complete domination by one man over the lives and the fortunes of others.
This intense form of individualism is nowhere so well exhibited as in the
story of piratical enterprise, where a band of men, outside of the law and
divorced from all human kind by the atrocity of their deeds, has had to be
welded into one homogeneous mass for the purpose of preying upon the world
at large. Therefore he who would hold rule among such outlaws must himself
be a man of no common description, for in him must be that quality which
calls for instantaneous obedience among those with whom he is associated;
behind him is no constituted authority, discipline is personal, enforced by
the leader, and by him alone. Beneath him are men of the rudest and
roughest description, slaves to their lusts and their passions, prone to
mutiny, suspicious, and--worst of all--stupid.

It is with these constituent elements that the piratical leader had to
deal, trusting to the strength of his own arm, the subtlety of his own
unassisted brain. Some among these leaders have risen to eminence in their
evil lives, most of them have been the captains of single ships preying on
commerce in an indiscriminate manner; but this was not the case with the
Sea-wolves of the Mediterranean, Primarily sea-robbers they were of course,
but as time and opportunity developed their characters they rose to meet
occasion, to take fortune at the flood, in a manner that, had they been
pursuing any other career, would most certainly have caused them to rise to
eminence. Into the fierce and blood-stained turmoil of their lives there
entered something unknown to any other pirates: this was religious
fanaticism--a fanaticism so engrained in character, a belief held to with
such passionate tenacity, that men stained with every conceivable crime
held that their passage to Paradise was absolutely secure because of the
faith which they professed. Tradition, sentiment, discipline, were summed
up in one trite formula; but though we, at this distance of time, may hold
it somewhat in derision, it was a vital force in the days of Soliman the