hat's your name?" asked my black keeper,
as he made me sit down on the bits of the bowsprit.

"Peter, at your service, Mr Mark Anthony," said I in as fearless a
voice as I could command; for having once taken a line of conduct which
seemed to answer well, I determined to persevere in it.

"Den, Massa Peter, you sit dere quiet," he said with a grin. "I no
break your skull, because Captain Hawk break mine if I do. I no let
anybody else hurt you for same reason."

From his look and voice I certainly did not flatter myself that he
refrained from throwing me overboard from any love he bore me; but, on
the contrary, that he would have been much more gratefully employed in
making me walk the plank, or in tricing me up to the foreyard.

Meantime the pirates were busily employed in ransacking the vessel, and
in transferring everything of value to them which they could find from
her to their own schooner. The captain and mates were threatened with
instant death if they did not deliver up all the money they had on
board; and even the crew were compelled to hand over to our captors the
small sums they possessed. To make them do this, they were knocked
about and beaten unmercifully. And even those who possessed watches and
rings were deprived of them, as well as of any clothes which appeared
worth taking.

I had often read the history of pirates and of their bold exploits, till
I almost fancied that I should like to become one, or, at all events,
that I should like to encounter them. But I can assure my friends that
the reality was very different to the fiction; and as the hideous black
was standing over me, ready every moment to knock out my brains, and my
companions were suffering all sorts of ill-treatment, I most heartily
wished that such gentry as pirates had not been allowed to exist.

Though I tried to look as indifferent as possible, the black would have
observed me trembling, had he not been watching to see what his friends
were about, no doubt eager to obtain his share of the plunder. The work
the pirates were engaged in went on for some time, till even they had
tolerably satiated their eagerness for booty; and then I fully expected
to see them either heave my shipmates overboard as food for the sharks
alongside, or hang them at the yardarms, and then set the ship on fire,
as Mark Anthony insinuated, for my satisfaction, that they would do.
Instead of this, to my surprise Captain Hawk went up to Captain Searle,