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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 973 ***
+
+
+
+
+HOWARD PYLE'S BOOK OF PIRATES
+
+
+
+
+Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of the
+Spanish Main: From the writing & Pictures of Howard Pyle:
+
+
+Compiled by Merle Johnson
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     FOREWORD BY MERLE JOHNSON
+
+     PREFACE
+
+     I.   BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
+     II.  THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND
+     III. WITH THE BUCCANEERS
+     IV.  TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE BOX
+     V.   JACK BALLISTER'S FORTUNES
+     VI.  BLUESKIN THE PIRATE
+     VII. CAPTAIN SCARFIELD
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+PIRATES, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolves
+who once infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day conceptions
+in great degree as drawn by the pen and pencil of Howard Pyle.
+
+Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenth
+century and the first decade of the twentieth, had the fine faculty of
+transposing himself into any chosen period of history and making
+its people flesh and blood again--not just historical puppets. His
+characters were sketched with both words and picture; with both words
+and picture he ranks as a master, with a rich personality which makes
+his work individual and attractive in either medium.
+
+He was one of the founders of present-day American illustration, and his
+pupils and grand-pupils pervade that field to-day. While he bore no
+such important part in the world of letters, his stories are modern in
+treatment, and yet widely read. His range included historical treatises
+concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was); fiction, with
+the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of Old World fairy
+tales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best sellers to growing
+lads; stories of the occult, such as In Tenebras and To the Soil of the
+Earth, which, if newly published, would be hailed as contributions to
+our latest cult.
+
+In all these fields Pyle's work may be equaled, surpassed, save in one.
+It is improbable that anyone else will ever bring his combination of
+interest and talent to the depiction of these old-time Pirates, any more
+than there could be a second Remington to paint the now extinct Indians
+and gun-fighters of the Great West.
+
+Important and interesting to the student of history, the
+adventure-lover, and the artist, as they are, these Pirate stories and
+pictures have been scattered through many magazines and books. Here, in
+this volume, they are gathered together for the first time, perhaps
+not just as Mr. Pyle would have done, but with a completeness and
+appreciation of the real value of the material which the author's
+modesty might not have permitted. MERLE JOHNSON.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+WHY is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly
+titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to
+make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this
+question another--Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had,
+a certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Is
+there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden groundwork
+of the old-time savage? Is there even in these well-regulated times an
+unsubdued nature in the respectable mental household of every one of us
+that still kicks against the pricks of law and order? To make my meaning
+more clear, would not every boy, for instance--that is, every boy of any
+account--rather be a pirate captain than a Member of Parliament? And
+we ourselves--would we not rather read such a story as that of Captain
+Avery's capture of the East Indian treasure ship, with its beautiful
+princess and load of jewels (which gems he sold by the handful, history
+sayeth, to a Bristol merchant), than, say, one of Bishop Atterbury's
+sermons, or the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of
+"Theodora and Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate
+nature of most of us there can be but one answer to such a query.
+
+In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales of
+derring-do Nelson's battles are all mightily interesting, but, even in
+spite of their romance of splendid courage, I fancy that the majority of
+us would rather turn back over the leaves of history to read how Drake
+captured the Spanish treasure ship in the South Sea, and of how he
+divided such a quantity of booty in the Island of Plate (so named
+because of the tremendous dividend there declared) that it had to be
+measured in quart bowls, being too considerable to be counted.
+
+Courage and daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always a
+redundancy of vim and life to recommend them to the nether man that lies
+within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against the
+tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have had
+much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black flag. But
+it is not altogether courage and daring that endear him to our hearts.
+There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that lust for wealth
+that makes one's fancy revel more pleasantly in the story of the
+division of treasure in the pirate's island retreat, the hiding of his
+godless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic beach, there to
+remain hidden until the time should come to rake the doubloons up
+again and to spend them like a lord in polite society, than in the most
+thrilling tales of his wonderful escapes from commissioned cruisers
+through tortuous channels between the coral reefs.
+
+And what a life of adventure is his, to be sure! A life of constant
+alertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, he
+wanders forever aimlessly, homelessly; now unheard of for months, now
+careening his boat on some lonely uninhabited shore, now appearing
+suddenly to swoop down on some merchant vessel with rattle of musketry,
+shouting, yells, and a hell of unbridled passions let loose to rend and
+tear. What a Carlislean hero! What a setting of blood and lust and flame
+and rapine for such a hero!
+
+Piracy, such as was practiced in the flower of its days--that is, during
+the early eighteenth century--was no sudden growth. It was an evolution,
+from the semi-lawful buccaneering of the sixteenth century, just as
+buccaneering was upon its part, in a certain sense, an evolution from
+the unorganized, unauthorized warfare of the Tudor period.
+
+For there was a deal of piratical smack in the anti-Spanish ventures
+of Elizabethan days. Many of the adventurers--of the Sir Francis Drake
+school, for instance--actually overstepped again and again the bounds
+of international law, entering into the realms of de facto piracy.
+Nevertheless, while their doings were not recognized officially by the
+government, the perpetrators were neither punished nor reprimanded for
+their excursions against Spanish commerce at home or in the West Indies;
+rather were they commended, and it was considered not altogether a
+discreditable thing for men to get rich upon the spoils taken from
+Spanish galleons in times of nominal peace. Many of the most reputable
+citizens and merchants of London, when they felt that the queen failed
+in her duty of pushing the fight against the great Catholic Power,
+fitted out fleets upon their own account and sent them to levy good
+Protestant war of a private nature upon the Pope's anointed.
+
+Some of the treasures captured in such ventures were immense,
+stupendous, unbelievable. For an example, one can hardly credit the
+truth of the "purchase" gained by Drake in the famous capture of the
+plate ship in the South Sea.
+
+One of the old buccaneer writers of a century later says: "The Spaniards
+affirm to this day that he took at that time twelvescore tons of
+plate and sixteen bowls of coined money a man (his number being then
+forty-five men in all), insomuch that they were forced to heave much of
+it overboard, because his ship could not carry it all."
+
+Maybe this was a very greatly exaggerated statement put by the author
+and his Spanish authorities, nevertheless there was enough truth in it
+to prove very conclusively to the bold minds of the age that tremendous
+profits--"purchases" they called them--were to be made from piracy. The
+Western World is filled with the names of daring mariners of those old
+days, who came flitting across the great trackless ocean in their little
+tublike boats of a few hundred tons burden, partly to explore unknown
+seas, partly--largely, perhaps--in pursuit of Spanish treasure:
+Frobisher, Davis, Drake, and a score of others.
+
+In this left-handed war against Catholic Spain many of the adventurers
+were, no doubt, stirred and incited by a grim, Calvinistic, puritanical
+zeal for Protestantism. But equally beyond doubt the gold and silver and
+plate of the "Scarlet Woman" had much to do with the persistent energy
+with which these hardy mariners braved the mysterious, unknown terrors
+of the great unknown ocean that stretched away to the sunset, there in
+faraway waters to attack the huge, unwieldy, treasure-laden galleons
+that sailed up and down the Caribbean Sea and through the Bahama
+Channel.
+
+Of all ghastly and terrible things old-time religious war was the most
+ghastly and terrible. One can hardly credit nowadays the cold, callous
+cruelty of those times. Generally death was the least penalty that
+capture entailed. When the Spaniards made prisoners of the English, the
+Inquisition took them in hand, and what that meant all the world knows.
+When the English captured a Spanish vessel the prisoners were tortured,
+either for the sake of revenge or to compel them to disclose where
+treasure lay hidden. Cruelty begat cruelty, and it would be hard to
+say whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Latin showed himself to be most
+proficient in torturing his victim.
+
+When Cobham, for instance, captured the Spanish ship in the Bay of
+Biscay, after all resistance was over and the heat of the battle had
+cooled, he ordered his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew and
+every Spaniard aboard--whether in arms or not--to sew them up in the
+mainsail and to fling them overboard. There were some twenty dead bodies
+in the sail when a few days later it was washed up on the shore.
+
+Of course such acts were not likely to go unavenged, and many an
+innocent life was sacrificed to pay the debt of Cobham's cruelty.
+
+Nothing could be more piratical than all this. Nevertheless, as was
+said, it was winked at, condoned, if not sanctioned, by the law; and it
+was not beneath people of family and respectability to take part in it.
+But by and by Protestantism and Catholicism began to be at somewhat less
+deadly enmity with each other; religious wars were still far enough from
+being ended, but the scabbard of the sword was no longer flung away
+when the blade was drawn. And so followed a time of nominal peace, and a
+generation arose with whom it was no longer respectable and worthy--one
+might say a matter of duty--to fight a country with which one's own
+land was not at war. Nevertheless, the seed had been sown; it had been
+demonstrated that it was feasible to practice piracy against Spain and
+not to suffer therefor. Blood had been shed and cruelty practiced, and,
+once indulged, no lust seems stronger than that of shedding blood and
+practicing cruelty.
+
+Though Spain might be ever so well grounded in peace at home, in the
+West Indies she was always at war with the whole world--English, French,
+Dutch. It was almost a matter of life or death with her to keep her hold
+upon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon the earthquake
+of the Reformation, her power was already beginning to totter and to
+crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and from it alone
+could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold and silver. So it
+was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to keep out the world from
+her American possessions--a bootless task, for the old order upon which
+her power rested was broken and crumbled forever. But still she strove,
+fighting against fate, and so it was that in the tropical America it was
+one continual war between her and all the world. Thus it came that,
+long after piracy ceased to be allowed at home, it continued in those
+far-away seas with unabated vigor, recruiting to its service all that
+lawless malign element which gathers together in every newly opened
+country where the only law is lawlessness, where might is right and
+where a living is to be gained with no more trouble than cutting a
+throat. {signature Howard Pyle His Mark}
+
+
+
+
+HOWARD PILE'S BOOK OF PIRATES
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
+
+JUST above the northwestern shore of the old island of Hispaniola--the
+Santo Domingo of our day--and separated from it only by a narrow channel
+of some five or six miles in width, lies a queer little hunch of an
+island, known, because of a distant resemblance to that animal, as
+the Tortuga de Mar, or sea turtle. It is not more than twenty miles in
+length by perhaps seven or eight in breadth; it is only a little spot of
+land, and as you look at it upon the map a pin's head would almost cover
+it; yet from that spot, as from a center of inflammation, a burning fire
+of human wickedness and ruthlessness and lust overran the world, and
+spread terror and death throughout the Spanish West Indies, from St.
+Augustine to the island of Trinidad, and from Panama to the coasts of
+Peru.
+
+About the middle of the seventeenth century certain French adventurers
+set out from the fortified island of St. Christopher in longboats and
+hoys, directing their course to the westward, there to discover new
+islands. Sighting Hispaniola "with abundance of joy," they landed, and
+went into the country, where they found great quantities of wild cattle,
+horses, and swine.
+
+Now vessels on the return voyage to Europe from the West Indies needed
+revictualing, and food, especially flesh, was at a premium in the
+islands of the Spanish Main; wherefore a great profit was to be turned
+in preserving beef and pork, and selling the flesh to homeward-bound
+vessels.
+
+The northwestern shore of Hispaniola, lying as it does at the eastern
+outlet of the old Bahama Channel, running between the island of Cuba and
+the great Bahama Banks, lay almost in the very main stream of travel.
+The pioneer Frenchmen were not slow to discover the double advantage to
+be reaped from the wild cattle that cost them nothing to procure, and a
+market for the flesh ready found for them. So down upon Hispaniola they
+came by boatloads and shiploads, gathering like a swarm of mosquitoes,
+and overrunning the whole western end of the island. There they
+established themselves, spending the time alternately in hunting the
+wild cattle and buccanning(1) the meat, and squandering their hardly
+earned gains in wild debauchery, the opportunities for which were never
+lacking in the Spanish West Indies.
+
+     (1) Buccanning, by which the "buccaneers" gained their name,
+     was of process of curing thin strips of meat by salting,
+     smoking, and drying in the sun.
+
+At first the Spaniards thought nothing of the few travel-worn Frenchmen
+who dragged their longboats and hoys up on the beach, and shot a wild
+bullock or two to keep body and soul together; but when the few grew to
+dozens, and the dozens to scores, and the scores to hundreds, it was a
+very different matter, and wrathful grumblings and mutterings began to
+be heard among the original settlers.
+
+But of this the careless buccaneers thought never a whit, the only thing
+that troubled them being the lack of a more convenient shipping point
+than the main island afforded them.
+
+This lack was at last filled by a party of hunters who ventured across
+the narrow channel that separated the main island from Tortuga. Here
+they found exactly what they needed--a good harbor, just at the junction
+of the Windward Channel with the old Bahama Channel--a spot where
+four-fifths of the Spanish-Indian trade would pass by their very
+wharves.
+
+There were a few Spaniards upon the island, but they were a quiet folk,
+and well disposed to make friends with the strangers; but when more
+Frenchmen and still more Frenchmen crossed the narrow channel, until
+they overran the Tortuga and turned it into one great curing house for
+the beef which they shot upon the neighboring island, the Spaniards grew
+restive over the matter, just as they had done upon the larger island.
+
+Accordingly, one fine day there came half a dozen great boatloads
+of armed Spaniards, who landed upon the Turtle's Back and sent the
+Frenchmen flying to the woods and fastnesses of rocks as the chaff flies
+before the thunder gust. That night the Spaniards drank themselves
+mad and shouted themselves hoarse over their victory, while the beaten
+Frenchmen sullenly paddled their canoes back to the main island again,
+and the Sea Turtle was Spanish once more.
+
+But the Spaniards were not contented with such a petty triumph as that
+of sweeping the island of Tortuga free from the obnoxious strangers,
+down upon Hispaniola they came, flushed with their easy victory, and
+determined to root out every Frenchman, until not one single buccaneer
+remained. For a time they had an easy thing of it, for each French
+hunter roamed the woods by himself, with no better company than his
+half-wild dogs, so that when two or three Spaniards would meet such a
+one, he seldom if ever came out of the woods again, for even his resting
+place was lost.
+
+But the very success of the Spaniards brought their ruin along with it,
+for the buccaneers began to combine together for self-protection,
+and out of that combination arose a strange union of lawless man with
+lawless man, so near, so close, that it can scarce be compared to
+any other than that of husband and wife. When two entered upon this
+comradeship, articles were drawn up and signed by both parties, a common
+stock was made of all their possessions, and out into the woods they
+went to seek their fortunes; thenceforth they were as one man; they
+lived together by day, they slept together by night; what one suffered,
+the other suffered; what one gained, the other gained. The only
+separation that came betwixt them was death, and then the survivor
+inherited all that the other left. And now it was another thing with
+Spanish buccaneer hunting, for two buccaneers, reckless of life, quick
+of eye, and true of aim, were worth any half dozen of Spanish islanders.
+
+By and by, as the French became more strongly organized for mutual
+self-protection, they assumed the offensive. Then down they came upon
+Tortuga, and now it was the turn of the Spanish to be hunted off the
+island like vermin, and the turn of the French to shout their victory.
+
+Having firmly established themselves, a governor was sent to the French
+of Tortuga, one M. le Passeur, from the island of St. Christopher; the
+Sea Turtle was fortified, and colonists, consisting of men of doubtful
+character and women of whose character there could be no doubt whatever,
+began pouring in upon the island, for it was said that the buccaneers
+thought no more of a doubloon than of a Lima bean, so that this was the
+place for the brothel and the brandy shop to reap their golden harvest,
+and the island remained French.
+
+Hitherto the Tortugans had been content to gain as much as possible from
+the homeward-bound vessels through the orderly channels of legitimate
+trade. It was reserved for Pierre le Grand to introduce piracy as a
+quicker and more easy road to wealth than the semi-honest exchange they
+had been used to practice.
+
+Gathering together eight-and-twenty other spirits as hardy and reckless
+as himself, he put boldly out to sea in a boat hardly large enough to
+hold his crew, and running down the Windward Channel and out into the
+Caribbean Sea, he lay in wait for such a prize as might be worth the
+risks of winning.
+
+For a while their luck was steadily against them; their provisions and
+water began to fail, and they saw nothing before them but starvation
+or a humiliating return. In this extremity they sighted a Spanish ship
+belonging to a "flota" which had become separated from her consorts.
+
+The boat in which the buccaneers sailed might, perhaps, have served for
+the great ship's longboat; the Spaniards out-numbered them three to
+one, and Pierre and his men were armed only with pistols and cutlasses;
+nevertheless this was their one and their only chance, and they
+determined to take the Spanish ship or to die in the attempt. Down upon
+the Spaniard they bore through the dusk of the night, and giving orders
+to the "chirurgeon" to scuttle their craft under them as they were
+leaving it, they swarmed up the side of the unsuspecting ship and upon
+its decks in a torrent--pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other. A
+part of them ran to the gun room and secured the arms and ammunition,
+pistoling or cutting down all such as stood in their way or offered
+opposition; the other party burst into the great cabin at the heels of
+Pierre le Grand, found the captain and a party of his friends at cards,
+set a pistol to his breast, and demanded him to deliver up the ship.
+Nothing remained for the Spaniard but to yield, for there was no
+alternative between surrender and death. And so the great prize was won.
+
+It was not long before the news of this great exploit and of the vast
+treasure gained reached the ears of the buccaneers of Tortuga and
+Hispaniola. Then what a hubbub and an uproar and a tumult there was!
+Hunting wild cattle and buccanning the meat was at a discount, and the
+one and only thing to do was to go a-pirating; for where one such prize
+had been won, others were to be had.
+
+In a short time freebooting assumed all of the routine of a regular
+business. Articles were drawn up betwixt captain and crew, compacts were
+sealed, and agreements entered into by the one party and the other.
+
+In all professions there are those who make their mark, those who
+succeed only moderately well, and those who fail more or less entirely.
+Nor did pirating differ from this general rule, for in it were men who
+rose to distinction, men whose names, something tarnished and rusted by
+the lapse of years, have come down even to us of the present day.
+
+Pierre Francois, who, with his boatload of six-and-twenty desperadoes,
+ran boldly into the midst of the pearl fleet off the coast of
+South America, attacked the vice admiral under the very guns of two
+men-of-war, captured his ship, though she was armed with eight guns and
+manned with threescore men, and would have got her safely away, only
+that having to put on sail, their mainmast went by the board, whereupon
+the men-of-war came up with them, and the prize was lost.
+
+But even though there were two men-of-war against all that remained of
+six-and-twenty buccaneers, the Spaniards were glad enough to make terms
+with them for the surrender of the vessel, whereby Pierre Francois and
+his men came off scot-free.
+
+Bartholomew Portuguese was a worthy of even more note. In a boat manned
+with thirty fellow adventurers he fell upon a great ship off Cape
+Corrientes, manned with threescore and ten men, all told.
+
+Her he assaulted again and again, beaten off with the very pressure of
+numbers only to renew the assault, until the Spaniards who survived,
+some fifty in all, surrendered to twenty living pirates, who poured upon
+their decks like a score of blood-stained, powder-grimed devils.
+
+They lost their vessel by recapture, and Bartholomew Portuguese
+barely escaped with his life through a series of almost unbelievable
+adventures. But no sooner had he fairly escaped from the clutches of the
+Spaniards than, gathering together another band of adventurers, he fell
+upon the very same vessel in the gloom of the night, recaptured her when
+she rode at anchor in the harbor of Campeche under the guns of the fort,
+slipped the cable, and was away without the loss of a single man. He
+lost her in a hurricane soon afterward, just off the Isle of Pines; but
+the deed was none the less daring for all that.
+
+Another notable no less famous than these two worthies was Roch
+Braziliano, the truculent Dutchman who came up from the coast of Brazil
+to the Spanish Main with a name ready-made for him. Upon the very first
+adventure which he undertook he captured a plate ship of fabulous value,
+and brought her safely into Jamaica; and when at last captured by the
+Spaniards, he fairly frightened them into letting him go by truculent
+threats of vengeance from his followers.
+
+Such were three of the pirate buccaneers who infested the Spanish
+Main. There were hundreds no less desperate, no less reckless, no less
+insatiate in their lust for plunder, than they.
+
+The effects of this freebooting soon became apparent. The risks to be
+assumed by the owners of vessels and the shippers of merchandise became
+so enormous that Spanish commerce was practically swept away from these
+waters. No vessel dared to venture out of port excepting under escort
+of powerful men-of-war, and even then they were not always secure from
+molestation. Exports from Central and South America were sent to Europe
+by way of the Strait of Magellan, and little or none went through the
+passes between the Bahamas and the Caribbees.
+
+So at last "buccaneering," as it had come to be generically called,
+ceased to pay the vast dividends that it had done at first. The cream
+was skimmed off, and only very thin milk was left in the dish. Fabulous
+fortunes were no longer earned in a ten days' cruise, but what money
+was won hardly paid for the risks of the winning. There must be a new
+departure, or buccaneering would cease to exist.
+
+Then arose one who showed the buccaneers a new way to squeeze money out
+of the Spaniards. This man was an Englishman--Lewis Scot.
+
+The stoppage of commerce on the Spanish Main had naturally tended to
+accumulate all the wealth gathered and produced into the chief fortified
+cities and towns of the West Indies. As there no longer existed prizes
+upon the sea, they must be gained upon the land, if they were to be
+gained at all. Lewis Scot was the first to appreciate this fact.
+
+Gathering together a large and powerful body of men as hungry for
+plunder and as desperate as himself, he descended upon the town of
+Campeche, which he captured and sacked, stripping it of everything that
+could possibly be carried away.
+
+When the town was cleared to the bare walls Scot threatened to set the
+torch to every house in the place if it was not ransomed by a large sum
+of money which he demanded. With this booty he set sail for Tortuga,
+where he arrived safely--and the problem was solved.
+
+After him came one Mansvelt, a buccaneer of lesser note, who first made
+a descent upon the isle of Saint Catharine, now Old Providence, which he
+took, and, with this as a base, made an unsuccessful descent upon Neuva
+Granada and Cartagena. His name might not have been handed down to us
+along with others of greater fame had he not been the master of that
+most apt of pupils, the great Captain Henry Morgan, most famous of
+all the buccaneers, one time governor of Jamaica, and knighted by King
+Charles II.
+
+After Mansvelt followed the bold John Davis, native of Jamaica, where he
+sucked in the lust of piracy with his mother's milk. With only fourscore
+men, he swooped down upon the great city of Nicaragua in the darkness of
+the night, silenced the sentry with the thrust of a knife, and then
+fell to pillaging the churches and houses "without any respect or
+veneration."
+
+Of course it was but a short time until the whole town was in an uproar
+of alarm, and there was nothing left for the little handful of men to do
+but to make the best of their way to their boats. They were in the town
+but a short time, but in that time they were able to gather together and
+to carry away money and jewels to the value of fifty thousand pieces of
+eight, besides dragging off with them a dozen or more notable prisoners,
+whom they held for ransom.
+
+And now one appeared upon the scene who reached a far greater height
+than any had arisen to before. This was Francois l'Olonoise, who
+sacked the great city of Maracaibo and the town of Gibraltar. Cold,
+unimpassioned, pitiless, his sluggish blood was never moved by one
+single pulse of human warmth, his icy heart was never touched by one ray
+of mercy or one spark of pity for the hapless wretches who chanced to
+fall into his bloody hands.
+
+Against him the governor of Havana sent out a great war vessel, and with
+it a negro executioner, so that there might be no inconvenient delays of
+law after the pirates had been captured. But l'Olonoise did not wait for
+the coming of the war vessel; he went out to meet it, and he found it
+where it lay riding at anchor in the mouth of the river Estra. At the
+dawn of the morning he made his attack sharp, unexpected, decisive. In a
+little while the Spaniards were forced below the hatches, and the vessel
+was taken. Then came the end. One by one the poor shrieking wretches
+were dragged up from below, and one by one they were butchered in cold
+blood, while l'Olonoise stood upon the poop deck and looked coldly down
+upon what was being done. Among the rest the negro was dragged upon the
+deck. He begged and implored that his life might be spared, promising to
+tell all that might be asked of him. L'Olonoise questioned him, and when
+he had squeezed him dry, waved his hand coldly, and the poor black went
+with the rest. Only one man was spared; him he sent to the governor of
+Havana with a message that henceforth he would give no quarter to any
+Spaniard whom he might meet in arms--a message which was not an empty
+threat.
+
+The rise of l'Olonoise was by no means rapid. He worked his way up by
+dint of hard labor and through much ill fortune. But by and by, after
+many reverses, the tide turned, and carried him with it from one success
+to another, without let or stay, to the bitter end.
+
+Cruising off Maracaibo, he captured a rich prize laden with a vast
+amount of plate and ready money, and there conceived the design of
+descending upon the powerful town of Maracaibo itself. Without loss of
+time he gathered together five hundred picked scoundrels from Tortuga,
+and taking with him one Michael de Basco as land captain, and two
+hundred more buccaneers whom he commanded, down he came into the Gulf of
+Venezuela and upon the doomed city like a blast of the plague. Leaving
+their vessels, the buccaneers made a land attack upon the fort that
+stood at the mouth of the inlet that led into Lake Maracaibo and guarded
+the city.
+
+The Spaniards held out well, and fought with all the might that
+Spaniards possess; but after a fight of three hours all was given up and
+the garrison fled, spreading terror and confusion before them. As
+many of the inhabitants of the city as could do so escaped in boats to
+Gibraltar, which lies to the southward, on the shores of Lake Maracaibo,
+at the distance of some forty leagues or more.
+
+Then the pirates marched into the town, and what followed may be
+conceived. It was a holocaust of lust, of passion, and of blood such as
+even the Spanish West Indies had never seen before. Houses and churches
+were sacked until nothing was left but the bare walls; men and women
+were tortured to compel them to disclose where more treasure lay hidden.
+
+Then, having wrenched all that they could from Maracaibo, they
+entered the lake and descended upon Gibraltar, where the rest of the
+panic-stricken inhabitants were huddled together in a blind terror.
+
+The governor of Merida, a brave soldier who had served his king in
+Flanders, had gathered together a troop of eight hundred men, had
+fortified the town, and now lay in wait for the coming of the pirates.
+The pirates came all in good time, and then, in spite of the brave
+defense, Gibraltar also fell. Then followed a repetition of the scenes
+that had been enacted in Maracaibo for the past fifteen days, only here
+they remained for four horrible weeks, extorting money--money! ever
+money!--from the poor poverty-stricken, pest-ridden souls crowded into
+that fever hole of a town.
+
+Then they left, but before they went they demanded still more money--ten
+thousand pieces of eight--as a ransom for the town, which otherwise
+should be given to the flames. There was some hesitation on the part of
+the Spaniards, some disposition to haggle, but there was no hesitation
+on the part of l'Olonoise. The torch WAS set to the town as he had
+promised, whereupon the money was promptly paid, and the pirates were
+piteously begged to help quench the spreading flames. This they were
+pleased to do, but in spite of all their efforts nearly half of the town
+was consumed.
+
+After that they returned to Maracaibo again, where they demanded a
+ransom of thirty thousand pieces of eight for the city. There was no
+haggling here, thanks to the fate of Gibraltar; only it was utterly
+impossible to raise that much money in all of the poverty-stricken
+region. But at last the matter was compromised, and the town was
+redeemed for twenty thousand pieces of eight and five hundred head of
+cattle, and tortured Maracaibo was quit of them.
+
+In the Ile de la Vache the buccaneers shared among themselves two
+hundred and sixty thousand pieces of eight, besides jewels and bales of
+silk and linen and miscellaneous plunder to a vast amount.
+
+Such was the one great deed of l'Olonoise; from that time his star
+steadily declined--for even nature seemed fighting against such a
+monster--until at last he died a miserable, nameless death at the hands
+of an unknown tribe of Indians upon the Isthmus of Darien.
+
+And now we come to the greatest of all the buccaneers, he who stands
+pre-eminent among them, and whose name even to this day is a charm
+to call up his deeds of daring, his dauntless courage, his truculent
+cruelty, and his insatiate and unappeasable lust for gold--Capt. Henry
+Morgan, the bold Welshman, who brought buccaneering to the height and
+flower of its glory.
+
+Having sold himself, after the manner of the times, for his passage
+across the seas, he worked out his time of servitude at the Barbados. As
+soon as he had regained his liberty he entered upon the trade of piracy,
+wherein he soon reached a position of considerable prominence. He was
+associated with Mansvelt at the time of the latter's descent upon
+Saint Catharine's Isle, the importance of which spot, as a center of
+operations against the neighboring coasts, Morgan never lost sight of.
+
+The first attempt that Capt. Henry Morgan ever made against any town
+in the Spanish Indies was the bold descent upon the city of Puerto del
+Principe in the island of Cuba, with a mere handful of men. It was
+a deed the boldness of which has never been outdone by any of a like
+nature--not even the famous attack upon Panama itself. Thence they
+returned to their boats in the very face of the whole island of Cuba,
+aroused and determined upon their extermination. Not only did they make
+good their escape, but they brought away with them a vast amount of
+plunder, computed at three hundred thousand pieces of eight, besides
+five hundred head of cattle and many prisoners held for ransom.
+
+But when the division of all this wealth came to be made, lo! there were
+only fifty thousand pieces of eight to be found. What had become of the
+rest no man could tell but Capt. Henry Morgan himself. Honesty among
+thieves was never an axiom with him.
+
+Rude, truculent, and dishonest as Captain Morgan was, he seems to have
+had a wonderful power of persuading the wild buccaneers under him to
+submit everything to his judgment, and to rely entirely upon his word.
+In spite of the vast sum of money that he had very evidently made away
+with, recruits poured in upon him, until his band was larger and better
+equipped than ever.
+
+And now it was determined that the plunder harvest was ripe at Porto
+Bello, and that city's doom was sealed. The town was defended by two
+strong castles thoroughly manned, and officered by as gallant a soldier
+as ever carried Toledo steel at his side. But strong castles and gallant
+soldiers weighed not a barleycorn with the buccaneers when their blood
+was stirred by the lust of gold.
+
+Landing at Puerto Naso, a town some ten leagues westward of Porto Bello,
+they marched to the latter town, and coming before the castle, boldly
+demanded its surrender. It was refused, whereupon Morgan threatened that
+no quarter should be given. Still surrender was refused; and then the
+castle was attacked, and after a bitter struggle was captured. Morgan
+was as good as his word: every man in the castle was shut in the guard
+room, the match was set to the powder magazine, and soldiers, castle,
+and all were blown into the air, while through all the smoke and the
+dust the buccaneers poured into the town. Still the governor held out in
+the other castle, and might have made good his defense, but that he was
+betrayed by the soldiers under him. Into the castle poured the howling
+buccaneers. But still the governor fought on, with his wife and daughter
+clinging to his knees and beseeching him to surrender, and the blood
+from his wounded forehead trickling down over his white collar, until a
+merciful bullet put an end to the vain struggle.
+
+Here were enacted the old scenes. Everything plundered that could be
+taken, and then a ransom set upon the town itself.
+
+This time an honest, or an apparently honest, division was made of
+the spoils, which amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of
+eight, besides merchandise and jewels.
+
+The next towns to suffer were poor Maracaibo and Gibraltar, now just
+beginning to recover from the desolation wrought by l'Olonoise. Once
+more both towns were plundered of every bale of merchandise and of every
+plaster, and once more both were ransomed until everything was squeezed
+from the wretched inhabitants.
+
+Here affairs were like to have taken a turn, for when Captain Morgan
+came up from Gibraltar he found three great men-of-war lying in the
+entrance to the lake awaiting his coming. Seeing that he was hemmed in
+the narrow sheet of water, Captain Morgan was inclined to compromise
+matters, even offering to relinquish all the plunder he had gained if
+he were allowed to depart in peace. But no; the Spanish admiral would
+hear nothing of this. Having the pirates, as he thought, securely in
+his grasp, he would relinquish nothing, but would sweep them from the
+face of the sea once and forever.
+
+That was an unlucky determination for the Spaniards to reach, for
+instead of paralyzing the pirates with fear, as he expected it would do,
+it simply turned their mad courage into as mad desperation.
+
+A great vessel that they had taken with the town of Maracaibo was
+converted into a fire ship, manned with logs of wood in montera caps and
+sailor jackets, and filled with brimstone, pitch, and palm leaves soaked
+in oil. Then out of the lake the pirates sailed to meet the Spaniards,
+the fire ship leading the way, and bearing down directly upon the
+admiral's vessel. At the helm stood volunteers, the most desperate and
+the bravest of all the pirate gang, and at the ports stood the logs of
+wood in montera caps. So they came up with the admiral, and grappled
+with his ship in spite of the thunder of all his great guns, and then
+the Spaniard saw, all too late, what his opponent really was.
+
+He tried to swing loose, but clouds of smoke and almost instantly a mass
+of roaring flames enveloped both vessels, and the admiral was lost. The
+second vessel, not wishing to wait for the coming of the pirates, bore
+down upon the fort, under the guns of which the cowardly crew sank
+her, and made the best of their way to the shore. The third vessel, not
+having an opportunity to escape, was taken by the pirates without the
+slightest resistance, and the passage from the lake was cleared. So
+the buccaneers sailed away, leaving Maracaibo and Gibraltar prostrate a
+second time.
+
+And now Captain Morgan determined to undertake another venture, the like
+of which had never been equaled in all of the annals of buccaneering.
+This was nothing less than the descent upon and the capture of Panama,
+which was, next to Cartagena, perhaps, the most powerful and the most
+strongly fortified city in the West Indies.
+
+In preparation for this venture he obtained letters of marque from the
+governor of Jamaica, by virtue of which elastic commission he began
+immediately to gather around him all material necessary for the
+undertaking.
+
+When it became known abroad that the great Captain Morgan was about
+undertaking an adventure that was to eclipse all that was ever done
+before, great numbers came flocking to his standard, until he had
+gathered together an army of two thousand or more desperadoes and
+pirates wherewith to prosecute his adventure, albeit the venture itself
+was kept a total secret from everyone. Port Couillon, in the island of
+Hispaniola, over against the Ile de la Vache, was the place of muster,
+and thither the motley band gathered from all quarters. Provisions had
+been plundered from the mainland wherever they could be obtained, and by
+the 24th of October, 1670 (O. S.), everything was in readiness.
+
+The island of Saint Catharine, as it may be remembered, was at one time
+captured by Mansvelt, Morgan's master in his trade of piracy. It had
+been retaken by the Spaniards, and was now thoroughly fortified by them.
+Almost the first attempt that Morgan had made as a master pirate was the
+retaking of Saint Catharine's Isle. In that undertaking he had failed;
+but now, as there was an absolute need of some such place as a base
+of operations, he determined that the place must be taken. And it was
+taken.
+
+The Spaniards, during the time of their possession, had fortified it
+most thoroughly and completely, and had the governor thereof been as
+brave as he who met his death in the castle of Porto Bello, there might
+have been a different tale to tell. As it was, he surrendered it in a
+most cowardly fashion, merely stipulating that there should be a sham
+attack by the buccaneers, whereby his credit might be saved. And so
+Saint Catharine was won.
+
+The next step to be taken was the capture of the castle of Chagres,
+which guarded the mouth of the river of that name, up which river the
+buccaneers would be compelled to transport their troops and provisions
+for the attack upon the city of Panama. This adventure was undertaken by
+four hundred picked men under command of Captain Morgan himself.
+
+The castle of Chagres, known as San Lorenzo by the Spaniards, stood upon
+the top of an abrupt rock at the mouth of the river, and was one of
+the strongest fortresses for its size in all of the West Indies. This
+stronghold Morgan must have if he ever hoped to win Panama.
+
+The attack of the castle and the defense of it were equally fierce,
+bloody, and desperate. Again and again the buccaneers assaulted, and
+again and again they were beaten back. So the morning came, and it
+seemed as though the pirates had been baffled this time. But just at
+this juncture the thatch of palm leaves on the roofs of some of the
+buildings inside the fortifications took fire, a conflagration followed,
+which caused the explosion of one of the magazines, and in the
+paralysis of terror that followed, the pirates forced their way into
+the fortifications, and the castle was won. Most of the Spaniards
+flung themselves from the castle walls into the river or upon the rocks
+beneath, preferring death to capture and possible torture; many who
+were left were put to the sword, and some few were spared and held as
+prisoners.
+
+So fell the castle of Chagres, and nothing now lay between the
+buccaneers and the city of Panama but the intervening and trackless
+forests.
+
+And now the name of the town whose doom was sealed was no secret.
+
+Up the river of Chagres went Capt. Henry Morgan and twelve hundred men,
+packed closely in their canoes; they never stopped, saving now and then
+to rest their stiffened legs, until they had come to a place known as
+Cruz de San Juan Gallego, where they were compelled to leave their boats
+on account of the shallowness of the water.
+
+Leaving a guard of one hundred and sixty men to protect their boats as
+a place of refuge in case they should be worsted before Panama, they
+turned and plunged into the wilderness before them.
+
+There a more powerful foe awaited them than a host of Spaniards
+with match, powder, and lead--starvation. They met but little or no
+opposition in their progress; but wherever they turned they found every
+fiber of meat, every grain of maize, every ounce of bread or meal, swept
+away or destroyed utterly before them. Even when the buccaneers had
+successfully overcome an ambuscade or an attack, and had sent the
+Spaniards flying, the fugitives took the time to strip their dead
+comrades of every grain of food in their leathern sacks, leaving nothing
+but the empty bags.
+
+Says the narrator of these events, himself one of the expedition, "They
+afterward fell to eating those leathern bags, as affording something to
+the ferment of their stomachs."
+
+Ten days they struggled through this bitter privation, doggedly forcing
+their way onward, faint with hunger and haggard with weakness and fever.
+Then, from the high hill and over the tops of the forest trees, they saw
+the steeples of Panama, and nothing remained between them and their goal
+but the fighting of four Spaniards to every one of them--a simple thing
+which they had done over and over again.
+
+Down they poured upon Panama, and out came the Spaniards to meet them;
+four hundred horse, two thousand five hundred foot, and two thousand
+wild bulls which had been herded together to be driven over the
+buccaneers so that their ranks might be disordered and broken. The
+buccaneers were only eight hundred strong; the others had either
+fallen in battle or had dropped along the dreary pathway through the
+wilderness; but in the space of two hours the Spaniards were flying
+madly over the plain, minus six hundred who lay dead or dying behind
+them.
+
+As for the bulls, as many of them as were shot served as food there and
+then for the half-famished pirates, for the buccaneers were never more
+at home than in the slaughter of cattle.
+
+Then they marched toward the city. Three hours' more fighting and
+they were in the streets, howling, yelling, plundering, gorging,
+dram-drinking, and giving full vent to all the vile and nameless lusts
+that burned in their hearts like a hell of fire. And now followed the
+usual sequence of events--rapine, cruelty, and extortion; only this time
+there was no town to ransom, for Morgan had given orders that it should
+be destroyed. The torch was set to it, and Panama, one of the greatest
+cities in the New World, was swept from the face of the earth. Why the
+deed was done, no man but Morgan could tell. Perhaps it was that all
+the secret hiding places for treasure might be brought to light; but
+whatever the reason was, it lay hidden in the breast of the great
+buccaneer himself. For three weeks Morgan and his men abode in this
+dreadful place; and they marched away with ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE
+beasts of burden loaded with treasures of gold and silver and jewels,
+besides great quantities of merchandise, and six hundred prisoners held
+for ransom.
+
+Whatever became of all that vast wealth, and what it amounted to, no
+man but Morgan ever knew, for when a division was made it was found that
+there was only TWO HUNDRED PIECES OF EIGHT TO EACH MAN.
+
+When this dividend was declared a howl of execration went up, under
+which even Capt. Henry Morgan quailed. At night he and four other
+commanders slipped their cables and ran out to sea, and it was said that
+these divided the greater part of the booty among themselves. But the
+wealth plundered at Panama could hardly have fallen short of a million
+and a half of dollars. Computing it at this reasonable figure, the
+various prizes won by Henry Morgan in the West Indies would stand as
+follows: Panama, $1,500,000; Porto Bello, $800,000; Puerto del
+Principe, $700,000; Maracaibo and Gibraltar, $400,000; various piracies,
+$250,000--making a grand total of $3,650,000 as the vast harvest of
+plunder. With this fabulous wealth, wrenched from the Spaniards by
+means of the rack and the cord, and pilfered from his companions by the
+meanest of thieving, Capt. Henry Morgan retired from business, honored
+of all, rendered famous by his deeds, knighted by the good King Charles
+II, and finally appointed governor of the rich island of Jamaica.
+
+Other buccaneers followed him. Campeche was taken and sacked, and even
+Cartagena itself fell; but with Henry Morgan culminated the glory of
+the buccaneers, and from that time they declined in power and wealth and
+wickedness until they were finally swept away.
+
+The buccaneers became bolder and bolder. In fact, so daring were their
+crimes that the home governments, stirred at last by these outrageous
+barbarities, seriously undertook the suppression of the freebooters,
+lopping and trimming the main trunk until its members were scattered
+hither and thither, and it was thought that the organization was
+exterminated. But, so far from being exterminated, the individual
+members were merely scattered north, south, east, and west, each forming
+a nucleus around which gathered and clustered the very worst of the
+offscouring of humanity.
+
+The result was that when the seventeenth century was fairly packed away
+with its lavender in the store chest of the past, a score or more
+bands of freebooters were cruising along the Atlantic seaboard in armed
+vessels, each with a black flag with its skull and crossbones at the
+fore, and with a nondescript crew made up of the tags and remnants of
+civilized and semicivilized humanity (white, black, red, and yellow),
+known generally as marooners, swarming upon the decks below.
+
+Nor did these offshoots from the old buccaneer stem confine their
+depredations to the American seas alone; the East Indies and the African
+coast also witnessed their doings, and suffered from them, and even the
+Bay of Biscay had good cause to remember more than one visit from them.
+
+Worthy sprigs from so worthy a stem improved variously upon the
+parent methods; for while the buccaneers were content to prey upon the
+Spaniards alone, the marooners reaped the harvest from the commerce of
+all nations.
+
+So up and down the Atlantic seaboard they cruised, and for the fifty
+years that marooning was in the flower of its glory it was a sorrowful
+time for the coasters of New England, the middle provinces, and the
+Virginias, sailing to the West Indies with their cargoes of salt fish,
+grain, and tobacco. Trading became almost as dangerous as privateering,
+and sea captains were chosen as much for their knowledge of the
+flintlock and the cutlass as for their seamanship.
+
+As by far the largest part of the trading in American waters was
+conducted by these Yankee coasters, so by far the heaviest blows, and
+those most keenly felt, fell upon them. Bulletin after bulletin came
+to port with its doleful tale of this vessel burned or that vessel
+scuttled, this one held by the pirates for their own use or that one
+stripped of its goods and sent into port as empty as an eggshell from
+which the yolk had been sucked. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
+Charleston suffered alike, and worthy ship owners had to leave off
+counting their losses upon their fingers and take to the slate to keep
+the dismal record.
+
+"Maroon--to put ashore on a desert isle, as a sailor, under pretense of
+having committed some great crime." Thus our good Noah Webster gives us
+the dry bones, the anatomy, upon which the imagination may construct a
+specimen to suit itself.
