Stories of the Spanish Main Author:Frank Richard Stockton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III The Story Of A Pearl Pirate THE ordinary story of the pirate, or the wicked man in general, no matter how successful he may have been in his crim... more »inal career, nearly always ends disastrously, and in that way points a moral which doubtless has a good effect on a large class of people, who would be very glad to do wrong, provided no harm was likely to come to them in consequence. But the story of Peter the Great, which we have just told, contains no such moral. In fact, its influence upon the adventurers of that period was most unwholesome. When the wonderful success of Peter the Great became known, the buccaneering community at Tortuga1 was wildly excited. Every bushy- bearded fellow who could get possession of a small boat, and induce a score of other bushy-bearded fellows to follow him, wanted to start out andcapture a rich Spanish galleon, as the great ships, used alike for war and commerce, were then called. 1 See map. 1 Stimulated, roused to new activity. But not only were the French and English sailors and traders who had become buccaneers excited and stimulated by the remarkable good fortune of their companion, but many people of adventurous mind, who had never thought of leaving England for purposes of piracy, now became firmly convinced that there was no business which promised better than that of a buccaneer, and some of them crossed the ocean for the express purpose of getting rich by capturing Spanish vessels homeward bound. As there were not enough suitable vessels in Tortuga for the demands of the recently stimulated l industry, the buccaneer settlers went to other parts of the West Indies to obtain suitable craft, and it is related that in about a month after the great victory of Peter the Great, two large Spanish vessels, loaded with silver b...« less