e strove strenuously, desperately, to keep out the world from
her American possessions--a bootless task, for the old order upon which
her power rested was broken and crumbled forever. But still she strove,
fighting against fate, and so it was that in the tropical America it was
one continual war between her and all the world. Thus it came that,
long after piracy ceased to be allowed at home, it continued in those
far-away seas with unabated vigor, recruiting to its service all that
lawless malign element which gathers together in every newly opened
country where the only law is lawlessness, where might is right and
where a living is to be gained with no more trouble than cutting a
throat. {signature Howard Pyle His Mark}

HOWARD PILE'S BOOK OF PIRATES

Chapter I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN

JUST above the northwestern shore of the old island of Hispaniola--the
Santo Domingo of our day--and separated from it only by a narrow channel
of some five or six miles in width, lies a queer little hunch of an
island, known, because of a distant resemblance to that animal, as
the Tortuga de Mar, or sea turtle. It is not more than twenty miles in
length by perhaps seven or eight in breadth; it is only a little spot of
land, and as you look at it upon the map a pin's head would almost cover
it; yet from that spot, as from a center of inflammation, a burning fire
of human wickedness and ruthlessness and lust overran the world, and
spread terror and death throughout the Spanish West Indies, from St.
Augustine to the island of Trinidad, and from Panama to the coasts of
Peru.

About the middle of the seventeenth century certain French adventurers
set out from the fortified island of St. Christopher in longboats and
hoys, directing their course to the westward, there to discover new
islands. Sighting Hispaniola "with abundance of joy," they landed, and
went into the country, where they found great quantities of wild cattle,
horses, and swine.

Now vessels on the return voyage to Europe from the West Indies needed
revictualing, and food, especially flesh, was at a premium in the
islands of the Spanish Main; wherefore a great profit was to be turned
in preserving beef and pork, and selling the flesh to homeward-bound
vessels.

The northwestern shore of Hispaniola, lying as it does at the eastern
outlet of the old Bahama Channel, running between the island of Cuba and
the great Bahama Banks, lay almost in