Much as our sailors hated to see all that treasure wasted on Spaniards, England had to keep the peace with Spain, because Charles II had his crown jewels in pawn and no money for such luxuries as war. The Spanish envoy would come to him making doleful lamentations about our naughty sailors, who, in the far Indies, had insolently stolen a galleon or sacked a town. Charles, with his mouth watering at such a tale of loot, would be inexpressibly shocked. The “lewd French” must have done this, or the “pernicious Dutch,” but not our woolly lambs--our innocent mariners. The buccaneers of the West Indies were of many nations besides the British, and they were not quite pirates. For instance, they would scorn to seize a good Protestant shipload of salt fish, but always attacked the papist who flaunted golden galleons before the nose of the poor. They were serious-minded Protestants with strong views on doctrine, and only made their pious excursions to seize the goods of the unrighteous. Their opinions were so sound on all really important points of dogmatic theology that they could allow themselves a little indulgence in mere rape, sacrilege, arson, robbery and murder, or fry Spaniards in olive oil for concealing the cash box. Then, enriched by such pious exercises, they devoutly spent the whole of their savings on staying drunk for a month. The first buccaneers sallied out in a small boat and captured a war-ship. From such small beginnings arose a pirate fleet, which, under various leaders, French, Dutch, Portuguese, became a scourge to the Spanish empire overseas. When they had wiped out Spain’s merchant shipping and were short of plunder, they attacked fortified cities, held them to ransom, and burned them for fun, then in chase of the fugitive citizens, put whole colonies to an end by sword and fire. Naturally only the choicest scoundrels rose to captaincies, and the worst of the lot became admiral. It should thrill the souls of all Welshmen to learn that Henry Morgan gained that bad eminence. He had risen to the command of five hundred cutthroats when he pounced down on Maracaibo Bay in Venezuela. At the entrance stood Fort San Carlos, the place which has lately resisted the attack of a German squadron. Morgan was made of sterner stuff than these Germans, for when the garrison saw him coming, they took to the woods, leaving behind them a lighted fuse at the door of the magazine. Captain Morgan grabbed that fuse himself in time to save his men from a disagreeable hereafter. Beyond its narrow entrance at Fort San Carlos, the inlet widens to an inland sea, surrounded in those days by Spanish settlements, with the two cities of Gibraltar and Maracaibo. Morgan sacked these towns and chased their flying inhabitants into the mountains. His prisoners, even women and children, were tortured on the rack until they revealed all that they knew of hidden money, and some were burned by inches, starved to death, or crucified.