ce blue eyes, a tangled lion's mane of coarse, dark hair,
and huge gold rings in his ears, he was the idol of the women in every
waterside hell from the Tortugas to Maracaibo on the Main. A red cap,
a blue silken shirt, brown velvet breeches with gaudy knee-ribbons, and
high sea-boots made up the costume of the rover Hercules.

A very different figure was Captain John Sharkey. His thin, drawn,
clean-shaven face was corpse-like in its pallor, and all the suns of the
Indies could but turn it to a more deathly parchment tint. He was
part bald, with a few lank locks of tow-like hair, and a steep, narrow
forehead. His thin nose jutted sharply forth, and near-set on either
side of it were those filmy blue eyes, red-rimmed like those of a white
bull-terrier, from which strong men winced away in fear and loathing.
His bony hands, with long, thin fingers which quivered ceaselessly like
the antennae of an insect, were toying constantly with the cards and the
heap of gold moidores which lay before him. His dress was of some sombre
drab material, but, indeed, the men who looked upon that fearsome face
had little thought for the costume of its owner.

The game was brought to a sudden interruption, for the cabin door was
swung rudely open, and two rough fellows--Israel Martin, the boatswain,
and Red Foley, the gunner--rushed into the cabin. In an instant Sharkey
was on his feet with a pistol in either hand and murder in his eyes.

"Sink you for villains!" he cried. "I see well that if I do not shoot
one of you from time to time you will forget the man I am. What mean you
by entering my cabin as though it were a Wapping alehouse?"

"Nay, Captain Sharkey," said Martin, with a sullen frown upon his
brick-red face, "it is even such talk as this which has set us by the
ears. We have had enough of it."

"And more than enough," said Red Foley, the gunner. "There be no
mates aboard a pirate craft, and so the boatswain, the gunner, and the
quarter-master are the officers."

"Did I gainsay it?" asked Sharkey with an oath.

"You have miscalled us and mishandled us before the men, and we scarce
know at this moment why we should risk our lives in fighting for the
cabin and against the foc'sle."

Sharkey saw that something serious was in the wind. He laid down his
pistols and leaned back in his chair with a flash of his yellow fangs.

"Nay, this is sad talk," said he, "that two stout fellows who have
emptied many a bottle and cut many a t