welcomed as a godsend by our coast dwellers, since they smuggled goods to them which would have been twice the cost if bought at the convoy markets.  Lastly, there were one or two horrid desperadoes who ravaged the seas like tigers.  Such an one was the man Cosh, and that Teach, surnamed Blackbeard, of whom we hear too much to-day.  But, on the whole, we of Virginia suffered not at all from these gentlemen of fortune, and piracy, though the common peril of the seas, entered but little into the estimation of the merchants.

Judge, then, of my disgust when I got news a week later that one of my ships, the Ayr brig, had straggled from the convoy, and been seized, rifled, and burned to the water by pirates almost in sight of Cape Charles.  The loss was grievous, but what angered me was the mystery of such a happening.  I knew the brig was a slow sailer, but how in the name of honesty could she be suffered in broad daylight to fall into such a fate?  I remembered the hostility of the Englishmen, and feared she had had foul play.  Just after Christmas-tide I expected two ships to replenish the stock in my store.  They arrived safe, but only by the skin of their teeth, for both had been chased from their first entrance into American waters, and only their big topsails and a favouring wind brought them off.  I examined the captains closely on the matter, and they were positive that their assailant was not Cosh or any one of his kidney, but a ship of the Brethren, who ordinarily were on the best of terms with our merchantmen.

My suspicions now grew into a fever.  I had long believed that there was some connivance between the pirates of the coast and the English traders, and small blame to them for it.  ’Twas a sensible way to avoid trouble, and I for one would rather pay a modest blackmail every month or two than run the risk of losing a good ship and a twelve-month’s cargo.  But when it came to using this connivance for private spite, the thing was not to be endured.

In March my doubts became certainties.  I had a parcel of gold coin coming to me from New York in one of the coasting vessels—­no great sum, but more than I cared to lose.  Presently I had news that the ship was aground on a sandspit on Accomac, and had been plundered by a pirate brigantine.  I got a sloop and went down the river, and, sure enough, I found the vessel newly refloated, and the captain, an old New Hampshire fellow, in a great taking.  Piracy there had been, but of a queer kind, for not a farthing’s worth had been touched except my packet of gold.  The skipper was honesty itself, and it was plain that the pirate who had chased the ship aground and then come aboard to plunder, had done it to do me hurt, and me alone.

All this made me feel pretty solemn.  My uncle was a rich man, but no firm could afford these repeated losses.  I was the most unpopular figure in Virginia, hated by many, despised by the genteel, whose only friends were my own servants and a few poverty-stricken landward folk.  I had found out a good way of trade, but I had set a hornet’s nest buzzing about my ears, and was on the fair way to be extinguished.  This alliance between my rivals and the Free Companions was the last straw to my burden.  If the sea was to be shut to him, then a merchant might as well put up his shutters.