The Jewel of Ynys Galon ... With 12 illustrations by Lancelot Speed

Front matter

PRINTED FROM AMERICAN PLATES BV SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE, LONDON BY OWEN RHOSCOMYL WITH 12 ILLUSTRATIONS BY LANCELOT SPEED LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6"> STREET l89S All rights reserved To Every boy who ever stored up stale crusts and hoarded his pocket-money with a view to presently annexing the family carving-knife and stealing forth to become a bloodthirsty pirate: the terror of the seas — To Every man who in the toil and struggle for subsistence looks back with fond regret to the days when he still believed in buried treasure and dreamed of one day discovering some hoard whereby to become rich BEYOND IMAGINATION — And finally to Every one whose blood rouses at a tale of tall fights and reckless adventure- RS 33odk is {Mast Jacspfcttullg OcSicatcu BY THE AUTHOR

Preface

. To the ordinary English-reading public it may appear somewhat strange to find pirates located in Wales. That, however, must be laid to the account of the writers of fiction, and not to that of the chroniclers of fact. A merely casual eye, running over the pedigrees of the families of note bordering the Welsh coasts, will scarcely fail to find, in the majority of cases, one or more in stances of fine, imprisonment, or outlawry suffered for the crime of piracy upon the high seas. Some of these punishments were inflicted to satisfy the clamours of foreign ambassadors at the English Court, notably in early Stuart days, while at a comparatively late date special measures were taken to put down the Welsh pirates and to clear out their nests in the chief ports, amongst which Cardiff is especially mentioned. Further, I have but to mention that very pink and pattern of what may be called the aristocracy of the buccaneers,

PREFACE.

. VIII Sir Henry Morgan of fierce memory to wit, to show with what strong advantages I stand begirt in submitting this book to the public. Having thus, to a certain extent, cleared the ground, I leave the reader to make a closer ac quaintance with such specimens of the race as are hereinafter presented. CONTENTS CHAPTER PACE

Introduction

: A WISE SAW AND A MODERN INSTANCE I I. IN WHICH A GREAT PERSONAGE COMES HOME 6 II. CONCERNING WILL BARRY AND THE AFFRAY AT GORPHWYSFA 20 III. TELLING OF THE APPEARANCE OF ' MISTER MORGAN1 33 IV. MY FOSTER-BROTHER EXPLAINS . . . 4S V. CONCERNING THE JEWEL OF YNYS GALON 59 VI. OF THE LOSS OF THE JEWEL AND WHAT BEFELL THEREAFTER .... 69 VII. 'A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY' . . • • 79 VIII. IN WHICH OLD MORRIS SHOWS HIS SKILL 93 IX TOUCHING THE DRAWING UP OF PLANS NOT EXECUTED I07 IN WHICH I FIND A PIRATE OF MY OWN 120 X XI. CONCERNING MY PIRATE 134 XII. TELLING HOW POLWITHY KEPT FAITH . 149 a CONTENTS. X TAGE CHAPTER ENDING WITH SOME PREPARATIONS FOR DEFENCE 164 XIII. l8l XIV. DETAILING THE BATTLE OF PWLLWEN XV. IN WHICH I COME TO NO SMALL HONOUR I96 XVI. IN WHICH I MAKE AN EXPEDITION AFTER TREASURE 215 XVII.

OF MY ADVENTURES IN THE JAWS 230 XVIII. IN WHICH MY DEDUCTIONS ARE FOUND CORRECT 244 XIX. ' DEW ! ' 2 259 XX. THE CEREMONY IN THE HOUSE OF NUADA 276 RECOUNTING AN ENEMY'S ENTERTAINMENT XXI. 292 XXII. TELLING OF THE BLOODY COMBAT OF TV MAWR 304 XXIII. CONCERNING THE CHALLENGE AND ITS RESULTS ILLUSTRATIONS IVOR IS EXPELLED lo face p. 1 1 THE REIVING OF THE JEWEL. . . „ 6 1 THE LAST OF ' NUADA'S FLESHHOOK' . . 66 MEGAN STEALS THE JEWEL FROM THE KING'S NECK n 72 POLWITHY CUTS THE ROPE . . . . 160 THE BATTLE OF PWLLWEN (88 URIEN RHEGED SLEW BELRE . . . . ,, 226 IVOR ATTEMPTS THE PASSAGE INTO THE JAWS ,,238 IVOR CLIMBS THE CLEFT IN THE CLIFF . . „ 247 'CATCH THAT !' SAID DEW, TOSSING A PISTOL TO ME „ 269 DEW DOOMS HORAN ,,298 WHO SHALL BE LORD OF YNYS GALON? WHO IS THE CHIEF OF THE SONS OF MORGAN?! " J"/ GALON.

