I [My Father's Secret]
II [The One-Legged Man and the Irish Maid]
III [A Caller in the Night]
IV [An Inkling of the Plot]
V [Aboard the Brig]
VI [Tall Ships and Lawless Men]
VII [Murray's Plan]
VIII [A Wicked Old Man's Dream]
IX [The Island]
X [Hostages]
XI [Peter Plays at Bowls with Destiny]
XII [The Treasure Ship]
XIII [Trouble Boards the Royal James]
XIV [The Dead Man's Chest]
XV [Suspicions]
XVI [Treachery]
XVII [The Storm]
XVIII [Disaster]
XIX [The Attack on the Stockade]
XX [Prisoners]
XXI [Flint's Way]
XXII ["Fetch aft the Rum, Darby McGraw!"]
XXIII [Cap'n Bill Bones]
XXIV [Home]
PORTO BELLO GOLD
CHAPTER I
MY FATHER'S SECRET
I was in the counting-room, talking with Peter Corlaer, the chief of our fur-traders—he was that very day come down-river from the Iroquois country—when the boy, Darby, ran in from the street.
"The Bristol packet is in, Master Robert," he cried. "And, oh, sir, the watermen do say there be a pirate ship off the Hook!"
I remember I laughed at the combination of awe and delight in his face. He was a raw, bog-trotting bit of a gossoon we had bought at the last landing of bonded folk, and he talked with a brogue that thickened whenever he grew excited.
"For the packet, I do not doubt you, Darby," I answered. "But you must show me the pirate."
Peter Corlaer chuckled in his quiet, rumbling way, his huge belly waggling before him beneath his buckskin hunting-shirt, for all the world like a monster mold of jelly.
"Ja, ja, show us der pirates," he jeered.