, as they are, these Pirate stories and
pictures have been scattered through many magazines and books. Here,
in this volume, they are gathered together for the first time, perhaps
not just as Mr. Pyle would have done, but with a completeness and
appreciation of the real value of the material which the author's
modesty might not have permitted.

MERLE JOHNSON.

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PREFACE

Why is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly
titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to
make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this
question another--Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had, a
certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Is
there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden
groundwork of the old-time savage? Is there even in these
well-regulated times an unsubdued nature in the respectable mental
household of every one of us that still kicks against the pricks of
law and order? To make my meaning more clear, would not every boy, for
instance--that is, every boy of any account--rather be a pirate
captain than a Member of Parliament? And we ourselves--would we not
rather read such a story as that of Captain Avery's capture of the
East Indian treasure ship, with its beautiful princess and load of
jewels (which gems he sold by the handful, history sayeth, to a
Bristol merchant), than, say, one of Bishop Atterbury's sermons, or
the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of "Theodora and
Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate nature of
most of us there can be but one answer to such a query.

In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales of
derring-do Nelson's battles are all mightily interesting, but, even
in spite of their romance of splendid courage, I fancy that the
majority of us would rather turn back over the leaves of history to
read how Drake captured the Spanish treasure ship in the South Sea,
and of how he divided such a quantity of booty in the Island of Plate
(so named because of the tremendous dividend there declared) that it
had to be measured in quart bowls, being too considerable to be
counted.

Courage and daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always a
redundancy of _vim_ and life to recommend them to the nether man that
lies within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against
the tremendous odds of