Pirate Adventures

Acknowledgments

All of the Howard stories, poems, letters and portions thereof contained in Pirate Adventures come from Howard’s original typescripts, manuscripts, and carbons. Virtually all of them were scanned from the Glenn Lord collection, now at the University of Texas, Austin; the Robert E. Howard collection at Texas A&M University; or the typescript collection at Cross Plains Library.

Thanks to Patrice Louinet for tracking down the owner of the Howard photographs and sharing his copies. Thanks also to Rusty Burke for his knowledge of the books that Howard may have read.

CHANGES FROM THE 1ST EDITION: This Ultimate Edition adds the earliest known draft of Black Vulmea’s Vengeance.

Furthermore, the poems have been updated to reflect the new standardized versions as they now appear in the Collected Poetry volumes, ensuring consistency across the Ultimate Editions.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction by Rob Roehm

Pirate Adventures

A Pirate Remembers

A Buccaneer Speaks

The Isle of Pirates’ Doom

A Song of the Anchor Chain

Blades of the Brotherhood

Buccaneer Treasure

Swords of the Red Brotherhood

Flint’s Passing

Black Vulmea’s Vengeance

A Dying Pirate Speaks of Treasure

Miscellanea

List of Names (The Treasure of Henry Morgan)

The Treasure of Henry Morgan (unfinished)

So there I was... (untitled and unfinished)

Help! Help! They’re murderin’ me!(untitled and unfinished)

The Shadow in the Well (untitled synopsis)

The Shadow in the Well (unfinished draft)

Black Vulmea’s Vengeance (earliest known draft)

Humor

A Pirut Story

Bill Boozy was a pirate bold

At the Inn of the Gory Dagger

Robert E. Howard (at right) playing make believe with his Cross Plains neighbors Leroy and Faustine Butler.

Introduction by Rob Roehm

In Robert E. Howard as a Boy, a short piece published in the Cross Plains Review shortly after Howard’s death in June 1936, Mrs. T. A. Burns describes an encounter with a young Howard near Burkett, Texas, where the Howards lived in 1918-19. Robert is out playing with his dog, Patches, who disturbs Mrs. Burns while she is reading in a clearing. Howard apologizes, saying that he and his dog like to come here where there are big rocks and caves so we can play ‘make believe.’ Some day I’m going to be an author and write stories about pirates and maybe cannibals.

Howard was 12-13 years old when the family lived in Burkett. If Mrs. Burns’ memory can be trusted, this must be the time Howard refers to three years later in a high school essay, Some People Who Have Had Influence Over Me:

First and foremost in this list appear, of course, my parents. But there are others. Captain Kidd, for instance. Reading his biography and fiction based on his eventful life, caused me to determine, at an early age, to lead a life of piracy on the high seas. Tales of Blackbeard and Morgan clinched my resolve.

But the influence of another man finally overbalanced this idea. I have forgotten his name but he was an author. He wrote an authentic book about piracy and by some means I secured it. I devoured it with avidity but was shocked to find that it contained a harrowing account of the deaths of Kidd, Blackbeard, and other noted gentlemen.

These accounts grieved me deeply. I felt as if I had lost some old and trusted friends. Also my determination to follow in Kidd’s footsteps was weakened. I began to perceive that there might be disadvantages attached to piracy. At the back of the aforesaid book there was an illustration which shattered my hopes entirely. It portrayed a pirate of my acquaintance just after his execution. He was fastened to the mast of a man-o-war, by a great spike which was driven through his head into the wood. The huge blood spattered head of the spike stood out from the center of his forehead and his villainous features were streaked with blood and twisted with the awful agony that had been his before death came to his release.

This gruesome picture haunted me for days and caused me, once and for all time, to give up any thoughts of sailing the Spanish Main under the skull and crossbones.

