Yes, everyone was present. Silas West, who seemed relieved to give over the duties of quartermaster to someone else; young Johnnie, whose enthusiasm for the trade—and reverence for his old captain—grew stronger by the day; Phil Stewart, Nat Paige, and a handful of others who, thanks to Black Sam, stood here today to witness the happiest event of his life.
Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, Paul turned. Sam, with Maria beside him, had come up on deck. Paul’s ruddy features broke into a smile as he gazed at his best friend, who now stood, as he had for much of the voyage south, at the rail with his arm locked possessively around Maria Hallett’s trim little waist. There was no separating those two. Paul shook his head. It had been close, too close. Thank God he’d known where to find Teach, thank God things had worked out the way they had. And the harassed coastline would thank God too, for now there’d be one less pirate to contend with.
Sam, true to his promise to Maria, was finally giving it up.
And the men in the Boston gaol? Paul didn’t want to think about them just yet, for they were his problem now—his and Teach’s. But they had, after all, been his men too.
His smile grew sad. Hard to believe, wasn’t it? Sam, who’d been such an enthusiastic supporter of the Brethren’s life; Sam, who’d embraced the calling with such reckless fervor; Sam, giving it all up for the love of a woman. But it was just as well, wasn’t it? Oh, he’d miss his friend, but there were other ventures on which he could take the rollicking crew of Mary Anne, other seas to sail. The North American coast; the Caribbean; hell, there was even Madagascar, the East Indies…why, the possibilities that awaited a good pirate were endless.
From behind him came a gurgle and the splash of liquid hitting a cup as the rum began to flow. Still holding the Bible, Paul gazed at the expectant faces around him and shrugged.
They were in no hurry.
Forward in the bow, Maria threw back her head, laughed, and let the balmy tropical breeze thread its fingers through her hair. Salt spray cooled her bare feet, kissed her ankles, dampened her cheeks. Just off to starboard a group of islands were approaching, emerald-green caps on a sea of turquoise. Drawing the briny fragrance deeply into her lungs, she closed her eyes and let the sunlight dance against her lids with joyous abandon.
“Oh, Sam! You were right! ’Tis so beautiful here—like paradise!” Her eyes shone with joy and delight. “The water is so clear and blue! I can see our shadow on the sea floor, and it must be a hundred feet down! And those birds! Why, there’s another one!” She grasped his arm, pointing to a great, sack-billed creature winging its way over Mary Anne’s masthead. “Look at its throat!”
“’Tis a pelican, lass.” Smiling at her childish exuberance, he drew her close, loving the feel of her body against his. And then he chuckled to himself as his favorite memory of her flashed through his mind; Maria, charging through the crowd to his rescue. Why, she’d been a veritable pirate princess that day.
He sighed, and shook his head. “Such a pity,” he said, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with little laugh lines.
“What?” she asked, tracing his jaw with a soft, teasing finger.
“Oh, I was just thinking. You missed your calling, I believe.” She looked at him, confused, until he smiled once more and went on. “If only ye could’ve seen yourself that day, Maria. You proved yourself to be a true pirate, and just as I’m finally striking my colors! That’s the pity, don’t ye think? We would’ve made a fine team.”
“We still make a fine team,” she assured him. Her eyes grew dreamy and distant. “Oh, what next, Sam? Now that you’re starting a new life?”
“What next?” he mused, gazing fondly down at her exquisite face with its eyes he could gladly drown in. Thank God he’d finally let Paul convince him that it was his turn to try and get the men out of the Boston gaol; with Teach in consort, Sam had no qualms about relinquishing the responsibility to his two capable friends. He looked down at Maria, his dark eyes soft with love. “Why, first, I’m going to marry you. Here. Today. With a pirate captain to perform the ceremony, and a ship full of thieving rascals as our honored guests.”
“And then what, my Captain?” She was smiling up at him, now, her golden hair floating around her face, her eyes sparkling like sunlight on the morning sea.
“Then, we’ll put in at a safe port, for good. What do you think of Barbados? Or, how about Antigua?” But she knew nothing of those Caribbean islands; any of them would suit her just fine. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. I can grow sugarcane, and trade with my contacts”—he flashed a quick grin toward Paul, still standing patiently aft near the helm—“on any of them.”
Her eyes were dancing.
“And you,” he said, tipping her chin up so that he could gaze down into her sweet, upturned face, “will be at my side.” He took her hand in his own, and lifted it to his lips. “Long ago, Maria, I promised to make you a princess of a West Indies isle. Now, I intend to make good on that promise.”
“A princess!” She threw her arms around his neck, thinking that fairy tales did, after all, come true.
“Aye, a princess.”
“And then what, Sam?”
“And then,” he said huskily, his head bending to hers in agonizing slowness, “I plan on spending my time plundering my greatest prize, my real treasure.” His lips were sweet and gentle as they found hers, and then his arms were around her, crushing her to his chest, holding her against his big, powerful body.
They kissed long and hard, heedless of the elbow-jostling and whistles that rose from those gathered aft.
At last, Sam reluctantly pulled away. Everyone was waiting, but for a long moment he held her gaze with his own, loving her with every fiber of his being. That was the way it was, and that was the way it would always be. No one could ever take that away from them. Sighing, he trailed a finger through a shining lock of her hair.
“And when do you plan to begin…plundering this treasure, my free prince?”
He smiled then, and his dark gaze smoldered with heat, that old familiar fire. Lazily, he looked down at her, admiring her striking eyes, her seashell-pink mouth, the molten gold of her hair that was richer than any pirate’s treasure could ever be. And he knew he couldn’t wait any longer.
