the homeward-bound vessels through the orderly channels of legitimate
trade. It was reserved for Pierre le Grand to introduce piracy as a
quicker and more easy road to wealth than the semi-honest exchange they
had been used to practice.

Gathering together eight-and-twenty other spirits as hardy and reckless
as himself, he put boldly out to sea in a boat hardly large enough to
hold his crew, and running down the Windward Channel and out into the
Caribbean Sea, he lay in wait for such a prize as might be worth the
risks of winning.

For a while their luck was steadily against them; their provisions and
water began to fail, and they saw nothing before them but starvation
or a humiliating return. In this extremity they sighted a Spanish ship
belonging to a "flota" which had become separated from her consorts.

The boat in which the buccaneers sailed might, perhaps, have served for
the great ship's longboat; the Spaniards out-numbered them three to
one, and Pierre and his men were armed only with pistols and cutlasses;
nevertheless this was their one and their only chance, and they
determined to take the Spanish ship or to die in the attempt. Down upon
the Spaniard they bore through the dusk of the night, and giving orders
to the "chirurgeon" to scuttle their craft under them as they were
leaving it, they swarmed up the side of the unsuspecting ship and upon
its decks in a torrent--pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other. A
part of them ran to the gun room and secured the arms and ammunition,
pistoling or cutting down all such as stood in their way or offered
opposition; the other party burst into the great cabin at the heels of
Pierre le Grand, found the captain and a party of his friends at cards,
set a pistol to his breast, and demanded him to deliver up the ship.