The Notorious Captain Hayes by Joan Druett

Author:Joan Druett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-06-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Pioneer

The story of Bully Hayes’ remarkable escape was broken by the Daily Southern Cross on 28 September, written by an editor who found the news amusing. ‘Captain Hayes is a name which has become notorious throughout the colonies,’ he began, going on to meditate, ‘His exploits have been so many and various that no one who is at all acquainted with his history would be surprised at hearing of his again distinguishing himself, were it not for the fact that he had been reported dead. The captain, however, with that versatility for which he is so remarkable, is no sooner reported dead than he reappears in another quarter.’

Constant reincarnation was not Captain Hayes’ only skill, according to the yarns — ‘He would be a very bold man who would vouch for the smallest particle of the many extraordinary stories that we are told of Bully Hayes.’ The latest was that ‘he kidnapped a number of natives from one of the islands, and took them in a schooner to Fiji, where he expected he would be able to dispose of his cargo at a good figure without being subjected to the indignity of having to answer awkward questions. The natives, however, contrived to forward a complaint to the American Consul, who seized the vessel, admitting Captain Hayes to parole pending inquiry.

‘But,’ the story ran on, ‘a new complication now arose. A firm with whom Hayes in bygone times had contracted some liability, took the opportunity to step in and demand payment of their little bill. To appease these insatiable creditors, Hayes was compelled to hand over his chronometers as security. Days passed on, and at length an American barque anchored off the place. Thereupon went he to the creditors, and in that genial off-hand manner for which he is so distinguished, requested that he might be allowed to take the chronometers on board the barque in order to regulate, and, if possible, sell them. In a moment of weakness the too confiding creditors consented.’

The ‘American barque’ spread her sails the moment Hayes was fairly on board, ‘and our informant states that they had been ever since anxiously looking for the return of Hayes or the chronometers’. Instead, with sublime cheek, the master steered for a plantation owned by the ‘lamenting’ creditors, where Hayes, in the guise of a representative of the firm, took £2000 worth of cotton on board, and then sailed off again. ‘The firm then chartered a schooner, and manned her, with the object of going in chase of the captain; but, after a cruise of three weeks, gave up the search.’ Chasing another lead, they steered for an island where they had a second plantation, expecting Hayes to call there, again with no result.

But, as the editor had commented, it was hard to distinguish fiction from fact in the stories told of Bully Hayes. A man who told a different tale of the famous escape was George Herbert, the thirteenth Earl of Pembroke, who at the age of twenty cruised the South Pacific in the Albatross, with his physician for company.

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