The Monarchs of the Main; Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers. Volume 1 (of 3)Thornbury, Walter
History
The Monarchs of the Main; Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers. Volume 1 (of 3)
Thornbury, Walter
Buccaneers; Pirates; Spanish Main
The adventurers found the vessel laden with costly
merchandise, and soon started with it upon a trip of a very different
nature from that for which it had been first intended.
Oexmelin laments that in many other adventures which Alexandre told him,
he found that he passed too lightly over his own exploits, and
attributed all the glory to the courage of his companions. But when his
comerades related the story, they were not so generous to him as he had
been to them, and, either from envy or shame, suppressed many of his
noblest actions. He concludes his sketch of the two Alexanders with
incomparable _naïveté_ in the following manner: "Au reste, je ne
prétends pas que la comparaison soit toute-à-fait juste, car s'il y a
quelque rapport, _il y a encore plus de différence_. En effet il étoit
aussi brave que téméraire, et lui étoit brave que prudent. Alexandre
aymoit le vin, et lui l'eau-de-vie. Aussi Alexandre fuyoit les femmes
par grandeur d'âme, et luy les cherchoit par tendresse de coeur; et pour
preuve de ce que je dis il s'en trouve une assez belle dans le vaisseau
dont j'ay parlé, qu'il préféra à tout l'avantage du butin."
"To conclude: if I have compared him to the Great Alexander, I do not
pretend that the comparison is altogether just; for, if there are some
points of resemblance, there are many more of difference. Of a truth,
the one Alexander was as brave as he was headstrong, the other as brave
as he was prudent; the one loved wine, and the other brandy; the one
fled from women through real greatness of heart, the other sought them
from a natural tenderness of soul; and, as a proof of what I say, he met
a beautiful woman in the vessel of which I have spoken, whom he valued
more than all the other spoil."
Providence, a French moral philosopher ventures to suggest, raised up
the Buccaneers to revenge on the Spaniards all the sufferings and
injustices of the Indians. The Spaniard was the scourge of the Indian,
and the Buccaneer the scourge of the Spaniard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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