“I shall not consume time by describing the toilsome ascent of the Chagres river in small boats, the historic march overland, the final victorious battle, and the capture and sack of the rich Spanish city, for all this is embalmed in the annals of heroic achievement in which the world records its worship of success.
“We left Panama February 24th, 1671 with one hundred and seventy-five beasts of burden, carrying the profits of the enterprise, consisting of gold, silver, and valuable merchandise. We had six hundred prisoners to be held for ransom, and this brought forth much wealth that had been secreted when the city was taken. Notwithstanding the necessary misery and lamentations of these hostages, it was a merry throng of adventurers that wound in triumph through the forest pathways back to the headwaters of the Chagres.
“The Captain left the prisoners and a rebellious portion of his followers at the mouth of the river and we sailed to Jamaica, where he settled down to the life of a quiet gentleman. As he was wealthy he commanded respect and nobody questioned his record. Upon his transition into the immaterial state a few years afterward we had the good fortune to have him join our party, and we found him in every way delightful.
“Our ghostly little company was later augmented by the addition of Captain Teach, and no more blood-thirsty sea rover ever scuttled a ship, cut a throat, or blew open a treasure safe. He was of the roaring, ranting type that gives the tinge of the melodramatic to piratical annals. He had a black beard of inordinate length that reached from up around his eyes to his waist, and he used to twist it into tails with bits of ribbon and fix it up around his ears.
“We were all with him on board his big ship, the ‘Great Allen’ mounting forty guns, the name of which he afterwards changed to the ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge.’ He was a hard drinker and we agreed that we had never seen a more turbulent and desperate character. For years he terrorized the sea from the Carolinas to Trinidad.
“One night we witnessed the capture of a Yankee vessel bound from New York to Jamaica, under command of a Captain Taylor. The pirates streamed over the larboard quarter of the fated ship, but they met with unexpected resistance. The attackers were nearly all disembodied when suddenly, with blood curdling shrieks, Teach bounded over the side on to the deck into the midst of the pirates, and Taylor’s shade told us afterwards that he had never seen a more horrible object. Lighted tapers hung from the rim of his broad black hat that revealed the whites of the gleaming eyes, the gnashing teeth, frightful red mouth, and flying masses of black whiskers. He waved a huge cutlass and a brace of pistols hung on his breast. With demonic howls and yells this fiendish figure plunged among the Yankees. Encouraged by this sudden apparition the pirates rallied and the ship was soon theirs. The dead were heaved overboard. From them we soon learned all of the particulars of the fight, and they were most dramatic. Teach used to burn pots of brimstone in his cabin to make his crew think he was the devil, and many of them believed it. He kept a big green parrot in a cage on the deck of his ship. In the midst of the smoke and din of battle the raucous voice of the ill-omened bird would be heard above the roar of the conflict, yelling, ‘Go it!--Go it!--Pieces-of-Eight!--Pieces-of-Eight!’