peace with the Admiralty Courts at
home. So one night Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe, with two others of
the pirates, went ashore with two great chests of treasure, which they
buried somewhere on the banks of the Cobra River near the place where
the old Spanish fort had stood.

What happened after the treasure was thus buried no one may tell. 'Twas
said that Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe fell a-quarrelling and that
the upshot of the matter was that Captain Malyoe shot Captain Brand
through the head, and that the pirate who was with him served Captain
Brand's companion after the same fashion with a pistol bullet through
the body.

After that the two murderers returned to their vessel, the _Adventure_
galley, and sailed away, carrying the bloody secret of the buried
treasure with them.

[Illustration: "CAPTAIN MALYOE SHOT CAPTAIN BRAND THROUGH THE HEAD"]

But this double murder of Captain Brand and his companion happened, you
are to understand, some twenty years before the time of this story, and
while our hero was but one year old. So now to our present history.

It is a great pity that any one should have a grandfather who ended his
days in such a sort as this; but it was no fault of Barnaby True's, nor
could he have done anything to prevent it, seeing he was not even born
into the world at the time that his grandfather turned pirate, and that
he was only one year old when Captain Brand so met his death on the
Cobra River. Nevertheless, the boys with whom he went to school never
tired of calling him "Pirate," and would sometimes sing for his benefit
that famous catchpenny ballad beginning thus:

"Oh! my name was Captain Brand,
A-sailing,
And a-sailing;
Oh! my name was Captain Brand,
A-sailing free.
Oh! my name was Captain Brand,
And I sinned by sea and land,
For I broke God's just command,
A-sailing free."

'Twas a vile thing to sing at the grandson of so unfortunate a man, and
oftentimes Barnaby True would double up his little fists and would
fight his tormentors at great odds, and would sometimes go back home
with a bloody nose or a bruised eye to have his poor mother cry over
him and grieve for him.

Not that his days were all of teasing and torment, either; for if his
comrades did sometimes treat him so, why then there were other times
when he and they were as great friends as could be, and used to go
a-swimming together in the most amicable fashion where there was a bit of
sandy strand b