“Now,” he whispered hoarsely. “But first, we must settle a certain thing between us.”
“And what is that, Captain?”
“We have a wedding to attend.” And taking her hand he led her aft, to where the captain and crew of the Mary Anne waited.
Author’s Note
The wind never stops blowing at the lonely cliffs of Cape Cod’s great outer beach. Sometimes it subsides a little and the thunder of booming surf becomes deafening; at other times it howls so fiercely that one is hard-pressed to hear the roar of the ocean beneath it. But if you listen closely, the wind has a story to tell, things to say and memories to share.
The legend of Maria Hallett and the Black Bellamy is as intrinsic to Cape Cod as sand, salt grass, and wildflowers, and when the storms roar in off the ocean and the nights grow black, legend persists…of a pirate ghost who still wanders that midnight stretch of the lonely outer beach, waiting for the skeletal hands of his dead crewmen to toss him an old silver coin or two from the waves…and “Goodie” Hallett, who hung lanterns on the flukes of her pet whale and lured innocent seamen to their deaths on dark, foggy nights for many years following the Whydah disaster.
I have drawn Sam Bellamy using contemporary newspaper accounts, surviving depositions from members of his crew, native folklore, a hefty dose of fictional license, and my own findings during my work as a research associate for Barry Clifford and Ken Kinkor back in the late 1980s. We will probably never know whether or not he survived the wreck of the ship that was carrying him back to his young lover that cold, stormy night of April 26, 1717. Of the 144 men purported to be aboard the Whydah, only two are known to have made it through the violent surf and to the safety of the beach: Thomas Davis, the ship�
�s carpenter, and John Julian, the young Indian that Sam hired to help pilot his flagship through the dangerous shoal waters surrounding Cape Cod. A total of 102 bodies were recovered from the surf and buried by Captain Cyprian Southack during the weeks following the disaster; what became of the rest of the crew is a secret that the sea has kept to herself for nearly three centuries.
The fate of other players in the Whydah story is well documented and leaves little for speculation. Paul Williams later teamed up with the French pirate Louis Lebous and spent the summer of 1717 harassing the New England coast before finally setting sail for Madagascar and distant seas, where he was quite successful in his trade. Blackbeard was killed off the coast of North Carolina in 1718 during a bloody battle with a young naval lieutenant. Julian was thought to have died in jail, but 1732 and 1733 issues of The Boston News-Letter tend to make one reexamine that theory. In them can be found the account of an Indian by the same name who stabbed a man with a jackknife and was later tried and executed for murder.
The fate of the prize crew that Sam Bellamy put aboard the leaky wine ship is most certain, thanks to contemporary accounts and depositions made by the pirates themselves. Along with the hapless Thomas Davis, these men spent the long summer of 1717 incarcerated in the Boston gaol, where they no doubt did entertain hope of rescue by one of the Brethren while they endured the well-meaning but tedious ministrations of none other than the famous Cotton Mather himself. But despite Mather’s attempts to save their souls—and some light talk on Blackbeard’s part about saving their lives—the pirates went on trial in October of 1717, facing charges of “Piracy, Robbery and Felony committed on the high seas.” The court of admiralty, presided over by Governor Samuel Shute, judged two of them, Thomas Davis and Thomas South, to be “forced men” and acquitted them. The others—Thomas Baker, Peter Cornelius Hoof, Simon Van Vorst, John Brown, Hendrick Quintor, and John Shuan—were all found guilty of the crimes with which they were charged and sentenced to “hang by the neck until dead.”
On November 15, 1717, the six pirates of the Whydah, escorted by a solemn Cotton Mather, were led through the streets of Boston and down to the cold, gray harbor, where they were rowed out to the gallows that awaited them on Charlestown Ferry. There, within “flux and reflux” of the sea, their tormented souls finally joined those of their lost shipmates.
Today, Whydah is very much alive on Cape Cod, thanks to the dedicated work of Barry Clifford, who, in 1984, discovered her remains in just thirty feet of water a quarter-mile off Wellfleet’s Marconi Beach, where she had slept undisturbed for 267 years. At the date of this writing, Whydah remains the only authenticated pirate ship ever found. With a museum to display them in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Barry Clifford continues to recover, preserve, and study thousands of artifacts: pistols, swords, and other weaponry; jewelry, eating utensils, musket balls, and navigational instruments; rapier hilts, their blades long since rusted into the centuries; cannon, coming up from the murky depths still loaded; clothing, bones, parts of the fabled ship herself; and yes, that fabulous hoard of pirate’s treasure, gold bars and gold doubloons, Spanish reales and pieces of eight, all part of the princess’s ransom stored between the ship’s decks when she went down within sight of the great sand cliffs that awful, stormy night.
After nearly three centuries, Whydah is finally at rest.
Yet the tales still persist, of ghosts who walk the outer beach after dark when the fog rolls in over the waves and the skies grow black with storm. One night three years ago, I took my courage in tow and drove out there during a spring thunderstorm to see if there was any truth to the old legends.
People often ask me—did I see anything?
To which I merely give a little smile.
I’ll never tell.
—Danelle Harmon
Cape Cod, Massachusetts,
February 1991
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About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Danelle Harmon has written seventeen critically acclaimed and award-winning books, with many being published all over the world and translated into numerous languages. She and her family make their home in New England with numerous animals including five dogs, an Egyptian Arabian horse, and a flock of pet chickens. Danelle enjoys reading, spending time with family, friends and her pets, and sailing her 19th century reproduction Melonseed skiff, Kestrel II. She welcomes email from her readers and can be reached at [email protected] or through any of the means listed below:
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Pirate In My Arms Page 39