+
+It is thence that the marooners took their name, for marooning was
+one of their most effective instruments of punishment or revenge. If a
+pirate broke one of the many rules which governed the particular band
+to which he belonged, he was marooned; did a captain defend his ship to
+such a degree as to be unpleasant to the pirates attacking it, he
+was marooned; even the pirate captain himself, if he displeased his
+followers by the severity of his rule, was in danger of having the same
+punishment visited upon him which he had perhaps more than once visited
+upon another.
+
+The process of marooning was as simple as terrible. A suitable place was
+chosen (generally some desert isle as far removed as possible from the
+pathway of commerce), and the condemned man was rowed from the ship to
+the beach. Out he was bundled upon the sand spit; a gun, a half dozen
+bullets, a few pinches of powder, and a bottle of water were chucked
+ashore after him, and away rowed the boat's crew back to the ship,
+leaving the poor wretch alone to rave away his life in madness, or to
+sit sunken in his gloomy despair till death mercifully released him from
+torment. It rarely if ever happened that anything was known of him after
+having been marooned. A boat's crew from some vessel, sailing by chance
+that way, might perhaps find a few chalky bones bleaching upon the white
+sand in the garish glare of the sunlight, but that was all. And such
+were marooners.
+
+By far the largest number of pirate captains were Englishmen, for,
+from the days of good Queen Bess, English sea captains seemed to have
+a natural turn for any species of venture that had a smack of piracy
+in it, and from the great Admiral Drake of the old, old days, to the
+truculent Morgan of buccaneering times, the Englishman did the boldest
+and wickedest deeds, and wrought the most damage.
+
+First of all upon the list of pirates stands the bold Captain Avary, one
+of the institutors of marooning. Him we see but dimly, half hidden by
+the glamouring mists of legends and tradition. Others who came afterward
+outstripped him far enough in their doings, but he stands pre-eminent as
+the first of marooners of whom actual history has been handed down to us
+of the present day.
+
+When the English, Dutch, and Spanish entered into an alliance to
+suppress buccaneering in the West Indies, certain worthies of Bristol,
+in old England, fitted out two vessels to assist in this laudable
+project; for doubtless Bristol trade suffered smartly from the Morgans
+and the l'Olonoises of that old time. One of these vessels was named the
+Duke, of which a certain Captain Gibson was the commander and Avary the
+mate.
+
+Away they sailed to the West Indies, and there Avary became impressed by
+the advantages offered by piracy, and by the amount of good things that
+were to be gained by very little striving.
+
+One night the captain (who was one of those fellows mightily addicted
+to punch), instead of going ashore to saturate himself with rum at the
+ordinary, had his drink in his cabin in private. While he lay snoring
+away the effects of his rum in the cabin, Avary and a few other
+conspirators heaved the anchor very leisurely, and sailed out of the
+harbor of Corunna, and through the midst of the allied fleet riding at
+anchor in the darkness.
+
+By and by, when the morning came, the captain was awakened by the
+pitching and tossing of the vessel, the rattle and clatter of the tackle
+overhead, and the noise of footsteps passing and repassing hither and
+thither across the deck. Perhaps he lay for a while turning the matter
+over and over in his muddled head, but he presently rang the bell, and
+Avary and another fellow answered the call.
+
+"What's the matter?" bawls the captain from his berth.
+
+"Nothing," says Avary, coolly.
+
+"Something's the matter with the ship," says the captain. "Does she
+drive? What weather is it?"
+
+"Oh no," says Avary; "we are at sea."
+
+"At sea?"
+
+"Come, come!" says Avary: "I'll tell you; you must know that I'm the
+captain of the ship now, and you must be packing from this here cabin.
+We are bound to Madagascar, to make all of our fortunes, and if you're a
+mind to ship for the cruise, why, we'll be glad to have you, if you will
+be sober and mind your own business; if not, there is a boat alongside,
+and I'll have you set ashore."
+
+The poor half-tipsy captain had no relish to go a-pirating under the
+command of his backsliding mate, so out of the ship he bundled, and away
+he rowed with four or five of the crew, who, like him, refused to join
+with their jolly shipmates.
+
+The rest of them sailed away to the East Indies, to try their fortunes
+in those waters, for our Captain Avary was of a high spirit, and had
+no mind to fritter away his time in the West Indies squeezed dry by
+buccaneer Morgan and others of lesser note. No, he would make a bold
+stroke for it at once, and make or lose at a single cast.
+
+On his way he picked up a couple of like kind with himself--two sloops
+off Madagascar. With these he sailed away to the coast of India, and for
+a time his name was lost in the obscurity of uncertain history. But
+only for a time, for suddenly it flamed out in a blaze of glory. It was
+reported that a vessel belonging to the Great Mogul, laden with treasure
+and bearing the monarch's own daughter upon a holy pilgrimage to Mecca
+(they being Mohammedans), had fallen in with the pirates, and after a
+short resistance had been surrendered, with the damsel, her court, and
+all the diamonds, pearls, silk, silver, and gold aboard. It was rumored
+that the Great Mogul, raging at the insult offered to him through his
+own flesh and blood, had threatened to wipe out of existence the few
+English settlements scattered along the coast; whereat the honorable
+East India Company was in a pretty state of fuss and feathers. Rumor,
+growing with the telling, has it that Avary is going to marry the
+Indian princess, willy-nilly, and will turn rajah, and eschew piracy as
+indecent. As for the treasure itself, there was no end to the extent to
+which it grew as it passed from mouth to mouth.
+
+Cracking the nut of romance and exaggeration, we come to the kernel of
+the story--that Avary did fall in with an Indian vessel laden with great
+treasure (and possibly with the Mogul's daughter), which he captured,
+and thereby gained a vast prize.
+
+Having concluded that he had earned enough money by the trade he had
+undertaken, he determined to retire and live decently for the rest of
+his life upon what he already had. As a step toward this object, he set
+about cheating his Madagascar partners out of their share of what had
+been gained. He persuaded them to store all the treasure in his vessel,
+it being the largest of the three; and so, having it safely in hand, he
+altered the course of his ship one fine night, and when the morning
+came the Madagascar sloops found themselves floating upon a wide ocean
+without a farthing of the treasure for which they had fought so hard,
+and for which they might whistle for all the good it would do them.
+
+At first Avary had a great part of a mind to settle at Boston, in
+Massachusetts, and had that little town been one whit less bleak and
+forbidding, it might have had the honor of being the home of this famous
+man. As it was, he did not like the looks of it, so he sailed away to
+the eastward, to Ireland, where he settled himself at Biddeford, in
+hopes of an easy life of it for the rest of his days.
+
+Here he found himself the possessor of a plentiful stock of jewels, such
+as pearls, diamonds, rubies, etc., but with hardly a score of honest
+farthings to jingle in his breeches pocket. He consulted with a certain
+merchant of Bristol concerning the disposal of the stones--a fellow
+not much more cleanly in his habits of honesty than Avary himself.
+This worthy undertook to act as Avary's broker. Off he marched with
+the jewels, and that was the last that the pirate saw of his Indian
+treasure.
+
+Perhaps the most famous of all the piratical names to American ears are
+those of Capt. Robert Kidd and Capt. Edward Teach, or "Blackbeard."
+
+Nothing will be ventured in regard to Kidd at this time, nor in regard
+to the pros and cons as to whether he really was or was not a pirate,
+after all. For many years he was the very hero of heroes of piratical
+fame, there was hardly a creek or stream or point of land along our
+coast, hardly a convenient bit of good sandy beach, or hump of rock, or
+water-washed cave, where fabulous treasures were not said to have been
+hidden by this worthy marooner. Now we are assured that he never was
+a pirate, and never did bury any treasure, excepting a certain chest,
+which he was compelled to hide upon Gardiner's Island--and perhaps even
+it was mythical.
+
+So poor Kidd must be relegated to the dull ranks of simply respectable
+people, or semirespectable people at best.
+
+But with "Blackbeard" it is different, for in him we have a real,
+ranting, raging, roaring pirate per se--one who really did bury
+treasure, who made more than one captain walk the plank, and who
+committed more private murders than he could number on the fingers of
+both hands; one who fills, and will continue to fill, the place to which
+he has been assigned for generations, and who may be depended upon to
+hold his place in the confidence of others for generations to come.
+
+Captain Teach was a Bristol man born, and learned his trade on board of
+sundry privateers in the East Indies during the old French war--that of
+1702--and a better apprenticeship could no man serve. At last, somewhere
+about the latter part of the year 1716, a privateering captain, one
+Benjamin Hornigold, raised him from the ranks and put him in command of
+a sloop--a lately captured prize and Blackbeard's fortune was made. It
+was a very slight step, and but the change of a few letters, to convert
+"privateer" into "pirate," and it was a very short time before Teach
+made that change. Not only did he make it himself, but he persuaded his
+old captain to join with him.
+
+And now fairly began that series of bold and lawless depredations which
+have made his name so justly famous, and which placed him among the very
+greatest of marooning freebooters.
+
+"Our hero," says the old historian who sings of the arms and bravery of
+this great man--"our hero assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that
+large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole
+face, and frightened America more than any comet that appeared there
+in a long time. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons into small
+tails, after the manner of our Ramillies wig, and turn them about his
+ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders, with three
+brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like bandoleers; he stuck lighted
+matches under his hat, which, appearing on each side of his face, and
+his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a
+figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a Fury from hell to look
+more frightful."
+
+The night before the day of the action in which he was killed he sat up
+drinking with some congenial company until broad daylight. One of them
+asked him if his poor young wife knew where his treasure was hidden.
+"No," says Blackbeard; "nobody but the devil and I knows where it is,
+and the longest liver shall have all."
+
+As for that poor young wife of his, the life that he and his rum-crazy
+shipmates led her was too terrible to be told.
+
+For a time Blackbeard worked at his trade down on the Spanish Main,
+gathering, in the few years he was there, a very neat little fortune in
+the booty captured from sundry vessels; but by and by he took it into
+his head to try his luck along the coast of the Carolinas; so off
+he sailed to the northward, with quite a respectable little fleet,
+consisting of his own vessel and two captured sloops. From that time he
+was actively engaged in the making of American history in his small way.
+
+He first appeared off the bar of Charleston Harbor, to the no small
+excitement of the worthy town of that ilk, and there he lay for five
+or six days, blockading the port, and stopping incoming and outgoing
+vessels at his pleasure, so that, for the time, the commerce of the
+province was entirely paralyzed. All the vessels so stopped he held as
+prizes, and all the crews and passengers (among the latter of whom was
+more than one provincial worthy of the day) he retained as though they
+were prisoners of war.
+
+And it was a mightily awkward thing for the good folk of Charleston to
+behold day after day a black flag with its white skull and crossbones
+fluttering at the fore of the pirate captain's craft, over across the
+level stretch of green salt marshes; and it was mightily unpleasant,
+too, to know that this or that prominent citizen was crowded down with
+the other prisoners under the hatches.
+
+One morning Captain Blackbeard finds that his stock of medicine is low.
+"Tut!" says he, "we'll turn no hair gray for that." So up he calls the
+bold Captain Richards, the commander of his consort the Revenge sloop,
+and bids him take Mr. Marks (one of his prisoners), and go up to
+Charleston and get the medicine. There was no task that suited our
+Captain Richards better than that. Up to the town he rowed, as bold as
+brass. "Look ye," says he to the governor, rolling his quid of tobacco
+from one cheek to another--"look ye, we're after this and that, and if
+we don't get it, why, I'll tell you plain, we'll burn them bloody crafts
+of yours that we've took over yonder, and cut the weasand of every
+clodpoll aboard of 'em."
+
+There was no answering an argument of such force as this, and the
+worshipful governor and the good folk of Charleston knew very well
+that Blackbeard and his crew were the men to do as they promised. So
+Blackbeard got his medicine, and though it cost the colony two thousand
+dollars, it was worth that much to the town to be quit of him.
+
+They say that while Captain Richards was conducting his negotiations
+with the governor his boat's crew were stumping around the streets of
+the town, having a glorious time of it, while the good folk glowered
+wrathfully at them, but dared venture nothing in speech or act.
+
+Having gained a booty of between seven and eight thousand dollars from
+the prizes captured, the pirates sailed away from Charleston Harbor to
+the coast of North Carolina.
+
+And now Blackbeard, following the plan adopted by so many others of his
+kind, began to cudgel his brains for means to cheat his fellows out of
+their share of the booty.
+
+At Topsail Inlet he ran his own vessel aground, as though by accident.
+Hands, the captain of one of the consorts, pretending to come to his
+assistance, also grounded HIS sloop. Nothing now remained but for those
+who were able to get away in the other craft, which was all that was
+now left of the little fleet. This did Blackbeard with some forty of his
+favorites. The rest of the pirates were left on the sand spit to await
+the return of their companions--which never happened.
+
+As for Blackbeard and those who were with him, they were that much
+richer, for there were so many the fewer pockets to fill. But even yet
+there were too many to share the booty, in Blackbeard's opinion, and so
+he marooned a parcel more of them--some eighteen or twenty--upon a naked
+sand bank, from which they were afterward mercifully rescued by another
+freebooter who chanced that way--a certain Major Stede Bonnet, of whom
+more will presently be said. About that time a royal proclamation had
+been issued offering pardon to all pirates in arms who would surrender
+to the king's authority before a given date. So up goes Master
+Blackbeard to the Governor of North Carolina and makes his neck safe by
+surrendering to the proclamation--albeit he kept tight clutch upon what
+he had already gained.
+
+And now we find our bold Captain Blackbeard established in the good
+province of North Carolina, where he and His Worship the Governor struck
+up a vast deal of intimacy, as profitable as it was pleasant. There is
+something very pretty in the thought of the bold sea rover giving up his
+adventurous life (excepting now and then an excursion against a trader
+or two in the neighboring sound, when the need of money was pressing);
+settling quietly down into the routine of old colonial life, with a
+young wife of sixteen at his side, who made the fourteenth that he had
+in various ports here and there in the world.
+
+Becoming tired of an inactive life, Blackbeard afterward resumed his
+piratical career. He cruised around in the rivers and inlets and sounds
+of North Carolina for a while, ruling the roost and with never a one to
+say him nay, until there was no bearing with such a pest any longer. So
+they sent a deputation up to the Governor of Virginia asking if he would
+be pleased to help them in their trouble.
+
+There were two men-of-war lying at Kicquetan, in the James River, at the
+time. To them the Governor of Virginia applies, and plucky Lieutenant
+Maynard, of the Pearl, was sent to Ocracoke Inlet to fight this pirate
+who ruled it down there so like the cock of a walk. There he found
+Blackbeard waiting for him, and as ready for a fight as ever the
+lieutenant himself could be. Fight they did, and while it lasted it
+was as pretty a piece of business of its kind as one could wish to
+see. Blackbeard drained a glass of grog, wishing the lieutenant luck
+in getting aboard of him, fired a broadside, blew some twenty of the
+lieutenant's men out of existence, and totally crippled one of his
+little sloops for the balance of the fight. After that, and under cover
+of the smoke, the pirate and his men boarded the other sloop, and then
+followed a fine old-fashioned hand-to-hand conflict betwixt him and the
+lieutenant. First they fired their pistols, and then they took to it
+with cutlasses--right, left, up and down, cut and slash--until the
+lieutenant's cutlass broke short off at the hilt. Then Blackbeard would
+have finished him off handsomely, only up steps one of the lieutenant's
+men and fetches him a great slash over the neck, so that the lieutenant
+came off with no more hurt than a cut across the knuckles.
+
+At the very first discharge of their pistols Blackbeard had been shot
+through the body, but he was not for giving up for that--not he. As said
+before, he was of the true roaring, raging breed of pirates, and stood
+up to it until he received twenty more cutlass cuts and five additional
+shots, and then fell dead while trying to fire off an empty pistol.
+After that the lieutenant cut off the pirate's head, and sailed away in
+triumph, with the bloody trophy nailed to the bow of his battered sloop.
+
+Those of Blackbeard's men who were not killed were carried off to
+Virginia, and all of them tried and hanged but one or two, their names,
+no doubt, still standing in a row in the provincial records.
+
+But did Blackbeard really bury treasures, as tradition says, along the
+sandy shores he haunted?
+
+Master Clement Downing, midshipman aboard the Salisbury, wrote a book
+after his return from the cruise to Madagascar, whither the Salisbury
+had been ordered, to put an end to the piracy with which those waters
+were infested. He says:
+
+"At Guzarat I met with a Portuguese named Anthony de Sylvestre; he came
+with two other Portuguese and two Dutchmen to take on in the Moor's
+service, as many Europeans do. This Anthony told me he had been among
+the pirates, and that he belonged to one of the sloops in Virginia when
+Blackbeard was taken. He informed me that if it should be my lot ever
+to go to York River or Maryland, near an island called Mulberry Island,
+provided we went on shore at the watering place, where the shipping used
+most commonly to ride, that there the pirates had buried considerable
+sums of money in great chests well clamped with iron plates. As to my
+part, I never was that way, nor much acquainted with any that ever used
+those parts; but I have made inquiry, and am informed that there is such
+a place as Mulberry Island. If any person who uses those parts should
+think it worth while to dig a little way at the upper end of a small
+cove, where it is convenient to land, he would soon find whether the
+information I had was well grounded. Fronting the landing place are five
+trees, among which, he said, the money was hid. I cannot warrant the
+truth of this account; but if I was ever to go there, I should find some
+means or other to satisfy myself, as it could not be a great deal out
+of my way. If anybody should obtain the benefit of this account, if it
+please God that they ever come to England, 'tis hoped they will remember
+whence they had this information."
+
+Another worthy was Capt. Edward Low, who learned his trade of
+sail-making at good old Boston town, and piracy at Honduras. No one
+stood higher in the trade than he, and no one mounted to more lofty
+altitudes of bloodthirsty and unscrupulous wickedness. 'Tis strange that
+so little has been written and sung of this man of might, for he was as
+worthy of story and of song as was Blackbeard.
+
+It was under a Yankee captain that he made his first cruise--down to
+Honduras, for a cargo of logwood, which in those times was no better
+than stolen from the Spanish folk.
+
+One day, lying off the shore, in the Gulf of Honduras, comes Master Low
+and the crew of the whaleboat rowing across from the beach, where they
+had been all morning chopping logwood.
+
+"What are you after?" says the captain, for they were coming back with
+nothing but themselves in the boat.
+
+"We're after our dinner," says Low, as spokesman of the party.
+
+"You'll have no dinner," says the captain, "until you fetch off another
+load."
+
+"Dinner or no dinner, we'll pay for it," says Low, wherewith he up with
+a musket, squinted along the barrel, and pulled the trigger.
+
+Luckily the gun hung fire, and the Yankee captain was spared to steal
+logwood a while longer.
+
+All the same, that was no place for Ned Low to make a longer stay, so
+off he and his messmates rowed in a whaleboat, captured a brig out at
+sea, and turned pirates.
+
+He presently fell in with the notorious Captain Lowther, a fellow after
+his own kidney, who put the finishing touches to his education and
+taught him what wickedness he did not already know.
+
+And so he became a master pirate, and a famous hand at his craft, and
+thereafter forever bore an inveterate hatred of all Yankees because of
+the dinner he had lost, and never failed to smite whatever one of
+them luck put within his reach. Once he fell in with a ship off South
+Carolina--the Amsterdam Merchant, Captain Williamson, commander--a
+Yankee craft and a Yankee master. He slit the nose and cropped the ears
+of the captain, and then sailed merrily away, feeling the better for
+having marred a Yankee.
+
+New York and New England had more than one visit from the doughty
+captain, each of which visits they had good cause to remember, for he
+made them smart for it.
+
+Along in the year 1722 thirteen vessels were riding at anchor in front
+of the good town of Marblehead. Into the harbor sailed a strange craft.
+"Who is she?" say the townsfolk, for the coming of a new vessel was no
+small matter in those days.
+
+Who the strangers were was not long a matter of doubt. Up goes the black
+flag, and the skull and crossbones to the fore.
+
+"'Tis the bloody Low," say one and all; and straightway all was flutter
+and commotion, as in a duck pond when a hawk pitches and strikes in the
+midst.
+
+It was a glorious thing for our captain, for here were thirteen Yankee
+crafts at one and the same time. So he took what he wanted, and then
+sailed away, and it was many a day before Marblehead forgot that visit.
+
+Some time after this he and his consort fell foul of an English sloop
+of war, the Greyhound, whereby they were so roughly handled that Low was
+glad enough to slip away, leaving his consort and her crew behind him,
+as a sop to the powers of law and order. And lucky for them if no worse
+fate awaited them than to walk the dreadful plank with a bandage around
+the blinded eyes and a rope around the elbows. So the consort was taken,
+and the crew tried and hanged in chains, and Low sailed off in as pretty
+a bit of rage as ever a pirate fell into.
+
+The end of this worthy is lost in the fogs of the past: some say that he
+died of a yellow fever down in New Orleans; it was not at the end of a
+hempen cord, more's the pity.
+
+Here fittingly with our strictly American pirates should stand Major
+Stede Bonnet along with the rest. But in truth he was only a poor
+half-and-half fellow of his kind, and even after his hand was fairly
+turned to the business he had undertaken, a qualm of conscience would
+now and then come across him, and he would make vast promises to
+forswear his evil courses.
+
+However, he jogged along in his course of piracy snugly enough until he
+fell foul of the gallant Colonel Rhett, off Charleston Harbor, whereupon
+his luck and his courage both were suddenly snuffed out with a puff of
+powder smoke and a good rattling broadside. Down came the "Black Roger"
+with its skull and crossbones from the fore, and Colonel Rhett had the
+glory of fetching back as pretty a cargo of scoundrels and cutthroats as
+the town ever saw.
+
+After the next assizes they were strung up, all in a row--evil apples
+ready for the roasting.
+
+"Ned" England was a fellow of different blood--only he snapped his whip
+across the back of society over in the East Indies and along the hot
+shores of Hindustan.
+
+The name of Capt. Howel Davis stands high among his fellows. He was the
+Ulysses of pirates, the beloved not only of Mercury, but of Minerva.
+
+He it was who hoodwinked the captain of a French ship of double the size
+and strength of his own, and fairly cheated him into the surrender of
+his craft without the firing of a single pistol or the striking of a
+single blow; he it was who sailed boldly into the port of Gambia, on the
+coast of Guinea, and under the guns of the castle, proclaiming himself
+as a merchant trading for slaves.
+
+The cheat was kept up until the fruit of mischief was ripe for the
+picking; then, when the governor and the guards of the castle were
+lulled into entire security, and when Davis's band was scattered about
+wherever each man could do the most good, it was out pistol, up cutlass,
+and death if a finger moved. They tied the soldiers back to back, and
+the governor to his own armchair, and then rifled wherever it pleased
+them. After that they sailed away, and though they had not made the
+fortune they had hoped to glean, it was a good snug round sum that they
+shared among them.
+
+Their courage growing high with success, they determined to attempt the
+island of Del Principe--a prosperous Portuguese settlement on the
+coast. The plan for taking the place was cleverly laid, and would have
+succeeded, only that a Portuguese negro among the pirate crew turned
+traitor and carried the news ashore to the governor of the fort.
+Accordingly, the next day, when Captain Davis came ashore, he found
+there a good strong guard drawn up as though to honor his coming. But
+after he and those with him were fairly out of their boat, and well away
+from the water side, there was a sudden rattle of musketry, a cloud of
+smoke, and a dull groan or two. Only one man ran out from under that
+pungent cloud, jumped into the boat, and rowed away; and when it lifted,
+there lay Captain Davis and his companions all of a heap, like a pile of
+old clothes.
+
+Capt. Bartholomew Roberts was the particular and especial pupil
+of Davis, and when that worthy met his death so suddenly and so
+unexpectedly in the unfortunate manner above narrated, he was chosen
+unanimously as the captain of the fleet, and he was a worthy pupil of
+a worthy master. Many were the poor fluttering merchant ducks that this
+sea hawk swooped upon and struck; and cleanly and cleverly were they
+plucked before his savage clutch loosened its hold upon them.
+
+"He made a gallant figure," says the old narrator, "being dressed in a
+rich crimson waistcoat and breeches and red feather in his hat, a gold
+chain around his neck, with a diamond cross hanging to it, a sword in
+his hand, and two pair of pistols hanging at the end of a silk sling
+flung over his shoulders according to the fashion of the pyrates."
+Thus he appeared in the last engagement which he fought--that with the
+Swallow--a royal sloop of war. A gallant fight they made of it, those
+bulldog pirates, for, finding themselves caught in a trap betwixt the
+man-of-war and the shore, they determined to bear down upon the king's
+vessel, fire a slapping broadside into her, and then try to get away,
+trusting to luck in the doing, and hoping that their enemy might be
+crippled by their fire.
+
+Captain Roberts himself was the first to fall at the return fire of the
+Swallow; a grapeshot struck him in the neck, and he fell forward across
+the gun near to which he was standing at the time. A certain fellow
+named Stevenson, who was at the helm, saw him fall, and thought he was
+wounded. At the lifting of the arm the body rolled over upon the deck,
+and the man saw that the captain was dead. "Whereupon," says the old
+history, "he" [Stevenson] "gushed into tears, and wished that the next
+shot might be his portion." After their captain's death the pirate crew
+had no stomach for more fighting; the "Black Roger" was struck, and one
+and all surrendered to justice and the gallows.
+
+Such is a brief and bald account of the most famous of these pirates.
+But they are only a few of a long list of notables, such as Captain
+Martel, Capt. Charles Vane (who led the gallant Colonel Rhett, of South
+Carolina, such a wild-goose chase in and out among the sluggish creeks
+and inlets along the coast), Capt. John Rackam, and Captain Anstis,
+Captain Worley, and Evans, and Philips, and others--a score or more of
+wild fellows whose very names made ship captains tremble in their shoes
+in those good old times.
+
+And such is that black chapter of history of the past--an evil chapter,
+lurid with cruelty and suffering, stained with blood and smoke. Yet
+it is a written chapter, and it must be read. He who chooses may
+read betwixt the lines of history this great truth: Evil itself is an
+instrument toward the shaping of good. Therefore the history of evil as
+well as the history of good should be read, considered, and digested.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II. THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND
+
+IT is not so easy to tell why discredit should be cast upon a man
+because of something that his grandfather may have done amiss, but the
+world, which is never overnice in its discrimination as to where to lay
+the blame, is often pleased to make the innocent suffer in the place of
+the guilty.
+
+Barnaby True was a good, honest, biddable lad, as boys go, but yet he
+was not ever allowed altogether to forget that his grandfather had
+been that very famous pirate, Capt. William Brand, who, after so many
+marvelous adventures (if one may believe the catchpenny stories and
+ballads that were written about him), was murdered in Jamaica by Capt.
+John Malyoe, the commander of his own consort, the Adventure galley.
+
+It has never been denied, that ever I heard, that up to the time of
+Captain Brand's being commissioned against the South Sea pirates he had
+always been esteemed as honest, reputable a sea captain as could be.
+
+When he started out upon that adventure it was with a ship, the Royal
+Sovereign, fitted out by some of the most decent merchants of New York.
+The governor himself had subscribed to the adventure, and had himself
+signed Captain Brand's commission. So, if the unfortunate man went
+astray, he must have had great temptation to do so, many others behaving
+no better when the opportunity offered in those far-away seas where so
+many rich purchases might very easily be taken and no one the wiser.
+
+To be sure, those stories and ballads made our captain to be a most
+wicked, profane wretch; and if he were, why, God knows he suffered and
+paid for it, for he laid his bones in Jamaica, and never saw his home
+or his wife and daughter again after he had sailed away on the Royal
+Sovereign on that long misfortunate voyage, leaving them in New York to
+the care of strangers.
+
+At the time when he met his fate in Port Royal Harbor he had obtained
+two vessels under his command--the Royal Sovereign, which was the boat
+fitted out for him in New York, and the Adventure galley, which he was
+said to have taken somewhere in the South Seas. With these he lay in
+those waters of Jamaica for over a month after his return from the
+coasts of Africa, waiting for news from home, which, when it came, was
+of the very blackest; for the colonial authorities were at that time
+stirred up very hot against him to take him and hang him for a pirate,
+so as to clear their own skirts for having to do with such a fellow. So
+maybe it seemed better to our captain to hide his ill-gotten treasure
+there in those far-away parts, and afterward to try and bargain with it
+for his life when he should reach New York, rather than to sail straight
+for the Americas with what he had earned by his piracies, and so risk
+losing life and money both.
+
+However that might be, the story was that Captain Brand and his gunner,
+and Captain Malyoe of the Adventure and the sailing master of the
+Adventure all went ashore together with a chest of money (no one of them
+choosing to trust the other three in so nice an affair), and buried the
+treasure somewhere on the beach of Port Royal Harbor. The story then has
+it that they fell a-quarreling about a future division or the money,
+and that, as a wind-up to the affair, Captain Malyoe shot Captain Brand
+through the head, while the sailing master of the Adventure served the
+gunner of the Royal Sovereign after the same fashion through the body,
+and that the murderers then went away, leaving the two stretched out
+in their own blood on the sand in the staring sun, with no one to know
+where the money was hid but they two who had served their comrades so.
+
+It is a mighty great pity that anyone should have a grandfather who
+ended his days in such a sort as this, but it was no fault of Barnaby
+True's, nor could he have done anything to prevent it, seeing that he
+was not even born into the world at the time that his grandfather turned
+pirate, and was only one year old when he so met his tragical end.
+Nevertheless, the boys with whom he went to school never tired of
+calling him "Pirate," and would sometimes sing for his benefit that
+famous catchpenny song beginning thus:
+
+     Oh, my name was Captain Brand,
+     A-sailing,
+     And a-sailing;
+     Oh, my name was Captain Brand,
+     A-sailing free.
+     Oh, my name was Captain Brand,
+     And I sinned by sea and land,
+     For I broke God's just command,
+     A-sailing free.
+
+'Twas a vile thing to sing at the grandson of so misfortunate a man, and
+oftentimes little Barnaby True would double up his fists and would fight
+his tormentors at great odds, and would sometimes go back home with a
+bloody nose to have his poor mother cry over him and grieve for him.
+
+Not that his days were all of teasing and torment, neither; for if his
+comrades did treat him so, why, then, there were other times when he
+and they were as great friends as could be, and would go in swimming
+together where there was a bit of sandy strand along the East River
+above Fort George, and that in the most amicable fashion. Or, maybe
+the very next day after he had fought so with his fellows, he would go
+a-rambling with them up the Bowerie Road, perhaps to help them steal
+cherries from some old Dutch farmer, forgetting in such adventure what a
+thief his own grandfather had been.
+
+Well, when Barnaby True was between sixteen and seventeen years old he
+was taken into employment in the countinghouse of Mr. Roger Hartright,
+the well-known West India merchant, and Barnaby's own stepfather.
+
+It was the kindness of this good man that not only found a place for
+Barnaby in the countinghouse, but advanced him so fast that against our
+hero was twenty-one years old he had made four voyages as supercargo to
+the West Indies in Mr. Hartright's ship, the Belle Helen, and soon after
+he was twenty-one undertook a fifth. Nor was it in any such subordinate
+position as mere supercargo that he acted, but rather as the
+confidential agent of Mr. Hartright, who, having no children of his
+own, was very jealous to advance our hero into a position of trust and
+responsibility in the countinghouse, as though he were indeed a son, so
+that even the captain of the ship had scarcely more consideration aboard
+than he, young as he was in years.
+
+As for the agents and correspondents of Mr. Hartright throughout these
+parts, they also, knowing how the good man had adopted his interests,
+were very polite and obliging to Master Barnaby--especially, be it
+mentioned, Mr. Ambrose Greenfield, of Kingston, Jamaica, who, upon the
+occasions of his visits to those parts, did all that he could to make
+Barnaby's stay in that town agreeable and pleasant to him.
+
+So much for the history of our hero to the time of the beginning of this
+story, without which you shall hardly be able to understand the purport
+of those most extraordinary adventures that befell him shortly after he
+came of age, nor the logic of their consequence after they had occurred.
+
+For it was during his fifth voyage to the West Indies that the first of
+those extraordinary adventures happened of which I shall have presently
+to tell.
+
+At that time he had been in Kingston for the best part of four weeks,
+lodging at the house of a very decent, respectable widow, by name Mrs.
+Anne Bolles, who, with three pleasant and agreeable daughters, kept a
+very clean and well-served lodging house in the outskirts of the town.
+
+One morning, as our hero sat sipping his coffee, clad only in loose
+cotton drawers, a shirt, and a jacket, and with slippers upon his feet,
+as is the custom in that country, where everyone endeavors to keep as
+cool as may be while he sat thus sipping his coffee Miss Eliza, the
+youngest of the three daughters, came and gave him a note, which,
+she said, a stranger had just handed in at the door, going away again
+without waiting for a reply. You may judge of Barnaby's surprise when he
+opened the note and read as follows:
+
+     MR.  BARNABY TRUE.
+
+     SIR,--Though you don't know me, I know you, and I tell you
+     this: if you will be at Pratt's Ordinary on Harbor Street
+     on Friday next at eight o'clock of the evening, and will
+     accompany the man who shall say to you, "The Royal Sovereign
+     is come in," you shall learn something the most to your
+     advantage that ever befell you. Sir, keep this note, and
+     show it to him who shall address these words to you, so to
+     certify that you are the man he seeks.
+
+Such was the wording of the note, which was without address, and without
+any superscription whatever.
+
+The first emotion that stirred Barnaby was one of extreme and profound
+amazement. Then the thought came into his mind that some witty fellow,
+of whom he knew a good many in that town--and wild, waggish pranks they
+were was attempting to play off some smart jest upon him. But all
+that Miss Eliza could tell him when he questioned her concerning the
+messenger was that the bearer of the note was a tall, stout man, with
+a red neckerchief around his neck and copper buckles to his shoes, and
+that he had the appearance of a sailorman, having a great big queue
+hanging down his back. But, Lord! what was such a description as that
+in a busy seaport town, full of scores of men to fit such a likeness?
+Accordingly, our hero put away the note into his wallet, determining to
+show it to his good friend Mr. Greenfield that evening, and to ask his
+advice upon it. So he did show it, and that gentleman's opinion was the
+same as his--that some wag was minded to play off a hoax upon him, and
+that the matter of the letter was all nothing but smoke.
+
+Nevertheless, though Barnaby was thus confirmed in his opinion as to the
+nature of the communication he had received, he yet determined in his
+own mind that he would see the business through to the end, and would be
+at Pratt's Ordinary, as the note demanded, upon the day and at the time
+specified therein.
+
+Pratt's Ordinary was at that time a very fine and well-known place of
+its sort, with good tobacco and the best rum that ever I tasted, and had
+a garden behind it that, sloping down to the harbor front, was planted
+pretty thick with palms and ferns grouped into clusters with flowers and
+plants. Here were a number of little tables, some in little grottoes,
+like our Vauxhall in New York, and with red and blue and white paper
+lanterns hung among the foliage, whither gentlemen and ladies used
+sometimes to go of an evening to sit and drink lime juice and sugar and
+water (and sometimes a taste of something stronger), and to look out
+across the water at the shipping in the cool of the night.
+
+Thither, accordingly, our hero went, a little before the time appointed
+in the note, and passing directly through the Ordinary and the garden
+beyond, chose a table at the lower end of the garden and close to the
+water's edge, where he would not be easily seen by anyone coming into
+the place. Then, ordering some rum and water and a pipe of tobacco, he
+composed himself to watch for the appearance of those witty fellows whom
+he suspected would presently come thither to see the end of their prank
+and to enjoy his confusion.
+
+The spot was pleasant enough; for the land breeze, blowing strong and
+full, set the leaves of the palm tree above his head to rattling and
+clattering continually against the sky, where, the moon then being about
+full, they shone every now and then like blades of steel. The waves also
+were splashing up against the little landing place at the foot of the
+garden, sounding very cool in the night, and sparkling all over the
+harbor where the moon caught the edges of the water. A great many
+vessels were lying at anchor in their ridings, with the dark, prodigious
+form of a man-of-war looming up above them in the moonlight.
+
+There our hero sat for the best part of an hour, smoking his pipe of
+tobacco and sipping his grog, and seeing not so much as a single thing
+that might concern the note he had received.
+
+It was not far from half an hour after the time appointed in the note,
+when a rowboat came suddenly out of the night and pulled up to the
+landing place at the foot of the garden above mentioned, and three
+or four men came ashore in the darkness. Without saying a word among
+themselves they chose a near-by table and, sitting down, ordered rum
+and water, and began drinking their grog in silence. They might have
+sat there about five minutes, when, by and by, Barnaby True became aware
+that they were observing him very curiously; and then almost immediately
+one, who was plainly the leader of the party, called out to him:
+
+"How now, messmate! Won't you come and drink a dram of rum with us?"
+
+"Why, no," says Barnaby, answering very civilly; "I have drunk enough
+already, and more would only heat my blood."
+
+"All the same," quoth the stranger, "I think you will come and drink
+with us; for, unless I am mistook, you are Mr. Barnaby True, and I am
+come here to tell you that the Royal Sovereign is come in."
+
+Now I may honestly say that Barnaby True was never more struck aback in
+all his life than he was at hearing these words uttered in so unexpected
+a manner. He had been looking to hear them under such different
+circumstances that, now that his ears heard them addressed to him, and
+that so seriously, by a perfect stranger, who, with others, had thus
+mysteriously come ashore out of the darkness, he could scarce believe
+that his ears heard aright. His heart suddenly began beating at a
+tremendous rate, and had he been an older and wiser man, I do believe
+he would have declined the adventure, instead of leaping blindly, as
+he did, into that of which he could see neither the beginning nor the
+ending. But being barely one-and-twenty years of age, and having an
+adventurous disposition that would have carried him into almost anything
+that possessed a smack of uncertainty or danger about it, he contrived
+to say, in a pretty easy tone (though God knows how it was put on for
+the occasion):
+
+"Well, then, if that be so, and if the Royal Sovereign is indeed
+come in, why, I'll join you, since you are so kind as to ask me." And
+therewith he went across to the other table, carrying his pipe with him,
+and sat down and began smoking, with all the appearance of ease he could
+assume upon the occasion.
+
+"Well, Mr. Barnaby True," said the man who had before addressed him, so
+soon as Barnaby had settled himself, speaking in a low tone of voice,
+so there would be no danger of any others hearing the words--"Well, Mr.
+Barnaby True--for I shall call you by your name, to show you that though
+I know you, you don't know me I am glad to see that you are man enough
+to enter thus into an affair, though you can't see to the bottom of it.
+For it shows me that you are a man of mettle, and are deserving of the
+fortune that is to befall you to-night. Nevertheless, first of all, I
+am bid to say that you must show me a piece of paper that you have about
+you before we go a step farther."
+
+"Very well," said Barnaby; "I have it here safe and sound, and see
+it you shall." And thereupon and without more ado he fetched out his
+wallet, opened it, and handed his interlocutor the mysterious note he
+had received the day or two before. Whereupon the other, drawing to him
+the candle, burning there for the convenience of those who would smoke
+tobacco, began immediately reading it.
+
+This gave Barnaby True a moment or two to look at him. He was a tall,
+stout man, with a red handkerchief tied around his neck, and with copper
+buckles on his shoes, so that Barnaby True could not but wonder whether
+he was not the very same man who had given the note to Miss Eliza Bolles
+at the door of his lodging house.
+
+"'Tis all right and straight as it should be," the other said, after he
+had so glanced his eyes over the note. "And now that the paper is read"
+(suiting his action to his words), "I'll just burn it, for safety's
+sake."
+
+And so he did, twisting it up and setting it to the flame of the candle.
+
+"And now," he said, continuing his address, "I'll tell you what I am
+here for. I was sent to ask you if you're man enough to take your life
+in your own hands and to go with me in that boat down there? Say 'Yes,'
+and we'll start away without wasting more time, for the devil is ashore
+here at Jamaica--though you don't know what that means--and if he gets
+ahead of us, why, then we may whistle for what we are after. Say 'No,'
+and I go away again, and I promise you you shall never be troubled again
+in this sort. So now speak up plain, young gentleman, and tell us
+what is your mind in this business, and whether you will adventure any
+farther or not."
+
+If our hero hesitated it was not for long. I cannot say that his courage
+did not waver for a moment; but if it did, it was, I say, not for long,
+and when he spoke up it was with a voice as steady as could be.
+
+"To be sure I'm man enough to go with you," he said; "and if you mean
+me any harm I can look out for myself; and if I can't, why, here is
+something can look out for me," and therewith he lifted up the flap of
+his coat pocket and showed the butt of a pistol he had fetched with him
+when he had set out from his lodging house that evening.
+
+At this the other burst out a-laughing. "Come," says he, "you are indeed
+of right mettle, and I like your spirit. All the same, no one in all the
+world means you less ill than I, and so, if you have to use that barker,
+'twill not be upon us who are your friends, but only upon one who is
+more wicked than the devil himself. So come, and let us get away."
+
+Thereupon he and the others, who had not spoken a single word for all
+this time, rose from the table, and he having paid the scores of all,
+they all went down together to the boat that still lay at the landing
+place at the bottom of the garden.
+
+Thus coming to it, our hero could see that it was a large yawl boat
+manned with half a score of black men for rowers, and there were two
+lanterns in the stern sheets, and three or four iron shovels.
+
+The man who had conducted the conversation with Barnaby True for all
+this time, and who was, as has been said, plainly the captain of the
+party, stepped immediately down into the boat; our hero followed, and
+the others followed after him; and instantly they were seated the boat
+was shoved off and the black men began pulling straight out into the
+harbor, and so, at some distance away, around under the stern of the
+man-of-war.
+
+Not a word was spoken after they had thus left the shore, and presently
+they might all have been ghosts, for the silence of the party. Barnaby
+True was too full of his own thoughts to talk--and serious enough
+thoughts they were by this time, with crimps to trepan a man at every
+turn, and press gangs to carry a man off so that he might never be heard
+of again. As for the others, they did not seem to choose to say anything
+now that they had him fairly embarked upon their enterprise.
+
+And so the crew pulled on in perfect silence for the best part of an
+hour, the leader of the expedition directing the course of the boat
+straight across the harbor, as though toward the mouth of the Rio Cobra
+River. Indeed, this was their destination, as Barnaby could after a
+while see, by the low point of land with a great long row of coconut
+palms upon it (the appearance of which he knew very well), which by and
+by began to loom up out of the milky dimness of the moonlight. As they
+approached the river they found the tide was running strong out of
+it, so that some distance away from the stream it gurgled and rippled
+alongside the boat as the crew of black men pulled strongly against
+it. Thus they came up under what was either a point of land or an islet
+covered with a thick growth of mangrove trees. But still no one spoke a
+single word as to their destination, or what was the business they had
+in hand.
+
+The night, now that they were close to the shore, was loud with the
+noise of running tide-water, and the air was heavy with the smell of mud
+and marsh, and over all the whiteness of the moonlight, with a few stars
+pricking out here and there in the sky; and all so strange and silent
+and mysterious that Barnaby could not divest himself of the feeling that
+it was all a dream.
+
+So, the rowers bending to the oars, the boat came slowly around from
+under the clump of mangrove bushes and out into the open water again.
+
+Instantly it did so the leader of the expedition called out in a sharp
+voice, and the black men instantly lay on their oars.
+
+Almost at the same instant Barnaby True became aware that there was
+another boat coming down the river toward where they lay, now drifting
+with the strong tide out into the harbor again, and he knew that it was
+because of the approach of that boat that the other had called upon his
+men to cease rowing.
+
+The other boat, as well as he could see in the distance, was full of
+men, some of whom appeared to be armed, for even in the dusk of the
+darkness the shine of the moonlight glimmered sharply now and then on
+the barrels of muskets or pistols, and in the silence that followed
+after their own rowing had ceased Barnaby True could hear the chug!
+chug! of the oars sounding louder and louder through the watery
+stillness of the night as the boat drew nearer and nearer. But he knew
+nothing of what it all meant, nor whether these others were friends or
+enemies, or what was to happen next.
+
+The oarsmen of the approaching boat did not for a moment cease
+their rowing, not till they had come pretty close to Barnaby and his
+companions. Then a man who sat in the stern ordered them to cease
+rowing, and as they lay on their oars he stood up. As they passed by,
+Barnaby True could see him very plain, the moonlight shining full upon
+him--a large, stout gentleman with a round red face, and clad in a fine
+laced coat of red cloth. Amidship of the boat was a box or chest about
+the bigness of a middle-sized traveling trunk, but covered all over
+with cakes of sand and dirt. In the act of passing, the gentleman, still
+standing, pointed at it with an elegant gold-headed cane which he held
+in his hand. "Are you come after this, Abraham Dawling?" says he, and
+thereat his countenance broke into as evil, malignant a grin as ever
+Barnaby True saw in all of his life.
+
+The other did not immediately reply so much as a single word, but sat
+as still as any stone. Then, at last, the other boat having gone by, he
+suddenly appeared to regain his wits, for he bawled out after it, "Very
+well, Jack Malyoe! very well, Jack Malyoe! you've got ahead of us this
+time again, but next time is the third, and then it shall be our turn,
+even if William Brand must come back from hell to settle with you."
+
+This he shouted out as the other boat passed farther and farther away,
+but to it my fine gentleman made no reply except to burst out into a
+great roaring fit of laughter.
+
+There was another man among the armed men in the stern of the passing
+boat--a villainous, lean man with lantern jaws, and the top of his head
+as bald as the palm of my hand. As the boat went away into the night
+with the tide and the headway the oars had given it, he grinned so that
+the moonlight shone white on his big teeth. Then, flourishing a great
+big pistol, he said, and Barnaby could hear every word he spoke, "Do but
+give me the word, Your Honor, and I'll put another bullet through the
+son of a sea cook."
+
+But the gentleman said some words to forbid him, and therewith the boat
+was gone away into the night, and presently Barnaby could hear that
+the men at the oars had begun rowing again, leaving them lying there,
+without a single word being said for a long time.
+
+By and by one of those in Barnaby's boat spoke up. "Where shall you go
+now?" he said.
+
+At this the leader of the expedition appeared suddenly to come back to
+himself, and to find his voice again. "Go?" he roared out. "Go to the
+devil! Go? Go where you choose! Go? Go back again--that's where we'll
+go!" and therewith he fell a-cursing and swearing until he foamed at
+the lips, as though he had gone clean crazy, while the black men began
+rowing back again across the harbor as fast as ever they could lay oars
+into the water.
+
+They put Barnaby True ashore below the old custom house; but so
+bewildered and shaken was he by all that had happened, and by what he
+had seen, and by the names that he heard spoken, that he was scarcely
+conscious of any of the familiar things among which he found himself
+thus standing. And so he walked up the moonlit street toward his lodging
+like one drunk or bewildered; for "John Malyoe" was the name of
+the captain of the Adventure galley--he who had shot Barnaby's own
+grandfather--and "Abraham Dawling" was the name of the gunner of the
+Royal Sovereign who had been shot at the same time with the pirate
+captain, and who, with him, had been left stretched out in the staring
+sun by the murderers.
+
+The whole business had occupied hardly two hours, but it was as though
+that time was no part of Barnaby's life, but all a part of some other
+life, so dark and strange and mysterious that it in no wise belonged to
+him.
+
+As for that box covered all over with mud, he could only guess at that
+time what it contained and what the finding of it signified.
+
+But of this our hero said nothing to anyone, nor did he tell a single
+living soul what he had seen that night, but nursed it in his own mind,
+where it lay so big for a while that he could think of little or nothing
+else for days after.
+
+Mr. Greenfield, Mr. Hartright's correspondent and agent in these parts,
+lived in a fine brick house just out of the town, on the Mona Road,
+his family consisting of a wife and two daughters--brisk, lively young
+ladies with black hair and eyes, and very fine bright teeth that shone
+whenever they laughed, and with a plenty to say for themselves. Thither
+Barnaby True was often asked to a family dinner; and, indeed, it was a
+pleasant home to visit, and to sit upon the veranda and smoke a cigarro
+with the good old gentleman and look out toward the mountains, while the
+young ladies laughed and talked, or played upon the guitar and sang. And
+oftentimes so it was strongly upon Barnaby's mind to speak to the good
+gentleman and tell him what he had beheld that night out in the harbor;
+but always he would think better of it and hold his peace, falling to
+thinking, and smoking away upon his cigarro at a great rate.
+
+A day or two before the Belle Helen sailed from Kingston Mr. Greenfield
+stopped Barnaby True as he was going through the office to bid him to
+come to dinner that night (for there within the tropics they breakfast
+at eleven o'clock and take dinner in the cool of the evening, because of
+the heat, and not at midday, as we do in more temperate latitudes). "I
+would have you meet," says Mr. Greenfield, "your chief passenger for
+New York, and his granddaughter, for whom the state cabin and the two
+staterooms are to be fitted as here ordered [showing a letter]--Sir John
+Malyoe and Miss Marjorie Malyoe. Did you ever hear tell of Capt. Jack
+Malyoe, Master Barnaby?"
+
+Now I do believe that Mr. Greenfield had no notion at all that old
+Captain Brand was Barnaby True's own grandfather and Capt. John Malyoe
+his murderer, but when he so thrust at him the name of that man, what
+with that in itself and the late adventure through which he himself had
+just passed, and with his brooding upon it until it was so prodigiously
+big in his mind, it was like hitting him a blow to so fling the
+questions at him. Nevertheless, he was able to reply, with a pretty
+straight face, that he had heard of Captain Malyoe and who he was.
+
+"Well," says Mr. Greenfield, "if Jack Malyoe was a desperate pirate and
+a wild, reckless blade twenty years ago, why, he is Sir John Malyoe now
+and the owner of a fine estate in Devonshire. Well, Master Barnaby, when
+one is a baronet and come into the inheritance of a fine estate (though
+I do hear it is vastly cumbered with debts), the world will wink its eye
+to much that he may have done twenty years ago. I do hear say, though,
+that his own kin still turn the cold shoulder to him."
+
+To this address Barnaby answered nothing, but sat smoking away at his
+cigarro at a great rate.
+
+And so that night Barnaby True came face to face for the first time with
+the man who murdered his own grandfather--the greatest beast of a man
+that ever he met in all of his life.
+
+That time in the harbor he had seen Sir John Malyoe at a distance and
+in the darkness; now that he beheld him near by it seemed to him that he
+had never looked at a more evil face in all his life. Not that the man
+was altogether ugly, for he had a good nose and a fine double chin; but
+his eyes stood out like balls and were red and watery, and he winked
+them continually, as though they were always smarting; and his lips
+were thick and purple-red, and his fat, red cheeks were mottled here
+and there with little clots of purple veins; and when he spoke his voice
+rattled so in his throat that it made one wish to clear one's own throat
+to listen to him. So, what with a pair of fat, white hands, and that
+hoarse voice, and his swollen face, and his thick lips sticking out, it
+seemed to Barnaby True he had never seen a countenance so distasteful to
+him as that one into which he then looked.
+
+But if Sir John Malyoe was so displeasing to our hero's taste, why, the
+granddaughter, even this first time he beheld her, seemed to him to be
+the most beautiful, lovely young lady that ever he saw. She had a thin,
+fair skin, red lips, and yellow hair--though it was then powdered pretty
+white for the occasion--and the bluest eyes that Barnaby beheld in all
+of his life. A sweet, timid creature, who seemed not to dare so much as
+to speak a word for herself without looking to Sir John for leave to do
+so, and would shrink and shudder whenever he would speak of a sudden to
+her or direct a sudden glance upon her. When she did speak, it was in so
+low a voice that one had to bend his head to hear her, and even if she
+smiled would catch herself and look up as though to see if she had leave
+to be cheerful.
+
+As for Sir John, he sat at dinner like a pig, and gobbled and ate and
+drank, smacking his lips all the while, but with hardly a word to either
+her or Mrs. Greenfield or to Barnaby True; but with a sour, sullen air,
+as though he would say, "Your damned victuals and drink are no better
+than they should be, but I must eat 'em or nothing." A great bloated
+beast of a man!
+
+Only after dinner was over and the young lady and the two misses sat off
+in a corner together did Barnaby hear her talk with any ease. Then, to
+be sure, her tongue became loose, and she prattled away at a great rate,
+though hardly above her breath, until of a sudden her grandfather called
+out, in his hoarse, rattling voice, that it was time to go. Whereupon
+she stopped short in what she was saying and jumped up from her chair,
+looking as frightened as though she had been caught in something amiss,
+and was to be punished for it.
+
+Barnaby True and Mr. Greenfield both went out to see the two into their
+coach, where Sir John's man stood holding the lantern. And who should
+he be, to be sure, but that same lean villain with bald head who had
+offered to shoot the leader of our hero's expedition out on the harbor
+that night! For, one of the circles of light from the lantern shining
+up into his face, Barnaby True knew him the moment he clapped eyes upon
+him. Though he could not have recognized our hero, he grinned at him in
+the most impudent, familiar fashion, and never so much as touched his
+hat either to him or to Mr. Greenfield; but as soon as his master
+and his young mistress had entered the coach, banged to the door and
+scrambled up on the seat alongside the driver, and so away without a
+word, but with another impudent grin, this time favoring both Barnaby
+and the old gentleman.
+
+Such were these two, master and man, and what Barnaby saw of them then
+was only confirmed by further observation--the most hateful couple he
+ever knew; though, God knows, what they afterward suffered should wipe
+out all complaint against them.
+
+The next day Sir John Malyoe's belongings began to come aboard the Belle
+Helen, and in the afternoon that same lean, villainous manservant comes
+skipping across the gangplank as nimble as a goat, with two black men
+behind him lugging a great sea chest. "What!" he cried out, "and so you
+is the supercargo, is you? Why, I thought you was more account when
+I saw you last night a-sitting talking with His Honor like his equal.
+Well, no matter; 'tis something to have a brisk, genteel young fellow
+for a supercargo. So come, my hearty, lend a hand, will you, and help me
+set His Honor's cabin to rights."
+
+What a speech was this to endure from such a fellow, to be sure! and
+Barnaby so high in his own esteem, and holding himself a gentleman!
+Well, what with his distaste for the villain, and what with such odious
+familiarity, you can guess into what temper so impudent an address must
+have cast him. "You'll find the steward in yonder," he said, "and
+he'll show you the cabin," and therewith turned and walked away with
+prodigious dignity, leaving the other standing where he was.
+
+As he entered his own cabin he could not but see, out of the tail of his
+eye, that the fellow was still standing where he had left him, regarding
+him with a most evil, malevolent countenance, so that he had the
+satisfaction of knowing that he had made one enemy during that voyage
+who was not very likely to forgive or forget what he must regard as a
+slight put upon him.
+
+The next day Sir John Malyoe himself came aboard, accompanied by his
+granddaughter, and followed by this man, and he followed again by four
+black men, who carried among them two trunks, not large in size, but
+prodigious heavy in weight, and toward which Sir John and his follower
+devoted the utmost solicitude and care to see that they were properly
+carried into the state cabin he was to occupy. Barnaby True was standing
+in the great cabin as they passed close by him; but though Sir John
+Malyoe looked hard at him and straight in the face, he never so much as
+spoke a single word, or showed by a look or a sign that he knew who our
+hero was. At this the serving man, who saw it all with eyes as quick as
+a cat's, fell to grinning and chuckling to see Barnaby in his turn so
+slighted.
+
+The young lady, who also saw it all, flushed up red, then in the instant
+of passing looked straight at our hero, and bowed and smiled at him with
+a most sweet and gracious affability, then the next moment recovering
+herself, as though mightily frightened at what she had done.
+
+The same day the Belle Helen sailed, with as beautiful, sweet weather as
+ever a body could wish for.
+
+There were only two other passengers aboard, the Rev. Simon Styles, the
+master of a flourishing academy in Spanish Town, and his wife, a good,
+worthy old couple, but very quiet, and would sit in the great cabin by
+the hour together reading, so that, what with Sir John Malyoe staying
+all the time in his own cabin with those two trunks he held so precious,
+it fell upon Barnaby True in great part to show attention to the young
+lady; and glad enough he was of the opportunity, as anyone may guess.
+For when you consider a brisk, lively young man of one-and-twenty and a
+sweet, beautiful miss of seventeen so thrown together day after day for
+two weeks, the weather being very fair, as I have said, and the ship
+tossing and bowling along before a fine humming breeze that sent white
+caps all over the sea, and with nothing to do but sit and look at that
+blue sea and the bright sky overhead, it is not hard to suppose what was
+to befall, and what pleasure it was to Barnaby True to show attention to
+her.
+
+But, oh! those days when a man is young, and, whether wisely or no,
+fallen in love! How often during that voyage did our hero lie awake in
+his berth at night, tossing this way and that without sleep--not that
+he wanted to sleep if he could, but would rather lie so awake thinking
+about her and staring into the darkness!
+
+Poor fool! He might have known that the end must come to such a fool's
+paradise before very long. For who was he to look up to Sir John
+Malyoe's granddaughter, he, the supercargo of a merchant ship, and she
+the granddaughter of a baronet.
+
+Nevertheless, things went along very smooth and pleasant, until one
+evening, when all came of a sudden to an end. At that time he and the
+young lady had been standing for a long while together, leaning over
+the rail and looking out across the water through the dusk toward the
+westward, where the sky was still of a lingering brightness. She had
+been mightily quiet and dull all that evening, but now of a sudden she
+began, without any preface whatever, to tell Barnaby about herself and
+her affairs. She said that she and her grandfather were going to New
+York that they might take passage thence to Boston town, there to meet
+her cousin Captain Malyoe, who was stationed in garrison at that place.
+Then she went on to say that Captain Malyoe was the next heir to the
+Devonshire estate, and that she and he were to be married in the fall.
+
+But, poor Barnaby! what a fool was he, to be sure! Methinks when she
+first began to speak about Captain Malyoe he knew what was coming. But
+now that she had told him, he could say nothing, but stood there staring
+across the ocean, his breath coming hot and dry as ashes in his throat.
+She, poor thing, went on to say, in a very low voice, that she had liked
+him from the very first moment she had seen him, and had been very happy
+for these days, and would always think of him as a dear friend who had
+been very kind to her, who had so little pleasure in life, and so would
+always remember him.
+
+Then they were both silent, until at last Barnaby made shift to say,
+though in a hoarse and croaking voice, that Captain Malyoe must be a
+very happy man, and that if he were in Captain Malyoe's place he would
+be the happiest man in the world. Thus, having spoken, and so found his
+tongue, he went on to tell her, with his head all in a whirl, that he,
+too, loved her, and that what she had told him struck him to the heart,
+and made him the most miserable, unhappy wretch in the whole world.
+
+She was not angry at what he said, nor did she turn to look at him, but
+only said, in a low voice, he should not talk so, for that it could only
+be a pain to them both to speak of such things, and that whether she
+would or no, she must do everything as her grandfather bade her, for
+that he was indeed a terrible man.
+
+To this poor Barnaby could only repeat that he loved her with all his
+heart, that he had hoped for nothing in his love, but that he was now
+the most miserable man in the world.
+
+It was at this moment, so tragic for him, that some one who had been
+hiding nigh them all the while suddenly moved away, and Barnaby True
+could see in the gathering darkness that it was that villain manservant
+of Sir John Malyoe's and knew that he must have overheard all that had
+been said.
+
+The man went straight to the great cabin, and poor Barnaby, his brain
+all atingle, stood looking after him, feeling that now indeed the last
+drop of bitterness had been added to his trouble to have such a wretch
+overhear what he had said.
+
+The young lady could not have seen the fellow, for she continued leaning
+over the rail, and Barnaby True, standing at her side, not moving, but
+in such a tumult of many passions that he was like one bewildered, and
+his heart beating as though to smother him.
+
+So they stood for I know not how long when, of a sudden, Sir John
+Malyoe comes running out of the cabin, without his hat, but carrying his
+gold-headed cane, and so straight across the deck to where Barnaby and
+the young lady stood, that spying wretch close at his heels, grinning
+like an imp.
+
+"You hussy!" bawled out Sir John, so soon as he had come pretty near
+them, and in so loud a voice that all on deck might have heard the
+words; and as he spoke he waved his cane back and forth as though he
+would have struck the young lady, who, shrinking back almost upon the
+deck, crouched as though to escape such a blow. "You hussy!" he bawled
+out with vile oaths, too horrible here to be set down. "What do you do
+here with this Yankee supercargo, not fit for a gentlewoman to wipe her
+feet upon? Get to your cabin, you hussy" (only it was something worse he
+called her this time), "before I lay this cane across your shoulders!"
+
+What with the whirling of Barnaby's brains and the passion into which he
+was already melted, what with his despair and his love, and his anger at
+this address, a man gone mad could scarcely be less accountable for his
+actions than was he at that moment. Hardly knowing what he did, he put
+his hand against Sir John Malyoe's breast and thrust him violently back,
+crying out upon him in a great, loud, hoarse voice for threatening a
+young lady, and saying that for a farthing he would wrench the stick out
+of his hand and throw it overboard.
+
+Sir John went staggering back with the push Barnaby gave him, and then
+caught himself up again. Then, with a great bellow, ran roaring at our
+hero, whirling his cane about, and I do believe would have struck him
+(and God knows then what might have happened) had not his manservant
+caught him and held him back.
+
+"Keep back!" cried out our hero, still mighty hoarse. "Keep back! If you
+strike me with that stick I'll fling you overboard!"
+
+By this time, what with the sound of loud voices and the stamping of
+feet, some of the crew and others aboard were hurrying up, and the next
+moment Captain Manly and the first mate, Mr. Freesden, came running out
+of the cabin. But Barnaby, who was by this fairly set agoing, could not
+now stop himself.
+
+"And who are you, anyhow," he cried out, "to threaten to strike me and
+to insult me, who am as good as you? You dare not strike me! You may
+shoot a man from behind, as you shot poor Captain Brand on the Rio Cobra
+River, but you won't dare strike me face to face. I know who you are and
+what you are!"
+
+By this time Sir John Malyoe had ceased to endeavor to strike him, but
+stood stock-still, his great bulging eyes staring as though they would
+pop out of his head.
+
+"What's all this?" cries Captain Manly, bustling up to them with Mr.
+Freesden. "What does all this mean?"
+
+But, as I have said, our hero was too far gone now to contain himself
+until all that he had to say was out.
+
+"The damned villain insulted me and insulted the young lady," he cried
+out, panting in the extremity of his passion, "and then he threatened
+to strike me with his cane. But I know who he is and what he is. I know
+what he's got in his cabin in those two trunks, and where he found
+it, and whom it belongs to. He found it on the shores of the Rio Cobra
+River, and I have only to open my mouth and tell what I know about it."
+
+At this Captain Manly clapped his hand upon our hero's shoulder and fell
+to shaking him so that he could scarcely stand, calling out to him the
+while to be silent. "What do you mean?" he cried. "An officer of this
+ship to quarrel with a passenger of mine! Go straight to your cabin, and
+stay there till I give you leave to come out again."
+
+At this Master Barnaby came somewhat back to himself and into his
+wits again with a jump. "But he threatened to strike me with his cane,
+Captain," he cried out, "and that I won't stand from any man!"
+
+"No matter what he did," said Captain Manly, very sternly. "Go to your
+cabin, as I bid you, and stay there till I tell you to come out again,
+and when we get to New York I'll take pains to tell your stepfather of
+how you have behaved. I'll have no such rioting as this aboard my ship."
+
+Barnaby True looked around him, but the young lady was gone. Nor, in the
+blindness of his frenzy, had he seen when she had gone nor whither she
+went. As for Sir John Malyoe, he stood in the light of a lantern, his
+face gone as white as ashes, and I do believe if a look could kill, the
+dreadful malevolent stare he fixed upon Barnaby True would have slain
+him where he stood.
+
+After Captain Manly had so shaken some wits into poor Barnaby he,
+unhappy wretch, went to his cabin, as he was bidden to do, and there,
+shutting the door upon himself, and flinging himself down, all dressed
+as he was, upon his berth, yielded himself over to the profoundest
+passion of humiliation and despair.
+
+There he lay for I know not how long, staring into the darkness, until
+by and by, in spite of his suffering and his despair, he dozed off into
+a loose sleep, that was more like waking than sleep, being possessed
+continually by the most vivid and distasteful dreams, from which he
+would awaken only to doze off and to dream again.
+
+It was from the midst of one of these extravagant dreams that he was
+suddenly aroused by the noise of a pistol shot, and then the noise of
+another and another, and then a great bump and a grinding jar, and then
+the sound of many footsteps running across the deck and down into the
+great cabin. Then came a tremendous uproar of voices in the great cabin,
+the struggling as of men's bodies being tossed about, striking violently
+against the partitions and bulkheads. At the same instant arose a
+screaming of women's voices, and one voice, and that Sir John Malyoe's,
+crying out as in the greatest extremity: "You villains! You damned
+villains!" and with the sudden detonation of a pistol fired into the
+close space of the great cabin.
+
+Barnaby was out in the middle of his cabin in a moment, and taking only
+time enough to snatch down one of the pistols that hung at the head of
+his berth, flung out into the great cabin, to find it as black as night,
+the lantern slung there having been either blown out or dashed out into
+darkness. The prodigiously dark space was full of uproar, the hubbub
+and confusion pierced through and through by that keen sound of women's
+voices screaming, one in the cabin and the other in the stateroom
+beyond. Almost immediately Barnaby pitched headlong over two or three
+struggling men scuffling together upon the deck, falling with a great
+clatter and the loss of his pistol, which, however, he regained almost
+immediately.
+
+What all the uproar meant he could not tell, but he presently heard
+Captain Manly's voice from somewhere suddenly calling out, "You bloody
+pirate, would you choke me to death?" wherewith some notion of what had
+happened came to him like a dash, and that they had been attacked in the
+night by pirates.
+
+Looking toward the companionway, he saw, outlined against the darkness
+of the night without, the blacker form of a man's figure, standing still
+and motionless as a statue in the midst of all this hubbub, and so by
+some instinct he knew in a moment that that must be the master maker
+of all this devil's brew. Therewith, still kneeling upon the deck, he
+covered the bosom of that shadowy figure pointblank, as he thought, with
+his pistol, and instantly pulled the trigger.
+
+In the flash of red light, and in the instant stunning report of the
+pistol shot, Barnaby saw, as stamped upon the blackness, a broad, flat
+face with fishy eyes, a lean, bony forehead with what appeared to be
+a great blotch of blood upon the side, a cocked hat trimmed with gold
+lace, a red scarf across the breast, and the gleam of brass buttons.
+Then the darkness, very thick and black, swallowed everything again.
+
+But in the instant Sir John Malyoe called out, in a great loud voice:
+"My God! 'Tis William Brand!" Therewith came the sound of some one
+falling heavily down.
+
+The next moment, Barnaby's sight coming back to him again in the
+darkness, he beheld that dark and motionless figure still standing
+exactly where it had stood before, and so knew either that he had missed
+it or else that it was of so supernatural a sort that a leaden bullet
+might do it no harm. Though if it was indeed an apparition that Barnaby
+beheld in that moment, there is this to say, that he saw it as plain as
+ever he saw a living man in all of his life.
+
+This was the last our hero knew, for the next moment somebody--whether
+by accident or design he never knew--struck him such a terrible violent
+blow upon the side of the head that he saw forty thousand stars flash
+before his eyeballs, and then, with a great humming in his head, swooned
+dead away.
+
+When Barnaby True came back to his senses again it was to find himself
+being cared for with great skill and nicety, his head bathed with cold
+water, and a bandage being bound about it as carefully as though a
+chirurgeon was attending to him.
+
+He could not immediately recall what had happened to him, nor until he
+had opened his eyes to find himself in a strange cabin, extremely well
+fitted and painted with white and gold, the light of a lantern shining
+in his eyes, together with the gray of the early daylight through the
+dead-eye. Two men were bending over him--one, a negro in a striped
+shirt, with a yellow handkerchief around his head and silver earrings in
+his ears; the other, a white man, clad in a strange outlandish dress of
+a foreign make, and with great mustachios hanging down, and with gold
+earrings in his ears.
+
+It was the latter who was attending to Barnaby's hurt with such extreme
+care and gentleness.
+
+All this Barnaby saw with his first clear consciousness after his swoon.
+Then remembering what had befallen him, and his head beating as though
+it would split asunder, he shut his eyes again, contriving with great
+effort to keep himself from groaning aloud, and wondering as to what
+sort of pirates these could be who would first knock a man in the head
+so terrible a blow as that which he had suffered, and then take
+such care to fetch him back to life again, and to make him easy and
+comfortable.
+
+Nor did he open his eyes again, but lay there gathering his wits
+together and wondering thus until the bandage was properly tied about
+his head and sewed together. Then once more he opened his eyes, and
+looked up to ask where he was.
+
+Either they who were attending to him did not choose to reply, or else
+they could not speak English, for they made no answer, excepting by
+signs; for the white man, seeing that he was now able to speak, and
+so was come back into his senses again, nodded his head three or four
+times, and smiled with a grin of his white teeth, and then pointed, as
+though toward a saloon beyond. At the same time the negro held up our
+hero's coat and beckoned for him to put it on, so that Barnaby, seeing
+that it was required of him to meet some one without, arose, though with
+a good deal of effort, and permitted the negro to help him on with his
+coat, still feeling mightily dizzy and uncertain upon his legs, his head
+beating fit to split, and the vessel rolling and pitching at a great
+rate, as though upon a heavy ground swell.
+
+So, still sick and dizzy, he went out into what was indeed a fine saloon
+beyond, painted in white and gilt like the cabin he had just quitted,
+and fitted in the nicest fashion, a mahogany table, polished very
+bright, extending the length of the room, and a quantity of bottles,
+together with glasses of clear crystal, arranged in a hanging rack
+above.
+
+Here at the table a man was sitting with his back to our hero, clad in
+a rough pea-jacket, and with a red handkerchief tied around his throat,
+his feet stretched out before him, and he smoking a pipe of tobacco with
+all the ease and comfort in the world.
+
+As Barnaby came in he turned round, and, to the profound astonishment
+of our hero, presented toward him in the light of the lantern, the dawn
+shining pretty strong through the skylight, the face of that very man
+who had conducted the mysterious expedition that night across Kingston
+Harbor to the Rio Cobra River.
+
+This man looked steadily at Barnaby True for a moment or two, and
+then burst out laughing; and, indeed, Barnaby, standing there with the
+bandage about his head, must have looked a very droll picture of that
+astonishment he felt so profoundly at finding who was this pirate into
+whose hands he had fallen.
+
+"Well," says the other, "and so you be up at last, and no great harm
+done, I'll be bound. And how does your head feel by now, my young
+master?"
+
+To this Barnaby made no reply, but, what with wonder and the dizziness
+of his head, seated himself at the table over against the speaker,
+who pushed a bottle of rum toward him, together with a glass from the
+swinging shelf above.
+
+He watched Barnaby fill his glass, and so soon as he had done so began
+immediately by saying: "I do suppose you think you were treated
+mightily ill to be so handled last night. Well, so you were treated ill
+enough--though who hit you that crack upon the head I know no more than
+a child unborn. Well, I am sorry for the way you were handled, but there
+is this much to say, and of that you may believe me, that nothing was
+meant to you but kindness, and before you are through with us all you
+will believe that well enough."
+
+Here he helped himself to a taste of grog, and sucking in his lips,
+went on again with what he had to say. "Do you remember," said he, "that
+expedition of ours in Kingston Harbor, and how we were all of us balked
+that night?"
+
+"Why, yes," said Barnaby True, "nor am I likely to forget it."
+
+"And do you remember what I said to that villain, Jack Malyoe, that
+night as his boat went by us?"
+
+"As to that," said Barnaby True, "I do not know that I can say yes or
+no, but if you will tell me, I will maybe answer you in kind."
+
+"Why, I mean this," said the other. "I said that the villain had got the
+better of us once again, but that next time it would be our turn, even
+if William Brand himself had to come back from hell to put the business
+through."
+
+"I remember something of the sort," said Barnaby, "now that you speak of
+it, but still I am all in the dark as to what you are driving at."
+
+The other looked at him very cunningly for a little while, his head on
+one side, and his eyes half shut. Then, as if satisfied, he suddenly
+burst out laughing. "Look hither," said he, "and I'll show you
+something," and therewith, moving to one side, disclosed a couple of
+traveling cases or small trunks with brass studs, so exactly like those
+that Sir John Malyoe had fetched aboard at Jamaica that Barnaby, putting
+this and that together, knew that they must be the same.
+
+Our hero had a strong enough suspicion as to what those two cases
+contained, and his suspicions had become a certainty when he saw Sir
+John Malyoe struck all white at being threatened about them, and his
+face lowering so malevolently as to look murder had he dared do it. But,
+Lord! what were suspicions or even certainty to what Barnaby True's two
+eyes beheld when that man lifted the lids of the two cases--the locks
+thereof having already been forced--and, flinging back first one lid and
+then the other, displayed to Barnaby's astonished sight a great treasure
+of gold and silver! Most of it tied up in leathern bags, to be sure,
+but many of the coins, big and little, yellow and white, lying loose and
+scattered about like so many beans, brimming the cases to the very top.
+
+Barnaby sat dumb-struck at what he beheld; as to whether he breathed
+or no, I cannot tell; but this I know, that he sat staring at that
+marvelous treasure like a man in a trance, until, after a few seconds of
+this golden display, the other banged down the lids again and burst out
+laughing, whereupon he came back to himself with a jump.
+
+"Well, and what do you think of that?" said the other. "Is it not enough
+for a man to turn pirate for? But," he continued, "it is not for the
+sake of showing you this that I have been waiting for you here so long
+a while, but to tell you that you are not the only passenger aboard, but
+that there is another, whom I am to confide to your care and attention,
+according to orders I have received; so, if you are ready, Master
+Barnaby, I'll fetch her in directly." He waited for a moment, as though
+for Barnaby to speak, but our hero not replying, he arose and, putting
+away the bottle of rum and the glasses, crossed the saloon to a door
+like that from which Barnaby had come a little while before. This he
+opened, and after a moment's delay and a few words spoken to some one
+within, ushered thence a young lady, who came out very slowly into the
+saloon where Barnaby still sat at the table.
+
+It was Miss Marjorie Malyoe, very white, and looking as though stunned
+or bewildered by all that had befallen her.
+
+Barnaby True could never tell whether the amazing strange voyage that
+followed was of long or of short duration; whether it occupied three
+days or ten days. For conceive, if you choose, two people of flesh
+and blood moving and living continually in all the circumstances and
+surroundings as of a nightmare dream, yet they two so happy together
+that all the universe beside was of no moment to them! How was anyone
+to tell whether in such circumstances any time appeared to be long or
+short? Does a dream appear to be long or to be short?
+
+The vessel in which they sailed was a brigantine of good size and build,
+but manned by a considerable crew, the most strange and outlandish in
+their appearance that Barnaby had ever beheld--some white, some yellow,
+some black, and all tricked out with gay colors, and gold earrings
+in their ears, and some with great long mustachios, and others with
+handkerchiefs tied around their heads, and all talking a language
+together of which Barnaby True could understand not a single word, but
+which might have been Portuguese from one or two phrases he caught. Nor
+did this strange, mysterious crew, of God knows what sort of men, seem
+to pay any attention whatever to Barnaby or to the young lady. They
+might now and then have looked at him and her out of the corners of
+their yellow eyes, but that was all; otherwise they were indeed like
+the creatures of a nightmare dream. Only he who was the captain of
+this outlandish crew would maybe speak to Barnaby a few words as to the
+weather or what not when he would come down into the saloon to mix a
+glass of grog or to light a pipe of tobacco, and then to go on deck
+again about his business. Otherwise our hero and the young lady were
+left to themselves, to do as they pleased, with no one to interfere with
+them.
+
+As for her, she at no time showed any great sign of terror or of fear,
+only for a little while was singularly numb and quiet, as though dazed
+with what had happened to her. Indeed, methinks that wild beast, her
+grandfather, had so crushed her spirit by his tyranny and his violence
+that nothing that happened to her might seem sharp and keen, as it does
+to others of an ordinary sort.
+
+But this was only at first, for afterward her face began to grow
+singularly clear, as with a white light, and she would sit quite still,
+permitting Barnaby to gaze, I know not how long, into her eyes, her face
+so transfigured and her lips smiling, and they, as it were, neither
+of them breathing, but hearing, as in another far-distant place, the
+outlandish jargon of the crew talking together in the warm, bright
+sunlight, or the sound of creaking block and tackle as they hauled upon
+the sheets.
+
+Is it, then, any wonder that Barnaby True could never remember whether
+such a voyage as this was long or short?
+
+It was as though they might have sailed so upon that wonderful voyage
+forever. You may guess how amazed was Barnaby True when, coming upon
+deck one morning, he found the brigantine riding upon an even keel,
+at anchor off Staten Island, a small village on the shore, and the
+well-known roofs and chimneys of New York town in plain sight across the
+water.
+
+'Twas the last place in the world he had expected to see.
+
+And, indeed, it did seem strange to lie there alongside Staten Island
+all that day, with New York town so nigh at hand and yet so impossible
+to reach. For whether he desired to escape or no, Barnaby True could not
+but observe that both he and the young lady were so closely watched that
+they might as well have been prisoners, tied hand and foot and laid in
+the hold, so far as any hope of getting away was concerned.
+
+All that day there was a deal of mysterious coming and going aboard
+the brigantine, and in the afternoon a sailboat went up to the town,
+carrying the captain, and a great load covered over with a tarpaulin in
+the stern. What was so taken up to the town Barnaby did not then guess,
+but the boat did not return again till about sundown.
+
+For the sun was just dropping below the water when the captain came
+aboard once more and, finding Barnaby on deck, bade him come down into
+the saloon, where they found the young lady sitting, the broad light of
+the evening shining in through the skylight, and making it all pretty
+bright within.
+
+The captain commanded Barnaby to be seated, for he had something of
+moment to say to him; whereupon, as soon as Barnaby had taken his
+place alongside the young lady, he began very seriously, with a preface
+somewhat thus: "Though you may think me the captain of this brigantine,
+young gentleman, I am not really so, but am under orders, and so have
+only carried out those orders of a superior in all these things that I
+have done." Having so begun, he went on to say that there was one thing
+yet remaining for him to do, and that the greatest thing of all. He said
+that Barnaby and the young lady had not been fetched away from the Belle
+Helen as they were by any mere chance of accident, but that 'twas all a
+plan laid by a head wiser than his, and carried out by one whom he must
+obey in all things. He said that he hoped that both Barnaby and the
+young lady would perform willingly what they would be now called upon
+to do, but that whether they did it willingly or no, they must, for that
+those were the orders of one who was not to be disobeyed.
+
+You may guess how our hero held his breath at all this; but whatever
+might have been his expectations, the very wildest of them all did not
+reach to that which was demanded of him. "My orders are these," said the
+other, continuing: "I am to take you and the young lady ashore, and to
+see that you are married before I quit you; and to that end a very
+good, decent, honest minister who lives ashore yonder in the village was
+chosen and hath been spoken to and is now, no doubt, waiting for you to
+come. Such are my orders, and this is the last thing I am set to do; so
+now I will leave you alone together for five minutes to talk it over,
+but be quick about it, for whether willing or not, this thing must be
+done."
+
+Thereupon he went away, as he had promised, leaving those two alone
+together, Barnaby like one turned into stone, and the young lady, her
+face turned away, flaming as red as fire in the fading light.
+
+Nor can I tell what Barnaby said to her, nor what words he used, but
+only, all in a tumult, with neither beginning nor end he told her that
+God knew he loved her, and that with all his heart and soul, and that
+there was nothing in all the world for him but her; but, nevertheless,
+if she would not have it as had been ordered, and if she were not
+willing to marry him as she was bidden to do, he would rather die
+than lend himself to forcing her to do such a thing against her will.
+Nevertheless, he told her she must speak up and tell him yes or no, and
+that God knew he would give all the world if she would say "yes."
+
+All this and more he said in such a tumult of words that there was no
+order in their speaking, and she sitting there, her bosom rising and
+falling as though her breath stifled her. Nor may I tell what she
+replied to him, only this, that she said she would marry him. At this he
+took her into his arms and set his lips to hers, his heart all melting
+away in his bosom.
+
+So presently came the captain back into the saloon again, to find
+Barnaby sitting there holding her hand, she with her face turned away,
+and his heart beating like a trip hammer, and so saw that all was
+settled as he would have it. Wherewith he wished them both joy, and gave
+Barnaby his hand.
+
+The yawlboat belonging to the brigantine was ready and waiting alongside
+when they came upon deck, and immediately they descended to it and took
+their seats. So they landed, and in a little while were walking up the
+village street in the darkness, she clinging to his arm as though she
+would swoon, and the captain of the brigantine and two other men from
+aboard following after them. And so to the minister's house, finding him
+waiting for them, smoking his pipe in the warm evening, and walking up
+and down in front of his own door. He immediately conducted them into
+the house, where, his wife having fetched a candle, and two others
+of the village folk being present, the good man having asked several
+questions as to their names and their age and where they were from,
+the ceremony was performed, and the certificate duly signed by those
+present--excepting the men who had come ashore from the brigantine, and
+who refused to set their hands to any paper.
+
+The same sailboat that had taken the captain up to the town in the
+afternoon was waiting for them at the landing place, whence, the
+captain, having wished them Godspeed, and having shaken Barnaby very
+heartily by the hand, they pushed off, and, coming about, ran away with
+the slant of the wind, dropping the shore and those strange beings alike
+behind them into the night.
+
+As they sped away through the darkness they could hear the creaking of
+the sails being hoisted aboard of the brigantine, and so knew that she
+was about to put to sea once more. Nor did Barnaby True ever set eyes
+upon those beings again, nor did anyone else that I ever heard tell of.
+
+It was nigh midnight when they made Mr. Hartright's wharf at the foot of
+Wall Street, and so the streets were all dark and silent and deserted as
+they walked up to Barnaby's home.
+
+You may conceive of the wonder and amazement of Barnaby's dear
+stepfather when, clad in a dressing gown and carrying a lighted candle
+in his hand, he unlocked and unbarred the door, and so saw who it
+was had aroused him at such an hour of the night, and the young and
+beautiful lady whom Barnaby had fetched with him.
+
+The first thought of the good man was that the Belle Helen had come into
+port; nor did Barnaby undeceive him as he led the way into the house,
+but waited until they were all safe and sound in privily together before
+he should unfold his strange and wonderful story.
+
+"This was left for you by two foreign sailors this afternoon, Barnaby,"
+the good old man said, as he led the way through the hall, holding up
+the candle at the same time, so that Barnaby might see an object that
+stood against the wainscoting by the door of the dining room.
+
+Nor could Barnaby refrain from crying out with amazement when he saw
+that it was one of the two chests of treasure that Sir John Malyoe had
+fetched from Jamaica, and which the pirates had taken from the Belle
+Helen. As for Mr. Hartright, he guessed no more what was in it than the
+man in the moon.
+
+The next day but one brought the Belle Helen herself into port, with the
+terrible news not only of having been attacked at night by pirates, but
+also that Sir John Malyoe was dead. For whether it was the sudden shock
+of the sight of his old captain's face--whom he himself had murdered
+and thought dead and buried--flashing so out against the darkness, or
+whether it was the strain of passion that overset his brains, certain
+it is that when the pirates left the Belle Helen, carrying with them the
+young lady and Barnaby and the traveling trunks, those left aboard
+the Belle Helen found Sir John Malyoe lying in a fit upon the floor,
+frothing at the mouth and black in the face, as though he had been
+choked, and so took him away to his berth, where, the next morning about
+ten o'clock, he died, without once having opened his eyes or spoken a
+single word.
+
+As for the villain manservant, no one ever saw him afterward; though
+whether he jumped overboard, or whether the pirates who so attacked the
+ship had carried him away bodily, who shall say?
+
+Mr. Hartright, after he had heard Barnaby's story, had been very
+uncertain as to the ownership of the chest of treasure that had been
+left by those men for Barnaby, but the news of the death of Sir John
+Malyoe made the matter very easy for him to decide. For surely if that
+treasure did not belong to Barnaby, there could be no doubt that it must
+belong to his wife, she being Sir John Malyoe's legal heir. And so it
+was that that great fortune (in actual computation amounting to upward
+of sixty-three thousand pounds) came to Barnaby True, the grandson of
+that famous pirate, William Brand; the English estate in Devonshire, in
+default of male issue of Sir John Malyoe, descended to Captain Malyoe,
+whom the young lady was to have married.
+
+As for the other case of treasure, it was never heard of again, nor
+could Barnaby ever guess whether it was divided as booty among the
+pirates, or whether they had carried it away with them to some strange
+and foreign land, there to share it among themselves.
+
+And so the ending of the story, with only this to observe, that whether
+that strange appearance of Captain Brand's face by the light of the
+pistol was a ghostly and spiritual appearance, or whether he was present
+in flesh and blood, there is only to say that he was never heard of
+again; nor had he ever been heard of till that time since the day he was
+so shot from behind by Capt. John Malyoe on the banks of the Rio Cobra
+River in the year 1733.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III. WITH THE BUCCANEERS
+
+Being an Account of Certain Adventures that Befell Henry Mostyn Under
+Capt. H. Morgan in the Year 1665-66
+
+
+I.
+
+ALTHOUGH this narration has more particularly to do with the taking of
+the Spanish vice admiral in the harbor of Porto Bello, and of the rescue
+therefrom of Le Sieur Simon, his wife and daughter (the adventure
+of which was successfully achieved by Captain Morgan, the famous
+buccaneer), we shall, nevertheless, premise something of the earlier
+history of Master Harry Mostyn, whom you may, if you please, consider as
+the hero of the several circumstances recounted in these pages.
+
+In the year 1664 our hero's father embarked from Portsmouth, in England,
+for the Barbados, where he owned a considerable sugar plantation.
+Thither to those parts of America he transported with himself his whole
+family, of whom our Master Harry was the fifth of eight children--a
+great lusty fellow as little fitted for the Church (for which he was
+designed) as could be. At the time of this story, though not above
+sixteen years old, Master Harry Mostyn was as big and well-grown as many
+a man of twenty, and of such a reckless and dare-devil spirit that no
+adventure was too dangerous or too mischievous for him to embark upon.
+
+At this time there was a deal of talk in those parts of the Americas
+concerning Captain Morgan, and the prodigious successes he was having
+pirating against the Spaniards.
+
+This man had once been an indentured servant with Mr. Rolls, a sugar
+factor at the Barbados. Having served out his time, and being of lawless
+disposition, possessing also a prodigious appetite for adventure, he
+joined with others of his kidney, and, purchasing a caravel of three
+guns, embarked fairly upon that career of piracy the most successful
+that ever was heard of in the world.
