dungeon for seventeen months.

DE SOTO, BERNADO.

One of the crew of the schooner _Panda_ that took and plundered the Salem
brig _Mexican_. The crew of the _Panda_ were captured by an English
man-of-war and taken to Boston. De Soto was condemned to death, but
eventually fully pardoned owing to his heroic conduct in rescuing the crew
of an American vessel some time previously.

DE SOTO, CAPTAIN BENITO.

A Portuguese.

A most notorious pirate in and about 1830.

In 1827 he shipped at Buenos Ayres as mate in a slaver, named the
_Defenser de Pedro_, and plotted to seize the ship off the African coast.
The pirates took the cargo of slaves to the West Indies, where they sold
them. De Soto plundered many vessels in the Caribbean Sea, then sailed to
the South Atlantic, naming his ship the _Black Joke_. The fear of the
_Black Joke_ became so great amongst the East Indiamen homeward bound that
they used to make up convoys at St. Helena before heading north.

In 1832 de Soto attacked the _Morning Star_, an East Indiaman, and took
her, when he plundered the ship and murdered the captain. After taking
several more ships, de Soto lost his own on the rocky coast of Spain, near
Cadiz. His crew, although pretending to be honest shipwrecked sailors,
were arrested, but de Soto managed to escape to Gibraltar. Here he was
recognized by a soldier who had seen de Soto when he took the _Morning
Star_, in which he had been a passenger. The pirate was arrested, and
tried before Sir George Don, the Governor of Gibraltar, and sentenced to
death. He was sent to Cadiz to be hanged with the rest of his crew. The
gallows was erected at the water's edge, and de Soto, with his coffin, was
conveyed there in a cart. He died bravely, arranging the noose around his
own neck, stepping up into his coffin to do so; then, crying out, "Adios
todos," he threw himself off the cart.

This man must not be confused with one Bernado de Soto, who was tried for
piracy at Boston in 1834.

SOUND, JOSEPH.

Of the city of Westminster.

Hanged, at the age of 28, at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1723.

SPARKS, JAMES.

A Newfoundland fisherman.

In August, 1723, with John Phillips and three others, ran away with a
vessel to go "on the account." Sparks was appointed gunner.

SPARKES, JOHN.

A member of Captain Avery's crew, and described by one of his shipmates as
being "a true cock of the game." A thief, he robbed his fellow-shipmates,
and from one,