification, nevertheless seems to have been fond of going about in disguise to hear what opinions were entertained of him. On one of these excursions, Charles met with some accident to one of his boots, and applied to a cobbler in Brussels to mend it. The cobbler refused. It was St. Crispin's Day, and he wouldn't do a job of work that day ; no, not for the Emperor. He was just off with some of his fellows. If the stranger would go and drink with him, well and good ; but as to mending his boot, not he. The mighty monarch— so the story goes — entered into the cobbler's festive mood, and went off and spent the day with him and his comrades in drinking and joviality and political discussion, and by and bye he left the company, well pleased with their guest. On the next day, to his infinite surprise, the cobbler who had refused to mend the stranger's boot was summoned to court, and, to his great horror, found that the customer he had refused to serve was no other than the great Emperor himself. Charles enjoyed his confusion and astonishment, no doubt ; but soon put him at his ease. He thanked him for his hospitality, and gave him a day to consider what could be done for him. The cobbler turned the matter over accordingly, and is said to have come back next day with the curiously modest request that the Flemish cobblers might thereafter wear for their arms a bcot with a crown over it. The Emperor at once granted this request, but urged the eccentric man to think of something else. According to the narrative the only additional favour he could desire was that henceforth in all civic processions the cobblers of Flanders might take precedence of the shoemakers, a favour ! which it need hardly be said was immediately conceded.