The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 164: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

866 “Ts there any one among you who has a better plan?” he asked. I heard a muttering among the crew of the Sea Eagle behind me and pres- ently a man was thrust forward by the men. He was a rough and unkempt looking scoundrel and he was most vil- lainously dirty. “ St, senor,’ he said. —“I-have a word to say to which it may pay you to listen.” | Interest quickened and the men crowded forward to see the speaker and to hear what he might have to say. ‘““T was one of L’Ollonois’s men,” he gerowled in a deep voice that sounded as though the salt winds of thirty years had played havoc with it; “and two years ago we took Maracaibo and Gibraltar and there may have grown some meat upon the bones that we picked so clean. I vote for Maracaibo and the southern coast. I know the ports, the forts, and the anchorage. I know the fortifications and I can take you there. I say Maracaibo and Gi- braltar, with maybe Caracas to top off with if there are no Spanish ships of war there that are beyond our strength. There is gold there and wine and beau- tiful women, and there are good ran- soms to be collected—”’ I turned sick at heart, for I knew now that this was not to be an expe- dition in which we would war with men who were armed and as brave as we were, but rather a repetition of the Porto Bello affair, only on a larger scale. I said as much to Oakes. He shook his head gravely. “T fear you are right, lad, and we must look out for a chance to leave them if we can.” But that chance never came, and well for me it was that it was so. CHAPTER VIL. THE MARACAIBO RAID. “Wr have made a bad _ bargain, Stephen,” said Oakes moodily as we THE ARGOSY. pulled aboard the bark. “ We thought to reimburse ourselves by honest war- fare, for it is honest now that there is war between the two countries; but now we find ourselves in a nice mess. We must find a way to leave them.” “Yes; but how?” I asked. “If we could but get a boat we might make for Jamaica; but we would be taking awful risks, and you know as well as I do what will happen should we fall into the hands of the Spaniards a sec- ond time. If Morgan would only touch at Jamaica on his way south we could leave him; but even he does not dare go through the Windward Pas- sage again, now that the whole coast of Hispaniola has been ravaged. “We were strong enough before to do as we pleased; we are not now. It does not need slate and pencil to do this sum: Are three hundred and sixty men as good as seven hundred? No, no. We must stay by them now till such time as we can leave them in an English vessel.”’ 3 “And in the mean time,” said my friend, ‘‘ we are like to feel a pike in our backs in the first scrimmage if we are not as forward as they think we ought to be in robbing women and children. No, no, man! War is just and right, and privateering is right when two peoples are at odds. “For nigh a hundred years we have been fighting Spain wherever we could meet her afloat or ashore, and I for one am not so squeamish but that I will take Spanish gold when I fall in with it in war times. ) “We must make a hard and fast rule, you and I, Stephen, for the rest of this voyage. In fight with armed men we will do our best. In mere pi- ratical raids for. robbing defenseless towns and people we will hold our hands, and we will leave the Brethren of the Coast so soon as the opportunity comes to us.” And so it was agreed between us. We ran southeast from Savona, looked in at our old anchorage in the Tortugas, where we took on board a COPMICOOOKS (E@)