no one the wiser.

To be sure those stories and ballads made our captain to be a most
wicked, profane wretch; and if he were, why God knows he suffered and
paid for it, for he laid his bones in Jamaica, and never saw his home
or his wife or his daughter after he had sailed away on the _Royal
Sovereign_ on that long, misfortunate voyage, leaving his family behind
him in New York to the care of strangers.

At the time when Captain Brand so met his fate in Port Royal Harbor he
had increased his flotilla to two vessels--the _Royal Sovereign_ (which
was the vessel that had been fitted out for him in New York, a fine
brigantine and a good sailer), and the _Adventure_ galley, which he had
captured somewhere in the South Seas. This latter vessel he placed in
command of a certain John Malyoe whom he had picked up no one knows
where--a young man of very good family in England, who had turned
red-handed pirate. This man, who took no more thought of a human life than
he would of a broom straw, was he who afterwards murdered Captain
Brand, as you shall presently hear.

With these two vessels, the _Royal Sovereign_ and the _Adventure_,
Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe swept the Mozambique Channel as clear
as a boatswain's whistle, and after three years of piracy, having
gained a great booty of gold and silver and pearls, sailed straight for
the Americas, making first the island of Jamaica and the harbor of Port
Royal, where they dropped anchor to wait for news from home.

But by this time the authorities had been so stirred up against our
pirates that it became necessary for them to hide their booty until
such time as they might make their peace with the Admiralty Courts at