+
+Master Harry had known this man very well while he was still with Mr.
+Rolls, serving as a clerk at that gentleman's sugar wharf, a tall,
+broad-shouldered, strapping fellow, with red cheeks, and thick red lips,
+and rolling blue eyes, and hair as red as any chestnut. Many knew him
+for a bold, gruff-spoken man, but no one at that time suspected that he
+had it in him to become so famous and renowned as he afterward grew to
+be.
+
+The fame of his exploits had been the talk of those parts for above a
+twelvemonth, when, in the latter part of the year 1665, Captain Morgan,
+having made a very successful expedition against the Spaniards into the
+Gulf of Campeche--where he took several important purchases from
+the plate fleet--came to the Barbados, there to fit out another such
+venture, and to enlist recruits.
+
+He and certain other adventurers had purchased a vessel of some five
+hundred tons, which they proposed to convert into a pirate by cutting
+portholes for cannon, and running three or four carronades across
+her main deck. The name of this ship, be it mentioned, was the Good
+Samaritan, as ill-fitting a name as could be for such a craft, which,
+instead of being designed for the healing of wounds, was intended to
+inflict such devastation as those wicked men proposed.
+
+Here was a piece of mischief exactly fitted to our hero's tastes;
+wherefore, having made up a bundle of clothes, and with not above a
+shilling in his pocket, he made an excursion into the town to seek
+for Captain Morgan. There he found the great pirate established at an
+ordinary, with a little court of ragamuffins and swashbucklers gathered
+about him, all talking very loud, and drinking healths in raw rum as
+though it were sugared water.
+
+And what a fine figure our buccaneer had grown, to be sure! How
+different from the poor, humble clerk upon the sugar wharf! What a deal
+of gold braid! What a fine, silver-hilled Spanish sword! What a gay
+velvet sling, hung with three silver-mounted pistols! If Master Harry's
+mind had not been made up before, to be sure such a spectacle of glory
+would have determined it.
+
+This figure of war our hero asked to step aside with him, and when they
+had come into a corner, proposed to the other what he intended, and that
+he had a mind to enlist as a gentleman adventurer upon this expedition.
+Upon this our rogue of a buccaneer captain burst out a-laughing, and
+fetching Master Harry a great thump upon the back, swore roundly that he
+would make a man of him, and that it was a pity to make a parson out of
+so good a piece of stuff.
+
+Nor was Captain Morgan less good than his word, for when the Good
+Samaritan set sail with a favoring wind for the island of Jamaica,
+Master Harry found himself established as one of the adventurers aboard.
+
+
+II
+
+Could you but have seen the town of Port Royal as it appeared in the
+year 1665 you would have beheld a sight very well worth while looking
+upon. There were no fine houses at that time, and no great counting
+houses built of brick, such as you may find nowadays, but a crowd of
+board and wattled huts huddled along the streets, and all so gay with
+flags and bits of color that Vanity Fair itself could not have been
+gayer. To this place came all the pirates and buccaneers that infested
+those parts, and men shouted and swore and gambled, and poured out money
+like water, and then maybe wound up their merrymaking by dying of fever.
+For the sky in these torrid latitudes is all full of clouds overhead,
+and as hot as any blanket, and when the sun shone forth it streamed down
+upon the smoking sands so that the houses were ovens and the streets
+were furnaces; so it was little wonder that men died like rats in a
+hole. But little they appeared to care for that; so that everywhere you
+might behold a multitude of painted women and Jews and merchants and
+pirates, gaudy with red scarfs and gold braid and all sorts of odds and
+ends of foolish finery, all fighting and gambling and bartering for that
+ill-gotten treasure of the be-robbed Spaniard.
+
+Here, arriving, Captain Morgan found a hearty welcome, and a message
+from the governor awaiting him, the message bidding him attend His
+Excellency upon the earliest occasion that offered. Whereupon, taking
+our hero (of whom he had grown prodigiously fond) along with him, our
+pirate went, without any loss of time, to visit Sir Thomas Modiford, who
+was then the royal governor of all this devil's brew of wickedness.
+
+They found His Excellency seated in a great easy-chair, under the shadow
+of a slatted veranda, the floor whereof was paved with brick. He
+was clad, for the sake of coolness, only in his shirt, breeches, and
+stockings, and he wore slippers on his feet. He was smoking a great
+cigarro of tobacco, and a goblet of lime juice and water and rum stood
+at his elbow on a table. Here, out of the glare of the heat, it was all
+very cool and pleasant, with a sea breeze blowing violently in through
+the slats, setting them a-rattling now and then, and stirring Sir
+Thomas's long hair, which he had pushed back for the sake of coolness.
+
+The purport of this interview, I may tell you, concerned the rescue of
+one Le Sieur Simon, who, together with his wife and daughter, was held
+captive by the Spaniards.
+
+This gentleman adventurer (Le Sieur Simon) had, a few years before, been
+set up by the buccaneers as governor of the island of Santa Catharina.
+This place, though well fortified by the Spaniards, the buccaneers
+had seized upon, establishing themselves thereon, and so infesting the
+commerce of those seas that no Spanish fleet was safe from them. At last
+the Spaniards, no longer able to endure these assaults against their
+commerce, sent a great force against the freebooters to drive them out
+of their island stronghold. This they did, retaking Santa Catharina,
+together with its governor, his wife, and daughter, as well as the whole
+garrison of buccaneers.
+
+This garrison was sent by their conquerors, some to the galleys, some
+to the mines, some to no man knows where. The governor himself--Le Sieur
+Simon--was to be sent to Spain, there to stand his trial for piracy.
+
+The news of all this, I may tell you, had only just been received in
+Jamaica, having been brought thither by a Spanish captain, one Don
+Roderiguez Sylvia, who was, besides, the bearer of dispatches to the
+Spanish authorities relating the whole affair.
+
+Such, in fine, was the purport of this interview, and as our hero
+and his captain walked back together from the governor's house to the
+ordinary where they had taken up their inn, the buccaneer assured his
+companion that he purposed to obtain those dispatches from the Spanish
+captain that very afternoon, even if he had to use force to seize them.
+
+All this, you are to understand, was undertaken only because of the
+friendship that the governor and Captain Morgan entertained for Le Sieur
+Simon. And, indeed, it was wonderful how honest and how faithful were
+these wicked men in their dealings with one another. For you must know
+that Governor Modiford and Le Sieur Simon and the buccaneers were all of
+one kidney--all taking a share in the piracies of those times, and all
+holding by one another as though they were the honestest men in the
+world. Hence it was they were all so determined to rescue Le Sieur Simon
+from the Spaniards.
+
+
+III
+
+Having reached his ordinary after his interview with the governor,
+Captain Morgan found there a number of his companions, such as usually
+gathered at that place to be in attendance upon him--some, those
+belonging to the Good Samaritan; others, those who hoped to obtain
+benefits from him; others, those ragamuffins who gathered around him
+because he was famous, and because it pleased them to be of his court
+and to be called his followers. For nearly always your successful pirate
+had such a little court surrounding him.
+
+Finding a dozen or more of these rascals gathered there, Captain Morgan
+informed them of his present purpose that he was going to find the
+Spanish captain to demand his papers of him, and calling upon them to
+accompany him.
+
+With this following at his heels, our buccaneer started off down the
+street, his lieutenant, a Cornishman named Bartholomew Davis, upon one
+hand and our hero upon the other. So they paraded the streets for the
+best part of an hour before they found the Spanish captain. For whether
+he had got wind that Captain Morgan was searching for him, or whether,
+finding himself in a place so full of his enemies, he had buried himself
+in some place of hiding, it is certain that the buccaneers had traversed
+pretty nearly the whole town before they discovered that he was lying
+at a certain auberge kept by a Portuguese Jew. Thither they went, and
+thither Captain Morgan entered with the utmost coolness and composure of
+demeanor, his followers crowding noisily in at his heels.
+
+The space within was very dark, being lighted only by the doorway and by
+two large slatted windows or openings in the front.
+
+In this dark, hot place not over-roomy at the best--were gathered twelve
+or fifteen villainous-appearing men, sitting at tables and drinking
+together, waited upon by the Jew and his wife. Our hero had no trouble
+in discovering which of this lot of men was Captain Sylvia, for not
+only did Captain Morgan direct his glance full of war upon him, but the
+Spaniard was clad with more particularity and with more show of finery
+than any of the others who were there.
+
+Him Captain Morgan approached and demanded his papers, whereunto the
+other replied with such a jabber of Spanish and English that no man
+could have understood what he said. To this Captain Morgan in turn
+replied that he must have those papers, no matter what it might cost him
+to obtain them, and thereupon drew a pistol from his sling and presented
+it at the other's head.
+
+At this threatening action the innkeeper's wife fell a-screaming, and
+the Jew, as in a frenzy, besought them not to tear the house down about
+his ears.
+
+Our hero could hardly tell what followed, only that all of a sudden
+there was a prodigious uproar of combat. Knives flashed everywhere,
+and then a pistol was fired so close to his head that he stood like one
+stunned, hearing some one crying out in a loud voice, but not knowing
+whether it was a friend or a foe who had been shot. Then another pistol
+shot so deafened what was left of Master Harry's hearing that his ears
+rang for above an hour afterward. By this time the whole place was
+full of gunpowder smoke, and there was the sound of blows and oaths and
+outcrying and the clashing of knives.
+
+As Master Harry, who had no great stomach for such a combat, and no very
+particular interest in the quarrel, was making for the door, a little
+Portuguese, as withered and as nimble as an ape, came ducking under the
+table and plunged at his stomach with a great long knife, which, had
+it effected its object, would surely have ended his adventures then and
+there. Finding himself in such danger, Master Harry snatched up a heavy
+chair, and, flinging it at his enemy, who was preparing for another
+attack, he fairly ran for it out of the door, expecting every instant to
+feel the thrust of the blade betwixt his ribs.
+
+A considerable crowd had gathered outside, and others, hearing the
+uproar, were coming running to join them. With these our hero stood,
+trembling like a leaf, and with cold chills running up and down his back
+like water at the narrow escape from the danger that had threatened him.
+
+Nor shall you think him a coward, for you must remember he was hardly
+sixteen years old at the time, and that this was the first affair of the
+sort he had encountered. Afterward, as you shall learn, he showed that
+he could exhibit courage enough at a pinch.
+
+While he stood there, endeavoring to recover his composure, the while
+the tumult continued within, suddenly two men came running almost
+together out of the door, a crowd of the combatants at their heels. The
+first of these men was Captain Sylvia; the other, who was pursuing him,
+was Captain Morgan.
+
+As the crowd about the door parted before the sudden appearing of these,
+the Spanish captain, perceiving, as he supposed, a way of escape opened
+to him, darted across the street with incredible swiftness toward an
+alleyway upon the other side. Upon this, seeing his prey like to get
+away from him, Captain Morgan snatched a pistol out of his sling, and
+resting it for an instant across his arm, fired at the flying Spaniard,
+and that with so true an aim that, though the street was now full of
+people, the other went tumbling over and over all of a heap in the
+kennel, where he lay, after a twitch or two, as still as a log.
+
+At the sound of the shot and the fall of the man the crowd scattered
+upon all sides, yelling and screaming, and the street being thus pretty
+clear, Captain Morgan ran across the way to where his victim lay, his
+smoking pistol still in his hand, and our hero following close at his
+heels.
+
+Our poor Harry had never before beheld a man killed thus in an instant
+who a moment before had been so full of life and activity, for when
+Captain Morgan turned the body over upon its back he could perceive at a
+glance, little as he knew of such matters, that the man was stone-dead.
+And, indeed, it was a dreadful sight for him who was hardly more than
+a child. He stood rooted for he knew not how long, staring down at the
+dead face with twitching fingers and shuddering limbs. Meantime a great
+crowd was gathering about them again. As for Captain Morgan, he went
+about his work with the utmost coolness and deliberation imaginable,
+unbuttoning the waistcoat and the shirt of the man he had murdered with
+fingers that neither twitched nor shook. There were a gold cross and
+a bunch of silver medals hung by a whipcord about the neck of the dead
+man. This Captain Morgan broke away with a snap, reaching the jingling
+baubles to Harry, who took them in his nerveless hand and fingers that
+he could hardly close upon what they held.
+
+The papers Captain Morgan found in a wallet in an inner breast pocket of
+the Spaniard's waistcoat. These he examined one by one, and finding them
+to his satisfaction, tied them up again, and slipped the wallet and its
+contents into his own pocket.
+
+Then for the first time he appeared to observe Master Harry, who,
+indeed, must have been standing, the perfect picture of horror and
+dismay. Whereupon, bursting out a-laughing, and slipping the pistol he
+had used back into its sling again, he fetched poor Harry a great slap
+upon the back, bidding him be a man, for that he would see many such
+sights as this.
+
+But indeed, it was no laughing matter for poor Master Harry, for it was
+many a day before his imagination could rid itself of the image of the
+dead Spaniard's face; and as he walked away down the street with his
+companions, leaving the crowd behind them, and the dead body where it
+lay for its friends to look after, his ears humming and ringing from
+the deafening noise of the pistol shots fired in the close room, and the
+sweat trickling down his face in drops, he knew not whether all that
+had passed had been real, or whether it was a dream from which he might
+presently awaken.
+
+
+IV
+
+The papers Captain Morgan had thus seized upon as the fruit of the
+murder he had committed must have been as perfectly satisfactory to him
+as could be, for having paid a second visit that evening to Governor
+Modiford, the pirate lifted anchor the next morning and made sail toward
+the Gulf of Darien. There, after cruising about in those waters for
+about a fortnight without falling in with a vessel of any sort, at the
+end of that time they overhauled a caravel bound from Porto Bello to
+Cartagena, which vessel they took, and finding her loaded with nothing
+better than raw hides, scuttled and sank her, being then about twenty
+leagues from the main of Cartagena. From the captain of this vessel
+they learned that the plate fleet was then lying in the harbor of Porto
+Bello, not yet having set sail thence, but waiting for the change of the
+winds before embarking for Spain. Besides this, which was a good deal
+more to their purpose, the Spaniards told the pirates that the Sieur
+Simon, his wife, and daughter were confined aboard the vice admiral of
+that fleet, and that the name of the vice admiral was the Santa Maria y
+Valladolid.
+
+So soon as Captain Morgan had obtained the information he desired he
+directed his course straight for the Bay of Santo Blaso, where he might
+lie safely within the cape of that name without any danger of discovery
+(that part of the mainland being entirely uninhabited) and yet be within
+twenty or twenty-five leagues of Porto Bello.
+
+Having come safely to this anchorage, he at once declared his intentions
+to his companions, which were as follows:
+
+That it was entirely impossible for them to hope to sail their vessel
+into the harbor of Porto Bello, and to attack the Spanish vice admiral
+where he lay in the midst of the armed flota; wherefore, if anything was
+to be accomplished, it must be undertaken by some subtle design rather
+than by open-handed boldness. Having so prefaced what he had to say, he
+now declared that it was his purpose to take one of the ship's boats and
+to go in that to Porto Bello, trusting for some opportunity to occur to
+aid him either in the accomplishment of his aims or in the gaining of
+some further information. Having thus delivered himself, he invited any
+who dared to do so to volunteer for the expedition, telling them plainly
+that he would constrain no man to go against his will, for that at best
+it was a desperate enterprise, possessing only the recommendation that
+in its achievement the few who undertook it would gain great renown, and
+perhaps a very considerable booty.
+
+And such was the incredible influence of this bold man over his
+companions, and such was their confidence in his skill and cunning, that
+not above a dozen of all those aboard hung back from the undertaking,
+but nearly every man desired to be taken.
+
+Of these volunteers Captain Morgan chose twenty--among others our Master
+Harry--and having arranged with his lieutenant that if nothing was heard
+from the expedition at the end of three days he should sail for Jamaica
+to await news, he embarked upon that enterprise, which, though never
+heretofore published, was perhaps the boldest and the most desperate of
+all those that have since made his name so famous. For what could be a
+more unparalleled undertaking than for a little open boat, containing
+but twenty men, to enter the harbor of the third strongest fortress of
+the Spanish mainland with the intention of cutting out the Spanish vice
+admiral from the midst of a whole fleet of powerfully armed vessels, and
+how many men in all the world do you suppose would venture such a thing?
+
+But there is this to be said of that great buccaneer: that if he
+undertook enterprises so desperate as this, he yet laid his plans
+so well that they never went altogether amiss. Moreover, the very
+desperation of his successes was of such a nature that no man could
+suspect that he would dare to undertake such things, and accordingly his
+enemies were never prepared to guard against his attacks. Aye, had he
+but worn the king's colors and served under the rules of honest war, he
+might have become as great and as renowned as Admiral Blake himself.
+
+But all that is neither here nor there; what I have to tell you now is
+that Captain Morgan in this open boat with his twenty mates reached the
+Cape of Salmedina toward the fall of day. Arriving within view of the
+harbor they discovered the plate fleet at anchor, with two men-of-war
+and an armed galley riding as a guard at the mouth of the harbor, scarce
+half a league distant from the other ships. Having spied the fleet in
+this posture, the pirates presently pulled down their sails and rowed
+along the coast, feigning to be a Spanish vessel from Nombre de Dios. So
+hugging the shore, they came boldly within the harbor, upon the opposite
+side of which you might see the fortress a considerable distance away.
+
+Being now come so near to the consummation of their adventure, Captain
+Morgan required every man to make an oath to stand by him to the last,
+whereunto our hero swore as heartily as any man aboard, although his
+heart, I must needs confess, was beating at a great rate at the approach
+of what was to happen. Having thus received the oaths of all his
+followers, Captain Morgan commanded the surgeon of the expedition that,
+when the order was given, he, the medico, was to bore six holes in the
+boat, so that, it sinking under them, they might all be compelled to
+push forward, with no chance of retreat. And such was the ascendancy of
+this man over his followers, and such was their awe of him, that not one
+of them uttered even so much as a murmur, though what he had commanded
+the surgeon to do pledged them either to victory or to death, with no
+chance to choose between. Nor did the surgeon question the orders he had
+received, much less did he dream of disobeying them.
+
+By now it had fallen pretty dusk, whereupon, spying two fishermen in a
+canoe at a little distance, Captain Morgan demanded of them in Spanish
+which vessel of those at anchor in the harbor was the vice admiral, for
+that he had dispatches for the captain thereof. Whereupon the fishermen,
+suspecting nothing, pointed to them a galleon of great size riding at
+anchor not half a league distant.
+
+Toward this vessel accordingly the pirates directed their course, and
+when they had come pretty nigh, Captain Morgan called upon the surgeon
+that now it was time for him to perform the duty that had been laid upon
+him. Whereupon the other did as he was ordered, and that so thoroughly
+that the water presently came gushing into the boat in great streams,
+whereat all hands pulled for the galleon as though every next moment was
+to be their last.
+
+And what do you suppose were our hero's emotions at this time? Like all
+in the boat, his awe of Captain Morgan was so great that I do believe he
+would rather have gone to the bottom than have questioned his command,
+even when it was to scuttle the boat. Nevertheless, when he felt the
+cold water gushing about his feet (for he had taken off his shoes and
+stockings) he became possessed with such a fear of being drowned that
+even the Spanish galleon had no terrors for him if he could only feel
+the solid planks thereof beneath his feet.
+
+Indeed, all the crew appeared to be possessed of a like dismay, for they
+pulled at the oars with such an incredible force that they were under
+the quarter of the galleon before the boat was half filled with water.
+
+Here, as they approached, it then being pretty dark and the moon not
+yet having risen, the watch upon the deck hailed them, whereupon Captain
+Morgan called out in Spanish that he was Capt. Alvarez Mendazo, and that
+he brought dispatches for the vice admiral.
+
+But at that moment, the boat being now so full of water as to be
+logged, it suddenly tilted upon one side as though to sink beneath them,
+whereupon all hands, without further orders, went scrambling up the
+side, as nimble as so many monkeys, each armed with a pistol in one hand
+and a cutlass in the other, and so were upon deck before the watch could
+collect his wits to utter any outcry or to give any other alarm than to
+cry out, "Jesu bless us! who are these?" at which words somebody knocked
+him down with the butt of a pistol, though who it was our hero could not
+tell in the darkness and the hurry.
+
+Before any of those upon deck could recover from their alarm or those
+from below come up upon deck, a part of the pirates, under the carpenter
+and the surgeon, had run to the gun room and had taken possession of the
+arms, while Captain Morgan, with Master Harry and a Portuguese called
+Murillo Braziliano, had flown with the speed of the wind into the great
+cabin.
+
+Here they found the captain of the vice admiral playing at cards
+with the Sieur Simon and a friend, Madam Simon and her daughter being
+present.
+
+Captain Morgan instantly set his pistol at the breast of the Spanish
+captain, swearing with a most horrible fierce countenance that if he
+spake a word or made any outcry he was a dead man. As for our hero,
+having now got his hand into the game, he performed the same service for
+the Spaniard's friend, declaring he would shoot him dead if he opened
+his lips or lifted so much as a single finger.
+
+All this while the ladies, not comprehending what had occurred, had sat
+as mute as stones; but now having so far recovered themselves as to find
+a voice, the younger of the two fell to screaming, at which the Sieur
+Simon called out to her to be still, for these were friends who had come
+to help them, and not enemies who had come to harm them.
+
+All this, you are to understand, occupied only a little while, for in
+less than a minute three or four of the pirates had come into the cabin,
+who, together with the Portuguese, proceeded at once to bind the
+two Spaniards hand and foot, and to gag them. This being done to our
+buccaneer's satisfaction, and the Spanish captain being stretched out
+in the corner of the cabin, he instantly cleared his countenance of its
+terrors, and bursting forth into a great loud laugh, clapped his hand
+to the Sieur Simon's, which he wrung with the best will in the world.
+Having done this, and being in a fine humor after this his first
+success, he turned to the two ladies. "And this, ladies," said he,
+taking our hero by the hand and presenting him, "is a young gentleman
+who has embarked with me to learn the trade of piracy. I recommend him
+to your politeness."
+
+Think what a confusion this threw our Master Harry into, to be sure,
+who at his best was never easy in the company of strange ladies! You may
+suppose what must have been his emotions to find himself thus introduced
+to the attention of Madam Simon and her daughter, being at the time in
+his bare feet, clad only in his shirt and breeches, and with no hat upon
+his head, a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other. However,
+he was not left for long to his embarrassments, for almost immediately
+after he had thus far relaxed, Captain Morgan fell of a sudden serious
+again, and bidding the Sieur Simon to get his ladies away into some
+place of safety, for the most hazardous part of this adventure was yet
+to occur, he quitted the cabin with Master Harry and the other pirates
+(for you may call him a pirate now) at his heels.
+
+Having come upon deck, our hero beheld that a part of the Spanish crew
+were huddled forward in a flock like so many sheep (the others being
+crowded below with the hatches fastened upon them), and such was the
+terror of the pirates, and so dreadful the name of Henry Morgan, that
+not one of those poor wretches dared to lift up his voice to give any
+alarm, nor even to attempt an escape by jumping overboard.
+
+At Captain Morgan's orders, these men, together with certain of his own
+company, ran nimbly aloft and began setting the sails, which, the night
+now having fallen pretty thick, was not for a good while observed by any
+of the vessels riding at anchor about them.
+
+Indeed, the pirates might have made good their escape, with at most only
+a shot or two from the men-of-war, had it not then been about the full
+of the moon, which, having arisen, presently discovered to those of the
+fleet that lay closest about them what was being done aboard the vice
+admiral.
+
+At this one of the vessels hailed them, and then after a while,
+having no reply, hailed them again. Even then the Spaniards might not
+immediately have suspected anything was amiss but only that the
+vice admiral for some reason best known to himself was shifting his
+anchorage, had not one of the Spaniards aloft--but who it was Captain
+Morgan was never able to discover--answered the hail by crying out that
+the vice admiral had been seized by the pirates.
+
+At this the alarm was instantly given and the mischief done, for
+presently there was a tremendous bustle through that part of the fleet
+lying nighest the vice admiral--a deal of shouting of orders, a beating
+of drums, and the running hither and thither of the crews.
+
+But by this time the sails of the vice admiral had filled with a strong
+land breeze that was blowing up the harbor, whereupon the carpenter,
+at Captain Morgan's orders, having cut away both anchors, the galleon
+presently bore away up the harbor, gathering headway every moment with
+the wind nearly dead astern. The nearest vessel was the only one that
+for the moment was able to offer any hindrance. This ship, having by
+this time cleared away one of its guns, was able to fire a parting shot
+against the vice-admiral, striking her somewhere forward, as our hero
+could see by a great shower of splinters that flew up in the moonlight.
+
+At the sound of the shot all the vessels of the flota not yet disturbed
+by the alarm were aroused at once, so that the pirates had the
+satisfaction of knowing that they would have to run the gantlet of
+all the ships between them and the open sea before they could reckon
+themselves escaped.
+
+And, indeed, to our hero's mind it seemed that the battle which followed
+must have been the most terrific cannonade that was ever heard in the
+world. It was not so ill at first, for it was some while before the
+Spaniards could get their guns clear for action, they being not the
+least in the world prepared for such an occasion as this. But by and by
+first one and then another ship opened fire upon the galleon, until it
+seemed to our hero that all the thunders of heaven let loose upon them
+could not have created a more prodigious uproar, and that it was not
+possible that they could any of them escape destruction.
+
+By now the moon had risen full and round, so that the clouds of smoke
+that rose in the air appeared as white as snow. The air seemed full of
+the hiss and screaming of shot, each one of which, when it struck the
+galleon, was magnified by our hero's imagination into ten times its
+magnitude from the crash which it delivered and from the cloud of
+splinters it would cast up into the moonlight. At last he suddenly
+beheld one poor man knocked sprawling across the deck, who, as he raised
+his arm from behind the mast, disclosed that the hand was gone from it,
+and that the shirt sleeve was red with blood in the moonlight. At this
+sight all the strength fell away from poor Harry, and he felt sure that
+a like fate or even a worse must be in store for him.
+
+But, after all, this was nothing to what it might have been in
+broad daylight, for what with the darkness of night, and the little
+preparation the Spaniards could make for such a business, and
+the extreme haste with which they discharged their guns (many not
+understanding what was the occasion of all this uproar), nearly all the
+shot flew so wide of the mark that not above one in twenty struck that
+at which it was aimed.
+
+Meantime Captain Morgan, with the Sieur Simon, who had followed him
+upon deck, stood just above where our hero lay behind the shelter of the
+bulwark. The captain had lit a pipe of tobacco, and he stood now in the
+bright moonlight close to the rail, with his hands behind him, looking
+out ahead with the utmost coolness imaginable, and paying no more
+attention to the din of battle than though it were twenty leagues away.
+Now and then he would take his pipe from his lips to utter an order to
+the man at the wheel. Excepting this he stood there hardly moving at
+all, the wind blowing his long red hair over his shoulders.
+
+Had it not been for the armed galley the pirates might have got the
+galleon away with no great harm done in spite of all this cannonading,
+for the man-of-war which rode at anchor nighest to them at the mouth
+of the harbor was still so far away that they might have passed it by
+hugging pretty close to the shore, and that without any great harm being
+done to them in the darkness. But just at this moment, when the open
+water lay in sight, came this galley pulling out from behind the point
+of the shore in such a manner as either to head our pirates off entirely
+or else to compel them to approach so near to the man-of-war that that
+latter vessel could bring its guns to bear with more effect.
+
+This galley, I must tell you, was like others of its kind such as you
+may find in these waters, the hull being long and cut low to the water
+so as to allow the oars to dip freely. The bow was sharp and projected
+far out ahead, mounting a swivel upon it, while at the stern a number of
+galleries built one above another into a castle gave shelter to several
+companies of musketeers as well as the officers commanding them.
+
+Our hero could behold the approach of this galley from above the
+starboard bulwarks, and it appeared to him impossible for them to
+hope to escape either it or the man-of-war. But still Captain Morgan
+maintained the same composure that he had exhibited all the while, only
+now and then delivering an order to the man at the wheel, who, putting
+the helm over, threw the bows of the galleon around more to the
+larboard, as though to escape the bow of the galley and get into the
+open water beyond. This course brought the pirates ever closer and
+closer to the man-of-war, which now began to add its thunder to the din
+of the battle, and with so much more effect that at every discharge you
+might hear the crashing and crackling of splintered wood, and now and
+then the outcry or groaning of some man who was hurt. Indeed, had it
+been daylight, they must at this juncture all have perished, though,
+as was said, what with the night and the confusion and the hurry, they
+escaped entire destruction, though more by a miracle than through any
+policy upon their own part.
+
+Meantime the galley, steering as though to come aboard of them, had now
+come so near that it, too, presently began to open its musketry fire
+upon them, so that the humming and rattling of bullets were presently
+added to the din of cannonading.
+
+In two minutes more it would have been aboard of them, when in a moment
+Captain Morgan roared out of a sudden to the man at the helm to put it
+hard a starboard. In response the man ran the wheel over with the utmost
+quickness, and the galleon, obeying her helm very readily, came around
+upon a course which, if continued, would certainly bring them into
+collision with their enemy.
+
+It is possible at first the Spaniards imagined the pirates intended to
+escape past their stern, for they instantly began backing oars to keep
+them from getting past, so that the water was all of a foam about them,
+at the same time they did this they poured in such a fire of musketry
+that it was a miracle that no more execution was accomplished than
+happened.
+
+As for our hero, methinks for the moment he forgot all about everything
+else than as to whether or no his captain's maneuver would succeed, for
+in the very first moment he divined, as by some instinct, what Captain
+Morgan purposed doing.
+
+At this moment, so particular in the execution of this nice design,
+a bullet suddenly struck down the man at the wheel. Hearing the sharp
+outcry, our Harry turned to see him fall forward, and then to his hands
+and knees upon the deck, the blood running in a black pool beneath him,
+while the wheel, escaping from his hands, spun over until the spokes
+were all of a mist.
+
+In a moment the ship would have fallen off before the wind had not our
+hero, leaping to the wheel (even as Captain Morgan shouted an order for
+some one to do so), seized the flying spokes, whirling them back again,
+and so bringing the bow of the galleon up to its former course.
+
+In the first moment of this effort he had reckoned of nothing but of
+carrying out his captain's designs. He neither thought of cannon balls
+nor of bullets. But now that his task was accomplished, he came suddenly
+back to himself to find the galleries of the galley aflame with musket
+shots, and to become aware with a most horrible sinking of the spirits
+that all the shots therefrom were intended for him. He cast his eyes
+about him with despair, but no one came to ease him of his task, which,
+having undertaken, he had too much spirit to resign from carrying
+through to the end, though he was well aware that the very next instant
+might mean his sudden and violent death. His ears hummed and rang, and
+his brain swam as light as a feather. I know not whether he breathed,
+but he shut his eyes tight as though that might save him from the
+bullets that were raining about him.
+
+At this moment the Spaniards must have discovered for the first time the
+pirates' design, for of a sudden they ceased firing, and began to shout
+out a multitude of orders, while the oars lashed the water all about
+with a foam. But it was too late then for them to escape, for within a
+couple of seconds the galleon struck her enemy a blow so violent upon
+the larboard quarter as nearly to hurl our Harry upon the deck, and then
+with a dreadful, horrible crackling of wood, commingled with a yelling
+of men's voices, the galley was swung around upon her side, and the
+galleon, sailing into the open sea, left nothing of her immediate enemy
+but a sinking wreck, and the water dotted all over with bobbing heads
+and waving hands in the moonlight.
+
+And now, indeed, that all danger was past and gone, there were plenty
+to come running to help our hero at the wheel. As for Captain Morgan,
+having come down upon the main deck, he fetches the young helmsman a
+clap upon the back. "Well, Master Harry," says he, "and did I not tell
+you I would make a man of you?" Whereat our poor Harry fell a-laughing,
+but with a sad catch in his voice, for his hands trembled as with an
+ague, and were as cold as ice. As for his emotions, God knows he was
+nearer crying than laughing, if Captain Morgan had but known it.
+
+Nevertheless, though undertaken under the spur of the moment, I protest
+it was indeed a brave deed, and I cannot but wonder how many young
+gentlemen of sixteen there are to-day who, upon a like occasion, would
+act as well as our Harry.
+
+
+V
+
+The balance of our hero's adventures were of a lighter sort than those
+already recounted, for the next morning the Spanish captain (a very
+polite and well-bred gentleman) having fitted him out with a shift of
+his own clothes, Master Harry was presented in a proper form to the
+ladies. For Captain Morgan, if he had felt a liking for the young man
+before, could not now show sufficient regard for him. He ate in the
+great cabin and was petted by all. Madam Simon, who was a fat and
+red-faced lady, was forever praising him, and the young miss, who was
+extremely well-looking, was as continually making eyes at him.
+
+She and Master Harry, I must tell you, would spend hours together, she
+making pretense of teaching him French, although he was so possessed
+with a passion of love that he was nigh suffocated with it. She, upon
+her part, perceiving his emotions, responded with extreme good nature
+and complacency, so that had our hero been older, and the voyage proved
+longer, he might have become entirely enmeshed in the toils of his
+fair siren. For all this while, you are to understand, the pirates were
+making sail straight for Jamaica, which they reached upon the third day
+in perfect safety.
+
+In that time, however, the pirates had well-nigh gone crazy for joy; for
+when they came to examine their purchase they discovered her cargo to
+consist of plate to the prodigious sum of L180,000 in value. 'Twas a
+wonder they did not all make themselves drunk for joy. No doubt they
+would have done so had not Captain Morgan, knowing they were still in
+the exact track of the Spanish fleets, threatened them that the first
+man among them who touched a drop of rum without his permission he would
+shoot him dead upon the deck. This threat had such effect that they all
+remained entirely sober until they had reached Port Royal Harbor, which
+they did about nine o'clock in the morning.
+
+And now it was that our hero's romance came all tumbling down about his
+ears with a run. For they had hardly come to anchor in the harbor when
+a boat came from a man-of-war, and who should come stepping aboard but
+Lieutenant Grantley (a particular friend of our hero's father) and his
+own eldest brother Thomas, who, putting on a very stern face, informed
+Master Harry that he was a desperate and hardened villain who was sure
+to end at the gallows, and that he was to go immediately back to his
+home again. He told our embryo pirate that his family had nigh gone
+distracted because of his wicked and ungrateful conduct. Nor could our
+hero move him from his inflexible purpose. "What," says our Harry, "and
+will you not then let me wait until our prize is divided and I get my
+share?"
+
+"Prize, indeed!" says his brother. "And do you then really think that
+your father would consent to your having a share in this terrible bloody
+and murthering business?"
+
+And so, after a good deal of argument, our hero was constrained to go;
+nor did he even have an opportunity to bid adieu to his inamorata. Nor
+did he see her any more, except from a distance, she standing on the
+poop deck as he was rowed away from her, her face all stained with
+crying. For himself, he felt that there was no more joy in life;
+nevertheless, standing up in the stern of the boat, he made shift,
+though with an aching heart, to deliver her a fine bow with the hat he
+had borrowed from the Spanish captain, before his brother bade him sit
+down again.
+
+And so to the ending of this story, with only this to relate, that our
+Master Harry, so far from going to the gallows, became in good time a
+respectable and wealthy sugar merchant with an English wife and a
+fine family of children, whereunto, when the mood was upon him, he has
+sometimes told these adventures (and sundry others not here recounted),
+as I have told them unto you.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV. TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE BOX
+
+An Old-time Story of the Days of Captain Kidd
+
+
+I
+
+TO tell about Tom Chist, and how he got his name, and how he came to be
+living at the little settlement of Henlopen, just inside the mouth of
+the Delaware Bay, the story must begin as far back as 1686, when a great
+storm swept the Atlantic coast from end to end. During the heaviest part
+of the hurricane a bark went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals, just
+below Cape Henlopen and at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, and Tom Chist
+was the only soul of all those on board the ill-fated vessel who escaped
+alive.
+
+This story must first be told, because it was on account of the strange
+and miraculous escape that happened to him at that time that he gained
+the name that was given to him.
+
+Even as late as that time of the American colonies, the little scattered
+settlement at Henlopen, made up of English, with a few Dutch and Swedish
+people, was still only a spot upon the face of the great American
+wilderness that spread away, with swamp and forest, no man knew how far
+to the westward. That wilderness was not only full of wild beasts, but
+of Indian savages, who every fall would come in wandering tribes
+to spend the winter along the shores of the fresh-water lakes below
+Henlopen. There for four or five months they would live upon fish and
+clams and wild ducks and geese, chipping their arrowheads, and making
+their earthenware pots and pans under the lee of the sand hills and pine
+woods below the Capes.
+
+Sometimes on Sundays, when the Rev. Hillary Jones would be preaching
+in the little log church back in the woods, these half-clad red savages
+would come in from the cold, and sit squatting in the back part of the
+church, listening stolidly to the words that had no meaning for them.
+
+But about the wreck of the bark in 1686. Such a wreck as that which then
+went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals was a godsend to the poor and
+needy settlers in the wilderness where so few good things ever came.
+For the vessel went to pieces during the night, and the next morning
+the beach was strewn with wreckage--boxes and barrels, chests and spars,
+timbers and planks, a plentiful and bountiful harvest, to be gathered up
+by the settlers as they chose, with no one to forbid or prevent them.
+
+The name of the bark, as found painted on some of the water barrels
+and sea chests, was the Bristol Merchant, and she no doubt hailed from
+England.
+
+As was said, the only soul who escaped alive off the wreck was Tom
+Chist.
+
+A settler, a fisherman named Matt Abrahamson, and his daughter Molly,
+found Tom. He was washed up on the beach among the wreckage, in a great
+wooden box which had been securely tied around with a rope and lashed
+between two spars--apparently for better protection in beating through
+the surf. Matt Abrahamson thought he had found something of more than
+usual value when he came upon this chest; but when he cut the cords
+and broke open the box with his broadax, he could not have been more
+astonished had he beheld a salamander instead of a baby of nine or ten
+months old lying half smothered in the blankets that covered the bottom
+of the chest.
+
+Matt Abrahamson's daughter Molly had had a baby who had died a month or
+so before. So when she saw the little one lying there in the bottom of
+the chest, she cried out in a great loud voice that the Good Man had
+sent her another baby in place of her own.
+
+The rain was driving before the hurricane storm in dim, slanting sheets,
+and so she wrapped up the baby in the man's coat she wore and ran off
+home without waiting to gather up any more of the wreckage.
+
+It was Parson Jones who gave the foundling his name. When the news
+came to his ears of what Matt Abrahamson had found he went over to the
+fisherman's cabin to see the child. He examined the clothes in which the
+baby was dressed. They were of fine linen and handsomely stitched, and
+the reverend gentleman opined that the foundling's parents must have
+been of quality. A kerchief had been wrapped around the baby's neck and
+under its arms and tied behind, and in the corner, marked with very fine
+needlework, were the initials T. C.
+
+"What d'ye call him, Molly?" said Parson Jones. He was standing, as he
+spoke, with his back to the fire, warming his palms before the blaze.
+The pocket of the greatcoat he wore bulged out with a big case bottle of
+spirits which he had gathered up out of the wreck that afternoon. "What
+d'ye call him, Molly?"
+
+"I'll call him Tom, after my own baby."
+
+"That goes very well with the initial on the kerchief," said Parson
+Jones. "But what other name d'ye give him? Let it be something to go
+with the C."
+
+"I don't know," said Molly.
+
+"Why not call him 'Chist,' since he was born in a chist out of the sea?
+'Tom Chist'--the name goes off like a flash in the pan." And so "Tom
+Chist" he was called and "Tom Chist" he was christened.
+
+So much for the beginning of the history of Tom Chist. The story of
+Captain Kidd's treasure box does not begin until the late spring of
+1699.
+
+That was the year that the famous pirate captain, coming up from the
+West Indies, sailed his sloop into the Delaware Bay, where he lay for
+over a month waiting for news from his friends in New York.
+
+For he had sent word to that town asking if the coast was clear for him
+to return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas
+and the coast of Africa, and meantime he lay there in the Delaware Bay
+waiting for a reply. Before he left he turned the whole of Tom Chist's
+life topsy-turvy with something that he brought ashore.
+
+By that time Tom Chist had grown into a strong-limbed, thick-jointed boy
+of fourteen or fifteen years of age. It was a miserable dog's life he
+lived with old Matt Abrahamson, for the old fisherman was in his cups
+more than half the time, and when he was so there was hardly a day
+passed that he did not give Tom a curse or a buffet or, as like as not,
+an actual beating. One would have thought that such treatment would
+have broken the spirit of the poor little foundling, but it had just the
+opposite effect upon Tom Chist, who was one of your stubborn, sturdy,
+stiff-willed fellows who only grow harder and more tough the more they
+are ill-treated. It had been a long time now since he had made any
+outcry or complaint at the hard usage he suffered from old Matt. At
+such times he would shut his teeth and bear whatever came to him, until
+sometimes the half-drunken old man would be driven almost mad by his
+stubborn silence. Maybe he would stop in the midst of the beating he
+was administering, and, grinding his teeth, would cry out: "Won't ye say
+naught? Won't ye say naught? Well, then, I'll see if I can't make ye
+say naught." When things had reached such a pass as this Molly would
+generally interfere to protect her foster son, and then she and Tom
+would together fight the old man until they had wrenched the stick or
+the strap out of his hand. Then old Matt would chase them out of doors
+and around and around the house for maybe half an hour, until his anger
+was cool, when he would go back again, and for a time the storm would be
+over.
+
+Besides his foster mother, Tom Chist had a very good friend in Parson
+Jones, who used to come over every now and then to Abrahamson's hut upon
+the chance of getting a half dozen fish for breakfast. He always had a
+kind word or two for Tom, who during the winter evenings would go over
+to the good man's house to learn his letters, and to read and write and
+cipher a little, so that by now he was able to spell the words out of
+the Bible and the almanac, and knew enough to change tuppence into four
+ha'pennies.
+
+This is the sort of boy Tom Chist was, and this is the sort of life he
+led.
+
+In the late spring or early summer of 1699 Captain Kidd's sloop sailed
+into the mouth of the Delaware Bay and changed the whole fortune of his
+life.
+
+And this is how you come to the story of Captain Kidd's treasure box.
+
+
+II
+
+Old Matt Abrahamson kept the flat-bottomed boat in which he went fishing
+some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of the old wreck
+that had been sunk on the Shoals. This was the usual fishing ground of
+the settlers, and here old Matt's boat generally lay drawn up on the
+sand.
+
+There had been a thunderstorm that afternoon, and Tom had gone down the
+beach to bale out the boat in readiness for the morning's fishing.
+
+It was full moonlight now, as he was returning, and the night sky was
+full of floating clouds. Now and then there was a dull flash to the
+westward, and once a muttering growl of thunder, promising another storm
+to come.
