aneers of the West Indies and South America had grown to be a
most formidable body of reckless freebooters. From merely capturing
Spanish ships, laden with the treasures taken from the natives of the
new world, they had grown strong enough to attack Spanish towns and
cities. But when they became soldiers and marched in little armies, the
patience of the civilized world began to weaken: Panama, for instance,
was an important Spanish city; England was at peace with Spain;
therefore, when a military force composed mainly of Englishmen, and led
by a British subject, captured and sacked the said Spanish city, England
was placed in an awkward position; if she did not interfere with her
buccaneers, she would have a quarrel to settle with Spain.

Therefore it was that a new Governor was sent to Jamaica with strict
orders to use every power he possessed to put down the buccaneers and to
break up their organization, and it was to this end that he set a thief
to catch thieves and empowered the ex-pirate, Morgan, to execute his
former comrades.

But methods of conciliation, as well as threats of punishment, were used
to induce the buccaneers to give up their illegal calling, and liberal
offers were made to them to settle in Jamaica and become law-abiding
citizens. They were promised grants of land and assistance of various
kinds in order to induce them to take up the legitimate callings of
planters and traders.

But these offers were not at all tempting to the Brethren of the Coast;
from pirates _rampant_ to pirates _couchant_ was too great a change, and
some of them, who found it impossible to embark on piratical cruises, on
account of the increasing difficulties of fitting out vessels, returned
to their original avocations of cattle-butchering and beef-drying, and
some, it is said, chose rather to live among the wild Indians and share
their independent lives, than to bind themselves to any form of honest
industry.

The French had also been very active in suppressing the operations of
their buccaneers, and now the Brethren of the Coast, considered as an
organization for preying upon the commerce and settlers of Spain, might
be said to have ceased to exist. But it must not be supposed that
because buccaneering had died out, that piracy was dead. If we tear
down a wasps' nest, we destroy the abode of a fierce and pitiless
community, but we scatter the wasps, and it is likely that each one of
them, in the unrestricted and irrespo