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During the autumn of this year the Bay of Fundy was so infested with pirates and picaroons that the war vessels Vulture, Hope and Albany were ordered around from Halifax. They were not entirely successful in their endeavor to furnish protection, for the privateers frequently managed to steal past the large ships in the night and in fogs and continued to pillage the defenceless inhabitants.
And in the middle of the Jew's Mouth, which was a scant six hundred yards across at its widest, the Folly Bay No. 5 swung on her anchor chain. A tubby cannery tender lay alongside. The crews were busy with picaroons forking salmon out of the seiner into the tender's hold. The flip-flop of the fish sounded distinctly in that quiet place.
Indeed, I had begun to fancy that I had got among real pirates, for these gentry were not uncommon at the time, and I am certain a gang of picaroons would not have been one whit more vulgar and brutal than were the crews of the Pandora.
"The fact, incredible as it may appear," said the writers, "seeming to be that the nest of these Picaroons is actually within the loyal dominions of the Spanish Crown." If Spain, our press said, resented our recognition of South American independence, let it do so openly, not by countenancing criminals. It was unworthy of a great nation.
The stone on which the senorita had been sitting was supposed to have been the throne of their chief. A ferocious band they were, without the fear of God or devil mostly English. The Rio Medio picaroons had used this cavern, occasionally, up to a year or so ago. But there were always ugly affairs with the people on the estate the vaqueros.
"Supreme chief of thieves and picaroons," I suggested again. He answered this by a gesture of disdainful superiority. "I wonder if you -if any of you English would have the courage to risk your all ambition, pride, position, wealth, peace of mind, your dearest hope, your self-respect like this. For an idea."
As the weather was beautifully fine, with our convoy bowling along under every rag of canvas they could spread, and no sign of any lurking picaroons in our neighbourhood, the skipper had our course altered, so as to give the strange object an overhaul.
They could never keep Babe more than one night at a camp for he would eat in one day all the feed one crew could tote to camp in a year. For a snack between meals he would eat fifty bales of hay, wire and all and six men with picaroons were kept busy picking the wire out of his teeth.
From the discourse, I gathered that the proceedings of these picaroons were often equivocal, and that Americans were generally left in doubt, until a favourable moment occurred for the semi-pirates to effect their purposes. The party assailed did not know when or how to defend himself, until it was too late.
She had been used to strange company all her life, and ever since her childhood, on her brief visits to her father's cabin, she had been accustomed to his cronies, lean, brown, scarred pirates and picaroons, full of strange Spanish oaths. "You will not mention this in letters to your mother," ordered Gallito, glooming at her with fierce eyes. "You know her. Caramba!