'Up aloft! up aloft!' our gallant captain cried;
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we.
'Look ahead, look astern, look aweather, look alee,'
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.
'Oh, I've seen on ahead, and I've seen on astern,'
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
'And I see a ragged wind and a lofty ship at sea,'
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.
'Ahoy! ship ahoy!' our gallant captain cried,
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
'Are you a man-of-war, or a privateer?' says he;
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.
'Oh! I am no man-of-war or privateer,' says he,
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
'But I am a jolly pirate seeking for my fee,'
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.
"This is the picture of the pirate ship and the fight. Captain Kidd has cut off the head of one of the men who boarded his ship. One of his men is firing a cannon, the rest of his crew may be seen between-decks.
'Twas broadside to broadside, so quickly then came we;
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
Until the Princess Charlotte shot her masts into the sea,
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.
Then 'Quarter! oh, quarter!' the pirate captain cried;
Blow high, blow low, so sailed we;
But the quarters that we gave them were down beneath the sea,
Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.
"Grandfather called it the story of Captain Kidd, because he thought he must have been the pirate whose ship the Princess Charlotte sunk. Captain Kidd was taken to London and hanged in chains, and I've made a picture of that too."
Emma Jane hardly approved of the sanguinary spirit displayed by these drawings, but she could not expect that the boy's antecedents and surroundings would produce an angel. She endeavored to draw his attention to gentler subjects for his pencil, recited tender and loving ballads, and changed the current of the boy's thought and aspiration, realizing that here was material which, in the fostering atmosphere of Rickett's Court, might easily develop into an anarchist—a menace to the state.
The Sandy girls were the last to be received from the court. The father had been a truckman, but a heavy box had fallen upon him, and he had lived in pain and misery for a year and had then died. Mrs. Sandy, by making men's clothing, managed to keep the wolf from the door—no, only snarling at the door with fierce, hungry eyes. All of her six children helped her. The oldest girl did the ironing and finishing; the next child, a boy, carried the great bundles back and forth in the intervals of his profession as a bootblack; the second girl did all of their poor housework; the twins sewed on buttons and pulled out basting threads, and the youngest boy sold newspapers, while Mrs. Sandy herself ran the sewing-machine ten or twelve hours in the day.