ry any
tricks, you'll leave us--feet first, over the rail." He leaned forward
and hissed slightly as he pronounced the last words. Something in the
eyes under his knotted gray brows struck deeper terror into the boy's
heart than either Herriot's threat or the cruel face of the man with the
broken nose. For that instant Bonnet seemed deadly as a snake.

[Illustration: Stede Bonnet]

Jeremy was much relieved when he was bidden to go. The sailing-master
stood by the companionway as he ascended. "You'll bunk for'ard," he
remarked curtly. "Go up with the crew now." The boy slipped into the
crowd that lay around the windlass as unobstrusively as he could. A
thick-set, bearded man with a great hairy chest, bare to the yellow sash
at his waist, was speaking. "Ay," he said, "a hundred Indians was dead
in the town before ever we landed. They didn't know where to run except
into the huts, an' those our round-shot plowed through like so much
grass--which was what they was, mostly. Then old Johnny Buck piped the
longboat overside and on shore we went, firin' all the time. Cap'n Vane
himself, with a dirk in his teeth and sword an' pistol out, goes
swearin' up the roadway an' we behind him, our feet stickin' in blood. A
few come out shootin' their little arrers at us, but we herded 'em an'
drove 'em, yellin' all the time. At close quarters their knives was no
match for cutlasses. So we went slashin' through the town, burnin' 'em
out an' stickin' 'em when they ran. Our sword arms was red to shoulder
that day, but we was like men far gone in rum an' never stayed while an
Indian held up head. Then we dropped and slept where we fell, across a
corp', like as not, clean tuckered, every man of us. Come mornin', the
sight and smell of the place made us sober enough and not a man in the
crew wanted to go further into the island. There was no gold in the
town, neither. All we got was a few hogs and sheep. We left the same
day, for it come on hot an' we had no way to clean up the mess. That
island must ha' been a nuisance to the whole Caribbean for weeks."

Job Howland nodded and spat as the story ended. "Ye're right, George
Dunkin," he said. "That was a day's work. Vane's a hard man, I'm told,
an' that crew in the _Chance_ was one of his worst." He was interrupted
by a villainous old sea-dog with a sparse fringe of white beard, who
sprawled by the hatchway. He cleared his throat hoarsely and spoke with
a deep wheeze between sentences.

"All