wn to dinner, when the mate
sighted a ship on the port-bow. We put straight out to sea at the hail,
and within half-an-hour we stood alongside her; and the man who
answered my call was Mike Leveston. When he saw me hailing him from the
poop of a steamer, he turned green as the sea about him; and he yelled
to me to stand off if I didn't want a bullet in me. The sight of him
maddened me; I turned the machine-gun on his decks, and swept them
clear as a grass field, but he lay flat on his face by the taffrail,
and he bellowed for mercy like a woman. And he got it. I ran the
steamer alongside him, smashing in his quarter, and when we had
gripped, I got aboard. Then he grovelled at my feet, and, as I held my
pistol at his head, he gabbled out the news that my son was dead--told
me that he died at Panama, and he screamed for mercy like a hog at the
block. But I cut his throat from ear to ear with my own knife, and I
threw his body to the sharks limb by limb as you would throw a dead
sheep to the dogs. God knows, I was mad then, as I have been often
since, and am now. My poor son!"

"The man told you the truth, then?"

"Yes. When I had made chips of his ship I went back to Panama, and
there got news of the boy. They had buried him at Porto Bello, and I
stopped there long enough to make his grave decent, and then returned
up the coast to New York. Coming back, the vermin with me took a fancy
on the third day out, when three parts of them were drunk, to do with a
strange brig as they had done with Leveston's. They stopped her with
the guns, and cleared her of every dollar aboard, sending her to the
bottom out of pure devilry. I didn't stop 'em; for I had the madness of
the drink on me again, and I led 'em at the work then, and when they
sent a dozen more coasters after the two that had gone on the voyage to
Sandy Hook. By the time we were in New York again, I had got a taste
for the new work which nothing could cure. It seemed as if I was to
revenge on mankind the wrong I had suffered from one man; and, more
than that, I saw there was money in heaps in it. They said at home that
piracy was played out, but I asked myself, 'How's that? Give me a ship
big enough,' said I, 'and under certain conditions I'll sweep the
Atlantic.' There was danger in the job, and it was big enough to tempt
that curious brain of mine, which had always dreamed of big jobs since
I'd been a bit of a boy; and I was fascinated with this big idea until
I cou