INTRODUCTION.

. A WISE SAW AND A MODERN INSTANCE. The use of old saws is reckoned by some to betray a poverty of intellect in the user. I do not here intend to enter into any argument upon the point, though I fancy I could bring some very nice details to bear upon it. Behold, however, the beauty of a formula so complete as to prompt its application, century in, century out, to the wisdom of successive govern ments as they move clickety-clacking down the ages, after the usual manner of machines with screws loose. The wise saw in point touches the matter of "locking the stable door after the steed is stolen" and the modern instance will explain the birth of this book. For the tale herein told would have been vastly more worthy of the reader's attention had the Welsh Manu scripts Commission been appointed as many years ago as it can reckon days.' b I "LS^ You see, my wrath is excusable.

A certain young heir succeeded to the estate of an elderly cousin, decided that the hall was not good enough to entertain and lodge his greatness. He must have a sale of the furniture and contents, and therefore the auctioneer was summoned at once to catalogue the whole. Mouldering away in a damp and musty garret a pile of old parchments was discovered ; and, being asked as to what should be done with these, the heir, or the solicitor, or the auctioneer, or somebody, gave the order to carry them out and burn them, as not being worth selling. No ! nobody lost a leg or dropped down dead, and yet this vandal order was carried out. The parchments gave a lot of trouble, however, and smouldered on for days, and when I attended the sale with an eye to certain specimens of carved oak I happened to see the pile and, out of curi osity, to pick up a bulky parcel bound roughly into volume form.

It was lying open a few feet away from the outer edge of the pyre and sparks had lodged between many of the leaves, scorching or eating through them till pretty nearly half its pages were undecipherable. It proved to consist of two sepa rate manuscripts, one, the earliest, written in Welsh and dated in the first quarter of the last century : the other, a rendering of the first into English, done half a century or so later. " Oh yes, I could take the old rubbish : I might have had all the rest if I had come before and offered to cart it away," said somebody — whom I felt a fierce desire to slaughter — and accordingly I am able to bring to the notice of the public a story which interested me most marvellously. And here I wish to explain the difficulty I had in preparing it for publication. The first manu script appeared to have been written by Ivor Meyric immediately after the occurrence of the adventures related therein and, most probably, in the short interval between the last scene on the cromlech and his departure for London upon receiving the commission which his many excel lencies had moved the lord-lieutenant to procure for him.

The second, and English version, was written, as its own pages testify, when Sir Ivor Meyric, Bart., retired Colonel of Horse, had fallen into old age and come to looking at things from another point of view. Accordingly I found the latter to be a very free rendering indeed of the former, altogether toned down and, in a manner, bowdlerised ! as we have since learnt to say. In the first all the old Pagan rites and bloody super stitions stalk unchecked across the pages, dabbling with gory fingers their freest passages. In the second an attempt is made to ignore them, saving where absolutely necessary to an understanding of the narrative, and even then to mutilate them so as to make it difficult reading to one unacquainted with the previous account. Add to this that whole pages of each were burnt out and that, while sometimes the one MS. could supply the missing chapters of the other, yet there were places where both were irretrievably damaged and I was forced to painfully recognise a word or para graph here and there and then apply my wits to restoring the whole in line with the spirit of the remainder.

This I succeeded in doing in what, I flattered myself, was a very passable manner ; but here again I was confronted by the difference in spirit of the two versions. Not to be baulked, however, I resolved to reconstruct the tale en tirely, making a suitable translation of the Welsh MS. : giving as many passages as possible from the English one, and piecing out the whole with my own ideas of the missing parts. Thus the reader has before him a tale consisting of the handiwork of three different people. First the young half-pagan schoolboy, Ivor ap Griffith ap Howel ; second Colonel Sir Ivor Meyric, Bart., of Dolgoch, and lastly of your very humble ser vant, the writer of this introduction. Under these circumstances the public will read ily understand why this book appears without any author's name upon the title-page and, in respect of whatever appreciation it may win, will allow me to bow an acknowledgment in the name of each and every one of the three above indicated.

Chapter I. In Which

A GREAT PERSONAGE COMES HOME. In the last fifty years or so, so many tales have grown up, each one differing from another, about the finding of the treasure on Ynys Galon, that at last I think it time to set forth the real facts of the case that the world may be no longer misled. I am the readier to follow this course for that I am now come nigh to the threescore years and ten of the royal Psalmist, and have a wish to put matters straight on this point before it be too late. The story here following then can be relied on and though, perhaps, it may lack somewhat of the marvellous and rich colouring of the corrupted versions, yet, in sober truth, I thought at the time of its happening — and do still think — that it is both marvellous and rich enough in tint to satisfy any plain, honest man.

