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Page 54
Adieu the delights of the island! They now became flat and insipid. Each
pictured to himself the consequence he might now aspire to, in civilized
life, could he once get there with this mass of ambergris. No longer a
poor Jack Tar, frolicking in the low taveriis of Wapping, he might roll
through London in his coach, and perchance arrive, like Whittington, at
the dignity of Lord Mayor.
With riches came envy and covetousness. Each was now for assuming the
supreme power, and getting the monopoly of the ambergris. A civil war at
length broke out: Chard and Waters defied each other to mortal combat,
and the kingdom of the Bermudas was on the point of being deluged with
royal blood. Fortunately, Carter took no part in the bloody feud.
Ambition might have made him view it with secret exultation; for if
either or both of his brother potentates were slain in the conflict,
he would be a gainer in purse and ambergris. But he dreaded to be left
alone in this uninhabited island, and to find himself the monarch of
a solitude: so he secretly purloined and hid the weapons of the
belligerent rivals, who, having no means of carrying on the war,
gradually cooled down into a sullen armistice.
The arrival of Governor More, with an overpowering force of sixty men,
put an end to the empire. He took possession of the kingdom, in the
name of the Somer Island Company, and forthwith proceeded to make a
settlement. The three kings tacitly relinquished their sway, but stood
up stoutly for their treasure. It was determined, however, that they
had been fitted out at the expense, and employed in the service, of the
Virginia Company; that they had found the ambergis while in the service
of that company, and on that company's land; that the ambergis,
therefore, belonged to that company, or rather to the Somer Island
Company, in consequence of their recent purchase of the island, and all
their appurtenances. Having thus legally established their right, and
being moreover able to back it by might, the company laid the lion's paw
upon the spoil; and nothing more remains on historic record of the Three
Kings of Bermuda, and their treasure of ambergris.
* * * * *
The reader will now determine whether I am more extravagant than most
of the commentators on Shakspeare, in my surmise that the story of Sir
George Somers' shipwreck, and the subsequent occurrences that took place
on the uninhabited island, may have furnished the bard with some of the
elements of his drama of the Tempest. The tidings of the shipwreck, and
of the incidents connected with it, reached England not long before the
production of this drama, and made a great sensation there. A narrative
of the whole matter, from which most of the foregoing particulars are
extracted, was published at the time in London, in a pamphlet form, and
could not fail to be eagerly perused by Shakspeare, and to make a vivid
impression on his fancy. His expression, in the Tempest, of "the still
vext Bermoothes," accords exactly with the storm-beaten character of
those islands. The enchantments, too, with which he has clothed the
island of Prospero, may they not be traced to the wild and superstitious
notions entertained about the Bermudas? I have already cited two
passages from a pamphlet published at the time, showing that they
were esteemed "a most _prodigious_ and _inchanted_ place," and the
"habitation of divells;" and another pamphlet, published shortly
afterward, observes: "And whereas it is reported that this land of the
Barmudas, with the islands about, (which are many, at least a hundred,)
are inchanted and kept with evil and wicked spirits, it is a most idle
and false report." [Footnote: "Newes from the Barmudas;" 1612.]
The description, too, given in the same pamphlets, of the real beauty
and fertility of the Bermudas, and of their serene and happy climate, so
opposite to the dangerous and inhospitable character with which they had
been stigmatized, accords with the eulogium of Sebastian on the island
of Prospero:
"Though this island seem to be desert, uninhabitable, and almost
inaccessible, it must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate
temperance. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Here is every
thing advantageous to life. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how
green!"
I think too, in the exulting consciousness of ease, security, and
abundance felt by the late tempest-tossed mariners, while revelling in
the plenteousness of the island, and their inclination to remain there,
released from the labors, the cares, and the artificial restraints of
civilized life, I can see something of the golden commonwealth of honest
Gonzalo:
"Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
And were the king of it, what would I do?
I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil:
No occupation; all men idle, all.
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