During the following weeks and months, Don Pedro and his crew kept very busy. They lay in wait for merchantmen, usually French, sometimes Italian; they boarded them in a professional manner, relieved them of their goods and did so without bloodshed.
Don Pedro, of course, was pleased that little violence was necessary. As time went by, his distaste for bloodshed grew even stronger. Where resistance made killing inevitable, Don Pedro went to the extraordinary length of asking the captains of the captured ships to accept a payment for the widows or children of the men who had been killed during their taking over of the ship. Nothing like this had ever happened in piracy on the high seas, and soon word got around the sea lanes that Don Pedro was a very special kind of pirate. Although this helped Don Pedro to come to terms with his peculiar profession, it did not improve his standing with his crew, many of whom had little sympathy for moral scruples of any kind.
About a year after this last landfall at Newport, when they were approaching the Caribbean area again in the hope of rich prizes, this problem came to a head. The crew asked Tom to raise the matter with their captain. Tom went to Don Pedro’s cabin and argued their case forcibly. He wanted the crew to have the freedom to defend themselves and to do what they thought necessary in the circumstances. Don Pedro listened quietly as Tom explained the incongruity of orders dealing with violence, when in fact they were in what most civilized countries considered an illegal business. But Don Pedro remained firm.
“The crew wonders who you really are, my captain,” Tom finally said. “Of course they will not hear it from me, of that you may be sure.”
“I should hope so, Tom,” Don Pedro replied, with perhaps more sternness in his voice than he had intended. Only Tom knew his real identity, and Lord John Howell did not exist for the rest of the crew.
“What shall I tell them about your identity, though?” Tom continued. This matter was on his mind as well. “After all, they can see that you are not a Spaniard. Don Pedro couldn’t possibly be your real name. I’ve got to tell them something. They keep asking. I think it would help your relationship with them if they knew a little more about you.”
Don Pedro thought it over. “Quite so,” he said. “I think you should tell them that my real name is Philip Babb, that I am an Englishman, and that I have decided to go to sea in this manner because of injustices done to me back in the mother country.”
“Philip Babb?” Tom said. “Who is Philip Babb?”
“It’s a perfectly fine name,” Don Pedro replied with a twinkle in his eye. “It happens to be the name of my butler when I was still Lord Howell.”
Tom enjoyed the joke. “Aye aye, sir,” he said. “Philip Babb it is.”
Relations between Don Pedro and his crew improved slightly after this. But the men noticed that their captain gradually became a bit harder, a bit more taciturn, less likely to crack a joke with them, than he had been before they had been to Newport. It was common knowledge aboard ship that the captain’s sweetheart had disappeared; and while no one dared to bring up the subject, they all knew and sympathized with him.
As if in fear of returning to Ireland and finding something he did not want to know, Don Pedro avoided going back to Newport for several years, preferring to do his repairs elsewhere. The Aurora plied her trade back and forth between Europe and the American coast, here and there catching a rich merchantman, taking the booty to be sold in Panama City or sometimes in one of the lush places in the Caribbean itself, such as Port Royal. Don Pedro felt that in himself a change was taking place. Somehow, the excitement of adventure at sea had gone out of his life, and he saw himself plying his trade as a pirate captain more or less mechanically, not caring very much whether he were successful, or not.
Some evenings, when he was alone in the captain’s cabin, sipping a glass of fine Spanish wine, he pondered his fate; had the curse of the Tibetan jewel taken his daughter and his beloved Merryn away from him? Was it possible that the accursed opal, though buried safely in the sands of America, could reach out and hurt him? He began to wonder whether he should not get rid of the jewel altogether, rather than merely having it buried and thus kept safely for his return. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that that was so. In the end he decided that on his next visit to the American shore he would try to reopen the hiding place and remove the stone; he would either destroy it, or take it back to where it had originally come from, though he realized that a journey to faraway Tibet was more of an adventure that he could possibly manage.
The thought of dealing with the opal became more and more an obsession with him and many a night he could not find rest because of it. If the opal was indeed responsible for his loss of Merryn, there was no gainsaying what else the accursed stone might do to him in the future. He did not relate his fears to Tom because he knew that Tom was not of that bent, and did not really believe in curses. But he knew that there was a destiny in all this, in the way the stone had reached his possession. Perhaps a kindly destiny was trying to tell him that the time had come to rid himself of the opal.
