wild cattle and buccanning the meat was at a discount, and the
one and only thing to do was to go a-pirating; for where one such
prize had been won, others were to be had.

In a short time freebooting assumed all of the routine of a regular
business. Articles were drawn up betwixt captain and crew, compacts
were sealed, and agreements entered into by the one party and the
other.

In all professions there are those who make their mark, those who
succeed only moderately well, and those who fail more or less
entirely. Nor did pirating differ from this general rule, for in it
were men who rose to distinction, men whose names, something tarnished
and rusted by the lapse of years, have come down even to us of the
present day.

Pierre Francois, who, with his boatload of six-and-twenty desperadoes,
ran boldly into the midst of the pearl fleet off the coast of South
America, attacked the vice admiral under the very guns of two
men-of-war, captured his ship, though she was armed with eight guns
and manned with threescore men, and would have got her safely away,
only that having to put on sail, their main-mast went by the board,
whereupon the men-of-war came up with them, and the prize was lost.

But even though there were two men-of-war against all that remained of
six-and-twenty buccaneers, the Spaniards were glad enough to make
terms with them for the surrender of the vessel, whereby Pierre
Francois and his men came off scot-free.

Bartholomew Portuguese was a worthy of even more note. In a boat
manned with thirty fellow adventurers he fell upon a great ship off
Cape Corrientes, manned with threescore and ten men, all told.

Her he assaulted again and again, beaten off with the very pressure of
numbers only to renew the assault, until the Spaniards who survived,
some fifty in all, surrendered to twenty living pirates, who poured
upon their decks like a score of blood-stained, powder-grimed devils.

They lost their vessel by recapture, and Bartholomew Portuguese barely
escaped with his life through a series of almost unbelievable
adventures. But no sooner had he fairly escaped from the clutches of
the Spaniards than, gathering together another band of adventurers, he
fell upon the very same vessel in the gloom of the night, recaptured
her when she rode at anchor in the harbor of Campeche under the guns
of the fort, slipped the cable, and was away without the loss of a
single man. He lost her in a hurricane soon afterward