nice thing to remember."

"But how did you come into it?" "Like most of the rest. I was second
mate of the _Ranger_, a Glasgow brig. We loaded with sugar at
Martinique, for London. These fellows overhauled us at daybreak about
a hundred miles off the east end of Cuba. They had a swift schooner,
and five guns, one a Long Tom. All we had to fight them with was about
fifteen men, and two brass carronades. Our skipper was Scotch, and he
put up some fight, but it wasn't any use. There was only three of us
left alive when the pirates came aboard. One of these died two days
later, and another was washed overboard and drowned down in the Gulf.
I am all that is left of the _Ranger_."

"You saved your life by taking on?"

"Sanchez had the two of us, who were able to stand, back in his cabin.
He put it to us straight. He said it was up to us whether we signed
up, or walked the plank; and he didn't appear to care a damn which we
chose. The cold-blooded devil meant it too, for he was raging mad at
getting only five hundred pounds off the brig. Well, Jack and I looked
at each other--and then we signed."

"And you say others of this crew have been obtained in the same
manner?" I questioned, deeply interested, and perceiving in this a ray
of hope.

"Not exactly--no, I wouldn't precisely say that. It's true, perhaps,
that most of the Britishers were forced to join in about the same way
I was, and there may be a Scandinavian, or two, with a few Dutch, to
be counted in that list; but the most of these cusses are pirates from