almost
certain death both for himself and the Portuguese sailors.

HALSEY, CAPTAIN JOHN.

This famous South Sea pirate was born on March 1st, 1670, at Boston, and
received a commission from the Governor of Massachusetts to cruise as a
privateer on the Banks. No sooner was he out of sight of land than Halsey
turned pirate. Taking a ship or two, he sailed to the Canary Islands,
picking up a rich Spanish ship there. He next doubled the Cape of Good
Hope, and paid a call on the "brethren" at Madagascar. He then sailed to
the Red Sea, another happy hunting ground of the pirates, and met a big
Dutch ship armed with sixty guns. Halsey astounded his men by announcing
his sudden determination to attack only Moorish ships in the future. The
indignant crew mutinied, threw Captain Halsey and his chief gunner in
irons, and proceeded to attack the Dutchman. The mutinous pirates got the
worst of the encounter, and released Halsey, who only just managed to get
his ship away. Luck seems to have deserted Halsey for a while, for not a
Moorish ship could he meet with, so much so that his scruples against
taking Christian ships eased enough to permit him to bag a brace of
English ships, the _Essex_ and the _Rising Eagle_.

The captain of the former proved to be a very old and dear friend of
Halsey's quartermaster, and to show a friendly feeling, Halsey allowed the
captain to keep all his personal belongings. Nevertheless, they took a
comfortable booty, comprising some fifty thousand pounds in English gold,
out of the _Essex_, and another ten thousand out of the _Rising Eagle_.

The pirates, being strict business men, produced invoices and sold the two
ships back to their legal owners for cash, and having settled this affair
to everybody's satisfaction, Halsey and his consort returned to
Madagascar. Here they were visited by the captain of a Scotch ship, the
_Neptune_, which had come to trade liquor, probably rum, but possibly
whisky, with the pirates. A sudden hurricane arose, destroying both the
pirate ships and damaging the _Neptune_. Halsey, ever a man of resource,
thereupon seized the Scotch ship, and, with even greater enterprise, at
once attacked a ship, the _Greyhound_, which lay at anchor, which was
loaded with stolen merchandise which the pirates had only just sold to the
captain of the _Greyhound_, and for which they had been paid.

The end was now drawing near, for in 1716 Captain Halsey was taken ill of
some tropical fever