reader has ever heard a sailor in
the like circumstance, five minutes after he has touched his pay,
address a company of parasites in an inn with the question: "What's it
going to be?"

FOOTNOTES:

[10] From _Buccaneer Customs on the Spanish Main_.

A TRUE ACCOUNT OF THREE NOTORIOUS PIRATES[11]

HOWARD PYLE, ED.

I

CAPTAIN TEACH _alias_ BLACK-BEARD

Edward Teach was a Bristol man born, but had sailed some time out of
Jamaica, in privateers, in the late French war; yet though he had often
distinguished himself for his uncommon boldness and personal courage, he
was never raised to any command, till he went a-pirating, which, I
think, was at the latter end of the year 1716, when Captain Benjamin
Hornygold put him into a sloop that he had made prize of, and with whom
he continued in consortship till a little while before Hornygold
surrendered.

In the spring of the year 1717 Teach and Hornygold sailed from
Providence, for the main of America, and took in their way a billop from
the Havana, with 120 barrels of flour, as also a sloop from Bermuda,
Thurbar master, from whom they took only some gallons of wine, and then
let him go; and a ship from Madeira to South Carolina, out of which they
got plunder to a considerable value.

After cleaning on the coast of Virginia, they returned to the West
Indies, and in the latitude of 24, made prize of a large French
Guineaman, bound to Martinico, which, by Hornygold's consent, Teach went
aboard of as captain, and took a cruise in her. Hornygold returned with
his sloop to Providence, where, at the arrival of Captain Rogers, the
governor, he surrendered to mercy, pursuant to the king's proclamation.

Aboard of this Guineaman Teach mounted forty guns, and named her the
_Queen Ann's Revenge_; and cruising near the island of St. Vincent, took
a large ship, called the _Great Allen_, Christopher Taylor, commander;
the pirates plundered her of what they thought fit, put all the men
ashore upon the island above mentioned, and set fire to the ship.

A few days after Teach fell in with the _Scarborough_, man-of-war, of
thirty guns, who engaged him for some hours; but she, finding the pirate
well-manned, and having tried her strength, gave over the engagement and
returned to Barbadoes, the place of her station, and Teach sailed
towards the Spanish America.

In this way he met with a pirate sloop of ten guns, commanded by one
Major Bonnet, lately a gentleman of good reputa