Such as find it otherwise I must refer, if they be Welshmen, to the old tales of the Mabinogion, or, if they be English, then to the wonderful stories with which the poor scribbiers do edify their patrons in London town ; the while they themselves starve upon the proceeds thereof — which last I think must ofttimes stimu late their imaginations by the bitterness of the contrast betwixt what they do create and their own circumstances. Further, touching this tale of mine, I have a wish to combat a most absurd contention, and one very strongly held by the commoner sort in these parts, namely, that Henry Morgan, the ter ror and scourge of the Spanish Main that we hear so much of, is none other than the Meyric Ddu ap Morgan mentioned in these pages, so famous in his day throughout Spanish America as " Dew the Buccaneer."

But this contention will be rele gated to its proper limbo by the intelligent reader ere he finishes this unvarnished history, and I shall be heartily thanked for saving him from giving cre dence to so idle a tale as the one aforesaid. So much by way of foreword, and now to begin. At that time I was a stout lad of seventeen or thereabouts, hearty and well grown, and, as I think, come pretty well to my full strength. I have no doubt that I was as conceited a young blade as ever imagined himself a man before the clown had had time to darken on his upper lip or he could think of one thing for two days together. Nevertheless I was only a boy for all that, since, look you, instead of coming out on top at the school to which I had been sent and passing to the University with honour, as my father expected, I was just newly expelled from that school and was sitting on the box-seat of the coach, on my way home, wondering, between my fruitless attempts at persuading the coachman to let me drive, what sort of a reception I should receive from my father.

Not that I felt any very great fear of the meet ing ; I knew my father too well. He was a rough, bluff country gentleman of Wales, whose pedigree was as long as his rent roll was short ; for he could never fall in with the new notion that one's people should be tenants rather than friends, and that a tenant was a person who paid a fixed yearly sum or made way for somebody else who would. No, he could shoot a line straighter than ever he could have drawn one, even to please old Euclid himself, and could a vast deal easier total up the points of a horse or dog and express it in terms of worth, than he could have done by a column of figures. So long as there was plenty of "cwrw da" in the kitchen and a drop of something more decent in the dining-room, with genial neighbours sharing both, he cared little for what might happen beyond the county, and it would have required one of the Jacobite risings, so freely whispered about over the goblets and tankards, to have roused him.

To this must be added that he had married my mother when he was forty and she was half that age, and, when I was born, she died. He felt the loss so much that he never cared about looking for another wife, and had let me grow up under the care of the whole population of the parish, for he could not say "no " to any one where I was concerned, and my foster-mother, or nurse rather, having also died when I had scarce begun to walk, there was no one else to claim authority. You can, therefore, conceive that I was spoiled something of the completest, being the subject of endless scheming among the old wives of the place, who each wished to monopolise my com pany. One person, perhaps, might have stood out if she had been less tender-hearted, and that was the lady, a cousin of my father's as we reckon kinship in Wales, who upon my mother's death undertook the duties of housekeeper in my father's house in Dolgoch.

But, as I say, she was too tender hearted. Again, there was the parson and he was sup posed to have my education in hand, but I proved so froward a pupil and so diligent only in devising ways and means of escaping my studies, that at length he was fain to give up in despair and advise my father to ship me off to some school where they would speedily find a fashion of pinning me down to my books. And thus it came about that I entered the school from which I was now expelled, a school situated in a rich, fair county of England, away and away from the cliffs and the shining sea and the pleasant folk of Pwllwen ; though perhaps it was these last I missed most in the new days when fagging galled me sorest. Nevertheless at that school the boys soon got to respecting me as one who would fight whenever there was need, and before long I was a recognised exponent and top "man" in that line, more especially at wrestling, the proud consciousness of which helped me the better to bear the degrada tion of my position at the bottom, when we were assembled during the hours of learning.

For I was a woful dunce, having been already so far behind when I entered school. And per- IVOR IS EXPELLED GALOxV. 11 haps that is the reason why, in the reading of this story, you shall miss so much the polish and style which otherwise you had a right to expect from one who received his education at the best school in the land. But it was the buffeting and the wrestlinsr of which I was so proud that was the final undoing of me in this matter of my education. It came about that when, as I said before, I ought to have been near ready, according to the miscalculation of my father, to pass on to the University, I must needs fall foul of another "man" of my own age but of vastly superior scholastic attainments and a great favourite with the masters to boot. It does not matter how it arose, as it proved to be all a mistake, but I turned to and thrashed him so handsomely that there was strong prospect of his missing his examination ; wherein he was to have brought so great credit upon the whole school.

