nsible career to which he has been
unwillingly forced, will prove a much more angry and dangerous insect
than he had ever been before.

This is what happened to these buccaneers who would not give up a
piratical life; driven away from Jamaica, from San Domingo, and even
from Tortuga, they retained a resting-place only at New Providence, an
island in the Bahamas, and this they did not maintain very long. Then
they spread themselves all over the watery world. They were no longer
buccaneers, they were no longer brothers of any sort or kind, they no
longer set out merely to pillage and fight the Spaniards, but their
attacks were made upon people of every nation. English ships and French
ships, once safe from them, were a welcome prey to these new pirates,
unrestrained by any kind of loyalty, even by any kind of enmity. They
were more rapacious, they were more cruel, they were more like fiends
than they had ever been before. They were cowardly and they no longer
proceeded against towns which might be defended, nor ran up alongside of
a man-of-war to boldly board her in the very teeth of her guns. They
confined themselves to attacks upon peaceable merchant vessels, often
robbing them and then scuttling them, delighted with the spectacle of a
ship, with all its crew, sinking hopelessly into the sea.

The scene of piratical operations in America was now very much changed.
The successors of the Brothers of the Coast, no longer united by any
bonds of fellowship, but each pirate captain acting independently in his
own wicked way, was coming up from the West Indies to afflict the
seacoast of our country.

The old buccaneers knew all about our southern coast, for they were
among the very first white men who ever set foot on the shores of North
and South Carolina before that region had been settled by colonists, and
when the only inhabitants were the wild Indians. These early buccaneers
often used its bays and harbors as convenient ports of refuge, where
they could anchor, divide spoils, take in fresh water, and stay as long
as they pleased without fear of molestation. It was natural enough that
when the Spanish-hating buccaneer merged into the independent pirate,
who respected no flag, and preyed upon ships of every nation, he should
feel very much at home on the Carolina coasts.

As the country was settled, and Charles Town, now Charleston, grew to be
a port of considerable importance, the pirates felt as much at home in
this r