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A great vessel that they had taken with the town of Maracaibo was converted into a fire ship, manned with logs of wood in montera caps and sailor jackets, and filled with brimstone, pitch, and palm leaves soaked in oil. Then out of the lake the pirates sailed to meet the Spaniards, the fire ship leading the way, and bearing down directly upon the admiral's vessel.
"If they had seen and chased us," the pirates would have landed, trusting to the local Indians to make good their escape over the isthmus. After twelve days of sailing they anchored about twenty miles from the San Miguel Gulf, in order to clean their arms, and dry their clothes and powder, before proceeding up the river, by the way they had come.
In this case there was no chance of cutting down sentinels, or jumping overboard with a couple of wine-jars for a life-preserver, or of doing any of those ordinary things which pirates were in the habit of doing when escaping from their captors.
On the other hand sternness was wanting in those cases where it would have been in place, as in dealing with the barbarians on the frontiers and with the pirates. When the central government renounced all superintendence and all oversight of provincial affairs, it entirely abandoned not only the interests of the subjects, but also those of the state, to the governor of the day.
"Seignior," said I, "I am a little concerned at your mentioning pirates; I hope there are none such in these seas, because you see in what weak condition we are to defend ourselves."
Paddy did not much mind, however. He rubbed himself over, and finding that he had no bones broken, or any puncture in his body, burst into a loud laugh. "I shouldn't be surprised but that those are the very fellows with the long beards we saw standing at the top of the ramparts, and whom everybody took for pirates," he exclaimed.
One is forced to the conclusion that the Arabian Nights stories of the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor were founded on a bed-rock of solid fact, and that Persian and Arab merchants, pirates and slave-traders, must have penetrated into these far-off waters, and brought their vile, effeminate luxury and shameful customs with them from Asia, of which transplanted iniquity, the parent soil half-forgotten, this word, like several others connected with revelry and vice, like a text in scarlet lettering, survives to this day.
I guessed that they were pirates, and my heart fell as I remembered what manner of men they were haters of all their God, their king, their fellow-men and how, in consequence, the hand of man was against their hand, as their hand was against man's. Where were the other men I had seen?
I tell you, sir, that it is my judgment that this whole section of coast line is rich in gold. Not only did those pirates bury gold here, but, during the Civil War, the Confederate blockade runners, when fearing capture, were known repeatedly to throw gold into the sea along the beach, sometimes by the keg full; and not one dollar's worth of it has ever yet been recovered, so far as I can learn.
So Mr Magor told me; and the survivors were all so weak, that he could not have brought the vessel home had he not shipped six Kroomen. He had also a narrow escape from pirates, who actually boarded his vessel, when a man-of-war heaving in sight, they made off without plundering her or killing any one." "Bless my heart! I'm sorry to hear about Captain Rig's death.
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