ell with small arms and cannon all about;
And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free
To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally.

Then we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold,
Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folks of old;
Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone,
Who flog men and keelhaul them and starve them to the bone.

Oh! palms grew high in Aves, and fruits that shone like gold,
And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold,
And the negro maids to Aves from bondage fast did flee
To welcome gallant sailors a sweeping in from sea.

Oh! sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze,
A swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees,
With a negro lass to fan you while you listened to the roar
Of the breakers on the reef outside which never touched the shore.

But Scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be,
So the king's ships sailed on Aves and quite put down were we.
All day we fought like bull dogs, but they burnt the booms at night,
And I fled in a piragua sore wounded from the fight.

Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside,
Till for all I tried to cheer her the poor young thing she died.
But as I lay a gasping a Bristol sail came by,
And brought me home to England here to beg until I die.

And now I'm old and going: I'm sure I can't tell where.
One comfort is, this world's so hard I can't be worse off there.
If I might but be a sea dove, I'd fly across the main
To the pleasant Isle of Aves to look at it once again.

By the side of this imaginative picture of a poor English sea rover, let
me place another, an authentic one, of a French _forban_ or pirate in
the same seas. Kingsley's Aves, or Isle of Birds, is down on the
American coast. There is another island of the same name, which was
occasionally frequented by the same gentry, about a hundred miles south
of Dominica. Pere Labat going once from Martinique to Guadaloupe had
taken a berth with Captain Daniel, one of the most noted of the French
corsairs of the day, for better security. People were not scrupulous in
those times, and Labat and Daniel had been long good friends. They were
caught in a gale off Dominica, blown away, and carried to Aves, where
they found an English merchant ship lying a wreck. Two English ladies
from Bar