The sombre tale of wrecks will never be done, but pirate stories no longer incite youth to possible adventure. In the old days Cape Cod men had plenty of chances to show their prowess against such adversaries, and likewise against the privateersmen who sometimes made use of their letters of marque in highly personal ventures. Nor was danger from out-and-out piracy unfamiliar to peaceful folk ashore. The Earl of Bellamont, Governor of Massachusetts and New York, was “particularly instructed to put a stop to the growth of piracy, the seas being constantly endangered by freebooters”; and the achievement of his short incumbency was the apprehension of Captain Kidd. Kidd, duly commissioned a privateer, was one of those who turned to the more lucrative trade of pirate. Then, pushed hard, he buried his profits, to the incitement of many future treasure hunts, and thinking to escape detection through sheer boldness, appeared in Boston. But he was recognized, laid by the heels, and packed off to London where he was duly hanged. An earlier pirate of our coast with better fortune died in his bed, a respected country gentleman, no doubt, at Isleworth, England, in the year 1703. He had been pilot on a pirate-chaser appointed by Governor Andros to clean up the seas off New England, and in process of pursuing the pirates had opportunity to observe the ease of their methods. In 1689 this Thomas Pound, in partnership with another master-mariner and duly commissioned to prey upon French merchantmen, set sail from Boston. But they had proceeded no farther than the Brewsters when they were holding up a mackerel sloop for supplies, and fifteen miles out they neatly exchanged their own boat for a better one Salem-bound, whose crew, save one John Derby who joined the adventurers as a “voluntary,” was to turn up at home and give news of the lately commissioned privateer, Thomas Pound, master. Pound, meantime, with a long advantage in the chase, was off for Portland and Casco Bay. Fully equipped from the Portland militia stores with clothing, powder, musket and cutlass, carbines and brass cannon, he made for Provincetown and again changed to a better boat whose master was sent back to Boston with the saucy message to probable pursuers that: “They Knew ye goot Sloop lay ready but if she came out after them & came up wh them shd find hott work for they wd die every man before they would be taken.” Boston, nevertheless, sent out its sloop, with orders to take Pound, or any other pirate, but quaintly, in so hazardous an enterprise, “to void the shedding of blood unless you be necessitated by resistance.” Perhaps Boston had heard the rumor that Richard, brother to Sir William Phips, Governor, was of the pirate company. Pound rounded the Cape, picked up a prize in the Sound, was blown out to sea, and returned to the rich hunting about the Cape by way of Virginia. Off Martha’s Vineyard, again, he drove a ketch into the harbor and would have followed and cut her