During that time I trusted well to amass treasures. The days whereof I write were those in which a single lucky capture made a fortune—in which one daring assault upon a Spanish battery might send the conqueror rolling home upon ingots of Indian gold. God forgive us if we were thieves and robbers of the sea; such we did not account ourselves. The Spaniards loudly swore that no European banner but their own should stream upon the trade-winds of the tropic—that no Europeans but themselves should traffic with those golden regions of the west. Upon this quarrel we fought, and—to the death. I never drew trigger upon a Spanish ship, that I did not deem myself as helping to unshackle the fettered enterprise of Protestant Europe. Why should we not, as well as its first discoverers, share in the spoils of the new world? The Spaniards held but inconsiderable portions of the soil—islands lay desert, great stretches of continent were tenanted only by handfuls of savages; but the Spaniard would keep all to himself. We did not admit the claim, and hence arose the Buccaneers. I said, that these adventurers ofttimes made a great fortune in a day. In many cases, these masses of wealth were no sooner won than they were lost. A week in Jamaica was quite sufficient to dissipate the spoils of the luckiest cruize. What brave sabres won, cogged dice lost; what gallant but foolish men amassed, at peril of their lives, infamous women squandered on brazen orgies. Little indeed of the wealth wrested by Englishmen from the Spaniards turned to happiness and content in the captor’s grasp. Well was it said, by an ancient Buccaneer, that gold ill-won by Spaniards, and ill-spent by Englishmen, enriched the latter no more than the former; that in the end the spoil slipped from the hands which grasped, as well as from those which held it; and that after all the fighting—all the suffering of these long wars—the yellow metal, for as much as it benefited either party, might well have been left in the mines by the Spaniards, or flung into the sea by the English. Still, as I have said, there were great exceptions to the general rule, and of these I trusted to prove one. Therefore, when last we saw each other—when last I felt Joseffa’s form clasped to mine, I whispered in her ear, that I well trusted in three years at Alicant, to come to her, not a poor-hearted fugitive, but a well-endowed lover. And thus we parted. When I write these latter words I doubt not but that I have penned all necessary to be said, to picture the scene by those who take interest in such passages. We parted, and we never met again!