By the time he was writing this paper, dated February 7, 1922, Howard’s interests had moved beyond the piratical, but it seems clear that he read a good deal on the subject. The title of the book mentioned above remains a mystery, but Rusty Burke posits that it may have been The Pirates Own Book (1837), by Charles Ellms, which features a picture of The head of Benavides stuck on a pole, though this doesn’t exactly fit Howard’s description above. Another title that is not mentioned in Howard’s surviving papers is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, though based on Howard’s poem Flint’s Passing, it’s certain he was at least aware of it. Other pirate-related titles on Howard’s bookshelf include Jeffrey Farnol’s Black Bartlemy’s Treasure and Martin Conisby’s Vengeance. Drake’s Quest, by Cameron Rogers, and the Bounty Trilogy, while not specifically pirate novels, were also among Howard’s reading material.

Howard’s interest in the subject is also clear by the number of stories and poems—even photographs—he produced along those lines. One of his early efforts, The Treasure of Henry Morgan, may have been inspired by a reading of Washington Irving’s Tales of a Traveller, which contains Kidd the Pirate. Compare the opening of Howard’s story (see the Treasure of Henry Morgan) with the following from Irving’s:

They [the pirates] took advantage of the easy access to the harbor of the Manhattoes, and of the laxity of its scarcely-organized government, to make it a kind of rendezvous, where they might dispose of their illgotten spoils, and concert new depredations. Crews of these desperadoes, the runagates of every country and clime, might be seen swaggering, in open day, about the streets of the little burgh; elbowing its quiet Mynheers; trafficking away their rich outlandish plunder, at half price, to the wary merchant, and then squandering their gains in taverns; drinking, gambling, singing, swearing, shouting, and astounding the neighborhood with sudden brawl and ruffian revelry.

Possible influences aside, Howard’s tales of the sea were never as successful as the yarns that appeared in Weird Tales or Action Stories; none of the items contained in the present collection were published until after the Texan’s death; of course, this was not for lack of trying. In 1928, Howard submitted The Isle of Pirates’ Doom to Argosy, Adventure, and Red Blooded—to no avail. In 1929 he sent it to Romance, a pulp magazine that carried tales by some of Howard’s favorite authors from Adventure. It was rejected again, and he filed it away in his trunk.

Also in 1929, The Blue Flame of Vengeance, a piratical tale featuring Solomon Kane, was shopped around. It went to Argosy and Adventure but was rejected by both. There is no record of whether or not Howard sent the story to Weird Tales, but due to its lacking a weird element, it seems unlikely. In 1932, when Howard was attempting to crash into other markets, he rewrote the story into its present form, changing the hero to Malachi Grim and the title to Blades of the Brotherhood. There is no record to show to which magazines this story was offered, if any.

While Howard was unsuccessful in selling straight pirate yarns, he did incorporate many of the elements into his other work, perhaps most notably in the Conan stories Queen of the Black Coast, published in 1934, and The Black Stranger, which remained unpublished at the time of Howard’s death. The Black Stranger may have been rejected by Weird Tales’ editor Farnsworth Wright in February or March 1935. Undaunted, Howard rewrote it into Swords of the Red Brotherhood and sent it to his agent, Otis Adelbert Kline, who received it on May 28, 1935. Now featuring Terence Vulmea, the tale remained unsold and did not see print until 1976. Another Vulmea story, Black Vulmea’s Vengeance, appeared in Golden Fleece for November 1938, more than two years after Howard’s death.

The tales collected herein were not commercial successes for their author, though many of them do display the poetic prose and narrative drive that are the earmarks of Howard’s fiction. Recognizing this—and no doubt trying to cash in on the Howard Boom—in 1976, a small collection containing the Vulmea series and The Isle of Pirates’ Doom was published by Donald M. Grant; the collection was reissued in the years that followed by several paperback publishers. Now, thanks to the persistence of Glenn Lord and the kindness of his widow, we are able to present all of Howard’s stories, poems, and fragments inspired by his long ago admiration for Captain Kidd.

These include three never before published items from the Glenn Lord Estate: the untitled fragment beginning Help! Help!,* a list of characters, and a stray page that appears to be from an earlier draft of The Treasure of Henry Morgan; the new text is appended to the story here.

