Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/Devils and Doubloons
DEVILS AND DOUBLOONS
DEVILS and doubloons have been perplexingly associated for more than two centuries among the West Indies and neighboring coasts. Often the devils guarded the doubloons out of fondness for the pirates who had hidden them, and sometimes the pirates were pretty good imitations of devils themselves. Wherever there is wealth sin is not far. The love of money is a root of several evils. How many shaggy creatures have been marooned on the sand keys from the Carolinas southward, how many have been killed there in wrangles over the division of treasure, and how much treasure was unearthed during the absence of its winners in distant ports, can never be guessed, but the memory of these crimes and burials haunts thousands of miles of shore. Very likely it was the discovery of so strange a race as the Indians that forced the first explorers into a belief that the New World was filled with devils, yet even remote and lonely places, without mortal inhabitants, were so peopled. The Bermudas, for example, were regarded as inaccessible, darkened by terrors, and were known as the Devils' Islands. They be-longed to Ferdinand Camelo, a Portuguese, who merely put his initials on a cliff, together with a cross, the one to keep the English off, the other to frighten away the imps. He may have succeeded with the imps, but an English ship went ashore on one of Camelo's islands, and—well, pretty soon the English owned them all.
To our own day strange things inhabit the tropical belt of the Western world. Jamaica has its "duppies" and "rolling calves," that prank around in the night, pestering poor negroes. Porto Rico was one of the islands on which the prophecy was given, before the coming of Columbus, of "ruin and desolation by the arrival of strangers, completely clad, and armed with the lightning of heaven." Days were set for solemn dances and lamentations, in a hope of deferring the dreadful time, and these ceremonies lasted into the years of white ownership, for other devils than the white ones had also been discovered. Mugeres Island, off British Honduras, has had its devils in the flesh and out of it, for it has a typical buried-treasure story: Pirates went ashore there in the last century with the sack of a coast town, including coin, communion cups, and bishop's jewels, which they had sealed in large lead boxes. These chests were lowered into a pit at the north end of the island, sixty steps from water, and covered with tarpaulin. The captain asked for volunteers to guard them, and two negroes of the crew stepped forward, thinking to live there pleasantly, without work, and perchance to rob the robbers as soon as the ship was out of sight. Mistaken fellows! They did not know the traditions of their trade. The captain pulled out his pistols and shot them dead. Their bodies were thrown upon the tar-paulin, then covered with sand, the captain saying that they would care for the treasure better dead than alive, for their ghosts would drive away intruders, and, beside, any one finding bones would dig no farther. This treasure can be taken up only by the one for whom fate intends it. The watchful, jealous people of the island, who still hope to find it themselves, say they will kill any other. Do you wish to try your luck?