Nor was that all of my offending, for I was so puffed up with conceit of my handiwork as to answer most unmannerly when the master took me to task upon the point ; and so grievous was my carriage during that interview, that, in the result, I was expelled at short shift : as I have previously intimated. And here let me say by way of comment, that in after years I often had occasion to regret having made so little use of my opportunities of education at that school. But at the time I sat on that front seat of the coach I should have scorned the bare idea of com ing to such regrets, and I was infinitely more con cerned at the obduracy of the driver in refusing to let me handle the ribbons. The more so as we should soon come in sight of the town of Gaerwen, where I must leave the coach and with it my last opportunity of driving one, so far as I could see at present.

And this dire thing did actually come to pass ; for, as we drew up in front of the Cross Foxes, I had to seek the level of the pavement with my ambition unfulfilled, the disappointment of which reduced me to such a state of heat and disgust that I turned to the nearest loafer and directed him to take my box inside to the best room of the inn, at the same time ostentatiously tossing him a sovereign. The coachman saw the coin and his eyes twinkled greedily, whereupon I turned my back upon him and marched off in my most lordly fashion, now really angry, for I saw that had I offered a bribe on the road I could have attained my great desire. And this made my gorge rise, for I could never abide meanness or to have a favour done me for the money it would bring : which is indeed no favour, but a mere sordid merchandising of good will and affection.

Mine host, of course, knew me well and therefore my empty pockets did not trouble me so far as he was concerned. For you arc to understand that, barring a few shillings and coppers, the sovereign was the last money I had ; so that temper had reduced me to poverty, since otherwise a shilling would have been quite ample reward for the car rying of one almost empty box from the coach to the best room. And so, I suspect, that loafer thought, for he disappeared instantly the job was clone and was no more seen during my short stay in the place. Now so hastily had I been sent down from the school that I did not expect my father to have sent the lumbering family coach for me and had accordingly made up my mind to post or, better still, to ride. But this last did not commend itself to mine host of the Cross Foxes.

I shrewdly suspect that he was the wiser for one or more experiences of the after-condition of saddle horses when hired to irresponsible young gentlemen on the way home from school. At any rate he fell in at once so completely with the post-chaise idea as left me no room to amplify upon the superiority of the other, and I was fain to yield apparently, mentally saving my purpose by deciding to change places with the postboy as soon as I should be well out of sight of Gaerwen. Next, I tried to persuade the landlord that my dignity required four horses, but that sympathetic soul hinted, in the most delicate man ner possible, that perhaps my father — ahem! — a real gentleman he was and one of the old generous sort who never counted the items in a bill ! In fine, my father might not approve of four horses, as savouring too much of display and, in a manner, aping the ways of the spies and Government creat ures who had lately been cutting such a dash in those parts, when the Jacobite whispers had risen to an indiscreet pitch.

And, really now, a light chaise with a couple of good hackneys and a smart postboy would be just the style for a clever young gentleman returning from completing his education, and a credit I should no doubt be to my family and the country in general. In the end so mightily was I tickled with the pleasantness of his fine speeches that I quite decided to ride in the chaise all the way home, instead of exchanging with the boy, that is to say until I reached the boundary of Pwllwen, when of course I should be in a manner bound to consult my own notions of what my position allowed. It is vastly conducive to enjoyment to have one's vanity tickled with so light a feather and so skilful a touch as innkeepers for the most part command. Accordingly, after a very neat meal, and a bottle of something which I begged mine host to do me the favour of sharing, — and which, further, I sipped and tasted and smacked my lips over as if I had been an old connoisseur and it had come from the Duke of Beaufort's cellar or the King's at least, — the chaise was brought round and I got in.

So well satisfied with the world in general and myself in particular was I that I delayed starting for a moment or two, air ing my greatness by indulging in an affable con versation with the landlord, after the manner of the young gallants, and big wigs generally, whom I had envied many a time on my journeys to and from school. And mine host, with that knowledge of the weaknesses of travellers which is the gift of a true innkeeper, fooled me to the top of my bent, just as he had a few minutes before praised my judgment of wines when I smacked my lips over the sherry, hinting that it could be nothing less than Amontillado ; which strange name I had read in a book at school. Finally, as condescendingly as you please, I nodded to the postboy and, with a grand wave of the hand to the landlord, my high mightiness was rattling away over the stones in commencement of a journey of twenty miles or so, along villainous roads, as I had loftily told the postboy, and with — what I had not told him — a dubious welcome at the farther end.