Several weeks later, the Aurora was approaching the shore of New England, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as it was called. The crew was particularly restless during those days, because they knew that very little in the way of prizes lay that far north, an area frequented mainly by whalers; the southern seas of the Caribbean, on the other hand, promised far more in the way of rich merchantmen. But it so happened that the captain had decided to sail farther north, perhaps unconsciously wanting to approach that part of America where the opal lay buried. Of course, the crew did not know this, and perhaps Don Pedro himself was not aware of it; but the course had been set. The Aurora drew rapidly nearer the American coastline, the winds being extremely favorable at that time of year. Within a matter of three or four days they would undoubtedly make landfall along the coast of Connecticut or Massachusetts.
Unbeknownst to the Aurora, another ship was approaching the same general area. This was a good-sized merchantman, called the Wolf, out of Londonderry, Ireland. The ship’s captain, William Wilson, had just become the father of a little girl who had actually been born at sea. In addition to various goods, Captain Wilson had aboard the Wolf a large number of Scottish and Irish emigrants who had put all their hopes in a new life in the New World, because of repression, religious difficulties and other reasons in the Old World. Some of these emigrants had a great deal of wealth with them; others were poor but managed to take along whatever possessions they had anyway. All this gave the Wolf the appearance of being heavily loaded, as she lay rather deeply in the water. Anyone seeing her thus might assume that she was indeed filled with precious cargo.
As the Wolf approached the coast of New England, and found herself within sight of the rolling hills of the Northern Massachusetts coast, her passengers thronged the rails, pointing out to each other the approaching American coast, the land of their future where all their hopes resided. So occupied were they with the joy of looking out towards the approaching landfall that they failed to notice another ship bearing down on them from the sea. The ship was none other than the Aurora which had noticed the Wolf, sailing at so much slower a speed owing to the fact that she was so heavily laden. The Wolf’s lines were French, and Don Pedro had decided to attack her. As yet, he did not know what the ship was or what she carried. When the Aurora cut across the Wolf’s bow, thus bringing her around, he realized that he had for the first time in his career as a pirate given the order to attack a ship from his own country.
Don Pedro found himself in a quandary when he realized this, but it was too late. Already the orders to board had been given; the merchantman offered no resistance; and the men were eager for booty. As Tom rushed by Don Pedro on his way to go with his men, Don Pedro held him back for a moment.
“Go easy Tom,” he admonished his mate. “No killings please. These are Englishmen.”
“No matter, sir,” Tom replied curtly. “They’re ours now.” Without reassuring his captain that he would follow the request, Tom brushed past him and joined the men, who were already scrambling over the Wolf’s side.
Under the circumstances, Don Pedro decided to join them, partly because it was his duty as the captain to do so, and partly because he wanted to prevent anything taking place that he would later regret.
The attack by pirates within sight of the American coast had, of course, caused tremendous panic among the passengers. Women were screaming, babies were crying, and men were walking around in a daze, clinging to their meager possessions. But to no avail. Calmly and professionally, as they had done many times before, the men from the Aurora collected whatever valuables they could from the passengers and the crew. All Don Pedro could do was to reassure them that no harm would come to them if they did not resist. The emigrants, of course, followed his request without fail, begging him only to understand that all they had for the new life was being taken from them. Much as he may have wanted to, Don Pedro could not listen to their requests to retain some of their belongings, because he knew only too well that if he did so, his own crew would rebel against him. Too many weeks had passed without a single ship coming into sight, and they were eager for booty.
While the men from the Aurora were beginning to take their spoils from the Wolf, ferrying it over to the Aurora, Don Pedro went down below into the captain’s cabin, a privilege reserved to the captain under the unwritten law of piracy. Normally it was the captain’s cabin where the most valuable possessions were kept, such as gold or jewelry. Even though Don Pedro realized that the Wolf carried emigrants and that their most valuable cargo was people, he felt that there would have to be some valuables in the captain’s cabin, and he fully intended to secure them.
An unexpected sight met his eyes when he entered the cabin. There, instead of gold and valuables, he found an attractive lady with a little girl, scarcely more than two weeks old.
The woman was in her middle or late twenties, and vaguely reminiscent of some of the women he had known back in England. Frightened by the appearance of Don Pedro, she readily told him that she and her husband Jack Wilson, the Wolf’s captain, had hoped to start a new life in Londonderry, New Hampshire, the namesake of the town they had come from in Ireland.
“So you are Mrs. Wilson,” Don Pedro said. “And this is your little girl?”
