Then we fell upon them, and the hindquarters of all bore witness to our greeting.

I caught the fellow who had laid the fuse, tied the whole thing round his neck, clapped a pistol to his ear, and marched him before me into the town.  “If you are minded to bolt,” I said, “remember you have a charge of gunpowder lobbing below your chin.  I have but to flash my pistol into it, and they will be picking the bits of you off the high trees.”

I took the rascal, his knees knocking under him, straight to the ordinary where the English merchants chiefly forgathered.  A dozen of them sat over a bowl of punch, when the door was opened and I kicked my Guy Fawkes inside.  I may have misjudged them, but I thought every eye looked furtive as they saw my prisoner.

“Gentlemen,” said I, “I restore you your property.  This is a penitent thief who desires to make a confession.”

My pistol was at his temple, the powder was round his neck, and he must have seen a certain resolution in my face.  Anyhow, sweating and quaking, he blurted out his story, and when he offered to halt I made rings with the barrel on the flesh of his neck.

“It is a damned lie,” cried one of them, a handsome, over-dressed fellow who had been conspicuous for his public insolence towards me.

“Nay,” said I, “our penitent’s tale has the note of truth.  One word to you, gentlemen.  I am hospitably inclined, and if any one of you will so far honour me as to come himself instead of dispatching his servant, his welcome will be the warmer.  I bid you good-night and leave you this fellow in proof of my goodwill.  Keep him away from the candle, I pray you, or you will all go to hell before your time.”

That was the end of my worst troubles, and presently my lading was finished and my store replenished.  Then came the time for the return sailing, and the last enterprise of my friends was to go off without my three vessels.  But I got an order from the Governor, delivered readily but with much profanity, to the commander of the frigates to delay till the convoy was complete.  I breathed more freely as I saw the last hulls grow small in the estuary.  For now, as I reasoned it out, the planters must begin to compare my prices with the Englishmen’s, and must come to see where their advantage lay.

But I had counted my chickens too soon, and was to be woefully disappointed.  At that time all the coast of America from New England to the Main was infested by pirate vessels.  Some sailed under English letters of marque, and preyed only on the shipping of France, with whom we were at war.  Some who had formed themselves into a company called the Brethren of the Coast robbed the Spanish treasure-ships and merchantmen in the south waters, and rarely came north to our parts save to careen or provision.  They were mostly English and Welsh, with a few Frenchmen, and though I had little to say for their doings, they left British ships in the main unmolested, and were