Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer A Romance of the Spanish Main   By: Cyrus Townsend Brady (1861-1920)

Sir Henry Morgan, BUCCANEER

A Romance of the Spanish Main

BY

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY

Author of "For Love of Country," "For the Freedom of the Sea," "The Southerners," "Hohenzollern," "The Quiberon Touch," "Woven with the Ship," "In the Wasp's Nest," Etc.

[Illustration]

Illustrations by J.N. MARCHAND and WILL CRAWFORD

G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE PEARSON PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1903, IN GREAT BRITAIN

[ All rights reserved ]

Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer Issued October, 1903

TO MY ONLY BROTHER

COLONEL JASPER EWING BRADY

LATE U.S. ARMY

"Woe to the realms which he coasted! for there Was shedding of blood and rending of hair, Rape of maiden and slaughter of priest, Gathering of ravens and wolves to the feast; When he hoisted his standard black, Before him was battle, behind him wrack, And he burned the churches, that heathen Dane, To light his band to their barks again."

SCOTT: "Harold the Dauntless."

PREFACE

In literature there have been romantic pirates, gentlemanly pirates, kind hearted pirates, even humorous pirates in fact, all sorts and conditions of pirates. In life there was only one kind. In this book that kind appears. Several presentations in the guise of novels of pirates, the like of which never existed on land or sea, have recently appeared. A perusal of these interesting romances awoke in me a desire to write a story of a real pirate, a pirate of the genuine species.

Much research for historical essays, amid ancient records and moldy chronicles, put me in possession of a vast amount of information concerning the doings of the greatest of all pirates; a man unique among his nefarious brethren, in that he played the piratical game so successfully that he received the honor of knighthood from King Charles II. A belted knight of England, who was also a brutal, rapacious, lustful, murderous villain and robber and undoubtedly a pirate, although he disguised his piracy under the name of buccaneering is certainly a striking and unusual figure.

Therefore, when I imagined my pirate story I pitched upon Sir Henry Morgan as the character of the romance. It will spare the critic to admit that the tale hereinafter related is a work of the imagination, and is not an historical romance. According to the latest accounts, Sir Henry Morgan, by a singular oversight of Fate, who must have been nodding at the time, died in his bed not peacefully I trust and was buried in consecrated ground. But I do him no injustice, I hasten to assure the reader, in the acts that I have attributed to him, for they are more than paralleled by the well authenticated deeds of this human monster. I did not even invent the blowing up of the English frigate in the action with the Spanish ships.

If I have assumed for the nonce the attributes of that unaccountably somnolent Fate, and brought him to a terrible end, I am sure abundant justification will be found in the recital of his mythical misdeeds, which, I repeat, were not a circumstance to his real transgressions. Indeed, one has to go back to the most cruel and degenerate of the Roman emperors to parallel the wickednesses of Morgan and his men. It is not possible to put upon printed pages explicit statements of what they did. The curious reader may find some account of these "Gentlemen of the Black Flag," so far as it can be translated into present day books intended for popular reading, in my volume of "COLONIAL FIGHTS AND FIGHTERS."