“Yes,” the woman replied, still trembling.
“What is her name?” Don Pedro asked, looking at the little girl, who wasn’t at all afraid of him. In fact, she stared at Don Pedro with searching blue eyes, as if she knew who he was!
“She’s not afraid of me, is she?” Don Pedro asked, and looked directly at Mrs. Wilson.
“So it seems, sir,” the woman replied, somewhat more relaxed now.
“You didn’t tell me her name,” Don Pedro repeated.
“Oh sir,” Mrs. Wilson replied, “she hasn’t been baptized yet.”
“I see,” Don Pedro said. “What name have you picked for her?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir,” she replied. “We haven’t given it much thought yet.”
A sudden thought struck Don Pedro. The little girl looked at him and seemed to be smiling now, as if she was enjoying the entire scene.
“I’ll tell you what,” Don Pedro said, never taking his eyes off the little girl’s face. “I’ll tell you what: if you will name her Mary, I will do something for you in return.”
“Mary?” Mrs. Wilson said. “Is that someone you know?”
“As a matter of fact,” the captain replied, “it is a name very dear to me indeed.” He didn’t want to tell the woman that he was thinking of his Merryn, and of his little daughter Mary who had died long ago.
“Of course, sir,” Mrs. Wilson said, “if it will please you.”
“Yes, it will please me very much,” Don Pedro replied. “And in return I will tell you what I will do for you and the people on this ship. I will spare everyone, no one will come to any harm, and all your possessions shall be returned forthwith.”
Mrs. Wilson could not believe her ears. She jumped up and flung her arms around Don Pedro’s broad shoulders. Somewhat embarrassed, he gently loosened her grip, sat her down again, touched the little girl lightly and then went out of the cabin up on deck.
When Don Pedro told his men what kind of bargain he had struck, he was faced with icy silence. But a look at the captain’s eyes convinced Tom at that time, at least, Don Pedro meant business. Considering that what they had taken from the emigrants wasn’t really all that much, Tom thought it wasn’t worth making a stand for it. There would be other times.
“Give these people back whatever you have taken from them,” Don Pedro ordered, and after a moment’s hesitation and much grumbling, the crew obeyed.
Within the hour all the goods taken from the emigrants had been returned to the Wolf. When this was done, the last crewmen of the Aurora left the Wolf and returned to their own ship, not without expressions of anger. But go they did, and a sigh of relief went up from the emigrants, who had watched the proceedings in utter amazement.
While this was being supervised by Tom, Don Pedro had returned to the Aurora. Now he returned once again to the Wolf, bringing with him a satchel. Quickly descending into the captain’s cabin, he presented it to Mrs. Wilson. Amazed, she opened it and found in it a bolt of precious silk.
“For Mary’s wedding gown,” Don Pedro said simply and withdrew.
Moments later the Aurora was on her way. When it was apparent they were free to pursue their original course, the Wolf also set sail for the nearby coast.
“Mary it is indeed,” the proud captain said, as he looked at his little girl. “It’s a right nice name, too,” he added, still amazed at what had transpired.
“You know that pirate captain,” Mrs. Wilson said. “There was something peculiar about him. To begin with, he wasn’t Spanish. I am sure he was an Englishman.”
“Oh, that is for sure,” Captain Wilson replied. “But you see, pirates take these names to disguise their real identity.”
“I think it is more than that,” Mrs. Wilson said. “It isn’t just that he is an ordinary Englishman. He struck me as being one of the nobility, or someone very, very important.”
“You’re just prejudiced because of what he did,” the captain said, and kissed her gently.
The following morning, the Wolf made landfall at the port of Salem, Massachusetts. The captain spent most of the day disembarking the passengers and unloading the goods the ship carried. Once the formalities had been completed, Captain Wilson, his wife and little Mary set out to spend the night in a comfortable inn in Salem. They planned to stay only a day or two and then continue onto their home at Londonderry, which lay a day’s journey to the north. The Wolf had been his ship for many years, but this was to be his last trip as her captain. On her home journey, the Wolf would be commanded by his former first mate, now Captain Johnson, while Wilson and family were to settle down in the American Londonderry, to lead the life of colonists, perhaps even as pioneers. They felt that living in America would give them more peace and certainly better opportunity than the old country; and little Mary would grow up in surroundings free from the prejudices and pressures of the other Londonderry, which they had left behind.
