How had this almost baronial magnificence come to be in this far-away corner of a desert island?  At first I concluded that here was a relic of the brief colonial prosperity of the Bahamas, when its cotton lords lived like princes, with a slave population for retainers—­days when even the bootblacks in Nassau played pitch-and-toss with gold pieces; but as I considered further, it seemed to me that the style of the architecture and the age of the building suggested an earlier date.  Could it be that this had been the home of one of those early eighteenth-century pirates who took pride in flaunting the luxury and pomp of princes, and who had perhaps made this his headquarters and stronghold for the storage of his loot on the return from his forays on the Spanish Main?  This, as the more spirited conjecture, I naturally preferred, and, in default of exact information, decided to accept.

Who knows but that in this hall where the iguana lurked and the ants laboured at their commonwealth, the redoubtable “Blackbeard”—­known in private life as Edward Teach—­had held his famous “Satanic” revels, decked out in the absurd finery of crimson damask waistcoat and breeches, a red feather in his hat, and a diamond cross hanging from a gold chain at his neck?  There, perhaps, glass in hand, and “doxy on his knee,” he had roared out many a blood-curdling ditty in the choice society of ruffians only less ruffianly than himself.  Perhaps, too, this other spacious building adjacent to the great hall, and connected with it by a ruinous covered way, had been the sybarite’s “harem”; for “Blackbeard”—­like that other famous gentleman whose beard was blue—­collected from his unfortunate captive ships treasure other than doubloons and pieces of eight, and prided himself on his fine taste in ladies.

The more I pondered upon this fancy, and remarked the extent of the ruins—­including several subsidiary out-houses—­and noted, too, one or two choked stone staircases that seemed to descend into the bowels of the earth, the more plausible it seemed.  In one or two places where I suspected underground cellars—­dungeons for unhappy captives belike, or strong vaults for the storage of the treasure—­I tested the floors by dropping heavy stones, and they seemed unmistakably to reverberate with a hollow rumbling sound; but I could find no present way of getting down into them.  As I said, the staircases that promised an entrance into them were choked with debris.  But I promised myself to come some other day, with pick and shovel, and make an attempt at exploring them.

Meanwhile, after poking about in as much of the ruins as I could penetrate, I stepped out through a gap in one of the walls and found myself again on the path by which I had entered.  I noticed that it still ran on farther north, as having a destination beyond.  So leaving the haunted ruins behind, I pushed on, and had gone but a short distance when the path began to descend slightly from the ridge on