ed the capture of this incredible prize, our captain
scuttled the great ship and left her to sink with all on board. Three
Lascars of the crew alone escaped to bear the news of this tremendous
disaster to an astounded world.

As may readily be supposed, it was now no longer possible for Captain
Keitt to hope to live in such comparative obscurity as he had before
enjoyed. His was now too remarkable a figure in the eyes of the world.
Several expeditions from various parts were immediately fitted out
against him, and it presently became no longer compatible with his
safety to remain thus clearly outlined before the eyes of the world.
Accordingly, he immediately set about seeking such security as he
might now hope to find, which he did the more readily since he had
now, and at one cast, so entirely fulfilled his most sanguine
expectations of good fortune and of fame.

Thereafter, accordingly, the adventures of our captain became of a
more apocryphal sort. It was known that he reached the West Indies in
safety, for he was once seen at Port Royal and twice at Spanish Town,
in the island of Jamaica. Thereafter, however, he disappeared; nor was
it until several years later that the world heard anything concerning
him.

One day a certain Nicholas Duckworthy, who had once been gunner aboard
the pirate captain's own ship, _The Good Fortune_, was arrested in the
town of Bristol in the very act of attempting to sell to a merchant of
that place several valuable gems from a quantity which he carried with
him tied up in a red bandanna handkerchief.

In the confession of which Duckworthy afterward delivered himself he
declared that Captain Keitt, after his great adventure, having sailed
from Africa in safety, and so reached the shores of the New World, had
wrecked _The Good Fortune_ on a coral reef off the Windward Islands;
that he then immediately deserted the ship, and together with
Duckworthy himself, the sailing master (who was a Portuguese), the
captain of a brig, _The Bloody Hand_ (a consort of Keitt's), and a
villainous rascal named Hunt (who, occupying no precise position among
the pirates, was at once the instigator of and the partaker in the
greatest part of Captain Keitt's wickednesses), made his way to the
nearest port of safety. These five worthies at last fetched the island
of Jamaica, bringing with them all of the jewels and some of the gold
that had been captured from _The Sun of the East_.

But, upon coming to a d