water-washed cave, where fabulous treasures were not said to have been
hidden by this worthy marooner. Now we are assured that he never was
a pirate, and never did bury any treasure, excepting a certain chest,
which he was compelled to hide upon Gardiner's Island--and perhaps even
it was mythical.

So poor Kidd must be relegated to the dull ranks of simply respectable
people, or semirespectable people at best.

But with "Blackbeard" it is different, for in him we have a real,
ranting, raging, roaring pirate per se--one who really did bury
treasure, who made more than one captain walk the plank, and who
committed more private murders than he could number on the fingers of
both hands; one who fills, and will continue to fill, the place to which
he has been assigned for generations, and who may be depended upon to
hold his place in the confidence of others for generations to come.

Captain Teach was a Bristol man born, and learned his trade on board of
sundry privateers in the East Indies during the old French war--that of
1702--and a better apprenticeship could no man serve. At last, somewhere
about the latter part of the year 1716, a privateering captain, one
Benjamin Hornigold, raised him from the ranks and put him in command of
a sloop--a lately captured prize and Blackbeard's fortune was made. It
was a very slight step, and but the change of a few letters, to convert
"privateer" into "pirate," and it was a very short time before Teach
made that change. Not only did he make it himself, but he persuaded his
old captain to join with him.

And now fairly began that series of bold and lawless depredations which
have made his name so justly famous, and which placed him among the very