coast is
full of them. For my part I can give no guess when I shall get away,
for I purchast but 27 slaves since I have been here, for slaves is very
scarce. We have had nineteen Sail of us at one time in ye Road, so that
ships that used to carry pryme slaves off is now forced to take any that
comes. Here is seven sail of us Rum men that are ready to devour one
another, for our case is desprit."

Two hundred years of wickedness unspeakable and human torture beyond all
computation, justified by Christian men and sanctioned by governments,
at length rending the nation asunder in civil war and bequeathing a
problem still unsolved--all this followed in the wake of those
first voyages in search of labor which could be bought and sold as
merchandise. It belonged to the dark ages with piracy and witchcraft,
better forgotten than recalled, save for its potent influence in
schooling brave seamen and building faster ships for peace and war.

These colonial seamen, in truth, fought for survival amid dangers so
manifold as to make their hardihood astounding. It was not merely a
matter of small vessels with a few men and boys daring distant voyages
and the mischances of foundering or stranding, but of facing an
incessant plague of privateers, French and Spanish, Dutch and English,
or a swarm of freebooters under no flag at all. Coasts were unlighted,
charts few and unreliable, and the instruments of navigation almost as
crude as in the days of Columbus. Even the savage Indian, not content
with lurking in ambush, went afloat to wreak mischief, and the records
of the First Church of Salem contain this quaint entry under date of
July 25, 1677: "The Lord having given a Commission to the Indians to
take no less than 13 of the Fishing Ketches of Salem and Captivate the
men... it struck a great consternation into all the people here. The
Pastor moved on the Lord's Day, and the whole people readily consented,
to keep the Lecture Day following as a Fast Day, which was accordingly
done.... The Lord was pleased to send in some of the Ketches on the Fast
Day which was looked on as a gracious smile of Providence. Also there
had been 19 wounded men sent into Salem a little while before; also a
Ketch sent out from Salem as a man-of-war to recover the rest of the
Ketches. The Lord give them Good Success."

To encounter a pirate craft was an episode almost commonplace and often
more sordid than picturesque. Many of these sea rogues were thieves w