Besides, men’s tastes, ideas, constitutions, feelings, and sensitiveness vary. Many a man would have found the blazing sun and the spray-sprinkled deck of the Vigilant a most uncomfortable and unpleasant spot, and would have gone mad had he been obliged to sail hither and yon on the old packet. To straddle a yard, soaring back and forth sixty feet above the sea, as must those of my crew, would have been a physical impossibility to thousands. To climb mountains is pure enjoyment to many, and yet I can imagine nothing more irksome. Big Sam, standing there on his firm flat feet, and deftly twirling the wheel, would have found it far harder and more of a strain to write a dozen misspelled lines than to dive for sponges in shark-infested waters day after day. And so we cannot hope to fathom the depths of others’ thoughts, to realize their sensations, or to understand their points of view, and we might just as well give up trying to analyze the buccaneers and, forgetting their shortcomings, enjoy the romance of their lives. Thus musing, I glanced at Sam; and, remembering that in his veins flowed a bit of the wild blood of Red Lithgow, I asked: “Sam, how would you like to be a pirate?” For a brief instant the huge negro looked puzzled,—perhaps thinking the sun had affected my head,—and then a broad, tooth-filled grin spread over his shining black face. “Lordy, Chief!” he rumbled. “Ah’ spec’ yo’ ’s jus’ tryin’ for to spoof me. The’ ain’t pirates now-’days; th’ parsed on years agone.” “Aren’t there!” I exclaimed. “You’ve never ridden in a New York taxi, Sam, or dined in an American restaurant, or traveled in a Pullman.” The Bahaman’s eyes widened. “Lordy!” he ejaculated. “You don’ is tellin’ me true, Chief?” Sam’s childlike simplicity and his utter innocence were irresistible, and I burst into a roar of laughter. “I was just speaking figuratively,” I explained. “But honestly, Sam, wouldn’t you like to sail up alongside a ship, leap over her rails with a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other, and murder her crew and take her treasure?” Sam shook his broad-hatted, kinky head decidedly. “No-o, sir, Chief!” he declared. “Ah’s a man o’ peace, Ah is, an’ Ah’s no desire for to do nothin’ that’s like what yo’ says. An’ ah’s tellin’ yo’ true, Chief, if Ah sees a man wif a gun or pistol approachin’ me, Ah don’ mek to remain to argify. No, sir! Ah jus’ says to mah feet, ‘The Lord put you on mah laigs for to run, an’ now you obey the Lord.’” Truly, Red Lithgow’s blood had turned to water in his descendant’s veins!