man-of-war and the shore, they determined to bear down upon the king's
vessel, fire a slapping broadside into her, and then try to get away,
trusting to luck in the doing, and hoping that their enemy might be
crippled by their fire.

Captain Roberts himself was the first to fall at the return fire of the
Swallow; a grapeshot struck him in the neck, and he fell forward across
the gun near to which he was standing at the time. A certain fellow
named Stevenson, who was at the helm, saw him fall, and thought he was
wounded. At the lifting of the arm the body rolled over upon the deck,
and the man saw that the captain was dead. "Whereupon," says the old
history, "he" [Stevenson] "gushed into tears, and wished that the next
shot might be his portion." After their captain's death the pirate crew
had no stomach for more fighting; the "Black Roger" was struck, and one
and all surrendered to justice and the gallows.

Such is a brief and bald account of the most famous of these pirates.
But they are only a few of a long list of notables, such as Captain
Martel, Capt. Charles Vane (who led the gallant Colonel Rhett, of South
Carolina, such a wild-goose chase in and out among the sluggish creeks
and inlets along the coast), Capt. John Rackam, and Captain Anstis,
Captain Worley, and Evans, and Philips, and others--a score or more of
wild fellows whose very names made ship captains tremble in their shoes
in those good old times.

And such is that black chapter of history of the past--an evil chapter,
lurid with cruelty and suffering, stained with blood and smoke. Yet
it is a written chapter, and it must be read. He who chooses may
read betwixt the lines of history this great truth: Evil itself is an
instrument toward the shaping of good. Therefore the history of evil as