The romance of the era of pirates continues to draw our curiousity. Yet, this history, like the wild, wild, west of Texas lasted but a short time. Read from the early stories about pirates that captured our imagination. Great for children! Originally published in 1870.
**************
Excerpt:
Ah! her captain could tell perhaps, for it might be taken for granted that there was some urgent reason for his remaining here with no possible object to gain when his cargo was stowed and the ship homeward-bound. The seamen could make nothing of it, however; and there was much grumbling forwards at this unlooked-for hitch in their departure from the land of "chin chins" and "no bony Johnny."
Jem Backstay, who was a stalwart, able-bodied seaman, and as smart a "hand" as could be found in a day's cruise, did not appear at all convinced by what his chum Bill, the boatswain, had said, for he returned again to the conversation after the latter had apparently ended it with his monosyllabic "aye."
"Lor', mate!" said he, "I thinks your old brains are wool-gathering about pirates. I've been sailing in these here China seas since I were no higher than your thumb and I never see none."
"Haven't you?" muttered the other disdainfully.
"No, never a one."
"And you've never seen none of 'em h'executed, as I have, at Canton, in batches of a dozen or more?"
"No, Bill; how does they do it?"
"Why, mate, they makes the beggars all kneel down in a row, with their hands tied behind them so that they can't put 'em up. Then a chap comes along-I s'pose he's called their Jack Ketch-and he carries a sword that's partly made like a cutlass and partly like a butcher's cleaver, with which he slices off all their heads like so many carrots."
"Lor'!"
"Yes, bo; and the funny thing is to see this executioner chap going along behind all the kneeling figures, afore he knocks their heads off, and pulling this one here and a-shovin' that one theer, so arrangin' on 'em that he can have a clean stroke when he ups with his sword."
"Lor'!" exclaimed the other on hearing this description.
"Yes, bo, it's all true as gospel what I'm a-tellin' on you. The hangman chap don't seem to make no more account of them poor devils than if they wos so many wooden dummies, like them 'Quaker guns' as they call-cos they can't hurt nobody, I s'pose-that them silly artful Chinese mounted in the Bogue forts to frighten us, as they thought, when we went to war with 'em last time, you know."
"But, talkin' about h'executions, Bill, ain't talkin' of pirates, is it, bo? P'raps those poor ignorant chaps you seed have their heads chopped off mightn't no more a' been pirates than you or I."