Now for the first and longest stage of the way I reckoned with my new dignity and kept my seat in the chaise, but with the change of horses my resolution slacked. Ahead of me and around I saw the old familiar mountains and landmarks, and my blood took to dancing so lightly that at the first decent turn of the road I called a halt and expressed my intention of exchanging places with the postboy ; much to his astonishment. At first he flatly refused, but when I threatened to inflict all manner of dire punishments upon him he visi bly wavered. Then I tried persuasion and finally he yielded, whereupon I emptied my last remain ing coins into his hand and with a mollified grin he climbed up into the seat I had vacated, while I leaped into the saddle. It is possible that those two horses had done some rollicking runs in their day, but even so I am still of opinion that they remembered that stage for some time afterwards.

Sometimes we had three wheels on the ground at once, more often two, while it was seldom indeed that all four were in use at once. We flew round sharp bends, scaring cottagers' chickens out of a year's growth ; we hummed along between hedges, raising dust enough to choke a cow ; we drummed over bridges and through hamlets, at tended by every dog in the neighbourhood, all barking like mad. It was a glorious time. It struck me at length, however, that at this rate I should enter Pwllwen at some inglorious shamble or broken-down trot, which would have taken the polish off the whole proceedings ; there fore, when we came to the boundary stone which marks the line betwixt the parish of Pengareg and my own, I pulled in to a walk and for the next mile petted and patted the horses and laughed with the postboy behind.

Then, as we topped a little hill and saw Pwllwen a scant three furlongs away, I raised a wild whoop and started again. That was a dash ! How the pigs in the ditches did grunt and scramble ! how the colts in the c fields did kick up and gallop, and how the dust did fly as we bowled along like mad over the bridge. Then I shouted to the folk in the strag gling street, and after that everything went crazy. The postboy yelled behind till his cap flew off, the dogs barked and leaped at the horses as we went, the children screamed, the boys threw up their caps and capered ; the women ran to the doors and the men hurrahed like folk demented as we crashed over the cobble-stones and drew short up in a cloud of steam and dust at the door of the Black Lion, where Evan Landlord was wav ing his apron and shouting like the veriest boy of them all.

Thereafter the uproar subsided into laughter and greetings till it rose into another cheer when I di rected that a barrel of ale should be tapped, free to everybody, while the postboy, as became his new elevation, was to have a jorum of punch brewed in his especial honour. I said nothing about the horses ; Tom Ostler and I knew each other too well for that, and he would have felt deeply hurt had I ventured to doubt him by any recommendation. That was indeed a rare hour and I went breast ing about as if I had come back head of a whole University instead of a dunce in disgrace. But what did college or education signify just then to one who was home once more to his own place and people ? Was I not Ivor Meyric, son to Griffith Meyric of Dolgoch, with all that that implied in his village of Pwllwen ? I would not have changed places with the King himself at that moment.

Chapter II. Concerning Will Barry And The Affray At Gorphwysfa

, All my life I had been accustomed to feel that I was at home so long as I was anywhere within sight of Pwllwen, and as much so in an open field as under the roof of Dolgoch. Therefore it did not occur to me to drive up the avenue to the house in a post-chaise. It did occur to me, how ever, to inquire about my father ; whether he was at home ? had he received any letter concerning me ? and so forth. ' In reply Evan Black Lion as sured me that my father had been away on a visit of three weeks' or so's duration, to Treffynnon, and was expected back to-day; every minute in fact, and that he was riding and so would come from the other side and not through the village at all : at which last item I felt strangely relieved without troubling to reason why. A letter had arrived certainly, but I knew it would be waiting at the hall still since nobody there would venture to pester my father by for warding it to Treffynnon : letters to him having mostly to do with money owing, or other equally unpleasant things.

This was unwelcome intelligence to me ; as I should thus be in contact with my father at the first moment of his disappointment in me. Now that I was at home, my courage seemed suddenly to have failed me and, at the first blush, I seriously meditated flight to the house of one of the hill tenants, till my father's wrath should have blown over — three or four days at the farthest. Shame, however, kept me from that in the end and I turned to make further inquiries. Was Will Barry gone with my father ? Oh no ! he stayed at home to attend to the steward's work and practise fenc ing as usual with the sword he was so fond of. This relieved me immensely and when, a moment or two later, I set out for the Hall, my spirits had risen again to a very merry pitch as I parted with my kindly friends at the bridge.