the table, and sat themselves upon
the benches, while the drawers, or potboys, in their shirts, drew near
to take the orders. I wonder if the reader has ever heard a sailor in
the like circumstance, five minutes after he has touched his pay,
address a company of parasites in an inn with the question: "What's it
going to be?"

After the settlement of Jamaica by the English, the buccaneers became
more enterprising. One buccaneer captain, the most remarkable of all of
them, a man named Mansvelt, probably a Dutchman from Curacoa, attempted
to found a pirate settlement upon the island of Santa Katalina, or Old
Providence. Mansvelt was a fortunate sea-captain, with considerable
charm of manner. He was popular with the buccaneers, and had a name
among them, for he was the first of them to cross the isthmus and to
sail the South Sea. His South-Sea cruise had come to little, for
provisions ran short, and his company had been too small to attempt a
Spanish town. He had, therefore, retreated to the North Sea to his
ships, and had then gone cruising northward along the Nicaragua coast
as far as the Blewfields River. From this point he stood away to the
island of Santa Katalina, or Old Providence--an island about six miles
long, with an excellent harbour, which, he thought, might easily be
fortified. A smaller island lies directly to the north of it, separated
from it by a narrow channel of the sea. Twenty years before his visit it
had been the haunt of an old captain of the name of Blewfields, who had
made it his base while his men went logwood cutting on the mainland.
Blewfields was now dead, either of rum or war, and the Spaniards had
settled there, and had built themselves a fort or castle to command the
harbour. Having examined the place, Mansvelt sailed away to Jamaica to
equip a fleet to take it. He saw that the golden times which the
buccaneers were then enjoying could not last for ever, and that their
occupation might be wrecked by a single ill-considered treaty, dated
from St James's or the Court of France. He thought that the islands
should be seized as a general rendezvous for folk of that way of life.
With a little trouble the harbour could be made impregnable. The land
was good, and suited for the growing of maize or tobacco--the two
products most in demand among them. The islands were near the Main,
being only thirty-five leagues from the Chagres River, the stream from
which the golden harvest floated from the cities