Here was genuine buried treasure, but the circumstances were such as to make the once terrible Captain Charles Gibbs cut a wretched figure. To the ignominious crime of killing the captain and the mate of a little trading brig had descended this freebooter of renown who had numbered his prizes by the score and boasted of slaying their crews wholesale. As for the specie looted from the brig _Vineyard_, half the amount was lost in the surf when the jolly-boat foundered, and the remainder buried where doubtless that hospitable resident, Johnson, was able to find most of it. Silver dollars were too heavy to be carried away in bulk by stranded pirates, fleeing the law, and these rascals got no good of their plunder. ====================================================================== [Illustration: Gibbs and Wansley burying the treasure.] The Portugese captain cutting away the bag of moidores. (_From The Pirates' Own Book._) ====================================================================== Glance at the sin-stained roster of famous pirates, Edward Low, Captain England, Captain Thomas White, Benito De Soto, Captain Roberts, Captain John Rackham, Captain Thomas Tew, and most of the bloody crew, and it will be found that either they wasted their treasure in debaucheries, or were hanged, shot, or drowned with empty pockets. Of them all, Blackbeard[3] fills the eye most struttingly as the proper pirate to have buried treasure. He was immensely theatrical, fond of playing the part right up to the hilt, and we may rest assured that unless his sudden taking-off prevented, he was at pains to bury at least one sea-chest full of treasure in order to live up to the best traditions of his calling. He was prosperous, and unlike most of his lesser brethren, suffered no low tides of fortune. By rights, he should be a far more famous character than Captain William Kidd whose commonplace career was so signally devoid of purple patches. Blackbeard was a pirate "right out of a book," as the saying is. How this Captain Edward Teach swaggered through the streets of Charleston and terrorized the Carolinas and Bermuda is an old story, as is also the thrilling narrative of his capture, after a desperate battle, by brave Lieutenant Maynard, who hung the pirate's head from his bowsprit and sailed home in triumph. There are touches here and there, however, in the authentic biography of Blackbeard which seem to belong in a discussion of buried treasure, for he was so very much the kind of flamboyant rogue that legend paints as infernally busy with pick and shovel on dark and lonely beaches. Blackbeard is the hero of such extremely diverting tales as these, which sundry writers have not scrupled to appropriate, either for purposes of fiction or unblushingly to fit them to poor Captain Kidd as chronicles of fact: