kind of men whom Balty and his like had formerly led-or driven-two or three hundred strong, to attack twenty policemen, though now they were fallen into disfavour with the champions of freedom. The eleventh was not of this type. He was tall and erect, and even coming as he did straight from his sordid captivity, neat and point-devise in every detail. His open dignity and manly bearing contrasted startlingly with his strange surroundings. It was not altogether to their satisfaction when they reached Killiney to find that Robert was accompanied by Riordan, so that the car had to cope with six persons, Riordan sitting beside the driver, and the other five inside. This used up some time and all the remaining light, so that night had already come down when they were ready to start again-a night without moon, almost without stars, impenetrable. Here and there, at rare intervals, the merest flicker amid It was General Stewart, kid- the blackness, some light napped a month ago. twinkled in a solitary homestead. Tarragon explained to Vardon, the Intelligence officer, in private that Robert had brought him as far as Killiney, and waited for him there. Could they help him on his way back Certainly they could. If he didn't mind being squeezed into the General's car-he would very likely have to sit on the floor-they would be delighted to take him. Dusk was creeping on. It was the hour the French call so fitly "between dog and wolf." And they must be away before darkness. A crowd waited at the other side of the barrier to watch the passing of the troops. The car, containing the driver, Vardon of the Intelligence on the seat in front beside him, the General with another officer and Tarragon inside, raced swiftly on and over the bridge where Robert and John had experienced their encounter with the police, "It's I, Robert. By God! they've done me in this time. That letter wasn't a joke." A woman came running across the fields from a house near by, screaming out some unintelligible jargon. As she came nearer, her words were audible. "Blessed mother of God! and these be therrible times. And who is it they'd be murthering now, the cowardly spalpeens ! "It's Captain Macghahorn, from Macghahorn," said Tarragon. "Is there a house near? Can you help us? " "Macghahorn! Macghahorn!" she said. "Is it Captain Robert that'd be lying there? Help you! God never help me again in anything if I'd not be helping your honour!" They carried Robert into the house and laid him on a bed. He was weak with loss of blood and almost unconscious, but still able to recognise her. It was Mrs O'Rorke, the widow of the murdered constable. She told him the military had brought her there only an hour before to see her children. She had not dared, she said, to tell them, when they saw her in the asylum, that she was a prisoner. The next day they brought him home. He would recover, but it would be a long time. His father had been released by an order from the General, and was there to receive his stricken son. In the afternoon came Wynterfold. He had heard all the news, and more besides. Tarragon asked eagerly if he knew anything of Mahaffy. He was sent for early that morning, but up to the present nothing had been seen of him. "He was brutally done to death yesterday at midday," said Wynterfold. "We have caught the murderer." WHEN Captain Kidd was sentenced to be hanged, it was directed that his body should be suspended in chains at Tilbury Point, "at such place on ye said Point where he may be seen most plaine by persons passing into, or out of, ye River of Thames." There was some idea in those days of making the punishment fit the crime; and a generation less squeamish than our own saw no impropriety in the spectacle of murderers, pirates, agitators, and other malefactors hanging in chains at conspicuous points about the countryside. Whether such examples really acted as deterrents seems doubtful. They were believed to do so, however. When piracy was at its height, in the first years of the eighteenth century, the river Thames was particularly well decorated in this manner. While the remains of Kidd still clattered and spun at Tilbury Point, many less noteworthy villains were similarly suspended elsewhere along both shores. The corpse of a gentleman called by the attractive but unconvincing name of Leary Gittor-actually one Louis Guittar or Guitton of Cape Coast Castle, diversified the Isle of Doggs, over against Deptford," and a recent Session of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery, held for the Admiralty at the Old Bailey (then described as "in the suburbs "), had easily outbid all these niggling expedients by sentencing no fewer than ten men, convicted of piracy, to be hanged together in chains "at the Point of Hope Ness, below Gravesend, near High Water Mark... as a greater terror to all persons from committing the like crime for the time to come.' The Thames, indeed, must have offered in those days a cheerful welcome to the returning traveller. If, however, the latter had come from the West Indies or the Guinea Coast, the sight would have been stale; for there was no hanging of pirates even in this country on the wholesale scale adopted in the tropics and other parts especially victimised by these ruffians. When Roberts' people were captured in the Royal Fortune, fifty-two of them-a third of the crew-were summarily strung