" 190

THE BUCCANEER WAS A PICTURESQUE FELLOW " 196

THEN THE REAL FIGHT BEGAN " 200

"HE STRUCK ONCE AND AGAIN AT THE BALD, NARROW FOREHEAD
BENEATH HIM" " 206

CAPTAIN KEITT " 212

HOW THE BUCCANEERS KEPT CHRISTMAS " 224

THE BURNING SHIP " 236

DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES " 240

"I AM THE DAUGHTER OF THAT UNFORTUNATE CAPTAIN KEITT" " 244

* * * * *

FOREWORD

Pirates, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolves
who once infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day
conceptions in great degree as drawn by the pen and pencil of Howard
Pyle.

Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenth
century and the first decade of the twentieth, had the fine faculty of
transposing himself into any chosen period of history and making its
people flesh and blood again--not just historical puppets. His
characters were sketched with both words and picture; with both words
and picture he ranks as a master, with a rich personality which makes
his work individual and attractive in either medium.

He was one of the founders of present-day American illustration, and
his pupils and grand-pupils pervade that field to-day. While he bore
no such important part in the world of letters, his stories are modern
in treatment, and yet widely read. His range included historical
treatises concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was);
fiction, with the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of
Old World fairy tales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best
sellers to growing lads; stories of the occult, such as _In Tenebras_
and _To the Soil of the Earth_, which, if newly published, would be
hailed as contributions to our latest cult.

In all these fields Pyle's work may be equaled, surpassed, save in
one. It is improbable that anyone else will ever bring his combination
of interest and talent to the depiction of these old-time Pirates, any
more than there could be a second Remington to paint the now extinct
Indians and gun-fighters of the Great West.

Important and interesting to the student of history, the
adventure-lover, and the artist