wed himself to be most
proficient in torturing his victim.

When Cobham, for instance, captured the Spanish ship in the Bay of
Biscay, after all resistance was over and the heat of the battle had
cooled, he ordered his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew
and every Spaniard aboard--whether in arms or not--to sew them up in
the mainsail and to fling them overboard. There were some twenty dead
bodies in the sail when a few days later it was washed up on the
shore.

Of course such acts were not likely to go unavenged, and many an
innocent life was sacrificed to pay the debt of Cobham's cruelty.

Nothing could be more piratical than all this. Nevertheless, as was
said, it was winked at, condoned, if not sanctioned, by the law; and
it was not beneath people of family and respectability to take part in
it. But by and by Protestantism and Catholicism began to be at
somewhat less deadly enmity with each other; religious wars were still
far enough from being ended, but the scabbard of the sword was no
longer flung away when the blade was drawn. And so followed a time of
nominal peace, and a generation arose with whom it was no longer
respectable and worthy--one might say a matter of duty--to fight a
country with which one's own land was not at war. Nevertheless, the
seed had been sown; it had been demonstrated that it was feasible to
practice piracy against Spain and not to suffer therefor. Blood had
been shed and cruelty practiced, and, once indulged, no lust seems
stronger than that of shedding blood and practicing cruelty.

Though Spain might be ever so well grounded in peace at home, in the
West Indies she was always at war with the whole world--English,
French, Dutch. It was almost a matter of life or death with her to
keep her hold upon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon
the earthquake of the Reformation, her power was already beginning to
totter and to crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and
from it alone could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold
and silver. So it was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to
keep out the world from her American possessions--a bootless task, for
the old order upon which her power rested was broken and crumbled
forever. But still she strove, fighting against fate, and so it was
that in the tropical America it was one continual war between her and
all the world. Thus it came that, long after piracy ceased to be
allowed at home, it co