+
+All that day the pirate sloop had been lying just off the shore back of
+the Capes, and now Tom Chist could see the sails glimmering pallidly in
+the moonlight, spread for drying after the storm. He was walking up the
+shore homeward when he became aware that at some distance ahead of him
+there was a ship's boat drawn up on the little narrow beach, and a
+group of men clustered about it. He hurried forward with a good deal of
+curiosity to see who had landed, but it was not until he had come close
+to them that he could distinguish who and what they were. Then he knew
+that it must be a party who had come off the pirate sloop. They had
+evidently just landed, and two men were lifting out a chest from the
+boat. One of them was a negro, naked to the waist, and the other was a
+white man in his shirt sleeves, wearing petticoat breeches, a Monterey
+cap upon his head, a red bandanna handkerchief around his neck, and
+gold earrings in his ears. He had a long, plaited queue hanging down
+his back, and a great sheath knife dangling from his side. Another man,
+evidently the captain of the party, stood at a little distance as
+they lifted the chest out of the boat. He had a cane in one hand and a
+lighted lantern in the other, although the moon was shining as bright
+as day. He wore jack boots and a handsome laced coat, and he had a
+long, drooping mustache that curled down below his chin. He wore a fine,
+feathered hat, and his long black hair hung down upon his shoulders.
+
+All this Tom Chist could see in the moonlight that glinted and twinkled
+upon the gilt buttons of his coat.
+
+They were so busy lifting the chest from the boat that at first they did
+not observe that Tom Chist had come up and was standing there. It was
+the white man with the long, plaited queue and the gold earrings that
+spoke to him. "Boy, what do you want here, boy?" he said, in a rough,
+hoarse voice. "Where d'ye come from?" And then dropping his end of the
+chest, and without giving Tom time to answer, he pointed off down the
+beach, and said, "You'd better be going about your own business, if you
+know what's good for you; and don't you come back, or you'll find what
+you don't want waiting for you."
+
+Tom saw in a glance that the pirates were all looking at him, and then,
+without saying a word, he turned and walked away. The man who had spoken
+to him followed him threateningly for some little distance, as though
+to see that he had gone away as he was bidden to do. But presently he
+stopped, and Tom hurried on alone, until the boat and the crew and
+all were dropped away behind and lost in the moonlight night. Then he
+himself stopped also, turned, and looked back whence he had come.
+
+There had been something very strange in the appearance of the men
+he had just seen, something very mysterious in their actions, and he
+wondered what it all meant, and what they were going to do. He stood
+for a little while thus looking and listening. He could see nothing, and
+could hear only the sound of distant talking. What were they doing on
+the lonely shore thus at night? Then, following a sudden impulse, he
+turned and cut off across the sand hummocks, skirting around inland, but
+keeping pretty close to the shore, his object being to spy upon them,
+and to watch what they were about from the back of the low sand hills
+that fronted the beach.
+
+He had gone along some distance in his circuitous return when he became
+aware of the sound of voices that seemed to be drawing closer to him
+as he came toward the speakers. He stopped and stood listening, and
+instantly, as he stopped, the voices stopped also. He crouched there
+silently in the bright, glimmering moonlight, surrounded by the silent
+stretches of sand, and the stillness seemed to press upon him like a
+heavy hand. Then suddenly the sound of a man's voice began again, and as
+Tom listened he could hear some one slowly counting. "Ninety-one,"
+the voice began, "ninety-two, ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five,
+ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one
+hundred and one"--the slow, monotonous count coming nearer and nearer;
+"one hundred and two, one hundred and three, one hundred and four," and
+so on in its monotonous reckoning.
+
+Suddenly he saw three heads appear above the sand hill, so close to
+him that he crouched down quickly with a keen thrill, close beside the
+hummock near which he stood. His first fear was that they might have
+seen him in the moonlight; but they had not, and his heart rose again
+as the counting voice went steadily on. "One hundred and twenty," it
+was saying--"and twenty-one, and twenty-two, and twenty-three, and
+twenty-four," and then he who was counting came out from behind
+the little sandy rise into the white and open level of shimmering
+brightness.
+
+It was the man with the cane whom Tom had seen some time before the
+captain of the party who had landed. He carried his cane under his arm
+now, and was holding his lantern close to something that he held in his
+hand, and upon which he looked narrowly as he walked with a slow and
+measured tread in a perfectly straight line across the sand, counting
+each step as he took it. "And twenty-five, and twenty-six, and
+twenty-seven, and twenty-eight, and twenty-nine, and thirty."
+
+Behind him walked two other figures; one was the half-naked negro, the
+other the man with the plaited queue and the earrings, whom Tom had seen
+lifting the chest out of the boat. Now they were carrying the heavy box
+between them, laboring through the sand with shuffling tread as they
+bore it onward. As he who was counting pronounced the word "thirty,"
+the two men set the chest down on the sand with a grunt, the white
+man panting and blowing and wiping his sleeve across his forehead. And
+immediately he who counted took out a slip of paper and marked something
+down upon it. They stood there for a long time, during which Tom lay
+behind the sand hummock watching them, and for a while the silence was
+uninterrupted. In the perfect stillness Tom could hear the washing of
+the little waves beating upon the distant beach, and once the far-away
+sound of a laugh from one of those who stood by the ship's boat.
+
+One, two, three minutes passed, and then the men picked up the chest
+and started on again; and then again the other man began his counting.
+"Thirty and one, and thirty and two, and thirty and three, and thirty
+and four"--he walked straight across the level open, still looking
+intently at that which he held in his hand--"and thirty and five,
+and thirty and six, and thirty and seven," and so on, until the three
+figures disappeared in the little hollow between the two sand hills on
+the opposite side of the open, and still Tom could hear the sound of the
+counting voice in the distance.
+
+Just as they disappeared behind the hill there was a sudden faint flash
+of light; and by and by, as Tom lay still listening to the counting,
+he heard, after a long interval, a far-away muffled rumble of distant
+thunder. He waited for a while, and then arose and stepped to the top
+of the sand hummock behind which he had been lying. He looked all about
+him, but there was no one else to be seen. Then he stepped down from the
+hummock and followed in the direction which the pirate captain and the
+two men carrying the chest had gone. He crept along cautiously, stopping
+now and then to make sure that he still heard the counting voice, and
+when it ceased he lay down upon the sand and waited until it began
+again.
+
+Presently, so following the pirates, he saw the three figures again in
+the distance, and, skirting around back of a hill of sand covered with
+coarse sedge grass, he came to where he overlooked a little open level
+space gleaming white in the moonlight.
+
+The three had been crossing the level of sand, and were now not more
+than twenty-five paces from him. They had again set down the chest, upon
+which the white man with the long queue and the gold earrings had seated
+to rest himself, the negro standing close beside him. The moon shone
+as bright as day and full upon his face. It was looking directly at Tom
+Chist, every line as keen cut with white lights and black shadows as
+though it had been carved in ivory and jet. He sat perfectly motionless,
+and Tom drew back with a start, almost thinking he had been discovered.
+He lay silent, his heart beating heavily in his throat; but there was
+no alarm, and presently he heard the counting begin again, and when he
+looked once more he saw they were going away straight across the little
+open. A soft, sliding hillock of sand lay directly in front of them.
+They did not turn aside, but went straight over it, the leader helping
+himself up the sandy slope with his cane, still counting and still
+keeping his eyes fixed upon that which he held in his hand. Then they
+disappeared again behind the white crest on the other side.
+
+So Tom followed them cautiously until they had gone almost half a mile
+inland. When next he saw them clearly it was from a little sandy rise
+which looked down like the crest of a bowl upon the floor of sand
+below. Upon this smooth, white floor the moon beat with almost dazzling
+brightness.
+
+The white man who had helped to carry the chest was now kneeling, busied
+at some work, though what it was Tom at first could not see. He was
+whittling the point of a stick into a long wooden peg, and when, by and
+by, he had finished what he was about, he arose and stepped to where he
+who seemed to be the captain had stuck his cane upright into the ground
+as though to mark some particular spot. He drew the cane out of the
+sand, thrusting the stick down in its stead. Then he drove the long
+peg down with a wooden mallet which the negro handed to him. The sharp
+rapping of the mallet upon the top of the peg sounded loud the perfect
+stillness, and Tom lay watching and wondering what it all meant. The
+man, with quick-repeated blows, drove the peg farther and farther
+down into the sand until it showed only two or three inches above the
+surface. As he finished his work there was another faint flash of light,
+and by and by another smothered rumble of thunder, and Tom, as he looked
+out toward the westward, saw the silver rim of the round and sharply
+outlined thundercloud rising slowly up into the sky and pushing the
+other and broken drifting clouds before it.
+
+The two white men were now stooping over the peg, the negro man watching
+them. Then presently the man with the cane started straight away from
+the peg, carrying the end of a measuring line with him, the other end
+of which the man with the plaited queue held against the top of the peg.
+When the pirate captain had reached the end of the measuring line he
+marked a cross upon the sand, and then again they measured out another
+stretch of space.
+
+So they measured a distance five times over, and then, from where Tom
+lay, he could see the man with the queue drive another peg just at the
+foot of a sloping rise of sand that swept up beyond into a tall white
+dune marked sharp and clear against the night sky behind. As soon as
+the man with the plaited queue had driven the second peg into the ground
+they began measuring again, and so, still measuring, disappeared in
+another direction which took them in behind the sand dune where Tom no
+longer could see what they were doing.
+
+The negro still sat by the chest where the two had left him, and so
+bright was the moonlight that from where he lay Tom could see the glint
+of it twinkling in the whites of his eyeballs.
+
+Presently from behind the hill there came, for the third time, the sharp
+rapping sound of the mallet driving still another peg, and then after a
+while the two pirates emerged from behind the sloping whiteness into the
+space of moonlight again.
+
+They came direct to where the chest lay, and the white man and the black
+man lifting it once more, they walked away across the level of open
+sand, and so on behind the edge of the hill and out of Tom's sight.
+
+
+III
+
+Tom Chist could no longer see what the pirates were doing, neither did
+he dare to cross over the open space of sand that now lay between
+them and him. He lay there speculating as to what they were about, and
+meantime the storm cloud was rising higher and higher above the horizon,
+with louder and louder mutterings of thunder following each dull flash
+from out the cloudy, cavernous depths. In the silence he could hear
+an occasional click as of some iron implement, and he opined that the
+pirates were burying the chest, though just where they were at work he
+could neither see nor tell.
+
+Still he lay there watching and listening, and by and by a puff of warm
+air blew across the sand, and a thumping tumble of louder thunder leaped
+from out the belly of the storm cloud, which every minute was coming
+nearer and nearer. Still Tom Chist lay watching.
+
+Suddenly, almost unexpectedly, the three figures reappeared from behind
+the sand hill, the pirate captain leading the way, and the negro and
+white man following close behind him. They had gone about halfway across
+the white, sandy level between the hill and the hummock behind which Tom
+Chist lay, when the white man stopped and bent over as though to tie his
+shoe.
+
+This brought the negro a few steps in front of his companion.
+
+That which then followed happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly, so
+swiftly, that Tom Chist had hardly time to realize what it all meant
+before it was over. As the negro passed him the white man arose suddenly
+and silently erect, and Tom Chist saw the white moonlight glint upon the
+blade of a great dirk knife which he now held in his hand. He took one,
+two silent, catlike steps behind the unsuspecting negro. Then there was
+a sweeping flash of the blade in the pallid light, and a blow, the thump
+of which Tom could distinctly hear even from where he lay stretched out
+upon the sand. There was an instant echoing yell from the black man, who
+ran stumbling forward, who stopped, who regained his footing, and then
+stood for an instant as though rooted to the spot.
+
+Tom had distinctly seen the knife enter his back, and even thought that
+he had seen the glint of the point as it came out from the breast.
+
+Meantime the pirate captain had stopped, and now stood with his hand
+resting upon his cane looking impassively on.
+
+Then the black man started to run. The white man stood for a while
+glaring after him; then he, too, started after his victim upon the run.
+The black man was not very far from Tom when he staggered and fell.
+He tried to rise, then fell forward again, and lay at length. At that
+instant the first edge of the cloud cut across the moon, and there was a
+sudden darkness; but in the silence Tom heard the sound of another blow
+and a groan, and then presently a voice calling to the pirate captain
+that it was all over.
+
+He saw the dim form of the captain crossing the level sand, and then, as
+the moon sailed out from behind the cloud, he saw the white man standing
+over a black figure that lay motionless upon the sand.
+
+Then Tom Chist scrambled up and ran away, plunging down into the hollow
+of sand that lay in the shadows below. Over the next rise he ran, and
+down again into the next black hollow, and so on over the sliding,
+shifting ground, panting and gasping. It seemed to him that he could
+hear footsteps following, and in the terror that possessed him he almost
+expected every instant to feel the cold knife blade slide between his
+own ribs in such a thrust from behind as he had seen given to the poor
+black man.
+
+So he ran on like one in a nightmare. His feet grew heavy like lead, he
+panted and gasped, his breath came hot and dry in his throat. But still
+he ran and ran until at last he found himself in front of old Matt
+Abrahamson's cabin, gasping, panting, and sobbing for breath, his knees
+relaxed and his thighs trembling with weakness.
+
+As he opened the door and dashed into the darkened cabin (for both Matt
+and Molly were long ago asleep in bed) there was a flash of light, and
+even as he slammed to the door behind him there was an instant peal of
+thunder, heavy as though a great weight had been dropped upon the roof
+of the sky, so that the doors and windows of the cabin rattled.
+
+
+IV
+
+Then Tom Chist crept to bed, trembling, shuddering, bathed in sweat, his
+heart beating like a trip hammer, and his brain dizzy from that long,
+terror-inspired race through the soft sand in which he had striven to
+outstrip he knew not what pursuing horror.
+
+For a long, long time he lay awake, trembling and chattering with
+nervous chills, and when he did fall asleep it was only to drop into
+monstrous dreams in which he once again saw ever enacted, with various
+grotesque variations, the tragic drama which his waking eyes had beheld
+the night before.
+
+Then came the dawning of the broad, wet daylight, and before the rising
+of the sun Tom was up and out of doors to find the young day dripping
+with the rain of overnight.
+
+His first act was to climb the nearest sand hill and to gaze out toward
+the offing where the pirate ship had been the day before.
+
+It was no longer there.
+
+Soon afterward Matt Abrahamson came out of the cabin and he called
+to Tom to go get a bite to eat, for it was time for them to be away
+fishing.
+
+All that morning the recollection of the night before hung over Tom
+Chist like a great cloud of boding trouble. It filled the confined area
+of the little boat and spread over the entire wide spaces of sky and sea
+that surrounded them. Not for a moment was it lifted. Even when he was
+hauling in his wet and dripping line with a struggling fish at the end
+of it a recurrent memory of what he had seen would suddenly come upon
+him, and he would groan in spirit at the recollection. He looked at Matt
+Abrahamson's leathery face, at his lantern jaws cavernously and stolidly
+chewing at a tobacco leaf, and it seemed monstrous to him that the old
+man should be so unconscious of the black cloud that wrapped them all
+about.
+
+When the boat reached the shore again he leaped scrambling to the beach,
+and as soon as his dinner was eaten he hurried away to find the Dominie
+Jones.
+
+He ran all the way from Abrahamson's hut to the parson's house, hardly
+stopping once, and when he knocked at the door he was panting and
+sobbing for breath.
+
+The good man was sitting on the back-kitchen doorstep smoking his
+long pipe of tobacco out into the sunlight, while his wife within was
+rattling about among the pans and dishes in preparation of their supper,
+of which a strong, porky smell already filled the air.
+
+Then Tom Chist told his story, panting, hurrying, tumbling one word over
+another in his haste, and Parson Jones listened, breaking every now and
+then into an ejaculation of wonder. The light in his pipe went out and
+the bowl turned cold.
+
+"And I don't see why they should have killed the poor black man," said
+Tom, as he finished his narrative.
+
+"Why, that is very easy enough to understand," said the good reverend
+man. "'Twas a treasure box they buried!"
+
+In his agitation Mr. Jones had risen from his seat and was now stumping
+up and down, puffing at his empty tobacco pipe as though it were still
+alight.
+
+"A treasure box!" cried out Tom.
+
+"Aye, a treasure box! And that was why they killed the poor black man.
+He was the only one, d'ye see, besides they two who knew the place
+where 'twas hid, and now that they've killed him out of the way, there's
+nobody but themselves knows. The villains--Tut, tut, look at that now!"
+In his excitement the dominie had snapped the stem of his tobacco pipe
+in two.
+
+"Why, then," said Tom, "if that is so, 'tis indeed a wicked, bloody
+treasure, and fit to bring a curse upon anybody who finds it!"
+
+"'Tis more like to bring a curse upon the soul who buried it," said
+Parson Jones, "and it may be a blessing to him who finds it. But tell
+me, Tom, do you think you could find the place again where 'twas hid?"
+
+"I can't tell that," said Tom, "'twas all in among the sand humps, d'ye
+see, and it was at night into the bargain. Maybe we could find the marks
+of their feet in the sand," he added.
+
+"'Tis not likely," said the reverend gentleman, "for the storm last
+night would have washed all that away."
+
+"I could find the place," said Tom, "where the boat was drawn up on the
+beach."
+
+"Why, then, that's something to start from, Tom," said his friend. "If
+we can find that, then maybe we can find whither they went from there."
+
+"If I was certain it was a treasure box," cried out Tom Chist, "I would
+rake over every foot of sand betwixt here and Henlopen to find it."
+
+"'Twould be like hunting for a pin in a haystack," said the Rev. Hilary
+Jones.
+
+As Tom walked away home, it seemed as though a ton's weight of gloom had
+been rolled away from his soul. The next day he and Parson Jones were to
+go treasure-hunting together; it seemed to Tom as though he could hardly
+wait for the time to come.
+
+
+V
+
+The next afternoon Parson Jones and Tom Chist started off together upon
+the expedition that made Tom's fortune forever. Tom carried a spade over
+his shoulder and the reverend gentleman walked along beside him with his
+cane.
+
+As they jogged along up the beach they talked together about the only
+thing they could talk about--the treasure box. "And how big did you say
+'twas?" quoth the good gentleman.
+
+"About so long," said Tom Chist, measuring off upon the spade, "and
+about so wide, and this deep."
+
+"And what if it should be full of money, Tom?" said the reverend
+gentleman, swinging his cane around and around in wide circles in the
+excitement of the thought, as he strode along briskly. "Suppose it
+should be full of money, what then?"
+
+"By Moses!" said Tom Chist, hurrying to keep up with his friend, "I'd
+buy a ship for myself, I would, and I'd trade to Injyy and to Chiny to
+my own boot, I would. Suppose the chist was all full of money, sir, and
+suppose we should find it; would there be enough in it, d'ye suppose, to
+buy a ship?"
+
+"To be sure there would be enough, Tom, enough and to spare, and a good
+big lump over."
+
+"And if I find it 'tis mine to keep, is it, and no mistake?"
+
+"Why, to be sure it would be yours!" cried out the parson, in a loud
+voice. "To be sure it would be yours!" He knew nothing of the law, but
+the doubt of the question began at once to ferment in his brain, and he
+strode along in silence for a while. "Whose else would it be but yours
+if you find it?" he burst out. "Can you tell me that?"
+
+"If ever I have a ship of my own," said Tom Chist, "and if ever I sail
+to Injy in her, I'll fetch ye back the best chist of tea, sir, that ever
+was fetched from Cochin Chiny."
+
+Parson Jones burst out laughing. "Thankee, Tom," he said; "and I'll
+thankee again when I get my chist of tea. But tell me, Tom, didst thou
+ever hear of the farmer girl who counted her chickens before they were
+hatched?"
+
+It was thus they talked as they hurried along up the beach together,
+and so came to a place at last where Tom stopped short and stood looking
+about him. "'Twas just here," he said, "I saw the boat last night. I
+know 'twas here, for I mind me of that bit of wreck yonder, and that
+there was a tall stake drove in the sand just where yon stake stands."
+
+Parson Jones put on his barnacles and went over to the stake toward
+which Tom pointed. As soon as he had looked at it carefully he called
+out: "Why, Tom, this hath been just drove down into the sand. 'Tis
+a brand-new stake of wood, and the pirates must have set it here
+themselves as a mark, just as they drove the pegs you spoke about down
+into the sand."
+
+Tom came over and looked at the stake. It was a stout piece of oak
+nearly two inches thick; it had been shaped with some care, and the top
+of it had been painted red. He shook the stake and tried to move it, but
+it had been driven or planted so deeply into the sand that he could not
+stir it. "Aye, sir," he said, "it must have been set here for a mark,
+for I'm sure 'twas not here yesterday or the day before." He stood
+looking about him to see if there were other signs of the pirates'
+presence. At some little distance there was the corner of something
+white sticking up out of the sand. He could see that it was a scrap of
+paper, and he pointed to it, calling out: "Yonder is a piece of paper,
+sir. I wonder if they left that behind them?"
+
+It was a miraculous chance that placed that paper there. There was only
+an inch of it showing, and if it had not been for Tom's sharp eyes, it
+would certainly have been overlooked and passed by. The next windstorm
+would have covered it up, and all that afterward happened never would
+have occurred. "Look, sir," he said, as he struck the sand from it, "it
+hath writing on it."
+
+"Let me see it," said Parson Jones. He adjusted the spectacles a little
+more firmly astride of his nose as he took the paper in his hand and
+began conning it. "What's all this?" he said; "a whole lot of figures
+and nothing else." And then he read aloud, "'Mark--S. S. W. S. by S.'
+What d'ye suppose that means, Tom?"
+
+"I don't know, sir," said Tom. "But maybe we can understand it better if
+you read on."
+
+"'Tis all a great lot of figures," said Parson Jones, "without a
+grain of meaning in them so far as I can see, unless they be sailing
+directions." And then he began reading again: "'Mark--S. S. W. by S. 40,
+72, 91, 130, 151, 177, 202, 232, 256, 271'--d'ye see, it must be sailing
+directions--'299, 335, 362, 386, 415, 446, 469, 491, 522, 544, 571,
+598'--what a lot of them there be '626, 652, 676, 695, 724, 851, 876,
+905, 940, 967. Peg. S. E. by E. 269 foot. Peg. S. S. W. by S. 427 foot.
+Peg. Dig to the west of this six foot.'"
+
+"What's that about a peg?" exclaimed Tom. "What's that about a peg? And
+then there's something about digging, too!" It was as though a sudden
+light began shining into his brain. He felt himself growing quickly very
+excited. "Read that over again, sir," he cried. "Why, sir, you remember
+I told you they drove a peg into the sand. And don't they say to dig
+close to it? Read it over again, sir--read it over again!"
+
+"Peg?" said the good gentleman. "To be sure it was about a peg. Let's
+look again. Yes, here it is. 'Peg S. E. by E. 269 foot.'"
+
+"Aye!" cried out Tom Chist again, in great excitement. "Don't you
+remember what I told you, sir, 269 foot? Sure that must be what I saw
+'em measuring with the line."
+
+Parson Jones had now caught the flame of excitement that was blazing up
+so strongly in Tom's breast. He felt as though some wonderful thing was
+about to happen to them. "To be sure, to be sure!" he called out, in a
+great big voice. "And then they measured out 427 foot south-southwest by
+south, and they then drove another peg, and then they buried the box
+six foot to the west of it. Why, Tom--why, Tom Chist! if we've read this
+aright, thy fortune is made."
+
+Tom Chist stood staring straight at the old gentleman's excited face,
+and seeing nothing but it in all the bright infinity of sunshine. Were
+they, indeed, about to find the treasure chest? He felt the sun very hot
+upon his shoulders, and he heard the harsh, insistent jarring of a tern
+that hovered and circled with forked tail and sharp white wings in the
+sunlight just above their heads; but all the time he stood staring into
+the good old gentleman's face.
+
+It was Parson Jones who first spoke. "But what do all these figures
+mean?" And Tom observed how the paper shook and rustled in the tremor of
+excitement that shook his hand. He raised the paper to the focus of his
+spectacles and began to read again. "'Mark 40, 72, 91--'"
+
+"Mark?" cried out Tom, almost screaming. "Why, that must mean the stake
+yonder; that must be the mark." And he pointed to the oaken stick with
+its red tip blazing against the white shimmer of sand behind it.
+
+"And the 40 and 72 and 91," cried the old gentleman, in a voice equally
+shrill--"why, that must mean the number of steps the pirate was counting
+when you heard him."
+
+"To be sure that's what they mean!" cried Tom Chist. "That is it, and
+it can be nothing else. Oh, come, sir--come, sir; let us make haste and
+find it!"
+
+"Stay! stay!" said the good gentleman, holding up his hand; and again
+Tom Chist noticed how it trembled and shook. His voice was steady
+enough, though very hoarse, but his hand shook and trembled as
+though with a palsy. "Stay! stay! First of all, we must follow these
+measurements. And 'tis a marvelous thing," he croaked, after a little
+pause, "how this paper ever came to be here."
+
+"Maybe it was blown here by the storm," suggested Tom Chist.
+
+"Like enough; like enough," said Parson Jones. "Like enough, after the
+wretches had buried the chest and killed the poor black man, they were
+so buffeted and bowsed about by the storm that it was shook out of the
+man's pocket, and thus blew away from him without his knowing aught of
+it."
+
+"But let us find the box!" cried out Tom Chist, flaming with his
+excitement.
+
+"Aye, aye," said the good man; "only stay a little, my boy, until we
+make sure what we're about. I've got my pocket compass here, but we must
+have something to measure off the feet when we have found the peg. You
+run across to Tom Brooke's house and fetch that measuring rod he used
+to lay out his new byre. While you're gone I'll pace off the distance
+marked on the paper with my pocket compass here."
+
+
+VI
+
+Tom Chist was gone for almost an hour, though he ran nearly all the
+way and back, upborne as on the wings of the wind. When he returned,
+panting, Parson Jones was nowhere to be seen, but Tom saw his footsteps
+leading away inland, and he followed the scuffling marks in the smooth
+surface across the sand humps and down into the hollows, and by and by
+found the good gentleman in a spot he at once knew as soon as he laid
+his eyes upon it.
+
+It was the open space where the pirates had driven their first peg, and
+where Tom Chist had afterward seen them kill the poor black man. Tom
+Chist gazed around as though expecting to see some sign of the tragedy,
+but the space was as smooth and as undisturbed as a floor, excepting
+where, midway across it, Parson Jones, who was now stooping over
+something on the ground, had trampled it all around about.
+
+When Tom Chist saw him he was still bending over, scraping away from
+something he had found.
+
+It was the first peg!
+
+Inside of half an hour they had found the second and third pegs, and Tom
+Chist stripped off his coat, and began digging like mad down into the
+sand, Parson Jones standing over him watching him. The sun was sloping
+well toward the west when the blade of Tom Chist's spade struck upon
+something hard.
+
+If it had been his own heart that he had hit in the sand his breast
+could hardly have thrilled more sharply.
+
+It was the treasure box!
+
+Parson Jones himself leaped down into the hole, and began scraping away
+the sand with his hands as though he had gone crazy. At last, with some
+difficulty, they tugged and hauled the chest up out of the sand to the
+surface, where it lay covered all over with the grit that clung to it.
+It was securely locked and fastened with a padlock, and it took a good
+many blows with the blade of the spade to burst the bolt. Parson Jones
+himself lifted the lid. Tom Chist leaned forward and gazed down into the
+open box. He would not have been surprised to have seen it filled full
+of yellow gold and bright jewels. It was filled half full of books and
+papers, and half full of canvas bags tied safely and securely around and
+around with cords of string.
+
+Parson Jones lifted out one of the bags, and it jingled as he did so. It
+was full of money.
+
+He cut the string, and with trembling, shaking hands handed the bag to
+Tom, who, in an ecstasy of wonder and dizzy with delight, poured out
+with swimming sight upon the coat spread on the ground a cataract of
+shining silver money that rang and twinkled and jingled as it fell in a
+shining heap upon the coarse cloth.
+
+Parson Jones held up both hands into the air, and Tom stared at what he
+saw, wondering whether it was all so, and whether he was really awake.
+It seemed to him as though he was in a dream.
+
+There were two-and-twenty bags in all in the chest: ten of them full of
+silver money, eight of them full of gold money, three of them full of
+gold dust, and one small bag with jewels wrapped up in wad cotton and
+paper.
+
+"'Tis enough," cried out Parson Jones, "to make us both rich men as long
+as we live."
+
+The burning summer sun, though sloping in the sky, beat down upon them
+as hot as fire; but neither of them noticed it. Neither did they notice
+hunger nor thirst nor fatigue, but sat there as though in a trance, with
+the bags of money scattered on the sand around them, a great pile of
+money heaped upon the coat, and the open chest beside them. It was an
+hour of sundown before Parson Jones had begun fairly to examine the
+books and papers in the chest.
+
+Of the three books, two were evidently log books of the pirates who had
+been lying off the mouth of the Delaware Bay all this time. The other
+book was written in Spanish, and was evidently the log book of some
+captured prize.
+
+It was then, sitting there upon the sand, the good old gentleman reading
+in his high, cracking voice, that they first learned from the bloody
+records in those two books who it was who had been lying inside the Cape
+all this time, and that it was the famous Captain Kidd. Every now and
+then the reverend gentleman would stop to exclaim, "Oh, the bloody
+wretch!" or, "Oh, the desperate, cruel villains!" and then would go on
+reading again a scrap here and a scrap there.
+
+And all the while Tom Chist sat and listened, every now and then
+reaching out furtively and touching the heap of money still lying upon
+the coat.
+
+One might be inclined to wonder why Captain Kidd had kept those bloody
+records. He had probably laid them away because they so incriminated
+many of the great people of the colony of New York that, with the
+books in evidence, it would have been impossible to bring the pirate to
+justice without dragging a dozen or more fine gentlemen into the dock
+along with him. If he could have kept them in his own possession they
+would doubtless have been a great weapon of defense to protect him from
+the gallows. Indeed, when Captain Kidd was finally brought to conviction
+and hung, he was not accused of his piracies, but of striking a mutinous
+seaman upon the head with a bucket and accidentally killing him. The
+authorities did not dare try him for piracy. He was really hung because
+he was a pirate, and we know that it was the log books that Tom Chist
+brought to New York that did the business for him; he was accused and
+convicted of manslaughter for killing of his own ship carpenter with a
+bucket.
+
+So Parson Jones, sitting there in the slanting light, read through these
+terrible records of piracy, and Tom, with the pile of gold and silver
+money beside him, sat and listened to him.
+
+What a spectacle, if anyone had come upon them! But they were alone,
+with the vast arch of sky empty above them and the wide white stretch of
+sand a desert around them. The sun sank lower and lower, until there was
+only time to glance through the other papers in the chest.
+
+They were nearly all goldsmiths' bills of exchange drawn in favor of
+certain of the most prominent merchants of New York. Parson Jones, as he
+read over the names, knew of nearly all the gentlemen by hearsay. Aye,
+here was this gentleman; he thought that name would be among 'em. What?
+Here is Mr. So-and-so. Well, if all they say is true, the villain has
+robbed one of his own best friends. "I wonder," he said, "why the
+wretch should have hidden these papers so carefully away with the other
+treasures, for they could do him no good?" Then, answering his own
+question: "Like enough because these will give him a hold over the
+gentlemen to whom they are drawn so that he can make a good bargain for
+his own neck before he gives the bills back to their owners. I tell you
+what it is, Tom," he continued, "it is you yourself shall go to New York
+and bargain for the return of these papers. 'Twill be as good as another
+fortune to you."
+
+The majority of the bills were drawn in favor of one Richard
+Chillingsworth, Esquire. "And he is," said Parson Jones, "one of the
+richest men in the province of New York. You shall go to him with the
+news of what we have found."
+
+"When shall I go?" said Tom Chist.
+
+"You shall go upon the very first boat we can catch," said the parson.
+He had turned, still holding the bills in his hand, and was now
+fingering over the pile of money that yet lay tumbled out upon the coat.
+"I wonder, Tom," said he, "if you could spare me a score or so of these
+doubloons?"
+
+"You shall have fifty score, if you choose," said Tom, bursting with
+gratitude and with generosity in his newly found treasure.
+
+"You are as fine a lad as ever I saw, Tom," said the parson, "and I'll
+thank you to the last day of my life."
+
+Tom scooped up a double handful of silver money. "Take it sir," he
+said, "and you may have as much more as you want of it."
+
+He poured it into the dish that the good man made of his hands, and
+the parson made a motion as though to empty it into his pocket. Then
+he stopped, as though a sudden doubt had occurred to him. "I don't know
+that 'tis fit for me to take this pirate money, after all," he said.
+
+"But you are welcome to it," said Tom.
+
+Still the parson hesitated. "Nay," he burst out, "I'll not take it; 'tis
+blood money." And as he spoke he chucked the whole double handful into
+the now empty chest, then arose and dusted the sand from his breeches.
+Then, with a great deal of bustling energy, he helped to tie the bags
+again and put them all back into the chest.
+
+They reburied the chest in the place whence they had taken it, and then
+the parson folded the precious paper of directions, placed it carefully
+in his wallet, and his wallet in his pocket. "Tom," he said, for the
+twentieth time, "your fortune has been made this day."
+
+And Tom Chist, as he rattled in his breeches pocket the half dozen
+doubloons he had kept out of his treasure, felt that what his friend had
+said was true.
+
+As the two went back homeward across the level space of sand Tom Chist
+suddenly stopped stock-still and stood looking about him. "'Twas just
+here," he said, digging his heel down into the sand, "that they killed
+the poor black man."
+
+"And here he lies buried for all time," said Parson Jones; and as he
+spoke he dug his cane down into the sand. Tom Chist shuddered. He would
+not have been surprised if the ferrule of the cane had struck something
+soft beneath that level surface. But it did not, nor was any sign of
+that tragedy ever seen again. For, whether the pirates had carried away
+what they had done and buried it elsewhere, or whether the storm in
+blowing the sand had completely leveled off and hidden all sign of that
+tragedy where it was enacted, certain it is that it never came to sight
+again--at least so far as Tom Chist and the Rev. Hilary Jones ever knew.
+
+
+VII
+
+This is the story of the treasure box. All that remains now is to
+conclude the story of Tom Chist, and to tell of what came of him in the
+end.
+
+He did not go back again to live with old Matt Abrahamson. Parson Jones
+had now taken charge of him and his fortunes, and Tom did not have to go
+back to the fisherman's hut.
+
+Old Abrahamson talked a great deal about it, and would come in his cups
+and harangue good Parson Jones, making a vast protestation of what he
+would do to Tom--if he ever caught him--for running away. But Tom on all
+these occasions kept carefully out of his way, and nothing came of the
+old man's threatenings.
+
+Tom used to go over to see his foster mother now and then, but always
+when the old man was from home. And Molly Abrahamson used to warn him
+to keep out of her father's way. "He's in as vile a humor as ever I see,
+Tom," she said; "he sits sulking all day long, and 'tis my belief he'd
+kill ye if he caught ye."
+
+Of course Tom said nothing, even to her, about the treasure, and he and
+the reverend gentleman kept the knowledge thereof to themselves. About
+three weeks later Parson Jones managed to get him shipped aboard of a
+vessel bound for New York town, and a few days later Tom Chist landed
+at that place. He had never been in such a town before, and he could
+not sufficiently wonder and marvel at the number of brick houses, at
+the multitude of people coming and going along the fine, hard, earthen
+sidewalk, at the shops and the stores where goods hung in the windows,
+and, most of all, the fortifications and the battery at the point,
+at the rows of threatening cannon, and at the scarlet-coated sentries
+pacing up and down the ramparts. All this was very wonderful, and so
+were the clustered boats riding at anchor in the harbor. It was like a
+new world, so different was it from the sand hills and the sedgy levels
+of Henlopen.
+
+Tom Chist took up his lodgings at a coffee house near to the town hall,
+and thence he sent by the postboy a letter written by Parson Jones
+to Master Chillingsworth. In a little while the boy returned with
+a message, asking Tom to come up to Mr. Chillingsworth's house that
+afternoon at two o'clock.
+
+Tom went thither with a great deal of trepidation, and his heart fell
+away altogether when he found it a fine, grand brick house, three
+stories high, and with wrought-iron letters across the front.
+
+The counting house was in the same building; but Tom, because of Mr.
+Jones's letter, was conducted directly into the parlor, where the great
+rich man was awaiting his coming. He was sitting in a leather-covered
+armchair, smoking a pipe of tobacco, and with a bottle of fine old
+Madeira close to his elbow.
+
+Tom had not had a chance to buy a new suit of clothes yet, and so he
+cut no very fine figure in the rough dress he had brought with him from
+Henlopen. Nor did Mr. Chillingsworth seem to think very highly of his
+appearance, for he sat looking sideways at Tom as he smoked.
+
+"Well, my lad," he said, "and what is this great thing you have to
+tell me that is so mightily wonderful? I got what's-his-name--Mr.
+Jones's--letter, and now I am ready to hear what you have to say."
+
+But if he thought but little of his visitor's appearance at first, he
+soon changed his sentiments toward him, for Tom had not spoken twenty
+words when Mr. Chillingsworth's whole aspect changed. He straightened
+himself up in his seat, laid aside his pipe, pushed away his glass of
+Madeira, and bade Tom take a chair.
+
+He listened without a word as Tom Chist told of the buried treasure, of
+how he had seen the poor negro murdered, and of how he and Parson
+Jones had recovered the chest again. Only once did Mr. Chillingsworth
+interrupt the narrative. "And to think," he cried, "that the villain
+this very day walks about New York town as though he were an honest man,
+ruffling it with the best of us! But if we can only get hold of these
+log books you speak of. Go on; tell me more of this."
+
+When Tom Chist's narrative was ended, Mr. Chillingsworth's bearing was
+as different as daylight is from dark. He asked a thousand questions,
+all in the most polite and gracious tone imaginable, and not only urged
+a glass of his fine old Madeira upon Tom, but asked him to stay
+to supper. There was nobody to be there, he said, but his wife and
+daughter.
+
+Tom, all in a panic at the very thought of the two ladies, sturdily
+refused to stay even for the dish of tea Mr. Chillingsworth offered him.
+
+He did not know that he was destined to stay there as long as he should
+live.
+
+"And now," said Mr. Chillingsworth, "tell me about yourself."
+
+"I have nothing to tell, Your Honor," said Tom, "except that I was
+washed up out of the sea."
+
+"Washed up out of the sea!" exclaimed Mr. Chillingsworth. "Why, how was
+that? Come, begin at the beginning, and tell me all."
+
+Thereupon Tom Chist did as he was bidden, beginning at the very
+beginning and telling everything just as Molly Abrahamson had often told
+it to him. As he continued, Mr. Chillingsworth's interest changed into
+an appearance of stronger and stronger excitement. Suddenly he jumped up
+out of his chair and began to walk up and down the room.
+
+"Stop! stop!" he cried out at last, in the midst of something Tom was
+saying. "Stop! stop! Tell me; do you know the name of the vessel that
+was wrecked, and from which you were washed ashore?"
+
+"I've heard it said," said Tom Chist, "'twas the Bristol Merchant."
+
+"I knew it! I knew it!" exclaimed the great man, in a loud voice,
+flinging his hands up into the air. "I felt it was so the moment you
+began the story. But tell me this, was there nothing found with you with
+a mark or a name upon it?"
+
+"There was a kerchief," said Tom, "marked with a T and a C."
+
+"Theodosia Chillingsworth!" cried out the merchant. "I knew it! I knew
+it! Heavens! to think of anything so wonderful happening as this! Boy!
+boy! dost thou know who thou art? Thou art my own brother's son. His
+name was Oliver Chillingsworth, and he was my partner in business,
+and thou art his son." Then he ran out into the entryway, shouting and
+calling for his wife and daughter to come.
+
+So Tom Chist--or Thomas Chillingsworth, as he now was to be called--did
+stay to supper, after all.
+
+This is the story, and I hope you may like it. For Tom Chist became
+rich and great, as was to be supposed, and he married his pretty cousin
+Theodosia (who had been named for his own mother, drowned in the Bristol
+Merchant).
+
+He did not forget his friends, but had Parson Jones brought to New York
+to live.
+
+As to Molly and Matt Abrahamson, they both enjoyed a pension of ten
+pounds a year for as long as they lived; for now that all was well with
+him, Tom bore no grudge against the old fisherman for all the drubbings
+he had suffered.
+
+The treasure box was brought on to New York, and if Tom Chist did not
+get all the money there was in it (as Parson Jones had opined he would)
+he got at least a good big lump of it.
+
+And it is my belief that those log books did more to get Captain Kidd
+arrested in Boston town and hanged in London than anything else that was
+brought up against him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V. JACK BALLISTER'S FORTUNES
+
+
+I
+
+WE, of these times, protected as we are by the laws and by the number
+of people about us, can hardly comprehend such a life as that of the
+American colonies in the early part of the eighteenth century, when
+it was possible for a pirate like Capt. Teach, known as Blackbeard, to
+exist, and for the governor and the secretary of the province in which
+he lived perhaps to share his plunder, and to shelter and to protect him
+against the law.
+
+At that time the American colonists were in general a rough, rugged
+people, knowing nothing of the finer things of life. They lived mostly
+in little settlements, separated by long distances from one another,
+so that they could neither make nor enforce laws to protect themselves.
+Each man or little group of men had to depend upon his or their own
+strength to keep what belonged to them, and to prevent fierce men or
+groups of men from seizing what did not belong to them.
+
+It is the natural disposition of everyone to get all that he can. Little
+children, for instance, always try to take away from others that which
+they want, and to keep it for their own. It is only by constant teaching
+that they learn that they must not do so; that they must not take
+by force what does not belong to them. So it is only by teaching and
+training that people learn to be honest and not to take what is not
+theirs. When this teaching is not sufficient to make a man learn to be
+honest, or when there is something in the man's nature that makes him
+not able to learn, then he only lacks the opportunity to seize upon the
+things he wants, just as he would do if he were a little child.
+
+In the colonies at that time, as was just said, men were too few and
+scattered to protect themselves against those who had made up their
+minds to take by force that which they wanted, and so it was that men
+lived an unrestrained and lawless life, such as we of these times of
+better government can hardly comprehend.
+
+The usual means of commerce between province and province was by water
+in coasting vessels. These coasting vessels were so defenseless, and the
+different colonial governments were so ill able to protect them,
+that those who chose to rob them could do it almost without danger to
+themselves.
+
+So it was that all the western world was, in those days, infested
+with armed bands of cruising freebooters or pirates, who used to stop
+merchant vessels and take from them what they chose.
+
+Each province in those days was ruled over by a royal governor appointed
+by the king. Each governor, at one time, was free to do almost as he
+pleased in his own province. He was accountable only to the king and his
+government, and England was so distant that he was really responsible
+almost to nobody but himself.
+
+The governors were naturally just as desirous to get rich quickly,
+just as desirous of getting all that they could for themselves, as was
+anybody else only they had been taught and had been able to learn that
+it was not right to be an actual pirate or robber. They wanted to be
+rich easily and quickly, but the desire was not strong enough to lead
+them to dishonor themselves in their own opinion and in the opinion of
+others by gratifying their selfishness. They would even have stopped
+the pirates from doing what they did if they could, but their provincial
+governments were too weak to prevent the freebooters from robbing
+merchant vessels, or to punish them when they came ashore. The provinces
+had no navies, and they really had no armies; neither were there enough
+people living within the community to enforce the laws against those
+stronger and fiercer men who were not honest.
+
+After the things the pirates seized from merchant vessels were once
+stolen they were altogether lost. Almost never did any owner apply for
+them, for it would be useless to do so. The stolen goods and merchandise
+lay in the storehouses of the pirates, seemingly without any owner
+excepting the pirates themselves.
