s 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 [Portuguese gold pieces]; 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 Non-conformist 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 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 [dead
looking] and blackavized [dark faced], 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 profound melancholy,
save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots
appeared in them and lit them up horribly. In manner, something of the
grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with
an air, and I have been told that he was a RACONTEUR [storyteller] of
repute.