n the evening and anchored, as he
could not venture, under cloud of night, to go into the place where
Blackbeard lay.

"The latter spent the night in drinking with the master of a trading
vessel, with the same indifference as if no danger had been near. Nay,
such was the desperate wickedness of this villain, that, it is
reported, during the carousals of that night, one of his men asked him,
'In case anything should happen to him during the engagement with the
two sloops which were waiting to attack him in the morning, whether his
wife knew where he had buried his money!' To this he impiously
replied, 'That nobody but himself and the devil knew where it was, and
the longest liver should take all.'

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[Illustration: Interview between Lafitte, General Andrew Jackson, and
Governor Claiborne.]

The death of Black Beard.

(_From The Pirates' Own Book._)

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"In the morning Maynard weighed, and sent his boat to take soundings,
which, coming near the pirate, received her fire. Maynard then hoisted
royal colors, and directly toward Blackbeard with every sail and oar.
In a little while the pirate ran aground, and so did the king's
vessels. Maynard lightened his vessel of the ballast and water and
made towards Blackbeard. Upon this, the pirate hailed in his own rude
style. 'Damn you for villains, who are you, and from whence come you?'
The lieutenant answered, 'You may see from our colors we are no
pirates.' Blackbeard bade him send his boat on board, that he might
see who he was. But Maynard replied, 'I cannot spare my boat, but I
will come on board of you as soon as I can with my sloop.' Upon this
Blackbeard took a glass of liquor and drank to him, saying, 'I'll give
no quarter nor take any from you.' Maynard replied, 'He expected no
quarter from him, nor should he take any.'"[6]

It is to be presumed that the devil fell heir to Blackbeard's treasure,
inasmuch as Lieutenant Maynard and his men fairly cut the pirate and
his crew to pieces. Turn we now from such marauders as this to that
greater generation of buccaneers, so called, who harried the Spanish
treasure fleets and towns in the West Indies and on the coasts of the
Isthmus and South and Central America. During the period when Port
Royal, Jamaica, was the headquarters and recruiting station for these
picturesque cu