Once, to be sure, I was greatly elated when a white-headed, tottering old negro with lackluster eyes and toothless mouth hobbled to our camp on the beach and, carefully unwrapping several layers of dried banana leaves, produced a corroded sword blade with the cross hilt of a design dating back to buccaneer days. He had found it, he mumbled in almost unintelligible words, while clearing away the brush preparatory to making a charcoal-pit, and I gladly paid him thrice the fifty cents he asked for it. But my hopes were shattered and my romantic notions dispersed to the four winds when, in cleaning the dirt and rust from the blade, I uncovered the unmistakable imprint of the Broad Arrow near the hilt, with the half-obliterated arms of England near it. To be sure, that did not prove it was not a buccaneer’s sword, but it seemed far more probably a trusty blade dropped from the lifeless hand of one of those Britons who had sought to help the Danes suppress the revolting blacks. Though I preferred a pirate weapon for a souvenir, there were plenty of romantic and historical associations connected with this silent, long-lost witness of the bloody days of St. John’s past, whether wielded by sea-rover or by British soldier, and I was satisfied that I at least would not sail empty-handed from this half-deserted, drowsy little Virgin isle. I must confess that I had grown very fond of the half-forgotten, sadly neglected place, and when at last the time came when we must up anchor and away from St. John, I felt really sorry to leave. I had seen the island thoroughly. We had cast anchor in many a lovely bay and for the last night we were moored in the snug “Hurricane Hole” in Coral Bay, perhaps the finest natural harbor in all the West Indies. Close at hand upon the headland were the scarcely distinguishable ruins of that first fort erected by old Governor Bredal, wherein the unsuspecting garrison had been butchered by the fagot-bearing slaves. Seated under the shadow of the big mainsail as the Vigilant rode to her anchor and the soft lapping of the waves along the beach and the chirp of crickets and the grunt of land frogs were borne to me on the soft night breeze, my mind harked back to those long-past days when these isles literally were steeped in blood. Like a ghostly silhouette upon the hilltop I could see the ruined fort about which battle red and furious had raged. Up that green-clad slope had charged the soldiers of three, or perchance four, nations, first one then another winning the day and holding, for a brief space, the hard-won battlements, until another enemy, by greater prowess or more reckless sacrifice of life, wrested it from their grasp. Perchance, in later years, the buccaneers had also hurled themselves, through mimosa scrub and aloes, upon the stout stone walls, shouting and cursing, falling and dying, but heedless of loss, still carrying on in face of blazing musket and thundering cannon.