sermons, or the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of
"Theodora and Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate
nature of most of us there can be but one answer to such a query.

In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales of
derring-do Nelson's battles are all mightily interesting, but, even in
spite of their romance of splendid courage, I fancy that the majority of
us would rather turn back over the leaves of history to read how Drake
captured the Spanish treasure ship in the South Sea, and of how he
divided such a quantity of booty in the Island of Plate (so named
because of the tremendous dividend there declared) that it had to be
measured in quart bowls, being too considerable to be counted.

Courage and daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always a
redundancy of vim and life to recommend them to the nether man that lies
within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against the
tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have had
much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black flag. But
it is not altogether courage and daring that endear him to our hearts.
There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that lust for wealth
that makes one's fancy revel more pleasantly in the story of the
division of treasure in the pirate's island retreat, the hiding of his
godless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic beach, there to
remain hidden until the time should come to rake the doubloons up
again and to spend them like a lord in polite society, than in the most
thrilling tales of his wonderful escapes from commissioned cruisers
through tortuous channels between the coral reefs.

And what a life of adventure is his, to be sure! A life of constant
alertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, he