It required but very little persuasion on the part of the pirates to induce one to join them, whose spirit was congenial with theirs, so he very soon became one of the most active and daring of their number.  Courage, cunning and cruelty were considered by them to be the most important qualifications of a bona-fide bucanier, and they soon found that these were possessed by Rowland, in a most superlative degree, and this added to the influence of his talents and early education, caused him to rise rapidly to a station of command among them.  As it was his motto ‘to make hay while the sun shines,’ he sailed as soon as possible from Madagascar, from which he had not been absent but twenty days when he fell in with and captured a Spanish Galleon, bound from Genoa to Lisbon, laden with a large amount of gold and silver ornaments, which was the property of the church, and was under the care of a number of ecclesiastics who had taken passage in the unfortunate vessel.

There were a number of other passengers on board, amongst whom was Don Fernando Herrera, who was accompanied by his daughter a beautiful Castilian maiden, then about seventeen years of age, who doated upon her father with all the fondness of a pure and filial affection.

As Rowland acted almost invariably on the principle that dead men tell no tales, he caused all the passengers to be put to death, in detail, until it came the turn of Herrera.  As he was about to be cast into the sea, his daughter sprang wildly forward, and kneeling before the cruel pirate captain, she beseeched him in such earnest and pathetic tones to spare her father’s life, or let her die in his stead, that Rowland, fired by the voluptuousness of her extreme beauty, and perhaps touched by her tears, promised to spare her father on condition that she would become his wife.  Such were the dread alternatives.  Death for her father and herself on one hand, and the sacrifice forever of her happiness and peace of mind on the other.  In the extremity of her terror, Clarice, (for that was her name,) chose the latter, and that very same night she was united to Rowland, by her own priest and confessor who was compelled to officiate in the ceremony, and her father was compelled to will all of his vast riches in the event of his death to his murderous son-in-law.  After having taken to himself a wife in the above strange and summary manner, Rowland repaired to the West Indies, where his father-in-law died soon after his arrival, leaving to the pirate, a vast amount of money and other property, which enabled him to establish himself at Havana, in a most splendid and magnificent manner.  His inordinate desire for wealth however still remained unsatiated, and although he left off all open communication with his former associates, (the bucaniers,) still he secretly patronized them, and in return was made acquainted with the result of all their efforts and received a goodly share of their plunder.