The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pirates and Piracy, by Oscar Herrmann

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Title: Pirates and Piracy

Author: Oscar Herrmann

Commentator: Herman A. Heydt

Illustrator: Frederick Ehrlich

Release Date: March 8, 2010 [EBook #31551]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Pirates and Piracy

BY

OSCAR HERRMANN

_With Illustrations by_
FREDERICK EHRLICH

_And an Introduction by_
HERMAN A. HEYDT

NEW YORK
PRESS OF STETTINER BROTHERS, PRINTERS
52-58 DUANE STREET
1902

INTRODUCTION.

There is hardly a person who, as a school-boy, had not received the fire
of imagination and the stimulus for adventure and a roaming life through
the stirring narratives concerning Captain Kidd and other well-known sea
rovers. A certain ineffable glamor metamorphosed these robbers into
heroes, and lent an inalienable license to their "calling," so that the
songster and romancist found in them and their deeds prolific and genial
themes, while the obscure suggestions of hidden treasures and mysterious
caves have inspired many expeditions in quest of buried fortunes which,
like the Argo of old, have carried their Jasons to the mythical Colchis.

The pens of Byron, Scott, Poe, Stevenson, Russell, and Stockton, and the
musical genius of Wagner, were steeped in the productive inspiration of
these lawless adventurers, and Kingsley found in Lundy Island, the
erstwhile nest of the reckless tribe, a subject for his "Westward Ho!"

Byron, in "The Corsair," sings:

O'er the glad waters of the dark-blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the b