up within the flood- marks outside the gate The evil against which these measures were directed was, for a time, a very serious one. It has become strangely transfigured in what is called the popular mind (assisted by eminent novelists) during more recent and orderly generations, ignorant of how unpleasant it is to be robbed and set adrift in an open boat, if not murdered outright, somewhere in midocean. Experiences during the late war may have cured a few beliefs in the romance of piracy. For, in truth, there was little romance in that profession. In its earlier form, as buccaneering, which differed ethically only in degree and not in kind from the later development, it could show at least some arresting figures like Drake or Morgan, some enterprises that were not wholly predatory in design nor brutal in execution, and some startling military military exploits; but the genuine pirate of the early eighteenth century had few redeeming qualities. With rare exceptions, he was a mere vulgar ruffian-ignorant, cruel, and often extraordinarily stupid. The romantic and even chivalrous pirate of fiction is as big a myth as the legendary highwayman. In the nature of things he could not have existed: his friends would not have endured him for a moment. The real man was the direct ancestor of the engaging gentleman we have with us in such numbers to-day, who bludgeons old ladies and holds up defenceless post-office girls at the muzzle of a revolver. And it will be found that this type of scoundrel always becomes suddenly prominent, both in numbers and audacity, at certain definite periods of history-at the close, namely, of every prolonged and far-reaching war. For at such times, in addition to the ordinary criminals who have been absorbed into armies and navies, a peace lets loose also a formidable reinforcement of shiftless men changed by circumstance, rendered unemployable and reckless, inured to hardship and violence, callous, needy, and more or less expert in the use of weapons. For such men opportunities at sea have been cramped by steam and wireless telegraphy; but Europe is cursed ashore with thousands of them at this moment. And the heyday of genuine piracy its few busy and predominant years, whose false glitter, refined by time and ignorance, still shines as a tale for schoolboys-arose immediately after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. For a generation before there had been warfare all over the globe. Adventurous men, who sought a more free and profitable life than any regular service had to offer, had manned the innumerable privateers sent out during the long conflict by all the belligerents. Licence, excitement, drink, and often money in abundance, were to be found by those who sailed under Letters of Marque and Reprisal. Even a man-of-war might win a prize worth taking. For twenty-five years and more, with one short interlude, this halcyon age endured. And then there came a sudden end to it. The diplomatists contrived a peace. We all know how it was done. In the meantime, other honest gentlemen who, like the diplomatists, hankered after a maximum of booty with a minimum of blows, found their occupation gone. The privateers were become traders again. The menof-war were laid up in ordinary, or employed on monotonous duties of police. Thousands of seamen of all nationalities, most of whom, it may be said, had been born and bred into a state of war and licence, were condemned at a stroke to a life of starvation or ill-requited toil. In that rough age it is not surprising that many of them took their fate into their own hands. In any case, there ensued at once the great outbreak of piracy. The maritime nations directly affected by the Peace of Utrecht were England, France, Spain, and the United Provinces. In the years that followed, the the better known pirates were either British or French, most of them (a doubtful compliment) being British. Captain Charles Johnson, in the preface to his 'General History of the Pyrates '-a book which, with all its imperfections, has the merit of being a contemporary narrative-makes the following observation on this point: "I cannot but take notice in this place," he says, "that during this long Peace I have not so much as heard of a Dutch Pyrate. It is not," he hastens to add, "that I take them to be honester than their neighbours." And he explains that this abstention of the Dutch from piracy may be attributed to the fact that the United Provinces owned a vast and lucrative fishery, actively VOL. CCIX.-NO. MCCLXV. II. encouraged by the Government, which at once absorbed all the men discharged from the fleet on the cessation of war. Also, the Dutch are a cautious and industrious race. England and France were less fortunately situated and less methodically governed; and they let loose upon a world that, like our own to-day, was struggling with the aftermath of conflict-a great horde of predatory undesirables. Piracy as a profession is as old as mankind; and no doubt in the Stone Age there were fur-clad Teaches and Averys who plied their trade in coracles. But in writing of recent historical times, we have come to differentiate by various terms the recurring periods at which this pest, always active, assumed intolerable proportions, and provoked its victims to determined retaliation. Thus, when we talk of the corsairs of the Mediterranean, we mean Y |