sailor that the captain allowed him to serve as one of the crew.  Roc knew how to do a great many things; not only could he murder and rob, but he knew how to turn an honest penny when there was no other way of filling his purse.  He had learned among the Indians how to shoot fish with bow and arrows, and on this voyage across the Atlantic he occupied all his spare time in sitting in the rigging and shooting the fish which disported themselves about the vessel.  These fish he sold to the officers, and we are told that in this way he earned no less than five hundred crowns, perhaps that many dollars.  If this account is true, fish must have been very costly in those days, but it showed plainly that if Roc had desired to get into an honest business, he would have found fish-shooting a profitable occupation.  In every way Roc behaved so well that for his sake all his men were treated kindly and allowed many privileges.

But when this party of reformed pirates reached Spain and were allowed to go where they pleased, they thought no more of the oaths they had taken to abandon piracy than they thought of the oaths which they had been in the habit of throwing right and left when they had been strolling about on the island of Jamaica.  They had no ship, and not enough money to buy one, but as soon as they could manage it they sailed back to the West Indies, and eventually found themselves in Jamaica, as bold and as bloody buccaneers as ever they had been.

Not only did Roc cast from him every thought of reformation and a respectable life, but he determined to begin the business of piracy on a grander scale than ever before.  He made a compact with an old French buccaneer, named Tributor, and with a large company of buccaneers he actually set out to take a town.  Having lost everything he possessed, and having passed such a long time without any employment more profitable than that of shooting fish with a bow and arrows, our doughty pirate now desired to make a grand strike, and if he could take a town and pillage it of everything valuable it contained, he would make a very good fortune in a very short time, and might retire, if he chose, from the active practice of his profession.

The town which Roc and Tributor determined to attack was Merida, in Yucatan, and although this was a bold and rash undertaking, the two pirates were bold and rash enough for anything.  Roc had been a prisoner in Merida, and on account of his knowledge of the town he believed that he and his followers could land upon the coast, and then quietly advance upon the town without their approach being discovered.  If they could do this, it would be an easy matter to rush upon the unsuspecting garrison, and, having annihilated these, make themselves masters of the town.