an' sweet as a dandy in Picadilly, an' when he's real he's like a
devil in hell."

"Was you a prisoner--or did you sail under him?"

"Both, fer the matter o' thet. He give me the choice ter serve, er
walk the plank. I wus eighteen, an' hed an ol' mother at Deal."

"I see; but later you got away?"

"Ay, I did thet," chuckling over the recollection. "But I hed ter wait
eight months fer the luck. Hev ye ever been sea-farin' down in them
waters, off the West Indies?"

"No."

"Well, they're all studded over with little islands--cays, they call
'em down thare; an' it's in among them thet the buccaneers hide away,
an' sorter rest up after a cruise. Thar's a lot o' 'em too; whole
villages hid away on some o' them cays, with women an' children--every
color ye ever saw. Sanchez he made his headquarters on a cay called
Porto Grande. He hed three ships, an' maybe a hundred an' fifty men
'bout the time I got away. The last I saw o' him wus at sea. He'd
overhauled an English ship, an' sunk her; an' then the next mornin' we
took a Dutch bark in ballast. She wus such a trig sailor Sanchez
decided to keep her afloat, an' sent a prize crew aboard ter sail her
inter Porto Grande. I wus one o' the fellers picked fer thet job, an'
we wus told off under a nigger mate, named LaGrasse--he wus a French
nigger from Martinique, and a big devil--an' our orders wus ter meet
Sanchez three days later. His vessel wus a three-masted schooner, the