One can easily imagine a group of hard-bitten men sheltering under the lee of the long boat on a dirty night; wet, cold and tired; listening with hungry interest to the yarns of an “old stander” who had been “on the account,” telling of the time he sailed with Bart Sharp or “Long Ben” Avery; picturing with many a brave oath, that other channel, the broad one, straight, with smooth water, pieces-of-eight to port, dollars and doubloons to starboard, snug harbors in tropic isles, dusky maids, punch, tobacco and grub in plenty, laced coats and chains of gold. There is another side to the picture, not so pleasant, to be sure, but easily dimmed by a noggin of rum or a swig or two of flip. ’Tis naught, after all, but the yard-arm of a man-of-war with a man on the end of a tricing line with his flippers seized to his sides; and on a seashore, a wooden erection with a something hanging--something that looks uncommonly like a sailorman, watching, with wry face, the ebbing and flowing of the tide. But there’s nothing in the picture to make one of the right sort go about ship. Better a short choking sensation than a long starving in merchants’ employ or scurvy rotting for a pay ticket on board a king’s ship. Capt. Charles Johnson tells us in his book on pirates, that one “Mary Read, a female pirate, being asked by her captain, before he knew she was a woman, why she followed a life so full of danger and at last to the certainty of being hanged, replied: as to the hanging she thought it no great hardship, for were it not for that every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so infest the seas that men of courage would starve. That if it was put to her choice she would not have the punishment less than death, the fear of which kept dastardly rogues honest; that many of those who were now cheating the widows and orphans and oppressing their poor neighbors who had no money to obtain justice, would then rob at sea and the ocean would be as crowded with rogues as the land, so that no merchant would venture out and the trade in a little time would not be worth following.”