at twins were, and
his band were not allowed to know anything he did not know, so these two
were always vague about themselves, and did their best to give
satisfaction by keeping close together in an apologetic sort of way.

The boys vanish in the gloom, and after a pause, but not a long pause,
for things go briskly on the island, come the pirates on their track. We
hear them before they are seen, and it is always the same dreadful song:

'Avast belay, yo ho, heave to,
A-pirating we go,
And if we're parted by a shot
We're sure to meet below!'

A more villainous-looking lot never hung in a row on Execution dock.
Here, a little in advance, ever and again with his head to the ground
listening, his great arms bare, pieces of eight in his ears as
ornaments, is the handsome Italian Cecco, who cut his name in letters of
blood on the back of the governor of the prison at Gao. That gigantic
black behind him has had many names since he dropped the one with which
dusky mothers still terrify their children on the banks of the
Guadjo-mo. Here is Bill Jukes, every inch of him tattooed, the same Bill
Jukes who got six dozen on the _Walrus_ from Flint before he would drop
the bag of moidores; and Cookson, said to be Black Murphy's brother (but
this was never proved); and Gentleman Starkey, once an usher in a public
school and still dainty in his ways of killing; and Skylights (Morgan's
Skylights); and the Irish bo'sun Smee, an oddly genial man who stabbed,
so to speak, without offence, and was the only Nonconformist in Hook's
crew; and Noodler, whose hands were fixed on backwards; and Robt.
Mullins and Alf Mason and many another ruffian long known and feared on
the Spanish Main.

In the midst of them, the blackest and largest jewel in that dark
setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom
it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared. He lay at his
ease in a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of a
right hand he had the iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged
them to increase their pace. As dogs this terrible man treated and
addressed them, and as dogs they obeyed him. In person he was cadaverous
and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a
little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly
threatening expression to his handsome countenance. His eyes were of the
blue of the forget-me-not, and of a p