He himself knew a great deal about the pirates, and, singularly
unbending from his normal, stiff taciturnity, he began telling of what
he knew, particularly of Captain Scarfield--in whom he appeared to take
an extraordinary interest.

Vastly to Mainwaring's surprise, the old Quaker assumed the position
of a defendant of the pirates, protesting that the wickedness of the
accused was enormously exaggerated. He declared that he knew some of the
freebooters very well and that at the most they were poor, misdirected
wretches who had, by easy gradation, slid into their present evil ways,
from having been tempted by the government authorities to enter into
privateering in the days of the late war. He conceded that Captain
Scarfield had done many cruel and wicked deeds, but he averred that he
had also performed many kind and benevolent actions. The world made no
note of these latter, but took care only to condemn the evil that had
been done. He acknowledged that it was true that the pirate had allowed
his crew to cast lots for the wife and the daughter of the skipper of
the Northern Rose, but there were none of his accusers who told how,
at the risk of his own life and the lives of all his crew, he had given
succor to the schooner Halifax, found adrift with all hands down with
yellow fever. There was no defender of his actions to tell how he and
his crew of pirates had sailed the pest-stricken vessel almost into the
rescuing waters of Kingston harbor. Eleazer confessed that he could not
deny that when Scarfield had tied the skipper of the Baltimore Belle
naked to the foremast of his own brig he had permitted his crew of
cutthroats (who were drunk at the time) to throw bottles at the helpless
captive, who died that night of the wounds he had received. For this
he was doubtless very justly condemned, but who was there to praise him
when he had, at the risk of his life and in the face of the authorities,
carried a cargo of provisions which he himself had purchased at Tampa
Bay to the Island of Bella Vista after the great hurricane of 1818? In
this notable adventure he had barely escaped, after a two days' chase,
the British frigate Ceres, whose captain, had a capture been effected,
would instantly have hung the unfortunate man to the yardarm in spite of
the beneficent mission he was in the act of conducting.

In all this Eleazer had the air of conducting the case for the
defendant. As he talked he became more and more animated and