clean-scraped and varnished, except at the cross-trees and truck,
which were painted black. The standing and running rigging was in
the most perfect order, and the sails white as snow. In short,
everything, from the single narrow red stripe on her low black hull
to the trucks on her tapering masts, evinced an amount of care and
strict discipline that would have done credit to a ship of the
Royal Navy. There was nothing lumbering or unseemly about the
vessel, excepting, perhaps, a boat, which lay on the deck with its
keel up between the fore and main masts. It seemed
disproportionately large for the schooner; but, when I saw that the
crew amounted to between thirty and forty men, I concluded that
this boat was held in reserve, in case of any accident compelling
the crew to desert the vessel.

As I have before said, the costumes of the men were similar to that
of the captain. But in head gear they differed not only from him
but from each other, some wearing the ordinary straw hat of the
merchant service, while others wore cloth caps and red worsted
night-caps. I observed that all their arms were sent below; the
captain only retaining his cutlass and a single pistol in the folds
of his shawl. Although the captain was the tallest and most
powerful man in the ship, he did not strikingly excel many of his
men in this respect, and the only difference that an ordinary
observer would have noticed was, a certain degree of open candour,
straightforward daring, in the bold, ferocious expression of his
face, which rendered him less repulsive than his low-browed
associates, but did not by any means induce the belief that he was
a hero. This look was, however, the indication of that spirit
which gave him the pre-eminence among the crew of desperadoes who
called him captain. He was a lion-like villain; totally devoid of