+
+The governors and the secretaries of the colonies would not dishonor
+themselves by pirating upon merchant vessels, but it did not seem so
+wicked after the goods were stolen--and so altogether lost--to take a
+part of that which seemed to have no owner.
+
+A child is taught that it is a very wicked thing to take, for instance,
+by force, a lump of sugar from another child; but when a wicked child
+has seized the sugar from another and taken it around the corner, and
+that other child from whom he has seized it has gone home crying, it
+does not seem so wicked for the third child to take a bite of the sugar
+when it is offered to him, even if he thinks it has been taken from some
+one else.
+
+It was just so, no doubt, that it did not seem so wicked to Governor
+Eden and Secretary Knight of North Carolina, or to Governor Fletcher of
+New York, or to other colonial governors, to take a part of the booty
+that the pirates, such as Blackbeard, had stolen. It did not even seem
+very wicked to compel such pirates to give up a part of what was not
+theirs, and which seemed to have no owner.
+
+In Governor Eden's time, however, the colonies had begun to be more
+thickly peopled, and the laws had gradually become stronger and stronger
+to protect men in the possession of what was theirs. Governor Eden was
+the last of the colonial governors who had dealings with the pirates,
+and Blackbeard was almost the last of the pirates who, with his banded
+men, was savage and powerful enough to come and go as he chose among the
+people whom he plundered.
+
+Virginia, at that time, was the greatest and the richest of all the
+American colonies, and upon the farther side of North Carolina was
+the province of South Carolina, also strong and rich. It was these two
+colonies that suffered the most from Blackbeard, and it began to be
+that the honest men that lived in them could endure no longer to be
+plundered.
+
+The merchants and traders and others who suffered cried out loudly for
+protection, so loudly that the governors of these provinces could not
+help hearing them.
+
+Governor Eden was petitioned to act against the pirates, but he would
+do nothing, for he felt very friendly toward Blackbeard--just as a child
+who has had a taste of the stolen sugar feels friendly toward the child
+who gives it to him.
+
+At last, when Blackbeard sailed up into the very heart of Virginia,
+and seized upon and carried away the daughter of that colony's foremost
+people, the governor of Virginia, finding that the governor of North
+Carolina would do nothing to punish the outrage, took the matter into
+his own hands and issued a proclamation offering a reward of one hundred
+pounds for Blackbeard, alive or dead, and different sums for the other
+pirates who were his followers.
+
+Governor Spottiswood had the right to issue the proclamation, but he had
+no right to commission Lieutenant Maynard, as he did, to take down an
+armed force into the neighboring province and to attack the pirates in
+the waters of the North Carolina sounds. It was all a part of the rude
+and lawless condition of the colonies at the time that such a thing
+could have been done.
+
+The governor's proclamation against the pirates was issued upon the
+eleventh day of November. It was read in the churches the Sunday
+following and was posted upon the doors of all the government custom
+offices in lower Virginia. Lieutenant Maynard, in the boats that Colonel
+Parker had already fitted out to go against the pirates, set sail upon
+the seventeenth of the month for Ocracoke. Five days later the battle
+was fought.
+
+Blackbeard's sloop was lying inside of Ocracoke Inlet among the
+shoals and sand bars when he first heard of Governor Spottiswood's
+proclamation.
+
+There had been a storm, and a good many vessels had run into the
+inlet for shelter. Blackbeard knew nearly all of the captains of these
+vessels, and it was from them that he first heard of the proclamation.
+
+He had gone aboard one of the vessels--a coaster from Boston. The wind
+was still blowing pretty hard from the southeast. There were maybe a
+dozen vessels lying within the inlet at that time, and the captain of
+one of them was paying the Boston skipper a visit when Blackbeard came
+aboard. The two captains had been talking together. They instantly
+ceased when the pirate came down into the cabin, but he had heard enough
+of their conversation to catch its drift. "Why d'ye stop?" he said.
+"I heard what you said. Well, what then? D'ye think I mind it at all?
+Spottiswood is going to send his bullies down here after me. That's
+what you were saying. Well, what then? You don't think I'm afraid of his
+bullies, do you?"
+
+"Why, no, Captain, I didn't say you was afraid," said the visiting
+captain.
+
+"And what right has he got to send down here against me in North
+Carolina, I should like to ask you?"
+
+"He's got none at all," said the Boston captain, soothingly. "Won't you
+take a taste of Hollands, Captain?"
+
+"He's no more right to come blustering down here into Governor Eden's
+province than I have to come aboard of your schooner here, Tom Burley,
+and to carry off two or three kegs of this prime Hollands for my own
+drinking."
+
+Captain Burley--the Boston man--laughed a loud, forced laugh. "Why,
+Captain," he said, "as for two or three kegs of Hollands, you won't
+find that aboard. But if you'd like to have a keg of it for your own
+drinking, I'll send it to you and be glad enough to do so for old
+acquaintance' sake."
+
+"But I tell you what 'tis, Captain," said the visiting skipper to
+Blackbeard, "they're determined and set against you this time. I tell
+you, Captain, Governor Spottiswood hath issued a hot proclamation
+against you, and 't hath been read out in all the churches. I myself
+saw it posted in Yorktown upon the customhouse door and read it there
+myself. The governor offers one hundred pounds for you, and fifty pounds
+for your officers, and twenty pounds each for your men."
+
+"Well, then," said Blackbeard, holding up his glass, "here, I wish 'em
+good luck, and when they get their hundred pounds for me they'll be in a
+poor way to spend it. As for the Hollands," said he, turning to Captain
+Burley, "I know what you've got aboard here and what you haven't. D'ye
+suppose ye can blind me? Very well, you send over two kegs, and I'll let
+you go without search." The two captains were very silent. "As for that
+Lieutenant Maynard you're all talking about," said Blackbeard, "why, I
+know him very well. He was the one who was so busy with the pirates down
+Madagascar way. I believe you'd all like to see him blow me out of the
+water, but he can't do it. There's nobody in His Majesty's service I'd
+rather meet than Lieutenant Maynard. I'd teach him pretty briskly that
+North Carolina isn't Madagascar."
+
+On the evening of the twenty-second the two vessels under command of
+Lieutenant Maynard came into the mouth of Ocracoke Inlet and there
+dropped anchor. Meantime the weather had cleared, and all the vessels
+but one had gone from the inlet. The one vessel that remained was a New
+Yorker. It had been there over a night and a day, and the captain and
+Blackbeard had become very good friends.
+
+The same night that Maynard came into the inlet a wedding was held on
+the shore. A number of men and women came up the beach in oxcarts and
+sledges; others had come in boats from more distant points and across
+the water.
+
+The captain of the New Yorker and Blackbeard went ashore together a
+little after dark. The New Yorker had been aboard of the pirate's sloop
+for all the latter part of the afternoon, and he and Blackbeard had been
+drinking together in the cabin. The New York man was now a little tipsy,
+and he laughed and talked foolishly as he and Blackbeard were rowed
+ashore. The pirate sat grim and silent.
+
+It was nearly dark when they stepped ashore on the beach. The New York
+captain stumbled and fell headlong, rolling over and over, and the crew
+of the boat burst out laughing.
+
+The people had already begun to dance in an open shed fronting upon the
+shore. There were fires of pine knots in front of the building, lighting
+up the interior with a red glare. A negro was playing a fiddle somewhere
+inside, and the shed was filled with a crowd of grotesque dancing
+figures--men and women. Now and then they called with loud voices as
+they danced, and the squeaking of the fiddle sounded incessantly through
+the noise of outcries and the stamp and shuffling of feet.
+
+Captain Teach and the New York captain stood looking on. The New York
+man had tilted himself against a post and stood there holding one arm
+around it, supporting himself. He waved the other hand foolishly in time
+to the music, now and then snapping his thumb and finger.
+
+The young woman who had just been married approached the two. She had
+been dancing, and she was warm and red, her hair blowzed about her head.
+"Hi, Captain, won't you dance with me?" she said to Blackbeard.
+
+Blackbeard stared at her. "Who be you?" he said.
+
+She burst out laughing. "You look as if you'd eat a body," she cried.
+
+Blackbeard's face gradually relaxed. "Why, to be sure, you're a brazen
+one, for all the world," he said. "Well, I'll dance with you, that I
+will. I'll dance the heart out of you."
+
+He pushed forward, thrusting aside with his elbow the newly made
+husband. The man, who saw that Blackbeard had been drinking, burst out
+laughing, and the other men and women who had been standing around drew
+away, so that in a little while the floor was pretty well cleared. One
+could see the negro now; he sat on a barrel at the end of the room.
+He grinned with his white teeth and, without stopping in his fiddling,
+scraped his bow harshly across the strings, and then instantly changed
+the tune to a lively jig. Blackbeard jumped up into the air and clapped
+his heels together, giving, as he did so, a sharp, short yell. Then
+he began instantly dancing grotesquely and violently. The woman danced
+opposite to him, this way and that, with her knuckles on her hips.
+Everybody burst out laughing at Blackbeard's grotesque antics. They
+laughed again and again, clapping their hands, and the negro scraped
+away on his fiddle like fury. The woman's hair came tumbling down her
+back. She tucked it back, laughing and panting, and the sweat ran down
+her face. She danced and danced. At last she burst out laughing and
+stopped, panting. Blackbeard again jumped up in the air and clapped his
+heels. Again he yelled, and as he did so, he struck his heels upon the
+floor and spun around. Once more everybody burst out laughing, clapping
+their hands, and the negro stopped fiddling.
+
+Near by was a shanty or cabin where they were selling spirits, and by
+and by Blackbeard went there with the New York captain, and presently
+they began drinking again. "Hi, Captain!" called one of the men,
+"Maynard's out yonder in the inlet. Jack Bishop's just come across from
+t'other side. He says Mr. Maynard hailed him and asked for a pilot to
+fetch him in."
+
+"Well, here's luck to him, and he can't come in quick enough for me!"
+cried out Blackbeard in his hoarse, husky voice.
+
+"Well, Captain," called a voice, "will ye fight him to-morrow?"
+
+"Aye," shouted the pirate, "if he can get in to me, I'll try to give
+'em what they seek, and all they want of it into the bargain. As for
+a pilot, I tell ye what 'tis--if any man hereabouts goes out there to
+pilot that villain in 'twill be the worst day's work he ever did in all
+of his life. 'Twon't be fit for him to live in these parts of America if
+I am living here at the same time." There was a burst of laughter.
+
+"Give us a toast, Captain! Give us something to drink to! Aye, Captain,
+a toast! A toast!" a half dozen voices were calling out at the same
+time.
+
+"Well," cried out the pirate captain, "here's to a good, hot fight
+to-morrow, and the best dog on top! 'Twill be, Bang! bang!--this way!"
+
+He began pulling a pistol out of his pocket, but it stuck in the lining,
+and he struggled and tugged at it. The men ducked and scrambled away
+from before him, and then the next moment he had the pistol out of
+his pocket. He swung it around and around. There was perfect silence.
+Suddenly there was a flash and a stunning report, and instantly a crash
+and tinkle of broken glass. One of the men cried out, and began picking
+and jerking at the back of his neck. "He's broken that bottle all down
+my neck," he called out.
+
+"That's the way 'twill be," said Blackbeard.
+
+"Lookee," said the owner of the place, "I won't serve out another drop
+if 'tis going to be like that. If there's any more trouble I'll blow out
+the lantern."
+
+The sound of the squeaking and scraping of the fiddle and the shouts and
+the scuffling feet still came from the shed where the dancing was going
+on.
+
+"Suppose you get your dose to-morrow, Captain," some one called out,
+"what then?"
+
+"Why, if I do," said Blackbeard, "I get it, and that's all there is of
+it."
+
+"Your wife'll be a rich widdy then, won't she?" cried one of the men;
+and there was a burst of laughter.
+
+"Why," said the New York captain,--"why, has a--a bloody p-pirate like
+you a wife then--a--like any honest man?"
+
+"She'll be no richer than she is now," said Blackbeard.
+
+"She knows where you've hid your money, anyways. Don't she, Captain?"
+called out a voice.
+
+"The civil knows where I've hid my money," said Blackbeard, "and I know
+where I've hid it; and the longest liver of the twain will git it all.
+And that's all there is of it."
+
+The gray of early day was beginning to show in the east when Blackbeard
+and the New York captain came down to the landing together. The New York
+captain swayed and toppled this way and that as he walked, now falling
+against Blackbeard, and now staggering away from him.
+
+
+II
+
+Early in the morning--perhaps eight o'clock--Lieutenant Maynard sent a
+boat from the schooner over to the settlement, which lay some four
+or five miles distant. A number of men stood lounging on the landing,
+watching the approach of the boat. The men rowed close up to the wharf,
+and there lay upon their oars, while the boatswain of the schooner,
+who was in command of the boat, stood up and asked if there was any man
+there who could pilot them over the shoals.
+
+Nobody answered, but all stared stupidly at him. After a while one of
+the men at last took his pipe out of his mouth. "There ben't any pilot
+here, master," said he; "we ben't pilots."
+
+"Why, what a story you do tell!" roared the boatswain. "D'ye suppose
+I've never been down here before, not to know that every man about here
+knows the passes of the shoals?"
+
+The fellow still held his pipe in his hand. He looked at another one of
+the men. "Do you know the passes in over the shoals, Jem?" said he.
+
+The man to whom he spoke was a young fellow with long, shaggy, sunburnt
+hair hanging over his eyes in an unkempt mass. He shook his head,
+grunting, "Na--I don't know naught about t' shoals."
+
+"'Tis Lieutenant Maynard of His Majesty's navy in command of them
+vessels out there," said the boatswain. "He'll give any man five pound
+to pilot him in." The men on the wharf looked at one another, but still
+no one spoke, and the boatswain stood looking at them. He saw that they
+did not choose to answer him. "Why," he said, "I believe you've not got
+right wits--that's what I believe is the matter with you. Pull me up
+to the landing, men, and I'll go ashore and see if I can find anybody
+that's willing to make five pound for such a little bit of piloting as
+that."
+
+After the boatswain had gone ashore the loungers still stood on the
+wharf, looking down into the boat, and began talking to one another for
+the men below to hear them. "They're coming in," said one, "to blow poor
+Blackbeard out of the water." "Aye," said another, "he's so peaceable,
+too, he is; he'll just lay still and let 'em blow and blow, he will."
+"There's a young fellow there," said another of the men; "he don't look
+fit to die yet, he don't. Why, I wouldn't be in his place for a thousand
+pound." "I do suppose Blackbeard's so afraid he don't know how to see,"
+said the first speaker.
+
+At last one of the men in the boat spoke up. "Maybe he don't know how to
+see," said he, "but maybe we'll blow some daylight into him afore we get
+through with him."
+
+Some more of the settlers had come out from the shore to the end of the
+wharf, and there was now quite a crowd gathering there, all looking at
+the men in the boat. "What do them Virginny 'baccy-eaters do down here
+in Caroliny, anyway?" said one of the newcomers. "They've got no call to
+be down here in North Caroliny waters."
+
+"Maybe you can keep us away from coming, and maybe you can't," said a
+voice from the boat.
+
+"Why," answered the man on the wharf, "we could keep you away easy
+enough, but you ben't worth the trouble, and that's the truth."
+
+There was a heavy iron bolt lying near the edge of the landing. One of
+the men upon the wharf slyly thrust it out with the end of his foot. It
+hung for a moment and then fell into the boat below with a crash. "What
+d'ye mean by that?" roared the man in charge of the boat. "What d'ye
+mean, ye villains? D'ye mean to stave a hole in us?"
+
+"Why," said the man who had pushed it, "you saw 'twasn't done a purpose,
+didn't you?"
+
+"Well, you try it again, and somebody'll get hurt," said the man in the
+boat, showing the butt end of his pistol.
+
+The men on the wharf began laughing. Just then the boatswain came down
+from the settlement again, and out along the landing. The threatened
+turbulence quieted as he approached, and the crowd moved sullenly aside
+to let him pass. He did not bring any pilot with him, and he jumped down
+into the stern of the boat, saying, briefly, "Push off." The crowd of
+loungers stood looking after them as they rowed away, and when the
+boat was some distance from the landing they burst out into a volley
+of derisive yells. "The villains!" said the boatswain, "they are all in
+league together. They wouldn't even let me go up into the settlement to
+look for a pilot."
+
+The lieutenant and his sailing master stood watching the boat as
+it approached. "Couldn't you, then, get a pilot, Baldwin?" said Mr.
+Maynard, as the boatswain scrambled aboard.
+
+"No, I couldn't, sir," said the man. "Either they're all banded
+together, or else they're all afraid of the villains. They wouldn't even
+let me go up into the settlement to find one."
+
+"Well, then," said Mr. Maynard, "we'll make shift to work in as best we
+may by ourselves. 'Twill be high tide against one o'clock. We'll run in
+then with sail as far as we can, and then we'll send you ahead with the
+boat to sound for a pass, and we'll follow with the sweeps. You know the
+waters pretty well, you say."
+
+"They were saying ashore that the villain hath forty men aboard," said
+the boatswain.(2)
+
+     (2) The pirate captain had really only twenty-five men
+     aboard of his ship at the time of the battle.
+
+Lieutenant Maynard's force consisted of thirty-five men in the schooner
+and twenty-five men in the sloop. He carried neither cannons nor
+carronades, and neither of his vessels was very well fitted for the
+purpose for which they were designed. The schooner, which he himself
+commanded, offered almost no protection to the crew. The rail was not
+more than a foot high in the waist, and the men on the deck were almost
+entirely exposed. The rail of the sloop was perhaps a little higher, but
+it, too, was hardly better adapted for fighting. Indeed, the lieutenant
+depended more upon the moral force of official authority to overawe
+the pirates than upon any real force of arms or men. He never believed,
+until the very last moment, that the pirates would show any real fight.
+It is very possible that they might not have done so had they not
+thought that the lieutenant had actually no legal right supporting him
+in his attack upon them in North Carolina waters.
+
+It was about noon when anchor was hoisted, and, with the schooner
+leading, both vessels ran slowly in before a light wind that had begun
+to blow toward midday. In each vessel a man stood in the bows, sounding
+continually with lead and line. As they slowly opened up the harbor
+within the inlet, they could see the pirate sloop lying about three
+miles away. There was a boat just putting off from it to the shore.
+
+The lieutenant and his sailing master stood together on the roof of
+the cabin deckhouse. The sailing master held a glass to his eye. "She
+carries a long gun, sir," he said, "and four carronades. She'll be hard
+to beat, sir, I do suppose, armed as we are with only light arms for
+close fighting."
+
+The lieutenant laughed. "Why, Brookes," he said, "you seem to think
+forever of these men showing fight. You don't know them as I know them.
+They have a deal of bluster and make a deal of noise, but when you seize
+them and hold them with a strong hand, there's naught of fight left in
+them. 'Tis like enough there'll not be so much as a musket fired to-day.
+I've had to do with 'em often enough before to know my gentlemen well
+by this time." Nor, as was said, was it until the very last that the
+lieutenant could be brought to believe that the pirates had any stomach
+for a fight.
+
+The two vessels had reached perhaps within a mile of the pirate sloop
+before they found the water too shoal to venture any farther with
+the sail. It was then that the boat was lowered as the lieutenant had
+planned, and the boatswain went ahead to sound, the two vessels, with
+their sails still hoisted but empty of wind, pulling in after with
+sweeps.
+
+The pirate had also hoisted sail, but lay as though waiting for the
+approach of the schooner and the sloop.
+
+The boat in which the boatswain was sounding had run in a considerable
+distance ahead of the two vessels, which were gradually creeping up with
+the sweeps until they had reached to within less than half a mile of the
+pirates--the boat with the boatswain maybe a quarter of a mile closer.
+Suddenly there was a puff of smoke from the pirate sloop, and then
+another and another, and the next moment there came the three reports of
+muskets up the wind.
+
+"By zounds!" said the lieutenant. "I do believe they're firing on the
+boat!" And then he saw the boat turn and begin pulling toward them.
+
+The boat with the boatswain aboard came rowing rapidly. Again there were
+three or four puffs of smoke and three or four subsequent reports from
+the distant vessel. Then, in a little while, the boat was alongside, and
+the boatswain came scrambling aboard. "Never mind hoisting the boat,"
+said the lieutenant; "we'll just take her in tow. Come aboard as quick
+as you can." Then, turning to the sailing master, "Well, Brookes, you'll
+have to do the best you can to get in over the shoals under half sail."
+
+"But, sir," said the master, "we'll be sure to run aground."
+
+"Very well, sir," said the lieutenant, "you heard my orders. If we run
+aground we run aground, and that's all there is of it."
+
+"I sounded as far as maybe a little over a fathom," said the mate, "but
+the villains would let me go no nearer. I think I was in the channel,
+though. 'Tis more open inside, as I mind me of it. There's a kind of
+a hole there, and if we get in over the shoals just beyond where I was
+we'll be all right."
+
+"Very well, then, you take the wheel, Baldwin," said the lieutenant,
+"and do the best you can for us."
+
+Lieutenant Maynard stood looking out forward at the pirate vessel, which
+they were now steadily nearing under half sail. He could see that there
+were signs of bustle aboard and of men running around upon the deck.
+Then he walked aft and around the cabin. The sloop was some distance
+astern. It appeared to have run aground, and they were trying to push it
+off with the sweeps. The lieutenant looked down into the water over
+the stern, and saw that the schooner was already raising the mud in her
+wane. Then he went forward along the deck. His men were crouching down
+along by the low rail, and there was a tense quietness of expectation
+about them. The lieutenant looked them over as he passed them.
+"Johnson," he said, "do you take the lead and line and go forward and
+sound a bit." Then to the others: "Now, my men, the moment we run her
+aboard, you get aboard of her as quick as you can, do you understand?
+Don't wait for the sloop or think about her, but just see that the
+grappling irons are fast, and then get aboard. If any man offers to
+resist you, shoot him down. Are you ready, Mr. Cringle?"
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," said the gunner.
+
+"Very well, then, be ready, men; we'll be aboard 'em in a minute or
+two."
+
+"There's less than a fathom of water here, sir," sang out Johnson from
+the bows. As he spoke there was a sudden soft jar and jerk, then the
+schooner was still. They were aground. "Push her off to the lee there!
+Let go your sheets!" roared the boatswain from the wheel. "Push her off
+to the lee." He spun the wheel around as he spoke. A half a dozen men
+sprang up, seized the sweeps, and plunged them into the water. Others
+ran to help them, but the sweeps only sank into the mud without moving
+the schooner. The sails had fallen off and they were flapping and
+thumping and clapping in the wind. Others of the crew had scrambled
+to their feet and ran to help those at the sweeps. The lieutenant had
+walked quickly aft again. They were very close now to the pirate sloop,
+and suddenly some one hailed him from aboard of her. When he turned he
+saw that there was a man standing up on the rail of the pirate sloop,
+holding by the back stays. "Who are you?" he called, from the distance,
+"and whence come you? What do you seek here? What d'ye mean, coming down
+on us this way?"
+
+The lieutenant heard somebody say, "That's Blackbeard hisself." And he
+looked with great interest at the distant figure.
+
+The pirate stood out boldly against the cloudy sky. Somebody seemed to
+speak to him from behind. He turned his head and then he turned round
+again. "We're only peaceful merchantmen!" he called out. "What authority
+have you got to come down upon us this way? If you'll come aboard I'll
+show you my papers and that we're only peaceful merchantmen."
+
+"The villains!" said the lieutenant to the master, who stood beside
+him. "They're peaceful merchantmen, are they! They look like peaceful
+merchantmen, with four carronades and a long gun aboard!" Then he called
+out across the water, "I'll come aboard with my schooner as soon as I
+can push her off here."
+
+"If you undertake to come aboard of me," called the pirate, "I'll shoot
+into you. You've got no authority to board me, and I won't have you do
+it. If you undertake it 'twill be at your own risk, for I'll neither ask
+quarter of you nor give none."
+
+"Very well," said the lieutenant, "if you choose to try that, you may do
+as you please; for I'm coming aboard of you as sure as heaven."
+
+"Push off the bow there!" called the boatswain at the wheel. "Look
+alive! Why don't you push off the bow?"
+
+"She's hard aground!" answered the gunner. "We can't budge her an inch."
+
+"If they was to fire into us now," said the sailing master, "they'd
+smash us to pieces."
+
+"They won't fire into us," said the lieutenant. "They won't dare to."
+He jumped down from the cabin deckhouse as he spoke, and went forward to
+urge the men in pushing off the boat. It was already beginning to move.
+
+At that moment the sailing master suddenly called out, "Mr. Maynard! Mr.
+Maynard! they're going to give us a broadside!"
+
+Almost before the words were out of his mouth, before Lieutenant Maynard
+could turn, there came a loud and deafening crash, and then instantly
+another, and a third, and almost as instantly a crackling and rending of
+broken wood. There were clean yellow splinters flying everywhere. A man
+fell violently against the lieutenant, nearly overturning him, but he
+caught at the stays and so saved himself. For one tense moment he stood
+holding his breath. Then all about him arose a sudden outcry of groans
+and shouts and oaths. The man who had fallen against him was lying face
+down upon the deck. His thighs were quivering, and a pool of blood was
+spreading and running out from under him. There were other men down, all
+about the deck. Some were rising; some were trying to rise; some only
+moved.
+
+There was a distant sound of yelling and cheering and shouting. It was
+from the pirate sloop. The pirates were rushing about upon her decks.
+They had pulled the cannon back, and, through the grunting sound of
+the groans about him, the lieutenant could distinctly hear the thud and
+punch of the rammers, and he knew they were going to shoot again.
+
+The low rail afforded almost no shelter against such a broadside, and
+there was nothing for it but to order all hands below for the time
+being.
+
+"Get below!" roared out the lieutenant. "All hands get below and lie
+snug for further orders!" In obedience the men ran scrambling below into
+the hold, and in a little while the decks were nearly clear except
+for the three dead men and some three or four wounded. The boatswain,
+crouching down close to the wheel, and the lieutenant himself were the
+only others upon deck. Everywhere there were smears and sprinkles of
+blood. "Where's Brookes?" the lieutenant called out.
+
+"He's hurt in the arm, sir, and he's gone below," said the boatswain.
+
+Thereupon the lieutenant himself walked over to the forecastle hatch,
+and, hailing the gunner, ordered him to get up another ladder, so that
+the men could be run up on deck if the pirates should undertake to come
+aboard. At that moment the boatswain at the wheel called out that the
+villains were going to shoot again, and the lieutenant, turning, saw the
+gunner aboard of the pirate sloop in the act of touching the iron to the
+touchhole. He stooped down. There was another loud and deafening crash
+of cannon, one, two, three--four--the last two almost together--and
+almost instantly the boatswain called out, "'Tis the sloop, sir! look at
+the sloop!"
+
+The sloop had got afloat again, and had been coming up to the aid of the
+schooner, when the pirates fired their second broadside now at her. When
+the lieutenant looked at her she was quivering with the impact of the
+shot, and the next moment she began falling off to the wind, and he
+could see the wounded men rising and falling and struggling upon her
+decks.
+
+At the same moment the boatswain called out that the enemy was coming
+aboard, and even as he spoke the pirate sloop came drifting out from the
+cloud of smoke that enveloped her, looming up larger and larger as she
+came down upon them. The lieutenant still crouched down under the rail,
+looking out at them. Suddenly, a little distance away, she came about,
+broadside on, and then drifted. She was close aboard now. Something came
+flying through the air--another and another. They were bottles. One of
+them broke with a crash upon the deck. The others rolled over to
+the farther rail. In each of them a quick-match was smoking. Almost
+instantly there was a flash and a terrific report, and the air was full
+of the whiz and singing of broken particles of glass and iron. There was
+another report, and then the whole air seemed full of gunpowder smoke.
+"They're aboard of us!" shouted the boatswain, and even as he spoke the
+lieutenant roared out, "All hands to repel boarders!" A second later
+there came the heavy, thumping bump of the vessels coming together.
+
+Lieutenant Maynard, as he called out the order, ran forward through the
+smoke, snatching one of his pistols out of his pocket and the cutlass
+out of its sheath as he did so. Behind him the men were coming, swarming
+up from below. There was a sudden stunning report of a pistol, and then
+another and another, almost together. There was a groan and the fall of
+a heavy body, and then a figure came jumping over the rail, with two or
+three more directly following. The lieutenant was in the midst of the
+gun powder smoke, when suddenly Blackbeard was before him. The pirate
+captain had stripped himself naked to the waist. His shaggy black hair
+was falling over his eyes, and he looked like a demon fresh from the
+pit, with his frantic face. Almost with the blindness of instinct the
+lieutenant thrust out his pistol, firing it as he did so. The pirate
+staggered back: he was down--no; he was up again. He had a pistol in
+each hand; but there was a stream of blood running down his naked
+ribs. Suddenly, the mouth of a pistol was pointing straight at the
+lieutenant's head. He ducked instinctively, striking upward with his
+cutlass as he did so. There was a stunning, deafening report almost in
+his ear. He struck again blindly with his cutlass. He saw the flash of a
+sword and flung up his guard almost instinctively, meeting the crash
+of the descending blade. Somebody shot from behind him, and at the same
+moment he saw some one else strike the pirate. Blackbeard staggered
+again, and this time there was a great gash upon his neck. Then one of
+Maynard's own men tumbled headlong upon him. He fell with the man, but
+almost instantly he had scrambled to his feet again, and as he did so he
+saw that the pirate sloop had drifted a little away from them, and that
+their grappling irons had evidently parted. His hand was smarting as
+though struck with the lash of a whip. He looked around him; the pirate
+captain was nowhere to be seen--yes, there he was, lying by the rail. He
+raised himself upon his elbow, and the lieutenant saw that he was trying
+to point a pistol at him, with an arm that wavered and swayed blindly,
+the pistol nearly falling from his fingers. Suddenly his other elbow
+gave way and he fell down upon his face. He tried to raise himself--he
+fell down again. There was a report and a cloud of smoke, and when it
+cleared away Blackbeard had staggered up again. He was a terrible figure
+his head nodding down upon his breast. Somebody shot again, and then the
+swaying figure toppled and fell. It lay still for a moment--then rolled
+over--then lay still again.
+
+There was a loud splash of men jumping overboard, and then, almost
+instantly, the cry of "Quarter! quarter!" The lieutenant ran to the
+edge of the vessel. It was as he had thought: the grappling irons of the
+pirate sloop had parted, and it had drifted away. The few pirates who
+had been left aboard of the schooner had jumped overboard and were now
+holding up their hands. "Quarter!" they cried. "Don't shoot!--quarter!"
+And the fight was over.
+
+The lieutenant looked down at his hand, and then he saw, for the first
+time, that there was a great cutlass gash across the back of it, and
+that his arm and shirt sleeve were wet with blood. He went aft, holding
+the wrist of his wounded hand. The boatswain was still at the wheel. "By
+zounds!" said the lieutenant, with a nervous, quavering laugh, "I didn't
+know there was such fight in the villains."
+
+His wounded and shattered sloop was again coming up toward him under
+sail, but the pirates had surrendered, and the fight was over.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI. BLUESKIN THE PIRATE
+
+
+I
+
+CAPE MAY and Cape Henlopen form, as it were, the upper and lower jaws of
+a gigantic mouth, which disgorges from its monstrous gullet the cloudy
+waters of the Delaware Bay into the heaving, sparkling blue-green of
+the Atlantic Ocean. From Cape Henlopen as the lower jaw there juts out a
+long, curving fang of high, smooth-rolling sand dunes, cutting sharp and
+clean against the still, blue sky above silent, naked, utterly deserted,
+excepting for the squat, white-walled lighthouse standing upon the crest
+of the highest hill. Within this curving, sheltering hook of sand hills
+lie the smooth waters of Lewes Harbor, and, set a little back from the
+shore, the quaint old town, with its dingy wooden houses of clapboard
+and shingle, looks sleepily out through the masts of the shipping lying
+at anchor in the harbor, to the purple, clean-cut, level thread of the
+ocean horizon beyond.
+
+Lewes is a queer, odd, old-fashioned little town, smelling fragrant of
+salt marsh and sea breeze. It is rarely visited by strangers. The people
+who live there are the progeny of people who have lived there for many
+generations, and it is the very place to nurse, and preserve, and care
+for old legends and traditions of bygone times, until they grow from
+bits of gossip and news into local history of considerable size. As in
+the busier world men talk of last year's elections, here these old bits,
+and scraps, and odds and ends of history are retailed to the listener
+who cares to listen--traditions of the War of 1812, when Beresford's
+fleet lay off the harbor threatening to bombard the town; tales of the
+Revolution and of Earl Howe's warships, tarrying for a while in the
+quiet harbor before they sailed up the river to shake old Philadelphia
+town with the thunders of their guns at Red Bank and Fort Mifflin.
+
+With these substantial and sober threads of real history, other and more
+lurid colors are interwoven into the web of local lore--legends of the
+dark doings of famous pirates, of their mysterious, sinister comings and
+goings, of treasures buried in the sand dunes and pine barrens back of
+the cape and along the Atlantic beach to the southward.
+
+Of such is the story of Blueskin, the pirate.
+
+
+II
+
+It was in the fall and the early winter of the year 1750, and again
+in the summer of the year following, that the famous pirate, Blueskin,
+became especially identified with Lewes as a part of its traditional
+history.
+
+For some time--for three or four years--rumors and reports of Blueskin's
+doings in the West Indies and off the Carolinas had been brought in now
+and then by sea captains. There was no more cruel, bloody, desperate,
+devilish pirate than he in all those pirate-infested waters. All kinds
+of wild and bloody stories were current concerning him, but it never
+occurred to the good folk of Lewes that such stories were some time to
+be a part of their own history.
+
+But one day a schooner came drifting into Lewes harbor--shattered,
+wounded, her forecastle splintered, her foremast shot half away, and
+three great tattered holes in her mainsail. The mate with one of the
+crew came ashore in the boat for help and a doctor. He reported that the
+captain and the cook were dead and there were three wounded men aboard.
+The story he told to the gathering crowd brought a very peculiar thrill
+to those who heard it. They had fallen in with Blueskin, he said, off
+Fenwick's Island (some twenty or thirty miles below the capes), and
+the pirates had come aboard of them; but, finding that the cargo of the
+schooner consisted only of cypress shingles and lumber, had soon quitted
+their prize. Perhaps Blueskin was disappointed at not finding a more
+valuable capture; perhaps the spirit of deviltry was hotter in him that
+morning than usual; anyhow, as the pirate craft bore away she fired
+three broadsides at short range into the helpless coaster. The captain
+had been killed at the first fire, the cook had died on the way up,
+three of the crew were wounded, and the vessel was leaking fast, betwixt
+wind and water.
+
+Such was the mate's story. It spread like wildfire, and in half an hour
+all the town was in a ferment. Fenwick's Island was very near home;
+Blueskin might come sailing into the harbor at any minute and then--! In
+an hour Sheriff Jones had called together most of the able-bodied men
+of the town, muskets and rifles were taken down from the chimney places,
+and every preparation was made to defend the place against the pirates,
+should they come into the harbor and attempt to land.
+
+But Blueskin did not come that day, nor did he come the next or the
+next. But on the afternoon of the third the news went suddenly flying
+over the town that the pirates were inside the capes. As the report
+spread the people came running--men, women, and children--to the green
+before the tavern, where a little knot of old seamen were gathered
+together, looking fixedly out toward the offing, talking in low voices.
+Two vessels, one bark-rigged, the other and smaller a sloop, were slowly
+creeping up the bay, a couple of miles or so away and just inside the
+cape. There appeared nothing remarkable about the two crafts, but the
+little crowd that continued gathering upon the green stood looking
+out across the bay at them none the less anxiously for that. They were
+sailing close-hauled to the wind, the sloop following in the wake of her
+consort as the pilot fish follows in the wake of the shark.
+
+But the course they held did not lie toward the harbor, but rather bore
+away toward the Jersey shore, and by and by it began to be apparent that
+Blueskin did not intend visiting the town. Nevertheless, those who stood
+looking did not draw a free breath until, after watching the two pirates
+for more than an hour and a half, they saw them--then about six miles
+away--suddenly put about and sail with a free wind out to sea again.
+
+"The bloody villains have gone!" said old Captain Wolfe, shutting his
+telescope with a click.
+
+But Lewes was not yet quit of Blueskin. Two days later a half-breed from
+Indian River bay came up, bringing the news that the pirates had sailed
+into the inlet--some fifteen miles below Lewes--and had careened the
+bark to clean her.
+
+Perhaps Blueskin did not care to stir up the country people against him,
+for the half-breed reported that the pirates were doing no harm, and
+that what they took from the farmers of Indian River and Rehoboth they
+paid for with good hard money.
+
+It was while the excitement over the pirates was at its highest fever
+heat that Levi West came home again.
+
+
+III
+
+Even in the middle of the last century the grist mill, a couple of miles
+from Lewes, although it was at most but fifty or sixty years old, had
+all a look of weather-beaten age, for the cypress shingles, of which it
+was built, ripen in a few years of wind and weather to a silvery, hoary
+gray, and the white powdering of flour lent it a look as though the
+dust of ages had settled upon it, making the shadows within dim, soft,
+mysterious. A dozen willow trees shaded with dappling, shivering ripples
+of shadow the road before the mill door, and the mill itself, and the
+long, narrow, shingle-built, one-storied, hip-roofed dwelling house.
+At the time of the story the mill had descended in a direct line of
+succession to Hiram White, the grandson of old Ephraim White, who had
+built it, it was said, in 1701.
+
+Hiram White was only twenty-seven years old, but he was already in local
+repute as a "character." As a boy he was thought to be half-witted or
+"natural," and, as is the case with such unfortunates in small country
+towns where everybody knows everybody, he was made a common sport and
+jest for the keener, crueler wits of the neighborhood. Now that he was
+grown to the ripeness of manhood he was still looked upon as being--to
+use a quaint expression--"slack," or "not jest right." He was heavy,
+awkward, ungainly and loose-jointed, and enormously, prodigiously
+strong. He had a lumpish, thick-featured face, with lips heavy and
+loosely hanging, that gave him an air of stupidity, half droll, half
+pathetic. His little eyes were set far apart and flat with his face, his
+eyebrows were nearly white and his hair was of a sandy, colorless
+kind. He was singularly taciturn, lisping thickly when he did talk,
+and stuttering and hesitating in his speech, as though his words moved
+faster than his mind could follow. It was the custom for local wags to
+urge, or badger, or tempt him to talk, for the sake of the ready laugh
+that always followed the few thick, stammering words and the stupid
+drooping of the jaw at the end of each short speech. Perhaps Squire
+Hall was the only one in Lewes Hundred who misdoubted that Hiram was
+half-witted. He had had dealings with him and was wont to say that
+whoever bought Hiram White for a fool made a fool's bargain. Certainly,
+whether he had common wits or no, Hiram had managed his mill to pretty
+good purpose and was fairly well off in the world as prosperity went in
+southern Delaware and in those days. No doubt, had it come to the pinch,
+he might have bought some of his tormentors out three times over.
+
+Hiram White had suffered quite a financial loss some six months before,
+through that very Blueskin who was now lurking in Indian River inlet.
+He had entered into a "venture" with Josiah Shippin, a Philadelphia
+merchant, to the tune of seven hundred pounds sterling. The money had
+been invested in a cargo of flour and corn meal which had been shipped
+to Jamaica by the bark Nancy Lee. The Nancy Lee had been captured by the
+pirates off Currituck Sound, the crew set adrift in the longboat, and
+the bark herself and all her cargo burned to the water's edge.
+
+Five hundred of the seven hundred pounds invested in the unfortunate
+"venture" was money bequeathed by Hiram's father, seven years before, to
+Levi West.
+
+Eleazer White had been twice married, the second time to the widow West.
+She had brought with her to her new home a good-looking, long-legged,
+black-eyed, black-haired ne'er-do-well of a son, a year or so younger
+than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle, shiftless, willful,
+ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a pin. He was the very
+opposite to poor, dull Hiram. Eleazer White had never loved his son; he
+was ashamed of the poor, slack-witted oaf. Upon the other hand, he was
+very fond of Levi West, whom he always called "our Levi," and whom he
+treated in every way as though he were his own son. He tried to train
+the lad to work in the mill, and was patient beyond what the patience
+of most fathers would have been with his stepson's idleness and
+shiftlessness. "Never mind," he was used to say. "Levi'll come all
+right. Levi's as bright as a button."
+
+It was one of the greatest blows of the old miller's life when Levi ran
+away to sea. In his last sickness the old man's mind constantly turned
+to his lost stepson. "Mebby he'll come back again," said he, "and if he
+does I want you to be good to him, Hiram. I've done my duty by you and
+have left you the house and mill, but I want you to promise that if Levi
+comes back again you'll give him a home and a shelter under this roof if
+he wants one." And Hiram had promised to do as his father asked.
+
+After Eleazer died it was found that he had bequeathed five hundred
+pounds to his "beloved stepson, Levi West," and had left Squire Hall as
+trustee.
+
+Levi West had been gone nearly nine years and not a word had been heard
+from him; there could be little or no doubt that he was dead.
+
+One day Hiram came into Squire Hall's office with a letter in his hand.
+It was the time of the old French war, and flour and corn meal were
+fetching fabulous prices in the British West Indies. The letter Hiram
+brought with him was from a Philadelphia merchant, Josiah Shippin, with
+whom he had had some dealings. Mr. Shippin proposed that Hiram should
+join him in sending a "venture" of flour and corn meal to Kingston,
+Jamaica. Hiram had slept upon the letter overnight and now he brought
+it to the old Squire. Squire Hall read the letter, shaking his head the
+while. "Too much risk, Hiram!" said he. "Mr Shippin wouldn't have asked
+you to go into this venture if he could have got anybody else to do
+so. My advice is that you let it alone. I reckon you've come to me
+for advice?" Hiram shook his head. "Ye haven't? What have ye come for,
+then?"
+
+"Seven hundred pounds," said Hiram.
+
+"Seven hundred pounds!" said Squire Hall. "I haven't got seven hundred
+pounds to lend you, Hiram."
+
+"Five hundred been left to Levi--I got hundred--raise hundred more on
+mortgage," said Hiram.
+
+"Tut, tut, Hiram," said Squire Hall, "that'll never do in the world.
+Suppose Levi West should come back again, what then? I'm responsible for
+that money. If you wanted to borrow it now for any reasonable venture,
+you should have it and welcome, but for such a wildcat scheme--"
+
+"Levi never come back," said Hiram--"nine years gone Levi's dead."
+
+"Mebby he is," said Squire Hall, "but we don't know that."
+
+"I'll give bond for security," said Hiram.
+
+Squire Hall thought for a while in silence. "Very well, Hiram," said he
+by and by, "if you'll do that. Your father left the money, and I don't
+see that it's right for me to stay his son from using it. But if it is
+lost, Hiram, and if Levi should come back, it will go well to ruin ye."
+
+So Hiram White invested seven hundred pounds in the Jamaica venture and
+every farthing of it was burned by Blueskin, off Currituck Sound.
+
+
+IV
+
+Sally Martin was said to be the prettiest girl in Lewes Hundred, and
+when the rumor began to leak out that Hiram White was courting her the
+whole community took it as a monstrous joke. It was the common thing to
+greet Hiram himself with, "Hey, Hiram; how's Sally?" Hiram never made
+answer to such salutation, but went his way as heavily, as impassively,
+as dully as ever.
