ptain Edward Lowe " 39

Captain Teach " 89

Major Stede Bonnet " 103

Captain William Kid " 119

Captain Edward England " 137

Captain John Gow " 147

[Illustration]

FOREWORD

Time, though a good Collector, is not always a reliable Historian.
That is to say, that although nothing of interest or importance is
lost, yet an affair may be occasionally invested with a glamour that
is not wholly its own. I venture to think that Piracy has fortuned in
this particular. We are apt to base our ideas of Piracy on the
somewhat vague ambitions of our childhood; and I suppose, were such a
thing possible, the consensus of opinion in our nurseries as to a
future profession in life would place Piracy but little below the
glittering heights of the police force and engine-driving. Incapable
of forgetting this in more mature years, are we not inclined to deck
Her (the "H" capital, for I speak of an ideal), if not in purple and
fine linen, at least with a lavish display of tinsel and gilt? Nursery
lore remains with us, whether we would or not, for all our lives; and
generations of ourselves, as schoolboys and pre-schoolboys, have
tricked out Piracy in so resplendent a dress that she has fairly
ousted in our affections, not only her sister profession of "High Toby
and the Road," but every other splendid and villainous vocation. Yet
Teach, Kid, and Avery were as terrible or grim as Duval, Turpin, and
Sheppard were courtly or whimsical. And the terrible is a more vital
affair than the whimsical. Is it, then, unnatural that, after a lapse
of nigh on two centuries, we should shake our wise heads and allow
that which is still nursery within us to deplore the loss of those
days when we ran--before a favouring "Trade"--the very good chance of
being robbed, maimed, or murdered by Captain Howel Davis or Captain
Neil Gow? It is as well to remember that the "Captains" in this book
were seamen whose sole qualifications to the title were ready wit, a
clear head, and, maybe, that certain indefinable "power of the eye"
that is the birth-right of all true leaders. The piratical hero of our
childhood is traceable in a great extent to the "thrillers," toy
plays, and penny theatres of our grandfathers. Here our Pirate was, as
often