In that time, however, the pirates had well-nigh gone crazy for joy; for when they came to examine their purchase they discovered her cargo to consist of plate to the prodigious sum of L130,000 in value.  ’Twas a wonder they did not all make themselves drunk for joy.  No doubt they would have done so had not Captain Morgan, knowing they were still in the exact track of the Spanish fleets, threatened them that the first man among them who touched a drop of rum without his permission he would shoot him dead upon the deck.  This threat had such effect that they all remained entirely sober until they had reached Port Royal Harbor, which they did about nine o’clock in the morning.

And now it was that our hero’s romance came all tumbling down about his ears with a run.  For they had hardly come to anchor in the harbor when a boat came from a man-of-war, and who should come stepping aboard but Lieutenant Grantley (a particular friend of our hero’s father) and his own eldest brother Thomas, who, putting on a very stern face, informed Master Harry that he was a desperate and hardened villain who was sure to end at the gallows, and that he was to go immediately back to his home again.  He told our embryo pirate that his family had nigh gone distracted because of his wicked and ungrateful conduct.  Nor could our hero move him from his inflexible purpose.  “What,” says our Harry, “and will you not then let me wait until our prize is divided and I get my share?”

“Prize, indeed!” says his brother.  “And do you then really think that your father would consent to your having a share in this terrible bloody and murthering business?”

And so, after a good deal of argument, our hero was constrained to go; nor did he even have an opportunity to bid adieu to his inamorata.  Nor did he see her any more, except from a distance, she standing on the poop-deck as he was rowed away from her, her face all stained with crying.  For himself, he felt that there was no more joy in life; nevertheless, standing up in the stern of the boat, he made shift, though with an aching heart, to deliver her a fine bow with the hat he had borrowed from the Spanish captain, before his brother bade him sit down again.

And so to the ending of this story, with only this to relate, that our Master Harry, so far from going to the gallows, became in good time a respectable and wealthy sugar merchant with an English wife and a fine family of children, whereunto, when the mood was upon him, he has sometimes told these adventures (and sundry others not here recounted) as I have told them unto you.

II.  TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX

An Old-time Story of the Days of Captain Kidd.

To tell about Tom Chist, and how he got his name, and how he came to be living at the little settlement of Henlopen, just inside the mouth of the Delaware Bay, the story must begin as far back as 1686, when a great storm swept the Atlantic coast from end to end.  During the heaviest part of the hurricane a bark went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals, just below Cape Henlopen and at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, and Tom Chist was the only soul of all those on board the ill-fated vessel who escaped alive.