“He got worse and worse, however, and the best doctors shook their heads over his case.  He called in his son and grandson, and old Aaron Halyard, the bo’s’n,—­the same one who came so near to botching everything in the first fight.  He said good-bye to them all, and gave some good advice to the youngest Pedro,—­who was a fine, promising boy, by this time.  Then he passed away, and they gave him the biggest funeral that had ever been seen on Rum Island.

“Of course, Black Pedro the Second took up the work right where the old pirate had left it.  It was the season when the galleons were starting for Spain, loaded down with gold, and as soon as the funeral was over, the ‘Angel’ sailed on her regular autumn trip.  Some of the Spanish captains had heard of the death of old Pedro, and so they weren’t quite as cautious as they should have been.  They found out their mistake very quick, however, and the ‘Angel’ had a most profitable voyage.  Gold and silver from the mines of Peru, diamonds from Brazil, rubies and other kinds of precious stones,—­oh, I tell you, the pirates sailed back to Rum Island that winter, chuckling with glee at the thought of the wealth they had won.  They had with them the Governor General of the Antilles, a Spanish grandee of the very highest kind.  They held him for ransom, and made the King of Spain pay fifty thousand dollars to get him back.  ‘The Angel of Death’ got to be such a scourge of the seas that half a dozen men-of-war were sent out by England, Spain and Portugal to try to catch her.  But she was the fleetest ship on the ocean, and she always gave them the slip.  Once she got caught in a tight place, between Rum Island and Alligator Key.  The pursuer was a Portuguese man-of-war, and the pirate vessel turned and fought so fiercely that the enemy was put to flight.

“So it went on for many years.  The boy, Pedro, had worked his way up, by sheer merit—­no favoritism—­until he was now first mate.  Then it came his father’s turn to pass on, as the first Pedro had passed.  The ‘Angel’ had put in at Alligator Key, for a few weeks one summer, and while they were there some friend presented the captain with a water-melon.  He ate it at supper that night, and as it was unripe, it disagreed with him.  Several glasses of ice-water, which he drank with the melon, had the effect of making him still worse.  Next morning another of the Pedros was gone, and Pedro the Third was now captain of ‘The Angel of Death’ and leader of the pirate crew.”

Mr. Daddles paused in his story and came and sat down with Ed and me in the cock-pit.

“When ‘The Angel of Death’ sailed on her next trip, she was probably the most dangerous pirate ship that was ever afloat.  You see they were all of them experienced men.  They had years of practice behind them.  They knew their ship, and they knew the ocean.  There wasn’t a shoal or a passage, an inlet or a creek from one end of the Spanish Main to the other that they didn’t