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It is true one could continue on Spanish territory from Genoa, which was Spain's watergate into Italy, across the Mont Cenis Pass, and through Savoy, Burgundy, Lorraine, and Luxembourg to Brussels, and it was by this route that Parma's splendid army of 10,000 "Blackbeards" came in 1577. But this was an arduous three months' march for troops and still more difficult for supplies.

"Makkay needs none of his own warriors when he comes in peace. If he came in war the terrible Blackbeards with him would cause the whole forest to fly apart in smoke and flame. Since he walks in peace to visit his friend Umanuh, of whose wisdom he has heard, he brings only his friends the Mayorunas, who are friends also to the men of the Red Bones." Another pause.

"It has come to the ears of Makkay," Lourenço informed the man of Umanuh, "that a man of the Blackbeards lives among the men of the Red Bones. Makkay would see that man." Again the interpreter awaited his master's voice before answering. "No man of the Blackbeards is among the men of Umanuh," he then denied. "If he is not among them he is near them," was Lourenço's certain reply.

"He has been seen both by other Blackbeards and by the Mayorunas. I, too, have seen him. He bears on his bones the sign that his mind is out of his skull. His eyes are green and his hair touched with white. Umanuh and his men know well that I speak true." The pause this time was longer than before. "There was such a man, but he is gone." "Then Makkay asks his friend Umanuh to find that one.

There was not wanting, too, a spirit of lawlessness in the English America, curiously in contrast with the law-abiding character of the Non-conformist colonizations. Along the seaboard wild pirates nestled, skimmers of the seas of the most daring type, worthy brethren of the Kidds, the Blackbeards, and the Teaches, terrors of the merchantman and the well-disposed emigrant.

The masterbuilder's hands had not yet put the craft into seaworthy condition when she was overhauled by these Kidds and Blackbeards of the press.

As Schwandorf yanked it back for another thrust McKay struck it away with one hand and, without drawing his own steel, jumped again at his assailant. An instant later the two blackbeards were clenched in a death grapple. Schwandorf found his long knife useless and dropped it. He strove for a back-breaking hold, but found it blocked.

He would take the project to certain money-loving souls; he would get their opinions by asking their aid. Mr. Harley went to New York and called about him a quintette of gentlemen, each of whom had been with him and Senator Hanway in more than one affair of shady profit. Mankind does not change, its methods change, and trade has still its Kidds and Blackbeards.

"Umanuh, great chief, eater of his enemies, with fangs of the jaguar and wisdom of the great snake, awaits the greeting of the one-whose-hair grows-from-his-mouth," droned the old mouthpiece of the chief. "Makkay, leader of the fighting men of the Blackbeards, whose voice is the thunder and whose hand spits lightning and death, gives greeting to Umanuh," responded Lourenço in a like droning tone.