all the civilized world of law and order, have
had much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black
flag. But it is not altogether courage and daring that endear him to
our hearts. There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that
lust for wealth that makes one's fancy revel more pleasantly in the
story of the division of treasure in the pirate's island retreat, the
hiding of his godless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic
beach, there to remain hidden until the time should come to rake the
doubloons up again and to spend them like a lord in polite society,
than in the most thrilling tales of his wonderful escapes from
commissioned cruisers through tortuous channels between the coral
reefs.

And what a life of adventure is his, to be sure! A life of constant
alertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, he
wanders forever aimlessly, homelessly; now unheard of for months, now
careening his boat on some lonely uninhabited shore, now appearing
suddenly to swoop down on some merchant vessel with rattle of
musketry, shouting, yells, and a hell of unbridled passions let loose
to rend and tear. What a Carlislean hero! What a setting of blood and
lust and flame and rapine for such a hero!

Piracy, such as was practiced in the flower of its days--that is,
during the early eighteenth century--was no sudden growth. It was an
evolution, from the semilawful buccaneering of the sixteenth century,
just as buccaneering was upon its part, in a certain sense, an
evolution from the unorganized, unauthorized warfare of the Tudor
period.

For there was a deal of piratical smack in the anti-Spanish ventures
of Elizabethan days. Many of the adventurers--of the Sir Francis Drake
school, for instance--actually overstepped again and again the bounds
of international law, entering into the realms of _de facto_ piracy.
Nevertheless, while their doings were not recognized officially by the
government, the perpetrators were neither punished nor reprimanded for
their excursions against Spanish commerce at home or in the West
Indies; rather were they commended, and it was considered not
altogether a discreditable thing for men to get rich upon the spoils
taken from Spanish galleons in times of nominal peace. Many of the
most reputable citizens and merchants of London, when they felt that
the queen failed in her duty of pushing the fight against the great
Catholic Power, fitted out fleets upon their