+
+The joke was true. Twice a week, rain or shine, Hiram White never
+failed to scrape his feet upon Billy Martin's doorstep. Twice a week, on
+Sundays and Thursdays, he never failed to take his customary seat by the
+kitchen fire. He rarely said anything by way of talk; he nodded to the
+farmer, to his wife, to Sally and, when he chanced to be at home, to her
+brother, but he ventured nothing further. There he would sit from half
+past seven until nine o'clock, stolid, heavy, impassive, his dull eyes
+following now one of the family and now another, but always coming back
+again to Sally. It sometimes happened that she had other company--some
+of the young men of the neighborhood. The presence of such seemed to
+make no difference to Hiram; he bore whatever broad jokes might be
+cracked upon him, whatever grins, whatever giggling might follow those
+jokes, with the same patient impassiveness. There he would sit, silent,
+unresponsive; then, at the first stroke of nine o'clock, he would rise,
+shoulder his ungainly person into his overcoat, twist his head into
+his three-cornered hat, and with a "Good night, Sally, I be going now,"
+would take his departure, shutting the door carefully to behind him.
+
+Never, perhaps, was there a girl in the world had such a lover and such
+a courtship as Sally Martin.
+
+
+V
+
+It was one Thursday evening in the latter part of November, about a week
+after Blueskin's appearance off the capes, and while the one subject of
+talk was of the pirates being in Indian River inlet. The air was still
+and wintry; a sudden cold snap had set in and skims of ice had formed
+over puddles in the road; the smoke from the chimneys rose straight in
+the quiet air and voices sounded loud, as they do in frosty weather.
+
+Hiram White sat by the dim light of a tallow dip, poring laboriously
+over some account books. It was not quite seven o'clock, and he never
+started for Billy Martin's before that hour. As he ran his finger slowly
+and hesitatingly down the column of figures, he heard the kitchen door
+beyond open and shut, the noise of footsteps crossing the floor and the
+scraping of a chair dragged forward to the hearth. Then came the sound
+of a basket of corncobs being emptied on the smoldering blaze and then
+the snapping and crackling of the reanimated fire. Hiram thought nothing
+of all this, excepting, in a dim sort of way, that it was Bob, the negro
+mill hand, or old black Dinah, the housekeeper, and so went on with his
+calculations.
+
+At last he closed the books with a snap and, smoothing down his hair,
+arose, took up the candle, and passed out of the room into the kitchen
+beyond.
+
+A man was sitting in front of the corncob fire that flamed and blazed in
+the great, gaping, sooty fireplace. A rough overcoat was flung over the
+chair behind him and his hands were spread out to the roaring warmth.
+At the sound of the lifted latch and of Hiram's entrance he turned his
+head, and when Hiram saw his face he stood suddenly still as though
+turned to stone. The face, marvelously altered and changed as it was,
+was the face of his stepbrother, Levi West. He was not dead; he had
+come home again. For a time not a sound broke the dead, unbroken silence
+excepting the crackling of the blaze in the fireplace and the sharp
+ticking of the tall clock in the corner. The one face, dull and stolid,
+with the light of the candle shining upward over its lumpy features,
+looked fixedly, immovably, stonily at the other, sharp, shrewd,
+cunning--the red wavering light of the blaze shining upon the high cheek
+bones, cutting sharp on the nose and twinkling in the glassy turn of the
+black, ratlike eyes. Then suddenly that face cracked, broadened, spread
+to a grin. "I have come back again, Hi," said Levi, and at the sound of
+the words the speechless spell was broken.
+
+Hiram answered never a word, but he walked to the fireplace, set the
+candle down upon the dusty mantelshelf among the boxes and bottles, and,
+drawing forward a chair upon the other side of the hearth, sat down.
+
+His dull little eyes never moved from his stepbrother's face. There was
+no curiosity in his expression, no surprise, no wonder. The heavy under
+lip dropped a little farther open and there was more than usual of
+dull, expressionless stupidity upon the lumpish face; but that was all.
+
+As was said, the face upon which he looked was strangely, marvelously
+changed from what it had been when he had last seen it nine years
+before, and, though it was still the face of Levi West, it was a very
+different Levi West than the shiftless ne'er-do-well who had run away to
+sea in the Brazilian brig that long time ago. That Levi West had been
+a rough, careless, happy-go-lucky fellow; thoughtless and selfish, but
+with nothing essentially evil or sinister in his nature. The Levi West
+that now sat in a rush-bottom chair at the other side of the fireplace
+had that stamped upon his front that might be both evil and sinister.
+His swart complexion was tanned to an Indian copper. On one side of his
+face was a curious discoloration in the skin and a long, crooked, cruel
+scar that ran diagonally across forehead and temple and cheek in a
+white, jagged seam. This discoloration was of a livid blue, about the
+tint of a tattoo mark. It made a patch the size of a man's hand, lying
+across the cheek and the side of the neck. Hiram could not keep his eyes
+from this mark and the white scar cutting across it.
+
+There was an odd sort of incongruity in Levi's dress; a pair of heavy
+gold earrings and a dirty red handkerchief knotted loosely around his
+neck, beneath an open collar, displaying to its full length the lean,
+sinewy throat with its bony "Adam's apple," gave to his costume somewhat
+the smack of a sailor. He wore a coat that had once been of fine
+plum color--now stained and faded--too small for his lean length, and
+furbished with tarnished lace. Dirty cambric cuffs hung at his wrists
+and on his fingers were half a dozen and more rings, set with stones
+that shone, and glistened, and twinkled in the light of the fire. The
+hair at either temple was twisted into a Spanish curl, plastered flat to
+the cheek, and a plaited queue hung halfway down his back.
+
+Hiram, speaking never a word, sat motionless, his dull little eyes
+traveling slowly up and down and around and around his stepbrother's
+person.
+
+Levi did not seem to notice his scrutiny, leaning forward, now with
+his palms spread out to the grateful warmth, now rubbing them slowly
+together. But at last he suddenly whirled his chair around, rasping
+on the floor, and faced his stepbrother. He thrust his hand into his
+capacious coat pocket and brought out a pipe which he proceeded to fill
+from a skin of tobacco. "Well, Hi," said he, "d'ye see I've come back
+home again?"
+
+"Thought you was dead," said Hiram, dully.
+
+Levi laughed, then he drew a red-hot coal out of the fire, put it upon
+the bowl of the pipe and began puffing out clouds of pungent smoke.
+"Nay, nay," said he; "not dead--not dead by odds. But [puff] by the
+Eternal Holy, Hi, I played many a close game [puff] with old Davy Jones,
+for all that."
+
+Hiram's look turned inquiringly toward the jagged scar and Levi caught
+the slow glance. "You're lookin' at this," said he, running his finger
+down the crooked seam. "That looks bad, but it wasn't so close as
+this"--laying his hand for a moment upon the livid stain. "A cooly devil
+off Singapore gave me that cut when we fell foul of an opium junk in the
+China Sea four years ago last September. This," touching the disfiguring
+blue patch again, "was a closer miss, Hi. A Spanish captain fired a
+pistol at me down off Santa Catharina. He was so nigh that the powder
+went under the skin and it'll never come out again. ---- his eyes--he
+had better have fired the pistol into his own head that morning. But
+never mind that. I reckon I'm changed, ain't I, Hi?"
+
+He took his pipe out of his mouth and looked inquiringly at Hiram, who
+nodded.
+
+Levi laughed. "Devil doubt it," said he, "but whether I'm changed or no,
+I'll take my affidavy that you are the same old half-witted Hi that
+you used to be. I remember dad used to say that you hadn't no more than
+enough wits to keep you out of the rain. And, talking of dad, Hi, I
+hearn tell he's been dead now these nine years gone. D'ye know what I've
+come home for?"
+
+Hiram shook his head.
+
+"I've come for that five hundred pounds that dad left me when he died,
+for I hearn tell of that, too."
+
+Hiram sat quite still for a second or two and then he said, "I put that
+money out to venture and lost it all."
+
+Levi's face fell and he took his pipe out of his mouth, regarding Hiram
+sharply and keenly. "What d'ye mean?" said he presently.
+
+"I thought you was dead--and I put--seven hundred pounds--into Nancy
+Lee--and Blueskin burned her--off Currituck."
+
+"Burned her off Currituck!" repeated Levi. Then suddenly a light seemed
+to break upon his comprehension. "Burned by Blueskin!" he repeated,
+and thereupon flung himself back in his chair and burst into a short,
+boisterous fit of laughter. "Well, by the Holy Eternal, Hi, if that
+isn't a piece of your tarnal luck. Burned by Blueskin, was it?" He
+paused for a moment, as though turning it over in his mind. Then he
+laughed again. "All the same," said he presently, "d'ye see, I can't
+suffer for Blueskin's doings. The money was willed to me, fair and true,
+and you have got to pay it, Hiram White, burn or sink, Blueskin or no
+Blueskin." Again he puffed for a moment or two in reflective silence.
+"All the same, Hi," said he, once more resuming the thread of talk, "I
+don't reckon to be too hard on you. You be only half-witted, anyway, and
+I sha'n't be too hard on you. I give you a month to raise that money,
+and while you're doing it I'll jest hang around here. I've been in
+trouble, Hi, d'ye see. I'm under a cloud and so I want to keep here, as
+quiet as may be. I'll tell ye how it came about: I had a set-to with a
+land pirate in Philadelphia, and somebody got hurt. That's the reason
+I'm here now, and don't you say anything about it. Do you understand?"
+
+Hiram opened his lips as though it was his intent to answer, then seemed
+to think better of it and contented himself by nodding his head.
+
+That Thursday night was the first for a six-month that Hiram White did
+not scrape his feet clean at Billy Martin's doorstep.
+
+
+VI
+
+Within a week Levi West had pretty well established himself among his
+old friends and acquaintances, though upon a different footing from
+that of nine years before, for this was a very different Levi from that
+other. Nevertheless, he was none the less popular in the barroom of the
+tavern and at the country store, where he was always the center of a
+group of loungers. His nine years seemed to have been crowded full of
+the wildest of wild adventures and happenings, as well by land as by
+sea, and, given an appreciative audience, he would reel off his yarns by
+the hour, in a reckless, devil-may-care fashion that set agape even old
+sea dogs who had sailed the western ocean since boyhood. Then he seemed
+always to have plenty of money, and he loved to spend it at the tavern
+tap-room, with a lavishness that was at once the wonder and admiration
+of gossips.
+
+At that time, as was said, Blueskin was the one engrossing topic of
+talk, and it added not a little to Levi's prestige when it was found
+that he had actually often seen that bloody, devilish pirate with his
+own eyes. A great, heavy, burly fellow, Levi said he was, with a beard
+as black as a hat--a devil with his sword and pistol afloat, but not so
+black as he was painted when ashore. He told of many adventures in which
+Blueskin figured and was then always listened to with more than usual
+gaping interest.
+
+As for Blueskin, the quiet way in which the pirates conducted themselves
+at Indian River almost made the Lewes folk forget what he could do when
+the occasion called. They almost ceased to remember that poor shattered
+schooner that had crawled with its ghastly dead and groaning wounded
+into the harbor a couple of weeks since. But if for a while they forgot
+who or what Blueskin was, it was not for long.
+
+One day a bark from Bristol, bound for Cuba and laden with a valuable
+cargo of cloth stuffs and silks, put into Lewes harbor to take in water.
+The captain himself came ashore and was at the tavern for two or
+three hours. It happened that Levi was there and that the talk was
+of Blueskin. The English captain, a grizzled old sea dog, listened to
+Levi's yarns with not a little contempt. He had, he said, sailed in the
+China Sea and the Indian Ocean too long to be afraid of any hog-eating
+Yankee pirate such as this Blueskin. A junk full of coolies armed with
+stink-pots was something to speak of, but who ever heard of the likes of
+Blueskin falling afoul of anything more than a Spanish canoe or a Yankee
+coaster?
+
+Levi grinned. "All the same, my hearty," said he, "if I was you I'd
+give Blueskin a wide berth. I hear that he's cleaned the vessel that was
+careened awhile ago, and mebby he'll give you a little trouble if you
+come too nigh him."
+
+To this the Englishman only answered that Blueskin might be----, and
+that the next afternoon, wind and weather permitting, he intended to
+heave anchor and run out to sea.
+
+Levi laughed again. "I wish I might be here to see what'll happen," said
+he, "but I'm going up the river to-night to see a gal and mebby won't be
+back again for three or four days."
+
+The next afternoon the English bark set sail as the captain promised,
+and that night Lewes town was awake until almost morning, gazing at a
+broad red glare that lighted up the sky away toward the southeast. Two
+days afterward a negro oysterman came up from Indian River with news
+that the pirates were lying off the inlet, bringing ashore bales of
+goods from their larger vessel and piling the same upon the beach under
+tarpaulins. He said that it was known down at Indian River that Blueskin
+had fallen afoul of an English bark, had burned her and had murdered the
+captain and all but three of the crew, who had joined with the pirates.
+
+The excitement over this terrible happening had only begun to subside
+when another occurred to cap it. One afternoon a ship's boat, in which
+were five men and two women, came rowing into Lewes harbor. It was the
+longboat of the Charleston packet, bound for New York, and was commanded
+by the first mate. The packet had been attacked and captured by the
+pirates about ten leagues south by east of Cape Henlopen. The pirates
+had come aboard of them at night and no resistance had been offered.
+Perhaps it was that circumstance that saved the lives of all, for no
+murder or violence had been done. Nevertheless, officers, passengers
+and crew had been stripped of everything of value and set adrift in
+the boats and the ship herself had been burned. The longboat had become
+separated from the others during the night and had sighted Henlopen a
+little after sunrise.
+
+It may be here said that Squire Hall made out a report of these two
+occurrences and sent it up to Philadelphia by the mate of the packet.
+But for some reason it was nearly four weeks before a sloop of war was
+sent around from New York. In the meanwhile, the pirates had disposed
+of the booty stored under the tarpaulins on the beach at Indian River
+inlet, shipping some of it away in two small sloops and sending the rest
+by wagons somewhere up the country.
+
+
+VII
+
+Levi had told the English captain that he was going up-country to visit
+one of his lady friends. He was gone nearly two weeks. Then once more
+he appeared, as suddenly, as unexpectedly, as he had done when he first
+returned to Lewes. Hiram was sitting at supper when the door opened and
+Levi walked in, hanging up his hat behind the door as unconcernedly as
+though he had only been gone an hour. He was in an ugly, lowering humor
+and sat himself down at the table without uttering a word, resting his
+chin upon his clenched fist and glowering fixedly at the corn cake while
+Dinah fetched him a plate and knife and fork.
+
+His coming seemed to have taken away all of Hiram's appetite. He pushed
+away his plate and sat staring at his stepbrother, who presently fell
+to at the bacon and eggs like a famished wolf. Not a word was said until
+Levi had ended his meal and filled his pipe. "Look'ee, Hiram," said he,
+as he stooped over the fire and raked out a hot coal. "Look'ee, Hiram!
+I've been to Philadelphia, d'ye see, a-settlin' up that trouble I told
+you about when I first come home. D'ye understand? D'ye remember? D'ye
+get it through your skull?" He looked around over his shoulder, waiting
+as though for an answer. But getting none, he continued: "I expect two
+gentlemen here from Philadelphia to-night. They're friends of mine and
+are coming to talk over the business and ye needn't stay at home, Hi.
+You can go out somewhere, d'ye understand?" And then he added with a
+grin, "Ye can go to see Sally."
+
+Hiram pushed back his chair and arose. He leaned with his back against
+the side of the fireplace. "I'll stay at home," said he presently.
+
+"But I don't want you to stay at home, Hi," said Levi. "We'll have to
+talk business and I want you to go!"
+
+"I'll stay at home," said Hiram again.
+
+Levi's brow grew as black as thunder. He ground his teeth together and
+for a moment or two it seemed as though an explosion was coming. But he
+swallowed his passion with a gulp. "You're a----pig-headed, half-witted
+fool," said he. Hiram never so much as moved his eyes. "As for you,"
+said Levi, whirling round upon Dinah, who was clearing the table, and
+glowering balefully upon the old negress, "you put them things down and
+git out of here. Don't you come nigh this kitchen again till I tell
+ye to. If I catch you pryin' around may I be----, eyes and liver, if I
+don't cut your heart out."
+
+In about half an hour Levi's friends came; the first a little, thin,
+wizened man with a very foreign look. He was dressed in a rusty black
+suit and wore gray yarn stockings and shoes with brass buckles. The
+other was also plainly a foreigner. He was dressed in sailor fashion,
+with petticoat breeches of duck, a heavy pea-jacket, and thick boots,
+reaching to the knees. He wore a red sash tied around his waist, and
+once, as he pushed back his coat, Hiram saw the glitter of a pistol
+butt. He was a powerful, thickset man, low-browed and bull-necked, his
+cheek, and chin, and throat closely covered with a stubble of blue-black
+beard. He wore a red kerchief tied around his head and over it a cocked
+hat, edged with tarnished gilt braid.
+
+Levi himself opened the door to them. He exchanged a few words outside
+with his visitors, in a foreign language of which Hiram understood
+nothing. Neither of the two strangers spoke a word to Hiram: the little
+man shot him a sharp look out of the corners of his eyes and the burly
+ruffian scowled blackly at him, but beyond that neither vouchsafed him
+any regard.
+
+Levi drew to the shutters, shot the bolt in the outer door, and tilted
+a chair against the latch of the one that led from the kitchen into the
+adjoining room. Then the three worthies seated themselves at the table
+which Dinah had half cleared of the supper china, and were presently
+deeply engrossed over a packet of papers which the big, burly man had
+brought with him in the pocket of his pea-jacket. The confabulation was
+conducted throughout in the same foreign language which Levi had used
+when first speaking to them--a language quite unintelligible to Hiram's
+ears. Now and then the murmur of talk would rise loud and harsh over
+some disputed point; now and then it would sink away to whispers.
+
+Twice the tall clock in the corner whirred and sharply struck the
+hour, but throughout the whole long consultation Hiram stood silent,
+motionless as a stock, his eyes fixed almost unwinkingly upon the three
+heads grouped close together around the dim, flickering light of the
+candle and the papers scattered upon the table.
+
+Suddenly the talk came to an end, the three heads separated and the
+three chairs were pushed back, grating harshly. Levi rose, went to the
+closet and brought thence a bottle of Hiram's apple brandy, as coolly
+as though it belonged to himself. He set three tumblers and a crock of
+water upon the table and each helped himself liberally.
+
+As the two visitors departed down the road, Levi stood for a while at
+the open door, looking after the dusky figures until they were swallowed
+in the darkness. Then he turned, came in, shut the door, shuddered, took
+a final dose of the apple brandy and went to bed, without, since his
+first suppressed explosion, having said a single word to Hiram.
+
+Hiram, left alone, stood for a while, silent, motionless as ever, then
+he looked slowly about him, gave a shake of the shoulders as though to
+arouse himself, and taking the candle, left the room, shutting the door
+noiselessly behind him.
+
+
+VIII
+
+This time of Levi West's unwelcome visitation was indeed a time of
+bitter trouble and tribulation to poor Hiram White. Money was of very
+different value in those days than it is now, and five hundred pounds
+was in its way a good round lump--in Sussex County it was almost a
+fortune. It was a desperate struggle for Hiram to raise the amount of
+his father's bequest to his stepbrother. Squire Hall, as may have been
+gathered, had a very warm and friendly feeling for Hiram, believing in
+him when all others disbelieved; nevertheless, in the matter of money
+the old man was as hard and as cold as adamant. He would, he said, do
+all he could to help Hiram, but that five hundred pounds must and should
+be raised--Hiram must release his security bond. He would loan him, he
+said, three hundred pounds, taking a mortgage upon the mill. He would
+have lent him four hundred but that there was already a first mortgage
+of one hundred pounds upon it, and he would not dare to put more than
+three hundred more atop of that.
+
+Hiram had a considerable quantity of wheat which he had bought upon
+speculation and which was then lying idle in a Philadelphia storehouse.
+This he had sold at public sale and at a very great sacrifice; he
+realized barely one hundred pounds upon it. The financial horizon looked
+very black to him; nevertheless, Levi's five hundred pounds was raised,
+and paid into Squire Hall's hands, and Squire Hall released Hiram's
+bond.
+
+The business was finally closed on one cold, gray afternoon in the early
+part of December. As Hiram tore his bond across and then tore it across
+again and again, Squire Hall pushed back the papers upon his desk and
+cocked his feet upon its slanting top. "Hiram," said he, abruptly,
+"Hiram, do you know that Levi West is forever hanging around Billy
+Martin's house, after that pretty daughter of his?"
+
+So long a space of silence followed the speech that the Squire began to
+think that Hiram might not have heard him. But Hiram had heard. "No,"
+said he, "I didn't know it."
+
+"Well, he is," said Squire Hall. "It's the talk of the whole
+neighborhood. The talk's pretty bad, too. D'ye know that they say that
+she was away from home three days last week, nobody knew where? The
+fellow's turned her head with his sailor's yarns and his traveler's
+lies."
+
+Hiram said not a word, but he sat looking at the other in stolid
+silence. "That stepbrother of yours," continued the old Squire
+presently, "is a rascal--he is a rascal, Hiram, and I mis-doubt he's
+something worse. I hear he's been seen in some queer places and with
+queer company of late."
+
+He stopped again, and still Hiram said nothing. "And look'ee, Hiram,"
+the old man resumed, suddenly, "I do hear that you be courtin' the girl,
+too; is that so?"
+
+"Yes," said Hiram, "I'm courtin' her, too."
+
+"Tut! tut!" said the Squire, "that's a pity, Hiram. I'm afraid your
+cakes are dough."
+
+After he had left the Squire's office, Hiram stood for a while in the
+street, bareheaded, his hat in his hand, staring unwinkingly down at
+the ground at his feet, with stupidly drooping lips and lackluster eyes.
+Presently he raised his hand and began slowly smoothing down the sandy
+shock of hair upon his forehead. At last he aroused himself with a
+shake, looked dully up and down the street, and then, putting on his
+hat, turned and walked slowly and heavily away.
+
+The early dusk of the cloudy winter evening was settling fast, for
+the sky was leaden and threatening. At the outskirts of the town Hiram
+stopped again and again stood for a while in brooding thought. Then,
+finally, he turned slowly, not the way that led homeward, but taking the
+road that led between the bare and withered fields and crooked fences
+toward Billy Martin's.
+
+It would be hard to say just what it was that led Hiram to seek Billy
+Martin's house at that time of day--whether it was fate or ill fortune.
+He could not have chosen a more opportune time to confirm his own
+undoing. What he saw was the very worst that his heart feared.
+
+Along the road, at a little distance from the house, was a mock-orange
+hedge, now bare, naked, leafless. As Hiram drew near he heard footsteps
+approaching and low voices. He drew back into the fence corner and there
+stood, half sheltered by the stark network of twigs. Two figures passed
+slowly along the gray of the roadway in the gloaming. One was his
+stepbrother, the other was Sally Martin. Levi's arm was around her, he
+was whispering into her ear, and her head rested upon his shoulder.
+
+Hiram stood as still, as breathless, as cold as ice. They stopped upon
+the side of the road just beyond where he stood. Hiram's eyes never
+left them. There for some time they talked together in low voices,
+their words now and then reaching the ears of that silent, breathless
+listener.
+
+Suddenly there came the clattering of an opening door, and then Betty
+Martin's voice broke the silence, harshly, shrilly: "Sal!--Sal!--Sally
+Martin! You, Sally Martin! Come in yere. Where be ye?"
+
+The girl flung her arms around Levi's neck and their lips met in one
+quick kiss. The next moment she was gone, flying swiftly, silently, down
+the road past where Hiram stood, stooping as she ran. Levi stood looking
+after her until she was gone; then he turned and walked away whistling.
+
+His whistling died shrilly into silence in the wintry distance, and
+then at last Hiram came stumbling out from the hedge. His face had never
+looked before as it looked then.
+
+
+IX
+
+Hiram was standing in front of the fire with his hands clasped behind
+his back. He had not touched the supper on the table. Levi was eating
+with an appetite. Suddenly he looked over his plate at his stepbrother.
+
+"How about that five hundred pounds, Hiram?" said he. "I gave ye a month
+to raise it and the month ain't quite up yet, but I'm goin' to leave
+this here place day after to-morrow--by next day at the furd'st--and I
+want the money that's mine."
+
+"I paid it to Squire Hall to-day and he has it fer ye," said Hiram,
+dully.
+
+Levi laid down his knife and fork with a clatter. "Squire Hall!" said
+he, "what's Squire Hall got to do with it? Squire Hall didn't have the
+use of that money. It was you had it and you have got to pay it back to
+me, and if you don't do it, by G----, I'll have the law on you, sure as
+you're born."
+
+"Squire Hall's trustee--I ain't your trustee," said Hiram, in the same
+dull voice.
+
+"I don't know nothing about trustees," said Levi, "or anything about
+lawyer business, either. What I want to know is, are you going to pay me
+my money or no?"
+
+"No," said Hiram, "I ain't--Squire Hall'll pay ye; you go to him."
+
+Levi West's face grew purple red. He pushed back, his chair grating
+harshly. "You--bloody land pirate!" he said, grinding his teeth
+together. "I see through your tricks. You're up to cheating me out of
+my money. You know very well that Squire Hall is down on me, hard and
+bitter--writin' his----reports to Philadelphia and doing all he can to
+stir up everybody agin me and to bring the bluejackets down on me. I
+see through your tricks as clear as glass, but ye shatn't trick me. I'll
+have my money if there's law in the land--ye bloody, unnatural thief ye,
+who'd go agin our dead father's will!"
+
+Then--if the roof had fallen in upon him, Levi West could not have been
+more amazed--Hiram suddenly strode forward, and, leaning half across the
+table with his fists clenched, fairly glared into Levi's eyes. His face,
+dull, stupid, wooden, was now fairly convulsed with passion. The great
+veins stood out upon his temples like knotted whipcords, and when
+he spoke his voice was more a breathless snarl than the voice of a
+Christian man.
+
+"Ye'll have the law, will ye?" said he. "Ye'll--have the law, will ye?
+You're afeared to go to law--Levi West--you try th' law--and see how ye
+like it. Who 're you to call me thief--ye bloody, murderin' villain ye!
+You're the thief--Levi West--you come here and stole my daddy from me ye
+did. You make me ruin--myself to pay what oughter to been mine then--ye
+ye steal the gal I was courtin', to boot." He stopped and his lips
+rithed for words to say. "I know ye," said he, grinding his teeth. "I
+know ye! And only for what my daddy made me promise I'd a-had you up to
+the magistrate's before this."
+
+Then, pointing with quivering finger: "There's the door--you see it! Go
+out that there door and don't never come into it again--if ye do--or
+if ye ever come where I can lay eyes on ye again--by th' Holy Holy I'll
+hale ye up to the Squire's office and tell all I know and all I've seen.
+Oh, I'll give ye your belly-fill of law if--ye want th' law! Git out of
+the house, I say!"
+
+As Hiram spoke Levi seemed to shrink together. His face changed from its
+copper color to a dull, waxy yellow. When the other ended he answered
+never a word. But he pushed back his chair, rose, put on his hat and,
+with a furtive, sidelong look, left the house, without stopping to
+finish the supper which he had begun. He never entered Hiram White's
+door again.
+
+
+X
+
+Hiram had driven out the evil spirit from his home, but the mischief
+that it had brewed was done and could not be undone. The next day it
+was known that Sally Martin had run away from home, and that she had run
+away with Levi West. Old Billy Martin had been in town in the morning
+with his rifle, hunting for Levi and threatening if he caught him to
+have his life for leading his daughter astray.
+
+And, as the evil spirit had left Hiram's house, so had another and a
+greater evil spirit quitted its harborage. It was heard from Indian
+River in a few days more that Blueskin had quitted the inlet and had
+sailed away to the southeast; and it was reported, by those who seemed
+to know, that he had finally quitted those parts.
+
+It was well for himself that Blueskin left when he did, for not three
+days after he sailed away the Scorpion sloop-of-war dropped anchor
+in Lewes harbor. The New York agent of the unfortunate packet and a
+government commissioner had also come aboard the Scorpion.
+
+Without loss of time, the officer in command instituted a keen and
+searching examination that brought to light some singularly curious
+facts. It was found that a very friendly understanding must have existed
+for some time between the pirates and the people of Indian River, for,
+in the houses throughout that section, many things--some of considerable
+value--that had been taken by the pirates from the packet, were
+discovered and seized by the commissioner. Valuables of a suspicious
+nature had found their way even into the houses of Lewes itself.
+
+The whole neighborhood seemed to have become more or less tainted by the
+presence of the pirates.
+
+Even poor Hiram White did not escape the suspicions of having had
+dealings with them. Of course the examiners were not slow in discovering
+that Levi West had been deeply concerned with Blueskin's doings.
+
+Old Dinah and black Bob were examined, and not only did the story of
+Levi's two visitors come to light, but also the fact that Hiram was
+present and with them while they were in the house disposing of the
+captured goods to their agent.
+
+Of all that he had endured, nothing seemed to cut poor Hiram so deeply
+and keenly as these unjust suspicions. They seemed to bring the last
+bitter pang, hardest of all to bear.
+
+Levi had taken from him his father's love; he had driven him, if not to
+ruin, at least perilously close to it. He had run away with the girl he
+loved, and now, through him, even Hiram's good name was gone.
+
+Neither did the suspicions against him remain passive; they became
+active.
+
+Goldsmiths' bills, to the amount of several thousand pounds, had been
+taken in the packet and Hiram was examined with an almost inquisitorial
+closeness and strictness as to whether he had or had not knowledge of
+their whereabouts.
+
+Under his accumulated misfortunes, he grew not only more dull, more
+taciturn, than ever, but gloomy, moody, brooding as well. For hours he
+would sit staring straight before him into the fire, without moving so
+much as a hair.
+
+One night--it was a bitterly cold night in February, with three inches
+of dry and gritty snow upon the ground--while Hiram sat thus brooding,
+there came, of a sudden, a soft tap upon the door.
+
+Low and hesitating as it was, Hiram started violently at the sound. He
+sat for a while, looking from right to left. Then suddenly pushing back
+his chair, he arose, strode to the door, and flung it wide open.
+
+It was Sally Martin.
+
+Hiram stood for a while staring blankly at her. It was she who first
+spoke. "Won't you let me come in, Hi?" said she. "I'm nigh starved with
+the cold and I'm fit to die, I'm so hungry. For God's sake, let me come
+in."
+
+"Yes," said Hiram, "I'll let you come in, but why don't you go home?"
+
+The poor girl was shivering and chattering with the cold; now she began
+crying, wiping her eyes with the corner of a blanket in which her head
+and shoulders were wrapped. "I have been home, Hiram," she said, "but
+dad, he shut the door in my face. He cursed me just awful, Hi--I wish I
+was dead!"
+
+"You better come in," said Hiram. "It's no good standing out there in
+the cold." He stood aside and the girl entered, swiftly, gratefully.
+
+At Hiram's bidding black Dinah presently set some food before Sally and
+she fell to eating ravenously, almost ferociously. Meantime, while she
+ate, Hiram stood with his back to the fire, looking at her face that
+face once so round and rosy, now thin, pinched, haggard.
+
+"Are you sick, Sally?" said he presently.
+
+"No," said she, "but I've had pretty hard times since I left home, Hi."
+The tears sprang to her eyes at the recollection of her troubles, but
+she only wiped them hastily away with the back of her hand, without
+stopping in her eating.
+
+A long pause of dead silence followed. Dinah sat crouched together on a
+cricket at the other side of the hearth, listening with interest. Hiram
+did not seem to see her. "Did you go off with Levi?" said he at last,
+speaking abruptly. The girl looked up furtively under her brows. "You
+needn't be afeared to tell," he added.
+
+"Yes," said she at last, "I did go off with him, Hi."
+
+"Where've you been?"
+
+At the question, she suddenly laid down her knife and fork.
+
+"Don't you ask me that, Hi," said she, agitatedly, "I can't tell you
+that. You don't know Levi, Hiram; I darsn't tell you anything he don't
+want me to. If I told you where I been he'd hunt me out, no matter where
+I was, and kill me. If you only knew what I know about him, Hiram, you
+wouldn't ask anything about him."
+
+Hiram stood looking broodingly at her for a long time; then at last he
+again spoke. "I thought a sight of you onc't, Sally," said he.
+
+Sally did not answer immediately, but, after a while, she suddenly
+looked up. "Hiram," said she, "if I tell ye something will you promise
+on your oath not to breathe a word to any living soul?" Hiram nodded.
+"Then I'll tell you, but if Levi finds I've told he'll murder me as
+sure as you're standin' there. Come nigher--I've got to whisper it." He
+leaned forward close to her where she sat. She looked swiftly from right
+to left; then raising her lips she breathed into his ear: "I'm an honest
+woman, Hi. I was married to Levi West before I run away."
+
+
+XI
+
+The winter had passed, spring had passed, and summer had come. Whatever
+Hiram had felt, he had made no sign of suffering. Nevertheless,
+his lumpy face had begun to look flabby, his cheeks hollow, and his
+loose-jointed body shrunk more awkwardly together into its clothes. He
+was often awake at night, sometimes walking up and down his room until
+far into the small hours.
+
+It was through such a wakeful spell as this that he entered into the
+greatest, the most terrible, happening of his life.
+
+It was a sulphurously hot night in July. The air was like the breath of
+a furnace, and it was a hard matter to sleep with even the easiest
+mind and under the most favorable circumstances. The full moon shone in
+through the open window, laying a white square of light upon the floor,
+and Hiram, as he paced up and down, up and down, walked directly through
+it, his gaunt figure starting out at every turn into sudden brightness
+as he entered the straight line of misty light.
+
+The clock in the kitchen whirred and rang out the hour of twelve, and
+Hiram stopped in his walk to count the strokes.
+
+The last vibration died away into silence, and still he stood
+motionless, now listening with a new and sudden intentness, for, even as
+the clock rang the last stroke, he heard soft, heavy footsteps, moving
+slowly and cautiously along the pathway before the house and directly
+below the open window. A few seconds more and he heard the creaking of
+rusty hinges. The mysterious visitor had entered the mill. Hiram crept
+softly to the window and looked out. The moon shone full on the dusty,
+shingled face of the old mill, not thirty steps away, and he saw that
+the door was standing wide open. A second or two of stillness followed,
+and then, as he still stood looking intently, he saw the figure of a man
+suddenly appear, sharp and vivid, from the gaping blackness of the open
+doorway. Hiram could see his face as clear as day. It was Levi West, and
+he carried an empty meal bag over his arm.
+
+Levi West stood looking from right to left for a second or two, and then
+he took off his hat and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. Then
+he softly closed the door behind him and left the mill as he had come,
+and with the same cautious step. Hiram looked down upon him as he passed
+close to the house and almost directly beneath. He could have touched
+him with his hand.
+
+Fifty or sixty yards from the house Levi stopped and a second figure
+arose from the black shadow in the angle of the worm fence and joined
+him. They stood for a while talking together, Levi pointing now and then
+toward the mill. Then the two turned, and, climbing over the fence,
+cut across an open field and through the tall, shaggy grass toward the
+southeast.
+
+Hiram straightened himself and drew a deep breath, and the moon, shining
+full upon his face, snowed it twisted, convulsed, as it had been when
+he had fronted his stepbrother seven months before in the kitchen. Great
+beads of sweat stood on his brow and he wiped them away with his sleeve.
+Then, coatless, hatless as he was, he swung himself out of the window,
+dropped upon the grass, and, without an instant of hesitation, strode
+off down the road in the direction that Levi West had taken.
+
+As he climbed the fence where the two men had climbed it he could see
+them in the pallid light, far away across the level, scrubby meadow
+land, walking toward a narrow strip of pine woods.
+
+A little later they entered the sharp-cut shadows beneath the trees and
+were swallowed in the darkness.
+
+With fixed eyes and close-shut lips, as doggedly, as inexorably as
+though he were a Nemesis hunting his enemy down, Hiram followed their
+footsteps across the stretch of moonlit open. Then, by and by, he also
+was in the shadow of the pines. Here, not a sound broke the midnight
+hush. His feet made no noise upon the resinous softness of the ground
+below. In that dead, pulseless silence he could distinctly hear the
+distant voices of Levi and his companion, sounding loud and resonant in
+the hollow of the woods. Beyond the woods was a cornfield, and presently
+he heard the rattling of the harsh leaves as the two plunged into the
+tasseled jungle. Here, as in the woods, he followed them, step by step,
+guided by the noise of their progress through the canes.
+
+Beyond the cornfield ran a road that, skirting to the south of Lewes,
+led across a wooden bridge to the wide salt marshes that stretched
+between the town and the distant sand hills. Coming out upon this road
+Hiram found that he had gained upon those he followed, and that they
+now were not fifty paces away, and he could see that Levi's companion
+carried over his shoulder what looked like a bundle of tools.
+
+He waited for a little while to let them gain their distance and for the
+second time wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve; then, without ever
+once letting his eyes leave them, he climbed the fence to the roadway.
+
+For a couple of miles or more he followed the two along the white, level
+highway, past silent, sleeping houses, past barns, sheds, and haystacks,
+looming big in the moonlight, past fields, and woods, and clearings,
+past the dark and silent skirts of the town, and so, at last, out upon
+the wide, misty salt marshes, which seemed to stretch away interminably
+through the pallid light, yet were bounded in the far distance by the
+long, white line of sand hills.
+
+Across the level salt marshes he followed them, through the rank sedge
+and past the glassy pools in which his own inverted image stalked
+beneath as he stalked above; on and on, until at last they had reached
+a belt of scrub pines, gnarled and gray, that fringed the foot of the
+white sand hills.
+
+Here Hiram kept within the black network of shadow. The two whom he
+followed walked more in the open, with their shadows, as black as ink,
+walking along in the sand beside them, and now, in the dead, breathless
+stillness, might be heard, dull and heavy, the distant thumping,
+pounding roar of the Atlantic surf, beating on the beach at the other
+side of the sand hills, half a mile away.
+
+At last the two rounded the southern end of the white bluff, and when
+Hiram, following, rounded it also, they were no longer to be seen.
+
+Before him the sand hill rose, smooth and steep, cutting in a sharp
+ridge against the sky. Up this steep hill trailed the footsteps of those
+he followed, disappearing over the crest. Beyond the ridge lay a round,
+bowl-like hollow, perhaps fifty feet across and eighteen or twenty feet
+deep, scooped out by the eddying of the winds into an almost perfect
+circle. Hiram, slowly, cautiously, stealthily, following their trailing
+line of footmarks, mounted to the top of the hillock and peered down
+into the bowl beneath. The two men were sitting upon the sand, not far
+from the tall, skeleton-like shaft of a dead pine tree that rose, stark
+and gray, from the sand in which it may once have been buried, centuries
+ago.
+
+
+XII
+
+Levi had taken off his coat and waistcoat and was fanning himself with
+his hat. He was sitting upon the bag he had brought from the mill and
+which he had spread out upon the sand. His companion sat facing him. The
+moon shone full upon him and Hiram knew him instantly--he was the same
+burly, foreign-looking ruffian who had come with the little man to the
+mill that night to see Levi. He also had his hat off and was wiping his
+forehead and face with a red handkerchief. Beside him lay the bundle of
+tools he had brought--a couple of shovels, a piece of rope, and a long,
+sharp iron rod.
+
+The two men were talking together, but Hiram could not understand what
+they said, for they spoke in the same foreign language that they had
+before used. But he could see his stepbrother point with his finger, now
+to the dead tree and now to the steep, white face of the opposite side
+of the bowl-like hollow.
+
+At last, having apparently rested themselves, the conference, if
+conference it was, came to an end, and Levi led the way, the other
+following, to the dead pine tree. Here he stopped and began searching,
+as though for some mark; then, having found that which he looked for,
+he drew a tapeline and a large brass pocket compass from his pocket. He
+gave one end of the tape line to his companion, holding the other
+with his thumb pressed upon a particular part of the tree. Taking his
+bearings by the compass, he gave now and then some orders to the other,
+who moved a little to the left or the right as he bade. At last he gave
+a word of command, and, thereupon, his companion drew a wooden peg from
+his pocket and thrust it into the sand. From this peg as a base they
+again measured, taking bearings by the compass, and again drove a peg.
+For a third time they repeated their measurements and then, at last,
+seemed to have reached the point which they aimed for.
+
+Here Levi marked a cross with his heel upon the sand.
+
+His companion brought him the pointed iron rod which lay beside the
+shovels, and then stood watching as Levi thrust it deep into the sand,
+again and again, as though sounding for some object below. It was some
+while before he found that for which he was seeking, but at last the
+rod struck with a jar upon some hard object below. After making sure
+of success by one or two additional taps with the rod, Levi left it
+remaining where it stood, brushing the sand from his hands. "Now fetch
+the shovels, Pedro," said he, speaking for the first time in English.
+
+The two men were busy for a long while, shoveling away the sand. The
+object for which they were seeking lay buried some six feet deep, and
+the work was heavy and laborious, the shifting sand sliding back, again
+and again, into the hole. But at last the blade of one of the shovels
+struck upon some hard substance and Levi stooped and brushed away the
+sand with the palm of his hand.
+
+Levi's companion climbed out of the hole which they had dug and tossed
+the rope which he had brought with the shovels down to the other. Levi
+made it fast to some object below and then himself mounted to the level
+of the sand above. Pulling together, the two drew up from the hole a
+heavy iron-bound box, nearly three feet long and a foot wide and deep.
+
+Levi's companion stooped and began untying the rope which had been
+lashed to a ring in the lid.
+
+What next happened happened suddenly, swiftly, terribly. Levi drew back
+a single step, and shot one quick, keen look to right and to left. He
+passed his hand rapidly behind his back, and the next moment Hiram saw
+the moonlight gleam upon the long, sharp, keen blade of a knife. Levi
+raised his arm. Then, just as the other arose from bending over the
+chest, he struck, and struck again, two swift, powerful blows. Hiram
+saw the blade drive, clean and sharp, into the back, and heard the
+hilt strike with a dull thud against the ribs--once, twice. The burly,
+black-bearded wretch gave a shrill, terrible cry and fell staggering
+back. Then, in an instant, with another cry, he was up and clutched Levi
+with a clutch of despair by the throat and by the arm. Then followed a
+struggle, short, terrible, silent. Not a sound was heard but the deep,
+panting breath and the scuffling of feet in the sand, upon which there
+now poured and dabbled a dark-purple stream. But it was a one-sided
+struggle and lasted only for a second or two. Levi wrenched his arm
+loose from the wounded man's grasp, tearing his shirt sleeve from the
+wrist to the shoulder as he did so. Again and again the cruel knife was
+lifted, and again and again it fell, now no longer bright, but stained
+with red.
+
+Then, suddenly, all was over. Levi's companion dropped to the sand
+without a sound, like a bundle of rags. For a moment he lay limp and
+inert; then one shuddering spasm passed over him and he lay silent and
+still, with his face half buried in the sand.
+
+Levi, with the knife still gripped tight in his hand, stood leaning over
+his victim, looking down upon his body. His shirt and hand, and even
+his naked arm, were stained and blotched with blood. The moon lit up his
+face and it was the face of a devil from hell.
