ard the other vessel by means of the boats, capture her, and sail out
of the harbour again before daylight with both vessels. And when once
well out of sight of land, and reasonably safe from pursuit, all the
survivors of her crew, if any, were to be killed and flung overboard.
All stores, cargo, and guns were to be transferred to the new capture,
and our present craft sunk--as we had done with the galley.

"It had become a saying with us that `dead men tell no tales'; so it was
agreed to kill every soul we captured, taking care that none escaped us.
We should thus--so we believed--keep our movements secret for some
considerable period at any rate. For--it is useless for me to attempt
to disguise the fact--we had not been in possession of our prize
twenty-four hours ere we had agreed to start piracy in earnest, preying
on all nations, and selecting some nook where we could hide what
treasure we captured.

"Well, we duly arrived in the roads of San Juan, and anchored well out
of gunshot from the forts, seemingly without exciting any suspicion
whatever. We carefully examined the roadstead, and there, sure enough,
was just the craft for our purpose; but she was lying right under the
guns of the fort. She was a pretty vessel: schooner-rigged, very low in
the water, and--as we found out when we took her--of very deep draught;
broad in the beam, and `flush-decked' fore and aft, with no raised fore
or after castles. We could see, by her open ports, that she carried
twelve guns of a side--nine-pounders they were,--with a long gun forward
of her foremast that threw a thirty-two pound shot. She was therefore
quite heavily armed enough for our purpose, and there would be no need
to transfer our old guns to her when she was captured; and we should
thus be saved a great deal of labour. Her masts were very long and
tapering, with a big rake aft, and from a distance the vessel looked
overmasted; but when one got on board her one saw that her great width
of beam gave her the stiffness necessary to carry such lofty masts with
their corresponding spread of sail. In short, she was just what we
wanted, and, indeed, we could not have had a ship better suited to our
purpose even though we had built her ourselves. Needless to say, we
determined to cut her out from under the guns of the fort, and capture
her, at any risk, that very night. During the day we got up our arms,
loaded our pistols, sharpened up our swords and cutlasses, an