* This fragment is part of a humorous boxing tale that also appears in Fists of Iron, Round 2 (REHF Press 2014).

Pirate Adventures

A Pirate Remembers

From the scarlet shadows they come to me,

Shades of the dust-dead past,

Like drifting fogs of the restless sea

From the silent Nameless Vast.

Ghostly and grey in the dying day

Their spectral ranks are massed.

With their lank, dank hair, and their eery stare,

Phantom and fiend and ghost —

Skeletons limned in a haunted sky,

Footfalls light where the dim bats fly,

Stealthy shadows — yet none but I

Am ’ware of the weird host.

Their light tread whispers on every hand

When I walk through the shadows’ rack

And I hear the mumble of fleshless jaws

In the dark behind my back.

Red shades of many a buccaneer

Whose bones rust in the sea,

Grisly phantoms who gape and leer

That died on the gallows tree.

And they haunt my brain with their dim refrain:

As we are, thou shalt be.

A Buccaneer Speaks

I’ve broken the laws of man and God,

I’ve flung my gauntlet forth to the world.

I’ve turned from the ways that in youth I trod —

Yonder the Skull Flag flies unfurled.

I laugh at Death and I mock at Life.

Through seas of blood I have steered my prow.

I’ve known the glories of crimson strife

And I’ve tattooed the cross-bones on my brow.

I’ve bared my breast to the sea-wind’s force;

Sailed red ways beyond seamen’s ken.

I’ve scattered red ruin along my course,

Of ravished women and slaughtered men.

I’ve steered in the teeth of bloody dawns

And I’ve raced the sunset o’er crimson seas.

I’ve sailed where abyss-red Hell yawns,

And I’ve battled the bergs where the star beams freeze.

I’ve seized my wish at the hilt of the sword

And held my own by the point of the blade,

Spite of the foe or my own wild horde,

Were it gold of man or beauty of maid.

I’ve had my pleasure in slaughter and wreck,

And all undaunted my end shall be,

With the broken sword on a bloody deck

Or the raven’s croak on the gallows tree.

The Isle of Pirates’ Doom

The First Day

The long low craft which rode offshore had an unsavory look and, as I lay close in my covert, I was glad that I had not hailed her. Caution had prompted me to hide myself and observe her crew before I made my presence known, and now I thanked my guardian spirit; for these were troublous times and strange craft haunted the Caribees.

Truth, the scene was a fair and peaceful one enough. I lay among green and fragrant bushes on the crest of a slope, which ran down before me to the broad beach. Tall trees rose about me and their ranks swept away on either hand. Below on the shore, green waves broke on the white sand and above all lay the blue sky like a dream. But like a serpent in a rose bed lay that black sullen ship, anchored just outside the shallow water.

She had an unkempt look, a slouchy, devil-may-care appearance of rigging which speaks not of an honest crew or a careful master. Anon rough voices floated across the intervening space of water and beach, and once I saw a great hulking fellow slouching along the rail, lift something to his lips and then hurl it overboard.

Now the crew was lowering a longboat, heavily loaded with men, and as they laid hand to oar and drew away from the ship, their coarse shouts and the replies of they who remained on the decks came to me, though the words were blurred by reason of the distance.

I lay in my covert wishing for a telescope that I might discern the name of the ship, and presently the longboat drew in close to the beach. There were eight men in her: seven great rough fellows and the other a slim, foppishly clad varlet who wore a cocked hat who did no rowing. Now as they approached, I perceived that there was argument between them, and seven of them roared and bellowed at the dandy, who, if he answered at all, spoke in a tone so low that I did not hear.

The boat swept through the light surf and, as she beached, a huge hairy rogue in the bows heaved up and plunged at the fop, who sprang up to meet him. I saw steel flash and heard the larger man bellow, then the other leapt nimbly out, splashed through the wet sand and legged it inland as fast as he might, while the other rogues streamed out in pursuit, yelling and brandishing weapons. He who had begun the brawl halted a moment to make the longboat fast, then took up the chase also, cursing at the top of his bull’s voice, the blood trickling down his face.

