had only to curl his hair with a hot
iron and rub charcoal on his chops to deceive a governor."

The tickled old fellow drank their health and wished them a safe
journey, out of Jamaica.

While luck seemed to bide with the rovers, it was not always smooth
sailing on the Spanish seas. Now and then the buccaneers attacked
an innocent looking ship that waited until they had come within
musket-reach, when it ran up the Spanish standard, opened a dozen
ports, and let fly at them with hot-shot and a hail of bullets. Now
and again a mutiny would occur, and the victorious either forced the
defeated to walk the plank or marooned them on some desolate sand
key to perish of thirst and sunstroke.

Blackbeard's men once found a fishing-vessel drifting off the Burmudas
and eagerly boarded her to look for treasure. In a minute they tumbled
out of the cabin and scrambled into the sea like the swine possessed
of devils. The vessel had but one living man on board, and he had not
many hours of life before him, while corpses strewn about the floor
were spotted with small-pox. Half of the pirate crew were slain by
the pestilence.

When Roberts was cruising off Surinam a supposed war-ship bore down on
him in a fog. He pelted her with all his guns, but she kept her way
unheeding. The fog then breaking showed that it was not a frigate,
but a sloop, which had been magnified by the mist, and he quickly
grappled her and sent his men to see what manner of ship she was. Ten
or twelve Spaniards lying about the deck with their throats cut proved
that some other buccaneer had been before him. As the men were about
to leave their floating charnel-house to hold her way whither the
gales might send her, a furious swearing in Spanish caused them to
shiver and look back. Were the dead speaking? Had some crazed sailor
escaped, and was he gibbering from the roundtop? No: it was a parrot
in the rigging, and he was saying all he knew.

Montbar, having discovered a company of Spanish on one of the Windward
Islands, went ashore with guns, knives, and axes, and destroyed them
all, except one. This man told how he and his fellows had been put
ashore. They were the crew of a slaver, and were on their way from
Africa to Cuba with a cargo of slaves, when the ship began to leak
badly. The carpenter, accompanied by several of the more intelligent
of the blacks, made a careful inspection of the hold, yet could find
no leak; so the constant inflow, that kept all h