gazine, and she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer.
Water and provisions were shipped for a long voyage.

But the preparation of his ship's company was most surprising. It made
Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that
his master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or
another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the
firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port--men
whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been
ashamed to furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known
to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his
hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a
red afterglow from that great crime. He was first mate, and under him
was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell
Davies at the taking of Cape Coast Castle.

The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been
shaved, and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom
Sharkey had placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his
experiences to Copley Banks. These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet
uncommented upon in the town of Kingston. The Commandant of the
troops--Major Harvey of the Artillery--made serious representations to
the Governor.

"She is not a trader, but a small warship," said he.

"I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the
vessel."

"What do you suspect?" asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
broken down with fevers and port wine.

"I suspect," said the soldier, "that it is Stede Bonnet over again."

Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious
character who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in
his blood, had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the
Caribbean Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the
utmost consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been
accused of being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions
upon their plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
construction.

"Well, Major Harvey," said he, "I am vastly sorry to do anything which
may offend my friend Copley Banks, for many