"Finally, old Pedro the First was taken sick. There was a fight, early one morning when the air was very damp, between the 'Angel' and a rich merchantman. The pirate captain got rather over-heated, during his usual duel with the captain of the merchantman, and then he foolishly sat down in a draft while he ate his breakfast. He had a bad attack of rheumatism, and it made it very hard for him to scramble over the bulwarks when he led a boarding party to the enemy's decks. The next time they put in at Rum Island the old man took his bed, dolefully predicting that his end was near.
"'Just at this season, when the plate-ships are all sailing for Spain,' he grumbled, 'I don't see what I've done to be put upon this way.'
"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 know. Black Pedro spread terror into far corners of the ocean, where neither his father nor grand-father had ever been heard of. They would have been proud indeed, if they could have seen their son. He wore a black velvet suit, with a red sash, just like his grand- father before him. That had become the official costume in the family. He had made no change in it, except to add one or two more pistols in the sash.
"One autumn, after Black Pedro the Third had been captain for about a dozen or fifteen years, 'The Angel of Death' had a terrible fight with the biggest galleon she had ever tackled,— 'The Santa Maria Sanctissima,' a ship so huge that she towered far above the pirate vessel. While the great guns were roaring, and the cannon-balls flying, Black Pedro stood amid the smoke, in his velvet suit, his black beard bristling with rage, and his face bearing an expression ten times more ferocious than his grand- father's at its worst. He noted carefully the precise moment when the scuppers were running with blood, and then gave the signal for boarding. 'The Santa Maria Sanctissima' was so high that they had to use scaling-ladders to reach her deck, but the pirates soon swarmed on board, the captain was slain by Black Pedro, the rest of the crew walked The Plank, and 'The Angel of Death' sailed back to Rum Island with her booty.
"It was the richest she had ever captured. 'The Santa Maria Sanctissima' carried an enormous cargo of gold, intended for a great castle in Spain, and it took four days to unload the treasure at the pirates' lair, and six more days to bury it in the ground. Think how they felt when the last shovelful of earth was put in, how the sense of work well done filled their breasts with satisfaction! But on that very day disaster of the most terrible kind was hanging over them, and less than twenty-four hours lay between them and dire calamity.
"Early in the evening, on the day after they had buried the last gold bar, Black Pedro sat on the veranda of his cottage, smoking his pipe. This cottage was his regular dwelling place, while he was at Rum Island. From the veranda he could look out over the bay, where 'The Angel of Death' lay at anchor. The men's quarters were down the hill, near the beach.