he office vacant.

So de Lussan shut his eyes to the tempting prospects which were spread
out before him, and preferring rather to be a live buccaneer than a dead
city treasurer, he told the beautiful widow that he could not marry her
and that he must go forth again into the hard, unsympathetic world to
fight, to burn, to steal, and to be polite. Then, fearing that if he
remained he might find his resolution weakened, he gathered together his
men and his pillage, and sadly went away, leaving behind him a joyful
town and a weeping widow.

If the affection of the young Spanish lady for the buccaneer chief was
sufficient to make her take an interest in his subsequent career, she
would probably have been proud of him, for the ladies of those days had
a high opinion of brave men and successful warriors. De Lussan soon
proved that he was not only a good fighter, but that he was also an
able general, and his operations on the western coast of South America
were more like military campaigns than ordinary expeditions of lawless
buccaneers.

He attacked and captured the city of Panama, always an attractive prize
to the buccaneer forces, and after that he marched down the western
coast of South America, conquering and sacking many towns. As he now
carried on his business in a somewhat wholesale way, it could not fail
to bring him in a handsome profit, and in the course of time he felt
that he was able to retire from the active practice of his profession
and to return to France.

But as he was going back into the circles of respectability, he wished
to do so as a respectable man. He discarded his hat and plume, he threw
away his great cutlass and his heavy pistols, and attired in the costume
of a gentleman in society he prepared himself to enter again upon his
old life. He made the acquaintance of some of the French colonial
officers in the West Indies, and obtaining from them letters of
introduction to the Treasurer-General of France, he went home as a
gentleman who had acquired a fortune by successful enterprises in the
new world.

The pirate who not only possesses a sense of propriety and a sensitive
mind, but is also gifted with an ability to write a book in which he
describes his own actions and adventures, is to be credited with unusual
advantages, and as Raveneau de Lussan possessed these advantages, he has
come down to posterity as a high-minded pirate.

Chapter XXI

Exit Buccaneer; Enter Pirate

The bucc