clothes.

Capt. Bartholomew Roberts was the particular and especial pupil of
Davis, and when that worthy met his death so suddenly and so
unexpectedly in the unfortunate manner above narrated, he was chosen
unanimously as the captain of the fleet, and he was a worthy pupil of
a worthy master. Many were the poor fluttering merchant ducks that
this sea hawk swooped upon and struck; and cleanly and cleverly were
they plucked before his savage clutch loosened its hold upon them.

"He made a gallant figure," says the old narrator, "being dressed in a
rich crimson waistcoat and breeches and red feather in his hat, a gold
chain around his neck, with a diamond cross hanging to it, a sword in
his hand, and two pair of pistols hanging at the end of a silk sling
flung over his shoulders according to the fashion of the pyrates."
Thus he appeared in the last engagement which he fought--that with the
_Swallow_--a royal sloop of war. A gallant fight they made of it,
those bulldog pirates, for, finding themselves caught in a trap
betwixt the man-of-war and the shore, they determined to bear down
upon the king's vessel, fire a slapping broadside into her, and then
try to get away, trusting to luck in the doing, and hoping that their
enemy might be crippled by their fire.

Captain Roberts himself was the first to fall at the return fire of
the _Swallow_; a grapeshot struck him in the neck, and he fell forward
across the gun near to which he was standing at the time. A certain
fellow named Stevenson, who was at the helm, saw him fall, and
thought he was wounded. At the lifting of the arm the body rolled over
upon the deck, and the man saw that the captain was dead. "Whereupon,"
says the old history, "he" [Stevenson] "gushed into tears, and wished
that the next shot might be his portion." After their captain's death
the pirate crew had no stomach for more fighting; the "Black Roger"
was struck, and one and all surrendered to justice and the gallows.

* * * * *

Such is a brief and bald account of the most famous of these pirates.
But they are only a few of a long list of notables, such as Captain
Martel, Capt. Charles Vane (who led the gallant Colonel Rhett, of
South Carolina, such a wild-goose chase in and out among the sluggish
creeks and inlets along the coast), Capt. John Rackam, and Captain
Anstis, Captain Worley, and Evans, and Philips, and others--a score or
more of wild fellows whose very names m