“‘Morgan himself landed with two hundred men to take full vengeance, but could find no one to fight with, and had therefore to return, but he burned every house or hut he came across.’”
Captain Reeves paused, and began to turn over the pages of the old yellow-leaved log somewhat languidly.
“I must say,” he observed, “that my ancestor has spared no pains to make the history of this great pirate as exact and complete as possible, and I have material from which one day to build a book.
“Many of the writers on the pirates of the Spanish Main differ, and doubtless several of them are dependent upon their imagination for their facts. On the contrary, this Miguel Bassanto, our far-distant ancestor, seems to be nothing unless truthful and punctilious.
“The more I read about Morgan, afterwards made Sir Henry Morgan by the British Government, the more I admire his skill as a commander of forces, either by sea or on land, and the more I abhor and detest his character. To call him inhuman is to pay him a compliment. He was more than inhuman, he was a fiend incarnate, and instead of being honoured with high rank, made Governor of Jamaica, and Governor of Gibraltar, he ought to have been burned alive over a slow fire.
“At Maracaybo, another writer tells us, all kinds of inhuman cruelties were practised upon the innocent people. Those who would not confess, or who had nothing to declare, died under the hands of those tyrannical men. Those tortures and racks continued for the space of three whole weeks, during which time the pirates ceased not to send out daily parties of men to seek for more people to torment and rob. They never returned home without booty and riches.”
“Thank God,” I said, “we live in less perilous, less terrible times.”
“Ah! thank God indeed.”
“But now I come to the last adventure described in this book, and it is this to which I wish to draw your particular attention, as it is connected with the buried treasure which I hesitate not again to say belongs to me and mine.
“If we set about the business properly and scientifically, I do not doubt for a single moment that we shall be able to unearth it.—Then, my dear nephew, my sister’s struggles, and yours too, will be at an end.”