that was nowt to our fight off Panama in the spring of 'eighty," he
growled. "We weren't slaughterin' Indians, but Spaniards that could
fight, an' did. What's more, they were three good barks and nigh three
hundred men to our sixty-eight men paddlin' in canoes. Ah, that was a
day's work, if you will! I saw Peter Harris, as brave a commander as
ever flew the black whiff, shot through both legs, but he was a-swingin'
his cutlass and tryin' to climb the Spaniard's side with the rest when
our canoe boarded. Through most of that battle we was standin' in
bottoms leakin' full of bullet holes, a-firin' into the Biscayner's
gun-ports, an' cheerin' the bloody lungs out of us! When we got aboard,
their hold was full of dead men an' their scuppers washin' red. They
asked no quarter an' on we went, up an' down decks, give an' take. At
the last, six men o' them surrendered. The rest--eighty from the one
ship--we fed to the sharks before we could swab decks next day. Eh, but
that was a v'yage, an' it cost the seas more good buccaneers than ever
was hanged. Harris an' Sawkins an' half o' their best men we left on the
Isthmus. But out of one galleon we took fifty thousand pieces-of-eight,
besides silver bars in cord piles. Think o' that, lads!"

A fair, stocky, young deserter from a British man-of-war--his forearm
bore the tattooed service anchor--broke in, his eyes gleaming greedily
at the thought of the treasure.

"That was in New Panama," he cried. "Do you mind old Ben Gasket we took
off Silver Key last summer! Eighty years old he was, and marooned there
for half his life. He was with Morgan at the great sack of Old Panama
before most on us was born. An' Old Ben, he said there was nigh two
hundred horse-loads o' gold an' pearls, rubies, emeralds and diamonds
took out o' that there town, an' it a-burnin' still, after they'd been
there a month. Talk o' wealth!"

The man with the broken nose raised himself from his place by the
capstan and stretched his hairy arms with an evil, leering yawn. Every
eye turned to him and there was silence on the deck as he began to
speak.

"Dollars--louis d'ors--doubloons?" said he. "There was one man got 'em.
Solomon Brig got 'em. All the rest was babes to him--babes an' beggars.
Billy Kidd was thought a great devil in his day, but when he met Brig's
six-gun sloop off Malabar, he turned tail, him an' his two great
galleons, an' ran in under the forts. Even then we'd ha' had him out an'
fought him,