of Cuba, where we expected to fall
in with the Musquito fleet and some English vessels, especially detailed
to destroy two or three nests of pirates who had for some years swarmed
in those seas and infested that coast. In the course of time we beat all
around the south side of Cuba, and at last dropped anchor in St. Jago,
where we learned from the English consular agent that five or six
fellows, who had been wrecked on the Carvalo reef, were identified as
having been part of a piratical crew who had plundered an English vessel
with a free passport bound to Havana, and had been sent there in irons
for trial.

"The truth was, that the Spanish colonial authorities had so long
connived, winked at, or been indifferent to what was going on during the
wars of the Continent, that they allowed these piratical hordes to exist
and thrive at their very doors. The matter had already been brought to
the notice of the administrador of the port, and all other ports as far
along the coast as Cienfuegos, and in such a threatening manner, too,
that the governor at St. Jago, fearful of having his town blown down,
exerted himself in the arrest of the rascals I have alluded to, and
likewise in procuring information by dispatching guarda costas along the
south side of the island.

"Accordingly, the very morning we anchored I went ashore with the
captain of the custom-house, where we met the deputy administrador and a
little withered, one-eyed old rascal, who was in the colonial service,
and who professed to know the haunt, or at least he said he thought he
did, of that notorious villain Brand.

"I remember distinctly spreading a chart before him, and while he traced
with the end of his cigarette a course for the captain to steer by, I
stood near, watching him narrowly. But the fact was, that he had the
very sharpest spark of an eye set, or rather standing out, beside his
nose that any body ever saw in a human being's head; and instead of me
watching him, he seemed to be looking straight through me, and divining
my thoughts and suspicions. However, the spot he pointed out, and the
way he described it, with a cocoa-nut-tree on top of a rock, and the
passage through the reef, so nearly corresponded with the confused
account the Yucatanese gave us before he died, that the captain was
entirely convinced we were on the scent, though I myself was not more
than half satisfied. The place indicated was near the Isle of Pines,
three hundred miles off