As they reached the vessel, the captain's face appeared in the glow shed by the light. The coffin was lifted on board, and then down into the captain's cabin, after which the schooner's wide wings were spread, and she was speeding on over the calm waters to the shelter, far away, that formed the buccaneers' retreat and impregnable home, while Commodore Junk went down to his cabin, to kneel by the coffin side, and pray for strength to complete his vengeance against the world and those who had robbed him of the only one he loved. CHAPTER NINETEEN. THE PEST OF THE WEST. The merchants of Bristol sent in a petition to His Majesty the King, saying that the trade of the port was being ruined, that their ships were taken, that the supplies of sugar and tobacco must run short, and that, while the ladies would suffer as to their coffee, there would soon be no snuff ground up for the titillation of the noses of the king's liege subjects. Always the same story--Commodore Junk, in command of a long, low, fast-sailing schooner, was here, there, and everywhere. This sugar and coffee-laden ship was plundered and burnt off Kingston port, so near that the glow of the fire was seen. That brig, full of choice mahogany logs, was taken near Belize. A fine Bristol bark, just out of the great port of South Carolina, full of the choicest tobacco-leaf, was taken the next week. And so on, and so on. Ships from Caracas, from the Spanish, French, and Dutch settlements, heavily-laden, or from England outward bound, were seized. All was fish that came to the pirate's net, and if the vessels were foreign, so much the worse for them, the buccaneer captain dealing out his favours with fairly balanced hand till the shores of the great gulf and the islands that formed the eastern barrier rang with the news of his deeds. Government heard what was said, and replied that five years before they had sent out a ship to capture Commodore Junk, that there was a severe engagement, and the captain was taken and hung, and afterwards gibbeted off the port where his deeds obtained most fame. To which the Bristol merchants replied in a further petition that though it was as the Government stated, Commodore Junk's body had been taken down from the gibbet soon after it was hung up, that he had come to life again, and that his deeds were now ten times worse than before.