Published by Good Press, 2021

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      EAN 4057664637680

Table of Contents

       TALES OF PIRATES

       I

       CAPTAIN SHARKEY: HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT'S CAME HOME

       II

       THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK

       III

       THE BLIGHTING OF SHARKEY

       IV

       HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY

       V

       THE "SLAPPING SAL"

       VI

       A PIRATE OF THE LAND

       ONE CROWDED HOUR

       TALES OF BLUE WATER

       VII

       THE STRIPED CHEST

       VIII

       THE CAPTAIN OF THE "POLESTAR"

       (BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE SINGULAR JOURNAL OF JOHN M'ALISTER RAY, STUDENT OF MEDICINE.)

       IX

       THE FIEND OF THE COOPERAGE

       X

       JELLAND'S VOYAGE

       XI

       J. HABAKUK JEPHSON'S STATEMENT

       XII

       THAT LITTLE SQUARE BOX

       THE END

       By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

       Novels and Stories

       On the Life Hereafter

       A History of the Great War

       Poems

TALES OF PIRATES

       Table of Contents

I

       Table of Contents

CAPTAIN SHARKEY: HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT'S CAME HOME

       Table of Contents

      When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce, others were absorbed into the fishing-fleets, and a few of the more reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the whole human race.

      With mixed crews, recruited from every nation they scoured the seas, disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in for a debauch at some outlaying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants by their lavishness and horrified them by their brutalities.

      On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer and dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.

      They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers, both formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and salt in front of him. It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his calling in the Caribbean Gulf.

      Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship Morning Star, and yet he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt's was his final port of call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old England. He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet edge