contributions to
our latest cult.

In all these fields Pyle's work may be equaled, surpassed, save in one.
It is improbable that anyone else will ever bring his combination of
interest and talent to the depiction of these old-time Pirates, any more
than there could be a second Remington to paint the now extinct Indians
and gun-fighters of the Great West.

Important and interesting to the student of history, the
adventure-lover, and the artist, as they are, these Pirate stories and
pictures have been scattered through many magazines and books. Here, in
this volume, they are gathered together for the first time, perhaps
not just as Mr. Pyle would have done, but with a completeness and
appreciation of the real value of the material which the author's
modesty might not have permitted. MERLE JOHNSON.

PREFACE

WHY is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly
titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to
make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this
question another--Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had,
a certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Is
there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden groundwork
of the old-time savage? Is there even in these well-regulated times an
unsubdued nature in the respectable mental household of every one of us
that still kicks against the pricks of law and order? To make my meaning
more clear, would not every boy, for instance--that is, every boy of any
account--rather be a pirate captain than a Member of Parliament? And
we ourselves--would we not rather read such a story as that of Captain
Avery's capture of the East Indian treasure ship, with its beautiful
princess and load of jewels (which gems he sold by the handful, history
sayeth, to a Bristol merchant), than, say, one of Bishop Atterbury's
sermons, or the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of
"Theodora and Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate
nature of most of us there can be but one answer to such a query.

In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales of
derring-do Nelson's battles are all mightily interesting, but, even in
spite of their romance of splendid courage, I fancy that the majority of
us would rather turn back over the leaves of history to read how Drake
captured the Spanish treasure ship in the South Sea, and of how he
divided such a quanti