old men, who had swung in hammocks nigh half a century, and had been tossed on every sea all round the world. The great fault they had was, that not a single man of the whole lot would keep sober if he had an opportunity of getting drunk. For all that, however, Jerry was forced to depend upon these sailors, his ‘Mother Carey’s chickens,’ as he called them, for the safe navigation of the ship; knowing very well that, if the rest of the crew were but fresh water seamen, they were as good, with cutlasses and boarding-pikes in their hands, as the most daring veterans of the sea. With these ancient mariners I chiefly consorted, we forming a company who kept somewhat aloof from the rake-helly set we lived among, and during the many calm midwatches I kept on board the ‘Saucy Susan,’ I picked up many legends and tales of the sea from these old men, who had passed long lives upon the face of the waters. I have already given to the reader one story, as a sample of the kind of legends which we Buccaneers loved to listen to, and I shall here add another of the same sort, relating to a notion which was very common amongst seamen of the time of which I speak, but which has now, I believe, except with the most ignorant of the class, wholly died away. I mean, the idea that particular capes or headlands running out into the sea are haunted by evil demons, who hate ships to pass by, and who, therefore, raise tempests to beat them back, and prevent them from doubling the point, or spot of land in question. This belief, no doubt, rose from the general stormy nature of the seas off capes and outstretching tongues of land. The two great capes of the world—the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, many sailors believed to be haunted by most powerful demons, and regarded the awful gales which blew, and the fearful seas which run thereabouts, as nothing but the work of these Cape devils, if I may call them so, not remembering that the phenomena in question are simply the effect of geographical position and the unchanging laws of the elements. However, I proceed to my story, merely premising that the seaman who told it, and who was an old mariner with a white beard, did devoutly believe in all the extravagancies which I have just mentioned, as well as in the fantastic tale which he told. I give it in rather better language than the narrator made use of; his speech, indeed, being much seasoned with forecastle expressions, not of the most delicate nature. But it is worthy of a new chapter. CHAPTER XXVI. THE LEGEND OF THE DEMON WHO HAUNTS POINT MORANT IN JAMAICA. Old Josiah Ward, for such was the name of my storyteller, recounted the legend to about a dozen of us, as we sat in the lee of the long-boat on the deck, the breeze blowing gently, and the ‘Saucy Susan’ running slowly before it. Thus he spoke—