When they arrived at the town of Londonderry, which was then part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they found the house they had purchased beforehand waiting for them. It was everything they had hoped for, built of wood and neatly painted in white. Since Don Pedro had given them back all their belongings, including their money, the Wilsons started life in America with the proper support.
Captain Wilson knew nothing about farming, but Mrs. Wilson did, since she came from a long line of farmers. They hired a man to help them run the little farm, a native North American named Pennington. Their needs were not terribly large, the house was paid for, and the farm should support them within the year. All in all, it was a very good feeling that filled their hearts when they began to settle down in Londonderry. Many a night, Mrs. Wilson thought of Don Pedro, and her strange pact with the pirate captain.
Time went on and the Wilsons did very well in their new home in the New World. Mary, the baby who had unwittingly saved her parents and the entire ship from the pirates, grew into a beautiful young woman, slender in form at age eighteen, very much the apple of her parents’ eye. Her charm did not escape the eligible young men of the countryside either, and shortly after her eighteenth birthday, in a gown made from the silk Don Pedro had given her, she married a man by the name of Wallace. Robert Wallace was a good husband who provided well for his wife and four children she bore him.
But as often happened in those days, when medicine had not yet found the remedies, after the birth of their fourth son, Mr. Wallace became ill and shortly afterwards passed away. This left Mary Wallace a widow with four boys and a house to manage.
Somehow the years went by for Don Pedro and he wasn’t even aware of the passage of time; his mind was preoccupied with the business at hand, meaning to make a fair living from piracy on the high seas. In his heart he knew that his wife was dead, and with Merryn gone, life did not matter very much to Don Pedro anymore. He developed a morose character which even Tom and the crewmen could not fail to notice. More and more, he kept to himself and spent long hours in the captain’s cabin; when they were on land, he isolated himself from the others, shunning the company of women; he refused to discuss his private life, even with Tom. All this grief over the disappearance of his beloved one seemed to age Don Pedro rather suddenly. Nothing Tom could say in the way of cheer or a bright word for the future would help; Don Pedro answered merely that his life had been rendered useless by fate and that he did not know how long he could carry on as he did. Such pronouncements began to worry Tom, who was frankly concerned more with his own future than that of the Aurora and Don Pedro’s moods. He began to wonder what would happen if the captain became unable to fulfil his duties and more and more Tom’s mind began to drift in the direction of perhaps taking over the enterprise at an opportune moment.
Don Pedro had abandoned his intention of digging up the opal after the abortive capture of the Wolf. Fate, he felt, had loaded the dice against him. In his despair, he believed that digging up the cursed stone would only increase his ill-fortune. The nearer he came to the opal, the worse his life would become.
Many years after their visit to Newport, Don Pedro decided that the time had come for him to think of his own future and perhaps retire from the sea. He had studiously avoided making a landfall again on Long Island, where the seaman’s chest had been buried in the sand. That was for an even more remote future to worry about. Meanwhile, Don Pedro had kept up a loose correspondence with the Wilsons in New Hampshire and learned from them what had become of Mary and the tragedy that had befallen her with the death of her husband. On the next landfall in the New World, Don Pedro decided to build himself a house not far from where the Wilsons still lived. He excused himself from Tom and the crew for a week, explaining that he needed the fresh air of New England to bring his ailing mind into better shape.
Meanwhile Tom and the crew were having a good time on land, celebrating and spending some of their recent booty. No one interfered with them, for in those days piracy was a way of life which everyone knew existed, and few did anything about.
In time, Don Pedro acquired a piece of land, near what is now the town of Henniker in New Hampshire. Using the name of Philip Babb, he had no difficulty getting a land grant from the local officials. He did not use his real name, let alone his title, for the British government’s memory was a long one, and news of his arrival in the colonies might eventually filter back to the authorities in London. Within a matter of days he was the master of six thousand acres of fertile land and forest in and around the little town of Henniker, which was then only a village. The place was some distance from the sea, which was exactly what Don Pedro wanted. Once he had turned his back on the sea, he wanted to be safely ensconced inland to continue what was left of his life. Here, he told himself, he would build his final home.
When he returned to the Aurora, he made his plans known to the men. He told them that after his retirement he would transfer the captaincy of the Aurora to Tom. All he wanted for himself, Don Pedro explained, was their help in building himself a house. Once that was done, he would turn his share of the Aurora and her future profits over to Tom and the crew. This, of course, pleased them and they were eager to help Don Pedro build his dream house, the sooner to inherit the Aurora and all that she stood for.
