lly believed that the English were the chosen of the fiend.

Among the most trusted of the witches was a withered Indian woman
of Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. She was close upon her fifth
score of years before she departed this life, but the rumor that she
had lived in New Providence since the flood was not denied, for it
made her the more regarded. Her best commodity was strings. For a
large price she would sell a string in which she had tied several
knots, each one of which represented the particular wind that the
captain might wish to prosper him on his way. Captain Condent was a
blaspheming corsair from the wicked town of New York, who had left
that port as quartermaster on a merchant-man and next morning had
appeared with a battery of pistols and had calmly taken the ship out
of the hands of her officers. This fellow had bought a string from
the witch that carried him to the Cape Verdes and back to America,
but when he had cut off all the knots, except two or three, he feared
that he might run out of winds altogether; so he put upon certain
servants of the Lord the task for which he had paid the servant of the
devil. He had with him two or three Spanish monks whom he had stolen
in the Cape Verdes, though what he wanted of them neither he nor they
could have guessed. They were having a most unhappy time of it. Now
and then the scallawag sailors would force them upon all fours, and
sitting astride their backs would compel them to creep about the deck,
pretending to be horses, while Condent whipped them smartly with the
rope's end. Thinking to save his precious twine, he ordered these
monks to pray for favoring winds, and he kept them on their marrow
bones petitioning from daylight until sunset. Often they would fall
exhausted and voiceless. At last, believing that the wind peddler
of Nassau had more power over the elements than a shipload of monks,
he threw the wretched friars overboard, and, as luck would have it,
the wind he wanted came whistling along a few minutes after.

He came to the end of his string at Zanzibar, where he was caught
in a tremendous storm, and was in hourly peril of destruction. His
masts had cracked, his sails had split, his water barrels had gone
by the board. It was time to hold the witch to her bargain. He swung
the cord about his head three times, called the woman's name, and
although eight thousand miles of sea and continent lay between them,
she heard the call. The string was pu