t-throats, and Sir Henry Morgan was their bright,
particular star, there is the testimony of an eye-witness and
participant to show that the blood-stained gold seldom tarried long
enough with its owners to permit of burying it, and that they bothered
their wicked heads very little about safeguarding the future.

Captain Bartholomew Roberts, that "tall, black man, nearly forty years
old, whose favorite toast was 'Damnation to him who ever lives to wear
a halter,'" was snuffed out in an action with a King's ship, and the
manner of his life and melodramatic quality of his death suggest that
he be mentioned herein as worthy of a place beside Blackbeard himself.
Roberts has been overlooked by buried treasure legend, and this is odd,
for he was a figure to inspire such tales. His flamboyant career
opened in 1719 and was successful until the British man-of-war
_Swallow_ overhauled him on the African coast. His biographer, Captain
Charles Johnson, writing while the episode was less than a decade old
and when the facts were readily obtainable, left us this fine picture
of the fight:

"Roberts himself made a gallant figure at the time of the engagement,
being dressed in a rich crimson damask waistcoat and breeches, a red
feather in his hat, a gold chain round his neck, with a diamond cross
hanging to it, a sword in his hand, and two pair of pistols hanging at
the end of a silk sling flung over his shoulder (according to the
fashion of the pirates). He is said to have given his orders with
boldness and spirit; coming, according to what he had purposed, close
to the man of war, received her fire, and then hoisted his black
flag[7] and returned it; shooting away from her with all the sail he
could pack.... But keeping his tacks down, either by the wind's
shifting or ill steerage, or both, he was taken aback with his sails,
and the _Swallow_ came a second time very nigh to him. He had now
perhaps finished the fight very desperately if Death, who took a swift
passage in a grapeshot, had not interposed and struck him directly on
the throat.

"He settled himself on the tackles of a gun, which one Stephenson from
the helm, observing, ran to his assistance, and not perceiving him
wounded, swore at him and bid him stand up like a man. But when he
found his mistake, and that Captain Roberts was certainly dead, he
gushed into tears and wished the next shot might be his lot. They
presently threw him overboard, with his arms and orna