The man in the cocked hat was leading by several paces when they reached the first fringe of trees. He vanished among them and the rest followed, and for awhile I could hear the alarums and bellowings of the chase, till the sounds faded in the distance.

Now I looked again at the ship. Her sails were filling and I could see men in the rigging. As I watched, the anchor came aboard and she stood off—and from her peak broke out the Jolly Roger. Truth, ’twas no more than I had expected.

I worked my way further back among the bushes on hands and knees, and then stood up. A gloominess of spirit was upon me, for when the sails had first hoven in view, I had looked for rescue. Instead of proving a blessing, the ship had disgorged eight ruffianly buccaneers on the island for me to cope with.

I wondered at the reason for this as I slowly made my way between the trees. No doubt these men had been marooned by their comrades—a procedure very common among the bloody Brothers of the Main.

I know not what I might do, since I was unarmed and these rogues would doubtless consider me an enemy—as, in truth, I was to all their ilk. My gorge arose against running and hiding from them, but I saw naught else to do. Nay, ’twould be rare fortune were I able to escape them at all.

Meditating thus, I had traversed a considerable distance inland and had heard naught of the pirates, when I came to a small glade. Tall trees, crowned with lustrous green vines and gemmed with small exotic-hued birds flitting through their branches, rose about it. The musk of tropic growths filled the air and the stench of blood was there also. A man lay dead in the glade.

Flat on his back he lay, his seaman’s shirt drenched with the gore which had ebbed from the wound below his heart. He was one of the Brethren of the Red Account, no doubt of that. He’d never shoes to his feet, but a great ruby glimmered on his finger, and a costly silken sash girdled the waist of his tarry pantaloons. Through this sash were thrust a pair of flintlock pistols and a cutlass lay near his hand.

Here were weapons, at least. So I drew the pistols from his sash, noting that they were charged, and having thrust them in my waistband, I took his cutlass also. He would never need weapons again and I had good thought that I might very soon.

Then as I turned from despoiling the dead, a soft mocking laugh brought me round like a shot. The dandy of the longboat stood before me. Faith, he was smaller than I had thought, though supplely and lithely built. Boots of fine Spanish leather he wore on his trim legs, and above them tight britches of doeskin. A fine crimson sash, with tassels and rings to the ends, was round his slim waist, and from it jutted the silver butts of two pistols. A blue coat with flaring tails and gold buttons gaped open to disclose the frilled and laced shirt beneath, and the cocked hat I had noticed rode on the owner’s brow at a jaunty angle, golden hair showing beneath.

Satan’s throne! said the wearer of this finery. There is a great ruby ring you’ve overlooked!

Now I looked for the first time at the face. It was a delicate oval, with red lips that curled in mockery, large grey eyes that danced—only then did I realize that I was looking at a woman and not a man. One hand rested saucily on her hip, the other held a long ornately-hilted rapier—and with a twitch of repulsion I noted a trace of blood on the blade.

Speak, man! cried she impatiently. Are you ashamed to be caught at your work?

Now I doubt not that I was a sight to inspire little respect, what with my bare feet and my single garment, sailor’s pantaloons, and them stained and discolored with salt water. But at her mocking tone my anger stirred.

At least, said I, finding my voice, if I must answer for robbing a corpse, someone else must answer for making it.

Ha, I struck a spark then, eh? she laughed in a hard way. Satan’s Fiends, if I’m to answer for all the corpses I’ve made, ’twill be a wearisome reckoning.

Thereat my gorge rose.

One lives and one learns, said I. I had not thought to meet a woman who rejoiced in cold-blooded murder.

Cold-blooded, say you! she fired up then. Am I then to stand and be butchered like a sheep?

Had you chosen the proper life for a woman you had had no necessity either to slay or be slain, said I, carried away by my revulsion. And I then regretted what I had said for it was beginning to dawn on me who this girl must be.

