pirate soul had ever dreamed of before. But
it was not often that one of these great ships was taken, and for a time
the results of Spanish robbery and cruelty were safely carried to Spain.

But it was very hard to get the better of the buccaneers; their lives
and their fortunes depended upon this boom, and if in one way they could
not get the gold out of the Spaniards, which the latter got out of the
natives, they would try another. When the miners in the gold fields find
they can no longer wash out with their pans a paying quantity of the
precious metal, they go to work on the rocks and break them into pieces
and crush them into dust; so, when the buccaneers found it did not pay
to devote themselves to capturing Spanish gold on its transit across the
ocean, many of them changed their methods of operation and boldly
planned to seize the treasures of their enemy before it was put upon the
ships.

Consequently, the buccaneers formed themselves into larger bodies
commanded by noted leaders, and made attacks upon the Spanish
settlements and towns. Many of these were found nearly defenceless, and
even those which boasted fortifications often fell before the reckless
charges of the buccaneers. The pillage, the burning, and the cruelty on
shore exceeded that which had hitherto been known on the sea. There is
generally a great deal more in a town than there is in a ship, and the
buccaneers proved themselves to be among the most outrageous, exacting,
and cruel conquerors ever known in the world. They were governed by no
laws of warfare; whatever they chose to do they did. They respected
nobody, not even themselves, and acted like wild beasts, without the
disposition which is generally shown by a wild beast, to lie down and go
to sleep when he has had enough.

There were times when it seemed as though it would be safer for a man
who had a regard for his life and comfort, to sail upon a pirate ship
instead of a Spanish galleon, or to take up his residence in one of the
uncivilized communities of Tortuga or Jamaica, instead of settling in a
well-ordered Spanish-American town with its mayor, its officials, and
its garrison.

It was a very strange nation of marine bandits which had thus sprung
into existence on these faraway waters; it was a nation of grown-up men,
who existed only for the purpose of carrying off that which other people
were taking away; it was a nation of second-hand robbers, who carried
their operations to su