the merchant-ships. If the prey was weak enough they'd board
and ransack her and make her crew walk the plank,--(that's how
Aaron Burr's beautiful daughter is supposed to have died on
her way North, you know,)--and if the ship showed fight or
seemed too tough a handful the pirates hit on a surer way of
capture. They'd turn tail and run. The merchant ship would
give chase, for there were fat rewards out for the capture of
the sea rovers, you know. The pirates would head for some
strip of water that seemed perfectly navigable. The ship
would follow, and would pile up on a sunken reef that the
pirates had just steered around."

"Clever work!"

"They were a thrifty and shrewd crowd those old-time
black-flaggers. After they were wiped out the wreckers still
reaped their fine harvest by signaling ships onto reefs at
night. Their descendants live down among some of the keys
still. We call them 'conchs,' around here. They're an
illiterate, uncivilized, furtive, eccentric lot. And they
pick up some sort of living off wrecked ships and off what
cargo washes ashore from the wrecks. A missionary went down
there and tried to convert them. He found the 'conch'
children already had religion enough to pray every night.
'Lord, send a wreck!' The conchs gather a lot of plunder
every year. They--"

"Do they sell it or claim salvage on it. or--?"

"Not they. That would call for too much brain and education