So, so, self-righteous, sneered she, her eyes beginning to flash dangerously. So you think I’m a rogue! And what might you be, may I ask; what do you on this out-of-the-way island and why do you come a-stealing through the jungle to take the belongings of dead men?

"My name is Stephen Harmer, mate on The Blue Countess, Virginia trader. Seven days ago she burned to the waterline from a fire that broke out in her hold and all her crew perished save myself. I floated on a hatch and eventually raised this island, where I have been ever since."

The girl eyed me half thoughtfully, half mockingly, while I told my tale, as if expecting me to lie.

As for taking weapons, I added, it’s but bitter mead to bide among such rogues as yours without arms.

Name them none of mine, she answered shortly, then even more abruptly: Do you know who I am?

There could be only one name you could wear—what with your foppery and cold-blooded manner.

And that’s—?

Helen Tavrel.

I bow to your intuition, she said sardonically, for it does not come to my mind that we have ever met.

No man can sail the Seven Seas without hearing Helen Tavrel’s fame and, to the best of my knowledge, she is the only woman pirate now roving the Caribees.

So, you have heard the sailors’ talk? And what do they say of me, then?

That you are as bold and heartless a creature as ever walked a quarter-deck or traded petticoats for breeches, I answered frankly.

Her eyes sparkled dangerously and she cut viciously at a flower with her sword point.

And is that all they say?

They say that though you follow a vile and bloody trade, no man can say truthfully that he ever so much as kissed your lips.

This seemed to please her for she smiled.

And do you believe that, sir?

Aye, I answered boldly, though may I roast in Hades if ever I saw a pair more kissable.

For truth to tell, the rare beauty of the girl was going to my head, I who had looked on no woman for months. My heart softened toward her; then the sight of the dead man at my feet sobered me. But before I could say more, she turned her head aside as if listening.

Come! she exclaimed. I think I hear Gower and his fools returning! If there be any place on this cursed island where one may hide a space, lead me there, for they will kill us both if they find us!

Certes I could not leave her to be slaughtered, so I motioned her to follow me and made off through the trees and bushes. I struck for the southern end of the island, going swiftly but warily, the girl following as light-footed as an Indian brave. The bright-hued butterflies flitted about us and in the interwoven branches of the thick trees sang gay-winged birds. But a tension was in the air as if, with the coming of the pirates, a mist of death hung over the whole island.

The underbrush thinned as we progressed and the land sloped upward, finally breaking into a number of ravines and cliffs. Among these we made our way and I marveled at the activity of the girl, who sprang about and climbed with the ease of a cat, and outdid me who had passed most of my life in ship’s rigging.

At last we came to a low cliff which faced the south. At its foot ran a small stream of clear water, bordered by white sand and shadowed by waving fronds and tall vegetation which grew to the edge of the sand. Beyond, across this narrow rankly grown expanse there rose other higher cliffs, fronting north and completing a natural gorge.

Down this we must go, said I, indicating the cliff on which we stood. Let me aid you—

But she, with a scornful toss of her head, had already let herself over the cliff’s edge and was making her way down, clinging foot and hand to the long heavy vines which grew across the face of it. I started to follow, then hesitated as a movement among the fronds by the stream caught my eye. I spoke a quick word of warning—the girl looked up to catch what I had said—and then a withered vine gave way and she clutched wildly and fell sprawling. She fell not far and the sand in which she lighted was soft, but on the instant, before she could regain her feet, the vegetation parted and a tall ruffian leaped upon her.

I glimpsed in a single fleeting instant the handkerchief knotted about his skull, the snarling bearded face, the cutlass swung high in a brawny hand. No time for her to draw sword or pistol—he loomed over her like the shadow of death and the cutlass swept downward—but even as it did I drew pistol and fired blindly and without aim. He swerved sidewise, the cutlass veering wildly, and pitched face down in the sand without a sound. And so close had been her escape that the sweep of his blade had knocked the cocked hat from the girl’s locks.

I fairly flung myself down the cliff and stood over the body of the buccaneer. The deed had been done involuntarily, without conscious thought, but I did not regret it. Whether the girl