A Story of Land and Sea

It is written in the first Book of Wonder how Captain Shard of the bad
ship Desperate Lark, having looted the sea-coast city Bombasharna,
retired from active life; and resigning piracy to younger men, with
the good will of the North and South Atlantic, settled down with a
captured queen on his floating island.

Sometimes he sank a ship for the sake of old times but he no longer
hovered along the trade-routes; and timid merchants watched for other
men.

It was not age that caused him to leave his romantic profession; nor
unworthiness of its traditions, nor gun-shot wound, nor drink; but
grim necessity and force majeure. Five navies were after him. How he
gave them the slip one day in the Mediterranean, how he fought with
the Arabs, how a ship's broadside was heard in Lat. 23 N. Long. 4 E.
for the first time and the last, with other things unknown to
Admiralties, I shall proceed to tell.

He had had his fling, had Shard, captain of pirates, and all his merry
men wore pearls in their ear-rings; and now the English fleet was
after him under full sail along the coast of Spain with a good North
wind behind them. They were not gaining much on Shard's rakish craft,
the bad ship Desperate Lark, yet they were closer than was to his
liking, and they interfered with business.