The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Pirate Hoard, by Thomas A. Janvier

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Title: Our Pirate Hoard
1891

Author: Thomas A. Janvier

Release Date: December 10, 2007 [EBook #23804]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR PIRATE HOARD ***

Produced by David Widger

OUR PIRATE HOARD.

By Thomas A. Janvier

Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers

I

My great-great-great-uncle was one of the many sturdy, honest,
high-spirited men to whom the early years of the last century gave
birth. He was a brave man and a ready fighter, yet was he ever
controlled in his actions by so nice a regard for the feelings of
others, and through the strong fibre of his hardy nature ran a strain
of such almost womanly gentleness and tenderness, that throughout
the rather exceptionally wide circle of his acquaintance he was very
generally beloved.

By profession he was a pirate, and although it is not becoming in me,
perhaps, to speak boastingly of a blood-relation, I would be doing his
memory injustice did I not add that he was one of the ablest and most
successful pirates of his time. His usual cruising-ground was between
the capes of the Chesapeake and the lower end of Long Island; yet now
and then, as opportunity offered, he would take a run to the New England
coast, and in winter he frequently would drop down to the s'uthard and
do a good stroke of business off the Spanish Main. His home station,
however, was the Delaware coast, and his family lived in Lewes, being
quite the upper crust of Lewes society as it then was constituted. When
his schooner, the _Martha Ann_, was off duty, she usually was harbored
in Rehoboth Bay. That was a pretty good harbor for pirate schooners in
those days.

My great-great-great-uncle threw himself into his profession in the
hearty fashion that was to be expected from a man of his sincere,
earnest character. He toiled early and late at sea, and on shore he
regulated the affairs of his family so that his expenses should be well
within his large though somewhat fluctuating income; and the result of
his prudence in affairs was that he saved the greater portion of what he