“These sheets,” said Reeves, “which are but clean copies of the time-worn ones I have in my possession at home, date back, as far as I can find out, for about two hundred years. These papers are, in reality, excerpts from the log of my ancestor, a Spaniard of the name of Miguel Bassanto.
“They are without consecutive dates, and it is my own impression that they were written after and not during the terrible adventures and wild, stormy voyages in which he took part.
“I may tell you at once that his life at sea was intimately connected with that of several pirates, but notably that of Morgan.
“Let him speak for himself. I have changed the style of English, however.
“‘When I landed from a small trading sloop at the English port of Bristol,’ he says, ‘all my worldly goods were contained in a bundle slung over my shoulder on a stick. I was but fifteen years of age, though strong and wiry. I was very innocent too.
“‘Not very many weeks before this I had bidden farewell to a loving mother and a dear little sister, whom, alas! as things turned out, I was doomed never, never to see again. We had been very well-to-do when I was younger, but misfortunes had overwhelmed us after my dear father ventured on speculations. Then grief brought about his end.
“‘Work of a remunerative kind I failed to find in Cadiz. But I met one evening some young English officers, and naturally they praised their own country. “No one could starve in Britain,” they said. Here were food and work for all. And they were kind enough even to arrange for my passage.
“‘Well, I had enough money to last me in a humble way for many months. I obtained lodgings down near the docks, and every day I set out to look for work.
“‘Ah! all in vain.
“‘I wandered far away one afternoon, up and on to a beautiful though somewhat dreary table-land.