han a cut
across the knuckles.

At the very first discharge of their pistols Blackbeard had been shot
through the body, but he was not for giving up for that--not he. As
said before, he was of the true roaring, raging breed of pirates, and
stood up to it until he received twenty more cutlass cuts and five
additional shots, and then fell dead while trying to fire off an empty
pistol. After that the lieutenant cut off the pirate's head, and
sailed away in triumph, with the bloody trophy nailed to the bow of
his battered sloop.

Those of Blackbeard's men who were not killed were carried off to
Virginia, and all of them tried and hanged but one or two, their
names, no doubt, still standing in a row in the provincial records.

But did Blackbeard really bury treasures, as tradition says, along the
sandy shores he haunted?

[Illustration: Blackbeard Buries His Treasure

_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN

_by_ Howard Pyle

_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September, 1887_]

Master Clement Downing, midshipman aboard the _Salisbury_, wrote a
book after his return from the cruise to Madagascar, whither the
_Salisbury_ had been ordered, to put an end to the piracy with which
those waters were infested. He says:

"At Guzarat I met with a Portuguese named Anthony de
Sylvestre; he came with two other Portuguese and two
Dutchmen to take on in the Moor's service, as many Europeans
do. This Anthony told me he had been among the pirates, and
that he belonged to one of the sloops in Virginia when
Blackbeard was taken. He informed me that if it should be my
lot ever to go to York River or Maryland, near an island
called Mulberry Island, provided we went on shore at the
watering place, where the shipping used most commonly to
ride, that there the pirates had buried considerable sums of
money in great chests well clamped with iron plates. As to
my part, I never was that way, nor much acquainted with any
that ever used those parts; but I have made inquiry, and am
informed that there is such a place as Mulberry Island. If
any person who uses those parts should think it worth while
to dig a little way at the upper end of a small cove, where
it is convenient to land, he would soon find whether the
information I had was well grounded. Fronting the landing
place are five trees, among wh