re pearls enow to be had out of
the oysters--unless there be lawyers down below--ay, and pearls, too, in
dead men's skulls, and emerald and diamond gimmels on skeleton hands,
among the sea-weed, sand, and the many-coloured pebbles of the great
Ocean.

There are those who call me an old Pirate. Let them. I was never in
trouble with the Admiralty Court. I can pass Execution Dock without
turning pale. And no one can gainsay me when I aver that I have
faithfully served his Majesty King George, and was always a true friend
to the Protestant succession.

There has been a mighty talk, too, about my turning Turk. Why should not
I, if I could not Help it? Better to read the Koran, than to sing the
Black Sanctus. Better to serve Mahound than Bungy's dog. I never Turned
my Tippet, as some fine gentlemen who have never seen Constantinople
have done. I never changed my Principles, although I was a Bashaw with
three tails. Better to have three tails than to be a Rat with only one.
And, let me tell you, it is a mighty fine thing to be a Bashaw, and to
have as many purses full of Sequins and Aspers as there are days in the
year.

I should have been hanged long ago, should I--hanged for a Pirate, a
Spy, and a Renegade? Well, I have escaped the bow-string in a country
where hundreds die of Sore Throat every day, and I can afford to laugh
at any prospect of a wych round my weasand in mine old age. Sword of
Damocles, forsooth! why my life has been hanging on a cobweb any time
these fifty years; and here I am at Sixty-Eight safe and sound, with a
whole Liver and a stout Heart, and a bottle of wine to give a Friend,
and a house of mine own in Hanover Square.

I write this in the great Front Parlour, which I have converted into a
library, study, and counting-room. The year of our Lord is seventeen
hundred and eighty. His Majesty's subjects have lost eleven
days--through some Roguery in high places, you may be sure--since I was
a young man; and were I a cocksloch, I might grudge that snipping off of
the best part of a fortnight from an Old Man's life. It may be, indeed,
that Providence, which has always been good to me, will add eleven
days--yea, and twice eleven--to the dwindling span of poor old John
Dangerous. I have many Mercies to be thankful for; of sins likewise
without blin, and grievous ones, there may be a long list that I shall
have to account for; but I can say that I never killed a man in cold
blood, that I never wilfully wro