liberty, exacting only the promise that Esquemeling should pay him one hundred pieces of eight when in a position to do so. Being, as he himself says, ‘at liberty but like unto Adam when he was first created, that is, naked and destitute of all human necessities,’ and with no means of earning a livelihood, Esquemeling threw in his lot with the buccaneers and he remained with them for a number of years. Being by profession a clerk, Esquemeling kept the logs and accounts of the buccaneers and also a journal of his own in which he recorded all the details and events of his adventurous life. His work is, in fact, the only authentic account of these men, and his quaint phraseology and droll remarks are very amusing. I have the book here, boys, and you’ll find it more interesting and absorbing than any story or fiction of the buccaneers that ever was written. “The first buccaneer of note with whom Esquemeling sailed was Bartholomew Portugues, so called as he was a native of Portugal. Portugues left Jamaica in a small ship of four small carronades with a crew of thirty men, and went cruising off Cuba. A few days later he met a heavily armed galleon bound to Havana from Cartagena and at once attacked her. Although the Spaniard carried a crew of over seventy, in addition to passengers, and was armed with twenty heavy cannon, yet Portugues assaulted the Dons without hesitation and after a desperate battle in which nearly fifty Spaniards were killed and wounded, the buccaneers took the galleon with a loss of only ten men killed and four wounded. Owing to contrary winds Portugues could not return directly to either Tortuga or Jamaica and so set sail for Cape San Antonio at the western extremity of Cuba. There he made necessary repairs to his prize and secured a supply of fresh water. As they were setting sail the buccaneers were surprised by three great Spanish ships and, greatly outnumbered, were taken prisoners and stripped of the booty they had so recently secured, a treasure of over ten thousand pieces of eight, in addition to valuable merchandise. We can imagine the chagrin of the buccaneers at this turn of fate and no doubt they gave themselves up for lost. But luck was with them. Two days after they had been made prisoners a great storm arose, the vessels became separated and the one containing the buccaneers was driven to Campeche in Yucatan. When the residents learned that Portugues and his fellows were captives on board there was great rejoicing, and the authorities sent off to the ship demanding that the buccaneers be delivered to them. After a consultation, however, it was decided safer to leave the prisoners aboard and in preparation for a general hanging a number of gibbets were erected on shore. These were in plain view of the buccaneers, and Portugues resolved to make a desperate effort to escape and to cheat the expectant Dons of the grewsome spectacle. He managed to secure two