"That little affair I had with Black Ben."
"Black Ben? Who is he?"
"Hain't you ever heard tell of him?" demanded the captain, in amazement; and then, recollecting himself, he added: "I forgot; that was before your time—at least, you must have been quite a younker then. Black Ben, next to Mike Fink, was one of the greatest pirates that ever infested the Mississippi."
"What became of him?"
"I was going to tell you. In the first place, you mustn't imagine he was a negro because he was called Black Ben. He had a skin as dark as a mulatto's, and a fearful lot of great, black, bushy hair, which stood up like bristles; and, as he always went without a hat, I can tell you he was just about the most villainous-looking creature you ever saw. Besides that, he had jet-black whiskers, short and sticking out like needles, and growing up almost to his eyes; so when you looked at him you saw about a bushel of black, bristling hair, and in the midst his great eyes glowing like coals of fire. He wasn't more than five feet in height; he had short legs, very long arms, and immense muscular power. He generally went dressed as a backwoodsman, and had two comrades—ordinary-looking men, but as bloody and merciless cutthroats as he.
"Black Ben had been seen as far up as Cairo, and as low down as Natchez. He was such a queer-looking creature that it was impossible for him to disguise himself enough to go among the towns or where he would have run any danger. His principal hunting-ground was from the mouth of the Arkansas north to the Tennessee line. Here he had all the opportunity he wished for hiding himself, and I don't believe a party of red Indians ever could have hunted him to his hole. If he hadn't met his fate in the queer manner he did he might have hunted there until he died of old age.
"In those days a great many flatboats used to pass down the Mississippi on their way to New Orleans, and these were the favorite prey of Black Ben and his men. As the river navigation, with its snags and sawyers, is always so dangerous, these boats often lay to under the bank during the night, when the chances are ten to one that the sharp eyes of these pirates detected them, and, at the dead hour of midnight, they stole out as silently as shadows, crept over the boat, cut the throats of the unsuspicious sleepers, gutted the craft, then scuttled it and set it afloat. Out in deep water it would sink, and that would be the last ever seen or heard of that flatboat.
"Black Ben was a horrid dog, and it was no wonder that there was such terror of him all along the river. Captain Hallongton, an old friend of mine, had his boat served in this manner, but the night was so dark that he managed to swim off, although his three men were every one of them murdered. The captain had a hard story to tell, and he offered five hundred dollars to any one who would shoot this bloody cutthroat.
"I had been from Cincinnati down to New Orleans fully a dozen times without once encountering this redoubtable Blue Beard. I had lain to at a place where, it was said, he would be sure to find us; but never once did we catch sight or sound of him, and I would have doubted his existence but for the testimony of Captain Hallongton and his friends, whom I could not refuse to believe.
"'It is strange that I never meet him.' I once said, when he and I were conversing together regarding this river outlaw. 'It must be that he is either afraid of me, or else has a feeling of friendship toward me.'