Upon this our rogue of a buccaneer captain burst out a-laughing, and
fetching Master Harry a great thump upon the back, swore roundly that he
would make a man of him, and that it was a pity to make a parson out of
so good a piece of stuff.

Nor was Captain Morgan less good than his word, for when the Good
Samaritan set sail with a favoring wind for the island of Jamaica,
Master Harry found himself established as one of the adventurers aboard.


II

Could you but have seen the town of Port Royal as it appeared in the
year 1665 you would have beheld a sight very well worth while looking
upon. There were no fine houses at that time, and no great counting
houses built of brick, such as you may find nowadays, but a crowd of
board and wattled huts huddled along the streets, and all so gay with
flags and bits of color that Vanity Fair itself could not have been
gayer. To this place came all the pirates and buccaneers that infested
those parts, and men shouted and swore and gambled, and poured out money
like water, and then maybe wound up their merrymaking by dying of fever.
For the sky in these torrid latitudes is all full of clouds overhead,
and as hot as any blanket, and when the sun shone forth it streamed down
upon the smoking sands so that the houses were ovens and the streets
were furnaces; so it was little wonder that men died like rats in a
hole. But little they appeared to care for that; so that everywhere you
might behold a multitude of painted women and Jews and merchants and
pirates, gaudy with red scarfs and gold braid and all sorts of odds and
ends of foolish finery, all fighting and gambling and bartering for that
ill-gotten treasure of the be-robbed Spaniard.