Within a matter of days nearly all the ship’s crew, including her carpenters, had gone to the piece of land acquired by Don Pedro and had started building his stately mansion. They soon realized that it could not be done as quickly as they had hoped and that perhaps they would have to spend a considerable amount of time on land in order to complete the job. But so eager were the men that they did not mind this interruption of their normal activities away from sea. They spent the next three months in Henniker, building Don Pedro his house.
It was a strange sight, indeed, seeing the burly seamen in their colorful outfits working on land, raising the house Don Pedro was to call his home. The village people wondered who these strange men were, but the menacing looks of the workers suggested to the villagers that no one should ask too many questions. Besides, Don Pedro had been very generous with them and his presence amongst them promised to be beneficial.
As soon as the house was finished, Tom and the crew returned to the Aurora, while Don Pedro furnished his home as lavishly as was possible in eighteenth century New England.
Soon after he had settled in, he received a letter from Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. They wrote to say that their daughter, Mary Wallace, had fallen on hard times since her husband’s death. They were too proud to ask for help, but Don Pedro had no intention of allowing Mary—the namesake of his lost wife and daughter—to live in want. He went at once to Mary’s modest home and suggested that she and her children should come and live with him. In this way, Mary Wallace became Don Pedro’s permanent housekeeper.
To be sure, she was never more than that. There was no romance between them, for Don Pedro’s one and only love had disappeared forever.
Don Pedro settled into a quiet domestic life in his new house, walking the countryside, fishing here and there in the little brooks surrounding it, and reading a great deal from the books he had managed to bring with him. Now and then he would engage Mary Wallace in conversations about life and philosophy, but on the whole he kept to himself. The house was then, as it is now, isolated, and few callers found their way to it. Occasionally a friend of Mary Wallace’s would drop by or the Wilsons would come for a visit, but Don Pedro had not made any close friends in the village and continued to keep to himself as much as possible.
Living the quiet life now, Don Pedro needed little money, and he had brought with him enough funds to ensure that he would have no need ever to look for money again. As for the buried treasure, Don Pedro had become firmly convinced that there really was a curse attached to the opal, and even the thought of removing it filled him with fear.
He wished he had put it elsewhere, for the chest also contained much treasure, some of it belonged to Tom Masterson and the boys from the ship, who might not feel the same way about letting things rest.
At times, he wondered whether in fact the treasure was still in place. Perhaps Tom had come back for it secretly? Tom and the other sailors had been so convinced the jewel was bringing them bad luck that it seemed unlikely that greed would overcome their superstition, but the fortune that lay buried would be a great temptation.
It seemed as if Don Pedro would live out the rest of his natural life gracefully in his own house in the hills of New Hampshire, reminiscing about his days at sea and perhaps of the glorious days in England, and undoubtedly still thinking about his beloved Merryn. Mary Wallace spent much of her free time painting and decorating the house.
One day, about five years after Mary had moved into the house with Don Pedro, the peaceful atmosphere was rudely disturbed. It was a cool evening and the sun was just about to set. Don Pedro was out in the large garden to the rear of the house, sitting quietly underneath a tree. Mary was in the house, when she heard a commotion followed by a great shout of pain. She rushed out into the garden to find Don Pedro beneath a tree with a short, curved sword in his chest, dying quickly. Mary recognized it as a seaman’s cutlass, and attempted to pull it out of the wound; but it was too late. A pale, shaken Don Pedro waved her away, perhaps not wanting to be saved. He asked that she bury him underneath the hearth stone of the house, to bless his last resting place. He told her that she and her descendants would own the house forever. He assured her that he had included the bequest in his will and made arrangements at the local registry office so that she would have no difficulty in obtaining her inheritance. Once again he blessed her and thanked her for the service she had rendered him. With one last sigh and Merryn’s name on his lips, Don Pedro passed into the great beyond.
For several days Mary Wallace was too shaken to do anything about the murder. When she made enquiries no one would help. The Wilsons, very aged and frail themselves, could only suggest that perhaps one of the men from the Aurora, dissatisfied with the arrangements Don Pedro had made with them, might have come and taken revenge on his former captain. But that was conjecture. No one knew for sure who had killed Don Pedro in his declining years.
Mary inherited the house without difficulty and lived in it until her death in 1814. Her descendants obtained it after her. After that, the house changed hands many times. But it still stands, proud and very beautiful, in an isolated area of Henniker, New Hampshire, known to one and all as the “Ocean-Born Mary House.”