, they were the most hideously ruthless miscreants
that ever disgraced the earth and the sea. But their courage and
endurance were no less notable than their greed and cruelty, so that a
moral can be squeezed even out of these abandoned miscreants. The
soldiers and sailors who made their way within gunshot of Khartoum,
overcoming thirst, hunger, heat, the desert, and the gallant children of
the desert, did not fight, march, and suffer more bravely than the
scoundrels who sacked Mairaibo and burned Panama. Their good qualities
were no less astounding and exemplary than their almost incredible
wickedness. They did not lie about in hammocks much, listening to the
landward wind among the woods--the true buccaneers. To tell the truth,
most of them had no particular cause to love the human species. They
were often Europeans who had been sold into slavery on the West Indian
plantations, where they learned lessons of cruelty by suffering it. Thus
Mr. Joseph Esquemeling, our historian, was beaten, tortured, and nearly
starved to death in Tortuga, "so I determined, not knowing how to get any
living, to enter into the order of the pirates or robbers of the sea."
The poor Indians of the isles, much pitied by Kingsley's buccaneer, had a
habit of sticking their prisoners all over with thorns, wrapped in oily
cotton, whereto they then set fire. "These cruelties many Christians
have seen while they lived among these barbarians." Mr. Esquemeling was
to see, and inflict, plenty of this kind of torment, which was not out of
the way nor unusual. One planter alone had killed over a hundred of his
servants--"the English did the same with theirs."

A buccaneer voyage began in stealing a ship, collecting desperadoes, and
torturing the local herdsmen till they gave up their masters' flocks,
which were salted as provisions. Articles of service were then drawn up,
on the principle "no prey, no pay." The spoils, when taken, were loyally
divided as a rule, though Captain Morgan, of Wales, made no more scruple
about robbing his crew than about barbecuing a Spanish priest. "They are
very civil and charitable to each other, so that if any one wants what
another has, with great willingness they give it to one another." In
other matters they did not in the least resemble the early Christians. A
fellow nick-named The Portuguese may be taken as our first example of
their commendable qualities.

With a small ship of four guns he had taken a