[The following takes place following the capture of the formerly Spanish-controlled, New World city of Gibraltar (not to be confused with the island in the Mediterranean), by Captain Henry Morgan and his crew.]
The only person left in town was a “poor man born a fool,” a mentally handicapped Spaniard. He was questioned closely by the pirates, but to everything he answered, “I know nothing, I know nothing.” The buccaneers put him to the rack and demanded to know where the residents had fled with their valuables. Finally the man broke and cried out, “Do not torture me anymore, but come with me and I will show you my goods and my riches!”
Esquemeling reports that the pirates believed that the man was a rich citizen who was faking idiocy so he’d be left alone, though it seems like a daft idea. The pirates left no one alone who might have a morsel of information. What happens next is one of the few passages in the many pirate narratives that could be described as poignant:
Hereupon they went with him; and he conducted them to a poor and miserable cottage, wherein he had a few earthen dishes, and other things of little or no value; and amongst these, three pieces of eight [gold pieces] which he’d concealed with some other trumpery underground. After this, they asked him his name; and he readily made answer: My name is Don Sebastian Sanchez, and I am brother to the governor of Maracaibo. This foolish answer, it must be conceived, these men, though never so inhuman, took for a certain truth. For no sooner had they heard it, but they put him again upon the rack, lifting him up on high with cords, and tying huge weights to his face and neck…
It got worse. The pirates took burning palm leaves and scorched the man’s face with them. He lasted only thirty minutes before dying; the pirates cut the cords and dragged him out to the forest and left him there, unburied.
Source:
Talty, Stephan. “An Amateur English Theatrical.” Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign. New York: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2007. 154. Print.
Further Reading:
No comments, yet...