“But at last it was done and the Trinity sailed forth from the Gulf of Dulce and started on her long deferred voyage to the distant Caribbean. And as they sailed, many a rich prize fell to those upon the one-time galleon. Within ten days after starting, a ship was taken with over forty thousand pieces of eight and, by a strange coincidence, this proved to be the same ship from which they had won so much treasure and wine in Panama harbor over a year before. Ship after ship they took, but ever freeing all prisoners and turning them loose in the vessels after they had been looted, for Sharp had no mind to burden himself with hungry mouths which were of no use to him. Down the coast they sailed, avoiding conflicts ashore,—although, truth to tell, there was little to be got after having raided the coast twice within the twelvemonth,—until finally, leaving the last settlements and inhabited lands astern, they bore through cold and stormy seas towards the tip of the continent. They stopped in at Tierra del Fuego, found and mapped uncharted, storm-lashed isles, hunted penguins and seals, and battered by mountainous waves, buffeted by ice-laden gales, crept ever farther south, searching for the entrance to the Strait of Magellan. “And remember that they had only the crudest instruments with which to navigate, only a rough quadrant for finding their latitude, and no means whatever, save dead reckoning, for determining their longitude. Their ship, despite their efforts to put it in seaworthy shape, was leaky, strained and filled with patched shot holes, and they were in one of the stormiest parts of the world in the wildest season of the year. Often their sails were torn to ribbons or carried away, the ship was sheathed in ice, and after tedious beating through storm and sleet for days they would be driven back in a night farther than they had gained in a week. Let me quote a few passages from Ringrose’s log and you will get a better idea of what that handful of grim buccaneers in the Blessed Trinity underwent. Here, for example, under date of November 10th, he says, ‘Day being come the wind increased and at noon blew our mainsail to pieces. Hereupon we were forced to lower the yard and unbend the sail, lying under mizzen. But that too gave way and all the rest of the day we lay a hull in dark weather, foggy and windy, with a huge sea that oftentime rolled over us.’ The next day he reports, ‘All last night we had furious weather with seas higher and higher.’ On November 16th the fore shrouds gave way; for several days hereafter it was ‘so foggy we could not see the stem from the stern’; they narrowly escaped running into icebergs and, to make matters worse, their provisions had run low and the men were on the most scanty rations. Several of the crew were frostbitten; others were so benumbed with the intense cold they could not stand, and at last they realized that they could not find the sought-for Straits and that there was