ither across the deck. Perhaps he lay for a while turning
the matter over and over in his muddled head, but he presently rang
the bell, and Avary and another fellow answered the call.

"What's the matter?" bawls the captain from his berth.

"Nothing," says Avary, coolly.

"Something's the matter with the ship," says the captain. "Does she
drive? What weather is it?"

"Oh no," says Avary; "we are at sea."

"At sea?"

"Come, come!" says Avary: "I'll tell you; you must know that I'm the
captain of the ship now, and you must be packing from this here cabin.
We are bound to Madagascar, to make all of our fortunes, and if you're
a mind to ship for the cruise, why, we'll be glad to have you, if you
will be sober and mind your own business; if not, there is a boat
alongside, and I'll have you set ashore."

The poor half-tipsy captain had no relish to go a-pirating under the
command of his backsliding mate, so out of the ship he bundled, and
away he rowed with four or five of the crew, who, like him, refused to
join with their jolly shipmates.

The rest of them sailed away to the East Indies, to try their fortunes
in those waters, for our Captain Avary was of a high spirit, and had
no mind to fritter away his time in the West Indies, squeezed dry by
buccaneer Morgan and others of lesser note. No, he would make a bold
stroke for it at once, and make or lose at a single cast.

On his way he picked up a couple of like kind with himself--two
sloops off Madagascar. With these he sailed away to the coast of
India, and for a time his name was lost in the obscurity of uncertain
history. But only for a time, for suddenly it flamed out in a blaze of
glory. It was reported that a vessel belonging to the Great Mogul,
laden with treasure and bearing the monarch's own daughter upon a holy
pilgrimage to Mecca (they being Mohammedans), had fallen in with the
pirates, and after a short resistance had been surrendered, with the
damsel, her court, and all the diamonds, pearls, silk, silver, and
gold aboard. It was rumored that the Great Mogul, raging at the insult
offered to him through his own flesh and blood, had threatened to wipe
out of existence the few English settlements scattered along the
coast; whereat the honorable East India Company was in a pretty state
of fuss and feathers. Rumor, growing with the telling, has it that
Avary is going to marry the Indian princess, willy-nilly, and will
turn rajah, and eschew piracy as indece