+
+At last he gave himself a shake, stooped and wiped his knife and hand
+and arm upon the loose petticoat breeches of the dead man. He thrust his
+knife back into its sheath, drew a key from his pocket and unlocked the
+chest. In the moonlight Hiram could see that it was filled mostly with
+paper and leather bags, full, apparently of money.
+
+All through this awful struggle and its awful ending Hiram lay, dumb
+and motionless, upon the crest of the sand hill, looking with a horrid
+fascination upon the death struggle in the pit below. Now Hiram arose.
+The sand slid whispering down from the crest as he did so, but Levi
+was too intent in turning over the contents of the chest to notice the
+slight sound.
+
+Hiram's face was ghastly pale and drawn. For one moment he opened his
+lips as though to speak, but no word came. So, white, silent, he
+stood for a few seconds, rather like a statue than a living man, then,
+suddenly, his eyes fell upon the bag, which Levi had brought with him,
+no doubt, to carry back the treasure for which he and his companion were
+in search, and which still lay spread out on the sand where it had been
+flung. Then, as though a thought had suddenly flashed upon him, his
+whole expression changed, his lips closed tightly together as though
+fearing an involuntary sound might escape, and the haggard look
+dissolved from his face.
+
+Cautiously, slowly, he stepped over the edge of the sand hill and down
+the slanting face. His coming was as silent as death, for his feet made
+no noise as he sank ankle-deep in the yielding surface. So, stealthily,
+step by step, he descended, reached the bag, lifted it silently. Levi,
+still bending over the chest and searching through the papers within,
+was not four feet away. Hiram raised the bag in his hands. He must have
+made some slight rustle as he did so, for suddenly Levi half turned his
+head. But he was one instant too late. In a flash the bag was over his
+head--shoulders--arms--body.
+
+Then came another struggle, as fierce, as silent, as desperate as that
+other--and as short. Wiry, tough, and strong as he was, with a lean,
+sinewy, nervous vigor, fighting desperately for his life as he was, Levi
+had no chance against the ponderous strength of his stepbrother. In any
+case, the struggle could not have lasted long; as it was, Levi stumbled
+backward over the body of his dead mate and fell, with Hiram upon him.
+Maybe he was stunned by the fall; maybe he felt the hopelessness of
+resistance, for he lay quite still while Hiram, kneeling upon him, drew
+the rope from the ring of the chest and, without uttering a word, bound
+it tightly around both the bag and the captive within, knotting it again
+and again and drawing it tight. Only once was a word spoken. "If you'll
+lemme go," said a muffled voice from the bag, "I'll give you five
+thousand pounds--it's in that there box." Hiram answered never a word,
+but continued knotting the rope and drawing it tight.
+
+
+XIII
+
+The Scorpion sloop-of-war lay in Lewes harbor all that winter and
+spring, probably upon the slim chance of a return of the pirates. It was
+about eight o'clock in the morning and Lieutenant Maynard was sitting
+in Squire Hall's office, fanning himself with his hat and talking in a
+desultory fashion. Suddenly the dim and distant noise of a great crowd
+was heard from without, coming nearer and nearer. The Squire and his
+visitor hurried to the door. The crowd was coming down the street
+shouting, jostling, struggling, some on the footway, some in the
+roadway. Heads were at the doors and windows, looking down upon them.
+Nearer they came, and nearer; then at last they could see that the
+press surrounded and accompanied one man. It was Hiram White, hatless,
+coatless, the sweat running down his face in streams, but stolid and
+silent as ever. Over his shoulder he carried a bag, tied round and round
+with a rope. It was not until the crowd and the man it surrounded had
+come quite near that the Squire and the lieutenant saw that a pair
+of legs in gray-yarn stockings hung from the bag. It was a man he was
+carrying.
+
+Hiram had lugged his burden five miles that morning without help and
+with scarcely a rest on the way.
+
+He came directly toward the Squire's office and, still sun rounded and
+hustled by the crowd, up the steep steps to the office within. He flung
+his burden heavily upon the floor without a word and wiped his streaming
+forehead.
+
+The Squire stood with his knuckles on his desk, staring first at Hiram
+and then at the strange burden he had brought. A sudden hush fell upon
+all, though the voices of those without sounded as loud and turbulent as
+ever. "What is it, Hiram?" said Squire Hall at last.
+
+Then for the first time Hiram spoke, panting thickly. "It's a bloody
+murderer," said he, pointing a quivering finger at the motionless
+figure.
+
+"Here, some of you!" called out the Squire. "Come! Untie this man! Who
+is he?" A dozen willing fingers quickly unknotted the rope and the bag
+was slipped from the head and body.
+
+Hair and face and eyebrows and clothes were powdered with meal, but,
+in spite of all and through all the innocent whiteness, dark spots and
+blotches and smears of blood showed upon head and arm and shirt. Levi
+raised himself upon his elbow and looked scowlingly around at the
+amazed, wonderstruck faces surrounding him.
+
+"Why, it's Levi West!" croaked the Squire, at last finding his voice.
+
+Then, suddenly, Lieutenant Maynard pushed forward, before the others
+crowded around the figure on the floor, and, clutching Levi by the hair,
+dragged his head backward so as to better see his face. "Levi West!"
+said he in a loud voice. "Is this the Levi West you've been telling
+me of? Look at that scar and the mark on his cheek! THIS IS BLUESKIN
+HIMSELF."
+
+
+XIV
+
+In the chest which Blueskin had dug up out of the sand were found not
+only the goldsmiths' bills taken from the packet, but also many
+other valuables belonging to the officers and the passengers of the
+unfortunate ship.
+
+The New York agents offered Hiram a handsome reward for his efforts
+in recovering the lost bills, but Hiram declined it, positively and
+finally. "All I want," said he, in his usual dull, stolid fashion, "is
+to have folks know I'm honest." Nevertheless, though he did not accept
+what the agents of the packet offered, fate took the matter into its
+own hands and rewarded him not unsubstantially. Blueskin was taken to
+England in the Scorpion. But he never came to trial. While in Newgate
+he hanged himself to the cell window with his own stockings. The news
+of his end was brought to Lewes in the early autumn and Squire Hall
+took immediate measures to have the five hundred pounds of his father's
+legacy duly transferred to Hiram.
+
+In November Hiram married the pirate's widow.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII. CAPTAIN SCARFIELD
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The author of this narrative cannot recall that, in any history of the
+famous pirates, he has ever read a detailed and sufficient account
+of the life and death of Capt. John Scarfield. Doubtless some data
+concerning his death and the destruction of his schooner might be
+gathered from the report of Lieutenant Mainwaring, now filed in the
+archives of the Navy Department, out beyond such bald and bloodless
+narrative the author knows of nothing, unless it be the little chap-book
+history published by Isaiah Thomas in Newburyport about the year
+1821-22, entitled, "A True History of the Life and Death of Captain Jack
+Scarfield." This lack of particularity in the history of one so notable
+in his profession it is the design of the present narrative in a measure
+to supply, and, if the author has seen fit to cast it in the form of a
+fictional story, it is only that it may make more easy reading for those
+who see fit to follow the tale from this to its conclusion.
+
+
+I
+
+ELEAZER COOPER, or Captain Cooper, as was his better-known title in
+Philadelphia, was a prominent member of the Society of Friends. He was
+an overseer of the meeting and an occasional speaker upon particular
+occasions. When at home from one of his many voyages he never failed to
+occupy his seat in the meeting both on First Day and Fifth Day, and he
+was regarded by his fellow townsmen as a model of business integrity and
+of domestic responsibility.
+
+More incidental to this history, however, it is to be narrated that
+Captain Cooper was one of those trading skippers who carried their own
+merchandise in their own vessels which they sailed themselves, and on
+whose decks they did their own bartering. His vessel was a swift, large
+schooner, the Eliza Cooper, of Philadelphia, named for his wife. His
+cruising grounds were the West India Islands, and his merchandise
+was flour and corn meal ground at the Brandywine Mills at Wilmington,
+Delaware.
+
+During the War of 1812 he had earned, as was very well known, an
+extraordinary fortune in this trading; for flour and corn meal sold at
+fabulous prices in the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Danish islands, cut
+off, as they were, from the rest of the world by the British blockade.
+
+The running of this blockade was one of the most hazardous maritime
+ventures possible, but Captain Cooper had met with such unvaried
+success, and had sold his merchandise at such incredible profit that,
+at the end of the war, he found himself to have become one of the
+wealthiest merchants of his native city.
+
+It was known at one time that his balance in the Mechanics' Bank was
+greater than that of any other individual depositor upon the books, and
+it was told of him that he had once deposited in the bank a chest of
+foreign silver coin, the exchanged value of which, when translated
+into American currency, was upward of forty-two thousand dollars--a
+prodigious sum of money in those days.
+
+In person, Captain Cooper was tall and angular of frame. His face was
+thin and severe, wearing continually an unsmiling, mask-like expression
+of continent and unruffled sobriety. His manner was dry and taciturn,
+and his conduct and life were measured to the most absolute accord with
+the teachings of his religious belief.
+
+He lived in an old-fashioned house on Front Street below Spruce--as
+pleasant, cheerful a house as ever a trading captain could return to.
+At the back of the house a lawn sloped steeply down toward the river. To
+the south stood the wharf and storehouses; to the north an orchard and
+kitchen garden bloomed with abundant verdure. Two large chestnut trees
+sheltered the porch and the little space of lawn, and when you sat under
+them in the shade you looked down the slope between two rows of box
+bushes directly across the shining river to the Jersey shore.
+
+At the time of our story--that is, about the year 1820--this property
+had increased very greatly in value, but it was the old home of the
+Coopers, as Eleazer Cooper was entirely rich enough to indulge his fancy
+in such matters. Accordingly, as he chose to live in the same
+house where his father and his grandfather had dwelt before him, he
+peremptorily, if quietly, refused all offers looking toward the purchase
+of the lot of ground--though it was now worth five or six times its
+former value.
+
+As was said, it was a cheerful, pleasant home, impressing you when you
+entered it with the feeling of spotless and all-pervading cleanliness--a
+cleanliness that greeted you in the shining brass door-knocker; that
+entertained you in the sitting room with its stiff, leather-covered
+furniture, the brass-headed tacks whereof sparkled like so many
+stars--a cleanliness that bade you farewell in the spotless stretch of
+sand-sprinkled hallway, the wooden floor of which was worn into knobs
+around the nail heads by the countless scourings and scrubbings to which
+it had been subjected and which left behind them an all-pervading faint,
+fragrant odor of soap and warm water.
+
+Eleazer Cooper and his wife were childless, but one inmate made the
+great, silent, shady house bright with life. Lucinda Fairbanks, a niece
+of Captain Cooper's by his only sister, was a handsome, sprightly girl
+of eighteen or twenty, and a great favorite in the Quaker society of the
+city.
+
+It remains only to introduce the final and, perhaps, the most important
+actor of the narrative Lieut. James Mainwaring. During the past twelve
+months or so he had been a frequent visitor at the Cooper house. At
+this time he was a broad-shouldered, red-cheeked, stalwart fellow
+of twenty-six or twenty-eight. He was a great social favorite, and
+possessed the added romantic interest of having been aboard the
+Constitution when she fought the Guerriere, and of having, with his own
+hands, touched the match that fired the first gun of that great battle.
+
+Mainwaring's mother and Eliza Cooper had always been intimate friends,
+and the coming and going of the young man during his leave of absence
+were looked upon in the house as quite a matter of course. Half a dozen
+times a week he would drop in to execute some little commission for the
+ladies, or, if Captain Cooper was at home, to smoke a pipe of tobacco
+with him, to sip a dram of his famous old Jamaica rum, or to play a
+rubber of checkers of an evening. It is not likely that either of the
+older people was the least aware of the real cause of his visits; still
+less did they suspect that any passages of sentiment had passed between
+the young people.
+
+The truth was that Mainwaring and the young lady were very deeply in
+love. It was a love that they were obliged to keep a profound secret,
+for not only had Eleazer Cooper held the strictest sort of testimony
+against the late war--a testimony so rigorous as to render it altogether
+unlikely that one of so military a profession as Mainwaring practiced
+could hope for his consent to a suit for marriage, but Lucinda could not
+have married one not a member of the Society of Friends without losing
+her own birthright membership therein. She herself might not attach much
+weight to such a loss of membership in the Society, but her fear of, and
+her respect for, her uncle led her to walk very closely in her path
+of duty in this respect. Accordingly she and Mainwaring met as they
+could--clandestinely--and the stolen moments were very sweet. With equal
+secrecy Lucinda had, at the request of her lover, sat for a miniature
+portrait to Mrs. Gregory, which miniature, set in a gold medallion,
+Mainwaring, with a mild, sentimental pleasure, wore hung around his neck
+and beneath his shirt frill next his heart.
+
+In the month of April of the year 1820 Mainwaring received orders
+to report at Washington. During the preceding autumn the West India
+pirates, and notably Capt. Jack Scarfield, had been more than usually
+active, and the loss of the packet Marblehead (which, sailing from
+Charleston, South Carolina, was never heard of more) was attributed
+to them. Two other coasting vessels off the coast of Georgia had been
+looted and burned by Scarfield, and the government had at last aroused
+itself to the necessity of active measures for repressing these pests of
+the West India waters.
+
+Mainwaring received orders to take command of the Yankee, a swift,
+light-draught, heavily armed brig of war, and to cruise about the Bahama
+Islands and to capture and destroy all the pirates' vessels he could
+there discover.
+
+On his way from Washington to New York, where the Yankee was then
+waiting orders, Mainwaring stopped in Philadelphia to bid good-by to his
+many friends in that city. He called at the old Cooper house. It was
+on a Sunday afternoon. The spring was early and the weather extremely
+pleasant that day, being filled with a warmth almost as of summer. The
+apple trees were already in full bloom and filled all the air with their
+fragrance. Everywhere there seemed to be the pervading hum of bees, and
+the drowsy, tepid sunshine was very delightful.
+
+At that time Eleazer was just home from an unusually successful voyage
+to Antigua. Mainwaring found the family sitting under one of the still
+leafless chestnut trees, Captain Cooper smoking his long clay pipe and
+lazily perusing a copy of the National Gazette. Eleazer listened with
+a great deal of interest to what Mainwaring had to say of his proposed
+cruise. He himself knew a great deal about the pirates, and, singularly
+unbending from his normal, stiff taciturnity, he began telling of what
+he knew, particularly of Captain Scarfield--in whom he appeared to take
+an extraordinary interest.
+
+Vastly to Mainwaring's surprise, the old Quaker assumed the position
+of a defendant of the pirates, protesting that the wickedness of the
+accused was enormously exaggerated. He declared that he knew some of the
+freebooters very well and that at the most they were poor, misdirected
+wretches who had, by easy gradation, slid into their present evil ways,
+from having been tempted by the government authorities to enter into
+privateering in the days of the late war. He conceded that Captain
+Scarfield had done many cruel and wicked deeds, but he averred that he
+had also performed many kind and benevolent actions. The world made no
+note of these latter, but took care only to condemn the evil that had
+been done. He acknowledged that it was true that the pirate had allowed
+his crew to cast lots for the wife and the daughter of the skipper of
+the Northern Rose, but there were none of his accusers who told how,
+at the risk of his own life and the lives of all his crew, he had given
+succor to the schooner Halifax, found adrift with all hands down with
+yellow fever. There was no defender of his actions to tell how he and
+his crew of pirates had sailed the pest-stricken vessel almost into the
+rescuing waters of Kingston harbor. Eleazer confessed that he could not
+deny that when Scarfield had tied the skipper of the Baltimore Belle
+naked to the foremast of his own brig he had permitted his crew of
+cutthroats (who were drunk at the time) to throw bottles at the helpless
+captive, who died that night of the wounds he had received. For this
+he was doubtless very justly condemned, but who was there to praise him
+when he had, at the risk of his life and in the face of the authorities,
+carried a cargo of provisions which he himself had purchased at Tampa
+Bay to the Island of Bella Vista after the great hurricane of 1818? In
+this notable adventure he had barely escaped, after a two days' chase,
+the British frigate Ceres, whose captain, had a capture been effected,
+would instantly have hung the unfortunate man to the yardarm in spite of
+the beneficent mission he was in the act of conducting.
+
+In all this Eleazer had the air of conducting the case for the
+defendant. As he talked he became more and more animated and voluble.
+The light went out in his tobacco pipe, and a hectic spot appeared
+in either thin and sallow cheek. Mainwaring sat wondering to hear the
+severely peaceful Quaker preacher defending so notoriously bloody and
+cruel a cutthroat pirate as Capt. Jack Scarfield. The warm and innocent
+surroundings, the old brick house looking down upon them, the odor
+of apple blossoms and the hum of bees seemed to make it all the more
+incongruous. And still the elderly Quaker skipper talked on and on with
+hardly an interruption, till the warm sun slanted to the west and the
+day began to decline.
+
+That evening Mainwaring stayed to tea and when he parted from Lucinda
+Fairbanks it was after nightfall, with a clear, round moon shining in
+the milky sky and a radiance pallid and unreal enveloping the old house,
+the blooming apple trees, the sloping lawn and the shining river beyond.
+He implored his sweetheart to let him tell her uncle and aunt of their
+acknowledged love and to ask the old man's consent to it, but she would
+not permit him to do so. They were so happy as they were. Who knew but
+what her uncle might forbid their fondness? Would he not wait a little
+longer? Maybe it would all come right after a while. She was so fond, so
+tender, so tearful at the nearness of their parting that he had not
+the heart to insist. At the same time it was with a feeling almost of
+despair that he realized that he must now be gone--maybe for the space
+of two years--without in all that time possessing the right to call her
+his before the world.
+
+When he bade farewell to the older people it was with a choking feeling
+of bitter disappointment. He yet felt the pressure of her cheek against
+his shoulder, the touch of soft and velvet lips to his own. But what
+were such clandestine endearments compared to what might, perchance, be
+his--the right of calling her his own when he was far away and upon the
+distant sea? And, besides, he felt like a coward who had shirked his
+duty.
+
+But he was very much in love. The next morning appeared in a drizzle of
+rain that followed the beautiful warmth of the day before. He had the
+coach all to himself, and in the damp and leathery solitude he drew out
+the little oval picture from beneath his shirt frill and looked long and
+fixedly with a fond and foolish joy at the innocent face, the blue eyes,
+the red, smiling lips depicted upon the satinlike, ivory surface.
+
+
+II
+
+For the better part of five months Mainwaring cruised about in the
+waters surrounding the Bahama Islands. In that time he ran to earth and
+dispersed a dozen nests of pirates. He destroyed no less than fifteen
+piratical crafts of all sizes, from a large half-decked whaleboat to a
+three-hundred-ton barkentine. The name of the Yankee became a terror
+to every sea wolf in the western tropics, and the waters of the Bahama
+Islands became swept almost clean of the bloody wretches who had so
+lately infested it.
+
+But the one freebooter of all others whom he sought--Capt. Jack
+Scarfield--seemed to evade him like a shadow, to slip through his
+fingers like magic. Twice he came almost within touch of the famous
+marauder, both times in the ominous wrecks that the pirate captain had
+left behind him. The first of these was the water-logged remains of a
+burned and still smoking wreck that he found adrift in the great Bahama
+channel. It was the Water Witch, of Salem, but he did not learn her
+tragic story until, two weeks later, he discovered a part of her crew
+at Port Maria, on the north coast of Jamaica. It was, indeed, a dreadful
+story to which he listened. The castaways said that they of all the
+vessel's crew had been spared so that they might tell the commander of
+the Yankee, should they meet him, that he might keep what he found, with
+Captain Scarfield's compliments, who served it up to him hot cooked.
+
+Three weeks later he rescued what remained of the crew of the shattered,
+bloody hulk of the Baltimore Belle, eight of whose crew, headed by the
+captain, had been tied hand and foot and heaved overboard. Again, there
+was a message from Captain Scarfield to the commander of the Yankee that
+he might season what he found to suit his own taste.
+
+Mainwaring was of a sanguine disposition, with fiery temper. He swore,
+with the utmost vehemence, that either he or John Scarfield would have
+to leave the earth.
+
+He had little suspicion of how soon was to befall the ominous
+realization of his angry prophecy.
+
+At that time one of the chief rendezvous of the pirates was the little
+island of San Jose, one of the southernmost of the Bahama group. Here,
+in the days before the coming of the Yankee, they were wont to put in
+to careen and clean their vessels and to take in a fresh supply of
+provisions, gunpowder, and rum, preparatory to renewing their attacks
+upon the peaceful commerce circulating up and down outside the islands,
+or through the wide stretches of the Bahama channel.
+
+Mainwaring had made several descents upon this nest of freebooters.
+He had already made two notable captures, and it was here he hoped
+eventually to capture Captain Scarfield himself.
+
+A brief description of this one-time notorious rendezvous of freebooters
+might not be out of place. It consisted of a little settlement of those
+wattled and mud-smeared houses such as you find through the West Indies.
+There were only three houses of a more pretentious sort, built of wood.
+One of these was a storehouse, another was a rum shop, and a third a
+house in which dwelt a mulatto woman, who was reputed to be a sort
+of left-handed wife of Captain Scarfield's. The population was almost
+entirely black and brown. One or two Jews and a half dozen Yankee
+traders, of hardly dubious honesty, comprised the entire white
+population. The rest consisted of a mongrel accumulation of negroes
+and mulattoes and half-caste Spaniards, and of a multitude of black or
+yellow women and children. The settlement stood in a bight of the beach
+forming a small harbor and affording a fair anchorage for small vessels,
+excepting it were against the beating of a southeasterly gale. The
+houses, or cabins, were surrounded by clusters of coco palms and growths
+of bananas, and a long curve of white beach, sheltered from the large
+Atlantic breakers that burst and exploded upon an outer bar, was drawn
+like a necklace around the semi-circle of emerald-green water.
+
+Such was the famous pirates' settlement of San Jose--a paradise of
+nature and a hell of human depravity and wickedness--and it was to this
+spot that Mainwaring paid another visit a few days after rescuing the
+crew of the Baltimore Belle from her shattered and sinking wreck.
+
+As the little bay with its fringe of palms and its cluster of wattle
+huts opened up to view, Mainwaring discovered a vessel lying at anchor
+in the little harbor. It was a large and well-rigged schooner of two
+hundred and fifty or three hundred tons burden. As the Yankee rounded to
+under the stern of the stranger and dropped anchor in such a position
+as to bring her broadside battery to bear should the occasion
+require, Mainwaring set his glass to his eye to read the name he could
+distinguish beneath the overhang of her stern. It is impossible to
+describe his infinite surprise when, the white lettering starting out in
+the circle of the glass, he read, The Eliza Cooper, of Philadelphia.
+
+He could not believe the evidence of his senses. Certainly this sink of
+iniquity was the last place in the world he would have expected to have
+fallen in with Eleazer Cooper.
+
+He ordered out the gig and had himself immediately rowed over to the
+schooner. Whatever lingering doubts he might have entertained as to the
+identity of the vessel were quickly dispelled when he beheld Captain
+Cooper himself standing at the gangway to meet him. The impassive face
+of the friend showed neither surprise nor confusion at what must have
+been to him a most unexpected encounter.
+
+But when he stepped upon the deck of the Eliza Cooper and looked about
+him, Mainwaring could hardly believe the evidence of his senses at
+the transformation that he beheld. Upon the main deck were eight
+twelve-pound carronade neatly covered with tarpaulin; in the bow a Long
+Tom, also snugly stowed away and covered, directed a veiled and muzzled
+snout out over the bowsprit.
+
+It was entirely impossible for Mainwaring to conceal his astonishment at
+so unexpected a sight, and whether or not his own thoughts lent color
+to his imagination, it seemed to him that Eleazer Cooper concealed under
+the immobility of his countenance no small degree of confusion.
+
+After Captain Cooper had led the way into the cabin and he and the
+younger man were seated over a pipe of tobacco and the invariable bottle
+of fine old Jamaica rum, Mainwaring made no attempt to refrain
+from questioning him as to the reason for this singular and ominous
+transformation.
+
+"I am a man of peace, James Mainwaring," Eleazer replied, "but there are
+men of blood in these waters, and an appearance of great strength is of
+use to protect the innocent from the wicked. If I remained in appearance
+the peaceful trader I really am, how long does thee suppose I could
+remain unassailed in this place?"
+
+It occurred to Mainwaring that the powerful armament he had beheld was
+rather extreme to be used merely as a preventive. He smoked for a while
+in silence and then he suddenly asked the other point-blank whether, if
+it came to blows with such a one as Captain Scarfield, would he make a
+fight of it?
+
+The Quaker trading captain regarded him for a while in silence. His
+look, it seemed to Mainwaring, appeared to be dubitative as to how far
+he dared to be frank. "Friend James," he said at last, "I may as well
+acknowledge that my officers and crew are somewhat worldly. Of a truth
+they do not hold the same testimony as I. I am inclined to think that
+if it came to the point of a broil with those men of iniquity, my
+individual voice cast for peace would not be sufficient to keep my crew
+from meeting violence with violence. As for myself, thee knows who I am
+and what is my testimony in these matters."
+
+Mainwaring made no comment as to the extremely questionable manner in
+which the Quaker proposed to beat the devil about the stump. Presently
+he asked his second question:
+
+"And might I inquire," he said, "what you are doing here and why you
+find it necessary to come at all into such a wicked, dangerous place as
+this?"
+
+"Indeed, I knew thee would ask that question of me," said the Friend,
+"and I will be entirely frank with thee. These men of blood are, after
+all, but human beings, and as human beings they need food. I have at
+present upon this vessel upward of two hundred and fifty barrels of
+flour which will bring a higher price here than anywhere else in the
+West Indies. To be entirely frank with thee, I will tell thee that I
+was engaged in making a bargain for the sale of the greater part of my
+merchandise when the news of thy approach drove away my best customer."
+
+Mainwaring sat for a while in smoking silence. What the other had told
+him explained many things he had not before understood. It explained why
+Captain Cooper got almost as much for his flour and corn meal now that
+peace had been declared as he had obtained when the war and the blockade
+were in full swing. It explained why he had been so strong a defender
+of Captain Scarfield and the pirates that afternoon in the garden.
+Meantime, what was to be done? Eleazer confessed openly that he dealt
+with the pirates. What now was his--Mainwaring's--duty in the case? Was
+the cargo of the Eliza Cooper contraband and subject to confiscation?
+And then another question framed itself in his mind: Who was this
+customer whom his approach had driven away?
+
+As though he had formulated the inquiry into speech the other began
+directly to speak of it. "I know," he said, "that in a moment thee will
+ask me who was this customer of whom I have just now spoken. I have no
+desire to conceal his name from thee. It was the man who is known as
+Captain Jack or Captain John Scarfield."
+
+Mainwaring fairly started from his seat. "The devil you say!" he cried.
+"And how long has it been," he asked, "since he left you?"
+
+The Quaker skipper carefully refilled his pipe, which he had by now
+smoked out. "I would judge," he said, "that it is a matter of four or
+five hours since news was brought overland by means of swift runners
+of thy approach. Immediately the man of wickedness disappeared." Here
+Eleazer set the bowl of his pipe to the candle flame and began puffing
+out voluminous clouds of smoke. "I would have thee understand, James
+Mainwaring," he resumed, "that I am no friend of this wicked and sinful
+man. His safety is nothing to me. It is only a question of buying upon
+his part and of selling upon mine. If it is any satisfaction to thee I
+will heartily promise to bring thee news if I hear anything of the man
+of Belial. I may furthermore say that I think it is likely thee will
+have news more or less directly of him within the space of a day. If
+this should happen, however, thee will have to do thy own fighting
+without help from me, for I am no man of combat nor of blood and will
+take no hand in it either way."
+
+It struck Mainwaring that the words contained some meaning that did not
+appear upon the surface. This significance struck him as so ambiguous
+that when he went aboard the Yankee he confided as much of his
+suspicions as he saw fit to his second in command, Lieutenant Underwood.
+As night descended he had a double watch set and had everything prepared
+to repel any attack or surprise that might be attempted.
+
+
+III
+
+Nighttime in the tropics descends with a surprising rapidity. At one
+moment the earth is shining with the brightness of the twilight; the
+next, as it were, all things are suddenly swallowed into a gulf of
+darkness. The particular night of which this story treats was not
+entirely clear; the time of year was about the approach of the rainy
+season, and the tepid, tropical clouds added obscurity to the darkness
+of the sky, so that the night fell with even more startling quickness
+than usual. The blackness was very dense. Now and then a group of
+drifting stars swam out of a rift in the vapors, but the night was
+curiously silent and of a velvety darkness.
+
+As the obscurity had deepened, Mainwaring had ordered lanthorns to be
+lighted and slung to the shrouds and to the stays, and the faint yellow
+of their illumination lighted the level white of the snug little war
+vessel, gleaming here and there in a starlike spark upon the brass
+trimmings and causing the rows of cannons to assume curiously gigantic
+proportions.
+
+For some reason Mainwaring was possessed by a strange, uneasy feeling.
+He walked restlessly up and down the deck for a time, and then, still
+full of anxieties for he knew not what, went into his cabin to finish
+writing up his log for the day. He unstrapped his cutlass and laid it
+upon the table, lighted his pipe at the lanthorn and was about preparing
+to lay aside his coat when word was brought to him that the captain of
+the trading schooner was come alongside and had some private information
+to communicate to him.
+
+Mainwaring surmised in an instant that the trader's visit related
+somehow to news of Captain Scarfield, and as immediately, in the relief
+of something positive to face, all of his feeling of restlessness
+vanished like a shadow of mist. He gave orders that Captain Cooper
+should be immediately shown into the cabin, and in a few moments
+the tall, angular form of the Quaker skipper appeared in the narrow,
+lanthorn-lighted space.
+
+Mainwaring at once saw that his visitor was strangely agitated and
+disturbed. He had taken off his hat, and shining beads of perspiration
+had gathered and stood clustered upon his forehead. He did not reply to
+Mainwaring's greeting; he did not, indeed, seem to hear it; but he came
+directly forward to the table and stood leaning with one hand upon the
+open log book in which the lieutenant had just been writing. Mainwaring
+had reseated himself at the head of the table, and the tall figure of
+the skipper stood looking down at him as from a considerable height.
+
+"James Mainwaring," he said, "I promised thee to report if I had news of
+the pirate. Is thee ready now to hear my news?"
+
+There was something so strange in his agitation that it began to infect
+Mainwaring with a feeling somewhat akin to that which appeared to
+disturb his visitor. "I know not what you mean, sir!" he cried, "by
+asking if I care to hear your news. At this moment I would rather have
+news of that scoundrel than to have anything I know of in the world."
+
+"Thou would? Thou would?" cried the other, with mounting agitation. "Is
+thee in such haste to meet him as all that? Very well; very well, then.
+Suppose I could bring thee face to face with him--what then? Hey? Hey?
+Face to face with him, James Mainwaring!"
+
+The thought instantly flashed into Mainwaring's mind that the pirate
+had returned to the island; that perhaps at that moment he was somewhere
+near at hand.
+
+"I do not understand you, sir," he cried. "Do you mean to tell me that
+you know where the villain is? If so, lose no time in informing me, for
+every instant of delay may mean his chance of again escaping."
+
+"No danger of that!" the other declared, vehemently. "No danger of that!
+I'll tell thee where he is and I'll bring thee to him quick enough!"
+And as he spoke he thumped his fist against the open log book. In the
+vehemence of his growing excitement his eyes appeared to shine green
+in the lanthorn light, and the sweat that had stood in beads upon his
+forehead was now running in streams down his face. One drop hung like
+a jewel to the tip of his beaklike nose. He came a step nearer to
+Mainwaring and bent forward toward him, and there was something so
+strange and ominous in his bearing that the lieutenant instinctively
+drew back a little where he sat.
+
+"Captain Scarfield sent something to you," said Eleazer, almost in a
+raucous voice, "something that you will be surprised to see." And the
+lapse in his speech from the Quaker "thee" to the plural "you" struck
+Mainwaring as singularly strange.
+
+As he was speaking Eleazer was fumbling in a pocket of his long-tailed
+drab coat, and presently he brought something forth that gleamed in the
+lanthorn light.
+
+The next moment Mainwaring saw leveled directly in his face the round
+and hollow nozzle of a pistol.
+
+There was an instant of dead silence and then, "I am the man you seek!"
+said Eleazer Cooper, in a tense and breathless voice.
+
+The whole thing had happened so instantaneously and unexpectedly that
+for the moment Mainwaring sat like one petrified. Had a thunderbolt
+fallen from the silent sky and burst at his feet he could not have been
+more stunned. He was like one held in the meshes of a horrid nightmare,
+and he gazed as through a mist of impossibility into the lineaments
+of the well-known, sober face now transformed as from within into the
+aspect of a devil. That face, now ashy white, was distorted into a
+diabolical grin. The teeth glistened in the lamplight. The brows,
+twisted into a tense and convulsed frown, were drawn down into black
+shadows, through which the eyes burned a baleful green like the eyes
+of a wild animal driven to bay. Again he spoke in the same breathless
+voice. "I am John Scarfield! Look at me, then, if you want to see
+a pirate!" Again there was a little time of silence, through which
+Mainwaring heard his watch ticking loudly from where it hung against the
+bulkhead. Then once more the other began speaking. "You would chase me
+out of the West Indies, would you? G------ --you! What are you come
+to now? You are caught in your own trap, and you'll squeal loud enough
+before you get out of it. Speak a word or make a movement and I'll blow
+your brains out against the partition behind you! Listen to what I say
+or you are a dead man. Sing out an order instantly for my mate and my
+bos'n to come here to the cabin, and be quick about it, for my finger's
+on the trigger, and it's only a pull to shut your mouth forever."
+
+It was astonishing to Mainwaring, in afterward thinking about it all,
+how quickly his mind began to recover its steadiness after that first
+astonishing shock. Even as the other was speaking he discovered that his
+brain was becoming clarified to a wonderful lucidity; his thoughts were
+becoming rearranged, and with a marvelous activity and an alertness
+he had never before experienced. He knew that if he moved to escape or
+uttered any outcry he would be instantly a dead man, for the circle of
+the pistol barrel was directed full against his forehead and with the
+steadiness of a rock. If he could but for an instant divert that fixed
+and deadly attention he might still have a chance for life. With the
+thought an inspiration burst into his mind and he instantly put it into
+execution; thought, inspiration, and action, as in a flash, were one. He
+must make the other turn aside his deadly gaze, and instantly he roared
+out in a voice that stunned his own ears: "Strike, bos'n! Strike,
+quick!"
+
+Taken by surprise, and thinking, doubtless, that another enemy stood
+behind him, the pirate swung around like a flash with his pistol leveled
+against the blank boarding. Equally upon the instant he saw the trick
+that had been played upon him and in a second flash had turned again.
+The turn and return had occupied but a moment of time, but that moment,
+thanks to the readiness of his own invention, had undoubtedly saved
+Mainwaring's life. As the other turned away his gaze for that brief
+instant Mainwaring leaped forward and upon him. There was a flashing
+flame of fire as the pistol was discharged and a deafening detonation
+that seemed to split his brain. For a moment, with reeling senses, he
+supposed himself to have been shot, the next he knew he had escaped.
+With the energy of despair he swung his enemy around and drove him with
+prodigious violence against the corner of the table. The pirate emitted
+a grunting cry and then they fell together, Mainwaring upon the top, and
+the pistol clattered with them to the floor in their fall. Even as
+he fell, Mainwaring roared in a voice of thunder, "All hands repel
+boarders!" And then again, "All hands repel boarders!"
+
+Whether hurt by the table edge or not, the fallen pirate struggled as
+though possessed of forty devils, and in a moment or two Mainwaring saw
+the shine of a long, keen knife that he had drawn from somewhere about
+his person. The lieutenant caught him by the wrist, but the other's
+muscles were as though made of steel. They both fought in despairing
+silence, the one to carry out his frustrated purposes to kill, the other
+to save his life. Again and again Mainwaring felt that the knife had
+been thrust against him, piercing once his arm, once his shoulder, and
+again his neck. He felt the warm blood streaming down his arm and body
+and looked about him in despair. The pistol lay near upon the deck of
+the cabin. Still holding the other by the wrist as he could, Mainwaring
+snatched up the empty weapon and struck once and again at the bald,
+narrow forehead beneath him. A third blow he delivered with all the
+force he could command, and then with a violent and convulsive throe the
+straining muscles beneath him relaxed and grew limp and the fight was
+won.
+
+Through all the struggle he had been aware of the shouts of voices, of
+trampling of feet and discharge of firearms, and the thought came to
+him, even through his own danger, that the Yankee was being assaulted
+by the pirates. As he felt the struggling form beneath him loosen and
+dissolve into quietude, he leaped up, and snatching his cutlass, which
+still lay upon the table, rushed out upon the deck, leaving the stricken
+form lying twitching upon the floor behind him.
+
+It was a fortunate thing that he had set double watches and prepared
+himself for some attack from the pirates, otherwise the Yankee would
+certainly have been lost. As it was, the surprise was so overwhelming
+that the pirates, who had been concealed in the large whaleboat that had
+come alongside, were not only able to gain a foothold upon the deck,
+but for a time it seemed as though they would drive the crew of the brig
+below the hatches.
+
+But as Mainwaring, streaming with blood, rushed out upon the deck, the
+pirates became immediately aware that their own captain must have
+been overpowered, and in an instant their desperate energy began to
+evaporate. One or two jumped overboard; one, who seemed to be the mate,
+fell dead from a pistol shot, and then, in the turn of a hand, there was
+a rush of a retreat and a vision of leaping forms in the dusky light of
+the lanthorns and a sound of splashing in the water below.
+
+The crew of the Yankee continued firing at the phosphorescent wakes of
+the swimming bodies, but whether with effect it was impossible at the
+time to tell.
+
+
+IV
+
+The pirate captain did not die immediately. He lingered for three or
+four days, now and then unconscious, now and then semi-conscious, but
+always deliriously wandering. All the while he thus lay dying, the
+mulatto woman, with whom he lived in this part of his extraordinary dual
+existence, nursed and cared for him with such rude attentions as the
+surroundings afforded. In the wanderings of his mind the same duality
+of life followed him. Now and then he would appear the calm, sober,
+self-contained, well-ordered member of a peaceful society that his
+friends in his faraway home knew him to be; at other times the nether
+part of his nature would leap up into life like a wild beast, furious
+and gnashing. At the one time he talked evenly and clearly of peaceful
+things; at the other time he blasphemed and hooted with fury.
+
+Several times Mainwaring, though racked by his own wounds, sat beside
+the dying man through the silent watches of the tropical nights.
+Oftentimes upon these occasions as he looked at the thin, lean face
+babbling and talking so aimlessly, he wondered what it all meant. Could
+it have been madness--madness in which the separate entities of good and
+bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence? He chose to
+think that this was the case. Who, within his inner consciousness, does
+not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling against the stern,
+adamantine bonds of morality and decorum? Were those bonds burst
+asunder, as it was with this man, might not the wild beast rush forth,
+as it had rushed forth in him, to rend and to tear? Such were the
+questions that Mainwaring asked himself. And how had it all come about?
+By what easy gradations had the respectable Quaker skipper descended
+from the decorum of his home life, step by step, into such a gulf of
+iniquity? Many such thoughts passed through Mainwaring's mind, and he
+pondered them through the still reaches of the tropical nights while he
+sat watching the pirate captain struggle out of the world he had so long
+burdened. At last the poor wretch died, and the earth was well quit of
+one of its torments.
+
+A systematic search was made through the island for the scattered crew,
+but none was captured. Either there were some secret hiding places upon
+the island (which was not very likely) or else they had escaped in boats
+hidden somewhere among the tropical foliage. At any rate they were gone.
+
+Nor, search as he would, could Mainwaring find a trace of any of the
+pirate treasure. After the pirate's death and under close questioning,
+the weeping mulatto woman so far broke down as to confess in broken
+English that Captain Scarfield had taken a quantity of silver money
+aboard his vessel, but either she was mistaken or else the pirates had
+taken it thence again and had hidden it somewhere else.
+
+Nor would the treasure ever have been found but for a most fortuitous
+accident. Mainwaring had given orders that the Eliza Cooper was to be
+burned, and a party was detailed to carry the order into execution. At
+this the cook of the Yankee came petitioning for some of the Wilmington
+and Brandywine flour to make some plum duff upon the morrow, and
+Mainwaring granted his request in so far that he ordered one of the
+men to knock open one of the barrels of flour and to supply the cook's
+demands.
+
+The crew detailed to execute this modest order in connection with the
+destruction of the pirate vessel had not been gone a quarter of an hour
+when word came back that the hidden treasure had been found.
+
+Mainwaring hurried aboard the Eliza Cooper, and there in the midst of
+the open flour barrel he beheld a great quantity of silver coin buried
+in and partly covered by the white meal. A systematic search was now
+made. One by one the flour barrels were heaved up from below and burst
+open on the deck and their contents searched, and if nothing but the
+meal was found it was swept overboard. The breeze was whitened with
+clouds of flour, and the white meal covered the surface of the ocean for
+yards around.
+
+In all, upward of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was found
+concealed beneath the innocent flour and meal. It was no wonder the
+pirate captain was so successful, when he could upon an instant's notice
+transform himself from a wolf of the ocean to a peaceful Quaker trader
+selling flour to the hungry towns and settlements among the scattered
+islands of the West Indies, and so carrying his bloody treasure safely
+into his quiet Northern home.
+
+In concluding this part of the narrative it may be added that a wide
+strip of canvas painted black was discovered in the hold of the Eliza
+Cooper. Upon it, in great white letters, was painted the name, "The
+Bloodhound." Undoubtedly this was used upon occasions to cover the real
+and peaceful title of the trading schooner, just as its captain had, in
+reverse, covered his sanguine and cruel life by a thin sheet of morality
+and respectability.
+
+This is the true story of the death of Capt. Jack Scarfield.
+
+The Newburyport chap-book, of which I have already spoken, speaks only
+of how the pirate disguised himself upon the ocean as a Quaker trader.
+
+Nor is it likely that anyone ever identified Eleazer Cooper with the
+pirate, for only Mainwaring of all the crew of the Yankee was exactly
+aware of the true identity of Captain Scarfield. All that was ever known
+to the world was that Eleazer Cooper had been killed in a fight with the
+pirates.
+
+In a little less than a year Mainwaring was married to Lucinda
+Fairbanks. As to Eleazer Cooper's fortune, which eventually came into
+the possession of Mainwaring through his wife, it was many times a
+subject of speculation to the lieutenant how it had been earned. There
+were times when he felt well assured that a part of it at least was the
+fruit of piracy, but it was entirely impossible to guess how much more
+was the result of legitimate trading.
+
+For a little time it seemed to Mainwaring that he should give it all up,
+but this was at once so impracticable and so quixotic that he presently
+abandoned it, and in time his qualms and misdoubts faded away and he
+settled himself down to enjoy that which had come to him through his
+marriage.
+
+In time the Mainwarings removed to New York, and ultimately the fortune
+that the pirate Scarfield had left behind him was used in part to
+found the great shipping house of Mainwaring & Bigot, whose famous
+transatlantic packet ships were in their time the admiration of the
+whole world.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 973 ***